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§
** {* *
.*
• HE ESSAYS OF ELIA, BY
T CH A R L ES LAMB: WITH
INTRO DUCTION BY E R NEST
RHYS.
NEW YORK :
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS,
º -
º
7
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA.
PAGE
Tº. TH-SEA House (London Magazine, Augus’ 1820) - I
o, ºn IN THE Vacation (L. M., October 1820) - - 9
cºsts Hospital Five-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGo (L. M.,
mber 1820) - - - - - . I7
Tº. o Races of MEN (L. M., December 1820) . 31
New Year's Eve (L. M., January 1821) - - 37
… , , , , lºs opinions on whist (Z. M., February 1821) 43
VA NE's DAY (7%e Indicator, February 1821) - - 5 I
A. C. ER on EARs (London Magazine, March 1821) 54
ALL Ls' DAY (L. M., April 1821) . - - , 61
A Quakers’ MEETING (L. M., April 1821) 65
The OLD AND THE New SchoolMAster (L. M., May 1821) 70
Miº Relations (Z. M., June 1821) . - - 79 -
Mºck ERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE (L. M., Vuly 1821) . S6
Tºrrect SyMPATHIEs (L. M., August 1821) - . 91
| THE OLD BENCHERs of THE INNER TEMPLE (L. M., Sept. 1820) Ioo
| Wºrches AND other NIGHT-FEARs (L. M., October 1821) . I 11
GRAce BEFoRE MEAT (L. M., November 1821) - . . iS
My FIRST PLAY (L. M., December 1821) - - 125
Dºanſ-CHILDREN : A REveR1E (Z. M., Vanuary 1822) 130
º SoME of THE OLD Actors (L. M., February 1822) - IS4
1 Istant CoRREspondents (L. M., March 1822) - IAZ
D tº Artificial Comedy of the Last Century (L. M.,
| ON ºf 1822) . - - - - - - IS3
| º ISE OF CHIMNEY-SweepERs (A. M., May 1822) . 166 - -
* Coºl AINT of THE DEcAv of BEGGARs IN THE METRoPolis
- M., June 1822) . - - - - 173
TATION Upon Roast PIG (L. M., S.A/ember 1822) , 182


vi COAVZ'EAV7 S. . . . .
Pags
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT (Z. M., September 1822) , . 189
ON THE ACTING of MUNDEN (Z. AZ., October 1822) . w. 197.
MUNDEN's FAREweLL (Z. M., July 1824) º g . 199
THE DEATH OF MUNDEN (Athenæum, February 1832) . 202
MODERN GALLANTRY (Zondon Magazine, Movember 1822) . 203
THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA.
&
PREFACE By A FRIEND OF THE LATE ELIA (Z, AZ., Jazz. 1823) 209
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON Books AND READING (Z. M., .
July 1822) . te º e o e , ala
OLD CHINA (Z. M., March 1823) e * º . 220
POOR RELATIONS (Z. M., May 1823) . - . c. --→gat-,
* THE CHILD ANGEL: A DREAM (Z. M., June 1823) . . . .233
THE OLD MARGATE Hoy (Z. M., July 1823) . s : 236
SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY (Z. M., Sept. 1823) . 244
THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY (L. M., October 1823) . . .252
AMICUS REDIviv Us (Z. M., December 1823) . © .. 255
BLAKESMoor, IN H-shire (L. M., September 1824) ºf 26o
CAPTAIN JACKSON (/. Al/., AWozember 1824) . º . 266 ,
BARBARA S- (Z. M., April 1825) . º • ... 270 "
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. (L. M., May 1825) e . . .276
THE CONVALESCENT (Z. M., /uly 1825) º & 284
STAGE ILLUSION (L. M., August 1825) - º º, 289° l
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING (New Monthly Magazine, ºf
2.
March 1826) . - e e º e ... .292 A.
SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS (AV. M. M., Aſay 1826) * - * 29,
To THE SHADE OF ELLISTON (Englishman's Magazine, August. #
1831). º º º e ºf
ELLISTONIANA (E. M., August 1831) . & e
NEwsPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO (AE. M., October 1831;
*BARRENNess of the IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE PR6;
DUCTION OF MODERN ART (Athenæum, Jam, and Feb. 183:
TIIE WEDDING . o º tº & e :



INTRODUCTION.
-º-O-e—
IT is seventy years now since the ‘London Magazine’
gave Charles Lamb the opportunity which led to Elia; that
full opportunity which his genius had so long seemed to be
waiting for. The ‘London Magazine’ first appeared in
January 1820. In August, probably through the friendly
offices of that other master of essays, Hazlitt, the “Recollec-
tions of the South-Sea House” added Lamb to its
contributors under the now familiar disguise. So quietly
was Elia first discovered to the world.
From this time, Lamb was a regular contributor to the
magazine, for some months at any rate. The Essays
appeared, month by month, until Elia came to be recognised
as, clearly, a figure of much more than a passing and Occa-
sional interest. They showed indeed once more, as Steele,
Addison, Goldsmith, and the eighteenth century men had
done so well before, how the occasional in literature may
be made classic,+reassuring instance of how the doubtful
hospitalities of those seductive half-way houses of literature,
the magazines, may be turned to delightful effect by your
true guest ! Charles Lamb was a guest peculiarly fitted for
these rare offices of genius. Possibly to him, with his way-
ward mind and peculiar temper of thought, working not by
grave predetermination, like some of his contemporaries,
but as the mood might take him, some such direct call for
the writing of a monthly essay, as the ‘London Magazine’
afforded, was indispensable. By this time, we remember,
Íe was forty-five years old, without having found, as was
iaid, the opportunity to fully express the best of those rare
numours and graces that we find in Elia. It needs that one


Wiii AAV7/8 O/O UCZYO AV,
should realise his previous literary adventures, and in fact
his whole history up to the time of his beginning Elia, to
know what the training for so original a writing implied.
There are few of the many who dip casually into the
Essays, I suppose, who have cared much to understand out
of what human experiences, what hopes and fears, and
often very sorrowful things, that exquisite house of folly
and imagination was built. It is to be seen, however,
written as it is, with a hundred fanciful variations and
humorous disguises, in the book “Elia.’
To make an author tell his own tale, with whatever added
light the other fictions of biography may throw upon it, is
always the most interesting way of getting to know him, if it
be not exactly the way to decide his place historically. Lamb,
fortunately, does not at all refuse us an account of himself.
Instead, he enters upon the task as an artist, bringing to it
all the wit and imagination, all the range of expression and
charm of style, that he possesses.
The best introduction to ‘Elia,’ it has been said, is to be
found in Burton, Fuller, the Elizabethan playwrights, the
eighteenth century essayists, and other such delightful old
books; and these, certainly, are a part of Lamb's history,
quite as much as the outer events that make up the lives of
ordinary men. But the childish associations, and the later
occurrences with which the name of his sister and lifelong
friend and companion are bound up, need to be remem-
bered well, to understand that there is more in ‘Elia,” than
a mere set of fine literary exercises, as the Essays seem to be
too often regarded. One finds in them, indeed, the perfect
expression of Lamb's whole feeling about life. They are
full of those glimpses of autobiography which, in the case
of such a master of the humours and imaginations of life,
mean so much. Such fantasies of his own history as we
find in the essays on Christ's Hospital, on the Inner
Temple, The South-Sea House, Mackery End, and so
forth, are really much more to the purpose, than an
historical setting out of his exact biography, by narrate
succession of date, place, and worldly promotion, only.

AAV7'RO D OVCZZOAV. ix
There is the less need to attempt any new account of
Lamb's history, because of the admirable life by Canon Ainger,
which is well within every one's reach. Upon the pages of
Canon Ainger, who has established ere this his position as a
chief authority on all that relates to Charles Lamb, I have
not hesitated to draw where necessary. But it is in the
pages of Elia, to again repeat, that the real colouring of the
author's picture may be found.
In the essay on “The Old Benchers of the Middle
Temple,” Lamb begins his tale in the most delightful way,
with a famous passage, quoted by Canon Ainger at the
outset of his biography. “I was born,” says Lamb, “and
passed the first seven years of my life, in the Temple.”
And he goes on to tell of the surroundings of his early
childhood, in a way that suggests how fit it was that he
should have been planted there, a rare growth, nourished
by the rich soil of the past; in the one place in London
where everyday life keeps yet something like a saving grace
of antiquity. Here then we gather up some of the associa-
tions that nourished the heart of the little dark-eyed fellow
who rambled about the courts of the Temple, where the
older child of nature, Goldsmith, had wandered, not always
so happily, a score years before him. It is more than a
century since Lamb was a child there, for he was born
on February Ioth, 1775, in Crown Office Row, the youngest
of the three children of John Lamb, confidential clerk, secre-
tary, and servant, to Samuel Salt, celebrated in this essay
under his own name. Lamb's father appears as Lovel.
“I knew this Lovel. He was a man of incorrigible and
losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and “would strike.’”
By such vivid touches, Lamb carries on the tale. From
the Temple, we proceed in turn to Christ's Hospital, where
the boy went at seven years old. His life there, and how
fortunate it was, seeing the temperament of the child, we
gather well from the “Christ's Hospital Essay,” although
the fact that it is couched in ingenuous terms of a criticism
upon another previously published essay of Lamb him-
self, “Recollections of Christ's Hospital,” with which
X AVTRO/DUCT/O AV.
Elia pretends to gravely disagree on some points, is here
and there perhaps a little puzzling. In the main, the
“Recollections” cover very much the same ground as the
Elia essay; but there are some passages which well deserve
to be added to the account there given, as where Lamb,
beginning to recall “those circumstances, some pleasant,
Some attended with severe pain, which, seen through
the mist of distance, are sweetly softened to the memory.”
One passage especially it is impossible not to quote, so
full is it of Lamb's characteristic grace of thought and
word. “Let me have leave,” he says, “to remember
Our hymns and anthems, and well-toned organ; the doleful
tune of the burial anthem chanted in the solemn cloisters,
upon the seldom-occurring funeral of some school-fellow;
the festivities at Christmas, when the richest of us would
club our stock to have a gaudy day, sitting round the fire,
replenished to the height with logs, and the penniless and
he that could contribute nothing partook in all the mirth,
and in Some of the substantialities of the feasting; the
Carol sung by night at that season of the year which, when
a young boy, I have so often lain awake to hear from seven
(the hour of going to bed) till ten, when it was sung by the
older boys and monitors, and have listened to it, in their
rude chanting, till I have been transported in fancy to the
fields of Bethlehem, and the song which was sung at that
season by angels' voices to the shepherds.”
As the later of the two essays recalls, it was at the Blue-
coat School that Lamb first met “the young Mirandula,”
Coleridge, who was to influence him so immensely,–“ the
young Mirandula,” who made the casual passer through the
Cloisters stand still, “entranced with admiration to hear thee
unfold,” exclaims Lamb, addressing him in memory, “in
thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus,
or Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale
at such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his
Greek, or Pindar.”
Coleridge serves very well as the step to lead from these
schooldays, which continued till Lamb was fourteen, to his
AVZTAE O/O OCZZO/V. xi
later boyhood and youth, first at the South-Sea House, for
a year or two; and then at the India House, which he
entered in 1792. Of all Lamb's delightful letters, none are
more interesting than those addressed to the young and
immensely potential Coleridge, to whom many years later,
in 1818, Lamb recalled, in dedicating the two volumes of
his “Works” to him, “the memory
“Of summer days and of delightful years,’
even so far back as to those old suppers, at our old * * *
Inn—when life was fresh, and topics exhaustless—and you
first kindled in me, if not the power, yet the love of poetry,
and beauty, and kindliness.”
There is nothing more idyllic, so to speak, and yet more
sad, in stories of literary friendships, than this story of Cole-
ridge and Lamb. The fading away of the god-like youth of
Coleridge, with its extraordinary brilliancy of promise, into
the doubtful mists of unaccomplished mountain-peaks of
metaphysics and poetry, had, in the end, a dark effect upon
Lamb. He expresses this, half-humorously, more than
once in his Letters:–“Bless you,” he says in one of them,
“Bless you, Old Sophist, who next to human nature
taught me all the corruption I was capable of knowing !”
But this is to anticipate. During earlier years, while
Coleridge was at Cambridge, and then at Nether Stowey,
his influence upon Lamb was great, and tending doubtless
to great issues. Lamb had all the poet’s ambition at this
time; and some of his letters to Coleridge contain sonnets
and other signs of a potential faculty of verse greater,
I think, than has generally been allowed to him. Words-
worth at the same age had written nothing so good as the
following sonnet, imitative as no doubt it is. It occurs in
a letter, written during 1796, composed, as Lamb explains,
“during a walk down into Hertfordshire early in last
Summer” —
“The Lord of Light shakes off his drowsy-hed.
Fresh from his couch up springs the lusty sun,
And girds himself his mighty race to run ;
xii AVTRO/DUCTIOAV.
Meantime, by truant love of rambling led,
I turn my back on thy detested walls,
Proud City, and thy sons I leave behind,
A selfish, Sordid, money-getting kind,
Who shut their ears when holy Freedom calls,
I pass not thee so lightly, humble spire,
That mindest me of many a pleasure gone,
Of merriest days, of Love and Islington,
Rindling anew the flames of past desire;
And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on
To the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire.”
Of the little household in the Temple, which was visited by
So Sorrowful a tragedy almost ere the young poet was arrived
at full manhood, we find again glimpses in such Essays as
“My Relations,” and “Mackery End, in Hertfordshire.” In
the former, the selfish elder brother, John, is drawn with
inimitable mixed kindliness and irony. But it is to his
sister, Mary, that Lamb devotes in ‘Elia' his most loving
grace of description ; to his sister, who, as Bridget Elia,
lives in our hearts and minds for ever.
Of the tragedy, with which she was associated, it is
enough to quote Lamb's own letter to Coleridge, with its
Ominous postScript. As it was with Coleridge he had so
often exchanged his poet's hopes, to him he might well now
announce an end to those happy ambitions of youth. It
was the September of 1796, when this misfortune broke the
natural course of so many simple lives. The letter in
which Lamb tells Coleridge what had happened, is dated
the 27th of that month :—
“MY DEAREST FRIEND,-White, or some of my friends,
or the public papers by this time may have informed you of
the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I
will only give you the outlines:—My poor dear, dearest
sister, in a fit of insanity, has been the death of her own
mother. I was at hand only time enough to Snatch the
knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a madhouse,
from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital.
God has preserved to me my senses—I eat, and drink, and
sleep, and have my judgment, I believe, very sound. My
AVZTA’O/DUCT/OAV, xiii
poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care
of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris, of the Bluecoat School,
has been very kind to us, and we have no other friend;
but, thank God, I am very calm and composed, and able to
do the best that remains to do. Write as religious a letter
as possible, but no mention of what is gone and done with.
With me the ‘former things are passed away,’ and I have
something more to do than to feel.
“God Almighty have us well in His keeping.
“C. LAMB.”
“Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every
vestige of past vanities of that kind. Do as you please;
but if you publish, publish mine (I give free leave) without
name or initial, and never send me a book, I charge you.”
The postscript is, as was said, ominous. But the whole
letter, as the beginning of the pathetic, and indeed heroic,
story, of the intermingled fates of the brother and sister,
lets us into the secret of many of the things which are most
characteristic and most profoundly human in the Essays of
Elia. Unless we recognise this great pathos, underlying
always the humour of Lamb, we shall do him a singular
injustice; the injustice that the popular estimate of him as
a dispenser only of very pretty fooling, and a master of
fantastic thoughts and words, does him constantly.
The struggles through which Charles and Mary Lamb
went are not to be found writ large in the Essays, of course;
but they can be read between the lines there. The
various attempts which Lamb made from time to time,
to gain a little money, and a little repute, by his writing;
and his sister's resolute attempts to help by her less ready
and capable pen, need to be sympathetically weighed
too, as a prelude to the book “Elia.’ The impulse to
verse gradually seemed to die away in Lamb ; but
the poetry was there, and found its better expression, per-
haps, in prose. The best of his verse and prose, he
ultimately collected in the two volumes of his works
published by Ollier in 1810, when he was forty-four years
xiv AVZTA’O/DUCTYOAV.
old. Here we have the earlier sonnets, included in previous
volumes, and some of his other verse, with the tragedy
“John Woodvill,” more interesting, I think, than has gener-
ally been allowed; the tale, “Rosamund Gray”; the
“Recollections of Christ's Hospital”; and characteristic
essays on Shakspeare and Hogarth, among other matter.
The “Tales from Shakspeare” had been prepared by
Charles and Mary some years before, and published in
1807; and the “Specimens from the English Dramatists”
in 1808: and both of these had brought him repute. But
it seems to have been the publication of the “Works,” in
Ollier's two volumes, which specially led up to the oppor-
tunity offered by the ‘London Magazine,' resulting in the
Essays of Elia.
There is not place here to enlarge upon the many fine
and rare graces to be found in Elia ; the art, the fantasy,
the charm of style, the exquisite sense of words, the tempera-
mental faculty for literature at its highest and choicest
attainment. There is not room either to tell of the changing
experiences of London, which went to make up the story
of Charles and Mary Lamb, the changes from the Temple
to Covent Garden, from Islington to Enfield, and at last to
Edmonton, where Lamb died, on the 27th December 1834.
What space I have left, I prefer to give to one of his
contemporaries, his fellow-essayist, Hazlitt, who was so
well qualified to appreciate his work. In the last chapter
of the “Spirit of the Age,” Hazlitt characteristically dis-
cusses his friend.
“When the full tide of human life poured along to some
festive show, to some pageant of a day, Elia would stand on
one side to look over an old book-stall, or stroll down some
deserted pathway in search of a pensive inscription over a
tottering doorway, or some quaint device in architecture,
illustrative of embryo art and ancient manners. Mr. Lamb
has the very soul of an antiquarian, as this implies a reflect-
ing humanity; the film of the past hovers forever before
him. . . . He evades the present; he mocks the future.
His affections revert to, and settle on, the past; but then
AVZ RO/DC/CTYOM. XV
even this must have something personal and local in it to
interest him deeply and thoroughly. He pitches his tent
in the suburbs of existing manners, brings down the
account of character to the few straggling remains of the
last generation, seldom ventures beyond the bills of
mortality, and occupies that mice point between egotism
and disinterested humanity. No one describes the manners
of the last generation so well as Mr. Lamb; with so fine
and yet so formal an air; with such vivid obscurity; with
such arch piquancy, such picturesque quaintness, such
Smiling pathos.”
A word remains to be said about the order and condition
of the essays given. The order is, as may be seen in the
list of contents, chronological: the essays are given in the
order in which they originally appeared, for the most part in
the ‘London Magazine.’ The omissions found necessary to
bring ‘Elia’ within the compass of this volume, are not of
grave importance. The “Popular Fallacies” are hardly
“Elia,’ and the “Confessions of a Drunkard” and “Rejoic-
ings upon the New Year's Coming of Age” do not show us
Lamb at his best. Some pains have been taken to give the
text intact, and passages omitted in reprinting the essays
at other times have been restored where the restoration
seemed advisable, such passages being marked by brackets.
E. R.
HAMPSTEAD, October 1890.
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA.
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.
READER, in thy passage from the Bank—where thou hast
been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art
a lean annuitant like myself)—to the Flower Pot, to secure
a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other thy
suburban retreat northerly,–didst thou never observe a
melancholy-looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, to
the left—where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishopsgate?
I daresay thou hast often admired its magnificent portals
ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave court, with
cloisters, and pillars, with few or no traces of goers-in or
comers-out—a desolation something like Balclutha’s.”
This was once a house of trade,-a centre of busy
interests. The throng of merchants was here—the quick
pulse of gain—and here some forms of business are still
kept up, though the soul be long since fled. Here are still
to be seen stately porticoes; imposing staircases; offices
roomy as the state apartments in palaces—deserted, or
thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks; the still more
sacred interiors of court and committee-rooms, with vener-
able faces of beadles, door-keepers—directors seated in
form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend), at long
* “I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate.”—
SSIAN.
I
2 THE AESSA YS OF EAE/A.
worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany, with tarnished
gilt-leather coverings, supporting massy silver inkstands
long since dry;-the Oaken wainscots hung with pictures º
deceased governors and sub-governors, of Queen Anne, an
the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty;-huge
charts, which subsequent discoveries have antiquated;—l
dusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams, and soundings of
the Bay of Panama —The long passages hung with buckets,
appended, in idle row, to walls, whose substance might
defy any, short of the last conflagration —with vast ranges
of cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces of eight
Once lay, an “unsunned heap,” for Mammon to have
Solaced his solitary heart withal,—long since dissipated, or
scattered into air at the blast of the breaking of that ſamous
BUBBLE.
Such is the SOUTH-SEA House. At least, such it was
forty years ago, when I knew it, a magnificent relic
What alterations may have been made in it since, I have
had no opportunities of verifying. Time, I take for granted,
has not freshened it. No wind has resuscitated the face of
the sleeping waters. A thicker crust by this time stagnates
upon it. The moths, that were then battening upon its
obsolete ledgers and day-books, have rested from their
depredations, but other light generations have succeeded,
making fine fretwork among their single and double entries.
Layers of dust have accumulated (a superfoetation of dirt 1)
upon the old layers, that seldom used to be disturbed, save
by some curious finger, now and then, inquisitive to explore
the mode of book-keeping in Queen Anne's reign; or, with
less hallowed curiosity, seeking to unveil some of the
mysteries of that tremendous HOAx, whose extent the petty
peculators of our day look back upon with the same
expression of incredulous admiration, and hopeless am-
bition of rivalry, as would become the puny face of modern
conspiracy contemplating the Titan size of Vaux's super-
human plot.
Peace to the manes of the BUBBLE | Silence and destitu-
tion are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial |
|
ZTAZAZ Z.S.S.A. Y.S OA' A' Z.Z.A. 3
Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring and
living commerce,—amid the fret and fever of speculation—
with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India House
above thee, in the hey-day of present prosperity, with
their important faces, as it were, insulting thee, their floor
neighbour out of business—to the idle and merely contem-
plative, to such as me, old house ! there is a charm in
thy quiet:-a cessation—a coolness from business—an
indolence almost cloistral—which is delightful l With what
reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at
eventide They spoke of the past :-the shade of some
dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by me,
stiff as in life. Living accounts of accountants puzzle me.
I have no skill in figuring. But thy great dead tomes,
which scarce three degenerate clerks of the present day
could lift from their enshrining shelves—with their old
fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric interlacings—their
sums in triple columniations, set down with formal super-
fluity of cyphers—with pious sentences at the beginning,
without which our religious ancestors never ventured to
open a book of business, or bill of lading—the costly
vellum covers of some of them almost persuading us that we
are got into some better library, are very agreeable and
edifying spectacles. I can look upon these defunct dragons
with complacency. Thy heavy odd-shaped ivory-handled
penknives (our ancestors had everything on a larger scale
than we have hearts for) are as good as anything from
Herculaneum. The pounce-boxes of our days have gone
retrograde.
The very clerks which I remember in the South-Sea
House—I speak of forty years back—had an air very
different from those in the public offices that I have had to
do with since. They partook of the genius of the place
There were mostly (for the establishment did not admit
of superfluous salaries) bachelors. Generally (for they had
not much to do) persons of a curious and speculative turn
of mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason mentioned before.
Humourists, for they were of all descriptions; and, not
|
4. TA/A2 ESSA VS OF EA/A.
having been brought together in early life (which has a
tendency to assimilate the members of corporate bodies to
each other), but, for the most part, placed in this house.in
ripe or middle age, they necessarily carried into it their
separate habits and oddities, unqualified, if I may so speak,
as into a common stock. Hence they formed a sort of
Noah’s ark, Odd fishes. A lay-monastery. Domestic
retainers in a great house, kept more for show than use.
Yet pleasant fellows, full of chat—and not a few among
them had arrived at considerable proficiency on the German
flute.
The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cambro-
Briton. He had something of the choleric complexion of
his countrymen stamped on his visage, but was a worthy
sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, to the last,
powdered and frizzed out, in the fashion which I remember
to have seen in caricatures of what were termed, in my
young days, Maccaronies. He was the last of that race of
beaux, Melancholy as a gib-cat over his counter all the
forenoon, I think I see him making up his cash (as they
call it) with tremulous fingers, as if he feared every one
about him was a defaulter; in his hypochondry ready to
imagine himself one; haunted, at least, with the idea of
the possibility of his becoming one : his tristful visage clear-
ing up a little over his roast neck of veal at Anderton's at
two (where his picture still hangs, taken a little before his
death by desire of the master of the coffee-house, which he
had frequented for the last five-and-twenty years), but not
attaining the meridian of its animation till evening brought
on the hour of tea and visiting. The simultaneous sound of
his well-known rap at the door with the stroke of the clock
announcing six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in the
families which this dear old bachelor gladdened with his
presence. Then was his forfe, his glorified hour ! How
would he chirp, and expand over a muffin | How would
he dilate into secret history ! His countryman Pennant
himself, in particular, could not be more eloquent than he
in relation to old and new Iondon—the site of old theatres,
7 HE ESSA YS OF EAE/A. 5
churches, streets gone to decay—where Rosamond's pond
stood—the Mulberry Gardens—and the Conduit in Cheap
—with many a pleasant anecdote, derived from paternal
tradition, of those grotesque figures which Hogarth has
immortalised in his picture of Moon,_the worthy descend-
nts of those heroic confessors, who, flying to this country,
ſº the wrath of Louis the Fourteenth and his dragoons,
kept alive the flame of pure religion in the sheltering
obscurities of Hog Lane, and the vicinity of the Seven
Dials
Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had the
air and stoop of a nobleman. You would have taken him
for one, had you met him in one of the passages leading to
Westminster Hall. By stoop I mean that gentle bending
of the body forwards, which, in great men, must be supposed
to be the effect of an habitual condescending attention to
the applications of their inferiors. While he held you in
converse, you felt strained to the height in the colloquy.
The conference over, you were at leisure to smile at the
comparative insignificance of the pretensions which had just
awed you. His intellect was of the shallowest order. It
did not reach to a saw or a proverb. His mind was in its
original state of white paper. A sucking babe might have
posed him. What was it then P Was he rich P Alas, no
Thomas Tame was very poor. Both he and his wife looked
outwardly gentlefolks, when I fear all was not well at all
times within. She had a neat meagre person, which it was
evident she had not sinned in over-pampering ; but in
its veins was noble blood. She traced her descent, by
some labyrinth of relationship, which I never thoroughly
understood, much less can explain with any heraldic
certainty at this time of day,+to the illustrious, but unfor-
tunate house of Derwentwater. This was the secret of
Thomas's stoop. This was the thought—the sentiment—
the bright solitary star of your lives,<-ye mild and happy
pair, which cheered you in the night of intellect, and in
the obscurity of your station I This was to you instead of
riches, instead of rank, instead of glittering attainments:
6 7THE ESSA VS OF /º/, /A.
and it was worth them all together. You insulted none
with it; but, while you wore it as a piece of defensive
armour only, no insult likewise could reach you through it.
JDecus et solamezz.
Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, John
Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, nor in ºl
truth cared one fig about the matter. He “thought an
accountant the greatest character in the world, and himself
the greatest accountant in it.” Yet John was not without
his hobby. The fiddle relieved his vacant hours. He sang,
certainly, with other notes than to the Orphean lyre. He
did, indeed, scream and scrape most abominably. His
fine suite of official rooms in Threadneedle Street, which,
without anything very substantial appended to them, were
enough to enlarge a man's notions of himself that lived in
them—(I know not who is the occupier of them now")—
resounded fortnightly to the notes of a concert of “sweet
breasts,” as our ancestors would have called them, Culled
from club-rooms and orchestras—chorus singers—first and
second violoncellos—double basses—and clarionets—who
ate his cold mutton, and drank his punch, and praised his
ear. He sate like Lord Midas among them. But at the
desk Tipp was quite another sort of creature. Thence all
ideas, that were purely ornamental, were banished. You
could not speak of anything romantic without rebuke. Politics
were excluded. A newspaper was thought too refined and
abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in writing off
dividend warrants. The striking of the annual balance in the
company's books (which, perhaps, differed from the balance
of last year in the sum of 24, 25, Is. 6d.) occupied his days
and nights for a month previous. Not that Tipp was blind
to the deadness of things (as they call them in the city) in
* I have since been inſormed, that the present tenant of them is a
Mr. Lamb, a gentleman who is happy in the possession of some choice
pictures, and among them a rare portrait of Milton, which I mean to
do myself the pleasure of going to see, and at the same time to refresh
my memory with the sight of old scenes. Mr. Lamb has the character
of a right courteous and communicative collector.
ZTHE AESSA VS OF EAE/A. 7
his beloved house, or did not sigh for a return of the old
stirring days when South-Sea hopes were young—(he was
indeed equal to the wielding of any the most intricate
accounts of the most flourishing company in these or those
'days):—but to a genuine accountant the difference of pro-
ceeds is as nothing. The fractional farthing is as dear to
his heart as the thousands which stand before it. He is the
true actor, who, whether his part be a prince or a peasant,
must act it with like intensity. With Tipp form was every-
thing. His life was formal. His actions seemed ruled
with a ruler. His pen was not less erring than his heart.
He made the best executor in the world: he was plagued
with incessant executorships accordingly, which excited his
spleen and soothed his vanity in equal ratios. He would
swear (for Tipp swore) at the little orphans, whose rights
he would guard with a tenacity like the grasp of the dying
hand that commended their interests to his protection. With
all this there was about him a sort of timidity—(his few
enemies used to give it a worse name)—a something which,
in reverence to the dead, we will place, if you please, a
little on this side of the heroic. Nature certainly had been
pleased to endow John Tipp with a sufficient measure of the
principle of self-preservation. There is a cowardice which
we do not despise, because it has nothing base or treacher-
ous in its elements; it betrays itself, not you : it is mere
temperament; the absence of the romantic and the
enterprising; it sees a lion in the way, and will not, with
Fortinbras, “greatly find quarrel in a straw,” when some
supposed honour is at stake. Tipp never mounted the box
of a stage-coach in his life; or leaned against the rails of
a balcony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or looked
down a precipice; or let off a gun ; or went upon a water-
party; or would willingly let you go if he could have helped
it : neither was it recorded of him, that for lucre, or for
intimidation, he ever forsook friend or principle.
Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead, in
whom common qualities become uncommon P Can I
forget thee, Henry Man, the wit, the polished man of
8 ZTHE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
letters, the author, of the South-Sea House? who never
enteredst thy office in a morning, or quittedst it in mid-
day—(what didst thou in an office?)—without some quir
that left a sting ! Thy gibes and thy jokes are now extinct.
or survive but in two forgotten volumes, which I had th
good fortune to rescue from a stall in Barbican, not thre
days ago, and found thee terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as
alive. Thy wit is a little gone by in these fastidious days—
thy topics are staled by the “new-born gauds” of the time:
—but great thou used to be in Public Ledgers, and in
Chronicles, upon Chatham and Shelburne, and Rocking-
ham, and Howe, and Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the war
which ended in the tearing from Great Britain her rebellious
colonies—and Keppel, and Wilkes, and Sawbridge, and
Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond,-and Such
small politics.
A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstreperous,
was fine rattling, rattleheaded Plumer. He was descended
—not in a right line, reader (for his lineal pretensions, like
his personal, favoured a little of the sinister bend)—from the
Plumers of Hertfordshire. So tradition gave him out; and
certain family features not a little sanctioned the opinion.
Certainly old Walter Plumer (his reputed author) had been
a rake in his days, and visited much in Italy, and had seen
the world. He was uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine old
Whig still living, who has represented the county in so
many successive parliaments, and has a fine old mansion
near Ware. Walter flourished in George the Second's days,
and was the same who was summoned before the House of
Commons about a business of franks, with the old Duchess
of Marlborough. You may read of it in Johnson's Life of
Cave. Cave came off cleverly in that business. It is
certain our Plumer did nothing to discountenance the
rumour. He rather seemed pleased whenever it was,
with all gentleness, insinuated. But, besides his family
pretensions, Plumer was an engaging fellow, and sang
gloriously.
Not So Sweetly sang Plumer as thou Sangest, mild,
ZTHE AESSA VS OF E//A. 9
child-like, pastoral M ; a flute's breathing less divinely
whispering than thy Arcadian melodies, when in tones
worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song sung by
Amiens to the banished Duke, which proclaims the winter
wind more lenient than for a man to be ungrateful. Thy
sire was old surly M , the unapproachable churchwarden
of Bishopsgate. He knew not what he did, when he begat
thee, like spring, gentle offspring of blustering winter:—only
unfortunate in thy ending, which should have been mild,
conciliatory, swan-like.
Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up,
but they must be mine in private :—already I have fooled
the reader to the top of his bent;-else could I omit that
strange creature Woollett, who existed in trying the
question, and bought litigations Ž—and still stranger, inimit-
able, solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton might
have deduced the law of gravitation. How profoundly
would he nib a pen—with what deliberation would he wet a
wafer
But it is time to close—night's wheels are rattling fast
Over me—it is proper to have done with this solemn
mockery.
Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this
while—peradventure the very names, which I have sum-
moned up before thee, are fantastic, insubstantial—like
Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece:
Be Satisfied that something answering to them has had a
being. Their importance is from the past.
OXFORD IN THE WACATION.
CASTING a preparatory glance at the bottom of this article,
as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye (which,
while it reads, seems as though it read not), never fails to
consult the gui's sculpsit in the corner, before he pronounces
IO Z'HE ESSA VS OF ELIA.
Some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a Woollett methinks
I hear you exclaim, reader, Who is Elia Ž
Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half-
forgotten humours of some old clerks defunct, in an old
house of business, long since gone to decay, doubtless you
have already set me down in your mind as one of the self-
Same College—a votary of the desk—a notched and cropt
Scrivener—one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick
people are said to do, through a quill.
Well, I do agnise something of the sort. I confess that
it is my humour, my fancy—in the forepart of the day, when
the mind of your man of letters requires some relaxation—
(and none better than such as at first sight seems most
abhorrent from his beloved studies)—to while away some
good hours of my time in the contemplation of indigoes,
Cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In
the first place . . . and then it sends you home with such
increased appetite to your books . . . not to say, that your
Outside sheets, and waste wrappers of foolscap, do receive
into them, most kindly and naturally, the impression of
Sonnets, epigrams, essays—so that the very parings of a
Counting-house are, in some sort, the settings up of an
author. The enfranchised quill, that has plodded all the
morning among the cart-rucks of figures and cyphers, frisks
and curvets so at its ease over the flowery carpet-ground of
a midnight dissertation. It feels its promotion. . . . So
that you see, upon the whole, the literary dignity of Æſia is
very little, if at all, compromised in the condescension,
Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities
incidental to the life of a public office, I would be thought
blind to certain flaws, which a cunning carper might be able
to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I must have leave,
in the fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition, and doing-
away with altogether, of those consolatory interstices, and
Sprinklings of freedom, through the four seasons,—the red-
Zetter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-
Jeffer days. There was Paul, and Stephen, and Barnabas—
“Andrew and John, men famous in old times; ”
TH/2 ESSA YS OF E/./A. I 1
—we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back as
I was at school at Christ's. I remember their effigies, by
the same token, in the old Basket Prayer-book. There
hung Peter in his uneasy posture—holy Bartlemy in the
troublesome act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by
Spagnoletti...—I honoured them all, and could almost have
wept the defalcation of Iscariot—so much did we love to
keep holy memories sacred:—only methought I a little
grudged at the coalition of the better Jude with Simon—
clubbing (as it were) their sanctities together, to make
up one poor gaudy-day between them—as an economy
unworthy of the dispensation.
These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's
life—“far off their coming shone.”—I was as good as an
almanac in those days. I could have told you such a
saint’s-day falls out next week, or the week after. Perad-
venture the Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity, would,
once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little
better than one of the profane. Let me not be thought to
arraign the wisdom of my civil superiors, who have judged
the further observation of these holy tides to be papistical,
superstitious. Only in a custom of such long standing,
methinks, if their Holinesses the Bishops had, in decency,
been first sounded—but I am wading out of my depths. I
am not the man to decide the limits of civil and ecclesiastical
authority—I am plain Elia—no Selden, nor Archbishop
Usher—though at present in the thick of their books, here
in the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty
Bodley.
I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To such
a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his young years
of the sweet food of academic institution, nowhere is so
pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks at, as one or other
of the Universities. Their vacation, too, at this time of the
year, falls in so pat with ours. Here I can take my walks
unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree or standing I
please. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past
opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that
I 2 7A7A2 ESSA VS OF AE/.../A.
it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a
Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman
Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts.
Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable
character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed:
makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsey, as I pass;
wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about
in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church
reverend quadrangle, I can be content to pass for nothing
short of a Seraphic Doctor.
The walks at these times are so much one's own, the
tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen I The halls
deserted, and with open doors, inviting one to slip in unper-
ceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble or royal
Benefactress (that should have been ours) whose portrait
seems to smile upon their over-looked beadsman, and to
adopt me for their own. Then, to take a peep in by the
way at the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of antique
hospitality: the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen fire-
places, cordial recesses; ovens whose first pies were baked
four centuries ago; and spits which have cooked for
Chaucer | Not the meanest minister among the dishes but
is hallowed to me through his imagination, and the Cook
goes forth a Manciple.
Antiquity thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that,
being nothing, art everything ! When thou Zwerſ, thou wert
not antiquity—then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter
antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind
veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune,
modern / What mystery lurks in this retroversion ? or what
half Januses" are we, that cannot look forward with the
same idolatry with which we for ever revert | The mighty
future is as nothing, being everything ! the past is every-
thing, being nothing !
What were thy dark ages Ż Surely the sun rose as brightly
then as now, and man got him to his work in the morning.
* “Januses of one ſace.”—SIR THOMAS BRowNE,
THE ESSAYS OF EZZA. I3
Why is it that we can never hear mention of them without
an accompanying feeling, as though a palpable obscure had
dimmed the face of things, and that our ancestors wandered
o and fro groping !
Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most arride
and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering learning,
thy shelves
What a place to be in is an old library It seems as
though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed
their labours to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in
some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle,
to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon
dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid
their foliage; and the odour of their old moth-scented
coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential
apples which grew amid the happy orchard.
Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of
MSS. Those zaria ſectiones, so tempting to the more
erudite palates, do but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am
no Herculanean raker. The credit of the three witnesses
might have slept unimpeached for me. I leave these
Curiosities to Porson, and to G. D.—whom, by the way, I
found busy as a moth over some rotten archive, rummaged
Out of some seldom-explored press, in a nook at Oriel.
With long poring, he is grown almost into a book. He
stood as passive as one by the side of the old shelves. I
longed to new-coat him in Russia, and assign him his place.
He might have mustered for a tall Scapula.
D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning.
No inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortune, I appre-
hend, is consumed in journeys Letween them and Clifford's
Inn—where, like a dove on the asp’s nest, he has long
taken up his unconscious abode, amid an incongruous
assembly of attorneys’ clerks, apparitors, promoters, vermin
of the law, among whom he sits, “in calm and sinless
peace.” The fangs of the law pierce him not—the winds
of litigation blow over his humble chambers—the hard
sheriff's officer moves his hat as he passes—legal or illegal
I4 ZTAZAZ A.S.S.A. Y'S OF AZ ZZA,
discourtesy touches him—none thinks of offering violence or
injustice to him—you would as soon “strike an º
idea.”
D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course o
laborious years, in an investigation into all curious matter
connected with the two Universities; and has lately lit
upon a MS. collection of charters, relative to C , by
which he hopes to settle some disputed points—particularly
that long controversy between them as to priority of foun-
dation. The ardour with which he engages in these liberal
pursuits, I am afraid, has not met with all the encourage-
ment it deserved, either here, or at C Your caputs,
and heads of Colleges, care less than anybody else about
these questions.—Contented to suck the milky fountains of
their Alma Maters, without inquiring into the venerable
gentlewomen's years, they rather hold such curiosities to
be impertinent—unreverend. They have their good glebe
lands in mamu, and care not much to rake into the title-
deeds. I gather at least so much from other sources, for
D. is not a man to complain.
D. started like an unbroke heifer, when I interrupted
him. A priori it was not very probable that we should
have met in Oriel. But D. would have done the same, had
I accosted him on the sudden in his own walks in Clifford's
Inn, or in the Temple. In addition to a provoking short-
sightedness (the effect of late studies and watchings at the
midnight oil), D. is the most absent of men. He made a
call the other morning at our friend M.'s in Bedford Square;
and finding nobody at home, was ushered into the hall,
where asking for pen and ink, with great exactitude of
purpose he enters me his name in the book—which
ordinarily lies about in such places, to record the failures
of the untimely or unfortunate visitor—and takes his leave
with many ceremonies, and professions of regret. Some
two or three hours after, his walking destinies returned him
into the same neighbourhood again, and again the quiet
image of the fireside circle at M.'s—Mrs. M. presiding at it
like a Queen Lar, with pretty A.S. at her side—striking

7A7A2 ZSSA VS OF E/AA. I5
rresistibly on his fancy, he makes another call (forgetting
that they were “certainly not to return from the country
before that day week”) and disappointed a second time,
inquires for pen and paper as before : again the book is
brought, and in the line just above that in which he is
about to print his second name (his re-script)—his first
name (scarce dry) looks out upon him another Sosia, or as
if a man should suddenly encounter his own duplicate
The effect may be conceived. D. made many a good
resolution against any such lapses in future. I hope he will
not keep them too rigorously.
Por with G. D.—to be absent from the body, is some-
times (not to speak it profanely) to be present with the
Lord. At the very time when, personally encountering
thee, he passes on with no recognition—or, being stopped,
starts like a thing surprised—at that moment, reader, he is
on Mount Tabor—or Parnassus—or co-sphered with Plato
—or, with Harrington, framing “immortal commonwealths.”
—devising some plan of amelioration to thy country, or thy
species—peradventure meditating some individual kindness
of courtesy, to be done to thee thyself, the returning con-
sciousness of which made him to start so guiltily at thy
obtruded personal presence.
[D. commenced life after a course of hard study in the
house of “pure Emanuel,” as usher to a knavish fanatic
schoolmaster at , at a salary of eight pounds per annum,
with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend he never
received above half in all the laborious years he served this
man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when poverty,
staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes compelled
him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears,
Dr. would take no immediate notice, but after supper,
when the school was called together to even-song, he would
never fail to introduce some instructive homily against
riches, and the corruption of the heart occasioned through
the desire of them—ending with “Lord, keep thy servants,
above all things, from the heinous sin of avarice. Having
food and raiment, let us therewithal be content. Give me

I6 ZTAE/E AESSA YS OF ZZZZA.
Hagar's wish”—and the like—which, to the little auditory
sounded like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and sim!,
plicity, but to poor D. was a receipt in full for that quarter's
demand at least. ſ'
And D. has been under-working for himself ever since;—
drudging at low rates for unappreciating booksellers,
wasting his fine erudition in silent corrections of the classics,
and in those unostentatious but solid services to learning
which commonly fall to the lot of laborious scholars, who
have not the heart to sell themselves to the best advantage.
He has published poems, which do not sell, because their
character is unobtrusive, like his own, and because he has
been too much absorbed in ancient literature to know what
the popular mark in poetry is, even if he could have hit it.
And, therefore, his verses are properly, what he terms them,
crotchets; voluntaries; odes to liberty and spring; effusions;
little tributes and offerings, left behind him upon tables and
window-seats at parting from friends’ houses; and from all
the inns of hospitality, where he has been courteously (or
but tolerably) received in his pilgrimage. If his muse of
kindness halt a little behind the strong lines in fashion in
this excitement-loving age, his prose is the best of the sort
in the world, and exhibits a faithful transcript of his own
healthy, natural mind, and cheerful, innocent tone of con-
versation.]
D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best in such
places as these. He cares not much for Bath. He is out
of his element at Buxton, at Scarborough, or Harrogate.
The Cam and the Isis are to him “better than all the
waters of Damascus.” On the Muses' hill he is happy,
and good, as one of the Shepherds on the Delectable
Mountains; and when he goes about with you to show you
the halls and colleges, you think you have with you the
Interpreter of the House Beautiful.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-ANI)-THIRTY
- YEARS AGO.
IN Mr. Lamb’s “Works,” published a year or two since, I
find a magnificent eulogy on my old School," such as it was,
or now appears to him to have been between the years 1782
and I789. It happens, very Oddly, that my own standing
at Christ's was nearly corresponding with his ; and, with all
gratitude to him for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, I think
he has contrived to bring together whatever can be said in
praise of them, dropping all the other side of the argument
most ingeniously.
I remember L. at school; and can well recollect that he
had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his
schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town, and were
near at hand; and he had the privilege of going to see
them, almost as often as he wished, through some invidious
distinction, which was denied to us. The present worthy
sub-treasurer to the Inner Temple can explain how that
happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in the morning,
while we were battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf-
our crug—moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden
piggins, Smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured
from. Our Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and
the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched
for him with a slice of “extraordinary bread and butter,”
from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of
millet, somewhat less repugnant—(we had three banyan to
four meat days in the week)—was endeared to his palate with
a lump of double-refined, and a Smack of ginger (to make it
go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. In
lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh boiled beef
on Thursdays (strong as caro equina), with detestable mari-
golds floating in the pail to poison the broth—our scanty
mutton crags on Fridays—and rather more savoury, but
* “Recollections of Christ's Hospital.”
17 2
I 8 ZTHE ESSA VS OF EAAA.
grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted or rare,
on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited our appetites,
and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal proportion)
—he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting
griskin (exotics unknown to our palates), cooked in the
paternal kitchen (a great thing), and brought him daily by
his maid or aunt 1 I remember the good old relative (in
whom love forbade pride) squatting down upon some odd
stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the viands (of
higher regale than those cates which the ravens ministered
to the Tishbite); and the contending passions of L. at the
unfolding. There was love for the bringer; shame for the
thing brought, and the manner of its bringing; sympathy
for those who were too many to share in it; and, at top of
all, hunger (eldest, strongest of the passions !) predominant,
breaking down the stony fences of shame, and awkwardness,
and a troubling over-consciousness.
I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and those who
should care for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances
of theirs, which they could reckon upon being kind to me
in the great city, after a little forced notice, which they had
the grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, soon
grew tired of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to
recur too often, though I thought them few enough ; and,
One after another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone
among six hundred playmates.
O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early
homestead | The yearnings which I used to have towards
it in those unfledged years How, in my dreams, would my
native town (far in the west) come back, with its church,
and trees, and faces ! How I would wake weeping, and in
the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet Calne in
Wiltshire |
To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by
the recollection of those friendless holidays. The long
warm days of summer never return but they bring with them
a gloom from the haunting memory of those whole-day-leaves,
when, by some strange arrangement, we were turned out,
THE ESSA VS OF ELIA. I9
for the livelong day, upon our own hands, whether we had
friends to go to, or none. I remember those bathing-
excursions to the New-River, which L. recalls with Such
relish, better, I think, than he can—for he was a home-
seeking lad, and did not much care for such water-pastimes:
—How merrily we would sally forth into the fields; and
strip under the first warmth of the sun; and wanton like
young dace in the streams; getting us appetites for noon,
which those of us that were penniless (our scanty morning
crust long since exhausted) had not the means of allaying—
while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes, were at feed
about us, and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings—the
very beauty of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and
the sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon them —
How faint and languid, finally, we would return, towards
night-fall, to our desired morsel, half-rejoicing, half-reluctant,
that the hours of our uneasy liberty had expired
It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about
the streets objectless—shivering at cold windows of print-
shops, to extract a little amusement ; or haply, as a last
resort, in the hope of a little novelty, to pay a fifty-times
repeated visit (where our individual faces should be as well
known to the warden as those of his own charges) to the
Lions in the Tower—to whose levée, by courtesy imme-
morial, we had a prescriptive title to admission.
L.'s governor (so we called the patron who presented us
to the foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal
roof. Any complaint which he had to make was sure of
being attended to. This was understood at Christ's, and
was an effectual screen to him against the severity of
masters, or worse tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions
of these young brutes are heart-sickening to call to recollec-
tion. I have been called out of my bed, and waked for the
purpose, in the coldest winter nights—and this not once, but
night after night—in my shirt, to receive the discipline of a
leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, because it pleased
my callow overseer, when there has been any talking heard
after we were gone to bed, to make the six last beds in the
2O Z'H'A. A.S.S.A. Y.S OF EAE/A.
dormitory, where the youngest children of us slept, answer-
able for an offence they neither dared to commit, nor had
the power to hinder. The same execrable tyranny droye
the younger part of us from the fires, when our feet were
perishing with snow; and, under the cruelest penalties,
forbade the indulgence of a drink of water, when we lay in
sleepless Summer nights, fevered with the season, and the
day's sports.
There was one H , who, I learned, in after-days, was
seen expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. (Do I
flatter myself in fancying that this might be the planter of
that name, who suffered at Nevis, I think, or St. Kits,
some few years since P My friend Tobin was the
benevolent instrument of bringing him to the gallows.)
This petty Nero actually branded a boy, who had offended
him, with a red-hot iron ; and nearly starved forty of us,
with exacting contributions, to the one half of our bread, to
pamper a young ass, which, incredible as it may seem, with
the connivance of the nurse's daughter (a young flame of
his) he had contrived to smuggle in, and keep upon the
leads of the zward, as they called our dormitories. This
game went on for better than a week, till the foolish beast,
not able to fare well but he must cry roast meat—happier
than Caligula’s minion, could he have kept his own counsel
—but, foolisher, alas ! than any of his species in the fables
—waxing fat, and kicking, in the fulness of bread, one
unlucky minute would needs proclaim his good fortune to
the world below ; and, laying out his simple throat, blew
such a ram's horn blast, as (toppling down the walls of his
own Jericho) set concealment any longer at defiance. The
client was dismissed, with certain attentions, to Smithfield;
but I never understood that the patron underwent any
censure on the occasion. This was in the stewardship of
L.'s admired Perry.
Under the same facile administration, can L. have for-
gotten the cool impunity with which the nurses used to
carry away openly, in open platters, for their own tables,
one out of two of every hot joint, which the careful matron
i THE ESSA YS OF EAE/A. 2 I
had been seeing scrupulously weighed out for our dinners?
These things were daily practised in that magnificent apart-
ment, which L. (grown connoisseur since, we presume)
praises so highly for the grand paintings “by Verrio, and
others,” with which it is “hung round and adorned.” But
the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat boys in pictures was,
at that time, I believe, little consolatory to him, or us, the
living ones, who saw the better part of our provisions carried
away before our faces by harpies; and ourselves reduced
(with the Trojan in the hall of Dido)
“To feed our mind with idle portraiture.”
L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags, or
the fat of fresh beef boiled ; and sets it down to some
superstition. But these unctuous morsels are never grateful
to young palates (children are universally fat-haters), and in
strong, coarse, boiled meats, unsalted, are detestable. A
gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a ghoul, and held in
equal detestation. suffered under the imputation :
“ —'Twas said,
He ate strange flesh.”
He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up the
remnants left at his table (not many, nor very choice frag-
ments, you may credit me)—and, in an especial manner,
these disreputable morsels, which he would convey away,
and secretly stow in the settle that stood at his bed-side.
None saw when he ate them. It was rumoured that he
privately devoured them in the night. He was watched,
but no traces of such midnight practices were discoverable.
Some reported, that, on leave-days, he had been seen to
carry out of the bounds a large blue check handkerchief,
full of something. This then must be the accursed thing.
Conjecture next was at work to imagine how he could
dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the beggars. This
belief generally prevailed. He went about moping. None
spake to him. No one would play with him. He was excom-
municated; put out of the pale of the school. He was too

22 THE AESSA VS OF EAEA. |
powerful a boy to be beaten, but he underwent every º:
of that negative punishment, which is more grievous than
many stripes. Still he persevered. At length he was
observed by two of his school-fellows, who were determined
to get at the secret, and had traced him one leave-day for
that purpose, to enter a large worn-out building, such as
there exist specimens of in Chancery Lane, which are let
out to various scales of pauperism with open door, and a
common staircase. After him they silently slunk in, and
followed by stealth up four flights, and saw him tap at a
poor wicket, which was opened by an aged woman, meanly
clad. Suspicion was now ripened into certainty. The
informers had secured their victim. They had him in their
toils. Accusation was formally preferred, and retribution
most signal was looked for. Mr. Hathaway, the then steward,
for this happened a little after my time, with that patient
sagacity which tempered all his conduct, determined to
investigate the matter, before he proceeded to sentence.
The result was, that the supposed mendicants, the receivers
or purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned out to be the
parents of , an honest couple come to decay,+whom
this seasonable supply had, in all probability, saved from
mendicancy; and that this young stork, at the expense of
his own good name, had all this while been only feeding the
old birds ! The governors on this occasion, much to their
honour, voted a present relief to the family of , and
presented him with a silver medal. The lesson which the
steward read upon RASH JUDGMENT, on the occasion of
publicly delivering the medal to , I believe, would not
be lost upon his auditory. I had left school then, but I
well remember He was a tall, shambling youth, with
a cast in his eye, not at all calculated to conciliate hostile
prejudices. I have since seen him carrying a baker's basket.
I think I heard he did not do quite so well by himself, as he
had done by the old folks.
I was a hypochondriac lad; and a sight of a boy in fetters,
upon the day of my first putting on the blue clothes, was
not exactly fitted to assuage the natural terrors of initiation.
Zł//Z /2.SSA YS OF EAZA. 23
was of tender years, barely turned of seven; and had only
ead of such things in books, or seen them but in dreams.
was told he had run azuay. This was the punishment for
the first offence. As a novice I was soon after taken to see
the dungeons. These were little, square, Bedlam cells,
where a boy could just lie at his length upon straw and a
blanket—a mattress, I think, was afterwards substituted—
with a peep of light, let in askance, from a prison-orifice at
top, barely enough to read by. Here the poor boy was locked
in by himself all day, without sight of any but the porter
who brought him his bread and water—who might not speak
to him ; or of the beadle, who came twice a week to call
him out to receive his periodical chastisement, which was
almost welcome, because it separated him for a brief interval
from solitude:—and here he was shut up by himself of
hights, out of the reach of any sound, to suffer whatever
horrors the weak nerves, and superstition incident to his
time of life, might subject him to." This was the penalty
for the second offence. Wouldst thou like, reader, to see
what became of him in the next degree?
The culprit, who had been a third time an offender, and
whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible, was
brought forth, as at some solemn auto da fé, arrayed in
uncouth and most appalling attire—all trace of his late
“watchet weeds” carefully effaced, he was exposed in a
jacket, resembling those which London lamplighters for-
merly delighted in, with a cap of the same. The effect of
this divestiture was such as the ingenious devisers of it
could have anticipated. With his pale and frighted features,
it was as if some of those disfigurements in Dante had
seized upon him. In this disguisement he was brought
into the hall (Z.'s favourite state-room) where awaited him
* One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accordingly,
at length convinced the governors of the impolicy of this part of the
sentence, and the midnight torture to the spirits was dispensed with.
This fancy of dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard’s brain;
for which (saving the reverence due to Holy Paul), methinks, I could
willingly spit upon his statue.
24 7'HAZ ESSA YS OF EAAA,
the whole number of his school-fellows, whose joint lesson
and sports he was thenceforth to share no more ; the awful
presence of the steward, to be seen for the last time; of the
executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the occasion;
and of two faces more, of direr import, because never but
in these extremities visible. These were governors; two
of whom, by choice, or charter, were always accustomed
to officiate at these O//ima Supplicia ; not to mitigate
(so at least we understood it), but to enforce the uttermost
stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert, I
remember, were colleagues on one occasion, when the
beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was ordered
to prepare him for the mysteries. The scourging was, after
the old Roman fashion, long and stately. The lictor
accompanied the criminal quite round the hall. We were
generally too faint with attending to the previous disgusting
circumstances to make accurate report with our eyes of
the degree of corporal suffering inflicted. Report, of course,
gave out the back knotty and livid. After scourging, he
was made over, in his San Benito, to his friends, if he had
any (but commonly such poor runagates were friendless),
or to his parish officer, who, to enhance the effect of the
scene, had his station allotted to him on the outside of the
hall gate.
These solemn pageantries were not played off so often as
to spoil the general mirth of the community. We had
plenty of exercise and recreation after school hours; and,
for myself, I must confess, that I was never happier, than
in them. The Upper and the Lower Grammar Schools
were held in the same room; and an imaginary line only
divided their bounds. Their character was as different as
that of the inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyrenees.
The Rev. James Boyer was the Upper Master; but the
Rev. Matthew Feilde presided over that portion of the
apartment of which I had the good fortune to be a member.
We lived a life as careless as birds. We talked and did just
what we pleased, and nobody molested us. We carried an
accidence, or a grammar, for form ; but, for any trouble it
THE AES,S.A YS OF Z ZZA. 25
ve us, we might take two-years in getting through the
rbs deponent, and another two in forgetting all that
we had learned about them. There was now and then the
formality of saying a lesson, but if you had not learned it, a
brush across the shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was
the sole remonstrance. Feilde never used the rod; and in
truth he wielded the cane with no great good-will—holding
it “like a dancer.” It looked in his hands rather like an
emblem, than an instrument of authority; and an emblem,
too, he was ashamed of. He was a good, easy man, that
did not care to ruffle his own peace, nor perhaps set any
great consideration upon the value of juvenile time. He
came among us, now and then, but often stayed away
whole days from us ; and when he came, it made no
difference to us—he had his private room to retire to, the
short time he stayed, to be out of the sound of our noise.
Our mirth and uproar went on. We had classics of our
own, without being beholden to “insolent Greece or
haughty Rome,” that passed current among us—Peter
Wilkins—the Adventures of the Hon. Capt. Robert Boyle
—the Fortunate Blue Coat Boy—and the like. Or we
cultivated a turn for mechanic or scientific operations;
making little sun-dials of paper; or weaving those ingenious
parentheses, called cat-cradles, or making dry peas to dance
upon the end of a tin pipe; or studying the art military
over that laudable game “French and English,” and a
hundred other such devices to pass away the time—mix-
ing the useful with the agreeable—as would have made
the souls of Rousseau and John Locke chuckle to have
Seen UIS.
Matthew Feilde belonged to that class of modest divines
who affect to mix in equal proportion the gentleman, the
scholar, and the Christian, but, I know not how, the first
ingredient is generally found to be the predominating dose
in the composition. He was engaged in gay parties, or with
his courtly bow at some episcopal levée, when he should
have been attending upon us. He had for many years the
classical charge of a hundred children, during the four or
26 Z}/AE AESSA YS OA' AAAA,
five first years of their education; and his very highest
form seldom proceeded further than two or three of the
introductory fables of Phaedrus. How things were suffered
to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was the proper
person to have remedied these abuses, always affected,
perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering in a province not
strictly his own. I have not been without my suspicions,
that he was not altogether displeased at the contrast we
presented to his end of the school. We were a sort of
Helots to his young Spartans. He would sometimes, with
ironic deference, send to borrow a rod of the Under Master,
and then, with Sardonic grin, observe to one of his upper
boys, “how neat and fresh the twigs looked.” While his
pale students were battering their brains over Xenophon
and Plato, with a silence as deep as that enjoined by the
Samite, we were enjoying ourselves at our ease in our little
Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets of his discipline,
and the prospect did but the more reconcile us to our lot.
His thunders rolled innocuous for us; his storms came
near, but never touched us; contrary to Gideon's miracle,
while all around were drenched, our fleece was dry." His
boys turned out the better scholars; we, I suspect, have
the advantage in temper. His pupils cannot speak of him
without something of terror allaying their gratitude; the
remembrance of Feilde comes back with all the soothing
images of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work like
play, and innocent idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and
life itself a “playing holiday.”
Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of
Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to understand
a little of his system. We occasionally heard sounds of the
O/ulanies, and caught glances of Tartarus. B. was a
rabid pedant. His English style was cramped to barbarism.
His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged him to those
periodical flights) were grating as scannel pipes.” He
* Cowley,
* In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadjutor.
While the ſormer was digging his brains for crude anthems, worth a
THE AESSA VS OF EAZA. 27
would laugh, ay, and heartily, but then it must be at
Flaccus’s quibble about Rex or at the fristis severifas.
in zultu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence—thin jests,
which at their first broaching could hardly have had wis
enough to move a Roman muscle. He had two wigs, both
pedantic, but of different omen. The one serene, smiling,
fresh powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old
discoloured, unkempt, angry Caxon, denoting frequent and
bloody execution. Woe to the school, when he made his
morning appearance in his passy, or passionate zvig. No
comet, expounded surer. J. B. had a heavy hand. I have
known him double his knotty fist at a poor trembling
child (the maternal milk hardly dry upon its lips) with a
“Sirrah, do you presume to set your wits at me?” Nothing
was more common than to see him make a headlong entry
into the school-room, from his inner recess, or library, and,
with turbulent eye, singling out a lad, roar out, “Od's my
life, sirrah” (his favourite adjuration), “I have a great mind
to whip you,”—then, with as sudden a retracting impulse,
fling back into his lair—and after a cooling lapse of some
minutes (during which all but the culprit had totally for-
gotten the context) drive headlong out again, piecing out
his imperfect sense, as if it had been some Devil's Litany,
with the expletory yell—“and / WILL, too.” In his gentler
moods, when the raó’us furor was assuaged, he had resort
to an ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to
himself, of whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, at
the same time ; a paragraph, and a lash between ; which in
those times, when parliamentary Oratory was most at a
height and flourishing in these realms, was not calculated to
impress the patient with a veneration for the diffuser graces
of rhetoric.
pig-nut, F. would be recreating his gentlemanly, ſancy in the more
flowery walks of the Muses. A little dramatic effusion of his, under the
name of Vertumnus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the chroniclers
of that sort of literature. It was accepted by Garrick, but the town
did not give it their sanction. B. used to say of it, in a way of half-
compliment, half-irony, that it was too classical for represenſation.
28 TH AE AESSA VS OF EAAA.
Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to ſaſl
ineffectual from his hand—when droll squinting W 5
having been caught putting the inside of the master's desk
to a use for which the architect had clearly not designed
it, to justify himself, with great simplicity averred, that he
did not know that the ſhing had been forewarmed. This
exquisite irrecognition of any law antecedent to the oral or
declaratory, struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who
heard it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) that remis-
Sion was unavoidable.
L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructor.
Coleridge, in his Literary Life, has pronounced a more
intelligible and ample encomium on them. The author of
the Country Spectator doubts not to compare him with the
ablest teachers of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss
him better than with the pious ejaculation of C when he
heard that his old master was on his death-bed—“Poor
J. B.-may all his faults be forgiven; and may he be wafted
to bliss by little cherub boys, all head and wings, with no
bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities.”
Under him were many good and sound scholars bred.
First Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens,
kindest of boys and men, since Co-grammar-master (and
inseparable companion) with Dr. T-e. What an edify-
ing spectacle did this brace of friends present to those who
remembered the anti-socialities of their predecessors | You
never met the one by chance in the street without a wonder,
which was quickly dissipated by the almost immediate sub-
appearance of the other. Generally arm in arm, these
kindly coadjutors lightened for each other the toilsome
duties of their profession, and when, in advanced age, one
found it convenient to retire, the other was not long in
discovering that it suited him to lay down the fasces also.
Oh, it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same arm linked
in yours at forty, which at thirteen helped it to turn over
the Cicero De Amicitié, or some tale of Antique Friendship,
which the young heart even then was burning to anticipate!
Co-Grecian with S. was Th—, who has since executed with
ZTHE /2.SSA Y'S OF EAAA. 29
ability various diplomatic functions at the Northern courts.
Th— was a tall, dark, Saturnine youth, sparing of speech,
with raven locks. Thomas Fanshaw Middleton followed
him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gentle-
man in his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent
critic; and is author (besides the Country Spectator) of a
Treatise on the Greek Article, against Sharpe. M. is said
to bear his mitre high in India, where the regni movitas (I
dare say) sufficiently justifies the bearing. A humility quite
as primitive as that of Jewel or Hooker might not be
exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo-Asiatic
diocesans with a reverence for home institutions, and the
church which those fathers watered. The manners of M.
at school, though firm, were mild, and unassuming. Next
to M. (if not senior to him) was Richards, author of the
Aboriginal Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize
Poems; a pale, studious Grecian. Then followed poor
S , ill-fated M ! of these the Muse is silent.
“Finding some of Edward's race
Unhappy, pass their annals by.”
Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day-
spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before
thee—the dark pillar not yet turned—Samuel Taylor
Coleridge—Logician, Metaphysician, Bard —How have I
seen the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still,
entranced with admiration (while he weighed the dispro-
portion between the speech and the garð of the young
Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet
intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for
even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philo-
sophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar
while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the
accents of the inspired charity-boy/—Many were the “wit-
combats” (to dally awhile with the words of old Fuller)
between him and C. V. Le G–, “which two I behold
like a Spanish great galleon, and an English man-of-war;
Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher in
3o THE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
learning, solid, but slow in his performances. C. V. L.,
with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in
sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take
advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and
invention.”
Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten,
Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh,
with which thou wert wont to make the old Cloisters shake,
in thy cognition of some poignant jest of theirs; or the
anticipation of some more material, and, peradventure,
practical one, of thine own. Extinct are those Smiles, with
that beautiful countenance, with which (for thou wert the
Mireus formosus of the school), in the days of thy maturer
waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town-
damsel, who, incensed by provoking pinch, turning tigress-
like round, suddenly converted by thy angel-look, exchanged
the half-formed terrible “b/–,” for a gentler greeting—
“bless thy handsome ſace /*
Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the
friends of Elia—the junior Le G and F ; who
impelled, the former by a roving temper, the latter by too
quick a sense of neglect—ill capable of enduring the slights
poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in our seats of learning
—exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp ; perishing one
by climate, and one on the plains of Salamanca :—Le
G , sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured ; F , dogged,
faithful, anticipative of insult, warm-hearted, with something
of the old Roman height about him.
Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master of Hertford,
with Marmaduke T , mildest of Missionaries—and both
my good friends still—close the catalogue of Grecians in my
time.
THE TWO RACES OF MEN.
THE human species, according to the best theory I can
form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who
borrozw, and the men zwho Zend. To these two original
diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifi-
cations of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men,
red men. All the dwellers upon earth, “Parthians, and
Medes, and Elamites,” flock hither, and do naturally fall in
with one or other of these primary distinctions. The
infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate
as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and
a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born
degraded. “He shall serve his brethren.” There is some-
thing in the air of one of this cast, lean and Suspicious;
contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of
the other.
Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all
ages—Alcibiades—Falstaff—Sir Richard Steele—our late
incomparable Brinsley—what a family likeness in all four !
What a careless, even deportment hath your borrowers
what rosy gills what a beautiful reliance on Providence
doth he manifest,--taking no more thought than lilies
What contempt for money, accounting it (yours and mine
especially) no better than dross | What a liberal confound-
ing of those pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum. / or
rather, what a noble simplification of language (beyond
Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites into one clear,
intelligible pronoun adjective l—What near approaches doth
he make to the primitive community,+to the extent of one-
half of the principle at least !—
He is the true taxer “who calleth all the world up to be
taxed ; ” and the distance is as vast between him and one of
us, as subsisted betwixt the Augustan Majesty and the
poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusalem!
—His exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary air ]
So far removed from your sour parochial or state-gatherers,
3I )
32 THE ESSA YS OF EAAA,
—those ink-horn varlets, who carry their want of welcome
in their faces ! He cometh to you with a smile and
troubleth you with no receipt ; confining himself to no set
Season. Every day is his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy
Michael. He applieth the lene formentum of a pleasant
look to your purse, which to that gentle warmth expands
her silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveller,
for which sun and wind contended ! He is the true
Propontic which never ebbeth ! The sea which taketh
handsomely at each man's hand. In vain the victim, whom
he delighteth to honour, struggles with destiny; he is in the
net. Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordained to lend—
that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the
reversion promised. Combine not preposterously in thine
own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives!—but, when
thou Seest the proper authority coming, meet it smilingly,
as it were half-way. Come, a handsome sacrifice I See
how light he makes of it ! Strain not courtesies with a
noble enemy.
Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon my mind
by the death of my old friend, Ralph Bigod, Esq., who
departed this life on Wednesday evening; dying, as he had
lived, without much trouble. He boasted himself a descend-
ant from mighty ancestors of that name, who heretofore
held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions and
sentiments he belied not the stock to which he pretended.
Early in life he found himself invested with ample revenues;
which with that noble disinterestedness which I have
noticed as inherent in men of the great race, he took almost
immediate measures entirely to dissipate and bring to
nothing: for there is something revolting in the idea of a
king holding a private purse; and the thoughts of Bigod
were all regal. Thus furnished by the very act of dis-
furnishment; getting rid of the cumbersome luggage of
riches, more apt (as one sings)
“To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise,”
ZTA/Z ZSSA VS OA' Z.Z.Z.A. 33
he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enterprise,
“borrowing and to borrow !”
In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout this
island, it has been calculated that he laid a tithe part of the
inhabitants under contribution. I reject this estimate as
greatly exaggerated: but having had the honour of accom-
panying my friend, divers times, in his perambulations about
this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at first with the
prodigious number of faces we met, who claimed a sort
of respectful acquaintance with us. He was one day so
obliging as to explain the phenomenon. It seems, these
were his tributaries; feeders of his exchequer; gentlemen,
his good friends (as he was pleased to express himself),
to whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan.
Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He rather
took a pride in numbering them ; and, with Comus, seemed
pleased to be “stocked with so fair a herd.”
With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived to
keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force of an
aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that “money
kept longer than three days stinks.” So he made use of
it while it was fresh. A good part he drank away (for he
was an excellent toss-pot), some he gave away, the rest he
threw away, literally tossing and hurling it violently from
him—as boys do burrs, or as if it had been infectious,
into ponds, or ditches, or deep holes, inscrutable cavities
of the earth:--or he would bury it (where he would never
seek it again) by a river's side under some bank, which (he
would facetiously observe) paid no interest—but out away
from him it must go peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into
the wilderness, while it was sweet. He never missed it.
The streams were perennial which fed his fisc. When new
supplies became necessary, the first person that had the
felicity to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure to
contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an undemiable
way with him. He had a cheerful, open exterior, a quick
jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched with grey (cana
fides). He anticipated no excuse, and found none. And,
3
34 7THE ESSA VS OF AZZZA.
waiving for a while my theory as to the great race, I would
put it to the most untheorising reader, who may at times
have disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is not more
repugnant to the kindliness of his nature to refuse such
a one as I am describing, than to say no to a poor petitionary
rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his mumping vis-
nomy, tells you, that he expects nothing better; and there-
fore, whose preconceived notions and expectations you do
in reality so much less shock in the refusal.
When I think of this man; his fiery glow of heart; his
swell of feeling; how magnificent, how ideal he was ; how
great at the midnight hour; and when I compare with him
the companions with whom I have associated since, I
grudge the Saving of a few idle ducats, and think that I am
fallen into the society of lenders, and little men.
To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in
leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of
alienators more formidable than that which I have touched
upon ; I mean your borrozzers of books—those mutilators
of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and
creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless
in his depredations !
That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great
eye-tooth knocked out—(you are now with me in my little
back study in Bloomsbury, reader 1) with the huge
Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants, in
their reformed posture, guardant of nothing) once held the
tallest of my folios, Opera Bonavenſura, choice and massy
divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also,
but of a lesser calibre, Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas)
showed but as dwarfs, itself an Ascapart —that Comberbatch
abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is
more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute,
namely, that “the title to property in a book” (my
Bonaventure, for instance) “is in exact ratio to the
claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating the
same.” Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of
our shelves is safe P
7TA/AE AESSA VS OA' A' Z.Z.A. 35
The slight vacuum in the left-hand case—two shelves from
the ceiling—Scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of
a loser was whilom the commodious resting-place of
Browne on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he knows
more about that treatise than I do, who introduced it to him,
and was indeed the first (of the moderns) to discover its
beauties—but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his
mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry
her off than himself—Just below, Dodsley's dramas want
their fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is . The
remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons,
where the fates borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy
of Melancholy, in sober state.—There loitered the Com-
plete Angler; quiet as in life, by some stream side.—In
yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower-volume, with “eyes
closed,” mourns his ravished mate.
One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes,
like the sea, Sweeps away a treasure, at another time, sea
like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. I
have a small under-collection of this nature (my friend's
gatherings in his various calls), picked up, he has forgotten
at what odd places, and deposited with as little memory as
mine. I take in these orphans, the twice-deserted. These
proselytes of the gate are welcome as the true Hebrews.
There they stand in conjunction ; natives, and naturalised.
The latter seem as little disposed to inquire out their true
lineage as I am.—I charge no warehouse-room for these
deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the ungentlemanly
trouble of advertising a sale of them to pay expenses.
To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning
in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty meal on
your viands, if he can give no account of the platter after it.
But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., to be so
importunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and
adjurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely
woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle P-knowing at
the time, and knowing that I knew also, thou most assuredly
wouldst never turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio:—
36 THE AESSA VS OF AE/.../A.
what but the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love
of getting the better of thy friend?—Then, worst cut of all !
to transport it with thee to the Gallican land—
“ Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness,
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt,
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder 1"
hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and
fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keep-
est all companies with thy quips and mirthful tales P-Child
of the Green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy
wife, too, that part-French, better part Englishwoman l—
that she could fix upon no other treatise to bear away, in
kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke
Greville, Lord Brook—of which no Frenchman, nor woman
of France, Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted
to comprehend a tittle ! Was there not Zimmermann on
So/Etude 3
Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collec-
tion, be shy of showing it; or if thy heart overfloweth to
lend them, lend thy books; but let it be to such a one as
S. T. C.—he will return them (generally anticipating the
time appointed) with usury; enriched with annotations,
tripling their value. I have had experience. Many are
these precious MSS. of his—(in matter oftentimes, and
almost in quantity not unfrequently, vying with the originals)
—in no very clerkly hand—legible in my Daniel; in old
Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser
cogitations of the Greville, now, alas ! wandering in Pagan
lands. I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy
library, against S. T. C.
NEW YEAR’S EVE.
EVERY man hath two birthdays: two days, at least, in every
year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it
affects his mortal duration. The one is that which in an
especial manner he termeth his. In the gradual desuetude
of old observances, this custom of Solemnising our proper
birthday hath nearly passed away, or is left to children,
who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand
anything in it beyond cake and orange. But the birth of
a New Year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted
by king or cobbler. No one ever regarded the First of
January with indifference. It is that from which all date
their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity
of our common Adam.
Of all sound of all bells—(bells, the music nighest border-
ing upon heaven)—most solemn and touching is the peal
which rings out the Old Year. I never hear it without a
gathering-up of my mind to a concentration of all the
images that have been diffused over the past twelvemonth;
all I have done or suffered, performed or neglected—in that
regretted time. I begin to know its worth, as when a
person dies. It takes a personal colour; nor was it a
poetical flight in a contemporary, when he exclaimed
“I saw the skirts of the departing Year.”
It is no more than what in sober sadness every one of us
seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave-taking. I am
sure I felt it, and all felt it with me, last night; though some
of my companions affected rather to manifest an exhilaration
at the birth of the coming year, than any very tender regrets
for the decease of its predecessor. But I am none of those
who
“Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.”
I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties; new books,
new faces, new years, from some mental twist which makes
37
38 TH/AE AESSA VS OA' A' Z.Z.A.
it difficult in me to face the prospective. I have almost
ceased to hope; and am sanguine only in the prospects of
other (former) years. I plunge into foregone visions and
conclusions. I encounter pell-mell with past disappoint-
ments. I am armour-proof against old discouragements. I
forgive, or overcome in fancy, old adversaries. I play over
again for love, as the gamesters phrase it, games, for which
I Once paid so dear. I would scarce now have any of those
untoward accidents and events of my life reversed. I would
no more alter them than the incidents of some well-contrived
novel. Methinks, it is better that I should have pined
away seven of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the
fair hair, and fairer eyes, of Alice W-n, than that so
passionate a love-adventure should be lost. It was better
that our family should have missed that legacy, which old
Dorrell cheated us of, than that I should have at this
moment two thousand pounds in Öanco, and be without the
idea of that specious old rogue.
In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look
back upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox, when
I say that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a
man may have leave to love himself, without the imputation
of self-love P
If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is intro-
spective—and mine is painfully so—can have a less respect
for his present identity, than I have for the man Elia. I
know him to be light, and vain, and humoursome ; a
notorious . . . ; addicted to . . . ; averse from counsel,
neither taking it, nor offering it;- . . besides; a stam-
mering buffoon; what you will ; lay it on, and spare not ; I
subscribe to it all, and much more, than thou Canst be
willing to lay at his door but for the child Elia—that
“other me,” there, in the background—I must take leave
to cherish the remembrance of that young master—with as
little reference, I protest, to this stupid changeling of five-
and-forty, as if it had been a child of some other house, and
not of my parents. I can cry over its patient Small-pox at
five, and rougher medicaments. I can lay its poor fevered
ZTAZ2 ESSA VS OF EAE/A. 39
head upon the sick pillow at Christ's, and wake with it in
surprise at the gentle posture of maternal tenderness hang-
ing over it, that unknown had watched its sleep. I know
how it shrank from any the least colour of falsehood.—God
help thee, Elia, how art thou changed 1 Thou art sophis-
ticated.—I know how honest, how courageous (for a weak-
ling) it was—how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful!
From what have I not fallen, if the child I remember was
indeed myself-and not some dissembling guardian, pre-
senting a false identity, to give the rule to my unpractised
steps, and regulate the tone of my moral being !
That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy,
in such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly
idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another cause; simply, that
being without wife or family, I have not learned to project
myself enough out of myself; and having no offspring of
my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory, and adopt
my own early idea, as my heir and favourite P If these
speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader—(a busy man,
perchance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and
am singularly conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to
ridicule, under the phantom cloud of Elia.
The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a
character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of any
old institution; and the ringing out of the Old Year was
kept by them with circumstances of peculiar ceremony.—In
those days the sound of those midnight chimes, though it
seemed to raise hilarity in all around me, never failed to
bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I then
scarce conceived what it meant, or thought of it as a
reckoning that concerned me. Not childhood alone, but
the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is
mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could
preach a homily on the fragility of life; but he brings it not
home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can
appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of Decem-
ber. But now, shall I confess a truth?—I feel these audits
but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of
4O THE ESSA YS OF EAE/A.
my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments
and shortest periods, like miser's farthings. In proportion
as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count
upon their periods and would fain lay my ineffectual finger
upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to
pass away “like a weaver's shuttle.” Those metaphors
solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of
mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that
smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the
inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green
earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural
solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up
my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age
to which I am arrived; I, and my friends: to be no
younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be
weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into
the grave.—Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or
in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My household
gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are now rooted up
without blood. They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores.
A new state of being staggers me. •
Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summe
holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious
juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful
glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversations, and
innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself—do these things
go out with life?
Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are
pleasant with him P
And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios I must I part
with the intense delight of having you (huge armfuls) in my
embraces? Must knowledge come to me, if it come at all,
by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by
this familiar process of reading P
Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indi-
cations which point me to them here, the recognisable
face—the “sweet assurance of a look”?—
In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying—to give
7A/E /2.SSA VS OF EAE/A. 4 I
it its mildest name—does more especially haunt and beset
me. In a genial August noon, beneath a Sweltering sky,
death is almost problematic. At those times do such poor
snakes as myself enjoy an immortality. Then we expand
and burgeon. Then are we as strong again, as valiant
again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The blast that
nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts of death. All
things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that master
feeling; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity; moonlight
itself, with its shadowy and spectral appearances, that cold
ghost of the sun, or Phoebus's sickly sister, like that
innutritious one denounced in the Canticles:–I am none
of her minions—I hold with the Persian.
Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings
death into my mind. All partial evils, like humours, run
into that capital plague-Sore.—I have heard some profess an
indifference to life. Such hail the end of their existence as
a port of refuge: and speak of the grave as of Some soft
arms, in which they may slumber as on a pillow. Some
have wooed death but out upon thee, I say, thou foul,
ugly phantom | I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar
John) give thee to six-score thousand devils, as in no
instance to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as a
universal viper; to be branded, proscribed, and spoken evil
of In no way can I be brought to digest thee, thou thin,
melancholy Privation, or more frightful and confounding
Aositize / *
Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, are
altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself. For what satis-
faction hath a man, that he shall “lie down with kings and
emperors in death,” who in his lifetime never greatly coveted
the society of such bedfellows?—or, forsooth, that “so
shall the fairest face appear P”—why, to comfort me, must
Alice W-n be a goblin P More than all, I conceive
disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities,
inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead
man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his
odious truism, that “such as he now is, I must shortly be.”
42 THE AESSA VS OF EAAA.
Not so shortly, friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the
meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty
of thee. Know thy betters | Thy New Years’ Days are
past. I survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup
of wine—and while that turn-coat bell, that just now mourn-
fully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with changed
notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to its peal the
Song made on a like occasion, by hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton,
THE NEW YEAR.
Hark! the cock crows, and yon bright star
Tells us the day himself's not far;
And see where, breaking from the night,
He gilds the western hills with light.
With him old Janus doth appear,
Peeping into the future year,
With such a look as seems to say,
The prospect is not good that way.
Thus do we rise ill sights to see,
And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy;
When the prophetic fear of things
A more tormenting mischief brings,
More full of soul-tormenting gall,
Than direct mischiefs can beſall.
But stay ! but stay! methinks my sight,
Better inform'd by clearer light,
Discerns sereneness in that brow,
That all contracted seem’d but now.
His revers’d face may show distaste,
And frown upon the ills are past;
But that which this way looks is clear,
And smiles upon the New-born Year.
He looks too from a place so high,
The Year lies open to his eye;
And all the moments open are
To the exact discoverer.
Yet more and more he smiles upon
The happy revolution.
Why should we then suspect or fear
The influences of a year,
So Smiles upon us the first morn,
And speaks us good so soon as born ?
Plague on't! the last was ill enough,
This cannot but make better proof;
Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through
ZłżE ESSA YS OF E/C/A. 43
The last, why so we may this too:
And then the next in reason should
Be superexcellently good:
For the worst ills (we daily see)
Have no more perpetuity,
Than the best fortunes that do fall;
Which also bring us wherewithal
Longer their being to support,
Than those do of the other sort:
And who has one good year in three,
And yet repines at destiny,
Appears ungrateful in the case,
And merits not the good he has.
Then let us welcome the New Guest
With lusty brimmers of the best;
Mirth always should Good Fortune meet,
And render e'en Disaster sweet:
And though the Princess turn her back,
Let us but line ourselves with sack,
We better shall by far hold out,
Till the next Year she face about.
How say you, reader—do not these verses smack of the
rough magnanimity of the old English vein P Do they not
fortify like a cordial ; enlarging the heart, and productive
of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the concoction P
Where be those puling fears of death, just now expressed
or affected P−Passed like a cloud—absorbed in the purging
Sunlight of clear poetry—clean washed away by a wave of
genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondries—
And now another cup of the generous ! and a merry New
Year, and many of them, to you all, my masters |
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST.
“A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth,” and the rigour of the game.”
This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle (now with
* This was beſore the introduction of rugs, reader, You must
remember the intolerable crash of the unswept cinder, betwixt your
foot and the marble,
44 ZTH/AE AESSA VS OF AE/ZA.
God), who, next to her devotions, loved a good game at
whist. She was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your
half and half players, who have no objection to take a hand,
if you want one to make up a rubber; who affirm that they
have no pleasure in winning; that they like to win one
game and lose another ;” that they can while away an hour
very agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent whether
they play or no ; and will desire an adversary, who has
slipped a wrong card, to take it up and play another.
These insufferable triflers are the curse of a table. One
of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may be
Said, that they do not play at cards, but only play at playing
with them.
Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested them,
as I do, from her heart and soul; and would not, save
upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself at the same
table with them. She loved a thorough-paced partner, a
determined enemy. She took, and gave no concessions.
She hated favours. She never made a revoke, nor ever
passed it over in her adversary without exacting the utmost
forfeiture. She fought a good fight; cut and thrust. She
held not her good sword (her cards) “like a dancer.” She
Sat bolt upright; and neither showed you her cards, nor
desired to see yours. All people have their blind side—
their superstitions; and I have heard her declare, under
the rose, that Hearts was her favourite suit.
I never in my life—and I knew Sarah Battle many of the
best years of it—saw her take out her snuff-box when it was
her turn to play; or snuff a candle in the middle of a game;
or ring for a servant, till it was fairly over. She never intro-
duced, or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during
its process. As she emphatically observed, cards were
cards; and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her fine last-
Century Countenance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman
of a literary turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded to
take a hand; and who, in his excess of candour, declared,
* As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one day,
and lose him the next.
ZTAZE AESSA VS OA' ZZZA. 45
that he thought there was no harm in unbending the mind
now and then, after serious studies, in recreations of that
kind | She could not-bear to have her noble occupation, to
which she wound up her faculties, considered in that light.
It was her business, her duty, the thing she came into the
world to do, and she did it. She unbent her mind after-
wards—over a book.
Pope was her favourite author; his Rape of the Lock her
favourite work. She once did me the favour to play over
with me (with the cards) his celebrated game of Ombre in
that poem ; and to explain to me how far it agreed with,
and in what points it would be found to differ from,
traydrille. Her illustrations were apposite and poignant;
and I had the pleasure of sending the substance of
them to Mr. Bowles; but I suppose they came too late to
be inserted among his ingenious notes upon that author.
Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love; but
whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The former, she
said, was showy and specious, and likely to allure young
persons. The uncertainty and quick shifting of partners—a
thing which the constancy of whist abhors;–the dazzling
supremacy and regal investiture of Spadille—absurd, as she
justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where his
crown and garter give him no proper power above his
brother-nobility of the Aces;–the giddy vanity, so taking to
the inexperienced, of playing alone;—above all, the over-
powering instructions of a Sans Prendre Vole,_to the
triumph of which there is certainly nothing parallel or
approaching, in the contingencies of whist;-all these, she
would say, made quadrille a game of captivation to the
young and enthusiastic. But whist was the solider game:
that was her word. It was a long meal; not, like quadrille,
a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might co-extend in
duration with an evening. They gave time to form rooted
friendships, to cultivate steady enmities. She despised the
chance-started, capricious, and ever fluctuating alliances of
the other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say,
reminded her of the petty ephemeral embroilments of the
46 7"H/2 ESSA VS OF AE/AA.
little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel; perpetually
changing postures and connections; bitter foes to-day,
Sugared darlings to-morrow; kissing and scratching in a
breath;-but the wars of whist were comparable to the
long, steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the great
French and English nations,
A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in her
favourite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the nob
in cribbage—nothing superfluous. No flushes—that most
irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being can set up:—
that any one should claim four by virtue of holding cards of
the same mark and colour, without reference to the playing
of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions of the
cards themselves | She held this to be a solecism ; as
pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship.
She despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the
colours of things.—Suits were soldiers, she would say, and
must have a uniformity of array to distinguish them : but
what should we say to a foolish squire, who should claim a
merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets that
never were to be marshalled—never to take the field P−she
even wished that whist were more simple than it is ; and in
my mind, would have stripped it of some appendages, which
in the state of human frailty, may be venially, and even
commendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the
deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not
one suit always trumps?—Why two colours, when the mark
of the suits would have sufficiently distinguished them
without it?–
“But the eye, my dear madam, is agreeably refreshed
with the variety. Man is not a creature of pure reason—he
must have his senses delightfully appealed to. We see
it in Roman Catholic countries, where the music and the
paintings draw in many to worship, whom your quaker
spirit of unsensualising would have kept out.—You, your-
self, have a pretty collection of paintings—but confess to
me, whether, walking in your gallery at Sandham, among
those clear Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters in the
THAE AESSA VS OF AE/C/A. 47
ante-room, you ever felt your bosom glow with an elegant
delight, at all comparable to that you have it in your power
to experience most evenings over a well-arranged assortment
of the court cards?—the pretty antic habits, like heralds in
a procession—the gay triumph-assuring Scarlets—the con-
trasting deadly-killing sables—the ‘hoary majesty of spades’
—Pam in all his glory!—
“All these might be dispensed with ; and, with their
naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the game might go
on very well, pictureless. But the beauty of cards would be
extinguished for ever. Stripped of all that is imaginative in
them, they must degenerate into mere gambling.—Imagine
a dull deal-board, or drum head, to spread them on, instead
of that nice verdant carpet (next to nature's), fittest arena
for those courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts and
turneys in l—Exchange those delicately-turned ivory markers
—(work of Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol,-or
as profanely slighting their true application as the arrantest
Ephesion journeyman that turned out those little shrines for
the goddess)—exchange them for little bits of leather (our
ancestors' money) or chalk and a slate l’—
The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of
my logic; and to her approbation of my arguments on her
favourite topic that evening, I have always fancied myself
indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage-board, made
of the finest Sienna marble, which her maternal uncle (old
Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated) brought
with him from Florence;—this, and a trifle of five hundred
pounds, came to me at her death.
The former bequest (which I do not least value) I have
kept with religious care; though she herself, to confess a
truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. It was an
essentially vulgar game, I have heard her say,+disputing
with her uncle, who was very partial to it. She could never
heartily bring her mouth to pronounce “go”—or “that’s a
go.” She called it an ungrammatical game. The pegging
teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five
dollar stake), because she would not take advantage of the
48 THE AESSA VS OF AZIAA.
turn-up knave, which would have given it her, but which she
must have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring
“two for his heels.” There is something extremely genteel
. this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentlewoman
OTI).
Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two
persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the
terms—such as pique—repique—the capot—they savoured
(she thought) of affectation. But games for two, or even
three, she never greatly cared for. She loved the quadrate,
or Square. She would argue thus:–Cards are warfare: the
ends are gain, with glory. But cards are war in disguise of
a sport: when single adversaries encounter, the ends pro-
posed are too palpable. By themselves, it is too close a
fight; with spectators, it is not much bettered. No looker-
on can be interested, except for a bet, and then it is a mere
affair of money; he cares not for your luck sympathetical/y,
or for your play.—Three are still worse; a mere naked war
of every man against every man, as in cribbage, without
league or alliance; or a rotation of petty and contradictory
interests, a succession of heartless leagues, and not much
more hearty infractions of them, as in traydrille.—But in
square games (she meant zwhist) all that is possible to be
attained in card-playing is accomplished. There are the
incentives of profit with honour, common to every species—
though the latter can be but very imperfectly enjoyed in
those other games, where the spectator is only feebly a
participator. But the parties in whist are spectators and
principals too. They are a theatre to themselves, and a
looker-on is not wanted. He is rather worse than nothing,
and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or interests
beyond its sphere. You glory in some surprising stroke of
skill or fortune, not because a cold—or even an interested—
bystander witnesses it, but because your partner sympathises
in the contingency. You win for two. You triumph for
two. Two are exalted. Two again are mortified; which
divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking
off the invidiousness) your glory. Two losing to two are
ZTAE/A2 /2.SSA VS OA' A' Z/A. 49
better reconciled, than one to one in that close butchery.
The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying the channels.
War becomes a civil game.—By such reasonings as these
the old lady was accustomed to defend her favourite
pastime.
No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at
any game, where chance entered into the composition, for
7.0%ing. Chance, she would argue—and here again, admire
the subtlety of her conclusion 1—chance is nothing, but
where something else depends upon it. It is obvious that
cannot be glory. What rational cause of exultation could
it give to a man to turn up size ace a hundred times
together by himself? or before spectators, where no stake
was depending;-Make a lottery of a hundred thousand
tickets with but one fortunate number—and what possible
principle of our nature, except stupid wonderment, could it
gratify to gain that number as many times successively,
without a prize P-Therefore she disliked the mixture of
chance in backgammon, where it was not played for money,
She called it foolish, and those people idiots, who were
taken with a lucky hit under such circumstances. "Games
of pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played for a stake,
they were a mere system of over-reaching. Played for
glory, they were a mere setting of one man's wit—his
memory, or combination-faculty rather—against another’s ;
like a mock-engagement at a review, bloodless and profit-
less.-She could not conceive a game wanting the Sprightly
infusion of chance,—the handsome excuses of good fortune.
Two people playing at chess in a corner of a room, whilst
whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with
insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut similitudes
of Castles and Knights, the imagery of the board, she would
argue (and I think in this case justly), were entirely mis-
placed and senseless. Those hard head-contests can in no
instance ally with the fancy. They reject form and colour.
A pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper
arena for such combatants.
To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the
4.
50 ZAZE ESSA VS OF E/AA.
bad passions, she would retort that man is a gaming animal.
He must be always trying to get the better in something or
other:—that this passion can scarcely be more safely
expended than upon a game at cards; that cards are a
temporary illusion; in truth, a mere drama; for we do but
£/ay at being mightily concerned, where a few idle shillings
are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we are as mightily con-
cerned as those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. They
are a sort of dream-fighting; much ado; great battling and
little bloodshed; mighty means for disproportioned ends;
quite as diverting, and a great deal more innoxious, than
many of those more serious games of life, which men play,
without esteeming them to be such. -
With great deference to the old lady's judgment on these
matters, I think I have experienced some moments in my
life, when playing at cards for nothing has even been agree-
able. When I am in sickness, or not in the best spirits, I
sometimes call for the cards, and play a game at piquet for
love with my cousin Bridget—Bridget Elia,
I grant there is something sneaking in it; but with a tooth-
ache, or a sprained ankle, -when you are subdued and
humble, you are glad to put up with an inferior spring of
action.
There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, as sick
zwhásá-
I grant it is not the highest style of man—I deprecate
the manes of Sarah Battle—she lives not, alas ! to whom I
should apologise.— -
At such times, those terms which my old friend objected
to, come in as something admissible.—I love to get a tierce
or a quatorze, though they mean nothing, I am subdued
to an inferior interest. Those shadows of winning amuse
Iſle.
That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capotted
her)—(dare I tell thee, how foolish I am?)—I wished it
might have lasted for ever, though we gained nothing, and
lost nothing, though it was a mere shade of play: I would
be content to go on in that idle folly for ever. The pipkin
THE ESSA YS OF EDMA. 5 I
should be ever boiling, that was to prepare the gentle lenitive
to my foot, which Bridget was doomed to apply after the
game was over ; and as I do not much relish appliances,
there it should ever bubble. Bridget and I should be ever
playing,
VALENTINE’S DAY.
HAIL to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine ! Great
is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable Arch-flamen of
Hymen | Immortal Go-between who and what manner of
person art thou? Art thou but a name, typifying the restless
principle which impels poor humans to seek perfection in
union ? or wert thou indeed a mortal prelate, with thy tippet
and thy rochet, thy apron on, and decent lawn sleeves?
Mysterious personage I like unto thee, assuredly, there is
no other mitred father in the calendar; not Jerome, nor
Ambrose, nor Cyril; nor the consigner of undipped infants
to eternal torments, Austin, whom all mothers hate; nor he
who hated all mothers, Origen; nor Bishop Bull, nor Arch-
bishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou comest attended with
thousands and tens of thousands of little Loves, and the
air is
“Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings.”
Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors ; and
instead of the crozier, the mystical arrow is borne before thee.
In other words, this is the day on which those charming
little missives, yeleped Valentines, cross and intercross each
other at every street and turning. The weary and all fore-
spent twopenny postman sinks beneath a load of delicate
embarrassments, not his own. It is scarcely credible to
what an extent this ephemeral courtship is carried on in
this loving town, to the great enrichment of porters, and
detriment of knockers and bell-wires. In these little visual
interpretations, no emblem is so common as the heart, -
52 THE AESSA VS OF EAE/A.
that little three-cornered exponent of all our hopes and
fears, the bestuck and bleeding heart; it is twisted and
tortured into more allegories and affectations than an opera
hat. What authority we have in history or mythology for
placing the headquarters and metropolis of God Cupid in
this anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not very
clear; but we have got it, and it will serve as well as any
other. Else we might easily imagine, upon some other
system which might have prevailed for anything which our
pathology knows to the contrary, a lover addressing his
mistress, in perfect simplicity of feeling, “Madam, my liver
and fortune are entirely at your disposal; ” or putting a
delicate question, “Amanda, have you a midriff to bestow P”
But custom has settled these things, and awarded the seat
of sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate
neighbours wait at animal and anatomical distance.
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all
rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door. It
“gives a very echo to the throne where hope is seated.”
But its issues seldom answer to this oracle within. It is
so seldom that just the person we want to see comes. But
of all the clamorous visitations the welcomest in expecta-
tion is the sound that ushers in, or seems to usher in, a
Valentine. As the raven himself was hoarse that announced
the fatal entrance of Duncan, so the knock of the postman
on this day is light, airy, confident, and befitting one that
bringeth good tidings. It is less mechanical than on other
days; you will say, “that is not the post, I am sure.”
Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymen —delightful eternal
commonplaces, “having been will always be ; ” which no
school-boy nor school-man can write away; having your
irreversible throne in the fancy and affections—what are
your transports, when the happy maiden, opening with
careful finger, careful not to break the emblematic seal,
bursts upon the sight of some well-designed allegory, some
type, some youthful fancy, not without verses—
“Lovers all,
A madrigal,”
ZTAE/A2 ASSA VS OA' Z.Z.Z.A. 53
or some such device, not over-abundant in sense—young
Love disclaims it, and not quite silly—something between
wind and water, a chorus where the sheep might almost
join the shepherd, as they did, or as I apprehend they did,
in Arcadia.
All Valentines are not foolish ; and I shall not easily
forget thine, my kind friend (if I may have leave to call
you so) E. B.-E. B. lived opposite a young maiden, whom
he had often seen, unseen, from his parlour window in
C e Street. She was all joyousness and innocence, and
just of an age to enjoy receiving a Valentine, and just of a
temper to bear the disappointment of missing one with
good humour. E. B. is an artist of no common powers;
in the fancy parts of designing, perhaps inferior to none;
his name is known at the bottom of many a well-executed
vignette in the way of his profession, but no further; for
E. B. is modest, and the world meets nobody half-way.
E. B. meditated how he could repay this young maiden for
many a favour which she had done him unknown ; for
when a kindly face greets us, though but passing by, and
never knows us again, nor we it, we should feel it as an
obligation ; and E. B. did. This good artist set himself at
work to please the damsel. It was just before Valentine's
day three years since. He wrought, unseen, and unsus-
pected, a wondrous work. We need not say it was on the
finest gilt paper, with borders—full, not of common hearts
and heartless allegory, but all the prettiest stories of love
from Ovid and older poets than Ovid (for E. B. is a
scholar). There was Pyramus and Thisbe, and be sure
Dido was not forgot, nor Hero and Leander, and swans
more than sang in Cayster, with mottoes and fanciful
devices, such as beseemed—a work in short of magic.
Iris dipt the woof. This on Valentine's eve he commended
to the all-swallowing indiscriminate orifice—(O ignoble
trust 1)—of the common post; but the humble medium did
its duty, and from his watchful stand, the next morning, he
saw the cheerful messenger knock, and by-and-by the
precious charge delivered. He saw, unseen, the happy girl
54 TA/AE AESSA WS OF EAEA.
unfold the Valentine, dance about, clap her hands, as one
after one the pretty emblems unfolded themselves. She
danced about, not with light love or foolish expectations,
for she had no lover; or, if she had, none she knew that
could have created those bright images which delighted
her. It was more like some fairy present; a God-send, as
our familiarly pious ancestors termed a benefit received,
where the benefactor was unknown. It would do her
no harm. It would do her good for ever after. It is
good to love the unknown. I only give this as a specimen
of E. B. and his modest way of doing a concealed
kindness. -
“Good-morrow to my Valentine,” sings poor Ophelia ;
and no better wish, but with better auspices, we wish to all
faithful lovers, who are not too wise to despise old legends,
but are content to rank themselves humble diocesans of old
Bishop Valentine, and his true church.
A CHAPTER ON EARS.
I HAVE no ear.—
Mistake me not, reader, nor imagine that I am by
nature destitute of those exterior twin appendages, hanging
ornaments and (architecturally speaking) handsome volutes
to the human capital. Better my mother had never borne
me.—I am, I think, rather delicately than copiously pro-
vided with those conduits; and I feel no disposition to
envy the mule for his plenty, or the mole for her exactness,
in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets—those indispensable
side-intelligencers.
Neither have I incurred or done anything to incur, with
Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which constrained him
to draw upon assurance—to feel “quite unabashed,”’ and
at ease upon that article. I was never, I thank my stars, in
* “Earless on high stood, unabashed, Defoe.”—Dunciad.
7"HZ ZSSA VS OA' Z2/C/A, 55
the pillory; nor, if I read them aright, is it within the
compass of my destiny that I ever should be.
When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will under-
stand me to mean—for music.—To say that this heart never
melted at the concourse of sweet sounds, would be a foul
self-libel.—“Water Žarſed from the sea "never fails to move
it strangely. So does “An infancy.” But they were used
to be sung at her harpsichord (the old-fashioned instrument
in vogue in those days) by a gentlewoman—the gentlest,
sure, that ever merited the appellation—the sweetest—why
should I hesitate to name Mrs. S , once the blooming
Fanny Weatherall of the Temple—who had power to thrill
the soul of Elia, small imp as he was, even in his long coats;
and to make him glow, tremble, and blush with a passion,
that not faintly indicated the day-spring of that absorbing
sentiment, which was afterwards destined to overwhelm and
subdue his nature quite, for Alice W-n.
I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to harmony.
But organically I am incapable of a tune. I have been
practising “God save the King ” all my life; whistling and
humming it over to myself in solitary corners; and am not
yet arrived, they tell me, within many quavers of it. Yet
hath the loyalty of Elia never been impeached.
I am not without suspicion that I have an undeveloped
faculty of music within me. For, thrumming, in my wild
way, on my friend A.’s piano, the other morning, while he
was engaged in an adjoining parlour, -on his return he was
pleased to say, “Ae thought it could not be the maid /* On
his first surprise at hearing the keys touched in somewhat
an airy and masterful way, not dreaming of me, his suspicions
had lighted on Jenny. But a grace snatched from a superior
refinement, soon convinced him that some being,-techni-
cally perhaps deficient, but higher informed from a principle
common to all the fine arts, had swayed the keys to a
mood which Jenny, with all her (less-cultivated) enthusiasm,
could never have elicited from them. I mention this as a
proof of my friend's penetration, and not with any view of
disparaging Jenny.
56 ZTA/A2 /2.SSA VS OF EAEAA.
Scientifically I could never be made to understand (yet
have I taken some pains) what a note in music is ; or how
one note should differ from another. Much less in voices
can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes
the thorough bass I contrive to guess at, from its being
Supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, however,
for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that which I
disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, I scarce know
what to say I am ignorant of. I hate, perhaps, by mis-
nomers. Sostenufo and adagio stand in the like relation of
obscurity to me; and Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as conjuring as
Aara/ºon.
It is hard to stand alone—in an age like this, -(consti-
tuted to the quick and critical perception of all harmonious
combinations, I verily believe, beyond all preceding ages,
since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut)—to remain as it were
singly unimpressible to the magic influences of an art which
is said to have such an especial stroke at soothing, elevating,
and refining the passions.—Yet rather than break the candid
current of my confessions, I must avow to you, that I have
received a great deal more pain than pleasure from this so
Cried-up faculty.
I am constitutionally susceptible of noises, A carpenter's
hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me into more
than midsummer madness. But those unconnected, unset
Sounds are nothing to the measured malice of music. The
ear is passive to those single strokes; willingly enduring
stripes, while it hath no task to con. To music it cannot
be pa: sive. It will strive—mine at least will—spite of its
inaptitude, to thrid the maze; like an unskilled eye painfully
poring upon hieroglyphics. I have sat through an Italian
Opers, till, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have
rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded streets, to
solace myself with sounds, which I was not obliged to
follow, and get rid of the distracting torment of endless,
fruitless, barren attention | I take refuge in the unpretend-
ing assemblage of honest common-life sounds;–and the
purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes my paradise,
ZTATE AESSA VS OF AZZZA. 57
I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the purposes
of the cheerful playhouse) watching the faces of the auditory
in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's Laughing Audience!)
immovable, or affecting some faint emotion,-till (as some
have said, that our occupations in the next world will be
but a shadow of what delighted us in this) I have imagined
myself in some cold Theatre in Hades, where some of the
forms of the earthly one should be kept up, with none of the
enjoyment, or like that—
“—Party in a parlour,
All silent, and all DAMNED !”
Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of
music, as they are called, do plague and embitter my appre-
hension.—Words are something ; but to be exposed to an
endless battery of mere sounds; to be long a dying, to lie
stretched upon a rack of roses; to keep up languor by
unintermitted effort; to pile honey upon Sugar, and sugar
upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness; to fill
up sound with feeling, and strain ideas to keep pace with it;
to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to make the pictures
for yourself; to read a book al/ stops, and be obliged to
supply the verbal matter; to invent extempore tragedies to
answer to the vague gestures of an inexplicable rambling
mime—these are faint shadows of what I have undergone
from a series of the ablest-executed pieces of this empty
instrumental music.
I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, I have
experienced something vastly lulling and agreeable:—after-
wards followeth the languor, and the oppression. Like that
disappointing book in Patmos; or, like the comings on of
melancholy, described by Burton, doth music make her first
insinuating approaches:—“Most pleasant it is to such as
are melancholy given, to walk alone in some solitary grove,
betwixt wood and water, by some brook side, and to
meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject,
which shall effect him most, amabilis insania, and menţis
58 THE ESSAYS of Ezza.
grafissimus error. A most incomparable delight to build
Castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an
infinite variety of parts, which they suppose, and strongly
imagine, they act, or that they see done.—So delightsome
these toys at first, they could spend whole days and nights
without sleep, even whole years in such contemplations, and
fantastical meditations, which are like so many dreams, and
will hardly be drawn from them—winding and unwinding
themselves as so many clocks, and still pleasing their
humours, until at last the SCENE TURNS UPON A SUDDEN,
and they being now habitated to such meditations and
Solitary places, can endure no company, can think of
nothing but harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow,
Suspicion, Suðrus?icus £udor, discontent, cares, and weariness
of life, surprise them on a sudden, and they can think of
nothing else: continually suspecting, no. Sooner are their
eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth
upon them, and terrifies their souls, representing some
dismal object to their minds; which now, by no means, no
labour, no persuasions, they can avoid, they cannot be rid
of, they cannot resist.” -
Something like this “scENE-TURNING” I have experienced
at the evening parties, at the house of my good Catholic
friend ZWoz, ; who, by the aid of a capital organ, himself
the most finished of players, converts his drawing-room into
a chapel, his week-days into Sundays, and these latter into
minor heavens."
When my friend commences upon one of those solemn
anthems, which peradventure struck upon my heedless ear,
rambling in the side aisles of the dim Abbey, some five-and-
thirty years since, waking a new sense, and putting a soul of
old religion into my young apprehension—(whether it be
that, in which the psalmist, weary of the persecutions of bad
men, wisheth to himself dove's wings, or that other, which,
with a like measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth by
* “I have been there, and still would go ;
'Tis like a little heaven below.”—DR. WATTS,
THAZ ZSSA VS OF AZZZA, 59
what means the young man shall best cleanse his mind)—a
holy calm pervadeth me.—I am for the time
& & rapt above earth,
And possess joys not promised at my birth.”
But when this master of the spell, not content to have
laid a soul prostrate, goes on, in his power, to inflict more
bliss than lies in her capacity to receive, impatient to
overcome her “earthly’ with his “heavenly,”—still pouring
in, for protracted hours, fresh waves and fresh from the sea
of sound, or from that inexhausted German ocean, above
which, in triumphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride those
Arions Haydn and Mozart, with their attendant tritons
Aach, Beethozen, and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to
reckon up would but plunge me again in the deeps, I
stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling to and fro at
my wit’s end;—clouds, as of frankincense, oppress me—
priests, altars, censers, dazzle before me—the genius of his
religion hath me in her toils—a shadowy triple tiara invests
the brow of my friend, late so naked, so ingenious—he is
Pope, –and by him sits, like as in the anomaly of dreams, a
she-Pope too, tri-coroneted like himself!—I am converted,
and yet a Protestant;-at once ma/Zeus hereticorum, and
myself grand heresiarch: or three heresies centre in my
person: I am Marcion, Ebion, and Cerinthus—Gog and
Magog—what not P−till the coming in of the friendly
Supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a draught of true
Lutheran beer (in which chiefly my friend shows himself no
bigot) at once reconciles me to the rationalities of a purer
faith; and restores to me the genuine unterrifying aspects
of my pleasant-countenanced host and hostess.
[P.S.—A writer, whose real name it seems is Boldero, but
who has been entertaining the town for the last twelve
months with some very pleasant lucubrations under the
assumed signature of Zeigh Hunt,” in his “Indicator” of
* Clearly a fictitious appellation ; for, if we admit the latter of these
names to be in a manner English, what is Leigh & Christian nomen-
clature knows no such,
6o 7THE ESSA VS OA' A. Z.Z.A.
the 31st January last has thought fit to insinuate that I,
Elia, do not write the little sketches which bear my signa-
ture in this magazine, but that the true author of them is a
Mr. L–b. Observe the critical period at which he has
chosen to impute the calumny, on the very eve of the
publication of our last number, affording no scope for
explanation for a full month; during which time I must lie
writhing and tossing under the cruel imputation of nonentity.
Good Heavens ! that a plain man must not be allowed to
&e
They call this an age of personality; but surely this spirit
of anti-personality (if I may so express it) is something worse.
Take away my moral reputation,--I may live to discredit
that calumny; injure my literary fame—I may write that up
again ; but, when a gentleman is robbed of his identity,
where is he?
Other murderers stab but at our existence, a frail and
perishing trifle at the best ; but here is an assassin who aims
at our very essence; who not only forbids us to be any
longer, but to have been at all. Let our ancestors look to it.
Is the parish register nothing? Is the house in Princes
Street, Cavendish Square, where we saw the light six-and-
forty years ago, nothing P. Were our progenitors from
stately Genoa, where we flourished four centuries back,
before the barbarous name of Bolderol was known to a
European mouth, nothing? Was the goodly scion of our
name, transplanted into England in the reign of the seventh
Henry, nothing? Are the archives of the steelyard, in
succeeding reigns (if haply they survive the fury of our
envious enemies), showing that we flourished in prime
repute, as merchants, down to the period of the Common-
wealth, nothing?
“Why, then the world, and all that's in't, is nothing ;
The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing.”
I am ashamed that this trifling writer should have power
to move me so.]
* It is clearly of transatlantic origin.
AILL FOOLS’ DAY.
THE compliments of the season to my worthy masters, and
a merry first of April to us all !
Many happy returns of this day to you—and you—and
Jou, sir, nay, never frown, man, nor put a long face upon
the matter. Do not we know one another P what need of
ceremony among friends P we have all a touch of that same
—you understand me—a speck of the motley. Beshrew
the man who on such a day as this, the general festival,
should affect to stand aloof. I am none of those sneakers.
I am free of the corporation, and care not who knows it.
He that meets me in the forest to-day, shall meet with no
wiseacre, I can tell him. Stultus sum, Translate me that,
and take the meaning of it to yourself for your pains.
What, man, we have four quarters of the globe on our side,
at the least computation.
Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry—we will drink
no wise, melancholy, politic port on this day—and let us
troll the catch of Amiens—duc ad me—duc ad me—how
goes it?
“Here shall he see,
Gross fools as he.”
Now would I give a trifle to know historically and authen-T
tically, who was the greatest fool that ever lived. I would
certainly give him a bumper. Marry, of the present breed,
I think I could without much difficulty name you the party.
Remove your cap a little farther if you please; it hides
my bauble. And now each man bestride his hobby, and
dust away his bells to what tune he pleases. I will give
you, for my part,
6 & the crazy old church clock,
And the bewilder'd chimes.”
Good master Empedocles," you are welcome. It is long
1 & 6 He who, to be deem'd
A god, leap'd fondly into Etna flames
23
6 I
62 THE ESSA VS OF EAEAA.
since you went a salamander-gathering down AEtna. Worse
than Samphire-picking by some odds. 'Tis a mercy your
Worship did not singe your mustachios.
Ha! Cleombrotus !!! and what salads in faith did you
light upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean P You
were founder, I take it, of the disinterested sect of the
Calenturists.
Gebir, my old freemason, and prince of plaisterers at
Babel,” bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand | You
have claim to a seat here at my right hand, as patron of
the stammerers. You left your work, if I remember
Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred million toises, or
thereabout, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what a
long bell you must have pulled to call your top workmen
to their nuncheon on the low grounds of Senaar. Or did
you send up your garlic and onions by a rocket P I am a
rogue if I am not ashamed to show you our Monument on Fish
Street Hill, after your altitudes. Yet we think it somewhat.
What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears P-cry, baby,
put its finger in its eye, it shall have another globe, round
as an Orange, pretty moppet !
Mister Adams 'odso, I honour your coat—pray do us
the favour to read to us that sermon, which you lent to
Mistress Slipslop—the twenty and second in your portman-
teau there—on Female Incontinence—the same—it will
come in most irrelevantly and impertinently seasonable to
the time of the day. .
Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. Pray
correct that error.
Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you a bumper,
or a paradox. We will have nothing said or done syllo-
gistically this day. Remove those logical forms, waiter,
that no gentleman break the tender shins of his apprehension
stumbling across them.
l $6 He who, to enjoy
Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the sea
* “The builders next of Babel on the plain
Of Senaar.”—
33
ZAZ ZSSA VS OF AZZZA. 63
Master Stephen, you are late.—Ha 1 Cokes, is it you?—
Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay my devoir to you.-
Master Shallow, your worship's poor servant to command.
—Master Silence, I will use few words with you.--Slender,
it shall go hard if I edge not you in somewhere.—You six
will engross all the poor wit of the company to-day.—I
know it, I know it.
Ha I honest R , my fine old Librarian of Ludgate,
time out of mind, art thou here again P Bless thy doublet,
it is not over-new, threadbare as thy stories:–what dost
thou flitting about the world at this rate P-Thy customers
are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, have ceased to read long ago.
—Thou goest still among them, seeing if, peradventure, thou
canst hawk a volume or two, -Good Granville S , thy
last patron, is flown.
“Ring Pandion, he is dead,
All thy friends are lapt in lead.”—
Nevertheless, noble R , come in, and take your seat
here, between Armado and Quisada; for in true courtesy,
in gravity, in fantastic Smiling to thyself, in Courteous
smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature of well-appar-
elled speech, and the commendation of wise sentences, thou
art nothing inferior to those accomplished Dons of Spain.
The spirit of chivalry forsake me for ever, when I forget
thy singing the song of Macheath, which declares that he
might be happy zwith either, situated between those two
ancient spinsters—when I forget the inimitable formal love
which thou didst make, turning now to the one, and now to
the other, with that Malvolian Smile as if Cervantes, not
Gay, had written it for his hero; and as if thousands of
periods must revolve, before the mirror of courtesy could
have given his invidious preference between a pair of so
goodly-propertied and meritorious-equal damsels. * * *
To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract our
Fool's Banquet beyond its appropriate day,+for I fear the
second of April is not many hours distant—in sober verity->
I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I love a Foo/—
64 THZE ESSA VS OF E//A.
as naturally, as if I were of kith and kin to him. When
|a child, with childlike apprehensions, that dived not below
'the surface of the matter, I read those Parables—not guess-
| ing at their involved wisdom—I had more yearnings
l towards that simple architect, that built his house upon the
| Sand, than I entertained for his more cautious neighbour;
i grudged at the hard censure pronounced upon the quiet
'Soul that kept his talent; and—prizing their simplicity
beyond the more provident, and, to my apprehension, some-
|. unſeminine wariness, of their competitors—I felt a
kindliness, that almost amounted to a tendre, for those five
thoughtless virgins,—I have never made an acquaintance
\ince that lasted, or a friendship, that answered, with any
that had not some tincture of the absurd in their char-
acters. I venerate an honest obliquity of understanding.
The more laughable blunders a man shall commit in your
company, the more tests he giveth you, that he will not
betray or overreach you. I love the safety, which a palp-
able hallucination warrants; the security, which a word out
of season ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and
say a fool told it you, if you please, that he who hath not
a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse
matter in his composition. It is observed, that “the
foolisher the fowl or fish—woodcocks,—dotterels, cod’s-
heads, etc., the finer the flesh thereof,” and what are
commonly the world’s received fools, but such whereof the
world is not worthy P and what have been some of the
kindliest patterns of our species, but so many darlings of
absurdity, minions of the goddess, and her white boys P-
Reader, if you wrest my words beyond their fair construction,
it is you, and not I, that are the April Fool.
A QUAKERS’ MEETING.
** Still-born Silence thou that art
Flood-gate of the deeper heart!
Offspring of a heavenly kind
Frost o’ the mouth, and thaw o' the mind
Secrecy’s confidant, and he
Who makes religion mystery !
Admiration's speaking'st tongue !
Leave, thy desert shades among,
Reverend hermits’ hallow'd cells,
Where retired devotion dwells :
With thy enthusiasms come,
Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb l’’
—FLECKNO."
READER, wouldst thou know what true peace and quiet
mean ; wouldst thou find a refuge from the noises and
clamours of the multitude; wouldst thou enjoy at once
solitude and society; wouldst thou possess the depth of
thy own spirit in stillness, without being shut out from the
consolatory faces of thy species; wouldst thou be alone,
and yet accompanied ; solitary, yet not desolate; singular,
yet not without some to keep thee in countenance; a unit
in aggregate; a simple in composite:—come with me into a
Quakers' Meeting.
Dost thou love silence as deep as that “before the winds
were made?” go not out into the wilderness, descend not
into the profundities of the earth; shut not up thy case-
ments; nor pour wax into the little cells of thy ears, with
little-faithed self-mistrusting Ulysses, Retire with me into
a Quakers' Meeting.
For a man to refrain even from good words, and to hold
his peace, it is commendable ; but for a multitude, it is
great mastery.
What is the stillness of the desert, compared with this
place? what the uncommunicating muteness of fishes?—
here the goddess reigns and revels.-“Boreas, and Cesias,
and Argestes loud,” do not with their inter-confounding
* “Love's Dominion.” [See Lamb’s “Specimens of the English
Dramatic Poets.”]
65 5
66 ZTA//2 ESSA VS OF AZ Z/A.
uproars more augment the brawl—nor the waves of the
blown Baltic with their clubbed sounds—than their opposite
(Silence her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered more
intense by numbers and by sympathy. She too hath her
deeps, that call unto deeps. Negation itself has a positive
more and less; and closed eyes would seem to obscure the
great obscurity of midnight.
There are wounds, which an imperfect solitude cannot
heal. By imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth by
himself. The perfect is that which he can sometimes attain
in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely as in a Quakers'
Meeting.—Those first hermits did certainly understand this
principle, when they retired into Egyptian solitudes, not
singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another's want of con-
versation. The Carthusian is bound to his brethren by
this agreeing spirit of incommunicativeness. In secular
occasions, what so pleasant as to be reading a book through
a long winter evening, with a friend sitting by—say, a wife
—he, or she, too (if that be probable), reading another,
without interruption, or oral communication ?—can there be
no sympathy without the gabble of words?—away with this
inhuman, shy, single, shade-and-cavern-haunting Solitariness.
Give me, Master Zimmermann, a sympathetic solitude.
To pace alone in the cloisters, or side aisles of some
cathedral, time-stricken :
“Or under hanging mountains,
Or by the fall of fountains; ”
is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which those
enjoy, who come together for the purposes of more com-
plete, abstracted solitude. This is the loneliness “to be
felt.”—The Abbey Church of Westminster hath nothing so
solemn, so spirit-soothing, as the naked walls and benches
of a Quakers' Meeting, Here are no tombs, no inscriptions,
* — sands, ignoble things,
Dropt from the ruin’d sides of kings”— `
but here is something, which throws Antiquity herself into
THE ESSAYS of Ezza. 67
the foreground—SILENCE—eldest of things—language of
old Night—primitive Discourser—to which the insolent
decays of mouldering grandeur have but arrived by a
violent, and, as we may say, unnatural progression.
“How reverend is the view of these hush'd heads
Looking tranquillity 1"
Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmischievous synod |
convocation without intrigue ! parliament without debate
what a lesson dost thou read to council, and to consistory !
—if my pen treat of you lightly—as haply it will wander—
yet my spirit hath gravely felt the wisdom of your custom,
when sitting among you in deepest peace, which some out-
welling tears would rather confirm than disturb, I have
reverted to the times of your beginnings, and the sowings
of the seed by Fox and Dewesbury.—I have witnessed that,
which brought before my eyes your heroic tranquillity,
inflexible to the rude jests and serious violences of the
insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to molest you
—for ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecutions, the out-
cast and off-scouring of church and presbytery, -I have seen
the reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered into your recep-
tacle, with the avowed intention of disturbing your quiet,
from the very spirit of the place receive in a moment a new
heart, and presently sit among ye as a lamb amidst lambs.
And I remembered Penn before his accusers, and Fox in
the bail-dock, where he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells
us, and “the Judge and the Jury became as dead men
under his feet.”
Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would recom-
mend to you, above all church-narratives, to read Sewel's
History of the Quakers. It is in folio, and is the abstract
of the journals of Fox, and the Primitive Friends. It is
far more edifying and affecting than anything you will read
of Wesley and his colleagues. Here is nothing to stagger
you, nothing to make you mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no
drop or dreg of the worldly or ambitious spirit. You will
here read the true story of that much-injured, ridiculed
68 THE ESSAYS OF EZIA.
man (who perhaps hath been a by-word in your mouth), -
James Naylor: what dreadful sufferings, with what patience,
he endured, even to the boring through of his tongue with
red-hot irons without a murmur ; and with what strength of
mind, when the delusion he had fallen into, which they
stigmatised for blasphemy, had given way to clearer
thoughts, he could renounce his error, in a strain of the
beautifullest humility, yet keep his first grounds, and be a
Quaker still l—so different from the practice of your common
converts from enthusiasm, who, when they apostatise, aftos-
taſise all, and think they can never get far enough from the
society of their former errors, even to the renunciation of
some saving truths, with which they had been mingled, not
implicated.
Get the writings of John Woolman by heart; and love
the early Quakers.
How far the followers of these good men in our days have
kept to the primitive spirit, or in what proportion they have
substituted formality for it, the Judge of Spirits can alone
determine. I have seen faces in their assemblies, upon
which the dove sate visibly brooding. Others again I have
watched, when my thoughts should have been better
engaged, in which I could possibly detect nothing but a
blank inanity. But quiet was in all, and the disposition to
unanimity, and the absence of the fierce controversial work-
ings.-If the spiritual pretensions of the Quakers have abated,
at least they make few pretences. Hypocrites they certainly
are not, in their preaching. It is seldom indeed that you
shall see one get up amongst them to hold forth. Only
now and then a trembling female, generally ancient, voice is
heard—you cannot guess from what part of the meeting
it proceeds—with a low, buzzing, musical sound, laying out
a few words which “she thought might suit the condition
of Some present,” with a quaking diffidence which leaves
no possibility of supposing that anything of female vanity
was mixed up, where the tones were so full of tenderness,
and a restraining modesty.—The men, from what I have
observed, speak seldomer.
7A/E ESSA YS OF EAAA, 69
Once only, and it was some years ago, I witnessed a
sample of the old Foxian orgasm. It was a man of giant
stature, who, as Wordsworth phrases it, might have danced
“from head to foot equipt in iron mail.” His frame was of
iron too. But he was malleable. I saw him shake all over
with the spirit—I dare not say, of delusion. The strivings
of the outer man were unutterable—he seemed not to speak,
but to be spoken from. I saw the strong man bowed
down, and his knees to fail—his joints all seemed loosening
—it was a figure to set off against Paul preaching—the words
he uttered were few, and sound—he was evidently resisting
his will—keeping down his own word-wisdom with more
mighty effort, than the world’s orators strain for theirs.
“He had been a WIT in his youth,” he told us, with
expressions of a sober remorse. And it was not till long
after the impression had begun to wear away, that I was
enabled, with something like a smile, to recall the striking
incongruity of the confession—understanding the term in
its worldly acceptation—with the frame and physiognomy of
the person before me. His brow would have scared away
the Levites—the Jocos Risus-que—faster than the Loves
fled the face of Dis at Enna. – By zwit, even in his youth, I
will be sworn he understood something far within the limits
of an allowable liberty.
More frequently the Meeting is broken up without a word
having been spoken. But the mind has been fed. You go
away with a sermon, not made with hands. You have
been in the milder caverns of Trophonius ; or as in some
den, where that fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures,
the Tongu E, that unruly member, has strangely lain tied up
and captive. You have bathed with stillness.-O when the
spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness of the janglings,
and nonsense-noises of the world, what a balm and a solace
it is, to go and seat yourself, for a quiet half-hour, upon some
undisputed corner of a bench, among the gentle Quakers
Their garb and stillness conjoined, present an unifor-
mity, tranquil and herdlike—as in the pasture—“forty
feeding like one.”—
7o THE ESSA VS OF EA/A.
The very garments of a Quaker, seem incapable of
receiving a soil; and cleanliness in them to be something
more than the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is
a lily; and when they come up in bands to their Whitsun-
conferences, whitening the easterly streets of the metropolis,
from all parts of the United Kingdom, they show like
troops of the Shining Ones,
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.
My reading has been lamentably desultory and immethodical,
Odd, out-of-the-way, old English plays and treatises, have
supplied me with most of my notions and ways of feel-
ing. In everything that relates to science, I am a whole
Encyclopædia behind the rest of the world. I should have
scarcely cut a figure among the franklins, or country gentle-
men, in King John’s days. I know less geography than a
schoolboy of six weeks' standing. To me a map of old
Ortelius is as authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not know
whereabout Africa merges into Asia ; whether Ethiopia lie
in one or other of those great divisions; nor can form
the remotest conjecture of the position of New South
Wales, or Van Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a corre-
spondence with a very dear friend in the first-named of these
two Terrae Incognitae. I have no astronomy. I do not
know where to look for the Bear, or Charles's Wain; the
place of any star; or the name of any of them at sight. I
guess at Venus only by her brightness—and if the sun on
Some portentous morn were to make his first appearance in
the West, I verily believe that, while all the world were
gasping in apprehension about me, I alone should stand
unterrified, from sheer incuriosity and want of observation.
Of history and chronology I possess some vague points,
such as one cannot help picking up in the course of miscel-
laneous study; but I never deliberately sat down to a
7THE ESSA VS OF EDIA. 71
chronicle, even of my own country. I have most dim
apprehensions of the four great monarchies; and some-
times the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats as first in
my fancy. I make the widest conjectures concerning Egypt,
and her shepherd kings. My friend M., with great pains-
taking, got me to think I understood the first proposition
in Euclid, but gave me over in despair at the second. I
am entirely unacquainted with the modern languages; and,
like a better man than myself, have “small Latin and less
Greek.” I am a stranger to the shapes and texture of the
commonest trees, herbs, flowers—not from the circumstance
of my being town-born—for I should have brought the
same inobservant spirit into the world with me, had I first
seen it “on Devon's leafy shores,”—and am no less at a
loss among purely town-objects, tools, engines, mechanic
processes.—Not that I affect ignorance—but my head has
not many mansions, nor spacious; and I have been obliged
to fill it with such cabinet curiosities as it can hold without
aching. I sometimes wonder, how I have passed my
probation with so little discredit in the world, as I have
done, upon so meagre a stock. But the fact is, a man may
do very well with a very little knowledge, and scarce be
found out, in mixed company; everybody is so much more
ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of your
acquisitions. But in a fête-à-féfe there is no shuffling. The
truth will out. There is nothing which I dread so much, as
the being left alone for a quarter of an hour with a sensible,
well-informed man, that does not know me. I lately got
into a dilemma of this sort.—
In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate and
Shacklewell, the coach stopped to take up a staid-looking
gentleman, about the wrong side of thirty, who was giving his
parting directions (while the steps were adjusting), in a tone
of mild authority, to a tall youth, who seemed to be neither
his clerk, his son, nor his servant, but something partaking
of all three. The youth was dismissed, and we drove on.
As we were the sole passengers, he naturally enough
addressed his conversation to me; and we discussed the
72 ZTHE AESSA VS OF EAE ZA,
merits of the fare, the civility and punctuality of the driver;
the circumstance of an opposition coach having been lately
set up, with the probabilities of its success—to all which I
was enabled to return pretty satisfactory answers, having
been drilled into this kind of etiquette by some years’ daily
practice of riding to and fro in the stage aforesaid—when
he suddenly alarmed me by a startling question, whether I
had seen the show of prize cattle that morning in Smith-
field P. Now as I had not seen it, and do not greatly care
for such sort of exhibitions, I was obliged to return a
cold negative. He seemed a little mortified, as well as
astonished, at my declaration, as (it appeared) he was just
come fresh from the sight, and doubtless had hoped to
compare notes on the subject. However he assured me
that I had lost a fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of
last year. We were now approaching Norton Folgate, when
the sight of some shop-goods ticketed freshened him up into
a dissertation upon the cheapness of cottons this spring. I
was now a little in heart, as the nature of my morning
avocations had brought me into some sort of familiarity
with the raw material; and I was surprised to find how
eloquent I was becoming on the state of the India market
—when, presently, he dashed my incipient vanity to the
earth at once, by inquiring whether I had ever made any
calculation as to the value of the rental of all the retail
shops in London. Had he asked of me, what song the
Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid
himself among women, I might, with Sir Thomas Browne,
have hazarded a “wide solution.” My companion saw my
embarrassment, and, the alms-houses beyond Shoreditch
just coming in view, with great good-nature and dexterity
shifted his conversation to the subject of public charities;
which led to the comparative merits of provision for the
poor in past and present times, with observations on the old
monastic institutions, and charitable Orders;–but, finding
me rather dimly impressed with some glimmering notions
from old poetical associations, than strongly ſortified with
any speculations reducible to calculation on the subject, he
THE ESSA VS OF AZZ/A. 73
gave the matter up; and, the country beginning to open
more and more upon us, as we approached the turnpike at
Ringsland (the destined termination of his journey), he put
a home-thrust upon me, in the most unfortunate position
he could have chosen, by advancing some queries relative
to the North Pole Expedition. While I was muttering out
something about the Panorama of those Strange regions
(which I had actually seen), by way of parrying the ques-
tion, the coach stopping relieved me from any further
apprehensions. My companion getting out, left me in the
comfortable possession of my ignorance; and I heard him,
as he went off, putting questions to an outside passenger,
who had alighted with him, regarding an epidemic disorder
that had been rife about Dalston, and which, my friend
assured him, had gone through five or six schools in that
neighbourhood. The truth now flashed upon me, that my
companion was a schoolmaster; and that the youth, whom
he had parted from at our first acquaintance, must have
been one of the bigger boys, or the usher.—He was
evidently a kind-hearted man, who did not seem so much
desirous of provoking discussion by the questions which he
put, as of obtaining information at any rate. It did not
appear that he took any interest, either, in such kind of
inquiries, for their own sake; but that he was in some way
bound to seek for knowledge. A greenish-coloured coat,
which he had on, forbade me to surmise that he was a
clergyman. The adventure gave birth to some reflections
on the difference between persons of his profession in past
and present times.
Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagogues; the
breed, long since extinct, of the Lilys, and the Linacres:
who believing that all learning was contained in the
languages which they taught, and despising every other
acquirement as Superficial and useless, came to their task as
to a sport | Passing from infancy to age, they dreamed
away all their days as in a grammar-school. Revolving in
a perpetual cycle of declensions, conjugations, syntaxes,
and prosodies; renewing constantly the occupations which
74 7A/E ESSA VS OF AZZZA.
had charmed their studious childhood; rehearsing con-
tinually the part of the past; life must have slipped from
them at last like one day. They were always in their first
garden, reaping harvests of their golden time, among their
Aſ/ori and their Spici-legia; in Arcadia still, but kings; the
ferule of their sway not much harsher, but of like dignity
with that mild sceptre attributed to King Basileus; the
Greek and Latin, their stately Pamela and their Philoclea:
with the occasional duncery of some untoward Tyro,
serving for a refreshing interlude of a Mopsa, or a clown
Damoetas
With what a savour doth the Preface to Colet's, or (as
it is sometimes called) Paul's Accidence, set forth ! “To
exhort every man to the learning of grammar, that intendeth
to attain the understanding of the tongues, wherein is Con-
tained a great treasury of wisdom and knowledge, it would
seem but vain and lost labour; for so much as it is known,
that nothing can surely be ended, whose beginning is either
feeble or faulty; and no building be perfect, whereas the
foundation and ground-work is ready to fall, and unable to
uphold the burden of the frame.” How well doth this
stately preamble (comparable to those which Milton com-
mendeth as “having been the usage to prefix to some
Solemn law, then first promulgated by Solon, or Lycurgus”)
correspond with and illustrate that pious zeal for confor-
mity, expressed in a succeeding clause, which would fence
about grammar-rules with the severity of faith-articles –
“as for the diversity of grammars, it is well profitably taken
away by the king's majesties wisdom, who foreseeing the
inconvenience, and favourably providing the remedie,
caused one kind of grammar by Sundry learned men to be
diligently drawn, and so to be set out, only everywhere to
be taught for the use of learners, and for the hurt in
changing of schoolmaisters.” What a gusſo in that which
follows: “wherein it is profitable that he [the pupil] can
orderly decline his noun, and his verb.” His noun
The fine dream is fading away fast; and the least concern
of a teacher in the present day is to inculcate grammar-rules.
THE ESSAYS OF EAE/A. 75
The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a little of
everything, because his pupil is required not to be entirely
ignorant of anything. He must be superficially, if I may
so say, omniscient. He is to know something of pneu-
matic; of chemistry; of whatever is curious, or proper to
excite the attention of the youthful mind; an insight into
mechanics is desirable, with a touch of statistics; the
quality of soils, etc.; botany; the constitution of his
Country, cum multis a/tts. You may get a notion of Some
part of his expected duties by consulting the famous
Tractate on Education addressed to Mr. Hartlib.
All these things—these, or the desire of them—he is
expected to instil, not by set lessons from professors,
which he may charge in the bill, but at school-intervals, as
he walks the streets, or saunters through green fields (those
natural instructors) with his pupils. The least part of what
is expected from him is to be done in school-hours. He
must insinuate knowledge at the mol/ia fempora fandi.
He must seize every occasion—the season of the year—the
time of the day—a passing cloud—a rainbow—a waggon of
hay—a regiment of soldiers going by—to inculcate some-
thing useful. He can receive no pleasure from a casual
glimpse of nature, but must catch at it as an object of
instruction. He must interpret beauty into the picturesque.
He cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for thinking of
the suitable improvement. Nothing comes to him, not
spoiled by the sophisticating medium of moral uses. The
Universe—that Great Book, as it has been called—is to
him indeed, to all intents and purposes, a book, out of
which he is doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting
schoolboys.-Vacations themselves are none to him, he is
only rather worse off than before; for commonly he has
some intrusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such times;
some cadet of a great family; some neglected lump of
nobility, or gentry; that he must drag after him to the play,
to the panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrery, to the Panopticon,
or into the country, to a friend's house, or his favourite
watering-place. Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow
76 7"HE ESSA VS OF E/AA.
attends him. A boy is at his board, and in his path, and
in all his movements. He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy.
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their
mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown
people. The restraint is felt no less on the one side, than
on the other.—Even a child, that “plaything for an hour,”
tires always. The noises of children, playing their own
fancies—as I now hearken to them by fits, sporting on the
green before my window, while I am engaged in these
grave speculations at my neat suburban retreat at Shackle-
well—by distance made more sweet—inexpressibly take
from the labour of my task. It is like writing to music.
They seem to modulate my periods. They ought at least
to do so—for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind
of poetry, far unlike the harsh prose-accents of man’s Con-
versation.—I should but spoil their sport, and diminish my
own sympathy for them, by mingling in their pastime.
I would not be domesticated all my days with a person
of very superior capacity to my own—not, if I know myself
at all, from any considerations of jealousy, or self-compari-
son, for the occasional communion with such minds has
constituted the fortune and felicity of my life—but the
habit of too constant intercourse with spirits above you,
instead of raising you, keeps you down. Too frequent
doses of original thinking from others, restrain what lesser
portion of that faculty you may possess of your own. You
get entangled in another man's mind, even as you lose
yourself in another man's grounds. You are walking with
a tall varlet, whose strides out-pace yours to lassitude.
The constant operation of such potent agency would
reduce me, I am convinced, to imbecility. You may
derive thoughts from others; your way of thinking, the
mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own.
Intellect may be imparted, but not each man's intellectual
frame.
As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged
upwards, as little (or rather still less) is it desirable to be
stunted downwards by your associates. The trumpet does
THE AESSA VS OF EAE/A. 77
not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases
you by its provoking inaudibility.
Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence of a
schoolmaster P-because we are conscious that he is not
quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place,
in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from
among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his
understanding to yours. He cannot meet you on the
square. He wants a point given him, like an indifferent
whist-player. He is so used to teaching, that he wants to
be teaching you. One of these professors, upon my com-
plaining that these little sketches of mine were anything but
methodical, and that I was unable to make them otherwise,
kindly offered to instruct me in the method by which young
gentlemen in his seminary were taught to compose English
themes.—The jests of a schoolmaster are Coarse, or thin.
They do not fell out of school. He is under the restraint
of a formal and didactive hypocrisy in company, as a clergy-
man is under a moral one. He can no more let his intellect
loose in society, than the other can his inclinations.—He
is forlorn among his coevals ; his juniors cannot be his
friends.
“I take blame to myself,” said a sensible man of this
profession, writing to a friend respecting a youth who had
quitted his school abruptly, “that your nephew was not
more attached to me. But persons in my situation are
more to be pitied, than can well be imagined. We are
surrounded by young, and, consequently, ardently affec-
tionate hearts, but Zwe can never hope to share an atom of
their affections. The relation of master and scholar forbids
this. How Żleasing this must be to you, how / enzy your
feelings, my friends will sometimes say to me, when they see
young men, whom I have educated, return after some years'
absence from school, their eyes shining with pleasure, while
they shake hands with their old master, bringing a present
of game to me, or a toy to my wife, and thanking me in the
warmest terms for my care of their education. A holiday
is begged for the boys; the house is a scene of happiness;
78 ZTAFE AESSA YS OF EAAA.
I, only, am sad at heart.—This fine-spirited and warm-
hearted youth, who fancies he repays his master with grati-
tude for the care of his boyish years—this young man—in
the eight long years I watched over him with a parent's
anxiety, never could repay me with one look of genuine
feeling. He was proud, when I praised ; he was submissive,
when I reproved him ; but he did never love me—and what
he now mistakes for gratitude and kindness for me, is but a
pleasant sensation, which all persons feel at revisiting the
scene of their boyish hopes and fears; and the seeing on
equal terms the man they were accustomed to look up
to with reverence. My wife, too,” this interesting corre-
spondent goes on to say, “my once darling Anna, is the
wife of a schoolmaster.—When I married her—knowing
that the wife of a schoolmaster ought to be a busy notable
creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna would ill supply
the loss of my dear bustling mother, just then dead, who
never sat still, was in every part of the house in a moment,
and whom I was obliged sometimes to threaten to fasten
down in a chair, to save her from fatiguing herself to death
—I expressed my fears, that I was bringing her into a way
of life unsuitable to her ; and she, who loved me tenderly,
promised for my sake to exert herself to perform the duties
of her new situation. She promised, and she has kept her
word. What wonders will not a woman's love perform P-
My house is managed with a propriety and decorum,
unknown in other schools; my boys are well-fed, look
healthy, and have every proper accommodation ; and all
this performed with a careful economy, that never descends
to meanness. But I have lost my gentle, he///ess Anna l—
When we sit down to enjoy an hour of repose after the
fatigue of the day, I am compelled to listen to what have
been her useful (and they are really useful) employments
through the day, and what she proposes for her to-morrow's
task. Her heart and her features are changed by the duties
of her situation. To the boys, she never appears other
than the master’s wiſe, and she looks up to me as the boys'
masſer, to whom all show of love and affection would be
THE ESSA WS OF EAAA. 79
ſ
highly improper, and unbecoming the dignity of her situa-
tion and mine. Yet this my gratitude forbids me to hint to
her. For my sake she submitted to be this altered creature,
and can I reproach her for it P [These kind of complaints
are not often drawn from me. I am aware that I am a
fortunate, I mean a prosperous man.” My feelings prevent
me from transcribing any further.]—For the communication
of this letter, I am indebted to my cousin Bridget.
MY RELATIONS.
I AM arrived at that point of life, at which a man may
account it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he have either
of his parents surviving. I have not that felicity—and
sometimes think feelingly of a passage in “Browne's
Christian Morals,” where he speaks of a man that hath
lived sixty or seventy years in the world. “In such a
compass of time,” he says, “a man may have a close appre-
hension what it is to be forgotten, when he hath lived to
find none who could remember his father, or scarcely the
friends of his youth, and may sensibly see with what a face
in no long time OBLIVION will look upon himself.”
I had an aunt, a dear and good One. She was one whom
single blessedness had soured to the world. She often
used to say, that I was the only thing in it which she loved;
and, when she thought I was quitting it, she grieved over
me with mother's tears. A partiality quite so exclusive my
reason cannot altogether approve. She was from morning
till night poring over good books, and devotional exercises.
Her favourite volumes were Thomas à Kempis, in Stan-
hope's Translation; and a Roman Catholic Prayer-Book,
with the maſſins and complines regularly set down, terms
which I was at that time too young to understand. She
- persisted in reading them, although admonished daily con-
cerning their Papistical tendency; and went to church every
8o THE ESSA VS OF EAAA.
Sabbath, as a good Protestant should do. These were the
only books she studied; though, I think, at one period of
her life, she told me she had read with great satisfaction the
“Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman.” Find-
ing the door of the chapel in Essex Street open one day—
it was in the infancy of that heresy—she went in, liked the
Sermon, and the manner of worship, and frequented it at
intervals for Some time after. She came not for doctrinal
points, and never missed them. With some little asperities
in her constitution, which I have above hinted at, she was
a steadfast friendly being, and a fine old Christian. She
was a woman of strong sense, and a shrewd mind—
extraordinary at a reſºarſee, one of the few occasions of her
breaking silence—else she did not much value wit. The
only secular employment I remember to have seen her
engaged in, was, the splitting of French beans, and dropping
them into a China basin of fair water. The odour of those
tender vegetables to this day comes back upon my sense,
redolent of soothing recollections. Certainly it is the most
delicate of culinary operations,
Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none—to
remember. By the uncle's side I may be said to have been
born an orphan. Brother, or sister, I never had any—to
know them. A sister, I think, that should have been
Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. What a comfort, or
what a care, may I not have missed in her l—But I have
cousins, sprinkled about in Hertfordshire—besides two, with
whom I have been all my life in habits of the closest
intimacy, and whom I may term cousins par excellence,
These are James and Bridget Elia. They are older than
myself by twelve, and ten, years; and neither of them
seems disposed, in matters of advice and guidance, to waive
any of the prerogatives which primogeniture confers. May
they continue still in the same mind; and when they shall
be seventy-five, and seventy-three, years old (I cannot spare
them sooner), persist in treating me in my grand climacteric
precisely as a stripling, or younger brother
James is an inexplicable cousin, Nature hath her unities,
ZTAE/E ESSA VS OF EAE/A. 81
which not every critic can penetrate; or, if we feel, we
cannot explain them. The pen of Yorick, and none since
his, could have drawn J. E. entire—those fine Shandean
lights and shades, which make up his story. I must limp
after in my poor antithetical manner, as the fates have given
me grace and talent. J. E. then—to the eye of a common
observer at least—seemeth made up of contradictory
principles.—The genuine child of impulse, the frigid philo-
sopher of prudence—the phlegm of my cousin's doctrine
is invariably at war with his temperament, which is high
sanguine. With always some fire-new project in his brain,
J. E. is the systematic opponent of innovation, and crier-
down of everything that has not stood the test of age and
experiment. With a hundred fine notions chasing one
another hourly in his fancy, he is startled at the least
approach to the romantic in others; and, determined by
his own sense in everything, commends you to the
guidance of common-sense on all occasions.—With a
touch of the eccentric in all which he does, or says,
he is only anxious that you should not commit yourself
by doing anything absurd or singular. On my once
letting slip at table, that I was not fond of a certain
popular dish, he begged me at any rate not to say so—for
the world would think me mad. He disguises a passionate
fondness for works of high art (whereof he hath amassed a
choice collection), under the pretext of buying only to sell
again—that his enthusiasm may give no encouragement to
yours. Yet, if it were so, why does that piece of tender
pastoral Domenichino hang still by his wall?—is the ball of
his sight much more dear to him P-Or what picture-dealer
can talk like him P
Whereas mankind in general are observed to wrap their
speculative conclusions to the bent of their individual
humours, his theories are sure to be in diametrical opposi-
tion to his constitution. He is courageous as Charles of
Sweden, upon instinct; chary of his person, upon principle,
as a travelling Quaker.—He has been preaching up to me,
all my life, the doctrine of bowing to the great—the
6
82 7THE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
necessity of forms, and manner, to a man's getting on in
the world. He himself never aims at either, that I can
discover, and has a spirit, that would stand upright in the
presence of the Cham of Tartary. It is pleasant to hear
him discourse of patience—extolling it as the truest wisdom
—and to see him during the last seven minutes that his
dinner is getting ready. Nature never ran up in her haste
a more restless piece of workmanship than when she
moulded this impetuous cousin—and Art never turned out
a more elaborate orator than he can display himself to be,
upon his favourite topic of the advantages of quiet, and
contentedness in the state, whatever it be, that we are placed
in. He is triumphant on this theme, when he has you safe
in one of those short stages that ply for the western road,
in a very obstructing manner, at the foot of John Murray's
Street—where you get in when it is empty, and are expected
to wait till the vehicle hath completed her just freight—
a trying three-quarters of an hour to some people. He
wonders at your fidgetiness—“where could we be better
than we are, thus sitting, thus consulting 2*—“prefers, for
his part, a state of rest to locomotion,”—with an eye all the
while upon the coachman—till at length, waxing Out of all
patience, at your zwant of it, he breaks out into a pathetic
remonstrance at the fellow for detaining us so long over the
time which he had professed, and declares peremptorily,
that “the gentleman in the coach is determined to get out
if he does not drive on that instant.”
Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting a
sophistry, he is incapable of attending you in any chain of
arguing. Indeed he makes wild work with logic; and
seems to jump at most admirable conclusions by some
process, not at all akin to it. Consonantly enough to this,
he hath been heard to deny, upon certain occasions, that
there exists such a faculty at all in man as reason, and
wondereth how man came first to have a conceit of it—
enforcing his negation with all the might of reasoning he
is master of. He has some speculative notions against
laughter, and will maintain that laughing is not natural to
ZTHAZ Z2.SSA VS OF AE ZZA, 83
him—when peradventure the next moment his lungs shall
crow like Chanticleer. He says some of the best things in
the world—and declareth that wit is his aversion. It was
he who said, upon seeing the Eton boys at play in their
grounds— What a pity to think, that these fine ingenuous Zads
in a few years will all be changed into frivolous Members of
Aar/tament / -
His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous—and in age
he discovered no symptom of cooling. This is that which
I admire in him. I hate people who meet Time half-way.
I am for no compromise with that inevitable spoiler.
While he lives, J. E. will take his swing.—It does me good,
as I walk towards the street of my daily avocation, on some
fine May morning, to meet him marching in a quite opposite
direction, with a jolly handsome presence, and shining
sanguine face, that indicates some purchase in his eye—a
Claude—or a Hobbima—for much of his enviable leisure is
consumed at Christie's, and Phillips's—or where not, to
pick up pictures, and such gauds. On these occasions he
mostly stoppeth me, to read a short lecture on the advantage
a person like me possesses above himself, in having his time
occupied with business which he must do—assureth me that
he often feels it hang heavy on his hands—wishes he had
fewer holidays—and goes off—Westward Ho!—chanting a
tune to Pall Mall—perfectly convinced that he has convinced
me—while I proceed in my opposite direction tuneless.
It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indifference
doing the honours of his new purchase, when he has fairly
housed it. You must view it in every light, till he has found
the best—placing it at this distance, and at that, but always
suiting the focus of your sight to his own. You must spy at
it through your fingers, to catch the aërial perspective—
though you assure him that to you the landscape shows
much more agreeable without that artifice. Woe be to the
luckless wight, who does not only not respond to his rapture,
but who should drop an unseasonable intimation of pre-
ferring one of his anterior bargains to the present —The
last is always his best hit—his “Cynthia of the minute.”—
84 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA.
Alas ! how many a mild Madonna have I known to come in
—a Raphael !—keep its ascendency for a few brief moons—
then, after certain intermedial degradations, from the front
drawing-room to the back gallery, thence to the dark parlour,
—adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive
lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its fall—
consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a
Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti —which things
when I beheld—musing upon the chances and mutabilities
of fate below—hath made me to reflect upon the altered
condition of great personages, or that woful queen of
Richard the Second—
& 4
set forth in pomp,
She came adornéd hither like sweet May.
Sent back like Hallowmas or shortest day.”
With great love for you, J. E. hath but a limited sympathy
with what you feel or do. He lives in a world of his own,
and makes slender guesses at what passes in your mind.
He never pierces the marrow of your habits. He will tell
an old-established playgoer, that Mr. Such-a-one, of SO-and-
so (naming one of the theatres), is a very lively comedian—
as a piece of news | He advertised me but the other day
of some pleasant green lanes which he had found out for
me, Ánowing me to be a great zwałżer, in my own immediate
vicinity—who have haunted the identical spot any time
these twenty years l—He has not much respect for that
class of feelings which goes by the name of sentimental.
He applies the definition of real evil to bodily suffering
exclusively—and rejecteth all others as imaginary. He is
affected by the sight or the bare supposition of a creature in
pain, to a degree which I have never witnessed out of
womankind. A constitutional acuteness to this class of
sufferings, may in part account for this. The animal tribe
in particular he taketh under his especial protection. A
broken-winded or spur-galled horse is sure to find an
advocate in him. An over-loaded ass is his client for ever.
He is the apostle to the brute kind—the never-ſailing friend
THE AESSA VS OF EAZA. 85
of those who have none to care for them. The contempla-
tion of a lobster boiled, or eels skinned alive, will wring him
so, that “all for pity he could die.” It will take the
savour from his palate, and the rest from his pillow, for
days and nights. With the intense feeling of Thomas
Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness of pursuit, and
unity of purpose, of that “true yoke-fellow with Time,” to
have effected as much for the Animal, as he hath done for
the AVegro Creation. But my uncontrollable cousin is but
imperfectly formed for purposes which demand co-operation.
He cannot wait. His amelioration-plans must be ripened
in a day. For this reason he has cut but an equivocal
figure in benevolent societies, and combinations for the
alleviation of human sufferings. His zeal constantly makes
him to outrun, and put out, his coadjutors. He thinks of
relieving, while they think of debating. He was black-
balled out of a society for the Relief of * * * because the
fervour of his humanity toiled beyond the formal apprehen-
sion, and creeping processes, of his associates. I shall
always consider this distinction as a patent of nobility of
the Elia family
Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile at,
or upbraid, my unique cousin P Marry, heaven, and all good
manners, and the understanding that should be between
kinsfolk, forbid!—With all the strangeness of this stranges?
of the Elias—I would not have him in one jot or tittle other
than he is ; neither would I barter or exchange my wild
kinsman for the most exact, regular, and every-way con-
sistent kinsman breathing.
In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some account
of my cousin Bridget—if you are not already surfeited with
cousins—and take you by the hand, if you are willing to go
with us, on an excursion which we made a summer or two
since, in search of more cousins—
“Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire,”
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.
BRIDGET ELIA has been my housekeeper for many a long
year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending beyond the
period of memory. We house together, old bachelor
and maid, in a sort of double singleness; with such
tolerable comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find
Amyself in no sort of disposition to go out upon the moun-
itains, with the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy.
*We agree pretty well in our tastes and habits—yet so, as
“with a difference.” We are generally in harmony, with
occasional bickerings—as it should be among near relations.
Our sympathies are rather understood, than expressed; and
once, upon my dissembling a tone in my voice more kind
than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and complained
that I was altered. We are both great readers in different
directions. While I am hanging over (for the thousandth
time) some passage in old Burton, or one of his strange
contemporaries, she is abstracted in some modern tale, or
adventure, whereof our common reading-table is daily fed
with assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative teases me. I
have little concern in the progress of events. She must have
a story, well, ill, or indifferently told—so there be life
stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. The
fluctuations of fortune in fiction—and almost in real life—
have ceased to interest, or operate but dully upon me.
Out-of-the-way humours and opinions—heads with some
diverting twist in them—the oddities of authorship please
me most. My cousin has a native disrelish of anything
that sounds odd or bizarre. Nothing goes down with her
that is quaint, irregular, or out of the road of common
sympathy. She “holds Nature more clever.” I can pardon
her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the Religio
Medici; but she must apologise to me for certain dis-
respectful insinuations, which she has been pleased to
throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear
favourite of mine, of the last century but one—the thrice
86
THE ESSAYS OF EZIA. 87
noble, chaste, and virtuous, but again somewhat fantastical,
and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle.
It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I
could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine,
free-thinkers—leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies
and systems; but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts,
their opinions. That which was good and venerable to
her, when she was a child, retains its authority over her
mind still. She never juggles or plays tricks with her
understanding.
We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive;
and I have observed the result of our disputes to be almost
uniformly this—that in matters of fact, dates, and circum-
stances, it turns out, that I was in the right, and my cousin
in the wrong. But where we have differed upon moral
points; upon something proper to be done, or let alone;
whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of conviction, I
set out with, I am sure always in the long run, to be brought
over to her way of thinking.
I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a
gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her
faults. She hath an awkward trick (to say no worse of it)
of reading in company: at which times she will answer yes
or no to a question, without fully understanding its purport
—which is provoking, and derogatory in the highest degree
to the dignity of the putter of the said question. Her
presence of mind is equal to the most pressing trials of
life, but will sometimes desert her upon trifling occasions.
When the purpose requires it, and is a thing of moment,
she can speak to it greatly; but in matters which are not
stuff of the conscience, she hath been known sometimes to
let slip a word less seasonably.
Her education in youth was not much attended to ; and
she happily missed all that train of female garniture, which
passeth by the name of accomplishments. She was tumbled
early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good
old English reading, without much selection or prohibition,
and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage.
88 THE ESSA YS OF EV/A.
Had I twenty girls, they should be brought up exactly in
this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock
might not be diminished by it; but I can answer for it,
that it makes (if the worst come to the worst) most incom-
parable old maids.
In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter; but
in the teasing accidents, and minor perplexities, which do
not call out the zwill to meet them, she sometimes maketh
matters worse by an excess of participation. If she does
not always divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter occasions
of life she is sure always to treble your satisfaction. She is
excellent to be at play with, or upon a visit; but best, when
she goes a journey with you.
We made an excursion together a few summers since, into
Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our less-
known relations in that fine corn country.
The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End; or
Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some
old maps of Hertfordshire; a farm-house, delightfully
situated within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I can
just remember having been there, on a visit to a great-aunt,
when I was a child under the care of Bridget; who, as I
have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish
that I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint
existences, that we might share them in equal division.
But that is impossible. The house was at that time in the
occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married my
grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. My grand-
mother was a Bruton, married to a Field. The Gladmans
and the Brutons are still flourishing in that part of the
county, but the Fields are almost extinct. More than forty
years had elapsed since the visit I speak of; and, for the
greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of the
other two branches also. Who or what sort of persons
inherited Mackery End—kindred or strange folk—we were
afraid almost to conjecture, but determined some day to
explore.
By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park at
ZTA/AE AESSA VS OF EAE/A. 89
Luton in our way from Saint Alban's, we arrived at the spot
of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old
farm-house, though every trace of it was effaced from my
recollection, affected me with a pleasure which I had not
experienced for many a year. For though Z had forgotten
it, we had never forgotten being there together, and
we had been talking about Mackery End all our lives,
till memory on my part became mocked with a phantom
of itself, and I thought I knew the aspect of a place, which,
when present, O how unlike it was to that, which I had
conjured up so many times instead of it !
* Still the air breathed balmily about it; the season was in
the “heart of June,” and I could say with the poet,
“But thou, that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation l’’”
Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she
easily remembered her old acquaintance again—some
altered features, of course, a little grudged at. At first,
indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy; but the scene
soon reconfirmed itself in her affections—and she traversed
every outpost of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the
orchard, the place where the pigeon-house had stood (house
and birds were alike flown)—with a breathless impatience
of recognition, which was more pardonable perhaps than
decorous at the age of fifty odd. But Bridget in some
things is behind her years.
The only thing left was to get into the house—and that
was a difficulty which to me singly would have been in-
surmountable: for I am terribly shy in making myself
known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, stronger
than scruple, winged my cousin in without me; but she
soon returned with a creature that might have sat to a
sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of
the Gladmans; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had become
1 Wordsworth.
90 7”H AE AESSA VS OF EAE/A.
mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood are the
Brutons. Six of them, females, were noted as the hand-
somest young women in the county. But this adopted
Bruton, in my mind, was better than they all—more comely.
She was born too late to have remembered me. She just
recollected in early life to have had her cousin Bridget once
pointed out to her, climbing a stile. But the name of
kindred, and of cousinship, was enough. Those slender
ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmo-
sphere of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty,
homely, loving Hertfordshire. In five minutes we were as
thoroughly acquainted as if we had been born and bred up
together; were familiar, even to the calling each other by
our Christian names. So Christians should call one another.
To have seen Bridget, and her—it was like the meeting of
the two scriptural cousins ! There was a grace and dignity,
an amplitude of form and stature, answering to her mind, in
this farmer's wife, which would have shined in a palace—or
so we thought it. We were made welcome by husband and
wife equally—we, and our friend that was with us.-I had
almost forgotten him—but B. F. will not so soon forget that
meeting, if peradventure he shall read this on the far-distant
shores where the Kangaroo haunts. The fatted calf was
made ready, or rather was already so, as if in anticipation of
our coming ; and, after an appropriate glass of native wine,
never let me forget with what honest pride this hospitable
cousin made us proceed to Wheathampstead, to introduce
us (as some new-found rarity) to her mother and sister
Gladmans, who did indeed know something more of us, at
a time when she almost knew nothing.—With what corre-
sponding kindness we were received by them also—how
Bridget's memory, exalted by the occasion, warmed into a
thousand half-obliterated recollections of things and persons,
to my utter astonishment, and her own—and to the astound-
ment of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing that was
not a cousin there, old effaced images of more than half-
forgotten names and circumstances still crowding back upon
her, as words written in lemon come out upon exposure to
7'HZ ZSSA VS OA’ A3/E/A. 9I
a friendly warmth, whef, I forget all this, then may my
country cousins forget me; and Bridget no more remember,
that in the days of weakling infancy I was her tender charge
—as I have been her care in , foolish manhood since—in
those pretty pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery End,
in Hertfordshire.
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.
“I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathiseth
with all things; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in anything.
Those national repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold with
prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch.”—Religio Medici.
THAT the author of the Religio Medici, mounted upon the
airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about notional and
conjectural essences; in whose categories of Being the
possible took the upper hand of the actual; should have
overlooked the impertinent individualities of such poor
concretions as mankind, is not much to be admired. It is
rather to be wondered at, that in the genus of animals he
should have condescended to distinguish that species at all.
For myself—earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my
activities,
“Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky,”
I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national
or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no
indifferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is to
me a matter of taste or distaste ; or when once it becomes
indifferent, it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer
words, a bundle of prejudices—made up of likings and
dislikings—the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, anti-
pathies. In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me
that I am a lover of my species. I can feel for all indiffer-
ently, but I cannot feel towards all equally. The more
purely-English word that expresses sympathy will better
92 Z"HE AESSA VS OF EAE/A.
explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy man,
who upon another account cannot be my mate or fellow.
I cannot like all people alike."
I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am
obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They
cannot like me—and in truth, I never knew one of that
nation who attempted to do it. There is something more
plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceeding. We
know one another at first sight. There is an order of
imperfect intellects (under which mine must be content to
rank) which in its constitution is essentially anti-Caledonian.
The owners of the sort of faculties I allude to, have minds
rather suggestive than comprehensive. They have no
pretences to much clearness or precision in their ideas, or
in their manner of expressing them. Their intellectual
wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They
are content with fragments and scattered pieces of Truth.
She presents no full front to them—a feature or side-face at
the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and crude essays at a
* I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of imper-
fect sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no direct
anfºathy. There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite
to another individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them.
I have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two
persons meeting (who never saw one another before in their lives) and
instantly fighting.
& 4 We by proof find there should be
*Twixt man and man such an antipathy,
That though he can show no just reason why
For any former wrong or injury,
Can’neither find a blemish in his fame,
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame,
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil,
Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil.”
The lines are from old Heywood’s “Hierarchie of Angels,” and he
subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted
to assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack
could give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy
which he had taken to the first sight of the King.
# * The cause to which that act compell'd him
Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him.”
THE ESSA VS OF EAE/A. 93
system, is the utmost they pretend to. They beat up a little
game peradventure—and leave it to knottier heads, more
robust constitutions, to run it down. The light that lights
them is not steady and polar, but mutable and shifting:
waxing, and again waning. Their conversation is accordingly.
They will throw out a random word in or out of season, and
be content to let it pass for what it is worth. They cannot
speak always as if they were upon their oath—but must be
understood, speaking or writing, with some abatement.
They seldom wait to mature a proposition, but e'en bring it
to market in the green ear. They delight to impart their
defective discoveries, as they arise, without waiting for their
full development. They are no systematisers, and would
but err more by attempting it. Their minds, as I said
before, are suggestive merely. The brain of a true
Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is constituted upon quite
a different plan. His Minerva is born in panoply. You
are never admitted to see his ideas in their growth—if,
indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put together upon
principles of clock-work. You never catch his mind in an
undress. He never hints or suggests anything, but unlades
his stock of ideas in perfect order and completeness. He
brings his total wealth into company, and gravely unpacks
it. His riches are always about him. He never stoops to
catch a glittering something in your presence, to share it
with you, before he quite knows whether it be true touch or
not. You cannot cry halves to anything that he finds. He
does not find, but bring. You never witness his first
apprehension of a thing. His understanding is always at
its meridian—you never see the first dawn, the early streaks.
—He has no falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses,
misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-consciousness, partial
illuminations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, have no
place in his brain, or vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety
never falls upon him. Is he orthodox—he has no doubts.
Is he an infidel—he has none either. Between the
affirmative and the negative there is no border-land with
him. You cannot hover with him upon the confines of
94. 7A/E ESSA VS OF EA/A.
truth, or wander in the maze of a probable argument. He
always keeps the path. You cannot make excursions with
him—for he sets you right. His taste never fluctuates.
His morality never abates. He cannot compromise, or
understand middle actions. There can be but a right and
a wrong. His conversation is as a book. His affirmations
have the sanctity of an oath, You must speak upon the
square with him. He stops a metaphor like a suspected
person in an enemy's country. “A healthy book ”—said
one of his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give
that appellation to John Buncle, “did I catch rightly what
you said P I have heard of a man in health, and of a
healthy state of body, but I do not see how that epithet can
be properly applied to a book.” Above all, you must beware
of indirect expressions before a Caledonian. Clap an
extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest
with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath. I
have a print of a graceful female after Leonardo da Vinci,
which I was showing off to Mr. ——. After he had
examined it minutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked
MY BEAUTY (a foolish name it goes by among my friends)—
when he very gravely assured me, that “he had consider-
able respect for my character and talents” (so he was
pleased to say), “but had not given himself much thought
about the degree of my personal pretensions.” The mis-
conception staggered me, but did not seem much to
disconcert him.——Persons of this nation are particularly fond
of affirming a truth—which nobody doubts. They do not
so properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do indeed
appear to have such a love of truth (as if, like virtue, it
were valuable for it"elf) that all truth becomes equally
valuable, whether the proposition that contains it be new or
old, disputed, or such as is impossible to become a subject
of disputation. I was present not long since at a party of
North Britons, where a son of Burns was expected ;
and happened to drop a silly expression (in my South
British way), that I wished it were the father instead of the
son—when four of them started up at once to inform me,
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 95
that “that was impossible, because he was dead.” An
impracticable wish, it seems, was more than they could
conceive. Swift has hit off this part of their character,
namely, their love of truth, in his biting way, but with an
illiberality that necessarily confines the passage to the
margin.” The tediousness of these people is certainly pro-
voking. I wonder if they ever tire one another 1–In my
early life I had a passionate fondness for the poetry of
Burns. I have sometimes foolishly hoped to ingratiate
myself with his countrymen by expressing it. But I have
always found that a true Scot resents your admiration of his
compatriot, even more than he would your contempt of him.
The latter he imputes to your “imperfect acquaintance with
many of the words which he uses; ” and the same objection
makes it a presumption in you to suppose that you can admire
him, Thomson they seem to have forgotten. Smollett they
have neither forgotten nor forgiven for his delineation of
Rory and his companion, upon their first introduction to our
metropolis.—Speak of Smollett as a great genius, and they
will retort upon you Hume's History compared with his
Continuation of it. What if the historian had continued
Humphrey Clinker P -
I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. They are
a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which
Stonehenge is in its nonage, They date beyond the
pyramids. But I should not care to be in habits of familiar
intercourse with any of that nation. I confess that I have
not the nerves to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices
cling about me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh of
Lincoln. Centuries of injury, contempt, and hate, on the
* “There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit them.
selves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no con-
sequence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as
happen every day; and this I have observed more frequently among the
Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the
minutest circumstances of time or place; which kind of discourse, if
it were not a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as
accent and gesture peculiar to that country, would be hardly tolerable,”
—Hints towards an Essay on Conversation.
96 THE ESSA VS OF E/AA.
One side,-of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on the
other, between our and their fathers, must, and ought, to
affect the blood of the children. I cannot believe it can
run clear and kindly yet; or that a few fine words, such as
Candour, liberality, the light of a nineteenth century, can
close up the breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew
is nowhere congenial to me. He is least distasteful on
'Change—for the mercantile spirit levels all distinctions, as
are all beauties in the dark. I boldly confess I do not
relish the approximation of Jew and Christian, which has
become so fashionable. The reciprocal endearments have,
to me, something hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do
not like to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and con-
geeing in awkward postures of an affected civility. If they
are converted, why do they not come over to us altogether P
Why keep up a form of separation, when the life of it has
fled P. If they can sit with us at table, why do they kick at
our cookery P I do not understand these half convertites.
Jews christianizing—Christians judaizing—puzzle me. I
like fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more confounding
piece of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spirit of the
synagogue is essentially separative. B would have
been more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of his
forefathers. There is a fine scorn in his face, which nature
meant to be of Christians. The Hebrew spirit is strong
in him, in spite of his proselytism. He cannot conquer the
Shibboleth. How it breaks out, when he sings, “The
Children of Israel passed through the Red Seal” The
auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he
rides over our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking
him. B has a strong expression of sense in his counten-
ance, and it is confirmed by his singing. The foundation
of his vocal excellence is sense. He sings with understand-
ing, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing the
Commandments, and give an appropriate character to each
prohibition. His nation, in general, have not over-sensible
countenances. How should they P—but you seldom see
a silly expression among them. Gain, and the pursuit
THE AESSA VS OF EAAA. tº 97
of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never heard of an
idiot being born among them.—Some admire the Jewish
female-physiognomy. I admire it—but with trembling.
Jael had those full dark inscrutable eyes.
In the Negro countenance you will often meet with
strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tender-
ness towards some of these faces—or rather masks—that
have looked out kindly upon one in casual encounters in
the streets and highways. I love what Fuller beautifully
calls—these “images of God cut in ebony.” But I should
not like to associate with them, to share my meals and my
good-nights with them—because they are black.
I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I venerate
the Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the
day when I meet any of their people in my path. When I
am ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, or
quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator,
lightening the air, and taking off a load from the bosom.
But I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say)
“to live with them.” I am all over sophisticated—with
humours, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. I must have
books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, Scandal, jokes, ambigui-
ties, and a thousand whim-whams, which their simpler taste
can do without. I should starve at their primitive banquet.
My appetites are too high for the salads which (according
to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel, my gusto too excited
“To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse.”
The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to
return to a question put to them may be explained, I think,
without the vulgar assumption, that they are more given to
evasion and equivocating than other people. They naturally
look to their words more carefully, and are more cautious
of committing themselves. They have a peculiar character
to keep up on this head. They stand in a manner upon
their veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted from taking
an oath. The custom of resorting to an oath in extreme
cases, sanctified as it is by all religious antiquity, is apt (it
7
98 T/7/2 /2.SSA VS OF EAE/A.
must be confessed) to introduce into the laxer sort of minds
the notion of two kinds of truth—the one applicable to the
Solemn affairs of justice, and the other to the common pro-
ceedings of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the
conscience by an oath can be but truth, so in the common
affirmations of the shop and the market-place a latitude is
expected and concealed upon questions wanting this solemn
covenant. Something less than truth satisfies. It is com-
mon to hear a person say, “You do not expect me to speak
as if I were upon my oath.” Hence a great deal of incor-
rectness and inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps into
ordinary conversation ; and a kind of secondary or laic-
truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth—oath-truth, by the
nature of the circumstances, is not required. A Quaker
knows none of this distinction. His simple affirmation
being received, upon the most sacred occasions, without
any further test, stamps a value upon the words which he is
to use upon the most indifferent topics of life. He looks
to them, naturally, with more severity. You can have of
him no more than his word. He knows, if he is caught
tripping in a casual expression, he forfeits, for himself, at
least, his claim to the invidious exemption. He knows
that his syllables are weighed—and how far a consciousness
of this particular watchfulness, exerted against a person, has
a tendency to produce indirect answers, and a diverting of
the question by honest means, might be illustrated, and the
practice justified, by a more Sacred example than is proper
to be adduced upon this occasion. The admirable pres-
ence of mind, which is notorious in Quakers upon all
contingencies, might be traced to this imposed self-watch-
fulness—if it did not seem rather an humble and secular
scion of that old stock of religious constancy, which never
bent or faltered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave way to
the winds of persecution, to the violence of judge or
accuser, under trials and racking examinations. “You
will never be the wiser, if I sit here answering your ques-
tions till midnight,” said one of those upright Justicers to
Penn, who had been putting law-cases with a puzzling
ZTAZ2 ESSA VS OA' ZZZA. 99
subtlety. “Thereafter as the answers may be,” retorted the
Quaker. The astonishing composure of this people is
sometimes ludicrously displayed in lighter instances.—I
was travelling in a stage-coach with three male Quakers,
buttoned up in the straightest non-conformity of their sect.
We stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea
apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. My friends
confined themselves to the tea-table. I in my way took
supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest
of my companions discovered that she had charged for
both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very
clamorous and positive. Some mild arguments were used
on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of
the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The
guard came in with his usual peremptory notice. The
Quakers pulled out their money, and formally tendered it
—so much for tea—I, in humble imitation, tendering mine
—for the supper which I had taken. She would not relax
in her demand. So they all three quietly put up their
silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the
eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the
rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the
example of such grave and warrantable personages. We
got in. The steps went up. The coach drove off. The
murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambigu-
ously pronounced, became after a time inaudible—and now
my conscience, which the whimsical scene had for a while
suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in
the hope that some justification would be offered by these
serious people for the seeming injustice of their conduct.
To my great surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the
subject. They sate as mute as at a meeting. At length
the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next
neighbour, “Hast thee heard how indigos go at the India
House P” and the question operated as a soporific on my
moral feeling as far as Exeter.
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
I was born, and passed the first seven years of my life in
the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountain,
its river, I had almost said—for in those young years, what
was this king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our
pleasant places P these are of my oldest recollections. I
repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more frequently, or
with kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser, where he
speaks of this spot.
“There when they came, whereas those bricky towers,
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide,
Till they decayed through pride.”
Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis.
What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the
first time—the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet
Street, by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent ample
squares, its classic green recesses | What a cheerful, liberal
look hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, over-
looks the greater garden : that goodly pile
“Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight,”
confronting, with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more
fantastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the
cheerful Crown-office Row (place of my kindly engendure),
right opposite the stately stream, which washes the garden-
foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems
but just weaned from her Twickenham Naiades a man
would give something to have been born in such places.
What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall,
where the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and
fall, how many times 1 to the astoundment of the young
urchins, my contemporaries, who, not being able to guess
at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the
wondrous work as magic What an antique air had the
IOO
THE ESSA WS OF E//A. IOI
now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions,
seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and
to take their revelations of its flight immediately from
heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light!
How would the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched
by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement,
never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first
arrests of sleep !
“Ah yet doth beauty like a dial-hand
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived l’’
What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowel-
ments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of
communication, compared with the simple altar-like
structure, and silent heart-language of the old dial It
stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it
almost everywhere vanished P. If its business-use be
superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses,
its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It
spoke of moderate labours, of pleasures not protracted
after sunset, of temperance, and good hours. It was the
primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam
could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the
measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to spring
by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for
flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd
“carved it out quaintly in the sun;” and, turning philo-
sopher by the very occupation, provided it with mottoes
more touching than tombstones. It was a pretty device of
the gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the days of
artificial gardening, made a dial out of herbs and flowers.
I must quote his verses a little higher up, for they are full,
as all his serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy. They will
not come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains and
sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet garden scenes:
“What wondrous life is this I lead |
Ripe apples drop about my head.
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine.
I O2 ZTAZZZ ZSSA VS OF AZZZA,
The nectarine, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach.
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass,
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness.
The mind, that ocean, where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
How well the skilful gardener drew.
Of flowers and herbs, this dial new
Where, ſrom above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers?”"
#
The artificial ſountains of the metropolis are, in like
manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up, or
bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that little green
nook behind the South-Sea House, what a freshness it gives
to the dreary pile ! Four little winged marble boys used to
play their virgin fancies, spouting out ever fresh streams from
their innocent wanton lips, in the square of Lincoln's Inn,
when I was no bigger than they were figured. They are
gone, and the spring choked up. The fashion, they tell me,
is gone by, and these things are esteemed childish. Why
not then gratify children, by letting them stand? Lawyers,
I suppose, were children once. They are awakening images
to them at least. Why must everything Smack of man, and
* From a copy of verses entitled “The Garden.”
THE ESSA VS OF AZZZA. IO3
mannish P Is the world all grown up? Is childhood dead?
Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and the best
some of the child’s heart left, to respond to its earliest
enchantments P The figures were grotesque. Are the stiff-
wigged living figures, that still flitter and chatter about that
area, less Gothic in appearance? or is the splutter of their
hot rhetoric one half so refreshing and innocent as the little
cool playful streams those exploded cherubs uttered P
They have lately gothicised the entrance to the Inner
Temple-hall, and the library front, to assimilate them, I
suppose, to the body of the hall, which they do not at all
resemble. What is become of the winged horse that stood
over the former ? a stately arms and who has removed
those frescoes of the Virtues, which Italianised the end of
the Paper-buildings P-my first hint of allegory ! They must
account to me for these things, which I miss so greatly.
The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call the
parade; but the traces are passed away of the footsteps
which made its pavement awful It is become common
and profane. The old benchers had it almost sacred to
themselves, in the fore part of the day at least. They might
not be sided or jostled. Their air and dress asserted the
parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you, when you
passed them. We walk on even terms with their successors.
The roguish eye of J ll, ever ready to be delivered of a
jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee with it. But
what insolent familiar durst have mated Thomas Coventry P
—whose person was a quadrate, his step massy and elephan-
tine, his face square as the lion's, his gait peremptory and
path-keeping, indivertible from his way as a moving column,
the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow-beater of equals and
superiors, who made a solitude of children wherever he
came, for they fled his insufferable presence, as they would
have shunned an Elisha bear. His growl was as thunder in
their ears, whether he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke,
his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the most repulsive
and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating the natural
terrors of his speech, broke from each majestic nostril,
IO4 ZTAZA, ZSSA YS OF VEZ.Z.A.
darkening the air. He took it, not by pinches, but a palm-
ful at once, diving for it under the mighty flaps of his
old-fashioned waistcoat pocket; his waistcoat red and angry,
his coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original, and by
adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete gold. And so he paced
the terrace.
By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen ; the
pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They were coevals, and
had nothing but that and their benchership in common.
In politics Salt was a Whig, and Coventry a staunch Tory.
Many a sarcastic growl did the latter cast out—for Coventry
had a rough spinous humour—at the political confederates
of his associate, which rebounded from the gentle bosom
of the latter like cannon-balls from wool. You could not
ruffle Samuel Salt.
S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and of
excellent discernment in the chamber practice of the law.
I suspect his knowledge did not amount to much. When
a case of difficult disposition of money, testamentary or
otherwise, came before him, he ordinarily handed it over
with a few instructions to his man Lovel, who was a quick
little fellow, and would despatch it out of hand by the light
of natural understanding, of which he had an uncommon
share. It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed
by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man; a child
might pose him in a minute—indolent and procrastinating
to the last degree. Yet men would give him credit for vast
application in spite of himself. He was not to be trusted
with himself with impunity. He never dressed for a dinner-
party but he forgot his sword—they wore swords then—or
some other necessary part of his equipage. Lovel had his
eye upon him on all these occasions, and ordinarily gave
him his cue. If there was anything which he could speak
unseasonably, he was sure to do it.—He was to dine at a
relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of her
execution; and L., who had a wary foresight of his probable
hallucinations, before he set out, schooled him with great
anxiety not in any possible manner to allude to her story
ZTHE AESSA VS OF AZZZA. Io5
that day. S. promised faithfully to observe the injunction.
He had not been seated in the parlour, where the company
was expecting the dinner summons, four minutes, when, a
pause in the conversation ensuing, he got up, looked out of
the window, and pulling down his ruffles—an ordinary
motion with him—observed, “it was a gloomy day,” and
added, “Miss Blandy must be hanged by this time, I
Suppose.” Instances of this sort was perpetual. Yet S. was
thought by some of the greatest men of his time a fit
person to be consulted, not alone in matters pertaining to
the law, but in the ordinary niceties and embarrassments of
Conduct—from force of manner entirely. He never laughed.
He had the same good fortune among the female world,—
was a known toast with the ladies, and one or two are said
to have died for love of him—I suppose, because he never
trifled or talked gallantry with them, or paid them, indeed,
hardly common attentions. He had a fine face and person,
but wanted, methought, the spirit that should have shown
them off with advantage to the women. His eye lacked
lustre.—Not so, thought Susan P ; who, at the advanced
age of sixty, was seen, in the cold evening time, unaccom-
panied, wetting the pavement of B d Row, with tears
that fell in drops which might be heard, because her friend
had died that day—he, whom she had pursued with a
hopeless passion for the last forty years—a passion, which
years could not extinguish or abate; nor the long resolved,
yet gently enforced, puttings off of unrelenting bachelorhood
dissuade from its cherished purpose. Mild Susan P 5
thou hast now thy friend in heaven
Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family of that
name. He passed his youth in contracted circumstances,
which gave him early those parsimonious habits which in
after-life never forsook him ; so that, with one windfall or
another, about the time I knew him he was master of four
or five hundred thousand pounds; nor did he look, or walk,
worth a moidore less. He lived in a gloomy house opposite
the pump in Serjeants' Inn, Fleet Street. J., the counsel,
is doing self-imposed penance in it, for what reason I divine
Ioô ZTAE/E AESSA YS OF EA/A.
not, at this day. C. had an agreeable seat at North Cray,
where he seldom spent above a day or two at a time in the
summer; but preferred, during the hot months, standing at
his window in this damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch,
as he said, “the maids drawing water all day long.” I
suspect he had his within-door reasons for the preference.
Aſic currus et arma ſuáre. He might think his treasures
more safe. His house had the aspect of a strong box. C.
was a close hunks—a hoarder rather than a miser—Or, if a
miser, none of the mad Elwes breed, who have brought
discredit upon a character, which cannot exist without
certain admirable points of steadiness and unity of purpose.
One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so easily
despise him. By taking care of the pence, he is often
enabled to part with the pounds, upon a scale that leaves
us careless generous fellows halting at an immeasurable
distance behind. C. gave away thirty thousand pounds at
once in his lifetime to a blind charity. His housekeeping
was severely looked after, but he kept the table of a gentle-
man. He would know who came in and who went out of his
house, but his kitchen chimney was never suſfered to freeze.
Salt was his opposite in this, as in all—never knew what
he was worth in the world; and having but a competency
for his rank, which his indolent habits were little calculated
to improve, might have suffered severely if he had not
had honest people about him. Lovel took care of every-
thing. He was at once his clerk, his good servant, his
dresser, his friend, his “flapper,” his guide, stop-watch,
auditor, treasurer. He did nothing without consulting
Lovel, or failed in anything without expecting and fearing
his admonishing. He put himself almost too much in his
hands, had they not been the purest in the world. He
resigned his title almost to respect as a master, if L. could
ever have forgotten for a moment that he was a servant.
I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible and
losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and “would strike.”
In the cause of the oppressed he never considered inequali-
ties, or calculated the number of his opponents. He once
Z"HE AESSA VS OF AZZZA. Io?
wrested a sword out of the hand of a man of quality that
had drawn upon him ; and pommelled him severely with
the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered insult to a
female—an occasion upon which no odds against him could
have prevented the interference of Lovel. He would stand
next day bare-headed to the same person, modestly to
excuse his interference—for L. never forgot rank, where
Something better was not concerned. L. was the liveliest
little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as Garrick's, whom
he was said greatly to resemble (I have a portrait of him
which confirms it), possessed a fine turn for humorous
poetry—next to Swift and Prior—moulded heads in clay or
plaster of Paris to admiration, by the dint of natural genius
merely; turned Cribbage-boards, and such small cabinet
toys, to perfection ; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with
equal facility; made punch better than any man of his
degree in England; had the merriest quips and conceits,
and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and inventions as
you could desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover,
and just such a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak
Walton would have chosen to go a-fishing with. I saw him
in his old age and the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten,
in the last sad stage of human weakness—“a remnant most
forlorn of what he was,”—yet even then his eye would light
up upon the mention of his favourite Garrick. He was
greatest, he would say, in Bayes—“was upon the stage
nearly throughout the whole performance, and as busy as a
bee.” At intervals, too, he would speak of his former life,
and how he came up a little boy from Lincoln to go to
Service, and how his mother cried at parting with him, and
how he returned, after some few years' absence, in his smart
new livery to see her, and she blessed herself at the change,
and could hardly be brought to believe that it was “her
own bairn.” And then, the excitement subsiding, he would
weep, till I have wished that sad second-childhood might
have a mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the
common mother of us all in no long time after received him
gently into hers,
Io8 THE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
With Coventry, and with Salt, in their walks upon the
terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson would join, to make
up a third. They did not walk linked arm in arm in those
days—“as now our stout triumvirs sweep the streets,”—but
generally with both hands folded behind them for state, or
with one at least behind, the other carrying a cane. P. was
a benevolent, but not a prepossessing man. He had that
in his face which you could not term unhappiness; it rather
implied an incapacity of being happy. His cheeks were
colourless, even to whiteness. His look was uninviting,
resembling (but without his sourness) that of our great
philanthropist. I know that he did good acts, but I could
never make out what he was. Contemporary with these,
but subordinate, was Daines Barrington—another oddity—
he walked burly and square—in imitation, I think, of
Coventry—howbeit he attained not to the dignity of his
prototype. Nevertheless, he did pretty well, upon the
strength of being a tolerable antiquarian, and having a
brother a bishop. When the account of his year's treasurer-
ship came to be audited, the following singular charge was
unanimously disallowed by the bench: “Item, disbursed
Mr. Allen, the gardener, twenty shillings, for stuff to poison
the sparrows, by my orders.” Next to him was old Barton
—a jolly negation, who took upon him the ordering of the
bills of fare for the parliament chamber, where the benchers
dine—answering to the combination rooms at college—
much to the easement of his less epicurean brethren. I
know nothing more of him.—Then Read, and Twopeny—
Read, good-humoured and personable—Twopeny, good-
humoured, but thin, and felicitous in jests upon his own
figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was attenuated and fleeting.
Many must remember him (for he was rather of later date)
and his singular gait, which was performed by three steps and
a jump regularly succeeding. The steps were little efforts,
like that of a child beginning to walk; the jump compara-
tively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. Where he learned
this figure, or what occasioned it, I could never discover.
It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed to answer the
7 HE ESSA VS OF /º/, /A. Io9
purpose any better than common walking. The extreme
tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a
trial of poising. Twopeny would often rally him upon his
leanness, and hail him as Brother Lusty; but W. had no
relish of a joke. His features were spiteful. I have heard
that he would pinch his cat's ears extremely, when anything
had offended him. Jackson—the omniscient Jackson he was
called—was of this period. He had the refutation of pos-
sessing more multifarious knowledge than any man of his
time. He was the Friar Bacon of the less literate portion
of the Temple. I remember a pleasant passage, of the
cook applying to him, with much formality of apology, for
instructions how to write down edge bone of beef in his bill
of commons. He was supposed to know, if any man in the
world did. He decided the orthography to be—as I have
given it—fortifying his authority with such anatomical
reasons as dismissed the manciple (for the time) learned
and happy. Some do spell it yet perversely, aitch bone,
from a fanciful resemblance between its shape, and that
of the aspirate so denominated. I had almost forgotten
Mingay with the iron hand—but he was somewhat later.
He had lost his right hand by some accident, and supplied
it with a grappling hook, which he wielded with a tolerable
adroitness. I detected the substitute, before I was old
enough to reason whether it were artificial or not. I remem-
ber the astonishment it raised in me. He was a blustering,
loud-talking person ; and I reconciled the phenomenon to
my ideas as an emblem of power—somewhat like the horns
in the forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses. Baron Maseres,
who walks (or did till very lately) in the costume of the reign
of George the Second, closes my imperfect recollections of
the old benchers of the Inner Temple,
Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled? Or, if the like of
you exist, why exist they no more for me? Ye inexplicable,
half-understood appearances, why comes in reason to tear
away the preternatural mist, bright or gloomy, that en-
shrouded you? Why make ye so sorry a figure in my
relation, who made up to me—to my childish eyes—the
I IO TH/AE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
mythology of the Temple P In those days I saw Gods, as
“old men covered with a mantle,” walking upon the earth.
Let the dreams of classic idolatry perish,_extinct be the
fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling, in the
heart of childhood, there will, for ever, spring up a well
of innocent or wholesome superstition—the seeds of exag-
geration will be busy there, and vital—from everyday
forms educing the unknown and the uncommon. In that
little Goshen there will be light, when the grown world
flounders about in the darkness of sense and materiality.
While childhood, and while dreams, reducing childhood,
shall be left, imagination shall not have spread her holy
wings totally to fly the earth.
P.S.—I have done injustice to the soft shade of Samuel
Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect memory, and the
erring notices of childhood | Yet I protest I always thought
that he had been a bachelor This gentleman, R. N.
informs me, married young, and losing his lady in child-bed,
within the first year of their union, fell into a deep melan-
choly, from the effects of which, probably, he never
thoroughly recovered. In what a new light does this place
his rejection (O call it by a gentler name !) of mild Susan
P , unravelling into beauty certain peculiarities of this
very shy and retiring character —Henceforth let no one
receive the narratives of Elia for true records! They
are, in truth, but shadows of fact—verisimilitudes, not
verities—or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts
of history. He is no such honest chronicler as R. N., and
would have done better perhaps to have consulted that
gentleman, before he sent these incondite reminiscences to
press. But the worthy sub-treasurer—who respects his old
and his new masters—would but have been puzzled at the
indecorous liberties of Elia. The good man wots not,
peradventure, of the licence which Magazines have arrived
at in this plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams of their
existence beyond the Gentleman's—his furthest monthly
excursions in this nature having been long confined to
THE /2.SSA VS OF AZZ/4. I I I
the holy ground of honest Urban's obituary. May it be
long before his own name shall help to swell those columns
of unenvied flattery !—Meantime, O ye New Benchers of
the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is himself the
kindliest of human creatures. Should infirmities overtake
him—he is yet in green and vigorous senility—make allow-
ances for them, remembering that “ye yourselves are old.”
So may the Winged Horse, your ancient badge and cog-
nizance, still flourish so may future Hookers and Seldens
illustrate your church and chambers! so may the sparrows,
in default of more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop
about your walks so may the fresh-coloured and cleanly
nursery-maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in your
stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsey as ye
pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion so may the
younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your stately
terrace, with the same superstitious veneration, with which
the child Elia gazed on the Old Worthies that solemnised
the parade beſore ye
WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS.
WE are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the
gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they
seem to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the
relations of this visible world we find them to have been as
rational, and shrewd to detect an historic anomaly, as
ourselves. But when once the invisible world was supposed
to be opened, and the lawless agency of bad Spirits assumed,
what measures of probability, of decency, of fitness, or
proportion—of that which distinguishes the likely from the
palpable absurd—could they have to guide them in the
rejection or admission of any particular testimony P-That
maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen images
consumed before a fire—that corn was lodged, and cattle
II 2 THE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
lamed—that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the oaks
of the forest—or that spits and kettles only danced a fearful-
innocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen when no wind
was stirring—were all equally probable where no law of
agency was understood. That the prince of the powers of
darkness, passing by the flower and pomp of the earth,
should lay preposterous siege to the weak fantasy of indigent
eld—has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood & Ariori to us,
who have no measure to guess at his policy, or standard to
estimate what rate those anile souls may fetch in the devil's
market. Nor, when the wicked are expressly symbolized
by a goat, was it to be wondered at so much, that he should
come sometimes in that body, and assert his metaphor.—
That the intercourse was opened at all between both worlds
was perhaps the mistake—but that once assumed, I see no
reason for disbelieving one attested story of this nature
more than another on the score of absurdity. There is no
law to judge of the lawless, or canon by which a dream may
be criticised.
I have sometimes thought that I could not have existed
in the days of received witchcraft; that I could not have
slept in a village where one of those reputed hags dwelt.
Our ancestors were bolder or more obtuse. Amidst the
universal belief that these wretches were in league with the
author of all evil, holding hell tributary to their muttering,
no simple Justice of the Peace seems to have scrupled
issuing, or silly Headborough serving, a warrant upon them
—as if they should subpoena Satan –Prospero in his boat,
with his books and wand about him, suffers himself to be
conveyed away at the mercy of his enemies to an unknown
island. He might have raised a storm or two, we think, on the
passage. His acquiescence is an exact analogy to the non-
resistance of witches to the constituted powers.--What stops
the Fiend in Spenser from tearing Guyon to pieces—or
who had made it a condition of his prey, that Guyon must
take essay of the glorious bait—we have no guess. We do
not know the laws of that country.
From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive about
ZTHE ESSA VS OF EAE/A. I 13
witches and witch-stories. My maid, and more legendary
aunt, supplied me with good store. But I shall mention
the accident which directed my curiosity originally into this
channel. In my father's book-closet, the History of the
Bible, by Stackhouse, occupied a distinguished station. The
pictures with which it abounds—one of the ark, in particular,
and another of Solomon's temple, delineated with all the
fidelity of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had been
upon the spot—attracted my childish attention. There was
a picture, too, of the Witch raising up Samuel, which I wish
that I had never seen, We shall come to that hereafter.
Stackhouse is in two huge tomes—and there was a pleasure
in removing folios of that magnitude, which, with infinite
straining, was as much as I could manage from the situation
which they occupied upon an upper shelf. I have not met
with the work from that time to this, but I remember it
consisted of Old Testament stories, orderly set down, with
the objection appended to each story, and the solution of the
objection regularly tacked to that. The objection was a
summary of whatever difficulties had been opposed to the
credibility of the history, by the shrewdness of ancient or
modern infidelity, drawn up with an almost complimentary
excess of candour. The soluſion was brief, modest, and
satisfactory, The bane and antidote were both before you.
To doubts so put, and so quashed, there seemed to be an
end for ever. The dragon lay dead, for the foot of the
veriest babe to trample on. But—like as was rather feared
than realised from that slain monster in Spenser—from the
womb of those crushed errors young dragonets would creep,
exceeding the prowess of so tender a Saint George as myself
to vanquish. The habit of expecting objections to every
passage, set me upon starting more objections, for the glory
of finding a solution of my own for them. I became
staggered and perplexed, a sceptic in long-coats. The
pretty Bible stories which I had read, or heard read in
church, lost their purity and sincerity of impression, and
were turned into so many historic or chronologic theses to
be defended against whatever impugners. I was not to
8
II.4 ZTHE ESSA YS OF EAE/A.
disbelieve them, but—the next thing to that—I was to be
quite sure that some one or other would or had disbelieved
them. Next to making a child an infidel, is the letting
him know that there are infidels at all. Credulity is the
man's weakness, but the child's strength. O, how ugly
sound Scriptural doubts from the mouth of a babe and a
suckling !—I should have lost myself in these mazes, and
have pined away, I think, with such unfit sustenance as
these husks afforded, but for a fortunate piece of ill-fortune,
which about this time befell me. Turning over the picture
of the ark with too much haste, I unhappily made a breach
in its ingenious fabric—driving my inconsiderate fingers
right through the two larger quadrupeds—the elephant and
the camel—that stare (as well they might) out of the two
last windows next the steerage in that unique piece of naval
architecture. Stackhouse was henceforth locked up, and
became an interdicted treasure. With the book, the
oôſections and solutions gradually cleared out of my head,
and have seldom returned since in any force to trouble me.
—But there was one impression which I had imbibed from
Stackhouse, which no lock or bar could shut out, and which
was destined to try my childish nerves rather more seriously.
—That detestable picture
I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The night-time
solitude, and the dark, were my hell. The sufferings I
endured in this nature would justify the expression. I
never laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, from the
fourth to the seventh or eighth year of my life—so far as
memory serves in things so long ago—without an assurance,
which realised its own prophecy, of seeing some frightful
spectre. Be Old Stackhouse then acquitted in part, if I say,
that to his picture of the Witch raising up Samuel—(O that
old man covered with a mantle !) I owe—not my midnight
terrors, the hell of my infancy—but the shape and manner
of their visitation. It was he who dressed up for me a hag
that nightly sate upon my pillow—a sure bedfellow, when
my aunt or my maid was far from me. All day long, while
the book was permitted me, I dreamed waking over his
ZT///Z ZSSA YS OF EA/A. II5
delineation, and at night (if I may use so bold an expression)
awoke into sleep, and found the vision true. I durst not,
even in the daylight, once enter the chamber where I slept,
without my face turned to the window, aversely from the
bed where my witch-ridden pillow was.-Parents do not
know what they do when they leave tender babes alone to
go to sleep in the dark. The feeling about for a friendly
arm—the hoping for a familiar voice—when they wake
Screaming—and find none to soothe them—what a terrible
shaking it is to their poor nerves | The keeping them up
till midnight, through candle-light and the unwholesome
hours, as they are called,—would, I am satisfied, in a
medical point of view, prove the better caution.—That
detestable picture, as I have said, gave the fashion to my
dreams—if dreams they were—for the scene of them was
invariably the room in which I lay. Had I never met with
the picture, the fears would have come self-pictured in some
shape or other—
“Headless bear, black man, or ape,”
but, as it was, my inmaginations took that form.—It is not
book, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants, which
create these terrors in children. They can at most but give
them a direction. Dear little T. H., who of all children has
been brought up with the most scrupulous exclusion of every
taint of superstition—who was never allowed to hear of
goblin or apparition, or scarcely to be told of bad men, or
to read or hear of any distressing story—finds all this world
of fear, from which he has been so rigidly excluded aā extra,
in his own “thick-coming fancies; ” and from his little
midnight pillow, this nurse-child of optimism will start at
shapes, unborrowed of tradition, in Sweats to which the
reveries of the cell-damned murderer are tranquillity.
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras dire—stories of
Celaeno and the Harpies—may reproduce themselves in the
brain of superstition—but they were there before. They
are transcripts, types—the archetypes are in us, and eternal,
1 I6 7 HE ESSA VS OF ZZZA.
How else should the recital of that, which we know in a
Waking sense to be false, come to affect us at all?—or
6 &
Names, whose sense we see not,
Fray us with things that be not?”
Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such subjects,
considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us
bodily injury?—O, least of all ! These terrors are of older
standing. They date beyond body—or, without the body,
they would have been the same. All the cruel, tormenting,
defined devils in Dante—tearing, mangling, choking, stifling,
scorching demons—are they one-half so fearful to the spirit
of a man, as the simple idea of a spirit unembodied following
him—
“Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turn’d round, walks on,
And turns no more his head ;
13ecause he knows a frightſul fiend
Doth close behind him thead.”"
That the kind of fear here treated of is purely spiritual—
that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless upon earth
—that it predominates in the period of sinless infancy—are
difficultics, the solution of which might afford some prob-
able insight into our ante-mundane Condition, and a peep
at least into the shadow-land of pre-existence.
My night fancies have long ceased to be afflictive. I
Confess an occasional nightmare; but I do not, as in early
youth, keep a stud of them. Fiendish faces, with the
extinguished taper, will come and look at me; but I know
them for mockeries, even while I cannot elude their presence,
and I fight and grapple with them. For the credit of my
imagination, I am almost ashamed to say how tame and
prosaic my dreams are grown. They are never romantic,
seldom even rural. They are of architecture and of build-
ings—cities abroad, which I have never seen, and hardly
have hope to see. I have traversed, for the seeming length
* Mr. Coleridge's “Ancient Mariner.”
ZTA/A2 ZSSA VS OA' /2Z.Z.A. I 17
of a natural day, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon—their
churches, palaces, squares, market-places, shops, suburbs,
ruins, with an inexpressible sense of delight—a map-like
distinctness of trace—and a daylight vividness of vision,
that was all but being awake.—I have formerly travelled
among the Westmoreland fells—my highest Alps, but they
are objects too mighty for the grasp of my dreaming recog-
nition; and I have again and again awoke with ineffectual
struggles of the inner eye, to make out a shape, in any
way whatever, of Helvellyn. Methought I was in that
country, but the mountains were gone. The poverty of my
dreams mortifies me. There is Coleridge, at his will can
conjure up icy domes, and pleasure-houses for Kubla Khan,
and Abyssinian maids, and songs of Abara, and caverns,
“Where Alph, the sacred river, runs,”
to solace his night solitudes—when I cannot muster a fiddle.
Barry Cornwall has his tritons and his nereids gambolling
before him in nocturnal visions, and proclaiming sons born
to Neptune—when my stretch of imaginative activity can
hardly, in the night season, raise up the ghost of a fish-wife.
To set my failures in somewhat a mortifying light—it was
after reading the noble Dream of this poet, that my fancy
ran strong upon these marine spectra; and the poor plastic
power, such as it is, within me set to work, to humour my
folly in a sort of dream that very night. Methought I was
upon the ocean billows at some sea nuptials, riding and
mounted high, with the customary train sounding their
conchs before me (I myself, you may be sure, the leading
god), and jollily we went careering over the main, till just
where Ino Leucothea should have greeted me (I think it
was Ino) with a white embrace, the billows gradually sub-
siding, fell from a sea-roughness to a sea-calm, and thence
to a river-motion, and that river (as happens in the
ſamiliarisation of dreams) was no other than the gentle
Thames, which landed me, in the wafture of a placid wave
or two, alone, Safe and inglorious, somewhere at the foot of
Lambeth Palace.
II.8 THE ESSA YS OF EAE/A.
The degree of the soul's creativeness in sleep might
furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poetical
faculty resident in the same soul waking. An old gentle-
man, a friend of mine, and a humorist, used to carry this
notion so far, that when he saw any stripling of his
acquaintance ambitious of becoming a poet, his first question
would be, “Young man, what sort of dreams have you?”
I have so much faith in my old friend's theory, that when I
feel that idle vein returning upon me, I presently subside
into my proper element of prose, remembering those
eluding nereids, and that inauspicious inland landing,
GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
THE custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, its
origin in the early times of the world, and the hunter-state
of man, when dinners were precarious things, and a full
meal was something more than a common blessing; when a
bcllyful was a windfall, and looked like a special providence.
In the shouts and triumphal songs with which, after a season
of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty of deer's or goat's flesh
would naturally be ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ
of the modern grace. It is not otherwise easy to be under-
stood, why the blessing of food—the act of eating—should
have had a particular expression of thanksgiving annexed to
it, distinct from that implied and silent gratitude with which
we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment of the many
other various gifts and good things of existence.
I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other
occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I
want a form for Sctting Out upon a pleasant walk, for a
moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved
problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual
repasts—a grace before Milton—a grace before Shakspeare
—a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading
THA. AESSA VS OF AZZZA. II9
the Faëry Queene?—but, the received ritual having pre-
scribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of manducation,
I shall confine my observations to the experience which I
have had of the grace, properly so called; commending my
new scheme for extension to a niche in the grand philo
sophical, poetical, and perchance in part heretical, liturgy,
now compiling by my friend Homo Humanus, for the use
of a certain snug congregation of Utopian Rabelaesian
Christians, no matter where assembled.
The form then of the benediction before eating has its
beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and un-
provocative repast of children. It is here that the grace
becomes exceedingly graceful. The indigent man, who
hardly knows whether he shall have a meal the next day
or not, sits down to his fare with a present sense of the
blessing, which can be but feebly acted by the rich, into
whose minds the conception of wanting a dinner could
never, but by some extreme theory, have entered. The
proper end of food—the animal sustenance—is barely
contemplated by them. The poor man's bread is his daily
bread, literally his bread for the day. Their courses are
perennial.
Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be preceded
by the grace. That which is least stimulative to appetite,
leaves the mind most free for foreign considerations. A
man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of
plain mutton with turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon
the ordinance and institution of eating ; when he shall
confess a perturbation of mind, inconsistent with the pur-
poses of the grace, at the presence of venison or turtle.
When I have sate (a rarus hos/es) at rich men's tables, with
the savoury soup and messes steaming up the nostrils, and
moistening the lips of the guests with desire and a distracted
choice, I have felt the introduction of that ceremony to be
unseasonable. With the ravenous orgasm upon you, it
seems impertinent to interpose a religious sentiment. It is
a confusion of purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth
that waters. The heats of cpicurism put out the gentle
I 2 O THAE AESSA VS OAP EZZA.
flame of devotion. The incense which rises round is pagan,
and the belly-god intercepts it for his own. The very
excess of the provision beyond the needs, takes away all
Sense of proportion between the end and means. The
giver is veiled by his gifts. You are startled at the injustice
of returning thanks—for what P−for having too much, while
So many starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss.
I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce consciously
perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. I have
seen it in clergymen and others—a sort of shame—a sense
of the co-presence of circumstances which unhallow the
blessing. After a devotional tone put on for a few seconds,
how rapidly the speaker will fall into his common voice,
helping himself or his neighbour, as if to get rid of some
uneasy sensation of hypocrisy. Not that the good man
was a hypocrite, or was not most conscientious in the dis-
charge of the duty; but he felt in his inmost mind the
incompatibility of the scene and the viands before him with
the exercise of a calm and rational gratitude.
I hear somebody exclaim, Would you have Christians
sit down at table, like hogs to their troughs, without remem-
bering the Giver ?–no—I would have them sit down as
Christians, remembering the Giver, and less like hogs. Or
if their appetites must run riot, and they must pamper
themselves with delicacies for which east and west are
ransacked, I would have them postpone their benediction
to a fitter season, when appetite is laid; when the still small
voice can be heard, and the reason of the grace returns
with temperate diet and restricted dishes. Gluttony and
surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving. When
Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he kicked. 'Virgil knew
the harpy-nature better, when he put into the mouth of
Celaeno anything but a blessing. We may be giatefully
sensible of the deliciousness of some kinds of food beyond
others, though that is a meaner and inferior gratitude: but the
proper object of the grace is sustenance, not relishes; daily
bread, not delicacies; the means of life, and not the means
of pampering the Carcass. With what frame or composure, I
7"HE ESSA VS OF E/L/A. I 2 I
wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his benediction at
some great Hall feast, when he knows that his last con-
cluding pious word—and that in all probability, the sacred
name which he preaches—is but the signal for so many
impatient harpies to commence their foul orgies, with as
little sense of true thankfulness (which is temperance) as
those Virginian fowl. It is well if the good man himself
does not feel his devotions a little clouded, those foggy
sensuous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar
sacrifice.
The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is the
banquet which Satan, in the Paradise Regained, provides
for a temptation in the wilderness :
“A table richly spread in regal mode,
With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort
And savour; beasts of chase, or fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boil’d
Gris-amber-steam’d ; all fish from sea or shore,
Freshet or purling brook, for which was drain’d
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast.”
The tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates would go
down without the recommendatory preface of a benediction.
They are like to be short graces where the devil plays the
host.—I am afraid the poet wants his usual decorum in this
place. Was he thinking of the old Roman luxury, or of a
gaudy day at Cambridge P. This was a temptation fitter for a
Heliogabalus. The whole banquet is too civic and culinary,
and the accompaniments altogether a profanation of that
deep, abstracted, holy scene. The mighty artillery of sauces,
which the cook-fiend conjures up, is out of proportion to
the simple wants and plain hunger of the guest. He that
disturbed him in his dreams, from his dreams might have
been taught better. To the temperate fantasies of the
famished Son of God, what sort of feasts presented them-
selves P−He dreamed indeed,
C & As appetite is wont to dream,
Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet.”
I 2.2 THE ESSA VS OF EAE, ZA,
But what meats P
“Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood,
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
Food to Elijah bringing even and morn;
Though ravenous, taught to abstain ſrom what they brought:
He saw the prophet also how he fled
Into the desert, and how there he slept
Under a juniper; then how awaked
He found his supper on the coals prepared,
And by the angel was bid rise and eat,
And ate the second time after repose,
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days:
Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook,
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse.”
Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than these temperate
dreams of the divine Hungerer. To which of these two
visionary banquets, think you, would the introduction of
what is called the grace have been most fitting and
pertinent.
Theoretically I am no enemy to graces; but practically
I own that (before meat especially) they seem to involve
something awkward and unscasonable. Our appetites, of
one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason,
which might otherwise but feebly set about the great ends
of preserving and continuing the species. They are fit
blessings to be contemplated at a distance with a becoming
gratitude; but the moment of appetite (the judicious reader
will apprehend me) is, perhaps, the least fit season for that
exercise. The Quakers who go about their business, of
every description, with more calmness than we, have more
title to the use of these benedictory prefaces. I have always
admired their silent grace, and the more because I have
observed their applications to the meat and drink following
to be less passionate and sensual than ours. They are
neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. They eat,
as a horse bolts his chopped hay, with indifference, calm-
ness, and cleanly circumstances. They neither grease nor
slop themselves. When I see a citizen in his bib and
tucker, I cannot imagine it a surplice.
7THE AESSA VS OA' ZZ/A. I23
I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not indif.
ferent to the kinds of it. Those unctuous morsels of deer's
flesh were not made to be received with dispassionate ser-
vices. I hate a man who swallows it, affecting not to know
what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters. I
shrink instinctively from one who professes to like minced
veal. There is a physiognomical character in the tastes for
food. C holds that a man cannot have a pure mind
who refuses apple-dumplings. I am not certain but he is
right. With the decay of my first innocence, I confess a
less and less relish daily for those innocuous cates. The
whole vegetable tribe have lost their gust with me. Only
I Stick to asparagus, which still seems to inspire gentle
thoughts. I am impatient and querulous under culinary
disappointments, as to come home at the dinner-hour, for
instance, expecting some savoury mess, and to find one
quite tasteless and sapidless. Butter ill melted—that com-
monest of kitchen failures—puts me beside my tenour.—
The author of the Rambler used to make inarticulate
animal noises over a favourite food. Was this the music
quite proper to be preceded by the grace P or would the
pious man have done better to postpone his devotions to a
season when the blessing might be contemplated with less
perturbation ? I quarrel with no man's tastes, nor would
set my thin face against those excellent things, in their
way, jollity and feasting. But as these exercises, however
laudable, have little in them of grace or gracefulness, a man
should be sure, before he ventures so to grace them, that
while he is pretending his devotions otherwhere, he is not
secretly kissing his hand to some great fish—his Dagon—
with a special consecration of no ark but the fat tureen
before him. Graces are the sweet preluding strains to the
banquets of angels and children ; to the roots and severer
repasts of the Chartreuse; to the slender, but not slenderly
acknowledged, refection of the poor and humble man; but
at the heaped-up boards of the pampered and the luxurious
they become of dissonant mood, less timed and tuned to
the occasion, methinks, than the noise of those better befitting
I 24 ZTAE/AE ZE.S.S.A. Y.S OF AZZZA.
organs would be, which children hear tales of at Hog's
Norton. We sit too long at our meals, or are too curious
in the study of them, or too disordered in our application
to them, or engross too great a portion of those good things
(which should be common) to our share, to be able with
any grace to say grace. To be thankful for what we grasp
exceeding our proportion is to add hypocrisy to injustice.
A lurking sense of this truth is what makes the performance
of this duty so cold and spiritless a service at most tables.
In houses where the grace is as indispensable as the napkin,
who has not seen that never-settled question arise, as to
who shal/ say if, while the good man of the house and the
visitor clergyman, or some other guest belike of next
authority from years or gravity, shall be bandying about
the office between them as a matter of compliment, each
of them not unwilling to shift the awkward burthen of an
equivocal duty from his own shoulders ?
I once drank tea in company with two Methodist divines
of different persuasions, whom it was my fortune to intro-
duce to each other for the first time that evening. Before
the first cup was handed round, one of these reverend
gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solemnity,
whether he chose to say anyżing. It seems it is the cus-
tom with some sectaries to put up a short prayer before
this meal also. His reverend brother did not at first quite
apprehend him, but upon an explanation, with little less
importance he made answer, that it was not a custom known
in his church : in which courteous evasion the other acqui-
escing for good manners' sake, or in compliance with a
weak brother, the supplementary or tea-grace was waived
altogether. With what spirit might not Lucian have painted
two priests, of Žis religion, playing into each other's hands
the compliment of performing or omitting a sacrifice,—
the hungry God meantime, doubtful of his incense, with
expectant nostrils hovering over the two flamens, and (as
between two stools) going away in the end without his
Supper.
A short form upon these occasions is felt to want reverence;
T///2 /2.SSA Y.S OF AE/.../A. I 25
a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape the charge of im-
pertinence. I do not quite approve of the epigrammatic
conciseness with which that equivocal wag (but my pleasant
School-fellow) C. V. L., when importuned for a grace, used
to inquire, first slyly leering down the table, “Is there no
clergyman here P”—significantly adding, “Thank God—.”
Nor do I think our old form at school quite pertinent,
where we were used to preface our bald bread and cheese Sup-
pers with a preamble connecting with that humble blessing
a recognition of benefits the most awful and overwhelming
to the imagination which religion has to offer. Moſt func
i//is era; locus. I remember we were put to it to reconcile
the phrase “good creatures,” upon which the blessing
rested, with the fare set before us, wilfully understanding
that expression in a low and animal sense, till some one
recalled a legend, which told how in the golden days of
Christ's, the young Hospitallers were wont to have smoking
joints of roast meat upon their nightly boards, till some
pious benefactor, commiserating the decencies, rather than
the palates, of the children, commuted our flesh for gar-
ments, and gave us—horresco referens—trousers instead of
Imutton.
MY FIRST PLAY.
AT the north end of Cross Court there yet stands a portal,
of some architectural pretensions though reduced to humble
use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office.
This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you may not
know was the identical pit entrance to Old Drury—Garrick’s
Drury—all of it that is left. I never pass it without shaking
Some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the
evening when I passed through it to see my first play. The
afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going
(the elder folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease.
126 7A/E ESSA VS OF AZZZA.
With what a beating heart did I watch from the window the
puddles, from the stillness of which I was taught to
prognosticate the desired cessation | I seem to remember
the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce it.
We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent us.
He kept the oil shop (now Davies's) at the corner of Feather-
stone Buildings, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave person,
lofty in speech, and had pretensions above his rank. He
associated in those days with John Palmer, the comedian,
whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy; if John (which
is quite as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat of his
manner, from my godfather. He was also known to, and
visited by, Sheridan. It was to his house in Holborn that
young Brinsley brought his first wife on her elopement with
him from a boarding-school at Bath—the beautiful Maria
Linley. My parents were present (over a quadrille table)
when he arrived in the evening with his harmonious charge.
—From either of these connections it may be inferred that
my godfather could command an order for the then Drury-
lane theatre at pleasure—and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue
of those cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy autograph, I have
heard him say was the sole remuneration which he had
received for many years' nightly illumination of the orchestra
and various avenues of that theatre—and he was content it
should be so. The honour of Sheridan's familiarity—or
supposed familiarity—was better to my godfather than
money.
F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen; grandiloquent,
yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest matters of
fact was Ciceronian. He had two Latin words almost con-
stantly in his mouth (how odd sounds Latin from an
oilman's lips (), which my better knowledge since has
enabled me to correct. In strict pronunciation they
should have been sounded vice versá–but in those young
years they impressed me with more awe than they would
now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro–in his own
peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, or
Anglicised, into something like Zerse verse. By an imposing
TA/Z ZSSA VS OF EAE/A. I 27
manner, and the help of these distorted syllables, he
climbed (but that was little) to the highest parochial honours
which St. Andrew's has to bestow.
He is dead—and thus much I thought due to his memory,
both for my first orders (little wondrous talismans !—slight
keys, and insignificant to outward sight, but opening to me
more than Arabian paradises 1) and moreover, that by his
testamentary beneficence I came into possession of the only
landed property which I could ever call my own—situate
near the roadway village of pleasant Puckeridge, in Hert-
fordshire. When I journeyed down to take possession, and
planted foot on my own ground, the stately habits of the
donor descended upon me, and I strode (shall I confess the
vanity ?) with larger paces over my allotment of three-
quarters of an acre, with its commodious mansion in the
midst, with the feeling of an English freeholder that all
betwixt sky and centre was my own. The estate has passed
into more prudent hands, and nothing but an agrarian Can
restore it.
In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncomfort-
able manager who abolished them l—with one of these we
went. I remember the waiting at the door—not that which
is left—but between that and an inner door in shelter—O
when shall I be such an expectant again l—with the cry of
nonpareils, an indispensable play-house accompaniment in
those days. As near as I can recollect, the fashionable
pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses then was,
“Chase some Oranges, chase some numparels, chase a bill
of the play;”—chase pro choose. But when we got in, and
I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my
imagination, which was soon to be disclosed the breath-
less anticipations I endured I had seen something like
it in the plate prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe's
Shakspeare—the tent scene with Diomede—and a sight of
that plate can always bring back in a measure the feeling of
that evening.—The boxes at that time, full of well-dressed
women of quality, projected over the pit; and the pilasters
reaching down were adorned with a glistening substance (I
I 28 7//E /2.SSA VS OF E/AA.
know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling—a
homely fancy—but I judged it to be sugar-candy—yet, to
my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it
appeared a glorified candy ſ—The orchestra lights at length
arose, those “fair Auroras l’ Once the bell sounded. It
was to ring out yet once again—and, incapable of the
anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation
upon the maternal lap. It rang the second time. The
Curtain drew up—I was not past six years old—and the play
Was Artaxerxes |
I had dabbled a little in the Universal History—the
ancient part of it—and here was the court of Persia. It
was being admitted to a sight of the past. I took no
proper interest in the action going on, for I understood not
its import—but I heard the word Darius, and I was in the
midst of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision.
Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, passed before
me. I knew not players. I was in Persepolis for the time;
and the burning idol of their devotion almost converted me
into a worshipper. I was awestruck, and believed those
significations to be something more than elemental fires.
It was all enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure
has since visited me but in dreams.-Harlequin's Invasion
followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the
magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me a
piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying
his own head to be as sober a verity as the legend of St.
Denys.
The next play to which I was taken was the Lady of the
Manor, of which, with the exception of some scenery, very
faint traces are left in my memory. It was followed by a
pantomime, called Lun's Ghost—a satiric touch, I apprehend,
upon Rich, not long since dead—but to my apprehension
(too sincere for satire), Lun was as remote a piece of
antiquity as Lud-the father of a line of Harlequins—
transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden Sceptre) through
countless ages. I saw the primeval Motley come from his
silent tomb in a ghastly vest of white patchwork, like the
THE AESSA YS OF EAAA. I29
apparition of a dead rainbow. So Harlequins (thought I)
look when they are dead.
My third play followed in quick succession. It was the
Way of the World. I think I must have sat at it as grave
as a judge: for, I remember, the hysteric affectations of
good Lady Wishfort affected me like some solemn tragic
passion. Robinson Crusoe followed; in which Crusoe,
man Friday, and the parrot, were as good and authentic
as in the story.—The clownery and pantaloonery of these
pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I believe,
I no more laughed at them, than at the same age I should
have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque Gothic heads
(seeming to me then replete with devout meaning) that
gape, and grin, in stone around the inside of the old Round
Church (my church) of the Templars.
I saw these plays in the season 1781–2, when I was from
six to seven years old. After the intervention of six or
seven other years (for at School all playgoing was inhibited)
I again entered the doors of a theatre. That old Artaxerxes
evening had never done ringing in my fancy. I expected
the same feelings to come again with the same occasion.
But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than
the latter does from six. In that interval what had I
not lost At the first period I knew nothing, under-
stood nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all,
wondered all—
“Was nourished, I could not tell how ’’—
I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a ration-
alist. The same things were there materially; but the
emblem, the reference, was gone l—The green curtain was
no longer a veil, drawn between two worlds, the unfolding
of which was to bring back past ages, to present “a royal
ghost,”—but a certain quantity of green baize, which was to
separate the audience for a given time from certain of their
fellow-men who were to come forward and pretend those
parts. The lights—the orchestra lights—came up a clumsy
machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now
9
I 30 THE ESSAYS OF EZZA.
but a trick of the prompter's bell—which had been, like the
note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no hand seen or
guessed at which ministered to its warning. The actors
were men and women painted. I thought the fault was in
them; but it was in myself, and the alteration which those
many centuries—of six short twelvemonths—had wrought
in me.—Perhaps it was fortunate for me that the play of the
evening was but an indifferent comedy, as it gave me time
to crop some unreasonable expectations, which might have
interfered with the genuine emotions with which I was soon
after enabled to enter upon the first appearance to me of
Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison and retrospection
soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene; and
the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, the most
delightful of recreations.
*
DREAM-CHILDREN : A REVERIE.
CHILDREN love to listen to stories about their elders, when
they were children: to stretch their imagination to the con-
ception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom
they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones
crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-
grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk
(a hundred times bigger than that in which they and
papa lived) which had been the scene—so at least it was
generally believed in that part of the country—of the tragic
incidents which they had lately become familiar with from
the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that
the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to
be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece
of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Red-
breasts, till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a
marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story
upon it, Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's
ZTHE ESSA VS OF EAAA, 131
looks, too tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went on
to say, how religious and how good their great-grandmother
Field was, how beloved and respected by everybody, though
she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had
only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might
be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by its
owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashion-
able mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the
adjoining county; but still she lived in it in a manner as if
it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great
house in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to
decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old Orna-
ments stripped and carried away to the owner's other house,
where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some
one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately
at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.’s tawdry gilt
drawing-room. Here John Smiled, as much as to Say,
“that would be foolish, indeed.” And then I told how,
when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a con-
course of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the
neighbourhood for many miles round, to show their respect
for her memory, because she had been such a good and
religious woman ; so good indeed that she knew all the
Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament
besides. Here little, Alice spread her hands. Then I told
what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grandmother
Field once was ; and how in her youth she was esteemed
the best dancer—here Alice's little right foot played an
involuntary movement, till upon my looking grave, it
desisted—the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till
a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down
with pain; but it could never bend her good spirits, or
make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she
was so good and religious. Then I told how she used to
sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house;
and how she believed that an apparition of two infants was
to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great stair-
case near where she slept, but she said “those innocents
I32 THE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
would do her no harm;” and how frightened I used to be,
though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me,
because I was never half so good or religious as she—and
yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his
eyebrows and tried to look courageous. Then I told how
good she was to all her grandchildren, having us to the
great house in the holidays, where I in particular used to
spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts
of the twelve Caesars, that had been Emperors of Rome,
till the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be
turned into marble with them ; how I could never be tired
with roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty
rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and
carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out—
Sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I
had almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary
gardening man would cross me—and how the nectarines
and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering
to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless
now and then, and because I had more pleasure in
strolling about among the old melancholy-looking yew-
trees, or the firs, and picking up the red berries, and
the fir apples, which were good for nothing but to
look at-Or in lying about upon the fresh grass, with .
all the fine garden smells around me—or basking in the
orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too
along with the oranges and the limes in that grateful warmth
—or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in the fish-
pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here and there a
great sulky pike hanging midway down the water in silent
state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings, I had
more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than in all the
sweet flavours of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such like
common baits of children. Here John slyly deposited back
upon the plate a bunch of grapes which, not unobserved by
Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, and both seemed
willing to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant,
Then in somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how,
7THE ESSA WS OF EAAA. I33
though their great-grandmother Field loved all her grand-
children, yet in an especial manner she might be said to love
their uncle, John L–, because he was so handsome and
spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us; and, instead
of moping about in solitary corners, like some of us, he
would mount the most mettlesome horse he could get,
when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make
it carry him half over the county in a morning, and join the
hunters when there were any out—and yet he loved the
old great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit
to be always pent up within their boundaries—and how
their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was
handsome, to the admiration of everybody, but of their
great-grandmother Field most especially; and how he used
to carry me upon his back when I was a lame-footed boy—
for he was a good bit older than me—many a mile when I
could not walk for pain;–and how in after-life, he became
lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make allow-
ance enough for him when he was impatient, and in pain,
nor remember sufficiently how considerate he had been to
me when I was lame-footed; and how when he died, though
he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died
a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and
death; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well
at first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me; and
though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as
I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him
all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved
him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness,
and wished him to be alive again, to be quarrelling with him
(for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him
again, and was as uneasy without him, as he, their poor
uncle, must have been when the doctor took off his limb.
Here the children fell a-crying, and asked if their little
mourning which they had on was not for uncle John, and
they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about their
uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty dead
mother. Then I told how for seven long years, in hope
I34 7THE ESSA VS OF AEAAA.
sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I
courted the fair Alice W n; and, as much as children
could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and
difficulty, and denial meant in maidens—when suddenly,
turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her
eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in
doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that
bright hair was ; and while I stood gazing, both the children
gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still reced-
ing till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen
in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely
impressed upon me the effects of speech; “We are not of
Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children
of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing; less than
nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been,
and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions
of ages, before we have existence, and a name "—and
immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my
bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the
faithful Bridget unchanged by my side—but John L. (or
James Elia) was gone for ever.
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.
THE casual sight of an old Play Bill, which I picked up the
other day—I know not by what chance it was preserved so
long—tempts me to call to mind a few of the Players, who
make the principal figure in it. It presents the cast of
parts in the Twelfth Night at the old Drury Lane Theatre
two-and-thirty years ago. There is something very touching
in these old remembrances. They make us think how we
once used to read a Play Bill—not, as now peradventure,
singling out a favourite performer, and casting a negligent
eye over the rest; but spelling out every name, down to the
very mutes and servants of the scene:–when it was a
THAE AESSA VS OA' ZZZA. I 35
matter of no small moment to us whether Whitfield, or
Packer, took the part of Fabian ; when Benson and Burton
and Phillimore—names of small account—had an importance
beyond what we can be content to attribute now to the
time's best actors.-‘‘Orsino, by Mr. Barrymore.”—What
a full Shakspearean sound it carries how fresh to memory
arise the image, and the manner, of the gentle actor
Those who have only seen Mrs. Jordan within the last
ten or fifteen years, can have no adequate notion of her
performance of such parts as Ophelia; Helena, in All's Well
that Ends Well; and Viola in this play. Her voice had
latterly acquired a coarseness, which suited well enough
with her Nells and Hoydens, but in those days it sank, with
her steady melting eye, into the heart. Her joyous parts—
in which her memory now chiefly lives—in her youth were
Outdone by her plaintive ones. There is no giving an
account how she delivered the disguised story of her love
for Orsino. It was no set speech, that she had foreseen, so
as to weave it into an harmonious period, line necessarily
following line, to make up the music—yet I have heard it so
spoken, or rather read, not without its grace and beauty—
but, when she had declared her sister's history to be a
“blank,” and that she “never told her love,” there was a
pause, as if the story had ended—and then the image of the
“worm in the bud" came up as a new suggestion—and the
heightened image of “Patience” still followed after that,
as by some growing (and not mechanical) process, thought
springing up after thought, I would almost say, as they were
watered by her tears. So in those fine lines—
“Write loyal cantos of contemněd love—
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills”—
there was no preparation made in the foregoing image for
that which was to follow. She used no rhetoric in her
passion; or it was nature's own rhetoric, most legitimate
then, when it seemed altogether without rule or law.
Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Renard), then in the pride of her
beauty, made an admirable Olivia. She was particularly
136 ZTAZ2 AESSA VS OF AE Z.Z.A.
excellent in her unbending scenes in conversation with the
Clown. I have seen some Olivias—and those very sensible
actresses too—who in these interlocutions have seemed to
set their wits at the jester, and to vie conceits with him in
downright emulation. But she used him for her sport, like
what he was, to trifle a leisure sentence or two with, and
then to be dismissed, and she to be the Great Lady still.
She touched the imperious fantastic humour of the character
with nicety. Her fine spacious person filled the scene.
The part of Malvolio has in my judgment been so often
misunderstood, and the general merits of the actor, who
then played it, so unduly appreciated, that I shall hope for
pardon, if I am a little prolix upon these points.
Of all the actors who flourished in my time—a melan-
choly phrase if taken aright, reader—Bensley had most of
the swell of soul, was greatest in the delivery of heroic
conceptions, the emotions consequent upon the present-
ment of a great idea to the fancy. He had the true poetical
enthusiasm—the rarest faculty among players. None that I
remember possessed even a portion of that fine madness
which he threw out in Hotspur's famous rant about glory,
or the transports of the Venetian incendiary at the vision
of the fired city." His voice had the dissonance, and at
times the inspiriting effect of the trumpet. His gait was
uncouth and stiff, but no way embarrassed by affectation;
and the thorough-bred gentleman was uppermost in every
movement. He seized the moment of passion with the
greatest truth; like a faithful clock, never striking before the
time; never anticipating or leading you to anticipate. He
was totally destitute of trick and artifice. He seemed come
upon the stage to do the poet’s message simply, and he did
it with as genuine fidelity as the nuncios in Homer deliver
the errands of the gods. He let the passion or the senti-
ment do its own work without prop or bolstering. He
1 “How lovely the Adriatic whore
Dress'd in her flames will shine—devouring flames—
Such as will burn her to her wat'ry bottom,
And hiss in her ſoundation.”—Pierre, in “Venice Preserved.”
TH/AE AESSA VS OF AZZZA, 137
would have scorned to mountebank it; and betrayed none
of that clezerness which is the bane of serious acting. For
that reason, his Iago was the only endurable one which I
remember to have seen. No spectator from his action
could divine more of his artifice than Othello was supposed
to do. His confessions in soliloquy alone put you in
possession of the mystery. There were no by-intimations to
make the audience fancy their own discernment so much
greater than that of the Moor—who commonly stands like
a great helpless mark set up for mine Ancient, and a
quantity of barren spectators, to shoot their bolts at. The
Iago of Bensley did not go to work so grossly. There was
a triumphant tone about the character, natural to a general
consciousness of power; but none of that petty vanity
which chuckles and cannot contain itself upon any little
successful stroke of its knavery—as is common with your
small villains, and green probationers in mischief. It did
not clap or crow before its time. It was not a man setting
his wits at a child, and winking all the while at other
children who are mightily pleased at being let into the
secret; but a consummate villain entrapping a noble nature
into toils, against which no discernment was available, where
the manner was as fathomless as the purpose seemed dark,
and without motive. The part of Malvolio, in the Twelfth
Night, was performed by Bensley, with a richness and a
dignity, of which (to judge from some recent castings of
that character) the very tradition must be worn out from the
stage. No manager in those days would have dreamed of
giving it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. Parsons: when Bensley
was occasionally absent from the theatre, John Kemble
thought it no derogation to succeed to the part. Malvolio
is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes comic but by
accident. He is cold, austere, repelling; but dignified,
consistent, and, for what appears, rather of an overstretched
morality. Maria describes him as a sort of Puritan; and he
might have worn his gold chain with honour in one of our
old round-head families, in the service of a Lambert, or
a Lady Fairfax, But his morality and his manners are
138 7THE ESSA VS OF EAAA.
misplaced in Illyria. He is opposed to the proper levities of
the piece, and falls in the unequal contest. Still his pride,
or his gravity (call it which you will), is inherent, and native
to the man, not mock or affected, which latter only are the
fit objects to excite laughter. His quality is at the best
unlovely, but neither buffoon nor contemptible. His bear-
ing is lofty, a little above his station, but probably not much
above his deserts. We see no reason why he should not
have been brave, honourable, accomplished. His careless
committal of the ring to the ground (which he was com-
missioned to restore to Cesario), bespeaks a generosity of
birth and feeling. His dialect on all occasions is that of a
gentleman and a man of education. We must not confound
him with the eternal old, low steward of comedy. He is
master of the household to a great Princess; a dignity
probably conferred upon him for other respects than age
or length of service. Olivia, at the first indication of his
supposed madness, declares that she “would not have him
miscarry for half of her dowry.” Does this look as if the
character was meant to appear little or insignificant? Once,
indeed, she accuses him to his face—of what?—of being
“sick of self-love,”—but with a gentleness and considerate-
ness which could not have been, if she had not thought that
this particular infirmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke
to the knight, and his sottish revellers, is sensible and
spirited ; and when we take into consideration the unpro-
tected condition of his mistress, and the strict regard with
which her state of real or dissembled mourning would draw
the eyes of the world upon her house-affairs, Malvolio might
feel the honour of the family in some sort in his keeping;
as it appears not that Olivia had any more brothers, or
kinsmen, to look to it—for Sir Toby had dropped all such
nice respects at the buttery hatch. That Malvolio was
meant to be represented as possessing estimable qualities,
the expression of the Duke in his anxiety to have him
reconciled, almost infers: “Pursue him, and entreat him to
a peace.” Even in his abused state of chains and darkness,
a sort of greatness seems never to desert him. He argues
TA/A2 ASSA VS OF ZZZA, 139
highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas," and philo-
sophises gallantly upon his straw. There must have been
some shadow of worth about the man; he must have been
something more than a mere vapour—a thing of straw, or
Jack in office — before Fabian and Maria could have
ventured sending him upon a courting-errand to Olivia.
There was some consonancy (as he would say) in the under-
taking, or the jest would have been too bold even for that
house of misrule.
Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part an air of Spanish
loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like an old Castilian.
He was starch, spruce, opinionated; but his superstructure
of pride seemed bottomed upon a sense of worth. There
was something in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big and
swelling, but you could not be sure that it was hollow. You
might wish to see it taken down, but you felt that it was
upon an elevation. He was magnificent from the outset;
but when the decent sobrieties of the character began to
give way, and the poison of self-love, in his conceit of the
Countess's affection, gradually to work, you would have
thought that the hero of La Mancha in person stood before
you. How he went smiling to himself with what ineffable
carelessness would he twirl his gold chain what a dream it
was you were infected with the illusion, and did not wish
that it should be removed you had no room for laughter
if an unseasonable reflection of morality obtruded itself, it
was a deep sense of the pitiable infirmity of man's nature,
that can lay him open to such frenzies—but in truth you
rather admired than pitied the lunacy while it lasted—you
felt that an hour of such mistake was worth an age with the
eyes open. Who would not wish to live but for a day in the
conceit of such a lady's love as Olivia P Why, the Duke
would have given his principality but for a quarter of a
minute, sleeping or waking, to have been so deluded. The
* Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?
Ma/. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.
Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion ?
Mal, I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his opinion.
T40 THE ESSA VS OF EAAA.
man seemed to tread on air, to taste manna, to walk with
his head in the clouds, to mate Hyperion, O ! shake not
the castles of his pride—endure yet for a season, bright
moments of confidence—“stand still, ye watches of the
element,” that Malvolio may be still in fancy for Olivia's
lord—but fate and retribution say no—I hear the mis-
chievous titter of Maria—the witty taunts of Sir Toby—the
still more insupportable triumph of the foolish knight—
the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked—and “thus the
whirligig of time,” as the true clown hath it, “brings in his
revenges.” I confess that I never saw the catastrophe of
this character, while Bensley played it, without a kind of
tragic interest. There was good foolery too. Few now
remember Dodd. What an Aguecheek the stage lost in
him Lovegrove, who came nearest to the old actors,
revived the character some few seasons ago, and made it
sufficiently grotesque; but Dodd was it, as it came out of
nature's hands. It might be said to remain in ſºuris
naturalibus. In expressing slowness of apprehension this
actor surpassed all others. You could see the first dawn of
an idea stealing slowly over his countenance, climbing up
by little and little, with a painful process, till it cleared up
at last to the fulness of a twilight conception—its highest
meridian. He seemed to keep back his intellect, as some
have had the power to retard their pulsation. The balloon
takes less time in filling, than it took to cover the expansion
of his broad moony face over all its quarters with expression.
A glimmer of understanding would appear in a corner of
his eye, and for lack of fuel go out again. A part of his
forehead would catch a little intelligence, and be a long
time in communicating it to the remainder.
I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than five-
and-twenty years ago, that walking in the gardens of Gray's
Inn—they were then far finer than they are now—the
accursed Verulam Buildings had not encroached upon all
the east side of them, cutting out delicate green crankles,
and shouldering away one or two of the stately alcoves of
the terrace—the Survivor stands gaping and relationless as
THE ESSA YS OF EAE/A. I4 I
if it remembered its brother—they are still the best gardens
of any of the Inns of Court, my beloved Temple not
forgotten—have the gravest character, their aspect being
altogether reverend and law-breathing—Bacon has left the
impress of his foot upon their gravel walks—taking my
afternoon solace on a summer day upon the aforesaid
terrace, a comely sad personage came towards me, whom,
from his grave air and deportment, I judged to be one of
the old Benchers of the Inn. He had a serious thoughtful
forehead, and seemed to be in meditations of mortality.
As I have an instinctive awe of old Benchers, I was passing
him with that sort of subindicative token of respect which
One is apt to demonstrate towards a venerable stranger, and
which rather denotes an inclination to greet him, than any
positive motion of the body to that effect—a species of
humility and will-worship which I observe, nine times out
of ten, rather puzzles than pleases the person it is offered to
—when the face turning full upon me strangely identified
itself with that of Dodd. Upon close inspection I was not
mistaken. But could this sad thoughtful countenance be
the same vacant face of folly which I had hailed so often
under circumstances of gaiety; which I had never seen
without a smile, or recognised but as the usher of mirth;
that looked out so formally flat in Foppington, so frothily
pert in Tattle, so impotently busy in Backbite; so blankly
divested of all meaning, or resolutely expressive of none, in
Acres, in Fribble, and a thousand agreeable impertinences?
Was this the face—full of thought and carefulness—that had
so often divested itself at will of every trace of either to give
me diversion, to clear my cloudy face for two or three hours
at least of its furrows P Was this the face—manly, sober,
intelligent—which I had so often despised, made mocks at,
made merry with ? The remembrance of the freedoms
which I had taken with it came upon me with a reproach of
insult. I could have asked it pardon. I thought it looked
upon me with a sense of injury. There is something strange
as well as sad in seeing actors—your pleasant fellows par-
ticularly—subjected to and suffering the common lot—their
142 7 'A' E ESSA VS OF EAAA,
fortunes, their casualties, their deaths, seem to belong to
the scene, their actions to be amenable to poetic justice
only. We can hardly connect them with more awful
responsibilities. The death of this fine actor took place
shortly after this meeting. He had quitted the stage some
months; and as I learned afterwards, had been in the
habit of resorting daily to these gardens almost to the day of
his decease. In these serious walks probably he was divest-
ing himself of many scenic and some real vanities—weaning
himself from the frivolities of the lesser and greater theatre
—doing gentle penance for a life of no very reprehensible
fooleries, taken off by degrees the buffoon mask which he
might feel he had worn too long—and rehearsing for a more
solemn cast of part. Dying, he “put on the weeds of
Dominic.”!
If few can remember Dodd, many yet living will not
easily forget the pleasant creature, who in those days
enacted the part of the Clown to Dodd's Sir Andrew.—
Richard, or rather Dicky Suett—for so in his lifetime he
delighted to be called, and time hath ratified the appella-
tion—lieth buried on the north side of the cemetery of
Holy Paul, to whose service his nonage and tender years
were dedicated. There are who do yet remember him at
that period—his pipe clear and harmonious. He would
often speak of his chorister days, when he was “cherub
Dicky.”
What clipped his wings, or made it expedient that he
should exchange the holy for the profane state; whether he
had lost his good voice (his best recommendation to that
* Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice collection
of old English literature. I should judge him to have been a man of
wit. I know one instance of an impromptu which no length of study
could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had seen him one
evening in Aguedheek, and, recognising Dodd the next day in Fleet
Street, was irresistibly impelled to take off his hat and salute him as
the identical Knight of the preceding evening with a “Save you, Sir
Andrew.” Dodd, not at all disconcerted at this unusual address from
a stranger, with a courteous half-rebuking wave of the hand, put him
off with an “Away, Fool.”
ZTATE AESSA VS OF /2Z.Z.A. I43
office), like Sir John, “with hallooing and singing of
anthems; ” or whether he was adjudged to lack something,
even in those early years, of the gravity indispensable to an
occupation which professeth to “commerce with the skies’
—I could never rightly learn ; but we find him, after the
probation of a twelvemónth or so, reverting to a secular
condition, and become one of us.
I think he was not altogether of that timber out of which
cathedral seats and sounding-boards are hewed. But if a
glad heart—kind and therefore glad—be any part of Sanc-
tity, then might the robe of Motley, with which he invested
himself with so much humility after his deprivation, and
which he wore so long with so much blameless satisfaction
to himself and to the public, be accepted for a surplice—his
white stole, and alòe.
The first fruits of his secularization was an engagement
upon the boards of Old Drury, at which theatre he com-
menced, as I have been told, with adopting the manner of
Parsons in old men's characters. At the period in which
most of us knew him, he was no more an imitator than he
was in any true sense himself inimitable.
He was the Robin Good-Fellow of the stage. He came
in to trouble all things with a welcome perplexity, himself
no whit troubled for the matter. He was known, like Puck,
by his note—Ha / Ha / Ha /—sometimes deepening to
Aſo / Ho / Ho / with an irresistible accession derived per-
haps remotely from his ecclesiastical education, foreign to
his prototype of, O La / Thousands of hearts yet respond
to the chuckling O Za / of Dicky Suett, brought back to
their remembrance by the faithful transcript of his friend
Mathews's mimicry. The “force of nature could no farther
go.” He drolled upon the stock of these two syllables
richer than the cuckoo.
Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his
composition. Had he had but two grains (nay, half a
grain) of it, he could never have supported himself upon
those two spider's strings, which served him (in the latter
part of his unmixed existence) as legs. A doubt or a
Y 44 7"H.A., ESSA VS OF EAAA.
scruple must have made him totter, a sigh have puffed him
down ; the weight of a frown had staggered him, a wrinkle
made him lose his balance. But on he went, scrambling
upon those airy stilts of his, with Robin Good-Fellow,
“thorough brake, thorough briar,” reckless of a scratched
face or a torn doublet. *
Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed his fools and
jesters. They have all the true Suett stamp, a loose and
shambling gait, a slippery tongue, this last the ready mid-
wife to a without-pain-delivered jest; in words, light as
air, venting truths deep as the centre; with idlest rhymes
tagging conceit when busiest, singing with Lear in the
tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery-hatch.
Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of
personal favourites with the town than any actors before or
after. The difference, I take it, was this —Jack was more
àe/ozed for his sweet, good-natured, moral pretensions.
Dicky was more liked for his sweet, good-natured, no
pretensions at all. Your whole conscience stirred with
Bannister's performance of Walter in the Children in the
Wood—but Dicky seemed like a thing, as Shakspeare says
of Love, too young to know what conscience is. He puts
us into Vesta's days. Evil fled before him—not as from
Jack, as from an antagonist,--but because it could not
touch him, any more than a cannon-ball a fly. He was
delivered from the burthen of that death; and when Death
came himself, not in metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it is recorded
of him by Robert Palmer, who kindly watched his exit, that
he received the last stroke, neither varying his accustomed
tranquillity, nor tune, with the simple exclamation, worthy
to have been recorded in his epitaph—O Za / O Za /
Aobby /
The elder Palmer (of stage-treading celebrity) commonly
played Sir Toby in those days; but there is a solidity of
wit in the jests of that half-Falstaff which he did not quite
fill out. He was as much too showy, as Moody (who some-
times took the part) was dry and sottish. In sock or buskin
there was an air of Swaggering gentility about Jack Palmer.
THE AESSA VS OF EAE/A. I45
He was a gentleman with a slight infusion of the footman.
His brother Bob (of recenter memory), who was his shadow
in everything while he lived, and dwindled into less than a
shadow afterwards—was a gent/eman with a little stronger
infusion of the latter ingredient; that was all. It is
amazing how a little of the more or less makes a difference
in these things. When you saw Bobby in the Duke's
Servant,' you said, what a pity such a pretty fellow was
only a servant. When you saw Jack figuring in Captain
Absolute, you thought you could trace his promotion to
some lady of quality who fancied the handsome fellow in
his top-knot, and had bought him a commission. Therefore
Jack in Dick Amlet was insuperable.
Jack had two voices, both plausible, hypocritical, and
insinuating; but his secondary or supplemental voice still
more decisively histrionic than his common one. It was
reserved for the spectator; and the dramafis fersona were
supposed to know nothing at all about it. The lies of
young Wilding, and the sentiments in Joseph Surface, were
thus marked out in a sort of italics to the audience. This
secret correspondence with the company before the curtain
(which is the bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely
happy effect in some kinds of comedy, in the more highly
artificial comedy of Congreve or of Sheridan especially,
where the absolute sense of reality (so indispensable to
scenes of interest) is not required, or would rather interfere
to diminish your pleasure. The fact is, you do not believe
in such characters as Surface — the villain of artificial
comedy—even while you read or see them. If you did,
they would shock and not divert you. When Ben, in Love
for Love, returns from sea, the following exquisite dialogue
occurs at his first meeting with his father:—
Sir Sampson. Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben, since I
saw thee.
Benz. Ey, ey, been I Been far enough, an that be all.—Well, father,
and how do all at home P how does brother Dick, and brother Val P
* “High Liſe Below Stairs.”
IO
I46 THAE AESSA VS OF EAE/A.
Sir Sampson. Dick | body o' me, Dick has been dead these two
years. I writ you word when you were at Leghorn.
Ben. Mess, that's true; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's dead, as you
Say—Well, and how 2–I have a many questions to ask you—
Here is an instance of insensibility which in real life
would be revolting, or rather in real life could not have
co-existed with the warm-hearted temperament of the char-
acter. But when you read it in the spirit with which such
playful selections and specious combinations rather than
strict metaphrases of nature should be taken, or when you
saw Bannister play it, it neither did, nor does, wound the
moral sense at all. For what is Ben—the pleasant sailor
which Bannister gives us—but a piece of satire—a creation
of Congreve's fancy—a dreamy combination of all the
accidents of a sailor's character—his contempt of money—
his credulity to women—with that necessary estrangement
from home which it is just within the verge of credibility to
Suppose might produce such an hallucination as is here
described. We never think the worse of Ben for it, or feel
it as a stain upon his character. But when an actor comes,
and instead of the delightful phantom—the creature dear
to half-belief—which Bannister exhibited—displays before
our eyes a downright concretion of a Wapping sailor—a
jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar—and nothing else—when
instead of investing it with a delicious confusedness of the
head, and a veering undirected goodness of purpose—he
gives to it a downright daylight understanding, and a full
consciousness of its actions; thrusting forward the sensi-
bilities of the character with a pretence as if it stood upon
nothing else, and was to be judged by them alone—we feel
the discord of the thing; the scene is disturbed ; a real
man has got in among the dramafi's Zersonae, and puts them
out. We want the sailor turned out. We feel that his
true place is not behind the curtain but in the first or
Second gallery.
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS.
IN A LETTER TO B. F. ESQ., AT SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH
WALES.
My DEAR F.—When I think how welcome the sight of a
ſetter from the world where you were born must be to you
in that strange one to which you have been transplanted, I
feel some compunctious visitings at my long silence. But,
indeed, it is no easy effort to set about a correspondence
at our distance. The weary world of waters between us
oppresses the imagination. It is difficult to conceive how a
scrawl of mine should ever stretch across it. It is a sort of
presumption to expect that one's thoughts should live so far.
It is like writing for posterity; and reminds me of one of
Mrs. Rowe's superscriptions, “Alcander to Strephon, in the
Shades.” Cowley's Post-Angel is no more than would be
expedient in such an intercourse. One drops a packet at
Lombard Street, and in twenty-four hours a friend in
Cumberland gets it as fresh as if it came in ice. It is only
like whispering through a long trumpet. But suppose a
tube let down from the moon, with yourself at one end,
and the man at the other; it would be some balk to
the spirit of conversation, if you knew that the dialogue
exchanged with that interesting theosophist would take two
or three revolutions of a higher luminary in its passage.
Yet for Ought I know, you may be some parasangs nigher
that primitive idea—Plato's man—than we in England here
have the honour to reckon ourselves.
Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics; news,
sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include all non-
serious subjects; or subjects serious in themselves, but
treated after my fashion, non-seriously.—And first, for
news. In them the most desirable circumstance, I
Suppose, is that they shall be true. But what security
can I have that what I now send you for truth shall
not before you get it unaccountably turn into a lie P
I 47
I 48 ZTAE/AE /2.SSA VS OAF A. Z.Z.A.
For instance, our mutual friend P. is at this present
writing—my Mozy—in good health, and enjoys a fair share
of worldly reputation. You are glad to hear it. This is
natural and friendly. But at this present reading—your
Mow—he may possibly be in the Bench, or going to be
hanged, which in reason ought to abate something of your
transport (i.e., at hearing he was well, etc.), or at least con-
siderably to modify it. I am going to the play this evening,
to have a laugh with Munden. You have no theatre, I
think you told me, in your land of d d realities. You
naturally lick your lips, and envy me my felicity. Think
but a moment, and you will correct the hateful emotion.
Why, it is Sunday morning with you, and 1823. This con-
fusion of tenses, this grand solecism of two fºresents, is in a
degree common to all postage. But if I sent you word to
Bath or the Devizes, that I was expecting the aforesaid treat
this evening, though at the moment you received the intelli-
gence my full feast of fun would be over, yet there would
be for a day or two after, as you would well know, a Smack,
a relish left upon my mental palate, which would give
rational encouragement for you to foster a portion at least
of the disagreeable passion, which it was in part my inten-
tion to produce. But ten months hence, your envy or your
sympathy would be as useless as a passion spent upon the
dead. Not only does truth, in these long intervals, un-
essence herself, but (what is harder) one cannot venture a
crude fiction for the fear that it may ripen into a truth upon
the voyage. What a wild improbable banter I put upon
you some three years since of Will Weatherall having
married a servant-maid I remember gravely consulting
you how we were to receive her—for Will's wife was in no
case to be rejected; and your no less serious replication
in the matter: how tenderly you advised an abstemious
introduction of literary topics before the lady, with a caution
not to be too forward in bringing on the carpet matters
more within the sphere of her intelligence; your deliberate
judgment, or rather wise suspension of sentence, how far
jacks, and Spits, and mops could with propriety be introduced
ZTAE/E /2.SSA VS OF Z Z/A. I49
as subjects; whether the conscious avoiding of all such
matters in discourse would not have a worse look than
the taking of them casually in our way; in what manner we
should carry ourselves to our maid Becky, Mrs. William
Weatherall being by ; whether we should show more
delicacy, and a truer sense of respect for Will's wife, by
treating Becky with our customary chiding before her, or
by an unusual deferential civility paid to Becky as to a
person of great worth, but thrown by the caprice of fate
into a humble station. There were difficulties, I remember,
on both sides, which you did me the favour to state with
the precision of a lawyer, united to the tenderness of a
friend. I laughed in my sleeve at your solemn pleadings,
when lo ! while I was valuing myself upon this flam put
upon you in New South Wales, the devil in England,
jealous possibly of any lie-children not his own, or working
after my copy, has actually instigated our friend (not three
days since) to the commission of a matrimony, which I had
only conjured up for your diversion. William Weatherall
has married Mrs. Cotterel's maid. But to take it in its
truest sense, you will see, my dear F., that news from me
must become history to you ; which I neither profess to
write, nor indeed care much for reading. No person, under
a diviner, can with any prospect of veracity, conduct a
correspondence at such an arm’s length. Two prophets,
indeed, might thus interchange intelligence with effect; the
epoch of the writer (Habakkuk) falling in with the true
present time of the receiver (Daniel); but then we are no
prophets.
Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with that.
This kind of dish, above all, requires to be served up hot:
or sent off in water-plates, that your friend may have it
almost as warm as yourself. If it have time to cool, it is
the most tasteless of all cold meats. I have often smiled at
a conceit of the late Lord C. It seems that travelling some-
where about Geneva, he came to some pretty green spot, or
nook, where a willow, or something, hung so fantastically
and invitingly over a stream—was it P-Or a rock P-no
I 5o ZTHE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
matter—but the stillness and the repose, after a weary
journey ’tis likely, in a languid moment of his lordship's hot
restless life, so took his fancy, that he could imagine no
place so proper, in the event of his death, to lay his bones
in. This was all very natural and excusable as a sentiment,
and shows his character in a very pleasing light. But when
from a passing sentiment it came to be an act ; and when,
by a positive testamentary disposal, his remains were
actually carried all that way from England; who was there,
some desperate sentimentalists excepted, that did not ask
the question, Why could not his lordship have found a spot
as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree as green and pendant,
with a stream as emblematic to his purpose, in Surrey, in
Dorset, or in Devon P. Conceive the sentiment boarded up,
freighted, entered at the Custom House (startling the tide-
waiters with the novelty), hoisted into a ship. Conceive it
pawed about and handled between the rude jests of
tarpaulin ruffians—a thing of its delicate texture—the Salt
bilge wetting it till it became as vapid as a damaged
lustring. Suppose it in material danger (mariners have
some superstition about sentiments) of being tossed over in
a fresh gale to some propitiatory shark (spirit of St.
Gothard, save us from a quietus so foreign to the deviser's
purpose !) but it has happily evaded a fishy consummation.
Trace it then to its lucky landing—at Lyons shall we say?
—I have not the map before me—jostled upon four men's
shoulders—baiting at this town—stopping to refresh at
tºother village—waiting a passport here, a licence there; the
sanction of the magistracy in this district, the concurrence
of the ecclesiastics in that canton; till at length it arrives
at its destination, tired out and jaded, from a brisk senti-
ment, into a feature of silly pride or tawdry, senseless
affectation. How few sentiments, my dear F., I am afraid
we can set down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite Seaworthy.
Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though con-
temptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which
should irradiate a right friendly epistle—your puns and
small jests are, I apprehend, extremely circumscribed in
TH/AE AESSA VS OF AZZZA. I5 I
their sphere of action. They are so far from a capacity of
being packed up and sent beyond sea, they will scarce
endure to be transported by hand from this room to the
next. Their vigour is as the instant of their birth. Their
nutriment for their brief existence is the intellectual atmo-
sphere of the bystanders: or this last, is the fine slime of
Nilus—the melior ſufus, -whose maternal recipiency is as
necessary as the so! ſafer to their equivocal generation. A
pun hath a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack with
it ; you can no more transmit it in its pristine flavour, than
you can send a kiss.-Have you not tried in some instances
to palm off a yesterday's pun upon a gentleman, and has it
answered? Not but it was new to his hearing, but it did
not seem to come new from you. It did not hitch in. It
was like picking up at a village ale-house a two days’ old
newspaper. You have not seen it before, but you resent
the stale thing as an affront. This sort of merchandise
above all requires a quick return. A pun, and its recognitory
laugh, must be co-instantaneous. The one is the brisk
lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A moment's
interval, and the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from
a friend’s face as from a mirror. Who would consult his
sweet visnomy, if the polished surface were two or three
minutes (not to speak of twelve months, my dear F.) in
giving back its copy P
I cannot imagine to myself whereabout you are. When
I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's island comes across me.
Sometimes you seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. I see
Diogenes prying among you with his perpetual fruitless
lantern. What must you be willing by this time to give for
the sight of an honest man You must almost have for-
gotten how we look. And tell me, what your Sydneyites
do? are they th”v°ng all day long? Merciful heaven
what property can stand against such a depredation | The
kangaroos—your Aborigines—do they keep their primitive
simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short fore-
puds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to the pick-
pocket ! Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely
1 52 ZAZAE AESSA VS OF E/./A.
provided d ?riori, but if the hue and cry were once up,
they would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest
loco-motor in the colony.—We hear the most improbable
tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that the young
Spartans among you are born with six fingers, which spoils
their scanning?—It must look very odd; but use reconciles.
For their scansion, it is less to be regretted, for if they take
it into their heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn out,
the greater part of them, vile plagiarists.--Is there much
difference to see to between the son of a th”f, and the
grandson? or where does the taint stop? Do you bleach
in three or in four generations P-I have many questions to
put, but ten Delphic voyages can be made in a shorter time
than it will take to satisfy my scruples.—Do you grow your
own hemp —What is your staple trade, exclusive of the
national profession, I mean? Your lock-Smiths, I take it,
are some of your great capitalists.
I am insensibly chattering to you as familiarly as when we
used to exchange good-morrows out of our old contiguous
windows, in pump-famed Hare Court in the Temple. Why
did you ever leave that quiet corner?—Why did I?—with
its complement of four poor elms, from whose smoke-dried
barks, the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first lady-
birds ! My heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves
in a thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is
between us; a length of passage enough to render obsolete
the phrases of our English letters before they can reach you.
But while I talk, I think you hear me, thoughts dallying
with vain surmise—
“Ay me ! while thee the seas and sounding shores
Hold far away.”
Come back, before I am grown into a very old man, so
as you shall hardly know me. Come, before Bridget walks
on crutches. Girls whom you left children have become
sage matrons, while you are tarrying there. The blooming
Miss W. r (you remember Sally W r) called upon us
yesterday, an aged Crone. Folks, whom you knew, die off
7A/AE AESSA VS OA' /2Z.Z.A. I 53
every year. Formerly, I thought that death was wearing
out, -I stood ramparted about with so many healthy friends.
The departure of J. W., two springs back, corrected my
delusion. Since then the old divorcer has been busy. If
you do not make haste to return, there will be little left to
greet you, of me, or mine.
[Something of home matters I could add ; but that, with
certain remembrances never to be omitted, I reserve for the
grave postscript to this light epistle; which postScript, for
weighty reasons, justifactory in any court of feeling, I think
better omitted in this first edition. London, March Ist,
1822.—ELIA.]
ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST
CENTURY.
THE artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is quite
extinct on our stage. Congreve and Farquhar show their
heads once in seven years only, to be exploded and put
down instantly. The times cannot bear them. Is it for a
few wild speeches, an occasional licence of dialogue P I
think not altogether. The business of their dramatic
characters will not stand the moral test. We screw every-
thing up to that. Idle gallantry in a fiction, a dream, the
passing pageant of an evening, startles us in the same way
as the alarming indications of profligacy in a son or ward
in real life should startle a parent or guardian. We have
no such middle emotions as dramatic interests left. We
see a stage libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours'
duration, and of no after-consequence, with the severe eyes
which inspect real vices with their bearings upon two worlds.
We are spectators to a plot or intrigue (not reducible in life
to the point of strict morality) and take it all for truth.
We substitute a real for a dramatic person, and judge him
accordingly. We try him in our courts, from which there is
I54 7THE ESSA VS OF AE//4,
no appeal to the dramatis personae, his peers, We have
been spoiled with—not sentimental comedy—but a tyrant
far more pernicious to our pleasures which has succeeded
to it, the exclusive and all-devouring drama of common life;
where the moral point is everything; where, instead of the
fictitious half-believed personages of the stage (the phantoms
of old comedy) we recognise ourselves, our brothers, aunts,
kinsfolk, allies, patrons, enemies, the same as in life,
with an interest in what is going on so hearty and sub-
stantial, that we cannot afford our moral judgment, in its
deepest and most vital results, to compromise or slumber
for a moment. What is there transacting, by no modification
is made to affect us in any other manner than the same
events or characters would do in our relationships of life.
We carry our fireside concerns to the theatre with us. We
do not go thither, like our ancestors, to escape from the
pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience
of it; to make assurance double, and take a bond of fate.
We must live our toilsome lives twice over, as it was the
mournful privilege of Ulysses to descend twice to the shades.
All that neutral ground of character, which stood between
vice and virtue; or which in fact was indifferent to neither,
where neither property was called in question; that happy
breathing-place from the burthen of a perpetual moral
questioning—the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted
casuistry—is broken up and disfranchised, as injurious to
the interests of society. The privileges of the place are
taken away by law. We dare not dally with images, or
names, of wrong. We bark like foolish dogs at shadows.
We dread infection from the scenic representation of dis-
order; and fear a painted pustule. In our anxiety that our
morality should not take cold, we wrap it up in a great
blanket surtout of precaution against the breeze and
Sunshine.
I confess for myself that (with no great delinquencies to
answer for) I am glad for a season to take an airing beyond
the diocese of the strict conscience,—not to live always in
the precincts of the law courts, but now and then, for a
ZTH/A2 /2.SSA VS OA' ZZZA. I 55
dream-while or so, to imagine a world with no meddling
restrictions—to get into recesses, whither the hunter cannot
follow me— -
£ 6 Secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove”—
I come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher and
more healthy for it. I wear my shackles more contentedly
for having respired the breath of an imaginary freedom. I
do not know how it is with others, but I feel the better
always for the perusal of one of Congreve's—nay, why
should I not add even of Wycherley's—comedies. I am
the gayer at least for it ; and I could never connect those
Sports of a witty fancy in any shape with any result to be
drawn from them to imitation in real life. They are a
world of themselves almost as much as fairyland. Take
one of their characters, male or female (with few exceptions
they are alike), and place it in a modern play, and my
virtuous indignation shall rise against the profligate wretch
as warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire; because in
a modern play I am to judge of the right and the wrong.
The standard of Żolice is the measure of Żolitica/justice.
The atmosphere will blight it, it cannot live here. It has
got into a moral world, where it has no business, from
which it must needs fall headlong; as dizzy and incapable
of making a stand, as a Swedenborgian bad spirit that has
wandered unawares into the sphere of one of his Good
Men, or Angels. But in its own world do we feel the
creature is so very bad P−The Fainalls and the Mirabels,
the Dorimants and the Lady Touchwoods, in their own
sphere, do not offend my moral sense; in fact, they do not
appeal to it at all. They seem engaged in their proper
element. They break through no laws, or conscientious
restraints. They know of none. They have got out of
Christendom into the land—what shall I call it P−of
cuckoldry—the Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is
duty, and the manners perfect freedom. It is altogether a
I56 7TH//Z ZSSA VS OA' EZZA.
speculative scene of things, which has no reference whatever
to the world that is. No good person can be justly offended
as a spectator, because no good person suffers on the stage.
Judged morally, every character in these plays—the few
exceptions only are mistakes—is alike essentially vain and
worthless. The great art of Congreve is especially shown
in this, that he has entirely excluded from the scenes,
Some little generosities in the part of Angelica perhaps
excepted,—not only anything like a faultless character, but
any pretensions to goodness or good feelings whatsoever.
Whether he did this designedly, or instinctively, the effect
is as happy, as the design (if design) was bold. I used to
wonder at the strange power which his Way of the World
in particular possesses of interesting you all along in the
pursuits of characters, for whom you absolutely care nothing
—for you neither hate nor love his personages—and I think
it is owing to this very indifference for any, that you endure
the whole. He has spread a privation of moral light, I will
call it, rather than by the ugly name of palpable darkness,
Over his creations; and his shadows flit before you without
distinction or preference. Had he introduced a good
character, a single gush of moral feeling, a revulsion of the
judgment to actual life and actual duties, the impertinent
Goshen would have only lighted to the discovery of
deformities, which now are none, because we think them
In On 62.
Translated into real life, the characters of his, and his
friend Wycherley's dramas, are profligates and strumpets,
he business of their brief existence, the undivided pursuit
of lawless gallantry. No other spring of action, or possible
motive of conduct, is recognised ; principles which, univer-
Sally acted upon, must reduce this frame of things to a chaos.
But we do them wrong in so translating them. No such
effects are produced in their world. When we are among
them, we are amongst a chaotic people. We are not to
judge them by our usages. No reverend institutions are
insulted by their proceedings, for they have none among
them. No peace of families is violated,—for no family ties
ZTAZZ /2.SSA VS OF /ZZ/A. I 57
exist among them. No purity of the marriage bed is
stained,—for none is supposed to have a being. No deep
affections are disquicted,—no holy wedlock bands are
snapped asunder, for affection's depth and wedded faith
are not of the growth of that soil. There is neither right
nor wrong, gratitude or its opposite, claim or duty,+
paternity or sonship. Of what consequence is it to virtue,
or how is she at all concerned about it, whether Sir Simon,
or Dapperwit, steal away Miss Martha; or who is the father
of Lord Froth's, or Sir Paul Pliant's children P
The whole is a passing pageant, where we should sit as
unconcerned at the issues, for life or death, as at a battle of
the frogs and mice. But like Don Quixote, we take part
against the puppets, and quite as impertinently. We dare
not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme, out of which our
coxcombical moral sense is for a little transitory ease
excluded. We have not the courage to imagine a state of
things for which there is neither reward nor punishment.
We cling to the painful necessities of shame and blame.
We would indict our very dreams.
Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant upon
growing old, it is something to have seen the School for
Scandal in its glory. This comedy grew out of Congreve
and Wycherley, but gathered some allays of the sentimental
comedy which followed theirs. It is impossible that it
should be now acted, though it continues, at long intervals,
to be announced in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer
played it at least, was Joseph Surface. When I remember
the gay boldness, the graceful solemn plausibility, the
measured step, the insinuating voice—to express it in a
word—the downright acted villainy of the part, so different
from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness, the
hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy, which made Jack so
deservedly a favourite in that character, I must needs con-
clude the present generation of playgoers more virtuous
than myself, or more dense. I freely confess that he
divided the palm with me with his better brother; that, in
fact, I liked him quite as well. Not but there are passages,
158 THAE ESSA VS OF AZZZA.
—like that, for instance, where Joseph is made to refuse a
pittance to a poor relation,-incongruities which Sheridan
was forced upon by the attempt to join the artificial with
the sentimental comedy, either of which must destroy the
other—but over these obstructions Jack's manner floated
him so lightly, that a refusal from him no more shocked
you, than the easy compliance of Charles gave you in reality
any pleasure; you got over the paltry question as quickly
as you could, to get back into the regions of pure comedy,
where no cold moral reigns. The highly artificial manner
of Palmer in this character counteracted every disagreeable
impression which you might have received from the con-
trast, supposing them real, between the two brothers. You
did not believe in Joseph with the same faith with which
you believed in Charles. The latter was a pleasant reality,
the former a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The
comedy, I have said, is incongruous; a mixture of Con-
greve with sentimental incompatibilities: the gaiety upon
the whole is buoyant; but it required the consummate art
of Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements.
A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now, would
not dare to do the part in the same manner. He would
instinctively avoid every turn which might tend to unrealise,
and so to make the character fascinating. He must take
his cue from his spectators, who would expect a bad man
and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other as the
death-beds of those geniuses are contrasted in the prints,
which I am sorry to say have disappeared from the windows
of my old friend Carrington Bowles, of St. Paul’s Church-
yard memory—(an exhibition as venerable as the adjacent
cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad and good man at
the hour of death; where the ghastly apprehensions of the
former, and truly the grim phantom with his reality of
a toasting-fork is not to be despised,—so finely contrast with
the meek complacent kissing of the rod, taking it in like
honey and butter, with which the latter submits to the
scythe of the gentle bleeder, Time, who wields his lancet
with the apprehensive finger of a popular young ladies'
ZTAZZ ZSSA WS OF AZZZA, I59
surgeon. What flesh, like loving grass, would not covet to
meet half-way the stroke of such a delicate mower P-John
Palmer was twice an actor in this exquisite part. He was
playing to you all the while that he was playing upon Sir Peter
and his lady. You had the first intimation of a sentiment
before it was on his lips. His altered voice was meant to
you, and you were to suppose that his fictitious co-flutterers
on the stage perceived nothing at all of it. What was it to
you if that half-reality, the husband, was over-reached by
the puppetry—or the thin thing (Lady Teazle’s reputation)
was persuaded it was dying of a plethory P. The fortunes of
Othello and Desdemona was not concerned in it. Poor
Jack has passed from the stage in good time, that he did
not live to this our age of seriousness. The pleasant old
Teazle Aïng, too, is gone in good time. His manner would
scarce have passed current in our day. We must love or
hate—acquit or condemn—censure or pity—exert our detest-
able coxcombry of moral judgment upon everything. Joseph
Surface, to go down now, must be a downright revolting
villain—no compromise—his first appearance must shock
and give horror—his specious plausibilities, which the
pleasurable faculties of our fathers welcomed with such
hearty greetings, knowing that no harm (dramatic harm
even) could come, or was meant to come of them, must
inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real
canting person of the scene—for the hypocrisy of Joseph
has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's professions
of a good heart centre in downright self-satisfaction) must
be loved, and Joseph hated. To balance one disagreeable
reality with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer the
comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, whose
teasings (while King acted it) were evidently as much played
off at you, as they were meant to concern anybody on the
stage, he must be a real person, capable in law of sus-
taining an injury—a person towards whom duties are to
be acknowledged—the genuine crim-con. antagonist of the
villainous seducer Joseph. To realise him more, his suffer-
ings under his unfortunate match must have the downright
I6o 7A7/7 /2.SSA VS OF AZZZA.
pungency of life—must (or should) make you not mirthful
but uncomfortable, just as the same predicament would
move you in a neighbour or old friend. The delicious
scenes which give the play its name and zest, must affect
you in the same serious manner as if you heard the
reputation of a dear female friend attacked in your real
presence. Crabtree, and Sir Benjamin—those poor Snakes
that live but in the sunshine of your mirth—must be ripened
by this hot-bed process of realisation into asps or amphis-
baenas; and Mrs. Candour–O! frightfull become a
hooded serpent. Oh, who that remembers Parsons and
Dodd—the wasp and butterfly of the School for Scandal—
in those two characters; and charming natural Miss Pope,
the perfect gentlewoman as distinguished from the fine lady
of comedy, in this latter part—would forego the true scenic
delight—the escape from life—the oblivion of consequences
—the holiday barring out of the pedant Reflection—those
Saturnalia of two or three brief hours, well won from the
world—to sit instead at one of our modern plays—to have
his coward conscience (that forsooth must not be left for a
moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals—dulled rather,
and blunted, as a faculty without repose must be—and his
moral vanity pampered with images of notional justice,
notional beneficence, lives saved without the spectators'
risk, and fortunes given away that cost the author nothing?
No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in all its
parts as this manager’s comedy. Miss Farren had succeeded
to Mrs. Abingdon in Lady Teazle; and Smith, the original
Charles, had retired, when I first saw it. The rest of the
characters, with very slight exceptions, remained. I re-
member it was then the fashion to cry down John Kemble,
who took the part of Charles after Smith ; but, I thought,
very unjustly. Smith, I fancy, was more airy, and took the
eye with a certain gaiety of person. He brought with him
no sombre recollections of tragedy. He had not to expiate
the fault of having pleased beforehand in lofty declamation.
He had no sins of Hamlet or of Richard to atone for.
His failure in these parts was a passport to success in one
ZTAE//2 /2.SSA VS OA’ ZZZA. I6I
of so opposite a tendency. But, as far as I could judge,
the weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal
incapacity than he had to answer for. His harshest tones in
this part came steeped and dulcified in good humour. He
made his defects a grace. His exact declamatory manner,
as he managed it, only served to convey the points of his
dialogue with more precision. It seemed to head the shafts
to carry them deeper. Not one of his sparkling sentences
was lost. I remember minutely how he delivered each in
succession, and cannot by any effort imagine how any of
them could be altered for the better. No man could
deliver brilliant dialogue—the dialogue of Congreve or of
Wycherley—because none understood it—half so well as
John Kemble. His Valentine, in Love for Love, was to
my recollection, faultless. He flagged sometimes in the
intervals of tragic passion. He would slumber over the
level parts of an heroic character. His Macbeth has been
known to nod. But he always seemed to me to be par-
ticularly alive to pointed and witty dialogue. The relaxing
levities of tragedy have not been touched by any since him
—the playful court-bred spirit in which he condescended to
the players in Hamlet—the sportive relief which he threw
into the darker shades of Richard—disappeared with him.
John had his sluggish moods, his torpors—but they were
the halting-stones and resting-place of his tragedy—politic
savings, and fetches of the breath—husbandry of the lungs,
where nature pointed him to be an economist—rather, I
think, than errors of the judgment. They were, at worst,
less painful than the eternal tormenting unappeasable
vigilance,—the “lidless dragon eyes,” of present fashionable
tragedy.
[The story of his swallowing opium pills to keep him lively
on the first night of a certain tragedy, we may presume to
be a piece of retaliatory pleasantry on the part of the suffer-
ing author; but, indeed, John had the art of diffusing a
complacent equable dulness (which you knew not where to
quarrel with), over a piece which he did not like, beyond
any of his contemporaries. John Kemble had made up
II
I62 TA/A2 /2.SSA VS OF EAAA.
his mind early, that all the good tragedies which could be
written, had been written; and he resented any new
attempt. His shelves were full. The old standards were
scope enough for his ambition. He ranged in them
absolutely—and fair “in Otway, full in Shakspeare shone.”
He succeeded to the old lawful thrones, and did not care to
adventure bottomry with a Sir Edward Mortinner or any casual
speculator that offered. I remember, too actually for my
peace, the deadly extinguisher which he put upon my friend
G.’s “Antonio.” G., satiate with visions of political justice
(possibly not to be realised in our time), or willing to let the
sceptical worldlings see that his anticipations of the future
did not preclude a warm sympathy for men as they are and
have been—wrote a tragedy. He chose a story, affecting,
romantic, Spanish—the plot simple, without being naked
—the incidents uncommon, without being overstrained.
Antonio, who gives the name to the piece, is a sensitive
young Castilian, who, in a fit of his country honour,
immolates his sister—
But I must not anticipate the catastrophe-the play,
reader, is extant in choice English—and you will employ a
spare half-crown not injudiciously in the quest of it.
The conception was bold, and the dénouement—the time
and place in which the hero of it existed, considered—not
much out of keeping; yet it must be confessed, that it
required a delicacy of handling both from the author and
the perſormer, so as not much to shock the prejudices of a
modern English audience. G., in my opinion, had done
his part.
John, who was in familiar habits with the philosopher,
had undertaken to play Antonio. Great expectations were
formed. A philosopher's first play was a new era. The
night arrived. I was favoured with a seat in an advan-
tageous box, between the author and his friend M &
G. sat cheerful and confident. In his friend M.'s looks,
who had perused the manuscript, I read some terror.
Antonio, in the person of John Philip Kemble, at length
appeared, starched out in a ruff which no one could
ZTAZAZ /2.SSA VS OF EAAA. - I63
dispute, and in most irreproachable mustachios. John
always dressed most provokingly correct on these occasions.
The first act swept by, solemn and silent. It went off, as
G. assured M., exactly as the opening act of a piece—the
protasis—should do. The cue of the spectators was, to be
mute. The characters were but in their introduction.
The passions and the incidents would be developed here-
after. Applause hitherto would be impertinent. Silent
attention was the effect all-desirable. Poor M. acquiesced—
but in his honest, friendly face I could discern a working
which told how much more acceptable the plaudit of a
single hand (however misplaced) would have been than all
this reasoning. The second act (as in duty bound) rose a
little in interest, but still John kept his forces under—in
policy, as G. would have it—and the audience were most
complacently attentive. The protasis, in fact, was scarcely
unfolded. The interest would warm in the next act, against
which a special incident was provided. M. wiped his
cheek, flushed with a friendly perspiration—'tis M.'s way of
showing his zeal—“from every pore of him a perfume falls”
—I honour it above Alexander's. He had once or twice
during this act joined his palms, in a feeble endeavour to
elicit a sound—they emitted a solitary noise, without an
echo-there was no deep to answer to his deep. G.
repeatedly begged him to be quiet. The third act at length
brought him on the scene which was to warm the piece,
progressively, to the final flaming forth of the catastrophe.
A philosophic calm settled upon the clear brow of G., as it
approached. The lips of M. Quivered. A challenge was
held forth upon the stage, and there was a promise of a
fight. The pit roused themselves on this extraordinary
occasion, and, as their manner is, seemed disposed to make
a ring, when suddenly, Antonio, who was the challenged,
turning the tables upon the hot challenger, Don Gusman
(who, by the way, should have had his sister) baulks his
humour, and the pit’s reasonable expectation at the same
time, with some speeches out of the “New Philosophy
against Duelling.” The audience were here fairly caught—
164 ZTAE//Z A.S.S.A. Y.S OA' A' Z/A.
their courage was up, and on the alert—a few blows, ding-
dong, as R. s, the dramatist, afterwards expressed it
to me, might have done the business, when their most
exquisite moral sense was suddenly called in to assist in the
mortifying negation of their own pleasure. They could not
applaud for disappointment; they would not condemn for
morality's sake. The interest stood stone still ; and John's
manner was not calculated to unpetrify it. It was Christ-
mas time, and the atmosphere furnished some pretext for
asthmatic affections. One began to cough—his neighbour
sympathised with him—till a cough became epidemical.
But when, from being half artificial in the pit, the cough
got frightfully naturalised among the fictitious persons of
the drama, and Antonio himself (albeit it was not set down
in the stage directions) seemed more intent upon relieving
his own lungs than the distresses of the author and his
friends, then G. “first knew fear; ” and, mildly turning to
M., intimated that he had not been aware that Mr. K.
laboured under a cold; and that the performance might
possibly have been postponed with advantage for some
nights farther—still keeping the same serene countenance,
while M. Sweat like a bull. It would be invidious to pursue
the fates of this ill-starred evening. In vain did the plot
thicken in the scenes that followed; in vain did the dialogue
wax more passionate and stirring, and the progress of the
sentiment point more and more clearly to the arduous
development which impended. In vain the action was
accelerated, while the acting stood still. From the begin-
ning John had taken his stand; had wound himself up to
an even tenor of stately declamation, from which no
exigence of dialogue or person could make him swerve for
an instant. To dream of his rising with the scene (the
common trick of tragedians) was preposterous; for, from
the onset, he had planted himself, as upon a terrace, on
an eminence vastly above the audience, and he kept that
sublime level to the end. He looked from his throne of
elevated sentiment upon the under-world of spectators with
a most sovereign and becoming contempt. There was
ZTAZA, ZSSA VS OA” ZZZA. 165
excellent pathos delivered out to them : an they would
receive it, so ; an they would not receive it, so ; there was
no offence against decorum in all this ; nothing to con-
demn, to damn. Not an irreverent symptom of a sound
was to be heard. The procession of verbiage stalked on
through four and five acts, no one venturing to predict what
would come of it, when towards the winding up of the latter,
Antonio, with an irrelevancy that seemed to stagger Elvira
herself—for she had been coolly arguing the point of
honour with him—suddenly whips out a poniard, and stabs
her sister to the heart. The effect was as if a murder had
been committed in cold blood. The whole house rose up
in clamorous indignation, demanding justice. The feeling
rose far above hisses. I believe at that instant, if they
could have got him, they would have torn the unfortunate
author to pieces. Not that the act itself was so exorbitant,
or of a complexion different from what they themselves
would have applauded upon another occasion, in a Brutus
or an Appius, but for want of attending to Antonio's zwords,
which palpably led to the expectation of no less dire an event,
instead of being seduced by his manner, which seemed to
promise a sleep of less alarming nature than it was his cue
to inflict upon Elvira : they found themselves betrayed into
an accompliceship of murder, a perfect misprision of parri-
cide, while they dreamed of nothing less. M., I believe,
was the only person who suffered acutely from the failure;
for G, thenceforward, with a serenity unattainable but by
the true philosophy, abandoning a precarious popularity,
retired into his fasthold of speculation,-the drama in
which the world was to be his tiring-room, and remote
posterity his applauding spectators, at once, and actors.]
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.
I LIKE to meet a sweep—understand me—not a grown
Sweeper–old chimney-sweepers are by no means attractive
ſ—but one of those tender novices, blooming through their
first nigritude, the maternal washings not quite effaced from
the cheek—such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat
earlier, with their little professional notes sounding like the
ſee/ ?eeſ of a young sparrow ; or liker to the matin lark
should I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom
anticipating the sun-rise P.
* I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks—poor
blots—innocent blacknesses—
I reverence these young Africans of our own growth—
these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without
assumption ; and from their little pulpits (the tops of chim-
neys), in the nipping air of a December morning, preach a
lesson of patience to mankind.
When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to wit-
ness their operation to see a chit no bigger than one's self
enter, one knew not by what process, into what seemed the
ſauces Azerni–to pursue him in imagination, as he went
Sounding on through so many dark stifling caverns, horrid
shades —to shudder with the idea that “now, surely, he
must be lost for ever !”—to revive at hearing his feeble
shout of discovered daylight—and then (O fulness of
delight) running out of doors, to come just in time to see
the Sable phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished
weapon of his art victorious like some flag waved over a
conquered citadel ! I seem to remember having been told,
that a bad sweep was once left in a stack with his brush, to
indicate which way the wind blew. It was an awful spec-
tacle certainly ; not much unlike the old stage direction in
Macbeth, where the “Apparition of child crowned with a
tree in his hand rises.”
Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in thy
early rambles, it is good to give him a penny. It is better
I66
7A/Z ZºSSA VS OA. A. Z.Z.A. 167
to give him twopence. If it be starving weather, and to the
proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair of kibed heels
(no unusual accompaniment) be superadded, the demand
on thy humanity will surely rise to a tester.
There is a composition, the groundwork of which I have
understood to be the sweet wood yclept Sassafras. This
wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an
infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some tastes a delicacy
beyond the China luxury. I know not how thy palate may
relish it; for myself, with every deference to the judicious
Mr. Read, who hath time out of mind kept open a shop
(the only one he avers in London) for the vending of this
“wholesome and pleasant beverage,” on the south side of
Fleet Street, as thou approachest Bridge Street—ſ/he on/y
Sa/opian house,_I have never yet adventured to dip my
own particular lip in a basin of his commended ingredients
a cautious premonition to the olfactories constantly whis-
pering to me, that my stomach must infallibly, with all due
courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, otherwise not
uninstructed in dietetical elegances, sup it up with avidity.
I know not by what particular conformation of the organ
it happens, but I have always found that this composition
is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young chimney-
sweeper—whether the oily particles (Sassafras is slightly
oleaginous) do attentuate and soften the fuliginous con-
cretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) to
adhere to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged prac-
titioners; or whether Nature, sensible that she had mingled
too much of bitter wood in the lot of these raw victims,
caused to grow out of the earth her Sassafras for a sweet
lenitive—but so it is, that no possible taste or odour to the
senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a delicate
excitement comparable to this mixture. Being penniless,
they will yet hang their black heads over the ascending
steam, to gratify one sense, if possible, seemingly no less
pleased than those domestic animals—cats—when they
purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is something
more in these sympathies than philosophy can inculcate.
I 68 THE ESSA. Y.S OF AE/XA.
Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, that
his is the only Salopian house ; yet be it known to thee,
reader—if thou art one who keepest what are called good
hours, thou art happily ignorant of the fact—he hath a race
of industrious imitators, who from stalls, and under open
sky, dispense the same savoury mess to humbler customers,
at the dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the
rake, reeling home from his midnight cups, and the hard-
handed artisan leaving his bed to resume the premature
labours of the day, jostle, not unfrequently to the manifest
disconcerting of the former, for the honours of the pave-
ment. It is the time when, in summer, between the ex-
pired and the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, the kennels of
our fair metropolis give forth their least satisfactory odours.
The rake who wisheth to dissipate his o'er night vapours in
more grateful coffee, curses the ungenial fume, as he
passeth ; but the artisan stops to taste, and blesses the
fragrant breakfast.
This is Saloop—the precocious herb-woman's darling—
the delight of the early gardener, who transports his smok-
ing cabbages by break of day from Hammersmith to Covent
Garden's famed piazzas—the delight, and, Oh I fear, too
often the envy, of the unpennied sweep. Him, shouldest
thou haply encounter, with his dim visage pendent over the
grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin (it will
cost thee but three halfpennies) and a slice of delicate bread
and butter (an added halfpenny) so may thy culinary fires,
eased of the o'ercharged secretions from thy worse-placed
hospitalities, curl up a lighter volume to the welkin—so may
the descending soot never taint thy costly well-ingredienced
Soups—nor the odious cry, quick-reaching from street to
street, of the fired chimney, invite the rattling engines from
ten adjacent parishes, to disturb for a casual Scintillation
thy peace and pocket !
I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts;
the jeers and taunts of the populace; the low-bred triumph
they display over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a
gentleman. Yet can I endure the jocularity of a young
TA://Z ZSSA VS OAF AAAA. I69
Sweep with something more than forgiveness. In the last
winter but one, pacing along Cheapside with my accustomed
precipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous slide
brought me upon my back in an instant. I scrambled up
with pain and shame enough—yet outwardly trying to face
it down, as if nothing had happened—when the roguish
grin of one of these young wits encountered me. There
he stood, pointing me out with his dusky finger to the mob,
and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in particular,
till the tears for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he thought
it) worked themselves out at the corners of his poor red
eyes, red from many a previous weeping, and soot-inflamed,
yet twinkling through all with such a joy, snatched out of
desolation, that Hogarth but Hogarth has got him
already (how could he miss him P) in the March to
Finchley, grinning at the pie-man there he stood, as
he stands in the picture, irremovable, as if the jest was to
last for ever—with such a maximum of glee, and minimum
of mischief, in his mirth—for the grin of a genuine sweep
hath absolutely no malice in it—that I could have been
content, if the honour of a gentleman might endure it, to
have remained his butt and his mockery till midnight.
I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what are
called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips (the
ladies must pardon me) is a casket presumably holding
such jewels; but, methinks, they should take leave to
“air " them as frugally as possible. The fine lady, or fine
gentleman, who show me their teeth, show me bones. Yet
must I confess, that from the mouth of a true sweep a
display (even to Ostentation) of those white and shining
Ossifications, strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in manners,
and an allowable piece of foppery. It is, as when ~
“A Sable cloud
\ Turns forth her silver lining on the night.”
§
It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct; a badge
of better days; a hint of nobility:-and, doubtless, under
the obscuring darkness and double night of their forlorn
17o 7TP//2 ESSA VS OA' /2/.../A.
disguisement, oſtentimes lurketh good blood, and gentle
conditions, derived from lost ancestry, and a lapsed pedigree.
The premature apprenticements of these tender victims give
but too much encouragement, I fear, to clandestine, and
almost infantile abductions; the seeds of civility and true
courtesy, so often discernible in these young grafts (not
otherwise to be accounted for) plainly hint at some forced
adoptions; many noble Rachels mourning for their children,
even in our days, countenance the fact; the tales of fairy-
Spiriting may shadow a lamentable verity, and the recovery
of the young Montagu be but a solitary instance of good
fortune, Out of many irreparable and hopeless deſi/iations.
In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few years
since—under a ducal canopy—(that seat of the Howards is
an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, in
which the late Duke was especially a connoisseur)—encircled
with curtains of delicatest crimson, with starry coronets
inwoven—ſolded between a pair of sheets whiter and softer
"than the lap where Venus lulled Ascanius—was discovered
by chance, after all methods of search had failed, at noon-
day, fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The little creature,
having somehow confounded his passage among the
intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by some unknown
aperture had alighted upon this magnificent chamber; and,
tired with his tedious explorations, was unable to resist
the delicious invitement to repose, which he there saw
exhibited ; so, creeping between the sheets very quietly,
laid his black head upon the pillow, and slept like a young
Howard.
Such is the account given to the visitors at the Castle.—
But I cannot help seeming to perceive a confirmation of
what I have just hinted at in this story. A high instinct
was at work in the case, or I am mistaken. Is it probable
that a poor child of that description, with whatever weari-
ness he might be visited, would have ventured, under such
a penalty as he would be taught to expect, to uncover the
sheets of a Duke's bed, and deliberately to lay himself down
between them, when the rug, or the carpet, presented an
TH//2 /2.SSA VS OA. A. Z.Z.A. 171
obvious couch, still far above his pretensions — is this
probable, I would ask, if the great power of nature, which
I contend for, had not been manifested within him, prompt-
ing to the adventure ? Doubtless this young nobleman (for
such my mind misgives me that he must be) was allured by
Some memory, not amounting to full consciousness, of his
condition in infancy, when he was used to be lapt by his
mother, or his nurse, in just such sheets as he there found,
into which he was now but creeping back as into his proper
incunabula, and resting-place. By no other theory, than by
this sentiment of a pre-existent state (as I may call it), can
I explain a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon any other
system, so indecorous, in this tender, but unseasonable,
sleeper.
^My pleasant friend JEM WHITE was so impressed with a
belief of metamorphoses like this frequently taking place,
that in some sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in these
poor changelings, he instituted an annual feast of chimney-
sweepers, at which it was his pleasure to officiate as host
and waiter. It was a solemn supper held in Smithfield,
upon the yearly return of the fair of St. Bartholomew.
Cards were issued a week before to the master-sweeps in
and about the metropolis, confining the invitation to their
younger fry. Now and then an elderly stripling would get
in annong us, and be good-naturedly winked at ; but our
main body were infantry. One unfortunate wight, indeed,
who, relying upon his dusky suit, had intruded himself into
our party, but by tokens was providentially discovered in
time to be no chimney-sweeper (all is not soot which looks
so), was quoited out of the presence with universal indigna-
tion, as not having on the wedding garment; but in general
the greatest harmony prevailed. The place chosen was
a convenient spot among the pens, at the north side of the
fair, not so far distant as to be impervious to the agreeable
hubbub of that vanity; but remote enough not to be
obvious to the interruption of every gaping spectator in it.
The guests assembled about seven. In those little tempor-
ary parlours three tables were spread with napery, not so
I72 THE AESSA VS OA” A. Z.Z.A.
fine as substantial, and at every board a comely hostess
presided with her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils of
the young rogues dilated at the savour. JAMES WHITE, as
head waiter, had charge of the first table; and myself, with
our trusty companion BIGOD, ordinarily ministered to the
other two. There was clamouring and jostling, you may
be sure, who should get at the first table—for Rochester in
his maddest days could not have done the humours of the
Scene with more spirit than my friend. After some general
expression of thanks for the honour the company had done
him, his inaugural ceremony was to clasp the greasy waist
of old dame Ursula (the fattest of the three), that stood
frying and fretting, half-blessing, half-cursing “the gentle-
man,” and imprint upon her chaste lips a tender salute,
whereat the universal host would set up a shout that tore
the concave, while hundreds of grinning teeth startled the
night with their brightness. O it was a pleasure to see the
Sable younkers lick in the unctuous meat, with his more
unctuous sayings—how he would fit the tit-bits to the puny
mouths, reserving the lengthier links for the seniors—how
he would intercept a morsel even in the jaws of some
young desperado, declaring it “must to the pan again to be
browned, for it was not fit for a gentleman's eating”—how
he would recommend this slice of white bread, or that piece
of kissing-crust, to a tender juvenile, advising them all to
have a care of cracking their teeth, which were their best
patrimony, how genteelly he would deal about the small
ale, as if it were wine, naming the brewer, and protesting, if
it were not good, he should lose their custom ; with a
special recommendation to wipe the lip before drinking.
Then we had our toasts—“The King,”—the “Cloth,”—
which, whether they understood or not, was equally divert-
ing and flattering;-and for a crowning sentiment, which
never failed, “May the Brush supersede the Laurel.” All
these, and fifty other fancies, which were rather felt than
comprehended by his guests, would he utter, standing upon
tables, and prefacing every sentiment with a “Gentlemen,
give me leave to propose so and so,” which was a prodigious
7A7/2 /2.SSA VS OA; E/C/4. I 73
comfort to those young orphans; every now and then
stuffing into his mouth (for it did not do to be squeamish
on these occasions) indiscriminate pieces of those reeking
sausages, which pleased them mightily, and was the
savouriest part, you may believe, of the entertainment.
“Golden lads and lasses must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.”
JAMES WHITE is extinct, and with him these suppers
have long ceased. He carried away with him half the fun
of the world when he died—of my world at least. His old
clients look for him among the pens; and, missing him,
reproach the altered feast of St. Bartholomew, and the glory
of Smithfield departed for ever.
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS
IN THE METROPOLIS.
THE all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation—your
only modern Alcides’ club to rid the time of its abuses—is
uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering
tatters of the bugbear MENDICITY from the metropolis.
Scrips, wallets, bags—staves, dogs, and crutches—the whole
mendicant fraternity with all their baggage, are fast posting
out of the purlieus of this eleventh persecution. From the
crowded crossing, from the corners of streets and turnings of
alleys, the parting Genius of Beggary is “with sighing sent.”
I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this
impertinent crusado, or bellum ad exterminationem, pro-
claimed against a species. Much good might be sucked
from these Beggars.
They were the oldest and the honourablest form of
pauperism. Their appeals were to our common nature;
less revolting to an ingenuous mind than to be a suppliant
to the particular humours or caprice of any fellow-creature,
or set of fellow-creatures, parochial or societarian. Theirs
I 74 7T///Z /2.SSA VS OA' /2ZZA.
were the only rates uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in
the assessment.
There was a dignity springing from the very depth of
their desolation ; as to be naked is to be so much nearer
to the being a man, than to go in livery.
The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses; and
when Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, do we feel
anything towards him but contempt P Could Vandyke
have made a picture of him, swaying a ferula for a sceptre,
which would have affected our minds with the same heroic
pity, the same compassionate admiration, with which we
regard his Belisarius begging for an oboſus 3 Would the
moral have been more graceful, more pathetic?
The Blind Beggar in the legend—the father of pretty
Bessy—whose story doggerel rhymes and ale-house signs
Cannot so degrade or attenuate, but that some sparks or a
lustrous spirit will shine through the disguisements—this
noble earl of Cornwall (as indeed he was) and memorable
sport of fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence of his
liege lord, stript of all, and seated on the flowering green
at Bethnal, with his more fresh and springing daughter by
his side, illumining his rags and his beggary—would the
child and parent have cut a better figure, doing the honours
of a counter, or expiating their fallen condition upon the
three-foot eminence of some sempstering shopboard P
In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just antipode
to your King. The poets and romancical writers (as dear
Margaret Newcastle would call them) when they would
most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse of fortune, never
stop till they have brought down their hero in good earnest
to rags and the wallet. The depth of the descent illustrates
the height he falls from. There is no medium which can
be presented to the imagination without offence. There is
no breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from his palace, must
divest him of his garments, till he answer “mere nature”;
and Cresseid, fallen from a prince's love, must extend her
pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of beauty, suppli-
Cating lazar alms with bell and clap-dish.
7"HE AESSA VS OF EAAA. I 75
The Lucian wits knew this very well; and, with a converse
policy, when they would express scorn of greatness without
the pity, they show us an Alexander in the shades cobbling
shoes, or a Semiramis getting up foul linen.
How would it sound in song, that a great monarch had
declined his affections upon the daughter of a baker | yet
do we feel the imagination at all violated when we read the
“true ballad,” where King Cophetua woos the beggar-maid?
Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity,
but pity alloyed with contempt. No one properly contemns
a beggar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and each degree
of it is mocked by its “neighbour grice.” Its poor rents
and comings-in are soon Summed up and told. Its pre-
tences to property are almost ludicrous. Its pitiful attempts
to save excite a smile. Every scornful companion can
weigh his trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor man reproaches
poor man in the streets with impolitic mention of his con-
dition, his own being a shade better, while the rich pass
by and jeer at both. No rascally comparative insults a
Beggar, or thinks of weighing purses with him. He is not
in the scale of comparison. He is not under the measure
of property. He confessedly hath none, any more than a
dog or a sheep. No one twitteth him with ostentation
above his means. No one accuses him of pride, or up-
braideth him with mock humility. None jostle with him
for the wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No wealthy
neighbour seeketh to eject him from his tenement. No
man sues him. No man goes to law with him. If I were
not the independent gentleman that I am, rather than I
would be a retainer to the great, a led captain, or a poor
relation, I would choose, out of the delicacy and the great.
ness of my mind, to be a beggar.
Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the Beggar's
robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure,
his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show
himself in public. He is never out of the ſashion, or
* “Timon of Athens.”
176 THE ESSA VS OF EAAA.
limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not required to put
on court mourning. He weareth all colours, fearing none.
His costume hath undergone less change than the Quaker's.
He is the only man in the universe who is not obliged to
study appearances. The ups and downs of the world con-
cern him no longer. He alone continueth in one stay.
The price of stock or land affecteth him not. The fluc-
tuations of agricultural or commercial prosperity touch him
not, or at worst but change his customers. He is not
expected to become bail or surety for any one. No man
troubleth him with questioning his religion or politics. He
is the only free man in the universe.
The Mendicants of this great city were so many of her
sights, her lions. I can no more spare them than I could
the Cries of London. No corner of a street is complete
without them. They are as indispensable as the Ballad
Singer; and in their picturesque attire as ornamental as
the Signs of Old London. They were the standing morals,
emblems, mementoes, dial-mottoes, the spital sermons, the
books for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the
high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry—
& 6 Look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there.”
Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall
of Lincoln's Inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had
expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray
of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful dog-
guide at their feet, whither are they fled? or into what
corners, blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of
the wholesome air and sunwarmth P immured between four
walls, in what withering poor-house do they endure the
penalty of double darkness, where the chink of the dropt
halfpenny no more consoles their forlorn bereavement, far
from the sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring tread of
the passenger ? Where hang their useless staves P and who
will farm their dogs P-Have the overseers of St. L
caused them to be shot? or were they tied up in sacks, and
7A/A. A.S.S.A. YS OF E/.../A. 177
dropt into the Thames, at the suggestion of B–, the mild
Rector of P
Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, most
classical, and at the same time, most English, of the
Latinists — who has treated of this human and quad-
rupedal alliance, this dog and man friendship, in the
Sweetest of his poems, the Epitaphium in Canem, or, Dog’s
Epitaph. Reader, peruse it; and say, if customary sights,
which could call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a
nature to do more harm or good to the moral sense of the
passengers through the daily thoroughfares of a vast and
busy metropolis.
“Pauperis hic Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis,
Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectae,
Dux caeco fidus : nec, me ducente, solebat,
Praetenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per iniqua locorum
Incertam explorare viam ; Sed fila secutus,
Quae dubios regerent passús, vestigia tuta
Fixit inoffenso gressu; gelidumque sedile
In nudo nactus Saxo, quá praetereuntium
Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras
Lamentis, noctemdue oculis ploravit obortam.
Ploravit nec frustra ; obolum dedit alter et alter,
Queis corda et mentem indiderat natura benignam.
Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile,
Vel mediis vigil in somnis; ad herilia jussa
Auresque atque animum arrectus, seu frustula amicè
Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei
Taedia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat.
Hi mores, haec vita fuit, dum fata sinebant,
Dum neque languebam morbis, nec inerte Senectä;
Quae tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite caecum
Orbavit dominum : prisci Sed gratia facti
Ne tota intereat, longos deleta per annos,
Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit,
Etsi inopis, non ingratae, munuscula dextraº ;
Carmine signavitgue brevi, dominumque canemdue
Quod memoret, fidumque canem dominumque benignum.”
G
6
Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie,
That wont to tend my old blind master's steps,
His guide and guard; nor, while my service lasted,
Had he occasion for that staff, with which
I 2
178 THE ESSA VS OF EL/A.
He now goes picking out his path in fear
Over the highways and crossings, but would plant
Safe in the conduct of my friendly string,
A firm ſoot forward still, till he had reach'd
His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide
Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd :
To whom with loud and passionate laments
From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd.
Nor wail'd to all in vain : some here and there,
The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave.
I meantime at his feet obsequious slept ;
Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear
Prick’d up at his least motion, to receive
At his kind hand my customary crumbs,
And common portion in his feast of scraps;
Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent
With our long day, and tedious beggaly.
These were my manners, this my way of life,
Till age and slow disease me overtook,
And sever'd from my sightless master's side.
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die,
Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost,
* This slender tomb of turf hath Irus rear'd,
Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand,
And with short verse inscribed it, to attest,
In long and lasting union to attest,
The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog,”
These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months
past a well-known figure, or part of the figure, of a man,
who used to glide his comely upper half over the pavements
of London, wheeling along with most ingenious celerity
upon a machine of wood ; a spectacle to natives, to
foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make,
with a florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare
to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a
speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The
infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his
own level. The common cripple would despise his own
pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty heart,
of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him;
for the accident, which brought him low, took place during
the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long,
THE ESSA YS OF Z ZZA. 179
He seemed earth-born, an Antaeus, and to Suck in fresh
vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He was a
grand fragment ; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature
which should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was not
lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half
a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering and
growling, as before an earthquake, and casting down my
eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had started
at his portentous appearance. He seemed to want but his
just stature to have rent the offending quadruped in shivers.
He was as the man-part of a Centaur, from which the horse-
half had been clo' La in some dire Lapithan controversy.
He moved on as if he could have made shift with yet half
of the body-portion which was left him. The os suff/ime
was not wanting; and he threw out yet a jolly countenance
upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this
out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in the
service, but his good spirits no way impaired, because he
is not content to exchange his free air and exercise for the
restraints of a poor-house, he is expiating his contumacy in
one of those houses (ironically christened) of Correction.
Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nuisance,
which called for legal interference to remove P or not rather
a salutary and a touching object, to the passers-by in a
great city P Among her shows, her museums, and supplies
for ever-gaping curiosity (and what else but an accumula-
tion of sights—endless sights—is a great city ; or for what
else is it desirable P) was there not room for one Zusus (not
AWatura, indeed, but) Accidentium ? What if in forty-and-
two years’ going about, the man had scraped together
enough to give a portion to his child (as the rumour ran) of
a few hundreds—whom had he injured P−whom had he
imposed upon P. The contributors had enjoyed their sight
for their pennies. What if after being exposed all day to
the heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven—shuffling his
ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion—
he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club
of his fellow-cripples over a dish of hot meat and vegetables,
I8O TA/AE AESSA YS OF /º/, /A.
as the charge was gravely brought against him by a clergy-
man deposing before a House of Commons’ Committee—
was this, or was his truly paternal consideration, which (if a
fact) deserved a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is
inconsistent at least with the exaggeration of nocturnal
Orgies which he has been slandered with—a reason that he
should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay edifying,
way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy
vagabond P−
There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have
shamed to have sate down at the cripples’ feast, and to
have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite too,
for a companionable symbol. “Age, thou hast lost thy
breed ”—
Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made
by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. One
was much talked of in the public papers some time since,
and the usual charitable inferences deduced. A clerk in
the Bank was surprised with the announcement of a five
hundred pound legacy left him by a person whose name he
was a stranger to. It seems that in his daily morning walks
from Peckham (or some village thereabouts) where he lived,
to his office, it had been his practice for the last twenty
years to drop his halfpenny duly into the hat of some blind
Bartimeus, that sate begging alms by the wayside in the
Borough. The good old beggar recognised his daily bene-
factor by the voice only ; and, when he died, left all the
amassings of his alms (that had been half a century per-
haps in the accumulating) to his old Bank friend. Was
this a story to purse up people's hearts, and pennies, against
giving an alms to the blind P-or not rather a beautiful
moral of well-directed charity on the one part, and noble
gratitude upon the other ?
I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk.
I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature,
blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the Sun—
Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against him P
Perhaps I had no small change.
T///E E,SSA VS OA” ſº ZZA. I8I
Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, imposition,
imposture—gize, and asſº no questions. Cast thy bread upon
the waters. Some have unawares (like this Bank clerk)
entertained angels.
Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress.
Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature (outwardly
and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay to inquire
whether the “seven small children,” in whose name he
implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake
not into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a halfpenny.
It is good to believe him. If he be not all that he
pretendeth, give, and under a personate father of a family,
think (if thou pleaseth) that thou hast relieved an indigent
bachelor. “When they come with their counterfeit looks,
and mumping tones, think them players. You pay your
money to see a comedian feign these things, which, concern-
ing these poor people, thou Canst not certainly tell whether
they are feigned or not.
“Pray God, your honour, relieve me,” said a poor beads-
woman to my friend I, one day: “I have seen better
days,” “So have I, my good woman,” retorted he, looking
up at the welkin, which was just then threatening a storm—
and the jest (he will have) was as good to the beggar as a
tester. It was, at all events, kinder than consigning her to
the stocks, or the parish beadle.—
But L. has a way of viewing things in rather a paradoxical
light on some occasions.
P.S.—My friend Hume (not M.P.) has a curious manu-
script in his possession, the original draft of the celebrated
“Beggar's Petition ” (who cannot say by heart the “Beggar's
Petition”?), as it was written by some school usher (as
I remember), with corrections interlined from the pen of
Oliver Goldsmith. As a specimen of the Doctor's improve-
ment, I recollect one most judicious alteration—
“A pamper'd menial drove me from the door.”
It stood originally—
“A livery servant drove me,” etc.
I 82 TF//, /2.SSA VS OF AZ/./A.
Here is an instance of poetical or artificial language properly
Substituted for the phrase of common conversation; against
Wordsworth, I think I must get H. to send it to the Zondon,
as a corollary to the foregoing.
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.

MANKIND, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M.
was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first
Seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting
it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to
this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their
great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane
Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the
term Cho-fang, literally the Cook’s holiday. The manuscript
goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling
(which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally
discovered in the manner following. ( The swine-herd, Ho-ti,
having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner
was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care
of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being
fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly
are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which
kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of
their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes.) Together
with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a build-
ing, you may think it), what was of much more importance,
a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in
number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a
luxury all over the East from the remotest periods that we
read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you
may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which
his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry
branches, and the labour of an hour or two, at any time, as
for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he
should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the
ZTAE/E AESSA VS OF AZZZA. 183
smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an
Odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had
before experienced. What could it proceed from ?–not
from the burnt Cottage—he had smelt that smell before—
indeed this was by no means the first accident of the kind
which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky
young firebrand. Much less did it resemble that of any
known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening
at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not
what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if
there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and
to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his
mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come
away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the
world’s life indeed, for before him no man had known it)
he tasted—crackling/ Again he felt and fumbled at the pig.
It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers
from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow
understanding, that it was the pig that Smelt so, and the pig
that tasted so delicious; and, surrendering himself up to the
new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of
the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it
down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered
amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and
finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young
rogue's shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo
l,eeded not any more than if they had been flies. The
tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions,
had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he
might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on,
but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made
an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his
situation, something like the following dialogue ensued :
“You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring P
Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses
with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you, but you must
be eating fire, and I know not what—what have you got
there, I say?”
2.
184 THE ESSA VS OF EAAA.
“O father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how nice
the burnt pig eats.”
The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his
son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son
that should eat burnt pig.
Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since
morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it
asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of
Ho-ti, still shouting out, “Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig,
father, only taste, O Lord,”— with such-like barbarous
ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.
Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the abomin-
able thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to
death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling
Scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying
the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of
its flavour, which, make what sour mouths he would for
a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In
conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious) both
father and son fairly sat down to the mess, and never leſt
off till they had despatched all that remained of the litter.
Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape,
for the neighbours would certainly have stoned them for a
couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improv-
ing upon the good meat which God had sent them. Never-
theless, Strange stories got about. It was observed that
Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more frequently than
ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some
would break out in broad day, others in the night-time.
As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of
Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti himself, which was the
more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to
grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they were
watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and ſather and
son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an incon-
siderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious
food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be
pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some
THAE AESSA VS OF AE/.../A. 185
of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be
handed into the box. He handled it, and they all handled
it, and burnt their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done
before them, and nature prompting to each of them the same
remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the clearest
charge which judge had ever given, to the surprise of the
whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all present—
without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation what-
ever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty.
The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the mani-
fest iniquity of the decision ; and, when the court was
dismissed, went privily, and bought up all the pigs that
could be had for love or money. In a few days his Lord-
ship's town house was observed to be on fire. The thing
took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires
in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear
all over the districts. The insurance offices one and all
shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day,
until it was feared that the very science of architecture
would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this
custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time,
says my manuscript, a Sage arose, like Our Locke, who made
a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other
animal, might be cooked (burnt, as they called it) without
the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then
first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the
string, or spit, came in a century or two later, I forget in
whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the
manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the most
obvious arts, make their way among mankind.
Without placing too implicit faith in the account above
given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy pretext for so
dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especi-
ally in these days) could be assigned in favour of any
culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in
ROAST PIG.
Of all the delicacies in the whole mund’us edibilis, I will
maintain it to be the most delicate—Azinceſs obsonformºn.
— —------>
I86 ZTAE/Z /2.SSA YS OF AE/AA.
I speak not of your grown porkers—things between pig
and pork—those hobbledehoys—but a young and tender
suckling—under a moon old—guiltless as yet of the sty—
with no Original speck of the amor immundiſiae, the heredi-
tary failing of the first parent, yet manifest—his voice as yet
not broken, but something between a childish treble, and
a grumble—the mild forerunner, or prae/udium, of a grunt.
Aſe must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors
ate them seethed, or boiled—but what a sacrifice of the
exterior tegument
There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of
the Crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, crack/ing, as
it is well called—the very teeth are invited to their share of
the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle
resistance—with the adhesive oleaginous—O call it not fat
—but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it—the tender
blossoming of fat—fat cropped in the bud—taken in the
shoot—in the first innocence—the cream and quintessence
of the child-pig's yet pure food—the lean, no lean, but a
kind of animal manna, or, rather, fat and lean (if it
must be so) so blended and running into each other, that
both together make but one ambrosian result, or common
substance.
Behold him, while he is “doing”—it seemeth rather a
refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so
passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string !—
Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of
that tender age, he hath wept out his pretty eyes—radiant
jellies—shooting stars—
See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he
lieth l—wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to
the grossness and indocility which too often accompany
maturer swinehood P Ten to one he would have proved
a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal—
wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation—from these
sins he is happily snatched away—
“Ere sin could blight, or sorrow ſade,
Death came with timely care”—
7A/Z /2.SSA VS OA' A' Z.Z.A. 187
his memory is odoriferous—no clown curseth, while his
stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coalheaver
bolteth him in reeking sausages—he hath a fair sepulchre
in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure—and for
Such a tomb might be content to die.
He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is
indeed almost too transcendent—a delight, if not sinful, yet
So like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person
would do well to pause—too ravishing for mortal taste, she
woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her—like
lovers' kisses, she biteth—she is a pleasure bordering on
pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish—but she
stoppeth at the palate—she meddleth not with the appetite
—and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for
a mutton chop,
Pig–let me speak his praise—is no less provocative of
the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the
Censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him,
and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices.
Unlike to mankind’s mixed characters, a bundle of
virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be
unravelled without hazard, he is—good throughout. No
part of him is better or worse than another. He helpeth,
as far as his little means extend, all around. He is the
least envious of banquets. He is all neighbours’ fare.
I am one of those, who freely and ungrudgingly impart a
share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot
(few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take
as great an interest in my friend’s pleasures, his relishes,
and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. “Presents,” I
often say, “endear Absents.” Hares, pheasants, part-
ridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those “tame villatic
fowl.”), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dis-
pense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them,
as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop
must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear,
“give everything.” I make my stand upon pig. Methinks
it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good favours, to extra-
I88 7TH//Z ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
domiciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly (under
pretext of friendship, or I know not what), a blessing so
particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my indi-
vidual palate—It argues an insensibility.
I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school.
My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of
a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing
into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a
Smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to
School (it was over London Bridge) a grey-headed old
beggar Saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day that
he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him
with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very cox-
Combry of charity, schoolboy-like, I made him a present of
—the whole cake I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one
is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfac-
tion ; but before I had got to the end of the bridge, my better
feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how
ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her
good gift away to a stranger, that I had never seen before,
and who might be a bad man for aught I knew ; and then
I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be taking in
thinking that I—I myself, and not another—would eat her
nice cake—and what should I say to her the next time I
saw her—how naughty I was to part with her pretty present
—and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my
recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken
in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it to the
oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had
never had a bit of it in my mouth at last—and I blamed
my impertinent spirit of alms-giving, and out-of-place
hypocrisy of goodness, and above all I wished never to see
the face again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey
impostor.
Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing
these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with
something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete
custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be
ZTAE//2 /2.SSA VS OA' / Z.Z.A. 189
curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what
effect this process might have towards intenerating and
dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the
flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet
we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity,
how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might
impart a gusto—
I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young
students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with
much learning and pleasantry on both sides, “Whether,
supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his death
by whipping (ſer ſlage/ſationem extremam) superadded a
pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any
possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man
justified in using that method of putting the animal to
death P” I forget the decision.
His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few
bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a
dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech
you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to
your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with
plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot
poison them, or make them stronger than they are—but
Consider, he is a weakling—a flower.
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT
OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE.
As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my time in
noting down the infirmities of Married People, to console
myself for those superior pleasures, which they tell me I
have lost by remaining as I am.
I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their wives
ever made any great impression upon me, or had much
I90 THE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
tendency to strengthen me in those anti-social resolutions,
which I took up long ago upon more substantial considera-
tions. What oftenest offends me at the houses of married
persons where I visit, is an error of quite a different descrip-
tion;–it is that they are too loving.
Not too loving neither: that does not explain my mean-
ing. Besides, why should that offend me? The very act
of separating themselves from the rest of the world, to have
the fuller enjoyment of each other's society, implies that
they prefer one another to all the world.
But what I complain of is, that they carry this preference
So undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces of us single
people so shamelessly, you cannot be in their company a
moment without being made to feel, by some indirect hint
or open avowal, that you are not the object of this prefer-
ence. Now there are some things which give no offence,
while implied or taken for granted merely; but expressed,
there is much offence in them. If a man were to accost
the first homely-featured or plain-dressed young woman of
his acquaintance, and tell her bluntly, that she was not
handsome or rich enough for him, and he could not marry
her, he would deserve to be kicked for his ill manners; yet
no less is implied in the fact, that having access and oppor-
tunity of putting the question to her, he has never yet
thought fit to do it. The young woman understands this as
clearly as if it were put into words; but no reasonable
young woman would think of making this the ground of a
quarrel. Just as little right have a married couple to tell
me by speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain than
speeches, that I am not the happy man,—the lady's choice.
It is enough that I know I am not ; I do not want this
perpetual reminding.
The display of superior knowledge or riches may be made
sufficiently mortifying; but these admit of a palliative.
The knowledge which is brought out to insult me, may
accidentally improve me; and in the rich man's houses
and pictures,-his parks and gardens, I have a temporary
usufruct at least. But the display of married happiness has
THE ESSAYS OF EZZA. I9 I
none of these palliatives; it is throughout pure, unrecom-
pensed, unqualified insult.
Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the
least invidious sort. It is the cunning of most possessors of
any exclusive privilege to keep their advantage as much out
of sight as possible, that their less favoured neighbours,
seeing little of the benefit, may the less be disposed to
question the right. But these married monopolists thrust
the most obnoxious part of their patent into our faces.
Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire com-
placency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of
a new-married couple, in that of the lady particularly : it
tells you, that her lot is disposed of in this world; that you
can have no hopes of her. It is true, I have none; nor
wishes either, perhaps: but this is one of those truths which
Ought, as I said before, to be taken for granted, not ex-
pressed.
The excessive airs which those people give themselves,
founded on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would be
more offensive if they were less irrational. We will allow
them to understand the mysteries belonging to their own
craft better than we who have not had the happiness to be
made free of the company: but their arrogance is not con-
tent within these limits. If a single person presume to offer
his opinion in their presence, though upon the most
indifferent subject, he is immediately silenced as an incom-
petent person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaint-
ance, who, the best of the jest was, had not changed her
condition above a fortnight before, in a question on which I
had the misfortune to differ from her, respecting the pro-
perest mode of breeding oysters for the London market,
had the assurance to ask, with a sneer, how such an old
Bachelor as I could pretend to know anything about such
ImatterS.
But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the airs
which these creatures give themselves when they come, as
they generally do, to have children. When I consider how
little of a rarity children are, —that every street and blind
192 7"HE ESSA VS OF E/AA.
alley Swarms with them,--that the poorest people commonly
have them in most abundance,—that there are few marriages
that are not blest with at least one of these bargains,—how
often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their
parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty,
disgrace, the gallows, etc.—I cannot for my life tell what
Cause for pride there can possibly be in having them. If
they were young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but one
in a year, there might be a pretext. But when they are so
COIIll]] O11–
I do not advert to the insolent merit which they assume
with their husbands on these occasions. Let them look to
that. But why zwe, who are not their natural-born subjects,
should be expected to bring our spices, myrrh, and incense,
—our tribute and homage of admiration,--I do not see.
“Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are
the young children: ” so says the excellent office in our
Prayer-book appointed for the churching of women. “Happy
is the man that hath his quiver full of them : ” so say I; but
then don’t let him discharge his quiver upon us that are
weaponless;–let them be arrows, but not to gall and stick
us. I have generally observed that these arrows are double-
headed : they have two forks, to be sure to hit with one or
the other. As for instance, where you come into a house
which is full of children, if you happen to take no notice of
them (you are thinking of something else, perhaps, and turn
a deaf ear to their innocent caresses), you are set down as
untractable, morose, a hater of children. On the other
hand, if you find them more than usually engaging, if you
are taken with their pretty manners, and set about in
earnest to romp and play with them, some pretext or other
is sure to be found for sending them out of the room ; they
are too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does not like
children. With one or other of these forks the arrow is
sure to hit you.
I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with toying
with their brats, if it gives them pain; but I think it
unreasonable to be called upon to loze them, where I See
ZTA://º ESSA YS OF EA/A. I 93
no Occasion,--to love a whole family, perhaps, eight, nine,
or ten, indiscriminately,–to love all the pretty dears,
because children are so engaging.
I know there is a proverb, “Love me, love my dog;”
that is not always so very practicable, particularly if the dog
be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport. But
a dog, or a lesser thing, -any inanimate substance, as a
keepsake, a watch or a ring, a tree, or the place where we
last parted when my friend went away upon a long absence,
I can make shift to love, because I love him, and any-
thing that reminds me of him ; provided it be in its
nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue fancy
can give it. But children have a real character and
essential being of themselves: they are amiable or
unamiable per se; I must love or hate them as I see
cause for either in their qualities. A child's nature is too
Serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere
appendage to another being, and to be loved or hated
accordingly: they stand with me upon their own stock, as
much as men and women do. O ! but you will say, sure it
is an attractive age, there is something in the tender years
of infancy that of itself charms us. That is the very reason
why I am more nice about them. I know that a sweet
child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the
delicate creatures which bear them; but the prettier the
kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be
pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not much from another
in glory; but a violet should look and smell the daintiest.—
I was always rather squeamish in my women and children.
But this is not the worst : one must be admitted into
their familiarity, at least, before they can complain of
inattention. It implies visits, and some kind of intercourse.
But if the husband be a man with whom you have lived on
a friendly, footing before marriage, if you did not come in
on the wife's side,--if you did not sneak into the house in
her train, but were an old friend in fast habits of intimacy
before their courtship was so much as thought on, look
about you—your tenure is precarious—before a twelvemonth
I 3
I94 THE ESSA YS OF EDIA.
shall roll over your head, you shall find your old friend
gradually grow cool and altered towards you, and at last seek
opportunities of breaking with you. I have scarce a married
friend of my acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I can rely,
whose friendship did not commence after the period of his
marriage. With some limitations they can endure that:
but that the good man should have dared to enter into a
Solemn league of friendship in which they were not con-
sulted, though it happened before they knew him, before
they that are now man and wife ever met,_this is intoler-
able to them. Every long friendship, every old authentic
intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new
stamped with their currency, as a sovereign Prince calls in
the good old money that was coined in some reign before
he was born or thought of, to be new marked and minted
with the stamp of his authority, before he will let it pass
current in the world. You may guess what luck generally
befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in these new
mindings.
Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult and
worm you out of their husband's confidence. Laughing at
all you say with a kind of wonder, as if you were a queer
kind of fellow that said good things, but an oddity, is one
of the ways;–they have a particular kind of stare for the
purpose ;-till at last the husband, who used to defer to
your judgment, and would pass over some excrescences of
understanding and manner for the sake of a general vein of
observation (not quite vulgar) which he perceived in you,
begins to suspect whether you are not altogether a humorist,
—a fellow well enough to have consorted with in his bachelor
days, but not quite so proper to be introduced to ladies.
This may be called the staring way; and is that which has
oftenest been put in practice against me.
Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of irony:
that is, where they find you an object of especial regard
with their husband, who is not so easily to be shaken from
the lasting attachment founded on esteem which he has
conceived towards you; by never-qualified exaggerations to
THE ESSA WS OF EAAA. I95
cry up all that you say or do, till the good man, who under-
stands well enough that it is all done in compliment to him,
grows weary of the debt of gratitude which is due to so
much candour, and by relaxing a little on his part, and
taking down a peg or two in his enthusiasm, sinks at length
to that kindly level of moderate esteem,--that “decent
affection and complacent kindness” towards you, where she
herself can join in sympathy with him without much stretch
and violence to her sincerity.
Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so
desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of innocent
simplicity, continually to mistake what it was which first
made their husband fond of you. If an esteem for some-
thing excellent in your moral character was that which
riveted the chain which she is to break, upon any imaginary
discovery of a want of poignancy in your conversation, she
will cry, “I thought, my dear, you described your friend, Mr.
, as a great wit.” If, on the other hand, it was for some
supposed charm in your conversation that he first grew to
like you, and was content for this to overlook some trifling
irregularities in your moral deportment, upon the first notice
of any of these she as readily exclaims, “This, my dear, is
your good Mr. —.” One good lady whom I took the
liberty of expostulating with for not showing me quite so
much respect as I thought due to her husband's old friend,
had the candour to confess to me that she had often heard
Mr. speak of me before marriage, and that she had
conceived a great desire to be acquainted with me, but that
the sight of me had very much disappointed her expectations;
for from her husband's representations of me, she had formed
a notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officer-like looking
man (I use her very words); the very reverse of which
proved to be the truth. This was candid; and I had the
civility not to ask her in return, how she came to pitch
upon a standard of personal accomplishments for her
husband's friends which differed so much from his own ;
for my friend's dimensions as near as possibly approximate
to mine; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in which I
196 ZTH/AE ESSA YS OF EAE ZA.
have the advantage of him by about half an inch; and he
no more than myself exhibiting any indications of a martial
character in his air or countenance.
These are some of the mortifications which I have en-
countered in the absurd attempt to visit at their houses.
To enumerate them all would be a vain endeavour; I shall
therefore just glance at the very common impropriety of
which married ladies are guilty, of treating us as if we
were their husbands, and zice zersá, I mean, when they
use us with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony.
Testacea, for instance, kept me the other night two or three
hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was
fretting because Mr. did not come home till the
oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of
the impoliteness of touching one in his absence. This was
reversing the point of good manners: for ceremony is an
invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive
from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and
esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It
endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little
points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to
deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept the oysters back
for me, and withstood her husband’s importunities to go to
Supper, she would have acted according to the strict rules
of propriety. I know no ceremony that ladies are bound to
observe to their husbands, beyond the point of a modest
behaviour and decorum : therefore I must protest against
the vicarious gluttony of Cerasia, who at her own table sent
away a dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great
good-will, to her husband at the other end of the table, and
recommended a plate of less extraordinary gooseberries to
my unwedded palate in their stead. Neither can I excuse
the wanton affront of ſº
But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaint-
ance by Roman denominations. Let them amend and
change their manners, or I promise to record the full-
length English of their names to the terror of all such
desperate offenders in future.
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN.
NOT many nights ago I had come home from seeing this
extraordinary performer in Cockletop ; and when I retired
to my pillow, his whimsical image still stuck by me, in a
manner as to threaten sleep. In vain I tried to divest
myself of it, by conjuring up the most opposite associations.
I resolved to be serious. I raised up the gravest topics of
life; private misery, public calamity. All would not do.
& & There the antic sate
Mocking our state”—
his queer visnomy—his bewildering costume—all the strange
things which he had raked together—his serpentine rod,
Swagging about in his pocket—Cleopatra's tear, and the rest
of his relics—O'Keefe's wild farce, and his wilder commen-
tary—till the passion of laughter, like grief in excess, relieved
itself by its own weight, inviting the sleep which in the first
instance it had driven away.
But I was not to escape so easily. No sooner did I fall
into slumbers, than the same image, only more perplexing,
assailed me in the shape of dreams. Not one Munden, but
five hundred, were dancing before me, like the faces which,
whether you will or no, come when you have been taking
opium—all the strange combinations, which this strangest
of all strange mortals ever shot his proper countenance into,
from the day he came commissioned to dry up the tears of
the town for the loss of the now almost forgotten Edwin.
O for the power of the pencil to have fixed them when I
awoke I A season or two since there was exhibited a
Hogarth gallery, I do not see why there should not be a
Munden gallery. In richness and variety the latter would
not fall far short of the former.
There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one (but
what a one it is l) of Liston; but Munden has none that
you can properly pin down, and call his. When you think
he has exhausted his battery of looks, in unaccountable
I97
198 ZTAZAZ ESSA YS OF AZ Z.Z.A.
warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an
entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He is not one,
but legion. Not so much a comedian, as a company. If
his name could be multiplied like his countenance, it might
fill a play-bill. He, and he alone, literally makes faces:
applied to any other person, the phrase is a mere figure,
denoting certain modifications of the human countenance.
Out of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his
friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as easily.
I should not be surprised to see him some day put out the
head of a river-horse; or come forth a pewit, or lapwing,
some feathered metamorphosis.
I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry—
in Old Dornton—diffuse a glow of sentiment which has
made the pulse of a crowded theatre beat like that of
one man ; when he has come in aid of the pulpit, doing
good to the moral heart of a people. I have seen some
faint approaches to this sort of excellence in other players.
But in the grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands out as
single and unaccompanied as Hogarth. Hogarth, strange
to tell, had no followers. The school of Munden began,
and must end with himself.
Can any man zwonder, like him P can any man see ghosts,
like him P or ſight zwiſh his ozom shadoze—“SESSA’’—as
he does in that strangely-neglected thing, the Cobbler of
Preston—where his alterations from the Cobbler to the
Magnifico, and from the Magnifico to the Cobbler, keep
the brain of the spectator in as wild a ferment, as if some
Arabian Night were being acted before him. Who like
him can throw, or ever attempted to throw, a preternatural
interest over the commonest daily-life objects? A table, or
a joint stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity equiva-
lent to Cassiopeia's chair. It is invested with constellatory
importance. You could not speak of it with more deference,
if it were mounted into the firmament. A beggar in the
hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, rose the Patriarch of
Poverty. So the gusto of Munden antiquates and ennobles
what it touches. His pots and his ladles are as grand and
Z}/E ESSA VS OF EAAA. I99
primal as the Seething-pots and hooks seen in old prophetic
vision. A tub of butter, contemplated by him, amounts to
a Platonic idea. He understands a leg of mutton in its
quiddity. He stands wondering, amid the commonplace
materials of life, like primeval man with the sun and stars
about him.
MUNDEN’S FAREWELL,
THE regular playgoers ought to put on mourning, for the
king of broad comedy is dead to the drama —Alas!—
Munden is no more —give sorrow vent. He may yet
walk the town, pace the pavement in a seeming existence
—eat, drink, and nod to his friends in all the affectation
of life—but Munden,_the Munden —Munden, who with
the bunch of countenances, the bouquet of faces, is gone
for ever from the lamps, and, as far as comedy is concerned,
is as dead as Garrick | When an actor retires (we will put
the suicide as mildly as possible) how many worthy persons
perish with him —With Munden,_Sir Peter Teazle must
experience a shock—Sir Robert Bramble gives up the
ghost–Crack ceases to breathe. Without Munden what
becomes of Dozey P. Where shall we seek Jemmy Jumps ?
Nipperkin and a thousand of such admirable fooleries fall
to nothing, and the departure therefore of such an actor as
Munden is a dramatic calamity. On the night that this
inestimable humourist took farewell of the public, he also
took his benefit:-a benefit in which the public assuredly
did not participate. The play was Coleman's Poor Gentle-
man, with Tom Dibdin's farce of Past Ten o’Clock. Reader,
we all know Munden in Sir Robert Bramble, and Old
Tobacco complexioned Dozey ;-we all have seen the old
hearty baronet in his light sky-blue coat and genteel cocked
hat; and we have all seen the weather-beaten old pensioner,
T)ear Old Dozey, tacking about the stage in that intense
blue sea livery—drunk as heart could wish, and right
2 OO THE AESSA YS OF EZZA.
valorous in memory. On this night Munden seemed like
the Gladiator “to rally life's whole energies to die,” and as
we were present at this great display of his powers, and as
this will be the last opportunity that will ever be afforded us
to speak of this admirable performer, we shall “consecrate,”
as Old John Buncle says, “a paragraph to him.”
The house was full,—full /–pshaw that's an empty
word l—The house was stuffed, crammed with people—
crammed from the swing door of the pit to the back seat
in the banished one shilling. A quart of audience may be
said (vintner-like, may it be said) to have been squeezed into
a pint of theatre. Every hearty play-going Londoner, who
remembered Munden years agone, mustered up his courage
and his money for this benefit—and middle-aged people
were therefore by no means scarce. The comedy chosen
for the occasion, is one that travels a long way without a
guard;—it is not until the third or fourth act, we think,
that Sir Robert Bramble appears on the stage. When he
entered, his reception was earnest,-noisy, Outrageous,
waving of hats and handkerchiefs, deafening shouts,
clamorous beating of sticks,—all the various ways in which
the heart is accustomed to manifest its joy were had recourse
to on this occasion. Mrs. Bamfield worked away with a
sixpenny fan till she scudded only under bare poles. Mr.
Whittington wore out the ferule of a new nine-and-sixpenny
umbrella. Gratitude did great damage on the joyful
OCC2S1OI).
The old performer, the veteran, as he appropriately
called himself in the farewell speech, was plainly overcome;
he pressed his hands together, he planted one solidly on
his breast, he bowed, he sidled, he cried When the noise
subsided (which it invariably does at last) the comedy
proceeded, and Munden gave an admirable picture of the
rich, eccentric, charitable old bachelor baronet, who goes
about with Humphrey Dobbin at his heels, and philan-
thropy in his heart. How crustily and yet how kindly he
takes Humphrey's contradictions ! How readily he puts
himself into an attitude for arguing ! How tenderly he
ZTHE ESSA YS OF AZZZA. 2 CT
gives a loose to his heart on the apprehension of Frederick's
duel. In truth he played Sir Robert in his very ripest
manner, and it was impossible not to feel in the very midst
of pleasure regret that Munden should then be before us
for the last time.
In the farce he became richer and richer; Old Dozey is
a plant from Greenwich. The bronzed face—and neck to
match—the long curtain of a coat—the straggling white
hair—the propensity, the determined attachment to grog,
are all from Greenwich. Munden, as Dozey, seems never
to have been out of action, Sun, and drink. He looks (alas
he looked) fireproof. His face and throat were dried like a
raisin, and his legs walked under the rum-and-water with all
the indecision which that inestimable beverage usually
inspires. It is truly tacking, not walking. He steers at a
table, and the tide of grog now and then bears him off the
point. On this night, he seemed to us to be doomed to
fall in action, and we therefore looked at him, as some of
the Victory's crew are said to have gazed upon Nelson, with
a consciousness that his ardour and his uniform were worn
for the last time. In the scene where Dozey describes a
sea fight, the actor never was greater, and he seemed the
personification of an old seventy-four ! His coat hung like
a flag at his poop ! His phiz was not a whit less highly
coloured than one of those lustrous visages which generally
superintend the head of a ship ! There was something
cumbrous, indecisive, and awful in his veerings Once
afloat, it appeared impossible for him to come to his
moorings; once at anchor, it did not seem an easy thing to
get him under weigh
The time, however, came for the fall of the curtain, and
for the fall of Munden The farce of the night was
finished. The farce of the long forty years' play was over !
He stepped forward, not as Dozey, but as Munden, and we
heard him address us from the stage for the last time. He
trusted, unwisely we think, to a written paper. He read of
“heart-felt recollections,” and “indelible impressions.” He
stammered, and he pressed his heart, and put on his
2O2 ZTA://2 FSSA YS OF EAAA.
spectacles,-and blundered his written gratitudes, and
wiped his eyes, and bowed—and stood, and at last
staggered away for ever ! The plan of his farewell was bad,
but the long life of excellence which really made his fare-
well pathetic, overcame all defects, and the people and Joe
Munden parted like lovers | Well ! Farewell to the Rich
Old Heart 1 May thy retirement be as full of repose, as
thy public life was full of excellence We must all have
our farewell benefit in our turn.
THE DEATH OF MUNDEN.
YOUR communication to me of the death of Munden made
me weep. Now, sir, I am not of the melting mood; but, in
these serious times, the loss of half the world’s fun is no
trivial deprivation. It was my loss (or gain shall I call
it?) in the early time of my play-going, to have missed all
Munden's acting. There was only he and Lewis at Covent
Garden, while Drury Lane was exuberant with Parsons,
Dodd, etc., such a comic company as, I suppose, the stage
never showed. Thence, in the evening of my life, I had
Munden all to myself, more mellowed, richer, perhaps, than
ever. I cannot say what his change of faces produced in
me. It was not acting. He was not one of my “old
actors.” It might be better. His power was extravagant.
I saw him one evening in three drunken characters. Three
farces were played. One part was Dozey—I forget the
rest,--but they were so discriminated, that a stranger might
have seen them all, and not have dreamed that he was
seeing the same actor. I am jealous for the actors who
pleased my youth. He was not a Parsons or a Dodd, but
he was more wonderful. He seemed as if he could do any-
thing. He was not an actor, but something better, if you
please. Shall I instance Old Foresight in Zove for Zove, in
which Parsons was at once the old man, the astrologer,
etc. Munden dropped the old man, the doater—which
7 HE ESSA VS OF EDIA. 2O3
makes the character—but he substituted for it a moon-
struck character, a perfect abstraction from this earth, that
looked as if he had newly come down from the planets.
Now, that is not what I call acting. It might be better.
He was imaginative; he could impress upon an audience
an idea—the low one perhaps of a leg of mutton and
turnips; but such was the grandeur and singleness of his
expressions, that that single expression would convey to all
his auditory a notion of all the pleasures they had all
received from all the legs of mutton and furnips they had
ever eaten in their lives. Now, this is not acting, nor do I
set down Munden amongst my old actors. He was only a
wonderful man, exerting his vivid impressions through the
agency of the stage. In one only thing did I see him act—
that is, support a character; it was in a wretched farce
called Johnny Giſpin, for Dowton's benefit, in which he did
a cockney; the thing ran but one night; but when I say
that Lubin's Log was nothing to it, I say little; it was
transcendent. And here, let me say of actors—enzious
actors—that of Munden, Liston was used to speak, almost
with the enthusiasm due to the dead, in terms of such
allowed superiority to every actor on the stage, and this at a
time when Munden was gone by in the world’s estimation,
that it convinced me that artists (in which term I include
poets, painters, etc.) are not so envious as the world think.
I have little time, and therefore enclose a criticism on
Munden's Old Dozey and his general acting, by a gentle-
man, who attends less to these things than formerly, but
whose criticism I think masterly.
MODERN GALLANTRY.
IN comparing modern with ancient manners, we are pleased
to compliment ourselves upon the point of gallantry; a
certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect, which we are
supposed to pay to females, as females.
2O4 THE AESSA VS OF EAE/A.
I shall believe that this principle actuates our conduct,
when I can forget, that in the nineteenth century of the era
from which we date our civility, we are but just beginning
to leave off the very frequent practice of whipping females
in public, in common with the coarsest male offenders.
I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut my
eyes to the fact, that in England women are still occasion-
ally—hanged.
I shall believe in it, when actresses are no longer subject
to be hissed off a stage by gentlemen.
I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a fish-wife
across the kennel; or assists the apple-woman to pick up
her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has just
dissipated.
I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants in humbler life,
who would be thought in their way notable adepts in this
refinement, shall act upon it in places where they are not
known, or think themselves not observed—when I shall see
the traveller for some rich tradesman part with his admired
box-coat, to spread it over the defenceless shoulders of the
poor woman, who is passing to her parish on the roof of the
same stage-coach with him, drenched in the rain—when I
shall no longer see a woman standing up in the pit of a
London theatre, till she is sick and ſaint with the exertion,
with men about her, seated at their ease, and jeering at her
distress; till one, that seems to have more manners or
conscience than the rest, significantly declares “she should
be welcome to his seat, if she were a little younger and
handsomer.” Place this dapper warehouseman, or that
rider, in a circle of their own female acquaintance, and you
shall confess you have not seen a politer-bred man in
Lothbury.
Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some such
principle influencing our conduct, when more than one-half
of the drudgery and coarse servitude of the world shall
cease to be performed by women.
Until that day comes, I shall never believe this boasted
point to be anything more than a conventional fiction; a
Z"HE ESSA WS OF EAAA. 2O5
%
pageant got up between the sexes, in a certain rank, and at
a certain time of life, in which both find their account
equally. -
I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salutary
fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall see the same
attentions paid to age as to youth, to homely features as
to handsome, to coarse complexions as to clear—to the
woman, as she is a woman, not as she is a beauty, a fortune,
or a title.
I shall believe it to be something more than a name,
when a well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed company
can advert to the topic of female old age without exciting,
and intending to excite, a sneer:-when the phrases “anti-
quated virginity,” and such a one has “overstood her
market,” pronounced in good company, shall raise imme-
diate offence in man, or woman, that shall hear them
spoken. -
Joseph Paice, of Bread Street Hill, merchant, and one of
the Directors of the South-Sea Company—the same to
whom Edwards, the Shakspeare commentator, has ad-
dressed a fine sonnet—was the only pattern of consistent
gallantry I have met with. He took me under his shelter
at an early age, and bestowed some pains upon me. I owe
to his precepts and example whatever there is of the man of
business (and that is not much) in my composition. It
was not his fault that I did not profit more. Though bred
a Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, he was the
finest gentleman of his time. He had not one system of
attention to females in the drawing-room, and another in the
shop, or at the stall. I do not mean that he made no dis-
tinction. But he never lost sight of sex, or overlooked it in
the casualties of a disadvantageous situation. I have seen
him stand bare-headed—Smile if you please—to a poor
servant girl, while she has been inquiring of him the way to
some street—in such a posture of unforced civility, as
neither to embarrass her in the acceptance, nor himself in
the offer, of it. He was no dangler, in the common
acceptation of the word, after women: but he reverenced
2O6 THE ESSA YS OF AZ Z.Z.4.
and upheld, in every form in which it came before him,
womanhood. I have seen him—nay, smile not—tenderly
escorting a market-woman, whom he had encountered in a
shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit,
that it might receive no damage, with as much carefulness
as if she had been a countess. To the reverend form of
Female Eld he would yield the wall (though it were to an
ancient beggar-woman) with more ceremony than we could
afford to show our grandams. He was the Preux Chevalier
of Age; the Sir Calidore, or Sir Tristan, to those who have
no Calidores or Tristans to defend them. The roses, that
had long faded thence, still bloomed for him in those
withered and yellow cheeks.
He was never married, but in his youth he paid his
addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanley—old Win-
Stanley's daughter of Clapton—who, dying in the early days
of their courtship, confirmed in him the resolution of
perpetual bachelorship. It was during their short Courtship,
he told me, that he had been one day treating his mistress
with a profusion of civil speeches—the common gallantries
—to which kind of thing she had hitherto manifested no
repugnance—but in this instance with no effect. He could
not obtain from her a decent acknowledgment in return.
She rather seemed to resent his compliments. He could
not set it down to caprice, for the lady had always shown
herself above that littleness. When he ventured on the
following day, finding her a little better humoured, to
expostulate with her on her coldness of yesterday, she con-
fessed, with her usual frankness, that she had no sort of
dislike to his attentions; that she could even endure some
high-flown compliments; that a young woman placed in her
situation had a right to expect all sort of civil things said to
her; that she hoped she could digest a dose of adulation,
short of insincerity, with as little injury to her humility as
most young women : but that—a little before he had com-
menced his compliments — she had overheard him by
accident, in rather rough language, rating a young woman,
who had not brought home his cravats quite to the appointed
THE ESSAYS OF EZZA. 2O7
time, and she thought to herself, “As I am Miss Susan
Winstanley, and a young lady—a reputed beauty, and known
to be a fortune,—I can have my choice of the finest
speeches from the mouth of this very fine gentleman who is
courting me—but if I had been poor Mary Such-a-one
(naming the mil/iner), -and had failed of bringing home the
cravats to the appointed hour—though perhaps I had sat
up half the night to forward them—what sort of compli-
ments should I have received then P-And my woman's
pride came to my assistance; and I thought, that if it were
only to do me honour, a female, like myself, might have
received handsomer usage: and I was determined not to
accept any fine speeches, to the compromise of that sex,
the belonging to which was after all my strongest claim and
title to them.”
I think the lady discovered both generosity, and a just
way of thinking, in this rebuke which she gave her lover;
and I have sometimes imagined, that the uncommon strain
of courtesy, which through life regulated the actions and
behaviour of my friend towards all of womankind indis-
criminately, owed its happy origin to this seasonable lesson
from the lips of his lamented mistress.
I wish the whole female world would entertain the same
notion of these things that Miss Winstanley showed. Then
we should see something of the spirit of consistent gallantry;
and no longer witness the anomaly of the same man—a
pattern of true politeness to a wife—of cold contempt, or
rudeness, to a sister—the idolater of his female mistress—
the disparager and despiser of his no less female aunt, or
unfortunate—still female—maiden cousin, Just so much
respect as a woman derogates from her own sex, in what-
ever condition placed—her handmaid, or dependent—she
deserves to have diminished from herself on that score;
and probably will feel the diminution, when youth, and
beauty, and advantages, not inseparable from sex, shall lose
of their attraction. What a woman should demand of a
man in courtship, or after it, is first—respect for her as she
is a woman;–and next to that—to be respected by him
208 Zºº ESSA YS OF AEZZA.
above all other women. But let her stand upon her female
character as upon a foundation; and let the attentions,
incident to individual preference, be so many pretty addita-
ments and ornaments—as many and as fanciful, as you
please—to that main structure. Let her first lesson be—
with sweet Susan Winstanley—to reverence her sex,
THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA,
a-as-mass
PREFACE BY A FRIEND OF THE LATE, ELIA.
THIS poor gentleman, who for some months past had been
in a declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to
nature.
To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humour of
the thing, if there was ever much in it, was pretty well
exhausted; and a two years' and a half existence has been
a tolerable duration for a phantom.
I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have
heard objected to my late friend's writings was well-founded.
Crude they are, I grant you—a sort of unlicked, incondite
things—villainously pranked in an affected array of antique
moods and phrases. They had not been his, if they had
been other than such ; and better it is, that a writer should
be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect a
naturalness (so called) that should be strange to him.
Egotistical they have been pronounced by some who did
not know, that what he tells us, as of himself, was often
true only (historically) of another; as in a former Essay (to
save many instances) where under the first person (his
favourite figure) he shadows forth the forlorn estate of a
country boy placed at a London School, far from his friends
and connections—in direct opposition to his own early
history. If it be egotism to imply and twine with his own
identity the griefs and affections of another—making him-
self many, or reducing many unto himself—then is the
209 I4
2 Io THE AESSA VS OF EAE/A.
skilful novelist, who all along brings in his hero, or heroine,
speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of all; who yet
has never, therefore, been accused of that narrowness. And
how shall the intenser dramatist escape being faulty, who
doubtless, under cover of passion uttered by another, often-
times gives blameless vent to his most inward feelings, and
expresses his own story modestly P
My late friend was in many respects a singular character.
Those who did not like him, hated him ; and some, who
once liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters. The
truth is, he gave himself too little concern what he uttered,
and in whose presence. He observed neither time nor
place, and would e'en out with what came uppermost.
With the severe religionist he would pass for a free-thinker;
while the other faction set him down for a bigot, or
persuaded themselves that he belied his sentiments. Few
understood him ; and I am not certain that at all times he
quite understood himself. He too much affected that
dangerous figure—irony. He sowed doubtful speeches,
and reaped plain, unequivocal hatred.—He would interrupt
the gravest discussion with some light jest; and yet, perhaps,
not quite irrelevant in ears that could understand it. Your
long and much talkers hated him. The informal habit of
his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of speech,
forbade him to be an orator; and he seemed determined
that no one else should play that part when he was present.
He was £efit and ordinary in his person and appearance. I
have seen him in what is called good company, but where
he has been a stranger, sit silent, and be suspected for an
odd fellow ; till some unlucky occasion provoking it, he
would stutter out some senseless pun (not altogether sense-
less perhaps, if rightly taken), which has stamped his
character for the evening. It was hit or miss with him ;
but nine times out of ten, he contrived by this device to
send away a whole company his enemies. His conceptions
rose kindlier than his utterance, and his happiest improm/ſus
had the appearance of effort. He has been accused of try-
ing to be witty, when in truth he was but struggling to give
ZTAE/A2 A.SSA VS OF AZZZA, 2 II
his poor thoughts articulation. He chose his companions
for some individuality of character which they manifested.—
Hence, not many persons of science, and few professed
/iterati, were of his councils. They were, for the most part,
persons of an uncertain fortune; and, as to such people
commonly nothing is more obnoxious than a gentleman of
settled (though moderate) income, he passed with most of
them for a great miser. To my knowledge this was a
mistake. His infimados, to confess a truth, were in the
world's eye a ragged regiment. He found them floating on
the surface of society; and the colour, or something else,
in the weed pleased him. The burrs stuck to him—but
they were good and loving burrs for all that. He never
greatly cared for the society of what are called good people.
If any of these were scandalised (and offences were sure to
arise), he could not help it. When he has been remonstrated
with for not making more concessions to the feelings of
good people, he would retort by asking, what one point did
these good people ever concede to him? He was temperate
in his meals and diversions, but always kept a little on this
side of abstemiousness. Only in the use of the Indian
weed he might be thought a little excessive. He took it,
he would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry—as the
friendly vapour ascended, how his prattle would curl up
sometimes with it ! the ligaments, which tongue-tied him,
were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded a statist
I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice that
my old friend has departed. His jests were beginning to
grow obsolete, and his stories to be found out. He felt the
approaches of age ; and while he pretended to cling to life,
you saw how slender were the ties left to bind him. Dis-
coursing with him latterly on this subject, he expressed
himself with a pettishness, which I thought unworthy of
him. In our walks about his suburban retreat (as he called
it) at Shacklewell, some children belonging to a school of
industry had met us, and bowed and curtseyed, as he
thought, in an especial manner to him. “They take me for
a visiting governor,” he muttered earnestly. He had a
2 I 2 TH/A2 A.S.S.A. Y.S OF EDA.
horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like anything
important and parochial. He thought that he approached
nearer to that stamp daily. He had a general aversion from
being treated like a grave or respectable character, and kept
a wary eye upon the advances of age that should so entitle
him. He herded always, while it was possible, with people
younger than himself. He did not conform to the march
of time, but was dragged along in the procession. His
manners lagged behind his years. He was too much of the
boy-man. The ſoga ziriſis never sate gracefully on his
shoulders. The impressions of infancy had burnt into him,
and he resented the impertinence of manhood. These were
weaknesses; but such as they were, they are a key to
explicate some of his writings.
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND
|READING,
“To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the
forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality
and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his
own.”—Zord Foppington, in the “A’elapse.”
AN ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck
with this bright Sally of his Lordship, that he has left off
reading altogether, to the great improvement of his origin-
ality. At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I
must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of
my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my
life in others’ speculations. I love to lose myself in other
men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I
cannot sit and think. Books think for me.
I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel
for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything
which I call a book. There are things in that shape which
I cannot allow for such.
ZTAEME ESSA VS OF E/C/A. 2 I 3
In this catalogue of books which are no books—&ió/ia
a-biblia—I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket
Books (the Literary excepted), Draught Boards bound and
lettered at the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks, Statutes
at Large; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie,
Soame Jenyns, and, generally, all those volumes which “no
gentleman's library should be without : ” the Histories of
Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's Moral
Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost
anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so
unexcluding.
I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in
books' clothing perched upon shelves, like false Saints,
usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the Sanctuary,
thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a
well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some kind-
hearted play-book, then, opening what “seem its leaves,”
to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To
expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find–Adam Smith.
To view a well-arranged assortment of blockheaded Ency-
clopædias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an
array of Russia, or Morocco, when a tithe of that good
leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios;
would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Ray-
mund Lully to look like himself again in the world. I
never see these impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm
my ragged veterans in their spoils.
To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum
of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it can
be afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books
indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of Magazines,
for instance, in full suit. The déshabille, or half-binding
(with Russia backs ever) is our costume. A Shakspeare, or
Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere foppery to
trick out in gay apparel. The possession of them confers
no distinction. The exterior of them (the things them-
selves being so common), strange to say, raises no sweet
emotions, no tickling sense of property in the owner.
2I4 ZTAE/E ESSA VS OF AZZZA.
Thomson's Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little
torn, and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of
reading are the Sullied leaves, and worn-out appearance,
nay, the very odour (beyond Russia), if we would not forget
kind feelings infastidiousness, of an old “Circulating Library”
Tom Jones, or Vicar of Wakefield ! How they speak of
the thousand thumbs, that have turned over their pages
with delight !—of the lone sempstress whom they may have
cheered (milliner or harder-working mantua maker) after
her long day's needle-toil, running far into midnight, when
she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep
her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their
enchanting contents | Who would have them a whit less
soiled P What better condition could we desire to see
them in P -
In some respects the better a book is, the less it
demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all
that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes—Great
Nature's Stereotypes—we see them individually perish with
less regret, because we know the copies of them to be
“eterne.” But where a book is at once both good and
rare—where the individual is almost the species, and when
that perishes,
“We know not where is that Promethean torch
That can its light relumine”—
such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of New-
castle, by his Duchess—no casket is rich enough, no
casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a
jewel. -
Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem
hopeless ever to be reprinted; but old editions of writers,
such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his
prose-works, Fuller—of whom we have reprints, yet the
books themselves, though they go about, and are talked of
here and there, we know, have not endenizened them-
selves (nor possibly ever will) in the national heart, so
as to become stock books—it is good to possess these
TH/AE AESSA YS OF EAAA. 2 I 5
in durable and costly covers. I do not care for a First
Folio of Shakspeare. You cannot make a ſet book of
an author whom everybody reads. I rather prefer the
Common editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes,
and with Ž/afes, which, being so execrably bad, serve
as maps, or modest remembrancers, to the text; and with-
out pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are
So much better than the Shakspeare gallery engravings,
which did. I have a community of feeling with my country-
men about his Plays, and I like those editions of him best,
which have been oftenest tumbled about and handled.—
On the contrary, I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but
in Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I
have no sympathy with them. If they were as much read
as the current editions of the other poet, I should prefer
them in that shape to the older one. I do not know a
more heartless sight than the reprint of the Anatomy of
Melancholy. What need was there of unearthing the bones
of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-
sheet of the newest fashion to modern censure ?, what hapless
stationer could dream of Burton ever becoming popular?—
The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed
the sexton of Stratford church to let him whitewash the
painted effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood there, in
rude but lively fashion depicted, to the very colour of the
cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used
to wear—the only authentic testimony we had, however
imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of him. They
covered him over with a coat of white paint. By , if I
had been a justice of peace for Warwickshire, I would have
clapped both commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, for
a pair of meddling sacrilegious varlets.
I think I see them at their work—these sapient trouble-
tombs.
Shall I be thought fantastical, if I confess, that the names
of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish
to the ear—to mine, at least—than that of Milton or of
Shakspeare? It may be, that the latter are more staled
216 THE ESSA VS OF ELIA.
and rung upon in common discourse. The sweetest names,
and which carry a perfume in the mention, are, Kit Mar-
lowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley.
Much depends upon zwhen and zwhere you read a book.
In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is
quite ready, who would think of taking up the Faërie
Queen for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes'
sermons P
Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be
played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music,
to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and
purged ears.
Winter evenings—the world shut out—with less of cere-
mony the gentle Shakspeare enters. At such a season, the
Zempest, or his own Winter's Taſe—
These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud—to
yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listening.
More than one—and it degenerates into an audience.
Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are
for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them
out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern
novels without extreme irksomeness.
A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of the
Bank offices it is the custom (to save so much individual
time) for one of the clerks—who is the best scholar—to
commence upon the Times, or the Chronicle, and recite its
entire contents aloud pro bono Žuć/ico. With every advan-
tage of lungs and elocution, the effect is singularly vapid.
In barbers’ shops and public-houses a fellow will get up,
and spell out a paragraph, which he communicates as Some
discovery. Another fellow with his selection. So the
entire journal transpires at length by piece-meal. Seldom-
readers are slow readers, and, without this expedient, no
one in the company would probably ever travel through the
contents of a whole paper.
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays
one down without a feeling of disappointment.
What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando’s,
ZTAE/E ESSA VS OF AZZZA. 217
keeps the paper | I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling
out incessantly, “The Chronicle is in hand, sir.”
As in these little diurnals I generally skip the Foreign
News, the Debates and the Politics, I find the Morning
Aerald by far the most entertaining of them. It is an
agreeable miscellany rather than a newspaper.
Coming in to an inn at night—having ordered your
supper—what can be more delightful than to find lying in
the window-seat, left there time out of mind by the careless-
ness of some former guest—two or three numbers of the
old Town and Country Magazine, with its amusing fèſe-à-téfe
pictures—“The Royal Lover and Lady G ;” “The
Melting Platonic and the Old Beau,”—and such-like anti-
quated scandal? Would you exchange it—at that time,
and in that place—for a better book?
Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so
much for the weightier kinds of reading—the Paradise Lost,
or Comus, he could have read to him—but he missed the
pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a magazine, or
a light pamphlet.
I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of
some cathedral alone, and reading Candide.
I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than
having been once detected—by a familiar damsel—reclined
at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera),
reading—Pamela. There was nothing in the book to make
a man seriously ashamed at the exposure; but as she seated
herself down by me, and seemed determined to read in
company, I could have wished it had been—any other
book. We read on very sociably for a few pages; and, not
finding the author much to her taste, she got up, and—went
away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture,
whether the blush (for there was one between us) was the
property of the nymph or the Swain in this dilemma. From
me you shall never get the Secret.
I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot
settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who
was generally to be seen upon Snow Hill (as yet Skinner's
2 I 8 ZTH/AE AESSA YS OF EAAA.
Street was not), between the hours of ten and eleven in the
morning, studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to
have been a strain of abstraction beyond my reach. I used
to admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of secular
contacts. An illiterate encounter with a porter’s knot, or
a bread basket, would have quickly put to flight all the
theology I am master of, and have left me worse than
indifferent to the five points.
I was once amused—there is a pleasure in affecting
affectation—at the indignation of a crowd that was jostling
in with me at the pit-door of Covent Garden Theatre, to
have a sight of Master Betty—then at once in his dawn and
his meridian—in Hamlet. I had been invited, quite unex-
pectedly, to join a party, whom I met near the door of the
play-house, and I happened to have in my hand a large
octavo of Johnson and Steevens's Shakspeare, which, the
time not admitting of my carrying it home, of course went
with me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pressure
of the doors opening—the rush, as they term it—I deliber-
ately held the volume over my head, open at the scene in
which the young Roscius had been most cried up, and
quietly read by the lamp-light. The clamour became
universal. “The affectation of the fellow,” cried one.
“Look at that gentleman reading, papa,” Squeaked a young
lady, who, in her admiration of the novelty, almost forgot
her fears. I read on. “He ought to have his book
knocked out of his hand,” exclaimed a pursy cit, whose
arms were too fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to
execute his kind intention. Still I read on—and, till the
time came to pay my money, kept as unmoved as Saint
Anthony at his holy offices, with the satyrs, apes, and hob-
goblins mopping and making mouths at him, in the picture,
while the good man sits as undisturbed at the sight as if he
were the sole tenant of the desert.—The individual rabble
(I recognised more than one of their ugly faces) had
damned a slight piece of mine a few nights before, and I
was determined the culprits should not a second time put
me out of countenance.
ZTA://2 /2.SSA YS OF AZZZA. 2 IQ
There is a class of street-readers whom I can never
contemplate without affection—the poor gentry, who, not
having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little
learning at the open stalls—the owner, with his hard eye,
casting envious looks at them all the while, and thinking
when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after
page, expecting every moment when he shall interpose his
interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratifica-
tion, they “snatch a fearful joy.” Martin B , in this way,
by daily fragments, got through two volumes of Clarissa,
when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition, by
asking him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant
to purchase the work. M. declares, that under no circum-
stances of his life did he ever peruse a book with half the
satisfaction which he took in those uneasy snatches. A
quaint poetess of our day has mortalised upon this subject
in two very touching but homely stanzas.
“I saw a boy with eager eye
Open a book upon a stall,
And read as he'd devour it all ;
Which when the stall-man did espy,
Soon to the boy I heard him call,
“You, sir, you never buy a book,
Therefore in one you shall not look.’
The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh
He wish'd he never had been taught to read,
Then of the old churl’s books he should have had no need.
Of sufferings the poor have many,
Which never can the rich annoy:
I soon perceived another boy,
Who look'd as it he'd not had any
Food, for that day at least—enjoy
The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder.
This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder, .
Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny,
Beholding choice of dainty-dressèd meat:
No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat.”
OLD CHINA,
I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. When
I go to see any great house, I inquire for the china-closet,
and next for the picture-gallery. I cannot defend the order
of preference, but by Saying, that we have all some taste or
other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering
distinctly that it was an acquired one. I can call to mind
the first play and the first exhibition, that I was taken to ;
but I am not conscious of a time when china jars and
saucers were introduced into my imagination.
I had no repugnance then—why should I now have P-
to those little lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that
under the notion of men and women, float about, uncir-
cumscribed by any element, in that world before perspec-
tive—a china tea-cup. * . s
I like to see my old friends—whom distance cannot
diminish—figuring up in the air (so they appear to our
optics), yet on terra firma still—for so we must in courtesy
interpret that speck of deep blue, which the decorous
artist, to prevent absurdity, has made to spring up beneath
their sandals.
I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if
possible, with still more womanish expressions.
Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a
lady from a salver—two miles off. See how distance seems
to set off respect And here the same lady, or another—
for likeness is identity on tea-cups—is stepping into a little
fairy boat, moored on the other side of this calm garden
river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of
incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land
her in the midst of a flowery mead—a furlong off on the
other side of the same strange stream
Farther on—if ſar or near can be predicated of their
world—see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays,
Here—a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-extensive—so
22 O
ZTA/AE /2.SSA VS OA” A. Z.Z.A. 22 T
objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine
Cathay.
I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our
Hyson (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink
unmixed still of an afternoon), some of these speciosa
miracula upon a set of extraordinary old blue China (a
recent purchase) which we were now for the first time
using ; and could not help remarking, how favourable cir-
cumstances had been to us of late years, that we could
afford to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort—
when a passing sentiment seemed to over-shade the brows
of my companion. I am quick at detecting these summer
clouds in Bridget.
“I wish the good old times would come again,” she said,
“when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean, that I
want to be poor; but there was a middle state;”—so she
was pleased to ramble on, “in which I am sure we were a
great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that
you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to
be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, O !
how much ado I had to get you to consent in those times )
we were used to have a debate two or three days before,
and to weigh the for and against, and think what we might
spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that
should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then,
when we felt the money that we paid for it.
“Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to
hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you,
it grew so threadbare, and all because of that folio Beau-
mont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night
from Barker's in Covent Garden P Do you remember how
we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to
the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it
was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off
from Islington, fearing you should be too late—and when
the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop,
and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards)
lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures—and when
222 THE ESSA YS OF EDA,
you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome—
and when you presented it to me—and when we were
exploring the perfectness of it (co//ating you called it)—and
while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste,
which your impatience would not suffer to be left till day-
break—was there no pleasure in being a poor man P or can
those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so
careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and
finical, give you half the honest vanity, with which you
flaunted it about in that overworn suit—your old corbeau—
for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to
pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen—or
sixteen shillings was it P−a great affair we thought it then
—which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you
can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not
See that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases
I\OW.
“When you came home with twenty apologies for laying
out a less number of shillings upon that print after
Leonardo, which we christened the ‘Lady Blanche’; when
you looked at the purchase, and thought of the money—
and thought of the money, and looked again at the picture
—was there no pleasure in being a poor man P. Now, you
have nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a
wilderness of Leonardos. Yet do you ?
“Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield,
and Potter's Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holiday—
holidays, and all other fun, are gone, now we are rich—and
the little hand-basket in which I used to deposit our day's
fare of savoury cold lamb and salad—and how you would
pry about at noontide for some decent house, where we
might go in, and produce our store—only paying for the ale.
that you must call for—and speculate upon the looks of the
landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a table-
cloth—and wish for such another honest hostess, as Izaak
Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks of
the Lea, when he went a-fishing—and sometimes they would
prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would look
THE ESSA VS OF EZZA. 223
grudgingly upon us—but we had cheerful looks still for one
another, and would eat our plain food Savourily, Scarcely
grudging Piscator his Trout Hall P Now, when we go out
a day's pleasuring, which is seldom moreover, we ride part
of the way—and go into a fine inn, and order the best of
dinners, never debating the expense—which, after all, never
has half the relish of those chance country snaps, when
we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a precarious
welcome.
“You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in
the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit,
when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of
Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in
the Wood—when we squeezed out our shillings a-piece to
sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery
—where you felt all the time that you ought not to have
brought me—and the pleasure was the better for a little
shame—and when the curtain drew up, what cared we for
our place in the house, or what mattered it where we were
sitting, when our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or
with Viola at the Court of Illyria P You used to say, that
the gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a play
socially—that the relish of such exhibitions must be in pro-
portion to the infrequency of going—that the company we
met there, not being in general readers of plays, were
obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was
going on, on the stage—because a word lost would have
been a chasm, which it was impossible for them to fill up.
With such reflections we consoled our pride then—and I
appeal to you, whether, as a woman, I met generally with
less attention and accommodation, than I have done since
in more expensive situations in the house P The getting in
indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient staircases,
was bad enough, but there was still a law of civility to
women recognised to quite as great an extent as we ever
found in the other passages—and how a little difficulty
overcome heightened the snug seat, and the play after-
wards ! Now we can only pay our money, and walk in.
224 7"HE /2.SSA VS OF EAAA,
You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. I am sure
We saw, and heard too, well enough then—but sight, and
all, I think, is gone with our poverty.
“There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they
became quite common—in the first dish of peas, while they
were yet dear—to have them for a nice supper, a treat.
What treat can we have now P If we were to treat ourselves
now—that is, to have dainties a little above our means, it
would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little more that
we allow ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get at,
that makes what I call a treat—when two people living
together, as we have done, now and then indulge them-
selves in a cheap luxury, which both like ; while each
apologises, and is willing to take both halves of the blame
to his single share. I see no harm in people making much
of themselves in that sense of the word. It may give
them a hint how to make much of others. But now—
what I mean by the word—we never do make much of
ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do not mean
the veriest poor of all, but persons as we were, just above
poverty. -
“I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty
pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet—and much
ado we used to have every Thirty-first Night of December
to account for our exceedings—many a long face did you
make over your puzzled accounts, and in contriving to
make it out how we had spent so much—or that we had
not spent so much—or that it was impossible we should
spend so much next year—and still we found our slender
capital decreasing—but then, betwixt ways, and projects,
and compromises of one sort or another, and talk of cur-
tailing this charge, and doing without that for the future—
and the hope that youth brings, and laughing Spirits (in
which you were never poor till now), we pocketed up our
loss, and in conclusion, with “lusty brimmers’ (as you used
to quote it out of hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called
him), we used to welcome in the ‘coming guest.'... Now we
have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year—
Z}/A2 A.S.S.A. Y.S OF EAE/A. 225
no flattering promises about the new year doing better
for us.”
Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions,
that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how
I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling at the
phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had con-
jured up out of a clear income of poor—hundred pounds a
year. “It is true we were happier when we were poorer,
but we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid we must
put up with the excess, for if we were to shake the super-
flux into the Sea, we should not much mend ourselves.
That we had much to struggle with as we grew up together,
we have reason to be most thankful. It strengthened, and
knit our compact closer. We could never have been what
we have been to each other, if we had always had the
sufficiency which you now complain of The resisting
power—those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which
circumstances cannot straiten—with us are long since passed
away. Competence to age is supplementary youth ; a sorry
supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had.
We must ride where we formerly walked: live better and
lie softer—and shall be wise to do so—than we had means
to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet could those
days return—could you and I once more walk our thirty
miles a-day—could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be
young, and you and I be young to see them—could the
good old one-shilling gallery days return—they are dreams,
my cousin, now—but could you and I at this moment,
instead of this quiet argument, by our well-carpeted fireside,
sitting on this luxurious Sofa–be once more struggling up
those inconvenient staircases, pushed about, and squeezed,
and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers
—could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours—
and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, which always
followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first
light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us–I
know not the fathom line that ever touched a descent so
deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than
15
226 ZTHAE AESSA YS OF AZZZA,
Croesus had, or the great Jew R is supposed to have,
to purchase it. And now do just look at that merry little
Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-
tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half-Madonna-ish
chit of a lady in that very blue summer-house.”
POOR RELATIONS,
A POOR relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature,
—a piece of impertinent correspondency, —an odious
approximation, —a haunting conscience,—a preposterous
shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity,+
an unwelcome remembrancer, -a perpetually recurring
mortification,--a drain on your purse,_a more intolerable
dun upon your pride,-a drawback upon success, a rebuke
to your rising, a stain in your blood, Ha blot on your
'scutcheon,--a rent in your garment, a death's head at
your banquet,_Agathocles' pot, -a Mordecai in your gate,
—a Lazarus at your door, a lion in your path,<-a frog in
your chamber, a fly in your ointment, a mote in your
eye, -a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends,
—the one thing not needful,-the hail in Y arvest,--the
ounce of sour in a pound of Sweet.
He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you
“That is Mr. .” A rap, between familiarity and respect;
that demands, and, at the same time, seems to despair of,
entertainment. He entereth smiling, and—embarrassed.
He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and draweth it
back again. He casually looketh in about dinner-time—
when the table is full. He offereth to go away, seeing you
have company—but is induced to stay. He filleth a chair,
and your visitor's two children are accommodated at a side
table. He never cometh upon open days, when your wife
says with some complacency, “My dear, perhaps Mr.
will drop in to-day.” He remembereth birthdays—and
THE ESSAYS OF EZZA. 227
professeth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He
declareth against fish, the turbot being small—yet suffereth
himself to be importuned into a slice against his first
resolution. He sticketh by the port—yet will be prevailed
upon to empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger
press it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who are
fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil enough, to him.
The guests think “they have seen him before.” Every one
speculateth upon his condition; and the most part take
him to be—a tide-waiter. He calleth you by your Christian
name, to imply that his other is the same with your own.
He is too familiar by half, yet you wish he had less diffidence.
With half the familiarity he might pass for a casual depend-
ent; with more boldness he would be in no danger of being
taken for what he is. He is too humble for a friend, yet
taketh on him more state than befits a client. He is a
worse guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth
up no rent—yet ’tis odds, from his garb and demeanour,
that your guests take him for one. He is asked to make
one at the whist table; refuses on the score of poverty, and
—resents being left out. When the company break up, he
proffereth to go for a coach—and lets the servant go. He
recollects your grandfather; and will thrust in some mean,
and quite unimportant anecdote of the family. He knew
it when it was not quite so flourishing as “he is blest in
seeing it now.” He reviveth past situations, to institute
what he calleth—favourable comparisons. With a reflecting
sort of congratulations, he will inquire the price of your
furniture; and insults you with a special commendation of
your window-curtains. He is of opinion that the urn is the
more elegant shape, but, after all, there was something
more comfortable about the old tea-kettle—which you must
remember. He dare say you must find a great convenience
in having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to your
lady if it is not so. Inquireth if you have had your arms
done on vellum yet; and did not know till lately, that such-
and-such had been the crest of the family. His memory
is unseasonable; his compliments perverse; his talk a -
228 THE ESSAYS OF EZZA.
trouble; his stay pertinacious; and when he goeth away,
you dismiss his chair into a corner, as precipitately as
possible, and feel fairly rid of two nuisances.
There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is—a female
Poor Relation. You may do something with the other;
you may pass him off tolerably well; but your indigent she-
relative is hopeless, “He is an old humourist,” you may
Say, “and affects to go threadbare. His circumstances are
better than folks would take them to be. You are fond of
having a Character at your table, and truly he is one.” But
in the indications of female poverty there can be no disguise.
No woman dresses below herself from caprice. The truth
must out without shuffling. “She is plainly related to the
L s; or what does she at their house P” She is, in all
probability, your wife's cousin. Nine times out of ten, at
least, this is the case. Her garb is something between a
gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former evidently pre-
dominates. She is most provokingly humble, and ostenta-
tiously sensible to her inferiority. He may require to be
repressed sometimes—aliguando suff/aminandas eraſ—but
there is no raising her. You send her soup at dinner, and
she begs to be helped—after the gentlemen. Mr.
requests the honour of taking wine with her ; she hesitates
between Port and Madeira, and chooses the former—
because he does. She calls the servant Sir; and insists on
not troubling him to hold her plate. The housekeeper
patronises her. The children's governess takes upon her to
correct her, when she has mistaken the piano for a harpsi-
chord.
Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance of
the disadvantages, to which this chimerical notion of affinity
constituting a claim to acquaintance, may subject the spirit of
a gentleman. A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt
him and a lady with a great estate. His stars are perpetually
crossed by the malignant maternity of an old woman, who
persists in calling him “her son Dick.” But she has where-
withal in the end to recompense his indignities, and float
him again upon the brilliant surface, under which it had
7TH/AE AESSA VS OF EAAA. 229
been her seeming business and pleasure all along to sink
him. All men, besides, are not of Dick's temperament. I
knew an Amlet in real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy,
sank indeed. Poor W was of my own standing at
Christ's, a fine classic, and a youth of promise. If he had
a blemish, it was too much pride; but its quality was inoffen-
sive; it was not of that sort which hardens the heart, and
serves to keep inferiors at a distance; it only sought to ward
off derogation from itself. It was the principle of self-respect
carried as far as it could go, without infringing upon that
respect which he would have every one else equally maintain
for himself. He would have you to think alike with him on
this topic. Many a quarrel have I had with him, when we
were rather older boys, and our tallness made us more
obnoxious to observation in the blue clothes, because I
would not thread the alleys and blind ways of the town
with him to elude notice, when we have been out together
on a holiday in the streets of this sneering and prying
metropolis. W went, sore with these notions, to
Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life,
meeting with the alloy of a humble introduction, wrought in
him a passionate devotion to the place, with a profound
aversion from the society. The servitor's gown (worse than
his school array) clung to him with Nessian venom. He
thought himself ridiculous in a garb, under which Latimer
must have walked erect; and in which Hooker, in his
young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no discommend-
able vanity. In the depth of college shades, or in his lonely
chamber, the poor student shrunk from observation. He
found shelter among books, which insult not; and studies,
that ask no questions of a youth's finances. He was lord
of his library, and seldom cared for looking out beyond his
domains. The healing influence of studious pursuits was
upon him, to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a
healthy man; when the waywardness of his fate broke out
against him with a second and worse malignity. The father
Of W had hitherto exercised the humble profession of
house-painter at N–, near Oxford. A supposed interest
23o THE AESSA VS OF EAAA.
with some of the heads of colleges, had now induced him
to take up his abode in that city, with the hopes of being
employed upon some public works which were talked of.
From that moment I read in the countenance of the young
man, the determination which at length tore him from
academical pursuits for ever. To a person unacquainted
with our Universities, the distance between the gownsmen
and the townsmen, as they are called—the trading part of
the latter especially—is carried to an excess that would
appear harsh and incredible. The temperament of W-'s
father was diametrically the reverse of his own. Old W
was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, who, with his son
upon his arm, would stand bowing and scraping, cap in
hand, to anything that wore the semblance of a gown—
insensible to the winks and opener remonstrances of the
young man, to whose chamber-fellow, or equal in standing,
perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously ducking.
Such a state of things could not last. W must change
the air of Oxford or be suffocated. He chose the former;
and let the sturdy moralist, who strains the point of the
filial duties as high as they can bear, censure the dereliction;
he cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with W , the
last afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of his
paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading from the
High Street to the back of ' ' ' ' ' college, where W
kept his rooms. He seemed thoughtful, and more recon-
ciled. I ventured to rally him—finding him in a better
mood—upon a representation of the Artist Evangelist,
which the old man, whose affairs were beginning to flourish,
had caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame, over
his really handsome shop, either as a token of prosperity, or
badge of gratitude to his saint. W looked up at the
Luke, and, like Satan, “knew his mounted sign—and fled.”
A letter on his father's table the next morning, announced
that he had accepted a commission in a regiment about to
embark for Portugal. He was among the first who perished
before the walls of St. Sebastian.
I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with
7"HE ESSA YS OF E/C/A. 231
treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital so
eminently painful; but this theme of poor relationship is
replete with so much matter for tragic, as well as comic
associations, that it is difficult to keep the account distinct
without blending. The earliest impressions which I received
on this matter, are certainly not attended with anything
painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At my father's
table (no very splendid one) was to be found, every Saturday,
the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman clothed in neat
black, of a sad yet comely appearance. His deportment
was of the essence of gravity; his words few or none; and
I was not to make a noise in his presence. I had little
inclination to have done so—for my cue was to admire in
silence. A particular elbow-chair was appropriated to him,
which was in no case to be violated. A peculiar sort of
sweet pudding, which appeared on no other occasion, dis-
tinguished the days of his coming. I used to think him a
prodigiously rich man, All I could make out of him was,
that he and my father had been schoolfellows a world ago
at Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The Mint
I knew to be a place where all the money was coined
—and I thought he was the owner of all that money.
Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves about his
presence. He seemed above human infirmities and
passions. A sort of melancholy grandeur invested him.
From some inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged
to go about in an eternal suit of mourning; a captive—
a stately being, let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often
have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in spite
of an habitual general respect which we all in common
manifested towards him, would venture now and then to
stand up against him in some argument, touching their
youthful days. The houses of the ancient city of Lincoln
are divided (as most of my readers know) between the
dwellers on the hill, and in the valley. This marked
distinction formed an obvious division between the boys
who lived above (however brought together in a common
school) and the boys whose paternal residence was on the
232 THE AESSA VS OA' FAZA.
plain; a sufficient cause of hostility in the code of these
young Grotiuses. My father had been a leading
Mountaineer; and would still maintain the general
Superiority, in skill and hardihood, of the Above Boys (his
own faction) over the Belozy Boys (so were they called), of
which party his contemporary had been a chieftain. Many
and hot were the skirmishes on this topic—the only one
upon which the old gentleman was ever brought out—and
bad blood bred; even sometimes almost to the recommence-
ment (so I expected) of actual hostilities. But my father,
who scorned to insist upon advantages, generally contrived
to turn the conversation upon some adroit by-commenda-
tion of the old Minster; in the general preference of which,
before all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller on the
hill, and the plain-born, could meet on a conciliating level,
and lay down their less important differences. Once only I
saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and I remember with
anguish the thought that came over me: “Perhaps he will
never come here again.” He had been pressed to take
another plate of the viand, which I have already mentioned
as the indispensable concomitant of his visits. He had
refused, with a resistance amounting to rigour—when my
aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who had something of this,
in common with my cousin Bridget, that she would some-
times press civility out of season—uttered the following
memorable application—“Do take another slice, Mr. Billet,
for you do not get pudding every day.”—The old gentleman
said nothing at the time—but he took occasion in the course
of the evening, when some argument had intervened be-
tween them, to utter with an emphasis which chilled the
company, and which chills me now as I write it—“Woman,
you are superannuated.” John Billet did not survive long
after the digesting of this affront; and, if I remember aright,
another pudding was discreetly substituted in the place of
that which had occasioned the offence. He died at the
Mint (Anno 1781) where he had long held, what he
accounted, a comfortable independence ; and with five
pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which were found
7A/E ESSA. Y.S OA’ ZZZA. 233
in his escrutoire after his decease, left the world, blessing
God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had
never been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was—
a Poor Relation.
THE CHILD ANGEL: A DREAM.
I CHANCED upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical thing of a
dream the other night, that you shall hear of. I had been
reading the “Loves of the Angels,” and went to bed
with my head full of speculations suggested by that extra-
ordinary legend. It had given birth to innumerable
conjectures; and, I remember, the last-waking thought,
which I gave expression to on my pillow, was a sort of
wonder, “what could come of it.”
I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could
scarcely make out—but to some Celestial region. It was
not the real heavens neither—not the downright Bible
heaven—but a kind of fairyland heaven, about which a poor
human fancy may have leave to sport and air itself, I will
hope without presumption.
Methought—what wild things dreams are l—I was present
—at what would you imagine P-at an angel's gossiping.
Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, or
whether it came purely of its own head, neither you nor
I know—but there lay, Sure enough, wrapt in its little cloudy
swaddling bands—a Child Angel.
Sun-threads—filmy beams—ran through the celestial
napery of what seemed its princely cradle. All the winged
orders hovered round, watching when the new-born should
open its yet closed eyes; which, when it did, first one, and
then the other—with a solicitude and apprehension, yet not
such as, stained with fear, dims the expanding eye-lids of
mortal infants, but as if to explore its path in those its
unhereditary palaces—what an inexhaustible titter that
234 zaz A2.SSA YS OF AZZZA.
time spared not celestial visages | Nor wanted there to my
seeming—O the inexplicable simpleness of dreams —bowls
of that cheering nectar,
—“which mortals caudſe call below"—
Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants, stricken in
years, as it might seem,-so dexterous were those heavenly
attendants to counterfeit kindly similitudes of earth, to
greet, with terrestrial child-rites the young Žresent, which
earth had made to heaven.
Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full symphony
as those by which the spheres are tutored ; but, as loudest
instruments on earth speaks oftentimes, muffled; so to
accommodate their sound the better to the weak ears of the
imperfect-born. And, with the noise of those subdued
soundings, the Angelet sprang forth, fluttering its rudiments
of pinions—but forthwith flagged and was recovered into
the arms of those full-winged angels. And a wonder it was
to see how, as years went round in heaven—a year in dreams
is as a day—continually its white shoulders put forth buds
of wings, but, wanting the perfect angelic nutriment, anon
was shorn of its aspiring, and fell fluttering—still caught by
angel hands—for ever to put forth shoots, and to fall fluttering,
because its birth was not of the unmixed vigour of heaven.
And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and it was to
be called Ge-Orania, because its production was of earth
and heaven.
And it could not taste of death, by reason of its adoption
into immortal palaces: but it was to know weakness, and
reliance, and the shadow of human imbecility; and it went
with a lame gait; but in its goings it exceeded all mortal
children in grace and swiftness. Then pity first sprang up
in angelic bosoms; and yearnings (like the human) touched
them at the sight of the immortal lame one.
And with pain did then first those Intuitive Essences,
with pain and strife to their natures (not grief), put back
their bright intelligences, and reduce their ethereal minds,
schooling them to degrees and slower processes, so to adapt
THE ESSAYS of EzzA. 235
their lessons to the gradual illumination (as must needs
be) of the half-earth-born ; and what intuitive notices they
could not repel (by reason that their nature is, to know all
things at once), the half-heavenly novice, by the better part
of its nature, aspired to receive into its understanding ; so
that Humility and Aspiration went on even-paced in the
instructions of the glorious Amphibium.
But, by reason that Mature Humanity is too gross to
breathe the air of that super-subtile region, its portion was,
and is, to be a child for ever.
And because the human part of it might not press into
the heart and inwards of the palace of its adoption, those
full-natured angels tended it by turns in the purlieux of
the palace, where were shady groves and rivulets, like this
green earth from which it came : So Love, with Voluntary
Humility, waited upon the entertainment of the new-adopted.
And myriads of years rolled round (in dreams Time is
nothing), and still it kept, and is to keep, perpetual child-
hood, and is the Tutelar Genius of Childhood upon earth,
and still goes lame and lovely.
By the banks of the river Pison is seen, lone-sitting by
the grave of the terrestrial Adah, whom the angel Nadir
loved, a Child; but not the same which I saw in heaven.
A mournful hue overcasts its lineaments; nevertheless, a
correspondency is between the child by the grave and that
celestial orphan, whom I saw above; and the dimness of
the grief upon the heavenly, is as a shadow or emblem
of that which stains the beauty of the terrestrial. And this
correspondency is not to be understood but by dreams.
And in the archives of heaven I had grace to read, how
that once the angel Nadir, being exiled from his place for
mortal passion, upspringing on the wings of parental love
(such power had parental love for a moment to suspend the
else-irrevocable law) appeared for a brief instant in his
station ; and, depositing a wondrous Birth, straightway
disappeared, and the palaces knew him no more. And this
charge was the self-same Babe, who goeth lame and lovely
—but Adah sleepeth by the river Pison.
*&
THE OLD MARGATE HOY.
I AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe I have said so
before) at one or other of the Universities. Next to these
my choice would fix me at some woody spot, such as the
neighbourhood of Henley affords in abundance, upon the
banks of my beloved Thames. But somehow or other my
cousin contrives to wheedle me once in three or four
seasons to a watering-place. Old attachments cling to her
in spite of experience. We have been dull at Worthing one
summer, duller at Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourne a
third, and are at this moment doing dreary penance at—
Hastings l—and all because we were happy many years ago
for a brief week at-Margate. That was our first sea-side
experiment, and many circumstances combined to make it
the most agreeable holiday of my life. We had neither of
us seen the sea, and we had never been from home so long
together in Company.
Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy
weather-beaten Sunburnt captain, and his rough accom-
modations—ill exchanged for the foppery and fresh-water
niceness of the modern steam-packet P To the winds and
waves thou committedst thy goodly freightage, and didst ask
no aid of magic fumes, and spells, and boiling cauldrons.
With the gales of heaven thou wentest swimmingly; or,
when it was their pleasure, stoodest still with sailor-like
patience. Thy course was natural, not forced, as in a hot-
bed; nor didst thou go poisoning the breath of ocean with
sulphureous smoke—a great sea-chimera, chimneying and
furnacing the deep ; or liker to that fire-god parching up
Scamander.
Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their coy
reluctant responses (yet to the suppression of anything like
contempt) to the raw questions, which we of the great city
would be ever and anon putting to them, as to the uses of
this or that strange naval implement P 'Specially can I
forget thee, thou happy medium, thou shade of refuge
236
7THE /2.SSA YS OF AZ Z/A. 237
between us and them, conciliating interpreter of their skill
to our simplicity, comfortable ambassador between Sea and
land l—whose sailor-trousers did not more Convincingly
assure thee to be an adopted denizen of the former, than
thy white cap, and whiter apron over them, with thy neat-
fingered practice in thy culinary vocation, bespoke thee to
have been of inland nurture heretofore—a master cook of
Eastcheap P How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious
Occupation, cook, mariner, attendant, chamberlain ; here,
there, like another Ariel, flaming at once about all parts of
the deck, yet with kindlier ministrations—not to assist the
tempest, but, as if touched with a kindred sense of our
infirmities, to soothe the qualms which that untried motion
might haply raise in our crude land-fancies. And when the
o'er-washing billows drove us below deck (for it was far
gone in October, and we had stiff and blowing weather)
how did thy officious ministerings, still catering for our
comfort, with cards, and cordials, and thy more cordial
conversation, alleviate the closeness and the confinement of
thy else (truth to say) not very savoury, nor very inviting,
little cabin
With these additaments to boot, we had on board a
fellow-passenger, whose discourse in verity might have
beguiled a longer voyage than we meditated, and have
made mirth and wonder abound as far as the Azores. He
was a dark, Spanish complexioned young man, remarkably
handsome, with an officer-like assurance, and an insuppress-
ible volubility of assertion. He was, in fact, the greatest
liar I had met with then, or since. He was none of your
hesitating, half story-tellers (a most painful description of
mortals) who go on Sounding your belief, and only giving
you as much as they see you can swallow at a time—the
nibbling pickpockets of your patience—but one who com-
mitted downright, daylight depredations upon his neigh-
bour's faith. He did not stand shivering upon the brink,
but was a hearty thorough-paced liar, and plunged at once
into the depths of your credulity. I partly believe, he made
pretty Sure of his company. Not many rich, not many wise,
238 ZTAMA2 ESSA VS OA' A' Z.Z.A.
or learned, composed at that time the common stowage of a
Margate packet. We were, I am afraid, a set of as un-
Seasoned Londoners (let our enemies give it a worse name)
as Aldermanbury, or Watling Street, at that time of day
could have supplied. There might be an exception or two
among us, but I scorn to make any invidious distinctions
among such a jolly, companionable ship's company, as those
were whom I sailed with. Something too must be conceded
to the Genius Zoci. Had the confident fellow told us half
the legends on land, which he favoured us with on the other
element, I flatter myself the good sense of most of us would
have revolted. But we were in a new world, with every-
thing unfamiliar about us, and the time and place disposed
us to the reception of any prodigious marvel whatsoever.
Time has obliterated from my memory much of his wild
fablings; and the rest would appear but dull, as written, and
to be read on shore. He had been Aide-de-camp (among
other rare accidents and fortunes) to a Persian prince, and
at one blow had stricken off the head of the King of
Carimania on horseback. He, of course, married the
Prince's daughter. I forget what unlucky turn in the
politics of that court, combining with the loss of his consort,
was the reason of his quitting Persia; but with the rapidity
of a magician he transported himself, along with his hearers,
back to England, where we still found him in the confidence
of great ladies. There was some story of a Princess—
Elizabeth, if I remember—having intrusted to his care an
extraordinary casket of jewels, upon some extraordinary
occasion—but as I am not certain of the name or circum-
stances at this distance of time, I must leave it to the Royal
daughters of England to settle the honour among themselves
in private. I cannot call to mind half his pleasant wonders;
but I perfectly remember, that in the course of his travels
he had seen a phoenix; and he obligingly undeceived us of
the vulgar error, that there is but one of that species at a
time, assuring us that they were not uncommon in some
parts of Upper Egypt. Hitherto he had found the most
inplicit listeners. His dreaming fancies had transported us
ZTAZAZ ZSSA VS OA' A' Z/A. 239
beyond the “ignorant present.” But when (still hardying
more and more in his triumphs over our simplicity) he went
on to affirm that he had actually sailed through the legs of
the Colossus at Rhodes, it really became necessary to make
a stand. And here I must do justice to the good sense and
intrepidity of one of our party, a youth, that had hitherto
been one of his most deferential auditors, who, from his
recent reading, made bold to assure the gentleman, that
there must be some mistake, as “the Colossus in question
had been destroyed long since: ” to whose opinion, delivered
with all modesty, our hero was obliging enough to concede
thus much, that “the figure was indeed a little damaged.”
This was the only opposition he met with, and it did not at
all seem to stagger him, for he proceeded with his fables,
which the same youth appeared to swallow with still more
complacency than ever, confirmed, as it were, by the
extreme candour of that concession. With these prodigies
he wheedled us on till we came in sight of the Reculvers,
which one of our own company (having been the voyage
before) immediately recognising, and pointing out to us, was
considered by us as no Ordinary Seaman.
All this time sat upon the edge of the deck quite a
different character. It was a lad, apparently very poor,
very infirm, and very patient. His eye was ever on the sea,
with a smile : and, if he caught now and then some Snatches
of these wild legends, it was by accident, and they seemed
not to concern him. The waves to him whispered more
pleasant stories. He was as one, being with us, but not of
us. He heard the bell of dinner ring without stirring; and
when some of us pulled out our private stores—our cold
meat and our Salads—he produced none, and seemed to
want none. Only a solitary biscuit he had laid in ; pro-
vision for the one or two days and nights, to which these
vessels then were oftentimes obliged to prolong their
voyage. Upon a nearer acquaintance with him, which he
seemed neither to court nor decline, we learned that he was
going to Margate, with the hope of being admitted into the
Infirmary there for sea-bathing. His disease was a scrofula,
24o ZTHE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
which appeared to have eaten all over him. He expressed
great hopes of a cure; and when we asked him, whether he
had any friends where he was going, he replied, “he had no
friends.”
These pleasant, and some mournful passages, with the
first sight of the sea, co-operating with youth, and a sense of
holidays, and out-of-door adventure, to me that had been
pent up in populous cities for many months before, have
left upon my mind the fragrance as of summer days gone
by, bequeathing nothing but their remembrance for cold and
wintry hours to chew upon. -
Will it be thought a digression (it may spare some unwel-
come comparisons), if I endeavour to account for the dis-
satisfaction which I have heard so many persons confess to
have felt (as I did myself feel in part on this occasion), at
the sight of the sea for the first time ! I think the reason
usually given—referring to the incapacity of actual objects
for Satisfying our preconceptions of them—scarcely goes
deep enough into the question. Let the same person See a
lion, an elephant, a mountain, for the first time in his life,
and he shall perhaps feel himself a little mortified. The
things do not fill up that space, which the idea of them
seemed to take up in his mind. But they have still a cor-
respondency to his first notion, and in time grow up to it, SO
as to produce a very similar impression : enlarging them-
selves (if I may say so) upon familiarity. But the sea
remains a disappointment.—Is it not, that in the Zafter we
had expected to behold (absurdly, I grant, but, I am afraid,
by the law of imagination unavoidably) not a definite object,
as those wild beasts, or that mountain compassable by the
eye, but all the sea at once, THE COMMENSURATE ANTAGONIST
OF THE EARTH P I do not say we tell ourselves so much,
but the craving of the mind is to be satisfied with nothing
less. I will suppose the case of a young person of fifteen
(as I then was) knowing nothing of the Sea, but from
description. He comes to it for the first time—all that he
has been reading of it all his life, and that the most enthu-
siastic part of life, all he has gathered from narratives of
ZTAEſ/2 /2.SSA VS OA' EZZA. 24I
wandering seamen; what he has gained from true voyages,
and what he cherishes as credulously from romance and
poetry; crowding their images, and exacting strange tributes
from expectation.—He thinks of the great deep, and of those
who go down unto it; of its thousand isles, and of the vast
continents it washes; of its receiving the mighty Plata, or
Orellana, into its bosom, without disturbance, or sense of
augmentation; of Biscay swells, and the mariner
“For many a day, and many a dreadful night,
Incessant labouring round the stormy Cape ; ”
of fatal rocks, and the “still-vexed Bermoothes;” of great
whirlpools, and the water-spout; of sunken ships, and sum-
less treasures swallowed up in the unrestoring depths: of
º and quaint monsters, to which all that is terrible on
earth—
“Be but as bugs to frighten babes withal,
Compared with the creatures in the sea’s entral ;”
of naked Savages, and Juan Fernandez; of pearls, and shells;
of coral beds, and of enchanted isles; of mermaids’ grots—
I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects to be
shown all these wonders at once, but he is under the
tyranny of a mighty faculty, which haunts him with con-
fused hints and shadows of all these ; and when the actual
object opens first upon him, seen (in tame weather too most
likely) from our unromantic coasts—a speck, a slip of sea-
water, as it shows to him—what can it prove but a very
unsatisfying and even diminutive entertainment? Or if he
has come to it from the mouth of a river, was it much more
than the river widening P and, even out of sight of land,
what had he but a flat watery horizon about him, nothing
comparable to the vast o'er-curtaining sky, his familiar
object, seen daily without dread or amazement P−Who, in
similar circumstances, has not been tempted to exclaim
with Charoba, in the poem of Gebir,
“Is this the mighty ocean?—is this al/?”
I6
242 THE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
I love town, or country; but this detestable Cinque Port
is neither. I hate these scrubbed shoots, thrusting out
their starved foliage from between the horrid fissures of dusty
innutritious rocks; which the amateur calls “verdure to the
edge of the sea.” I require woods, and they show me
stunted coppices. I cry out for the water-brooks, and pant
for fresh streams, and inland murmurs. I cannot stand all
day on the naked beach, watching the capricious hues of the
seas, shifting like the colours of a dying mullet. I am tired
of looking out at the windows of this island-prison. I would
fain retire into the interior of my cage. While I gaze upon
the sea, I want to be on it, over it, across it. It binds me
in with chains, as of iron. My thoughts are abroad. I
should not so feel in Staffordshire. There is no home for
me here. There is no sense of home at Hastings. It is a
place of fugitive resort, an heterogeneous assemblage of sea-
mews and stockbrokers, Amphitrites of the town, and
misses that coquet with the Ocean. If it were what it
was in its primitive shape, and what it ought to have
remained, a fair honest fishing-town, and no more, it
were something—with a few straggling fishermen’s huts
scattered about, artless as its cliffs, and with their
materials filched from them, it were something. I could
abide to dwell with Mescheh; to assort with fisher-swains,
and smugglers. There are, or I dream there are, many of
this latter occupation here. Their faces become the place.
I like a smuggler. He is the only honest thief. He robs
nothing but the revenue, an abstraction I never greatly
cared about. I could go out with them in their mackerel
boats, or about their less ostensible business, with some
satisfaction. I can even tolerate those poor victims to
monotony, who from day to day pace along the beach, in
endless progress and recurrence, to watch their illicit
countrymen—townsfolk or brethren perchance—whistling
to the sheathing and unsheathing of their cutlass (their only
solace), who under the mild name of preventive service,
keep up a legitimated civil warfare in the deplorable ab-
sence of a foreign one, to show their detestation of run
7TA/E ESSA VS OF EAAA. 243
hollands, and zeal for old England. But it is the visitants
from town that come here to say that they have been here,
with no more relish of the sea than a pond perch, or a dace
might be supposed to have, that are my aversion. I feel
like a foolish dace in these regions, and have as little tolera-
tion for myself here, as for them. What can they want
here P if they had a true relish of the ocean, why have they
brought all this land luggage with them P or why pitch their
civilised tents in the desert P What mean these scanty
book-rooms—marine libraries as they entitle them—if the
sea were, as they would have us believe, a book “to read
strange matter in P” what are their foolish concert-rooms,
if they come, as they would fain be thought to do, to listen
to the music of the waves. All is false and hollow preten-
sion. They come, because it is the fashion, and to spoil
the nature of the place. They are mostly, as I have said,
stockbrokers; but I have watched the better sort of them—
now and then, an honest citizen—(of the old stamp), in the
simplicity of his heart, shall bring down his wife and
daughters, to taste the sea breezes. I always know the
date of their arrival. It is easy to see it in their counten-
ance. A day or two they go wandering on the shingles,
picking up cockle-shells, and thinking them great things;
but, in a poor week, imagination slackens : they begin to
discover that cockles produce no pearls, and then—O then
—if I could interpret for the pretty creatures (I know they
have not the courage to confess it themselves) how gladly
would they exchange their sea-side rambles for a Sunday
walk on the green-sward of their accustomed Twickenham
meadows
I would ask one of these sea-charmed emigrants, who
think they truly love the sea, with its wild usages, what
would their feelings be, if some of the unsophisticated abori-
gines of this place, encouraged by their courteous question-
ings here, should venture, on the faith of such assured
sympathy between them, to return the visit, and come up
to see—London. I must imagine them with their fishing-
tackle on their back, as we carry our town necessaries.
244 THE AESSA VS OF EAE/A.
What a sensation would it cause in Lothbury | What vehe-
ment laughter would it not excite among
“The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard Street!”
I am sure that no town-bred, or inland-born subjects, can
feel their true and natural nourishment at these sea-places.
Nature, where she does not mean us for mariners and vaga-
bonds, bids us stay at home. The Salt foam seems to
nourish a spleen. I am not half so good-natured as by the
milder waters of my natural river. I would exchange
these sea-gulls for swans, and scud a Swallow for ever
about the banks of Thamesis.
SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.
SYDNEY’s Sonnets—I speak of the best of them—are among
the very best of their sort. They fall below the plain moral
dignity, the sanctity, and high yet modest spirit of self-
approval, of Milton in his compositions of a similar struc-
ture. They are in truth what Milton, censuring the Arcadia,
says of that work (to which they are a sort of after-tune or
application), “vain and amatorious” enough, yet the things
in their kind (as he confesses to be true of the romance)
may be “full of worth and wit.” They savour of the
courtier, it must be allowed, and not of the Common-
wealthsman. But Milton was a courtier when he wrote
the Masque at Ludlow Castle, and still more a courtier
when he composed the Arcades. When the national
struggle was to begin, he becomingly cast these vanities
behind him ; and if the order of time had thrown Sir
Philip upon the crisis which preceded the Revolution,
there is no reason why he should not have acted the same
part in that emergency, which has glorified the name of a
later Sydney. He did not want plain for plainness or
boldness of spirit. His letter on the French match may
TH//2 /2,SSA.YS OF EAAA. 245
testify, he could speak his mind freely to Princes. The
times did not call him to the scaffold.
The Sonnets which we oftenest call to mind of Milton
were the compositions of his maturest years. Those of
Sydney, which I am about to produce, were written in the
very heyday of his blood. They were struck full of amorous
fancies—far-fetched conceits, befitting his occupation; for
True Love thinks no labour to send out Thoughts upon the
vast, and more than Indian voyages, to bring home rich
pearls, outlandish wealth, gums, jewels, spicery, to Sacrifice
in self-depreciating similitudes, as shadows of true amiabili-
ties in the Beloved. We must be Lovers—or at least the
cooling touch of time, the circum praecordia frigus, must not
have so damped our faculties, as to take away our recollec-
tion that we were once so—before we can duly appreciate
the glorious vanities, and graceful hyperboles, of the passion.
The images which lie before our feet (though by some
accounted the only natural) are least natural for the high
Sydnean love to express its fancies by. They may serve for
the loves of Tibullus, or the dear Author of the School-
mistress; for passions that creep and whine in Elegies and
Pastoral Ballads. I am sure Milton never loved at this
rate. I am afraid some of his addresses (ad Zeonoram, I
mean) have rather erred on the farther side; and that the
poet came not much short of a religious indecorum, when
he could thus apostrophise a singing-girl:—
“Angelus unicuique suus (sic credite gentes)
Obtigit aethereis ales ab ordinibus.
Quid mirum, Leonora, tibi si gloria major,
Nam tua praesentem vox sonat ipsa Deum ?
Aut Deus, aut vacui certë mens tertia coeli
Per tua secretë guttura serpit agens;
Serpit agens, facilisque docet mortalia corda
Sensin immortali assuescere posse sono.
QUOD SI cunct A QUIDEM DEUS EST, PER CUNCTAQUE FUSUS,
IN TE UNA LoquiTUR, CAETERA MUTUS HABET.”
This is loving in a strange fashion; and it requires Some
candour of construction (besides the slight darkening of a
dead language) to cast a veil over the ugly appearance of
246 ZTHE AESSA VS OF AZZA.
Something very like blasphemy in the last two verses. I
think the Lover would have been staggered, if he had gone
about to express the same thought in English. I am sure,
Sydney has no flights like this. His extravaganzas do not
strike at the sky, though he takes leave to adopt the pale
Dian into a fellowship with his mortal passions,
I.
With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies
How silently; and with how wan a ſace
What I may it be, that even in heavenly place
That busy Archer his sharp arrow tries?
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;
I read it in thy looks; thy languisht grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be P
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess?
Do they call zirtue there—ungratefulness /
The last line of this poem is a little obscured by trans-
positions. He means, Do they call ungratefulness there a
virtue P
II,
Come, Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease +
Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw;
O make in me those civil wars to cease:
I will good tribute pay if thou do so.
Take thou of me sweet pillows, sweetest bed;
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light;
A rosy garland, and a weary head.
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, STELLA’s image see.
* Press.
ZAZE ESSA YS OF AE/AA. 2.47
III.
The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness
Betray itself in my long-settled eyes,
Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise,
With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess.
Some, that know how my spring I did address,
Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies;
Others, because the Prince my service tries,
Think, that I think state errors to redress;
But harder judges judge, ambition's rage,
Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place,
Holds my young brain captiv'd in golden cage.
O fools, or over-wise ! alas, the race
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start,
But only STELLA's eyes, and STELLA's heart.
IV,
Because I oft in dark abstracted guise
Seem most alone in greatest company,
With dearth of words, or answers quite awry,
To them that would make speech of speech arise
They deem, and of their doom the rumour flies,
That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie
So in my swelling breast, that only I
Fawn on myself, and others do despise;
Yet Pride, I think, doth not my soul possess,
Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass;
But one worse fault—Ambition—I confess,
That makes me oſt my best friends overpass,
Unseen, unheard—while Thought to highest place
Bends all his powers, even unto STELLA's grace.
We
Having this day, my horse, my hand, my lance,
Guided so well that I obtained the prize,
Both by the judgment of the English eyes,
And of some sent from that sweet enemy, France;
Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance;
Townsfolk my strength; a daintier judge applies
His praise to sleight, which from good use doth rise;
Some lucky wits impute it but to chance;
Others, because of both sides I do take
My blood from them, who did excel in this,
Think Nature me a man of arms did make.
How far they shot awry 1 the true cause is,
STELLA look'd on, and from her heavenly ſace
Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race,
THE AESSA YS OF AE/AA.
VI.
In martial sports I had my cunning tried,
And yet to break more staves did me address,
While with the people's shouts (I must confess)
Youth, luck, and praise, even fill'd my veins with pride—
When Cupid having me (his slave) descried
In Mars's livery, prancing in the press,
“What now, Sir Fool ’’ said he; “I would no less:
Look here, I say.” I look'd, and STELLA spied,
Who hard by made a window send forth light.
My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes;
One hand forgot to rule, th’ other to fight;
Nor trumpet’s sound I heard, nor friendly cries.
My foe came on, and beat the air for me—
Till that her blush made me my shame to see.
VII,
No more, my dear, no more these counsels try;
O give my passions leave to run their race;
Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace;
Let folk o'ercharged with brain against me cry;
Let clouds bedim my ſace, break in mine eye;
Let me no steps, but of lost labour, trace;
Let all the earth with scorn recount my case—
But do not will me from my love to fly.
I do not envy Aristotle's wit,
Nor do aspire to Caesar's bleeding ſame;
Nor aught do care, though some above me sit;
Nor hope, nor wish, another course to frame,
But that which once may win thy cruel heart:
Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art.
WIII.
LOVE still a boy, and oft a wanton, is,
School'd only by his mother's tender eye;
What wonder, then, if he his lesson miss,
When for so soft a rod dear play he try?
And yet my STAR, because a sugar'd kiss
In sport I suck'd, while she asleep did lie,
Doth lour, nay chide, may threat, for only this,
Sweet, it was saucy LovE, not humble I.
But no 'scuse serves; she makes her wrath appear
In Beauty's throne—see now who dares come near
Those scarlet judges, threat’ning bloody pain P
O heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face
Anger invests with such a lovely grace,
That anger's self I needs must kiss again.
THAE AESSA VS OF EAE/A. 249
IX,
I never drank of Aganippe well,
Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit,
And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell;
Poor lay-man I, for sacred rights unfit.
Some do I hear of Poet's fury tell,
But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it;
And this I swear by blackest brook of hell,
I am no pick-purse of another’s wit.
Who falls it then, that with so smooth an ease
My thoughts I speak, and what I speak doth flow
In verse, and that my verse best wits doth please ?
Guess me the cause—what is it thus 2–ſye, no
Or so?—much less. How then P sure thus it is,
My lips are sweet, inspir'd with STELLA's kiss.
X.
Of all the kings that ever here did reign,
Edward, named Fourth, as first in praise I name.
Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain—
Although less giſts imp feathers oft on Fame.
Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame
His sire's revenge, join'd with a kingdom's gain;
And, gain’d by Mars could yet mad Mars so tame,
That Balance weigh’d what Sword did late obtain,
Nor that he made the Floure-de-luce so 'fraid,
Though strongly hedged, of bloody Lions' paws,
That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid.
Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause—
But only, for this worthy knight durst prove
To lose his crown rather than fail his love.
XI.
O happy Thames, that didst my STELLA bear,
I say thyself, with many a smiling line
Upon thy cheerful ſace, Joy's livery wear,
While those fair planets on thy streams did shine;
The boat for joy could not to dance forbear,
While wanton winds, with beauty so divine
Ravish'd, stay’d not, till in her golden hair
They did themselves (O sweetest prison) twine.
And ſain those AEol’s youth there would their stay
Have made; but, ſorced by nature still to fly,
First did with puffing kiss those locks display.
She, so dishevell’d, blush'd; from window I
With sight thereof cried out, O fair disgrace,
Let Honour's self to thee grant highest place |
250 THE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
XII,
Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be;
And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet,
Tempers her words to trampling horses’ feet,
More soft than to a chamber melody;
Now blessed You bear onward blessed Me
To Her, where I my heart safe left shall meet,
My Muse and I must you of duty greet
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully.
Be you still fair, honour’d by public heed,
By no encroachment wrong’d, nor time forgot;
Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed.
And that you know, I envy you no lot
Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss,
Hundreds of years you STELLA's feet may kiss.
Of the foregoing, the first, the second, and the last sonnet,
are my favourites. But the general beauty of them all is,
that they are so perfectly characteristical. The spirit of
“learning and of chivalry,”—of which union, Spenser has
entitled Sydney to have been the “president,”—shines
through them. I confess I can see nothing of the “jejune.”
or “frigid” in them ; much less of the “stiff” and
“Cumbrous”—which I have sometimes heard objected to
the Arcadia. The verse runs off swiftly and gallantly. It
might have been tuned to the trumpet; or tempered (as
himself expresses it) to “trampling horses' feet.” They
abound in felicitous phrases—
“O heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face”—
8th Sonnel.
“ — Sweet pillows, sweetest bed;
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light;
A rosy garland, and a weary head.”
- 2nd Sonnet.
“ —— That sweet enemy, France”—
5th Sonnet.
But they are not rich in words only, in vague and un-
localised feelings—the failing too much of some poetry of the
present day—they are full, material, and circumstantiated.
Time and place appropriates every one of them. It is not
a fever of passion wasting itself upon a thin diet of dainty
THE AESSA YS OF EZZA. 251
words, but a transcendent passion pervading and illuminat-
ing action, pursuits, studies, feats of arms, the opinions of
contemporaries, and his judgment of them. An historical
thread runs through them, which almost affixes a date to
them ; marks the zwhen and zwhere they were written.
I have dwelt the longer upon what I conceive the merit
of these poems, because I have been hurt by the wanton-
ness (I wish I could treat it by a gentler name) with which
W. H. takes every occasion of insulting the memory of Sir
Philip Sydney. But the decisions of the Author of Table
Talk, etc. (most profound and subtle where they are, as for
the most part, just) are more safely to be relied upon, on
Subjects and authors he has a partiality for, than on such as
he has conceived an accidental prejudice against. Milton
wrote sonnets, and was a king-hater; and it was congenial
perhaps to sacrifice a courtier to a patriot. But I was
unwilling to lose a fine idea from my mind. The noble
images, passions, sentinents, and poetical delicacies of
character, scattered all over the Arcadia (spite of Some
stiffness and encumberment), justify to me the character
which his contemporaries have left us of the writer. I can-
not think with the Critic, that Sir Philip Sydney was that
op/roãrious thing which a foolish nobleman in his insolent
hostility chose to term him. I call to mind the epitaph
made on him, to guide me to juster thoughts of him ; and
I repose upon the beautiful lines in the “Friend's Passion
for his Astrophel,” printed with the Elegies of Spenser
and others:
“You knew—who knew not Astrophel?
(That I should live to say I knew,
And have not in possession still !)—
Things known permit me to renew—
Of him you know his merit such,
I cannot say—you hear—too much.
Within these woods of Arcady
He chief delight and pleasure took ;
And on the mountain Partheny,
Upon the crystal liquid brook,
The Muses met him every day,
That taught him sing, to write, and Say.
252 THE AESSA VS OF E//A.
When he descended down the mount,
His personage seemed most divine:
A thousand graces one might count
Upon his lovely cheerful eyne.
To hear him speak, and sweetly smile,
You were in Paradise the while.
A sweet attractive Kind of grace;
A full assurance given by looks;
Continual comfort in a face,
Zhe lineaments of Gospel books—
I trow that count'nance cannot lye,
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.
Above all others this is he,
Which erst apprověd in his song,
That love and honour might agree,
And that pure love will do no wrong.
Sweet Saints, it is no sin or blame
To love a man of virtuous name.
Did never love so sweetly breathe
In any mortal breast before;
Did never Muse inspire beneath
A Poet's brain with finer store I
He wrote of Love with high conceit,
And Beauty rear'd above her height.”
Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief running
into rage) in the Poem,-the last in the collection accom-
panying the above, from which internal testimony I believe
to be Lord Brooke's, beginning with “Silence augmenteth
grief,”—and then seriously ask himself, whether the subject
of such absorbing and confounding regrets could have been
that thing which Lord Oxford termed him.
T H E TO M BS IN T H E A B B E Y.
IN A LETTER TO R— S- ESQ.
THOUGH in some points of doctrine, and perhaps of
discipline, I am diffident of lending a perfect assent to
that church which you have so worthily historifted, yet may
THE ESSA YS OF EDAA. 253
the ill time never come to me, when with a chilled heart, or
a portion of irreverent sentiment, I shall enter her beautiful
and time-hallowed edifices. Judge then of my mortification
when, after attending the choral anthems of last Wednesday
at Westminster, and being desirous of renewing my acquaint-
ance, after lapsed years, with the tombs and antiquities there,
I found myself excluded; turned out like a dog, or some
profane person, into the Common street, with feelings not
very congenial to the place, or to the solemn service which
I had been listening to. It was a jar after that music.
You had your education at Westminster; and doubtless
among those dim aisles and cloisters, you must have gathered
much of that devotional feeling in those young years, on
which your purest mind feeds still—and may it feed . The
antiquarian spirit, strong in you, and gracefully blending
ever with the religious, may have been sown in you among
those wrecks of splendid mortality. You owe it to the
place of your education; you owe it to your learned
fondness for the architecture of your ancestors; you owe it
to the venerableness of your ecclesiastical establishment,
which is daily lessened and called in question through these
practices—to speak aloud your sense of them; never to
desist raising your voice against them, till they be totally
done away with and abolished ; till the doors of Westminster
Abbey be no longer closed against the decent, though low-
in-purse enthusiast, or blameless devotee, who must commit
an injury against his family economy, if he would be indulged
with a bare admission within its walls. You owe it to the
decencies, which you wish to see maintained in its impressive
services, that our Cathedral be no longer an object of
inspection to the poor at those times only, in which they
must rob from their attendance on the worship every minute
which they can bestow upon the fabric. In vain the public
prints have taken up this subject, in vain such poor nameless
writers as myself express their indignation. . A word from
you, sir—a hint in your Journal—would be sufficient to
fling open the doors of the Beautiful Temple again, as we
can remember them when we were boys. At that time of
254 7THE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
life, what would the imaginative faculty (such as it is) in
both of us, have suffered, if the entrance to so much
reflection had been obstructed by the demand of so much
silver !—if we had scraped it up to gain an occasional
admission (as we certainly should have done) would the
sight of those old tombs have been as impressive to us
(while we had been weighing anxiously prudence against
sentiment) as when the gates stood open as those of the
adjacent Park; when we could walk in at any time, as
the mood brought us, for a shorter or longer time, as that
lasted P Is the being shown over a place the same as
silently for ourselves detecting the genius of it? In no part
of our beloved Abbey now can a person find entrance (out
of service time) under the sum of two shillings. The rich
and the great will Smile at the anticlimax, presumed to lie in
these two short words. But you can tell them, sir, how
much quiet worth, how much capacity for enlarged feeling,
how much taste and genius, may coexist, especially in youth,
with a purse incompetent to this demand.—A respected
friend of ours, during his late visit to the metropolis,
presented himself for admission to St. Paul's. At the same
time a decently clothed man, with as decent a wife, and
child, were bargaining for the same indulgence. The price
was only twopence each person. The poor but decent man
hesitated, desirous to go in ; but there were three of them,
and he turned away reluctantly. Perhaps he wished to
have seen the tomb of Nelson. Perhaps the interior of the
Cathedral was his object. But in the state of his finances,
even sixpence might reasonably seem too much. Tell the
Aristocracy of the country (no man can do it more impress-
ively); instruct them of what value these insignificant
pieces of money, these minims to their sight, may be to
their humbler brethren. Shame these Sellers out of the
Temple. Stifle not the suggestions of your better nature
with the pretext, that an indiscriminate admission would
expose the Tombs to violation. Remember your boy-days.
Did you ever see, or hear, of a mob in the Abbey, while it
was free to all P Do the rabble come there, or trouble their
THE ESSA VS OF EAAA. 255
heads about such speculations P. It is all that you can do
to drive them into your churches; they do not voluntarily
offer themselves. They have, alas ! no passion for antiqui-
ties; for tomb of king or prelate, Sage or poet. If they
had, they would be no longer the rabble.
For forty years that I have known the Fabric, the only
well-attested charge of violation adduced, has been—a
ridiculous dismemberment committed upon the effigy of
that amiable spy, Major André. And is it for this—the
wanton mischief of some schoolboy, fired perhaps with raw
notions of Transatlantic Freedom—or the remote possibility
of such a mischief occurring again, so easily to be prevented
by stationing a constable within the walls, if the vergers are
incompetent to the duty—is it upon such wretched pretences,
that the people of England are made to pay a new Peter's
Pence, so long abrogated; or must content themselves with
contemplating the ragged exterior of their Cathedral? The
mischief was done about the time that you were a scholar
there. Do you know anything about the unfortunate relic P
AMICUS REDIVIVUS,
“Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?”
I Do not know when I have experienced a stranger sensa-
tion, than on seeing my old friend G. D., who had been
paying me a morning visit a few Sundays back, at my cottage
at Islington, upon taking leave, instead of turning down the
right-hand path by which he had entered—with staff in
hand, and at noon-day, deliberately march right forwards
into the midst of the stream that runs by us, and totally
disappear.
A spectacle like this at dusk would have been appalling
enough ; but, in the broad open daylight, to witness such an
unreserved motion towards self-destruction in a valued friend,
took from me all power of speculation.
256 Z}/E ESSA VS OF AEAAA.
How I found my feet, I know not. Consciousness was
quite gone. Some spirit, not my own, whirled me to the
spot. I remember nothing but the silvery apparition of a
good white head emerging; nigh which a staff (the hand
unseen that wielded it) pointed upwards, as feeling for the
skies. In a moment (if time was in that time) he was on
my shoulders, and I—freighted with a load more precious
than he who bore Anchises.
And here I cannot but do justice to the officious zeal of
Sundry passers-by, who albeit arriving a little too late to
participate in the honours of the rescue, in philanthropic
shoals came thronging to communicate their advice as to
the recovery; prescribing variously the application, or non-
application of salt, etc., to the person of the patient. Life
meantime was ebbing fast away, amidst the stifle of con-
flicting judgments, when one, more sagacious than the rest
by a bright thought, proposed sending for the doctor. Trite
as the counsel was, and impossible as one should think, to
be missed on, shall I confess?—in this emergency, it was
to me as if an Angel had spoken. Great previous exertions
—and mine had not been inconsiderable—are commonly
followed by a debility of purpose. This was a moment of
irresolution.
Monoculus—for so, in default of catching his true name,
I choose to designate the medical gentleman who now
appeared—is a grave middle-aged person, who, without
having studied at the college, or truckled to the pedantry of
a diploma, hath employed a great portion of his valuable time
in experimental processes upon the bodies of unfortunate
fellow-creatures, in whom the vital spark, to mere vulgar
thinking, would seem extinct, and lost for ever. He omitteth
no occasion of obtruding his services, from a case of common-
surfeit-suffocation to the ignobler obstructions, sometimes
induced by a too wilful application of the plant Cannabis
outwardly. But though he declineth not altogether these
drier extinctions, his occupation tendeth for the most part
to water-practice; for the convenience of which, he hath
judiciously fixed his quarters near the grand repository of
ZTAZZ /2.SSA VS OF AE/C/A, 257
the stream mentioned, where, day and night, from his little
watch-tower, at the Middleton's Head, he listeneth to detect
the wrecks of drowned mortality—partly, as he saith, to be
upon the spot—and partly, because the liquids which he
useth to prescribe to himself and his patients, on these
distressing occasions, are ordinarily more conveniently to be
found at these common hostelries, than in the shops and
phials of the apothecaries. His ear hath arrived to such
finesse by practice, that it is reported, he can distinguish a
plunge at a half furlong distance; and can tell if it be casual
or deliberate. He weareth a medal, suspended over a suit,
originally of a sad brown, but which, by time, and frequency
of nightly divings has been dinged into a true professional
sable. He passeth by the name of Doctor, and is remark-
able for wanting his left eye. His remedy—after a sufficient
application of warm blankets, friction, etc., is a simple
tumbler or more, of the purest Cognac, with water, made as
hot as the convalescent can bear it. Where he findeth, as
in the case of my friend, a squeamish subject, he conde-
scendeth to be the taster, and showeth, by his own example,
the innocuous nature of the prescription. Nothing can be
more kind or encouraging than this procedure. It addeth
confidence to the patient, to see his medical adviser go
hand in hand with himself in the remedy. When the
doctor swalloweth his own draught, what peevish invalid can
refuse to pledge him in the potion ? In fine, MONOCULUs
is a humane, sensible man, who, for a slender pittance,
scarce enough to sustain life, is content to wear it out in the
endeavour to save the lives of others—his pretensions so
moderate, that with difficulty I could press a crown upon
him, for the price of restoring the existence of such an
invaluable creature to Society as G. D.
It was pleasant to observe the effect of the subsiding
alarm upon the nerves of the dear absentee. It seemed to
have given a shake to memory, calling up notice after
notice, of all the providential deliverances he had experi-
enced in the course of his long and innocent life. Sitting
up in my couch—my couch which, naked and void of
I7
258 ZTHE AESSA YS OF EAAA.
furniture hitherto, for the salutary repose which it adminis-
tered, shall be honoured with costly vallance, at some price,
and henceforth be a state-bed at Colebrook,--he discoursed
of marvellous escapes—by carelessness of nurses—by pails
of gelid, and kettles of the boiling element, in infancy—by
orchard pranks, and Snapping twigs, in Schoolboy frolics—
by descent of tiles at Trumpington, and of heavier tomes
at Pembroke—by studious watchings, inducing frightful
vigilance, by want, and the fear of want, and all the sore
throbbings of the learned head.—Anon, he would burst out
into little fragments of chaunting—of songs long ago—ends
of deliverance hymns, not remembered before since child-
hood, but coming up now, when his heart was made tender
as a child's—for the fremor cordis, in the retrospect of a
recent deliverance, as in a case of impending danger, acting
upon an innocent heart, will produce a self-tenderness,
which we should do ill to christen cowardice; and Shak-
speare, in the latter crisis, has made his good Sir Hugh to
remember the sitting by Babylon, and to mutter of shallow
r1VerS.
Waters of Sir Hugh Middleton—what a spark you were
like to have extinguished for ever ! Your salubrious streams
to this City, for now near two centuries, would hardly have
atoned for what you were in a moment washing away.
Mockery of a river—liquid artifice—wretched conduit!
henceforth rank with canals and sluggish aqueducts. Was
it for this, that, Smit in boyhood with the explorations of
that Abyssinian traveller, I paced the vales of Amwell to
explore your tributary springs, to trace your salutary waters
sparkle through green Hertfordshire, and cultured Enfield
parks?—Ye have no swans—no Naiads—no river God—or
did the benevolent hoary aspect of my friend tempt ye to
suck him in, that ye might also have the tutelary genius of
your waters?
Had he been drowned in Cam, there would have been
some consonancy in it; but what willows had ye to wave
and rustle over his moist Sepulchre P-Or, having no name,
besides that unmeaning assumption of eternal movičy, did ye
ZTAZZ A.SSA VS OF AZZZA. 259
think to get one by the noble prize, and henceforth to be
termed the STREAM DYERIAN ?
“And could such spacious virtue find a grave
Beneath the imposthumed bubble of a wave?”
I protest, George, you shall not venture out again—no,
not by daylight—without a sufficient pair of spectacles—in
your musing moods especially. Your absence of mind we
have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in
question by it. You shall not go wandering into Euripus
with Aristotle, if we can help it. Fie, man, to turn dipper at
your years, after your many tracts in favour of sprinkling only!
I have nothing but water in my head o' nights since this
frightful accident. Sometimes I am with Clarence in his
dream. At others, I behold Christian beginning to sink,
and crying out to his good brother Hopeful (that is to me),
“I sink in deep waters; the billows go over my head, all
the waves go over me. Selah.” Then I have before me
Palinurus, just letting go the steerage. I cry out too late to
save. Next follow—a mournful procession—suicida/ faces,
saved against their wills from drowning | dolefully trailing a
length of reluctant gratefulness, with ropy weeds pendant
from locks of watchet hue—constrained Lazari—Pluto's
half-subjects—stolen fees from the grave—bilking Charon
of his fare. At their head Arion—or is it G. D. P-in his
singing garments marcheth singly, with harp in hand, and
votive garland, which Machaon (or Dr. Hawes) snatcheth
straight, intending to suspend it to the stern God of Sea.
Then follow dismal streams of Lethe, in which the half-
drenched on earth are constrained to drown downright, by
wharves where Ophelia twice acts her muddy death.
And, doubtless, there is some notice in that invisible
world, when one of us approacheth (as my friend did so
lately) to their inexorable precincts. When a soul knocks
once, twice, at death's door, the sensation aroused within
the palace must be considerable; and the grim Feature, by
modern science so often dispossessed of his prey, must have
learned by this time to pity Tantalus.
26o THE AESSA YS OF EAE/A.
A pulse assuredly was felt along the line of the Elysian
shades, when the near arrival of G. D. was announced by
no equivocal indications. From their seats of Asphodel
arose the gentler and the graver ghosts—poet, or historian
—of Grecian or of Roman lore—to crown with unfading
chaplets the half-finished love-labours of their unwearied
scholiast. Him Markland expected—him Tyrwhitt hoped
to encounter—him the sweet lyrist of Peter House, whom
he had barely seen upon earth,” with newest airs prepared
to greet ; and, patron of the gentle Christ's boy, who
should have been his patron through life—the mild Askew,
with longing aspirations, leaned foremost from his venerable
AEsculapian chair, to welcome into that happy company the
matured virtues of the man, whose tender Scions in the boy
he himself upon earth had so prophetically fed and watered.
BLAKESMOOR IN H_SHIRE,
I Do not know a pleasure more affecting than to range at
will over the deserted apartments of some fine old family
mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a better
passion than envy : and contemplations on the great and
good, whom we fancy in succession to have been its inhabi-
tants, weave for us illusions, incompatible with the bustle
of modern occupancy, and vanities of foolish present
aristocracy. The same difference of feeling, I think, attends
us between entering an empty and a crowded church.
In the latter it is chance but some present human frailty—
an act of inattention on the part of some of the auditory—
or a trait of affectation, or worse, vain-glory, on that of the
preacher—puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonising the
place and the occasion. But would'st thou know the beauty
of holiness?—go alone on some week-day, borrowing the
* GRAIUM famſum zidit.
ZTAZ2 AESSA VS OF AE//4. 26I
keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some
country church : think of the piety that has kneeled there—
the congregations, old and young, that have found consola-
tion there—the meek pastor—the docile parishioner. With
no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons,
drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thyself become
as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and
weep around thee.
Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going
some few miles out of my road to look upon the remains
of an old great house with which I had been impressed in
this way in infancy. I was apprised that the owner of it
had lately pulled it down; still I had a vague notion that it
could not all have perished, that so much solidity with
magnificence could not have been crushed all at once into
the mere dust and rubbish which I found it.
The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand
indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced it
to—an antiquity.
I was astonished at the indistinction of everything.
Where had stood the great gates ? What bounded the
courtyard P. Whereabout did the out-houses commence P a
few bricks only lay as representatives of that which was so
stately and so spacious.
Death does not shrink up his human victim at this rate.
The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their proportion.
Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their process
of destruction, at the plucking of every panel I should have
felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to
them to spare a plank at least out of the cheerful store-room,
in whose hot window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley,
with the grass-plot before, and the hum and flappings of
that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it about me—it is
in mine ears now, as oft as Summer returns; or a panel of
the yellow room. -
Why, every plank and panel of that house for me had
magic in it. The tapestried bedrooms—tapestry so much
better than painting—not adorning merely, but peopling the
262 TAZA, ZSSA VS OF E/.../4.
wainscots—at which childhood ever and anon would steal
and look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as quickly) to
exercise its tender courage in a momentary eye-encounter
with those stern bright visages, staring reciprocally—all
Ovid on the walls, in colours vivider than his descriptions.
Actaeon in mid sprout, with the unappeasable prudery of
Diana; and the still more provoking, and almost culinary
coolness of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately divesting
of Marsyas.
Then, that haunted room—in which old Mrs. Battle died
—whereinto I have crept, but always in the daytime, with a
passion of fear; and a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, to
hold communication with the past.—Hozy shall they build
it up again?
It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted but
that traces of the splendour of past inmates were everywhere
apparent. Its furniture was still standing—even to the
tarnished gilt leather battledores, and crumbling feathers
of shuttlecocks in the nursery, which told that children had
once played there. But I was a lonely child, and had the
range at will of every apartment, knew every nook and
corner, wondered and worshipped everywhere.
The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of
thought, as it is the feeder of love, and silence and admira-
tion. So strange a passion for the place possessed me in
those years, that, though there lay—I shame to say how
few roods distant from the mansion—half hid by trees, what
I judged some romantic lake, such was the spell which
bound me to the house, and such my carefulness not to
pass its strict and proper precincts, that the idle waters lay
unexplored for me; and not till late in life, curiosity pre-
vailing over elder devotion, I found, to my astonishment,
a pretty brawling brook had been the Lacus Incognitus of
my infancy. Variegated views, extensive prospects—and
those at no great distance from the house—I was told of
such—what were they to me, being out of the boundaries of
my Eden P-So far from a wish to roam, I would have
drawn, methought, still closer the fences of my chosen
THE ESSA VS OF EAE ZA. 263
prison; and have been hemmed in by a yet securer cincture
of those excluding garden walls. I could have exclaimed
with that garden-loving poet—
“Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines;
Curl me about, ye gadding vines;
And oh so close your circles lace,
That I may never leave this place;
But, lest your fetters prove too weak,
Ere I your silken bondage break,
Do you, O brambles, chain me too,
And, courteous briars, nail me through.”
I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug firesides—the
low-built roof–parlours ten feet by ten—frugal boards, and
all the homeliness of home—these were the condition of my
birth—the wholesome soil which I was planted in. Yet,
without impeachment to their tenderest lessons, I am not
Sorry to have had glances of something beyond; and to
have taken, if but a peep, in childhood, at the contrasting
accidents of a great fortune.
To have the feeling of gentility, it is not necessary to
have been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be had
on cheaper terms than to be obliged to an importunate race
of ancestors; and the coatless antiquary in his unemblazoned
cell, revolving the long line of a Mowbray's or De Clifford's
pedigree, at those sounding names may warm himself into
as gay a vanity as those who do inherit them. The claims
of birth are ideal merely, and what herald shall go about to
strip me of an idea P Is it trenchant to their swords P can
it be hacked off as a spur can P or torn away like a tarnished
garter P
What, else, were the families of the great to us? what
pleasure should we take in their tedious genealogies, or
their capitulatory brass monuments P What to us the
uninterrupted current of their bloods, if our own did not
answer within us to a cognate and correspondent elevation.
Or wherefore, else, O tattered and diminished 'Scutcheon
that hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely stairs,
* Marvell on Appleton House, to the Lord Fairfax.
264 ZTAE//Z ESSA VS OF AZZZA.
BLAKESMOOR 1 have I in childhood so oft stood poring
upon thy mystic characters—thy emblematic supporters,
with their prophetic “Resurgam ”—till, every dreg of
peasantry purging off, I received into myself Very Gentility?
Thou Wert first in my morning eyes; and of nights, hast
detained my steps from bedward, till it was but a step from
gazing at thee to dreaming on thee.
This is the only true gentry by adoption ; the veritable
change of blood, and not, as empirics have fabled, by
transfusion.
Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid trophy,
I knew not, I inquired not ; but its fading rags, and colours
Cobweb-stained, told that its subject was of two centuries
back.
And what if my ancestor at that date was some Damoetas
—feeding flocks, not his own, upon the hills of Lincoln—
did I in less earnest vindicate to myself the family trap-
pings of this once proud AEgon P−repaying by a backward
triumph the insults he might possibly have heaped in his
lifetime upon my poor pastoral progenitor.
If it were presumption so to speculate, the present
Owners of the mansion had least reason to complain.
They had long forsaken the old house of their fathers for
a newer trifle; and I was left to appropriate to myself
what images I could pick up, to raise my fancy, or to soothe
my vanity.
I was the true descendant of those old W S ; and
not the present family of that name, who had fled the old
waste places.
Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, which
as I have gone over, giving them in fancy my own family
name, one—and then another—would seem to Smile, reach-
ing forward from the canvas, to recognise the new relation-
ship; while the rest looked grave, as it seemed, at the
vacancy in their dwelling, and thoughts of fled posterity.
That Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and a
lamb–that hung next the great bay window—with the
bright yellow H shire hair, and eye of watchet hue—so
ZTA//2 /2.SSA VS OF EAE/A. 265
like my Alice —I am persuaded she was a true Elia—
Mildred Elia, I take it.
Mine too, BLAKESMOOR, was thy noble Marble Hall,
with its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Caesars—stately
busts in marble—ranged round: of whose countenances,
young reader of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero,
I remember, had most of my wonder ; but the mild Galba
had my love. There they stood in the coldness of death,
yet freshness of immortality.
Mine too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of
authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror of
luckless poacher, or self-forgetful maiden—so common
since, that bats have roosted in it.
Mine too—whose else?—the costly fruit-garden, with its
Sun-baked southern wall; the ampler pleasure-garden, rising
backwards from the house in triple terraces, with flower-pots
now of palest lead, save that a speck here and there, saved
from the elements, bespake their pristine state to have been
gilt and glittering ; the verdant quarters backwarder still ;
and, stretching still beyond, in old formality, the firry
wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel, and the day-long
murmuring woodpigeon, with that antique image in the
centre, God or Goddess I wist not ; but child of Athens
or old Rome paid never a sincerer worship to Pan or to
Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to that fragmental
mystery.
Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too fer-
vently in your idol worship, walks and windings of BLAKES-
MOOR 1 for this, or what sin of mine, has the plough passed
over your pleasant places P I sometimes think that as men,
when they die, do not die all, so of their extinguished habi-
tations there may be a hope—a germ to be revivified.
CAPTAIN JACKSON,
AMONG the deaths of our obituary for this month, I observe
with concern “At his cottage on the Bath road, Captain
Jackson.” The name and attribution are common enough;
but a feeling like reproach persuades me, that this could
have been no other in fact than my dear old friend, who
Some five-and-twenty years ago rented a tenement, which he
was pleased to dignify with the appellation here used, about
a mile from Westbourne Green. Alack, how good men,
and the good turns they do us, slide out of memory, and
are recalled but by the surprise of some such sad memento
as that which now lies before us !
He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, with a
wife and two grown-up daughters, whom he maintained
with the port and notions of gentlewomen upon that slender
professional allowance. Comely girls they were too.
And was I in danger of forgetting this man?—his
cheerful suppers—the noble tone of hospitality, when first
you set your foot in the cottage—the anxious ministerings
about you, where little or nothing (God knows) was to be
ministered.—Althea's horn in a poor platter—the power of
self-enchantment, by which, in his magnificent wishes to
entertain you, he multiplied his means to bounties.
You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed a
bare scrag—cold savings from the foregone meal—remnant
hardly sufficient to send a mendicant from the door con-
tented. But in the copious will—the revelling imagination
of your host—the “mind, the mind, Master Shallow,”
whole beeves were spread before you—hecatombs—no end
appeared to the profusion.
It was the widow’s cruse—the loaves and fishes; carving
could not lessen nor helping diminish it—the stamina were
left—the elemental bone still flourished, divested of its
accidents.
“Let us live while we can,” methinks I hear the open-
handed creature exclaim ; “while we have let us not want,”
266
7A/E ESSA VS OF E/./A. 267
“here is plenty left;” “want for nothing”—with many
more such hospitable sayings, the Spurs of appetite, and
old concomitants of smoking boards, and feast-oppressed
chargers. Then sliding a slender ratio of Single Gloucester
upon his wife's plate, or the daughter's, he would convey
the remnant rind into his own, with a merry quirk of “the
nearer the bone,” etc., and declaring that he universally
preferred the outside. For we had our table distinctions,
you are to know, and some of us in a manner sate above
the salt. None but his guest or guests dreamed of tasting
flesh luxuries at night, the fragments were were hospitibus
sacra. But of one thing or another there was always
enough, and leavings: only he would sometimes finish the
remainder crust, to show that he wished no savings.
Wine we had none ; nor, except on very rare occasions,
spirits; but the sensation of wine was there. Some thin
kind of ale I remember—“British beverage,” he would say !
“Push about, my boys;” “Drink to your sweethearts, girls.”
At every meagre draught a toast must ensue, or a song. All
the forms of good liquor were there, with none of the effects
wanting. Shut your eyes, and you would swear a capacious
bowl of punch was foaming in the centre, with beams of
generous Port or Maderia radiating to it from each of the
table corners. You got flustered, without knowing whence ;
tipsy upon words; and reeled under the potency of his
unperforming Bacchanalian encouragements.
We had our songs—“Why, Soldiers, Why”—and the
“British Grenadiers”—in which last we were all obliged to
bear chorus. Both the daughters sang. Their proficiency
was a nightly theme—the masters had given them—the
“no-expense” which he spared to accomplish them in a
science “so necessary to young women.” But then—they
could not sing “without the instrument.”
Sacred, and by me, never-to-be-violated, Secrets of
Poverty Should I disclose your honest aims at grandeur,
your makeshift efforts of magnificence? Sleep, sleep, with
all thy broken keys, if one of the bunch be extant ;
thrummed by a thousand ancestral thumbs dear cracked
268 7"HE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
Spinnet of dearer Louisa Without mention of mine, be
dumb, thou thinner accompanier of her thinner warble! A
veil be spread over the dear delighted face of the well-
deluded father, who now haply listening to cherubic notes,
Scarce feels sincerer pleasure than when she awakened thy
time-shaken chords responsive to the twitterings of that
slender image of a voice.
We are not without our literary talk either. It did not
extend far, but as far as it went, it was good. It was
bottomed well; had good grounds to go upon. In the
cottage was a room, which tradition authenticated to have
been the same in which Glover, in his occasional retire-
ments, had penned the greater part of his Leonidas. This
circumstance was nightly quoted, though none of the present
inmates, that I could discover, appeared ever to have met
with the poem in question. But that was no matter.
Glover had written there, and the anecdote was pressed into
the account of the family importance. It diffused a learned
air through the apartment, the little side casement of which
(the poet's study window), opened upon a superb view as
far as to the pretty spire of Harrow, over domains and
patrimonial acres, not a rood nor square yard whereof our
host could call his own, yet gave occasion to an immoderate
expansion of vanity shall I call it P−in his bosom, as he
showed them in a glowing summer evening. It was all his,
he took it all in, and communicated rich portions of it to
his guests. It was a part of his largess, his hospitality; it
was going over his grounds; he was lord for the time of
showing them, and you the implicit lookers-up to his
magnificence.
He was a juggler, who threw mists before your eyes—you
had no time to detect his fallacies. He would say “ hand
me the silver sugar tongs;” and, before you could discover
it was a single spoon, and that Ž/aſed, he would disturb and
captivate your imagination by a misnomer of “the urn " for
a teakettle ; or by calling a homely bench a sofa. Rich
men direct you to their furniture, poor ones divert you
from it; he neither did one nor the other, but by simply
THZ ZSSA VS OA' A' Z.Z.A. 269
assuming that everything was handsome about him, you were
positively at a demur what you did, or did not see, at the
cottage. With nothing to live on, he seemed to live on
everything. He had a stock of wealth in his mind; not
that which is properly termed Conſent, for in truth he was
not to be contained at all, but overflowed all bounds by the
force of a magnificent self-delusion.
Enthusiasm is catching; and even his wife, a sober native
of North Britain, who generally saw things more as they
were, was not proof against the continual collison of his
credulity. Her daughters were rational and discreet young
women ; in the main, perhaps, not insensible to their true
circumstances. I have seen them assume a thoughtful air
at times. But such was the preponderating opulence of his
fancy, that I am persuaded, not for any half-hour together,
did they ever look their own prospects fairly in the face.
There was no resisting the vortex of his temperament. His
riotous imagination conjured up handsome settlements
before their eyes, which kept them in the eye of the world
too, and seem at last to have realised themselves; for they
both have married since, I am told, more than respectably.
It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some
subjects, or I should wish to convey some notion of the
manner in which the pleasant creature described the circum-
stances of his own wedding-day. I faintly remember
something of a chaise and four, in which he made his entry
into Glasgow on that morning to fetch the bride home, or
carry her thither, I forget which. It so completely made
out the stanza of the old ballad—
“When we came down through Glasgow town,
We were a comely sight to see ;
My love was clad in black velvet,
And I myself in cramasie.”
I suppose it was the only occasion, upon which his own
actual splendour at all corresponded with the world’s notions
On that subject. In homely cart, or travelling caravan, by
whatever humble vehicle they chanced to be transported in
less prosperous days, the ride through Glasgow came back
27o THE ESSA YS OF AZZZA.
upon his fancy, not as a humiliating contrast, but as a fair
occasion for reverting to that one day's state. It seemed
an “equipage eterne” from which no power of fate or
fortune, once mounted, had power thereafter to dislodge
him.
There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon
indigent circumstances. To bully and swagger away the
sense of them before strangers, may not be always dis-
commendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, even when detected,
have more of our admiration than contempt. But for a
man to put the cheat upon himself; to play the Bobadil at
home; and, steeped in poverty up to the lips, to fancy
himself all the while chin-deep in riches, is a strain of
constitutional philosophy, and a mastery over fortune, which
was reserved for my old friend Captain Jackson.
BARBARA S-.
ON the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, I forget
which it was, just as the clock had struck one, Barbara
S , with her accustomed punctuality, ascended the long
rambling staircase, with awkward interposed landing-places,
which led to the office, or rather a sort of box with a desk
in it, whereat sat the then Treasurer of (what few of our
readers may remember) the old Bath Theatre. All over
the island it was the custom, and remains so I believe to
this day, for the players to receive their weekly stipend on
the Saturday. It was not much that Barbara had to claim.
This little maid had just entered her eleventh year; but
her important station at the theatre, as it seemed to her,
with the benefits which she felt to accrue from her pious
application of her small earnings, had given an air of
womanhood to her steps and to her behaviour. You would
have taken her to have been at least five years older.
Till latterly she had merely been employed in choruses,
THE ESSAYS OF EZZA. 271
or where children were wanted to fill up the scene. But
the manager, observing a diligence and adroitness in her
above her age, had for some few months past entrusted to
her the performance of whole parts. You may guess the
self-consequence of the promoted Barbara. She had already
drawn tears in young Arthur; had rallied Richard with
infantine petulance in the Duke of York; and in her turn
had rebuked that petulance when she was Prince of Wales.
She would have done the elder child in Morton's pathetic
after-piece to the life; but as yet the Children in the Wood
WaS not. -
Long after this little girl was grown an aged woman, I
have seen some of these small parts, each making two or
three pages at most, copied out in the rudest hand of the
then prompter, who doubtless transcribed a little more care-
fully and fairly for the grown-up tragedy ladies of the
establishment. But such as they were, blotted and
scrawled, as for a child’s use, she kept them all; and in the
zenith of her after-reputation it was a delightful sight to
behold them bound up in costliest Morocco, each single
—each small part making a book—with fine clasps, gilt
splashed, etc. She had conscientiously kept them as they
had been delivered to her; not a blot had been effaced
or tampered with. They were precious to her for their
affecting remembrancings. They were her principia, her
rudiments; the elementary atoms; the little steps by which
she pressed forward to perfection. “What,” she would say,
“could india-rubber, or a pumice stone, have done for these
darlings?”
I am in no hurry to begin my story—indeed I have little
or none to tell—so I will just mention an observation of
hers connected with that interesting time.
Not long before she died, I had been discoursing with
her on the quantity of real present emotion which a great
tragic performer experiences during acting. I ventured to
think, that though in the first instance such players must
have possessed the feelings which they so powerfully called
up in others, yet by frequent repetition those feelings must
272 7'HE ESSA VS OF AZZZA.
become deadened in great measure, and the performer trust
to the memory of past emotion, rather than express a
present one. She indignantly repelled the notion, that with
a truly great tragedian the operation, by which such effects
were produced upon an audience, could ever degrade itself
into what was purely mechanical. With much delicacy,
avoiding to instance in her self experience, she told me, that
So long ago as when she used to play the part of the Little
Son to Mrs. Porter's Isabella (I think it was) when that
impressive actress has been bending over her in some heart-
rending colloquy, she has felt real hot tears come trickling
from her, which (to use her powerful expression) have per-
fectly scalded her back.
I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter; but it
was some great actress of that day. The name is in-
different; but the fact of the scalding tears I most distinctly
remember.
I was always fond of the society of players, and am not
sure than an impediment in my speech (which certainly kept
me out of the pulpit) even more than certain personal dis-
qualifications, which are often got over in that profession,
did not prevent me at one time of life from adopting it. I
have had the honour (I must ever call it) once to have been
admitted to the tea-table of Miss Kelly. I have played at
serious whist with Mr. Liston. I have chatted with ever
good-humoured Mrs. Charles Kemble. I have conversed as
friend to friend with her accomplished husband. I have
been indulged with a classical conference with Macready;
and with a sight of the Player-picture gallery, at Mr.
Matthews's, when the kind owner, to remunerate me for my
love of the old actors (whom he loves so much), went over
it with me, supplying to his capital collection, what alone
the artist could not give them—voice; and their living
motion, Old tones, half-faded, of Dodd and Parsons and
Baddeley, have lived again for me at his bidding. Only
Edwin he could not restore to me. I have supped with
; but I am growing a coxcomb.
As I was about to say—at the desk of the then treasurer
ZTHAE AESSA VS OF EAE./A. 273
of the old Bath theatre—not Diamond's—presented herself
the little Barbara S tº
The parents of Barbara had been in reputable circum-
stances. The father had practised, I believe, as an apothe-
cary in the town. But his practice from causes which I feel
my own infirmity too sensibly that way to arraign—or
perhaps from that pure infelicity which accompanies some
people in their walk through life, and which it is impossible
to lay at the door of imprudence—was now reduced to
nothing. They were in fact in the very teeth of starvation,
when the manager, who knew and respected them in better
days, took the little Barbara into his company.
At the period I commenced with, her slender earnings
were the sole support of the family, including two younger
sisters. I must throw a veil over some mortifying circum-
stances. Enough to say, that her Saturday's pittance was the
only chance of a Sunday's (generally their only) meal of meat.
One thing I will only mention, that in some child’s part,
where in her theatrical character she was to sup off a roast
fowl (Ojoy to Barbara !) some comic actor, who was for the
night caterer for this dainty—in the misguided humour of
his part, threw over the dish such a quantity of salt (O grief
and pain of heart to Barbara !) that when he crammed a
portion of it into her mouth, she was obliged sputteringly to
reject it; and what with shame of her ill-acted part, and
pain of real appetite at missing such a dainty, her little heart
sobbed almost to breaking, till a flood of tears, which the
well-fed spectators were totally unable to comprehend,
mercifully relieved her.
This was the little starved, meritorious maid, who stood
before old Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for her Saturday's
payment.
Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old theatrical
people besides herself say, of all men least calculated for a
treasurer. He had no head for accounts, paid away at
random, kept scarce any books, and summing up at the
week's end, if he found himself a pound or so deficient, blest
himself that it was no worse.
I8
274 7 HAE AESSAYS OF EAE/A.
Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare half guinea.—
By mistake he popped into her hand a-whole one.
Barbara tripped away.
She was entirely unconscious at first of the mistake : God
knows, Ravenscroft would never have discovered it.
But when she had got down to the first of those uncouth
landing-places, she became sensible of an unusual weight of
metal pressing her little hand.
Now mark the dilemma.
She was by nature a good child. From her parents and
those about her she had imbibed no contrary influence.
But then they had taught her nothing. Poor men's Smoky
cabins are not always porticoes of moral philosophy. This
little maid had no instinct to evil, but then she might be
said to have no fixed principle. She had heard honesty
commended, but never dreamed of its application to her-
self. She thought of it as something which concerned
grown-up people—men and women. She had never known
temptation, or thought of preparing resistance against it.
Her first impulse was to go back to the old treasurer, and
explain to him his blunder. He was already so confused
with age, besides a natural want of punctuality, that she
would have had some difficulty in making him understand
it. She saw that in an instant. And then it was such a
bit of money ! and then the image of a larger allowance of
butcher's meat on their table next day came across her, till
her little eyes glistened, and her mouth moistened. But
then Mr. Ravenscroft had always been so good-natured,
had stood her friend behind the scenes, and even recom-
mended her promotion to some of her little parts. But
again the old man was reputed to be worth a world of
money. He was supposed to have fifty pounds a year clear
of the theatre. And then came staring upon her the figures
of her little stockingless and shoeless sisters. And when
she looked at her own neat white cotton stockings, which
her situation at the theatre had made it indispensable for
her mother to provide for her, with hard straining and
pinching from the family stock, and thought how glad she
ZTHE ESSA YS OF AE/C/A. 275
should be to cover their poor feet with the same—and how
then they could accompany her to rehearsals, which they
had hitherto been precluded from doing, by reason of their
unfashionable attire, in these thoughts she reached the
second landing-place—the second, I mean from the top—
for there was still another left to traverse.
Now virtue support Barbara !
And that never-failing friend did step in—for at that
moment a strength not her own I have heard her say, was
revealed to her—a reason above reasoning—and without
her own agency, as it seemed (for she never felt her feet to
move) she found herself transported back to the individual
desk she had just quitted, and her hand in the old hand of
Ravenscroft, who in silence took back the refunded treasure,
and who had been sitting (good man) insensible to the
lapse of minutes, which to her were anxious ages; and from
that moment a deep peace fell upon her heart, and she
knew the quality of honesty.
A year or two's unrepining application to her profession
brightened up the feet and the prospects of her little
sisters, set the whole family upon their legs again, and
released her from the difficulty of discussing moral dogmas
upon a landing-place.
I have heard her say, that it was a surprise, not much
short of mortification to her, to see the coolness with which
the old man pocketed the difference, which had caused her
such mortal throes.
This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, from the
mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,” then sixty-seven years of
age (she died soon after); and to her struggles upon this
childish occasion I have sometimes ventured to think her
indebted for that power of rending the heart in the repre-
sentation of conflicting emotions, for which in after-years
she was considered as little inferior (if at all so in the part
of Lady Randolph) even to Mrs. Siddons.
* The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she changed, by
successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, and Crawford. She
was Mrs. Crawford, a third time a widow, when I knew her,
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN.
“Sera tamen respexit
Libertas.” VIRGIL.
“A Clerk I was in London gay.”
O’KEEFE,
IF peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the
golden years of thy life—thy shining youth—in the irksome
confinement of an office; to have thy prison days prolonged
through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs
without hope of release or respite ; to have lived to forget
that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them
but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then only,
will you be able to appreciate my deliverance.
It is now six-and-thirty years since I took my seat at the
desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy was the transition at
fourteen from the abundant play-time, and the frequently-
intervening vacations of School-days, to the eight, nine, and
Sometimes ten hours' a day attendance at a counting-house.
But time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually
became content—doggedly contented, as wild animals in
Cages.
It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sundays,
admirable as the institution of them is for purposes of
worship, are for that very reason the very worst adapted of
days for unbending and recreation.” In particular, there is
a gloom for me attendant upon a city Sunday, a weight in
the air. I miss the cheerful cries of London, the music,
* Our ancestors, the noble old Puritans of Cromwell's day, could
distinguish between a day of religious rest and a day of recreation; and
while they exacted a rigorous abstinence from all amusements (even to
the walking out of nurserymaids with their little charges in the fields)
upon the Sabbath; in the lieu of the superstitious observance of the
saints’ days, which they abrogated, they humanely gave to the appren-
tices and poorer sort of people every alternate Thursday for a day of
entire sport and recreation. A strain of piety and policy to be com-
mended above the proſane mockery of the Stuarts and their book of
Sports,
276
TAZZ ZSSA VS OA’ ZZ/A. 277
and the ballad-singers—the buzz and stirring murmur of
the streets. Those eternal bells depress me. The closed
shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all the glittering and
endless succession of knacks and gewgaws, and Osten-
tatiously displayed wares of tradesmen, which make a
week-day saunter through the less busy parts of the metro-
polis so delightful—are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously
to idle over—no busy faces to recreate the idle man who
contemplates them ever passing by—the very face of
business a charm by contrast to his temporary relaxation
from it. Nothing to be seen but unhappy countenances—
or half-happy at best—of emancipated 'prentices and little
tradesfolks, with here and there a servant-maid that has got
leave to go out, who slaving all the week, with the habit
has lost almost all the capacity of enjoying a free hour; and
livelily expressing the hollowness of a day's pleasuring.
The very strollers in the fields on that day look anything
but comfortable.
But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day at
Christmas, with a full week in the summer to go and air
myself in my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last was
a great indulgence; and the prospect of its recurrence, I
believe, alone kept me up through the year, and made my
durance tolerable. But when the week came round, did
the glittering phantom of the distance keep touch with me?
or rather was it not a series of seven uneasy days, spent in
restless pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find
out how to make the most of them P Where was the quiet,
where the promised rest? Before I had a taste of it, it was
vanished. I was at the desk again, counting upon the fifty-
one tedious weeks that must intervene before such another
snatch would come. Still the prospect of its coming threw
something of an illumination upon the darker side of my
captivity. Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have
sustained my thraldom.
Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever
been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of
incapacity for business. This, during my latter years, had
278 7THE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
increased to such a degree, that it was visible in all the
lines of my countenance. My health and my good spirits
flagged. I had perpetually a dread of some crisis, to which
I should be found unequal. Besides my daylight servitude,
I served over again all night in my sleep, and would wake
with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my accounts,
and the like. I was fifty years of age, and no prospect of
emancipation presented itself. I had grown to my desk,
as it were; and the wood had entered into my soul.
My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me upon
the trouble legible in my countenance; but I did not know
that it had raised the suspicions of any of my employers,
when, on the 5th of last month, a day ever to be remem-
bered by me, L , the junior partner in the firm, calling
me on one side, directly taxed me with my bad looks, and
frankly inquired the cause of them. So taxed, I honestly
made confession of my infirmity, and added that I was
afraid I should eventually be obliged to resign his service.
He spoke some words of course to hearten me, and there
the matter rested. A whole week I remained labouring
under the impression that I had acted imprudently in my
disclosure; that I had foolishly given a handle against
myself, and had been anticipating my own dismissal. A
week passed in this manner, the most anxious one, I verily
believe, in my whole life, when on the evening of the 12th
of April, just as I was about quitting my desk to go home (it
might be about eight o'clock) I received an awful summons
to attend the presence of the whole assembled firm in the
formidable back parlour. I thought, Now my time is surely
come, I have done for myself, I am going to be told that
they have no longer occasion for me. L–, I could see,
smiled at the terror I was in, which was a little relief to me,
—when to my utter astonishment B , the eldest partner,
began a formal harangue to me on the length 9f my services,
my very meritorious conduct during the whole of the time
(the deuce, thought I, how did he find out that? I protest
I never had the confidence to think as much). He went
on to descant on the expediency of retiring at a certain
THE ESSA VS OF AE/AA. 279
time of life (how my heart panted ) and asking me a few
questions as to the amount of my own property, of which I
have a little, ended with a proposal, to which his three
partners nodded a grave assent, that I should accept from
the house which I had served so well, a pension for life to
the amount of two-thirds of my accustomed salary—a magni-
ficent offer | I do not know what I answered between
Surprise and gratitude, but it was understood that I
accepted their proposal, and I was told that I was free from
that hour to leave their service. I stammered out a bow,
and at just ten minutes after eight I went home—for ever.
This noble benefit—gratitude forbids me to conceal their
names—I owe to the kindness of the most munificent
firm in the world—the house of Boldero, Merryweather,
Bosanquet, and Lacy.
“Asto perpetua ſ”
For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I
could only apprehend my felicity; I was too confused to
taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy,
and knowing that I was not. I was in the condition of a
prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a
forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself with
myself. It was like passing out of Time into Eternity—for
it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have his Time all to
himself. It seemed to me that I had more time on my
hands than I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor
in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I
could see no end of my vast possessions; I wanted some
steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time
for me. And here let me caution persons grown old in
active business, not lightly, nor without weighing their old
resources, to forego their customary employment all at once,
for there may be danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I
know that my resources are sufficient; and now that those
first giddy raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home-
feeling of the blessedness of my condition. I am in no
hurry. Having all holidays, I am as though I had none,
28o ZTAE/E ESSA YS OF EAE ZA,
If Time hung heavy upon me, I could walk it away; but I
do not walk all day long, as I used to do in those old
transient holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the most of
them. If Time were troublesome, I could read it away,
but I do not read in that violent measure, with which,
having no Time my own but candle-light Time, I used to
weary out my head and eyesight in bygone winters. I
walk, read, or scribble (as now) just when the fit seizes me.
I no longer hunt after pleasure; I let it come to me. I
am like the man
6 (; That's born, and has his years come to him
In some green desert.”
“Years,” you will say! “what is this superannuated
simpleton calculating upon P. He has already told us, he is
past fifty.”
I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out
of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and
not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow.
For that is the only true Time, which a man can properly
call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest,
though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other
people's time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long
or short, is at least multiplied to me, threefold. My ten
next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any pre-
ceding thirty. 'Tis a fair rule-of-three sum.
Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the com-
mencement of my freedom, and of which all traces are not
yet gone, one was, that a vast tract of time had intervened
since I quitted the counting-house. I could not conceive
it as an affair of yesterday. The partners, and the clerks,
with whom I had for so many years, and for so many hours
in each day of the year, been closely associated—being
suddenly removed from them—they seemed as dead to me.
There is a fine passage, which may serve to illustrate this
fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard, speaking of a
friend's death ;
7A/E AESSA VS OF AE//4. 281
£ 6 'Twas but just now he went away;
I have not since had time to shed a tear;
And yet the distance does the same appear
As if he had been a thousand years from me,
Time takes no measure in Eternity.”
To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to go
among them once or twice since ; to visit my old desk-
fellows—my co-brethren of the quill—that I had left below
in the state militant. Not all the kindness with which
they received me could quite restore me to that pleasant
familiarity, which I had heretofore enjoyed among them.
We cracked some of our old jokes, but methought they
went off but faintly. My old desk; the peg where I hung
my hat, were appropriated to another. I knew it must be,
but I could not take it kindly. D 1 take me, if I did
not feel some remorse—beast, if I had not, -at quitting my
old compeers, the faithful partners of my toil for six-and-
thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and
conundrums the ruggedness of my professional road. Had
it been so rugged then after all P or was I a coward simply?
Well, it is too late to repent ; and I also know, that these
suggestions are a common fallacy of the mind on such
occasions. But my heart smote me. I had violently
broken the bands betwixt us. It was at least not courteous.
I shall be some time before I get quite reconciled to the
separation. Farewell, old cronies, yet not for long, for
again and again I will come among ye, if I shall have your
leave. Farewell Ch , dry, sarcastic, and friendly
DO , mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly Pl 3.
officious to do, and to volunteer, good services !—and thou,
thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a Whittington
of old, stately House of Merchants; with thy labyrinthine
passages, and light-excluding, pent-up offices, where candles
for one-half the year supplied the place of the sun's light;
unhealthy contributor to my weal, stern fosterer of my
living, farewell ! In thee remain, and not in the obscure
collection of some wandering bookseller, my “works l’
There let them rest, as I do from my labours, piled on thy
\
282 7THAE AESSA VS OF AZZZA.
massy shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left,
and full as usefull My mantle I bequeath among ye.
A fortnight has passed since the date of my first communi-
cation. At that period I was approaching to tranquillity,
but had not reached it. I boasted of a calm indeed, but it
was comparative only. Something of the first flutter was
left; an unsettling sense of novelty; the dazzle to weak
eyes of unaccustomed light. I missed my old chains,
forsooth, as if they had been some necessary part of my
apparel. I was a poor Carthusian, from strict cellular
discipline suddenly by some revolution returned upon the
world. I am now as if I had never been other than my
own master. It is natural to me to go where I please, to
do what I please. I find myself at eleven o'clock in the
day in Bond Street, and it seems to me that I have been
Sauntering there at that very hour for years past. I digress
into Soho, to explore a book-stall. Methinks I have been
thirty years a collector. There is nothing strange nor new
in it. I find myself before a fine picture in the morning.
Was it ever otherwise P What is become of Fish Street
Hill P. Where is Fenchurch Street P Stones of old Mincing
Lane which I have worn with my daily pilgrimage for six-
and-thirty years, to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk
are your everlasting flints now vocal ? I indent the gayer
flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change time, and I am strangely
among the Elgin marbles. It was no hyperbole when I
ventured to compare the change in my condition to a pass-
ing into another world. Time stands still in a manner
to me. I have lost all distinction of season, I do not
know the day of the week, or of the month. Each day
used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the
foreign post days; in its distance from, or propinquity to,
the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Satur-
day nights’ sensations. The genius of each day was upon
me distinctly during the whole of it, affecting my appetite,
spirits, etc. The phantom of the next day, with the dreary
five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor Sabbath recrea-
tions. What charm has washed that Ethiop white? What
THE AESSA VS OF EAAA. 283
is gone of Black Monday? All days are the same, Sunday
itself—that unfortunate failure of a holiday as it too often
proved, what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care
to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it—is melted
down into a week-day. I can spare to go to church now,
without grudging the huge cantle which it used to seem to
cut out of the holiday. I have Time for everything. I
can visit a sick friend. I can interrupt a man of much
occupation when he is busiest. I can insult over him
with an invitation to take a day's pleasure with me to
Windsor this fine May-morning. It is Lucretian pleasure
to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind in the
world, carking and caring; like horses in a mill, drudging
on in the same eternal round—and what is it all for P [I
recite those verses of Cowley which so mightily agree with
my constitution –
“Business the frivolous pretence
Of human lusts to shake off innocence :
Business the grave impertinence :
Business the thing which I, of all things, hate:
Business the contradiction of my fate.”
Or I repeat my own lines, written in my clerk state:—
“Who first-invented work,” etc.—
O this divine leisure | Reader, if thou art furnished with
the old series of the “London,” turn incontinently to the
third volume (page 367), and you will see my present Con-
dition there touched in a “Wish’ by a daintier pen than
I can pretend to. I subscribe to that Sonnet toto corde.
A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too
little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him
NOTHING-TO-Do; he should do nothing. Man, I verily
believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I
am altogether for the life contemplative. Will no kindly
earthquake come and swallow up those accursed cotton
mills P. Take me that lumber of a desk there, and bowl it
down
“As low as to the fiends.”
284 ZTAZ2 AESSA VS OF /2/2/4.
I am no longer * * * * * *, clerk to the Firm of etc. I,
am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens.
I am already come to be known by my vacant face and
careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace, nor with
any settled purpose. I walk about ; not to and from.
They tell me, a certain cum dignitate air, that has been
buried so long with my other good parts, has begun to
shoot forth in my person. I grow into gentility perceptibly.
When I take up a newspaper, it is to read the state of the
opera. O/us operatum est. I have done all that I came
into this world to do. I have worked task-work, and have
the rest of the day to myself.]
THE CONVALESCENT.
A PRETTY severe fit of indisposition which, under the name
of a nervous fever, has made a prisoner of me for some
weeks past, and is but slowly leaving me, has reduced me
to an incapacity of reflecting upon any topic foreign to
itself. Expect no healthy conclusions from me this month,
reader; I can offer you only sick men's dreams.
And truly the whole state of sickness is such ; for what
else is it but a magnificent dream for a man to lie a-bed,
and draw daylight curtains about him ; and, shutting out
the sun, to induce a total oblivion of all the works which
are going on under it? To become insensible to all the
operations of life, except the beatings of one feeble pulse?
If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. How the
patient lords it there ! what caprices he acts without controll
how king-like he sways his pillow—tumbling, and tossing,
and shifting, and lowering, and thumping, and flatting, and
moulding it, to the ever-varying requisitions of his throbbin
temples. -
He changes sides oftener than a politician. Now he lies
full length, then half-length, obliquely, transversely, head
ZTA/E ESSA VS OF E/C/A. 285
and feet quite across the bed; and none accuses him of
tergiversation. Within the four curtains he is absolute.
They are his Mare Clausum.
How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to
himself! he is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfish-
ness is inculcated upon him as his only duty. 'Tis the Two
Tables of the Law to him. He has nothing to think of but
how to get well. What passes out of doors, or within them,
so he hear not the jarring of them, affects him not.
A little while ago he was greatly concerned in the event
of a law-suit, which was to be the making or the marring of
his dearest friend. He was to be seen trudging about upon
this man’s errand to fifty quarters of the town at Once,
jogging this witness, refreshing that solicitor. The cause
was to come on yesterday. He is absolutely as indifferent
to the decision, as if it were a question to be tried at Pekin.
Peradventure from some whispering, going on about the
house, not intended for his hearing, he picks up enough to
make him understand, that things went cross-grained in the
Court yesterday, and his friend is ruined. But the word
“friend,” and the word “ruin,” disturb him no more than
so much jargon. He is not to think of anything but how
to get better.
What a world of foreign cares are merged in that absorb-
ing consideration
He has put on the strong armour of sickness, he is
wrapped in the callous hide of suffering; he keeps his
sympathy, like some curious vintage, under trusty lock and
key, for his own use only.
He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to himself;
he yearneth over himself; his bowels are even melted
within him, to think what he suffers; he is not ashamed to
weep over himself.
He is for ever plotting how to do some good to himself;
studying little stratagems and artificial alleviations.
He makes the most of himself; dividing himself, by an
allowable fiction, into as many distinct individuals, as he
hath sore and sorrowing members. Sometimes he meditates
286 7"HAE AESSA VS OF AZ Z/A.
—as of a thing apart from him—upon his poor aching head,
and that dull pain which, dozing or waking, lay in it all the
past night like a log, or palpable substance of pain, not to
be removed without opening the very skull, as it seemed, to
take it thence. Or he pities his long, clammy, attenuated
fingers. He compassionates himself all over; and his bed
is a very discipline of humanity and tender heart.
He is his own sympathiser; and instinctively feels that
none can so well perform that office for him. He cares for
few spectators to his tragedy. Only that punctual face of
the old nurse pleases him, that announces his broths, and
his cordials. He likes it because it is so unmoved, and
because he can pour forth his feverish ejaculations before it
as unreservedly as to his bed-post.
To the world’s business he is dead. He understands not
what the callings and occupations of mortals are ; only he
has a glimmering conceit of some such thing, when the
doctor makes his daily call; and even in the lines of that
busy face he reads no multiplicity of patients, but solely
conceives of himself as the sick man. To what other
uneasy couch the good man is hastening, when he slips out
of his chamber, folding up his thin douceur so carefully for
fear of rustling—is no speculation which he can at present
entertain. He thinks only of the regular return of the same
phenomenon at the same hour to-morrow.
Household rumours touch him not. Some faint murmur,
indicative of life going on within the house, soothes him,
while he knows not distinctly what it is. He is not to
know anything, not to think of anything. Servants gliding
up or down the distant staircase, treading as upon velvet,
gently keep his ear awake, so long as he troubles not
himself further than with some feeble guess at their errands.
Exacter knowledge would be a burden to him : he can just
endure the pressure of conjecture. He opens his eye
faintly at the dull stroke of the muffled knocker, and closes
it again without asking “Who was it?” He is flattered by
a general notion that inquiries are making after him, but he
cares not to know the name of the inquirer. In the general
ZAZAZ ASSA VS OF EAE/A. 287
stillness, and awful hush of the house, he lies in state, and
feels his sovereignty.
To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives. Compare
the silent tread, and quiet ministry, almost by the eye, with
which he is served—with the careless demeanour, the
unceremonious goings in and out (slapping of doors, or
leaving them open) of the very same attendants, when he is
getting a little better—and you will confess, that from the
bed of sickness (throne let me rather call it) to the elbow-
chair of convalescence, is a fall from dignity, amounting to
a despotism.
How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine
stature where is now the space, which he occupied so
lately, in his own, in the family's eye P. The scene of his
regalities, his sick room, which was his presence chamber,
where he lay and acted his despotic fancies—how is it
reduced to a common bedroom | The trimness of the very
bed has something petty and unmeaning about it. It is
made every day. How unlike to that wavy, many-furrowed,
oceanic surface which it presented so short a time since,
when to make it was a service not to be thought of at
oftener than three or four day revolutions, when the patient
was with pain and grief to be lifted for a little while out of
it, to submit to the encroachments of unwelcome neatness,
and decencies which his shaken frame deprecated; then to
be lifted into it again, for another three or four days’ respite,
to flounder it out of shape again, while every fresh furrow
was an historical record of some shifting posture, some
uneasy turning, some seeking for a little ease; and the
shrunken skin scarce told a truer story than the crumpled
coverlid. -
Hushed are those mysterious sighs—those groans—so
much more awful, while we knew not from what caverns of
vast hidden suffering they proceeded. The Lernean pangs
are quenched. The riddle of sickness is solved; and
Philoctetes is become an ordinary personage.
Perhaps some relic of the sick man's dream of greatness
survives in the still lingering visitations of the medical
288 ZTHE AESSA VS OF AZZZA.
attendant. But how is he too changed with everything
else ! Can this be he—this man of news—of chat—of
anecdote—of everything but physic—can this be he who so
lately came between the patient and his cruel enemy, as on
Some Solemn embassy from nature, erecting herself into a
high meditating party?—Pshaw ’tis some old woman.
Farewell with him all that made sickness pompous—the
spell that hushed the household—the desert-like stillness,
felt through its inmost chambers—the mute attendance—
the inquiry by looks—the still softer delicacies of self
attention—the sole and single eye of distemper alonely
fixed upon itself—world thoughts excluded—the man a
world unto himself—his own theatre—
“What a speck is he dwindled into 1"
In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by the ebb of
sickness, yet far enough from the terra firma of established
health, your note, dear Editor, reached me, requesting—an
article. In Articulo Morţis thought I; but it is something
hard—and the quibble, wretched as it was, relieved me.
The summons, unseasonable as it appeared, seemed to link
me on again to the petty businesses of life, which I had lost
sight of; a gentle call to activity, however trivial: a whole-
some weaning from that preposterous dream of self-absorp-
tion—the puffy state of sickness—In which I confess to
have lain so long, insensible to the magazines and mon-
archies, of the world alike ; to its laws, and to its literature.
The hypochondriac flatus is subsiding; the acres, which in
imagination I had spread over—for the sick man swells in
the sole contemplation of his single sufferings, till he be-
comes a Tityus to himself, are wasting to a span ; and for
the giant of self-importance, which I was so lately, you
have me once again in my natural pretensions—the lean
and meagre figure of your insignificant Essayist.
STAGE ILLUSION.
A PLAY is said to be well or ill acted in proportion to the
scenical illusion produced. Whether such illusion can in
any case be perfect, is not the question. The nearest
approach to it, we are told, is, when the actor appears
wholly unconscious of the presence of spectators. In
tragedy—in all which is to affect the feelings—this undi-
vided attention to his stage business, seems indispensable.
Yet it is, in fact, dispensed with every day by our cleverest
tragedians; and while these references to an audience, in
the shape of rant or sentiment, are not too frequent or
palpable, a sufficient quantity of illusion for the purposes of
dramatic interest may be said to be produced in spite of
them. But, tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether, in
certain characters in comedy, especially those which are a
little extravagant, or which involve some notion repugnant
to the moral sense, it is not a proof of the highest skill in
the comedian when, without absolutely appealing to an
audience, he keeps up a tacit understanding with them; and
makes them, unconsciously to themselves, a party in the
scene. The utmost nicety is required in the mode of doing
this ; but we speak only of the great artists in the profession.
The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel
in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is, perhaps,
cowardice. To see a coward done to the life upon a stage
would produce anything but mirth. Yet we most of us
remember Jack Bannister's cowards. Could anything be
more agreeable, more pleasant P We loved the rogues.
How was this effected but by the exquisite art of the actor
in a perpetual subinsinuation to us, the spectators, even in
the extremity of the shaking fit, that he was not half such a
coward as we took him for P. We saw all the common
symptoms of the malady upon him ; the quivering lip, the
cowering knees, the teeth chattering ; and could have sworn
“that man was frightened.” But we forgot all the while—
or kept it almost a secret to ourselves—that he never once
289 I9
290 THE ESSA YS OF EAAA.
lost his self-possession ; that he let out by a thousand droll
looks and gestures—meant at us, and not at all supposed to
be visible to his fellows in the scene, that his confidence in
his own resources had never once deserted him. Was this
a genuine picture of a coward P or not rather a likeness,
which the clever artist contrived to palm upon us instead of
an Original ; while we secretly connived at the delusion for
the purpose of greater pleasure, than a more genuine coun-
terfeiting of the imbecility, helplessness, and utter self-
desertion, which we know to be concomitants of cowardice
in real life, could have given us.
Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so endurable
on the stage, but because the skilful actor, by a sort of sub-
reference, rather than direct appeal to us, disarms the
character of a great deal of its odiousness, by seeming to
engage our compassion for the insecure tenure by which he
holds his money bags and parchments P By this subtle
vent half of the hatefulness of the character—the self-
closeness with which in real life it coils itself up from the
sympathies of men evaporates. The miser becomes sym-
pathetic, i.e., is no genuine miser. Here again a diverting
likeness is substituted for a very disagreeable reality.
Spleen, irritability—the pitiable infirmities of old men,
which produce only pain to behold in the realities, counter-
feited upon a stage, divert not altogether for the comic
appendages to them, but in part from an inner conviction
that they are being acted before us; that a likeness only is
going on, and not the thing itself. They please by being
done under the life, or beside it ; not to the life. When
Gatty acts an old man, is he angry indeed P or only a
pleasant counterfeit, just enough of a likeness to recognise,
without pressing upon us the uneasy sense of reality P
Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too
natural. It was the case with a late actor. Nothing could
be more earnest or true than the manner of Mr. Emery; this
told excellently in his Tyke, and characters of a tragic cast.
But when he carried the same rigid exclusiveness of attention
to the stage business, and wilful blindness and oblivion
ZTAZZ ZSSA VS OF AZZZA. 291
of everything before the curtain into his comedy, it produced
a harsh and dissonant effect. He was out of keeping with
the rest of the ZOramafi's Aersona. There was as little link
between him and them as betwixt himself and the audience.
He was a third estate, dry, repulsive, and unsocial to all.
Individually considered, his execution was masterly. But
comedy is not this unbending thing; for this reason, that
the same degree of credibility is not required of it as to
serious scenes. The degrees of credibility demanded to the
two things may be illustrated by the different sort of truth
which we expect when a man tells us a mournful or a merry
story. If we suspect the former of falsehoods in any one
tittle, we reject it altogether. Our tears refuse to flow at a
suspected imposition. But the teller of a mirthful tale has
latitude allowed him. We are content with less than abso-
lute truth. 'Tis the same with dramatic illusion. We
confess we love in comedy to see an audience naturalised
behind the scenes, taken in into the interest of the drama,
welcomed as bystanders however. There is something
ungracious in a comic actor holding himself aloof from all
participation or concern with those who are come to be
diverted by him. Macbeth must see the dagger, and no
ear but his own be told of it; but an old fool in farce may
think he sees something, and by conscious words and looks
express it, as plainly as he can speak, to pit, box, and
gallery. When an impertinent in tragedy, an Osric, for
instance, breaks in upon the serious passions of the scene,
we approve of the contempt with which he is treated. But
when the pleasant impertinent of comedy, in a piece purely
meant to give delight, and raise mirth out of whimsical per-
plexities, worries the studious man with taking up his leisure,
or making his house his home, the same sort of contempt
expressed (however natural) would destroy the balance of
delight in the spectators. To make the intrusion comic,
the actor who plays the annoyed man must a little desert
nature; he must, in short, be thinking of the audience, and
express only so much dissatisfaction and peevishness as is
consistent with the pleasure of comedy. In other words,
292 THA. AESSA YS OF AZZZA,
his perplexity must seem half put on. If he repel the
intruder with the sober-set face of a man in earnest, and
more especially if he deliver his expostulations in a tone
which in the world must necessarily provoke a duel; his
real-life manner will destroy the whimsical and purely
dramatic existence of the other character (which to render
it comic demands an antagonist comicality on the part of
the character opposed to it), and convert what was meant
for mirth, rather than belief, into a downright piece of
impertinence indeed, which would raise no diversion in us,
but rather stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest upon any
unworthy person. A very judicious actor (in most of his
parts) seems to have fallen into an error of this sort in his
playing with Mr. Wrench in the Farce of Free and Easy.
Many instances would be tedious ; these may suffice to
show that comic acting at least does not always demand
from the performer that strict abstraction from all reference
to an audience, which is exacted of it; but that in some
cases a sort of compromise may take place, and all the pur-
poses of dramatic delight be attained by a judicious under-
standing, not too openly announced, between the ladies and
gentlemen—on both sides of the curtain.
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WIRITING.
IT is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord Shaftesbury, and
Sir William Temple, as models of the genteel style in
writing. We should prefer saying—of the lordly, and the
gentlemanly. Nothing can be more unlike than the inflated
finical rhapsodies of Shaftesbury, and the plain natural chit-
chat of Temple. The man of rank is discernible in both
writers; but in the one it is only insinuated gracefully, in
the other it stands out offensively. The peer seems to have
written with his coronet on, and the Earl's mantle before
him; the commoner in his elbow-chair and undressed.
THE ESSA VS OF Z Z/A. 293
—What can be more pleasant than the way in which
the retired statesman peeps. out in the essays, penned by
the latter in his delightful retreat at Shene P They
scent of Nimeguen, and the Hague. Scarce an authority
is quoted under an ambassador. Don Francisco de
Melo, a “Portugal Envoy in England,” tells him it was
frequent in his country for men, spent with age or
other decays, so as they could not hope for above a year
or two of life, to ship themselves away in a Brazil fleet, and
after their arrival there to go on a great length, sometimes
for twenty or thirty years, or more, by the force of that
vigour they recovered with that remove. “Whether such
an effect” (Temple beautifully adds) “might grow from the
air, or the fruits of that climate, or by approaching nearer
the Sun, which is the fountain of light and heat, when their
natural heat was so far decayed : or whether the piecing out
of an old man's life were worth the pains; I cannot tell:
perhaps the play is not worth the candle.”—Monsieur
Pompone, “French Ambassador in his (Sir William's) time
at the Hague,” certifies him, that in his life he had never
heard of any man in France that arrived at a hundred years
of age; a limitation of life which the old gentleman imputes
to the excellence of their climate, giving them such a live-
liness of temper and humour, as disposes them to more
pleasures of all kinds than in other countries; and moralises
upon the matter very sensibly. The “late Robert Earl of
Leicester” furnishes him with a story of a Countess of
Desmond, married out of England in Edward the Fourth’s
time, and who lived far in King James's reign. The “same
noble person” gives him an account, how such a year, in the
same reign, there went about the country a set of morrice-
dancers, composed of ten men who danced, a Maid Marian,
and a tabor and pipe ; and how these twelve, one with
another, made up twelve hundred years. “It was not so
much " (says Temple) “that so many in one small county
(Herefordshire) should live to that age, as that they should
be in vigour and in humour to travel and to dance.” Monsieur
Zulichem, one of his “colleagues at the Hague,” informs
2.94 THE ESSA VS OF EAAA.
him of a cure for the gout ; which is confirmed by another
“Envoy,” Monsieur Serinchamps, in that town, who had
tried it. —Old Prince Maurice of Nassau recommends to
him the use of hammocks in that complaint; having been
allured to sleep, while suffering under it himself, by the
“constant motion or swinging of those airy beds.” Count
Egmont, and the Rhinegrave who “was killed last summer
before Maestricht,” impart to him their experiences.
But the rank of the writer is never more innocently dis-
closed, than where he takes for granted the compliments
paid by foreigners to his fruit-trees. For the taste and
perfection of what we esteem the best, he can truly say,
that the French, who have eaten his peaches and grapes at
Shene in no very ill year, have generally concluded that the
last are as good as any they have eaten in France on this
side Fontainebleau ; and the first as good as any they have
eat in Gascony. Italians have agreed his white figs to be as
good as any of that sort in Italy, which is the earlier kind of
white fig there ; for in the latter kind and the blue, we
Cannot come near the warm climates, no more than in the
Frontignac or Muscat grape. His orange trees, too, are
as large as any he saw when he was young in France, except
those of Fontainebleau, or what he has seen in the Low
Countries; except some very old ones of the Prince of
Orange's. Of grapes he had the honour of bringing over
four sorts into England, which he enumerates, and supposes
that they are all by this time pretty common among some
gardeners in his neighbourhood, as well as several persons
of quality; for he ever thought all things of this kind “the
commoner they are made the better.” The garden pedantry
with which he asserts that 'tis to little purpose to plant any
of the best fruits, as peaches or grapes, hardly, he doubts,
beyond Northamptonshire at the farthest northwards; and
praises the “Bishop of Munster at Cosevelt,” for attempting
nothing beyond cherries in that cold climate ; is equally
pleasant and in character. “I may perhaps * (he thus ends
his sweet Garden Essay with a passage worthy of Cowley)
“be allowed to know something of this trade, since I have so
ZTHZ ZSSA VS OF Z.Z.Z.4. 295
long allowed myself to be good for nothing else, which few
men will do, or enjoy their gardens, without often looking
abroad to see how other matters play, what motions in the
state, and what invitations they may hope for into other
Scenes. For my own part, as the country life, and this part
of it more particularly, were the inclination of my youth
itself, so they are the pleasure of my age ; and I can truly
Say that, among many great employments that have fallen
to my share, I have never asked or sought for any of them,
but have often endeavoured to escape from them, into the
ease and freedom of a private scene, where a man may go his
Own way and his own pace, in the common paths and
circles of life. The measure of choosing well is whether
a man likes what he has chosen, which I thank God has
befallen me; and though among the follies of my life,
building and planting have not been the least, and have
cost me more than I have the confidence to own; yet they
have been fully recompensed by the sweetness and satisfac-
tion of this retreat, where, since my resolution taken of
never entering again into any pnblic employments, I have
passed five years without ever once going to town, though I
am almost in sight of it, and have a house there always ready
to receive me. Nor has this been any sort of affectation, as
some have thought it, but a mere want of desire or humour
to make so small a remove ; for when I am in this corner, I
can truly say with Horace, Me quoties reſicit, etc.
“Me when the cold Digentian stream revives,
What does my friend believe I think or ask P
Let me yet less possess, so I may live,
Whate'er of life remains, unto myself.
May I have books enough ; and one year's store,
Not to depend upon each doubtſul hour :
This is enough of mighty Jove to pray,
Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away.”
The writings of Temple are, in general, after this easy
copy. On one occasion, indeed, his wit, which was mostly
subordinate to nature and tenderness, has seduced him into
a string of felicitous antitheses; which, it is obvious to
296 THE ESSAYS OF EAE/A.
remark, have been a model to Addison and succeeding
essayists. “Who would not be covetous, and with reason,”
he says, “if health could be purchased with gold P who not
ambitious if it were at the command of power, or restored
by honour P but, alas! a white staff will not help gouty feet
to walk better than a common cane; nor a blue riband bind
up a wound so well as a fillet. The glitter of gold or of
diamonds, will but hurt sore eyes instead of curing them ;
and an aching head will be no more eased by wearing a
crown, than a common night-cap.” In a far better style,
and more accordance with his own humour of plainness, are
the concluding sentences of his “Discourse upon Poetry.”
Temple took a part in the controversy about the ancient and
the modern learning ; and, with that partiality so natural
and so graceful in an old man, whose state engagements had
left him little leisure to look into modern productions, while
his retirement gave him occasion to look back upon the
classic studies of his youth—decided in favour of the latter.
“Certain it is,” he says, “that, whether the fierceness of
the Gothic humours, or noise of their perpetual wars,
frighted it away, or that the unequal mixture of the
modern languages would not bear it—the great heights and
excellency both of poetry and music fell with the Roman
learning and empire, and have never since recovered the
admiration and applauses that before attended them. Yet,
such as they are amongst us, they must be confessed to be
the Softest and sweetest, the most general and most innocent
amusements of common time and life. They still find room
in the courts of princes, and the cottages of shepherds.
They serve to revive and animate the dead calm of poor and
idle lives, and to allay or divert the violent passions and
perturbations of the greatest and the busiest men. And
both these effects are of equal use to human life; for the
mind of man is like the sea, which is neither agreeable to
the beholder nor the voyager, in a calm or in a storm, but
is so to both when a little agitated by gentle gales; and so
the mind, when moved by soft and easy passions or affections.
I know very well that many who pretend to be wise by the
7THE ESSA YS OF EVA. 297
forms of being grave, are apt to despise both poetry and
music, as toys and trifles too light for the use or entertain-
ment of serious men. But whoever find themselves wholly
insensible to their charms, would, I think, do well to keep
their own counsel, for fear of reproaching their own temper,
and bringing the goodness or their natures, if not of their
understandings, into question. While this world lasts, I
doubt not but the pleasure and request of these two enter-
tainments will do so too ; and happy those that content
themselves with these, or any other so easy and so innocent,
and do not trouble the world or other men, because they
cannot be quiet themselves, though nobody hurts them.”
“When all is done" (he concludes), “human life is at the
greatest and the best but like a froward child, that must be
played with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet, till it
falls asleep, and then the care is over.”
SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS,
So far from the position holding true, that great wit (or
genius, in our modern way of speaking) has a necessary
alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the contrary, will
ever be found to be the sanest writers. It is impossible for
the mind to conceive of a mad Shakspeare. The greatness
of wit, by which the poetic talent is here chiefly to be
understood, manifests itself in the admirable balance of all
the faculties. Madness is the disproportionate straining or
excess of any one of them. “So strong a wit,” says Cowley,
speaking of a poetical friend,
& 6 did Nature to him frame,
As all things but his judgment overcame,
His judgment like the heavenly moon did show
Tempering that mighty sea below.”
The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding in the
raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation, to
298 THE ESSAYS OF EZZA.
which they have no parallel in their own experience, besides
the Spurious resemblance of it in dreams and fevers, impute
a state of dreaminess and fever to the poet. But the true
poet dreams, being awake. He is not possessed by his.
Subject, but has dominion over it. In the groves of Eden
he walks familiar as in his native paths. He ascends the
empyrean heaven, and is not intoxicated. He treads the
burning marl without dismay ; he wins his flight without
self-loss through realms of chaos “and old night.” Or if,
abandoning himself to that severer chaos of a “human mind
untuned,” he is content awhile to be mad with Lear, or to
hate mankind (a sort of madness) with Timon, neither is
that madness, nor this misanthropy, so unchecked, but
that, never letting the reins of reason wholly go, while
most he seems to do so, he has his better genius still
whispering at his ear, with the good servant Kent suggesting
Saner counsels, or with the honest steward Flavius recom-
mending kindlier resolutions. Where he seems most to
recede from humanity, he will be found the truest to it.
From beyond the scope of Nature if he summon possible
existences, he subjugates them to the law of her consistency.
He is beautifully loyal to that sovereign directress, even
when he appears most to betray and desert her. His
ideal tribes submit to policy; his very monsters are tamed
to his hand, even as that wild sea-brood shepherded by
Proteus. He tames, and he clothes them with attributes of
flesh and blood till they wonder at themselves, like Indian
Islanders forced to submit to European vesture. Caliban, the
Witches, are as true to the laws of their own nature (ours
with a difference), as Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Herein
the great and the little wits are differenced; that if the latter
wander ever so little from nature or actual existence, they
lose themselves and their readers. Their phantoms are law-
less; their visions nightmares. They do not create, which
implies shaping and consistency. Their imaginations are
not active—for to be active is to call something into act and
form—but passive, as men in sick dreams. For the Super-
natural, or something superadded to what we know of nature,
THE AESSA VS OF EAE/A. 299
they give you the plainly non-natural. And if this were all,
and that these mental hallucinations were discoverable only
in the treatment of subjects out of nature, or transcending
it, the judgment might with some plea be pardoned if
it ran riot, and a little wantonised: but even in the describ-
ing of real and every-day life, that which is before their
eyes, one of these lesser wits shall more deviate from nature
—show more of that inconsequence, which has a natural
alliance with frenzy, than a great genius in his “maddest
fits,” as Withers somewhere calls them. We appeal to any
one who is acquainted with the common run of Lane's
novels, as they existed some twenty or thirty years back—
those scanty intellectual viands of the whole female reading
public, till a happier genius arose, and expelled for ever the
innutritious phantoms, whether he has not found his brain
more “betossed,” his memory more puzzled, his sense of
when and where more confounded, among the improbable
events, the incoherent incidents, the inconsistent characters,
or no characters, of some third-rate love intrigue—where
the persons shall be a Lord Glendamour and a Miss
Rivers, and the scene only alternate between Bath and
Bond Street—a more bewildering dreaminess induced upon
him, than he has felt wandering over all the fairy grounds
of Spenser. In the productions we refer to, nothing but
names and places is familiar; the persons are neither of
this world nor of any other conceivable one ; an endless
string of activities without purpose, of purposes destitute
of motive:–we meet phantoms in our known walks;
fantasques only christened. In the poet we have names
which announce fiction; and we have absolutely no place
at all, for the things and persons of the Faërie Queene prate
not of their “whereabout,” But in their inner nature, and
the law of their speech and actions, we are at home and
upon acquainted ground. The one turns life into a dream;
the other to the wildest dreams gives the sobrieties of
every-day occurrences. By what subtile art of tracing the
mental processes it is effected, we are not philosophers
enough to explain, but in that wonderful episode of the
3oo 7THE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
Cave of Mammon, in which the Money God appears first in
the lowest form of a miser, is then a worker of metals, and
becomes the god of all the treasures of the world; and has
a daughter, Ambition, before whom all the world kneels for
favours—with the Hesperian fruit, the waters of Tantalus,
with Pilate washing his hands vainly, but not impertinently,
in the same stream—that we should be at one moment in
the cave of an old hoarder of treasures, at the next at the
forge of the Cyclops, in a palace and yet in hell, all at Once,
with the shifting mutations of the most rambling dream, and
our judgment yet all the time awake, and neither able nor
willing to detect the fallacy, is a proof of that hidden
Sanity which still guides the poet in his wildest seeming
aberrations.
It is not enough to say that the whole episode is a copy
of the mind's conceptions in sleep; it is, in some sort—but
what a copy Let the most romantic of us, that has been
entertained all night with the spectacle of some wild and
magnificent vision, recombine it in the morning, and try it
by his waking judgment. That which appeared so shifting,
and yet so coherent, while that faculty was passive, when it
comes under cool examination, shall appear so reasonless
and so unlinked, that we are ashamed to have been SO
deluded; and to have taken, though but in sleep, a monster
for a god. But the transitions in this episode are every whit
as violent as in the most extravagant dream, and yet the
waking judgment ratifies them.
TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON.
Joyous EST of once embodied spirits, whither at length hast
thou flown P to what genial region are we permitted to
conjecture that thou hast flitted P
Art thou sowing thy WILD OATS yet (the harvest time was
still to come with thee) upon casual sands of Avernus P or
7THZ ZSSA VS OF E/./A. 3o I
art thou enacting ROVER (as we would gladlier think) by
wandering Elysian streams ?
This mortal frame, while thou didst play thy brief antics
amongst us, was in truth anything but a prison to thee, as
the vain Platonist dreams of this body to be no better than
a county gaol, forsooth, or some house of durance vile,
whereof the five senses are the fetters. Thou knowest
better than to be in a hurry to cast off those gyves; and
hadst notice to quit, I fear, before thou wert quite ready to
abandon this fleshy tenement. It was thy Pleasure House,
thy Palace of Dainty Devices; thy Louvre, or thy White
Hall.
What new mysterious lodgings dost thou tenant now P or
when may we expect thy aerial house-warming P
Tartarus we know, and we have read of the Blessed
Shades; now cannot I intelligibly fancy thee in either.
Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as the
schoolmen admitted a receptacle apart for Patriarchs and
un-chrisom Babes) there may exist—not far perchance from
that storehouse of all vanities, which Milton saw in visions
—a LIMBO somewhere for PLAYERS P and that
“ Up thither like aërial vapours fly
Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things
Built their fond hopes of glory, or lasting fame?
All the unaccomplish'd works of Authors’ hands,
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mix’d,
Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither—
Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery.”—
There, by the neighbouring moon (by some not improperly
supposed thy Regent Planet upon earth) mayst thou not
still be acting thy managerial pranks, great disembodied
Lessee P but Lessee still, and still a Manager.
In Green Rooms, impervious to mortal eye, the muse
beholds thee wielding posthumous empire.
Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) circle
thee in endlessly, and still their song is Fie on simſu!
Ahantasy.
Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe of earth,
302 7"HE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
ROBERT WILLIAM ELLISTON 1 for as yet we know not thy
new name in heaven.
It irks me to think, that, stripped of thy regalities, thou
shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Stygian
wherry. Methinks I hear the old boatman, paddling by the
weedy wharf, with raucid voice, bawling, “SCULLS, SCULLS:”
to which, with waving hand, and majestic action, thou
deignest no reply, other than in two Curt monosyllables,
“NO : OARS.”
But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference
between king, and cobbler; manager, and call-boy; and, if
haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly
taking your passage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble levelling of
Death) with the shade of some recently departed candle-
snuffer. - -
But mercy! what strippings, what tearing off of histrionic
robes, and private vanities what denudations to the bone,
before the surly Ferryman will admit you to set a foot within
his battered lighter |
Crowns, sceptres; shield, sword, and truncheon; thy own
coronation robes (for thou hast brought the whole property
man's wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a navy); the
judge's ermine; the coxcomb's wig; the snuff-box 3 la
Aroppington—all must overboard, he positively swears—and
that ancient mariner brooks no denial; for, since the tire-
some monodrame of the old Thracian Harper, Charon, it is
to be believed, hath shown small taste for theatricals.
Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat weight; £ura ef
£uła anima.
But bless me, how ſittle you look.
So shall we all look—kings, and kaisers—stripped for the
last voyage.
But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu, pleasant, and
thrice pleasant shade 1 with my parting thanks for many a
heavy hour of life lightened by thy harmless extravaganzas,
public or domestic.
Rhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes below,
leaving to his two brethren the heavy calendars—honest
ZTAE/AE AESSA VS OA' Z.Z.Z.A. 3O3
Rhadamanth, always partial to players, weighing their parti-
coloured existence here upon earth, making account of the
few foibles, that may have shaded thy rea/ /ăſe, as we call it
(though, substantially, scarcely less a vapour than thy idlest
vagaries upon the boards of Drury), as but of so many echoes,
natural repercussions, and results to be expected from the
assumed extravagancies of thy secondary or mock /č/e, nightly
upon a stage—after a lenient castigation, with rods lighter
than of those Medusean ringlets, but just enough to “whip
the offending Adam out of thee"—shall courteously dismiss
thee at the right-hand gate—the O. P. side of Hades—that
conducts to masques, and merry-makings, in the Theatre
Royal of Proserpine.
PLAUDITO, ET VALETO.
ELLISTONIANA.
My acquaintance with the pleasant creature, whose loss we
all deplore, was but slight.
My first introduction to E., which afterwards ripened into
an acquaintance a little on this side of intimacy, was over a
counter of the Leamington Spa Library, then newly entered
upon by a branch of his family, E., whom nothing mis-
became—to auspicate, I suppose, the filial concern, and
set it a-going with a lustre—was serving in person two
damsels fair, who had come into the shop ostensibly to
inquire for some new publication, but in reality to have a
sight of the illustrious shopman, hoping some conference.
With what an air did he reach down the volume, dispassion-
ately giving his opinion upon the worth of the work in
question, and launching out into a dissertation on its com-
parative merits with those of certain publications of a similar
stamp, its rivals his enchanted customers fairly hanging on
his lips, subdued to their authoritative sentence. So have
I seen a gentleman in comedy acting the shopman. So
3o4 THE AESSA VS OF AZZZA,
Lovelace sold his gloves in King Street. I admired the
histrionic art, by which he contrived to carry clean away
every notion of disgrace, from the occupation he had so
generously submitted to ; and from that hour I judged him,
with no after repentance, to be a person, with whom it
would be a felicity to be more acquainted.
To descant upon his merits as a Comedian would be
Superfluous. With his blended private and professional
habits alone I have to do; that harmonious fusion of the
manners of the player into those of every-day life, which
brought the stage boards into streets, and dining-parlours,
and kept up the play when the play was ended.—“I like
Wrench,” a friend was saying to him one day, “because he
is the same natural, easy creature, on the stage that he is
off.” “My case exactly,” retorted Elliston—with a charm-
ing forgetfulness, that the converse of a proposition does
not always lead to the same conclusion—“I am the same
person off the stage that I am on.” The inference, at first
sight, seems identical ; but examine it a little, and it con-
fesses only, that the one performer was never, and the other
always, acting.
And in truth this was the charm of Elliston's private
deportment. You had a spirited performance always going
on before your eyes, with nothing to pay. As where a
monarch takes up his casual abode for a night, the poorest
hovel which he honours by his sleeping in it, becomes iſ so
facto for that time a palace; so wherever Elliston walked,
sate, or stood still, there was the theatre. He carried about
with him his pit, boxes, and galleries, and set up his portable
playhouse at corners of streets, and in the market-places.
Upon flintiest pavements he trod the boards still ; and if
his theme chanced to be passionate, the green baize carpet
of tragedy spontaneously rose beneath his feet. Now this
was hearty, and showed a love for his art. So Apelles
always painted—in thought. So G. D. aſzways poetises. I
hate a lukewarm artist. I have known actors—and some of
them of Elliston's own stamp—who shall have agreeably
been amusing you in the part of a rake or a coxcomb,
TA/AE AESSA PS OF AZZZA. 305
through the two or three hours of their dramatic existence;
but no sooner does the curtain fall with its leaden clatter,
but a spirit of lead seems to seize on all their faculties.
They emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable to their
families, servants, etc. Another shall have been expanding
your heart with generous deeds and sentiments, till it even
beats with yearnings of universal sympathy; you absolutely
long to go home, and do some good action. The play
seems tedious, till you can get fairly out of the house, and
realise your laudable intentions. At length the final bell
rings, and this cordial representative or all that is amiable
in human breasts steps forth—a miser. Elliston was more
of a piece. Did he play Ranger ? and did Ranger fill the
general bosom of the town with satisfaction P why should he
not be Ranger, and diffuse the same cordial satisfaction
among his private circles? with his temperament, his animal
spirits, his good nature, his follies perchance, could he do
better than identify himself with his impersonation P Are
we to like a pleasant rake, or coxcomb, on the stage, and
give ourselves airs of aversion for the identical character
presented to us in actual life P or what would the performer
have gained by divesting himself of the impersonation ?
Could the man Elliston have been essentially different from
his part, even if he had avoided to reflect to us studiously,
in private circles, the airy briskness, the forwardness, and
Scapegoat trickeries of his prototype P
“But there is something not natural in this everlasting
acting; we want the real man.” -
Are you quite sure that it is not the man himself, whom
you cannot, or will not see, under some adventitious trap-
pings, which, nevertheless, sit not at all inconsistently upon
him. What if it is the nature of some men to be highly
artificial? The fault is least reprehensible in players.
Cibber was his own Foppington, with almost as much wit
as Vanbrugh could add to it.
“My conceit of his person,”—it is Ben Jonson speaking
of Lord Bacon, “was never increased towards him by his
place or honours. But I have, and do reverence him for
- 2O
306 THE ESSA YS OF EAE/A.
the greatness, that was only proper to himself; in that he
seemed to me ever one of the greatest men, that had been
in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that heaven
would give him strength ; for greatness he could not want.”
The quality here commended was scarcely less con-
spicuous in the subject of these idle reminiscences, than
in my Lord Verulam. Those who have imagined that an
unexpected elevation to the direction of a great London
Theatre, affected the consequence of Elliston, or at all
changed his nature, knew not the essential greatness of the
man whom they disparage. It was my fortune to encounter
him near St. Dunstan's Church (which, with its punctual
giants, is now no more than dust and a shadow), on the morn-
ing of his election to that high office. Grasping my hand with
a look of significance, he only uttered,—“Have you heard
the news P”—then with another look following up the blow,
he subjoined, “I am the future Manager of Drury Lane
Theatre.”—Breathless as he saw me, he stayed not for
congratulation or reply, but mutely stalked away, leaving
me to chew upon his new-blown dignities at leisure. In
fact, nothing could be said to it. Expressive silence alone
could muse his praise. This was in his great style.
But was he less great (be witness, O ye Powers of
Equanimity, that supported in the ruins of Carthage the
consular exile, and more recently transmuted for a more
illustrious exile, the barren constableship of Elba into an
image of Imperial France), when, in melancholy after years,
again, much nearer the same spot, I met him, when that
sceptre had been wrested from his hand, and his dominion
was curtailed to the petty managership, and part proprietor-
ship, of the small Olympic, his Elba / He still played
nightly upon the boards of Drury, but in parts, alas! allotted
to him, not magnificently distributed by him. Waiving his
great loss as nothing, and magnificently sinking the sense of
fallen material grandeur in the more liberal resentment of
depreciations done to his more lofty intellectual pretensions,
“Have you heard” (his customary exordium)—“have you
heard,” said he, “how they treat me P they put me in
ZTH/A2 ESSA WS OF AZ Z/A. 307
comedy.” Thought I—but his finger on his lips forbade
any verbal interruption—“Where could they have put you
better P” Then, after a pause—“Where I formerly played
Romeo, I now play Mercutio,”—and so again he stalked
away, neither staying, nor caring for, responses.
O, it was a rich scene,—but Sir A C , the best
of story-tellers and surgeons, who mends a lame narrative
almost as well as he sets a fracture, alone could do justice
to it—that I was witness to, in the tarnished room (that had
once been green) of that same little Olympic. There, after
his deposition from Imperial Drury, he substituted a throne.
That Olympic Hill was his “highest heaven”; himself
“Jove in his chair.” There he sat in state, while before
him, on complaint of prompter, was brought for judgment
—how shall I describe her P-one of those little tawdry
things that flirt at the tails of choruses—a probationer for
the town, in either of its senses—the prettiest little drab–
a dirty fringe and appendage of the lamps' smoke—who, it
seems, on some disapprobation expressed by a “highly
respectable” audience, had precipitately quitted her station
on the boards, and withdrawn her small talents in disgust.
“And how dare you,” said her Manager—assuming a
sensorial severity which would have crushed the confidence
of a Vestris, and disarmed that beautiful Rebel herself of
her professional caprices—I verily believe, he thought her
standing before him—“how dare you, madam, withdraw
yourself, without a notice, from your theatrical duties P”
“I was hissed, sir.” “And you have the presumption to
decide upon the taste of the town P” “I don't know that,
sir, but I will never stand to be hissed,” was the subjoinder
of young Confidence—when gathering up his features into
One insignificant mass of wonder, pity, and expostulatory
indignation—in a lesson never to have been lost upon a
creature less forward than she who stood before him—his
words were these : “They have hissed me.”
'Twas the identical argument, à fortiori, which the son of
Peleus uses to Lycaon trembling under his lance, to persuade
him to take his destiny with a good grace. “I too am
368 THE ESSA VS OF EAAA,
mortal.” And it is to be believed that in both cases the
rhetoric missed of its application, for want of a proper
understanding with the faculties of the respective recipients.
“Quite an Opera pit,” he said to me, as he was
courteously conducting me over the benches of his Surrey
Theatre, the last retreat, and recess, of his every-day waning
grandeur.
Those who knew Elliston, will know the manner in which
he pronounced the latter sentence of the few words I am
about to record. One proud day to me he took his roast
mutton with us in the Temple, to which I had superadded
a preliminary haddock. After a rather plentiful partaking
of the meagre banquet, not unrefreshed with the humbler
sort of liquors, I made a sort of apology for the humility
of the fare, observing that for my own part I never ate but
of one dish at dinner. “I too never eat but one thing at
dinner”—was his reply—then after a pause—“reckoning
fish as nothing.” The manner was all. It was as if by one
peremptory sentence he had decreed the annihilation of all
the Savory esculents, which the pleasant and nutritious food-
giving Ocean pours forth upon poor humans from her watery
bosom. This was greatness, tempered with considerate
Zenderness to the feelings of his scanty but welcoming
entertainer.
Great wert thou in thy life, Robert William Elliston 1 and
not lessened in thy death, if report speak truly, which says
that thou didst direct that thy mortal remains should repose
under no inscription but one of pure Zafinity. Classical
was thy bringing up ! and beautiful was thy feeling on thy
last bed, which, connecting the man with the boy, took thee
back in thy latest exercise of imagination, to the days when,
undreaming of Theatres and Managerships, thou wert a
scholar, and an early ripe one, under the roofs builded by
the munificent and pious Colet. For thee the Pauline
Muses weep. In elegies, that shall silence this crude prose,
they shall celebrate thy praise.
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO,
DAN STUART once told us, that he did not remember that
he ever deliberately walked into the Exhibition at Somerset
House in his life. He might occasionally have escorted a
party of ladies across the way that were going in ; but he
never went in of his own head. Yet the office of the
Morning Post newspaper stood then just where it does now
—we are carrying you back, Reader, some thirty years or
more—with its gilt-globe-topped front facing that emporium
of our artists’ grand Annual Exposure. We sometimes wish
that we had observed the same abstinence with Daniel.
A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared to us one
of the finest-tempered of Editors. Perry, of the Morning
Chronicle, was equally pleasant, with a dash, no slight one
either, of the courtier. S. was frank, plain, and English all
over. We have worked for both these gentlemen.
It is soothing to contemplate the head of the Ganges; to
trace the first little bubblings of a mighty river;
“With holy reverence to approach the rocks,
Whence glide the streams renown'd in ancient song.”
Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian Pilgrim's explor-
atory ramblings after the cradle of the infant Nilus, we
well remember on one fine summer holiday (a “whole day's
leave” we called it at Christ's Hospital) sallying forth at rise
of Sun, not very well provisioned either for such an under-
taking, to trace the current of the New River—Middletonian
stream l—to its scaturient source, as we had read, in
meadows by fair Amwell. Gallantly did we commence
our solitary quest—for it was essential to the dignity of a
DISCOVERY, that no eye of schoolboy save our own,
should beam on the detection. By flowery spots, and
verdant lanes, skirting Hornsey, Hope trained us on in
many a baffling turn ; endless, hopeless meanders, as it
seemed; or as if the jealous waters had dodged us, reluctant
to have the humble spot of their nativity revealed; till
309 • *
3Io THE ESSA YS OF AZZZA.
spent, and nigh famished, before set of the same sun, we
sat down somewhere by Bowes Farm, near Tottenham,
with a tithe of our proposed labours only yet accomplished;
sorely convinced in spirit, that the Brucian enterprise was
as yet too arduous for our young shoulders.
Not more refreshing to the thirsty curiosity of the traveller
is the tracing of some mighty waters up to their shallow
fontlet, than it is to a pleased and candid reader to go back
to the inexperienced essays, the first callow flights in
authorship, of some established name in literature; from
the Gnat which preluded to the AEneid, to the Duck which
Samuel Johnson trod on.
In those days every Morning Paper, as an essential
retainer to its establishment, kept an author, who was bound
to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs. Sixpence
a joke—and it was thought pretty high too—was Dan
Stuart's settled remuneration in these cases. The chat of
the day, scandal, but above all, dress, furnished the material.
The length of no paragraph was to exceed seven lines.
Shorter they might be, but they must be poignant.
A fashion of f.es/, or rather pink-coloured hose for the
ladies, luckily coming up at the juncture, when we were in
our probation for the place of Chief Jester to S.’s Paper,
established our reputation in that line. We were pronounced
a “capital hand.” O the conceits which we varied upon
red in all its prismatic differences ! from the trite and
obvious flower of Cytherea, to the flaming costume of the
lady that has her sitting upon “many waters.” Then there
was the collateral topic of ankles. What an occasion to a
truly chaste writer, like ourself, of touching that nice brink,
and never yet tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approxi-
mating something “not quite proper”; while, like a skilful
posture-master, balancing betwixt decorums and their
opposites, he keeps the line, from which a hair's-breadth
deviation is destruction; hovering in the confines of light
and darkness, or where “both seem either’”; a hazy
uncertain delicacy; Autolycus-like in the Play, still putting
off his expectant auditory with “Whoop, do me no harm,
ZTH/AE ESSA VS OA” A. Z.Z.A. 3 IT
good man l’ But, above all, that conceit arrided us most
at that time, and still tickles our midriff to remember, where,
allusively to the flight of Astraea—ultima Calesłłm terras
reliquit—we pronounced—in reference to the stockings still
—that MODESTY TAKING HER FINAL LEAVE OF MORTALs,
HER LAST BLUSH WAS VISIBLE IN HER ASCENT TO THE
HEAVENS BY THE TRACT OF THE GLOWING INSTEP. This
might be called the crowning conceit ; and was esteemed
tolerable writing in those days.
But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes
away; as did the transient mode which had so favoured us.
The ankles of our fair friends in a few weeks began to
reassume their whiteness, and left us scarce a leg to stand
upon. Other female whims followed, but none, methought,
so pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd conceits, and more
than single meanings.
Somebody has said, that to swallow six cross-buns daily
consecutively for a fortnight would surfeit the stoutest
digestion. But to have to furnish as many jokes daily, and
that not for a fortnight, but for a long twelvemonth, as we
were constrained to do, was a little harder execution.
“Man goeth forth to his work until the evening”—from a
reasonable hour in the morning, we presume it was meant.
Now as our main occupation took us up from eight till five
every day in the City; and as our evening hours, at that
time of life, had generally to do with anything rather than
business, it follows, that the only time we could spare for
this manufactory of jokes—our supplementary livelihood,
that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and
cheese—was exactly that part of the day which (as we have
heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No
Man’s Time ; that is, no time in which a man ought to be
up and awake in. To speak more plainly, it is that time,
of an hour, or an hour and a half's duration, in which a
man, whose occasions call him up so preposterously, has to
wait for his breakfast.
O those headaches at dawn of day, when at five, or half-
past five in summer, and not much later in the dark Seasons,
3I2 ZTAZAZ ZSSA YS OF EAE ZA,
we were compelled to rise, having been perhaps not above
four hours in bed—(for we were no go-to-beds with the
lamb, though we anticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising
—we liked a parting cup at midnight, as all young men did
before these effeminate times, and to have our friends about
us—we were not constellated under Aquarius, that watery
sign, and therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold, washy, blood-
less—we were none of your Basilian water-sponges, nor had
taken our degrees at Mount Ague—we were right toping
Capulets, jolly companions, we and they)—but to have to
get up, as we have said before, curtailed of half our fair
sleep, fasting, with only a dim vista of refreshing Bohea
in the distance—to be necessitated to rouse ourselves at the
detestable rap of an old hag of a domestic, who seemed to
take a diabolical pleasure in her announcement that it was
“time to rise;” and whose chappy knuckles we have often
yearned to amputate, and string them up at our chamber
door, to be a terror to all such unseasonable rest-breakers
in future .
“Facil” and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the “de-
scending” of the over-night, balmy the first sinking of the
heavy head upon the pillow; but to get up, as he goes on
to Say,
—“revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras”—
and to get up moreover to make jokes with malice pre-
pended—there was the “labour,”—there the “work.”
No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to
that, our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned out
for half the tyranny, which this necessity exercised upon us.
Half-a-dozen jests in a day (bating Sundays too), why it
seems nothing ! We make twice the number every day in
Our lives as a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical
exemptions. But then they come into our head. But
when the head has to go out to them—when the mountain
must go to Mahomet—
Reader, try it for once, only for one short twelvemonth.
It was not every week that a fashion of pink stockings
7A/Z ZSSA VS OF E/C/A. 3I3
came up; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged, untractable
subject; some topic impossible to be contorted into the
risible; some feature, upon which no smile could play;
some flint, from which no process of ingenuity could pro-
cure a distillation. There they lay; there your appointed
tale of brick-making was set before you, which you must
finish, with or without straw, as it happened. The craving
dragon—the Public—like him in Bel's temple—must be fed;
it expected its daily rations; and Daniel, and ourselves, to
do us justice, did the best we could on this side bursting
him.
While we were wringing out coy sprightliness for the Post,
and writhing under the toil of what is called “easy writing,”
Bob Allen, our quondam schoolfellow, was tapping his
impracticable brains in a like service for the Oracle. Not
that Robert troubled himself much about wit. If his
paragraphs had a sprightly air about them, it was sufficient.
He carried this nonchalance so far at last, that a matter of
intelligence, and that no very important one, was not seldom
palmed upon his employers for a good jest; for example
sake—“Walking yesterday morning casually dozwn Snow
Aft/Z, Zeho should zwe meet but Mr. ZXeputy Humphreys / zve
rejoice to add, that the worthy Deputy appeared to enjoy
a good state of health. We do not remember ever to have seen
him look better.” This gentleman, so surprisingly met upon
Snow Hill, from some peculiarities in gait or gesture, was a
constant butt for mirth to the Small paragraph-mongers of
the day; and our friend thought that he might have his
fling at him with the rest. We met A. in Holborn shortly
after this extraordinary rencounter, which he told with tears
of satisfaction in his eyes, and chuckling at the anticipated
effects of its announcement next day in the paper. We did
not quite comprehend where the wit of it lay at the time;
nor was it easy to be detected, when the thing came out,
advantaged by type and letter-press. He had better have
met anything that morning than a Common Councilman.
His services were shortly after dispensed with, on the plea
that his paragraphs of late had been deficient in point. The
3I4 7///7 FSSA YS OF EAE ZA,
one in question, it must be owned, had an air, in the
opening especially, proper to awaken curiosity; and the
Sentiment, or moral, wears the aspect of humanity, and good
neighbourly feeling. But somehow the conclusion was not
judged altogether to answer to the magnificent promise of
the premises. We traced our friend's pen afterwards in the
ZŽue Briton, the Star, the Traveller,-from all of which he
was successively dismissed, the Proprietors having “no
further occasion for his services.” Nothing was easier than
to detect him. When wit failed, or topics ran low, there
constantly appeared the following—“At is not generally
Ánown that the three Blue Balls at the Pazembrokers' shops are
the ancient arms of Zombardy. The Zombards were the first
money-brokers in Europe.” Bob has done more to set the
public right on this important point of blazonry, than the
whole College of Heralds. /*
The appointment of a regular wit has long ceased to be a
part of the economy of a Morning Paper. Editors find
their own jokes, or do as well without them. Parson Este,
and Topham, brought up the set custom of “witty
paragraphs " first in the World. Boaden was a reigning
paragraphist in his day, and succeeded poor Allen in the
Oracle. But, as we said, the fashion of jokes passes away;
and it would be difficult to discover in the Biographer of
Mrs. Siddons, any traces of that vivacity and fancy which
charmed the whole town at the commencement of the
present century. Even the prelusive delicacies of the
present writer—the curt “Astraean allusion *—would be
thought pedantic, and out of date, in these days. -
From the office of the Morning Post (for we may as well
exhaust our Newspaper Reminiscences at once) by change
of property in the paper, we were transferred, mortifying
exchange to the office of the Albion Newspaper, late
Rackstrow's Museum, in Fleet Street. What a transition—
from a handsome apartment, from rose-wood desks, and
silver inkstands, to an office—no office, but a den rather,
but just redeemed from the occupation of dead monsters, of
which it seemed redolent—from the centre of loyalty and
THAE AESSA VS OF EAAA. 3I5
fashion, to a focus of vulgarity and sedition | Here in
murky closet, inadequate from its square contents to the
receipt of the two bodies of Editor, and humble paragraph-
maker, together at one time, sat in the discharge of his new
Editorial functions (the “Bigod” of Elia) the redoubted
John Fenwick.
F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left not
many in the pockets of his friends whom he might
command, had purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole and
sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the rights and titles
(such as they were worth) of the Albion, from one Lovell;
of whom we know nothing, save that he had stood in the
pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With this hope-
less concern—for it had been sinking ever since its com-
mencement, and could now reckon upon not more than
a hundred subscribers—F. resolutely determined upon
pulling down the Government in the first instance, and
making both our fortunes by way of corollary. For seven
weeks and more did this infatuated Democratic go about
borrowing seven-shilling pieces, and lesser coin, to meet the
daily demands of the Stamp Office, which allowed no credit
to publications of that side in politics. An outcast from
politer bread, we attached our small talents to the forlorn
fortunes of our friend. Our occupation now was to write
treaSOn.
Recollections of feelings—which were all that now
remained from our first boyish heats kindled by the French
Revolution, when if we were misled, we erred in the company
of some, who are accounted very good men now—rather
than any tendency at this time to Republican doctrines—
assisted us in assuming a style of writing, while the paper
lasted, consonant in no very undertone to the right earnest
fanaticism of F. Our one was now to insinuate, rather than
recommend, possible abdications. Blocks, axes, Whitehall
tribunals, were covered with flowers of so cunning a peri-
phrasis—as Mr. Bayes says, never naming the thing directly
—that the keen eye of an Attorney-General was insufficient
to detect the lurking snake among them. There were
316 7THE ESSA VS OF EAAA,
times, indeed, when we sighed for our more gentleman-like
occupation under Stuart. But with change of masters it is
ever change of service. Already one paragraph, and
another, as we learned afterwards from a gentleman at the
Treasury, had begun to be marked at that office, with a
view of its being submitted at least to the attention of the
proper Law Officers—when an unlucky, or rather lucky
epigram from our pen, aimed at Sir J S M h, who
was on the eve of departing for India to reap the fruits of
his apostasy, as F, pronounced it (it is hardly worth
particularising), happening to offend the nice sense of Lord,
or, as he then delighted to be called, Citizen Stanhope,
deprived F. at once of the last hopes of a guinea from the
last patron that had stuck by us; and breaking up our
establishment, left us to the safe, but somewhat mortifying,
neglect of the Crown Lawyers.--It was about this time, or a
little earlier, that Dan Stuart made that curious confession
to us, that he had “never deliberately walked into an
Exhibition at Somerset House in his life.” -
BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY
IN THE PRODUCTION OF MODERN ART.
HogARTH excepted, can we produce any one painter within
the last fifty years, or since the humour of exhibiting began,
that has treated a story imaginatively 2 By this we mean,
upon whom his subject has so acted, that it has seemed to
direct him—not to be arranged by him P Any upon whom
its leading or collateral points have impressed themselves so
tyrannically that he dare not treat it otherwise, lest he
should falsify a revelation P Any that has imparted to his
compositions, not merely so much truth as is enough to
convey a story with clearness, but that individualising pro-
perty, which should keep the subject so treated distinct in
7A/E ESSA VS OF EAAA, 317
feature from every other subject, however similar, and to
common apprehensions almost identical ; so as that we
might say, this and this part could have found an appro-
priate place in no other picture in the world but this P. Is
there anything in modern art—we will not demand that it
should be equal—but in any way analogous to what Titian
has effected, in that wonderful bringing together of two
times in the “Ariadne,” in the National Gallery? Pre-
cipitous, with his reeling Satyr rout about him, re-peopling
and re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with a
new fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like
flings himself at the Cretan. This is the time present.
With his telling of the story an artist, and no ordinary one,
might remain richly proud. Guido, in his harmonious
version of it, saw no further. But from the depths of the
imaginative spirit Titian has recalled past time, and laid it
contributory with the present to one simultaneous effect.
With the desert all ringing with the mad cymbals of his
followers, made lucid with the presence and new offers of a
god, as if unconscious of Bacchus, or but idly casting her
eyes as upon some unconcerning pageant—her soul undis-
tracted from Theseus—Ariadne is still pacing the Solitary
shore, in as much heart-silence, and in almost the same
local solitude, with which she awoke at daybreak to catch
the forlorn glances of the sail that bore away the Athenian.
Here are two points miraculously co-uniting; fierce
society, with the feeling of solitude still absolute; noonday
revelations, with the accidents of the dull grey dawn
unquenched and lingering ; the present Bacchus, with the
fast Ariadne; two stories, with double Time: separate, and
harmonising. Had the artist made the woman one shade
less indifferent to the God; still more, had she expressed a
rapture at his advent, where would have been the story of the
mighty desolation of the heart previous? merged in the
insipid accident of a flattering offer met with a welcome
acceptance. The broken heart for Theseus was not lightly
to be pieced up by a God.
We have before us a fine rough print, from a picture by
318 THE ESSA VS OF EAEA.
Raphael in the Vatican. It is the Presentation of the new-
born Eve to Adam by the Almighty. A fairer mother of
mankind we might imagine, and a goodlier sire perhaps of
men since born. But these are matters subordinate to the
conception of the situation, displayed in this extraordinary
production. A tolerably modern artist would have been
Satisfied with tempering certain raptures of connubial antici-
pation, with a suitable acknowledgment to the Giver of the
blessing, in the countenance of the first bridegroom; some-
thing like the divided attention of the child (Adam was here
a child man) between the given toy, and the mother who
had just blessed it with the bauble. This is the obvious,
the first-sight view, the superficial. An artist of a higher
grade, considering the awful presence they were in, would
have taken care to subtract something from the expression
of the more human passion, and to heighten the more
spiritual one. This would be as much as an exhibition-goer,
from the opening of Somerset House to last year's show,
has been encouraged to look for. It is obvious to hint at a
lower expression, yet in a picture, that for respects of draw-
ing and colouring, might be deemed not wholly inadmissible
within these art-fostering walls, in which the raptures should
be as ninety-nine, the gratitude as one, or perhaps zero !
By neither the one passion nor the other has Raphael
expounded the situation of Adam. Singly upon his brow
sits the absorbing sense of wonder at the created miracle.
The moment is seized by the intuitive artist, perhaps not
self-conscious of his art, in which neither of the conflicting
emotions—a moment how abstracted—have had time to
spring up, or to battle for indecorous mastery.—We have
seen a landscape of a justly admired neoteric, in which he
aimed at delineating a fiction, one of the most severely
beautiful in antiquity—the gardens of the Hesperides. To
do Mr. justice, he had painted a laudable orchard,
with fitting seclusion, and a veritable dragon (of which a
Polypheme by Poussin is somehow a fac-simile for the
situation), looking over into the world shüt out backwards,
so that none but a “still-climbing Hercules” could hope to
7A/AE AESS.4 VS OA' A' Z.Z.4. 319
get a peep at the admired Ternary of Recluses. No conventual
porter could keep his keys better than this custos with the
“lidless eyes.” He not only sees that none do intrude into
that privacy, but, as clear as daylight, that none but Hercules
auf Ziałoſus by any manner of means can. So far all is
well. We have absolute solitude here or nowhere. Aff
extra the damsels are snug enough. But here the artist's
courage seems to have failed him. He began to pity his
pretty charge, and, to comfort the irksomeness, has peopled
their solitude with a bevy of fair attendants, maids of honour,
or ladies of the bed-chamber, according to the approved
etiquette at a court of the nineteenth century; giving to the
whole scene the air of a ſéte champêtre, if we will but excuse
the absence of the gentlemen. This is well, and Watteauish.
But what is become of the solitary mystery—the
“Daughters three,
That sing around the golden tree ?”
This is not the way in which Poussin would have treated
this subject.
The paintings, or rather the stupendous architectural
designs, of a modern artist, have been urged as objections
to the theory of our motto. They are of a character, we
confess, to stagger it. His towered structures are of the
highest order of the material sublime. Whether they were
dreams, or transcripts of some elder workmanship—Assyrian
ruins old—restored by this mighty artist, they satisfy our
most stretched and craving conceptions of the glories of the
antique world. It is a pity that they were ever peopled.
On that side, the imagination of the artist halts, and appears
defective, Let us examine the point of the story in the
“Belshazzar's Feast.” We will introduce it by an apposite
anecdote,
The court historians of the day record, that at the first
dinner given by the late King (then Prince Regent) at the
Pavilion, the following characteristic frolic was played off.
The guests were select and admiring; the banquet profuse
and admirable; the lights lustrous and oriental ; the eye
320 7"HE ESSA YS OF AEAAA,
was perfectly dazzled with the display of plate, among
which the great gold salt-cellar, brought from the regalia in
the Tower for this especial purpose, itself a tower stood
conspicuous for its magnitude. And now the Rev. 9
the then admired Court Chaplain, was proceeding with the
grace, when, at a signal given, the lights were suddenly
Overcast, and a huge transparency was discovered, in which
glittered in golden letters—
“BRIGHTON.—EARTHQUAKE–SWALLOW-UP-ALIVE.”
Imagine the confusion of the guests; the Georges and
garters, jewels, bracelets, moulted upon the occasion | The
fans dropped, and picked up the next morning by the sly
court pages 1 Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name fainting, and the
Countess of holding the smelling-bottle, till the good-
humoured Prince caused harmony to be restored by calling
in fresh candles, and declaring that the whole was nothing
but a pantomime hoax, got up by the ingenious Mr. Farley,
of Covent Garden, from hints which his Royal Highness
himself had furnished Then imagine the infinite applause
that followed, the mutual rallyings, the declarations that
“they were not much frightened,” of the assembled galaxy.
The point of time in the picture exactly answers to the
appearance of the transparency in the anecdote. The
huddle, the flutter, the bustle, the escape, the alarm, and
the mock alarm ; the prettinesses heightened by consterna-
tion ; the courtier's fear which was flattery, and the lady's
which was affectation ; all that we may conceive to have
taken place in a mob of Brighton courtiers, sympathising
with the well-acted surprise of their sovereign; all this, and
no more, is exhibited by the well-dressed lords and ladies in
the Hall of Belus. Just this sort of consternation we have
seen among a flock of disquieted wild geese at the report of
a gun having gone off
But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal anxiety for the
preservation of their persons,—such as we have witnessed at
a theatre, when a slight alarm of fire has been given—an
adequate exponent of a supernatural terror P the way in
Z'HE AESSA VS OF E/C/A. 321
which the finger of God, writing judgments, would have
been met by the withered conscience P There is a human
fear, and a divine fear. The one is disturbed, restless, and
bent upon escape. The other is bowed down, effortless,
passive. When the spirit appeared before Eliphaz in the
visions of the night, and the hair of his flesh stood up, was
it in the thoughts of the Temanite to ring the bell of his
chamber, or to call up the servants P But let us see in the
text what there is to justify all this huddle of vulgar con-
Sternation.
From the words of Daniel it appears that Belshazzar had
made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank
wine before the thousand. The golden and silver vessels
are gorgeously enumerated, with the princes, the king's
concubines, and his wives. Then follows—
“In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand,
and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of
the wall of the king's palace ; and the king saw the part of
the hand that wrote. Then the King’s countenance was
changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints
of his loins were loosened, and his knees smote one against
another.”
This is the plain text. By no hint can it be otherwise
inferred, but that the appearance was solely confined to the
fancy of Belshazzar, that his single brain was troubled. Not
a word is spoken of its being seen by any else there present,
not even by the queen herself, who merely undertakes for the
interpretation of the phenomenon, as related to her, doubt-
less by her husband. The lords are simply said to be
astonished; i.e., at the trouble and the change of counten-
ance in their sovereign. Even the prophet does not appear
to have seen the scroll, which the king saw. He recalls it
only, as Joseph did the Dream to the King of Egypt.
“Then was the part of the hand sent from him [the Lord],
and this writing was written.” He speaks of the phantasm
as past.
Then what becomes of this needless multiplication of the
miracle? this message to a royal conscience, singly expressed
2I
322 THE ESSA YS OF EA/A.
—for it was said, “thy kingdom is divided,” simultaneously
impressed upon the fancies of a thousand courtiers, who
were implied in it neither correctly nor grammatically P
But admitting the artist's own version of the story, and
that the sight was seen also by the thousand courtiers—let
it have been visible to all Babylon—as the knees of
Belshazzar were shaken, and his countenance troubled, even
so would the knees of every man in Babylon, and their
Countenances, as of an individual man, been troubled;
bowed, bent down, so would they have remained, stupor-
fixed, with no thought of struggling with that inevitable
judgment.
Not all that is optically possible to be seen, is to be shown
in every picture. The eye delightedly dwells upon the
brilliant individualities in a “Marriage at Cana,” by
Veronese, or Titian, to the very texture and colour of the
wedding garments, the rings glittering upon the bride's
fingers, the metal and fashion of the wine-pots; for at such
seasons, there is leisure and luxury to be curious. But in
a “day of judgment,” or in a “day of lesser horrors, yet
divine,” as at the impious feast of Belshazzar, the eye should
see, as the actual eye of an agent or patient in the immediate
scene would see, only in masses and indistinction. Not
only the female attire and jewellery exposed to the critical
eye of the fashion, as minutely as the dresses in a lady's
magazine, in the criticised picture, but perhaps the
curiosities of anatomical science, and studied diversities of
posture in the fallen angels and sinners of Michael Angelo,
—have no business in their great subjects. There was no
leisure of them.
By a wise falsification, the great masters of painting got
at their true conclusions; by not showing the actual appear-
ances, that was, all that was to be seen at any given moment
by an indifferent eye, but only what the eye might be
supposed to see in the doing or suffering of some portentous
action. Suppose the moment of the Swallowing up of
Pompeii. There they were to be seen—houses, columns,
architectural proportions, differences of public and private
THE AESSA VS OF EA/A. 323
buildings, men and women, at their standing occupations,
the diversified thousand postures, attitudes, dresses, in Some
confusion truly, but physically they were visible. But what
eye saw them at that eclipsing moment, which reduces con-
fusion to a kind of unity, and when the senses are upturned
from their proprieties, when sight and hearing are a feeling
only P A thousand years have passed, and we are at leisure
to contemplate the weaver fixed standing at his shuttle, the
baker at his oven, and to turn over with antiquarian coolness’
the pots and pans of Pompeii.
“Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou Moon, in
the valley of Ajalon.” Who, in reading this magnificent
Hebraism, in his conception, sees aught but the heroic Son
of Nun, with the outstretched arm, and the greater and
lesser light obsequies P Doubtless there were to be seen
hill and dale, and chariots and horsemen, on open plain or
winding by secret defiles, and all the circumstances and
stratagems of war. But whose eyes would have been
conscious of this array at the interposition of the synchronic
miracle P. Yet in the picture of this subject by the artist of
the “Belshazzar's Feast”—no ignoble work either—the
marshalling and landscape of the war is everything, the
miracle sinks into an anecdote of the day; and the eye may
“ dart through rank and file traverse” for some minutes,
before it shall discover, among his armed followers, zwhich is
Joshua / Not modern art alone, but ancient, where only it
is to be found if anywhere, can be detected erring, from
defect of this imaginative faculty. The world has nothing
to show of the preternatural in painting, transcending
the figure of Lazarus bursting his grave-clothes, in the
great picture at Angerstein's. It seems a thing between
two beings. A ghastly horror at itself struggles with newly-
apprehended gratitude at second life bestowed. It cannot
forget that it was a ghost. It has hardly felt that it is a
body. It has to tell of the world of spirits.—Was it from a
feeling, that the crowd of half-impassioned bystanders, and
the still more irrelevant herd of passers-by at a distance,
who have not heard or but faintly have been told of the
324 ZTHE ESSA VS OF EAE/A.
passing miracle, admirable as they are in design and hue—
for it is a glorified work—do not respond adequately to the
action—that the single figure of Lazarus has been attributed
to Michael Angelo, and the mighty Sebastian unfairly robbed
of the fame of the greater half of the interest? Now that there
were not indifferent passers-by within actual scope of the
eyes of those present at the miracles to whom the sound of
it had but faintly, or not at all, reached, it would be hardi-
hood to deny; but would they see them P or can the mind
in the conception of it admit of such unconcerning objects?
can it think of them at all P or what associating league to
the imagination can there be between the seers, and the
seers not, of a presential miracle?
Were an artist to paint upon demand a picture of a Dryad,
we will ask whether, in the present low state of expectation,
the patron would not, or ought not to be fully satisfied with
a beautiful naked figure recumbent under wide-stretched
Oaks P Dis-seat those woods, and place the same figure
among fountains, and falls of pellucid water, and you have
a—-Naiad | Not so in a rough print we have seen after
Julio Romano, we think—for it is long since—there, by no
process, with mere change of scene, could the figure have
reciprocated characters. Long, grotesque, fantastic, yet
with a grace of her own, beautiful in convolution and dis-
tortion, linked to her connatural tree, co-twisted with its
limbs her own, till both seemed either—these, animated
branches ; those, disanimated members—yet the animal
and vegetable lives sufficiently kept distinct—his Dryad lay
—an approximation of two natures, which to conceive, it
must be seen: analogous to, not the same with, the delicacies
of Ovidian transformations.
To the lowest subjects, and to a superficial comprehension,
the most barren, the Great Masters gave loftiness and fruit-
fulness. The large eye of genius saw in the meanness of
present objects, their capabilities of treatment from their
relations to some grand Past or Future. How has Raphael
—we must still linger about the Vatican—treated the humble
craft of the ship-builder, in his “Building of the Ark”? It
ZTAZ2 ZSSA VS OF AZZZA. 325
is in that scriptural series, to which we have referred, and
which, judging from some fine rough old graphic sketches
of them which we possess, seem to be of a higher and more
poetic grade than even the Cartoons. The dim of sight
are the timid and the shrinking. There is a cowardice in
modern art. As the Frenchmen, of whom Coleridge's friend
made the prophetic guess at Rome, from the beard and
horns of the Moses of Michael Angelo collected no infer-
ences beyond that of a He Goat and a Cornuto ; so from
this subject, of mere mechanic promise, it would instinct-
ively turn away, as from one incapable of investiture with
any grandeur. The dockyards at Woolwich would object
derogatory associations. The depôt at Chatham would be
the mote and the beam in its intellectual eye. But not to
the nautical preparations in the shipyards of Civita Vecchia
did Raphael look for instructions, when he imagined the
Building of the Vessel that was to be conservatory of
the wrecks of the species of drowned mankind. In the
intensity of the action, he keeps ever out of sight the mean-
ness of the operation. There is the Patriarch, in calm
forethought, and with holy prescience, giving directions.
And there are his agents—the solitary but sufficient Three
—hewing, Sawing, every one with the might and earnestness
of a Demiurgus; under some instinctive rather than technical
guidance; giant-muscled ; every one a Hercules, or liker to
those Vulcanian Three, that in sounding caverns under
Mongibello wrought in fire—Brontes, and black Steropes,
and Pyracmon. So work the workmen that should repair
a world !
Artists again err in the confounding of Żoetic zwiſh Żictoria/
subjects. In the latter, the exterior accidents are nearly
everything, the unseen qualities as nothing. Othello's
colour—the infirmities and corpulence of a Sir John Falstaff
—do they haunt us perpetually in the reading P or are they
obtruded upon our conceptions one time for ninety-nine
that we are lost in admiration at the respective moral or
intellectual attributes of the character P But in a picture
Othello is a/ways a Blackamoor; and the other only Plump
326 ZTHE ZESSA VS OF AE//4.
Jack. Deeply corporealised, and enchained hopelessly in
the grovelling fetters of externality, must be the mind, to
which, in its better moments, the image of the high-souled,
high-intelligenced Quixote—the errant Star of Knighthood,
made more tender by eclipse—has never presented itself,
divested from the unhallowed accompaniment of a Sancho,
or a rabblement at the heels of Rosinante. That man has
read his book by halves; he has laughed, mistaking his
author's purport, which was—tears. The artist that pictures
Quixote (and it is in this degrading point that he is every
season held up at our Exhibitions) in the shallow hope of
exciting mirth, would have joined the rabble at the heels of
his starved steed. We wish not to see that counterfeited,
which we would not have wished to see in the reality.
Conscious of the heroic inside of the noble Quixote, who,
on hearing that his withered person was passing, would have
stepped over his threshold to gaze upon his forlorn habili-
ments, and the “strange bedfellows which misery brings
a man acquainted with ?” Shade of Cervantes who in
thy Second Part could put into the mouth of thy Quixote
those high aspirations of a super-chivalrous gallantry, where
he replies to one of the shepherdesses, apprehensive that he
would spoil their pretty net-works, and inviting him to be a
guest with them, in accents like these: “Truly, fairest lady,
Actaeon was not more astonished when he saw Diana bathing
herself at the fountain, than I have been in beholding your
beauty: I commend the manner of your pastime, and thank
you for your kind offers; and, if I may serve you, so I may
be sure you will be obeyed, you may command me: for my
profession is this, To show myself thankful, and a doer of
good to all sorts of people, especially of the rank that your
person shows you to be ; and if those nets, as they take up
but a little piece of ground, should take up the whole world,
I would seek out new worlds to pass through, rather than
break them: and ” (he adds), “that you may give credit to
this my exaggeration, behold at least he that promiseth you
this, is Don Quixote de la Mancha, if haply this name hath
come to your hearing.” Illustrious Romancer were the
THE AESSA VS OF EAE/A. 327
“fine frenzies,” which possessed the brain of thy own
Quixote, a fit subject, as in this Second Part, to be exposed
to the jeers of Duennas and Serving men; to be monstered,
and shown up at the heartless banquets of great men P Was
that pitiable infirmity, which in thy First Part misleads him,
always from zwithin, into half-ludicrous, but more than half-
compassionable and admirable errors, not infliction enough
from heaven, that men by studied artifices must devise and
practise upon the humour, to inflame where they should
soothe it? Why, Goneril would have blushed to practise
upon the abdicated king at this rate, and the she-wolf Regan
not have endured to play the pranks upon his fled wits,
which thou hast made thy Quixote suffer in Duchesses’ halls,
and at the hands of that unworthy nobleman."
In the First Adventures, even, it needed all the art of
the most consummate artist in the Book way that the world
hath yet seen, to keep up in the mind of the reader the
heroic attributes of the character without relaxing; so as
absolutely that they shall suffer no alloy from the debasing
fellowship of the clown. If it ever obtrudes itself as a dis-
harmony, are we inclined to laugh; or not, rather, to indulge
a contrary emotion P-Cervantes, stung, perchance, by the
relish with which his Reading Public had received the
fooleries of the man, more to their palates than the gener-
osities of the master, in the sequel let his pen run riot, lost
the harmony and the balance, and sacrificed a great idea to
the taste of his contemporaries. We know that in the
present day the Knight has fewer admirers than the Squire.
Anticipating, what did actually happen to him—as after-
wards it did to his scarce inferior follower, the author of
“Guzman de Alfarache”—that some less knowing hand
would prevent him by a spurious Second Part; and judging
that it would be easier for his competitor, to outbid him
in the comicalities, than in the romance of his work, he
abandoned his Knight, and has fairly set up the Squire for
his Hero. For what else has he unsealed the eyes of
* Yet from this Second Part, our cried-up pictures are mostly selected;
the waiting-women with beards, etc.
328 ZºZº. ZSSA YS OF AZZZA.
Sancho; and instead of that twilight state of semi-insanity—
the madness at second-hand—the contagion, caught from a
stronger mind infected—the war between native cunning,
and hereditary deference, with which he has hitherto
accompanied his master—two for a pair almost—does he
substitute a downright Knave, with open eyes, for his own
ends only following a confessed Madman; and offering at
one time to lay, if not actually laying, hands upon him.
From the moment that Sancho loses his reverence, Don
Quixote is become a-treatable lunatic. Our artists handle
him accordingly.
THE WEDDING,
I Do not know when I have been better pleased than at
being invited last week to be present at the wedding of a
friend's daughter. I like to make one at these ceremonies,
which to us old people give back our youth in a manner,
and restore our gayest season, in the remembrance of our
own success, or the regrets, scarcely less tender, of our own
youthful disappointments, in this point of a settlement. On
these occasions I am sure to be in good humour for a week
or two after, and enjoy a reflected honeymoon. Being
without a family, I am flattered with these temporary adop-
tions in a friend’s family ; I feel a sort of cousinhood, or
uncleship, for the season; I am inducted into degrees of
affinity; and, in the participated socialities of the little
community, I lay down for a brief while my solitary
bachelorship. I carry this humour so far, that I take it
unkindly to be left out, even when a funeral is going on in
the house of a dear friend, But to my subject.
The union itself had been long settled, but its celebration
had been hitherto deferred, to an almost unreasonable state
of suspense in the lovers, by some invincible prejudices
which the bride's father had unhappily contracted upon the
ZTAZZ /2.SSA VS OF A. Z.Z.4. 329
subject of the too early marriages of females. He has been
lecturing any time these five years—for to that length the
courtship has been protracted—upon the propriety of put-
ting off the solemnity, till the lady should have completed
her five-and-twentieth year. We all began to be afraid that
a suit, which as yet had abated of none of its ardours, might
at last be lingered on, till passion had time to cool, and love
go out in the experiment. But a little wheedling on the
part of his wife, who was by no means a party to these
overstrained notions, joined to some serious expostulations
on that of his friends, who, from the growing infirmities of
the old gentleman, could not promise ourselves many years'
enjoyment of his company, and were anxious to bring
matters to a conclusion during his lifetime, at length pre-
vailed; and on Monday last the daughter of my old friend
Admiral having attained the zºoman/y age of nineteen,
was conducted to the church by her pleasant cousin J 2
who told some few years older.
Before the youthful part of my female readers express
their indignation at the abominable loss of time Occasioned
to the lovers by the preposterous notions of my old friend,
they will do well to consider the reluctance which a fond
parent naturally feels at parting with his child. To this
unwillingness, I believe, in most cases may be traced the
difference of opinion on this point between child and
parent, whatever pretences of interest or prudence may be
held out to cover it. The hardheartedness of fathers is a
fine theme for romance writers, a sure and moving topic;
but is there not something untender, to say no more of it,
in the hurry which a beloved child is sometimes in to tear
herself from the parental stock, and commit herself to
strange graftings P. The case is heightened where the lady,
as in the present instance, happens to be an only child. I
do not understand these matters experimentally, but I can
make a shrewd guess at the wounded pride of a parent upon
these occasions. It is no new observation, I believe, that a
lover in most cases has no rival so much to be feared as the
father. Certainly there is a jealousy in unftara/e/ subjects,
- 2 I*
33O ZTAE/E ESSA YS OF EAAA.
which is little less heart-rending than the passion which we
more strictly christen by that name. Mothers' scruples are
more easily got over ! for this reason, I suppose, that the
protection transferred to a husband is less a derogation and
a loss to their authority than to the paternal, Mothers,
besides, have a trembling foresight, which paints the incon-
veniences (impossible to be conceived in the same degree
by the other parent) of a life of forlorn celibacy, which the
refusal of a tolerable match may entail upon their child.
Mothers’ instinct is a surer guide here, than the cold reason-
ings of a father on such a topic. To this instinct may be
imputed, and by it alone may be excused, the unbeseeming
artifices, by which some wives push on the matrimonial
projects of their daughters, which the husband, however
approving, shall entertain with comparative indifference.
A little shamelessness on this head is pardonable. With
this explanation, forwardness becomes a grace, and maternal
importunity receives the name of a virtue.—But the parson
stays, while I preposterously assume his office; I am preach-
ing, while the bride is on the threshold.
Nor let any of my female readers suppose that the sage
reflections which have just escaped me have the obliquest
tendency of application to the young lady, who it will be
seen, is about to venture upon a change in her condition, at
a mature and competent age, and not without the fullest
approbation of all parties. I only deprecate very hasty
ſmarriages.
It had been fixed that the ceremony should be gone
through at an early hour, to give time for a little déſeſ/mer
afterwards, to which a select party of friends had been
invited. We were in church a little before the clock struck
eight.
Nothing could be more judicious or graceful than the
dress of the bridesmaids—the three charming Miss Foresters
—on this morning. To give the bride an opportunity of
shining singly, they had come habited all in green. I am
ill at describing female apparel; but, while she stood at the
altar in vestments white and candid as her thoughts, a
THE ESSA VS OF EAE/A. 33 I
sacrificial whiteness, they assisted in robes, such as might
become Diana's nymphs—Foresters indeed—as such who
had not yet come to the resolution of putting off cold
virginity. These young maids, not being so blessed as to
have a mother living, I am told, keep single for their
father's sake, and live all together so happy with their
remaining parent, that the hearts of their lovers are ever
broken with the prospect (so inauspicious to their hopes) of
such uninterrupted and provoking home-comfort. Gallant
girls each a victim worthy of Iphigenia
I do not know what business I have to be present in
solemn places. I cannot divest me of an unseasonable
disposition to levity upon the most awful occasions. I was
never cut out for a public functionary. Ceremony and I
have long shaken hands; but I could not resist the impor-
tunities of the young lady's father, whose gout unhappily
confined him at home, to act as parent on this occasion,
and give away the bride. Something ludicrous occurred to
me at this most serious of all moments—a sense of my
unfitness to have the disposal, even in imagination, of the
sweet young creature beside me. I fear I was betrayed to
some lightness, for the awful eye of the parson—and the
rector's eye of Saint Mildred's in the Poultry is no trifle of a
rebuke—was upon me in an instant, souring my incipient
jest to the tristful severities of a funeral.
This was the only misbehaviour which I can plead to
upon this solemn occasion, unless what was objected to me
after the ceremony by one of the handsome Miss T S,
be accounted a solecism. She was pleased to say that she
had never seen a gentleman before me give away a bride in
black. Now black has been my ordinary apparel so long—
indeed I take it to be the proper costume of an author—
the stage Sanctions it—that to have appeared in some lighter
colour would have raised more mirth at my expense, than
the anomaly had created censure. But I could perceive
that the bride's mother, and some elderly ladies present
(God bless them (), would have been well content, if I had
come in any other colour than that. But I got over the omen
332 7A//E ESSA YS OF AZZZA.
by a lucky apologue, which I remembered out of Pilpay,
or some Indian author, of all the birds being invited to the
linnets' wedding, at which, when all the rest came in their
gayest feathers, the raven alone apologised for his cloak
because “he had no other.” This tolerably reconciled the
elders. But with the young people all was merriment, and
shakings of hands, and congratulations, and kissing away
the bride's tears, and kissings from her in return, till a young
lady, who assumed some experience in these matters, having
worn the nuptial bands some four or five weeks longer than
her friend, rescued her, archly observing, with half an eye
upon the bridegroom, that at this rate she would have
“none left.”
My friend the Admiral was in fine wig and buckle on
this Occasion—a striking contrast to his usual neglect of
personal appearance. He did not once shove up his
borrowed locks (his custom ever at his morning studies)
to betray the few grey stragglers of his own beneath them.
He wore an aspect of thoughtful satisfaction. I trembled
for the hour, which at length approached, when after a
protracted breakfast of three hours—if stores of cold fowls,
tongues, hams, botargoes, dried fruits, wines, Cordials, etc.,
can deserve so meagre an appellation—the coach was
announced, which was to come to carry off the bride and
bridegroom for a season, as custom has sensibly ordained,
into the country; upon which design, wishing them a
felicitous journey, let us return to the assembled guests.
“As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
The eyes of men
Are idly bent on him that enters next,”
so idly did we bend our eyes upon one another, when the
chief performers in the morning's pageant had vanished.
None told his tale. None sipped her glass. The poor
Admiral made an effort—it was not much. I had antici-
pated so ſar, Even the infinity of full satisfaction, that had
betrayed itself through the prim looks and quiet deportment
of his lady, began to wane into something like misgiving.
ZTA/A, ASSA YS OF EAE/A. 333
No one knew whether to take their leaves or stay. We
seemed assembled upon a silly occasion. In this crisis,
betwixt tarrying and departure, I must do justice to a
foolish talent of mine, which had otherwise like to have
brought me into disgrace in the fore part of the day; I
mean a power, in any emergency, of thinking and giving
vent to all manner of strange nonsense. In this awkward
dilemma I found it sovereign. I rattled off some of my
most excellent absurdities. All were willing to be relieved,
at any expense of reason, from the pressure of the intolerable
vacuum which had succeeded to the morning bustle. By
this means I was fortunate in keeping together the better
part of the company to a late hour: and a rubber of whist
(the Admiral's favourite game) with some rare strokes of
chance as well as skill, which came opportunely on his side
—lengthened out till midnight—dismissed the old gentle-
man at last to his bed with comparatively easy Spirits.
I have been at my old friend's various times since. I do
not know a visiting place where every guest is so perfectly
at his ease; nowhere, where harmony is so strangely the
result of confusion. Everybody is at cross purposes, yet
the effect is so much better than uniformity. Contradictory
orders; servants pulling one way; master and mistress
driving some other, yet both diverse; visitors huddled up
in corners; chairs unsymmetrised; candles disposed by
chance; meals at odd hours, tea and Supper at once, or the
latter preceding the former; the host and the guest con-
ferring, yet each upon a different topic, each understanding
himself, neither trying to understand or hear the other;
draughts and politics, chess and political economy, cards
and conversation on nautical matters, going on at once,
without the hope, or indeed the wish, of distinguishing
them, make it altogether the most perfect concordia discors
you shall meet with. Yet somehow the old house is not
quite what it should be. The Admiral still enjoys his pipe,
but he has no Miss Emily to fill it for him. The instrument
stands where it stood, but she is gone whose delicate touch
could sometimes for a short minute appease the warring
334 THAE AESSA VS OF AZZZA.
elements. He has learnt, as Marvel expresses it, to “make
his destiny his choice.” He bears bravely up, but he does
not come out with his flashes of wild wit so thick as
formerly. His sea songs seldomer escape him. His wife,
too, looks as if she wanted some younger body to scold and
set to rights. We all miss a junior presence. It is wonder-
ful how one young maiden freshens up, and keeps green,
the paternal roof. Old and young seem to have an interest
in her, so long as she is not absolutely disposed of. The
youthfulness of the house is flown. Emily is married.
THE WALTER SCOTT PRESS, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.
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