Footprints on the Road

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FOOTPRINTS ON THE EOAD.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

POETICAL WORKS IN TWO VOLUMES. I

DREAMLAND: Sha^spera at Shott^tf. With otber FoemB.

ALETHEIA ; or, tta Doom of Mjthol<OT. Willi other Poerai.

A Nev Kdilion. Fcap. Sto.

Ldbiuuii, Gkkeh, LonnMAii, Robertb, and Oiueh.

POLITICAL SKETCHES.

CAJtINET PICTtJfiES. Bj Mahk Roohkstbb.
Second Bditiim,

HoUTLBDOK, WaRNE, AND BoUTLEDOE.

TALE OF THE FIVE SENSES.

THB VISION OF CAQLIOSTEO. A Tale of the PItb Ssdm*:!

Beptinted in Tol, X. of " Talei from BUckvoDd."

Wn. Blackwuod iBD Sobs.

FOOTPBINTS ON THE EOAD.

• t*^

CHARLES KENT,

BARRISTER-AT-

Wkir,

LONDON :
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.

i^

^M^..^^(^t4l

1864,

TO

CHARLES DICKENS,

C^se ^vfft ate Sttstribeb

WITH

EABNEfiT KEGABD AND OBATBFTTL ASMIEATION.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

LEONARDO DA VINCI— THE AETIST 1

PIERRE sfeRANGER— THE SONG-WRITER 50

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS— THE NAVIGATOR 63

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE — ^THE ART-COLLECTOR 89

WALTER RALEIGH— THE ADVENTURER 99

THOMAS RAIKES — ^THE BOND STREET LOUNGER 123

ROBERT HERRICK— THE ENGLISH ANACREON 136

CHARLES BRAGANZA — THE EXILED PRINCE 146

EUSTACE BUDGELL— THE ESSAYIST 157

liEIOH HUNT — ^THE TOWN POET . 165

BARDANA HILL — ^THE QUACK 176

DOUGLAS JERROLD— THE WIT 189

EDMUND WALLER— THE COURT POET 201

WILLIAM NAPIER — THE SOLDIER-ANNALIST 215

HENRY HOWARD — ^THB POET-KNIGHT 221

BUOT WARBURTON— THE TRAVELLER *L*

CHARLES STVAItT'^THS BOYAL FTJOmVE ....

/flmr KXATa^TBs zmuan hylab ....

•

',* Several of thaae Papers appeared originally in the " Wcatminalcr Keview,'
" BlackwDod'a MagaBine," "Honaehold Worda," and other periodicals. They ar
here reprlDted for ths fint time callectlvelj.

FOOTPKINTS ON THE KOAD.

LEONARDO DA VINCI— THE ARTIST.

It has frequently been remarked by historians and biographers
that great men never exist separately, but always have corre-
spondent minds among their contemporaries. Were we to con-
dense the opinion into an aphorism, we should say that greatness
is peculiar rather to the age than to the individual. And it must
be acknowledged that every distinguished generation, every re-
markable character, every empire, and, we might even say, every
principality, has afforded brilliant illustrations of this aphorism.
While Socrates, for example, was instilling morality into the
incipient philosophy of Greece, Confucius was founding a religion
among the Chinese. While Epicurus was dreaming in the gar-
dens of Athens, Euclid was ripening the science of geometry at
Alexandria. While Cicero was intoning his voice to the sound
of a flageolet, Yitruvius was planning a triclinium, or drawing
the proportions of an aqueduct. Were we, in short, to survey
the whole annals of intellect, we should discover only repetition
after repetition of this very beautiful companionship among the
illustrious. We should discover a QuintUian contemporaneous
with a Tacitus ; a Petrarch with a Giotto ; and a Voltaire with a
Gibbon. Yet the simultaneous appearance of genius is scarcely
so surprising or unaccountable as the simultaneous growth of
various branches of human knowledge. There have been i^<&tvc^^^
in which a mysterious impulse has been given, to \)cvft yqX^\^«^^^
of mBukwd, when at one t)ound Bciencftft Y\aNe o^«t\«a.V^ ^^'^
upon Alps of di£Scultie8, and the barren fteYdia ol Xxtex^W^^^
nred with golden JbarFests and perenmal fe\x\V», a% >->ttOv^^ ^

li FOOTPEINTB ON THE BOAD.

had been stricken by the wand of a necromancer. Centuries of
iguorBDCe and obscurity bave auddenlj become pregnant with
migbtf trutliB and still mightier principles -, aod, in the birth of
Iboae new ems, a moral light has strenmed over the world brighter
than had tver before visited its inlmbitantB, In astronomy, this
coincideDce is attested by the advent of Tycho Brahe and Coper-
nicus ; in navigation, b; the ezpeditiona of Cabot and Columbus ;
in poetry, by the creatioDs of Hesiod and Chaucer. It is not,
liowever, to the progress made in any particular department of
leamiug, nor to the derelopraent of any distiixot bough upon the
tree of kuo^^ ledge, that the contemplation of Ihe career and
character of Leonardo da Yiiici would naturally direct attention ;
— it is rather to the general dawning of the intelligence of
modern times, of that more divine and more comprehensive intel-
ligence than was ever perceptible in ihe halcyon days of antiquity,
before the robust faculties of the anciente had become emaflciUated
through over- cultivation.

If vi6 examine the most deplorable of all the deplorable records
of humanity, ne find that Bubsequently to the iucursione of the
northern barbarians under Alaric and Odoacer, a Night of Igno-
rance gloomed once more over the Eoman peninsula, aod gradu-
ally extended its darkuess througliout the dominions of "Weatera
Europe. The intellectual beams which bad hitherto radiated
from the metropolis of that vast empire appeared, in tiieir physical
Bubjectiou, to have been utterly eitinguifhed ; — and the ultimate
removal of the imperial government to Bysantium threatened to
enibrce the blow which hod been administered by the branda
of savage invaders. The Genius of ancient Italy was veiled ; the
treasures of karniug were either forgutlen or destrojed; the-
seeds of knowledge were trampled into the duet, ar)d the very
place of their burial vcas obliterated. Upon the regions sanoti-
lied by bo much glory and wisdom the desolatiou of eight
fruitless centuries descended, and iu the lapse of that dismal
interval the fate of the Italian people seemed to acquire aa
inexorable confirmation. According to the rotation which is
observable in the phenomena of hurning mouutaius, the old
verdure appeared to be permaueutly covered by the irruption and
iucrubtutiuu of a uew Boil — a soil distinguished for a long while
by its sterility, and at length only epnukled wiih a sickly and
stunied vegetation. Towaids the dose of the thirteenth century,
however, the dormant capacities of Europe asserted their energy,
aud the barrenness of many preceding ages was compensated by
the feeuudity of a few generations.
_ Ou tie capture of Constantinople, aa we have already inti-

LEONARDO DA VINCI — ^THE ARTIST. 8

mated, the moral and intellectual decay of Italy seemed to
approach its consummation. The evil destinies of the capital
and its environs appeared to be definitively accomplished by the
transportation of the sovereign authority to the shores of the
Marmora. Yet the consequence of that great movement was
exactly tKe reverse of what was anticipated. Out of the very
forlomness and abandonment of the popidation arose the means
and the deeds of its redemption — another Minerva eraergpng
from the pangs of Jupiter. The establishment of the Byzantine
dynasty proved, in fact, to be an occurrence the best calculated
to ensure the resuscitation of ancient Europe. A direct inter-
course was thereby restored between the Latins and the GJ-reeks,
and the effect or that renewed intercourse was the whole-
some incitement of the former to philosophic enterprise and
mental speculation. Under that benign influence, the aspect
of the peninsula was rapidly transformed from an exhausted
antiquity to a vigorous and propitious youth. The land which
was still strewn with the dihris of the colossal empire, —
which was still disfigured by the devastations of the Vandals, —
which, above all, was still oppressed with the oblivion of its long
sorrows, gave indications of the revival of its glory and its
adolescence. The obscurity of the past floated from the veiled
Ghenius of that illustrious country. The treasures of its classic
erudition, like the entombed gems of the Etruscans, were re-
stored to the daylight, immutilated. The seeds of knowledge,
trodden down and despised by insensate generations, sprouted
up through that universal sterility, and gave forth a harvest and
a vintage.

lu order that the lethargy which ages had rendered the habi-
tual condition of the popular mind, might be effectively dispelled,
it was essential that the works of the antique writers should be
transmitted from the libraries and cloisters of Greece. Until
that was accomplished, indeed, the very materials of scholarship
would be wanting. The existence of such a necessity has been
more than insinuated by GJ-ibbon, where he observes that " before
the revival of classic literature, the barbarians of Europe were
immersed in ignorance, and their vulgar tongues were marked by
the rudeness and poverty of their manner." ♦ When ouce, how-
ever, the movement of regeneration had commenced, its effects
became manifest in achievements of the most aar\^t\%\\^% %x^
gigantic character. Scarcely twelve Tttoii\.\i^ \\sA ^\i^\«fe^ ^5N«"
the day when the matchless compo^\liouA oi ^<5iv\v^x *i»N^vA. ^

* Qibbon'8 DeOme and Pall, vol. Vi. p. 4U. QsawVi ^s^lxhoiv, V\^-

^^ JOOXrEJNTS ON THE ROAD.

interpreter bpyond tlie Alps in tlie person of Bar] a am, when,
] 3iO, gunpowder is euppoBed to have been first employed aa
iuBtniment. of destruction bv Swartz, wliiJe oil-pnintiiig is also
presumed to have been then first attemptedby the bond of the in-
genious Von eck. Ninety years later Laurentius of Haarlem was
inspired with the crude notion, which afterwards, under the fs^a-
city of Guttenburg and Schoefler, expanded into that peaceful
weapon of civilisation, the print ing-preKs. During the interval
between these actonisbins innovations, the light of letters and
philosophy in Italy had become at once more intense and more
diffuBed. Petrarch had illumined his country's history with a sun-
hurst of poetry. Boccaccio had thrown a contemporary lustre over
the age of the Hermit of Vaucluse. The mendicity of the profound
Leontius Pilatus had not debarred him from the hoBpitality of the
author of the ' Decamei-on,' or from the chair of Greek Professor-
ship at Florence ; while the language in which that extraordinary
being was so incomparably versed was subsequently established in
the peninsula by means of the industry and erudition of Manuel
Chrysoloras. The whole apectocle presented to the imagination
by this most memorable epoch is one, indeed, which not only
elicits our admiration, but absolutely commanda our gratitude.
Whether we contemplate the toil which was then apparent in
the department of literature, or in that of science, or in ttat of art,
or in that of philoaopiiy, we behold everywhere the prognoatics
of a, new and unparalleled enlightenment. By one simullaneous
movement those bonds were riven asunder which had hitherto
trammelled the mind of man, since the capture of the civilised
south hy the predatory hands of the Ostrogoths. A voife, as
solemn as that which is said, in the beautiful legend of Plutarch,
to have lamented in the solitudes of the .£gean sea, seemed to
arouae the nations from their stumhera. And, at the bidding of
that mysterious voice, there was a resurrection of whatever was
inost admirable in ancient lore; the marble sgain rounded into
Bjmmetry under the chisel of the sculptor; the canvass again
bloomed under the pencil of the artist ; the strings vibrated
under the fingers of tlie musician; the quarries tapered into
columns, spanned into arches, and bubbled iijto domes, under the
mallet of the maaon and the guidance of the architect.

Indebted, aa we are, to this auiJden emuhitioo for the present

development and diflueion of knowledge, we should be uUHiae to

overlook the auspice under which it waa mainly ejected ; and

iJje Btare BO because it Has a sublime and a most divine auspice —

j't Bsa the auspice of the Genius of Christianity. "N^T^te'ra ol

^f^fJinde of opinion coincide at leait in this one. knift^e ^xea\i

LEONARDO DA VINCI — ^THB ARTIST. 5

historian already quoted has remarked, with a rather dubious feli-
city of expression, that " after a large deduction for the time and
talents lost in the devotions, the laziness, and the discord of the
church and the cloister, the more inquisitive and ambitious minds
would explore the sacred and profane erudition of their native
language.'** This exceptional curiosity, it must never be for-
gotten, revived the principles pf architecture by the construction
of the basilicas; it preserved an intermittent love for natural
philosophy in the seminaries of the ecclesiastics ; it evoked the
chemical discoveries and mechanical inventions of Eoger Bacon,
and occasionally transformed the pulpit into the rostrum of the
elocutionist. The innate aspirations of humanity set at defiance
the restraints of discipline, and scorned the monotony of monastic
life. Hence it is that the heart of a true bard could throb under
the serge of a monk (Petrarch), and the heart of a poetaster
under the purple of a cardinal (Bellarmine). Hence, especially,
was the Pictorial Art fostered by the munificence of the Church ;
its vigour being expended in the decoration of religious edifices,
and its capacities evoked in the illustration of Holy Writ. The
flames of modem knowledge — those flames, which, after dissi-
pating the darkness of barbarism, have imparted a lustre to every
succeeding century — may, therefore, in all truth, be said to have
been kindled by the Lamp of the Sanctuary — ^a light more pure
and perpetual than the fires of Yesta ! It is a consciousness of these
grateful labours of Christianity which has induced Sir Archibald
Alison to observe with such graceful emphasis, that '' learning,
sheltered under the sanctity of the monastery, survived the devas-
tations of ignorance ; and freedom, nursed by devotion, acquired
a strength superior to all the forces of despotism." f And pro-
found, it must be confessed, is the awe inspired by that reflection
— ^that the creed, which was once abhorred as the apotheosis of a
crucified malefactor, should be the means of infusing into modern
society an admiration for the pagan sages; that the religion
which, under the Boman emperors, bad found a shelter only iu
the catacombs, should be the peculiar guardian and conservator
of heathen literature ; that the descendants of those Christians
who were immolated in the gardens of Nero, and spurned like
dogs in the Comitium, and devoured by lions in the unholy pas-
times of the Coliseum, should revive to remote generations what-
ever was brightest and noblest in the memorut^ oi \.Vi«a >\\i:^>X'^>xij^
persecutors. How divine was that revenue \Ti\\» ^^\iv\»i^ "^&ar*
sublime that retribution in its tendemeaal

' fj!>bof 8 Decline and Fall, vol. yi. p. 416.
f Aluoa 8 History of itfurope, Tol. i. p. ^4. ae^eut\i. ^\Ua^

A.^V»

6 FOOTFBIHTS OH THE BOAD.

Extraordinary, however, as was tlie patronage awarded by
Chriatinnity to the different productions of the fiuman intellect,
the patronage it extended to the art of painting wna, perhaps, of
all, the most lavish and remarkable. It waa only aa reccQtly as
the thirteenth t-entury that that beautiful art waa resuacitated —
partially by the incrpased intercourse of the Italians and Grecians,
partially by (he contemplation of the antique bassi-rilievi, par-
tially by the inborn genins of the artists themselvea, bnt prin-
cipally through the countenance and encouragement which it
obtained from the more discerning ecclesiastics. If any testimony
were required of this, it would be diacovered in the fact, that,
in ita infancy, the Pictorial Art waa more generally engaged in
the adornment of basilicas than of palacea ; in the delineation
of Madonnas than of priuoeasea ; in the limning of a pieta or a
crucifixion than of feaats and tournaraenta. The labours of
painting were eaaentiully of a scriptural character, from the crude
draughta of Oiunta and Margaritone to the tnaaterpieces of the
moat glorious of their many glorioua aucceasors.

Without entering into any detailed chronological account of
the artists who preceded Leonardo, it may be as well, before we
adventure upon a further record of that extraordinary man, to
enumerate the more conspicuous of his predecesaors, dating from
the appearance of Giovanni Cimabue. For the name of Cimabne,
we muat acknowledge at once that we entertain an affection and
reverence posaibly dig proportioned to hia intrinsic merita ; and
this perhaps may arise, in some nneaaure, from the circumstance
of his beiug the first [painter mentioned in the enthralling
biographiea of Vaaari — biographies which, from their peculiar
diversity and fuacination, caused the late unfortunate Haydon to
eiciaim uith euthu^iaam, "If I were confined to three books, in
a deaert is1ai:d, I would certainly choose the Bible, Shukspere,
and Vaaari."* Tet, in a^jite of thia excusable predilection for
Cimabue, we must perforce award to hia enccessor Giotto the
glory of being the first artist who, in modern times, evinced any
7ery decided originality. Contemporary with Giotto di Bondone,
were Buouamico, Taddeo Gaddi, and Meromi di Martino; but
not one of these, not even his immediate follower Orcagna, could
compete with him either in point of manual skill or of imagina-
tive capacity. Next in einineuce to Giotto was the gentle and
renowned Maaaccio, a man who, notwithatanding hia premature
decease, iiu measurably aurpasaed all the artinta of hia gene-
— j^a Gioranoi, Fra Aagelico, Benotzo GroiioU, «nd. Fra

' HaydoiiS UotoTSB. First Scries, p. 2ai. J

LEONARDO DA VINCI — THE ARTIST. 7

Eilippo. Much as bad unquestiouablj been accomplisbed by
tbe men we have enumerated in assertinor the dignity, and in
developinc; the capabilities of their art, they had, nevertheless,
still failed in ridding it of the harshness and formalities so
peculiarly distasteful to a fastidious and cultivated age. On the
appearance of Signorelli, and subsequently of Perugino, painting
yet remained in a state of astonishing immaturity. One by one
the prominent requisites of the artist were indicated — ^nothing
more — bv these fitful originators of greatness, these mines of
immaturity from which came the golden riches of G-iulio Bomano,
Giorgione, Tintoretto, Correggio, Paulo Veronese, G-uido, Par-
megiano, and their competitors. Sii^le was hinted by Donatello,
proportion by Brunaleschi, perspective by G-hirlandajo ; there was
the suggestion of what could be effected by design in tbe com-
positions of Pisano, of what could be accomplished by expression
m the pathos of Ghiotto, and of what could be achieved by colotvr
in the daring brilliancy of Cimabue : yet, in defiance of all these
efforts to rid the pictorial art from the refrigerating and dis-
couraging influence of G-othicism — notwithstanding that these
efforts were in most instances reiterated, and, occasionallv, even
simultaneous in their earnestness — that art still languished under
the effects of an unnatural restraint, and would never possibly
liave rben above a certain degree of exquisite mediocrity, but for
the advent of three innovators, as wonderful for their audacity as
for their inspiration. The fame of having established the essen-
tial principles of the pictorial art, and of carrying it, both by
precept and example, to the highest point of perfection, is due
to those three illustrious beings — ^to Leonardo da Yinci, to Fra
Bartolomeo, and to Michelangelo Buonarotti. The priority in
the triumvirate, and that scarcely in regard to time alone, we
•claim for and av^ard to Leonardo. Possessing all the fabulous
versatility of Crichton, that astonishing man seemed to concen-
trate in bis single mind the most estimable characteristics of the
most admirable painters. Insomuch so that, bearing in remem-
brance the ''awful majesty of his manner," the "truth and
naturalness of his delineation," the " supreme grace and purity
of his style," and " the perfect symmetry of his drawing," we
might, with an allowable anachronism, trace a similitude to him
in those blundering verses of Agostino Carracci —

'' Di Michelangelo la tembW ^?\a. \
II vero DaturaL di Tizvano -,
I>i Correggio lo aUl piiro e BONidiTiO^

B di nn £a£Eael la vera. ^mmQtI^a^.^''

To Leonardo, indeed, tbe who
plishmentB appeared to become i
different kinds of precious Btones are familiBrieed to ihe eye of
a practised lapidary. Uia artistic powers constituted only one
phase in his Protean character ; it was only one of the many
splendid dyes in the embroidery of his genius i and it is probably
from the circumBtanee that bis paintings have preserved to us the
original lustre of that one phase in particular, that it has assum.'d
to itself svieh a predominance in l)ie memory, Otiierwise, could
we, as clearly as we now see his creations upon canvas, behold
his colossal productions as a sculptor — could we listen at this
moment to the dulcet sounds hia hand once drew from stringed
instrumeiita— could we perceive before us the evidences of his
engineering indust' j, the fabrications of hia mechaoicul skill, and
the innumerable graces of hia carriage, we should doubtless be
puzzled to decide in what department of learning he was moi^^t
gifted, or in what particular accompliabment he shone the most
conapicuounly.

By a blunder not unusual in the biographies of remarVable
men, tlie birth of Leonardo has been erroneously dated ; tbe
majority of hia biographers maintaining the year of the Hedemp-
tion liiS to be the one in which hia eiiatence commenced. Dur-
genville says li55 ; the Padre fiesta insists upon 1467 ; while
Pagare of Milan, followed obsequiously by i'iorillo, declares in
favour of 1441. and that, too, with tbe dogmatism of an oracle in
chronology. "With all deference to the judgment of DurgenviUe,
of Kesta, of Pagave, and of I'iorillo, we must, nevertheless, pni-
claim it as an indiapuiable fact, that for nearly seven years after
the date given by Vasari, namely, 1445, Leonardo da Vinci was
yet unborn. It has been established on conclusive authority,
by Durazsini, that the eyes of this illustrious Tuscan first opened
in the summer of 1452,* at the little fortress of Vinci, situate on
the margin of the lake of Fucecchio, in the Valdarno luferiore,
hard by the walls of Florence. Signore Pietro da Vinci, an
eminent notary, of wliorii Leonardo was tbe illegitimate ofi'cpting,
appears to have been of a somewhat uiorious disposition, having
been married three times — first to Qiovanna di Zenobi Amaduri,
secondly, to Fruncesca di Ser Giuliano Lanfredini, and thirdly to
Lucrezia di Ouglielmo Cortigiuni. It is from a complimentary

* Bee Dunuini's Panegyric oa lllnstrioan Tnscaug, toaie ii[. a. 2S. Among
ibc moat uoaDsncnble of the orgumeDla in Uioni of Hfi2, va may meation tlie
xeaem/ojiKal Ltea of tbe Vied Janiily (Jiflcovered \-i SiKOoiB Del inums Uxe
■*""""' — '■■■■-" ofFIoTeacc), nlii.li aajB— " LeotiMdo, VAvne UaVvmis, (*\.,

giat"

LEONARDO DA VINCI — ^THE ARTIST. 9

Bonnet, addressed to tbe last-mentioned, by Belincionni, that we
discover the light in which our young Florentine was regarded
by his family — the poet speaking of him as one of the habitual
inhabitants of the beautiful villa of Lucrezia. The accident of
bastardy was not, therefore, in his instance, punished — or shall
we say, expiated — by domestic contumelies. The natural sweet-
ness of his temperament was not injured by that consciousness of
undeserved disgrace which must be so inexplicable to the majority
of children bom out of the bonds of wedlock.

Prom the picturesque and peculiar beauties which abound in
this portion of the Taldarno, it is not improbable that the infant
mind of Leonardo first derived its affection for inland scenery.
Even in boyhood he must have been accustomed to the grass and
the boughs of solitary places, flinging pebbles into Eucecchio,
chasing dragon-flies along the windings of the Amo, or watching
the various characteristics of the landscape until they were lost
in the grey horizon of the Apennines. Like Lorraine, he
entertained throughout life an enthusiasm for Nature in all the
diversities of her aspect ; and like Lorraine, he must at this early
period have imbibed delicious draughts of inspiration from her
maternal bosom. It is pleasant to imagine to ourselves the
influence exercised by creation over an intellect so susceptible as
his, and that, too, at a time when it was most immaculate and
most impressionable. The very joys of childhood must, to such
a mind, have possessed a superior fascination ; those joys which
are blended with the budding and the dying of the leaves, the
blooming and the shedding of the flowers, the formation and the
ripening of the fruit. To the unpoetical observer, that which to
Ooethe was " the paradise of morning-red," which to Keats was
" the light-wing'd Dryad of the trees,** and to Beranger was
" the solace of the hermit,** would be merely daybreak, a nightin-
gale, and a sparrow* — nothing more. Around us, above us,
beneath us — it we would but know it — there is an inexhaustible
multitude of perfections ; and when the heart remains unmoved
in the midst of them, its stupor arises from its own barrenness of
perception, not from the intrinsic poverty of any one created
thing. The rapture of Leonardo, therefore, must have been
something indeiinable, nurtured as he was in the luxuriant lap of
Tuscany.

But Signer Pietro was by no means anxious to prolong the
sylvan reveries of his son. When ttie \a(i\x\\i\fe^ ^X. '^'^ \aSCvRx
hegan at last to develop themselves ia xevjii e«tw<e%^»> V^ "^'^'

* FMUBt, 8c, u. Ode to a Nightingale, v. 7. SV y^Xa^k V^Ni*. «vbr»».,-i.

isfflp

removed to tbe neiglibnun'ag city, and placed as n pupil under
Mesaer Andrea Veroochio, tlien enjoying a high reputation aa a
painter and aeiilptor. No arrangement could by possibility have
been better adapted to foster the peouHar genius of the striplingj
for, while his artiatic tastes were corrected by the deeorom
tuition of Verncchio, his versatility was encouraged by the
bkndi-hments of Floreutine society. Before many months had
elapsed after his introduction to the atelifr of Messer Andrea, it
became very visible to his acquaintance that there waa in the
nature of Leonardo an originality and a grasp of comprehension
which brooked no rules, however ingenious, and defied all
restraints, no matter how formidable. Cimabue and Qiotto had
already dug out the foundations of the art ; and Masaccio — that
daring and admirable Masiaceio, whom Sir Joshua Reynolds has
termed, with perfect truth, " one of the great fathers of modern
art,"* — had materially atrenglhened and very considerably ei-
tended their labours. Little was it conjectured at this moment
that to Leonardo was reserved the glory of constructing, upon
these eahrged foundations, the fane of his magnificent art. His
friends foresaw much of his after celebrity, but still of that
celebrity they as yet perceived merely the skirts. But that we
remember how Da Vinci, on entering Florence, abandoned him-
self to the pursuit of every desuUorf fancy, we should most
assuredly marvel that the anticipations of his associates were not
proportioned to the productions of his pencil. Their hesitation,
however, is accountable, if we recollect that, beyond his labours
at the eusel, Leonardo was at one time sailing on the river with a
party of madcap civilians, at another culling leaves in the hedge-
rows as a herbalist; now galloping his horse over the suburban
meadows, now mastering the rudiments of geometry, now
loitering in the fashionable lounges, the pink of the prevailing
mode ; or now, again, chauntiug a driukiug-song at a carousal,
the proverb arid pattern of boon companions. Tet, diversified aa
his occupations were, Da Vinci was never satisfied until he had
renderttd himself a proficient in each of the new studies upon
which, from one interval to another, he adventured. While ocder
men would have been acquiring a knowledge of one profession, or
ekill in one accompliahuient, Leonardo made himself au adept in
thirty, And it is this wonderful faculty for conquering the
difficultiea of learning which evidences the complete ofgauization

BiJIiid enlarged capacity of bis intellect.

^K -4a jncidenc occurred about this period which augured well

^^^ * Jleyoolds' Diacavmea to the Bojal hcklemj, vi. ^^_

LEONARDO DA VINCI — ^THE ARTIST. 11

for the fafcare achieyements of tlie young Florentine as an artist.
During one of bis periodical visits to the paternal mansion in the
Yaldamo, he was requested by a neighbour (one of tbe contadini
of Signor Pietro) to paint something, no matter what, upon a
circular piece of figwood, a rarity m size and smootbness, which
had been sawn from tbe stem of an old tree in bis garden. Tbe
boy seems to have been tickled by the eccentric vagueness of the
request. His imagination was excited to the conception of
something never dreamt of before, and his hand tasked for its
embodiment. Three weeks passed by, and he was still closeted
in his chamber, with his brushes, bis palette, and bis piece of
figwood. At length, one evening, after being engaged for many
hours upon his friendly composition, Leonardo laid a:>ide his
implements, and we can fancy him flinging his cap up to the
celling, and laughing till tbe tears glittered down his cheeks,
as he did so — the painting was finished ! That painting, the cele-
brated Botella del Fieo, is still, we believe, preserved. It is said
to be a miracle of ingenuity, and, in some sort, of power. Upon it
Leonardo exhausted every conceivable adjunct of the hideous and
the repulsive. The beautiful gleams of the twilight, as they
stole into the chamber in tbe Yaidarno, are said, according to the
biograpber, to have revealed the form of a monster-reptile, such
as man had never seen before, emerging from its den, its eyes
malignant and ''dead like a vulture's," its mouth distended, and
reeking with a greenish moisture, its feet armed with talons and
fizzled with hair, its loathsome body bristling with spikes, and
Its legs crouched as if for a spring at the throat of the spectator.
Tbe hue of the picture was of a cadaverous salmon colour.
Giorgio Yasari further assures us that Leonardo summoned his
&ther into bis apartment ; and that, on beholding tbe reptile,
which appeared, in the uncertain light of the evening, to be
actually palpitating with life, Pietro da Vinci recoiled with an
exclamation of horror. A painting of less value was presented to
the eontadino as a sort of compensation, and the Botella dtl Fico
was purchased for a hundred ducats by a Florentine merchant,
and subseauently for tbree hundred by Ludovico tbe Duke of
Milan. When engaged upon this singular production, Leonardo
had secretly collected every description of creeping thing the
place aiforded — newts, and adders, and lizards, tbiugs of tbe
scorpion tribe, and the spider tribe, and tbe rat tribe ; andv b^ s^
combination of them ali^ depicted a creature ol \.\ie m.o^\> ^^\.^^\j^i^^
^Toportiona,
He was not contented, however, with the^e iaa\.«iSX^a \^W5X^
'- aBpirations were loftier, and hia progresa m X>aft «\. ^^s^j

fOOTrKINTS ON THE ROAD.

equalled his aspirations. By assidiioiiB practice, br a rigid dis-
cipliuB, but especially by the innate nclies of liifl geniuB, he
rapidly outatripped hia master Verocchio in all the qualifioatioaB
most betitting a painter. iDsomuc-h waa this superiority mani-
fested that, having, ou one occaaion, been directc'd to introduce
the figure of an angel into a large picture reprepenting the
Baptism of Christ, Leonardo executed his task with such coo-
BUmniate ability, that it made the rest of the picture look mean
by comparison. From that moment Mecser Andrea Veroecbio
altogether abandoned the brush in despair — or rather, as Vaaari
expresses it, enraged (tdegnatosi), and worked thenceforth esclu-
nively OB a sculptor. The painting ia to tliis moment preserveil
in the Florentine Academy, and is an inimitable corroboration
of the anecdote. In justice to Verocchio, it must nevrrlhelesa be
remembered, that to his tutorage Leonardo da Vinci was first
consigned — that in hia studio that great mind first divulged the
splendour of its inspiratinus, that there it first held commune
with the renowned Perugino, the maaier of the divine Raphael —
thut there, moreover, Leuniirdo first really established his fame
by founding the third, or golden ago of painting. For these
thmgB has Verocchio become to na a name fur ever venerable.
The first to ^ecogni^e the glory of his pupil, as the mountain-top
— to employ the uiHJestic melapbor of Shelley — beholds that of
" the yet unriaen sun," the memory of Andrea Verocchio is on
that account sufiused, and, in a manner, actually sanctified by its
refles.

Very speedily the genius of Leonardo da Vinci became so
apparent, that it was bruited about the northern priucipaliciea of
tlio peninsula. Tiie almost bewilderiug variety of his accom—
plisbments excited such universal admiration, that hid merit grew
:it length into an adage among bis lellow citizens. It was not
very difficult, therefore, to conjecture, from the peculiar character
of those times, that a brilliant destiny was dawning upon the
young painter. A paasion for intellectual cultivation had, about
that epoch, become prevalent throughout the different states of
Italy — not as an epliemeral fushiou, but as a part of the national
character. Much of ihis eutbusiusm for the revival of literature
and art was traceable, uudoub'-edly, to the muuidceuce and
enlightenment of the Ifledicis ; and the illustrious Cosmo was just
at lliat period bting more than emulated — was being absolutely
Burpaa^ed, in expenditure and enterprise, by the magnificent
liurenzo. Wbecher it arose from a seiitimtnt ot jealousy, op
/hnai a vpontaueouB affection lor knowledge, vt w tftrtaiva vWit,
Mmeduitelv upon the commencement ot ttieRe e^^tWo^ «

LEONARDO DA VINCI — ^THE ARTIST. 13

Florence, a similar course was followed by most of tbe neigh-
bouring municipalities. Tbej vied with each other in the deco-
ration of their public edifices, in imparting a classical air to their
civic festivities, and in assembling together, within their walls,
tbe most erudite scholars, the most refined artists, and the most
profound philosophers, who could be seduced thither by flattery,
or retained by pecuniary encouragement. Among these Leonardo
now assumed a very distinguished position. His services were
courted by many princes, who became solicitous to number among
their retainers a man of such precocious celebrity, and to swell
the sum of their treasures . by the productions of his easel.
Notwithstanding the splendour of the offers made to him by
these supreme magistrates, Leonardo rejected them all, without
distinction, as insignificant, and, with characteristic independence,
made his own selection. The singular letter forwarded by him to
Ludovico, in 1483, is still visible in the Ambrosian Library at
Milan, and shows the delicate quaintness with which a man
may become his own panegyrist without degenerating into
egotism.

Ludovico, sumamed II Moro, not from the darkness of his
complexion, but from the circumstance of bis having chosen a
mulberry-tree (moro) as his heraldic device, was then reigning
as S>egent of Milan during the minority of his nephew, the Duke
Giovanni Gkdeazzo. He accepted the proposition of Da Yinci
with alacrity; and the latter was speedily established in the
Milanese court, with a yearly salary of five hundred scadi. The
exact period at which Leonardo made this important movement
in his profession has been rendered the subject of considerable
discussion. By the majority of the historians of art, it is erro-
neously dated at a little before the close of the fifteenth century ;
but we are satisfied that Monsignore Sabba da Castiglione is not
much at fault, when in his Bicordi he states 1483 to be the year
of the removal, firstly, because of the date of the application
already mentioned ; and secondly, because as early as 1485 we
find Leonardo founding an Academy of Arts in Milan, being
himself invested with the dignity of its president. Another
mis-statement has likewise crept into several of tbe biographies
of our artist, to the effect that he was engaged by Ludovico
rather as a musician than as a painter — a blunder so enforc: d by
repetition, that it is generally regarded as incontrovertible.
Fuseli, for example, was so unconscious tV\a.\i \\v« xck^XXt^T n4«& \^
anj reapect doubtful, that be has flippantVy a\.\iT\W\i^^ ^^ <;^"k^^
from Florence to Milan, to Ihe circum&taiice^ \>MX\ifccraaT^^V'8v
comtructed a lyre, and that Ludovico N^aa '' «^ ^^VeXJwwoX'^

I* FOOTPBIHTS ON TBa ROAD.

muaic!"* when it is indisputable tliat not one syllable is tnea-
tioned about Da Vinci's skill as a votary of Euterpe in that loDg
catalogue of hia acquirementa with which he tempted the repre-
eentntive of the house of STorza, and the original of which letter
is, as wo have aln-ady remarked, still preserved ia manuscript.
The aBsertion, however — origimiting in no leaser authority, it
must be confessed, than Vasari himself — baa been for ever set at
rest by the satii-fnctory and conclusive arguineots given by the
most recent of Da Vinci's biographers f— arguments which are
not the less valuable or definitive from being writtcii vith a
strictly logical sequence.

On his arrival in the capital of Lombardy, Leonardo had just
entered upon the fourib decade of his existence, and consequently
the seventeen years during which he continued at Milan, under
the patronage of D Moro, must be considered as doubly memor-
able — memorable because they embraced the period when his
body and his frame were in their ripe maturity, and memorable
because tbey witnessed the most remarkable of his many extra-
ordinary achievements. Among the first, as it certainly was among
the most distinctly unprecedented of these labours, undertaken by
Da Vinci at the inatigation of the Eegent Ludovico, was the
equestrian statue of Francisco Sforza, which he projected, and
what is more, actuiilly commenced. From the colossal propor-
tions of this monument, it was regarded by the more scientific
of his contemporaries as a hopeless effort, endeavouring to cast it
in bronze. Yet the daring mind of the artist was undeterred by
these clamours — he proceeded. Luca Paecioli, who eiclaim*
elsewhere of Leonardo that " he excelled in every way —
Apelles, Myron, and Folycleies," assures us that the statue of
Francicco was ultimately fabricated, alihough measuring no leas
than seventy-two feet in heigiit, and weighing no less than two
hundred thousand pounds. Notwithstanding the ingenuity of
the reasons given by Paecioli to account for the total disappear-
ance of a piece of bronze-work of such enormous dimensions,
namely, that it was broken up and melted alter the revolution of
1490, we cannot but regard the whole statemt^nt as improbable
and incredible. According to the majority of the memorialists,
it is maintained that the scheme never proceeded further than the
model, from the disinclination of the local government to attempt
an enterprise which was c.rtain to require such costly disbur
^unents. And the correctness of this statement is only the m

i. V. w\.

LEONARDO DA VINCI — ^THE ARTIST. 15-

assured by a passage which occurs in the Eicordi of Sabba da
Castiglione, describiug how that nobleman had beheld the bowmen
of Gascon J using the model of the colossal horse as a target for
their arrows. However much Leonardo's intentions may hav&
been frustrated in this instance, it is indisputable that he found
numberless opportuDities for the display of nis powers ; and that,
with the adroitness of a courtier, as well as witQ the facility of a
yersatile and cultivated intellect, he employed those opportunities
precisely as occasion required, for the use of his fellow-citizens,,
or for the amusement of his benefactor.

A beautiful incident occurred in 1489, which evinced the poeti-
cal imagination and the mechanical science of Leonardo da Vinci
in a striking manner. It was upon the marriage of the young^
Duke Giovanni Galeazzo to Donna Isabella of Arragou. Amonr
the various pageantries with which that ceremony was enlivened^
one outshone all the rest in magnificence and singularity, and it
was conceived by the fertile fancy of the renowned Plorentine
painter.

Happily, the details of this inimitably graceful f^te have
been recorded by the contemporary pen of Monsignore Sabba
da Castiglione. A sort of elder Fepys in his way, Sabba da
Castiglione has preserved to us, in all the freshness of quotidian
memoranda, whatever was most agreeable, or most worthy of
remembrance, in connexion with the brilliant court of Ludovico.
His Micordi — so minute, so garrulous, so exquisite in its parti-
cularity — may almost be regarded as ihQ Morning JPost of the
fifiteenth century. From the authentic pages of the Monsignore,
therefore, we acquire a vivid conception of this, among many
other gorgeous festivities Late on the even-
ing of the day upon which the august nuptials had been cele-
brated, according to our reporter of Castiglione, the nobles
and dames are summoned bv the sound of bugles to an open
theatre, constructed after the fashion of the ancient amphi-
theatres, attached to the ducal palace of Milan. Silver tripods,
bearing vessels of porphyry, are disposed at intervals between the
benches; imder the tripods are torches of cedar- wood; in the
vessels of porphyry are burning aromatic gums and incense. By
this arrangement of the decorations, as well as by the gradual^
closing in of twilight, a subdued and fluctuating light is produced,,
which not only renders the jewellery and costume of the s^ecta-
tors unusually picturesque, but materialVy aa«v^\.^\^cv^'^\3«vss^* K.
buzz from the aaaemblage — a pattering oi Toae-\>\Q»»o\!B» \x^cpa.'^
~i3 carpeting^-it ia the bndegroota YeadVns t>Mi "^^^"^ ^? ^
of digaity-^both of them robed in wViite nAn^^, ^^x^'^^^

arras
seat

fOOTPRlNTS 0^ THE ROAD.

violet sili, and cinctured with cloth of gold — both crowned with
flowerB. Another murmur riaee from the assembly — it is Leon-
ardo, seated uader one of the trjpode, holding in his hand a golden
Ivre of hiB own construction, shaped like a horae's skull, upon
which, Bay the Italian chroniclers, be played with aiieh ravishin)
melody as to he accounted the Boest eitemporaneous perfonne
of his age. His 6ngera are upon the strings — there is a death-
like silence — bis hand strays over the instrument deftly, playfully,
wiimingly, as though he would decoy the wandering spiritB of the
air; — there is a modulation in the melody — it is Borrowfui, it is
weeping ; and now it rolls upwards — higher — it gains enthustaBm
— it Boars ! Brightly twinkle the Btars OTerhend. A cry of
wonder hursts from the assembly — one of those stars e
forsake its place in the beavens^it rushes downwards
preaches them — it is a moon. The orb floats over the theatre to
the rippling of the strings upon the golden skull. The globe
opens, and the god Mercury is revealed in its centre — his feet
winged, hia caduceua in his hand — he chaunts a bridal song— the
cpithalamium of Giovanni Galeazzo. The planet closes and is
replaced by another^from it emerges Venus, girdled with the
zoneof love — her tones are more impaaaioned and sapphic. After
Venus, Mara, with the god in hie battle harness— his bridal verse
i a chivalrous and lusty. Then the Father of Olympus, grasping
Lis baleful thunderbolts— his voice being solemn and majestio.
And lastly, after Jupiter, Saturn, the sad and venerable. Then,
while the planets are revolving in concentric circles above the
theatre, like five gigantic moons — while the golden lyre :'
hreathing like an anthem under the fingers of ita master —
bright light illumines the whole city, a thousand boniires are
ignited, the bells in the turreta are ringing, their clamour is
drowned in the acclamations of the multitude, and the optical

delusion of Leonardo is completed So much for

Sabba da Castiglione, the Pepya of Tuscany ; and bo much, also,
lor that Bicordi which we have termed the Morning Post of the
fifteenth century.

While carrying out this exquisite and eccentric apectacle, the
artiat was aiiied only in one particular— the poetry being the
etiusion of his friend Belincionni. By such devices tie contrived
to diversify the more durable and splendid achievements of his
intellect; or, as has been oddly, jet we think happily, said of
him, " If he could talk precious stonea, like the princess in the
ArabiMB tale, be couid also talk brilliant and evancBcent blos-

asama. Ji /eeent commentator upon the c^iatactei o^SWVs^eTe,
^ph Waldo Emerson, baa observed t\iat t\\e Bm4 olSax.\iift

LEONARDO DA VINCI — THE ARTIST. 17

could accomplish "great things greatly — little things suhordi-
nately." The same may be said of Leonardo. If he penned a
treatise, it was marked by sobriety and acumen. If he built a
toy, it was a toy — gaudy, dazzling, and perishable.

Much as our artist achieved in affording entertainment to the
Milanese, the period of his official sojourn amongst them was
marked more especially and particularly by the useful em-
ployment of his abilities. Besides imparting a novel kind of
grandeur to the ceremonials of the court, he completed many
works substantially advantageous to the citizens. He con-
trived, moreover, by a felicitous arrangement of his exertions, to
gratify at the same moment the homely ambition of the com-
munity, and the princely appetite for luxury which characterised
Ludovico. While he assisted, for example, in effecting an
improvement in domestic architecture, by the revival of the
Grecian style and the rejection of the Gothic, he propitiated the
affections of the Eegent by his inimitable portraits of Cecilia
Gtillerani and Lucrezia Crevelli. Instead of evincing his pleasure
at the masterly manner i]i which the features of his two beautiful
favourites had been delineated, by a pecuniary reward such as
might be bestowed upon a journeyman, H Moro, as a graceful
token of regard, presented the painter with a small estate situated
near the Porta Vercellina. And Leonardo had worthily merited
this munificent donation. Not satisfied with enriching the city
with the productions of his atelier, he beautified it with enormous
structures, and increased its salubrity by the manner in which he
caused those structures to be employed. During the very year
which was rendered memorable by the death of Lorenzo de
Medici, namely, in 1492, Leonardo da Vinci achieved a victory in
the science of engineering hitherto deemed impracticable, by
connecting together the canals of Tesin and Mortesana. By the
construction of this celebrated aqueduct, a channel extending to
the length of two hundred miles conveyed the waters of the river
Adda to the battlements of Milan, and thereby, and in perpetuity,
conferred a boon beyond all price upon its inhabitants. Encou-
raged by the successful issue of this undertaking, Leonardo
projected works of yet greater magnitude ; he proposed to deepen
the bed of the Arno, and propounded a scheme by which he
pledged himself to lift up the whole bulk of the cathedral church
of San Lorenzo, while the foundations were being strengthened.
With the exception, however, of the plan by "tiVAcJcv V^ ^<i\A«tfe^
the i\Ky\gBi^oB of the Adda between Btii.i\o «i\:^^ 'St^'w*^ \s\<s^^
practicable, bia abilities as an engineer Tecw^A.^ \^^s^^ \>&k^> "*
farther encouragement.

*■ POOTPRINTB ON THE ROAD.

It was in the forty-eightli year of his oge, othervTiBe in 1197,
that Leonardo da Vinct realised the glurioua nugurieB of hb
youth, by coinnieneing one of those rare maeterjiieceB of human
invention, which defy imitation, while they ensure for the memory
of their creators an universal and almost unbounHed hoinage,
ProbHbly before the twelve months had elapsed, this memorable
production was finished, and the moist glories of the fresco
painting of the " Lord's Supper " beamed in all their oriKinal
perfection from the inner wall of the monastery. The subject
was 'treated ' by the command of Ludovico il Moro, and at the
time of its completion was the largest paiuting that bad ever
been attempted. It caused the renown of Leonardo to travel
over the civilised world, and raised him to the very pinuacle of
bia profession. Standing now within the refectory of the
Dominican convent of the Santa Maria della Qrazia, and
beholding only the shreds of the superb picture, which mildews ■
have blotched, and ignorance has mutilated, and accident bas
ravaged, it is still possible to descry glimpses of that beauty,
which, in the very worst of the random copies tuken before the
orig'nal was destroyed, demands and obtains our admiration. It
is still possible to authenticate those copies by the comparison of
tliem with the fragments yet unobliterated ; and it is possible,
^vhile lamenting the erasure of such consummate eicellence of
form, and hue, and expression, and grouping, and dramatic
narrative — and of such unutterable grandeur of treatment,
because of such esquisite simplicity of conception — it is possible,
even then, to find a solace m the crumbling plaster and the
curling paint, seeing that they testify how assuredly the memory
of a great artist will survive, without diriiinution, the deetructioa
of his masterpieces. They declare to us that the genius of art ia
independent of all perishable things, as far as its perpetual cele-
bration is coneernea; that canvas may rot thread by thread,
that marble may be splintered into atoms, that walls may become
prostrate, and pigments fade away like bruised flowers ; but that
the spirit of the genius which baa been lavished upon those
materials shall remain unforgotten, in defiance oC the friction of
lime and of the corrosiou of the elements. They proclaim, more-
over, that artistic genius bas about it such an indestruciible
vitality, that it shall renew itself, and multiply the sureties of
its immortali^ in the mere transcripts of others — that its very
siiadow or ri^aection shall be a guarantee of its remembraace.
Although we have said that glimpses of the original painting
^s"^ A? detected to this day, by the more\\gvWAB^ecV».\,ov,\t
■art/a^ aerertheleae, be ac^owledged tliat t\ioae gWm'gaea ua^^^

LEONARDO DA VINCI — THE ARTIST. 19

better than microscopic. So complete has been the destruction
of this wonderful picture, that it is absolutely impossible to decide
whether it was originally produced in oil, fresco, or tempera.
And the causes of this wholesale obliteration were, most cer^
tainly, more than sufficient to account for its rapid and perma-
nent disappearance. To the defective character of the stucco
which formed the tablet of Leonardo, must be added the unlucky
experiments of the artist himself, in the colours employed upon
its execution. How far those experiments interfered with the
preservation of the " Last Supper " may be conjectured from the
circumstance that, while the work was completed in 1498, it was
almost entirely effaced as early as 1540, and that, too, by the
simple operation of the atmosphere.

Leonardo is said to have painted the heads of the apostles
immediately after pencilling the outlines of the composition,
reserving the countenance of Christ till the end. Upon the
features of the more conspicuous of the disciples, however, he
exhausted aU his notions of the majestic; insomuch that on
coming to the allotted climax, he could not form to himself an
idea sufficiently grand and beautiful for the visage of an incarnate
Ood. Even his imagination, stirred as it ever was with '^ the
divine afflatus'* most requisite in grappling with the sublime,
even his itnagination shrank abashed and confounded before the
memory of a Bedeeming Deity — before the thought of those
loving eyes which had turned reproachfully on Simon Bjvrjonah ;
of that brow, awful in its placidness, which had rained a bloody
sweat in the garden by the brook of Oedron; of those lips which
had cried aloud on Golgotha, '' Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani P "
Before that tremendous ideal the adoring mind of Leonardo con-
fessed its impotence. He had not the audacity to attempt any
elaborated portraiture ; but, yielding to the advice of his friend
Bernardo Zenale, contented himself with lightly sketching in the
features which his presumption had once dreamed of perfecting.
The adroitness with which he thus slurred over the arch-difficulty
in the fresco has been compared, not inaptly, to the famous sub-
terfuge of Timanthes in veiling the face of Agamemnon, in his
representation of the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Still, the little
which his hand dared to depict of the head of Jesus Christ is so
admirable, as to have induced Eichardson to remark that *' the
part remaining visible is wonderfully finished:"* though, pre-
eminently noble as was the expression of t\iat «b\3L^w.^\. -^X^-a.^^^^^^
Vinci himself, if we may credit the asaertvon ol Qrvo Q?ttvt^^^^ ^

♦ Ricbardson'B Treatises on Painting. XoV. m. ^* ^^*

^^

20 "^^orrRiNTs os the hoad.

Bossi, pronounced it to be " imptrfect." Tbe brush of BellottJ,
who in 1726 renovnted (?) the entire productioD, presumed to
tamper with that solemn and merely hinted countenance.

Already there have been ao many, and such inimitable,
deeeriptionB of the " Latt Supper" by Da Vinci — (called strangely
enough by Mr. AddiBon, the " Marriage of Caua," and by Mr.
BoBcoe, leas erroueoualy, the "Inetitution of the Sacrament") —
already there have been so many commentaries upon the peculiar
manner of its treatment, that we abstain from giving an analysis
which might, not unreaaanably, be regarded aa superfluous.
Whoaoever may be eolicitous to scrutinize the picture through
tbe magnifying glass of professional criticism, or may be aniious
to appreciate the extraordinary art exhibited in the arrangement
of the compoaition, will do well to refer to the elegant classifica-
tion penned by Ghinirdo de Sossi, the annotator mentioned in
the last paragraph ; or, supposing tbnt catalogue to be unattaia-
■Ue, to peruse the admirable lecture by Barry, in which he par-
ticuiariBes, one by one, the different merits of the fresco ; the
genius displayed in the portraiture of the several apostles ; and,
most of all, the power evinced in the delineation of the Redeemer.
It must be remarked, moreover, that these observations of Barry
derive a particular interest from the circumstance that be was
possibly the last Englishman who saw the original painting before
it was irrecoverably scraped away by the blundering knife of
Pietro MaKzi.* Every cue who has hitherto commented upon
this great production — the greatest of all the achievements of
Leonardo! — has enlarged upon ihe extraordinary animation
expressed in the grouping, upon the equable distribution of tbe
lignta and shadows, upon tbe absolute completeness of the picture
aa a design, and especially upon the marvellous depth and variety
of emotions indicated in the thirteen physiognomies. Tet, when
the intense and unwearying application of the artist is borne in
mind — when it is remembered that the very aubordinate items
in the fresco were the result of the most profound deliberation —
when due consideration ia given to the minute and scrupulous
devotion with which the master-band of Leonardo was applied to
the undertaking, the wonder will cease, and the enigma will
appear no longer inexplicable.

As an illustration of tbe eaniestijesB with which he devoted his
whole intellect to the completion of his chef-d'teuvre, may be
adduced the accounts furnished by the differeut biograpliers, of
"a Khicb the head of Judas lacaciot was jiortrayed.

' Bartji'M Lecture on De^ga. Bolm'slW\fii>ii,Sj

LEOXASDO DA T15CI — THE JkBTEST. 21

Aeeoidiiig to tlieae aodioffitm^ I>a Tinci vis detemiiied to
expreflB in the fiaturepi of the timitoitHiB dbctple, the utmost
amoont of TiUanj and torpitode of which toe humm nsage ia
saaoeptible ; he rnc^Ted to i«nder that one £Me the coocoitnUKMi
of mennnesB and deprantj — ^the mirror, 80 to speak, of the most
ahjsmal atrodtj. To aecompiish thia» the artisst saw that it was
neceasarj to surpass his imagination hj appealing at once to
Nature, or rather, hj appeahug to that distortion of Natufo
whidi is disooT^ahle in the mofe infunous locsditiesof a populous
eitj. Impressed with this couviction, he explored the rookeries
of Milan, searching eTerjwhere for a Tisage sufficientlr treach«
erous and execrable to be accepted as a model for the betrarer.
For days, for weeks, the search of tbe painter was ineffectual ;
he found no hee whicb, to his exacting £iuct, appeared to be
capable of representing that monster of humaniiy. He in Tain
made expeditions into the prisons and peuitentiaries of the
Milanese, penetrating into tbe Tilest quarters — ^the Sjuut Gileses
and the Whitechapels of Tuscan j — nowhere could he discern the
looked-for double of the Iscariot. Meanwhile the refectory of the
Dominican convent was littered with the implements of the
studio, and disfigured with the unsightly beams and cords of a
temporary scaffolding. The brethren became impatient at the
discomfort thus prolonged into the pleasant hours of their refec-
tion. Asceticidui itself was proof against any annoyance but
that which disturbed the serenity of its appetite, obstructed the
dining-room, and endangered the cookery ! The Prior became the
mouthpiece of this monastic indignation. He waylaid Leonardo
and importuned him with remonstrances. Looking upon the
picture, it almost seemed, as a thing merely requiring time for the
laying on of so much pigment upon so much plaster, he became
irritated whenever the artist paused from his labours, his eyelids
closed, and the palette strung upon his thumb, in one of his
intervals of reverie or inspiration. Argument was futile: the
scaffolding was there — the fre&co was uuHuished — the refectory
^as in confusion: these facts, incontrovertible in themselves,
amounted, in the estimation of the Prior, to a stupendous
grievance. At length the latter, in the extremity of his impa-
tience, complained of the procrastination to Ludovico. On
hearing of this ungenerous proceeding, Da Vinci whimsically
bethought himself of an expedient whereby hia. futus^ tt^x^o^^Sx^
might be ensured. In a conversation mtVi II Moro^V^ i^i:\^\»ns^^^
tbe actual reaaou for hia delay, and tVireateueA \.o t^\«^'^ ^^-^^"^
/ro/n the cbaace of farther auQoyauce bv ttwiwi^ xXv^ >^w^
of tbe Domiaican auperxot in the charactw o^ ^vA^^^^'^

22 rooTPaiNTS on the koad. I

Dreading the possibility of such a rctnliatioo, nnd abashed by the-
derision excited against himself by the threat, the Prior became
very speedily reconciled to the delay, and to, what waa worse
than the delay, its consequence — the scaffolding. In this cir-
cumstance has originated the tradition, that Leonardo actually
delineated the iriar as tlie criminal apostle." But, beyond the
fact recorded by all contemporary writers, that the countenance
of the Duwinican waa about the very last Da Vinci would have
ehoaen as the countenance of an lacariot, the thing was lite-
rally impossible; for, in order to have acted thus, vindictiveQess
was necessary, and vindictiveoefs was not in the nature of
Leonardo.

A signal act of reverence to the genius which had evoked this
wonderful painting, occurred in 1796, in the refectory of Santa
Maria della Grazin. During bia immortal campaigns ia Italy,
young Bonaparte entered that chamber and, having gazed with

Erofound interest upon the ruins of the fresco, there, upon hia
nees, wrote an order of the day, directing that the apartment
should be held sacred from military occupation. Although that
beautiful incident did not prevent the French cavalry from stabling
their horses in the dining-room, or from firing; their bullets at
the apostles, aud even at the dim ef&gy of the Eedeemer, it ao far
mitigates the blame attached to the invading army, that we can
almost listen with auiazement to the foolish vagueness with which
Mr. Brown observes, that "the brutality of the soldiery soon
completed what the ignorance of the priesthuod and the ravages
of time had commenced."* When it is borne in recolltction
that the feet of Christ and of several of the disciples had been
cut away by the Dominicans for the purpose of increasing a
doorway, and that the whoJe surface of the wall was flecked with
blotches of damp, it must be au-kuowleilged that time and the
priesthood had left but little enough for " the brutality of the
soldiery" to obliterate. Beyond the extenuation afforded to the
military profession by tlm anecdote of Napoleon, it must not be
forgoiten that, in 1807, Prince Eugene Beauhurnais, then viceroy
of the kingdom of Italy, engaged Giuseppi Bossi to take an
accurate copy of the "Lord's Supper" in mosaic — n proceeding
the more laudable from the scarcity of the copies by Lomazzo, by
Oggioiii, by Luino, by Monaignon, and by Hantagostino, as well
as from the costliness of the celtbrated engravings by Frey, by
Woffiiej-, and by the Chevalier Raphael Jlcrghen. Among the
riitJi/esB Bpolktions of n-arfare, the care thus mauiTeatei tot \J

's tife of Leoimrdo. p. S

LEONARDO DA VINOI — ^THE ARTIST, 23

preservation of a single painting, and that painting very nearly
effaced, becomes to us an act peculiarly worthy of commendation.
It would seem as if, after a lapse of three centuries, and in a
period of political conflagration, the genius which was imprinted
upon the wall had extended its JBgis over its decaying ruins, and
had transformed a eoencusulum into a sanctuary.

Shortly after Leonardo had established his supremacy as an
artist by the completion of the marvellous composition in which
the lips of the Incarnate God appeared to be articulating those
solemn and pathetic words, '^ Amen, dico vobis quia untu vestrum
me traditums est ** — his fortunes were altogether changed by a
series of military and political catastrophes. The excessive ambi-
tion of Ludovico II Moro proved to oe not only the destruction
of himself, but the misfortune of Tuscany. Desirous, without
doubt, of rivalling Lorenzo the Magnificent by the splendour of
his marital alliances, the Begent, in 1493, negotiated a marriage
between his niece, Bianca Maria Sforza, and the Austrian Em-
peror, Maximilian. During the subsequent year. King Charles
Vill. of France descended upon Italy, and soon werwards
Giovanni Galleazzo, the youthful Duke of Milan, suddenly
expired. Notwithstanding the insinuation of Guicciardiui, we
are by no means disposed to credit the assertion that Ludovico
caused his nephew to be assassinated by the administration of
poison, especially as that assertion is uncorroborated by anything
like well-authenticated evidence. The suddenness of the demise
of Giovanni, coupled with the circumstance of its occurring at
such a marvellously convenient juncture, seems at first, it is true,
to justify suspicion; but the thought that on no other occasion
has crime of any sort been attributed to U Moro, and the reflec-
tion that, from the distinguished po;»itian occupied by himself in
the government, there was virtually no utility whatever in brand-
ing himself with the guilt of homicide, induce us to regard the
imputation as altogether unproven, and to dismiss the mere idea
of it as improbable. However this may be, immediately upon
the decease of his unfortunate nephew, Ludovico assumed the
ducal crown ; and, in consequence of his usurpation, war was at
once declared against him by King Louis XII. of France, who
had shortly before succeeded to the throne, his predecessor,
Charles VlIL, having died without children. The casus belli
advanced by the former monarch, was the declaration of a clauxk
to the Duchy of Milan by virtue o£ b\a gcwid^wvo^V^st^^^^^^s^a^
YiacoDti, a liaeal descendant from th© lLo\xu^«t o1 x>»fc '^^'^^i^
djrmstfr. Que campaign, was sufficieuV. to ^\x\iN«t>t ^5X\ft ^Qr«^^
Jjtidovico n Moro. His army was oyeT^Vifi\tCLe^ \>1 ^^^ ^^^^

mmamm

Zl^ FO0TPBINT3 OS THE ROAD. \

forces of bis antagonist; te himself, after a uuinber of vioiasi-
iuUei<, was captiirfd and imprisoned in the Ch&teau de Lochea, in
Tonraiue; and thero the aoHomplisbed and once puissant prince
ultimately perished in the wretchednet^B ui' captivity.

On the discomfiture of his protector, LeoLiardo was formally
introduced to the conqueror; aud, as the readiest meane of pro-
pitiating the favour ot Lonia, presented )iim with the portraila or
two TirginR, subjects which lie always treated with a touch of
matchless beauty. As a token of his pleasure, the French aove-
reign settled a peneioD upon the artist ; and, in addition to that,
presented him with certain rij^hta of property in tlioae canalx
of the Mortesana which his iudnatry had so materially improved.
It was upon the entrance of Louia XII. into the vauquished
city, aud uot in celebration of an interview with liis Buoiesaor,
Francis I., that Da Viuci displayed bis cunning as a mechanician,
liy the iabrication of his celebrated automaton. The illusion ia
I hna described by hiatoriauB ; Ah the king, say they, was crosaing
the veatibule of tlie palace, a lion of vast proportions emerged
from behind a curtain at the extremity of the hall ; it advanced
deliberately towards the porch, paused, fawned upon the feet of
Louis, raised itself upon its buttocks, and, tearing open its breast,
revealed a curved escutcheon embisBoned with the ilovrer-de-luce.
By such costly and elaborate compliuients, did the Florentine
eLiforce the IkscJuatioa ot his persona! address, and extend hia
reputatiou as a courtier.

Although Leonardo was subjected to considerable annoyance
from the prolonged occupation of Milan by the French soldiery —
aud althuugh he was frequently compelled, by the casualties of the
Lour, to change his residence, and sometiinea even to seek repose
beyond the foctiiications of the city in the little Melzi Villa,
situated at Vaprio, halt v. ay on the road to iiergauio — lie waa
nevertlieless particularly addicted, at this period, to the indul-
gence of one of his most characteristic wlilins. We allude to
bis passion for studying the variatious of the human counteuaoce
under every species of circumstance — whether agitated by emotion,
inane with imbecihty, giotesque, odd, grave, lugubrious, fantsHtic,
or, what was most agreeable of all to our painter, bewitching
from its exceeding couieliness. Such was his euthusiasm in this
acrutiuy, tliat be occasionally walked beside the tumbrils in which
the crijuiuals were being dragged to execution, noting, either in
the pallor or distortion of their features, the workings of horror
oj- rcmorae, or, that moat appaliiag of all eipreaaiona, tt^e BT-otea-
«/c!a o/' c'oaaciuua dcpritvity. SometimeB, aga\n, \j6 wouli \u\\«s ^
^off^ffi the atrcets, ou tkc a/ert for everv wU\niB\i:ftV ftn4 eccentTN*

LEONARDO DA VINCI — ^THE ARTIST. 25

physiognomy, smothering his merriment whenever he encountered
a face peculiarly droll or bizarre^ and retiring into a doorway to
sketch it on his tablets in the first flush of his hilarity. Mar*
vellouB as it may appear when we consider the grandeur, the
majesty, the purity, and the almost sublime holiness of the style
of this great painter, it is, nevertheless, true that he was one of
the mos^ inimitable of caricaturists. Those who have never
glanced through a portfolio of his comic drawings, faithfully
transcribed from the original either by the auouymous French-
man, M. le G. de C, or by the congenial pencil of Wenceslaus
Hollar, — those who only know him by his Madonna upon the knees
of Saint Anne, by his Madonna with the Dewy Fioioers, by his
cartoon of Adam and Mve in the moment of Temptation, by his
Magdalene, his Leda, his JPomona, his Medusa, or his Daitghter of
Serodias, — those especially who are only familiar with his artistic
powers through the exquisite picture of Christ disputing with the
J?harisees* which is preserved in the National Q-allery (No. 18),
can have no conception of the extravagant drollery of his carica-
tures — faces gluttonous, lecherous, truculent, mincing, iuflamed,
attenuated, supercilious, criugiug, bloated, cadaverous, and always
to a monstrou;} exaggeration — laces Quixotic in expression and
Hudibrastic in form — faces as odious as those of Yahoos, and as
unhuman as those of Kouyhnhnms ; bottle-no:fed, beetle-browed,
full and carbuncukr in chin, prodigal of eye, and casually devoid
of some perfectly indispensable teature. It is impossible to open
one of these portfolios without poriug over its pages, as we have
pored over them, until the whole heart has been sunned and
mellowed with laughter. Du Eresnoy acknowledged the excel-
lence of the practice which produced these inimitable and pre-
posterous outlines, where he commends that same practice to
his professional readers, bidding them mark the features of the
passers-by in a crowded thoroughfare : —

" Perqae vias, vnltas houiinam, motosqae notabis
Libertate Bua proprios, pusitasque tiguras
Kx sese laciles, ut'inobserTatns, habebi8."t

* By some uoaccoantable blander, the late gifbed artist, Mr. Haydon, took it
into his head, while writing the analytic and histoiical article on Jk^ainting, in
the Encydopesdia Britannioa (vol. xvi. pp. (>93— 730), to call this picture, not
** Christ in the Synagogue,'* but ** Christ and the Doctors ;" and thereupon he
atka^ in a tone of the most supercilious impertinence, '* why Christ, who dia^^at^d
▼ith the doctors at twelve years of age, should be \ajr9,Q( vn ^t^KscL «sA \v<^»^ >2&a:&.
the doctors^ who are sixty ?" A fault there is, \kii(\u«&\>vQii»iXA's ,>avj^\\»"v^ ^•'^^''^ ^'
the part of Leonardo's commentator— tbe old men in xift \>«y<iV^xvyisaA\»>»%'^'^^
ihetoj^ nor apostles, nor erangelists—but pha\-iaeea.
t M. Charles Alpbonse Da Fresnoy's Arte i3tr»pVivca, ^. ^^^.

Tooii

A nother amusing practice with Leonardo was to watch the num-
berlesH distortionB of tlie visnge caused by eicesaive gaiety. For
the better gratification of this pleasant conceit, he would now and
then invite a company of boora to a merry -making in his orchard,
presiding himself at their rustic banquets, and tickling bia guesta
into risibility by the drollest anecdotes, the broadest jokes, and
the most amiable absurdities. Often may he have sat thus enjoy-
ing the blithe looks of the peasantry, sprawling back perchance
upon tbe grass to pelt the ripe apples from the boughs, and noting,
between whiles, the pMgrewsive effects of the facetious. In this
affection for natural merriment, we can detect something more
than idle pastime; we can perceive in it the indications of a
genial and sinless heart. Besides which, Leonardo invariably
turned these quaint carousals to advantam ; he gathered from
them materials to be afterwards revived in his more serious avoca-
tions, turning the commonest things into the most precious by a
species of mental alchemy — aa Nature, that true Eoaicrucian,
resolves the excrescence of the oyster into a pearl.

From the disturbances which unhappily ensued among the
Milanese in consequence of the French invasion, Leonardo "«
at length compelled to forsake Lombardy, and on the dawning
the sixteenth century had again established himself in Florence.
He was welcomed to his birthplace, with the honours due to his
celebrity, by the chief magistrate, Pietro Soderini, who, on tbe
banishment of Pietro de Medici, had been nominated G-onfalo-
niere Perpetuo. Alniust immediately upon his arrival. Da Vinci
was formally commissioned by the Senate to decorate a portion
of the council- chamber with allegorical and historical paintings.
His companioD in the undertaking was a young man just then
rising in public estimation — Michelangelo Buonarotti. Here it
wan, possibly, that the genius of Leonardo da Vinci shone fortb
with its utmost brightness, for here it was that that genius was
brought into direct rivalahip with one of the grandest intellects
God ever vouchsafed to mortal. And Leonardo passed, without
any diminution to bis fame, through the ordeal of that rivalship
with Buonarotti — a circumstance tiie more eitraordinary, con-
sidering that the former was approacbiuj; bis sixtieth summer,
whereas the latter was scarcely thirty. Kothing, indeed, was
wanting to excite emulation in these remarkable competitors —
the one possessing originality in its very lustibood, the other
having cultivated his powers to their utmost maturity ;— the
one aoJicitoas to preserve the precedency whicU W \ia4 TL\t«wi-j
oAia/ueef, tbe other ainbitioua of acquiring lenowo. \>y anB.ta'MQft
m»cn>^a from hig venerable predecessor. Out oS \.\i\a tt«yi«

LEONARDO DA VINCI — THE ARTIST. 27

competition came those two celebrated cartoons wbich elicited
tbe admiration of their contemporaries, but which were unhappily
destined to a very early destruction. The cartoon of Michelangelo
was illustrative of an episode in the siege of Pisa by the Floren-
tines ; it represented, in fact, a party of soldiers surprised while
bathing, and was marked by the vigour which afterwards became
manifest in bis more gigautic compositions. The most con*
spicuous excellence appears to have been the introduction of
several naked figures of infinite grace and of surprising power.
The cartoon of Leooardo, originally intended to adorn the Palazzo^
Yecchio, was an equestrian combat, portraying the discomfiture
of the famous Italian soldier, the Condottiere Niccolo Piccinino.
It was characterised by a robust energy and a masculine anima-
tion. One group ot infantry and cavalry wrestling for a banner
— a group pyramidical in design and singularly forcible in con-
ception — has been rendered familiar to posterity by countless
engravings taken from the sketch by Eubens, or from the antique
prints of Veneziano, Antonio, or Edelynck. In the representa-
tion by Antonio, called among the dealers in art Les OrimpeurSy
it will be perceived that the horses themselves are participating
in the struggle, their teeth and hoofs vieing with the swords and
lances of the human antagonists. Both these inimitable produc-
tions were unfortunately destroyed during the intestine wars
which ravaged Tuscany ; but it is certain, from the unanimous
assurances of those who were lucky enough to behold them while
exhibiting at Florence, as well as from the simple but significant
fact that the opinions of those spectators were balanced as to^
their superiority, that they must have been masterpieces worthy
of that majestic emulation. It was a renewal of the Yirgilian
conflict between Dares and Entellus — between the athlete, vene-
rable alike from his age and his victories, and the gladiator,
dauntless at once from the ripeness of his manhood and the
supremacy of his ambition. The one powerful in retrospect, the
other in anticipation ; the one unconquerable in repute, the other
unassailable in vigour.

** nie, pedum melior motu, fretusque jaTent&,
Hie, membiis et mole vaiens.'**

It is by such rivalries that the miracles of human valour, and
wisdom, and eloquence, have been, on diflei'ent occasions, evoked;
that the voluptuous Edward IV. aud^fatm^V \>Ci'^ >L\\v^\s^^&^^^
were aroused to a display of proweaa «ta t.^TtiM^<ei ^ ^>s^a2^ ^^ ^^^

* .Eneid, v. 4^0.

Grecian demigods ; tliat Burke and Sheridan were inspired with
oratory not unworthy of Dtmoathenes ; that Newton and Leibnits
vere animated to Buch profound and eucceeaful reseiirches as
eclipsed even the moat brilliant achievementa of preceding philo-
GOphers. In the instance of Leonardo and Miclielan^elo, the
emulation was enhanced by its peculiar publicity a.* well aa by
the hiatoricnl character of their joint undertaking. Florence was
the amphitheatre ; the civic eouucil-ehamber was the an-na ; the
municipal government were the judges of the competitors; the
most enlightened among the inhabitants of Tuscany were tho
spectators. That the result of this eitraordinary contest was
beyond the expectations even of the more sanguine citizens, is
testified by the boiuidless and unesceptionable applause awarded
to the cartoons. The caaimlties of a civil commotion have pre-
vented posterity from deciding for themselves as to the justice or
injuatica of that universal approval ; but contemporary writera
have afforded it the most <lecisive corroboration by their candid
and spontaneous i!aneg\rics, Beuvenuto Cellini has gone so far
as to designate these drawings " the school of the world " — la
seuola del tnondo* an expression more pregnant with praise than
the most studied eulonium. Baldinucci goes still further, main-
taining t that after their production, the works even of Maaaccio
were scarcely worthy of remembrance. And in addition to this
may be cited the emphatic declaration of M. Quatremere de
Quincy, who observes, that the cartoon of Buonarotti, and hia
"Holy Pamily," at ouL-e establiahed his reputation as the &rst
artist in designings — " Acqwirent alors a {lui) la reputation du
^premier de tout let deiunat^n" % This lust commendation, it
must be observed, ia, moreover, an indirect panegyric upon the
equestrian combat of Da Vinci, seeing that it was in no way out-
shone by its Juxtaposition with auch an astonishing original.

During hia resideuce at Florence, according to a very general
belief, Leonardo was visited by the immortal Raphael d'Urbino.
Dating their interview at 1503, the latter muse then have been
in his twentieth year, a period particularly fitted for the reception
of those opinions by which the whole of a mau's after-career is
coloured. Whether, indted, ihia personal intercourse between
Raphael and Leonardo is actual or merely aupposititious, it is
altogether beyond dispute that Kaphael owed much of hia ovin
development as a paniter to the conlemplation of the works of

* Fits di Bearenata Ctlli'ni. Lib. i. cap, it. p. *6.
/ Opera di Filippo BaJdiuucci. Vol. v"i, p. 130.
^^^^^£Mit^ta/ibie Uiiiveraelle. Tom. KK-riii. T' 67^,

LEONARDO DA VINCI — ^THE ARTIST. 29

Leonardo. The fact has been recorded by Barry, where he
observes, that ** from his (Leonardo's) works, Giorgione and Pra
Bartolomeo formed their beautiful style of colouring and relievo,
and Raphael his taste for the expressive, and for diversity of
character;"''^ and it has, in addition to this, been admirably ex-
pressed in a single sentence by Sir Joshua Beynolds : " Eaphael,*'
says he, '^ began by imitating implicitly the manner of Pietro
Perugino, under whom he studied — he soon imitated the grand
outline of Michael Angelo — he learnt the manner of using
colours from the works of Leonardo da Vinci and Pra Barto-
lomeo."t It was not merely in the use of colours, however, that
the Florentine tutored the divine and inspired mind of TJrbino,
as the remark of Barry has already partially indicated. In deli-
cacy of expression, in purity of sentiment, in vividness of deline-
ation, his mind became as a chalice, from which Baphael imbibed
the nectar of inspiration. Nor could he have made a happier
selection. As a competent authority has well remarked, among
the creations of all his contemporaries, those of Leonardo were
his fittest model : '' // semble que si Raphael avait eu a se donner
nn seul modele parmi les ouvrages de see contemporaines, il aurait
ckoisi les (Buvres de Leonardo,** % Thus is it that one intellect
in its adolescence acquires a precocious ripeness from accumu-
lating the nourishment of example from its predecessors ; thus is
it that one artist produces more mellowed and perfected com-

Eositions, by inoculating himself with the more estimable pecu-
arities of another ; thus is it that he frequently rises above his
master in the splendour and multiplicity of his works, as the
grafting of a shoot upon a young and naturally exuberant stock
ensures a still more navorous and prolific fruitage.

Circumstances succeeded each other about this time which
graduallv estranged Leonardo from the Florentines, and induced
him ultimately to forsake bis birth-place. The death of his
father, in 1504, rendered even the Yaldamo less attractive than
it had been hitherto ; besides which, the progressive rise of
Buonarotti in the estimation of the citizens filled his proud and
sensitive nature with misgivings as to the possibility of being
eclipsed. Something like jealousy — not jealousy itself, but some-
thing akin to it, for we have reasons, which shall be afterwards
explained, for coinciding with the English biographer when he
observes of Da Vinci, that *' the rust of envy never corroded hia

t

♦ BuTfa Lectnrea, Bohn's edition, p. l^T .
f ^jnolda' LectarcB. Dis. vi.
t Biognpbie UnireraelU, Tom. x\. p. ^^^.

"•1F00TPRINTS OK ■lliE BOAD.

noble heart ;"• aotnetUing, we say, like jealouay bad been evinced
towards hia napiring competitor, wlien, iu tlieir first intevview,
be addresBed Miclielangelo in tliese hauglity worda, " I was
already faiitous before you were in esistence ! " Not that he waa
incapable of appreciating the eiceUericies of another ; but that
'his great bouI revolted at the nolion of not being appreciated
Iiim8>-]f. The dread of this at laat impelled bim to seek an addi-
tion to his glory by entering the inlellectual arena of Chriatendoni.
About mid-day, on the 2<tth of September, 1514, Leonardo set
-out for Eome in company with Giuliano di Medici, intending to
witnean the installation of that uobleinan'a brother, the Cardinal
Giovanni, in the pontifical chair, under the title of His Holineaa
Pope Leo X. During the journey, the versatile mind of the old
man was asaiduoualy occupied in striving to accompliah some odd
contrivance for the entertainment of bis fellow-traveller. Among
other devices, he fabricated a neat of automaton birda, which
fluttered round the carriage and re-entered at the window. Ae a
sort of corollary to this ingenioua trick, it may here be mentioned
that Leonardo, in one of hia literary compositions, mnintaina the
feasibility of mankind, at some future time, being enabled to
niivigaie the air in conveyances, a notion embodied a few years
since in an eccentric speculation. Notwithstanding the doubt
expressed by M. Duppa, in his biography of Buonarotti, as to
whether Da Vinci ever viaited the Eternal City during the pontifi-
cate of Leo, we are satisfied, by a preponderance of evidence, that
such n'as not only the caae, but that he waa honoured by a private
audience with that accomplished Pontiff. Our opinion ia the
result of a very simple series of deductions. Before ony circum-
stance is adduced iu reference to this particular journey, it must
be remarked that Leonardo is acknowledged by every authority
indiscriminately to have travelled to and fro, at some time or
■other, into almoat every important city iu the northern and mid-
land portions of the Italian peuinaula. Much uncertainty no
doubt exists as to the exact period of theae peregrination a, but
the fact of them has hitherto remained indiaputable. No one,
for example, has evinced ony incredulity whatever as to the truth
of the assertion that, somewhere about 1494, Leonardo proceeded
to Favia, where he studied anatomy under the celebrated Marc
Antonio della Torre ; on the contrary, the anatomical drawings
made by the rioreutine in red chalk t are univeraally regarded

^^^^^ LEONAEDO DA VISTCI — THE AliTIBT. 31

S3 unanBwerable proofa of hia aojourn iii the GenocBB UniverHity.
Agian, it is couaidered by almost every writer as altogether
undeniable, that, during Leonardo's secoud residence in Florence,
he repeatedly made eicuraioo?, at one time to Urbino, at another
to Pe»aro, to Kinuei;i, to Ceaena, and so on, at fitful intervals,
traversing the whole of Komagna, and ultimately settling down
in the capital of Tuacany. "Upon these particulars, anDotatorB,
«hronologi3t8, and antiquaries, have been unanimous without one
exception. But Eome ! — There, indeed, has been the point of
divergence. Directly the elevation of Oardiiial Medici to the
{loutifical chair has been mentioned in recording the adventures
of Leonardo, Italian annalists have pauaed in bewilderment,
Eoglish commentatore have acratched their heads and hesitated,
and French encyclopiediBtB have shrugged their shoulders with the
eenuine shrug of sceptieinm. Now, looking at the matter with
tiie ealmnesa of the moat profound inJiffereuce, and defending
ouraelves by that meana from all those blunders of judgment
vhich are the certain concomitants of predilection and partisan-
ship, it is impossible not to perceive at once that the journey
from Floreuce to Home in the suite of Giuliano de Medici, ia
one of the moat fuUy authenticated of all the incidents iu the
career of Leonardo. Whatever arguments can be adduced by M.
Duppa, or by those who coincide with JL Duppa, in regording
the anecdote of the interview with Leo X. as apocryphal, are
only argumeota of a singularly partial and inferential character ;
whereas the proofa by which those doubts have been opposed
are as singularly direct and positive. The truth of this can be
readily indicated in a very iaw sentences. .All the authorities
which M. Duppa can enumerate in favour of his supposition, are
fiucb writers as Borghini, Sereno, Baldaasare, and Itoseoe. Kow,
the corroboration derived from those authorities reduces itself to a
very insignificant compass, when we discover that Borghini simply
omiU the Horif, that Aurelio Sereno omits it, that Ealdassare da
Peseta omiU it, and that Mr. Boscoe, following in the footsteps
of his predecessors, otnils it. Not that they demonstrate tne
impossibility of such a journey by proving aaalibi, neither that
they eiplain its improbability by any novel revelation of facts ;
but simply they omit any record of the occurrence. Ou the
opposite side the authorities are such men aa Vaaari, as Fabroni,
aa Mariette, as Du Fresnoy, and as Amoretti ; and they all speak
emphatically and unanimously to the point without the thadow
ut a prevarication. Nothing, indeed, couid, by au^ ■^asa'Ca'to.'s.^ ,^i*
more eiplicit than the announcement conlivaei wi \.V« ■ow^^* ^
Vasari, that Leonardo journeyed to Home mftvyfto^vis-e tiwiiviB

"TOOTPRINTS ON THE I

di Medici to wit.neBB tlie installation of tlie Pontiff Leo. " Ando
a Soma," Bays tliG clironicler, " eol Duea GiuUano de Medtei nella
creazione di Papa Leone," &c.* Mariette t repeats the asBertion in
like manner; and so after Fubroni ; J and so after Dii FreBnoyjg
and BO after Amoretti, || until the latest biographer, If Mr. Brown,
becomes so fully inipreBsed with a convicti'ni of its authenticity,
that he mentionB the fact of the visit to the metropolis without
any alluBion whatever to its being of a dubious character. That
our intelligent countryman was justified in this opinion, we thint
is clearly demonstrated by the foregoing arguments — argumeotB
which, until now, we believe have never been grouped together
from the works of the different authorities,

Leonardo, therefore, did accompany Giuliauo to &ome, and
obtained an audience from the sovereign pontiff. It is strange
to learn, nevertheless, that tbia introduction was productive of
scarcely any advantage to the painter; for, excepting a single
commission from the Pope's dotario or nlmouer, Baldassnre da
Pescia, and an unfulfilled commission from Leo liimaelf, the
artistic abilities of Da Vinci were not called into requisition during
hia Bojoumiutbe capital. Chagrin at this undeserved neglect
ultimately compelled him to seek encouragement elsewhere. Some
commentators liave attributed the coolness on the part of Hin
Holiness to the malignant insinuations by which bis mind had
been prejudiced against our adventurer; and have even asserted '
that those insiuuatious proceeded from the immediate partisans of
Buonarotti. This is more than improbable, however, from the dis-
favour with which Michelangelo was himself invariably rrgarded
by the same pontiff. We are disposed to view the indifference
luauifeated towards these gifted beings by Pope Leo, as originat-
ing in one of those unaccountable antipathies by which the loftiest

• Le Tit* de plu EccEllcnti Pittori, &c., 4lo Bologna : 1647. Vol. ii. p. 12.
t Lettere Pittoriche, Ho. 84.
t Life of Leo X., p. 219.

% See tba liiogtapbic introdnclion preSied to Dd Fresnoj'a poeni, "Delia
Pittnra."

11 Uemorie Sloriche, Sc. p. lOG. Spealcing of Gialiiuio, Amoretti \eie
observes : — ' ' Che ben lapea gnanlo Lionardo valaie nun conlenlo di far amoteere
in palria in qual amlo lo ieneait egli, Mco il a/ndiutt a guella mefrapoli, mentre
celi paiiavaii ad astislcTC alia wwrwazion* dtl Pontifia." Snppoaiag,
howcTei, thnt Amoretti stood aloDe in this Statement^ we sfaodld not, mwit oer-
tainlf, bare adduced hii remark aa conclosiTe tenliuioD]'; Fur in a preoeding part
/f>. S3) he CBoUj tAkes for granted, without an; anScient antiioiitj, that Leonardo

•rent Into France for s Utth while in lEOfi, i

'opn^ble—Bos i impnSatik/
vjfmwB'a Lifa of Leonardo, p. 135,

LEONARDO DA VINCI — ^THE ARTIST. 33

judgments are occasionallj warped ; aud our conjecture is borne
out bj a singular and well-authenticated anecdote.

It was the custom of Leonardo da Vinci, as it afterwards
became that of Titian and Sir Peter Paul Bubens, to receive his
more important visitors in his studio. There, surrounded by the
half-fimshed creations of his fancy, he appeared to be invested
with a majesty which enhanced the habitual nobleness of his
aspect ; there, too, clad, according to his wont, in the costliest
velvets, his fingers sparkling with jewels, his neck cinctured with
a golden collar, his head covered with a cap of wadded satin, cut
in a grotesque but becoming fashion, he pursued his avocations
undisturbed by the presence of princes and ambassadors — his
ardour admitting of no abatement in his search after the Beau-
tiful.

One morning, as we are told by contemporary writers. Da Vinci
was seated in his Boman atelier at an earlier hour than ordinary.
The incident has been depicted with such an earnest vividness b^
Vasari, and repeated with such an agreeable gusto by Amoretti,
that every minute detail or accessory starts out upon our imagina-
tion like a reality. "We can picture to ourselves even the pencil of
sunlight which must have stolen in through the lattice at that
early hour, and quivered upon the square of canvas upon which '
the artist was about to commence his painting for the Sov^eign
Pontiff. We can imagine the confusion of rare manuscripts,
then more than ever precious, scattered negligently over the
tables. We can see the embroidered saddles, the daggers from
Damascus, the herbariums of Morocco, and those other appur-
tenances of the chase and the laboratory which Leonardo loved as
the implements of his volatility, and which were always either
hanging in abundance against the wainscot, or peering from the
tapestiy of his apartments. On this occasion he was bus^ in the
mixture of certain chemical ingredients for the composition of a
new description of varnish: and we can conjecture how his
attention must have been divided between his different occupa-
tions, his eyes glancing now towards the compound boiling over
the chafing-dish, now towards the canvas lit up by the sunbeams,
and now, again, to the attendants occupied in preparations for
the day's labour — one cleansing the palette, another arranging
the flasks and sponges, another polishing the stone for grinding
colours. As the liquid bubbled over the flames, we can fancy to
ourselveB the artist stirring it monotouoxiAV} tqxxtA ^xA t^>ssA
with the horn ladle, humming to \iim^e\S, m«3 \i^t ^qto^^ ^
crusading roundelay. PJeasant ttiougVila Tp^Tcmxicft 5^^'^'"^^
^ boBom in the sweet morning pleaBaut mexcioxHft^^ ^'^^'^

TOOTPBTHTS ON THE ROAD.

anticipation B of the future. And etill, without doubt, Ltie sun-
shine glittered on the csnvaa; still the liquid bubbled over the
chatiug-diah ; the bom ladle atill went round and round ; the
aptiat Btill hummed the old roundelay.

Leonardo ia said to have started from his reverie on hearing
the ruBtle of a garment in the doorway, and the pressure of a
satin shoe upou the floor. On looking up, he hurriedly unco-
vered his head, and bent hia Icnee with an air of homage — for,
in. his visitor, he recognised Hia Holiness, Pope Leo X. The
Pontiff, continue the biographers, foUowed; by hia retinue, ad
vanced composedly into the chamber, until arrested by the odour
of the boiling varnish, when a sneer glimmered over his cheek,
"Aha!" said he, sarcastically, speaking in tones aufGciently
audible, " this man will never linish anything, since he thinks of
the end before he has made a beginning— Oi'me, eoHui non eper
Jar nulla, dacehe coviineia a peniare alia fine innanni al prirwtpio
delV opefa?' The coareeness of a sarcasm so unusual to the
refinecf Leo, must have struck a poignant sorrow to the heart
of Leonardo. Turning his solemn and reproachful eyea from
the countenance of his auguat viaitor, hia thoughts must upon the
inatant have reverted to the glory of hia many past achievements.
And the recollection of those peaceful deeds by which he had
already enaured bis immortality, floated, then, perhaps, as some
solace before hia imagination, though the harshneBs of the words
of Leo must have jarred upou his memory during the remainder
of their interview.

Of itself, it was to our Florentine a most distasteful occupation,
dallying thus in the ante -chambers of an ecclesiastical court.
Git^ed, aa he was, with a winning deportment and a most per-
suasive tongue, he waa altogether incapable of " coining hia
cheek to smilea" for the purchase of an unwilling patronage.
In the maturity of his intellectual strength, and in the plenitude
of his acconiplishments, he found himself standing upon the bill
of the Quirinul, isolated amongst all the competitors around him
in those three great fields of intellectual emulation — Art, Science,
and Literature. At length, with his disposition partially soured
by neglect, Leonardo hurriedly left Eoroe, being not unnaturally
solicitous to depart from its uncongenial atmosphere. Age was
now creeping upon him perceptibly — atifi'ening his limbs, blanch-
ing his hair, and chilling hia enthusiasm. The whole peninsula
was before him ; but no home. There is something ioeipressibly
Ar/orn in the recollection of how it thus came to gaas that so
^^fv.3/ n man nandered Cortli in search o? a T:ea\.\ii^-^\!Kft, a.V &
tB^aa of life nhea be must indubitably \iwe moBt Tct^-w^

LEONAKDO DA VINCI — ^THK ARTIST. 35

9

repose — yearning for sympathy without a response, and for friend-
ship almost without a companion. After paying a casual visit to
Toscanella, he proceeded to his birth-place, and thence onwards
to Parma and Milan. Immediately upon reaching the latter
cilrv*, the happy thought occurred to him, of presenting himself
before the French sovereign, and obtaining shelter under his

Protection. Favia was then the head-quarters of Francis 1. ; and
)a Vinci, returning thither with ail eagerness, was fortunate
enough to obtain an instant admittance to the monarch, by whom
he was received with the utmost consideration. Nor was this
cordiality a merely gracious illusion — fairy gold, glittering in the
band for a moment, and then melting away like snow, or shrivel-
ling up to dead leaves. Leonardo was permanently established
in the household of his new benefactor. He formed, indeed, one
of the retinue upon the occasion of the interview which shortly
afterwards took place at Bologna, between Francis and the Sove-
reign Pontiff. In addition to these honorary privileges, he
obtained no less than four thousand crowns for his famous
picture, '* Lisa del Qiocondo," in the production of which he had
oeen occupied merely four months, and not four years, as some
«mong his biographers have erroneously asserted.

Towards the close of January, in 1516, the venerable Italian
reached Fontainebleau, and was immediately afterwards conveyed,
by the direction of Francis, to a suitable residence in the Palace
of Clouz, situated at about a mile's distance from the city of
Amboise. Here the serene anticipations of his youth seemed to
approach their realization. Everything that luxury could sug-
gest, everything that affection required, everything that ambition
dreamed of attaining, united to console the sensitive tempera-
ment of the artist for the ingratitude, or rather, it should be said,
the indifference, of that country from which he had been driven
forth almost as an alien. With splendid apartments in one of
the government buildings, and an annual salary of seven hundred
-crowns, Leonardo had happily no longer any reason to feel anxiety
in regard to his expenditure. The almost preternatural scope of his
intellect, and the excessive beauty of his artistic creations, found
for him an ardent and even extravagant admirer in the person
of his royal protector. Francis, indeed, placed such price upon
the productions of his pencil, as to have nt one time meditated
the transmission of the ''Last Supper" from Milan to Paris \
having been, in fact, only deterred from ao Ao\xi%\i^ >iJcife ^w^-
able nature of the materials, more eBpecicJl^ \)^ ^^ \st>WJXK^^'*2
vf the plaster. After the final settlemeiiX. oi >i>a.^ ^Vrt^rcicv:
witbin the domizdoua of Prance, the young ao^etevga^ co^vdk

TOOTPRINTa ON THE ROAD.

without any abatement, to evince the zeal of his partiality, fre-
quently making especial journeys to Amboise for the purpose of
TiBttiog his illustrious dependent.

Unhappily for Leonardo, this golden epoch of his eriatence waa
as brief as it was flattering and consolatory. The fatigues of the
protracted joiu-ney from Bologna, together with the influence of a
more northern climate, actingupou a coDstitution already exhausted
by exertion and solicitude, produced in the end a fatal proetratioa
of energy. Such waa the effect of this debility, that Da Vinci waa
only enabled to complete the portrait of " La Belle ^rronniere"
the miatreBS of Francis I., and to commence the construction of ft
canal in the yicinity of Eamorantin, during bis aojoum in Touraine.
The pressure of years gradually manifested itself in hia phyaical
and mental decline, and obtained the nmstery over his frame
before the allotted period of man's eiiatence had arrived. "Who
shall forget the incidents connected with the departure of
Leonardo da Vinoi into the land of mysteries? "Who shall
remaiu unmoved before the spectacle which that memory diacloBes?
Who shall depreciate the glory of that solenin interview P

Evening is around the palace of Fontainebleau, whither
Leonardo has been conveyed for the purpose of superintending
its decoration — a beautiful evening on the 2nd of May, 1519 —
such an evening, we may conjecture from the language of
Mariette, as those on which the throstle still warbles in the
brambles, when the nightingale 'Erakea into song among the
chestnuts — an evening like that apostrophised by a congenial
and almost contemporaneoua poet, gentle-hearted old 0-eorge
Herbert—

" Sneet ifij, bo cool, 90 calm, bo bright.
The bridal of the earth anil sit; ,
Sweet dewB shall weep thj fall to-night,-
For thou mnst die !"

I

^K Again the voices of the old biographers —the voices of Borghini
^Band of Aurelio, of Baldassare and of Du Freauoy, of Mariette and
^^ofVaaari— speak to us, together, in one language.

A light is burning already in the chamber of the king's painter
— a feeble light that flickers like a mockery from the casement.
There is a deep stillness in the upper rooms of the building. A
bell tinkles, its sound approaches, a taper comes glimmering up
the staircase, the attendants are kneeling — it ia a priest, with hi8
Jico/jrtea, bearing the viaticum. As the pioceaaion winds out of
fiffht, a ^f'oung mau descends the oaken Bl&ita-, \ie\B-»iee^i.T\t— i-^
^^Praucisco Meizi, the /sTourite pupU o£ lisonwio. 1'«i:\giA'—

LEONABDO DA VINCI — THE ARTIST. 37

increasing rapidly — ^the thrush has ceased — ^the nightingale is in
full concert. Within the sleeping chamber of the ar^t there
has been a different music — the music of eloquent and thrilliug
litanies. Laying his head upon his pillow, Da Yinci is falling
into a lethargy, when his ears are startled by the sound of
trumpets in the court-yard. His hands are toying convulsively
with the coverlet — ^that ghastly contraction of the fingers which
always carries sorrow to the watchers by the bed. There is a
movement among the serving-men and physicians — a noiseless
opening and shutting of the door — the tapestried screen is
shaken — ^and the King of France approaches the sufferer. By a
violent effort to rise into a sitting posture, the artist has hastened
the crisis of his malady ; his visage becomes prematurely damp
with the sweat of dissolution. " Bon Dieu, noble heart ! " cries
the monarch. The silver beard and hair of Leonardo are floating
over the king's hunting vest — he is gasping on the bosom, in the
arms, of Francis — he is dead ! Without, the voice of the nightin-
gale thrills on under the shadow of the copse — ^its throat is
gurgling with melody as the moonlight showers down among the
foliage of the chestnuts.*

Thus expired Leonardo da Vinci, in the sixty-seventh year of
bis agCyt in the maturity of his intellect and on the breast of the
enlightened Francis. A death-scene more affecting, or altogether
more majestic is not recorded in the history of peaceful G-enius.
It is an incident fraught with many grand and moving thoughts,
and M^nageot well understood the dramatic interest of the occur-
rence when, shortly before 1781, he produced his fine painting of
the Death of Leonardo. Much doubt has, nevertheless, been
expressed as to whether his decease took place precisely as hath
been related, notwithstanding those decisive expressions of his
earliest biographer, that the " divine spirit " of Da Vinci, con-
scious that a greater honour could not be attained on earth,
expired in the arms of the monarch — ^' Lo spirito sitOy che divinis'

* See the Lettere Fittoriche of Mariette ; the Vite de* Fittori, of Yasari ;
the intnxluctloii to the poem Delia Fittura of Du Fresnoy. See alto the
narratiTes of Borghini, Baldassare and Aorelio ; the sketch by Facoioli ; the
Memoirs by Mr. Brown, pp. 170-176 ; the English Biographical Dictionary
of Chalmers, toI. xzx. p. 392 ; the biography written by M. Fabien Fillet in the
Kographie Uniyerselle, tom. xlix. pp. 156-157, &c. &c., from each of which
is culled one or other of the details in the foregoing description.

f By an almost nniyersal consent among the ^wi\\«n^ qil ^^v^tns^ \£a^«sn%

beginning with Vasari uad ending with Mr. Wonmm, \SV^ Sa laKo^assaR^ ^ "^

jrear of the death of Leonardo, Yet such, is l^ie caxe\«BHi«» ^"^ '^v«^\. "^

ebroaohgist^ that at one time he says that the ^eax ^aa \^Vl ^QtWs ^^ ^

81), and at another that it was I5I» {ibid. yo\. iii. p. \^^V

'^m

38 FOOTPRINTS OK THE ROAD.

simo era, eonoseendo non potere havere maggior Tionore, gpirb in -
hraeno a quel Si."* 8tiU, we can Bcarcely leel amazed that bus-
piciona were entertained as to the reality of thia coincidence, when
ive fifld the armotators at variance in re^rd to the very locality in

, which he perished. For eiamjile, the Trench editors of Vaaari
mention tlie Palace of Cious as the scene of the occurrence,
without adducing a eiiigle fact wherehy to Buhstantiate their
statement ;t and, in a similar Bpirit we hear Carlo Amorebti
remarking io a sceptical and almost derisive manner, that many
writers describe Leonardo's death as tranapiriDg at Fontainebleau
— " leggessi su molii eerittori che Leonardo na morto a Fontain-
ilb."X Neither ia it surpriaiog that, having, as he imagines,
detected one mis-Btatement in the original story, Amoretti should
become altogether sceptical aa to the remainder. Tet, to our
thinking, the old narrative ia too venerable and beautiful to be
discarded upon such very questionable arguments — upon the
discovery of a hypothetical blunder, or upon the insufSeient
supposition that Francis was, in all likeliiiood, on the 2nd of
May attending his queen, then in childbed at Saint Germain-
en-Laye. As to the minor embelliahrnenta given by the more
credulous historians, we feel comparatively indifi'erent. It matters
little to us whether the courtiera regarded the proceedings of
their master with sarcastic astonish ment, or whether Francis
reproved them for that unseemly expression of countenance, by
saying, " I can, at pleasure, create nobles and moat puissant
BGigneura, but God alone can create a man like thia f" We
fibould ba loth, however, to witnesa the precipitate rejection of
an account, investing with such grandeur the departure from life
of a mortal so virtuous and gifted : " C'et iomme," saya M. Landon,
" auigi recommandable par se» vertus que par ses talents." § Be-
sides which, as i'abien Pillet has delicately observed, we can
readily admit the veracity of a tradition so doubly meritorious —
" On potivait sans inconvenient admettre comme vraie une tradition

faite pour honorer a lajbis un roi de France et an grand artiite." ||
If it is impossible to prove the correctness of the onginal
iiarrative, it is equally impOEsible to prove its incorrectness. A
doubt having been expressed, therefore, as to the authenticity
of the tradition, we reverse the legal custom in its application,
by giving the tradition the benefit of the doubt — especially as.

L

• Vuari, Bologna ed. vol. ii. p. 36.
/ Taaui, Lecluiclie's ed. tom. it. p. 30,
.» Mem. Storicbe di Leonardo, y. W^.
S Vies et (Bnyres dm PeintrcB, p. 5.
J/ Biographie Unheraeile, tom. lAii. ^i- l-M^

LEONARDO DA VINCI — THE ARTIST. 39

in the naive expression of M. Fillet, we can do so toithout
inconvenience.

In accordance with a request contained in his last will and
testament, dated Amboise, April 23, 1518, the body of Leonardo
laj upon his deathbed undisturbed during the three days subse-
quent to his decease, and was then interred with much ceremony
at St. Morentin d' Amboise. Through the generosity of King
Francis, Da Vinci was permitted to dispose of his French
property among his Italian relatives, leaving his library and
artistic instruments to a Neapolitan gentleman, named Francisco
Melzi, who, together with another disciple, called Andrea Salajno
(better knovm in England as Solario), had long attended upon
him with filial affection and enthusiasm.

Nothing now remained of this marvellous man, it is true, saving
an emaciated corpse, but his spirit had already diffused an im-
mortal memory over the earth, and his name was for ever
afterwards to be chronicled among the illustrious.

Begarding an individual of such boundless capacities — one
who, accor&ig to the phrase of Paccioli, was universally en-
dowed — **di tutte virtu dociato** — some curiosity is naturally
excited as to his personal characteristics and appearance. Leo-
nardo da Yinci seems to have excelled others, sdmost as much in
his corporeal as in his intellectual endowments. With features
exquisitely chiselled, and a complexion tawny, like an apricot
" the side that's next the sun," he combined a lofty stature, and
a winning expression of countenance. Yenerable as he was in .
his declining years, and solemnly as he is generally depicted to
us, with an ample beard, and eyes of a pecuHar pensiveness, it is
indisputable that in his youth, and even in the commencement
of his manhood, his countenance was animated and beautiful.
From the symmetry of his proportions, as well as from the
discursiveness of his tastes, he was enabled to participate with
zest in every species of pastime. His sinewy flexibility enabled
him to become skilful in wrestling and archery; his lithesome
figure was admirably adapted to render him a proficient in fencing
and horsemanship ; and his muscular energy was so remarkable
that, at pleasure, he could twist an iron horse-shoe as easily
as though it were composed of lead. To these qualifications,
Leonardo added a joyous temperament, and an insatiable passion
for magnificence. Surpassing others in loftier objects of emula-
tion, he appeared to be solicitous even to o\3i\.^YCL<b\xv^ ^^\!^\s^-
poraries in the splendour and costlineaa oi \i\& dct^^^. ^\^^^
S8 sU these external attractions were 'b'j t\^^ wws^'v^l ^\^
mjumerB, the aweetneas of his wisdom, t^ie^ e\o^«^^ ^^

toDgue, the purity of his habits, nod the unaffected elevation of
hia nature, it is, in truth, hewilderiog to think that he never
so much as indicated an inclination for marriage. It cannot he
attrihuted to any incapacity for appreciating the lovelineaa of
woman, for hia hruah delineated hoth virgin and matron with a
piquancy and spirituality which have never heen exceeded. Nor
c.in his unwedded condition be traced to any deficiency in bia
address, for be ia described by Giorgio Tasari aa having attracted
all hearts towards him, by the faacinating ehanna of bis conversa-
tion, — "era tanto ptacetole nella converiazione, che tirava a <b
gli aniini delle genti." * It seems as though the thought of hia
nuptials bad never crossed hia imagination.

So universal was the genius of thia great man, ao numberless
were bis accomplishiDentB, and a o diversified his stadies, that we
hesitate as to the sequence in which they ehould be enumerated.
No science naa too profound, no art too elevated, no practice too
trivial, no handicraft too mean, for the application and mastery
of Leonardo. Hia geniua was esaentially, as Sichardson has
hapjiily termed it, "capricious hut vast." f It waa capricioua and
mobile as a cload of Cossacks, hovering, glancing, scattering,
vanishing, and returning upon the flanks of an embattled science:
it was as vast, as compact, and as triumphant in its conquest
of intellectual diificultiea, as a phalani of Pyrrbus. Unlike the
mere buccaneers of knowledge, who vauqiiiali the obstacles of a
language, or the rudiments of an art, for the pleasure of adorning
themselves with its dead and mutilated fragments, as a red man
forms hia necklace of sharks' teeth, and decorates hia belt with
scalps, Leonardo penetrated the mysteries of every new study
for the pure enjoyment of its beauties. "Whatever he attempted,
moreover, he mastered ; insomuch so, that we may say of bim
what said of others would he merely hyperbolical compliment:
If he had stood before the gates of Macedon, he would have
tamed Bucephalua. If he bad been seated upon the magic throne
of Uomus, be would have broken the wand of the demon. If he
had seen the chariot of the King of Phrygia, he would have
unravelled the Gordian knot. Every fresh effort of hia miud only
revealed more plainly its vigour and variety. He could dance as
deftly OS Chancellor Hatton ; he could improvise on the lyre like
llmotheus ; he could match Laertes as a swordsman ; he could
contrive machines as surprising as those of Archimedes ; he could
draw cancaturea aa humoroualy as Cruikahank. In geometry, in

i, vol. iii. p. 0.

I

■metapbysios, in pliilosophy, itt botnnj, in iiydraiilies, in chemistry,
Bjn optk-a, in methanits, in architecture, in all of these be was
Jwqn^ly a proficient. Tbat he was a practical mattematician ofi
WHO mean order is uanifested by his aqueduct of MorteBaoa, sod
■«ther works of a aimilar character, which effected irk a great
Bpienaure the irrigation of Lombardy. He was sufficiently skilfid
EcB an Boatomist to diBsect the bodies of men and boraes with'
fceonsiderable facility ; besides whicli, lie wrote an elaborate trear
Btlse on " Anatomy," aa well aa other treatisea on the " Anatomy
Eof the Horse," on " Hydraulica," on "Light and 8hade," and'
■©n " Perspective," ' In military engineering be acquired such
^Wnioence aa to be employed in that profession by the execrable'
JCiBsar Borgia, otherwise called the Duke Valentino, immediately
Vtipon the decease of Ludovico Sforza. That be fully compre-
Miended the requirements of handicraft, ia abown by bis invention'
H&t the ingenious instrument called the turning-box, an instru-
Waent which has since proved so aerviceable in the productions of
H^ie lathe. Yet, notwithstanding the brilliant evideuce which
■Nras thus afforded by Da Yinci that his talent aa a mechanician'
Btraa not altogether restricted to the puerilities of tricks or auto-
^taiata, there have been men who have deridtd bis skill in this.
Kflepartment of natural philosophy, and have turned into ridicule
^wis efforts to combine science w^itli amusement. In this manner,
■zuaeli has observed, in a tone of rather impertinent flippancy,
Ktliat " the birds of paate, the lions filled with lilies, the lizards
■with dragon's wings, homed and silvered over, savour eijually of
Mlihe boy and of the quack ; " t and Eoscoe, in a congenial mood,
^^aa remarked, that " whilst Eaphael and Michelangelo were
vnrnamenting Italy with their immortal labours, Leonardo was
Bolowing bubbles to fill a whole spartiueut, and decorating lizards
nwith artificial winga." J Aa if Da Vinci had never accomplished
P*ny tiling beyond the conatruction of a paateboard Folidnello!
■ As if bis many admirable models of watches, of presses, and of
■windmills, were not of themselves some eitenuation of bis
eccentric and occasional puzzles ! As if those very puzzles were
not the result of hia momenta of recreation — directed to the
amuaemeut of the people and the entertainment of bis bene-
factora I Turning, however, from theae rather prudish excep-

Seiaral of tLese treatisea, never jet printed, are sdll lying amang ths<
iBcript treasures of tlie Ambroaian Lihrarj. What daring hand wiU lennBi
from dust and destrnctioD, and give tiiem. to tlie world wJAiet '
& ti'auBlation 1

t FiiBeli's Lectnrea. Bohn's edition, p. 380, iwW.

i SoKxe's life of Leo X., vol. iv, p. 259,

42 F0OTPEIKT8 ON THE BOAD. I

tiona to the less important labours of Leonardo, we may mention
llie Boniewhat dubitable rumour that we are indebted to bim
for the original introduction of engraving upon wood and
copper, as another testimoaj of the practical tendency of bis
investigationa.

Extraordinary aa were hia capaeitiea for the acquisition and
tbe appbcation of the liberal sciences, and vigilant as be proyed
himself to be in ejcploring tbe misceUaneous bje-patha of know-
ledge, there was, nevertbelesa, one field in which the intellect of
Leonardo da Vinci aeacrted ita supremacy, and soared almost
beyond competition. Art was the goddesa of hia adoration. He
worahipped her aa a miatresa ; he revered her aa Telemachus
revered the disguised Pallaa; he devoted to her tbe fresbneaa of
hia boyhood, the aspirations of bis youth, the ardour of hie prime,
and the unquenched enthusiasm of hia decrepitude. At her
abrine he sacrificed tbe discuraiveneas of bis ambition. She was
at once bis exoteric aolace, and bis esoteric inapiration. She
endowed him with tbe creative powers of a Deucalion. He flung
Btonea behind bim, and they grew up into atatuea ; he scattered
pigments on the canvasa, and they reaolved themaelves into pic-
torial master-pieces. How far Leonardo succeeded in embodying
hia artistic dreama may be discerned from tbe compositions BtiU
(ireaerved in tbe public structures of Florence, in the principal
cities of Italy, in the palaces of France, and in tbe private
golleriea of England. As a sculplor, he demonatrated that he
was very far removed from mediocrity by bis inimitable figure of
S. Tommasso in the Orsanmicbcle at Florence, and by the Marble
Horse in the Church of Saints John and Paul at Venice ; though
be baa, unfortunately, left nothing, in addition to these, beyond
some basn riiiesi, aud a noble model of Christ at tbe age when
ha lived obscurely at Galilee obedient to tbe carpenter.

As a painter, however, Leonardo baa acquired his principal

celebrity, and deservedly as a painter. Before his adveut the art

languished under an incubua of formalities : it was crude— ^'e/7«ie

— cramped into a very deformity. Although hia predecessors

bad broken through the ground and pronounced the incantation,

they were unable to penetrate tbe mysteries of the hidden

treasure. He it was who became their Aladdin ; he it was who

lifted tbe ring, who descended into the garden of art, who

returned laden with the apoU of ita precioua fruitage, bearing in

hia band the lamp which waa to evoke the geniua. The first

amosff modern painters to form any conception ol ttie \,tvi6 ft«n-

^aai of the Beautiful, Leonardo avaiied bimse\S bo weW i^ Xttt.\,

gg--'^ that in the opinion o£ Winckelman, "he 'haa sur^asaei >ia.

LEONARDO DA VINCI — ^THE ARTIST. 4$-

others in the expression of ideal beauty. Nor did he aid in the
development of the art solely in regard to its spiritualitj. His
inventive mind was directed to the meanest point of its manipu-
lation, and invariably with a beneficial consequence, as is testified,
for example, in the little circumstance of his being the first to-
lay it down as an axiom that " verdigris is evanescent unless it
be immediately varnished;'' an axiom which has been recently
commemorated in the intelligent pages of Sir Charles Eastlake,.
President of the Eoyal Academy.* That Da Vinci should
become liable to certain subordinate blemishes as an artist is but
natural, considering his amazing impetuosity and discursiveness.
But it can never be forgotten, that while he evinced an occa-
sional poverty in his design, while his execution was sometimes-
marred by his abruptness, while his flesh-tints were too frequently
empurpled and over-polished — to him we are indebted for the
science of chuirosciMro ; to him we owe that delineation of dra-^
matic fenergy of which he .was considered by Giraldi Cinthiole to
be the master ; to him, especially, we owe that sprightliness and
vivacity of portraiture which has drawn from De Piles the
observation, that his expressions are singularly lively and
tpirituelle.f The admiration of De Piles for his artistic powers
was so enthusiastic, indeed, that he considered him as upon an
equality with Titian, as superior in several respects to Correggio,.
and, in one or two particulars, as beyond even JBuonarotti.

Eminent and notorious as are the benefits conferred upon art
by the written precepts and the painted examples of Leonardo,
their value has, nevertheless, been latterly questioned and depre-
ciated. The malapert spirit of cultivated mediocrity has risen
vnth ingratitude 'against its most venerable benefactor. Any
allusion to this ingratitude would have been beneath the con-
sideration of criticism, had not the late unfortunate and ambitious
Haydon sanctioned it by his voice, when he remarked that Sir
Joshua Beynolds " first brought the principles of art into some-
thing like consistency ; and, though greatly indebted to Coypel,
be fiirst rescued it from the trash of De Piles, the common-place
receipts of Leonardo, great man as he was, and all the old
bewildered theorists." J Why, Leonardo was to Beynolds what
Cadmus was to Augustus Mathise ; he created the very alphabet
of the art of which fieynolds was only the ingenious expounder;.
be created the very language of the art, and Beynolds, by a/qte-

* Sastlake's Materiah for the History oi Oi\ Y^anXAii^^ ^» ^1 •
f ^ :Pa€8' Balance des Peintres, p. 165.
J Majrdon a Lecturm. First Series, p . S^l.

cise and laborious claseification of that Uoguage, rose bo higher
than to become its grammarian. As well might we rate the first
type-founder now living as superior to Guttenburg ; aa well
might WB give precedence to a Glasgow engine-builder over the
immortal "Watt ; aa well might we regard a modern optician aa
worthy of more veneration than Newton or Galileo !

It IS evident that the sarcasm of Haydon is directed against
the celebrated treatise, "Delia Fittura." That composition is,
in itself, a brilliant contrast to the sneer. But artists of unques-
tionable genius have afforded a counterpoise to the contemptuona
aUusion of Mr. Haydon, bv the panegyrics which, both in eon-
duct and expression,, they have pronounced upon that renowned
treatise, "Delia Fittura" was the vade meetim of Nicholas
PousfiiQ. On first beholding a mauuscript copy of the work,
Annibale Carracci lamented that he had not perused it before,
declaring it to be his convictiaii that it would have saved him
twenty years of assiduous toil. Not to mention the euloginm
passed upon the trattato by the competent judgment of the
Count Algarotti, there is a sufficient guarantee that its chapters
cannot consist of merely "common-place receipts," in the
estrcme caution which characterised the intellectual researches of
Leonardo. In reference to this cautiousQess, M. Saint-Germain
distinctly asserts that our artist was more generally engaged in
investigating the theory of his art, than in labouring upon his
pictures ; — " n emploj/ait a la theorie de son art beaucoup plat de
tempt qu'il n'en metiaii a Vexecution de sea tableaux;'"* or, aa
the Abate Luigi Lanzi has otherwise expressed it, in bis
eloquent "History of Painting in Italy," 3Ja Vinci was more
solicitous to improve the art than to multiply his pictures :—
" Fiit a migliorar le arti che a moltipUearne gii esempi ; " + and
hence his easel was less prolific than those of his distinguished
contemporaries. Another analytical writer has elsewhere penned
a sentence which would almost seem to have been a predestined
climax to the foregoing quotation. Summing up the qualifica-
tions of Leonardo aa a painter, Andre Feiibien declares that, as a
theoretic artist, he rejiiembers no one who has evinced such
wisdom — " Je ne »gai/ poi metme ti depuig luy ily en a e& d'aussi
tgavant dans la theorie de cext art."X Though we would by no
means imply that the judgment of Baint-Gerraain and Feiibien
are to be considered as infallible, we are satisfied that their

y

Ozu'de dea Amiteam de 'Pemiwx, p. 79.
t tuigiLaozi, toI. i. p. 101.
,jC XatretieDs sur les Vies dea Peintres, torn. ui. v.

LEONABDO DA VINCI — THE AKTIST. 45

opinions are, at the least, admissible against the platitudes of
Mr. Hajdon.

Beyond all his othelr avocations, it must be recorded that
Leonardo was an earnest cultivator of literature in its various
departments. By Crescimbeni, he is accounted as among the
resuscitators of Italian poetry. One of his sonnets is s^ in
existence, beginning

** Chi non pnd quel che tuoI, qael che pad voglia/* &c.,

but it is merely remarkable for the disagreeable chinking of the
diction. Already we have enumerated some of his pretensions
to distinction as a scientific writer ; and it is almost superfluous
to observe that those pretensions are, even to this day, recog-
nised as valid. When the caricatures of Da Yinci are borne in
recollection — those caricatures which we have previously alluded
to, and of which the historian of art has declared that there are
none superior* — it will not appear surprising that he likewise
evinced a decided tendency to the humorous m some of his lite-
rary compositions. In testimony of this, we may mention Ms
lu^crous description of the naked limbs pourtrayed by preceding

Eainteps. " They look," said he, " for all the world more like a
ag of nuts than the human superficies, or rather more like a
bundle of radishes than naked muscles — un saceo di nod piutiSsto
ehe superficie humane, owero un fascio di ravanelli piuttSsto che
muscotoii nudi"f Equally characteristic is that facility pos-
sessed by him of infusing an indescribable gusto into a few
syllables, as where he is complaiuing, in a letter to his steward
2banobi Boni, of the inferiority of the last vintage. " Sapete,** he
writes, '* che disH etiamdio che sarehhe a cuneimare la corda quando
posa in el macignio con la maceria di calcina difabriche o muralie
difnoliti, e guesta asHuga la radicha, e lo atelto, e le folic, dalle aria
attranno le sustanzie convenienti alia perfezione del grapolo,** %,
What exquisite particularity in the directions ! What zestful-
ness in that expression, " preserving a germinant warmth in the
roots, and the stem, and the leaves ! " What an appreciation of
nature in that other phrase, ''extracting nutrition from the
atmosphere ! " And then, what lusciousness in the climax, '' the
accumulation of the substance most conducive to the perfecting
of the grape ! " From such passages one would almost feel dis-

* *<Noii0 lea ATonB encore, ces oharmanteft C8Jie«^\\Kt«&, «\ ^ wn^\»^s&M?^»«»
qui exiMtaik**~'Jffittoire de la PeirUure en IfcaXie, \Am. \. ^.\^Nf
f M8» 2D the Ambroaitai Library, quoted "by lit. "Rto^wtl, "^m ^'^«
X Another M8. quoted hj Mr. Browa iubii Appt-adiat^ ^* ^^"^*

rOOTPHrNTS OS 1

SoBed to doubt the absteniioua habits of Leonardo, and to regard
im as somewliat of a, bon-vtvant. All occounia, bovever,
describe liim ns a mnu of moderate appetites, bo that we must
attribute bis dainty diction rather to his taste aa a scribe, than
to his overweening love for potations. Whether it was for the
gratification of an eeeentrie fancy, or for the better concealment
of bis thoughts from bis atteudanta, Da Vinci never wrote other-
wise than after the fashion of the Persian cotigrapbera, that ia to
say, inversely from right to left, so that bis manuacripta are
illegible until held before a mirror. A considerable number of
these enigmatical papers came into the possesaion of Erancieco
Melii OS a portion of bia bequeat, and, after passing through
divers hands, were scattered and forgotten. ThrougU the indus-
trious esertioua of the Chevalier Pompeo Leoni, aided by
Mazzenta, they were collected into a large folio volume, con-
taining 1750 original designs, besides a large assortment of
curious writings. This remarkable book, commonly known as
the Codice Atlantieo, ultimately became the property of Count
Paleaizo Arconanti, to whom, according to Mr. Addison,* three
thousand pistoles were offered for it by King James I. of
England. The munificent tender of the aovereiga having been
refused, the book was, with equal munificence, presented by
'Count Arconanti to the Ambrosian Library, whence it was
transmitted, in the year 1796, to the National Institute of
Prance, on the first conquest of Lombardy by Napoleon.
Most of the documents were then found to be anthenticated by
the favouiite cipher of Leonardo— a I> interlaced with a V and
an L, all in c-apitala, lu the essay produced during the follow-
ing autumn, by Venturi, the precise nature of these manuscripts
was explained, and the astonishing versatility, aa well aa the
profound knowledge of their author, were revealed and eulogised.
On reviewing the character and achievements of this wonderful
man, it is scarcely possible to refrain from employing, in refer-
ence to him, espressions which, applied to others, would be mere
bombast and exaggeration. Our own Hogarth is said to have
invariably mentioned him as "the great Leonardo :"t and great
be had undoubtedly rendered himself by the vivid delineations of
his pencil, by the sweetness of his immaculate disposition, by the
multiplicity of his endowments, and by the scope and ripeness
of his eclectic wisdom. This it is which justifies Opie in terming

• Wbria o/Joeepb Addison, rol. il. p. 16.
f Srea at the present d&s, (ie portrait of the illnstirioiM MtiiA is ■[p™!**A'i^^*i*
' aa // Z?io deifa OuUeria — iconmnlo daTtwu WiiKtLBi:e1uM'«iav>si^axV] .
'agnJSceut dati^ '

LEONARDO DA VINCI — THE ARTIST. 47

bim "one of the most extraordinary of men;"* thia it is also
whicli imparts such piquancy to the scholastic pun of the Fadre
Luca Paccioli, who declared that Da Vinci in painting, in casting
bronze-work, and in sculpturing marble, verified his name —
" H Vince in seoUura, getto, e pittwra^ con ciascuna arte il nome
eerifiea.*^ All biographers of Italian genius have coincided, with-
out one exception, m becoming the panegyrists of Leonardo.
** He was a marvel," writes M. Duppa, " that overstepped the
bounds of every department of knowledge which limited the
researches of his predecessors."t And, remembering that, accord-
ing to Mr. Ealph Wornum, " he anticipated both Era Bartolomeo
in tone and Michelangelo in grandeur of design ;" J remembering
that to the guiding in£.uence of his prior compositions much of
the glory of Buonarotti and TTrbino is traceable ; § remembering
the deeds and the traditions by which he still emulates their
Tast and beautiful renowa ; we can the more readily assent to
the opinion of his recent panegyrist, that " it must generally be
allowed, if they were the greater artists he was the greater
man, without derogating from the high character of either."J|
Were it objected that Leonardo evinced an unbecoming jealousy
of those prophets of a later civilization, let the exquisite sentence
of Pabien Pillet be repeated in extenuation,'^where he explains
that apparent jealousy to have arisen from a susceptibUity of
self-love, by which he paid his tribute to humanity — " II payait
^an tribiU a Vhumanite par une susceptiMlite d* amour-propre qui
ressemhlaU quelquefois d la jalousie,** % Besides which, the
virtues of meekness and indifference to applause are incompatible
with the progress and elevation of Art. Emulation ceases with
the birth of any fear to wound another by surpassing him, and
Art ceases with emulation. To no illustrious painter, however
perfect his character may otherwise be, can we address the pane
gyric of the Younger Pliny upon Trajan : — " Tuam vero magnani-
mitatem, an modestiam, an henignitatem prius mirer? Magnanimitas
Juitf expetito semper honore abstinere; modestia, cedere; lenignitas,
per alios frui.**** Magnanimity, modesty, and benignity, as there
indicated, are beyond the attainment of an aspiring intellect.

* Opie*8 Lectures. Bohn's edition, p. 259.

+ Duppa*s Life of Michelangelo, p. 52.

t Wornum's History of Painting, p. 226.

§ *'Baphael et Michel- Ange lal doiyent une partie de leur gloire; ils ont
commence 4 se former sur ses ouyrages." — Jiecueil de Tc^tc^ dt OaradeY^ fi, ^^
Charges, p. 9.

// Brown's Life of Leotk&rdOf p. 147.

f Biognphie UniveraeUe, torn. xlix. p. 157.
FJmjr, Fuiegyricua, W-grva Trajano, n. 1v\m.

■*48 FOOTPniKTS OS THE ROAD.

■\Vhile, however, Leonardo betrayed a disrelish to peril the dimi-
nution of hia own importance, he had, to employ the words of
Paolo Lomnzzo, such a perfect appreciation of truth and charity
— "delta gloria profonda delta verita, e della earita, regina dt tutta
le virtit " * — that he readily acknowledged the capacities of hii
competitors! ; and acknowledged them, moreover, with a cordiality
simiJar to that with whicli he himself is lauded by Eubens, where
Sir Peter Paul avows that no commendation of him can be
eiceaaive, and that aD imitation of him would be hopeleaa.t
Viewing him aa a pliilosophic student, as a votary of pleasure, aa
an athletic civilian, aa an aspiring artist, or aa a man of catholic
tastes and boundleaa eapncities, we muat ever regard him as a
splendid phenomenon. And a phenomenon he unquestionably
was, if for nothing else, for the dazzling but harmonious contra-
dictiocB of his character. Perhaps no other man, either before
or since, ever combined so intimately, and yet with such aa
esquiflite preservation of individuality, the incongruous attributes
of the natural and the artificial. Such was hia appreciation of the
purely natural, that he could paint a blossom spangled with the
dew of morning (as he haa done in one of hia JItladonnas), so that
you would mistake for a reality both bloom and moiature. Tet
he disdained not to participate in the frivolities of fashion and
the coteriea ; he could dally over a broidered glove, and diseem
beautiea in the testure of a jewelled tiaaue. Oaric might have
found sympathy in him for all the pnnctihoa of etiquette, and
yet he migiit have lamented for the flowers of Proaerpine with
an earnest tenderness like that of Perdita. His whole aoul was
a living antithesis of predilections — verging in one direction
towards the city and the palace, and in another towards the
woods and the wilderness — singins pieans to the society of the
gay and the dehonnaire with Catullus, and exclaiming, in his rapt
admiration of Nature, as the American philosopher has since

es claimed, with a voice awe-stricken and yet exultant — "Every
day, the sun ; and, after sunset, night and the stars ; ever the
wind blows; ever the grass grows!" Such was Leonardo when
he wandered by the ripples of Fucecchio, or frittered away his
leisure in the aaloona of Florence. A child, with all the poetry
of childhood, when he was in the meadows of Bergamo; he
was a gentleman, jf not a pelit-maUra, and a worldling, vrhen
mingling in the throng of courtiers in the palace of l^uscany.

* Idea del Tompio della Fitturn, e&p. s:ii. p. 41.

7* "Jiir an eSet de aea pra/ondea lp£cuUtioaB, il est arriv^ & an tel degr£ da

psrivcefoB, qa'il me panll aanmB impoisiblo d'en paiW uui 4\gjiBUU(n!t, A

^^pl'i3dei'imitei."~BePiUi, Abrfgidtla Vic, Iicb.IW

LEONAKDO DA VINCI — ^THE ARTIST. 49

It is this contrariety of sentiment and bearing which imparts bo
much of zest and fascination to his memory, investing it with
the double graces culled from nature and civilization. It is this,
indeed, which constitutes the originality of his idiosyncrasy,
colouring it with a variable splendour of antitheses, like the
sheen which fluctuates on the plumage of those oriental birds de-
scribed by the ornithologist ^ "damson and silver, according to the
variations of light." And precisely as the light of circumstances
shone upon Leonardo's temperament, were the contrasting shades
of that temperament revealed. At a pageant, he was a musician
or a necromancer; at a conclave, an orator or a philosopher:
whenever any one faculty was calculated to be most effective, that
faculty was, at once, by a sort of admirable fatality, developed
by the Florentine. Nor did these sudden transformations arise
from any inherent inconsistency in his principles ; they originated,
on the contrary, in the marvellous flexibility and elasticity of his
genius — a genius which adapted itself to every emergency, which
obeyed every demand, and which only succumbed at last under
the pressure of physical prostration. That this genius was
remarkable for its almost miraculous versatility, is attested not
only by treatise, and picture, and statue, and aqueduct, and
axioms, and implements, and automata, and sonnets, and criti-
cisms; it is proved beyond denial, not only by sketches by
Edelynck, and engravings by Morghen — ^not only by the Lisa
del OioeondOf or the JBelle Ferronniere — not only by the liaint of
Orsanmichele and the arches of Mortesana ; it is displayed in
every detail of the vicissitudes of that illustrious Artist whose
fame retained one luminous and equable lustre, under the golden
away of Lorenzo the Magnificent, under the liberal pomp and
patronage of Ludovico il Moro, under the infamous Borgia, and
the gorgeous Leo, and the munificent Erancis. Whoever could
contrive to enhance his reputation, in defiance of such diversities
of fortune, must, in all truth, have been sustained by a rare and
inexhaustible versatility. That versatility is the secret of the
glory of Leonardo da Vinci. It enabled him, by a consummate
efibrt of volition, so to distribute and apportion his ardour
throughout life, that he scarcely left a single field for intellectual
cultivation unexplored, and in none of them were his labours
either superficial or unproductive. He was not only the taU of
art^ he was also, in a great measure, so to speak, the leavetL ^C
modem knowledge.

THE SONG-WRITER.

A PLEA8AHT picture in the BUTnmer of 1857 died out like a dia-
solving view iu one of the old-fnshioned streets of Paris — at No. T
iu the Bue de Vendome. A quaint aud beautiful group, long
familiar to us all, thereupoa became abruptly scattered. The cen-
tral figure in it was buried away with great pomp ou the 17th of
July, in the year just uientioued, under the sacred dust of Pere la
Chaiae. And yet that group, or we are much mistalien, wiU very
long survive in the world's remembrance. It was one in many
ways quainter even and more beautiful than any with which the
eccentricities of genius have hitherto rendered us so strangely
and yet so intimately acquainted in the animated and pictorial
records of literature. Quainter even and more heautii'ul than
that glimpse we catch in one direction of Cowper in his linen
day-cap and brocaded gown sauntering among his tome hares,
over the green lawn at Oloey ! Or, yonder again, that other, of
white-haired Sir Walter in hia leathern gaiters and his " car-
veiled " chair, seated among the shaggy deer-hounds iu the laird's
writing room at Abbotsford ! Or Voltaire, with a face wizened
and wrinkled like a last autumn's apple, tripping with a mincing
step and a lacquered cane, with a stereotyped sneep on his lips
and an everlasting scorn in his eyes, among the box hedge-
rows and quincunxes of Pemey ! Or ChfLteaubriaud, brooding
with dreamful eyes under his disordered locks, in the midst of
the wizard- conclave of cats littered habitually about his chairs
and tables, among his books and manuscripts ! But thU group —
the group of Passy and the Eue de Vendome ? Ah what a
charming group it was, what a picture it made, how it still con-
trives to shine out viridly before the mind's eye in the dim
perajiective of one's remembrance ! Look ! —
Jjoiten'ogttmoDg his flower-beds, or seated Vij Via gjiTien-^Qich.
—dear old Pierre Jean de Beranger ! A comtortaWe o\i ^eii'tXe-
w io Jook ujion—cJad after the homeliest fas\Aoii "m im. ;\mii\a

PIERRE bArANGER — THE SONG-WRITER. 51

and broad-skirted coat, rather worn, it must be told, and even
threadbare. Has he not sung of it in one of his most famous
ditties ? An easy waistcoat and loose-fitting trousers, altogether
reminding one of that preposterous line in Eejected Addresses —

'* Loose in his gaiters, looser in his gait."

His feet thrust into slippers trodden down at heel ; his head bald
and smooth, and glossy as appears somehow to befit best your
true bacchanalian singer ; a Tery —

"Beaded bubble making at the brim !"

bald, and smooth, and glossy, as the sculptured front of his own
brother of the classic age — ^Anacreon ! The dearest old face in
the world — ^the simplest form — the kindliest features. Yet withal
a face, a form, and features about which, notwithstanding their
exceeding simplicity and homeliness, nothing, absolutely nothing,
seemed to come iucongruously in the way of even the loveliest,
the most aerial, or the most fantastically exquisite associations.
One could fancy the Eairies playing at hide-and-seek between
his slippers, or a stray Cupid secreting itself on the sly in one
of his pockets. His voice sounded with a tender intonation,
thrilling alternately with tears and with laughter. His eyes
brimmed with the pathetic, or sparkled with the humorous. His
cheek flushed with the praise, rather than with the quaffing, of the
delicious draughts of the love, and the wine, and the glory, he sang
of. Por, this old man in the old coat — slipshod and bald-pated —
was tTie Song-writer of his Age, the boast of Prench literature,
the darling of the French population! During nearly half a
centurv, throughout a long delightful interval of more than forty
years, his poetry, the poetry of this Great Heart, had been to the
entire mass of the people in his native land, whether gentle or
simple, grey-beards or little children, at once a joy and a conso-
lation. And no wonder — for, of all song-writera, Beranger was
undoubtedly both the most natural and the most national : more
so even, if that be possible, than Moore was to Erin, or Bums
to Caledonia! His very style, in truth, was so intrinsically
naturalised and nationalised; it was, so to speak, in the very
grain and colour of it, so intensely idiomatic and indi^e\i<(^\^%^%s^
absolutely to defy anything like adequate ttraL^^^XAsya.. ^^qtck^^
that the happieat foreign version of any one ol\i\^ ^Qti^ ^-sct^;
accompUahed, ia, at the best, but as a ^\vxm \J[i^^ >aaa \i^«^ !;
geredl A fcu^ferfy-^aught, no douU, \>\3L^- V\\Xi ^^ %^

bloom draggled off its purple wir^
vitli the dew aliahea out of it, and the a,
withered.

What Songs they are, these Chansons of Berauger ! Expreasive
of every kind of emotioa that can ever atir our heart-st rings.
Sonp of love and hattle ; of grief and gaieiy ; of sarcasm and
tenderness. Celebrations of glory and of beauty, of victory and
lieftat, of the homely and the heroic. Ditties that haTa often
and often been, that will again and yet again be (how many a
time to come !) crooned gently by the cradle, and chanted dole-
fully by the bier — muaic thrilling deeply and tenderly into the
heart of a Great People, listened to by them, and loved by tbem,
as Saul listened to and loved the harp-tones of the Shepherd of
the Terebynthine Valley,

How it happened that B^ranger came to be a Song-writec at
all, he bimaelf has related, and this, moreover, in aome of tha love-
liest of hia many noble efl'uaiona. He hna embalmed the flies and
blrawa of hia lowly experience in tlie amber of hia verse : and for
once we don't "wonder how the devil they got there!" Very
precious memoriala they are of the man to thoie who love him —
^iudwho among us all baa not an affection fortbis Trouvere in tbe
liome-apun broad-cloth, this Bard of the Quinguette? Above
nil, they are inestimable attestations of tbe unaffected aimplioity
and nobility of hia character.

It waa in Paiia (of all places), at No. 50 in the Hue Mont-
ora^ieil, on tbe 19th of August, 1780, that Pierre Jean de
Be'ratiger was born — Paris ("full of gold and woe") being
appropriately the birthplace and the deathplace of this most
intensely French of all Preuclimen, He breathed bia first breatb,
he tells UB, in the house of a poor tailor — his maternal grand-
father. He not merely tella ns this — be sings it — sings the very
name and datea (precisely as we bave here given them), tbo
humble trade and tbe lowly parentage.

" Esas 00 Paris plein d'or et de miajre,
Bn ran du Cbrist mil sept ceat qaatre-Tingt
Chei uD tuilleur, mun puuvre ct vieux graad-pSre,
Moi DDuye!iii-ii6, uchci cs qui m'adviiit,"

And thereupon he chants to ua (how melodioualy !) the surprise
of his old grandsire, the Snip, on finding him one day tenderly
jtwlieii in tbe arms of a Pajry, " who with gay refrains lulled the
cr^ ofjita £rat sorrowB ; "

" Bt cette tie avee des gais retraiiiB,
Calmait h crl de mea premierB chagvuift?

PIERRE B^RAKQER — ^THE SONG-WRITER. .53

Another of these charming little autobiographic Chansons,
recounts the awful source of this holy mission of tne Song- writer.
It is called Ma Vocation. And it relates how a mournful wail
issuing from his new-born lips, the dear God said to him—" Sing,
sing, poor little one ! " Everything is most touchingly and
truthfully particularised in this manly and modest egotism of
B^ranger. Even the drowsy lullaby sung to him by the pretty
bonne, Ma Nourrice, who hushed him to rest in his infancy.

** Do, do, Tenfant do,
L*eii&nt dormira tantdt."

** Bye-bye, baby, bye 1
Sleep, my baby, bye-and-bye 1"

So, likewise in the Eecollections of Childhood, Souvenirs
d'Enfance, he commemorates the games and tasks of the old
school-days when, from his tenth to his sixteenth years, from 1790
to 1796, he lived during those troublous times among his friends
and relatives in the town of Peronne. Later on, he sings regret-
fully of the joyous hours passed in his garret — see Le Q-renier —
when a healthful and hopeful stripling. Nay, even (as already
intimated) the perishable Old Coat, with the pile brushed off it
and the seams whitened by age, has a charm for him — ^vide
Mon Habit— becomes endeared to him by the simple force of
association. It is not, however, we need scarcely add, by any
means exclusively to the celebration of littlenesses even thus
genially domestic, that Beranger restricts his incomparable genius
as a Song-writer. He has, on the contrary, sounded in some sort
the whole gamut of the Human Passions, from the Treble to the
Diapason. Religion and Patriotism, Glory and Beauty, Love
and Friendship, have been his themes alternately. And it would
be difficult to say, upon the instant, in which department of song
his mi\se has proved the most eminently successful.

His immense popularity can scarcely be matter of surprise to
us, when we remember that others have, before now, been re-
warded with Eame for the production of a single copy of verses.
Not to allude more than casually to Wolfe, as having secured
remembrance for his name in the world of letters by his one
solitary Elegy about Sir John Moore at Corunna — precisely as
Beckford has, by Yathek alone, gained for himself no ^^^^vc^^
reputation as a romancist — did not th© liady kxma^^^^^^t^VS^^^
bless her/) win renown by her single baWadi oi kviV^^<^>^ ^x"8i^
Did not Bouget de Lisle, the young artWHex^ oSi^'i^ '«i.\>^^^
rjson at Strasbourg, half-atarved durmg tVe ^wt6X.i ^^

OS THE EOAD.

flushed with wine and improvising to the sound of. his claricord
in the eilence and solitude of Lis barrack-chamber upon one
memorable midnight before that first stormy dawn of the^Great
French Eevolution— did nob Eouget de Lisle there and then
immortalise himself, in that one efibrt, by the composition, the
creation, rather be it said, the rapturous revelation, of that
glorious Hyran of Eevolt, the Marseillaise ? It is, therefore, uo
marvel whatever, that, with celebrity thus not unfrequently
achieved before now, by one single triumph oa the part of a
song-writer, Biiranger by so many triumphs, triumphs so signal
and so reiterated, Bhould have won for himself this unrivalled
popularity, and this all but unparalleled reputation.

His succesgea have been so many, ao various, and so complete —
these thrilling and melodious successes of his as a Song-writer !
And this foi the most part simply because his marvelloua lyrical
genius was throughout so perfectly truthful, so entirely unaffected,
ao wholly natural and unstudied in its manifestatioo. He never
pretends or eiaggerates. AVhafc he thinks, he says — what he
teels, he expreBsea — be Is simply what he Appears To Be. His
Muse, ao to apeak, is never hysterical. His fun declares itself,
not in a roar of merriment, but iu a laughter like that of Old
Fezziwig, who, we are told, " laughed aU over himself from hia
shoes to his organ of benevolence." His rage and hia pathos
have neither the howl of a Cassandra, nor the shriek of a
Deiphobe. Kejoicing, sorrowing, believing, feeling, thinking,
in every way intensely — he is never in extremes. AHectation, it
may be said, waa his antithesis. He, we may be sure, could
never

He would have inhaled its fragrance with a sort of rapture, and
then have stuck it jauntily in his button-hole. And bo the people
loved him — the man was so true at the same time that he waa so
intense !

The purest love-songa of Borangcr — alaa ! that we should have
to regret his occasionally chanting licentious ditties to the zon-
lon of the flute and the violin — how exquisitely delicious they are
in their refined and chastened tenderness ! Loveliest of them all,
perhaps, the one in which he cries out continually that she is
beautiful, Qu'elle est joUel Pre-eminently above all hia eshilarat-
inj convivial son^s, or Bacchanalians, commend us to his jovial
2iinguongf in which be bids the whole woili \io\i-'(w\j wjiiTOiV'j

^^^er/ Trinquons! m'tii its chinking reEram.^jettexeNeB.'i.'bBai..

fe-Oi^n&mg cboraa oF Mine Ancient in OtlieWo. V^

1»IERRE BfiRANGER — THE SONG-WRITER. 55

' ' £t pour choquer.

Nous provoquer,

Le yerre en main, en Tond nons attaquer,

D*abord nous trinquerons pour boire,

£t puis nous boirons pour trinquer.*'

Very freely translated thus^

•'* Cups we clatter,
Tables batter,
Glass in band, each other flatters
First of all we chink to drink,
And presently we diink to chink ! *'

But what refrains they all are, these wonderful refrains of
Beranger: as provocative of singing in unison to the voiee of
those who listen, as the stirring sound of Scottish dance-music
ever proves to be an irresistible incentive to movement among
the feet of a gathering of Highlanders. Listen to the close of
each verse of the Vivandifere, with her choral rub-a-dub —

'* Tintin, tintin, tintin, z'lin, tintin !*'

Or hearken to his comically serious expostulation with G-rimalkin
in his stanzas entitled Ma Chatte (asking Pussy "What ails
her.?)—

< * Mia-mia*ou ! Que veut Minette ? *'

Above all, sit silently, with a grave fac6, if you can, while some
friend from Over the Water chuckles out the laughing refrain of
any one among the drollest of these Chansons ! Say, for example,
^hat about The Little Grey Man :

'* Qui dit : Moi, je m'en . ■. •

Et dit : Moi, je m*en . . «
Ma foi, moi, je m'en ris !
Oh I qu*il est gai le petit homme gris !"

''Who said: As for me . . •
And said : As for me ... .
Faith, as for me, I laugh !
Ohl but the Little Grey Man loves chaff!*

Or, better still, that of the famous King of Tvetot :

" Pour toute garde il n'avait rieik
Qu*an chien.
OA / oh/ oh I oh ! ah! ab\ aii\ «2q.\
Qael boa petit roi c'fetait \^\
La, la/"

" Whose only guard was a dog —

Queer dog !
[Quite a. Punch with Toby !]
Oh ! oh ! oh ! oh I ah ! ah ! a)i
Wbot a fuDny little king waa I

La, la!"

HiB pensire a
be regarded i

lud purely

i amongst his moat emjoeiitlj beautiful.
jsquiBite little poem about The Shooting Stars, especially, witb
ita closiug couplet :

■ " Ce n'eEt qu'nne itoile qui file,

Qui Gle, file, et dispamt."
" 'Tia only a star that ahoots.
That ahoota, shoota, aud disappears!"

Daintiest among the duintiest of these particular corapositiona of
hia, moreover, being hia far-famed aong. If I were a little Bird !
That graceful freak of fancy, in which be exclaima continually,
like a voice from the boughs,

»" Je Toleraia Tite, Tite, vite.
Si j'6tu8 peUt oiseau."
"I would fly quick, quick, qalok,
If I were a litUe bird."

Several of these world-renowned Chansona are neyertheleas, in
reality, atrange to tell, about the merest abstractions. But how
much Be'ranger could make of themes thus apparently vague and
impalpable, those will very well remember, who are familiar with
hia aonga on Fortune and on Happiness. Tet to understand
thorougnly that he loves to deal in something better than mere
abstractions, it is only necessary to contemplate for a moment,
his celebration of such exceedin[>ly substantial per.'onages as
Eoger Bontemps, or Madame Gregoire ; or to look at bis inge-
nious delineation of Jean de Paris and Mooaieur Judas ; to say
nothing of that nonderful scapegrace Paillasse. Sometimes, as
in the half-pluyful, half-pathetic equivoque about the Blind Motlier
— wherein Liae, with inimitable effrontery, attributea the opening
window to the heat ! and th^opening door to the wind ! and the
sound of kissea to the bird in its osier ccge ! (Colin, the rogue,
all the while at her elbow, invisible to La Mere Aveugle, but
Buapected!) — Eeraager compresses witbin. ^uvVJ-a-doieti b^mV-Ivq^

'tMnzas, tlie interest of a Jittle romance, and, ■«At\i tVe mXctesiV

}^tJie 2-efjatJess faadaatioti.

PIERRE BERANGER — ^THE SONG-WRITER. 57

His chief glory as a Song-'writer, however, springs incontestably
from his wondrous identiEcation of himself with the patriotic
ardour, and the national enthusiasm, and the warlike splendour,
of his Patherland. Especially, and beyond all, from his intimate
it should rather be said, his inextricable, interweaving of his own
poetic fame with the heroic renown of Napoleon. Henceforth
their names will live together in the popular remembrance — cele-
brities so strangely contrasting, and yet at the same time so
curiously harmonious ! The founder of an empire and of a
dynasty. Conqueror at once and Lawgiver : and, side by side with
that new Sesoatris, the homely Poet who sang of his glory, he who
loved to call himself simply by his one enviable but unpretending
title of Chansonnier. Beranger more even than Manzoni, has
acquired for himself the right of being designated The Poet of
Napoleon. Already that right has during a very long interval,
been universally recognised. Already ! And yet there are some
fifty songs, relating exclusively to the memories of the Empire,
which have never yet appeared. Pifty original Chansons written
by Beranger about Napoleon; deposited several years ago by
their author in the hands of a Paris notary, with an ulterior view
to their posthumous publication. Need any one hint with what
eagerness that posthumous publication is still to this moment
anticipated ? Scarcely ; to those at least, who know familiarly the
glorious songs chanted long since to the memory of Napoleon the
Great by the thrilling voice of Pierre Jean de Beranger ! Songs
in which it is curious to note that never once is tbe name of
Napoleon articulated. He is only spoken of in tliem as " le grand
homme," or " le bon empereur," or by some such phrase — lovingly
and reverently. The merest allusion is enough ; the Hero shines
forth through the verse of the Song-writer too distinctly to require
one solitary syllable with a view to his identification. Besides
which, the catastrophe of Mont Saint Jean, and the sorrowful
exile in Saint Helena were altogether too freshly and too pain-
fully in the popular remembrance when Beranger wrote, to admit
of his articulating without a pang, through such cries of homage
and affection as rang out wildly in those impassioned songs, the
name of all others consecrated to the love and admiration of
Prance : first of all by so many unparalleled achievements : after-
wards, and yet more, by sufferings so profound and overwhelming.
His evidently intentional suppression of Napoleon's name in all
these war-songs, appears indeed to be born oi Wi^ «».\xi'fc ^x<^Vsv«A
emotions of grief, dictating, in one of \via aon^%, ^i)cL^ v^Qr^«2i^^

intentional suppression of the name of Waterloo, ^^xt.^^s^'^^;^;

the snguwii witli which it is associated, \ve cne^ ^^>5^ ^^^"^

"VOOTPSDITS ON THE "SbH

that name liia verse shall never be saddened." la not the reti-
cence as significant ia regard to Napoleon aa ia regard to
Waterloo ?

"Son nam jsmaia n'ftttmtent mea Ters."

Yet, ttougli he ainga of him thua, merely inferential! y, with
what fervour he sings, nevertheless I His ■worda ring through
these noble war-songs as with the resonance of a trumpet. It ia
scarcely possible while reading them to remain uninfluenced by
the contagion of their deep and true enthuaiasm. What a tender
and elevated pathos there is in the commemoration of the Hero's
Death, I^e Cinq Mai, 1821, at Longwood ! "What a tenacity of
love and admiration in the colloquy between the old soldiera of
the grand army, les Deui Grenadiers! How evidently the old
man delights to sing of the Old Times in respect of the Old Flag,
and the Old Sergeant, and the Old Corporal ! The Old Flag
treasured up in secret, dusty and faded, under the mattrass ; the
Old Sergeant talking rapturously of the ensanguined past, to hia
pretty daughter ; the Old Corporal marching to death, with the
pipe between hia teeth, muttering to the young troopera through
the pufia of tobacco, as they move on with measured tread towards
the place of execution : —

I

Canscrita an pai :
Moiohei an pas.

ui«a,

a paa, [lu p

lit

ornita-

march free

Weep not for me,
Keep Etep — march free!
Keep Btep, keep stop, keep sWp, keep etep!"

The grandest of all these heroic Chansons, however, yet remains
to he partioulariaed. The glorioua Ee collections of the People, so
called simply Souvenirs du Peuple, in which (as usual, without a
whisper of hia name) the historic form of Napoleon gleams forth
vividly before the popular imagination, transfigured ! An old
grandame ia the narrator ; and a, party of villagers clustered
-around her as she sits there in the evening twilight, are the
listeners and iuterlocutora. The refrain of this song in particular,
£s^ something wQndevi\x\ in its strange and acMceVj definable
heading of variety with monotony. SlonotoTij A^a effiett o

to tlie one

purpose ;

iety of treatment iia toVTi?, '^M

PIERRE BiRANQER— THE SONG-WRITER. 59

Iceep alive, at its utmost intensity, the interest first awakened.
The villagers entreat the old grandame to talk to them about the
Great Man, whose deeds long past, still like events of yesterday,
captivate the popular heart in their remembrance. And she talks
— ^talks of her own personal recollections. She has seen him
herself: they are full of wonder. He had given her Qood-day at
her cottage door, as he passed through the village with a retinue
of kings. " What ! " they exclaim. " He has spoken to you,
mother ? He has spoken to you ? '* Everything is described by
the old grandame minutely, with all the particularity of a photo-
graph. The grey great-coat, the three-cornered hat, the smile
which she says was so sweet, " etait lien dov^P They hang upon
every syllable, exclaiming again, "What brave days for you,
mother! What brave days for you!** -Her recollections now
change in their tone ; she talks no longer of his glory, but of the
disasters portending his downfall. One evening, " as it might be
this," she tells them, he came again to her cottage, and entered.
No retinue of kings at his heels then, but a feeble escort, weary
and dejected. " Seated in this very chair," she says, he sighed,
**0h! War, War!" "What!** they exclaim. "Then he sat
there, mother P Then he sat there ? *' It ends, this apotheosis
of a popular hero in song — as such a song should end — with tears
and words of benediction. In every way it is B6ranger's master-
piece.

It was not, of course, by a single bound that Pierre Jean de
Beranger attained this conspicuous elevation, or rather this abso-
lute pre-eminence as a Song-writer. As might be said in the
instance of almost every self-made man on record, his were indeed
but very small beginnings. At the outset, a boy- waiter at a little
tavern or auberge kept by a prim old aunt of his at F^ronne.
Afterwards, like f'ranklin, or our own gifted and lamented Jerrold,
a compositor; this also at the town of P6ronne, at a M. Laisney's

Erinting establishment. Here, handling the type, he seems to
ave caught from them the old ineradicable disease of writing,
the cacoethes seribendiy and to have instinctively aspired to the
dignity of authorship. Animated by his new-born ambition,
B6ranger hastened from the provinces to his native capital, and
there, in that "golden and miserable** Paris, boldly tried his
fortunes in literature. It was at this most critical period of his
history that he passed through many and some of them very h'vtt^xL
hardships. Hardships from which he was orij ex\,t\.ca.\i^^V3 \ssft'No&
of the sole patronage he ever consenled to ^ftG«^'<» — ^^'^\x^^^'i
coming to him appropriately from the YVtat CiomxiS! ^ ^^^^"^
JiOerwsrds known aa the Prince di CamiiO,^.lAVXCAft^ >^^^^^^

FOOTP^STBOK THE BOA]

Having iu 1803, by a fortunate inspiration, enclosed some of liis
MS. veraes to tliis amiable cultivator of the fine arts and of letters,
tbe young, unfriended, and impoverished adventurer, received three
days afterwarda, tbe eiquisite consolation of the verbal and, with
it, tlie Bubstantifll sympathy of his nen--foiind Mecrenaa, How
amply and abundantly he repaid tbe author of the epic of Churle-
magne for that sympathy, every one knows who baa chanced to
read the grateful note of 1833, explanatory in moat eloquent prose
of his ever- memorable Dedication.

It haa been observed in reference to Beranger, aa aomething in
every way most remarkable, tliat he of all men remained to the
last without the cross and Hbbon of the Legion of Honour, in n
land where merit, however insignificant — sometimes, dndeed, de-
merit tbe most flagrant and diagraeeful — is iu the iiabit of being
signalised by decorations. This in truth, howerer, is not by any
means, as haa been supposed, remarkable in regard to Beranger.
It is, on tbe contrary, strictly in keeping and perfectly charac-
teriatic. It is a circumstance in its way aa perfectly characteristic
as the incident embellishing his whole life — that, namely, of hia
supporting existence to the end, exclusively with the proceeds
of a trifiing annuity derived from his publiaher, and be it said
also, his warm-hearted friend and asaociate, M. Ferrotin. Besides,
liad he not won a popularity beyond all decorations? He-who
has been voted the Poet of franco by national acclamation : he
who comes to us bearing in one baud the bay-wrcatb of a Bard
of the People, and in the other tbe undying laurel-crown woven
hy himself, the greenest and tbe brightest ever laid in votive
offering upon the imperial tomb of ]N"apoleon ? As for himself,
he had long since received the old anacreontic coronation ; —
cronned with the Song-writer's garland of rosea— rosea drooping
about his bald head voluptuously, heavy with their aromatic
perfurae^the dew upon them, wine-dropa I It is eiclusivelv
upon his transcendaut merits as a Song-Ariter that his fame rests,
aa upon an indestructible foundation. Of the absolute reality of
this truth, be himself was so entirely satisfied, that he is known
to have spontaneously coiiimitted to the flames — one by one, at
intervals — hia more ornate and more ambitious contributions to
literature. ConspieuouB among the works thus destroyed by hia
own hand, in manuscript, were his epic on Ciovia, hia dithyram-
bica on tbe Deluge, his idyll descriptive of a Pilgrimage, bis
comedy of the Hermaphrodites, his Memoirs of hia Own Times,
^ad a oompendioaa critical and biographical "Diclwum-j a? \i\»
^""ffn^porarica. Mven novi liis ingenious U'boura \ieWeevL \SOV
JgjJ ISUG aa the compiler of tho AnnaU o? tVe "M\iaewQ. «b

^X

PIERRE b£rANGER— THE SONG-WRITER. 61

forgotten by the world at large almost as entirely as bis assi-
duous application subsequently in the office of M. de Eontanes,
the Grand Master of the University, within the jurisdiction of
whose department he occupied, for twelve years, the position of
sub-secretary, or rather the minor post of commis-exp^dition-
naire.

Beranger, we repeat, was fully conscious, immediately after
the occasion of his earlier successes, that the one fruitful toil
of his life was that adventured upon by him simply in his
character as a Chansonnier. "My songs," said he, "are mjself,"
{" Mes chansons, c'est moi "). And, as attestations of his really
national importance as a Song-writer, twice we find him subjected
in that capacity to fine and incarceration. Eirst of all, in 1821,
when he was mulcted of 500 francs, and imprisoned for three
months in Saint F^gie ; secondly, in 1829, when he was in
durance for as many as nine months at La Eorce, having in-
curred, under the same sentence, a penalty of no less than
10,000 francs — a sum which was at once raised (at the suggestion
of his friend, Lafitte the banker,) by national subscription.
"" The happiness of mankind has been the dream of my life,"
wrote Beranger in 1833. And, strangely enough, it was the
destiny of that philanthropic genius to watch from the very
commencement the momentous struggle of Erance towards that
day-dream, with a view to its social and political realisation.
He who remembered, as an incident of yesterday, following
{when himself but a little nine-year-old gamin of the Quartier
des Halles,) the tumultuous mob of Parisians on the renowned
14th of Julv, 1789, to the storming of the Bastille, nearly sixty
years later found himself in his old age returned by 204,471 votes
to a seat in the National Assembly, as representative of the
Seine, the eighth upon the list of popular favourites, his name
coming immediately after those of the leading members of the
Provisional Government. It was only, however, at one single
fitting of that Eepublican Chamber that the reserved and simple-
hearted Song-writer took his place among the chosen legislators
of Erance — ^namely, upon Thursday, the 4th of May, 1848, the
day upon which the National Assembly was solemnly inaugurated.
TVithdrawing into the privacy most congenial to the noble sim-
plicity pf his character, Beranger there survived, in uninterrupted
-calm, very nearly to the patriarchal age of an octogenarian. He,
who by a memorable accident was almoat deelTO^^^ m V\% ^^^o
hood at PSronne by & thunderbolt, breathed. \i\a \asXi ^^"aft&^lNi^'^
on Thand^y, the 15th of July, 1857,— em\xms ^^^"^ ^^ ^"^^
^j^bautition of nature, but one uiontli ahoxt oi \i\a ^e.N^\NN.^-^«^^^

anniyereary. Tbe national honourB subsequently paid to his
memory in France, are jet freshly in the general remembrance.
The ceremonial of a great public funeral upon the morrow of
hia demise, was the first tribute offered to the fame of the poor
tailor's grandson of the Hue Montorgueil by the People and tbe
GoTemment. A monument provided by tbe latter was decreed to
he raised over the grave where his honoured remains were laid —
Bide hy side with those of hia old friend, Manuel. The etreot where
the national Song-writer expired was thenceforth to he called —
(uo longer the Eue de Teud6me, but) the Hue do Beranger. His
portrait, moreover, it was arranged forthwith, should be placed in
the gallery at Versailles, where were already grouped together
the effigies of Molifere, Corneille, and Lafontaine. But, Borrow-
fully agaitt be it said, the group has now at length been scattered,
of which the original of that portrait was so long the centra! fieure,
the group bo weU known, and bo familiar! Berauger, the white-
haired and bald-headed — his old coat and slippers clustered about
by Fays and Cupids — swallows circling and hissing clieerUy at hia
open lattice — a cup of wine in his hand and a Bong upon his lip»
— the wine and the song both tribrites to the love and beauty of
Lisette.

CHRISTOPHEE COLUMBUS— THE NAVIGATOR.

Thb Discoverer of the New World — ^long before the realisation ^
of bis grand design — by reason of his brooding over it during
many years, allowed his imagination to become so coloured by the
magnificence, so captivated by the awful glory of his One Scheme,
that those around him came at last, almost by necessity, to regard
him as a visionary. Few indeed out of the millions of the
fifteenth century sympathised with the dreamings of Columbus.

Considerable inconvenienccT has resulted from the variety of
names assumed by the renowned navigator. Although Colombo
was unquestionably the appeUation of his family, and although
Colon was selectea by himself during his residence in the Penin*
sula, so much that is memorable has become associated with his
Latinized surname, that we cannot presume to speak of him
otherwise than as Christopher Columbus. The period and place
of his birth have likewise been involved in much uncertainty.
Yet, notwithstanding several ingenious objections, we shall merely
transcribe the implied assurance of the navigator himself, in
observing that he first appeared upon this world, so many hidden
beauties of which he was destined to divulge, at Genoa, in 1446.
Genealogists have endeavoured to demonstrate the nobility of his
house. Chapters have been compiled for the purpose of proving
the honouraole antiquity of his family. His descendant, Per-
naudo, however, has exquisitely remarked upon the insignificance
of these researches, where he exclaims,* " nobility can impart less
lustre to me than the honour I derive from such a father," cTie
mi viene da un cost fatto padre ! One circumstance, at least, in
this controversy is fortunately beyond all dispute ; the parent of
Christopher followed the honest trade of a woolcarder. Three
younger children completed the offspring o? t\ie Qrenci^'aRkTCkfe^'aKNa
— Bartholomew, Diego, and a daughter, VJ^io 'wai^ \i\\Axaa.\i^l ^k^"^

♦ PenuLudo Columbus' Hiat. cap. liV. ^. 4.

FOOTPRINTS ON THE ROAD.

ried to an obacure individutil, called Giacomo Bavarelio. Having'
been tliorougWy proiinded, during liia cliildliood, in the bare rudi-
mentB of knowledge, in reading, writing, and arithraetio, besides
poaeeBBiug a telerable capacity for drawing and painting, Christo-
pher was in his twelfth year removed to tlie University of Pavio, in
Lombardy. Here he became an accompliahed Latin scholar, and
an ordinary mathematician, returning homewards after two years'
' absence. At this period of bis history, according to the
ance of Giuatiniani, the fingers of Columbus were euga^
wool- combing, whereas Feronndo explicitly repudiates the
tion, adding, with pitiable indignation, that his father was never
degraded to any handicraft ! Aa if the touching of a work-
man's implement could be the smallest degrndatiou to any hand,
more particularly to one that kings might have kissed with-
out dishonouring their dignity ! Fernando had forgotten the
ploughshare of Cincinnatus. Fired by aa alinoat instinctive
enthusiasm for the profession in which his alter celebrity was
acquired, Christopher Columbus, when only fourteen, entered
a Mediterranean trader, as a gailor-boy. Scarcely anything
at all ia known respecting the career of this estraordinary
character, until, having doubled his age, he suddenly reap-
peared in tlie capital of Portugal. Legends are undoubtedly
preserved of his peregrinations in the interval; but these are
sometimes ao exaggerated into the romantic, and at otliera so
heightened into the improbable, that we should be credulous in
placing any reliance upon their accuracy. According as the
narrators have been speculative or fanciful, we are informed that
■Columbus partook in a warlike expedition, fitted out by his
native place, in 1459 ; that he proceeded a hundred leagues be-
yond Iceland in the February of 1467 ; that he visited a Portu-
guese fortification ia Guinea ; that lie commanded a privateer in
the service of King Kene, and subeeijuently another at the behest
■of Louis XI ; and finally, that he was implicated, with a notorious
corsair of his name and family, in marauding adventures against
the Mahometans and Venetians. These occurrences, to say the
least of them, are simply conjectural; and they appear to us
as though contemporaneous personages and cuntemporaneous
names had been placed with our seaman in the cap of a literary
kaleidoscope, aud shaken into so many combinations. What
little seems to be indubitable is, that Columbus, first as a sub-
ordinate Bailor, and afterwards as "master," was almost inces-
^antJr affoat between the Levant and GibraXtw, \.Wt Vve may
or^'bly have sailed towards the uorthero. ■gottVoia ol "S.^xT^i'5«^ ■,
^^Jiai duriag bis Jaborious and ndventuioua -waiiie-rvii^*, W

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS — ^THE NAVIGATOR. 65

was fostering the natural fecundity of his intellect hy hook-
studies, by communings with nature, and hy the development of
his own glorious aspirations. That some such mental cultivation
was requisite is unquestionahle, from the circumstance of his
entering Lisbon in 1470, not merely as an experienced navigator,
but as a proficient in the more abstruse mysteries of his pro-
fession, as a remarkable geographer, and as an ardent worshipper
of science generally. Shortly after his settlement in the Portu-
guese metropolis, Columbus was united to Donna Felipa de
PalestreUo, a young damsel whom he had first encountered when
attending mass in the little chapel adjoining the convent of All
Saints. Her father, Bartolomeo Monis de PalestreUo, an Italian
navigator of considerable eminence, was the discoverer and colo-
niser of the island of Porto Santo, in which place Diego, the son
of Christopher, was subsequently born. The absorbing passion
for geographical research which had already taken possession of
the whole soul of Columbus was thus singularly fostered by this
most appropriate marriage. He listened with intense eagerness
to the incidents of their seafaring exploits recounted by his newly
acquired relations. His ambition to extend the knowledge of
mankind by navigation, derived fresh energy from their com-
munings ; and, having at length received from Eelipa's mother
the various journals, memoranda, and curious charts belonging to
his deceased father-in-law, new beams of glorious anticipation
flooded the heart of the so-called visionary. The ripening of the
crude aspiration of Columbus was, however, considerably retarded
by his impoverished circumstances. He was compelled to forsake
his delicious reveries, and to handle the inkhorn. His proficiency
as a cosmographer enabled him to earn a precarious livelihood
by making maps, and while his attention was thus apparently
diverted from his loftier theme, it was on the contrary height-
ened and confirmed by the incessant contemplation of geography
which his profession required. Nor did his enthusiasm as a
navigator decrease when he was at intervals enabled to make a
casual voyage to Madeira and G-uinea, or when he was occa-
sionally employed in trading excursions to the Canaries and the
Azores. So beneficial, indeed, were the pursuits of Christopher
daring these years of probation, pursuits such as his cosmogra-
phical labours and his wanderings along the western shores of
Africa, that he was ultimately regarded as more skilled iiL tiL^
science of navigation than any one of bia coiitftTii^at^Tve?^*

A mighty project, however, at last arose m^b\im >J\i^ ^xci^^v^^
of the indigent citizen of Lisbon. It ftoateflL'beiQte V\^ ex^Nx^^^
vhion like the predestination of Oianipoteuee. ^^ ^^^^ ^^

FOOTPRINTS ON THE BOAD.

Bun-burst upon his fancy — that superb fancy, which in the lan-
guage of hia greatest biographer,* " spread a golden and glorious'
world around him, and tinged everything with its own gorgeous
poIourB." It elevated him ahove the littlenesBea of his condition,
and, to bifl excited genius, identified him witli a being prophesied
in the Apocalypse. Poverty was nothing to him. He seemed to
himself that veritable alchemist who had heen idealised by the
romancer, as bearing about him the secret of the aurum pof(MU,
!i.nd tarrying only for some suitable moment for its revelation.
The depths of the inscrutable ocean yawned before him as his
mind traversed its mysterious and tracliless immensity j moun-
tains clotlicd with unknown verdure purpled before bis dream-
ings ; creatures of unearthly beauty, flowers of unimagined dyes,
foreata of unutterable magnificence, thronged upon him as hia
eyes roved over Ihe chart of the unsearched sea. That vast
scheme of his creation was not unlike —

such as it was pictured by a poetical mythology: as lustrous
withal, but less unreal.

It might almost be said without extravagance that his soul
strove with the awful but seductive phantom of the future, aa
Jacob struggled with the angel in the wilderness,

Eather more than half a league from Palos de Moguer, a sea-
port in Andalusia, stands at tbis present moment a convent,
formerly occupied by Franciscan friars, and dedicated to Sauta
Maria de Babida. It is situated on a solitary eminence over-
looking the sea-beach, and is picturesquely embosomed among
pine-trees. One day in 1485, Columbus, as a mere chance way-
farer, clad in homely garments, but one reraai-kable I'or hia
majestic and even lordly presence, leading a child by the band,
drew the bell-chain suspended by the porch of that monastery.
He was there, simply as an impoverished traveller, iu search of
Itoapitality ; and as such he then first confronted the superior of
the convent, Juan Perez de Marchena.

Columbus was journeying at this time in search of a relative at
the adjacent town of Huelva. "Welcomed with an instant cor-
diality by Marchena, however, he tarried awhile with his son
"Diego to jjartake of the hospitalifciea of tbe monastery.
^^e pergonal appearance of Columbus, a,t tliia ■jjeT^oA ot hia

^^^^^^_ ' Washi'ngloa Lrviag'e Life at ColambuB, v

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS — ^THE NAVIGATOR. 67

history, is fortunately preserved to us, even with a minute par-
ticularity. He is represented as somewhat above the ordinary
height ; of compact and muscular proportions ; his visage long,
but well fleshed ; his nose inclined to the aquiline ; his eyes of
the lightest grey ; his complexion naturally fair, but ruddy from
exposure to sunshine and searbreezes ; while his hair, originally
of a pale auburn-red, had become since his thirtieth year of a
milky whiteness.

Anterior to his arrival in Portugal, the observation of Columbus
had been directed to a marvellous fleld of discovery. An impres-
sion had for centuries been prevalent among geographers, assuring
them of the sphericity or globular form of the earth. Never-
theless, it continued to be merely a conjecture ; it still required
demonstration. This supposition, however, of a terraqueous
globe, had so imprinted itself upon the mind of Christopher ; it
had so animated his enthusiasm, and so burnt into his heart with
the glorious reveries it had evoked, as to amount to an enduring
and prophetic conviction. A variety of circumstances tended,
moreover, to impress this belief upon Columbus. In Aristotle and
Seneca, he had found his opinions explicitly embodied. Plato, in
his renowned dialogue of Tifnaus, had hinted at the probable ex-
istence of remote countries, when picturing the island of Atalantis.
The circular shape of the earth seemed, indeed, to be conceded
by universal consent : the elucidation of the mystery was now,
therefore, alone requisite. Satisfied upon this point, the sug-
gestive intellect of our navigator endeavoured to estimate the
distances of the ocean which intervened between the extremities
of the known world. In these endeavours he derived material
assistance from the calculations and assertions of preceding cos-
mographers. According to Pliny and Strabo, the width of the
Atlantic was comparatively inconsiderable — and its width con-
stituted the great obstacle to research. Alfraganus was even
more moderate in his notion of the earth's circumference ; and
to his Arabic theory Columbus gave much credence. His ideas
were, however, reduced to a practical consistency, by the spirit
of geographical enterprise which characterised the age in which he
lived, more especially by the national efforts of the very state in
which he resided. Portugal had long rendered itself conspicuous
in striving to enlarge the boundaries of navigation ; and, under
the patriotic guidance of Prince Henry, its government was then
endeavouring to reach India by sailing xovxud. >}ci^ ^i.^^'sX* ofl KSsv^*
That endeavour 80 coupled itself in tke mm'i oi Vov:JV\i\£Xi>QL^ ^>^
hiB viewa aa to the dimensions- of the ^orVd-, t\io^^ Vw^'^^'^^V
amBlgamated tbemBeivea together —they »o te^oVi^^ VW^^^

By WWftMHfaTBr^ fioAB:

into eacli other — tliat, witfa a khi(i of intuitive recognition of the
joality, and with a preTieion of his own ^lorj, Christopher first
t-ontempkted the daring project of arriving at India, hy sailing
due west across the Atlantic.

Livioft, as we do, in a generation w^en the steam-packet con-
veys us from New York to Liverpool within a fortnight, »-e can
scarcely appreciate tlie consummate audacity of the scheme thus
promulgated in the fifteenth century. Ages upon ages, since
the creation of the ■world, the Atlautic surges had seemed to
repel the incursions of mankind. That vast domain of hillowa
had girdled the western shores of Europe and Africa, as with
an impassable barrier. Before its mysterious extension, men
had shrunk back, appalled and awe-stricken. It appeared to bar
that portion of the earth witli a chaotic immensity of waters. A
modern writer has admirably exemplified the character of the
project broached by Ciiristopher Columbus, by saying that it
then excited some such astonishment as would be experienced
now-a-days, were an adventurer to ascend in a balloon, with the
intention of seeking one of the planets. That project, however,
derived only additional earnestness from the solid judgment and
!;orgeou8 fancy of its originator — " that ardent and enthusiastic
iraagiuation which threw a magnificence over his whole cast of
thought." * He was confirmed, moreover, in hia determination,
by an erroneous supposition that the regions hitherto unex-
amined, were occupied by the Asiatic continent, which, to his
tliinking, constituted the eastern boundary of the Atlantic.
Believing this, and believing the sphericity of the earth, he
recognised the fact, that, by sailing in a westerly direction, he
would necessarily either arrive at Asia, or discover any inter-
vening country. The germination of these glorious conceptions
was materially expedited by a number of collateral stimulants.
Marco Polo in 1250, and John Mandeville in 1332, had departed
severally from Venice and England, to explore the more eastern
territories and dependencies of Asia. Their narratives had exer-
cised a peculiar fascination over the visions of the Genoese : the
writings of Polo especially had rendered his future more lustrous,
and more seductive even, than heretofore. The luxurious island
of Cipango ; the gold-running rivers of Cathay ; the meUifluous
landscapes of Mangi, such as they were delineated by the Vene-
tian voyager, imparted a fresh splendour to his expectations, am!
Jacited him to new exertions for their attainment. The visionary
■islands ofAutilla, and St. Brandon, were verdant aijQt&\\miin Kiuv

^^^^^^^_ * iCasbington Iivias's Life of Culain^v\!, i'

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS — THE NAVIGATOR. 69

on tbrough the " blue-green " deep ; while, to his impassioned
day-dreams, the succouring of.Prester John — that most chimerical
of potentates ! — may possibly have formed no insignificant induce-
ment. Nop were these the only encouragements oflfered to the
aspirations of Columbus. His notion as to the protrusion of
Asia into the Atlantic, was apparently corroborated by his
brother-in-law, Pedro Correo, who had frequently observed, on
the western beach' of Porto Santo, gigantic canes floating on the
sea — canes precisely similar to those depicted by Ptolemy as
growing in the Indian jungles. Other observations of a like
nature appeared to demonstrate, beyond all doubt, the exist-
ence of other inhabited regions beyond the ocean. Martin
Vincenti, a Portuguese pilot, after having proceeded a con-
siderable distance westward, had found a piece of curiously
carved timber, wafted by a westerly breeze ; entire trees were
occasionally carried by the same gales upon the Azores ; and the
corpses of two singular-looking men, their features of a foreign
and unfamiliar cast, were remembered to have been once washed
up on the island of Plores. So durable and vivid were the traces
left upon the imagination of our navigator by these numerous
and significant facts, so rapidly did they there mellow into
arguments, and so much were those very arguments enforced by
the epistles written by the renowned Toscanelli to Christopher,
that in 14i74 the latter was fully assured of the feasibility of
his gigantic project ; insomuch so, that he felt himself " destined
by God " for the discovery of a new hemisphere.

Conscious of the magnitude of his proposition, Columbus, with
a princely dignity, now endeavoured to associate himself with
some sovereign, whether of a kingdom or a principality. He is
declared to have applied first to the government of his native city,
but unsuccessfully. His second application was made ta John II.,
King of Portu^; and, although that enlightened monarch
listened with deference to the extraordinary scheme offered to
his consideration, it was carelessly submitted to the decision of
a maritime junto, and was there rejected as a chimera, after a
perfidious effort to acquire the glory of the deed without the
assistance of the applicant. Thirdly, the proposition was once
more tendered to the Genoese merchants, and was again by them
contemptuously spumed. A vague and incredible report has
arisen in Italian history, that it was thereupon offered in like
manner to Venice, and in like manner eo\i\.ecmft\. "^^ Sa^ ^'^^i^
lutelj- certain, however, that Co\u.ni\>na dLe^^«.\.<2t\fc^ "^^ ^^^*^
Bartholomew to Eaghnd with a aimaax wo^vi^A\ 'Cwa^i ^^a^
Jomewwaagracioaalywekomedi by BLemy ^ \l/va\Aa'^ % «^^

!X)0TPBINT3 OS, THE ]

participation in the undertaking of the great Christopher was
alone denied to Britain hy his previoua and unexpected arrange-
ment elsewhere. In consequence of a ministerial Rrudge to the
poor adventurer, Columbus was at length compelled to escape
secretly from Portugal ; and, with bis son Diego (Felipa being
already deceased), entered Spain, at the particular date, and under
the peculiar circumatancea already described, with the intention
of personally endeavoioring to negociate an alliance with its
sovereigns.

Friar Juan Perez de Marcliena— a name to be loved and
honoured til! the end of time — listened with a swelling heart
and moistened eyes to the explanation of the foregoing incidents,
uttered by the lips of his extraordinary guest. The grandeur
of tlie latter's language, as, pushing the dainties aside, he ex-
plained, with rapid movements of his finger upon the table, at
their earliest interview, the course he intended to pursue in
dirniging a new world ; his eminent and commanding presence ;
his " easy gravity," piaee-vole gravita ; * the uncommon air of
inspiration upon hia visage, must without doubt have filled with
sublime emotions the bosom of the true-hearted Franciscan, as
he sat and hearkened to the voice of Christopher Columbus in
the old refectory chamber of the convent of La Itabida.

This noble and affecting incident, in truth, is adoroed with a
natural and an undying beauty : it lives again before ua at this
moment — the great "sea wanderer" first breathing his grand
hopes to willing eaea, a solemn exultation betrayed upon his
features, precisely as they were depicted by the pencil of Parme-
giano. Diego slumbering on a cushion. Marchena drinking in
the words of Christopher, his cheeks flushed, hia lips tremuloua.
And, through the lattice, the Andalusian landscape radiant with
Qod's sunshine.

The incidents chequering the life of Christopher immediately
after hia romantic entrance into Andalusia, may now be very
rapidly particularised. Marchena evinced himseli' a staunch and
practical friend, He induced Columbus to remain aa his guest
at La Eabida, until some propitious opportunity miglit present
itself for an application to Ferdinand and Isabella, He summoned
Garcia Femaodez to discuss the project with his Genoese visitor ;
and finally, in 1486, retaining Diego under his protection, sui
plied Columbus with a letter of introduction to Fernando a
il'alaverBj her Majesty's Confessor. On reaching Cordova, how-
<■'"■*; ^Ae nppliesnt was treated aa a needy \ialo'DaTY ^iy tVe wa.'^ftr-

^^^^^_ ' Fetnando Colambus' Hist. can. iii. p. 1

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS — THE NAVIGATOR. 71

cilions Prior of Pradon and it was only through the personal
interference of Cardinal Mendoza, that he was ultimately admitted
to an audience with Bang Ferdinand. His proposition was then
submitted to an ecclesiastical conference at the Dominican con-
Tent of St. Stephen, in Salamanca. Christopher was here
assailed by, and here retorted with, scriptural quotations ; but
not until five years had elapsed was any answer given by his
interlocutors, when, in 1491, an unfavourable report was for-
warded to the sovereigns. It were unnecessary to specify the
almost numberless disappointments to which this glorious pro-
phet of the western hemisphere was subjected ; his contemptuous
treatment by the courtiers ; his constantly hanging about the
royal armies, now wielding his sword on the battle-field, now
tarrying in the antechambers — added to all this, the significant
&ct of the Spanish children pointing to their foreheads as he
passed through the streets, and gibing him as ^Hhe mad Italian."
These are among those contumelies apportioned to Neglected
Genius which have passed into household proverbs. Despite the
powerful patronage received by him from Mendoza, from Deza,
Archbishop of Seville, from Quintanilla, and from St. Angel,
Columbus could obtain neither the smallest encouragement, nor
yet even any decisive refusal from Ferdinand or Isabella. Nay,
he was at length so wearied out by his lengthened series of un-
successful applications, that he determined upon seeking some
different assistance. After his project had been successively
refused by two of the principal Spanish grandees, named Celi and
Sidonia, he resolved to lay the proposition before the French
monarch, from whom he had some time previously received a
benignant epistle. During his residence in Spain our cosmo-
grapher had yielded to the fascinations of Beatriz Enriquez, a
beautiful lady of Cordova, and by her had his second son, Fer-
nando. Notwithstandiug all these inducements to a settlement
in the Peninsula, Columbus resolved to prosecute his grand
endeavour, and in consequence returned to La Habida to bid
adieu to Marchena, and to depart with Diego. Friar Juan was
heartbroken at this resolution ; implored him to delay awhile ;
called in the assistance of Fernandez, and likewise of Alonzo
Pinzon; wrote himself to Isabella, and, upon her requiring a
verbal explanation, saddled his mule at nightfall, and hastened
to Santa Fe, where he, in person, pleaded the cause of his
friend and favourite. Although that \oft.^-\mxi"^fc^ ^<3i^\SL^^>a
won hjr the eloquent intercessions o? Maxc^i^T^^^, ^^ Q.W3k$i>iHssix
of the expedition were considered prepo^tetoxs^a ow ^sNn^ "^"^^t^
a mere penniless adventurer. More mo^ex^X.^ ^^xm'^ ^^^^ "^^

^93 FOOTPRIKTS ON THE HOJID. ■

quently proposed ; but, aa tiie filial biographer very beautifully
esclaims, God would not allow theai to be accepted — a die Dio
now diede luogo.* ludignaut with what be conceived to be a
paltry response to his own munificence, Columbus resolved to
abandon the kingdom in which he had received such contume-
lious treatment. Isabella was, however, true to her own great-
ness ; she despatched mesaeugers alter Chriatopher, when he was
already on the road to Cordova. >jbe conBcuted to defi^y what-
ever espeusea might be incurred by the undertaking, even if their
liquidation required the pawning of her jewels. And on the 17th
of April, 1492, the neceasary capitulaiiona were uigned by heraetf
and Ferdinand at Santa Fd, within view of those plains around
Granada, in which a few days previously the Moors, under Boabdil,
had surrendered to the Spanish auvereigns. Thus eighteen years
alter its first conception was the project of Columbus allowed an
opportunity of being realised. By an unparalleled peraeverance
be bad clung to tlie vision of his youth through the whole period
of his majestic and troubled manhood, tbrougl) ribaldry and ritu>
peratioii, tbrougli indigence and contumely : and now amidst the
on-comings of decrepitude he belield that vision merging into a
reality.

According to these renowned stipulations between the con-
tracting parties, Columbus was to be Admiral and Adelantado, or
Lieuteuiint-Gtjvernor of whatever lands he might discover; he
was to receive one-tenth of the gains, whether acquired by barter
or conquest ; he was to disburse one-eighth of tbe cost, and as
compensation, to receive one-eighth of the profit in diamonds,
pearls, gold, spices, and other commodities.

After shriving himself, and receiving the most blessed eucharist
from the hands of Marcheua, Columbus, early on the morning of
Friday, the 3rd of August, 1492, departed from the bar of Saltes,
neur Palos, in the presence of & prodigious multitude of spec-
tators. iN'^otwith standing the vastness of tbe enterprise, the
instruments for its prosecution were miserably dispro portioned.
I'hree vessels comprised the fleet : one. La Santa Maria, com-
manded by Columbus himself; another. La Piuta, by Martin
Alonzo Piuzon; and the third, La ^*ina, by his brother Vincente
Yanez Pinzou. The two latter ships were merely caravels, and
the whole convoy carried only one hundred and twenty men.
Providence seems indeed to have smiled propitiously upon the
endeavour. The Great Spirit which had germinated such a craving
^ £&e mind of Columbus to esplore the AtVautic, glaaaed its

^^^^^^^ ' Fernaado Columliue' Hiat. cap. ■viii- p- 2,i6. ,^^^<

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS — THE NAVIGATOR. 73

nwful billows before him, strewed its surface with sunbeams
and tokens of encouragement, and cooled its atmosphere with
refreshing breezes. And Christopher responded to the benefi-
cence of the Deity; throughout his loog life he responded to it;
his piety was not intermittent or eccentric, it coloured his whole
soul, and lent a new majesty to his majestic nature. His
Journal, commenced immediately after his departure from Palos,
indicates the incessant and intense awe with which he regarded
the great one of eternity : its opening paragraph is written, " In
nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christie Columbus appears to have
rendered the dreaded passage across the oce^n less perilous by
certain improvements in the astrolabe, for according to the inti-
mation of Beauchamp, " C'est ainsi gue son genie createur perfec-
tionna Vart nautique^ avant de mettre son grand projet a execution.**
The circumstances which accompanied that first entrance into the
wild immensity of the western ocean may be briefly catalogued.
On the 6th of August a rudder was damaged, and, on the follow-
ing <iay> they repaired the accident. On the 13th of August they
reached the Canary Islands, provisioned themselves anew, and on
the 6th of September quitted Gomera. Here the altercation of
Christopher with his mariners commenced : and, when we reflect
upon his various devices to decrease their despondency, and to
exalt their anticipations ; his fallacious reckoning in the common
log-book ; his ingenious explanation of that mysterious variation
in the compass first observed on the 13 th of September, a varia-
tion which has been aptly classed among those phenomena
" baffling the experience of the practical, and humbling the pride
of science ; " t his persistence in a westerly course so as not to
appear wavering, and this despite every inducement to a devia-
tion ; his patient remonstrances with "his refiractory crew ; his
appeals to their cupidity and ambition — every circumstance
throughout that most memorable of all voyages demonstrates the
valour, the self-reliance, the fortitude, the almost prescient
certainty of success wbich lived the while in the bosom of
Columbus. The spectacle of that extraordinary man standing
undismayed amongst his enemies in the midst of the then un-
known Atlantic is, in truth, one of the most thrilling and instruc-
tive pictures ever presented to mankind. How atiecting is the
simplicity of that exclamation of his, when the wind changed
from east to south-west, on the 20th of September, thereby
affording a temporary pacification to bia mVot^ — ^^ iA^^\ ^\!k»rx^

• Biognphie Universelle, ix. 28S.
f Was}^ngton Irving' s Life oi Co\\im\i\xa, \. *i^^.

HJTPBINTS ON THE ROAD.

wanted this contrnry wind " — macho me foe ngoestario etle viento
cantrario ! * Even when his dtuation had become absolutely
(leeperate, namely, when on the 10th of October there was a.
proposition abroad among the niarinera to throw him overboard
and return homewards, tbe resolve of Christopher remained
unshaken. Oviedo, a somewhat credulous writer, declares, that
Columbus, thereupon, capitulated with his crew for three days
longer. 'Xhat assertion ia proved to be a gross fabrication:
instead of yielding to the importunities and tlireats of these
ignorant seamen, he actually changed from espostulation to
upbraiding, and proclaimed to them in their teeth that he would
proceed at every hazard. Sea-weeds, birds with gorgeous and
unusual plumage, brauclies covered witli clusters of brilliant
berries, laud-crabs floating upon casual pieces of timber, together
with a multitude of similar tokens, assured them from time to
time that the anticipations of tbeir commauder might not in the
end prove altogether illusory.

About dead of night oa the 11th of October, 1492, after having
sailed during seventy days in a westerly direction from Europe,
Columbus waa standing on the forecastle of the Santa Maria.
An impenetrable darkness enveloped the vessel ; yet, so satiafied
was our navigator tliat his undertaking waa on the eve of its
completion, aud that hia hopes were on the verge of being
realised, that, immediately after evening prayers, he had com-
manded the aaila of his little squadron to be furled, and a vigi-
lant watch preserved, lest their keels should be unexpectedly
grounded. A page of the queen's wardrobe, named Guttierez,
waited beaide the great adventurer on the forecastle ; a fragrajit ' '
breeze whistled amongst the rigging ; a breathless silence was
maintained, in which the plashing of the billows could alone be
distinctly audible.

Columbus, suddenly grasping his companion by the arm, asked
him if he did not see a hght — " yonder ! "

Guttierez, with a joyful eiclamation, replied in the affirma-
tive ; and shouted to the comptroller, Salcedo, to come and par-
ticipate in their pleasure.

" Thanks be to the Most High God ! " was tlie reverent
eielauiation of tbe admiral, after tiiey had watched the light
for a while flitting backwards and forwards.

Towards two o'clock in the moniing, a gun was fired by the
foremost vessel ; and a faint cry of " Land! land !'' followed the
ioaming of tbe gunpowder. The mariners ■were crovAcA toge-

tJTavBn'lta, Col. de Vmges, \. 11.

CHBISTOPHER COLUMBUS — ^THE NAVIGATOR. 75

thep on the deck throughout that momentous night ; sleep was
forgotten ; every eye was strained to penetrate the surrounding
gloom ; every heart yearned for daybreak.

Not, however, until the dawn of morning (Friday, the 12th of
October) was their credulity wholly vanquished. A glorious
island lay before them, strewn with an uncommon verdure : its
shores covered with handsome savages, perfectly naked, saving
bracelets of the purest gold, and fantastic plumes upon their
heads ; forests of novel foliage clothing the hills ; fruits of a
surprising aspect ripening on their boughs.

With trumpets blowing and banners waving, the mariners
descended from their vessels, and glided in boats to the beach.
Christopher Columbus, clad in a sumptuous garment of scarlet
cloth, his white hair partially concealed by a velvet cap, and
bearing in his hand the gonfalon of Spain, landed in the western
hemisphere, and, as Sportono finely exclaims, " with a grand
footstep pressed the new world," e di grand' orma il nuovo mondo
imprima, "Well does Washington Irving observe, that " it is
difficult even for the imagination to conceive the feelings of such
a man at the moment of so sublime a discovery I " * While the
repentant Spaniards were kneeling around the great Admiral to
kiss his feet, and to implore his forgiveness— while the sun shone
with an exceeding refulgence over those newly-revealed regions —
while the singular inhabitants stood gazing at them in wonder-
ment from the distance, the glorious heart of Columbus must
have throbbed with a divine tumult. And worthily were his
emotions )3vinced : he pressed his lips to that land for which his
soul had yearned so long : he planted the cross among that
godless people : he named the island San Salvador, an island
formerly called Guanahanij and now reokoned amongst the
Bahamas. " Divi Salvatoris nomine imposui,^* he reverently writes
to Baphael Sanxis ; " cufus fretus auxilio, tarn ad hanc quam ad
ccBteras alias pervenimtisJ^ f He there inaugurated the political
and ecclesiastical existence of a hitherto undiscovered and gigantic
hemisphere.

Scarcely knowing what to conjecture on entering Guanahani,
Christopher was peculiarly enraptured with the spectacle there
presented to his observation. Believing their Spanish visitors
to be superior beings who had descended from heaven in terrible
machines vomiting thunder and lightning, the tawny savages
treated Columbus and his companiona '^Wa. Wi^ xi^Tsiof^J^ tl<^^^^-

* Waabington Irving' s Life of CoVvimVim, \. ^i*^^-
fBell Christ. 116, date 15S3.

^rOOTPRISTS OK THE ROAl

ence. To their virginal fancies the Admiral, conspicuous amongst
hiB flttendantB, both by reasou of hia scarlet trappings and his
princely demeanour, was a god who had forsaken hia palace in the
skies to visit their island. It was in consequence of this subuiis-
sireness among the natives, that Columhus was sQabletl to take
possession of San Salvador without opposition; " Contra iicenie
nemine, " eays he, in the same letter to Sansis, " posseisionem
accept." Having exchanged trinkets, glass beads, and hawk's
bells with the savages in return for cotton-yarn and cassava
bread, he departed on the 24ith of October in quest of those
voluptuous countries depicted by Polo, implicitly conceiving him-
self to be in their vicinity.

During his cruise amidst that splendid archipelago, he touched
in quick succession at Conception, !Exnma, Isla Larga, and Cuba,
the last mentioned of which appeared to be such a perfect
" elysiura," that he was satisiied he had at length reached the veri-
table Cipango. Even until the moment of his demise, Columbus
was so persuaded that Cuba adjoined the Indian mainland, that
the American aborigines were indiscriminately designated Indians,
the neighbouring islands having ever since then been styled " the
West Indies." On arriving shortly afterwards at Santo Domingo,
otherwise called Hayti, our navigator subjected himself, if that
were posaihle, to a still greater delusion, mistaking it for the
ancient Ophir, whence Solomon had derived liia ricbes. From its
recalling to his recollection tlie scenery of Andalusia, Columbus
denominated that island by the Latin diminutive Hispaniola.
Having bartered divers plates of gold from the natives, and
stored hia vessel witli other evidences of the realization of hia
scheme, the Admiral established an embryo colony in Hispauiola,
and on^the 4th of January, 1493, set sail for Europe. His own
ship, the Santa Maria, had previously foundered off Santo
Domingo; he bad likewise been deserted by Alonzo Pinzon;
Christopher was therefore adandoued to the little caravel, called
La Nina. Nevertheless he was not throughout his return-
passage across the Atlantic wholly " left alone to retrace his
course," as Mr. Prescott has erroneously intimated : • for he
rejoined during several weeks by the perfidious Pinta. O
taken by a terrific tempest on the 12th of February, while
the ship's company were bewailing the probability of their
destruction, Columbus valorously retired tu his cabin, penned
two brief narratives of hia discovery, enveloped them in wax, and
^miJJj- enclosed them in separate barrels to \)e cowvmittiei to the

^^^^^ ' Preacolfa Hist. Ferd. and Isil. vol. il. "Ltt

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS — ^THE NAVIGATOR. 77

billows in case of an emergency — more solicitous for the perpe-
tuation of his discovery than for the preservation of his life !
Fortunately, however, the storm abated, and the great mariner
was afterwards, on the 4ith of March, compelled by distress of
weather to seek shelter in the Tagus. Having been honourably
received by the Portuguese monarch, Columbus resumed his
homeward voyage, and on Friday, the 16th of March, landed at
Falos, amidst the jubilations of its inhabitants and salvos of
artillery. Thus had this most glorious navigator — guide par une
hypothise ingenietise, favorise par une heureuse hasarde, et soutenu
par une h^roique intrepidite "* — consummated the enterprise which
his intellect alone had had the sagacity to propose, and upon
which his heart alone had had the audacity to adventure.

Extraordinary honours were showered upon one who had im-
parted so vast and enduring a glory to the Spanish empire.
Besides receiving the ten thousand maravedis promised to whom-
soever should first descry land, he was formally presented with a
thousand Aoblas of gold from the royal treasury. As an especial
prerogative he was permitted to quarter the royal arms upon the
very appropriate escutcheon already allotted to him — "golden
isla^ids amid azure billows.*' His progress to Seville, and thence
to Barcelona, was as ceremonious as that of a prince, and as
enthusiastic as that of a conqueror. His reception in the latter
city by Fer<finand and Isabella was consonant in magnificence
and solemnity with the occasion which was to render their reign
illustrious for evermore beyond the reigns of all preceding and
succeeding sovereigns of the Peninsula.

"Without the suburbs of the city of Barcelona, during that
spring of 1493, a sumptuous pageantry awaited the arrival of
Columbus, to conduct him thence with all pomp and ceremony
into the presence of the Spanish sovereigns. Nor can the splen-
dour of his reception be in any degree wondered at : for under
his guidance, and in accordance with his anticipations, the most
wonderful expedition ever undertaken by mariner had been con-
ducted to a successful issue — a new world was, of a truth, re-
vealed. Had the denizens of this earth been suddenly enabled to
obtain admittance to one of the celestial bodies, a more excessive
astonishment could not have been experienced throughout
Europe. Descriptions of those transatlantic countries, teeming
with precious metals, redolent of aromatic spices, covered with
extraordinary verdure, and peopled with a Bvii^v)\«cc x«i^^^ <stt<iNi^-
]ated over the continent with a rapidity indicatYS^ oi ^'^ \iSG»a*^'

/* Balbj, AhT6g^ de G^ograpble, p. xdx.

meat they eicited. " Our minds, Boiled with vieee," wrote Petet
Martyr,' " become meliorated by contemplating snob gloriona
events." The enthusiaem enkindled amongst those who had
beheld these heretofore fabuloua regions was contagious. Every
one pictured to himself their aurpriaing beauty, and became
inspired with a reflex of that admiration which Herrera describea
to have been universal, when he remarksjf " la grandeur de aettt-
quatriesme partie est telle, que cliaseun I'admire." Their remote-
ness, moreover, invested them with an additional fascination.

In a pavilion hung with arahesqued tissue, under a dias of
cloth of gold profusely embroidered with precioua atones, the
Spanish monarcba in 1493 awaited the arrival of the very man,
whom in 1491, they had treated as a mere troublesome visionary.
The rattle of the drums and the blare of the trumpets told hia
approach, and the noble countenance of Isabella is deecribed as
having flushed with emotion at the signal. Even the phlegmatic
Perdinand, we read, evinced some show of curiosity. Shortly
afterwards the procesaion entered the pavilion. First came a cluster
of pursuivants bearing the banners of tlieespedition,then a number
of hidalgos caparisoned in burnished armour, after them several of
the mariners who had shared in the voyage, bearing dishes filled
with gold, in plates and powder, fruits, spices, plants, parrots,
baboons, miuerals, and other specimens of the natural productions-
of the new world. Then came six of the natives decorated with
sheila and feathtira, their skins grotesquely painted, their wrists-
bound with golden bands : and lastly, surrounded by a gorgeous
retinue of nobles, the extraordinary personage to whom all these
revelations were attributable. As Columbus made his appear-
ance at the portal, we are tcld that the sovereigns simultaneously
rose to do him honour; tliey would scarcely permit him to abase
jiimself by kissing their hands, conductiug hioi to a chair
beside tlieir thrones, immediately beneath the brocade hangings-
by which they themselves were canopied. Here, seated and
covered in compliance with their command, Cliriatopher recounted
his adventures to Ferdinand and laabella " with that modesty and
simplicity which charucterizea men of superior minds." J He
reuouoted the viciaaitudes of hia pOgrimuge across the deep,
dilated upon the maguiflcencc of the new regions, the dehcioua
beauty of the climate, the sweetness of tlie ever blossoming
I sbrubs, the delicacy of the fruitage, the probabihty of pearl

L

' Feter Martyr'a Lettera, i. 53,
t Sen-en's Deecrip. dee Inil. Ocdilen, oh, i. 5.
f Robortaoa'B Hist, of Am<;iica, i. lU'J-

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS — THE NAVIGATOR, 7&

fisheries and gold mines, the tractable and generous disposition
of the savages, their feeble weapons of warfare, their domestic
habits, their ceremonies, everything he knew in any way apper-
taining to those marvellous lands, the very existence of which
had been so recently brought to light. Bemembering the inex-
haustible and suggestive nature of his subject, bearing in mind
the earnestness of his enthusiasm in its regard, and considering
the intrinsic glory and sublimity of his theme, it cannot be sur-
prising that the discourse of Columbus is described as having
been remarkable for its impressive and exalted eloquence. It
cannot at least create astonishment to those who are familiar with
the dictum of the master-orator, that a fruitfuluess of facts begets
a fruitfuluess of language, and that wherever the topic possesses
real worth, it thereby imparts a natural splendour to the utter-
ance : " Beriwi enim copia verhorum copiam ffi^nU," says Cicero ; *
'* et si est honestas in rebus ipsis, de quibus dicitur, exsistit ex rei
natura quidam splendor in verbis J* Immediately upon the close
of this memorable oration of Columbus, the whole of its
auditors with one accord prostrated themselves upon their knees,
while the royal choristers chanted the Te Deum, in gratitude to
Gj-od for the wonders he had disclosed to mankind. Well has it been
observed by a recent historian,t that this spectacle in the pavilion
at Barcelona was " a homage to intellectual power, successfully
exerted in behalf of the noblest interests of humanity." As
Columbus gazed around upon that solemn pageant — the costly
appurtenances — the kneeling monarchs — the tawny children of
the lands beyond the Atlantic — as he listened to the voice of
thanksgiving raised to that Q^reat Deity in whose fear he walked
throughout his life — his heart must have thrilled with the blissful
consciousness that his destiny was already accomplished.

Various circumstances, nevertheless, eventually led to an extra-
ordinary alteration in the behaviour of the [royal couple towards
the Great Navigator, who was the chief glory of their reign.
When the popular enthusiasm had somewhat subsided, after his
triumphal reception at Barcelona, Columbus prepared for the
extension of his discoveries, and departed from Cadiz on the 25th
of September, 14i93, on his second expedition, accompanied by
seventeen ships and 1500 men. By sailing in a more southerly
direction, he reached the Caribbee or Leeward Islands, and
remained awhile at Puerto £ico. On arriving at Santo Doming ^
he was horrified to find that his coloniata \ia^ "Vi^^ii ^"^w:^ w^a ^^

* DeOratore, lib. iii. n. U5.

t Preacott^a Hist. Ferd. audita. VVA^^.

tbem deBtroyed during liis absence : but, with the nasiBtance of a
Haytinn cbieftain named G-uncanagari, be wns enabled to found
the city of Isabella, upon the abore of an ndjoceDt harbour. 8ooil
afterwards Columbua diacovered Jamaica. Thence he was apeedily
recalled to Hiapaniola, in order to quell the mutinies and dis-
ordera which bad again arisen between ita aboriginal inhabifcanta
and the Spanish settlers. Complaints had already reached the
admiral from the peninsula, that the new regiona were considered
unproductive dependencies to Spain. From an anxiety to remove
these unfavourable impreasiona, Christopher was induced to levy
onerous taxes upon the nativea, requiring each individual to iiir-
nish " as much gold dust aa would fill a hawk's bell" quarterly.
Hence, likewise, arose the notorious system of repartimientos —
that execrable system which was inaugiirative of slavery in Ame-
rica ; and for the counteracting of which Las Casaa, the grand-
hearted Bishop of Chiapa, roved amongst the foreata and over the
prairies of the new world from hia twenty- eightli to hia ninety-
second year, imparting to the Eed Indians the blessings of Chris-
tianity, and the benefits of civOization. Despite, however, bis
compulsory severity to the nativea, Columbua even here displayed
a notable forbearance. According to his ablest biographer,* in
truth, "hia conduct was [at this very period in hia career] charac-
terized by the grandeur of hia viewa, and the magnanimity of hia
spirit," Hearing that calumniea were being promulgated in
Spain to hia detriment, our Navigator returned to Cadiz on the
11th of June, 1496, and by the candour of hia explanations
speedily removed the prejudicea excited against Lira by his

From the harbour of San Lucar de Earrameda, on the 30tb of
May, 1498, Columbua embarked upon bis third expedition with
a paltry squadron of merely six vessels. Perhaps, everything
considered, this particular voyage may be regarded as among
all hia voyages the moat remarkable, seeing that during it, by
touching at the coast of Paria, Christopher then first discovered
the American continent. Besides this he discovered La Trinidad,
the entrance of the Oronoco, the Margarita and Cubngua islands.
Having arrived off Hiapaniola in the hope of recruiting hia debili-
tated constitution on the 14lh of August, he found that unfor-
tunate colony in the moat miserable atate of disorganizatiou.
Nor were the dissensiona of Haytj the only grievances to which
Columbus was now subjected. The courtiers in Spain, filled with
eziij-ttt bfholdmg the good fortuue of a neei^ aiventirer, and

^^^B ^ ' Washington Irving'a Life oE Colam^ra*, n

CHKISTOPHER COLU|IBUS — THE NAVIGATOR. 81

indignant at such high powers beinof delegated to a foreigner,
continued to asperse the character of the admiral with so much
assiduity, that in July 1500, he was superseded by Bobadilla.

Shortly afterwards, within the hold of a vessel lying off Hispa-
niola, and commanded by that superseding Spanish commissioner
Don Francisco de Bobadilla, September 1500, seated upon bales
of cotton, and laden with chains, incredible though it still seems
to us in the far-off retrospect, languished Christopher Columbus
and his .brothers Diego and Bartholomew. The illustrious sea-
captain who had divulged to mankind the existence of another
hemisphere ; the man who had so augmented the dominions of
Ferdinand and Isabella ; the glorious voyager, who had rendered
his generation most memorable amongst the generations of the
earth, covered with manacles by the orders of a contemptible tool
of diplomacy ! He, who by his solitary genius, by his incom-
parable valour, and by his inimitable perseverance, had conferred
one of the greatest benefactions upon the human race, re-
compensed by imprisonment and contumelies ! Throughout his
passage homewards, the chains remained riveted upon his wrists
and ancles : they were subsequently treasured up in his cabinet ;
and were ultimately interred with nim in his coffin. Thus, says
Beauchamp,* was this spotless hero treated, *' c^e%t ainsi quefut
traite eet hamme irreprochable ! ^^ His unprecedented services
were forgotten by the sovereigns, in the hope of extricating them-
selves from a momentary dilemma.

When the rumour got abroad that Christopher Columbus had
arrived in fetters at Cadiz, one pulse of indignation throbbed
through the Spanish people ; one shout of execration was raised
against his w^rong-doers. Although Ferdinand asserted his
ignorance of the proceeding, his subsequent behaviour was so
ignoble, that we are compelled to discredit the assurance,t as
far as the king is concerned, that ''none partook of the general
indignation more strongly than Ferdinand and Isabella." Of the
sincerity of Isabella's indignation we are satisfied. So marked
was her emotion on again beholding the subject who had done
80 much for their common glory, and who had been so infamously
recompensed, that the stem self-possession of that great mariner
melted in his bosom ; and, falling down before the throne, he
wept bitterly at the feet of his favourite sovereign. With the
valour of a demi-god, he had the susceptibility of a woman.

It was only after a wearisome attendance oi m^e xclqtc^^ ^

* Biognpbie Universelle, ix. 297
f Preacott*B Hist. Fer. and laa. i\. 4^^*

the Spanish court, that he was enabled to obtain a very questiaii-
able redress; when Nicbolaa Ovando was nominated GoTemgr
of His pan io! a, and Columbus departed I'rom Cadiz on the 9th of
May, 1502, hia health impaired, his authority diminialied, bub his
ambition still preserved in. all its prtatine vigour. Fou.r caravels,
and one hundred and fifty men, were alone committed to his
charge, on this hia fourth einedition. In upeaking of Ovando's
promotion over the head of Christopher, Mr. Frescott has singu-
larly remarked as follows : * " There were several features of fiia
(Columbua') character which mate it doubtful whether be were
the most competent person, in any event, for an emergency
demanding at once the greatest coolness, consummate address, and
acknowledged personal authority."

These eipressions, as it appears to us, are, indeed, wonderfully
ill selected. Instead of forming the antithesis, they are the actual
representatives of the moat conspicuous features in that renowned
man's character. " The ^atest coolness!" Where have we more
brilliant instances of this, than in his defiance of hia rebellious
crew, immediately before the discovery of Quauabani — than in hia
writing an account of bis voyage, while uncertain whether he
might not be engulfed each moment in tlie Atlantic — than in
the language uttered by him when manacled by Bobadiila ?
" Consuramate address!" AYhere shall we discover anything
comparable to the consummate address with which he pacified
his marinera throughout bis first voyage, or with which he nego-
tiated with Guacanagari and Eoldan P " Acknowledged personal
authority ! " No man, with the exception of the Emperor Napo-
leon the Great, was ever endowed more lavishly with this faculty,
And, when we reflect that the authority arising from the lofti-
ness of his mind, the profundity of hia knowledge in navigation,
and the inefiahle majesty of hia appearance, was enhanced at
the period of Ovaudo's nomination, both by the dignity of bis
rank, the patron^e of Isabella, and the marvellous prestige of his
name, his efficiency in that particular cannot for one moment be
questioned. For these reasons, we are convinced that Columbus
was more eminently qualified for the appointment than Ovando,
or than any one of his contemporaries,

Persuaded that a passage to the East Indies, preferable to

that of Vase de Gama, might be discovered somewhere in the

neighbourhood of the isthmus of Darien, Christopher formed

the daring notion of sailing homewards across the Indian Ocean,

aaii bj- that means, circumnavigating the g\Q\ie. "Bafora coast-

s Hiat. Fer. anil la\, Vi. 4W^

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS — THE NAVIGATOR. 8^

mg tbe mainland, however, he was compelled by the dilapidation
of his vessels to seek assistance at Santo Domingo. Being
.thwarted in that endeavour, he was carried by an adverse current
to Truxillo, whence he proceeded by Honduras, the Mosquito
shores, Costa Hica, and Yeragua, to the ultimate point, then
recently attained by Bastides, and designated El Eetrete. Here,
on the 6th of December, his crew became so clamorous at their pro-
tracted and apparently unprofitable adventure, that he reluctantly
resimed his magnificent intention, and returned in quest of
golden booty to Veragua, a region which he falla<;iously identified
with the Aurea Chersonesus of antiquity. Driven thence by the
ferocity displayed towards him by the savages, Columbus arrived
at Jamaica, on the 24th of June, 1503, with a couple of crowded
and rickety caravels. Incited to mutinies by their disconso-
late condition, and goaded to desperation by a scarcity of pro-
visions, the mariners of Columbus enhanced the miseries by which
he was surrounded. It was only on the 13th of August, 1504,
that, affcer a multitude of privations and disasters, they were
enabled to reach Santo Domingo, from which place, after parting
with nearly his last maravedi in succouring his ungrateful seamen,
£he admiral sailed on the 12th of September for Europe. By the
evening of the 7th of November, he anchored off San Lucar ; and,
hastening onwards to Sevilla, was overwhelmed with affliction
on. receiving intelligence of the demise of his royal mistress.
IjBabella's decease was the virtual entombment of his hopes.
The subsequent incidents of his career; his being denied all
reasonable remuneration ; his obscure and indigent wanderings,
when, wearied by the encroachments of age and the pangs of a
dreadful malady ; his being without any other shelter than that
furnished by the poorest inn, and sometimes without the where-
withal to pay the reckoning, impart a deep gloom to that period
of Spanish history, and have tarnished for evermore the memory
of Ferdinand.

It was in the garret of an obscure tavern at Segovia that
disease at last struck down, upon a miserable pallet, the once-
puissant Admiral and Adelantado of the West Indian archipelago.
Forlorn, not merely by the solitude of his position, but by the
impoverished state of his finances and by the squalor of his
dwelling-place, Columbus here presents to the imagination a
spectacle profoundly affecting by reason at once of its grandeur
imd of its moumfulness. His body affl\e\.ei m>^ ^TA\?QL<£v6^^s^'^
twingea of gout, exbauated by oldl age, auA. ^tcv^cJiaJt^^ ^s*! ^^xji^-
tion; Ma mind depreaaed by his ini8foTt\me»,\i«x^^"a»^^^l.^^'^
pointmenta, and saddened by neglect, \\e -aeveTVJck&Xa'^"^ ^*^^^ ^

'TOOTPEIKTS ON THE WMSK""^"^^^ H

perred tLat contemplative dignity and beautiful resignation which
eudue bis character with ao remarkable a lustre.

Exhausted at leugth by excessive anxiety, eitreme pcerty,
&nd the torments of disease, Christopher Columbus died at Yallit-
dolid, on the 20th of May, 1506, in the siitieth year of hia age.
Hia departure seems to have been compatible with his eiistence:
" He perished," 88 jB Kobertson,* "with a composure of mind
suitable to the magnanimity which distinguiabed hia character."
'J'he descent of that great luminary, encompassed by so many
tribulations, which appeared only to render more manifest the
innate grandeur of hia disposition, is, we repeat, a spectacle so
striking from its desolate glory, that it can surely never fail to
arouse the sympathies of tbe most distant posterity. Among the
many lamentations that have been uttered upon that event, the
most touching, because the most simple and b ear t- spoken, is that
ejaculation of an anonymous panegyrist,t " O giomo disastrom,
ffiomo fatale, in eui riiuorib, quad mugghio di taono, queir an-
numio trittissimo ed infelice, Colombo muore, Colombo i morto!"
First interred at Seville, and subsequently transferred to St.
Domingo, the great navigator's body was in 1795 removed thence
to tbe cathedral of the Havannah. As if to acknowledge the
injustice of his previous conduct, Ferdinand caused the remMua
of tbe illustrious navigator to be interred with extraordinary
pomp, and that expressive motto to be sculptured upon his
mausoleum, " Columbus gave anew world to CastilJe and Leon;"
LdFi to transcribe the original distich —

Every map of the world that is printed forms, however, hia
worthiest epitaph.

Before entering upon any consideration of the peculiaritieB
which marked tbe genius, or of the incidents which illustrated
the disposition of Christopher Columbus, we should endeavour
to record, with all due candour, the various circumstances which
testify the priority of his geographical discoveries beyond those
of any other navigator. It is a moiirnful testimony of the weak-
ness of humanity, that most of our greatest benefactors have been
the victims of petty jealousies. Whenever any individual has
aignaliaed himself in a remarkable degree, either by discloBing
aometh'isg oS importance wbicb was hitherto unknown, or by

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS — THE NAVIGATOR. 85

striking out some novel project for the benefit of mankind, pre*
tenders have arisen to appropriate to themselves the credit of the
achievement. Almost every truth in philosophy, almost every
fabrication in mechanics, has its separate group of claimants to
the honour of being its divulger. This spirit of moral piracy has
attempted to wrest from the great discoverer of the new world
that golden freight of glory which he thereby acquired. Martin
Behem, Antonio Sanchez, and the Scandinavians, have been seve-
rally declared to have penetrated, the mysteries of the Atlantic
prior to the first voyage of the Genoese mariner from Falos.
Inca Ghracilas and other scribes have tried to render one or other
of these claims authoritative, by the corrupt and unprincipled
employment of their pens. Their allegations, however, have been
successively disproved ; their documents have turned out to be
forgeries ; their facts one by one have been demonstrated to be
spurious. Other aspirants, however, have appeared, of a more
formidable character — we mean Cabot and Yespuci. The former
is but little honoured, though he deserves celebration : the latter
receives more deference, and merits less than possibly any other
navigator that ever existed. The simple occurrences are as follows :
In the June of 1497, a Yenetian named Sebastian Cabot coasted
the mainland of America from Labrador to Morida. In 1499, a
Florentine named Amerigo Yespuci, acting in the capacity of
pilot to Ojeda, visited the shores of Paria. The great Christopher,
as our reader is already aware, during his third expedition, first
touched the American continent, when he landed at Paria, in the
August of 1498. Consequently, Columbus anticipated Yespuci
by somewhere about a year; and was himself anticipated by
Cabot by fourteen months. Notwithstanding, however, that this
calculation detracts from the mainland-priority of the admiral, we
cannot but conceive that the man who five years before stepped
upon the shingles at G-uanahani, must be considered as the most
legitimate discoverer of the western hemisphere. This opinion
possesses, besides, a contemporary corroboration; the Spanish
sovereigns having, in a document dated August 4, 1494, attri-
buted the sole credit of those transatlantic revelations to their
Adelantado. Other equally conclusive evidences might be ad-
duced,* demonstrating the authenticity of the claims advanced
by Columbus. Posterity has, however, settled the point beyond
all further controversy : every individual throughout the worlds
from the unlettered cottager to the \i\at.ot\c«l 'l^^c^<;i^Q.^<st^^^^'^^
mses in Columbua the veritable diaeoNetet o1 Kxssetivisw, 'i^^

• Ftcf « Navaritta, iii. 19^, ^^^>.

m

85 F00TP8C8TS OS THE ROAD. 1

grieves over the accident wliicli lias identified tbe aatae of a
iiiiHerable cliBrlatan like Amerigo with that contiuent, every por-
tion of vrLich, from Cape Bathurst to Putagonin, should, on the
contrary, have been more accurately termed Columbia.

Every fresli contemplation of this illuatrioua man inapircB ub
only with an increased admiration for hia character. Christopher
Columbus possessed most of those moral nnd intellectual quaUties
which impart an air almoat of sublimity to tlieir possessor — a
lofty and ever-soaring genius, a superb imagination, a stem sim-
plicity in habits, a persuasive eloquence, and a natural enthuaiaam
in religion. In manners he tempered gravity with suavity ; in
diet he was moderate even to abstemiousness ; and, with an
irritable and excitable temper, he so corrected himself by the
domination of his will as to become remarkable for his amenify.
That be was naturally valorous, his whole lil'o is a sufficient proof;
while, of hia audacity and his hardihood, that incident in hb
earlier history, narrated by his biographer Fernando Colombo, of
Ilia grappling with a Venetian vessel in a piratical adventure, and,
upon their being enveloped in flames, swimming two leagues to
Portugal, affords an additional and conclusive testimony. Ab-
sorbed as he was in mental speculations, Christopher nevertheless
retained the domestic affections in aU their native iatensity ; and
the same gentleness of heart which prompted him, while struggling
with difficulties at Lisbon, to transmit a portion of his wretched
pittance to Genoa, for the susteuanee of his infirm father, and
the education of hia younger brothers, rendered him a generous
parent to Diego and FernaDdo. With reference to his piety, we
may observe, that it was of so zcaJouB and exalted a description,
that, with a mind less genial and benevolent, it might not im-
probably have merged into fanaticism. It prompted him, thia
j'eligious fervour, not merely to perambulate tlie streets of
Seville during 1496, clothed iu the vesture of a Franciscan
monk, but to explain to Ferdinand and laabella his intention
of raising flfty thousand foot soldiers, and five thousand horse-
men, for the recovery of the holy sepulchre from the Saracens.
Such was the oriental and chivalrous scheme which he ambi-
tioned to hiuiBclf out of the proceeds of hia discoveries; such
was the scheme which he declares the monarchs to have sanc-
tioned, by promising their assistance under all circumstances:
" se rieroti y dijeron que let placia, y que tin esto tertian agiuella
j/iT/aty "' gt/di lias the scheme wliieh has been scorufiilly derided
4' ^ir. Prescott,f as a contemptible estravaganiyi \ "laieei ^Xe

f Preuoott's Hist, Fetd. ani \7a. »■ \'^,

"*^J

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS— THE NAVIOATOR. 87

latter acute writer seems to have altogether misapprehended the
idiosyncrasy of Columbus. He speaks of the superior benignitv
of Isabella, when comparing the queen and the admiral ;* and,
alluding to those glorious bursts of enthusiasm whidh enhanced
the character of the voyager with so much of the beautiful and
romantic, he styles them ''crazy dreams," mentions them as
evidencing ''a temporary alienation of mind," and in this manner
absolutely attempts to justify the base ingratitude and neglect of
Ferdinand, t In uttering such sarcasms upon the magnificent
reveries of Columbus, Frescott might have remembered that the
acme of those reveries was the conception of a populous land
beyond the ocean, a reverie which has since proved so inestimable
a boon to the human race. So marvellously did the indulgence
of these dreamings tend to the exaltation of the whole soul of the
mariner, that, we are assured, his ideas were '* princely and un-
bounded," and^ that ''he conferred with sovereigns almost with
a feeling of equality." Orazy dreams would, on the contrary,
have only conduced to his intellectual degradation. Of the deep
and reliant faith in apresiding spirit, by which these contempla-
tions were sobered, Kumboldt has exquisitely remarked, § " elle
adoucissait de tongues advereites par la charme des riveries ascS-
tiquee.'* Of his modesty we are informed by Luigi Bo8si,|| that
it predominated over every other characteristic, and that it
rendered him meek and uuelated ia the midst of his greatest
successes, " umile e tranquilh in mezzo ai irionfi.*^ The wisdom
as well as the imaginativeness of the mind of Columbus has
elicited the panegyric of the most eminent of his biographers,
Washington Irving, who insistsif that, providing the admiral's
shrewd policv and liberal principles had been imitated by his
successors, the new world *' would have been settled by pacific
colonists, and civilised by enlightened legislators ; instead oi being
overrun by desperate adventurers, and desolated by avaricious
conquerors." Peeling the justice of this, we cannot but deplore
the short-sightedness which so prematurely withdrew the Q^enoese
Governor fiom those regions his supervision was so very likely
to have regenerated, and which transmitted that authority to
depraved and sanguinary characters — ^afcer having been committed
to the hands of one who, according to Beauchamp,** "eto*^ sohre
et d^une grande moderation dans ses actions. ^^ it is impossible,

^ •

♦ TreaooU'B HiaL Ferd. and Isa. IL 423. \\ 'ViU ^v 0. ^. ISw. luwc.. ^s^..

f Ibid. lil 226. ^ ^aa\iV!i^Ti'^Tfl^^> V^ • '^'^ •

t Waabington Irving, i. 62. ♦• BVott. \iiiVT. Vx.. I^^-
/ G^, da Not. Cont iii. 259.

To FOOTPHIHTSOSTraB llOAD.

in fine, to meditate upon the circumstance a incidetitd to his most
remarkable career, without coinciding in the conclusion arrived at
hy Mr. Prescott, that " the finger of the historian will find it diifi-
cult to point to a single blemish in his moral character," or with-
out echoing the eulogium passed upon him by Giovio, Considering
the progress made in geographical knowledge anterior to the pro-
position to John II., Malte'Bcun has spoken of the greater eaga-
aty and lesser temerity of our navigator — considering him to be
in those respects " moing temeraire et plus taoant que see aveaglei
pan/ffffrUtea ne le represenfant." Gazing back upon the sceneB
Ijresented to our imagination upwards of three centuries ago, we
are fain to track the footsteps of Washington Irving in his uil-
j^rimage, standing beneath the ruined porch wliere the great dis-
coverer once begged bread and water for his child, or pausing
along the margin of the river Tinto, where hia footsteps had so
often been impressed, loving, as we do, the memory, revering
the genius, and sympathising with the misfortunes of Columbus
the ^Navigator.

NAPOLEON BONAPAKTE— THE ART-

COLLECTOR.

The magnificent collection of Art-Treasures, a few years since
on view at Manchester, not unnaturally recalled to our remem-
brance another exhibition of a very different character. An
accumulation of rare objects, in its way, perfectly exceptional. A
gallery of paintings, gems, and sculpture, such as had never
before been grouped together, to be ultimately scattered. One,
in all human likejibood, of which mankind may never hereafter
have the opportunity of witnessing the repetition.

It was a collection numerically smaller, but intrinsically far
more costly, and, in some respects, far more remarkable, than even
that wonderful gathering of pictures, jewels, and statuary, stored
up for awhile in our manufacturing capital, in that new palace
of glass — "one entire and perfect chrysolite! " The Manchester
display of Art-Treasures, however, possessed this one incontes-
tiUe pre-eminence, that it was, in literal truth, scarcely so much
a gallery, as a gallery of galleries. It presented under a single
roof^ specimens of all the schools, with hardly one noticeable
deficiency. It constituted a visible history of art from its rise —
or, more correctly speaking, from its revival — downwards.
Whereas the previous gallery, of which this notable exhibition
has proved to us an inevitable reminder, possessed in no compa-
rable degree either of these high pretensions. It affected in no
way to illustrate the annals of painting. It afforded no syste-
matic survey of the so-called schools. In these particulars it
yielded but small assistance, if any, either to the art-critic, or to
-the art-chronologist. Nevertheless, it did indubitably possess
the claim of being a collection of the world! ^ \aftatec^\'5i^^'?^«

It IB of the OaHery of the Louvre, aa it \^«j^\i^1oTi^N^^ -^grkR.'^^'?
BpoilB, were scattered back in 1815 to t\ie nwcVom^ ^sa.^^*^^ "V^^
which they had been originally purloined, t\i«^t vi^ ^^^^ ^^^"^

yO " FOOTPEIHTS ON THE HOAD,

by the rediatribution of tlie conteuts of that memorable Art-
Gallery at Munthester: a collection— that earlier one — made ut
tlie point of the wonder- working sword, brandished over Europe
during a quarter of a century by Napoleon Bonaparte.

Masterpieces there still are, of course, in the Louvre, sereral
among them of even matchless excellence. Yet, compared with
those adorning the same historic walla fifty years ago in such
affluent profusion, the choicest among all tbese exquisite art-
poasesaioua of Prance are but as the tinselled diadem and sceptre
of a play, to the glittering marvels of the crown regalia. It is true,
that the j)alatial edifice itaelf has been reaplendently completed by
the reigning sovereign : but its interior decorations, the manifolil
works of genius wrought either by the brush or by the chisel, works
constituting the bullion and ingots of this magnificent artistic
treasury — these, now-a-days, resolve themselves into the merest
shadowy ghost of their former glory. Eadiant fruit, still hanging
sparsely liere and there about the enchanted garden of Aladdin,
long after the glorious crop had fallen from those magical
branches, and been strewn abroad to the four winds by the breath
of a hurricane. It is absolutely no exaggeration to talk thus of the
Louvre as it is now, and as it was under the sway of the First
Kapoleon. Now, its chief boast is as a fabric, is externa!, is for
the moat part architectural. Then, its principal merit conaiated in
its enclosing one astonishing cluster of masterpieces. Throughout
the fifteen years beginning this nineteenth century, it was literally
with the Louvre as it might have been with the acquisitions of
aome fortunate lapidary, who had secured to himself examples of
all the variouB precious stones familiar to his craft; gems of
price, or rather beyond all price, comprising amongst their number
those most renowned in history. A lapidiiry, let us say, who had
secured, among Diamonds of the purest water, nothing leas than
the veritable Kohinoor : whose store of Pdarls included the com-
panion to that melted in the cup of wine, and quafied with a,
dimpling Bmilo to Antony by Cleopatra. The rarest among whose
Eubies proved to be no other than tiie famous jewel, once forming
the eye of the one-eyed Idol of Jemsciiid. Here, the indisputable
Carbuncle that had flamed upon the villanous forehead of the toad
of Sycorax. There, the sacred Emerald graven with the profile
of the Redeemer, traditionally eaid to have been bartered aa a
Christian ranaom at the pagan dungeon bars of Constantinople.
Tie eoIJection of inimitable works of art, broken up in 1815 by
tiie AiJies, being ia very deed not the lesa matcWeaa ftui \m.wi.t-
pasaabie. It enumerated the notleat creationa oi t\iB g<e^'^**»
^tei-s and sculptors of whom the world liaa trcMVKei >i¥ '*"

NAP0I*E01^ BONAPARTE — THE ART-COLLECTOR. 91

Memory with the Masterpieces. Miracles iii marble, preserved
almost withoat a flaw from the remote ages of antiquity. Mira-
cles on canyas, blooming to this day as freshly as when they
bloomed first under the pencil of TJrbino, or of Buonarotti.
Passing down those majestic galleries of the Louvre, was like
traversing a suite of halls in one of the Palaces of the Five Senses,
raised in the Cloudland of Romance by Vathek the Sybarite. It
was here that the Prench CsBsar appeared for a while to have
permanently gathered togetlier under the shadow of the Tuileries,
trophies of battle that the conquerors oi the classic days would
have amused themselves with, probably, by dragging them at the
heels of their soldiery in triumphal procession.

To appreciate the truth of this more vividly, it is only neces-
sary to recrpss those fifty years in imagination. Header, you are
then, we will suppose, one of those ill-starred prisoners of war, the
luckless detente, kidnapped, you will but too well remember, on
the rupture of the Peace of Amiens, while innocently maundering
about, mere harmless sight-seers. You have found your way,
somehow, up to Paris, from that miserable Verdun, with every
pebble of whose troitoirs your i'avourite corns have long since
become utterly disgusted. Tour costume and general appear-
ance are in everj respect sufficiently fashionable to allow of your
passing unnoticed ^ong the boulevards of the capital, as a gentle-
man in no way given to eccentricities. Your hair, straggling
negligently from under the rim of your little pinched-up beaver,
in the approved locks called oreilles de chien, reveals just the
faintest dash of powder in it — a graceful tribute to the highest
and daintiest of all the taxes upon gentility. Your clean-shaved
chin lies half-buried in the voluminous folds of cambric, imparting
to your cravat its proper amplitude of dimensions. Your coat-
collar reaches half-way up the back of your head, its swallow-tails
dangling down towards your heels, while the waist-buttons of
glittering brass (about an inch apart) are situated somewhere
between your shoulder-blades. Your tight-fitting shorts, of a
delicate fawn-colour, are buttoned at the knee with mother-o'-
pearl ; below, there is a gap of stocking ; and finally, to complete
all, and to keep the dust out of your shoes, you are pleasingly
embellished with a pair of little white gaiters.

Otherwise supposing you, gentle reader, to be some " passing
fair," your ringlets are bunched in small clusters about your fore-
head, down even to the eyebrows, the xeat oi'3C>>xsi\»^^'?s^^'?^\i'»s^'^
coiled around a monstroua comb of toTto\ae-Ai'^ \!cA.^«^^>i^^
the crown of a bonnet, the stupendoua po\Le oi viVi\Ai.Sa o^^^"^*^
viO0^ mgeniousljr poHentona ever faa\iioxLedm'^^^^^^- ^"^"^

Mk^&i^ ..juJ^ .:<dLd

delicately cinctured with a girdle immediately under your arms,
the skirts of your dreas hanging dowQ below, close and "skimpy "
- — ^the spectral phaatoia of a* garment shivering midway between
the byegone hoop and the coming crinoline.

Attired thus according to the charming fashion in vogue during
these early days of the new century, you pick your way across
the miry road skirting the Place du Carrousel — under the
swinging oil-lnmp (for gas is not yet dreamed of), guttering and
dribbling overhead, just as the whim, or the wind, takes it. The

Eonderoua diligeuce, fresh — or rather stale — from the provinces,
as but this moment rumbled and jingled past you, with its
immemorial postilion cracking his huge whip, like discharges of
musketry. Not a thought yet of raQroads ; although Watt has
long since worked out the problem of the kettle-ltd, and though
young George Stephenson has already thriftily drudged his way
up to the post of engine-wright at the High Pit Colliery down
at Killing worth. These are not by any means, at the present
instant, the themes of your speculatiou. On the contrary, your
every thought, as becomes a genuine detenit from Verdun,
happens to be pleasantly absorbed iu a little holiday scheme of
sight-seeing, with all its agreeable anticipations. The Louvre —
the Louvre Imperial — with its contents, tiie Musee de Napoleon'
Thither your footsteps have been all this while tending. There,
you pause for a moment on the threshold, you enter the porch,
you ascend the staircase, you advance up the first of those
resplendent galleries,

A roll of drums from the courtyard of the adjacent palace
greets your ear as you open your catalogue and begin to look
about you more in detail, while sauntering slowly down that
long perspective, half-pictorial, half-statuesque. It is Cssar, in
the little grey-coat and the three-cornered hat, yonder, mounting
his horde for an afternoon ride among his lieges, through street
and boulevard. And these are among the spoils won for the
capita! of his vast empire by bis many Tictories — these marvellous
woriis of art that, another glance informs you, require no syllable
of eiplanation from either guide-book or catalogue.

Masterpieces, for the most part, so familiar to the mind's eye,

through the aid of countless engravings and descriptive criticisuja,

that at a single look they are at once recognised, and that, moie-

over, in many instances, with a sense of instant admiratioji.

Several among these world-la mous trophies of war are scattered,

Ji js true, elsewhere, about the imperial cvty -, as, ^ot B^aia-^Ve,

ii&0se renowned broaze horses from St. MatVs, at NcincB—

Ip^^ and plungiug, in animated meta\. over tVe tTrv.\wtt^\«

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE — ^THE ART-COLLECTOR. 93

arch hard hj the old Bourbon Palace of the Tuileries. But here
—under the sheltering roof-beams of the Louvre itself — the
majority of these wonderful prizes of military rapine have been
in one gorgeous aggregate accumulated.

Suppose, therefore, without more ado, we pocket our catalogue,
as something wholly superfluous, and lounge amicably together
down the extended array of inimitable and inestimable master-
pieces. Beginning, let us say, with those marble wonders in the
foreground, aptly to be termed hereafter by Shelley " the despair
of modem art ! " And, subsequently, directing our gaze in due
sequence to all that glowing canvas on the walls — magic mirrors
one might say (without being either fantastie or affected), within
whose radiant depths so many glorious and angelic forms have
been conjured eternally to view by the wizardry of Q^enius.

Startlmg us into delight upon the very threshold, here struggles
and writhes in everlasting horror, the wondrous group of the
Laocoon, designated by Michael Angelo, that Artistic Miracle,
revealing to us, in one astonishing cluster, the gigantic form of
the Priest of Apollo, with a stripling son on either hand, tangled
and twined about by those awful serpent-folds — slimy, ponder-
ous, and dinging. Here, close beside it, ravished by the mandate
of the Yictor horn its accustomed pedestal in the Tribune of
Morence, stands shrinkingly the celestial form of the Venus de
Medici, captive herself for once —

** Chained to the chariot of triumphal War

)*

as securely now, for awhile at least, as her votaries have ever
been chained to that of art, according to the rapturous phrase
through which Childe Harold avows himself to be " dazzled and
dnmk " with this divine glimpse of the Beautiful. Here, again,
not far removed from each other — starting forward as if in life,
both eagerly gazing into the distance — are the wonderful Dis-
cobolus, or Quoit Player, and the yet more wonderful Apollo
Belvidere. How accurately the attitude, the look, the indefinable
bearing of each, inform one that the latter has but just dis-
charged his arrow at the Python, while the former is watching
the effect of his flying discus. Instantaneously, intuitively you
recognise, as Beynolds has done (in his Tenth Discourse), ''the
graceful, negligent, though animated air of the one, and the
vulgar eagerness of the other : both equally tcvjA to t^xsx^^ ^ts^^
eguaUj admirable/' Now we pause beiote >Jsie Viiiii-^^<sNSBisi«s&
%iOT of the Dying ftladiator, witli t\i© ftto^^ o^^^^aA'^^'^^l
on bia brow and the Jife-blood oozmg 5ot\u\i m %^v>^»^ ^^'^'^

irOOTPRlKTS ON THE

dust of tlie ampliitheatro. Now we tarry awhile before the hi'gh-
aiioQldered Egyptian Antinous of the Capitol, or' glance at the
other (colossal) Antinous — a trophy of the conquests of the s;raiid
army in lSOG-7 — its Bymmetrienl form towerirg up towards the
roof at the extremity of the lofty gallery, its lordly head clustered
about with ringletH, ambrosiiil and hyacinthine. Here is the
celebrated Pallas of Velletri, and here that aetounding torso of
Herculea from the Vatican, which one miglit almost regard as the
embodimeot of omnipotence in t!ie brawny musclea of a demi-god
— muscles, let ua venture to say, no lesa than himself most won-
derfully clubbed. Here glares upon ue from under its diadem of
spikes, the noble bust of Serapis, that rayed and gorgon-lilce frag-
ment found, long years back, upon the Appian way at Colombaro;
and here again the wondrous head of Jupiter from, the Vatican,
that awful and sublime elBgy discovered, also long ago, upon the
Flaminian way at Otricoli. These, again, confronting each other
on either side, we recognise upon the iostant as the well-known
busts of Homer and Euripides — the one transported hither from
the Academy of Mantua, the other (the classic and idealised pre-
sentiment of Homer) withdrawn from the Eternal City, where it
was accidentally dug ilp a few centuries earlier in the garden of
the Palazzo Graetani, near Santa Maria Maggiore. Here, as a con-
trast to the mighty torao of Hercules, mark well the delicate and
exquisitely beautiful torso of the Greek love— also from that
same rifled museum of the Vatican. And from the aelt-same
costly repository of ancient rarities in sculpture, you note the
next moment, upon one hand, the immortal Venus coming from
the bath, and upon the other, the maternal statue of Ceres
swathed in the undulating outlines of a drapery but very little
abort of the miraculous. There — contrasting as well aa con^
fronting each the other — the picturesque river-gods of the Tiber
-and the Nile: giant forme, carved out of the diedal granite by
some chisel held, perhaps, in the grapp of Phidias or of Praii-
teles: twin statues solemnly secured to France by a distinct
article in the Treaty of Tolentino. Yonder, the lovely Adonis,
found by a fortunate excavator at Centoeelle, on the road to
Palestrina. And, to close at last a catalogue that might other-
wise threaten to be interminable, the dainty shapes of Cupid and
Psyche kiasing each other with lips of all but sentient marble,
the very types of Love nod Beauty, the visible evidence of all
fhat is moBt tender and bewitching in the essence of the Greek

^^e f'^ox the peopled pedestals to tlie ^kUvei waNia, -wVaSi
^^^oj^aintiag Aave there not been amaasei togBA^M^

NAPOLEON BONAPABTE — THE ART-COLLECTOR. 95

this bewildering concentration of all that is most precious in art
— ^the Musde de Napoleon !

Conspicuous even here by its transcendent beauty, the glorious
Transfiguration of Baphael, torn ruthlessly from its shrine in
IU>me, over the high altar in San Pietro di Montorio. The far-
famed Descent from the Cross, of Bubens, also abstracted from
its time-honoured comer in the cathedral at Antwerp, to be hung
up here in the great national exhibition of Prance : a composition
still extorting universal admiration by the incomparable excellence
of its grouping. What though its originally lustrous hues have
long since faded under the deteriorating influence of cleansing
and miscalled renovation, when, during his journey to Elanders
and Holland, Sir Joshua remarked with concern that even then
its brilliant effect was " lost in a mist of varnish which appeared
to be chilled and mildewed.'' Another matchless Eaphael
d'Urbino attracts our gaze irresistibly as we loiter on : it is the
awe-inspiring Vision of Ezekiel, with the wings, and the wheels,
and the eyes, and the four living creatures borne upon the whirl-
wind, visibly — one might almost fancy audibly — ^realising the
beatific mystery of that dread prophetic narrative, the perusal of
which, we scarcely marvel now to remember, was prohibited in
olden times to every Hebrew man until after he had attained the
ripe age of thirty. And these ? Are they not the three grimly
Pates, the fearful ParcsB, of Michael Angelo Buonarotti ? Terrible
hags, that might have bubbled out of the earth before the recoiling
Thane in the solitude of the blasted muirland. Beside them, the
witching Circe of Guercino, selected from the Museum of Florence.
Further on, the ineffably pathetic Piettl, or Dead Christ, of
Annibale Caracci, radiant in every tint, as if but yesterday
removed from the easel. And, scattered at intervals along the
opposite wall, those four unrivalled models for the art-student,
whether viewed in reference to drapery or anatomy, fore-
shortening or composition, the symbolical eflSgies of the four
pseudo elements — Earth, Air, Fire, "Water — imagined by the
master-mind, and delineated by the master-hand, of Agostino
OaraccL At one moment we are standing awed before the
seraphic Christ at the Tomb, by Caravaggio ; at another — filled
with wondering delight — we pause in front of the majestic
apparition of the Saviour of the world, as revealed by the
reverent genius of that Venerable Bede of Art, gentle-hearted
Fra Bartolomeo. Yonder is the legendary M»x\.^\^<csa3L ^1 *^"»xsis.
Christopher — aged and austere — ^by Spa4a\ yoTidL«t>5Jcv^\*x^^cisx^^
Martyrdom of Saint Agnes — ^bright ^it\i "icfiaiAivTia «2^^ ^xtS8^
beauty-^hy -Domeniqhino. Here, t\i© eT^lTaLOtft^voaxi ^vi^^ax^

■- TOOTPFINTS ON THE ROAD.

the Communion of Soiot Jerome, from the Bnnie wizard bniah of
faaci nation ; there, tbe yet more remarkable Crowning with

PTbomB, from tie liiminoua pencil of Titian, the paragon of
Bolouriets. Wherever your glance falls, it falls inevitably npon
^ masterpiece. Now, perchance, it is some lovely limning like
Carlo Dolce's [Sleep of the little Saint John; now some noble
altar-piece of thrilling solemnity, such as the Descent from the
Cross, by Andrea del Sarto. Scarcely a painter of mark ia
there, from Cimaboe down to the latest of the grand niaestroa,
but here is, not merely some exquisite evidence of his peculiar
merits, but hia admitted elief-d'auvre.

It was in 1796, on the capitulation of the Grand Bute of
Parma, that Bonaparte's novel system of pillage may be said in
real earnest to have commenced. It was there, in a manner,
solemnly inaugurated as a portion of hia new sclieme of warfare.
Having compelled the vanquished Parmeae government, soon
after the opening of that ever- memorable Italian campaign, to
pay down some 2,000,000 franca in silver, to furniBh the victors
with 1,600 artillery horses, and to supply them with a consider-
able store of corn and other proviaiona. Napoleon, in addition to
all this, constrained the lucldess Grand Duke to give up twenty
of the principal paintings in hia metropolis, the boast of his
little prmcipality. Among these— chief pride of all — the world-
renowned Saint Jerome of Correggio. Already several of the
reigning monarchs had vainly endeavoured, by oifering large
sums 01 mocey, to obtain this one famous production. Bonaparte,
by a single sweep of hia aword, conjured it, and with it nineteen
other pictorial prizes, into the possession of the Eepublican
Directory. It ia amusing to observe how the incident of thia
firat " haul " of the art-net ia recorded by the oiEcial annaliat of
the MuB^e de Napoldon. He introduces the circumstance by com-
placently remarking tliat Parma might still have preserved the
Correggio but for — what? — that liberal spirit which presided
over the Gallic conquests, " cet esprit liberal qui prUidait aux
conquitet des Francois." Hia unfortunate and obtuse highneas,
the sovereign Prince of Parma, not appreciating sufficiently the
magnanimity of this liberal spirit of his conqueror, offered to
disburse another round million in compensation to France, upon
the simple understanding that this Saint Jerome still remained
in its owner's possession. " Mait un grand homme" exclaims tbe
annalist aforesaid, with quite a patriotic glow in his words, " ett
tuperiear aux coniideratiorts pecuniaires" — meaning Jiterally that
the later Hannibal took no more hard cash from the Parmese
treaaury thaa tbe amount he happened just then to require.

ire,^^^^|

^^" NAPOLEON BONAPARTE — THE ART- COLLECTOR. 97

the Correggio passed over, with the nineteen other painting,
from the vanquiahed to the vanquishers. Neyor — -ejaculatea the
imperial scribe naiTcly, when relating the occurrence^never did
heroism render nobler tribute to arts and to national diainterested-
neas, "JittnaiM VMrdUtne ne rsndit wn plus noble hommage aux arti,
et aa desmteressemeni national." Adding, tliat when the beloved
Correggio had actually taken its departure from hia dominions,
the Grand Duke resolved never again to enter the apartment
where the pride of hia palace had hitherto been suspended, and
whither he himself had so often gone to admire it in the happy
days when young General Bonaparte had not yet won the oppor-
tunity to try his knack at conqueriog. The resolution, we are
told, was confirmed by an oath, and the oath, we are nest coolly
informed by this drily humorous historian, was kept by the Graod
Duke (poor fellow I) rebgiously. Our comical friend the informant,
being, in truth, no other person than Monsieur Antoine Michel
Filhol, graveur et iditear Su Musee Soyal de France, aa afterwards,
of com^e, right loyally, du MugSe Imperial. A magnificent testi-
mony of whose skill in which capacity survivea to this day in the
ten superb volumes published under his direction, between ISOl
and 1815, under the title of the Gallerie de Napoleon. Volumes
comprising within them, besides the explanatory letterpress de-
scriptions, from 700 to 800 esquiaite copperplate engravings, taken
from the pick of the glorious paintings and statuary in that truly
sumptuous collection. A gathering together of the art-triumphs
of the world, here frankly described by our amiable Pilhol as the
enormous collection of pictures from Italy (and elsewhere), and
of which France owes the possession to the memorable victories
of hia Majesty the Emperor and King, " I'immense collection de
tableaux apportet d'ltalie, et dont la France doit la possession aux
memorablea vicioires de Sa Majeste VMmpereur et Hoi:" for which
candid and accurate definition you have only to turn to the
soixante-dix-septieme livraison of Monsieur PilhorB costly publi-
cation.

Unfortunately for the glory of the Louvre and for the pride of
France, there came at last, upon the second entrance of the Allies
into Paris, the terrible Day of Eeckoniiig. Talleyrand, still cling-
ing tenaciously in 1815 to the ministry for Foreign Afi"aira — it
mattering little or nothing, at any moment, to Monaeigneui
le Prince who chanced then to be the sovereign— ineffectually
strove at that crisis to preaerve to France under the regal Bourbon
the works of art obtained for her under the imperial Ba-iw^wic!'-^-
TaUeyraod enforced his appeal by an eamesfu Tttetc&iie Vs .'^^*^^
DMtieular article in the capitulatioa ol "Eur^a ■fl\a.fio. S^9.*f■"

98 FOOTPBTSTS ON THE SOAD.

provided for the preserration of pubKc and private property, if
not of a Btrictly military description. So Tain, however, was this
momentary interpoBition, that with as little delay as posaible the '
despoiler was, there and then, in turn, aunimarily despoiled. The
art treasuTCB of Europe being forthwith tranamitted each to its
original destination — the aoldiers of Britain and Pmsaia bivouack-
ing night and day in the Place du Carrousel during the interval
occupied in their removal. A. painful incident it waa felt to be —
poignantly and undiaguisedly — among our gallant neighboura.
And no wonder; for even Monaieur de Lamartine has remarked,
explicitly in reference to it, in the thirtieth book of his History
of the lieatoration : " The artiBtic as well aa the military genius
of France waa attached to theae pictures, theae marblea, theae
hronzea, with more paaeion and witb a pasaion more noble than
waa felt for treaaurea and for territoriea." Nevertheless, after
all, the dcvaatation of the Louvre — as it waa then called, and aa
it was then considered to he, by the Parisians — waa really nothing
more than a aimple and unavoidable act of general reatitution.
A consideration, this, however, in no way asauaging the anguish
of the wound administered at the time to French patriotism, an
anguish still resounding in the impaaaioned versea in which the
event was coutemporaneoualy lamented by Caaimir Delavigne,
through the indignant and mournful cadence of his elegies, en-
titled Mass^niemies.

WALTEE RALEIGH— THE ADVENTURER.

DimrEra tbe early part of the reign of Elizabeth, the spirit of
chivalpj was still predominant. With its termination, however,
that extravagant, though in many respects beneficent, spirit
faded away, and eventually disappeared. Cervantes had lived ;
and tbe scorn of that insolvent soldier demolished a system
immortalised by the verse of Ariosto, and illustrated by the
deeds of Roland. Happily for England it was so ; for the incidents
of knight-errantry would indeed have assorted but grotesquely
with tne uncouth presence and unregal pedantry of James.
Even before the accession of the Stuart dynasty, the people had
begun to regard with derision the warlike coquetry which charac-
terised the cburtiers of Elizabeth. That reverence for simplicity
and earnestness which afterwards became visible in the doublets
and the councils of Cromwell, already lurked amongst the popu-
lation, even while they welcomed with acclamations the gaudiest
pageants of the maiden queen. Eor Elizabeth, on the contrary,
chivalry was ever invested with a peculiar fSosciuation. It
ministered to her insatiable vanity : it extolled her very question-
able beauty : it changed the most brilliant members of her court
into her champions and her lovers. The gratification of these
selfish passions was an amusement in her youth ; in her old age
it became a necessity. As the lustre faded from, her eyes, and
the bloom from her cheeks, as her flesh shrank, and her hair
blanched, under the weight of accumulating years — she endea-
voured to forget in the adulation of her more favoured knights,
the evanescence of her fascination, and the fragility of her charms.
So essential, indeed, had this kind of homage become to Elizabeth,
that her suitors if they might thus be designated, were then m.<^T:^
numerous than at any anterior penoSi, «adk. "^^t^ ^^^ ^&!^^^^^
with the most fastidioua deliberation.

As uDfortunately is but too ofteix t\iO c^i^^ ^"^ x^^^3^^^^
those extnordinary characters twIio \iw^ ^JOtwsi^^ A«s^^^^

ough the instrumentality of tlieir ovni individual acMevemBnta
_, nd peraonal accompliBbmeDts, the earlier events in tlie career of
onr adventurer are clouded over with an obscurity almost impe-
netrable. The younger son of an ancient family, Walter Raleigh
was bom in 1552^ at a pictureBque farm called Hayes, situated
near the entrance of the river Otter, in the parisli of Budleigh, in
Devonshire. Of his childhood no anecdotes whatever are pre-
Herved, from which we migtt have discovered promises of future
eminence. In 1568, however, we find E^eigh distinguishing
himself as a commoner of Oriel College, Oxford, attracting the
attention of the university, both by the precocity of his mind and
the vivacity of his manners. His academical studies were never-
tbelesa of very abort duration, as in the following year his
viciasitudes as a military adventurer commenced. After serving
sis years as a volunteer nnder Champeron, in aid of the Hugue-
nots, having shared, moreover, during that interval iu the civil
wars which were then devastating France, "Walter entered the
Netherlands as a volunteer, under Sir John Norris, against the
Spaniards. It was aiter being thus matured in military tactics
and political stratagems by the examples of a Ooligni and a
Prince of Orange, that the insatiable intellect of Raleigh hungeiTed
for some new field for the esercise of its capacities. The glory
of Columbus appears to have wielded a peculiar fascination over
Lim even at that period : his favourite project — the prosecution
of discovery in America — having alone hurried liim from his war-
like occupations in Holland. In 1579, he returned to England,
with his half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert, after a vain endea-
vour to create a colony on the northern continent of the new
world. Almost immediately afterwards, Raleigh entered the
Queen's army, and in 1580 commanded a company of royal
troops in Ireland. It was in that beautiful but luckless island —
that "comiDOUwealth of common woe," as Raleigh himself expres-
sively termed it — that a crime was perpetrated, if not under the
direction, at least with the connivance of our adventurer ;
allusion being here made to the massacre in cold blood of the
garrison of Smerwiek, under San Giuseppe. A quarrel arose out
of this oceiirrence between Raleigh and the lord deputy, and
immediately upon the suppression of the Earl of Desmond's
rebellion, tho altercation was referred to the decision of the
council. The former disputant, unassisted and uncared-for,
appeared before that august tribunal, and in the presence of his
aovepeign pleaded his own cause. So passionate, ao eaviieat, aa
l^eo/ wejv the worda of Baleigb, that he 6^c\l.ei tW »,^^-
g^ ereii of Jug xuoai cjuicid bearers. He vjaa auir"™'^'

WALTBB RALEIGH — ^THE ADVENTURER. 101

the royal presence. Elizabetlfwas captivated by his noble person,
his brilliant conyersation, and his adroit flattery. She frequently
oonsulted him as '^ an oracle ; " she required his escort in her
excursions — she nominated him one of her personal attendants
— and the fortunes which were hitherto all fluctuation and shadow,
were now all sunshine and stability. According to Sir Thomas
Naunton, this sudden alteration dated itself from the delivery of
lE^aleigh's oration before the council, where says that old gossip,
"he got the queen's ear in a trice." According to Puller, the
moment of transition was the dropping of a cloak — that pictu-
resque incident so often chronicled by the historian, sung by the
poet, and illustrated by the painter! That famous incident,
namely, which relates how "Walter Baleigh, walking with his
sovereign in the palace garden, flung his garment in the mire for
her foot-cloth ; how Elizabeth evinced her pleasure at that act
of delicate and spontaneous gallantry; and how the courtiers
welcomed in the penniless soldier the rival of Essex and Leicester !
Both incidents combined, the deliveiy of the speech and the
dropping of the cloak, would probably Dring conjecture nearer to
the mark; to the detection, that is, of what really constituted
!EUkleigh's passport to the patronage of Elizabeth. Nevertheless,
with all the accomplishments of this most accomplished aspirant,
it is impossible not to believe that his inimitable gallantry
in the garden, expedited the time of his promotion, and that,
according to the renowned pun commemorated by Miss Aikin,*
"the spoiling of a cloak gained him many good suits." It
would hardly, in truth, be anything of an extravagance to
remark that, like the piece of carpet mentioned in the Arabian
Tale, which conveyed its possessor at pleasure to any spot,
however distant or otherwise inaccessible, this cloak of Raleigh
transported him to the region of his aspirations — to wit, the palace
of Elizabeth.

Scarcely eleven years had elapsed after this occurrence, when
OUT adventurer had only too serious reason to muse over the
instability of the high fortunes he had so earnestly coveted.
Many of his brightest day-dreams it is true had by that time
been realised — his elevation had been almost commensurate with
his ambition. He was invested with the dignity of knighthood
— he was nominated seneschal 'of the Duchies of Cornwall and
Exeter — ^he retained the wardenship of the Stannaries — he was a
burgess in the imperial parliament. "EkmoYxsm^gj^'s^ '^'^^ V^^^ "^^^ss?^^
digniidea^ moreover, had signaliaed ftx^ irveu-^i^v^ ^1^^^^^"^"^

• Lucy Aikia's MemovrB oi 'Ei^AZ»J^«^^i, t^.^-"^^-

niiBtreaa. The flowers and fruits* thus Btrewn tefore bia foot-
BtepB, so to speak, were not Tinfrequently as precious aa those
which bloomed and ripened in the garden of Aladdin. A patent
for licensing the selling of wine throughout the kingdom, enabled
him to sustain a magnificence compatible with his recent exalta-
tion. Twelve thousand acres forfeited from the estates of Des-
mond in Ireland, were with a questionable munificence transferred
to Ealeigh, and though they scarcely contributed a single crown-
piece to his rereuues, they were so far beneficial that they
associated hiia with the territorial proprietors of Great Britain.
Subsequent events in his career served, howeyer, very clearly to
demonstrate that at this period the imagination of the new
favourite was not altogether absorbed in exultation over the pre-
Bent; he found leisure for fruitful speculationa upon many future
achievements, sonie of them of the very highest importance. Among
other things, at this time, w!iiJe he was apparently bent alone upon
enacting the courtier on the terraces of Windsor, his mind would
often revert to the deeds of the great Christopher. Even here,
however, it may be mentioned, in passing, that in the prosecution
of bis one cherished enterprise, the vessels he despatched thither
for the purpose of extending geographical knowledge, and pro-
moting colonial prosperity, failed where he continued to anticipate
euccess, and succeeded where he had first anticipated failure. He
anstained every possible disappointment in bis hopes of American
discovery ; but his coffers were fiUed by the Spanish galleons
captured by bis fleets in their transit across the ocean. So mag-
nificent were his acquisitionstbroughthis latter circumstance, that
his court-dress, flowered with rubies, and blazing with diamonds,
was estimated at no less than sixty thousand pounds. The

forgeous promisea of his fancj^, like the expectations of Sir
Ipicure Mammon, were succeaeiyely evoked only to be succes-
sively moumed aa illusions ; but often, aa it were, on emerging
ttom the laboratory of Subtle, Sir Epicure would prove to have
discovered a purse more prolific of gold than the crucible of the
finccessful alchemiet. Signal, however, as bad been the various
triumphs achieved by Ealeigh in the way of political advance-
ment, propitious as was the aspect of his temporal future,
conspicuous in his regard as were the evidences of the queen's
partiality, persuasive as was his tongue, potent iis were bis intallec-
tual capacities, and bis external endowments, the influence of his
jiVfl] Essex proved aufiiciently powerful to interrupt his prosperity,
•^'fiadf/pe/iim intobaoiahmeDt. Having come into diiectcoUiaion
^^^. ^^^ nobleman, B&ieigh was compeUed to xeVueioT a.-7i>;iie
^» -fcwZt poasessions .- ostensibly for the ^urpoae oi sa-^cmv-

WALTER RALEIGH — ^THE ADVENTURER. 103

tending their cultiyatioDy but in reality to await tHe chance of his
restoration to court favour. In the portentous gloom of his
abandonment, there remained, however, one remote loop-hole to
good fortune, and instinctively, as the tendril in a vault struggles
towards the sunlight, Ealeigh ever stedfastly turned his hopes
towards that possible point of emergence for him from darkness
to light; that aperture — the powerful predilection still cherished
by ilSizabeth for the most gallant and the knightliest of her cham-
pions.

Edmund Spenser, the Poet, at this period of ill-fortune for
Italeigh frequently loitered with him in loving companionship
along the banks of the river Mulla at Ejlcolman. And Spenser
has himself most charmingly commemorated their intercourse in
that musical and fantastic pastoral of Colin Clout, in which the
Poet has gracefully idealised his visitor as " The Shepherd of the
Ocean." That a poetical sympathy, the most profound and inti-
mate, knit these two noble minds together, we possess evidence
beyond dispute, among other tokens of this sympathy being a
sonnet addressed by the author of the Faerie Queen to Baleigh,
beginning : —

** My rimes I know xinsaYOiiry and soore^
To taste the streames that like a golden showre,

Flow from thy froitfol head, of thy love's praise,
Fitter perhaps to thunder martial stonre

When so thee list thy lofty muse to raise."

Time came, however, eventually, when the banished favourite,
no longer relegated to Ireland, was restored to his home in Lon-
don, and to much of his influence at court. Then it was, in 1598,
that he must often have bent musingly over his well-fingered
charts in his renowned study at Durham House — that beautiful
chamber commanding not only a noble prospect of the Thames,
and such a panorama of the then comparatively small but wonder-
fully picturesque metropolis, as appeared to invite the mind
almost irresistibly to contemplation, and which is known to have
aroused even the fastidious taste of Aubrey to a languid en-
thusiasm. The faint glimmer of a lamp, suspended at nightfall
from the ceiling, may often then have revealed the lank but
comely visage of the scholar — the pointed beard, the tawny cheek,
the "exceeding high forehead," the ruff, the yellow doublet
slashed with black, and unbuttoned at tk^ bo^woi^ ^^^^^ \ss«ciiu^
eharactenatic of that? wonderful maTi\)e\B%VJci'et^\i^'l53^^^^^'»^2>5^^^
muse over the bare suggestion of ttiialcLvatox^c.^ V^^^^^ ^^xisa
and mmuBcripta scattered about t\io a^«ctoL^ii\.'aL^^^^'^^^^^^

^I^^^^K^S^^S

favoTuite i*reyhoiind coiled up in one corner under a portrait of
Boleyn ; a etatuette of Niobe glittered upon a cabinet of precious
woods. And then, perchance, after poring intently over the
chart, Sir Walter Ealeigh we may picture to ouiaelvea at such
moments, flinging himself back in his chair for the more leisurely
enjoyment of the long silver pipe, the bowl of it resting upon his
. puffed slipper. And, as the fumes of the tobacco float out through
the open lattice, " many a time and oft," while he gazes forth
upon the stare, Ilaleigh may well at these halcyon moments have
abandoned himself luxuriously to the cherished phantasms of his
imagination. And never, surely, were iilusiona more gorgeous,
more seductive, some of them even, it might be said, more
terrible.

IVlankind has again and again given credence to the most
visionary and extravagant undertakings. Generationa have strug-
gled for impossibilities. NatioDshavoworshippedshadowa. Almost
every age has more or less been cursed with a political, a Bocial,
a commercial, or a scientific inirage. Gold was the mirage of the
alchemists; land the mirage of the South Sea speculators; uni-
versal equality the mirage of the Girondists ; community of goods
the mirage of the Pennitea; human perfectibility the mirage of
the Puritans. Nothing was there so inaccessible, nothing so
improbable, nothing so gigantic, nothing so frivolous, but what it
could be readily awalluwed by the credulity of the multitude.
Nor were the ignorant alone mfected ; philosophers were bitten
by the popular tarantula. Eoger Bacon sought the elixir vita m
well as Cornelius Agrippa. Aislabie embarked money in the
South Sea venture as well as poor Gay. Plato and More bad
dreamt of universal et^uality centuries before Heuriot tippled
brandy or Panis i'ed his pheasants. The early Christians bad
practised that community of goods which the colonists of Penn-
sylvania preached. Cromwell credited the efficacy of Puritanism
as well as the most loutish suttier in his camp. The greatest
minds have often been deceived by the greatest illusions. But
gigantic as were those chimeras already enumerated, one infinitely
more outrageous possessed the minds of Europeans — and amoug
these many of the most philosophical — during several successive
centuries, dating from the latter portion of what are called the
" Middle Ages, ' down to the period of the great schism in
Cbristinnitj, and even for some time afterwards. And, amidst the
en/iaent personages who were not only implicit believers in this
enormous delasion, but diligent searchers atler \t aa -mb^Ii, "B.t.Veigh.
assumed a r^^coos^/cuous, and, ibr awhile even,'* m,i6\A\ie».B.\4,
'^J'^ios positioa. Mia name is iiitimatelj tlBaoci.a.tei■«■1.0Q.^.^i^*

WALTER RALEiaH — THE ADVENTURER. 105

phantom, because the chief romance colouring his most romantic
Ufe, the chief woes leading to his most wofoi death, are . imme-
diately connected with his pilgrimages for its discoyery. Let it
here be remarked of him, moreover, that it is so rememoered that
his name has thus come to be inextricably identified with it, because
he has himself written an account of his peregrinations in quest of
it, with a pen so luminous that the lustre of it has not yet faded
away. It need scarcely be said that the illusion here referred to
was no other than — El Dorado. Thousands before Ealeigh had
b^on to breathe, thousands after Ealeigh had ceased to breathe,
beUeyed in the reality of that magnificent day-dream. Thousands !
It should rather be said millions : for this credulity was not con-
fined to narrow localities, or to isolated individuals ; it extended
over kingdoms, and empires, and continents. Men cherished the
beloved vision like a household truth — the golden city, filled with
inconceivable splendour, agate tesselating its pavements, precious
atones encrusting its pinnacles, ambrosial fruits hanging in its
orchards, flowers of unearthly glory blooming in its gardens,
rocks plated and veined with solid gold blazing in the sunlight
upon its outskirts— such literally was the gorgeous impossibility
believed in for ages by the generations of civilised Europe.
Spanish travellers there were, who declared that they had beheld
this marvellous city, that they had sojourned in its palaces,
that they had tasted its delicious viands. Millions believed the
story. Baleigh believed the story. And the circumstances which
marked his pursuit of the ignis fatuus may be here very readily
epitomised.

Even while engaged in a multiplicity of occurrences as courtier,
as statesman, as soldier, as sailor, as orator, and as author, Sir
Walter still clung to the ambition of his boyhood, he still prose-
cuted his endeavours to promote American discovery. He
drained his purse by fitting out expeditions ; the first under Sir
Humphrey Gilbert in 1583, when the admiral perished, and when
Newfoundland was occupied in the name of England ; the second
in 1584, when the island of Okakoke was discovered. In the fol-
lowing year he colonised Virginia, a country so designated by the
modest direction of Elizabeth, in honour of herself. Other expe-
ditions were likewise fitted out by Ealeigh, repaying him by no
successes, while they exhausted an income but slightly augmented,
in 1594, by his salary as Captain of the Yeomen ot the Guard,
and by the manor oi Sherborne, m\imfiL(ieii>u\^ Y^^'ssevs^'^^ \»^^^k!sss^
hy bia sovereign. Although, on tlae wj^owJ^ ^^ ^^ '^^'«s^
Armada, Sir Walter was occupied a^ lAevi^.evi^iS^-^^^'^^^
CforawaU, and Governor of the ialand oi ^ox>iX«sA\ ^nx^^n^''^

1589, engaged as a volunteer nnder Norria and Drake, in tbe
eipedition to Portiifja!, wbere, for capturing several prizes,
Ealeigh wns rewarded by a gold chain from Elizabeth ; altnough
embarassed, in 1591, by a liaigon and aubaequent marriage with
Elizabeth Throckmorton, one of her Majeaty's maids of honour, and
for which offence he waa confined for two months in the Tower;
although, during a conaiderable portion of 1596, his time was
engroaaed by his duties as rear-admiral in the destruction of the
Spanish fleet at Cadiz, by iiis illness from a wound in the leg,
received in that action, by hia Bubaequent miaunderstandingi*
with Cecil and Eases, by hia office aa Governor of Jersey in 1597,
by his participation in the " lalaud Voyage," where, by a brilliant
coup-de-main, he captured Fayal, and by an intricacy of court
intrigues. Sir Walter still found leisure to struggle for the deve-
lopment of his grand design. He strayed, so to spealc, occa-
sionally to the right hand, occasionally to the left; he broke, as
it were, through the thickets on either side of his chosen path-
way, sometimes to pluck a berry, aometimea to slay a bird, tarry-
ing awhile in the green gladea, or basking in the sunshine ; but '
he still preserved his partiality for the old track, he atiU pursued
the lure of hia imagination, remaining to the last still resolute,
still sanguine, in hia adherence to his one beloved and cherished
enterprise. On hia temporary diagraee in 1594, Edeigh reverted
with especial avidity to this darling project. Hume insinuates,*
indeed, that Sir Walter at this juacture merely ambitioned the
achievement of something conspicuous, — hia language is " to
attempt some great action," — and that, accidentally, he deter-
mined upon becoming a navigator. Any auch notion, however,
we cannot but think is altogether erroneous. The expeditiona to
Okakoke and Newfoundlaud in the two preceding years, in point
of fact, are its complete refutation. Besides which, tbe whole
bearing of Ealeigh's mental history shows the bias of his ambi-
tion. He departed with a fleet in the February of 1595 to
Guiana, the reputed country of El Dorado. Leaving his vessels
at the mouth of the Orinoco, he sailed with his companiona in
shallow boats 400 miles up a river, now estimated in length at
15,000. Golden rocks and jewelled cities continuing still obdu-
rately invisible, Ealeigh returned. His narrative of the disco-
very of the " large, rich, and beautiful empire of Guiana," a
narrative fascinating as a fairy legend, startliug as the voyages
of Lemuel GuJJJTer, fantastic as portions of the Divina Oomedia,
vas tBe onlf tangible consequence of the entet^nae. TViai -qbs-

^^^^^^H * Same's EJEtvry of Englnad, v. Zll, > ^^ ^^^^^m

WALTEB KALEIGH — THE ADVENTURER. 107

rative has been stigmatised by Hume, in the same page ^iritli
the foregoing quotatioo, as ''full of the grossest and most
palpable lies that were ever attempted to be imposed on the
Gredulit^ of mankind." Yet, if every blunder of judgment
were vilmed with expressions thus litimeasured and intemperate,
what epithets, for example, could be applied to Johnson, in allu-
sion to his crediting the actuality of the Cock Lane Ghost ? "We
believe Ealeigh to have been sincere, and Johnson to have been
sincere ; but, while we do so, we are astonished rather than indig-
nant at their mistakes. "Where Sir Walter had hoped to have
discovered an inexhaustible magnificence, and to have founded a
gigantic kingdom tribut ary to his native land, he acquired merely
Potatoes and Tobacco. While his voyages to Guiana ministered
to the anguish of his mind, his voyages to Virginia ministered to
the comfort of his body. To that spirit of enterprise in naviga-
tion, which in the memory of Ealeigb is unjustly coupled with so
much ridicule, millions of his posterity have owed one of the
principal sources of their sustenance ; and, let it be here added
abo, to that same spirit millions of his fellow-creatures have been
no less indebted for the delicious solace found by smokers in
tobacco — putting out of view altogether when we say this the
comfort brought to the Tar by his quid, and the titillating re-
freshment ever ready, at a pinch, to the snuff-taker. As old
Burton has it, in his " Anatomy of Melancholy," * by a sort of
bhist and counterblast that would have bewildered ^i^g James
— ^blowing now hot, now cold, in praise and in blame — " Tobacco,
divine, rare, super-excellent tobacco," to begin with, and then
''hellish, devilish, and damned. tobacco!" The multitude at
large in Baleigh's time seem only, however, to have just sipped
or nibbled, as one may say, at the delights of tobacco-smokmg,
the pipe commonly used at first being a walnut-shell and a straw
— ^the farmers on market-day picking out their biggest shillings, to
lay in the scales when the weed was sold by its weight in silver.

How often, while Sir Walter Ealeigh has reclined thus in his
chamber at Durham House, smoking through his long silver tube,
with a chart of Florida under his elbow, may not an entrancing
vision of the Golden City, with fountains of muscadine, and rails
of amber, and odours of spikenard, and pathways, such as he
himself has sung,t

"Strew'd with rubies tliick as gravel,"

have floated with barb&nc pomp before \iia im^i^tji'aSilvQtiX

• Barton's Anatomj of Melancholy, -^twrt.'^. ^*1^.
f Raleigh'B Works, viiL 724.

"HIOTPRDITS ON THE ROAD.

Xet, in painful contrast to all these intoxicating dfly-dreams,
_ iHie Boventeenth century had hardly commenced when our Ad-
Tenturer was lying a state prisoner in the Tower of London.
Prom a courtier, he had suddenly subsided into a recluse; from
riding beside Eliaabeth, cased in armour of burnished silver, he
had accustomed himself abruptly to the sober garments of pbilo-

KBophy ; from tilting with Esses, and flirting with ladiea of the
Ndcharaber, he had turned to collate the Talmud, and to finger
the crucible. Sorrow, and with sorrow fifty-eight wintera, had
grizzled his beard and thinned the hair above his temples ; yet the
smoothness of his lofty forehead, and the lustre of his scornful
eyes, showed that the flames of his ambition, though quelled for
a time, still remained unquenched. It was during the period of
Sir "Walter's lengthened incarceration of thirteen years, that hia
son Carew was bom to him, the child's prattle, as the time
advanced, tending at once to assuage and to embitter the anguish
of Raleigh's imprisonment.

tA aeries of deaths had originally conduced to the eitinction of
Pir Walter's influence, and to the dispersion of his grandeur.
^he death of Eiisex — that ignominious and affecting death ! that
Wot upon the magnanimity of Baleigh, the gratitude of Bacon,
and the generosity of Cecil! — had embittered the last years of
the queen, and rendered the ultimate donafall of Ealeigh him-
self a thing inevitable. Little did the latter imagine, when
endeavouring to hasten the execution of his rival, that he was
only, in effect, thereby materially facilitating his ovm destruction.
Little did he imagine that, in removing Essex, he was rendering
Cecil a more formidable antagonist. The death of Elizabeth —
that most miserable spectacle of imperial abasement and impo-
tency 1 — had sealed the ruin of the man who had been one of the
brightest ornaments of her reign. Having been mainly instru-
mental in causing the decapitation of the chivalrous and unfortu-
nate Essex, neither Saleigh nor Cecil could bi'ook the possibility
of becoming subordinate to the other. Both thirsted for supe-
riority 1 but the latter was the more cunning in the promotion of
his project of advancement, and a succession of accidental cir-
cumstances crowned his machinations with aucceaa. On the
accesaion of Jamea I,, Cecil was re-nominated to the secretary-
ship ; while Koleigh was deprived of his captaincy as yeoman of
the guard. Cecil was covered with new honours and additional
pTBrogatives i Baleigh was expelled from the court, in whicli
a/oiie polj'tical elevatioa could be realised, aoA. ■vaa ieiaeA, More-
/^rer, every opportunity of redeeming h,\a ^oatooa. T^na^a ■t*'
^riabJe alterations nere prgduced, tcafly, M ^'^^ aa-'ac^^ajwa

WALTER RALEIGH — ^THE ADVENTURER. 109

adulation of Cecil, when the old queen gave indications of her
approaching dissolution; secondly, by the prejudicial rumours
concerning Saleigh which were conveyed to the Scottish sove-
reign in the secret correspondence of the secretary ; thirdly, by
the courageous propositions of Sir Walter on the great meeting
at Whitehall ; and fourthly, because in the cautious astuteness
of Cecil there was something more consonant with the tempera-
ment of James than was in any way discernible in the unfashion-
able valour and dangerous hardihood of Ealeigh. Scarcely
three months had elapsed after the accession of the northern
monarch, when his dista*ust of the Great Adventurer was evinced
in a conspicuous manner by his prosecution of the conspirators
in the notorious plots of " The Bye," and " The Main." Of the
incidents connected with those prosecutions, of the intricacies of
the double conspiracy, of the obscure manner in which Sir
Walter was presumed to be implicated in it, it is unnecessary
here to speak with any degree of particularity, seeing that our
national annals have so elaborately narrated those occurrences as
to have rendered them familiar to the majority of lettered
Englishmen. It were easy enough of course to dilate iipon the
inconsistencies of Lord Cobham's behaviour towards Ealeigh;
upon the villainous malignity evinced towards him by the king
and the secretary ; upon the informality of his trial at Winches-
ter; upon the ruffianism of that vile Attorney-General, Sir
Edward Coke ; * upon the execrable heartlessness of Lord Chief-
Justice Popham ; upon the eloquence and self-possession of the
victim of these state intrigues ; upon the solemn comedy enacted
upon the scaffold on Tower Hill. Sufficient, however, for our
present purpose will it be here to restrict our observations to
matters either of a more immediate importance^ or of a more
questionable character.

On the evening of Ealeigh's condemnation, as not only his own
biographers, but as the national historians themselves relate, he
elicited the admiration of the most prejudiced among his specta-
tors by his dignified forbearance ; departing from court, according
to Sir Thomas Overbury, " with admirable erection, but yet in such
a sort as became a man condemned." His appeal to the royal
clemency was dictated throughout in language of mournful gran-
deur : — " Lost am I for hearing a vain man,'* said he, " for hearing
only, and never believing or approving." His attempted suicide
admits, we conceive, of being explained be^onftLTKJMai xcMswg^^
hension. The agoniaed and touching leU^t 'SRiiX.Wa. ^^^^^"^^"^

• State Trials, U. ^6.

declares, that lie had indeed Eeriously attempted Eelf-destructieni:
and this purely from despair of all escape from the vindietiTa-
neB3 of hi8 enemies, " I tave desired God, and disputed witti
my reason," he eiclaima,* "but nature and compassion havft
the victory." Heoce, therefore, the inainuation of Hallam.f'
that Ealeigh's guilty participation in the conspiracy for Arabelli,
Stuart is proven hy this attempt, ia clearly shown to have had
no foundation whatever. Hence Tytler's conjecture, that Sir
Walter, " in a moment of paaaiouato irritation, had inflicted oa
himself a alight wound," is blown into thin air ; hence, liiewise,.
the lenient supposition of Dr. Lingard.J; that it was " probably
a feigned attempt," ia to our thinking utterly dispelled. Tha;
letter already mentioned demonstratea beyond all cavil, that
aaicide was really attempted, that that heinous crime waa deli<
berately resolved upon, that that resolution arose from no con*
sciouaneas whatever of guilt, but rather from the very torment
of helpless innocence. During the mock execution of Sir O-ri&i
Markham, Lord Grey, and Lord Cobhani, the latter individual
appeared with an undaunted mien upon the scafiold, and ther&
solemnly avowed before the great God of Heaven, that hia
accusations against Ealeigh were true to the letter. For our-
selves, we cannot conceive how biatoriana could have been in any
way deluded by this act of most damning duplicity. Instead of
considering Sir Walter's guilt aa attested by this oath, we are all
the more firmly convinced of his innocence, from the very con-
fidence with which it was uttered. Cobham had previously
evinced, it should he remembered, the utmost puaillanimity.
Abject cowardice, and barefaced lying, were the principal ingr&-
dienta in his character. Hence, in truth, his astonishing valour
before the appurtenances of a violent death, ia au assurance to
us that he had purchased forgiveness by perjury; that, ia fact, he
had received a promise of pardon if he consented to pronounce
the declaration in question. Cobham was, in effect, preciaely
one of those vile iudtruments James and Cecil were auch adepts
in wielding.

Committed to the Tower towards the conclusion of 1603,
Ealeigh was confined to hia dungeon, as we have said, during no
less than thirteen years of hia extraordinary existence. Nor
could the demise of hia enemy the aecretary, iu 1615, or the
importunate entreaties of hia friend, tlie Priuce of Wales, or the
^tereeaeionB of the gueen wife, and of her brother the Xing of

^^Mitej'CeBBwii,

l'b Court of JamCB, u. ^^■
CoUBtitutiocttl liialots, i
History of Knal'^'^i '

WALTER RALEIGH — ^THE ADVENTURER. Ill

Denmark, diminish the implacahle hatred of James. The most
brilliant courtier of his age was compelled to wile away those
weary years of his life in seclusion. The favourite of Elizabith
was the prisoner of her successor, justifying that grotesque remark
of Naunton,* that " Fortune had picked him (Sir Walter) out of
purpose to use as her tennis hall," we might be led to deplore this
incarceration as an indelible blot upon the historic page of Eng-
land, but that we are constrained to acknowledge with Southey,t
that ^^ the better part of his (Ealeigh's) fame rests upon the works
which he produced during that compulsory seclusion." Political
cabals were forgotten then, by him, in scholastic labours ; and,
with that true greatness which prompted the exile at Longwood
to solace himself for the loss of the mightiest empire man ever
owned, by the narration of his victories, Sir Walter endeavoured
to obliterate the recollection of his sorrows by delving into the
mysteries of knowledge. In this he received material assistance,
for, as Lingard expresses it, J " the Earl of Northumberland, the
Mecffinas of the age, converted that abode of misery into a temple
of the Muses." Chemistry, and even alchemy, appear first to
have arrested his attention and aroused his industry. Of his
perseverance in the latter study, an amusing description is given by
Sir William Wade. Of his proficiency in the former we may obtain
some inkling upon referring to an account of the Confectio Ba^
leghana, preserved in Cayley's biography.§ Literature, however,
at length absorbed within itself the whole energies of Baleigh.
Betorts and crucibles were deserted for Tully and Quintilian;
and the intellect which had formerly toyed with poetry — as
evidenced, for example, by an exquisite response to Christopher
Marlow's Invitation to Love, and by a majestic sonnet, which has
the glory of having evoked the sonnets of Milton — now aspired to
one of the loftiest efforts in the whole range of historical compo-
sition. Other writers had been conteuted with surveying the
vicissitudes of individual nations ; Sir Walter Ealeigh possessed
an ambition of a more comprehensive character — his theme em-
braced the entire globe, beginning with the moment of Creation.
The History of the World was published two years before the
termination ot its author's imprisonment. Despite the qidbbling
innuendoes of the author of the Curiosities of Literature, we are
satisfied that the annalist, here, was, as the French Eepublicans
would have it, Ealeigh, one and indivisible ! The unique beauty
and strength of that one mind are Niaibla tVaoM^^-vsis.^ *^^^

♦ mnntoD'B Aicuia AuUcA, p. 216. t LmftorO^aBAS^OTi ^l^xv^^wA%^^*^'^'
f Sonibeya Britiab AdimraJa, iv. 378. § Ca^Yey> ^oV V\. K\i^\i^'«^^^'

— TrOOTPRIKTS ON THE BOAD.

are indelibly imprinted upon every sentence. Of the eloquence
of the composition, of the wiadom of the observations, of
the. profound melancholy which colours the sentiments upon
death, and of the florid elegance of the diction, we cannot speak
in terms too eulogistic. How superbly, for example, does he pre-
figure the destruction of Eome, when " the storms of ambition
shall beat her great boughs and branches one agHinst another! "*
Some conception may be formed of the position which Baleigh
has assumed in literature irom. that allusion to Sir Walter and
Lord Bacon, where Stewart mentions in the same breath, "the
originality and enlargement of their philosophical views." When
Fortune so had it, in fact, that Ealeigh was unable to carve his
way to immortality with his sword, hia genius was thus nobly
attested in the dungeon by his pen.

Bribery, on tlie one band, cupidity on the other, at last van-
quished the repugnance of James ; Sir Walter Ealeigh obtaining
his release from confinement on the 17th of March, 1616, on
paying fifteen thousand pounds to the relatives of Buckingham,
and on assuring his sovereign, through Secretary Winwood, that
inexhaustible wealth might be acquired for the crown in Guiana.
During his former expedition to that romantic land, our voyager
had, under rather painful circumstances, massacred the garrison
at Trinidad, fired the town of St. Joseph, and conveyed Berreo,
ita governor, away as his prisoner. Possibly with the intention
of preventing the recurrence of such unnecessary outrages, pro-
bably with the design of entrapping a man whom he still continued
to abhor, the English monarch permitted Ealeigh to attempt once
more to establish a colony, and to work a gold mine, in Ouiano,
with the interpolated restriction of trading only with " savags
and infidel nations." A fleet of fourteen vessels, equipped by the
wreck of Sir Walter's fortune, was collected in the Thames. By
letters, under the privy seal, he was appointed Commander-in-
Chief and Governor of the intended colony. James was guaran-
teed a portion of the anticipated bullion, thou'^h he contributed
not one single groat towards the defrayment of the expenses of
the undertaking. On the morning of the 28th of March, 1617,
Ealeigh again sailed in quest of the fabled city of Manoa, that
golden El Dorado of his imagination — little suspecting that the
instruments of his destruction were already fabricated ; that
Qondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, bad, with the execrable
connivance of the king, minutely acquainted himself with the
proposed route ; ia Sue, that reinforcementa \mi been, dea^o-t^hed

" Baleiglj'a woiks, vii. &9a.

WALTER RALEIGH — THE ADVENTtJRER. US

by G-ondomar to his brother, the Governor of St. Thomas. A
writer in the Edinburgh Review* declares that in this dishonest
and nnregal paltering of James, he can discover " nothing dis-
honourable or inconsistent with the usages of civilised nations ! "
To our own view, the communication in question appears
to be, on the contrary, somewhat equivalent to the stab of a
stiletto. On reaching the coast of America, in November, the
seamen were so asssoled by contagious maladies as to render
it necessary for the vessels of the expedition to anchor near
Wiapoco. Here it was that Ealeigh was compelled to remain
for a while altogether inactive, endeavouring to alleviate the tor-
ments of a raging fever by his one anodyne and his sole luxury
— sucking oranges. Here it was that the doomed hero continued
for nearly one whole month devoured by an agony of hope and
trepidation — while two hundred and fifty soldiers, under Captain
Keymis, advanced up the Orinoco to take possession of the sup-
posed mine ; while they were being assailed by the garrison of
St. Thomas ; while they entered that town as conquerors after
having killed the governor and routed their antagonists ; while
they were lamenting over the mutilated corpse of Baleigh's eldest
son, destroyed in their recent conflict ; while they were commit-
ting the houses' to conflagration after wandering twenty days
within view of the neighbouring mountains; while they were
drifting slowly, with broken spirits, between the beautiful banks
of that noble river, to crush the heart of a great man with their
tidings of death, of disappointment, of ruin, of despair. Keymis,
half-maddened by his reverses, but especially by the untimely
demise of the younger Ealeigh, had returned with the .remnant of
his attendants, although convinced, according to Cayley,t that the
coveted mines were " within two hours' march from the river side."
A consummation so contrary to his expectations, overwhelmed Sir
Walter with a woe beyond all description. His heart ached with
the subversion of the dreams of a long life. The jewelled roofs
of Manoa had already shimmered tantalizingly before him (to all
appearance in no very remote perspective) Uke the brass palace
luring on the Arabian^Calender in the scoop of the ocean. The
enchanted wand, however, had been reversect, the gorgeous vision
had disappeared ; the future, like the hereafter of the infidel^ had
become lor Ealeigh, little better than one —

"Wide, grey, lampless, deep, ■unpw^l^^QtV'ir

* EdinhvLvgh Review, vol. lxx\. p^. %^-^\.
f Caylefa Life of Raleigh, \i. 110.

w

Terrible, however, as were these consequeacea of his fruitless
ndrenture, the Bcoroful Belf-reliance of Ealeigh might yet, but
for one other reason, have Bustained him above the abyaaes of
despondercy. Beggary, ridicule, persecution, royal malignity,
might atill have tasked hia equanimity in vain, had not the un-
timely death of hia sou made his very aoul sink under the weighc
of an intense and unbearable agony. Hia dispoaition was soured by
that excesa of misfortune ; and, in hia paroxysms of despondency,
he overwhelmed Keymia with reproaches.

A few days only, it is related by his biographer, had elapsed
after the discomfiture of the expedition, and Sir Walter Ealeigh,
still a prey to the most melancholy retrospections and the
gloomiest forebodings, was reclining one forenoon in hia cabin,
when Keymis, with a careworn and melancholy visage, suddenly
stood beside hia couch, and, with a respectful obedience, tendered
him a scroll of paper,

Ealeigh, after glancing at the writing, obaerved that it waa an
explanatory letter to the Barl of Arundel,

"Captain Keymis," said he, "thou hast by tby obstinacy
brought such perdition to my hopes, that favour of mine in any
Bort cannot he given."

" Sir Walter," demanded the other, compressing his lips toge-
ther in anguish, " is that in truth your final resolve ? "

■ ■' cried Ealeigh, waving him away with an impatient

"Ik wn t then sir," murmured Keymia, " what course to
at

A m n t ft w rds Ealeigh was alone: nothing — in the
hu h f tl t p al noon — beyond the occasional daahiug of the
b ne p n tb ah windows, or the gurgling of the water in
th pp nt rrupting the intense tranquillity. Sir Walter is
rel t d t ha b n gradually yielding to the drowsy influence of
the silence, when he was startled by the muffled explosion of a
pistol. He hurried to an adjacent compartment of the vessel,
occupied by his companion, and, finding the door fastened, de-
manded in a loud and querulous voice, " who Lad been burning
gunpowder? "

" I, sir," replied Keymis from within ; " because the bore hath
been long charged."

Sir Walter, with a composed countenance, returned to his pallet

jia ioue aliorwarda, Keymis wna found \j\ngicai to. tis cabin,
-iT?'^ ^^^^■^o ■"! iiis iieart, and one ot \^ i&a Vo^sea^i^ ii. .

ii

WALTER RALEIGH — THE ADVENTURER. 115

Never again did the fortunes of Sir Walter Raleigh, after that
incident, emit even one momentary scintillation of brightness.
The suicide of his most trusted adherent was the prelude to a
succession of novel and unexpected calamities. His fleet was
diminished by the recreancy of the subordinate commanders.
His own crew became mutinous and ungovemahle. The rats,
tme to their ignoble instincts, were departing from the shelter
of a noble edifice, then trembling to its foundation. After
various futile and spasmodic endeavours to retain his position,
Saleigh landed, in the June of 161S, at Plymouth. Specious
as was the explanation given of his disobedience to the royal
mandate in attacking the settlement of St. Thomas, namely,
that * he did so " knowing His Majesty's title to the country
to be best and most Christian," the animosity of James had
not only to be satisfied but to be satiated. Sir Walter sur-
rendering himself to his kinsman. Sir Lewis Stukeley, was
conducted in close custody to London. Neither feigned mad-
ness, nor passionate remonstrance, could prevent the realization
of a kings imkingly vengeance; and G-ondomar, thirsting to
avenge his brother, and to vindicate the dignity of Spain, abetted
the malignity of James by a blustering, yet adroit importunity.
As Lambert Wood oddly remarks with a sort of inverted meta-
phor,t " having gotten Ealeigh in the trap, he (G-ondpmar) laid
his baits about the king." Again confined in a dungeon of the
Tower, Sir Walter abandoned himself to the last evil portents of
fais romantic destiny. The golden palaces and gorgeous day-
dreams of his boyhood had resulted only in the sombre dungeons
and the darkening twilight of his afflicted age.

Nothing seems to have been spared by the advisers of the
British monarch, by which greater opprobrium might be attached
to the government, in its behaviour during the closing scenes of
Saleigh's magnificent but melancholy career. Not only was an
ompiric, named Manourie, employed to cajole the illustrious
captive into the commission of acts which criminated him still
.fiuther ; not only was Sir Thomas Wilson deputed as an official
spy to extract certain confessions from him in the. unrestrained
conversations of a perfidious friendship ; not only were the per-
sonal grudges of Gondomar, and the ungenerous antipathies of a
foreign nation, appeased by heaping contumelies upon that
IBngHsh warrior, whom Theobald has with justice characterised X
as, *^next to !Drake, the great sconi^e «Ai4. ^i^xx^ort ^\ ^ii^'^ ^'^'j^-

* Apology, Balelgh^a "Woika, VtSI* ^^^.
f History of England, p. 2.1^.
, :t Life of Raleigb, p. S9. _ o

TT6 FOOTPRrsTs on the road.

niarda ; " not only were meanneBH aod hypocrisy resorted to for
the purpose of rendering his downfall irretrievable ; but, with an
audacity of malice which has hardly any parallel in the annala of
the moat cruel despotiani, hia enemies reaolved to carry into effect
the original sentence for hia eiecution. To expiate a fault com-
mitted in 1617, he was retiuired to submit to a punishment to
which he bad been condemned in 1603. To atone for the destruc-
tion of a aettlemeot, it was ordered that he should receive the
chastisement of a detected leader of a conspiracy. To propitiate
a continental power, and to dispel the terrors of a pusillanimoua
prince, one of the most chivalrous knights, one of the moat distin-
guished statesmen, oneof the most gifted orators, one of the purest
writera England had then produced, waa to be sacrificed to a
sentence passed upon him fifteen years before ! Well indeed
may one of the most luminous of our historiana declare erapbati-
cflDy,* that " no technical reasoning could overcome the moral
sense that revolted at carrying the original sentence into execu-
tion." On being summoned before the Court of King's Bench,
Ealeigh availed himself of this opportunity to appeal against the
judgment. Never had hia language been more temperate ; neTer
did hia mien evince such equanimity ; never perhaps did any man,
oppressed by woes so terrible, numerous, and complicated, display
a more dignified or a more affecting self-possession. Succeeding
ages have appreciated to the full that notable spectacle of patient
sorrow and dignified endurance. It has been written decisively
in our own geneTfttion,t that " from the moment he despaired of
saving his life, Ealeigh displayed a fortitude worthy of his cha-
racter." Ciad io the panoply of his resignation, he calmly
awaited the vengeance of hia persecutors.

It waa on the forenoon of the 29th of October, 1618, that Sir
Walter Baleigh ascended a temporary scaffold erected in the
Palace-yard of Westminster. A. vast concourse filled the open
space surrounding it. Spectatora not only tenanted the windowa
in large numbers, but many of them had even clambered upon the
housetops. As that memorable victim stepped upon the sombre
carpeting of the planks, and according to Sir Thomas Overbury,J
" saluted the lords who were present with a cheerful counte-
nance," the bugles of the soldiery sounded a martial flourish, and
the roll of their drums imposed a sudden silence upon the multi-
tude. The breathleaa hush was full soon broken, however, by
fti^ slir/U roieo of Sir Walter, uttering those mournful words of

' HaUum'a aonstitutional HiKtocj, i. %Vl.
t Liosard'a History of EngbJiil, ''
^^^^^H^ 4^ Arraigaiaeat of ilahigli, i

WALTER RALEIGH — ^THE ADVENTURER. 117

eziiltation, that he should die in the free sunlight and not in the
unholy darkness of his dungeon. Clothed, Hamlet-like, in a gar-
ment of black velvet — his majestic person towering above his
attendants and executioners — ^his arms gesticulating in the
earnestness of his harangue — ^his features flushed but composed
— Saleigh is then reported to have influenced the opinions and
moved the passions of his auditors with the potency of a true
orator. On the completion of his address, the Abbey bells tolled
out from their adjacent turret, and the concourse of spectators,
with beating hearts and moistened eyes, pressed forward into a
denser mass, in the very eagerness of their observation.

" I prythee let me see it,** cried Ealeigh, in his broad Devon-
shire accent, taking the axe from the reluctant gn^ of the
headsman: "Dost thou think I am afraid of itp" — He mused
over the glittering weapon awhile, and then murmured, as though
himself agitated by the plaintiveness of the conceit : " 'Tis a
sharp medicine, but this is that, that will cure all sorrows."

Having kissed the instrument by which his life was to be
destroyed, Sir Walter returned it to the executioner, bidding
him not to strike until he observed a preconcerted signal. " Then
fear not," said he, " but strike home.**

A few deathful moments having been devoted to inward prayer
and meditation, the condemned man leisurely placed his neck upon
the block.

" Nay, nay," he exclaimed, when recommended to turn his face
in an opposite direction ; " no matter how the head lies, so the
heart be right."

Observing a hesitation on the headsman's part in responding
to his signal, Ealeigh partially raised himself from the block,
crying out, " Why dost thou not strike ? Strike, man ! " At
the second blow from the axe which he had but just pressed to
his lips, the hero was decapitated.

.His noble head, gory and haggard in its immobility, was
dropped into a red leathern bag, and conveyed as a precious
relic to his widow. According to some accounts, it was tenderly
preserved by her during twenty-nine years, being ultimately
buried with her youngest son, Carew, in West Horsley Church,
Surrey. That it was in truth a priceless memorial. Bishop G-ood-
man has tenderly averred,* where he says, " I know where his
{Baleigh's) skull is kept to this day, and I have kissed it ! " With
some slight shpw of Christian decency, \n.^\)o^'5 ^^^ VciiRLtxfe^xsi.
Bt Margaret's, Westminster.

• Goodman's Court o! Jamea, i. ^^*

HHHMHB

FOOTPRINTS ON THE BOiD.

Thua perished Sir Walter Baleigli, in the Bixty-aixth year
of hia age — a mournful and memorable evidence of the pro-
verbial mutability of fortune. However much we may be
inclined, as we are, to dissent from that sweeping sentence of Dr.
Lingard,* that in this catastrophe " the provocation was great,
and the puniehmcnt not undeserved," we can at least coincide
with that eminent hiatoriaQ in regarding with admiration the
magnanimous self-poaaeasion of Raleigh. "We can beyond all
doubt peruse with satisfaction that splendid panegyric pronounced
upon the Great Adventurer by the Bishop oi Salisbury, who
attended Sir Walter on the scaBbld, and who declared that " his
was the most fearless of deaths that ever was known, and the
moat resolute and confident, yet with reverence and canscienee ! "
It comes to us almost as a consolation to remember that Ealeigh's
contemporaries were aufilciently dispassionate to regard his execu-
tion, according to Hume, t as a deed of "cruelty and injustice,
meanness and indiscretion! " It is hardly leas than a source of
eiultation to ua, to remember that in our own day Lord Macaulay
has moat emphatically asserted | that that decollation, " under all
circumstances, must be considered as a dastardly murder ! " Who
is there, indeed, that, in the remembrance of it, does not experience
a sense of delight in reading of that dramatic incident occurring
several years afterwards at Wliiteball, when James waa one day
startled by the introduction at Court of Ealeigh's only surviving
son, Carew, the old king tarning from the young man with evident
loathing, muttering that he resembled his Pather's Ghoat ! An
anecdote plainly proving, as Miss Aikin remarks, § "how ioudly
tlie conscience of the king upbraided him with the sacrifice of Sir
Walter."

Whether it be regarded through the variety of hia attainments,
or through tho romantic circuraatancca which contributed to
hia celebrity, the character of Sir Walter Baleigh ia precisely
one of those that instantly, one might almost say irresistibly,
captivates the imagination. And in some respects the investi-
gation of that character ia calculated to be more instructive
from the very circumstance of the moral blemishes which are
therein connected with so many physical and intellectual beauties.
As a courtier, none was more brilliant. As a geographical disco*
verer, none was more adventurous. As a statesman, none amongst
_ Ilia contemporaries was more enlightened. As a naval and mlli-

* Liagard'a Hietory of England, Vi. "ITi..
+ Home's History of Euelaud, 'ri. Vi.
t Lcnl Mncaiilaj's Esaays, u, 3*0.
S" Lucy Jikiu'B Memoita oE tiie Coart oS. 5«.t

WALTER RALEIGH — THE ADVENTURER. 119

tary commander, none was more truly heroic. As a historian, as
a lyrical poet, as an orator, as a chemist, as a mathematician, as a
proficient in mechanical sciences, and as a searcher after the
revelations of philosophy, Ealeigh assumes a distinguished 'posi-^
tion, and demands our earnest and most unaffected admiration*
Nevertheless, his actions were occasionally reprehensible, and his
principles generally pernicious. It is among the most surprising
anomalies of his extraordinary age, that while possessing so many
qnalities likely to engage the affections and arouse the enthu-
siasm of the multitude, Sir Walter Ealeigh was the most unpopular
among all the favourites of Elizabeth. Even when he appeared
in his silver armour, powdered with diamonds and encrusted with
pearls and rubies, the people gave but little testimony of that admi-
ration for magnificence which they evinced towards other courtly
heroes under similar circumstances. Ealeigh's handsome counte-
nance, his lofty and dignified person, his fascinating conversation,
the unstudied elegance of his manners, and the graceful pomp in
which he indulged, rendered the minions of the court his vassals,
yet were wholly inadequate to remove the prejudices of the
general multituae. The populace respected him for his martial
prowess, but they mistook tne munificence of his royal mistress
for his own rapacity ; and in the tact by which he vanquished the
machinations of his political antagonists, the mob only recognised
a despicable craftiness. Among the many reasons which are
given for this antipathy towards Sir Walter, the foremost is un-
doubtedly his inefiable and insufferable haughtiness. All his
biographers, without exception, have insisted that arrogance of
demeanour was perhaps the most conspicuous among his distin-
guishing characteristics. Aubrey* has even gone so far as to
enforce this declaration by an expletive, where he observes of
Kaleigh, that "his nave was, that he was damnable proud." Yet
it is difficult not to believe that, in this, Ealeigh's biographers
were either mistaken altogether in attributing any such senti-
ments to his contemporaries, or that, if his contemporaries did
really entertain those sentiments, they were labouring under
some very grievous misconception. That Sir Walter did not
possess this repulsive pride, either in features or in manners,
M'e are perfectly well persuaded, and that for several reasons
now at once to be particularised. His writings — generally the
mirror of his disposition — indicate nothing whatever of that de-
scription. The only authentic portxaita >NVv\5i\i\iW^\i^^^^^^'?sj«:^
to uSf give ua the notion rather o£ a digmSi^^ ^\A laaj^^ ^C^isss^ ^

* Aubrey's Llvea, \i» 5^^.

^^ral

an arrogant or a forbidding nature. Besides which, there occatB
a passage in OoUn Chut — a poem not merely dedicated to !Baleigh,
but especially commemorative of hia character — espresaive of n
sentiment in regard to Ealeigh that the poet would never have
preaumed to utter had hia Shepherd of the Ocean been thua dia-
tinguished for "high looks" and "haughty worda," Spenser*
there writes, in effect, as follows : —

"For liiglteet looks lave not the biglieet mind.
Nor hanghty n'orda moet full of higLeBt tfaonglita:
But are like bladders blowoD np with wind,
ITbat being prickt do vanish into noughts."

Those veraea, to our thinking, fumiah concluaive testimony that
Sir Walter Ealeigh'a habitual haughtiness ia a chimera of some
diseased fancy ; and those verses have, by a singular coincidence,
been hitherto overlooked aa in any way thus elucidatory of hia
character. Another circumstance that tends to corroborate our
opinion upon tliis particular, ia hia acknowledged amenity of dis-
position towards his adherents, together with their undoubtedly
tender consideration for himself. Hia behaviour " towarda those
who had any dependance upon hira," says Oldys.t "especially
towards those of any liberal knowledge and education, appears to
have been of singular candour and benignity." For tiieae reasons,
therefore, we are fain to believe that his diaposition has hitherto
been in a, great measure strangely niiaapprehended, and that
because upon some remarkable occaaiona he may have displayed
nn " aivfulness and ascendancy in his aspect over other mortalls," J
ho has been considered as naturally supercilious. As well might
we imagine from their casual hurricanes that the tropical climates
are perpetually tempestuous. Others, however, have maintained
that Ealeigh'a lamentable disregard to veracity, was among the
reasons of Jjis being unpopular ; yet Cranmer was, and ia, popular,
and surely his moat shameless panegyriat will not accuse Cranmer
of the vice of veracity ? The moat reaaonable anppositiou as to
the origin of this antipathy in the multitude is, to our own mind,
the hostility of Sir "Walter to that most popular of all Elizabeth's
favourites, the generous, brilliant, unfortunate, and thoughtless
Eaaex. In administering to the destruction of that nobleman,
Raleigh thwarted the people beyond all forgiveness, while he
thereby indelibly tamiahed liis own fair fame with posterity.
Nevertheless, it must be confesaed, even then, that hia conduct
£i3i/s sojne j/alJj'ation in the untiring autagoinsiti ot "Eases,

'^ Foetical Works, p. 01. + OWja' t Lite ol "SJiiKvio, V tia.

WALTER RALEIGH — THE ADVENTURER. 121

Eour crimes are attributed to Ealeigb, yet to our judgment
it would seem that the accusations are not equally deserved.
Firstly, his participation in the ruin of Essex is not sufficiently
substantiated ; he evinced neither the phlegmatic cruelty of Cecil,
nor the dastardly ingratitude of Bacon. Secondly, his extortion
in receiving bribes from the adherents of Essex for gaining the
remission of their sentences, such for example as the ten thousand
pounds presented by Mr. Littleton, is, if true, a vile blot on his
character ; though even then it should be regarded as simply of
a piece with the peculation then unhappily prevailing at that epoch,
wnen even the Lord High Chancellor of England was degraded
for his wholesale corruption. Thirdly, Raleigh is accused of aban-
doning the colonists whom he had conveyed to Virginia, to the
tomahawks of the Bed Indians. Of this charge, however, he is
altogether guiltless, seeing that, according to Purchase,* he dis-
pat<med vessels to that country five separate times, at his own
cost, in the vain expectation of affording those wretched beings
assistance. Their abandonment, and their being subsequently
butchered by Powhatten, a Virginian sovereign, are solely charge-
able upon the government of Elizabeth, fully justifying a con-
temporary critic in averring that they affix a deep stain upon
her much vaunted reign." f Fourthly, there is the accusation
directed against Ealeigh of his having deliberately attempted
suicide — of the perfect validity of which charge we have already
expressed oiu' own conviction. 'No other words of palliation can
be uttered in behalf of Raleigh, in regard to that attempt at
suicide, than those usually pronounced by the verdict of a coro-
ner's jury — ^temporary insanity. His affecting letter, however,
penned immediately before stabbing himself, renders any such
plausible excuse null and inapplicable. Of Sir Walter's acquies-
cence in the dreams of El Dorado, we have already given ample
explanation. Upon the readiness with which he succumbed to the
delusion, Mr. Tytler has gracefully but fantastically remarked,!
that such " credulity was a weed thrown out by the strength and
ardour of his imagination." His first dim visions of Manoa must
have been coloured and almost realised by his reveries, just as
those " adjuncts of learning " mentioned by Naunton,§ " which by
diligence he enforced to a great augmentation and perfection."
Although viewing in aU its strength and in all its weakness the
character of this extraordinary adventurer, as it has been aptly

* Purchase, iv. 1653.

f Edinburgh Review, Ixxi. 14.
t Tytler's Life of Raleigli, ii. 5^^.
S Nannton'a Arc Axil., p. 215.

122

FOOTPRTNTa OS THE KOAD.

epitomiaed in two epithets, by Dr. Linn^irJ, when speaking of
" the gallant but unprincipled Sir Walter Ealeigh," it is difficult
to picture him to ourselves, whether at the storming of Fayal, or
the reviewing at Dover ; whether pencilling sonnets in a dungeon,
or standing in the Privy Gardens while the Earl of Nottingham
wiped the dust off his shoes " in compliment," in is still rnore
diilicult to imagine him to ourselves, whether as a soldier, a sailor,
a debater, a voyager, or an author; whether chatting in the
" Mermaid," or perishing undaunted upon the scaffold, without
regarding him, in the words of Hallam, aa "a splendid orna-
ment to his country," without feeling the frigid apprehensions
of our judgment io his regard merged in a glow of forgiving
admiration.

THOMAS EAIKES— THE BOND ST* LOUNGER.

DiABisTS may be the most slovenly, but they are also at the
same time, without doubt, the most candid of autobiographers.
We may picture them as sitting down to the entry of their daily
jottings with that excruciatingly starched cravat, called Conven-
tional Eeserve, thrown aside (with what a sigh of relief!), and
. the old abominable strait-waistcoat of Social Formality, just for
once in the twenty-four hours, luxuriously unbuckled.

One fancies the mere journal-scribbler writing invariably as
Oliver Goldsmith loved to write — ^in his dressing-gown and slip-
pers. Certainly never preparing himself for his task after the
fastidious fashion of the musician Haydn, who is related to have
occasionally arrayed himself in full Court costume — his peruke
sprinkled with a fresh bloom of powder, his wrists clouded with
delicate ruffles of cobweb-lace, his fingers radiant with diamond,
amethyst, and carbuncle — simply for the purpose of composing
quartetts and sonatas in the privacy of his own apartment ; creak-
ing on his red-heeled shoes alternately, to and fro between his
desk and his harpsichord. The Muse of the Diarist, if he have
one, ought always assuredly to be portrayed in deshabille. As
assuredly as the manuscript volumes, penned by him in such
careless and straggling characters, lay bare at a glance to the
inspection of every one who lists, not merely the writer's indi-
vidual temperament, but with it also that intimate inner-self,
which we have all of us learned to call respectively each one's
own peculiar idiosyncrasy.

The journal of the Diarist is in reality, of his own especial
idiosyncrasy, the most vivid and uncompromising revelation. It
is the very window-in-a-man'a-breast,>N\iv^ \^^j^ \wi^^ *isst ^^
many agea ago by the old Greek ]g\nio^o^\iet. W» Sa» *^^ "^
dow, moreover, with the shutters flLune V\die o^evi, «sA "^ ^^
drawa up. We can see througVx it dL\ \xi^\.»sixtcci^avx^^ ^

12? FOOTPKINTB ON THE BOAD.

medium being very tbia, and tranaparent. "We axe
each one amongst us, to pry at our own free will and pieaaure
into the every crevice and involution of the complicated haman
iiearta of these poor dead and buried Diariata, vThile they, ia
turn — the Bpirita of these dear brothera departed — seem to reveal
most clearly and distinctly through that same mysterioufl loop-
hole, their own natural teatuies, stamped with their own real
and genuine ejpression. Some looking out upon us laughingly
— like Holbein's jocund portrait of Will Somers, the King's
Jester, peeping, with a merry twinkle in his eyes, through the
lattice m the picture-gallery at Hampton Court. Others ap-
pearing before us dolefully — like the beautifully-ahrouded face
of St. Amelia, the Nun, wistfully gazing between the conventual
bars in the famous French lithograph. The former category
implying, what may be termed, the purely anecdotal Diarists:
such as might, be instanced through the journals of [IhomaB
Moore — journals kept apparently, somewhat as the squirrel keepa
his teeth for cracking nuts, chiefly for the pleasure of cracking
jokes flavoured with the wine of wit and the salt of good-fellow-
ehip. The second category referring, on the other hand, to such
outpourings of effervescent lamentation as those in the midst
of which Madame D'Arblay has unwittingly sprinkled, not, as she
fancied, the roae-water of compliment, but the nitric acid of
satire, upon the memory of the "Sweet Queen," — old strait-
laced Queen Cbarlotte.

Besides these, however, there are others of the most motley
kind, Diarists the most widely contrasting and the most pic-
turesquely diversified. There are those numberless and name-
less multitudes, for example, who might be accurately described,
according to lago's plirase, aa doing little else with their journals
than "chronicle small beer" — scoring off their days in ponderous
books about as monotonous in their general eft'ect, and not by
any means one half as interesting, as the fur-famed sticks fiobin-
son Crusoe used to notch for a calendar. There are, however, on
the contrary, those extremely rare aud inestimable exceptions —
Diarists who come conscientiously, night by night, to their self-
imposed duty; come with their periodical gatherings of revela-
tions, telling their secrets right out, and making a clean breast
of it ; Dianats whose writings are like the whisperings of devo-
tees at the confessional. The value of the treasures picked up
j5vm time to time by these wajfarers, dejieudiiig entirely, of
course, upon the nature of the ground t\vey ta.^^'jftti. \.q W.Na
^nirersed. Sometimes they almost seem, Stom. ftiB coiAaiAB, 1:4
1^ waJJet, to have been wandering at lurgo Q-^ex 's^ie 'v>&,^<s«

mOMAS RAIKES — THE BOND STREET LOUNGER.- 125

possessions of that redoubtable millionaire of the nursery, Mr.
Thomas Tiddler, originally, of course, of Cathay and El Dorado,
but latterly, no doubt, of the Australian gold diggings, or those
of California. Occasionally, even a few appear to have descended,
like our old friend, Sindbad the Sailor, into another wondrous
Valley of Diamonds, and, like him, to have cunningly availed
themselves of the very tempting opportunity. These, it should
be observed, have not always emptied out before us, clumsily and
pell-mell, the precious store of their girdles — pouring forth their
accumulations confusedly in most admired disorder, just as they
may have been first collected, hap-hazard. One, perchance,
instead of this, has clustered them hastily together in a glitter-
ing mass as a pendant to the Life they may appear designed
to illustrate. Precisely in this way, for example, it is that the
history of Alexander Pope has been embellished by Spence's
Anecdotes. Another, setting more ingeniously, and with a
greater amount of elaboration, the gems of price he has carefully
gathered up, and yet more carefully selected, transforms them
from a mere heap of resplendent particles into a very aigrette
or aureole — that radiant diadem of genius, a perfected biography.
It was thus, for instance, with James Boswell's ever-memorable
masterpiece.

Incidentally, moreover, there has appeared upon occasion,
some 'more amusing egotist, with a self-sufficiency resembling
that of ^sop's fly upon the wheel : some personage of such
supreme importance in his own estimation, that out of the loose
memorabilia of his note-book, he has deliberately compiled the
History of His Own Times— a title equivalent in His Own mind,
probably, to the Georgian Era, or the Augustan Age, or the
epoch, say of the Carlovingians. As a notable representative of
this rather entertaining class of Diarists, may be particularised
Sir William "Wraxall — an observer of His Own contemporaries,
chie&y remarkable now, as the individual who flrst suggested to
the British Oovernment the selection of the Island of Saint
Helena as the Attest place of exile for the discrowned Emperor
and King, Napoleon Bonaparte. Journal*writers of a much
nobler, because of a much more modest description, however,
have assumed to themselves like John Evelyn — the learned and
accomplished Evelyn — the character as it may be termed of
G-entlemen TTshers to History. ' And One, the most delightful
Diarist of all — meaning, of course, Mr. SwxiU'd'Se^^^^^^^st'^'^
to the Admiralty — ^has he not acbieved. iot 'V^wxi'aj^l ^^ ^^<y:>^KiSfc^
pre^-eminence in his craft, as a ajatema\.vi e.cJAfe<5.\»ox ^1 xis^^-;
aidered trOLea, solely by the eyidence oil \ii^ ^«s?^^ ^ac:tQfvv^

FOOTPRINTS ON THE ECU).

incomparable journals, of a supreme faculty for — what ? "Well,
plainly and candidly, for — Blabbing !

It is, frankly be it apofeen, as about the honesteat blab in the
world that Mr. Samuel Pepya has taken his place among Diarists,
the Saul among that multitude ^ higher thau the highest of
them all, by a head and shouldera. Little, in truth, waa it coa-
jectured (not ao yery many yeara ago), when the manuscript
diary of Mr. Pepya was first discovered down at Oxford, poked
away, dusty and yellow, in a corner of an old ram-ahackle book-
case, what very strange secrets were lying hid away there undei-
the mask of that queer, and fantastic, aud apparently inscrutable
specimen of ahort-hand. Happily, the key being almost simul-
taneously brought to light, we have ever since then enjoyed the
privilege of peeping, with a happier fate than that of Fatima, as
often as we have felt disposed, into the forbidden chamber of this
comical and perfectly harmless Bluebeard. It is such capital fiin,
tucking ourselvea under the arm of tliis unconscionably candid
Guide, and being conducted by him, after the lapse of a couple
of centuries, bebind those far-ofi" scenes, and into so many a
remote sanctuiu sanctorum! He lifts the curtain, too, with
such a ludicrously composed air, as it might be called, of sly
innocence — his iudei-fiuger hesitating by his nose, and the ghoat
of a wink quivering upon hia eyelid ! All these uneipected
revelations of the past, reiuemher, coming to us from, a seemingly
insoluble enigma — a mystery in the esplanation of which
Lord Eraybrooke baa, happily for ua, displayed a sagacity only
comparable to that brought to bear by Colonel (oow Sir
Henry) Eawlinson, upon the problem of the cuneiform hiero-
glypbica.

fortunately for every individual, like ourselves — shame be
it said — delighting in the colloquial scandal and conversational
tittle-tattle of old Sam Pepya, formerly of the Admiralty, and
now for ever of the book-ahelves, there has recently appeared a
kind of kindred diary, a companion-picture, though one, of
course, not by any means so highly coloured— a similar social
banquet, yet, it must be confessed, one not to any comparable
extent so highly aeaaoned. Nerertheless, toned down, cooled —
even, it might be aaid, iced — in its general efl'ect, by the refri-
gerating influence of the proprieties, the journal hare parti-
cularly alluded to may honestly, w'e fancy, come within the range
of thig reaiij alluring and appetising description. A portion of
fie Journal kept by the late Thomas B.ai\tea, "Bsiyntft, Hie t\tle-
■" of theBB four gamiloua volumea a.tinoimcea tVei.t coo.\«vA%
Thotaas Raikea, Eaquire, himself ptovmgto\ie^-^*i^'^'»'^

THOMAS R4JKES — ^THE BOND STREET LOUNGER. 127

have penetrated very far, into his lucubrations — what may be
designated a most amiable, old Toryfied Prig, and an extremely
self-contented and self-sufficient Chatterbox. Consisting, as it
does, of merely a portion of his journal — extending from 1831 to
1847 — ^the work recently issued from the press, imder this some-
what unattractive title, will be found to extend over four volumes
of really interesting social and political reminiscences. Enter-
taining they are, for a reason or two hereupon to be immediately
specified. The production being altogether the counterfeit pre-
sentment of the individual who penned it — to wit, Thomas
Baikes, Esquire. The production itself never tiring by the way
of reminding us that he was Esquire — T. Eaikes, Esq., figuring
away on every leaf — T. Eaikes, Esq., being lettered in gold upon
the back of the volume, and Thomas Eaikes, Esquire, in full,
being engraved with a flourish under the author's portrait,
prefixed to Volume One, by way of frontispiece. This wonderful
portrait was taken, one might suppose, from one of Deighton's
full-length profile miniatures. What a characteristic sketch of
the man it manifestly is ! — as characteristic as his own diary, and
that surely is his alter ego^ his other self, his ghostly adumbra-
tion. Looking at the portrait and at the journal, we know at
once what sort of a man this was ; we catch the notion of him
perfectly. A Spence, maundering about continually, without a
Pope, A Boswell never stumbling upon his Johnson, but ever
and ever self-conscious, as though he stood always in the midst
of a cluster of cheval-glasses, full of his own reflections ! An
Evelyn, whose Sylva had (only semi-officially) something or other
to do with the woods and forests. Briefly and more accurately
— ^Mr. Pepys's Shadow modernised.

EiLamining the man more carefully in his picture as well as in
his journal, it is amusing to recognise what we may venture to
style a kind of a Peel-Turveydrop in this comely double of the
incarnation of Deportment. A gentleman, in fact, bearing such
a strong family likeness to that particular prototype, that, look-
ing at his well-strapped and well-buttoned figure, one might,
here again, almost expect to see '^ creases in the whites of hiu
eyes" when he bowed! It is easy enough even to imagine the
gait of the man when he walked, to see him trundliog over the
pavement of St. James's and Piccadilly, with a heavy-go-light
kind of ambling pace, as though his corns were wadded. The
very neckcloth lapped about his throat appears to have beeiL -^wl
on as tenderly aa if it were a ponltice. Aii'i >JcLav3L^ «<A^\5i^
'one who, in bia younger days, must, m\*\iO\3Ai ^LOxitoX^ Vk^'^ "^'^"^
whatf was yanouBly designated iu t\iOBe tvmet^ «k \Jioo^, ^Vvv^>

' FOOTPRINTS OK THE ROAI

ji dandy — what we are in tbe habit of defining now-a-days aa
a swell — so subordinating coxcombry to comfort that, despite
all that still tightly-fitting, faabionable raiment, he seems to
have yindicated bis title in a more literal sense to tbe modem
appellation of the brotherhood, by an amplitude of girth deeidedly
more compatible than any wasp-like waist with the enjoyment of
a fare lusciously altematiiig between truffles and ortolans. Yet,
after all, this personage was not, in truth, aa one might have
been disposed to imagine from hia air of innate ton, any deBoen-
dant of tbe Courtenays, any scion of a patrician house, tracing
baclt his lineage to the Tudors or Plaiitagenets, one who, if
Italian, might have claimed kindred with the Colonuas ; if Spa-
nish, with the Medina-Sidonias; or if French, with the Gram-
monta and tbe Mootniorencies.

Eicellent, honest Mr. Thomas Kaikes, was in reaKty the eldest
son of a wealthy and respected merchant of our good city of
London, as the preface to his son's diary tells us, "a personal
friend of Mr. Pitt and Mr, "Wilberforce," and descended from an
ancient family of Yorkshire. Nevertheless, if Thomaa Baikes,
Esquire, were not himself of noble origin, one can only picture
hira (after reading this journal of his recollections) as one who
had somehow contrived to soar into such social altitudes that he
seems throughout the four volumes to be floating in the seventh
heaven of fiish ion— wandering at large in the rarefied empyrean
of what is emphatically termed society — hanging on by his eye-
lashes, as the saying is, to the skirts of the aristocracy. Eunniag
our glance over his pages, don't we find tliat the Duke of
Wellington was his " very faithfully " ? That he not only corre-
sponded with the Duke of York, but that be was even familiarly
the " Dear Baikes " of his Eoyal Highneaa ? That the Boyal "
Duchess (of York) signed herself bis friend and servant very
atfectiooately, "voire tres affeetionn4e amie et aervante 7" He was
manifestly, in truth, a pleasant companion, a good listener, an
agreeable retailer of an anecdote. He was obviously also a man
wjioae mind was so intensely flavoured with the atmosphere of
Pall Mali, that he might have been said to be of the clubs, clubby,
— if we could not (and we do scarcely think somehow that we
could go that length) term him a very clubable man, employing
that happy phrase of Dr. Johnson's, with tiie full bearing of its
wise and witty, aa well as tlioroughly sociable, signification.

Mr. Baikes was clearly one who dearly loved a goaaip. He
Aad a Snger for erery man's button-W\e, "Sa ■waa uitviiiBically
^^ nature, what tbe Parisians call a ^dneur, n. s«.\mtetftT doo^i'^
■^^eat-ead eauaewaya — in the height oi the seaftou— \o."&W

THOMAS RAIKES — THE BOND STREET LOUNGER. 129

of the afternoon. As a conversationalist he did, hy word of
month for love, what the news-writers of Queen Anne's time did
by scrawls of letters for money — he helped to distribute, where-
ever he could, the chit-chat of the hour, social, political, and
miscellaneous. He could swallow, upon occasion, without even one
momentary qualm of suspicion, those delicate little gilded hoti'bons
of white-lies, called canards on the opposite side of the channel.
Yet, at the same time, he appears to nave had an instant relish
f(»*, and a very keen apprecialaon of, a pun or a witticism, or as he
preferred to express it, a-bon-mot or a calembourg. Piurticularly
n, by good fortune, the happy saying chanced to be in French —
a pasquinade from Le Corsaire, or a jest of Talleyrand's. His
mother-tongue, indeed, he seems to have dropped, whenever he
could contrive to do so, upon every possible and impossible oppor-
tonity. His fastidious taste — we doubt not the least in the
world — ^would have been absolutely shocked by a vulgarised
translation into plain EngUsh of such a frequent expression of
his, let us say, as ^*unpeufort.^* How he would have shuddered
— ^from his old-&shioned Bond Street beaver down to the soles of
his Hoby's — ^if the familiar phrase had chanced, by some miracle,
to resolve itself, on falling from his lips, into our own common
vernacular, as coming it a little too strong ! No : the Anglo-
Saxon tongue was for him seemingly too coarse and unmannerly.
He flavoured his style with a sprinkling of Gallic idioms, and to
those exotic blossoms of speech we must attribute, of course,
whatever that style has (Heaven knows it is little enough !) of
piquancy. . Aad so, for example, we find him everlastingly « going
to see" in Erench — ^those perpetual natts verrons dropping from
his pen as portentously as the nods of Lord Burleigh. That he was
undeniably — ^in spite of all his exquisite grace ^la-mode— a Frig
(as already intimated), may be rendered sufficiently apparent
. upon the instant, we conceive, by a mere casual reference to his
sedate elaboration, preparatory to the retailing of some wretched
little joke. As, for instance, where we read in this journal of his,
under the heading, ^' Joke of Holmes in the House of Commons,"
the following : " When Mr. Morrison, the member for Leicester,
who, being a haberdasher, had made himself conspicuous by a
8]^ch on the foreign glove question, came up to him and asked
hun if he could get him a pair for the evening. [Italics sic in
the original.] * Of what ! * said Holmes, ' gloves or stockings ? "*
Altogether, one of those appalling fa\\\wce^ m ^ici^^^i <2»l ^'^'^v
wbea onljr the perpetrator of the atrocity gcm^Voxr^ciS^ ^ ^-8^
grin, or rather, be it said, bray a fort\i a yet mote Votc^^ ^©^^
while the miBerable victims of it— meaning t^ie met^Xia\ft5^^^

lookera-on — are eimply overwhelmed with s painful depreasioD of
spirits, as though they were being subjected to some dead-lock or
dread-agony, Buch as a stuttering after-dinner speech. Tet
Thomas Eaikea, Esquire, not onl^v retails the joke upon paper, in
cold blood, to be posthumously printed some quarter of a century
afterwards, but probably liked it ! It is precisely in the same
marvellously innocent way that we find him, five-and- twenty yeara
ago, talking politics. Talking them, be it at once observed, not
the least that can be imagined like a politician, but simply like
what 18 termed — ia English, a Busybody — in Lutiii, a Quidnunc —
in French, a Gohemovcie. Beaidea thia, he was the very em-
bodiment — and a rather Bubstantial one, it should be added —
of the social phenomenon popularly known as an Alarmist. But
then, certainly, it must be remembered, as some sort of extenua-
tion, that from the period at which this fragment of the journal
kept by Thomas Eaikes, Esquire, begins — namely, 1831, dates
the veritable commencement ol the decadenceof Toryism! Thomas
Eaikes, Esquire, merchant's son though he ia, being in truth a
loTypitr sang — through and through — to the very back-bone.

Naturally enough, everything looked inauspicious then, even to
the most staunchly sanguine adherents of the grand, old, obdurate
cause of Toryism : a cause which might perhaps have been not
inaptly typified at the period by a grimly visaged idol, bearing an
awful resemblance to Lord Eldon, squatting eterniUly upon an
ungainly altar-throne shaped like the woolsack ! Panic the moat
dire was in the very midst of those upon whom the cloak of Lord
Eldon had floated down, less, it seemed, as a robe of party, than
as a winding-sheet. Trades' unions were " frighting the isle fi^jm
ita propriety," over the whole of the mauufacturiug districts.
Toryism Proper had not yet given place to that colourless phan-
tom of it subsequently known as Conaen'atiam. The former was
in the agonies of dissolution ; the latter was to be born of it by
a sort of Cfflsarian operation, poHthumously. Meanwhile the tide
was running up so strongly all along the political coast-line, that
poor Mrs. Partington's broom was — not leas than the ruck on the
Derby day — just nowhere.

According to the sombre view taken of events by all the more

orthodox believers in a certain heaven-born minister deceased, the

national escutcheon had become so blotted by disgraceful demands

on the part of the People, as well aa by still more disgraceful

conceaaions on the part of the Government, that its entire field

A^^^ftf ^« described aa sable, with Rooming ou^. ol i-*!:! a. iwwtvA.

^^aic ajiparitioa, never dreamed of before, e'jen\>iV'nftitw«tte*

Uu iJie ludeous gryphons and otter zooYogvca\V<JD%o\i\:aia -^w

THOMAS HATKFiS— THE BOND STREET LOUNGER. 131

pling the imaginative brains of Rouge-dragon, or Clarencieux.
A novel symbol — only dimly definable as Radicalism rampant —
monopolising, it appeared to the distracted Tories, at that most
alarming crisis in our history, the whole of the tarnished and
blackened shield of Britannia. Conspiracies dark and sinister
were supposed to be lurking among the Whigs, somewhere in a
little back-room at Boodle's. Simultaneously with which, by a
sort of chronic fatality, everyone at White's looked (strange to
tell) immistakeably in the blues. Conspicuous among these —
Thomas Baikes, Esquire: that ill-starred gentleman, judging
from the records of his Note-book, groaning continually under a
species of waking nightmare of the most agonising presentiments.
Several of his associates, moreover, seem to have administered, at
this time, to his morbid fears, rather maliciously ; some, probably,
participating in them to the uttermost themselves. '' Charlton,"
he writes, " who dined with me to-day, said, aptly enough, with-
out some reform we should have a rebellion in the country ; but,
with the present extravagant plan, we shall have a revolution.**
The Reform Bill, indeed, was then to him the veriest bugaboo.
A member of the Cabinet having, shortly before, observed most
rationally^ " The Tories must concede, as we cannot retract ; the
people would not let us," our sagacious diarist remarks imme-
diately — ^with a manifest shrug of the shoulders, as much as to say,
I told you so ! — " This speaks volumes as to the dilemma in which
they have got not only themselves but the country.*' Everything
betokens, under his austere and searching scrutiny, the folly of
Earl Grey's administration.

A sympathising correspondent, Count MatuScewitz, had written
to Thomas Raikes, Esquire, a little while previously, in regard to
the monstrous ministerial project of a wholesale emancipation of
the negroes, reprehending it as a scheme " pregnant with danger
and bloodshed ; " but adding, with a Mawworm casting-up of the
eyes, "however, I sincerely wish I may be deceived in these
forebodings ! " — ^when lo ! at once the dejected recipient of the
letter has caught from it the fever of the new alarm instanta-
neously. A fortnight afterwards, hp is swallowing all imaginable
and unimaginable kinds of sharp things, in the sha^e of the
Latest News from Jamaica — another Ramo Samee bolting knife-
blades and dagger-points. " A serious insurrection of the slaves,"
he scribbles down in his journal, " which had been reijrea^ed b'^
the troops; but it is said that fifty eataXe^\i"a.>i^\i^«^ ^vfe-^^.^^^^V.^
Fancy ifby estates destroyed ! WViy , t\i€> \axg&«?t \^\A^^ ^^^
heard of was nothing to this. Fifty eatate^^ \\. \.% ^wea "w^^^
boTBting of a Holland dyke, or tke cra^\x oS. ^i\^^ ^^^^5\

isz footpeintI on the eoad. 1

quake ! Nothing occurs but what chimes in with his dull mono-
tony of depresaion. Even a hopeful spirit in the stronghold of
Toryism fails to inspire him with the moat evanescent sense of ei-
hilaratiou. " The Tories at White's are in spirits," he recorde upon
one occasioD, " and begin to talk of throwing out the bill ; " but
to this, quoth he lugubriously, " .S^e* vana ! " It is Joe Miller's
Irishman tumbled neck and heels into the Slough of Despond, and
crying out while he floundere there, "I will be drowned and nobody
s/ioll save me ! " Another while, he writes, " The Speaker told
me this morning that Ellice had assured him the night before,
that the Government never was so strong as at present." And
here it is that he claps on to the old wound whieb tins untoward
remark has opened afresh, one of his favourite little Gallic ano-
dynes. " Tbia," saith he, in his pet way, or, at any rate, in a pet,
" is «» pevjbrt." He was incredulous — the poor old-world and
woe-begone Tory — utterly incredulous of the capacity of the
Whig Eeformers to do the mischief they intended ; jet, at the
same instant, he absolutely despaired of the discovery, for the
doomed nation itself, of any means of extrication from its difficul-
ties. At one moment, he writes, somewhat as one might suppose
a reveller of Old Eome, fresh from a banquet of the patricians,
might have mused when pausing in the Forum, and looking down
into the abyss ultimately destined to be the grave of CurtiuB. In
this temperament we find him observing — " There is much alarm
in some branches of the cabinet about the future ; they begin to
feel that they have raised o power which they can never put
down — a power that will only go with them as long as they
Ibllow its impulse. The political unions have spoken too loudly
now ever to be silenced again, and they will eventually overturn,
not only this Government, but any other which may succeed."
Adding, almost immediately afterwards, as though he had made
hia mind up for the worst, and had fairly screwed hia courage to
tLe B ticking-place — " The die is cast ; to go back is impossible ;
the tide of innovation has set in, and who shall say where it will
carry ua? From this day dates a new era for England. Flacurds
are streaming about the streejis with ' Glory and Honour to the
People I ' " " And what ? " asks Thomas Haikes, Esquire, son of
the London merchant, "What is the People? What has the
People always been ? The most capriciuus, the most cruel, the
most ungrateful," &c. &c. Hia own clay, of course, being moulded
l/^e t22e rarest porcelAin of humanity, out of quite other materials
— oui o/ the holy dust from some remote aiii anttei ve^Ssm —

■ oi' the red earth of JHesopotamia '. EvidentV^j tVieieDoi eaavo-'Ow
Water bad fceen living so long auiong t\ie CTeam.-o'L-'i.Vft-c.veMa

THOMAS RAIKES — ^THE BOND STKEET LOUNGER. 133

— ^fche Nobs of Nobland— that He had actually come at last to
look upon himself as one of the same divine fraternity. Meta-
morphosed to that Extent at least, as the caterpillar gets coloured
with the hue of the leaf it feeds on. The People? Paugh!
** Here's the smell of the blood still — all the perfumes of Arabia
will not sweeten this ! "

Mr. Baikes' terrors meantime, in the midst of his mock-patri-
cian disgust, increase apparently as the hour advances; the
terrible Keform Bill, in proportion to its drawing nearer and yet
nearer, enlarging its horrors to his affrighted imagination, like
some odious head in a phantasmagoria. '^ All parties now," be
writes, '' seem to agree that we are in a dreadful state, and even
the government people lower their tone, and hope that the
common danger may ultimately unite Whigs and Tories to resist
the common enemy. They have done the mischief, and feel too
late their incapacity to remedy* it." Continuing thus, a little
farther on — " &lad would the Government now be, if they could
dissolve the political unions ; but of this there is little chance ;
on the contrary, success seems only to have raised their tone, and
Lord Grey will find that he has used a dangerous auxiliary, who
will only serve under him as long as he will lead them on to
further conquest. They have got their reform; what will be
their next war-cry? The repeal of the Corn Bill, which will
reduce the income from land one-half. Will that satisfy them ?
No ! Then comes,'* &c. &c. " annual parliaments, ballot." Ob-
serving in a similar strain, when the last faint Tory hopes that
the Bill might be quashed, or at any rate amended, have been
finally dissipated — " A new era may be dated from this day for
England, and who can tell the changes that may ensue ? The
House of Peers as a deliberative body is trampled under foot ; it
never again can be a check to popular innovation, as the same
threat of a fresh creation may be used by a reckless minister to
carry any other point in opposition to their opinion and feeling."
But, Ah ! the secret peeps out at last, the secret of this intense
political excitation in the mind of the exquisitely tasteful and con-
summately refined West End diner-out. It is in the middle of
the Beform agitation, when Thomas Baikes, Esquire, enters in
his diary this startling but wholly unintended revelation — " I do
not think," he says, " that in all my experience I ever remember
such a season in London as this has been; so little gaiety,
so few dinners^ balls, and ffetes." TVl© m\xt^<et S& ws^— ^>io&
the Beform Bill, away with the ^biga, diO^Ti ^y^^Sa.^^'s^'^^
JVb wander the aleek Sybarite a^\iOTied ^ xcL<asCTi«^ ^'jcct^V
such desolation and languor into t\ie saloiia oi ^JU^^^^ ^^"^

134 FOOTFBIKTS ON THE BOU). 1

kitcliena of Belgravia. No wonder he exclaimed, when eomment-
ioff on Lord Grey, with auch bitterness and originality : " He has
the winds, and must reap the tempests." Or that, repeating
ilf in hia sorrowful indignation, he should cry out with the
guttural voice of a well-fed Cassandra, " Prom this day commenceH
a new era for Euglaud." — This day heing the date of the dissolu-
tion of the laat unrefomied parliament. He very considerately
obliges US, upon the opposite page to the one containing the last'
mentioned most touching ejaculation, with his own asiomatie
definition of the Great End of all Good Government, namely —
To combine the maximum of liberty with the minimum of demo-
cracy. (Something tantamount to. The Wide Ocean, with Aa
Little Water As Possible!) It is a philoaophical and statesman-
Hke epitome of hia political creed, worthy of so eitremely well-pre-
served a frequenter of White's and the Carlton, of one who had
drunk in wisdom as it were in hia youth at tbe feet of BrumraeU,
and in hia old age at the stirrup of D'Oraay — not under the
ahadow of the porch or in the groves of the Academia, but in the
immeasurably more delightful precincts of Pall Mall and Eotten
Bow.

It is positirely affecting to note that the first shock of the con-
sequences produced hy this miserable lieforni Bill upon the
nerves of Thomas Halkes, Esquire, he himself indicates with a
apaam of loathing, where he observes that, "the hone-grubber,
W. Cohbett, is returned for Oldham," and, a little lower down on
the same page, that "the famous pugilist and better at New-
market, Gully, has been returned for Pontefract." A month
later, and thia revolting parliament has actually assembled at
Weatminster, What is the earliest anguish of it to our afflicted
diarist ? Why of course it cornea again from that incorrigible
Old Gridiron ! " The first object which presented itself, was Mr,
Cobbett aeated on the Treasury Bench with the ministers ; from
which he refused to move, aa he said he knew of no distinction of
seats in that house." The wretchedness of all tbia being to
Thomas Eaikes, Esquire, not so much its revolutionary aspect, aa
ita abominable vulgarity. In testimony of which he makes the
following illustrative remarks afterwords upon (aa will be seen)
very high authority- — ■" Sir Biobert Peel said to me that ho was
very much struck with the appearance of this new parliament,
the tone and character of whicu seemed quite diferent trom any
oih^i-he had ever Been ; there was an asperity, a rudeness, a vulgar
isaumption of independence, couahiued with a ia.N'sn.ai^ iafeietuyi
^ the people out of doors, expressed ty man^ ne-s -men^ftt*,
mm fas Ji/gbJy dhguBthiQ. Myfriend a .,'«\ioV&a\iean.i

THOMAS BAIKES — ^THE BOND STREET LOUNGER. 135

tliick-and-thiii reformer, and voted with the GU)vemment through-
out, owned to me this evening that he began to be frightened."
So atrociouslv vulgar, in point of fact, is the whole transaction
from first to Last, that he ultimately arrives at the deliberate con-
clusion that, '' none can deny that a great revolution in the state
is advancing." Explaining the character and tendency of that
revolution thus : — " The aristocracy are hourly going down in the
scale ; royalty is become a mere cipher." Pinally, he expresses
himself explicitly in these appalling words — " The revolution so
long predicted seems to be approaching. No real Government
can henceforward exist in this country." In reality, he appears
to have thought pretty much as Pozzo di Borgo thought in 1834 :
to wit, that "the British Constitution of King, Lords, and
Commons, which had for ages been the admiration of the world,
had been destroyed by a stroke of the pen : " nay, that, ^* the
only G-ovemment which remained for England was the reformed
House of Commons, or, in other words, a Democracy." Never-
theless, Thomas Baikes, Esquire, survived until the 3rd of July,
1848, when he peacefully expired in the seventieth year of his
age, at Brighton, leaving his fatherland still out of the clutches of
an untameable Democracy, still presided over by a Sovereign, stiU
with Lords and Commons, still, it should be said, with a tolerably
hale Constitution.

EGBERT HEERICK— THE ENGLISH ANACE^ON.

EvEESOifE who chances to know anything about either the
poet or the painter must be passingly familiar, we presume, with
Hogarth's famouB imaginary portrait of Churchill, the Satirist.
It represents Bruin, a rather formidable specimen of tbe Great
Grizzly Bear, liugging (aa if he loyed it) an enormous gnarled
bludgeon with a brand of infamy labelled on every knot — such as,
Lie Twelve, Lie Fiflieen, Fallacy, and so forth throughout. About
his throat a clerical band — torn, awry, and crumpled. At hia
muizle a foaming measure of porter, over which he is slobbering
in a sort of ursine rapture very ludteroua to see. Altogether a
monstrous distortion, and jet— tradition aaith — somehow as like
to tbe original aa two peaa, in spite of all its fantastic exaggeration
and estravagance.

A companion picture, sketched after a similar fashion, though
conceived in a very different mood, might, we fancy, be readily
enough drawn in pen and ink — presenting to view a sort of a
Minasi -portraiture of another demi-se mi-reverend. As charac-
teristic a likeness it might be rendered in its way as even that
terrible one entitled, "The Bruiser, Cbarlca Churchill, in the
character of a Eussian Hercules, regaling himself after having
killed the Monster Caricatura." Not certainly, as in that instance,
savagely etched in with the deadly needle of a Hogarth's scorn,
or bit into copper with the aqua-fortis of his marveUous genius for
ridicule ; but lightly touched off, on the contrary, with the fluent
careleaaneas of some genial and unpretending goosequil!. The
portraiture we mean of a no less unreverend reverend than jovial
Itobert Herrick, vicar for some thirty-four yeara of the pleasant
little village of Dean Prior, down in Devonshire, Kot a jot of a
bruiser, but a glorious boon eorapaoion. No more appalling club
^i his elbow than that furnished, may be, by a shepherd's crook
iwised about vrith ivy, and turned into a teai ol vm^Tovo^VM.
tij-xsag—a rustic mockevj, in fact, of t\ie o\A c\a.mc -wa-iii ol -saMt
raw epieurean. Jfp pewter pot of SXS-Srofeqa.-ag>MSnw»\aMj

ROBERT HERRICK — ^THE ENGLISH ANACREON. 137

but a flagon of ripe canary, or a bowl of aromatic hippocras.
Yet with his clerical band, too, not onlj torn, awry, and crumpled,
but, beyond that, fragrantly and rosily wine-stained ! Boystering
old Sobert Herrick ! There he sits eternally at table, with his
doublet unbuttoned, his cheek flushed, and his hair disordered ;
just as he sat two centuries ago in the merry days — and nights —
of King Charles the Second ; just as any one may still see him
drinking and singing over his cups to this moment — ^any one who
cares to turn oyer tenderly the leaves of that garden of sweets,
his song-book, called the Hesperides — altogether perhaps the very
best work in circulation of any author who has ever squandered
about equal quantities of wit and fllth amidst the motley stores of
our imaginative literature. And this, be it said, with a very vivid
remembrance of the rather remarkable fact, that about the
wittiest and the dirtiest writers who ever lived were three very un-
derical clergymen — Sterne, Swift, and Eabelais ! Congenial with
them in every way was the singer of these luscious imaginings :
ditties not inappropriately called collectively the Hesperides. Eor,
among them, are there not G-olden Apples of beauty enough and
to spare P And yet, so to speak, guarding every access to the green
pleasaunce, lurking in every pathway, lying in ambush at every
turn, the foul and grim Dragons of licentiousness ! Insomuch,
that here we should almost feel disposed to welcome, for once,
that general object of our abhorrence, a revised or excerpted
edition — ^what Southey aptly designated when speaking of some of
these very ditties, a few " beautiful pearls raked from the dunghill"
— a project Dr. Nott once actually attempted, though very iu-
adequately. It would be tantamount to a dash of soda-water to
a wine-bibber far gone in his potations. It would be literally
setting delightful old Master Herrick on his feet again iu the
world's estimation, enabling him to loiter down his page without
reeling, and to sing without a hiccup. What a delicious way he
has — this charming old-world Song-writer — whenever he moves
with a seemly gait and talks to us coherently.

Although apparently but the offspring of a well-to-do gold-
smith and banker of Cheapside, Eobert Herrick was in reality
directly descended from an ancient and honourable family iu
Leicestershire. His genealogy indeed has been minutely traced
back to the middle of the flfteenth century, by the learned and
laborious annalist of the county just now mentioned, that is to
say, by Mr. John Nichol, in one of "wVlo^^ e^^^N.^ i^j^vNas^^ '^j»a^
tmtdng the general history and antiquities oili^ia^^X^t^Vfia^k-fc^^^^^
maj- be found indicated with all due xegaidL \.o <^x:a\^^<^^^
order and tabular distinctness, the lineal de^^ien^ oi ox>x ^ofe'^^-^

138 700TFBINTB ON THE BOAD.

3 remote ancestor, one Eobert Eyrick of Houglitonj SouriBhing
at ihe period already specified. Nevertheleaa, it was at the
paternal home over the goldsmith's shop in Cheapaide, that
Eobert Herriek was bom on the 20th of August, 1591, being
baptised four doya later in the parish church of St. HicholaB
Vedast, Foster Lane. A little more tlian a twelvemonth after-
wards, namely, on Lord Mayor's Day in the year following,
Nicholas Ilerrick, his father, eipired prematurely : nay, not only
prematurely, but under rather suspicious circumstances. For,
dying, as it is stated, in consequence of injuries received fi\3m
tumbling from an upper window of his bonse upon the pavement
below iu the great public thoroughfare, it baa been conjectured —
from the significant circumstance of bis baving made bis will but
just forty-eight hours previously — that the event was not, in
reality, entirely accidental. However caused (whether bj a mere
casualty or by a deliberate act of suicide), his demise, at any ratCj
occurred thus unexpectedly : leaving abruptly widowed wito some
balf-a-dozen orphan children (one of them even then unborn) the
young wife to whom he hud been married only eleven years
before— Julia, daughter of William Stone, of Segbenoe, in Bed-
fordshire. The goldaniitii's property, estimated by liimself at nearly
three thousand pounds, realised as much as five thousand poimda
sterling. This was the sole provision left to his famOy : yet it
proved sufficient to establish bis eldest son, Thomas, as a farmer,
and his second son, Nicholas, as a Levant merchant ; £«bert, the
third or fourth son, being left, almost exclusively, to the guardiaa-
abip of bis uncle. Sir William Hejrick, of Beaumanor. It baa
been sujiposed — from certain allusions to its "beloved" sports
and pastimes scattered here and there through the Heaperidea —
that the poet's education in childhood was conducted in the old
classic seminary at Westminster. It is, however, undoubted that
in 1615 he was entered a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge.
It is equally certain that, some tliree years later, he was removed
to Trinity, wljere he took bis degree in arts. As ultimately in
his choice of a profession, so previously in hia change of colleges,
£obert Herriek appears to have been capricious. Aspiring firet
of all to distinction in the law, he ^ally entered holy orders :
although it has never been discovered when, or by whose hands,
this right clerkly bacchanalian was ordained. Ultimately, through
the patronage of the Earl of Exeter — though not, it should ba
observed, until he was thirty-eight years of age — Eobert Herriek
waa presented by King Charles the First to tXw ■svcwa^.a ol Qeaa
Ji-j'ar, in Devonshire. Ilia predecessor, Dr. "Bv^imNj-j SoV'w.Ti'VBi,
)ll^UBt then, been promoted to the see ol Cq.t'W^. T^eiiai

EGBERT HERRICK — ^THE ENGLISH ANACREON. 139

into which our poor middle-aged bird of song fluttered for repose
and shelter, must have seemed to him provokingly warm from the
aromatic and half-fabulous translation from it of that phceniz of
the episcopacy. From this period, the germs of Herrick's ambi-
tion appear only to have blossomed in disappointment. He
literally seems to have been as entirely out of his element as
Sydney Smith proved to be a couple of^hundred years afterwards,
when banished to that lonely curacy on Salisbury Plain, where
one could almost fancy the great Urban Wit driven at last in the
Terj distraction of his solitude to playing at bowls with the
Wheel of Fortune among the giant boulders of Stonehenge.

Herrick chafed under his exile for nineteen years, uninter-
mptedly. So bitterly and so regretfully, that we And him actually
exulting over his ejection from his living, in 1648, when the
Puritans were purging the church of even a suspicion of royalism.
When Zeal-of-the-land-busy, and Praise- Qod-bare-bones with their
congenial associates were, as one might say, distributing the fat
pluralities of the Crown among the lean singularities of the
Commonwealth.

Trundled out of his snug home — the comforts of which during
the actual time of their enjoyment he appears scarcely to have
appreciated— our jovial ex-vicar, bound London-ward, muttered
to nimself, we are told, almost exultingly, even in the midst of
the loving regrets of his parishioners, as he crossed the little river
on the outskirts of the village :

« Dean-bourn, farewell ; I never look to see
Dean, or thy warty incivility,"

Twelve years afterwards, however, he again visited the old
home and the old haunts, never more to leave them. S>eturning
to the familiar vicarage in 1660, when he was reinstated in it by
King Charles the Second, immediately after the Bestoration.
Puritan John Sym, or Sim, who had held the post pretty tightly
during the interval, being thereupou, of course, very summarily
translated from Sim into Essem, from a no doubt extremely agree-
able present tense, into one decidedly and most unpleasantly
imperfect. There, in his accustomed bed-chamber in the homely
vicarial tenement at Dean Prior, Bobert Herrick breathed his
last, eventually, in 1674, having attained no less than three sum-
mers bevond the ripe old age of an octogenarian ! A memorandum
in the old parish-register still informing ua tVx«Ai'^'Sj^«t\»^<«ix^^
Yicker/* was buried in that year, on Ike \5fti oi OcX.^«t»

It was during the period of his first ^ojovmi iot xi^^A^ l^^'^
rffors at the rural vicarage near Totneaa, t\^^ ^SjcJa««^» '^^^^

140 FooTPRDrra on the eoad.

penned thoee fourteen hundred little melodious poema, through
the medium of which hia name is still held in remembrance — hia
Noble Numbera and his HesperideB. It was durine hia twelve
years' residence in London under the CommonweiSth that he

fublished those poems collectively under the title of his " Works,
oth Human and Divine," in humorous comment upon which title
Campbell remarka as quaintly, aa truly and sententiously, " What
IB divine has much of poetry, that which is human haa the frailty
of flesh." Immediately, indeed, upon the Eeverend Eobert
Hemck'a arrival in the capital, after the abrupt diamisBal from
his vicarage, it should be obaerved that he dropped both the
clerical gown and the cloricid appellation, reauraing the lay habit
and reverting to the title (such aa it is) of Esquire, He dropped
something more, however, than hia vicnr's gown, when he went to
live first of all upon his Pifcha and afterwarda (when cruelly
deprived of that email proportion of the church revenues usually
conceded to the royalist clergy upon their ejectment) upon hia
Wits, Bomewhere down in the back alums of St. Anne's parish, in
the cit;y- of Weatminater. Alas ! be it said — then also he let fall
with his clerical bands and frock hia whole sense of decency.
Driven by neeesaity to eke out a subsistence, as he best could,
upon the proceeds of hia poetical writings — to the end that he ,
might tickle the palates of those he hoped would feed upon them,
he purposely interiarded a wholesome banquet of sweeta with
the hottest and the most highly spiced of all imaginable literary
condiments. Designing to provide some intellectual meat for
appetites the moat notoriously depraved, he literally— to employ
an expressive idiom — made no bonea at all about it ; or, if he did,
he certainly had them very rarely devilled.

By turns of the pen the moat villainously adroit conceivable,
he deliberately, and with mahce aforethought, transformed what
ivaa almost prudish into what was absolutely prurient — not only
giving the reins to his own skittish fancy upon every possible
opportunity, but even applying tlie most superfluous goad to the
unbridled imagination of a licentious age. It is something
strangely lamentable to think of— this wanton sullying of hia
raiment, both as a priest and as a poet, trailing it wilfully, aa he
did, in the mire of the squalid kennel by the way-side ! Par-
ticularly lamentable is it, remembering how accurately it has been
said of him by Southey, in the Quarterly, that " whenever he
iiTote toplesee himsellj he wrote Irom the heart to the heart ; "
^otl recollecting aho that he has been deBcri.\ieiiio\i;«.t.^c(uieM.l-5
fj^trutblulJy by another reviewer in V\\6 E.etro8pectiw,B&>ni\v>'i
*^ M the spring, blithe aa the eurnvflet, wii. ■n'^e wa >lV*

KOBEKT HERRICK — THE ENGLISH ANACREON. 141

satamn ** — this gay celebrant of eyeiything in nature most fair
and beautiful ! Nevertheless, when we have scattered aside, as
80 much dross, all that is foul in this poet's wreath of the
Hesperides — ^precisely as one might shake out of some luxuriant
orange-bough, may-bug, and larva, and blight, and caterpillar —
what a gloss and verdure remain upon the leaves, what a ruddy
gold upon the fruit, what a silvery bloom and fragrance in the
flowers!

Herrick, we love to think of, alternately, under two very different
phases of character. Now, as a comfortable rustic parson, domes-
ticated in his secluded vicarage in Devonshire. Now, again, as a
spurious lay-gentleman, a gay gallant of sixty — ^never (we may be
■ore of that!) at his wit's end, though very often, doubtless,
sadly out at elbow — ^rollicking with other Wild Wits of the town
at the merry taverns in London, or in the boisterous, suburban
bowling-greens and quoit-grounds of Westminster. A glorious
company they must have made, those famous friends of Herrick,
gathering about him fitfully in his strange city-life — associates,
mduding among them, twenty years earHer, K&re Ben Jonson,
poet, actor, and bricklayer; Cotton, translator of Montaigne;
l>enham, author of Cooper's Hill ; Selden, most sociable of anti-
quaries. To the prince amongst them all, has not our writer
sung in the clear, ringing voice of love — love for the mere
remembrance of their renowned wit-combats and drinking-bouts
at the Mermaid and elsewhere —

" Ah, Ben I

Say how or when
Shall we, thy guests,
Meet at those lyric feasts.
Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the Triple Tun ;
Where we such clusters had,
As made us nobly wild, not mad ?
And yet each verse of thine
Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine.'*

Most of all, however, do we delight to picture Herrick to our-
selves, as he must have looked habitually when he lived, and
loved, and laughed, for nearly forty years, down at the old Dean
Prior Vicarage. A reverend parson of the days of the Merry
Monarch, no longer disguised in the puritanical doublet and hose
of coarse cloth, turned up with velvet o£ ^ ^\3^ ^^«5^ <5t \s!ksssisfefc-
colour — but daunting it on gala-days amoii^\i\^^«!^^ccLW^^^'^^^^
a aljr aboulder-knot, or a new-fangled a\ioe.\>vxci>s^'^\ X^"^^«^ ^
iiito la bia porch, under the honey auckle, "sio^i ^Ve^^^^^^^i^^ ^^

142 yOOTPHISTS ON THE KOAD.

world like a clergymau. Preciaely as Marsliall's uncompromiBuig
grayer bas depicted bim io the original edition of the Heaperidea
— witb a wonderful Eoman-noBed Brutus- eh aped profile ; s mus-
taehe like an eyebrow, and no forebead at ail to apeak of. Hia
eyea still luatroua (tbough tbeir sigbt, he aays, begina to fail him)
under the shadow of hia close curling hair ; ha,ir grizzled like that
of the royal ghoat in Hamlet, "a sable sihered! " HJa whole
form and features " fat and smooth," according to his own
accurate deacription of them : his voice fat too, and weak— in
spite of hia broad bull-throat. At his feet, curled up into a ball,
aaleep, hia little spaniel Tmcie. In the trim privet hedgerow
bordering the lawn hard by — preening itself, with an occaaional
flutter — the tiny tame sparrow, Phil, whose death the vicar will
have to sing of tenderly hereafter. From the house-room within,
however, glides out into the sunshine with his afternoon potation,
tiie ooe faithful and favourite domeatic, pretty Miatreas Prudence
Baldwin, hia housekeeper, simply Prue in the Hesperidea. As
he takea the cup from her, you perceive at a glance, that it is not
without reason the author of that Book of tlie Golden Apple
Garden has there bewailed, in verae, the " lease " of one of bia
fingers ; those remaining to him, however, on that plump hand of
his, yet enabling him to bold a tankard as firmly and as lovbgly
aa the grasp of a Bardolpb, or a Silenus. But, aee where comes
grunting to him to drink tlie drega out of that tankard, the pet
pig to wboiti the merry parBon haa taught that aame fantastic
accompliebment. It is a quaint scene enough altogether, and one
that betraya at once in its every odd particular the queer old
bachelor, who, but far the simplicity of hia habita, and the ten-
dency of hia creed, would moat assuredly have degenerated into
the mere sensual voluptuary. As it is, quoth he himaelf, right
honestly,

* * I cauld never "wallt alone.
Fat It shirC of saokclotli on," Ac.

Trust him for that ! Eather than sackcloth, a robe of eider-down,
with the pUe inwarda ! Candidly, too, be ainga of himaelf like a

new Bpicui

10 enrtblj p

I'rotestiDg frjinklr, in his Hynrn to Venus, despite those draggled
'iad oajiary-atained bauds of cambric oiiViiB\iQaom-,

ROBERT HERRICK — ^THE ENGLISH ANACREON. 143

And she ? "Why mark ! where she passes by upon the instant,
tripping daintily aloDg the brown and grass-bordered pathway of
the village road. Ton catch delightful glimpses of her through the
lattice- work paling of the vicar's garden, and in among the green
light of the fragrant and dancing branches. It is Julia — his muse,
his inspiration. What, he asks himself, shall he sing of her briefly P
And thus answers : —

** Black and rolling is her eye.
Double-chinned, and forehead high,
Lips she has all rubj red,
Cheeks like cream enclaretted.**

Her blush he likens to a rose — ^when " blowing." Her kiss, he
says, is a miraculous anodyne. The very warmth of her com-
' plexion he compares to oil of lilies and to spikenard. Her voice
— has he not sung of it ?

** So smooth, so sweet, so silvery is thy voice,
As, could they hear, the damned would make no noise,
Bat listen to thee walking in thy chamber
Melting melodious words to lutes of amber."

Her mere shadow, saith he, breathes of pomander. If he bids
her make a bridecake he tells her she has but to knead the dough.
and 'twill be turned to almond paste ; to kiss it, and 'twill be
spiced. He sees the " babies " in her eyes as vividly as Camoens
saw them in the eyes of his Katarina, as so many another poet
has done (before and since) in those of his ladye-love. He de-
scribes, as bewitchingly as did Sir John Suckling in the famous
stanzas, her little feet playing at bo-peep under the hem of her
petticoat. That silken petticoat itself he sings ; and sings, too,
the very manner of its wearer's walking movement. Describing,
thus, the perfect walking of a perfect lady, where, speaking of
what he' calls " that liquefaction of her clothes," he exclaims : —

*' Next when I cast my eyes and see
That brave yibration each way free,
how that glittering taketh me !"

Everything about her, indeed, furnished him with themes for
poetical eulogium, as almost everything around himself appeared
to abound more or less with sources to him of rapturous delight
and admiration. Silvered though his own locks were by the
winters of considerably more than half a century, he could, never-
theless, in one of the most fairy-like of hia l\U\ft, ^^^\.Qt^ ^c^^'s^'?^^
d&ndle a cowslip-ball as gleefully as any ^oV^Let^-^^^^^'^^^^J^^^s^^
the riUagC'green, His verses throughout ax© ita^wjo^ nr^»5^ "^
daffodil and ^Ae jessamine, with the BweetA)x\ac,«QA^^^^^^=^^

U4 F00TPBINT3 OU THE BOAT. \

and tlie almond-bud, and the clove -bloasora. Veraea in which he
singa to us, at delicious intervale, how roees first came red, and
violets hlue, and liliee white, and primroaes a sallow-nreen, and
marigolds yellow — another Ovid caroUiog the wonders of the Floral
MetamorphoseB. He poure the blossoms out upon ua in a flowery
cascade, or at moments spriukJea them before him in delicate hand-
fuls, while his fancies dance ou gaily down his pa^e in motley
procession. But, if he crops a pansy or a tulip from the par-
terre, if he culla a trail of woodbine from the coppice, or plucks a
ladysmock from the verdant lap of the meadow — it is never idly
done, it is always either ns a love-offering, or as a, wooing compli-
ment. Emblematic tokens of affection they always are — the very
largess of his love — fluug with an overflowing bounty to the
right Land and to the left, not to One but to a Hundred. For he
perpetually movea in an imaginary hareem, this blithe old poet
bachelor ! Surrounded by nymplis like Electra, and Perilia, and
Dianeme — even when there is only little Phil twittering on the
gravel, or Tracie yelpiog over the pick of his carnations in chase
of a butterfly. Several, howbeit, amoug these fair demoiselles
were really no mere empty imagiuings, but blooming and blush-
ing verities. Such, for example, were those he so often celebrated
under the euphonious names of Althfea and Corinna. Above all
— she who first snared him, he says, by " a ringlet of her hair" —
she of whom, in truth, we possess no other records than those
incidentally scattered through the Hesperides — the queeoliest
among the radiant concourse of his real and ideal mistresses —

" Stately Julia, iirime of aU !"
according to his own notable apostrophe. An eiquisite Name —
and nothing more— in the Histoiy of Poetic Literature, she at
least among all these nymphs of Herrick, we may rest assured, is
no mere " airy nothing " to whom he has endearingly awarded, in
these same poems of his, both tbat perennial name and that ever-
lasting local habitation. A true woman she is throughout — with
natural pulses throbbing warmly under aU tbat frostwork of delec-
table artifice : in spite of slashed sleeves aud jewelled stomacher,
in spite of all the cunning witcheries she used so deftly — the mys-
teries of gorget and wimple, of kwn and musk, of jesaamy-butter
and rose-powder. It was in celebration of those charms of Julia
(whetherarlfulor natural it matters not), that Eobert Herrick sang
the sweetest of his dulcet love-lays, thuae musical songs of the
Jlesperidea which iave not inaptly been ^VeiiaitcitW Carmina
of CatulJus. JBeauLiful, no doubt, are manj oi \Nietft e\Sai.-se«B»
jj^o wsf relating to her, such, for example, as ^i^l.6 lA.^^ "^\.wii<

KOBERT HERRICK — ^THE ENGLISH ANACREON. 145

■

Song, OP Gorinna going a-Maying. But, assuredly, " best beautiful"
among them after all are those referring to Julia herself, whether
directly or indirectly. ^Wonderfully popular many of these poems
proved to be during Herrick's lifetime, when set to music by the
master composers of his age, by Henry Lawes and by Laoiere,
by Wilson and by Bamsay — the Ames and Furcells of that gene-
ration. A few, indeed, still preserve to this present moment a
reflex of that far-off halo of popularity. It will be yet remem-
bered, doubtless, by many a reader how charmingly Madame
Vestris used to warble " Cherry Eipe" — ^it seems but yesterday !
And where may we find loveUer words than those written two
hundred years ago by Robert Herrick, "Gather ye rosebuds
while ye may " — ^words preserved, even now, as the theme of a
still favourite madrigal P Better, doubtless, the Poems than the
Discourses of this mad wag of an ecclesiastic. In corroboration
of which very reasonable conjecture, is there not that ludicrous
tradition, picked up in 1810 by Dr. Southey down at Dean Prior
frcHU the recollections of old Dorothy Eling, the village crone,
whose age was but a few months short of a whole century ? A
marvellous anecdote, relating — how, once upon a time, Yicar
SCenick — ^with a curse for their inattention — flung his sermon at
the congregation I An incident, no doubt, horribly indecorous,
but at the same time, it must be confessed, most laughably
characteristic. A sudden flashing up in the rural pulpit, of tlie
froUc, and the passion, and the horse-play of the old roysterer in
the 1»v6ms of Eastcheap. One would like to have caught a
glimpse of lovely Mistress Julia in her pew, and to have scanned
the startled faces of the rustic parishioners.

IHAELES BRAGANZA— THE EXILED PRINCE.

Veet briaf and apparently very sinister waa tLe first intima-
tion of tbe melancholy death of Hia Boyal Highness the Count
de Montemolin. The intelligence came, moreover, with startling
abruptness. It waa the news of the day on which it arrived.
"Sudden death of the Count on li Countess de Montemolin" —
those were the terms in wbioh the telegram announced it. And
every one instinctively, upon the instant. Jumped to but one only
coDclusiou — a conclusion not at all unnatural, it must be admitted,
under the circumstance a — namely, that the tidings carried about
them at any rate the " appearance " of foul play ; that they
" seemed," upon the first blush, to hint darkly at something very
like a political aesassinatiou.

" What means this, my lord ? " asks Ophelia.

"Marry," cries young Hamlet, "this is miehing malecho, it
means mischief!"

Yet upon a little further inquiry, that apparently mysterious,
almost iuexplicahle double death — that most suspicious demise
within but a. very few hours of each other, of the Count and
Countess de Montemolin — admitted, after all, as events showed,
of tbe very easiest explanation. The all but simultaneous de-
cease of huabaud and wife turued out to be a casualty or a coin-
cidence, very lamentable in itself, it ia true j but atill, no more
than a casualty or a coiactdence. Tender younglings of that
ancient race were lying ill of a contagious malady ; sick unto
death of a fever, breathing forth the fatalest infection. Thither, it
proved, their royal highnesses had hastened, had rapidly caught
the disease, had suddenly perished. The incident in itself is,
ludinppily, not so very rare — it was only rendered unusually con-
spicuoua m the. peeullar instance referred to, by reason of tbe
jJiaatrioua rank and mournful i'ortunea oS t\\e Conie Ae 'M.'iiite-

Mjg iu2looied.for dimppeatance itom tto -woAA- •»'» »^ 'fa'^

CHARLES BRAGAKZA — THE EXILED PRINCE. 147

more surprising, moreover, at the particular moment when it
occurred, from the fact that this ill-fated prince had but so very
recently emerged from a disastrous enterprise, with his royal
honour blurred, his historic escutcheon tarnished, his kingly
crest broken, so to speak, and draggled in the dust, his knightly
spur shorn from the heel, and cast ignominiously into the mire.
It will be for some time held vividly in the popular remembrance
in the Iberian peninsula — that adventure, signalized, not alone by
failure the most complete, but by abjection the most deplorable
and overwhelming. Scarcely had Europe awakened to the know-
ledge that the Garlist banner was again unfurled in the Iberian
peninsula ; that the Count de Montemolin, accompanied by the
younger of his two brothers, had himself gone thither to claim
the allegiance of the Spaniards ; that an armed expedition was
advancing from the frontier towards the capital, to wrest the
sceptre from the hand of Isabella and the marshal's baton from
the grasp of O'Donnell — when, lo ! the bubble had burst ! The
little band of royalist desperadoes had been scattered! The
general leading them on had been taken prisoner, had been has-
tily tried for mgh treason, had ' been summarily executed ! And
the hue-and-cry, the stand and yield, the qui va la ? were audibly
in quest of that unfortunate descendant of FhiL'p Y. He who had
been, throughout his afflicted life, so variously designated by
friends and by foes — how shall his name, here, be the^ most accu-
rately indicated? — Don Carlos the younger, King, Pretender,
His iEU>yal Highness, His Majesty, the unhappy Count de Monte-
molin ! Hardly was that regal hunt well a-foot, however, when
the royal Stag-of-Ten was seen driven to bay with an almost piti-
able facility. Captured like any ordinary renegade — his place
of concealment having been adroitly surrounded by a cordon of
gendarmes — ^this high-souled aspirant to the Crown of the Spanish
Bourbons was next beheld purchasing his release from captivity
by the voluntary and total abdication of his own individual claims,
and of the claims of his then yet possible descendants, their
claims, that is, to the glorious rights of sovereignty. Eeleased
forthwith from durance vile upon this total abnegation of all his
dynastic hopes and lifelong yearnings — as if in wanton evidence
that there was still left to him a possible descent to one yet
lower grade of self-abasement — barely had his royal highness
reached a safe distance from the scene of his captivity, that
haughty land of his aspirations, when. — ^t ia '^OkTiisstlxi^ \»^ ^'^-
member it even now I one still feeVa aVmo«»\i «ii \AsvgMi^>Ss»^^ ^
ajmpatbetio ab&me at the mere Teeo\\ecX.\oT3L\\— ^^ ^^'^ ^S^
who had but juat been restored to \3ttet^i ^x^Q^ "^^^ Y^^

148 FOOTPRINTB ON'THE BOAD. >

word, immediately on finding himself sheltered once more under
tbe tegis of exile, cancelled his solemn pledge, coolly and delibe-
rately renouncing his renunciation.

A calamitous death befalling the unfortunate Count de Monte-
moHa BO very speedily alter what was (for bis fair fame, at least)
that still more calamitous degradation, appears to bare imparted
the last touch of Badness to a. history replete with scarcely aught
but mournful incidents and most melancholy associations. The
Spaniards' younger Doc Carlos, unlike our own far younger
Prince Charlie, had never once the consolation, in deteat, of
knowing that the kingly sword, so to speak, had been dashed out
of hia hand by the thunderbolt of a Culloden. Neither, in fact,
of the two last claimants to the throne of Ferdinand and Isabella
— the tliroue which, in defiance of the Salic law, reflating the
order of succession in Spain since the Treaty of tffcrecht, was
imperiously wiUed by the last degenerate Ferdinand (that is,
Ferdinand VII.), to hia infant daughter Isabella (that is, the
reigning sovereign) — neither father nor son, neither Don Carlos
the elder, nor Don Carlos the younger, though advancing claims
to that grand old diadem of the Spanish Bourbons, could advance
:iny single claim whatever to the glory of direct participation in
tliis chivalrous contest for it. A struggle it was, throughout, of
the heroism of which they could alone, in a manner, partake vica-
riously. For the elder fought tbe dauntless guerilla chieftain,
ZumaJacarregui ; for the younger, tbat dare-devil Don Kamon
Cabrera, whose valiant heart yet beats imder a bosom cicatrised
with countless wounds, a great captain among those mountain
warriors, only comparable in his otherwise matehleas audacity to
our own glorious Viking, Thomas Cochrane, lately surviving
amongst us as the venerable tenth Earl of Dundonald, Leaving
the brunt of conflict to devoted adherents lilie Cabrera and Zuma-
lacarregui, the successive princes — claiming tbat crown of tbe
SpaniHh Bourbons for which those resolute leaders and their half-
disciplined followers so often and always so vainly contended —
meditated vaguely in exile the hypothetical policy under colour of
which tbe reign of each in turn was in the fulness of time to have
been inaugurated. Eventually, however, when under the incito-
ment of a tardy, and as it may only too aptly be described, a
profoundly despoudent desperation, hia royal bigbnesa the Count
de Montemolin at lengtb determined upon adventuring himself,
ya pezTion, upon the scene of action — the result, as might have
A?eio anticipated, proved to be very (ani t\iat, moTftWfcT, m. the
'^^oiest sense oi the words) di6creAita\)\e alii &sii.»,tto\iJi. Qn.
"^^T Spaia at the close of tbat deijioiaUe ex-geSiwvoii— »SS-«a

CHAKLESl BRAGANZA— THE EXILED PRINCE. 149

sigmng the terms of his ignominious, and doubly ignominious
because actually volunteered abdication — the discomfited prince,
unhappier in his fate than the defeated Boabdil, stooped under far
lowlier caudine forks than those which, more than three centuries
previously, had failed to bend the haughty neck of the last of the
Abencerages, at the tearful pass into the Alpuxarras! It is
related in history in reference to that last-mentioned place of
departure, that the rocky cleft were Boabdil paused and wept, as
he gazed back upon the towering pinnacles of his lost Cl^ranada,
was thenceforth called in memory of his grief, and is even to this
day designated, M ultimo suspiro del Moro ! "Not thus, however,
ought the last foot-hold from which the later and weaker Boabdil
gazed back wistfully upon the kingdom over which he once
aspired to rule — ^not thus, indeed, should be distinguished any
one especial point upon the boundary line of Spain — but rather
let us say : It is the ignoble spot of earth, whereon he asserted
the shameless cancelling of his own solemn renunciation of his
kingly rights, that should henceforth be designated, with a more
bitter significance, JEl ultimo suspiro de Montemolin !

It was, nevertheless, not always thus with the Count de Mon-
temolin. His intellect, without being kindled by one spark of
genius, was warmed by sedulous cultivation and illumined by
many accomplishments. His heart, untouched bv the divine fire
of heroism, could yet thrill upon occasion through all its fibres to
the noblest impulses, could yet glow at times with sentiments the
most elevated and chivalrous. Campbell has sung in an immortal
couplet —

« The Btmset of life has a mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.**

And, in the duplex thought expressed through that poetic distich,
it may surely be recognised how far the incongruity of a life and
death like that of Montemolin, may, in a great measure, be ex-
plained away — how that seeming contradiction may for the most
part be reconciled. It is not only, observe, according to that
exquisite im^;ery of the Dreamer, that, upon the approach of
death, otherwise in the " sunset of life," a clearer vision, " a
mystical lore," as he expresses it, is, in rare instances, imparted.
E!e adds — ^in words that have long since come to be " household
words," in a line that has become part and parcel of the national
language — how, occasionally, in between those divine glints and
prophetic fflimpses of light, oi the light b^yoiA iV^fe ^^<b^*^^
light ineSkble, there descends a darkemngm^ueiic.^xic^^sv:^'^'^'^^'^
aeaiingibs dissolution —

*'Aad — coming events cast tWvc 8hjOLd(y«a^i^'tot^^

iJSO FOOTPSINTS ON THE BOAD.

From within one of tliose malefic sliadows, it muat aeauredly have
been, that this heir to one of the haughtiest races that ever
wielded the sceptre of sovereignty, penned, in an interval of
profound hallucination, that deplorable document in which (simply
to the end that he 'might escape Irom captivity) he renounced his
claims to the crown of Spain s only that from within another
shadow yet mote malefic he might immediately after his release
retract those sacredly aaaeverated words of ahdication ! " And "
— may we not say of him, as Edgar Poe sings of the lover over-
shadowed by that wondei'ful liaven, the type, he himself tells us,
of " mournful and everlasting remembrance," may we not sigh
here, too, over the memory of Monteniolin ? —
" Aud bia soul from, out thai, ehidon
SImU be lifted-

Siiteen years have scareeiy elapsed, even now, since I enjoyed an
opportunity myself of recognising and appreciating the lofly
aspirations and ennobling thoughts that found a home in the
heart of this young prince, since then 80 lamentably deceased,
almost unnoticed, by many almost despised, as the defeated, it
might even, alas, be added, the aelf-ahased Conde de Montemolin.

Although 80 long an interval has elapsed since the date here
referred to, since the occasion, that is, of my own intercourse with
the eldest of the three sons of Don Carlos, of the three nephews
of King Ferdinand VII., I hold the minutest incidents of that
intercourse as vividly as thougb they were events but of yesterday
ia my remembrance. Let me recall, therefore, a single interview
— one solitary, though protracted couTersation.

It is Tuesday, the 20th of June, in the year 1848— emphatically
the Tear of Eevolutions ! The identical day, as it happens —
tbough, of course, unconsciously to every one then — the ideuticai
day when M. Leon Faucher quite unwittingly gave the signal for
that tremendous Battle of Jane in the streets of Paris: that
terrific conflict which, lastiog four dajs, "cost France" — it ia
tlje Historian of Europe* who asserts it ! — " more lives than any
of the battles of tl)e empire ; the number of generals who perished
in it, or from the wounds they had received," the annalist yet
I'urther observes, "exceeding even those cut off at Borodino and
Waterloo." It is, in fact, that very Tuesday, the 20th of June,
JS^^ when IF. Zeon Gaucher reported to the National Assembly, i

■Sistoijr of Sarope ; Continuation from tte JaU ot ■Sa.^Xean foa Q^o«.\Vi "Ji* 1
•"■" ofNapoieoa Itl. By Sit Arcljibald Uiaon. VoV. im., k\»- 60,%^V. I

taemaa

CHAKLES BRAGANZA — THE EXILED PRINCE. 151

speakiiig on behalf of the Committee appointed to investigate the
difficulty, that although 120,000 workmen were already employed
and paid at the Ateliers Nationaux by order of the Provisional
Government, 50,000 more were clamouring for admittance^ Sup-
posing which latter army of the unemployed were to be admitted,
it became evident at a glance that a dreadful necessity arose upon
the instant for a loan of 150,000,000 francs additional; diame-
trically opposed to which supplementary loan, by the way, was
the finance minister, M. G-oudchoux. Imperatively demanding
it, upon the other hand, with insurrectionary threats, were the
Socialists or the Bed-Ultra-Democrats. Sine ilia lachrynuB,
Alas ! tears that were soon alone to be but tears of blood, pour-
ing forth abundantly at 3,888 barricades, distributed throughout
a populous city, where two armies, each from 40,000 to 50,000
strong, contended, fighting desperately a Voutrance ! But a very
few days later, in effect, and the appalling storm then brooding
over Paris, and there slowly gathering up its stupendous artillery,
had burst forth in a cataract of fiame and thunder, only to close
at last with the sublime self-sacrifice of Archbishop Afire yielding
up his life as a peace-ofieriug for the people, the cross in his baud,
and upon his Hps the divine words, " Bonus pastor dot animam
guam pro ovihus suis.*^ However, at the particular date here
referred to, trembling though the Parisians were upon the very
verge of that astounding catastrophe, they could not as yet
apply to themselves, as they had only too much reason for doing
upon the morrow, that horrid epitome, by Voltaire, of the clang
of battle, in which one absolutely seems to hear the din and to
breathe the stench of its detonations : —

<< On entendait gronder ces bombes efl&oyables,
Des troubles de la Flandre enfants abominables :
Dans ces globes d'airain le salp^tre enflamm6
Yole avec la prison qui le tient renfermS ;
II la brise, et la mort en sort avec fane !"

La Henriadet chant vi., y^ 199.

All Paris, then vibrating half consciously with the dread por-
tents — now audible, now visible — of this approaching earthquake ;
London, then in the height of its season, almost appeared to
justify that horrible accusation directed against it by Victor
Hugo on the 10th of that same month, speaking from the tribune
of the National Assembly—" When Paris is in agony, London
rejoices." * The latter capital, it should be remembered^ bail \s\vfe
yery little more than one calendar montti "^tervssvMS^^ ^^YL^^^'^^vicfii

* Moniieury June ^1, \^^^»

rOOTPHIKTS ON THE KOAD.

memoralile lOth of April, secured for the cause of Order throngli-
oufc the United Kingdom a magnificent reassurance. ThepopuJar
phalanx of the special constables — among whom, it is yet borne
in recollection, there was numhered the future Imperial Majesty
of France, the reigning Emperor Napoleon III. — had Btarted
forth upon the first momentary summons; not unworthy or
inappropriate precursors of the Eifle Volunteers ! The British
Islands were tlienceforth, indeed, to the recognition of all, the
solitary beacon-tower, from the eleTation of whicli the turmoil of
the revolutionary deluge then surging over the whole length and
breadth of the European Continent could be observed with anj
appearance even of equanimity. Eecalling to mind the darkness
that had elsewhere settled down upon those European dominions,
lit up here and there only by the lurid glare of insurrection, and
remembering the vigilant note then system atically taken of the
progress of events abroad by our insular journaliBra, but one
earnest demand seemed to be alone audible here at intervals —
"Watchman! What of the Night ?" Iteverting to my own par-
ticular memory of that time, as associated with a day events
showed subsequently to have been a very crisis in the destinies of
Earope, a veritable turning-point in the onward march of many
separate nationalities, I would briefly commemorate oue trivial
incident occurring on that 20th of June, 1848, here in London —
tlie little incident, namely, of my personal interview with the
Count de Monte mol in.

H.E.H., it may be remarked, resided at this time in one of the
streets turning eastwards out of Cavendish Square, one of the
integral parts of that Quadrilateral of Fashion, the houodaries of
which — Park Lane, Eegent Street, Oiford Street, and Piccadilly
— enjoying the reputation among the initiated of embracing within
them, not so much the choicest skimmings merely of the creme de
la creme, as the main part, indeed, of that inner World of the
World claiming to itself arrogantly enough (in French) the dJa-
tinctive title of the Beautiful.

Darkened though the room is to a sort of half twilight, at the
moment of ray reception, I have his royal highness before me at
the first glance, nevertheless, with hia every trait indelibly
stamped upon the retina of my memory by one vivid recogmtion.
Slightly above the middle height, his face serious in its general
aspect, almost saddened, even, it might be said, soured by mis-
fortunes; bis form moderately proportioned; bis bearing indi-
isafy'Fe, SB it seems to me, of habitual, one Tuight even have
ira^ned it, conatitniionaX depression. AEtet ttie fita'!, gcee'cm^
^^w> and when the friend who liaa introiucei me (jxS^Mfljiv

CHARLES BRAGAKZA — ^THE EXILED PRINCE. 153

gentleman, distinguished among the Progressistas) has left us to
ourselves, I remain, there, with the Count de Montemolin, fully
one hour in earnest conversation.

It was during this lengthened conversation — a conversation, I
may remark, chiefly relating to political aflairs, with especial
reference, above all, to his own individual aspirations and inten-
tions in respect to the possible future of the Spanish government
— ^it was while we were talking thus together upon themes affect-
ing his whole nature the most profoundly, that I had occasion to
note what appeared to me at the time, what still appears to me in
the retrospect, the singular contradictions of his temperament, the
bewildering — ^the almost impossible — certainly the wholly irrecon-
cilable — ^incongruities of his idiosyncrasy. Prankness itself in the
avowal of his opinions, he was so, nevertheless, with an ineradicable
air of reservation. With a readiness to articulate his sentiments at
almost any length, whenever the whim prompted or the occasion
seemed to require some more elaborate explanation, he yet bore
about him an appearance of inscrutable taciturnity. Fluent —
almost voluble — in his delivery, he nevertheless interrupted his
remarks with frequent hesitations. Gracious — even cordial — ^in
his address, there was still an expression of gloom almost for-
bidding diffused over his countenance. The one word applicable
to his "look" was— downcast. And that downward glance —
from eyes that when raised at intervals appeared to have some-
thing like what is called "a cast" in them — a fluctuating obliquity,
attributable possibly to one of the orbs being either faulty or
faltering — ^imparted to the prince an ineffaceable " seeming " of
dejection. Even the nervous trick he had while engaged in con-
versation, of trifling with the ends of his moustache, but more
frequently of dragging downward the long brown point of his
lugubrious imperial, appeared somehow to impart the last quaint
tou^h to the prevailing tokens of his despondency.

At the exquisitely critical period of our interview, a juncture
momentous to Spain and the Spaniards only, however, in common
with almost all the rest of the states and peoples of Christendom,
the favourite dream of the hour for the Iberian Peninsula was
the formation of a new political party, to be called the National
Part^ — a coalition or combination of all the more rational and
patriotic members of the various conflicting parties already in
existence. It was thought by the more sanguine aspirants for
the political regeneration of the Spanish people, that the Tek^\s>li^
tation of the Spanish government, the xecoiiB^ctxi^NiivQkTi, *^ ^'^x^^
be said, perhaps, more correctly, the BimpV© t«^iv««N^ «^ x^^\»«t^^^
of the Spanish constitution, might be TeaAStj eiioAJ^ f&^^^\.^^

only la Naeion, that is to say, tlie cause bo typified, would absorb
witnia itaelf los partidos. Especially if it would but bring together
and harmoniously combine in feeling and in ambition all that was
best and wiseat among tbo ModeradoB and the Progressistas. An
illufitrioua cbampioD of the noblest intereata alike of the Spaniflh
monarchy aud of the Spanish multitude, had apparently, in truth,
given the signal for thia new movement among all parties by a single
phrase uttered by him in the Cortea at Madrid upon the 24th of
the preceding Kovember. Escoaura had, there and then, bo to
apeak, unfurled the banner for the New Party — the party of the
Coalition. He had in a manner inscribed upon it in one happy and
effective eentence ita aymbolieal rallying-cry, when urging equally
upon the Progressistas and the Moderadoa the neceaaity, which ha
frankly declared to be incumbent upon them, that they should
group themselves about one common centre : jue delieran agru-

Sarse en un centra ! It was argued, and not without reason, that
eeidea being eminently feasible, the merging of all parties in one,
thua Buggested by the authoritative voice of Eacoaura, afforded
about the only reasonable hope for the permanent establishment
upon the aoil of the peninsula of a really constitutional adminis'
tration. To this end it waa ingeniously insisted — and that, let it
be particularly remembered, not merely by Carlist partisans, but by
independent liberals, who were still numbered at that time among
the ranks of the Pro greseistaB— that it was the ancient law of
Spain, rather than the new law {la nueva lei/), then beginning to be
regarded with excessive jealouay, which waa directly compatible
ivith true liberty, the liberty of a strictly balanced and constitu-
tional government. And, in maintaining this somewhat remarkable
thesis, it must not be supposed that those who were thus yearning
to participate in the wonderfully difficult and reaponsible enterprise
of calling thia new political combination into exiatence under the
auapicea of the National Party, were mere superficial adventurers.
They were no mere idle visionaries — they searched deeply into
the past — they looked keenly into the future; and the principal
conclusion arrived at by them, aa the result of their meditations,
was summed up by one of the ablest amongst them iu the avowal
that it waa imperatively requisite to reconsLitute the whole fabric
upon a foundation, not only more solid, but more analogous in
every way to the character of the age and to ita necesaities, que
es neeessario reeosstituirte en un base mas selida y fnas andloija al
earde^er y xeeesida de los tiempog. Aspirations and arguments
yy^^ those were of course all the more -welcwnie \.<i X.Ve iudgtaent
^/i the heart of H.E.H. the Conde de ■Moii\.emM\vo,'Oi«'^'^'a'»
S^^es LoiuB de Bourbon, claimicg 'bj \veTBiVUT-3 t\%\A «(va 'iJSa

CHABLES BBAGANZA— THE EXILED PBINCE. 155

of H.M. King Charles VI. of Spain — remembering that the
advocates of t];ie National Party insisted throughout that nothing
permanently advantageous to the country could be anticipated
even in this new du*ection, unless the hand that was to raise aaew
the Spanish gonfalon^ were, it was said significantly, the hand of
a prince of courage, of intellect, and of patriotism, one uncom*
promised by previous political adventures — one, it was further
added, who could secure to himself the loyalty and admiration of
his fellow-countrymen by the consistency of his career and by the
guarantee of a glorious and liberal constitution.

That constitution, the Count de Montemolin — while explaining,
at considerable length, his views at once in regard to the ancient
laws of the Spanish monarchy, and in reference to the inalien-
able political rights appertaining to the Spanish multitude — that
thoroughly liberal constitution the Count de Montemolin gave
me ample and, to mv own mind, it seemed conclusive, reason for
believing then, and believing still, he himself most earnestly ambi- •
tioned to establish* Of his sincerity in all this, of the genuine
lojfdty of his intentions, I have the most perfect conviction*

I am to the last persuaded that the resolutions avowed to me
by his royal highness were — and that, simply, for one good reason
now immediately to be specified — ^really worthv of being, I will
venture to say, implicitly relied upon. Wherefore, is it asked P
Wherefore, this extravagant reliance P Simply and solely, then,
let me say it at once : because the exiled prince had come at
length to recognise, not merely with a Machiavelian cunning
in the recognition, but with the calm deliberation of a genuine
enlightenment — that it was to the interests no less of the Kins
than of the People, that the basis of the government should
be broad, that its very genius should in the fullest sense of the
word be Hberal, that the whole character of it should throughout
its entire framework, from summit to foundation, from centre to
circumference, be strictly and essentially constitutional. Not in
vain had he lived here amongst us, not in vain had he breathed
our English atmosphere. In arguing the whole weighty problem
with the Count de Montemolin, I gave credence to his candid
statement of his convictions — for the self-same reason that lent
importance to the words of the Moor Alfaqui, in the Bomance
Muy Dohroso.

*' Because he answered and because
He spake exceeding well of laws—

Y como el otro de leyes
De leyea tambien hablava.^'

Haougb, however i the day-dreama aad aa^\t^>BiSjrQa^ "S^"^ ^^

FOOTPRINTS ON THE ]

designs and heort-earneBfc reBolutions have alike faded out,
together with the vanished life of Montemolin. Afi we part, the
ProgresBiBta who has introduced me, bends his knee in loyal
recognition of one whom he (Spaniard as he is) deems, in epite
of hiB misfortunes, to he his sovereign. As we are proceeding
down the Quadrant immediately afterwards, I am startled by
apparently meeting the very man from whom we have, but a few
moments before, just parted. A second glance, however, shows
me I am mistaken. The countenance is younger, the features
less saturnine, the step more elastic. It is the second of the
three sons of Don Carlos, of those three ill-starred nephews of
King Ferdinand VII. It is Don Jnan—newly risen hope after-
wards, in his turn, of the not all extinct party of the old Spanish
Legitimists ! Leader of those who were the CarUsts of yesterday
— Carlists now no longer, but Juanists — looking still with a half
despairing trust to one whose hand has already had determination
■ enough to raise anew the ancient, tattered, blood-stained, buUet-
riddled banner of the cause and of the dynasty — to raise it anew
from the degradation into which it had fallen by the side of an
almost dishonoured tomb, dropped there in the duat from the
^ddened grasp of the MontemolimstB.

EUSTACE BUDGELL— THE ESSAYIST.

AjcoHCh the stores of our native literature there are, as it ap-
pears to us, numerous productions very unjustly overlooked, and
many writers who are only occasionally perused by the inquisitive,
although their intrinsic excellence entitles them to no inconsi-
derable share of popularity. This carelessness, possibly this lack
of diBcemment in tne reading public, forms, in truth, one of the
most remarkable phenomena m the world of letters. Authors not
only far removed from mediocrity, but whose writings are replete
wim the blandishments of an elegant style and an exhilarating
vivacity, are frequently relegated to some obscure comer of our
libraries, while others, immeasurably inferior both in scholarship
and authorcrafb, are blazoned in gilded morocco on the most con*
spicuous shelves in the apartment. Sometimes, no doubt, there
are peculiarities in connection with either the manner or the matter
of such writings sufBcient of themselves, perhaps, to a)ccount for
the neglect of the multitude. Eor example, their beauties may be
obscured by professionid tedinicalities, as in the instance, let us
say, of the admirable poem of the Shipwreck^ by Falconer, the

Eower of which is in a great measure concealed from the compre-
ension of the general reader by language which to the nautical
man constitutes its principal charm. Take, as a single but suf-
ficient specimen of which, that expressive though, to a landsman^
most enigmatical couplet—

" And while the lee due garnet's lower'd away^
Taut aft the sheet they tally and belay.'*

In sereraly however, of the exceptional cases to which we

have referred, literary compositions in every way adapted to the

understanding of the masses, compositions fraug^ht, oiie -^oiv^l^

thinly with every quality calcv^tedi to ensux^^^e^m. ^^s^^^^'^^2i^^

Jmiy, are by same xoscrotable miachaiiOQ xe«erj^^ iojt >Qtta \si^!cs>s

tiaa and amusement of a select few— xiamAy> oi ^^waSs^V^^cpa^

IP

Too roofPEDras on thk boad.

fraternity of bookworms iudividualised or typified by Mr, Carlyle
under the geQeric title of Dryasdust.

Perhaps oue of the most remarkable insfcancea of this ill-fortune
anywhere recorded, is discoverable in the person of Eustace
Budgell, than whom there la hardly a more elegant or a more
admirable prose writer in the English language. Hia style at
once devoid of pedantry and quaintness, hia diction both natural
and refined, hia aentimeuta chaste and elevated ; he has, neverthe-
leas, been hitherto treated as though his writings were unworthy
of any attention whatever; and it iaonly by something approa<;hing
to a painful research, that a morsel of his writings can be occa-
sionally discovered amongst a mass of estraneous and frivolous
miscellanieB. Surely some especial consideration might have been
thought due to one who, when scarcely entered on the age of man-
hood, participated in the production of a claaaic periodical like the
Spectator, whose writinga vcere esteemed by some of the more
infatuated admirers among hia contemporaries as preferable even
to those of Addison, and who, according to a general opinion,
exclusively with the assistance of that Prince of Esaayiata, com-
pleted the last volume of his renowned publication.

Among all the literary adventurers of that age, hardly excepting
even Savage himself, Budgell chiefly presents to our view not
only a career fraught with vicisaitudea, but one signalized by aspira-
tiona that were eventually dragged down into the very dust by a
contumely as unmerited aa it waa certainly myateriouB and malig-
nant. Even at the melancholy and premature termination of his
existence, a prejudice against him, almost amounting to a personal
antipathy, imbued the minds of the general multitude. The
elaborate vindications he himself had published of acta that were
even then very generally regarded as most questionaHe, were
perused with a repugnance that militated against them rather
seriously, or, worse atill, were altogether overlooked, while the
statements of hia opponents were devoured with the utmost sym-
pathy, with the liveliest alacrity, and with the moat implicit
credence. Since that period, whatever biographical notices of him
have appeared, have been mere repetitions of this malignity, aorae-
wbat softened down, it is true, by the indiBerence of the tran-
scribers, who were either ignorant of, or wholly uninterested in, the
actual merits of a long-paat squabble. That this controversy has
never been dispassionately considered is beyond dispute. And oa
^ teatiwonyth&t tiie original misstatements have been idly copied
ii7&>eFe^Bu6fleguenfeBncyclopEe4ia,,V\t\\ou.tt\ife\i\o%ra^\iftMouce
cauva38iag the matter tbemselveo, we may b™^\'3 T^Aev -eoa tfts&a
HP^ '^^aa of those publicatious, -wherem Vb ^^V ot^-j Wi tw^.

EUSTACE BUDGELL — ^THE ESSAYIST. 159

perceive that each memoir, without one solitary exception, is a mere
transcript from the calumnious opinions promulgated bv the per-
sonal foes of Eustace Budgell — that they are identical in their
assertions, occasionally even identical in the very language in which
those assertions are couched. The original documents, for and
against, have in all likelihood been unexamined durmg the last
hundred years, the maligned name of Eustace Budgell being con-
signed to posterity with a word or two of negative commendation
for his talents, and a very world of ignominy for all his imagined
turpitude. Those documents, however, we have ourselves perused
with the most scrupulous attention, and certainly it should
be said, also, with the most dispassionate sentiments. The law
reports in which his various trials are elaborately detailed, the
fiercest calumnies of the very bitterest among his opponents, the
numerous and, many of them, most scurrilous pamphlets in which
he is traduced — all these we have scrutinized, together with the
various defences of himself published by this singularly gifted and
no less singularly unfortunate man of letters. And never hardly
have more painful exhibitions of malice and chicanery disclosed
themselves in printed documents, than have there started, more
and more vividly to view at each successive page ; painful merely
to read, from their excessive rancour, but especially detestable
fro9i their manifest injustice. Erom these miserable effusions we
can, however, in some measure appreciate the anguish which at
length subjugated the judgment of Budgell, resulting in that catas-
trophe which imparts to his name so sinister and gloomy a signi-
ficance. Erom the demise of his cousin Addison and the death of
his other influential associates, his greatest miseries may be dated,
when, for a few playful lampoons against certain high and mighty
personages (lampoons which our essayist had produced several
years previously), a secret persecution was commenced, which for
its sustained and unrelenting malignity has hardly any parallel
anywhere discoverable in the annals either of Grub Street or of
Alsatia.

His estates were one by one wrested from him, by parties not
invested with the shadow of a claim to their possession. His
country-house was broken open by the brother-in-law of the fellow
to whom his landed property had been awarded ; and, notwith-
standing that the felony was proved beyond all manner of ques-
tion, the burglar was quietly acquitted nevertheless, Budgell
was afterwards thrown, without the slightest QatQ\yeAh\& ^^;^si.^^^
into gaol, and even when at length Te\eaa^dLitQta.^\a«W5»^ai*^^
nctiiD of a Mae imprisonment, the vaiue oi \i\^\^«t:\r3 ^^^ ^^^
.temptuoualjr estimated at a farthing* M tYiti ^wj TassvasK^

^ro^

TODITa ON I^E BOAI}.

uwakened to the knowledge of his loaa of twentj thousand pounds
hj the esploaion of the South Sea bulible, the moat pitUesB ndicula
waa showered upon his character. He was publicly declared to
beinaane, when just recovering from the agony of asielt bed. Ha
was accused of forgery, because a legacy of two thousand pounds
had been left him by a hrother'author ; theso unsubstantiated
accusations of his enemies being unecrupulously immortalized by
the irony of the Dunciad. To increase his torture under the false
aspersions by which his characterwaa rendered an UDirersal object
of detestation ; his footsteps were dogged by spies in the daylight,
his life was repeatedly attempted in the darkuess. "When a generous
patron, in the person of the Duke of Portland, offered to preserve
him from starvation hy making him his private secretary, a special
iuterpoaition on the part oF government deprived him of this last
opportunity of redeeming his fortunes. And it was all this sys-
tematic and locg-austained malevolence which, pressing for a long
series of years upon a mind distraught with the anguish of accu-
mulating embarrassments, at length precipitated an intellect as
noble aa it was sensitive, into a very abyss of despair. Heart*
brokeo, and in a state of utter destitution, he is known to have
taken a boat one day nt Somerset Stairs, and, as the waterman
shot one of the arches of London Bridge, to have cast himself into
the Thames, having previously filled his pockets with pebbles, by
way of terminating his life with a sort of practical bathos.

As evidence that anything like theforegomgestimate of Budgell'a
character is derived from no merely shallow or fanciful misconcep-
tion, it ia simply necessary torecalltomind that, until their demise,
our Easayist was on terms of the closest intimacy with his cousin
Addison, with the Earl of Orrery, and with Lard Halifax. And,
assuredly, the associate of those three illustrious men could not
possibly have been so entirely devoid of amenity, nay, even of
integrity, as Eustace Budgell is related to have been by his more
implacabie assailants, anymore than deficient in those intellectual
qualifications which were essential to the securing of such friend-
sbips. In addition to this, the opinion formed of Eustace Budgell
by Mathew Tindal, an opinion solemnly avouched by him in his
last will and testament, forma another and a very diatinct guarantee
both for hia rectitude and for his abilities. Besides which, as a
final and conclusive testimony, those who are still sceptical may
be referred to the various literary compositions of this charming
-Easa^iei, all of which are replete with the moat philanthropic een-
t/uieata, the moat unaffected piety, tke iiiOBt-vi\Bmn%^\».'^\ilnaa8,
^dtbemoBt uncorauromisine hostiUty tovice. Tlvft vBMiil«.%'«^uni'i1
o^Jucb qualities it would be difficult, \£ not a\iao\u\ft\i ■via'io«i*J«H

j^Jti

EUSTACE BUDGELIi — THE ESSAYIST. 161

for ftny author Bystematically to affect, during a seriee of years,
ivithout his occasionally dropping the masquerade, so far as to
reveal his engrained licentiousness.

AmoQg the more conspicuous evidences of the capacity pos-
aeised by Eustace Budgell, his '^ Memoirs of the Earl of Orrery
and his Ancestors" occupy a prominent place; more particularly
as in them we obtain a succinct narrative of the life and dis-
coveries of the great Boyle. On this account, therefore, as well
as from the admirable perspicuity with which it is penned, th^
work referred to, is likely enough always to hold its own as an
essential link in the chain of English biography. For its extreme
elegance and lucidity, his translation of the *' Characters of Theo-
phrastus " is peculiarly remarkable, fully meriting the commenda-
tion with which it was mentioned by Addison in the ** Lover." As
to the epilogue of the '' Distrest Mother," about the authorship of
which by Eustace Budgell, so many serious doubts were enter-
tained, that the trivial question almost rose at one time to the
dignity of a controversy, it appears in truth to be a subject of
very small importance, more particularly seeing that the epilogue
in question has but little pretensions to notice, beyond those
of being regarded as an amusing trifle. The final couplet,
-however, no matter upon whom we may ^x the paternity of this
epilogue, deserves, we cannot but think, all possible celebration,
being, so far, a masterpiece of ingenuity in that department of
dramatic composition, that it places beyond the power of the
audience the condemnation of the tragedy. Among Budgell's
BOogBy and lighter poetical pieces, there is one, possessing peculiar
int^est, by reason of the exceeding vivacity and light-heartedness
it displays throughout; from the very commencement —

** Vm not one of yonr fops who, to please a coy lass,
Can lie whining and pining, and look like an ass — **

down to the closing syllable. His lougest poem, on the occasion
of the " King's Visit to Cambridge and Newmarket," deserves
0ime passing meed of praise, if only for the adroitness of its
metaphors and the exceeding naturalness of its descriptions. His
incidental limniog, in this poem, of the race-horse, whose —

** qaiyering ears express his strong desire,

While from his nostrils clouds of smoke expire,**

suggests a not unworthy theme for Eosa Bonheui'^ i^^v^'CNL^^Vsci^
the battle ofOudenard, where the'*miB6\Nfe di^^tW ^\<b '*'• ^«:^'^^-
ing all the akjr/' coDvejB to the imagination axv \.\sx^x«i'««vQrQ.'»s^^
to that produced upon it by a cabiaet ^\c\a3^^ Qi>^o\vN^^«s^

rooTPBDiTS on 1

m

Apart from its intolerable flavour of egotium, Budgell'a " ILetter
to Cleotnenea" Ib well entitled to perusnl, more particularly for
inasmuch as it ib adorned here and there with casual eketclies of
Bome among the more interesting and noteworthy of his personal
friends and coritemporariea, Pinally, in this enumeration of his
minor effusions it may here be mentioned that a copious narratiya
of the numberless misfortunes and grievances which he had to
encounter is, vet, witliin reach of the more curious, in Budgell'a
enthralling pamphlet entitled " Liberty and Property" — a pam-
phlet which nas certainly never yet received, as it appears to us,
the impartial scrutiuy it merits. To one estraordinary circum-
stance in this paper we are fain more especially to direct Attention,
namely, several sentences in pages 156 and 157, expressive of his
abhorrence of the crime of suicide, and of his contempt for those
who are weak enough to fly their worldly sorrows by ita per-
petration !

The character, however, in which Eustace Budgell's genius
shines more radiantly than in any other, is beyond all question
that of an originai EsBayist. And in this, in truth, he claims the
dignity of association with the brightest ornaments of our didactic
literature. Hia contributions, identified with an aaterisk in the
Guardiafi, and with the letter X in the Spectator, in some in-
stanc^CB, ibr their intrinsic eicellence, take rank with the effusions
of either Addison or Steele — now by reason of the elegance of
their diction, now because of their solid common aense, now because
oftheverybrilliuncy of their wit. These luminous characteristics
may be discerned also in his occasional epistles to the Orafigman,
and again even in a kind of magazine called the Bee. As the
latter, however, are more difficult of access, reference may here be
directed eicluaiyely to a few among the tiiirty-two essays written
by Eustace Budgell in the pages of the Spectator.

These, indeed, afford the opportunity for a rich banquet to the
more fastidious searchers among those latterly neglected stores
of the beiles-Jettres — whether attention be directed to bis disquisi-
tion on the diffusion of learning (No. 379), or in a very differeftt
mood to his facetious complaints against dancing (No. 67). In
these admirable lucubrations (gossipings, by the way, anticipatory
ot Mr. Boundabout), Budgell may be said to have ingeniously
addressed himself, alternately, to nearly every class in the commu-
jTjir, Ja iis eihilaratiog description of a hunt with Sir Boger de
Vorerlej (No. 116), be aeized an OT^portunity for impressing upon
tiff spcirtBuiaa the need there ia for pev^fet\ia\te\i4fttBe«a\attie
^liiab creation, rijspJayii.g therein 8UcAigenl\epea«n"tV«a'rt.\ivni*(fi&^
L/o excuse hia biundera as one t^uite o\jV\o\i5V^ BS^i «n.'ra»\l

EUSTACE BUDGELL — ^THE ESSAYIST. 163

unacquainted with the field — blunders so utterly preposterous,
many of them, that they might have driven even Mr. Leech's Tom
Noddy to the verge of distraction. In his comical disqusiitions
about ill-clotbing (Nos. 160, 606), he endeavoured to laugh the
tribe of fops and coquettes out of some few at least of their extrava-
gances. W bile, in his philosophic argum^ upon Atheists and
Atheism (No. 389), he ridiculed, in a subtle and masterly manner,
the blasphemous hardihood of infidelity. In his mellifluous verses
upon love (No. 691), he spoke to the very core of the hearts of
youth, through the eloquent voices of their passions : while, in
nis aphorisms upon friendship (No. 386), he attempted to trans-
form the bickerings of mankind into amity, performing imaginary
offices of mediation, such as only a large-hearted man could so
tenderly have conceived or so lovingly executed. As for the
humorous portions of his essays, they need not shrink from com-
parison even with those of his kinsman and associate, Addison.
The essay, for example, upon absence of mind, as instanced in
"Win Honeycomb (No. 77), is the very acme of the comic, and
from that single paper may be said to have proceeded all those
unconscionable witticisms so much in vogue in later years, witti-
cisms, popularly known by their generic title of " Jouathanisms."
His description again of the mode in which country sports are
conducted (No. 161), is hardly inferior to this in its fantastic
drollery, the fun of it being wonderfully heightened by the quiet
manner in which its pleasantries are insinuated — as, for instance,
where he mentions the '' cudgel-players breaking one another's
heads, in order to make some impression on their mistress's hearts;"
or again, in his catalogue of Will Honeycomb's amours (No. 359),
where Will is speaking of his conquests — " particularly of one
which I made some years since upon an old woman, whom I had
certainly borne away with flying colours if her relations had not
come pouring in to ber assistance from all parts of England ; nay,
I believe I should have got her at last, had she not been carried
off by a hard frost ! " There is always something delightfully
genial, simple, natural, unforced in his humour ; it comes off the
lip as it were with a glibness of utterance, a dimpling about the
mouth, and a sparkle in the eye : it is unpremeditated — it startles
one into laughter. His more sedate compositions, moreover, when
turned to, will be found to yield abundant food for meditation.

Joyous apparently and gentle as a very child in his disposition,
bis intellect enriched with stores of leurniug^^ ^\£t^4 '^^'^ ^^\sS^
imagwation, bis turns of rhetoric 8po\itaii^o\3L^^\i\^"^««!^'*'^^^^^^'^
the disaemination ot morality throug\i \i\» >«T\\AXi%^ t£io"^X» ^>ai^\^^^^
whatever ideas be committed to paper, coxiJA \^t^Vj 1^^ *^^ ^

FOOTPBINTS ON THE BOAD,

with some reflex of hia own nature. Still, hy an iuecrutabls
dcBtiuy, the bouI thua yearning for approbation from ita fellow-
men, received at their hands little elee than contumely and loathing
during ita earthly career, Bince the cloae of that career obtaining
from posterity little more than total neglect and ahsolute indiffe-
rence. The neglect^nd the indifference, as formerly the loathing
and the contumely, we helteve to have been unmerited; for that
Bostace Budgell is one of the purest proae writers in our language,
is very readily demonstrable, aa it appears to ua, from his writings
themaelvea ; thoae writings that might yet with advantage be col-
lected into a volume entitled " Budgeli'a Works " — a volume not
nnworthy of aasuming its place in the minor treasury of
English Miscollaniea.

LEIGH HUNT— THE TOWN POET.

■■■ •

A HAPPY circumstance brought me into brief but intimate
communication with Leigh Hunt shortly before the dose of those
seTenty-five years, the abundant fruits of which have secured for
him the reputation of one of the most charming writers, whether
of prose or verse, in English literature. Our intercourse, though
narrowed in point of time by his tranquil death, at Putney, on
the 28th of August, 1859, mid already ripened, as I have said^
into nothing less than intimacy. His regard had rapidly become,
as indeed the ending of every letter to me cordially intimated
in so many words, that of an affectionate friendship. In one of
these, penned as recently as the first da^ of the very month of
which ne was fated never to see the termination, he wrote in my
regard thus delightfully — '' It is like one of the friendships of
former days come back to me in my old age, as if in reward for
my fidelity to their memory."

A communication from the dear old Foet-Essajist, penned on
Monday, the 8th of August — (it was the last scrap of our coire-
spondence I was ever to receive)— K^losing, strangely it seemed to
me at the time, with a solemn benison that sounds even now
almost like an unconscious farewell — *^ All blessings attend you,
prays your affectionate friend, Leigh Hunt," began with a plea-
sant summons to him on the following evening at his house in
what he had characteristically mentioned in a previous note, as
" the not very attractive suburbanity " of Hammersmith. " To-
morrow (Ti^esday), by all means," he now wrote: adding whim-
sically, as will be seen immediately, '' and the (that?) evening will
suit me better than any other, for a very curious eztemporaneoua
reason, as you shall hear." The reaaon "^xoNVxi^ ^yck^ *^^ "^^^
that evening, bad I called, I should. \xaveiLO\xTk^\ivB^^^s!»2^^."^^*^^^
then taken hia departure, bent upou at©m^at«t^ ^cotslss^^^^^^
of health, to the opposite bank o£ tYxeT\xwnfe%, w^^xixc^^'^^

186 FOOTPBINTB ON THB BOAD.

the cberiahed guest of the valued friend under whoae alielterinfj
roof-beams iie bo soon afterwards expired.

On Tuesday evening, then, the 9th of August, 1859, I am with
Leigh Hunt for the last time in our earthly nieetiug. It is (ho
wholly unimagined by himself !) his own last evening in his last
home-residence, one that haviug heen subsequently deserted by
his family, may now, without any breach of delicacy, be indicated
for the satisfaction of those curious as to the last abode of the
author of " The Town," as the little villa, No. 7, Cornwall Boad,
EBmraerBinith.

As I enter the inner sitting-room, I End my host seated in.
his easy-chair, in his accustomed corner, musing sadly in solitude.
Although to the very close of his life he retained uudimmed the
most vivid appreciation alike of the beauiiful and the whimsical
— and I know not which, indeed, if either, of those two seemingly
incongruous faculties held in bis nature aoythiug like a distinct
predominance — 1 could not but especially note his eager solicitude
at this time, upon every possible opportunity, to discuss the more
solemn themes of time and eternity, above all the dread and holy
mysteries of the hereafter. A few evenings previously, when
left alone together, we had talked on thus late into the night ;
and now, again, his thoughts reverted, evidently with an awful
joy, to the same "high argument." It is manifest enoueh to me
now, that these were but the instinctive flulterings of his spirit,
as it felt the jarring back of the bolts of life, towards what
Edward Young has finely termed in his " Night Thoughts,"
Death, that—

" Dark Lattice lettingin Etonial Day."

Leigh Hunt, though now nearly five years beyond the allotted

age of man, slill evidenced the same iusatiuble appetite as of yore

for all the sugar-plums of life, "lumps of flowers," and snatches

of melody. A primrose was ever yet, for him, something more

than a primrose, even though it had been the one whose delicate

stalk was held between the brutal lips— whose pale, exquisite

blossom gleamed between the black whiskers — oi' the vulgar

ruffian, Blastua, in Douglas Jerrold's story of " St. Gilts and

St. James." Tet, strange to say, Leigh Hunt — like Wordsworth

himself, who thus first philosophised poetically over the infinite

BuffgesttveneBB of beauty lateut in the primrose — Leigh Hunt,

Ii'&& WiJliam Wordeviorih, was totally deficient, as be assured

"■^ 'i' / Benae o£ flmell, detecting no ^ev^uoie ■?)\iB.\£ieT, eswtv

^^ J" ^Pf '"oat odoriferous. He, wtose -^e-reea are aclMsii^

jr "''' ^owera\ Instance tbia, Via deUdovia a-^Qft't.'co^V*

LEIGH HUNT — ^THE TOWN POET. 167

to the vernal month, that month of love and verdure, of cowslip
and daffodil. Instance, this floral fragrance peculiar to Leigh
Hunt's poetic effusions, his metrical apostrophe to the jouugling
month of the twelve, an apostrophe ending with that mellifluous
couplet, the conclusion of which is as a very breath wafted from
the hedgerows —

* ** May, thou merry month complete ;

t May, thy very name is sweet/**

His imaginative sense of perfume, however, must have borne
some analogy to the faintly adumbrated sense of colour prevailing
among the colour-blind : among those who, wanderiag through a

farden, recognise only by a difference of outline the distinction
etween the roses and the green leaves clothing the bush upon
which they are blooming ; who can there discover no diversity of
hue, even, later on in the season, between the autumnal verdure
and the scarlet rose-berries.

It was a distinguishing peculiarity with Leigh Hunt, that in
regard to whatever of the beautiful his fancy touched, one might
say of it, as he himself has said of Paganini's affection for his
violin, that " he loved it like a cheek." Nay, if ever in his collo-
quial criticisms he had to note some fault or blemish in the thing
he loved, it was always with that gentle apology, with that courtly
extenuation of Torquato Tasso, not pale but fair —

** Non era pallidezza, ma candore ! *'

So, likewise, when he was writing, particularly in verse, upon
anything whatever possessing the divine grace and crowning
luerit of the Beautiful, it was perpetually with him, as it once
upon a time actually chanced with Keats, while scrawling a letter
to one of his familiar correspondents when he suddenly broke
off with, " Talking of pleasure, this moment I was writing with
one hand, and with the other holding to my mouth a nectarine.
Good God ! — ^how fine ! It went down soft, pulpy, slushy, oozy,
all its delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large
beatified strawberry," Leigh Hunt — when writing — always, one
might say, held in his other hand the nectarine.

And the fruits loved most by this poetic gourmand, were
they not the choicest glories of what he has himself daintily
termed the " Human Orchard ?'* Where — it is in his charming
little poem on " Sudden Fine Weather" that tke ^hxi^^<^ ^<^Ni2«. —
he cnea out delicioaalj —

" Tour finest firuit to some Vwo TDioxi>i>aa Taa.-^ T^w2a.\
Tve known a cheek of forty Aikft «b ^g«w^ V^

IBS FOOTPRINTS ON THE ROAD.

Aa he wrote, bo likewise did he read, wifh a band and art eye
of tenderest appreciation. Those votumes indeed, the teavea of
which he hod turned in any way attentively, hore upon their pages
abundant evidence ofthis, in numberlesa little pencilled ticka
of applause or of objection, no less than in the qnainteat margioal
annotations, penned in his elegant Ilaliao caligraphy. Any auoh
jotted lines and notes upon the margin, he hirnBelf compared to
loving pinches upon the oheek, touchea, he would say, that left,
each of them, an impress like a dimple ; giving tlie future reader,
he argued, the added charm of a direct companionship in thia
kind of sympathetic appreciation.

One of these well-fingered books — a very wall of fruit, witt
a hee-made cicatrice here and there upon tbe riper green-
gages and opricots — a volume he dearly loved, and which he
had actually read through fonr timet — he has notified it, " with
increasing admiration" (it is M. Abel Eemnaat'a translation
of the veritable Chinese Novel, " lu-kiao-li ; or, the Two Fair
Cousins")— Leigh Hunt lent me, upon thia last night of our
meeting, shortly before we parted, bidding me, as be did so, pre-
serve it tenderly for him, as one among the many million atoms
of the apple of my eye. I have it utiU — a posthumous gift from
him, proffered to me from his deathbed — if I cared to keep it in
his remembrance. It illustrates, by a two-fold attraction, what
has here been said about those dimpling touches ; touchea here
imparted to tlie cheek of the old Cninese Chronicler, by Leigh
Hunt's own hand, and by that of hia loved and honoured friend,
Thomas Carlyle. Such lantastic touches, some of them! As,
where a personage in the teit called " Old Touchi" is spoken of
incidentally. "Whereupon, quoth Leigh Hunt in the margin,
" Head of the^enw* irritahile !" Again, where mention is made,
in connection witli the Imperial College, of one " Eiaminer
Li — " the once editor of the journal of that ilk, aa the Scotch
would have it, cries out, with mingled exultation and surprlBe,
upon the margin, "Myself! by title and name!"

More thickly, however, than the margins of hia books, were
the pleaaant hours of his converse sown with whimsicalities. Ho
could not speak of even one of hia own inflrmities, without pon-
dering it the theme of a joke and the provocation to an eiplosion
of laughter. The loas of his teeth, for example, casually men-
tioned b_y him, caused him to emit at having made that additional

^dratiee totrarda being et/ierialised.

^j'^o does not remember bia sudden \>aTB\:a o^ io.i\, e^«Q. A
-^ezi he must have been moat tWroxi%\i\-^ m ewowA^^

^^^^^^mt( here, in hia diecursive mttiicaX Wci\i^^*S'^

LEIGH HUNT — ^THE TOWN POET. I6d

heading Pomfret's Choice," while i^isting upon the exquisite
cruelty involved in that seemingly all-pleai<ant pastime of angling,
he unexpectedly puts the ai*gament (an argument he has just
befor'e been enforcing, almost with tears in hi» eyes), thus fantas-
tically to the more ii5atuated Votaries of Izaak Walton*» orafu:-**

'' Fancy a preacher at tbis sort o^ work,
^ot witli bis trout and gudgeon, but bis cl^k.
Tbe clerk leaps gaping at a tempting bit|
And-— hah / cm ea^-ache with a knife inU/"

'Tv^as the delightfuUest, oddest, whimsicallest Verse, well ima-
ginable at times, that of our dear Leigh Hunt ; and at other
times, verse so trembling through and through with the tenderest
thrills of sensibility. Now Warbling, as " A Lover of Music to his
Pianoforte," as well he might ! he who could sing so sweetly him-
self to a few careless touches upon the keys of that instrument : —

<< Mirtb flies to thee, and Loyo's unrest^
And Memory dear,
And Sorrow f vfith his tightened hreast,
ConU8 for a tear,"

Now carolling with the boisterous, elvish gleeof aEobin Q-ood-
fellow, in honour of the ubiquity of that Protean glory of the
Winter season— Christmas : —

** Now he*8 town gone out of town,
And now a feast in civic gown.
And now the pantomime and clown
With a crack apon the crown.
And all sorts of tumbles down.'

T?he very quintessence of this Puck-like naughtiness of the
old Town Poet's muse being distilled, by the way, into the aro-
matic ink with which he penned his " Chorus of i'airies Eobbing
an Orchard" — singing (shamefully!) with an interjected smack
of the lips—

** Stolen BwiBets are always sweeter,
l^len kisses moch completer.
Stolen looks are nice in chapeli^
Stolen, stolen be yonr apples."

And-^as if even this were not enough — ^murmuring, yet further,
gotfo voee^ with an audible chuckle and a relish that almost makes
his reader long to go clambering over the moonlit wall after tbe
golden pippins — »

" When ia bed tbe world ttt^VAAAiv^,
Then's the time for OTcihaTd.xo\kV\\i\^%
Tet the fruit were sottroe woT\ai "^w^kSi^^
Wer» it not for Bteai^g, BlAa^^fL^'

t:^

mm

170 fOOTPBIHTS ON THB BOAD.

Ab for the exemplara of his prose ooinioality, it may be said,
tliat the raciest of the papera which came from him in tlie palmiest
days of hia literary atrength — wlieii hia wit was two-edged, and
his humour rieheet, merriest, most hilarious — wus perpetually
t into a lavish abundance of conceits, nay, was occa-

Bionally as bolaterous aa the merriest romp in the pin „
Of these etfuaioiia, who can ever forget hia talk with the reader
ahout the " Inside of an Omnibus?" How ridiculously true
it is in point of fact, and how absurdly grotesque in point of
fiction ! The very conjecture at the outset, that if Dr. Jotmaon
had hfen transformed into any aort of vehicle — a thing so
probable!— it would have been into an Omnibus! Aud how
he makes Juhnaon (in Elysium) develop his choice thus to the
ghost of Boswell ! " Sir, I should not be a cart. That would be
low. Neither ahoidd I aspire to be the triumphal chariot of
an Alexander, or the funeral car of a Napoleon, Posthumous
knowledge haa corrected these sympathies with ambition. A
gig is pert ; a curricle coxcombical ; and the at cam -carriage is too
violent, perturbed and migratory. Sir, the omnibus for me. It
is decent, deliberate, and unpretending; no respecter of persona ;
a kiug has been known to ride iu it ; and opposite tlie king may
have sat a republican weaver." Then, after diamiasiug the
sbadow of the garrulous doctor, how he goea off at a hard gallop,
describing the various grades and ages of omnibusea — the
morning omnibus, the noon, and the night! "If a midnight
omnibus," saya he, "it is full of play-goers and gentlemen lax
with stiff glasaes of brandy -and- water. And how correctly be
pourtrays the different paaaengera who get in and out ! The
precise peraonage, the youngster, the maid-servant, the young
lady in colours, the two more young ladiea in white, the dandy,
the man with the bundle, the old gentleman, the fat man, the
woman with the babv, tbe two estranged friends ignoring each
other, and the man in a smock frock, " who, hy sitting on the
edge of hia seat, and perpetually watching hia time to go out,
seems to make a constant apology for hia preaence." Here is one
little aide face, however, wortli a dozen full-lengths by any other
artist : — "Enter an unrefiectingyoung gentleman, who has bought
an orange, and must needs eat it immediately. He, accordingly,
begiua by peeling it, and ia first made aware of the delicacy of
bis position by tbe gigglemeut of the two young ladles, and hia
doubt where he BbaU throw the peel. He is in for it, however,
Jfad la use proceed ; so, being unable to iiviiiB \,'q6 Qvaiige into
'^Saeats, he ventures upon a great liqviii Vvte, ■«)V\c\i leftoMvia
tt|^^ ihti omujbus, una covers tbe -whole ol ^ne \o-««t ^a,iA. cS.

LEIGH HUNT — THE TOWN POET. 171

his face with pip and drip. The young lady with the ringlets is
right before him. The two other yoimg ladies stuff their hand-
kerchiefs into their mouths, and he, into his own mouth, the
whole of the rest of the fruit, sloshy, and too big, with desperation
in his heart, and the tears in his eyes. Never will he eat an orange
again in an omnibus." No doubt he won't. Then in glancing through
*f The day of disasters of Carpington Blundell, Esq.," can we over-
look the account of the deplorable state of the weather ? when the
gutters were a torrent, the pavement a dancing wash, the wind a
whirlwind, and " the women all turned into distressed Venuses
de Medici ! " Or the description of the flock of sheep, and the
drover,'; " in a very loud state of mind," hooting, whistling,
swearing, and tossing up his arms. Or, best of all, the picture
of the man who fled from the jeers of the croT^d — " He fairly
turned back, pursued by a roar ; and Oh, how he loved the corner
as he went round it ! Every hair at the back of his head had
seemed to tingle with consciousness and annoyance. He felt as
if he saw with his shoulder-blades ; as if he was face to face at the
back of his hat!" In the paper on Zoological Gardens, moreover,
there is a thought as lustrous as a precious stone : — " The sun-
shine in the thick of St. Giles's comes as straight and sunny as
ever from the god-like orb that looks at us from a distance of
millions of miles, and out of the depth of millions of ages." Then
the pleasant suggestion made while the author is descanting on
wild beasts ! " Fancy yourself coming home from the play or
opera," he says, " humming * Deh vieni non tardar* or * Meet me
by Moonlight alone ; * and as you are turning a corner in Wim-
pole Street meeting — a tiger ! What should you say ? Tou would
nnd yourself pouriDg forth a pretty set of Eabelaisque excla-
mations— 'Eh—Oh—Oh Lord !— Hollo !— Help !— Help !— Mur-
der !— Tiger !— TJ-u-u-u-u-u ! Policeman ! ' ^Unter Policeman.]
Policeman — * Good God I a gentleman with a tiger !' [UxU
Policeman.]" Then the dissertation on " Beds and Bedrooms ! "
a dissertation better than poppies, or opium, oi* the recipe of En-
dymion ! Home is home, however homely, says the proverb. Bed
is bed, however bedly, says Leigh Hunt, and after this execrably
good bit of parody, now he goes on — " Bed is the home of home,
the innermost part of its contents. It is sweet within sweet ; a
nut in the nut : within the snuggest nest, a snugger nest ; my
retreat from the publicity of my privacy ; my room within my
room, walled (if I please) with curla\na\ «k Wt.^^ ^^^'«xv*v^<3ji.>'«>^
snug corner, such as children lo\e 'w\veii W\fe^ "^^^l ^''VviN^'%»\ *"^^^
place where I draw a direct lino \iei\iN<jfeex\. xw6 ^\A ^sc^ ^^
where I enter upon a new exiatence, fee^, 1^*^ "^^^ ^^^"^

■m

173 FOOTPROTTS cm 1

reposing but full of power ; wliere the act of laying down and
pulling the clothes over one's head, eeemB to exclude matters
that have to do with us when dressed and on our le^a ; where,
though in repose, one ia never more eonscioua of one'a activity,
divested of those hampering weeds : where a leg is not a lump
of boot and stocking, hut a real leg, clear, natural, fleshy, de-
lighting to thrust itself hither and thither; and lo ! so recre-
ating itself, it cornea in contact with another; to wit, one's own.
One should hardly guess as much did it remain eternally divorced
from its companion — alienated and altered into leather and pru-
nella." Wbat truth there is, again, in hia diatribe about a
featlier bed ! " When we are in the depths of it, we long to be
on the heights. When we get on the heights do*n they go
with MS and turn into depths. The feathers hamper us, ob-
struct, irritate, suffocate. We lose the sense of repose and inde-
pendence, and feel ourselves in the hands of a soft lubberly
giant." We have already remarked that our essayist is some-
times in his humour as boisterous as a romp. Here is proof of it —
where he revela in the very idea of haviug a bed made up on the
floor — " provided the paillasse be of decent thickness, — the flflor
itself thus becomes s part of the great field of rest in which wo
expatiate — there is nothing to wound our right of incumbency j
we can gather the clothes about us and roll on the floor if we
please ! " Out of his exquisite " Criticisms on Female Beauty,"
— papers abounding with claasio and scholarly thoughta.as wellaa
with thoughts springing from a minute sense of what ia the truth
of the beautiful — we ahail tranacribe one of those latter thoughts
most delicately expressed, " the mouth out of its many sensiuili-
ties may be fancied throwing up one great expression into the
eyes; as many lights in a city reflect a broad lustre into the
heavens." And liuw he speaks against stays I — the Judies should
read it — bow he does speak against stays 1 Prior, in his " Heary
and Emma," says —

" No longer slinJl the bodice, tptlf iMed,
From thy fall bosoui to th; sleuder w&is
That air and hatoiony qf grace eipreoa,
Fine by degrees luid benutifollf less."

Ko ! exclaims Leigh Hunt, it should be —

"BauBtah at once sjid MieoMj VwAle,

gW. »'iat delect ible condimenta in the

LEIGH HUNT — THE TOWN POET. 173

scholarsliip are traceable to his chance recognition of that blue jar
of Sicilian honey attracting his glance as it stood in the window
of Messrs. Fortnum and Mason, in Piccadilly, and from the mere
eight of which arose all tliose bewitching associations afterwards
resolving themselves into the delightful volume, so entitled —
** The Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla." We look upon that
same jar, and think, with the author, of the blue sea and the blue
heavens of Italy. We hold it in the sun, '' and fancy that a spot
of insufferable radiance comes in the middle of its cheek, like a
very laugh of light.** We look at it again, and we think also of
the copper pot of the fisherman in the '* Arabian Nights Enter-
tainments,'* — 'that vessel which was sealed with the seal of the
great Solomon, and which Leigh Hunt himself has spoken of as
containing the " highly concentrated essence of Jin ! ** Of the
delicate thoughts contained in this honey jar, what can be more
delicate and, being delicate, what can be more truthful or more
refined than the one comprised in those five words — " Flowers
cannot help being beautiful " f Of quaint phrases, again, what
can be quainter thsKn that one where he speaks of Polyphemus
** in his fiercer days, before he had sown his wild rocks ? " Or
than that one where he aUudes to the trick of Dionysius in
hanging a sword by a single hair over the head of Damocles,
during a luxurious banquet, and calls it (the trick) *' a practical
epigram of the v«ry finest point P *' And, in the way of quiet
humour, what can be mofe humorous than the remark with wliich
he concludes his account of the huge toy*ship constructed by
Hiero the Second — a ship so vast in dimensions that it contained
^' gardens, a wrestling ground, rooms full of pictures and statues,
floors with subjects from Homer painted in mosaic, and eight
fortified towers '* — ^by exclaiming, " We should like to know what
Tom Bowling would have said to it.'* Those who have not
perused the papers as they appeared from time to time in Ains-
worth's Magazine, will find what delectable bits are culled from
the classics by merely dipping into Chapter iv., where there is
the narrative of the prize-fight between Pollux andAmycus, from
the original of Theocritus, given with all the daintiness of Wal-
pole or of Chesterfield, yet imbued, at the same time, with all
the relish of Bendigo or the Tipton Slasher. Let them but dip so
far into the " Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla " and we warrant
them they will soon be over their knuckles — ^nay, that they will be
fairly up to their wrists in its " dainty dukitMdfts^" \i<5l'Q?t<5i ^a^as>c^
minutes have expired. If Le\g\i ^vxuX. \i«L^ ^^«^\\Kt<b ^xs^-i^i^:^^
dies in amber, he has here ca\i^V\t m«i.w^ ^' nvvc^^^^ ^^'^^^^
(better things even, than your June fl\e^,^\^\^^«^ o^'?^-^'^

B and their gold-green armour) in his honey. Hie " Jar of
Hoaey," is to proae indeed wbat Boecaceio's " Pot of Basil " ie to
poetry. Whosoever ruaa may read what ia here written in Leigh.
Hunt's pages, and bo reading thoae pages may" become very
learned in Greek over his salad and profoundly "versed" in
Italian over his chocolate. All countries and all generations
afford him sweet-meats for his literary coufectiona. Scotland and
Attica, Italy and "Warwickahire, Syracuse and Stratford, Allan
Eamsay and Tasao, Spenser and Moachua, Virgil and Marlowe —
all add their offerings : they are the flowers from which he has
estracted the very angary quintessence of poetry, or rather, let
ua say, they are the beea which have supplied hia hive.

Ever on the alert for a drolLery, whether he were sitting, pen
in hand, at his desk in solitude, or talking intermittently in the
familiar intercourse of friendship, he was so, none the less, upon
the occasion of our final meeting, and of hia own final tarrying
Iq that latest of his many suburban London reaidencea — the one
already particularised as rendered, thua,inamarmer,classio ground,
in the Cornwall Boad at Hammersmith. Ahd I welt remember,
in the very midst of the sadness of this his last evening in-
the dear homo he was never to see again, and of the eternal
parting from which he seemed to have a mournful premonitory
consciousness, I well remember the zestful enjoyment with which
an accidental circumstance recalled to recollection his solemn
recantation in the Examiner I His solemn recantation, that is,
shortly after his release from his two years' impriaonment in
Horsemonger-lane Gaol — of everything he had ever previously
written in that journal againat bis ICoyol Highness the then
Prince Eegent — a recantation, ending, after a long catalogue of
similar declarations, he waa thia, and he was that, and he was the
other, and — to crown everything — he was thin !

Throughout the evening, at intervals, but more heavily and
continuously towards the close of it, the rain fell dolefully, with
a subdued monotone in the Bound that harmonized only too well
with the evident sadneaa hlliug the old poet's imagination. In
one of the momentary pauses of the converaatiou auiongat ua all,
pauses that gradually, as the twilight darkened over the rooms,
Decame, out of the mere force of sympathy, not infrequent — Leigh
Hunt having juat remarked that he had got a bundle of hia books
together, to take with him as " a bit of home " — there came,

inoduJated by the distance, through the rain and tiie silence, the
Bouad of au itiuerant's organ down, ftie tob.4, ^la^iug (^of all
^'A-propoa airs in the wide wor\d'.'> S\t ■S.cot-j ?.\ftV<i\i'*

'~itiye aational melody — aa niuA tt Tiat\o\\a\. mAoi-j \u\\.s.-«a.'i

'^^,

LEIGH HUNT — THE TOWN POET. 175

as even "Eule Britannia*' — ^the national melody* of the English
domestic affections, " Home, sweet Home."

Almost immediately afterwards the wheels came and went that
bore Leigh Hunt from his home to his death-place. Like an old
soldier upon his last march, he had wrapped his cloak about him
and gone forth, with his heart-strings torn and bleeding, I believe,
from that apparently trivial separation from those he loved : from
his dear daughters and his little grandchildren.

Standing by the garden gate, in the rain, I hear his cordial
voice still ringing back to me, as he drives away, almost cheerily
calling me by name, in accents of farewell.

As I write these last sentences, there lies before me, in aid of
my remembrance, the only truthful effigy of those venerable and
thoughtful features : the large black eyes, still lustrous to the last ^
the long white hair, the reverse of grav — ^being silver, with ail
occasional thread or two of the original black intermingled. As
I close this memorial of Leigh Hunt's Last Evening at Horne^
my hand is laid upon a lock of this white hair, with a IUquie8cat
and a Benedidte,

* Since writing the aboye, I am assnred npon competent authority that> strictly
speaking, England has no claim whatever to the world-famous song of **Home,
sweet Home," on the score of nationality. The poetry, as indeed is very well
known, was the production of an American — John Howard Payne (who was bom
at New York in 1792, and who died at Tunis in 1852), an actor and dramatist,
and, latterly, Consul (at his death-place) for the United States. The melody itself
is Sicilian. And that it is so, I am assured, not alone upon the ipse dixit of many
a native of fiiir Sicily, but upon the authority of a gifted and accomplished friend
of Sir Henry Bishop's, from whose own lips the information was received, upon the
authority of one whom I am prOud to claim also as my friend. Dr. Charles Mackay,
the Poet, or as Stranger loved rather to be called, the Song- writer. ** Thus,'' I
am reminded, '* the claims of England to this son^ identified so strongly with
English feelings and home affections, are but small ; but — small as they are— they
may be sufficient, for the song was bom in England, and the melody was unknown
out of Sicily, till Sir Henry Bishop gave it an English life and an assured immor-
tality.*' This, by the way, being done through the medium of one of Sir Henry's
sparkling little ballad operas, given to the world at the period when he was
installed as Musical Director at Covent Garden Theatre. So that, after all-*-
Sidlian though the melody, American though the poetry, of ** Home, sweet
Home" — England may still lay large claim to it^ almost upon the score of its
nationality*

G-XESi: nnd their Quacica — might be Mcepted, it occura tp me,
M a not inappropriate title for a paper oa Medical Impostors
and their TictiniB. And the notion is probably suggested by
loy remembrance of a remark occurring ia the History of
Selbome, a curious little caeunl resiiLrk that alwaye struck me as
having an odd kind of a whimsical application to those Barae
victims of that very clasa of scieEtifio or rather pseudo-scientific
impostors. "The Voice of the Goose," quoth the Keverend Gil-
bert-White to that correspondent of his who ultimately expanded
from a single individual into a noun of multitude signityiug
many, otiierwise Poaterity — " The Toice of the Goose ia trumpet-
like and claokiDg." These epithets conveying — according to my
fanciful notion of it — precisely the characteristics of the voice of
all the Human Geeae who have ever sounded from time imme-
morial the trumpet of Quackery. Por, in simple truth, has not
this purely by-tlie-way observation of Parson White's expressed
moat accurately by implication the readiness with which the more
gulhble are always blowing abroad the renown of their deluders,
while, in the very act of so doing, they are complacently parading
about with them the chaius of their own ignorance ? It was,
surely, as wisely as it was humorously sung in old Hudibras, that,
beyond a doubt —

" The jileisnro ia ui great
lu being cheated an tu chesC"

Otherwise, how possibly con I account for the eagerness with

which so many contentedly piUory themselTes any day in the

_rear, solely, as it appears, for the purpose of extending yet further

"oe of those same spurious but lucrative reputatiojjs ? Other-

^se, indeed, bow many- an amiable atqualnteLUce Tnig,ht not have

V^ed the world thom rather startling reveYattoua ol xW-aaxWi,

'* ^'^i^ tOf aa exempliiied in iheit c^n. ^aiViaviai \tUdA

BARDANA HILL — THE QUACK. . 177

bequests, for minute description of which (each case authenticated
with name and address in fiill), as thej saj in the provincial
newspapers — see advertisement.

The Quacksalver, it is true, has long ago carefully shut up
and carted away from the purlieus of Vanity Fair that monstrous:
gilded booth of his, with the raised platform and the chemical
apparatus yet familiar to us all in the old Dutch pictures. He has
summarily discharged honest Jack Pudding from his service, as a
needy but, at the same time, a needless nondescript. Individu-^
ally, too, he has thrown aside that flowing doctorial robe and that
broad-brimmed conical hat, imparting to him of jore, it must be
confessed, the appearance rather of a conjuror than of a wandering
physician. His lantern jaws are now-a-days cleanlv shaved^
instead of displaying, pendant from them, a beard like that of the
Boyal Dane himself — a sable silvered. The ridge of his keen
nose is no longer bestridden by the big horn spectacles, over the
rim of which his keener eyes were wont to peer forth so searehingly
and inscrutably. Even his personal pomps and splendours have

Eassed away long since, wholly and irretrievably, ^is very appel-
ktions, once so familiar, have faded from him altogether — Char-
latan or Mock Doctor being no longer among his habitual titles,
as in the instance of world-famous leeches, like the immortal
Sangrado or the deathless SidropheL His name, now, is simply
and generically Legion. Under which designation our venerabld
intimate flourishes to this day, in eflect, more triumphantly than
ever. He is ubiquitous: we meet him everywhere, under the
most astounding disguises and in circumstances the most bewilder-
ingly enigmatical. Upon occasions even he may be stumbled
across by any more adventurous explorer, loitering in the gutter a»
far east as the High Street of Whitechapel, on a Saturday evening,
in the thick and throng of the hubbub of all that motley haggling,
and chaffering. There indeed stands forth, at these times, bodily
to view in the kennel, the old imperishable vagabond, the Ahasuerus
of Humbug, with a snowy apron girt about his loins, while carried
slung horizontally before him is a tray, on the which the voluble
rogue is turning, if not an honest penny, certainly a good many
dirty half-pence. Tliis being the lowest, though not by any means,
I take it, the least profitable of his various modem masqueradings.
Here, in truth, he may be found thriving apace in his modest
character as the Street Herbalist, vending to believers coltsfoot
and horehound, magical candies and manreiU.o\i^ ^<fc^iSiOasyQSi^'^w^'*
metics from nettle juice, and catkartVc^ ixoxcL ^wvxA 'vr^O^^»ss^
for wind, and Irish-moss for conaumption. ^^^s,

ScieatiMc impostors of every kind iot ^^i'a^• Tss^aNNKt ^Js^^

IP

rOOTPBIHTS OH TSE BOAD,

always — for a while, at leaet — successful. Their popularity sur-
passes the measure of any triumph yet recorded to have been
won by any known benefactor of hia species. Thus, while John
Hunter, footsore and dnst- begrimed, is trudging all the way from
Scotland cp to London, with a single change of linen tied up in
a darned cotton bandkercliief, Jobn Law is giving audience in bis
gilded saloon at Paris, under the shadow of the old palatial
Tuileries, to a cringing mob of princes of the blood aud, of the
ancienne nohtetse, representatives of that haughtiest of all the proud
European aristocracies. And so, too, while that dearest friend of
TIB all. Doctor Oliver Goldsmith, then of Southwark, stands bowing
before his poor Bankside patient, politest of all threadbare physi-
cians, his second-hand three-cornered hat held pertinaciously over
the patch in the rusty velvet, Cagiiostro, the Knave of Trumps,
the ver^ Trump of all the Knaves in the ever-shuffling human pack,
is making hia tour of the great capitals on the continent with as
many kings grouped before his chariot wheels as were ever har-
nessed, according to the old classic story-book, to the triumphal
car of the Emperor Sesostris. Intalerable though all contrasts of
this disheartening kind undoubtedly are iu themselves, I never-
theless do frankly acknowledge at once, that I have a, certaia
weakness for these same delightfully mendacious charlatans. I
think it is only, indeed, in obedience to a common weakness of
our nature that they esist and flourish, a weakuesa, by reason o/
which we all of ua love to be deluded sometimes.

Supposing, for example, that a carious paag has seized upon a
pet molar or a favourite incisor — cherished tooth of all, like the
weakliest bantling in a family, or what is pretty much the same,
with the maternal preference, the veriest scapegrace aud the most
incorrigible ne'er-do-weel —supposing the demon ache in that
agreeable little bony core of throbs to have reached the very
climax of pulsation, aud the old preposterous nostrum in the little
finnikin bottle with the big cork, the panacea you have tried so
often, and never yet with any avail whatever, is brought forth
again for the ninety-ninth time for the purpose of that purely
imaginary alleviation I Don't you, even then, look with an in-
flamed eye of unbelief over the top of your handkerchief, still
with a secret, sanguine, spectral credulity in your heart, as the
snowy atom of cotton is being piukly moistened— though yon
Jtnow j>erfectly well in your heart of hearts, what must, alter ail,
p^ necnasitf, be the one inevitable consequence ? Namely, that
'a a /ffw zniautea a/cerviarda yoa wiVY bti c\iiBft\*d in the back-
^'our of yoar dmboJical neighbour roimd t:\ve cor(iCT,"BoTW:^
^»ntaet, reposing ia the cruel lui-iivj ot tti« t\iliavjX'a\i«\.-j ewi

BABDANA HILL — THE QUACK. 179

cbair, taking an open-mouthed contemplation of the ceiling:
while the cat-footed manipulator, witb bis delicate instrument of
torture secreted, like a conjuring trick, up his wristband, comes
to you with his band behind his back and, with that monstrous
affectation of merely hoJcing, that you feel, even then, as an insult
to your common sense, xet, next year, next month, with the
toothache rampant, perhaps, in another section of the jaw, I dare
say that absurd little anodyne will be out again, as though the
futility of all its exhilarating, but utterly illusive, pretensions had
neyer once been detected.

I don't wonder then in the least that, before now, miraculous
curatives like magic rings have been worn, or that other mar-
vellous things, such as love-philters,' have been swallowed. It is
only quite natural, after all, that the Bomans should have had
their amulets, and the G-reeks their phylacteries. It seems merely
a matter of course that of yore such extraordinary note should
have been taken of Omens, and that such wonderful regard should
have beeij paid to Numbers. People have evinced even in the
middle of this boasted nineteenth century, in this scientific age of '
steam-engines and electric telegraphs, such an ineradicable love
of the marvellous, such an insatiable thirst and hunger for decep-
tion — in the preposterous matter of Table Turnings and of Spirit
jBappings — ^that we should fairly have the tables turned against us,
that our sneers of incredulity would probably and with justice be
regarded as in common parlance really not worth a rap, if directed
seriously against the gullibility of our forefathers ! Against their
search for water-springs by means of the divining-rod or the
dowsing- withy ! Against their credence in the significance of the
palmy lines of Chiromancy ! Against their reverent faith in
the seqond-sight vouchsafed to privileged adepts in the pseudo-
science of Deuteroscopia ! With a social gangrene or political
imposthume, like the Mormon Creed still festering at Utah —
with many a sleight-of-hand and sleight-of-ankle Medium, still
procurable at a fee of a few paltry guineas for the holding of a
sdance in our drawing-rooms any evening in the twelvemouth — I
don't think that we iiave any clear right to be supercilious about
the amiable wiseacres of a bygone generation; or to wonder
so yery open-eyed at the epochs when there were Alchemists and
Astrologers, Enchanters and Bosicrucians. Madmen, those won-
derful old smoke-begrimed philosophers are, by the generality of
lis, reputed to have been, now tUat we lookb«k!ck^N>;^««v*^^^\a.Si«is^
sublime regioos of electro-biology, "ptym^ «ka \^^ ^o Veto '^^ ^^^s^
teriea of the Od force, sending o\it meaaag|b»\m^ct ^^o.^^^^'^^'^^
with the thrill ofm acid on the winga ot \Xi^ '^^^^'^^^^':^^

180 JOOTPBINTS ON THE SOAD.

broodiDg over their retorts and crucibles iq search of the elixir
vitre and the aunim potahile, the tincture of coral and the solution,
of pear) 1 Tet,to their continued and fantastic labours are indubit-
ably owing all the latest and noblest revelationB of the laboratory.
Did not the seed-germ of Alchemy— buried away and rotting —
blossom into Chemistry p And remembering the strange jargon
droned of yore by the old alchemistB over their furnace firer—
fires that were notv itht<taDding hept thua perpetually kindled by
their hands, as the very Vestal lamps of Truth — may we not apply
to iheni Pope's wisely witty and familiar couplet P —

" Fly ta tbelr altftra, th«re tbej'U talk jou dend ;
Yet fools rush io wkere angels fear to tread."

Precisely, thus, by sheer force of their serene and unbluBhing
audacity, have these reviled pretenders to scientific authority often
proved themBelvea to have Deeii the unwitting pioneers to solid
knowledge.

ConspicuouB among the impostors who have in this maunep
been really useful in their generation, is one of whose name I am
but just now reminded by having heard of a somewhat startling
ap|)litation — to wit a request recently made by a sick pauper for
a bottle of Sir John Hill's Essence of Waterdock.

inderful humbug was this vivacious and versatile Sir John

imbug n
As Bardana Hill he survives to this day in a queer little
out-of-the-way corner of the world's remembrance— so called by
after times, as by his own, in consideration of that tincture of
bardana, notable even among the many imaginary remedies cnta-
logued in the ridiculous list of his spiuious pharmacoptsia. A non-
sensical repertory of anodynes, including, among other marvels,
fever-few-ten as a certain cure for headache, bhe daisy for hectic
fever, the leaves of camomile for cholie, the flowers of camomile
for ague — to say nothitig of Sir John's renowned and most
redoubtable pectoral balsam of honey, his essence of sage, and hia
tincture of valerian. Yet, outrageous quack though the map
indubitably was, Bardana Hill did some good service in his day.
Despite his absurd exhibition of himself before the Boyal Society,
decked out iu tinsel-trappings, armed with a dagger of lath, and
bearing before him a shield of pasteboard — this buffoon-censor was
actually the means of effecting, if not a total reorganisation, a very
_^erceptible improvement in the whole scheme of the Philosophical
TranaactioBs. And — what IB yet more eitraordinary iu bis regard
r~f^- "^f^l^o HiU, with all hia pretenaiona as aWT\j-iQii\.0T, truly
^» i^r^^y '^'*i Biore than any other man tA \\w age Xw-RMi* tio*
aBBUderelopuient and elevation of tUe aeience ot\jQ\:S»i AVw6\>^^

BARDANA HILL — THE QUACK. 181

of course, in so doing, very materially assisting the labours of
the naturalist. If he crowned himself with the fool's cap-and-
bells by publishing his coxcombical pamphlet on the virtues of
British herbs, he secured to himself the gratitude of all the after
disciples of Linnaeus bj his ingenious volume entitled Exotic
Botany, as he did afterwards still more by the most laborious and
ornate among all his literary productions, The Vegetable System
-r— a work published (plain) at thirty-eight guineas, and (coloured)
at one hundred and sixty guineas. A magnificent compilation,
comprising within it sixteen hundred four-guinea copperplate
engravings, extending over twenty-six folio volumes, and por-
traying, by means at once of the pen and the graver, no less
than twenty-six thousand different plants — every one of them
copied from nature. 'No wonder the poor man was ruined in
the prosecution of this resplendent enterprise. No wonder his
health sank under the toil, and his life, at last, under the failure
pf so exhausting and ponderous an undertaking. Hardly, when
we come to think of the poor Quack sinking under the weight of
the enterprise upon which, in an evil hour for his fortunes but in
a happy one for his reputation (such as it is), he had been induced
to adventure by the specious recommendation of Lord Bute, the
then Prime Minister— hardly do we wonder to find the adventure
designated " the most voluminous, magnificent, and costly work
that ever man attempted*' — so designated, in the first poignancy
of her widowhood, by his relict, the Hon. Lady Hill, sister of my
Lord Banelagh. ' It occurs, this amazing panegyric, in her lady-
ship's Apology for her dead lord's character — poor fellow! the said
character needing it sorely enough, to be sure — ^published as a
sort of posthumous fanfaronade.

Although Bardana Hill died of gout in the sixtieth year of his
age, on the twenty-second of December, seventeen hundred and
seventy -five, such is the sense of vitality about him produced in
one's mind by the scrambling records of his career, that he
appears somehow to have died in a manner prematurely. Looking
down the perspective of those sixty years, I can hardly think of
him as having been bom at Spalding in seventeen hundred and
sixteen, the son of Mr. Theophilus Hill, a respectable clergyman
of Peterborough. It would seem more reasonable to note his
entrance into life in a cellar of G-rub Street, or in a garret rented
of Catnach. The adventurer's after career divides itself into five
separate sections, each as distinct in \t^ -^^^^ — e^i^^s^ Ssl ^'^''^^jqs^
and situation — ^as the transformation'^ ol «b xxiwai^^^s^'' ^*^
outset, jroang Bardana seta up Tep\i\.^\>V5 «.^ v^ ^"^ "^^
JSt. Martia'a Lane, Westminster. A&eT^«i^, "^^ ^^n»>^

mm

182 rooTPEmrs o» thb boad.

direction of tbe botanical gardens of Lord Petre and the Diite of
Hicfimond. Quitting that more wholesome and primitive occu-
pjition, he struts and frets his hour upon tlie Bta«e until fairly
hissed and laughed off the boards successively of Covent Garden
and the Haymarket, as something too ridiculous to be tolerated
even as a histrionic butt. Subsetiuently, the ex-actor, ei-gar-
dener, ex-apothecaij, takes (and kindly too) to literature. He
undertakes the Bntiah Magazine. He Bcribblea off a Naval
History of England^ — leaving Horatio Nelson to illustrate it
tranecendnnfly, and Williftm Jamea to write it rather better (all
things considered) a. long while afterwards. Turning novelist
even, he pens the A dvertures of a Creole, the Life of Lady Erail,
and the History of Mr. Lovell.

By-and-by, however, Bardana Hill took a yet higher flight. Not
content with thus merely dabbling ia literature, the chrysalis of
the desk hurat forth at last respleiideiitjy ioto the butterfly of the
Quack-Phyaifian, basking in the daylight and the wailight alter-
nately, as a gay lounger, perfectly equipped in the airiest faahiona
then in vogue, Hia cane daintily clouded, his velvet coat richly
embroidered, his ■wrists and breast delicately ruffled with laee, his
peruke exquisitely crimped and powdered 1 His chariot rolls con-
tinually between Bedford Square and Sanelagh. He is such a
matchless economist of tlie twenty-four hours, that, in spite of all
his professional avocations, during an interval of many years, he
i» never once known to have missed a single public entertainment.
He is at every rout and ridotto. He flaunts among the " pleached
allies" and over the " amootli-shaven" lawns of the public gardens.
Conspicuous in hia box at the theatre, he there raiaes critical tur<
moils about him during the performances. Having judiciously
obtained his diploma betimes, from the college of St. .Andrew's
in Scotland, Bardana becomes further glorified by the King of
Sweden, who creates him Chevalier of the order of the Polar Star
of "Vasa. Whereupon^ forth cornea yet more lustrously the ever-
imperturbable and self-complacent Quack, styliiig himaelf— Sir
John Hill, Acad. Eeg. Scient. Burd. Soc. To which magical
hieroglyphic my amusing acquaintance, Smart, one of the small
poets of those times, facetiously alludes in his satiric volume,
entitled the Hilliad, wherein he says :

■Bardaaa Mi!} certainly came in for more ftiMv a ^evt smwt tobb
'«■ tie Anuckhs. What does Charles C\i\iici\^ stag (A\flsa.\a
JB^ybJe Boaciad ?~

BARDANA HILL — THE QUACK. 183

** With sleek appearance, and witli ambling paoe^
And, type of vacant head, with vacant face,
The Proteus Hill put in his modest plea, —
' Let favour speak for others, worth for me.*
For who, like him, his various powers could call
Into so many shapes, and shine in all ?
Who could so nobly grace the motley list-*
Actor, inspector, doctor, botanist ?
Knows any opte so well — sure no one knows-^
At once to play, prescribe, compound, compose ? '*

But then his own band was against eyerj other man's remorse-
lessly. And everybody knows bow proverbial wisdom saitb dog-
matically — Those who play at bowls must look out for rubbers,
Bubbers ! Sir John the Doctor had more than those to look out
for, as his wonderful serio-comic history relates. It is in most
significant allusion to this circumstance that the merciless Smart
puts into the mouth of a wretched Sybil the following very
ludicrous admonition:

" The chequered world 's before thee ; go, ferewell I
Beware of Irishmen, and learn to spell.**

This mysterious and remarkable warning having reference to an
irascible gentleman of the name of Browne (and of the nature of
Pat) who, irritated by some of the scandalous pleasantries of Sir
John, one fine afternoon thrashed him soundly with a cane upon
one of the lamplit gravel walks of Banelagh. More terrible, how-
ever, than even tbe scornful couplets of Srfjart, or the muscular
drubbings of Browne, there descended upon poor luckless Hill, the
stinging, derisive wit of Henry Fielding, a blighting shower of
sarcasms rained down upon him from the empyrean of his Covent
Oarden Journal. Even this Bardana Hill wantonly drew down
upon himself — doing so at the very time, moreover, when he was
being unmercifully belaboured by the lithe and flickering wand of
the then famous Harlequin, Woodward. Literary onslaughts of
a far more damaging description. Sir John doubtless often had to
endure, yet no assailant ever made more lively attacks upon his
matchless impudence than that same light-footed, merry-handed
Harlequin, Wood ward — one of whose paper-pellets directed against
this Quack of Quacks, still preserves a most agreeable reputation
as an exquisite specimen of sly and humorous banter.

Who can wonder, however, that Bardana Hill, havin^ra^aft^VNs^.'.
self thus conspicuously upon a pede»ta\o^m^^«t&Y^^^»^^c»^'^"^>'^^^
have there become the butt uponYi\i\c\i^«^^i«^^^'^^'^'^^^^^"^
sU tbe eying shafts of ridiciUe, pomt©^^Vftv\Xx^ ^^wd.^^.^^^

FOOTPRINTS ON THE HtH

with tbe wit of the wieest aa well as of the moBt whiniBical among
bJB many gifted contemporarieB ? Surely no one who baa ever
ventured to turn the leaves of bis scurrilous " Inspector," a perio-
dical paper, publisbed diurnally during two disgraceful years, by
Sir John Hill, in the columns of the London Daily Advertiser !
Simultaoeously with the production of which disreputable effu-
sion of Bpleen and effrontery, Sir John — wavering between his
old love, the stage, and his new love, litPrature — blossomed into
the miserablest straggling weed of a dramatist ever beard of !
Writing, besides an opera, called Orpbeus, two inane farces; one
entitled the Bout, and the other the Critical Minute ; farces so
execrably bad, that they never actually appear to have won for
themselves the shadowy glory of even being damned. It is in
allusion to these abortive efforts of the doctor as a playwrigbt,
that David Grarrick penned that cruel epigram : —

The epigrammatists of those days in fact had no compassion
whatever for Bardana Hill. Apoatrophisiug the arch- delinquent,
quoth one of them, with the fury of Scarron and the voice, one
might fancy, of Boanerges :

" Than essence of dock, of Tulerian, snd Boge,
At once tfae dis^trace and the \ient of this ttge ;
The wiirgt that we uisb th«e fur &11 tb; <i1e crimn
Jb tu take thy own physic and read thy own rhymes."

"WTiereupon anotber has thus unpityiugly as well as pithily
commented :

" The wish must he in form rcvEraed

To anit the doctor's orimeB ;

For if he lakes hia phyaic first,

Ha'U neier read hia rhymes."

Tet, for all this, I cannot but remember, and that too with a
sense of amuaeriicnt, that Sir John Hill had hia revenges! At
the period duiing which he may be said to have attained the
heyday of his lornines ; when, upon his rather doubtful escut-
cheon might at any rate have been emblazoned confidently the
one radiant device, Florescat j when be was rolling in his coach
/hi?ar coffee-house to conversazione, from drum to masi^uerade ;
nliea he was ecribblhig impertiuenciea about everything and
v^Z^^^' ''"■^ after day, in hia mendacioMa ani MTiyVjaXwi^^
"««"- ".TAe luapector; " when lie wua aeWicg Via i^iaiit meiia.-

K"

BARDANA HILL — THE QUACK. 185

ernes by the ton and by the hogshead — Sir John was perpetrat-
ing, for the entertainment of his own and subsequent generations,
some of the most extravagant and outrageous practical jokes
that ever waggish varlet adventured upon. This, moreover, when
be was making large as well as lucrative contributions to polite
and not . less to what may be called, with some show of reason,
unpolite literature ! Bealising by his pen fifteen hundred pounds
sterling in a single twelvemonth, a circumstance regarded, as
long afterwards as 1814, with bewildered astonishment by Mr.
Alexander Chalmers: "which sum*' saith that worthy in his
redoubtable Dictionary (to the amusement I can fancy of the Great
Unknown, if he. ever chanced to glance at the passage) " is, we
believe, at least three times as much as ever was made by any
one writer in the same period of time ! '*

It is scarcely to be supposed that the flourishing literary
physician made much by such a venture as his guinea quarto,
entitled " Thoughts concerning God and Nature " — undertaken
strangely enough by such a man (constituting, in truth, a re-
deeming trait in his character) as a labour of love, in answer to
the renowned treatise of Viscount Bolingbroke. The prodigious
sums acquired, so much to the admiration of Mr. Chalmers, came,
I should be disponed to conjecture, from sheer bookmaking, cun-
ningly applied : from such specimens of that handiwork of the
bookseller's hack, for example, as Sir John's two volumes of
fictitious Travels in the East, or, more probably stiU, from such
a work as that of which Hill is now universally reputed to have
been the author, according to an accepted tradition — Mrs. Glasse's
Cookery. A delectable composition, the one last mentioned, to
which mankind is (among other *' good things ") indebted for a
well-known and often relished little morsel of fun in regard to
the making of hare-soup — ** i'irst catch your hare." Speaking of
the popular belief, even then prevalent, that Dr. Hill wrote Mrs.
Glass© s Cookery book, is it not recorded in the Great Biography,
under date 1778, in the age of the Doctor sixty-nine, how John-
son, with his customary snort of indignation, as if somebody
had contradicted him (which nobody had), said, *' Well, sir, this
shows how luuch better the subject of cookery may be treated by
a philosopher ? "

^Favourably introduced to the notice of the more eminent
members of the Eoyai Society, first of all in 1746, by his then
recently published and ijigenious " Tre&t\&^ \r^<^\i ^^asj«»V ^^'^^
the Greek of Tiieophrastus, Bardaii«^ HiW ^xxiiv^'^^ '^'^^^ '^'^
£re yeare Afterwards for the credu\\t,^ ^SxV VoSs^ ^"^^^s
unwittingly admitted him to tlie priwVega <i^ ^^«^ \\vb^

rOOTPBISTS 05 THE BOAD,

end certainly, it must be admitted, punisbed tbnm for tbis rery
cruelly. His atrabilious insolence, arisiog at Ibe time simply
out of tbeir not altogether unnatural reluctance to welcorae
the clever charlatan formally amongst themselves. Sir John
liappening then, among bis other miscellaneous arocations, to
be engaged, in conjunction with one Mr. Seott^ F.E.S., in com-
piling the Supplement to Chambere's Dictionary, endeavoured
by one niasterBtroke to gratify his own vanity and the wishes of
his publiahere, by having the magical iuitials affixed to bis own
name also upon the title-page. Knrdly can it be re^nrded as in
aoy way surprising that Martin Folkes, then president of the
Boyal Society, friend and successor of Isaac Newton, should have
failed to obtain in Hill's behalf, three signatures to enforce, or
indorse, bia own generous recomniendatiou. However this may
be, so the event proved. The application was wholly inoperative.
And, thereupon, away to the winds of heaven were scattered pell-
mell, helter-skelter, by the unhesitating hand of Dr. Hill, all the
amenities, all the decencies, all the proprieties, of society, of
science, of philosophy, of literature. His sarcasms were squan-
dered abroad indiacriminately. Even Martin Folkes, ataunchest
of kindly supporters, passed not unscathed. All the scientific
collectors were jeered at, in succession. The Antiquarian Society
had ita members derided as medal-scrapers and antediluvian koife-
grinders. The conchologists were depicted as cockle-shell mer-
chantri. The naturalists were described as recording pompous
htstories of sticklebacks and cockchafers. One of the foremost
of then living entomologists, Henry Baker, was represented u
the ridiculous aspect of a person displaying the peristaltic motion
of the bowels in a louse, by the aid of the microscope! Our
doctorial Pasquin, or Quack Juvenal, playing off these fantastic
tricks of hia ogainst the learned, variously, under liis own name,
utider a false name, at times even, and these pretty frequent
times, it should be said, quite anonymously. Among tbe
pseudonvms of Dr. Hill in this way, were the purely imaginary
ones of i)r. Crine and Dr. Uveduile.

But, where he acquitted himself, beyond a doubt, the mosi

effectively, was in his grand attack upon the Eoyai Society, by

which he conceived himself to have been the moat shamefully

aggrieved. It was an attack that commenced with a humoroua

prose satire of Hill's, entitled Dissertation on Boyal Societies,

in a letter (to hiB fiiend) from a, Sclavonian Nobleman. This

peaductioa wrb rapidly followed up \)j a ^QuAeTO"aB (quarto

To/uwe, in external apnenrance and mternnV amLT\?,avQftB.t && ^Swk

^^o peaa to a. volamti of the Pkiloaop^iwaV 'itB.°awi'«^«°"" "^"^

BARDANA HILL — THE QUACK, 187

name of the second and, in every respect, far weightier
sarcasn), being simply, A Beview of the Eoyal Society, in Eight
Parts : several of the divisions being suggestive, in the midst
of all their facetious absurdities (as in the instance of the
proposed plan for forming a Hortus Siccus), of considerable, and
some of it really valuable information. The crowning vengeance
of all, however, wreaked by this unconscionable and relentless
Quack upon the Eoyal Society, its Members, and its President,
found vent in one of those roystering pleasantries called practical
jokes — the richest hoax, perhaps, that was ever played off upon a
solemn council of grave and reverend seigneurs. Better far than
the daintiest tidbit of a canard ever swallowed by the most in-
satiable and the least incredulous yo5^9nof^^0.^ Possibly, we might
say, all things considered, the most audacious known specimen
of grave-faced impudence on the part of the 'actual trickster,
and of all-believing simplicity on the part of those who were by
this cruel waggery so remorselessly victimized. Happily for us,
Horace Walpole has told the tale, and told it too with in-
imitable piquancy, in one of the drollest fragments of his motley
and voluminous correspondence. Yet, the pleasantest version of
it, perhaps, because the one marked by the most fantastically
punctilious particularity in regard to the details, is the narra-
tive of it given by Sir John HilPs historian in the Biographie
TJniverselle.

It happened, then, let it be said, in the thick of Bardana
Hill's squabbles with the Boyal Society, that much was daily
talked in society and printed in the newspapers, about the mar-
vellous cures effected by the employment of tar-water, eau de
gaudron. One morning the postal delivery from the provinces
Drought to the Secretary of tne Eoyal Society a letter addressed
to him in his official capacity by a certain so-called medical
.practitioner at Portsmouth. The communication related how the
writer of it had recently had confided to his care a poor sailor,
whose leg had been broken by a fall from the mast-head. The
Secretary was further informed by his correspondent that, having
brought the broken parts tofi;ether and properly adjusted them
by means of bandages, the writer had then carefully bathed them
with tar- water — and such, continued the Portsmouth physician,
had been the miraculous effect already produced by the appli-
cation, that within a few days, the sailor had been enabled to
use his leg as well as he had ever \iaed \Vi \ie,^Qt^ >i>cift ^^^^^sssis*
At the very next meeting of the BLo^^X ^o^iSfeVj ^vs» ^^s^w:^
able document was submitted to ita coii»\^«t^>sv^'0'» J

formally read to the assembly, tlie reaftm^ oi \\. «^» ^'^'^'^ ^

188 MOTPBDITB OS THE BOAD.

riae to on animated discuesioii, whit-h, we are informed by contem-
porary authorities, «aa yet in active progresa when another letter,
Btumped with the Portsmouth postmark, was dflivereil into the
hands of the Secretary. A letter, thia was, in which the imaginary
doctor informed the Boyal Society that he had Diiiitted to mention
one trifling circumstance in connection with the cure: namely,
that the Bailor's leg was a wooden leg !

Bardana Uill, Sir John, Dr, Urine, Dr. Uvedaile, call him what:
you will — for he, of course, waa this same wicked, hypothetical,
aea-Bide E'cuJapiua — waa indeed avenged. And the revelation of
the riiirculoua incident hy which he had thus contrived to wreak
Ids vengeance, was very naturally welcomed by the people of
those days with explosions of laughter.

DOUGLAS JEEROLD— THE WIT.

P0PTJLA.B — ^in the more genial acceptation of the word —
Douglas Jerrold is not, although his writings have acquired for him
a rather extended reputatioii. The treason of this, moreover, is
sufficiently apparent. His sarcasm has overlaid his philanthropy.
But then, agam, in simple justice it should be added, his wit has
redeemed his sarcasm. In the display of his abilities as a satirist,
we cannot but think, indeed, that Douglas Jerrold inadvertently,
though still effectually, acted as his own traducer. By a per<<
petual play of irony throughout his compositions, he almost
invariably extorted applause, if he did not always succeed in
winning admiration. The cynical chord in his nature was to
him what the one string was to Faganini. He made it laugh and
sing. He told stories with it. He compelled it to talk in dia*
logue. He rendered it at pleasure, tragical, or gay, or pathetio,
or gi^otesque — all like Faganini. FeopTe wondered so long at
the miraculous skill of his performances upon that one chord
that they forgot his adroitness upon all others ; they forgot the
genius, the artistic genius, he so often displayed otherwise.
They forgot that his hand had ever strung, with the subtle aud
delicate touch of a master, the golden lyre of their heart-strings
• — calling forth, with the aeolian breath of passion, the exquisitely
responsive music of their vibrations. Jerrold, in truth, more than
once accomplished that noblest of all successes in authorship.
Satirist though he pre-eminently was — he could occasionally, in
his capacity as a dramatist, achieve the triumph attributed to the
comedian Munden in his more serious moments — he could make,
he has made, the pulse of a whole house beat like that of one
man. Bemembering this, and remembering still more, that thj%
abilities of Douglas Jerrold have without ^tf5«:c^^^ «dl w^k^^"^^
even when apparently the most sim^teT «ii^ \)aft \!Dlo^^\.^«c«s^^'^'^'^
been directed witb a generouB and bexve^kftftXiXi "\\Afe\iNAss^>^*^ ^^'^
commend him as one speakiug to tlie crawdL ^V&V ^ ^^"^^^ "^^

F00TPH1NT8 ON THE BOAD.

shrewd and searching, but harmonious withal, and most per-
Buasive ; inculcuting, witli a strange and variable eloquence, truths
quaint, and solemn, and tender, and faotsatic, and beautiful.
According to his own suggeatioD, be may be likened to the hedge-
hogs of Plutarch, which, after shaking the autumnal vinea, roll
themaelTCB ingeniously to and fro among the fallen fruit, collect-
ing the grapes on their prickles and creeping off like a " walking
cluster" to yield their young, even from their own bristling
ugliness, a saccharine and delicious nourishment. The illustration
is decidedly more complimeDtary to hia writings than to himself;
and even supposing we were to accept it as strictly applicable,
WB doubt whether we could ever be induced, like Cajjatick, to
christen our favourite — Velvet. Hie style is flavoured bo poig-
nantly with bitterness, that its intermittent sweetness, ruciuess,
and mellowness are not very easily to be distiuguiehed, and are
certainly not very generally appreciated. Bitterness is without
doubt the pervading quality, but it is a bitterness whoiesome ia
its application — it is the tonic of our light literature.

Conspicuous among the influential writers of his age, Douglas
Jerrold attained that position of eminence by a career of more
than usual industry and perseverance. During a considerable
time, at the outset he had to struggle hard for every separate
rung on the ladder of Fortune. That ladder which be himself
likened sardonically in a parenthesis to the celestial ladder of
Jacob in the wilderness : that ladder which affords the climber
immediately above you such delightful facilities to trample upon
your fingers ! Jerrold, the future novelist, dramatist, satirist,
joumaliHt, began hia draught of experience with a taste, a briny,
reliBiiiug taaCe, of sea life as a mioBhipman. Had he persevered
in that flrst venture, he might possibly never have riaen above
the level of professioual mediocrity. The middy's " curse" hap-
pily dropped from him, thanks to the singularly original mind
lurking uuder the golddaced cap of the boy-reefer. Sheerness wai»^
ibe birthplace (in 18U5) of Douglas Jerrold. Hence, possibly, his
selection of "Black-Eyed Susan" as the subject of one of his
earliest dramatic productions, very shortly after hia ariival in the
metropolis as an intellectual adventurer seeking his fortunes in the
"fresh fields and pastures (ever) new" of literature. Uia thea-
trical tastes must, likewise, in some measure be attributed to the
recollections of childhood, acquired in the establishment of bis
Atherasa maaager. As a dramaliat, far more tiian as a novelist, his
Jabotuv were sivgularly varied and asBiduoua, Besides the maiden
^roduotJon already mejjtioned, he brougivt oiwie mova qb. \a -tV*
^0, the comely form aud romautie -siciaaauiea oS. "^ ''■

DOUGLAS JERROLD — ^THE WIT. 191

Gwynnei" constraming gods and groundlings to roar with merri-
ment at the irresistible ridiculousness of Keelej as Orange Moll.
The most brilliant achievement of this early period in his history,
however, was the domestic drama in two acts, in which he painted
" The Bent Day" no less vividly, certainly no less truthfully, to
nature than David Wilkie ; revealing for the first time that
mastery over the emotions, the continued advancement of whicK
he afterwards so repeatedly demonstrated. Here it was, according
to a pleasant anecdote familiar to the ana both of art and letters,
that upon the first night of its performance, there met behind
the scenes of that Londou playhouse, in the characters respec-
tively of scene painter and dramatist — ^both, even then, win-
ning their way towards celebrity — two young adventurers who
had encountered previously when middies in the Boyal Navy,
Douglas Jerrold and Clarkson Stanfield. Later on, and when
matured in skill by practice, the young dramatist brought out his
comedy of " The Schoolfellow," and still later another domestic
drama (represented long afterwards before her Majesty and the
Court at Windsor Castle), the charming drama well-known as
" The Housekeeper." Besides a humorous piece, in three acts,
entitled ^* Betired from Business," he contributed four successful
comedies to our dramatic literature — " The Catspaw," a designa-
tion of itself sufficiently suggestive to render its satirical purpose
apparent; "The Prisoner of War," representing society as it
appeared at the commencement of the present century, during
the supremacy of Napoleon ; " The Bubbles of a Day," in some
respects the happiest of all these productions ; and a work no less
brilliantly characterised by the wit and vivacity of its dialogue,
" Time works Wonders." By the two last mentioned, more pro-
bably than by any other of his compositions, the author's reputation
may be perpetuated.

It was by industry elsewhere than behind the scenes of a
theatre, however, that Douglas Jerrold rose to distinction among
bis contemporaries. A series of grotesque sketches, originally
issued in " Blackwood's Magazine," were subsequently collected
for separate publication. The essayist merged into the romancer.
The copyist became the creator. The mere periodical contributor
developed into the novelist. As an intermediate step in the
process of this development, the fanciful papers just mentioned
as originally inserted, of course anonymously in Maga were, after
a while, acknowledged in their aggregate, aa t!\<^^^ ^^^«vi.\»^^i&SsM^^
champions of misfortune, the " Men oi OViatwiWtr ^cras^^^s^
ingenuity waa here displayed "by t\i© ^T\\*«t, Va \>aft ^^"^^"^^^^
of several among those same eccentxvi i\axt«b\AH«i^* ^si. ^si%

FOOTPRCCTS OS THE BOAD.

which erideDced itaelf no less in the tangliiig and traraTvUing of
the piotB than in the diferimination cf the TuiouE immg^narj per-
»onaa>fl introduced. The longest of sD, for ezunple, the fajstory
of John Applejohn, irrin^D, b;* the w»r, as an addeudam to those
actuallrpubiished in the MagoiiDe, comprised a diremtv of vid»-
Fitades sufficient slmost of tbenjaelTes to have furnished an addi-
' tional series of episodes for a eotitiauation to " Gil Bias," It
was in his delineation here of that creature of accidents, tha
unfortDnate " Man Who Meant Well," that the writer comnie-
norated the eitraTagant freaks and nocturnal eccentricitiea then
netting the town by the ears, the Master of Misrule in which
Tagnrits was the wild Toung Marquess of Waterford. Few,
moreover, of those who have ever read the moving record of the
calamitiee therein depicted, will be likely to have lost a recollec-
tion of the eontrttemp* by which the soul and body of Adam
Buff were agonized, what though he was, in the truest sense of
the word, a philosopher. But then — if a philosopher, a philo-
sopher " Without a Sbirt ;" and Democritus himself, we might
conjecture, could scarcely have preserved his hilaritr under
similar circumstances, without the aid of his laundress. Matthew
Clear, the gentleman who " Saw Hia War," rerciods one in-
stinctively of the " Vert- Vert," of Greaset, in relation to tliab
scurrilous old dowager of a parrot who celebrated every matri-

tnouial tiff with the ejaculation " Hooked again, by ! " Job

Pipping, the " Man Who Couldn't Help It," unlike his associate
Buff, it may be remembered, has just a shirt too many, con-
sidering its delicate texture and still more delicate consequences.
Job Pippins' courtship of Agues Candy, at the moment when his
very identity seems merging, like that of Rip Van Winkle, into
the identity of" somebody el^e," imparts an exquisitely ludicrous
fascination to the atorj-, a fasi-ination that lasts unabated until
the close of the narrative. Jack Bunnymede, again, the " Man
of Many Thanks," admirably well impersonates the folly of that
home-bred enthusiasm which is too frequently engendered by
loyalty and stupidity in the brains of your more hopelessly duU
and pig-headed politicians. It conveys, moreover, a very whole-
some lesson ; one not less wholesome, we would add, of its kind
thou may be found otherwise inculcated by the memoir of Bamaby
Palma, that sycophant of ajcophants, who "Felt his Way" so
adroitly as to lose a bag of gold for a rotten egg, the wretch
>rAo fumbled down stairs in the dark on the very night of his
asarriage. ChriBtojibtr Snubb, likewise, ^W ia w>Tis\iw«i\i'3 \na
o^Shboura as infaJlibly " Born to be Tiauged," *\uto>ivice* m% mi
S&fiout^e of his ujiinerited sufferings, to feose maivvmia

DOUGLAS JEKROLD — THE WIT. 193

already rendered familiar to the readers of English fiction by the
pen of Smollett, scenes which Jerrold was enabled to delineate
afresh with admirable vivacity, deriving his inspiration, as he did,
from his own personal recollections. As the closing chapter in
these fantastic annals of calamity, came the curious old story of
Cresco Quattrino, the " Man who Died Eich," making the reader
whimsically acquainted thenceforth with that " Stone of Infamy"
at Padua which, we are told, more readily relieved the " squatter"
from his creditors than the court of bankruptcy, and which, more-
over, by reason of its so doing, while it immeasurably surpasses
the blarney stone in sophistry, reduces the philosopher's stone
as a source of opulence to the merest pebble by comparison.

Rescued from the anonymous in one quarter by the republica-
tion of his contributions to " Blackwood," Douglas Jerrold in
1843- began to extend his influence as a public writer, more espe-
cially as a sarcastic humourist, by his connection with " Punch,"
as one of its principal contributors. Through its exhilarating
pages he commanded at once a very numerous audience, an
audience moreover which the raciness of his wit contributed,
hardly less than the inimitable pictorial fun of Leech, to increase
with wonderful rapidity. " Punch's Letters to his Son," replete
with pungent sarcasm and sparkling throughout with facetious-
ness, revealed in a new light those poignant and trenchant powers
of his, as an observant and uncompromising satirist, which were
yet further developed by " Punch's Complete Letter Writer."
Besides these two sly and laughter-moving serials, he wrote, in
the same periodical, his charming " Story of a Eeather," in
which — nodding through the dus^ mazes of life in London,
saturated with tears and shaken by laughter — the plume of an
ostrich recounts (of course with its quill-end) its autobiography.
Simple though the story is in its character, it comprises within
its compass all imaginable phases of society; from Shadrach
Jacobs the Jew dealer-in-stores, to Mr. Inglewood the clergy-
man; from Jack Lipscomb the sailor, to Mr. Lintley the
apothecary ; from Mr. Flamingo the Court-feather merchant, to
Mr. Julius Curlwell the valet of my Lord Huntingtopper — nay,
from the squalid Jessy to the beautiful Countess Blushrose.
Among the more eccentric passages of this fiction, the readers
of it can scarcely by possibility forget the cynical anecdote about
the pineapples at Flamingo's dessert, or the c^5ixi\i\^ \.<2i\^ '^^'^sr^
of the scarlet-heeled shoe. Any more tti%xi >utkvi^ c»x:^^^^ ^'^sw^^
lose a remembrance of that incompara\Ao »^K^^\iGe> ^^S. ^^^^^'^^
the principal personage engaaed in ^\ive\i ^a ^^'^^^ v\^ ^
Almost as dreadful a creation ia Yier via^ «ka ^i^CL^ ^^ox\^ ^

194 tOOTPHINTS OS THE BOAD.

drake of Farquhar. Subordinate thougli several of the otlier
character are, even these are occaaionally pencilled with toochea
of such inimitable cleverneea, that thej start to vievr &s viaibly
rounded by an outline aa the marvellous limnings from the penciJ
of Moritz Betzch. Such are Mra. Crumpet the lodginghouB©-
keeper, and Clickly Abram the highwayman, Such too are
grotesque little Monsieur Spanneu and honest Luke Knuckle —
no lesa than surly old Traply the turnkey of Newgate and those
excellent simple minded Misses Peachick, who are a sort of Sisters
Cheeryble, these last mentioned personages in the story bearing
alao a faint family resemblance to the Misses Spenlow, the little
birdlike aunts of the " Child-Wife" of David Copperfield. " Best
beautiful,'' however, among all the more really loveable characters
ia this charming narrative is poor dear little Patty Butler the
Feather Dresser — she whose very name is somehow endeared to
us by the tender recollections of childhood, associated as that
name is with a little nursery tale almost equalling in our loving
estimation of it the charms of "The "White Chicken," a wee little
story to wit, bight " Patty Primrose," a little story stitched in a
yellow cover, the very golden crocus for us among the flowers of
fiction. The purity, the sweetness, the long-suffering equanimity
of Patty Butler invest the motley chapters of the narrative,
indeed, at times with a moat bewitching interest — a narrative,
moreover, in which the grotesque and the terrible are occasionally
blended in a sorb of tragic extravaganza, as at that awful but
ridiculous death-bed of Cramp the Cardmaker. More successful
than the series of papers here mentioned, more successful perhaps
than any other of the serial contributions that have ever appeared
in " Punch," beyond all manner of doubt in some respects the
happiest effort of his peculiar powers as a satirical humorist,
" Sirs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures," may be said to have set the
seal to our author's reputation. It was, in the popular accepta-
tion of the term, "a veritable hit," and that, too, a hit of the
moat unmistakably telling character. Nor, for that matter, can
this be in any way wondered at — remarking how nearly the
matter therein descanted upon came home, according to Lord
Bacon's phrase, to " men's buainesse and bosomes." Came home
thus dirtctly through those lectures delivered by Mrs. Caudlo
from her nightly platform of the palliasse — those thirty-aii
)fctures of which, with ali possible respect for the memory
o/ that "sainted creature," that " angel now in heaven," we
^s fain to speak as — those three doieu ttom tt\e i<Maeatic cat,
^aju/ti/stered, not at the triangle but at t\xe £oMv-'^a\.M,wiwi.'^*
^j^d shouJiit^ra of poor suffering 3ob. "Vi vt\im. ^Ve^a wi-swiij

DOUGLAS JBRROLD— THE WIT. 195

thirty solemn prelections from the bed-clothes, how much indeed
of genuine domestic grieyances has there not been recorded,
from the first peccadillos of Caudle, when he begins ^* quarrelling
with the doormat " on returning from a carouse, to his clearly
demonstrated profligacy in regard to the consumption of whisky
and tobacco : nrom his timid intercession in behalf of the servant
girl to his full-blown flirtation with Miss Prettyman. '' There
was a time," exclaims Mrs. Caudle in her third lecture, '^ when
you were as regular at your fireside as the kettle." One sympa-
thises almost with her regrets for the lost time of their Arcadian
honeymoon in Bloomsbury. It certainly required a genius like
that of Mrs. Caudle to make as much as she does of incidents
like the Loan of the Family Umbrella, the Smashing of a Piece
of Crockery, the Appearance of Black Beetles in the Front
Parlour, or the suggestion of an Autumnal Trip to Margate.
Her capacity for the expansion of the triyial into the important
remains altogether unparalleled, excepting, perhaps, by Caleb
Balderstone. She could expatiate, for example, over a New
Bonnet until it assumed a dignity hardly less distinguished than
that belonging to the Helmet of Cassandra ; and she could do
this, moreover, with as much fluency of imaginative comment as
might have been displayed by the steward of Eavenswood when
panegyrising a pint of sour wine in a broken pitcher until it
appeared to become invested with the yalue of a whole biu-f uU of
the choicest Burgundy. Humorous as the Curtain Lectures are
for the m6st part, one of them nevertheless closes with a gush of
tenderness so exquisitely true to nature, as to be irresistible in
its abrupt pathos. Allusion being here made to the unexpected
discovery that "Brother Tom," after all, is the friend whom
Caudle has rescued from the spunging-house. Bepeated essays
were made by Jerrold, upon the completion of these inimitable
papers, to produce another series in " Punch," such as might
happily attain for themselves a kindred popularity — the attempt
in each instance, however, proving signally unsuccessful. " Mrs.
Bib's Baby," for example, after giving terrible promise of degene-
rating into a " crying nuisance," was, by a kindly after-thought,
abandoned as precipitately as though it had been a foundling.
''Miss Benimbie*s Tea and Toast," again, earning by its early
dose as a serial a right rather to the title of " Tea and Turn
Out." Yet, notwithstanding these occasional failures, Douglas
Jerrold was certainly never "greater" tt^wn ^wVi'few V^ -^^^^x.^Ss^
' Punch." There, as with Johu LeecV % ^t . ^t\%%^ ^\^^^ ^^^
1 Scotland during August, his iooti ^aa oaVi^a^^^^^'^^^'*^^'^
9 name Macgregor,

196 FOOTPBIHTa ON THE BOAD.

Apart from " Puncli," however, Jerrold often displayed remitrk-
able powers both as a humorist and aa a satirist — his " Chronicles
of Clovemook," reyealing under a more genial aspect the aweet-
nesB of hia quaint, yet, often, sardonic philosophy. The nettle,
in the midst of its stinging leaves, yielding blossoms laden with,
honey and fragrance. It was in these same Chronicles that the
world obtained " some account of the Hermit of Bellyful " — -
the cordial and convivial record of his jovial saintahip embellishing
with the pen of Douglas Jerrold and the pencil of Kenny
MeadowH the pleasant pages of the once popular " Illuminated
Wagazine," ^fter conducting that periodical for some months,
our author adventured upon another publication, called after
himself, and especially notable in its way, we believe, as the first
of the ShiUing Magazines, Beaides editing its miscellaneous
contents, he brought out in ita pages, accompanied by the cha-
racterietic etchings of John Leech, his story of " St. Gilea and
St. ■TaTnes" — in many respects his masterpiece. Previously he
had been culling the blossoms — he was now gathering in the
ripened fruits at once of his esperience in authorcraft and of his
cultivated imagination. In this — like the agriculturist in the
Greorgica — plucking the roses in the spring and the applea in the

It ia more particularly through the pages of this fiction, " St. Qiles
and St. James," that Jerrold may be said to have vindicated
himself from the charge of having pitted class against class, by
representing the rich as criminal and the poor as virtuous.
According to the impreeaion still entertained by many, such is
the tendency of his writiuga that Honest Labour la through them
taught to regard Decent Apparel as the disguise of Depravity —
every alternate page shining as with the reflei of the Tranafi-
guration of Indigence. Here it ia, in truth, that we regard
Jerrold as suffering undeservedly from tJie consequences of a
popular miaapprehenaiuu of the benignant biaa ot hia philau-
thropy. Hai'dly leas cordially than Charles Dickens, he could
discern beauty under rngs, and virtue hidden away in the
rookeries. But, unhappily for bimaell', unlike Dickens, Jerrold
could never warm his imaginary pictures into colour and life
with the glow of a genius as aponianeous and genial as O-od's
auashine from Heaven. Master, aa Jerrold was, of all the " quipa
and crania " of the eatirist, he could not leaiaX. occusiunally in-
dujging himRelf in the Juiuryof girding at s(ime^\t\ei^B\a^iS,-^ — ■
VB^iagthe couch of XHveawitli poison, ■viXiaeatTe-sw^'oVQasatia:

DOUGLAS JBBBOLD— THE WIT, ' 197

at the foot of Lazarus. Hence, indeed, the distorted estimate of
his philosophy. Of the inaccuracy and injustice of that estimate
we take " St. Giles and St. James" to be signally demonstrative,
and we would here consequently commend it with all earnestness
to those who, according to the conjecture of our, author himself,
are fain to cry Aloes! Aloes! even when his pen may be dropping
Myrrh and Frankincense. True, even here they may find Becky
represented as gentle and loveable, although no more than a
humble barmaid at the '* Lamb and Star,** while Crossbone carries
a black heart as well as a gold-headed malacca in his chariot, as a
Mayfair physician. But, on the other hand, it must be confessed
that Saint Giles, and his half-brother little Jingo, do no very
great credit to the back slums of the metropolis ; while, in behalf
of Saint James, lapped though he is in velvet luxuries from his
infancy, and ofibpnng though he happens to be of a Marchioness,
the writer enlists from the very outset the reader's cordial sym-
pathies. Eemembering which contrast, surely it may be argued
that it looks very unlike maligning the peer and eulogising the
pauper. The accusation, indeed, results from nothing more
than the distortion of a merit into a demerit — Jerrold being
at all times as ready to censure evil among patricians as he is
eager to declare himself the foe to whatever is infamous among
the dregs of the population. Beautiful testimonies of his love
for the labouring classes may be found in Bright Jem and his

^ better-half, kind-hearted Mrs. Aniseed. And, rising yet a little
higher in the social scale, lo ! does there not come forth Capstick
the Muffin-maker — great in Seven Dials when he exclaims ** Cry
muffins and be happy ! " — greater still when retired, like a Chris-
tianised Diogenes, to The Tub — greatest of all when astounding
his faithful squire by his benevolent eccentricities as the Member
for the borough of Liquorish. Capstick — by far the happiest
among the creations of Jerrold — affords, in truth, an admirable
illustration of his own character in literature. His heart rugged
as a cocoa-nut, but brimming over with the milk of human
kindness ! Crabbed in speech, but gentlest of the gentle in the
sentiments he utters and the truths he inculcates ! Cynical in
manner, yet every vein throbbing with benevolence ! That most
precious of all diamonds in the rough — a surly, large-handed
philanthropist I There is indeed a subtle reference to the real
softness and apparent roughness of the nature of Capstick in Lk
congenial pet — Velvet the Hedgehog, ^xaou^ "0^^ \ss>5isst ^$>cssta-
racters introduced into the story, coiraxiexi^ m% Ya^*Ottfc>^ ^«^^w
wajrs to Mrs. Simmer, who carriea \ier cWty^i ^'^^^^^'^e*^^^!!^

of dotage, and to Mr. Polder, wboae ^xoloux^Oi\^o\sia%^vox^

I

rOOTPMNTS ON THK KOAD.

degenerateB into ataolute syeoplianey. Perhaps about the drollest
in the narrative is that recounting the courtship of Kitty
and Cieaar <Juin, the African footman, of whom it is so
iglitfully remarked " that love turned ebony into ivory."
len, however, the noveliat is here apeaking of the negro bb
1 objectionable bladtness, a human blot, an ignominious stain,"
we canuot but think he had ud consciously floating io his remem-
brance that esquisite senlence in Elia, wherein (it ia in hia essay
in Praise of Chimney Sweepers) Charles Lamb designates the littlo
olimbing-boya — " dull specks, poor blots, jncocent blacknesses."
Pulpit-orator has seldom preached a nobler homily against mam-
mon-worship than is conveyed through Tangle's dream about tha
chest of gold, with every coin a cherub, a very swarm of
beea filling the chamber with a hummiug sound ! No, not even
the godly Doctor Gilead himself, with his bins of choice
Madeira, and his poad-fuU of carp, and his library consist-
ing of volumes "bound in truly pastoral vellum," aud written
[by departed ecclesiastics — " the Eloquent Dumb, the Great
tForgotten, the Illustrious Dim, the Folio Furniture ! " What-
■ipTer chapters in the novel relate to the melodramatic murder in
Cow Meadovr, we should be disposed to regard as altogether
unendurable but that tliey are introductory to the household of
Ebenezer Snipeton at the Dovesnest. There, it is, tliat we first
become acquainted with hia wife — the heroine of the tale —
Clarissa. Although the termination of the atory is almost aa
confused aa the close of " Hamlet," the plot of the narrative,
regarded aa a whole, displays an indisputable advauce upon its
predecessors. Several of the incidents are described with an irre-
sistible appreciation of the humorous, such, for example, as that
of the election, presided over by those implacable rivals. Flay and
Hasp, the barber- politicians. Here, more especially, perhaps, than
in any other of his productions, Jerrold has administered those
bitter but wholesome pillules of truth which, although occasionally
gilded with wit, are more frequently pungeut with the acrid flavour
peculiar to such anodynes of morality. Almost as nnpalatabie
they are, doubtless, aa any bolus recommended by " the faculty,"
the true medicine of the intellect, the ^;[iji lorpfioj-— yet ia it
impOBsible to deny the beneficial influence of their dissemination,
whether through the columns of " Punch," or through the scarcely
/^.s^/io/JuJar pages of the novelist. If for nothing elae, they would
ie entitled to our admiration as diametrically opposed to the
-njo.s/ pernioioua maxims of the time, \^\dbb o^ t'aei m^'^ftvialM.t*,^
" d the (na Dim on -irorshipperB — tbe lucri boniw odor ex tb qxuilftrt^
■ a/I those principles of speculation an\u.u\v aie ^ii 'iait mq "•'«■

^^u

oiples at all, — principles which John Law himself might have
plagiarised from Vespasiau.

In addition to the works already enumerated, Douglas Jerrold
contributed at intervak to his own magazinea, as well aa to other
periodicals, a variety of iniscellaneoua papers which aoinetimes, in
the serial form, extended to substantial volumes on their eventual
republication ; such volumes, for eiample, as the miscellany called
"Cakes and Ale," or that eccentric and half-diabolic pliantasy
known as " The Man. made of Money." There were, beaidea
these, several minor contributions of his to the current light
literature, sketches, for example, such as that story of " The Sick
Giani and the Doctor Dwarf," recounting the histories of Ziia
and Bakkuk, fugitive pieces that served to illustrate the versa-
tility of his style, if they tended hut indifferently to enhance
his reputation. Twice in his career he adventured upon the
difficult path of joumaiism, once by conducting a weekly organ
called after himself, afterwards by undertaking the editorship of a
cheap periodical of extensive ciccuktion. It was in the former
publication, namely, iu " Douglas Jerrold'a Weekly Newspaper,"
that he issued for a while, in instalments, a collection ot quaint
and cutting sarcasms on the events of the week, bight *' The
Barber's Chair" — a chair presided over alternately, one might
fancy, by Kasp, tlie barber- politician of Liquoriah, and by Jasmin,
the barber-poet of Languedoc.

A little volume appeared some few years back, we remember,
dedicated emphatically to Douglas Jerrold, as " to the greatest wit
of bis age." And the dedicatiun, ultra-eu logistic though it might
appear, was, after all, hardly anything of an extravagance.
"Without regarding him in this particular aa altogether beyond
the pick of the greut wits who were his contemporaries — beyond,
let us say, Sydney Smith and Samuel Eogers — we would never-
theless undertake to iUustrate, and that too very copiously from
his writings, hia claim to the title not only of a wit, but of a wit
of the very highest distinction. For exquisite grace and aptitude
of expression — for that cariosaJelicUag verborum which is as dis-
cernible in true wit aa iu true poetry — he possessed, indeed, a
really aatonishing aptitude i as, lor example, wliere he calls a
garden " a beautiful book vtrit by God," wherein " every flower
and every leaf'a a letter." To this peculiar genius, moreover, .|
everything seemed to be suggestive of thoughta capable of beiusj. ;
" bodied forth " jn, brilliant savinga. BMteuaess. ^oii.^i.'i^'^-^-^i.'B^
were alike to him. He qduU od-iVj eia&\ia.W, ^fi\S* -o^vis.vi^«^
the wild^rneaa, "bow few the v'aAs ia^a m-«V\cV<Sia^^,^ ^

a Arabia Petrica have the luivvig ot a.te'aYa'*^^^ "'^

in a, wholly difFerent mooc), when brooding over tlie ricJiness of
the AuBtralian soil, vividly indicate the eicess of ita fertility by
Bverring that " you have only to tickle it with n lioe and it Uugha
into harveBts." Nothing, again, conld surely be happier than hie
inimitable definition of Dogmntiam aa " Puppyism arrived at a
state of maturity ! " Democritna ie not alwajB, however, hia
favourite philnaopher: he could weep when he listed (and when
the occasion hade) with Heraelitus. At such moments his ideas
are often surpassed in their loveliness by their solemnity. How
grand and br'autiful, for example, is that ejaculation in the work
we have called his masterpiece, where musing over a skull, as
Hamlet mused over the skull of Torick, he writes (cb. i^vii.),
" the cheekhones look still puckered with a smile, aa though con-
tracted, when it flung aside the mask of life, and caught a glimpse
of the on-coming glory !" It was of the man who could think thus
nobly, and not of the satirist with the pen of iron and the ink of
vitriol, that Henry Mayhew must have thought when imprinting
on the flyleaf of his " London Labour and the London Poop"
these words of affectionate friendship — "This book is dedicated to
Douglas Jerrold, whom, knowing most intimately, the author has
learnt to love and honour most profoundly." Nevertheless, a con-
siderable number of his contemporaries failed altogether to appre-
ciate those more amiable and less obtrusive characteristics of hia
style, his geniality and his sensibility — not detecting the subtle
sweetness through the dominant acidity of that good old English
Hippocras. These, if they chanced to pass him unknowingly in the
crowded streets of London — streets trodden from age to age by the
genius of England — would have failed as entirely to perceive
the energy lurking in that feeble rather Ihan athletic frame; to
discover the grotesque and Puck-Jike spirit looking through those
keen light eyes; to discern, in fine, the ineshaustihle vivacity
hidden under that apparently serene and, at moments, almost
sedate demeanour. Even yet, Douglas Jerrold is, we cannot but
think, only half appreciated. If but dimly and douhtingly scanned -
by others, he himself throughout life regarded with a more obser-
vant glance and a more penetrant |)erce[)tivity the motley crowd
of his fellow-authors. His capacities in this way stood him
in greater stead than the wand placed at the disposal of Don
Cleophas Peran de Zanibulo. More effectually than the crutch
of Asmodeus, hia pen could strip off the roof-tops of the city,
mad, far more than thatj could probe the wounds and lay bare the
Jiearte of the citizens.

k

EDMUND WALLER— THE COURT POET.

■♦ ■>

That accomplished gentleman and elegant poet, Mr. Edmund
Waller, of Beaconafield — Member of Paniament for the borough
of Agmondesham, courtier, wit and orator, man of wealth and
man of fashion^— loved and sang, upwards of two centuries ago,
the charms of Sacharissa.

And hereupon the majority mav probably inquire. Who was
she ? Who was she, this beautiful and charming Sacharissa ? She
whose name has thus, by the honeyed words of her lover, been
sweetened for ever in the world's remembrance— literally pre-
served in the sugary compliments of verse— candied with poetry
like a very sweetmeat in the banquet of our national literature.
For, at once, be it remarked, in regard to this fantastic and
delicious name of Sacharissa, that Dr. Johnson has observed in
reference to it, speaking of it with characteristic reprehension,
and in no less characteristic phraseology, " The name is derived
from the Latin appellation of sugar, and implies, if it means
anything, a spiritless mildness and dull goodnature." Whereas
Mr. Elijah Fenton has described it far more ingeniously and
judiciously, as a name recalling to mind (to his antiquarian
mind, that is to say !) " what is related of the Turks" (he
does not inform us where I) **who, in their gallantries,"
quoth he quaintly, " think Sucar Birpara, i.e., bit of sugar, to be
tbe most polite and endearing compliment they can use to the
ladies." Delightful Mr. Fenton — ^it is the very key to the enigma
— the solution (of course, ftguratively) of the delicate love-puzzle
of this melting saccharine ** appellation " of Sacharissa. Bit of
sugar — Sucar Birpara — let us nibble at \t. A^ ^^% ^^^ ^^"^
whole flavour of the poetic flattery con^e^e^ va- \^Q!^'^ ^^'^ioss^
worda of bim w/jom Mr. Addison. laBiiS a\>^TO^Yv»i^l ^"^^^
tbe ''Cowrtly Walier"— words rained doviix \>l ^K^^a. ^\»^X^^^

m

his raiBtreBs, not, as in the instance of the Arabian princess of
the fairy tale, like a ahower of penrla and precious stones, bat
rather, in this instance, like a sprinkling of coniKts and augai^
plums.

Almost nil that the world-at-larffe really appears to know
abont Sachariasa might, we coDJecture, be summed up thus suc-
cinctly ; tliat siie was, when her lover sang of her, very young,
very charming, and very beautiful. Scarcely anything besides;
and that assuredlv, as far as it goes, might safely enough have
been tnlien for granted without requiring one syllable io the way
of ver fication. Not but what these Lovea of the Poets have
cecaaionally been very startling persouages indeed, by reason
Bomelimea even of the absolute incongruity of their appearance.
Appalling justifications of the bandage significantly bound over
the eyes of Eroa in the antique mythology! Abominable pen-
dants, in their way, to the classic legend of Beiuty wedded to
the god of the splintered thigh and the splay-foot ! However it
may have been thus, with rare eiceptions these Lovea of the
Poets have, nevertheless — almost invariably — appeared, upon
investigation, to be what we have but just now very briefly
described Sacharissa. Yet, invariably, they have beea better
than merely visibly beautiful: they have been beautiful, all of
them, ideally ; some of them ment^y ; a few of them, in a very
high degree, spirituaily. Types of excellence, existing now
and then eiclusively, it is true, in the singer's imagiuatioa ;
but, at any rate, existing there, and consequently, as such,
admitting, if merely as the creatious of genius, of these
elevated poetic celebrations. "A Thing of Beauty" each baa
proved to be in some particular, several of tbein in very many
particulars.

So, indeed, no less than with her lovely compeers, has it

turned out to be in the instance of Sacharissa. Her graces,

thanks to Waller, have become perennial. Mer charms — reflected

iu his pellucid verse as in a mirror—have been etfectually and

respleudeutly perpetuated. She has surpassed Diana of Poictiers

without an effort : retaining her beauty uuiinpaired, the sparkle

of her glance, and the bloom of her compleiion : not only through

the wriukling and withering ordeal of old age, but — after death —

beyond the grave — when her dust itself has long since mouldered

away and perished out into absolute nothingness.

_ At the period vrhea Edmimd Waller first ventured to raiae

tuB voice in the impaaaioned language ot nft\i\U« a»^mn%toth8

Aaad of Sacbariaaa, be was still very joang, BL\'s.\\otta^i ^ li'iiKi^et,

W^vei-, ia hia mere worldly £oEtuv\ea 'te ^aaiSaeiA- ■^— -

EDMUND WALLER — THE COURT POET. 203

iratber considerably enbanced by the addition to it of bis first
wife's property bis own ample and even splendid patrimony.
Beyond tbis, he was vain enough to imagine himself to be little
less than irresistible, and gifted enough to account, in some
measure, for this not absolutely unparalleled hallucination.
It was scarcely seven years from the date of the premature
demise of Edmimd Spenser, when, upon the third of March,
sixteen hundred and five, Edmund Waller first drew breath at
Coleshill, in Hertfordshire. His father, Eobert Waller, of
Agmondesham, in the county of Buckingham, dying during the
future poet's infancy, bequeathed to him somewhere about three
thousand pound? a year, an amount equivalent, it has been
calculated, to an annual income, now-a-days, of ten thousand
pounds sterling. Obviously all of which, beyond what was
absolutely requisite for the expenses. of his education, must,
throughout the period of his pupilage, have been in due course
accumulating. Increased thus by compound interest during the
lapse of a score of years. Waller's pecuniary resources were
soon appreciably extended still more, as already hinted, by
his early marriage with Miss Banks, a rich city heiress. In
the suit for whose heart (and purse) it should be recorded
that he signally triumphed over one Mr. Crofts — a rival so far
formidable, that he was reputed to be backed by very powerful
court influence.

Glorified by these doubled riches — vivacious, vain, and con-
vivial — with an oratorical repute rising rapidly within, and a
literary repute rising no less rapidly without, the walls of parlia-
ment. Waller (bereaved of his fine city madam thus prematurely)
ventured, at twenty-five, to fix his audacious gaze upon the
haughty and patrician Sacharissa. Ambitious and affluent him-
self, he probably recognised no disparity whatever between their
relative positions: the status respectively — here, of an earl's
daughter ; there, of a commoner, well born, well bred, rich, comely,
aspiring, and, in many ways, rarely accomplished. Such was the
vain-glory of the man who spoke in the House of Commons with
the self-possession of a practised debater at the age of eighteen ;
and who, while yet a stripling, took within his grasp the poetic
lyre then in vogue, striking its chords boldly from the first
with the skill of a practised, an almost perfected, musician. It
can scarcely be matter for wonder, therefore^ whevL ^^ ^iisn^
that, successful thus in various -wa^^ «i.\i \)afe ^«n QkNiisj^^%^«^
conMeDce in hia own capacities aVioxjX^ ^^^^^^^-^ ^'^'^^^'^'^
in a manner, supreme and consummate. ^^'^^^^^\^'^''^^
&t Eton and at King'h College, Cwxi\ix\^^^> ^^

place, at the early period alreadr intimated, among tbe national
legiBlators at Weatmlnater, as M.P. for liia father's birth-place,
the little Buckini^hamabire borough of Agmonilesham. At six-
teen (ohaerve! two years earlier), he had already found his way
to Whitehall, among the gadflies of the court of King Jamea the
Pirst — overhearing, there, upon one occasion, at the royal dinner-
table, a contest of wite, since then recorded upon the pages of
history as in many respects curiously, even portentously, charac-
teriatic. Tbe air of the court infected Mm: it influenced
succeasively his muae, hia heart, and his ambition. Hia firat
■ poetic effurt waa in loyal celebration of tbe escape of tbe Prince
(afterwards King Charlee the First) at St. Andero. Hia second
waa in commemoration of his Majesty's wonderful equanimity on
receiving intelligence, on the twenty-third of August, sixteen
hundred and twenty-eiglit, of t)ie afsaRsination of the royal
favourite, the handsome and profligate Duke of Buckingham. It
is amusing to note in the former piece, that earliest of Waller's
literary performances, how fragrantly tbe aoil of the fancied
Parnassus breathes, so to apeak, of the freBhly-dinted turf of
the playoround ! Witness this, the schoolboy metaphor, com-
paring the gilded barge in which the Prince of Wales waa
nearly foundering among the Spanish waters, off Saint Andero,
to the perilous tossing to and fro of the leather-covered
and elastic bladder in tlie game of football. Witness this,
moreover, hardly less, the whole of tbe egregioualy academic
illuatrationa — referring now to the painter Timanthea, now to
the floral death of Cyparissua, and so forth, throughout the
scholastic souvenirs of some well-thumbed page of Ovid op
Thucydides — scattered abundantly among tbe scanty verses re-
lating to the bloody deed of Lieutenant Felton, by whose red
right liand George Villiera waa basely done to death at Porta-
m.outh. But if the style spoke of the schools, tbe themes thua
celebrated spoke also in thejr turn of tbe court no leas distinctly.
Waller had become a Courtier and a Poet not only prematurely,
but aimultaneously. And precisely as tlie mere contagion of the
golden ringing of the broad pieces in liis ample purse caused him
apparently to grasp, in tbe first insfcauce, at the money-bags oi
the City Heiress avariciously, so, likewise, in tbe second and
more notable venture of hid affections, the impulse seemed to be
imported from without tj this creature, lislf of hot impetuosity,
half of cool delibemtioa. It should be remembered of him, that
■^e was bora with a ponderous gold a^ooTV m V* -nioxAV, -ca.tlier
^fl with the mere matter- of- I'aet sil\ei; oD.e,\v^\A\l lAysfisuOfti,

I

JiJiUul_} Mdle-pxtterueA. E.ia foitune ^^ i^ewi-j ■miie,Msai

BDMUND WALLER — TSB OOUBT POET.

aiting for him. So might it be anid of hia stylo, whether in
Irogard to rhetoric, or ia regard to TerBification, "What was
acquired by Denhnin," aaid the Great Doctor, " wna inherited by
Waller."* It appeared as though to have, he bad but to aak.
Wherefore, aa he had previously wooed aud won Miss Banka, and
that too against eonaiderable odds, bo now again be dared to woo,
Hud hoped, to win, the lofty and far more desirable Sachariaaa.
Likely enough, he plumed himaelt' etill more upon his lineage
than upon either hia parts or his possessions ; for with this
poet, at least, it was no russet bird of song warbling under the
eaves of a garret. It was here, rather that scarcely cou-
ceivable phenomenon, the vanity and splendour of the peacock,
enhanced by the glorious voice and thrilling oadenoe of the

IDJghtiugale.
r Through the maternal line, he claimed kindred with the Great
English People, as represented in the Augto-Sasou yeomanry ;
feiatbiB, moreover, by the strongest thews and sinews of relation-
ibip : his mother being sister to John Hampden, the Hero of
^triotism, martyred in the green meadow near Chalgrove, and
Bousin consequently of his Highness the Lord Protector, Oliver
Cromwell, the uncrowned king of the Commonwealth. Through
the paternal line, on the contrary, our love-aick aspirant to the
blending by marriage of hia own " divine ichur" with the " blue
blood" of the Perciea aud the Sydoeys, traced back his ancestry
by direct ascent up to the Golden Age of Chivalry — in simple
truth, to that valiant Sheriff of Kent, Eichard WaUer of Speud-
burst, who, in fourteen hundred and fifteen, with hia own hand,
took the Duke of Orleans prisoner upon the memorable tweuty-
flfth of October, when King Henry gave the battle-signiil,
" Banners Advance," upon the famous field of Agincourt.
Wherefore, probably, the knightly sherifl:''8 descendant deemed it
in no way incongruous that he also, in due course, should in the
lists of love dreum of capturing an earl's daughter, even though
that earl's daughter wore a mail of proof as impenetrable to the
shafts of hia passion as the pride of Sacharissa. A. suspicion of
that repellent pride, WaUer seems, in spite of his own matchless
self-reltance, to have entertained actually at the very outset; so
that we absolutely find him muttering to himtielf " sour grapes"
with a qualm like that of an agonising presentiment, in the
^^Jarliest utterance of his newly awakened admiral: ton., t^ Ss.--*C'^i»wi
^E|e hints (in the Verses upon the Bictute qI Vw, >S>^Q-*'ftS>v ■«■ "^^

^^Pft had been prerioaHly remarked bj Wa.tOie-« 'Stiox, 'floB.'^

^^mitr imprared oar Ttprailication, aud Drjaeu veifecWA'*-"

Kmr doM W i

Vi

• to CUon lAaw

nbj

k pnmatue Rvdataoa of Ui hepek^nMt. OtT*<^ *^ i^""!
dioobi liB dvt> Gke • fttdMS ia flight. BomIm, tlw maimer
in wluck his aidoor CgHad eiftvmis, bwe aboat it tiio appear-
ance at kut of alMlaaMK. TTiiiia^ b k did, at long intar-
Tila — this natanllf «aoa^ WooHoag a hakit vitli ado allogctiia
witfaoui theneenB^oftoSngat tits pen fir bia aabBtatCToe —
Waller innriiUj wrote md n-wnfb» wtA ibm moet exquiBlte
care and the acat paiafiil d(£b(9abcH. Hn be not himadf
acbnovrledged nurdv, ia bia ^«w"yw!"* i^ok tbe Eail of Boa-
«i»nmon's Tcnim of ^oneeP —

Unlike Paganuu. vho ints nenr ones beaid by
friends to tune an instnuDent, Waller was alvara applying fioah
rosin to his bow, and elackmiu^ tbe alrii^ or screwing th^
a little tighter. According to tbe aasoraaee Rirai bjr tbe Dote
of BockinghaiD to tbe Anuolator of onr antbor's Quarto Bdition,
be vas koova to hare eonsonied tbe greater part of an entira
summer in composing aod correcting juet Uai lines to be inscribed
in a rare ctipr of Tasso, belong;iiig to her Koval Highness tbe
J>uche«e of York. Yet the cherrretone ina not worth much,
after sit, eren when rubbed into a gloss aud carved thus elabo-
rately. It may lie, doubtless, in explanadon of the fastidious
ataticn larubed upon these Tcrsea, fur the fiy-leaf of tbe Jem-
f»Jeai Deiirer&i, that he designed t\vem, ^cesiiW «& % ^rJcnvte of
■^f^erevt gratitude to the memorj o£ ToT<v».to,V'^'«^»*«' ™*^
ttV* epic^ done into English by Mt. Yidrt>H.,\* «^crs^«» -Cw

EDMUND WALLEB — ^THE COURT POET. 207

tearing of Mr. Dryden, that he owed whatever smoothness might
be discernible in his own flowing and harmonious versification.
In testimony, however, of the poetic faith that was in him, this
significant couplet may not inaptly be cited from one of his
Prologues : —

'' Oar lines reformed, and not oomposed in haste,
Polished like marble, would like marble last.*'

Hardened and polished lines, like these same marble numbers
of "Waller, however, were scarcely the fittest medium for a pas-
sion imperatively demanding at all times more penetrable stuff
for' its manifestation. Sacharissa, we may presume, wanted a
heart, and she was offered a gem selected with the refined taste,
and cut with the inimitable adroitness, of the most exquisitely
tasteful and cunningly adroit of lapidaries.

Sacharissa, the haughty and the dcbonnaire, was the first-bom
of eight fair daughters — offspring of the marriage of Eobert Syd-
ney, Earl of Leicester, with the Lady Dorothea Percy, sister of
the celebrated Countess of Carlisle. Sacharissa, chief fiower of
all this blooming stock,

'* Qaeen rose in this rosebad garden of girls,"

was known and admired, during her radiant maidenhood, as the
Lady Dorothea Sydney. Subsequently, however, her name was
rendered otherwise familiar: first of all, during nearly half a
century, by her husband's title, to her contemporaries; after-
wards, by the sweetest appellation lover ever bestowed on his
beloved, to all after generations. During her lifetime. Countess
of Sutherland ! Perpetually, to all generations, Sacharissa !
Delectable, old, bright-eyed Elia, would infallibly have called her
(coining a superlative for the nonce) Fortunatest of Ladies ! this
— -at any rate in one important particular — happy-go-lucky
Dorothea, Countess of Sutherland. And why? Simply, be it
confessed, because there is not anywhere discoverable the faintest
vestige of a clue to the date of her birth, leaving that mystery
as a problem to be solved with the quadrature of the circle, or
the accurate definition of the longitude. Nowhere has the
record of that date proved discernible, ot «^«vi^S^>a\»^ *<i^^ t«&s$5q^
of probabJe conjecture, scrutmiaing ^lYv'b ^cMasil^ ^^{^ '"^^ ^Sj»k
Dorothea's lite from its commeiicemeTLY. \.o SXs^ ^^^^"^^^^^^^
appeari neither down in the We«JLOLa oi TSjaxiX», xx^Q*^ ^^

ter Fit PenahurBt, nor yet again upon the Bepnlchral monumeDt
raised over lier dead lord and herself at Briuton, in Northamp-
tonshire. Ah well attempt, now, to denote the age of Sacbariua,
as to be quite certain (within a century or two) about that of
CaElioHtro, or to he perfectly satisGed, again, in regard to the
real name or the real country of PsalmanaKar. iler years baffle
ua not a jot less bewilderingly than the identity of that comely
"White Rose of England, Perkin "Warbeck, or of that ever grimly
and ghostly personage, the Man-in-the-iron-mask ! At any raie,
if it be imposBible even to guees when she was bom, we know
accurately enough when she naa married, when she was widowed,
and when ahe died! Married — not, oh, doleful Muse of Bea-
consfield ! to Edmund Waller, poet, legialator, and what not —
but, upon the eleventh of July, sixteen hundred and tLirty-nine,
to Henry, Lord Spencer, aubaequently created, by Cliarlea the
First, Earl of Sunderland! Widowed but four years after her
gay bridal morn, when her husband, in the bloom of bia taan-
hood (being then but twenty-tbree), was slain by a cnnnon-bali
while Sghting in arma for his king, like a gaJlant cavalier as he
was, on the notable twentieth of September, sixteen hundred and
forty-three, in the bloody atrife at Newbury. Surviving "her
young lord i'ul! forty years, — until the eve of her sepulture, on
the twenty-fifth of Februarj', eixteen hundred and eighty-three,
io the stately yault of the Earls of Snnderland, By Sacharia.'a,
the young cavalier noble, notwithstanding his premature demise,
left three children : one of them a aoo, heir to hia title and pos-
sessions. And so the story of her proud life is told in few
words : leaving her for forty years in weeds, and for ever after-
wards in flowers — flowers blooming with an eternal fragrance,
the flowera of love and poetry woven deftly by tlie band of
Waller into a coronal for Sacbarissa.

The incenae of hia encomiums be flung to her with a laviith
hand (how affluently !) from the awingiug tliurible of his verse,
Bemembering her relationship with that Bayard of Britain, Sir
Philip Sidney, author of the Arcadia, he eiclaimed, while gazing
upon the portrait of hia mistress, rapt in admiration : —

^^V " Tbia glorioiu piece tnnscende wLat lie cddIiI tLink,

Describino' Iiep under the leafy covert, surrounding her
ancestral home at Pensburst, lie maVea tVe vct'j ^TsadQci,
he^uej her as sie saunters, or cluster above ^i6i\ie«A.'i%\s«*iikit

EDMUND WALLEB — ^THE COXJET POET. 209

** If she sit down, with tops all towards her boVd,
They 'round about her into harbours crowd ;
Or if she walk, in even ranks they stand,
like some weU-marshalledand obsequious band.*'

Hearing that some one has infamously accused her of rouge-
ing : Yes, Heaven ! — ^he cries out in scornful ire —

" Paints her, 'tis true, with the same hand which spreads
Like glorious colours thro* the flowery mead%
When lavish Nature, with her best attire.
Clothes the gay Spring, the season of desire.
Paints her, 'tis true, and does her cheek adorn
With the same art with which she paints the mom ;
With the same art wherewith she gildeth so
Those painted clouds which form Than man tia's bow."

If he beholds her in his dreams, he thus apostrophises the
lovely vision bearing her semblance : —

*^ In heaven itself thou sure were't drest
With that angel-like disguise :
Thus deluded am I blest.
And see my joy with dosM eyes."

Deprecating her evident wrath at his audacity ah the while
be is singing, by reminding her that his passion is, after all,
merely —

** His humble love whose hope shall ne'er rise higher
Than for a pardon that he dares admire."

Chloris, he commends ; Zelinda, eulogises ; Amoret, loves ; but
— he confesses even while proffering his tenderness to the gentle
nymph last mentioned—he adores Sach^ssa. He suspects it to
be for him an idle and profitless infatuation. Yet he feels, too,
at the same moment, that it is of all his noblest inspiration.
Conscious of this, he draws an exquisite comparison between his
own tantalising pursuit of her, and that of i)aphne by Apollo :
proudly predicting his own Fame (by way of consolation) through
an imagery as beautiful, as it has proVed in his and many another
kindred instance, marvellously prophetic : —

** Yet what he sang in his immortal strain,
Tho' unsuccessful, was not Bung in "^mii \
All but the nymph that should redioaaYiVa ^^rtQ>ti%^
Attend hia passion, and approve \Lva «oTi%.
lake Phoebus thus, acquirmg nnsovi^X V^M^^ft, ^^

JSTe eaiched at lave, amdfiUed hit arm* -wUK^^a*- ^

yOOTPKDTTS ON THE BOAD.

It is the epitome of tbe story of Waller's Idealised paaaion for
Sachariasa. A tenderness, in the metrical effusion of which, wd
find him occasionally, we haJ almost said repeatedly, anticipating
Bome of the loveliest fancies of Tarioua after-poets of yet larger
reputation. Who shall aay but that Waller first suggested to>
Pope the elfin pbantasy of his Rape of the Lock, through th©'
following couplet. It occurs in his epistle to Mrs. BroughtOi
tbe Abigail to Sacbarissa : —

^Emti

r

Was not Gray's memorable quatrain in the elegy —

" Bomo yillage Hampden, Ihst with daanllMtt breaat
Ths littla tyrant of his fislds withstoud ;
Some iDUte in^luriouB Milton there mnf rest,
Some Croujweil giultleBa ef bi& countrj^A blood,'*

iticipated by those lines of Waller, denoting the need QenJuB
" of Opportunity ? —

" Qmt Jaltus, on tba mountains bred,
A Bnei, perhaps, or herd had led.
Be that the world labdaed, had been
£ut llie best vreatler so the gneu."

And is not the principal charm of Byron's famous commemora-
tion of Kirke White, in English Bards and Scotch Eeviewera, but
a literal transcript from Waller's ejaculation to his ladj-love,
singing a song of his compoBmg p —

Which, on the ghaftthat made him die,
Effy'd a feather of his own,
Wherewith he wont to soar so high."

^^^ Thus eloquently did Waller breathe through his oaten reed the.'
^^lones of loTe and flattery. Vainly, however, as we have seen, whei:^
those notes were syllabled to Sachariaaa. Immediately upon hep
rather conclusive rejection of bis addresses, it has been conjeo-
tuced that, for the purpose of dissipating his anguish, he accom-
panied the Earl of Warwick in an expedition to the Bermudas.
l^e eoDBoled bimaeU in efl'ect rather difi'erenlly, however, under
f^:^ poignancy of hia disappoinLment. A.Tii 'Siajitiai\»»a. Vos'* it!
-He /7e(y /br comfort to the arms of a, eecoc.i'B\'ie,iv*oT'- - " "■
^trid (a peraoaage who, it maj \ie TeuiaoiiB^fti,

BDMTJND WALLEB — ^THE COUBT POET. 211

described by Lord Jeffpey«^ I.9 " & tame rabbit boiled to rags") —a
lady, in truth, of such absolute inaignifieance, iodividaally, that it
remains to this day a moot question, whether her maiden-name were
really Bresse or Breaux. Terrible is the comment, uttered by Dr.
Johnson upcm this incident in Waller's history, where he observes,
in one of those sonorous sentences so provokingly equipoised, " he
doubtless praised one whom he would have been afraid to marry,
and perhaps married one whom he would have been ashamed to
praise." This, recollect, from one who, having himself espoused
(with all her vulgarity) Mistresa Elisabeth Porter in a very-
rapture of admiration, consecrated her from the ridicule of all,
saving only Lord Maoaulay in the Encyclopaedia Britannica — so
consecrating her by the tender affection hallowing even the
absurd diminutive of Tetty in those prayers written down in
his old age by the great secular ecclesiastic — that lay-bishop in
the scratch wig and the rusty-brown coat, instead of in the sleeves
of lawn and the apron of prunella. So ridiculous was Waller's
second wife in the eyes of Johnson, even with Tetty, his own
red-faced Blowsabella, vividly surviving in his remembrance !

Yet, while Waller's first wife brought him but two, his second
probably astonished him with no less than thirteen children-^
five sons and eight daughters. First Consul Bonaparte would
certainly have called her no mediocrity !

Politically, Edmund Waller was a Trimmer of the most shame-
less effrontery, proffering his allegiance to whatever power chanced
to be in the ascendant — a courtier with the most flexile knee^i
and the most supple vertebr». His existence, it should be borne
in remembrance — beginning in the early spring of sixteen hundred
and five and ending in the late autumn of sixteen hundred and
eighty-seven — extended over an interval embracing within it, as
by a sort of monopoly, the principal part of the seventeenth
century. Duriug the lapse of nearly eighty-three years he
enjoyed the privilege of a persooal intercourse with five re-
markable sovereigns, with four of whom he is even recorded to
have interchanged familiar compliments. His intimacy with
the greatest ot them all — his kinsman, Cromwell — be, himself,
immediately upon the death of the Lord Protector, crowned with
that glorious panegyric, which is universally recognised as in-
comparably Waller -s poetic masterpiece, xet, with scarcely a
momentary pause between, we find him, directly ci^v^'^x^^
chanting exultantly over the eventi oi X^i^ ^^'a.XioraJCxws.N ^"^^^
when mllied, good-humouredly, by t\\e l\eTt^ ^^w^x^^ ^^i^
the inferiority of the loyalist ^eraeti ^\ieTL \Xi«> ^^'^^>5e^
to be contrasted with their Hepub^cwv ^xe>^e^'«»^^'^'» ^ n

courtliest grace proffering in extenUBtion tbat memorable rejoinder
— " Poets, Sire, succeed better in Fiction than in Truth. Hia
wit, indeed, has few better attestations of its brilliancy thaa
those furnished by other equally well-known and well-authen-
ticated palace aoecdotea. While, os deligbtfully illustrative
of hia humuroua extravagancies, it will be sufficient to parti-
cularise tbe reason extracted from him in palliation of bifl
monstrous eutogium upon the Duchess of Newcastle's elegiac
lines on the Beath of a Stag (verses wliich he bad protested ho
would have given up all hia own compositions to have penned).
" Notbiug," said be, when charged with the flattery, " was too
much to he given that a ladv might be saved from tbe disgrace of
Bucli a vile perfonnance." But — ah, the vengeance upon Sacba-
risaa 1 A vengeance drawn down upon herself in the old age of
both — of the quondam lover and the wbilome beauty. Wlien
would Mr. "Waller again write verses upon her ? asks Sacharissa.
Fancy the how of the old beau among his rustling lace and his
flowing knots — among his wrinkles and his lovelocks, as he
replies with the frostiest smile upon his withered lips — " When
you are as young. Madam, and as handsome as you were then 1 "
It is lilte a sprinkle of vitriol over a rosebush.

The slighted poet was, indeed, avenged. If, however, the Lady
Dorothea possessed within herself the slightest sense of a preten-
sion to anything like decent consistency of character, it could
scarcely have been aught else to her but matter for earnest self-
gratulation tbat she had once, in her sagacious yootb, rejected a
man whose whole life, after that rejection, might be accurately
described as one long series of startling antitheses and disgraceful
contradictions. His political tergiversation was, to the very last
degree, flagrant and unblushing. Upon no palliative or explana-
tory hjpotlieais tbat could possibly be dreamed of, can bia
principles he reconciled, or his actions harmonised. As a Parlia-
mentary representative be could so energetically conduct tbe
Erosecution of Sir Francis Crauley, one of the twelve judges who
ad declared the legality of levying ship-money, that, of the
tamons speech in which he advocated the interests of tbe nation
and the cause of the legislature— an outburst of rhetorical logic
and eloquent vituperation, in the midst of which he strikingly
compares the beggary of the realm for the mere purpose of
supplying the navy to the barbarity of seething a iiid in its
inai/ier'a milk — tiere were sold in a single day copies to the
number of nob leas than twenty thousand, Te^, tVia eii\.\iMi\ftatic
^ml impaaaioned conductor of Crawley's im^eoc^vmeiA iio\i.i *'&«■
jS^B, vhhadmir&hie coneistency, afciida.xHoMftmi4\>t^^™~"

EDMUND WALLER— THE COURT POET, 213

to the king when Charles the Eirst set up the royal standard at
Nottingham, and could suhsequently allow himself to be so be-
witched by his Majesty's kind reception of him at Oxford after
the battle of Edgehill, that he is notoriously known to have been
engaged a little later on, in a treacherous conspiracy against the
Commonwealth. The particulars of that futile plot — a plot so
futile that Hume speaks of it simply as a project, Lingard even
mentioning it as imaginary — are altogether too familiar to the
students of our national history to be here recapitulated. Its
discovery, while it cost two of Waller's accomplices their heads,
cost the poet himself a temporary incarceration, a fine of ten
thousand pounds, and eventually banishment. Worse than all,
it cost him his reputation. It is a melanoholv spectacle, in truth,
that presented to us by Waller's many despicable evidences
*bbout this time, now of tergiversation, now of pusillanimity.
His submission was so abject, his fear so overwhelmms;. During
the period of his exile in Erance, an event of particular interest
befell the pardoned but disgraced conspirator. There appeared
at London in 1648 the very first edition of his works ever
published : an enterprise originated by some unknown lad;^ who
had written to him in his foreign seclusion, requesting him to
send her all his various poems collected together in manuscript.
Could this nameless fair one, by any wild possibility, have been—
Sacharissa ?

Ultimately, Waller was permitted to return homeward, a blot
on his escutcheon and sorely reduced in his circumstances.
It was then he took up his abode upon the last remnant of his
fortunes at Halibam, near his mother's residence and his own
former estate at Beaconsfield^ He subsequently resumed bis old
position in the legislature, continuing throughout another gene»
ration to be the delight and, in some sort also, the boast of
Parliament. His literary reputation was securely established.
It obtained — a marvel in those days-^a Continental recognition
among his own immediate contemporaries. Ha himself, it is true,
by coolly writing in one of his letters, " The old blind school-
master John Milton hath published a tedious poem on the fall of
man," could perfe^tl^r justify, in that one sentence, the accusation
of envy directed against him by Atterbury. But Envy was not
the shadow of His own merit. He was on the contrary the very
Schlemil of popularity, Alexander Pope has taught the mereac
tyro in verse to—

" — praise the easy ^our ol Bb'Wiaft , v >*

Wbare DenLam'a strength and ^a\\fti?\i ik^QRXxaR»V»^

214 rOOTPKlNTB ON TH£ BOAD.

Mr. AddisoD has declared the perpetuity of his renown to be I
pynouf mouB n'ith the eiiBteuce of tlie laogunge, namely, where I
liH has formaUy predicted —

On the twenty-first of October, in the year 1687, the old Poet,
and yet older Courtier, peacefully breathed hia last in his anceatml J
Jiome at Beacons&eld.

WILLIAM NAPIER— THE SOLDIEE-ANNALTST.

It is scarcely probable that the world will soon, if indeed it
can ever, again witness so singular a combination of hereditary
peculiarities as that which distinguished the five sons of Colonel
the Honourable Q-eorge Napier of Celbridge, in the county of
Dublin. Their ancestry, like a famous parliamentary majority
recorded in one of the later volumes of " Hansard " was nothing
less than a " fortuitous concurrence." And, in its result, it cer-
tainlv goes far to prove that a mixture of races tends as directly
to the elevation of the individual character, as it unquestion-
ably does towards the advancement and invigoration of the
genius of distinct nationalities. Of the latter remarkable truth
the annals and exploits of the Anglo-Saxon family afford of them-
selves conclusive attestation. It is, for all the world, like the
imperceptible growth of a running stream — "a rivulet, now a
river'* — widened and deepened in its progress by the influx of
many important tributaries. Into the maia current of the historic
lineage of the Napiers, it is curious to note in this way how many
and how important were those tributaries. They secured to it
whatever ambi-dexterous advantaa;es might be supposed to result
from the infusion into the blood of the Napiers, of the divine
ichor of two royal houses — those of Henry IV. of France, and
of Charles II. of England. They rendered kindred to that same
heroic blood, the blood of two chivalrous but attainted traitors to
the Crown — the great Montrose and the unfortunate and chival-
rous Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Through the maternal line they
enabled these five brothers to claim the sympathies of relationship
with Charles Fox, the orator of the Liberal Opposition; and
through the paternal line, farther back by one or two generatLana^
and higher in the intellectual atmo«\]\xete^,YOL>i)ckft^^^^ <5i\a.Ng^^«»
of abstract pbilosophj^ to trace ttievt Afe^ceviX. ^vc«i<riv>^l ^^ ^
renowned inventor of logaritkma, ti^e \tsi\xiox\si^^"^^5*£^^^'^'^
MercbiatomL

rOOTPEINTS ON THE I

There are, of eoBree, very few among tlioae wbo may ezaming i
these records of purely personal recollection who will require any
introduction whatever to three, at least, out of that cluster of five
brothers— English most of them by birth, Scottish originally by
ancestry, Irish by education and reaidence — all five of whom
passed the early days of their boyhood together in their little
home retreat at Celbridge. It is with the central figure in the
group that I have here to do eiclusiyely. Another while I may
take occasion perhaps to relate briefly what I knew, thronga
personal intercourse, of the eldest among this quintette of ripe
scholars and valiant Boldiera — tliat great Proconsul who added
the province of Scinde to our vast empire by his sheer audacity
as a military conqueror, and who permaneotly incorporated it
afterwards with our dominion by his prudential sagacity as an
administrator. It is of the second, or intermediate brotber, be-
tween the two most illustrious in this little domestic eoncourBB
of heroes and authors, that I purpose in this pUce to say but a
very few words incidentally. It will be sufBcient to remarK, here,
previouB]y,of the thMe eldest of the fraternity, that tliey all suffered
terribly during the chief part of their long lives from formidable
wounds received upon the battle-field ; that all of them gained at
the point of their keen swords high military distinction ; that each
won for himself the red ribbon of the Bath with its knightly
insignia; that aU three were simultaneously the Governors of
distinct dependencies of the Crown — Charles of Scinde, George
of the Cape, William of Guernsey. Enough as to the two
youngest of the brothers not yet specified, if it be here added that
Henry, the youngest but one amongst them, though he adopted
the Eoyal Navy as his professiou, wUl be better borne in Remem-
brance in his purely literary capacity as the author of a luminous
asweU as a voluminous "History of Florence;" and that Eichard,
the youngest of them all, thougn himself a member of the bar, is
understood to have dedicated his intellectual energies also exclu-
eively to the cultivation of literature.

And now of that one central figure — as I knew and honoured
it — I may speak here, as I have proposed to do, esclusively. Our
English Tacitus, may I not call him — and, as sucli, as the greatest
of all our military historians, secure of having his brave bright
name surviving perennially in the national remembrance. One
engraved portrait there is of him — it may be found as the frontis-
piece to the second volume of his elaborate biography of his
Brother Sir CharleB, the conqueror ot Scinie — s. \fte'M.ot\nto by
^leton, from a clossic bust by Adam, vVv^A vhb.^ afioTi wmu
^o^a to those who never actually saw t\ie SQ\d\ei-ti.'caiaS:^60l*a|

WILLIAM NAPIEB — THE SO LDIEB- ANNALIST. 217

Peninsular "War, may afford them some faint proximate idea of
his eminently noble and ehivalric appearance at the age of
seventy. He was yet more advanced in years when I saw and
conversed with him last, not long before bis death at seventy-four,
his eyes flashing brightly as he talked, an inextinguishable anima-
tion in every outline of his lofty and reverent lineaments. It
only needed the casual gusts of a thunder-shower blowing
through the open window of his residence at Sciade House, in
the green little LondoUr suburb of Clapham, to render him the
very incarnation of the fanuliar couplet in Gray's ode on " The '

** Loose his Veard and Koary hair
Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air : ** '

only, that for hoary it should, in his instance, have been read
silvery — silvery as the thrice-driven snow. And under the
crowning grace of that white hair, above the rippled torrent
of that venerable beard — one that looked, in its dishevelled
flow, like the beard of the " Shipman " in Chaucer, as though
it had been "shaken by many a tempest"' — there remained,
unmarred by age to the moment of his decease, that handsome
aquiline visage the marble effigy of which any sculptor might
well rejoice to have chiselled. It was a noble presence, that of
Sir Wuliam Napier, and one not very easily to be forgotten.
It was the weird age of Merlin descended upon the knightly
form and features of Sir Lancelot. 'Every individual peculiarity
of the man bore evidence that Q-eneral Sir William Francis
Patrick Napier was indeed the offspring of that Colonel Napier
described by his son (Sir William) as not simply tall and strong,
but actually "gigantic;" and of that Lady Sarah Napier, nee
Lennox, the eminently beautiful daughter of a mother herself
eminentlv beautiful — that Lady Sarah Lennox (the celebrated
toast and boast of her day) who, at eighteen, had been for one
brief while the affianced bride, as in very truth she appears to
have been ever afterwards the tender regret, of King George
the Third! There were still visible the graces of the young
mother's countenance reflected in the nobler outlines of the son,
even when that son had lived to be a veteran of more than seventy
winters. There, too, in the stature of the latter, were the lofty
proportions of the sire, modified by years and lamentably weighed
down, also, by prolonged suffering.

Those who were loudest in their rei^T^eii'swavi oi ^V^ ^^^^qc^
posed to be the constitutional acerbity o^ «\t "^*^»mw\b.^^
wbeDever be took pen in hand, partiwiarVy oi ^a^»^ -j^w^^ "^

318 KIOTPBINTB ON THK BOAD.

view to publication, were of all, perhaps, the least aware of tlie
pliyBicnl nnsiiish with which that pen was often— nay, it should even
oe said, hiibitunlly — grasped ! Anguish born of the battle-woimda
already nlluderi to, and of consequent tortures from a protracted
neuralgic affection ! If, while agoniKcd uuder these combined afflic-
tions, that dauntless and ever outspoken nature undertook tha
vindication, for eiamole, of one of hia loved anrl honoured brothers,
in terms of unmeasured acorn agaitiBt thoae by whom, especially,
Sir Charles Napier was co often and so ungenerously misrepre-
sented, Tinnf purely are there but may now ibrget the bitterneea
of those written words in the remembered bitteruess of all that
bidden suffering. During many years, indeed, before the Soldier-
Annalist breathed his last, his life was one protracted niartyrdom,
and a martyrdom suatained throughout with the moat heroic
fortitude. Insomuch was this actually the case, that hia only
practicable exercise at last was an occasioDal drive io a little
pony phaeton. To move across a room was an effort testing his
powers of endurance. To touch the hand of a frieud was often
nothing less than an act of courage, Tet, in spite of this, he
would frequently date liis letters " Seven o'clock, a.m." I have
now lying before me, in fact, a long letter of the 2l8t of April,
1857, literally bo headed — a letter in the course of which Sir
William Napier ohserves: " I write, aa you see, before post comes
in," Ac. ; addmg, " 1 am an early riser, though past seventy-one, and
a very complete wreck in bady : but the freab air of the morning
revives me for work." And it ia characteristic of the indomitable
eiiei^'y with which he threw hioiaelf into this work — latterly (in
his brother's behalf) a chivalroua, self-imposed labour of vindica-
tion, often, it might be said, rather, of pitiless reprobation — it is
characteristic of the man himself and of hia later labours, of hia
resolution and of hia sufferings, that in this very communication
(taken, haphazard, from among a pile of others extei.ding over
many years), he writes under the above-mentioned date, at seren
o'clock, A.Ji., as follows, in a rush of burning words — words thus
eloquent and impassioned; — " The most offen«ivo portion [be ia
speaking of an onslaught upon his brother Sir George, an
onslaught which he terms whuusically enough in an earlier part
of the letter from which I am quotiog, 'a mixture of snowballB
and sweetmeats'] is the attack ou my honeat, gallant, true-hearted
brother George. To hint at cowardice in the man who passed
the night following Corunna with a torch, turning over the
corpses of the slain in aearch of 'Uia XitoWvct, ex'^oaed to the

^w^i- of plunderers, of enemiea pattoMVug, ani "^e 'i'wwQWi cS.

mmielb bebmd a prisoner. To Wx at co-flajii.i«s \u x^oftTOaa

WILiilAM NAPtER — ^THB SOLDtER-ANNALIST. 219

wlio carried off Gifford's body in the midst of enemies at Cordova.
To hint at cowardice in the man who fitormed Ciudad Bodrigo.
To do this merely for the gratification of vulgar spite against
tne, is surt^ly a sign of baseness deeply engrained. And the
proof ! He, an Englishman, refused the command of the foolish,
though gallant, King of Sardinia's army. And again, he, like a
true Englishman, refused to step into the place of a better man
than himself in the command of the Indian armies ; and that
man, his brother. Patriotism and honour, and self-negation,
would have been the terms in an honourable mouth ; but with

it is cowardice ! *'

Reverting, however, to the conversation with Sir William
Napier upon the occasion already referred to as not long anterior
to the date of his demise, I bear distinctly in remembrance how,^
in the midst of an animated discussion as to the origin, develop-
ment, and eventual subjugation of the Indian revolt, he strongly
reprobated the undue severity displayed on our side — to which
excessive severity he attributed, indeed, much of the subsequent
bloodshed, and many of the later disasters. With a nature thrilling
in its every fibre with sensibility, and a temperament singularly
impulsive and impassioned, he combined in a wonderful degree, a
judgment pre-eminently judicial and dispassionate. In testimony
of which, it is only necessary to glance for a moment at that
majestic Plutarchian contrast or comparison with which he closes
the last chapter of the twenty-fourth book of bis great historic
masterpiece. The peroration, as we may so call it, of that
oratorical history, in which Napier contrasts Napoleon (whom
the English annalist, by the way, there speaks of magnanimously
and magnificently, as " the greatest man of whom history makes
mention, the most wonderful commander, the most sagacious
politician, the most profound statesman"), that closing passage
of the Great History of the Great War, in which Napier con-
trasts Napoleon and Wellington. Comparing the battle of
Wellington to the stroke of the battering ram — " down went the
wall in ruins!" The battle of Napoleon to "the swell and dash
of the mighty wave, before which the barrier yielded and the
roaring flood poured onwards, covering all!" As thus, in these
profoundly deliberated and crowning sentences, in his record of
the wars of the Peninsula, so equally judicial and dispassionate
shone the judgment of Sir William Napier in the heat and vivacitY
of conversation.

It waa signiGcant of the Eng\\s\i ^o\d^ei?% \\£C^^^i^5^*^'^^^
of the English historian's magiiaii\mo\i& Te^«x^"la^ ^^, ^^^\q
that ia Ida principal room at ScineLO lioxx^^^ VjX^^ ^i:!^^-^-

FOOTPRINTS ON THE BOAD.

the only picture visible upon its whIIb, a picturi
in the place of honour, over the mantel-piece, wa
not of Wellington, but of WellingtoD'a gloriouf
An engravins; from Paul de la Eoche's exquisite a
traiture ofKapoleon, the Emperor and King. And, a
connpicuous decoration of the Soldier- Author
there was displayed a noble trophy of arms upon the waste of
wall opposite the windows of the apartment — aabrea and musketH
dispOBed in grim geometric arrangement, having aa ita central
feature (a gracious and graceful gift from the Sovereign, to be
thenceforth treasured in the family of ita recipient as a priceleaa
heir-loom) the heraldic banner borne by the baud of General Sir
"William Fraticia Patrick Napier in the ever-memorable pageanl
of the great Duke'a funeral, in Saint Paul'e Cathedral.

( hung, too,
9 a portrait,
I antagonist.
ide-loDg por-
t "the other"
ialle-Or-manger,

HENRY HOWARD— THE POET-KNIGHT,

AtTHOTTGH about half a century lias now elapsed eince Doctor
■George Frederick Nott published two big ijuartoa for the expreai
>urpoBe of breaking that delicate butterfly upon the wheel, every-
jody (there is not a doubt about it) still believea implicitly in the
^harming love-atorr relating to the noble Surrey and the fair
ff^raldine. Nobody cares one jot for the portentous discharge of
F that huge double-barrelled blunderbuss of criticism at — what P
[ "Why, at nothing more substantial, after all, than*a beautiful
[ Kttle bubble blown by Pancy more than three centuries ago — a
" fcubble of the imagination, radiant with all the colours of the
I {iriam, and full of wonders as a wizard's crystal— nay, what is
\ 'jnore, a bubble that is stiil happily floating down to us unharmed
[ ttpon the Bepbyrs of dreamland.

L Admitting everything that Doctor Nott has written upon the
Iftibject of this same delightful love-story to be perfectly incon-
Ptrovertible ; acknowledging the reasonableness of his premises

■ knd the atobbornnesB of Eis facta; allowing him to have proved,
["with the moat unanswerable logic, the whole legendary tale to be

■ an impossibility — yet are we, even then, doggedly credulous and
Ijerversely unconvinced. It -may be that Surrey baa long ago
p&irly 'witched us with his magic numbers, so that, down to the

Tery end of the chipter, we yet remain standing beside him—

Btedfastly and confidingly as ever courtier did at the elbow of

Prince Hamlet — seeing the clouds as he sees them, shaped like a

camel or backed like a weasel, gazing upwards at bis bidding witb

I the eager aBsent and compliant credulity of a Polonius. Never-

■thelesB, it Bbould be at once remarked that our credence in hia 1

H'tegard is not by any means exceptional. Let iia,u^'i«,'a>^^t>!u^'(is^

I quite frankly acknowledge it, that we WNeVa. vftaaii.\ra -Caa^^aKM

lovely poetic traditions an almost VGB.uvtB ea'jB.'i^'^'^ ^"^^ >]^^^-tf^

Wherefore, it is, we pin our faitk teTe 4e\otfc^l ^° *'^i;i.«.

the L»dj Geraldiae — akirta appareutVj xBGeivo-i a» '««' «.

TSa FOOTPBDira on thk road.

them wiatfuHj down the deluding vista of those dreary pages of
her last nod most unbelieving celebrant.

Supposing we were to allow any one among these historical
infidels, Herr Niebuhr, let us say, or Doctor Nott, or Monsieur
Thierry, to have satialactorily proved hia case, we should, of
course, nest have the very Wonders of the World coolly bowled
down like so many nine-pins by atill burlier tomes (t'olioa
poseibly) trundled at them by yet more adventurous commen-
tators, Admit the Fair Gtraldine to have abaolutely melted
into thin air under the Bcrutiny of Doctor Nott's analytical
microscope, and we shall speedily, no doubt of it, have Fair £osa<
mond herself banished from the heart of her labyrinth at Godatow,
aa not one iota less fabulous than the Cretan Minotaur. So
that, never again might we track along the winding pathway
that ahadowy form of grim Queeu Eleanor, longing — as we have
all of us so often done while dogging her footsteps — to jog the
poison out of her chalice, or, still better, to trip her majesty up

I adroitly on to her own stiletto ! Permit these unbeiievera au
inch of solid fact, and they will soon infallibly have au e!l —

I rather, perhaps we should say, ring the knell of JTairyland. Our
revising annalists would then, probably, make no mention what-
erer of those minor incidents which, nevertheless, constitute of
themselves the very bloom of history. Alexander, for example, in
that case, might never more have to settle a knotty poiui with
the edge of his sword while pausing by the wheel of the Gordiaa
chariot. Nothing, in all probability, would then be heard of
Canute rebuking his flatterers on the sea-sliore by getting his
royal slippers dabbled in the briue at flood-tide; or of Dionysius
rebuking his sycophants by cauaing the chief among them all, the
courtier Damocles, to carouse for one evening " by particular
desire " (after the fashion ot Chriatopher Sly), lolling in purple
and ermine, on the golden throne in the banqueting- hall uf the
Sicilian palace — with, literally, but a hair's breadth 'twixt life and
death, whatever the apace intervening between that trembling
sword's point and those trembling roae-crowned ringlets ! Sweep-
ing aside from the ^ast aa altogether worthless little historical
atoms such aa these, it is, reaU^, for all the world, like shredding
rutbleaaly from the Tree of Knowledge the umbrageous verdure
and the rosy flowers and the yelloning fruit, leaving nothing
behind save the dry and sapless branches. The surest and the
readiest way of all, certainly, whereby to render history in very
iruti nothing better than an old aknan&ck.
Therefore it is that we cling perlmaciowsV^ Vo cwc'^^iiel '^o^'Cia .

•ealit^ of the loves of Earl Surrey and Via \)«SM!ijS)A.St^j^j^

I — THE POBT-KNICHT, 223

Nay, may we not aak in apteat illiiBtration of our obalimioy —
Doctor Nott to the oontrnry, nevertheless, notwitliBtaiiding^—
What were those i'ainoua words of the Great Aatronomer, after
he had asserted the earth to be motionless ? " £ pur si muove 1 "
(atampins hie foot)—" Ah, but it moirea though ! " And so, too,
of this dear, delicious love-story of the youugest of our old, old
poets — hut IT moves, though — and moves fur that matter, our
very heart-strings.

A delightful vagabond, one Thomas Nash, was the first to tell
this veracious history — the history of Surrey's Greraldiue. As
the notorious Naah, he is generally spoken of, in the annals of our
English literature, One who is among our prose writers what
Elkanah Settle was among our poets— the very bathos iucamate !
A masterpiece of impudence from this cunning hand, iu the sbape
of a book such ag only the arrantest varlet could ever have
dreamt of penaiug, or still more could ever have hud the uncon-
Bcionable etfroutery to publish in printed characters, first told the
tale — the genuine original narrative — in the year 1594, under the
title of The Life of Jack Wilton, otherwise The Unfortunate
Traveller. The aforesaid Jaok Wilton being — what think you ?
Why, nothing better than a tapster in the reign of King ilenry
the Eighth. A roving blade of a tapster who, on his journey
homewards from the wars — where he had been valiantly drawiog
wine-corks in the sutler's tent for the officers, aud jugs of beer
for the roystering troopers, getting his head cracked oocasionally,
as he, doubtless, often very richly merited, by the more boisterous
among the boosing men-at-arms — this same tapster, we say,
during hia journey homeward from the wars, accidentally lalla iu
(by the likeliest chance imaginable) with no less probable ti
personage in such companionship, than Henry the haughty, stately,
courtly Earl of Surrey, then, in fact, althitugh BtilT but iu t)ie
vernal flower of his age, the boast and paragon of British chivalry.
Having thus opportunely encountered each other aomeivbere la
France, tliese two extremely congenial associates — Earl and Tapster
— immediately begin compariug notes together, companiouably :
Surrey the Earl, without any more ado, pouriug into the ear of
Wiltou the Tapster the whole of the tender mystery of hia refined
aud idealised passion for the Lady Geraldine I (Jltiuiately (so
probable this!) inducing his sympathetic hearer, JacI; VVilcuu
before-meutioiied. Jack of the spigot and the corkscrew, to
return with him to Florence, the Earl ^er&ufl.i\svt\Xi* cXiv-^'i^Ki^iaj
Tapster there to share with him in t,\ie VvA* vVe i^-t\e.-i ■»»-*>■ "«
perils ofknight-errautry.

Brerytbiug here, jt will be oliaec^ti, ^a

22* POOTPRDITa ON THE ROAD.

range of probability that, wbile we muse over the pages of the
"Unfortunate Traveller, we can readUy luncy Dr. Nott, with spec-
tacles poked up on forehead, peering at ua over tbe rim of one
of hie portentous quartoa and chuckling audibly. Tet, despite
even those deriiiive sounds and arch looks of interrogation, Thomae
Naah tbe Notorious, somehow, like the Ancieute Mariner, " holds
lis with his glittering eye," and " hath hia will," to the very end,
triumphaotly. The hook is bo delectably baited that we swallow
it bodily, barb, silk and tiaeel, down to the minutest tip of the
laat haekle-featber. Let it be remembered, however, in eitenua-
tion, that others before ua have taken it in (Doctor Nott, of course,
would spitefully hint that the process had been reversed !) quite as
greedily. Scarcely had four years elapaed after the appearance of
Jack Wilton'a astounding Autobiography, however, when Michael
Drayton, in 1598, reproduced the whole narrative (this time
glorified in verse) in a memorable section of hia renowned
Hiatorical E pieties.

Afterwards, in point of fact, nearljf a whole century afterwards,
namely, in 1687, we see the bubble rise again upon the surface of a
certain sluggish stream winding its way down to the inevitable
waters of Lethe, to wit, the then authoritative Livea of our Engliali
Poets, penned by the poasibly very excellent but exceedingly dull
"William Winstanley. After whom came Anthony h Wood liimseltj
with a sort of a second-hand galvanic battery of belief, creating a
sou! under the riba of the dead and buried Taiiater, and presenting
bodily to the world of letters Jack Wilton iledivivus ! Then in
due course appeared Tbeophilus Cibber, eager to fix his subjects
like so many entomological specimens — with a pen it must be
allowed but clumsily pointed for the purpose — in the dusty
museum of hia BioEraphies. Jack sprawls there still upon one of
the mouldy pages, tike a mildewed gadfly with the bloom eaten off
hia wings aud the colours tarnished. I'inaUy, there tripa forth
upon the scene, in hia red-heeled shoes and his powdered peruke,
tiie Eight Honourable Horatio, Earl of Orford, better known to
ua all as Horace Walpole, bearing tenderly in his hand from his
own patrician workshop up-ataira, down into that luxurious and
fantastic library of hia at Strawberry Ulll, his last fastidious com-
pilation, radiant with gilding and smelling sweetly of &esh
morocco, the twin volumes of hia Koyal and Noble Authora.
Wherein, of course. Earl Surrey appears conspicuously; and, yet
aiore, wberein the Lady Geraldine herself is really tor the fcat
tiioe identiSed. No marvel, surely, attei; tiiuft,\.Wt. e. ■riqe critic
Jf'ie Tbomas Warton should ha-se ultVmntd-^ RCRfe-^'w&.W-fta wm-
SwwO'j and aa a. aomethiag quite de&mX\ve\3 5-co\«i,ttMA

mmm

SESEY HOWAHD THE POET-SNIQHT. 225

narrative, of wliicli we have here miautelr given what may in one
eeiiae be called ita literary genesia. Granted that we might
acknowledge ouraelvea to be in no way reluctant to have Tbomiis
Nash kicked out of court indigaantly ae a rogue altogether un-
worthy of consideration ; yet are we fain to have previously for-
feited by him as an ill-gotten waif of romance, that dainty love-
tale found aoileii, and crumpled, aad hid away euspieioualy, in the
mouldy wallet of the vagabond.

It ia tantalising to know, that we can never reasonably hope to
learn distinctly when the Earl of Surrey was boru, or where, in
fact, was his birthplace. Whether he flrst opened his eyes to
a life of but thirty years' duration at Kenninghall iu Nortblk, the
place aasocisted with his title ; or at Teodringhall in Suffolk, his
father's usual residence ; or at Farlingham in the same county,
the spot indicated as moat probable by the majority of hia biogra-
phers. The date of his birth, moreover, raugea variously over
five years, apparently, according to the mere whim of the conflicting
authorities ; the generality, however, deciding in favour of what we
may call the secoad drop in that lustre, namely, the year of grace
1517. And it ia certainly pleasant enough at the outset of our
poetical anDals— before we come to be startled by the ghostly
spectres of Boyce shivering in his blanket, of Otway strangling
over bia crust, of Savage dying miserably in a dehtor'a prison down
at Bristol, of Butler breathing his last in abject penury, and being
huddled into the dust under the shadow of Saint Paul's Churcli, ■
Covent Garden, there lying obscurely to this day, without epitaph
OP even gravestone — it is pleasant, surely, at the outset of our
poetical history, before being startled by these dismal tragedies,
to feast our eyes upon the gorgeous pageant presented to tbe
imagination by tlie short but memorable lifetime of one of the
earliest and noblest iliuatratora of our national literature. Leave
we to Sir Bernard Burke, TJIater king-at-arma, or to his resplendent
compeera, the amiable Souge-dragou, and tbe courteous Chiren-
cieux, arrayed in their emblazoned tabards stiff with gold em-
broidery, to sound in appropriate tones upon their heraldic
trumpets of silver, the pomp, and the pride, and the glory of that
ancient lineage. Enough for ua if we here very briefly mention,
that Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and Nursling of the Muses,
as they were wont in those old dnya to designate him quaintly,
was eldest born of Thomas, third Duke of Norfolk, h^ Ei.vi.-s»a-C»|^
Stafford, bis second Pucbesa, daugWte^ ol "S.i-«OTii., \>^J*«- ■«
Buckingham. , ^ ',

Pleasnat glimpaea of the little prmceWa^ m& ^^^^"^^.^^^d
^bttiv, tUrouah the iuop-hoiea of our aa\.i.N e Vw^o^i • ^ ~

226 F00TPBINT8 0^ THB BOAD.

n

ture age of nine, for example, we observe him, nimble of foot,
at tlie court of Henry the Eighth, att*Ddaut as eup-bearer
■upon tba roya! voluptuarj. Already, while dangling thus in his
infancy at the heels of hia BOTereign, Henry Howard, Earl of
Surrey, hnd won his way to the intimacy of a boy-friend ship
with Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Eichrnond — illegitimate eon of tbe
king by the Lady Tallboye, and ultimately, by his nuptials with
the Lad^ Mary Howard, not only Surrey's friend but Surrey's
brother-in-law. Delightfully in keeping with the uncertainty of
everything eke relaling to his earlier years, it remains to this very
hour doubtfid whether the young earl thumbed his Delectus on
the banks of the Cam, or by the osier shallows of the lais. A
tradition commemorated by Anthony k Wood favours the notion
of his having been a stuaeot of Cardinal College, now Christ
Church, Oxford j while the conflicting claim of the rival univer-
sity appears tn eoine way to be sustained, upon the other hand,
by the fact of Surrey's election, conjointly with his ducal father,
in tbe September of 1511, to the honorary post of the Sceward-
eiiip of Cambridge. As efi'ectualjy ua Kiug Charles the Second
secreted himself long afterwards at liVbiteladies, the Earl of
Surrey may be said to have contrived somehow to hide hia aca-
demical cap away between the ample skirts of the sheltering
Almie Matres, Wherever or however educated, he must assur-
edly have been educated both promptly and skilfully, for already
at fifteen we perceive sufficiently positive evidence of the com-
pletion of his Bcholiistic labours, in the fact of his occupying
even then a recognised and eatubliahed position among the regal
retinue at Windsor aa one of the royal household. Already,
moreover, let it be whispered — with a covert sigh for the I'air
Geral din e !— already, in hia fifteenth wiuter, on the thirteenth of
IFebruary, 1632, Surrey had been formally contracted in marriage
to tlie lady who but three summers afterwards became his wife,
the Lady Frances Vere, daughter of John Earl of Oxford, ulti-
mately, in the fulness of time, mother of the boy-ead'a five
blooming children.

At fifteen an accomplished courtier, with an earl's coronet
jauntily cocked aside on his gay ringlets for a play-cap, and a
bauble-ring on bis finger, marking him affianced as the future
biidegroom of this Lady Eauny Vere de Vere — Surrey, Irom
this starting-point in his lordly life, greets us at uncertain inter-
i«/(4 /iiore and more vividly as time advaucea, and upon each
tfocasion, it almost Beema to ua, mora ani mow ^\tA.u.ie3*\\j.«lY

r^'ircumstaneed. Amidst the home dvcVe fasmVioi evetk \« \a»
d, drinking m the wise 6a\,a ani gvat«^vi

HENBY HOWARD — ^THE POET-KNIGHT. 227

chivalry, through the casual sayings dropped idly-from the lips
of one among the more honoured of the many literary guests of
the Duke of Norfolk, a nobleman ever ambitious, in his day, of
being esteemed a patron of men of letters — stately Lord Ber-
ners, the tranalator^upon-stilts, as we may term him, of the
knightly Eroissart. Drinking, with an eager relish, the glorious
Bpirit of Bayard, even when thus diluted for his acceptance, or,
may be, looking askance at the fluttering past him of some of
those poor withered leaves of rhyme in which among others my
lady Duchess was duly celebrated by the poetic Skelton in his
capacity as his avowed protector I The virtues of her grace still
shining dimly through the dust, an inch thick, upon the dead
leaves of that tinkling chaplet, poked away somewhere on an
4ipper shelf of our libraries, and known as the said Skelton's —
indeed, for any shadowy ghost of fame yet left to him, it might
almost be safely misprinted the said Skeleton's '^ Crown of Laurel."

If we follow the youthful earl from under the sheltering
gloom of the paternal roof-tree, we first of all recognise him,
while yet the merest stripling of sixteen, in close personal
attendance upon King Henry the Eighth, on his memorable
visit to Boulogne-sur-Mer, where the British monarch and his
court were entertained by King Francis the First, during four
days of the October of 1532, with so much royal pomp and
chivalric magnificence. These, of course, were the sumptuous
holidays, the pageantries of which are yet remembered in history
as those of the Field of the Cloth of G-old. Subsequently, at the
very commencement of the year following, we mark his yet more
conspicuous participation in a scene almost as resplendent. It
is the moving past us, at the extremity of that long perspective
of three hundred years, of the roval procession conducting the
young queen, the beautiful and ill-fated Anne Boleyn — on her
unconscious way towards the scaffold — ^to her coronation.

As representative of his future father-in-law, John, Earl of
Oxford, then Lord High Chamberlain, Henry, the Lord Surrey,
carries in that radiafit retinue, the Fourth Sword with the scab-
bard upright, before his stalwart Suzerain.

Scarcely three more years have flowered into midsummer —
within which interval, as already foreshadowed, Henry Howard
has espoused his betrothed, by whom, indeed, as early as March,
1536, his eldest son, Thomas, afterwards fourth Duke of "^o.^^^^^^
is bom to him at nineteen — when i?© ^%«t^^ Xssssl ^ass^^^''^ '«>^
a verj different spectacle in a very ASSet^iiXi ^J®^^*^"^! '»*"^^^^J^
as bia own father's representative. Q,\xft««^ ^^^"^"^ ^>^^^. o*
etill, aa before, the heroine of tlie dr«bma\ \>\5i& Vs^'e^ "^^^=1.

2128 POOTFBDITB ON THE BOAS.

ceremonial ie no longer to crown her head with a diadem ; it ib,
rather thao that, to deliver it over to the aie of the executioner.

Surrey ia yet under age when he takes part as Deputy Earl
Marshal in the solemn trial of the mother of Elizabeth, before
the court, presided over by hia father, tlie Duke of Norfolk, in
his official character as Lord High Steward of the King's House-
hold. SeveDteen months later, and Earl Surrey, aa one among
the chief mourners, ia following to the royal vaults at Windsor
the remains of the third queen of our iaiand-Heliogabalus, the
Lady Jane Seymour, dead witliin a fortnight after the birth of
her son, the Prince of Wales, afterwards, as King Edward the
Siith, England's boy-aovereigQ. Upon the next New Tear's
Day, the Lord Surrey, stiD by law an infant — though a married
one, and a father — is gaily dttncing attendance at court, proffer-
ing three gilded howls as a present to the royal epicurean.
Scarcely anything noteworthy can we mark in Surrey's regard
during the three years subsequently beyond the birth, in 1539,
of his second son, Henry, afterwards Earl of Northampton, until
we come upon him suddenly upon the May Day of 1540, gorge-
ously arrayed in shining plate of mail, arabesqued with gold and
i'ewelled at the hinges, sharing in the courtly jousts, holden in
lonourofhiBMajesty'snuptialswitb Anne of Cleves, the uncomely
choice and as such the evil genius of Thomas, the Lord Cromwell.
A tournauient, this was, possibly, all things considered, the very
strangest in plea of any touruay upon record, as it was likewise,
perhaps, the most superb in its appurtenances, the lists being
opened to competitors about a ludye faire, whose form and
features were of an ugliness so undeniable as to have caused a
revulsion, at the first glance, in the heart of the sated and fasti-
dious bridegroom. IJevertbeless, here the chivalrous young
Poet-Eiirl distinguished himself signally with lance and falchion. ■
Already, at an earlier period, while he was jet in fact but nine-
teen, Surrey had prematurely had the golden spur affixed to his
heel, upon receiving then the knightly accolade from the sword of
his sovereign. Subsequently, upon Saint George's Day, 1542, it
ia in one way surprising to fijid him enrolled by Henry among tbe
knights of the haughtiest order of chivalry in Ohriatendom, his
knee cinctured with the Garter, his shoulder crossed by the Blue
Kiband, like a baldrick, his neck hung about with the glittering
George of diamonds. Our sole cause for wonder at Surrey's
conse/itiog tbuB to his creation as a Knight of the Garter, being
the cireiinistaace of the recent decapitation, at \,V6 Iq'^m, q^ iiivi

ews cousin, Catherine Howard, a. dwiit^ ■V\Vt\e cYCW,Mi;e, *
ut/ye and iragik that Burnet speaVii oi Vei w ■puroww

^

HENRY HOWARD— THE POET-KNIGHT. 229

puelld — ^the fifth, yet not the last, of the bride-victims of our
English Bluebeard.

Immediately after this, our national annals have revealed the
fact that Surrey so far abandoned his comparatively insular seclu-
sion as at last, about that time, to take part in a recognised position
in the public affairs of England upon the continent. It was there-
iipon, indeed, that he was commissioned, together with LordBussell
and the Earl of Southampton, to visit the English pale at G-uisnes,
for the purpose of seeing immediately to the improvement of its
defences — apprehensions being then entertained of a speedy rup-
ture with the French Government. Betumed from this brief but
important expedition, we find him engaged, full soon, in earnest
contention with Sir Edward Knevett. Later on, again, we behold
him plunging into a noisy quarrel with one John k Leigh, a
patrician brawler, of Middlesex. Eor this latter offence, for
participation in this mere act of tiurbulence, we note our hot-
headed scapegrace bound over, to the tune of ten thousand marks,
in recognisances, and (first of all at the Fleet, afterwards at
Windsor Castle) twice subjected, for this solitary offence, to
lengthened incarceration. In riper years, though apparently not
in riper vrisdom, the Earl finds his way yet a second time into the
Fleet ; having been pronounced guilty, upon his summons before
the Privy Council, in the April of 1543, of two heinous crimes
and misdemeanors ! Firstly, of having eaten fiesh meat during
Lent, in regard to which charge the Earl pleaded a dispensation !
{Secondly, of roystering about the streets of London, accom-
panied by two frolicsome companions, " in a lewd and unseemly
manner," so runs the puritanical wording of the accusation, '' like
licentious players " — smashing sundry lattice windows with stone-
bows, otherwise with pebbles discharged from crossbows, like
those carried upon occasion by the arquebusiers. An occurrence
altogether indicating pretty plainly that Surrey could sometimes,
when fiushed with wine, disport himself as wildly in horse-play as
the least dignified among his contemporaries.

However, it is neither upon this phase of his domestic history,
nor yet even of the conspicuous share taken by him in our
warlike annals upon the battle-field, that we are here desirous of
expatiating. Pleasant, possibly instructive, though it might be
to mark his assiduity in prosecuting that costliests of pastimes,
playing with bricks and mortar, in the completion of hia \LCiV:i^<^
country-seat of Mount Surrey, in tiVk^ T^ot^NVs^ ^xi^SiXi:!^'^ *^&.^'^SJ^
LeoDord'a. Amusing, again, tViou^Vi SX. td:\^\» Tgt«s^ ^^
the relations in which he atood on t.\i^ oiift ^^^^V^'^^^Ttv^^v
nowned phjBician Hadriaa Juniua, «^ dieTBi-wmv-w^^^^^

2:iO FOOTPRINTS ON THE ROAD.

retained in the Earl's bousehold at an annual stipend of fifty
anjelfl; or, upon the other, towards the once famous but now
forgotten poet Churchyard, then a curly-pated urchin of ton, one
who owed to this princely patron the bodily luiury of a refined
hnme, and the intellectual luxury of a yet more refined edueatioQi
Churchyard, indeed, strove afterwards to repay his patron's gene*
i-osity by gratefully commemorating it in a poetical miscdWy
called " fchipH," a volume in which I^rl Surrey's character may »
found moBt graciously, even glowingly, portrayed.

To our national chroniclers let us leave the task of recounting
how the Poet-Knight acquitted himself when, putting aside his
Bin^ng-robes for the butT-jerkin and the shirt-of-mail, he parti-
eipateif in the wara of Scotland, and afterwards in the more
sanguinary conflicts upon the continent. Attractive, though tha
abrupt and tragical scenes closing these chequered feats of arma,
from the sudden termiuiitioo of Surrey's successive appointments
as marshal, as king's lieutenant, and as captain -general of hia
Majesty's forces in France, down in rapid sequence to bis final
imprisonment in Windsor Castle, to bis hurried removal thence to
the Tower of London, to bis infamous trial and liia atrocious
execution while jet but in the flower of his age ! — attractive, we
say, though they are, we would here cast but one momentary glance
of piteous sympathy and horror at the miBcrabie incident a, even
at that one of the sunny head rolling from the blood-stained block
npon the scaffold I Bather than this, let us fix our gaae here ex-
eluaivejy upon a spectacle in every way more congenial to our
tastes and more alluring to our imagination. Uememberiug
only, in regard to the sGameleaa condemnation of the £arl of
Surrey, upon certain frivolous charges relating to mere questions
of heraldic art and genealogical accuracy — a condemnation sum-
marily followed up by his decapitation on Tower Hill upon the
afternoon of Friday, the 21st of January, 1517 — tbat this con-
demnation and execution v. ere the last, as they were also the most
deplorable, sacrifices offered up to the ruthless cruelty of the
bloodiest despot that ever held in hia grasp of contamination the
sceptre of our Engliali soveieignty. Within one week from the
lamentable aasaBsination of Surrey by tlie axe of the headsman,
the Master-Murderer in that age of official slaughter had himseiP
breathed hia last — Kenry the Eighth expiring upon the 2Sth of
January, 1547 — according to some in the odour of sanctity, or at
any rate in the calmness of a serene contrition ; accorUing to

alters, with bowliugB of despiui: ttni a. teB^mfeft \(«,QWa,()le
betauae UDaraihog.

■A happier view- of the knigtt\y Svaie^ \X^>»^ k&'S '^'^^^le™"^

HENRT HOWAHD — THE POBT-KHlaHT. 231

obtainable, prior to tiie record of tiiose dreadful deatb acenes,
■whoao lists may, at bia own free will and pleasure, obtain among
the fluttering baveH of the young Eirl's poetry. And the glimoBe
thua obtained is, for all the world, like one of those delectable
peeps caught — here of Benedict, there of Beatrice — hid away in
the woodbine coverture of LeoDato'a orchard, in " Much Ado
about Nothing." Among the clustered leaves of those blooming
and delicioua verses, it ia as if we watched again the two lovers
stealing by turns —

^^^ " into tbe plsitcliid bower

^K Where houeyBQcklflB rijen'd b; the nut

^^ Forbid tlie son to enter."

The Benedict and Beatrice of tbis, our elder romance, being
ereaturea, happily, not of airy fiction, but of throbbing fleeh and
blood, the Lord Surrey and tbe Lady Geraldiue.

So covertly, indeed, is the latter bid away in her fairy-bower,
that but once only does her name appear among the titles, but
once only does it glance out through tbe teit ot tbege delicioua
verses of Surrey — veraes which are, nevertheless, in apite of their
curious reticence, the sole guarantee for that name being yet held
in the world's remembraui-e. Upon tbe traditionary records
already enumerated, are built up the incidents of a tale, the
veracity of which we have already avowed ourselves to be quite
obdurately bent upon believing. It matters nothing that con-
temporary autboritiea prove, beyond the possibility of denial,
that the Earl never at any time extended his continental wander-
ings so far as Italy — where the majority of these same legendary
incidents are, nevertheless, said to have transpired. Opposed to
the contemporary chroniclers — " mark now bow a plain tale shall
put them down " — has not Thomas Gray, dreamer of dreams, and,
therefore, surely a most authoritative witness, observed, in a foot-
note to bis " Progress of Poesy : " " The Earl of Surrey travelled
in Italy, and formed hia taste there " ? Consequently — if we wiU
but admit this weighty, or, as it may be called, paulo-post-future
assertion of a fictionist like Mr. Gray to be coneluaive— we can
then at once accept aa probable the out-growing statement, that
in Italy not only did Surrey form hia taste (a taate of which Mr,
Hallam has remarked, that it ia even more striking than. t.'a.
genius), but that there, also, he eigniiU^ Vnii\cia^4. '\'sj,Vi ■«&«>-'^'
tainingat the point of a word and speai tVe ^Q'a.'u£\ie.«s.'^'J«""^'i "^
eiceJencooftiierBir Geraldine. v &.\s

^It ia rexatioua, no do lib t, to find oiUBftViea o^aa'^.tMR'^

mam

232 TOOTPBINTB ON THX BOAD,

laudable efforts to arrive at this cnnclueion by a mere etubbora
fact of chronology. By siicli a chronological barrier, for example,
BB tbat proving the said Geraldine to have been aged no more
than seven at the very period here referred to, namely, 1536 ; the
very year in which the Earl is declared by that honest rascal Nash
and his two credulous followers, to have gone upon no sleevelesa
errand to the ducal court of Florence. Meaning the time when,
in a rapturous fit of knight-errantry, lie tied the sleeve of the
pretty chit to the crest of his helmet, and drove hie lance at »
gallop through the dust and blood of the Tuscan touruanienta.

A Platonic passion we will suppose it to have been, like that
cherished of uld by Measer Petrarch for Baby Laura — first seen
aud loved by the Poet-Monk, as the tale runs, ■when a tender
damsel of thirteen.

Kather than willingly abandon the day-dream of Surrey's love
for Geraldine, we will, in point of fact, suppose just anything, no
matter how preposterous. Driven, in effect, by the horns of our
dilemma to which very candid admission, we are fain to turn with
a sense almost of indignation upon that spouse of Surrey who
ought, in reason, never to have eiisted, aud upon those five
iutolerahle children, of whom it would bave been a great deal
more satisfactory never to have encountered any mention what^
ever in bis biography.

It is, at any rate, pleasant to remember, with Eenttmenta lite
those of a satiated vengeance, in reference to these five inoppor-
tune offspring of Lord Surrey's marriage, that alter their father's
premature decease they were handed overfor educational purposea
to Fox the maitjrclogiat ! That Master Fox who is described by
his historian as, w ith thin countenance aud hollow eyes, " looking
after the ghastly manner of dying men" — insomuch that we don't
wonder in the least to find, on reading further on in the lugu-
brious description, an incidental mention of every one shunning s
spectacle of bo much horror. Appeased to a certain extent by
which terrific apparition, we are, in sume measure, solaced for the
unwelcome birth of those five little witnesses against the Lady
Geraldine — leaving them with an ogre-like sense of satisfaction
to the tender mercies of their spectral pedagogue. It is a conso-
lation in ajiother way to remember, that nbde their widowed
mother sunived her lord for many years after his execution, she
appears by her second marriage, with a commoner of Suffolk, one
Shtanas Bteyamg, of "Woodford, Esquire, to have justified the
notion of a sort of poethumouB jealouaj m te^Ti \a bei ■^te«osa%il.
nrsl, the Fait Geraldine. W batevei ttoe iee\\nfe% tfwAB.'wn?, ^'iv
' ~ " of that second marriage of Surrey's ^lio-Kei <n>MTA'i%*=«

ife.

HENRY HOWARD — THE POET-KNIGHT. 233

lindeniable. As undeniable as the more welcome fact of the
reality of the individual existence of the Lady Q-eraldine.
• A descendant of the renowned house of the Q-eraldi of Florence
—a family said to have originally migrated to England in the
reign of Alfred the Great ; one of them, by name Gerald Fitz-
"Walter Fitz-Otho, having been Castellan, otherwise Constable,
at Windsor in the reign of William the Conqueror — Geraldine,
or, more strictly speaking, the Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, was
the daughter of the ninth Earl of Kildare, called, according to his
haughty ancestral patronymic, G-erald Fitzgerald. The identity
of the lady Elizabeth and the Fair Geraldine, it should be borne
in recollection, was first demonstrated by Horace Walpole in
those stately tomes of his, which must have been penned, one
might suppose, with nothing less rare than the quill of a roc or of
an albatross, dipped in an infusion of ambergris and attar of roses.
The paternal ancestry of our heroine seems, moreover, from that
same genealogical analysis of the family, to have been, if possible,
eclipsed in dignity by her maternal ancestry —Margaret, the
second Countess of the Earl of Kildare and daughter of Thomas
Gray, Marquis of Dorset, being herself descended from the
princely house of Luxembourg. Notwithstanding all which
splendid blazonries on their escutcheon, the Fitzgeralds appear
to have sometimes modestly abbreviated that euphonious desig-
nation into — Garret. In Surrey's instance, assuredly the noblest
and the loftiest G-arret with which the name of Poet ever came
to be associated. If incredulity be anywhere expressed as to the
reality of the feats of arms achieved by Surrey's lacce at Florence,
may we not point triumphantly to the antique shield still pre-
served at Arundel Castle, the Grand Duke's guerdon to the
knightly champion of Geraldine ? A testimony quite as conclu-
sive in its way as that afibrded by certain gigantic ribs of a
monstrous dun cow once upon a time slaughtered by the lordly
giant Guy, Earl of Warwick ; ribs scattered broadcast over the
western counties of England, as though Guy had exploded his
fore-footed enemy precisely as the bear was destroyed with flint
and steel b^ Baron Munchausen.

Ensconcmg ourselves behihd the impregnable defence of which
same substantial shield— invulnerable to ail the darts of ridicule
supplied from the critical quiver of Dr. Nott, no matter how
cunningly those arrows of argument may have been ijoiuted'^ir*^^
sarcasm and fledged with wit — ^iet \ia \iet^ \)afeTi,^SJi>a.'a^\ife*^:^i^^
credulity in reference to the loye oi ^aiV ^xjlxx'ctj *isst ^^ ^
Oeraidine, very rapidly epitomise t\ie N^TacvsvjA "^^"^"^^^^^^
romantic and renowned adventurer. ^caxXcrvsi^ ^•^

234 TOOTPRIHTS ON THE BOAD.

prpvionBly, of course, wbile doing ho, any little frivolous impedi-
meuta to belief, such Ba the infnncj of the Lady Elizabeth Fit.z-
perald, otherwise the Fair Geraldine — siK^h aa the non-ex istence
at that time of the magician, Henry Comelius Agrijjpa Ton
Nettesheim — or such, let us Bay, again, aa the acjual marital ties
formed by the Earl of Surrey himself! To say nothing at all
about his fiTB intolerable children, or of tho veiatious, though of
course quite unimportant, circumstance of his never hayin? tra-
versed Europe as far even as the mere frontiers of the Boman
Seninsula. Unrfer the shadow of Duke Paschal'a shield, we sit
own resolutely to the record of this charming love atory, im-
asaailably embattled.

How runs the tale, aB told by the sorrowful poet himself, in the
four tenderest lines of the famous sonnet ? —

" HansdoD dill firet present ber i/i mine ejen.
Bright is faer huD and Gcraldino tihe lijght :
Hninpton me taught to wish her first for mine ;
\?indaor, sliu I doth cbo^ me from her sight."

Here, indeed, in few words, is the quintessence of the joys and
woes of the affection twining together in a true lover's knot the
sympathetic heflrt-atrings of the Lord Surrey and the Lady
Geraldine. At Hunsdon Palace — love at first sight! Surrey,
then a stripling-gaUant, going thither on a ceremonial risit into
Hertfordshire, according to Chauncey's history of that county,
in company with the half-royal Duke of Eichmond ! Geraldine,
then a graceful slip of a girl, blooming radiantly in the train of
tlie Princess Royal, afterwards (Agnes Strickland shows ua how
unfairly) Mary of the blood-red reputation. At the Palace of
Hampton Court, not long afterwards, the tender passion awaken-
ing in Surrey's heart, to his own consciousness ! A revelation,
this, by the way, which is presumed to have occurred upon the
occasion of one of those gorgeous and courtly entertainments
with which Henry the Eighth delighted at times to vindicate his
taste as a more gross and more robuetuous Sardanapalua. Was
it not here, peradventure, during the dance in that old hall, to the
sound of gitem and sackbut, that the love-smitten Earl had bis
heart first torn by the coquettish rebuff of the lady whose rejec-
tion of his hand for the eutillou he himself haa so quaintly and
poignantly celebrated under the fable of a Tiff between a Wolf
/i/jd a Lion ? Jiimaelf as the Lord of the Forest, " prancing "
gsJIantlf towarda ous whom, quoth he —

HENKY HOWARD — THE POET-KNIGHT. 235

And from whom, nevertheless, to his amazement, he receives a
" alight," driving him thus nearly to desperation. Saith Madame
"Wolf to Monsieur Leo, with a flirt of her fan and a toss of her
head-gear —

" Do way ! I let thee wut, tbou sbalt not play with me ;
Go range about where thou mayst find some meter fere for thee."

Whereupon, and no marvel, we find it added forthwith, in regard
to one obviously a fine fellow in the mane ! —

'* With that he beat his tail, his eyes began to flame ;
I might perceive his noble heart mach movM by the same.

Seriously, however, it would seem that it was at the palace
of X Windsor Castle, not very long afterwards, that therd
came to them their first lengthened, and, this time, compulsory
estrangement. There it was that, in Surrey's own tantalising
remembrance of the incident, the young Earl so often directed
his wistful gaze towards the maiden's tower — his ladye-lova
sauntering there the while upon the leads, looking down into
the broad green tennis court below, where the youthful lover,
stripped to his white sleeves among the courtly players, would
so often miss the ball by glancing aside as he struck towards
the far-off fluttering raiment. Afterwards, immediately indeed^
upon the premature death of his brother-in-law, the Duke of
Richmond, the separation of the forlorn lovers, while it became,
we are told, more absolute, became at the same time also, it
must be confessed, in every respect more delightfully picturesque.
Then it was, in fact, that Surrey, partly at the instigation
of his mistress, partly to assuage his own recent anguish of
mind — a twofold anguish then coming to him simultaneously
from the trial of love and the death of friendship, set forth upon
his far-famed series of knight-errant exploits and adventures.
Not rendering himself by any means singular, remember, by so
doing, then, in that age of chivalry — when Petrarch had warbled
so recently and dulcetly upon his oaten reed at Yaucluse, and
when Surrey himself had participated, then as it were but yester-
day, in the gallant toumays of the Field of the Cloth of Q-old.
For, let it be borne in recollection, as it was not long since most
truthfully and touchingly sung by the late Viscount Strangford,
in his melodious tribute to Armand Carrel —

" It was gentle and good m ^^ o\^«ol ^«5^
To bear a brave luioo in "jomce \a:vx^\a^^^ ^gw^a»>
And never was knight 'w oxiVd \>e Ytlo-wi^ Vi Wa
Bat was ready to die for b\a\ad::j^'* tiasa<&.

^

ti'dO fOOTPHIHTS ON THB BOAS,

So was it with the kniglitly poet. Earl of Surrey, when he crossed
the European oontinent to maintain in the lieta the Bupremacy of
tlie ciiarnia of hia beloved Geraldine at the point of his lance sod
at the edge of hia keen BwcirJ, in hia own fair birthplace of
Florence. It being related of him that hb he wended hia way
thither, accompanied by a. splendid retinue, he tarried awhile in
llie capital of the German empire, for the purpose of conBulting
the worid-famoua wizard Cornelius Agrippa, then the most skilled
and potent magician in Cbriatendom. Haa not Sir Walter Scott
indeed BolemnU com ir Fin orated the interview in hia "Lay of the
Last Minstiel" ? — recording how —

" Daik vBB the liannted room of grammerys
_, To which the wizard Ud the raliant koight,

^^ Sais that before a mirror hoge und high

^^ A hallowed taper shed a glimmering light."

'a ghoBtly mirror Boon shadowing forth to the ravished eyes of
Surrey — as he staods there awe-stricken, in the midst of a goblin
ring of cross, and rune, and talisman, and alraageat — the exquisite
form of bis lovely Geraldine, clothed in her virginal night robe,
extended languidly upon her couch, consoling herself, aa poet
could beat wish during his absence, by reading one of bis own
impuaaioned manuacripts. An incident appropriately thua re-
counted ill harmonioua numbers —

Thanks to ■whom we may yet hear it related, in kindred rerses,
how raptnj^usly —

" The gentle Surrey lored lii« lyre —
Who h^ not heard of Surrej'i fams 1

■ Hia was the hero's soul of fire

And hia the bard'a immortal nam^
And hia the love exalted high
By ali the glow otchiTilry."

Insomuch that upon his arrival ultimately in the Tuscan capital,

after issuing a haughty cbullenge there to the kniglita of tbo

whole known world— Chriatian, Jew, Turk, Saracen, and cannibal

Cfiwcj', by the waj, a knightly canuibal— figbiing, of course, witli

sn tye to the tqpdereat pickings attet-BaTds^:^— t^ft"^T\tA'aiNJste^

boTo off the prize (the elory ot taa \aA^e-\oi«> ''■*^''^*^ fl«

bfautjund eiceiience) from all comeetVv.ow,^leMm?.ift■«^^«^M

HENRY HOWARD — ^TUE POET-KNIGNT. 237

him in the lists all who dared to splinter lances or cross swords
with him in the grand ducal tournaments. But it was prior to
these superb tournays in his honour that Surrey received from
the princely hand of Paschal de Medici the bossy shield, already
noticed as hanging in the armoury at Arundel Castle — ^the shield
dinted with heroic blows, repelled and repaid by their recipient, in
homage to the manifold graces of the Lady G-eraldine ! The same
identical, indubitable, indestructible shield from under the shelter-
ing shadow of which we may all look forth believingly down the dim
perspective of the past to that far-off love-legend, which, though
afar off, is yet in another sense so very near and so very dear to
our hearts, being in truth among the most tenderly cherished of
all our historico-literary reinembrances.

Eleven original portraits of the Earl of Surrey, each of them a
likeness of undoubted authenticity, enable us even now, at the
distance of three centuries, to form a pretty accurate notion of
his outward appearance. Nor is it uninteresting to conjecture
what manner of man it was of whom Pope saug in his " Windsor
Eorest"—

** Matcbless his pen, yictorions was his lanoe.
Bold in the lists, and gracefol in the dance.*'

A personage, this, moreover, who was eulogised by Sir "Walter
Baleigh in the preface to his History of the World — (fancy having
one's name trumpeted to after times not merely in the History ot
the World, but in the very Preface to it !) — as " no less valiant
than learned, and — of excellent hopes." The saddest words, those
last, that Baleigh could well have written of him, remembering
his premature and ignominious decapitation.

Conspicuous among these eleven portraits of Surrey are the
two admirable pictures from the brush of Hans Holbein-^
the full-length in the royal collection at Windsor, and the
kit-kat hanging upon the walls of the palace at Kensington.
In the latter he is sombrously robed in a black doublet and
mantle. In the former we see him radiantly clad in red, even
to tbe coxcombical cap of scarlet velvet, tufted with the gay
white feather. Yet, vividly lifelike as are these twin portraits
by the master-painter of the days of Henry, incomparably the
most characteristic among all the effigies of Surrey is the whole-
length painted by one GuiUim Streets, still tenderly ch.ei:\&W^^
among the heir-looms of the Howard iaaioX:^,^^* fcix\i.^^'^^'«>a5^'^
not leas tenderly, indeed, tlian tVie eia^vi^^^^ ^«\fcV^ «5^>i'«^
particukriaed. And an impressive -potX.T^kX.wc^ '^:^ ^n^«
mtntdoned iadubitMj is, repreeeutm^ tXi^ ^o>m^^ ^^"^ ~

238 roomraiNTS os the eoad.

the picture does, precisely as he must have looked witliin a year
before the date of hia execution.

He is here depicted ia fact, aa Btunding, with hia right hand
leaning upon a broken column (mournl'ul type of bis own desti-
nies), clothed, as in Holbein's kit-kat, in olack, but with the
black here richly flouriabed with silver embroidery ; hia comely
visage strongly eipressive io every lineament of melancholy and
indignation. Diiuiuutive in form, though one perceives him to
have been at a glance, and alight, apparently, evea fragile, in his
proportions, it is impossible not to recognise at the same time
upon the in:<tant in these composed and thoughtful features the
indomitable daring of the man who, while on trial for his life,
dauntlessly flung down gage of battle in open court before bis
chief accuser, beseeching his judges to permit the decision of his
cause by single combat, liimseV, stripped of his armour and clad
only in his shirt, to meet bis mailed antagonist sword to sword !
The valour of the heroic heart looks out upon us through the
keen glance of those dark brown eyes, not less dit^tinctly than
through the mobile play of lips but thinly veiled with the small
pointed beard, and the light delicate moustache.

And Geraldine— have we not equally vivid evidence of the
graces of her beautiful countenance P Geraldine — fair in com-
plexion, her eyes of a light colour, her tresses golden and luxu-
riant. Long after Surrey's demise, we have a casual glimpse of
lier rather unexpectedly, aa Lady Brown — in white satin — at
Queen Mary's coronation I Geraldine having in the meantime
espoused one Sir Anthony Brown — degenerating positively into
plain Betsy Brown — the skirts of her white satin petticoat flitting
past us through an Incidental memorandum in the twenty-eighth
appendix to the Cotton Manuscripts. Startled back by the flut-
tering garment of which silken apparition, we turn now more
pleaHurubly to take one parting glajice at the poet lover of my
Lady Brown, reminded by John Lelaud, who, in his Antiquities,
quaintly terms Surrey the " conscript enrolled heir of Sir Thomas
"VVyatt," that he was one, in truth, who, hardly less in merit than
in time, was foremost among the chiefs of our English literature,
" This noble Erie wrote excellently well and to purpose," quoth,
in his " Arte of English Foesie," sententious muster Puttenham.
As an author of various language, Surrey is spoken of by AVilham
Camden in hia " Britannia ; " and not inaptly, for, besides being
ekilied in Greek and Latin, he is re[)orted to have been a perfecC
nmater (a .rarer accomplishment tben, tWa ^o*.-ar4iYs'i in the
French and Syianiah and Italian \ang,\ia.^i;6. e\a.n'ivii% ftstisi^
•■he poetical woria of Surrey — \ev8e& iu ■ftVi.cV 'kb ■^\cwie Nsm

HESKT HOWAED — JUS POKT-KNIQHT. 239l

i End there preaenliiii!; himself to view liardly less distinctly
thiia in hia painted portraiturea ! Here, in the London streets,
" wrapped in hia careleaa doak ! " There, at "WindBOr Castle,
penaivelj resting hie head upon hia hand, his elbow on the sill of
his prison caaement ! It is curious to note, sprinkled about the
pages, not unfreq^uently such uumistakable anticipations of the
thoughta and even of the expressions of later poets, aa almoat
would juatify in regard to the latter the charge of something very
like actual plagiariam. As, for example, a certain well-remem-
bered puiiBage in Burna, which is only a more exquisite expaiiaion
into an impaasioned ijuatraiu of Surrey's lovely couplet j

^p Or aa that lamentation of FitEJiiniea over the death of hia
f^^^allant grey, in the " Lady of tlie Lake," a lament that is the

merest echo of these pathetic lines in " Surrey's complaint of a

Dyiog Lover ;"

" ' TUuu carsei pen,' said ho, 'woe -worth tKa bird thee hara, —
■ Ibe mao, the knife, sad nil thut made tliee, woe be to their shaie.

^m 'Viae worth tbe time and piaae tbac 1 so cuold iadite ;

^m And woe be it yet onoe again the pen that ao ean writs."

Twice, moreover, in tlieae Poems, do we not meet here in
Surrey with the same identical metaphor with which Lord Byron
closed his noble mouody ;

JT Strange and startling among the personal traits of Surrey, it is
here noticeable that a patrician, remarkable in his time for
the splendour of hia apparel and for the profusion of his ex-
penditure, should have penned that inimitable panegyric upon
thrift and contentment:

I

" The chief btiee that is cu-th to tiring man is lent,
la moderate wealth to nourish life, if be can be cuntent.
Hb tbat bath bat one held, and greeilil/ seeketh aougiil
To fenee the tiilet's hand ti'um need, a king withiii hia thui^
Sut euuh aa of their gold tbcir only itla\ la&'&e.
So Ireasura may the rayln of tlieit liangcs Vwila sa\o!tB:''

whimsical thought, by tke "way, 'Viere «\i.'g,£e.'i*t« ^^

a.

m

'MO rOOTPKINTS OK THE EOAD.

connection wilh the circumstance of Surrey's having adventured 1
upon a fragmentary translation of the j^ineid of Virgil, Accepting 1
as accurate the asaertion made by Mr. Hallani, that Trisaino U
indubitably " the father of blank verae," it would follow as an
inevitable consequence, that Surrey, Lftving certainly preceded
Trisaiuo in the composition of blank Terae, must neceasarily be
regarded as its grandfather. Yet, however, this may be — fathered
at any rate upon the young Earl's heart and brain is his charming
love-story — the love-story of one who ia perpetuated to our
remembrance through his own poetry as the very type of
Chivalry: (eraes and theme tenderly knit together anew
the familiar and melodioua diatich of Sir Walter Scott ;

ELIOT WAEBURTON— THE TEAYELLER

SiTATOHED from the world by an appalling disaster, Eliot
Warburton has left behind him the memory of an accomplished
gentleman, the reputation of an intelligent annotator, the lame of
the most delightful of all our oriental travellers. As a writer of
fiction we cannot, it is true, but regard his popularity as
evanescent. As a biographer, however, he will long be remem*
bered for a collation of manuscripts relating to one of the most
chivalrous and momentous epochs in our history — a work which,
while it at once rendered luminous incidents previously clouded
over by prejudice, at the same time, in the very act of so doing,
indicatea the nobler traits of a character until then blackened by
calumny or distorted by misrepresentation. As a delineator of
life and scenery in the East, he must always be regarded as a
writer gifted with peculiarities very rare if not indeed unrivalled
in their combination. With a keen perception of the humorous,
he united a winning and graceful sensibility. He wandered
through the landscapes of Asia Minor, with the heart of a poet and
the eye of a sportsman. His descriptions were eminently matter-
of-fact in their minute precision and exactitude, but the very driest
of their details it may be said were exquisitely coloured into life
by the glow of his imagination. The ground traversed by
Warburton was marked out like a ver^ chart in his narrative
as by the hand of a Mercator, but it may be said to have
been suffused at the same time with the diaphonous atmosphere
and exquisite dyes of a Lorraine. It was a peculiarly happy
thought, indeed, which announced upon the title-page of hia
earliest composition, that Eomance and "R/e^XSXi"^ ^^t^^ji^^^^vsi^^^is^sw
contracting tbemea depicted toget\\er. ^ \>eX,\«t ^\3iS.^^^^^3«-^^^
one calculated to prove more practic^Xi.^ AjjKe^xiJL Vi ^^ *^^*^^^^^
was perhaps never penned than t\io ^ery ^oVam^^"^^^^"*^

242 FOOTPHmra ok the boad.

^

all otherB in its homage for the sublime and its love for the beau-
tiful in those lands abounding with sublime and beautiful
associations. "With the remembrance of his various contributious
to the literature of our time, thf re is now blended, moreover, the
recollection of his abrupt and terrible die appearance — deepeoing
his reader's interest into curioHity and investing his name with
an almost painful fascination.

Born in 1811, at Aughrim, County Galway, Eliot was tbe
eldest son of Major Gleorge Warburton, formerly Inspector-
General of Constabulary in Ireland, by Anna, aiater of Colonel
Aeton of lVe8taBton,M.P. for the county of WickJow. Descended
originally from the old Cheshire house of "Warburton of "War-
burton and Arley, the Warburtons of Aughrim were derived from
a branch of the family settled in the Queen's County, and known
as the Warburtons of Garrybineh. Heir to a considerable pro-
perly in the sister island, tbe future noveliat and traveller had the
path of life smLothed before him to that career of competence
which, as with all men of a genuine nature or an earnest tempera-
ment, stimulated instead of enervating bis faculties. His scholastic
education was in due course completed at tbe University of
Cambridge. Subsequently, in tbe midst of bis travels, the
ambition to describe to others the loveliness of those scenes he
himself so peculiarly and sensitively appreciated, more than any
idle solicitude to obtain a passing reputation as a man of letters,
induted Warburton to venture upon recounting, in print, the story
of bis peregrinations. As a consequence of which determination
" The Crescent and the Cross " made its appearance in 1845, in
two small volumes, recounting, according to their second title, the
" Eomance and lieolities of Eastern Travel " — volumes extending
the scene of their narrative over Egypt and Palestine, into the
Grecian sea and tbe Nubian wilderness, through the porta of tbe
Levant and the streets of Constantinople. Tbe success of tbe work
was almost instantaneous. Its popularity, to employ once more the
familiar metaphor of the nursery, grew up in a night like tbe
I'airy beau-stalli. Not one solitary aie of criticism, moreover, it is
worth remarking, has since then been raised to fell it. Whac
was, however, still more delightful in the resemblance than even
that accordant voiceuf approbation welcoming the new leaves thus
suddenly grown up into a reputation — the narrative conducted
tije reader into countries quite as strange and marvellous in their
traj' as tbe giant region of the beau-stalk. It was in efl'ect a very
Jacob's Jadatr, leading us up irum & \\\)taT;j loot i-u ^n^.'^woA Ui
tJie ruina, and tbe tombe, tnd the AeeettB, ant We iio\>w=ci-
a^ cf Holy laud. "EotUeu" idone,a\ttuBS's.\VlWo\.\i«-

ELIOT WARBtIRTO$T--THE TRAVELLER, ^43

descriptive of the oriental wanderings of Englishmen, has dis-
played any comparable vividness in the mere manner of its
delineation. Perhaps, in some respects, " Eothen," in regard to
the simple quality of vividness, surpasses even the " Crescent
and the Cross," in spite of the letter's wonderfully natural and
picturesque power of realization. But in several other particulars
the *' Crescent and the Cross '* has a manifest advantage over the
brilliant and ornate pages of " Eothen." Warburton was no
scoffer. Humorous though he is very frequently, his merriment
is always " in place." He never startles you by a jest in Beth-
lehem, or violates all those emotions you adore as divine, by a
saucy sarcasm or a sardonic drollery uttered in the most sacred
localities of Jerusalem — uttered, moreover, with the impertinence
of a coxcomb, though with the gravity of a philosopher. Instead
of this, Warburton seems, in the very manner of his description,
upon entering Palestine, to " tread lightly," as though conscious
in his heart that it is, in truth, " holy ground." Throughout this
portion of his narrative he evidences a reverential feeling of awe,
if he fails to rise always in tone to the exaltation of religious
enthusiasm. Accompany him where we wiU, to the moonlit
avenues of Cairo, to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, or to that
island of Philoe up the Nile, which appears to be almost the
realization of Shelley's day-dream of —

*' A little lawny islet
By anemone and yiolet
Like mosaic paven — **

or pass onward with him into the grim and awful interior of the
everlasting pyramid — ^you feel that it is always the warm heart of a
man of genial nature that is beating in the bosom of your guide ;
not the frigid and bloodless organ of the cynic. Out of an insen-
sible appreciation of this arises, indeed, the sympathy created
almost unconsciously between the author and his reader in the
course pf this bewitching composition — a sympathy so complete
that the casual mention of his illness comes like a home sorrow to
vou, as though you had a personal friend in this unknown traveller.
\Jnlike Kiuglake, who is original rather than winning, and who,
surprises you into applause while he fails altogether to awaken for
one instant within you the more grateful sentiment of admiration
—Warburton charms by his gentleness as much as he enlis«»L%\s^
his vivacity, throwing at the same t\m^ ovet xJcva^V^^^'^'^^^^^
hia joumeyiDg the attractive influence oi\x\am\i^\%^^^ ^sKvssisi^^ss
and of hia ainguhrly sweet and coTaT^axvvonasXJ^^^ Xa^s^^t-ess^
Towarde the concJiisioa of Ms vrxitten te\i\.\xaQVvl > ^i

FOOTPRIKTB OS THE BOAD.

theae more amiable tmits in hia character, he candidly confesBes
bis distflte for the acoffinj^ spirit now-a-daja unfortunately only too
prevalent among our fellow-countrymen, who, " whether on the
mountain of Parnaaaua, or in the valley of Jehoaaphat, seem,"
BfljB he, " to think that everything ia unreal except themselves
and their eandwichea :" adding — "this ia the very triumph of
objectivity." With a nervous organization, whose every fibre,
one might say, responded to tlie associatioaa of the scenery,
"Warburton tad atao a peculiar clearness of perception, almost
amounting to the matter'Ot'fact. He comprehended and exulted
in the Komance of " eastern travel," but he saw none the
less distinctly, be certainly described none the leas accurately, its
realities. Wherever he moved in the course of his erratic pil-
grimage, like Goidamith, he not merely —

" Dragged at each remoTO a lenglhening cb^D,"

adding a new link of interest at every footatep to the electric
bond of Bympathy uniting bis own with the hearts of those who
lingered over the record of hia peregrinations — but, with his
"grey goose-quill" for a brush, and his ample vocabulary for a
palette, he painted s landscape in a page, sometimes a vignette in
a sentence. The effect reaembled the "Picture-Book without
Pictures," though it must be allowed that Warburton'a style
vas somewhat leas idiomatic while it was also aomewhat more
gorgeous than the simple but picturesque manner of Hans
Christian Andersen. This rhetorical splendour it was, which
imparted such a peculiar charm to the writings of Warburton,
excelling by reaaon of this peculiar charm of theirs the writings
of all other travellers, however affluent their vocabulary or
vivid their imagination. His similta were always appropriate,
and were aquandered about him, moreover, in inexhaustible
profusion. How acceptable tbeae were, none can properly
appreciate, but those who have pondered over the narrative
tbuB sprinkled alternately with dry statistics and flowering
illustrations, until one is almost tempted to say it assumed a
fantastic resemblance to an illuminated manuscript. If, for
example, he strolled away into the clasaic plain aurrounding the
Acropolis, the author was not satinfied with telling you that "the
Ilyssus exists no longer :" he conjured up an e:squisite feature in
the ;>anoninm — a feature thenceforth indehbly impreasiug the
euvumstance upon our recollecUon ^ly B.A4i.u^, t(ia.t " a torrent-
'j^e line of oltandera Beema atU\ to fiVV iVa iyi\it*a ■«\'i.V \et4isWi.
jspea and rosy foam." ^et, pleaaanttj "waai ^m\«.^6, «SS^^,

ELIOT WABBUBTON — THE TBAVELLEB. 245

his most conspicuous characteristic. It was manifest, too, from
the very commencement, as such, that indication of high animal
spirits, always so delightfully exhilarating, because neither
affected nor boisterous. In this animated strain he talked of the
confusion of the luggage before starting in the Oriental steamer
from Southampton, reminding us that saddlery and bullock
trunks were quite obtrusive, while the little indispensables for
the voyage were nowhere discernible, and "remedies for sea-
sickness reserved themselves for the overland journey." Expa-
tiating at another moment over the loveliness of the island of
Calypso, and the seductive calm of its seclusion, he interrupts
our enthusiasm, as he might have done that of Telemachus, by
observing that " a fat gentleman in green spectacles informed us
that it was the Botany Bay of Naples," calling it by its name
Pantellaria. Gossiping over the Nile, he alludes to the old
story of the mythologists, that the heart's blood of a virgin was
annually poured into its current, adding nidvely, " not unlikely,
in a country where they worshipped crocodiles, and were anxious
to consult their tastes." Equally extravagant is his grave,
almost grandiose allusion to the steamboat on the same vener-
able stream, apostrophising it as an unhappy river, which, having
like Ixion, in its warm youth loved the gorgeous islands of
Ethiopia, must now *^ expiate its raptures on the wheel !" Saun-
tering through the streets of Cairo, how humorously he mentions
the eccentricities of the lean and mangy dogs, " continually
running between your legs, which afford a tempting passage in
this petticoated place." Delightfuiiest of all, however, is his
most amusing particularity as to the still greater eccentricities
of the hens of Egypt, which " seem to consider that they have
discharged every duty to society in producing a mere egg,"
caring little or notlung alter the operation "whether their
offspring becomes a fritter or a fowl, an omelette or a game
eock!" Even the naked fellow entrusted with the office of
hatching the chickens wholesale, by means of gigantic ovens, is
ludicrously described as ever and ever turning the eggs " with
most henlike anxiety." A happy phrase, in this way, not nn-
frequently proves sufficient, in the vivid delineations of War^
burton. He thus describes the mud-coloured buildings and
terraced roofs of Alexandria as being " varied with fat mosques
and lean minarets." He callotypes the black slaves^ as t^^^'^
are in reality, " magpied with wnit.© nst^^toim^ xovsaA '^^^ \is».^
And loins, "
Gibraltar atarts before us, from ttie BecondL^^b^^ c!l '^^ ^^
chapter with a distinctaeas macveiioua «XxGL<;>^ti «s^ "^^

Sio rOOTPEHfTB OS THE BOAD. ■

with curtain, and ravelin, and rampart — with "zigzag lineo from
ehore to summit, looking like couductors for the defenders'
electric fire to flash along" — in the complexity of its stem and
impregnable fortiflcationB. Musing again over that Nile, which
he mnnifeatly reverenced in epite of the grizzly story of the
virgin's blood and the grizzlier appetite of the crocodiles, War-
hurton in his fourth chapter allows hia fancy to run riot in
eiaggeration over the supposition that Egypt ie an eiotic land,
borne down from the torrid remoteness of Abyssinia towards the
shores of the sublime and history- glorified Mediterranean. Hia
fantastic meditations thus expressing themselves : " Those quiet
plains have tumbled down the cataracts; those demure gardens
have flirted with the Isle of PiowerB five hundred niiles away;
those very pyramids have floated down the waves of the Nile ; to
speak chemically, tbat river is a solution of Ethiopia's richeat
regions, and that vast country is merely a precipitate." In a
kindred mood of facetiousness, our Traveller, while pausing in
the midat of the petrified forests of the wilderness, comments
upon the fact of their invariably appearing in places the most
arid and shelterless, by observing that they " must have had a
hard time of it," being " exposed, like Niohe, to all the arrows
of Apollo." No less wittily, elsewhere, does he prouounce judg-
ment upon the summary vengeance wreaked by the jealoua
husbands among the Egyptians — remarking that eunuchs are
their only " gentlemen of the long robe," the knife and the Nile
being their only damages. Abounding as the chapters do with
these tokeuH of an innocent and irradiating merriment, they lure
the attention onwards, as by an irresistible fascination, through
all the varieties of Asiatic life, enlivened sometimes by perilous,
sometimes even by romaijtic adventures. Throughout the whole
of his charming narrative, moreover, what is especially notice-
able, is the fact that, not once, by a syllable or an innuendo,
does Warburton become for one instant dogmatical. In this
particular be appears to be little else than a miracle among
Travellers. Dogmatism, indeed, would seem to have bad about
it but little that was akin to that ingenuous and equable tem-
perament. Besides — there was genial intelligence as well as
eclectic taste lurking under hia subtle and comprehensive
sensibility; and as La Brujfcre says in one of his poignant
apophthegms, " C'est la protonde ignorance qu' inspire le ton

doffiaatique. "
GUted by Jtfature with the very (pisMiea tAeuXa^-tA to -^n.
regard from tbe observant, it was iwit ftMYVTvivufe Vo 'iuv*. "v^a^

Uhurton'a first work aVmoet \mmei\a.W>^ tfCwwAaA. -eBi

Jgf2n

ELIOT WARBURTON — ^THB TBAVBLLER. 247

attention of the public to him — that, in other words, it im-
mediately secured for him a reputation. His readers exulted
over the freshness of his gentle and unaffected enthusiasm.
They were pleased with the frankness of a character which
revealed by turns the most generous sentiments and the most
elevat»ed aspirations. They rejoiced in the opportunity of be-
holding those famous regions where the feet of the holy race
had moved down the trail of immemorial generations, toiling
in Egypt, roving in Syria, and conquering in Palestine — ^those
regions consecrated, one might almost believe, to celestial im-
mortality in the inspired annals of the Prophets — and which no
other modem writer has ever depicted with a pencil at once so
reverent and so picturesque. The vividness of each description
here, in fact, is surpassed only by the felicity with which are
celebrated its peculiar associations. Insomuch was this remark-
able in the earliest and happiest of the literary productions of
Warburton, that from his lips " twice told tales" were found to
be scarcely less acceptable than they have since proved to be on
the opposite shores of the Atlantic, when revivified by the voice
of Nathaniel Hawthorne. What, for example, could be more
enthralling than Eliot Warburton*s account of the battle of the
Nile ? — a victory, for two reasons, unsurpassed in the annals of
maritime warfare, having been fought at midnight and at anchor.
And yet how many had been the records of that memorable
action already penned and already familiar, from the highly ela-
borated description of James to the terse and inspiring panegyric
of Southey ? " 'Tis an old story now, that battle of the Nile,'*
said Warburton, " but a brave old story can never die of age ;*'
and thereupon he recounted once more tbe incidents of the
conflict from its commencement to its conclusion, from the silent
bearing down of Nelson's fleet upon the armament of his anta«
gonists to the capture of the last vessel, the Tonnant, when
'* slowly and reluctantly, like an expiring hope, her pale flag
fluttered down from her lofty spars, and the next that floated
there was the banner of old England !"

It was not only, however, in his second-hand narratives
that our author was thus pre-eminently successful. The enume-
ration of bis own incidents of travel presented to him the
happiest theme for his descriptions. Here it was that he
revealed his originality as a depictor of the coast scenery of
the Levant, of the fertility of Egy^t, oi \.\y^ ^X^wi^-^ <2jL^>^ss«^
of the sacred topography of ^yx\a, oi >iNv& waj^^^ ^o^^^
and luxury of Constantinople, oi t\xB «8L^^JtLYt% .'^^'^^v^
emerald iaknda of the Greek arc\ivee\a®>* ^^xxvs^X^^ ^

248 FOOTPEINTa ON THE BOAT.

Lis temperament was, lie had n evert li el ess strong 'within him
all the comprehensive sympathiee of the cosmopolite. Insular
as some of hie notioiiB iicqueBtiouably were, the majority of tfaem
were characterized hy a largenesB that embraced the wliole cycle
of humanity and were restricted to neither hemiBphere.

DomeBtic aa were those affections which prompted him in a sub-
sequent production to declare in an effusion oi tenderness that
the sacred word Home "applies to hearts, not heartha," he
pOBseeeed a love of the true and the beautiful of all climes and
countries, such as rendered him familiar and at home io regions
the most remote and among Labita the most outlandish. An
agreeable testimony of this is afforded hy the incidents accom-
panying his arrival at Beyrout, and his reluctant resignation to
quarantine when living for a fortnight in a little cottage apart
from the lazaretto. This cottage-prison he describes as situated
in a grove or orchard of mulberries. Here, from the roof top
looking in one direction over the Syrian landscape, in another
over the billows of the Mediterranean, ho tends a " little gallipot
garden," whose every weedy plant he declarea to have become for
him a Picciola, while he watches with an emotion somewhat
nobler than tbat of idle curiosity the movements of the little
family in the lower portion of the premises, a family of humble
Maronites. How charmingly he avows at last " I Bjmpftthiaed
witb the changes of weatber tbat affected the operations of the
silkw orms ; I grieved for the illness of the Uttle child ; I took as
much interest m the attentions paid by the young Syrian awaini
to Katarin and Dudu as tliey did themaelves ; and a baking or a
washing day appeared to me fdl of importance :" his Wiirm and
kindly disposition kindling into attachment for beings who must
have regarded him comiiaratively, the while, almost with indil-
ference. And such was "Warburtoii! Everywhere "at home"
— in the Nile boat or in the tombs of the Pyramids, under the
cedars of Lebanon or among the olives of tlie holy mount near
Jerusalem. Eyerywiiere looking into the visages of those he
met, the Jew, the Copt, the Arab, the Nubian, tbe Turk, the
Greek, or the Egyptian, not as into the face of an alien, hut as
into the face of a fellow-creature. Hence indeed it was that he
adapted himself so readily to the customs of those suuny and
voluptuous climates — wearing the tarboosh, or the turban, or the
girdling alianl, breathing aromatic tobaccoes through the fumea
t^/'iAe t-Aj'iougue or the uaigilly, ridiug tliat docile Arabian trom
wA/cA Ae^aried at Jast aa Ironi " a tried o\i 'iiwni" \iisK.\iacing
uae/er the canvaa of his tent, or \mder ^fea \)tB3\c)Q«6 ol «jib-
umbrageous sjcamore, as readily aa ^.Wm^ ^ ■««**■ ^«=^*'*

ELIOT WAKBURTON — THE TRAVELLER. 249

Islam or a descendant of Ishmael ! The yery title of the pro-
duction in which these roviugs were recounted was an incentive
to its perusal, being at once as poetical as it was epigrammatic.
It constituted a tribute to the genius of symbolism — that myste-
rious element common to the atmosphere of Paganism and of
Christianity. It celebrated not merely the Crescent by which
Byzantium seems to have commemorated the greatness of Diana
of the Ephesians, but that more sublime and more awful emblem,
the Cross, the emblem which appears to have been prophetically
worshipped by Heathendom in anticipation of the !Uivine Sacri-
fice. In inscribing the latter ef&gy, so to speak, upon the frontis-
piece of his undertaking, Warburton had not forgotten the
bewildering circumstance of its antiquity as a symbol of idolatrous
as well as of inspired religion. He associated the name of his
volumes with that wonderful and enigmatic image which, according
to Lafitau, was adored by the Eed Indians of America before the
discovery of their continent by Europeans, that solemn Cross
which Grecian Art had placed in the hands of Horus Apollo,
suspended round the neck of the divinity Apis, carved upon the
front of Jupiter Ammon, inserted in the thyrsus of Bacchus,
engraved upon the vases of libation, and jewelled in the bosom
of the vestal virgins — the Cross mentioned with an inexplicable
reverence in the most ancient annals of the Chinese and in the
memorable records of the Fhcenicians.

following upon these really astounding recollections, it is
beautiful to remember the noblest apostrophe of admiration
ever addressed to the Cross as the Symbol of Symbols — the
Apostrophe of St. Augustine,* where he speaks of the Cross as
once an object of derision, but now glittering in gold and pre-
cious stones upon the summit of every diadem — "Attende
gloriam crucis ipsius: jam in fironte regum crux ilia fixa
est, cui inimici insultaverunt." Had the passage we have
just quoted occurred to Warburton, we doubt not that he would
have selected it as the motto of his title-page. As it is —
the work in which, by its designation, the author thus evi-
dences his recognition of the grace and of the mystery of symbo-
lism will — by revealing the country of the Crescent in all its
Bomance and in all its Beality to the venerators of the Cross — •
long tend, we believe, to preserve, if it fail to perpetuate, his
reputation.

Encouraged, doubtless, by the A\a\.\xi^ai^e^ ««Q55Rft»s^ ^ *^'^
♦*. CreBcent And the Cross,** our auttiot dfc\«tm\a»^\i^^^^^ ^^^

* Bx Tnictatu super Pealmnft, "fcv ^V.V^'^^-

— -TOOTPRINTB ON THE

yet onee more to adventure upnn the hozwiIoiiB but fascinfttfne
enterprises of literature. In Iiis Becond work it was found tbst
the Traveller liati become transrormpd, almost we had eajd degene-
tated, into the collator of manuaenptft. The " Memoirs of Prince
Bupert and the Cavnliera," published in 1849, disclosed, however,
scarcely less than ite predeceBSor, tlie picturesque matiner and the
generous Bympathies of Warhurton. The latter characteriatics
were. perhapB, therein even more perceptible than, in the pro-
duction which must always be regarded as his masterpiece.
Comprising a selection from the private correapon deuce between
the Royalist Commander-in-Cbief and the subordinate adherents
of the Cavalier Sovereign, the work contained a variety of carioui
documents transcribed from original MS8. — documents which had
never until then been afforded the opportunity of publication. So
abundant, indeed, were the manuscript treasures tbue arranged
and revised by "VVarburton, that he scrupulously disclaimed the
authorship of more than the first and second volumes, remarking
that he could be regarded as nothing more ihan simply the editor
of the third, consisting as it did for the moat part of authentic
papers relating to the civil war, carefully digested and symmetri-
cally disposed in order. The peculiar interest of this collection,
it must be observed, arose from the circumstance of ita being
derived from Colonel Benett, Prince Rupert's secretary. It
included no less than a thousand letters, addressed to their
youthful chieftain by the chivalrous and loyal Cavaliers — letters
peoned by the hands of those gallant gentlemen who pawned
their plate and mortgaged their estates, and "dropped their
hearts' blood for drachmas," to purchase the safety of a princ6
and to vindicate the power of a dynasty. Besides tnese singular
epistles there were many others, which had been lying neglected
until then among the family archives of the Earl of Dartmouth,
together with copious materials extracted from the Diary of
Evelyn, and the Eoyal Letters of Bromley, as well as from Sir
Henry Ellis's well-knowu Collection. As additional evidence of
the extraordinary industry displayed in this compilation by Eliot
Warburton, it may be observed that his researches extended
through a multitude of celebrated MS3,, among them the Lana-
downe, Harleian, Bodleian, Sloane, and Aahrnolean. Apart from
these laborious inveatigatiouB, however, the production was in
many respects singularly meritorious. It was not so much the
worthiest, as it was IneraJly the first, biography of Prince Superb
that tiwi appeared. A trivial pamjihleti^iur^tlivia**' recount hii
"Heroic HiBtory " iad been printed, it, \a Wae, &o 'Sai WV «■
Jf63, While, withm tie present centan. " -"'" <"\io™ta

. uiota tiiiQOT»!w(

ELIOT WAItBUETON — THE TBAVELLEB.

memorial of tlie pame peraonnge Imd been contributeii to ttie
" BinErnphie TJniverfielle " — but neither could be regarded aa
entitled to any high degree of consideration. Warburtoa mnat
therefore be looked upon aa the earlieat biatorian of the Cavaliera.
Incidental mention of their proweas and Belf-sacrifice had been
repeatedly made before without question ; but no deliberate effort
had been attempted to clear their memory from roiaeonception,
or to obliterate from the repntatn'on of Rupert those oftlumniea
which had dimmed its glory through so many misapprehending
generationa. There waa a coneeninl gallantry in the resolution
with whiuh Warburton ventured to impugn the accuracy of that
stem judgment — a judgment ■which had been sanctioned with a
sort of tacit acquiescpnce by no leaa than two centuries. In
relating the adventures of the Eoyaliat Leader, he displayed
much of hia former eameBtness with a wholly unloolted for cir-
cumfrpection. His narrative, in regard to facta, posseasea all the
etubbornneaa of the Rnundhead, while in its occasional bursts of
alternate invective and panegyric it reveals all the audacity of
the Cavalier.

Shortly after the firat rise of his popularity, "Warburton was
induced in 1846 to edit a couple of volumes descriptive of life in
the Catiadas. Here it was, that in the course of his Preface to
"Hochelaga." he observed as truthfully aa aententiously, after aa
allusion to Atalantia — "The theories of old Greece and Eoman
Spain became stories ; atoriea became tradition ; tradition became
faitli, and when Columbua asaumed hia miasion, in him the
old 'Weatering' instinct amounted to an inspiration." Alaa!
that we ahould have now to bear in mind that with Warburton
himself that "old 'weatering' instinct" amounted more to a
lamentable fatality than to any auch golden aspiration. Six years
afterwards, namely, in 1851, another work was edited by the
biographer of Eupert, a circumstance indicated by his Introduc-
tion to the "Memoirs of Horace Walpole." Here, however,
Warburton diatinctly avowed that hia oiJy share in the under-
taking was that of affixing his name to the title page — excepting
alone a few occasional corrections " freely offered and freely
accepted." Sketches of the " voluptuous virtuoso" of Strawberry-
Hill had already appeared, but these were chiefly restricted to
mere summaries, such, for example, as the memorials penned by
Lord Dover, by Sir Walter Scott, and by Pinkerton. E.-i™.
the "feeling and eloquent" memow ol 1A;v%4 "?>5btvi -«^,». ^i^^Ms
better, a& Warburton here too^ oc«ua\o-a W \.VL'C\-a-siuc , ■*^?^^

avowed apology, dictated by "Cam ^oa't'a.vittxo^is. ■^'s^'Si*'^'*^ » .

^^idsbip, J

^«"

"What coTitribiitpd very considernhly to enhanoe tiie value of the
biogrnphy introduced to tiie world by Warburtou, was the cip*
cumntance that the volumes comprised a variety of original
letters by the inoBt faacinatin^, becauee tbe most ftlegantly
voluble, of corre spoil dents. Apparently almost as delightfully
inartificial as the letters of Byron, those of Wafpole are aa
faHtidiniisiy delicate as the epistles of Chesterfield, occasionallf
combining with these dflectable pemliarities the idiomatic diction
of Cowper, and the effervescent, sometimes almost boisterous,
vivacity of Madame de Sevlgn^, Speaking of them in emineutlv
ileservi d terms of admiration, our author wittily observes in his
Introduction, that "they leave nothing but truthfuluesa to
be desired,"

While amusing himself thus at bis leisure with the responsi-
bilities of editorship, Warburton had his errant fancies at length
carried away captive by the manifold seductions of imaginative
literature. Influenced, probably, by his examinatiou of the
Koyalist manuscripts, he determined to recount a tale of the
troubles of 161 — , by writinj; the confeasions of a Cavulier, under
the guise of a fictitious autobiography. Such, in truth, were the
imaginings which, in 1850, led to the appearance of his romauca
of " Reginald Hastings. " It afforded but feeble evidence of the
author's capacity as a novelist, and was in consequence regarded
even by his admirers with an undisguised sense of diaappoinlment.
The story displayed, no doubt, that familiarity witli the epoch
which was only to have been expected from the historian of
Kupert, a familiarity which in another might have been a subject
at oDCe for surprise and admiration. It was otherwise unattrac-
tive. The masquerade of tlie Homancer appeared to sit but
awkwardly on the shoulders of the Traveller. He could donn the
burnoose with the readiness of an Arab, but the mask of the
novelist seemed as unnatural a disguise for him aa feathers might
Lave seemed for a leopard. It was askew in the first chapter.
Upwards of a year elapsed before he ventured once moro upon
the delineation of the purely imaginary, It was late in the
winter of 1851 that his last work, "Darien," was published, a
narrative partially historical in its character, and recounting,
under the title of "The Mercliant Prince," the fortunes of the
renowned Alvarez,, better known, as that Sir Solomon Medina
who accused the great Duke of Marlboroui^h of such enormous
embtzzlenient. The production, as a literary performance, was
aoarcelj lesa faulty than its predeceasQi •, ■\iu'&, (ioQsv.AftTwL in. the
tjIwb of an after occurrence verj letrMe m "vW c\iMaK.\.«t,-&^^^
■ '^uod to poaaeas an eatliraUing aui,we\)6'ttCTe,'"' »«i™«^

ELIOT WARBUBTON — THB TRAVELLER. 253

interest. ** DarieD," to be estimated at its intrinsic value, must
be read by the lurid light of the AmazoD, by the light of that
maritime conflagration which seems throughout the fiction to be
foreseen as by a sort of weird presentiment. Viewed thus, the
work cannot fail to excite the awe, as well as the bewilderment,
of the psychologist. Its conspicuous purport — enlivened by the
romantic adventures of Alvarez — was to record the rise and
£ailure, the propitious rise, the disastrous failure, of the famous
Darien Expedition. That expedition, it may be remembered, was
originated by the founder of the Bank of England. William
Patterson is, therefore, the real hero of the romance— the strangest
of all the heroes of romance, perhaps, that was ever selected ; a
Puritan enthusiast, and a mercantile day dreamer, unselfish and
elevated in his ambition, but weak and vacillating in ita develop-
ment ! Associated with Patterson, towards the conclusion of the
story, is Andrew Fletcher, of Saltoun, a man almost as specula-
tive and still more impracticable. Bemarkable, even beyond his
powers, among the real characters introduced should likewise be
particularized John Law (as Warburton designates him, "the
Napoleon of the gambling world"), the originator of that famous
Mississippi scheme which as far surpassed the South Sea Bubble
as the South Sea Bubble surpassed M. Cabet's project for found-
ing a new Arcadia by means of an Icarian colonization. A sort
of morganetic admiration for the old Baccaneers betrays itself
throughout the narrative— due reference being made to Alexander
of the Iron Arm, to the wily Biock, the daring Pierre, the ruthless
Olonois, and the redoubtable Montbara, otherwise called the
Exterminator. Besides all of whom, not the least formidable
among these ferocious '' water rats," Sir Henrjr Morgan is here
actually involved in the imaginary incidents conjured up by the
novelist. There is an evidefit gusto in his every allusion to the
spoils gathered in by the audacity of the Buccaneers — ^gold from
Mexico, silver from Peru, pearls from the Gulf, cinnamon from
the Caraccas, ambergris from the Baltic, fish from Newfoundland,
nutmegs from the Moluccas, ivory from Ceylon, diamonds from
Golconda — the involuntary tributes paid by the industrious trader
to the lawless navigator. Fascinated though he was, however,
by the prowess of the Buccaneers, Warburton's gentle nature
revolted, nevertheless, at their cruelty, but still more at the
systematic inhumanity revealed by the conquerors of SpanialL
America. Prom " the complaints of Laa Q^iS^dA^^^^ <^^\&^>«skKi^)&
of Cortes, the apologies ot HerreTa) «dA \^aft %>MSi\ssaa^ "^^
Freaeott/'he here adduced the moat iwrviau^ «s\^«m» ^>r
Almost jfretematursd atrocity. ^\uV^ «aoaat>tt^^ ^^ •Cassw^

inveatigationa, however, he loat no portion of his engaging
vivacity ; tliua, even 'wb«:^n depictiag an outrage bj tbe troopers
of Cltwerhouae, for esftmple, lie quietly remarkB — tliat " in toaet-
ing the bealtb of fair Aiice the topers made considerable inroada
upon their own." It was a curioua cireumBtanee, moreover, that
although actually a total stranger Co the Trauaatlantic sceDerr, he
depicted it almost with the local colouring of Cooper and tbe
ornithological and eoological minuteoess of Audubon, He ap-
peared to be familiar with every feature in tbe landscape, with all
the winged and creeping denieenB of the woods, with the abound- ■
ing varieties of the luxuriaut vegetation. He beheld, aa if in
reality, the branches of the cedar aad the balsam, gorgeous with
their liTing blosBoma — the brilliant plumage of the Darat and the
tulean. He seemed to have noted every movement of the scorpion
uuder the cassia tree, and to know familiarly the favourite baunta
of the lizard or of Che serpeut near tlie moss-grown aud tortuoua
roots of the fruit-dropping tamariad. "There," he exclaims in
one portion (ii. 299), " under the influence of an eternal summer,
Xature runs not ; like a glorioua and Ikntastic Baccliaiial, drunk
with tbe rich juices of a virgin soil, and the warm leUowuhip of a
meridian suu : there ehe makes tor herself arboriol bowera wboae
lofty colonnades aud flower-roofed aialea muck the dimeusious of'
our stateliest palaces." And with every leaf and fibre he ap-
peared to have rendered liimseli' perfectly well acquainted — from
the bamboos and bananas to tlie interwoven [juraaiteB "all a
bloom with purple fl-owers-," from the pineapple "burning
like a topaz ou its green culyi," to the maugroves drooping
into the »ater heavily laden at every bough with oysten.
'I'he tenacity of his memory, tbe voracity of his researches, and-
tlie vividness of hia imagination traustormed Warhurton into
a Meiicatt while he wrote, as the same induence cliauged Moore
for the time being into a native of Cashmere, and Burke into a
Bengalee.

Wlietber it was that he yearned to compare hia own fancies

with the realities of nuture acroBs the ocean, whether he may have

wished at laat to satisfy his curiosity by examining with bis own eyes

Bucb creatures as tbu " demouiae cut-flsh and me cruel remora,"

or byre-discovering for liimaelf that "one rocky^ ridge" in the

isthmus ot Darien (u. 97), from the summit of which can be aeeu

tim oppoaiag ahures ot the PaciQc and Atlantic — shortly after the

pubhoitioa of bta novel, relating to tbe "Merchant Prince,"

tyarburton reaolved upon at once ^TOC^ieivti?, W Manama.

l'<iaait>ly, in thia instance, be -was actuatwi \i3 \.\iB.^,\we qI \w«s

S^J^aeJl' teimed "the must un(\u»ini;\ia)Q\ft o'i.WNca" tj.'""^

ELIOT WAKBUETON — THE TRAVBLLBB.

tliat love wiiicb had already, years before, carried him to Damietta
and the Dardanelles. However tiiia may have beet}, his eicursion
to Central America was resolved upon ; at firat, aimply with an
eye to pleasure, but ultimately alao with an eye to buaineaa —
Warburton havipg been deputed to negotiate friendly relations
between the Indian tribes of Darien and the Atlantic and Pacific
Junction Company. lu pursuance of this enterprise, he left
England in the Amazon ateam-ship, of 2,250 tons burden, on
Friday, the 2nd of January, 1852, under the command of Captain
Symoua, with 163 souls on board, crew aad passengers. The fate
of that unfortunate and magniflceat vessel can never, surely, iii
the annala of misfortune, be altogether lost to remembrance, lu
ita aggregation of horrors it exceeded even tbe doubtful fate of
the President and the well-kuown loss of the Kent Eust India-
mau. In many particulars it eclipsed the fearful destruction (a
month afterwards) of her Majesty's ship the Birkenhead. Eariy
oQ Sunday morning, the 4th of January, but very little indeed
after midnight, almost every soul on board the Amazon being
huahed iu alumber, the pealing of the alarm-bell, and frantic cries
of " Fire," woke thoae who were aleeping to the frightful know-
ledge that the ship was in flames. Twenty minutes more proved
enough to complete tbe conflagration; but witliiu that brief
interval how much agony was compreased those who have survived
have enabled us to conjecture. An iueffectual efibrt to set the
fire-engine going was followed by the despairing abandonment of
the hose and of the desperate resort to the buckets. Everythiug
speedily revealed that the attempt to extinguish tbe conflagration
must prove futile, but during the loss of time reaultiug Iroui the
endeavour four out of the nine boata received irreparable injury.
Meanwhile the engines, not haviug been stopped at tbe outbr^tak
of the cataatrophe, carried tbe Amazon with terrible velocity
through a heavy aea aud a wind blotiiag with considerable
violeuee. Eifty-mue persons alone escaped in two of the life-
boats, the dingy, tbe cutler, and the pinnace — tbe two beat
lifebouts being burnt on the aponsona, wiiile the mail boat, and
in all probability the gig, were swamped alongaidti. The huG
individual recognised on board by those who were saved was
Eliot Warburton — standing by the captain at the wheel, fully
dreaaed, and quite collected. Shortly afterwards tbe vessel be-
coming involved iu a sheet of flame Irora the bowatjtvii Mi> ^.nib
tafitail, the magazine aoou expluded, \.be l\uui'^, ^ie*K->s-«^, '^'^
over with a bwsjug sound into the via.Ne«,a.ii.4 ■Coa. '*i-E«.«i;^^J<>^
u/jofl ainioHl instantly fonndereil. ■K.tiu.ie'uiQecui^ '^-'^a ?;^'^^^
^ iLla appaUiag oaJaniitj, i;oiums ixi it ivi ^-^ ■e.'i^'^'^'^ "1

FOOTPRINTS OS THE BOAD.

appearance of the i-omnnee of " Darien," we ahudder at the
mysterious recurrence of alluaions to precisely similar disasters,
introduced by the almoat prophetic haad of the g^ifted and
lamented Travt-ller. Already in tho opening page of the third
volume of " Begiiiald Uaatinga " be had quoted thoae paaaiooate
Iraes of Shakapere —

^^k " Lord t methODght vhat psin it 'oa to irowa 1

^^^^ Whut dreadful aoiae o! vatar in mine enra ;

^^^^ What slgbta of agl; dealba iritbiD mina ejet ! "

But, here, in " Darien " his expreaaiona became atiU mora
lamentably appropriate, were atill more painfully distinct in their
explicit.ness. Almoat at the commencement of the romance tho
author' dedicatea an entire chapter (i. 17.) to a minute deacriptioa
of the tormenta of death by bumiug, transcribing at the ontaet
those terrible versea of Shelley —

»" The thirsty Gra crept ronnd hia manlj limbi—
His reaolntfl ejea were scorched to bliadjiess gooa;
Hin death-ptmga reat 017 heui."

Further on "Warhnrton writes (i. 206) : "We atruck; all hands
took to the boats ; I only left ; boats awamped ; crew lost ; I,
thanks to your gallantry and kindneaa — only saved." Elsewhere,
he aaya (ii. 16) : " Startled by the audden sense of drowning, he
awoke to find himsell' in the anE[ry sea, with wreck and ruin and
destruction all around." Another of his mournfully apposite ex-
its, moreover, ia from TJhland —

^

" The vindB nnd the varea of ooean,
They rested qoietly ;
But I heard on the gale a sound of wall,
IliBra was danger on the sea."

Everywhere he aeemed to behold round him mystically, as "Lang-
fellow did in " Evangeline," the glory of a conflagration, where —

Sia BimDea were tinctured with t'kesa.meX'Lmitue of premonition,
5e thus illuatrated the impecceptMe Si^vft^aM^wii. "ii ^aT^o-w "
^oeaaed comoamon (iii. 211) — " As YiXieii a '&Vv5 'isiMa&»w

nition.

!HH

ELIOT VTASEURTOS — THE THAVELLEH. S57

tlie water forma a diatracted vortei for a, few minutea, and the
waves are tossed about unnaluvally ; but tliey gradually subside,
until tbe surface of ocean is as calm over the buried wreck aa
over tbe smootbest sand that ever formed a drowned seamau's
pillow." His tbongbtB appeared to recur perpetually to the
same tiieme with a miaboding iteration. He talked (i. 68) of
" marioera making preparations on a quiet shore for a long and
stormy voyage." He seemed by a preternatural anticipation to
recognise tbe forma of thoae who would ao soon be lamenting his
own calamitous disappearance. He described (i. 88) one whose
eyes "regardless of all except the sea in which her hope now aa
ever her fear waa rested : " and at another time wrote of one of
bis heroines (iii. 82) : " She waa like those who have lost dear
relations at sea, and who love to aoothe their sorrows by sitting
on the shore and watching the waves as they come and go ; in
some dreamy eipectation that somehow they may bring tidings
of those who have gone down among their fellowa." Somefcimea,
even, the thin veil of futurity became almost sufficiently transparent
to reveal the horrors of the approaching catastrophe. In one
volume he wrote (i. 74) : " Nothing but some coluuma of suioke
curling quietly up in tbe evening air, gave token of any disaster."
In another {lii. 25) : "The remaining Spaniard was now on fire
forward, and her dry sails burned up rapidly into three pillars of
flame." In another he depicted yet more minutely the misfortune
he waa ao speedily to eiperience (ii. 224-225): "As the King's
officer came forward in liis turn, his speech was interrupted by
the cry of 'fue^o ! ' from the forecastle; a thick volume of smoke
at the same time gushing up from the hold diffused a sulpliui'ous
stencb. The ship had been set on lire by one of the ijueuchleas
fireballa that the buccaueera were accustomed to make u^e of in
extremity. It bad faUeu among bales of silk, which for same
time smothered the fierceness of the flames ; but it had the more
extenaively and subtly done its work, and the fire waa pro-
portionately destrnctive. The boats were immediately lowered,
&nd those on hoard had barely time to put oti' when tbe gadeon
was in flames from stem to stern. Even the wounded buccaneer
and the sick Eiigliah sailor had been saved. The boats rowed
fast towards Alvaro's ship, and almost immediately after they had
reached her, the galleon blew up, and no trace was Jeit of the
gallant ship but a few seething planks, and some bubbltss au.-Oo.-a
calm water in which she had gone dovju." Tiw.w iSi. "OoMi A^^^^*"^^
ture does not coutain any more el&itVm.^ mivt^v\trtift o\ ■»■ "^^
Beotinmnt. T/jey remind one of tboae e^^^w&Aei '*«^**'* ''^ ^.^
' ■' Bjrron cuJebraled the thirty-9c\eav'a. B.a^^'J'^'^'*''*''^"* ^

^Aord

Si

zoo yOOTPRMTS OH THE BOAol ' \

birth, at Miasoloue'ii — the fabulous notea of tlie swan singing its
own requiem, as Mozart is said tu have eoiuposed his on the ev9
of his dissolution. That Warburton preserved his self- possession,
even under tbe terrors of an occurrence that might have palsied
the moat courageous, cannot but be matter for our aduiiration.
His coUected behaviour even under such circumstances can be
readily comprelietided, however, by those in any way acquainted
with the serene bravery of his character.* Several instances of
this bravery occurred in the course of his eastern peregrinations,
not the least remarkable of which were (" Crescent," Ac, ch. lii.)
the coolness displayed by him when nearly half a mile from his
boat at midnight, and almost alone in the midst of a couple of
hundred angry Nubian savages ; his refusal of backsheesh to the
extortionate Bedouins in one of the Pyramids (ditto, eh. ivi.), a
refusal enforced by an extended pistol and a threat of the bastinado;
but especially (ditto, ch. xiii.) the courage disclosed in hia riding
on horseback, 'U'ithout a single attendant, along the sea shore, from
Lebauon to Beyrouc — a feat which nearly led to his assassiuatiou.
Bravely as became him, therefore, he passed away in what seemed
to be the meridian of his life, in the midst of that awful con-
flagration. Peace be with him ! whithersoever may bave flown
his gentle but bt^roic spirit. He should have died in diflerent
scenes and under less dreadful auspices — upon the banks of the
holy Jordan, or under the boughs of the whispering palm, or ta
the ripeuess of a good old age, reposing on his bed, surrounded
by those who loved him, and by the fields sacred tor him with the
tender recoileetiona of his childhood. Instead of which — what was
the dread arena — what tbe direful speccacle P— the deck of the
burning Amazon, far away, at midnight, upon the raging waters
of the Atlantic ! Prematurely though to our eyes hia career thus
terminated, hia name cannot readily be forgotten. It will ba
ranked among the catalogue of tbose "keen-eyed travellers " of
whom Xin^lnke speaks iu the most eloquent passage of "Eothen"

* In nppetratice Warburton WEia fiSDk and prepasBSBaing. la stature of abonl
the middle-bEight, Le was erect in iiia bearing and, Dutaaionnllj, in the cairisge of
hia head, almoBl, tu one ma; taj, militaiy. Aniitibility temjiuted tha resolutJOB
eipieaaed in Uu laoath. Aloug ttas edge of the lower lip tru traceabJe tbe fainlcat
leatige uf au imperial. Uia fi'esb camplexiDii and li^ht-biuHD haii betiajied lib*
Saxon arlgiD, which woa rendered jet more apparent b; btfl blucialL ejea- — apiured
at tile outer corners with crows' feet Injpriuled leea by time tbnn b; B mernmeat
Hvinklin; into laiight«c. Uts voice, i:1eEir and rather bi^jb, was peouhar br iia
peoaire oadence, imparting to almoat ever; sentence a pleasing but melaniihi^
'uaeL-tioa. His memarj is with iia, as t,liat ul &e gfflimv a.iA \lw ^Ited — ths
■^™'"'.>' o/" sfl obserranl traveller Willi liie Bjmca.t,liwa

ELIOT WABBURTON — THE TRAVELLER. 259

(cb. XX.) as "Warburton to-day and Herodotus yesterday" —
and will long be associated in tbe mind of every Englisb pilgrini
to tbe Holy Land, witb tbe Hill of Zion and Mount Moriab, witb
tbe babbling Kedron and tbe gloomy Jebosbaphat, witb every
stone in tbe Yia Dolorosa and every olive in G-etbsemane.
And assuredly tbat alone is an acbievement. It is sometbing to
have one's name remembered in connection witb tbe ruins of
Jerusalem !

I LOTB to Bit under the shade of a certain oak-tree and read
Eoecobel. Tet, better still than that, I lore to clamber into its
branches at the heels of gallant, true-hearted Colonei William
Careless, there to lie hid away, within earshot of his whispered
converse with my lord the king, among the glistening oak-appioa,
and the parasite boughs of mistletoe, and the crisp and yellowing
foliage, through all the breathless Saturday of that far away

And assuredly it requires hut a very trifling effort indeed of the
imagination to realise that famous incident completely, down even
to its minulest particular. For,yonder, undeniably to this very day,
upon the selfi-ame spot of earth, within a furlong from the souta-
eaat side of Old Boscobei House, stands, not, it is true, in spectnil
guise, a three-legged mare foaled by an acorn, but the indabitabJe
produce of one of those same marvellous seeds dropped into the
grass about its roots from the royal oak tree, among whose
frondnge King Charles the Second in his youth, now more than
two centuries ago, concealed himself from the prying eyes of
those grim soldiers of the Puritan Commonwealth. Its imme-
diate predecessor, meouiDg that original old pollard-oak which
actually afforded the fugitive prince so delightful a hiding-place,
got loyally whittled up, it should be said, piecemeal, soon after
the Bestoration ! Yielding in this manner to a fate as inevitable
as that subsequently befalling the willow at ^Napoleon's tomb, or
the mulberry iu Shakspere's garden. The oak, the willow, and
the mulberry, in other words, getting minced into snuff-boiea and
silk-windera, and other ginicracks of turuery, more curious in
their way than any Tuubridge ware of now-a-days — relics of
JqyaJtj, those oaken ones, tenderly treasured up by the faithful
Jacobites and their deseendanta, moo.';) \an^-5BWft cNeviaCter the

period of the JBevolution. Sevei:t\ie\e6a, \)e \t ».a\4, a?pai, mA.

^ceibrtb wtiU remembered, tkougli tka oVi QnJs. \i3i& ftjaa-^vtsa:^

CHARLE3 STUABT — THE ROYAL FUGITIVE. 261

thus from the baunts of Boscobel, yonder, on tlie same identical
Shropshire soil, there flourishes, even to this hour, its compara-
tively youthful offspring. So that we may still credulously, and
not quite unreasonably, regard it as, in one sense, the veritable
lair itself —

" Wherein the younger Charles aI)ode
Till all the paths were dim,
And far below the Roundhead rode
And hummed a surly hymn.*'

Turning off at the little tavern (or hostel, as they love to
phrase it in the old romances) at Ivetsey Bank, midway upon the
high road from Lichfleld to Shrewsbury, and wandering across
country for about a mile further southwards, one comes upon the
ancient tenement of Boscobel, just as Charles Stuart came upon
it for the first time in the grey of the morning of that far off
•yesterday. It remains there to this hour intact, looking still like
a quaint old forest-lodge as it is — ^with this sole difference, that
its former chequer- work of black timber and white plaster has
given place to the less picturesque appearance of a house uni-
formly cemented. Situated in the vicinity of Cannock Chase and
Tong Castle, immediately upon the' borders of Shropshire, and
closely adjoining Staffordshire, this romantic and historical dwel-
ling was secreted then in a lonelier site than it occupies in these
more populous and more civilised times, being insulated, two
hundred years back, in what was then a mere wilderness. A
windy, hilly, sandy common, forming the centre of the demesne,
was surrounded by pleasant woodlands of considerable extent;
the beauty of the whole sylvan solitude being sufficiently indi-
cated by the Italian bosco-bello, otherwise fair-wood, giving the
origin of its melodious designation. Ah, dear old Boscobel! I
delight to haunt thee : clambering up the steep, ramshackle stair-
cases, peering through every dingy lattice, rapping the wainscots
for the sliding panels with knuckles of untiring mquisitiveness,
prying again and yet again into the secret places — the Priests'
Holes — just as thev were of yore in the days when Boscobel was
the aboae of Catholic recusants, belonging as it did to the old
Catholic house of the Qiffards, then resident on the principal
estate of the family, their adjacent seat at Chillington.

It signifies little enough to me, as I maunder about th^ t^W.^
dreamily, who chances at the momeut to \ife xccj <i\'5ifcxw^^^^^'^^>^^^
ojUjr I know my guide by long acqus^VAsie.^ ^»^ ^^^ •^^^ft'^^x^^
trustworthy. ^

Sometimes, in this way, for a ^\io\b ^«ra.oo^>^ ^=^

263 POOTPHDITS OH THE ROAD.

elbow of a delightful gosBip, to wit, excellent Master Thomai
Blount, of Orleton, in tlie county of Hereford, Esquire, a gen-
tleman radiantly apparelled in brocaded velvet and lace ruffles,
with a swinging sword at his thigh aud a feathered hat rnkishly
cocked on one aide, upon the flowing wig that hangs in riugleta
down hia shoulders. As I follow the clatter of his jack-boots
along the crackling gravel-walka of that trim old garden at Boa-
cobtl, and hearken to him not uufrequently with awe when he
pauses for a inoraent to preface hia often-recounted anecdotes of
the place to me thus grandiosely : quoth he to me, in fact, at
such times, hooking me impressively, though familiarly, by the
button-hole aa he speaks :— " Behold 1 present you with an his-
tory of wonders : wondera bo great, that as no former age caa
parallel, succeeding times will never believe tliem." Another
while — am I not laborious, painstaking Mr. Hughes's most obe-
dient P— standing there by his elbow, turning over with him the
leaves of hia ample diary — hearkening eagerly to him as he tells
me conSdentially (his scholarly hand resting at the moment upon
a goodly heap of the Boscobol Ti'acts) how it was that the
thought of this delectable compilation lirst suggested itself, and'
how it rapidly thereupon ripened into maturity under the wise
counsel of Edward, late Lord Bishop of LUiadaff, the right
eieellent and right learned as weU as right reverend Dr. Copple-
stoue. Occaaionally, too, I saunter off at tlie heela of my Lord
Clarendon, into a very thicket of direst uncertainty and bewilder-
ment, listening to him as he declaims, with that sonorous voice of
his, lengthy fragments from tlie thirteenth book of his famous
History of the Eebellion, Another time, even, I am not ashamed
to eonfesB it, I am coolly eaves-dropping upon a certain Sunday
afternoon in the year of grace, 1680, down at Newmarket,
peeping over the shoulders of Mr. Samuel Pepys, the while that
gentleman ia jotting down, with the ineffablest smirk and the
courtliest eiactitude, the drawling narrative dictated to him by.
the king himself— that most authentic and authoritative among
all the records of his majesty's long-past adventures. Yesterday,
perchance, I have bad ear for no one else but moat deliberate and
trustworthy Mr. Thomas Wliitgreaves, of Mosely Hall, near
Walaall, in Staflbrdshire. To-day, it may be, 1 am fairly absorbed
in the examination of a couple of very yellow and nearly illegible
manuBcripta — one purporting to be a letter from Mr. William
■ElJideon, the other a communication foow an anonymous prisoner
down at Chester; the latter givine an djCTOmiA o'i 'ila'a tci^^liBt
yut imiaediately after the battle o1 N^ otceaV« ■, 'Ooft loTrmw m«»
ftiagola. niinute]y detaUed memorial ot ^-Va m^^^-scV*, ^^a^Si

CHABLEB BTUAET — IHB EOTAL FOGITIVB.

m

effort to escape in an open boat from the beach at Charmouth.
To-morrow, very poaaiblj', I am eager to give audience eiclusively
to Mistresa Anue Wjndbara, of Trent, ail the more readily
responding to her delightful offer of her companion ship, as tl*
beet beloved of all my old-world attendants, in a quiet BtroU
around Boscobel, provided that very charming lady cornea to me
irreeiBtibly in her rustling ailka — the bearer of her one literary
offspring, her queer, little, old-faaliioned, prattling Claustruni
Kfgule Eeaeratuiu I Supposing her ladyship to begin especially
Witt one deliciouB aentenee — a sentence I have eorae long aince
to know by heart ! — Ah, me ! 1 am fairly in for it— for the whole
of this more than thriae-told tale, beginning, &b the dear old story
hooka say, witti the beginning, 1 sit down, and, like Milton's
Night, "listen dehghted" — wherein she explains the reason of
her turning bookmaker to be, her loyal solicitude " tiiat the truth
of hia Majeaty'H escape might appear in its native beauty and
splendour ; tliat as every dust of gold is gold, and every ray of
light is light, so every jot and tittle of trutb being truth, not one
grain of the treasure, not one beam of the lustre of thid story
might be lost or clouded; it being so rare, so excellent, that
Aged Time, out of all the archives of antiquity, can hardly pro-
dui'o a parallel."

Divers other babbling tale-tellers catch me by the sleeve as I
press onwards in search of the truth through all the pleasant
woodlands and wild places about old Boacobel. N^iw it is my
pragmatical friend, Mr. Bates, intent upon reaiiing me remorae-
lessly the whole of the second part of hia Eleuchua. Now, per-
adventure, it is my polite acquaintance, Mr. GunCer, with a fore-
linger ominously inserted in the seeood volume of Gary, with
which he touches me on the elbow by way of arresting my atten-
tion, and in the which second volume I but too well remember
the full, true, and particular account of his own personal recol-
Icciions (dull even with the dulness of Peter Bell) to have been
bodily preserved. Finally, there sticks like a burr to the skirta
of my memory, the grfiniliose relation — written througliout in
what I'rere, in one of his admirably ridiculuus pliraaes m the
Anti-Jacobin calls buzz-prose — the majestic relation, eushrined
(ahall it be said, entombed F) in the fourtli volume of the Harleian
Miscellanies. Even when thua porientously accompanied, 1 lova
to tread the meadow-patha and winding lanes of that lutU isas-^
of-the-way district down in Shrogati«e\ "*^ t>ttfiat'iQ.'{,_-«>ti»^^~^
was here the young king \e£t Viw " c\ow\e^ *'^'^'^^V-Tx«ia.'^
bia fe^t by the mire when he \eapei \.^e Vei>^e> "^/^^.^^^iiif

aiB jecb Of ine mire wnen ne lea^ea \i«c i^^^j-vi" — ?. "«a-w
^ from tie approaching cii\aVcad« oi \i\i'i-a'>*'w*'^ ».->i

^

FOOTPBUm ON'd

-HH

1

"Whether, again, it may not have been actually here, upon the
gnarled root of this ancient blackthorn that ho sat huddled up,
that miserable morning, on the rain-aoaked blanket, eating ont
rf the wooden bowl the meea of buttermilk and eggs hurriedlr

Srepared and brought out to him from the cottage by goodwife
largaret Tatee, the worthy siater of those trusty, true-hearted
Pencterells, How much more agreeable n time I have of it,
however, if instead of being attended by mere Prige of the Past
like Bates and Guiiter, I roam down the green glades and over
the greener lea at BoBcobe! with courtly Master Blount, or, better
still, with the royal fugitive himself aa my companion.

It iH something remarkable, by the way, to bear in mind the
mere corporeal fatigues Charles Stuart bad to undergo in the
course of theae romantic adventures. Let'it be borne iu recol-
lection, for e:sample, that it was only in the June of 1650 he had
taken ship from Holland at the port of Scbeveling, lauding after
a tempeatuoua voyage, at Spey, in the north of Scotland, and so
Buccest'fully conducting hia enterprise in that kingdom, that on
New Year's Day, 1651, he waa solemnly crowned at Scone with
the old immemorial ceremonials of coronation. After that,
drawing the aword from bis scabbard, and marching boldly
southwards at the head of a small army hastily collected together
and indifferently disciplined. Following upon that march of
three hundred miles, he lights the battle of Worcester on tha
memorable third of September — Charles himself, after hia heroic
resistance at the close of that " foughten field," having the crest
of his then but short-lived sovereiguty cloven down as it were at
a single blow by the resistless brand of Cromwell. And it ie
from the evening of that disastrous third of September that dates
the narrative of his forty-three days and nights of hair-breadth
'scapes and perilous adventures! During the progress of which
piotrac-ted interval the young prince, then but one-and-twenty,
iraversed either a-foot or on horseback, another distance of three
hundred miles clothed in squalid disguises, hid away in bama and
outLouses, with a reward of a thousand pounds upon his head
and the penalty of high treason proclaimed against all thoae who

I Bhould aid in his concealment. Nevertheless, throughout all
these three-and-forty days and nights, this very costly and most
dangerous guest was known perfectly well, at a moderate com-

I jjutation, to not less than iilty men and women of various
conditions, the majority of them being persona of the very
humbieat rank' in. the aocial scale, \i\.eTa\\.;j m«v6 Wi^ew B.ud

diUbers, people steeped to the lips in ^^''^i^"!' ^''^^ tiawelme, "■«,

JMb^ ^t> presumed, in every way more 0^)60. to Xeia'^V'b.'w.Qti.\ "^eS.,

CHARLES STUART — THE ROYAL FUGITIVE. 265

tbrougliout all those three-and-forty days and nights, over all
that straggling route of full three hundred miles, from the gate
of Worcester city to the pebhled beach at Shoreham, among all
those different men and women, mostly of the lowliest class,
bribes and threats alike, from first to last, proved wholly unavail"
ing. It is satisfactory to think of this sometimes. It elevates
one's estimate of human nature. It enlarges our regard for our
fellow-creatures.

There is something consolatory, remembering how Charles
afterwards, when monarch, allowed the Dutch war-ships to ride
insolently at anchor unmolested in the Thames, while he himself,
by a more deplorable abnegation of his kingly authority, degene-
rated into the craven pensioner of Louis the Fourteenth — there
is something consolatory in the recollection that here at least, in
the flush of his early manhood, Charles Stuart displayed personal
valour and dignity. I rather like than otherwise to hear all about
what one may call the heroic taking in which the young king was
at the close of that desperate fight under the walls of old Wor*
cester. I like to watch him as he returns dusty and breathless
from leading that last bootless charge of the Cavalier troopers at
Perrywood, when with dinted breastplate, and a broken plume,
he was constrained, by reason of an overturned ammunition-
waggon, to dismount at Sudbury Gate, entering the city on foot
in the midst of the general confusion. There — putting off his
heavy armour, and taking freshly to horse — do I not catch
glimpses of him riding up and down the streets half-distracted ?
Imploring men and officers — ^vainly, vainly — to turn even then,
and stand at bay in very desperation ! '* I had rather you would
shoot me dead,*' he cries out at last in anguish, '* than keep me
alive to see the sad consequences of this fatal day.*' Fruitlessly,
all this : the die is cast — the doom is spoken. And, by six of the
clock on that autumnal evening, King Charles, heart-sore and
dispirited, rides out of Worcester city by Saint Martin's Q-ate, in
the midst of Lesley's cavalry, from which, however, his Majesty
separates soon afterwards at Barbon's Bridge, about a mile on
the road towards Kidderminster. Accompanied from that -point
by nearly sixty of his principal adherents, a gorgeous retinue,
including among them dukes, and earls, and other high patrician
soldiers, the stripling monarch presses onward until some half-a-
dozen miles from our Brummagem Brussels ; when, drawing rein
suddenly at Kinver Heath, the vrbola xo^^X. ^wVj \^aic^fc^^^^-
wildered in the darkness as totldeVc ^Vet^^XiOkViXs^- '^t^^^'^;^"*
that a certain stalwart Cavalier, one C\iswc\^^ <^Y«ax^ "^^k^
ChiUingtoD, undertakes to coudact t\\e ^m^ \.o^^^^^ ^ ^

Zea TO^TBlNTS OS THE BOJn. ■

tcnempnt of liie, an abode already favourably known to his
Majpflty, by repute, hb the recent hiding-plaoe of bis valiant
Hervant, the Earl of Derby, now a prisoner in tbe bands of the
rictoriniia republieann — to wit, tlie old wood lodpe of Boscobel.
^n nfter-tbounht of precflulion, however, slinhlly alters the
direction taken by the fugitives. Having paaaed ptealthHy about
midnigl't through the sleeping and shuttered town of Stourbridge
— unnoticed even by a tronp of Bouiidhead cavalry then atationed
there — the king and hia inded escort arrive, towards daybreak on
the follo»in<r tnoruing, Thursday, the fourth of September, at
another little property of the G-iffard family in those parts, the
now famous house of White Ladies, so called from havine been
formerly a monastery of nuns, belonging to the white-robed order
of the Cistercians.

For safety's sake, the horse Charles ridea is led clattering into
the hall at White LRdies, and there, assisted to aliglit, the king
takes leave at length of his devoted and disconsolate followers.
Monarch now no longer — his last vestige of a court dispersed —
the anointed fugitive finds himself committed by Squire Qi&rd
to the care of a handful of his humble retainers, a family of poor
Labourers, mere woodwards, earning their daily bread by toiling
with bill-hooks in the sylvan demesne of Boscobel. Previoualy
to this judicious departure and dispersion of his splendid retinue,
however, have I not remarked the unfortunate sovereign ridding
himself in all haste of the dangerous symbols and evidences of
royalty F Hurriedly, he ha» divested himself of his buff-coat with
its emblazoned star, tlie cuffs and bosom crusted over with heavy
embroidery. He hns unbuckled the garter with its device in
brilliants. He has doffed the blue ribbon, and unslung from his
neck the radiant George of diamonds. The George he has com-
mitted to the care of Colonel Blague ; his gnld he has distributed
among his grooms and equerries -, his jewelled watch he has given
into the safe keeping of Henry, the Lord "Wilinot, afterwards
better known in one sense, and worse in another, as the gay and
licentious Earl of Eochester, And now — vaniBhed the king,
scattered bis court — there enters (after a pause) into the hall at
"White Ladies, where there are still visible the miry hoof-prints
of the steed his Majesty has just ridden from Worcester, a very
different figure indeed from that of the youthful sovereign lately
proclaimed, at Scone, to the flourish of trumpets and the roar of
canaoD, the Hisb, Mighty, aud PmawHit ^tmycp, Charles by the
fi^i:e of Ood King of England, Sco\.\a.Tvi, ItdMii, a-ai. "^tMiKa.
£iia Cbarlea Stuan no n.ore; Wt B™v\e.^A\^«-^*..*»«'^'^^'a
W^oodaien yf Boscobel, a p\aiB covmU^-fe^^^*- ^^^^mSB

CHARLES STUART — ^THB ROYAL FUGITIVE. 267

about the squalidest figure well presentable. His flowing hair
has been cut off anj-how. He has rubbed his hands upon the
back of the chimney in the little room which has been the scene
of this singular and impromptu transformation, and afterwards
has smeared his sooty fingers over his face by way of effectually
completing his disfigurement. His dress is of the poorest and
the raggedest. A green cloth jerkin, or jump-coat, so worn and
bare that the threads here and there appear actually whitened.
A pair of ordinary green cloth breeches, so long at the knees that
the ends of them hang down below the garters. Over the thread-
bare jerkin, an old sweaty leathern doublet with pewter buttons ;
under it, a coarse noggin shirt — or, as the village-folk thereabout
call it, hogging shirt— frayed at the collar and patched at the
wrists; a garment supplied from the wardrobe of one Edward
Martin, a lowly menial at White Ladies. Will Jones retains
still upon his feet his Majesty's white flannel boot-stockings,
the tops of them snipped off, from being gold-corded and clocked
with rare embroidery. But over the decapitated boot-stockings
are cunningly drawn a footless pair of green yarn stockings,
darned at the knees, and otherwise disgracefully dilapidated.
Besides all these disguises, woodman Jones has for shoes the
oldest and rustiest procurable — slashed at the sides for ease, but
destined through those comfortless gashes to let in the mud and
gravel abundantly. For head-covering he wears a very greasy
old grey steeple-crowned hat, unadorned with either band or
lining, the brims turned up, the battered circumference marked
to the depth of two inches with perspiration. In the girdle of
this lamentable spectre of a man there is thrust a wood-bill—
token of his craft. In his filthy hand he carries an ugly thorn-
stick, crooked three or four ways, and altogether perfectly well
suited to his own distorted and miserable appearance. Looking
askance at this deplorable figure, I don't wonder in the least
when I hear my charming gossip. Mistress Anne Wyndham,
exclaiming dolefully, in allusion to King Charles's arrival, even in
somewhat improved apparel, a fortnight or so afterwards, at
Trent, that there " The passions of joy and sorrow did a while
combat in them who beheld his sacred person ; for what loyal eye
could look upon so glorious a prince thus eclipsed, and not pay
unto him the tribute of tears ? "

I can quite imagine, indeed, one of the generQ\v&-%.<s\5iftji. '«Si5i.
gentle-hearted Eoyalists of t\ioa© A«k5^\ocifeM^'^QrcL*'^i«i2tQ>x^^\«^^
eyea at that melancholy apparidon. _ -.^ vn^o. ^cs

While I am thus musing, \io>NeNeT,\its.N^^ x^^^.^^^^
kmg waiting in his disguise of s^m^Xox >x^o\i. '^w^ ^^'^^

rOOTPRIHTa ON THE EOAD.

the Hall at White Ladies; from which dwelling he is led out by A
back-door, about a mile in the grey dawn into a little adjacent wood
called Spring Coppice. Led forth upon those wanderioga of hia
that were to last for more than forty days, and to estend over a dis-
tance of more than three hundred miles — by whom ? By those
Louest, marly, braTe-hearted woodcutters, the PeiidereUs, Heroic
gentlemen one and all of them, though mere day labourers armed
with bill-hooka. Thomas Penderell — dead, fighting valorously for
King Chnrles the First cither at Stowe or EdgehiU— had lefl five
brothers of hia not lesa courageous: what thougSi they had none of
them ever smelt gunpowder as royalist men-at-arms clad in red
coats and bandoliers! A brotherhood as atauncl) and dauntless
as ever formed the body-guard of a prince, from the Tenth Legion
of Ctefar to the Swiizers of Louis the Siitecuth or the Old
Guard of Napoleon. Cieorge bad opened the door to the royal
party on theit opproaob to White Ladies, being a servant in that
household. Humphrey, the miller, ground his corn at the old
winiimill in the immediate neighbourhood. John ahinea out upon
us conspicuously among the whole fraternity aa the one reputed
to have taken the most trouble in behalf of the king, according
to the act'ouut furnished to us by the laitbful pen of Father
Huddlestone. Bichard, surnamed Truaty Dick whenever he
chanced to be spoken of afterwards, kept house with hia aged
mother, old Dame Joan, at Hobbal Grange. William Penderell,
as tenant of the Giffard family, residing, with his wife, young
Dame Joan, in the old weather-beaten house of Boscobel. The
kiag, aa dirty Will Jones, was conducted by the two latter Pen-
derells into Spring Coppice about sun-riaiug on that lamentable
Thursday — " and," saith Master Blount, " the heavens wept
bitterly at these calamities," There it was that, seated in the
drenching rain under the shelter of a tree, upon an old blanket,
the king devoured the mess of buttermilk got ready for him in the
adjoining cottage of Francis Tales (brother-in-Uw of the Pen-
derells) at Lougbtown — the sole refreshment the luckless Cbarlea
had tasted since his flight from Worcester, save a crust and a cup
of canary, snatched during a momentary halt at a little tavern on
the outskirts of the borongh of Stourbridge.

Following the king at the close of that disheartening first day of

drizzling and mizzling, 1 croas with him the tliresliold of Trusty

Dick's abode at Hobbal Grange, a little after nightfall. There

JnjJ Joaes, having hastily quaffed a VnnV-nvd of ala and devoured

a morsel of coarse bread — Dame 3otin staniva?, Tfeveiea-Ot^ Xi'^ ,'CBfe

iMe, audibly blessmg God for that "fi-e W4 'S*'^"'^'^*-^'^*^

WMia saving ihi Jile of her gracVoua botw^^S^— ^ft'MBS.^

CHARLES STUART — THE ROYAL FUGITrVE. 269

him upon his first expedition : bent upon crossing the river
Severn, by means of a ferry-boat, somewhere about Madeley, a
village situated half-way between Bridgenorth and Shrewsbury ;
hoping thereby to escape into Wales, and so, at some early oppor-
tunity, to be away on ship-board for the Continent.

At Evelin Mill where, unknown of course to ourselves, a party
of cavalier fugitives are secretly carousing — forth comes the
dusty miller, bawling valiantly into the darkness : '^ TV ho goes
there?"

The challenge is altogether too much for us. Another minute,
s,nd we are scampering down the nearest turning, a miry byeway,
the very Slough of > Despond, where we flounder on distractedly
over a veritable quagmire of ruts, until we pause at last, panting
with chagrin and exhaustion. Here, Will Jones, seating himseu
wearily under the hedgerow, declares he can go no further. Passing
onward, however, in our dreary night-march, we creep at last by
a back way into the house of one Mr. Francis Woolfe, a respect-
able old Cavalier gentleman of Madeley ; who, through fear of his
residence being searched by the Puritan militia — two companies
of whom chance to be quartered upon the inhabitants of the
locality — finds himself constrained to lodge his sovereign in a
cosy bam. There we watch throughout the whole day following
—Friday, the 6th of September — during which Jones luxuriously
reposes his aching limbs upon a litter of straw behind the corn-
sacks and hay-bundles, sheltering him from casual observation.
Evening returned, we — on finding bridges and boats upon the
Severn alike exclusively in the command of the Bepublicans —
retrace our miserable footprints, again under Trusty Dick*s
guidance. Cunning-handed Mistress Woolfe previously applying,
it should be observed, the finishing artistic touch to the general
degradation of the king's appearance, by staining his face and
bands of a reeky colour, with the juice of walnut-leaves, rendering
his Majesty independent from that time forth of mere soot-marks,
by imparting to him the acceptable mask of a permanently tawny
complexion. Through a wholesome dread of the terrible miller of
Evelin, we ford, at a convenient distance, the stream that turns
his mill-wheel ; Charles, by reason of his being the most adroit
swimmer, acting as pioneer. At John Penderell's cottage, where
Bichard looks in for a moment in passing, unexpected news is
learnt, putting an end to yet another of the king's projected
enterprises ; the design by which hia Ma^^eX.^ «xA\jss^^^^*^^ssiR5^
had mutually proposed to journey \)y ^e^MuXfe -««<j^ \.^ ^^;«^^
there to meet at the Three Cranes in t\ie ^VoN.^ > ^^'^ « ^"^^
the other bj the nam© of Will ALaVnWrxAiam. \>i ^j^^^^x^'^^

JOTPRIKTS ON THE

over, that riy lord has happily found a secure asylum at Mofielej*
Hall, Charles determiues to delay no longer iu preasing onward to,
the sholterinj; bocage of Boscobel, the place of hia ot'igiual
deatinatioa. Encouraged to srrive at this determination by the fai;t
of Moaeley Hall being but eight miles from Boscobel, and yeO
more by the inlbrmatioa that there already, near the latter place
of coucealment, awaited hie Majesty's arrival no leas valiant an
adherent than Colonel William Careless, the Hero of Worcester
— (Major Carlia as Blount calls him, but Carlos as he was after-
wards dubbed by a not ungrateful sovereign) — in other words, tha
knightly soldier wlio, according to the author of " Boscobel," hini-
telf beheld the last man killed on t!ie 3rd of [September. Deem-
ing his own paternal home of Brom Hall, iu the vicinity, aomtiwhat
unsafe, he has taken to the leal'y covert about Boscobel with tba
resolution ot a bold freebooter. Companioned stilt by his
trusty henchman and my ghostly self, Oharlea hurriedly com-
pletes that dismal trudge of seven miles from Madeley — '
reaching the immediate neighbourhood of William Penderell'a
dwelling at the Great House, about five o'clock on the looruing
of the Gth, being Saturday. Leaving hia Majesty outside, Iticharci
cautiously enters bis brother's house-place to reconnoitre, speeddy
returning thence ; accompanied by honest William and by gallant
Careless, who at once bring the monarch within doors ana there
ofi'er him the homage of their homely but not unwelcome atten-
tions. One tenderly bathes his galled feet in waim water.
Another partially dries tlie soddened leather of hia shoes by
hoidmg red-hot cinders inside tliem with the fire-tongs. G-ood-
wife rendereil the while appeasing the royal appetite with a
slice of strong cheese and a hunch of brown bread, mixing there-
upon a posaet for him, made of thin milk and small beer — this,
quoth the historian quaintly, as un extraordinary. Refreshed to
some extent by these primitive luxuries, forth into the early
morning sallies the king and, together with him. Colonel Careless
and the two Peudcrells.

It ia the cvilnimating point in the progress of the star of his
Majesly's fortunes, the climax of these hia romantic adventures.
I follow these four figures watchfully, breathlessly, to iheir pre-
concerted rendezvous. It is the Bioyal Uak under the shadow of
which iliey are now pasaing— at the distance of about two hundred
jards from that old mansion of Boacobel — cluae to the couunou
pathway, in a verdant meadow -field. It ia a buahy, umbrageous,
pollard oak, of rather couaiderab\e imefisvou*. \ii\a\kift tlie two
sturdy forvatera help Coloufei CateYea^ feta\., Wft fau'g, ^\^aT-aw<a. —
W^Jj^, cautiuusiy—up the gnatYei UMuk— W '>.W \!^|||m|M

CHARLES STUABT — THE ROYAL FUGITIVE. 271

lK)ugh — ^higher and higher among the rustling branches. Charles
drops one of bis rustj buckets of shoes in his ascent, so that it
has to be Hung up after him for his dextrous catching, knocking
down a shower of acorns and dry leaves in the face of Trusty
Dick Penderell. A cushion is fetched from the house and tossed
up adroitly afterwards, by the aid of which the king contrives ats
last, with something less of discomfort, to dispose himself in a
half-recumbent posture among the branches, bis head resting;
upon the lap of Careless : the pockets of both of them crammed
with bread and cheese, besides a flask or two of thin ale for
the day's consumption. Everything arranged before daybreak,
and the Fenderells gone on their customary avocations, there the.
two secret watchers remain effectually hidden from passers-by,
whiling away that livelong day for the most part in silence : poop
jaded Will Jones dozing off at intervals, at the hazard of a
tumble. If they talk at all, they speak only in stealthiest
whispers ; looking out vigilantly, ever and anon, from their im-
penetrable lair among the foliage, over the wide expanse of open
ground surrounding it.

Frequently, as the dreary hours drag on, they observe the glint
of steel in the neighbouring thickets, and the gleam of buff
through the gaps of the green brambles : patrols of the enemy
searching eagerly in the covert for stray Cavaliers. The wearisome
noon lengthens into evening, while Charles and Careless — not
much unlike the Charles and Careless of the School for Scandal
—sit there high up in the oak-tree, munching their bread and
cheese, and gurgling small beer out of their ale bottles ; laughing
silently in their sleeves as they note their baffled pursuers ; amused
though anxious; ever vigilant, and ever listening. At length,
when twilight is sufficiently deepened into obscurity, their
cramped forms are relieved from durance ; and, in a few scramb-
ling steps, they have descended. A substantial supper rewards
them on their once more crossing the porch of Boscobel House ;
where, after supper, I assist mine host, honest thumb-fiogered
William Penderell, in shaving his Majesty, and in cropping what-
ever hair remains on the crown of his head, as close to the scalp
as the scissors of Dame Joan will lie there. After a comfortless
night passed in a secret closet, Ave feet square, coiled upon a
pallet less resembling the Bed of Ware than the bed of Procrustes,
his Majesty comes down the next momiug betimes into the little
farm-house parlour; and there, to the dismay ot \,Vi<6^k^'^'^^c^^^«^^
courtiers, the royal nose falls a-b\eeA\ii^. ^ ws\. ^\sss\afc^ -^^-^-^
daya^ to recollect^ after the lapse o£ ttieae \.>NQk ^^^^^^^^'^''T^^^ .
once popular superatition about t\ie t^^«V \.o>x^ ^ *^^

mj-Btery clean forgotten by the general multitude — to remembeP,
that long years afterwards, the tnttered handkerchief then drawn by
Will Jones from his Kreasy pocket, a handkerchief very old, ^
torn, very coaree in its roatenals, and lamentably daubed (
blood from the king's nose, waa religiously preserTed aa a
Sovereign Remedy for tlie King's Evil.

It is Sunday mornine, the aeventli of September, and already
the buccaneering Colonel has celebrated the sacred dav by salljing
forth to an adjacent sheep-cote, upon — a hanging feat in those
times, and indeed, for that matter, long afterwards — a memorable
eaploit of ah eep- stealing. This expedition having proved emi-
nently Buccessful, tbanka to the keen dagger and the broad
ehouldera of Careless, hia Majesty falls to with knife and
trencher; and, having sliced the mutton into collops, and pricked
it delicately with the knife-point, himseif, with his kingly hands
(the royaliflt narrator of the cireuinBtance almost fainting in the
record of it) cooks the meat cleverly with a frying-pan and butter,
and afterwards eats of it heartily for his breakfast. Throughout
the remainder of the day Will Jonea ia either reverently engaged.
in his devotions (with the Colonel's matin felony upon his coi
science ? nay, 1 suspect rather disposed, on the contrary, like a
incorrigible aa he is, to greet the Colonel towards dinner hour witli
a Sevenons a nos moulons !~) — or he ia busy reading in a pretty
Bummer-bouae in the garden; the atone table of which honey-auckle
harbour ia shown even to this day as a most precious relic in
one of the quiet rooms of old Boscobel House. Brief time, how-
ever, has the king now for much indolent enjoyment. Not now
can the Sybarite Charles indulge to his heart a delight in what
Bishop Burnet relates to have been his favourite paatime, to wit,
that of " aauntering," Wiih the return of darkness the king's
rovings have recommenced.

Quitting Bopcobel with a hobnailed bodyguard — consisting of
the five Penderells and Tates, tlieir brother-in-law — Charles
Stuart, mounted ufon the mill-horse of bluff Humphrey, seta
forth upon hia long ride for life, a breathless journey of from
three to four hundred miles, at times almost as grotesque as the
flight of Gilpin the Haberdasher, for the most part in every way
aa adventurous as that of Turpin the Highwayman. Leaving
Boscobel, his advance from that time forth ia almost uninter-
ruptedly equeetrian. Twice be rides long distances, with a lady
perched behind him on a pillion — uo loiig«;r, however, in the foij
disgaise of a egualid woodcutter, a i\8ga\sa 6\\^*.'j \\aij\w«i *t
&vtfora brief interval, but eventuaWj aVia.-niQ-ttei lilvWyfed'OMM \^^
Bj-eio^ beSttirg hh newly asBumed c\iMa.c\*t ^4*\iv^^K«asd

CHARLES STUABT — ^THE ROYAL FUOITIVE, 273

son, by name Will Jackson. In the which humble masquerade
my lord the king appears in a holiday suit, consisting of a short
juppa of a sad-eoloured cloth without cuffs, a black hat, a sombre
cloak, and grey breeches — altogether an attire resembling what
was then worn by the meaner sort of country gentlemen. Will
Jackson, however, has not yet replaced Will Jones, who, by the
time his escort has conducted him by lonely bye-lanes to Fentord's
Mill, below Cotsall, is nearly worn out by the rough jogging of
the mill-horse : to the groaned-out complaint of whose joltering
paces has not Humphrey, simple miller though he is, replied in
those ready and courtly words of extenuation, " Can you blame
the horse, my liege, to go heavily when he has the weight of three
kingdoms on his back ? '* Dismounting at the point last-men-
tioned, Charles stumbles with a diminished suite across the mid-
night fields, imtil, after a toilsome tramp of three miles, through
. hedge and ditch, he arrives at a meadow called Alport's Leasom.
Thence his servants are led away from him to the buttery-hatch
of Moseley Bidl by the owner of that mansion, Mr. Thomas
Whitgreave, formerly a lieutenant in the army of the late sove-
reign. Meanwhile, Charles himself is making straight for a light
in my Lord Wilmot's chamber in that great house of Moseley :
my lord, with a lighted taper in his hand, awaiting his Majesty's
approach at the stair-foot leading to it, and thereupon conducting
hiim up to his room, delighted. Here King Charles in his sordid
disguise is introduced by Lord Wilmot as "his master, and the
master of them all," to the loyal host himself; and, with him, to
a personage who, like himself, had originally been a gentleman
volunteer in the late monarch's army — one ^Father Huddlestone,
then a secular priest, afterwards a Benedictine monk, ultimately
one of the queen's chaplains, and now generally reported to have
been the priest who, thirty-four years later on, was introduced
by Chiffinch into the royal bed-chamber at Whitehall during
the king's last moments, and who there administered to the
dying monarch the last rites of the Catholic religion. Having
received the obeisances offered to him (with some emotion) upon
their knees by Squire Whitgreave and his chaplain, the king is
sedulously waited upon by those loyal recusants, assisted in
their unaccustomed labour of courtiers by the more skilled hands
of Wilmot, afterwards Earl of TSochester. They refresh the
poor weary wight of a prince with sack and biscuit. The^ \skH<^
Jiis blisterii feet — extracting from \>©\.^««a XX^^ Xji^^s^^s^J^^ ^^^
of paper cruelly put there by eome VW ^AnV^^^ V^ ^x<esi<ecis. *^^
galling they bare only grievoualy mcteft»e^- '^V'^l ^^^^^S^:
wet clothea for others in every reapect mox^ co«ii>st'w«Q\«^ ^>5>

rOOTPRDTTS ON THE HOAD.

him in lieu of the old hogging sliirt, a ■warm flaxen cme belonging
to Father Huddlestone. Solaced by these then unwonted enjoy-
mentB — bis heart glows anew, faia hopes riae again within him as
he sits niiiBingly bj the cheerful wood-blaze, watching its reflection
in the Dutth tiles lining the bearth of that quaint old Sre-placa
still preserved at Moseley Hall unchanged, "If it would please
Almighty God," he says, with the sack yet reliBhing upon his
lips, " If it would please Almigh^ God to send me once more an
army of ten thousand good and loyal soldiers and subjects, I
should fear not to eipel all the rogues forth i'rom my kingdom."
Still, mark, "loyal subjectB," and " my kingdom ! " "With the
walout juice yet freshly embrowning his face and hands, with the
blackthorn stick leaning in the chimney-corner there against
the mantel -piece, with the billhook on yonder chair — his only
weapon offensive or defensive— he still meditates wresting hia
subjects ami his kingdom from the strong grasp of Oliver and his
Koundheads ! Shortly afterwards be has laid that close-cropped
roundhead of bis own upon the pillow vouclisafed to him aC
Moseley, and is dreaming calmly, perhaps, of having been vic-
torious instead of vanquished in the fight at Worcester.

Having sojourned a couple of days under the hospitable roof-
tree of Mr, Whitgreave — during which interval of aniious reposa
bis Majesty has been constantly attended upon by Father Huddle-
stone, while the chaplain's three youthful pupils, by name, Francis
Reynolds, Thoioos Palyn, and a boy-baronet, one Sir John Preston,
have kept watch and ward from the garret- windows, unconscious
of hia dignity, yet calling themselves his life-guard — Charles at
length, in the dusk of Tuesday evening, the ninth of September,
resumes his perilous journey coastwarda. MiritreBS Whitgreave,
the venerable mother of the Squire of Moaeley, filling the royal
pockets with the oddest rei'eeiion for a flying sovereigu — namely,
almonds -an d-raisins, and sweetmeats.

Munching some of these condiments, as he mounts the saddle,

and giving his band to be kissed by his late devoted servitors

— country gentlemen and recusant priest, there kneeling

in the grass by bis stirrup to offer him their farewell reverence —

Charles Stuart rides out of the orchard-gate, raufiled in a warm

cloak lent to him tor the occasion, with a kindly thought, by

Fuiher Huddlestone. Colonel Iiane has now become the king's

guide and sole attendant ; the colonel's country-seat of Bentiey

Jiall being then their immedlttte 4e6t\\iB.\vm. Thare the two

wayfarers arrive, in due course, tovsaTia ftifc isai&e ui floa "t»^&,

^tad thence they take their departure a^Mn aV ift-^\i«^ «vi iJoi

Mjf^ijig iDoi-ning — his Majesty ■hcvm?, \ie« \miw?,o^* to. >J

I

I CHARLES STOAHT — THE ROYAL STJOITIVE. 275

Uiterim hia more respectable transformation. Colonel Lane,
fcowever, and King CnarleB journey onwards from this point by
diiferent though parallel routes to the more remote distillation,
the residence of Mr. George Norton, aituated some three miles
beyond the cityof Briatol and known as Abbotsleigh.

Thither pretty Miatreaa Jane Lane, the colonel's aiater, is
Wending her way on a visit to her friend, Mistress Norton, under
Ml pass available for heraelf and a single male attendant. That
attendant being now impersonated in the character of the
yeoman'a aon, Will Jackson, by the ready-witty sovereign. 80
accoutred and so designated, Charles sets forth on that Wednes-
day morning, with hia bonnie miatress behind him, on their
double- saddled charger, accompanied, after a similar fashion, by
the lady's brother-in-law and sister, Mr. and Mistress Petre of
Buckinghamshire. These being attended, moreover, by another
relative, a royalist officer, named Lascelles. Colonel Lane meao-
Tfhile canters acroas the meadow fields skirting the highway in
company with Lord Wilmot. Neither of them more elaborately
disguised than by carrying each a hawk upon the wrist and a
lure by the side; while, clustered at their heels are two or three.
gay little yelping spaniels. It is eminently characteristic of that
most refined voluptuary that-was-to-be, Wilmot, Earl of Eoehester,
that he resolutely diadained any other disguise whatsoever; pro-
testing, with a shrug of the ahouldera and a twirl of the moustache,
that he should look frightful in it. Nevertheless, during one brief
interval of their subsequent wanderings. Lis lordship, I remember,
TOndescends so far to a little temporary masquerading as to
BBBume the patronymic of one Mr, Barlow. And a sufficiently
J)repoaterous conjecture as to the Christian name selected, at the
same time, way very naturally result from a recollaction of the
invariable predi of Will to the royal pseudonyms of Jones,
Jackson, and Aah burn ham.

Eapidly following in the wake of the fugitives, I observe
throughout, nith increasing zest, the more notable JncidentB
chequering the progress of the young king's adventures. 1 am
at his elbow cimckling inaudibly as lie stands by the little village
forge in Warwickshire (hia mare having cast a shoe) and holds
the hoof for the garrulous smith, who gossips with him as ha
files and hammers, about that rogue Charles Stuart, protesting
that the fellow deserves hanging more than the rest toe li^'c^a^ '
in the army from Scotland. Anot,\ieY -wVxXft \ VesmV-eoL *jjj;m- "^i
that nifeterioua warning-cry ot iVe Q\i \j&\ia.ia« ^«a.-am% wss^
the burle/ atubbie by Wotton— " ii-^atax, iS.oT;\-^'J'^ w^T-^V
if hone before you ! " — just aa 1 com« c\toAAi«">'4^'?'i '^ -ill

FOOTPRINTS ON THE BOAD.

with the king, through the midst of a squadrou of Bepublicaa
cavalry halting there to refresh their chargers by letting them
crop the grass by the wayside. I am in the kitchen at Mr,
Tombs's of Long Maratou, four miles beyond Stratford-upon-
Avon, when the cookmaid roils at my liege lor hia awkwardness
in fumbling over the meat-jack, she liaving asked him to lend a
hand iu winding — a companion incident to that of the burniug of
the oat cakea by Alfred the Great, centuries before, in the cabin*
of the swineherd. I tarry together with Mistress Norton's maid,
Margaret Hider, by the bedside of stripling farmer Jackson, while
he leans there, propped up on tlie bolster— pale with fatigue and
seemingly to my companion just recovered from the ague — eipping
the carduua posset she has brought him as a sudorific, 1 am
momentarily dismayed myself, upon the discovery of the king by
sagacious !Slr. John Pope, the butler at Abbotsleigh, though
speediiy reassured, it is true, by the candid fervour of his pro-
testations of faithfulness.

After a delightful night's repose at Mr. Edward Kirton's man-
sion of Castle Cary, near Burton, I am eshilarated by a refreshing
gallop through the sweet morning air over to Colonel Wyndham's
house, at Trent j where, in a meadow immediately adjoiiiing it, 1
note the recognition of that gallant cavalier by his sovereign —
who rides up to him in the midst of his family with a cheery
" Frank, I'rank, how dost thou ? " I peer over the king'a
shoulder out of the window of his hiding-place, there remarking
with him the boisterous assemblage in the churchyard below ua,
where the Puritans are broaching casks of ale and lighting bon-
fires tumultuously in celebration of hia supposed demise, hearing
bim sigh to himijeli^ as he turns from the lattice, Alas I pool
people. I am startled hardly less than be himselti when the
ostler in the inn-yard at Bridport greets him with — surely he has
seen his face before — the varlet actually then, in truth, trembling
upon the brink of recognition. Tet, more startled am I, however,
when another tavern-groom (ostler at the inn at Charmouth)
taking my Lord Wilraot's horse round to the neigiibouriug forge
for the purpose of getting a cast shoe replaced, has his suspiciona
roused by that shrewd observation of the keen-witted artisan,
Uammit, the blacksmith, " This horse has but tiu^e shoes, and
they were ail set in diderent conuties, and one in Worcester-
shire.'' Seminding me at once of the ever-memoratde deduction
of the dervish in the Arabian tale that a camel had recently
passed that way lame of the right forefoot, blind of the left eye,
iaden on the one side with liooey, on the other with spices —
^Miring at these coucluaiona eiuijiy tcom VtVai?, xraaMtad a

CHARLES STUABT — ^THB ROYAL FUGITIVE. 277

eamel-track with but tbree boof-priiits, the herbage cropped only
to the right hand, the bees swarmiDg here on the susary drop*
pings, the ants busy there with the over brimming ot the spice-
bags.

' I am still pertinaciously beside his Majesty, when under the
guidance of Colonel Bobin Philips, he carries behind him, on the
pillion, a new lady-mistress in the fair Juliana Coningsby ; and,
when stopping to dinner at the Mere, the presumed hobby-groom
is challenged by jovial Boniface with the Caralier countersign,
''Art thou a friend of CsBsarP" and answering as one might
conjecture, " Yea ! " is pledged to his own health roysteringly.

I pass the whole of one day of October upon Salisbury Plain,
in company with Charles and Bobin, entertaining ourselves,'
among other idle amusements, with reckoning up the colossal
fragments of Stonehenge.

A week later, I am crossing those same downs a-foot with his
Majesty, attended by burly Dr. Henchman, canon of Salisbury,
pursuing our way with pleasant converse until we come by pre-
arrangement at Clarendon Park Comer, upon a little group of
friends there loitering about for us, with greyhounds in leash,
under pretext of being out simply on a coursing expedition.

I am an amused listener at the supper-table at Humbledon in
Hampshire, when jolly Squire Symons reeling in from the ale-'
house more than — (what his unknown guest would fain have been
himself literally !) — half-seas-over, raps out an oath — ^being there-
upon, incontinently, to his own great dudgeon, reproved by
Charles with a " Pye, sir, that is an escape T"

Finally, I am observantly entertained at the little inn, still
discoverable by the curious, in the now most fashionable of all
our brilliant wateriag-pkces, then no more than the small fisher-
town of Brighthelmstone— when vulgar-minded, honest-hearted
landlord Smith, passing behind the king and, suddenly kissing his
Majesty's hand (then resting by accident 6n the back of a chair
on which he was leaning), wluspers to his liege in a fluster :
^' God bless thee wherever thou goest ! I doubt not before I die
but to be a lord and my wife a lady.*' Whereat his Majesty
laughs, and to the end that he may stop that dangerous talk be-
times, through fear of eavesdroppers, strolls away into another
apartment.

Thence, from that humble tavern at Brighton, I go forth with
the royal party about four of the clock on the morning of Wed-
nesday the fifteenth of October, for the last brief march be€c^^^
embarkation. Having, within the \vitietN«l c>Qi«,\5c^\ft.^ ^i'i >^«%s^
adventurer, run the gauntlet o£ t\i^ eue«i^ ^toNv^ ^^^'e

"FOOTPimrra '6S the boad.

counfciea ; having enjoyed in aucccBaion the aheltering hospitality
of Colonel Wyndham at Trent, of Colonel Philipa at Heale,
snd of Colonel Qunter'a sister at Hiimbledou ; having passed un-
detected through more than two-score days and nights of perilous
Tincertainty, unbetrayed by more than two-score faithful adhe-
rents, stanch to the last, in spite at once of terror and tempta-
tion '. Trudging along the coast-liue aa far as the little village of
Shorehaiu, I watch the king (still in the sad-coloured suit of Will
Jackaon), and with him my Lord Wilmot (still to the end blason-
ing it out haughtily in velvets and gold era broidery )^take boat
about seven of the clotk, the tide then serving, and so on board
s tiny bark in the ofSng, a collier of no more than sixty tons
burden, commanded hy worthy Captain Nicholas Tattersall, A

{ileasant excursion across the Chanuel with fair winds, and we are
anded iu Normandy, being taken on shore in the cockboat on
Thursday, the 16th of October, 1651, at Feschamp, near Havre-
de-Grace, Thence onwards immediately by easy stages to Eouen,
where we put up for a while at the principal hotel in the Old
Fiahmarket. Ultimately, as I track them onwards still to their
destination, that gay Prench capital where the Princes of both
Stuart and Bourbon dynasties, awaiting in eager expectancy the
approach of the royal retinue, niy thoughts revert almost wist-
fully to the earlier and more chequered acenea of King Charles's
famous adventures— to the rain-drenched coppice at "Whiteladies,
to the straw-littered bom at Maddeley, to the autumnal oak at
Eoscobel — even then when I am marking that gorgeous pro-
cession conducting the aijualid wayfarer of yesterday to the
Palace of the Louvre to the blast of trumpets and the boom of
connoD, with all royal pomp and ceremonial.

JOHN KEATS— THE ENGLISH HYLAS.

Nbablt fifty years ago there died, at a lodging-house in the
Piazza di Spagna, at Eome, a young Englishman of humble origin,
in exceeding poverty, with a frame emaciated by consumption.
His whole existence had numbered little more than five-and-
twenty years, the simple history of which might be summed up,
according to the pathetic expression of his biographer (meaning
the late accomplished member for Fontefract, Eichard Monckton
Milnes, now Lord Houghton), in "the composition of three
small volumes of verse, some earnest friendships, one passion, and
a premature death." Fully a quarter of a century after his demise
— not earlier — there appeared, in two charming volumes, edited
by Lord Houghton, a narrative of the young poet's life and
sufferings, together with a posthumous collection of the last
fragmentary melodies of his splendid and precocious genius — the
gleanings of ** a harvest of which so few full sheaves were per-
mitted to be garnered." Adonais sleeps calmly, meanwhile,
during all these years past, in his Italian grave — ^a place of
sepulture beautified by perpetual verdure and blooming with
violets and daisies, under the shadow of the pyramidal tomb
erected to the memory of Caius Gestius, a tribune of the lioman
people, the cenotaph erroneously imagined by Fetrarch to contain
the ashes of the brother of Eomulus. The lovers of Laon have
been long familiar with that romantic burying-place, from a
vignette prefixed to the collected writings of Shelley : lor Shelley
and Keats, the mourner and the mourned, kindred in their pre-
mature deaths and congenial in their precocious intellects, lie
there together in that self-same spot of earth which their moulder-
ing bones have thus rendered doubly classic. Above one grave
appears that humble, almost despairing, inscription —

"Here lies one whoee Bame -vr^ ^wxvXiYil^^i^K^x^w^

JOOtphints on the boad.

TJpoQ the otber ia engraven a brief but impassioned memento —
" Cor Cordium ! " Stom and obloquy were almost the only re-
compenBe of the young poets during their liletime ; but Bince their
departure their fame has so widened that their names have long
ago become conspicuouB among the brightest glories of our
national literature. And applyiog to them — more particularly
these two poets — the eiclaniatioD originally applied to £eata
and Tennyson, it might in truth, be said of Adonais and his
lamenting celebrant, in the words of an impassioned criiic recently
deceased — " When we think of the amount of the recognition they
liave received, one niay well bless God that poetry is in its^
strength and joy, whether it be crowned by all mankind, or left
alone in its own magic hermitage." And, assuredly, we do
Weaa God for this, earnestly and gratefully, because, in truth,
through the works of these illustrious writers, our hearts re-
cognise the sweetness, and the depth, and the holiness of those
intellectual amenities by which our common earth is adorned
and sanctified. We bless God that such is the strength and
joy of poetry that it emerges with as much vitality from tho
dungeon of the Earl of Surrey when he sang love songs there
within the shadow of the royal walla of Windsor, as from the
capitol of the eternal city when the hermit of Voucluse was
crowned with a garland of bay-leaves. We bless God that it is
ever thus, whether Tasso is incarcerated as a madman, or Yoltaire
is borne in triumph on the shoulders of the Farisians. And for
the same reason may we not have a grateful sense of exultation
that John Keats is no longer derided as a pigmy among the Lilli-
putitina of Coekaigne ; but that in his undeveloped genius there
has long since come to be recognised the fragment of a coloasua
kindred in its proportions to the sublime stature of the very
giants of poetry. Even a superficial acquaintance with tlJe
poetical effusions of Keats would be sufficient, one might think,
to kindle an admiration among the less impressionable, if only
for the wealth of his mere vocabulary, for the gorgeous colour-
ing and magniiicent profusion of bis imageries. Hence the
almost instantaneous appreciation by the majority in his
"Endyraion" — that " stretched metre of an antique song" — of
the realization of the truth of its first aphoristic declaration as to
beauty being an eternal benefaction. In spite of its unnumbered
blemishes, its school-bred affectations, its colloquialisms, even, it
might be said, its occasional absurdities and extravagances, whether
in regard to diction or in regard to fancy, it is difficult not to exult
over its equally unnumbered graces and witcheries, both of
^wgbi and oi' eipredsiou 1 From t^e %vi\imKnnB 'N&nderingB of

JOHN KEATS— THE ENGLISH HTLAS. 281

Qlaucus tfarougli tbe "blue-green" of the ^gean, to that
opening hymn of Pan, where —

** aaverthrfllfl

From kissing cymbals make a merry din.'*

Prom the glint of the erratic springs of Latmos, " warming their
ehilliest bubbles in the grass," to the perfume wafted from the
luscious bower of Feona, with its couch of " sacred dittany and
poppies red " — the whole poem, as we turn the leaves, becomes
for us, according to one of its own delicious utterances —

*' An endless fonntain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto ns irom the heaven's brink.

9»

** Lamia," again, has it not been pronounced by Lord Houghton,
and hardly with extravagance, the most perfect specimen of
narrative poetry in the English language ? That Lamia which
fastens upon our imagination like the remembrance of some lovely
and fantastic dream, from the moment when the demon-beauty
is discovered —

" a palpitating snake,

Bright and cirque-conchant in a dusky brake.

»»

Throughout the story of her marvellous metamorphosis, of the
love of Lycius, of the marriage at Athens, of the appearance of
Apollooius —

*' Until it seemed a horrid presence there^
And not a man but felt the terror in his h^.**

" The Pot of Basil," too, who that knows the piteous tale of
Boccaccio, as sung anew by Keats, but holds in tender and
tearful recollection the loves of Isabella and Lorenzo, of whom,
saith our English rhymed-leaf from the Decameron —

** Parting, they seem'd to tread upon the air.
Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart
Only to meet again more close, and share
The inward fragrance oi each other's heart**

** The Eve of Saint Agnes," moreover, that seraphic vision of
refined revelry and bridal rapture, where MftA'e\Mi<&,^\«t^'«6Kss^^
of Porphjro, and finding him on Yna k.n»b^ \i^ \2«st ^io.xi.^^'^'sfia^

rOOTPBINTa ON THE BOAD.

into his ears, through the silence of the moonlit chamber, the
impasBioned tones of love, untU—

^" At ber valnptnoiie accents he aroBe,
Etherinl. flushed, and like a throhl>iDg stai
Seen 'mid the Bapphire heaT«n'H deep capoae.
Into her dream he melted, as the roie
Bleudelh its odour with the violet."

3o, too, ia it with that "Ode to Psyche," depicting ho very
wondrously the " rosy eanctoary" of the virginal goddesa, declced
" with the wreathed trelHa of a working brain ; " or, again, with
the " Ode on a Grecian Urn," pourtraying those —

" happj, happy bongh< ! that ouinot shed

Their learea, nor ever bid the epriug adieu ;
And happj raelodldt, nnweari^d.
For ever singing aonga for eTer new."

So, likewise, with regard to the immortal " Ode to a Nightingale,"
composed OQ a garden grase-plot under a plum-tree at Hampstead.
!rhuB, finally, is it with so many other odes, stanzas, lyrics, sonnets,
epistles, miscellanies, of John Kents — poems shed in aromatic and
luminous characters upon the paper from the young dreamer's
hand! Have they not one and all been long since as familiar to
UB as the breath of clover in the meadows ? Have they not
fallen upon our hearing at all seasons as pleasantly^ — -now as
"the clicking of the coal in wiuter time" — now as "theluiury
of a aummer ratn at the windows P " But, beyond all these, have
we not grateful memories treasured up for that wonderful frag-
ment of " Hyperion P " — as grand in utterance as anything ever
syllabled by the lips of Homer, aa inspired ae Pindar, or, brede
Byron, " aa sublime ae 2£achylus ! "

That one so- young and so indifferently tutored should have
written thus— not alone, be it said, harmoniously, but with arigour
so full and elevated — must imder any circumstances have appeared
something little less than marvellous. But that a youth bred
beliind the counter of a aurg eon-apothecary, aided only by the
most slip-aliod and insufficient education, should have revived
thus in his virile verae the forms, and the passions, and the
graces, and the melodies of Attic life and Grecian mythology,
must for ever remain one of the most surprJBing and inex-
plicable among all the many bewildering enigmas baffling the
scrutiny of the psychologist. The merest glance taken at the
/b»' domestic /acta which ha've been lecwciai ot! John Keats,
»-W be found to yield the ampUat teatviaQni "CftTk^. Sa. «^<«!initt
^^^^^jare ve/ging upon no eiCLgs«a.^wtt, Toa W^-j 5

JOHN KEATS — THE ENGLISH HYLAS. 283

Keats, as already intimated, was very bumble; but, at tbe
least, its lowliness was respectable. The poet's father held em-
ployment as a groom or helper in the livery stable of a Mr.
Jennings, whose establishment was situated on the Pavement at
Moorfields. The poet's mother was the daughter of this man's
employer. Both parents dying prematurely, left their children
to the care of a Mr. Abbey. As to these orphan children of the
stable-help and the livery-man's daughter, be it said at once that
besides John, whose genius was destined ultimately to render the
obscure name of his family illustrious, there was his elder brother
George, who died in America, his younger brother Thomas, who
perished in the poet's arms from a lingering decline, and their
little child-like sister (Fanny) who was subsequently married to
a Spanish gentleman named Llanos. In 1810 John was placed
by his guardian, for a period of five years, with a Mr. Hammond,
a surgeon, living at Edmonton. Prior to this, he had studied at
the school of a Mr. Clarke, in Enfield, there learning little enough
beyond the merest rudiments of knowledge. Latin was to him,
in more senses than one, a dead letter ; Greek was, as the phrase
is, nothing more comprehensible than high Dutch. Even now in
English literature the young chemist's assistant was only slowly
and painfully, attaining anything like proficiency. Notwith-
standing a passion for poetry and mythology — a passion which
had grown up with him from his boyhood, and which was so far
confirmed that it became little less than an infatuation upon his
eager perusal of Lempri^re's " Dictionary," Spence's " Polyme-
tis," Tooke s « Pantheon," and Spenser's " Paery Queen"— he
laboured with so much assiduity at his profession that he not
only in due time passed the examination at Apothecaries' Hall,
but did so with considerable credit. Upon his arrival in London
for the purpose of walking the hospitals, John Keats took up
his residence in the Poultry ; removing thence, however, in the
autumn of 1817 to Hampstead. Here it was that there were
commenced by him simultaneously those friendships and those
compositions which have so redounded to the glory of his
name in our literature, saddened though they were at the
time bv the accompaniment of so many sordid anxieties, and
coupled though they were for some years after the close of his
brief and afflicted existeince with so many melancholy misrepre-
sentations. In the partial or half-veiled revelation of some at
least among these poignant miseries, Lord Kovi.'^^X!^^ ^s» ^^^^^^

Keats' biographer and annotator, lawft ^\&^\k^^^ ^ ^^^'s^^^ >io2^
wins alike our respect and admiratioii \ «cA \ii "^^ ^^^Zn^ ^^'
rice of allowing the correspondeiice ot t^Xi^e^ ^qv)5^^ "^"^"^^

POOTPRIHTB ON THE ROAD.

^

atitate the chief portion of the bionraphy — his own intercalary
remarks being, flgutatively speaking, nothing more than the
thread upon wliich the pearls of his hero'a fancy and the dia-
monds of hia wit are strung together — lie haa revealed in the
dearest light the intellect and character he had undertaken to
portray. But for the publication of the letters contained in
these charming volumes, the public wonld have remained alto-
gether in ignorance of at least one among the moat delightful
and distinctive peculiarities in the temperament of Keats, mean-
ing hia exquisite relish for and appreciation of the humoroua.
Loving as he did with his whole soul the ideal of the Beautiful,
adoring, so to speak, from the innermost recesses of hia pro-
found and susceptible nature, the loftier and holier emotione of
humanity — the emotions of love, of pity, of paaaion, of grief-
Keats nevertheless revelled in those sudden gleams of wisdom
and abrupt flashes of imagination known to ua all familiarly, aa
wit. He exulted as completely ia everything odd, whimsical,
and grotesque, as he did in everythiug that came to him toached,
however subtly, witli pathos, with aSection, or with loveliness.
He aiibrded, indeed, another and a very striking illustration of
the blending of extremes — that refined principle of harmony
which constitutes the charm of antithesis in rhetoric, and wbica
furnishes the key to the mystery of the magical effect of contrasts-
ing sounds produced by the skill of the contrapujitiaC. Keati
aeemed to leel that drollery was the natural ebullition of the
human mind in its moods of pleasure (and for that reason, .
therefore, especially to he cherished) quite as much as he be-.
lieved in the divine origin of the nobler kinds of poetry — that
B- creed which has since hia time been expressed ao quabitly yet
^■Mn inimitably by the voice of Balph Waldo Emerson :

H Of the capacity of Keats for appreciating the ludicroua, the
letters edited by Lord Houghton afl'ord ua, in truth it may be
aliowed, very abundant evidence, liear Xviva, iiM «**«&■«, in
oae epiatle complaining of a fit of VaivaeBs V'Vv^:* wei-«'wSusm%
^'■"- dtfclarmg, inpi-oofofit, " I amin t\ia.'-teiP\'^T^'^^'*'*^^'«*^

"Never from lips of ounning fell
The tbrtllJDg Delphio onLcle ;
Out fiuDi the liBarc of Natnre tolled,
Tbe hurdeus of tlie Bible oM ;
TLu libiuies uf natiuDS came,
Like llie vulcuao'a tongue of flame.
Up from tlie buniiDg core below,
The canticles ot love auij woe."

JUOi,

JOHN KKATS — THE ENGLISH HTLAS. 285

under water I would scarcely kick to come up to the top I" Or
hearken to him, in another place, talking of a certain *' mahogan j-
faced old jackass who knew Bums, and who ought to have been
kicked for having spoken to him ! " Listen to him when he is
declaiming in a letter addressed to a friend at Oxford against
dims, thus — '* So you are determined to be my mortal foe ! Draw a
sword at me, and I will forgive you — put a bullet in my brain, and
I will shake it out as a dew-drop from the lion's mane — put me
on a gridiron, and I will fry with great complacency — but — Oh,
horror ! to come upon me in the shape of a dun ! " Or hear him
again, when he is descanting upon that miserable weather, upon
what Mr. Justice Haliburton, otherwise Mr. Samuel Slick, of
SlickviUe, would call those "juicy days" in Devonshire — ^''As the
drops beat against my window," says he, " they give me the same
sensation as a quart of cold water offered to revive a half-drowned
devil — no feel of the clouds dropping fatness ; but as if the roots
of the earth were rotten, cold, and drenched/' And, in another
letter — " I lay awake l^st night listening to the rain, with a sense
of being drowned and rotted like a grain of wheat !" And in
another^—" By the by, you may say what you will of Devonshire :
the truth is, it is a splashy, rainy, misty, snowy, foggy, haily,
floody, muddy, slipshod county. The hills are very beautiful,
when you can get a sight of 'em ; the primroses are out — but yo^
are in."

During a pedestrian excursion among the lake-scenery in
Cumberland, our poet again depicts thus extravagantly a country-*
dance witnessed by him upon a village green — "It was indeed no
new cotillon fresh from Prance," says he in a spirit of abounding
comicality. "!No, they kickit and jumpit with mettle extra-
ordinary, and whiskit and friskit, and toed it and goed it, and
twirled it and whirled it, and stamped it and sweated it, tat-
tooing the floor like mad." During another excursion of a
similar character he takes occasion to write thus with amiable
banterings to a sick friend, whose illness rendered him incapable
of participating in such robust enjoy monts — "Buy a girdle,'*
he exclaims, " put a pebble in your mouth, loosen your braces ;
for I am going among scenery whence I intend to tip you the
Damosel !Radclifle. I'll cavern you, and grotto you. I'll make
a lodgement on your glacis by a row of pines, and storm your
• covered way with bramble-bushes. I'll have at you with hv^-as^sJ^-
haw small-shot, and cannonade you mtVi ^Jooi^^^. ^^ ^'^ ^«>«^
upon Bait hsh, and impede your cayaiXi'j Nn\*\i cVoXNfc^ ^t^«j«y^ ^

Here, however, as a crowning m\xB\.Tat.\OTL oi VXva ^^^^\,
And irolic noticeable in thia child o£\o\© wA ^oac^^'^J^^^^^^

rooTPRiNTS as 1

Jimotlier htiniOTouH passnae— HJtie not unworthy, as it seema to as,
"f Sydney Smith himBelf in his most fantaatic mood —

Here, for eiarnple, as a, distinct companion-pictnre to Sydney's
Stout Lady of immortal memory, we have this wonderful Httia
comical, ghostly silhouette from the hand of Keats of a Thin

Lftdy, aa folioWB— " Will Henry have that Miaa ? A lath

with a bodice — she who has been fine-drawn — fit for nothing but
to cut up into cribbage-pins ; one who ia all muslin, all feathers
and bone ! Once in travelling she was made use of as a linchpin.
I hope he will not have lier, though it is no uncommon thing to
be 'smitten with a staff' — though she might be uaefu! as his
walking-stick, his fiahing-rod, hia tooth-pick, his hat-stick (she
runs 80 much in hia Lead). Let him turn farmer, she would cut
into hurdles ; let him write poetry, she would be his turn-style.
Her gown is like a flag on a pole; she would do for him if be
turned Freemason ; I hope she will prove a flag of truce. Whea
she sits languishing, with her oue foot on a stool, and one elbow
on the table, and her bead inclined, she looks like the sign of the
Crooked Billet, or the frontispiece to Cinderella, or a teapaper
woodcut of Mother Shipton at her studies."

Sometimes he will pen an allegory as fresh and felicitous as any
ever contributed to the Spectator by Addison. At other momenta
■he will dash off a fantastic aentiraent in half-a-dozen words, as
epigrammatically as Martial or as Eoehefoucault. For example,
what home-truth there ia, in his remark that "A proverb is no
proverb to you until life haa illustrated it." With what a
charming grace he exclaims at another time, that — " To see an
entirely disinterested girl quite happy is tiie most pleasant and
extraordinary thing in the world." Again, with what a pretty
tendemess, half fun, half fondness, he cries out, " How beautiful
are the retired flowers ! How they would lose their beauty were
they to throng into the highway, crying out, ' Admire me, I am
a violet ! Dote upon me, I Hm a primrose ! ' " There is something
noble, too, in the reflection tempting him to say, " We talk of
the immense number of books, the volumes ranged thousands by
thousands ; but perhaps more goea through tlie human intelli-
gence in twelve (Wys than ever was written."
Aa for the "Literary Bemalna" of John Keats, filling up the
two hundred concluding pages of t\ie aecOTki'ioXvmwi cS. "raa Vo-
grapby, tbej are but the last \ibrati.o\ia o? V\ia*ft V'jtus *VT\^g^
tkmaouad of which, was ao prtiTQatUTe\'3 mua^A '-ai- '>^ia'\>»:Sa i

Ifc

JOHN KEATS— THE ENGLISH HYLAS. 287

death. These effusions, including among them " Otho the Great,"
a tragedy in five acts, together with a variety of miscellaneous
pieces, although they are in no degree comparahle to the more
perfected effusions of the young writer's genius, nevertheless
abound with new illustrations of the depth of his nature, and of
the fruitfulness of his exuberant and precocious imagination.
Although " The Cap and Bells" is a mere unfinished eccentricity
— curiously in its way a companion to the " Peter Bell" of Shelley,
both being humorous and both posthumous — it is nevertheless
80 vivacious and fantastic, that the fairy dramatis persona become
at once enshrined among our household recollections — Bello-
naine, the beautiful princess ; Oorallina, her nurse and confidante ;
Elfinan, the mannikin emperor ; Eban, his ebony page ; Hum, the
soothsayer ; Bertha Pearl, the toast of Canterbury ; and, best of
all, old Crafticant, a sort of pigmy compound of Pollonius and
Padladeen. Yet assuredly the most exquisite among all these
** Literary Remains" is the love song beginning —

** Hush, hnshl tread softly! Hasb, hush, my dear I*'

A love ditty, ending with a couplet as impassioned as any in the «
whole range of erotic poetry.

Eeverting, however, to the memorials of Keats contained in
the two charming volumes now edited by Lord Houghton, it is
worthy of especial remark that the principal interest of the work
lies in the fact of its proving to demonstration that Keats was
not killed by adverse criticisms, but that he was the victim of
consumption; that terrible disease being in his instance ren-
dered doubly deathful by reason of the poignant intensity of his

one absorbing passion, his love for , a young lady living

at Hampstead. As affording indisputable evidence of this, the
book is, indeed, altogether triumphant as a vindication. So far
was the young poet from being "destroyed" by the article in
the Quarterl^f that he was apparently about the very last being
«in existence who could have been so affected hj the condemna-
tion of a reviewer. "Writing to Mr. Hessey, in 1818, he says
himself, very beautifully, " My own domestic criticism has given
me pain without comparison beyond what Blackwood or the Quar-'
terly could inflict : and also when I feel I am right, no external
praise can give me such a glow as my own soiitairy re-percep-
tion and ratification of what is fine." BL'ft Aj^vA^Teiwik^^^s^sssas^&.'w
although, with the exception oH a\*eN^ ipn.v^XaVcv^w^'^^V^^^^^f^
in the sm&lleat degree compre\i©\idLed \>^ >d^^ ^^^^^^T^
Irow the petulant sueer of Wordayjoxtiti, ^V«t«^ \Xi^Y^^

888 rooTPBiHTa on ths boad.

of " Endymion" witb supercilious affectation, as " a pretty piece
of paganisia," to the ferocious attack of the Quarterly Eeviewer,
which eitnrted from Shelley the noble elegy of " Adonain," pnor
Seats encountered ia almost every direction little c)ae than
rebuffs, depreciations, and contumelies. Tet must it even, now
be confessed that if these pertinacious assaults fell harmlessly
upon the masculine nature of Keats himself, it was certainly
from no lack of virulence or of malignity on the part of his assail-
anta. As Lord Houghton expresaea it, " the malice was weak
only because the genius was strong; the arrows were poisoned,
though the armour they struck was proof, and able to save the
life withio." And have we not reason to be grateful that it was
so ? That the young poet who exclaimed " I would sooner tail
than not be amongst the greatest " — he who declared at another
time, that he must write, "from the mere yearning and fondness
he had lor the beautiful, even if his night's labours should be
burnt every morning', and no eye ever ahioe upon them " — could
believe in his heart, and utter in tones espreasive of the strongest
confidence to one ol' his bosom companions, these prophetic words
— " I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death,"
■ May we not, indeed, exult over that simple acknowledgment,
as we have erstwiiile exulted over those more egotistical odes of
Horace, in which be foresees his own renown with posterity, or as
we have exulted over those superb sonnets of our own Shakspere
(xviii. and li.), in which he expresses bis credence in bis own
poetical immortality p Knowing bis defects, Keats also knew the
truth and vitality of his genius ; and his prescience of his future
celebrity was as an ample breastplate against the shafts of hia
antagonists. Death came to him at Borne, then, be it remem-
bered, not from anguisli at a criticism, as has been so long errone-
ously imagined. The aimple record of the origin of his decease
runs as inllowa i — " One night, about eleven o'clock, Keata re-
turned home in a state of strange physical excitement — it might
have appeared to those who did not know him, one of fierce
intoxication. He told bis friends he had been outside the stagOiw
coach, had received a severe chill, was a little fevered, but added,
' I don't feel it now.' He was easily persuaded to go to bed, and
as he leapt into the cold sheets, before his head was on the
pillow, he shglitly coughed, and said, ' That is blood from my
mouth ; bring me the candle — let me see this blood.' He gazed
|^_ td/astlf for some moments itt the ruddy stain, aud then,
^H tag in Ill's iriend's face with an es'^Tewsvou ol wiiiaa calm-
^L never to be forgotten, aaii, '1 Vnow ftie tuVms tjl SloaS
^K'~yt is ai-ttsyial blood— 1 cannot \>e i>:':eweiSB.i.VB^'a3>n\a

JOHN KEATS — ^THE ENGLISH HYLAS. 289

that drop is my death-warrant. I must die ! ' " This was in the
Pebruary of 1820. Before the February of 1821 had terminated
Adonais was mouldering in his grave near the ruins of the
Honorian walls of tbe Eternal City ! The heart that worshipped
Nature so devoutly that he was fain to cry oat once, ** The
setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a sparrow were
before my window, I take part in its existence and pick about
the gravel," lay at rest there under the turf — dyed by the Italian
sunset — the haunt of the ubiquitous sparrow.

Musing over the young poet's, dust reposing calmlv, there, in
Borne, it moves one to remember his rapturous articulation of
homage to the glory of the Universe. " The open sky sets upon
our senses like a sapphire crown ; the air is our robe of state ; the
earth is our throne ; and the sea a mighty minstrel playing before
it^ — able, like David's harp, to make us forget almost the' tempest
cares of life.'' Those tempest cares were to die out early enough
as it happened for him, and high above them all, that master-*

passion of his soul, his love for ! How profound, even it

might be said distracting, this passion was, in very deed, may be
recognized through the poet's own despairing allusions to his
love when dying, quite consciously to himself,. during his sojourn

in Italy. " The thought of leaving ," he writes, " is

l>eyond everything horrible — the sense of darkness coming over
me — I eternally see her figure eternally vanishing." And again
— " I can bear to die — I cannot bear to leave her. Oh, God J.
God! God! Everything I have that reminds me of her^
goes through me like a spear." In bitter truth it might be
'.said, that he experienced in the despair of this unrealized love,
the dread pangs of death again and yet again a thousand times,
before the moment of his own actual dissolution. 8o intense are
the revelations of this great anguish of his in the brief and affect-
ing narrative of his demise, fortunately preserved to us, that tears
would be an inadequate evidence of pity, but that the gloom of
the picture is relieved by the remembrance of the exquisite solace
secured to the Poet Keats in his last agony through the tender
care lavished upon him by the Painter 8evem. Honour to that
rtrue heart ! Honour to that loyal nature ! thanks to which there
were carried at least to the youug poet, in consolation to the very
end, the wine of love and the bread of friendship. -

' It IB worthy of remark, that associatioQB of an occult or ini

ible character have in every age exercised a peculiar fascination
over the multitude. With much of the diatinctneaa of philoaopby,
they have combined much also of the mjsticism of auperBtition ;
and by that anomalous alliance have, at different periods, wielded
an authority more gigantic than waa ever posaesBed by the moat
puiaaant couqueror. Nations have bowed down before them in
obedience — aenatea have propitiated their favour by conceBaionB
— princes have become their vassals, aud aovereigua iheir votaries.
TJuBeen and impalpable, they have proved more destructive than
Juggernaut ; their car baa rolled over the most stubborn races
and the moat haughty potentates. Surprising as is the prestige
acquired by those institutions, it ia by no meana difficult to dis-
cover the cause of their almoat preternatural dominioQ. Iho
taliaman of their power waa their secreay. They became august
and terrible by reason of their very indistinctneaa. To the
imaginatioQH of the million there appeared to be something divine
in bodiea which arrogated to themselvea ao many of the attributes
of Omnipotence. It was this obscurity whicli reflected and mag-
nified the dread of the uninitiated, just aa the vapours of the
BrDckea are said to preaent colossal spectres to the traveller by
reflecling the ahadow of hia own stature aa he journeys along the
pinnacle of the HartE Mountains. It waa the ineerutable privacy,
for example, of the Council of Ten which enabled it to hang the
aword of Damocles, and the rock oi' Sisyphua, and the gorgon-
buckler of Medusa, above the marble homea of the Veuetiana ;
to stutter poison over their bowla of pleasure, and spriulile eepa
MtnoBg the dowers atrewn m t\ieii ^Toces&TOna -, to multiply
^^saaainationa with every groan under t\\e\eoA%,B:Q-i (iNsT^\i\Mo\a

«i cbe Adriatic ; and to realise a reaevQb\saJc« '^fc'^-^^*^ ** "^-^^

I r

AGATHOCLES — ^THB ELEUSINIAN. 291

austere tribunal and the sublime but dismal allegory of Death — a
shape —

"* If sbape it miglit be called, tbat shape bad none
Bistingaisbable in member, joint, or limb ;
Or substanoe might be called, that shadow seemed,
For each seemed either; black it stood as Night,
Fierce oaten Furies, terrible ots Hell,
Aiud shook a dreadfvZ dart; what seemed its head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on,**

Wherever and whenever a sect or a confederacy has been
established, the interest, or, more frequently, the fear inspired
by its invisibility has been veiy speedily manifested. This is
attested by the records of antiquity, as well as by the experience
of contemporaries. It is discernible in every kindred society,
from the nse of the Druidical religion to the most perfect re-or-
ganisation of freemasonry ; from the inspired ravings of the sybil
to the impassioned but discursive oratory of Irving; from the
scientific phantasms of the £osy Cross, to the political fanaticism
of the Vehmegericht. The same predominant characteristics may
be recognised throughout the whole catalogue, even down to the
latest of the revolutionary schemes of democracy, among the
Carbonari in Italy or the agrarian marauders in Ireland. They
possess one moral complexion in common with each other; their
bond of union is identical; their policy has the same oblique
tendencies ; they are alike inscrutable, enigmatical, and incompre-
hensible. This truth is manifest, whether we track the Neapolitan
carbonari or the Irish peasantry ; whether we follow the one into
the fastnesses of the Abruzzi, or the other into the pasture-lands
of Tipperary ; whether ^e contrast the assailants of King Joachim
with those of King Eerdinand ; whether, in short, we particularise
amongst the muiderous Thugs of Erin, — the Levellers, the
Whiteboys, the Molly Maguireites, the Eockites, the Fenians,
the Terryalts, or the Kibbonmen. IJnder all designations, these
confederacies have maintained the same imperturbable aspect, and
the same inviolable secresy. Sometimes evoked by knavery,
sometimes by the spirit of insubordination, they have ostensibly
aimed at religious supremacy, at social improvement, or at the
advancement of philosophic knowledge; and, while they have
been most effectually agitating the passions oC tb^^^ T^^^^^^^^
themselves have appeared to ^e tYi<b mo«X. ^WEs4\cyc^fc^'^ 'w^^^^^
psBsioDsble* '\^Si^

Of all kindB o^ occult a8Bocia\iom,\vo^«^«t%^^^"^^^W

TS!^^^^ FOOTPBlNTa ON THE R0i3

the most influence over the community whicU bave been asaociatecE
witb the bewitching dreama of the Grecian mythologists. The
altractioQB of romnnce and poetty have enhanced their authority,
and rendered sublime and atipreiae tbe festivities of Eleuainia, of
Demetria, and of TheBmophoria, Yet it ia Bcarcely surpriaing
that such Bhould have been the case among a people bo peculiarly
Buareptible as the ancient Greeks, and especially when that people
abandoned themselves, heart and soul, body and mind, to tbe
exquisite seductions of polytheism. Still less can this be matter
for astonishment, when we reflect that even now-a-days, after the
lapse of eighteen ceuturicB, men are still to be found who fantas-
tically aflect a homage for the creed of the polytheists. Across
the abyss of so many ages, the unholy voice which is said to
have lamented over the billows of the Toniau sea, crying out,
" Great Fan ia dead ! " fluds an echo among the very shrines of
Christianity,

Until very recently, it was admitted on all hands that tbe
divinities, as well as the letters of the Grecians, might be traced
to the priesthood and tbe philosophers of Egypt — a striking simi-
larity being observable between the ceremonies of Greece and
tbosa performed by the Egyptians. All archsBologistB indis-
criminately coincide in regarding the religious worship of the
two countries as, in a great measure, identical ; and in maintain-
ing that the ideas which were prevalent in Northern Africa under
the Pharaohs, were discernible in the festivities of the Athenians,
in the days of Miltiadea and Epauiinondas. During the course
of the present century, however, doubts were awakened as to the
wisdom of this credulity in Btatenienta hitherto advanced solely
upon the credit of the classic historians. A new department of
intellectual activity had been opened to inquirers by the genius
of the German students in philology, Tbe disquisitions of Wolf
upon the origin of the Homeric Songs had excited a noble emu-
lation among scholars generally throughout Chriatendom ; and it
waa to thia emulation that, in England, we were mainly indebted
for tbe researches of the late lamented Dr. Arnold, and, in Italy,
for the remarkable investigations of a mind not less luminous m
criticism than in poetry — that of the youthful and ill-fated Count
Giacomo Leopardi. Pre-eminent, however, among all his illus-
trious contemporaries was that modem annalist of Some, whose
daring and profound scepticism dissipated so many of the beautiful
illusions of Pagan literature, "What Niebuhr was, moreover, to
tbe history q£ the Latins, Lolieck,to aome «iVeo.\,,-^^wed hioiBelf
a be al'tervcards, in reference to t\ie in-^Aeilie* ol \^% ^ircris*—
^^iag solace and light," lite ^bs T^iftieGe>»oi,"jg|

AaATHO0LKB — THE ELBUBDTTAN.

293^

mounttiin-Bummita of antiquity." * Besides Lobeclr, a variety of
distinguished writers have endeavoured to clear up all uncer-
tainties as to the real source of these occult feetivitiea of the
mythologists. Hence the very curious labours of Gorres and of
Bitter, of Schmitzler and of Eooul-Rocbette. It is to Lobeck,
bowever, that the principal amount of attcBtion in this matter
should be directed, because the moat important arguments upon
the question at issue owe to him their existence, through the
pagea of his extraordinary work, Aglaopkamus. Acknowledging
at once the ability revealed in that great and comprehensive pro-
duction, we must, nevertheless, avow with equal promptitude our
incapacity to accept as proven the whole of bis very ingenious,
but also very eccentric, hypothesis. Dittering with him in several
essential particulars, it is right that we should here explain our
views — with all respect, be it observed — as contradistinguished
from the opinions entertained by the Professor of Kegimouti ;
though the task of ao doing, incidentally, in the course of a single
essay, may be estimated, and not without reason, aa scarcely lesa
difficult tban that of carving upon the surface of a cherrystone
the whole of the intricate designs of the shield of AchiUes,

According to the ancient belief, as proclaimed by Herodotus,
the earliest civilisera of Greece were foreigners, who had acquired,
on the banks of the Nile, knowledge from the cultivation of
science, and wisdom from the practice of religion. Several
writers, it is true, agreed with Nonnus t iu attributing the glory
of this enterprise to Cadmus the Phcenician ; while others consi-
dered it eutirely due to the innovations introduced by Pelopa the
Phrygian, Tet, if we were to credit the assertions both of
Euripides and of Aristophanes, the mythical story of Orpheus
was, on the contrary, to be couaidered as the only reliable account
of the undertaking— a declaration, consequently, referring the
fame of its achievement to the deified hero of the Thracians.
Popular, however, as these conjectures were at different periodi
in Attica, they were all, for the most part, immeasurably sur-
passed in popularity by the one which, eituer through Cecrops or
DanauB, awarded the palm of priority to an Egyptian adventurer.
Under any circumstances, the latter idea must be admitted to be,
of all, the most fascinating — kindling the imagination, as it does,
with the reflection that Greece was thus indebted to the lore of
Africa — to that hoary and primeval wisdom which wota vjSft

• The CievaliCT Bnnsea'a G»ia; on S-witafta, "^^ *» \^wio»Ki«».-e
» f HooDos, lib. i, p. 130; Eorlp. RtieBO ', &j\bV)V"- "^^^^ '

2»4

FOOTPBTNTS OS THB BOA.D.

activity in the darkness of remote centuries, and which was
approachinff its decrepitude before the first Ptolemy ssBumed. the
diadpm of Alexandria.

Whencesoever the importation of learainEr into Greece, that it
was originally imported not even the most incredulons 1
tured to gaitisaf — the civiliBation of a country never having
proved, in a single instance, to be self-created or i "
springingr, as it necessarily must, from the intercom
nation alties. Equally assured are we, also, that ethics more than,
science, that religion more than abstract philoHophy, is ever the
medium employed for the development of this civilisation — testi-
monies of the accuracy of which assertion are, indeed, afforded by
almost every chapter in the annals of humanity, from the earliest
wanderings of the worsbippera of the Hindoo Trimarti to tho'
latest expedition, of the Christian missionaries. It must he
remembered, moreover, in illustration of this priority or pre-
eminence of religion as the handmaid of civilisation, that, a
the Bibie of the Hebrews, the intellectual treasures of the i
of antiquity were stored up in their sacred volumes — in the .
Indian Vedas and the Parsee Zendavesta. It was thus with the
Greelia as with the majority of the Oriental populations. Miiller,
indeed, goes so far as to aver,* that the Theogony of Hesiod was
no less a religious code than the Shaaters, or the Sadder, or
indeed, we might add, than the ejoteric teachings of the Magi, or
the Gymnosophists. In eiaminiog, consequently, into the pro-
gress of mental advancement in Greece, we must perforce observe
the gradual growth and complication of its mythofogy. Trora the
crudest germs of adoration, from a grovelling credence in the
gods of Fetichism, to the time when tbat belief had become sub-
limated into a system of symbolised emotions, or of passiona
esqiiisitely personified, we watch the building up of tliat marve'
louB edifice, in which the phantoms of poetry were enshrined a
the rulers of the universe. Unlike the creed of the Persians, we
find that of the Pelasgi to have displayed itself from the outset
through the medium of material repreaentatioos. Instead of
acknowledging the incongruous supremacy of an evil principle
like Ahrimanes, and of a beneficent principle like Oromandea, the
primitive inhabitants of Hellas bent the knee in homage before
divine ideas, evoked, as it were, from the original elements c
creation, from the dust of that earth which appealed to their
sj-Bipathjes through so many attributes oE aubUmity and loveli-
Saving tbua satisfied tbe popular eg,o^\&ni, \i-3 ^os&i'i&'wQ^

■ JHiiller'a Hist. Lit. Qrsec., viii. ^^.

■ ASATHOCLEB — THE ELBUSIWIAN. 29S'

■ifceir genius os originatora — taving deified, for eiample. fire as in
BVolcan, and water aa in Neptune — tliey appear to have multiplied
n^e mystic objects of their veneration, not merely by the woraliip
Birf love aB in YenuB, and of revenge aa in NemeBis, but by tba
IKloption of divinities preyioualy recognised elaewbere. Importa-
tions of this kind are universaliy admitted; but it is in regard to
the iiarticular time and peculiar manner of these importationB
that the opinions of modem scholars have become divided. The
entire question, moreover, is so sinpularly involved with the argu-
ments relating to the rise of the Eleusinian mysteries, that in
recounting consecutively the facta connected with the latter ,
circumstance, it will be impossible not to unravel, in a great
measure, the whole of that entangled subject — of which thoae
myBteries are, without doubt, the moat remarkable illustration.

Incredulous aa to the iuflaence said to have been exercised
over the Greek by the Egyptian mythology, Lobeck insists that
the religious ceremonies performed at Eleusis, in honour of
Deraeter, were originally racy of the soil of Attica, and were only
adulterated when Greece became politically connected wita
Egypt, long after the period of their foundation.' Mysticiani,
according to his idea, resolved itself into religion during the
interval which elapsed between the Homeric age and the Persian
war ; and the festivities here specified are referred, by him, not
even to the Athenians, much less to the Egyptians, but to the
Eleusiniana themselves esclusively — the cbildren of the violet-
crowned Acropolis, if we are to accept his hypothesis, having
been first allowed the privilege of participating in the celebratiou,
on the occasion of their triumph over the people of Eleusis during
the reign of Erectheus — an age very considerably removed from
the time of Paudion, formally mentianed by ApoUodorus,* For
the purpose of imparting some degree of consistency to his state-
ment, Ixjbeck maintains that the secreay in which the ceremoniea
referred to were involved, was merely attributable to the jealousy
with which the iohabitanta of the different Grecian states re<
garded the adoration of their respective divinities, Jt'eai'fui that
their gods might be decoyed from them by the more impassioned
homage, or the more sumptuous propitiation of their ueigUbours
and ciinlemporaries, tlie G-reeka are known, indeed, to have Ire-
quently oflered up their prayers in silence, in order that they

• ApoUodorus, iii liv. 7. For tte axtufiTdiaBTS 'iJ»civ^>«.wp£&'*>-'^''>^«^^
eee AghKpbdiatiB, torn. i. EleuBin. p. a2%,-w\ifiit"ti™™T™.-Bi-i'M«»-'®='*^*?5
boDiiBam ]DffeDli» non bstitau,, iie<iuo & nacne v^yaOi* o[iifti>;™«
itinj oleriralis Bspieatim colomai ei.»B\>Bi Btiv," oaa"™*"*"
thtuB is proclaimed.

^u%

296 POOTPHINTS ON THE BOAD.

iiiigLfc tlie more effectunlly avoid the poBsibility of provoting any
Bueh dangerous emulation. Hence tlie a9?ertionn advanced by
thia ingeniouB philologist, that tVi6 "myHteriea" of Eleuais were bo
called aimply from the desire of the Eleiisioians to esciude others
from aharinE; in the cereroonial worship of their diTine protectors,
Cerea and Proserpine, and that their ritual adoration might, from
the drcuinstauce of its secresy, have ultimately acquired, though
but very alightlv, a certain myalical character. He argues, in
fine, tliat a somewhat profouoder eolemnity may have been infuaed
into these religious ceremonies when the citizens of Athens were
permitted to join iu them wiih their origioators the Eleusiniana.
But above aU, and beyond all, he avers that the rites, in the first
instance, were purely Greek, afterwards slightly tioctured pos-
aibly by Egyptian adulterations. Such, in brief, is the masterly
argument by which Lobeck has endeavoured to overturn the
belief of geuerations. Inadequate we consider it to be for thatj
purpose, but stUl sufficiently iilausible to demand some attempt
at an explicit and logical ret'utalion.

The mysteries of the Eleusiniana we still consider, notwith-
atanding the abUity displayed by Lobeck and liis disciples in their
very specious and persuasive hypothesis, to have been originally
introduced iuto Attica through the instrumentality of some Egyp-
tian traveller. IVittiout accepting aa conclusive the declaration of
ilerodotus, confirmed by a similar statement of Clemens Alesan-
drinus, to the ellect that the daughters of Danaus first taught the
ceremonies of the mystic worship of Ceres to the Pelasgians ;•.
without crediting a rather contradictory assertion of the latter
writer, that the fiiunder was Melampua, any more than the aasu^
ance of Sophocles that it was Eumolphus, or even that it was InSr-
ch us according to Epiphanius, orMuJteus accordmg to Tertullianjt
without regarding, lor on instant, the mythical story which traced
the foundation of the mysteries to the goddess Demeter herself, on
the occasion of her arrival iu Attica in quest of Persephone — viewing
each of these accounts as frivoloua, nay, let us add, laughing them
all to scorn as fabulous, we must nevertheless continue persuaded
that the celebration originally eaisted in Egypt, having been im-
ported thence at a very early period, and Ibrinaliy established
among the Eleusians. Erom the first agitation of tiiis inquiry, it,
has been erroneously maintained that the religious mysteriea

' Mervdota^ ii- ITT, 183. Clemens Aleitandrinua, Stromiit, iv, o. 19.
"J^aervat Daaai 611ie, qua Jianc BOllennilUlem M 5ig3t^VcKHtf.ii\i3™A, m^^iate^
gae Pehsgaa docoeraai." Jfatalia ComilM de M3t\iQ\osnB, W>- -i- ^. ^1.

t CJaasDs, Coh. ad. GeoUi, p. 12 ; BopbocUs. Ki- ffiA.<io\.-t.^'>.ft^-,tTf«-
^"'"^ -^dv. Hrer. torn, i. c. i. S 9 : TerluUuiB, Apo\o4- c. "n,.

i

AGATHOCLES-THB ELKTTSmiAN. 297

among the Greeks are invariably found associated with the ancient '
Pelasgian divinities. Why, Ceres herself was not a Pelasgian
divinity ! Demeter was not Greek in her origin : she was a goddess
borrowed from the Egyptians. The truth of this is significantly^
visible in the circumstance that the cultivation of com was intro-
duced among the Grecians from Africa, and that Geres was pecu-
liarly identified with that branch of agriculture was demonstrated
clearly enough we conceive, by the familiar adage of antiquity—
Nv/x<^oi Cdwp, (Tiros ArjfiriTTjp — nymph(B aqtuB sunt, Ceres frumenta^
[Referring, moreover, to various ancient, mediaeval, and recent
authorities, it will be perceived that the notion conveyed by that
phrase of the Athenians is consistent with their opinion that
Ceres and I sis were identical. Plutarch regarded them as
such, as also did Herodotus — the views of those remote writers
having been subsequently echoed in the early days of Chris-
tianity by no less credible an antagonist of paganism than
Lactantius, and still later by Dupuis in France, and by Pritchard
among our own countrymen.* These impressions, be it observed^
are yet further entitled to consideration, from the circumstance
of their being in no way incompatable with the suggestion of De
PauWjt that the mysteries of Ceres originated in the fetes cham*
petres of harvest, as those of Bacchus sprang from the festivi"
Uies of vintage — De Pauw himself being not the least formidable
deprecator of these mystic celebrations. As additional testimony
that Ceres and Isis were identical, in a similar manner as were
Bacchus and Osiris, it may be remarked that a distinguished his-
torian now living — ^no less careful a collator of the classics than
Mr. Grote — speaks of Demeter and Dionysius as " the Grecian
counterparts '* of the Egyptian divinities particularised. % Beyond
which it may be remarked that this resemblance, or rather iden-
tity, is further verified by the intimacy of the relationship in which
the Grecian, as well as the Egyptian, God and Goddess stood
towards each other. Pindar, indeed, expressly designates Bacchus
as the partner of Ceres, both in the celestial throne and the
adoring cymbals, whUe Sophocles apostrophises the tutelary
deity of the vineyard as — Thou who reignest in the arms of the
goddess of Eleusis ! § It is enough, however, to observe that our

* Plutarch, De laid., p. 862, 864, et 869; Herodotus, IL 42, 59, 144;
Lactantius, De Falsa ReUg., p. 119, § 21 ; Dapuis, Origine des Coltea^ tA^sa^. vl»^.
616 ; and Dr. Prichard, Analysis of Egypt. M:5\.Vi., ^. \\. \*L, ^. ^^.
t De Panir, Becherches PhUosopbiquea wm \«r Qtxwa^ Vwsv, \\-^**iSJ»-
; Grote'a History of Greece, vol. i. p. ftO, ^ -w«.cv«ftl»^«« •*'*^

§ Pindtur, Isthrn. yii. 3, remarkable iox ^Sti^ <»:gt^»»vQa'«*^'''^'^
Aa/uiT€pos; and. Sophocles, AnUgox^e,

^298 rOOTPHINTB ON THB BOAD.

estimate of tlie African deriTatinn of Demeter, is eonfirmeJ
hv the eyidence of LimTiurg-Brouwer, tbe latest, perhapa
tbe moat sagacious, certainly the most diBpaasionate, among the
whole ranire of philoln^iste. Speaking of the circumstancp, that
the Athetiiana tliemselveB considered Cerea to be a foreign divinity,
he concedes the fact that the oriein of her worship is immediately
traceable to the Ertyptinns.* Beraember that this is the opinion
deliberately eipresaed by one who wrote with the arguments of
Miiller, of Voas.t apd of Lobeck before him, and that, in quoting
" it, we are not resortin;; to the Jdeaa entertained b? any of tbe
obsolete or despiaed authorities. It were practicable, of course,
to refer, in proof of the Egyptian origin of the mysteries, to tbe
venerable pages of Diodorua Siculns, and bo on, downwards,
through the various writers upon the subject, to the leas imposing
volumes of Dupuis and Saint Croix. J Discredit haa been brought,
however, upon their reasoning, in consideration of their indis-
putable credulity, and more recent critics are deemed to have
supplanted even the reapectable influence of Warburton. With-
out laying too much atreas, therefore, upon the assertion of
Zonaras, that Greece was civilized by the Egyptians, and Egypt
itself by tbe Chaldeans ; without insiating upon the reasonable-
neas of that remark of Bryant, that the philosophers who migrated
from the Nile into Attica brought with them the arts and worship
they had previously introduced in tbe former country ; without
going tbe length ot Cudworth, where be defines tbe Egyptian to
have been " tbe pattern " of tbe Greek and Boman theologies, we
might almost content ourselves with repeating the moderate and
rational opinion advanced within the present century by M.
Ouvaroir,§ — namely, that the religion of tbe Athenians was based
upon traditions of the East, drawn originally from Africa, after
they iiad undergone a certain amount of modification. Later and
more considerable authorities, nevertheless, have rendered super-

• Limburg-Bronwer, Histoiro de Is Civilization Mor. et R6lig. dea Greea, toin.
ii.C.iiv. p. 228. TliB words are worth Iramcrihiug in the original— "Je crois,"
EHijBhe, "qaenaaB pouvooB admettreque 1b culta du CSrda fnb d'origias Egjrp-

t See Miiller, Hist. Lit. Grat p 287 ; Voas, Mjtholoeiaohe Briefe. Band, iil
p. ISil, Bt pBBsIui.

I DiocioruB Sionlns, lib. i. (S 08, et lib. iii. g SS ; Dnpuia, Origine d« Coltea,
ioai. ir. p. 1-36 ; and St. Croii, Eechcrcbee aar iea Myat. dn Pagan. § T. p. 316.
S Zonaraa, i. 22, Eit x^^'""" 7°* *>T""" ipniTiiiriu mini -wfai idyirnt
'aKetStf jtpas 'EXKiiya!. BrjiOt, i.iia.\3«ia o( k[.'a<ni<,W,ift«!««,-^Ql. iii. p. 408;
idwortb, Trae Iiitellectnal SjBtcm ot ti>e \5>iier«,"*™'S.\. fit. w.^. J^-,™a.
**" " ■ ■ Iflfl MjBt. d'Ele>ia», ^1-p-'i\'«'i^'^^,'^"^^'WJ*»'

AGATH0CLB9 — THE BLBIT8INIAN. 293 I

fluouB any extended allusion to this j^ceful and meritoriona dis-
sertation. Grote has accepted, aa beyond the necessity of further
demonstration, the introduction into Attica of Thraciao, Phrygian,
and Egyptian rites, " distinct both from the public and the
gentUe solemnitieB ;" acknowledging, besides, a belief iu the
importation of religious ideas aud feelings, having eapecial re-
ference to Demeter and Dionysius.* Tliirlwall, moreover, though
reluctantly it ia true, agrees that the religiona of the East " very
early" exerted some influence on that of Greece, and'confeasea
even that Egypt may have contributed to the building up of the
Hellenic mythology it while the elegant and profound researchea
of Limburg-Brouwer have impelled him to the avowal of a similar
conviction, only one yet more clearly and resolutely enunciated. J
Writing as recently as 183i, the last- mentioned scholar declares
his judgment, despite the arguments of Lobeck and his followers,
to have pronounced strongly in favour of the Egyptian hypothesis,
particularising the ceremonies of Eleueis as iuilisputably derived
trom the worshippers of Isis and Oairis^ — an utterance grateful,
one might imagine it, to the manee of Herodotus, reviving the
glories of that renowned Olympiad which witnessed bis literary
coronation.

Ecerjthing considered, therefore, in reference to this eurioua
and intricate question in classic philology, we are confirmed in
the opinion that for the worship of Ceres, and for the mysteriea
of Eleuais, the Athenians were directly indebted to the Egyptian

Ehiloaophers. That the entire system of the Greek religion was
orrowed from Egypt, from Thrace, or from Phrygia, is as impro-
bable, to our thinking, as to that of our standard arcbteologist.g
But that each of those countries aided materially in extending
the scope of the Pelasgian mythology, we conceive to be altogether
incontrovertible. Among the evidences of this extension, not the
least memorable was the introduction of the mysteries from the
banks of the river Nile to the aljorea of the Gulf of Salarais— an
occurrence as obvious, in comiection with our foregoing state-
ments, as their subsequent removal from Eltusis to Epneiius.||

* Grate's History of Orseoe, vol. i. pp. 80, 32.
+ ThirwaH'B Hiatorj of Oreeoe, vol. i. <Jl vi. p. 215.

t Linbtirg-Broiiwer, Hiat. de In CJviL ki., torn. ii. p. IS, where he obsenee,
' ' Lea GrecB sieot pu recevoir dea id£es, des traditlou, et des ci^w ii^v^v^ ^m
rEgjpta, par nntorni6diair6 dea Plcenicienii ;'' aJi4 Wm. vi, c~Tii. >*. TMi6,-"\^
he speaka thus decirivel/, " Je otoLb qu'au mouiB 50m ^£» BfeTtmn^ws- S'Sisi'™"
taat ea rereairi I'Egypte."
§ Fotler'a Antiquities, book ii. o. i. p, 217, „ v. -n-< «KB

ms For the meaUoD of tlieir introduction at Eb\i'»^>^ awStTiitao, ■» -

800 FOOTPBINTB ON THE EOAD-

Coinciding with Meinera that it would be idle to search after the
precise year of their foundation in Attica ,• we cannot but tbink
that the principal teBtimoniea unite in fixing the period of their
estRblishraent somewhere about 1400 B.C. — namely, during the
sovereignty of Erectheus. According even to the admission of
Loheffc, it was shortly afterwards that the Athenians were allowed
to participate in their celebration by the conquered Eleuainiana.
According to the first Homeric record of the ]egend,t it waa then
that the rites were formally adopted by a section of the Hellenes.
According to all the credible witnesses of the progressive develop-
ment of civilisation, it was at that epoch, as far aa at this distance
can be reasonably calculated, that the art of agriculture became,
in a manner, STstematised among the descendauta of the ancient
PelasgiauB. Borrowed from the primitive cultivators of com in
Egypt, that art was speedily personiBed by the Greeks in the
divine form of Demeter — their instructors trom the banks of the
!Nile having suggested the worship of that divinity by their
descriptions of her prototype, and having defined from the rites
of leia kindred ceremonies of initiation.

Eeorganieed with peculiar pomp immediately on the admlseion
of the Athenians, the festiviiiea of Eleusia assumed such pre-
cedence over nil other religious celebrations in mythology aa to
be termed neither Spyia nor TtXirai, but The Mffiteriet (fiuor^pio,)
by way of particular distinction. They were considered, more"
over, so essential for the purification of a, Gireek citizen, that it
was the circumstance of his having neglected thia most holy
ordeal of initiation which led, more than either the sarcasms of
Aristophanes, the arguments of Lycon, or the scurrilous aspersiona
ot'MeJituti, to the condemnation and death of Socrates. Eleusia
or Eleusin, a borough-town of Attica, situated exactly between
Megara and the Pirieiis, waa the spot in which these festivities
were celebrated, every fifth year, in their greatest magnificence.
And although rites of a similar character were prevalent among
the Phiiasiana, the Pheneatte, the Cretans, the Celiana, tba
Parrhusians, and the Laced semon ions, it was to the consecrated
gai'dena of Eleusis that the votaries of the Peninsula and the
Archipelago thronged in the largest abundance. It was to
Eieueia that ^aculapius made a pilgrimage on his return from
Epidaurua, It waa there that Castor and Pollux were ad-
niitted after having visited the AcropoliB, It was thither that
JltTCulea bimseif, the moat accom5\ia\ie4 Veto olt wat^jiity, re-

• Mc/ners, Verm. Phi\. Schtift. "ivi. 7.63. . ^

AOATHOCLES^^THE ELEUSINIAK, 501

fiorted on bis departure from Tiryotlius. G-ods and demigods^
heroes and philosophers, sages and striplings, princes and
peasants, warriors and artisans, were allowed 'to participate in-
discriminately in the sacrifices offered on these occasions to
Demeter and Persephone. And their participation was at once
a duty and a privHege. It was a supreme duty, because those
who abstained from the periodical rites were regarded as haying
incurred the displeasure of the divinities, and as being doomed
liereafter to eternal darkness and abasement. It was in like
manner a supreme privilege, because of the comparatively small
number of those who were permitted to take part in the cere-
monies. Eestricted, in the first instance, to the population of
Attica, the prerogative was at all times denied to homicides and
bastards, ana helots, and concubines, and to such as were couf
yicted of the crime of necromancy. It was subsequently extended
to everyone but barbarians, though the prohibition was always more
strictly directed to the exclusion of Epicureans and Christians.

Conjectures of all kinds have been made, at different periods
and by different writers, as to the possible nature of these secret
and abstruse festivities. Among other suppositions, it has not
un&equently been imagined that the Eleusinian mysteries were,
like the Bacchic mysteries, remarkable for their indecorum and
their obscenities. This accusation is, doubtless, traceable to the
. circumstance of their being confounded by the early fathers with
the Mithraic and other demoralising celebrations. It is fortunate,
however, that mistakes of this character have been rectified by
the pagan controversialists of the early centuries of Christianity,
so that we can read Origen and Eusebius by the light furnished
in the disclosures of Celsus and of Zosimus ; finding, moreover,
in the Qolden Ass of Apuleius a counterpoise to the errors of
Theodoretus, the favourite, perhaps the most gifted, among all
the pupils of Chrysostom. Deceived by the unintentional mis-
statement of the fathers of the Church, Leland has, it appears to
us, most erroneously adopted this belief in the abandoned bearing
of the worshippers initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. Accord-
ingly we find him asserting, in his Commentaries on Demosthenes'
memorable oration in reply to ^schines, that the expression
"abuse vented flwyroTW a car^" (oxnrfp afia^s,) had reierence to the
liberties of tongue indulged in by the Athenian women on their
way to the temple of Demeter — ^whereas it was majox^&^k!^ "«w
sarcasm directed by the speaker ag;Biii^\> >(>aft \>c^^'^Yis»i^ <ii^^fiK.'«^^
of his antagonist. No wonder, ttiexeioTOA'^'^^'^^^^'^^^^'^^^
accede to the justice of any aucYi mtw^^^x*t>x\ssu\ J^^^^^^^-as
theleaa be admitted that Plautua aSox^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^

tlie agpailants of the mysteries nn the score of immorality, when
in Avartu he deicribeij the iDcident befalling the daughter of
Eudion during the nocturnal celebration. A raore erroneous
notion, however, was never prevalent, seeing that the ritea of
Cerea were rather Bolemn than licentious. The idea niav have
originated, poBsihl 7, in the drcuiDalauce that, on the tranamiBBioii
of the ceremonieB from Attica to Rome, during the dayB of the
Emperor Adrian, a certain amount of indecency was tolerated by
the libertioiam of the Italians; otherwise the Eleusinian mya-
teriea were immaculate. There was about them, indeed, a degree
of severity that precluded the celebrants from the poBsibility of
polluting the sacred precincts of Eleueia with any proceedings of
an offensive character. Every step towards the porch of the
edifice, consecrated to the Goddess of K^ature, was an act of
austere preparation. Fasting was enjoined; chastity was en-
joined ; and the flesh was macerated by watchings and purifica-
tions. Mor is it astonishing that such preliminary rigours should
have been regarded as essential, when it is certain that the mys-
teries which were then divulged to the Athenians were the
syinbola of the most stupendous truths of creations, and the
Bubliuieat types of an invisible Divinity, Under.every act of the
celebration — even under the minutest — there was an awful pro-
fundity of meaning. "When, at the very moment of initiation,
the citizens were distinguished as the Ephoroi and the Epoptai,
it was because of their actual inspection (i<j>opia) of secrets hilherto
concealed from humanity. "Wlien the assistants were, in like
manner, termed Udranos by way of distinction, it was because
of the mystic water (CSap) aprinkled by their hands over the
prostrate bodies of the worahippers. "When their Bupplications
were raised, moreover, not to Ceres, or to Demeter, but to
Aetheia, it was with nn exquisitely subtle reference to the
anguish ("x^os) with which that goddess had made her dolorous
journey in search of Proserpine. Throughout every particular of
these remarkable forms of adoration may be discerned, in fact,
the evidences that they were the emblems, or rather the ma-
chinery, of a great system — a system at once mystical, philo-
sophical, and ethicaL Even in the etymology of the word Eleusis,
there is this eridence of antiquity and depib of signification ; for
the town derived its name Bcarcely so much from the father of its
ibunder (Eleusna) as from the reputed arrival (iXcvirir) of Chores
at that Je'Jsnd, after her departnie itom 'Eotia, where, if we are to
credit the ancient legend of the GTeeVa, fe\\B ^w'l \a.M^\. vW wtt

of agriculture to TriptoleaiUB.

^ecordiag to the deacriptiona fumiaVei >iT i.5««w&

^aenBiiii^

K

AGATHOCLBS — THE BLKU31SIAH.

from Plutarch to Meuraius, and from Herodotus to Fourmon le
Jeune, it ia unqueationable tliat an atmosphere of the moat ear-
passing majesty enveloped the myateriea of Eleusinia. And the
grandeur of their accompaniments cannot have been, in any respect,
inappropriate, when it ia remembered that the mysteries themselves
were as benignant in their operation as they were tremendous
in their aspect. Ooe of our own historiana, speaking with all the
emphasis of admiration, mentiona them, indeed, as "hidden trea-
sures of wisdom and happiness."* Treasures they indisputably
were — treasures of intellectual beauty and of moral magnideence.
Besides affording a bewitching representation, commemorative of
the rape of Proserpine when culling flowers on the plains of
'Enua., and besides presenting to the initiated a psnorama of the
pilgrimage of Ceres in quest of her daughter — from the moment
when she lighted a brand at the iiamea of Etna until that in
which she discovered her eating the grains of a pomegranate ia
tlie Elyaian fields — the Eleusinian mysteries had a twofold pur-
pose of a very remarkable kind : they were intended to convey a
judicious sense of the inl'usion of the soul into matter, and to
reduce to the comprehensiou of the multitude tlie authority of aa
unseen and impalpable Godhead over a visible and palpable
Universe. These doctrines liave been otherwise eipressed by a
quaint essayist as "the descent of the soul," and "ttie procession
of divinity." t They embody that creed which was suffused over
the whole of the Grecian philosophy, and which maiutained that
tiie spiritual being of man was a diviue particle, suffering degrada-
tion by its connection with a material nature, and destined to a
more utter aud irretrievable debasement unless its impuritiea
were purged away before the period of dissolution. It was this
tenet, puslied to extremity, which induced Empedocles to lament
the fact of his existence. It was this which inspired Heraclitua
Tdth that grotesque antithesis, that mankind live the death and
die the life of disembodied spirits. It was ttiis which prompted
''he memorable expression of Pyihagoras, that whatever la beneld
_ luring our waking momenta is death, and during our sleeping
moments a vision. It was this, in tine, wtiieh caused Plato, wheu

* QUIiea' Histor; of Qreece, loL iii. cbap. xii. p. 193.

t "Thougli the descent of the bodI wbb douhtlew principailj alludod to by
tliHe sacred nti% yet tliey likewiBe occuhly Bignifled, agreeable to tlie iib.Uu«, ^
tlie fable, tlia procession of dlTiuit/ into tbs BaliluoM^ iiqxW." — i^. "UTaicrVivy
on tht Elea. ami Back. Mj/at, By 'I^omaa Tk^W, t. Vi\. " "^"" ""

even a loftier parpoae to the initiMioo, ■wteia \ie iiv — "■ ^■"
pariluLtioDem aniaiie ad ilium Btalum, va c^o <

TS ON THE BOAb,

^04 roOTPBIHTS ON THS BOJ

alluding to the bouI, to exclaim, that the body ia its Bepiilchre!
TJttder every variety of religion, even within three centuriea after
iho eBtabliahment of Christianity, thia startling dogma has found
its advotatea. For, if we are not marvellously mistaken — and we
cannot recollect ever befnre to have heard the coincidence
remarked — many of the ethical vagariea of the Manichieans were
merely the reviv^ of the dreams of the Greek mythologiets ; and
the views of Manichieua, or (as he ia said, by St. Epiphanius, to
bave been originally called) Cubricua, were identical with those
long before propounded by the congenial fancy of Ariatocles.
Among the other doetrinea, for example, which were advanced by
the Feraian madman, who called biinself the Paraclete and termed
Ilia disciples Mauicheeana, vaa that of the subjugation of the soul
by its association with a physical esiatencs — a poisonous belief^
which had been imbibed nearly seven hundred years before by
the Athenian bee when collecting the honey of truth in the
gardens of philosophy. This belief, however fallacious, originated
in those conjectures of the stupendous conflict between a good
and evil principle, which have been prevalent in all ages, and
under every diversity of circuinatance — a conflict which paganism
typified in the noble myth of Jupiter and Prometheus, but the
Blighty reality of which ia explained by Bevelation in the exput-
eiou of the rebel angek from heaven, and the hurling of Lucifei*-—

'^ With hideaas ruin and combii^^oii, down
Tu bottomlesfi petdidou."

Throughout the whole of the Oriental theologies, but more
particularly in the scheme of the Brahminical religion, as illuB-
trated in Sheva the Destroyer and in Viahou the Preaerver,
may be detected the pagan preacience of that great struggle*

* Sbelle; baa already represented tbia primeval baUle, iii itg mjthDlogim] sene^
in bis splendid bnt blasphemons introdaclion W the ItevoU of Islttoi, wberehe
ujmbuliBeii, under the allegoric farms of aa eagle aud a eerpeul, tbe two great
aDtagoDlstiu and caeteraal pricdpieB. An we read on, stanza afler etujiia, duf
beart qoaila with burrur while cuut«uiptating the altematiuns of the triamphaat
struggle i noting how somelimes, for an interval, tbe snake— ^

' ' Helaied hja suffocating grasp, and acoui^ed
The wind with his wild writliings;"
bow another while from the tortured winga of the eagle —

" In llie -Jnii sk, fe* VWKJ,
Floated the shatlerEi jAamea ■"
^^V^, anain, in the Gerceat furj of ttic imuQIs*^'

AGATHOCLES — ^THB ELEUSINIAN. 305

wliicb may be said to have closed only with the foundation of
Christianity.

Such were the brilliant dreams which imparted fascination to
the creed of antiquity and sugo;ested the themes of those who
officiated at the mysteries of Eleusinia. Besides the peculiar
ideas of theocracy which were embodied in these mysteries at the
period of their original institution, the fantastic belief of Pytha-
goras was subsequently ingrafted upon them, and tended in no
inconsiderable manner to enhance their attractions. That belief,
developed into a system by the Buddhic religionists, was the
transmigration of the degenerated souls of mortals, or, as it was
literally termed, the doctrine of metempsychosis. It ultimately
gave consistency to the notion of the descent of the soul into a
material universe, and imparted an air of uniformity to the
theology of the Hellenic republicans. This, at least, was the
efiect produced upon his immediate contemporaries by the
teachings of the illustrious Samian, although the frivolity of his
successors ultimately thwarted the intentions of ^' his gorgeous
and august philosophy." * Some conception may be formed of
the avidity with which the Pythagorean system was welcomed by
the populace, from the fact of the belief in metempsychosis having
penetrated to the secluded forests of Britain, and become very
speedily amalgamated with the metaphysical theology of the
Druids.f It rendered the abstruser phantasies of the Greek

'* Bright scales did leap.
Where'er the eagle's talons made their way.
Like sparks into the darkness."

The whole passage, in tmth (a passage which may be classed among the finest
poetical descriptions in the language), is musical with the agonies, and impassioned
with the throes, of that most dismal and momentous of all imaginary collisions.

* Speaking of Pythagoras and his posterity, Sir Edward Bui werLytton has observed
that "the political designs of lus gorgeous and august philosophy, only for a while
successful, left behind them but the mummeries of an impotent fiwemasonry, and
the enthusiastic ceremonies of half-witted ascetics." — Jlise and FaU of Athens, b.
iv. chap. ▼. § 17.

t This striking coincidence between the creed of the Druids and the Pythago-
reans was first recorded by Caesar (De Bel. Gal., lib. yi. cap. 14), where that
accomplished conqueror writes — ** In primis hoc volunt persuaders^ non interire
aoimas, sed ab aliis post mortem transire ad alios ; cUqtte hoc maxime ad virtutem
excUare putantf metu mortU negUcto. " Bearing in mind the latter declaration,
that the doctrine of transmigration was thought to increase the bravery of the
ancient Britons, *'by disarming death of its terrors," we can the more readily
comprehend Isocrates (Panegyr., p. 24), where he mentions the Eleusinian
mysteries as ** fortifying the initiated against the horror^^ ^^ ^<e9^«:>&!d^sssv^ vs&Sw.
inspiring them with the hopes of a Im^^^^ \m\siOT\ai>^'^^'' 'Va. XsrjO^ ^aawa"* *^^^
inference affords a fresh illustration to \\ie «A«.%^, 'Xjwv^^ V^K^jXtv^ ^^T-^^^iJcw
^At/Sot ifrop, d/wUas irpdrrovai — ^the 4\ir\s, m t\iia YMtojac»^\s«flv%\Jo» tscg
inspired bj metempsychoHa, ^s-

XOOTPBDITS ON THE ROAD.

religion comprehen Bible to the rulgar, without diraimBhing ita
grandeur in any particular ; it prepared the mind of the votaries
for those vsafc and extraordinary reveiationa, wbich would have
been otherwiBo only additional Bources of bewiiderment ; and it
afforded freah iuciteinents to the enterpriaeB of a warlike people,
by announcing to them that amidst deatruction they were inde-
atructible, and that in death they were deathiess. The readera of
Virgil are, however, better able to eatimate the influence and
tendencies of tlie Eleusinian festival — coloured as that festival
was by the philosophy of Pythagoras — now that Warburton has
proved in bis Divine Legation of Motes that the sixth book of the
./EnwJ represents several of the shows of the mysteries. Aided
by that asaurance alone, it would have been possible to con-
jecture, though to no very considerable estent, the nature bf
Pome of the mystic cereiiioniea witnessed at Eleuaia. We might,
under the Sibylline guidance of Deiphobe, have advanced from
the banks of Cocjtus to the waters of the Styx, and onwarda to
the most remote boundaries of Tartarus, but vre should have still
remained ignorant of the character and manner of those cele-
brations of which the passage into Hades was only a portion, op
rather on episode. The heart of the secret would nave been still
undiscovered : we should still have been baffled in our endeavours
to underatand the reason why the lestivities performed at an
insignificant borough-town of Attica should have surpassed all
others in importance, retaining during so many centuries an
undisputed dominion over the imaginations of the most civilised
people of antiquity. When wo found it narrated that Nero
himaelf, with all his matchless audacity, was deterred from joining
in those festivities from a consciousness of his own heinous and
gigantic crimes,* nee should, without further knowledge, have
marvelled at the moral authority which proved superior to the
physical puiHsance of that imperious and lawless despot. When
we learnt, moreover, that the Emperor Valentinian permitted the
continuance of these festivities, in consequence of the representa-
tion made by PrtBteitatus, the proconsul of Achaia, to the efi'ect
that the Girecians would be utterly dispirited by their abolition,
and that this concessioa was made by Valentinian at the very
period when he was prohibiting elsewhere all kinds of nootumai
sacriiieea, we should have been yet more inspired with curiosity
as to the nature of these inscrutable rites, and have been still

' Aacordiog til bis biographer (Soet. , N«ro, c ^i"!, '^b wnueiHt iu-nfcwA
Jtiemi tie Eleminiau mysterica, because, to lie miititt "A \iii uaflim.^w \ai,
WauUir»dded that of hie aunt — "juiia-uque purricidui mmWiij—i^"'™^

AGATHOCLBS — THE ELEUSDOAN. 307

more filled \rith astomsliment at the wonderful hold they had
obtained over the popular affections. Other circumstances must
have tended, in like manner, to increase our amazement at the
complete and irresponsible sway exercised by the institution of
Eleusinia — such circumstances as the penalties inflicted upon
those who, after initiation, arrested any debtor, tendered any
petition, travelled to the sacred edifice in a chariot, seated them-
selves on the cover of a well, or devoured either mullets, beans,
or weasels, besides the summary vengeance wreaked upon whom-
soever presented themselves witliout the necessary qualifications,
or divulged the secrets of those occult and symbolic ceremonies
—crimes which were expiated by death of the most sudden and
ignominious description. Something more than the poetic
enigmas of Yirgil was necessary to explain the precise character
of these mysteries, and to satisfy our inquisitiveness as to the
particular spectacles revealed to the Athenians on such solemn
and august occasions. This additional information, however,
could only be accumulated piecemeal — ^being scattered over the
whole surface of classic literature. Bit by bit, it might be culled
from the oratory of Cicero, from the biographies of Plutarch,
from the didactic pages of Aristotle, and from the commemorative
chapters of Xenophon. Even in these authorities, the facts
relating to Eleusis are frequently introduced as merely casual
inuendoes, while others have been incidentally recorded by such
men as Demosthenes, and Philostratus, and Lilian of FrsBueste,
and Fausanias the Ionic historian. It has occurred to us, there-
fore, that a juster conception might be formed of the hitherto
scarcely comprehended festival of Eleusinia by a combination of
these disjointed passages.* Elementary works like the Bibliotkeca
of Lempriere, and the ArchcBologia of Eobinson, have already
given a narrow and unadorned synopsis of the solemnities ; but
hitherto in English literature no attempt whatever has been made
to portray the panorama of those marvellous and thrilling rites,
with the minuteness or the distinctness essential for their due
appreciation.

Of the Lesser Mysteries, it is luinecessary to record anything
further than that they were originally established at Agrss, a
district in Boeotia remarkable as the source or fountaiu of the
Ilissus ; and that these Lesser Mysteries (kept in the month of
Antheserion, in honour of Proserpine) were considered, at last^^
to be merely preliminary or prepaxati^t^* "^^ ^^^ ^s»^acssx ^s^-

♦ The paper here, for the first ^ame, tov\]W^2^«^. or^aaS^ «^V»5?^
number ior Fehrxuixj, 1853^ of «sBUidk.irQod^ik^&»'(6^32^^* -s.*^

\s

308 rooTPaiMTB o» the boad.

selves nJtof^ther to the delineation of tlie Greater Mystories —
thoae mvsteriea nrliicb, being conBecrated esclusiTely to Cer«,
were performed in the month of Bdedromion ; and, by wandering
in innagiDation amongst the multitude of worshippera, we shall he
enabled to indicate more accurately the nature and sequenee of
initiation. Occupying, as the celebrations did, Nine Days, (A
Novena!) they commenced on the 15th of Boedromion, or Sep-
tember, and terminated on the 23 rd inclusively; so that within
that period ample time was allowed for the development of the
whole system of the classic religion.

Througliout these intervals of the celebration, eneh of the
votaries, with scarcely au exception, preserved a uniform expres>
aion of hilarity upon liia countenance. The eshilarating effects
of a festivity, animated in every particiUar. were perceptible in
the general excitement. On the first day — the day of Aaaembly,
('Aywp^iit) — the worshippera merely collected together, Oa the
second — the day denominated among the Feiasgi by the exclama-
tion, "To the sea, O ye initiated 1" ('AXaSe,^ nCarail) — the throng
purified themselves by ablutions in the two streamlets of salt
water pouring into the Gulf of Salamis, and isolating the delta
of Eleusis from the Attic peninsula. Here the younger Greeks
bounded through the current with the energy ot Leonder, their
limbs exulting in the exercise, the feeblest amongst them com-
petiugwiththe ablest Hwimmera in awiftuesa; now, as they careered
through the elastic billows —

^^L " FrasBiDg their heels sgainst the apringf vavej"

now, as they rose to the bubbling surface after a dive to the
sandy bottom —

" Langtioti; from their lips tbe g,udacioai brine."

On the third — the day of Sacrifices (8ia) — when a mullet and
barley grown in the field of Eharoa were solemnly consecrated to
Demeter — the homage of tbe concourse assumed an air more than
ever spontaneous and reverential. On the fourth, while tbe
sacred basket, called Kalathion, was dragged through the territory
of tlie goddess, every tongue became vociferous in its ejaculation
of " Hail to Bemeter ! " every hand was lavish in heaping the
offeringa of the Atheniana into the osier panniers of the females,
ieraied Kiaophoroi — poppies, carded wqo\, ^btos ot ftait,aeaamum,

Stegpanateg, ivy, reeils, cakes caUed ?\i\\ni\a, «Qi^ei, uiA J
Shea torn from the neighbouring \Ja.3-^l^ia^«*■ Q^vOa****^ — -'

AGATHOCLES — THE ELKUSINIAN. 809

the day of Torches (fi ra,v Aafxvdd&v rifiepa) — the multitude roved
over the meadows at nightfall, carrying flambeaux in imitation of
the mother of Proserpine. On the sixth — the day of Bacchus —
the statuette of the Q-od of Vintage was borne triumphantly from
fche Ceramicos. Then it was that the famous torch-procession
traversed the Holy Way and the road of the Fig Tree, the mob
decorated with vine-leaves and danciug to the melody of flutels
and brazen kettles^ Then, moreover, the votaries paused on the
bridge of the Cephissus, to ridicule those who passed underneath,
and, on re-entering the sacred precincts, by a gateway styled the
Mystical Eatrance, were admitted during the night-time to the
tnost solemn of all the rites, being themselves thereupon desig-
nated the Epoptai, or the fully initiated. On the seventh — the
day of Athletic Pastimes — the more stalwart distinguished them-
selves by their vigour and the more adroit by their agility. On
the eighth — a day originally instituted when JBdculapius visited
Attica on his journey from Epidaurus — the Lesser Mysteries were
Again performed, the imaginations of the rabble being again
lavished by celestial revelations. On the ninth — the day of
Earthen Vessels (UXrffjLoxoai) — bowls of wine, sanctified by the
incantations of the Hierophant, were dashed upon the ground
as libations to Ceres ; the festival being thereupon completed by
the discordant shouts of those who haa witnessed the mysteries
of Eleusinia. The rites of the G-recian novena were thus consum-
mated, and thus were the worshippers dismissed.

The precise meaning of the festival of Eleusinia has been already
disclosed by different writers ; and those who may be solicitous to
acquaint themselves with its signification, will find that the task
is anything but impracticable, now that the truth has been sifted
by the industry of Meursius,* by the enthusiasm of Taylor, and by
the ingenuity of Warburton, as well as by the profounder re-
searches of Creuzer,t of Lobeck, and of Limburg-Brouwer. Con-
tradictory as the opinions of these commentators may appear at
times, the conclusion to which we are driven by their perusal is
identical — namely, that the mysteries are alone capable of explana-
tion through the assistance of the Platonic philosophy. They
prove that these sacrifices were not only of an uncommon cha-
racter, but that they were types of a more terrible and divine
expiation ; that the fictions of the mythologists were not merely
remarkable for their licentious beauty, but for the wisdom which
lay concealed under them in the ahai^^ ot xk^^^ «o^ ^Si^'^^csssfe

• Menwias' El^sin., c. n. 1\,

f Creaser, Symbo\i\LXuadlll;f>iwAo%.^ V**^-*

^.^«^-

FOOTPRrSTa ON THE ROAD.

SpeakiDg of that particular period in his own history when he
hiiuBell' " first learnt to consider that Antiquity was the true ex-
ponent of the doctrines of Ciiriatianity," Dr. Newman has but
just now very finely and impreaaively remarked, that, according
to the view of the myBteriea of Time and Eternity thereupon
opened up to his contempjation — " Nature was a parable :
EJcripture was an allegory : pagan literature, philosophy and
mythology, properly understood, were but a, preparation for the
Gospel."'* A wonderful sentence — suggestive as it ia (through-
out all Time even into tlie Eternities) of Unity in apparent
Diversity — harmonizing, as it does, so to apeak, almost at a breath,
the seemingly inharmonious siguidcance of the Material Universe
and Bevelation, of Heathendom and Christianity.

During the halcyon days when AJcibiades was in the height of
his popularity, namely, in the interval immediately preceding his
flight to Pharnabazns, tiie Eleuainian mysteries were revived in all
their original magnificence. Until the fortunes of that remark-
able man were in the ascendant, the Athenians, according to the
expreBsion of Mr. Mitford,t " had never dared to make the
mysterious procession since Deeeleia had been occupied by a
Laced£emouian garrison." It was therefore at this period in
particular that the celebration of the national festival was con-
ducted with more than usual splendour — the inhabitants of
Attica appearing to return with redoubled zeat to the perform-
ance of those rites from the enjoyment of which they had been so
long restricted. About daybreak on the 15tli of September, the
citizena of Athens, according to an almost immemorial custom,
began to bestir themselves ; and by the time the first tints of
morning were reflected on the crest of the Areopagus, the Bounds
of preparation had extended from the dwelling-houses to the
places of public assembly. AIL classes, without distinetioD, vied
with each other in activity, and, abandoning for awhile their
ordinary avocations, directed their stepa along the streets leading
towards the Holy Way, the road connecting Eleusis with the
capital. Even ttie localities of most habitual resort were left
tenantlesa, from the general anxiety to swell the ranks of the
procession. The porticoes were forgotten by philoaophy; the
gymnasia were forsaken by the athletes; and in the public batha
the attendants only ministered to a few swimmers refreshing
themselves alter the night's conviviality. Scarcely a fiower-sellep
JoUered hx the Agorai to tighten tke ttiongs of her sandal, or to

^po/ogia pro vitA ana. By Jolin Hencj Sewman.^-^- ^»A™
■"'^- "- History of Greece, vol. iii. obap. lii. V- ^"' —

ygt^'

dispose in more alluring confusion the punsieB heaped together ia
ht'r wicker head-basket. For a brief interval at least the diapu-
tatious became less impaaaioned in the halls of scholastic debate,
while even the gladiators for a time relaied their strugglea in the
Pancratium. Litigation found but few inducements to penetrata
beyond the outer vestibules of the Pnyx ; the suburban deraarka
grew leaa imporbauate iu tbeir corapiaiuts to tlie supreme magia-
tracy ; the Terj strangera from remote countries, attracted to the
metropolia of civilization either by the enterpriaea of commerca
OP by the seductions of curiosity, discovered objects of faacinatioa
elsewliere tlian in the groves of the Ceramicoa or the marble
glories of the Parthenon. Long before the arrival of mid-day,
the city became abandoned to an unwonted tranquiOity. Art bad
thrown aside its chisel and its palette. Toil had ceased alike with
the handicraftsman and hia employer. Merchaudiae no longer
retained any decoy for the apecuiative; the diurnal duties of the
houaehold were neglected; the comoiencement of a aeries of
holidays had huabed the drone of the aehool-rooms, those hivea of
knowledge where literature waa already accumulating the mate-
rials for the great masters of dialogue and narrative — for Plato
the Divine Dreamer, and for that Encyclopediast of biography,
whose masterpiece has been regarded as the handbook of heroes
from the days of Constantine to those of Napoleon.

Occasionally the footatepa of some belated votary were audible,
as he hastened down the deserted thoruughfarea ; or the voices of
domestics, returning for a mislaid ornament, resounded through
the piaz!;as of the Anthronitia. But, otherwise, the metropolia-

Sireaented a spectacle of almost unnatural stillness aad deaulation,
n aeveral of the more secluded residences, ehadowa cast by the
uutUEiin clouda flitted acrosa the vacant perspective ot the
meaaulos ; while in the banqueting chamber, the sunbeams glit-
tered in pools, betraying the recent presence of the reveUers — the
rosy pools of the wine-cup scattered in the merry game of the
Cottabos. The prevailing silence of the solitude waa alone dis-
turbed by the plaah of a fountain, the rustle of a fig-tree, or the
tinkling movement of a golden lizard as it crept out from a.
crevice of its favourite Fi-iaptm, basking iu the light with a bolder
gase, or threading the grass with a lesa timorous agility, Tha
whole population waa al'oot, in the hope of participating in tha
holiest of the religious ceremoniea of the Glrecians. '

Meanwhile, before noon, the sbirta ot \k« m\i.'C\'ws.ia ■<&:*'«a«.-^^^
in oaa common direction tiaA. p&aaei t'Mow^ "^e, '^"°?''^^,.
gateway, along the high-road coniltc'tltts^«^^«> ^^T^^V^^^. «
Amoag tbia enornioua coacoMia© -wet^i ■s^•'»» i j

rOOTFRIKTa OH THE BOAB.

n

persona of all ages and of both sexes, but individuals of eve^
imaginable grade and proFession. Here strolled the Eupatrid,
witli sedate and leisurely demeanour, muffled ia tlie sombre
drapery of bis pliiloaophtc himation. Here, clad in a more
homely costume, pushed onward a cluster of Periosci or pro-
vinciala. Sometimea the nobleBb matrons found tbemselves, in
the general distraction, jostled by the flaunting Hetairai, the
beautiful but depraved daughtere of the violet-crowned Acropolis.
But conspicuous among all tlie foot'paasengera were the graoeful
carriage and coatly apparel of the Epheboi, imparting, aa tbey
eaunSered by, a more elegant fold to the gauay testure of the
Chlamys, wound like a golden mist across the bosom. Perhaps,
beyond all other examples of humanity, the Athenian stripling
might be regarded aa affording the worthieet type of whatever is
at ouce moat heroic and most bewitching in appearance. Such,
at least, we might conjecture from the delineations sketched by
contemporary penmen, and preserved through many generationa
by the sldlful transcripts of tho caligrapliers. All descriptiona,
Uioteover, coincide in portraying the youth of Attica as charac-
terised by a peculiar cnarm of feature and a distinctive symmetry
of proportion— -whether it be the account of Pericles, aa he was
before his entrance into public life, before he had dreamed of
wooing Aspasia, or of aupplantiug Thucydides — or whether it be
that of the Siciiiot Agathocles, before he fought against the Car-
thagiuiana, and monopolised the dictatorship of Syracuse. At all
timea clothed with a particular attentioa, in many instances
amounting to feminine refinement, the Epheboi were eapecially
careful to appear in becoming raiments oo the occasion of their
prospective initiation. This scrupulous regard, however, for the
appliuncea of the celebralioa diminished in no measure the awful
nature of their expectations ; for, although scarcely yet emerged
I'rom boyhood, their hearts thirsted with the eagerness of maturer
years for the exposition of those unutterable secrets which had
kindled their imaginations from their earliest ini'aucy. They
yearned for them as the Israelite must have jeamed for the
opening of that aealed chapter of Ezelciel in which the inspired
prophet recounts his moat subliine phautaam of the four liviB^
creatures in the whirlwind, the noiHs of whose wings was like
" the noise of many wattra, like the voice of a multitude, like
the noise of an army, like the voice of the Most Uigh God,"*

' Exekiel, i. 2i. Tiia chapter seemed to ttie ai!Li!«iv^^'a^i6ii»\iitjwftniai»i^'a
j^e^bls mysteriea, that all were prohibiteA {romTeaOiiu&'A-«lio\>»i«<*-'
■md^Etb 3.nmvorm^y oflheir Eativity- Baa J«r. Ep. ad-Paul™. %>.

AGATHOCLES — ^THE ELEUSINIAN. SI 3

Their "whole being must have thrilled with rapture as they
approached the scene of the solemnities.

Eighteen summers ripened the child into the Ephebos— effect-
ing but little change in the effeminacy of his visage, excepting
in the down which betokens the approach of manhood, and which
was scarcely more than is perceptible in the bloom of an apricot.
At this period of life the robes of boyhood were exchanged for
those of adolescence. A fillet of purple linen, called the Sephane-
upsele, usually worn by females, encompassed the forehead, and
was fastened on the left temple by one of the Tettigai or golden
grasshoppers. Under the folds of this head-dress the hair
descended in ringlets, and glittered in clusters — sometimes
yellow as the crocus, sometimes auburn like the empurpled
leaves of the autumnal larch — upon the shoulders. The inner-
garment, or Kiton, of a delicate texture and of singular white-
ness, opened sufficiently to display the moulding of the throat,
and was clasped at the centre by a silver buckle exquisitely fila-
greed. Over this depended the flowing tunic termed the Diploic*
don, reaching nearly to the knee, and confined at the waist by a
belt of fur, the tunic itself being dyed of a brilliant scarlet. The
feet of the stripling — ^whom we will here merely for the sake of
distinction, and, as by an echo of the heroic name last mentioned^
designate Agathocles — the feet of the stripling Athenian in
whose Footprints we would^now follow until by right of initiation
he has become more than an Athenian, to wit, an Eleusinian — ^the
delicately-moulded and roseate feet of Agathocles were encased in
the shoes, or sandals, called Diabathra, fitting over the instep and
about the ancles, with ribbons of leather. According to a pre-
vailing characteristic of the Athenians, the eyes of the Ephebos
were generally of that peculiar blue-grey which, in the fluctuations
of light, appears to be tinctured of the colour of violets, spark-
ling with the lustre of precious stones, and imparting a degree of
splendour to the passions that alternately betrayed themselves
upon his lips. In the whole contour of the countenance was
distinguishable that indescribable purity of outline which seems
to be the prerogative of Grecian beauty ; and which, combined
with an elastic elegance of deportment, and a picturesque delicacy
of attire, rendered him a not unworthy representative of the
civilisation of the Pelasgic people.

Contrasting agreeably with Epheboi, were the young virgins
who glided through the crowd, attended with xoA^t^^rc^ xs^^et^^^

the yJBion in the next chapter, the pro^Ut Umw^ wjts *^^S?k»^^'^^"^^''^
th9 Jikeaeaa of the glorj of thQ Im^*^

FOOTPRmrg on tee road.

by their domeitics, or who disported amidat groups of their com-
paoiona. Most of these were robed in Hnowv tunics, gemmed on
the shoulder with golden buttons, and falling apart &0Q1 the mid-
leg in folds of voluptuouH amplitude. Occasionally, however, this
garment was bound below the breast with a broad sash, falling
thence uninterruptedly to the instep. A shorter tuuic, edged
with stripes of particoloured embroidery, partially covering the
arms with transparent sleeves, added a new charm to a costume
which was completed by an outer robe, bordered witli a hem of
crimson. In the throngs invariably collected together on the
annual inauguration of the mysteries, there must, of course, have
been witnessed repeatedly tliose little incidenta of dawning emo-
tion which are inseparable from all occasiona of festivity, when
maiden and stripling meet in the tumult of the assemblage, and,
exchanging furtive glances, Und, in the palpitation of their bearts,
the birth of an unexpected affection. Especially muat this have
been the case in the first journey to the llisaua, when each fibre
of their nature was prepared for every novel and palatable sensa-
tion. Here strolled the damael just releaaed from the thralls of
tutelage. Here sauntered the matron, conjuring up to her
remembrance the days of her virgiuity. Here again, perhaps,
stood the timorous girl, bliisliiug, in the presence of her mother,
while the tell-tale apple rolled from her bosom along the path-
way — that dainty picture of love, immortalised ia the melodious
Ferae of Catullus : —

t

" Vl misBum EpoDBi fartiva munere malum
Procurit easto virginiB e gremio,

Quod misers obllte radlli sub veete locatDni,
Dam Hdieota matria prosilit, eicutilur ;

Atqu-e illud proiui pracept ai/ilm- rfecurjU;

Such were the numerous worshippers of mythology who consti-
tuted the multitude proceeding towardsEleusis.almostwithin bear-
ing of the waves of the EJarouicus. About mid-day the pilgrimage
was completed, the concourse pressing onward through the grove
which surrounded the sacred edifice. The principal day of cele-
bration had commenced ; but before the chief ceremonies were
permitted to begin, the labour of selection was entered upon by
the oifioers appointed for that duty by the Q-overnment. Those
alone were allowed to advance witliin the holier precincts who
puaaeased one or other of the i^ualilicatioiis already enumerated,
having, moreover, twelve mouttia ■jieNvi'iA^ , Baavftftd. aS the

■ Carmon ai ^OTtaVam.

AQATQOCLES — THE BLEUSINIAN,

Leaser MysterieB performed at A^ttk, a village situated on tlio
borders of the Iliasua. This important examination, of the
credentiaia of the different applicants appears to have been con-
ducted by four curators, or Epimeletai, chosen at stated intervale
from the mass of the community, and presiiied over by one of the
nine Axchons, royally entitled Basileus. Scarcely had the more
fortunate aspirants for initiation passed beyond the boundaries
raised against the adraiaaion of the " rejected," wheu their ears
were saluted by the voices of the holy choristers. Modulated as
these voices were by distance, and by masaea of intervening
foliage, the words of the singers, nevertheless, fell upon their
aenaes with extraordinary distinctness. They were words of hope,
of homage, and of supplication. The Atheniana quickened their
pace, and, after threading a path among the brambles, emerged in
a few minutes upon a greenwood glade of considerable dimensions.
A spectacle there revealed itself such aa entranced their fancy
with a novel sentiment of admiration.

An altar of solid marble, carv«d with all the akill of Arcadian
workmanship, atood in the centre of the open apace, immediately
under the boughs of an umbrageoua cedar, and within sight of
the stone called the Sorrowful £ock ('AytXaorot Hfrpa) on which
Ceres was said to have seated herself when, weighed down with
grief, she paused near the romantic well of Callichoroa. Around
the altar daoeed a troop of virgins, the innocent Kanephoroi,
bearing in their hands the baskets which contained the conse-
crated implements, and chauntiug in harmonious numbers the
hymn dedicated to Demeter. As the melody of the epode ceased,
the sacrifice proceeded. It was the sacrifice of propitiatioa, con-
sisting of a pregnant sow, the offering most grateful to the Goddess
of Nature, fruitfuiness, and parturition. The victim, already
deprived of life, lay burniug upon the altar-atone under a heap
of fragrant herbs, when the foremost of the approaching votaries
issued Croru between the branches. The smoke of the oblation,
ascending in a spiral column into the atmosphere, mingled with the
fumesof wild thyme and parsley, together with the periume of citron
and frankincense. !Never, it seemed to the younger and more
inexperienced witnesses, had they beheld loveliness capable of
inspiring so much awe as at the moment when the chief priestess,
or Areteira, turned towards them, and, seizing a torch, from a
vesael called the Perirranterion scattered a shower of holy water
over the worshippers. Ail her natural graces of feu.t'i<%,^i^'ai™.
spontaneous eicellencea of propottwa, -uttift ft\iiaaisw^ "^"i ,^
iu/alie ad/uuctfl of her solemn and &acMia\,«y ■a-W*^'^- ^^
' " head to ibot in looae veetcaBiita 'A ^itQC--*^* ^'^

^£^m

ni6 «k)TFRIKTB ON THE BOAB. ■

I *itb In'eroglypliics, and white, in token of ber interior purity — ]
her brows were cinctured with a garJand of ripe wheat and eom-l
poppies. Nor was that dehcate coronal inexpresBive in itffJ
character ; on the contrary, it afforded another iliuBtration rfj
that, reverence with wlnich the creed of Olympus aasociated divinrfi
influenoea with the visible productions of the univerae. It indL^i
cated the reality of that truth whicli baa been sdmirabJy expressed
hy the philosopher, where he remarks that " the G-reeka imagined]
the vegetable world connected by a thousand mythical relations]
with the heroes and the gods : avenging chastisement foUowedl
injury to the sacred trees and plants." • Little regard, howevepJ
could be paid eicJusively to the radiant form of the priesieBs, th»l
attention of the spectators being speedOy distracted by the feaci- '
nating rites of adoration.

Again, the beautiful Eanephoroi danced in procession upon the
greeuaward ; agaiu the music of the strophe and tlie antistrophe
resoundtd among the leaves of the cedar; again the couplets of
the epode floated tip to the heavens in a prolonged cadence.
Everything combined to intoxicate the hearts of the more emo-'
tionai Athenians, while preparing them for those stupendom
ceremonies which were reserved for the hours of darkness anc
solitude. The song ; the dance; the sparkling robes and brilliaul
maidens ; the pleasant odour of the wine-cups, as tbey stained thi
fragrant sod with libationSj and hissed among the live embers j tlw
graceful movements of those who officiated, when they poured I
inisture of aromatic salt and barley upon the sacrifice ; ever]
incident of the ceremonial affected them with some new feeliu{_
of aatislaction. At the same time a seuae of indefi-uable ternn!
increased upon their imaginations as the Bun descended towarc
the horizon. They seemed to be rather under the wand of
demonologi»t than before the shrine of a divinity.

Twiligbt had long deepened before, one by oue, the votnrii
advanced, trembling and expectant, towards the entrauoe of tht
gigantic temple dedicated to Eleuainia. Contrasted with the mora
ing'a hilarity, they each presented a very discrepant appearano*
The costume, for example, of the Ephebos Agathocles was, in somi
measurej essentially ditferent from that which he bad previously
worn, and his cheeks bad already assumed the pallor of intenal
expectation. The purple fillet having been removed, his goldc
ringlets were crowned with a chaplet of flowers, designated tl
Jntricra, the petals of which were interwreathed with epriga
tJja greca and odorous niyrlle. B.i& ieeV,\i«ftCT.iiANi«a"{,'6atWB

^^^^^P • Humboldt's CoBmoi, -voV-'i- ^ "^ ^A\.

AGATHOCLES — ^THE ELEUSINIAN. 317

in eboes of an ordinary material, were shod with sandals termed
Aios Kadiov, or Jove's skin, because formed from the skin of an
animal destroyed in honour of Jupiter. An unutterable horror
filled the bosom of the worshipper as he paused beneath the
archway, and dipped his fingers into the bowl of holy water placed
there in readiness for the ablutions of those who entered. His
limbs shuddered with a sensation such as he had never before
experienced, for he had reached the threshold of the most re-
nowned fane of the idolaters — ^the dread mysteries of Eleusid
were on the eve of being disclosed to his inspection. Scarcely
had he passed under the lintel of the doorway, when he found
himself enveloped in a darkness like that of midnight, and a
voice whispered in his ear, warning him not to advance unless
his body were cleansed and his mind divested of every carnal
afiection. Although his nerves thrilled at the unnatural secresy
of the admonition, the adventurer hesitated only for an instant—
his footsteps resounded on the fioor, and the revelations com-
menced.*

After he had proceeded a little farther, an obscure light en-
abled him to distinguish, though with considerable difficulty, the
character of the place through which he was journeying. It
seemed to be rather an excavation than a building erected accord-
ing to the rules of architecture. A green moisture dripped
from the walls, and an earthy smell pervaded the atmosphere.
Loathsome creatures, shaped like bats or winged lizards, Ditted
to and &o, occasionally beating against the face and arms of the
approacher. It was a cavern such as might have excited the

* Every incident — even the smallest particular — in the description which follows,
has been here collected together from the pages of the classic authorities. Instead,
however, of anthentioating each sentence with a separate foot-note, it appears prefer-
able that the principal references should be now mentioned at once altogether.
The reader is commended therefore to Plutarch (in Alcib. 34, Phoc. 28, et
Demetr. 26), to Aristotle (in Bhet. ii. 24), to Cicero (De Leg. ii. 14), to Xenophon
(in Hist. Graec. vi. 3), to Philostratus (in Apol. iv. 6 et 18), to Arianus (in
Kpict. iii. 21), to Diogenes Laertius (vii. 186), to Pausanias of Rome (in Hist.
Grsec. i. 2, et 3, § 6, ii. 14), to -ffilianus Claudus (in Var. Hist. xii. 24), to
Claudianus (in Kapt. Pros. i. 7), to Aristophanes (in Acham. 703, Nub. 802, et
Ban. 309), to Diodorus Siculus (i 29), to Varro (De £e Bust. iL 4), to Seneca
(Qusest. Nat. vii. 31), to Virgil (Georg. i. 166), to Produs (TheoL Plat. iii. 18),
to GaUius (XV. 20), to Plato (De Rep. ii. 264), to Strabo (ix. 896, et 717), to
Thocydides (ii. 16 et 17), to Isocrates (Panegyr. p. 46), to Apollodorus (Biblioth.
i. 6), to Ovid (Fasti, iv. 602), to Herodotus (Hist. viii. 65), to Polysenus (iii. 2\^
to Clemens Alexandrinus (Protrept. p. 18), and also, amons^ <i\.\!kKtv ^*^ '^'^ '^^^^'^^
of Yelleius, Demosthenes, &c. In the piecedAii^ Wic»\i»X. ^^ ^Jaa ^s6fcx\SiRfc Nss^j^
grove, we bare adhered to the foots ixxTniaViftdL Vii ^^^1 ^^'^^ ^>aX». '^* ^
Tibuliaa (ii. 1), by Ovid (Met. vii. 2\ ttad m<ca.^«nX»J^l ^1 ^^^ "=* ^
poets and pbiloaopbio historians of Italy.

■RES TOOTPBDfTS OH" THZ BQAD. |

^fflevDtion of Zoroaster, partial ae that great sorcerer wa> to thB
HbauntB of reptilea. While the individual about to be initiated
Kitbb Btill groping hia yiaj onwards, he perceived, as be imagined,
nt Bwarm of spectral objects of a most grotesque and detestable
Haapect, aud at the very instnut iu nbich be detected tbem the
P:fcir was rent with sbrieba and yells of derision. He waa travera-
■ ing the Cave of Spleen and Deapair — the cave dedicated in a
I peculiar manner to the darker and meaner paasionH of Lumanity.
' <)n either aide of thia gloomy region were ranged its beatial inba-
bitanta, displaying to him every variety of fantastic and repulaive
ugliness, gibbering at bim with espreaaiona of the intenaeat mtt-
liguity, or deafening him with screama of excruciating ahrillneaB
and diecordance,* Each adventurer in euccession, aa he entered,
strove by every meana to conquer the diamaj excited by theao
preternatural sounds and distracting Ulusions, when, suddenly,
the phantoms vanished, the goblin din was silenced, the granite
wall of the cavern waa burst in twain, and be felt himeelf hur-
ried by an ioviaible hand through the aperture.

When the votary had somewhat recovered from the confiieioQ
arising out of these marvellous occurreneea, he observed that ha
had entered an edifice of enormous magnitude. Pillars of im-
menae diameter and estraordinary height supported the masonry
of this structure, which, extending over a vast area, was of cir-
cular prcportiona ; and, from the aummit of its aerial walla, the
roof rose in a globular form, presenting to the observations of
those who looked upwards, the interior of a superb dome, ribbed
with precious metals, and strewn with stars and constellations of
burnished copper. Between the columns, which were black and
glittering like the rarest ebony, the night-breeze blew with
delicious coolneaa against the burning foreheads of those who had
uewly arrived. It penetrated farther into the building, and fanned
the embers which still glowed upon the altar of sacrifice. Although
the flame flickered percbance only for a moment, and then expired,
it illujniued every detail of the lane, and displayed a scene oC

* Pope lias depicted Bereral of tie eccentric apiitce, vhieh tiB ssid to b>Ta
peapled tbo Cave of Sple«zi, though his portraiturea Bic chiedy reBtrioled to the
rictiuu of hjpochoiidiiasig. We may instance one passage, inimitable iot ill
abautdil? {sea lUpe of the Lock, canto it. t. 19} —

"Here living teapota stand, one um held ont,
One bent ; the handle this, and that the epoat :
A pipkin there, like Homct'e Uv^ud, walks ;
Here sighs a jar, anS tUere a ssKBi-^ie X*aa," he.
» /aet-veiw (not here quottd), tieingAo'vBn

AGATHOCLES — ^THE ELEUSINIAN. 310

astonishing solemnity and magnificence. ^ It glimmered over a
colossal statue of Ceres reared in the centre of her palace.* It
disclosed a vast multitude who were tarrying for the more awful
disclosures of the celebration. It blazed in the reflections of the
concavity overhead, and sparkled in the minutest crevice of the
pavement. What, however, particularly struck the imagination of
Agathocles, and arrested his attention in the momentary glimpse
of this spectacle, was the group collected together about the pedes-
tal of the divinity. It assured the Ephebos that he was standing
in a spot no less august than the mystic temple of Demeter —
that memorable and majestic temple so rievered by the Grecians,
as the scene of these awful ceremonies of Initiation ! He recog-
nised in an instant the different functionaries of the festival,
the contrast of their garbs, and the dissimilarity of their duties.
In one direction was distinguishable the sacred torchbearer,
clad in a glorious garment of silver tissue, crowned with bean-
blossoms, and carrying in his hand an extinguished flambeau. In
another was the sacred herald, clothed in radiant armour, his
head covered with a brazen helmet. A third attendant, par-
ticularised as the altar-priest by an eccentric appellation, was
habited in a raiment of simple white — his brows, like those of
the chief priestess, being bound with a garland of corn-ears and
poppies. High above his assistants appeared the figure of the
holiest personage in the assembly — the revealer of the mysteries,
the supreme Hierophant of initiation. His majestic stature was
enveloped in a costume as gorgeous as the coronation robes of an
emperor, the outer vestment being a sort of coarse brocade of
woven gold, arabesqued with jewels and scented with spikenard.
A diadem, lavishly adorned with emeralds, pressed his foreh^d,
in some measure confining the hair which streamed down in
abundant tresses upon his shoulders, and mingled with a beard
darker than the glossy hue of the chestnut. Besides the Hiero-
phant, who wasL anointed with the juice of hemlock as the type
of Creative Omnipotence, and his three principal attendants —
severally the representatives of the sun, the moon, and the planet
Mercury — other officers were congregated in their vicinity, among
whom were the curators or populajr commissioners, already alluded
to cursorily, two ot these being descendants of the sacerdotal
families of the Ceryces and the EumolpidsD. Beyond these
were the 'Uponoiol, whose office consisted in superintending

♦ Th'iB rery statue of the goddees ie «\.m Vn «» iiWw\A ^"l ««=^^Sf^*=*^TS^''^'^'?
Several years ago it was removed from aaaoi^^ X^ift "tqma ^1 '^^'''****^
erected in the yeBtdhvde of the public Vibnx^ «A. Q«xo^x\dL%«*

»

^POOTPRKTS ON THE ROAD. ^

oblations, and in whose girdles gleamed the blades of their con*
aecrated axes ; the napQC7iToi, or local maKistrateB, who shared the
offerings with the priesthood, divuluing tbefact of that particip&<
tion bj the sickle and the sheaf of barley borne before tbem on
days of ceremonial ; the NoocfivXiutr, who were the guardians
of the holy utensils ; and the meaner seiritors of religion, the
acolytes or Nraicopoi, all of wliom were remarkable, evea to tha
lowliest, for tlie beauty and elegance of their Teatures. Coo-*
Bpicuoua ainotig the more prominent miniatraQts, moreover, waa
obseryable tlmt powerful Archon, previously mentioned by his
regal synonym of Basileus. An ingenious explanation of the
mystic import of these dresses and oificed of the priesthood haft
been furnished by Porpbyrius ; * but for all such esplanationa,
Lobeck has little more than a aneer of derisioQ.t Protracted as
the time may be, occupied in the enumeration of these particulars,
they were perceived in the duration of a second, and lo^t sight o£
with equal rapidity. In a single instant the crowd beheld the
glory ot the fane and its administrators. As the flame shot up
and quivered among the embers, tliey comprehended the divine
magnidcence of the temple — in another moment the tongue of
fire had disappeared, and the whole waa involved in impenetrable
obscurity. Immediately the darkness bad descended upon the
concourse, a solemn voice reverberated among the pillars — it was
the voice of the sacred herald crying out to the worshippers: — ■
"Who is here?" said he — (Tcr TjJt ;) "Many and good!"

PffloXXoi npyafloi,) waa the murmured response of the populace 1
followed, a moment afterwards, by the sonorous tones of the
-JBtierophant summoning them to prayer!

Scarcely were the words articulated when a roaring noise, like
that of a great hurricane, shook the building to its i'ouudatioos.
The marble floor thrilled and rippled as with the throes of an
earthquake, and the people staggered to and fro in an extremity
of mysterious dread. Before they could maater the first agony of
their terror, the din was huahed, and a lull, profound as death,
succeeded. Before they could overcome tlieir astonisliment at
the change, they were stunned with a repetition of the clamour,
and many were dashed down upon their faces by the heavy undu-
lations of the pavement. Again the hideous roaring ceaaed, and

* Porphyrins, Easeb. Pr. Er. lii 137.

f Tina, ill allaaioa to theee sag^eal\oiiB,^i« sa\l^ " A.n quia teatem laoulentnm

iabet S" adding, "At eat leviBflimua." &i alao ^ wA& asAeiixiettijrfi leeount

of^tbe iateriot meaning of tb« niy&teiies tsea 'SiA. »6.?flill^He^>^(™l.\,■^,^ ""

jwdi one Sippunt escJamation — " Magnifiiia tow iu^iw tbb «. QmMfmojais

|g^*«"«, dammodo verm I "— JaUojiKanvu*, i. % "l^-

AGATHOCLES — THE ELEUSINIAN. 321

again the earth quaked and rolled like surges under the feet of
the multitude. Lightning flashed across the heavens, and gleamed
among the intervals of the columns ; thunder boomed and clat-
tered over the skies, and shook the met;allic dome with its con-
cussions. At one instant the air was lambent with a preternatural
splendour, at another everything was hidden by glooms of hor-
rible profundity. Yells and bowlings, like those of devils, affrighted
the mob, and ghostly apparitions startled them in all directions.
.Now they beheld a band of Centaurs ; now Gryges grappling at
them with his hundred talons ; now the dismal shadows of the
Eumenides ; now the ghastly, coiling, serpentine bulk of
Echidna; now the Gryphons and the I)ir»; now the grimly
Gorgons ; now the grimlier Grs3S3 ; while ChimsDra vomited flaming
poison from its jaws, and Minotaur trampled them under its hoofs
in a rage of madness and ferocity. Distracting, nevertheless, as were
the emotions aroused by these spectral images, they were as nothing
when compared with those elicited by the scenes which followed.
A chasm yawned at the feet of the assemblage, and unfolded be-
fore them the secrets of the infernal regions.* They saw the
•aluggish waters of Fhlegethon lapping against a tower of polished
steel — the palace of the god of Hades. Tisiphone loomed upon
them from the obscurities of Tartarus, shaking her scourge and
twining snakes among her Angers. Bhadamanthus started forth
upon a throne of judgment, dispensing his inexorable vengeance
on the spirits of the damned. On one side poured the billows of
Cocytus ; on another those of Lethe ; on a third the waves of
Acheron: and in the distance they distinguished the Stygian
river, with its boatman Charon ferrying the dead to the Elysian
fields. Grisly phantoms, as of the Lemures, flitted through the
murky atmosphere, or swarmed over the bituminous soil. Here
hissed the abhorred phantasm of Echidna. There crooned over
their deadly employment the attenuated and loathsome semblance
of the ParcsB. W hile the Athenians were still gazing upon these
terrific territories, the turret of steel opened abruptly, with the
sound of many instruments, revealing the deities of hell sur-
rounded by the pomp of all their most execrable accessories — Dis
armed with his trident, and Proserpine still as seductively beau-
tiful as when ravished, through the fountain of Cyane, to her
subterranean dominions. An exclamation of abhorrence broke
from the lips of the multitude as they recoiled before the relent-

♦ Clemens Alexandrinus, in Strom. Ub. m. ^^%x«^ VJmwH. *. Tjf^xSSss^ ^^ ^^^
^ BleuBiman mysteriea consisted in a repreaeii\»X.\OTi ol 1ELaAfi». ^«\«s«^'ecsi ^^t*.^
tbat through the mjsteries the aysteia of cK«AAS>ik^^^«af^^^'^^^^^
eomprehenBible.'StromcU. v. c. u. p. 68^. ^

'RINTS ON THE B.0X1

leea and forbidding visage of Pluto. Simultaneously, the abyss
was slirouded Irom their coiiteiiiplatiou, while the thnnders
again resounded across the henTena with a more crushing dis-
sonance, " Let Tia pray !" (Ei;(ca>nfla,) exdaiined the high prieei,
a second tiuie, as eoou as the tiunult of the explosion had sub-
sided.

lu the very utterance of those syllables a marvelloiia change
occurred in the situation of the worshippers. They were in-
Btantaneoui^ly translated IVom the gloom of a tempestuous night
to ihe lustre of the refulgent daylight ; the sunbeams streamed
between the pillars* and glittered upon the metuliic dome of
Eleusiiiia ; and here it was that the chief Tcysteries of Semeter
were divulged to her votaries. The principal divinities of Olympua
vere revealed to the spectators in the midst of a divine radiance.
Foremost among these appeared the twelve superior deities, the
Consentes or Dii Majoies : — Jupiter, crowned with olive boughs ;
Apollo with pencils of light; Neptune, with anemones j Mars,
with a goldeu helmet; Mercury, with a winged petaaus; and
Vulcan, with dishevelled ringlets ; Juno, attended by her cuckoo
and peacocks; Minerva, by her owl and dragon; Diana, by her
greyhound; Ceres, by a dolphin; Venus, by a sparrow; and
Vesta, bearing the palladium as her talisman. After the last of
this sublime conclave had floated before the enraptured vision of
the spectators, the lesser inhabitants of Olympus followed each
other in a celestial processioo :— Naiads fresh irom the waterfiil),
Potamides from the rivulet, and Oreads trom the mountain,
Bacchus with his brood of revellers, and Cupid with his fltiiil
arrows ; Auiwra blushing with the tints of morning, and Philo-
mela warbling for the evanescence of the twilight: tbe rest of
that "intiuite variety" fluttering by in superb and bewildering
profusion.

Incredible though it haa appeared to the learned depreciatora
of the mysteries, from the germinant doubts of De Pauw to the
ripened scepticism of Lobeck, we are aatiafied that there eiiata
considerable reason in tbe statement advanced by some of the
earlier inquirers into Eleuainia — to the effect that the initiation
comprised, among other things, the announcement of certain
esoteric doctrines, subversive, in a very great measure, of the
whole of the then eiiating syatem of tbe Greek mythology.
Hence the various deities of Atti(.'a are said to have passed L

-^pBleius sajB, when desDribiDetia
uOdle of the night I beheld the san b

l^^ric

AGATHOCLES — THE ELEUSINIAN. ^ 823

succession, as above enumerated, before tbe eyes of the initiated,
in order that, being first displayed to veneration, they might be
subsequently stripped of their respective attributes of supremacy.
Otherwise than through the mecUum of some such conjecture, it
is scarcely possible to account satisfactorily for that incident
mentioned by Plutarch in his Life of Alcibiades, where the spoilt
darling of the Athenians is described as having mutilated the
statues of Mercury and of other divinities, after having, in a
drunken frolic, travestied the mysteries — he himself representing
the hierophant, Theodorus the herald, and Polytion the torch-
bearer.* Guided by the light of the supposition already mentioned,
we discover the circumstance of this profanation to be immediately
comprehensible: whereas, denied the aid of some such rational
explanation as to the debasement of the popular theology of the
mysteries, an act of impiety so flagrant and audacious surpasses
belief, even when told of a madcap like Alcibiades.

After the procession of the other divinities, came the repre-
sentation of the story of Demeter and Persephone — that exquisite
story, which is symbolic of the marvels of vegetation.f Strains
of music, of a tender and pathetic character, vibrated along the
gorgeous walls of the edifice, as the commemorative rites of
Ceres drew to a conclusion. The Athenians had already un-
ravelled a considerable part of the enigmas of Eleusis; they
might now be designated not only Epoptai, as having inspected
(eTTOTrrcva)) the mysteries of a spiritual existence, but might be
hailed, moreover, Eudaimones, by reason of their felicity (cvdm/iovia),
in having participated in the wonderful ceremonies of initiation.

While the melodies were yet ringing their last cadence in the
sunlight, the Hierophant ascended a rostrum, immediately in
front of the pedestal of the goddess, and opened the sacred
volume Petroma, which contained the explanation of the stu-
pendous types of the festivity. The language, as well as the
sense of these revelations, was not unlike that which Virgil has
placed in the mouth of Anchises, and which may be regarded as
the most explicit definition now extant of the meaning of the
Eleusinian mysteries : —

* Flatarch's evidence in this particular is altogether too remarkable not to be
here, at least partially, quoted : — "KKK'uv re dytO^rwv v€piKOTriiSf Kcd fivtmipiwy
It op* oJvop iLTrofufi'fi<r€is, tov 'AXKifiuUiov Ktd rSav <ptKwv Koniyopowrts (t(v6s).—
Alcib,, § 19.

t It is maintained by competent m^\,\xo\o^"a\A VJi^^'^t^^ ^^.^x^wec^ga^'*^-*^

Uttle else tbad an allegory, Bigmlying \iie pwxia^l ^'^^^'^ ^"^^^^^"^^
principle of the earth receives and sepuXcJax^a.^' — Vlie^^RRftQ"* *^^ ^
hb. u. 'v ^

" Frincipio ccelnoi, an terraa, umpoBqoe liqaent^a,
Lncenlemque globam Lunie, TlCaniitque aatn.

fert monetr* sub st

Teneniqae tebetaot artaB, ninribnndiique membra.
Hinc meCnunt, cupluiiti|ue ; dolent, gsudentJitie ; I'
Respieiant clause teaebriii et camre oocu.
Qain et sapiemo liliii lumiae vita reliqiiit,
Sob tBtaen ornne malaia miBeris, hoc fandituB omaa
CorporeSi sicedunt peatea j penitnaqoe naceaaa eat
Mulba diu ajnareia modii iaoleaoece miris.
ErgA exercentnr pcenis, Tetemmqne malonmi
SuppliouL expeoduDt, Aliie pnadnnbar iDaaea
SDBpeDSffi ad Tentos ; aliia Bab gurgiM yaato
InJaetum eliiitut Boelus, aut esnritur iguL
Qoigque euus patimur Manes, Eiiude per amplum
Uittimar Elysium, et pauci Iceta nrvn tenemuB :
Donee loDgu dies, perfecto Umporis orbe,

^Ihereum sensum. atque aurai einiplide ignem.
Has niiinea, obi millc rutaiD voIvSre per aonoa,
LftbH^um lid fluTiam Deua evocat Hgrniee iiia);no ;

Eorsua et inoipiant in corpora velle revert.!."*

J

Gradually, as the voice of the high priest pronounced the truths
inscribed upon the tablets of the cooeecrated book, a mist evapo-
rated from the intellects of the listeners, the problems of eternity
appeared to be simplified to their comprehension, the mysticism
of the celebration became transparent under their scrutiny, and
their hearts bounded with an ecstatic sense of pleasure at the
accession of such august and stupendous knowledge. Their
minds — distraught by the marvellous ordeal to which they had
been recently subjected — seemed as it were to be, each of them,
a, chalice filled up to the very brim with a celestial and inebriat-
ing intelligence. 'I'hey drank in the written revelations in a
species of religious rapture, while the sonorous voice of the
Uierophant evoked a respondent enthusiasm in the bosoms of

* Moeii, lib. tI. retaea 724-751. Into thia passage the eloquent Maatoon liaa

coodenaed the aeorela of Elausia ajid the creed of Pjthagoras : in its opening he

2>aa f j/ireaaed, in a ler; subtle manner, the degeneracy of the soul bj its ubo-

cialioa with material organs ; and, in &« cdusludia^ veraes, be has atlmirablf

deSned the doctrine of its tranamigiatioQ. l*i is tom XVa.*. Xns x^iaii nt tha

ioBiaa eng as ciaiaaa Icnebris et careere cteco, ani »».^iiB» tfwr-Kria ^b\i*

Jvsamptha of fleaJi, »ccordinE to th« balwl oi ft» Qri».«aWn lA itat toasa "

AGATHOCLES — THE ELEUSINIAN. 325

his auditors. Suddenly the voice paused, the sunbeams were
extinguished, and, in that abrupt and appalling revival of mid-
night, the dismal forms of intuition (airroyftia) were resumed*
Again the floor shuddered with the convulsive movements of an
earthquake ; again the noise of 4he storm roared among the
columns of the temple ; again the lightning quivered and the
thunder raged with redoubled concussions through the heavens^
Beyond all this clamour and commotion, however, above the
rumbling sounds of the earthquake, of the storm, and of the
thunder, the shrieks of the apparitions were still distinguishable
— thin abortive shapes still flitted in myriads through the atmos-
phere. While this unnatural commotion was at its utmost, the
Hierophant bade the worshippers depart, with the quaint ejacu-
lation Koyg, SfiTra^; and the multitudes felt themselves hurried
forward with an irresistible yet incomprehensible impulse. When
they emerged from the grand portal, the dews of morning glit-
tered on the green leaves and dropped in sparkles upon the
underwood. As the thought occurred to them that the horrors
of intuition were accomplished, joy beamed upon the elated fea-
tures of the initiated.

Familiarised as the majority had become with the rigorous
character of the laws relating to the religion of the Athenians,
the virgins and the Epheboi were not unfrequeatly startled by
a spectacle which awaited them on their return homewards^
Fired with the ecstacy excited by these extraordinary festivities,
as they approached the "barriers" admitting the tiiveller fromr
Eleusis into the city of the Acropolis, they, on some rare occa-
sion, observed the corpse of a criminal dangling from one of the
adjacent pinnacles. A superscription announced that the dead
man had perished for having divulged the awful secrets of the
celebration — the rosy light of the sunset, as it bathed the cada-
verous flesh, affording a ghastly indication at once of the pomp
and the sterility, the ferocity and the magnificence, of these
among the many other sumptuous but inadequate rites of the
mythologists.

After surviving, during a protracted interval of eighteen cen-
turies and a half— a period exactly corresponding with the present
duration of Christianity — the renowned mysteries of Eleusinia
were at length doomed to extinction. The occasion of their
abolition was one which will ever remain memorable va. ^2^*%^
annals of humanity. It waa m t\\^ ^^i^ ^i ^^"S.xs^^^^t^j'^'^^
dosiuB the Great that tbere N^aa ^otti^^l '^^?'^t^^ t^^^^'
Eoman Senate, according to t\\e Tfe^\\^V\o\^a. ^ "^^^os^ ^^
awful and tremendous queat'ou TR\ie\)aft^ wa ^ "^

32S TDOTPBmra on the boad.

1

world should be the worship of the Daemon of Olympus or of the
Divinity of Calvary, tlie adoration of Jupiter or the adoration of
Christ the Crucified !• Actuated by faith, by reason, iind by a
Bublime devotion to the happineea of his fellow-creatures, the
imperial conqueror thereupon procured a solenm senatorial renun-
ciation of mytholoKy.

Allowing for all the errors, absurdities, and atrocities which
were inevitable as tbe results of pagan superstition, it ia as
impossible not to recognise on exquisite ingenuity in the myths
of the idolaters, as it would be frivolous to deny that their reli-
gious festivities contained much that was elevating and beautiful.
Even if the Eleusinian mvsterieB, for example, enforced no other
oonviction upon the minds of the initiated, they would have
been estimable as yielding an illustration of that golden truth
which sparkles in the gorgeous pages of Valhec, where Ahdalaziz
declares he does not consider " that it is necessary to make a
hell of this world to enjoy Paradise in the next." But the great
festival of Demeter inculcated wisdom yet nobler and holier than
this — it proclaimed the beneficence of virtue, the worih of indus-
try, the subordination of all that is human to all that is spiritual.
TJnaided by the light of Eevelation, it nevertheless disclosed
a. faint glimmering of those celestial doctrines which are the
nutriment of man's soul, and the necessity of his imagination.
Under the pomp of its sumptuous adorumentB it brought to
view the ideas whii?h corroborated the general yearning after
immortality. It asserted the perfectability and the indeatrncli-
bility of the sou], together with tbe evanescence of an esiatence
which it declared to be only probationary. It inculcated the
belief that, after the dissolution of tbe body, the spirit would bo
subjected to everlasting punishment for iniquity, or rewarded for
purity with unending enjoyments. It proclaimed the eternal
fact, tliat the whole material creation is impregnated witli divi-
nity, and maintained that to the reverence of this divinity all
the aspirations of mankind should be rendered subservient.
Abandoned to the guidance of their own fruitful hut wayward
intellects, the originators of the pagau religion undoubtedly
illustrated their recognition of a Divine Essence by many extra-
vagant and sensuous inventions. Yet their viHiouary speculations,
in a worldly sense, were eminently benefii'ial in ameliorating the
condition of the community, and in advancing the interests of
eiviJisation. They directed t\ie c\\\BeV ot "StM-^UiUa -Khen he pro-
dueed the marble Eros of Phryne ■, ttie-j '■mfi'g'vtfti "Ooa X-it* lA

^B " G/iion's Decline and Fall, tc, etap. -siViii. 'ivi. I'l.

AGATHOCLES — THE ELEUSINIAN. 327

Timotheus, when he chauDted the praises of Artemis to the
Ephesians; they evoked the verses in which Sophocles warned
the guilty of inevitable retribution ; they imparted skill to the
pencil with which Apelles delineated the loveliness of Anadyo-
mene. Erroneous, without question, this creed was, but still
beautiful ; cruel, but still majestic ; barren, but still fraught
with ineffable wisdom, and enveloped in an atmosphere of poetic
witcheries.

ARCADIAN MEMORIES— THE MAYERS.

To go a- Maying now-a-(Jajs in real earnest, would, perbops, be
about as pleuaant a pastime of its kind, all tilings eousiiJered, as
it would be to saunter in the heigbt of tlie May season down the
aunny aide of Pall Mall, in a alashed doublet with clouks to one's
stockings ; or, as it niiglit be to a man of nervous temperament,
to don (taaaela and all) thoae wonderful hessians one used, but a
very few years back, still to meet occasionally in the Strand, like a
pair of AV arreo's Blocking advertiaements out on a walking espe-
dition in search of the cat. Taking heart of grace, however, for a
purely imaginary eicursion of this kind, one may loiter back for
once with profit into the old tiiuea, and go a-Maying at least in.
Dreamland.

I care not though the axe bna long since been laid to the root
of the old Maypole sung of by Pope, once standing not a hundred
mile a ofi' —

** Where Catharine -street deaceade into the Strand."

I take as my leaping-ataff an older Maypolo yet, the one of whicb
an older poet atill, Dan Chaucer to wit, cbaunts proudly, aa of —

"The great shaft in Cornhill,"

^H|Dd I am back at a, bound in thoae glad aylvan generations.

^^ Have we not, indeed, in one sense, a peculiar right to go
0-Maying thus in fancy ; we wliose age, perhaps more signally
than any of the ages past, has given to May tbe loveliest of all its
poetic celebrations ? Whose hand ever more eiquisitely than that
of our Jiving iaiireate crowned " The Queen of the May " in lyric
coronation? Whose voice evermore c\v&tm\ii^^ s^w.'^^'^'^^^'*'!- the

ffioiy of the spring-time than that o? tViat \etetft.u ft<m%%\«T i,;'\ifei«».

tiua •') gone from amonaat ua but so ^et-j tftceTi-iXi "4 K^i-W-od

^erpoet of these times— a true -poet ot tVe ¥«xtv\-i^Tf«fti

ARCADIAN MEMORIES — THE MAYERS. 329

as never before did bmsli of painter, the abundant splendours of
the Maj blossom ? Answer this — any one who bears in mind the
bower of hawthorn in the great historic picture of Alfred in the
Danish camp — where one could actually smell to them! those
delicious blossoms blooming upon the canvas from the magic
palette of the Academician. So, by the brush of Daniel Maclise,
by the pen of Leigh Hunt, by the lyre of Alfred Tennyson, I
claim as of right the privilege of maundering back whenever I list,
from the click of the electric needle, and the roar of the steam-
engine, and the clatter of the spinning-jenny, back into the spring
meadows of yore, where the English lads and lasses went
a-Maying. Besides, in this I surely do in regard to time but
what each year is done in regard to distance by every English
emigrant at our antipodes. There, cherishing a strong home-love
at heart, he eats his Christmas pudding still on the twenty-fifth
of December, in the heat of the southern dog-days — that pudding
no longer decorated, may be, with a winti^ sprig of holly, but
with the roses of an Australian midsummer. So here, too,
though in a very different atmosphere, may one dream the time
away thus as a fancied Mayer ; now, when in these new days of
crinoline k-la-mode, no less surely than in those old days of the
rustic fardingale, there comes tripping daintily over the earth —
as daintily as when Milton first sang of her in his bewitching
numbers —

'* The delicate-footed May,
Witli her slight fingers fall of leaves and flowers."

It is a melancholy truth, to begin with, imdoubtedly, that 1
cannot honestly avow in that exultant couplet from Brown's
Pastorals—

" I have seen the Lady of the May,
Set in an arbour on a holiday.'*

Tet have I, within moderate recollection, many a time and oft,
watched troops of young Eustic Mayers going and coming in the
green country-side with vernal and floral garlands and with those
quaint rites of May since then so sadly fallen into desuetude. Or,
culling a flower of verse from the Hesperides, in remembrance of
the last of the Queens of the May m England — whoever the
pretty damsels were, now ripened probably into grandmothet«. —

** I have \>e\id^ ^\i«a. ^«^

To kiBB aii4\>ea.i ai^«.i ^^

The xicViw qoni^vb^^o^^*

1

830 POOTPRINT8 ON THE ROAD.

Nay, beyond even this delectable mpmory have I not clearly —
nmrked with a white stone upon the Calendar of Childhood— the
recollection of aeeing danced by the peasantry of G-louceBtershire
ihat now almost forgotten Morris for May Day, pronounced by
one of ihe oracular Clowns of Shakspere to lie " as fit aa pao-
cakes for Shrove Tuesday?" Bemenibering those same mummera
aa vividly, indeed, aa though they had capered before lue on the
(.leensward only yesterday 1 Conspicuous among them Mad
Mull and her madder husband, with their faces blackened, he
witL a besom, both in rags 1 My Lord with a stupendous cocked-
liat, the very type and symbol of glorified beadledom ! My Lady
tricked out in finery that would have been, in anotlier sense than
that in wliicli the term is usually applied, the despair of Almack's !
The striplings fiuttering all over with variegated handkerchiefs,
the maidens with raany-coloured ribbons. Eemembering the fun,
the frolic, the motion, the music, and the laughter, I do not
wonder in the Jeast to hear Edmund Spenser sing aa he does at a
mere ghmpse of tlie May

Further back, I fancy, than any one yet living can well re-
member, there were stranger cereiJionials even than these to
greet the dawn of May Day down in that old western county,
once upon a time the vineyard of England. As, for example, in
the village of Kandwick, hard by the Stroud cloth-mills, where, at
the appointed daybreak, three cheeses — large as oart-wlieels, red
skin without, golden marrow within, . masterpieces from some
neighbouring dairy, true double- Gloucester to the core — were
carried upon a litter, festooned and garlanded with blossoms,
down to the church-yard ; tbere taken off the wholesome cloths on
\vhieb tbey lay enthroned, and rolled thrice mystically round tbe
sacred building; being subsequently carried back in the same
way upon the litter in triumphal procession, to be cut up on the
village green and distributed piecemeal among the bystanders.
Vanished all these quaint old local customs^there etill remain to
us what drew the Mayers of old into meadow and woodland —
Love and I'lowera — the tender passion and the spring verdure.
Though now-a-days " the boys doe [not] blow cow-homes and
hollow canes all night," as hooest Aubrey describes them to have
t/ong between the close of the thirtieth of April and the opening
ufMay Dav, the buds at least b\ow e^fiW a* S.xe^ii'j ™ etttT,\.\ittak
Ood! in the graas and on the thicket, ■\^ie ^jftftcWo. laK^^Afi,,
tainted apiraUj in twining suakeAmes ol \iV'wV lavi ^€ia-«,-saK^

ARCADIAN MEMORIES — ^THE MAYERS. 331

never grow again out of the turf to be danced about, and bung
with coronals, and^^made love round by grown-up children, yet
those ever-growing-up children will make love to the last in spite
of there being no maypoles nevertheless. And, knowing this, may
we not without another momentary qualm of regret, resign the
latest vestige of the neglected rites of May Morning to our
friends the London Sweeps, as they were formerly resigned, in
what Beau Nash would have deemed a politer age, to those
cherry-lipped damsels, the pretty London milk-maids ? There are
yet happily even now amongst those last preservers of the May Day
frolic a few ready, as the year comes round, to foot it about their
goblin Jack-in-the-greQU till the time may come when they too
nray grow tired out in turn. Eeverting, however, for an instant
— as a last souvenir of the scattered glory of these vanished May
games— reverting thus to the recorded fact that, upon one famous
May Day, Eobin Hood was Lord of the May in London, and
Maid Marian his Lady Queen, I turn now with a zest to the
fresh love and the fresh flowers underlying all the dust stirred up
by the footsteps of the antiquary.

Wandering along some brown country highroad, turning down
a green lane budding thickly with leaf and blossom, clambering
over a stile, and so on by another, from meadow to meq^dow, have
I not the spring-time of the Mayers of the middle ages still before
me, as verdurous as ever, as full as ever of their old floral luxu-
riance ? There — on this Tom Tiddler's ground of childhood-
silver and gold scattered as abundantly as of yore about the green-
sward, that true largess of Nature —

** The daisy and the batter-cup
For which the laughing children stoop !

n

Blossoms golden and silvern, homeliest of all homely blooms
spriuiiled about the grass, as old Clare sings of them so charm-
ingly in his '* Shepherd's Calendar " —

" As if the drops of April showers
Had wooed the sun and changed to flowers.

>9

Strolling over the field-turf, the sweet month is still for me in
truth precisely what it was for the bard of Paradise —

** The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the -i^sAa ^tvaa^^»A^^

And here, if for a moment 1 ^awa^ mm^ ^«^^'®^^'^*^'^j^]^
one of those greasy, slimy atalka ot tVift Y^Yoft-^i^^ A ^*^

133^ F00TPSIHT8 ON THE BOAl

1

Die over that flowering landscape, do I not note well tLroug'li all
the variegated coloura of May the wondroua truth of that verae of
the boy-poet Chatterton, where, depicting Nature iu the epring-
time, he writee —

"The mtaAn are Bpriakled vith a jellov liae."

For, in spite of the pale lilac of the cuckoo-buds and t!ie damson-
brown of the bee-orchia, in spite even of the scnrlet of the way-
side poppy, and the delicate blue of the little germander, or
wild speedwell (that country cousin of the forget-me-not!) — one
prevailing goldea sheen overlays the whole vernal landscape;
broom and gorse upon the wild, breezy uplnnds ; marigold in the
cottage gardens ; kingcup or crowfoot on the rich pasture-lands.
Hung in tassels above the hedgerows the pendant spikes or catkin
of the hazel — blooming from the very weeds below them the
honeyed hloasoms of the hemp-nettle. And, away in secret places,
fragile tufts of what one poet calls " the rathe piimroae," or, more
delicate stUl, fniry-like-bells, tremulous among theic broad leaves,
what auotlier national poet sings of lovingly as —

Overhead, as I loiter back towards the more habitable regions,
the glorious cones of blossom making one giant nosegay of the
horse-chestnut — the milk-white and bluish-pink plumes of the lilac
— creaming over hedge and hawthorn, the abounding May-fiower,
oppressive almost at times from its delicious wealth of fragrance
— and yonder, it may be, in the centre of a smootli- shaven lawn,
that floral cascade of the season, the gold-dripping laburnum !
Fluttering hither and thitlier all the birds and insects familiar to
orchard and garden-croft in the spring-time! Here the large
vrhite cabbage butterfly, dancing from shrub to shrub iu frequent
vaeiUatious. Here the little dun house sparrow, lured by the
increasing warmth from its temporary home under the eaves to
nest for greater coolness in the plum-tree or the opple-tree. Is
my rural saunter dashed for a brief interval by a sudden rai[i-gust,
am I not solaced as the sun comes out again over the sparkling
branches, by the song of that missel-thrush, who loves beat to
warble thus in the blowing, showery weather ? But, better than
song of bird or gleam of sunshine, what seems soraebow made out
of tlieir blending, when I find mj-aelf, at a sudden turn in the
pathway, in the midst of the tom'p xai Xaw^Vw ol 'Oaft ■village
urchina, startled for a mometit mto eifeace isX -cv^ -iiimTOv-^
ihat they hear for the first time m ^Va ^^wae VV^ ■«.^'*V^-!€tt«^

ABCADIAH MEMORIES — THE MiTEHS. '

m

of the cuckoo, sounding to them from the green distance I — bnt
returning with redoubled zest the nest instant, when I have
passed onwarda, to their interrupted gajae with the golden cowslip-
baU, whicli is for them in May what the Bilvery enow-ball 13
in December.

Happiest glimpse of all the seaaonable influences, however, yet
caught in tbia May-day ramble, the shy pair I have passed but
now, by sympathy bo shyly, sauntering by the filbert coppice, la
it not a nielodiouB re-echoing atill of the charming song of that

I delightful raBCal Touchstone r —
" It was B. lover and hia lass, I

Wilb a he/, vith a bo, with a hej, no ace no, ■

I And a hey no nee no ui no, ^M

k That o'er the grffia carD-Seld did pass ^^^^1

■ In apriag-time, the onl^ pretty riDg-tima, ^^^^^^^U

■ 'When birds do sing hey ding, a ding, ding, ^^^^^^|

I Bweet lovers love the spring." ^^^^^^|

Ab I cannot resist nresentlv one momentary glance after them. '

I

i I cannot resist presently one momentary glance after them,
while I note tbe whispering air of both (the little skirt of rusaet
fluttering from mo the while into perspective), I think to myself,
think I, if, na it happens, those younger cliildren yet within ear-
shot at their gambols, are unconseiotis iUuatrationa of Gmy's
joyous line— dainty motto for a vignette I —

" We froiic while 'tia May t"—

these two elder children are no lesa inatiuctive disciples of the
philosopl)y sung thus quaintly by au earhec lyrist, Edwards, one
0} the true Shukspearian aong-writera : ,

" Use May while that yon may.

For Ma; hath but his time :

Wben all the fruit is gone, it if

Too late the tree to climb."

I

Ending my May stroll in that flood of melody, first audible in
the mouth of the May-flowers, I cannot marvel in the least that
this, among all the twelve, has ever had tbe peculiar love of those
congenial melodists tbe poets. I cannot wonder that Milton
followed delightedly — with blind eyes that saw clearer and further
ftlmoBt than all others gifted with keenest vision —

e tlian I can poaeibly mar\eV ttat ^

— that very Shoiil iu Pairyland — should break for once it
sprighlly measure — where he siugs:

" Sweet Maj, thy radiant form nnfold,
Oncloae thj blae ToluptuouB ejo,
And wuve th j sbmlovij lockH of gold I " —

or that (happieat tribute of all I) Spenser, enraptured by tbe
lovely spparitioo, should have broken forth into tnat boisterous
outburst of adiniratioD, when chauutiug :

As I am atill rousing thus upon the calendar-month of love and
flowers, there comes gaily floating down to me from betond two
hundred years ago, May ditty alter May ditty — a very choir of
nightingales !

Obsolete though all these seasouahle songs have come to bo
long siuce — yea! obaolete as the antii^ue aud all hut forgotten
sports they celebrate — yet, for all that, the May season comes to
us stiD Ireably as ever-— if none amongst ua may yet go forth
a-Maying. In the midst of all my arcadian reveries over the
vanished pastimes, however, what is that remembered snatch of
verse, like a sigh breathed years ago, by the English poet of the
Italian Eimini 'i —

" Ab, friends, methiaks it ware a pl^ssact spbsra
If, like tbe treea, we tloagoni'd every year;

»If loeka grew think again, and rosy iljes
Betara'd ia cLeeka, and i-acineBa ia eyes,
And all aroond na vital to the tips,
Tbe human orchard langb'd with cherry lipa \
Lord, what a buret of merriBieut aiid jilaj,
Fait dames, weie tbatl und nbat a fiiat of May I"

A far pleasanter time of it, however, the Mayers of yore had
than could by any possibility be attainable by ourselves : a kindlier
spirit, as one might say, then actuating that shrewd despot the
Clerk of the Weather. Is it asked. How ? Turn we simply for
answer to the ancient Calendar of our Forefathers! That
Calendar which shoMs, full plainly, how — upon May-Morning —
they could troop into far more flowery meadows — over a certain
Old Style, bringing them, as by & a^iort c>i\, \\a,Xi oaa tWai
'Jii nearer to Midsummerl

THOMAS MOOEE— THE POET-WIT.

Begabdikg Thomas Moore though we must always do —
essentially and above all things — as Poet and as "Wit, we cannot
of course but have consideration also occasionally for his other
intellectual characteristics. We cannot but think of him some-
times as the historian of Ireland, as the humorist of the " Fudge
Family," as the scholarly adventurer within the labyrinths of
religious controversy, as the biographer of Sheridan, of Byron,
and of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Now and then he returns to our
recollection as the facetious Fasquin of those delightful " sooter-
kins of wit," the once famous odes upon " Cash, Corn, and
Catholics," or as the classic fabulist of the mysteries of " The
Epicurean," or as the sparkling fribble of the " Twopenny Post
Bag" and the "Blue Stocking." It is peculiarly, however,
nay, it is almost exclusively as the Wit and as the Poet,
as the Humorist and as the Melodist, that Moore lives in our
own and in the general remembrance. We have heard him
spoken of by one of the most gifted men of our time, as the
most brilliant companion in the whole range of his recollection.
We all know what the fastidious Byron called him — " the beloved
of all circles, the idol of his own ! " We remember, too, how even
the cynical Eogers exclaimed in a letter to him (August 5, 1820),
" What a lucky fellow you are ! Surely you must have been bom
with a rose in your lips and a nightin^e singing on the top of
your bed ! " We remember still more delightedly that glorious
asseveration of Sydney Smith's — " By the beard of the prelate of
Canterbury, by the cassock of the prelate of York, by the break-
fasts of Eogers, by Luttrell's love of side dishes, I swear that I
had rather hear you sing than any other person I ever heard in
my life, male or female. For what is your aiii^\>L^\s^<i^»\i^'«>»i^^

Jjoetry, floating in fine music, ani gcaAa^ \i^ ^■i.q^^s^^ *^^^^^^^^x?^
t IB aa the songster, as the \>a\\a^.NTOJuBt» «cA. ij^^ "^"^^^
BiDger, it IB aa the animated taftLex* >Ai<e» eoix^««^^^^^^^

TOOTPBINTS ON THE ROAD. ^^

humorist, the melodist, the perfect master at once of repartee
and of anecdote, that Tom Moore lives at this moment, and will
long continue to live, in l.he national memory. As a companion,
we think of him individually, precieely aa Sir Walter wrote of
him in his "Diary" (November 22, 1825), viz., as "a little man,
a very little man," wiio " always enjoys the mot pour rire."
Conspicuous upon his busts and portraits, are there not — don't
we all remember there are— those two bright organs of wit
shining upon his forehead like little moons of merriment ?
Looking at his face at the age of forty, as it has been preserved
to UB by the pencil of Phillips, cannot we recognise in the alert
carriage of the head, in the clustering hair, and the sparkling
eyes, even in the nez retromse, and in the very cock of the ear,
in the dimple on the chin, and the piquant lines about the month
— plain face though it is, altogether, according to Scott's judicioua
estimate of its general character — cajinot we recognise in it just a
glimpse of what we might fancy Dan Cupid would have grown to
be wlien ietat. xn., a mixture of the quaint and the comely, the
gay and the pensive ? At nineteen (1798) he may have been
shy in society, as he hiniself asserted ilt the time; but that ahy-
ueas must surely have faded out very soon indeed after that same
bashful age of nineteen ! For, if, as he himself remarked in one of
his letters to Lady Donegal, he was " little, like Horace," and
" loved do/.ing in the morning, like Montaigne," he had all Horace's
zest for human intercourse, and gave ample reason for hia morn-
ing's doie by his midnight carouse far into the small hours, at
bfJl, and rout, and theatre, and niasquerade. This same gay
gregarious life he began early and terminated late ; entering
upon hia long round of pleasures in the dear old Dublin times,
the times of Emmefct and hia compatriota, with — " The feast of
treason and the flow of punch! " And ending them in the still
dearer old London nights — the nights of Belgravian entertain-
ment — just before the subject of these recollections retired to die
in the pretty rural quietude of his little rose-covered cottage at
Sloppertoo. Well, the blithe days are over, now, for him; there ia
an end come to the merry moods of Torick. " Where be your
gibes now ? your gambols ? your songa ? your flashes of merri-
ment, that are wont to set the table on a roar?" Where?
They are in the " Fudge Tamily " already mentioned. They are
in the Irish Melodies. They are in the " Twopenny Post Bag,"
Thej are in the " Cash, Corn, and Catholics," Above all— ia
reference to the effervescent con«ei*fttvoi\B.\. ^a-o. «.nd snarkle of
Moore — tliex atiJ] survive in the p\eaBan.tNoV\i."mea lAVw" W.btoo\-ct,,
Q^nal, and Correspondence." "Vo\um«6eirt«i,Ba'»Si.>i(*-»i«W

THOMAS MOORE — THE POET-WIT. 337

knows, by his personal friend and literary executor, Lord Bussell
— one who, after all the hackneyed labours of a long parlia-
mentary and -administrative career, still continues to retain the
faculty of turning sentences which in the nervous strength of their
diction, in their brilliant and polished animation, in their humorous
freshness and rhetorical finish, are not unworthy of the disciple
of Somers, of the political descendant of Chatham, of the dis-
passionate appreciator of the genius of Burke, of the personal
friend and ministerial colleague of Macaulay. High praise, but
praise such as Lord Eussell appears to us to have eminently well
deserved. Instance, indeed, firom that Preface of his, written in
racy and idiomatic English, in a style as sparkling as epigram-
matic, his delightful portraiture of Sydney Smith.

Sydney to a hair, to a t — not a miniature profile of the humorist
80 much as an actual callotype of the man, with every comic
wrinkle at the corners of his blithe eyes, and every subtlest
dimple at the angles of his kindly mouth ! It is Sychiey Smith
as he lives to us in his own deliciously wise, absurd, most shrewd,
and most preposterous Peter Piymley — as he looks out anew, post-
humously, upon that world he gladdened so often during his life-
time, through the pages of Lady Holland's filial biography of him
— Sydney, as be laughs again and again through the pleasant
prattle and agreeable gossip of Moore's Diary, laughs through it
here and there, not loudly or boisterously, but contagiously and
inextinguishably? Does he not? Ecoutez! Hear him as he
runs over with " comicality and fancy " at Eogers's breakfast-
table, on the 27th of May, 1826, keeping them all in roars of
laughter! Hear him discoursing of the stories about dram-
drinkers catching fire — ^before the father of Captain Marryat's
" Jacob Faithful," and the rag-selling Krook of Mr. Dickens's
"Bleak House," had been dreamt of as "going off"* by spon-
taneous combustion — ^hear Sydney Smith dilating upon this
theme, and, according to his wont, " pursuing the idea in every
possible shape ! " " The inconvenience of a man coming too near
the candle when he was speaking. ' Sir, your observation has
caught fire!"* Then imagining a parson breaking into a blaze
in the pulpit. The engines called to put him out. No water
to be had — the man at the waterworks being an Unitarian or
an Atheist." And so forth. No wonder they "roared with
laughter ! " No wonder the hearers of Sydney left him often
witb their sides aching ! Fancy listening^ t<i \:^\s^ -^^^^ ^^'^
talked of some one on the very same occ«k»\c>Ti, ^^ ^\si»xs."^R^^'*'*^^
no command over his understanding — ^Wi *\^ ^^^'^^ ^^•^^^'a^^
tween Ms legs and tripping liim \xp\'* ^«ai^i V^ ^"^^^^^

or two nfterwards, when it was remarked of a dinner party at
Agar Ellis's, how well and good-hiim'mredly the host had mixed
bis guests all up together--" That's the great use of a good coo-
ver^atioual couk, who eays to his company, ' I'll make a good
pudding of you ; ' it's no matter what you came into the bow],
you must come out a pudding, ' Dear me," Hays one of the
iogredifnts, ' wasn't I just now an egt{ ? ' but he feela tbe batter
sticking to him!" Why, HeracliluB himself must have grjiined
under the influence of sucli a converaationaliBt, and DeniourituB
have rdlled himself into convulsions on the carpet a la Mackin-
tosh ! It is the twotbid charm of Moore's Diary, that it displays
continually tlie most exquisite sense imaginable of a joke, how-
ever subtle or however extravagant it may he, and while doing
this perpetuates for after-times the little fleeting wliima and
oddities of tbe men of mark encountered by the Diarist, whima
and oddities often conveying to tlie observer's mind the liveliest
appreciation of apparently the most trivial, hut in reality the moab
significant, of that subject's odd and whimsical characteristics.

Altogether, Moore's Memoirs are distinguished more especially
by the twofold charm resulting from the union in their pages of
sprightly anecdotes, and of frequent allusions to the remarkable
individuals encountered by the Poet-"Wit during his pleasant
journey through life ; anecdotal recollections thus perpetuated by
him with a keen sense of their strange and personal, frequently wf
their more eccentric and fantastic, peculiarities. A seemingly
careless sentence, sometiinea a mere passing phrase, or casual
expression, conjures up before us the living and breathing etu
of one or another of the Diarist's immediate contemporaries,
Sketches, they all of them are, " touched in " with the finest and
faintest of all possible strokes of the pencil, sufBcieut only for the
indication of the merest outline, yet touched in always with a
master-band, as in those all but miraculous etchings of MoritE
Eetsch, in which the veriest point of the artistic needle indicates
by the thinnest line imaginable the form designed by the magical
and creative fancy of the draughtsman; doing this, however, eo
deftly, so wondrously, so all-suiEciently, that by a bint, as it
were, every nerve, every vein, every muscle, seems to be minutely
and individually defined. As with the wizard-graver of Ketsch,
so with the more than Minasi-like quill of Moore. Scattering
doBD the scrawled notes of his Journal, day by day, hotly-^-as the
iacidtata occurred, as the pecBoua were seen, as the words were
spoken or iisteued to, while e\eY^t\\mft nj^ -^^t warm in his
nwaiury — tfjePoet-WitbastUus^veBMStiioTiift-sWVTOvi^ti&iiffl.-
»we have rapidly died out oi tVe gp-uasai- iwaevtiaMiiaa. *"

ample banquet of audi memorieB, moreover, the book affords from
iirat to last, almost from the date of Thomas Moore's birth, on
the 28th of May, 1779, ia Wo, 12, Aungier Street, at the comer
of Little Longford Street, iu the city of Dubliu, almost to the
date of his death, on the 26th of February, 1852, at Slopperton
Cottage, near Devizes, in Wiltshire. A spun of nearly seventy-
three years, within which Moore tasted so many sweets, together
with some bitterneBs — his pathway atudded here and there with
a thorn or two, but carpeted for the moat part with the flowers
and blooming garlands rhat were strewn before him in abundance.
As a social lavourite, it is not an extravagance to say that Moora
was duriug mauy seasons, the spoilt dailing of Londou— or at least,
in Loudon, of what Fanny Burney, according to the vocabulary
of her time, was so fond of calling the /on— what Jeames, of
Berkeley Square, would terra the elile — the halcyon region of
fashion, down which saunters for ever and ever ia dwindliug
perspective, epoch after epoch — the tjpe of each— the blood, the
buck, the dandy, and the swell ! Fascinated by hla wit, his grace,
his melodious and exquiBite seosibility, every bewitching attribute
of his genius, people forgot somehow, that old John Moore kept
a little wine-store, once upon a time, somewhere in the Irish
capital. They lost all recollection, apparently, that Tom Moore
hiraaelf was one of those unfortunate persons who happen to have
had no great-gi'andfatber. They only reujerabered Anacreon, first
of all, and then the Melodies, and then " Lalla Bookh," while they
beard all the while the "voice of the charmer," singing as he
alone could sing, his own Bongs of the heart, in his own music,
to his own accompaniment. The glamour evoked by his meihod
of singing those same songs of his, was a thing once heard never
in a long lifetime to be forgotten — any more than it was posaiblo
to forget the weird passion of Kean as Otiiello, or the ravishing
anguish of Malihran as Amina, or the gay laugh of Mrs. Jordan,
or the violin, half divine, hull' diubuhcal, of tlie wondrouH
Fagauini. Those who can call but one melody of his to their
recollection, 'as they have heard it sung by him, " avec lea larmes
dans la voix," caa believe in the sincerity of the regret eipressed
by Monk Lewis, who " waa ' in the greatest agooiea ' the other
night at Lady Donegal's " at having arrived too late — " 'Pon hia
honour, he had come tor the espresa purpose of hearing me ! "
Everyone, too, with the like precious memory of " sweet aoutidt,
that gave dtlight and hurt not," will heife nQ-nxikvi^-»i>o-«^''^^^-^
read, under dale 7th to lOlh o?"5)IVatc:a,\Sa^— "^'^'^'^^-'^

l_«^i

"did f; "vfry' nervous about S.t. " \t ^ \«i!>.. '»^«^ Z*"^

, vtry ^^ , — . -- ,

<uld have burst out crying, aa 1 T:ecs.ttai^«e i»N»t

■!

n

ago at a large party at Lady Rothes's. No one belieres how
much 1 am affected in Binging, partly from beiag touched myself,
and partly from an anxiety to toueli others." The duplex clue,
this, to all his succeBses ! Hib eameBtnees in what he did, and
hja almost morbid yearning lor admiration. How mnch he did
well! And, in the doing of it, what overflowing admiration he
gained — enough, and to spare I Por all which he had precisely
the very qnalitiea that were requisite. As his noble editor bns
said so justly, " Hia waa a delightful fancy, not a sublime
imagination; a tender and touching feeling, not a rending and
overmhelming passion." Hence, his celebrity survives, hardly eo
much in his gcirgeous eastern romance of " Lalla Kookh," aa in
his more brief and homely songa of love and sorrow, hia national
Irish Melodies. A fortunate circumstance, the very brevity of
tliem, in an age when, as Lord Jeffrey has oddly observed, " men
would as little think of sitting down to a whole epic as to a
whole ox." Moore himself imd au accurate sense of the secret of
his powers, the extent of his capacities, and the validity of his
claims upon the notice of poaterity. " My poetry, such as it is,"
he epeaks of aa " having sprung out of my deep feeling for
music." And, later on, he talks of " the bnrating out of my latent
talent for mueic," as "in reality the source of my poetic talent,
since it was merely," he adda, " the efl'ort to translate into words
the did'ereut feelings and passions which melody seemed to me to
express." A revelation one might almost recognise as quaintly
prefigured in that curious little incident of his childhood, when at
a certain large tea-party, with his hoateea alone in the secret, he
"remained for hours concealed under the table, haviug a small
barrel-organ in his lap, and watching anxiously the moment when
he was to burst upon their ears witti music from they knew not
where ! " This was in the daya when the little fellow excited the
wonder of his acquaintance by hia smallness and precocity — when
one Captain Mahoney (the wag !) used to say laughingly to Moore's
mother, that he was sure Tom had passed all bis nights with " the
little people," meaning the fairies ; and was wont to banter Tom
himself to his great amusement at stray breakfast-times with eucb

Eosera as — " Well, Tom, what news from your friends on the
ills ? It was a fine moonlight night, and I know you were
auiong them," Those were the merry play-days when little Tom
(ai'ter the fashion of big old Sam of Licafield, in hia childhood)
uss borne on the shoulders of hia hoy- companion a to the ruins of
JJundrum C&sth, there being ciowMei o-a '\\,6 %wn\to,\t by ^^^
MadB of some little girl of tbe pavtj. "5Sq Njoo-iev S^i* ^wA.
'"jai folk about him marvelled at tive ^iBiam ft'wwi xv^ "m. -ial?

^mkl

THOMAS MOORE — THE POET- WIT. 341

small frame, lookiDg, as it did, particularly infantine for its age,
till some cross-grained Hibernian Cornelia would cry out with a
comical sort of indignant asperity, " Oh, he's an old little crab,
he can't be less than eleven or twelve years of age," he being
then some seven or eight. "Whereto a gentleman sitting next her
responds, " Then, madam, if that be the case, he must have been
four years old before he was bom ;" which reply, reported forth-
with to Tom's mother, " won her warm heart towards that gentle-
man for ever after," says that son later on in the days of his
fame. Yet Tom .Moore, even then to the wide world, as he
was from the first to the last, in his own loving household. Tom
even, he tells us (vide " Letter" No. 261), to his little daughter
Barbara, where he writes comically to his " dearest mother " —
'' Barbara calls me Tom, and I try in vain to break her of it,
because she hears her mother call me so."

The man was loving and beloved throughout. There was
something kindly, human, gentle,, genial — be sure of it — in that
large heart of his, yearning and yearning, ever and ever, as it did,
with a hunger so insatiable, for everybody's admiration. "Watch
him into the meadows with that same little, child — ^the little
Barbara he was before long to bury with some bitter tears in the
suburban churchyard that gave shelter long afterwards to the
poor old wearied bones of the nonogenarian B>ogers — it is like a
peep into Burke's study, with the memorable glimpse of the
philosophic statesman lying on the carpet among the toys by the
side of the " one cbild" he too was to rear so tenderly, only to
lose, in his turn, so prematurely and with such poignant and
insufferable anguish ! " To-day," says Moore, in " Letter '* No.
248, dated from Mayfield Cottage, " to-day " (a Monday in 1813)
'* little Barbara and I rolled about in the bay-field before our
door till I was much more hot and tired thau my little play-
fellow." A picture with its especial charm, we take it, for those
who care to note the man of genius, not merely in his hours of
relaxation, but at moments when those hours are gilded with the
sunshine of natural affection. Times like those in regard to
which Luttrell once uttered so comically, in his ludicrous way,
that deiiciously absurd lamentation — " How often in lile we
should like to arrest our heaiMf moments ; should be so obliged to
the five minutes if they would only stop ten ! " Nearly thirty
years had to roll on, however, from the time when Tom Moore
sat under the Dublin tea-table with. tK^ Wxt^-vs^^jsc^'v^^^A^^'*
before he tumbled in the bay mt,\iY\U\fe^^^\i«c%.Ss^'««^^^
charming poet's home of May&eld CoU^.^^- ^"^^^cJ^v^^s
bud he to play ia the interim. durixiS ^iv^ ^^^^^^^^

342 FOOTPBESTS ON THB EOAD.

up from obBCnn'ty to renown — niiiny motley parts — not forgetting
evcD that of harlequin ! In atriving to prfpare hiraaelf for vhioh
impersonation he tells ua he suci-eeded, at last, " by conBtant
iiractice over the rail of a tent bed," in performing most auccess-
mlly " the head- fore most leap " of the hero of pantomime. A
little later (1802) and the spangled akin of harlequin, caat long
ago like a glittering alougb in the dear old school-days, no longer
aeema to poaseaa any paramount attraction as a holiday dieguiae
for the light-hearted and light-heeled little Patlander. I'or we
find him escorting a fair companion as "Wowski, in the low-
comedy part of Trudge, to a merry dance in London at the
Union Masquerade. A season after (1803) and we hear of hia
going aa Lingo to a Jtie given by one of the West End Clubs,
and better still, as George Cruiksliank would have it, " figuring
away" at a Mrs. Orby Hunter's (we had almost said at Mrs. Leo
Hunter's), in the very apt character of " A Little Irish Boy just
come to London." In recording which last impersonation, says,
Moore, in a letter to hia mother written immediately afterwards,
" I had a fast deal of fun !" As no doubt he had. A little Triah
boy jnat come to London, however, he was in reality no longer;
for in 1803 he was getting well into hia fifth season of Belgravian
frolic. The spring of 1799 having witnessed hiu literal appear-
ance in that character, when he had come up to town, seeking hia
fortune, with a few odd guineas aewed up by hia provident
mother in the waistband of hia pantaloons ! Already by that
time he had paaaod through a anrt of irregular literary pupilage
at home, scrawling poetical inscriptions of hia own composition
over the door, and in all sorts of strange nooks and comers in hia
private little snuggery at his father's ; doing all thia, he tells us
naively, " in the manner, as he flattered himself, of Sheoatone at
the Leasowea," Bi-aidea which he had boldly tried hia 'prentice
hand, as another Thomas the Ehymer, in such overt burlesque
effusions as an " Ode upon Nothing, with Notes by Triamegistus
Bustifustiua! " "Winning, when he was only sixteen (1795), in
return for a copy of original veraes " all out of hia own head,"
what he mentiona briefly as " the first gain I ever made hj that
pen which, such as it is, has been my sole support ever since " —
a prize awarded by a board consisting of the Provost and Senior
FellowB of Trinity, in the shape of a very handsomely bound copy
of the "Travels of Anacharais," Notwithstanding bis home
triampha and college succeaaea, he aijpears, neveithelesn, at the
outset, to have had no notion whatever oi \.Ve ^w«aT\B.te\i\.\ii»Q\%
^jrj- gooBe qusR—ita potency, that \a, \u \;^wiaMl^l^;m% vemos. jA^
7aper and gailoua of ink into go\A, aSt« ». aecMiat i'^^w^i^-Nlsaa

THOMAS MOOKE — THE POET-WIT. 343

tbat of tbe old alchemists ; for we read in a letter of bis, addressed
to his father at the close of the century, that he meditates
publishing a few of bis " trifling poems,'* adding " it is more
through a wish to get rid of them than with any hopes of
emolument." Perhaps his views in this respect may have become
somewhat modified a little afterwards, when he had occasion to
rejoice his mother's heart by the good tidings that he expected to
clear one hundred guineas by Anacreon ! However this may be,
** clear " them he did — and more. The " open sesame " was won to
the treasures rewarding the fortunate adventurer, giving him
access not only to the base metals to be got out of popular books
as well as out of popular any things, but into the exclusive
circles of fashion, the via lactea of the gay world, down the
current of which there floats only the very creme de la cremef
Insomuch that the young Irelander, who, at eleven years of
age, was screeching from a window over his father's shop, as
Grattan and Pitzgerald were carried by in triumph on their
joint election for the city of Dublin — Moore rendering him-
self, he tells us, " so conspicuous by the enthusiasm with
which I waved a large branch of laurel, that I either caught,
or fancied I caught, the particular notice of Grattan, and
was, of course, prodigiously proud in consequence" — insomuch,
we say, was the ^oung Irish man-of-letterd successful in
gaining admission to the higher circles of the metropolis, that
he who at thirteen was proud of being taken for a few minutes
upon the knee of Napper Tandy, at twenty-one was basking in
the smile, was actually living and breathiug in the sublime pre-
sence of his Eoyal Highness George Prince of Wales. Yes —
wonderful privilege — positively enjoying the civilities, almost the
familiarities, of Fum the Fourth ! Listen to the audible gusto
with which Moore tells the blissful tale of their introduction.
He is writing to his mother. The letter is dated August 4, 1800.
" Yesterday," he says, ** I was introduced to His Eoyal Highness
George Prince of Wales. He is beyond doubt a man of very
fascinating manners. When I was presented to him, he said he
was very happy to know a man of my abilities ; and when 1
thanked him for the honour he did me in permitting the dedi-
cation of Anacreon, he stopped me and said, the honour was
entirely his in being allowed to put his name to a work of such
merit." (What is it the Scotch say ? — " Claw me, olaw thee ! ")
*' He then said that he hoped, when he retumad ^">5k \ss^\vS».*<i«^'^
winter, we snould have many oi^^oT\.\im\Kfc^ ^1 «vs:^q.TJ^ "^"^
other's society.'* Moore adding, «i^ \\. ^e^T^i ^">^ ^ ^^^ ^Nsis
lips, while he lameuta that the a«i\>toMi. m\««H\a^ ^^

TOOTPRIHTB ON THE ROAD,

Dew eoflt — " Is not all this very fine ? " Eleven yeara nfterwardB,
he ia still in tbe blissful iUusion- — still hugging himself in the
luiury of being countenanced by H. E. H., writing to hia mother
in a letter dated Friday, June 21at, 1811—" The Prince spoke to
me, as he always does, with the cordial famitisrity of an old
acquainfance." Ah, poor human poet! you were under the
gliimour then of a pnncely eye, and had not an inkling of any-
thing at all of the sour cynical hereafter. Not a notion had
you then how soon K. 'R. H. was to dwindle down into Fom.
the Fourth of your own burleBqiie christening; op of how the
very year afterwards (March 6, 1812) you yourself were to be
sneering at George Prince of WaleB, in a letter to Miss Godfrey,
speaking of him aa the " precious gentleman," who " once blub-
bered when he was told that Brummel did not like the cut of
his coat ! " All, well — the days of enlightenment were to come
soon enough. Let ua leave the poor bright-eyed young Iiiah
poet for a while contentedly in the first flush of his entrance
into the loftier regions of fashion — when he could find consolation
even for an inopportune addition to hia tailor's hill in the courtly
palavering of him, whom Thackeray has audafiously dubbed a
" royal snob " — before Moore himself was fairly running a-muck,
at the heheat of my Lord Moira, after what he hijnself ultimately
confessed to he the " will o' the wisp " of hia life, a sham
patronage, leading not by a hair's breadth to the smailesli
modicum of advancement.

Arrived in London, Tom Moore very soon indeed became the
favourite of the fashionables, and the pet of the pettieoate. It
mattered little in hia instance, even in those preposteroua daya
when H. K, H. George Prince of Wales was the example and
the archleader of that old-world SaobhiMin Hampant, that the
young Irish poet had a father over in Dublin, who waa a, small
shopkeeper. Anacreon Moore, with hia apnrkling eyes, hia
animated features, hia tongue of fascination, hia eihilaraLing com-
panionship, his wit, his melodious songs, trembling into tears, or
Sashing out into sudden laughter— carrying everything before
im in the "great world," as ic is called (meaning the little one),
bucks, big-wigs, beautiful women, all of them dangled after him,
indiscriroiuately, wondering and bewitched, from His Majesty's
servant, the poor play-uctor, to the aristocratic "raff" attendant
upon Uia Boyal Highness. It ia a strange spectacle enough,
fjjai motley concourse traversed by Moore almost immediately
upoa bia arrival ia the metropolis. 'I\ie aVum^ftsA s^witaAe', Aa
motJeyin its way, nearly, aa the crowi %twv«^ ^1 "S.^™
'-— Tib Lis fumoua picture oi TV>6 Co^iV^eSV-y^v^^r"

mouey n

THOMAS MOOKE — ^THE POET-WIT. 345

princes jumbled together so very confusedly, that one could
hardly tell which was the prince and which was the blackguard.
Yet Moore contrived to get through the crush somehow
triumphantly, without receiving the faintest soil or smutch by
his forced contact with so many (to say the least of them) ex-
ceedingly questionable reputations ; with only this, in fact, to be
regretted in his regard, now that we come to look back upon his
entrance into "l3e," that his vertebrsB (by just the smallest
deflection in the world from the perpendicular) proved, perhaps,
a little too supple in —

" Bowing down, and bowing down ; *'

according to Charles Mackay's sarcasm,.

'* The way to get on in London town !

)•

Already we have seen how this fell out in reference more par-
ticularly to H. R. H. of Wales, poor little Tom Moore sleekly
rubbing his hands with a gratified air, as he writes to « his
** dearest mother " about the prince's affability in addressing him
with — ** How do you do, Moore ? I am glad to see you ; " and
such-like royal small-talk — " buttered thunder," as Mr. Bailey
might call it, from the Jovian lips of his High Mightiness ! It
is pleasant to turn from bim in his court suit, with a sword
between his legs, spindling over the carpets of St. James*B —
to find him manfully erect again in a more natural attitude and
homelier attire, driving up to town in a coach, with Curran " in
an uninterrupted fit of laughter all the way ; " or dining at
Incledon's, and there getting " very great " with Irish Johnson ;
or attending a " beautiful little fete champetre " at Mrs. Siddon's
cottage ; or (yet a little later on) touching, in one day, as he says
himself, " the two extremes of anarchy and law," dining with Sir
Francis Burdett, and going in the evening to Lord Ellen-
borough's.

What glimpses we obtain, too, both of small and large cele-
brities, incidentally, as we turn over these pages of the garrulous
Diary, and gossiping correspondence ! Here, in 1799, we come,
for example, upon big, burly, beastly old Peter Pindar, not feeling
at all surprised to find that Moore thinks him '' coarse both in
manners and conversation." Here again, in 1812, we are brought,
by no means for the only time in the pleasant volumes, face
to face with Sir John Stevenson the melodv«t^\?Cka ss^q^«{s.v& ^^cj^s^.-
poser, for instance, of " Oft iu the ^tV)L\^ ^'v^V^^V ^^^ Sa^^^^?^ ^^
by Moore to h&\e shown himBe\f " aa W^^^Vi. «cl^ ^"^"^r^^^^
ever, making the grave, matter-ol-$ac\. "E^^^'^'"^'^^ ^"^"^^

msmm

346 K)OTPRiirra on the boad.

he goes ! " At another moment our Diariat ia recording the
fact of his having once upon a ticne been placed under the
tuition, at Trinity College, Dublin, of the Rev. Mr. Burrowes,
author of the celebrated flash song, "The night before Larry
was stretched," meaning banged. Or he ia awins ua with the
announcement of a visit paid to him in 17E)9, in London, " by
a very famoua and very respectable man," a Mr. Biggin —
Moore adding, as he annoances the circumatance to hia mother
— " By the bye, it ia from him the coffee biggins take their
name, aad from them he has taken hia moiiev." An incident,
at once recalling to remembrance that woncterful fellow, w'
once introduced himself to Dr. Johnson with a flourish,
"the great Twalraley," who had iovented flat-irona, or aome su
rubbiak. An oecurrence pretty familiar, we take it, to every
reader of Boswell, and never Burely to be remembered without
a smile by anyone amougat them, even by tlioae the least sus-
ceptible to a joke. Writing from New York in the May of
1804, not long before Napoleon changed hia couaular fascea
into a aceptre, aad girt hia brows with the imperial diadem, we
find Moore writing to hia mother — "The oddest things I have
seen yet are young Bonaparte and his bride;" a note explaiaing
theae same odd things to be no other than M. Jerome Bouaparte
and Miss Patteraon. Writing to Lady Donegal a year later in
London, we obaerve Moore recording then, in 1 805, that he likes
Kogers better every time he sees hini — that same Engers, already
at the time, remarkable in many ways, but in none more remarkable
than in the fact of hie being — atrangeat of all strange paradoxes — ■
a cynical philanthropiat ! How wondroualy the people Moore
met, too, contrast with each other, In 1811 he is ataying at
Donnington Park, " in clover," while Monsieur is a gueat of my
Lord Moira's, and, with Monsieur, the Prince de Conde and the
Due de Bourbon. Not many yeara previously he had beea
Bitting in hia Dublin chambers with poor Bobert Emmett,
chatting, ainging, playing the piano ! Several years later we
come upon Moore'a sketch of an Eogliah demagogue — Sir Francis
Burdett — whom he defines as "a moat amiable man," with
"something particularly attaching in his manner." Old Glory!
Can we believe it of him, when Moore adds ? — " hia gentleness
and almost hashfulneas forming such a contrast to the violeoce
of his public career." A glimpae, this, of calm home-life in the
midst of the turbulence of demagogy, reminding one of Eobes-
pierre, as be ia depicted to ub, tsVicq jVacvto-j a'acV\iuj, oTom^ea over
t^e workshop of the Paris caToenttfT. , ,

m^lrsndj we have noted Moore's meiAVou QiV■va^^B.^^■(^%<^»»•■^^1

THOMAS MOORE — THE POET-WIT. 347

glimpse, at 'New York, of young Jerome Bonaparte. In 1819 we
find bim at Viterbo, gazing with interest upon the "handsome face"
of Lueien Bonaparte. Arrived at Eome soon afterwards, he is
amused with an interview with the lovely sister of the Gallic
Caesar, the Venus of Canova, otherwise Pauline, Princess of
Borghese — a " fine creature in her way," says the fastidious Celtic
Anacreon, to whom the Borghese "showed her beautiful little
hands," which, saith Moore, with a relish, " I had the honour of
kissing twice : " adding, and she " let me feel her foot, which is
matchless." O those Bonapartes — creatures formed, one might
fancy, out of the red earth of Mesopotamia ! What was it Captain
Basil Hall remarked about the Bonaparte, when he saw him at
St. Helena ? — that the texture of his face was of that infinitely
beautiful delicacy and fineness that it seemed less like flesh than
like some rare Parian marble ! And this at fifty-t^o years of age
— after such a life — not the faintest indication of a single
wrinkle discernible on the face, not one silver hair among the dark
silken chestnut. "What tales Moore tells, moreover, here and
there in his Diary, of that wonder-working Napoleon ! At one
moment a companion anecdote to the old classic legend of the
Casarem vehis ! To wit — " When Napoleon was embarking from
Elba, his four hundred veterans wished to be aboard the same
ship with him ; but the captain of the vessel remonstrated with-
him, and said, that if there came the slightest breath of wind,
they would upset with so many on board ; and that he must at
most take but half of the guard; upon which Napoleon an-
swered, II fera beau; and ordered that all should accompany
him." With what miraculous consequences afterwards, the world
knows — in the record of that bloodless and meteor-like re-
conquest of an empire, of which Tom Moore, upon the very
morrow of it (March 27, 1815) writes thus amazedly to Lady
Donegal — " What do you think now of my supernatural friend
the Emperor ? If ever tyrant deserved to be worshipped, it is
he. Milton's Satan is nothing to him for portentous magnificence
— for sublimity of mischief! If that account in the papers be
true, of his driving down in his carriage like lightning towards
the royal army embattled against him, bare-headed, unguarded, in
all the confidence of irresistibility — it is a fact far more sublime
than any that fiction has ever invented, and I am not at all sur*
prised at the dumfounded fascination that seizes people at such
daring. Eor my part, I could have fancied tVi-a.^.^'Sjiw^'^ftK's^i^^"^''^
in that carriage" If that accounti m Wi'e ^^^^^"^^ Nstx^aX K.^
deal more than " that " was true m xe^^^^^ "to "^^ T^^
romance of the "Eetura fcom "Eftia''— ^ ^^^^ ^^ ^

ai^^itt^^E^^

35a rooTPBiNTs os thh boas.

glory, which made Byron write (much about the same time) m
ouB of his letters (dated March, 1815) — " I can forgive the rogue
for utterly falsifying every line of mine Ode — which I take to be
the last and uttermost stretch of human magnanimity." No
wonder Tom Moore, years before, in a note to liis mother, dated
November 2, 1805, alluding to the then recent death of Neleon,
could etcilairo — "Tlioae two men (Bonaparte and he) dintled the
world between them — the land and the water, "Wo have lost
ours " — meaning our Napoleon.

It ia amusing, while we turn over these gOHsiping memoranda
jotted down from day to day ourrente calamo by the Poet Fribble,
to note with what a desterous touch of the pencil he dashes
down on the instant the moat life-like portraiture of all sorts of
remarkable charaetera. Do we not at oecb recognise the haughty
carriage of tliat head of Grecian beauty, the insolent curl of tlioso
exquisitely chiselled lips, the flash of those cold grey eyes, tbi
pride of the noble contour, making up the glory of the face o
Byron, in that astounding revelation made to the Irish melodist
one day in 1819, when Lord Byron suddenly exclaimed—" What
do you think of Shakspere, Moore? I think him a damned
humbug." There Is the man instantaneouHly before ua, with all
his pride, aU big daring, all bis vaaity, all his folly, all his arrogant
and audacious impulaivenesa.

Wordaworth again. What a wonderfully truthful peep do we
not have of him in that brief but all-sufficient note in Moore's
Diary, October 25th, 1820—" Wordsworth rather dull 1 " The
very roan. A portrait, ia three words, full length, living and
breathing — a speaking likeness I "Wordsworth rather dull!"
" I see," adda Moore, " he is a man to hold forth, and who does
not underatand the give and take of conversation." Two days
later, October 27th, he touches the dull fellow up again, thus —
" Wordaworth came at half-past eight, and stopped to breakfast.
Talked a good deal [about himself always]. Spoke of Byrou's
plagiarisms from him j the whole third canto of ' Childe Harold '
i'ounded on his style and aeutijnenta," Fancy Byron (ye goda !)
plagiariaiug from. Wordsworth. Pancy Phtebus borrowing new
Hunbearaa from a cucumber-bed. Of a truth, as Dogberry hatb
it, "babble" like this ia "very tolerable, and not to be en-
Turning from the dull solemn egotism of William Wordsworth,
it is flgreeahle to meet with such attractive beinga, for example,
j»s Washington Jrving or (jenecal "Lu.^ii'jftVte. "\jB.'iw^sW*,li«it!e
deeeribeo, in so niiijiy words, as " a 6ue, «ite«%M-m% Ai. Toaas.-,"
H^ of Irving be apeaks aa " sooi-\oaV«.?. w^i ^v*\Ni««*

THOMAS MOORE — THE POET-WIT. 349

mannered." In Madame de Genlis he finds " a lively, little old
woman, but by no means so fantastic a person as Lady Morgan
makes her." Schlegel he mentions as appearing to him " full of
literary coxcombry.** Lavalette, he mentions, as " a very gentle,
interesting little man.*' Boissy d'Anglas shines upon us from
his note-book, " with his white hair spread out upon his shoulders,
a most extraordinary figure." Beresford, the author of about
the drollest book ever penned by mortal, viz., " The Miseries of
Human Life," he speaks of, just exactly as we should expect him
to be spoken of, namely, as " a grotesque-minded person, very
amusing.*' Hear, too, how it is he talks of Charles Lamb — as " a
clever fellow, certainly ; but full of villainous and abortive puns, of
which he miscarries every minute." That delectable, inccMrigible,
and most whimsical of punsters, who received, as he himself
informed Moore, no more than 1701. for his two years' con-
tributions (" Essays of Elia *') to the " London Magazine."
Glancing over a few more pages of the Diary, what an odd
little memento we come upon about Bryan "Waller Proctor, better
known by his nom de phime of " Barry Cornwall," of whom
Moore writes, April 12th, 1823 — " A gentle, amiable-mannered
person, in very ill-health [Barry Cornwall still surviving, neverthe-
less, a grey-headed, but hale Ex- Commissioner de Lunatico
Inquirendo, more than forty years afterwards], which ill-health
has delayed his marriage with a person he has long been in love
with ; she, too, an invalid ; and somebody, the other day, de-
scribed the two lovers supping together at nine o'clock on water-
gruel." A very different picture to that robust one (not to say
that picture of rude health), delineative of James Hogg, the
Ettrick Shepherd, who " yelled out savagely two or three Scotch
songs, and accompanied the burden of one of them by labouring
away on the bare shoulders of the ladies, who sat on each side
of him." Wonderfully miscellaneous, indeed, is the company
to which we are introduced by Moore, as we follow him through
all the vagaries and whimsicalities commemorated in his amusing
Diary — accompanying him one while behind the scenes of Drury
Lane Theatre, where he has " some talk with Kean," then and
there playing Sir G-iles Overreach — Edmund Kean already spoken
of in an earlier volume, as that " extraordinary phenomenon."
As very happily illustrative of the kind of life led by Moore in
his best days, when in London, take this record of the 23rd of
May, 1828, when he was setat. forty-nine, a date K^ ^'^'^Jo^jee^C^'^
the way, as " not a bad day altogetV^t^ ^'s^^ \\» \^_^^-^?Si^\««
Scott, Bogera, and Chantrey at \>rea\^«L«.\. \ mx^ve. ^^^^^'^^^
at luncheon ; dinner at Ltau^owne Tioxj^jafe, -^Sxi^^. >^^

350 FOOTPRINTS ON THE BOID^ ■

Canova before my eyes " — remember, lie Iiad kissed the hand alid
felt the foot of the origitinl — " and Sontag io the evening." To
which he adds, " Tokiiif; it with all its et-eeterns of ^niuR,
beauty, feeling, and magnificeuce, no other couutry but Engl
could furnish out such a day." So that our dear little Patlau
after all, was very John Bullish in his prejudices. And so too,
again, in his instance, the divine •^^x'l "' '■"^ Poet, roving from
flower to flower, from sweet to sweet, sipping the honey of
adulation, and basking in the sunshine of popularity, lived the
gay life of the butterfly.

It has been rather seriously objected to Moore by those who have
the readiest eye for the detection of anything at all betraying the
faintest semblance of a blemish in the character of a great cele-
brity, that the pet of fashion was s bit of a tufthunter. He has
been aceused of sycophaDcy, of toad-eating, of all manner of uie,
and grovelling tricks of obseijuiouBness. And these same swan
ing little despicable imps of depreciation seem to have sprung
into being as unaccountably and as surprisingly as thoBe hoirid
niicroacojiical electric insects which were apparently called into
existence by the late Mr. Cross during the process of some of the
more eccentric of his gsWanic eiperiments ! Miserable little gnata
of slander summoned into life, as far as we can at all understand,
by one casual phrase incidentally introduced here and there in the
course of the Diary — minute hobgoblin devils of spite conjured up
by the utterance of one accidental Abracadabra ! Tet the very
simplest thing in the world, it proves to be, when looked at for two
seconds dispassionately. As may now be very briefly, but very
clearly and categorically demonstrated. Observe, then — for here in
truth is an instance of it, a very case in point— the microscopic
origin of all this monstrous kind of hubbub of vituperation. Moore
happens to jot down in his Diary, under date 29th of June,
1S28, such little "flies in amber" in the way of personal memo-
randa, as — " Bessy [Mrs. Moore] came to town at twelve to pay

visits Found Lady Davy aud Lady Charlemont at home:

went thence to Lady Eadeliflc's and the Granards', where we
were let in also." Where " we were letin! " That constituting, in
point ot fact, the whole gist of the charge directed against Moore
— ^this charge of toad-eating, tufting, sycophancy, obsequiousness.
Therein lies the gravamen of the whole of these sneering depre-
ciations of Moore as a parvenu secretly worahipping the haul ton
and the pur tang of the aristocracy ! When but a very little
candid conaideration might bave BhoviO, 8l'ow«ft,\).^Q\.Ww»tant,
-Aftre/jtireJj preposterous such ieductvoua ^toto & ■^■cwa mj -sm^
iUaal reaily were under tlie circumalaucea. ""V«'^.■ul.^" — ^Wa^-Otf

THOMAS MOORE — ^THE POET-WIT. 351

I

plirase was as common in those days as the familiar greeting in
the streets of " How d'ye do ? " from a passing acquaintance.
In her own contemporary Diary, Madame D'Arblay, for instance,
uses the phrase more than once as a mere matter of course —
talking about being " let in" or " not let in," as the case chanced
to be, in reference to the round of her morning visits. But
Moore's own Oiary — the very Diary from which this wretched
little trumped-up accusation of meanness takes its rise — may
readily enough furnish proof positive as to the folly of the
imputation. Turning to the date of May 20th, 1823, the reader
will there perceive Moore writiug quite innocently as to any of
the gabble about the significance for good or evil of the wording
of these poor little home memorabilia — " In returning from a
saunter to Chitto [Chitway] Valley, met Lady L. [Lausdowne],
and Lord Kerry ; who had walked to call at the cottage [Moore's
own cottage] ; but were not let in, Bessy being, they said, fast
asleep." 8o much for this nonsensical talk about tufthunting on
the part of Moore, a charge springing out of two of the siujplest
words possible, words used by him according to the fashionable
slang of the day, in the most natural, little, jaunty, fribbling way
imaginable. But then, as Macaulay has admirably said in one of
his inimitable Essays (the one on " Frederick the G-reat "), there
are "those abject natures, whose delight is in the agonies of
powerful spirits, and in the abasement of immortal names!"
And so Thomas Moore has, in his turn, been compelled to pay
posthumously the penalty of his wide and enviatle reputation.
Fortunate it was for him, at least, with his exquisitely sensitive
nature, that he had to pay it for the most part only posthumously.
All these whispered hints — the shrug, the hum ! the hah ! of de-

Ereciation, being the probable penalty, moreover, of his various
terary peccadilloes— of his sins against good taste, some of these
even being worse than mere peccadilloes. Say, for instance,
those abominable, erratic, prurient, sensuous, sensual, " Poetical
Works of the late Thomas Little, Esq.," of which youthful com-
positions, however, the noble editor of the Memoirs can find it in
his heart to talk thus leniently : — " I will not enter into the
question of the propriety of Moore's earlier poems. Horace is
very licentious, yet his Odes are the delight of our clerical
instructors and solemn critics. Prior is not very decent, but his
tales are praised on a monument in Westminster Abbey, and
defended by our great moralist, 'Dr. Johnson^ ^<ycss5^ ^^^Xii^sCiss^^
Poems should never have been vixv^il^Ti, i"a.x\ee?^^Ni^:^^>^^'^^
tbejr must now be classed witk tVkoae^ oi o\>ci«t ^^'^'^^^V^^'^;^
have aUowed their fancy to roam \>e^oiA\>aft>^^^«^'^'^^^^'^

"rOOTPHINTS ON 1

and decorum would prescribe." They were his literary wild oai
sown betimeH in hie " hot youth when George the Third waS'
king," and were only to be reraembereil by him, we may be sure,
of that, long afterwards, with feelings of remorseful repentance,
Moore thought better of poetry in time than to render it merely
the vehicle for aniraal paasion and animal Bpirita. As he thought
better in time too of wedlock, of which he wrote io flippantly in
1807, while yet a bachelor — " I don't know which would put me in,
the greatest purgatory, matrimony or physic." He who afterwards
(the cynical sneera of the late Right Hon. J. W. Croker neverthe-
lesa notwith standing) lived, during so many years, a life of pure
domestic bappinesB, However, in these immature years, Moore
could err in grammar as in judgment — mistaking an adjective for
lui adverb, when he wrote from London, in the April of 1807, to hi*
mother — " The time flies over me here as swift as if I waa in the
midst of dissipation." Very soon, however, he had to brush up both
grammar and judgment, and to bestir himself in earnest as a
literary adventurer. And he did so, we all know, to very general
admiration. His industry, as well as his skill, hod to be mani-
fested ; for had he not to gather name and fame out of the winds
that blow, honey out of the flowers of Parnassus, and money out
of the waters of ihe literary Pactolus? Competing with such rivala,
too, in those glorious games of the poetic amphitheatre ! Scarcely
is he arrived in London in 1799, than he is writing about "thii
wonderful Pizarro of Sheridan's, which is putting all London
into a fever." ' A dozen years later he is obaeiTing in a letter to
tlie same correspondent—" My friend Lord Byron's poem is
doing wonders, and there is nothing talked of but hira eveiy-
where ; he certainly is • * * " Then come the most irritating;
asterisks in the world, followed by a curt intimation in bracket^
to the effect that "[the rest of the letter has been lost]." Again,
in the year following, he tells ns, through the same channel — " I
had a lively letter from Lord Byron yesterday : his last thing, (•)
the Giaour, is very much praised, and deservedly so; indeed, I
think he will dethrone Walter Scott." Sometimes, in truth, he
cannot help remarking with a paug about the monopoly of renown
iu the world of letters shared by those twin giants of fiomanca
and Poetry, as where he says — "'It is rather discouraging now to-,
write, when the attention of all the reading world is absorbed by
two writers — Scott and Byron; and when one finds such sen-
tenees ae the ibllowiug, in the last ' Ediubnrgh Eeview,' — ' These
Borela (Scott's) have thrown evidenft'j \'(i\ffl ^Nie ftV*.4& «.ll contem-
">rarr proae, and even b\\ recent -^oeti^, e-s.cftv'^ ^-tfea^ 'Oiiawt
-' >d by tie genius or demon ot B^ioa.' " ^*A ■«i.w», i

THOMAS MOORE — THE POET-WIT.

35^

epite of all such casual heartacliea and occasional miagivings,
contrived to earn "golden opiniona," both figurative and sub-
stantial, from his contemporaries. Did he not, in fact, out of
that theme of "Rogera' Buggeating," " Lalla Rookh," obtain in
one haui 3000i. sterling from the munificent firm of the Messrs,
Longmati P Was he not pleasantly, as he himself tells ns,
" particularly flattered " hy praise from Leigh Hunt, conveyed
through his " Feast of the Poets P" Was he not himself amused
by the magnificent offer of Lucien Bonaparte's poem to translate
— an off'er, however, wiiich he respectfully declined. Not every
day did he meet with a genial, hearty, open-handed boon-companion,
like "friend Douglas," on the morrow of obtaining a comfortable
legacy of 10,000^. left him hy the recently deceased Duke of
Qiieensherry, and who could then and there say to liirn, with a
s lap-on- the-hack sort of flourish, "Now, my dear little fellow,
you know I'm grown rich: there is (sie) at present seven hun-
dred pounds of mine in Coutts's bank; here ia a blank cheque,
which you may fill up while I am away, for as much of that as
you may want." A high-flown ofier of bounty, which, of course,
Moore never accepted. Hard ca«b, indeed, was coming in then
from his publiahers, quite freely enough to render him independent
of any such gratuitous and incidental asBiatance; rendering it
needless for him, moreover, to resort to the comical shift ascribed
by himself in a mood of delightful waggery to a ridiculous poet-
aster among his college acquaintances, of whom says Moore,
with a twinkling laugh in his eye — " Wlienever he found himself
hard run for money, which was not unfrequently, 1 believe, the
case — his last and great resource, af^er having tried all other
expedients, was to threaten to publish his poems; on hearing
which menace the wliole of his friends flew instantly to his relief,"
At pleasure we might readily illustrate the abundant evidence
afforded by Moore's " Diary and Correspondence," of his esquisite
sense of the ludicrous, of tlie charm of which delightt'ultest sense
of all, perhaps, that laat- mentioned anecdote ia of itself sufficiently
indicative.

Glancing, indeed, through these gay and animated pages of the
Memoirs and Journals of Thomas Moore, do we not at one mumeut
note, with lifted eyebrows and sbrugged-up shoulders, Moore's
mention, in 1816, of a letter then recently received from Lord
Byron, in which that eccentric being writes. " There is not
eiiating a better, a brighter, or more amiable cren.tu.ift ^W^^aA:^
Byron;" and to which Byron's S>ituTB\i\a^tK^w ■B.iii5«s.*» '^
two bemldervd queries — "la not t.\na oiit '^IVsS. ^^^
^aaaon o/tAe separation ? " AiiotWi ■wVv\e-«e"^*-'**^^"^

(OTPKINTS ON THE ZOl

1S18, the Inteat news about the premature death of poor Monk
Lewis, wliile making a voyage acrosa the ocean, Moore telling us
that it woe occasioued fay LcnU taking emetics (contrary to
advice) for sea-aicbneBs. It is curious, moreover, to bear through
bim from Lord Holland, that " Mr. Fos thought Sheridan's
Wt;atmiustcr Uall sjieecb trumpery, aud used to say it spoiled
the style of Burke, who was delighted with it." Moore, who
Bt'enis to have thouglit by the way that he himself spoke very
wall indeed, baekiug up my Lord UoJland's record of Mr. Fox's
o[jiuion, by declaring flippantly for his own part, in regard to
Slieridan'B Begum Philippic — "Certainly, in the report 1 hare
read of it, it seems most trashy bomba:«t." In compeuaatiou,
however, for all this twaddling small talk, do we not find pre-
served for us, that delightful memento of Slierry's own reiady
recognition, in spite of himself, ol' his son's hilarious genius as a
humorist? Tlie occasion being, so to speak, thus steuographically
related by the biographer of the orator-dram atist- statesman : —
" Sheridan, the flrst time he met Tom, after the marriage of the
latter, seriously angry with him, told him he had made his will,
and had cut him off with a shilling. Tom said he was, indeed,
very sorry, aud immediately added, 'You don't happen to have
the shilling about you now, sir, do you?" Old 8. burst out
n-laughing, and they became friends again." And we don't
doubt in the least, by the way, but that both Torn and ^chord
Brinsley would together " have burst out a-laughing," had they
overheard Moore's own remark about the Lord Chamberlain's
oliiue, recorded in his Diary just before hia mention of this anec-
dote about the shilling. Having had occasion to observe that
" at the Chamberlain's office all the plays sent to the licenser
since the time this office was &^t instituted are preserved," siuth
Moore, " What a hell of the damned it muac be!" In the
cracking of whith diabolical joke we seem to hear the very tone
of the voice of the comic cicerone of the "Pudge Family," of the
purloiuer of the "'Twopenny Post Bag," of the historian of
" Captain Eock," of the Times' epigrammatist, of the wag who
called himself, even when a boy, as we have seen, ridiculously,
" Trismegistua Kustifustius!"

In the editing of these garrulous Memoirs, Journals, and
Correspondence of Thomas Moore, Earl Hussell, it may be said, at
length found himself enabled to consummate the final tribute of
their faitbfui friendship — a friendship ao intrinsically real and
eoTfleaetiat it baa disco vetedfori\Be\'it\iftifteaM.tol\niine thus pont-
turooual/ perpetuated. A IriendaVi^ Vto.\.\.w\% \*i?,eNWi \m'kq^
f^ li&time tlie sympathies oi a^\^*B i'i'^^* "^ ""* "* '^"

THOMAS MOOBB — THE POET-WIT. 355

son of a Dublin grocer — coupling together thus intimately, after
their separation by death, the names of the Poet Moore and
the Patrician Eussell. The result beiug a rather voluminous
production, distinguished among other agreeable, qualities by two
very prominent and acceptable characteristics — abounding, as the
memoirs do, in delightful anecdote and agreeable reminiscences.
The latter of these two conspicuous characteristics has here been
already illustrated by detailed allusion to the numerous aud motley
crowd of celebrities introduced to our acquaintance, so to speak,
in kit-kat or in full length, in profile or in three-quarters, in life-
size or in miniature, now in a random sketch, now in a mere sil-
houette by the piquant Diary of the observant melodist-humorist !
As to the evidences adducible of the charm appertaining to Moore's
Memoirs as a repository of anecdote, they are here ready to hand,
scattered abundantly before us up and down the diaries and
correspondence.

It is observable, in fact, throughout them, that Moore had an
especial natural relish for the ridiculous. He had a ready laugh
for anything at all partaking of the facetious ; whether he heard
of an absurd fellow meeting a friend running through the rain
with an umbrella over him, and calling out to him as he passed,
** Where are you running to in such a hurry like a mad mush-
room ? ** or listened another while to the good old story of the
Irishman in the Marshalsea having heard his companion brushing
iiis teeth the last thing at night, and then, upon waking, at the
same work in the morning — " Och, a weary night you must have
had of it, Mr. Pitzgerald ! *' Among the multifarious anecdotes
related by Moore, there are no lack, by the way, of those setting
forth the drollery of his fellow-countrymen in a light of peculiar
ridiculousness. As for example, that recounted of a visitor asking
a servant — "Is your master at home?" "No, sir; he's out."
'' Your mistress ?" « No, sir ; she is out.*' " Well, I'll just go
in and take an air of the fire till they come." " Faith, sir, that's
out too ! " Or the since familiar anecdote of the man asked by
his friend to come and dine with him off" boiled beef and potatoes,
and who replied, " That I will ; and it's rather odd it should be
exactly the same dinner I had at home for myself, barring the
beef ! " Or that story, again, of Luttrell's about the Irish lady
who had been travelling with her family, and on being asked
whether they had been at Aix, answered, " Oh, yes, indeed ; very
much at our ase everywhere." Or, best of «AL^ ^^^W^^^ -^^^
indicative of the preposteroua aWpa ol VJaa \.c»T\%>aft ^"^^""^^^^^^^
to John Bull, but to Pat Bull, t\ia\. T^\«.\ie.eL X^i ^"f ^'^ "^X^^-^
occurred actually within hia ON?a exg^Y^ft^^ ^V«^ ^ ^

coming one morning, with an uncle of his, npon tlie dearl bocly of
» pnor wretch lying upon the high road between Dublin and
Sniidymoiint. " He had been shot," Bays Moore, "juBt under
the eve, and there waa no other mark than the email hole through
which the bullet had entered. An old woman, who waa looking
down at the body at the same time with us, Paid, ' It was the
blessing of God it didn't hit hie eye ! ' " Not a. few among the
anecdotes and witticisms related by the Irish raelodint come back
to US, of course, as very old friends indeed — friends known to tis,
years ago, familiarly. Some of them, in truth, unmistakeable
" Old Joea," very much (urahled, and toweled, and dog's-eared, and
threadbare. Scarcely anyone, for example, requires to be re-
minded of the uncleanly whist-player to whom quoth Elia, " If
dirt WHS trumps, what hands you would have ! " The same
individual, one mislit conjecture, of whom it was remarked
(epitnphicaliy) by Kenny, that he " died of a cold caught by
washing hia face." Almost every one, again, has an intimate
personal acquaintance with the sham problem, " Given the
tonnage of a ship, and the course she is upon ; required the name
of the captain." While the came, doubtless, might be said with
equal truth of that capital old story of the man brimming o7er
with ill-temper, coming out of a room where he bad lost all his
money at play, and seeing a person (a perfect stranger to him)
tying his slioe at the top of the stairs, " D — n you (saya he),
you're always tving your shoe ! " thereupon kicking him down-
stairs. Not less familiar, too, are some of the theatrical legends
here revived for our amusement. As, for instance, that of the
actor saying by mistake —

Or that one of Old Parker, who used always to say " coison'd pup
instead of " poisoned cup " — a ludicrous lapsug lingam mentioned
in Moore's Diary with a most laughable addition (new to us), to
the effect that one night, when Old Parker spoke it right, the
audience said, "No, no!" and called for "the other reading."
Something of the same kind is the absurd blunder, related else-
where by our diarist, about John Kembie performing one night
at some country theatre one of hia favourite parts, and being
interrupted from time to time by the squaUing of a child in one
of the galleries, until at length, angered by this rival performance,
Kewbh walked with solemn BVep to \,Vie 'itont of the stage, and,
addressing the audience in bia moat Ua^ic \oae,aw,i,"\jaSuak
«grf gentleiaen, unless tlie p^ay ^ eXo^'eci ^!ae tXiii.

THOMAS MOOBE — THE POET-WIT. 357

possibly go on.** A Prench theatrical anecdote, told to Moore by
an actual ear-witness of it, no other than Earl Eussell himself, is,
to our thinking, in its way, absolutely delicious. Seated next
a man at the Th^tre Pran9ais, who was very much discontented
at the way in which the play (" Cinna") was being acted, Lord
Bussell heard him, on the following line being spoken, '' Ou
laissez-moi r^gner, oa laissez-raoi p^rir," mutter, " Ou laissez-moi
siffler, ou laissez-moi sortir! " Several delightful stories, by the
by, are told here about that Prince of French Wits, Charles
Maurice Talleyrand — any one of whose sayings we may be certain
would have tickled the risible muscles of Voltaire and have been
dear to the memory and the note-book of the Chevalier Boufflers.
Hear that story of somebody, who squinted, asking him,
" Comment vont les affaires ? " and his answering, " Comme vous
voyez ! " Listen to him one day, when Bobus Smith happened
casually in conversation to speak of the beauty of his mother,
saying, " C'etait done votre pere qui n'etait pas beau ? " Hearken
to that laughter-moving reminiscence of his correspondence — the
story about the lady who wrote to him (Talleyrand), informing
him in high-flown terms of her grief on the death of her husband,
and expecting an elegant letter of condolence in return; his
answer only being, " H61as, Madame. Votre affection6, Talley-
rand.*' In less than a year, another letter from the same lady
informed him of her being married agaia ; to which he returned
an answer in the same laconic style — " Oh, oh, Madame ! Votre
affeetione, Talleyrand.** A companion anecdote, illustrative of
Talleyrand's nameless zest for whimsicality, is introduced in an
earlier page of tbose amusing memoirs. The anecdote, that is,
related by Dedel, of the Duchesse de G-rammont (sister of the
Due de Choiseuil) coming to dinner, and on her passing through
the ante-room where Talleyrand was standing, he looked up and
exclaimed sigaiiicantly, " Ah ! " In the course of the dinner, the
lady having asked him across the table, why he had uttered the
exclamation of, "Oh!** on her entrance, Talleyrand, with a
grave, self- vindicatory look, answered, " Madame, je n'ai pas dit
Oh ! j'ai dit. Ah ! " To which adds Moore — " Comical, very, with-
out one's being able to define why it is so.** Bon-mots^ grave
and gay, in abundance, are recorded by Moore of others besides
Talleyrand. Mention, for example, is made of the late General
Sir Charles Napier, writing very beautifully and touchingly to ^
lady, upon the eve of his great victory ».t. Mftasi^ife— ^^^^^ ^s^ss^v^^e^^
I shall soon be with those I love-, Vi 1 i«^^ ^ij^X^W^^^ ;^^^
I have loved I " Turning at a glanee ixom 'Oi^'e> ^:^^^^
may be called without niucli exagg^taX\au, Xo ^^^a

^

353 iwrn-nDTTS oh thb koad.

what a proTocative of mirtb there is, in that alluBion to Scroopa
Daviee calling some persoa who had a habit of puffing out his
cheeks when he spoke, and was not remarkable for veracity,
"The -Solian lyre." Or, better etill, that aDecdote related by
Kenny, about Charles Lamb being- once bored by a lady praising
to him " such a charming man ! " &c.-, eudins with, " I know him,
bleaa him ! " On which Lamb, by thia time thoroughly naueeiited,

exclaims — "Well, I don't ; but d o him, at a hazard ! "

A. gentleman resembling this unfortunate lady, in one respect at
least, is alluded to elsewhere by Moore, as the victim of one of
Lord Plunkett's punning aarcaams. " Mentioned," he writes,
" Plunkett's joke on some oue sayin?, ' Well, you see 's pre-
dictions have come true.' ' Indeed,' said Plunkett, ' I always
knew he was a bore, but I didn't know he was an angiir.' "
Sundry old friends we fancy we recognise here and there with
new faces. Take that comical definition blurted out by Dr.
Currie (hot both by name and by nature) when teased by a
frivolous Blue to tell her the precise meaning of the word "idea"
(about which she said she had been reading iu some metaphysical
work, but could not understand it). "Idea, madam," at last
angrily exclaims Dr, Currie, " idea, mndam, is the feminine of idiot,
aud meaus a female fool." Again, Mercer's mention of a punster,
who had so much the character of never opening his mouth with-
out a pun, that one day upon his merely asking some one at
diimer for a little spinach, the persou stared, looked puKzkd, and
said— "Je VOU3 demaode pardon, monsieur, mais pour cette ,
foia je ne comprends paa!" Two capital mots are mentioned
by Moore in his Diary, as having been uttered by Madame de
Coigny. One iu which she remarked about a woman, wlio had
red hair with all its attendant consequences (some one having
observed, in addition to thia, that she waa very virtuous). " Oui,
elle est comme Samson, elle a toutes sea forces dans ses cheveux."
The other, in which Madame de Coigny said, in reference to
her own bad voice — " Je n'ai qu'une voix contra moi ; c'eat la
mienne." Quite as epigrammatic too, in ita way, ia the reply
said to have been made by the Prince Ligjiy, who hud been
trying unsuccessfully to make a piece of water in hia grounds,
to one who told him there had been a man drowned in it — " C'etait
un flatteur 1 " Delightfully extravagant, moreover, is the notion
of Jekjll, at Merchant Tailors' Hall, on being asked by c
of that body to translate the motto, " Concordii res parvie
crescunt," Buying it meant, "Nice taW-U-ta Tx\(fe.e ». TO.VL-a'." Aa
-'-ia the incidental mention o£ t\\e "&v%\\&VTOaa tgiNwi^ %. WB^.
reBtauiateur (which he Wy^eaei ^Q ^»--*« ^^^ -^"^

n^

THOMAS MOORE — THE POET-WIT. 359

instead of his passport, and the gendarme maliciously reading it
and looking at him — " Tete de veau ; pied de cochon ; 9a suffit,
monsieur, c'eat vous ! " Enough, however, surely in evidence
that these " Memoirs of Thomas Moore " are really, as we have
said, a delightful repertory of anecdotes. They are worthy of
being eulogised, however, for qualities far more deserving admira-
tion — for qualities of larger and more enduring worth ; for inas-
much, namely, as they constitute very brilliant and characteristic
memorials of their author's exquisite sensibility and sparkling
intelligence, of the humour of his wit, as one may say, if not
of the Celtic music of his poetry, or of the Oriental splendour of
his imagination.

GALILEO GALILEI— THE ASTRONOMER.

Oalilko Galilei we would here regard solely through the
I grajideur of bia discoveries, aud tiie versutilitj of hia genlua :
viewJEg hie career, in fact, for once, apart from the miBt of con-
tention excited around it by eager con trovers ialista : and doing
this, moreover, aa vividly ae may be, through one or two momentary
glimpses of him— glimpses caught, as it were, through the loop-
holes of his biography.

Darkueaa ia aetiliug over the narrow streets of Pisa, upon a
winter's evening in 1582, when a young student from the
university, doffing hia cap within the porch of the cathedral,
paasea between the curtains of the doorway. Touching his brow
with holy water, the youth advances up ibe nave as the priest
begiua intouing the vespers with the Sens in adjutorium !

But dimly illumined by tbe hali'-dozeu wax tapera upon the

higii altar, the soaring arches of the edifice glow with a mysterious

beauty among the roof-beams; and as the incense roJla up from

the thurible, floating around in guata of fragrance, a sentiment of

delicious awe £lls the bosom of the student. His emotions (we

may be certain of this, at least, from every syllable recorded in his

history) are aroused, not by the jubilant intonations of the

choristers — not by tbe precious Btonea blazing upon the remon-

sti'anoe — not by the flowers about the tabernacle— not by the

vestments so eloquently symbolical of Christianity — not by the

radiance, or the music, or the bended figures of the worshippers;

but rather by tbe aggregation of them all as typea of reverence

uud love — to God. Appealed to in every sense of his body, and

every faculty of his soul, by the genius of religion ; surrounded

by BO many benign aiid moving admouitions, tbe young scholar

abandons himself to the faBc'mation. of the ceremony. "With that

cuntradictioa of purpose, hov.e'vtT,'«\iVft\i'\9i wi -^"iaWt & charac-

teriatic ofhmuanity hia or\8o»a ate aoo^ ^i'lft^ '>sx\R««j\Ki.\i-^ 'Oim*,

yibmtion of a suiaU lamp, aAffigeaiei 'flA>i\B. xNia wkqi4.«"J

aALILEO OAULEI — THE ASTBONOMEB.

Gazing at it with idle curiosity, and wonderioE; whether it had
been accidentally set in. motion by an acolyte, the student almost
unconsciously follows ita raoyementa, as it swings lazily to and
fro. Aa ho gazes, however, a sudden joy gleams upon his
features, his clieeks are flushed with esuliation, his eyes are
luminous and, despite the sallow redness of his hair, there ia an
indefinable beauty in the animation of his whole aspect. A new
truth ia added to the treasures of philosophy — the Inochroniam of
the Pendulum is discovered !

G-alileo, at this period of his history, had completed hia
eighteenth year, having been born within the boundaries of Pisa,
February 15, 1564. Tiioiigh of a patrician family of Florence,
his father Vincenzo was coriHiilerably straitened in his eircum-
etances, insomuch that the education of his aix childien became
ultimately a matter to him of the most serious embarrassment,
G^iieo, even in boyhood, betokened the natural bent of hia
intellect, by the construction of adroit machinery, and by the
novel application to which hia toys were occasionally submitted.
This strnnse but characteristic precocity of inventiveness, has
elicited indeed from his biographer, Salusbury, the homely
observation, that " before others had lelt nfaking of dirt piea, he
was framing of diagrams." His studies, commenced in the city
of Florence, were afterwards prosecuted . at the university of
Fisa; and, having attained at the former considerable proficiency
in classical literature and as a draughtsman, he was entered at
the latter for the acquiaition of medicinal knowledge. To this
circumstance we may possibly attribute the fact of his first
applying his discovery of the pendulum to the estimation of the
human pulse ; for, accordiug to Sautorio, the littlu instruiaeota
called pulsilogies, long used by Italian physicians, were the
invention of Galileo. Eeflection, however, showed to tlie young
innovator that the eiceeding equality of the oscillation, might be
rendered of inhniiely greater value by employing it for the
measurement of time. Hence in truth the perlection since
attained in clock-making is traceable directly to the Tuscjin
philosopher. Whether or not we regard it as a hereditary bias,
Galileo's passion for music appears to have formed au essential
ingredient in his character, when wo turn over the treatise
upon that dlvinest art, written by Vi(iceny;o. In noting the
isochronous vibrations of a pendent weight, Galileo, it shou-Ld ho.
especially borne in mind, iiiipelled 5hUQ%Q^'Q\wii.T.ss«fe'B-'t^Si'v&^™
■very verge of a yet greater diacoverj — ^to -Oma, "^^^"V^^ «s««4
principle of gravitation. Nay, SX vt. aVovo^ wcvv^'**™^* -os^^
^^ect the two discoveries — t\ie peiiiyiu'ai.a.'iWa^*''^^ s j

FOOTFRIHTa OH THE BOAD.

infiuence of the gravitnting force of matter. It becomeB, 1

fore, somewhat embarraBsiug to trace our knowledge of the 1

principle to its birtli-pliic« : to decitie whether it ongiuated &ii
the cathedral of Pisa, or in the English orchard? Whether it
gleamed in the swaying of the lamp, or bloomed iu the ripens
of the apple ? Whether, In fine, Galileo planted tite tree, the
fruita of which dropped at the feet of Newton ?

That. year of grace, llilO, muBt needs ever be regarded as in a
supreme degree memorable : memorable aa Imving accorded to
man a loftier notion of Omnipotence : memorable as removing hia
intelligence from the shallows of the finite, and launching it forth
into the abjaseB of infinite speculation : especially memorable, if
we may say this without extravagance, aa affording him a du>ib
vivid glimpse of the very sliirta of the Godhead !

Within an antique chamber of the university of Fadua, hia
flowing robe loosened to the night wind, his lips trembling with
emotion, muses the great sage to whom this intellectual revo-
lutioa is mainly attributable. But for the revelation by him of
the greater glory of tliose constellatioua, bearoiug down upon the
uplifted visage of the philosoplier, mankind might for many
centuries longer have remained under the gloom of the aatro-
nomlcal hypothesis of Aristotle. Galileo had, however, invented,
or rather reinvented, the telescope : and the marvels which that
extraordinary instrument had disclosed to him, had dissipated for
ever, and with wonderful rapidity, the hazy dogmas of the Peri-
patecians. Grasping the rude cylinder which he had conhtructed
for the reception of his lenses, and leaning out upon the balcony
of his apartment, Galileo looked forth into the dark heavens.
And how can language adequately defiue the sensations of that
noble heart, as it drank in t'orthe first time the deep magnificence
of ecernity ? How possibly delineate tiie joy with which, iu —

"Solemn midniglit'a tingling Hilflntneaa,"

it had then first revelled in a true recognitioo of the universe ?
Words in truth can never even proiiuiately express the senti-
meats of Galileo, while guying during tlioae first nights of hia
scrutiny upon the adorable system of the sky. Even the ei-
presaions of the iUuatrious Kepler are but feebly indicative,
where he yearns to see what Galileo waa then seeing — alone
among his fellow-men — to wit — the awful fabric of creation :
" magna me deaiderio incendisti vivendi tuum itistrumentum,"
Sepler exclaims, " ut tandem et itsdem, tecum yo(iar cieleHibua
w^iacuhg." * And well, indeed, migVA Ve e-oXBK.iivi. *,\iKi\iVj6V-

GALILEO GALILEI — THE ASTRONOMER. 363'

ings of curiosity — ^feelings the most intense and insatiable : for
Galileo then beheld what had been hitherto denied to mortal.
He beheld the moon, rugged with mountain and with valley, like
the earth. He beheld what the Copemicans had already con-
jectured, the horned appearance of the planet Venus. He beheld
the gibbosity, or as we may otherwise term it, the convexity of
Mars. He beheld in the nebulsB the congregation of remote
spheres. He beheld in the Milky Way one astonishing flood of
orbs — the strewings of the prodigality of Omnipotence I And as
that torrent of almost incredible discoveries crowded in upon his
vision, his heart must have pulsated with the overwhelming con-
viction of his immortality ; his soul must have recognised through
this new knowledge the shadow of the untteen Deity. 'Nor can
his ecstasy of heart be to us any matter for amazement, since to
such an intellect as his, the reflections inspired by the celestial
world must have been altogether sublime. However assured his
£aith might hitherto have been in the first principles of ethics, it
must have derived additional stability, it must have been based
in a manner upon a wholly indestructible foundation, when his
sight penetrated into the exceeding depths of space, and beheld
the power, and the wisdom, and the ingenuity, and the splendour,
which astronomical research there divulged. If, indeed, the
existence of a Creator were not sufficiently attested by revela-
tion, by its prevalence throughout all time and all nations, no
less than by our own innate tendencr^r to that belief, it must have
become an indubitable truth immediately upon our acquaintance
with the mechanism of the heavens. This might have been
established on a recognition merely of fche wonderful contrivance
and uniformity of the solar system alone : seeing that the near
approximation of the planetary orbits to circularity, is altogether
incompatible with the non-existence of a Supreme Being. Hence,
when observing a diagram of those orbits, "Whewell* pronounced
that most exquisite sentence, that a man can no more attribute
their dimensions to chance " than .he can believe that a target,
such as archers are accustomed to shoot at, was painted in con-
centric circles by the accidental dashes of a brush in the hands of
a blind man." Still more, however, if we extend our contem-
plation beyond our own vicinity in 8pace,»and consider for a single
moment the regularity of motion in the heavenly bodies, and the
inexpressible majesty by which they are characterised, the far-otf
glory of the Creator beams upon us throu^k Hia. ^ssw^is^'^a.^"'^
more distinctl/, prostrating our Ba\]la\ii't«\«t«t&»^^^'t»^^'^^* ^^x^sss

* BridgewaiUT TTC»X\afc^ m. \^^«

3o¥ FOOTPBINTB ON THE BOSD^ |

Atheists in fact declare the universe to have been formed with-
out the intervention of a Deity, they are absolutely deriving
Symmetry of Sff'ect from Chaos of Cause, a thing niaihematieaUy
impoHBible. The true science o!' astronomy is, therefore, ao indei
to heavt;n. It is, of itself, an incontestable indication that there
is a God. And that true science was inaugurated and first
developed by Galileo.

Subsequently to the close of the period of hia tuition at Piaa,
Galileo had made eitraordinaiy advances towards eminence, and
had already indeed acquired a wide celebrity. From the first
instant of his entrance into public life, he hud declared him-
ae!f an antagonist of the Aristotelian philosophy — a philosophy
which it should be remembered was likewise the abhorrence of
Descartes aud of Bacon. Those three great men, in truth, recog-
nised the absurdity of giving implicit credence any longer to the
dogmas of the Stagirite, They looked more to the declarations
of Nature herself, and Gralileo was the first to adventure upon a
nobler system, that of the real and eiperimental philosophy.
Vieta in algebra, and Benedetti in statics, had in some meaaura
prepared the way for this innovation in science. But it remained
lor the Tuscan to ripen what was crude, and to animate what was
sluggish among his contemporary schoolmen. After some oppo-
sition Irom his father, Galileo applied himself to the study of
geometry, under Ostilio Kiocj. Thenceforth he resigned the
perusal of Hippocrates and Galen to devour the writings of
Euirlid aud Archimedes. Hia ingenuity was soon afterwards
demonstrated by the invention of the Hydrostatic Balance ; and,
his prosperity was about the same time assured upon his secLuing
the friendship of a noble mathematician, the Marquis Guido
Ubaldi. The latter personage, having formed a very high opinioa
of the young student's abilities, introduced him to his brother,
the Cardinal del Monte, at whose instance Galileo was, in 1588,
nominated to the chair of mathetnatics at Pisa, by Eerdinand, the
Grand-Duke of Tuscany. Having roused the auimosily of the
Peripatetics in that University by hia exposition of tlie theory of
"uniformly accelerated motion," and conceiving in his own heart
a profound indignation at their man if e stations of malice, Galileo,
in 1592, threw up his office in disguai. He afterwards resided
J'or a brief period with Salviati, an opulent civilian of Plorenea.
And, iu the following September, we find him removed by a.
mutual friend named Sagredo, to the chair of mathematica at
Padua. Hero it was that Ga\\\eo tegauto 5fl4>^-^ iJa* ■i-WMJidity
Mf ilia fjiteJiectual resources— hy e^vietmsfeivV*N. xeswOTOa.**-, >h^
Wmentiuy Ueatiaes ; by the coastruWiou ol aV^i^^^ ^«..v™—

GALILEO GALILEI — ^THE ASTRONOMER. 365

for the state ; by the invention almost simultaneously of the Ther-
mometer and the Proportional Compass. Having been re-elected
to his professorship at increased salaries, in 1599 and 1606, he nobly
justified the sagacity, while he splendidly requited the generosity,
of his patrons by inventing the Telescope, and by publishing his
celestial observations in a periodical, quaintly entitled " Nuncius
Siderius." As may here be very readily conjectured, the announce-
ments contained in those pages, startled the whole civilised world !
At each revelation it shattered some ancient doctrine in astro-
nomy : and as the Aristotelians beheld those vaunted bulwarks-^
bulwarks which they had hitherto regarded as impregnable —
crumbling away like icicles before the beams of reality, they in-
stinctively felt themselves to be ipso facto covered with derision.
They, in consequence, assailed Galileo with redoubled and unre-
lenting animosity. Perhaps the severest blows ever struck by
him at the Peripatetic school were — First, by the discovery of
Jupiter's satellites, which group, together with the planet, formed
a miniature of the entire system : Secondly, by the detection of the
solar spots, indicating as those spots did that the orb was not
entirely incorruptible, and affording as they did also, by reason of
their periodical reappearance, a distinct argument in favour of the
sun's rotation upon its axis. What must, therefore, be especially
remembered in reference to Galileo's renown is that it originated
not in the fabrication by him of any specious or seductive theory,
but in the vast and solid data which he accumidated for philo-
sophy — data leading to truth, and pointing to heaven.

Subsequent to his discovery of the telescope, his life was
destined to be one of intermittent commotion. The great celestial
phenomena which that instrument disclosed, and which Galileo
possessed the moral courage to hurry before mankind — the facta
in favour of the heliocentric system — the movements of the
Medician stars — the sheen of Saturn, which the Tuscan regarded as
a reduplication of the planet, but which Huyghens and Herschel
afterwards proved to be two concentric rings in a state of revo-
lution — all these wonderful announcements were either received
with admiration or with scorn, according as his contemporaries
were biassed. Among the Peripatetics, or as Galileo contemptuously
styled them, " the pajer philosophers," his assertions were treated
with every testimony of contempt. About this time also Caccini,
a Dominican friar, actually prefaced a sermon with the punning
text, "FtW Qalilcdi, quid statis adapicientea in. coalu-wv-t*^ '''^^^
chiefs of the pontifical governmeiit,Vvo^es«t,<i«rc^ix\^^
him with favour. In 1616, \ie ^aa ^«jc\qvxA^ '^'^'^'^^^'^\^^^
Paul V. In 1624i he was honoured n^\x)cl «vt. y^c\x^\»^^ ''^

wm

HJiiD."

with tlie sovereign pontiff, who loatled him with presents of
paintinsB aud mediilB, and, on hia return to Plorence, granted
him a tetter of retrommendation to Ferdinand couched in the
moat eulogistic laoguage. Ooldeo and his son nere subsequently
noininitted pensionera of Urban VIII. The Copernican doctrines
were taught in the papal university. lu the Eternal City every
Bpecies of eneourac;ement, in fact, was held out to the disciples of
that elsewhere obnoiioua system.

Eagerly bent upon at once crushing his ignoble asaailanfcs,
G)«lileo broached rather precipitately the delicate and most difB-
cult design of reconciling bis scheme of the heavens with the
Scriptures — iraaginioR that scheme to have been already (wbat it
certainly was not until long afterwards) den[innstrated. His per-
aistcnt endeavours to this end, however, resulted eventually in
hia formally pledging himself to silence upon — Polemical Astro-
nomy. Tet, this solemn engagement on hie part was, neverthe-
leas, in 1632, abruptly and signally violated by the publication of
hia renowned " Dialogues."

Galileo had by that time esplained much, no doubt, wbich had

Sreviously appeared anomalous in the scheme of Copernicus. He
ad imparted substance to what was until then only a hypo-
theaia. But, upon mature reflection, he must have perceived hia
mistake in baviug treated such problems as the revolution of the
globe iia truths altogether or conclusively demonstrated. Even
Whew ell,* when speaking of Graiileo'a discoveriea in their rela-
tion to the heliocentric ayatera, acknowledges that they merely
" aupported tbe belief of such an arrangement of the planeta, by
an analogy all but irreautible ;" aignifyiiig thereby, in other
words, that tbe system waa still uneatabliahed. Aud, being un-
established, it waa very obviously a most precipitate and, so far, a
most inconsiderate venture — this attempt at the reconciliation of
a mere a peculation with Scripture! That premature argument
was however summarily postponed by the condemnation pro-
nounced upon Galileo, for having broken his tow and defled the
authorities of tbe state. In partial accordance with the language
employed in bis sent^uce, Galileo was confined during Four Days
in an apartment of tbe inquisitional palace. Immediately at
the end of those Four Days he removed to the aumptuous
dwelling of Nioolini ; thence to the hospitable palaxxo at the
Archbishop Piccolumini, at Sienna ; finally, to his own mauaion
at Arcetii. Here our philosopher pubiished two additional Dia-
'oguea on Motion, applying him&eVt \ieBvie% •daia ■«\tW untiring

GALILEO GALILEI— THE ASTRONOMER. 367

zeal to the simplification of science generally. About the com-
mencement of 1638, his sight, which had been previously rather
alarmingly affected, became gradually clouded over, and at length
extinguished; a calamity so terrible as to elicit from Castelli
that exclamation of anguish, that then indeed *' the noblest eye
was darkened which nature ever made!*' Having been attacked,
in 1594, with a severe disease from which he was scarcely ever
afterwards relieved, and having subsequently been afflicted with
hernia, Galileo retained but little strength for the resistance of
any accession of illness. A violent fever, accompanied by palpi-
tations of the heart, was in consequence not tardy in gaining
upon his debilitated constitution, insomuch that on January 8,
1642, and in the seventy-ninth year of his age, G-alileo had
ceased to breathe. His body was interred, without pomp, in the
Church of Santa Croce, in J<lorence, where a century afterwards
a superb mausoleum was erected over bis bones. His noblest
monument, however, is his name ; as his fittest inscription and
his loftiest panegyric are the planets and the constellations.

In reference to Gtilileo's condemnation, it must be acknow-
ledged that the Italian philosopher himself wantonly and per-
versely called down upon his own head the adverse sentence —
not because of his attempting to subvert the Ptolemaic theory,
for the principles of Copernicus were in vogue amongst the
Boman ecclesiastics, but-— for inasmuch as he had stepped be-
yond the limits of his profession, and in so doing had flagrantly
bearded the civil and religious authorities of his country. His-
tory indeed proves CampaneUa to have been correct in asserting
that the proceedings of 1633 originated solely in " the infringe-
ment of the injunction of 1616." And that injunction would
never have been pronounced if the great Tuscan had but followed
the advice of Ciamponi, and of Cardinal Bellarmine, by restricting
his attention to science, leaving polemics to the churchmen. To
quote the simple proposition of Bergier,''c« philoaophe nefUt point
persecute comme bon astronome, mais comme mauvais theologien,^*
When the Copernican scheme of the heavens should have been
actually demoustrated, then, but not until then, the reconcila-
bility of that scheme with the Scriptures would become a matter
for serious investigation. Now, the theory of Copernicus was
nothing beyond a theory during the lifetime of G-aiileo. As
Delambre accurately observes, it remained unproven until the
days of iiicher, and £oemer, and Bradley. Nor can it b^ ^aa^VksJc*.
matter for astonishment, in truth, tXitiX, \Xv'&^SJCim^\i.^^^^'«^^^^
not readily concede the point ot \ta «yc\AW3^ e^^morQ.^^^^'^*-^^^^
weRud that wonderful geniua luotflL^a.CiO^i^'S^^^'^^'^'^'^^^

FOOTPRINTS ON THE BOAl

utmost derision of this new Bvatem of t!ie lieavena, For example,*
he declares it to be most fallacious: " nobit constat falntsimum
etM." And agaiuit " Veruntamen in gystemate Coperniei multa
et magna inveniuntur ineommoda." In evidence, moreover, that
SacoD wBB not solitary in treating tlie matter tbuB as utterly
beyond belief it may be mentioned, tbat Tycho Brabe was incre-
dulouB of the annual and diurnal revolution of the globe; and,
speaking of this same Tycho Brabe, "WhewellJ declares, that his
" must ever be oue of the greatest names in astronomy." It is
hardly surprising, therefore, that the Papacy should have refused
to regard that system in Galileo's own time aa even then defi-
nitely established. Galileo appears to have been pronounced
" heretical," not doctrinally, but simply according to the formula
of a customary document. The condemned himself, in writing to
Benieri after bis abjuration, said that they had nuarlt/ declared
him a heretic; while as Magalotti remarks, "it requires an
Ecumenical council to declare a doctrinal heresy."

As the first individual who ever applied Geometry and Experi-
ment to Natural Philosophy, Galileo Galilei must always occupy
a supreme position among the nobleat intellects of whom the
world has record. He proved that the phenomena of nature
were only to be comprehended thoroughly upon testing them by
mathematical analysis : and by bis discoveries of the telescope,
the raicroBCope, the pendulum, the sector, and the hydrostatic
balance, he materially aided in the establishment of his proposi-
tion. Of the authenticity of those discoveries by Galileo we are
BO fully convinced, that we would challenge even the most adroit
logician to trace the original suggestion of any one amongst
them to Metins, Jansen, Lipperbey, or Fuccarius ; or, for that
matter, to deteriorate the claims of our philosopher, by adyoeat-
ing, as in any way superior, those of Fracastoro, Porta, Digges,
or i)e Donnius. Excepting that the librationa of the moon were
originally obaerved by Galileo to be afterwards explained by
Gassini, and that the former was the first to give emphasis to the
aurmise of Miestlin and Da Vinci, by declaring the feeble glim-
mer upon the uDilluminated side of our satellite to be earlhthina
— we shall subjoin no further comments upon his celestial disco-
veries. But as a testimony that those discoveries have proved of
practical advantage to his posterity, it need only be Doroe in
mind that the satellilea of Jupiter, or, as they were called by
Galileo, the Medician stars, have aflbrded, and still continue to

• Da Ang. Sci. \\b. lii. o. ^■
K + Opera Omnis., loV. ■"- ■&■ ^^■

^^^^^ t Fill. JviJ. Sci. Vi. a^°

GALILEO GALILEI — ^THE ASTRONOMER. 369

"afford the easiest method of ascertaining terrestrial longitudes."
Perhaps this renowned Italian displayed his powers of argument
to the greatest advantage, in demonstrating that the floating of
bodies depended in nowise upon their form: in the exposition
of which, according to Whewell, " the happy genius of Galileo is
the more remarkable," inasmuch as the discussion was entangled
with the phenomena of capillary or molecular attraction. As a
writer, the Tuscan assumes a considerable eminence amongst his
countrymen, both from the elegance of his diction, the playful-
ness of his humour, the agreeable discursiyeness of his speculations,
and the solid originality of thought by which they are charac-
terised. H Saggiatore, or the Essayer, is generally regarded as
his masterpiece, and is looked upon by many as " a perfect speci-
men of philosophical composition." Although never married,
the affection evinced by Galileo towards his three illegitimate
children, Vincenzo, Julia, and Polisenna, proves that he was not
incapable of appreciating, to the full, the delights of domestic
affection. Of a cheerful countenance and a noble mien, particularly
in his old age, brilliant in conversation, and a moderate lover of
the goblet, Galileo was especially fitted for society, and from his
convivial disposition became an universal favourite. Hasty in
temperament, his anger speedily evaporated ; and though a depre-
ciator of Tasso, he loved Ariosto and Petrarch. If we cannot
possibly coincide with Hume, in looking upon Bacon as " inferior
to his contemporary Galileo," we can at least confess, that the
latter is not unworthy of being coupled with the founder of the
Inductive System of Philosophy; for Professor Playfair, in his
comprehensive dissertation on the Mathematical and Physical
Sciences, designates the Italian '* one of those to whom human
knowledge is under the greatest obligations." As the one first
privileged to scan the majesty and the mystery of God in his
planets, Galileo is to us invested with an enduring and peculiar
glory : he may truly be said to have conveyed to the senses of
his fellow-men the music of the spheres in the regularity of their
motion, and the symmetry of their proportions.

W. M. THACKEEAY— THE SATIRIST-HUMORIST.

Theee ia scarcely any one, we suppose, wlio is not familiar with
that chartning optical illuHion known as a series of Diseohing
ViewB. "We all rememher it as a scientific toy, standing about
midway, in point both of time and excellence, between the old
Mapic L»ntern of childhood and that wonderful new-fangled
world-in -little — that double-barrelled microcosm of photography —
the Stereoscope. Don't we all of ua bear vividly enough in recol-
lection the mingled surprise and suspense with which we first
watched those marvellous fluctuations of light and shadow upon
the disc of the Dissolving Views, as we sat id the darkened eihi-
bition-room — picture fadmg into picture — the variegated colours
and manifold outlines of each glowing radiantly for a while upon
tlie spectral canvas accordingly as, turn by turn, the paintings
streamed upon it from the lens of the invisible microscope. It
was the realization for once of the wizard mirror of the Necro-
mancer. "We were guests at length, for a delightful interval, of
our old friend Cornelius Agrippa, or of that more modern inti-
mate, no less than Cornelius Agrippa, King of the Seers and
Master of the Arcana of all the Dai'ker Sciences, Balaamo, the
Eosicrueian.

It hftppeus, let ua say, that we are gazing upon some beau-
tiful landscape, umbrageous with foliage, diaphanous with sun-
shine, exquisite in its aerial perspective, when, gradually, while
we are yet looking at it, there steals oi'er the sjlvan panorama
some namtless ghost of a change. The hues are paling oif imper-
ceptibly — the shapes are fainting away into shadows — their out-
lines are becoming blurred — a blending of mist and mystery ;
until— lo! a granite pillar starts abruptly out of the leafy oak-
trancbes in the foreground — tbe fiagment of a groined roof ia
ffliaiintriog upon a auddeu tbTOug\i X,\ie vXyMift — an.ov^ftV'fiiadow,

£:orgeou9 wjtii jstained glass, octvipiea t\ie -va\i4.\6 &»,\,Biisajrai&.va.

the uexc iuatiml we are moxveiliue ^^ '^-'^^ uw^^-ies v^«\(™^«

i

W. M. THACKERAY — THE SATIItlST-HUMORIST. 371

gazing upon the green country-side, but musing among the mys-
tical glories of the interior of some old Gothic cathedral.

Nevertheless — scarcely have we become familiarized with the
peculiarities of this new spectacle, when a surging billow, it may
be, rolls out of the tesselated pavement — high up in the rood-loft
the gilded organ-pipes are webbed over with a sudden tracery of
shrouds and rigging — a jib-booin sprouts unexpectedly out of the
half- transparent architecture ; and — in one other twinkling
change — we are watching the progress of a rising storm, far out
at sea, in the midst of some disastrous shipwreck.

It is now some fifteen years since a series of transforma-
tions quite as remarkable in their way appeared upon the surface
of a yet more magical spectrum — that mirror held up now-a-days,
in lieu of the drama, before Nature as seen in Society — the re-
flective and (shall it be confessed ?) sometimes distorting circle of
our periodical literature.

There, among other shifting forms and features, had appeared
during several years previously, a succession of whimsical person-
ages, grotesquely emanating, one after another, from the same
variable imagination. They moved in motley. They talked in
feigned voices. It was the shadow of one fantastic entity seen in
a variety of different disguises. Now it was no other than George
Pitz boodle who, from his corner in the Omnium Club, quizzed the
whole social system through the medium of his Confessions. Now
it was dear garrulous old Michael Angelo Titmarsh, perpetually
laughing at us through his comical spectacles, saving only at rare
moments when, his keen sight becoming dim with emotion, he
would whisk the glasses off to rub them dry, with the tears in his
voice. Now it was the straddling saunter of the immortal Charles
Fitzroy Plantagenet Yellowplush, luring us into attention from
the first moment of his preposterous apparition — his (no doubt,
badly mended) goosequill dropping wisdom from it as he jotted
down his observations upon men and things, in splotches of
excruciating orthography. Here it was the assumed " alter ego,"
or archetype of Snob, delineating with tlie point of a scalpel,
specimen after ^specimen of his own peculiar "genus," pinning
them down upon his page, one by one, as actually and substan-
tially as the perforated spoil of the entomologist. Here, again,
it was that prize-wag — fed upon the oat-cake of laughter — the
memorable Eat Contributor, jovially shaking his sides and qu£
own too, sympatheticaDy, by the contaj^ora. <2»l ^^ ^^^^^ssskq^..
Another while it was excellent M.T. ^to^t^.^^vcdl^*^'*^^^^.'*^^^'^
irreaiatihie gravity poking fun at \i\a m^^vi>i^^^^'^ ^^"^^1^^ "^
from the paternal nest, preening \i\^ ne^ni-^^^^^^ ^^ «^

ijOOTPBlSTS ON THE ROiU).

Bcanty Bunbeams finding their way askew into Fig Tree Court,
Inner Temple. Now we were excbanging appreciative winks
with hoceBt Spec, tender abbreviation for the well-beioved spec-
tacles. Now — amazed at our even momentary mention of such
doggrel — we found ourselves listening to the warblinga of
Policeman X. Now — not less in spite of ourselves — we found
our Knze fined adniiringly upon the obtrusive cheek and affiuent
wbiskerB of Jeames, otherwiBe, after his promotioo from Buckley-
square to the Halbany, Cbawlee Jeamea de la Pluche, Esi].
Wonderfully dissimilar personages, all of these, it must be ac-
knowledged — yet some among Ihem carrying conspicuously into
the throng of their ooatemporarips a common and thenceforth,
familiar charaeteristic ; to wit, those two amazingly bulbous calves
upon which certain of these imaginary creatures stalk down their
respective narratives to our unspeakable admiration ! Calves
Ruch as Perseus might, in a happy moment, have caught, ranged
two and two down the palace staircase, and thereupon, with a.
flash of his Medusa- shield, have appropriately ossified into
baluatrades. Portentous protuberances of muscle, distinctively
appertaining, above all, to tliose twin chiefs of Flunkeydom — the
renowned Jeatnes and the delightful Tellowplur-h. This perpe-
tually recurrent characteristic formed confessedly, however, it
should be observed, "a weakness" with the creator of them.
Has he not, in truth, in one of the earlier chapters of his great
"Book of Snobs," when pausing suddenly before a cluster of
menials in plush breeches, in order to indulge himself with the
confession — has be not fondly particularized " that delightful
quivering swagger of the calvea, which has always" — he there
ucknowledges it — " had a frantic fascination for us." And so—
with that "delightful quivering swagger" — pass on to immortality
the calves of Jeames and Tellowpluah ! "

The fortunate moment eventually arrived, however, when a
less grotesque change was to flutter across the mobile features
revealed to us in this singular species of literary phantasmagoria.
The applauded actor was at last to appear himself in proprid per-
sond before the footlights. Mask aud motley thrown behind the
side-sceuea, as no longer requisite. Dropped ofi' tbe false pad-
ding of the Fat Contributor 1 Faded out like a blush the claret
complexion of Mr. Brown, Senior! Dwindled away into ghostly
nothingneBB, even the fleshy proportions of the celebrated legs
slFeady particularized! Tne guttwtal wapgeriea of Spec, no
longer Budihle. Silenced the \u\ano\ia *(^fea^o1%fttJtt\itliind the
gfeen fta/ze curtain of Mr. Piinc\i,ttieii\Kao.a;«. "S(j4ssi!{,\!&. lA.
^' 8. Fitzhoodle but Mb -wit ; ot oST&- £»..'SLv\.xi>M%V\,AA^i-a -

f I Ti ■ M n nil

taclea. Instead of any one among these fancy portraits sketched
by the hand of the inviaible artist, there at lengtb appeared before
us a life-like preseatment of that artist himself. The features of
the author (no longer anonymous) reflected in hia own polished
looliing-glaBS, framed in hie own first-ackoow] edged title-page j
features snon afterwards portrayed with infinite skill by the
graver of Francis Holl, from the inimitable pencilling by Samuel
Laurence,

An impression of this admirable likeness hung till very recently
— poasibly hangs to tbis very day — upon tbe wall of a little old-
faaliioned sittiug-room, on the ground floor of a mournful-looking
house, upon the borders of a churchyard in the wilds of York-
shire, Jiot so many years ago, it was installed there as the moat
cherished among all the household goda of one of the keeneat-
■witted women in England. The character revealed in this vivid
portraiture, the contour of the head, the expression of tbe fea-
tures, Charlotte Bronte cleverly epitomized in tbe eiclamation, to
which she is reported to have given utterance when first looking
at the picture; — "And there came up a lion out of Judah!" This
occurring upon tbe occasion of her first seeing the original drawing
in the metropolis. Afterwards, when a copy of the engraving
came into ber possession at Haworth Parsonage, she anaiysed the
portrait carefully, with a subtle and appreciative discrimination.
And it ia, indeed, worthy of tbe analysis ; for, without bearing
about it one single line of beauty, it is the " counterfeit pre-
eentment" of a really remarkable countenance; the eminently
characteristic head ot tbe greatest satirist and one of the most
delightfid humorista of our generation. In bis own estimation,
probably, " not worth the sun-buTQing," according to the happy
phrase of Shakspere'a Henry tbe I'ifth. Tet, for all that, pre-
cisely the very face in which we can, every one of us, recognise
the caustic wit that gave to the Kovel Without a Hero, a heroine
like Becky Sharp — tlia geuial and gentle heart to whose pulsa-
tions we are indebted for the esiateuce of Oolonel Mewcome.
Esaraining "tbe great man's picture" (as she reverently term ■
it), with eyes of shrewdest scrutiny, the authoress of " Jane
liyre" observed thereupon, that the broad brow seemed to her
to express intellect. " Certain lines abuut the nose aud cheek
betray the satirist and cynic," she writes ; adding, " tiie mouth
indicates a child-like simplicity; perhaps even a degree at wi*.-
soluteness, inconsistency, weakneaa ia ft^aort-iNi^^ «.-»<t!it.-^s»-*^
unamiable," Jfevertbeleaa, »\ia TBtaa.tVa "\avma*wii!u^-i ''^^^'l^^^S
in regard to tlie picture, that " •&. ctrtwa, ivA ."^^"^^^ c-^^mS
^spreaeion — ' not to put too S.ue a "goVtA m.^Q'^ ™»

■^^^^^ FOOTPRINTS OS THE ROAD.

of spite, most vividly marked in tTic original is liere aoftened ; and
pernnps a little, a very little, of the power liaa CBcaped in the
atneliornting proceBEi." There stands the author before us, in
truth disfinctly portrayed; in stature, tall; in proportions, stal-
wart J at the penod when this likeness was taken, no more than
some forty-eight years of age ; yet already, even then, with his
shock of hair bo bountifully aprinkltd with gray as to be almost
whitened. Evidence beyond all tbia, clearly diBceroible through
the features, of the blending iu that shrewd observer of the con-
traating natures of the Satirist and the Humorist : a look at o
kindly and scornful, gleaming out bravely through the apectaclea
in a glance of mingled sarcasm and good fellowabip.

William Makepeace Thackeray, baving been bom, in ISll,
at Calcutta, might, ho far, have been claimed by the Asiatics as
a Bengalee. But it is pleasant to note of our intensely British
author, that on both sides he came of thoroughly British paren-
tage T bis mother being the descendant from an old Welsh family,
his father the last of an estended line of Torkshiremen, And
evidently, if we may judge from a remark thrown out by him
quite parenthetically in the first of his six lectures on the English
Humorists, where he is speaking of Dublin, as Swift's undoubted
birth-place — " but it seems to me he is no more an Irishman,
than a man bom of Engbah parents at Calcutta, ia a Hindoo" —
Mr. Thackeray, himself, implied a claim advanced on his own
piirt to be regarded, not in any respect aa an Anglo-Indian, but
distinctly, and essentially, as an Englishman. His ancestry,
whether viewed in reference to his maternal or paternal progeni-
tors, might certainly be described with a double significance in
the phrase, aa racy of the soil of the Angb-Sasons. It ia a
circumstance worthy of note, iu regard to these progenitors,
marking, as the incident does, the first arrival of the lamily in
the vicinity of Loudon, from the wilds of Yorkshire, that the
Eev. Eicbard Thackeray, grandfether of our novelist, was for
some years curate of Hadley, in Middlesex. At the cammence-
meut of the present century, that clergyman's son, father of the
future man of letters, occupied, in his capacity as a civil servant
of the Honourable East India Company, a lucrative and respon-
sible post in the capital of the Bengal Presidency.

Anything like a popular reputation now-a-dnys neeeaaitatea for
the winner of it the payment of a certain penalty in the shape of
individual publicity, this being indeed among the diatinguishing
peculiarities of a period (whatever otWt fevdaU ace yet borne
aoa its Atlanteau shoulders) unbviTtVetvei 6.^ aa^ ■ni\a'V| liwi
"" it BemblaneB of a liteia,rY or ^\c\,OT:ui. ceMso^K^- »«»«*»

W. M. THACKERAY — THE SATIRIST-HUMORIST. 875

the unnumbered photographs and memoirs issued from time to
time of celebrated contemporaries. The photographic art, of
course, is inexorable in its representations. There is no need of
Crom weirs advice to Lely, that the warts should never be slurred
over, but all alike accurately portrayed. Granted but ordinary
skill in the manipulation, excellence in the lens, purity in the
collodion, and those happy accidents of time or atmosphere, wbich
are essential for the production of a perfect negative (being to the
new art as the gift of melody to the musician), and the photo-
graph is by necessity faithful — even microscopically. The bio-
graphy, however, on tbis side of the Atlantic at least, happily for
the preservation among us of the customary amenities of social
life, admits of a certain amiable and rational amount of reticence.
It was reserved for Mr. Dickens to learn, for the first time in his
life, in the United States, as he himself recounts with delightful
gravity, in his American Notes, " how tbe back of his head looked
when viewed from behind," as he sat there in a railway car,
waiting patiently for the train to carry him out of a mob of
Yankee spectators. There it was also, upon another occasion,
that the same great humorist, having his gold watch caught sight
of by another tjnited States' inquisitor, was " asked," he tells us,
" what that cost, and whether it was a French watch, and where
I got it, and how I got it, and whether I bought it, or bad it
given me, and how it went, and where the key-hole was, and
when I wound it, every night or every morning, and whether I
ever forgot to wind it at all, and if I did, what then ; eh ? lor,
now ! do tell ! " Here, however, in these islands, we can leave
the watches of our great authors unthought of, save by our light-
fingered professionals. We can content ourselves with a front
view of those heads, to wbich we are so largely indebted : saving
and excepting, we believe in that solitary instance in which the
eccentric author of the " Doctor " is represented as seated in his
arm-chair, in the library at Keswick, with his back towards us
for ever, in the tantalizing frontispiece. Nevertheless, while any
reasonable man amongst us would shrink from the indelicacy of
taking an inventory of the lares and penates of a home ; while
any rational observer here would instinctively refrain from
describing the daily costume of the living writer of eminence,
with that delightful particularity wfth which the bills of Mr.
rUby, the tailor, mention the " ratteen coat " and the " bloom-
coloured breeches " of Oliver Goldsmith ; the outlines of a. <5flsft««.
may surely be sketched upon ova \.?^\eX»j wi ^wso. •««. "^^^"^
rendered tho&e outlines in a manneji! ^\sM^<i ^gto^^^'^- -^^s^
loiter and ciiat among the ^VXiai^ oi >i)aa ^T«N»t«^ ^^^"^

infraction of the laws of courtesy; if we but pause upon the
inner threshold ; if we abstain from lifting the curtain veiling the
porch of the triclininm ; if we but bear in remembrance the aym-
bolic rose can'ed upon the old classic ceilings over the centre of
the banquet- table — the rose ever since those days, or rather
nights, of the ancient symposium, imparting a proverbial sanctity
to social converse. Guided by this rational sense of what ia
alone allowable to the biographer of those very recently deceased,
■we would here trace in a few rapid touchea, the leading points in
the path traversed by AV. M. Thackeray, in his advance from
childhood to maturity ; from the period when, as a rough-pated
urchin, he first donned the gown, doubly famous now aa that
worn also, once upon a time, by Old Flos (Sir Henry Havelock),
and by Old Codd Colonel (dear Thomas Newcome) j upon
entering as a boy-scholar, the old monastic Charterhouse. There,
among the Cistercians, aa he loved to call them, Thackeray
received his early education. Eemoved theuce in due course to
the University of Cambridge, there, amoug his contemporaries
were numbered several who were destined, like himself to achieve
aome reputation in literature. Foremost among these aspiring
Htripiings, the now laureate, Alfi-ed Tennyson. Noticeable among
them — in a lesser and varied degree — Mitchell Kemble, the late
gifted Saxon antiquary; Monckton Milnes, now Lord Houghton;
Alexander Kiuglake, author of the brilliant, cyuieal "Eothen;"
with that other famous oriental traveller, upon whom we have
already commented, meaning the ill-fated and lamented Sliot
"Warburton.

Originally intended for a career at the bar, Mr. Thackeray
kept seven or eight terms while at Cambridge, but eventually
guitted the University without a degree, bent upon obeying
implicitly, and with all reasonable despatch, the earliest prompt-
ings of luB youthful ambition, then inciting him at the outset of
his career to become, in preference to anything else, an artist.
In this design be appears to have been encouraged, at the period,
by a variety of circumstances. Immediately, for example, upon
coming of nge in 18t)2, he found himself iu possession, by inhe-
ritance, if not of an ample fortune, at any rate of an independence
sufficient to justify him in carrying out to the full his own
instinctive inclinations. He at once started upon an educational
tour, as an art-student, through the principal galleries of the
^European continent. Pausing for a while in those travels for the
nore careful prosecution, of tift stviiVe* ftS. "B^ivae, TUackeray
'itered on at his leisure among IW Bcaieanfeft (A "^^.livj a.iA
ui/. TJifther, indeed, wbWe ^et, «.\u«iov,Ve,\i»J>.'i'«ssft.Na*

Ba«a/>

1

■wny, pencil in band, into the midat of the refined society of
Weimar, then, in 1831, still recognised aa the intellectual capital
of the whole Teutonic Confederation.

At nioeteen, hia artistic powers, like those of Clive Newcome,
were chiefly remarkable for the extravagant and rapid drollery of
his quaintly- Bcribbled caricatures— comical aketchea of situation
and character daahed off in pen-and-ink, eurrente ealamo, for the
delighted amusement of hia acquaintances. " Among the English
who tiyed iu "Weimar during those days," writes Mr. Lewes,
in his masterly "Life of Goethe" (book vii. ch. 8, p. 553), .
•' was a youth whose name is now carried in triumph wbererer
English literature is cherished— I allude to William Makepeace
Thackeray:" the biographer adding — "and Weimar albums still
display with pride the caricaturea which the young satirist
sketched at that period." Several of these bizarre scraps of
pictorial fun were shown at the time to Goethe, to the great
author's unspeakable amusement. And, at last, there came the
day, marked thenceforth with a white stone in the caleodar of
the youiig Engliahman, whan the venerable German poet gave
audience to the caricaturist. The interview baa happily been
described by Mr. Thackeray himself, in that charming letter,
penned nearly one quarter of a century after the occurrence ic
describes ; that letter, dated " London, 28th April, 1855," in
which he recourita to Mr. Lewes the circumstance of his coiiverae
■with the author of "Faust." Tbrough that epistle, as vividly aa
through the lorgnette of a stereoscope, we recognise the atately,
comely figure, robed in the long grey redingote, the blooming
features beaming radiantly above the white neckcloth, the little
red ribbon glowing in the button-hole. Fidi tantum ! esclairos
Thackeray, exultingly, at the close of these delightful recollec-

Several years passed thus pleaaantly over the head of the
young art-student, preparing himself with eager but desultory
application for those toils iu the atelier, which were never, as it
happened, to begin for him in earnest. How it eventually came
to pass that, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, art was perma-
nently abandoned by him for letters, he himself humorously
related a lew years since, upon the occasion of the annual dinner
given by the Hoyal Academy. There, within the walls of the
National Gallery, upon Saturday, the 1st of May, 1858, Mr.
Thackeray aflbrded that anecdotal glimpse of hia earliec Wi* ViijSa.
■vas ao especially welcouie to tdl vi\io \veB.v&. "*,, ^>s. ■"■''■■'*'®*^5?^
.ortion of hia autobiography. It >Nai6 ^"^^"^ '^'^^'H "^l^L^^
*ickem having responded 'to tVie toast, o'i. ^a^u^^^* V^

'■Wm^ FOOTPRINTS ON THE HOAD.

Tliackerav, nliose name had likewise beec coupled witb that toast
complimeotarily— aupplemetited the thanks of Boa with this apt
remiuiscence : — "Had it not been," he said, "for the direct act of
my frieud vho baa just sat down, I should most likely have never
been included in the toast which you have been pleased to drink ;
and 1 should have tried to be, not a writer, but a painter or
designer of pictures. That was the object of my early ambition ;
and I can remember when Mr. Dickens was a very young man,
and had commenced delighting the world with some ohanning
humorous works, of which I cannot mention the name, but which
were coloured light green and came out once a month, that this
youne man wanted an artist to illustrate hia writingR ; and I
recollect walking up to his chambers with two or three drawinga
in my hand, which, strange to say, he did not find suitable. But
for that unfortunate blight which came over my artistical exiat-
ence, it would have been my pride and my pleasure to have endea-
voured one (lav to find a place on these walla for one of my per-
formances." Happily for us all, that wholesome blight did really
descend thuB upon the pictorial leaves carried hopefully by William
Thackeray to the door of those chambers in rurnivars Inn, np
that stairrase thus rendered doubly and delightfully clasaic
ground, being at once the acceas to the abode of the historian
of Mr. Pickwick, and the true starting point in the literary
career subaeiiiientty traversed by the author of " Vanity Pair,"
"Esmond," and "The Newcomes." Shortly before this inci-
dent, while he had been sojourning in the French capital, Mr.
Thackeray had been industriously, day after day, copying pictures
in the gallery of the Louvre. Thenceforth, however, by reason
of tlie above -mentioned timely corrective, the crayon was thrown
aside for the goosequill. The art-student, forsaking the palette
for the stflndiah, settled down resolutely to work out his destiniea
afresh, and with redoubled zest, iu his new capacity
fessionftl man-of-lettera.

According to a writer in the Edinburgh, Jtevieto, Mr. Thackeray
illustrated hia literary career shortly after its commencement,
somewhat notably, by Betting on foot and editing, with distin-
guished ability, a weekly journal, arranged upon the plan of the
Literary Gaxette and Athenrsum. It is generally understood that
his pen contributed to the columns of the Tiineg newspaper,
during the editing of that greatest of all London joumala (it
might be said of all journals in the wide world) by Thomaa
Sarnea, the first of all London jDMrQalwla, His earliest settled
onesgement, however, upon the etftS ol ati'j ■^tvoK\M\, iaJwa, w
heUeve, from the September ol 16^^, 'i-V« \eii -Sftm «ws«i%-iiV

W. M. THACKERAY — ^THE SATIRIST-HUMORIST. 377

way, pencil in band, into the midst of the refined society of
"Weimar, then, in 1831, still recognised as the intellectual capital
of the whole Teutonic Confederation.

At nineteen, his artistic powers, like those of Clive Newcome,
were chiefly remarkable for the extravagant and rapid drollery of
his quaintly-scribbled caricatures — comical sketches of situation
and character dashed off in pen-and-ink, currente c'alamo, for the
delighted amusement of his acquaintances. " Among the English
who lived in Weimar during those days," writes Mr. Lewes,
in his masterly "Life of Goethe" (book vii. eh. 8, p. 553),
'* was a youth whose name is now carried in triumph wherever
English literature is cherished — I allude to "William Makepeace
Thackeray : " the biographer adding — " and "Weimar albums still
display with pride the caricatures which the young satirist
sketched at that period." Several of these bizarre scraps of
pictorial fun were shown at the time to Goethe, to the great
author's unspeakable amusement. And, at last, there came the
day, marked thenceforth with a white stone in the calendar of
the young Englishman, when the venerable German poet gave
audience to the caricaturist. The interview has happily been
described by Mr. Thackeray himsielf, in that charming letter,
penned nearly one quarter of a century after the occurrence it
describes; that letter, dated "London, 28th April, 1855," in
which he recounts to Mr. Lewes the circumstance of his converse
with the author of "Faust." Through that epistle, as vividly as
through the lorgnette of a stereoscope, we recognise the stately,
comely figure, robed in the long grey redingote, the blooming
features beaming radiantly above the white neckcloth, the little
red ribbon glowing in the button-hole. Fidi tantum ! exclaims
Thackeray, exultingly, at the close of these delightful recollec-
tions.

Several years passed thus pleasantly over the head of the
young art-student,' preparing himself with eager but desultory
application for those toils in the atelier , which were never, as it
happened, to begin for him in earnest. How it eventually came
to pass that, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, art was perma-
nently abandoned by him for letters, he himself humorously
related a few years since, upon the occasion of the annual dinner
given by the Eoyal Academy. There, within the walls of the
National Gallery, upon Saturday, the 1st of May, 1858, Mr*
Thackeray afforded that anecdotal glimpse of his earUftr Ixfie^ ^Vi^siRs.
was so especially welcome to 8ii>N\io \i<eajc^S^^^A^'^'!^'^ssK^i«KK^

portion of hia autobiograp\\y. It >«».% \>DL«vi. ^^^^^^^^L^^^^
Dickem having responded to t\ie to^i^t ^1 ^^«tsi«si2^>

genet Tellowplush obserrea of Captain FIupp — acaong other
epecimeuB of his qualitj^apeciiiiens provocative only of what in
Homeric phrase is defined as iuextinguisbable laughter — that
"he is a huzza, but looks much more like a bravo." Pointing us
tbe way majestically viith his gold-beaded cane, Cbawles Jeames
introduces us — we are ashamed to confess it, always upon the
broad^ grin, to llisa Shura's husband. He conducts ub iuto
" Foripg Parts." He relVeshea ua with a few " Skimmings from
the Diary of George IT." — skimmings, of course, at once yielding
us access to the " cream of the cream." He reveals to our scru-
tiny the various shuffles of "Mr, Duceace at Paris;" obliges ua
with a trenchant exemplar of " Dimond cut Dimond ; " and ulti-
mately hriuga us up short with a pathetic " Ajew," as already inti-
mated, from the lips of this preposterous high-priest of Flunkeydom.
Between the commencement and the completion of the Yellow-
pluah Correspondence occurred one month's omission — a hiatus
auspieiousiy Idled up (uuder date June, 183S), by those '■ Stric-
tures on Pictures" in Grazer's Magazine, which formed, we
believe, the earliest acknowledged effusiou from the pen of Mr.
Michael Angelo Titmarah. The sequel to this lecture upon the
Fine Arts did not make its appearance ia Eegina until aoothec
twelvemonth had elapsed, when, in June, 1839, M. A. Titmarsh
again put on the critical spectacles. Afterwards (it was in the
ensuing December) there was brought to light, through the sama
channel, that ingenious " Letter to Macgilp on the French
School of Puinting," which, a few months later, formed part and
parcel of our author's first substantive publicatioo. This, in
truth, was no other than the " Paria Sketch Book, by Mr. Tit-
marah" — a couple of volumes composed of misceilaneoua papera,
several entirely new though, the majority of them were eitnply
reprinted from the periodicals, Scattered through the letterpress
appeared here, for the first time, some of those fantastic Uttle " de-
signs by the author," fur which — etched on copperohite, pencilled
on wocd-blocka — Mr. Thackeray's writings so often afterwards
became whimsically remarkable. Productions of art, some of them
almost as funny, moot of them nearly as inariiatic, as even Tom
Hood's pictorial comicalities. As a draughtsman Mr. Thackeray
employed the crayon aud the needle habitually with too careleu
a rapidity ever to effect more, by their twittering movement over
level box or varnished metal, than to tickle his reader now
aad then into a cordial burst of laughter. With much of tbe
grotesque genius of the caTica\.\ii'\B^., \vo \\ai ^\A X'as.\a at his
jnani/mlative dexterity — acarc^iV^ au-^ mieisi ^je^o'tA. -OmR. jA,
fenced by the extraordinary s^^*^^ ^"^^"^ ^V^tV^A*"^-* *^

W. M. THACKERAY — ^THE SATIRIST-HUMORIST. 381

twinkling, he produced those fantastic emhellishments. Occa-
sionally, it must be confessed, dashing off thus rapidly a vignette
or an initial letter characterized by an effect the most exquisitely
ludicrous. Instance this, one of the latter, that is, an initial letter
prefixed to a chapter about midway in "Vanity Fair," in the
which a small boy and girl balance upon their tip-toes to a degree
beyond the endurance of any one's gravity — attaining an acme of
absurdity upon their pumps, beyond the possibility of an eclipse
by any similar imagining of Leech or of Cruiksbank.

Reverting, however, from the embellishments — which are but
the aits interspersing the current of the letter-press — to the
volumes of which they are but the incidental, and for the most
part indifferent illustrations, we may observe, that the work just
now mentioned, as a whole, does not, in one sense at least,
affect the merit of originality: several of the tales in it being
avowedly borrowed from the French, and reproduced in trans-
lations chiefly remarkable for the ease, the freedom, and the
sprightliness of the paraphrase. The narrative, if so it can be
termed, opens with a pleasant " Invasion of France " via Bou-
logne. It is agreeably inscribed by Mr. Titmarsh to his tailor,
M. Aretz, of the Rue Richelieu — a gentleman who had offered
him the loan of a 1000 franc note, proving himself thereby the
very paragon of snips, and one eminently worthy of the meed
of this genial dedication. As an attestation of his quality as
a humorist, almost we had said before starting, there is that
delightful record, by Mr. Thackeray, of the English bull heard by
him while they are crossing the Channel. Says the man at the
wheel, "That's Ramsgit," says he, "that there's Deal — that's
Dover, round that there pint, only you can't see it." As for the
written bad pronunciation of French, soon after we have landed
upon the shores of Gaul, it is here altogether as excruciatingly-
good in its way as Albert Smith's imitative spoken pronunciation
under the like circumstances. It is literally, as the Egyptian
Hall Polyglot Monologuist used to call it quaintly, " French, with
the unmistakable English accent." Turning the pages of this
" Paris Sketch Book," who can ever forget " The Painter's
Bargain " — that story of Simon Gambouge, where the invisible
devil who has answered his soliloquy of impieties, on being asked
by Simon, " "Where are you ? " says in reply and in the very
smallest of voices — " S-q-u-e-e-z-e ! " And, immediately, on the
nail being picked from a bladder of crimson lake in t\2A. 'wsss^ ^
the artist, a little imp spirta out on \\i«i ^^i^fcXXfc- K.^>^S^fc>^^^^
coloured imp of expanding ditaeiisvoixa — ^«a ^s\^, ^ %s^x.^ ^5s-
told, aa a tadpole, as a mouae, aa a c«iti — ^HiV«?a. SX ^joxK^g^

'TOOTPBDiTS ON THE ROAD.

r j)Blette and turns a somersault ! "Who ag&in con easily lose tbs
temembrauce of that other kindred historiette of " The Devii'a
IPager " — the irreverent legend about the soul of Sir Eoger da
SoUo, 8ueh as ought by rights to have been chaunted by ThomaB
Ingoldsby ; or that quaintest of episodes, " The Story of Little
Poinsinet," another Little Pickle as ugly as Thersites, and aa

» deformed as Asmodeus F Here, too, iu this curious melange, da
Itre not still bear Ju vivid recollection the mock-heroic biography of
Cartouche, the pieltpoeket ; the terrible history of Mary Aucel—
• leaf stained with blood, torn from the Annals of theiievolution,
and the sorrowful memoirs of Beatrice Merger, a poor French
eervant ol' all work — memoirs there penned nejtrly twenty years
ago by Thackeray, as simply and as tuuchingly aa Lamartine subse-
quently related those of Genevieve. Here liltewise do we not
listen awe-stricken to that frightful record of "A Gambler's
Death," a story with a horrible pathos in it, depicting in lurid
colours the career and decease of John Attwood tlie gamester p
The circumstantial account of a trial for murder, relating to us in
this strange miscellany the extraordinary particulars of the case
of " Sebastian Peytel, might have awakeoMl the enthusiasm, oa tt
must certainly have rivetted the interest of Edgar Poe, that
greatest of all masters of the horrible and the mysterious in
literature. It is in this chapter that, while speaking of execu-
tions, Thackeray writes, " It is a fine grim pleasure that we have
in seeing a man killed." Efi'cctive phrases are by no means
sparsely scattered through this maiden work of the Satirist-
Humorist, in which he already gives evidence of bia rare capacity
in the double character. Pausing under the. shadow of the
Egyptian obelisk in that superb central point of the French
capital, and remembering, as he looks about him, the scenes that
have been witnessed in that really " finest site in Europe," he
wonders to himself, drolly. Why upon earth they call it the Place
de la Concorde ? Looking then (in 1840) with au eye of keen
sagacity under the specious quietude that lasted for years after-
wards, until the arrival of one famous February, he declares of
Louis Philippe, with all the confidence of one far in advance of
his time, that " no one cares sixpence for him or hie dynasty."
Scanning with an imparthil glance the social and political pro-
blems of that time and country, he asks gravely — while discoursing
upon the treatment there and then of female priaoiiers — "was it
not a great stroke of tbe \eg\a\B.t\it6 to aiiijerintend the morals
and the linen at once, and thus V.ee'5 ^Xieaa -^wst t-jesisawa win-
iinua]}y Bjend'mg?" DeBcantuigw^oii.BOHi*^^'^'^* ^^i^Ma-cMHss,
^ of the Empire, he obaeiNea muat W^-gi-j ctli->i»ii.'*i'efc\ia'^

ST. iHS I

^Ui

W. U. THAOKEBAT — THE SATIBIBT-HIEHOEIST.

B kind of miiture of Dugueaclin and Ducrow — a felicitous
ment, reminding one of that celebrated witticism of Mirabeau, in
mhieh the great Tribune spoke of Lafayette by a double epithet
aa Cromwell- Gran diaon.

One of tLe most delightful portions of thia "Paris Sketch
Book" ia ooe glorious critical cha])ter upon French caricature.
It celebrates befictingly the genius of PhillipoQ and Daumier, the
rival artista of the Charivari. It relates, among other thinga,
how they iu their time have immortalised through their ineffably
ridiculous lithographs the knaveries of Uobert Macaire, aiid of
poor dear stupid Bertrand the perpetual accomplice of that most
clever and ragged of rapacalliona. Phlllipon it was, by the way,
eapecially, who asaisted so very materially, with tbe point of his
■wicked lead-pencil, in bringing about eventually the third (and
let ua hope, final) Preucli Uevolution. He assisted thua in
preparing for it, by discovering in regard to the citizen-king
that — as the Arab eiclaima with diagust in the ballad of Bon
G-ualtier — " His head ia like a pear 1 " And there — thanks to
Phillipon — week after week that pear dangled and mellowed
among the leaves of the Charivari ; until, at length, in Napoleouio
phrase, Tha Pear Being Ripe, fell from its high estate at the drat
breeze of the February Kevolution.

Throughout these initial volumea of his, however, Thackeray is
eapecially bounteoua in regard to art. He himself was juat fresh
from it ; lie waa yet great upon it ; it was slOi in a manner his
hobby, in retrospect. Writing upon thia theme to a certain extent,
as an ex-artist, ex cathedrd, be by uo means, as an art-critic, lectured
ua even into the merest momentary notion of his infaliibility.
We diil'er with him in his opinions, we dissent from his conclu-
eious, we recoil when he blaaphemea Baphael, the divinest of all
painters— actually (at page 156, vol. i.) deaignutiug as " donkeys "
those who do not accord to him, in the flagrant heresy, an im-
plicit agreement. Tet, for the moat part, when goaaipiiig upun
art topics, Mr. Titmarsh ia peculiarly delightful : he is then,
beyond a doubt, especially amusing. Proteaiing againat the long
nightmare of French classiciam, he designaiea it "a claasicism
inspired by rouge, gas-lampa, and a few lines in Lemprifere,"
But, exulting later on over the dowuiiiil of the populaiiCy of
Davidism and classicism, he cries out ezultingly — " Claaaicism is
dead. Sir John Froiaaart has taken Dr. Leraprifere by th« tows,,
and reigns aovereign." While enuuciatTO^ wmwi^'Oi^ e&wi.'^Ns*
preference for landscapes, lie observes, altet \!ci« Ss^e.«s9."C*»^-;' ""
ner of Leigh Hunt— "Fancy Iwmg va a xoa-£Q.;^\'e^^^-^
lolte LL-uaida.--, slaring perpetuaU^ \u -jo^xt 'i.'W^ •

of the true Hublime in art, however, is profound and thorougli.
If he revilea Eapha^l, he pronounces the apotheoni a of Buonarotti.
Speakin;; of the Hculpturesque masterpiece of that colossal intel-
lect sb " frij^htt'ully majeatii;," he adila — "Iwould not like to be
left in a room alone with tlie Mosea ; " wondering afterwards in
so many words, that Michael Angelo was not " scorched up " by
the fire of his genius like Semele by Jupitw. By a pleasant
conceit he likens Watteau to Champagne, Claude Lorraine to
Chateau Margaui, and PoUBsin to a draught of hot-blood; re-
marking, in regard to the last-mentioned — " I don't like indulging
ineuch tremendous drink." Then, taking hts reader by the button-
liole, " Confess," now, says he, " how many times you have read
B^ranger, and how many Milton ? If you go to the Star and
Garter, don't you grow sick of that vast Inscious landscape, and
long for the sight of a couple of eowa, or a donkey, and a few
yards of common." Yet, loving Beranger thus entirely, he is,
nevertheless, in these very volnmes but indifferently successful in
his attempted imitations of the master song-writer. Instance
this, his versions of Le Boi d'Tvetot, Le Grrenier, and Eoger
Bontemps, in which, as he himself observes so happily of transla-
tions, " the flavour and sparkle have evaporated in the decanting."
If feeble, however, in his insular echo of those glorious ciiansons,
he is admirably bold, vigorous, and disoriraiiaative in bis critieisnis
upon unother and a very different brauch of French literature.
Hia masterly survey, we mean, of one or two species of prose
fiction, then, and sume of them still, popular among oup Gallic
neighbours. Herewith he puts forward an earnest plea for
romances in general, ali-unconBcioiia of some he himself was to
write in the hereafter, exclaiming derisively to those sedate big-
wigs who avowedly despise novels — " Go and bob for triangles
from the Pons Asinorum ! "

Incomparably the happiest evidences ever given of hia capacitv
as a renewer of novels and novelists are those afforded through
his searching and scornful satire upon QeoTge Sand (other-
wse Madame Dudevant), and the New Apocalypse. One after
another, he subjects to the inexorable scrutiny of common sense
the various masterpieces of that intellectual hermaphrodite,
selecting each in turn, as though it were some glittering reptile
pinned down upon the page, and placed under the lens of the
critical microscope. "Indiana" — directly attacking marriage as
a religious and social institution ! "Valentine" — advocating an
amiable licence in all tbiiiga for ^ovrnw meu «.\ii. -^oiia?, TOaid^a 1
"Lelia "—what does he call it ?— '' a. tegaiat ^oij'TN.'HV&aUwstt.iS.
^^aiity, or thieves' and ^lostvtuUri aij'A\.««»aV' "Em^,

" Spiridion "^the religious, op rather ethical, manifesto of Q-ebrge
Sand, in which that epicene prophet boldly declares for 'Pan-
theism ! Here it is that, in words worthy of the then unrecog-
nised genius within him — words as noble in their eloquence as any
to which his pen ever afterwards gave expression — Thackeray
breaks forth at last in this cry of reverent and burning indignation
— " O awful, awl'ul name of &od ! Light unbearable ! Mystery
unfathomable! Yastness immeasurable! Who are these whb
come forward to explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking int6
the depths of the light, and measui^e the immeasurable vastnesd
to a hair? O name that GK)d's people of old did fear to utter!
O light that G-od's prophet would have perished had he seen !
Who are these that are now so familiar with it?" It is no merO
professional jester, observe, who talks to us thus from the '* Parii)
Sketch Book," but, on the contrary, an earnest thiuker, one whb
was already scanning the philosophy of life with a oleai^ and
comprehensive intelligence.

Our examination ot these earliest volumes from the hAnd of Mi^.
Thackeray has been thus minute and lengthened intentionally.
The production is, doubtless, little more in itself than a careless!
prelude to all his more highly elaborated after-performances. Yet
It is a prelude, we cannot but think, in which the gamut of thei
hitherto untouched organ was sounded — ^howevet carelessly — from
the treble to the diapason. As such, it appears to us not imin-
teresting to recall some of those prefatory trills and roulades, some
of those forgotten chords and harmonies, thus distinctly to
remembrance.

The following year, 1841, witnessed Mr. Titmarsh^s reappear-
ance before the reviewers, bearing in his hand this time, howevei*,
only a miniature volume, in which he t^cbunted in three letters,
addressed to Miss Smith of London, the incidents accompanying
the obsequies, famous thenceforth in history as '* The Second
Puneral of Napoleon." It was a timely effusion enough — ^not by
auy means one in the ordinary acceptation of the phrase apropos
des hottes, being, in point of fact, literally apropos to the celebrated
Jack-Boots of the Little Corporal 1 Boots, by the way, far
beyond the seven-leagued boots of the old nursery tale — having
traversed kingdoms and empires during the wearer's lifetime, in
strides preternaturally gigantesque, and now, aftel' death, carrying
him at one stride from Slane's Valley, uiider the shadow of the
willows of St. Helena, to his plade of ^ai and lm\^«i^\&L^ii€<$i:^^»Qi3L^
under the dome of the Invaliaes. .

Although Mr. Titmarsh is a ttue^ BTv\i6Tl,toA^'e<^'e^^«56^^«^^
to have felt somehow oonatmoA^ to YooV ^^SJi^^ ^w^ ^'^ ^ ^

upon the pageant lie hae recently been witnessing, he cannot help
blurting out, once in a vay. an indication of hero- worship, worthj
of a true Bonapartist. E«lating the historic fact, how the old
soldiers and the villagers walked miles upon miles across country
to the hordera of ihe Seine, in order tliat they might see the host
pass by with its twinkling chapelle ardente; and how those veterans
and peasants there knelt down on the banks of the river, and prayed
with Btreaming eyes for the repose of tbe aoul of the ^Emperor and
King, Napoleon — Thackeray cannot help eiclaiming, "Something
great and good vnnl have been in thia man; something loving
and kindly, that baa kept his name bo cherished in the popular
memory, and gained him such lasting reverence and affection."
Tet, for all that, the letters are written in a sardonic spirit
throughout ; even from the commenceiiieat of the first epistle, in
- which there is sarcastic talk about that veritable banyau tree,
spreading and dropping tendrils down and taking fresh root, and
expanding into a wider and yet wider forest perpetually — the
Humbug Plant ! Nay, so little is the enthusiasm of the writer
kindled oy the spectacle at which he is assisting, so feebly ia his
record of it coloured with anything like ini'atuatjon, ao keen a
regard still does be preserve for the ludicrous in the midat of the
ceremonial of the reinterment, that he there makes that moat
ridiculous mention of the aignal-cry uttered by the Comman-
dant of the National Guard — the signal that, reverberating
in the silence of the sacred edifice, sounded in Mr. Titmarsh's
profane ears like nothing less supremely absurd than, " Harnim
— Hump!" Yet, in eipiation, ao to apeak, of what might
seem but fiippant in the eyes of another even than an Iiu-
perialiat, there ia appended to the prose narrative of the Second
Funeral, the poetic " Chronicle of^the Drum," a ballad-biatory
recoimting the warUke glories of France from the days of the
Great Gondii to those of the Greater Napoleon —

It ia appropriately chanted — this stirring war-song — by the
lipa of the Veteran Pierre, one of the Emperor's Old Ghiardsmen.
As the grizzled warrior eings to us —

TiiiaoroBa,

twafl the Bmjwr

IT gave it.

(God bte

« him !) it =ove«

ablow;

I lud it at

Austcrlitt ficht.

Ab I beat oa mj dram La

tlifl mow :

we needs must listen to the dose -, -^a bib -vmisK ■&« ^anonox A
flfl e/e aa glittering as that o£ the Xsde'o.'tl&JiKB^

W. M. THACKEBAY — THE SATIBIST-HUMORIST. 387

this ditty is, perhaps, the best sustained among the lyrical efforts
of Mr. Thackeray. And although it might with truth be
described as also one of the most successful, it is far from being
our own peculiar favourite. Better than this, that charming
reminiscence of the Temple, *^ The Cane-bottomed Chair;" trol-
ling off with —

** In tattered old slippers that toast at the bars,
And a ragged old jacket, perfdmed with cigars :
Away from the world, with its toils and its cares,
Tye a snug little kingdom, np four pair of stairs."

* Best beautiful that homely realm of day-dreams, because there,
in the embrace of that old Cane-bottomed Chair, Fanny one
morning sat enthroned so bewitchingly —

** It was bat a moment she sate in this place,
8he*d a scarf on her neck, and a smile on her fiioe ;
A smile on her &ce, and a rose in her hair.
And she sate there and bloomed, in my cane-bottomed chair."

Better to us than that roaring blood-bespattered '' Chronicle of
the Drum;" the delectable souvenir of Faris life, preserved to us
in *< The Ballad of Bouillabaisse."

*' When first I saw ye^ eari luogkiy
rd scarce a beard npon my face.
And now a grizzled, grim, old fogy,
I sit, and wait for BooUlabaisse,"

Better, ah ! how immeasurably better, the cordial hand-grasp
of each line of " The Mahdgany Tree" —

" Here let ns sport,
Boys as we sit.
Laughter and wit
Flashing so free.
Life is but short —
When we are gone.
Let them sing on
Bound the old tree."

Still sing on with us, warm heart, large heart, and gentle —

'< Evenings we knew,
Happy as this;
Faces we miss.
Pleasant to see.
Kind hearia a^ii \ir^<^
G^TiUe aiid ^\is\>^
Peaoe to ^oux dL\)^\

^^^^^^-^^

•smi*' dS- WOT ^fll^^^^^^^^

Surely, thi^ is tbe dear old soDg of home for ub all. As such
we prize it. Ab such we love it. This, if wo nmat perforce make
choice from among them, we may perhaps select ae, among all the
IjricB of Thaekeray, our own especial favourite.

Although our writer, during the first luatre of hia career as a
man of letters, had given frequent evideuce of his abilities, he had
done ao for the most part merely with the average brilliancy of ft
magazine contributor, and a newspaper correspondent. His wit
had sparkled hitherto only in fitful and moiuentarj scintillationB.
Hifl metier seemed to be, simply, the facetioua — his mission to
crack jokes anonymously. We question very much wiiether he
hiineelf had any confidence whatever, even until a long while after-
wards, in his own capacity to realize, however remotely in tbe
hereafter, what must, m spite of bis own diffidence and self-depre-
cifttiun, have coloured at intervals the day-dream of his ambition,
namely, the hope of taking rank amon^,' the great Masters of
English Literutiire. Employing a grotesque image, that may yet
not inaptly eipreaa bis own uueonsciouaneas of his powera at the
outset of his career, and of tiie mnrvelloua capabilities of the
magical little instrument in hia hand, he might be described oa
merely whistling and blowing catcalls, where he was ultimately to
breathe the music of a pure and original geniua— through the
trivial orifice of a quill, which, at the touch of tbe lip of geniua,
becomes, mora resonantly than the golden horn of Clio, the
trmripet of immortality. Added to which he was talking so long
under maaka, in feigned accents, that we were without tbe oppor-
tunity even of detecting the depth or the sweetness of hia own
natural intonatious. Hushed at last the guttural croakinga of the
Pat Contributor, the shrill but variable treble of Spec, and Snob,
and divers other whimsical minor individualities— abandoned at
length (with a sigli) what he himself rapturously designates " that
pecuiiar, unspellable, inimitable, fiunkified pronunciation," fami-
liar to Jeames and YelJowplush, the pronunciation with which
Whatdyecallum, in Mr. T.'s own tragic record of Gray's dinner
(chops and rolypoly pudding) to Goldmore, asks the latter
" Wawt taim will you please have the cage, sir " — then at
length, but not sooner, we could hear the tears in the voice of
Thackeray.

Beyond any doubt whatever, the earliest indication of the real

strength and scope of his rare gifts aa a writer, both of humour

and of senaibiEty, was afforded through tbnt fantastic narrative,

"The History of Samuel Tttmsrftb atii \.V.fc G^eat Hoggarty

Diatuond," a, story beguu in "^rastrfa "^Vn^ailxae." Xa^asi*

^Dd of I8il, tbe lirat inataXioetA ot X.'ub ttirfw«Q -Soi.^'wit*
i

W. M. THACKERAY — THE SATIRIST-HUMORIST. 389

appearing in the number for September. It was not until eight
years afterwards — when the writer had sprung at last by a single
bound into a recop;nised popularity — ^that the tale of "The
Hoggarty Diamond " was placed substantially before us as a
separate publication. Yet, the charms of the little fiction, the
exquisite merits scattered up and down it, were recognised by the
more discerning almost immediately upon its periodical issue,
even within the first quarter from the date of its commencement.
A letter of John Sterling's — afibrding proof positive of this early
appreciation — a letter addressed by Sterling to his mother, under
date December the 11th, 1841, may be found, in evidence of what
we are here saying, in Mr. Carlyle's Life of that Thunderer among
London journalists. " I have seen no new book," writes Sterling,
in this epistle ; but he adds immediately, " I have got hold of the
two first numbers of * The Hoggarty Diamond ;' and read them
with extreme delight. What is there better,*' he asks defiantly —
" What is there better in Fielding or Goldsmith P — ^The man is a
true genius ; and with quiet and comfort might produce master-
pieces that would last as . long as any we have, and delight
millions of unborn readers. There is more truth and nature in

one of these papers than in all 's novels together." Who

may possibly be, we are left of course to conjecture. It is

but a spiteful and jealous stab in the dark, aimed with a pointless
printer* s dash at Somebody whose identity we care not to distin-
guish. But the appreciative panegyric of the friend then, and
for that matter during several years afterwards, altogether " un-
known to fame," beyond the radius of a genial literary coterie —
that assuredly is as explicit and as emphatic as any heartfelt and
unstudied eulogium well could be. Insomuch that Thomas Carlyle,
after quoting those earnest words of praise in his biography of
The Thunderer, is fain to add, by way of comment (p. 287),
'* Thackeray, always a close friend of tbe Sterling House, will
observe that this is dated 1841, and not 1851, and have his own
reflections on the matter." It is not, after all, very surprising,
however, to note the cordiality of those encomiastic and even pro-
phetic words of Sterling, if we come to turn over once more those
leaves of ready fun and trolic, of sportive sarcasm and unaffected
tenderness, through which we hear so many strange, but soon
familiar voices — a few among them, at rare intervals, thrilling us
with simple accents into tears — the majority provoking us to
secret merriment, or better still, coming do'«\^^i:^wi.^isw^^s$esisa^^^
with sleeveless errands of \a\x^>Dtet\ T^wi^ ^^ ^'^^ ^^"^
delighted to the quavering tone^ oi o\^ fc^xw^x» '^^^'^^r^''^^-
upon tbe great Mulcahy'a Ay deunoer, ^'^V«i ^— ^^ ^^

POOTPRISTS OS THE BOAD.

po-ortrait of her Sainted Hoggarty," let into that dreadful
machine, the locket (" about the aize of the lid of a ahaTing-box"),
upon the margin of which blazes the Great Diamond, the heirloom
of the Hoggarties ? Doo't we still watch, with malicious satia-
faction the convulsire features of Samuel, the nephew, as be gulps
down repeated dosea of that abhorred btach currant w^ne, ideuized
under the mellifluous title of Bosolio? Have we not a glance of
the eiil eye yet, flashed back from our indignatioD of old, in
regard to that sanetimoniouH Bro'igh, the swindling manager of
the great West Diddlesei Association? Cannot we find one
little morsel of fricasseed toad left still to eat at the hospitable
board of the Dowager Countess of Drum — or a single hair of the
tuft upon the chin of that West-end fiiquet, the radiant Earl of
Tiptoff, to hunt a brief while longer down the broad sweep of
Sotteu Bow, or round the curl of the Eing, or through the mazy
involutions of BelgraTia ? As for the minor characters, or more
Tulgar entities introduced among the throng of those more
elevated personages, they may, it is true, be meaner studies for
the artist, but they acquire more distinctly, under his hand, the
aharp outline and the warm tints of Terisirailitude. Instance, let
ua say, that priggish young clerk. Bob Swinney, with his " Sip, to
you," when summoned to appear before his principal — a sort of a
abadowy silhouette of the immortal Swiveller! Or good-natured
Gus Hoskius — the dim precursor of that delightful gent in
Pendennis ! It is, however, around the fresh, wholesome, little
womanly figure of dear Misa Mary Smith that was, young Mrs.
Samuel Titmarsh that is, and as such through her husband, pos-
seesoress for the time being of the Great Hoggarty Diamond, that
the one real charm of the book revolves. She is the central point
of the magic circle, drawn here by bis pen's tip, in this initial fiction
of Mr. Thackeray. Listen to that crowning incident in her hom^
life, aa related by worthy Mrs. Stokes, the landlady — the incident
occurring shortly after the death of the heroine's first-born, when
she hopes to extricate her husband from his pecuniary troubles,
by obtaining the post of wet nurse in the Couotees of Tiptofi^a
establishment. " ' Poor thing! ' said my lady [who has just heard
from the narrator the twofold sorrows, driiing the bereaved
young mother in quest of this peculiar and lowly situation],
'Poor thing!' said my lady. Mrs. Titmarah did not speak, but
kept looking at the baby; and the great big grenadier of a Mrs.
Honner [another applicant] looked angrily at her. ' Poor thing!'
wj"* mf t&dj, taking Mrs. T.'a Vai\4ier^ Vmi,' doe feeuu very
oaag. How old are you, my deai?*— 'Twe -we^ta mA V«ti
|y' aaye jour wife. Bobbins-— ^1«- ^'J^sast >i'at*. \ii» v

W. M. THAOKBRAT — ^THE SATIRIST-HUMORIST. 391

laugh ; but there was a tear in mj lady's eyes, for she knew what
the poor thing was a-thinking of." Thus, in that thirteenth
chapter of "The Hoggarty Diamond/* as surely as the Master Poet
writ in the third scene of his third act of 7^oilu8 and OresHda,
" one touch of nature makes the whole world kin :'* the Countess
takes the ex-clerk's wife, as a sister, in her embrace, while the
reader's mind leaps at the same instant to the recognition of the
unmistakeable sign-manual of genius — the expression of that
sweet, and true, and exquisite pathos, which is the inseparable
and inevitable characteristic of the world's Great Original
Humorists.

Already, within the year which witnessed, towards its close, the
commencement of this earliest of the serial stories of Mr.
Thackeray, there had been collected together, from magazines or
from manuscript, two volumes of his miscellaneous effusions,
designated, simply and explicitly, upon the title-page, " Comic
Tales and Sketches." Anonymously and gradually the future
novelist was stealing his way to public notice, under all kinds of
whimsical soubriquets, and through a great variety of popular
periodicals. Sometimes — as for example in that preposterous
story of " Little Spitz," which many a reader of " CruikshaiA's
Omnibus " n^ust about this time have cried with laughing over —
through the medium of an independent specimen of broad
humour, that tasked to its utmost even the illustrative drollery
of the pencil of that prince and paragon of Caricaturists. Beyond
the original monthly outlet for Thackeray's satirical and
humorous fancies, namely the double-columned pages of " Eraser's
Magazine," there was started precisely at the risht moment for
his own powers, as for those also of so many of his literary inti-
mates and coUaborateurs, that wonderful weekly repertory of
fun, in other words, that delightful little hunchback, " Punch,"
whose jesting has had in its day sufficient originality, and for that
matter also sufficient nationality about it, to make us often regret
exceedingly its never yet having dropped its second title of the
" London Charivari."

By hebdomadal instalments, by monthly instalments, through
** Puuch," through " Fraser," Thackeray by degrees numbered up
so many good things, that these of themselves when acknowledgea
— apart from his other more elaborate writings— would have suf*
ficed to secure for him in the end a reputation. For the most
part these piecemeal effusions have never yet been iaauad £rqmb^
the press of England in an m4ft^fe\i^'&xi\. ^oftxsv^ ^'w^^s^•"^i^^^
lective form as portions ot tV\ft io\a N^xim^'^ ^^ *^^ ^
"" Miscellamea.*' Several among t\kftm^\2^^^«^«^>^^^^

W^^^^"' rO0TPBIST3 ON THE ROiD",-

eite ahorea of the Atlantic had long preyioualy achieved the
honours of separate publication. It was thua with the sarcaatio
" Confeesiona of FitEboodle," coupled with the record of " Major
Qahagan'a Tremendoua AdventureB," that eiaggeratiou even upon
the extravagances of the mendacious and redoubtable Baron
MunchauBen. It was thua too with the quaint portraiture of
" Men's Wives " — meaning the model wives of Frank Berry and
Dennia Haggarty. Thua, likewise, bad it been in America with
regard to "A Shabby- Genteel Story" — eked out aa a volume by
several minor tales in the form of a supplement — that cynical
stopy which relates with pitilesa particularity, among other kindred
iucidenta, the painful ceremonial of & shabby-genteel dinner, and
the ret more painful ceremonial, if poaaible, of a shabby-genteel
marriage. Another of theae unique American reprints, again,
was an agreeable little omnium- gatherum volume, embracing
within the compass of 306 pages, 16mo, " Punch's Prize
Novelists," "The Fat Contributor," and "'IVavela in London"
— all these thus reprinted together being announced upon that
KewTork title-page as "By W. M. Thackeray j " the earliest
revelation of which name in authorship, if we remember rightly,
occurred, however, in our own country in connection with a work
BOW requiring to be particularised. It was a revelation, however,
of that now famous name, not upon a title-page, but at the
close of an epistolary dedication. The production itself savoured
somewhat, it must be confessed, of book-making. This was no
other than " The Irish Sketch- Book," by Mr. Titmarsh — a aketcb-
book, the letterpress of which was disfigured here and there by a
few of the author's prejudices, and here and there also by a lew
more of his iUustrations. The description therein attempted to
be given of Ireland and the Irish is, of course, by this time very
much after date. It could hardly be expected, therelbre, to
bear much resemblance to what Ireland and the Irish actually
are — to our own present knowledge. But viewing the sister island
retrospectively, aa it undoubtedly was when the pencilllugs of
Mr. Titmarali were but fii'st freshly jotted down upon the leaves
of bis Sketch-Book, tlie limning is not, by any meuuc', so much
the reflective limning of a faithful portraiture, as it is one
characterised by the bizarre diatortions of the veritable carica-
ture. It ia a hastily -fiuiahed picture — painted in distemper.
The general toae of it might be moat aptly described as sud-
coloured. Yiewing it in its own ostensible character as a, Sketeb-
booi, the effect produced waa tattieT ivBifiwife^KflivftonotonouB.
'ie outlinea were in Indian m\i, anitQea'^^^'i^^'*^*^^'^-'™'''"'*^
^^Uguiaedly is it in parts au exem^'W ot \tae t—^* ■^—'--

W. M. THACIKBRA.T — ^THB SATEftlST-HUMORIST. 393

making, that the eommeDeement of it is really little more than a
contrasting reprint from the liberal Catholic '* Morning Eegister,"
and from the independent Conservative *' Saunders' News- Letter."
The dedicatory epistle, at the close of which Mr. Thackeray here^
for the first time, plucked off for a moment the comic mask of
Titmarsh, revealing under that facetious pseudonym his own
earnest individuality, was addressed in the genial spirit of a frank
and cordial friendship to Charles Lever, then editor of the
" Dublin University Magazine." " Harry Lorrequer," quoth the
first sentence of the letter, " needs no complimenting in a dedi-
cation; and," continues the writer with an exemplary afiecta-
tion of bashfulness, *' I would not venture to inscribe this volume
to the editor of the ' Dublin University Magazine,' who, I fear,
must disapprove of a great deal which it contains. But," he adds
— and the sarcasm lurking in the words that follow seems to drop
more befittingly from the searing steel-pen of W. M. Thackeray,
than from the playfully-twittering goose-quill of M. A. Titmarsh
•^" allow me," he writes, " to dedicate my book to a good Irish-
man, the hearty charity of whose visionary red-coats some sub-
stantial personages in black might imitate to advantage." The
ingredients in the ink thus trailed across the paper, as far back as
the twenty-seventh of April, 1843, from the point of that iron
stylus, for long afterwards lost none of their poignant efficacy
either in sparkle or in bitterness. The caustic for years still bit
—the phosphorus still glimmered out in luminous scintillations.

That our English traveller carries with him everywhere through
Ireland a microscopic eye for spots and blemishes, he indicates
whimsically enough at the very outset. He has scarcely landed
at Kingstown, when wandering through the streets he recognises
nothing more vividly than its " shabby milliners' and tailors' with
flyblown prints of old fashions " — peculiarities, of course, alto-
gether invisible in the surburban districts of London and West-*
minster. Following no settled plan in his peregrinations, Mr.
Thackeray allows his narrative to meander, in the track of his
footprints hither and thither discursively, as the whim prompts,
pr — what is yet more potent with your pleasure-tourist — the
weather. A " Summer's Day in Dublin," agreeably depicted, is
followed by a true Cockney's description of "A Country House
in Kildare," And so onward, by the clattering oar, from Carlow
to Watert'ord ! Occasionally the future dreaded cynic of all such
scribes as afi'ect to clamber into the pulj^it and t^ tAk^\k^<«k
didactically ex caihedrd, cannot Yam^^Vl t^««5^ ^ \fiL^^^^5^»^c^'^
pulae to write as it were prepense, Vn. XiVi^ \o\.^i^» ^^^^=^^^?*"^'^'^
up to Bome high moral purpose, to \.>cl^ ^\\«.m^^a\iSSQKs^

SB

FOOTPRIKTa OH THE BOAS.

great social or politiciil innovation. Here aijaia, for example, as
already in "The Paris Sketch- Book," wo find him advocating
upon principle, and from the depth of hia own humane convictions,
the absolute remission of the supreme penalty of capital puniah-
ment. Sometimes, too, the keen-witted ei-artist-turned-book-
man gives evidence of his capacity, let us say, to take the
meaBurement of an agricultural district by a better Btandard than
the breadth of bis ruler or the length of his mahl-stick. Thus,
BO many long years ago, he estimates, with shrewd dtacemment, at
its right value, the then new and almost untried manure of guano,
Bs compared with bone duat or with Murray's composition —
acknowledging (vol. i. p. 57) that " the bone-dust run guano very
hard," but that the " com position waa clearly distanced." At
intervals Mr. Titmarah atill contrives by a single felicitous epithet
to hit off in a twinkling a whole vivid description: aa where,
upon crossing the Suir, he says they "went over the tbuudCTing
old wooden bridge to Waterford." Is there not a glimpse, too,
of the mannerism of that quiet humour with which we aftep-
warda became so perfectly well acquainted, but that was then so
new to us all, where he describes that house in Cork with "a fine
tester bed in the best room where my lady might catch cold in
state in the midst of yawniog chimneys ? " Better still, is there
not a premonitory flavour — something like that which Count
Xavier de Maiatre allutlea to in hia delightful " Journey Round
myEoom"(ch. 42), where he writea "it ia thus that one ex-
jjeriences a pleasant foretaste of acid when one cuts a lemon " —
JS there not a foretaste here of the " Lectures upon the English
Humorists " of tea yeara afterwards, where in this '■ Irish Sketch-
Book " (vol. i. p, 24) he muses over that mask of Swift's dead
face preserved in Trinity College, wondering over those painful,
almost awful, liueameuta of Dean Jonathan — "the tall forehead
fallen away in a ruin, the mouth settled in a hideous, vacant
smile P " Best of all, however, in these two earlier volumes from
the hand of Thackeray, as an unmtstakeable foreshadowing of his
veritable presence as later on revealed in its actual proportions —
beat of all as such ia that little incidental mention here (ch. vi.)
in the description giveu of the ITrauline Convent at Blackrock,
of the nun guiding him proudly among the " little collection of
gimcracks," dignified with the title of museum among the sister-
hood, Aa he recaUs to recollection how the young nun went
prattling oa before him, leading him hither and thither " like a
ebild showing her toys," Mr. TVincWetK^ ^ViVia ie»ACT,\\i. words
'/ iaSnite lenderaesa— aska \ii8 teiAw Sb. «. 't'A'» ifi^Ri^-Mia.
mj^ fami]i&r\j to the hea-rta ot mw^j Vviaii*ii& ^ "*>*«■

W. M. THACKERAY — THE SATIRIST-HUMORIST. 395

— '* Wliat strange mixture of pity and pleasure is it which comes
over you sometimes, when a child takes you by the hand and leads
you up solemnly to some little treasure of its own — a feather or a
string of glass beads ? I declare I have looked at such," he adds,
^' with more delight than at diamonds, and fslt the same sort of
soft wonder examining the nuns' little treasure-chamber." It is
but a casual fragment, this, from Mr. Titmarsh's " Irish Sketch-
Book," but it is a thought expressed in words not unworthy of
the author later on of " Esmond " and " The Newcomes."

The following year, 1844, witnessed the production, by Mr,
Thackeray, of another serial tale, issued still anonymously how-
ever, though this time under another nom de plumcy through the
pages of '' Eraser's Magazine.*' The narrative itself was entitled
" The Luck of Barry Lyndon," the writer of it assuming to be
one G-eorge Fitzboodle. It afterwards achieved the honour of a
separate reprint both at Paris and at New York, though at
home it has merely been re-published, we believe, as an inte-
gral portion of the four volumes of Mr, Thackeray's Collected
" Miscellanies." Meanwhile the weekly quarto pages of " Punch"
had been affording the author of " Barry Lyndon" more frequent
and effective opportunities for the display of his rare and original
genius as a satirist — as the one destined to take rank very
speedUy, by universal assent, as the master satirist of our gene-
ration. Yet acrid to the last degree of acridity, though he was
already demonstrating himself to he as & totirist, as a critic, Mr.
Thackeray was, about this time, frequently proving, as he had often
proved before, and as he so often proved afterwards, genial to the
utmost limits of geniality, overflowing with a grateful, cordial,
generous, enthusiastic appreciation. His romance of the last
century, " Barry Lyndon" to wit, had scarcely been commenced
^the first instalment of it appearing in January, 1844 — when in
the number of "Eraser" for the ensuing month of February
there came forth a kind of collective review, entitled " A Box of
Novels." This delectable paper, signed with the well-known
initials, M. A. T., is still noticeable, though never since reprinted,
as a critical argument, containing within it one of the most exqui-
site tributes ever offered to the genius of Charles Dickens, dpropos
of that glorious " Christmas Carol" which, notwithstanding its
brevity, we are almost tempted to select from among all the now
voluminous writings of Boz, as pre-eminently his masterpiece.
Perhaps Charles Dickens had no more ardent admiter^hft. <yKs^sssic\
never had any more unstinted panft^TOX., >iJaa5>L *0ol^ ^«r^ '^'^^^^^^
whose writingB during bo many «V3L\>^fe<^^^ ^«K«k ^^^^
absurdly held up by certain "bxm^Vng ^\iX>K\>ss\a»^^^ ^^si. ^^

rOOTFRINTB ON THE BOikD.

the works of Bnz, with a view to the depreciation of that delight-
ful genius. Mr. Thackeray must often, wo doubt not, hsTe
been of all men about the first to laugh to very Bcom the
COQcluoionB thus arrived at hy some of hia more infatuated
encomiasts. According to those eccentric logicians, when "Vauity
Fair" appeared, " Pickwick" ceased to be! The publication of
" Pendennis" rendered " David Copperfield" non-eiistent ! Kay,
the caustic worldly wit and wisdom of the Anatoniiat of the Snob*
of England, according to this newly-discovered mode of reaaoa-
ing, suddenly invested with a heinous hut nameless guilt those
extraordinary powers, both patlietic and humorous, which had
previously won for Cliarles Dickens a popularity that has never
been surpassed, if it has ever been equalled, during hia own
lifetime, by any one purely and simply a writer of imagination.
Mr. Thackeray in his time efl'ectively illustrated his own vivid
appreciation of the distinct difference (a difference discernible,
one might have thought, at a glance) between his owti powers,
style, tendencies, idiosyncrasy, and those of his great coutem-
porary, where the former has related in one of hia charming
colioqiiial discourses, how his own children once upon a time
posed him with the query, Why he did not write a novel like
" Nicholas NicklehyP" It is, to our thinking, in the peculiar
combination in ThHckeray's genius — in the very pith and marrow
of his genius — of the distinctive and vividly contrasting attri-
butes of the Satirist and the Humorist that his chief eicellenca
consists. It is as if his pen alternately, at his own variable
whim and pleasure, dropped honey and vitriol. It is aa'if theru
were blent together in the nature of this one writer the B\\eet-
neas of Gnldsmitli and the withering and pitiless scorn of Swil't
— the bitterneBS of satire, in its very intensity, mingled with
humour the most genial, humour with all its most graceful,
overflowing, and bewitching tenderness. Admiration for tho
Humorist, and admiration for the Batirist-Humoriat of our time,
we would simply insist upon being in no way incompatible.
The appreciation of Thackeray does not necessarily imply the
depreciation of Dickens, or vice versd. There ia room enough
for all in the vacant niches and upon the unoccupied pedestnia of
the grand Walhalla of Literature. To induct another Worthy
to his appropriate place of elevation, there is no need to clear
the way lor him either with the spiteful pencil of a Paaqnin, or
with the blundering hammer of an Iconoclast. How utterly dia-
tasteful tbesB ridiculous gibes Aweisei lugsvcii'v. 0\t'*.%o,a, with a
view to tfae glorification of Thackew.-3i'n>^*'^'^'"*"^^^'^3"*»»^-
t^imselt; auj one acquainted 'K^t^ "IWcVetwi % iq.-*w>^

W. M. TBXCKJEEIlY — THE SATIBIST-HUMORIST. 397

writings may readily enough conjecture, knowing thereby, as the
reader of Thackeray does full well, the latter*s intense and even
tender admiration for the genius of his great contemporary.
Contenting ourselves with one solitary indication of this pro-
found and affectionate appreciation, let us here recall to recoU
lection for a moment the musings of our Satirist-Humorist in his
delightful '* Sketches and Travels in London," where he is
startled by *^ the melody of Homer*s nose, as he lies asleep upon
one of the sofas*' of the club-house library at the Polyanthus.
" What is he reading ? " asks Mr. Brown the traveller, other-
wise Mr. Thackeray, the great rival novelist. " Hah ! JPendenniSf
No. yii. : hum, let us pass on. Have you read David Copper-
field, by the way P" says he, turning round upon his reader in a
glow of unaffected delight. " How beautiful it is — ^how charm-
ingly fresh and simple ! In those admirable touches of tender
humour — and I should call humour, Bob, a mixture of love and
wit — who can equal this great genius P There are little words
and phrases in his books which are like personal benefits to the
reader. What a place it is to hold in the affections of men !
What an awful responsibility hanging over a writer ! What man
holding such a place, and knowing that his words go forth to vast
congregations of mankind, — ^to grown folks — ^to their children,
and perhaps to their children's cbildreu, — but must think of his
calling with a solemn and humble heart ! May love and truth
guide such a man always ! It is an awful prayer ; may Heaven
further its fulfilment !" ^oble and beautiful words surely, words
before which should ever afterwards remain dumb and confounded
such as might yet meditate testifying their admiration for Thack-
eray by depreciating Dickens — "that great genius" whose writings
Thackeray loved and honoured not less than any other man out
of the huge multitude of his contemporaries. An eulogium, by
the way, the impressive close of which Mr. Thackeray failed even
then to recognise, comprised within it an orison for his own
guidance by the handmaids of Providence.

By this cursory mention, however, of Mr. Brown's " London
Travels and Sketches," we are inadvertently anticipating. Mr.
Brown had been preceded some iive years by Mr. Snob, while Mr.
Snob in his turn had trod hard upon the heels, if he had not even
jostled the elbows, of Mr. de la Pluche. Each of them tripping
jauntily, in turn or together, across the conspicuous proscenium
of Mr. Punch the manager — that pleasant little ^ew^^W^sssi. V$

»3^

Mr. Thackeray himself expressed \x.,\o\i^ ^i\«t^«x^^^*^i«i:^^^'^^s^
delightful p&per in the " Qoarterly ^'^ V\X,\i\i^^ ^^Tv^x^^-feR^ T"^
fklaetto voice, the "alight doraal irre^vkXsaiV*^ T wA'^^V*^^*^

^198 FOOTrHiNTe on the boad.

peroeptible ventral protuberance. " Jeamea'a Diary"
apropoi of that metnorable railway mania which the " Times," by
aingle "leader" — by a single phrase in a "leader" — brought one
fine morning to an abrupt conclusion; " Chawles Jeames de la
Pluche, Es(j.," himself shortly afterwards serving, by the potent
agency of ridicule, to complete the catastrophe. Nothing could
well be more laughter-mo viag than the mere orthography of those
wondrons auto-biogrsphical memoranda of the great archetype
and representative- man of Flunkeydom. An antieipative relish
of thia is given in the very earliest of the entries, i.e. — " 3rd
January — Our Beer in the Suvot's Kail so precimtt small at this
Christmas time that I reely muia give warning," It waa the
" Book of Snobs," nevertheless, that capped the climax of Mr,
Thackeray's successea as an anonymous contributor to the perio-
dicals. It is not only the happiest among all his many felicitous
serial papers in " Punch," but, beyond that, the most remarkable
among all his Miscellanies. Upon this wonderful instrument,
at once of torture and of execution, " The Snobs of England" —
here of the Million, there of the Upper Ten Thousand— were
carefully hung, and drawn, and quartered by one who dubbed
himself, after the fashion of Tom Moore's Fadladeen, at the very
outset of bis labours (aa torturer and esecutioner), " One of
themselves." How he trots them out here, one after another, in
ridiculous procesaion ! Mr. Punch's baton has slipped into his
hands, and lie deals about him with it unmercifully. Down they
go, turn by turn, one at a time, or half a dozen of them together.
Anybody comes in for it — Everybody ; his own knuckles even
tingling from the recoil occasionally. Talking of the imitation
of the great as a weakness universally apparent — " Peacock's
feathers are stuck in the tails of most families," quoth he (p. 75),
"Scarce one of us domestic birds but imitates the lanky, pavonine
strut, and shrill, genteel scream." Sometimes the careless strokes
dealt around him by this comic censor, blight as visibly and in-
stantaneously as a flare of lightning. When pausing, for ex-
ample, before one of the great houses in Belgravia — oue of those
state luanaions of " Vanity Fair," iu reference to which be
observes afterwards to bis throng of readers in the midst of hia
noble masterpiece descriptive of it (chap, li,, p, 449), "Dear
brethren, let us tremble before these august portals ! " so now
previously in hia " Book of Snobs " (chap, vi., p. 24), halting for
an instant in front of one of these patrician dwellings, — saith he
within himself, " Ob bouse, jou oie \B.\i«.\i\\eA.— otv knocker, yon
^ knocked at — oh undreaaed ftunie-j , aotrnwi^ •jom.-i "\m.-^ >^iia.
U Jean against the iron xai-Vm^a.-sou rae -^ixi.— >i-^

W. M. THACKERAY — THE SATIRIST-HUMORIST. 399

And thereupon awAilly selecting this same '' tremendous
thought/' as he terms it, for immediate illustration, ^* Look," he
exclimns, " at this grand house in the middle of the square. The
Earl of Loughcorrib lives there: he has fifty thousand a-year.
A d^e4ner dansatU given at his house last week cost, who knows
how much f The mere flowers for the room and bouquets for the
ladies cost four hundred pounds. That man in drab trousers
coming crying down the steps, is a dun. Lord Loughcorrib has
ruined him, and wont see him: that is his Lordship peeping
through the blind of his study at him now. G-o thy way, Lough-
corrib, thou art a Snob, a heartless pretender, a hypocrite of
hospitality, a rogue who passes forged notes upon society."
Yet, directly afterwards, the darkened face of the cynic dimples
over with fiin, as he depicts with harmless raillery the peculiari-
ties of that wonderful portrait of General Scraper — the picture
representing the General (who, we are informed, distinguished
himself at Walcheren) ^* at a parlour window with red curtains,
in the distance a whirlwind in which cannon are firing off*," with

* other irresistil][ly ludicrous particulars. A translation of this
witty little book, more exquisitely provocative of merriment, in
parts, even than the original (by reason of its being a transla-
tion), has presented ** Les Snobs d* Angleterre^^ to the wondering
contemplation, no doubt, of Monsieur and Madame, our dear
French neighbours. It is worth looking at, for a moment, this
" traduction," by those who have the opportunity, if only for the
absurdity of the thing, in beholding "ie» Snohs d^Angleterre**
aforesaid, tricked out for the nonce, as it were, in French ha-
bilimentSy straddling over the trottoirs, so to speak, in those
marvellous Hessian trousers plaited round the waist, the little
dandified kepi perched on the extreme top of the sturdy British
cranium, M. Snob pausing, we may suppose, when athirst, to
moisten his 'lips at the leaden counter of some small Parisian
wine-shop, with one of those amazing little sips of bitter nothing,
the petits verres d 'absinthe!

Prior to the apparition in " Punch " of either the " Book" or
the ''Diary," Mr. Thackeray had packed his portmanteau and
gone straggling off by the Overland Eioute, as that voyage across
the Mediterranean is, oddly enough, designated — had gone
straggling off to the East in a semi-official serio-comic sort of a
character, as Mr, P.'s Eat Contributor and Correspondent Extra-
ordinary. The journey extended not only, as thft t^Ji>\A ^Sx^
ultimate record intimates, " Erom CoTu\iiSi\.o ^«a^V \pq50«W5^^^
off in divers directions— to Liaboii, to K^Vew^^V^^^^^^^^i;;

Conatantmople. It was commeiieeA m xXie^ kvx^j^^^ ^^

pleaaant journey eastwarda, on, board the P. and 0. Coropary's
steamer, the Lady Mary Wood. But it waa not until more thnn
II tuelvemonth afterwards that the notea of travel jotted down by
Jlr. Thackeray in trafinitu were published in a volume, brimmed
full, from rim to rim of ita cover, with sparkling fecetiousQBas.
The traveller Beeme throughout never to have forgotten for an
iuBtant the aim or drift of the whole enterprise. Aa the Fat
Contributor, he appears to imagine that he must be perpetually
on the ehnckle. Sometimes in the most incongruous and
unseemly localities for a jest, he can hardly aet- for laughing — 'he
can hardly see, at leaaC, that the ground he treads on ia boly
tironnd, and that the awful sanctity of what he himaelf onca
designates, even here in hia Jeat Book, "the great murder of all,"
\i around him. The mixture of cyniciam and acepticism with
which he paasea by such hallowed regions aa the place of the
Holy SepiOchre, is almost as ofieiiaive aa that nianiteated by his
brother Cantab, Mr. Kinglake, in his radiant but refrigerating
" Eotlien." He is, neverthelesa, in spite of all thia, awed for one
brief interval into solemnity, by the iron aoil and the whole
Hpeclat'le of branded sterility presented to view on all sides, both
within and around the awful city of Jeruaalem — describing aa
" the most ghastly sight in the world," the blasted desolation of
the wild and rocky valley of Jehoahaphat.

It is aa a profeHniou^ farceur, or joke-master, however, that
he travels tnroughout the whole of tliis oriental expedition.
Although he buuioroualy depicts himaelf as laudiug in Egypt
pre[)ar6d to view everything " with pyramidal wonder and hiero-
glyphic awe," he ia, on the contrary, perpetually looking at all
around him with an especial eye for the detection of the ridicu-
lous. He carries his London likings, moreover, with him beyond
the ends of Christendom. At Alexandria, he acknowledges to
his having a Cockney preference for " PuQch " over tlie Sphinx,
and for " Galignani " over the tombs of the PiiaraohH, Scanned
superciliously through his Euglish spectaclea, the Sultan's
Seraglio looks for all the world " Like Vauihall in the daytime."
And precisely, aa Mr. Dickena startles us in his " Pictures from
Italy," by declariug (with parenthetical hesitation and three
notes of esclamatiou) that, as he came in sight of the Eterntd
City, " it looked like — I am half afraid to write the word — like
London ! ! ! " — so bere, too, Mr. Tkaclteray surpriHes us by cou-
fuBBing the disappointment with which he found Alexandria to be
fattt hke — So ut Hampton I Tel \vaa \ie V\i6 B^"j\e6\B.Uva glance of
'paJuter for the ripe and^aried co\ovirvQ?,cA-sia»«.»toavi*Q«*tS.'Ows
lUtkeea and crieutal ewjnerj. "liOoViins-vi.?,«iAwsisRA,Si»aSiDa

■

W. M. THACKERAY — ^THE SATIRIST-HUMORIST. 401 '

»ky oyer the market-place at Cadiz, he describes it as bluer and
brighter than the best cobalt in the paint-boxes. And, float-
ing once more in imagination over the waters of the JN"ile, his
luminous page reflects thus gorgeously the sunrise he there wit-
nessed — "In the sky in the east,'* he writes, "was a streak of
greenish light, which widened and rose until it grew to be of an
opal colour, then orange ; then, behold, the round red disk of the
8iin rose flaming up above the horizon. All the waters blushed as
he got up ; the deck was all red ; the steersman gave his helm to
another and prostrated himself on the deck, and bowed his head
eastward, and praised the Maker of the sun: it shone on his
white turban as he was kneeling, and gilt up his bronze face, and
sent his blue shadow over the glowing deck.'* Yet directly
afterwards, upon the very next page, all Mr. Thackeray has to
Bay about the Pyramids is this — " 1 confess, for my part, that the
Pyramids are very big." While, all that he can tell us about the
Desert is, that it appeared to him " uncomfortable.*' Journeying
onward in this mood — ^in search not, like Dr. Syntax, of the
Picturesque, but of the Droll — ^it must have been quite congenial
to his humour to make his flrst entrance into G-rand Cairo in a
race upon donkeys! JN"o wonder, with this unwinking gaze
everywhere in quest of the absurd, that — when stopping for a
while at Eamleh in the course of his advance in cavalcade towards
Jerusalem — he makes particular m:ention of the circumstance of
his being waited upon, among others, by an Arab ornamented
about the nose with diachylon.

Several of his facetious phrases in the midst of this habitual
jocularity, are, of course, it must be admitted, even by the veriest
curmudgeon of a reader, irresistibly ridiculous. What can be
better than his mode of defining the lethargic influence of the
lovely climate at Bhodes — ^where he depicts everybody there as
being "idle with all their might!" He seems to walk, as it
were, nervously upon tiptoe along the streets of Lisbon, with
secret qualms in regard to one particular hititoric recollection,
describing the Portuguese capital as not smoked like London,
but dusted over — ^having " a dry, uncomfortable, earthquaky
look." Surveying the sham architecture of the Sultan's palace
at Constantinople, he observes comically, that "most of the
marble is wood:" a remark about as oddly ridiculous as that
exclamation of one of those two absurd men m the farce of " Box
and Cox," the one who calls out indignantly over the gridiron —
"Hallo! my bacon's a chop I" Aimo^Xi \\a?s^^<J^^>:^A'^ X5:?^«vx^^
setting forth, on this Journey, aa \?fe Wn^ ^■a^Xfc^'^.^^'^"=^!^'^^^
the DroU, Mr. Thackeray mat^t cext%.m\i >o^^^ii?Jt'^^^^^% ,

^^0!^^ ■■ FOOTPRINTS ON THE ROAD.

for, scarcely has he laaded at Vigo, when we find himseir and bis
companions suddenly accosted thus by the Spanish mendicants-
" I Boy, sir ! penny, sir ! I say, English ! tam your ays ! penny ! "
Then, ia it not worth goins ail the way to Bysantium to arriTe aC
lai't at such a resuit aa the Turkish bath, provocative of that
deliciouaiy fantaBtic destription, assuredly better thau the most
vivacious frugmeut to be culled from all Lady Mary Wortley
Montague's CorrcBpondence — that description of the true Turkish
bath, in which Mr. Thackeray deciares that !ie was at last
" drowned in lather "^-protesting iu tlie mere spluttering recol-
lection of it — "you can't see, the auda are frothing over your
e_fe-balls; you cau't hear, the soap ia whizzing into your eon;
you can't gasp for breath. Miss Mac Whirter'a wig is down your
throat with half a paOful of suds in an instaat — you are all soap,"
In a similar strain of grotesque exaggeration, he intimates to bis
reader his profound sense of the hopeless decay of the Turkiah
lEmpire, by remarking that there, so to apeak, "the ready roaated
meat trees may cry ' come and eat me,' every now and then, in a
faint voice, without any gravy in it — but the Faithful begin to
doubt about the quality of tlie victuals." With what a preposte-
rous gravity he descants, with an air of tender interest, upon the
merits of every one on board the Lady Mary Wood— "down
even to the cook witli tatooed arms, sweating among the a
pans of the galley, who used (with touching affection.) to send us
locks of ilia liair lu the soup." About aa good in its way, that, aa
the mention made iu another place, of the lazaretto for quaraO'
tiue where " the authorities are so attentive as to sceut your
letters with aromatic vinegar."

Com^picuous among the oddities in these deacriptiona of hi^
there in that ludicrous record of the landing of the Bishop
of Paro, with his lordship's servant in yellow and blue liverj,
"like the Edinburgh Eeview!" Or, again, the
ticuiarly dry humour with which he uudertakes to dellneaie
ia a few worda the prevailing characteristics uf the Maltese
landscape, where, speaking of ■' what may be called the country,"
near valetta, he says that " there the fields are rocks, and
the hedges stoneti." Occasionally his aimiles are hardly less
poetical than they are fantastical, as wliere he quaintly
talks of that pinnacle of the arched entrauce to a mosque at
Cairo, as shooting up "like the jaont beauiitul pirouette by
Tag)ioiii." Tiiat he uas at length beginning to feel something
Jike hope in himself and \iia yiuae '\\ii\, Xaka \,lns queer little

niaoing cum men tar? upon xW \witui, uX. "Cce liose sjt V*

Qaemui Jucubrutiv,ila; "Tbia^u.^" ^^^i(A\l^ift,"■■& wmim*-!

W. M. THACKERAY — THE SATIRIST-HUMORIST. 403

wing of an humble domestic bird, who walks a common, who
talks a great deal (and hisses sometimes) ; who can't fly far or
high, and drops always very quickly, and whose unromantic end
is, to be laid on a Michaelmas or Christmas table, and there to be
discussed for half-an-hour — let us hope with some relish," "With
80 much relish apparently (with all its abundant accompa-
niments of "sage" and "sauce") was it discussed in this
particular instance, that Mr. Thackeray upon six different
occasions afterwards catered directly for the English tables at
Christmas.

Taking down his old dusty paint-box from the shelf, upon
which it had been so long lying, almost forgotten, certainly quite
neglected — selecfcing his brightest gamboge, his richest carmioe,
and his divinest ultramarine — our dear modern Michael Angelo,
him of the dumpling cheeks and the circular spectacles, Mr.
Titmarsh, for the nonce, came forth, to the delight of all the
boys and girls in the three kingdoms, during the winter of 1846-
1847, with a little pink glazed quarto volume of funny letterpress,
and yet funnier coloured illustrations, descriptive of " Mrs.
Perkuis's Ball." Setting aside, as the one solitary exception,
that homme farouche, who may be regarded as the exaggerated
type of the model Irishman of your ultra-caricaturist, the
Mulligan of Ballimulligan — setting aside that one outrageous
extravagance, an Englishman's notion of an Irishman, about as
like the original as a Frenchman's notion of an Englishman, with
his hiftake " bleeding," and his houledogue " bandy-legged," and
his steppare flying the garter over park-gates tis an everyday
pastime, and his Cott-tam interlarding of everyday conversation —
with that one exception of the Mulligan (proving the rule), the
characters introduced into this entertaining historiette, were exact
and literal limnings of people who had sat, or walked, or sang, or
danced to the author-artist for their portraiture. They were
literai-y and pictorial daguerreotypes, in the imprinting of which,
upon the pages of his Christmas book, Mr. Thackeray had taken
wit for his iodine. He had turned the feather end of his goose-
quill into a paint-brush, and had taken his pigments directly &om
the palette of Nature. In testimony of which it is only necessary
to recall the merest sprinkling from the motley groups crowding
the drawing-rooms, staircases, and hall-passage of Mrs. Perkins, in
our amused remembrance ! From Herr Spoff, breathing melody
through his cornet-a-pistons, to honest Grunsell, the attendiua^
greengrocer, draining Dottles beViiud \.\ife «»c!c^«vi\ ^^'svs^^^^as^^^
Thomas Perkins, busy among the macatooii^ xx^cjra.'^'e^^^^J^^^^'^^
Mr. Flam, tantalizing the Boveu loveV'j ^vB»a^ >^aR.Q».>^^^

how I Tvish I waa a dancing man," upon the very brink of an
espected invitation! An exnct companion, externally, to this
earliest of Mr. Tifraarsh'a half-dozen Chriatmaa books dropped
from the presB in the midst of the enBuing year's feHtivitieB. ]t
was only a companion to it, however, in the manner of its
appearance — " Our Street " being, really and truly, for the most
part valueless, utterly TaluelesB, indeed, saving for a few among
the illustrationa. " The Man in PoHsession " being obvionaly one
of these happier hits with the leaded pencil. But the beat of
them all, " The Lady whom Nobody knew," flaunting in gay
apparel down "Our Street," yet scorned by the nuraerymaida.
A blither, merrier book than any yet, tickling us into laughter,
thua with crayon or quill-point twiddled between the finger and
thumb of M. A. Titmarah, B.A., was the goodly voluniette, in
■which, during the winter following, he introduced us to " Dr.
Eircb and his Young Friends." Who can forget those model
boys of the model Bchoolmaater — or the subtle touches of nature
witii which we often get, at an instant, to the depths of their
idiosyncrasies ? George Champion, the cock of the echool, for
example, after the summing up of the distinguisliing peculiarities
of whose beautiful, brave, and noble character, our autlior pro-
pounds the following delectable sentiment — " I think that to be
ptrong, and able to whop everybody, would be the greatest of all
gifts." Tliere is Duval, the Pirate, too, in the record of whose
predatory career, it may be remembered, that we come, among
other larcenous feats, upon one most iinpressivB incident,
where Jones Minimus patising laden with tarts, after a alight
colloquy has the goods (that have been merely entrusted to
him) confiscated. Can anything, again, have a more comical
truthfulness about it than that touching example of " Briggs in
Luck ! " — " Enter the Knife boy — ' Hamper for Briggnes ! '
Master Browu — 'Hurray, Tom Briggs! TU lend ^ou vty knife.' "
But they are all of them capital, these photographs from the
haunts of Hieroclesian Skolastikos ! From Slother Buggies the
tiirt, apple, and brondy-ball seller, up to (or down to — which ia
it F) the honourable Flantagenet Gamut-Gamut, the Idiot
Aristocrat. With all the intermediate throng — including among
tliem Master Hewlett (in bed) and Master Nightingale (in his
shirt) upon the occasion of tbat inteDsely farcical scene in the
dormitories! Not forgetting l\\B vera effigies of the pugnacious
^ioxaila end dull Master Hulker, of Bullock the Sharper and
BackbouBB the Pill-Garlids— ieatVaeft, VNi\a \&af-ai«n.tioned, ao
ve/'j' frequently, to lament, \\V.e "SA-asVcT \^i^o\i6\ii So. -CaE la-wsa*
^fi&id by the Eer. Thomaa Bar'nam—

W. M. THACKERAY — THE SATIRIST-HUMORIST. 405

<* Then he took me by the collar,
Cruel ouly to be kind,
And to my exceeding doloar
Gave me several slaps behind."

Wonderfully life-like specimens, all of tbem are, of the academic
inhabitants of Sodwell Beg^is, those small inhabitants trembling
under the rule, rather we should say the fe-rule, of energetic Dr,
Birch — the swinge of whose cane must have aflforded so many of
his pupils a lively notion of the vigorously rounded development
of the biceps muscle veiled under the clerical broad-cloth.

Singularly inferior to the foregoing Christmas book were the
two immediately ensuing in annual succession. The first of
these, "Bebecca and Bowena'* — being in effect,. as the second
title designated it, " a romance upon romance " — partook of the
obnoxious and irritating character of a deliberate travesty — the
wilful degradation of the beautiful to the ridiculous. Insomuch
was the travesty here to our thinking something quite intolerable,
that even the piquant drollery of Bichard Doyle as the illustrator,
failed to propitiate us so far as to lure us even into momentary
approbation. Delectably humorous, certainly, was the little
woodcut in the centre of the ornamental cover of the volume,
representing Master Motley with palette and brush " painting the
lily!" But what possibly could, in any way, redeem from the
Malaprop penalty of " forfeiting our malevolence for ever," that
disgracetully laughable vignette upon the title page, portraying
Wamba as Clown, Isaac as Pantaloon, Wilfred as Harlequin, aod
Bebecca as Columbine — disposing the chief personages of
Ivanhoe, in fact, in the approved tableau preliminary to the
Charivari, the hammer-and-tongs, sausage-stealing and red-hot-
poker-brandishing, the comic busiaess^ in short, as it is techni-
cally called, of your regular Christmas pantomime? Somewhad
better than this " romance upon romance " was the next " winter-
night's tale,'* from the hand of Mr. Titmarsh, " The Kickleburys
up the Bhine " — descriptive for the most part, of a season passed
by an English family, once upon a time, in that very beau-ideal of
a German watering-place, yclept Bougetnoirburg. It is chiefly
memorable, however, this little narrative, designed apparently
for nothing more than the pleasant wiling-away of a December
evening, by reason of its having elicited from the '' Times " a
savage review, intended, no doubt, to be crushingly overwhelm-
ing. Hurled blindly at Mr. Thackeray, nevertheless, it some-
how recoiled upon the critic lik© «^ \>oQ\x^«'c»a\%» "^^"^^^^^^
Thackeray to a "retort polite," a xe^om^et ^V^R^^Si^^^^^
of preservation, as among tke \xap^\^aX. ^Sxv&\Qras^ ^1 ^^wNx.^

TOOTPitlNTS ON THE ROAD,

D-poict of the Master Satirist. " An Essay on Thunder aod
timall Beer," it was called : a mei'e little octtiTo pamphlet, extend-
ing to the length, or rather the sKortneBH, of aome half-a-dozen
leaves or ao, yet, by turns, within this narrow compaaa, dignified,
ironical, contemptuous, sarcastic, bitter, derisive, eloquent —
flaying the reviewer from the lipa downwards, and then steeping
him in the atjua-fortia of a scholarly and gentlemanly ridicule.
Scarcely a quarter of a year bad wel! elapsed after this edifying
literary One-Two between the " Times " and Thackeray, when — it
was upon a certain May-day, thenceforth to be held in popular
remembrance— The Thunderer, in token of its magnanimoua
reconciliation with its eminent Discomfiter, was doing far better
than merely Chronicling Small Beer (or souring it), by giving
to publicity in its colomos that harmonious " May-Day Ode,"
with which Mr. Thackeray celebrated in graceful stanzas the
inauguration, in Hyde Park, of the "World's Exhibition of Art and
Industry,

Finally, completing the fairy circle of these Christmas phan-
tasies, by M. A. Titmarsh, there appeared, not, however, until
four seasons later, the last of the little series, perhaps among thera
all the moat delightful, certainly the most fanciful, that pretty
" Fire-Side Pantomime, for Great and Small Children," " The
Eose and the Eing" — giving ua the veracious histories of Prince
Giglio and Prince Bulbo. . If for nothing else, it would live
daintily in our recollection, to the music of the little giri'a song,
aa she sings, dancing to herself in the wondrous garden — the
sweetest little lisping baby-song, surely, that Great Author ever
penned —

" what fan !
Nice plnm bnn,
Hdw I wig it Dever w&a done !"

As it never will be, let us all rest assured ! For. that little girl,
with her song and her bun, like little E«d Shoes in the Fairy
Legend of the dear Danish Poet for all Children — Hans Christian
Andersen, will go on dancing — " dance she will, and dance she
must " — down to the very end of the chapter.

Already, by this time, the Satirist- Humorist had been in the
enjoyment, during several years, of a couspicuouH popularity. It
was immediately after the appearance of the earliest of the little
Cbriftmas books here particularized, that Michael Angelo Tit-
marab, suddeolj, as it were, X)^ a »mi^ i^Viia, aAvMiced from
•idat the crovrd of brilliant -writers ?oT\.Uft-^ft«oSii'^ft,'ya».TS«=Q%.
^^d place amoag the foremoet oS fee s^eiA^NW^ •^'saS* *A -

W. M. THACKERAY — THE SATIRIST-HUMORIST. 407

imaginative literature. He had served for ten years in the ranks:
but, all the while, like one of the true soldiers of the Great
Napoleon, he had been carrying his marshal's baton in his knap-
sack. " Vanity Pair " became at once a new starting point in his
literary career, and the most lasting trophy of his genius as a
Satirist-Humorist. It is understood to have been declined by one
publisher, though happily the Sibylline leaves, in this instance,
were not diminished in number by that obtuse rejection. The serial
issue of the narrative began almost unnoticed. It was scarcely
midway, however, in its course of month-by-month publication,
when, throughout all the various literary circles of the metropolis,
it had become the theme of wondering and delighted conversation.
By the period of its completion, in 1848, Mr. Thackeray's fame
was already securely established — his name was enrolled forth-
with, by right of that one work, upon the list of our great Euglish
Novelists — he had assumed his place at once, and permanently, in
the inner throng of that illustrious and beloved fraternity.

ITEPPING-STONES— THE MEK OP LETTERS.

A FATOiTBiTB pastime witli me, occaBionally, id — how ahall I
express it ?^ — Htriding up the broad iEiver of Time liJie a stalwart
traveller &om Brobdiugnag ; takiog a whole generation in a aingle
giant step, and ao getting rapidly by hall-a-dozen zig-zaga over
the diatancB of two or three centuries. All this, inoreover, being
accomphshed in the moat natural way eoneeii-able, by the bome-
heet exercise uf memory, and not simply by what might be
termed a mere stretch of the imagiuatioD.

Obijerre, however, that I altogether and at once disclaim the
faintest notion of there being any presumable identity between
myself and that eicesaively dull personage, the Oldest Inhabitant.
A fellow wlio iuvariahly reducea one to the alternative — either (a
thing exceedingly probable under the circumstances) that he
hiniBell' has abaoinlely uo capacity ibr recollection at all — or (a
supposition that cotuinou aense and ordinary experience alike
repudiate with indignation) that we are perpetually living iu tha
nndat ol' events bo entirely unparalleled, as to amount to ab»0'
lute phenomena. Pliiloaopby having long ago informed us, and
having for that matter alao tiioroughly convinced us, thut his-
tory is, after all, nothing more than a series of continual repe-
titious or reptoduetioEH, And as with history, bo also assuredly
is it with matters of every day occurrence — spring bligbta,
let ua say, and autuamal crops, sbarp Irosts and big hail-Btonea,
Yet, according to the vacuum in this wonderfully uon-retentivo
noddle of The Oldest Inliabitant — the green buda were ftever
ao prematurely cankered — the apples were never so cideroualy
plentiful — Jack I'roBt never held such a pair of atmospheric
tweezers to the nose of any cummuulty — the lumps of congealed
rain were never so preteruaturally aud stupendouHly crystallized.
lie seems to be always going about like an insane conatitu-

Eiat in search of precedtuta, ihi.4 Yn^ver Gaiding any — this
auiava to be iiverybod/aaui ^-iv \4\ui:'.Mio.^.^^«N«A.l-.
I

STEPPING-STONES — THE MEN OF LETTERS. 409

Bemembrancer ! Ko, eveii were I as wliite-pated as the summit
of Chimborazo, or as wrinkled as Eussia leather, I must still
protest against, and renounce with unutterable scorn, the suppo-
sition that I am in any particular whatever associated with that
inconceivable, old, superannuated jackass, '^ sans teeth, sans eyes,
sans taste, sans everything," The Oldest Inhabitant.

An ordinary memory, indeed, is really, I take it, about the only
endowment in any respect positively requisite for the complete
enjoyment of this new species of intellectual recreation. An
ordinary memory meaning nothing more than the average memory
of any moderately educated individual. Endowed so far and no
farther, any one — ^you, reader, I, writer — may, in another sense,
not less than Julius CsBsar himself, according to Shakspere's
definition of him—

" Besixide this narrow world like a Colossus/'

Traversing the long, sweeping current of history, after the
gigantesque fashion aforesaid, by what may be called its
iStepping-iStoQes, we may any of us readily enough saunter back
from this present time, until we find ourselves, after a few care-
less paces, standing as it were spell- bound, hundreds of years off,
in some remote antiquity, employing oiir book-bom recollections
in the way here directly afterwards to be explained. It is for all
the world like putting on the Seven League Boots of our tiny
friend Hop-o'-my-thumb, and swaggering with a Polyphemian gait
up the Silent Highway of the past, to the *' tune " (figuratively or
literally, just as we may like to express it) of Thirty Years at a
btretch, or of " Over the Hills and Par Away.** It gives one, so
to speak, the sensation mentally of having buckled on a pair of
goblin stilts, like those familiar to the Shepherds of the Landes,
and of staiiung so mounted up the fiood of ages by steps wider,
chronologically, than the vast and awful steppes of Bussia are
geographically. Memory, so used, becomes in fact the Wishing
Carpet of the Arabian lights' Entertainments. Otherwise, to
illustrate the same identical thought, another little nursery-hero
comes tripping in to the rescue, and we slip on, as with a magio
shoe-horn — better than the petasus of Dan Mercury — the spring-
heeled Shoes of Swiltness appertaining, of yore, to the errant
leet of Jack the Giant- Killer. However, to attest at once the
literal truth ot all this by a few simple illustrations, come with
me, dear reader, while I take one of these same Titanic strolls
back towards the fountain-head of antic^x.^ ^ ^x^5?C\s^^'vt^\sv^^N^-'«w-
dajfi — atriding from iStepping-atoixe to ^Xto-^^^ix'^-^Vors^^-— "^^^^"^
jou H© Bhail £iid ourselves carried XiaioJeL, >3a ^i^'i^^^ ^^^^^ssas^

just half a dosien paces, to a period removed from this present
Lour by at least some three good ceDturies. At every raoTemeDt
of the pilgrim's ataff, it will be as at the waving of the wand of a
necromancer, of one whoae magical " Presto ! " mi^lit be the moat
aptly eipressed by a genuine Tankee " Go-a-head!"

STAHTIKG POINT. A.B. 1864.

It is about four of the clock upon an sCternoon in the early
part of this seaaon that I am aaunterinp alonj; the pavement tn
front of WhiteLal!, over against tiie Horse Guards, directing my
steps in a leisurely stroll down Parliament Street to«arda West-
minster. I know the precise time, leas by means of the dingy
clock-dial over the way — a sort of a tantalising, opaque tranepa-
rerey, neither white by midday nor bright by midniglit — than by
a cBsunl glance on either hand at my fellow Jbot-passengerB.

Honourable gentlemen straggling from the clubs to what may
be designated the rival Commons of Britain — and — Bellauiy.
The choicest residue of the session, hearing somewhat the same
relation to the Houae that pure gold does to the well-rocked
cradle of the Californian. Legislators who have been gradually
sifted down in the cradie of debate. Everybody is lamiliarly
acquainted with them, who knows anvthing about tbe precincts
of St. Margaret's. They are what that Junius of St. James's,
the mysterious and illuatrious author of the Court Circular,
would term the habituh of the House of Comuions. Honourable
gentlemen, right honourable gentlemen, and noble lords, n
stick to the benches with as much tenacity as Theseus to tbe
diabolical chair originally handed to him (no doubt with a polite
flourish) by Bhadamantbus. The limpets (to say nothing of the
Barnacles) of the state vessel. A select few, who begin the
dreary fun of the session by chasing Black Eod to the bar of the
Lords in February, and end it by meekly shaking hands witb
Mr. Speaker in August, somewhat according to the exem-
plary fashion with which tbe good-conduct boy tails after his
corded trunk from the awful, but relaxing, presence of the
schoolmaster. A wonderful set of iudefati gables, gvinding av
systematically, on committees, witli a atoHd perseverance worthy of
tue Brixton ireadmilla — told out into one or other of the lubbiee
on every division — haunting the doorkeeper like the memoriea
of an evil conscience — contributing, each of them, ever a certaiu
unit to eyery uncertaiu minority upon every count-out re-
corded in the newspepera. "E.veT'j^iioA-^ iA5ft,-«teiv i.Ue autumn
comes, will betimes pulV on la\B ^tt\«n?,-'^wit*. w (iwi \iA ^^nvs^
^ket, awa/ to the trout-alieam, ot \.o \,V6\\fta.*«it^ t%^b.O.S1i

STEPPING-STONES — THE MEN OF LETTERS. 411

deer-stalker. With these it will be otherwise : the only battue
they care for being the one knovni in parliamentary slang as
the Massacre of the Innocents. Yet, look at them ! these men
who may be regarded as the pick of the national representatives.
"With a few rare exceptions, they are, for the most part, as
unlike senators in their outward appearance as even Monsieur
Holand of the French Eevolution — wearing most of them, figura-
tively speaking, ribbons in their shoes, made of nothing more
than red-tape, dusted over with nothing less than pouncet. Con-
spicuous amongst the political mediocrities, however, as they
saunter down towards their accustomed destination — noticeable,
here and there, an orator with something like an individuality, or
a statesman with something very like a reputation. Yonder,
perched in the saddle, and guiding his horse at a walking pace
past the Treasury, moves by on his way to the Lords, slowly but
surely in the one inevitable direction, the noble Earl, the Foreign
Secretary, with the Sphinx-like profile and the (Edipus-like
sagacity. There, as I come at last within view of the grey old
minster towers, flashes round the kerbstone in his brougham, the
still sprightly veteran who thinks it such a capital joke to guide
the destinies of England, lolling on green cushions before a green
box containing nothing at all in particular, with a hat cocked
rakishly on one side, and a smart thing always ready to his lips
for every comer — be be some earnest patriot with a great wrong
to speak of, or the discoverer and proprietor in fee-simple of the
last new mare's-nest of diplomacy.

Here as I reach the corner of Palace Yard, immediately before
me I recognise another of these "old familiar faces"- — sitters,
whether they will or no, in the atelier of Mr. Tenniel, that great
Comic Academician in the realms of Bigdum Funnidos. The
identity would be unmistakeable, even to a country cousin, thanks
to the pencil that has so often and so deftly movea us to laughter.
It is no longer a noble lord from the G-ovemmeut benches, but a
Bight Honourable gentleman — ^the leader of Her Majesty's
Opposition. A second glance would be sufficient to confirm even
a stranger's first impression.

As 1 cross the open space in my careless advance towards
"Westminster Hall, i recollect the larger purpose of my purely
mental peregrinations. And the fancy then takes me that by no
more than six or eight of the simplest strides of memory, each
one naturally suggesting another, 1 shall have passed in tu.<^\^s^
over the heads of ten several geiiet«i\\oTi^^\i^\syt^^'^'«^^^^^'^'^^
the great state engine, the glaaa doox^ ^^^'^^^'^^^'^^*^^^^^
Bhali have swung to at the hee\a oi \.\ie \fe«A«^ oS. v^««^ ^». ^

T00TPKINT8 ON THE HOS

OppoHition, the member for Eucki oghams hire. Half-a-dozen, hia*
toric Steppbg- atones, or thereabouts, and we shall be landed at
the distance ol' three centuriea 1

^K STEP THE riBST. A.D. ISIS.

An interval of siiteeu yearH' duration briuga me readily to a
date within the recollection of ua nil — to au ociiurrence, as it
were, comparatively speaking, but uf yesterday. I am reminded
of tbat Idih of January, in 1S48, ^'hen j'ouder Doveliat-politician
lousgiog on before me, was witness to a trauqull death-scene be
himself has since then very gracefully and impreBsively comme-
morated — that of his venerable father, the accomplished anthop of
" The Curioeities of Literature." A dJasolutioa so entirely in the
natural order of tliiaga — resulting from a calm decay of the vital
energiea at a ripe old age, surrouuded by ail the cDusolationB of a
blameleaa and, still more, of on eminently useful and meritorious
life — that a son could wTite of it beflttiogly soon afterwards in
a tone expressive of pensive eq^uanimity. Tlie demise of Isaac
DiaraeE, ia his eighty -second year, lias, in truth, been not inap-
propriately doflcribed by bia iiliol biographer aa conatituting, bo to
speak, the very Euthanasia of a Man-uf-lettera. For, ic is re-
corded of hiuj, that almost immediately before he laid himself
down peacefully to breathe hia last in the seclusion of hie country
home at Bradenham House, in Buckinghamshire, bis publish^
had written to inform him that all his works were out of print,
the said publisher importuning him at once lo set about revising
them for a nev^ edition, lo appear either piecemeal or collectively.
Ho ended, sixteen years ago, that piotracted literary existence:
a life which, coium.enciug rather unpropitiously for a student-
ambition in the May of 17li6, at Eudeld, was passed, fur the most
part, m the quietude of a library, in the midst uf a continual and
congenial litmr of books and manuscripts.

STEP THE SECOKD. A.D. 1784.

It recurs to my mind, while I am musing over this career of
the purely contemplative and entirely aucceaaful book-man, that,
in the nineteenth year of Ilia age, tliia same Isaac Diaraeli, who,
sixty-four years aiterwards, was to expire amidst the raptures of
a Bi>-called iiiuthanasia of Authorship, stood m the winter of 1784,
upon the doorstep of Ko. 8, Bolt Court, Fleet hJtreet, a timorous
poetic aspirant seekiug the advice of lie. Johnson. It is the
luitmoon ui a. foggy day in "So\em\ifti. li. ■^fta'wit has been lelt
by tiiti uervous atriphug at tiiaV, '^amfe iwix n. vieaV->ite^C>s»i&^-,
LSU^ he has calied a\>v.-, by avvio\nXmec'^,Sa\.X^«^^«'J*"^ ^™™'

STEPPING-STONES — THE MEN OF LETTERS. 4l3

the success of his little enterprise. A packet, this appears to
have been, containing nothing less important than a manuscript
poem on " Commerce" — a didactic poem reprehending its theme
(strange enough, this, from the son of a Hebrew merchant !) as
the enervator of the human race and the corrupter of society —
and together with these verses a suitable epistle addressed to the
great critic, beseeching the aid of his wisdom as a literary guide
and counsellor.

That door-step of Number 8, Bolt Court, is our second Stepping-
stone. It has carried us at one stride across some sixtj-four
years, over about two generations.

Hesitating, yet sanguine, as befits at once the modesty and
hopefulness of eighteen, young Isaac Disraeli is standing there
beside me, waiting the answer to his faint uncertain knock of
trepidation. The door opens at last — it is answered (meaning
the visitor is answered) by the doctor's well-known black servant,
Mr. Francis Barber, a form with which each one is intimately
acquainted through the magic mirror of Bos well's Biography.

Ill news for the youthful poetaster — here is the packet handed
back to him, unopened. Ill news, ah me ! too, for the world at
large. The Doctor is too ill to read anything.

The disheartening message, we are told by the sympathising
commemorator of the incident, is accepted by the stripling of
eighteen, in his utter despondency, as a merely mechanical
excuse. '' But, alas ! the cause was too true ; and a few weeks
after, on that bed beside which the voice of Mr. Burke faltered,
and the tender spirit of Bennet Langton was ever vigilant, the
great soul of Johnson quitted earth." At the moment, however,
when the young, eager face of the Jew-poet turns from the door,
clouded by the first auguish of his sudden and scarcely antici-
pated disappointment — there, breathing heavily and painfully in
the curtained room up-stairs, lies, still in life, the Oracle of his
G-eneration. Miss Burney is waiting anxiously for news of him
in the quiet parlour, and the gaunt figure of Langton is softly
creaking down the staircase, to sadden her with the last whispered
bulletin.

STEP THE THIED. A.D. 1739.

Johnson expired soon afterwards in that same year, at the age
of seventy -five, on the 13 th of December ; and I remember me,
not unnaturally, of a notable incident occurring five and Coxfe*^
years before the date of the oivft \a&\i TXi«viXASstvfe\» "V 'sjsss.Ss^^
picturesque corner of a famo\:k& gtoUiO — ^«b «iaai^^^^i^ "^^^^cJ
gnuggery, very cosily f uruiahed. 1\. \a ^Jti© \aX ^"^ fewx^"^^ ^

K

FOOTPRINTS (

of grace 1739. A poor little pale-faced lameter is seated
immediately before me, huddled up in a dresfling-gown, leaning
over a table, ecribbliiig. A glance over hia aboulder ahows me
that what he has been writing is just fioished. It ia a couptlj
lotCer from Alexander Pope, addressed to my Lord Gower, com-
mending one Mr, Samuel Johnson, who hath recently (hia Lord-
ship is informed by hia correspondent) penned an ingenioua poem
on London : and for which aforeeaid bard of the capital, Mr.
Pope thinks my Lord might perhaps, without much effort —
laterially advancing the young man's fortunes thereby— obtaia
degree, at bis Lordship's leisure, from oue of the rival univer-
Generously thought of, noble heart in the stunted
But thought of, UB it happeaa, in this inistanee somewhat
■ineffectually. However fruitlessly written, it ia pleasant to recal
to one's rtmembmnce that kiudly intercession on belialf of
Samuel Johnson, then thirty and comparatively obscure, apon-
taneouEly made by Alexander Pope, then fifty-one and in the
full meridian glory of hia reputation. It imparts — the memory
of that genial act, an act worthy of the literary brotiierhood — aa
additional pathos to the sorrowful death-scene five yeara after-
wards, when the great poet, prematurely decrepit at the age of
fifty-sii, sat silently, with hia mind wrecked, propped up with
pillows, slowly dying ! And when, leaning over the back of hia
ann-cbair, weeping over the friend already taken Irom Mm,
though still alive, Senry, Lord Boliugbroke, sobbed out, through
hia tears, in broken accents: " great God, what is mau!"

Bemembering which woeful death-scene that was to be, X like
to tarry a while over the thought of that fraternal plea, but one
brief lustre earlier (five short years 1), that unsolicited good
service, by which the renowned author endeavoured, as it were,
by stealth, to aid the unknown writer, tlien struggling manfiiily
to fame, through many dismal misfortunes.

STEP THE EOITETK. A.n. 1700.

Another interval has sped by, an interval of full forty years,
'hen I lounge back at a stride into Will's Cofl'ee House, and the
year of grace 1700, simultaneously. As I am folloiving our own
diminutive Aleiander the Great into that tar-famed Launt of the
wits and witlingB, I am ashamed to confess it, I observe that my
little Guide upon Town is positively but just in his teens, and
coti:ieqaent\y in hia outward man (or rather, it should be said,
bi'^) aiipears to be mote llian esev a ^V\'^^iM^«BB.-^'^ir, I abould

be Btill more ashamed to coiilesa \t,tWu\i:\a-s\»-to.tt%'^'fii* «::«jSs^
JSuUBein this way ia regarded, "b^ maa-j aa Ko.Sasa&snii^'wwi-M

STEPPING-STONES — ^THE MEN OF LETTERS. 415

least of it, extremely questionable, if not an occnrreace, the
record of which must be pronounced (as some assert) absolutely
apocryphal — But — that (as already intimated in the paper on the
Earl of Surrey) I have long since doggedly and deliberately made
up my mind to swallow henceforth, without any further qualms
of suspicion, every one of these dear little dubious episodes that
lend a charm to our national annals, while imparting a zest to
biography, and suffusing a fascination over all kinds of literary
and historical reminiscences.

Don't tell me they are impossible. I reply they are delightful,
and, so replying, pin my faith to them, one and all, with the
most implicit credulity. It may be that Sir Isaac Newton never
bad a pet dog of any kind whatever ; yet, in spite of that newly
discovered and perfectly indisputable truth, I cherish still, with
the most obstiuate and unshakeable fidelity, my old schoolboy
belief in that world-famous anecdote about the tiny spaniel
Diamond and the ruined manuscript calculations. It might even
80 happen, that the oak was never known to be still fully and
freshly in leaf at the time of year when King Charles the Second
18 so very erroneously supposed to have hid himself among its
branches after the battle ot Worcester. Possibly ! I don't deny
it — ^yet hide himself among those green oak boughs I am incor-
rigibly satisfied he did, nevertheless. The particular tree he
climbed must have been, I will admit, a phenomenon among its
species : bourgeoning miraculously at a season unknown before or
since to the naturalist, but bourgeoning then — I am quite sure
of it — luxuriantly. Magnificently verdant in foliage, from the
cracks in its gnarled and burly trunk up to the minutest skyward
twig, and full of shining oak-apples as the pride of a Kent orchard
is of golden pippins in October. And so. Woodman Niebuhr !
lay your axe of incredulity to any tree but that ; administer your
poisoned bolus of F&ct to any dog but Diamond. Under the
shadow of that oak I must still read Boscobel. For the frolics
of that mischievous rascal of a spauiel I must still have an eye,
as I turn the oracular pages of the J^f ovum Organum !

Wherefore, that Pope did go to Will's, when only a little boy
of twelve, 1 am resolutely bent upon believing, down to the
end of the argument. What though the record of the child-
poet's visit to tiie old cofiee-house rests almost exclusively upon
the assertion of Mr. Bufihead, his biographer? As doubly
corroborative of the probable veracity of which assertioii. bL^j^N^^^vs^^
hath not Sir Charles Wogan wriUen ^\«»tI\\iOi\^ Vvsi. ^\fc\x^^ "^^^
zoajr bo found at page twenty -ouo ol NoVvj^ma <5vi^awb«^ ^^
Walter Saott'a editiou of the Nwotk^ ol ^nnMx.^-- "' Y>aa.^\>^^^^

f bringing Jlr. Pope from our retreat in the foreeit of Windsor
f^ dreuR a la mode, and introduce at Will's Coffee-house ? "
While Mr. Pope himself no lesa distinctly remarks, in hia enrlieat
epistle to Mr, Wycherly, " It was certainly h great aatisfaction
to me to hear you at our first meetins; doing justice to our dead
friend Mr, Dryden, I waB not so happy as to know him:
Virgilinm tantum vidi." Mark the solemn BBseTeration or
averment : " I have seen Virgil ! " It is as explicit as pos-
sible — " I was not so happy as to know him : but I have seen
him ! " After which, 1 am Mr. Euffhead'a most obedient ;
placinj^ my hand in hia confidingly, even though it be with eyes
still closely blindfolded. For, observe — as glorious John died at
the ripe age of seventy, breathing hia last upon Mayday, eeren-
teen hundred, so, glorious Alexander, if he saw him at all (and he
says he did, most distinctly and deliberately), must perforce have
seen htm at the eariy part of that year, when he (Alexander)
was still only in his tender childhood. And further, as our Enghsh
Virgil was indisputably dying through all the previous March
and April, being confined a close prisoner during the whole of
those two spring months within the privacy of his house in
Gerard-street, it follows that the reputed interview at Will's
Coffee House, must, equally perforce, have token place, at the very
latest, during the previous February. Scarcely a dozen yeara
therefore have elapsed since the child-beau before us — faslidiously
clad a la modr, and tripping eagerly across the tjjresliold of the
famous rendezvous — breathed his first breath on the 2Ist of May,
1688, in that dwelling in Lombard-street, where his father, then
light of hand and ready of whip, drove a thriving trade aa a linen
merchant.

After the little red heels and the toy cane, into the old wain-
scoted public room of the great coffee-house of Covent Garden 1
A cursory glance is Hufficient to take in every detail of the pe-
culiar scene — familiar as his own haunt, to every reader of
Captain Steele's Spectator. Nothing, however, remains audible
in all the hubbub and gossip, nothing visible among all the
moving lights and shadows, but what at once fixes the attention
of our boy-introducer. Mr. Dryden yonder — scrooping his chair
round upon the bare boarding of the floor so as to have his foot
more easily upon the fender, and get altogether at a cosier angle
in the lime-honoured chimney corner, where tor so long he baa
sat enthrooed the master of the gay revels of conversation,
Wigged and ruffled, brave m -vd^el «vii ^^ki-Viua aa becomes
ti/em both in their contTQating dciavButew— V X^e Xa *i;^ *
^mm thus as they momentatWy cooS»it& etaV o'^Ve^,'*rtil^Sh^

STEPPING-STONES — THE MEN OF LETTERS* 417

keen eyes meeting casually but searcbingly: the eyes of the
fragile child and of the fast-failing septuagenarian.

STEP THE EIPTH. A.D. 1680.

Peradventure another score of years may have slipped by, and
J. have probably fixed my staff, at the next stride, upon a jutting
point in 1680, when I find myself still standing by Mr. Dryden's
elbow — ^he has just completed his half-centuir — ^listening with
him to " our famous "Waller" — ^then but some four years short of
eighty — as he chats pleasantly in a cluster of wits about his own
varied literary experiences. A fragment of this sparkling small-
talk Mr. Dryden subsequently preserves in his Preface to the
Fables, where he relates having overheard Mr. Waller attribute
the smoothness of his numbers to the suave and harmonising
influence of the Tasso done into English verse by Mr. Fairfax,
While the courtly lyrist is discoursing with a negligent drawl in
bis tone, I note how vigilantly attention is awakened in at least
one listener ; I see it on that mobile brow and on those nervous
lips, so vividly and instantly impressionable.

STEP THE SIXTH. A.I). 1621.

An adventurous movement gives me at another stride a new
foot-hold sixty years further back, namely, in 1621, when I am
at the elbow, no longer of Waller's listener, but of Waller as a
listener. He himself has not lived long enough to wither into
greyness and wrinkles. He is, on the contrary, in the fresh
bloom of sixteen, jauntily attired, as becomes a courtier, making
one in a brilliant gathering of attendants grouped about the dius
in the banqueting-chamber of Whitehall. His Majesty Jamie
the Sixth of Scotland, James the First of England, according to
kingly wont in those days, holds high revel, comparatively in
public, in the presence of his lieges. A customary royal dinner
this is, in the mere manner of it ; but, in the curious converse
it elicits, one in many ways really extraordinary. A contest of
gibe and repartee faithfully recorded upon our national anualq by
every subsequent historian. A wit-combat between the anointed
clown there, slobbering over the gold dishes (with the juices of
the food he masticates running in unseemly fashion out of the
comers of his ungainly mouth upon his dribbled beard), and
sundry of the guests at his regal board, right honourables and
right reverends. It is not the babble of king and bishops^ how-
ever, I am now watchfully obaetroi^^ \\» *\^ T^S^'st *viw6 ^S^ssjs^
listening £nce of one spare and ift\ic«X» ^oxsJ^, «aK^ ^i^^^Bc^
among the bystanders. TVie co\iatei\»Xis» q!1^^^««^'^^

FOOTTRINTS ON THE EOAD.

ns Aubrey has described it : with a " fair thin Ekin ; his hai
frizzed, of a brownish colour ; fuU eje, popping out and workiDg ;
his face somewhat of an olivaster" — Waller, in short, aa he was,
before he saw that "sleepy eye" that spoke, for him at least,
anything but the " melting soul :" the langnishing glance of the
blonde and voluptuouB SaccharisBa. Not, howETer, now to the
damask cheek of beauty or to the chiming cadence of her ailver
Toice, are "Waller's senses wakened as I observe him leaning by
the gorgeous buffet of Whitehall, Bather than that, they are
fixed meditatiTely upon the drivelling of the Grotesque, yonder,
lolling in the state chair and spluttering over the crisp ruff and
the jewels of sovereignty — that farcical pedant king, whose incon-
gruous reign is, as it were, nothing better than a fantastic
burlesque between two bloody and affecting tragedies. A laugh-
able interlude played out upon the great stage of biatopy by a
low comedian, the very type of the Jiing of extravaganzas; by
one whcse offspring and successor was nevertheless afterwards to
die upon a scaffold outside that very banquet-hall ; whose own
immediate progenitors were already prematurely sliun, the one by
the headsman's aie, the otberby the band of the midnight assassin.
This same gobbling farceur, however, talking such perilous non-
sense now in 1621 to two of the lords spiritual of hia realm —
fcire and son midway between destinies so evil doomed — has no
relish whatever taken from the viands upon bis platter by the
shadowy ghosts of two grimly memories, or by the spectral
phantom of one momentary presentiment. Guttling his food
with a Keat, the King plays the fool, according to habit, in his
accustomed though unconscious capacity as his own jester, what

tlime Mr, Edmund Waller — the down not yet upon his lips— toys
■ith the tassel of his orange doublet and hearkens eagaciously.
I STEP TEE BETENTn. A,n. 1566.

In a twinkling I have strode, at a single pace, forty-five years
further onward into the past, and am peering curiously, upon a
Bummer's day of 1566, through a tapestried porch of an ante*
room into a sleeping-chamber in what was, even then, the time-
worn and war-worn Castle of Edinburgh. James Stuart has
happily not yet developed from the baby-prince into the full-
grown kingly punthinello. He is indeed but newly bom, having
first opened hia eyes to the light on the 19th of June, only a few
days previously. The apartment — since screened off into a very
cupboard, and displayed thus to wcmieivo?, tv^Vit^eers as tha
birth-place of the first aovcreiga o^ 'Ofte ^Jvi-Afti. IJ^^'^^tsi. <&.
j^land and Scotland— preaenta to xia-fl, »a "^ ■"-*■ ■™^- * *

STEPPING-STONES — THE MEN OF LETTERS. 419

domestic group, pathetic in its way, and singularly beautiful.
That handsome and youthful ne'er-do-weel, Henry, the Lord
Domley, King (consort) of Scots — sullen and passionate by
turns, through all his wayward married life — has unexpectedly
come to visit his queen-wife during one brief, lucid interval of
compunction : apparently intent only upon consoling her under
the depressiug influence of her recent pangs by this unwonted
evidence of tenderness : in reality eager to see with his own eyes
and hold within his own arms the oflFspring of their ill-fated
nuptials. A contemporary chronicler teUs full sadly the tale of
the notable interview, with its slight but touching incidents — how
Mary, lovelier than ever in her maternal prostration, her delicate
complexion flushing as she spoke, swore a great oath as to the
child's legitimacy, calling G-od to witness the truth of her asseve-
ration: her eyes of witchery in a blaze, her fair right hand
pointing stedfastly from her couch to Heaven ! How Darnley,
thrilling to the words then uttered, yearned over the helpless
infant he held at the moment in his arms, as he sat by the bed-
side, and bending down, kissed it tenderly upon the forehead.
All this I note now accurately, peering from the threshold into
that historic chamber, marking vividly those words and that kiss,
and, more than either, the eloquent silence afterwards.

STEP THE EIGHTH. A.D. 1542.

Following a very natural sequence of recollections, I pass, still
as from Stepping-stone to Stepping-stone, across an interval of
some four-and-twenty years, from the birth-place of James to
that of his young mother, the radiant and unfortunate Queen of
Scots — pausing upon the 8th of December, 1542, at the door of
another royal bedchamber : the room in which the thrice-widowed
Mary began her woful life of love in the palace of Linlithgow.
Here, in truth, at last — pausing ! For, the date alone, without
one syllable of illustrative comment, is of itself, indeed, suffi-
ciently suggestive. Suggestive — how suggestive ! of the first
tender budding of that beautiful passion-flower, sown, so to speak,
by a storm-blast between the chinks of a mouldering rampart,
stained with the blood and blackened with the thunder of battle.

And that date, has it not brought us (let it be remembered
distinctly by no more than an eighth step) to a period removed
from the Actual Present by a lapse of more than Three
Centuries ?

Link by link the chain of memona^ T£i\^\»\i^ ^^Gc^is^%\«^§^^s^
readily enough, indefinitely oirw^it^, i^om ^^^t^^-^^^^^ ^veS^
tion: connecting the age o£ ^\ctori«k \io\. \^^^ «»^^ ^

■Tt)OTPKINTS ON THE BOAD.

Boadicea, than the former is here brought, 1/ eight paces, within
Tiew of an epoch positively beyond that of Elizabeth.

Enough. I am suddenly recalled from 1542 o this present
year of our Lord 18C4, aa by a jert, startling me from my medi-
tative recollections. The glaaa-doors of the Commons have awung-
to, aa I kick off my Shoes of Swiftness and Bubaide into mere J
every-day Balmorale.