'(!•.■
ESSAYS OF ELIA.
^^a^mVu.
Annuls <t rf-*€nttt
ESSAYS OF ELIA.
BY
CHARLES LAMB.
A NEW EDITION.
NEW YORK:
W. J. WIDDLETON, PUBLISHER.
1878.
I
Cambridge :
Pressiiwk l<v John Wihon &> Son.
LIBRARY
T\ UNIVERSITY OF .-^ALIFORNIA
<^i) SANTA BARBARA
CONTENTS.
ELIA.
PAOE
the south-sea house 9
oxford ix the vacatiox 19
Christ's hospital five-and-thirty years ago . . 27
the two races of men 44
new-year's eve 51
MRS. battle's opinions ON WHIST GO
A CHAPTER ON EARS 69
ALL fools' day 75
A QUAKERS' MEETING 80
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 86
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 98
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS 108
valentine's DAY 117
MY RELATIONS 121
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 129
MY FIRST PLAY 136
MODERN GALLANTRY 142
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE .... 147
VI CONTENTS.
PAGE
grace before meat 162
dream-children; a revery 171
distant correspondents 176
the praise of chimney-sweepers 184:
a complaint of the decay of beggars in the me-
tropolis 193
a dissertation upon roast pig 203
A bachelor's COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOR OF MAR-
RIED PEOPLE 212
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 221
ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY . 237
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 217
THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA.
BLAKESMOOR in II SIIIKE 257
POOR RELATIONS 264
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING . . . 273
STAGE ILLUSION 281
TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON 285
ELLISTONIANA 280
THE OLD MARGATE HOY 296
THE CONVALESCENT 306
SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 312
CAPTAIN JACKSON 316
CONTENTS. Vll
PACE
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 322
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING 331
BARBARA S 337
THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY 344
AMICUS REDIVIVUS 348
SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY 354
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 363
BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE
PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART 373
THE WEDDING 388
REJOICINGS UPON THE NICW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE . 395
OLD CHINA 402
THE CHILD- angel; A DREAM 410
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD 414
Popular Fallacies —
i, that a bully is always a coward .... 425
ii. that ill-gotten gain never prospers . . . 426
iii. that a man must not laugh at his own jest 427
iv. that such a one shows his breeding — that
it is easy to perceive he is no gentleman 427
v. that the poor copy the vices of the rich . 428
vi. that enough is as good as a feast .... 430
vii. of two disputants the warmest is generally
in the wrong 431
vui. that verbal allusions are not wit, because
they will not bear a translation . . . 433
ix. that the worst puns are the best .... 433
VIU CONTENTS.
Popular Fallacies — (Continued^
^ ' PAGE
X. THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES . . . 436
XI. THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT-HORSE IN THE
MOUTH 439
XII. THAT HOME IS HOME, THOUGH IT IS NEVER SO
HOMELY 442
XIII. THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME AND LOVE MY DOG . 448
XIV. THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK .... 452
XV. THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB . . 455
XVI. THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE . . . 458
E L I A.
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.
Re,\der, in thy passage from the Bank — where
tliou hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends
(supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself) —
to the Flower Pot, to secure a place for Dalston, or
Shacklewell, or some other thy suburban retreat north-
erly,— didst thou never observe a melancholy-looking,
handsome, brick and stone edifice, to the left — where
Threadneedle-street abuts upon Bishopsgate ? I dare
say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals ever
gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave court, with
cloisters, and pillars, with few or no traces of goers-
in or comers-out, — a desolation something like Bal-
clutha's.*
This was once a house of trade, — a centre of busy
interests. The throng of merchants was here — the
quick j)ulse of gain — and here some forms of business
are still kept up, though the soul be long since fied.
Plere are still to be seen stately porticos ; imposing
staircases, offices roomy as the state apartments in
palaces — deserted, or thinly peopled with a few strag-
• I passed by the walls of Bulclutha, and tUey were diisojato.
USSIAS.
10 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.
gling clerks ; tlie still more sacred interiors of court
and committee-rooms, with venerable faces of beadles,
door-keepers — directors seated in forai on solemn days
(to proclaim a dead dividend), at long worm-eaten
tables, that have been mahogany, with tarnished gilt-
leather coverings, supporting massy silver inkstands
long since dry ; — the oaken wainscots hung with
pictures of deceased governors and sub-governors, of
Queen Anne, and the two first monarchs of the
Brunswick djniasty ; — huge charts, Avhich subsequent
discoveries have antiquated ; dusty maps of Mexico,
dim as dreams, — and soundings of the Bay of Panama !
The long passages hung with buckets, appended, in
idle row, to walls, whose substance might defy any,
short of the last, conflagration : — with vast ranges of
cellarage mider all, where dollars and ])ieces-of-eight
once lay, an " unsunned heap," for Mammon to have
solaced his solitary heart withal, — long since dissi-
pated, or scattered into air at the blast of the breaking
of that famous Bubble.
Such is the South-Sea House. At least, such it
was forty years ago, when I knew it, — a magnificent
relic ! What alterations may have been made in it
since, I have had no opportunities of verifying. Time,
I take for granted, has not freshened it. No wind
has resuscitated the face of the sleeping waters. A
thicker crust by this time stagnates upon it. The
moths that were then battening upon its obsolete
ledgers and daybooks, have rested from their depre-
dations, but other liiiht generations have succeeded,
makino; fine fretwork amono; their sino;le and doid)le
entries. Layers of dust have accumulated (a super-
foetation of dirt!) upon the old layers, that seldom
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 11
used to be disturbed, save by some curious finger, now
and then, inquisitive to explore the mode of bookkeep-
ing in Queen Anne's reign ; or, with less hallowed
curiosity, seeking to unveil some of the mysteries of
that tremendous hoax, whose extent the petty pecula-
tors of our day look back upon with the same expres-
sion of incredulous admiration, and hopeless ambition
of rivaliy, as would become the puny face of modem
conspiracy contemplating the Titan size of Vaux's
superhuman plot.
Peace to the manes of the Bubble ! Silence and
destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a me-
morial !
Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring
and livuig commerce, — amid the fret and fever of
speculation, — with the Bank, and the 'Change, and
the India-House about thee, in the heyday of present
prosperity, with their important faces, as it were, in-
sulting thee, their poor neiglihor out of business, — to
the idle and merely contemplative, — to such as me,
old house ! there is a charm in thy quiet : — a cessa-
tion — a coolness from business — an indolence almost
cloistral — which is deliffhtfal ! With what reverence
have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at even-
tide ! They spoke of the past : — the shade of some
dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit
by me, stiff as in life. Living accounts and account-
ants puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring. But thy
great dead tomes, which scarce three degenerate clerks
of the present day could lift from their enshrining
shelves — with their old fantastic flourishes, and dec-
omtive rubric interlacings — their sums in triple col-
uraniations, set down with formal superfluity of cipher?
l2 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.
— with pious sentences at the beginning, without wliich
our rehgious ancestors never ventured to open a book
of business, or bill of lading — the costly vellum covers
of some of them almost persuading us that we are
got into some better lihrary^ — are very agreeable and
edifying sjiectacles. I can look upon these defunct
dragons with complacency. Thy heavy, odd-shaped,
ivory-handled penknives (our ancestors had every-
thing on a larger scale than we have hearts for) are as
good as anything fi'om Herculanemn. The pounce-
boxes of our days have gone retrograde.
The very clerks which I remember in the South-Sea
House — I speak of forty years back — had an air very
(different from those in the public offices that I have
had to do with since. They partook of the genius of
the ])lace !
They were mostly (for the establishment did not
admit of superfluous salaries) bachelors. Generally
(for they had not much to do) persons of a curious
and speculative turn of mind. Old-fashioned, for a
reason mentioned before. Humorists, for they were
of all descriptions ; and, not having been brought to-
gether in early life (which has a tendency to assimi-
late the members of corporate bodies to each other),
but, for the most part, })laced in this house in ripe or
middle age, they necessarily carried into it their sepa-
rate habits and oddities, unciualified, if I may so speak,
as into a common stock. Hence they formed a sort of
Noah's ark. Odd fishes. A lay-monastery. Domestic
retainers in a great liouse, kept more for show than
use. Yet pleasant fellows, full of chat, — and not a
few among them had arrived at considerable profi-
ciency on the German flute.
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 13
The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Oambro-
Briton. He had something of the choleric complexion
of his countrymen stamped on his visage, but was a
worthy sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair,
to the last, ])owdered and frizzed out, in the fashion
which I remember to have seen in caricatures of what
were termed, in my young days, Maccaronies. He
was the last of that race of beaux. Melancholy as a
gibcat, over his counter all the forenoon, I think I see
him, making up his cash (as they call it) with tremu-
lous fingers, as if he feared every one about him was a
defaulter; in his hypochondry ready to imagine him-
self one ; haunted, at least, with the idea of the possi-
bility of his becoming one ; his tristful visage clearing
ap a little over his roast neck of veal at Anderton's at
two (where his picture still hangs, taken a little before
his death by desire of the master of the coffee-house,
which he had frequented for the last five-and-twenty
years,) but not attainmg the meridian of its animation
till evenino; brought on the hour of tea and visitino-.
The simultaneous sound of his well-known rap at the
door with the stroke of the clock announcing six, was a
topic of never-failing mirth in the families which this
dear old bachelor gladdened with his presence. Then
was hh forte, his glorified houi'! How would he chirp,
and expand, over a muffin ! How would he dilate into
secret history. His countryman. Pennant himself, in
particular, could not be more eloquent than he in rela-
tion to old and new London — the site of old theatres,
churches, streets gone to decay — where Rosamond's
Pond stood — the Mulberry-gardens — and the Con-
duit in Cheap — with many a pleasant anecdote, de-
rived from paternal tradition, of those grotesque figures
14 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.
which Hogarth has immortahzed in his picture of Noon,
— the worthy descendants of those lieroic <!onfessors,
who, fl}^ng to this country, from the wrath of Louis
the Fourteenth and his dragoons, kept ahve tlie flame
of pure rehgion in the sheltering obscurities of Hog-
lane, and the \'icinity of the Seven Dials !
Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had
the air and stoop of a nobleman. You would have
taken him for one, had you met him in one of the
passages leading to Westminster-hall. By stoop, I
mean that gentle bending of the body forwards, which,
in great men, must be supposed to be the effect of an
habitual condescending attention to the applications of
their inferiors. While he held you in converse, you
felt strained to the height in the colloquy. The con-
ference over, you were at leisure to smile at the com-
parative insignificance of the pretensions which had
just awed you. His intellect was of the shallowest
order. It did not reach to a saw or a proverb. His
mind was in its original state of white paper. A
sucking-babe might have posed him. What was it
then ? Was he rich ? Alas, no ! Thomas Tame
was very poor. Both he and his wife looked out-
wardly gentlefolks, when I fear all was not well at sd)
times within. She had a neat meagre person, which if
was evident she had not sinned in over-pampering ; but
in its veins was noble blood. She traced her descent,
by some labyrinth of relationship, which I never thor-
oughly understood, — much less can explain with any
heraldic certainty at this time of day, — to the illus-
trious, but unfortunate house of Derwentwater. This
was the secret of Thomas's stoop. This was the
thought — the sentiment — the bright solitaiy star of
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 15
70ur lives, — ye mild and happy pair, — which cheered
you in the night of intellect, and in the obscurity of
your station ! This was to you instead of riches, in-
stead of rank, instead of glittering attainments ; and it
was worth them all tog-ether. You insulted none with
it ; but, while you wore it as a piece of defensive
armor only, no insult likewise could reach you through
it. Deeus et solamen.
Of quite another stamp was the then accountant,
John Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, nor,
in good truth, cared one fig about the matter. He
" thought an accountant the greatest character in the
world, and himself the greatest accountant in it.''
Yet John was not without his hobby. The fiddle
relieved liis vacant hours. He sang, certainly, with
other notes than to the Orphean lyre. He did, in-
deed, scream and scrape most abominably. His fine
suite of official rooms in Threadneedle-street, which,
without anything very substantial appended to them,
were enough to enlarge a man's notions of himself that
lived in them, (I know not who is the occupier of them
uow,) resounded fortnightly to the notes of a concert
of " sweet breasts," as om' ancestors would have called
them, culled from club-rooms and orchestras — choinis-
singers — first and second violoncellos — double basses
— and clarionets — who ate his cold mutton and drank
his punch, and praised his ear. He sate like Lord
Midas among them. But at the desk Tipp was quite
another sort of creature. Thence all ideas, that were
purely ornamental, were banished. You could not
speak of anything romantic without rebuke. Politics
were excluded. A newspaper was thought too refined
and abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in
16 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.
writing off dividend warrants. The striking of the
annual balance in the company's books (which, per-
haps, differed from the balance of last year in the sum
of 251. Is. 6c?.) occupied his days and nights for a
month previous. Not that Tipp was blind to tlie dead-
ness of things (as they call them in the city) in his
beloved house, or did not sigh for a retiu'n of the old
stirring days when South-Sea hopes were young — (he
was indeed equal to the wielding of any the most in-
tricate accounts of the most flourishmg company in
these or those days) ; — but to a genuine accountant
the difference of proceeds is as nothing. The fractional
farthing is as dear to his heart as the thousands which
stand before it. He is the true actor, who, whether
nis part be a prince or a peasant, must act it with like
intensity. With Tipp form was everything. His life
was formal. His actions seemed ruled with a ruler.
His pen was not less erring than his heart. He made
the best executor in the world ; he was plagued with
incessant executorships accordingly, which excited his
spleen and soothed his vanity in equal ratios. He
would swear (for Tipp swore) at the little orphans,
whose rights he would guard with a tenacity like the
grasp of the dying hand, that commended their interests
to his protection. With all this there was about him
a sort of timidity — (his few enemies used to give it a
worse name) — a something which, in reverence to the
dead, we will place, if you please, a little on this side
of the heroic. Nature certahily had been pleased to
endow John Tipp with a sufficient measiu'e of the
principle of self-preservation. Tliere is a cowardice
which we do not despise, because it has nothing base
or treacherous in its elements ; it betrays itself, not
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 17
you ; it is mere temperament ; the absence of the
romantic and the enterprising ; it sees a Hon in the
way, and will not, with Fortinbras, " gi-eatly find
quarrel in a straw," when some supposed honor is at
stake. Tipp never mounted the box of a stage-coacli
in his life ; or leaned against the rails of a balcony ;
or walked upon the ridge of a parapet ; or looked down
a precipice ; or let off a gun ; or went upon a water-
party ; or would willingly let you go, if he could have
helped it ; neither was it recorded of him, that for
lucre, or for intimidation, he ever forsook friend or
principle.
Whom next shall we summon fi'om the dusty dead,
in whom common qualities become uncommon ? Can
I forget thee, Henry Man, the wit, the polished man
of letters, the author^ of the South-Sea House ? who
never enteredst thy office in a morning, or quittedst it
in mid-day — (what didst thou in an office?) — with-
out some quirk that left a sting ! Thy gibes and thy
jokes are now extinct, or survive but in two forgotten
volumes, which I had the good fortune to rescue from
a stall in Barbican, not three days ago, and found thee
terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as alive. Thy wit is a little
gone by in these fastidious days — thy topics are staled
by the " ncAv-born gauds" of the time; — but great
thou used to be in Public Ledgers, and in Chronicles,
upon Chatham, and Shelburne, and Rockingham, and
Howe, and Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the war which
ended in the tearing from Great Britain her rebellious
colonies, — and Keppel, and Wilkes, and SaAvbridge,
and Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond, —
and such small politics.
A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstrep-
18 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.
erous, was fine rattling, rattle-headed Plumer. He
was descended, — not in a right line, reader, (for hia
lineal pretensions, like his personal, favored a little of
the sinister bend,) from the Plumers of Hertfordshire.
So tradition gave him out ; and certain family features
not a little sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old
Walter Plumer (his reputed author) had been a rake
in his days, and visited much in Italy, and had seen
the world. He was uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine
old whig still hving, who has represented the county
in so many successive parliaments, and has a fine old
mansion near Ware. Walter flourished in George
the Second's days, and was the same who was sum-
moned before the House of Commons about a busi-
ness of franks, with the old . Duchess of Marlborough.
You may read of it in Johnson's " Life of Cave." Cave
came off cleverly in that business. It is certam our
Plumer did nothmg to discountenance the rumor.
He rather seemed pleased whenever it was, with all
gentleness, insinuated. But, besides his family pre-
tensions, Plumer was an engaging fellow, and sang
gloriously.
Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild,
childlike, pastoral M ; a .flute's breathing less
divinely v.diispering than thy Arcadian melodies, when,
in tones worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song
sung by Amiens to the banished Duke, which pro-
claims the winter wind more lenient than for a man
to be ungrateful. Thy sire was old surly M , the
unapproachable churchwarden of Bishopsgate. He
knew not what he did, when he begat thee, like spring,
gentle offspring of blustering winter : — only unfortu-
nate in thy ending, which should have been mild, con-
ciliato)'y, swan-like.
OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 13
Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise
up, but they must be mine in private ; — ah-eady I
have fooled the reader to tlie top of his bent ; — else
could I omit that strange creature Woollett, who
existed in trying the question, and bought litigations ?
— and still stranger, inimitable, solemn Hepworth,
from whose gravity Newton might have deduced the
law of gravitation. How profoundly Avould he nib
a pen — with what deliberation would he wet a
wafer !
But it is time to close — night's wheels are rattling
fast over me — it is proper to have done with this
solemn mockeiy.
Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all
this while ? — peradventure the veiy names, which I
have summoned up before thee, are fantastic — insub-
stantial — like Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps
of Greece ;
Be satisfied that something answering to them has
had a being. Their importance is from the past.
OXFORD IN THE VACATION.
Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this
article — as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cur-
sory eye, (which, while it reads, seems as though it
read not,) never fails to consult the quis scnlpsit in
the corner, befoi'e he pronounces some rare piece to
be a Vivares, or a Woollett methinks I hear you
exclaim, Reader, WJio is Elia ?
Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some
20 OXFORD IN THE VACATION.
half-forgotten humors of some old clerks defunct, in
an old house of business, long since gone to decay,
doubtless you have already set me down in your mind
as one of the self-same college a votary of the
desk — a notched and cropt scrivener — one that sucks
his sustenance, as certain sick people are said to do,
through a quill.
Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I confess
that it is my humor, my fancy — in the forepart of
the day, when the mind of your man of letters requires
some relaxation — (and none better than such as at
first sight seems most abhorrent fi-om his beloved
studies) — to while away some good hours of my
time in the contemplation of mdigos, cottons, raw
silks, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In the
first place .......
and then it sends you home with such increased appe-
tite to youi' books ......
not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste wrap-
pers of foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly
and naturally, the impression of sonnets, epigrams,
essays — so that the very parings of a counting-house
are, in some sort, the settings up of an author. The
enfranchised quill, that has plodded all the morning
among the cart-rucks of figures and ciphers, frisks
and curvets so at its ease over the flowery carpet-
ground of a midnight dissertation. — It feels its pro-
motion. ........
So that you see, upon the whole, the literary dignity
of Elia is very little, if at all, compromised in the
condescension.
Not that, in my anxious detail of the many com-
modities incidental to the life of a public oflice, I
OXFOi^D IN THE VACATION. 21
would be tliouslit blind to certain flaws, which a
cunning carper might be able to pick in this Joseph's
vest. And here I must have leave, in the fulness of
my soul, to regret the abolition, and doing-away-with
altogether, of those consolatory interstices, and sprink-
lings of freedom, through the four seasons, — the red-
letter dai/s, now become, to all intents and purposes,
dead-letter days. There was Paul, and Stephen, and
Barnabas —
Andrew and John, men famous in old times
— we were used to keep all their days holy, as long
back as I was at school at Christ's. I remember
their effigies, by the same token, in the old Basket
Prayer Book. There hung Peter in his vmeasy
posture boly Bartlemy in the troublesome act of
flaying, after the famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti.
1 honored them all, and could almost have wept
the defalcation of Iscariot — so much did we love to
keep holy memories sacred ; — only methought I a
little o;rudo;ed at the coalition of the better Jade with
Simon — clubbing (as it were) their sanctities together,
to make up one poor gaudy-day between them — as an
economy unworthy of the dispensation.
These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a
clerk's life — "far off* their coming shone." — I was as
good as an almanac in those days. I could have told
you such a saint's day falls out next week, or the week
after. Peradventure the Epiphany, by some periodical
infelicity, would, once in six years, merge in a Sabbath.
Now am I little better than one of the profane. Let
me not be thought to arraign the wisdom of my civil
superiors, who have judged the ftirther observation of
22 OXFORD IN THE VACATION.
these holy tides to be papistical, superstitious. Onlj
in a custom of such long standing, methinks, if theii
Holinesses the Bishops had, in decency, been first
sounded but I am wading out of my depths. I
am not the man to decide the limits of civil and ecclesi-
astical authority I am plain Elia — no Selden,
nor Archbishop Usher — though at present in the thick
of their books, here in the heart of learnmg, under the
shadow of the mighty Bodley.
I can here play the gentleman, enact the student.
To such a one as myself, who has been deft-auded in
his young years of the sweet food of academic insti-
tution, nowhere is so pleasant, to while away a few
idle weeks at, as one or other of the Universities.
Their vacation, too, at this time of the year, falls in
so pat with ours. Here I can take my walks unmo-
lested, and fancy myself of what degree or standing
I please. I seem admitted ad eundeni. I fetch up
past opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and
dream that it rings for me. In moods of humility I
can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock vein
rises, I sti'ut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver
moments, I proceed Master of Arts, Indeed I do
not think I am much milike that respectable char-
acter. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-
makers in spectacles, drop a bow or a curtsy, as I pass,
wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go
about in black, which favors the notion. Only in
Christ Church reverend quadrangle, I can be content
to pass for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor.
The walks at these times are so much one's OA\m, —
the tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen !
The halls deserted, and with open doors inviting one
OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 23
to slip in uiiperceived, and pay a devoir to some
Founder, or noble or royal Benefactress (that should
have been ours), whose portrait seems to smile upon
their over-looked beadsman, and to adopt me for their
own. Then, to take a peep in by the way at the but-
teries, and sculleries, redolent of antique hospitality
the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen fireplaces,
cordial recesses ; ovens whose first pies were baked
four centuries ago ; and spits which have cooked for
Chaucer ! Not the meanest minister among the dishes
but is hallowed to me through his imagination, and the
Cook goes forth a Manciple.
Antiquity ! thou wondi'ous charm, what art thou ?
that being nothing, art everything ! When thou wert^
thou wert not antiquity — then thou wert nothmg, but
hadst a remoter Mitiquity^ as thou calledst it, to look
back to with blind veneration ; thou thyself being to
thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mysteiy lui'ks in
this retroversion ? or what half Januses * are we,
that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with
which we forever revert ! The mighty future is as
nothing, being everything ! the past is everything,
being nothing !
What were thy dark ages ? Surely the sun rose as
brightly then as now, and man got him to his work in
the morning. Why is it we can never hear mention
of them without an accompanjdng feeling, as though
a palpable obscure had dimmed the face of things, and
that our ancestors wandered to and fi'o groping !
Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most
arride and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering
learning, thy shelves
* Januses of one face. — Sir Thomas Bkownk.
24 OXFOKD IN THE VACATION.
What a place to be in is an old library ! It seems
as though all the souls of all the writers, that have
bequeathed their labors to these Bodleians, were re-
posing here as in some dormitory, or middle state. I
do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their
winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I
seem to inhale learning, walkmg amid their fohage ;
and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is
fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples
which grew amid the happy orchard.
Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose
ol MSS. Those varice lectiones, so tempting to the
more erudite palates, do but disturb and unsettle my
faith. I am no Herculanean raker. The credit of the
tliree witnesses might hai'e slept unimpeached for me.
I leave these curiosities to Porson, and to G. D. —
whom, by the way, I found busy as a moth over some
rotten archive, rummaged out of some seldom-explored
press, in a nook at Oriel. With long poring, he is
grown almost into a book. He stood as passive as one
by the side of the old shelves. I longed to new coat
him in russia, and assign him his place. He might
have mustered for a tall Scapula.
D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learnmo;.
No inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortime, I
apprehend, is consumed in joui'neys between them and
Cliiford's-inn where, like a dove on the asp's nest,
he has long taken up his unconscious abode, amid an
incongruous assembly of attorneys, attorneys' clerks,
apparitors, promoters, vermin of the law, among whom
he sits " in calm and sinless peace." The fangs of the
law pierce him not — the winds of litigation blow over
his humble chambers — the hard sheriff's officer moves
OXFORD EN THP: VACATION 25
his hat as he passes — legal nor illegal discourtesy
touches him — none thinks of offering violence or in-
justice to him — you would as soon " strike an ab-
stract idea.''
D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course
of laborious years, in an investigation hito all curious
matter connected with the two Universities ; and has
lately lit upon a MS. collection of charters, relative
to C , by which he hopes to settle some disputed
points — particularly that long controversy between
them as to priority of foundation. The ardor with
which he engages in these liberal pursuits, I am afraid,
has not met with all the encouragement it deserved,
either here, or at C . Your caputs, and heads of
colleges, care less than anybody else about these ques-
tions. — Contented to suck the milky fountains of their
Alma Maters, without inquiring into the venerable
gentlewomen's years, they rather hold such curiosities
to be impertinent — unreverend. They have their
good glebe lands in manu, and care not much to rake
into the title deeds. I gather at least so much from
other sources, for D. is not a man to complain.
D. started like an unbroke heifer, when I inter-
rupted him. A priori it was not veiy probable that
we should have met in Oriel. But D. would have
done the same, had I accosted him on the sudden in
his owm walks in ClifFord's-inn, or in the Temple. In
addition to a provoking short-sightedness (the effect of
late studies and watchings at the midnight oil), D. is
the most absent of men. He made a call the other
morning at our finend M.'s in Bedford-square ; and,
finding nobody at home, was ushered into the hall,
where, asking for pen and ink, with great exactitude
26 OXFORD IN THE VACATION.
of pui'pose he enters me his name in the book — which
ordinarily Mes about m such phices, to record the fail-
ures of the untimely or unfortunate visitor — and takes
his leave Avith many cerelnonies and professions of
regret. Some two or three hours after, his walking
destinies returned him into the same neighborhood
again, and again the quiet image of the fireside circle
at M.'s — Mrs. M. presiding at it like a Queen Lar,
with pretty A. S. at her side — striking irresistibly on
liis fancy, he makes another call (forgetting that they
were " certainly not to return from the country before
that day week "), and disappointed a second time, in-
quires for pen and paper as before ; again the book is
brought, and in the line just above that in which he is
about to print his second name (his re-script) — his first
name (scarce dry) looks out upon him like another
Sosia, or as if a man should suddenly encounter his
own duplicate ! — The effect may be conceived. D.
made many a good resolution against any such lapses
in future. I hope he will not keep them too rigorously.
For with G. D. — to be absent from the body, is
sometimes (not to speak it profanely) to be present
with the Lord. At the very time when, personally
encountering thee, he passes on with no recognition
or, being stopped, starts like a thing surprised —
at that moment, reader, he is on Mount Tabor —
or Parnassus — or co-sphered Avith Plato — or, with
Harrinffton, framino; "immortal commonwealths" —
devising some plan of amelioration to thy countiy, or
thy species perad venture meditating some indi-
vidual kindness or courtesy, to be done to thee thi/selfy
the returning consciousness of which made him to
stall so guiltily at thy obtruded personal presence.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, &c. 27
D. is deliglitftil anywhere, but he is at the best in
such places as tliese. He cares not much for Bath.
He is out of his element at Buxton, at Scarborough,
or Harrowgate. The Cam and the Isis are to him
" better than all the waters of Damascus." On the
Muses' hill he is happy, and good, as one of the
Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains ; and when
he goes about with you to show you the halls and
colleges, you think you have with you the Interpreter
at the House Beautiful.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS
AGO.
In Mr. Lamb's " Works," published a year or two
since, I find a magnificent eulogy on my old school,*
such as it was, or now appears to him to have been,
between the years 1782 and 1789. It happens, very
oddly, that my own stanchng at Christ's was nearly
corresponding with his ; and, with all gratitude to him
for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, I think he has con-
trived to bring together whatever can be said in praise
of them, dropping all the other side of the argument
most ingeniously.
I remember L. at school ; and can well recollect
that he had some peculiar advantages, which I and
others of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived
in town, and were near at hand ; and he had the privi-
lege of going to see them, almost as often as he wished,
through some invidious distinction, which was denied to
* Recollections of Christ's Hospital.
28 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL
US. The present worthy sub-treasurer to the Inner
Temple can explain how that happened. He had his
tea and hot rolls in a morning, while we were batten-
ing upon our quarter-of-a-penny-loaf — our et'ug —
moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden pig-
gins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was
poured from. Our Monday's milk porridge, blue and
tasteless, and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and
choking, were enriched for him with a slice of " extra-
ordinary bread and butter," from the hot-loaf of the
Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat
less repugnant — (we had three banyan to four meat
days in the week) — was endeared to his palate with a
lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger (to make
it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon.
In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh boiled
beef on Thursdays (strong as caro equina)^ with detest-
able marigolds floating in the pail to poison the broth
— our scanty mutton scrags on Fridays — and rather
more savoury, but ginidging, portions of the same flesh,
rotten-roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish
which excited our appetites, and disappointed our stom-
achs, in almost equal proportion) — he had his hot
plate of roast veal, or the more tempting griskin (exot-
ics unknown to our palates), cooked in the paternal
kitchen (a great thing), and brought him daily by his
maid or aunt ! I remember the good old relative (in
whom love forbade pride) squatting down u])on some odd
stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing ♦.he viands
(of higher regale than those cates which the ravens
ministered to the Tishbite) ; and the contending pas-
sions of L. at the unfolding;. There was love for the
bringer ; shame for the thing brought, and the manner
FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 29
of its bringing ; sympathy for those who were too many
to sliare in it ; and, at top of all, hunger (eldest,
strongest of the passions !) predommant, breaking down
the stony fences of shame, and awkAvardness, and a
troublino; over-consciousness.
I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and those
who should care for me, were far away. Those few
acquaintances of theirs, which they could reckon upon
being khid to me in the great city, after a little forced
notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my
first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday
visits. They seemed to them to recur too often,
though I thought them few enough ; and, one after
another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone
among six hundred playmates.
O the cnielty of separating a poor lad from his
early homestead ! The yearnings which I used to
have towards it in those unfledged years ! How, in
my dreams, would my native town (far in the west)
come back, with its church, and trees, and faces !
How I would wake weeping, and in the anguish of
my heart exclaim upon sweet Calne in Wiltshire.
To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions
left by the recollection of those friendless holidays.
The long warm days of summer never return but
they bring with them a gloom fi-om the haunting
memory of those whole-day leaves^ when by some
strange arrangement we were turned out, for the live-
long day, upon our own hands, wliether we had friends
to go to, or none. I remember those bathing excur-
sions to the New River, which L. recalls with such
relish, better, I think, than he can — for he was a home-
seeking lad, and did not much care for such water-
30 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL
pastimes : — How merrily we would sally forth into the
fields ; and strip under the first warmth of the sun ,
and wanton like young dace in the streams ; getting us
appetites for noon, which those of us that were penni-
less (our scanty morning crust long since exhausted)
had not the means of allaying — while the cattle, and
the birds, and the fishes, were at feed about us and we
had nothing to satisfy our cravings — the very beauty
of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the
sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon them ! —
How faint and languid, finally, we would return, tow-
ards nightfall, to our desu-ed morsel, half-rejoicing,
half-reluctant, that the hours of our uneasy liberty had
expired !
It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling
about the streets objectless — shivering at cold windows
of print-shops, to extract a little amusement ; or haply,
as a last resort in the hopes of a little novelty, to pay a
fifty-times repeated visit (where our individual faces
should be as well known to the warden as those of his
own charges) to the Lions in the Tower — to whose
levee, by courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive
title to admission.
L.'s governor (so we called the patron who pre-
sented us to the foimdation) lived in a manner under
his paternal roof. Any complaint which he had to
make was sure of being attended to. This was under-
stood at Christ's, and was an effectual screen to him
against the severity of masters, or worse tyranny of
the monitors. The oppressions of these young brutes
are heart-sickening to call to recollection. I have been
called out of my bed, and waked for the purpose, in the
coldest winter nights — and this not once, but night
FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 31
after night — in my shii't, to receive the discipline of a
leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, because it
pleased my callow overseer, when there had been any
talking heard after we were gone to bed, to make the
last six beds in the dormitory, where the youngest
children of us slept, answerable for an offence they
neither dared to commit, nor had the power to hinder.
The same execrable tyranny drove the younger part of
us from the fires, when our feet were perishing with
snow ; and, under the cruelest penalties, forbade the
indulgence of a drink of water when we lay in sleep-
less summer nights, fevered with the season and the
day's sports.
There was one H , who, I learned, in after days,
was seen expiating some maturer offence in the hulks.
(Do I flatter myself in fancying that this might be the
planter of that name, who suffered — at Nevis, I think,
or St. Kitts — some few years since ? My fiiend
Tobin was the benevolent instrument of bringing him
to the gallows.) This petty Nero actually branded a
boy, who had offended him, with a redhot iron ; and
nearly starved forty of us, with exacting contributions,
to the one half of our bread, to pamper a young ass,
which, incredible as it may seem, with the connivance
of the nurse's daughter (a young flame of his) he had
contrived to smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of the
ward^ as they called our dormitories. This game went
on for better than a Aveek, till the foolish beast, not able
to fare well but he must cry roast meat — happier than
Caligula's minion, could he have kept his own counsel
— but, foolisher, alas ! than any of his species in the
fables — waxing fat, and kicking, in the fulness of
bread, one unlucky minute would needs proclaim hia
32 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL
good fortune to the world below ; and, laying out his
simple throat, blew such a ram's-horn blast, as (toppling
down the Avails of his own Jericho) set concealment
any longer at defiance. The client was dismissed, with
certain attentions, to Smithfield ; but I never under-
stood that the patron underwent any censure on the
occasion. This was in the stewardship of L.'s admired
Perry.
Under the same facile administration, can L. have
forgotten the cool impunity with which the nurses used
to carry away openly, in open platters, for their own
tables, one out of two of eveiy hot joint, which the care-
ful matron had been seeing scrupulously weighed out
for our dinners ? These things were daily practised in
that magnificent apartment, which L. (grown connois-
seiu' since, we presume,) praises so highly for the grand
paintings " by Verrio, and others," with which it is
"huno; round and adorned." But the sight of sleek
well-fed blue-coat boys in pictures was, at that time, I
believe, little consolatory to him, or us, the living ones,
who saw the better part of our provisions carried away
before our faces by harpies ; and ourselves reduced
(with thelrojan in the hall of Dido)
To feed our mind with idle portraiture.
L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to
gags^ or the fat of fresh beef boiled ; and sets it down
to some sujierstition. But these unctuous morsels are
never grateful to young palates (children are univer-
.sally fat-haters), and in strong, coarse, boiled meats,
unsalted, are detestable. A gag-eater in our time was
equivalent to a ghoul, and held in equal detestat'oii.
suffered under the imputation :
FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 38
'Twas said
He ate strange flesh.
He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up
the remnants left at his table (not many, nor veiy
choice fragments you may credit me,) — and, in an
especial manner, these disreputable morsels, which he
would convey away, and secretly stow in the settle
that stood at his bedside. None saw when he ate
them. It was rumoured that he privately devoured
them in the night. He was watched, but no traces of
such midnight practices were discoverable. Some re-
ported, that, on leave-days, he had been seen to carry
out of the bounds a large blue check handkerchief, full
of something. This then mvist be the accursed thing.
Conjecture next was at work to imagine how he could
dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the beggars.
This belief generally prevailed. He went about mop-
ing. None spake to him. No one would play with
him. He was excommunicated ; j)ut out of the pale of
the school. He was too powerful a boy to be beaten,
but he underwent every mode of that negative punish-
ment, which is more grievous than many stripes. Still
he persevered. At length he was observed by two of
his school-fellows, who were determined to get at the
secret, and had traced him one leavo hxv for that pur-
pose, to enter a large worn-out buildn^g, such as there
exist specimens of in Chancery-lane, which are let out
to various scales of pauperism, with open door and a
common staircase. After him they silently slunk, in,
and followed by stealth up four flights, and saw him
tap at a poor wicket, which was opened by an aged
woman, meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened into
certainty. The informers had secui'ed their victim.
VOL. 111. 3
34 CHRIS rs hospital
The}"^ had him m their toils. Accusation was fonnally
preferred, and retribution most signal was looked for.
Mr. Hathaway, the then steward (for this happened a
little after my time), with that patient sagacity which
tempered all his conduct, determined to investigate tlie
matter, before he proceeded to sentence. The result
was, that the supposed mendicants, the receivers or
purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned out to be
the parents of , an honest couple come to decay —
wh'^m this seasonable supply had, in all probability,
savod from mendicancy ; and that this young stork, at
the expense of his own good name, had all this while
been only feeding the old birds ! — The governors on
this occasion, much to their honor, voted a present
relief to the family of , and presented him with a
silver medal. The lesson which tlie steward read upon
RASH JUDGMENT, on the occasion of publicly dehvering
the medal to , I believe would not be lost upon his
auditory. — I had left school then, but I well remem-
ber . He was a tall, shambling youth, with a cast
in his eye, not at all calculated to conciliate hostile pre-
judices. I have since seen him carrying a baker's
basket. I think I heard he did not do quite so well by
himself, as he had done by the old folks.
I was a hypochondriac lad ; and the sight of a boy
in fetters, upon the day of my first putting on the blue
clothes, was not exactly fitted to assuage the natural
terrors of initiation. I was of tender years, barely
turiied of seven ; and had only read of such things in
books, or seen them but in dreams. I was told he had
run aivay. Tliis was the punishment for tlie first
offence. — As a novice I was soon after taken to see
the dungeons. These were little, square, Bedlam cells.
FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 3o
where a boy could just lie at his length upcn straw a>id
a blanket — a mattress, I think, was afterwards substi-
tuted— with a peep of light, let in askance, from a
prison-orifice at top, barely enough to read by. Here
the poor boy was locked in by himself all day, without
sight of any but the porter who brought him his bread
and wate]' — who 7ni(/ht not speak to him ; — or of the
beadle, who came twice a week to call him out to re-
ceive his periodical chastisement, which was almost
welcome, because it separated him for a brief interval
from solitude ; — and here he was shut up by himself
of nigJtts out of the reach of any sound, to suffer what-
ever horrors the weak nerves, and superstition incident
to his time of life, might subject him to.* This was
the penalty for the second offence. Wouldst thou like,
reader, to see what became of him in the next degree ?
The culprit, who had been a third time an offender,
and whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversi-
ble, was brought forth, as at some solemn auto da /e,
arrayed in uncouth and most appalling attire — all
trace of his late " watchet weeds " carefully effaced, he
was exposed in a jacket resembling those which London
lamplighters formerly delighted in, with a cap of the
same. The effect of this divestiture was such as the
ingenious devisers of it could have anticipated. With
his pale and frighted features, it was as if some of those
disfigurements in Dante had seized upon him. In tliis
disguisement he was brought into the hall (^U s favorite
* One or two instances of lunacj', or attempted suicide, accordingly, at
length convinced the governors of tlie impolicy of this part of the sentence,
and the midnight torture to the spirits was dispensed with. — This fancy
of dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard's brain; for which (sav-
ing the revereni;e due to Holy Paul) methinks, I could willingly spit upon
nis sta',ue.
36 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL
Btale^oom), Avhere awaited him the wliole number of
liis school-fellows, whose jouit lessons and sports he was
thenceforth to share no more ; the awful presence of
the steward, to be seen for the last time ; of the execu-
tioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the occasion ;
and of two faces more, of du-er import, because never
but in these extremities visible. These were gover-
nors ; two of Avliom by choice, or charter, were always
accustomed to officiate at these Ultima Supplicia ; not
to mitigate (so at least Ave understood it), but to en-
force the uttermost stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne,
and Peter Aubert, I remember, were colleagues on one
occasion, when the beadle turning rather pale, a glass
of brandy was ordered to prepare him for the mysteries.
The scouro-incr was, after the old Roman fashion, long
and stately. The lictor accompanied the crimmal quite
round the hall. We were generally too faint with at-
tending to the prcAaous disgusting circumstances, to
make accurate report with our eyes of the degree of
corporal suffering inflicted. Report, of course, gave
out the back knotty and livid. After scourging, he
was made over, in his San Benito, to his fi'iends, if he
had any (but commonly such poor runagates were
friendless), or to his parish officer, who, to enhance
tlie effect of the scene, had his station allotted to him
on the outside of the hall gate.
These solemn pageantries were not played off so
often as to spoil the general mirth of the community.
We had plenty of exercise and recreation after sc1k)o1
hours ; and, for myself, I must confess, that I wag
never happier, than in them. The Upper and the
Lower Grammar Schools were held in the same room ;
and an imaginaiy line only divided their bounds.
FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 37
Their character was as different as that of the uiliaV*
itants on the two sides of the Pyrenees. The Rev.
James Boyer was the Upper Master ; but the Rev.
Matthew Field presided over that portion of the apart-
ment of which I liad the good fortune to be a member.
We hved a hfe as careless as bu'ds. We talked and
did just what we pleased, and nobody molested us.
We carried an accidence, or a grammar, for form ; but,
for any trouble it gave us, we might take two years in
getting through the verbs deponent, and another two
in foro-ettincT all that we had learned about them.
There was now and then the formality of saying a
lesson, but if you had not learned it, a brush across the
shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was the sole
remonstrance. Field never used the rod ; and in tnith
he wielded the cane with no great good-will — holding
it " like a dancer." It looked in his hands rather like
an emblem than an instrument of authority ; and an
emblem, too, he was ashamed of. He was a good easy
man, that did not care to ruffle his own peace, nor per-
haps set any great consideration upon the value of
juvenile time. He came among us, now and then, but
often stayed away whole days from us : and when he
came it made no difference to us — he had his private
room to retire to, the short time he stayed, to be out of
the sound of our noise. Our mirth and uproar went
on. We had classics of our own, without being be-
holden to " insolent Greece or haughty Rome," that
passed current among us — Peter Wilkins — the Ad-
ventm'es of the Hon. Captain Robert Boyle — the
Fortunate Blue Coat Boy — and the like. Or we cul-
tivated a turn for mechanic and scientific operations ;
•naking little sun-dials of paper ; or weaving those in-
38 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL
genions parentheses called cat'-cradles ; or making diy
peas to dance npon tlie end of a tin pipe ; or studying
tlie art military over that laudable game " French and
English," and a hundi'ed other such devices to pass
away the time — mixing the useful with the agreeable
— as would have made the souls of Rousseau and John
Locke chuckle to have seen us.
Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest
divines who affect to mix in equal proportion the
gentleman^ the scholar^ and the Christian ; but, I know
not how, the first ingredient is generally found to be
the predominating dose in the composition. lie was
engaged in gay parties, or with his courtly bow at
some episcopal levee, when he should have been attend-
ing upon us. He had for many years the classical
charge of a hundred children, during the four or five
first years of their education ; and his very highest
form seldom proceeded further than two or three of the
introductory fables of Phasdrus. How things were suf-
fered to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was
the proper person to have remedied these abuses,
always affected, perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering
in a province not strictly his own. I have not been
without my suspicions, that he was not altogether dis-
pleased at the contrast we presented to his end of the
school. We were a sort of Helots to his young Spar-
tans. He Avould sometimes, with ironic deference, send
to borrow a rod of the Under Master, and then, with
Sardonic grin, observe to one of his upper boys " how
neat and fresh the twigs looked." While his pale
students were battering their brains over Xenophon
and Plato, with a silence as deep as that enjoined by
the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves at our ease in
FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 39
our little Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets of
his discipline, and the prospect did but the more recon-
cile us to our lot. His thunders rolled innocuous for
us ; his storms came near, but never touched us ; con-
trary to Gideon's miracle, while all around were
drenched, our fleece was dry.* His boys turned out
the better scholars ; we, I suspect, have the advantage
in temper. His pupils cannot speak of him without
something of terror allaying their gratitude ; the re-
membrance of Field comes back with all the soothing
images of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work
like play, and innocent idleness, and Elysian exemp-
tions, and life itself a " playing holiday."
Though sufficiently removed fi'om the jurisdiction
of Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to
understand a little of his system. We occasionally
heard sounds of the Ululantes, and caught glances of
Tartarus. B. was a rabid pedant. His English style
was crampt to barbarism. His Easter anthems (for
his duty obliged him to those periodical flights) were
grating as scrannel pipes. f — He would laugh, ay, and
heartily, but then it must be at Flaccus's quibble about
Rex or at the tr-istis severitas in viiltu, or insjneere
in patinas, of Terence — thin jests, which at their fii-st
broaching could hardly have had vis enough to move a
Roman muscle. — He had two wigs, both pedantic, but
* Cowley.
t In this and everything B. was the antiporles of his coadjutor. Wtiilo
the foimer was dig;gino: Ids brains for crude anthems, worth a pignut, F.
■would be recreating his gentlemanly fancy in the more flowery walks of
the Muses. A little dramatic effusion of his, under the name of Vertumnus
and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the chroniclers of that sort of litera-
-ure. It was accepted by Gan-ick, but the town did not give it their
sanction. — B. used to say of it, in a way of half-compliment, half-ir my,
that it was too classical for represenlation.
40 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL
of different omen. The one serene, smiling, fresh
powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old,
discolored, unkempt, angiy caxon, denoting frequent
and bloody execution. Woe to the school, when he
made his morning appearance in his passy^ or passionate
wig. No comet expounded surer. — J. B. had a hea%y
hand. I have known him double his knotty fist at a
poor trembling child (the maternal milk hardly diy
upon its lips) with a " Sirrah, do you presume to set
your wits at me ? " — Nothing was more common than
to see him make a headlong entiy into the school-room,
fi'om his inner recess, or libraiy, and, with turbulent
eye, singling out a lad, roar out, " Od's my life, sirrah,"
(his favorite adjuration), " I have a great mind to whip
you," — then, with as sudden a retractmg impulse,
fling back into his lair — and, after a cooling lapse of
some minutes (during which all but the culprit had
totally forgotten the context) drive headlong out again,
piecing out his imperfect sense, as if it had been some
Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell — " and Jwill,
too." — In his gentler moods, when the rahidm furor
was assuaged, he had resort to an ingenious method,
peculiar, for what I have heard, to himself, of whipping
the boy, and reading the Debates, at the same time ; a
paragraph, and a lash between ; which m those times,
when parliamentary oratoiy was most at a height and
flourishing in these realms, was not calculated to im-
press the patient with a veneration for the diffuser
graces of rhetoric.
Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to
fall ineffectual fi'om his hand — wlien droll squinting
VV. — having been caught putting the inside of the
master's desk to a use for which the architect had
FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 41
dearly not designed it, to justify himself, with great
simplicity averred, that he did not know that the thing
had been forewarned. This exquisite irrecognition of
any law antecedent to the oral or declaratory, struck so
irresistibly upon the fancy of all who heard it (the
pedagogue himself not excepted) — that remission was
unavoidable.
li. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an
instructor. Coleridge, in his literary life, has pro-
nounced a more intelligible and ample encomium on
them. The author of the Country Spectator doubts
not to compare him with the ablest teachers of antiq-
uity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss him better than
with the pious ejaculation of C. — when he heard that
his old master was on his death-bed : " Poor J. B. !
— may all his faults be forgiven ; and may he be
wafted to bliss by little cherub boys all head and wings,
with no bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities."
Under him were many good and sound scholars
bred. — First Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys
Stevens, kindest of boys and men, since Co-grammar-
master (and inseparable companion) with Dr. T e.
What an edifying spectacle did this brace of friends
present to those who remembered the anti-socialities of
their predecessors ! — You never met the one by chance
in the street withovit a wonder, which was quickly dis-
sipated by the almost immediate sub-appearance of the
other. Generally arm-in-arm, these kindly coatljutors
lightened for each other the toilsome duties of their
profession, and when, in advanced age, one found it
convenient to retire, the other was not long in discover-
ing that it suited him to lay down the fasces also. Oh,
it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same ann linked
42 CHRIST'S HCSriTAL
in yours at forty, which at thirteen helped it to turn
over the Cicero De Amicitid, or some tale of Antique
Friendship, which the young heart even then was burn-
ing to anticipate ! — Co-Grecian with S. was Th ,
who has since executed with ability various diplomatic
functions at the Northern courts. Th was a tall,
dark, saturnine youth, sparing of speech, with raven
locks. — Thomas Fanshaw Middleton followed him
(now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gentleman
in his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent
critic ; and is author (besides the Country Spectator)
of a Treatise on the Greek Article, against Sharpe.
M. is said to bear his mitre high in India, where the
regni novitas (I dare say) sufficiently justifies the bear-
ing. A humility quite as primitive as that of Jewel or
Hooker might not be exactly fitted to impress the
minds of those Ano;lo-Asiatic diocesans with a rever-
ence for home institutions, and the church which those
fathers watered. The manners of M. at school, though
firm, were mild and unassuming. — Next to M. (if not
senior to him) was Richards, author of the Aboriginal
Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems ;
a pale, studious Grecian. — Then followed poor S ,
ill-fated M ! of these the Muse is silent.
Finding some of Edward's race
Unhappy, pass their annals by.
Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the
dayspring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column
before thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel
Taylor Coler.'lge — Logician, JNIetaphysician, Bard ! —
How have I seen the casual passer through the Clois-
ters stand still, entranced with aJmiration (while he
FIVE-AND-TIIIKTY YEARS AGO. 43
weighed the disproportion between tlie speech and the
garb of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in
thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jam-
bh'chus, or Plotinus (for even in those years thou
waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts), or
reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar while the
walls of the old Grey Friars reechoed to the accents
of the inspired chaHty-hoy ! — Many were the "wit-
combats," (to dally awhile with the words of old Fid-
ler), between him and C. V. Le G , " which two
I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an English
man-of-war; Master Coleridge, like the former, was
built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his per-
formances. C. V. L., with the English man-of-war,
lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all
tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by
the quickness of his wit and invention."
Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten,
Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial
laugh, with which thou wert wont to make the old
Cloisters shake, in thy cognition of some poignant jest
of theirs ; or the anticipation of some more material,
and, peradventure, practical one, of thine own. Ex-
tinct are those smiles, with that beautiful countenance,
with which (for thou wert the Nireus formosus of the
school), in the days of thy maturer waggeiy, thou didst
disarm the wrath of infiu'iated town-damsel, who, in-
censed by provoking pinch, turning tigress-like round,
suddenly converted by thy angel-look, exclianged the
half-formed terrible " bl ," for a frontier creetins
— " bless thy handsome face ! "
Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the
friends of Elia — the junior Le G and F •
44 THE TWO RACES -x -^tN.
who impelled, the former by a roving temper, the latter
by too quick a sense of neglect — ill capable of endur-
ing the slights poor Sizars are S9metimes subject to m
our seats of learnino; — exchanoed their Alma Mater
for the camp ; perishing, one by climate, and one on
the plains of Salamanca : — Le G , sanguine, vola-
tile, sweet-natured ; F , dogged, faithful, antici-
pative of insult, warm-hearted, with something of the
old Roman height about him.
Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master of
Hertford, with Marmaduke T , mildest of Mission-
aries — and both my good friends still — close the cata-
logue of Grecians m my time.
THE TWO RACES OF MEN.
The human species, according to the best theoiy I
can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the
men who borrow, and the men who lend. To these
two original diversities may be reduced all those im-
pertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes,
white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers
upon earth, " Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites,"
flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other
of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority
of the former, which I choose to designate as the (/reat
race^ is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain
instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born degraded.
THE TWO RACES OF MEN 45
** He shall serve his brethren." There is something in
the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious ; con-
trasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of
the other.
Observe who have been the greatest boiTowers of all
ages — Alcibiades — Falstaff — Sir Richard Steele —
our late incomparable Brinsley — what a family like-
ness in all four !
What a careless, even deportment hath your bor-
rower ! what rosy gills ! what a beautiful reliance
on Providence doth he manifest, — taking no move
thought than lilies ! What contempt for money, —
accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better
than dross ! What a liberal confounding of those
pedantic distinctions of meum and taum ! or rather,
what a noble simplification of language (beyond
Tooke), resolving these su])posed opposites into one
clear, intelligible pronoun adjective ! — What near ap-
proaches doth he make to the primitive community^ —
to the extent of one-half of the principle at least.
He is the true taxer who " calleth all the world up
to be taxed ; " and the distance is as vast between him
and one of us, as subsisted between the Augustan
Majesty and the poorest obolary Jew that paid it
tribute-pittance at Jerusalem ! — His exactions, too,
have such a cheerfiil, voluntary air ! So far removed
from your sour parochial or state-gatherers, — those
inkhorn varlets, who carry their want of welcome in
their faces ! He cometh to you with a smile, and
troubleth you with no receipt ; confining himself to no
set season. Every day is his Candlemas, or his Feast
of Holy Michael. He applieth the lene tormentum of a
pleasant look to your purse, — wliich to that gentle
46 THE TWO RACES OF MEN.
warmth expands her silken leaves, as naturally as the
cloak of the traveller, for which sun and wind con-
tended ! He is the true Propontic which never ebbeth !
The sea which taketh handsomely at each man's hand.
In vain the victim, whom he delighteth to honor,
struggles with destiny ; he is in the net. Lend there-
fore cheerfully, O man ordained to lend — that thou
lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the rever-
sion promised. Combine not preposterously in thine
own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives ! —
but, when thou seest the proper authority coming, meet
it smilingly, as it were half-way. Come, a handsome
sacrifice ! See how light he makes of it ! Strain not
courtesies with a noble enemy.
Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon my
mind by the death of my old friend, Ralph Bigod, Esq.,
who parted this life, on Wednesday evening; dying,
as he had lived, without much trouble. He boasted
himself a descendant fi-om mighty ancestors of that
name, who heretofore held ducal dignities in this realm.
In his actions and sentiments he belied not the stock to
which he pretended. Early in life he found himself
invested with ample revenues ; which, with that noble
disinterestedness which I have noticed as inherent in
men of the great race, he took almost immediate ' meas-
ures entirely to dissipate and bring to nothing ; for
there is somethino; revolting in the idea of a kino; hold-
ing a private purse; and the thoughts of Bigod were
all regal. Thus furnished by the veiy act of disfurnish-
ment ; getting rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches,
more apt (as one sings)
To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,
Than pi'ompt her to do aught may merit praise.
THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 47
he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enter-
prise, " borrowing and to borrow ! "
In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout
this island, it lias been calculated that he laid a tythe
part of the inhabitants under contribution. I reject
this estimate as greatly exaggerated : — but having had
the honor of accompanying my friend divers times, in
his perambulations about this vast city, I own I was
greatly struck at first with the prodigious number of
faces we met^ who claimed a sort of respectflil acquaint-
ance with us. He was one day so obliging as to ex-
plain the phenomenon. It seems, these were his trib-
utaries ; feeders of his exchequer ; gentlemen, his
good friends (as he was pleased to express himself,) to
whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan.
Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He
rather" took a pride in numbering them; and, with
Comus, seemed pleased to be " stocked with so fair a
herd."
With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived
to keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force
of an aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that
" money kept longer than three days' stinks." So he
made use of it while it was fresh. A good part he
drank away (for he was an excellent toss-pot) ; some
he gave away, the rest he threw away, literally tossing
and hurling it violently from him — as boys do burrs,
or as if it had been infectious, — into ponds, or ditches,
or deep holes, inscrutable cavities of the earth ; or he
would buiy it (where he would never seek it again)
by a river's side under some bank, which (he would
facetiously observe) paid no interest — but out away
from him it must go peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring
48 THE TWO RACES OF MEN.
into the wilderness, while it was sweet. lie never
missed it. The streams were perennial which fed his
fisc. When new supplies became necessary ; the first
person that had the felicity to fall in with him, friend
or stranger, was sure to contribute to the deficiency.
For Bigod had an undeniable way with him. He had
a cheerful, open exterior, a quick jovial eye, a bald
forehead, just touched with gray (cana fides). He
anticipated no excuse, and found none. And, waiving
for a while my theory as to the great race,, I would put
it to the most untheorizing reader, who may at times
have disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is not
more repugnant to the kindliness of his nature to reftise
such a one as I am describing, then to say no to a poor
petitionary rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his
mumping visnomy, tells you, that he expects nothing
better ; and, therefore, whose preconceived notions and
expectations you do in reality so much less shock in the
refusal.
When I think of this man ; his fiery glow of heart ,
his swell of feeling ; how magnificent, how ideal he
was ; how great at the midnight hour ; and when I
compare with him the companions with Avhom I have
associated since, I grudo-e the savini; of a few idle
ducats, and think that I am fallen into the society of
lenders,, and little men.
To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in
l(;ather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a
class of alienators more formidable than that which I
have touched upon ; I mean your borrowers of books —
those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry
of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is
Comberbatch, matchless in his de]>redations I
THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 49
That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a
great eye-tooth knocked out — (you are now with me
m my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader !)
with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the
Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant
of nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, Ojjera
Bonaventurce, choice and massy divinity, to which its
two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lessor
calibre, — Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but
as dwarfs, — itself an Ascapart ! — that Comberbatch
abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which
is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to
refute, namely, that " the title to property in a book
(my Bonaventure, for instance), is in exact ratio to the
claimant's powers of miderstanding and appreciating
the same." Should he go on acting upon this theory,
which of our shelves is safe ?
The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — two shelves
from the ceiling — scarcely distinguishable but by the
quick eye of a loser — was whilom the commodious
resting-place of Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly
allege that he knows more about that treatise than I do,
who introduced it to him, and was, indeed, the first
(of the moderns) to discover its beauties — but so have
I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the
presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off" than
himself. Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their
fourth volume, where Vittoiia Corombona is. The
remaininor nine are as distastefid as Priam's refuse
sons, when the Fates horroived Hector. Here stood
the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. Tliei'e
loitered the Complete Angler ; quiet as in life, by
some stream side. In yonder nook, John Biuicle, a
50 THE TWO RACES OF MEN.
widower-volume, with " eyes closed," mourns liis rav
islied mate.
One justice I must do my friend, that if he some-
times, like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another
time, sea-like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to
match it. I have a small under-collection of this
nature (my friend's gatherings in his various calls),
picked up, he has forgotten at what odd places, and
deposited with as little memory at mine. I take in
these orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes
of the gate are welcome as the true Hebrews. There
they stand in conjunction ; natives, and naturalized.
The latter seem as little disposed to inquire out their
tnie lineao-e as I am. — I charge no warehouse-room
for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the
imgentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of them to
pay expenses.
To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and mean-
in o- in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty
meal on your viands, if he can give no account of the
platter after it. But what moved thee, wayward, spite-
ful K., to be so importunate to carry off with thee, in
ppite of tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the
Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble Mar-
garet Newcastle ? — knowing at the time, and knowing
that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never
turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio : — what but
the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love of
getting the better of thy friend ? — Then, worst cut of
all ! to transport it with thee to the Gallican land —
Unworthy land to harbor such a sweetness,
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt,
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder I
NEW YEAR'S EVE. 51
hadst tliou not thy play-books, and books of jests
and fancies, about thee, to keep thee meny, even as
thou keepest all companies with thy quips and mirthful
tales ? Child of the Green-room, it was unkindly done
of thee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, better-part
Englishwoman ! — that she could fix upon no othei
treatise to bear away, in kindly token of remembering
us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook —
of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy,
or England, was ever by nature constituted to compre-
hend a tittle ! — Was there not Zimmerman on Solitude ?
Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate
collection, be shy of showing it ; or if thy heart over-
floweth to lend them, lend thy books ; but let it be to
such a one as S. T. C — he will return them (gener-
ally anticipating the time appointed) with usury ; en-
riched with annotations tripling their value. I have
had experience. Many are these precious MSS. of his
— (in matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not
unfrequently, vying with the originals) in no very
clerkly hand — legible in my Daniel ; in old Burton ;
in Sir Thomas Browne ; and those abstruser cogita-
tions of the Greville, now, alas ! wandering in Pagan
lands. — I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy
library, against S. T. C.
NEW YEAR'S EVE.
Every man hath two birthdays : two days, at least,
in every year, which set him upon revolving the lapse
52 NEW YEAR'S EVE.
of time, as it affects his mortal duration. The one is
that which in an especial manner he termeth Ms. In
the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom
of solemnizing our proper birthday hath nearly passed
away, or is left to childi'en, who reflect nothing at all
about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond
cake and orange. But the bh'th of a New Year is of
an interest too wide to be preteraiitted by king or cob-
bler. No one ever regarded the first of January with
indifference. It is that from which all date their time,
and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our
common Adam.
Of all sound of all bells — (bells, the music nighest
bordering upon heaven) — most solemn and touching
is the peal which rings out the Old Year. I never
hear it without a gathering-up of my mind to a con-
centration of all the images tliat have been difRised
over the past twelvemonth ; all I have done or suffered,
performed or neglected — in that regretted time. I
beo-in to know its Avorth, as when a person dies. It
takes a personal color ; nor was it a poetical flight in a
contemporary, when he exclaimed,
I saw the skirts of the departing Year.
It is no more than what in sober sadness eveiy one
of us seems to be conscious of, in that awftd leave-
taking. I am sure I felt it, and all felt it with me,
last night ; though some of my companions affected
rather to manifest an exhilaration at the birth of the
coming year, than any veiy tender regrets for the
decease of its predecessor. But I am none of those
who —
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.
NEW YEAR'S EVE. 53
I am naturally, beforehand, sliy of novelties ; new
books, new faces, new years — from some mental twist
which makes it difficult in me to face the prospective.
I have almost ceased to hope ; and am sanguine only
in the prospects of other (former) years. I plunge
into forecrone visions and conclusions. I encounter
pellmell with past disappointments. I am armor-
proof against old discouragements. I forgive, or over-
come in fancy, old adversaries. I play over again for
love^ as the gamesters phrase it, games, for wliich I
once paid so dear. I would scarce now have any of
those untoward accidents and events of my life re-
versed. I would no more alter them than the incidents
of some well-contrived novel. Methinks it is Letter
that I should have pined away seven of my golden est
years, when I was thrall to the fair hair, and fairer
eyes, of Alice W — n, than that so passionate a love-
adventure should be lost. It was better that our family
should have missed that legacy, which old Dorrell
cheated us of, than that I should have at this moment
two thousand pounds in hanco^ and be without the idea
of that specious old rogue.
In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to
look back upon those early days. Do I advance a
paradox, when I say, that, skipping over the interven-
tion of forty years, a man may have leave to love liim-
self without the imputation of self-love ?
If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is
introspective — and mine is painftilly so — can have a
less respect for his present identity, than I have for the
man Elia. I know him to be light, and vain, and
humorsome ; a notorious . . . ; addicted to .... ;
iverse from comisel, neither takmg it nor offering it ;
54 NEW YEAR'S EVE.
— ... besides ; a stammering buffoon ; what you
will ; lay it on, and spare not ; I subscribe to it all,
and much more than thou canst be willing to lay at his
door — but for the child Eha, that "other me," there,
in the background — I must take leave to cherish the
remembrance of that young master — with as little
reference, I protest, to this stupid changeling of five-
and-forty, as if it had been a child of some other house,
and not of my parents. I can cry over its patient
smallpox at five, and rougher medicaments. I can
lay its poor fevered head upon the sick pillow at
Christ's, and wake Avith it in surprise at the gentle
posture of maternal tenderness hanging over it, that
unknown had watched its sleep. I know how it
shrank from any the least color of falsehood. God
help thee, Elia, how art thou changed ! — Thou art
sophisticated. — I know how honest, how courageous
(for a weakling) it was — how religious, how imagina-
tive, how hopeful ! From what have I not fallen, if
the child I remember was indeed myself, — and not
some dissembling guardian, presenting a false identity,
to give the rule to my unpractised steps, and regulate
the tone of my moral being !
That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sym-
pathy, in such retrospection, may be the symptom of
some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another
cause : simply, that being without wife or family, I
have not learned to project myself enough out of my-
self; and having no offspring of my own to dally with,
I turn back upon memory, and adopt my own eai'ly
idea, as my heir and favorite ? If these speculations
seem fantastical to thee, reader — (a busy man, per-
chance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy,
NEW YEAR'S EVE. 55
and am singularly conceited only, I retire, impenetrable
to ridicule, under the phantom-cloud of Elia.
The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a
character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of
any old institution ; and the ringing out of the Old
Year was kept by them with circumstances of peculiar
ceremony. — In those days the sound of those midnight
chimes, though it seemed to raise hilarity in all around
me, never failed to bring a train of pensive imagery
mto my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived what it
meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned
me. Not childhood alone, but the young man till
thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He
knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a
homily on the fragility of life ; but he brings it not
home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can
appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of
December. But now, shall I confess a ti-uth ? — I feel
these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count the
probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the ex-
penditure of moments and shortest periods, like misers'
farthings. In proportion as the years both lessen and
shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would
fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the
great wheel. I am not content to pass away " like
a weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors solace me not,
nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I
care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly
bears human life to eternity ; and reluct at the inevi-
table course of destiny. I am in love with this green
earth ; the face of town and country ; the unspeakable
rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I
would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to
56 NEW YEAR'S EVE.
stand still at tlie age to which I am arrived ; I, and my
friends ; to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I
do not want to be weaned by age ; or di'op, like mel-
low fruit, as they say, into the grave. — Any alteration,
on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and
discomposes me. My household-gods plant a terrible
fixed foot, and are iiot rooted up without blood. They
do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state of
\)eing staggers me.
Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and
summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the
delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the
cheerful glass, and candlelight, and fireside conversa-
tions, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself
— do these thino-s o-o out with life ?
Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when
you are pleasant with him ?
And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! must I
part with the intense dehght of having you (huge arm-
fiils) in my embraces ? Must knowledge come to me,
if it come at all, by some awkward experiment of in-
tuition, and no longer by this familiar process of read-
ing?
Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling
indications which point me to them here, — the recog-
nizable face — the " SAveet assurance of a look " — ?
In winter this intolerable dismclination to dying —
to give it its mildest name — does more especially haunt
and beset me. In a genial August noon, beneath a
sweltenng sky, death is almost problematic. At those
times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy an immor-
tality. Then we expand and bourgeon. Tlien we are
as strong again, as valiant again, as wise again, and a
NEW YEAR'S EVE. 57
great deal taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me,
puts me in thoughts of death. All tilings allied to
the insubstantial, wait upon that master-feeling ; cold,
numbness, dreams, perplexity ; moonlight itself, with
its shadowy and spectral appearances, — that cold ghost
of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that innutri-
tions one denounced in the Canticles : — I am none of
her minions — I hold with the Persian.
Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way,
brings death into my mind. All partial evils, like
humors, run into that capital plague-sore. — I have
heard some profess an indifference to life. Such hail
the end of their existence as a port of refuge ; and
speak of the grave as of some soft anns, in which they
may slumber as on a pillow. Some have wooed death
but out upon thee, I say, thou foul, ugly phan-
tom ! I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar John)
give thee to sixscore thousand devils, as in no instance
to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as an universal
viper ; to be branded, proscribed, and spoken evil of !
In no way can I be brought to digest thee, thou thin,
melancholy Privation^ or more frightful and confound-
ing Positive !
Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee,
are altogether fi'igid and insulting, like thyself. For
what satisfaction hath a man, that he shall " lie down
with kings and emperors in death," who in his lifetime
never greatly coveted the society of such bedfellows ?
— or, forsooth, that " so shall the fairest face appear? "
— why, to comfort me, must Alice W — n be a goblin ?
More than all, I conceive disgust at those impertinent
and misbecoming familiaintics, inscribed upon your
ordinary tombstones. Eveiy dead man must take upon
58 NEW YEAR'S EVE.
himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that
" Such as he now is I must shortly be." Not so shortly,
friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the mean time 1
am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee.
Know thy betters ! Thy New Years' days are past. I
survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup of
wine — and while that turncoat bell, that just now
mournfully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with
changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune
to its peal the song made on a like occasion, by hearty,
cheerful Mr. Cotton.
THE NEW YEAR.
Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star
Tells us, the day himself 's not far;
And see where, breaking from the night,
He gilds the western hills with light.
With him old Janus doth appear,
Peeping into the future year,
With such a look as seems to say,
The prospect is not good that way.
Thus do we rise ill sights to see,
And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy;
When the prophetic fear of things
A more tormenting mischief brings,
More full of soul-tormenting gall
Than direst mischiefs can befall.
But stay ! but stay ! methinks my sight,
Better inform'd by clearer light,
Discerns sereneness in that brow.
That all contracted seem'd but now.
His reverv^'d face may show distaste,
And frown upon the iUs are past;
But that which this way looks is clear,
And smiles upon the New-born Year.
He looks too from a place so high.
The Year lies open to his eye;
And all the moments open are
To the exact discoverer.
Yet more and more he smiles upon
The happy revolution.
NEW YEAR'S EVE.
Why should we then suspect or fear
The influences of a year,
So smiles upon us the first mom,
And speaks us good so soon as born?
Plague on't! the last wfis ill enough,
This cannot but make better proof;
Or, at the worst, as we Lu'ush'd through
The last, why so we may this too;
And then the next in reason shou'd
Be superexcellently good :
For the worst ills (we daily see)
Have no more perpetuity
Than the best fortunes that do fall;
Which also bring us wherewithal
Longer their being to support,
Than those do of the other sort ;
And who has one good year in three,
And yet repines at destiny,
Appears ungrateful in the case.
And merits not the good he has.
Then let us welcome the New Guest
With lusty brimmers of the best:
Jlirth always should Good Fortune meet,
And renders e'en Disastei- sweet:
And though the Princess turn her back,
Let us but line ourselves with sack,
We better shall by far hold out,
Till the next Year she face about.
How say yovi, reader — do not these verses smack of
the rough magnanimity of the old English vein ? Do
they not fortify like a cordial ; enlargmg the heart, and
productive of sweet hlood, and generous spirits, in the
concoction ? Where he those puling fears of death,
just now expressed or affected ? — Passed like a cloud
— absorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry —
clean washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your
only Spa for these hyi^ochondries — And now another
cup of the generous ! and a merry New Year, an J
many of them to you all, my masters I
GO MRS. BATTLE'S OPLNIONS ON WHIST.
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST.
" A CLEAR fire, a clean heartli, and the rigor of the
game." This was the celebrated wisJi of old Sarah
Battle (now with God), who, next to her devotions,
loved a good game of whist. She was none of your
lukewann gamesters, your half-and-half players, who
have no objection to take a hand, if you want one to
make up a rubber; who affirm that they have no
pleasure in winning ; that they like to win one game
and lose another ; that they can while away an hour
very agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent
whether they play or no ; and will desire an adversary,
who has slipped a wrong card, to take it up and play
another. Tliese insufferable trifles are the curse of a
table. One of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of
such it may be said that they do not play at cards, but
only play at playing at them.
Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested
them, as I do, from her heart and soul, and would not,
save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself
at the same table with them. She loved a thorough-
paced partner, a determined enemy. She took, and
gave, no concessions. She hated favors. She never
made a revoke, nor ever passed it over hi her adversary
without exactino; the utmost forfeiture. She fouo-ht a
good fight : cut and thrust. She held not her good
sword (her cards) " like a dancer." She sate bolt vip-
right ; and neither showed you her cards, nor desired
to see yours. All people have their blind side — their
superstitions ; and I have heard lier declare, under the
rose, that hearts was her favorite suit.
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 61
I never in my life — and I knew Sarah Battle many
of the best years of it — saw her take out her snnfFbox
when it was her turn to play ; or snuff a candle in the
middle of a game ; or ring for a servant, till it was
fairly over. She never introduced, or connived at,
miscellaneous conversation during its process. As she
emphatically observed, cards were cards ; and if I ever
saw unmingled distaste in her fine last-century counte-
nance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman of a
literary turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded
to take a hand ; and who, in his excess of candor, de-
clared, that he thought there was no harm in unbenc^
ing the mind now and then, after serious studies, in
recreations of that kind ! She could not bear to have
her noble occupation, to which she wound up her facul-
ties, considered in that light. It was her business, her
duty, the thing she came into the world to do, — and
she did it. She unbent her mind afterwards, over a
book.
Pope was her favorite author; his " Rape of the
Lock " her favorite work. She once did me the favor
to play over with me (with the cards) his celebrated
game of Ombre in that poem ; and to explain to me
how far it agreed with, and in what points it would be
found to diflPer from, tradrille. Her illustrations were
apposite and poignant ; and I had the pleasure of send-
ing the substance of them to Mr. Bowles ; but I su}>
pose they came too late to be inserted among his m-
genious notes upon that author.
Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love ;
but whist had engap-ed her maturer esteem. The
former, she said, was showy and specious, and likely to
allurn young persons. The uncertainty and quick
62 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WmST.
shifting of partners — a thing which the constancy of
whist abhors ; — the dazzHng supremacy and regal in
vestiture of Spadille — absui'd, as she justly observed,
in the piu'e aristocracy of whist, where his crown and
garter give him no proper power above his brother-
nobility of the Aces ; — the giddy vanity, so taking to
the inexperienced, of playing alone ; above all, the
overpowering attractions of a Saris Prendre Vole, — to
the triumph of which there is certainly nothing parallel
or approaching, in the contingencies of whist ; — all
these, she would say, make quadi'ille a game of captiva-
lion to tlie young and enthusiastic. But whist was the
solider game : that was her word. It was a long meal ;
not, like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or two
rubbers might coextend in duration Avith an evening.
Tliey gave time to form rooted friendships, to cultivate
steady enmities. She despised tlie chance-started, ca-
pricious, ani ever fluctuating alliances of the other.
The skirmisnes of quadrille, she would say, reminded
her of the petty ephemeral embroilments of the little
Italian states, depicted by Machiavel : perpetually
changing postures and connections ; bitter foes to-day,
suo-ared darlino;s to-morrow ; kissing and scratching m
a breath ; — but the wars of whist were comparable to
the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of
tlie great French and English nations.
A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in
her favorite game. There was nothing sillv in it,
like the nob in ci'ibbage — nothing superfluovis. No
flushes — that most irrational of all pleas that a reason-
able bemg can set uj) ; — that any one should claim
four by virtue of holding cards of the same mark and
color, witl'out reference to the playing of the game, or
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. G3
the individual worth or pretensions of the cards them-
selves ! She held this to be a solecism ; as pitiful an
ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She
despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the colors
of things. — Suits were soldiers, she would say, and
must have a uniformity of array to distinguish them ;
but what should we say to a foolish squire, who should
claim a merit from dressing up his tenantry in red
jackets, that never were to be marshalled — never to
take the field ? — She even wished that whist were
more simple than it is ; and, in my mind, would have
stripped it of some appendages, which in the state of
human frailty, may be venially, and even commend-
ably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the deciding
of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not one
suit always trumps ? — Why two colors, when the
mark of the suits would have sufficiently distinguished
them without it?
" But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably re-
freshed with the variety. Man is not a creature of
pure reason — he must have his senses delightftdly
appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic countries,
where the music and the pamtings draw in many to
worship, whom your Quaker spirit of unsensualizing
would have kept ovit. — You yourself have a pretty
collection of paintings, — but confess to me, whether,
walking in your gallery at Sandham, among those
clear Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters in the
anteroom, you ever felt your bosom glow with an
elegant delight, at all comparable to that you have it
in your power to experience most evenings over a well-
aiTanged assortment of the court-cards ? — the pretty
antic habits, like heralds in a procession — the gay
64 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST.
tnumph-assuring scarlets — tlie contrasting deadly-kill-
ing sables — the ' lioary majesty of spades' — Pam in
all his glory !
" All these might be dispensed with ; and with their
naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the game
might go on very well, pictureless. But the beauty
of cards would be extinguished forever. Stripped of
all that is imaginative in them, they must degenerate
into mere gamblmg. Imagine a dull deal board, or
drum-head, to spread them on, instead of that nice
verdant carpet (next to Nature's), fittest arena for
those courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts
and tourneys in ! — Exchange those delicately turned
ivory markers — (work of Chinese artist, unconscious
of then' symbol, — or as profanely slighting their tnie
application as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that
turned out those little shrines for the goddess) — ex-
change them for little bits of leather (our ancestors'
money), or chalk and a slate ! "
The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness
of my logic ; and to her approbation of my arguments
on her favorite topic that evening, I have always
fancied myself indebted for the legacy of a curious
cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna marble,
which her maternal uncle (old Walter Plumer, whom
I have elsewhere celebrated,) brought with him from
Florence ; — this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds,
came to me at her death.
The former bequest (which I do not least value) T
have kept with religious care ; though she herself, to
confess a truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage.
It was an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her
say, — disputing with her uncle, who was very partial
MKS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. Co
to it. She could never heartily bring her mouth to
pronounce " Cro " — or " ThaCs a go.'''' She called it
an ungi"ammatical game. The jDegging teased her. I
once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five-dollar stake),
because she would not take advantage of the turn-up
knave, which would have given it her, but which she
must have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declar-
ing ''^ two for his heels.''^ There is something extremely
genteel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a
gentlewoman bom.
Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two
persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the
terms, — such as pique — repique — the capot, — they
savored (she thought) of affectation. But games for
two, or even three, she never greatly cared for. She
loved the quadrate, or square. She would argue thus :
— Cards are warfare : the ends are gain, with glory.
But cards are war, in disguise of a sport : when single
adversaries encounter, the ends proposed are too pal-
pable. By themselves, it is too close a fight ; with
spectators, it is not much bettered. No looker-on can
be interested, except for a bet, and then it is a mere
affair of money ; he cares not for your luck sym2}at7iet'
ioallg, or for your play. — Three are still worse ; a
mere naked war of every man against every man, as in
cribbage, without league or alliance ; or a rotation of
petty and contradictory interests, a succession of heart
less leagues, and not much more hearty infractions of
them, as in tradrille. — But in square games (^she meant
whist), all that is possible to be attained in card-playing
IS accomplished. There are the incentives of profit
with honor, common to every species, — though the
latter can be but very imperfectly enjoyed im those
66 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST.
other games, where the spectator is only feebly a par-
ticipator. But the parties in whist are spectators and
principals too. They are a theatre to themselves, and
a looker-on is not wanted. He is rather worse than
nothing, and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutral-
ity, or interests beyond its sphere. You glory in some
surprising stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold
— or even an interested — bystander witnesses it, but
because your jjartner sympathizes in the contingency.
You win for two. You triumph for two. Two are
exalted. Two again are mortified ; which divides their
disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking off the
invidiousness) your glories. Two losing to two are
better reconciled, tlian one to one in that close butch-
ery. The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying
the channels. War becomes a civil game. — By such
reasonings as these the old lady was accustomed to
defend her favorite pastime.
No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play
at any game, where chance entered into the compo-
sition, for nothing. Chance, she would argue, — and
here again, admire the subtlety of her conclusion, —
chance is nothing, but where something else depends
upon it. It is obvious that cannot be glory. What
rational cause of exultation could it give to a man to
turn up size ace a hundred times together by himself?
or before spectators, where no stake was depending?
— Make a lottery of a hundred thousand tickets with
but one fortmiate number, — and what possible princi-
ple of our nature, except stupid wonderment, could it
gratify to gain that number as many times successively,
without a prize ? Therefore she disliked the mixture
of chance in backgammon, where it was not played
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 67
for money. She called it foolish, and those people
idiots, who were taken with a lucky hit under sacli cir-
cumstances. Games of pure skill were as little to her
fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere system
of overreaching. Played for glory, they were a mere
setting of one man's wit — his memory, or combina-
tion faculty rather — against another's ; like a mock
engagement at a review, bloodless and profitless. She
could not conceive a game wanting the spritely infusion
of chance, the handsome excuses of good fortune. Two
people playing at chess in a corner of a room, whilst
whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with
insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut simili-
tudes of Castles, and Knights, the imagery of the board,
she would argue, (and I think m this case justly,)
were entu'ely misplaced and senseless. Those hard
head-contests can in no instance ally with the fancy.
They reject form and color. A pencil and diy. slate
(she used to say) were the proper arena for such com-
batants.
To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing
the bad passions, she would retort, that man is a gam-
ing animal. He must be always trying to get the
better in something or other ; — that this passion can
scarcely be more safely expended than upon a game at
cards ; that cards are a temporary illusion ; in trutli_
a mere drama ; for we do but play at being mightily
concerned, where a few idle shillings are at stake, yet,
during the illusion, we are as mightily concerned as
those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. They are
a sort of dream-fighting ; much ado ; great battling,
and little bloodshed ; mighty means for disproportioned
ends ; quite as divertuig, and a great deal more innox
68 IIRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST.
ious, than many of those more serious games of life
which men play, without esteeming them to be such.
With great deference to the old lady's judgment in
these matters, I tliink I have experienced some moments
in my life, when playing at cards for nothing has even
been agx-eeable. When I am in sickness, or not in the
best spirits, I sometimes call for the cards, and play a
game at piquet for love with my cousin Bridget— ;-
Bridget Elia.
I gi'ant there is something sneaking in it ; but with
a toothache, or a sprained ankle, — when you are sub-
dued and lunnble, — you are glad to put up with an
inferior spring of action.
There is such a thing m nature, I am con\dnced, as
sick whist.
I grant it is not the highest style of man — I depre-
cate the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, alas I
to whom I should apologize.
At such times, those terms^ which my old friend
objected to, come in as something admissible. I love
to get a tierce or a quatoi'ze, though they mean noth-
ing. I am subdued to an inferior interest. Those
shadows of winnins; amuse me.
That last game I had with my SAveet cousin (I
^ capotted her) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish I am ?)
— I wished it might have lasted forever, though we
gained nothing, and lost nothing ; though it was a mere
shade of play, I would be content to go on in that idle
folly forever. The pipkin should be ever boiling, that
was to prepare the gentle lenitive to my foot, wliich
Bridget was doomed to apply after the game Avas over ;
and, as I do not much relish appliances, there it should
ever bubble. Bi'idget and I should be ever playuig.
A CHAPTER ON EARS. 69
A CHAPTER ON EARS.
I HAVE no ear. —
Mistake me not, reader — nor imagine that I am by
nature destitute of those exterior twin appendages,
hanging ornaments, and (architecturally speaking)
handsome volutes to the human capital. Better my
mother had never borne me. I am, I think, rather
delicately than copiously provided with those conduits;
and I feel no disposition to envy the mule for his
plenty, or the mole for her exactness, in those mgen-
ious labyrinthine inlets — those indispensable side-intel-
ligencers.
Neither have I incurred, or done anything to mciir,
with Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which con-
strained him to draw upon assurance — to feel " quite
unabashed," and at ease upon that article. I was
never, I thank my stars, in the pillory ; nor, if I read
them aright, is it within the compass of my destiny,
that I fever should be.
When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will
understand me to mean — for mudc. To say that this
heart never melted at the concord of sweet somids,
would be a foul self-libel. " Water parted from the
sea " never fails to move it strangely. So does " In
infancy.'''' But they were used to be sung at her harp-
sichoi'd (the old-fashioned instrument in vogue in those
days) by a gentlewoman — the gentlest, sure, that ever
merited the appellation — the sweetest — why should I
hesi ate to name Mrs. S , once the blooming Fanny
Weatheral of the Temple — who had power to thrill
7b A CHAPTER ON EARS.
the soul of Ella, small imp as he was, even in his long
coats ; and to make him glow, tremble, and blush with
a passion, that not faintly indicated the dayspring of
that absorbino; sentiment which was afterwards destined
to overwhelm and subdue his natiu'e quite for Alice
W n.
I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to
harmony. But organically I am incapable of a tune.
I have been practising " Crod save the King " all my
life ; whistling and humming of it over to myself in
solitary corners ; and am not yet arrived, they tell me,
within many quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty of
Elia never been impeached.
I am not without suspicion, that I have an unde-
veloped faculty of music within me. For thrumming,
in my wild way, on my friend A.'s piano, the other
morning, while he was engaged in an adjoining parlor,
— on his return he was pleased to say, " he thought it
could not be the maid ! " On his first surprise at hear-
ing the keys touched in somewhat an airy and master-
fiil way, not dreaming of me, his suspicions had lighted
on Jenny. But a grace, snatched from a superior
refinement, soon convinced him that some bciing —
technically perhaps deficient, but higher informed from
a principle common to all the fine arts — had swayed
the keys to a mood which Jenny, with all her (less
cviltivated) enthusiasm, could never have elicited from
them. I mention this as a proof of my fi-iend's pene-
tration, and not with any view of disparaging Jenny.
Scientifically I could never be made to understand
(yet have I taken some pains) what a note in music
is ; or how one note should differ from another. Mach
less in I'oices can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor.
A CHAPTER ON EARS. 71
Or\v sometimes the thorougli-bass I contrive to giiess
at. from its being supereminently harsh and disagree-
able. 1 tremble, however, for my misapplication of the
simplest terms of that which I disclaim. While I pro-
fess my ignorance, I scarce know what to say I am
ignorant of. I hate, perhaps, by misnomers. Sostenuto
and adagio stand in the like relation of obscurity to me ;
and Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as conjuring as Baraltpton.
It is hard to stand alone in an age like this, — (con
stituted to the quick and critical perception of all har-
monious combinations, I verily believe, beyond all
preceding ages, since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut,)
to remain, as it were, singly unimpressible to the magic
influences of an art, which is said to have such an
especial stroke at soothing, elevating, and refining the
passions. — Yet, rather than break the candid current
of my confessions, I must avow to you, that I have re-
ceived a great deal more pain than pleasure from this
so cried-up faculty.
I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A car-
penter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret
me into more than midsummer madness. But those
unconnected, unset sounds are nothing to the measured
malice of music. The ear is ' passive to those single
strokes ; willingly enduring stripes while it hath no
task to con. To music it cannot be passive. It will
strive — mine at least will — 'spite of its inaptitude,
to thrid the maze ; like an unskilled eye painfully por-
ing upon hieroglyphics. I have sat through an Italian
Opera, till, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I
have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded
streets, to solace myself with sounds, which I was not
obliged to follow, and get rid of the distracting torment
72 A CHAPTER ON EARS.
of endless, fruitless, barren attention ! I take refuge
in the unpretending assemblage of honest common-life
sounds ; — and the purgatory of the Enraged Musician
becomes my paradise.
I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the
purposes of the cheei-ful playhouse) watching the faces
of the auditory in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's
Laughing Audience !) immovable, or affecting some
famt emotion — till (as some have said, that our occu-
pations in the next world will be but a shadow of what
delighted us in this,) I have imagined myself in some
cold Theatre in Hades, where some of the forms of the
earthly one should be kept up, with none of the enjoy-
ment ; or like that
Party in a parlor
All silent, and all damned.
Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of
music, as they are called, do plague and imbitter my
apprehension. Words are something ; but to be ex-
posed to an endless battery of mere sounds ; to be long
a-dying ; to lie stretched upon a rack of roses ; to keep
up languor by unintermitted effort ; to pile honey upon
sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable
tedious sweetness ; to fill up sound with feeling, and
strain ideas to keep pace with it; to gaze on empty
frames, and be forced to make the pictures for your-
self; to read a book, all stops, and be obliged to supply
the verbal matter ; to invent extempore tragedies to
answer to the vague gestures of an mexplicable ram-
bling mime, — these are faint shadows of what I have
undergone from a seiles of the ablest executed pieces
of tliis empty i7istrumental music.
I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, I have
A CHAPTER ON EARS. 73
experienced something vastly lulling an({ agreeable ; —
afterwards followeth the languor and the oppression.
— Like that disappointing book in Patmos ; or like
the comings on of melancholy, described by Burton,
doth music make her first insinuating approaches :
*' Most pleasant it is to such as are melancholy given
to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and
water, by some brook side, and to meditate upon some
delightsome and pleasant subject, wliich shall affect
liim most, amabilis insania, and mentis gratiasimus
error. A most incomparable delight to build castles in
the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite
variety of parts, which they suppose, and strongly
imagine they act, or that they see done. So delight-
some these toys at first, they could spend whole days
and nights without sleep, even whole years in such
contemplations, and fantastical meditations, which are
like so many dreams, and will hardly be di'awn from
them, — winding and unwinding themselves as so many
clocks, and still pleasing their humors, until at the
last the SCENE turns upon a sudden, and they being
now habituated to such meditations and solitary places,
can endm-e no company, can think of nothing but
harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion,
8ubrusticus pador, discontent, cares, and weariness of
life, surprise them on a sudden, and they can think of
nothing else ; continually suspecting, no sooner are
their eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy
seizeth on them, and terrifies their souls, representing
some dismal object to their minds ; which now, by no
means, no labor, no persuasions, they can avoid, they
cannot be rid of, they cannot resist."
Something like this " scene turning " I have ex
74 A CHAPTER Ois EARS.
perienced at the evening parties, at the house of my
good Cathohc friend Nov ; who, by the aid of a
capital organ, himself the most finished of players,
converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his weekdays
into Sim days, and these latter into minor heavens.*
When my friend commences upon one of those
solemn anthems, which peradventure struck upon my
heedless ear, rambling in the side aisles of the dim
Abbey, some five-and-thirty years since, waking a new
sense, and putting a soul of old religion into my
young apprehension — (whether it be ihat^ in which
the Psalmist, weary of the persecutions of bad men,
wisheth to himself dove's wings — or that other ^ which,
with a like measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth
by what means the young man shall best cleanse his
mind) — a holy calm pervadeth me. I am for the
time
rapt above earth,
And possess joys not promised at my birth.
But when this master of the spell, not content to
have laid his soul prostrate, goes on, in his power, to
inflict more bliss than lies in her capacity to receive,
— impatient to overcome her " earthly " with his
"heavenly," — still pouring in, for protracted hours,
fresh waves and fresh from the sea of sound, or from
that inexhausted Crerman ocean, above which, in tri-
umphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride those Arions
Haydn and 3Iozart, with their attendant Tritons, Bach,
Beethoven, and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to
reckon up would but plunge me again in the deeps, —
I stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling to and
* I have been there, and still would c^o;
'Tis like a little heaven below. — Dr. W<Uti.
ALL FOOLS' DAV. 75
fro at ray wits' end ; — clouds, as of frankincense,
oppress me — priests, altars, censers, dazzle before me
— the genius of his religion hath me in her toils — a
shadowy triple tiara invests the brow of my friend, late
so naked, so ingenuous — he is Pope, — and by him
sits, like as in the anomaly of dreams, a she-Pope too,
— tri-coroneted like himself ! — I am converted, and
yet a Protestant ; — at once malleus her'eticoriim, and
myself grand heresiarch : or three heresies centre in my
person : — I am Marcion, Ebion, and Cerinthus — Gog
and Magoo; — what not ? — till the comino- in of
the friendly supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a
draught of true Lutheran beer (in which chiefly my
friend shows himself no bigot) at once reconciles me to
the rationalities of a purer faith ; and restores to me
the genuine unterrifying aspects of ray pleasant-coun-
tenanced host and hostess.
ALL FOOLS' DAY.
The compliments of the season to my worthy mas-
ters, and a merry first of April to us all !
Many happy returns of this day to you — and you —
and you., Sir — nay, never frown, man, nor put a long
face upon the matter. Do not we know one another ?
what need of ceremony among friends ? we have all a
touch of that same — you understand me — a speck of
the motley. Beshrew the man who on such a day as
this, the general festival., should affect to stand aloof.
76 ALL FOOLS' DAY.
I am none of those sneakers. I am free of tlie corpo-
ration, and care not who knows it. He that meets me
in the forest to-day, shall meet with no wiseacre, I can
tell him. Stidtus sum. Translate me that, and take
the meaning of it to yourself for your pains. What !
man, we have four quarters of the globe on our side, at
the least computation.
Fill us a cup of that sparkling goosebeny, — we will
drink no wise, melancholy, politic port on this day, —
and let us troll the catch of Amiens — due ad me —
due ad me, — how goes it ?
Here shall he see
Gross fools as he.
Now would I give a trifle to know historically and
authentically, who was the greatest fool that ever lived.
I would certainly give him in a bumper. Many, of the
present breed, I think I could without much difficulty
name you the party.
Remove your cap a little farther, if you please ; it
hides my bauble. And now each man bestride his
hobby, and dust away his bells to what tmie he pleases.
I will give you, for my part, —
The crazy old church clock,
And the bewllder'd chimes.
Good master Empedocles, you are welcome. It is
long since you went a salamander-gathering down
^tna. Worse than samphire-picking by some odds.
'Tis a mercy your worship did not singe your nms-
tachios.
Ha ! Cleombrotus ! and what salads in faith did
you light upon at the bottom of the Meditermnean ?
ALL FOOLS' DAY. 77
You were founder, I take it, of the disinterested sect
of the Calenturists.
Gebir, my old freemason, and prince of plasterers
at Babel, bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand !
You have claim to a seat here at my right hand, a8
patron of the stammerers. You left your work, if I re-
member Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred million
toises, or thereabout, above the level of the sea. . Bless
us, what a long bell you must have pulled, to call your
top workmen to their nunchion on the low grounds of
Shinar. Or did you send up your garlic and onions
by a rocket ? I am a rogue if I am not ashamed to
show you our Monument on Fish-street Hill, after your
altitudes. Yet we think it somewhat.
What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears ? — ciy,
baby, put its finger in its eye, it shall have another
globe, round as an orange, pretty moppet !
Mister Adams 'odso, I honor your coat — pray
do us the favor to read to us that sermon, which you
lent to Mistress Slipslop — the twenty and second in
your portmanteau there — on Female Incontinence —
the same — it will come in most irrelevantly and im-
pertinently seasonable to the time of the day.
Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. Pray
correct that error.
Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you a
bumper, or a paradox. We will have nothing said or
done syllogistically this day. Remove those logical
forms, waiter, that no gentleman break the tender shins
of his apprehension stumbling across them.
Master Stephen, you are late. — Ha ! Cokes, is it
you? — Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay my
devoir to you. — Master Shallow, your worship's poor
78 ALL FOOLS' DAY.
servant to command. — ISIaster Silence, I will use
few words with you. — Slender, it shall go hard if I
edge not you in somewhere. You six will engross
all the poor wit of the company to-day. I know it,
I know it.
Ha ! honest R , my fine old Librarian of Lud-
gate, time out of mind, art thou here again ? Bless
thy doublet, it is not over-new, threadbare as thy
stories ; — what dost thou flitting about the world at
this rate ? Thy customers are extinct, defunct, bed-
rid, have ceased to read long ago. Thou goest still
among them, seeing if, peradventure, thou canst hawk
a volume or two. Good Granville S , thy last
patron, is flown.
King Pandion, he is dead, ^
All thy friends are lapt in lead.
Nevertheless, noble R , come in, and take your
seat here, between Armado and Quisada ; for in true
courtesy, in gravity, in fantastic smiling to thyself, in
com-teous smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature
of well-apparelled sj^eech, and the commendation of
wise sentences, thou art nothing inferior to those ac-
complished Dons of Spain. The spirit of chivalry
forsake me forever, when I forget thy singing the
song of Macheath, Avliich declares that he might be
happy with either, situated between those two ancient
spinsters, — when I forget the inimitable formal love
which thou didst make, turning now to the one, and
now to the other, with that Malvolian smile — as if
Cervantes, not Gay, had written it for his hero ; and
as if thousands of periods must revolve, before the
mirror of courtesy could have given his invidious
ALL FOOLS' DAY. 79
preference between a pair of so goodly-propertied ana
meritorious-equal damsels. .....
To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract
our Fools' Banquet beyond its appropriate dnj, — for
I fear the second of April is not many hours distant, —
in sober verity I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I
love a Fool — as naturally, as if I were of kith and kin
to him. When a child, with childlike apprehensions,
that dived not below the surface of the matter, I read
those Parables — not guessing at the involved wisdom,
— I had more yearnings towards that simple architect,
that built his house upon the sand, than I entertained
for his more cautious neighbor ; I grudged at the hard
censure pronounced upon the quiet soul that kept his
talent ; and — prizing their simplicity beyond the more
provident, and, to my apprehension, somewhat unfemi-
nine wariness of their competitors — I felt a kindliness,
that almost amounted to a tendre. for those five thoup-ht-
less virgins. I have never made an acquamtance since,
that lasted ; or a friendship, that answered ; with any
that had not some tincture of the absurd in their char-
acters. I venerate an honest obliquity of understand-
ing. The more laughable blunders a man shall commit
in your company, the more tests he giveth you, that he
will not betray or overreach you. I love the safety,
which a palpable hallucination warrants ; the security,
which a word out of season ratifies. And take my
word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if you
please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mix-
ture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his compo-
sition. It is observed, that " the foolisher the fowl or
fish, — woodcocks — dotterels — cods'-heads, — &c. the
finer the flesh thereof;" and what are commonly the
so A QUAKERS' MEETING.
world's received fools, but sucli whereof the world is
not worthy ? and what have been some of tlie kindliest
patterns of our species, but so many darlings of absur-
dity, minions of the goddess, and her white boys ? —
Reader, if you wrest my words beyond their fair con-
struction, it is you, and not I, that are the ApHl Fool,
A QUAKERS' MEETING.
Stillborn Silence! thou that art
Floodgate of the deeper heart !
Offspring of a heavenly kind !
Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind I
Secrecy's confidant, and he
Who makes religion mystery!
Admiration's speaking'st tongue!
Leave thy desert shades among
Reverend hermits' hallow'd cells,
AVhere retried devotion dwells!
AVith thy enthusiasms come,
Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb ! *
Reader, would'st thou know what true peace and
(juiet mean ; would'st thou find a refuge from the
noises and clamors of the multitude ; would'st thou
enjoy at once solitude and society ; would'st thou pos-
sess the depth of thine own spirit in stillness, without
being shut out from the consolatory faces of thy species ;
would'st thou be alone, and yet accompanied ; solitary,
yet not desolate ; singular, yet not without some to
keep thee in countenance ; a unit in aggregate ; a
* From " Poems of all Sorts," by Richard Fleckno, 1653.
A QUAKERS' MEETING. 81
simple in composite : — come with me into a Quakers'
Meeting.
Dost thou love silence deep as that " before the
winds were made?" go not out into the wilderness;
descend not into the profundities of the earth ; shut
not up thy casements ; nor pour wax into the little
cells of thy ears, with little-faith' d self-mistrusting
Ulysses. — Retire with me into a Quakers' Meeting.
For a man to refrain even from good words, and to
hold his peace, it is commendable ; but for a multitude,
it is great mastery.
What is the stillness of the desert, compared with
this place ? what the uncommunicating muteness of
fishes ? — here the goddess reigns and revels. — " Bo-
reas, and Cesias, and Ai'gestes loud," do not with their
inter-confounding uproars more augment the brawl —
nor the waves of the blown Baltic with their clubbed
sounds — than their opposite (Silence her sacred self)
is multiplied and rendered more intense by numbers,
and by sympathy. She too hath her deeps, that call
unto deeps. Negation itself hath a positive more and
less ; and closed eyes would seem to obscure the great
obscurity of midnight.
There are wounds which an imperfect solitude
cannot heal. By imperfect I mean that which a man
enjoyeth by himself. The perfect is that which he
can sometimes attain in crowds, but noAvhere so abso-
lutely as in a Quakers' Meeting. Those first hermits
did certainly understand this principle, when they re-
tired into Egy|)tian solitudes, not singly, but in shoals,
to enjoy one anotlier's want of conversation. The
Carthusian is bound to his brethren by this agreeing
spirit of incommunicativeness. In secular occasions,
VOL. III. 6
82 A QUAKERS' MEETING.
what SO pleasant as to be reading a book through a
long winter evening, with a friend sitting bj — say, a
wife — he, or she, too, (if that be probable,) reading
another, without interruption, or oral communication ?
— can there be no sympathy without the gabble of
words ? — away with this inhuman, shy, single, shade-
and-cavern-haunting solitariness. Give me, Master
Zimmerraann, a sympathetic solitude.
To pace alone in the cloisters, or side aisles of Home
cathedral, time-stricken ;
Or under hanging mountains,
Or by the fall of fountains ;
is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which those
enjoy who come together for the purposes of more
complete, abstracted solitude. This is the loneliness
" to be felt." — The Abbey Church of Westminster
hath nothing so solemn, so spirit-soothing, as the naked
w :11s and benches of a Quakers' Meeting. Here are
no tombs, no inscriptions, —
Sands, ignoble things,
Dropt from the mined sides of kings; —
but here is something which throws Antiquity herself
mto the foreground — Silence — eldest of things —
language of old Night — primitive Discourser — to
which the insolent decays of mouldering grandeur
have but arrived by a violent, and, as we may say,
unnatural progression.
IIow reverend is the view of these hushed heads,
Looking tranquillity!
Nothing-plotting, nought-cabalhng, unmlschievous
A QUAKERS' MEETING. 8S
synod I convocation without intrigue ! parliament with-
out debate ! what a lesson dost thou read to council,
and to consistory ! — if my pen treat of you lightly —
as haply it will wander — yet my spirit hath gravely
felt the wisdom of your custom, when sitting among
you in deepest peace, which some out-welling tears
would rather confirm than disturb, I have reverted to
the times of your beginnings, and the sowings of the
seed by Fox and Dewesbury. I have witnessed that
which brought before my eyes your heroic tranquillity,
inflexible to the rude jests and serious violences of the
insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to molest
you, — for ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecutions,
the outcast and offscouring of church and presbytery.
I have seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered
into your receptacle with the avowed intention of dis-
turbing your quiet, fi-om the very spirit of the place
receive in a moment a new heart, and presently sit
among ye as a lamb amidst lambs. And I remember
Penn before his accusers, and Fox in the bail-dock,
where he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells us, and
" the Judge and the Jury became as dead men under
liis feet."
Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would
recommend to you, above all church-narratives, to read
Sewel's " History of the Quakers." It is in folio, and
is the abstract of the Jounials of Fox and the primitive
Friends. It is far more edifying and affecting than
anything you will read of Wesley and his colleagues.
Here is nothing to stagger you, nothing to make you
mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the
worldly or ambitious spirit. You will here read the
true story of that much-injured, ridiculed man, (who
84 A QUAKERS' MEETING.
perhaps liatli been a byword in your mouth,) — James
Naylor : what dreadful sufferings, with what patience,
he endured, even to the boring through of his tongue
with redhot irons, without a murmur ; and with what
strength of mmd, wlien tlie delusion he had fallen into,
which they stigmatized for blasphemy, had given way to
clearer thoughts, he could renounce liis error, in a strain
of the beautifullest humility, yet keep his first grounds,
and be a Quaker still ! — so different fi-om the prac-
tice of your common converts from enthusiasm, who,
when they apostatize, apostatize all, and think they can
never get far enough from the society of their former
errors, even to the renunciation of some saving truths,
with which they had been mingled, not implicated.
Get the Writings of John Woolman by heart ; and
love the early Quakers.
How far the followers of these good men in our days
have kept to the primitive spirit, or in what proportion
they have substituted formality for it, the Judge of
Spu'its can alone determine. I have seen faces in their
assemblies, upon which the dove sate visibly brooding.
Others again I have watched, when my thoughts
should have been better engaged, in which I could
possibly detect nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet
was in all, and the disposition to unanimity, and the
absence of the fierce controversial workings. If the
spiritual pretensions of the Quakers have abated, at
least they make few pretences. Hypocrites they cer-
tainly are. not, in their preaching. It is seldom indeed
that you shall see one get up amongst them to hold
forth. Only now and then a trembling, female, gener-
ally ancient voice is heard — you cannot guess from
what part of the meeting it proceeds — with a low.
A QUAKEKS' MEETING. 85
buzzing, musical sound, laying out a few woids which
" she thought might suit the condition of some pres-
ent," with a quaking diffidence, which leaves no pos-
sibility of supposing that anything of female vanity was
mixed up, where the tones were so full of tenderness,
and a restraining modesty. The men, for what I have
observed, speak seldomer.
Once only, and it was some years ago, I witnessed a
sample of the old Foxian orgasm. It was a man of
giant stature, who, as Wordsworth phrases it, might
have danced " from head to foot equipt in iron mail."
His frame was of iron too. But he was malleable.
I saw him shake all over with the spirit — I dare not
say of delusion. The strivings of the outer man were
unutterable — he seemed not to speak, but to be spoken
from. I saw the strong man bowed down, and his
knees to fail — his joints all seemed loosening — it was
a figure to set off against Paul Preaching — the words
he uttered were few, and sound — he was evidently
resisting his will — keeping down his own word-wisdom
with more mighty effort, than the world's orators strain
for theirs. " He had been a wit in his youth," he told
us, with expressions of a sober remorse. And it was
not till long after the impression had begun to wear
away, that I was enabled, with something like a smile,
to recall the striking incongruity of the confession —
understanding the term in its worldly acceptation —
with the frame and physiognomy of tlie person before
me. His brow would have scared away the Levites
— the Jocos Risus-que — faster than the Loves fled the
face of Dis at Enna. By ivit^ even in liis youth, I will
be sworn, he understood something far within the limits
of an allowable liberty.
86 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.
More frequently the Meeting is broken up without
a word having been spoken. But the mind has been
fed. You go away with a sermon not made with
hands. You have been in the milder caverns of Tro-
phonius ; or as in some den, where that fiercest and
savagest of all wild creatures, the Tongue, that unruly
member, has strangely lain tied up and captive. You
have bathed with stillness. O when the spirit is sore
fretted, even tired to sickness of the janglings, and non-
sense-noises of the world, what a balm and a solace
it is, to go and seat yourself, for a quiet half hour,
upon some undisputed corner of a bench, among the
gentle Quakers !
Their garb and stillness conjoined, present a uni-
formity, tranquil and herd-like — as in the pasture —
"forty feeding like one."
The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of
receiving a soil ; and cleanliness in them to be some-
thing more than the absence of its contrary. Every
Quakeress is a lily ; and when they come up in bands
to their Whitsun-conferences, whitening the easterly
streets of the metropolis, from all parts of the United
Kingdom, they show lil^e troops of the Shining Ones.
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.
]\Iy reading has been lamentably desultory and im-
methodieal. Odd, out of the way, old English plays
and treatises, have supplied me with most of my
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASIER. 87
notions, and ways of feeling. In everytliing that re-
lates to science^ I am a whole Encyclopgedia behind
the rest of the world. I should have scarcely cut a
figure among the franklins, or country gentlemen, in
King John's days. I know less geography than a
schoolboy of six weeks' standing. To me a map of
old Ortelius is as authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not
know whereabout Africa merges into Asia ; whether
Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great divisions ;
nor can form the remotest conjecture of the position
of New South Wales, or Van Diemen's Land. Yet
do I hold a correspondence with a very dear friend in
the first-named of these two Terrae Incognitas. I have
no astronomy. I do not know where to look for the
Bear, or Charles's Wain ; the place of any star ; or
the name of any of them at sight. I guess at Venus
only by her brightness ; and if^ the sun on some por-
tentous mom were to make his first appearance in tho
West, I verily believe, that, while all the world were
gasping in apprehension about me, I alone should
stand unterrified, fi'om sheer incuriosity and want of
observation. Of history and chronology I possess some
vague points, such as one cannot help picking up in
the course of miscellaneous study ; but I never deliber-
ately sat down to a chronicle, even of my own country.
I have most dim apprehensions of the four great mon-
archies ; and sometimes the Assyrian, sometimes the
Persian, floats as first, in my fancy. I make the
widest conjectures concerning Egyjit and her shep-
herd kings. My friend M., with great painstaking,
got me to think I understood the first proposition in
Euclid, but gave me over *n despair at the secund. I
am entirely unacquainted with the modern languages;
88 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.
and, like a better man than myself, have " small Latin
and less Greek." I am a stranger to the shapes and
texture of the commonest trees, herbs, flowers, — not
from the circumstance of my being town-born, — for
I should have brought the same inobservant spirit into
the world with me, had I first seen it " on Devon's
leafy shores," — and am no less at a loss among purely
town-objects, tools, engines, mechanic processes. Not
that I affect ignorance — but my head has not many
mansions, nor spacious ; and I have been obliged to fill
it with such cabinet curiosities as it can hold without
aching. I sometimes wonder how I have passed my
probation with so little discrecht in the world, as I have
done, upon so meagre a stock. But the fact is, a man
may do very well with a very little knowledge, and
scarce be found out, in mixed company ; everybody is
so much more ready to produce his own, than to call
for a display of your acquisitions. But in a tete-d-tete
there is no shuffling. The truth will out. There is
notliing which I dread so much as the being left alone
for a quarter of an hour with a sensible, well-informed
man, that does not know me. I lately got into a
dilemma of this sort.
In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate and
Shacklewell, the coach stopped to take up a staid-look-
ing gentleman, about the wrong side of thirty, who
was giving his parting direcuons (while the steps were
adjusting), in a tone of mild authority, to a tall youth,
who seemed to be neither his clerk, his son, nor his
servant, but something partaking of all tliree. The
youth was dismissed, and we drove on. As we were
the sole passengers, he naturally enough addressed his
conversation to me ; and w-e discussed the merits of the
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 89
fare, the civility and punctuality of the driver; the
circumstance of an opposition coach having been lately
set up, with the pi'obabilities of its success, — to all
which I was enabled to return pretty satisfactory an-
swers, having been drilled into this kind of etiquette by
some years' daily practice of riding to and fro in the
stage aforesaid, — when he suddenly alanned me by a
startling question, whether I had seen the show of prize
cattle that morning in Smithfield ? Now, as I had not
seen it, and do not greatly care for such sort of exhibi-
tions, I was obliged to return a cold negative. He
seemed a little mortified, as well as astonished, at my
declaration, as (it appeared) he was just come fresh
from the sight, and doubtless had hoped to compare
notes on the subject. However, he assured me that I
had lost a fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of last
year. We were now approaching Norton Folgate,
when the sight of some shop-goods ticketed freshened
him up into a dissertation upon the cheapness of cot-
tons this spring. I was now a little in heart, as the
nature of my morning avocations had brought me into
some sort of familiarity with the raw material ; and I
was surprised to find how eloquent I was becoming
on the state of the India market, — when, presently,
he dashed my incipient vanity to the earth at once,
by inquiring whether I had ever made any calcula-
tion as to the value of the rental of all the retail
shops in London. Had he asked of me what song the
Siren sang, or what name Achilles assumed when ho
hid himself among women, I might, with Sir Thomas
Browne, have hazarded a " wide solution." * ]\Iy com-
panion saw my embarrassment, and, the almshouses be-
* Urn BuriaL
90 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.
yoiid Shoreditch just coming in ^'ie^v, with great good-
nature and dexterity, shifted his conversation to the
subject of public charities; which led to the compara-
tive merits of provision for the poor in past and present
times, with observations on the old monastic institu
tions, and charitable orders ; but, finding me rather
dimly impressed with some glimmering notions from
old poetic associations, than strongly fortified with any
speculations reducible to calculation on the subject, he
gave the matter up ; and, the country begmning to
open more and more upon us, as we approached the
turnpike at Kingsland (the destined termination of his
journey), he put a home thrust upon me, in the most
mifortunate position he could have chosen, by advanc-
ing some queries relative to the North Pole Expedition.
While I was muttering; out somethino; about the Pano-
rama of those strange regions (which I had actually
seen), by way of parrymg the question, the coach stop-
ping relieved me fi'om any further apprehensions. My
companion getting out, left me in the comfortable pos
session of my ignorance ; and I heard him, as he went
off, putting questions to an outside passenger, who had
alighted with him, regarding an epidemic disorder that
had been rife about Dalston, and which my fiiend as-
sured him had gone through five or six schools in that
neighborhood. The truth now flashed upon me, that
my companion was a schoolmaster ; and that the youth,
whom he had parted fi'om at our first acquaintance,
must have been one of the bigger boys, or the usher.
He was evidently a kind-hearted man, who did not
seem so much desirous of provoking discussion by the
questions which he put, as of obtaining information at
any rate. It did not appear that he took any interest,
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 91
either, in such kind of inquiries, for their owti sake ;
but that he was in some way bound to seek for knowl-
edge. A greenish-colored coat, wliich he had on, for-
bade me to surmise that he was a clergyman. The
adventure gave birtli to some reflections on the differ-
ence between persons of his profession in past and
present times.
Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagogues ; the
breed, long since extinct, of the Lilys, and the Lina-
cres ; who, believing that all learning was contained in
the languages which they taught, and despising every
other acquirement as superficial and useless, came to
their task as to a sport ! Passing from infancy to age,
they dreamed away all their days as in a gi'ammar-
school. Revolving in a perpetual cycle of declensions,
conjugations, syntaxes, and prosodies ; renewing con-
stantly the occupations which had charmed their studi-
ous childhood ; rehearsing continually the part of the
past ; life must have slipped from them at last like one
day. They were always in their first garden, reaping
harvests of their golden time, among their Flori and
their Spici-legia ; in Arcadia still, but kings ; the ferule
of their sway not much harsher, but of like dignity
with that mild sceptre attributed to king Basileus ; the
Greek and Latin, their stately Pamela and their Philo-
clea ; with the occasional duncery of some untoward
tyro, serving for a refreshing interlude of a Mopsa or a
cloAvn Damoetas !
With what a savor doth the Preface to Colet's, or
(as it is sometimes called) Paul's Accidence, set fortli !
" To exhort every man to the learning of gramirar,
that intendeth to attain the understanding of the
tongues, wherein is contained a great treasury of
92 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASfER.
wisdom and knowledge, it would seem but vain and
lost labor; for so much as it is known, that nothing
can surely be ended, whose beginning is either feeble
or faulty ; and no building be perfect whereas the
foundation and groundwork is ready to fall, and unable
to uphold the burden of the frame." Hoav well doth
this stately preamble (comparable to those which Mil-
ton commendeth as " having been the usage to prefix
to some solemn law, then first promulgated by Solon,
or Lycurgus,") correspond with and illustrate that
pious zeal for conformity, expressed in a succeeding
clause, which would fence about grammar-rules with
the severity of faith-articles ! — "as for the diversity
of grammars, it is well profitably taken away by the
Kings Majesties wisdom, who, foreseeing the inconven-
ience, and favourably providing the remedie, caused one
kind of grammar by sundry learned men to be dili-
gently drawn, and so to be set out, only everywhere
to be taught, for the use of learners, and for the hurt
in changing of schoolmaisters." What a gusto in that
which follows : " wherein it is profitable that he [the
pupil] can orderly decline his noun, and his verb."
His noun !
The fine dream is fading away fast ; and the least
concern of a teacher in the present day is to inculcate
grammar-rules.
The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a little
of e^'erything, because his pupil is required not to be
enti rely ignorant of anything. He must be superficially,
if I may so say, omniscient. He is to know something
of pneumatics ; of chemistry ; of whatever is curious,
or proper to excite the attention of the youthful mind ;
an insight into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 93
statistics ; the quality of soils, &c., botany, the consti-
tution of his country, cum multis aliis. You may get a
notion of some part of his expected duties by consult-
ing the famous Tractate on Education addressed to Mr.
Hartlib.
All these things — these, or the desire of them, — he
is expected to instil, not by set lessons from professors,
which he may charge in the bill, but at school-intervals,
as he walks the streets, or saunters through green fields
(those natural instructors), with his pupils. The least
part of what is expected from him, is to be done in
school-hours. He must insinuate knowledge at the
mollia tempora fandi. He must seize every occasion —
the season of the year — the time of the day — a pas-
sing cloud — a rainbow — a wagon of hay — a reg-
iment of soldiers going by — to inculcate something
useful. He can receive no pleasure from a casual
glimpse of Nature, but must catch at it as an object of
instruction. He must interpret beauty into the pictu-
resque. He cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gypsy, for
thinking of the suitable improvement. Nothing comes
to him, not spoiled by the sophisticating medium of
moral uses. The Universe — that Great Book, as it
has been called — is to him indeed, to all intents and
purposes, a book, out of which he is doomed to read
tedious homilies to distasting schoolboys. Vacations
themselves are none to lum, he is only rather worse
off than before ; for commonly he has some intrusive
upper-boy fastened upon him at such times ; some
cadet of a great family ; some neglected lump of nobil-
ity, or gentry ; that he must drag after him to the play,
to the Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrery, to the
Panopticon, or mto the country, to a friend's house, or
94 THL OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.
his favorite watering-place. Wherever lie goes, tliia
uneasy shadow attends him. A boy is at his board,
and in his path, and in all his movements. He is boy-
rid, sick of perpetual boy.
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among
their mates ; but they are unwholesome companions
for grown people. The restraint is felt no less on the
one side, than on the other. Even a child, that
" plaything for an hour," tires always. The noises of
children, playing their own fancies — as I now hearken
to them by fits, sporting on the green before my win-
dow, while I am engaged in these grave speculations at
my neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell — by distance
made more sweet — inexpressibly take fi'om the labor
of my task. It is like writing to music. They seem
to modulate my periods. They ought at least to do so,
— for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind of
poetry, far unlike the harsh prose-accents of man's
conversation. I should but spoil their sport, and
diminish my own sympathy for them, by mingling in
their pastime.
I would not be domesticated all my days with a per-
son of very superior capacity to my own, — not, if I
know myself at all, from any considerations of jealousy
or self-comparison, for the occasional communion with
such minds has constituted the fortune and felicity of
my life, — but the habit of too constant intercourse with
spirits above you, instead of raising you, keeps you
down. Too fi'equent doses of original thinking fi'om
others, restrain what lesser portion of that faculty you
Oiay possess of your own. You get entangled in an-
other man's mind, even as you lose youi'self in another
man's grounds. You are walking with a tall varlet,
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 95
whose strides outpace yours to lassitude. The con-
stant operation of such potent agency would reduce
me, I am convinced, to imbecility. You may derive
thoughts from others ; your way of thinking, the
mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your
own. Intellect may be imparted, but not each man's
intellectual frame.
As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged
upward, as little (or rather still less) is it desirable to
be stunted downwards by your associates. The trum-
pet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a
whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility.
Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence
of a schoolmaster ? — because we are conscious that he
is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and
out of place, in the society of his equals. He comes
like Gulliver fi'om among his little people, and he
cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours.
He cannot meet you on the square. He wants a point
given him, like an indifferent whist-player. He is so
used to teaching, that he wants to be teaching you.
One of these professors, upon my complaining that
these little sketches of mine were anything but method-
ical, and that I was unable to made them otherwise,
kindly offered to instruct me in the method by which
young gentlemen in Ms seminary were taught to com-
pose English themes. The jests of a schoolmaster are
coarse, or thin. They do not tell out of school. He is
under the restraint of a formal or didactive hypocrisy
in company, as a clergyman is under a moral one. He
can no more let his intellect loose in society, than the
other can his inclinations. He is forlorn among hi»
coevals ; his juniors cannot be his friends.
96 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.
" J take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this
profession, writing to a friend respecting a youth who
had quitted his school abruptly, " that your nephew
was not more attached to me. But persons in my situ-
ation are more to be pitied, than can well be imagined.
We are surrounded by young, and, consequently,
ardently affectionate hearts, but we can never hope to
share an atom of their affections. The relation of
master and scholar forbids th* . Sow pleasing this
must he to you^ how I envy your feelings ! my friends
will sometimes say to me, when they see young men
whom I have educated, return after some years' ab-
sence fi'om school, their eyes shining with pleasure,
while they shake hands with their old master, bringing
a present of game to me, or a toy to my wife, and
thanking me in the warmest terms for my care of their
education. A holiday is begged for the boys ; the house
is a scene of happiness ; I, only, am sad at heart. This
fine-spirited and warm-hearted youth, who fancies he
repays his master with gratitude for the care of his
boyish years — this young man — in the eight long
years I watched over him with a parent's anxiety,
never could repay me with one look of genume feeling.
He was proud, when I praised ; he was submissive,
when I reproved him ; but he did never love me ; —
and what he now mistakes for gratitude and kindness
for me, is but the pleasant sensation, which all persons
feel at revisiting the scenes of their boyish hopes and
fears ; and the seeing on equal terms the man they
were accustomed to look up to with reverence. My
wife too," this interesting correspondent goes on to say,
•' mv cnce darling Anna, is the wife of a schoolmaster.
Wh'^p T married her, — knowing that the wife of a
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 97
schoolmaster ought to be a busy notable creature, and
fearing that my gentle Anna would ill supply the loss
of my dear bustling mother, just then dead, who never
sat still, was in every part of the house in a moment,
and whom I was obliged sometimes to threaten to fasten
down in a chair, to save her fi'om fatiguing herself to
death, — I expressed my fears that I was bringing her
into a way of life unsuitable to her ; and she, who loved
me tenderly, promised for my sake to exert herself to
perform the duties of her new situation. She promised,
and she has kept her word. What wonders will not
woman's love perform? My house is managed with
a propriety and decorum unknown in other schools ;
my boys are well fed, look healthy, and have every
proper accommodation ; and all this perforaied with a
careful economy, that never descends to meanness.
But I have lost my gentle helpless Anna ! When we
sit down to enjoy an hour of repose after the fatigue of
the day, I am compelled to listen to what have been
her usefiil (and they are really useful) employments
through the day, and what she proposes for her
to-morrow's task. Her heart and her features are
changed by the duties of her situation. To the boys,
she never appears other than the master'' s tvife, and she
looks up to me as the hoy''s master ; to whom all show
of love and affection would be highly improper, and
unbecoming the dig-nity of her situation and mine.
Yet tills my gratitude forbids me to hint to lier. For
my sake she submitted to be this altered creature, and
can I reproach her for it ? " — For the communication
of this letter, I am indebted to my cousin Bridget.
VOL. III. 7
98 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.
1 am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathizeth with
til things; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy in anything.
Those natural repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I behold with prej-
ndice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — Religio Medici.
That the author of the Religio Medici, mounted
upon the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about
notional and conjectural essences ; in whose categories
of Being the possible took the upper hand of the actual ;
should have overlooked the impertinent individualities
of such poor concretions as mankind, is not much to be
admired. It is rather to be wondered at, that in the
genus of animals he should have condescended to dis-
tinguish that si^ecies at all. For myself — earthbound
and fettered to the scene of my activities, —
Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky, .
I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind,
national or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can
look with no indifferent eye upon things or persons.
Whatever is, is to me a matter of taste or distaste ; or
when once it becomes indifferent, it begins to be dis-
relishing. I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prej-
udices — made up of likings and dislikings — the
veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, antipathies. In
a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me that I
am a lover of my species. I can feel for all indiffer-
ently, but I cannot feel towards all equally. The
more purely English word that expresses sympathy,
will better explain my meaning. I can be a fnend
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 99
to a worthy man, who upon another account cannot
be my mate or fellow. I cannot like all people alike.*
I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen,
and am obliged to desist from the experiment in de-
spair. They cannot like me, — and in truth, I never
knew one of that nation who attempted to do it. There
is something more plain and ingenuous in their mode
of proceeding. We know one another at first sight.
There is an order of imperfect intellects (under which
mine must be content to rank) which in its constitution
is essentially anti-Caledonian. The owners of the sort
of faculties I allude to, have minds rather suggestive
than comprehensive. They have no pretences to much
clearness or precision in their ideas, or in their manner
of expressing them. Their intellectual wardrobe (to
* I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of imperfect
sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no direct antipathy.
There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite to anotlier
individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them. I have met
with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons meet-
ing (who never saw one another before in their lives) and instantly fight-
ing.
We by proof find there should be
'Twixt man and man such an antipatliy,
That though he can show no just reason why
For any former wrong or injury.
Can neitlier find a blemisli in his fame.
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame,
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil,
Yet notwithstanding, hates him as a devil.
The lines are from old Heywood's " Hierarchic of Angels," and he sub-
joins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted to
assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack could
give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy which be
had taken to the first sight of the King.
The cause which to that act compell'd him
Was, he ne'er loved hrn since he first beheld him.
100 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.
confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They are
content with fragments and scattered pieces cf Truth.
She presents no full front to them — a feature or side-
face at the most. Hints and glimpses, geiTns and crude
essays at a system, is the utmost they pretend to. They
beat up a httle game peradventure — and leave it to
knottier heads, more robust constitutions, to run it
down. The light that lights them is not steady and
polar, but mutable and shifting ; waxing, and again
waning. Their conversation is accordingly. They
will throw out a random word in or out of season,
and be content to let it pass for what it is worth.
They cannot speak always as if they were upon their
oath, — but must be understood, speaking or writing,
with some abatement. They seldom wait to mature
a proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the green
ear. They delight to impart their defective discoveries
as they arise, without waiting for their full develop-
ment. They are no systematizers, and would but err
more by attempting it. Their minds, as I said before,
are suo-ffestive merely. The brain of a time Caledonian
(if I am not mistaken) is constituted upon quite a
different plan. His Minerva is bom in panoply. You
are never admitted to see his ideas in then* growth, —
if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put to-
gether upon principles of clock-work. You never catcli
his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests
anything, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order
and completeness. He brings his total wealth into com-
pany, and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always
about him. He never stoops to catch a glittering
something in your presence to share it with you, before
he quite knows whether it be true touch or not. You
IMPERFECT SYMPAFinES. 101
cannot cry halves to anything that he finds. He does
not find, but bring. You never witness his first ap-
prehension of a thing. His understanding is always
at its meridian, — you never see the first dawn, the
early streaks. He has no falterings of self-suspicion.
Sunnises, guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-con
sciousnesses, partial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo
conceptions, have no place in his brain or vocabulaiy.
The twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he
orthodox — he has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he
has none either. Between the affirmative and the
negative there is no border-land with him. You can-
not hover with him upon the confines of truth, or
wander in the maze of a probable argument. He
always keeps the path. You cannot make excursions
with him — for he sets you right. His taste never
fluctuates. His morality never abates. He cannot
compromise, or understand middle actions. There
can be but a right and a wrong. His conversation
is as a book. His affinnations have the sanctity of
an oath. You must speak upon the square with him.
He stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an
enemy's country. " A healthy book ! " — said one of
his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give that
appellation to John Buncle, — " Did I catch rightly
what you said? I have heard of a man in health,
and of a healthy state of body, but I do not see how
that epithet can be properly applied to a book." Above
all, you must beware of indirect expressions before a
Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if
you are unhappily blest with a vein of it. Remember
you are upon your oath. I have a print of a gracefiil
female after Leonardo da Vinci, which I was showing
102 IMPERFECT SYMPAiraES.
off to Mr. . After lie had examined it mi-
nutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked my beauty
(a foolish name it goes by among my friends), — when
he very gravely assured me, that " he had considerable
respect for my character and talents," (so he was
pleased to say,) " but had not given himself much
thought about the degree of my personal pretensions."
The misconception staggered me, but did not seem
much to disconcert him. Persons of this nation are
particularly fond of affirming a truth — which nobody
doubts. They do not so properly affirm, as annunciate
it. They do indeed appear to have such a love of
truth (as if, like virtue, it were valuable for itself,)
that all truth becomes equally valuable, whether the
proposition that contains it be new or old, disputed, or
such as is impossible to become a subject of disputa-
tion. I was present not long since at a party of North
Britons, where a son of Burns was expected, and hap-
pened to drop a silly expression (in my South British
way), that I wished it were the father instead of the
son, — when four of them started up at once to inform
me, that " that was impossible, because he was dead."
An impracticable wish, it seems, was more than they
could conceive. Swift has hit off this part of their char-
acter, namely, their love of truth, in his biting way, but
with an illiberality that necessarily confines the passage
to the margin.* The tediousness of these people is
* There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit themselves,
and entertain tlieir company, with relating facts of no consequence, not at
all out of the road of such common incidents as happen every day; and
this I have observed more frequently among the Scots than any other
nation, wlio are very careful not to omit the minutest circumstances of
time or phice; which kind of discourse, if it were not a little relieved by
the uncouth terms and piirases, as well as accent and gesture peculiar to
that country, would be hardly tolerable. — Hints towards an Essay on Con'
venalum.
IMPERFEOr SYMPATHIES. 103
certainly provoking. I wonder if tliey ever tire one
another ? — In my early life I had a passionate fond-
ness for the poetry of Burns. I have sometimes fool
ishly hoped to ingratiate myself with his countrymen
by expressing it. But I have always found that a true
Scot resents your admiration of his compatriot, even
more than he wou^ld your contempt of him. The lat-
ter he imputes to your " imperfect acquaintance with
many of the words which he uses ; " and the same ob-
jection makes it a presumption m you to suppose that
you can admire him. Thomson they seem to have for-
gotten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor for-
given, for his delineation of Rory and his companion,
upon their first introduction to our metropolis. Speak
of Smollett as a great genius, and they will retort upon
you Hume's History compared with his Continuation
of it. Wliat if the historian had continued Humphrey
Clinker ?
I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews.
They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with
wliich Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond
the pyramids. But I should not care to be in habits
of familiar intercourse with any of that nation. I
confess that I have not the nerves to enter their
synagogues. Old prejudices cling about me. I can-
not shake off the story of Hugh of Lincoln. Cen-
turies of injury, contempt, and hate, on the one side,
— of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on the
other, — between our and their fathers, must and ought
to affect the blood of the children. I cannot believe it
can run clear and kindly yet ; or that a few fine words,
such as candor, liberality, the light of a nineteenth
century, can close up the breaches of so deadly a dis-
104 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.
union. A Hebrew is nowhere congenial to me. He
is least distasteful on 'Change — for the mercantile
spirit levels all distinctions, as all are beauties in the
dark. I boldly confess that I do not relish the approxi-
mation of Jew and Christian, which has become so
fiishionable. The reciprocal endearments have, to me,
something hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do
not like to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and
congeeing in awkward postures of an affected civility.
If they are converted, why do they not come over to
us altogether? Why keep up a fonii of separation,
when the life of it is fled ? If they can sit with us at
table, why do they keck at our cookery ? I do not
understand these half convertites. Jews christianizing
— Christians judaizing — puzzle me. I like fish or
flesh. A moderate Jew is a more confounchng piece
of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spu'it of the
synagogue is essentially separative. B would have
been more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of
his forefathers. There is a fine scorn in his face,
which nature meant to be of Christians. The
Hebrew spirit is strong in him, in spite of his prose-
lytism. He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How it
breaks out when he sings, " The Children of Israel
passed through the Red Sea ! " The auditors, for the
moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he rides over
om- necks in triumph. There is no mistaking him.
B has a strong expression of sense in his counte-
nance, and it is confirmed by his singing. The founda-
tion of his vocal excellence is sense. He sings with
undei'standing, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He
would sing the Commandments, and give an appro-
priate character to each prohibition. His nation, iu
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 105
general, have not over-sensible countenances. How
should they ? — but you seldom see a silly expression
among them. Gain, and the pursuit of gain, sharpen
a man's visage. I never heard of an idiot being born
among them. Some admire the Jewish female physi-
ognomy. I admire it — but with trembling. Jael had
those full dark inscrutable eyes.
In the Negro countenance you will often meet with
strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of
tenderness towards some of these faces — or rather
masks — that have looked out kindly upon one in
casual encounters in the streets and highways. I love
what Fuller beautifully calls — these " images of God
cut in ebony." But I should not like to associate with
them, to share my meals and my good nights with
them — because they are black.
I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I vener-
ate the Quaker principles. It does me good for the
rest of the day when I meet any of their people in my
path. When I am ruffled or disturbed by any occur-
rence, the sight or quiet voice of a Quaker acts upon
me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and taking off a
load from the bosom. But I cannot like the Quakers
(as Desdemona would say) " to live with them." 1
am all over sophisticated — with humors, fancies, crav-
ing hourly sympathy. I must have books, pictures,
theatres, chitchat, scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a
thousand whim whams, which their simpler taste can do
without. I should starve at their primitive banquet.
My appetites are too high for the salads which (accord-
ing to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel, my gusto t(y\
excited
To sit a guest with Daniel at liis pulse
106 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIE&.
The indirect answers which Quakers are often fonnd
to return to a question put to them may be explained,
I think, without the vulgar assumption that they are
more given to evasion and equivocating than other
people. They naturally look to their words more
carefully, and are more cautious of committing them-
selves. They have a peculiar character to keep up
on this head. They stand in a manner upon their
veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted from taking
an oath. The custom of resorting to an oath in ex-
treme cases, sanctified as it is by all religious antiquity,
is apt (it must be confessed) to introduce into the laxer
sort of minds the notion of two kinds of truth, — the
one applicable to the solemn affairs of justice, and the
other to the common proceedings of daily intercourse.
As truth bound upon the conscience by an oath can be
but truth, so in the common affirmatians of the shop
and the market-place a latitude is expected, and con-
ceded upon questions wanting this solemn covenant.
Somethino; less than truth satisfies. It is common to
hear a person say, " You do not expect me to speak as
if I were upon my oath." Hence a great deal of in-
correctness and inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps
into ordinary conversation ; and a kind of secondary or
laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth — oath-truth,
by the nature of the circumstances, is not required. A
Quaker knows none of this distinction. His simple
affirmation being received, upon the most sacred occa-
sions, without any further test, stamps a value upon the
words which he is to use upon the most indifferent
topics of life. He looks to them, naturally, with more
severity. You can have of him no more than his word.
Ho knows, if he is caught tripping in a casual expres-
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 107
Bion, he forfeits, for himself at least, his claim to the
invidious exemption. He knows that his syllables are
weighed ; and how far a consciousness of this par-
ticular watchfulness, exerted against a person, has a
tendency to produce indirect answers, and a diverting
of the question by honest means, might be illustrated,
and the practice justified, by a more sacred example
than is proper to be adduced upon this occasion. The
admirable presence of mind, which is notorious in
Quakers upon all contingencies, might be traced to
this imposed self-watchfulness, if it did not seem
rather an humble and secular scion of that old stock of
religious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in
the Primitive Friends, or gave way to the winds of
persecution, to the violence of judge or accuser, under
trials and racking examinations. " You will never
be the wiser, if I sit here answering your questions
till midnight," said one of those upright Justicers to
Penn, who had been putting law-cases with a puzzling
subtlety. " Thereafter as the answers may be," re-
torted the Quaker. The astonishing composure of
this people is sometimes ludicrously displayed in lighter
instances. I was travelling in a stage-coach with three
male Quakers, buttoned up in the straitest non-con-
formity of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover,
where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly suppi r, was
set before us. My friends confined themselves to tlie
tea-table. I, in my way, took supper. When the
landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my compan-
ions discovered that she had charged for both meals.
This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorous
and positive. Some mild arguments were used on the
part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the
108 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS.
good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. Tlie
guard came in with his usual peremptoiy notice. The
Quakers pulled out their money and formally tendered
it — so much for tea, — I, in humble imitation, tender-
mg mine — for the supper which I had taken. She
would not relax in her demand. So they all three
quietly put up then* silver, as chd myself, and marched
out of the room, the eldest and gravest gomg first, with
myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do
better than follow the example of such grave and war-
rantable personages. We got in. The steps went up.
The coach drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess,
not very indistinctly or ambiguously pronomiced, be-
came after a time inaudible, — and now my conscience,
which the whimsical scene had for a while suspended,
beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope
that some justification would be offered by these serious
persons for the seeming injustice of their conduct. To
my great surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the
subject. They sat as mute as at a meeting. At length
the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his
next neighbor, " Hast thee heard how mdigoes go at
the India House ? " — and the question operated as a
soporific on my moral feehng as far as Exeter.
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS.
We are too hasty Avhen we set down our ancestors
in the gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 109
(as they seem to lis) involved in their creed of witch-
craft. In the relations of this visible world we find
them to have been as rational and shrewd to detect an
historic anomaly as ourselves. But when once the
invisible world was supposed to be opened, and the
lawless agency of bad spirits assumed, what measures
of probability, of decency, of fitness, or proportion —
of that which distinguishes the likely from the palpable
absurd — could they have to guide them in the rejec-
tion or admission of any particular testimony ? That
maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen
images consumed before a fire — that corn was lodged,
and cattle lamed — that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic
revelry the oaks of the forest — or that spits and kettles
only danced a fearful innocent vagary about some
rustic's kitchen when no wind was stirring, — were
all equally probable where no law of agency was
understood. That the prince of the powers of dark-
ness, passing by the flower and pomp of the earth,
should lay preposterous siege to the weak fantasy of
mdigent eld — has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood
a ptiori to us, who have no measure to guess at his
policy, or standard to estimate what rate those anile
souls may fetch in the devil's market. Nor, when the
wicked are expressly symbolized by a goat, was it to be
wondered at so much, that he should come sometimes
in that body and assert his metaphor. That the inter-
course was opened at all between both worlds, was
perhaps the mistake, — but that once assumed, I see no
reason for disbelieving one attested story of this natiu'e
more than another on the score of absurdity. There
is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by wbich a
di'eam may be criticized.
110 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS.
I have sometimes thought that I could not have ex
isted in the days of received witchcraft ; that I could
not have slept in a village where one of those reputed
hags dwelt. Our ancestors were bolder or more obtuse.
Amidst the universal belief that these wretches were
in league with the author of all evil, holding hell tribu-
tary to their muttering, no simple Justice of the Peace
seems to have scrupled issuing, or silly Headborough
serving, a warrant upon them, — as if they should sub-
poena Satan ! Prospero in his boat, with his books
and wand about him, suffers himself to be conveyed
away at the mercy of his enemies to an unknown isl-
and. He might have raised a storm or two, we think,
on the passage. His acquiescence is in exact analogy
to the non-resistance of witches to the constituted
powers. What stops the Fiend in Spenser from tear-
ing Guyon to pieces, — or who had made it a condition
of his prey, that Guyon must take assay of the glorious
bait, — we have no guess. We do not know the laws
of that country.
From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive
about witches and witch-stories. My maid, and more
legendary aunt, supplied me with good store. But I
shall mention the accident which directed my curiosity
originally into this channel. In my father's book-
closet, the " History of the Bible " by Stackhouse occu-
pied a distinguished station. The pictures with which
it aboiuids — one of the ark, in particular, and another
of Solomon's temple, delineated with all the fidelity of
ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had been upon
the spot — attracted my childish attention. Thei-e was
a picture, too, of the Witch raising up Samuel, which
I wish that I had never seen. We shall come to that
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEABS. Ill
hereafter. Stackhouse is in two huge tomes, — and
there was a pleasure in removing folios of that magni-
tude, which, with infinite straining, was as much as I
could manage, from the situation which they occupied
upon an upper shelf. I have not met with the work
from that time to this, but I remember it consisted of
Old Testament stories, orderly set down, with the ib-
jection appended to each story, and the solution of tho
objection regularly tacked to that. The objection was a
summary of whatever difficulties had been opposed to
the credibility of the history, by the shrewdness of an-
cient or modern infidelity, drawn up with an almost
complimentary excess of candor. The solution was
brief, modest, and satisfactory. The bane and antidote
were both before you. To doubts so put, and so
quashed, there seemed to be an end forever. The
dragon lay dead, for the foot of the veriest babe to
trample on. But — like as was rather feared than
realized fi-om that slain monster in Spenser — fi'om the
womb of those crushed errors young dragonets would
creep, exceeding the prowess of so tender a Saint
George as myself to vanquish. The habit of expect-
ing objections to every passage, set me upon starting
more objections, for the glory of finding a solution of
my own for them. I became staggered and perplexed,
a skeptic in long-coats. The pretty Bible stories which
I had read, or heard read in church, lost their purity
and sincerity of impression, and were turned into so
many historic or chronologic theses to be defended
against whatever impugners. I was not to disbelieve
them, but — the next thing to that — I was to be quite
sure that some one or other would or had disbelieved
them. Next to making a child an infidel, is the letting
112 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS.
him know that there are infidels at all. Credulity is
the man's weakness, but the child's strength. O, how
ugly sound scriptural doubts from the mouth of a babe
and a suckling ! — I should have lost myself in these
mazes, and have pined away, I think, with such unfit
sustenance as these husks afibrded, but for a fortunate
piece of ill-fortune, which about this time befell me.
Turning over the picture of the ai'k with too much
haste, I unhappily made a breach in its ingenious fabric,
- — di'iving my inconsiderate fingers right through the
two larger quadrupeds, — the elephant, and the camel,
— that stare (as well they might) out of the last two
windows next the steerage in that unique piece of naval
architecture. Stackhouse was henceforth locked up,
and became an interdicted treasure. With the book,
the objections and solutions gradually cleared out of my
head, and have seldom returned since in any force to
trouble me. But there was one impression which I
had imbibed from Stackhouse, which no lock or bar
could shut out, and which was destined to try my
childish nerves rather more seriously. That detest-
able picture !
I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The
night-time, solitude, and the dark, were my hell. The
sufferings I endured in this nature would justify the ex-
pression. I never laid my head on my pillow, I sup-
pose, fi'om the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of
my life — so far as memory serves in things so long
ago — without an assurance, which realized its own
prophecy, of seeing some frightful spectre. Be old
Stackhouse then acquitted in part, if I say, that to his
picture of the Witch raising up Samuel — (O that old
mail covered \vith a mantle I ) — I owe — not my mid-
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 113
night terrors, the hell of my infancy — but the shape
and manner of their visitation. It was he who dressed
up for me a hag that nightly sate upon my pillow, — a
sure bedfellow, when my aunt or my maid was far from
me. All day long, while the book was permitted me,
I dreamed waking over his delineation, and at night
(if 1 may use so bold an expression) awoke mto sleep,
and found the vision true. I durst not, even in the
daylight, once enter the chamber where I slept, with-
out my face turned to the window, aversely from the
bed where my witchridden pillow was. Parents do
not knoAV what they do when they leave tender babes
alone to go to sleep in the dark. The feeling about for
a friendly arm — the hoping for a familiar voice —
when they wake screaming — and find none to soothe
them, — what a terrible shaking it is to their poor
nerves ! The keeping them up till midnight, through
candlelight and the unwholesome hours, as they are
called, — would, I am satisfied, in a medical point of
view, prove the better caution. That detestable pic-
ture, as I have said, gave the fashion to my dreams, —
if dreams they were, — for the scene of them was inva-
riably the room in which I lay. Had I never met with
the picture, the fears would have come self-pictured in
some shape or other, —
Headless bear, black man, or ape, —
but, as it was, my imaginations took that form. It is
not book, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants
which create these terrors in children. They can at
most but give them a direction. Dear little T. H.,
who of all cliildren has been brought up with the most
scrupulous exclusion of every taint of superstition —
1J4 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS.
who was never allowed to hear of goblin or apparition,
or scarcely to be told of bad men, or to read or hear of
any distressing story, — finds all this world of fear, from
which he has been so rigidly excluded ah extra, in his
own " thick-coming fancies ; " and fi'om his little mid-
night pillow, this nurse-child of optimism will start at
shapes, unborrowed of tradition, in sweats to which
the reveries of the cell-damned murderer are tran-
quiUity.
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras du'e — stories
of Celasno and the Harjiies — may reproduce them-
selves in the brain of superstition, — but they were
there before. They are transcripts, types, — the arche-
types are m us, and eternal. How else should the
recital of that, which we know in a waking sense to be
false, come to affect us at all ? — or
Names, whose sense we see not,
Fray us with things that be not ?
Is it that we naturally conceive teiTor from such ob-
jects, considered in their capacity of being able to m-
flict upon us bodily injury ? O, least of all ! These
terrors are of older standing. They date beyond body,
— or, without the body, they would have been the
same. All the cruel, tormenting, defined devils in
Dante, — tearing, mangling, choking, stifling, scorch-
ing demons, — are they one half so fearful to the spirit
of a man as the simple idea of a spirit unembodied
followinor him —
Like one that on a lonesome road
Dotli walk in fear and dread,
And having once turn'd round, walks on
And turns no more his head ;
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 115
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.*
That the kind of fear here treated of is purely spirit-
ual, — that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless
upon earth, — that it predominates in the period of sin-
less infancy, — are difficulties, the solution of which
might afford some probable insight into our antemun
dane condition, and a peep at least into the shadowland
of preexistence.
My night fancies have long ceased to be afflictive.
I confess an occasional nightmare ; but I do not, as in
early youth, keep a stud of them. Fiendish faces, with
the extinguished taper, will come and look at me ; but
I know them for mockeries, even while I cannot elude
their presence, and I fight and grapple with them.
For the credit of my imagination, I am almost ashamed
to say how tame and prosaic my dreams are grown.
They are never romantic, seldom even rural. They
are of architecture and of buildings, — cities abroad,
which I have never seen and hardly have hoped to
see. I have traversed, for the seeming length of a
natural day, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon — their
churches, palaces, squares, market-places, shops, sub-
urbs, ruins, with an inexpressible sense of delight — a
map-like distinctness of trace — and a daylight vivid-
ness of vision, that was all but being awake. I have
formerly travelled among the Westmoreland fells, —
my highest Alps, — but they are objects too mighty for
the grasp of my ch-eaming recognition ; and I have
again and again awoke with ineffectual struggles of the
inner eye, to make out a shape in any way whatever,
of H?lvellyn. Methought I was in that country, but
* Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Manner
116 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS.
the mountains were gone. The poverty of my dreams
mortifies me. Thei'e is Coleridge, at his will can
conjure up icy domes, and pleasure-houses for Kubla
Khan, and Abyssinian maids, and songs of Abara, and
caverns,
Where Alph, the sacred river, runs,
to solace his night solitudes, — when I cannot muster a
fiddle. Barry Cornwall has his tritons and his nereids
gamboling before him in nocturnal visions, and pro-
claiming sons born to Neptune, — when my stretch of
imaginative activity can hardly, in the night season,
raise up the ghost of a fishwife. To set my failures in
somewhat a mortifying light, — it was after i*eading the
noble Dream of this poet, that my fancy ran strong
upon these marine spectra ; and the poor plastic power,
such as it is, within me set to work, to humor my folly
in a sort of di'eam that very night. Methought I was
upon the ocean billows at some sea nuptials, riding and
mounted high, with the customary train sounding their
conchs before me, (I myself, you may be sure, the
leading god,') and jollily we went careering over the
main, till just where Ino Leucothea should have greeted
me (I think it was Ino) with a white embrace, the bil-
lows gradually subsiding, fell fi'om a sea-roughness to a
sea-calm, and thence to a river motion, and that river
('as happens in the familiarization of dreams) was no
other than the gentle Thames, which landed me in the
wafture of a placid wave or two, alone, safe, and inglo-
rious, somewhere at the foot of Lambeth palace.
The degree of the soul's creativeness in sleep might
furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poet-
ical faculty resident in the same soul waking. An old
gentleman, a friend of mine, and a humorist, used to
VALENTINE'S DAY. 117
tarry this notion so far, tliat when he saw any stripling
of his acquaintance ambitious of becoming a poet, his
first question would be, — " Young man, what sort of
dreams have you ? " I have so much faith in my old
friend's theory, that when I feel that idle vein return-
ing upon me, I presently subside into my proper ele-
ment of prose, remembering those eluding nereids, and
that inauspicious inland landing.
VALENTINE'S DAY.
Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentme t
Great is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable Arch-
flamen of Hymen ! Immortal Go-between ; who and
what manner of person art thou ? Art thou but a name,
typifying the restless principle which impels poor hu-
mans to seek perfection in union ? or wert thou indeed
a mortal prelate, with thy tippet and thy rochet, thy
ajDron on, and decent lawn sleeves ? Mysterious per-
sonage ! like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other
mitred father in the calendar ; not Jerome, nor Am-
brose, nor Cyril ; nor the consigner of undipt infants
to eternal torments, Austin, whom all mothers hate ;
nor he who hated all mothers, Origen ; nor Bishop
Bull, nor Archbishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou
comest attended with thousands and ten thousands of
little Loves, and the air is
Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings.
Singhig Cupids aie thy choristers and thy precentors ;
118 VALENTINE'S DAY.
and instead of the crosier, the mystical aiTow is borne
before thee.
In other words, this is the day on which those charm-
ing httle missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and inter-
cross each other at every street and turning. The
weary and all forespent twopenny postman sinks be-
neath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his own.
It is scarcely credible to what an extent this ephemeral
courtship is carried on in this loving town, to the great
enrichment of porters, and detriment of knockers and
bell-wires. In these little visual interpretations, no
emblem is so common as the hearty — that little three-
cornered exponent of all our hopes and fears, — the
bestuck and bleeding heart ; it is twisted and tortured
into more allegories and affectations than an opera-hat.
What authority we have in history or mythology for
placing the head-quarters and metropolis of God Cupid
in this anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not
very clear ; but we have got it, and it will serve as
well as any other. Else we might easily imagine, upon
some other system which might have prevailed for any-
thing which our pathology knows to the contraiy, a
lover addressing his mistress, in perfect simplicity of
feeling, " Madam, my liver and fortune are entirely
at your disposal ; " or putting a delicate question,
"Amanda, have you a midriff to bestow ? " But cus-
tom has settled these things, and awarded the seat of
sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortu-
nate neighbors wait at animal and anatomical distance.
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and
all iniral sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.
It " gives a very echo to the throne where Hope is
seated." But its issues seldom answer to this oracle
VALENTINE'S DAY. 119
within. It is so seldom that just the person we want
to see comes. But of all the clamorous visitations
the welcomest in expectation is the sound that ushers
in, or seems to usher in, a Valentine. As the raven
himself was hoarse that announced the fatal entrance
of Duncan, so the knock of the postman on this
day is light, airy, confident, and befitting one that
bringeth good tidings. It is less mechanical than on
other days ; you will say, " That is not the post, I am
sure." Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymens ! —
delightful eternal commonplaces, which " having been,
will always be ; " which no schoolboy nor schoolman
can write away ; having your iiTeversible throne in the
fancy and affections, — what are your transports, when
the happy maiden, opening with careful finger, careful
not to break the emblematic seal, bursts upon the sight
of some well-designed allegory, some type, some youth-
ful fancy, not without verses —
Lovers all,
A madrigal,
or some such device, not over abundant in sense,—
young Love disclaims it, — and not quite silly, — some-
thing between wind and water, a chorus where the
sheep might almost join the shepherd, as they did, or
as I apprehend they did, in Arcadia.
All Valentines are not foolish ; and I sliall not easily
forget thine, my kind friend (if I may have leave to
call you so) E. B. — E. B. lived opposite a young
maiden Avhom he had often seen, unseen, from his par-
lor window in C — e Street. She was all joyousness
and mnocence, and just of an age to enjoy receiving
a Valentine, and just of a temper to bear the disap-
pointment of missing one with good-humor. E. B. i»
120 VALENTINE'S DAY.
an artist of no common powers ; in the fancy parts of
designing, perhaps inferior to none ; his name is known
at the bottom of many a well-executed vignette in the
way of his profession, but no further ; for E. B. is
modest, and the world meets nobody half-way. E. B.
meditated how he could repay this young maiden for
many a favor which she had done him unknown ; for
when a kindly face greets us, though but passing by,
and never knows us again, nor we it, we should feel it
as an obligation ; and E. B. did. This good artist set
himself at work to please the damsel. It was just
before Valentine's day three years since. He wrought,
unseen and unsuspected, a wondrous work. We need
not say it was on the finest gilt paper with borders, —
full, not of common hearts and heartless allegory, but
all the prettiest stories of love from Ovid, and older
poets than Ovid (for E. B. is a scholar). There was
Pyramus and Thisbe, and be sure Dido was not forgot,
nor Hero and Leander, and swans more than sang in
Cayster, with mottoes and fanciful devices, such as be-
seemed, — a work, in short, of magic. Iris dipt the
woof. This on Valentine's eve he commended to
the all-swallowing indiscriminate orifice — (O ignoble
trust ! ) — of the common post ; but the humble . me-
dium did its duty, and from his watchful stand, the
next morning he saw the cheerful messenger knock,
and by and by the precious charge delivered. He saw,
unseen, the happy girl unfold the Valentine, dance
about, clap her hands, as one after one the pretty em-
blems unfolded themselves. She danced about, not
with light love, or foolish expectations, for she had no
lover ; or, if she had, none she knew that could have
ci'eated those brio-ht imaws which delirrhted her. It was
MY RELATIONS. 121
more like some fairy present ; a Godsend, as our famil-
iarly pious ancestors termed a benefit received where
the benefactor was unknown. It would do her no
harm. It would do her good forever after. It is good
to love the unknown. I only give this as a specimen
of E. B. and his modest way of doing a concealed
kindness.
Good morrow to my Valentine, sings poor Ophelia ;
and no better wish, but with better auspices, we wish
to all faitliful lovers, who are not too wise to despise
old legends, but are content to rank themselves humble
diocesans of old Bishop Valentine and his true church.
MY RELATIONS.
I AM arrived at that point of life at which a man
may accoimt it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he
have either of his parents surviving. I have not that
felicity — and sometimes think feelingly of a passage in
Browne's Christian Morals, whei'e he speaks of a man
that hath lived sixty or seventy years in the world.
" In such a compass of time," he says, '* a man may
have a close apprehension what it is to be forgotten,
when he hath lived to find none who could remember
his father, or scarcely the friends of his youth, and may
sensibly see with what a face in no long time OBimoN
will look upon himself."
I had an avmt, a dear and good one. She was one
whom single blessedness had soured to the world. She
122 MY RELATIONS.
often used to say, that I was the only thing in it which
she loved ; and, when she thought I was quitting it,
she grieved over me with mother's tears. A partiality
quite so exclusive my reason cannot altogether approve.
She was from morning till night poring over good
books and devotional exercises. Her favorite volumes
were, Thomas a Kempis, in Stanhope's translation ;
and a Roman Catholic Prayer-Book, with the matins
and complines regularly set down, — terms which I was
at that time too young to understand. She persisted
in reading them, although admonished daily concern-
ing their Papistical tendency ; and went to church
every Sabbath as a good Protestant should do. These
were the only books she studied ; though, I think, at
one period of her life, she told me she had read with
great satisfaction the Adventures of an Unfortunate
Young Nobleman. Finding the door of the chapel in
Essex Street open one day, — it was in the infancy of
that heresy, — she went in, liked the sermon and the
manner of worship, and fi-equented it at intervals for
some time after. She came not for doctrinal points,
and never missed them. With some little asperities in
her constitution, which I have above hinted at, she was
a steadfast, friendly being, and a fine old Christian.
She was a woman of strong sense, and a shrewd mind
— extraordinary at a repartee; one of the few occa-
sions of her breakino; silence — else she did not much
value wit. The only secular employment I remember
to have seen her engaged in, was, the splitting of
French beans, and dropping them into a china basin
of fair water. The odor of those tender vegetables to
this day comes back upon my sense, redolent of sooth-
mg recollections. Certainly it is the most delicate of
culinary operations.
MY RELATIONS. 123
Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none —
to remember. By the uncle's side I may be said to
have been born an orphan. Brother, or sister, I never
had any — to know them. A sister, I think, that
should have been Elizabeth, died in both our infancies.
What a comfort, or what a care, may I not have
missed in her ! But I have cousins sprinkled about
in Hertfordshire, — besides two, with whom I have been
all my life in habits of the closest intimacy, and whom
I may term cousins par excellence. These are James
and Bridget Elia. They are older than myself by
twelve, and ten years ; and neither of them seems dis-
posed, m matters of advice and guidance, to waive any
of the prerogatives which primogeniture confers. May
they continue still in the same mind ; and when they
shall be seventy-five, and seventy-three years old
(I cannot spare them sooner), persist in treating me
in my grand climacteric precisely as a stripling, or
younger brother!
James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath her
unities, which not every critic can penetrate ; or, if
we feel, we cannot explain them. The pen of Yorick,
and of none since his, could have drawn J. E. entire, —
those fine Shandean lights and shades, which make up
his story. I must limp after in my poor antithetical
manner, as the fates have given me grace and talent.
J. E. then — to the eye of a common observer at least
— seemeth made up of contradictory principles. The
genuine child of impulse, the frigid philosoj)her of
prudence — the phlegm of my cousin's doctrine is in-
variably at war with his temperament, which is high
sanguine. With always some fire-new project in his
brain, J. E. is the systematic opponent of innovatioD*
124 MY RELATIONS.
and crier down of everything that has not stood the
test of age and experiment. Witli a hundred fine
notions chasing one another hourly in his fancy, he is
startled at the least approach to the romantic in others :
and, determined by his own sense in everything, com-
mends yoii to the guidance of common sense on all
occasions. With a touch of the eccentric in all which
he does, or says, he is only anxious that you should not
commit yourself by doing anything absurd or singular.
On my once letting slip at table that I was not fond
of a certain popular dish, he begged me at any rate not
to %ay so — for the world would think me mad. He
disguises a passionate fondness for works of high art
(whereof he hath amassed a choice collection), under
the pretext of buying only to sell again — that his
enthusiasm may give no encouragement to yours. Yet,
if it were so, why does that piece of tender, pastoral
Domenichino hang still by his wall ? — is the ball of
his sight much more dear to him ? — or what picture-
dealer can talk like him ?
Whereas mankind in general are observed to wai'p
their speculative conclusions to the bent of their indi-
vidual humors, liu theories are sure to be in diametrical
opposition to his constitution. He is courageous as
Charles of Sweden, upon instinct ; chary of his person
upon principle, as a travelling Quaker. He has been
preaching up to me, all my life, the doctrine of bowing
to the great — the necessity of forms, and manner, to a
man's getting on in the world. He himself never aims
at either, that I can discover, — and has a spirit, that
would stand upright in the presence of the Cham of
Tartary. It is pleasant to hear him discourse of pa-
tience — extolling it as the truest wisdom, — and to see
MY RELATIONS. 125
him during the last seven minutes that his dinner is
getting ready. Nature never 'ran up in her haste a
more restless piece of workmanship than when she
moulded this impetuous cousin, — and Art never turned
out a more elaborate orator than he can display himself
to be, upon this favorite topic of the advantages of quiet
and contentedness in the state, whatever it be, that we
are placed in. He is triumphant on this theme, when
he has you safe in one of those short stages that ply for
the western road, in a very obstructing manner, at thg
foot of John Murray's street, — where you get in when
it is empty, and are expected to wait till the vehick
hath completed her just freight, — a trying three quar-
ters of an hour to some people. He wonders at youi
^dgetiness, — " where could we be better than we are,
thus sitting, thus consulting? " — " prefers, for his part,
a state of rest to locomotion," — with an eye all the
while upon the coachman, — till at length, waxing out
of all patience, at your want of it, he breaks out into a
pathetic remonstrance at the fellow for detaining us so
long over the time which he had professed, and declares
peremptorily, that " the gentleman in the coach is de-
termined to get out, if he does not drive on that in-
stant."
Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting
a sophistry, he is incapable of attending gou in any
chain of arguing. Indeed, he makes wild work with
logic ; and seems to jump at most admirable conclu-
sions by some process, not at all akin to it. Conso-
nantly enough to this, he hath been heard to deny, upon
certain occasions, that there exists such a faculty at all
in man as reason ; and wondereth how man came first
to have a conceit of it, — enforcing his negation with
126 MY RELATIONS.
all the might of reasoning he is master of. He has
some speculative notions against laughter, and will
maintain that laughing is not natural to Mm, — when
peradventure the next moment his lungs shall crow like
Chanticleer. He says some of the best things in the
world — and declareth that wit is his aversion. It was
he who said, upon seeing the Eton boys at play in their
grounds, — Wliat a ]:iity to think, that these fine ingenuous
lads in a few years will all be changed into frivolous
Members of Parliament !
His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous, — and in
age he discovereth no symptom of cooling. This is
that which I admire in him. I hate people who meet
Time half-way. I am for no compromise with that
inevitable spoiler. While he lives, J. E. will take his
swing. It does me good, as I walk towards the street
of my daily avocation, on some fine May morning, to
meet him marching in a quite opposite direction, with
a jolly handsome presence, and shining sanguine face
that indicates some purchase in his eye — a Claude —
or a Hobbima, — for much of his enviable leisure is
consumed at Christie's and Philli[)s's — or where not,
to pick up pictures, and such gauds. On these occa-
sions he mostly stoppeth me, to read a short lecture
on the advantage a person like me possesses above
himself, in having his time occupied with business
which he must do, — assureth me that he often feels it
hang heavy on his hands — wishes he had fewer holi-
days — and goes off — Westward Ho ! — chanting a
tune, to Pall Mall, — perfectly convinced that he has
convinced me, — while I proceed in my opposite du'ec-
tion, tuneless.
It is pleasant again to see this Professor of IndifFer-
MY RELATIONS. 127
ence doing the honors of his new purchase, when he
has fairly housed it. You must view it in eveiy light,
till he has found the best — placing it at this distance,
and at that, but always suiting the focus of your sight
to his own. You must spy at it through your fingers,
to catch the aerial perspective, — though you assure
him that to you the landscape shows much more agree-
able without that artifice. Woe be to the luckless
wight, who does not only not respond to his rapture,
but who should drop an unseasonable intimation of
preferring one of his anterior bargains to the present 1
— The last is always his best hit — his " Cynthia of
the minute." — Alas ! how many a mild Madonna
have I known to come in — a Raphael ! — keep its as-
cendancy for a few brief moons, — then, after certain
intermedial degradations, from the front drawing-room
to the back gallery, thence to the dark parlor, —
adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under succes-
sive lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its
fall, — consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, go out
at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti ! —
which things when I beheld — musing upon the chances
and mutabilities of fate below, hath made me to reflect
upon the altered condition of great personages, or that
woful Queen of Richard the Second —
set forth in pomp,
She came adorned hither hke sweet May.
Sent back like Hallowmas or shortest day.
With great love for you^ J. E. hath but a limited
sympathy with what you feel or do. He lives in a
world of his own, and makes slender guesses at what
pjisses in your mind. He never pierces the marrow of
128 MY RELATIONS.
your liabits. He will tell an old established play-goer,
that Mr. Such-a-one, of So-and-so (naming one of the
theatres,) is a very lively comedian — as a piece of
news ! He advertised me but the other day of some
pleasant green lanes which he had found out for me,
hnoiving me to he a great walker^ in my own immediate
vicinity — who have haunted the identical spot any
time these twenty years ! He has not much respect
for that class of feelings which goes by the name of
sentimental. He applies the definition of real evil to
bodily sufferings exclusively — and rejecteth all others
as imaginary. He is affected by the sight, or the bare
supposition, of a creature in pain, to a degree which I
have never witnessed out of womankind. A consti-
tutional acuteness to this class of sufferings may in part
account for this. The animal tribe in particular he
taketh under his especial protection. A broken-winded
or spur-galled horse is sure to find an advocate in him.
An overloaded ass is his client forever. He is the
apostle to the brute kind — the never-failing friend of
those who have none to care for them. The contem-
plation of a lobster boiled, or eels skinned alive^ will
wring him so, that " all for pity he could die." It
will take the savor from his palate, and the rest from
his pillow for days and nights. With the intense feel-
ing of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness
of pursuit, and unity of purpose, of that " true yoke-
fellow with Time," to have effected as much for the
Animal., as he hath done for the Negro Creation. But
my uncontrollable cousin is but imperfectly fonned for
purposes which demand cooperation. He cannot wait.
His amelioration plans must be ripened in a day. For
this reason he has cut but an cauivocal fioiu'e in be-
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 129
nevolent societies, and combinations for the alleviation
of human sufferings. His zeal constantly malfes him
to outmn, and put out, his coadjutors. He thinks of
relieving, — while they think of debating. He was
blackballed out of a society for the Relief of . . .
, because the fervor of his humanity toiled
beyond the formal apprehension, and creeping pro-
cesses of his associates. I shall always consider this
distinction as a patent of nobility in the Elia family !
Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile
at, or upbraid my unique cousin ? Marry, heaven,
and all good manners, and the understanding that
should be between kinsfolk, forbid ! With all the
strangenesses of this strangest of the Elias — I would
not have him in one jot or tittle other than he is ;
neither would I barter or exchange my wild kinsman
for the most exact, regular, and every way consistent
kinsman breathing.
In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some
account of my cousin Bridget — if you are not already
surfeited with cousins — and take you by the hand, if
you are willing to go with us, on an excursion which
we made a summer or two since, in search of more
cousins^ —
Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire.
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.
Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many
a long year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending
VOL. III. 9
130 MACKERY END, m HERTFORDSHIRE.
beyond the period of memory. We house together,
old bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness ;
with such tolerable comfort, upon the whole, that I, for
one, find in myself no sort of disposition to go out
upon the mountains, with the rash king's offspring, to
bewail my celibacy. We agree pretty well in our
tastes and habits — yet so, as " with a difference."
We are generally in harmony, with occasional bicker-
iuiis — as it should be among near relations. Our
sympathies are rather understood, than expressed ; and
once, upon my dissembling a tone in my voice more
kind than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and
complained that I was altered. We are both great
readers in different directions. While I am hanging
over (for the thousandth time) some passage in old
Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries, she is
abstracted in some modern tale, or adventure, whereof
our common reading-table is daily fed with assiduously
fresh supplies. Narrative teases me. I have little
concern in the progress of events. She must have a
story — well, ill, or indifferently told — so there be life
stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents.
The fluctuations of fortune in fiction — and almost in
real life — have ceased to interest, or operate but dully
upon me. Out-of-the-way humors and opinions —
heads with some diverting twist in them — the oddities
of authorship please me most. My cousin has a native
disrelish of anything that sounds odd or bizarre. Noth-
ing goes down with her that is quaint, irregular, or out
of the road of common sympathy. She " holds Nature
more clever." I can pardon her blindness to the beau-
tiful obliquities of the Religio Medici ; but she must
apologize to me for certain disrespe^*iil insinuations,
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 131
which she has been pleased to throw out latterly, touch-
ing the intellectuals of a dear favorite of mine, of the
last century but one, — the thrice noble, chaste, and
virtuous, — but again someAvhat fantastical, and origi-
nal-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle.
It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps
than I could have wished, to have had for her associates
and mine, freethinkers, — leaders, and disciples, of
novel philosophies and systems ; but she neither wran-
gles with, nor accepts their opinions. That which was
good and venerable to her, when a child, retains its
authority over her mind still. She never juggles or
plays tricks with her understanding.
We are both of us inclined to be a little too posi-
tive ; and I have observed the result of our disputes to
be almost uniformly this, — that in matters of fact,
dates, and circumstances, it turns out, that I was in the
right, and my cousin in the wrong. But where we
nave differed upon moral points ; upon something
oroper to be done, or let alone ; whatever heat of op-
position, or steadiness of conviction, I set out with, I
am sure always, in the long-run, to be brought over to
her way of thinking.
I must touch vipon the foibles of my kinswoman
with a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told
of her faults. She hath an awkward trick (to say no
worse of it) of reading in company ; at which times
she will answer yes or no to a question, without fully
understanding its purport, — which is provoking, and
derogatory in the highest degree to the dignity of the
putter of the said question. Her presence of mind is
equal to the most pressing trials of life, but will some-
times desert her upon trifling occasions. When the
132 MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.
pui'pose requires it, and is a thing of moment, she can
speak to it greatly ; but in matters which are not stuff
of the conscience, she hath been known sometimes to
let shp a word less seasonably.
Her education in youth was not much attended to ;
and she happily missed all that train of female garni-
ture, which passeth by the name of accomplishments.
She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a
spacious closet of good old English reading, without
much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon
that fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty
girls, they should be brought up exactly in this fashion.
I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not
be diminished by it ; but I can answer for it, that it
makes (if the Avorst come to the worst) most incompar*
able old maids.
In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter;
but in the teasing accidents, and minor perplexities,
which do not call out the will to meet them, she some-
times maketh matters worse by an excess of participa-
tion. If she does not always divide your trouble, upon
the pleasanter occasions of life she is sure always to
treble your satisfaction. She is excellent to be at a
play with, or upon a visit ; but best, when she goes a
journey with you.
We made an excursion together a few summers
since, into Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of
some of our less-known relations in that fine com
country.
The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End ; or
Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in
some old maps of Hertfordshire ; a farm-house, — de-
lightfully situated within a gentle walk from Wheat-
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 133
hampstead. I can just remember having been there,
on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under
the care of Bridget ; who, as I have said, is okler than
myself by some ten years. I wish that I could throw
into a heap the remainder of our joint existences ;
that we might share them in equal division. But that
IS impossible. The house was at that time in the occu-
pation of a substantial yeoman, who had married my
grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. My
grandmother was a Bruton, married to a Field. The
Gladmans and the Brutons are still flourishing; in that
part of the country, but the Fields are almost extinct.
More than forty years had elapsed since the visit I
speak of; and, for the greater portion of that period,
we had lost sight of the other two branches also. Who
or what sort of persons inherited Mackery End — kin-
dred or strange folk — we were afraid almost to conjec-
ture, but determined some day to explore.
By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble
park at Luton in our way from Saint Albans, we ar-
rived at the spot of our anxious curiosity about noon.
The sight of the old farm-house, though every trace of
it was effaced from my recollection, affected me with a
pleasure which I had not experienced for many a year.
For though / had forgotten it, we had never forgotten
being there together, and we had been talking about
Mackery End all our lives, till memory on my part be-
came mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought
I knew the aspect of a place, which, when present, O
how unlike it was to that which I had conjured up so
many times instead of it !
Still the air breathed balmily about it ; the season
was in the " heart of Jun3," and I could say with the
poet, —
134 MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.
But thou, that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination.
Dost rival iu the light of day
Her delicate creation!
Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for
she easily remembered her old acquaintance again, —
some altered features, of course, a little grudged at.
At first, indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy ;
but the scene soon reconfirmed itself in her affections,
— and she traversed every outpost of the old mansion,
to the wood-house, the orchard, the place where the
pigeon-house had stood (house and birds were alike
flown) — with a breathless impatience of recognition,
which was more pardonable perhaps than decorous at
the age of fifty odd. But Bridget in some things is
behind her years.
The only thing left was to get into the house, — : and
that was a difficulty which to me singly would have
been insurmountable ; for I am terribly shy in making
myself known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk.
Love, stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in with-
out me ; but she soon returned with a creature that
might have sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome.
It was the youngest of the Gladmans ; who, by mar-
riage with a Bruton, had become mistress of the old
mansion. A comely brood are the Brutons. Six of
them, females, were noted as the handsomest young
women in the county. But this adopted Bruton, in
my mind, was better than they all — more comely.
She was born too late to have remembered me. She
just recollected in early life to have had her cousin
Bridget once pointed out to her, climbing a stile. But
the name of kindred, and of cousinship, was enough.
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 135
Those slender ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the
rending atmosphere of a metropolis, bind faster, as we
found it, in hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire. In
five minutes we Avere as thoroughly acquainted as if we
had been born and bred up together ; were familiar,
even to the calling each other by our Christian names.
So Christians should call one another. To have seen
Bridget, and her — it was like the meeting of the two
scriptural cousins ! There was a grace and dignity, an
amplitude of form and stature, answering to her mind,
in this farmer's wife, which would have shined in a
palace — or so we thought it. We were made wel-
come by husband and wife equally — we, and our
friend that was with us. I had almost forgotten him,
— but B. F. will not so soon forget that meeting, if
perad venture he shall read this on the far distant shores
where the kangaroo haunts. The fatted calf was made
ready, or rather was already so, as if in anticipation of
our coming ; and, after an appropriate glass of native
wine, never let me forget with what honest pride this
hospitable cousin made us proceed to Wheathampstead,
to introduce us (as some new-found rarity) to her
mother and sister Gladmans, who did indeed know
something more of us, at a time when she almost knew
nothing. With what corresponding kindness we were
received by them also, — how Bridget's memory, ex-
alted by the occasion, warmed into a thousand half-
obliterated recollections of things and persons, to my
litter astonishment, and her own, — and to the astound-
ment of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing that
was not a cousin there, — old effaced imao-es of more
than half-forgotten names and circumstances still crowd-
ing back upon her, as words written in lemon come out
136 MY FIRST PLAY.
upon exposure to a friendly warmth, — when I forget
all this, then may my country cousins forget me ; and
Bridget no more remember, that in the days of weak-
ling infancy I was her tender charge, — as I have been
her care in foolish manhood since, — in those pretty
pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery End, in Hert-
fordshire.
MY FIRST PLAY.
At the north end of Cross Court there yet stands a
portal, of some architectural pretensions, though re-
duced to humble use, serving at present for an entrance
to a printing-office. This old door-way, if you are
young, reader, you may not know was the identical pit
entrance to old Drury, — Garrick's Drury, — all of it
that is left. I never pass it without shaking some forty
years from oif my shoulders, recurring to the evening
when I passed through it to see my first play. The
afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going
(the elder folks and myself) was, that the rain should
cease. With what a beating heart did I watch from
the window the puddles, from the stillness of which I
was taught to prognosticate the desii-ed cessation ! I
seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with
which I ran to announce it.
"We went with orders, which my godfather F. had
sent us. He kept the oil-sliop (now Davies's) at the
comer of Featherstone Buildings, in Holborn. F. was
a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had pretensjoiw
MY FIRST PLAY. 137
above Ids rank. He associated in those days with John
Palmer, the comedian, whose gait and bearing he
seemed to copy ; if John (which is quite as hkely) did
not rather borrow somewhat of his manner from my
godfather. He was also known to, and visited by
Sheridan. It was to his house in Holborn that young
Brinsley brought his first wife on her elopement with
him from a boarding-school at Bath, — the beautiful
Maria Linley. My parents were present (over a qua-
drille table) when he arrived in the evening with his
harmonious charge. From either of these connections
it may be inferred that my godfather could command
an oi'der for the then Drury Lane theatre at pleasure, —
and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue of those cheap billets,
in Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard him say
was the sole remuneration which he had received for
many years' nightly illumination of the orchestra and
various avenues of that theatre, — and he was content
it should be so. The honor of Sheridan's familiarity
— or supposed familiarity — was better to my god-
father than money.
F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen ; grandilo-
quent, yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest
matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had two Latin
words almost constantly in his mouth, (how odd sounds
Latin from an oilman's lips ! ) which my better knowl-
edge since has enabled me to correct. In strict pro-
nunciation they should have been sounded vice versd, —
but in those young years they impressed me with more
awe than they would now do, read aright fi-om Seneca
or Varro, — in his own peculiar pronunciation, monosyl-
labically elaborated, or Anglicized, into sometlnng like
verse verse. By an imposing manner, and th^ help of
138 MY FIRST PLAY.
these distorted syllables, he climbed (but that was
little) to the highest parochial honors which St. An-
drew's has to bestow.
He is dead, — and thus much I thought due to his
memory, both for my first ordei's (little wondrous talis-
mans ! — slight keys, and insignificant to outward sight,
but opening to me more than Arabian paradises !) and
moi'eover that by his testamentary beneficence I came
into possession of the only landed property which
I could ever call my own, — situate near the road-
way village of pleasant Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire.
When I journeyed down to take possession, and planted
foot on my own ground, the stately habits of the donor
descended upon me, and I strode (shall I confess the
A'anity ?) with larger paces over my allotment of three
quarters of an acre, with its commodious mansion in
the midst, with the feeling of an English freeholder
that all betwixt sky and centre was my own. The
estate has passed into more prudent hands, and nothmg
but an agrarian can restore it.
In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncom-
fortable manager who abolished them ! — with one of
these we went. I remember the waitino; at the door
— not that which is left — but between that and an
hiner door in shelter, — O when shall I be such an ex-
pectant again ! — with the cry of nonpareils, an indis-
pensable playhouse accompaniment in those days. As
near as I can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation
of the theatrical fruiteresses then was, " Chase some
oranges, chase some numparels, chase a bill of the
play ; " — chase |j»ro chuse. But when we got in, and
T beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my
imagination, which was soon to be disclosed, —-the
MY FIRST PLAY. 139
breatliless anticipations I endured ! I had seen some-
thing hke it in the plate prefixed to Troilus and Cres-
sida, in Rowe's Shakspeare, — the tent scene with
Dioraede, — and a sight of that plate can always bring
back in a measure the feeling of that evening. The
boxes at that time, ftiU of well-dressed women of
quality, projected over the pit ; and the pilasters reach-
ing down were adorned with a glistering substance
(I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), re-
sembling — a homely fancy, — but I judged it to be
sugar-candy, — yet, to my raised imagination, divested
of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy I
The orchestra lights at length arose, those " fair Au-
roras! " Once the bell sounded. It was to ring out
yet once again, — and, incapable of the anticipation,
I reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation upon
the maternal lap. It rang the second time. The
curtain drew up, — I was not past six years old, and
the play was Artaxerxes !
I had dabbled a little in the Universal History, —
the ancient part of it, — and here was the court of
Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the past.
I took no proper interest in the action going on, for I
understood not its import, — but I heard the word
Darius, and I was in the midst of Daniel. All feel-
ing was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens,
palaces, princesses, passed before me. I knew not
players. I was in Persepolis for the time, and the
burning idol of their devotion almost converted me
into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed
those significations to be something; more than ele-
mental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream.
No such pleasure has since visited me but in dreams.
140 MY FIRST PLAY.
Harlequin's Invasion followed ; where, I remember,
the transformation of the magistrates into reverend
beldams seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice,
and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a
verity as the legend of St. Denys.
The next play to which I was taken was the Lady
of the Manor, of which, with the exception of some
scenery, very faint traces are left in my memory. It
was followed by a pantomine, called Lun's Ghost — a
satiric touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since
dead — but to my apprehension (too sincere for satire),
Lun was as remote a piece of antiquity as Lud — the
father of a line of Harlequins — transmitting his dag-
ger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through countless
ages. I saw the primeval Motley come from his silent
tomb in a ghastly vest of white patchwork, like the
apparition of a dead rainbow. So Harlequins (thought
I) look when they are dead.
My third play followed in quick succession. It was
the Way of the World. I think I must have sat at
it as grave as a jvidge ; for, I remember, the hysteric
affectations of good Lady Wishfort affected me like
some solemn tragic passion. Robinson Crusoe fol-
lowed ; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and the paiTot,
were as good and authentic as in the stoiy. The
clownery and pantaloonery of these pantomimes have
clean passed out of my head. I believe, I no more
laughed at them, than at the same age I should have
been disposed to laugh at the grotesque Gothic heads
(seeming to me then replete with devout meaning)
that gape, and grin, in stone around the inside of the
old Round Church (my church) of the Templars.
I saw these plays in the season 1781-2, when I was
MY FIRST PLAY. 141
from six to seven years old. After the intervention
of six or seven other years (for at scliool all play-going
was inhibited) I again entered the doors of a theatre.
That old Artaxerxes evening had never done ringing
m my fancy. I expected the same feelings to come
again with the same occasion. But we differ ft-.ora
ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than the latter does
from six. In that interval what had I not lost 1 At
the first period I knew nothing, understood nothing,
discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered
all —
Was nourished, I could not tell how, —
I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a
rationalist. The same things were there materially ;
but the emblem, the reference, was gone ! The green
curtain was no longer a veil, drawn between two
worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring back past
ages to present a " royal ghost," — but a certain quan-
tity of green baize, which was to separate the audience
for a given time from certain of their fellow-men who
were to come forward and pretend those parts. The
lights — the orchestra lights — came up a clumsy ma-
chinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now
but a trick of the prompter's bell — which had been,
like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no
hand seen or guessed at which ministered to its warn-
ing. The actors were men and women painted. I
thought the fault was in them ; but it was in myself,
and the alteration which those many centuries — of
six short twelvemonths — had wrought in me. Per-
haps it was fortunate for me that the })lay of the even-
ing was but an indifferent comedy, as it gave me time
to crop some unreasonable expectations, which might
142 MODERN GALLANTRY.
have interfered with the genuine emotions with which
I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first appear-
ance to me of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison
and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction
of the scene; and the theatre became to me, upon a
new stock, the most delightful of recreations.
MODERN GALLANTRY.
In comparing modern with ancient manners, we are
pleased to compliment om'selves upon the point of gal-
lantry; a certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect,
which we are supposed to pay to females, as females.
I shall believe that this principle actuates our con-
duct, when I can forget, that in the nineteenth century,
of the era from which we date our civility, we are but
just beginning to leave off the very frequent practice
jf whipping females in public, in common with the
joarsest male offenders.
I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut
my eyes to the fact, that in England women are still
occasionally — hanged.
I shall believe in it, when actresses are no longer
subject to be hissed off a stage by gentlemen.
I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a fishwife
across the kennel ; or assists the apple-woman to pick
up her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has
just dissipated.
I shall believe in it, when the Dorunants in humblei
MODERN GALLANTRY. 143
life, who would be thought in their way notable adepts
in this refinement, shall act upon it in places where
they are not knoAvn, or think themselves not observed,
— when I shall see the traveller for some rich trades-
man part with his admired box-coat, to spread it over
the defenceless shoulders of the poor woman, who is
passing to her parish on the roof of the same stage-
coach with him, drenched in the rain, — when I shall
no longer see a Avoman standing up in the pit of a
London theatre, till she is sick and faint with the
exertion, with men about her, seated at their ease,
and jeering at her distress ; till one, that seems to
have more manners or conscience than the rest, signifi-
cantly declares " she should be welcome to his seat,
if she were a little younger and handsomer." Place
this dapper warehouse-man, or that rider, in a circle of
their own female acquaintance, and you shall confess
you have not seen a politer-bred man in Lothbury.
Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some
such principle influencing our conduct, when more
than one half of the drudgery and coarse servitude of
the world shall cease to be performed by women.
Until that day comes, I shall never believe this
boasted point to be anything more than a conventional
fiction ; a pageant got up between the sexes, in a
certain rank, and at a certain time of life, in which
both find their account equally.
I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salu-
tary fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall see
the same attentions paid to age as to youth, to homely
features as to handsome, to coarse complexions as to
clear, — to the woman, as she is a woman, not as she is
a beauty, a fortune, or a title.
1.44 MODERN GALLANTRY.
I shall believe It to be something more than a name,
when a well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed com-
pany can advert to the topic o^ female old age without
exciting, and intending to excite, a sneer ; — when the
phrases " antiquated virginity," and such a one has
" overstood her market," pronounced in good com-
pany, shall raise immediate offence in man, or woman,
that shall hear them spoken.
Joseph Paice, of Bread-street Hill, merchant, and
one of the Directors of the South Sea Company, — the
same to whom Edwards, the Shakspeare commentator,
has addressed a fine sonnet, — was the only pattern of
consistent gallantry I have met with. He took me
under his shelter at an early age, and bestowed some
pains upon me. I owe to his precepts and example
whatever there is of the man of business (and that
is not much) in my composition. It was not his fault
that I did not profit more. Though bred a Presby-
terian, and brought up a merchant, he was the finest
gentleman of his time. He had not one system of at-
tention to females in the drawing-room, and another in
the shop, or at the stall. I do not mean that he made
no distinction. But he never lost sight of sex, or over-
looked it in the casualties of a disadvantageous situa-
tion. I have seen him stand bareheaded — smile if you
please — to a poor servant-girl, while she has been in-
quiring of him the way to some street — in such a
posture of unforced civility, as neither to embarrass her
in the acceptance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He
was no dangler, in the common acceptation of the word,
after women ; but he reverenced and upheld, in every
form in which it came before him, womanhood. I have
Been him — nay, smile not — tenderly escorting a mar-
MODERN GALLANTRY. 145
ket-woman, whom he had encountered in a shower,
exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, that
it miglit receive no damage, with as much carefulness
as if she had been a countess. To the reverend form
of Female Eld he would yield the wall (though it were
to an ancient beggar-woman) with more ceremony
than we can afford to show our grandams. He was
the Preux Chevalier of Age ; the Sir Calidoro, or Sir
Tristan, to those who have no Calidores or Tristans to
defend them. The roses, that had long faded thence,
still bloomed for him in those withered and yellow
cheeks.
He was never married, but in his youth he paid his
addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanley — old
Winstanley's daughter of Clapton — who dying in the
early days of their courtship, confirmed in him the
resolution of perpetual bachelorship. It was during
their short courtship, he told me, that he had been
one day treating his mistress with a profusion of civil
speeches — the common gallantries — to which kind of
thing she had hitherto manifested no repugnance — but
in this instance with no effect. He could not obtain
from her a decent acknowledgment in return. She
rather seemed to resent his compliments. He could
not set it down to caprice, for the lady had always
shown herself above that littleness. When he ven-
tured on the following day, finding her a little better
humored, to expostulate with her on her coldness of
yesterday, she confessed, Avith her usual frankness, that
she had no sort of dislike to his attentions ; that she
could even endure some high-flown compliments ; that
a young woman placed in her situation had a right to
expect all sort of civil things said to her ; that she
VOL. III. 10
146 MODERN GALLANTRY.
hoped she could digest a dose of adulation, short o»
insincerity, with as little injury to her humility as most
young women ; but that — a little before he had com-
menced his compliments — she had overheard him by
accident, in rather rough language, rating a younaj
woman, who had not brought home his cravats quite to
the appointed time, and she thought to herself, " As I
am Miss Susan Winstanley, and a young lady, — a re~
puted beauty, and known to be a fortune, — I can have
my choice of the finest speeches from the mouth of tliis
very fine gentleman who is courting me, — but if I had
been poor Mary Such-a-one (naming the milliner)^ —
and had failed of bringing home the cravats to the ap-
pointed hour — though perhaps I had sat up half the
night to forward them — what sort of compliments
should I have received then ? And my woman's pride
came to my assistance ; and I thought, that if it were
only to do me honor, a female, like myself, might have
received handsomer usage ; and I was determined not
to accept any fine speeches, to the compromise of that
sex, the belonging to which was after all my strongest
claim and title to them."
I think the lady discovered both generosity, and a
just way of thmkmg, in this rebuke which she gave
her lover ; and I have sometimes imagined, that the
uncommon strain of courtesy, which through life reg-
ulated the actions and beha^dor of my friend towards
all of womankind indiscriminately, owed its happy
origin to this seasonable lesson from the lips of his
lamented mistress.
I wish the whole female world would entertain the
same notion of these things that Miss Winstanley
showed. Then we should see something of the spirit
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNEK TEMPLE. 147
of consistent gallantry ; and no longer witness the
anomaly of the same man — a pattern of true polite-
ness to a wife — of cold contempt, or rudeness, to a
sister — the idolater of his female mistress — the dis-
parager and despiser of his no less female aunt, or
unfortunate — still female — maiden cousin. Just so
much respect as a woman derogates from her own
sex, in whatever condition placed — her handmaid,
or dependant — she deserves to have diminished from
herself on that score ; and probably will feel the
diminution, when youth, and beauty, and advantages,
not inseparable fi'om sex, shall lose of their attrac-
tion. What a woman should demand of a man in
courtship, or after it, is first — respect for her as she
is a woman ; — and next to that — to be respected
by him above all other women. But let her stand
upon her female character as upon a foundation ;
and let the attentions, incident to individual prefer-
ence, be so many pretty additaments and ornaments
— as many, and as fanciful, as you please — to that
main structure. Let her first lesson be with sweet
Susan Winstanley — to reverence her sex.
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
I WAS bom, and passed the first seven years of
my life, in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its
gardens, its fountain, its river, I had almost said, —
for ui those young years, what was this king of rivers
148 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
to me but a stream that watered our pleasant places?
— these are of my oldest recollections. I repeat, to
this day, no verses to myself more frequently, or
with kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser, whcire
he speaks of this spot.
There when they came, whereas those bricky towers,
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide,
Till they decayed tlirough pride.
Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis.
What a transition for a countryman visiting London
for the first time — the passing from the crowded
Strand or Fleet Street, by mi expected avenues, into
its magnificent ample squares, its classic gi'een re-
cesses ! What a cheerful, liberal look hath that por-
tion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks the greater
garden ; that goodly pile
Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight,
confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, older,
more fantastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt,
with the cheerful Crown-office Row (place of my
kindly engendure), right opposite the stately stream,
which washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely
trade-polluted waters, and seems but just weaned
from her Twickenham Naiads ! a man would give
something to have been born in such places. What a
collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, where
the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and fall,
how many times ! to the astoundment of the young
urchins, my contemporaries, who, not being able to
guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 119
to liail the wondrous work as magic ! What an antique
air had the now almost effaced sundials, with their
moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time
which they measured, and to take their revelations of
its flight immediately from heaven, holding correspond-
ence with the fountain of light ! How would the dark
line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of
childhood, eager to detect its movement, never catched,
nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of
sleep !
Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived !
What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous
embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn
dulness of communication, compared with the simple
altar-like structure, and silent heart-lansuage of the
old dial ! It stood as the garden god of Christian
gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished ? If
its business-use be superseded by more elaborate in-
ventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded
for its continuance. It spoke of moderate labors, of
pleasures not protracted after sunset, of temperance,
and good hours. It was the primitive clock, the horo-
loge of the first world. Adam could scarce have
missed it in Paradise. It was the measure appropri-
ate for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, for the
birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks
to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd
" carved it out quaintly in the sun ; " and, turning
philosopher by the very occupation, provided it with
mottoes more touching than tombstones. It was a
pretty device of the gardener, recorded by Marvell,
who, m the days of artificial gardening, made a dial
150 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
out of herbs and flowers. I must quote his verses a
little higher up, for they are full, as all his serious
poetry was, of a witty delicacy. They will not come
in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains, and sun-
dials. He is speaking of sweet garden scenes; —
What wondrous life is this I lead !
Ripe apples drop about my head.
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine.
The nectarine, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach.
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness.
The mind, that ocean, where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas,
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
Jly soul into the boughs does glide;
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then wets and claps its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
How well the skilful gardener drew,
Of flowers and herbs, this dial new,
Where, from above, the milder sun
Does tlirough a fragi-ant zodiac run;
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers ? *
The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like
manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up, or
bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that little
* From a copy of verses entitled The Garden
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 151
green nook behind the South-Sea House, what a fresh-
ness it gives to tlie dreary pile ! Four Httle winged
marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, spoutinor
out ever fresh streams from their innocent-wanton
lips in the square of Lincoln's-inn, when I was no
bigger than they were figm-ed. They are gone, and
the spring choked up. The fashion, they tell me is
gone by, and these things are esteemed childish.
Why not then gratify children, by letting them stand ?
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. They are
awakening images to them at least. Why must every-
thincr smack of man and mannish ? Is the world all
grown up ? Is childhood dead ? Or is there not in the
bosoms of the wisest and the best some of the child's
heart left, to respond to its earliest enchantments ?
The figures were grotesque. Are the stiff-wigged liv-
ing figures, that still flitter and chatter about that area,
less Gothic in appearance? or is the splutter of their
hot rhetoric one half so refreshing; and innocent as the
little cool playful streams those exploded cherubs ut-
tered ?
They have lately gothicized the entrance to the
Inner Temple-hall, and the library front ; to assimilate
them, I suppose, to the body of the hall, which they
jdo not at all resemble. What is become of the winged
horse that stood over the former ? a stately arms ! and
who has removed those fi'escoes of the Virtues, which
Italianized the end of the Paper Buildings ? — my first
hmt of allegory ! They must account to me for these
things, which I miss so greatly.
The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call
the parade ; but the traces are passed away of the
footsteps which made its pavement awful I It is be-
152 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
come common and profane. The old benchers had it
almost sacred to themselves, in the forepart of the day
at least. They might not be sided or jostled. Their
air and dress asserted the parade. You left wide spaces
betwixt you, when you passed them. We walk on
even terms with their successors. The roguish eye of
J 11, ever ready to be delivered of a jest, almost
invites a stranger to vie a repartee with it. But what
insolent familiar durst have mated Thomas Coventry ?
— whose person was a quadrate, his step massy and
elephantine, his face square as the lion's, his gait per-
emptory and path-keeping, indivertible from his way as
a moving column, the scarecrow of his inferiors, the
browbeater of equals and superiors, who made a soK-
tude of children wherever he came, for they fled his
insufferable presence, as they would have shunned an
Elisha bear. His growl was as thunder in their ears,
whether he spake to them in mii'tli or in rebuke, his
invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the most repul-
sive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating the
natural terrors of his speech, broke from each majestic
nostril, darkening the air. He took it not by pinches,
but a palmful at once, diving for it under the mighty
flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket ; his waist-
coat red and angry, his coat dark rappee, tinctured by
dye original, and by adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete
gold. And so he paced the terrace.
By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen ;
the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They were co-
evals, and had nothing but that and their benchership
in common. In politics Salt was a whig, and Coventry
a stanch tory. Many a sarcastic growl did the latter
cast out — for CoAentry had a rough spinous humor —
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 153
Rt the political confederates of his associate, which
rehounded from the gentle bosom of the latter like
cannon-balls from wool. You could not ruffle Samuel
Salt.
S. had the reputation of being a very clever man,
and of excellent discernment in the chamber practice
of the law. I suspect his knowledge did not amount
to much. When a case of difficult disposition of
money, testamentary or otherwise, came before him,
he ordinarily handed it over with a few instructions to
his man Lovel, who was a quick little fellow, and
would despatch it out of hand by the light of natural
understanding, of which he had an uncommon share.
It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed
by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man ; a
child might pose him in a minute, — indolent and pro-
crastinating to the last degree. Yet men would give
him credit for vast application, in spite of himself. He
was not to be trusted with himself with impunity. He
never dressed for a dinner party but he forgot his
sword — they wore swords then — or some other ne-
cessary part of his equipage. Lovel had his eye upon
him on all these occasions, and ordinarily gave him his
cue. If there was anything which he could speak un-
seasonably, he was sure to do it. He was to dine at a
relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of
her execution ; — and L. who had a wary foresight of
his probable hallucinations, before he set out, schooled
him with great anxiety not in any possible manner to
allude to her story that day. S. promised foith fully to
observe the injunction. He had not been seated in the
parloi% where the company was expecting the dinner
summons, four minutes, when, a pause in the conver-
154 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLL.
Bation ensuing, he got up, looked out of window, and
pulling down his ruffles — an ordinary motion wilh
him — observed, "it was a gloomy day," and added,
" Miss Blandy must be hanged by this time, I suppose."
Instances of this sort were pei'petual. Yet S. was
thought by some of the greatest men of his time a fit
person to be consulted, not alone in matters pertaining
to the laAV, but in the ordinary niceties and embarrass-
ments of conduct — from force of manner entirely. He
never lauo-hed. He had the same good fortune among
the female world, — was a known toast with the ladies,
and one or two are said to have died for love of
him — I suppose, because he never trifled or talked
gallantry with them, or paid them, indeed, hardly com-
mon attentions. He had a fine face and person, but
wanted, methought, the spirit that should have shown
them off with advantage to the women. His eye
lacKed lustre. Not so, thought Susan P ; who, at
the advanced age of sixty, was seen, in the cold even-
ing time, unaccompanied, wetting the pavement of
B d Row, Avith tears that fell in drops which might
be heard, because her friend had died that day — he,
whom she had pursued with a hopeless passion for the
last forty years, — a passion, which years could not ex-
tinguish or abate ; nor the long-resolved, yet gently-
enforced, puttings off of luirelenting bachelorhood dis-
suade from its cherished purpose. Mild Susan P ,
thou hast now thy friend in heaven !
Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family
of that name. He passed his youth in contracted cir-
cumstances, which gave him early those parsimonious
habits which in after-life never forsook him ; so that,
with one windfall or another, about the time T knew
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 155
lilm he was master of four or five huncli'ed thousand
pounds ; nor did he look, or walk, worth a moidore
less. He lived in a gloomy house opposite the pump
in Serjeant's-inn, Fleet Street. J., the counsel, is doing
self-imposed penance in it, for what reason I divine not,
at this day. C. had an agreeable seat at North Cray,
where he seldom spent above a day or two at a time in
the summer ; but preferred, during the hot months,
standing at his window in this damp, close, well-like
mansion, to watch, as he said, " the maids drawing
water all day long." I suspect he had his within-door
reasons for the preference. Hio currus et arma fuere.
He mio-ht think his treasures more safe. His house
had the aspect of a strong-box. C. was a close hunks
— a hoarder rather than a miser — or, if a miser, none
of the mad Elwes breed, who have brought discredit
upon a character, which cannot exist without certain
admirable points of steadiness and unity of purpose.
One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so
easily despise him. By taking care of the pence, he is
often enabled to part with the pounds, upon a scale that
leaves us careless generous fellows haltincr at an im-
measurable distance behind. C. gave away 30,000Z.
at once in his lifetime to a blind charity. His house-
keeping was severely looked after, but he kept tlu'
table of a gentleman. He would know who came in
and who went out of his house, but his kitchen chim-
ney was never suffered to freeze.
Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never kne^A
what he was worth in the world ; and having but a
competency for his rank, which his indolent habit-
were little calculated to improve, might have suffered
severely if he had not had honest people about him.
156 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
Lovel took care of everything. He was at once his
clerk, his good servant, his di'esser, liis friend, his
" flapper," his guide, stop-watch, auditor, treasurer.
He did nothing without consulting Lovel, or failed in
anything without expecting and fearing his admonish-
ing. He put himself almost too much in his hands,
had they not been the pm'est in the world. He re-
signed his title almost to respect as a master, if L.
could ever have forgotten for a moment that he was
a servant.
I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible
and losmg honesty. A good fellow withal, and " would
strike." Li the cause of the oppressed he never con-
sidered inequalities, or calcidated the number of his
opponents. He once wrested a sword out of the hand
of a man of quality that had drawn upon him ; and
pommelled him severely with the hilt of it. The
swordsman had offered insult to a female — an occa-
sion upon which no odds against him could have pre-
vented the interference of Lovel. He would stand
next day bareheaded to the same person, modestly to
excuse his interference — for L. never forgot rank,
where somethino; better was not concerned. L. was
the liveliest little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as
Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to resemble (I
have a portrait of him which confirms it), possessed a
fine turn for humorous poetry — next to Swift and
Prior — moulded heads in clay or plaster of Paris to
admiration, by the dint of natural genius merely;
turned cribbage boards, and such small cabinet toys,
to perfection ; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with
equal facility ; made punch better than any man of his
degree in England ; had the merriest quips and con-
THE 01 3 BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 157
ceits ; and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and
inventions as you could desire. He was a brother of
the angle, moreover, and just such a free, hearty,
honest companion as Mr. Izaak Walton would have
chosen to go a-fishing with. I saw him in his old age
and the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten, in the last
sad stage of human weakness — "a remnant most
forlorn of what he was," — yet even then his eye
would light up upon the mention of his favorite Gar-
rick. He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes —
" was upon the stage nearly throughout the whole
performance, and as busy as a bee." At intervals, too,
he would speak of his former life, and how he came up
a little boy from Lincoln to go to service, and how his
mother cried at parting with him, and how he returned,
after some few years' absence, in his smart new livery,
to see her, and she blessed herself at the change, and
could hardly be brought to believe that it Avas " her
own bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he
would weep, till I have wished that sad second child-
hood might have a mother still to lay its head upon her
lap. But the common mother of us all in no long time
after received him gently into hers.
With Coventry, and with Salt, in their walks upon
the terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson would join
to make up a third. They did not walk linked arm in
arm in those days — " as now our stout triumvirs
sweep the streets," — but generally with both hands
folded behind them for state, or with one at least be-
hind, the other carrying a cane. P. w\'is a benevolent,
but not a prepossessing man. He had that in hi.5 face
which you could not term unhappiness ; it rather im-
plied an incapacity of being happy. His cheeks ^^re
158 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
colorless even to whiteness. His look was uninviting,
resembling (but without his sourness) that of our great
philanthropist. I know that he did good acts, but I
could never make out what he was. Contemporary
with these, but subordinate, was Daines Barrington —
another oddity — he walked burly and square — in
imitation, I think, of Coventry — howbeit he attained
not to the dignity of his protot}"pe. Nevertheless, he
did pretty well, upon the strength of being a tolerable
antiquarian, and having a brother a bishop. When the
account of his year's treasurership came to be audited,
the following singular charge was unanimously dis-
allowed by the bench : " Item, disbursed Mr. Allen,
the gardener, twenty shillings, for stuff to poison the
sparrows, by my orders." Next to him was old Barton
— a jolly negation, Avho took upon him the ordering of
the bills of fare for the parliament chamber, where the
benchers dine — answerino; to the combination rooms
at College — much to the easement of his less epicurean
brethren. I know nothing more of him. Then Read,
and Twopeny — Read, good-humored and personable
— Twopeny, good-humored, but thin, and felicitous in
jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry
was attenuated and fleeting. Many must remember
him (for he was rather of later date) and his singular
gait, which was performed by three steps and a jump
regularly succeeding. The steps were little efforts,
like that of a child beginning to walk ; the jump com-
paratively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. Where he
learned this figure, or what occasioned it, I could never
discover. It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed
to answer the purpose any better than common walk-
ing. The extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 159
him uj)on it. It Avas a trial of poising. Twopeny
would often rally him upon his leanness, and hail h* n
as brother Lusty ; but W. had no relish of a joke. His
features were spiteful. I have heard that he would
pinch his cat's ears extremely, when anythiiig had
offended him. Jackson — the omniscient Jackson he
was called — was of this period. He had the reputa-
tion of possessmg more multifarious knowledge than
any man of his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the
less literate portion of the Temple. I remember a
pleasant passage, of the cook applying to him, with
much formality of apology, for instructions how to write
down edge bone of beef in his bill of commons. He
was supposed to know, if any man in the world did.
He decided the orthography to be — as I have given it
— fortifying his authority with such anatomical reasons
as dismissed the manciple (for the time) learned and
happy. Some do spell it yet, perversely, aitch bono,
fi'om a fanciful resemblance between its shape and that
of the aspirate so denominated. I had almost forgotten
Mingay with the iron hand — but he was somewhat
later. He had lost his right hand by some accident,
and supplied it with a grappling-hook, which he
wielded with a tolerable adroitness. I detected the
substitute, before I was old enough to reason whether
it were artificial or not. I remember the astonishment
it raised in me. He was a blusterino;, loud-talkino-
person ; and I reconciled the phenomenon to my ideas
as an emblem of power — somewhat like the horns in
the forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses. Baron Ma-
seres, Avho walks (or did till very lately) in the cos-
tume of the reign of George the Second, closes ray
imperfect recollections of the old benchers of the
Inner Teronle.
160 THE OLD BENCHEKS OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled ? Or, if the
like of you exist, why exist they no more for me ? Ye
inexphcable, half-miderstood appearances, why comes
in reason to tear away the preternatural mist, bright
or gloomy, that enshrouded you? Why make ye so
sorry a figure in my relation, who made up to me, — to
my childish eyes — the mythology of the Temple ? In
those days I saw Gods, as " old men covered with a
mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of
classic idolatry perish, — extinct be the fairies and fairy
trumpery of legendary fabling, in the heart of child-
hood, there will, forever, spring up a well of innocent
or wholesome superstition, — the seeds of exaggeration
will be busy there, and vital — from every-day forms
educing the unknown and the uncoanmon. In that
little Goshen there will be light, when the grown
world flounders about in the darkness of sense and
materiality. While childhood, and while dreams,
reducing childhood, shall be left, imagination shall
not have spread her holy wings totally to fly the
earth.
P. S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of
Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect
memory, and the erring notices of childhood ! Yet I
protest I always thought that he had been a bachelor !
This gentleman, R. N. informs me, married young, and
losing his lady in childbed, within the first year of their
union, fell into a deep melancholy, from the effects of
which, probably, he never thoroughly recovered. In
what a new light does tliis place his rejection (O call it
by a gentler name !) of mild Susan P , unravel-
ling into beauty certain peculiarities of this very shy
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPI E. IGl
and retiring character ! Henceforth let no one receive
the narratives of Elia for true records ! They are, in
truth, but shadows of fact — verisimilitudes, not veri-
ties — or sitting but upon the remote edges and out-
fikirts of history. He is no such honest chronicler as
R. N., and would have done better perhaps to have
consulted that gentleman, before he sent these incondite
reminiscences to press. But tlie worthy sub-treasurer
— who respects his old and his new masters — would
but have been puzzled at the indecorous liberties of
Elia. The good man wots not, peradventure, of the
license which Magazines have arrived at in this plain-
speaking age, or hardly dreams of their existence be-
yond the G-entlemari' s — his furthest monthly excur-
sions in this nature havino; been long confined to the
holy ground of honest UrharCs obituary. May it be
long before his own name shall help to swell those
columns of un envied flattery ! — Meantime, O ye New
Benchers of the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for
he is himself the kindliest of human creatures. Should
infirmities overtake him — he is yet in gi'een and vig-
orous senility — make allowances for them, remember-
ing that " ye yourselves are old." So may the Winged
Horse, your ancient badge and cognizance, still flourish !
so may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your
church and chambers ! so may the span'ows, in default
of more melodious choristers, unpoisoned, hop about
your walks ! so may the fresh-colored and cleanly nur-
sery maid, who, by leave, airs her plaj'ful charge in
your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsy
as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion ! so may
the younkers of this generation eye you, pacmg your
stately terrace, with the same superstitious veneration,
VOL. III. n
162 GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
with which the child Elia gazed on the Old Worthies
tliat solemnized the parade before ye I
GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
The custom of sa^dng grace at meals had, probably,
its origin in the early times of the world, and the hun-
ter state of man, when dinners were precarious things,
and a full meal was somethino; more than a common
blessing ! when a bellyful was a windfall, and looked
like a special providence. In the shouts and triumphal
songs with which, after a season of sharp abstinence, a
lucky booty of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be
ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of the mod-
em grace. It is not otherwise easy to be understood,
why the blessing of food — the act of eating — should
have had a particular expression of thanksgiving an-
nexed to it, distinct from that implied and silent grati-
tude with which we are expected to enter upon the
enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good
things of existence.
I own that I am disposed to say gi'ace upon twenty
other occasions in the course of the day besides my
dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant
walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting,
or a solved problem. Why have we none for books,
those spiritual repasts — a grace before Milton — a
grace before Shakspeare — a devotional exercise proper
to be said before reading the Fairy Queen ? — but the
received ritual having prescribed these forms to the
tiKACE BEFORE MEAT. 163
solitary ceremony of raanducation, I shall confine my
observations to the experience which I have had of the
grace, properly so called ; commending my new scheme
for extension to a niche in the grand philosophical,
poetical, and perchance in part heretical, liturgy, now
compiling by my fiiend Homo Humanns, for the use
of a certain snug congregation of Utopian Rabelaesian
Christians, no matter where assembled.
The form, then, of the benediction before eating has
its beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and
unprovocative repast of children. It is here that the
grace becomes exceedingly graceful. The indigent
man, who hardly knows whether he shall have a meal
the next day or not, sits down to his fare with a pres-
ent sense of the blessing, which can be but feebly
acted by the rich, into whose minds the conception of
wantmg a dinner could never, but by some extreme
theory, have entered. The proper end of food — the
animal sustenance — is barely contemplated by them.
The poor man's bread is his daily bread, literally his
bread for the day. Their courses are perennial.
Again the plainest diet seems the fittest to be pre-
ceded by the grace. That which is least stimulative
to appetite, leaves the mind most free for foreign con-
siderations. A man may feel thankful, heartily thank-
ful, over a dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have
leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and institution of
eating ; when he shall confess a perturbation of mind,
inconsistent with the purposes of the grace, at the pres-
ence of venison or turtle. When I have sat (a rams
hosj^es') at rich men's tables, with the savory soup and
messes steaming up the nostrils, and moistening the lips
of the guests with desire and a distracted choice, I have
164 GEACE BEFORE MEAT.
felt the introduction of that ceremony to be unseason"
able. With the ravenous orgasm upon you, it seems
impertinent to interpose a religious sentiment. It is
a confusion of purpose to mutter out praises from a
mouth that waters. The heats of epicurism put out
the gentle flame of devotion. The incense which rises
round is pagan, and the bellygod intercepts it for his
own. The very excess of the provision beyond the
needs, takes away all sense of proportion between the
end and means. The giver is veiled by his gifts.
You are startled at the injustice of returning thanks
— for what? — for having too much, while so many
starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss.
I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce con-
sciously perhaps, by the good man who says the grace.
I have seen it in clergymen and others, — a sort of
shame, — a sense of the co-presence of circumstances
which unhallow the blessing. After a devotional tone
put on for a few seconds, how rapidly the speaker will
fall into his common voice ! helping himself or his
neighbor, as if to get rid of some uneasy sensation of
hypocrisy. Not that the good man was a hypocrite,
or was not most conscientious in the discharge of the
duty; but he felt in his inmost mind the mcompati-
bility of the scene and the viands before him with the
exercise of a calm and rational gratitude.
I hear somebody exclaim, — Would you have Chris-
tians sit down at table, like hogs to their troughs, with-
out remembering the Giver ? — no, — I would have
them sit down as Christians, remembering the Giver,
and less like hogs. Or if their appetites must run riot,
and they must pamper themselves with delicacies for
which east and west are ransacked, I would have them
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 165
postpone their benediction to a fitter season, when ap-
petite is laid ; when the still small voice can be heard,
and the reason of the grace returns — with temperate
diet and restricted dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are
no proper occasions for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun
waxed fat, we read that he kicked. Virgil knew the
harpy-nature better, when he put into the mouth of
Celgeno anything but a blessing. We may be grate-
fully sensible of the deliciousness of some kinds of food
beyond others, though that is a meaner and inferior
gratitude ; but the proper object of the grace is suste-
nance, not relishes ; daily bread, not delicacies ; the
means of life, and not the means of pampering the car-
cass. With what fi'ame or composure, I wonder, can
a city chaplain pronounce his benediction at some great
Hall-feast, when he knows that his last concludinf^
pious word — and that, in all probability, the sacred
name which he preaches — is but the signal for so
many impatient haiiDies to commence their foul orgies,
with as little sense of true thankfulness (which is tem-
perance) as those Virgilian fowl ! It is well if the
good man himself does not feel his devotions a little
clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling with
and polluting the pure altar sacrifice.
The severest satire upon fall tables and surfeits is the
banquet which Satan, in the Paradise Regained, pro-
vides for a temptation m the wilderness : —
A table richly spread in regal mode
With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort
And savor; beasts of chase, or fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,
Gris- amber-steamed; all fish from sea or shore,
Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained
Pontus, and Lucrme Lay, and Afric coast.
166 GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
The Tempter, I warrant 3'ou, thought these catcs
would go down without the recommendatory preface of
a benediction. They are Hke to be short graces where
the devil plays the host. I am afraid the poet wants
his usual decorum m this place. Was he thinking of
the old Roman luxuiy, or of a gaudy day at Cam-
bridge ? This was a temptation fitter for a Heliogaba-
lus. The whole banquet is too civic and culinary, and
the accompaniments altogether a profanation of that
deep, abstracted holy scene. The mighty artillery of
sauces, wliich the cook-fiend conjures up, is out of pro-
portion to the simple wants and plain hunger of the
guest. He that disturbed him in his dreams, from his
dreams might have been taught better. To the tem-
perate fantasies of the famished Son of God, what sort
of feasts presented themselves ? — He dreamed iildeed.
As appetite is wont to dream,
Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet
But what meats ? —
Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood.
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
Food to Elijah bringing even and morn;
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they
brought :
He saw the prophet also how he fled
Into the desert, and how there he slept
Under a juniper; then how awaked
He found his supper on the coals prepared,
And by the angel was bid rise and eat,
And ate the second time after repose,
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days;
Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook.
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse.
Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than these temper-
ate dreams of the divine Huno-erer. To which of these
GRACE BEIORE MEAT. 1G7
two Visionary banquets, think you, would the introduc-
tion of what is called the grace have been the most
fitting and pertinent?
Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; but prac-
tically I own that (before meat especially) they seem
to involve something awkward and unseasonable. Our
appetites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs
to our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set
about the great ends of preserving and continuing the
species. They are fit blessings to be contemplated at
a distance with a becoming gratitude ; but the moment
of appetite (the judicious reader will apprehend me)
is, perhaps, the least fit season for that exercise. The
Quakers, who go about their business of every descrip-
tion with more calmness than we, have more title to
the use of these benedictory prefaces. I have always
admired their silent grace, and the more because T have
observed their applications to the meat and drink fol-
lowing to be less passionate and sensual than ours.
They are neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people.
They eat, as a horse bolts his chopped hay, with indif-
ference, calmness, and cleanly circumstances. They
neither grease nor slop themselves. When I see a
citizen in his bib and tucker, I cannot imagine it a
surplice.
I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not
indifferent to the kinds of it. Those unctuous morsels
of deer's flesh were not made to be received with dis-
passionate services. I hate a man who swallows it,
affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect
his taste in higher matters. I shrink instinctively fi'om
one who professes to like minced veal. There is a
physiognomical character in the tastes for food. C
168 GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
holds that a man cannot have a pure mind who refuses
apple-dumplings. I am not certain but he is right.
With the decay of my first innocence, I confess a less
and less relish daily for those innocuous cates. The
whole vegetable tribe have lost their e;ust with me.
Only I stick to asparagus, which still seems to inspire
gentle thoughts. I am impatient and querulous under
culinary disappointments, as to come home at the din-
ner hour, for instance, expecting some savory mess,
and to find one quite tasteless and sapidless. Butter ill
melted — that commonest of kitchen failures — puts me
beside my tenor. The author of The Rambler used to
make inarticulate animal noises over a favorite food.
Was this the music quite proper to be preceded by the
grace ? or would the pious man have done better to
postpone his devotions to a season when the blessing
might be contemplated with less perturbation ? I
quarrel with no man's tastes, nor would set my thin
face against those excellent things, in their way, jollity
and feasting. But as these exercises, however laudable,
have little in them of grace or gracefulness, a man
should be sure, before he ventures so to grace them,
that wliile he is pretending his devotions otherwhere,
he is not secretly kissing his hand to some great fish —
his Dagon — with a special consecration of no ark but
the fat tm'een before him. Graces are the sweet pre-
luding strains to the banquets of angels and childi'en ;
to the roots and severer repasts of the Chartreuse ; to
the slender, but not slenderly acknowledged, refection
of the poor and humble man ; but at the heaped-up
boards of the pampered and the luxurious they become
of dissonant mood, less timed and tuned to the occa-
sion, methmks, than the noise of those better befitting
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 169
organs would be which children hear tales of, at Hog's
Norton. We sit too long at our meals, or are too
curious in the study of them, or too disordered in our
application to them, or engross too great a portion of
those good things (which should be common) to our
share, to be able with any grace to say grace. To be
thankful for what we grasp exceeding our proportion,
is to add hypocrisy to injustice. A lurking sense of
this truth is what makes the performance of this duty
so cold and spiritless a service at most tables. In
houses where the grace is as indispensable as the nap-
km, who has not seen that never-settled question arise,
as to wlio shall say it ? while the good man of the house
and the visitor clergyman, or some other guest, belike
of next authority, from years or gravity, shall be
bandying about the office between them as a matter
of compliment, each of them not unwilling to shift the
awkward burden of an equivocal duty from his own
shoulders ?
I once drank tea in company with two Methodist
divines of different persuasions, whom it was my for-
tune to introduce to each other for the first time that
evening. Before the first cup was handed round, one
of these reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with
all due solemnity, whether he chose to say anything.
It seems it is the custom with some sectaries to put up
a short prayer before this meal also. His reverend
brother did not at first quite apprehend him, but upon
an explanation, with little less importance he made
answer that it was not a custom known in his church ;
in which courteous evasion the other acquiescmg for
good manners' sake, or in compliance with a weak
brother, the supplementaiy or tea-grace was waived
170 GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
altogether. With what spu-It might not Lucian liavo
painted two priests of his rehgion playing into each
other's hands the compliment of performing or omitting
a sacrifice, — the hungry God meantime, doubtful of
his incense, with expectant nostrils hovering over the
two flamens, and (as between two stools) going away
in the end without his supper.
A short form upon these occasions is felt to want
reverence ; a long one, I am afi-aid, cannot escape the
charge of impertmence. I do not quite approve of
the epigrammatic conciseness with which that equiv-
ocal wag (but my pleasant school-fellow) C. V. L.,
when importimed for a grace, used to inquire, first
slyly leering down the table, " Is there no clergyman
here," — significantly adding, " Thank G — ." Nor
do I think our old form at school quite pertinent,
where we were used to preface our bald bread-and-
cheese-suppers with a preamble, connecting with that
humble blessing a recognition of benefits the most
awful and overwhelming; to the imagination which
religion has to offer. Non tunc illis erat locus. I
remember we were put to it to reconcile the phrase
*' good creatures," upon which the blessing rested,
with the fare set before us, wilfully understanding that
expression in a low and animal sense, — till some one
recalled a legend, which told how, in the golden days
of Christ's, the young Hospitallers were wont to have
smoking joints of roast meat upon their nightly boards,
till some pious benefactor, commiserating the decencies,
ratlier than the palates, of the children, commuted our
flesh for garments, and gave us — horresco referens —
Irousei-s instead of mutton.
DREAM-CHILDREN; A RE VERY. 171
DREAM-CHILDREN; A REVERY.
Children love to listen to stories about their el dors,
when they were children ; to stretch their imagination
to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or
grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit
that my httle ones crept about me the other evening to
hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in
a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than
that in which they and papa lived) which had been the
scene — so at least it was generally believed in that
part of the country — of the tragic incidents which
they had lately become familiar with from the ballad
of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the
whole stoiy of the children and their cruel uncle was
to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-
piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the
Robin Redbreasts ; till a foolish rich person pulled it
down to set up a marble one of modern invention in
its stead, with no story vipon it. Here Alice put out
one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be called
upbraiding. Then I v/ent on to say, how religious and
how good their great-grandmother Field was, how be-
loved and respected by everybody, though she Avas not
indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only
the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might
be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her
by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and
more fashionable mansion which he had purchased
somewhere in the adjoining county ; but still she lived
in it in a manner as if it had been her own, md kept
172 DREAM-CHILDREN; A RE VERY.
up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she
lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly
pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and
carried away to the owner's other house, wdiere they
were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one
were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately
at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry
gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to
say, " that would be foolish indeed." And then I told
how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended
by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry
too, of the neighborhood for many miles round, to show
their respect for her memory, because she had been
such a good and religious woman ; so good indeed that
she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great
part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice
spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright,
graceful person then great-grandmother Field once
was ; and how in her youth she was esteemed the
best dancer, — here Alice's little right foot played an
involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it
desisted, — the best dancer, I was saying, in the county,
till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed
her down with pain ; but it could never bend her good
spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upriglit,
because she was so good and religious. Then I told
how she was used to sleep by herself m a lone chamber
of the great lone house ; and how she believed that an
apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight
gliding up and down the great staircase near where
she slept, but she said " those innocents would do her
no harm ; " and how frightened I used to be, though
in those days I had my maid to sleep w4th me, because
DEEAM-CHILDREN; A RhVERY. 173
1 was never half so good or religious as she, - - and jet
I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his
eyebrows and tried to look courageous. Then I told
how good she was to all her grandchildren, havmg us
to the great house in the holidays, where I in particular
used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon
the old busts of the twelve Caesars, that had been Em-
perors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem
to live again, or I to be turned into marble with them ;
how I never could be tired with roaming about that
huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their
worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved
oaken pannels, with the gilding almost rubbed, out, —
sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which
I had almost to myself, unless when now and then a
solitary gardening man would cross me, — and how the
nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without
my ever offering to pluck them, because they were
forbidden fruit, unless now and then, — and because I
had more pleasure in strolling about among the old
melancholy-looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking
up the red berries, and the fir-apples, wliich were good
for nothing but to look at, — or in lying about upon the
fresh grass with all the fine garden smells around me, —
or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy
myself ripening too along with the oranges and the
limes in that grateful warmth, — or in watching the
dace that darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the
bottom of the garden, with hei*e and there a great
Bulky pike hanging midway down the water in silent
Btate, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings ; —
I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than
in all the sweet flavors of peaches, nectarines, oranges,
174 DREAM-CHILDREN; A REVERY.
and such-like common baits of children. Here John
slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes,
which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated
dividmg with her, and both seemed willing to rehn-
quish them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in
somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how, though
their great-grandmother Field loved all her grand-
cliildren, yet in an especial manner she might be said
to love their uncle, John L , because he was so
handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest
of us ; and, instead of moping about in solitary corners,
like some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome
horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than
themselves, and make it carry him half over the county
in a morning, and join the hunters when there were
any out, — and yet he loved the old great house and
gardens too, but had too much spirit to be always
pent up witliin their boundaries, — and how their uncle
grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome,
to the admiration of everybody, but of their great-
grandmother Field most especially ; and how he used
to carry me upon his back when I was a lame-footed
boy — for he was a good bit older than me — many a
mile when I could not walk for pain ; — and how in
after-life he became lame-footed too, and I did not
always (I fear) make allowances enough for him when
he was impatient and in pain, nor remember suffi-
ciently how considerate he had been to me when I was
lame-footed ; and how when he died, thoiigh he had
not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a
gi'eat while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life
and death ; and how I bore his death, as I thought
pretty well at first, but afterwards it haimted and
DREAM-CHILDREN; A RE VERY. 175
haunted me ; and though I did not cry or take it to
heart as some do, and as I think he would have done
if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew
not till then how much I had loved him. I missed his
kindness, and I missed his crossness, and wished him
to be alive again, to be quarrelling with him (for we
quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him again,
and was as uneasy without him, as he their poor uncle
must have been when the doctor took off his limb.
Here the children fell a-crying, and asked if then* little
mourning which they had on was not for Uncle John,
and they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about
their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their
pretty dead mother. Then I told how, for seven long
years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet
persisting ever, I coui'ted the fair Alice W — n ; and,
as much as children could understand, I explained to
hem what coyness, and difficulty, and denial meant in
maidens, — when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul
of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a
reality of representment, that I became in doubt which
of them stood there before me, or whose that bright
hair was ; and while I stood gazing, both the children
gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still
receding, till notliing at last but two mournful features
were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without
speech, strangely unpressed upon me the effects of
speech : " We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we
children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum
father. We are nothing ; less than nothing, and
dreams. We are only what might have been, and
must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of
ages before we have existence, and a name; " and
176 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS.
immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in
my bachelor armchair, where I had fallen asleep, with
the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side, — but John
L. (or James Elia) was gone forever.
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS.
IN A LETTER TO B. F., ESQ., AT SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES.
My dear F. — When I think how welcome the
sight of a letter fi*om the world where you were born
must be to you in that strange one to which you have
been transplanted, I feel some compunctious visitings
at my long silence. But, indeed, it is no easy effort to
set about a correspondence at our distance. The weary
world of waters between us oppresses the imagination.
It is difficult to conceive how a scrawl of mine should
ever stretch across it. It is a sort of presumption to
expect that one's thoughts shoidd live so far. It is
like writing for posterity; and reminds me of one of
Mrs. Rowe's superscriptions, " Alcander to Strephon in
the Shades." Cowley's Post-Angel is no more than
would be expedient in such an intercourse. One drops
a packet at Lombard Street, and in twenty-four hours
a friend in Cumberland gets it as fi'esh as if it came in
ice. It is only like whispering through a long trumpet.
But suppose a tube let down from the moon, Avith
yourself at one end, and the man at the other ; it Avould
be some balk to the spirit of conversation, if you knew
that the dialogue exchanged with that interesting theos-
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 177
ophist would take two or three revolutions of a higher
luminary in its passage. Yet for aught I know, you
may be some parasangs nigher that primitive idea —
Plato's man — than we in England here have the
honor to reckon ourselves.
Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics :
news, sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include all
non-serious subjects ; or subjects serious in themselves,
but treated after my fashion, non-seriously. — And
first, for news. In them the most desirable circum-
stance, I suppose, is, that they shall be tiaie. But what
security can I have that what I now send you for tinith
shall not, before you get it, unaccountably turn into a
lie ? For instance, our mutual friend P. is at this pres-
ent writing — my Now — in good health, and enjoys a
fair share of worldly reputation. You are glad to hear
it. This is natural and friendly. But at this present
reading — your Noio — he may possibly be in the
Bench, or going to be hanged, which in reason ought
to abate something of your transport (i. e. at hearing he
was well, &c.), or at least considerably to modify it. I
am going to the play this evening, to have a laugh with
Munden. You have no theatre, I think you told me,
in your land of d d realities. You naturally lick
your lips, and envy me my felicity. Think but a mo-
ment, and you will correct the hateful emotion. Why
it is Sunday morning with you, and 1823. This con-
fusion of tenses, this grand solecism of two presents^ is
in a degree common to all postage. But if I sent you
word to Bath or Devizes, that I was expecting the
aforesaid treat this evening, though at the moment you
received the intelligence my full feast of fun would be
over, yet there would be for a day or two after, as you
VOL. III. 12
178 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS.
would well know, a smack, a relish left upon my men-
tal palate, which would give rational encouragement
for you to foster, a portion at least, of the chsagi-eeable
passion, which it was in part my intention to produce.
But ten months hence, your envy or your sympathy
would be as useless as a passion spent upon the dead.
Not only does truth, in these long intervals, unessence
herself, but (what is harder) one cannot venture a
crude fiction, for the fear that it may ripen into a truth
upon the voyage. What a wild improbable banter
I put upon you some three years since of Will
Weatherall having married a servant-maid ! I remem-
ber gravely consulting you how we were to receive her,
— for Will's wife was in no case to be rejected; and
your no less serious replication in the matter ; how
tenderly you advised an abstemious introduction of lit-
erary topics before the lady, with a caution not to be
too forward in bringing on the carpet matters more
within the sphere of her intelligence ; your deliberate
judgment, or rather wise suspension of sentence, how
far jacks, and spits, and mops could with propriety be
introduced as subjects ; whether the conscious avoiding
of all such matters in discourse would not have a worse
look than the taking of them casually in our way ; in
what manner we should carry ourselves to our maid
Becky, Mrs. William Weatherall being by ; whether
we should show more delicacy, and a truer sense of
respect for Will's wife, by treating Becky with our
customary chiding before her, or by an unusual defer-
ential civility paid to Becky as to a person of great
worth, but thrown by the caprice of fate into a humble
station. There were difficulties, I remember, on both
sides, wliich you did me the favor to state with the pre«
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 179
cision of a lawyer, united to the tenderness of a friend.
I laughed in my sleeve at your solemn pleadings, when
lo ! while I was valuing myself upon this flam put upon
you in New South Wales, the devil in England, jeal-
ous possibly of any lie-children not his own, or working
after my copy, has actually instigated our ft-iend (not
three days since) to the commission of a matrimony,
which I had only conjm-ed up for your diversion.
William Weatherall has married Mrs. Cotterel's maid.
But to take it in its truest sense, you will see, my dear
F., that news from me must become history to you ;
which I neither profess to write, nor indeed care much
for reading. No person, under a diviner, can with any
prospect of veracity conduct a correspondence at such
an arm's length. Two prophets, indeed, might thus
interchange intelligence with effect ; the epoch of the
writer (Habakkuk) falling in with the true present
time of the receiver (Daniel) ; but then we are no
prophets.
Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with
that. This kmd of dish, above all, requires to be
served up hot ; or sent off" in water-plates, that your
friend may have it almost as warm as yourself. If it
have time to cool, it is the most tasteless of all cold
meats. I have often smiled at a conceit of the late
Lord C It seems that, travelling somewhere abovit
Geneva, he came to some pretty green spot, or nook,
where a willow, or something hung so fantastically and
invitingly over a stream — was it ? — or a rock ? — no
matter, — but the stillness and the repose, after a weary
journey 'tis likely, in a languid moment of his Lord-
ship's hot restless life, so took his fiincy that he could
imagine no place so proper, in the event of his death,
180 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS.
to lay his bones in. This was all very natural and ex-
cusable as a sentiment, and shoAvs his character in a
very pleasing light. But when from a passing senti-
ment it came to be an act ; and when, by a positive
testamentary disposal, his remains were actually carried
all that way from England ; who was there, some
desperate sentimentalists excepted, that did not ask the
question. Why could not his Lordship have found a
spot as solitaiy, a nook as romantic, a tree as green and
pendent, with a stream as emblematic to his purpose^
in Surrey, in Dorset, or in Devon ? Conceive the sen
timent boai'ded up, freighted, entered at the Custon.
House (startling the tidewaiters with the novelty),
hoisted into a ship. Conceive it pawed about and
handled between the rude jests of tarpaulin ruffians, —
a tliino; of its delicate texture, — the salt bilge wetting
it till it became as vapid as a damaged lustring. Sup-
pose it in material danger (mariners have some super-
stition about sentiments) of being tossed over in a fresh
gale to some propitiatory shark (spirit of Saint Goth-
ard, save us from a quietus so foreign to the deviser's
pui'pose !) but it has happily evaded a fishy consumma-
tion. Trace it then to its lucky landing — at Lyons
shall we say? — I have not the map before me — jostled
upon four men's shoulders — baiting at this town —
stopping to refresh at t'other village — waiting a pass-
port here, a license there ; the sanction of the magis-
tracy in this district, the concurrence of the ecclesiastics
in that canton ; till at length it arrives at its destina-
tion, tired out and jaded, from a brisk sentiment, into
a feature of silly pride or tawdry senseless affectation.
How few sentiments, my dear F., I am afraid we can
set down, in the sailor's plu'ase, as quite sea-worthy.
riSTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 181
Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though
contemptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula
which should irradiate a right friendly epistle, — your
puns and small jests are, I apprehend, extremely cir-
cumscribed in their sphere of action. They are so
far fi'om a capacity of being packed up and sent be-
yond sea, they will scarce endure to be transported by
hand from this room to the next. Their vio;or ia
as the instant of their birth. Their nutriment for
their brief existence is the intellectual atmosphere of
the by-standers ; or this last is the fine slime of Nilus
— the melior lutus — whose maternal recipiency is as
necessary as the sol pater to their equivocal generation.
A pun hath a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack
with it ; you can no more transmit it in its pristine
flavor, than you can send a kiss. Have you not tried
in some mstances to palm off a yesterday's pun upon a
gentleman, and has it answered ? Not but it was new
to his hearing, but it did not seem to come new from
you. It did not hitch in. It was like picking up at a
village alehouse a two-days'-old newspaper. You have
not seen it before, but you resent the stale thing as an
affi'ont. This sort of merchandise above all requii'es a
quick return. A pun, and its recognitory laugh, must
be coinstantaneous. The one is the brisk lightning,
the other the fierce thunder. A moment's interval,
and the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from a
friend's face as from a mirror. Who would consult his
sweet visnomy, if the polished surface were two or
three minutes (not to speak of twelve months, my
dear F.) in giving back its copy ?
I cannot image to myself whereabout you are.
When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's island comea
182 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS.
across me. Sometimes you seem to be in the Sadet
of Thieves. I see Diogenes prying among you with
his perpetual fruitless lantern. What must you be
willing by this time to give for the sight of an honest
man ! You must almost have forgotten how we look.
And tell me, what your Sydneyites do ? are they
th . . V . ng all day long ? Merciful heaven ! what
property can stand against such a depredation ! The
kangaroos — your Aborigines — do they keep their
primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those ht-
tle short fore puds, looking like a lesson framed by
nature to the pickpocket ! Marry, for diving into
fobs they are rather lamely provided, a priori; but
if the hue-and-cry were once up, they would show
as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest loco-
motor in the colony. We hear the most improb-
able tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that
the young Spartans among you are born with six
fingers, which spoils their scanning? It must look
very odd ; but use reconciles. For their scansion, it
is less to be regretted, for if they take it into their
heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn out, the
greater part of them, vile plagiarists. Is there much
difference to see, too, between the son of a th . . f,
and the grandson ? or where does the taint stop ? Do
you bleach in three or in four generations ? I have
many questions to put, but ten Delphic voyages can
be made in a shorter time than it will take to satisfy
my scruples. Do you grow your own hemp ? What
is your staple trade, — exclusive of the national pro-
fession, I mean ? Your locksmiths, I take it, are some
o£ your great capitalists.
I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as
DISTA2^T CORRESPONDENTS. 183
when we used to exchange good-moiTOWs out of our
old contiguous windows, in pump-famed Hare Court
in the Temple. Why did you ever leave that quiet
comer ? Why did I ? — with its complement of four
poor elms, from whose smoke-dyed barks, the theme
of jestmg ruralists, I picked ray first lady-birds ! My
heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves in a
thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is
between us ; a length of passage enough to render
obsolete the phrases of our English letters before they
can reach you. But while I talk, I think you hear
me, — thoughts dallying with vain surmise, —
Aye me! while thee the seas and sounding shores
Hold far away.
Come back, before I am grown into a very old
man, so as you shall hardly know me. Come, before
Bridget walks on crutches. Girls whom you left
children have become sage matrons while you are
tarrying there. The blooming Miss W — r (you re-
member Sally W — r) called upon us yesterday, an
aged crone. Folks, Avhom you knew, die off every
year. Formerly, I thought that death was wearing
out, — I stood ramparted about with so many healthy
friends. The departure of J. W., two springs back,
corrected my delusion. Since then the old divorcer
has been busy. If you do not make haste to return,
there will be little left to gi-eet you, of me, or mine.
184 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.
I LIKE to meet a sweep — understand me — not a
grown sweeper, — old chimney-sweepers are by no
means attractive, — but one of those tender novices,
bloomincT throuD-h their first nioritude, the maternal
washings not quite effaced from the cheek, — such as
come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with
their little professional notes sounding like the peep peep
of a young sparrow ; or liker to the matin lark should
I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom
anticipating the sunrise ?
I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks
— poor blots — innocent blacknesses —
I reverence these young Africans of our own growth
— these almost clergy unps, who sport their cloth
without assumption ; and from their little pulpits, (the
tops of chimneys,) in the nipping air of a December
morning, preach a lesson of patience to mankind.
When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to
witness their operation ! to see a chit no bigger than
one's self, enter, one knew not by what process, into
what seemed the fauces Averni, — to pursue him in
imagination, as he went sounding on through so many
dark stifling caverns, horrid shades ! — to shudder with
the idea that " now, surely, he must be lost forever ! "
— to revive at heanno; his feeble shout of discovered
daylight, — and then (O fulness of delight !) running
out of doors, to come just in time to see the sable
phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished weapon
of his art victorious like some flas; waved over a con-
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 185
quered citadel ! I seem to remember having been
told that a bad sweep was once left in a stack with his
brush, to indicate which way the wind blew. It was
an awful spectacle, certainly ; not much unlike the old
stage direction in Macbeth, where the " Apparition of
a child crowned, with a tree in his hand, rises."
Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry m
tliy early rambles, it is good to give him a penny. It
is better to give him twopence. If it be starving
weather, and to the proper troubles of his hard occu-
pation, a pair of kibed heels (no unusual accompani-
ment) be superadded, the demand on thy humanity
will surely rise to a tester.
There is a composition, the groundwork of which
I have understood to be the sweet wood yclept sassa-
fras. This wood, boiled down to a kind of tea, and
tempered with an infusion of milk and sugar, hath to
some tastes a delicacy beyond the China luxury. I
know not how thy palate may relish it ; for myself,
with every deference to the judicious Mr. Read, who
hath time out of mind kept open a shop (the only one
he avers in London) for the vending of this " whole-
some and pleasant beverage," on the south side of
Fleet Street, as thou approachest Bridge Street — the
only Salopian house — I have never yet ventured to dip
my own particular lip in a basin of his commended
ingredients — a cautious premonition to the olfactories
constantly whispering to me, that my stomach must
infallibly, with all due courtesy, decline it. Yet I have
seen palates, otherwise not uninstructed in dietetical
elegancies, sup it up with avidity.
I know not by what particular conformation of the
organ it happens, but I have always found that this
186 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.
composition is surprisingly gratifying to tlie palate of a
young chimney-sweeper, — whether the oily particles
(sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and
soften the fuliginous concretions, which are sometimes
found (in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the
mouth in these unfledged practitioners ; or whether
Nature, sensible that she had mingled too much of
bitter wood in the lot of these raw victims, caused to
grow out of the earth her sassafras for a sweet lenitive ;
— but so it is, that no possible taste or odor to the
senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a deli-
cate excitement comparable to this mixture. Being
penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over
the ascending steam, to gratify one sense if possible,
"seemingly no less pleased than those domestic animals
— cats — when they purr over a new-found sprig of
valerian. There is something more in these sympathies
-uhan philosophy can inculcate.
Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason,
that his is the only Salopian house ; yet be it known to
thee, reader, — if thou art one who keepest what are
called good hours, thou art haply ignorant of the fact,
— he hath a race of industrious imitators, who from
stalls, and under open sky, dispense the same savoiy
mess to humbler customers, at that dead time of the
dawn, when (as extremes meet) the rake, reeling home
from his midnight cups, and the hard-handed artisan
leaving his bed to resume the premature labors of the
day, jostle, not unfrequently to the manifest disconcei-t-
ing of the former, for the honors of the pavement. It
is the time when, in summer, between the expired and
the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, the kennels of
our fair metropolis give forth their least satisfactory
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 187
odors. The rake, wlio wishetli to dissipate his o'er-
night vapors in more grateful coffee, curses the unge-
nial fume as he passeth ; but the artisan stops to taste,
and blesses the fi-agrant breakfast.
This is salooj) — the precocious herb-woman's darling,
— the delight of the early gardener, who transports his
smoking cabbages by break of day from Hammersmith
to Covent Garden's famed piazzas, — the delight,
and oh ! I fear, too often the envy, of the unpennied
sweep. Him shouldst thou haply encounter, with his
dim visage pendent over the grateful steam, regale him
with a sumptuous basin (it will cost thee but three
half-pennies) and a slice of delicate bread and butter
(an added half-penny) — so may thy culinary fires,
eased of the o'ercharged secretions from thy worse-
placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter volume to the
welkin, — so may the descending soot never taint thy
costly well-ingredienced soups, — nor the odious cry,
quick-reaching from street to street, of the fired cliim-
ney^ invite the rattling engines from ten adjacent par-
ishes, to disturb for a casual scintillation thy peace and
pocket !
I am by nature extremely susceptible of street
aflfi'onts ; the jeers and taunts of the populace ; the
lowbred triumph they display over the casual trip, or
splashed stocking, of a gentleman. Yet can I endure
the jocularity of a young sweep with something more
than forgiveness. In the last winter but one, pacing
along Cheapside with my accustomed precipitation
when I walk westward, a treacherous slide brought
me upon my back in an instant. I scrambled up with
pain and shame enough, — yet outwardly ti-j'ing to
face it down, as if nothing had happened, — when the
188 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPEKS.
roguish grin of one of these young wits encountered
me. There he stood, pointing me out witli his dusky
finger to the mob, and to a poor woman (I suppose his
mother) in particular, till the tears for the exquisiteness
of the flin (so he thought it) worked themselves out
at the corners of his poor red eyes, red from many
a previous weeping, and soot-mflamed, yet twinkling
through all with such a joy, snatched out of desolation,
that Hogarth but Hogarth has got him already
(how could he miss him ?) in the March to Finchley,
grinning at the pieman, — there he stood, as he stands
in the picture, irremovable, as if the jest was to last
forever, — with such a maximum of glee, and minimum
of mischief, in his mirth, — for the grin of a genuine
sweep hath absolutely no malice in it, — that I could
have been content, if the honor of a gentleman might
endure it, to have remained his butt and his mockery
till michiight.
I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what
are called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips
(the ladies must pardon me) is a casket presumably
holding such jewels ; but, methinks, they should take
leave to " air " them as frugally as possible. The fine
lady, or fine gentleman, who show me their teeth, show
me bones. Yet must I confess, that from the mouth of
a trae sweep a display (even to ostentation) of those
white and shining ossifications, strikes me as an agree-
able anomaly in manners, and an allowable piece of
foppery. It is, as when
A sable cloud
Tunis forth her silver lining on the night.
It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct ;
a badge of better days ; a hint of nobility ; — and,
THE PRAISE OF CHL,INEY-S^VEEPERS. 189
doubtless, under the obscuring darkness and double
night of theii' forlorn disguiseraent, oftentimes lurketh
good blood, and gentle conditions, derived from lost
ancestry, and a lapsed pedigree. The premature ap-
prenticements of these tender victims give but too
much encouragement, I fear, to clandestine and almost
infantile abductions ; the seeds of civility and true
courtesy, so often discernible in these young grafts,
(not otherwise to be accounted for,) plainly hint at
some forced adoptions ; many noble Rachels, mourning
for their children, even in our days, countenance the
fact ; the tales of fairy-spiriting may shadow a lament-
able verity, and the recovery of the young Montagu be
but a solitary mstance of good fortune out of many
irreparable and hopeless defiliations.
In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few
years since — under a ducal canopy — (that seat of the
Howards is an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly
for its beds, in which the late duke was especially a
connoisseur) — encircled with curtains of delicatest
crimson, with stany coronets inwoven — folded be-
tween a pair of sheets whiter and softer than the lap
where Venus lulled Ascanius — was discovered by
chance, after all methods of search had failed, at noon-
day, fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The little
creature, having somehow confounded his passage
among the intricacies of those loi'dly chimneys, by
some unknown aperture had alighted upon this mag-
nificent chamber ; and, tired with his tedious explora-
tions, was unable to resist the delicious invitement to
repose, which he there saw exhibited ; so creeping be-
tween the sheets very quietly, laid his black head upon
the pillow, and slept Uke a young Howard.
190 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.
Such is the account given to the visitors at the
Castle. But I cannot help seeming to perceive a con-
firmation of what I have just hinted at in this story.
A high instinct was at work in the case, or I am mis-
taken. Is it probable that a poor child of that descrip-
tion, with whatever weariness he might be visited,
would have ventured, under such a penalty as he
would be taught to expect, to uncover the sheets of a
duke's bed, and deliberately to lay himself down be-
tween them, when the rug, or the carpet, presented an
obvious couch, still far above his pretensions, — is this
probable, I would ask, if the great power of nature,
which I contend for, had not been manifested within
him, prompting to the adventure ? Doubtless this
young nobleman (for such my mind misgives me that
he must be) was allured by some memory, not amount-
ing to full consciousness, of his condition in infancy,
when he was used to be lapped by his mother, or his
nurse, in just such sheets as he there found, into which
he was now but creej^ng back as into his proper ineiO'
nabula^ and resting-place. By no other theory than by
'this sentiment of a preexistent state (as I may call it),
can I explain a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon
any other system so indecorous, in this tender, but un-
seasonable, sleeper.
My pleasant friend Jem White was so impressed
with a belief of metamorphoses lilce this frequently
taking place, that in some sort to reverse the wrongs
of fortune in these poor changelings, he instituted an
annual feast of chimney-sweepers, at which it was his
pleasure to officiate as host and waiter. It was a
solemn supper held in Smithfield, upon the yearly
return of the fair of St. Bartholomew. Cards were
THE PRATSE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 191
issued a week before to the master-sweeps in and
about the metropohs, confining the invitation to their
younger fry. Now and then an elderly stripling would
get in among us, and be good-naturedly winked at ;
but our main body were infantry. One unfortunate
wight, indeed, who, relying upon his dusky suit, liad
intruded himself into our party, but by tokens was
providentially discovered in time to be no chimney-
sweeper, (all is not soot which looks so,) was quoited
out of the presence with universal mdignation, as not
having on the weddmg garment ; but in general the
greatest harmony prevailed. The place chosen was a
convenient spot among the pens, at the north side of
the fair, not so far distant as to be impervious to the
agreeable hubbub of that vanity ; but remote enough
not to be obvious to the interruption of every gaping
spectator in it. The guests assembled about seven. In
those little temporary parlors three tables were spread
with napery, not so fine as substantial, and at every
board a comely hostess presided with her pan of hissing
sausages. The nostrils of the young rogues dilated at
the savor. James White, as head waiter, had charge
of the first table ; and myself, with our tnisty com-
panion BiGOD, ordinarily ministered to the other two.
There was clambering and jostling, you may be sure,
who should get at the first table, — for Rochester in his
maddest days could not have done the humors of the
scene with more spii'it than my friend. After some
general expression of thanks for the honor the company
had done him, his inaugural ceremony was to clasp the
greasy waist of old dame Ursula (the fattest of the
three), that stood frying and fretting, half-blessing,
half-cursing " the gentleman," and imprint upon her
192 THE PRAISE OF CfflMNEY-S WEEPERS.
chaste lips a tender salute, whereat the universal host
would set up a shout that tore the concave, while
hundreds of grinnuig teeth startled the night with
their brightness. O it was a pleasure to see the sable
younkers lick in the unctuous meat, with his more
unctuous sayings, — how he would fit the titbits to
the puny mouths, reserving the lengthier links for the
seniors, — how he would intercept a morsel even in the
jaws of some young desperado, declaring it " must to
the pan again to be browned, for it was not fit for a
gentleman's eating," — how he would recommend this
slice of white bread, or that piece of kissing-crust, to
a tender juvenile, advising them all to have a care of
cracking their teeth, which were their best patrimony,
— how genteelly he would deal about the small ale, as
if it were wine, naming the brewer, and protesting, if
it were not good, he should lose their custom ; with a
special recommendation to wipe the lip before drink-
ins;. Then we had our toasts — " The Kino- !" — " the
Cloth," — which, whether they understood or not, was
equally diverting and flattering ; — and for a crowning
sentiment, which never failed, " May the Brush super-
sede the Laurel ! " All these, and fifty other fancies,
which were rather felt than comprehended by his
guests, would he utter, standing upon tables, and pref-
acing every sentiment with a " Gentlemen, give me
leave to propose so and so," which was a prodigious
comfort to those young orphans ; every now and then
stuffing into his mouth (for it did not do to be squeam-
ish on these occasions) indiscriminate pieces of those
reeking sausages, which pleased them miglitily, and
was the savoriest part, you may believe, of the enter-
tainment.
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 193
Golden lads and lasses mast.
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. —
James White is extinct, and with him these suppers
have long ceased. He carried away with him half the
fiin of the world when he died — of my world at least.
His old clients look for him among the pens ; and,
missing him, reproach the altered feast of St. Bartholo-
mew, and the glory of Smithfield departed forever
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS
IN THE METROPOLIS.
The all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation
— your only modern Alcides's club to rid the time of
its abuses — is uplift with many-handed sway to extir-
pate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear Men-
dicity from the metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags, —
staves, dogs, and crutches, — the whole mendicant
fraternity with all their baggage, are fast posting out *
of the purlieus of this eleventh persecution. From the
crowded crossing, from the comers of streets and turn-
ings of alleys, the partmg Genius of Beggary is " with
sighing sent."
I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this
impertment crusado, or helium ad exterminationem^ pro-
claimed against a species. Much good might be sucked
from these Beo-sars.
They were the oldest and the honorablest form of
pauperism. Theb appeals were to our common na
VOL.. III. 13
194 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS.
ture; less revolting to an ingenuous mind than to
be a suppliant to the particular humors or caprice of
any fellow-'^reature, or set of fellow-creatures, paro-
chial or societarian. Theirs were the only rates unin-
vidious in the levy, ungrudged in the assessment.
There was a dignity springing fi*om the very depth
of their desolation ; as to be naked is to be so much
nearer to the being a man, than to go in livery.
The greatest spirits have felt this in their revei'ses ;
and when Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster,
do we feel anything towards liim but contempt?
Could Vandyke have made a picture of him, swaying
a ferula for a sceptre, which would have affected our
minds with the same heroic pity, the same compassion-
ate admiration, with which we regard his Belisarius
beffo-ins: for an oholum f Would the moral have been
more graceful, more pathetic ?
The Blind Beggar in the legend — the father of
pretty Bessy — whose story doggerel rhymes and ale-
house signs cannot so degrade or attenuate, but that
some sparks of a lustrous spirit will shine through the
disguisements, — this noble Earl of Cornwall (as indeed
he was) and memorable sport of fortmie, fleeing fi-om
the unjust sentence of his hege lord, stript of all, and
seated on the flowering green of Bethnal, with liis more
fi-esh and springing daughter by his side, illumining his
t-ags and his beggary, — would the cliild and parent
have cut a better figm-e, doing the honors of a counter,
or expiating their fallen condition upon the three-foot
eminence of some sempstering shopboard ?
lu tale or histoiy your Beggar is ever the just anti-
pode to your King. The poets and romancical writers
(as dear Margaret Newcastle would call them), when
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 195
they would most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse
of fortune, never stop till they have brought down their
hero in good earnest to rags and the wallet. The
depth of the descent illustrates the height he falls from.
There is no medium which can be presented to the
imagination without offence. There is no breaking
the fall. Lear, thrown from his palace, must divest
him of his garments, till he answer " mere nature ; "
and Cresseid, fallen from a prince's love, must extend
her pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of beauty,
supplicating lazar alms with bell and clap-dish.
The Lucian wits knew this very well ; and, with a
converse policy, when they would express scorn of
greatness without the pity, they show us an Alexander
in the shades cobbhng shoes, or a Semiramis getting up
foul hnen.
How would it sound in song, that a great monarch
had declined his affections upon the daughter of a
baker 1 yet do we feel the imagination at all violated
when we read the " true ballad," where King Cophe-
tua woos the beggar maid ?
Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity,
but pity alloyed with contempt. No one properly con-
temns a beggar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and
each degree of it is mocked by its " neighbor grice."
Its poor rents and comings-in are soon summed up and
told. Its pretences to property are almost ludicrous.
Its pitiful attempts to save excite a smile. Every scorn-
ful companion can weigh his trifle-bigger purse against
it. Poor man reproaches poor man in the streets with
impolitic mention of his condition, his own being a
shade better, while the rich pass by and jeer at both.
Nrt rascally comparative insults a Beggar, or thinks of
196 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS
weighing purses with him. He is not in the scale of
comparison. He is not under the measure of property.
He confessedly hath none, any more than a dog or a
sheep. No one twitteth him with ostentation above his
means. No one accuses him of pride, or upbraideth
hun with mock humility. None jostle with him for the
wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No wealthy
neighbor seeketh to eject him fi'om his tenement. No
man sues him. No man goes to law with him. If I
were not the independent gentleman that I am, rather
than I would be a retainer to the great, a led captain,
or a poor relation, I would choose, out of the delicacy
and true greatness of my mind, to be a Beggar.
Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the
Beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession,
his tenure, his full dress, the suit in wliich he is ex-
pected to show himself m public. He is never out of
the fasliion, or hmpeth awkwardly behind it. He is
not required to put on court mourning. He weareth
all colors, fearino; none. His costume hath undergone
less change than the Quaker's. He is the only man in
the universe who is not obliged to study appearances.
The ups and downs of the world concern liim no
longer. He alone continueth in one stay. The price
of stock or land affecteth him not. The fluctuations
of agricultural or commercial prosperity touch him
not, or at worst but change his customers. He is not
expected to become bail or surety for any one. No
man troubleth him with questioning his religion or
politics. He is the only free man in the universe.
Tlie Mendicants of this great city were so many of
her sights, her lions. I can no more spare them than
I could the Cries of London. No corner of a street
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 197
is complete without them. They are as indispensable
as the Ballad Singer; and in their picturesque attire
as ornamental as the signs of old London. They were
the standing morals, emblems, mementos, dial-mottoes,
the spital sermons, the books for children, the salutary
checks and pauses to the high and rushing tide of
greasy citizenry, —
Look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there.
Above all, those old blind Tobits-that used to line the
wall of Lincoln's-Inn Garden, before modem fastid-
iousness had expelled them, casting up their ruined
orbs to catch a ray of pity, and (if possible) of light,
with their faithful Dog Guide at their feet, — wliither
are they fled ? or into what corners, blind as them-
selves, have they been driven, out of the wholesome
air and sun-warmth ? immersed between four walls, in
what withering poor-house do they endure the penalty
of double darkness, where the chink of the dropt half-
penny no more consoles their forlorn bereavement, far
from the sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring tread
of the passenger ? Where hang their useless staves ?
and who will farm their dogs ? — Have the overseers
of St. L — caused them to be shot ? or were they tied
up in sacks, and dropt into the Thames, at the sugges-
tion of B — , the mild rector of ?
Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne,
most classical, and at the same time, most English of
the Latinists ! — who has treated of this human and
qua«irupedal alliance, this dog and man fi'iendship, in
the sweetest of his poems, the E]jitaphiam in Canem^
or Dog's Epitaph. Reader, peruse it ; and say, if
customary sights, which could call up such gentle
198 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECaY OF BEGGARS.
poetiy as this, vrere of a nature to do more harm oi
good to the moral sense of the passengers through the
daily thorouglifares of a vast and busy metropolis.
Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis,
Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectaB,
Dux caeco fidus: nee, me ducente, solebat,
Praetenso hinc atque hine baculo, per iniqua locoram
Incertara explorare viam ; sed fila seeutus,
Qui5e dubios regerent passiis, vestigia tuta
Fixit inoffenso gressu; gelidumque sedile
In nudo nactus saxo, qua prfetereuntium
Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras
Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam.
Ploravit nee frustra; obolum dedit alter et alter,
Quels eorda et mentem indiderat natura benignam.
Ad latus interea jaeui sopitus herile,
Vel mediis vigil in somnis; ad berilia jussa
Auresque atque animum arreetus, seu frustula amio&
Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei
Tsedia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat.
Hi mores, hsc vita fuit, dum fata sinebant,
Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inerte senectik;
Quse tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite caeeum
Orbavit dominum: prisci sed gi-atia fiicti
Ne tota intereat, longos deleeta per anuos,
Exiguum hune Irus tumulura de cespite fecit,
Etsi inopis, non ingratse, munuscula dextrse;
Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemqne
Quod memoret, fidumque canem dominumque benigmiitt.
Poor Irus's faithful wolf-dog here I lie,
That wont to tend my old blind master's steps,
His guide and guard: nor, while ray service lasted,
Had he occasion for that staff, with which
He now goes picking out his path in fear
Over the highways and crossings; but would plant,
Safe in the conduct of my friendly string,
A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd
His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide
Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd:
To whom with loud and passionate laments
From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd.
Nor wail'd to all in vain: some here and there.
The well-disposed and good, their pennies gaT«
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 199
I meantime at his feet obsequious slept;
Not all-asleep iu sleep, but heart and ear
Prick'd up at his least motion; to receive
At his kind hand my customary crumbs,
And common portion in his feast of scraps;
Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent
With our long day and tedious beggary.
These were my manners, this my way of life,
Till age and slow disease me overtook,
And sever'd from my sightless master's side.
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die,
Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost.
This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared.
Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand.
And with short verse inscribed it, to attest,
In long and lasting union to attest.
The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog.
These dim eyes have in vain explored for some
months past a well-known figure, or part of the figure
of a man, who used to glide his comely upper half over
the pavements of London, wheehng along with most
ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood ; a spectacle
to natives, to foreigners, and to children. He was of a
robust make, with a florid sailor-like complexion, and
his head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was
a natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a
prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at the
mighty man brought down to his own level. The
common cripple would despise his own pusillanimity,
viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty heart, of this
half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him;
for the accident, which brought him low, took place
during the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling
so long. He seemed earthborn, an Antaeus, and to
suck in fresh vio-or from the soil which he neiolibored.
He was a grand fragment ; as good as an Elgin marble.
The natm'e, wliich should have recruited his reft legs
200 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS.
and thighs, was not lost, but only retired into his upper
parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a tremen-
dous voice thundering and growling, as before an earth-
quake, and casting down my eyes, it was this mandrake
reviling a steed that had started at his portentous ap-
pearance. He seemed to want but his just stature to
have rent the offending quadruped in shivers. He was
as the mau'-part of a centaur, from which the horse-half
had been cloven in some du'e Lapithan controversy.
He moved on, as if he could have made shift with yet
half of the body-portion which was left him. The os
sublime was not wanting ; and he threw out yet a jolly
countenance upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years
had he driven this out-of-door trade ; and noAV that his
hair is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no
way impaired, because he is not content to exchange
his free air and exercise for the restraints of a poor-
house, he is expiating his contumacy in one of those
houses (ironically christened) of Correction.
Was a daily spectacle like tliis to be deemed a nui-
sance, which called for legal interference to remove ? or
not rather a salutary and a touching object, to the pas-
sers-by in a great city ? Among her shows, her muse-
ums, and supplies for ever-gaping curiosity, (and what
else but an accumulation of sight — endless sights — is
a great city ; or for what else is it desirable ?) was thei'e
not room for one Lusus (not Naturce^ indeed, but)
Accidentium ? What if in forty-and-two years' going
about, the man had scraped together enough to give a
portion to his child, (as the rumor ran,) of a few hun-
dreds, — whom had he injured ? — Avhom had he im-
posed upon ? The contributors had enjoyed their sight
for their tDennies. What if after being exposed all day
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 201
to the heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven, — shuf-
fling his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and pain-
ful motion, — he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy
himself at a club of his fellow cripples over a dish of
hot meat and vegetables, as the charge was gravely
brought against him by a clergyman deposing before a
House of Commons' Committee, — was this, or was his
truly paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved
a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is inconsistent
at least with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which
he has been slandered with, — a reason that he should
be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay, edifying way
of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy
Tagabond ?
There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have
shamed to have sat down at the cripples' feast, and to
have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite too,
for a companionable symbol. " Age, thou hast lost thy
breed."
Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes
made by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calum-
nies. One was much talked of in the public papers
some time since, and the usual charitable inferences
deduced. A clerk in the bank was surprised with the
announcement of a five-hundred-pound legacy left him
by a person whose name he was a stranger to. It seems
that in his daily morning walks from Peckham (or
some village thereabouts) where he lived, to his office,
it had been his practice for the last twenty years to
drop his half-penny duly into the hat of some blind
Bartimeus, that sat begging alms by the way-side in
the Borough. The good old beggar recognized his
daily benefactor by the voice only ; and, when he d«ed,
202 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BJiGGARs.
left all tlie amassings of his alms (that had been half a
century perhaps in the accumulating), to his old bank
friend. Was this a story to purse up people's hearts,
and pennies, agamst giving an alms to the blmd ? — or
not rather a beautiful moral of well-directed charity
on the one part, and noble gratitude upon the other?
I sometimes wish I had been that bank clerk.
I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of crea-
ture, blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the
sun.
Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against
him?
Perhaps I had no small change.
Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, im-
position, imposture — give^ and ask no questions. Cast
thy bread upon the waters. Some have unawares (like
this bank clerk) entertained angels.
Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted
distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor
creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before
thee, do not stay to inquire whether the " seven small
children," in whose name he implores thy assistance,
have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels
of unwelcome truth, to save a half-penny. It is good
to believe him. If he be not all that he pretendeth,
give, and under a personate father of a family, think
(if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent
bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit
looks, and mumping tones, tlnnk them players. You
pay your money to see a comedian feign these things,
wIhoIi, concerning these poor people, thou canst not
certainly tell whether they are feigned or not.
A DISSERTATION UPON KOAST PIG. 203
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.
Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my
fiiend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to
me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat
raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as
they do m Abyssinia to this day. This period is not
obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the
second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he
designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang,
literally the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes on
to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling
(which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally
discovered in the manner following : The swineherd,
Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as
his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his
cottage in the care of his eldest son, Bo-bo, a great
lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as
younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks
escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly,
spread the conflagration over every part of their poor
mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with
the cottage, (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a build-
ing, you may think it,) what was of much more im-
portance, a fine fitter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than
nine in number, perished. China pigs have been es-
teemed a luxwry all over the East, from the remotest
periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost con-
sternation, as you may think, not so much for the -sake
of the tenement, which his father and he could easily
build up again with a few diy branches, and the labor
204 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.
of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the
pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to
his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking
remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odor
assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had
before experienced. What could it proceed from ? —
not fi'om the burnt cottage, — he had smelt that smell
before, — indeed this was by no means the first accident
of the kind which had occurred through the negligence
of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it
resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A
premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed
his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next
stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of
life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he
applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some
of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away
with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the
world's life indeed, for before him no man had known
it) he tasted — crackling ! Again he felt and fiimbled
at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he
licked his fino-ers fi^om a sort of habit. The truth at
length broke into his slow understanding, that it was
the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so deli-
cious ; and surrendering himself up to the new-born
pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the
scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming
it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire
entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retribu-
tory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to
rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, as thick
as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than
if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which he
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 205
experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him
quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in
those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but
he could not beat him fi'om his pig, till he had fairly
made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sen-
sible of his situation, something like the following dia-
logue ensued.
" You graceless whelp, what have you got there
devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt
me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be
hanged to you ! but you must be eating fire, and I
know not what ; — what have you got there, I say ? "
" O father, the pig, the pig ! do come and taste how
nice the burnt pig eats."
The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed
his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget
a son that should eat burnt pig.
Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since
morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rend-
ing it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into
the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, " Eat, eat, eat the
burnt pig, father, only taste ; O Lord ! " — with such-
like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as
if he would choke.
Ho-ti trembled eveiy joint while he gi'asped the
abominable thing, wavering whether he should not
put his son to death for an unnatural young monster,
when the crackling scorchino; his fino-ers, as it had done
his son's and applying the same remedy to them, he in
his turn tasted some of its flavor, which, make what
sour mouths he would for a pretence, proved not alto-
gether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the
manuscnpt here is a little tedious) both father anc?
206 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.
son fairly set dovra to the mess, and never left off till
tliey had despatched all that remained of the litter.
Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret es-
cape, for the neighbors would certainly have stoned
them for a couple of abommable wretches, who could
think of improving upon the good meat which God had
sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got about.
It was observed that Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down
now more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires
from tliis time forward. Some would break out in
broad day, others in the night time. As often as the
sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a
blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remark-
able, instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more
indulgent to him than ever. At length they were
watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father
and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an
inconsiderable assize town. E-vadence was given, the
obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict
about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury
begged that som<3 of the burnt pig, of which the cul-
prits stood accused, might be handed into the box.
He handled it, and they all handled it ; and burning
their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before
them, and nature prompting to each of them the same
remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the
clearest charge which judge had ever given, — to the
surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, re-
porters, and all present, — without leaving the box, or
any manner of consultation whatever, they brought iu
a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty.
The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the
manifest iniquity of the decision ; and when the court
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 207
was dismissed, went privily, and bought up all the pigs
that could be had for love or money. In a few days
his Lordship's town-house was observed to be on fire.
The thino; took wincr, and now there was nothing to be
seen but fire in every cUrection. Fuel and pigs grew
enormously dear all over the district. The insurance
offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter
and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very
science of architecture would in no long time be lost to
the world. Thus tliis custom of firing houses con-
tinued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a
sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discoveiy, that
the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might
be cooked (burnt, as they called it) without the neces-
sity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first
began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the
string or spit came in a century or two later ; I forget
in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes
the manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the
most obvious arts make their way among man-
kind.
Without placing too implicit faith in the account
above given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy pre-
text for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses
on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in
favor of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse
might be found in roast pig.
Of all the deh^acies in the whole mundus edihilis^
I will maintain it to be the most delicate — prineeps
obsoniorum.
I speak not of your grown porkers — things between
pig and pork — those hobbydehoys — but a young and
tender suckling — under a moon old — guiltless as ye<
208 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.
of the sty — with no original speck of the armr immwnr
ditice^ the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet
manifest — his voice as yet not broken, but something
between a childish treble and a grumble — the mild
forerunner, or prceludium of a grunt.
Se must he roasted. I am not ignorant that our an
cestors ate them seethed, or boiled, — but what a sacri-
fice of the exterior temiment !
There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to
that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-
roasted, crackling^ as it is well called, — the very teeth
are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet
in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance, — with the ad-
hesive oleao-inous — O call it not fat ! but an indefin-
able sweetness growing up to it, — the tender blossom-
ing of fat — fat cropped in the bud — taken in the
shoot — in the first innocence — the cream and quintes-
sence of the child-pig's yet pure food, the lean, no
lean, but a kind of animal manna, — or, rather, fat and
lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into
each other, that both together make but one ambrosian
result, or common substance.
Behold him, while he is " doing " — it seemeth rather
a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is
so passive to. How equably he twirleth round the
string ! Now he is just done. To see the extreme
sensibility of that tender age ! he hath wept out his
pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shooting stars.
See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he
lieth ! — wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up
to the grossness and indocility which too often accom-
pany maturer swinehood ? Ten to one he would liave
proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 2u9
animal — wallowing in all manner of filthy convei'sa-
tion, — from these sins he is happily snatched away, —
Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely care —
his memory is odoriferous, — no clown curseth, while
his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon, — no coal-
heaver bolteth him in reeking sausages, — he hath a fair
sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epi-
cure, — and for such a tomb might be content to die.
He is the best of sapors. Pineapple is great. She
is indeed almost too transcendent — a delight, if not
sinful, yet so like to sinning that really a tender con-
scienced person would do well to pause — too ravishing
for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips
that approach her — like lovers' kisses, she biteth —
she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness
and insanity of her relish — but she stoppeth at the
palate — she meddleth not with the appetite — and the
coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for a
mutton chop.
Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provoca-
tive of the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the criti-
calness of the censorious palate. The strong man may
batten on him, and the weakling refiiseth not his mild
juices.
Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of
virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to
be unravelled without hazard, he is — good throughout.
No part of him is better or worse than another. lie
helpeth, as far as his little means extend, all around.
He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neigh-
bors's fare.
VOL. III. 14
210 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.
I am one of those, who freely and ungrudgingly im-
part a share of the good things of this life which fall to
their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I
protest I take as great an interest in my friend's pleas-
ures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine
own. " Presents," I often say, " endear Absents."
Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens,
(those " tame villatic fowl,") capons, plovers, brawn,
barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive
them. I love to taste them, as it were, upon the
tongue of my friend. But a stop must be put some-
where. One would not, like Lear, " give everything.'*
I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingrati-
tude to the Giver of all good flavors, to extra-domicili-
ate, or send out of the house, slightingly, (under pre-
text of friendship, or I know not what,) a blessing so
particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my in-
dividual palate — It argues an insensibility.
I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at
school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me
at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat,
or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me
one evening with a smoking plum-cake fi'esh fi'om the
oven. In my way to school (it was over London
bridge) a grayheaded old beggar saluted me (I have
no doubt, at this time of day, that he was a counter-
feit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the
vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity,
schoolboy-like, I made him a present of — the whole
cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on
Buch occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfac-
tion ; but before I had got to the end of the bridge, my
better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, think-
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 211
ing how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go
and give her good gift away to a stranger that I had
never seen before, and who might be a bad man for
aught I knew ; and then I thought of the pleasure my
aunt would be taking in thinking that I — I myself,
and not another — would eat her nice cake, — and what
should I say to her the next time I saw her, — how
naughty I was to part with her pretty present ! — and
the odor of that spicy cake came back upon my recol-
lection, and the pleasure and the cui'iosity I had taken
in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it to
the oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I
had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last, — and I
blamed my impertinent spirit of alms-giving, and out-
of-place hypocrisy of goodness ; and above all I wished
never to see the face again of that insidious, good-for-
nothing, old gray impostor.
Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacri-
ficing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to
death with something of a shock, as we hear of any
other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone
by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical
light merely) what effect this process might have tow-
ards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, natu-
rally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It
looks like refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious,
while we condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the
wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto.
I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the
yorng students, when I was at St. Omer's, and main-
tained with much learning and pleasantry on both
sides, " Wh3ther, supposing that the flavor of a pig
who obtained his death by whipping Qper fiagellationem
212 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF
extremam'), superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a
man more intense than any possible suffering we can
conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that
method of putting the animal to death ? " I forget
the decision.
His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few
bread-crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a
dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I
beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your
whole hogs to your palate, steep them m shalots, stuff
them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic;
you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than
they are, — but consider, he is a weakling — a flower.
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOR
OF MARRIED PEOPLE.
As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my
time in noting down the infirmities of Married People,
to console myself for those superior pleasures, which
they tell me I have lost by remaining as I am.
I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their
wives ever made any great impression upon me, or had
much tendency to strengthen me in those anti-social
resolutions, which I took up long ago upon more sub-
stantial considerations. What oftenest offends me at
the houses; of married persons where I visit, is an error
of quite a different description ; — it is that they are too
lovinff.
THE BEHAVIOR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 213
Not too loving neither ; that does not explain my
oieaning. Besides, why should that offend me ? The
very act of separating themselves from the rest of the
world, to have the fuller enjoyment of each other's
society, implies that they prefer one another to all the
world.
But what I complain of is, that they carry this pref-
erence so undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces
of us single people so shamelessly, you cannot be in
their company a moment without being made to feel,
by some indirect hint or open avowal, that you are not
the object of this preference. Now there are some
tilings which give no offence, while implied or taken for
granted merely ; but expressed, there is much offence
in them. If a man were to accost the first homely-
featured, or plain- dressed young woman of his acquaint-
ance, and tell her bluntly, that she was not handsome
or rich enough for him, and he could not marry her,
he would deserve to be kicked for his ill manners ; yet
no less is implied in the fact, that having access and op-
portunity of putting the question to her, he has never
yet thought fit to do it. The young woman under-
stands this as clearly as if it were put into words ; but
no reasonable young woman would think of making
this the ground of a quarrel. Just as little right have
a married couple to tell me by speeches, and looks that
are scarce less plain than speeches, that I am not the
happy man, — the lady's choice. It is enough that I
know I am not ; I do not want this perpetual remind-
ing-
The display of superior knowledge or riches may be
made sufficiently mortifying ; but these admit of a
palhative. The knowledge which is brought out to
214 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF
insult me, may accidentally improve me ; and in the
rich man's houses and pictures, — his parks and gar-
dens, I have a temporary usufruct at least. But the
display of married happiness has none of these pallia-
tives ; it is throughout pm-e, unrecompensed, unquali-
fied insult.
Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of
the least in-\adious sort. It is the cunning of most pos-
sessors of any exclusive privilege to keep their advan-
tage as much out of sight as possible, that their less
favored neighbors, seeing little of the benefit, may the
less be disposed to question the right. But these mar-
ried monopolists thrust the most obnoxious part of their
patent into our faces.
Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire
complacency and satisfaction which beam in the coun-
tenances of a new-married couple, — in that of the
lady particularly ; it tells you, that her lot is disposed
of in this world ; that you can have no hopes of her.
It is true, I have none ; nor wishes either, perhaps ; but
this is one of those truths which ought, as I said before,
to be taken for granted, not expressed.
The excessive airs which those people give them-
selves, founded on the ignorance of us unmarried
people, would be more offensive if they were less in*a-
tional. We will allow them to understand the mys-
teries belongino; to their own craft better than we, who
have not had the happiness to be made free of the com-
pany ; but their aiTogance is not content within these
limits. If a single person presume to offer his opinion
in their presence, though upon the most indifferent
iubject, he is immediately silenced as an incompetent
person. Nay, a young mai'ried lady of my acquaint-
THE BEHAVIOR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 215
ance, who, the best of the jest was, had not changed
her condition above a fortnight before, in a question on
which I had the misfortune to differ from her, respect-
ing the properest mode of breeding oysters for the
London market, had the assurance to ask with a sneer,
how such an old bachelor as I could pretend to know
anything about such matters !
But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to
the airs which these creatures give themselves when
they come, as they generally do, to have children.
Wlien I consider how little of a rarity children are, —
that every street and blind alley swarms with them, —
that the poorest people commonly have them in most
abimdance, — that there are few marriages that are not
blest with at least one of these bargains, — how often
they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their
parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in pov-
erty, disgrace, the gallows, &c., — I cannot for my life
tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in hav-
ing them. If they were young phoenixes, indeed, that
were born but one in a year, there might be a pretext.
But when they are so common
I do not advert to the insolent merit which they
assume with their husbands on these occasions. Let
them look to that. But why we, who are not their
natural-born subjects, should be expected to bring our
spices, myrrh, and incense, — our tribute and homage
of admiration, — I do not see.
" Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant even
so are the young children;" so says the excellent office
pin our Prayer-Book appointed for the churching of
women. " Happy is the man that hath his quiver full
of them ; " so say I ; but then don't let him dis-
216 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF
charge his quiver upon us that are weaponless ; — let
them be arrows, but not to gall and stick us. 1 have
generally observed that these arrows are double-headed :
they have two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the
other. As for instance, where you come into a house
which is full of children, if you happen to take no
notice of them, (you are thinking of something else,
perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their innocent caresses,)
you are set down as untractable, morose, a hater of
children. On the other hand, if you find them more
than usually engaging, — if you are taken with their
pretty manners, and set about in earnest to romp and
play with them, some pretext or other is sure to be
found for sending them out of the room ; they are too
noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does not like children .
With one or other of these forks the arrow is sure to
hit you.
I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with toy-
ing with their brats, if it gives them any pain ; but I
think it unreasonable to be called upon to love them,
where I see no occasion, — to love a whole family,
perhaps, eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately, — to love
all the pretty dears, because childi-en are so engaging!
I know there is a proverb, " Love me, love my
dog ; " that is not always so very practicable, particu-
larly if the dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at
you in sport. But a dog, or a lesser thing, — any in-
animate substance, as a keepsake, a watch or a ring, a
tree, or the place where we last parted when my fiiend
went away upon a long absence, I can make shift to
love, because I love him, and anything that reminds me
of him ; provided it be in its nature indifferent, and apt
to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. But chil
THF BEHAVIOR OF MARRIKD PEOPLE. 217
dren have a real character, and an essential being of
themselves ; they are amiable or unamiable j^gr se ; I
must love or hate them as I see cause for either in their
qualities. A child's nature is too serious a thing to
admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to
another being, and to be loved or hated accordingly ;
they stand with me upon their own stock, as much as
men and women do. Oh ! but you will say, sure it is
an attractive age, — there is sometliing in the tender
years of infancy that of itself charms us ? That is the
very reason why I am more nice about them. I know
that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not
even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them ;
but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desir-
able it is that it should be pretty of its kind. One
daisy differs not much from another in glory; but a
violet should look and smell the daintiest. I was
always rather squeamish in my women and children.
But this is not the worst ; one must be admitted
mto their familiarity at least, before they can complain
of inattention. It implies visits, and some kind of in-
tercourse. But if the husband be a man with Avhom
you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage —
if you did not come in on the wife's side — if you did
not sneak into the house in her train, but were an old
friend in fast habits of intimacy before their courtship
was so much as thought on, — look about you — your
tenure is precarious — before a twelvemonth shall roll
over your head, you shall find your old friend gradually
grow cool and altered towards you, and at last seek op
portunities of breaking with you. I have scarce a
married friend of my acquaintance, upon whose firm
faith I can rely, whose friendship did not commence
218 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF
after the period of Jus marriage. With some Ihnita-
tions, they can endure that; but tliat the good man
should have dared to enter into a solemn league of
friendship in which they were not consulted, though it
happened before they knew him, — before they that are
now man and wife ever met, — this is intolerable to
them. Every long fi'iendship, every old authentic inti-
macy, must be brought into their office to be new
stamped with their currency, as a sovereign prince calls
in the good old money that was coined in some reign
before he was born or thought of, to be new marked
and minted Avith the stamp of his authority, before he
will let it pass current in the world. You may guess
what luck generally befalls such a nisty piece of metal
as I am in these new mintings.
Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult
and worm you out of their husband's confidence.
Laughing at all you say with a kind of wonder, as
if you were a queer kind of fellow that said good
things, hut an oddity., is one of the ways ; — they have
a particular kind of stare for the purpose ; — till at last
the husband, who used to defer to your judgment, and
would pass over some excrescences of understanding
and manner for the sake of a general vein of obser-
vation (not quite vulgar) which he perceived in you,
begins to suspect whether you are not altogether a
humorist, — a fellow well enough to have consorted
with in his bachelor days, but not quite so proper to be
introduced to ladies. This may be called the staring
way ; and is that which has oftenest been put in prac-
tice against me.
Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of
irony ; that is, where they find you an object of es])e-
THE BEHAVIOR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 219
cial regard with their liusLand, who is not so easily 1o
be sliaken from the lasting attachment founded on
esteem which he has conceived towards you, by never
qualified exaggerations to cry up all that you say or do,
till the good man, who understands well enough that it
is all done in compliment to him, grows weary of the
debt of gratitude which is due to so much candor, and
by relaxing a little on his part, and taking down a peg
or two in his enthusiasm, sinks at length to the kindly
level of moderate esteem — that " decent affection and
complacent kindness " towards you, where she herself
can join in sympathy with him without much stretch
and violence to her sincerity.
Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish
so desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of
innocent simplicity, continually to mistake what it was
which first made their husband fond of you. If an
esteem for something excellent in your moral character
was that which riveted the chain which she is to break,
upon any imaginary discovery of a want of poignancy
in your conversation, she will cry, " I thought, my
dear, you described your friend, Mr. , as a great
wit?" If, on the other hand, it was for some supposed
charm in your conversation that he first grew to like
you, and was content for this to overlook some trifling
irregularities in your moral deportment, upon the first
notice of any of these she as readily exclaims, " This,
my dear, is your good Mr. ! " One good lady
whom I took the liberty of expostulating with for not
showing me quite so much respect as I thought due to
her husband's old friend, had the candor to confess to
me that she had often heard jVIr. s])eak of me
before marriage, and that she had conceived a great
22U A BACHELORS COMPLAINT, ETC.
desire to be acquainted with me, but that the sight of
me had very much disappointed her expectations ; for
from her liusband's representations of me, she had
formed a notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officer-
like looking man, (I use her very words,) the very
reverse of which proved to be the truth. This was
candid ; and I had the civility not to ask her in return,
how she came to pitch upon a standard of personal
accomplishments for her husband's friends which dif-
fered so much from his own ; for my fi'iend's dimen-
sions as near as possible approximate to mine ; he stand-
ing five feet five in his shoes, in wdiich I have the
advantage of him by about half an inch ; and he no
more than myself exhibiting any indications of a
martial character in his air or countenance.
These are some of the mortifications Avhich I have
encountered in the absurd attempt to visit at their
houses. To enumerate them all would be a vain en-
deavor ; I shall therefore just glance at the very com
mon impropriety of which married ladies are guilty, —
of treating us as if we were their husbands, and vice
versd. I mean, when they use us with familiarity, and
their husbands with ceremony. Testaeea, for instance,
kept me the other night two or three hours beyond my
usual time of supping, while she was fi'etting because
Mr. did not come home, till the oysters were
all spoiled, rather than she Avould be guilty of the im-
politeness of touching one in his absence. This was
reversing the point of good manners ; for ceremony is
an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we
derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of
love ard esteem with a fellow-creature than some other
person is. It endeavors to make up, by superior
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTOKS. 221
attentions in little points, for that invidious preference
which it is forced to deny in the greater. Had Tes-
tacea kept the oysters back for me, and withstood her
husband's importunities to go to supper, she would have
acted according to the strict rules of propriety. I know
no ceremony that ladies are bound to observe to their
husbands, beyond the point of a modest behavior and
decorum ; therefore I must protest against the vicanous
gluttony of Cet'asia, who at her own table sent away a
dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great
good-will, to her husband at the other end of the table,
and recommended a plate of less extraordinary goose-
berries to my unwedded palate in their stead. Neither
can I excuse the wanton affront of •
But I am weary of stringing up all my married ac-
quaintance by Roman denominations. Let them amend
and change their manners, or I promise to record the
full-length English of their names, to the terror of all
such desperate offenders in future.
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.
The casual sight of an old playbill, which I picked
up the other day — I know not by what chance it was
preserved so long — tempts me to call to mind a few of
the players, who make the principal figure in it. It
presents the cast of parts in the Twelfth Night, at the
old Drury Lane Theatre, two-and-thirty years ago.
There is something very touching in these old remem-
222 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.
brances. They make us think liow we once used to
read a playbill, — not, as now perad venture, singling
out a favorite performer, and casting a negligent eye
over the rest ; but spelling out every name, down to
the very mutes and servants of the scene ; — when it
was a matter of no siuall moment to us whether Whit-
field, or Packer, took the })art of Fabian ; when Ben-
son, and Burton, and Phillimore — names of small
account — had an importance, beyond what we can
be content to attribute now to the time's best actors.
" Orsino, by Mr. Barrymore. " What a fiill Shak-
spearian sound it carries ! how fresh to memory arise
the image, and the manner of the gentle actor !
Those who have only seen Mrs. Jordan within the
last ten or fifteen years, can have no adequate notion of
her performance of such parts as Ophelia ; Helena, in
All's Well that Ends Well ; and Viola in this play.
Her voice had latterly acquired a coarseness, which
suited well enough with her Nells and Hoydens, but in
those days it sank, with her steady melting eye, into
the heart. Her joyous parts — in which her memory
now chiefly lives — in her youth were outdone by her
plaintive ones. There is no giving an account how
she delivered the disguised story of her love for Orsino,
It was no set speech, that she had foreseen, so as to
weave it into an harmonious period, line necessarily
following line, to make up the music, — yet I have
heard it so spoken, or rather read^ not without its grace
and beauty, — but, when she had declared her sister's
history to be a " blank," and that she " never told her
love," there was a pause, as if the story had ended, —
and then the image of the " worm in the bud," came
up as a new suggestion, — and the heightened image of
ON SOME OF THK Oi>D ACTORS. 223
" Patience " still followed after that, as by some grow-
ing (and not meclianieal) process, thought springing
up after thought, I would almost say, as they were
watered by her tears. So in those fine lines —
Write loyal cantos of contemned love —
Hollow your name to the reverberate hills —
there was no preparation made in the foregoi)ig image
for that which was to follow. She used no rhetoi'ic in
her passion ; or it was nature's own rhetoric, most legit-
imate then, when it seemed altogether without rule or
law.
Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Renard), then in the pride
of her beauty, made an admirable Olivia. She Avas
particularly excellent in her unbending scenes in con-
versation with the Clown. I have seen some Olivias
— and those very sensible actresses too — who in these
interlocutions have seemed to set their wits at the
jester, and to vie conceits with him in downright
emulation. But she used him for her sport, like what
he was, to trifle a leisure sentence or two with, and
then to be dismissed, and she to be the Great Lady
still. She touched the imperious fantastic humor of
the character with nicety. Her fine spacious person
filled the scene.
The part of Malvolio has, in my judgment, been so
often misunderstood, and the general merits of the
actor, who then played it, so unduly appreciated, that
I shall hope for pardon, if I am a little prolix ujion
these points.
Of all the actors who flourished in my time, — a
melancholy phrase if taken aright, reader, — Bcnsley
had most of the swell of soul, was greatest in the
224 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.
delivery of heroic conceptions, the emotions consequent
upon the presentment of a great idea to the fancy. He
had the true poetical enthusiasm — the I'arest faculty
among players. None that I remember possessed even
a portion of that fine madness which he threw out in
Hotspur's famous rant about glory, or the transports of
the Venetian incendiary at the vision of the fired city.
His voice had the dissonance, and at times the inspirit-
ing effect, of the trumpet. His gait was uncouth and
stiff, but no way embarrassed by affectation ; and
the thorough-bred gentleman was uppermost in every
movement. He seized the moment of passion with
greatest truth ; like a faithful clock, never striking be-
fore the time ; never anticipating or leading you to
anticipate. He was totally destitute of trick and arti-
fice. He seemed come upon the stage to do the poet's
message simply, and he did it with as genuine fidelity
as the nuncios in Homer deliver the errands of the
gods. He let the passion or the sentiment do its own
work without prop or bolstering. He would have
scorned to mountebank it ; and betrayed none of that
cleverness which is the bane of serious acting. For this
reason, his lago was the only endurable one Avhich I
remember to have seen. No spectator from his action
could divine more of his artifice than Othello was sup-
posed to do. His confessions in soliloquy alone put you
in possession of the mystery. There were no by-inti-
mations to make the audience fancy tlieir own discern-
ment so much greater than that of the Moor — Avho
commonly stands like a great helpless mark set up for
mine Ancient, and a quantity of barren sjiectators, to
shoot their bolts at. The lago of Bensley did not go
to work so grossly. There was a triumphant tone
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 225
about the character, natural to a general consciousness
of power ; but none of that petty vanity which chuckles
and cannot contain itself upon any little successful
stroke of its knavery — as is common with your small
villains, and green probationers in mischief. It did not
clap or crow before its time. It was not a man setting
his wits at a child, and winking all the while at other
children who are mightily pleased at being let into the
secret ; but a consummate villain entrapping a noble
nature into toils, against which no discernment was
available, where the manner was as fathomless as the
purpose seemed dark, and without motive. The part
of Malvollo, in the Twelfth Night, was performed by
Bensley with a richness and a dignity, of which (to
judge from some recent castings of that cliaracter) the
very tradition must be worn out from the stage. No
manager in those days would have dreamed of giving
it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. Parsons ; when Bensley
was occasionally absent from the theatre, John Kemble
thought it no derogation to succeed to the part. Mal-
volio is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes comic
but by accident. He is cold, austere, repelling ; but
dignified, consistent, and, for what appears, rather of an
over-stretched morality. Maria describes him as a
sort of Puritan ; and he might have worn his gold
chain with honor in one of our old round head families,
in the service of a Lambert or a Lady Fairfax. But
his morality and his manncis are misplaced in Illyria.
He is opposed to the proper levities of the piece, and
falls in the unequal contest. Still his pride, or his
gravity (call it which you will), is inherent, and
native to the man, not mock or affected, which latter
only are the fit objects to excite laughter. His quality
VOL. III. 15
226 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.
is at the best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor con-
temptible. His bearing is lofty, a little above hia
station, but probably not much above his deserts. We
see no reason why he should not have been brave,
honorable, accomplished. His careless committal of the
ring to the ground (which he was commissioned to
restore to Cesario), bespeaks a generosity of birth and
feeling. His dialect on all occasions is that of a gentle-
man, and a man of education. We must not confound
him with the eternal old, low steward of comedy. He
is master of the household to a great princess ; a dignity
probably conferred upon him for other respects than age
or length of service. Olivia, at the first indication of
his supposed madness, declares that she " would not
have him miscarry for half of her dowry." Does this
look as if the character was meant to appear little or
insignificant ? Once, indeed, she accuses him to his
face — of what ? — of being " sick of self-love," — but
with a gentleness and considerateness which could not
have been, if she had not thought that this particular
infirmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke to the
knight, and his sottish revellers, is sensible and spir-
ited ; and when we take into consideration the unpro-
tected condition of his mistress, and the strict regard
with which her state of real or dissembled mourning
would draw the eyes of the world u})on her house
affairs, Malvolio might feel the honor of the family in
some sort in his keeping ; as it appears not that Olivia
had any more brothers, or kinsmen, to look to it, — for
Sir Toby had dropped all such nice respects at the
butteiy-hatch. That Malvolio was meant to be repre-
sented as possessing estimable qualities, the expression
of the Duk(;, in his anxiety to have him reconciled,
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 227
almost infers : " Pursue him, and entreat him to a
peace." Even in his abused state of chains and dark-
ness, a sort of greatness seems never to desert him.
He argues higlily and well with the supposed Sir
Topas, and philosophizes gallantly upon his straw.*
There must have been some shadow of worth about
the man ; he must have been something more than a
mere vapor — a thing of straw, or Jack in office —
before Fabian and Maria could have ventured sending
him upon a courting errand to Olivia. There was
some consonancy (as he would say) in the undertak-
ing, or the jest would have been too bold even for that
house of misrule.
Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part an air of
Spanish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like
an old Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opinionated,
but his superstnicture of pride seemed bottomed upon
a sense of worth. There Avas something in it beyond
the coxcomb. It was big and sAvelling, but you could
not be sure that it was hollow. You mio;ht wish to see
it taken down, but you felt that it was upon an eleva-
tion. He was magnificent from the outset ; but when
the decent sobrieties of the character began to give way,
and the poison of self-love, in his conceit of the Count-
ess's affection, gradually to work, you would have
thought that the hero of La Mancha in person stood
before you. How he went smiling to himself! with
what ineffable carelessness would he twirl his gold
chain ! what a dream it was ! you were infected with
the illusion, and did not wish that it should be re-
* Cloum. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?
Mai. That the soul of our grandatn might haply inhabit a bird.
down. What thinkest thou of his opinion?
Mai. I think noWy of the soul, and no way approve of his opinioD.
228 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.
movod ! you had no room for laughter ! if an unseason-
able reflection of morality obtruded itself, it was a deep
sense of the pitiable infirmity of man's nature, that can
lay him open to such frenzies, — but in truth you rather
admired than pitied the lunacy while it lasted, — you
felt that an hour of such mistake was worth an age
with the eyes open. Who would not wish to live but
for a day in the conceit of such a lady's love as Olivia ?
Why, the Duke would have given his principality but
for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or waking, to have
been so deluded. The man seemed to tread upon air,
to taste manna, to walk with his head in the clouds, to
mate Hyperion. O ! shake not the castles of his pride,
— endure yet for a season, bright moments of confi-
dence, — " stand still, ye watches of the element," that
Malvolio may be still in fancy fair Olivia's lord ! — but
fate and retribution say no ! — I hear the mischievous
titter of Maria, — the witty taunts of Sir Toby — the
still more insupportable triumph of the foolish knight
— the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked — and '' thus
the whirligig of time," as the true clown hath it,
" brincrs in his reveno;es." I confess that I never saw
the catastrophe of this character, while Bensley played
it, without a kind of tragic interest. There was good
foolery too. Few now remember Dodd. What an
Aguecheek the stage lost in him ! Lovegrove, who
came nearest to the old actors, revived the character
some few seasons ago, and made it sufficiently gro-
tesque ; but Dodd was it, as it came out of nature's
hands. It might be said to remain in puris 7iatiiralihas.
In expressing slowness of apprehension, this actor sur-
passed all others. You could see the first dawn of an
idea stealing slowly over his countenance, climbing up
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTOEiJ. 22'j
by little and little, with a painful process, till it cleared
up at last to the fulness of a twilight conception — its
highest meridian. He seemed to keep back his intel-
lect, as some have had the power to retard their pulsa-
tion. The balloon takes less time in filling, than it took
to cover the expansion of his broad moony face over all
its quarters with expression. A glimmer of understand-
ing would appear m a comer of his eye, and for lack of
fuel go out again. A part of his forehead would catch
a little intelligence, and be a lono- time in communicat-
ino; it to the remainder.
I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than
five-and-twenty years ago, that walking in the gardens
of Gray's Inn — they were then far finer than they are
now — the accursed Verulam Buildings had not en-
croached upon all the east side of them, cutting out
delicate green crankles, and shouldering away one of
two of the stately alcoves of the terrace, — the survivor
stands gaping and relationless as if it remembered its
brother, — they are still the best gardens of any of the
Inns of Court, my beloved Temple not forgotten, —
have the gravest character, their aspect being alto-
gether reverend and law-breathing, — Bacon has left
the impress of his foot upon their gravel walks ;
taking my afternoon solace on a summer day upon the
aforesaid terrace, a comely, sad personage came towards
me, whom, from his grave air and deportment, I judged
to be one of the old Benchers of the Inn. He had a
serious thoughtflil forehead, and seemed to be in medi-
tations of mortality. As I have an instmctive awe of
old Benchers, I was passing him with that sort of sub-
mdicative token of respect which one is apt to demon-
strate towards a venerable stranger, and wliicb rather
230 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.
denotes an inclination to greet him, than any positive
motion of the body to that effect, — a species of humil-
ity and will-worship which I observe, nine times out of
ten, rather puzzles than pleases the person it is offered
to — when the face turning full upon me, strangely
identified itself with that of Dodd. Upon close inspec-
tion I was not mistaken. But could this sad, thought-
ful countenance be the same vacant face of folly which
I had hailed so often under circumstances of gayety ;
which I had never seen without a smile, or recognized
but as the usher of mirth ; that looked out so formally
flat in Foppington, so frothily pert in Tattle, so impo-
tently busy in Backbite ; so blankly divested of all
meaning, or resolutely expressive of none, in Acres, in
Fribble, and a thousand agreeable impertinences ? Was
this the face, — full of thought and carefulness, — that
had so often divested itself at will of eveiy trace of
either to give me diversion, to clear my cloudy face for
two or three hours at least of its furrows ? Was this
the face — manly, sober, intelligent — which I had so
often despised, made mocks at, made merry with ? The
remembrance of the freedoms which I had taken with
it came upon me with a reproach of insult. I could
have asked it pardon. I thought it looked upon me
with a sense of injury. There is something strange as
well as sad in seeing actors — your pleasant fellows
particularly — subjected to and suffering the common
lot ; their fortunes, their casualties, their deaths, seem
io belong to the scene, their actions to be amenable tc
poetic justice only. We can hardly connect them with
more awful responsibilities. The death of this fine
actor took place shortly after this meeting. He had
quitted the stage some months ; and, as I learned
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 231
afterwards, had been in the habit of resorting daily to
these gardens ahnost to the day of his decease. In
these serious walks probably he was divesting himself
of many scenic and some real vanities, — weaning him-
self from the fi-ivolities of the lesser and the greater
theatre, — doing gentle penance for a life of no very
reprehensible fooleries, — taking off by degrees the
buffoon mask, which he might feel he had worn too
long, — and rehearsing for a more solemn cast of part.
Dying, he " put on the weeds of Dominic." *
If few can remember Dodd, many yet living will not
easily forget the pleasant creature, who in those days
enacted the part of the Clown to Dodd's Sir Andrew.
Richard, or rather Dicky Suett, — for so in his lifetime
he delighted to be called, and time hath ratified the
appellation, — lieth buried on the north side of the
cemetery of Holy Paul, to whose service his nonage
and tender years were dedicated. There are who do
yet remember him at that period, — his pipe clear and
harmonious. He would often speak of his chorister
days, when he was " cherub Dicky."
What clipped his wings, or made it expedient that
he should exchange the holy for the profane state;
whether he had lost his good voice (his best recom-
mendation to that office), like Sir John, " with halloo-
* Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice collection
of old English literature. I shcjuld judge him to have been a man of wit.
I know one instance of an impromptu which no length of study could
have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had seen him one evening
in Aguecheek, and recognizing Dodd the next day in Fleet Street, was
irresistibly impelled to take off his hat and salute him as the identical
Knight of the preceding evening with a " Save j'ou. Sir Amh-cic." Dodd,
not at all disconcerted at this imusual address from a stranger, with a
courteous half-rebuking wave of tb** hand, put him off with au " Away.
Fool."
232 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.
ing and singing of anthems ; " or whether he was
adjudged to lack something, even in those early years,
of the gravity indispensable to an occupation Avhich
professeth to " commerce with the skies, " — I could
never rightly learn ; but we find him, after the proba-
tion of a twelvemonth or so, reverting to a secular con-
dition, and become one of us.
I think he was not altogether of that timber out of
which cathedral seats and sounding-boards are hewed.
But if a glad heart — kind, and therefore glad — be
any part of sanctity, then might the robe of Motley,
with which he invested himself with so much humility
after his deprivation, and which he wore so long with
so much blameless satisfaction to himself and to the
public, be accepted for a sm'plice, — his white stole ana
alhe.
The first fruits of his secularization was an engage-
ment upon the boards of Old Drury, at which theatre
he commenced, as I have been told, with adopting the
manner of Parsons in old men's characters. At the
period in which most of us knew him, he was no more
an imitator than he was in any true sense liimself
imitable.
He was the Robin Goodfellow of the stage. He
came in to trouble all things with a welcome perplexity,
himself no whit troubled for the matter. He was
known, like Puck, by his note, — Ra ! Ha ! Ha ! —
sometimes deepening to Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! with an
irresistible accession, derived, perhaps, remotely from
his ecclesiastical education, foreign to his prototype of,
— 0 La ! Thousands of hearts yet respond to the
chuckling 0 La! of Dicky Suett, brought back to
then* remembrance by the faithful transcript of Jiis fiiend
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 233
Mathews's mimicry. The " force of nature could no
further go." He drolled upon the stock of these two
syllables richer than the cuckoo.
Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in
his composition. Had he had but two grains (nay,
half. a grain) of it, he could never have supported him-
self upon those two spider's strings, which served him
(in the latter part of his unmixed existence) as legs.
A doubt or a scruple must have made him totter, a
sigh have puifed him down ; the weight of a ft own
had staggered him, a wrinkle made him lose his bal-
ance. But on he went, scrambling upon those airy
stilts of his, with Robin Goodfellow, " thorough brake,
thorough briar," reckless of a scratched face or a torn
doublet.
Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed his fools
and jesters. They have all the true Suett stamp, a
loose and shambling gait, a slippery tongue, this last
the ready midwife to a without-pain-delivered jest ; in
words, light as air, venting truths deep as the centre ;
with idlest rhymes tagging conceit when busiest, sing-
ing with Lear in the tempest, or Sir Toby at the but-
tery-hatch.
Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of
personal favorites with the town than any actors before
or after. Tlie difference, I take it, was this : — Jack
was more beloved for his sweet, good-natured, moral
pretensions. Dicky was more liked for his sweet, good-
natured, no pretensions at all. Your whole conscience
stiiTed with Bannister's performance of Walter in the
Children in the Wood, — but Dicky seemed like a
thing, as Shakspeare says of Love, too young to know
what conscience is. He put us into Vesta's days.
234 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS
Evil fled before him, — not as from Jack, as from an
antagonist, — but because it could not touch liim, any
more than a cannon-ball a fly. He was delivered
from the burden of that death ; and, when death came
himself, not in metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it is recorded
of him by Robert Palmer, who kindly watched his exit,
that he received the last stroke, neither varying his
Accustomed tranquillity, nor tune, with the simple ex-
clamation, worthy to have been recorded in his epitaph
— OLa! OLa! Bohhy !
The elder Palmer (of stage-treading celebrity) com-
monly played Sir Toby in those days ; but there is a
solidity of wit in the jests of that half-Falstaff" which he
did not quite fill out. He was as much too showy as
Moody (who sometimes took the part) was dry and
sottish. In sock or buskin there was an air of swag-
gering gentility about Jack Palmer. He was a gentle-
man with a slight infusion of the footman. His brother
Bob (of recenter memory), who was his shadow in
everything while he lived, and dwindled into less than
a shadow afterwards, — was a gentleman with a little
stronger infusion of the latter ingredient ; that was all.
It is amazing how a little of the more or less makes a
difference in these things. When you saw Bobby in the
Duke's Servant,* you said, " What a pity such a pretty
fellow was only a servant ! " When you saw Jack
figuring in Captain Absolute, you thought you could
trace his promotion to some lady of quality who fancied
the handsome fellow in his topknot, and had bought
him a commission. Therefore Jack in Dick Amlet was
insuperable.
Jack had two voices, both plausible, hypocritical,
* High Life Below Stairs.
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 235
and Insinuating; but his secondary or supplemental
voice still more decisively histrionic than his common
one. It was reserved for the spectator ; and the dram-'
Otis personcB were supposed to know nothing at all
about it. The lies of Young Wilding, and the senti-
ments in Joseph Surface, were thus marked out in a
sort of italics to the audience. This secret correspond-
ence with the company before the curtain (which is the
bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely happy
effect in some kinds of comedy, in the more liighly
artificial comedy of Congreve or of Sheridan espec-
ially, where the absolute sense of reality (so indispen-
sable to scenes of interest) is not required, or would
rather interfere to diminish your pleasure. The fact is,
you do not believe in such characters as Surface, — the
villain of artificial comedy, — even while you read or
see them. If you did, they would shock and not divert
you. When Ben, in Love for Love, returns from sea,
the following exquisite dialogue occurs at his first meet-
ing with his father : —
Sir Sampson. Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben, since I saw
thee.
Ben. Ey, ey, been ! Been far enough, an' that be all. — Well, father,
and how do all at home? how does brother Dick, and brother Val?
Sir Sampson. Dick! body o' me, Dick has been dead these two years.
I writ you word when j'ou were at Leghorn.
Ben. Mess, that's true; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's dead, as you say,
— well, and how i* — 1 have a many questions to ask you.
Hei'e is an instance of insensibility which in real lifa
would be revolting, or rather in real life could not have
coexisted with the warm-hearted temperament of the
character. But when you read it in the spirit with
which such playful selections and specious combinations
rather than strict metaphrases of nature should be taken,
236 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.
or when you saw Bannister play it, it neither did, no*
does, wound the moral sense at all. For what is Ben
— the pleasant sailor which Bannister gives us — but a
piece of satire, — a creation of Congreve's fancy, — a
dreamy combination of all the accidents of a sailor's
character, — his contempt of money, — his credulity
to women, — with that necessary estrangement from
home which it is just within the verge of credibility to
suppose might produce such an hallucination as is here
described. We never think the worse of Ben for it, or
feel it as a stain upon his character. But when an
actor comes, and instead of the delightful phantom —
the creature dear to half-belief — w^hich Bannister ex-
hibited, — displays befoi'e our eyes a downright concre-
tion of a Wapping sailor — a jolly warm-hearted Jack
Tar — and nothing else — when, instead of investing it
with a delicious confusedness of the head, and a veer-
ing undirected goodness of purpose, — he gives to it a
downright daylight understanding, and a full conscious-
ness of its actions ; thrusting forward the sensibilities
of the character with a pretence as if it stood upon
nothing else, and was to be judged by them alone, —
we feel the discord of the thing ; the scene is dis-
turbed ; a real man has got in among the dramatu
personce^ and puts them out. We want the sailor
turned out. We feel that hif, true place is not behind
the curtain, but in the first or second gallery.
THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 237
ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST
CENTURY.
The artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is
quite extinct on our stage. Congreve and Farquliai
show their heads once in seven years only, to be ex-
ploded and put down instantly. The times cannot
bear them. Is it for a few wild speeches, an occasional
license of chalogue ? I think not altogether. The busi-
er O-
ness of their dramatic characters will not stand the
moral test. We screw everything up to that. Idle
gallantry in a fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of
an evening, startles us in the same way as the alarming
indications of profligacy in a son or ward in real life
should startle the parent or guardian. We have no such
middle emotions as dramatic interests left. We see a
stage libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours'
duration, and of no after consequence, with the severe
eyes which inspect real vices with their bearings upon
two worlds. We are spectators to a plot or intrigue
(not reducible in life to the point of strict morality),
and take it all for truth. We substitute a real for a
dramatic person, and judge him accordingly. We try
him in our courts, from which there is no appeal to
the dramatis personce, his peers. We have been spoiled
with — not sentimental comedy — but a tyrant far
more pernicious to our pleasures which has succeeded
to it, the exclusive and all-devouring drama o^ common
life ; where the moral point is eveiything ; Aviiere, in-
stead of the fictitious half-believed personages of the
stage (the phantoms of old comedy), we recognize our-
238 THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY.
selves, our brothers, aunts, kinsfolk, allies, patrons,
enemies, — the same as in life, — with an interest in
what is going on so hearty and substantial, that we
cannot afford our moral judgment, in its deepest and
most vital results, to compromise or slumber for a
moment. What is there transacting, by no modification
is made to affect us m any other manner than the same
events or characters would do in our relationships of
life. We carry our fireside concerns to the theatre
with us. We do not go thither, like our ancestors, to
escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to con-
firm our experience of it ; to make assurance double,
and take a bond of fate. We must live our toilsome
lives twice over, as it was the mournful privilege of
Ulysses to descend twice to the shades. All that neu-
tral ground of character, which stood between vice and
virtue ; or which in fact was indifferent to neither,
where neither properly Avas called in question ; that
happy breathing-place from the burden of a perpetual
moral questioning — the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of
hunted casuistiy — is broken up and disfranchised, as
injurious to the interests of society. The privileges of
the place are taken away by law. We dare not dally
with images, or names, of wrong. We bark like fool-
ish doffs at shadows. We dread infection from the
scenic representation of disorder, and fear a painted
pustule. In our anxiety that our morality should not
take cold, we wrap it up in a great blanket surtout of
precaution against the breeze and sunshine.
I confess for myself that (with no great delinquen-
cies to answer for) I am glad for a season to take an
airing beyond the diocese of the strict conscience, —
not to live always in the precincts of the law-courts, -^
THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 239
but now and then, for a dream-while or so, to imagine
a world with no meddling restrictions — to get into
recesses, whither the hunter cannot follow me —
Secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.
I come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher
and more healthy for it. I wear my shackles more
contentedly for having respired the breath of an imag-
inary freedom. I do not know how it is with others,
but I feel the better always for the perusal of one of
Congreve's — nay, why should I not add even of
Wycherley's comedies. I am the gayer at least for it ;
and I could never connect those sports of a witty fancy
in any shape with any result to be drawn from them to
imitation in real life. They are a Avorld of themselves
almost as much as fairy-land. Take one of their char-
acters, male or female (with few exceptions they are
alike), and place it in a modern play, and my virtuous
indignation shall rise against the profligate wretch as
warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire ; because in
a modern play I am to judge of the right and the
wrong. The standard of 'police is the measure of polit-
ical justice. The atmosphere will blight it, it cannot
live here. It has got into a moral world, where it has
no business, from which it must needs fall headlong ; as
dizzy, and incapable of making a stand, as a Sweden-
borgian bad spirit that has wandered unawares into the
sphere of one of his Good Men, or Angels. But in its
own world do we feel the creature is so very bad ? —
The Fainalls and the Mirabells, the Dorimants and the
Lady Touchwoods, in their own sphere, do not offend
240 THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY.
my moral sense ; in fact they do not appeal to it at all.
They seem engaged in their proper element. They
break through no laws, or conscientious restraints.
They know of none. They have got out of Christen-
dom into the land — what shall I call it? — of cuck-
oldry — the Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is
duty, and the manners perfect freedom. It is alto-
gether a speculative scene of things, which has no
reference whatever to the world that is. No good
person can be justly offended as a spectator, because no
good person suffers on the stage. Judged morally,
every character in these plays — the few exceptions
only are mistakes — is alike essentially vain and worth-
less. The great art of Congreve is especially shown in
this, that he has entirely excluded from his scenes, —
some little generosities in the part of Angelica perhaps
excepted, — not only anything like a faultless char-
acter, but any pretensions to goodness or good feelings
whatsoever. Whether he did this designedly, or in-
stinctively, the effect is as happy, as the design (if
design) was bold. I used to wonder at the strange
power which his Way of the World in particular pos-
sesses of interesting you all along in the pursuits of
characters, for whom you absolutely care nothing —
for you neither hate nor love his personages — and I
think it is owing to this very indifference for any, that
you endure the whole. He has spread a privation of
moral light, I wUl call it, rather than by the ugly name
of palpable darkness, over his creations ; and his
shadows flit before you without distinction or prefer-
ence. Had he introduced a good character, a single
gusli of moral feeling, a revulsion of the judgment to
actual life and actual duties, the impertinent Goshen
THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 241
would have only lighted to the discovery of defonnities,
which now are none, because we think them none.
Translated into real life, the characters of his, and
his friend Wycherley's dramas, are profligates and
strumpets, — the business of their brief existence, the
undivided pursuit of lawless gallantry. No other
spring of action, or possible motive of conduct, is
recognized ; principles which, universally acted upon,
must reduce this frame of things to a chaos. But we
do them wrong in so translating them. No such
effects are produced in their world. When we are
among them, we are amongst a chaotic people. We
are not to judge them by our usages. No reverend
institutions are insulted by their proceedings — for
they have none among them. No peace of families is
violated — for no family ties exist among them. No
purity of the marriage bed is stained — for none is
supposed to have a being. No deep affections are
disquieted, no holy wedlock bands are snapped asunder
— for affection's depth and wedded faith are not of the
growth of that soil. There is neither right nor wrong,
— gratitude or its opposite, — claim or duty, — pater-
nity or sonship. Of what consequence is it to Virtue,
or how is she at all concerned about it, whether Sir
Simon, or Dapperwit, steal away Miss Martha ; or who
is the father of Lord Froth's or Sir Paul Pliant's
children.
The whole is a passing pageant, where we should
sit as unconcerned at the issues, for life or death, as at a
battle of the frogs and mice. But, like Don Quixote, we
take part against the puppets, and quite as impertinent-
ly. We dare not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme,
out of which our coxcombical moral sense is for a little
VOL. HI. 16
242 THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY.
transitory ease excluded. We have not the courage to
unagine a state of things for which there is neither
reward nor punishment. We cling to the painM
necessities of shame and blame. We would indict
our very dreams.
Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant upon
growing old, it is something to have seen the School for
Scandal in its glory. This comedy grew out of Con-
greve and Wycherley, but gathered some allays of the
sentimental comedy which followed theirs. It is im-
possible that it should be now actedy though it con-
tinues, at long intervals, to be announced in the bills.
Its hero, when Pahner played it at least, was Joseph
Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the
graceful solemn plausibility, the measured step, the in-
sinuating voice, — to express it in a Avord — the down-
right acted villany of the part, so different from the
pressure of conscious actual wickedness, — the hypo-
critical assumption of hypocrisy, — which made Jack
so deservedly a favorite in that character, I must needs
conclude the present generation of play-goers more
virtuous than myself, or more dense. I freely confess
that he divided the palm with me with his better
brother ; that, in fact, I liked him quite as well. Not
but there are passages, — like that, for instance, where
Joseph is made to reftise a pittance to a poor relation,
— incongruities which Sheridan was forced upon by
the attempt to join the artificial with the sentimental
comedy, either of which must destroy the other — but
over these obstructions Jack's manner floated him so
lightly, that a reftisal from him no more shocked you,
than the easy compliance of Charles gave you in real-
ity any pleasure ; you got over the paltry question aa
THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 243
quicklj as you could, to get back into the regions of
pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns. The highly
artificial manner of Palmer in this character counter-
acted every disagreeable impression which you might
have received fi'om the contrast, supposing them real,
between the two brothers. You did not believe in
Joseph with the same faith with which you believed in
Charles. The latter was a pleasant reality, the former
a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The comedy,
I have said, is incongnious ; a mixture of Congreve
with sentimental incompatibilities ; the gayety upon
the whole is buoyant ; but it required the consummate
art of Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements.
A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now,
would not dare to do the part in the same manner.
He would instinctively avoid every turn which might
tend to unrealize, and so to make the character fasci-
nating. He must take his cue from his spectators, who
would expect a bad man and a good man as rigidly
opposed to each other as the death-beds of those
geniuses are contrasted in the prints, which I am soriy
to say have disappeared from the windows of my old
friend Carrington Bowles, of St. Paul's Churchyard
memory, — (an exhibition as venerable as the adjacent
cathedral, and almost coeval,) of the bad and good man
at the hour of death ; where the ghastly apprehensions
of the former, — and truly the grim phantom with his
reality of a toasting-fork is not to be despised, — so
finely contrast with the meek complacent kissing of the
rod, — taking it in like honey and butter, — with which
the latter submits to the scythe of the gentle bleeder,
Time, who wields his lancet with the apprehensive
finger of a popular young ladies' surgeon. What flesh,
244 THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY.
like loving grass, would not covet to meet half-way the
stroke of such a delicate mower ? — John Palmer was
twice an actor in this exquisite part. He was playing
to you all the while that he was playing upon Sir Peter
and his lady. You had the first intimation of a senti-
ment before it was on his lips. His altered voice was
meant to you, and you were to suppose that his ficti-
tious co-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all
of it. What was it to you if that half reality, the hus-
band, was overreached by the puppetry — or the tliin
thing (Lady Teazle's reputation) was persuaded it was
dying of a plethory? The fortunes of Othello and
Desdemona were not concerned in it. Poor Jack has
passed from the stage in good time, that he did not live
to this our age of seriousness. The pleasant old Teazle
Kiny^ too, is gone in good time. His manner would
scarce have passed current in our day. We must love
or hate, — acquit or condemn, — censure or pity, —
exert our detestable coxcombry of moral judgment
upon everything. Joseph Surface, to go down now,
must be a downright revolting villain, — no compro-
mise— his first appearance must shock and give hor-
ror, — Ins specious plausibilities, which the pleasurable
faculties of our fathers welcomed with such hearty
greetings, knowing that no harm (dramatic harm even)
could come, or was meant to come, of them, must in-
spire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real
canting person of the scene, — for the hypocrisy of
Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's
professions of a good heart centre in downright self-
satisfaction) must be loved^ and Joseph hated. To
balance one disagreeable reality with another. Sir Peter
Teazle must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old
THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 245
bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings (while King acted
it) were evidently as much played off at you, as they
were meant to concern anybody on the stage, — he
must be a real person, capable in law of sustairJng an
injury, — a person towards whom, duties are to be ac-
knowledged,— the genuine crim. con. antagonist of
the villanous seducer Joseph. To realize him more,
his sufferings under his unfortunate match must have
the downright pungency of life, — must (or should)
make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the
same predicament would move you in a neighbor or
old friend. The dehcious scenes which give the play
its name and zest, must affect you in the same serious
manner as if you heard the reputation of a dear female
friend attacked in your real presence. Crabtree and
Sir Benjamin — those poor snakes that live but in the
sunshine of your mirth — must be ripened by this hot-
bed process of realization into asps or amphisboenas ;
and Mrs. Candour — O ! frightful ! — become a hooded
serpent. Oh ! who that remembers Parsons and Dodd,
— the wasp and butterfly of the Scliool for Scandal, —
in those two characters ; and charming natural Miss
Pope, the perfect gentlewoman, as distinguished from
the fine lady of comedy, in this latter part, — would
forego the true scenic delight, — the escape from life, —
the oblivion of consequences, — the holiday barring out
of the pedant Reflection, — those Saturnalia of two or
three brief hours, well won from the world, — to sit
instead at one of our modern plays, — to have his
coward conscience (that forsooth must not be left for
a moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals, — dulled
rather, and blunted, as a faculty without repose miist
be, — and his moral vanity pampered with images of
24G THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY,
notional justice, notional beneficence, lives saved with-
out the spectator's risk, and fortunes given away that
cost the author nothing ?
No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in
all its parts as this manager's comedy. Miss Farren
had succeeded to Mrs. Abington in Lady Teazle ; and
Smith, the original Charles, had retired when I first
saw it. The rest of the characters, with very slight
exceptions, remained. I remember it was then the
fashion to cry down John Kemble, who took the part
of Charles after Smith ; but, I thought, very unjustly.
Smith, I fancy, was more airy, and took the eye with
a certain gayety of person. He brought with him no
sombre recollections of tragedy. He had not to expiate
the fault of having pleased beforehand in lofty decla-
mation. He had no sins of Hamlet or of Richard to
atone for. His failure in these parts was a passport to
success in one of so opposite a tendency. But, as far
as I could judge, the weighty sense of Kemble made up
for more personal incapacity than he had to answer for.
His harshest tones in this part came steeped and dul-
cified in good-humor. He made his defects a grace.
His exact declamatory manner, as he managed it, only
served to convey the points of his dialogue with more
precision. It seemed to head the shafts to carry them
deeper. Not one of his sparkling sentences was lost.
I remember minutely how he delivered each in succes-
sion, and cannot by any effort imagine how any of them
could be altered for the better. No man could deliver
brilliant dialogue, — the dialogue of Congreve or of
Wycherley, — because none understood it, — half so
well as John Kemble. His Valentine, in Love for
Love, was, to my recollection, faultless. He flagged
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 247
sometimes in the intervals of tragic passion. He Tvould
slumber over the level parts of an heroic character.
His Macbeth has been known to nod. But he always
seemed to me to be particularly aMve to pointed and
witty dialogue. The relaxing levities of tragedy have
not been touched by any since him, — the playful
court-bred spirit in which he condescended to the
players in Hamlet, — the sportive relief which he
threw into the darker shades of Richard, — disap-
peared with him. He had his sluggish moods, his
torpors, — but they were the halting-stones and rest-
ing-place of his tragedy, — politic savings, and fetches
of the breath, — husbandry of the lungs, where nature
pointed him to be an economist, — rather, I think,
than errors of the judgment. They were, at worst,
less painful than the eternal tormenting unappeasable
vigilance, — the " lidless dragon eyes," of present
fashionable tragedy.
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN.
Not many nights ago, I had come home from seeing
this extraordinary performer in Cockletop ; and when
I retired to my pillow, his whimsical image still stuck
by me, m a manner as to threaten sleep. In vam I
tried to divest myself of it, by conjuring up the most
opposite associations. I resolved to be serious. I raised
up the gravest topics of life ; private misery, public
calamity. All would not do ;
248 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN.
There the antic sate
Mocking our state
his queer visnomy — his bewildering costume — all the
strange tilings which he had raked together, — his
serpentine roi, swagging about in his pocket, — Cleo-
patra's tear, and the rest of his relics, — O'Keefe's wild
farce, and his wilder commentary, — till the passion of
laughter, hke grief in excess, relieved itself by its own
weight, mviting the sleep wliich in the first instance it
had driven away.
But I was not to escape so easily. No sooner did I
fall mto slumbers, than the same image, only more per-
plexing, assailed me in the shape of dreams. Not one
Munden, but five hundred, were dancing before me,
like the faces which, whether you will or no, come
when you have been taking opium, — all the strange
combinations, which this strangest of all strange mortals
ever shot liis proper countenance into, from the day he
came commissioned to dry up t'he tears of the town for
the loss of the now almost forgotten Edwin. O for the
power of the pencil to have fixed them when I awoke I
A season or two since, there was exhibited a Hogarth
galleiy. I do not see why there should not be a Mun-
den gallery. In richness and variety, the latter would
not fall far short of the former.
There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one
(but what a one it is ! ) of Liston ; but ISIunden has
none that you can properly pin down, and call his.
When you think he has exhausted his battery of looks,
in unaccountable warfare with your gravity, suddenly
he sprouts out an entu'ely new set of features, hke
Hydra. He is not one, but legion ; not so much a
comedian, as a company. If liis name could be multi-
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 249
plied liked his countenance, it might fill a playbill.
He, and he alone, literally makes faces ; applied to any
other person, the phrase is a mere figui'e, denoting
certain modifications of the human countenance. Out
of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his
friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as
easily. I should not be surprised to see him some
day put out the head of a river-horse ; or come forth
a pewit, or lapwing, some feathered metamorphosis.
I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher
Curry — in old Domton — diffuse a glow of sentiment
which has made the pulse of a crowded theatre beat
like that of one man ; when he has come in aid of the
pulpit, doing good to the moral heart of a people. I
have seen some faint approaches to this sort of excel-
lence in other players. But in the grand grotesque
of farce, Munden stands out as single and unaccom-
panied as Hogarth. Hogarth, strange to tell, had no
followers. The school of Munden began, and must
end, with himself.
Can any man wonder^ like him ? can any man see
ghosts, like him ? or fight with his own shadow —
*' SESSA " — as he does in that strangely-neglected
thing, the Cobbler of Preston — where his alternations
from the Cobbler to the Magnifico, and from the Mag-
nifico to the Cobbler, keep the brain of the spectator
in as wild a ferment, as if some Arabian Night were
being acted before him. Who like him can throw,
or ever attempted to throw, a preternatural interest
over the commonest daily-life objects ? A table or a
joint-stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity equiv-
alent to Cassiopeia's chair. It is invested with con-
Btellatorv importance. You could not speak of it with
250 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN.
more deference, if it were mounted into the firmament.
A beggar in the hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli,
rose the Patriarch of Poverty. So the gusto of Mun-
den antiquates and ennobles what it touches. His pots
and his ladles are as grand and primal as the seething-
pots and hooks seen in old prophetic vision. A tub of
butter, contemplated by him, amounts to a Platonic
idea. He understands a leg of mutton in its quiddity.
He stands wondermg, amid the commonplace materials
of life, like primeval man with the sun and stars about
kim.
THE
LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA.
PREFACE.
BY A FRIEND OF THE LATE EUA.
This poor gentleman, who for some months past had been in a
declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to nature.
To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humor of the
thing, if there ever was much in it, was pretty well exhausted ;
and a two years' and a half existence has been a tolerable dura-
tion for a phantom.
I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have heard
objected to my late friend's writmgs was well founded. Crude
they are, I grant you — a sort of unlicked, incondite things —
villanously pranked in an affected array of antique modes and
phrases. They had not been his, if they had been other than
such ; and better it is, that a writer should be natural in a self-
pleasing quaintness, than to affect a naturalness (so called) that
should be strange to him. Egotistical they have been pronounced
by some who did not know, that what he tells us, as of himself,
was often true only (historically) of another; as in a former
Essay (to save many instances) — where under the Jirst person
(his favorite figure) he shadows forth the forlorn estate of a
country boy placed at a London school, far from his friends and
connections, — in direct opposition to his own early history. If
it be egotism to imply and twine with his own identity the gnefi
254 PREFACE.
and affections of another — making himself many, or reducing
many unto himself — then is the skilful novelist, who all along
brings in his hero or heroine, speaking of themselves, the greatest
egotist of all ; who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that
narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist escape being
faulty, who, doubtless, under cover of passion uttered by another,
oftentimes gives blameless vent to his most inward feelings, and
expresses his own story modestly ?
My late friend was in many respects a singular character.
Those who did not like him, hated him; and some, who once
liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters. The truth is,
he gave himself too little concern what he uttered, and in whose
presence. He observed neither time nor place, and would e'en
out with what came uppennost. With the severe religionist he
would pass for a free-thinker; while the other faction set him
down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he behed his senti-
ments. Few understood him ; and I am not certain that at all
times he quite understood himself He too much affected that
dangerous figure — irony. He sowed doubtful speeches, and
reaped plain, unequivocal hatred. He would interrupt the gravest
discussion with some hght jest ; and yet, perhaps, not quite irrele-
vant in ears that could understand it. Your long and much
talkers hated him. The informal habit of his mind, joined to an
inveterate impediment of speech, forbade him to be an orator;
and he seemed determined that no one else should play that part
when he was present. He was petit and ordinary in his person
and appearance. I have seen him sometimes in what is called
good company, but where he has been a stranger, sit silent, and be
suspected for an odd fellow ; till some unlucky occasion provoking
it, he would stutter out some senseless pun (not altogether senseless
perhaps, if rightly taken), which has stamped his character for the
evening. It was hit or miss with him ; but nine times out of ten,
he contrived by this device to send away a whole company hia
PREFACE. 255
enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance, and
his happiest impromptus had the appearance of effort. He has
been accused of trjing to be witty, when in truth he was but
Btruggling to give his poor thoughts articulation. He chose his
companions for some individuality of character which they mani-
fested. Hence, not many persons of science, and few professed
literati, were of his councils. They were, for the most part, per-
sons of an uncertain fortune ; and, as to such people commonly
nothing is more obnoxious than a gentleman of settled (though
moderate) income, he passed with most of them for a great miser.
To my knowledge this was a mistake. His intimados, to confess a
truth, were in the world's eye a ragged regiment. He found
them floating on the surface of society ; and the color, or some-
thing else, in the weed pleased him. The burrs stuck to him —
but they were good and loving burrs for all that. He never
greatly cared for the society of what are called good people. If
any of these were scandalized (and offences were sure to arise),
he could not help it. When he has been remonstrated with for
not making more concessions to the feelings of good people, he
would retort by asking, what one point did these good people
ever concede to him ? He was temperate in his meals and diver-
sions, but always kept a little on this side of abstemiousness. Only
in the use of the Indian weed he might be thought a little ex-
cessive. He took it, he would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry
— as the friendly vapor ascended, how his prattle would curl up
sometimes with it ! the ligaments which tongue-tied him, were loos-
ened, and the stammerer proceeded a statist 1
I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice that my
old friend is departed. His jests were beginning to grow ob-
solete, and his stories to be found out. He felt the approaches
of age ; and while he pretended to cling- to life, you saw how
slender were the ties left to bind him. Discoursing with him
latterly on this subject, he expressed himself with a pettishness,
256 PREFACE.
which I thought unworthy of hun. In our walks about his suD-
urban retreat (as he called it) at Shacklewell, some children
belonging to a school of industry had met us, and bowed and
curtseyed, as he thought, in an especial manner to him. " They
take me for a visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. He
had a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like any-
thing important and parochial. He thought that he approached
nearer to that stamp daily. He had a general aversion from
being treated like a grave or respectable character, and kept a
wary eye upon the advances of age that should so entitle him.
He herded always, while it was possible, with people younger
than himself. He did not conform to the march of time, but was
dragged along in the procession. His manners lagged behind his
years. He was too much of the boy-man. The toga virilis never
sat gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions of infancy had
burnt into him, and he resented the impertinence of manhood.
These were weaknesses ; but such as they were, they are a key to
explicate some of his writings.
THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA.
BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE.
I DO not know a pleasvire more affecting than to
iange at will over the deserted apartments of some fine
old family mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur
admit of a better passion than envy ; and contempla-
tions on the great and good, whom we fancy in succes-
lion to have been its inhabitants, weave for us illusions,
^compatible with the bustle of modem occupancy, and
/anities of foolish present aristocracy. The same dif-
ference of feeling, I think, attends us between entering
an empty and a crowded church. In the latter it is
chance but some present human frailty, — an act oi
inattention on the part of some of the auditory, — or (
trait of affectation, or worse, vainglory on that of th«i
preacher, — puts us by our best thoughts, disharmo-
nizing the place and the occasion. But wouldst thou
know the beauty of holiness ? — go alone on some
weekday, borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton,
traverse the cool aisles of some country church ; think
of the piety that has kneeled there, — the congrega-
tions, old and young, that have found consolation there,
— the meek pastor, — the docile parishioner. With
no disturbing emotions, no cross conflictmg compari-
^OL. III. 17
258 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE.
sons, drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou
thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble
effigies that kneel and weep around thee.
Journeying northward lately, I could not resist
going some few miles out of my road to look upon
the remains of an old great house with which I had
been impressed in this way in mfancy. I was appiised
that the owner of it had lately pulled it down ; still I
had a vague notion that it could not all have perished,
that so much solidity with magnificence could not have
been crushed all at once into the mere dust and rubbish
wliich I found it.
The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand
indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced
it to — an antiquity.
I was astonished at the indistinction of everything.
Where had stood the great gates ? What bounded
the court-yard ? Whereabout did the outhouses com-
mence ? A few bricks only lay as representatives of
that which was so stately and so spacious.
Death does not shrink up his human victim at this
rate. The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their
proportion.
Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their
process of destruction, at the plucking of every panel I
should have felt the varlets at my heart. I should
have cried out to them to spare a plank at least out of
the cheerful storeroom, in whose hot window-seat I
used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plot before,
and the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp
that ever haunted it about me, — it is in mine ears
now, as oft as summer retm'ns ; or a panel of the
yellow-room.
BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 259
Why, every plank and panel of that house for me
had magic in it. The tapestried bedrooms, — tapestry
so much better than painting — not adorning merely,
but peopling the wainscots, — at which childhood ever
and anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (re-
placed as quickly) to exercise its tender courage in
a momentary eye-encounter with those stem bright
visages, staring reciprocally, — all Ovid on the walls,
in colors vivider than his descriptions. Action in mid
sprout, with the unappeasable prudery of Diana ; and
the still more provoking, and almost culinary coolness
of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately divesting of
Marsyas.
Then, that haunted room — in which old Mrs.
Battle died, — whereinto I have crept, but always in
the daytime, with a passion of fear; and a sneaking
curiosity, teiTor-tainted, to hold communication with
the past. Sow shall they build it up again?
It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted
but that traces of the splendor of past inmates were
everywhere apparent. Its ftirniture was still standing
— even to the tarnished gilt leather battledores, and
crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks in the nursery,
which told that children had once played there. But
I was a lonely child, and had the range at will of
every apartment, knew every nook and comer, won-
dered and worshipped everywhere.
The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother
of thought, as it is the feeder of love, and silence, and
admiration. So strange a passion for the place pos-
sessed me in those years, that, though there lay — I
shame to say how few roods distant from the mansion
— half hid by trees what I judged some romantic lake,
260 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE.
such was the spell which bound me to the house, ano
such my carefulness not to pass its strict and proper
precincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored for me ;
and not till late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder
devotion, I found, to my astonishment, a pretty brawl-
ing brook had been the Lacus Incognitus of my infancy.
Variegated views, extensive prospects, — and those at
no great distance from the house, — I was told of such
— what were they to me, being out of the boundaries
of my Eden ? — So far from a wish to roam, I would
have drawn, methought, still closer the fences of my
chosen prison ; and have been hemmed in by a yet
securer cincture of those excluding garden walls. I
could have exclaimed with that garden-loving poet —
Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines;
Curl me about, ye gadding vines;
And oh so close your circles lace,
That I may never leave this place;
But, lest your fetters prove too weak,
Ere I yovu- silken bondage break.
Do you, 0 brambles, chain me too.
And, courteous briars, nail me through.
I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug firesides, —
the low-built roof, — parlors ten feet by ten, — frugal
boards, and all the homeliness of home, — these were
the condition of my birth, — the wholesome soil which
I was planted in. Yet, without impeachment to their
tenderest lessons, I am not sorry to have had glances of
something beyond ; and to have taken, if but a peep,
in childhood, at the contrasting accidents of a great
fortune.
To have the feeling of gentility, it is not necessary to
have been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be
had on cheaper terms than to be obliged to an importu
BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 261
nate race of ancestors ; and the coatless antiquary in
his unemblazoned cell, revolving the long line of a
Mowbray's or De Clifford's pedigree, at those sounding
names may warm himself into as gay a vanity as these
who do inherit them. The claims of birth are ideal
merely, and what herald shall go about to strip me of
an idea ? Is it trenchant to their swords ? can it be
hacked off as a spur can ? or torn away like a tar-
nished garter ?
What else were the families of the great to us ? ^vhat
pleasure should we take in their tedious genealogies, or
their capitulatory brass monuments ? What to us the
unmterrupted curi^ent of their bloods, if our own did
not answer witlun us to a cognate and correspondent
elevation ?
Or wherefore else, O tattered and diminished
'scutcheon that hung upon the time-worn walls of
thy princely stairs, Blakesmoor ! have I in child-
hood so oft stood poring upon the mystic characters,
■ — thy emblematic supporters, with their prophetic
" Resurgam," — till, every dreg of peasantry purging
off, I received into myself Very Gentility ? Thou
wert first in my morning eyes ; and of nights hast
detained my steps from bedward, till it was but a
step from gazing at thee to dreaming on thee.
This is the only true gentiy by adoption ; the
veritable change of blood, and not, as empirics haver
fabled, by transfusion.
Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid
trophy, I know not, I inquired not; but its fading
rags, and colors cobweb-stained, told that its subject
was of two centm'ies back.
And what if my ancestor at that date was some
262 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE,
Damoetas, — feeding flocks — not his own, upon the
hills of Lincoln, — did I in less earnest vhidicate to
myself the family trappings of this once proud jEgon ?
repaying by a backward triumph the insults he might
possibly have heaped in his lifetime upon my poor
pastoral progenitor.
If it were presumption so to speculate, the present
owners of the mansion had least reason to complain.
They had long forsaken the old house of their fathers
for a newer trifle ; and I was left to appropriate to
myself what images I could pick up, to raise my fancy,
or to soothe my vanity.
I was the true descendant of those old W s ;
and not the present family of that name, who had fled
the old waste places.
Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits,
which as I have gone over, giving them in fancy my
own family name, one — and then another — would
seem to smile, reaching forward fi'om the canvas, to
recognize the new relationship ; while the rest looked
grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy in their dwelling,
and thoughts of fled posterity.
That Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery,
and a lamb — that hung next the great bay window —
with the bright yellow H shire hair, and eye of
watchet hue — so like my Alice ! — I am persuaded
she was a true Elia, — Mildred Elia, I take it.
Mine too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble Marble Hall
with its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Caesars, —
stately busts in marble, — ranged round ; of whose
countenances, young reader of faces as I was, the
frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my
wonder; but the mild Galba had my love. There
BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 263
they stood in the coldness of death, yet freshness of im-
mortahty.
Mine too thy lofty Justice Hall, "with its one chair
of authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror
of luckless poacher, or self-forgetful maiden — so com-
mon since, that bats have roosted in it.
Mine too, — whose else ? — thy costly fruit-garden,
with its sun-baked southern wall ; the ampler pleasure-
garden, rising backwards from the house in triple ter-
races, with flower-pots now of palest lead, save that
a speck here and there, saved from the elements,
bespake then* pristine state to have been gilt and
glittering ; the verdant quarters backwarder still ; and,
stretching still beyond, in old formality, thy firry
wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel, and the day-long
murmuring wood-pigeon, with that antique image in
the centre, God or Goddess I wist not ; but child of
Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer worship to
Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to
that fragmental mystery.
Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too
fervently in your idol-worship, walks and windings of
Blakesmoor ! for this, or what sin of mine, has the
plough passed over your pleasant places ? I sometimes
think that as men, when they die, do not die all, so of
theh extinguished habitations there may be a hope —
a germ to be revivified.
264 POOR RELATIONS.
POOR RELATIONS.
A Poor Relation — is the most irrelevant thing in
nature, — a piece of impertinent correspondency, — an
odicus approximation, — a haunting conscience, — a
preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of
our prosperity, — an unwelcome remembrancer, — a
perpetually recurring mortification, — a drain on your
purse, a more intolerable dun upon your pride, — a
drawback upon success, — a rebuke to your rising, —
a stain in your blood, — a blot on your 'scutcheon, —
a rent in your garment, — a death's head at your ban-
quet, — Agathocles's pot, — a Mordecai in your gate, a
Lazarus at your door, — a lion in your path, — a frog
in your chamber, — a fly in your ointment, — a mote in
your eye, — a triumph to your enemy, an apology to
your friends, — the one thing not needful, — the hail in
harvest, — the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet.
He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you
*' That is Mr. ." A rap, between famiharity and
respect ; that demands, and at the same time seems to
despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling and —
embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake,
and — draweth it back again. He casually looketh in
about dinner-time — when the table is fiill. He of-
fereth to go away, seeing you have company, — but is
induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your visitor's
two children are accommodated at a side table. He
never cometh upon open days, when your wife says
with some complacency, " My dear, perhaps Mr.
will drop in to-day." He remembereth birthdays, —
POOR RELATIONS. 265
and professeth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon
one. He declareth against fish, the turbot being small
— yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice,
against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port, —
yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remainder glass
of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a
puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too
obsequious, or not civil enough, to him. The guests
think " they have seen him before." Every one
speculateth upon his condition ; and the most part
take him to be — a tidewaiter. He calleth you by
your Christian name, to imply that his other is the
same with your own. He is too familiar by half, yet
you wish he had less diffidence. With half the famili-
arity, he might pass for a casual dependant ; with more
boldnjess, he would be in no danger of being taken for
what he is. He is too humble for a friend ; yet taketh
on him more state than befits a client. He is a worse
guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth
up no rent — yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanor,
that your guests take him for one. He is asked to
make one at the whist-table ; refuseth on the score of
poverty, and — resents being left out. When the com-
pany break up, he proffereth to go for a coach — and
lets the servant go. He recollects your grandfather ;
and will thrust in some mean and quite unimportant
anecdote — of the family. He knew it when it was
not quite so flourishing as " he is blest in seeing it
now." He reviveth past situations, to institute what
he calleth — favorable comparisons. With a reflecting
sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price of your
furniture ; and insults you with a special commenda-
tion of your wmdow-curtains. He is of opinion that
266 POOR RELATIONS.
the urn is the more elegant shape, but, after all, thero
was something more comfortable about the old tea-
kettle, — which you must remember. He dare say
you must find a great convenience in having a carriage
of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not so.
Inquireth if you have had your arms done on vellum
yet ; and did not knoAv, till lately, that such-and-such
had been the crest of the family. His memory is
unseasonable ; his compliments perverse ; his talk a
trouble ; his stay pertinacious ; and when he goeth
away, you dismiss his chair into a corner, as precipi-
tately as possible, and feel fairly rid of two nuis-
ances.
There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is — a
female Poor Relation. You may do something with
the other ; you may pass him off tolerably well ; but
your indigent she-relative is hopeless. " He is an old
humorist," you may say, " and affects to go threadbare.
His circumstances are better than folks would take
them to be. You are fond of having a Character at
your table, and tnily he is one." But in the indica-
tions of female poverty there can be no disguise. No
woman dresses below herself from caprice. The truth
must out without shuffling. " She is plainly related to
the L s ; or what does she at their house ? " She
is, in all probability, your wife's cousin. Nine times out
of ten, at least, this is the case. Her garb is something
between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former
evidently predominates. She is most provokingly hum-
ble, and ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He
may require to be repressed sometimes — aliquando suf-
jiami.nandus erat — but there is no raising her. You
send her soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped —
POOR RELATIONS. 267
after the gentlemen. Mr. requests the honor of
taking wine witli her ; she hesitates between Port and
Madeira, and chooses the former — because lie does.
She calls the servant Sir ; and insists on not troubling
him to hold her plate. The housekeeper patronizes her.
The children's governess takes upon her to correct her,
when she has mistaken the piano for the harpsichord.
Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable in-
stance of the disadvantages, to which this chimerical
notion of affinity constituting a claim to acquaintance^
may subject the spirit of a gentleman. A little foolish
blood is all that is betwixt him and a lady with a great
estate. His stars are perpetually crossed by the malig-
nant maternity of an old woman, who persists in call-
ing him " her son Dick." But she has wherewithal in
the end to recompense his indignities, and float him
again upon the brilliant surface, under which it had
been her seeming business and pleasure all along to
sink him. All men, besides, are not of Dick's temper-
ament. I knew an Amlet in real life, who, wanting
Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor W was of
my own standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and a youth
of promise. If he had a blemish, it was too much
pride ; but its quality was inoffensive ; it was not of
that sort which hardens the heart, and serves to keep
inferiors at a distance ; it only sought to ward off dero-
gation from itself. It was the principle of self-respect
carried as far as it could go, without infringing upon
that respect, which he would have every one else
equally maintain for himself. He would have you to
think alike with him on this topic. Many a quarrel
have I had with him, when we were rather older boys,
and our tallness made us more obnoxious to observation
268 POOR RELATIONS.
in the blue clothes, because I would not thread the
alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude
notice, when we have been out together on a holiday
in the streets of this sneering and prying metropolis.
"VV went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, where
the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life, meeting
with the alloy of a humble introduction, wrought in
him a passionate devotion to the place, with a profound
aversion fi'om the society. The servitor's gown (worse
than his school array) clung to him with Nessian
venom. He thought himself ridiculous in a garb,
under which Latimer must have walked erect, and in
which Hooker, in his young days, possibly flaunted in
a vein of no discommendable vanity. In the depth of
college shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor stu-
dent shrunk fi'om observation. He found shelter among
books, wliich insult not ; and studies, that ask no ques-
tions of a youth's finances. He was lord of his library,
and seldom cared for looking out beyond his domains.
The healing influence of studious pursuits was upon
him, to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a
Ileal thy man ; when the waywardness of his fate broke
out against him with a second and worse malignity.
The father of W had hitherto exercised the hum-
ble profession of house-painter at N , near Oxford.
A supposed interest with some of the heads of colleges
had now induced him to take up his abode in that city,
with the hope of being employed upon some public
works which were talked of. From that moment I
read in the countenance of the young man the determi-
nation which at length tore him from academical pur-
suits forever. To a person unacquainted with our
universities, the distance betwefsn the gownsmen and
POOR RELATIONS, 269
the townsmen, as they are called — the trading part
of the latter especially — is carried to an excess that
would appear harsh and incredible. The temperament
of W 's father was diametrically the reverse of his
own. Old W was a little, busy, cringing trades-
man, who, with his son upon his arm, would stand
bowing and scraping, cap in hand, to anything that
wore the semblance of a gown, — insensible to the
winks and opener remonstrances of the young man, to
whose chamber-fellow, or equal in standing, perhaps,
he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously ducking.
Such a state of things could not last. W must
change the air of Oxford, or be suffocated. He chose
the former ; and let the sturdy moralist, who strains
the point of the filial duties as high as they can bear,
censure the dereliction ; he cannot estimate the strug-
gle. I stood with W , the last afternoon I ever
saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It
was in the fine lane leadino; from the Hioh-street to the
back of * * * college, where W kept his rooms.
He seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. I ven-
tm-ed to rally him — finding him in a better mood —
upon a representation of the Artist Evangelist, which
the old man, whose affairs were beginning to flourish,
had caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over
his really handsome shop, either as a token of pros-
perity or badge of gratitude to his saint. W
looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, " knew his
mounted sign — and fled." A letter on his father's
table the next morning announced that he had accepted
a commission in a regiment about to embark for Portu-
gal. He was among the first who perished before the
walls of St. Sebastian.
270 POOR RELATIONS.
I do not know how, upon a subject which I began
with treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon
a recital so eminently painful ; but this theme of poor
relationship is replete with so much matter for tragic
as well as comic associations, that it is difficult to keep
the account distinct without blending. The earliest
impressions which I received on this matter, are cer-
tainly not attended with anything painful, or very
humiliating, in the recalling. At my father's table (no
very splendid one) was to be found, every Saturday,
the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman, clothed in
neat black, of a sad yet comely appearance. His de-
portment was of the essence of gravity ; his words
few or none ; and I was not to make a noise in his
presence. I had little inclination to have done so —
for my cue was to admire in silence. A particular
elbow-chair was appropriated to him, which was in no
case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding,
which appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the
days of his coming. I used to think him a prodigiously
rich man. All I could make out of him was, that he
and my father had been schoolfellows, a world ago, at
Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The Mint
I knev/ to be a place where all the money was coined
— and I thought he was the owner of all that money.
Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves about his
presence. He seemed above human infirmities and
passions. A sort of melancholy grandeur invested him.
From some inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged to
go about in an eternal suit of mourning ; a captive —
a stately being, let out of the Tower on Saturdays.
Often have I wondered at the temerity of my father,
who, in spite of an habitual general respect which we
POOR RELATIONS. 271
all in common manifested towards him, would venture
now and tlien to stand up against liim in some argu-
ment, touching their youthful days. The houses of the
ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my
readers know) between the dwellers on the hill, and in
the valley. This marked distinction formed an obvious
division between the boys who lived above (however
brought together in a common school) and the boys
whose paternal residence was on the plain ; a sufficient
cause of hostility in the code of these young Grotiuses.
My father had been a leading Mountaineer ; and would
still maintain the general su])eriority, in skill and hardi-
hood, of the Above Boys (his own faction) over the
Below Boys (so were they called), of which party his
contemporaiy had been a chieftain. Many and hot
were the sku'mishes on this topic, — the only one upon
which the old gentleman was ever brought out — and
bad blood bred ; even sometimes almost to the recom-
mencement (so I expected) of actual hostilities. But
my father, who scorned to insist upon advantages,
generally contrived to turn the conversation upon some
adroit by-commendation of the old Minster ; in the
general preference of which, before all other cathedrals
in the island, the dweller on the hill, and the plain-
born, could meet on a conciliating level, and lay down
their less important differences. Once only I saw the
old gentleman really ruffled, and I remembered with
anguish the thought that came over me : " Perhaps he
will never come here again." He had been pressed to
take another plate of the viand, which I have already
mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of his visits.
He had refused with a resistance amountino; to rioor —
when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who had some-
272 POOR RELATIONS.
tiling of this, in common with my cousin Bridget, that
she would sometimes press civility out of season, —
uttered the following memorable application, — " Do
take another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pud-
ding every day." The old gentleman said nothing at
the time, — but he took occasion in the course of the
evening, when some argument had intervened between
them, to utter with an emphasis which chilled the com-
pany, and which chills me now as I write it — " Wom-
an, you are superannuated ! " John Billet did not
survive long, after the digesting of this affi'ont ; but he
siu'vived long enough to assure me that peace was
actually restored ! and, if I remember aright, another
pudding was discreetly substituted in the place of that
which had occasioned the offence. He died at the
Mint (anno 1781), where he had long held, what he
accounted, a comfortable independence ; and with five
pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which were
found in his escrutoire after his decease, left the world,
blessing God that he had enough to bury liim, and that
he had never been obliged to any man for a sixpence.
This was — a Poor Relation.
DETA3HED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING 27^
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING.
To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced
product of another man's brain. Now I thinlc a man of qualitj- and breed-
ing maybe much amused with tlie natural sprouts of his own. — Lord
Foppinyian in the Relapse.
An ingenious acquaintance of mj own was so much
struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he
has left off reading altogether, to the great improve-
ment of his originality. At the hazard of losing some
credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no
mconsiderable portion of my time to other people's
thoughts. I dream away my life in others' specu-
lations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds.
When I am not walking, I am reading ; I cannot sit
and think. Books think for me.
I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury' is not too
genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can
read anything which I call a book. There are things
in that shape which I cannot allow for such.
In this catalogue of hooks which are no books —
biblia a-biblia — I reckon Court Calendars, Directories,
Pocket-Books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered on
the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at
Large ; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beat-
tie, Soame Jenyns, and generally, all those vohunes
which " no gentleman's library should be without ; "
the Histories of Flavins Josephus (that learned Jew),
and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions,
I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a
taste so catholic, so unexcluding.
VOL. Ill 18
274 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING.
I confess that it moves my spleen to see these
tilings in hooks' clothing perched upon slielves, like
false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the
sanctuary, thrusting out tlie legitimate occupants. To
reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and
hope it some kind-hearted playbook, then, opening
what " seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a withering
Population Essay. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar,
and find — Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged
assortment of blockheaded Encyclopaedias (Anglicanaa
-or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of russia, or
morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would com-
fortably reclothe my shivering folios ; would renovate
Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to
look like himself again in the world. I never see these
impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged
veterans in their spoils.
To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desidera-
tum of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This,
when it can be afforded, is not to be lavished upon
all kinds of books indiscriminately. I would not dress
a set of Magazines, for instance, in full suit. The
dishabille, or half-binding (with russia backs ever)
is our costume. A Shakspeare, or a jNIilton (unless
the first editions), it were mere foppery to trick out in
gay apparel. The possession of them confers no dis-
tinction. The exterior of them (the things themselves
being so common), strange to say, raises no sweet emo-
tions, no tickling sense of property m the owner.
Thomson's Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it)
a little torn, and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a
genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and
worn-out appearance, nay the very odor (beyond rus-
L>ETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS \ND READING. 275
aia), if we would not forget kind fet lings in fastidious-
ness, of an old " Circulating Library " Tom Jones, or
Vicar of Wakefield ! How they speak of the thousand
thumbs that have turned over their pages with delight !
— of the lone sempstress, whom they may have cheered
(milliner, or harder-working mantua-maker) after her
long day's needle-toil, running far into midnight, when
she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep to steep
her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their
enchanting contents ! Who would have them a whit
less soiled ? What better condition could we desire to
see them in ?
In some respects the better a book is, the less it de-
mands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and
all that class of pei'petually self-reproductive volumes —
Great Nature's Stereotypes — we see them individually
perish with less regret, because we know the copies of
them to be " etenie." But where a book is at once
both good and rare — where the individual is almost
the species, and when that perishes,
We know not where is that Promethean torch
That can its light relumine —
such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of
Newcastle, by his Duchess — no casket is rich enough,
no casmg sufficiently durable, to honor and keep safe
such a jewel.
Not only rare volumes of this description, which
seem hopeless ever to be reprinted ; but old editions
of writers, such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor,
Milton -in his prose works. Fuller — of whom we have
reprints, yet the books themselves, though they go
about, and are talked of here and there, we know,
have not endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever
276 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING.
will) in the national heart, so as to become stock books
— it is good to possess these in durable and costly
covers. I do not care for a First Folio of Shakspeare.
I rather prefer the common editions of Rowe and Ton-
son, without notes, and with plates^ which, being so
execrably bad, serve as maps, or modest remembran-
cers, to the text ; and without pretending to any sup-
posable emulation with it, are so much better than the
Shakspeare gallery engravings^ which did. I have a
community of feeling with my countiymen about his
Plays, and I like those editions of him best, which have
been oftenest tumbled about and handled. On the
contrary, I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in
Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I
have no sympathy with them. If they were as much
read as the current etlitions of the other poet, I should
prefer them in that shape to the older one. I do not
know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the
Anatomy of Melancholy. What need was there of
unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to
expose them in a windingsheet of the newest fashion
to modern censure ? what hapless stationer could dream
of Burton ever becoming popular ? — The wretched
Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton
of Stratford church to let him whitewash the painted
effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood there, in rude but
lively fashion depicted, to the very color of the cheek,
the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to
wear — the only authentic testimony we had, however
imperfect, of these curious parts and pai'cels. ©f him.
They covered him over with a coat of white paint.
By , if I had been a justice of peace for Warwick-
shire, I would have clapt both commentator and sexton
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 277
fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious
varlets.
I think I see them at their work — these sapient
trouble- tombs.
Shall I be thought fantastical, if I confess, that the
names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a
finer relish to the ear — to mine, at least — than that
of Milton or of Shakspeare ? It may be, that the latter
are more staled and rung upon in common cHscourse.
The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the
mention, are, Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of
Hawthornden, and Cowley.
Much depends upon when and where you read a book.
In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner
is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy
Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes'a
sermons ?
Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to
be played before you enter upon him. But he brings
his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile
thoughts, and purged ears.
Winter evenings — the world shut out — with less
of ceremony the gentle Shakspeare enters. At such a
season, the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale —
These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud —
to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person
hstening. More than one — and it degenerates into an
audience.
Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents,
are for tJie eye to glide over only. It will not do
to read them out. I could never listen to even the
better kind of modem novels without extreme irk-
someness
278 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING.
A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of
the bank offices it is the custom (to save so much indi-
vidual time) for one of the clerks — who is the best
scholar — to commence upon the Times, or the Chron-
icle, and recite its entire contents aloud, pro b&no pub-
lico. With every advantage of lungs and elocution,
the effect is singularly vapid. In barbers' shops and
public-houses a fellow will get up and spell out a par-
agraph, which he communicates as some discovery.
Another follows with his selection. So the entire jour-
nal transpires at length by piecemeal. Seldom-readers
are slow readers, and, without this expedient, no one in
the company would probably ever travel through the
contents of a whole paper.
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever
lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at
Nando's, keeps the paper ! I am sick of hearing the
waiter bawlmg out incessantly, " The Chronicle is in
hand. Sir."
Coming into an inn at night — having ordered your
supper — what can be more delightful than to find
lying in the window-seat, left there time out of mind by
the cai'elessness of some former guest, — two or three
numbers of the old Town and Country Magazine, with
its amusing tete^d-tete pictures — " The Royal Lover
and Lady G ; " " The Melting Platonic and the
old Beau," — and such-like antiquated scandal? Would
you exchange it — at that time, and in that place — for
a better book ?
Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it
Bo much for the Aveightier kinds of reading — the Para-
dise Lost, or Comus, he could have read to him — but
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 279
he missed the pleasure of skimming over with his own
eye a magazine, or a hght pamphlet.
I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues
of some cathedral alone, and reading Candide.
I do not remember a more whimsical sur]Dnse than
having been once detected — by a familiar damsel —
reclined at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill
(her Cythera), reading Pamela. There was nothing
in the book to make a man seriously ashamed at the
exposure ; but as she seated herself down by me, and
seemed determined to read in company, I could have
wished it had been — any other book. We read on
very sociably for a few pages ; and, not finding the au-
thor much to her taste, she got up, and — went away.
Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture, whether
the blush (for there was one between us) was the
property of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma.
From me you shall never get the secret.
I am not nmch a friend to out-of-doors reading. I
cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian
minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow Hill
(as yet Skinner's Street was not), between the hours
of ten and eleven in the morning, studying a volume
of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of ab-
straction beyond my reach. I used to admire how he
sidled along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An
illiterate encounter with a porter's knot, or a bread-
basket, would have quickly put to flight all the the-l(
ology I am master of, and have left me worse than
mdifferent to the five points.
There is a class of street-readers, whom I can never
contemplate without affection — the poor gentry, who,
not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a
280 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READ..<G
little learning at the open stalls — the owner, with hia
hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while,
and thinking when they will have done. Venturing
tenderly, page after page, expecting every moment
when he shall intei'pose his interdict, and yet unable
to deny themselves the gratification, they " snatch a
fearful joy." Martin B , in this way, by daily
fragments, got through two volumes of Clarissa, when
the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition, by ask-
ing him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant
to piu'chase the work. M. declares, that under no
cu'cumstance in his life did he ever peruse a book with
half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy
snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has moralized
upon this subject in two very touching but homc^ly
stanzas.
I saw a boy vrith eager eye
Open a book upon a stall,
And read, as he'd devour it all;
Which when the stall-man did espy,
Soon to the boy I heard him call,
" You Sir, you never buy a book.
Therefore in one you shall not look."
The boy pass'd slowl}' on, and with a sigh
He wish'd he never had been taught to read,
Then of the old chun's books he should have had a v«ad.
Of sufferings the poor have many.
Which never can the rich annoy:
I soon perceived another boy,
Who look'd as if he had not any
Food, for that day at least, — enjoy
The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder.
This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder,
Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny.
Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat:
No wonder if he wish he ne'er had lear.i' i to eat
STAGE ILLUSION. 281
STAGE ILLUSION.
A PLAY is said to be well or ill acted, in proportion
to the scenical illusion produced. Whether such illu-
sion can in any case be perfect, is not the question.
The nearest approach to it, we are told, is, when the
actor appears wholly unconscious of the presence of
spectators. In tragedy — in all which is to affect the
feehngs — this undivided attention to his stage busi-
ness seems indispensable. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed
with every day by our cleverest tragedians ; and while
these references to an audience, in the shape of rant oi
sentiment, are not too frequent or palpable, a sufficient
quantity of illusion for the purposes of dramatic interest
may be said to be produced in spite of them. But,
tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether, in certain
characters in comedy, especially those which are a little
extravagant, or which involve some notion repugnant
to the moral sense, it is not a proof of the highest skill
in the comedian when, without absolutely appealing to
an audience, he keeps up a tacit understanding with
them ; and makes them, unconsciously to themselves, a
party in the scene. The utmost nicety is required in
the mode of doing this; but we speak only of the great
artists in the profession.
The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to
feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is, per-
haps, cowardice. To see a coward done to the life upon
a stage would produce anything but mu'th. Yet we
most of us remember Jack Bannister's cowards. Could
inytliing be more agreeable, more pleasant ? We lo\ ed
282 STAGE ILLUSION.
the rogues. How was this effected but by the exquisite
art of the actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us,
the spectators, even in the extremity of the shaking
fit, that he was not half such a coward as we took him
for ? We saw all the common symptoms of the malady
upon him ; the quivering lip, the cowermg knees, the
teeth chattering ; and could have sworn " that man
was fi'io-htened." But we forgot all the while — or
kept it almost a secret to ourselves — that he never
once lost his self-possession ; that he let out by a thou-
sand droll looks and gestures — meant at ms, and not at
all supposed to be visible to his fellows in the scene,
that his confidence in his own resources had never once
deserted him. Was this a genuine picture of a cow-
ard ? or not rather a likeness, which the clever artist
contrived to palm upon us instead of an original ; while
we secretly connived at the delusion for the purpose of
greater pleasure, than a more genuine counterfeiting of
the imbecility, helplessness, and utter self-desertion,
wliich we know to be concomitants of cowardice in real
life, could have given us ?
Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so
endurable on the stage, but because the skilful actor,
by a sort of sub-reference, rather than direct appeal to
us, disarms the character of a great deal of its odious^
ness, by seeming to engage our compassion for the in-
Hecure tenure by which he holds his money-bags and
parchments ? By this subtle vent half of the hateful-
ness of the character — the self-closeness with which in
real life it coils itself up fi'om the sympathies of men —
evaporates. The miser becomes sympathetic ; i. e. is
no genuine miser. Here again a diverting likeness is
substituted for a very disagreeable reality.
STAGE ILLUSION. ' 283
Spleen, irritability — the pitiable infirmities of old
men, which produce only pain to behold in the realities,
counterfeited upon a stage, divert not altogether for the
comic appendages to them, but in part from an inner
conviction that they are being acted before us ; that a
likeness only is going on, and not the thing itself.
They please by being done under the life, or besiile
it ; not to the life. When Gattie acts an old man, is
he angry indeed? or only a pleasant counterfeit, just
enough of a likeness to recognize, without pressing upon
us the uneasy sense of a reality ?
Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too
natural. It was the case with a late actor. Nothing
could be more earnest or true than the manner of Mr.
Emery ; this told excellently in his Tyke, and char-
acters of a tragic cast. But when he carried the same
rigid exclusiveness of attention to the stage business,
and wilfal blindness and oblivion of everything before
the curtain into his comedy, it produced a harsh and
dissonant effect. He was out of keeping with the rest
of the Personce Dramatis. There was as little link
between him and them, as betwixt himself and the
audience. He was a third estate, dry, repulsive, and
unsocial to all. Individually considered, his execution
was masterly. But comedy is not this unbending
thing ; for this reason, that the same degi'ee of credi-
bility is not required of it as to serious scenes. The
degrees of credibility demanded to the two things, may
be illustrated by the different sort of truth which we
expect when a man tells us a mournful or a merry
story. If we suspect the former of falsehood in any
one tittle, we reject it altogether. Our tears refuse to
flow at a suspected imposition. But the teller of a
284 STAGE ILLUSION.
mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are con-
tent with less than absolute truth. 'Tis the same with
dramatic illusion. We confess we love in comedy to
see an audience naturalized behind the scenes, taken
into the interest of the drama, welcomed as by-standers
however. There is something; ungracious in a comic
actor holding himself aloof from all participation or
concern with those who are come to b.e diverted by
him. Macbeth must see the dagger, and no ear but his
own be told of it ; but an old fool in farce may think
he sees something, and by conscious words and looks
express it, as plainly as he can speak, to pit, box, and
gallery. When an impertinent in tragedy, an Osric,
for instance, breaks in upon the serious passions of the
scene, we approve of the contempt with which he is
treated. But w4ien the pleasant impertinent of comedy,
in a piece purely meant to give delight, and raise mirth'
out of whimsical perplexities, worries the studious man
with taking up his leisure, or making his house his
home, the same sort of contempt expressed (however
naturaV) would destroy the balance of delight in the
spectators. To make the intrusion comic, the actor
who plays the annoyed man must a little desert
nature ; he must, in short, be thinking of the audience,
and express only so much dissatisfaction and peevish-
ness as is consistent with the pleasure of comedy. In
other words, his perplexity must seem half put on. If
ho repel the intruder with the sober set face of a man
in earnest, and more especially if he deliver his ex-
postulations in a tone which in the world must neces-
sarily provoke a duel ; his real-life manner will destroy
the whimsical and purely dramatic existence of the
other character (which to render it comic demands
TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 285
an antagonist comicality on the part of the character
opposed to it), and convert what was meant for mirth,
rather than behef, into a downright piece of imperti-
nence indeed, which would raise no diversion in us, but
rather stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest upon any
unworthy person. A very judicious actor (in most of
his parts) seems to have fallen into an error of this sort
in his playing with Mr. Wrench in the farce of Free
and Easy.
Many instances would be tedious ; these may suffice
to show that comic acting at least does not always
demand from the performer that strict abstraction from
all reference to an audience which is exacted of it ;
but that in some cases a sort of compromise may take
place, and all the purposes of dramatic delight be at-
tained by a judicious understanding, not too openly
announced, between the ladies and gentlemen — on
both sides of the curtain.
TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON.
JoYOUSEST of once embodied spirits, whither ai
length hast thou flown ? to what genial 'region are
we permitted to conjecture that thou hast flitted ?
Art thou sowing thy wild oats yet (the harvest
time was still to come with thee) upon casual sands
of Avemus ? or art thou enacting Rover (as we would
gladlier think) by wandering Elysian streams ?
This mortal frame, while thou didst play thy brief
286 TO THE SHADE Of' ELLISTON.
antics amongst us, was in truth anything but a prison
to thee, as the vain Platonist dreams of this hod^/ to
be no better than a county jail, forsooth, or some
house of durance vile, whereof the five senses are
the fetters. Thou knewest better than to be in a
huiTy to cast off those gyves; and had notice to quit,
I fear, before thou wert quite ready to abandon this
fleshy tenement. It was thy Pleasure-House, thy
Palace of Dainty Devices ; thy Louvre, or thy White-
Hall.
Wliat new mysterious lodgings dost thou tenant
now ? or when may we expect thy aerial house-
warming ?
Tartarus we know, and we have read of the Blessed
Shades ; now cannot I intelligibly fancy thee in either.
Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as the
schoolmen admitted a receptacle apart for Patriarchs
and un-chrisom babes) there may exist — not far per-
chance from that storehouse of all vanities, which
Milton saw in vision — a Limbo somewhere for
Players? and that
Up thither like aerial vapors fly
Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things
Built their fond hopes of glory, or lasting fame?
All the unaccomplished works of Authors' hands,
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed,
Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither —
Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery.
There, by the neighboring moon (by some not im
properly supposed thy Regent Planet upon earth),
mayst thou not still be acting thy managerial pranks,
great disembodied Lessee? but Lessee still, and still a
manacer.
TO THE SHADE OF ELUSION. 287
In Green Rooms, impervious to mortal eye, tlie muse
beholds thee wielding posthumous empire.
Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth)
circle thee in endlessly, and still their song is Fie on
sinful Fantasy/ !
Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe of
earth, Robert William Elliston ! for as yet we
know not thy new name in heaven.
It irks me to think, that, stript of thy regalities, thou
shouldst feriy over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Sty-
gian wherry. Methinks I hear the old boatman, pad-
dling by the weedy wharf, with rancid voice, bawling
" Sculls, Sculls ; " to which, with waving hand, and
majestic action, thou deignest no reply, other than in
two curt monosyllables, " No : Oars."
But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small differ
ence between king and cobbler ; manager and call-
boy ; and, if haply your dates of life were conter-
minant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by
cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) with tlie shade
of some recently departed candle-snuffer.
But mercy ! what strippings, what tearing off ot
histrionic robes, and private vanities ! what denuda-
tions to the bone, before the surly Fenyman will admit
you to set a foot within his battered lighter.
Crowns, sceptres ; shield, sword, and truncheon ; thy
own coronation robes (for thou hast brought the whole
property-man's wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a
navy) ; the judge's ermine ; the coxcomb's wig ; the
snuffboj: a la Foppington, — all must overboard, he
positively swears, — and that Ancient Mariner brooks
no denial ; for, since the tiresome monodrame of the
old Thracian Harper, Charon, it is to be believed, hath
shown small taste for theatricals.
288 TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON.
Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat-weiglit ; pura
et puta anima.
But, bless me, liow little you look !
So shall we all look — kings and keysars — stripped
for the last voyage.
But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu, pleasant,
and thrice pleasant shade ! with my parting thanks for
many a heavy hour of life lightened by thy harmless
extravaganzas, public or domestic.
Rhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes below,
leaving to his two brethren the heavy calendars, — hon-
est Rhadamanth, always partial to players, weighing
their parti-colored existence here upon earth, — making
account of the few foibles, that may have shaded thy
real life, as we call it, (though, substantially, scarcely
less a vapor than thy idlest vagaries upon the boards of
Drury,) as but of so many echoes, natural repercus-
sions, and results to be expected from the assumed ex-
travagances of thy secondary or 7nock life, nightly upon
a stage, — after a lenient castigation, with rods lighter
than of those Medusean ringlets, but just enough to
" whip the offending Adam out of thee," shall cjurte-
ously dismiss thee at the right-hand gate — the o. P.
side of Hades — that conducts to masks and merry-
makings in the Theatre Royal of Proseq)ine.
PLAUDITO, ET VALETO.
ELLISTONIANA. 289
ELLISTONIANA.
My acquaintance with the pleasant creature, whose
loss we all deplore, was but slight.
My first introduction to E., which afterwards ripened
into an acquaintance a little on this side of intimacy,
was over a counter in the Leamington Spa Library,
then newly entered upon by a branch of his family.
E., whom nothing misbecame to auspicate, I sup-
pose, the filial concern, and set it a-going with a lustre,
— was serving in person two damsels fair, who had come
into the shop ostensibly to inquire for some new publi-
cation, but in reality to have a sight of the illustrious
shopman, hoping some conference. With what an air
did he reach down the volume, dispassionately gi'ving
his opinion of the worth of the work in question, and
launching out into a dissertation on its comparative
merits with those of certain publications of a similar
stamp, its rivals ! his enchanted customers fairly hang-
ing on his lips, subdued to their authoritative sentence.
So have I seen a gentleman in comedy acting the shop-
man. So Lovelace sold his o-loves in Kino; Street. I
admired the histrionic art, by which he contrived to
carry clean away every notion of disgrace, from the
occupation he had so generously submitted to ; and
from that hour I judged him, with no after repentance,
to be a person with whom it would be a felicity to be
more acquainted.
To descant upon his merits as a Comedian would
be superfluous. With his blended private and profes-
sional habits alone I have to do ; that harmonious
VOL. III. 19
290 ELLISTONIANA.
fusion of tlie manners of the player into those of every-
day hfe, which brought the stage boards into streets,
and dining-parlors, and kept up tlie play when the
play was ended. " I like Wrench," a fi'iend "vas say-
ing to him one day, " because he is the same, natural,
easy creature, on the stage, that he is offy " My caso
exactly," retorted Elliston, — with a charmhig forget-
fulness, that the converse of a proposition does not al-
ways lead to the same conclusion, — "I am the same
person off the stage that I am on." The inference, at
first sight, seems identical ; but examine it a little, and
it confesses only, that the one performer was never,
and the other always, acting.
And in truth this was the charm of Elliston's private
deportment. You had spirited performance always
going on before your eyes, with nothing to pay. As
where a monarch takes up his casual abode for a night,
the poorest hovel which he honors by his sleeping in it,
becomes ipso facto for that time a palace ; so wherever
Elliston Avalked, sat, or stood still, there was the the-
atre. He carried about with him his pit, boxes, and
galleries, and set up his portable playhouse at corners of
streets, and in the market-places. Upon flintiest pave-
ments he trod the boards still ; and if his theme chanced
to be passionate, the green baize carpet of tragedy
spontaneously rose beneath his feet. Now this was
hearty, and showed a love for his art. So Apelles aU
ways painted — in thought. So G. D. always poetizes.
I hate a lukewarm artist. I have known actors — and
some of them of Elliston's own stamp — who shall have
agreeably been amusing 3'ou in the part of a rake or a
coxcomb, through the two or three hours of their dra-
matic existence ; but no sooner does the curtain %11
ELLISTONIANA. 291
with its leaden clatter, but a spirit of lead seems to
seize on all their faculties. They emerge sour, morose
persons, intolerable to their families, servants, &c.
Another shall have been expanding your heart with
generous deeds and sentiments, till it even beats with
yearnings of universal sympathy ; you absolutely long
to go home and do some good action. The play seems
tedious, till you can get fairly out of the house, and
reahze your laudable intentions. At length the final
bell rings, and this cordial representative of all that is
amiable in human breasts steps forth — a miser. Ellis-
ton was more of a piece. Did he play Ranger ? and
did Ranger fill the general bosom of the town with satis-
faction ? why should lie not be Ranger, and diffuse the
same cordial satisfaction among his private circles ? with
his temperament, Ms animal spirits, Ms good-nature. Mis
follies perchance, could he do better than identify him-
self with his impersonation ? Are we to like a pleasant
rake, or coxcomb, on the stage, and give ourselves airs
of aversion for the identical character, presented to us in
actual life ? or what would the performer have gained
by divesting himself of the impersonation ? Could the
man Elliston have been essentially different from his
part, even if he had avoided to reflect to us studiously,
in private circles, the airy briskness, the forwardness,
and scape-goat trickeries of his prototype ?
" But there is something not natural in this everlast-
ing acting ; we want the real man."
Are you quite sure that it is not the man himself,
whom you cannot, or will not see, under some adventi-
tious trappings, which, nevertheless, sit not at all incon-
sistently upon him ? What if it is the nature of some
men to be highly artificial ? The fiiult is least repre-
292 ELLISTONIANA.
hensible in players. Gibber was his own Foppington,
with almost as much wit as Vanbrugh could add to it.
" My conceit of his person," — it is Ben Jonson
speaking of Lord Bacon, — " was never increased tow-
ards him by his ^lace or honors. But I have, and do
reverence him for the greatness., that was only proper
to himself; in that he seemed to me ever one of the
greatest men, that had been in many ages. In his ad-
versity I ever prayed that Heaven would give him
strength ; for greatness he could not want."
The quality here commended was scarcely less con-
spicuous in the subject of these idle reminiscences than
in my Lord Verulam. Those who have imagined that
an unexpected elevation to the direction of a great
London Theatre affected the consequence of Elliston,
or at all changed his nature, knew not the essential
greatness of the man whom they disparage. It was my
fortune to encounter him near St. Dunstan's Church
(which, with its punctual giants, is now no more than
dust and a shadow), on the morning of his election to
that high office. Grasping my hand with a look of
significance, he only uttered, — " Have you heard the
news ? " — then, with another look following up the
blow, he subjoined, " I am the future Manager of
Drury Lane Theatre." Breathless as he saw me, he
stayed not for congratulation or reply, but mutely
stalked away, leaving me to chew upon his new-blown
dignities at leisure. In fact, nothing could be said to
it. Expressive silence alone could muse his praise.
This was in his great style.
But was he less great., (be witness, O ye Powers of
Equanimity, that supported in the ruins of Garthage
the consular exile, and more recently transmuted, for
ELLISTONIANA. 293
a more illustrious exile, the barren constableship of
Elba into an image of Imperial France,) when, in
melancholy after-years, again, much near the same
spot, I met him, when that sceptre had been wrested
from his hand, and his dominion was curtailed to the
petty managership, and part proprietorship, of the small
Olympic, Im Elba? He still played nightly upon the
boards of Drury, but in parts, alas ! allotted to him,
not magnificently distributed by him. Wai^'ing his
great loss as nothing, and magnificently sinking the
sense of fallen material grandeur in the more liberal
resentment of depreciations done to his more lofty in-
tellectual pretensions, " Have you heard " (his custom-
ary exordium) — " have you heard," said he, " how
they treat me ? they put me in comedy." Thought I —
but his finger on his lips forbade any verbal interrup-
tion — " where could they have put you better ? "
Then, after a pause — " Where I formerly played
Romeo, I now play Mercutio," — and so again he
stalked away, neither staying, nor caring for, responses.
O, it was a rich scene, — but Sir A C , the
best of story-tellers and surgeons, who mends a lame
narrative almost as well as he sets a fracture, alone
could do justice to it, — that I was a witness to, in the
tarnished room (that had once been green) of that
same little Olympic. There, after his deposition from
Imperial Drury, he substituted a throne. That Olym-
pic Hill was his " highest heaven ; " himself " Jove in
his chair." There he sat in state, while before him, on
complaint of prompter, was brought for judgment —
how shall I describe her ? — one of those little tawdry
things that flirt at the tails of chorusses — a probationer
for the town, in either of its senses — the pertest little
21)4 ELLISTONIANA.
drab — a dirty fringe and appendage of the lamps'
Bmoke — who, it seems, on some disapprobation ex-
pressed by a " highly respectable " audience, — had
precipitately quitted her station on the boards, and
withdrawn her small talents in disgust.
"And how dare you," said her manager, — assum-
mg a censorial severity, which would have crushed the
confidence of a Vestris, and disarmed that beautiful
Rebel herself of her professional caprices, — I verily
believe, he thought her standing before him, — " how
dare you. Madam, withdraw yourself, without a notice,
from your theatrical duties ? " "I was hissed, Sir."
*'And you have the presumption tc decide upon the
taste of the town ? " "I don't know that. Sir, but I
will never stand to be hissed," was the subjoinder of
young Confidence, — when gathering up his features
into one significant mass of wonder, pity, and expostu-
latory indignation — in a lesson never to have been
lost upon a creatui'e less forward than she who stood
before him, — his words were these : " They have
hissed me."
'Twas the identical argument a fortiori^ which the
son of Peleus uses to Lycaon trembling under his
lance, to persuade him to take his destiny with a good
grace. " I too am mortal." And it is to be believed
that in both cases the rhetoric missed of its application,
for want of a proper understanding with the faculties of
the respective recipients.
" Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he was
courteously conducting me over the benches of his
Surrey Theatre, the last retreat, and recess, of his
every-day waning grandeur.
Those who knew Elliston, will know the manner in
ELLISTONIANA. 296
which he pronounced the latter sentence of the few
words I am about to record. One proud day to me he
took his roast mutton with us in tlie Temple, to which
I had superadded a preliminary haddock. After a
rather plentiful partaking of the meagre banquet, not
unrefreshed with the humbler sort of liquors, I made a
sort of apology for the humility of the fare, observing
that for my own part I never ate but one dish at
dinner. " I too never eat but one thing at dinner," —
was his reply, — then, after a pause, — " reckoning fish
as nothing." The manner was all. It was as if by
one peremptory sentence he had decreed the annihila-
tion of all the savory esculents, which the pleasant and
nutritious-food-giving Ocean pours forth upon poor
humans from her watery bosom. This was greatness,
tempered with considerate tenderness to the feelings of
his scanty but welcoming entertainer.
Gireat wert thou in thy life, Robert William Ellis-
ton ! and Tiot lessened in thy death, if report speak
truly, which says that thou didst direct that thy mortal
remains should repose under no inscription but one of
pure Latinity. Classical was thy bringing up ! and
beautiful was the feeling on thy last bed, which, con-
necting the man with the boy, took thee back to thy
latest exercise of imagination, to the days when, un-
dreaming of Theatres and Managerships, thou wert a
scholar, and an early ripe one, under the roofs builded
by the munificent and pious Colet. For thee the
Pauline Muses weep. In elegies, that shall silence this
crude prose, they shall celebrate thy praise.
296 THE OLD MARGATE HOY.
THE OLD MARGATE HOY
1 AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe I hayts
Eaid so before) at one or other of the Universities.
Next to these my choice would fix me at some woody
spot, such as the neighborhood of Henley affords in
abundance, on the banks of my beloved Thames. But
somehow or other my cousin contrives to wheedle me,
once in three or four seasons, to a watering-place. Old
attachments cling to her in spite of experience. We
have been dull at Worthing one summer, duller at
Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourn a third, and are
at this moment doing dreary penance at — Hastings !
— and all because we were happy many years ago for
a brief week at Margate. That was our first seaside
experiment, and many circumstances combined to make
it the most agreeable holiday of my life. We had
neither of us seen the sea, and we had never been from
home so long together in company.
Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy
weather-beaten, sunburnt captain, and his rough ac-
commodations, — ill exchanged for the foppery and
freshwater niceness of the modern steam-packet ? To
the winds and waves thou committedst thy goodly
freightage, and didst ask no aid of magic fumes, and
spells, and boiling caldrons. With the gales of heaven
thou wentest swimmingly ; or, when it was their
pleasure, stoodest still with sailor-like patience. Thy
course was natural, not forced, as in a hotbed ; nor
didst thou go poisoning the breath of ocean with sul-
phureous smoke — a great sea chimera, chimneyhig
THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 297
and fiirnacing the deep ; or liker to that fire-god parch-
ing up Scamander.
Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their
coy reluctant responses (yet to the suppression of any-
thing like contempt) to the raw questions, which we of
the great city would be ever and anon putting to them,
as to the uses of this or that strange naval implement ?
'Specially can I forget thee, thou happy medium, thou
shade of refuge between us and them, conciliating inter-
preter of their skill to our simplicity, comfortable am-
bassador between sea and land ! — whose sailor-trousers
did not more convincingly assure thee to be an adopted
denizen of the former, than thy white cap, and whiter
apron over them, with thy neat-figured practice in thy
culinary vocation, bespoke thee to have been of inland
nurture heretofore, — a master cook of Eastcheap?
How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation,
cook, mariner, attendant, chamberlain ; here, there,
like another Ariel, flaming at once about all parts of
the deck, yet with kindlier ministrations, — not to
assist the tempest, but, as if touched with a kindred
sense of our infirmities, to soothe the qualms which that
untried motion might haply raise in our crude land-
fancies. And when the o'erwashino; billows drove us
below deck, (for it was far gone in October, and we
had stiff and blowing weather,) how did thy officious
ministerings, still catering for our comfort, with cards,
and cordials, and thy more cordial conversation, alle-
viate the closeness and the confinement of thy else
(truth to say) not very savory, nor very inviting,
little cabin ?
With these additaments to boot, we had on board a
fellow -passenger, whose discourse in verity might have
298 THE OLD MARGATE HOY.
beguiled a longer voyage than we meditated, and have
made mirth and wonder abomid as far as the Azores.
He was a dark, Spanish-complexioned young man, re-
markably handsome, with an officer-like assurance, and
an insuppressible volubility of assertion. He was, in
fact, the greatest liar I had met with then- or since.
He was none of your hesitating, half story-tellers (a
most painful description of mortals) who go on sound-
ing your belief, and only giving you as much as they
see you can swallow at a time, — the nibbling pick-
pockets of your patience, — but one who committed
downright, daylight depredations upon his neighbor's
faith. He did not stand shivering upon the brink, but
was a hearty, thorough-paced liar, and plunged at once
into the depths of your credulity. I partly believe, he
made pretty sure of his company. Not many rich, not
many wise, or learned, composed at that time the com-
mon stowage of a Margate packet. We were, I am
afraid, a set of as unseasoned Londoners (let our
enemies give it a worse name) as Aldermanbury, or
Watling Street, at that time of day could have supplied.
There might be an exception or two among us, but I
scorn to make any invidious distinctions among such a
jolly, companionable ship's company, as those were
whom I sailed with. Something too must be conceded
to the Crenius Loci. Had the confident fellow told us
half the legends on land, which he favored us with on
the other element, I flatter myself the good sense of
most of us would have revolted. But we were in a
new world, with everything unfamiliar about us, and
the time and place disposed us to the reception of any
pi'odigious marvel whatsoever. Time has obliterated
fi'om my memory much of his wild fablings ; and the
THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 299
rest would appear but dull, as written, and to be read
on shore. He had been aide-de-camp (among other
rare accidents and fortunes) to a Persian Prince, and
at one blow had stricken off the head of the King of
Cariraania on horseback. He, of course, married the
Prince's daughter. I forget what unlucky turn in the
politics of that court, combining with the loss of his
consort, was the reason of his quitting Persia ; but,
with the rapidity of a magician, he transported himself,
along with his hearers, back to England, where we still
found him in the confidence of great ladies. There
was some story of a princess — Elizabeth, if I remem-
ber— having intrusted to his care an extraordinary
casket of jewels, upon some extraordinary occasion, —
but, as I am not certain of the name or circumstance a',
this distance of time, I must ■ leave it to the Roya>
daughters of England to settle the honor among them
selves in private. I cannot call to mind half his pleas
ant wonders ; but I perfectly remember, that in the.
course of his travels he had seen a phoenix ; and he
obligingly undeceived us of the vulgar error, that there
is but one of that species at a time, assuring us that
they were not uncommon in some parts of Upper
Egypt. Hitherto he had found the most implicit
listeners. His dreaming fancies had transported us be-
yond the " ignorant present." But when (still hardy-
ing more and more in his triumphs over our simplicity)
he went on to affirm that he had actually sailed through
the legs of the Colossus at Rhodes, it really became
necessary to make a stand. And here I must do justice
to the good sense and intrepidity of one of our party, a
youth, that had hitlierto been one of his most deferen-
tial auditors, who, from his recent reading, made bold
300 THE OLD MARGATE HOY.
to assure tlie gentleman, that there must be some mis-
take, as ' the Colossus in question had been destroyed
long since ; " to whose opinion, delivered with all
modesty, our hero was obliging enough to concede thus
much, that " the figure was indeed a little damaged."
This was the only opposition he met with, and it did
not at all seem to stagger him, for he proceeded with
his fables, which the same youth appeared to swallow
with still more complacency than ever, — confirmed,
as it were, by the extreme candor of that concession.
With these prodigies he wheedled us on till we came in
sight of the Reculvers, which one of oiu" own company
(having been the voyage before) immediately recog-
nizing, and pointing out to us, was considered by us as
no ordinary seaman.
All this time sat upon the edge of the deck quite a
different character. It was a lad, appai'ently very poor,
veiy infirm, and very patient. His eye was ever on
the sea, with a smile ; and, if he caught now and then
some snatches of these wild legends, it was by accident,
and they seemed not to concern him. The waves to
him whispered more pleasant stories. He was as one,
being with us, but not of us. He heai'd the bell of
dinner ring without stu'ring ; and when some of us
pulled out our private stores — our cold meat and our
salads, — he produced none, and seemed to Avant none.
Only a solitary biscuit he had laid in ; provision for the
one or two days and nights, to which these vessels then
were oftentimes obliged to prolong their voyage. Upon
a nearer acquaintance Avith him, which he seemed
neither to court nor decline, Ave learned that he Avas
going to Margate, Avith the hope of being admitted into
the Infirmary there for sea-bathing. His disease Avas a
THE OLD MARGATi: HOY. 301
Bcroiula, which appeared to have eaten all over him.
He expressed great hopes of a cure ; and when we
a-^ked him, whether he had any friends where he was
going, he replied " he had no fi'iends."
These pleasant, and some mournful passages with the
first sight of the sea, cooperating with youth, and a
sense of holidays, and out-of-door adventure, to me that
had been pent up in po})ulous cities for many months
before, — have left upon my mind the fragrance as of
summer days gone by, bequeathing nothing but their
remembrance for cold and wintry hours to chew upon.
Will it be thought a digression (it may spare some
unwelcome comparisons) if I endeavor to account for
the dissatisfaction which I have heard so many persons
confess to have felt (as I did myself feel in part on this
occasion) at the sight of the sea for the first time f I
think the reason usually given — referring to the in-
capacity of actual objects for satisfying our preconcep-
tions of them — scarcely goes deep enough into the
question. Let the same person see a lion, an elephant,
a mountain, for the first time in his life, and he shall
perhaps feel himself a little mortified. The things do
not fill up that space, Avhich the idea of them seemed to
take up in his mind. But they have still a correspond-
ency to his first notion, and in time grow up to it, so as
to produce a very similar impression ; enlarging them-
selves (if I may say so) upon familiarity. But the sea
remains a disappointment. Is it not, that in the latter
we had expected to behold (absurdly, I grant, but, I
am afraid, by the law of imagination, unavoidably) not
a definite object, as those wild beasts, or that mountain
compassable by the eye, but all the sea at once, tpib
COMMENSURATE ANTAGONIST OF THE EARTH ? I do
802 THE OLD MARGATE HOY.
not say we tell ourselves so much, but the craving of
the mind is to be satisfied with nothing less. I will
suppose the case of a young person of fifteen (as I then
was) knowing nothing of the sea, but from description.
He comes to it for the first time, — all that he has been
reading of it all his life, and that the most enthusiastic
part of life, — all he has gathered from narratives of
wandering seamen, — what he has gained from true
voyages, and what he cherishes as credulously from ro-
mance and poetry, — crowding their images, and exact-
ing strange tributes from expectation. He thinks of
the great deep, and of those who go down unto it ; of
its thousand isles, and of the vast continents it washes ,
of its receiving the mighty Plate, or Orellana, into ita
bosom, without disturbance, or sense of augmentation :
of Biscay SAvells, and the mariner,
For many a day, and many a dreadful nigbt,
Incessant laboring round the stormy Cape ;
of fatal rocks, and the " still- vexed Bermoothes ; " of
great whirlpools, and the water-spout ; of sunken ships,
and sumless treasures swallowed up in the vmrestoring
depths ; of fishes and quaint monsters, to which all
that is terrible on earth
Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal,
Compared with the creatures in the sea's entral;
of naked savages, and Juan Fernandez ; of pearls,
and shells ; of coral beds, and of enchanted isles ; of
mennaids' grots ; —
I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects to bo
shown all these wonders at once, but he is under the
tyranny of a mighty faculty, which haunts him with
THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 803
confused hints and shadows of all these ; ana wl;en the
actual object opens first upon him, seen (in tame
weather too, most likely) from our unromantic coasts,
■ — a speck, a slip of sea- water, as it shows to him, — ■
what can it prove but a very unsatisfying and even
diminutive entertainment ? Or if he has come to it
from the mouth of a nver, was it much more than the
river widening ? and, even out ot sight of land, what
had he but a flat watery horizon about him, nothing
comparable to the vast o'er-curtaining sky, his familiar
object, seen daily without dread or amazement ? —
Who, in similar circumstances, has not been tempted to
exclaim with Charoba, in the poem of Gebir,
Is this the mighty ocean? is this all?
I love town, or country ; but this detestable Cinque
Port is neither. I hate these scrubbed shoots, thrusting
out their starved foliage from between the horrid fis-
sures of dusty innutritions rocks ; which the amateur
calls " verdure to the edge of the sea." I require
woods, and they show me stunted coppices. I cry out
for the water-brooks, and pant for fresh streams, and
inland murmurs. I cannot stand all day on the naked
beach, watching the capricious hues of the sea, shifting
like the colors of a dying mullet. I am tired of look-
ing out at the windows of this island-prison. I would
fain retire into the interior of my cage. While I gaze
upon the sea, I want to be on it, over it, across it. It
•binds me in with chains, as of iron. My thoughts «ire
abroad. I should not so feel in Staffordshire. There
is no home for me here. There is no sense of home
at Hastings. It is a place of fugitive resort, an hete-
rogeneous assemblage of sea-mews and stockbrokers,
504 THE OLD MARGATE HOY.
Amphitrites of the town, and misses that coquet with
the Ocean. If it were what it was in its primitive
shape, and what it ought to liave remained, a fair,
honest fishing-town, and no more, it were something ; —
with a few strao;o;hno; fishermen's huts scattered about,
artless as its chffs, and with their materials filched from
them, it were something. I coiild abide to dwell with
Meshech ; to assort with fisher-swains, and smugglers.
There are, or I dream there are, many of this latter
occupation here. Their faces become the place. I
like a smuggler. He is the only honest thief. He
robs nothing but the revenue, — an abstraction I never
greatly cared about. I could go out with them in their
mackerel boats, or about their less ostensible business,
with some satisfaction. I can even tolerate those poor
victims to monotony, who from day to day pace along
the beach, in endless progress and recurrence, to watch
their illicit countrymen, — townsfolk or brethren per-
chance, — whistling to the sheathing and unsheathing
of their cutlasses, (their only solace,) who, under the
mild name of preventive service, keep up a legitimated
civil warfare in the deplorable absence of a foreign one,
to show their detestation of run hollands, and zeal for
Old England. But it is the visitants from town, that
come here to say that they have been here, with no
more relish of the sea than a pond-perch or a dace
might be supposed to have, that are my aversion. I
feel like a foolish dace in these regions, and have as
little toleration for cayself here as for them. What
can they want here ? if they had a true relish of
the ocean, why have they brought all this land lug
gage with them ? or why i)itch their civilized tents
in the desert? What mean these scanty book-rooms
THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 305
• — marine libraries as they entitle them — if the sea
were, as they would have us believe, a book " to read
strano:e matter in ? " what are their foolish concert-
rooms, if they come, as they would fain be thought to
do, to listen to the music of the waves ? All is false
and hollow pretension. They come, because it is tlie
fasliion, and to spoil the nature of the place. They
are, mostly, as I have said, stockbrokers ; \at I have
watched the better sort of them, — now and then, an
honest citizen (of the old stamp), in the simplicity of
his heart, shall bring down his wife and daughters, to
taste the sea-breezes. I always know the date of their
arrival. It is easy to see it in their countenance. A
day or two they go wandering on the shingles, picking
up cockle-shells, and thinking them great things ; but,
m a poor week, imagination slackens: they begin to
discover that cockles produce no pearls, and then — O
then ! — if I could interpret for the pretty creatures
(I know they have not the courage to confess it them-
selves), how gladly would they exchange their seaside
rambles for a Sunday-walk on the greensward of their
accustomed Twickenham meadows !
I would ask of one of these sea-charmed emigrants,
who think they tinily love the sea, with its Avild usages,
what would their feelings be, if some of the unsophis-
ticated aborigines of this place, encouraged by their
courteous questionings here, should venture, on the
faith of such assured sympathy between them, to return
the visit, and come uj) to see — London. I must
imaffine them with their fishing-tackle on their back,
ab we carry our town necessaries. What a sensation
would it cause in Lotlibury. W.hat vehement laughter
would it not excite ainoiig
VOL. III. 20
806 THE CONVALESCENT.
The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard Street!
I am. sure that no town-bred or inland-bom sub-
jects can feel their true and natural nourishment at
these sea-places. Nature, where she does not mean
us for mariners and vagabonds, bids us stay at home.
The salt foam seems to nourish a spleen. I am not
half so good-natured as by the milder waters 'f my
natural river. I would exchange these sea-gulls for
swans, and scud a swallow forever about the banks of
Thamesis.
THE CONVALESCENT.
A PRETTY severe fit of indisposition which, under the
name of a nervous fever, has made a prisoner of me for
some weeks past, and is but slowly leaving me, has
reduced me to an incapacity of reflecting upon any
topic foreign to itself. Expect no healthy conclusions
from me this month, reader ; I can offer you only sick
men's dreams.
And truly the whole state of sickness is such ; for
what else is it but a magnificent dream for a man to lie
a-bed, and draw daylight curtains about him ; and,
shutting out the sun, to induce a total oblivion of all
the works which are ffoins: on under it ? To become
insensible to all the operations of life, except the beat-
ings of one feeble pulse ?
If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. How
the patient lords it there ; what caprices he acts with-
niE CONVALESCENT. S(}lt
out control ! how kinglike lie sways his pillow —
tumbling, and tossing, and shifting, and lowering, and
thumping, and flatting, and moulding it, to the ever-
varying requisitions of his throbbing temples.
He changes sides oftener than a politician. Now he
lies fiill length, then half length, obliquely, transversely,
head and feet quite across the bed ; and none accuses
him of tergiversation. Within the four curtains he is
absolute. They are his Mare Clausum.
How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's
self to himself! he is his own exclusive object. Su-
preme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only
duty. 'Tis the Two Tables of the Law to him. He
has nothing to think of but how to get well. What
passes out of doors, or within tliem, so he hear not the
jarring of them, affects him not.
A little while ago he was greatly concerned in the
event of a lawsuit, which was to be the making or the
marring of his dearest fi'iend. He was to be seen
trudging about upon this man's errand to fifty quarters
of the town at once, jogging this witness, refreshing
that solicitor. The cause was to come on yesterday.
He is absolutely as indifferent to the decision, as if it
were a question to be tried at Pekin. Perad venture
from some whispering, going on about the house, not
intended for his hearing, he picks up enough to make
him understand, that things went cross-grained in the
Court yesterday, and his friend is ruined. But the
word " friend," and the word " ruin," disturb him no
more than so much jargon. He is not to think of any-
thino; but how to o-et better.
What a world of foreign cares are merged in that
absorbing consideration I
308 THE CONVALESCENT.
He has put on the strong armor of sickness, he la
wrapped in the callous hide of suffermg ; he keeps hb
sympathy, like some curious vintage, under trusty lock
and key, for his own use only.
He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to him-
self; he yearneth over himself; his bowels are even
melted within him, to think what he suffers ; he is not
ashamed to weep over himself.
He is forever plotting how to do some good to
himself; studying little stratagems and artificial alle-
viations.
He makes the most of himself ; dividing himself, by
an allowable fiction, into as many distinct individuals,
as he hath sore and sorrowing members. Sometimes
he meditates — as of a thing apart from him — upon
his poor aching head, and that dull pain which, dozing
or waking, lay in it all the past night like a log, or
palpable substance of pain, not to be removed without
opening the very skull, as it seemed, to take it thence.
Or he pities his long, clammy, attenuated fingers. He
compassionates himself all over ; and his bed is a very
discipline of humanity, and tender heart.
He is his own sympathizer ; and instinctively feels
that none can so well perform that office for him. He
cares for few spectators to his tragedy. Only that
punctual face of the old nurse pleases him, that an-
nounces his broths and his cordials. He likes it because
it is so unmoved, and because he can pour forth his
feverish ejaculations before it as unreservedly as to his
bedpost.
To the world's business he is dead. He understands
not what the callings and occupations of mortals are
only he has a glimmering conceit of some such thing,
THE CONVALESCENT. 309
when tlie doctor makes his daily call ; and even in the
lines on that busy face he reads no multiplicity of pa-
tients, but solely conceives of himself as tJie sick man.
To what other uneasy couch the good man is hasten-
ing, when he slips out of his chamber, folding up his
thin douceur so carefully, for fear of inistling — is no
Bpeculation which he can at present entertain. He
thinks only of the regular return of the same phenom-
enon at the same hour to-morrow.
Household rumors touch him not. Some faint
murmur, indicative of life going on within the house,
St»othes him, while he knows not distinctly what it is.
He is not to know anything, not to think of anything.
Servants gliding up or down the distant staircase,
treading as upon velvet, gently keep his ear awake,
so long as he troubles not himself further than with
some feeble guess at their errands. Exacter knowledge
would be a burden to him ; he can just endure the
pressure of conjecture. He opens his eye faintly at
the dull stroke of the muffled knocker, and closes it
again without askincr " Who was it ? " He is flattered
by a general notion that inquiries are making after
him, but he cares not to know the name of the in-
quirer. In the general stillness, and awfid hush of the
house, he lies in state, and feels his sovereignty.
To be sick is to enjoy monarchial prerogatives. Com-
pare the silent tread, and quiet ministry, almost by the
eye only, with which he is served — with the cax'e-
less demeanor, the unceremonious e-oings in and out
(slapping of doors, or leaving them open) of the very
Bame attendants, when he is getting a little better —
and you will confess, that from the bed of sickness
(throne let me rather call it) to the elbowchair of
310 THE CONVALESCENT.
convalescence, is a fall fi'om dignity, amounting to a
deposition.
How convalescence shrinks a man back to liis pris-
tine stature ! where is now the space, which he occu-
pied so lately, in his own, in the family's eye ?
The scene of his regalities, his sick-room, which was
his presence chamber, where he lay and acted his des-
potic fancies — how is it reduced to a common bed-
room ! The trimness of the very bed has something
petty and unmeaning about it. It is made every day.
How unlike to that wavy, many-furrowed, oceanic
surface, which it presented so short a time since, when
to make it was a service not to be thought of at oftener
than three or four day revolutions, when the patient
was with pam and grief to be lifted for a little while
out of it, to submit to the encroachments of unwelcome
neatness, and decencies which his shaken frame depre-
cated ; then to be lifted into it again, for another three
or four days' respite, to flounder it out of shape again,
while eveiy fresh ftirrow was an historical record of
some shifting posture, some uneasy tmning, some seek-
ino- for a little ease ; and the shrunken skin scarce told
a truer story than the crumpled coverlid.
Hushed are those mysterious sighs — those groans
— so much more awful, while we knew not from what
caverns of vast hidden suffering they proceeded. The
Leniean pangs are quenched. The riddle of sickness
is solved ; and Philoctetes is become an ordinary per
sonage.
Perhaps some relic of the sick man's dream of great-
ness survives in the still lingering visitations of the
medical attendant. But how is he, too, changed with
everything else ! Can this be he — tliis man of news
THE CONVALESCENT. 311
— -of chat — of anecdote — of everything but physic, —
can this be he, who so lately came between the patient
and his cruel enemy, as on some solemn embassy from
Nature, erecting herself into a high mediating party ? —
Pshaw ! 'tis some old woman.
Farewell with him all that made sickness pompous
— the spell that hushed the household — the desert-
like stillness, felt throughout its inmost chambers —
the mute attendance — the inquiry by looks — the still
softer delicacies of self-attention — the sole and single
eye of distemper alonely fixed upon itself — world-
thoughts excluded — the man a world unto liimself —
his own theatre, —
What a speck is he dwindled into!
In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by the ebb
of sickness, yet far enough from the terra firma of
estabhshed health, your note, dear Editor, reached
me, requesting — an article. In Articulo INIortis,
thought I ; but it is something hard, — and the quibble,
wretched as it was, relieved me. The summons, un-
seasonable as it appeared, seemed to link me on again
to the petty businesses of life, which I had lost sight
of; a gentle call to activity, however trivial ; a whole-
some weaning fi'ora that preposterous dream of self-
absorption — the puffy state of sickness — in which I
confess to have lain so long, insensible to the maca-
zines and monarchies, of the world alike ; to its laws,
and to its literature. The hypochondriac flatus is sul>-
siding; the acres, which in imagination I had spread
over — for the sick man swells in the sole contempla-
tion of his single sufferings, till he becomes a Tityus to
himself — are wasting to a span ; and for the giant of
812 SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS.
self-importance, which I was so lately, you have me
once again in my natural pretensions — the lean and
meagre figure of your insignificant Essayist.
SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS.
So far from the position holding true, that great wit
(^or genius, in our modem way of speaking) has a ne-
cessary alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the
contrary, will ever be found to be the sanest writers.
It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shak-
speare. The gi'eatness of wit, by which the poetic
talent is here chiefly to be understood, manifests itself
in the admirable balance of all the faculties. Madness
is the disproportionate straining or excess of any one of
them. "So strong a wit," says Cowley, speaking of a
poetical friend,
" did Nature to him frame,
As all things but his judgment overcame;
His judgment like the heavenly moon did show,
Tempering that mighty sea below."
The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding In
the raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exalta-
tion, to which they have no parallel in their own ex-
perience, besides the spurious resemblance of it in
dreams and fevers, impute a state of dreaminess and
fever to the poet. But the true poet dreams being
awake. He h not possessed by his subject, but has
dominion over it. In the o-roves of Eden he walks
SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 313
familial as in his native paths. He ascends the empy-
rean heaven, and is not intoxicated. He treads the
burning marl without dismay ; he wings his flight with-
out self-loss through realms of chaos "and old night."
Or if, abandoning himself to that severer chaos of a
"human mind untuned," he is content awhile to be
mad with Lear, or to hate mankind (a sort of madness)
Math Timon ; neither is that madness, nor this misan-
thropy, so unchecked, but that — never letting the
reins of reason wholly go, while most he seems to do
so — he has his better genius still whispering at his
ear, with the good servant Kent suggesting saner coun-
sels, or with the honest steward Flavins recommending
kindlier resolutions. Where he seems most to recede
from humanity, he will be found the truest to it. From
beyond the scope of Nature, if he summon possible
existences, he subjugates them to the law of her con-
sistency. He is beautifully loyal to that sovereign
directress, even when he appears most to betray and
desert her. His ideal tribes submit to policy ; his very
monsters are tamed to his hand, even as that wild sea-
brood, shepherded by Proteus. He tames, and he
clothes them with attributes of flesh and blood, till they
wonder at themselves, like Indian Islanders forced to
submit to European vesture. Caliban, the Witches,
are as true to the laws of their own nature (ours with
a difference) as Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Here-
in the great and the little wits are differenced ; that
if the latter wander ever so little from nature or ac-
tual existence, they lose themselves, and their readers.
Their phantoms are lawless ; their visions nightmares.
They do not create, which implies shaping and consist-
ency. Their imaginations are not active, — for lo b**
314 SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS.
active is to call something into act and form, — but pas-
sive, as men in sick dreams. For the supernatural, or
something superadded to what we know of nature,
they give you the plainly non-natural. And if this
were all, and that these mental hallucinations were dis-
coverable only in the treatment of subjects out of
nature, or transcending it, the judgment might with
some plea be pardoned if it ran riot, and a little wan-
tonized ; but even in the describing of real and every-
day life, that which is before their eyes, one of these
lesser wits shall more deviate fi'om nature, — show more
of that inconsequence, which has a natural alliance
with frenzy, — than a great genius in his "maddest fits,"
as Withers somewhere calls them. We appeal to any
one that is acquainted with the common run of Lane's
novels, — a§ they existed some twenty or thirty years
back, — those scanty intellectiial viands of the whole fe-
male reading public, till a happier genius arose, and ex-
pelled forever the innutritious phantoms, — whether he
has not found his brain more " betossed," his memory
more puzzled, his sense of when and where more con
founded, among the improbable events, the incoherent
incidents, the inconsistent characters, or no characters,
of some third-rate love-intrigue, — wliere the persons
shall be a Lord Glendamour and a Miss Rivers, and the
scene only alternate between Bath and Bond Street, —
a more bewildering dreaminess induced upon him, than
he has felt wandering over all the fairy grounds of
Spenser. In the productions we refer to, nothing but
names and places isfiimiliar; the persons are neither of
this world nor of any other conceivable one ; an end-
less string of activities without purpose, of purposes
destitute of motive : — we m(;et phantoms in our known
SANITY OF TRUE OENIUS. 315
walks ; fantasques only christened. In the poet we
have names which announce fiction ; and we have ab-
solutely no place at all, for the things and persons of
the Fairy Queen prate not of their " whereabout."
But in their inner nature, and the law of their speech
and actions, we are at home and upon acquainted
ground. The one turns life into a dream ; the other
to the wildest dreams gives the sobrieties of every-day
occurrences. By what subtle art of tracing the mental
processes it is effected, we are not philosophers enough
to explain ; but in that wonderful episode of the cave of
Mammon, in which the Money God appears first in the
lowest form of a miser, is then a worker of metals, and
becomes the god of all the treasures of the world ; and
has a daughter. Ambition, before whom all the world
kneels for favors, — with the Hesperian fruit, the waters
of Tantalus, with Pilate washing his hands vainly, but
not impertinently, in the same stream, — that Ave should
be at one moment in the cave of an old hoarder of
treasures, at the next at the forge of the Cyclops, in a
palace and yet in hell, all at once, with the shifting
mutations of the most rambling dream, and our judg-
ment yet all the time awake, and neither able nor will-
ing to detect the fallacy, — is a proof of that hidden
sanity which still guides the poet in the wildest seem-
ing-aberrations.
It is not enough to say that the whole episode is a
copy of the mind's conceptions in sleep ; it is, in some
sort, — but what a copy ! Let the most romantic of us,
that has been entertained all night Avith the spectacle
of some wild and magnificent A'ision, recombine it in
the morning, and try it by his Avaking judgment.
That which appeared so shifting, and yet so coherent,
816' CAPTAIN JACKSON.
while that faculty was passive, when it comes under
cool examination shall appear so reasonless and so
unlinked, that we are ashamed to have been so de-
luded ; and to have taken, though but in sleep, a
monster for a god. But the transitions in this episode
are every whit as violent as in the most extravagant
dream, and yet the waking judgment ratifies them.
CAPTAIN JACKSON.
Among the deaths in our obituary for this month, I
observe with concern " At his cottage on the Bath
road. Captain Jackson." The name and attribution
are common enough ; but a feeling like reproach per-
suades me, that this could have been no other in fact
than my dear old friend, who some five-and-twenty
years ago rented a tenement, which he was pleased to
dignify with the appellation here used, about a mile
from Westbourn Green. Alack, how good men, and
the good turns they do us, slide out of memory, and are
recalled but by the surprise of some such sad memento
as that which now lies before us I
He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, with
a wife and two grown-up daughters, whom he main-
tained with the port and notions of gentlewomen upon
that slender professional allowance. Comely girls they
were too.
And was I in danger of forgetting this man ? — his
cheerftil suppers — the noble tone of hospitality, when
CAPTAIN JACKSON. 317
first you set your foot in the cottage^ — the anxious
ministerings about you, where little or nothing (God
knows) was to be ministered. Althea's horn in a poor
platter, — the power of self-enchantment, by which, in
his magnificent wishes to entertain you, he multiplied
his means to bounties.
You saw with your bodliy eyes indeed what seemed
a bare scrag — cold savings from the foregone meal —
remnant hardly sufficient to send a mendicant ft'om the
door contented. But in the copious will — the revel-
ling imagination of your host — the '* mind, the mind,
Master Shallow," whole beeves were spread before you
— hecatombs — no end appeared to the profiision.
It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and fishes j
carving could not lessen, nor helping diminish it — the
stamina were left — the elemental bone still flourished,
divested of its accidents.
" Let us live while we can," methinks I hear the
open-handed creature exclaim ; " while we have, let us
not want," " here is plenty left ; " " want for nothing,"
— with many more such hospitable sayings, the spurs
of appetite, and old concomitants of smoking boards,
and feast-oppressed chargers. Then slicHng a slender
ratio of Single Gloucester upon his wife's plate, or the
daughters', he would convey the remanent rind into
his own, with a merry quirk of " the nearer the bone,"
&c., and declaiing that he universally preferred the
outside. For we had our table distinctions, you are to
know, and some of vis in a manner eat above the salt.
None but his guest or guests dreamed of tasting flesh
luxuries at night, the fragments were vere hospitibus
sacra. But of one thing or another there was always
enough, and leavings ; only he would sometimes finish
318 CAPTAIN JACKSON.
tlie remainder crust, to show that he wisheil no sav-
ings.
Wine we had none ; nor, except on very rare oc-
casions, spirits ; but the sensation of wine was there. •
Some thin kind of ale I remember, — " British bev-
erage," he would say ! " Push about, my boys ; "
" Drink to your sweethearts, girls." At every meagre
draught a toast must ensue, or a song. All the forms
of good liquor were there, with none of the effects
wanting. Shut your eyes, and you would swear a
capacious bowl of punch was foaming in the centre,
with beams of generous Port or Madeira radiating to
it fi'om each of the table-corners. You got flustered,
without knowing whence ; tipsy upon words ; and
reeled under the potency of his unperforming Baccha-
nalian encourao-ments.
We had our songs, — " Why, Soldiers, why," — and
the " British Grenadiers," — in which last we were all
obliged to bear chorus. Both the dauo;hters sang;.
Their proficiency was a nightly theme, — the masters he
had given them, — the " no-expense " which he spared
to accomplish them in a science " so necessaiy to
young women." But then — they could not sing
" without the instrument."
Sacred, and, by me, never-to-be-violated, secrets of
Poverty ! Should I disclose your honest aims at
grandeur, your makeshift efforts of magnificence ?
Sleep, sleep, with all thy broken keys, if one of the
bunch be extant; thrummed by a thousand ancestral
thumbs ; dear, cracked spinnet of dearer Louisa !
VVithout mention of mine, be dumb, thou thin ac-
companler of her thinner warble ! A veil be spread
over the dear delighted face of the well-deluded father,
CAPTAIN JACKSON. 319
who now, haply listening to cherubic notes, scarce feels
sincerer pleasure than when she awakened thy time-
shaken chords responsive to the twitterings of that
slender image of a voice.
We were not without our literary talk either. It
did not extend far, but as far as it went, it was good.
It was bottomed well ; had good grounds to go upon.
In the cottage was a room, which tradition authenti-
cated to have been the same in which Glover, in his
occasional retirements, had penned the greater part of
his Leonidas. This circumstance was nightly quoted,
though none of the present inmates, that I could dis-
cover, appeared ever to have met with the poem in
question. But that was no matter. Glover had
written there, and the anecdote was pressed into the
account of the family importance. It diffused a learned
air through the apartment, the little side casement of
which, (the poet's study window,) opening upon a
superb view as far as the pretty spire of Harrow, over
domains and patrimonial acres, not a rood nor square
yard whereof our host could call his own, yet gaA^e oc-
casion to an immoderate expansion of — vanity shall I
call it ? — in his bosom, as he showed them in a glow-
ing summer evening. It was all his, he took it all in,
and communicated rich portions of it to his guests. It
was a part of his largess, liis hospitality ; it was going
over his grounds ; he was lord for the time of showing
them, and you the implicit lookers-up to his magnifi-
cence.
He was a juggler, who threw mists before your
eyes — you had no time to detect his fallacies. He
would say, " Hand me the silver sugar tongs ; " and
before you could discover it was a single spoon, and
320 CAPTAIN JACKSON.
thsLt plated, he would disturb and captivate your nnagi-
nation by a misnomer of " the urn " for a tea-kettle ;
or by calling a homely bench a sofa. Rich men direct
you to their fiirniture, poor ones divert you from it ; he
neither did one nor the other, but by simply assuming
that everything v^^as handsome about him, you were
positively at a demur what you did, or did not see, at
the cottage. With nothing to live on, he seemed to live
on evei'y thing. He had af stock of wealth in his mind;
not that which is properly termed Content, for in truth
he was not to be contained at all, but overflowed all
bounds by the force of a magnificent self-delusion.
Enthusiasm is catching ; and even his wife, a sober
native of North Britain, who generally saw things more
as they were, was not proof against the continual col-
hsion of his credulity. Pier daughters were rational
and discreet young women ; in the main, perhaps, not
insensible to their true circumstances. I have seen
them assume a thouo;htful air at times. But such was
the preponderating opulence of his fancy, that I am
persuaded, not for any half hour together did they ever
look their own prospects fairly in the face. There was
no resisting the vortex of his temperament. His riotous
imagination conjured up handsome settlements before
their eyes, which kept them up in the eye of the world
too, and seem at last to have realized themselves ; for
they both have married smce, 1 am told, more than
respectably.
It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some
subjects, or I should wish to convey some notion of the
manner in which the pleasant creature described the
circumstances of his own wedding-day. I faintly re-
member something of a chaise-and-four, in which he
CAPTAIN JACKSON. 321
made his entry into Glasgow on that morning to fetch
the briie home, or carry her thither, I forget which.
It so completely made out the stanza of the old
ballad —
When we came down through Glasgow town.
We were a comely sight to see;
My love was clad in black velvet,
And I myself in cramasie.
I suppose it was the only occasion upon which his
own actual splendor at all corresponded with the
world's notions on that subject. In homely cart,
or travelling caravan, by whatever humble vehicle
they chanced to be transported in less prosperous
days, the ride through Glasgow came back upon his
fancy, not as a humiliating contrast, but as a fair
occasion for reverting to that one day's state. It
seemed an " equipage etern " from which no power
of fate or fortune, once momited, had power there-
after to dislodge him.
There is some merit in putting a handsome face
upon Indigent circumstances. To bully and swagger
away the sense of them befoi-e strangers, may not be
always discommendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, even
when detected, have more of our admiration than
contempt. But for a man to put the cheat upon
himself; to play the Bobadil at home ; and, steeped
in poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all the
while chin-deep in riches, is a strain of constitutional
philosophy, and a mastery over fortune, which was
reserved for my old friend Captain Jackson.
21
322 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN
Sera tamea respexit
Libertas. Virgil.
A Clerk I was in London gay.
O'Keefe.
If peradventure, Reader, it has been tliy lot to svaste
the golden years of thy life — thy shining youth — in
the irksome confinement of an office ; to have thy
prison-days prolonged through middle age down to
decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or
respite ; to have lived to forget that there are such
things as holidays, or to remember them but as the
prerogatives of childhood ; then, and then only, will
you be able to appreciate my deliverance.
It is now six-and-thirty years since I took my seat at
the desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy was the transi-
tion at fom'teen fi-om the abundant playtime, and the
frequently intervening vacations of school days, to the
eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours' a-day attendance
at the counting-house. But time partially reconciles us
to anything. I gradually became content — doggedly
contented, as wild animals in cages.
It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sun-
days, admirable as the institution of them is for pur-
poses of worship, are for that very reason the very
worst adapted for days of unbending and recreation.
In particular, tliere is a gloom for me attendant upon
a city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss the cheer-
ful cries of London, the music, and the ballad-singers,
— the buzz and stirriuii murmur of the streets. Those
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 323
eturiial bells depress me. The closed shops repel me.
Prints, pictures, all the glittering and endless succession
of knacks and gewgaws, and ostentatiously displayed
wares of tradesmen, which make a weekday saunter
through the less busy parts of the metropolis so delight-
ful — are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle
over — No busy faces to recreate the idle ma\i who
contemplates them ever passing by — the very face of
business a charm by contrast to his temporary relaxa-
tion from it. Nothing to be seen but unhappy coun-
tenances — or half-happy at best — of emancipated
'prentices and little tradesfolks, with here and there a
servant-maid that has got leave to go out, who, slaving
all the week, with the habit has lost almost the capacity
of enjoying a free hour ; and livelily ex})ressing the
hollowness of a day's pleasuring. Tlie very strollers in
the fields on that day look anything but comfortable.
But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a
day at Christmas, with a fiill week in the summer to go
and air myself in my native fields of Hertfordsliire.
This last was a great indulgence ; and the prospect of
its recurrence, I believe, alone kept me up through the
year, and made my durance tolerable. But when the
week came round, did the glittering phantom of the
distance keep touch Avith me ? or rather was it not a
series of seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit
of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find out how
to make the most of them ? Where was the quiet,
where the promised rest ? Before I had a taste of it,
it was vanished. I Avas at the desk again, counting
upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must intervene
before such another snatch would come. Still the
prospect of its coming threw sometliing of an illumi-
324 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN.
nation upon the darker side of my captivity. Without
it, as I have said, I could scarcely have sustained my
thraldom.
Independently of the rigors of attendance, I have
ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere ca-
price) of incapacity for business. This, during my
latter years, had increased to such a degree, that it was
visible in all the lines of my countenance. My health
and my good spirits flagged. I had perpetually a
dread of some crisis, to which I should be found un-
equal. Besides my daylight servitude, I served over
again all night in my sleep, and would awake with
terrors cf imaginary false entries, errors in my ac-
counts, and the like. I was lifty years of age, and
no prospect of emancipation presented itself. I had
grown to my desk, as it were ; and the wood had en-
tered into my soul.
My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me
upon the trouble legible in my countenance ; but I
did not know that it had raised the suspicions of any
of my employers, when, on the fifth of last month, a
day ever to be remembered by me, L , the junior
partner in the firm, calling me on one side, directly
taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly inquired the
cause of them. So taxed, I honestly made confession
of my infirmity, and added that I was afraid I should
eventually be obliged to resign his service. He spoke
some words of course to hearten me, and there the
matter rested. A whole week I remained laboring
under the impression that I had acted imprudently in
my disclosure ; that I had foolishly given a handle
against myself, and had been anticipating my own
dismissal. A week passed in this manner, the most
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 325
anxious one, I verily believe, in my whole life, when,
on the evening of the 12th of April, just as I was
about quitting my desk to go home, (it might be about
eight o'clock,) I received an awful summons to attend
the presence of the whole assembled firm in the formi-
dable back parlor. I thought now my time is surely
come, I have done for myself, I am going to be told
that they have no longer occasion for me. L , I
could see, smiled at the terror I was in, which Avas a
little relief to me, — when to my utter astonishment
B , the eldest partner, began a formal harangue to
me on the length of my services, my very meritorious
conduct during the whole of the time, (the dense,
thought I, how did he find out that ? I protest I never
had the confidence to think as much). He went on to
descant on the expediency of retiring at a certain time
of life, (how my heart panted !) and asking me a few
questions as to the amount of my own property, of
which I have a little, ended with a proposal, to which
his three partners nodded a grave assent, that I should
accept from the house, which I had served so well, a
pension for life to the amount of two thirds of my
accustomed salary — a magnificent offer ! I do not
know what I answered between surprise and gratitude,
but it was understood that I accepted their proposal,
and I was told that I was fi'ee from that hour to leave
their service. I stammered out a bow, and at just ten
minutes after eight I went home — forever. This
noble benefit — gratitude forbids me to conceal their
names — I owe to the kindness of the most munificent
firm in the world — the house of Boldero, Merry-
weather, Bosanquet, and Lacy.
Eiltjoptrpttua!
326 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN.
For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed.
I could only apprehend my felicity ; I was too con-
fused to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking
I was happy, and knowing that I was not. I was
in the condition of a prisoner in the old Bastile, sud-
denly let loose after a forty years' confinement. I
could scarce trust myself with myself. It was like
passing out of Time into Eternity, — for it is a sort of
Eternity for a man to have his Time all to himself. It
seemed to me that I had more time on my hands than
I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in
Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue ; 1
could see no end of my possessions ; I wanted some
steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in
Time for me. And here let me caution persons grown
old in active business, not lightly, nor without weigh-
ing their own resources, to forego their customay em-
ployment all at once, for there may be danger in it. I
feel it by myself, but I know that my resources are suf-
ficient ; and now that those first giddy raptures have
subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling of the blessedness
of my condition. I am in no hurry. Having all holi-
days, I am as though I had none. If Time hung
heavy upon me, I could walk it away ; but I do not
walk all day long, as I used to do in those old transient
holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the most of them.
If Time were troublesome, I could read it away ; but I
do not read in that violent measure, with which, having
no Time my own but candlelight Time, I used to
weary out my head and eyesight in bygone winters.
I walk, read, or scribble (as now) just when the fit
seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure ; I let it
come to me. I am like the man
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 327
that's born, and has his years come to him,
la some gi-een desert.
"Years!" you will say; "what is this superannu-
ated simpleton calculating upon ? He has already told
us lie is past fifty."
I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct
out of them the hours which I have lived to other peo-
ple, and not to myself, and you will find me still a
young fellow. For that is the only true Time which
a man can properly call his own, that which he has all
to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be
said to live it, is other people's Time, not his. The
remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least
multiplied for me threefold. My ten next years, if I
stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty.
'Tis a fair rule-of-three sum.
Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the
commencement of my fi-eedom, and of which all traces
are not yet gone, one was, that a vast tract of time had
intervened since I quitted the Counting-House. I
could not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. The
partners, and the clerks with whom I had for so many
years, and for so many hours in each day of the year,
been closely associated, — being suddenly removed fi-om
them, — they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine
passage, which may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a
Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard, speaking of a fi'iend's
death.
'Twas but just now he went away;
I have not since had time to shed a tear;
And yet the distance docs the same appear
As if he liad been a thousand years from me.
Time takes no measure in Eternity.
To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain
328 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN.
to go among them once or twice since ; to visit my old
desk-fellows, — my co-brethren of the quill, — that I
had left below in the state militant. Not all the kind-
ness with which they received me could quite restore
to me that pleasant familiarity, which I had heretofore
enjoyed among them. We cracked some of our old
jokes, but methought they went off but faintly. My
old desk ; the peg where I hung my hat were appro-
priated to another. I knew it must be, but I could
not take it kindly. D 1 take me, if I did not feel
some remorse — beast, if I had not — at quitting my
old compeers, the faithful partners of my toils for six-
and-thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokea
and conundrums the ruggedness of my professional
road. Had it been so rugged then, after all ? or was 1
a coward simply ? Well, it is too late to repent ; and
I also know that these suggestions are a common fal-
lacy of the mind on such occasions. But my heart
smote me. I had violently broken the bands betwixt
us. It was at least not courteous. I shall be some
time before I get quite reconciled to the separation.
Farewell, old cronies, yet not for long, for again and
again I will come among ye, if I shall have your
leave. Farewell, Ch , diy, sarcastic, and friendly !
Do , mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly ! PI ,
officious to do, and to volunteer, good services ! — and
thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a
Whittington of old, stately house of Merchants ; with
thy labyrinthine passages, and light-excluding, pent-up
offices, where candles for one half the year supplied the
place of the sun's light; unhealthy contributoi to my
weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell ! In thee
remain, and not in the obscure collection of some
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 329
wandering bookseller, my " works ! " There let liiem
rest, as I do from my labors, piled on tli}' massy
shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left,
and full as useful ! My mantle I bequeathe among
ye.
A fortnight has passed since the date of my first
communication. At that period I was approaching to
tranquillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of a
calm indeed, but it was comparative only. Something
of the first flutter was left ; an unsettling sense of
novelty ; the dazzle to weak eyes of unaccustomed
light. I missed my old chains, forsooth, as if they
had been some necessary part of my apparel. I was
a poor Carthusian, from strict cellular discipline sud-
denly by some revolution returned upon the world.
I am now as if I had never been other than my own
master. It is natural to me to go where I please, to
do what I please. I find myself at eleven o'clock in
the day in Bond Street, and it seems to me that I have
been sauntering there at that very hour for years ])ast.
I digress into Soho, to explore a bookstall. Methinks
I have been thirty years a collector. There is nothing
strange nor new in it. I find myself before a fine pic-
ture in the morning. Was it ever otherwise ? What
is become of Fish Street Hill ? Where is Fenchurch
Street? Stones of old Mincing Lane, which I have
worn with my daily pilgrimage for six-and-thirty
years, to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are
your everlasting flints now vocal ? I indent the gayer
flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change time, and I am
strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was no hy-
perbole when I ventured to compare the change in
oiy condition to a passing into another world. Time
330 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN.
stands still in a manner to me. I have jlost all (iis«
tinction of season. I do not know the day of the week
or of the month. Each day used to be individually felt
by me in its reference to the foreign postdays ; in its
distance from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I
had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights'
sensations. The genius of each day was upon me dis-
tinctly during the whole of it, affecting my appetite,
spirits, &c. The phantom of the next day, with the
dreary five to follow, sat as a load upon my poor Sab-
bath recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop
white ? What is gone of Black Monday ? All days
are the same. Sunday itself, — that unfortunate failure
of a holiday, as it too often proved, what with my sense
of its fugitiveness, and overcare to get the greatest
quantity of pleasure out of it, — is melted down into
a weekday. I can spare to go to church now, without
grudging the huge cantle which it used to seem to cut
out of the holiday. I have Time for everything. I
can visit a sick friend. I can interrupt the man of
much occupation when he is busiest. I can insult over
him with an invitation to take a day's pleasure with me
to Windsor this fine May morning. It is Lucretian
pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left
behind in the world, carking and caring ; like horses in
a mill, drudging on in the same eternal round — and
what is it all for ? A man can never have too much
Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little
son, I would christen him Nothing-to-do ; he should
do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his ele-
ment as long as he is operative. I am altogether for
the life contemplative. Will no kindly earthquake
come and swallow up those accm'sed cotton mills ?
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 331
Puke me that lumber of a desk there, and bowl it
down
As low as to the fiends.
I am no longer , clerk to the Firm of, &c.
I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim
gardens. I am already come to be known by my
vacant face and careless gesture, perambulating at no
fixed pace, nor with any settled purpose. I walk
about ; not to and fi-om. They tell me, a certain eum
dignitate air, that has been buried so long with my
other good parts, has begun to shoot forth in my per-
son. I grow into gentility perceptibly. When I take
up a newspaper, it is to read the state of the opera.
Opus operatum est. I have done all that I came into
this world to do. I have worked taskwork, and have
the rest of the day to myself.
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING.
It is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord Shaftes-
bury, and Sir William Temple, are models of the
genteel style in writing. We should prefer saying —
of the lordly, and the gentlemanly. Nothing can be
more unlike, than the inflated finical rhapsodies of
Shaftesbury and the plain natural chitchat of Temple.
The man of rank is discernible in both writers ; but in
the one it is only insinuated gracefully, in the other it
stands out offensively. The peer seems to have written
with his coronet on, and his Earl's mantle before him ;
^he commoner in his elbow chair and undi'ess. What
332 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING.
can be more pleasant than the way in which tlie retired
statesman peeps out in his essays, penned b}' the latter
in his delightful retreat at Shene ? They scent of
Nimeguen, and the Hague. Scarce an authority is
quoted under an ambassador. Don Francisco de Melo,
a " Portugal Envoy m England," tells him it was fre-
quent in his country for men, spent with age and other
decays, so as they could not hope for above a year or
two of life, to ship themselves away in a Brazil fleet,
and after theu' arrival there to go on a great length,
sometimes of twenty or thirty years, or more, by the
force of that vigor they recovered with that remove.
" Wliether such an effect (Temple beautifully adds)
might grow from the air, or the fruits of that climate, or
by approaching nearer the sun, which is the fountain of
light and heat, when their natural heat was so far de-
cayed ; or whether the piecing out of an old man's life
were worth the pains ; I cannot tell : perhaps the
play is not worth the candle." Monsieur Pompone,
" French Ambassador in his (Sir William's) time at
the Hague," certifies him, that in his life he had never
heard of any man in France that arrived at a hundred
years of age ; a limitation of life which the old gentle-
man imputes to the excellence of their climate, giving
them such a liveliness of temper and humor, as disposes
them to more pleasures of all kinds than in other coun-
tries ; and moralizes upon the matter very sensibly.
The " late Robert, Earl of Leicester," furnishes him
with a story of a Countess of Desmond, married out of
England in Edward the Fourth's time, and who lived
far in King James's reign. The " same noble person "
gives him an account, how such a year, in the same
reign, there went about the country a set of morris-
dancers, composed of ten men who danced, a Maid-
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WKITING. 333
marian, and a tabor and pipe ; and how these twelve,
one with another, made up twelve hundred years. " It
was not so much (says Temple) that so many in one
small county (Hertfordshire) should live to that age, as
that they should be in vigor and in humor to travel
and to dance." Monsieur Zulichem, one of his " col-
leagues at the Hague," informs him of a cure for the
gout ; which is confirmed by another " Envoy," Mon-
sieur Serinchamps, in that town, who had tried it.
Old Prince Maurice of Nassau recommends to him the
use of hammocks in that complaint ; having been al-
lured to sleep, while suffering under it himself, by the
" constant motion or swinging of those airy beds."
Count Egmont, and the Rhinegrave who " was killed
last summer before Maestricht," impart to him their
experiences.
But the rank of the writer is never more innocently
disclosed, than where he takes for granted the com-
pliments paid by foreigners to his finiit-trees. For the
taste and perfection of what we esteem the best, he
can truly say, that the French, who have eaten his
peaches and grapes at Shene in no very ill year, have
generally concluded that the last are as good as any
they have eaten in France on this side Fontainebleau ;
and the first as good as any they have eat in Gascony.
Italians have agreed his white figs to be as good as any
of that sort in Italy, which is the earlier kind of white
fig there ; for in the later kind and the blue, we cannot
come near the warm climates, no more than in the
Frontignac or Muscat grape. His orange-trees, too,
are as large as any he saw when he was young in
France, except those of Fontainebleau ; or what he has
seen since in the Low Countries, except some very old
334 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING.
ones of the Prince of Orange's. Of grapes he had the
nonor of brino;ino; over four sorts into England, which
ne enumerates, and supposes that they are all by this
time pretty common among some gardeners in his
neighborhood, as well as several persons of quality ; for
he ever thought all things of this kind " the commoner
they are made the better." The garden pedantry with
which he asserts that 'tis to little purpose to plant any
of the best fruits, as peaches or grapes, hardly, he
doubts, beyond Northamptonshire at the farthest north-
wards ; and praises the " Bishop of Munster at Cose-
velt," for attempting nothing beyond cherries in that
cold climate ; is equally pleasant and in character. " I
may perhaps " (he thus ends his sweet Garden Essay
with a passage worthy of Cowley) " be allowed to
know something of this trade, since I have so long
allowed myself to be good for nothing else, which few
men will do, or enjoy their gardens, without often look-
ing abroad to see how other matters play, what motions
in the state, and what invitations they may hope for
into other scenes. For my own part, as the country
hfe, and this part of it more particularly, were the in-
clination of my youth itself, so they are the pleasure of
my age ; and I can truly say that, among many great
employments that have fallen to my share, I have
never asked or sought for any of them, but have often
endeavored to escape from them, into the ease and fi'ee-
dom of a private scene, where a man may go his own
way and his own pace, in the common paths and circles
of life. The measure of choosing well is whether a
man likes what he has chosen, wliich, I thank God, haa
befallen me ; and though among the follies of my life,
building and planting have not been the least, and have
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 335
cost me more than I have the confidence to own . yet
they have been folly recompensed by the sweetness and
satisfaction of this retreat, where, since my resolution
taken of never entering again into any public employ-
ments, I have passed five years without ever once going
to town, though I am almost in sight of it, and have a
house there always ready to receive me. Nor has this
been any sort of affectation, as some have thought it,
but a mere want of desire or humor to make so small
a remove ; for when I am m this corner, I can truly
say with Horace, Me quoties refieit, ^c.
" Me, when the cold Digentian stream revives,
"What does my friend believe I think or ask?
Let me yet less possess, so I may live,
Whate'er of life remains, unto myself.
May I have books enough ; and one year's store,
Not to depend upon each doubtful hour:
This is enough of mighty Jove to pray,
Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away."
The writings of Temple are, in general, after this
easy copy. On one occasion, indeed, his -wit, which
was mostly subordinate to nature and tenderness, has
seduced him into a string of felicitous antitheses ;
which, it is obvious to remark, have been a model to
Addison and succeeding essayists. " Who would not
be covetous, and with reason," he says, " if health
could be purchased with gold ? who not ambitious, if
it were at the command of power, or restored by
honor ? but, alas ! a white staff will not help gouty
feet to walk better than a common cane ; nor a blue
ribbon bind up a wound so well as a fillet. The glitter
of gold, or of diamonds, will but hurt sore eyes instead
of curino; them ; and an achini^ head will be no more
eased by wearing a crown than a common nightcap."
336 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING.
In a far better style, and more accordant with his
own humor of plainness, are the concluding sentences
of his " Discourse upon Poetry." Temple took a part
in the controversy about the ancient and the modern
learning ; and, with that partiality so natural and so
graceful in an old man, whose state engagements had
left him little leisure to look into modern productions,
while his retirement gave him occasion to look back
upon the classic studies of his youth, — decided in favor
of the latter. " Certain it is," he says, " that, whether
the fierceness of the Gothic humors, or noise of their
perpetual wars, frighted it away, or that the unequal
mixture of the modern languages would not bear it, —
the great heights and excellency both of poetry and
music fell with the Roman learning and empire, and
have never since recovered the admiration and ap-
plauses that before attended them. Yet, such as they
are amongst us, they must be confessed to be the softest
and the sweetest, the most general and most innocent
amusements of common time and life. They still find
room in the courts of princes, and the cottages of
shepherds. They serve to revive and animate the dead
calm of poor and idle lives, and to allay or divert the
violent passions and perturbations of the greatest and
the busiest men. And both these effects are of equal
use to human life ; for the mind of man is like the sea,
which is neither agreeable to the beholder nor the
voyager, in a calm or in a storm, but is so to both
when a little agitated by gentle gales ; and so the
mind, when moved by soft and easy passions or affec-
tions. I know very well that many who pretend to be
wise by the forms of being grave, are apt to despise
both poetry and music, as toys and trifles too light for
BARBARA S . 337
the use or entertainment of serious men. B\it who-
ever find themselves wholly insensible to their charms,
would, I think, do well to keep their own counsel, for
fear of reproaching their own temper, and bringing the
goodness of their natures, if not of their understandings,
into question. While this world lasts, I doubt not but
the pleasure and request of these two entertainments
will do so too ; and happy those that content them-
selves with these, or any other so easy and so innocent,
and do not trouble the world or other men, because
the}'' cannot be quiet themselves, though nobody hurts
them." " When all is done (he concludes), human
life is at the greatest and the best but like a froward
child, that must be played with, and humored a little,
to keep it quiet, till it falls asleep, and then the care is
over."
BARBARA S-
On the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, i
forget which it was, just as the clock had struck one,
Barbara S , witli her accustomed punctuality, as-
cended the long rambling staircase, with awkward
interposed landing-places, wliich led to the office, or
rather a sort of box with a desk in it, whereat sat tbe
then Treasurer of (what few of our readers may re-
member) the Old Bath Theatre. All over the island
it was the custom, and remams so I believe to this day,
for the players to receive their weekly stipend on the
Saturday. It was not much that Barbara had to claim.
VOL. HI. 22
338 BARBARA S-
This little maid had just entered her eleventh year ,
but her important station at the theatre, as it seemed to
her, with the benefits which she felt to accrue from hor
pious application of her small eai'nings, had given an
air of womanhood to her steps and to her behavior.
You would have taken her to have been at least five
years older.
Till latterly she had merely been employed in cho-
ruses, or where children were wanted to fill up the
scene. But the manager, observing a diligence and
adroitness in her above her age, had for some few
months past intrusted to her the performance of whole
parts. You may guess the self-consequence of the
promoted Barbara. She had already drawn tears in
young Arthur ; had rallied Richard with infantine
petulance in the Duke of York ; and m her turn had
rebuked that petulance when she was Prince of Wales.
She would have . done the elder child in Morton's
pathetic afterpiece to the life ; but as yet the " Chil-
di'en in the Wood" was not.
Long after this little girl was gi'own an aged woman,
I have seen some of these small parts, each making two
or three pages at most, copied out in the rudest hand
of the then prompter who doubtless transcribed a little
more carefully and fairly for the grown-up tragedy
ladies of the establishment. But such as they were,
blotted and scrawled, as for a child's use, she kept them
all ; and in the zenith of her after reputation it was a
delightful sight to behold them bound up in costliest
morocco, each single, — each small part making a book,
— with fine clasps, glit-splashed, &c. She had con-
scientiously kept them as they had been delivered to
her; not a blot had been effaced or tampered with.
BARBARA S . 33"
They were precious to her for theu* affecting remem-
brancings. They were her j^incipia^ her rudiments ;
the elementary atoms ; the little steps by which she
pressed forAvard to perfection. " What," she would
say, " could India-rubber, or a pumice-stone, ha^e
done for these darlings ? "
I am in no hurry to begin my story, — indeed J
have little or none to tell, — so I will just mention an
observation of hers connected with that interesting
time.
Not long before she died I had been discoursing with
her on the quantity of real present emotion which a
great tragic performer experiences during acting. I
ventured to think, that though in the first instance such
players must have possessed the feelings which they so
powerfully called up in others, yet by frequent repeti-
tion those feelings must become deadened in great
measure, and the performer trust to the memory of
past emotion, rather than express a present one. She
indignantly repelled the notion, that with a truly great
tragedian the operation, by which such effects were
produced upon an audience, could ever degrade itself
into what was purely mechanical. With much deli-
cacy, avoiding to instance in her se?f-experience, she
told me, that so long ago as when she used to play the
part of the Little Son to Mrs. Porter's Isabella, (I
think it was,) when that impressive actress has been
bending over her in some heart-rending colloquy, she
has felt real hot tears come trickling from her, which
(to use her powerful expression) have perfectly scalded
her back.
I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter ; but
it was some gr<;at actress of that day. The name is
310 BARBARA S .
indifferent ; but the fact of the scalding tears I most
distinctly remember.
I was always fond of the society of players, and am
not sure that an impediment in my speech (which
certainly kept me out of the pulpit) even more than
certain personal disqualifications, which are often gol
over in that profession, did not prevent me at one time
of life from adopting it. I have had the honor (I must
ever call it) once to have been admitted to the tea-
table of Miss Kelly. I have played at serious wliist
with Mr. Liston. I have chatted with ever good-
humored Mrs. Charles Kemble. I have conversed as
friend to friend with her accomplished Imsband. I
have been indulged with a classical conference with
Macready ; and with a sight of the Player-picture
gallery, at Mr. Mathews's, when the kind owner, to
remunerate me for my love of the old actors (whom he
loves so much), went over it with me, supplying to his
capital collection, what alone the artist could not give
them — voice ; and their living motion. Old tones,
half-faded, of Dodd, and Parsons, and Baddeley, have
lived again for me at his bidding. Only Edwm he
could not restore to me. I have supped "with ;
but I am growing a coxcomb. .
As I was about to say, — at the desk of the then
treasurer of the old Bath theatre, — not Diamond's, —
presented herself the little Barbara S .
The parents of Barbara had been in reputable cir-
cumstances. The father had practised, I believt^, as an
apothecary in the town. But his practice, from causes
which I feel my own infirmity too sensibly that way to
arraign, — or perhaps from that pure infelicity which
accompanies some people in their walk through life,
BARBARA S . 341
and which it is impossible to lay at the door of impra-
dence, — was now reduced to nothing. They were in
fact in the very teeth of starvation, when the manager,
who knew and respected them in better days, took the
little Barbara into his company.
At the period I commenced with, her slender earn-
ings were the sole support of the family, including two
younger sisters. I must throw a veil over some morti-
fying circumstances. Enough to say, that her Satur-
day's pittance was the only chance of a Sunday's
(generally their only) meal of meat.
One thing I will only mention, that in some child's
part, where in her theatrical character she was to sup
oflPa roast fowl (O joy to Barbara !) some comic actor,
who was for the night caterer for this dainty — in the
misguided humor of his part, threw over the dish such
a quantity of salt (O grief and pain of heart to Bar-
bara !) that when she crammed a portion of it into her
mouth, she was obliged sputteringly to reject it ; and
what with shame of her ill-acted part, and pain of real
appetite at missing such a dainty, her little heart sobbed
almost to breaking, till a flood of tears, which the well-
fed spectators were totally unable to comprehend, mer-
cifully relieved her.
This was the little starved, meritorious maid, who
stood before old Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for hel
Saturday's payment.
Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old
theatrical people besides herself say, of all men least
calculated for a treasurer. He had no head for ac-
counts, paid away at random, kept scarce any books,
and summing up at the week's end, if he found hlm-
Belf a pound or so deficient, blest himself that it was no
worse.
342 BARBARA b-
Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare half
guinea. By mistake he popped into her hand — a
whole one.
Barbara tripped away.
She was entirely unconscious at first of the mistake :
God knows, Ravenscroft would never have discov-
ered it.
But when she had got down to the first of those
uncouth landing-places, she became sensible of an
unusual weight of metal pressing her little hand.
Now mark the dilemma.
She was by nature a good child. From her parents
and those about her she had imbibed no contrary
influence. But then they had taught her nothing.
Poor men's smoky cabins are not always porticos of
moral philosophy. This little maid had no instinct to
evil, but then she might be said to have no fixed
principle. She had heard honesty commended, but
never dreamed of its application to herself. She
thought of it as something which concerned grown-up
people, men and women. She had never known temp-
tation, or thought of preparing resistance against it.
Her first impulse was to go back to the old treasurer,
and explain to him his blunder. He was already so
confused with age, besides a natiu*al want of punctual-
ity, that she would have had some difficulty in making
him understand it. She saw that in an instant. And
then it was such a bit of money ! and then the image
of a larger allowance of butcher's-meat on their table
next day came across her, till her little eyes glistened,
and her mouth moistened. But then Mr. Ravenscroft
had always been so good-natured, had stood her friend
behind the scenes, and even recommended her promo-
BARBARA S . 343
tion to some of her little parts. But again the old man
was reputed to be worth a world of money. He was
supposed to have fifty pomids a year clear of the the-
atre. And then came staring upon her the figures of
her little stockingless and shoeless sisters. And when
she looked at her own neat white cotton stockings,
which her situation at the theatre had made it indis-
pensable for her mother to provide for her, with hard
straining and pinching from the family stock, and
thought how glad she should be to cover their poor feet
with the same, — and how then they could accompany
her to rehearsals, which they had hitherto been pre-
cluded from doing, by reason of their unfashionable
attire, — in these thoughts she reached the second land-
ing-place, — the second, I mean, from the top, — for
there was still another left to traverse.
Now virtue support Barbara !
And that never-failing friend did step in, — for at
that moment a strength not her own, I have heard her
say, was revealed to her, — a reason above reasoning,
— and without her own agency, as it seemed (for she
never felt her feet to move) she found herself trans-
ported back to the individual desk she had just quitted,
and her hand in the old hand of Ravenscroft, who in
silence took back the refunded treasure, and who had
been sitting (good man) insensible to the lapse of min-
utes, which to her were anxious ages, and from that
moment a deep peace fell upon her heart, and she knew
the quality of honesty.
A year or two's unrepining application to her profes-
sion brightened up the feet, and the prospects, of her
little sisters, set the whole family upon their legs again,
and released her from the difficulty of di<5cussing mora]
dogmas upon a landing-place.
344 THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY.
I have heard her say that it was a surprise, not much
short of mortification to her, to see the coolness with
which the old man pocketed the difference, which had
caused her such mortal throes.
This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800,
from the mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,* then sixty-
seven years of age, (she died soon after,) and to her
struggles upon this childish occasion I have sometimes
ventured to think her indebted for that power of i-end-
ing the heart in the representation of conflicting emo-
tions, for which in after years she was considered as
little inferior (if at all so in the part of Lady Ran-
dolph) even to Mrs. Siddons.
THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY.
m A LETTER TO R S , ESQ.
Though in some points of doctrine, and perhaps ot
discipline, I am diffident of lending a perfect assent to
that church which you have so worthily Mstorified, yet
may the ill time never come to me, when with a chilled
heart or a portion of irreverent sentiment, I shall enter
her beautiful and time-hallowed edifices. Judge then
of my mortification when, after attending the choral
anthems of last Wednesday at Westminster, and being
desirous of renewing my acquaintance, after lapsed
* The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she changed by
successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, and Crawford. She iva«
Mrs. Crawford, a third time a widow, when I knew her.
THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 345
years, with the tombs and antiquities there, I found
myself excluded ; turned out like a dog, or some pro-
fane person, into the common street, with feelings not
very congenial to the place, or to the solemn service
which I had been listening to. It was a jar after that
music.
You had your education at Westminster ; and doubt-
less among those dim aisles and cloisters, you must
have gathered much of that devotional feeling in those
young years, on which your purest mind feeds still —
and may it feed ! The antiquarian spirit, strong in
you, and gracefully blending ever with the religious,
may have been sown in you among those wrecks of
splendid mortality. You owe it to the place of youi
education ; you owe it to your learned fondness for tht
architecture of your ancestors ; you owe it to the ven-
erableness of your ecclesiastical establishment, which
is daily lessened and called in question through these
practices — to speak aloud your sense of them ; nevei
to desist raising your voice against them till they be
totally done away with and abolished ; till the doors of
Westminster Abbey be no longer closed against the
decent, though low-in-purse, enthusiast, or blameless
devotee, who must commit an injury against his family
economy, if he would be indulged with a bare admis-
sion within its walls. You owe it to the decencies
which you wish to see maintained, in its impressive
services, that our Cathedral be no longer an object of
inspection to the poor at those times only, in which
they must rob from their attendance on the worship
every minute which they can bestow upon the fabric.
In vain the public prints have taken up this subject, in
vain such poor nameless writers as myself express theii
346 THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY.
indignation. A word from you, Sir, — a hint in your
Journal, — would be sufficient to fling open the doors of
the Beautiful Temple again, as we can remember them
when we were boys. At that time of life, what would
the imaginative faculty (such as it is) in both of us,
have suffered, if the entrance to so much reflection had
been obstructed by the demand of so much silver ! If
we had scraped it up to gain an occasional admission
(as we certainly should have done), would the sight of
those old tombs have been as impressive to us (while
we have been weighing anxiously prudence against sen-
timent) as when the gates stood open as those of the
adjacent Park ; when we could walk in at any time, as
the mood brought us, for a shorter, or longer time, as
that lasted ? Is the being shown over a place the same
as silently for oui'selves detecting the genius of it ? In
no part of our beloved Abbey now can a person find
entrance (out of service time) under the sum of two
sldllings. The rich and the great will smile at the
anticlimax, presumed to lie in these two short words.
But you can tell them. Sir, how much quiet worth,
how much capacity for enlarged feeling, how much
taste and genius, may coexist, especially in youth, with
a purse incompetent to this demand. A respected
fi'iend of ours, during his late visit to the metropolis,
presented himself for admission to St. Paul's. At the
same time a decently clothed man, with as decent a
wife and child, were bargaining for the same indul-
gence. The price was only twopence each person.
The poor but decent man hesitated, desirous to go in ;
but there were three of them, and he turned away re-
hictantly. Perhaps he wished to have seen the tomb
of Nelson. Perhaps the Interior of the Cathedral was
THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 347
his object. But in the state of his finances, even six-
pence might reasonably seem too much. Tell the
Aristocracy of the country (no man can do it more
impressively) ; instruct them of what value these insig-
nificant pieces of money, these minims to their sight,
may be to their humbler brethren. Shame these Sellers
out of the Temple. Stifle not the suggestions of your
better nature with the pretext, that an indiscriminate
admission would expose the Tombs to \"iolation. Re-
member your boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear, of
a mob in the Abbey, while it was free to all ? Do the
rabble come there, or trouble their heads about such
speculations ? It is all that you can do to drive them
into your churches ; they do not voluntarily offer them-
selves. They have, alas ! no passion for antiquities ; for
tomb of king or prelate, sage f r poet. If they had,
they would be no longer the rabble.
For forty years that I have known the Fabric, the
only well-attested charge of violation adduced, has
been — a ridiculous dismemberment committed upon
the effigy of that amiable spy, Major Andre. And is
it for this — the wanton mischief of some school-boy,
fired perhaps with raw notions of Transatlantic Free-
dom— or the remote possibility of such a mischief oc-
curring again, so easily to be prevented by stationing
a constable within the walls, if the vergers are incom-
petent to the duty — is it u]X)n such wretched pre-
tences that the people of England are made to pay a
new Peter's Pence so long abrogated ; or must content
themselves with contemplating the ragged Exterior of
their Cathedral ? The mischief was done about the
time that you were a scholar there. Do you know
anything about the unfortmiate relic?
348 AMICUS RiiiUVIVUS.
AMICUS REDIVIVUS.
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ?
I DO not know when I have experienced a stiaiigei
sensation than on seeing my old fiiend G. D., who
had been paying me a morning visit a few Sundays
back, at my cottage at Ishngton, upon taking leave,
instead of turning down the right-hand path by which
he had entered — with staff in hand, and at noonday
deliberately march right forwards into the midst of
the stream that runs by us, and totally disappear.
A spectacle like this at dusk would have been ap-
palling enough ; but in the broad open daylight, to
witness such an unreserved motion towards self-de-
struction in a valued friend, took from me all power
of speculation.
How I found my feet, I know not. Consciousness
was quite gone. Some spirit, not my own, whirled
me to the spot. I remember nothing but the silvery
apparition of a good wliite head emerging ; nigh
which a staff (the hand unseen that wielded it)
pointed upwards, as feeling for the skies. In a mo-
ment (if time was in that time) he was on my
shoulders, and I — freighted with a load more pre-
cious than his who bore Anchises.
And here I cannot but do justice to the officious
zeal of sundry passers-by, who albeit arriving a little
too late to participate in the honors of the rescue, in
philanthropic shoals came thronging to communicate
their advice as to the recovery ; prescribing variously
AMICUS KEDIVIVUS. 349
the application, or non-application, of salt, &c., to the
person of the patient. Life meantime was ebbing fast
away, amidst the stifle of conflicting judgments, when
one, more sagacious than the rest, by a bright thought,
proposed sending for the Doctor. Trite as the counsel
was, and impossible, as one should think, to be missed
on, — shall I confess ? — in this emergency it was to
me as if an Angel had spoken. Great previous exer-
tions, — and mine had not been inconsiderable, — are
commonly followed by a debility of purpose. This
was a moment of irresolution.
MoNOCULUS, — for so, in default of catching his true
name, I choose to designate the medical gentleman
who now appeared, — is a grave, middle-aged person,
who, without having studied at the college, or truckled
to the pedantry of a diploma, hath employed a great
portion of his valuable time in experimental processes
upon the bodies of unfortunate fellow-creatures, in
whom the vital spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would
seem extinct, and lost forever. He omitted no occasion
of obtruding his services, fi'om a case of common sur-
feit suffocation to the ignobler obstructions, sometimes
induced by a too wilful application of the plant cayv-
nobis outwardly. But though he declineth not alto-
gether these drier extinctions, his occupation tendeth,
for the most part, to water-practice ; for the conven-
ience of which, he hath judiciously fixed his quarters
near the grand repository of the stream mentioned,
where day and night, from his little watchtower, at
the Middleton's Head, he listeneth to detect the wrecks
of di-owned mortality, — partly, as he saith, to be upon
the spot, — and partly, because the liquids which he
oð to prescribe to himself, and his patients, on these
350 AMICUS REDIVIVLS.
distressing occasions, are ordinarily more conveniently
to be found at these common hostleries than in the
shops and phials of the apothecaries. His ear hath
arrived to such finesse by practice, tliat it is reported
he can distinguish a plunge at a half furlong distance ;
and can tell if it be casual or deliberate. He weareth
a medal, suspended over a suit, originally of a sad
brown, but which, by time and frequency of nightly
divings, has been dinged into a true professional sable.
He passeth by the name of Doctor, and is remarkable
for wanting his left eye. His remedy — after a suf-
ficient application of warm blankets, friction, &c., is a
simple tumbler or more, of the purest Cognac, with
water, made as hot as the convalescent can bear it.
"Where he findeth, as in the case of my friend, a
squeamish subject, he condescendeth to be the taster ;
and showeth, by his own example, the innocuous
nature of the prescription. Nothing can be more kind
or encouraging than this procedure. It addeth confi-
dence to the patient, to see his medical adviser go hand
in hand with himself in the remedy. When the doctor
swalloweth his own draught, what peevish invalid can
refuse to pledge him in the potion ? In fine, Monoo
ULUS is a humane, sensible man, who, for a slender
pittance, scarce enough to sustain life, is content to
wear it out in the endeavor to save the lives of others,
— his pretensions so moderate, that with difficulty I
could press a crown upon him, for the price of restor-
ing the existence of such an invaluable creature to
society as G. D.
It was pleasant to observe the effect of the subsiding
alarm upon the nerves of the dear absentee. It seemed
to have given a shake t" memory, calling up notice
AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 351
after notice of all the providential deliverances he had
experienced in the course of hij long and innocent life.
Sitting up in my couch, — my couch which, naked and
void of furniture hitherto, for the salutary repose which
it administered, shall be honored with costly valance,
at some price, and henceforth be a state-bed at Cole-
brook, — he discoursed of marvellous escapes — by
carelessness of nurses — by pails of gelid, and kettles
of the boiling element, in infancy, — by orchard pranks,
and snapping twigs, in school-boy frolics — by descent
of tiles at Trumpington, and of heavier tomes at Pem-
broke, — by studious watchings, inducing frightful vigil-
ance, — by want, and the fear of want, and all the sore
throbbings of the learned head. Anon, he Avould burst
out into little fragments of clianting — of songs long
ago — ends of deliverance hymns, not remembered
before since childhood, but coming up now, wlien his
heart was made tender as a child's, — for the tremor
cordis^ in the retrospect of a recent deliverance, as in
a case of impending danger, acting upon an innocent
heart, will produce a self-tenderness, which we should
do ill to christen cowardice ; and Shakspeare, in the
latter crisis, has made his good Sir Hugh to remem-
ber the sitting by Babylon, and to mutter of shallow
rivers.
Waters of Sir Hugh Middleton — what a spark you
were like to have extinguished forever ! Your sahi-
brious streams to this City, for now near two centuries,
would hardly have atoned for what you were in a
moment washing away. Mockery of a river, — liquid
artifice, — wretched conduit ! henceforth rank with
canals, and sluggish aqueducts. Was it for tliis, tliat
smit in boyhood with the explorations of that Abys-
852 AMICUS KEDIVIVUS.
sinian traveller, I paced the vales of Amwell to ex-
plore your tributary springs, to trace your salutary
waters sparkling through green Hertfordshire, and cul-
tured Enfield parks ? — Ye have no swans — no Naiads
— no river God, — or did the benevolent hoary aspect
of my friend tempt ye to suck him in, that ye also
might have the tutelary genius of your waters ?
Had he been drowned in Cam, there Avould have
been some consonancy in it ; but what willows had ye
to wave and rustle over his moist sepulture ? — or,
having no name^ besides that unmeaning assumption of
eternal novity^ did ye think to get one by the noble
prize, and henceforth to be termed the Stream Dy-
ERIAN ?
And could such spacious virtue find a grave
Beneath the imposthumed bubble of a wave ?
I protest, George, you shall not venture out again —
no, not by daylight — without a sufficient pair of spec-
tacles, — in your musing moods especially. Your ab-
sence of mind we have borne, till your presence of
body came to be called in question by it. You shall
not go wandering into Euripus with Aristotle, if we
can help it. Fie, man, to turn dipper at your years,
after your many tracts in favor of sprinkling only !
I have nothing but water in my head o'nights since
this frightful accident. Sometimes I am with Clarence
m his dream. At others, I behold Christian beginning
to sink, and crying out to his good brother Hopeful,
(that is, to me,) " I sink in deep waters ; the billows
go over my head, all the waves go over me. Selah."
Then I have before me Palinurus, just letting go the
steerage. I cry out too late to save. Next follow — a
mournful procession — suicidal faces ^ saved agamst their
AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 353
will from drowning ; dolefully trailing a length of re-
luctant gratefulness, with ropy weeds pendent from
locks of watchet hue, — constrained Lazari, — Pluto's
half-subjects, — stolen fees from the grave, — bilking
Charon of his fare. At their head Arion — or is it
G. D. ? — in his singing garments marcheth singly,
with harp in hand, and votive garland, which Machaon
(or Dr. Hawes) snatcheth straight, intending to sus-
pend it to the stern God of Sea. Then follow dismal
streams of Lethe, in which the half-drenched on earth
are consti'ained to drown downright, by wharves where
Ophelia twice acts her muddy death.
And, doubtless, there is some notice in that invisible
world, when one of us approacheth (as my friend did
so lately) to their inexorable precincts. When a soul
knocks once, twice, at death's door, the sensation
aroused within the palace must be considerable ; and
the grim Feature, by modern science so often dispos
sessed of his prey, must have learned by this time to
pity Tantalus.
A pulse assuredly was felt along the Hne of the
Elysian shades, when the near arrival of G. D. was
announced by no equivocal indications. From their
seats of Asphodel arose the gentler and the graver
ghosts — poet, or historian — of Grecian or of Roman
lore, — to crown with unfading chaplets the half-finished
love-labors of their unwearied scholiast. Him Mark-
land expected, — him Tyrwhitt hoped to encounter, —
him the sweet lyi'ist of Peter House, whom he had
barely seen upon earth,* with newest airs prepared to
greet ; and patron of the gentle Christ's boy, —
who should have been his patron through life, — the
* Graium tantum vidit.
VOL. ui. 28
354 SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS.
mild Askew, with longing aspirations leaned foremost
from his venerable ^sculapian chair, to welcome into
that happy company the matured virtues of the man,
whose tender scions in the boy he himself upon earth
i id so prophetically fed and watered.
SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.
Sydney's Sonnets — I speak of the best of them —
are among the very best of their sort. They fall below
the plain moral dignity, the sanctity, and high yet
modest spirit of self-approval, of Milton, in his com-
positions of a similar structure. They are in truth
what Milton, censuring the Arcadia, says of that work,
(to which they are a sort of after-tune or application,)
" vain and amatorious " enough, yet the things in their
kind (as he confesses to be true of the romance) may
be " full of worth and wit." They savor of the Cour
tier, it must be allowed, and not of the Commonwealths-
man. But Milton was a Courtier when he wrote the
Masque at Ludlow Castle, and still more a Courtier
when he composed the Arcades. When the national
struggle was to begin, he becomingly cast these vanities
behind him ; and if the order of time had thrown Sir
Philip upon the crisis which preceded the Revolution,
there is no reason why he should not have acted the
same part in that emergency, which has glorified the
name of a later Sydney. He did not want for plain-
ness or boldness of spirit. His letter on the French
SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS. 355
match may testify he could speak his mind freely to
Princes. The times did not call him to the scaffold.
The Sonnets Avhich we oftenest call to mind of
Milton were the compositions of his maturest years.
Those of Sydney, which I am about to produce, were
written in the very heyday of his blood. They are
stuck full of amorous fancies — far-fetched conceits,
befitting his occupation : for True Love thinks no
labor to send out Thoughts upon the vast, and more
than Indian voyages, to bring home rich pearls, out-
landish wealth, gums, jewels, spicery, to sacrifice in
self-depreciating similitudes, as shadows of true amia-
bilities in the Beloved. We must be Lovers — or at
least the cooling touch of time, the ciroiim prcecordia
frigus must not have so damped our faculties, as to
take away our recollection that we were once so —
before we can duly appreciate the glorious vanities, and
graceful hyperboles, of the passion. The images wliich
lie before our feet (though by some accounted the only
natural) are least natural for the high Sydnean love to
express its fancies by. They may serve for the loves
of Tibullus, or the dear Author of the Schoolmistress ;
for passions that creep and whine in Elegies and Pas-
toral Ballads. I am sure Milton never loved at this
rate. I am afraid some of his addresses (acZ Leonoram
I mean) have rather erred on the farther side ; and
that the poet came not much short of a religious
mdecorum, when he could thus apostrophize a singing-
girl : —
Angelus unicuique suus (sic credite gentes)
Obtigit aetliereis ales ab ordinibus.
Quid mirum, Leonora, tibi si gloria major,
Nam tua prsesentem vox sonat ipsa Deum V
Ant Deus, aut vacui cert6 mens tertia coeli.
356 SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS.
Per tua secretb guttura serpit agens ;
Serpit agens, facilisque docet mortalia corda
Sensim iminortali assuescere posse sono.
Quod si cuncta quidem Deus est, per cunctaque fdsob,
In te una loquitur, c^etera mutus habet.
This is loving in a strange fashion ; and it requires
some candor of construction (besides the sHght darken-
ing of a dead language) to cast a veil over the ugly
appearance of something very like blasphemy in the last
two verses. I tliink the Lover would have been stag-
gered, if he had gone about to express the same thought
in English. I am sure Sidney has no flights like this.
His extravaganzas do not strike at the sky, though he
takes leave to adopt the pale Dian into a fellowship
with his mortal passions.
With how sad steps, 0 Moon, thou climb'st the skies;
How silently ; and with how wan a face !
What ! may it be, that even iu heavenly pla'ie
That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries ?
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted ej'es
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;
I read it in thy looks ; thy lauguisht grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, 0 Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there — ungratefulness !
The last line of this poem is a little obscured by
transposition. He means, Do they call ungrateflibiesa
there a virtue ?
Come, Sleep, 0 Sleep, the certam knot of peace,
The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe,
SIK I'HILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS. 357
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease '
Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw;
0 make in me those civil wars to cease :
1 will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me sweet pillows, sweetest bed
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light;
A rosy garland, and a weary head.
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not they heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.
The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness
Bewray itself in my long-settled eyes,
Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise,
With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess.
Some, that know how my spring I did address,
Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge pliea
Others, because the Prince my service tries.
Think, that I think state errors to redress ;
But harder judges judge, ambition's rage,
Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place,
Holds my young brain captived in golden cage.
0 fools, or overwise! aliis, th« race
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start.
But only Stella's eyes, and Stella's heart.
Because I oft in dark abstracted guise
Seem most alone in greatest company.
With dearth of words or answers quite awry
To them that would make speech of speech arise;
They deem, and of their doom the rumor flies.
That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie
So in my swelling brsast, that only I
Fawn on myself, and others do despise;
Yet Pride, I think, doth not my soul possess
Which looks ton oft in his unflattering ghiss;
But one worse fault — Ambition — I confess.
That makes me oft my best friends overpass.
Unseen, unheard— while Thought to highest plac«
Bends all his powers, even unto Stella's grace.
* Pres»
558 SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SCNNETS.
Having this day, my horse, iiiy hand, my lance,
Guided so well that I obtained the prize,
Both by the judgment of the English eyes,
And of some sent from that sweet enemy, — France •
Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance;
Townsfolk my strength; a daintier judge applies
His praise to slight, wliich from good use doth rise;
Some lucky wits impute it but to chance;
Others, because of both sides I do take
My blood from them, who did excel in this,
Think Nature me a man of arips did make.
How far they shot awry ! the true cause is,
Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face
Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race.
In martial sports I had my cunning tried,
And yet to break more staves did me address,
While with the people's shouts (I must confess)
Youth, luck, and praise, even fill'd my veins with pride •
When Cupid having me (his slave) descried
In Mars's livery, prancing in the press,
" What now. Sir Fool ! " said he: " I would no less;
Look here, I say." I look'd, and Stella spied.
Who hard by made a window send forth light.
My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes,
One hand forgot to rule, th' other to fight;
Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries.
My foe came on, and beat the air for me —
Till that her blush made me my shame to see.
No more, my dear, no more these counsels try ;
0 give my passions leave to run their race ;
Let Fortune laj' on me her worst disgrace;
Let folk o'ercharged with brain against me cry;
Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye*
Let me no steps, but of lost labor, trace ;
Let all the earth with scorn recount my case, —
But do not will me from my love to fly.
1 do not envy Aristotle's wit.
Nor do aspire to Caesar's bleeding fame;
Nor aught do care, though some above me sit:
Nor hope, nor wish, another course to frame,
SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS. 359
But that which once may svin thy cruel heart
Thou art ray wit, and thoa my virtue art.
Love still a boy, and oft a wanton, is,
School'd only by his mother's tender eye;
What wander then, if he his lesson miss,
When for so soft a rod dear play he try ?
And yet my Star, because a siigar'd kiss
In sport I suck'd, while she asleep did lie,
Doth lour, nay chide, nay threat, for only this.
Sweet, it was saucy Love, not humble I.
But no 'scuse serves; she makes her wrath appear
In beauty's throne, — see now who dares come near.
Those scarlet judges, threat'ning bloody pain"?
0 heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face
Anger invests with such a lovely grace.
That anger's self I needs must kiss again.
I never drank of Aganippe well.
Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit.
And JIuses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell;
Poor layman I, for sacred rites unfit.
Some do I hear of Poet's fury tell.
But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it;
And this 1 swear by blackest brook of hell,
I am no pick-purse of another's wit.
How falls it then, that with so smooth an ease
My thoughts I speak, and what I speak doth flow
In verse, and that my verse best wits doth please?
Guess me the cause — what is it thus ? — fye, no.
Or soV — much less. How thcnV sure thus it is,
My lips are sweet, inspired with Stella's kiss.
Of all the kings that ever here did reign,
Edward, named Fourth, as first in praise I name.
Not fcT his fair outside, nor well-lined brain, —
Although less gifts imp feathers oft on Fame.
Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame
His sire's revenge, join'd with a kingdom's gain;
And, gain'd by JIars could yet mad Mars so tame,
That Balance weigh'd what Sword did late obtain.
Noi that lie made the Floure-de-luce so 'fraid.
560 SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS.
Though strongly hedged of bloody Lions' paw8.
That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid.
Nor this, nor that, nor any sucli small cause, —
But only, for this worthy knight durst prove
To lose his crown rather than fail his love.
0 happy Thames, that didst mj' Stella bear,
1 saw thyself, with many a smiling line
Upon thy cheerful face, Joy's livery wear.
While those fair planets on thy streams did shine ,
The boat for joj- could not to dance forbear.
While wanton winds, with beauty so divine
Ravish'd, stay'd not, till in her golden hair
They did themselves (0 sweetest prison) twine.
And fain tliose jEoI's youth there would their staj
Have made ; but forced by nature still to fly,
First did with puffing kiss those locks display
She, so dishevell'd, blush'd; from window I
With sight thereof cried out, 0 fair disgrace,
Let honor's self to thee grant highest place!
Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be;
And that my JIuse, to some ears not unsweet,
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet.
More soft than to a chamber melody ;
Now blessed You bear onward blessed Me
To Her, where I my heart safe left shall meet.
My Muse and I must you of duty greet
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully,
Be you still fair, honor'd by public heed,
By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot;
Nor blamed for blood, nor siiamed for sinful deed.
And that you know, I envy you no lot
Of highest wish, 1 wish you so much bliss.
Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss.
Of the foregoing, the first, the second, and tlie last
sonnet, are my favorites. But the general beauty of
them all is, that they are so perfectly characteristical.
The spirit of "learning and of chivalry," — of which
union, Spenser has entitled Sydney to have been the
SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS. 361
•* piesident," — shines through them. I confess I can
see nothing of the "jejune" or "frigid" in them;
much less of the "stiff" and "cumbrous," — Avhich I
have sometimes heard objected to the Arcadia. The
verse runs off swiftly and gallantly. It might have
been tuned to the trumpet ; or tempered (as him-
self expresses it) to " trampling horses' feet." They
abound in felicitous phrases, —
0 heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face —
Hth Sonnet.
Sweet pillows, sweetest bed;
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light;
A rosy garland, and a weary head.
2d Sonnei.
That sweet enemy, — France —
bth Sonnet.
But they are not rich in words only in vague and
unlocalized feelings, — the failing too much of some
poetry of the present day, — they are full, material, and
circumstantiated. Time and place appropriates every
one of them. It is not a fever of passion wasting itself
upon a thin diet of dainty words, but a transcendent
passion pervading and illuminating action, pursuits,
studies, feats of arms, the opinions of contemporariej
and his judgment of them. An historical thread rum
through them, which almost affixes a date to them
marks the when and where they were written.
I have dwelt the longer upon what I conceive the
merit of these poems, because I have been hurt by the
wantonness (I wish I could treat it by a gentler name}
with which W. H. takes every occasion of insulting the
memory of Sir Phihp Sydney. But the decisions of
the Author of Table Talk, &c., (most profound and
subtle where they are, as for the most part, just,) arc
362 SIR PinUP SYDNEY'S SONNETS.
more safely to be relied upon, on subjects and authors
he has a partiality for, than on such as he has con-
ceived an accidental prejudice against. Milton wrote
Sonnets, and was a king-hater ; and it was congenial
perhaps to sacrifice a courtier to a patriot. But I was
unwilling to lose a fine idea from my mind. The noble
images, passions, sentiments, and poetical delicacies of
character, scattered all over the Arcadia, (spite of some
stiffness and encumberment,) justify to me the char-
acter which his contemporaries have left us of the
writer. I cannot think with the Critic, that Sir Philip
Sydney was that opprobrious thing which a foolish
nobleman in his insolent hostility chose to term him.
I call to mind the epitaph made on him, to guide
me to juster thoughts of him ; and I repose upon
the beautiful lines in the " Friend's Passion for his
Astrophel," printed with the Elegies of Spenser and
others.
Yon knew— who knew not Astrophel? -
(That I should live to say 1 knew,
And have not in possession still!) —
Things known permit me to renew —
Of him you know his merit such,
I cannot say — you hear — too much.
Within these woods of Arcady
He chief delight and pleasure took;
And on the mountain Partheny,
Upon the crystal liquid brook.
The Muses met him every day,
That taught him sing, to write, and say.
When he descended down the mount,
His personnge seemed most divine:
A thousand gi-aces one might count
Upon his lovely cheerful eyne.
To hear him speak, and sweetly smile,
You were in Paradise the while.
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 363
A sweet attractive kind of grace ;
A full assurance given by looks ;
Continual comfort in a face,
The lineaments of Gospel books —
I trow that count'nance cannot lye,
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.
Above all others this is he,
Which erst approved in his song,
That love and honor might agree,
And that pure love will do no wrong.
Sweet saints, it is no sin or blame
. To love a man of virtuous name.
Did never love so sweetly breathe
In any mortal breast before :
Did never Muse inspire beneath
A Poet's brain with finer store.
He wrote of Love with high conceit,
And Beauty rear'd above her height.
Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief run
ning into rage) in the Poem, — the last in the collec-
tion accompanying the above, — which from internal
testimony I believe to be Lord Brooke's, — beginning
with "Silence augmenteth grief," — and then seriously
ask himself, whether the subject of such absorbing and
confounding regrets could have been that thing which
Lord Oxford termed him.
JVEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.
Dan Stuart once told us, that he did not remember
that he ever deliberately walked into the Exhibition at
364 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.
Somerset House in liis life. He iniglit occasionally
have escorted a party of ladies across the way that
were going in ; but he never went in of his own head.
Yet the office of The Morning Post newspaper stood
then just where it does now, — we are carrying you
back, Reader, some thirty years or more, — with its
gilt-globe-topt front facing that emporium of our ar-
tists' grand Annual Exposure. We sometimes wish
that we had observed the same abstinence with Daniel.
A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared to us
one of the finest-tempered of Editors. Perry, of The
Moniing Chronicle, was equally pleasant, with a dash,
no slight one either, of the courtier. S. was frank,
plain, and English all over. We have worked for both
these gentlemen.
It is soothing to contemplate the head of the Ganges ;
to trace the first little bubblings of a mighty river,
With holy reverence to approach the rocks,
Whence glide the streams renowned in ancient song.
Fired with a peinisal of the Abyssinian Pilgrim's
exploratory ramblings after the cradle of the infant
Nilus, we well remember on one fine summer holiday
(a "whole day's leave" we called it at Christ's Hos-
pital) sallying forth at rise of sun, not very well pro-
visioned either for such an undertaking, to trace the
current of the New River — Middletonian stream ! —
to its scaturient source, as we had read, in meadows by
fair Amwell. Gallantly did we commence our solitary
quest, — for it was essential to the dignity of a Discov-
ery, that no eye of schoolboy, save our own, should
beam on the detection. By flowery spots, and verdant
ianes skirtino- Hornsoy, Hope trained us on in many a
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE \ EARS AGO. 365
baffling turn; endless, hopeless meanders, as it seemed;
or as if' the jealous waters had dodged us, reluctant to
have the humble spot of their nativity revealed ; till
spent, and nigh famished, before set of the same sun,
we sat down somewhere by Bowes Farm near Totten-
ham, with a tithe of our proposed labors only yet
accomplished ; sorely convinced in spirit, that that
Brucian enteqw'ise was as yet too arduous for our
young shoulders.
Not more reft-eshing to the thirsty curiosity of the
traveller is the tracing of some mighty waters up to
their shallow fontlet, than it is to a pleased and candid
reader to go back to the inexperienced essays, the first
callow flights in authorship, of some established name
in literature ; from the Gnat which preluded to the
^neid, to the Duck which Samuel Johnson trod on.
In those days every Morning Paper, as an essential
retainer to its establishment, kept an author, who was
bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs.
Sixpence a joke — and it was thought pretty high too
- was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in these
cases. The chat of the day, scandal, but, above all,
dress, furnished the material. The length of no pai'a-
graph was to exceed seven lines. Shorter they might
be, but they mvist be poignant.
A fashion of j^esA, or rather pink-co\ovcdi hose for the
ladies, luckily coming up at the juncture when we were
on our probation for the place of Chief Jester to S.'s
Paper, established our reputation in that line. We
were pronounced a " capital hand." O the conceits
which we varied upon red in all its prismatic differ-
ences ! from the trite and obvious flower of Cytherea,
to the flaming costume of the lady that has her sitting
3GQ NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.
upon *•' many waters." Then there was the collateral
topic of ankles. What an occasion to a truly chaste
writer, like ourself, of touching that nice brink, and yet
never tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approx-
imating something " not quite proper ; " while, like a
skilful posture-master, balancing betwixt decorums and
their opposites, he keeps the line, from which a hair's
breadth deviation is destruction ; hovering in the con-
fines of light and darkness, or where " both seem
either ; " a hazy uncertain delicacy ; Autolycus-like
in the Play, still putting off his expectant auditory with
" Whoop, do me no harm, good man ! " But above
all, that conceit arrided us most at that time, and still
tickles our midriff to remember, where, allusively to
the flight of AstrjEa — ultima Ccelestum terras reliquit
— we pronounced — in reference to the stockings still
— that Modesty, taking her final leave of mor-
tals, HER LAST Blush was visible in her ascent tc
THE Heavens by the tract of the glowing instep.
This might be called the crowning conceit ; and was
esteemed tolerable writing in those days.
But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes
away ; as did the transient mode which had so favored
us. The ankles of our fair friends in a few weeks be-
gan to reassume their whiteness, and left us scarce a leg
to stand upon. Other female whims followed, but none
methought so pregnant, so invitatoiy of shrewd con-
ceits, and more than single meanings.
Somebody has said, that to swallow six crossbuns
daily, consecutively for a fortnight, would surfeit the
stoutest digestion. But to have to furnish as many
jokes daily, and that not for a fortnight, but for a long
twelvemonth, as we were t^onstrained to do, was a little
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 367
harder exaction. " Man goeth forth to liis work until
the evening," — from a reasonable hour in the morn-
ing, we presume it was meant. Now, as our main oc-
cupation took us up from eight till five every day in the
City ; and as our evening hours, at that time of life,
had generally to do with anything rather than business,
it follows, th*t the only time we could spare for this
manufactory of jokes — our supplementary livelihood,
that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and
cheese — was exactly that part of the day which (as
we have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly de-
nominated No Man's Time ; that is, no time in which
a man ought to be up, and awake, in. To speak more
plainly, it is that time of an hour, or an hour and a
half's duration, in which a man, whose occasions call
him up so preposterously, has to wait for his break-
fast.
O those headaches at dawn of day, when at five, or
half-past five in summer, and not much later in the
dark seasons, we were compelled to rise, having been
perhaps not above four hours in bed, — (for we were no
go-to-beds with the lamb, though we anticipated the
lark ofttimes in her rising, — we like a parting cup at
midnight, as all young men did before these effeminate
times, and to have our friends about us, — we were not
constellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and
therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold, washy, bloodless,
— we were none of your Basilian water-sponges, nor
had taken our degrees at Mount Ao;ue, — we were right
toping Capulets, jolly companions, we and they,) — but
to have to get up, as we said before, curtailed of half
our fair sleep, fasting, with oidy a dim vista of refresh-
ing bohca, in the distance, — to be necessitated to rouse
368 NEWSPAPKKS THIRTY-FIVK YEARS AGO.
ourselves at the detestable rap of an old hag of a domes-
tic, "vvho seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in her
announcement that it was " time to rise ; " and whose
chappy knuckles we have often yearned to amputate,
and string them up at our chamber-door, to be a terror
to all such unseasonable rest-breakers in future
" Facil " and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the
" descending " of the overnight, balmy the first sink-
ing of the heavy head upon the pillow ; but to get
up, as he goes on to say,
revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras
and to get up moreover to make jokes with malice pre-
pended, — there was the " labor," there the " work."
No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like
to that, our slavery. No fi'actious operants ever turned
out for half the tyranny which this necessity exercised
upon us. Half a dozen jests in a day, (bating Sundays
too,) why, it seems nothing ! We make twice the
number every day in our lives as a matter of course,
and claim no Sabbatical exemptions. But then they
come into our head. But when the head has to go out
to them, — when the mountain must go to Mahomet, —
Reader, try it for once, only for one short twelve-
month.
It was not every week that a fashion of pink stock-
ings came up ; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged,
untractable subject ; some topic impossible to be con-
torted into the risible ; some feature, upon which no
smile could play ; some flint, from which no process
of ingenuity could procure a scintillation. There they
lay ; there your appointed tale of brick-making was set
before you, which you must finish, with or without
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 369
straw, as it happened. The craving Dragon, — the
Public^ — like him in Bel's temple, — must be fed ; it
expected its daily rations ; and Daniel, and ourselves,
to do us justice, did the best we could on this side
bursting him.
While we were wringing out coy sprightlinesses foi
The Post, and writhing under the toil of what is called
" easy writing," Bob Allen, our quondam schoolfellow,
was tapping his impracticable brains in a like service
for the " Oracle." Not that Robert troubled himself
much about wit. If his paragraphs had a sprightly air
about them, it Avas sufficient. He carried this noncha-
lance so far at last, that a matter of intelligence, and
that no very important one, was not seldom palmed
upon his employers for a good jest ; for example sake, —
" Walking yesterday morning casually doivn Stioiv Hill,
who should we meet hut Mr. Deputy Humphreys ! we re-
joice to add, that the ivorthy Deputy appeared to enjoy a
good state of health. We do not ever remember to have
seen him look better J'^ This gentleman so surprisingly
met upon Snow Hill, from some peculiarities in gait or
gesture, was a constant butt for mirth to the small
paragraph-mongers of the day ; and our friend thought
that he might have his fling at him with the rest. We
met A. in Holborn shortly after this extraordinary ren-
counter, which he told with tears of satisfaction in his
eyes, and chuckling at the anticipated effects of its an-
nouncement next day in the paper. We did not quite
comprehend where the wit of it lay at the time ; nor
was it easy to be detected, Avhen the thing came out
advantaged by type and letter-press. He had better
have met anything that morning than a Common
Councilman. His services were shortly afler dis-
VUL. HI. 24
370 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.
pensed with, on the plea that his paragraphs of late
had been deficient in point. The one in question, it
must be owned, had an air, in the opening especially,
proper to awaken curiosity ; and the sentiment, or
moral, wears the aspect of humanity and good neigh-
borly feeling. But somehow the conclusion was not
judged altogether to answer to the magnificent promise
of the premises. We traced our friend's pen after-
wards in the " True Briton," the " Star," the " Trav-
eller," — from all which he was successively dismissed,
the Proprietors having " no further occasion for hia
services." Nothing was easier than to detect him.
When wit failed, or topics ran low, there constantly
appeared the following, — " It is not generally known
that the three Blue Balls at the Pawnbrokers'' shops are
the ancient arms of Lonibardy. Tlie Lombards were the
first money-brokers in Em'ope.'''' Bob has done more to
set the public right on this important point of blazonry,
than the whole College of Heralds.
The appointment of a regular wit has long ceased
to be a part of the economy of a Morning Paper.
Editors find their own jokes, or do as well without
them. Parson Este, and Topham, brought up the set
custom, of " witty paragraphs " first in the " World."
Boaden was a reigning paragi'aphist in his day, and
succeeded poor Allen in the " Oracle." But, as we
said, the fashion of jokes passes away ; and it would
be difficult to discover in the biographer of IMra.
Siddons any traces of that vivacity and fancy which
charmed the whole town at the commencement of
the present century. Even the prelusive delicacies of
the present writer, — the curt " Astryean allusion" —
would be thought pedantic and out of date in these days.
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 371
From the office of The Morning Post, (for we may as
well exhaust our Newspaper Reminiscences at once,)
by change of property in the paper, we were trans-
ferred, mortifying exchange ! to the office of The Albion
Newspaper, late Rackstrow's Museum, in Fleet Street.
What a transition, — fi-om a handsome apartment, from
rosewood desks, and silver inkstands, to an office, — no
office, but a den rather, but just redeemed from the
occupation of dead monsters, of which it seemed redo-
l(int, — from the centre of loyalty and fashion, to a
focus of vulgarity and sedition ! Here, in murky closet,
inadequate from its square contents to the receipt of the
two bodies of Editor and humble paragraph-maker,
together at one time, sat, in the discharge of his new
editorial functions, (the "Bigod" of Elia,) the re-
doubted John Fen wick.
F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left
not many in the pockets of his friends whom he might
command, had purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole
and sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the rights
and titles (such as they were worth) of The Albion
from one Lovell ; of whom we knoAv nothing, save that
he had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of
"Wales. With this hopeless concern — for it had been
sinking ever since its commencement, and could now
reckon upon not more than a hundred subscribers - - F.
resolutely determined upon pulling down the govern-
ment in the first instance, and making both our for-
tunes by way of corollary. For seven weeks and more
did this infatuated democrat go about borrowing seven-
shilling piec2s, and lesser coin, to meet the daily d(i-
mands of the Stamp-Office, which allowed no credit to
publications of that side in politics. An outcast from
372 NEWSPAPERS TIIIRTV-FIVE YEaRS AGO.
politer bread, we attached our small talents to the for-
lorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation now waa
to write treason.
Recollections of feelings, — which were all that now
remained from our first boyish heats kindled by the
French Revolution, when, if we were misled, we erred
in the company of some who are accounted veiy good
men now, — rather than any tendency at this time to
Republican doctrines, — assisted us in assuming a style
of writing, while the paper lasted, consonant in no very
under-tone, — to the right earnest fanaticism of F.
Our cue was now to insinuate, rather than recommend,
possible abdications. Blocks, axes, Whitehall tribunals,
were covered with flowers of so cunning a periphrasis
— as Mr. Bayes says, never naming the tiling directly
— that the keen eye of an Attorney-General was insuf-
ficient to detect the lurking snake among them. There
were times, indeed, Avhen we sighed for our more gen-
tlemanlike occupation under Stuart. But with change
of masters it is ever change of service. Already one
paragraph, and another, as we learned afterwards from
a gentleman at the Treasury, had begun to be marked
at that office, with a view of its being submitted at
least to the attention of the proper Law Officers,—
when an unlucky, or rather lucky epigram from our
pen, aimed at Sir J s M h, who was on the eve
of departing for India to reap the fruits of his apos-
tacy, as F. pronounced it, (it is hardly worth partic-
ularizing,) happening to offend the nice sense of Lord,
or, as he then delighted to be called. Citizen Stanhope,
deprived F. at once of the last hopes of a guinea from
the last patron that had stuck by us ; and breaking up
our establishment, left us to the safe, but somewhat
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OK MODLRN ART 373
mortifying, neglect of the Crown Lawyers. It was
about this time, or a Httle earlier, that Dan Stuart
made that curious confession to us, that he had " never
deliberately walked into an Exhibition at Somerset
House in his life."
BARKENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY LN
THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.
Hogarth excepted, can we produce any one painter
within the last fifty years, or since the humor of exhib-
iting began, that has treated a story iynaginatively ?
By this we mean, upon whom his subject has so acted,
that it has seemed to direct liim — not to be arranged
by him ? Any upon whom its leading or collateral
points have impressed themselves so tyrannically, that
he dared not treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a
revelation ? Any that has imparted to his composi-
tions, not merely so much truth as is enough to convey
a story with clearness, but that individualizing prop-
erty, which should keep the subject so treated distinct
in feature from every other subject, however similar,
and to common apprehensions almost identical ; so as
that we might say, this and this part could have found
an appropriate place in no other picture in the world
but this ? Is there anything in modem art — we will
not demand that it should be equal — but in any way
analogous to what Titian has effected, in that wonder-
ful bringing together of two times in the " Ariadne,"
111 the National Gallery ? Precipitous, with his reeling
371 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.
satyr rout about him, re-peopling and re-illumining sud-
denly the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond
the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, firelike flings himself
at the Cretan. This is the time present. With this
telling of the story — an artist, and no ordinary one,
might remain richly proud. Guido, in his harmonious
version of it, saw no further. But from the depths of
the imaginative spirit Titian has recalled past time, an i
laid it contributory Avith the present to one simulta-
ueous effect. With the desert all ringing with the
mad cymbals of his followers, made lucid with tlie
presence and new offers of a god, — as if unconscious
of Bacchus, or but idly casting her eyes as upon some
unconceming pageant, — her soul undistracted from
Theseus, — Ariadne is still pacing the solitary shore in
as much heart-silence, and in almost the same local
solitude, with which she awoke at daybreak to catch
the forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away the
Athenian.
Here are two points miraculously co-uniting ; fierce
society, with the feeling of solitude still absolute ; noon-
day revelations, with the accidents of the dull gray
dawn unquenched and lingering ; the present Bacchus,
with the past Ariadne ; two stories, M'ith double Time ;
separate, and harmonizing. Had the artist made the
woman one shade less indifferent to the god ; still
more, had she expressed a raptvire at his advent, where
would have been the story of the mighty desolation of
the heart previous ? merged in the insipid accident of a
flattering offer met with a welcome acceptance. The
broken heart for Theseus was not lightly to be pieced
np by a god.
We have before us a fine rough print, from a picture
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 375
by Raphael in the Vatican. It is the Presentation of
the new-bom Eve to Adam by the Almiglity. A
fairer mother of mankind we might imagine, and a
goodher sire perhaps of men since born. But these
are matters subordinate to the conception of the sitUf
ation, displayed in this extraordinary production. A
tolerably modern artist would have been satisfied with
tempering certain raptui'es of connubial anticipation,
with a suitable acknowledgment to the Giver of the
blessing, in the countenance of the first bridegroom ,
something like the divided attention of the child (Adam
was here a child-man) between the given toy, and the
mother who had just blest it with the bauble. This is
the obvious, the first-siglit view, the superficial. An
artist of a higher grade, considering the awful presence
they were in, would have taken care to subtract some ■
thing from the expression of the more human passion,
and to heighten the more spiritual one. This would
be as much as an exhibition-goer, from the opening of
Somerset House to last year's show, has been encour-
aged to look for. It is obvious to hint at a lower ex-
pression yet, in a picture that, for respects of drawing
and coloring, might be deemed not wholly inadmissible
within these art-fostering walls, in which the raptures
should be as ninety-nine, tlie gratitude as one, or per-
haps zero ! By neither the one passion nor the other
has Raphael expounded the situation of Adam. Singly
upon his brow sits the absorbing sense of wonder at the
created miracle. The moment is seized by the intuitive
artist, perhaps not self-conscious of his art, in which
neither of the conflicting emotions — a moment how
abstracted ! — has had time to spring up, or to battle
for indecorous mastery. We have seen a lardscape of
376 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.
a justly admired neoteric, in which he aimed at deUne-
ating a fiction, one of the most severely beautiful in
antiquity — the gardens of the Hesperides. To do
Mr. justice, he had painted a laudable orchard,
with fitting seclusion, and a veritable dragon (of whicli
a Polypheme, by Poussin, is somehow a fac-simile for
tlie situation), looking over into the world shut out
backwards, so that none but a " still-climbing Her-
cules " could hope to catch a peep at the admired
Ternary of Recluses. No conventual porter could
keep his eyes better than this custos with the " lidless
eyes." He not only sees that none do intrude into that
privacy, but, as clear as daylight, that none but Her~
cules aut Diabolus by any manner of means can. So
far all is well. We have absolute solitude here or no-
where. Ab extra the damsels are snug enough. But
here the artist's courage seems to have failed him. He
began to pity his pretty charge, and, to comfort the
irksomeness, has peopled their solitude with a bevy of
fair attendants, maids of honor, or ladies of the bed-
chamber, according to the approved etiquette at a court
of the nineteenth century ; giving to the whole scene
the air of a fete cliampetre^ if we will but excuse the
absence of the gentlemen. This is well, and Wat-
teauish. But what is become of the solitary mystery,—
the
Daughters three,
That sing around the golden tree ?
This is not the way in which Poussin would have
treated this subject.
The paintings, or rathw the stupendous architectural
designs, of i modern artist, have been urged as objec-
tions to the theory of our motto. They are of a char
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 377
acter, we confess, to stagger it. His towered stmc-
tures are of the highest order of the material sublime.
Whether they were dreams, or transcripts of some elder
workmanship, — Assyi'ian ruins old, — restored by this
mighty artist, they satisfy our most stretched and crav-
ing conceptions of the glories of the antique world. It
is a pity that they were ever peopled. On that side,
the imagination of the artist halts, and appears defec-
tive. Let us examine the point of the story in the
" Belshazzar's Feast." We will introduce it by an
apposite anecdote.
The court historians of the day record, that at the
first dinner given by the late King (then Prince
Regent) at the Pavilion, the following characteristic
fi-olic was played off. The guests were select and
admiring ; the banquet profuse and admirable ; the
lights lustrous and oriental ; the eye was perfectly
dazzled with the display of plate, among which the
great gold saltcellar, brought from the regalia in the
Tower for this especial purpose, itself a tower ! stood
conspicuous for its magnitude. And now the Rev.
, the then admired court chaplain, was proceed-
ing with the grace, when, at a signal given, the lights
were suddenly overcast, and a huge transparency was
discovered, in which glittered in gold letters —
" Brighton — Earthquake — Swallow-up- alive I "
Imagine the confusion of the guests ; the Georges and
garters, jewels, bracelets, moulted upon the occasion !
The fans dropped, and picked up the next morning by
the sly court pages ! Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name faint-
ing, and the Countess of holding the smelling-
bottle, till the good-humored Prince caused harmony to
'd78 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.
be restored, by calling in fresh candles, and declaring
that the whole was nothing but a pantomime hoax, got
up by the ingenious Mr. Farley, of Covent Garden,
fi'om hints which his Royal Highness himself had
fiu'nished ! Then imagine the infinite applause that
followed, the mutual rallyings, the declarations that
" they were not much frightened," of the assembled
galaxy.
The point of time in the picture exactly answers to
the appearance of the transparency in the anecdote.
The huddle, the flutter, the bustle, the escape, the
alarm, and the mock alarm ; the prettinesses heightened
by consternation ; the courtier's fear, which was flat-
tery ; and the lady's, which was affectation ; all that
we may conceive to have taken place in a mob of
Brighton courtiers, sympathizing with the well-acted
surprise of their sovereign ; all this, and no more, is
exhibited by the well-dressed lords and ladies in the
Hall of Belus. Just this sort of consternation we have
seen among a flock of disquieted wild geese at the
report only of a gun having gone off"!
But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal anxiety
for the px'eservation of their persons, — such as we
have witnessed at a theatre, when a slight alarm of fire
has been given, — an adequate exponent of a super-
natural terror ? the way in which the finger of God,
writing judgments, would have been met by the
withered conscience? There is a human fear, and a
divine fear. The one is disturbed, restless, and bent
upon escape. The other is bowed down, effortless,
passive. When the spirit appeared before Eliphaz in
the visions of the night, and the hair of his flesh stood
ap, was it in the thoughts of the Temanite to ring the
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF iMODERN ART. 379
bell of his chamber, or to call up the servants ? But
let us see in the text what there is to justify all this
huddle of vulgar consternation.
From the words of Daniel it appears that Belshazzar
had made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and
drank wine before the thousand. The golden and
silver vessels are gorgeously enumerated, with the
princes, the king's concubines, and his wives. Then
follows, —
"In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's
hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the
plaster of the wall of the king's palace ; and the king
saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the king^s
countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled
him, so that the joints of his loins were loosened, and
his knees smote one against another."
This is the plain text. By no hint can it be other-
wise inferred, but that the appearance was solely con-
fined to the fancy of Belshazzar, that his single brain
was troubled. Not a word is spoken of its being seen
by any else there present, not even by the queen her-
self, who merely undertakes for the interpretation of the
phenomenon, as related to her, doubtless, by her hus-
band. The lords are simply said to be astonished ; i. e.
at the trouble and the change of countenance in their
sovereign. Even the prophet does not appear to have
seen the scroll, which the king saw. He recalls it
only, as Joseph did the Dream to the King of Egypt.
" Then was the part of the hand sent from him [the
Lord], and this writing was written." He speaks of
the phantasm as past.
Then wluit becomes of this needless multiplication
of the miracle ? this message to a royal conscience,
380 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.
singly expressed, — for it was said, " Thy kingdor.i is
divided," — simultaneously impressed upon the fancies
of a thousand courtiers, who were implied in it neither
directly nor grammatically ?
But admitting the artist's own version of the story,
and that the sight was seen also by the thousand cour-
tiers, — let it have been visible to all Babylon, — as the
knees of Belshazzar were shaken, and his countenance
troubled, even so would the knees of every man in
Babylon, and their countenances, as of an individual
man, have been troubled ; bowed, bent down, so would
they have remained, stupor-fixed, with no thought of
struggling with that inevitable judgment.
Not all that is optically possible to be seen, is to be
shown in every picture. The eye delightedly dwells
upon the brilliant individualities in a " Marriage at
Cana," by Veronese, or Titian, to the very texture
and color of the wedding-garments, the ring glittering
upon the bride's fingers, the metal and fashion of the
wine-pots; for at such seasons there is leisure and
luxury to be curious. But in a " day of judgment,"
or in a " day of lesser horrors, yet divine," as at the
impious feast of Belshazzar, the eye should see, as the
actual eye of an agent or patient in the immediate
scene would see, only in masses and indistinction. Not
only the female attire and jewelry exposed to the criti-
cal eye of fashion, as minutely as the dresses in a Lady's
Magazine, in the criticized picture, — but perhaps the
curiosities of anatomical science, and studied diversities
of posture, in the falling angels and sinners of Michele
Angelo, — have no business in their great subjects.
There was no leisure for them.
By a wise falsification, the great masters of painting
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 381
got at their true conclusions ; by not showing the actual
appearances, that is, all that was to be seen at any
given moment by an indifferent eye, but only what the
eye might be supposed to see in the doing or suffering
of some portentous action. Suj)pose the moment of the
swallowing up of Pompeii. There they were to be
seen, — houses, columns, architectural proportions, dif-
ferences of public and private buildings, men and
women at their standing occupations, the diversified
thousand postures, attitudes, dresses, in some confusion
truly, but physically they were visible. But what eye
saw them at that eclipsing moment, which reduces con-
fusion to a kind of unity, and when the senses are up-
turned from their proprieties, when sight and hearing
are a feeling only ? A thousand years have passed,
and we are at leisure to contemplate the weaver fixed
standing at his shuttle, the baker at his oven, and to
turn over with antiquarian coolness the pots and pans
of Pompeii.
" Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou,
Moon, in the valley of Ajalon." Who, in reading
this magnificent Hebraism, in his conception, sees
aught but the heroic son of Nun, with the outstretched
arm, and the greater and lesser light obsequious ?
Doubtless there were to be seen hill and dale, and
chariots and horsemen, on open plain, or winding by
secret defiles, and all the circumstances and stratagems
of war. But whose eyes would have been conscious
of this array at the interposition of the synchronic
miracle? Yet in the picture of this subject by the
artist of the " Belshazzar's Feast " — no ignoble work
either — the marshalling and landscape of the war is
everything, the miracle sinks into an anecdote of the
382 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.
day ; and the eye may " dart through rank and file
traverse " for some minutes, before it shajl discover,
among his armed followers, which is Joshua ! Not
modern art alone, but ancient, where only it is to be
found if anywhere, can be detected erring, from defect
of this imaginative faculty. The world has nothing to
show of the preternatural in painting, transcending the
figure of Lazarus bursting his grave-clothes, in the
great picture at Angerstein's. It seems a thing be-
tween two beings. A ghastly horror at itself struggles
with newly apprehending gratitude at second life be-
stowed. It cannot forget that it was a ghost. It has
hardly felt that it is a body. It has to tell of the
world of spirits. Was it from a feeling, that the
crowd of half-impassioned by-standers, and the still
more irrelevant herd of passers-by at a distance, who
have not heard, or but faintly have been told of the
passing miracle, admirable as they are in design and
hue — for it is a glorified work — do not respond ade-
quately to the action — that the single figure of the
Lazarus has been attributed to Michele Angelo, and
the mighty Sebastian unfairly robbed of the fame of
the greater half of the interest? Now that there were
not indifferent passeu-by within actual scope of the
eyes of those present at the miracle, to whom the sound
of it had but faintly, or not at all, reached, it would be
hardihood to deny ; but would they see them ? or can
the mind in the conception of it admit of svich uncon-
ceniing objects ; can it think of them at all ? or what
associatins leag-ue to the imagination can there be
between the seers, and the seers not, of a presential
miracle ?
"Were an artist to paint upon demand a picture of a
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. o^b
Dryad, we will ask whether, in the present low state
of expectation, the patron would not, or ought not to
be fully satisfied with a beautiful naked figure recum-
bent under wide-stretched oaks ? Disseat those woods,
and place the same figure among fountains, and fall of
pellucid water, and you have a — Naiad ! Not so in a
rough print we have seen after Julio Romano, we think
— for it is long since — there, by no process, with mere
change of scene, could the figure have reciprocated
characters. Long, grotesque, fantastic, yet with a
grace of her own, beautiful in convolution and distor-
tion, linked to her connatural tree, co-twisting with its
limbs her own, till both seemed either — these, anima-
ted branches ; those, disanimated members — yet the
animal and vegetable lives sufficiently kept distinct, —
his Dryad lay — an approximation of two natures,
which to conceive, it must be seen ; analogous to, not
the same with, the delicacies of O vidian transforma-
tions.
To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial compre*
hension, the most barren, the Great Masters gave lofti-
ness and fi'uitfulness. The large eye of genius saw in
the meanness of present objects their capabilities of
treatment from their relations to some grand Past or
Future. How has Raphael — we must still linger about
the Vatican — treated the humble craft of the ship-
builder, in his " Building of the Ark ? " It is in that
scriptural series, to which we have referred, and which,
judging fi'om some fine rough old graphic sketches of
them which we possess, seem to be of a higher and
more poetic grade than even the Cartoons. The dim
of sight are the timid and the shrinking. There is
a cowardice in modern art. As the Frenchman, of
384 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.
whom Coleridge's friend made the prophetic guess at
Rome, fi'om the beard and horns of the Moses of
Micliele Angelo collected no inferences beyond that of
a He Goat and a Cornuto ; so from this subject, ot
mere mechanic promise, it would instinctively turn
away, as from one incapable of investiture with any
grandeur. The dock-yards at Woolwich would object
derogatory associations. The depot at Chatham would
be the mote and the beam in its intellectual eye. But
uot to the nautical preparations in the ship-yards of
Civita Vecchia did Raphael look for instructions, when
he imagined the Buildino- of the Vessel that was to be
conservatory of the wrecks of the species of drowned
mankind. In the intensity of the action, he keeps ever
out of sight the meanness of the operation. There is
the Patriarch, in calm forethought, and with holy pre-
science, giving directions. And there are his agents —
the solitary but sufficient Three — hewing, sawing,
«jvery one with the might and earnestness of a Demiur-
fl^us ; under some instinctive rather than technical guid
unce! giant-muscled; every one a Hercules, or liker to
those Vulcanian Three, that in sounding caverns under
Mongibello wrought in fire, — Brontes, and black Ster-
opes, and Pyracmon. So work the workmen that
should repair a world !
Artists again err in the confounding of poetic with
pictorial subjects. In the latter, the exterior accidents
are nearly everything, the unseen qualities as nothing.
Othello's color, — the infirmities and corpulence of a
Sir John Falstaff, — do they haunt us perpetually in
the reading? or are they obtruded upon our concep-
tions one time for ninety-nine that we are lost in
admimticn at the respective moral or intellectual at-
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 385
tributes of the character? But in a picture Othello
is always a Blackamoor ; and the other only Plump
Jack. Deeply corporealized, and enchained hopelessly
in the grovelling fetters of externality, must be the
mind, to which, in its better moments, the image of
the high-souled, high-intelligenced Quixote — the er-
rant Star of Knighthood, made more tender by eclipse
— has never presented itself, divested from the unhal-
lo^ved accompaniment of a Sancho, or a rabblement at
the heels of Rosinante. That man has read his book
by halves ; he has laughed, mistaking his author's
purport, which was — tears. The artist that pictures
Quixote (and it is in this degrading point that he is
every season held.'^p at our Exhibitions) in the shal-
low hope of exciting mirth, would have joined the
rabble at the heels of his starved steed. We wish not
to see that counterfeited, Avhich we Avould not have
wished to see in the reality. Conscious of the heroic
inside of the noble Quixote, who, on hearing that his
withered person was passing, would have stepped over
his threshold to gaze upon his forlorn habiliments, and
the " strange bedfellows which misery brings a man
acquainted Avith ? " Shade of Cervantes ! who in thy
Second Part could put into the mouth of thy Quixote
those high aspirations of a super-chivalrous gallantry,
where he I'cplies to one of the shepherdesses, apprehen-
sive that he would spoil their pretty net-works, and,
inviting him to be a guest with them, in accents like
these : " Truly, fairest Lady, Action was not more
astonished when he saw Diana bathing herself at the
fountain, than I have been in beholding your beauty:
1 commend the manner of your pastime, and thank
you for your kind offers ; and, if I may serve you, so I
VOL. III. 25
386 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.
may be sure you will be obeyed, you may command
me ; for my profession is this, To show myself thank-
ful, and a doer of good to all sorts of people, especially
of the rank that your person shows you to be ; and if
those nets, as they take up but a little piece of groiuid,
should take up the whole world, I would seek out new
worlds to pass through, rather than break them ; and
(he adds) that you may give credit to this my exagger-
ation, behold at least he that promiseth you this, is Don
Quixote de la Mancha, if haply this name hath come to
your hearing." Illustrious Romancer ! were the " fine
frenzies," which possessed the brain of thy own Quix-
ote, a fit subject, as in this Second Part, to be exposed
to the jeers of Duennas and Serving Men ? to be mon-
stered, and shown up at the heartless banquets of great
men ? Was that pitiable infirmity, which in thy First
Part misleads him, always from tvithin, into half-ludi-
crous, but more than half-compassionable and admirable
errors, not infliction enough from heaven, that men by
studied artifices must devise and practise upon the hu
mor, to inflame where they should soothe it ? Why,
Goneril would have blushed to practise upon the abdi-
cated king at this rate, and the she-wolf Regan not
have endured to play the pranks upon his fled wits,
which thou hast made thy Quixote suffer in Duchesses*
halls, and at the hands of that unworthy nobleman.*
In the First Adventures, even, it needed all the art
of the most consummate artist in the Book way that
the Avorld hath yet seen, to keep up in the mind of the
reader the heroic attributes of the character without
relaxing ; so as absolutely that they shall suffer no
* Yet from this Second Part, our cried-up pictures are mostly selected:
the waiting- women with beards, &c.
ON THE PKODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 387
alloy from the debasing fellowsliip of" the clown. If it
ever obtrudes itself as a disharmony, are we inclined to
laugh ; or not, rather, to indulge a contrary emotion ?
— Cervantes, stung, perchance, by tlie relish with
which Ms Reading Public had received the fooleries
of the man, more to their palates than the generosities
of the master, in the sequel let his pen run riot, lost
the harmony and the balance, and sacrificed a great
*dea to the taste of his contemporaries. We know that
in the present day the Knight has fewer admirers than
the Squire. Anticipating, what did actually happen to
him, — as afterwards it did to his scarce inferior fol-
lower, the Author of " Guzman de Alfarache," — that
some less knowing hand would prevent him by a
spurious Second Part ; and judging that it would be
easier for his competitor to outbid him in the comicali-
ties, than in the romance, of his work, he abandoned
his Knight, and has fairly set up the Squire for his
Hero. For what else has he unsealed the eyes of
Sancho? and instead of that twilight state of semi
insanity — the madness at second-hand — the con-
tagion, caught from a stronger mind infected — that
war between native cunning, and hereditary deference,
with which he has hitherto accompanied his master, —
two for a pair almost, — does he substitute a downright
Knave, with open eyes, for his own ends only following
a confessed Madman ; and offering at one time to lay,
if not actually laying, hands upon him ! From the
moment that Sancho loses his reverence, Don Quixote
is become — a treatable lunatic. Our artists handle
him accordingly.
388 THE WEDDING.
THE WEDDING.
I DO not know when I have been better pleased
than at being invited last week to be present at the
weddino; of a friend's daughter. I like to make one at
these ceremonies, which to us old people give back our
youth in a manner, and restore our gayest season, in
the remembrance of our own success, or the regi'cts,
scarcely less tender, of our own youthful disappoint-
ments, in this point of a settlement. On these occa-
sions I am sure to be in good-humor for a week or two
after, and enjoy a reflected honey-moon. Being with-
out a family, I am flattered with these temporary adop-
tions into a friend's family ; I feel a sort of cousinhood,
or uncleship, for the season ; I am inducted into degrees
of affinity ; and, in the participated socialities of the
little community, I lay down for a brief while my soli-
tary bachelorship. I carry this humor so far, that I
take it unkindly to be left out, even when a funeral
is goins; on in the house of a dear friend. But to
my subject.
The union itself had been long settled, but its cele-
bration had been hitherto deferred, to an almost un-
I'easonable state of suspense in the lovers, by some
invincible prejudices which the bride's father had un*
happily contracted upon the suljject of the too early
marriages of females. He has been lecturing any time
these five years — for to that length the courtship has
been protracted — upon the propriety of putting off the
solemnity, till the lady should have completed her five-
and-twentieth year. We all began to be afraid that a
THE WEDDING. 389
suit, which as yet had abated of none of its ardors,
might at last be Hngered on, till passion had time to
cool, and love go out in the experiment. But a little
wheedling on the part of his wife, who was by no
means a party to these overstrained notions, joined to
some serious expostulations on that of his friends, who,
from the growing infirmities of the old gentleman,
could not promise ourselves many years' enjoyment of
his company, and were anxious to bring matters to a
conclusion during his lifetime, at length prevailed ; and
on Monday last the daughter of my old friend. Admiral
, having attained the ivomanly age of nineteen,
was conducted to the church by her pleasant cousin
J , who told some few years older.
Before the youthful part of my female readers ex-
press their indignation at the abominable loss of time
occasioned to the lovers by the preposterous notions of
my old friend, they will do well to consider the reluc-
tance which a fond parent naturally feels at parting
with his child. To this unwillingness, I believe, in
most cases may be traced the difference of opinion on
this point between child and parent, whatever pre-
tences of interest or prudence may be held out to cover
it. The hard-heartedness of fathers is a fine theme for
romance writers, a sure and moving topic ; but is there
not something untender, to say no more of it, in the
nurry which a beloved child is sometimes in to tear
herself from the paternal stock, and commit herself to
tstrange graftings ? The case is heightened where the
4ady, as in the present instance, hap[)ens to be an only
rhild. I do not understand these matters experimen-
tally, but I can make a shrewd guess at the wounded
pride of a parent upon these occasions. It is no new
5U0 THE WEDDING.
observation, I believe, that a lover Li most cases has no
rival so much to be feared as the father. Certainly
there is a jealousy in unparallel subjects, which is little
less heart-rending than the passion which we more
strictly christen by that name. Mothers' scruples are
more easily got over ; for this reason, I suppose, that
the protection transferred to a husband is less a deroga-
tion and a loss to their authority than to the paternal.
Mothers, besides, have a trembling foresight, which
paints the inconveniences (impossible to be conceived
in the same degree by the other parent) of a life of
forlorn celibacy, which the refusal of a tolerable match
may entail upon their child. Mothers' instinct is a
surer guide here, than the cold reasonings of a father
on such a topic. To this instinct may be imputed, and
by it alone may be excused, the unbeseeming artifices,
by which some wives push on the matrimonial projects
of their daughters, which the husband, however approv-
ing, sliall entertain with comparative indifference. A
little shamelessness on this head is pardona):)le. With
this explanation, foi'wardness becomes a grace, and
maternal importunity receives the name of a virtue.
But the parson stays, while I preposterously assume
his office ; I am preaching, while the bride is on the
threshold.
Nor let any of my female readers suppose that the
sage reflections which have just escaped me have the
obliquest tendency of ajiplication to the young lady
who, it will be seen, is about to venture upon a changt
m her condition, at a mature and competent age, and
not without the fullest api)robation of all parties. I
only deprecate very hasty marriages.
It had been fixed that the ceremony should be gone
THE WEDDING. 391
thiougli at an early hour, to give time for a little
dejeune afterwards, to which a select parly of friends
had been invited. We were in church a little before
the clock struck eight.
Nothing could be more juchcious or graceful than the
dress of the bridemaids — the three charming Miss
Foresters — on this mornino;. To give the bride an
opportunity of shining singly, they had come habited
all in green. I am ill at describing female apparel ;
but while she stood at the altar in vestments white and
candid as her thoughts, a sacrificial whiteness, tliey as-
sisted in robes, such as might Jbecome Diana's nymphs ;
— Foresters indeed, — as such who had not yet come
to the resolution of putting off cold "virginity. These
young maids, not being so blest as to have a mother
living, I am told, keep single for their father's sake,
and live altogether so happy with their remaining
parent, that the hearts of their lovers are ever broken
with the prospect (so inauspicious to their hopes) of
such uninterrupted and provoking home-comfort. Gal-
lant girls ! each a victim worthy of Iphigenia !
I do not know what business I have to be present in
solemn places. I cannot divest me of an unseasonable
disposition to levity upon the most awful occasions. I
was never cut out for a public functionary. Ceremony
and I have long shaken hands ; but I could not resist
the im}wrtunities of the young lady's father, whose
gout unhappily confined him at home, to act as parent
on this occasion, and give away the hride. Something
ludicrous occurred to me at this most serious of all
moments, — a sense of my unfitness to have the dis-
posal, even in imagination, of the sweet young creature
beside me. I fear I was betrayed to some lightness,
3'j2 the wedding.
for t.ie awful eye of the parson — and tlie rector's eyo
of Saint Mildred's in the Poultry is no trifle of a re-
buke — was upon me in an instant, souring my incipi-
ent jest to the tristful severities of a funeral.
This was the only misbeliavior which I can plead to
upon this solemn occasion, unless what was objected to
me after the ceremony, by one of the handsome Miss
T ~ s, be accounted a solecism. She was pleased to
isay that she had never seen a gentleman before me give
away a bride, in black. Now black has been my ordi-
nary apparel so long — indeed I take it to be the proper
costume of an author — the state sanctions it, — that to
have appeared in some lighter color would have raised
more mirth at my expense, than the anomaly had
created censure. But I could perceive that the bride's
mother, and some elderly ladies present (God bless
them !) would have been well content, if I had come
in any other color than that. But I got over the omen
by a lucky apologue, which I remembered out of Pil-
pay, or some Indian author, of all the birds being in-
vited to the linnet's wedding, at which Avhen all the
rest came in their gayest feathers, the raven alone
apologized for his cloak because " he had no other."
This tolerably reconciled the elders. But with the
young people all was merriment, and shaking of hands,
and congratulations, and kissing away the bride's tears,
and kissing from her in return, till a young lady, who
assumed some experience in these matters, having worn
<he nuptial bands some four or five^eeks longer than
her friend, rescued her, archly observing, with half an
eye upon the bridegi'oom, that at this rate she would
have " none left."
My fiiend the Admiral was in fine wig and buckle
THE WEDDING. 393
on this occasion — a striking contrast to his usual
neglect of personal appearance. He did not once
shove up his borrowed locks (his custom ever at his
morning studies) to betray the few gray stragglers of
his own beneath them. He wore an aspect of thought-
ful satisfaction. I trembled for the hour, which at
length approached, when after a protracted breakfast of
three hours — if stores of cold fowls, tongues, hams,
botargoes, dried fruits, wines, cordials, &c., can deserve
so meagre an appellation — the coach was announced,
ivhich was come to carry off the bride and bridegroom
for a season, as custom has sensibly ordained, into the
country ; upon which design, wishing them a felicitous
journey, let us return to the assembled guests.
As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
The eyes of men
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
so idly did we bend our eyes upon one another, when
the chief performers in the morning's pageant had
vanished. None told his tale. None sipped her glass.
The poor Admiral made an effort, — it was not much.
I had anticipated so far. Even the inftnity of full
satisfaction, that had betrayed itself through the prim
looks and quiet deportment of his lady, began to wane
into something of misgiving. No one knew whether to
take their leaves or stay. We seemed assembled upon
a silly occasion. In this crisis, betwixt tarrying and
departure, I must do justice to a foolish talent of mine,
^diich had otherwise like to have brought me into dis-
j;race in the forepart of the day ; I mean a power, in
my emergency, of thinking and giving vent to all
inanner of strange nonsense. In this awkward dilemma
394 THE WEDDING.
I found it sovereign. I rattled off seme of my most
excellent absurdities. All were willing to be leheved,
at any expense "of reason, from the pressure of the in-
tolerable vacuum which had succeeded to the morning
bustle. By this means 1 was fortunate in keeping
together the better part of the company to a late hour ;
and a rubber of whist (the Admirals favorite game)
with some rare strokes of chance as well as skill, which
came opportunely on his side, — lengthened out till
midnight, — dismissed the old gentleman at last uo his
bed with comparatively easy spirits.
I have been at my old friend's various times dnce.
I do not know a visiting place where every guest is so
perfectly at his ease ; nowhere, where harmony is so
strangely the result of confusion. Everybody "is at
cross purposes, yet the eifect is so much better than
uniformity. Contradictory orders ; servants pulling
one way ; master and mistress driving some other,
yet both diverse; visitors huddled up in corners ; chairs
unsymmetrized ; candles disposed by chance ; meals at
odd hours, tea and supper at once, or the latter preced-
ing the former ; the host and. the guest conferring, yet
each \ipon » different topic, each understanding him-
self, neither trying to understand or hear the other;
draughts and politics, chess and political economy,
cards and conversation on nautical matters, going on at
once, without the hope, or indeed the wisn, of distin-
guishing them, make it altogether the most perfect oon-
ccrdia discors you shall meet with. Yet somehow the
>.i house is not quite what it should be. The Admiral
still enjoys his pipe, but he has no Miss Emily to fill it
for him. The instrument stands where it stood, but
she is gone, whose delicate touch could sometimes for a
REJOICINGS Ul'ON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 39;j
short minute appease the warring 'elements. He has
learnt, as Marvel expresses it, to " make his destiny his
choice." He bears bravely up, but he does not come
out with his flashes of wild wit so thick as formerly.
His sea-songs seldomer escape him. His wife, too,
looks as if she wanted- some younger body to scold and
set to rights. We all miss a junior presence. It is
wonderful how one young maiden freshens up, and
keeps green, the paternal roof. Old and young seem
to have an interest in her, so long as she is not abso-
lutely disposed of. The youtlifiilness of the house is
flown. Emily is married.
REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING
OF AGE.
The Old Year being dead, and the New Year com-
ing of age, which he does, by Calendar Law, as soon
as the breath is out of the old gentleman's body,
nothing would serve the young spark but he must give
a dinner upon the occasion, to which all the Days in
the year were invited. The Festivals^ whom he de-
puted as his stewards, were mightily taken with the
notion. They had been engaged time out of mind,
they said, in providing mirth and good cheer for
mortals below ; and it was time they should have a
taste of their own bounty. It was stiffly debated
among them whether the Fasts should be admitted.
Some said, the ajjpearance of such lean, starved guests,
396 REJOICINGS UPON THE
with their mortified faces, would pervert the ends of
the meeting. But the objection was overruie.d by
CJiristmas Day, who had a design upon Ash Wednes-
day (as you shall hear), and a mighty desire to see
how the old Domine would behave himself in his cups.
Only the Vigils were requested to come with their
lanterns, to light the gentlefolks home at night.
All the Days came to their day. Covers were pro-
vided for three hundred and sixty-five guests at the
principal table ; with an occasional knife and fork at
the sideboard for the Tiventy-Ninth of February.
I should have told you, that cards of invitation had
been issued. The cari'iers were the Hours; twelv^e
little, merry, whirligig foot-pages, as you should desire
to see, that went all round, and found out the persons
invited well enough, with the exception of Easter Day,
Shrove Tuesday, and a few such Movables, who had
lately shifted their quarters.
Well, they all met at last, foul Days, fine Days, all
sorts of Days, and a rare din t}|ey made of it. There
was nothing but. Hail ! fellow Day, — well met, —
brother Day — sister Day — only Lady Day kept a
little on the aloof and seemed somewhat scornful. Yet
some said. Twelfth Day cut her out and out, for she
came in a tifilmy suit, white and gold, like a queen on
a fi'ost-cake, all royal, glittering, and Epiphanous. The
rest came, some in green, some in white, — but old Lent
and his family were not yet out of mourning. Rainy
Days came in, dripping; and sunshiny Days helped
them to change their stockings. Wedding Day was
there in his marriage finery, a little the worse for wear.
Pay Day came late, as he always does ; and Doomsday
sent word — he might be expected.
NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 397
April Fiol (as my young lord's jester) took upon
himself to marshal the guests, and wild work he made
with it. It would have posed old Erra Pater to have
found out any given Day in the year, to erect a scheme
upon — good Days, bad Days were so shuffled together,
to the confounding of all sober horoscopy.
He had stuck the Twenty-First of Jane next to tho
Twenty-Second of December, and the former looked like
a Maypole siding a marrow-bone. Ash Wednesday got
wedged in (as was concerted) betwixt CJiristmas and
Lord Mayor s Days. Lord ! how he laid about him !
Nothing but barons of beef and turkeys would go down
with him, — to the creat greasino and detriment of his
new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas
Day was at his elbow, plying him with the wassail-
bowl, till he roared, and hiccupp'd, and protested there
was no faith in dried ling, but commended it to the
devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious hy-po-
crit-crit-critical mess, and no dish for a gentleman.
Then he dipt his fist into the middle of the great
custard that stood before his left-hand yieighhor, and
daubed his hungry beard all over witli it, till you would
have taken him for the Last Day in December, it so
hung in icicles.
At another part of the table, Shrove Tuesday wa3
helping the Second of September to some cock broth, —
which courtesy the latter returned with the delicate
thigh of a hen pheasant, — so there was no love lost for
that matter. The Last of Lent was spunging upon
Shrovetide' s pancakes ; which April Fool perceiving,
told him he did well, for pancakes were proper to a
good fry-day.
In another part, a hubbub arose about the Thirtieth
398 REJOICINGS UPON THE
of January^ who, it seems, being a sour puritanic char-
acter, that thouglit nobody's meat good or sanctified
enougli for him, had smuggled into the room a calf's
head, which he had had cooked at home for that pur-
pose, thinking to feast thereon incontinently ; but as it
lay in the dish March Mcmytveathers, who is a very fine
lady, and subject to the meagrims, screamed out there
was a " human head in the platter," and raved about
Herodias's dauohter to that degree, that the obnoxious
viand was obliffed to be removed ; nor did she recover
her stomach till she had gulped down a Restorative^
confected of Oak Apple, which the merry Twenty-
Ninth of May alwayj? carries about with him for that
puii^ose.
The King's health * beino- called for after this, a
notable dispute arose between the Twelfth of August
(a zealous old Whig gentlewoman), and the Twenty-
TJiird of April (a newfangled lady of the Tory
stamp), as to which of them should have the honor
to propose it. August grew hot upon the matter,
affirming time out of mind the prescriptive right to
have lain with her, till her rival had basely supplanted
her ; whom she represented as little better than a kept
mistress, who went about in fine clothes, while she (the
legitimate Birthday) had scarcely a rag, &c.
April Fool, being made mediator, confirmed the right
in the strongest form of words to the appellant, but de-
cided for peace's sake that the exercise of it should
remain with the present possessor. At the same time,
he slyly rounded the first lady in the ear, that an action
might lie against the Crown for hi-geny.
It beginning to grow a little duskish, Candlemcu
* King George IV.
.NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 399
lustily bawled out for lights, which was opposed by
all the Days^ who protested against burning daylight.
Then fair water was handed round in silver ewers, and
the same lady was observed to take an unut,ual time in
Washing herself.
May Day^ with that sweetness whicli is peculiar lo
her, in a neat speech proposing the health of the
founder, crowned her goblet (and by her example the
rest of the company) with garlands. This being done,
the lordly New Year from the upper end of the table,
in a cordial but somewhat lofty tone, returned thanks.
He felt proud on an occasion of meeting so many of his
worthy father's late tenants, promised to improve their
farms, and at the same time to abate (if anything was
found unreasonable) in their rents.
At the mention of this, the four Quarter Days in-
voluntarily looked at each other, and smiled ; April
Fool whistled to an old tune of " New Brooms ; " and
a surly old rebel at the farther end of the table (who
was discovered to be no other than the Fiftli of Novem-
ber^ muttered out, distinctly enough to be heard by the
whole company, words to this effect, that " when the
old one is gone, he is a fool that looks for a better."
Which rudeness of his, the guests resenting, unani-
mously voted his expulsion ; and the malecontent was
thrust out neck and heels into the cellar, as the proper-
est place for such a houtefeu and firebrand as he had
shown himself to be.
Order being restored — the young lord (who, to say
truth, had been a little ruffled, and ])ut beside his
oratory) in as few, and yet as obliging words as pos-
sible, assured them of entire welcome ; and, with a
graceful turn, singling out poor Ticenty-Ninth of Febi'ii-
4/)0 REJOICINGS UPON THE
ary^ that had sat all this while mum-chance at tlie
sideboard, begged to couple his health with that of the
good company before him, — which he di'ank accord-
ingly ; observing, that he had not seen his honest face
any time these four years, — with a number of endear-
ing expressions besides. At the same time, removing
the solitary Day from the forlorn seat which had been
assigned him, he stationed him at his own board,
somewhere between the Ch'eek Calends and Latter
Lammas.
Ash Wednesday, being now called upon for a song,
with his eyes fast stuck in his head, and as well as the
Canary he had swallowed would give him leave, struck
up a Carol, which Christmas Day had taught him for
the nonce ; and was followed by the latter, who gave
*' Miserere " in fine style, hitting off the mumping
notes and lengthened drawl of Old 3Iortification with
infinite humoV. Aj)ril Fool swore they had exchanged
conditions ; but Good Friday was observed to look ex-
tremely grave ; and Sunday held her fan before her
face, that she might not be seen to smile.
/Shrovetide, Lord 3Iayors Day, and April Fool, next
joined m a glee —
Which is the properest day to drink?
in which all the Days chiming in, made a merry
burden.
They next fell to quibbles and conundrums. The
question being proposed, who had the greatest number
of followers, — the Quarter Days said, there could be
no question as to that ; for they had all the creditors in
the world dogging their heels. But April Fool gave it
in favor of the Forty Days before Easter ; because the
NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 401
debtors in all cases outnumbered the creditors, and
they kept lent all the year.
All this Avhile Valentine s Day kept courting pretty
May, who sat next him, slipping amorous billets-doux
under the table, till the Dog Days (who are naturally
of a warm constitution) began to be jealous, and to
bark and rage exceedingly. April Fool, who likes a
bit of sport above measure, and had some pretensions,
to the lady besides, as being but a cousin once re-
mo'v'ed, — clapped and halloo'd them on ; and as fast
as their indignation cooled, those mad wags, the Ember
Days, were at it with their bellows, to blow it into a
flame ; and all was in a ferment ; till old Madam
Septuagesima (who boasts herself the Mother of the
Days) wisely diverted the conversation with a tedious
tale of the lovers which she could reckon when she was
young ; and of one Master Rogation Day in particular,
who was forever putting the question to her ; but she
kept him at a distance, as the chronicle would tell, —
by which I apprehend she meant the Almanac. Then
she rambled on to the Days that were gone, the good old
Days, and so to the Days before the Flood, — which
plainly showed her old head to be little better than
crazed and doited.
Day being ended, the Days called for their cloaks
and greatcoats, and took their leaves. Lord Mayor'' &
Day went off in a Mist, as usual ; Shortest Day in a
deep black Fog, that wrapt the little gentleman all
round like a hedge-hog. Two Vigils — so watchmen
are called in heaven — saw Chnstmas Day safe home,
— they had been used to the business before. Another
Vigil — a stout, sturdy, patrole, called the Fve of St.
Christopher — seeing Ash Wednesday in a condition
vol.. III. 26
102 OLD CHINA.
little better than he should be, — e'en whipt him over
his shoulders, pick-a-pack fashion, and Old Mortificor
tion went floating home singing —
On the bat's back do I fly,
and a number of old snatches besides, between dnink
and sober ; but very few Aves or Penitentiaries (you
may believe me) were among them. Longest Bay set
off westward in beautiful crimson and gold, — the rest,
some in one fashion, some in another; but Valentine
and pretty May took their departure together in one of
the prettiest silvery twilights a Lover's Day could wish
to set in.
OLD CfflNA.
I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china.
When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the
china-closet, and next for the picture gallery. I can-
not defend the order of preference, but by saying, that
we have all some taste or other, of too ancient a date
to admit of our remembering distinctly that it was an
acquired one. I can call to mind the first play, and
the first exhibition, that I was taken to ; but I am not
conscious of a time when china jars and saucers were
introduced into my imagination.
I had no repugnance then — why should 1 now
have ? — to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured gro-
tesques that, under the notion of men and women, float
OLD CHINA. 403
about, uncircumscribed by any element, in that world
before perspective — a china teacup.
I like to see my old friends — whom distance cannot
diminish — figuring up in the air (so they appear to
our optics), yet on terra fir ma still, — for so we must in
courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue, — which
the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to
spring up beneath their sandals.
I love the men with women's faces, and the women,
ii possible, with still more womanish expressions.
Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea
to a lady from a salver — two miles off. See how dis-
tance seems to set off respect ! And here the same
lady, or another — for likeness is identity on teacups
— is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the
hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty
mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (a3
angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the
midst of a flowery mead — a furlong off on the other
side of the same strange stream !
Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of
their world — see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the
hays.
Here — a cow and rabbit couchant, and coextensive,
— so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere
t>f fine Cathay.
I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over
our Hyson, (which we are old-fashioned enough to
drink unmixed still of an afternoon,) some of these
speeiosa miracida upon a set of extraordinary old blue
china (a recent purchase) which we were now for the
first time using; and could not help remarking, how
favorable circumstances had been to us of late years.
404 OLD CHINA.
that we could afford to please the eye sometimes with
trifles of this sort — when a passing sentiment seemed
to overshade the brows of my companion. I am quick
at detectino; these summer clouds in Bi'ido;et.
" I wish the good old times would come again," she
said, " when we were not quite so rich. I do not
mean, that I want to he poor ; hut there was a middle
state " — so she was pleased to ramble on, — " in which
I am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase
is but a purchase, now that you have money enough
and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph.
When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, O ! how much
ado I had to get you to consent in those times ! ) — we
were used to have a debate two or three days before,
and to weigh the for and against^ and think what we
might spare it out of, and what saving we could hit
upon, that should be an equivalent. A thing was
worth buying then, when we felt the money that we
paid for it.
" Do you remember the brown suit, which you made
to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame
upon you, it grew so threadbare — and all because of
that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged
home late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden ?
Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we
could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not
come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock
of the Saturday night, when you set off fi'om Islington,
fearing you should be too late, — and when the old
bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and
by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bed wards)
lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures, — and
W'hen you lugged it home, wishing it were twice a3
OLD CHINA. 405
cumbersome, — and when you presented it to me, —
and wlien we were exploring the perfectness of it, Qcol-
lating you called it,) — and while I was repairing some
of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience
would not suffer to be left till daybreak, — was there no
jJeasure in being a poor man ? or can those neat black
clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep
brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give
you half the honest vanity, with which you flaunted it
about in that overworn suit — your old corbeau — for
four or five weeks longer than you should have done,
to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen
— or sixteen shillings Avas it ? — a great affair we
thought it then — which you had lavished on the old
folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that
pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me
home any nice old purchases now.
" When you came home with twenty apologies for
laying out a less number of shillings upon that print
after Lionardo, which we christened the ' Lady Blanch ; '
when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the
money, — and thought of the money, and looked again
at the picture, — was there no pleasure in being a poor
man ? Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into
Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet
do you ?
" Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to En-
field, and Potter's bar, and Waltham, when we had a
holiday — holidays, and all other fun, are gone now
we are rich — and the little handbasket in which I
used to deposit our day's fare of savory cold lamb and
salad, — and hoAV you would pry about at noontide for
some decent house, where we might go in and produce
406 OLD CHINA.
our store — only paying for the ale that you must call
for — and speculate upon the looks of the landlady,
and whether she was likely to allow us a tablecloth, —
and wish for such another honest hostess, as Izaak
Walton has described many a one on the pleasant
banks of the Lea, when he went a-fishing — and some-
times they would prove obliging enough, and some-
times they would look grudgingly upon us, — but we
had cheerfiil looks still for one another, and would eat
our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging Piscator his
Trout Hall ? Now — when we go out a day's pleasur-
ing, which is seldom moreover, we ride part of the
way — and go into a fine inn, and order the best of
dinners, never debating the expense — which after all,
never has half the relish of those chance country snaps,
when we were at the mercy of imcertain usage, and a
precarious welcome.
" You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but
in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to
sit when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Sur-
render of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the
Children in the Wood, — when we squeezed out our
shillings a-piece to sit three or four times in a season in
the one-shilling gallery — where you felt all the time
that you ought not to have brought me — and more
strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought me
— and the pleasure was the better for a little shame, —
and when the curtain drew up, what cared we for our
place in the house, or what mattered it where we were
sittinor when our thouo;hts were with Rosalind in
Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria ? You
used to say, that the Gallery was the best place of all
for enjoying a play socially, — that the relish of such
OLD CHINA 407
exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of
going, — that the company we met there, not being in
general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the
more, and did attend, to what was going on, on the
stage, — because a word lost would have been a chasm,
which it was impossible for them to fill up. With such
reflections we consoled our px'ide then, — and I appeal
to you, whether, as a woman, I met generally with less
attention and accommodation than I have done since
ill more expensive situations in the house ? The get-
ting in indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient
staircases was bad enough, — but there was still a law
of civility to woman recognized to quite as great an ex-
tent as we ever found in the other passages, — and how
a little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat
and the play, afterwards ! Now we can only pay our
money and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in the
galleries now. I am sure we saw, and heard too, well
enough then, — but sight, and all, I think, is gone with
our poverty.
" There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before
they became quite common — in the first dish of peas,
while they were yet dear — to have them for a nice
supper, a treat. What treat can we have now ? If
we were to treat ourselves now, — that is, to have dain-
ties a little above our means, it would be selfish and
wicked. It is the very little more that we allow our-
selves beyond what the actual poor can get at, that
makes what I call a treat, — when two people living
together, as we have done, now and then indulge
themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like ; while
each apologizes, and is willing to take both halves of
the blame to his single share. I see no harm in people
408 OLD CHINA.
making much of themselves, in that sense of the word.
It may give them a hint how to make much of others.
But now — what I mean by the word — we never do
make much of ourselves. None but the poor can do it.
I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we
were, just above poverty.
" I know what you were going to say, that it is
nn'ghty pleasant at the end of the year to make all
meet, — and much ado we used to have every Thirty-
first night of December to account for our exceedings,
— many a long face did you make over your puzzled
accounts, and in contriving to make it out how we had
spent so much — or that we had not spent so much —
or that it was impossible we shoidd spend so much next
year, — and still we found our slender capital decreas-
ing, — but then, — betwixt ways, and projects, and
compromises of one sort or another, and talk of cur-
tailing this charge, and doing without that for the
future, — and the hope that youth brings, and laughing
spirits, (in which you were never poor till now,) we
pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with ' lusty
brimmers ' (as you used to quote it out of hearty cheer-
ful Mr. Cotton^ as you called him), we used to wel-
come in the ' comino; cuest.' Now we have no reck-
ed o
oning at all at the end of the old year, — no flattering
promises about the new year doing better for us."
Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions,
that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful
how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling
at the })hantom of wealth which her dear imagination
had conjured up out of a clear income of poor
hundred pounds a year. " It is true we were happiei
when we were poorer, but we wore also younger, niv
OLD CHINA. 409
cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the excess,
f<jr if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we
should not much mend ourselves. That we had much
to struggle with, as we grew up together, we have rea-
son to be most thankful. It strengthened, and knit our
compact closer. We could never have been what we
have been to each other, if we had always had the
sufficiency which you now complain of. The resisting
power, — those natural dilations of the youthful spirit,
which circumstances cannot straiten, — with us are long
since passed away. Competence to age is supplement-
ary youth, a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the
best that is to be had. We must ride where we
formerly walked ; live better and lie softer — and shall
be wise to do so — than we had means to do in those
good old days you speak of. Yet could those days re-
turn, — could you and I once more walk our thirty
miles a day, — could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again
be young, and you and I be young to see them, —
could the good old one-shilling gallery days return, —
they are di'eams, my cousin, now, — but could you and
I at this moment, instead of tliis quiet argument, by
our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa,
— be once more struggling up those inconvenient stair-
cases, pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the
poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers, — could I
once more hear those anxious shrieks of youi's, — and
the delicious Thank Grod, ive are safe, which always
followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the
first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath
us, — I know not the fathom line that ever touched a
descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more
wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R ia
410 THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM
supposed to have, to purchase it. And nctw do just
look at tliat merry little Chinese waiter holding an
umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of
that pretty insipid half Madona-ish chit of a lady in that
very blue summer-house."
THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM.
I CHANCED upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical
thing of a dream the other night, that you shall hear
of. I had been reading the " Loves of the Angels,"
and went to bed with my head full of speculations, sug-
gested by that extraordinary legend. It had given
birth to innumerable conjectures ; and, I remember the
last waking thought, which I gave expression to on my
pillow, was a sort of wonder "what could come of it."
I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could
scarcely make out, — but to some celestial region. It
was not the real heavens neither — not the downright
Bible heaven — but a kind of fairy-land heaven, about
which a poor human fancy may have leave to sport and
air itself, I will hope, without presumption.
Methoucrht — what wild thinos dreams are I — I was
present — at what would you imagine ? — at an angcJ's
gossiping.
Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come,
or whether it came purely of its own head, neither you
nor I know — but there lay, sure enough, wrapped in
its little cloudy swaddling-bands — a Child Angel.
THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM. 411
Sun-threads — filmy beams — ran through the celes-
tial napery of what seemed its princely cradle. All the
winged orders hovered round, watching when the new-
born should open its yet closed eyes ; which, when il
did, first one, and then the other, — with a solicitude
and apprehension, yet not such as, stained with fear,
dim the expanding eyelids of mortal infants, but as if to
explore its path in those its unhereditary palaces, —
what an inextinguishable titter that time spared not
celestial visages ! Nor wanted there to my seeming, —
O the inexplicable simpleness of dreams ! bowls ol
that cheering nectar,
— which mortals caudle call below.
Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants, —
stricken in years, as it might seem, — so dexterous
were those heavenly attendants to counterfeit kindly
similitudes of earth, to greet, with terrestrial child-
rites the young present, which earth had made to
heaven.
Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full sym-
phony as those by which the spheres are tutored ;
but, as loudest instruments on earth speak oftentimes,
muffled ; so to accommodate their sound the better to
the weak ears of the imperfect-born. And, with the
noise of those subdued soundings, the Angelet sprang
forth, fluttering its rudiments of pinions, — but forth-
with flao;o;ed and was recovered into the arms of those
full-winffed antxels. And a wonder it was to see how,
as years went round in heaven — a year in dreams is
as a day — continually its white shoulders put forth
buds of wings, but wanting the perfect angelic nutri-
ment, anon was shorn of its aspiring, and fell fiatterirg,
412 THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM
— still caught by angel hands, — forevei to put forth
shoots, and to fall fluttering, because its birth was not
of the unmixed vigor of heaven.
And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and it
was to be called Cie- Urania, because its production was
of earth and heaven.
And it could not taste of death, by reason of its
adoption into immortal palaces ; but it was to know
weakness, and reliance, and the shadow of human im-
becility ; and it went with a lame gait ; but in its
goings it exceeded all mortal children in grace and
swiftness. Then pity first sprang up in angelic
bosoms ; and yearnings (like the human) touched
them at the sioht of the immortal lame one.
And with pain did then first those Intuitive Es-
sences, with pain and strife, to their natures, (not
grief,) put back their bright intelligences, and reduce
their ethereal minds, schooling them to degrees and
slower processes, so to adapt their lessons to the grad-
ual illumination (as must needs be) of the half-earth-
born ; and what intuitive notices they could not repel
(by reason tliat their nature is, to know all things at
once), the half-heavenly novice, by the better part of
its nature, aspired to receive into its understanding ; so
that Humility and Aspiration went on even-paced in
the instruction of the glorious Amphibium.
But, by reason that Mature Humanity is too gross
to breathe the air of that super-subtile region, its
portion was, and is, to be a child forever.
And because the human part of it might not press
mto the heart and inwards of the palace of its adoption,
those fiill-natured angels tended it by turns in the
purlieus of the palace, where were shady groves and
THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM. 413
rivulets, like this green earth from which it came ; so
Love, with Vokmtary HumiHty, waited upon the en-
tertainment of the new-adopted.
And myriads of years rolled round, (in dreams Time
is nothing,) and still it kept, and is to keep, perpetual
childhood, and is the Tutelar Genius of Childliood
upon earth, and still goes lame and lovely.
By the banks of the river Pison is seen, lone sitting
by the grave of the terrestrial Adah, whom the angel
Nadir loved, a Child; but not the same which I saw in
heaven. A mournful hue overcasts its lineaments ;
nevertheless a correspondency is between the child by
the grave, and that celestial orphan, whom I saw
above ; and the dimness of the grief upon the heav-
enly, is a shadow or emblem of that which stains the
beauty of the terrestrial. And this correspondency is
not to be understood but by dreams.
And in the archives of heaven I had grace to read,
how that once the angel Nadir, being exiled from liis
place for mortal passion, upspringing on the wings of
parental love, (such power had parental love for a mo-
ment to suspend the else-irrevocable law,) appeared
for a brief instant in his station, and, depositing a
wondrous Birth, straightway disappeared, and the pal-
aces knew him no more. And this charge was the
selfsame Babe, who goeth lame and lovely, — out
Adah sleepeth by the river Pison.
414 CONFESSIONS UF A DRUNKARD.
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD
Dehortations from the use of strong liquors have
been the favorite topic of sober declaimers in all ages,
and have been received with abundance of applause by
water-drinking critics. But with the patient himself,
the man that is to be cured, unfortunately their sound
has seldom prevailed. Yet the evil is acknowledged,
the remedy simple. Abstain. No force can oblige a
man to raise the glass to his head against his will. 'Tis
as easy as not to steal, not to tell lies.
Alas ! the hand to pilfer, and the tongue to bear
false Matness, have no constitutional tendency. These
are actions indifferent to them. At the first instance
of the reformed will, they can be brought off without
a munnur. The itching finger is but a figure in
speech, and the tongue of the liar can with the same
natural delio-ht sive forth useful truths with which It
has been accustomed to scatter their pernicious contra
ries. But when a man has commenced sot
O pause, thou sturdy moralist, thou person of stout
nerves and a strong head, whose liver is happily un-
touched, and ere thy gorge riseth at the name which I
have written, first learn what the tidng is ; how much
of compassion, how much of human allowance, thou
mayest virtuously mingle with they disapprobation.
Trample not on the ruins of a man. Exact not,
under so terrible a penalty as infamy, a resuscitation
from a state of death almost as real as that from which
Lazarus rose not but by a miracle.
Begin a reformation, and custom will make it easy.
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 413
But what if the beginning be dieadflil, the first steps
not Hke cHmbing a mountain but going through fire ?
what if the whole system must undergo a change vio-
lent as that which we conceive of the mutation of form
in some insects ? what if a process comparable to flay-
ing alive be to be gone through ? is the weakness that
sinks under such struggles to be confounded with the
pertinacity which clings to other vices, which have
induced no constitutional necessity, no engagement of
the whole victim, body and soul ?
I have known one in that state, when he has tried
to abstain but for one evening, — though the poisonous
potion had long ceased to bring back its first enchant-
ments, though he was sure it would rather deepen
his gloom than brighten it, — in the violence of the
struggle, and the necessity he has felt of getting rid of
the present sensation at any rate, I have known him to
scream out, to cry aloud, for the anguish and pain of
the strife within him.
Why should I hesitate to declare, that the man of
whom I speak is myself? I have no puling apology to
make to mankind. I see them all in one way or an-
other deviating from the pure reason. It is to my own
nature alone I am accountable for the woe that I have
brought upon it.
I believe that there are constitutions, robust heads,
and iron insides, whom scarce any excesses can hurt ;
whom brandy, (I have seen them drink it like wine,)
at all events whom wine, taken in ever so plentiful a
measure, can do no Avorse injury to than just to nuid-
dle their faculties, perhaps never very pellucid. On
them this discourse is wasted. They would but laugh
at a weak brother, who trying his strength with them,
416 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD.
and coming off foiled from the contest, would fain per-
suade them that such afjonistic exercises are dano-erous.
It is to a very different description of persons I speak.
It is to the weak, the nervous ; to those who feel the
want of some artificial aid to raise their spirits in so-
ciety to what is no more than the ordinary pitch of all
around them without it. This is the secret of our
drinking. Such must fly the convivial board in the
first instance, if they do not mean to sell themselves for
term of life.
Twelve years ago I had completed my six-and-twen-
tieth year. I had lived from the period of leaving
school to that time pretty much in solitude. My com-
panions were chiefly books, or at most one or two liv-
ing ones of my own book-loving and sober stamp. J
rose early, went to bed betimes, and the faculties which
God had given me, I have reason to think, did not rust
in me unused.
About that time I fell in with some companions of a
different order. They were men of boisterous spu'its,
sitters up a-nights, disputants, drunken ; yet seemed to
have something noble about them. We dealt about
the wit, or what passes for it after midnight, jovially.
Of the quality called fancy I certainly possessed a
larger share than my companions. Encouraged by
their applause, I set up for a professed joker ! I, who
of all men am least fitted for such an occupation, hav-
ing, in addition to the greatest difficulty which I ex-
perience at all times of finding words to express
my meaning, a natural nervous impediment in ray
speech !
Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine,
aspire to any character but that of a wit. When you
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 417
find a tickling relish upon your tongue disposing you
to that sort of conversation, especially if you find a
preternatural flow of ideas setting in upon you at the
sight of a bottle and fi-esh glasses, avoid giving way to
it as you would fly your greatest destruction. If you
cannot cinish the power of fancy, or that within you
which you mistake for such, divert it, give it some
other play. Write an essay, pen a character or de-
scription, — but not as I do now, with tears trickling
down your cheeks.
To be an object of compassion to friends, of derision
to foes ; to be suspected by strangers, stared at by
fools ; to be esteemed dull when you cannot be witty,
to be applauded for witty when you know that you
have been dull ; to be called upon for the extemporane-
ous exercise of that faculty Avhich no premeditation can
give ; to be spurred on to efforts which end in con-
tempt ; to be set on to provoke mirth which procures
the procurer hatred ; to give pleasure and be paid with
squinting malice ; to swallow draughts of life-destroy-
ing wine which are to be distilled into airy breath to
tickle vain auditors ; to mortgage miserable morrows
for nights of madness ; to waste whole seas of time
upon those who pay it back in little inconsiderable
drops of grudging applause, — are the wages of buf-
foonery and death.
Time, which has a sure stroke at dissolving all
connections which have no solider fastening than
this liquid cement, more kind to me than my own
taste or penetration, at length opened my eyes to the
supposed qualities of my first friends. No trace of
them is left but in the vices which they introduced,
and the habits they infixed. In them my friends
VOL III. 27
418 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUXKARD.
survive still, and exercise ample retribution for any
supposed infidelity that I may have been guilty of
towards them.
My next more immediate companions were and are
persons of such intrinsic and felt worth, that though
accidentally their acquaintance has proved pernicious
to me, I do not know that if the thing were to do over
again, I should have the courage to eschew the mis-
chief at the price of forfeiting the benefit. I came to
them reeking from the steams of my late overheated
notions of companionship ; and the slightest fuel which
they unconsciously afforded, was sufficient to feed my
old fires into a propensity.
They were no drinkers, but, one from professional
habits, and another from a custom derived from his
father, smoked tobacco. The devil could not have
devised a more subtle trap to retake a backsliding
penitent. The transition, from gulping down draughts
of liquid fire to puffing out innocuous blasts of dry
smoke, was so like cheating him. But he is too hard
for us when we hope to commute. He beats us at
barter ; and when we think to set off a new failing
against an old infirmity, 'tis odds but he puts the trick
upon us of two for one. That (comparatively) white
devil of tobacco brought with him in the end seven
worse than himself.
It were impertinent to carry the reader through all
the processes by which, from smoking at first with malt
liqaor, I took my degrees throiigh thin wines, through
stronger wine and water, through small punch, to those
juggling compositions, which, under the name of mixed
liquors, slur a great deal of brandy or other poison
under less and less water continually, until they come
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 419
next to none, and so to none at all. Bat it is hateftd
to disclose the secrets of my Tartarus.
I should repel ray readers, from a mere incapacity of
believing me, were I to tell them what tobacco has
been to me, the drudging service which I have paid,
the slavery which I have vowed to it. How, when I
have resolv(;d to quit it, a feeling as of ingratitude has
started up ; how it has put on personal claims and
made the demands of a friend upon me. How the
reading of it casually in a book, as where Adams takes
his whiff in the chimney-corner of some inn in Joseph
Andrews, or Piscator in the Complete Angler breaks
his fast upon a morning pipe hi that delicate room
Piscatoribus Sacrum, has in a moment broken down
the resistance of weeks. How a pipe was ever in my
midnight path before me, till the vision forced me to
realize it, — how then its ascending vapors cm-led, its
fracjrance lulled, and the thousand delicious minister-
ings conversant about it, employing every faculty, ex-
tracted the sense of pain. How from illuminating it
came to darken, from a quick solace it turned to a
negative relief, thence to a restlessness and dissatisfac-
tion, thence to a positive misery. How, even now,
when the whole secret stands confessed in all its dread-
ful truth before me, I feel myself linked to it beyond
the power of revocation. Bone of my bone
Persons not accustomed to examine the motives of
their actions, to reckon up the countless nails that rivet
the chains of habit, or perhaps being bound by none so
obdurate as those I have confessed to, may recoil from
this as from an overcharged picture. But what short
of such a bondage is it, which in spite of protesting
ft'iends, a weeping wife, and a reprobating world.
420 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD.
chains down many a poor fellow, of no original in-
disposition to goodness, to his pipe and his pot?
I have seen a print after Correggio, in which three
female figures are ministering to a man who sits fast
bound at the root of a tree. Sensuality is soothing
him, Evil Habit is nailing him to a branch, and
Repugnance at the same instant of time is applying
a snake to his side. In his face is feeble delight, the
recollection of past rather than perception of present
pleasures, languid enjoyment of evil with utter im-
becility to good, a Sybaritic effeminacy, a submission
to bondage, the springs of the will gone down like a
broken clock, the sin and the suffering coinstanta-
neous, or the latter forerunning the former, remorse
preceding action — all this represented in one point of
time. When I saw this, I admired the wonderfiJ skill
of the painter. But when I went away, I wept, be
cause I thought of my own condition.
Of that there is no hope that it should ever change.
The waters have gone over me. But out of the black
depths, could I be heard, I would cry out to all those
who have but set a foot in the perilous flood. Could
the youth, to whom the flavor of his first wine is deli-
cious as the opening scenes of life or the entering upon
some newly discovered paradise, look into my desola-
tion, and be made to understand what a dreary thing
it is when a man shall feel himself going down a pre-
cipice with open eyes and a passive will, — to see his
destruction and have no power to stop it, and yet to
feel it all the way emanating from himself; to per-
ceive all goodness emptied, out of him, and yet not to
be able to forget a time wlien it was otherwise ; to bear
about the piteous spectacle of his own self-ruins ; —
CONFESSIONS of A DRUNKARD. 421
could lie see my fevered eye, feverish with last night's
drinking, and feverishly looking for this night's rep-
etition of the folly ; could he feel the body of the
death out of which I cry hourly with feebler and
feebler outcry to be delivered, — it were enough to
make him dash the sparkling beverage to the earth in
all the pride of its mantling temptation ; to make him
clasp his teeth,
and not undo 'em
To suffer wet damnation to run thro' 'em.
Yea, but (methinks I hear somebody object} it
sobriety be that fine thing you would have us to under-
stand, if the comforts of a cool brain are to be preferred
to that state of heated excitement which you describe
and deplore, what hinders in your instance that you do
not return to those habits from which you would induce
others never to swerve ? if the blessing be worth pre-
serving, is it not worth recovering ?
Recovering ! — O if a wish could transport me back
to those days of youth, when a draught from the next
clear spring could slake any heats which summer suns
and youthful exercise had power to stir up in the blood,
how gladly would I return to thee, pure element, the
drink of children, and of childlike holy hermit ! In
my dreams I can sometimes fancy thy cool refreshment
purling over my burning tongue. But my waking
stomach rejects it. That which refreshes innocence
only makes me sick and faint.
But is there no middle way betwixt total abstinence
and the excess which kills you? — For your sake,
reader, and that you may never attain to my exjjcri-
ence, with pain I must utter the drea Iful truth, tliat
there is none, none that I can find. In my stage of
422 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD.
habit, (I speak not of habits less confirmed — for some
of them I believe the advice to be most prudential,) in
the stage which I have reached, to stop short of that
measure which is sufficient to draw on torpor and sleep,
the benumbing apoplectic sleep of the drunkard, is to
have taken none at all. The pain of the self-denial is
all one. And what that is, I had rather the reader
should believe on my credit, than know from his own
trial. He will come to know it, whenever he shall
arrive in that state, in which, paradoxical as it may ap-
pear, reason shall only visit Jmn through intoxication ;
for it is a fearfiil truth, that the intellectual faculties by
repeated acts of intemperance may be driven from their
orderly sphere of action, their clear daylight ministries,
until they shall be brought at last to depend, for the
faint manifestation of their departing energies, upon the
returning periods of the fatal madness to which they
owe their devastation. The drinking man is never less
himself than during his sober intervals. Evil is so far
his good.*
Behold me then, in the robust period of life, reduced
to imbecility and decay. Hear me count my gains,
and the profits which I have derived from the mid-
night cup.
Twelve years ago, I was possessed of a healthy frame
of mind and body. I was never sti'ohg, but I think my
constitution (for a weak one) was as happily exempt
from the tendency to any malady as it was possible to
* When poor M painted his last picture, with a pencil in one trem-
bling hand, and a glass of brandy and water in the other, his fingers owed
the comparative steadiness with which they were enabled to go through
their task in an imperfect manner, to a temporary firmness derived from a
repetition of practices, the general effect of which had shaken both them
md him so terribly.
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 423
be. I scarce knew what it was to ail anything. Now,
except when I am losing myself in a sea of drink, I am
never free from those uneasy sensations in head and
stomach, which are so much worse to bear than any
definite pains or aches.
At that time I was seldom in bed after six in the
morning, summer and winter. I awoke refreshed, and
seldom without some merry thoughts in my head, or
some piece of a song to welcome the new-born day.
Now, the first feeling which besets me, after stretching
out the hours of recumbence to their last possible ex-
tent, is a forecast of the wearisome day that lies before
me, with a secret wish that I could have lain on still,
or never awaked.
Life itself, my waking life, has much of the con-
fusion, the trouble, and obscure perplexity, of an ill
dream. In the daytime I stumble upon dark moun-
tains.
Business, which, though never very particularly
adapted to my nature, yet as something of necessity
to be gone through, and therefore best undertaken with
cheerfulness, I used to enter upon with some degree of
alacrity, now wearies, affrights, perplexes me. I fancy
all sorts of discouragements, and am ready to give up
an occupation which gives me bread, from a harassing
conceit of incapacity. The slightest commission given
me by a friend, or any small duty which I have to per-
form for myself, as giving orders to a tradesman, &c.,
haunts me as a labor impossible to be got through. So
much the springs of action are broken.
The same cowardice attends me in all my inter-
course with mankind. I dare not promise that a
friend's honor, or his cause, would be safe in my keep-
424 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD.
ing, if I were put to the expense of any manly resolu
tion in defending it. So much the springs of moral
action are deadened within me.
My favorite occupations in times past, now cease
to entertain. I can do nothing readily. Application
for ever so short a time kills me. This poor abstract
of my condition was penned at long intervals, with
scarcely any attempt at connection of thought, which
is now difficult to me.
The noble passages which formerly delighted me in
history or poetic fiction, now only draw a few weak
tears, allied to dotage- My broken and dispirited
nature seems to sink before anything great and admi-
rable.
I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any cause,
or none. It is inexpressible how much this infirmity
adds to a sense of shame, and a general feeling of de-
terioration.
These are some of the instances, concerning which
I can say with truth, that it was not always so with
me.
Shall I lift up the veil of my weakness any farther ?
or is this disclosure sufficient?
I am a poor nameless egotist, who have no vanity to
consult by these Confessions. I know not whether 1
shall be laughed at, or heard seriously. Such as they
are, I commend them to the reader's attention, if he
find his own case any way touched. I have told him
what I am come to. Let him stop in time.
POPULAR FALLACIES. 425
POPULAB FALLACIES.
THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD.
This axiom contains a principle of compensation,
which disposes us to admit the truth of it. But there
is no safe trusting to dictionaries and definitions. We
should more willingly fall in with this popular lan-
guage, if we did not find brutality sometimes awk-
wardly coupled with valor in the same vocabulary.
The comic writers, with their poetical justice, have
contributed not a little to mislead us upon this point.
To see a .hectoring fellow exposed and beaten upon the
stage, has something in it wondei*fully diverting. Some
people's share of animal spirits is notoriously low and
defective. It has not strength to raise a vapor, or
furnish out the wind of a tolerable bluster. These
love to be told that huffing is no part of valor. The
truest courase with them is that which is the least
noisy and obtrusive. But confront one of these silent
heroes with the swaggerer of real life, and his con-
fidence in the theory quickly vanishes. Pretensions do
not uniformly bespeak non-performance. A modest in-
offensive deportment does not necessarily imply valor ;
neither does the absence of it justify us in denying that
quality. Hickman wanted modesty, — we do not mean
him of Clarissa, — but who ever doubted his courage ?
Even the poets — upon Avhom this equitable distribu-
tion of qualities should be most I inding — have thought
it agreeable to nature to depart from the rvile upon oc-
casion. Harapha, in the " Agonistes," is indeed a buUj
426 POPULAR FALLACIES.
upon tlie received notions. Milton has made him at
once a blusterer, a giant, and a dastard. But Alman-
zor, in Drjden, talks of driving armies singly before
him — and does it. Tom Brown had a shrewder in-
sight into this kind of character than either of his pre-
decessors. He divides the palm more equably, and
allows his hero a sort of dimidiate preeminence : —
" Bully Dawson kicked by half the town, and half
the town kicked by Bully Dawson." This was true
distributive justice.
II.
THAT ILL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS.
The weakest part of mankind have this saying com-
monest in their mouth. It is the trite consolation ad-
ministered to the easy dupe, when he has been tricked
out of his money or estate, that the acquisition of it will
do the owner no good. But the rogues of this world —
the prudenter part of them, at least — know better ;
and if the observation had been as true as it is old,
would not have failed by this time to have discovered
it. They have pretty sharp distinctions of the fluctuat-
ing and the permanent. " Lightly come, lightly go,"
is a proverb, which they can very well afford to leave,
when they leave little else, to the losers. They do not
always find manors, got by rapine or chicanery, in-
sensibly to melt away, as the poets will have it ; or
that all gold glides, like thawing snow, fi'om the thief's
hand that grasps it. Church land, alienated to lay
uses, was formerly denounced to have this slippciy
quality. But some portions of it somehow always
stuck so fast, that the denunciators have been fain to
postpone the prophecy of refundment to a late pos-
terity.
POPULAR FALLACIES. 427
THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS OWN JEST.
The severest exaction siu'ely ever invented upon the
self-denial of poor human nature ! This is to expect a
gentleman to give a treat without partaking of it ; to
sit esui'ient at his own table, and commend tlie flavor
of his venison upon the absurd strength of his never
touching it himself. On the contrary, we love to see a
wag taste his own joke to his party ; to watch a quirk
or a merry conceit flickering upon the lips some seconds
before the tongue is delivered of it. If it be good,
fresh, and racy — begotten of the occasion ; if he that
utters it never thought it before, he is naturally the
first to be tickled with it ; and any suppression of such
complacence we hold to be churlish and insulting.
What does it seem to imply, but that your company is
weak or foolish enough to be moA^ed by an image or a
fancy, that shall stir you not at all, or but faintly ?
This is exactly the humor of the fine gentleman in
Mandeville, who, while he dazzles his guests with the
display of some costly toy, affects himself to " see
nothing considerable in it."
THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING. THAT IT IS EAST
TO PERCEIVE HE IS NO GENTLEMAN.
A SPEECH from the poorest sort of people, which
always indicates that the party vituperated is a gentle-
man. The very fact which they deny is that which
galls and exasperates them to use this language. The
forbearance with which it is usually received, is a proof
what interjn*etation the bystander sets upon it. Of a
428 POPULAK FALLACIES.
kin to this, and still less politic, are the phras(ss -with
which, in their street rhetoric, they ply one another
more grossly : — Se is a poor creature. — He has not a
rag to cover , ^^c. ; thought his last, we confess, is
more fi-equently applied by females to females. They
do not perceive that the satire glances upon themselves.
A poor man, of all things in the world, should not up-
braid an antagonist with poverty. Are there no other
topics — as, to tell him his father was hanged, — his
sister, &c. , without exposing a secret, which
should be kept snug between them ; and doing an
affront to the order to which they have the honor
equally to belong? All this while they do not see
how the wealthier man stands by and laughs in his
sleeve at both.
V.
THAT THK POOR COPY THE VICES OP THE RICH.
A SMOOTH text to the letter; and, preached ft'om
the pulpit, is sure of a docile audience from the pews
lined with satin. It is twice sitting upon velvet to a
foolish squire to be told, that he — and not perverse
nature^ as the homilies would make us imagine, is the
true cause of all the irregularities in his parish. This
is striking at the root of fi*ee-will indeed, and denying
the originality of sin in any sense. But men are not
such implicit sheep as this comes to. If the abstinence
from evil on the part of the upper classes is to derive
itself from no higher principle than the apprehension of
setting ill patterns to the lower, we beg leave to dis-
charge them from all squeamishness on that score ; they
may even take their fill of pleasures, where they can
find them. The Genius of Poverty, hampered and
POPULAR FALLACIES. 429
straitened as it is, is not so barren of invention, bat it
can trade upon the staple of its own vice, without
drawing upon their capitah The poor are not quite
such servile imitators as they take them for. Some of
them are very clever artists in their way. Here and
there we find an original. . Who taught the poor to
steal, to pilfer? They did not go to the great for
schoolmasters in these faculties surely. It is well if in
some vices they allow us to be — no copyists. In no
other sense is it true that the poor copy them, than as
servants may be said to take after their masters and
mistinesses, when they succeed to their reversionary cold
meats. If the master, from indisposition or some other
cause, neglect his food, the servant dines notwithstand-
ing.
" O, but (some will say) the force of example is
great." We knew a lady who was so scrupulous on
this head, that she would put up with the calls of the
most impertinent visitor, rather than let her servant say
she was not at home, for fear of teaching her maid to
tell an untruth ; and this in the very face of the fact,
which she knew well enough, that the wench was one
of the greatest liars upon the earth without teaching ;
so much so, that her mistress possibly never heard two
words of consecutive truth from her in her life. But
nature must go for nothing : example must be every-
thing. This liar in grain, who never opened her
mouth without a lie, must be guarded against a remote
inference, wliicli she (pretty casuist !) might possibly
draw from a form of words — literally false, but essen-
tially deceiving no one — that under some circum-
stances a fib might not be so exceedingly sinful — a
fiction, too, not at all in her own waj'', or one that she
430 POPULAR FALLACIES.
could be suspected of adopting, for few servunt-weiichea
care to be denied to visitors.
This word example reminds us of another fine word
which is in use upon these occasions — encouragement.
" People in our sphere must not be thought to give
encouragement to such proceedings."- To such a fran-
tic height is this principle capable of being carried, that
we have known individuals who have thought it within
the scope of their influence to sanction despair, and give
eclat to — suicide. A domestic in the family of a
county member lately deceased, from love, or some
unknown cause, cut his throat, but not successfully.
The poor fellow was otherwise much loved and re-
spected ; and great interest was used in his behalf,
upon his recovery, that he might be permitted to retain
his place ; his word being first pledged, not without
some substantial sponsors to promise for him, that the
like should never happen again. His master was in-
clinable to keep him, but his mistress thought other-
wise ; and John in the end was dismissed, her ladyship
declaring that she " could not think of encouraging
any sucli doings in the county."
VI.
THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST.
Not a man, woman, or child, in ten miles round
Guildliall, who really believes this saying. The in-
ventor of it did not believe it himself. It was made in
revenge by somebody, who was disappointed of a regale.
It is a vile cold-scrag-of-mutton sophism ; a lie palmed
upon the palate, wliich knows better things. If nothing
else could be said for a feast, this is sufficient, that from
POPULAR FALLACIES. 431
the superflux there is usually something left for the
next day. Morally interpreted, it belongs to a class of
proverbs which have a tendency to make us undervalue
money. Of this cast are those notable observations,
that money is not health ; riches cannot purchase
everything : the metaphor which makes gold to be
mere muck, with the morality which traces fine cloth-
ing to the sheep's back, and denounces pearl as the
unhandsome excretion of an oyster. Hence, too, the
phrase which imputes dirt to acres — a sophistry so
barefaced, that even the literal sense of it is true only
in a wet season. This, and abundance of similar sage
saws assuming to inculcate content, we verily believe to
have been the invention of some cunning borrower,
who had designs upon the purse of his wealthier neigh-
bor, which he could only hope to carry by force of
these verbal jugglings. Translate any one of these
sayings out of the artful metonymy which envelopes
it, and the trick is apparent. Goodly legs and shoul-
ders of mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures,
the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, independ-
ence, heart's ease, a man's own time to himself, are
not muck — however we may be pleased to scandalize
with that appellation the faithful metal that provides
them for us.
OF TWO DISPUTANTS THE WARMEST 13 GENEKALLY IN THE
WRONG.
Our experience would lead us to quite an opposite
conclusion. Temper, indeed, is no test of truth ; but
warmth and earnestness are a proof at least of a man's
own convi(^iion of the rectitude of that which he main-
432 POPULAR FALLACIES.
tains. Coolness is as often the result of an unprincipled
indifference to truth or falsehood, as of a sober confi-
dence in a man's own side in a dispute. Nothing is
more insulting sometimes than the appearance of this
philosophic temper. There is little Titubus, the stam-
mering law-stationer in Lincoln's Inn, — we have sel-
dom known this shrewd little fellow engaged in an
armiment where we were not convinced he had the
best of it, if his tongue would but fairly have seconded
him. When he has been spluttering excellent broken
sense for an hour tocrether, writhino; and laboring to be
delivered of the point of dispute, — the very gist of the
controversy knocking at his teeth, which like some
obstinate iron-o;rating still obstructed its deliverance, —
his puny fi'ame convulsed, and face reddening all over
at an unfairness in the logic which he wanted articula-
tion to expose, it has moved our gall to see a smooth
portly felloAv of an adversary, that cared not a button
for the merits of the question, by merely laying his
hand upon the head of the stationer, and desiring him
to be calm^ (your tall disputants have always the ad-
vantage,) with a provoking sneer carry the argument
clean from him in the opinion of all the bystanders,
who have gone away clearly convinced that Titubus
must have been in the wrong, because he was in a pas-
sion ; and that Mr. , meaning his opponent, is one
of the fairest and at the same time one of the most dis-
passionate arguers breathing.
POPULAR FALLACIES. 433
THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, BECAUSE THEY
WILL NOT BEAR A TRANSLATION.
The same might be said of the wittiest local allu-
sions. A custom is sometimes as difficult to explain
to a foreigner as a pun. What Avould become of a
great part of the wit of the last age if it were tried
by this test ? How would certain topics, as alder-
manity, cuckoldiy, have sounded to a Terentian audi-
tory, though Terence himself had been alive to translate
them? Senator urhanus with Carruca to boot for a
synonyme, would but faintly have done the business.
Words, involving notions, are hard enough to render ;
it is too much to expect us to translate a sound, ana
give an elegant version to a jingle. The Virgilian
harmony is not translatable, but by substituting har-
monious sounds in another language for it. To Latin-
ize a pun, we must seek a pun in Latin, that will
answer to it ; as, to give an idea of the double endings
in Hudibras, we must have recourse to a similar prac-
tice in tlie old monkish doggerel. Dennis, the fiercest
oppugner of puns in ancient or modern times, professes
himself highly tickled with the " a stick," chiming to
" ecclesiastic." Yet what is this but a species of pun, a
verbal consonance ?
THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST.
If by worst be only meant the most far-fetched and
startling, we agree to it. A pun is not bound by the
laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at
the ear ; not a feather to tickle the intellect. It is an
VOL. III. 28
434 POPULAR FALLACIES
antic wliich does not stand upon manners, but comes
bounding into the presence, and does not sliow tlie less
comic for being dragged in sometimes by tlie liead and
shoulders. What though it limp a little, or prove de-
fective in one leg? — all the better. A pun may easily
be too curiovis and artificial. Who has not at one time
or other been at a party of professors, (himself perhaps
an old offender in that line,) where, after ringing a
round of the most ingenious conceits, every man con-
tributing his shot, and some there the most expert
shooters of the day ; after making a poor word run the
gauntlet till it is ready to drop ; after hunting and
winding it through all the possible ambages of similar
sounds ; after squeezing, and hauling, and tugging at it,
till the very milk of it will not yield a drop further, — -
suddenly some obscure, unthought-of fellow in a corner,
who was never 'prentice to the trade, whom the com-
pany for very pity passed over, as we do by a known
poor man when a money-subscription is going round,
no one calling upon him for his quota, — has all at once
come out with something so whimsical, yet so pertinent;
so brazen in its pretensions, yet so impossible to be de-
nied ; so exquisitely good, and so deploi^ably bad, at the
same time, — that it has proved a Robin Hood's shot ;
anything ulterior to that is despaired of; and the party
breaks up, unanimously voting it to be the very worst
(that is, best) pvm of the evening. This species of wit
is the better for not being perfect in all its parts. What
it gains in completeness, it loses in naturalness. The
more exactly it satisfies the critical, the less hold It has
upon some other faculties. The puns which are most
entertaining are those which will least bear an analysis.
Of this kind is the following, recorded with a sort of
stigma, in one of Swift's Miscellanies.
POPULAR FALLACIES. 435
An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was carry-
ing a hare through the streets, accosts him witli this ex-
traordinary question : " Pritliee, friend, is that tliy own
hare, or a wig ? "
There is no excusing this, and no resisting it. A
man might blur ten sides of paper in attempting a de
fence of it against a critic who should be laughter-proof.
The quibble in itself is not considerable. It is only a
new turn given by a little false pronunciation, to a very
common, though not very courteous inquiry. Put by
one gentleman to another at a dinner-party, it would
have been vapid ; to the mistress of the house, it would
have shown much less wit than rudeness. We must
take in the totality of time, place, and person ; the pert
look of the inquiring scholar, the desponding looks of
the puzzled porter ; the one stopping at leisure, the
other hurrying on with his burden ; the innocent
though rather abrupt tendency of the first member of
the question, with the utter and inextricable irrelevancy
of the second ; the place — a public street not favorable
to frivolous investigations ; the affrontive quality of the
primitive inquiry (the common question) invidiously
transferred to the derivative (the new turn given to it)
in the implied satire ; namely, that few of that tribe
are expected to eat of the good things which they
carry, they being in most countries considered rather
as the temporary trustees than owners of such dainties,
— which the fellow was beginning to understand ; but
then the wig again comes in, and he can make nothing
of it ; all put together constitute a picture : Hogarth
could have made it intelligible on canvas.
Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this a very
bad pun, because of the defectiveness in the concluding
436 POPULAR FALLACIES
member, which is its very beauty, and constitutes the
surprise. The same person shall cry up for admirable
the cold quibble from Virgil about the broken Cre-
mona ; * because it is made out in all its parts, and
leaves nothino- to the imagination. We venture to call
it cold ; because, of thousands who have admired it, it
would be difficult to find one who has heartily chuckled
at it. As appealing to the judgment merely, (setting
the risible faculty aside,) we must pronounce it a mon-
ument of curious felicity. But as some stories are said
to be too good to be true, it may with equal tnith be
asserted of this biverbal allusion, that it is too good to
be natural. One cannot help suspecting that the inci-
dent was invented to fit the line. It would have been
better had it been less perfect. Like some Virgilian
hemistichs, it has suffered by filling up. The nimium
Vicina was enough in conscience ; the Cremonce after-
wards loads it. It is in fact a double pun ; and we
have always observed that a superfoetation in this sort
of wit is dangerous. When a man has said a good
thing, it is seldom politic to follow it up. We do not
care to be cheated a second time ; or, perhaps, the
mind of man (with reverence be it spoken) is not capa-
cious enough to lodge two puns at a time. The im-
pression, to be forcible, must be simultaneous and un-
divided.
X.
THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES.
Those who use this proverb can never have seen
Mrs. Conrady.
The soul, if we may believe Plotinus, is a ray from
* Swift,
POPULAR FALLACIES. 437
tlie cel(;stial beauty. As she partakes rnoi'e or less of
this heavenly light, she informs, with corresponding
characters, the fleshly tenement which she chooses, and
frames to herself a suitable mansion.
All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. Con-
rady, in her preexistent state, was no great judge of
architecture.
To the same effect, in a H\Tnn in honor of Beauty,
divine Spenser platonizing, sings : —
Every spidt as it is more pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerful grace and amiable sight.
For of the soul the body form doth take :
For soul is form and doth the body make.
But Spenser it is clear never saw Mrs. Conrady.
These poets, we find, are no safe guides in philoso-
phy ; for here, in his very next stanza but one, is a
saving clause, which throws us all out again, and leaves
us as much to seek as ever : —
Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd,
Either by chance, against the course of kind,
Or through unaptness in the substance found,
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground,
That will not yield unto her form's direction.
But is performed with some foul imperfection.
From which it woukl follow, that Spenser had seen
somebody like Mrs. Conrady.
The spirit of this good lady — her previous anima —
must have stumbled upon one of these untoward taber-
nacles which he speaks of. A more rebellious com-
modity of clay for a ground, as the poet calls it, no
gentle mind — and sure her's is one of the gentlest —
ever had to deal with.
438 POPULAR FALLACIES.
Pondering upon her inexplicable visage, — inexpli-
cable, we mean, but by this modification of the theory
— we have come to a conclusion that, if one must be
plain, it is better to be plain all over, than amidst a
tolerable residue of features, to hang out one that shall
be exceptionable. No one can say of Mrs. Conrady's
countenance that it would be better if she had but a
nose. It is impossible to pull her to pieces in this
manner. We have seen the most malicious beauties
of her own sex baffled in the attempt at a selection.
The tout^ensemble defies particularizing. It is too com-
plete — too consistent, as we may say — to admit of
these invidious reservations. It is not as if some
Apelles had picked out here a lip — and there a chin
— out of the collected ugliness of Greece, to frame a
model by. It is a symmetrical whole. We challenge
the minutest connoisseur to cavil at any part or parcel
of the countenance in question ; to say that this, or
that, is improperly placed. We are convinced that
true ugliness, no less than is affirmed of true beauty, is
the result of harmony. Like that too it reigns without
a competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. Conrady, without
pronouncing her to be the plainest woman that he ever
met with in the course of his life. The first time that
you are indulged with a sight of her face, is an era in
your existence ever after. You are glad to have seen
it — like Stonehenge. No one can pretend to forget it.
No one ever apologized to her for meeting her in the
street on such a day and not knowing her ; the pretext
would be too bare. Nobody can mistake her for
another. Nobody can say of her, " I think I have
seen that face someAvhere, but I cannot call to mind
where." You must remember that in such a parlor it
POPL'LAi: FALLACIES 439
first struck you — like a bust. You wondered where
the owner of the house had picked it up. You won-
dered more when it began to move its lips — so mildly
too ! No one ever thought of asking her to sit for her
picture. Lockets are for remembrance ; and it would
be clearly superfluous to hang an image at your heart,
which, once seen, can never be out of it. It is not a
mean face either ; its entire originality precludes that.
Neither is it of that order of plain faces which improve
upon acquaintance. Some very good but ordinary
people, by an unwearied, perseverance in good offices,
put a cheat upon our eyes ; juggle our senses out of
their natural impressions ; and set us upon discovering
good indications in a countenance, which at first sight
promised nothing less. We detect gentleness, which
had escaped us, lurking about an underlip. But when
Mrs. Conrady has done you a service, her face remains
the same ; when she has done you a thousand, and you
know that she is ready to double the number, still it is
that individual face. Neither can you say of it, that it
would be a good face if it were not marked by the
small-pox, — a compliment which is always more ad-
missive than excusatory, — for either Mrs. Coni'ady
never had the small-pox, or, as we say, took it kindly.
No, it stands upon its own merits fairly. There it is.
It is her mark, her token ; that which she is known by.
THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH.
Nor a lady's age in the parish register. We hope
ive have more delicacy than to do either ; but some
feces spare us the trouble of these dental inquiries.
440 POPULAR FALLACIES.
And what if the beast, which my friend would force
upon my acceptance, prove, upon the face of it, a sorry
Rosinante, a lean, ill-favored jade, whom no gentleman
could think of setting up in his stables ? Must I,
rather than not be obliged to my friend, make her a
companion to Eclipse or Lightfoot ? A horse-giver, no
more than a horse-seller, has a right to palm his
spavined article upon us for good ware. An equivalent
is expected in either case ; and, with my own good
will, I would no more be cheated out of my thanks
than out of my money. Some people have a knack of
putting upon you -gifts of no real value, to engage you
to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing.
Our friend Mitis carries this humor of never refusing a
present to the very point of absurdity — if it were pos-
sible to couple the ridiculous with so much mistaken
delicacy, and real good-nature. Not an apartment in
his fine house (and he has a true taste in household
decorations), but is stuffed up with some preposterous
print or mirror, — the worst adapted to his panels that
may be, — the presents of his friends that know his
weakness ; while his noble Vandykes are displaced,
to make room for a set of daubs, the work of some
wretched artist of his acquaintance, who, having had
them returned upon his hands for bad likenesses, finds
his account in bestowing them here gratis. The good
creature has not the heart to mortify the painter at the
expense of an honest reflisal. It is pleasant (if it did
not vex one at the same time) to see him sitting in
his dining parlor ; surrounded with obscure aunts and
I'ousins to God knows whom, Avhile the true Lady
Marys and Lady Bettys of his own honorable family,
hi favor to these adopted frights, are consigned t^ the
POPULAR FALLACIES. 441
staircase and the lumber-room. In like manner his
goodly shelves are one by one stripped of his favorite
old authors, to give place to a collection of presentation
copies — the flour and bran of modem poetry. A pre-
sentation coj)y, reader, — if haply you are yet innocent
of such favors, — is a copy of a book which does not
sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph
at the beginning of it ; for which, if a stranger, he only
demands your friendship ; if a brother author, he ex-
pects from you a book of yours, which does sell, in
return. We can speak to experience, having by us a
tolerable assortment of these gift-horses. Not to ride a
metaphor to death — we are willing to acknowledge,
that in some gifts there is sense. A du})licate out of a
friend's library (where he has more than one copy of a
rare author) is intelligible. There are favors short of
the pecuniary — a thing not fit to be hinted at among
gentlemen — which confer as much grace upon the ac-
ceptor as the offerer; the kind, we confess, which is
most to our palate, is of those little conciliatory mis-
sives, which for their vehicle generally choose a ham-
per, — little odd presents of game, fruit, perhaps wine,
— though it is essential to the delicacy of the latter that
it be home-made. We love to have our friend in the
country sitting thus at our table by proxy ; to appre-
hend his presence (though a hundred miles may be
between us) by a turkey, whose goodly aspect reflects
to us his " plump corpusculum ; " to taste him in
grouse or woodcock ; to feel him gliding down in the
toast peculiar to the latter ; to concorporate him in a
slice of Canterbury brawn. This is indeed to have
him within ourselves; to know him intimately; such
participation is methinks unitive, as the old theologians
442 POPULAR FALLACIES.
phrase it. For tliese considerations we should be sorry
if certain restrictive regulations, which are thought to
bear hard upon the peasantry of this country, were
entirely done away with. A hare, as the law now
stands, makes many friends. Caius conciliates Titius
(knowing his gout) with a leash of partridges. Titius
(suspecting his partiality for them) passes them to
Lucius ; who in his turn, preferring his friend's relish
to his own, makes them over to Marcius ; till in their
ever-widening progress, and round of unconscious cir-
cummigration, they distribute the seeds of harmony
over half a parish. We are well disposed to this kind
of sensible remembrances ; and are the less apt to be
taken by those little airy tokens — impalpable to the
palate — which, under the names of rings, lockets,
keepsakes, amuse some people's fancy mightily. We
could never away with these indigestible trifles. They
are the very kickshaws and foppery of friendship.
THAT HOME IS HOME, THOUGH IT IS NEVER SO HOMELY.
Homes there are, we are sure, that are no homes ;
the home of the very poor man, and another which
we shall speak to presently. Crowded places of cheap
entertainment, and the benches of ale-houses, if they
could s])eak, might bear mournful testimony to the
first. To them the very poor man resorts for an image
of the home, which he cannot find at home. For a
starved grate, and a scanty firing, tliat is not enough
to keep alive the natural heat in the fingers of so many
shivering children with their mother, he finds in the
depths 'i)f winter always a blazing hearth, and a hob
POPULAR FALLACIES. 443
to warm his pittance of heer by. Instead of the clam-
ors of a wife, made gaunt by famishing, he meets with
a cheei'ftil attendance beyond the merits of the trifle
which he can afford to spend. He has companions
which his home denies him, for the very poor man has
no visitors. He can look into the goings on of the
world, and speak a little to politics. At home there
are no politics stirring, but the domestic. All interests,
real or imaginary, all topics that should expand the
mind of man, and connect him to a sympathy with
general existence, are crushed in the absorbing consid-
eration of food to be obtained for the family. Beyond
the price of bread, news is senseless and impertinent.
At home there is no larder. Here there is at least a
show of plenty ; and while he cooks his lean scrap of
butcher's meat before the common bars, or munches
his humbler cold viands, his relishing bread and cheese
with an onion, in a corner, where no one reflects upon
his poverty, he has a sight of the substantial joint pro-
viding for the landlord and his family. He takes an
interest in the dressing of it ; and while he assists in
removing the trivet from the fire, he feels that there
is such a thing as beef and cabbage, Avhicli he was be-
ginning to forget at home. All this while he deserts
his wife and children. But what wife, and what chil-
dren ? Prosperous men, who object to this desertion,
image to themselves some clean contented family like
that which they go home to. But look at the counte-
nance of the poor wives who follow and persecute their
goodman to the door of the public-house, which he is
a.bout to enter, when something like shame would re-
strain him, if stronger misery did not induce him to
pass the threshold. That face, ground by want, in
444 POPULAR FALLACIES.
which every cheerfiil, every conversable lineamert has
been long effaced by misery, — is that a face to stay
at home with ? is it more a woman, or a wild cat ?
alas ! it is the face of the wife of his youth, that once
smiled upon him. It can smile no longer. What
comforts can it share ? what burdens can it lighten ?
Oh, 'tis a fine thing to talk of the humble meal shared
together ! But what if there be no bread in the cup-
board ? The innocent prattle of his chddren takes
out the sting of a man's poverty. But the children of
the very poor do not prattle. It is none of the least
frightful features in that condition, that there is no
childishness in its dwellings. Poor people, said a sen-
sible old nurse to us once, do not bring up their chil-
dren ; they drag them up. The little careless darling
of the wealthier nursery, in their hovel is transformed
betimes into a premature reflecting person. No one
has time to dandle it, no one thinks it worth while to
coax it, to soothe it, to toss it up and down, to humor
it. There is none to kiss away its tears. If it cries,
it can only be beaten. It has been prettily said, that
" a babe is fed with milk and praise." But the ali-
ment of this poor babe was thin, unnourishing ; the
return to its little baby-tricks, and efforts to engage
attention, bitter ceaseless objurgation. It never had
a toy, or knew what a coi'al meant. It grew up with-
out the lullaby of nurses ; it was a stranger to the pa-
tient fondle, the hushing caress, the attracting novelty,
the costlier plaything, or the cheaper off-hand contri-
vance to divert the child ; the prattled nonsense (best
sense to it), the wise impertinences, the wholesome
Vies, the apt story interposed, that puts a stop to present
sufferings, and awakens the passions of young wonder.
POPULAR FALLACIES. 445
It was never suno; to, — no one ever told to it a tale
of the nursery. It was dragged up, to li\'e or to die
as it happened. It had no young dreams. It broke
at once into the iron realities of life. A child exists
not for the very poor as any object of dalliance ; it is
only another mouth to be fed, a pair of little hands to
be betimes inured to labor. It is the rival, till it can be
the cooperator for food with the parent. It is never liis
mirth, his diversion, his solace ; it never makes him
young again, with recalling his young times. The
children of the very poor have no young times. It
makes the very heart to bleed to overhear the casual
street-talk between a poor woman and her little girl,
a woman of the better sort of poor, in a condition
rather above the squalid beings which we have been
contemplating. It is not of toys, of nursery books,
of summer holidays (fitting that age) ; of the promised
sight, or play ; of praised sufficiency at school. It is
of mangling and clear-starching, of the price of coals,
or of potatoes. The questions of the child, that should
be the very outpourings of cui'iosity in idleness, are
marked with forecast and melancholy providence. It
has come to be a woman — before it was a child. It
has learned to go to market ; it chaffers, it haggles, it
envies, it murmurs ; it is knowing, acute, sharpened ;
it never prattles. Had we not reason to say, that the
home of the very poor is no home ?
There is yet another home, which we are constrained
to deny to be one. It has a larder, which the home
of the poor man wants ; its fireside conveniences, of
which the poor dream not. But with all this, it is no
iiome. It is — the house of a man that is infested
writh many visitors. May we be- branded for the veri-
446 POPULAR FALLACIES.
est churl, if we deny our heart to the many noblo-
hearted fi-iends that at tmies exchange their dwelhng
for our poor roof! It is not of guests that we com-
plain, but of endless, purposeless visitants ; droppers
in, as they are called. We sometimes wonder from
what sky they fall. It is the veiy error of the posi-
tion of our lodging ; its horoscopy was ill-calculated,
being just situate in a medium — a plaguy suburban
midspace — fitted to catch idlers from town or country.
We are older than we were, and age is easily put out
of its way. We have fewer sands in our glass to
reckon upon, and we cannot brook to see them drop in
endlessly succeeding impertinences. At our time of
life, to be alone sometimes is as needful as sleep. It
is the refreshing sleep of the day. The growing in-
firmities of age manifest themselves in nothing more
strongly than in an inveterate dislike of interruption.
The thing which we are doing, we wish to be permitted
to do. We have neither much knowledge nor devices ;
but there are fewer in the place to which we hasten.
We are not willingly put out of our way, even at a
game of ninepins. While youth was, we had vast re-
versions in time future; we are reduced to a present
pittance, and obliged to economize in that article. We
bleed away our moments now as hardly as our ducats.
We cannot bear to have our thin wardrobe eaten and
ft'etted into by moths. We are willing to barter our
good time with a fi'iend, who gives us in exchange his
own. Herein is the distinction between the genuine
guest and the visitant. This latter takes your good
time, and gives you his bad in exchange. The guest is
domestic to you as your good cat, or household bird ;
the visita)it is your fly, that flaps m at your window.
POPULAR FALLACIES. 4'l7
and out again, leaving nothing but a sense of disturb-
ance, and victuals spoiled. The inferior functions of
life begin to move heavily. We cannot concoct our
food with interruptions. Our chief meal, to be nutri
tive, must be solitary. With difficulty we can eat be-
fore a guest ; and never understood what the relish of
public feasting meant. Meats have no sapor, nor diges-
tion fair play, in a crowd. The unexpected coming in
of a visitant stops the machine. There is a punctual
generation who time their calls to the precise com
mencement of your dinner-hour — not to eat — but to
see you eat. Our knife and fork drop instinctively, and
we feel that we have swallowed our latest morsel.
Others again show their genius, as we have said, in
knocking the moment you have just sat down to a
book. They have a peculiar compassionate sneer, with
which they " hope that they do not interrupt your
studies." Though they flutter off the next moment, to
carry their impertinences to the nearest student that
they can call tlieir friend, the tone of the book is
spoihid ; we shut the leaves, and, with Dante's lovers,
read no more that day. It were well if the effect of
intrusion were simply coextensive with its presence,
but it mars all the good hours afterwards. These
scratches in appearance leave an orifice that closes not
hastily. " It is a prostitution of the bravery of friend-
ship," says worthy Bishop Taylor, " to spend it u{)on
impertinent people, who are, it may be, loads to their
families, but can never ease my loads." Tliis is the
secret of their gaddings, their visits, and morning calls.
They too have homes, which are — no homes.
448 POPULAR FALLACIES.
THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME AND LOVE MY DOG.
*• Good sir, or madam — as it may be — we most
willingly embrace the offer of your friendship. We
have long known your excellent qualities. We have
wished to have you nearer to us ; to hold you within
the very innermost fold of our heart. We can have
no reserve towards a person of your open and noble
nature. The frankness of your humor suits us ex-
actly. We have been long looking for such a fi-iend.
Quick, — let us disburden our troubles into each other's
bosom, < — let us make our single joys shine by redupli-
cation, — But yap^ yap^ yap ! what is this confounded
cur ? he has fastened his tooth, which is none of the
bluntest, just in the fleshy part of my leg."
" It is my dog, sir. You must love him for my sake.
Here, Test — Test— Test ! "
" But he has bitten me."
" A}^, that he is apt to do, till you are better ac-
quainted with him. I have had liim three years. He
never bites me."
Yap^ yap^ yap ! — " He is at it again."
" O, sir, you must not kick him. He does not like
LO be kicked. I expect my dog to be treated with all
the, respect due to myself."
" But do you always take him out with you, when
f ou go a friendship-hunting ? "
" Invariably. 'Tis the sweetest, prettiest, best-con-
ditioned animal. I call him my test — tlie touchstone
by which to try a fi-iend. No one can properly be said
to love me, who does not love him."
" Excuse us, dear sir — or madam, aforesaid — if
POl'ULAK FALLACIES. 449
a|ion further consideration we are obliged to decline
the otherwise invaluable offer of your friendship. We
do not like dogs."
" Mighty well, sir, — you know the conditions, —
you may have worse offers. Come along, Test."
The above dialogue is not so imaginary, but that, in
the intercourse of life, we have had frequent occasions
of breaking off an agreeable intimacy by reason of
these canine appendages. They do not always come
in the shape of dogs ; they sometimes wear the more
plausible and human character of kinsfulk, near ac-
quaintances, my friend's friend, his partner, his wife,
or his children. We could never yet form a friend-
ship, — not to speak of more delicate correspondence, —
however much to our taste, without the intervention
of some third anomaly, some impertinent clog affixed to
the relation — the understood dog in the proverb. The
good things of life are not to be had singly, but come
to us with a mixture, — like a schoolboy's holiday, with
a task affixed to the tail of it. What a delightful com-
panion is , if he did not always bring his tall
cousin with him ! He seems to grow with him ; like
some of those double births which we remember to
have read of with such wonder and delij>;ht in the old
"Athenian Oracle," where Swift commenced author
by writing Pindaric Odes (what a beginning for him !)
upon Sir William Temple. There is the picture of
the brother, with the little brother peeping out at his
shoulder; a species of fraternity, which we have no
name of kin close enough to comprehend. When
comes, poking in his head and shoulder ii\to your room,
as if to feel his entry, you think, surely you have now
got him to yourself, — what a three hours' chat we
450 POPULAR FALLACIES.
shall have ! — but ever in the haunch of him, and be-
fore his diffident body is well disclosed in your apart-
ment, appears the haunting shadow of the cousin,
overpeering his modest kinsman, and sure to overlay
the expected good talk with his insufferable procerity
of stature, and uncorresponding dwarfishness of obser-
vation. Misfortunes seldom come alone. 'Tis hard
when a blessing comes accompanied. Cannot we like
Sempronia, without sitting down to chess with her
eternal brother ? or know Sulpicia, without knowing
all the round of her card-playing relations ? — must my
friend's brethren of necessity be mine also ? must we
be hand and glove with Dick Selby the parson, or Jack
Selby the caHco-printer, because W. S., who is neither,
but a ripe wit and a critic, has the misfortune to claim a
common parentage with them ? Let him lay down his
brothers ; and 'tis odds but we will cast him in a pair
of ours (we have a superflux) to balance the conces-
sion. Let F. H. lay down his garrulous uncle ; and
Honorius dismiss his vapid wife, and superfluous estab-
lishment of six boys ; things between boy and manhood
— too ripe for play, too raw for conversation — that
come in, impudently staring their father's old friend
out of countenance ; and will neither aid, nor let alone,
the conference; that we may once more meet upon
equal terms, as we were wont to do in the disengaged
state of bachelorhood.
It is well if your friend, or mistress, be cont jnt witli
these canicular probations. Few young ladies but in
this sense keep a dog. But when Rutilia hounds at
you her tiger aunt ; or Ruspina expects you to cherish
and fondle her viper sister, whom she has preposter-
ously taken into her bosom, to tiy stinging conclusions
rOPULAR FALLACIES. 451
upon your constancy ; tliey must not ccmplain if the
house be rather thin of" suitors. Scylla must have
broken off many excellent matches in her time, if she
insisted upon all, that loved her, loving her dogs also.
An excellent story to tliis moral is told of JMerry, of
Delia Cruscan memory. In tender youth he loved and
courted a modest appanage to the Opera, — in truth a
dancer, — who had won him by the artless contrast
between her manners and situation. She seemed to
him a native violet, that had been transplanted by
some rude accident into that exotic and artificial hot-
bed. Nor, in truth, was she less genuine and sincere
than she appeared to him. He wooed and won this
flower. Only for appearance' sake, and for due honor
to the bride's relations, she craved that she might have
the attendance of her friends and kindred at the ap-
proaching solemnity. The request was too amiable not
to be conceded ; and in this solicitude for conciliating
the good-will of mere relations, he found a presage of
her superior attentions to himself, when the golden
shaft should have " killed the flock of all affections
else." The morning came ; and at the Star and
Garter, Richmond, — the place appointed for the break-
fasting, — accompanied with one English friend, he im-
patiently awaited what reinforcements the bride should
bring to grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had
made. They came in six coaches — the whole corps
du ballet — French, Italian, men, and women. J\Ion-
sieur de B., the famous pirouetter of the day, led his
fair spouse, but craggy, from the banks of the Seine.
The Prima Donna "iiad sent her excuse. But the first
and second Buffa were there ; and Signor Sc — , and
Signora Ch — , and Madame V — , with a countless cav-
452 POPULAR FALLACIES.
alcade besides of chorusers, figurantes ! at the sight of
whom Meny afterwards declared, that " then for the
first time it struck him seriously, that he was about to
marry — a dancer." But there was no help for it.
Besides, it was her day ; these were, in fact, her friends
and kinsfolk. The assemblage, though whimsical, was
all very natural. But when the bride — handing out
of the last coach a still more extraordinary figure than
the rest — presented to him as her father — the gen-
tleman that was to give her away — no less a person
than Signor Delpini himself — with a sort of pride, as
much as to say. See what I have brought to do us
honor ! — the thought of so extraordinary a paternity
quite overcame him ; and slipping away under some
pretence from the bride and her motley adherents, poor
Merry took horse from the backyard to the nearest
sea-coast from which, shipping himself to America, he
shortly after consoled himself with a more congenial
match in the person of Miss Brunton ; relieved from
his intended clown father, and a bevy of painted buffas
for bridemaids.
THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK.
At what precise minute that little airy musician doffs
his night gear, and prepares to tune up his unseason-
able matins, Ave are not naturalists enough to deter-
mine. But for a mere human gentleman — that has
no orchestra business to call him from his warm bed
to such preposterous exercises — we take ten, or half
after ten, (eleven, of course, during this Christmas sol-
stice,) to be the very earliest hour at which he can
begin to think of abandoning his pillow. To think of
POPULAR FALLACIES. 453
It, we say ; for to do it in earnest requires another half
hour's good consideration. Not but there are pretty
sunrisings, as we are told, and such like gauds, abroad
in the world, in summer-time especially, some hours
before what we have assigned ; which a gentleman may
see, as they say, only for getting up. But having been
tempted once or twice, in earlier life, to assist at those
ceremonies, we confess our curiosity abated. We are
no lono;er ambitious of beino; the sun's courtiers, tc
attend at his morning levees. We hold the good hours
of the dawn too sacred to waste them upon such ob-
servances ; which have in them, besides, something
Pagan and Persic. To say truth, we never anticipated
our usual hour, or got up with the sun (as 'tis called),
to go a journey, or upon a foolish whole day's pleasur-
ing, but we suffered for it all the long hours after in
listlessness and headaches ; Nature herself sufficiently
declaring her sense of our presumption in aspiring to
regulate our frail waking courses by the measures of
that celestial and sleepless traveller. We deny not
that there is something sprightly and vigorous, at the
outset especially, in these break-of-day excursions. It
is flattering to get the start of a lazy world ; to con-
quer death by proxy in his image. But the seeds of
sleep and mortality are in vis ; and we pay usually, in
strange qualms before night falls, the penalty of the
unnatural inversion. Therefore, while the busy part
of mankind are fast huddling on their clothes, are al-
ready up and about their occupations, content to have
swallowed their sleep by wholesale ; we choose to
linger a-bcd, and digest our dreams. It is the very
time to recombine the Avandering images, which night
in a confused mass presented ; to snatch them fi-om for-
454 POPULAR FALLACIES.
getftiliiess ; to shape and mould tliem. Some people
have no good of their dreams. Like fast feeders, they
gulp them too grossly, to taste them curiously. We
love to chew the cud of a foregone vision ; to collect
the scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over
again, with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal trage-
dies : to drag; into daylio;ht a struo-glincr and half-van-
ishino; nightmare ; to handle and examine the terrors,
or the airy solaces. We have too much respect for
these spiritual communications to let them go so lightly.
We are not so stupid, or so careless as that Imperial
forgetter of his dreams, that we should need a seer to
remind us of the form of them. They seem to us to
have as much significance as our waking concerns:
or rather to import us more nearly, as more nearly
we approach by years to the shadowy world, whither
we are hastening. We have shaken hands with the
world's business ; we have done with it ; we have dis-
charged ourself of it. Why should we get up ? we
have neither suit to solicit, nor affairs to manage. The
drama has shut in upon us at the fourth act. We have
nothing here to expect, but in a short time a sick bed,
and a dismissal. We delight to anticipate death by
such shadows as night affords. We are already half
acquainted with ghosts. We were never much in the
world. Disappointment early stiTick a dark veil be-
tween us and its dazzling illusions. Our spirits showed
gray before our hairs. The mighty changes of the
world already appear as but the vain stuff out of which
dramas are composed. We have asked no more of life
than what the mimic images in playhouses present us
with. Even those types have waxed fainter. Our
clock appears to have struck. We are supebaknu-
POPULAR FALLACIES. 455
ATED. In this dearth of mundane satisfaction, we con-
tract politic alliances with shadows. It is good to have
friends at court. The abstracted media of dreams seem
no ill introduction to that spiritual presence, upon
which, in no long time, we expect to be thrown. We
are trying to know a little of the usages of that colony ;
to learn the language, and the faces we shall meet with
there, that we may be the less awkward at our first
coming among them. We willingly call a phantom
our fellow, as knowing we shall soon be of their dark
companionship. Therefore, we cherish dreams. We
try to spell in them the alphabet of the invisible world ;
and think we know already, how it shall be with us.
Those uncouth shapes, which, while we clung to flesh
and blood, affnghted us, have become familiar. We
feel attenuated into their meagre essences, and have
given the hand of half-way approach to incorporeal
being. We once thought life to be something ; but
it has unaccountably fallen from us before its time.
Therefore we choose to dally with visions. The sun
has no purposes of ours to light us to. Why should
we get up ?
XV.
THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB.
We could never quite understand the philosophy of
this arrangement, or the wisdom of our ancestors in
sending us for instruction to these woolly bedfellows.
A sheep, when it is dark, has nothing to do but to shut
his silly eyes, and sleep if he can. Man found out long
sixes, — Hail, candle-light! without disparagement to
Bun or moon, the kindliest luminary of the three, — if
^e may not rather style thee their radiant deputy, mild
406 POPULAR FALLACILS.
viceroy of the moon ! — We love to read, talk, sit
silent, eat, drink, sleep, by candle-light. They are
everybody's sun and moon. This is our peculiar and
household planet. Wanting it, what savage unsocial
nights must our ancestors have spent, wintering in
caves and unillumined fastnesses ! They must have
lain about and grumbled at one anotlier in the dark.
What repartees could have passed, when you must
have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbor's
cheek to be sure that he understood it ? This accounts
for the seriousness of the elder poetry. It has a sombre
cast (try Hesiod or Ossian), derived from the tradition
of those unlanterned nights. Jokes came in with
candles. We wonder how they saw to pick up a pin,
if they had any. How did they sup ? what a melange
of chance carving they must have made of it ! — here
one had got a leg of a goat, when he wanted a horse's
shoulder — there another had dipped his scooped palm
in a kid-skin of wild honey, when he meditated right
mare's milk. There is neither ffood eatino; nor drink-
ing in fresco. Who, even in these civilized times, has
never experienced this, when at some economic table
he has commenced dining after dusk, and waited for
the flavor till the lights came ? The senses absolutely
give and take- reciprocally. Can you tell pork from
veal in the dark ? or distinguish Sherris from pure
Malaga? Take away the candle from the smoking
man ; by the glimmering of the left ashes, he knows
that he is still smoking, but he knows it only by
an inference ; till the restored light, coming in aid
of the olfactories, reveals to both senses the ftill
aroma. Then how he redoubles his puffs ! how he
burnishes ! — There is absolutely no such thing as
POPULAR FALLACIES. 457
reading but by a candle. We have tried the affecta-
tion of a book at noonday in gardens, and in sultiy
arbors ; but it was labor thrown away. Those gay
motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teas-
ing, like so many coquettes, that will have you all to
their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By the
midnight taper, the writer digests his meditations. B}-
the same light we must approach to their perusal, if we
would catch the flame, the odor. It is a mockery, all
that is reported of the influential Phoebus. No true
poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. They are
abstracted works —
Things that were born, when none but the still night,
And his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes.
Marry, daylight — daylight might furnish the images,
the crude material ; but for the fine shapings, the true
turning and filing (as mine author hath it), they must
be content to hold their inspiration of the candle. The
mild internal light, that reveals them, like fires on the
domestic hearth, goes out in the sunshine. Night and
=5ilence call out the starry fancies. Milton's Morning
Hymn in Paradise, we would hold a good wager, was
penned at midnight ; and Taylor's rich description of a
svmrise smells decidedly of the taper. Even ourself, in
these our humbler lucubrations, tune our best-measured
cadences (Prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to
the charm of the drowsier watchman, " blessing the
doors;" or the wild sweep of winds at midnight.
Even now a loftier speculation than we have yet at-
tempted, courts our endeavors. We would indite
something about the Solar System. — Betty ^ bring the
candleK.
VOL. Til. 29*
458 POPULAR FALLACIES.
THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTITNE.
We grant that it is, and a very serious one — to &
man's friends, and to all that have to do with him ; but
whether the condition of the man himself is so much to
be deplored, may admit of a question. We can speak
a little to it, being ourself but lately recovered — we
whisper it in confidence, reader — out of a long and
desperate fit of the sullens. Was the cure a blessing ?
The conviction which wrought it, came too clearly to
leave a scruple of the fanciful injuries — for they were
mere fancies — which had provoked the humor. But
the humor itself was too self-pleasmg, while it lasted —
we know how bare we lay ourself in the confession —
to be abandoned all at once with the grounds of it.
We still brood over wrongs which we know to have
been imaginary ; and for our old acquaintance N ,
whom we find to have been a truer friend than we took
him for, we substitute some phantom — a Caius or a
Titius — as like him as we dare to form it, to wreak
our yet unsatisfied resentments on. It is mortifying to
fall at once from the pinnacle of neglect ; to forego the
idea of having been ill-used and contumaciously treated,
by an old friend. The first thing to aggrandize a man
in his own conceit, is to conceive of himself as neg-
lected. There let liim fix if he can. To undeceive
him is to deprive him of the most tickling mOrsel
within the range of self-complacency. No flattery can
come near it. Happy is he who suspects his friend of
an injustice ; but supremely blest, who thinks all his
friends in a :onspiracy to depress and undervalue him.
POPULAR FALL\CIES. 459
There is a pleasure (we sing not to the profane^ far
beyond the reach of all that the world counts joy — a
deep, enduring satisfaction in the depths, where the
superficial seek it not, of discontent. Were we to
recite one half of this mysteiy, — which we were let
into by our late dissatisfaction, all the world would be
in love with disrespect ; we should wear a slight for a
bracelet, and neglects and contumacies would be the
only matter for courtship. Unlike to that mysterious
book in the Apocalypse, the study of this mystery is
unpalatable only in the commencement. The first
sting of a suspicion is grievous ; but wait — out of that
wound, which to flesh and blood seemed so difficult,
there is balm and honey to be extracted. Your friend
passed you on such or such a day, — having in his com-
pany one that you conceived worse than ambiguously
disposed towards you, — passed you in the street with-
out notice. To be sure he is something short-sighted ;
and it was in your power to have accosted him. But
facts and sane inferences are trifles to a true adept in
the science of dissatisfaction. He must have seen you ;
and S , who was with him, must have been the
cause of the contempt. It galls you and well it may.
But have patience. Go home, and make the worst of
it, and you are a made man from this time. Shut
yourself up, and — rejecting, as an enemy to your
peace, every whispering suggestion that but insinuates
there may be a mistake — reflect seriously upon the
many lesser instances which you had begun to per-
ceive, in proof of your ftnend's disaffection towards you.
None of them singly was much to the pui'pose, but the
aggregate weight is positive ; and you have this last
460 POPULAR FALLACIES.
affront to clench them. Thus far the process is any-
thing but agreeable. But now to your relief comes in
the comparative faculty. You conjure up all the kind
feelings you have had for your friend ; what you have
been to him, and what you would have been to him, if
he would have suffered you ; how you defended him in
this or that place ; and his good name — his literary
reputation, and so forth, was always dearer to you than
your own ! Your heart, spite of itself, yearns towards
him. You could weep tears of blood but for a restrain-
ing pride. How say you ! do you not yet begin to
apprehend a comfort? some allay of sweetness in the
bitter waters ? Stop not here, nor penuriously cheat
yourself of your reversions. You ai-e on vantage
ground. Enlarge your speculations, and take in the
rest of your friends, as a spark kindles more sparks.
Was there one among them, who has not to you proved
hollow, false, slippery as water ? Begin to think thai
the relation itself is inconsistent with mortality. That
the very idea of friendship, with its component parts, as
honor, fidelity, steadiness, exists but in your single
bosom. Image yourself to yourself, as the only pos-
sible friend in a world incapable of that communion.
Now the gloom thickens. The little star of self-love
twinkles, that is to encourage you through deeper
glooms than this. You are not yet at the half ])oint of
your elevation. You are not yet, believe me, half
sidky enough. Adverting to tlie world in general, (as
these circles in the mind will spread to infinity,) reflect
with what strange injustice you have been treated in
quarters where (setting gratitude and the expectation
of friendly returns aside as chimeras) you pretended no
POfUl^AR FALLACIES. 461
claim beyond justice, the naked due of all men. Think
the very idea of right and fit fled from the earth, or
your breast the solitary receptacle of it, till you have
swelled yourself into at least one hemisphere ; the other
being the vast Arabia Stony of your friends and the
world aforesaid. To grow bigger every moment in
your own conceit, and the world to lessen; to deify
yourself at the expense of your species ; to judge the
world, — this is the acme and supreme point of your
mystery, — these the true Pleasures of Sulkiness.
We profess no more of this grand secret than what
ourself experimented on one rainy afternoon in the last
week, sulking in our study. We had proceeded to the
penultimate point, at which the true adept seldom
stops, where the consideration of benefit forgot is about
to merge in the meditation of general injustice — when
a knock at the door was followed by the entrance of
the very friend whose not seemg of us in the morning
(for we will now confess tlie case our own,) an acci
dental oversight, had given rise to so much agreeable
generalization ! To mortify us still more, and take
down the whole flattering superstructure which jn-ide
had piled upon neglect, he had brought in his hand the
identical S , in whose favor we had suspected him
of the contumacy. Asseverations were needless, where
the ft-ank manner of them both was convictive of the
injurious nature of the suspicion. We fancied that
they perceived our embarrassment ; but were too proud,
or something else, to confess to the secret of it. We
had been but too lately in the condition of the noble
patient in Argos : —
Qui 96 credebat miros audiro tragcados.
In vacuo Isetus aessor plausoraue theatro —
i62 POPULAE FALLACIES.
and could have exclaimed with equal reason against
the friendly hands that cured us —
Pol, me occidistis, amici,
Non servastis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus erroT
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"^ TOGETHER. In uniform setsof 6vols. Cloth, $10.50
For sale at principal Bookstores throughout the country,
and mailed by Publisher on receipt of price.
W. T. WIDDLETON, Publishek
Nf.iu Tork-
Widdleton^s Mduiom of Choice Standard Works-
DISRAELI'S WORKS.
The Calamities and Quarrels of Atdhors^
With some inquiries respecting their moral and literary
charr.cters, and memoirs for our literary' history. By Isaac
Disraeli. Edited by his son, the Right Hon. B. Disraeli.
3 vo s. crown 8vo. Cloth, $3.50; half calf, $700.
The " Calamities and Quarrels of Authors " are, like the
" Curiosities of Literature," and the " Amenities," rich in
entertaining and instructive information, such as can be
found nowhere else. To the younger class of readers, who
treasure up every scrap of biography or personal gossip,
relating to the distinguished authors of the past, these
volumes must prove a storehouse of inestimable value
The Literary Character;
Of the History of Men of Genius, drawn from their own
feelings and confessions. Literary Miscellanies, and an
inquiry into The Character of James the First. By
Isaac Disraeli. Edited by his ^on, the Right Hon. B.
Disraeli. A handsome crown 8vo volume, with Steel Por-
traits of Disraeli, and uniform with our editions of the
" Curiosities " and " Amenities of Literature," by the same
author. Cloth, $2.25 ; half calf, $4.00.
The Literary Character is contained in a single
volume, but to our notion it is one of the best and most in-
teresting of the whole. It not merely treats of authors and
books, but through the variety of character portrayed, gives
a comprehensive view of human nature.
For sale at principal Bookstores, and mailed, poBtpaid,
on receipt of pr ice, by
W. J. WIDDLETON, Publisher,
No. 27 If award Street, New Tork.
Widdleton^ s Editions of Choice Standard Works
Disraeli's Complete Works
THE AUTHORIZED AND COMPLETE EDITION,
Edited, with Notes, by his Son, the Right Hon. B. Disrakli
Ex- Premier of England. In 9 vols, crown 8to. Large cleai
type, on fine toned paper, bound in handsome library style ia
extra cloth, comprising : —
The Curiosities of Literature. 4 vols. . $7.00
The Amenities of Literature. 2 vols. 3 50
The Calamities and Quarrels of Authors.
2 vols 3 50
The Literary Character, i vol. . . . 2.2s
Any of the works sold separately as above, or the entire
set of nine volumes in a case for $15.00; half calf, $30.00.
This set of books contains what may be called the cream
of reading and research, from the time of Dr. Johnson to
our own, and of the superiority of this edition there is no
room for question ; a comparison with the English, —
crowded into six volumes of small type, — decides at a
glance.
For sale at tne prmcipal Bookstores throughout the
oountr> , and sent by mail or express, on receipt of price bv
W. J. WIDDLETON, Publisher,
27 Howard Street^ Ntw Ycfb
THE LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Santa Barbara
D
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW.
Series 9482