Leigh Hunt's Writings. THE BOOK OF THE SONNET. Compris- ing an Essayon the Cultivation, History, and Varieties of the species of poem called the Sonnet, with a Selec- tion of English Sonnets, now first published from the original MSS. of Leigh Hunt. An Essayon American Sonnets and Sonneteers, with a Selection of Sonnets, by S. Adams Lee. In two volumes. i6mo. Cloth, gilt top. Price, $3.00. " The genuine aroma of literature abounds in every page of Leigh Hunt's delicious Essay on the Sonnet. His mind shows itself imbued with a rich knowledge of his subject, and this, illumined by the evidence of a thorough and unaffected liking for it, makes him irresistible." London Saturday Review. " As a collection of Sonnets, it is not only the fullest ever made, but by far the best, even excelling the dainty little collection by Dyce, . . . and Hunt's exhaustive and every way admirable introductory essay is, after all, much the best part of the work. Its pages are steeped in thoughtful scholarship on this special theme, and sparkle with genial and veracious criticism." JR. H. Stod- dard. "A greater verbal epicurean than Leigh Hunt never lived. He luxuriated over niceties of expression and revelled in a delicious image or apt phrases ; he was always seeking the beautiful in neglected fields of literature ; and to renew his acquaintance with the memorable sonnets of Italian and English poets was simply a labor of love. He therefore wrote an essay giving the history of the sonnet, and defining its conditions and possibilities, expatiated on the special merits of each renowned writer in this sphere, and indicated the most striking examples of success in artistic and effective construction or eloquent feeling as thus embodied and expressed." H. T. Tucker-man. " Whether Leigh Hunt was a man of genius, or only of surpassing talent, is a question which we willingly leave to the critics who find tweedledee differ- ent from tweedledum in kind as well as degree. We are content with the fact that he has some virtue which makes us read every book of his we open, and which leaves us more his friend at the end than we were before. Indeed, it would be hard not to love so cheerful and kindly a soul, even if his art were ever less than charming. But literature seems to have always been a gay sci- ence with him. We never see his Muse as the harsh step-mother she really was : we are made to think her a gentle liege-lady, served in the airiest spirit of chivalric devotion ; and in the Essay in this ' Book of the Sonnet ' her aspect is as sunny as any the poet has ever shown us. " The Essay is printed for the first time, and it was written in Hunt's old age ; but it is full of lig^ht-heartedness, and belongs in feeling to a period at least as early as that which produced the ' Stories from the Italian Poets." It is one of those studies in which he was always happy, for it keeps him chiefly in Italy ; and when it takes him from Italy, it only brings him into the Italian air of English sonnetry, a sort of soft Devonshire coast, bordering the rug- geder native poetry on the south." W. D. Howells, in Atlantic Monthly. Sold everywhere. Mailed, postpaid, by the Publishers. ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. I DAY BY THE FIRE. DAY BY THE FIRE; tfjer papers, HITHERTO UNCOLLECTED. LEIGH HUNT. "Matchless as a fireside companion." ELI A. BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1870. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by ROBERTS BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. PREFATORY NOTE. HE papers here first collected were originally published in "The Reflector," "The Ex- aminer," "The Indicator,"* "The London Journal," "The Monthly Chronicle," and " The New Monthly Magazine ; " and were written at widely different periods of the author's life in his early manhood, middle life, and old age. If there is any intelligent person who professes not to like Leigh Hunt, it is probably for precisely the same rea- son that Charles Lamb professed not to like the W s, because he did not know them. For Leigh Hunt is one of the most delightful of authors, and all who read him admire him for his scholarly tastes and literary amenities, his nimble wit, bright fancy, and subtle perception of beauty ; and love him for his glad heart and sunny dis- position, his large and generous sympathies, and noble, Christian faith in the innate goodness of man. This volume of essays and sketches, written in the author's pleasant, characteristic manner, and full of what Hawthorne happily calls "his unmeasured poetry," will, I hope, be acceptable to the old admirers of Leigh Hunt, and introduce him to many new and appreciative readers. J. E. B. CHELSEA, November 18, 1869. * The little weekly periodical, from which the well-known delightful work of the same name is a selection. Something not to be replaced would be struck out of the gentler literature of our century, could the mind of Leigh Hunt cease to speak to us in a book. EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON. Into whatever he has written he has put a living soul ; and much of what he has produced is brilliant either with wit and humor, or with tenderness and beauty. GEORGE L. CRAIK. Leigh Hunt seems the very opposite of Hazlitt. He loves everything, he catches the sunny side of everything, and, excepting that he has a few polemical antipathies, finds everything beautiful. HENRY CRABB ROBINSON. He is, in truth, one of the pleasantest writers of his time, easy, colloquial, genial, human, full of fine fancies and verbal niceties, possessing a loving if not a " learned spirit," with Hardly a spice of bitterness in his composition. E. P. WHIPPLE. I have been reading some of Leigh Hunt's works lately, and am surprised at the freshness, and sweetness, and Christian, not lax, spirit of human benev- olence and toleration which existed in the heart of one who was the contempo- rary, and even colleague, of Byron. FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON. CONTENTS. Prefatory Note 3 A Day by the Fire 13 On Commonplace People 42 A Popular View of the Heathen Mythology ... 47 On the Genii of the Greeks and Romans, and the Spirit that was said to have waited on Socrates . 59 On the Genii of Antiquity and the Poets 70 Fairies 81 Genii and Fairies of the East, the Arabian Nights, &c. 124 The Satyr of Mythology and the Poets 155 The Nymphs of Antiquity and of the Poets .... 170 The Sirens and Mermaids of the Poets 188 Tritons and Men of the Sea 206 On Giants, Ogres, and Cyclops 231 Gog and Magog, and the Wall of Dhoulkarnein . . 252 Aeronautics, Real and Fabulous 260 On the Talking of Nonsense 284 A Rainy Day 292 The True Enjoyment of Splendor 299 12 CONTENTS. Retrospective Review Men Wedded to Books The Contest between the Nightingale and Musician . 302 The Murdered Pump 315 Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 319 New Year's Gifts "..... 326 Sale of the late Mr. West's Pictures 331 Translation from Milton into Welsh 334 The Bull-Fight; or, The Story of Don Alphonso de Melos and the Jeweller's Daughter 343 Love and Will 353 A DAY BY THE FIRE. AM one of those that delight in a fireside, and can enjoy it without even the help of a cat or a tea-kettle. To cats, indeed, I have an aver- sion, as animals that only affect a sociality, without caring a jot for any thing but their own luxury ; * and my tea-kettle, I frankly confess, has long been displaced, or rather dismissed, by a bronze-col- ored and graceful urn ; though, between ourselves, I am not sure that I have gained any thing by the exchange. Cowper, it is true, talks of the " bubbling and loud-hissing urn," which " Throws up a steamy column ; " but- there was something so primitive and unaffected, so warm-hearted and unpresuming, in the tea-kettle, its song was so much more cheerful and continued, and it kept the water so hot and comfortable as long as you wanted it, that I sometimes feel as if I had sent off a good, plain, faithful old friend, who had but one wish to serve me, for a superficial, smooth-faced upstart of a fel- low, who, after a little promising and vaporing, grows cold * This was written in the early days of Leigh Hunt's literary career ; but years after, when he was older and wiser, he did full and complete justice to the familiar household cat, in an admirable paper, entitled, "The Cat by the Fire," published in "The Seer." ED. 14 A DAY BY THE FIRE. and contemptuous, and thinks himself bound to do noth- ing but stand on a rug and have his person admired by the circle. To this admiration, in fact, I have been obliged to resort, in order to make myself think well of my bargain, if possible ; and, accordingly, I say to myself every now and then during the tea, " A pretty look with it, that urn ; " or, u It's wonderful what a taste the Greeks had ; " or, " The eye might have a great many enjoyments, if peo- ple would but look after forms and shapes." In the mean while, the urn leaves off its " bubbling and hissing," but then there is such an air with it ! My tea is made of cold water, but then, the Greeks were such a nation ! If there is any one thing that can reconcile me to the loss of my kettle, more than another, it is that my fire has been left to itself: it has full room to breathe and to blaze, and I can poke it as I please. What recollections does that idea excite ? Poke it as I please ! Think, benevo- lent reader, think of the pride and pleasure of having in your hand that awful, but at the same time artless, weapon, a poker, of putting it into the proper bar, gently levering up the coals, and seeing the instant and bustling flame above ! * To what can I compare that moment ? that sudden, empyreal enthusiasm ? that fiery expression of vivification ? that ardent acknowledgment, as it were, of the care and kindliness of the operator ? Let me con- sider a moment : it is very odd ; I was always reckoned a lively hand at a simile ; but language and combination absolutely fail me here. If it is like any tiling, it must be something beyond every thing in beauty and life. Oh, I have it now : think, reader, if you are one of those who * Charles Lamb's friend and school-mate, Le Grice, wrote a book on the " Art of Poking the Fire." ED. A DAY BY THE FIRE. 15 can muster up sufficient sprightliness to engage in a game of forfeits, on Twelfth night, for instance, think of a blooming girl who is condemned to " open her mouth and shut her eyes, and see what heaven," in the shape of a mischievous young fellow, " will send her." Her mouth is opened accordingly, the fire of her eyes is dead, her face assumes a doleful air ; up walks the aforesaid heaven or mischievous young fellow (young Ouranos, Hesiod would have called him), and, instead of a piece of paper, a thimble, or a cinder, claps into her mouth a peg of orange or a long slice of citron ; then her eyes above instantly light up again, the smiles wreath about, the sparklings burst forth, and all is warmth, brilliancy, and delight. I am aware that this simile is not perfect ; but if it would do for an epic poem, as I think it might, after Virgil's whipping-tops and Homer's jackasses and black-pud- dings, the reader, perhaps, will not quarrel with it. But to describe my feelings in an orderly manner, I must request the reader to go with me through a day's enjoyments by the fireside. It is part of my business to look about for helps to reflection ; and, for this reason, among many others, I indulge myself in keeping a good fire from morning till night. I have also a reflective turn for an easy chair, and a very thinking attachment to com- fort in general. But of this as I proceed. Imprimis, then : the morning is clear and cold ; time, half-past sev- en ; scene, a breakfast-room. Some persons, by the by, prefer a thick and rainy morning, with a sobbing wind, and the clatter of pattens along the streets ; but I confess, for my own part, that being a sedentary person, and too apt to sin against the duties of exercise, I have somewhat too sensitive a consciousness of bad weather, and feel a heavy sky go over me like a feather-bed, or rather like a 1 6 A DAY BY THE FIRE. huge brush which rubs all my nap the wrong way. I am growing better in this respect, and, by the help of a stout walk at noon, and getting, as it were, fairly into a favorite poet and a warm fire of an evening, begin to manage a cloud or an east wind tolerably well ; but still, for perfec- tion's sake on the present occasion, I must insist upon my clear morning, and will add to it, if the reader pleases, a little hoar-frost upon the windows, a bird or two coming after the crumbs, and the light smoke from the neighboring chimneys brightening up into the early sunshine. Even the dustman's bell is not unpleasant from its association ; and there is something absolutely musical in the clash of the milk-pails suddenly unyoked, and the ineffable, ad libi- tum note that follows. The waking epicure rises with an elastic anticipation ; enjoys the freshening cold water which endears what is to come ; and even goes placidly through the villanous scrap- ing process which we soften down into the level and lawny appellation of shaving. He then hurries down stairs, rubbing his hands, and sawing the sharp air through his teeth ; and, as he enters the breakfast-room, sees his old companion glowing through the bars, the life of the apart- ment, and wanting only his friendly hand to be lightened a little, and enabled to shoot up into dancing brilliancy. (I find I am getting into a quantity of epithets here, and must rein in my enthusiasm.) What need I say? The poker is applied, and would be so whether required or not, for it is impossible to resist the sudden ardor inspired by that sight ? The use of the poker, on first seeing one's nre, is as natural as shaking hands with a friend. At that movement a hundred little sparkles fly up from the coal- dust that falls within, while from the masses themselves, a roaring flame mounts aloft with a deep and fitful sound as A DAY BY THE FIRE. 17 of a shaken carpet, epithets again ; I must recur to poetry at once : Then shine the bars, the cakes in smoke aspire, A sudden glory bursts from all the fire. The conscious wight, rejoicing in the heat, Rubs the blithe knees, and toasts th' alternate feet.* The utility, as well as beauty, of the fire during breakfast, need not be pointed out to the most unphlogistic observer. A person would rather be shivering at any time of the day than at that of his first rising ; the transition would be too unnatural, he is not prepared for it, as Barnardine says, when he objects to being hanged. If you eat plain bread and butter with your tea, it is fit that your moderation should be rewarded with a good blaze ; and if you indulge in hot rolls or toast, you will hardly keep them to their warmth without it, particularly if you read ; and then, if you take in a newspaper, what a delightful change from the wet, raw, dabbing fold of paper when you first touch it, to the dry, crackling, crisp superficies which, with a skilful spat of the finger-nails at its upper end, stands at once in your hand, and looks as if it said, " Come read me." Nor is it the look of the newspaper only which the fire must render complete : it is the interest of the ladies who may happen to form part of your family, of your wife in particular, if you have one, to avoid the niggling and pinching aspect of cold ; it takes away the harmony of her features, and the graces of her behavior ; while, on the other hand, there is scarcely a more interesting sight in the world than that of a neat, delicate, good-humored * Parody upon part of the well-known description of night, with which Pope has swelled out the passage in Homer, and the faults of which have long been appreciated by general readers. 2 16 A DAY BY THE FIRE. female presiding at your breakfast-table, with hands taper- ing out of her long sleeves, eyes with a touch of Sir Peter Lely in them, and a face set in a little oval frame of mus- lin tied under the chin, and retaining a certain tinge of the pillow without its cloudiness. This is, indeed, the finish- ing grace of a fireside, though'it is impossible to have it at all times, and perhaps not always politic, especially for the studious. From breakfast to dinner, the quantity and quality of enjoyment depend very much on the nature of one's con- cerns ; and occupation of any kind, if we pursue it prop- erly, will hinder us from paying a critical attention to the fireside. It is sufficient, if our employments do not take us away from it, or at least from the genial warmth of a room which it adorns, unless, indeed, we are enabled to have recourse to exercise ; and in that case, I am not so unjust as to deny that walking or riding has its merits, and that the general glow they diffuse throughout the frame has something in it so extremely pleasurable and encour- aging ; nay, I must not scruple to confess that, without some preparation of this kind, the enjoyment of the fire- side, humanly speaking, is not absolutely perfect, as I have latterly been convinced by a variety of incontestable argu- ments in the shape of headaches, rheumatisms, mote-haunt- ed eyes, and other logical appeals to one's feelings which are in great use with physicians. Supposing, therefore, the morning to be passed, and the due portion of exercise to have been taken, the firesider fixes rather an early hour for dinner, particularly in the winter-time ; for he has not only been early at breakfast, but there are two luxurious intervals to enjoy between dinner and the time of candles : one that supposes a party round the fire with their wine and fruit ; the other, the hour of twilight, of which it has A DAY BY THE FIRE. 19 been reasonably doubted whether it is not the most luxu- rious point of time which a fireside can present ; but opin- ions will naturally be divided on this as on all other subjects, and every degree of pleasure depends upon so many contingencies, and upon such a variety of associa- tions, induced by habit and opinion, that I should be as unwilling as I am unable to decide on the matter. This, however, is certain, that no true firesider can dislike an hour so composing to his thoughts, and so cherishing to his whole faculties ; and it is equally certain that he will be little inclined to protract the dinner beyond what he can help, for if ever a fireside becomes unpleas- ant, it is during that gross and pernicious prolongation of eating and drinking, to which this latter age has given itself up, and which threatens to make the rising genera- tion regard a meal of repletion as the ultimatum of enjoy- ment. The inconvenience to which I allude is owing to the way in which we sit at dinner, for the persons who have their backs to the fire are liable to be scorched, while, at the same time, they render the persons opposite them liable to be frozen : so that the fire becomes uncomfortable to the former, and tantalizing to the latter ; and thus three evils are produced, of a most absurd and scandalous na- ture : in the first place, the fireside loses a degree of its character, and awakens feelings the very reverse of what it should ; secondly, the position of the back towards it is a neglect and affront, which it becomes it to resent ; and finally, its beauties, its proffered kindness, and its sprightly social effect are at once cut off from the company by the interposition of those invidious and idle surfaces called screens. This abuse is the more ridiculous, inasmuch as the remedy is so easy : for we have nothing to do but to 2O A DAY BY THE FIRE. use semicircular dining-tables, with the base unoccupied towards the fireplace, and the whole annoyance vanishes at once ; the master or mistress might preside in the middle, as was the custom with the Romans, and thus propriety would be observed, while everybody had the sight and benefit of the fire ; not to mention that, by this fashion, the table might be brought nearer to it, that the servants would have better access to the dishes, and that screens, if at all necessary, might be turned to better purpose as a general enclosure instead of a separation. But I hasten from dinner, according to notice ; and can- not but observe that, if you have a small set of visitors who enter into your feelings on this head, there is no movement so pleasant as a general one from the table to the fireside, each person taking his glass with him, and a small, slim-legged table being introduced into the circle for the purpose of holding the wine, and perhaps a poet or two, a glee-book, or a lute. If this practice should be- come general among those who know how to enjoy luxur- ies in such temperance as not to destroy conversation, it would soon gain for us another social advantage, by put- ting an end to the barbarous custom of sending away the ladies after dinner, a gross violation of those chivalrous graces of life, for which modern times are so highly in- debted to the persons whom they are pleased to term Gothic. And here I might digress, with no great impro- priety, to show the snug notions that were entertained by the knights and damsels of old in all particulars relating to domestic enjoyment, especially in the article of mixed company ; but I must not quit the fireside, and will only observe that, as the ladies formed its chief ornament, so they constituted its most familiar delight. A DAY BY THE FIRE. 21 " The minstralcie, the service at the feste, The grete yeftes to the most and leste, The riche array of Theseus' paleis, Ne who sate first, ne last upon the deis, What ladies fairest ben, or best dancing, Or which of hem can carole best or sing, Ne who most felingly speketh of love ; What haukis sitten on the perch above, What houndis liggen on the flour adoun, Of all this now make I no mencioun." CHAUCER. The word snug, however, reminds me that amidst all the languages, ancient and modern, it belongs exclusively to our own ; and that nothing but a want of ideas sug- gested by that soul-wrapping epithet could have induced certain frigid connoisseurs to tax our climate with want of genius, supposing, forsooth, that because we have not the sunshine of the Southern countries, we have no other warmth for our veins, and that, because our skies are not hot enough to keep us in doors, we have no excursiveness of wit and range of imagination. It seems to me that a great deal of good argument in refutation of these calum- nies has been wasted upon Monsieur du Bos and the Herr Winckelman : the one a narrow-minded, pedantic French- man, to whom the freedom of our genius was incompre- hensible ; the other, an Italianized German, who being suddenly transported into the sunshine, began frisking about with unwieldy vivacity, and concluded that nobody could be great or bewitching out of the pale of his advan- tages. Milton, it is true, in his " Paradise Lost," ex- presses an injudicious apprehension lest " An age too late, or cold Climate, or years, damp his intended wing ; " but the very complaint which foreign critics bring against him, as well as Shakespeare, is that his wing was not 22 A DAY BY THE FIRE. damped enough, that it was too daring and unsubdued ; and he not only avenges himself nobly of his fears by a flight beyond all Italian poetry, but shows, like the rest of his countrymen, that he could turn the coldness of his climate into a new species of inspiration, as I shall pres- ently make manifest. Not to mention, however, that the Greeks and Romans, Homer in particular, saw a great deal worse weather than these critics would have us imag- ine ; the question is, would the poets themselves have thought as they did? Would Tyrtasus, the singer of patriotism, have complained of being an Englishman ? Would Virgil, who delighted in husbandry, and whose first wish was to be a philosopher, have complained of living in our pastures, and being the countryman of New- ton ? Would Homer, the observer of character, the pan- egyrist of freedom, the painter of storms, of landscapes, and of domestic tenderness, aye, and the lover of snug house-room and a good dinner, would he have com- plained of our humors, of our liberty, of our shifting skies, of our ever-green fields, our conjugal happiness, our firesides, and our hospitality ? I only wish the reader and I had him at this party of ours after dinner, with a lyre on his knee, and a goblet, as he says, to drink as he pleased, "Piein, hole thumos anogoi." ODYSS. lib. viii. v. 70. I am much mistaken if our blazing fire and our freedom of speech would not give him a warmer inspiration than ever he felt in the person of Demodocus, even though placed on a lofty seat, and regaled with slices of brawn from a prince's table. The ancients, in fact, were by no means deficient in enthusiasm at sight of a good fire ; and it is to be presumed that, if they had enjoyed such firesides A DAY BY THE FIRE. 23 as ours, they would have acknowledged the advantages which our genius presents in winter, and almost been ready to conclude, with old Cleveland, that the sun him- self was nothing but " Heaven's coalery ; A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame." The ancient hearth was generally in the middle of the room, the ceiling of which let out the smoke ; it was sup- plied with charcoal or faggots, and consisted sometimes of a brazier or chafing-dish (the focus of the Romans), sometimes of a mere elevation or altar (the earia or saxapa of the Greeks). We may easily imagine the smoke and annoyance which this custom must have occasioned, not to mention the bad complexions which are caught by hanging over a fuming-pan, as the faces of the Spanish la- dies bear melancholy witness. The stoves, however, in use with the countrymen of Mons. du Bos and Winckelman are, if possible, still worse, having a dull, suffocating ef- fect, with nothing to recompense the eye. The abhorrence of them which Ariosto expresses in one of his satires, when, justifying his refusal to accompany Cardinal d'Este into Germany, he reckons up the miseries of its winter- time, may have led M. Winckelman to conclude that all the Northern resources against cold were equally intolera- ble to an Italian genius ; but Count Alfieri, a poet, at least as warmly inclined as Ariosto, delighted in England ; and the great romancer himself, in another of his satires, makes a commodious fireplace the climax of his wishes with regard to lodging. In short, what did Horace say, or rather what did he not say, of the raptures of in-door sociality, Horace, who knew how to enjoy sunshine in all its luxury, and who nevertheless appears to have snatched a finer inspiration from absolute frost and snow ? 24 A DAY BY THE FIRE. I need not quote all those beautiful little invitations he sent to his acquaintances, telling one of them that a neat room and a sparkling fire were waiting for him ; describ- ing to another the smoke springing out of the roof in curling volumes, and even congratulating his friends in general on the opportunity of enjoyment afforded them by a stormy day ; but, to take leave at once of these frigid connoisseurs, hear with what rapture he describes one of those friendly parties, in which he passed his winter even- ings, and which only wanted the finish of our better mor- ality and our patent fireplaces, to resemble the one I am now fancying. " Vides. ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte, nee jam sustineant onus Silvs laborantes, geluque Flumina constiterint acuto : Dissolve frigus ligna super foco Large reponens, atque benignius Deprome quadrimum Sabina, O Thaliarche, merum diota. Permitte Divis caetera ; . . Donee virenti canities abest Morosa. Nunc et campus, et area;, Lenesque sub noctem stisurri Composita repetantur hora ; Nunc et latentis proditor intimo Gratus puellae risus ab angulo, Pignusque dereptum lacertis Aut digito male pertinaci." LIB. I. OD. 9. ; Behold yon mountain's hoary height Made higher with new mounts of snow ; Again behold the winter's weight Oppress the lab'ring woods below, A DAY BY THE FIRE. 35 And streams with icy fetters bound Benumb'd and crampt to solid ground. With well-heap'd logs dissolve the cold, And feed the genial hearth with fires, Produce the wine that makes us bold, And sprightly wit and mirth inspires. For what hereafter shall betide, Jove, if 'tis worth his care, provide. Th' appointed hour of promis'd bliss, The pleasing whisper in the dark, The half unwilling, willing kiss, The laugh that guides thee to the mark, When the kind nymph would coyness feign, And hides but to be found again, These, these are joys the gods for youth ordain." DRYDKN. The Roman poet, however, though he occasionally boasts of his temperance, is too apt to lose sight of the intellectual part of his entertainment, or at least to make the sensual part predominate over the intellectual. Now, I reckon the nicety of social enjoyment to consist in the reverse; and, after partaking with Homer of his plenti- ful boiled and roast, and with Horace of his flower- crowned wine-parties, the poetical reader must come at last to us barbarians of the North for the perfection of fireside festivity, that is to say, for the union of practi- cal philosophy with absolute merriment, for light meals and unintoxicating glasses ; for refection that administers to enjoyment, instead of repletions that at once constitute and contradict it. I am speaking, of course, not of our commonplace eaters and drinkers, but of our classical arbiters of pleasure, as contrasted with those of other countries ; these, it is observable, have all delighted in Horace, and copied him as far as their tastes were con- 26 A DAY BY THE FIRE. genial ; but, without relaxing a jot of their real comfort, how pleasingly does their native philosophy temper and adorn the freedom of their conviviality, feeding the fire, as it were, with an equable fuel that hinders it alike from scorching and from going out, and, instead of the artificial enthusiasm of a heated body, enabling them to enjoy the healthful and unclouded predominance of a sparkling in- telligence ! It is curious, indeed, to see how distinct from all excess are their freest and heartiest notions of relaxa- tion. Thus our old poet, Drayton, reminding his favorite companion of a fireside meeting, expressly unites freedom with moderation : " My dearly loved friend, how oft have we In winter evenings, meaning to be free, To some well-chosen place us'd to retire, And there with moderate meat, and wine, and fire, Have pass'd the hours contentedly in chat, Now talk'd of this, and then discours'd of that, Spoke our own verses 'twixt ourselves, if not Other men's lines, which we by chance had got." EPISTLE TO HENRY REYNOLDS, ESQ., of Poets and Poes,*. And Milton, in his " Sonnet to Cyriack Skinner," one of the turns of which is plainly imitated from Horace, par- ticularly qualifies a strong invitation to merriment by an- ticipating what Horace would always drive from your reflections, the feelings of the day after : " Cyriack, whose Grandsire, on the royal bench Of British Themis, with no mean applause Pronounc'd, and in his volumes taught, our laws, Which others at their bar so often wrench ; To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench In mirth, that, after, no repenting draws. Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause, And what the Swede intends, and what the French To measure life leam thou betimes, and know Tow'rd solid good what leads the nearest way A DAY BY THE FIRE. 2j For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains, And disapproves that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains." But the execution of this sonnet is not to be compared in gracefulness and a finished sociality with the one addressed to his friend Lawrence, which, as it presents us with the acme of elegant repast, may conclude the hour which I have just been describing, and conduct us complacently to our twilight, " Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire, Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire Help waste a sullen day, what may be won From the hard season gaining?. Time will run On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire The lily and rose, that neither sow'd nor spun. What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise To hear the lute well-touch'd, and artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of these delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, is not unwise." But twilight comes : and the lover of the fireside, for the perfection of the moment, is now alone. He was reading a minute or two ago, and for some time was un- conscious of the increasing dusk, till, on looking up, he perceived the objects out of doors deepening into massy outline, while the sides of his fireplace began to reflect the light of the flames, and the shadow of himself and his chair fidgeted with huge obscurity on the wall. Still wish- ing to read, he pushed himself nearer and nearer the win- dow, and continued fixing on his book till he happened to take another glance out of doors, and on returning to it, could make out nothing. He therefore lays it aside, and 28 A DAY BY THE FIRE. restoring his chair to the fireplace, seats himself right before it in a reclining posture, his feet apart upon the fender, his eyes bent down towards the grate, his arms on the chair's elbows, one hand hanging down, and the palm of the other turned up and presented to the fire, not to keep it from him, for there is no glare or scorch about it, but to intercept and have a more kindly feel of its genial warmth. It is thus that the greatest and wisest of mankind have sat and meditated ; a homely truism, per- haps, but such a one as we are apt enough to forget. We talk of going to Athens or to Rome to see the precise ob- jects which the Greeks and Romans beheld ; and forget that the moon, which may be looking upon us at the mo- ment, is the same identical planet that enchanted Homer and Virgil, and that has been contemplated and admired by all the great men and geniuses that have existed : by Socrates and Plato in Athens, by the Antonines in Rome, by the Alfreds, the 1'Hospitals, the Miltons, Newtons, and Shakespeares. In like manner, we are anxious to dis- cover how these great men and poets appeared in com- mon, what habits they loved, in what way they talked and meditated, nay, in what postures they delighted to sit, and whether they indulged in the same tricks and little com- forts that we do. Look at nature and their works, and we shall see that they did ; and that, when we act naturally and think earnestly, we are reflecting their commonest habits to the life. Thus we have seen Horace talking of his blazing hearth and snug accommodations like the jol- liest of our acquaintances ; and thus we may safely imag- ine that Milton was in some such attitude as I have described, when he sketched that enchanting little picture which beats all the cabinet portraits that have been pro- duced, A DAY BY THE FIRE. 29 " Or if the air will not permit, Some still removed place will fit, Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth, Or the bellman's drowsy charm To bless the doors from nightly harm." But to attend to our fireside. The evening is beginning to gather in. The window, which presents a large face of watery gray, intersected by strong lines, is imperceptibly becoming darker ; and as that becomes darker, the fire assumes a more glowing presence. The contemplatist keeps his easy posture, absorbed in his fancies ; and every thing around him is still and serene. The stillness would even ferment in his ear, and whisper, as it were, of what the air contained ; but a minute coil, just sufficient to hin- der that busier silence, clicks in the baking coal, while every now and then the light ashes shed themselves be- low, or a stronger, but still a gentle, flame flutters up with a gleam over the chimney. At length, the darker objects in the room mingle ; the gleam of the fire streaks with a rest- less light the edges of the furniture, and reflects itself in the blackening window ; while his feet take a gentle move on the fender, and then settle again, and his face comes out of the general darkness, earnest even in indolence, and pale in the very ruddiness of what it looks upon. This is the only time, perhaps, at which sheer idleness is salutary and refreshing. How observed with the smallest effort is every trick and aspect of the fire ! A coal falling in, a fluttering flame, a miniature mockery of a flash of lightning, nothing escapes the eye and the imagination. Sometimes a little flame appears at the corner of the grate like a quivering spangle ; sometimes it swells out at top 3O A DAY BY THE FIRE. into a restless and brief lambency ; anon it is seen only by a light beneath the grate, or it curls around one of the bars like a tongue, or darts out with a spiral thinness and a sulphurous and continued puffing as from a reed. The glowing coals meantime exhibit the shifting forms of hills and vales and gulfs, of fiery Alps, whose heat is unin- habitable even by spirit, or of black precipices, from which swart fairies seem about to spring away on sable wings ; then heat and fire are forgotten, and walled towns appear, and figures of unknown animals, and far-distant countries scarcely to be reached by human journey ; then coaches and camels, and barking dogs as large as either, and forms that combine every shape and suggest every fancy, till at last, the ragged coals tumbling together, reduce the vision to chaos, and the huge profile of a gaunt and grinning face seems to make a jest of all that has passed. During these creations of the eye, the thought roves about into a hundred abstractions, some of them sug- gested by the fire, some of them suggested by that sugges- tion, some of them arising from the general sensation of comfort and composure, contrasted with whatever the world affords of evil, or dignified by high wrought medita- tion on whatsoever gives hope to benevolence and inspira- tion to wisdom. The philosopher at such moments plans his Utopian schemes, and dreams of happy certainties which he cannot prove ; the lover, happier and more cer- tain, fancies his mistress with him, unobserved and confid- ing, his arm round her waist, her head upon his shoulder, and earth and heaven contained in that sweet possession ; the poet, thoughtful as the one, and ardent as the other, springs off at once above the world, treads every turn of the harmonious spheres, darts up with gleaming wings through the sunshine of a thousand systems, and stops A DAY BY THE FIRE. 31 not till he has found a perfect paradise, whose fields are of young roses, and whose air is music, whose waters are the liquid diamond, whose light is as radiance through crystal, whose dwellings are laurel bowers, whose language is poetry, whose inhabitants are congenial souls, and to enter the very verge of whose atmosphere strikes beauty on the face, and felicity on the heart. Alas, that flights so lofty should ever be connected with earth by threads as slender as they are long, and that the least twitch of the most commonplace hand should be able to snatch down the viewless wanderer to existing comforts ! The entrance of a single candle dissipates at once the twilight and the sunshine, and the ambitious dreamer is summoned to his tea! " Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer, but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in." Never was snug hour more feelingly commenced ! Cow- per was not a great poet ; his range was neither wide nor lofty ; but such as it was, he had it completely to himself, he is the poet of quiet life and familiar observation. The fire, we see, is now stirred, and becomes very differ- ent from the one we have just left ; it puts on its liveliest aspect in order to welcome those to whom the tea-table is a point of meeting, and it is the business of the firesider to cherish this aspect for the remainder of the evening. How light and easy the coals look ! How ardent is the roominess within the bars ! How airily do the volumes of smoke course each other up the chimney, like so many fantastic and indefinite spirits, while the eye in vain en- 2 A DAY BY THE FIRE. deavors to accompany any one of them ! The flames are not so fierce as in the morning, but still they are active and powerful ; and if they do not roar up the chimney, they make a constant and playful noise, that is extremely to the purpose. Here they come out at top with a leafy swirl ; there they dart up spirally and at once ; there they form a lambent assemblage that shifts about on its own ground, and is continually losing and regaining its vanishing members. I confess I take particular delight in seeing a good blaze at top ; and my impatience to pro- duce it will sometimes lead me into great rashness in the article of poking ; that is to say, I use the poker at the top instead of the middle of the fire, and go probing it about in search of a flame. A lady of my acquaintance, " near and dear," as they say in Parliament, will tell me of this fault twenty times in a day, and every time so good-humoredly that it is mere want of generosity in me not to amend it ; but somehow or other I do not. The consequence is that, after a momentary ebullition of blaze, the fire becomes dark and sleepy, and is in danger of go- ing out. It is like a boy at school in the hands of a bad master, who, thinking him dull, and being impatient to render him brilliant, beats him about the head and ears till he produces the very evil he would prevent But, on the present occasion, I forbear to use the poker ; there is no need of it : every thing is comfortable, every thing snug and sufficient. How equable is the warmth around us ! How cherishing this rug to one's feet ! How com- placent the cup at one's lip ! What a fine broad light is diffused from the fire over the circle, gleaming in the urn and the polished mahogany, bringing out the white gar- ments of the ladies, and giving a poetic warmth to their face and hair ! I need not mention all the good things A DAY BY THE FIRE. 33 that are said at tea, still less the gallant. Good humor never has an audience more disposed to think it wit, nor gallantry an hour of service more blameless and elegant. Ever since tea has been known, its clear and gentle powers of inspiration have been acknowledged, from Wal- ler paying his court at the circle of Catharine of Braganza, to Dr. Johnson receiving homage at the parties of Mrs. Thrale. The former, in his lines, upon hearing it " com- mended by her Majesty," ranks it at once above myrtle and laurel, and her Majesty, of course, agreed with him : " Venus her myrtle, Phcebus has his bays; Tea both excels, which she vouchsafes to praise. The best of queens, and best of herbs, we owe To that bold nation, which the way did show To the fair region where the sun does rise, Whose rich productions we so justly prize. The Muse's friend, Tea, does our fancy aid, Repress those vapours which the head invade, And keeps that palace of the soul serene, Fit, on her birth-day, to salute the Queen." The eulogies pronounced on his favorite beverage by Dr. Johnson, are too well known to be repeated here ; and the commendatory inscription of the Emperor Kien Long, to an European taste at least, is somewhat too dull, un- less his Majesty's teapot has been shamefully translated. For my own part, though I have the highest respect, as I have already shown, for this genial drink, which is warm to the cold, and cooling to the warm, I confess, as Mon- taigne would have said, that I prefer coffee, particularly in my political capacity : " Coffee, that makes the Politician wise To see through all things with his half-shut eyes." There is something in it, I think, more lively, and, at the same time, more substantial. Besides, I never see it but 3 34 A DAY BY THE FIRE. it reminds me of the Turks and their Arabian tales, an association infinitely preferable to any Chinese ideas ; and, like the king who put his head into the tub, I am trans- ported into distant lands the moment I dip into the coffee- cup, at one minute ranging the valleys with Sindbad, at another encountering the fairies on the wing by moonlight, at a third exploring the haunts of the cursed Maugraby, or wrapt into the silence of that delicious solitude from which Prince Agib was carried by the fatal horse. Then, if I wish to poeticize upon it at home, there is Belinda, with her sylphs, drinking it in such state as nothing but poetry can supply : " For lo 1 the board with cups and spoons is crown'd, The berries crackle, and the mill turns round : On shining altars of japan they raise The silver lamp ; the fiery spirits blaze ; From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, And China's earth receives the smoking tide : At once they gratify the scent and taste, And frequent cups prolong the rich repast. Straight hover round the fair her airy band ; Some, as she sipp'd, the fuming liquor fann'd ; Some o'er her lap their careful plumes display'd, Trembling, and conscious of the rich brocade." It must be acknowledged, however, that the general asso- ciation of ideas is at present in favor of tea, which, on that account, has the advantage of suggesting no confine- ment to particular ranks or modes of life. Let there be but a fireside, and anybody, of any denomination, may be fancied enjoying the luxury of a cup of tea, from the duchess in the evening drawing-room, who makes it the instrument of displaying her white hand, to the washer- woman at her early tub, who, having had nothing to signify since five, sits down to it with her shining arms and cor- rugated fingers at six. If there is any one station of life A DAY BY THE FIRE. 35 in which it is enjoyed to most advantage, it is that of medi- ocrity : that in which all comfort is reckoned to be best appreciated, because, while there is taste to enjoy, there is necessity to earn the enjoyment; and I cannot conclude the hour before us with a better climax of snugness than is presented in the following pleasing little verses. The author, I believe, is unknown, and may not have been much of a poet in matters of fiction ; but who will deny his taste for matters of reality, or say that he has not handled his subject to perfection ? " The hearth was clean, the fire was dear, The kettle on for tea, Palemon in his elbow-chair, As blest as man could be. Clarinda, who his heart possess' d, And was his new-made bride, With head reclin'd upon his breast Sat toying by his side. Stretch'd at his feet, in happy state, A fav'rite dog was laid, By whom a little sportive cat In wanton humour play'd. Clarinda's hand he gently prest ; She stole an amorous kiss, And, blushing, modestly confess'd The fulness of her bliss. Palemon, with a heart elate, Pray'd to Almighty Jove That it might ever be his fate, Just so to live and love. Be this eternity, he cried, And let no more be given : Continue thus my lov'd fireside, I ask no other heaven." THE HAPPY FIRESIDE. 36 A DAY BY THE FIRE. There are so many modes of spending the remainder of the evening between tea-time and bed-time (for I protest against all suppers that are not light enough to be taken on the knee), that a general description would avail me nothing, and I cannot be expected to enter into such a variety of particulars. Suffice it to say that, where the fire is duly appreciated, and the circle good humored, none of them can be unpleasant, whether the party be large or small, young or old, talkative or contemplative. If there is music, a good fire will be particularly grateful to the performers, who are often seated at the farther end of the room ; for it is really shameful that a lady who is charm- ing us all with her voice, or firing us, at the harp or piano, with the lightning of her fingers, should at the very mo- ment be trembling with cold. As to cards, which were invented for the solace of a mad prince, and which are only tolerable, in my opinion, when we can be as mad as he was, that is to say, at a round game, I cannot by any means patronize them, as a conscientious firesider : for, not to mention all the other objections, the card -table is as awkward, in a fireside point of view, as the dinner-table, and is not to be compared with it in sociality. If it be necessary to pay so ill a compliment to the company as to have recourse to some amusement of the kind, there is chess or draughts, which may be played on a tablet by the fire ; but nothing is like discourse, freely uttering the fancy as it comes, and varied, perhaps, with a little music, or with the perusal of some favorite passages which excite the comments of the circle. It is then, if tastes happen to be accordant, and the social voice is frank as well as refined, that the " sweet music of speech " is heard in its best harmony, differing only for apter sweetness, and mingling but for happier participation, while the mu- A DAY BY THE FIRE. 37 tual sense smilingly blends in with every rising meas- ure, " And female stop smoothens the charm o'er all." This is the finished evening ; this the quickener at once and the calmer of tired thought ; this the spot where our better spirits await to exalt and enliven us, when the daily and vulgar ones have discharged their duty ! " Questo e il Paradiso, Piu dolce, che fra 1' acque, e fra 1' arene In ciel son le Sirene." TASSO. Rime A morose. " Here, here is found A sweeter Paradise of sound Than where the Sirens take their summer stands Among the breathing waters and glib sands." Bright fires and joyous faces ; and it is no easy thing for philosophy to say good night. But health must be enjoyed or nothing will be enjoyed, and the charm should be broken at a reasonable hour. Far be it, however, from a rational firesider not to make exceptions to the rule, when friends have been long asunder, or when some do- mestic celebration has called them together, or even when hours peculiarly congenial render it difficult to part. At all events, the departure must be a voluntary matter ; and here I cannot help exclaiming against the gross and villanous trick which some people have, when they wish to get rid of their company, of letting their fires go down, and the snuffs of their candles run to seed : it is paltry and palpa- ble, and argues bad policy as well as breeding ; for such of their friends as have a different feeling of things, may chance to be disgusted with them altogether, while the careless or unpolite may choose to revenge themselves on the appeal, and face it out gravely till the morning. If a 38 A DAY BY THE FIRE. common visitor be inconsiderate enough, on an ordinary occasion, to sit beyond all reasonable hour, it must be reckoned as a fatality, as an ignorance of men and things, against which you cannot possibly provide : as a sort of visitation, which must be borne with patience, and which is not likely to recur often, if you know whom you invite, and those who are invited know you. But with an occa- sional excess of the fireside what social virtue shall quar- rel ? A single friend, perhaps, loiters behind the rest ; you are alone in the house ; you have just got upon a sub- ject delightful to you both ; the fire is of a candent bright- ness ; the wind howls out of doors ; the rain beats ; the cold is piercing ! Sit down. This is a time when the most melancholy temperament may defy the clouds and storms, and even extract from them a pleasure that will take no substance by daylight. The ghost of his happi- ness sits by him, and puts on the likeness of former hours ; and if such a man can be made comfortable by the mo- ment, what enjoyment may it not furnish to an unclouded spirit ! If the excess belong not to vice, temperance does not forbid it when it only grows out of the occasion. The great poet, whom I have quoted so often for the fireside, and who will enjoy it with us to the last, was, like the rest of our great poets, an ardent recommender of temperance in all its branches ; but though he practised what he preached, he could take his night out of the hands of sleep as well as the most entrenching of us. To pass over, as foreign to our subject in point of place, his noble wish that he might " oft outwatch the bear," with what a wrapped-up recollection of snugness, in the elegy on his friend Diodati, does he describe the fireside enjoyment of \ winter's night ? A DAY BY THE FIRE. 39 " Pectora cui credam ? Quis me lenire docebit Mordaces curas? Quis longam fallere noctera Dulcibus alloquiis, grato cum sibilat igni Molle pyrum, et nucibus strepitat focus, et malus Auster Miscet cuncta foris, et desuper intouat ulmo? " " In whom shall I confide ? Whose counsel find A balmy med'cine for my troubled mind? Or whose discourse, with innocent delight, Shall fill me now, and cheat the wintry night, When hisses on my hearth the pulpy pear, And black'ning chestnut start and crackle there, While storms abroad the dreary meadows whelm, And the wind thunders through the neighb'ring elm." COWPER'S Translation. Even when left alone, there is sometimes a charm in watching out the decaying fire, in getting closer and closer to it with tilted chair and knees against the bars, and letting the whole multitude of fancies, that work in the night silence, come whispering about the yielding fac- ulties. The world around is silent ; and for a moment the very cares of day seem to have gone with it to sleep, leav- ing you to catch a waking sense of disenthralment, and to commune with a thousand airy visitants that come to play with innocent thoughts. Then, for imagination's sake, not for superstition's, are recalled the stories of the Secret World and the midnight pranks of Fairyism. The fancy roams out of doors after rustics led astray by the jack- o'-lantern, or minute laughings heard upon the wind, or the night-spirit on his horse that comes flouncing through the air on his way to a surfeited citizen, or the tiny morris- dance that springs up in the watery glimpses of the moon ; or keeping at home, it finds a spirit in every room peeping at it as it opens the door, while a cry is heard from upstairs announcing the azure marks inflicted by " The nips of fairies upon maids' white hips," 40 A DAY BY THE FIRE. or hearing a snoring from below, it tiptoes down into the kitchen, and beholds where " Lies him down the lubber fiend, And stretch'd out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength." Presently the whole band of fairies, ancient and modern, the demons, sylphs, gnomes, sprites, elves, peries, genii, and above all, the fairies of the fireside, the sala- manders, lob-lie-by-the-fires, lars, lemures, larvas, come flitting between the fancy's eyes, and the dying coals, some with their weapons and lights, others with grave steadfastness on book or dish, others of the softer kind with their arch looks, and their conscious pretence of atti- tude, while a minute music tinkles in the ear, and Oberon gives his gentle order : " Through this house in glimmering light By the dead and drowsy fire, Every elf and fairy sprite Hop as light as bird from briar ; And this ditty, after me, Sing and dance it trippingly." Anon, the whole is vanished, and the dreamer, turning his eye down aside, almost looks for a laughing sprite gazing at him from a tiny chair, and mimicking his face and atti- tude. Idle fancies these, and incomprehensible to minds clogged with every-day earthliness ; but not useless, either as an exercise of the invention, or even as adding con- sciousness to the range and destiny of the soul. They will occupy us too, and steal us away from ourselves, when other recollections fail us or grow painful, when friends are found selfish, or better friends can but commiserate, or when the world has nothing in it to compare with what we have missed out of it. They may even lead us to A DAY BY THE FIRE. 41 higher and more solemn meditations, till we work up our way beyond the clinging and heavy atmosphere of this earthly sojourn, and look abroad upon the light that knows neither blemish nor bound, while our ears are saluted at that egress by the harmony of the skies, and our eyes be- hold the lost and congenial spirits that we have loved hastening to welcome us with their sparkling eyes, and their curls that are ripe with sunshine. But earth recalls us again ; the last flame is out ; the fading embers tinkle with a gaping dreariness ; and the chill reminds us where we should be. Another gaze on the hearth that has so cheered us, and the last, lingering action is to wind up the watch for the next day. Upon how many anxieties shall the finger of that brief chron- icler strike, and upon how many comforts too ! To- morrow our fire shall be trimmed anew ; and so, gentle reader, good night : may the weariness I have caused you make sleep the pleasanter ! "Let no lamenting cryes, nor dolefull tears, Be heard all night within, nor yet without ; Ne let false whispers, breeding hidden fears, Break gentle sleep with misconceived doubt. Let no deluding dreams, nor dreadful sights, Make sudden, sad affrights, Ne let hobgoblins, names whose sense we see not, Fray us with things that be not ; But let still silence true night-watches keep, That sacred peace may in assurance reigne, And timely sleep, since it is time to sleep. May pour his limbs forth on your pleasant plaine." SPENSER'S Epithalamion.* * In the new edition of " The Round Table," published in the Bayard Series of books, this article is given to Hazlitt. " Our style bewrays us," says Burton ; and " A Day by the Fire " is full of Leigh Hunt's peculiarities of thought and diction. The question of authorship, however, is not to be de- ON COMMONPLACE PEOPLE. ON COMMONPLACE PEOPLE. GREEABLY to our chivalrous, as well as do- mestic, character, and in order to show further in what sort of spirit we shall hereafter confer blame and praise, whom we shall cut up for the benefit of humanity, and to whom apply our healing balsams, we have thought fit, in our present number, to take the part of a very numerous and ill-treated body of persons, known by the various appellations of commonplace people, dull fellows, or people who have nothing to say. It is perhaps wrong, indeed, to call these persons com- monplace. Those who are the most vehement in object- ing to them have the truest right to the title, however little they may suspect it; but of this more hereafter. It is a name by which the others are very commonly known ; though they might rather be called persons of simple common sense, and, in fact, have just enough of that val- uable quality to inspire them with the very quietness which brings them into so much contempt. We need not, however, take any pains to describe a set of people so well known. They are, of course, what none of our readers are, but many are acquainted with. They are the more silent part of companies, and generally the cided upon internal evidence ; facts prove that the essay was written by the author of the "Story of Rimini." The prolusion was originally published in the " Reflector," with Hunt's well-known signature, E^". It waa afterwards re-printed in the "Examiner," as one of "The Round Table" papers. When these essays were collected into a volume, Leigh Hunt's ini- tials were printed at the end of " A Day by the Fire ; " and Hazlitt, in the preface to this original edition of "The Round Table," says, "out of the fifty-two numbers, twelve are Mr. Hunt's, with the signature, L. H." ED. ON COMMONPLACE PEOPLE. 43 best behaved people at table. They are the best of dumb waiters near the lady of the house. They are always at leisure to help you to good things, if not to say them. They will supply your absence of mind for you while you are talking, and believe you are taking sugar for pepper. Above all, which ought to recommend them to the very hardest of their antagonists, they are uninquiring laugh- ers at jokes, and most exemplary listeners. Now, we do not say that these are the very best of com- panions, or that when we wished to be particularly amused or informed we should invite them to our houses, or go to see them at theirs ; all we demand is that they should be kindly and respectfully treated when they are by, and not insolently left out of the pale of discourse, purely because they may not bring with them as much as they find, or say as brilliant things as we imagine we do ourselves. This is one of the faults of over-civilization. In a stage of society like the present, there is an intellectual as well as personal coxcombry apt to prevail, which leads people to expect from each other a certain dashing turn of mind, and an appearance, at least, of having ideas, whether they can afford them or not Their minds endeavor to put on intelligent attitudes, just as their bodies do graceful ones ; and every one who, from conscious modesty, .or from not thinking about the matter, does not play the same monkey tricks with his natural deficiency, is set down for a dull fellow, and treated with a sort of scornful resentment, for differing with the others. It is equally painful and amus- ing to see how the latter will look upon an honest fellow of this description, if they happen to find him in a com- pany where they think he has no business. On the first entrance of one of these intolerant men of wisdom, to see, of course, a brilliant friend of his, he concludes 44 ON COMMONPLACE PEOPLE. that all the party are equally lustrous ; but finding, by de- grees, no flashes from an unfortunate gentleman on his right, he turns stiffly towards him at the first commonplace remark, measures him from head to foot with a kind of wondering indifference, and then falls to stirring his tea with a half-inquiring glance at the rest of the company, just as much as to say, "a fellow not overburdened, eh ? " or, " who the devil has Tom got here ? " Like all who are tyrannically given, and of a bullying turn of mind, which is by no means confined to those who talk loudest, thes.e persons are apt to be as obse- quious and dumb-stricken before men of whom they have a lofty opinion as they are otherwise in the case above mentioned. This, indeed, is not always the case ; but you may sometimes find out one of the caste by seeing him waiting with open mouth and impatient eyes for the brill- iant things which the great gentleman to whom he has been introduced is bound to utter. The party, perhaps, are waiting for dinner, and as silent as most Englishmen, not very well known to each other, are upon such occa- sions. Our hero waits with impatience to hear the cele- brated person open his mouth, and is at length gratified ; but not hearing very distinctly, asks his next neighbor, in a serious and earnest whisper, what it was. " Pray, sir, what was it that Mr. W. said ? " " He says that it is particularly cold." " Oh, particularly cold." The gentleman thinks this no very profound remark for so great a man, but puts on as patient a face as he can, and, re/reshing himself with shifting one knee over the other, waits anxiously for the next observation. After a little silence, broken only by a hem or two, and by some- body's begging pardon of a gentleman next him for touch- ON COMMONPLACE PEOPLE. 45 ing his shoe, Mr. W. is addressed by a friend, and the stranger is all attention. "By the bye, W., how did you get home last night?" " Oh, very well, thank'ye ; I couldn't get a coach, but it was'nt very rainy, and I was soon there, and jumped into bed." "Ah, there's nothing like bed after getting one's coat wet." " Nothing, indeed. I had the clothes round me in a twinkling, and in two minutes was as fast as a church." Here the conversation drops again ; and our delighter in intellect cannot hide from himself his disappointment. The description of pulling the clothes round, he thinks, might have been much more piquant ; and the simile, as fast as a church, appears to him wonderfully commonplace from a man of wit. But such is his misfortune. He has no eyes but for something sparkling or violent ; and no more expects to find any thing simple in genius, than any thing tolerable in the want of it. Persons impatient of others' deficiencies are, in fact, likely to be equally undiscerning of their merits ; and are not aware, in either case, how much they are exposing the deficiencies on their own side. Not only, however, do they get into this dilemma, but what is more, they are lowering their respectability beneath that of the dullest person in the room. They show themselves deficient, not merely in the qualities they miss in him, but in those which he really possesses, such as self-knowledge and good tem- per. Were they as wise as they pretend to be, they would equal him in these points, and know how to extract some- thing good from him in spite of his deficiency in the other ; for intellectual qualities are not the only ones that excite the reflections, or conciliate the regard, of the truly intel- 46 ON COMMONPLACE PEOPLE. ligent, of those who can study human nature in all its bearings, and love it, or sympathize with it, for all its affec- tions. The best part of pleasure is the communication of it. Why must we be perpetually craving for amusement or information from others (an appetite which, after all, will be seldom acknowledged), and never think of bestow- ing them ourselves ? Again, as the best part of pleasure is that we have just mentioned, the best proof of intel- lectual power is that of extracting fertility from barrenness, or so managing the least cultivated mind, which we may happen to stumble upon, as to win something from it. Setting even this talent aside, there are occasions when it is refreshing to escape from the turmoil and final nothingness of the understanding, and repose upon that contentedness of mediocrity which seems to have attained its end with- out the trouble of wisdom. It has often delighted me to observe a profound thinker of my acquaintance, when a good natured person of ordinary understanding has been present. He is reckoned severe, as it is called, in many of his opinions : and is thought particularly to overrate his intellectual qualities in general ; and yet it is beautiful to see how he will let down his mind to the other's level, taking pleasure in his harmless enjoyment, and assenting to a thousand truisms, one after another, as familiar to him as his finger-ends. The reason is that he pierces deeper into the nature of the human being beside him, can make his very deficiencies subservient to his own speculations, and, above all, knows that there is something worth all the knowledge upon earth, which is happiness and a genial nature. It is thus that the sunshine of happy faces is re- flected upon our own. We may even find a beam of it in every thing that Heaven looks upon. The dullest minds do not vegetate for nothing, any more than the grass in a HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. 47 green lawn. We do not require the trees to talk with us, or get impatient at the monotonous quiet of the fields and hedges. We love them for their contrast to noise and bustle, for their presenting to us something native and elementary, for the peaceful thoughts they suggest to us, and the part they bear in the various beauty of creation. Is a bird's feather exhibited in company, or a piece of sea-weed, or a shell that contained the stupidest of created beings, every one is happy to look at it, and the most fas- tidious pretender in the room will delight to expatiate on its beauty and contrivance. Let this teach him charity and good sense, and inform him that it is the grossest of all coxcombry to dwell with admiration on a piece of in- sensibility, however beautiful, and find nothing to excite pleasing or profitable reflections in the commonest of his fellow-men. A POPULAR VIEW OF THE HEATHEN MY- THOLOGY. HE divinities of the ancient mythology are of a very tangible order. They were personifica- tions of the power of the external world, and of the operations of the intellect ,' and some- times merged themselves into the particular providence of an eminent prince or reformer. Mankind wishing to have distinct ideas of the unknown powers of the universe, naturally painted them at first in their own shapes ; and not being able to conceive of them otherwise than by the light of their understanding, they as naturally gifted them with their own faculties, moral and intellect- 48 HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. ual. Hence, the heathen gods were reflections of the qualities most admired or feared during the times in which they originated ; and to the same cause were owing the inconsistencies and the vices palmed upon them by the stories of different ages and nations, whose gods became lumped together ; and hence the trouble that the philoso- pher had in endeavoring to reconcile the popular super- stitions with a theology more becoming.* Plutarch, who was a priest at Delphi, and a regular devout pagan, but good-hearted and imbued with philosophy, is shocked at the popular stories of the rapes and quarrels of the gods ; and Plato, on a similar account, was for banishing Homer from his republic. Plutarch will not allow that it was the real Apollo who fought a serpent and afterwards had to purify himself. He said it must have been a likeness of him, a demon. In other words the gods of Plutarch were to resemble the highest ideas which Plutarch could form of dignity and power. Hence, the greater philoso- phers whose ardor in the pursuit of truth rendered them still more desirous of departing from conventional degra- dations of it, came to agree that the nature of the deity was inconceivable ; and that the most exalted being they * Virtue or vice either if accompanied with power, will do to make a god of in barbarous times, and till mankind learn the perniciousness of that sort of apotheosis. An Eastern writer says that Pharaoh wished to pass for a divinity with his subjects, and had frequent conversation with the devil for that pur- pose. The devil put him off from time to time, till he told him one day that the hour was arrived. "How is that," cried Pharaoh, "why is it time now, and was not before?" "The reason is," replied the devil, "that you have not hitherto been quite bad enough : at length you have become intolerable, and there is no alternative between a revolt of your subjects, and their belief in your being a god. Once persuade them of that, and there is nothing so ex- travagant, either in word or deed, which they will not take from you with re- spect." D'ffer&elot, article Feraoun. HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY. 49 could fancy was at an incalculable distance from it, an emanation, a being deputed, a sort of spiritual incarnation of one of the divine thoughts ; if we may so speak with- out absurdity and without blame. Plato, for instance, observing the moral imperfections of our planet, and not knowing how to account for them any more than we do (for the first cause of evil is always left in the dark), imag- ined that this world was created by what he called a Dem- iurgus, or inferior divine energy ; just as an artist less than Raphael might paint a fine picture though not so good as what might have come from the hands of the greater one. If you asked him how he made out that the chief creator did not do the work himself, he would have referred you to the fact of the imperfection and to the existence of dif- ferent degrees of skill and beauty in which we see all about us ; for he thought he had a right to argue from analogy, in default of more certain principles. This right he undoubtedly possessed, and it was natural and reasona- ble to exert it ; but considering the imperfection of the human faculties and the false reports they make to us, even of things cognizable to the senses, it is, in truth, im- possible to argue with any certainty from things human to things divine. The only service to all appearance, which our faculties can do for us in these questions, is to save us from the admission of gratuitous absurdities and dogmas dishonorable to the idea of a Divine Being, and to en- courage us to guess handsomely and to good purpose. For sincerity at all events must not be gainsaid ; other- wise belief and probability and principle and natural love and the earth itself slide from under our feet. The mys- tery of the permission of evil still remained ; the mystery of imperfection and of cause itself was only thrown back ; and in fact the invention of the Demiurgus was merely 4 5r exceeding feare ; For not one pujfe of winde there did appeare ; That all the three thereat were much afrayd, Unweeting what such horrour straunge did reare. Eftsoones they saw an hideous hoast arrayd Of huge sea-monsters, such as living sence dismayed : " Most ugly shapes and horrible aspects, Such as dame Nature's self mote feare to see, Or shame, that ever should so fowle defects From her most cunning hand escaped bee : A II dreadftdl pourtraicts of deformitee ; Spring-headed hydres, and SEA-SHOULDERING WHALES, Great whirlpooles, which all fishes make to flee, Bright scolopendraes, arm'd with silver scales, Mighty monoceros with immeasured tayles : " The dreadful fish, that hath deserv'd the name Of Death, and like him lookes in dreadfull hew ; The griesly wasserman, that makes his game The flying ships with swiftness to pursew ; The horrible Sea-Satyre, that doth, shew His fearefull face in time of greatest storme ; Huge ziflSius, whom mariners eschew No lesse than rockes, as travellers informe ; And greedy rosmarines, with visages deforme : " All these, and thousand thousands many more, And more deformed monsters, thousand fold, With dreadfull noise, and hollow rombling rore, Came rushing, in the fomy -waves enrolPd, Which seem'd to fly, for feare them to behold ; Ne wonder, if these did the knight appall ; For all that here on earth we dreedfull hold, Be but as bugs to fearen babes withall, Cottt/iarcd to the crettures in the seas entr^U." TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 21 / There is little doubt that Spenser got some of these monsters out of the natural history of Gesner, the Buffon of his time, and that in a plate of one of his old folio vol- umes (now before us) is to be seen the identical " fearful face " shown by the poet's " horrible sea-satyr " in " time of greatest storme," the one consequently which the poet himself saw. It is a pity we cannot give it here. The commentators should add it to their notes in the next edition.* With most of Spenser's sea-monsters we have nothing further to do in this article ; but the "sea-satyr" is directly to our purpose ; and so is the " griesly wasser- man," i. e. waterman, or man of the sea ; a very different personage from your " waterman above bridge." Gesner's " sea-satyr," or " pan," is taken from an ac- count given by Battista Fulgoso, who says that, in the time of Pope Eugenius the Fourth, it was taken on the coast of Illyria, while endeavoring to drag a boy away with it to its native element. It had a humanish kind of head and body, with a skin like an eel's, two horns on its forehead, a finger and thumb only on each hand, a couple of webbed feet, a great fish's tail, and wings like a bat ! Such, at least, is the figure to be collected from the description and plate together. Gesner has two whole chapters upon Wassermen; that is, Tritons and Men of the Sea ; for, " the Germans call all such creatures ivassermen, or seemen" Of these watermen and seamen, one of whom an accommodating figure is given, agreeable to his designation (with a caution * " Conradi Gesneri Historia Animalium," p. 1197. Gesner was evidently Milton's as well as Spenser's authority for his animals. In one of his plates (p. 138) is the whale mistaken for an island, which the former speaks of, ' With fixed anchor in his scaly rind." 2l8 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. on the part of the writer against having too much faith in him), is called the Monk. The account of it is taken from the work on fishes by Rondelet ; who says that the picture was sent him by Margaret, Queen of Navarre. The head is quite human, and has the clerical tonsure ! The rest is a compromise between fish-scales and church vestments. This reverend fish was taken in a drag of herrings, and lived only three days, during which it said nothing, "with the exception of uttering certain sighs, indicative of great sorrow and distress." * Another writer, quoted in the same place, says that the sea-monk is sometimes visible in the British Channel. " He has a white skin on his cranium, with a black circle round it, like a monk newly shaven. He fawns upon people at sea, and entices them into the water, where he satiates himself with their flesh." This species, we sup- pose, became extinct at the abolition of the monasteries. But the monk has also a Bishop, of whom a figure is likewise given, very episcopal, and as if in the act of giving a charge to his clergy. He has a scaly mitre, a cloak, and an aquiline nose. If the metempsychosis were believed in, it would be difficult not to suppose him an actual bishop, who had been turned into a fish for eating too much turbot. It was caught in 1531, and sent to the King of Poland, to whom it made signs, " apparently indicative of a vehement desire of being returned to the ocean, into which, without further delay, it was accordingly thrown." " I omit other particulars," says Rondelet, " because I hold them to be feigned, for such is the vanity of man- kind that, not content with truths sufficiently marvellous in themselves, they are for adding wonders to them of * Gesner, p. 321. TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 219 their own invention. As to the likeness of the monster, I give it as I received it, neither affirming nor denying the truth thereof." In Bochart's " Hierozoicon " is a very curious and learned chapter on fabulous animals, in which he gives us a variety of those of the sea from Arabian authors. They remind us of Eastern tales, and of Sindbad. Not that Sindbad's Old Man of the Sea (that admirable fiction, full of verisimilitude) has any thing of the sea in him but his name, and his living on the sea-shore ; but the won- ders are of the same wild and remote cast, linking the extremity of the marvellous with a look of nature and an appeal to our sympathies. The first is named Abu-Muzaina, that is, says Bochart, " Pater decora (the Father of the seemly)." Gentlemen of this species have the form of the sons of Eve, with glu- tinous skins, and are very well made. They weep and wail when they fall into human hands. They come out of the sea to walk about, and are then taken by hunters, who are so touched by their weeping as to dismiss them unhurt* The next is the Old Jew, who has a face like a man, a gray beard, a body like a frog's, hair like an ox, and is of the size of a calf. He comes out of the sea on Sabbath nights, and walks about till next evening, when he leaps frog-like into the sea. Then comes a proper "Wasserman" by name, the Homo Aquaticus, or Man of the Water; called likewise Old Man of the Sea, from his gray beard. He is just like a man, only he has a tail. His appearance presages great lowness in the price of crops. A king of Damascus married one of them to a female of the country, in order * Bochart, " Opera Orania," fol., vol. ii., part 2, p. 858. 22O TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. that he might learn what language he spoke from their offspring ! The result was a son, and one remark on the part of the old gentleman, expressing an unaccountable amazement. Lastly cometh one Duhlak (the name is not interpreted), who haunts islands, riding upon an ostrich, and eating people that are shipwrecked. Some say that he will board ships, have a fight with the crew, and cry aloud " with a voice of boasting." Bochart is of opinion that this "voice of boasting" should rather be translated "glad and agree- able voice ; " for, says he, the sirens are the creatures intended, who had maidens' faces, were birds in the lower parts of their bodies, and eat human flesh. But for a reason to be noticed presently, this decision appears to be a mistake. " In these Arabian stories," says our good old author, " there may be some truth ; for it has been proved that there are creatures in the sea possessing, or nearly pos- sessing, the human form. You may read of some that have endeavored to get into ships by the cables, of others who come upon land to walk about, and who strike fire in the night-time with flints, and of others who behave very ill to women, unless you are quick to prevent them. Some have been taken and lived a long time in human society ; among others a female one in Pomerania, of the name of Eda, very lively and amorous. And Gassendi, in his life of Peiresc, describes one that had been seen not long be- fore, on the coast of Brittany. Ancient as well as modern history bears witness that such creatures have been found on the surface as well as in the depth of the ocean. Hence the origin of Tritons and Nereids. / regard, however, as plainly fabulous what is said of their being gifted with speech, and the Arabian stories of a species -which keep TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 221 the Sabbath; though a writer of a former age, Lodovicus Vives, who was not at all given to trifling, confidently asserts that they have spoken, and thence concludes that the sea contains a generation of real men. ' There are men,' says he, 'in the sea as there are on the land Pliny tells us so; entire men and I have no doubt of it. One was taken twelve years ago in Holland, and seen by many. He was kept above two years, and was just beginning to speak, when being seized a second time with the plague, he was restored to his native element, into which he went leaping and rejoicing. 1 But we are to conclude that this marine species of man originated with the land species." * In the " Persian Tales," a genuine oriental production, is a story of a manifest species of Duhlak, or ship-invading and boasting man of the sea, which corroborates what appeared to Bochart a misinterpretation of the " voice " above mentioned. It is drawn in apparent emulation of Sindbad's old man, to which it is very inferior, especially in the conclusion ; yet the dramatic surprise of his be- havior after he gets on board the vessel is startling ; and though his boasting is overdone and made of too " know- ing " and human a cast, yet when we see that this attribute of bullying was part of the popular faith in such beings, the narrative acquires additional interest, and has a diminished look of impossibility. His impatient stamping, the im- penetrability of his skin, and his sticking his claws into the vessel when they tried to throw him overboard, are also striking circumstances. His face is described a good deal after the fashion of the ancient Triton. We shall commence the narrative with a few of those introductory details, a la Defoe, which give such a look of nature to * Bochart, "Opera Omnia," fol., vol. ii., part 2, p. 860. 222 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. these " monstrous lies." The person speaking is " Aboul- fauris, the Great Voyager," whose name one repeats with involuntary respect for his great beard and truly pro- digious experience. " Having sailed," says this illustrious personage, " al- most round the Isle of Serendib, we entered the Gulf of Bengal, which is the greatest gulf in Asia, at the lower end of which are the kingdoms of Bengal and Golconda. Just as we entered it there rose a violent storm of wind, the like of which had never been seen in those seas. We wanted a south wind, and this was a north-west, quite contrary to our course for Golconda. We lowered our sails, and the seamen did all they could to save the ship, which they were at last forced to let drive at the mercy of the wind and waves. The storm lasted fifteen days, and blew so furiously that we were in that time driven six hundred leagues out of our way. We left the long isles of Sumatra and Java to our larboard, and the ship drove to the strait of the Moluccas, south of the Philippines, into a sea unknown to our mariners. The wind changed at last and turned to an easterly wind ; it blew pretty gently, and great was the joy of the ship's company. But their joy did not last long ; 'twas disturbed by an adventure which you will hardly believe, it being so very extraor- dinary. We were beginning merrily to resume our course, and were got to the east point of the island of Java, when, not far off, we spied a man quite naked, struggling with the waves, and in danger of being swallowed up ; he held fast by a plank that kept him up, and made a signal to us to come to his assistance. We sent our boat to him out of compassion, and found, by experience, that if pity be a laudable passion it must be owned that it is also some- times very dangerous. The seamen took up the man and TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 223 brought him aboard ; he looked to be about forty years old, was of a monstrous shape, had a great head, and short, thick, bristly hair. His mouth was excessively wide, his teeth long and sharp, his arms nervous, his hands large, with a long crooked nail on each finger. His eyes, which are not to be forgotten, were like those of a tiger ; his nose was flat, and his nostrils wide. We did not at all like his physiognomy, and his mien was such that it soon changed our pity into terror. " When this man, such as I have described him, appeared before Dehaousch, our master, he thus addressed him : ' My Lord, I owe my life to you, I was at the point of de- struction when you came to my assistance.' 'Indeed,' replied Dehaousch, ' it would not have been long ere you had gone to the bottom, had you not had the good fortune to have met with us.' 'I am not afraid of the sea,' re- plied the man, smiling ; ' I could have lived whole years in the water without any inconvenience ; what tormented me much more is hunger, which has devoured me these twelve hours, for so long it is since I ate any thing, and that is a very long while for a man who has so good a stomach as I have. Therefore, pray let me have some- thing as soon as possible to repair my spirits almost spent with such a fas ting, as I have been forced to keep. You need not look for niceties ; I am not squeamish ; I can eat any thing.' " We looked at one another very much surprised at his discourse, and doubted not that the peril he had been in had cracked his brain. Our master was of the same mind, and imagining he might want something to eat, he ordered meat enough for six hungry stomachs to be set before him, and clothes to be brought him for his covering. * As for the clothes,' says the stranger, ' I shall not meddle 224 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. with them ; I always go naked.' ' But,' replied Deha- ousch, ' decency will not permit that you should stay with us in that condition.' The man took him up short ' Oh ! ' says he, ' you will have time enough to accustom yourself to it.' This brutal answer confirmed us in the opinion that he had lost his senses. Being sharp-set, he was very impatient that he was not served to his mind. He stamped with his foot upon the deck, ground his teeth, and rolled his eyes so ghastly that he looked both furious and menacing. At last what he wanted appeared ; he fell upon it with a greediness that surprised us, and though there was certainly sufficient for any other six men, he despatched it in a moment. " When we had cleared the table which had been spread for him, he, with an air of authority, bade us bring him some more victuals. Dehaousch, being resolved to try how much this devouring monster could really swallow, ordered he should be obeyed. The table was spread as before, and as much victuals again set before him ; but this second service lasted him no longer than the first it was gone in a moment. We thought, however, he would stop there, but we were mistaken, he demanded more meat still ; upon which one of the slaves aboard the ship, going up to this brute, was about to chastise him for his inso- lence, which the other observing prevented, laying his two paws upon his shoulders, fixing his nails in his flesh and tearing him to pieces. In an instant fifty sabres were drawn to revenge this dreadful murder ; every one pressed forward to strike him and chastise his insolence, but they very soon found to their terror that the skin of their enemy was as impenetrable as adamant ; their sabres broke, and their edges turned without so much as raising the skin. Though he received no hurt by theii blows, TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 225 they did not strike him with impunity ; he took one of the most forward of his assailants, and with amazing strength tore him to pieces before our eyes. ^ " When we found our sabres were useless, and that we could not wound him, we threw ourselves upon him to endeavor to fling him into the sea, but we could not stir him. Besides his huge limbs and prodigious nerve, he stuck his crooked nails in the timber of the deck, and stood as immovable as a rock in the midst of the waves. He was so far from being afraid of us that he said with a sullen smile, ' You have taken the wrong course, friends, you will fare much better by obeying me ; I have tamed more indocile people than you. I declare if you continue to oppose my will, I will serve you all as your two com- panions have been served.' " These words made our blood freeze in our veins. We a third time set a large quantity of provisions before him, he fell aboard it, and one would have thought by his eating that his stomach rather increased than diminished. When he saw we were determined to submit he grew good- humored. He said he was sorry we had forced him to do what he did, and kindly assured us he loved us on account of the service we had done him in taking him out of the sea, where he should have been starved if he had stayed there a few hours longer without succor ; that he wished, for our sakes, he could meet with some other ves- sel laden with good provisions, because he would throw himself aboard it and leave us in quiet. He talked thus while he was eating, and laughed and bantered like other men, and we should have thought him diverting enough had we been in a disposition to relish his pleasantry. At the fourth service he gave over, and was two hours with- out eating any thing at all. During this excess of sobriety 226 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. he was very familiar in his discourse ; he asked us one after another what country we were of, what were our customs, and what had been our adventures. We were in hopes that the fumes of his victuals he had eaten would have got up in his head and made him drowsy ; we impatiently expected that sleep would seize him, and were resolved to take him napping, and fling him into the sea before he had time to look about him. This hope of ours was our only resource, for though we had great store of provisions aboard, yet, after his rate of eating, he would have devoured them all in a very little while. But, alas ! in vain did we flatter ourselves with these false hopes. The cruel wretch, guessing our design, told us he never slept ; that the great quantity of victuals he ate repaired the wearisomeness of nature, and supplied the want of sleep. " To our grief we found what he said was true ; we told him long and tedious stories on purpose to lull him asleep, but the monster never shut his eyes. He then deplored our misfortune, and our master despaired of ever seeing Golconda again ; when on a sudden a cloud gathered over our heads. We thought at first it was a storm which was gathering, and we rejoiced at it ; for there was more hope of our safety in a tempest than in the state we were in. Our ship might be driven ashore on some island; we might save ourselves by swimming ; and by this means be delivered from this monster, who doubtless intended to devour us when he had eaten up all our provisions. We wished, therefore, that a violent storm would overtake us ; and, what perhaps never happened before, we prayed to heaven to be drowned. However, we were deceived ; what we took for a cloud was the greatest rokh that was ever seen in those seas. The monstrous bird darted him- TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 227 self on our enemy, who was in the middle of our ship's company; and mistrusting nothing, had no time to guard himself against such an attack : the rokh seized him by his claws, and flew up into the air with his prey, before we were aware of it. " We then were witnesses of a very extraordinary com- bat. The man recollecting himself, and finding he was hoisted up in the air between the talons of a winged monster, whose strength he made trial of, resolved to de- fend himself. He struck his crooked nails into the body of the rokh, and setting his teeth to his stomach, began to devour him, flesh, feathers, and all. The bird made the air resound with his cries, so piercing was his pain ; and to be revenged tore out his enemy's eyes with his claws. The man, blind as he was, did not give over. He ate the heart of the rokh, who, re-collecting all his force at the last gasp, struck his beak so forcibly into his enemy's head, that they both fell dead into the sea, not many paces from our ship's side." * In the "Arabian Nights " is an account of a nation who live under the sea, but they differ in nothing from men, except in their power of so doing, and coming to and fro with dry clothes, "as if nothing had happened; " all of which is not in the usual fine taste of that work.f Of men of the sea, in their connection with the more shadowy nation of the Fairies, we have treated elsewhere, in a separate article on that people, and therefore say no- thing of them here ; and what we might have had to say on Mermen has been anticipated, as far as the genus is * "Persian Tales; or, the Thousand and One Days/' Ed. 1800, vol. ii., P- '33- t See the story of Prince Beder and the Princess Giauhara. 228 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. concerned, in the paper on " Sirens and Mermaids ; " but as we extracted into that paper Mr. Tennyson's poem on the female of this genus, we cannot but indulge ourselves here with giving his companion-piece. THE MERMAN. Who would be A merman bold, Sitting alone, Singing alone, Under the sea, With a crown of gold, On a throne ? / would be a merman bold. I would sit and sing the whole of the day : / would Jill the sea-halls 'with a voice of power ; But at night I would roam abroad and play With the mermaids in and out of the rocks, Dressing their hair with the white sea-flower ; A nd, holding them back by their flowing locks, I would kiss them often under the sea, And kiss them again, till they kissed me, Laughingly, laughingly. And then we would wander away, away, To the pale-green sea-groves, straight and high, Chasing each other merrily. There would be neither moon nor star ; But the wave would make music above us afar Low thunder and light in the magic night Neither moon nor star. We would call aloud in the dreamy dells, Call to each other, and whoop and cry All night merrily, merrily. They would pelt me with starry spangles and shells, Laughing and clapping their hands between, All night merrily, merrily. But I would throw to them back in mine Turkis, and agate, and almondine ; Then leaping out upon them unseen, TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. 22Q / would kiss them often under the sea, A nd kiss them again, till they kiss'd me, Laughingly, laughingly. Oh ! what a happy Jife were mine, Under the hollow-hung ocean green I Soft are the moss-beds under the sea : We would live merrily, merrily. The most charming story connected with beings of the sea is that of Acis and Galatea ; the most wildly touching, that of the Neck, or Scandinavian Water-spirit, who wept when he was told he would not be " saved " (related in the fairy article above mentioned) ; the sublimest is the fa- mous one of the voice which announced the death of the " Great Pan." Plutarch relates it, in his essay on the " Cessation of Oracles," upon the authority of one Philip- pus, who said he had it from the hearer's own son, and who was corroborated in his report by several persons present. The original narrator alluded to gave the account as fol- lows.* He said, " that, during a voyage to Italy, the wind fell in the night-time, as they were nearing the Echi- nades ; and that, while almost all the people on board were on the watch, a great voice was heard from the Island of Paxos, calling upon one of them of the name of Thamnus ; which voice, for the novelty of the thing, excited them all to great astonishment." This Thamnus was an Egyptian, and master of the vessel. He was twice called and gave no answer. He was called a third time, and then he acknowledged the call ; upon which the voice, with much greater loudness than before, cried out, " When you come to the Marsh, announce that the Great Pan is dead," a command which struck all the listeners with terror. * We quote from Gesner, as above, p. 1198. 230 TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA. Accordingly, when they arrived off the Marsh, Thamnus, looking out from his rudder towards the land, cried, with a loud voice, " The Great Pan is dead ; " upon which there was suddenly heard a mighty groaning, as of many voices " yea, of voices innumerable, all wonderfully mixed up together." And because there were many people in that ship, as soon as they came to Rome the rumor was spread through the whole city, and the Emperor Tiberius sent for Thamnus, and was so struck with his relation, that he applied to the philosophers to know what Pan it could be ; and the conjecture was that it must be the Pan who was the son of Mercury and Penelope. The announcement of the death of Pan was awkward ; for Pan signifies //, and was the most universal of the gods ; but luckily, by the help of the Platonists and others, every god was surrounded with minor intelligences of the same name, after the fashion of a Scottish clan ; so that the philosophers found a god convenient for the occasion in this particular Pan, the offspring of Mercury and Pen- elope. It has been supposed that the story was a trick to frighten the vicious and superstitious emperor, which is not very likely. There is no authority, beyond Plutarch's report, who lived long after, and was very credulous, for the story itself ; and if a voice was actually heard, it does not follow that it said those exact words, or that the sub- sequent delivery of the message produced any thing more than a fancied acknowledgment. A sceptic at court might have resolved it into some common message, perhaps a watchword : perhaps some smugglers meant to tell their correspondent that " all was up with them ! " Jok- ing and scepticism apart, however, the story is a fine one ; so much so, that it is surprising Milton did not make a more particular allusion to it in his noble juvenile GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 23! ode on the " Nativity," where he speaks of the voices heard at the cessation of the oracles : " The lonely mountains o'er, And the resounding shore, A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament." ON GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. jT would be difficult to find an early national history without a giant in it. Any thing great in its effects, and supposed not to be very tender-hearted, was a giant. A violent set of neighbors were giants. An opposer of the gods was a giant, and threw mountains at them instead of sceptical essays. Evil genii were gigantic. The same Persian word came to signify a giant, a devil, and a magi- cian. An older word, in the Persian language, meaning a giant, gave its name to the ancient dynasty of the Caian- ides. Kings, in ancient times, when physical more than moral dignity was in request, were sometimes chosen on account of their stature. Agamemnon is represented as taller, by the head and shoulders, than any man in his army ; and probably it was as much on account of his height as his other supremacy that he was called Anax Andron^ King of Men. An etymologist would even see in the word Anax a resemblance to the Anakites of Scrip- ture. It is remarkable that Virgil, in his " Elysium," has given the old poet Musaeus a similar superiority over his brethren ; as if every kind of power in the early ages was associated with that of body. Moral enormity was natu- rally typified by physical. "It may be observed," says 232 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. Mr. Hole, " that a giant, in Arabic or Persian fables, is commonly a negro or infidel Indian, as he is in our old romances a Saracen Paynim, a votary of Mahound and Termagaunt." " Were the negroes authors," he pleasant- ly adds, " they would probably characterize their giants by whiskers and turbans ; or by hats, wigs, and a pale com- plexion." * In like manner, if the English wrote allegorical story- books nowadays, the oppressive lord or magistrate would be a giant. Fierce upholders of the old game-laws would be monsters of the woods, that devoured a man if he dared to touch one of their rabbits. " In books of chivalry," says Bishop Kurd, "the giants were oppressive feudal lords ; and every lord was to be met with, like the giant, in his stronghold or castle. Their dependants of the lower form, who imitated the violence of their superiors, and had not their castles, but their lurking places, were the savages of romance. The greater lord was called a giant, for his power ; the less, a savage for his brutality. All this is shadowed out of the Gothic tales, and some- times expressed in plain words. The objects of the knight's vengeance go indeed by the various names of giants, paynims, Saracens, and savages. But of what family they all are, is clearly seen from the poet's de- scription : ' What, mister wight, quoth he, and how far hence Is he, that doth to travellers such harmes ? He is, said he, a man of great defence, Expert in battell and in deedes of armes ; And more emboldened by the wicked charmes With which his daughter doth him still support : Having great lordships got and goodly farmes * " Remarks on the Arabian Nights' Entertainments," p. So. GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 233 Through strong oppression of his powre extort ; By which he still them holds, and keeps with strong effort. And dayly he his wrongs encreaseth more, For never wight he lets to pass that waye Over his bridge, albee he rich or poore, But he him makes his passage-penny paye ; Else he doth hold him backe or beate awaye. Thereto he hath a groom of evil guise, Whose scalp is bare, that bondage doth bewraye, Which pols and pils the poore in piteous wise, But he himself upon the rich doth tyrannise.' "Here," says the Bishop, "we have the great oppressive baron very graphically set forth. And the groom of evil guise is as plainly the baron's vassal. The romancers, we see, took no great liberty with these respectable person- ages, when they called the one a giant, and the other a savage." * That men of gigantic stature have existed here and there, we have had testimony in our own days. Some of them, probably not the tallest, have been strong. The others are weak and ill-formed, like children that have outgrown their strength. Whether giants ever existed as a body is still a question. The Patagonians of Commodore Byron have come down to a reasonable stature ; and the bones that used to be exhibited as proofs undeniable of enormous men, turn out to be those of the mammoth and the elephant. But this is the prose of gigantology. In poetry they are still alive and stalking. The earliest giants were monstrous as well as huge. Those that warred with the gods, and heaped Ossa upon Pelion, had a multitude of heads and arms, with serpents instead of legs. Typhon, the evil principle, the dreadful wind (still known in the East under the same name, the * Todd's " Spenser," vol. vi. p. 7. 234 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. Tifoori), had dragons, instead of human heads, and out of each of them threw the shriek of a different animal. En- celadus was thrust under Mount Etna, from which he still vomits fire and smoke, and when he turns his side there is an earthquake. Otus and Ephialtes grew nine inches a month, and at nine years old made their campaign against the gods. Now and then a giant undertook to be more courtly and pious. When Juno, Neptune, and Minerva conspired to dethrone Jupiter, Briareus went up into heaven, and seating himself on his right hand, looked so very shocking that the deities were fain to desist. There is a confusion of the giants with the Titans, but their wars were different. Those of the Titans were against Ccelus and Saturn ; the giants warred against Jupiter. They were also of a different nature, the Titans being of proper celestial origin, whereas the birth of the giants was as monstrous as their shapes. As to the great stature of the Titans, all the gods were gigantic. It was only in their visits to earth that they accommodated themselves to human size, and then not in their wars. One of the noblest uses ever made of this association of bodily size with divine power is in " Paradise Lost," where Milton, in one of those passages in which his theology is as weak and perplexed as his verse is powerful, makes Abdiel say to the leader of the infernal armies, " Fool ! not to think how vain Against the Omnipotent to rise in arms ; Who out of smallest things could without end Have raised incessant armies to defeat Thy folly ; or with solitary hand Reaching beyond all limit, at one blow, Unaided, could \awzfinished thee, and whelm'd Thy legions under darkness." " Solitary hand," says Bishop Newton, " means his GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 235 single hand." Oh no ! it is much finer than that. It means his hand, visibly alone, with nothing round about it, solitary in the great space of existence. It stretches out into the ether, dashing, at one blow, a great host into nothing; then draws back into heaven, and there is a silence as if existence itself were annihilated. The Cyclops is a variety of the giant monstrous. He has one eye, and is a man-eater. Mr. Bryant, who, in his " Elements of Ancient Mythology," amidst a heap of wild and gratuitous assumptions, has some ingenious conject- ures, is of opinion that a Cyclops was a watch-tower, with a round window in it showing a light, and that by the natural progress of fable the tower became a man. If the light however was for good purposes, the charge of man- eating is against the opinion. The Cyclopes, a real people, who left the old massy specimens of architecture, called after their name, are said to have been in the habit of carrying shields with an eye painted on them, or wore visors with a hole to see through. But these conjectures are not necessary to our treatise. The proper, huge, can- nibal giant, the Fee-faw-fum of antiquity, is our monster. Homer, who wandered about the world, and took marvels as they came, has painted him in all his cruelty. Theoc- ritus, writing pastorals at the court of Ptolemy, and more of a " sweet Signior," found out a refinement for him, which, to say the truth, is superior to jesting, and has touched a chord which the inventor of the character of Hector would have admired. He made Polyphemus in love ; and we are sorry for the monster, and wish Galatea to treat him with as much tenderness as is compatible with her terrors.* His discovery of his forlorn condition, * Those who wish to know how music can express a giant's misery con- 236 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. his fear that his senses are forsaking him, and his eager- ness to suppose that he is not altogether alien to humanity, because the village girls, when he speaks to them from his mountain at night-time, laughed at him, render him no longer a monstrosity odious, but a difference pitiable.* There is a Polyphemus in the story of " Sindbad " so like Homer's, that the ingenious author of the " Remarks on the Arabian Nights' Entertainments " pronounces it to be copied from him. Homer, however, might have copied it from the Orientals. He might have heard it from Eastern traders, granting it was unknown to the Greeks before. The wanderings of Ulysses imply a compilation of wonders from all parts of the world. The Greeks, except in this instance, appear to have had no idea of a nation of giants. Even Polyphemus they mixed up with their mythology, making him a son of Neptune. On the other hand, the grandiosity of the Orientals supplied them with giants in abundance, and Sir John Mandeville had no 'need, as Mr. Hole imagines, to go to Virgil and Ovid for his descrip- tions of huge monsters, eating men as they go, " all raw and all quicke." Ariosto, in the seventeenth book of his great poem, has a Polyphemus with two projecting bones, instead of eyes, of the color of fungus. This is very ghastly. He calls trasted with the happiness of two innocent lovers, should hear the serenata of " Acis and Galatea," by Handel, the giant of the orchestra. ('' Where giant Handel stands, Arra'd, like Briareus, with his hundred hands." POPE.) The terrible intonations of Polyphemus in his despair, with those lovely un- weeting strains of the happy pair immediately issuing out upon them, " Ere I forsake my love," &a, offer perhaps the finest direct piece of contrast in the whole circle of music. * Theocritus, " Idyll." xi. v. 72. GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 237 him an orco, that is to say, an ogre. Ogre, whether de- rived from the Latin orcus, or from Oigour (a tribe of Tartars), or Hongrois, or Hungarian,* is a man-eater; and orco appears to be the same, though not confined to the man-monster. The same poet, in his rifacimento of the story of Andromeda (canto 10), calls the fish an ore; and the word is used in a like sense in our elder poetry. Ariosto's Polyphemus (for he gives him a cavern, sheep, &c., exactly like those of the old Cyclops) has no sight at all with those horrible goggles of his. An exquisite sense of smelling supplies the want of it ; and he comes running upon his prey, dipping his nose towards the ground. " Mentre aspettiamo, in gran piacer sedendo, Che da caccia ritorni il signer nostro, Vederamo 1'orco a noi venir correndo Lango il lito del mar, terribil mostro. Dio vi guardi, signer, che '1 viso orrendo De 1'orco a gli occhi mai vi sia dimostro. Meglio e per fama aver notiza d'esso, Ch' andargli, si che lo veggiate, appresso. " Non si puo compartir quanto sia lungo, Si smisuratamente 6 tutto grosso. In luogo d' occhi, di color di fungo Sotto la fronte ha due coccole d'osso. Verso noi vien, come vi dico, lungo II lito : e par ch'un monticel sia mosso. Mostra le zanne fuor, come fa il porco : Ha lungo il naso, e'l sen bavoso e sporco. " Correndo viene, e'l muso a guisa porta Che'l braccio suol, quando entra in su la traccia. Tutti che lo veggiam, con faccia smorta In fugo andiamo ove il timor ne caccia. * See " Fairy Mythology," vol. ii. 238 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. Poco il veder lui cieco ne conforta ; Quando fiutando sol par che piu faccia, Ch "altri non fa ch 'abbia odorato e lume : E bisogno al fuggire eran le piume." While thus we sat, prepared for mirth and glee, Waiting the king's appearance from the chase, Suddenly, to our horror, by the sea, We saw the ogre coming towards the place. God keep you, Sir, in his benignity, From setting eyes on such a dreadful face ! Better, by far, of such things to be told, Than see a sight to make a man turn old. I cannot tell you his immeasured size, So huge he was, and of a bulk throughout. Upon his horrid front, instead of eyes, Two bony roundels, fungus-hued, stuck out. Thus, like the only thing 'twixt earth and skies, He came along ; and under his brute snout Tusks he put forth, bared like the boar's in wrath ; And his huge breast was filthy with a froth. Running he comes, projecting towards the ground His loathly muzzle, dog-like, on the scent. With ashy faces we arise, and bound, Fast as we can, before the dire intent. Small comfort to us was his blindness found ; Since with his smelling only as he bent, More sure he seem'd than creatures that have sight ; And wings alone could match him for a flight. The poverty-stricken propriety of Mr. Hoole regarded these circumstances as "puerilities." He ventured to turn Ariosto's wine into water, and then judged him in his unhappy sobriety. Mr. Hoole was not man enough to play the child with a great southern genius. Ariosto's poem is a microcosm, which sees fair-play to all the circles of imagination, at least to all such as are common to men in their ordinary state ; and he did not omit those that GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 239 include childhood, and that, in some measure, are nevet forgotten by us. This literally construed, is in high epic taste, as much so as the homely similes of the Iliad and the Odyssey. We should be thankful, for our parts, to an epic poet who could manage to introduce the big-headed and bushy-haired ogres of our own story-books, with the little ogres, their children, all with crowns on their heads. We sympathize with the hand of the diminutive "gigant- icide,". who felt them as they lay in their grim slumber, all in a row. Was this, by the way, a satire on royalty ? It is an involuntary one. The giant Gargantua, in " Rabe- lais," who ate three men in a salad was a king. Several of Spenser's allegorical personages are giants. The allegory is incidental, and helps to vary the individual character ; but otherwise the bodily pictures are complete specimens of the giants of chivalry. One of them is Disdain " Who did disdain To be so called, and whoso did him call." Of another giant, of the same name, he tells us that " His lookes were dreadful!, and his fiery eies, Like two great beacons, glared bright and wyde, Glauncing askew, as if his enemies He scorned in his overweening pryde ; And stalking stately, like a crane, did stryde At every step upon the tiptoes hie ; And all the way he went, on every syde He gaz'd about, and stared horriblie, As if he with his looks would all men terrific. " He wore no armour, ne for none did care, As no whit dreading any living wight ; But in a jacket, quilted richly rare Upon checklaton,* he was straungely dight, * Checklatoun (Fr. ciclatoun) is supposed to be intended by Spenser foi cloth of gold. 240 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. And on his head a roll of linnen plight, Like to the Moors of Malaber, he wore, With which his lockes, as black as pitchy night, Were bound about and voyded from before ; And in his hand a mighty yron club he bore." FAERIE QUEENE, Book vi., Canto vii. A third great giant is Orgoglio (or Pride), a good swal- lowing name. A knight is enjoying himself with his mis- tress, when suddenly he hears " A dreadful sownd, Which through the wood loud bellowing did rebownd, That all the earth for terror seemed to shake, And trees did tremble. Th' Elfe, therewith astownd, Upstarted lightly from his looser make, And his unready weapons gan in hand to take. "But ere he could his armour on him dight, Or get his shield, his monstrous enimy With sturdie steps came stalking in his sight, An hideous giant, horrible and hye ; The grownd all groned under him for dread.'* Orgoglio has a " Dreadful club All arm'd with ragged snubbes and knottie grain.'-' With this, in a battle with Prince Arthur, he aims a ter- rible blow, which, missing him " Did fall to ground, and with his heavy sway, So deeply dented in the driven day, That three yardes deep a furrow up did throw. The sad earth, wounded with so sore essay, Did groan full grievous underneath the blow, And trembling with strange feare, did like an earthquake shew." Then follows one of the noblest similes ever produced. Upton says that Longinus would have written a whole chapter upon it : GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 241 " As when Almightie Jove, in wrathful mood, To wreake the guilt of mortal sins is bent, Hurls forth his thund'ring dart with deadly food, Enroll'd in flames and smouldering dreriment, Through riven clouds and molten firmament : The fierce three-forked engine, making way, Both loflie towres and highest trees hath rent, And al! that might his angry passage stay ; And, shooting in the earth, castes up a mount of clay." Book i. Canto viii. Spenser writes the word variously giant, gyaunt, and geaunt ; for no man had a stronger sense of words as the expressions of things, nor delighted more to call in every aid to the emphasis and conscious enjoyment of what he was writing. His very rhymes are often spelled in an arbi- trary manner, to enforce the sound ; and he tells a dread- ful story with all the shuddering epithets, and lingering, fearful fondness of a child. Take another of his giants one Corflambo, whose eyes are very new and terrible : " At length they spied where towards them with speed A squire came galloping, as he would file, Bearing a little dwarte before his steed, That all the way full loud for aide did crie, That seem'd his shrikes would rend the brasen skie : Whom after did a mightie man pursew, Riding upon a dromedare on hie, Of stature huge, and horrible of hew, That would have mazed a man his dreadfull face to view : For from his fearfulle eyes twofierie beanies, More sharpe than points of needles, did proceede, Shooting forth farre awaye two flaming streames, Full of sad powre, that poysnous bale did breede To all that on him lookt without good heed, And secretly his enemies did slay: Like as the basiliske, of serpent's seede, From powrefull eyes close venim doth convay Into the looker's hart, and kUleth farre a-u>ay. n Book iv. Canto viii. 16 242 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. This Corflambo is another good name. The names of the giants in the beautiful romance of " Amadis of Gaul " (superior, undoubtedly, to " Palmerin of England," though the latter also is delightful for its bits of color, and its green and flowery places) are very bulky, and " talk big." There is Gandalac and Albadanger ; and Madanfabul, of the Vermilion Tower ; and Gromadaga, the Giantess of the Boiling Lake ; and Ardan Canileo, the Dreadful ; and above all, the mighty and most mouthing Famongom- adan, who seems to inform his enemies that he means to flame and gobble ''em. Gandalac makes the least oral pretensions ; and " he was not so wicked as other giants, but of a good and gentle demeanor, except when he was enraged, and then would he do great cruelties." * But he was very terrible. He was "so large and mismade, that * See the excellent version of Mr. Southey, vol. i., p. 37. [" Amadis of Gaul " and " Palmerin of England " were among Don Quixote's fovorite romances of chivalry. He and the curate used to dispute long and learnedly as to who was the better knight, Palmerin of England or Amadis of Gaul. Bernardo Tasso, father of the poet, translated " Amadis de Gaul " into Italian ; and Tasso himself, as quoted by Ticknor, says that the " Amadis " "is the most beautiful, and perhaps the most profitable, story of its kind that can be read, because in its sentiments and tone it leaves all others behind it, and in the variety of its incidents yields to none written before or since>" Sir Philip Sidney says he had known men " made better and braver by its perusal." According to Burton, the work was a favorite among the English gentry of the seventeenth century. Southey's version of "Amadis of Gaul" was published by Longman in 1803, and was the subject of Sir Walter Scott's first contribution to the " Edinburgh Review." " Amadis is an extraordinary book," wrote Southey, in a letter to Miss Barker (the Bhow Begum of " The Doctor ") ; " and now the job is done, I am glad I undertook it. ... I have a sort of family love for Vasco Loberia, more than for Ariosto or Mil- ton, approaching to what I feel for Spenser; and certainly, when I get to heaven, he will be one of the very first persons to whom I shall desire to be introduced." ED.] GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 243 never man saw him without affright ; " and when he makes his appearance in Chapter IV., " the women ran, some among the trees and others fell down, and shut their eyes, that they might not see him." By degrees, as men found out that a gigantic stature did not always imply strength, or even courage, they be- gan to change their fear into contempt, and to laugh, like children, at the great bugbear that had amazed them. At length, they discovered that a giant could even be good- natured ; and then the more philosophical romancers thought it necessary to do them justice. Hence the pleas- ant, mock-heroical giant of Pulci, and the amiable one (Dramuziando) of " Palmerin of England." Being no longer formidable, however, they were for the most part found to be dull and awkward, probably not without some ground in nature. It is observed, says Fuller (or in some such language), that, for the most part, those who exceed their fellows in a reasonable measure of height "are but indifferently furnished in the cockloft." * The little knights have as much advantage over them in battle, as the light brigantines had against the overgrown Spanish Armada. Our nursery acquaintance, Jack the Giant Killer (if he be not a burlesque on Thor himself), is an incarnation of the superior strength of wit over bulkiness. He has a cousin a monstrous giant, having three heads, and who would beat five hundred men in armor. On one occasion, Jack comes to a large house in a lonesome place, and knocking at the gate, there issues forth a giant with two heads, who nevertheless " did not seem so fiery as the former giant ; for," says the Saxon author, " he was a Welsh giant." * Fuller's exact words are : " Ofttimes such who are built four stories high, are observed to have little in their cockloft." ED. 244 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. In the opening book of the " Morgante Maggiore " of Pulci, the father of modern banter and burlesque (though a genius at the same time, capable of great seriousness and pathos), there is a remarkable scene, in which Orlando comes upon a set of monks in a desert, who are pestered by three giants, their neighbors. The giants, who are of course infidels or Mahometans, are in the habit of throw- ing great stones at the abbey, so that the monks cannot go out for provisions. Orlando, in his errantry, comes to the abbey door, and knocks for some time in vain. At length he is let in, and the abbot apologizes, by stating the block- ade in which they are kept. The holy father then proceeds to make some very singular comments, in a stanza that seems to contain the first germs of the style of Voltaire. " Gli antichi padri nostri nel deserto, Se le lor opre sante erano e giuste, Del ben servir da Dio n'avean buon merto ; Ne creder sol viversin di locuste : Piovea dal ciel la manna, questo e certo : Ma qui convien, che spesso assagi e guste Sassi, che piovon di sopra quel monte, Che gettano Alabastro e Passamonte. " E'l terzo ch'e Morgante pio fiero, Isveglie e pini, e faggi, e cerri, e gli oppi, E gettagli infin qui : questo e pur vero : Non posso far che d'ira non iscoppi. Mentre che parlan cosi in cimitero, Un sasso par che Rondel quasi sgroppi ; Che da giganti giu venne da alto Tanto, ch'e prese sotto il tetto un sal to. " Tirati dentro, cavalier, per Dio, Disse 1'abate, che la. manna, casca. Rispose Orlando : caro abate mio, - Costui non vuol che '1 mio caval piu pasca : Veggo che lo guarebbe del restio : Quel sasso par che di buon braccio nasca. GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 245 Rispose il santo padre ; io non t'inganno, Credo che V monte un giomo gitteramto.'" " The Eremites of old, if just and true, And righteous in their works, had blessed cheer ; God's servants in those days no hunger knew, Nor lived on those same locusts all the year. Doubt not, they had the rain of manna too : But as for us, our pretty dishes here A re stones ; which Passamont and Alabaster Rain down upon our heads, by way of taster. " And yet those two are nothing to the third. He tears me up whole trees, whole horrid oaken Trunks by the root ; he does upon my word ; Our heads infallibly will all be broken." While thus, as if he could be overheard, The monk stood talking low, there came a token So close upon the house, it seem'd all over With the poor devil, who leap'd under cover. " For God's sake, come in doors, Sir I " cried the priest ; " The manna's falling." " 'Tis indeed," said t'other : " They seem to grudge his feed to the poor beast ; They'd cure his restiveness. Well, such another Stunner as this proves no weak arm at least, No son, dear abbot, of a feeble mother." " The Lord," exclaimed the monk, " look down upon us ! Some day, I think, they'll cast the mountain on us." Orlando proposes to go and settle the giant ; which the monk, after in vain endeavoring to dissuade him, permits. " Disse 1'abate col segnarlo in fronte, Va, che da Dio e me sia benedetto. Orlando, poi che salito ebbe il moute Si dirizzo, come 1'abate detto Gli avea, dove sta quel Passamonte ; II quale Orlando veggendo soletto Molto lo squadra di drieto e davante ; Poi domando, se star volea per fante. " E' promettava di farlo godere. Orlando disse ; pazzo Saracino, 246 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. lo vengo a te, com' 6 di Dio volere, Per dar ti morte, e non per ragazzino. A'monaci suoi fatto ha dispiacere : Non puo piu comportarti, can mastino. Questo gigante armar si corse a furia, Quando sent! ch' e'gli diceva ingiuria." He cross'd the forehead of the kn-ght, and said, " Go then, of God, and of our prayers befriended." Orlando went, and keeping in his head The monk's directions, hastily ascended The height, and struck for Passamonte's shed, Who seeing him thus coming unattended, Perused him well, then cried, " I like his plan ! What, my new footboy ? eh, my little man? " And then he promised him his board and pallet. " You stupid Saracen ! " Orlando cried, " I come to be your death, and not your valet ; Think of these sa'nts here, whom you keep inside Their abbey : "tisn't to be borne, nor shall it, You hound, you ; so prepare your stupid hide." The giant, hearing him pour forth such evil. Ran in to arm him, like a very devil. The hero kills Alabaster and Passamonte, and converts Morgante, who was prepared for him by a dream. The giant becomes a faithful servant, both of the knight and the church, and after many enormous achievements, dies of the bite of a crab ; an edifying moral. His conversa- tion, in the course of his studies in divinity, is no less instructive ; but we are at a loss how to quote it, from the reverential feelings we have for certain names, whose mis- use he helps to expose. We would fain see them kept sacred against better days. There is another giant, Mar- gutte, who speaks still more plainly, and is the prototype of a worldly philosophy, the natural offspring of a profaner superstition. " Margutte," says Ugo Foscolo, " is a very infidel giant, ready to confess his failings, and full of droll- GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 247 ery. He sets all a-laughing, readers, giants, devils, and heroes, and he finishes his career by laughing till he bursts." * We do not choose, however, to leave off speaking of our old friends with a burlesque ; and, therefore, we shall conclude the present chapter with a few right earnest giants out of the " History of Prince Arthur." A jest cracked by that hero upon one of them is no joke infidel. It is only, as the poet says, " the ornament of his gravity." Arthur, in a battle with the Emperor of Rome, smites off by the knees the legs of a giant of the name of Galapar. " Now," quoth he, " art thou better of a size to deal with, than thou wert." The Emperor of Rome had got together fifty giants, who were " born of fiends," to break the front of the warriors' battle. But a chapter in that once popular compilation will present the reader with the complete giant of the old story-books. The style of the work is incorrect. The compiler pieces out the fine things of the old romances with a poverty of language that is a poor substitute for their simplicity ; but the present extract is " a favorable specimen ; " and the repetitions, and other gossiping fer- vors, have the proper childlike effect. We ascend the giant's mountain by due degrees. The picture of him, " baking his broad limbs by the fire," is in sturdy epic taste ; and " the weltering and wallowing " of the fighters does not mince the matter. There is a Cornish hug in the battle.f * See a masterly criticism in the "Quarterly Review," said to be trans- lated from a contribution of this gentleman, and entitled " Narrative and Romantic Poems of the Italians." t Fuller, in the " Worthies," gives this definition of a Cornish hug: " The Cornish are masters of the art of wrestling ; so that if the Olympian games were now in fashion, they would come away with victory. Their hug is a 248 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. "HOW A MAN OF THE COUNTRY TOLD HIM OF A MAR- VELLOUS GIANT, AND HOW HE FOUGHT AND CON- QUERED HIM. " Then came to him a husbandman of the country, and told him how there was, in the country of Constantine, beside Britain, a great giant, which had slain, murthered, and devoured much people of the country, and had been sustained seven years with the children of the commons of that land, insomuch that all the children be all slain and destroyed. And now late he hath taken the Duchess of Brittany, as she rode with her men, and had led her to his lodging, which is in a mountain : and many people followed her, more than five hundred ; but all they might not rescue her, but they left her shrieking and crying lamentably ; wherefore I suppose that he hath slain her in fulfilling his foul lust ; she was wife unto your cousin, Sir Howel, the which was full nigh of your blood. Now, as ye are a right- ful king, have pity on this lady, and revenge us all as ye are a valiant conqueror. "'Alas!' said King Arthur, 'this is a great mischief ; I had rather than the best realm that I have that I had been a furlong before him, for to have rescued that lady. Now, fellow,' said King Arthur, ' canst thou bring me there whereas this giant haunteth ? ' " ' Yea, Sir,' said the good man ; ' lo, yonder whereas ye see the two great fires, there shall ye not fail to find him, and more treasure, as I suppose, than is in all the realm of France.' " When King Arthur had understood this piteous case, cunning close with their fellow-combatant; the fruit whereof is his fair fall, ot foil at the least. It is figuratively applicable to the deceitful dealing of such, who secretly design their overthrow whom they openly embrace." ED. GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 249 he returned into his tent, and called unto him Sir Kaye and Sir Bedivere, and commanded them secretly to make ready horse and harness for himself, and for them twain ; for after evensong he would ride on pilgrimage, with them two only, unto Saint Mighel's Mount. And then anon they made them ready, and armed them at all points, and took their horses and their shields ; and so they three departed thence, and rode forth as fast as they might, till they came unto the furlong of that mount, and there they alighted, and the king commanded them to tarry there, and said he would himself go up to that mount. " And so he ascended up the mount till he came to a great fire, and there found he a careful widow wringing her hands and making great sorrow, sitting by a grave new made. And then King Arthur saluted her, and demanded her wherefore she made such lamentation. Unto whom she answered and said, ' Sir Knight, speak soft, for yonder is a devil ; if he hear thee speak he will come and destroy thee. I hold thee unhappy : what dost thou here in this mountain ? for if ye were such fifty as ye be, ye were not able to make resistance against this devil : here lieth a duchess dead, which was the fairest lady of the world, wife unto Sir Howel of Britain.' " ' Dame,' said the King, ' I come from the great con- queror, King Arthur, for to treat with that tyrant for his liege people.' " ' Fie upon such treaties,' said the widow ; ' he setteth nought by the King, nor by no man else ; but and if thou hath brought King Arthur's wife, Dame Guenever, he shall be gladder than if thou hadst given him half France. Beware ; approach him not too nigh ; for he hath over- come and vanquished fifteen kings, and hath made him a coat full of precious stones, embroidered with their beards, 250 GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. which they sent him to have his love for salvation of their people this last Christmas, and if thou wilt speak with him at yonder great fire, he is at supper.' " ' Well,' said King Arthur, ' I will accomplish my mes- sage for all your fearful words,' and went forth by the crest of that hill, and saw where he sat at supper gnawing on a limb of a man, baking his broad limbs by the fire, and breechless, and three damsels turning three broaches, whereon was broached twelve young children, late born, like young birds. " When King Arthur beheld that piteous sight, he had great compassion on them, so that his heart bled for sor- row, and hailed him, saying in this wise : ' He that all the world wieldeth give thee short life and shameful death, and the devil have thy soul ! Why hast thou mur- thered these young innocent children, and this duchess ? Therefore arise and dress thee, thou glutton, for this day shalt thou die of my hands.' " Then anon the giant start up, and took a great club in his hand, and smote at the King that his coronal fell to the earth. And King Arthur hit him again, that he carved his belly, and that his entrails fell down to the ground. Then the giant with great anguish threw away his club of iron and caught the King in his arms, that he crushed his ribs. Then the three damsels kneeled down, and called unto our Lord Jesus Christ, for help and com- fort of the noble King Arthur. And then King Arthur weltered and wrung, that he was one while under, and another while above ; and so weltering and wallowing, they rolled down the hill, till they came to the sea-mark ; and as they so tumbled and weltered, King Arthur smote him with his dagger, and it fortuned they came unto the place whereas the two knights were that kept King Arthur's GIANTS, OGRES, AND CYCLOPS. 251 horse. Then when they saw the King fast in the giant's arms, they came and loosed him ; and then King Arthur commanded Sir Kaye to smite off the giant's head, and to set it upon a truncheon of a spear, and bear it to Sir Howel, and tell him ' that his enemy is slain ; and after let his head be bound to a barbican, that all the people may see and behold it ; and go ye two to the mountain, and fetch me my shield, and my sword, and also the great club of iron ; and as for the treasure, take it to you, for ye shall find there goods without number ; so that I have his kirtle and the club, I desire no more. This was the fiercest giant that ever I met with, save one in the mount of Araby, which I overcame ; but this was greater and fiercer.' " * * " Of the two proposed books, respecting which you ask me the partic- ulars," writes Leigh Hunt to John Forster, " one is ' The Fabulous World,' the chief portion of which, though not under that title, or, indeed, under any general one, appeared many years ago in the ' New Monthly Magazine,' as articles on Satyrs, Nymphs, Giants, Mermaids, &c. They were written with my customary painstaking, interspersed with quotations from poets of divers languages (translated when necessary), and very much approved. Everybody, to whom their incorporation into a volume was talked of, seemed to hail the notion ; and, in truth, there is no such book in the language, nor, I believe, in any other. I propose to complete what was wanting to it in the ' New Monthly,' and to add the miraculous goods and chattels belonging to my fabulous people, such as Enchanted Spears, Flying Sophas, Illimitable Tents that pack up in nutshells, &c." "The Fabulous World" was never published, and the articles that were to have formed the greater part of the volume are here first collected together. ED. 252 GOG AND MAGOG, GOG AND MAGOG, AND THE WALL OF DHOULKARNEIN. SHADOW seems to fall upon our paper at the very mention of the words, " Gog and Ma- gog," fine, mouth-filling, mysterious names ; and of whom ? Nobody knows. The names, we doubt not, have helped to keep up the in- terest ; but the mystery is a mighty one of itself, and is found in reverend places. The grand prophet Ezekiel has a long mention of Gog and Magog, and describes them as a terrible people ; but nobody has yet discovered who they are. They have been thought to be Goths, Celts, Germans, Tartars, &c. ; but the most received opinion is, that they are Scythians ; and there is a curious chapter in Bochart, which would corroborate a notion that is said to have pre- vailed among the Turks, and to which late events have given additional color : to wit, that the Russians are a part of their family.* At all events, dear reader, Gog and Ma- gog are not the giants of Guildhall ; albeit the latter, like the former, are unappropriated phenomena supposed, we believe, to represent an ancient Briton and a Roman, and to be the relics of some quondam city pageant. It seems agreed, however, that although nobody knows who Gog and Magog are, they are mixed up somehow * " Geographia Sacra," cap. 13. [The reader will find a pleasant passage concerning Bochart in the article on " Bricklayers and an Old Book," in " The Seer." Hallam, too, in the " Literature of Europe," has a good word for the fine old scholar. ED.] THE WALL OF DHOULKARNEIN. 253 with the region about Caucasus ; and the Orientals, who call them Yajouje and Majouje,* thiftk they are to come out of the mountains on the Caspian, and overrun the world. Some hold them to be giants ; others say they are an innumerable race of pigmies. Bruce was asked about them during his travels, and informed that they were hor- ribly little. " By God's help," said the traveller, " I shall not be afraid of them, though they be a hundred times less." An old tradition, at strange variance with prophecy, says that Gog and Magog are Jews, and that they are to appear at the time of anti-Christ, and do great harm to believers. Hear Mandeville on the subject, whose old language adds to the look of seriousness and mystery : " Among thes hillis that be there," quoth the knight, "be the Jews of the ix. kyndes enclosed, that men call Gog and Magog, and they may not come out on no syde. Here were enclosed xxii. kynges, with her folke that dwellyd ther before, and between the hilles of Sichy (Scythae ? Scythians) and the kingdom of Alisaunder. He droffe hem theder among thes hillia, for he trowed for to have enclosyd hem there thourgh strength and worckyng of mannys hond, but he myght not. And than he prayed God that he wold fullfill that he had begon, and God hard his prayer, and enclosyd thes hillis togedyr, so that the Jews dwell there as they were lokyd and speryd inne (sparred, i.e. shut up) ; and there be hillis all abought hem but on one syde. Why ne * It is a whim of the Eastern nations, when names are familiarly coupled in history, to make them rhyme. Thus, Cain and Abel, are Cabil and Ha- bil ; and there are several other instances, but we have not time to look for them. If Beaumont and Fletcher had written among them, they would have tried hard to call them Beaumont and Fleaumont. 254 GOG AND MAGOG, AND go they not out ? seist thou. But therto I answer, thou yt be soo that yt be -called a cee, yt ys a stanke (standing water) stonding among hillis. And yt ys the greatest stanke of all the world, and yf they went over the cee, they wot not where to aryve, for they wot not to speke but her owne langage ; and ye shall (knowe) that the Jues have no lond of her owne in all the worlde, but they that dwellen in the hillis, and yet they bere tribute to the quene of Ermony. And sometyme yt ys soo that some Jewes gon on the hill, but they mey not passe, for thes hillis be so heigh ; never- thelesse men seye of that cuntre ther bye, that in the tyme of Antecriste they shall comen out, and do moch yll herme to Cristen men. And therefore all the Jewes that dwellen in dyvers partise of the world lern to speke Ebrewe, for they trowe that dwell amonge thes hillis schall com out, and (if) they speke Ebrewe and not ellis. And in tyme of Antecriste shall thyse Jewes comen out and speke Ebrewe, and leden other Jewes into Cristendom for to destroy Cristenmen ; for they wotte be her prophecies that they shall com out of Cristenmen, shall be in her subieccion, as they be now under Cristenmen. An yf ye will wit howe they shall com and fynd passage out as I have hard saye, I schall tell you. At the comynge of Antecrist, a fox schall com and make his den in the sam place where that kyng Alis- aunder ded make the gattes, and schall travaille so on the erth and perce yt thorowe till that he com among the Jewes ; and whan they see thys fox, they schall have great manvell of hym, for they seye never such maner of bestes, for other bestes they have amonge hem many, but non such ; and they schall chese the fox, and pursue him till he be fled agen to the hole ther he cam out of; and than schall they grave after hym tyll the time they com to the gates that kyng Alisaunder dyde make of gret stonys will dight with THE WALL OF DHOULKARNEIN. 255 symend (cement) ; and they schall brek thes gates, and so schall they fynd issue." * The story of the fox is idle enough ; but in the Pecorone of Sir Giovanni Fiorentino, quoted by the same authority, is a version of this story, in which a very romantic ma- noeuvre of Alexander is mentioned. In order to keep his captives in subjection, " he fixed a number of trumpets on the top of the mountains, so cunningly framed that they resounded in every breeze. In the course of time certain birds built their nests in the mouths of the trumpets, and stopped them up, so that the clangour gradually lessened. And when the trumpets were quite silent, the Jews -ven- tured to climb over the mountains, and sallied forth ." It is curious to fancy the imprisoned nation listening year after year, and finding the sound of Alexander's dreadful trumpets grow less and less, till at length they are " silent." What has happened ? Is the king dead ? Have his army grown less and less, or feebler and feebler, so as to be unable to blow them ? Are they all dead ? Let us go and see. And forth they go, but cautiously climb- ing the mountains with due care, and many listening delays. At length they arrive at the top, and see nobody only those mighty scarecrows of trumpets, their throats stuffed up with the nests of birds ! f In these traditions there is a confusion common in the East of Alexander of Macedon, called by the Orientals * Quoted by Mr. Weber in the notes to his " Metrical Romances," vol. iii. p. 323. It has long been supposed that the Jews had a national settlement some- where about this quarter. See D'Herbelot, " Bibliotheque Orientale," art. Jahoud; and the late English travellers, particularly Elphinstone in his "Account of Caubul." t Leigh Hunt tells this story more minutely in his fine poem entitled The Trumpets of Doolkarntin- ED. 256 GOG AND MAGOG, AND Dhoulkarnein, or Zulkarnein (that is to say, the Two- horned, or Lord of the East and West), with another Dhoul- karnein, who lived before the time of Abraham, and is styled Dhoulkarnein the Greater. Powerful as they think the former, the latter was still more so ; and was, besides, a prophet. He was a Mussulman by anticipation ; and lived sixteen hundred years. It is supposed, however, that the Greek Alexander is both Dhoulkarneins inclusive ; and that in consequence of the figure he made in the East, he threw that mightier shadow of his greatness upon the mists of antiquity. The essay towards the history of Old Arabia, by Major Price, contains a summary of this Dhoulkarnein's adven- tures with Gog and Magog, taken out of an Eastern his- torian, and containing the best account hitherto given of this awful people. The following is the amount of it : Among the children of Japhet was one of the name of Mensheje, or Meshech, who was the father of two sons called Yajouje and Majouje. From these descended a progeny so numer- ous, that, according to Abdullah, the son of Omar, if the inhabitants of the whole earth were divided into ten equal parts, nine out of the ten would be found to consist of the Yajouje-Majouje. They were so long-lived, that no one died till he had seen a thousand descendants of his body ; and as to their stature, the race might be divided into three classes, the Kelim-goush, or cloth-eared, only four cu- bits big ; the class a hundred and twenty cubits in height ; and the class who were a hundred and twenty cubits both in height and breadth. Had there been any more, we sup- pose that they would have been measured by the square mile. They were of enormous strength ; and, though their ordinary food was the wild mulberry, were eaters of men. Agreeably to these bodily symptoms, they lived THE WALL OF DHOULKARNEIN. 257 without a god, government, or good manners ; and made horrible visitations in the countries about them, who lived in constant dread of their enormities. Dhoulkarnein, in the course of an expedition which he took to survey all the countries of the earth, arrived at a territory bordering on these people, and was met with great reverence by the king of it, who, after becoming a convert to the hero's faith, begged his assistance against his dread- ful neighbors. The two-horned gave his consent, but it appears that even he had no expectation of being able to conquer them, for he did not attempt it. He contented himself with building a mighty wall, called by the Eastern historian sedde-Zulkarnein, or bulwark of Zulkarnein ; the remains of which are supposed to exist in certain ruins still visible, near the city of Derbent, on the Caspian. This wall fills the imagination almost as much as the race whom it was built to keep out ; and the details of its con- struction are worth repeating. The monarch commenced by causing an immense ditch to be excavated between the two mountains through which the Yajouje-Majouje were accustomed to pass. He then filled up the ditch with enormous masses of granite, by way of foundation ; and upon these (though we are not told how he contrived it) he heaped huge blocks of iron, copper, and other metals, in alternate layers like brick ; the whole of which being put in a state of fusion by great fires, became, when cooled, one solid bulwark of metal, stretching from side to side, and on a level with the mountains. " On the top of all," says our author, {Hiatus valde deflendus ! We had made a memoran- dum of this passage some time ago, and cannot on the sudden again meet with the book, not even in the British Museum.] '7 258 GOG AND MAGOG, AND The length of the wall was " one hundred and fifty para- sangs, or five hundred and twenty-five miles ; its breadth fifty miles ; and its height two thousand eight hundred cubits, or about the height of Ben Nevis." There is no doubt that an important barrier of some kind existed in the defiles of Caucasus, on the Caspian ; there are considerable remains of one. According to some, Nouschirvan, King of Persia, a prince of the dynasty of the Sassanides, had the honor of completing what Alex- ander began. Others have suspected, that by the account of its magnitude the wall of China must have been meant. But these questions, into which our hankering after the truth is continually leading us, are not necessary to that other truth of fable. The wall may or may not be a truth historical ; Gog and Magog are a fine towering piece of old history fabulous. In D'Herbelot, * is an account of a Journey of Discov- ery made by order of a caliph of the house of the Abba- sides, to inquire into this structure. With the exception of a story of a mermaid, which we have transferred to its proper place, Warton gives a better account in his " His- tory of English Poetry." f We have taken the best cir- cumstances from both, and proceed to lay the result before the reader. About the year 808, the caliph Al Amin, having heard wonderful reports concerning this wall or barrier, sent his interpreter Salam, with an escort of fifty men, to view it. Salam took the route of Nouschirvan, or Northern Media, in which Filan-Schah reigned at that time. From Nous- * Art " Jagiouge et Magiouge," torn. iii. p. 270. t Vol. i. "Dissertation I." (Quoted by Weber in the notes to his "Met- rical Romances," vol. iii. p. 325.) THE WALL OF DHOULKARNEIN. 259 chirvan he passed into the territory of the Alani, and thence into the district of the lord of the marches, who dwelt in the city of Derbent, and whose title was Lord of the Golden Throne. For the extraordinary fish which he caught in company with their ruler, see the article upon " Sirens and Mermaids." The Lord of the Golden Throne furnished our travellers with guides to conduct them farther north, into which quarter, having marched twenty-six days, they arrived at a land which emitted a fearful odor. They beheld, as they went, many cities destroyed by the Yajouje-Majouje, and in six days arrived at that part of the mountains of Cau- casus, in which was the stronghold, enclosing those cap- tives of Dhoulkarnein. They saw the tops of the fortress long before they reached it. On coming up, it was found to consist partly of iron and partly of a huge mountain, in an opening in which stood the gate, of enormous magni- tude. This gate was supported by vast buttresses, and had an iron bulwark, with turrets of the same metal, reach- ing to the top of the mountain itself, which was too high to be seen. The valves, lintels, threshold, lock and key, were all of proportionate magnitude. The governor of certain places in the neighborhood comes to this castle once every week, with an escort of ten men all mounted on horseback, and striking it three times with a great hammer, lays his ear to the door and listens. A murmur- ing noise comes from within, which is the noise of the Ybjouje-Mbjouje. Salam was told, that they often ap- peared on the battlements of the bulwark. Do you not fancy, reader, that you take a journey to that awful place, and that after waiting there a long time you behold some of them looking over huge, black- headed giants, looking down upon you with a shadow, and making you hold your breath ? 2(5o AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. HE balloon, by the help of fashionable encour- agement and the intrepid frequency of the ascents of Messrs, and Mesdames Green and Graham, appears to be again hovering on the borders of a little improvement. There is a talk of its being made use of for the purpose of survey- ing land. The only practical account it was ever turned to, was of this sort a survey of the field of battle at Fleu- rus ; where the French prevented a surprise by means of it. Ascents have been made, indeed, for scientific ex- periments, but not with any particular result. Should you like, dear reader, to go up in a balloon ? Some readers. Very much indeed. Others. Can't exactly say. Must reflect a little. If these latter wish to have a friend to stand by them in their hesitation, I, for one, must own myself of the same mind. It would take much to make me undergo so prac- tical a lift to the imagination. I can imagine it, " methinks," well enough as I am, on terra firma. " Suave Vauxhall Gardens, turbantibus sethera throatis, E terra magnum alterius spectare balloonem." " 'Tis sweet, when at Vauxhall throats tear the skies, To see in his balloon another rise." I cannot withhold my admiration from those who go up ; otherwise, perhaps, to spite them for my sense of the ad- vantage they have over me, I would ; nor can I say how immense my own valor might become, and how inde- pendent of the necessity for some prodigious cause or AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 2,6l principle, if, instead of these sedentary turnings of para- graphs, I could grow young again, and go through a course of horseback, felicity, and the Fives' Court. But mean- time, as a king of Naples once, climbing up a tree, told the courtiers who assisted him that he " found he had an antipathy to the buffalo ; " so I find my antipathy is to height. I could shudder now, this moment, to recollect, that when I was a youth I once walked to the edge of Shakespeare's Cliff (higher then than at present), and looked over ; though even then I was fain to stretch my- self along the ground, while the friend who was with me nobly kept his legs. I should have more respect for this infirmity, if I could persuade myself that it was unavoida- ble by the imaginative ; but Rousseau was famous for his love of these altitudes ; nor is the reverse courage to be attributed to a destitution of thought for others : for the late admirable writer and most kind human being, Charles Lamb, one of the most considerate of kinsmen, and highly imaginative also in his way, could run (as he once actually did) along the top of a high parapet wall in the Temple, so much to the terror of Hazlitt, that the latter cried out, in a sort of rage and cruel transport of sympathy, " Lamb, if you don't come down, I shall push you over." On the other hand, that I may not be supposed to be indulging myself in the lowest of all egotisms, that of parading a weakness, or the want of some common quality, I beg leave to say, that I trust I could do any sort of duty, if required of me, as well as most men, even to the walking on the edge of a precipice ; though I should beg leave to be permitted to do it with a pale face. I should want that sort of courage, which removes peril by feeling none ; and which, when it does not arise from having no thought at all (though the last instance forms a perplexing ex- 262 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. ception), seems to originate in some exquisite, healthy balancing of the faculties, bodily and mental ; a thing admirable, and which I envy to the last degree. I some- times fancy I have it, when I have been taking vigorous exercise ; but the emotion of a single morning's work over my writing-table puts it to flight. I attribute the change in myself (with regard to the power of enduring height), to a long illness I had, during which, happening to read of a similar infirmity, the impression it made upon me, when I again looked down from a high place, was tremendous j and I have never since been able to avoid thinking of it, on the like occasions. When I was in Italy, I tried to get rid of it by pedestrian experiments on mountainous places, upon Alps and Apennines ; but it would not do. I only mortified myself to no purpose. (I find I am get- ting egotistical, after all ; and must beg the reader to ex- cuse me. I would gladly hear as much about himself, or from any man.) Hail then, gallant Greens and Grahams ! and gallant Captain Currie ! and thou, Marquis of Clanricarde, worthy of thine ancestry ! It is not easy to know how far mind and matter are duly mixed up in any given aeronaut ; but the gallant Marquis, issuing from his house of legisla- tion, where he has speech as well as a voice, taketh me mightily ; and though captains are bound by office to be both gallant and gallant, it is not every one of them that would have the poetical enthusiasm to exclaim, when up in the clouds, " Oh, Mrs. Graham ! let us never retttrn to earth .' " We, envious fixtures to the ground, may smile at the exclamation ; but the critic who thought he was bantering it the other day in the newspapers, felt himself in his candor obliged to give up the laugh, and allow that the occasion justified the outbreak. I confess, I think the AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 263 Captain could not have said a better thing. On all occa- sions there is some one thing to be said which is better than all others ; and this appears to me to have been the very one for the present It combines the smile of pleasantry with the seriousness of a deep feeling. The clouds were looking gorgeous ; the scene was new and heavenly; the world, with all its cares, was under their feet ; the thought naturally arose, " Why cannot we quit all care, and live in some new and heavenly place, such as this seems to lead to ? Let us do it : let us " never return to earth." On turning to the narrative, I find the words to be still better put, with more of will in them, justified by the excess of beauty : " The range of clouds," Mrs. Graham tells us, were at this minute " forming an indescribable extensive circle around, in one part resembling the im- mense ocean, the darker clouds having the appearance of snow-clad mountains, the tops of which looked like frosted silver, from the effects of the glorious beams of the great luminary of the day." Captain Currie was so delighted with the grandeur of the scene, that in the moment of ecstasy, he suddenly exclaimed, " Oh ! how awfully beauti- ful how enchanting ! Oh, Mrs. Graham ! we will never return to the earth again ! " He had made up his mind. They had at this time " obtained an altitude of above three miles and a half, having surmounted the highest strata of clouds." What a place for two human beings to find themselves in, looking upon sights never beheld but by the sun and moon, and by eyes spiritual ! Who is to wonder at any enthusiasm excited by them ? It seems to me that if I had been there I should have felt as if I had no business in such a region till disembodied ; life and death would have seemed to meet together, and their 264 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. united wonders oppressed me beyond endurance. But there is no knowing. Imagination itself familiarizes us to spectacles of things which are too much for the mechan- ical. It is the body which is in fault when the mind is overborne in its own business. Again, I like Mrs. Gra- ham's committal of herself about Pope. The scene, she says, was one which, she is " convinced, would have given an energetic impetus to the ideas of the immortal Pope himself, to have given an adequate description." She betrays, to be sure, the extent of her reading ; and though Pope is an immortal, one is accustomed to confine the epithet to immortals greater than he ; but what could she do bet- ter than resort to the utmost limits of her book-knowledge, to show the height of her sensations ? Poetry itself may be glad of any compliment paid it, at an elevation of three miles and a half above terra firma ! It is not improbable that they who feel apprehensive at the idea of ascending in a balloon, would feel less so when fairly up in the air, especially at a great height. There is something in the air itself at those altitudes, which sup- ports and delights. I remember I used to have less of the feeling I have been speaking of, when standing on the greatest mountainous precipices, than on the top of a house. I have looked from a platform of the maritime Apennines, down upon the Gulf of Genoa, where the towns on the opposite coast appeared like toys in a shop- window, at a less distance from the edge of the mountain than I could have borne at a far less elevation. Extremes meet. Jt seemed so idle to contest a point, or to have a will not. in unison with so many thousand feet, that the counter idea itself mitigated the fascination of its terror. Besides, there is a tendency in the pure air to put the bodily feelings into a state of tranquillity. It seemed as if AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 265 the great, good-natured elements themselves would have supported me. " Ye gentle gales, upon my body blow, And softly lay me on the waves below." Perhaps they might really do so if one had a good cloak on, or some such expanding piece of drapery ! There was a marvellous paragraph the other day in the news- papers, stating that a young lady at Odessa had ascended in a balloon made of paper, which burst at a great height, and dismissed her to the earth, where she landed, never- theless, in safety ! The winds must have been conven- iently opposed to her, and her garments have formed an extempore parachute, after the fashion of the hoop-petticoat described in the " Spectator." But does it not seem a shame for men to have a thought of danger, while ladies can go up in paper balloons, or in any balloons at all ? One is forced, in self-defence, to conclude that these fair aerial voyagers cannot, at all events, superabound in imagina- tion. They would hardly irritate a perverse husband with an excess of the gentle. Not that they may not be very good-humored either, nor are they bound to be masculine in an ill sense. The truth is, they stand a chance of being either very pleasant or very unpleasant people pleasant, if their courage arises from good health, or confidence in science, and a willingness to go where their husbands go, and the reverse, in all conscience, if it be sheer want of fancy and abundance of will. I confess, if I were seeking a wife, that, on the face of the matter, I should not be de- sirous to fetch " E'en from the golden chariot of balloon, A fearless dame, who touch'd a golden fee ; " and yet circumstances might render even that circum- 266 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. stance a touching proof of her womanhood ; and I might fare worse, on the score of the truly feminine, with a screamer at a frog. Poets go up in the air without balloons, and arrive at sensations which others must ascend in actual cars to experience. The Psalmist takes " the wings of the morn- ing," (how beautiful ! ) and remains " in the uttermost parts of the sea." Goethe heard the sun rolling in thun- der round the throne of God, and young Milton anticipated the grandeurs of his epic poem, and saw the thunders themselves lying in cloudy piles and mountains of sullen snow. Milton, in his nineteenth year, seems to have meditated a poem on some aerial subject, like the " Ex- tasy," subsequently published by his contemporary Cow- ley, whom he is known to have highly admired in spite of his conceits. There is even a dash of Cowley's mixture of great and little things (the taste of the day) in the fol- lowing lines, which, however, are a true announcement of the future Milton : " I have some naked thoughts that rove about, And loudly knock to have their passage out ; And, weary of their place, do only stay Till thou hast deck'd them in thy best array ; That so they may, without suspect of fears, Fly swiftly to this fair assembly's ears. Yet I had rather, if I were to choose, Thy service in some graver subject use ; Such as may make thee search thy coffers round, Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound ; Such where the deep transported mind may soar Above the "wheeling poles t and at heaven's door Look i," (How well pitched is the pause here !) " and see each blissful deity, How he before the thunderous throne does lie, AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 267 Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings To the touch of golden wires, while Hebe brings Immortal nectar to her kingly sire ; Then passing through the spheres of watchful fire, And misty regions of wide air next under, And hills of snow, and lofts of piled thunder, May tell at length how green-eyed Neptune raves, In heaven's defiance mustering all his waves." Cowley's " Extasy " is a very curious poem, provoking for its excessive mixture of mean and grand ideas. Had Cowley and Milton, instead of being kept apart by differ- ence of political opinion, had the luck to become friends, they might have done one another great service. Milton might have saved Cowley's taste from the homely draw- backs to which good nature rendered it liable, and the highly rational amiableness of Cowley's heart might have softened the sternness of Milton, and saved it from de- generating into puritanical sourness. The opening of this poem might serve for an aeronaut when quitting the ground ; but how ludicrous is the misplaced waiving of ceremony in the second line, especially after the mighty universality of the first ! " I leave mortality and things below ; / have no time in compliments to waste ; Farewell to ye all in haste, For I am call'd to go. A whirlwind bears up my dull feet, Th' officious clouds beneath them meet ; And lo ! I mount, and lo ! How small the biggest parts of earth's proud title show I " Where shall I find the noble British land ? Lo I I at last a northern speckespy, Which in the sea does lie, And seems a grain o' the sand I For this will any sin or bleed ? Of civil wars is this the meed ? And is it this, alas I which we " 268 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. (Here comes a fine line), " Oh, irony of words ! do call Great Britannic?" He then seems to be imitating the lines of his contempo- rary, but in a very inferior strain. The third and fourth lines are in laughably bad taste : " I pass by th' arched magazines which hold Th' eternal stores of frost, and rain, and snow ; Dry and secure I go, Nor shake with fear or cold. Without affright or wonder, I meet clouds charg'd with thunder ; And lightnings on my way, Like harmless lambent fires, about my temples play." I pass two stanzas to come to a most noble line " Where ant I now ? ANGELS AND GOD is HERE." I know nothing finer than the use of this word is instead of are, making the idea of the presence of God swallow up that of the angels, and yet leaving a sense of them too. It is a feeling of this sort, which appears to me as if it would be overwhelming, up in that unaccustomed region of silence and vastness. This transport, in spite of some quaintness of expression, is not unworthily followed up in the succeeding lines, though in the concluding one the poet falls plump down into familiar inanity " Where am I now? Angels and God is here ; An unexhausted ocean of delight Swallows my senses quite, And drowns all what, or how, or where. Not Paul, who first did thither pass, And this great world's Columbus was, The tyrannous pleasure can express." That's fine ; but look at the next ! " O I 'tis too much for man ! but let ii ne^er be less ! I " AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 269 The next stanza is worth repeating, if only for the excess- ive comedy of the concluding verse : " The mighty Elijah mounted so on high, That second man who leap'd the ditch where all The rest of mankind fall, And went not downwards to the sky. With much of pomp and show (As conqu'ring kings in triumph go) Did he to heaven approach ; A nd -watufrous was his way, and wond'rous was his COACH I ! " The word "coach," it must be confessed, was not in quite such undignified repute then, as now ; but still the poet had no business with it. He proceeds, however, to make good his words, by a refinement on Ovid's description of Phaeton's : " 'Twas gaudy all, and rich in every part : Of essences, and gems, and spirit of gold," &c. There is something not so bad in "spirit of gold ; " but he goes on to tell us how it was not only with " moon- beams silver'd bright," but " Double-gilt with the sun's light ! " Enough, however, of the vagaries of dear, noble-hearted, genial Cowley, who was among the Tories what Thomson was among the Whigs one of the best specimens of hearty British nature, and only liable to want of selectness in his taste, because he had a love for every thing. My volume of Shelley happens to be lent at this moment, otherwise I could quote some fine things out of his ethereal pages ; nor am I lucky enough to have by me that of Mr. Southey, in which he gives us his beautiful fiction of the Glendoveer with his heavenly boat. Poetry and matter-of-fact meet oftener than is supposed. The first hints of aerostation may be truly said to be lost 270 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. in the clouds of antiquity ; but real and fabulous things of all kinds are naturally so confounded in those obscure periods of time, that it is not improbable there was some foundation in fact for the stories of Abaris, Daedalus, and others, beyond even the supposed solution of the difficul- ty by means of a ship. Sciences have been lost and re- covered. The Chinese had been in possession, for many centuries, of inventions supposed to be original to Europe. Should there have been no art of printing, the fact of the Channel's having been crossed by men in balloons, and of the fate of poor Pilatre de Rozier, might, in the course of time, become stories of no greater credibility than that of Daedalus and his son. Immortal poetry, at all events, keeps the tradition alive in some shape or other, not omitting those verisimilitudes which enable all stories, real or fabulous, to be true to the -human heart. With what pretty pathos does Ovid describe little Icarus enjoying his father's manufacture of the wings, unconscious of the death they were to give him ! " Puer Icarus una Stabat ; et ignarus sua se tractare pericla, Ore renidenti, modo quas vaga moverat aura Captabat plumas ; flavam modo pollice ceram Mollibat ; lusuque suo mirabile patris Impediebat opus." METAM. lib. viii. " Young Icarus stood by, who little thought That with his death he play'd ; and, smiling, caught The feathers, tossed by the wandering air ; Now chafes the yellow wax with busy care, And interrupts his sire." SANDYS. " But for men to flye is impossible " (says this fine old translator in his notes, where he thinks to make up foi his natural credulity by an occasional peremptory standing out for some matter of fact) ; " although," continues he, AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 271 " I am not ignorant that the like is reported of Simon Magus ; which others, by the breaking of their necks, have as miserably, as foolishly, attempted. Nero exhibited this spectacle to the Romanes in their amphitheater ; the poor youth fell not far from his throne, whose blood, to upbraid his cruell pastime, besprinkled his garments." Contemporary with Sandys, however, arose a learned di- vine, Bishop Wilkins, who was of opinion that men might not only fly, but fly to the moon. After contending for points which are now admitted (such as that the moon is a separate planet, has probably sea and land, &c.), and the supposed absurdity of which at former periods helps to give his remaining propositions a less air of the ridic- ulous, he gives the three following answers to the objec- tion as to ascending above the sphere of the earth's attraction : " i. It is not perhaps impossible, that a man may be able to flye by the application of wings to his owne body ; as angels are pictured, and as Mercury and Daedalus are fained, and as hath been attempted by divers, particularly by a Turk in Constantinople, as Busbequius relates. 2. If there be such a great Rock in Madagascar, as Marcus Polus the Venetian mentions, the feathers in whose wings are twelve foot long, which can swoope up a horse and his rider, or an elephant, as our kites doe a mouse ; why, then, it is but teaching one of these to carry a man, and he may ride up thither, as Ganymed does upon an eagle. 3. Or if neither of these ways will serve, yet I doe seriously, and upon good grounds, affirm it pos- sible to make a flying chariot ; in which a man may sit, and give such a motion into it, as shall convey him through the aire. And this perhaps might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food 272 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. for their viaticum, and commodities for traffique. It is not the bignesse of any thing in this kind, that can hinder its motion, if the motive faculty be answerable thereunto. We see a great ship swim as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the aire as well as a little gnat. This engine may be contrived from the same principles by which Archytas made a wooden dove, and Regiomontanus a wooden eagle. I conceive it were no difficult matter if a man had leisure, to show more particularly the meanes of composing it. The perfecting of such an invention would be of such excellent use, that it were enough, not only to make a man, but the age also wherein he lives. For besides the strange discoveries that it might occasion in this other world, it would be also of inconceivable ad- vantage for travelling, above any other conveiance that is now in use. So that, notwithstanding all these seeming impossibilities, 'tis likely enough, that there may be a meanes invented of journeying to the moone. And how happy shall they be, that are first successful in this attempt ? ' ' Fcelicesque animae, quas nubila supra Et turpes fumos, pleoumque vaporibus orbem Inserit Ccelo sancti scintilla Promethei ! ' " Having thus finished this discourse, I chanced upon a late fancy to this purpose, under the feigned name of Domingo Gonzales, written by a late reverend and learned Bishop (Godwin) ; in which (besides sundry particulars, wherein this latter chapter did unwittingly agree with it) there is delivered a very pleasant and well-contrived fancy concerning a voyage to this other world." * * " Biographical Dictionary," art. Wilkins. [Addison, in the following letter from a projector, quietly satirizes Wilkins and his brother philosophers in the art of flying : AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 273 The bishop, however, has here overlooked the still more formidable objection as to the power of breathing at so great an altitude. He seems to have forgotten that a man above a certain limit of the atmosphere is like a fish out of water. I have not his book at hand to see whether he notices this dilemma ; though, doubtless, he would get " Knowing that you are a great encourager of ingenuity, I think fit to acquaint you that I have made considerable progress in the art of flying. I flutter about my room two or three hours in a morning : and when my wings are on, can go above a hundred yards at a hop, step, and jump. I can fly al- ready as well as a Turkey-cock, and improve every day. If I proceed as I have begun, I intend to give the world a proof of my proficiency in this art. Upon the next public thanksgiving day, it is my design to sit astride the dragon upon Bow steeple, from whence, after the first discharge of the Tower guns, I intend to mount into the air, fly over Fleet-street, and pitch upon the Maypole in the Strand. From thence, by a gradual descent, I shall make the best of my way for St. James's Park, and light upon the ground near Rosamond's pond. This, I doubt not, will convince the world that I am no pretender ; but before I set out, I shall desire to have a patent for making of wings, and that none shall presume to fly, under pain of death, with wings of any other man's making. I intend to work for the court myself, and will have journeymen under me to furnish the rest of the nation. I likewise desire that I may have the sole teaching of persons of quality, in which I shall spare neither time nor pains, till I have made them as expert as myself. I will fly with the women on my back for the first fortnight. I shall appear at the masquerade, dressed up in my feathers and plumage like an Indian prince, that the quality may see how pretty they will look in their travelling habits. You know, Sir, there is an unaccountable prejudice against projectors of all kinds; for which reason, when I talk of practising to fly, silly people think me an owl for my pains ; but, Sir, you know better things. I need not enumerate to you the benefits which will accrue to the public from this invention ; as how much the roads of England will be saved when we travel through these new highways, and how all family accounts will be lessened in the article of coaches and horses. I need not mention posts and packet-boats, with many other conveniences of life, which will be supplied this way. In short, Sir, when mankind are in posses- sion of this art, they will be able to do more business in three-score and ten years, than they could do in a thousand by the methods now in use. I there- fore recommend myself and art to your patronage, and am "Your most humble servant." ED.] 18 274 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. over it with his usual vivacity. It is not a little that can stop a man who has taken his first step towards the moon. And yet the banter of the most confident of us may be balked by observing that, two years after the publication of this book, he sent forth another, " tending to prove that it is probable our earth is one of the planets." The man is laughed at now who ventures to think such an established tenet improbable. The " flying chariot " has been realized since Wilkins's time, in the car of the bal- loon ; but the only persons that have succeeded in getting to the moon are Cyrano de Bergerac, Domingo Gonzales, and Ariosto's hero, Astolfo. The first undoubted succeeders in raising a man into the air, and enabling him to continue there, were the brothers Stephen and Joseph de Montgolfier, paper- makers at Lyons : the first person who so rose, but in a balloon secured to the earth by ropes, was M. Pilatre de Rozier ; and the first persons who quitted the earth entirely were the same De Rozier and the Marquis d'Ar- landes. They went up together. The following is the interesting proces verbal, giving an account of this ascent, and signed, among others, by the illustrious Franklin, who was then commissioner in France, from the new American government : "To-day, Nov. 21, 1783, at the Chateau de la Muette, took place the experiment with the aerostatic machine of M. de Montgolfier. The sky was partly clouded, wind N. W. At eight minutes after noon, a mortar gave notice that the machine was about to be filled. In eight minutes, notwithstanding the wind, it was ready to set off, the Marquis d'Arlandes and M. Pilatre de Rozier being in the car. It was at first intended to retain the machine awhile with ropes, to judge what weight it would bear, and see that AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 275 all was right. But the wind prevented it from rising verti- cally, and directed it towards one of the garden walks : the ropes made several rents in it, one of six feet long. It was brought down again, and in two hours was set right. Having been filled again, it set off at fifty-four minutes past one, carrying the same persons. It rose in the most majestic manner, and when it was about two hundred and seventy feet high, the intrepid voyagers took off their hats and saluted the spectators. No one could help feeling a mingled sentiment of fear and admiration. The voyagers were soon undistinguishable ; but the machine, hovering upon the horizon, and displaying the most beautiful figure, rose at least three thousand feet high, and remained visi- ble all the time. It crossed the Seine below the barrier of La Conference ; and passing thence between the Ecole Militaire and the H6tel des Invalides, was in view of all Paris. The voyagers, satisfied with their experiment, and not wishing to travel farther, agreed to descend ; but seeing that the wind was carrying them upon the houses of the Rue de Seve, Faubourg St. Germain, they preserved their presence of mind, increased the fire, and continued their course through the air till they had crossed Paris. They then descended quietly on the plain, beyond the new boulevard, opposite the mill of Croulebarbe, without having felt the slightest inconvenience, and having in the car two-thirds of their fuel. They could then, if they had wished, have gone three times as far as they did go, which was 5000 toises, done in from twenty to twenty-five minutes. The machine was seventy feet high ; forty-six feet in diameter ; it contained 60,000 cubic feet, and carried a weight of from 1600 to 1700 pounds. Given at the Chateau of La Muette, at five in the afternoon. Signed, Due de Polignac, Due de Guisnes, Comte de Polastron, 276 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. Comte de Vaudreuil, D'Hunaud, Benjamin Franklin, Fau- jas de St. Fond, de Lisle, le Roy, of the Academy of Sci- ences." This proces verbal is taken from an excellent summary on the balloon, in the " Penny Cyclopaedia," where it is followed by the ensuing extract from a letter of the Mar- quis d'Arlandes, who, after stating that he had obtained permission from M. Montgolfier to ascend alone, but that, by the advice of the latter, M. de Rozier was associated with him the evening before the ascent, proceeds thus : " We set off at 54 minutes past one. The balloon was so placed that M. de Rozier was on the West, and I on the East. The machine, says the public, rose with roajesty. I think few of them saw that, at the moment when it passed the hedge, it made a half turn, and we changed our posi- tions, which, thus altered, we retained to the end. I was astonished at the smallness of the noise or motion occa- sioned by our departure among the spectators. I thought they might be astonished and frightened, and might stand in need of encouragement " (a beautiful trait of coolness from the man in the balloon to those on terra firmd). " I waved my arm with little success ; I then drew out and shook my handkerchief, and immediately perceived a great movement in the garden. It seemed as if the spectators all formed one mass, which rushed by an involuntary motion towards the wall, which it seemed to consider as the only obstacle between us. At this moment M. de Ro- zier called out, ' You are doing nothing, and we do not rise.' I begged his pardon, took some straw, moved the fire, and turned again quickly ; but I could not find La Muette. In astonishment, I followed the river with my eye, and at last found where the Oise joined it. Here then, was Conflans ; nearest to them, I repeated, Poissy, AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 277 St. Germain, St. Denis, Seve, then I am still at Poissy, or at Chaillot. Accordingly, looking down through the car, I saw the Visitation de Chaillot. M. Pilatre said to me at this moment, ' Here is the river, and we are descend- ing.' ' Well, my friend,' said I, ' more fire ; ' and we set to work. But, instead of crossing the river, as our course towards the Invalides seemed to indicate, we went along the He des Cygnes, entered the principal bed again, and went up the stream till we were above the Barriere la Con- ference. I said to my brave associate, ' Here is a river, which is very difficult to cross.' ' I think so,' said he ; 'you are doing nothing.' ' I am not so strong as you,' I answered ; ' and we are well as we are.' I stirred the fire, and seized a bundle of straw, which, being too much pressed, did not light well. I shook it over the flame, and the instant after I felt as if I had been seized under the arms, and I said to my friend, ' We are rising now, however.' 'Yes, we are rising,' he answered, coming from the interior, where he had been seeing all was right. At this moment I heard a noise high up in the balloon, which made me fear it had burst. I looked up, and saw nothing ; but, as I had my eyes fixed on the machine, I felt a shock, the first I had experienced. The shock was upwards, and I cried out, 'What are you doing, are you danc- ing ? ' 'I am not stirring.' ' So much the better,' I said ; ' this must be a new current, which will, I hope, take us off the river.' Accordingly, I turned to see where we were, and found myself between the Ecole Militaire and the In- valides, which we had passed by about 400 toises. M. Pilatre said, 'We are in the plain.' 'Yes,' I said, 'we are getting on.' ' Let us set to work,' he replied. I heard a noise in the machine, which I thought came from the breaking of a cord. I looked in and saw that the 278 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. southern part was full of round holes, several of them large. I said, ' We must get down.' ' Why ? ' ' Look,' said I. At the same time, I took my sponge (pyrotechnical term), and easily extinguished the fire, which was enlarging such of the holes as I could reach ; but on trying if the balloon was fast to the lower circle, I found it easily came off. I repeated to my companion, ' We must descend.' He looked round him, and said, ' We are over Paris.' Having looked to the safety of the cords, I said, ' We can cross Paris.' We were now coming near the roofs : we raised the fire, and rose again with great ease. I looked under me and saw the Missions Etrangeres, and it seemed as if we were going towards the towers of St. Sulpice, which I could see. Raising ourselves, a current turned us south. I saw on my left a wood, which I thought was the Luxembourg. We passed the Boulevard ; and I called out, ' Pied a terre.' We stopped the fire, but the brave Pilatre, who did not lose his self-possession, thought we were coming upon mills and warned me. . . . We alighted at the Butte aux Cailles, between the mill Des Merveilles and the Moulin Vieux. The moment we touched land, I held by the car with my two hands : I felt the balloon press my head lightly. I pushed it off, and leaped out. Turning tow- ards the balloon, which I expected to find full, to my great astonishment, it was perfectly empty and flattened." The second balloon voyage was that of Messrs. Charles and Robert, at sunset, from the Tuileries, Dec. i, 1783. M. Charles reascended immediately afterwards, alone, to the height of nearly two miles, and saw the sun rise again. " I was the only illuminated object," he says ; "all the rest of nature being plunged in shadow." M. de Rozier ascended for the third time, in the third voyage, in company with Joseph Montgolfier, and six AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 279 other persons. The balloon was " intended for six only, and these were found too many, but no one could be in- duced to give up his place. The instant after the ropes had been cut, a seventh person jumped in. A rent in the balloon caused it to descend with great velocity, but no one was hurt." February 22, 1784, a small balloon, launched by itself, from Sandwich, crossed the channel. March 2, 1784, M. Blanchard made his first ascent from Paris, carrying a parachute in case of need. April 25, 1784, Messrs, de Morveau and Bertrand as- cended 13,000 English feet, at Dijon, and thought they found some effect produced by the use of oars. May 20, 1784, ladies first went up, four of them with two gentlemen, but in a balloon secured by ropes. Ma- dame Thible, however, ascended on the 4th of June, with one other person in a free balloon. September 15, 1784, the first voyage in England was made by Vincenzo Lunardi, who took with him a dog, a cat, and a pigeon. He rose from the artillery-ground, and landed at Standon, near Ware, in Hertfordshire. January 7, 1785, M. Blanchard and Dr. Jeffries crossed the channel. June 15, 1785, M. Pilatre cle Rozier, and M. Romain ascended from Boulogne, with the intention of crossing the channel, when the balloon took fire, and the gal- lant De Rozier, the first aeronaut, together with his unfor- tunate companion, fell from a height of a thousand yards, and was killed on the spot. July 22, General Money ascended at Norwich, and the balloon dropped in the water, where the voyager remained six hours before he was rescued. In 1807, M. Garnerin ascended from Paris, and landed at, or rather " was dashed against Mount Tonnerre, 300 miles from that place, after running very great risks." 280 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. September 21, 1802, M. Garnerin descended from a bal- loon by means of a parachute, near the Small-pox Hospi- tal, at St. Pancras. I remember seeing him, frightfully swung about at first, but afterwards coming down steadily, to the great relief of an enormous multitude, whose sudden gathering together in the fields almost astonished me as much as the parachute. Several ascents have been made for the purpose of scien- tific experiments ; among others, one by M. Gay Lussac, at Paris, to the height of 23,000 feet. "In 1806, Carlo Brioschi, astronomer-royal at Naples, ascended with Signer Andreani, who had been the first Italian aeronaut. Trying to rise higher than M. Gay Lus- sac, they got into an atmosphere so rarefied as to burst the balloon. Its remnants checked the velocity of their de- scent ; and this, with their falling on an open space, saved their lives ; but Brioschi contracted a complaint, which brought him to his grave." Since this period many ascents have been made both in France and England, by a variety of aeronauts, one of whom, in the latter country, generally keeps possession of the public curiosity for a certain time, and makes the bal- loon a sort of profession. It is said in the publication above quoted, that the balloon is now a " toy in which as- cents are sometimes made to amuse a crowd," and that what " was honorable risk, so long as any thing could be gained to science, is now mere foolhardiness, and will con- tinue to be so until some definite object be proposed, and some probable means suggested of attaining it." But this is surely too harsh a judgment. Amusement is worth something for its own sake, and courage too ; and by fa- miliarity with the machine, gradual improvements in its construction must be acquired, and its safety made greater, AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 281 for greater purposes. It is a long time since any catastro- phe has happened to a balloon made of the ordinary ma- terials. The greatest fault to be found with aerial voyagers is the dulness of the narratives which they put forth. One would expect from their strange experiences more lively and copious accounts ; but whether it is that they are not gifted with too much observation themselves, or have less to observe than might be supposed, whether they are not imaginative or well informed enough, or the air is for the most part as barren of sights as the ocean, nothing can be more barren or brief than their narratives in gen- eral. All which the traveller tells us is, that he rose to a certain height, and went to a certain distance ; that the spectacle around him was very imposing, or grand, or magnificent ; that he saw Kensington Gardens distinctly, or the old London docks ; that the trees looked like hedges ; and that he alighted safely at such and such a place, where he was treated with great hospitality by Mr. Jenkins ; after which, he and his balloon returned to town the same evening by a post-chaise. Truth is certainly not " more wondrous than fiction " here. Ariosto's hippogriif and Mr. Southey's aerial boat are abundantly more enter- taining. In the first navigations of this kind, allowance is to be made for the fluttered feelings of the voyagers, which, indeed, are a zest of themselves. And perhaps the same allowance is to be made now, especially as there is still a tendency in the parties to compliment one another upon their courage. The thing to be desired, however (besides going up in more picturesque and varied countries mountainous, in particular), is, that they would tell us all they feel or see, giving us the minutest details, scenery, 282 AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. sensation, experiment, disappointment, every thing. It is hard if the results would not be more interesting than at present. Why does not Lord Clanricarde favor us with an account ? Or Captain Currie ? It would be curious to see the characters of the different minds, and of the im- pressions made upon them. By and by, people would be going up to record their experiences ; and being on the watch for observation, new appearances would be noticed. How should you feel, reader, up in the sky ? What should you say or do ? Do you think you should be inclined to be merry or grave ? or timid or bold ? or neither ? Should you think most of the third heaven, or of Pic- cadilly ? Horace is of opinion that the man who first went to sea must have had a heart triple-hooped with brass. What would he have said to the first aeronaut ? He has antici- pated without knowing it, in the same ode : Ccelum ipsum petimus stultitia. Our folly strives to reach the heav'ns themselves. It is thought a fearful thing at sea to have only a plank between you and death ; but you have a comparatively kindly element to fall into, something more substantial, and which gives you a chance. You can struggle with it, swim, cry out, get upon a piece of wood or a hen-coop. Being a swimmer myself, I never feel as if I should be lost in water, as long as I had only myself to attend to. But think of a plank's being between you and a distance of three miles and a half, all sheer emptiness ! Down you go, precipitate, chucked out ; a dreg at once tragical and ridiculous ; a fluttering bit of humanity, no securer than a lump of lead, no stronger than a feather. To be sure, there are instances of being saved ; but who could think of them at the moment of ejaculation ? AERONAUTICS, REAL AND FABULOUS. 283 Should a time, however, arrive when balloons shall be equally safe and guidable, steerable against the wind, &c., (and who, in this age of science and steam-engines, shall say there will not ?) it is very pleasant to fancy one's self keeping one's balloon, like a carriage, ordering it hither and thither, visiting one's friends over the house-tops, and " looking in," not at the street door, but at the drawing- room window, &c. The poet wishes that he could fly ; so that when pleasure flagged in the East, he might " Order his wings, and be off to the West." This undoubtedly would be pleasanter ; more convenient, and not so expensive. But he might have both ; and wings, compared with a balloon, would be like horse-keep- ing, compared with a carnage. Beaux, instead of cantering beside barouches, would then flutter three miles high by the side of a car ; and a hero in a novel would gloriously catch his mistress in his arms, if her balloon burst, and convey her safely to earth, as Mercury did Psyche. People would then be accused, not of running, but of flying after the girls ; and we should see an air-lounger fifty feet above Regent Street, pursuing some maid-servant, or pretty mil- liner, in and out the chimneys.* * " I have fully considered the project of these our modern Daedalists," says Addison, in the " Guardian," " and am resolved so far to discourage it, as to pre- vent any person from flying in my time. It would fill the world with innumer- able immoralities, and give such occasions for intrigues, as people cannot meet with who have nothing but legs to carry them. You should have a couple of lovers making a midnight assignation upon the top of the monument, and see the cupola of St. Paul's covered with both sexes, like the outside of a pigeon- house. Nothing would be more frequent than to see a beau flying in at a garret window, or a gallant giving chase to his mistress, like a hawk after a lark. There would be no walking in a shady wood without springing a covey of toasts. The poor husband could not dream what was doing over his head : if he were jealous, indeed, he might clip his wife's wings; . . . what con- 284 ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. But war ! What a horrible thing to be shot in a bal- loon ! To " fall gloriously " that way, in battle ! " There was mounting 'mong Graemes of the Netherby clan ; Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they 'roseS and they ran." Think of two armies, or navies rather, meeting over Salis- bury Plain, and commencing their broadsides ! What a tumbling forth of bodies and cocked hats ; of mid-balloon- men, and admirals of the sky-blue ! " Sky-scraper " would then indeed be a proper term for the top of a vessel ; and " Pegasus," and " Bellerophon," names to some purpose. But war must go out, as nations advance, whether they arrive at these altitudes or not. Peaceful railroads will supersede hostile inroads (as old Fuller would have said) : nations will no more go to war, when they become such close neighbors and their interests are so bound up to- gether, than Middlesex will fight with Surrey, or trades- men with their employers. V ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. HERE is no greater mistake in the world than the looking upon every sort of nonsense as want of sense. Nonsense, in the bad sense of the word, like certain suspicious ladies, is very fond of bestowing its own appellation, particularly upon what renders other persons agreeable. cern would the father of a family be in all the time his daughter was upon the wing? Every heiress must have an old woman flying at her heels, In short, the whole air would be full of this kind of gibier, as the French call it." ED. ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. 285 But nonsense, in the good sense of the word, is a very sensible thing in its season ; and is only confounded with the other by people of a shallow gravity, who cannot afford to joke. These gentlemen live upon credit, and would not have it inquired into. They are perpetual beggars of the ques- tion. They are grave, not because they think, or feel the contrast of mirth, for then they would feel the mirth itself; but because gravity is their safest mode of behavior. They must keep their minds sitting still, because they are incapable of a motion that is not awkward. They are waxen images among the living, the deception is undone, if the others stir, or hollow vessels covered up, which may be taken for full ones, the collision of wit jars against them, and strikes out their hollowness. In fact, the difference between nonsense not worth talk- ing, and nonsense worth it, is simply this : the former is the result of a want of ideas, the latter of a superabun- dance of them. This is remarkably exemplified by Swift's " Polite Conversation," in which the dialogue, though intend- ed to be a tissue of the greatest nonsense in request with shallow merriment, is in reality full of ideas, and many of them very humorous ; but then they are all common- place, and have been said so often, that the thing upper- most in your mind is the inability of the speakers to utter a sentence of their own ; they have no ideas at all. Many of the jokes and similes in that treatise are still the current coin of the shallow ; though they are now pretty much confined to gossips of an inferior order, and the upper part of the lower classes. On the other hand, the wildest rattling, as it is called, in which men of sense find entertainment, consists of nothing but a quick and original succession of ideas, a 286 ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. finding, as it were, of something in nothing, a rapid turning of the hearer's mind to some new face of thought and sparkling imagery. The man of shallow gravity, be- sides an uneasy half-consciousness that he has nothing of the sort about him, is too dull of perception to see the delicate links between one thought and another ; and he takes that for a mere chaos of laughing jargon, in which finer apprehensions perceive as much delightful associa- tion, as men of musical taste do in the most tricksome harmonies and accompaniments of Mozart or Beethoven. Between such gravity and such mirth, there is as much difference as between the driest and dreariest psalmody, and that exquisite laughing trio, E voi ridete, which is sung in Cosi Fan Tutte. A quaker's coat and a garden are not more dissimilar ; nor a death-bell, and the birds after a sunny shower. It is on such occasions indeed that we enjoy the perfec- tion of what is agreeable in humanity, the harmony of mind and body, intellect and animal spirits. Accord- ingly the greatest geniuses appear to have been proficients in this kind of nonsense, and to have delighted in dwelling upon it, and attributing it to their favorites. Virgil is no joker, but Homer is : and there is the same difference be- tween their heroes, ^Eneas and Achilles, the latter of whom is also a player on the harp. Venus, the most delightful of the goddesses, is philomeides, the laughter- loving ; an epithet, by the bye, which might give a good hint to a number of very respectable ladies, " who love their lords," but who are too apt to let ladies less respect- able run away with them. Horace represents Pleasantry as fluttering about Venus in company with Cupid, Quern Jocus circumvolat, et Cupido ; and these are followed by Youth, the enjoyer of animal ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. 287 spirits, and by Mercury, the god of persuasion. There is the same difference between Tasso and Ariosto as between Virgil and Homer ; that is to say, the latter proves his greater genius by a completer and more various hold on the feelings, and has not only a fresher spirit of Nature about him, but a truer, because a happier ; for the want of this enjoyment is at once a defect and a deterioration. It is more or less a disease of the blood ; a falling off from the pure and uncontradicted blithesomeness of child- hood ; a hampering of the mind with the altered nerves ; dust gathered in the watch, and perplexing our passing hours. It may be thought a begging of the question to mention Anacreon, since he made an absolute business of mirth and enjoyment, and sat down systematically to laugh as well as to drink. But on that very account, perhaps, his case is still more in point ; and Plato, one of the gravest, but not the shallowest, of philosophers, gave him the title of the Wise. The disciple of Socrates appears also to have been a great enjoyer of Aristophanes ; and the divine Socrates himself was a wit and a joker. But the divine Shakespeare ; the man to whom we go for every thing, and are sure to find it, grave, melancholy, or merry, what said he to this exquisite kind of non- sense ? Perhaps next to his passion for detecting nature, and over-informing it with poetry, he took delight in pur- suing a joke ; and the lowest scenes of his in this way say more to men whose faculties are fresh about them, and who prefer enjoyment to criticism, than the most doting of commentators can find out. They are instances of his animal spirits, of his sociality, of his passion for giving and receiving pleasure, of his enjoyment of something wiser than wisdom. 288 ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. The greatest favorites of Shakespeare are made to resemble himself in this particular : Hamlet, Mercutio, Touchstone, Jaques, Richard the Third, and Falstaff, "in- imitable Falstaff," are all men of wit and humor, modified according to their different temperaments or circumstan- ces, some from health and spirits, others from sociality, others from a contrast with their very melancholy. Indeed melancholy itself with the profoundest intellects, will rarely be found to be any thing else than a sickly temperament, induced or otherwise, preying in its turn upon the disap- pointed expectation of pleasure, upon the contradiction of hopes, which this world is not made to realize, though (let us never forget) it is made, as they themselves prove, to suggest. Some of Shakespeare's characters, as Mer- cutio and Benedick, are almost entirely made up of wit and animal spirits ; and delightful fellows they are ; and ready, from their very taste, to perform the most serious and manly offices. Most of his women, too, have an abun- dance of natural vivacity. Desdemona herself is so pleasant of intercourse in every way, that upon the prin- ciple of the respectable mistakes above mentioned, the Moor, when he grows jealous, is tempted to think it a proof of her want of honesty. But we must make Shake- speare speak for himself, or we shall not know how to be silent on this subject. What a description is that which he gives of a man of mirth, of a mirth too, which he has expressly stated to be within the limit of what is be- coming ! It is in Love's Labor Lost. " A merrier man, Within the limit of becoming mirth, I never spent an hour's talk withal. His eye begets occasion for his wit ; For every object that the one doth catch, The other turns to a mirth-moving jest ; ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. 289 Which his fair tongue, conceit's expositor, Delivers in such apt and gracious words, That aged ears play truant at his tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished ; So sweet and voluble is his discourse." We have been led into these reflections, partly to intro- duce the conclusion of this article, partly from being very fond of a joke ourselves, and so making our self-love as proud as possible, and partly from having spent some most agreeable hours the other evening with a company, the members of which had all the right to be grave and disagreeable that rank and talent are supposed to confer, and yet from the very best sense or forgetfulness of both, were as lively and entertaining to each other as boys. Not one of them perhaps but had his cares, one or two, of no ordinary description ; but what then ? These are the moments, if we can take advantage of them, when sorrows are shared, even unconsciously ; moments, when melancholy intermits her fever, and hope takes a leap into enjoyment ; when the pilgrim of life, if he cannot lay aside his burden, forgets it in meeting his fellows about a fountain ; and soothes his weariness and his resolution with the sparkling sight, and the noise of the freshness. To come to our anticlimax, for such we are afraid it must be called after all this grave sentiment and mention of authorities. The following dialogue is the substance of a joke (never meant for its present place) that was started the other day upon a late publication. The name of the book it is not necessary to mention, especially as it was pronounced to be one of the driest that had appeared for years. We cannot answer for the sentences being put to their proper speakers. The friends, whom we value most, happen to be great hunters in this way; and the reader may look upon the thing as a specimen of a joke 2pO ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. run down, or of the sort of nonsense above mentioned ; so that he will take due care how he professes not to relish it. We must also advertise him, that a proper quantity of giggling and laughter must be supposed to be interspersed, till towards the end it gradually becomes too great to go on with. A. Did you ever see such a book ? B. Never, in all my life. It's as dry as a chip. A. As a chip ? A chip's a slice of orange to it. B. Ay, or a wet sponge. A, Or a cup in a currant tart. B. Ah, ha ; so it is. You feel as if you were fingering a brick-bat. A. It makes you feel dust in the eyes. B. It is impossible to shed a tear over it. The lachry- mal organs are dried up. A. If you shut it hastily, it is like clapping together a pair of fresh-cleaned gloves. B. Before you have got far in it, you get up to look at your tongue in a glass. A. It absolutely makes you thirsty. B. Yes : If you take it up at breakfast, you drink four cups instead of two. A. At page 30 you call for beer. B. They say it made a Reviewer take to drinking. A. They have it lying on the table at inns to make you drink double. The landlord says "A new book, Sir," and goes out to order two neguses. B. It dries up every thing so, it has ruined the draining business. A. There is an Act of Parliament to forbid people's passing a vintner's with 'it in their pockets. ON THE TALKING OF NONSENSE. 2pl B. The Dutch subscribed for it to serve them instead of dykes.* * A witty correspondent of Leigh Hunt probably Charles Lamb thus " pampers " into pleasant " exaggeration " the joke about the " dry book: " What ? and do you really mean to say that this is " a specimen of a joke run down?" For "run down," read "wound up." There are limits to human wisdom, but none to folly. Hercules might come to a stand-still, bnt our merry friend with the bauble was never heard to exclaim ne plus ultra. After reading your pleasant article in our coterie the other evening, we took down " the book " you allude to (it gets into most libraries of any size), and it quickly inspired us with the following dry jokes : A. Et certamen erat, Corydon cum Thyrside, magnum, Posthabui seria ludo. Allons. I know an infant who, on merely seeing it, was cured of water in the head. B. A dropsical gentleman, given over by his physicians, was never tapped again after he had read it. A . Carry a copy under your arm, and you need no umbrella. B. A number were sent over to Ireland, just at the time they had almost abandoned the idea of reclaiming bogs. C. A friend of mine on the coast has recovered ninety acres of land from the sea, by possessing a copy. He calls it his Copyhold land. A . Southey tells me, that Kehama had one in his pocket when he walked into the ocean, and it divided. B. When I travel, I always take it to read in bed ; and though I never use a warming pan, I never had the rheumatism in my life. A . It must be a very ancient work, for we owe to it the origin of the terms "dry study," "dry reading," &c. C. It is not generally known, but the conjurer, rubs himself with it, before he dips his arm in boiling water. B. Some one swearing, kissed it in jest, which brought on the complaint of parched lips. Feeling this, he threw it down, and trampling on it, was laid up with chilblains. C. It is an excellent substitute in bathing for an oil-skin cap. A . It is said to be very superior in efficacy to a deviled biscuit. D. It is found in most libraries, which occasions such an accumulation of dust in those places. B. A nurse, who took it up by accident, was obliged to wean the child directly. f>. A widow that I know, after burying her husband, retired to her closet, 292 A RAINY DAY. i A RAINY DAY. | HE day that we speak of is a complete one of its kind, beginning with a dark wet morning, and ending in a drenching night. When you come down stairs from your chamber, you find the breakfast-room looking dark, the rain- spout pouring away, and unless you live in a street of traffic, no sound out of doors but a clack of pattens and an occasional clang of milk-pails. (Do you see the rogue of a milkman? He is leaving them open to catch the rain.) We never see a person going to the window on such a morning, to take a melancholy look out at the washed houses and pavement, but we think of a reanimation which we once beheld of old Tate Wilkinson. But observe how sour things may run into pleasant tastes at last. We are by no means certain that the said mimetic antique, Tate Wilkinson, was not Patentee of the York Theatre, wore a melancholy hat tied the wrong way, and cast looks of and having read a page, never shed another tear. This may be considered its greatest miracle ! C. Its author, who is said to have run mad during the dog-days, wrote it on the sands of Africa, from whence it was brought to this quarter of the globe by means of the Sirocco. " Nil dictum, quod non dictum prius," is, as you now see, a mighty foolish maxim ; and, as a foolish bit of Latin makes a very appropriate conclusion to the English that precedes it, " Vivas in amore jocisque Vive vale." [Live and preserve your health for other folks, And don't forget to love, and crack your jokes ] ED. A RAINY DAY. 293 unutterable dissatisfaction at a rainy morning, purely to let his worthy successor and surpasser in mimicry, Mr. Charles Mathews, hand down his aspect and countenance for the benefit of posterity. We once fell into company with that ingenious person at a bachelor's house, where he woke us in the morning with the suspicious sound of a child crying in another room. It was having its face washed ; and had we been of a scandalizing turn, or envied our host for his hospitality, we should certainly have gone and said that there was a child in his house who inherited a sorrowful disposition from somebody, and who might be heard (for all the nurse's efforts of a morning) whining and blubbering in the intervals of the wash- towel ; now bursting into open-mouthed complaint, as it left him to dip in the water ; and anon, as it came over his face again, screwing up its snubbed features and eyes, and making half-stifled obstinate moan with his tight mouth. The mystery was explained at breakfast ; and as it hap- pened to be a rainy morning, we were entertained with the reanimation of that "living dead man," poor Tate afore- said, who had been a merry fellow, too, in his day. Imagine a tall, thin, withered, desponding-looking old gen- tleman, entering his breakfast-room with an old hat on, tied under his chin the wrong way of the flap, a beaver some- what of the epicene order, so that you do not know whether it is his wife's or his own. He hobbles and shrinks up to the window, grunting gently with a sort of preparatory despair ; and having cast up his eyes at the air, and seen the weathercock due east and the rain set in besides, drops the corners of his mouth and eyes into an expression of double despondency, not unmixed (if we may speak unpro- fanely) with a sort of scornful resentment ; and turns off with one solitary, brief, comprehensive, and groaning 294 A RAINY DAY. ejaculation of " Eh Christ ! " We never see anybody go to the window of a rainy morning, but we think of this poor old barometer of a Patentee, whose face, we trust, will be handed down in successive fac-similes to posterity, for their edification as well as amusement ; for Tate had cultivated much hypochondriacal knowledge in his time, and been a sad fellow, in a merry sense, before he took to it in its melancholy one. The preparation for a rainy day in town is certainly not the pleasantest thing in the world, especially for those who have neither health nor imagination to make their own sunshine. The comparative silence in the streets, which is made dull by our knowing the cause of it, the window- panes drenched and ever-streaming, like so many helpless cheeks, the darkened rooms, and at this season of the year, the having left off fires ; all fall like a chill shade upon the spirits. But we know not how much pleasantry can be made out of unpleasantness, till we bestir ourselves. The exercise of our bodies will make us bear the weather better, even mentally ; and the exercise of our minds will enable us to bear it with patient bodies in-doors, if we cannot go out. Above all, some people seem to think that they cannot have a fire made in a chill day, because it is summer-time, a notion which, under the guise of being seasonable, is quite the reverse, and one against which we protest. A fire is a thing to warm us when we are cold ; not to go out because the name of the month begins with J. Besides, the sound of it helps to dissipate that of the rain. It is justly called a companion. It looks glad in our faces ; it talks to us ; it is vivified at our touch ; it vivifies in return ; it puts life and warmth and comfort in the room. A good fellow is bound to see that he leaves this substitute for his company when he goes A RAINY DAY. 295 out, especially to a lady ; whose solitary work-table in a chill room on such a day, is a very melancholy refuge. We exhort her, if she can afford it, to take a book and a footstool, and plant herself before a good fire. We know of few baulks more complete, than coming down of a chill morning to- breakfast, turning one's chair as usual to the fireside, planting one's feet on the fender and one's eyes on a book, and suddenly discovering that there is no fire in the grate. A grate, that ought to have a fire in it, and gapes in one's face with none, is like a cold, grinning, empty rascal. There is something, we think, not disagreeable in issu- ing forth during a good, honest summer rain, with a coat well buttoned up, and an umbrella over our heads. The first flash open of the umbrella seems a defiance to the shower, and the sound of it afterwards, over our dry heads, corroborates the triumph. If we are in this humor, it does not matter how drenching the day is. We despise the expensive effeminacy of a coach ; have an agreeable malice of self-content at the sight of crowded gate-ways ; and see nothing in the furious little rain-spouts, but a live- ly emblem of critical opposition, weak, low, washy, and dirty, gabbling away with a perfect impotence of splutter. Speaking of malice, there are even some kinds of legs which afford us a lively pleasure in beholding them splashed. Lady. Lord, you cruel man ! Author. Nay, I was not speaking of yours, madam. How could I wish ill to any such very touching stockings ? And yet, now I think of it, there are very gentle and sen- sitive legs (I say nothing of beautiful ones, because all gentle ones are beautiful to me), which it is possible to behold in a very earthy plight; at least the feet and ankles. 296 A RAINY DAY. L. And pray, sir, what are the very agreeable circum- stances under which we are to be mudded ? Aiithor. Fancy, madam, a walk with some particular friend, between the showers, in a green lane ; the sun shining, the hay sweet-smelling, the glossy leaves sparkling like children's cheeks after tears. Suppose this lane not to be got into, but over a bank and a brook, and a good savage assortment of wagon-ruts. Yet the sunny-green so takes you, and you are so resolved to oblige your friend with a walk, that you hazard a descent down the slippery bank, a jump over the brook, a leap (that will certainly be too short) over the ploughed mud. Do you think that a good thick-mudded shoe and a splashed instep would not have a merit in his barbarous eyes, beyond even the neat outline of the Spanish leather, and the symbolical white- ness of the stocking ? Ask him. L. Go to your subject, do. Author. Well, I will. You may always know whether a person wisjies you a pleasant or unpleasant adventure, by the pleasure or pain he has in your company. If he would be with you himself (and I should like to know the pleasant situation, or even the painful one, if a share of it can be made pleasant, in which we would not have a woman with us), you may rest assured that all the mischief he wishes you is very harmless. At the same time, if there are situations in which one could wish ill even to a lady's leg, there are legs and stockings which it is possible to fancy well-splashed upon a very different principle. Gentleman. Pray, sir, whose may those be ? Author. Not yours, sir, with that delicate flow of trou- ser, and that careless yet genteel stretch-out of toe. There is an humanity in the air of it, a graceful, but at the same time manly, sympathy with the drapery beside it. I allude, A RAINY DAY. 297 sir, to one of those portentous legs, which belong to an over-fed money-getter, or to a bulky methodist parson, who has doating dinners got up for him by his hearers. You know the leg I mean. It is " like unto the sign of the leg," only larger. Observe, I do not mean every kind of large leg. The same thing is not the same thing in every one, if you understand that profound apophthegm. As a leg, indifferent in itself, may become very charming, if it belongs to a charming owner ; so even when it is of the cast we speak of in a man, it becomes more or less unpleasant according to his nature and treatment of it. I am not carping at the leg of an ordinary jolly fellow, which good temper as well as good living helps to plump out, and which he is, after all, not proud of exhibiting ; keeping it modestly in a boot or trousers, and despising the starched ostentation of the other : but at a regular, dull, uninformed, hebetudinous, " gross, open, and palpable " leg, whose calf glares upon you like the ground-glass of a post-chaise lamp. In the parson it is somewhat obscured by a black stocking. A white one is requisite to display it in all its glory. It has a large balustrade calf, an ankle that would be monstrous in any other man, but looks small from the contrast, a tight knee, well buttoned, and a seam inexorably in the middle. It is a leg at once gross and symbolical. Its size is made up of plethora and super- fluity ; its white cotton stockings affect a propriety ; its inflexible seam and side announce the man of clock-work. A dozen hard-worked dependants go at least to the mak- ing up of that leg. If in black, it is the essence of infinite hams at old ladies' Sunday dinners. Now, we like to see a couple of legs, of this sort, in white, kicking their way through a muddy street, and splashed unavoidably as they go, till their horrid glare is subdued into spottiness. A 298 A RAINY DAY. lamplighter's ladder is of use, to give him a passing spurn : upon which the proprietor, turning round to swear, is run against in front by a wheelbarrow ; upon which, turning round again to swear worse, he thrusts his heel upon the beginning of a loose stone in the pavement, and receives his final baptism from a fount of mud. Our limits compel us to bring this article to a speedier conclusion, than we thought ; and, to say the truth, we are not sorry for it ; for we happened to break off here in order to write the one following, and it has not left us in a humor to return to our jokes.* We must therefore say little of a world of things we intended to descant on, of pattens, and eaves, and hackney-coaches, and waiting in vain to go out on a party of pleasure, while the youngest of us insists every minute that " it is going to hold up," and umbrellas dripping on one's shoulder, and the abomination of soaked gloves, and standing up in gate-ways, when you hear now and then the passing roar of rain on an umbrel- la, and glimpses of the green country at the end of streets, and the footmarked earth of the country-roads, and clouds eternally following each other from the west, and the scent of the luckless new-mown hay, and the rainbow, and the glorious thunder and lightning, and a party waiting to go home at night, and, last of all, the delicious moment of taking off your wet things, and rest- ing in the dry and warm content of your gown and slip- pers.f * "The Italian Girl," in the " Indicator." ED. t Years after the publication of this sprightly effusion, the author wrote an other article on " A Rainy Day," which the reader will find (if he cares to look for it) in " The Seer." ED. THE TRUE ENJOYMENT OF SPLENDOR. 299 THE TRUE ENJOYMENT OF SPLENDOR. A CHINESE APOLOGUE. OUBTLESS, saith the illustrious Me, he that gaineth much possession hath need of the wrists of Hong and the seriousness of Shan- Fee, since palaces are not built with a tea- spoon, nor are to be kept by one who runneth after butterflies. But above all it is necessary that he who carrieth a great burden, whether of gold or silver, should hold his head as lowly as is necessary, lest on lift- ing it on high he bring his treasure to nought, and lose with the spectators the glory of true gravity, which is meekness. Quo, who was the son of Quee, who was the son of Quee-Fong, who was the five-hundred and fiftieth in lineal descent from the ever-to-be-remembered Fing, chief min- ister of the Emperor Yau, one day walked out into the streets of Pekin in all the lustre of his rank. Quo, be- sides the greatness of his birth and the multitude of his accomplishments, was a courtier of the first order, and his pigtail was proportionate to his merits, for it hung down to the ground and kissed the dust as it went with its bunch of artificial roses. Ten huge and sparkling rings, which incrusted his hands with diamonds, and almost rivalled the sun that struck on them, led the ravished eyes of the beholders to the more precious enormity of his nails, which were each an inch long, and by proper nibbing might have taught the barbarians of the West to look with just scorn on their many writing-machines. But even 3OO THE TRUE ENJOYMENT OF SPLENDOR. these were nothing to the precious stones that covered him from head to foot. His bonnet, in which a peacock's feather was stuck in a most engaging manner, was sur- mounted by a sapphire of at least the size of a pigeon's egg ; his shoulders and sides sustained a real burden of treasure ; and as he was one of the handsomest men at court, being exceedingly corpulent, and indeed, as his flatterers gave out, hardly able to walk, it may be imagined that he proceeded at no undignified pace. He would have ridden in his sedan, had he been lighter of body, but so much unaffected corpulence was not to be concealed, and he went on foot that nobody might suspect him of pre- tending to a dignity he did not possess. Behind him, three servants attended, clad in the most gorgeous silks ; the middle one held his umbrella over his head ; he on the right bore a fan of ivory, whereon were carved the exploits of Whay-Quang ; and he on the left sustained a purple bag on each arm, one containing opium and Areca- nut, the other the ravishing preparation of Gin-Seng, which possesses the Five Relishes. All the servants looked the same way as their master, that is to say, straight forward, with their eyes majestically half-shut, only they cried every now and then with a loud voice, " Vanish from before the illustrious Quo, favorite of the mighty Brother of the Sun and Moon." Though the favorite looked neither to the right nor to the left, he could not but perceive the great homage that was paid him as well by the faces as the voices of the multitude. But one person, a Bonze, seemed transported beyond all the rest with an enthusiasm of admiration, and followed at a respectful distance from his side, bowing to the earth at every ten paces and exclaiming, " Thanks to my lord for his jewels ! " After repeating this for about THE TRUE ENJOYMENT OF SPLENDOR. 301 six times, he increased the expressions of his gratitude, and said, " Thanks to my illustrious lord from his poor ser- vant for his glorious jewels," and then again, "Thanks to my illustrious lord, whose eye knoweth not degradation, from his poor servant, who is not fit to exist before him, for his jewels that make the rays of the sun look like ink." In short, the man's gratitude was so great, and its lan- guage delivered in phrases so choice, that Quo could contain his curiosity no longer, and turning aside, de- manded to know his meaning : " I have not given you the jewels," said the favorite, "and why should you thank me for them ? " " Refulgent Quo ! " answered the Bonze, again bowing to the earth, " what you say is as true as the five maxims of Fo, who was born without a father: but your slave repeats his thanks, and is indeed infinitely obliged. You must know, O dazzling son of Quee, that of all my sect I have perhaps the greatest taste for enjoying myself. See- ing my lord therefore go by, I could not but be transported at having so great a pleasure, and said to myself, ' The great Quo is very kind to me and my fellow-citizens : he has taken infinite labor to acquire his magnificence ; he takes still greater pains to preserve it, and all the while, I, who am lying under a shed, enjoy it for nothing.' " A hundred years after, when the Emperor Whang heard this story, he diminished the expenditure of his household one half, and ordered the dead Bonze to be raised to the rank of a Colao. 3O2 MEN WEDDED TO BOOKS. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW MEN WEDDED TO BOOKS THE CONTEST BETWEEN THE NIGHTINGALE AND MUSICIAN. E have often had occasion to think of the ex- clamation of that ingenious saint, who, upon reading a fine author, cried out " Pereant male qui ante nos nostra dixerunt ! " " Deuce take those who have said our good things before us ! " Now, without mentioning the ex- tendibility (we are writing in high spirits, early on a fine morning, and cannot stop to find a better word) without mentioning the extendibility of this judicious imprecation to deeds, as, " Deuce take those who have anticipated our exploits ; " or to possessions, as " Confound those fellows that ride in our coaches and eat our asparagus;" we cannot help thinking the phrase particularly applicable to those who have read our authors " Plague take those who anticipate our articles, who quote our highly inter- esting passages out of old books." Here is a Retrospective Review set up, which with an alarming precision of prepositions undertakes to make " Criticisms upon, Analyses of, and Extracts from, curi- ous, useful, and valuable Books in all languages, that have been published from the Revival of Literature to the Com- mencement of the Present Century ; " And what is very inconsiderate, it performs all this, and more. Its criti- cisms are of a very uncritical kind ; deep and well-tem- pered. It can afford to let other people have their merits. Proud of the literature of past ages, it is nevertheless not at all contemptuous of the present ; and even in reading a MEN WEDDED TO BOOKS. 303 lecture to modern critics, as it does admirably in its second number in an article on the once formidable John Dennis, it expostulates in so genial and informing a spirit, that he must be a very far gone critical old woman indeed, who does not feel inclined to leave off the brandy-drinking of abuse, the pin-sticking of grudging absurdity. It is extremely pleasant to see it travelling in this way over so wide a range of literature, warming as well as penetrating as it goes, with a sunny eye, now fetching out the re- motest fields, and anon driving the shadows before it and falling in kindly lustre upon ourselves. The highest com- pliment that vre can pay it, or indeed any other work, is to say, that the enthusiasm is young, and the knowledge old ; a rare, a wise, and a delightful combination.* It is lucky for us that we happened to speak of this work in another publication, the very day before the ap- pearance of the second number ; for the latter contained a very kind mention of the little work now before the reader ; and thus our present notice might have been laid * "The Retrospective Review," says Lowell, in a pleasant passage of his uncollected prose writings, "continues to be good reading, in virtue of the antique aroma (for wine only acquires its bouquet by age) which pervades its pages. Its sixteen volumes are so many tickets of admission to the vast and devious vaults of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, through which we wander, tasting a thimbleful of rich Canary, honeyed Cyprus, or subacidulous Hock, from what dusty butt or keg our fancy chooses. The years during which this Review was published were altogether the most fruitful in genuine appre- ciation of old English literature. Books were prized for their imaginative, and not their antiquarian, value, by young writers who sat at the feet of Lamb and Coleridge." One of th* best and most agreeable contributors to the "Retro- spective Review " was Thomas Noon Talfourd, the biographer of Lamb, and the early friend and literary guide of Dickens. He wrote the article on John Dennis, mentioned above, and those on North's " Life of Lord Guilford," " Ryiner on Tragedy," Colley Gibber's "Apology for his Life," and Wal- lace's ' Prospects of Mankind, Nature, and Providence." KD. 304 MEN WEDDED TO BOOKS. to the account of a vanity, which, however gratified, is not the cause of it. The value of praise as well as rebuke does indeed depend upon the nature of the persons from whom it comes ; and it is as difficult not to be delighted with panegyric from some, as it is easy to be indifferent to it, or even pained by it, from others. But when we con- fess our pleasure in this instance, we can say with equal truth, that all our feelings and hopes being identified with the cause of what we think good and kind, our very self- love becomes identified with it ; and we would consent to undergo the horrible moment of annihilation and oblivion the next instant, could we be assured that the world would be as happy as we were unremembered. And yet what a Yes ! would that be ! But to get from under the imagination of this crush of our being, and emerge into the lightness and pleasurability of life, it was very hard of the Retrospective Review, that, while it praised us, it should pick our intentional pockets of an extract we had long thought of making from an old poet. We allude to the poem called " Music's Duel" from Crashaw. Here the feelings expressed at the head of our paper come over us again. It has been said of fond students that they were "wedded to their books." We have even heard of ladies who have been jealous of an over-seductive duodecimo ; as perhaps they might, if every literary husband or lover were like the col- legian in Chaucer, who would rather have At his bed's head, A twenty books, clothed in black ot red, Of Aristotle and his philosophy, Than robes rich, or fiddle, or psaltry. And yet we feel that we could very well like them too at the bed's head, without at all diminishing our regard for MEN WEDDED TO BOOKS. 305 what should be at the bed's heart. We could sleep under them as under a bower of imaginations. We are one of those who like to have a book behind one's pillow, even though we know we shall not touch it. It is like having all our treasures at hand. But if people are to be wedded to their books, it is hard that under our present moral dispensations, they are not to be allowed the usual exclusive privileges of marriage. A friend thinks no more of borrowing a book nowadays, than a Roman did of borrowing a man's wife ; and what is worse, we are so far gone in our immoral notions on this subject, that we even lend it as easily as Cato did his spouse. Now what a happy thing ought it not to be to have exclusive possession of a book, one's Shakespeare, for instance ; for the finer the wedded work, the more anxious of course we should be, that it should give nobody happiness but ourselves. Think of the pleasure not only of being with it in general, of having by far the greater part of its company, but of having it entirely to one's self; of always saying internally, " It is my property ; " of seeing it well-dressed in "black or red," purely to please one's own eyes ; of wondering how any fellow could be so im- pudent as to propose borrowing it for an evening ; of being at once proud of his admiration, and pretty certain that it was in vain ; of the excitement nevertheless of being a little uneasy whenever we saw him approach it too nearly ; of wishing that it could give him a cuff of the cheek with one of its beautiful boards, for presuming to like its beau- ties as well as ourselves ; of liking other people's books, but not at all thinking it proper that they should like ours ; of getting perhaps indifferent to it, and then comforting ourselves with the reflection that others are not so, though to no purpose ; in short, of all the mixed transport and 20 306 MEN WEDDED TO BOOKS. anxiety to which the exclusiveness of the book-wedded state would be liable ; not to mention the impossibility of other people's having any literary offspring from our fair unique, and consequently of the danger of loving any compilations but our own. Really if we could burn all other copies of our originals, as the Roman Emperor once thought of destroying Homer, this system would be worth thinking of. If we had a good library, we should be in the situation of the Turks with their seraglios, which are a great improvement upon our petty exclusivenesses. Nobody could then touch our Shakespeare, our Spenser, our Chaucer, our Greek and Italian writers. People might say, " Those are the walls of the library ! " and " sigh, and look, and sigh again ; " but they should never get in. No Retrospective rake should anticipate our privileges of quotation. Our Mary Woolstonecrafts and our Madame de Staels, no one should know how finely they were lettered, what soul there was in their disquisitions. We once had a glimpse of the feelings which people would have on these occasions. It was in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The keeper of it was from home ; and not being able to get a sight of the Manuscript of Milton's " Comus," we were obliged to content ourselves with looking through a wire work, a kind of safe, towards the shelf on which it reposed. How we winked, and yearned, and imagined we saw a corner of the all-precious sheets, to no purpose ! The feelings were not very pleas- ant, it is true ; but then as long as they were confined to others, they would of course only add to our satisfaction. But to come to our extract ; for not being quite recov- ered yet from our late ill-health, we mean to avail ourselves of it still. It is remarkable, as the Reviewer has ob- served, for " a wonderful power over the resources of our MEN WEDDED TO BOOKS. 307 language." The original is in the " Prolusions of Strada," where it is put into the mouth of the celebrated Castig- lione, as an imitation of the style of Claudian. From all that we recollect of that florid poet, the imitation, to say the least of it, is quite as good as any thing in himself. Indeed, as a description of the niceties of a musical per- formance, we remember nothing in him that can come up to it. But what will astonish the reader, in addition to the exquisite tact with which " Strada " is rendered by the translator, is his having trebled the whole description, and with an equal minuteness in his exuberance. We cannot stop to enter into the detail of the enjoyment, as we would ; and indeed we should not know perhaps how to express our sense of it but by repeating his masterly niceties about the " clear unwrinkled song," the " warbling doubt of dallying sweetness," the " ever-bubbling spring," the kindling of the bird's " soft voice In the close murmur of a sparkling noise," the " quavering coyness," with which the musician " tastes the strings," the " surges of swoln rhapsodies," the " full- mouthed diapason swallowing all ; " and, in short, the whole "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of masterly playing, from its lordly sweep over the full instrument to -the " capering cheerfulness " of a guitar accompaniment. The man of letters will admire the power of language ; and to the musician and other lovers of music we are sure we are affording a great treat. Numbers of them will never have found their sensations so well analyzed before. Part of the poetry, it is true, is in a false and overcharged taste ; but in general the exuberance is as true as it is surprising, for the subject is exuberant and requires it. We should observe, before the concert begins, that 308 MUSICAL DUEL. Castiglione is represented by Strada as having been pres- ent at this extraordinary duel himself; and however fabu- lous this may seem, there is a letter extant from Bartolomeo Ricci to Giambattista Pigna, contemporaries of Tasso, in which he says, that Antoniano, a celebrated improvisatore of those times, playing on the lute after a rural dinner which the writer had given to his friends, provoked a nightingale to contend with him in the same manner. Dr. Black, in his " Life of Tasso," by way of note upon this letter, quotes a passage from Sir William Jones, strongly corroborating such stories ; and indeed, when we know what parrots and other birds can do, especially in imitating and answering each other, and hear the extravagant reports to which the powers of the nightingale have given rise, such as the story of an actual dialogue in Buffon, we can easily imagine that the groundwork of the relation may not be a mere fable. " An intelligent Persian," says Sir William, " de- clared he had more than once been present, when a cele- brated lutanist, surnamed Bulbul (the nightingale), was playing to a large company in a grove near Shiraz, where he distinctly saw the nightingales trying to vie with the musician ; sometimes warbling on the trees, sometimes fluttering from branch to branch, as if they wished to ap- proach the instrument, and at length dropping on the ground in a kind of ecstasy, from which they were soon raised, he assured me, by a change in the mode." MUSIC'S DUEL. Now westward Sol had spent the richest beams Of noon's high glory, when hard by the streams Of Tiber, on the scene of a green plat, Under protection of an oak, there sat A sweet lute's-master : in whose gentle airs He lost the day's heat and his own hot cares. Close in the covert of the leaves there stood MUSICAL DUEL. 309 A nightingale, come from the neighbouring wood ; (The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree, Their muse, their syren, harmless syren she) There stood she list'ning, and did entertain The music's soft report : and mould the same In her own murmurs, that whatever mood His curious fingers lent, her voice made good : The man perceiv'd his rival and her art, Disposed to give the light-foot lady sport Awakes his lute, and 'gainst the fight to come Informs it, in a sweet praeludium Of closer strains ; and ere the war begin, He lightly skirmishes on every string, Charg'd with a. flying touch : and straightway she Carves out her dainty voice as readily, Into a thousand sweet distinguish'd tones, And reckons up in soft divisions, Quick volumes of wild notes ; to let him know By that shrill taste, she could do something too. His nimble hands' instinct then taught each string A cap'ring cheerfulness, and made them sing To their own dance ; now negligently rash He throws his arm, and with a long-drawn dash Blends all together ; then distinctly trips From this to that ; then quick returning skips And snatches this again, and pauses there. She measures every measure, everywhere Meets art with art ; sometimes, as if in doubt, Not perfect yet, and fearing to be out, Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note, Through the sleek passage of her open throat, A clear unwrink/ed song; then doth she point it With tender accents, and severely joint it By short diminutives, that being rear'd In controverting warbles evenly shar'd, With her sweet self she wrangles. He amaz'd That from so small a channel should be rais'd The torrent of a voice, whose melody Could melt into such sweet variety, Strains higher yet, that tickled with rare art The tattling strings (each breathing in his part) Most kindly do fall out ; the grumbling base In surly groans disdains the treble's grace : 310 MUSICAL DUEL. The high-perch'd treble chirps at this, and chides, Until his finger (moderator) hides And closes the sweet quarrel, rousing all Hoarse, shrill, at once ; as when the trumpets call Hot Mars to th' harvest of death's field, and woo Men's hearts into their hands : this lesson too She gives him back ; her supple breast thrills out Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill, And folds in wav'd notes, with a trembling bill, The pliant series of her slippery song; Then starts she suddenly into a throng Of short thick sobs, whose thund'ring volleys float, A nd roll themselves over her hibric throat In panting murmurs, still 'd out of her breast. That ever-bubbling spring, the sugared nest Of her delicious soul, that there does lie Bathing in streams of liquid melody ; Music's best seed-plot, where, in ripen'd airs A golden-headed harvest fairly rears His honey-dropping tops, plow'd by he breath Which there reciprocally laboureth. In that sweet soil, it seems a holy choir, Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyit, Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes Of sweep-lipp'd angel-imps, that swill their throats In cream of morning Helicon, and then Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men, To woo them from their beds, still murmuring That men can sleep while they their matins sing : (Most divine service) whose so early lay Prevents the eye-lids of the blushing day ! There you might hear her kindle her soft voice In the close mitrmur of a sparkling noise, And lay the ground-work of her hopeful song, Still keeping in the forward stream, so long Till a sweet whirlwind (striving to get out) Heaves her soft bosom, wanders round about, And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast, Till the fledg'd notes at length forsake their nest, Fluttering in wanton shoals, and to the sky, Wing'd with their own wild echoes, prattling fly. She opes the floodgate, and lets loose a tide MUSICAL DUEL. 3 Of streaming sweetness, which in state doth ride On the wav'd back of every swelling strain, Rising and falling in a pompous train. And while she thus discharges a shrill peal Of flashing airs, she qualifies their zeal With the cool efode of a graver note, Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat Would reach the brazen voice of war's hoarse bird ; Her little soul is ravish'd : and so pour'd Into loose ecstasies, that she is plac'd Above herself, music's enthusiast. Shame now and anger mix'd a double strain In the musician's face ; yet once again, Mistress, I come ; now reach a strain, my lute, Above her mock, or be forever mute. But tune a song of victory to me ; As to thyself, sing thine own obsequy ; So said, his hands sprightly as fire he flings, A nd with a quavering coyness tastes the strings, The sweet-lip'd sisters musically frighted, Singing their fears, are fearfully delighted. Trembling as when Apollo's golden hairs Are fann'd and frizzled in the wanton airs Of his own breath : which, married to his lyre, Doth tune the spheres, and make heaven's self look higher. From this to that, from that to this he flies, Feels music's pithe in all her arteries, Caught in a net which there Apollo spreads, His fingers struggle with the vocal threads, Following those little rills, he sinks into A sea of Helicon ; his hand does go Those parts of sweetness which with nectar drop, Softer than that which pants in Hebe's cup. The humourous strings expound his learned touch By various glosses ; now they seem to grutch, And murmur in a buzzing din, then gingle In shrill-tongu'd accents, striving to be single. Every smooth turn, every delicious stroke Gives life to some new grace ; thus doth invoke Sweetness by all her names ; thus, bravely thus (Fraught with a fury so harmonious) The lute''s light genius now does proudly rise, Heav'tt on the surges of swoln rhapsodies, 312 MUSICAL DUEL. Whose flourish (meteor-like) doth curl the air With flash of high-born fancies ; here and there Dancing in lolly measures, and anon Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone : Whose trembling murmurs melting in wild airs Run to and fro, complaining his sweet cares ,* Because those precious mysteries that dwell In music's ravish'd soul he dares not tell, But whisper to the world : thus do they vary, Each string his note, as if they meant to carry Their master's blest soul (snatch'd out at his ears By a strong ecstasy) through all the spheres Of music's heaven, and seat it there on high In th' empyreum of pure harmony. At length, (after so long, so loud a strife Of all the strings, still breathing the best life Of blest variety, attending on His fingers' fairest revolution, In many a sweet rise, many as sweet a fall) A full-mouth' d diapason swallows all. This done, he lists what she would say to this, And she, although her breath's late exercise Had dealt too roughly with her tender throat, Yet summons all her sweet powers for a note. Alas ! in vain ! for while (sweet soul) she tries To measure all those wild diversities Of chatt'ring strings, by the small size of one Poor simple voice, rais'd in a natural tone ; She fails, and failing grieves, and grieving dies. She dies : and leaves her life the victor's prize, Falling upon his lute ; O fit to have (That liv'd so sweetly) dead, so sweet a grave ! This exquisite story has had another relator in Ford, the dramatist, and according to a great authority, a finer one.* The passage is very beautiful, certainly, especially in the outset about Greece ; and if the story is to be taken * Charles Lamb ; who says, in one of the notes to his " Specimens of English Dramatic Poets," " This story, which is originally to be met with in ' Strada's Prolusions,' has been paraphrased in rhyme by Crashaw, Ambrose MUSICAL DUEL. 313 as a sentiment, it must be allowed to surpass the other ; but as an account of the Duel itself, it is assuredly as different as playing is from no playing. Sentiment, how- ever, completes everything, and we hope our readers will enjoy with us the concluding from Ford : Menaphon. Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales Which poets of an elder time have feign'd To glorify their Tempe, bred in me Desire of visiting that paradise. To Thessaly I came, and living private, Without acquaintance of more sweet companions Than the old inmates to my love, my thoughts, I day by day frequented silent groves And solitary walks. One morning early This accident encounter'd me : I heard The sweetest and most ravishing contention That art and nature ever were at strife in. A methus. I cannot yet conceive what you infer By art and nature. Men. I shall soon resolve ye. A sound of music touch'd mine ears, or rather Indeed entranc'd my soul ; as I stole nearer, Invited by the melody, I saw This youth, this tair-fac'd youth, upon his lute, With strains of strange variety and harmony, Proclaiming, as it seem'd, so bold a challenge To the clear choristers of the woods, the birds, That as they flock'd about him, all stood silent, Wond'ring at what they heard. I wonder'd too. A met. And so do I ; good, on ! Men. A nightingale, Nature's best skill'd musician, undertakes The challenge, and for ev'ry several strain The well-shap'd youth could touch, she sung her down ; He couid not run division with more art Upon his quaking instrument, than she, Phillips, and others ; but none of these versions can at all compare for harmony and grace with this blank verse of Ford's ; it is as fine as anything in Beaumont and Fletcher ; and almost equals the strife it celebrates." ED. 314 MUSICAL DUEL. The nightingale, did with her various notes Reply to. For a voice, and for a sound, Amethus, 'tis much easier to believe That such they were, than hope to hear again. A met. How did the rivals part ? Men. You term them rightly, For they were rivals, and their mistress harmony. Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last Into a pretty anger, that a bird Whom art had never taught clefs, moods, or notes, Should vie with him for mastery, whose study Had busied many hours to perfect practice : To end the controversy, in a rapture Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly, So many voluntaries, and so quick, That there was curiosity and cunning, Concord in discord, lines of diff "ring method Meeting in one full centre of delight. A met. Now for the bird. Men. The bird, ordain'd to be Music's first martyr, strove to imitate These several sounds : which, when her warbling throat Fail'd in, for grief down dropp'd she on his lute And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness, To see the conqueror upon her hearse, To weep a funeral elegy of tears, That, trust me, my Amethus, I could chide Mine own unmanly weakness, that made me A fellow-mourner with him. A met. I believe thee. Men. He look'd upon the trophies of his art, Then sigh'd, then wip'd his eyes, then sigh'd and cried, " Alas, poor creature ! I will soon revenge This cruelty upon the author of it ; Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood, Shall never more betray a harmless peace To an untimely end : " and in that sorrow, As he was dashing it against a tree, I suddenly slept in. THE MURDERED PUMP. 315 THE MURDERED PUMP. A STORY OF A WINTER'S NIGHT. ]HE hero of the following sketch is a real per- son, and the main points in it, the pump and the refuge in the cellar, are recorded as facts. The latter took place in the house of Sir John Trevor, the Master of the Rolls, a kinsman of Mr. Lloyd's, who was a proud and irritable Welshman. TIME. The Beginning of the Last Century. SCENE. A Fog in Holborn towards Daiim. Enter Two Middle-aged Gentlemen, of the names of LANE and LLOYD, coming towards an old Pump Lane. You're so quarrelsome, when you drink. Lloyd. (HiccUjfrmg.) No, I ain't. Lane. Always contradicting everybody. Lloyd. (Hiccuping.) No, I ain't. Lane. So eager to say No, merely because other people say Yes. Lloyd. (Hiccufiing.) No, I ain't. Lane. Why, you do it this very instant Lloyd. No, I don't. Lane. You can't say Yes, if you would. Lloyd, (Hiccuping.) Yes, I can. Lane. No, you can't. Your very Yes is a No. You merely say it to contradict. Lloyd. No, I don't. Lane. Pooh, nonsense ! And then you must draw your sword, forsooth, and add fury to folly. You'll get some tremendous lesson some day, and you really need it. I should like to give it you. Lloyd. (Violently.) Take care, George Lane. (LLOYD stumbles.) Lane. Take you care, of the gutter. I shan't pick you up. I shall leave you to cool yourself. Lloyd. (Jficcuping.) No, you won't. Lane. Oh, what, you remember my carrying you home last Thursday, do you ? And this is your gratitude. 316 THE MURDERED PUMP. Lloyd. Damn gratitude ! I'll not be insulted. Lane. Yes, you will, by forgiveness. You'll insult others, and be for- given. Lloyd. No, I won't. Nobody shall forgive Roderick Lloyd. I should like to see 'em. {Standing still, putting his Jiand on his s^uord, and trying to speak very loudly.) Who forgives me ? Who forgives Lloyd, I say? Come into the court, you rascal. Lane. (Laughing.) Come along. Nonsense. Lloyd. Who forgives Roderick Lloyd, Promontory, Pro thonotary of Lane. Of North Wales, Marshal to Baron Price, and so forth. Come along, and don't be an ass. Lloyd. Fire and fury ! A what? (Drawing his sword, and coming on.) A prothonotary called (He stumbles against the Pump.) Who the devil are you ? Get out of the way. Lane. (Aside.) A good thing, faith. He shall have it out. Lloyd. (To the Pump.) Who are you, I say? Why don't you speak? Lane. He says you may go to the devil. Lloyd. The devil he does ! Draw, you scoundrel, or you're a dead man. Lane. He stands as stiff as a post. Lloyd. (Furiously.) Draw, you infernal fool. Lane. He says he defies your toasting-fork, and your Welsh-rabbit to boot. Lloyd. Blood and thunder ! (He runs the Pump through tlie body.) Lane. Good Heavens, Lloyd ! what have you done ? We must be off. Lloyd. Pink'd an infernal Welsh-rabbit I mean a toasting, damnation prothonotary. Who's afraid? Lane. Come along, man. This way, this way. Here, down the lane. The constables are coming, and you've done it at last, by Heavens ! \_Exeunt down Chancery Lane. SCENE II. Daylight in a cellar. LLOYD and LANE discovered listening. Lane. It's nobody, depend on't. It's too early. Nobody is stirring yet. Don't be down-hearted, Rory. You're a brave man, you know ; and the worse the luck, the greater the lion. Lloyd. But I've left my sword in him. Lane. No, have you though ? That's unlucky. Lloyd. Oh, that punch, that punch! and that cursed fool poor fool, I should say, Progers. I shall come to shame, George. Oh, I shall. To shame and to suffering. (He walks to and fro.) Lane. No, no. The sword had no name on it ? Lloyd. Yes, it had. Lane. But only initials. THE MURDERED PUMP. 317 Lloyd. No. Full length. Lane. What, titles and all ? Roderick Lloyd, Prothono Lloyd. No, no. But name and address. Oh, wouldn't it be better if you would go out and see how matters are going on ? Lane. Wha^ the crowd, and all that ? No, I think best not. We are too well known hereabouts. Lloyd. Then why didn't you go further? Lane. You were too far gone already, Rory. I don't mean to jest You can't suppose me guilty of that. But it's a phrase, you know. You were very drunk, and to say the truth, very wilful. Lloyd. Oh, I was, I was. Lane. You wouldn't be guided at all. Lloyd. Too true, too true. Lane. I was twenty minutes getting you away from that apple-woman, and half an hour, I'm sure, in persuading you to rise from the door-way. {Lloyd groans.) Then you wouldn't let me take your sword (for I was afraid of some mischief), and you must have stood, I think, ten minutes against that shop- window, damning us all round all the friends you had been disputing with. Lloyd. Oh, don't tell me all that again. It's cruel of you, George. Listen I great Heavens, listen ! Lane. It's only some milkman. Lloyd. Only a milkman ! How do you know? Besides, what do you mean by "only a milkman?" Can't a milkman hang me? Can't a milk- man be furious ? furious about a man that's killed ? Lane. Pray, sit down, and be easy. Sir John, 'tis true, doesn't appear ; but that's his way. He never stands by a friend, you know ; that is to say, openly. But secretly he can do any thing ; and he will. I tell you again, that I woke him directly we came into the house, and he gave me his solemn oath that he would smuggle you into Wales, in the boot of his carriage. It is not a very big boot, but it's better than nothing. Lloyd. Oh, a paradise, a paradise, if I were but in it. But repeat to me, George. What sort of a man was it that I had the misfortune to to . Tell me he was a bad fellow at any rate a mohawk a gallows bird, or some- thing of that sort. Lane. I wish I could. But he was a young gentleman, plainly in liquor himself. Lloyd. Didn't he carry himself very stiffly ? Lane. Wonderfully, but with a sort of innocence too. Lloyd. But he said insulting things. Lane. Not he. That was your fancy. Lloyd. What, didn't he tell me to go to the devil, and all that? Lane. Not a bit. He was quite silent, and, in fact, evidently did not bear a word you uttered. THE MURDERED PUMP. Lloyd. How strange, how horribly strange 1 and that I should have had all those drunken fancies 1 Lane. That's your way, you know, owing to your confounded temper. I beg your pardon. Lloyd. Oh, I beg yours everybody's his. Lane. You do ? Roderick Lloyd beg pardon ! Is it positively come to that ? to that, which you have sworn a thousand times you would never do to any man living, be the circumstances what they might. Well, this is a change. Ah, ha! (Laughing.) A change and a lesson, eh, Rory? And you'll be a good boy, and never do the like again, I suppose ? Lloyd. (Astonished.) What has come to you ? Is this kindness? Is this humanity? Lane. Yes, Rory, very good kindness indeed, and very good humanity ; for I have now a piece of news to tell you, that will pay you for all you have suffered, and me for all that you have ever made me suffer ; for what with frights for you, and perils of fights for you, and some three or four flounderings in the gutter, there has been no mean balance, let me tell you, on the side of your old friend. So, mark me, you didn't leave your sword in the man, for I've got it ; and you didn't do him any mischief at all, for you couldn't ; and he was no man whatsoever, Rory, for he was a Pump. Lloyd. A Pump? Swear it. Shout it. Make me sure of it somehow or other, and I'm in heaven. Lane. (Tenderly.) Do you think I'd play with you, Rory, any longer, and in a way like this ? (Here Mr. RODERICK LLOYD, Prothonotary of North Wales, after em~ bracing his friend, jumps and dances in ecstasy about the cellar. ) Lloyd. By Heaven, it's almost worth going through misery, in order to taste of such happiness. Lane. That's one of the very points I have so often insisted on in our dis- putes. Hail to your new metaphysics, Rory ; to your enlightened theosophy. Lloyd. Come ; let's to breakfast then somewhere, out of this infernal cellar. I own my lesson, George. You might have let me off too, a little sooner, I think, eh? Spared me a few sharp sentences. (They prepare to go.) Lane. I'm afraid you're growing a little disconcerted, Rory. Lloyd. No, I ain't; but Lane. A little contradictory again. Lloyd. No, I ain't ; but Lane. You contradict me, however, as usual. Lloyd. No, I don't. Oh, damn it, come along. (Looking red, and laughing with his companion. ) You won't tell anybody, will you, George ? Lane. Haven't I the blood of the Lloyds in me. Am I not a gentleman, Rory? Lloyd. You are, you are. So we will drink gallons of tea to settle that CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. 319 confounded punch ; and, I think, I'll never say " No, I don't "as long as I live ; at least not to you, my boy ; that is to say, if you behave yoursel Lane. Ah, you feel a little angry with me still. Lloyd. No, I (LAtiElaug&s.) Damn it Well, I do; but not half so angry as happy, either. So, come along. \Exeunt. CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. F the three great annual holidays, Christmas day is, for many reasons, the greatest ; and one reason among others is, that it stands out of the winter-time, the first and warmest of them. It is the eye and fire of the season, as the fire is of Christmas and of one's room. We have al- ways loved it, and ever shall ; first (to give a child's rea- son, and a very good one, too, in this instance), because Christmas day is Christmas day ; second (which is included in that reason, or rather includes it, for it is the greatest), because of a high argument, which will more properly stand by itself at the close of this article ; third, because of the hollies and other evergreens which people conspire to bring into cities and houses on this day, making a kind of summer in winter, and reminding us that " The poetry of earth is never dead ; " fourth, because we were brought up in a cloistered school,* where carols had not gone out of fashion, and used to sit in circles round huge fires, fit to roast an ox, making in- conceivable bliss out of cakes and sour oranges ; fifth, because of the fine things which the poets and others have * Christ's Hospital. 32O CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. said of it ; sixth, because there is no business going on, " Mammon " is suspended ; and seventh, because New- Year's-day and Twelfth-day come after it ; that is to say, because it is the leader of a set of holidays, and the spirit is not beaten down into commonplace the moment it is over. It closes and begins the year with cheerfulness. We have collected, under the head of " The Week,"* some notices of the other principal points connected with Christmas. Most of them are now losing their old lustre, only to give way, we trust, by and by, to better evidences of rejoicing. The beadle we can dispense with, and even the Christmas- boxes ; especially as we hope nobody will then want them. And the " Bellman's Verses " shall turn to something no- bler, albeit we have a liking for him ; ay, for his very absurdities ; there is something in them so old, so unpre- tending, and so reminiscent about him. As long as the bellman is alive, one's grandfather does not seem dead, and his cocked hat lives with him. Good " Bellman's Verses " will not do at all. There have been some such things of late, " most tolerable and not to be endured." We have even seen them witty, which is a great mistake. Warton and Cowper unthinkingly set the way to them. You may be childlike at Christmas ; you may be merry ; you may be absurd, in the worldly sense of the term ; but you must write with a faith, and so redeem your old Christmas reputation somehow. Belief in something great and good preserves a respectability, even in the most child- ish mistakes ; but it feels that the company of banter is unworthy of it. The very absurdity of the " Bellman's Verses " is only bearable, nay, only pleasant, when we sup- * A column of original and selected miscellany published under this caption in the " London Journal." ED. CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. 321 pose them written by some actual doggerel-poet in good faith. Mere mediocrity hardly allows us to give our Christmas-box, or to believe it nowadays in earnest ; and the smartness of your cleverest worldly-wise men is felt to be wholly out of place. No, no ; give us the good old decrepit "Bellman's Verses," hobbling as their bringer, and taking themselves for something respectable like his cocked-hat, or give us none at all. We should not like even to see him in a round hat. He would lose something of the old and oracular by it. If in a round hat, he should keep out of sight, and not contradict the portrait of him- self at the top of his sheet of verses, with his bell and his beadle's staff. The pictures round the verses may be new ; but we like the old better, no matter how worn-out, pro- vided the subject be discernible ; no matter what blots for the eyes, and muddiness for the clouds. The worst of these old wood-cuts are often copied from good pictures ; and, at all events, they wear an aspect of the old sincer- ity.* Give us, in short, a foundation of that true old Christ- mas sincerity to go upon (no matter under what modification of belief, provided it be of a Christian sort), and, like the bet- ter sort of Catholics, who go to church in the morning and to their dance in the evening, we can begin the day with a mild gravity of recollection, and finish it with all kinds of forgetful mirth, forgetful, because realizing the happiness for which we are thoughtful. It is a pernicious mistake among persons who exclusively call themselves religious, * We learn from Hone's " Every-Day Book " that for the use of this per- sonage there was a book, entitled " The Bellman's Treasury, containing above a hundred several verses, fitted for all Humours and Fancies, and suited to all times and seasons." London, 1707, 8vo. ED. 322 CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. to think they ought never to be cheerful, without calling to mind considerations too vast and grand for cheerfulness ; thereby representing the object of their reverence after the fashion of an officious and tyrannical parent, who should cast the perpetual shadow of his dignity over his children's sports. Those sports are a part of the general ordinance of things. Man is a laughing as well as a thinking crea- ture ; and " there is a time ," says the wise man, " for all things." Formal set times for being religious and thought- ful are, to be sure, not the only times ; but a perpetual formality is merely the same mistake rendered thorough- going and entire ! It might be thought unnecessary to touch upon this point nowadays, and a violation of our own inculcations of seasonableness to notice it in the present article ; but a periodical writer who is in earnest is much hampered by certain inconsistencies in the demands of some of his readers ; and what we feel, we express. To have a thorough sense, then, of Christmas, grave and gay, and to reconcile as much as possible of its old times to the new, one ought to begin with Christmas Eve, to see the log put on the fire, the boughs fixed somewhere in the room, and to call to mind what is said by the poets, and those beautiful accounts of angels singing in the air, which inspired the seraphical strains of Handel and Corelli. Those who possess musical instruments should turn to these strains, or procure them, and warm their imaginations by their performance. In paintings from Italy (where the violin, on account of its greater mastery, and the enthusiasm of the people, is held in more esteem than with us), we often see choral visions of angels in the clouds, singing and playing on that instrument as well as the harp ; and certainly, if ever a sound which may be supposed to resemble them, was yet heard upon earth, CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. 323 it is in some of the harmonies of Arcangelo Corelli. And the recitative of Handel's divine strain, "There were shepherds abiding in the fields," is as exquisite for truth and simplicity as the cheek of innocence. See what Milton has sung of these angelic symphonies in the ode " On the Morning of Christ's Nativity." Shakespeare has touched upon Christmas Eve with a reverential tender- ness, sweet as if he had spoken it hushingly. " Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes, Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long. And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad ; The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm ; So hallovi 'd and so gracious is the time. 1 ' Upon which (for it is a character in Hamlet who is speak- ing) Horatio observes, in a sentence remarkable for the breadth of its sentiment as well as the niceness of its sincerity (like the whole of that apparently favorite charac- ter of the poet, who loved a friend), " So have I heard, and do in part believe it: " that is to say, he believed all that was worthy, and recog- nized the balmy and Christian effect produced upon well- disposed and sympathetic minds by reflections on the season. The Waits, that surprise us with music in the middle of the night, evidently originated in honor of the heavenly visitation. They are, unfortunately, not apt to be very celestial of their kind. There is a fellow in particular, that plays the bass, who seems to make a point of being out of tune. He has two or three notes that are correct enough, that enable him to finish in a style of grandeur 324 CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. and self-satisfaction, but his " by-play," for the most part, is horrible. However, the very idea of music is good, especially in the middle of the night ; and a little imagin- ation, and Christian charity, together with a considera- tion of his cold fingers, will help us to be thankful for his best parts, and slip as we can over his worst. When the English become a more musical people, zealous amateurs will volunteer their services on fine nights, and, going forth with their harps and guitars, charm their friends and neighbors with strains rendered truly divine by the hour and the occasion, " Divinely-warbled voice Answering the stringed noise." (See Milton's ode, as above-mentioned.) " Soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony." MERCHANT OF VENICE. A Christmas day, to be perfect, should be clear and cold, with holly branches in berry, a blazing fire, a dinner with mince-pies, and games and forfeits in the evening. You cannot have it in perfection, if you are very fine and fash- ionable. Neither, alas ! can it be enjoyed by the very poor ; so that, in fact, a perfect Christmas is impossible to be had, till the progress of things has distributed comfort more equally. But when we do our best, we are privileged to enjoy our utmost ; and charity gives us a right to hope. The completest enjoyer of Christmas (next to a lover who has to receive forfeits from his mistress), is the holiday school-boy who springs up early, like a bird, darting hither and thither, out of sheer delight, thinks of his mince-pies half the morning, has too much of them when they come (pardon him this once), roasts chestnuts and cuts apples CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. 325 half the evening, is conscious of his new silver in his pocket, and laughs at every piece of mirth with a loudness that rises above every other noise. Next day what a peg- top will he not buy ! what string, what nuts, what ginger- bread ! And he will have a new clasp-knife, and pay three times too much for it. Sour oranges also will he suck, squeezing their cheeks into his own with staring eyes ; and his mother will tell him they are not good for him, and let him go on. A Christmas evening should, if possible, finish with music. It carries off the excitement without abruptness, and sheds a repose over the conclusion of enjoyment. A word respecting the more serious part of the day's subject alluded to above. It is but a word, but it may sow a seed of reflection in some of the best natures, es- pecially in these days of perplexity between new doctrines and old. It appears to us, that there is a point never enough dwelt upon, if at all, by those who attempt to bring about a reconciliation between belief and the want of it. It is addressed only to the believers in a Providence, but those who have that belief, if they have no other, are a numer- ous body. The point is this, that Christianity, to say the least of it, is a GREAT EVENT. It has had a wonder- ful effect on the world, and still has, even in the workings of its apparently unfilial daughter, modern philosophy, who could never have been what she is but for the doctrine of boundless sympathy, grafted upon the elegant self-reference of the Greeks, and the patriotism of the Romans, which was so often a mere pretext for the most unneighborly injustice. Now so great an event must have been in the contempla- tion of Providence, one of the mountain-tops of its manifestation ; and, if we say, even of a Shakespeare and a Plato (and not without reason), that there is something 326 NEW YEAR S GIFTS. " divine " in them, that is to say, something partaking of a more energetic and visible portion of the mysterious spirit breathed into mankind, how much more, and with how much more reverential a love, ought we not to have a di- vine impression of the nature of Him, who drew the great line between the narrowness of the Old World and the uni- versalities of the New, and uttered to the earth, through the angelical organ of his whole being, life and death, that truly celestial doctrine, " Think of others I" NEW YEAR'S GIFTS. ORMERLY, everybody made presents on New Year's Day, as they still do in Paris, where our lively neighbors turn the whole metrop- olis into a world of cakes, sweetmeats, jewel- lery, and all sorts of gifts and greetings. The Puritans checked that custom, out of a notion that it was superstitious, and because the heathens did it ; which was an odd reason, and might have abolished many other inno- cent and laudable practices eating itself, for one and going to bed. Innumerable are the authorities which (had we lived in those days) we would have brought up in be- half of those two customs, in answer to the New-Year's- Day-knocking-down folios of Mr. Prynne, the great " blasphemer of custard." Unfortunately if the Puritans thought gift-giving superstitious, the increasing spirit of commerce was too well inclined to admit half its epithet, and regard the practice as, at least, siiperfluous a thing over and above and what was not always productive of NEW YEAR'S GIFTS. 327 a " consideration." " Nothing is given for nothing now- adays," as the saying is. Nay, it is doubtful whether next to nothing will always be given for something. There are people, we are credibly informed, taken for persons " well to do " in the world, and of respectable character, who will even turn over the pages of the " London Journal," and narrowly investigate whether there is enough wit, learning, philosophy, lives, travels, poetry, voyages, and romances in it, for three halfpence.* This must be mended, or there will be no such thing as a New Year by and by. Novelty will go out ; the sun will halt in the sky, and prudent men sharply consider whether they have need of common perception. Without entering into politics, something is to be said, nowadays, for an Englishman's being averse to making presents ; and, as it behooves us to make the best of a bad thing, reasons might be shown also why it is not so well to have a formal and official sort of day for making presents, as to leave them to more spontaneous occa- sions. Besides, if everybody gives and everybody re- ceives, where, it may be asked, is the compliment ? And how are people to know whether they would have given or received anything, had it not been the custom ? How are they to be sure, whether a very pretty present is not a positive insult, till they compare it with what has been received by others ? And how are men in office and power to be sure that in the gifts of their inferiors there is anything but self-seeking and bribery ? It was formerly * Such a one was not Walter Savage Landor, who thus wrote, from Italy to a friend in England : " Let me recommend to you Leigh Hunt's ' London Journal,' three halfpence a week. It contains neither politics nor scandal, but very delightful things in every department of graceful literature." ED. 328 NEW YEAR'S GIFTS. the custom in England to load princes and ministers with New- Year's Gifts. Queen Elizabeth, who had the soul of a mantuamaker as well as of a monarch, received whole wardrobes of gowns and caps, as well as caskets of jewel- lery. What a day must she have passed of it, with all the fine things spread out before her ! And yet with all her just estimation of herself, and her vanity to boot, bitter suspicions must occasionally have crossed her, that all this was but so much self-interest appealing to self-love. But suppose a Duke or an Earl did not send a gift good enough. Here was ground for anger and jealousy, and all the pleasure-spoiling self-will which see no good in what is given it, provided something be wanting. Dryden addressed some verses on New- Year's Day to Lord Chan- cellor Hyde (Clarendon), which he begins as follows : " My Lord, While flattering crowds officiously appear To give themselves, not you, a happy year, And by the greatness of their presents, prove How much they hope, but not how well they love," &c. Here was a blow (not very well considered, perhaps) at the self-complacency induced by the receipt of "great presents." Suppose Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, or Lord Chancellor Brougham, had similar presents sent them on the like occasion. How could the one be sure that his great legal knowledge, or the other, that even his great genius and tact for all knowledge, had anything to do with the compliment ? Or that it was not as mere a trick for court-favor as anything which they would now despise ? We grant that (where there is any right to bestow it at all) a present is a present ; that it is an addition to one's stock, and, at all events, a compliment to one's influence ; and influence is often its own proof of a right to be compli- NEW YEAR S GIFTS. 329 mented ; as want of influence is sometimes a greater. But, for the sake of fair-play among mankind, every ad- vantage must have its drawback ; and it is a drawback in the power to confer benefits, that it cannot always be sure of the motives of those who do it honor. If a day is to be set apart for such manifestations of good-will, the birthday would seem better for them than New- Year's Day. The compliment would be more particular and per- sonal ; others might not know of it, and so would not grudge it ; and real affections would thus be indulged, not mere ceremonies. We own that we think there is something in that dis- tinction. Yet our sprightly-blooded neighbors would no doubt have replies to all these arguments ; and, for our part, we are for cutting the knot of the difficulty thus : Make us all rich enough, and then we could indulge our- selves both with New-Year's Day and the birthday, both on the general occasions and the particular one. For, to say the truth, we people who are not rich, and who, there- fore, have nothing perhaps worth withholding, are long in coming to understand how it is that rich people can resist these anniversary opportunities of putting delight into the eyes of their friends and dependants, and distributing their toys and utilities on all sides of them. Presents (properly so called) are great ties to gratitude, and there- fore great increasers of power and influence, especially if they are of such a kind as to be constantly before the eye, thus producing an everlasting association of pleasant ideas with the giver.* They tell the receiver that he is worth something in the giver's eyes, and thus the worth of the giver becomes twenty-fold. Nor do we say this sneer- * Presents endear absents. CHARLES LAMB. 33 NEW YEAR'S GIFTS. ingly, or in disparagement of the self-love which must of necessity be, more or less, mixed up with every one's na- ture ; for the most disinterested love would have nothing to act upon without it ; and the most generous people in the world, such as most consult the pleasure of others before their own, must lose their very identity and personal consciousness before they can lose a strong desire to be pleased. Oh ! but rich people, it will be said, are not always so rich as they are supposed to be ; and even when they are, they find plenty of calls upon their riches, without going out of their way to encourage them. They have estab- lishments to keep up, heaps of servants, &c., their wives and families are expensive, and then they are cheated beyond measure. Making allowances for all this, and granting in some instances that wealth itself be poor, considering the de- mands upon it, nevertheless for the most part real wealth must be real wealth ; that is to say, must have a great deal more than enough. You do not find that a rich man (unless he is a miser) hesitates to make a great many presents to himself, books, jewels, horses, clothes, fur- niture, wines, or whatever the thing may be that he most cares for ; and he must cease to do this (we mean of course in its superfluity) before he talks of his inability to make presents to others. SALE OF THE LATE MR. WEST'S PICTURES. 331 . SALE OF THE LATE MR. WEST'S PICTURES. T is a villanous thing to those who have known a man for years, and been intimate with the quiet inside of his house, privileged from in- trusion, to see a sale of his goods going on upon the premises. It is often not to be helped, and what he himself wishes and enjoins ; but still it is a villanous necessity, a hard cut to some of one's oldest and tenderest recollections. There is a sale of this kind now going on in the house we spoke of last week.* We spoke of it then under an impulse not easy to be re- strained, and not difficult to be allowed us ; and we speak of it now under another. We were returning the day be- fore yesterday from a house, where we had been entertained with lively accounts of foreign countries, and the present features of the time, when we saw the door in Newman Street standing wide open, and disclosing to every passen- ger a part of the gallery at the end of the hall. All our boyhood came over us, with the recollection of those who had accompanied us into that house. We hesitated whether we should go in, and see an auction taking place of the old quiet and abstraction ; but we do not easily suffer an unpleasant and vulgar association to overcome a greater one ; and, besides, how could we pass ? Having passed the threshold, without the ceremony of the smiling old porter, we found a worthy person sitting at the door of the gallery, who, on hearing our name, seemed to have * In an article entitled " A Nearer View of Some of the Shops," in " The Indicator." ED. 332 SALE OF THE LATE MR. WEST'S PICTURES. old times come upon him as much as ourselves, and was very warm in his services. We entered the gallery, which we had entered hundreds of times in childhood, by the side of a mother, who used to speak of the great persons and transactions in the pictures on each side of her with a hushing reverence as if they were really present. But the pictures were not there, neither Cupid with his doves, nor Agrippina with the ashes of Germanicus, nor the Angel slaying the army of Sennacherib, nor Death on the Pale Horse, nor Jesus Healing the Sick, nor the Deluge, nor Moses on the Mount, nor King Richard pardoning his brother John, nor the Installation of the old Knights of the Garter, nor Greek and Italian stories, nor the landscapes of Windsor Forest, nor Sir Philip Sidney, mortally wound- ed, giving up the water to the dying soldier. They used to cover the wall ; but now there were only a few engrav- ings. The busts and statues also were gone. But there was the graceful little piece of garden as usual, with its grass plat and its clumps of lilac. They could not move the grass plat, even to sell it. Turning to the left, there was the privileged study, which we used to enter between the Venus de Medicis and the Apollo of the Vatican. They were gone, like their mythology. Beauty and intel- lect were no longer waiting on each side of the door. Turning again, we found the longer part of the gallery like the other; and in the vista through another room, the auction was going on. We saw a throng of faces of busi- ness with their hats on, and heard the hard-hearted knocks of the hammer, in a room which used to hold the mild and solitary Artist at his work, and which had never been entered but with quiet steps and a face of consider- ation. We did not stop a minute. In the room between this and the gallery, huddled up in a corner, were the busts SALE OF THE LATE MR. WEST'S PICTURES. 333 and statues which had given us a hundred thoughts. Since the days when we first saw them, we have seen numbers like them, and many of more valuable materials ; for though good of their kind, and of old standing, they are but common plaster. But the thoughts and the recol- lections belonged to no others ; and it appeared sacrilege to see them in that state. " Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine : ***** And each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat." Into the parlor, which opens out of the hall and into the garden, we did not look. We scarcely know why ; but we did not. In that parlor we used to hear of our maternal ancestors, stout yet kind-hearted Englishmen, who set up their tents with Penn in the wilderness. And there we learned to unite the love of freedom with that of the graces of life ; for our host, though born a Quaker, and appointed a royal painter, and not so warm in his feelings as those about him, had all the natural amenity belonging to those graces, and never truly lost sight of that love of freedom. There we grew up acquainted with the divine humanities of Raphael. There we remember a large colored print of the old lion-hunt of Rubens, in which the boldness of the action and the glow of the coloring overcome the hor- ror of the stuggle. And there, long before we knew any thing of Ariosto, we were as familiar as young playmates with the beautiful Angelica and Medoro, who helped to fill our life with love. May a blessing be upon that house, and upon all who know how to value the genius of it ! 334 TRANSLATION FROM TRANSLATION FROM MILTON INTO WELSH. E are going to do a thing very common with critics ; we are about to speak of a work we do not understand. What is not so com- mon, however, we are not going to condemn it. On the contrary, the evident spirit under which it is written, gives it a very advantageous character in our opinion ; and we shall proceed to show those eminent and dissatisfied persons, how possible it is by the help of a little good humor and modesty to be pleased instead of provoked, and to enjoy one's imagination in- stead of resenting one's ignorance. The reader is aware perhaps, that there is a kind of Poetical Order existing among our Welsh brethren, the object of which is to keep up the genius as well as remem- brance of their ancient Bards. The members look upon themselves, in love at least, as their successors ; take the same title of Bards ; distribute harps as prizes ; and en- deavor to catch the reflection of their old fire on the same mountains. Nor is this second-hand inspiration, we dare say, without the occasional production of something fine. In a populous modern city, with its sophistications, such an establishment might be regarded as a mere game at antiques. But in persons of simplicity of life and earnest- ness of intention, especially in solitudes peopled with grand human recollections, it is difficult to love anything fervently, and never speak of it in a worthy manner. We have seen poems in the English language written by Welshmen of this character, which were as good as some MILTON INTO WELSH. 335 of the English productions of Burns ; and the inference is, that in their own language, and on the subject of their own affections, they have not always produced poetry un- worthy of ranking with his Scotch. Even upon subjects of mere antiquity, the inspiration above mentioned may act upon them as that of the great poets of Greece and Italy has acted upon their own. Great times and men may literally be said never to die in point of effect. Their touch reaches us from afar. Their eye is upon us out of the clouds of time. We feel their memory in our ears, like the tremble of an eternal song. If their own works help to divert us from the more natural soil out of which they drew the flowers and fountains of their immortality, they serve to create a new stratum of fertility, not so fine indeed as the other, but still fine and abundant, and full of a second vitality. Death itself helps to beautify them. We walk among their memories, as we do among the leaves of autumn, or the ruins of great places ; and sup- ply the want of present perfection with the love of that which is past. In our youth, we met with one of the Modern Welsh Bards, who had all the character we speak of. He was a man of primeval simplicity of manners ; that is to say, one who without any of the conventional substitutes for the humanities of intercourse, possessed that natural polite- ness of benignity, which is so instantly felt to be their vital spirit. He had the true Welsh face improved by information, hair and eyes black as a raven, and an ex- pression of great candor and good nature. If we remem- ber rightly, we gathered from his conversation, that he had risen, by dint of his love of letters, and much to the credit of those who noticed him, from an humble origin ; which origin he neither affected to hide nor to boast of. He 336 TRANSLATION FROM occasionally came up to London ; took his meals with the best society among his countrymen or at his own hermit- like table ; and hired an humble lodging near the Museum, where .it was his delight to go and study Welsh antiquities. Thus if he came to London, he brought his country with him ; found his bards and his very quiet about him, wher- ever he pleased, in the shape of books ; and in default of his goats and mountains, could get among animals and things which perhaps he loved as well, and thought almost as real, the dragons and golden fields of Cambrian heraldry. Among other advantages of the remoteness and romantic nature of the sphere in which he grew up, it had kept him free from the small pedantry and self-sufficiency so often observable in the leading wits of country towns and minor cities, who think their own amount of knowledge the sum of all that is accomplished, and have a particular fancy for setting Londoners in the right. He had the humanity to think well of what he did not know. He loved his country's music and its poets, and in our fond- ness for an air on the piano-forte and an ode of Horace was pleased to discover something which he thought worthy both of his sympathy and his respect. This pleasant Cambro-Briton, of whom we are speak- ing, once took us to see a countryman of his, whose taste in urbanities and antiquities resembled his own. He lived in a small quiet house near the fields ; and we found him up to the eyes in good humor, books, and a Welsh harp. If we are not much mistaken, this is the author of the Welsh Milton. There is something very beautiful to us to see the whole souls of men yearning in this manner towards their native country, when its power has long ceased to exist. They have all the merit of adhering to a great friend in adver- MILTON INTO WELSH. 337 sity ; and yet the friend is perhaps greater than ever he was, and can reward them more. The ancient Britons had in them the seeds of a great nation, even in our modern sense of the word. They had courage ; they had reflection ; they had imagination. When driven from their larger possessions by the mere power which the world then adored, they soon found out the two great secrets of adversity, that of softening reality with ro- mance, and of turning experience to reformation. They possessed, in an extraordinary degree, the spirit of legis- lative improvement. Power at last made a vassal of their prince. There were writers in those times ; harpers and bards, who made the instinct of that brute faculty turn cruel out of fear. But there were no presses to let all the world know what the writers thought, and to give intel- lectual power its fair chances with brute. They bequeathed to their countrymen, however, the glory of their memories. They, and time together, have consecrated their native hills, so as they were never before consecrated. Existing, in a manner, no longer as a thing of the common world, the country took an elevation nearer heaven. It lifted up its head in the light of love and poetry, and its tops shine to this day in the reverted eyes of its wanderers. " Fond impious man, thinkst thou yon sanguine cloud Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day? To-morrow he repairs the golden flood, And warms the nations with redoubled ray." Violence is the grown childhood of the world. Its man- hood is intellect and equanimity ; and part of the grace of manhood consists in recollecting the better things of infancy. Edward the First, who made vassals of the Welsh, is now an inferior person in our eyes compared with Howell the legislator. We would rather see Alfred 22 TRANSLATION FROM the Great than the widest-ruling of all the Roman Em- perors. We should expect more in his face. We should recognize in him a greater existing man, a finer contem- porary, or rather a more becoming fellow-creature for the Shakespeares and Bacons : for when we speak of modern times, we mean the intellectual times which such great men have produced for us. Even the smallness of the territory, to which the old Britons were confined, serves to concentrate and make strong the gaze of recol- lection. Mere greatness acts through the medium of pride or fear. It always inflicts a sort of uneasy con- sciousness of the gross nature of its pretensions. Break it, and it resolves its compounds into littleness. You can only contrast it with mere smallness, or pity it because it is not entire. It cannot afford to be otherwise. Its com- pounds have no principle of growth, no power of vol- untary aggrandizement, no charm with which to call associations^ about them. But break a heart into a thou- sand shivers, and every atom shall be reverenced. Love is great enough for itself. Such phrases as the Great King and the Great Nation, even though warranted in point of physical power, are nothing but vanity, and are felt to be so. Both imply a want of individual importance, and by the same reason a want of general humanity. They make the recollections either too vaguely public, or too minutely private. The Persian in Greece, or the Turk in Candia, was angry at being killed by a petty re- publican, or regretted only his harem or his houris ; but the Greek who " dying, thought of sweet Argos," * and Sternitur infelix alieno vulnere, coelumque Adspicit, et dukes moriens reminiscitur Argos. VIRGIL, Lib. 10, v. 781. MILTON INTO WELSH. 339 the Florentine who turned at hearing Dante speak in his native language, and felt his heart live again at "the dialect of Arno's vale," thought of his home and his country as one. It is a feeling connected with this love of country, which most particularly strikes us in the translation of Milton. Here is an author fond of authorship, an author living among Englishmen, and well aware of the universality of their language, and yet he contents his ambition with pro- ducing a long work which none but his countrymen shall understand. It is sufficient for him if he can give them a new source of pleasure. It is enough for the true large- ness of his spirit if he can give a thousand times more than he can receive, happy in obtaining the thanks of the modern Howells and Llewellyns, and in being re- nowned in a country about twice the size of Yorkshire. On opening the book, we are then struck with the delight it must afford to those who have no other lan- guage, and amused with the unreadable face it presents to those who are not acquainted with it. One's familiarity with the original, and utter inability to make out its ex- pounder, make up a very pleasant perplexity. We will quote a passage from both, which in Milton is like the coming of an army with music, and which must present high associations, of another sort, to the Welsh reader. Satan has just numbered his forces : " And now his heart Distends with pride, and hard'ning in his strength Glories : for never, since created man, Met such embodied force, as named with these Could merit more than that small infantry Warr'd on by cranes ; though all the giant brood Of Phlegra with th' heroic race were joiu'd That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side 340 TRANSLATION FROM Mix'd with auxiliar gods ; and what resounds In fable or romance of Uther's son Begirt with British and Armorick knights ; And all who since, baptiz'd or infidel, Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, Or whom Biserta sent from Africk shore, When Charlemain with all his peerage fell By Fontarabia." Yna ymfulchia, Ei galon, a chaledu yn ei nerth Ymorfoledda : canys nid erised Er pan fu dyn, yr ymddygyrchai lu Wrth y rhai hyn teilyngach fyddent nog Oedd y peddytos man a gyrchent gynt Greyrod ; er pe cawri Phlegra oil Yn gyflu ag y glewion 4 gateynt Rhag Thebes a rhag Ilion, cymhlith o Gyfneirthiaid Dduwiau y ddwy blaid ; a pheth A soniant chwedlau am fab Uthr ar gyrch Marchogion Prydain ac Armorica ; Ac wedi hwynt oil, cred neu anghred lu, Yn Aspramont neu Montalbar, neu yn Damasco, neu Marocco, neu Trebisond, Neu o Affric dorf Biserta, yn y drin Wrth Fontarabia, pan y syrthiai lioll Urddolion Carlo Mawr ac efe ei hun. Here are some fine words to the eye : Yna ymfalcKia Ei galon, a chaledu yn ei nerth Ymorfoledda. And again : Marchogton Prydain ac Armorica : And, Yn y drin Wrth Fontarabia, pan y syrthiai holl Urddolion Carlo Mawr ac efe ei hun. Charles the Great keeps up his old triumphs. He always MILTON INTO WELSH. 34! gets well off in every tongue and nation, Charlemain, Carlo Mano, Carolus Magnus. Even his plain mono- syllable, Carl, which Camden tells us is the only appellation on his coins, has a self-sufficing and dominant sound. But we know not that he ever cut a more imperial figure than in this lofty and solemn agnomen of Carlo Mawr. It reminds one of the mountain.* The names that abound in this passage serve only to show to greater effect the obscurity of the rest. Uthr and Prydain we can make out : Damasco and Marocco, and Trebisond, are as fa- miliar to us as the sounds of a trumpet ; but " what the devil," as Brantome would say, is " oedd y pedditos man ? " There happens to be a note to these words ; and the idea of explanation is so united with that of a note, that one looks involuntarily for some instruction on the point. The following is the elucidation. " Odd y pedditos man."] Syniad yw hyn am y ddammeg o ryfel rhwyng y crbrod ac y creyrod." Even the Preface, we find, has nothing in it for us Saxons ; nor the Index either. At last, in the former, we hit upon some Greek letters, and thought that some light was going to break in upon us, when lo ! we know not for what cause, but these Greek letters contained only Welsh words. This was " the unkindest cut of all." But they look like some memorial about a lady, perhaps an affectionate one ; and we return to our gravities. The only remaining observation we have to make, is the * Those rogues the punsters, who will be levelling every thing, and laying every language double, have already got hold of the translation of Mr. Owen Pughe. One of them, the other day, seeing the words "Mr. Tomkins" at the head of an advertisement, and finding that it concerned that late eminent writing-master, said that he was the greatest man that flourished during the last century, and that he ought to be called Penman- Mawr. 342 TRANSLATION FROM MILTON. pleasure with which the great poet himself would have witnessed a translation of his work into this language : there has lately been an Icelandic version of Paradise Lost. This would have gratified him, from feelings com- mon to all writers. The Italian ones were a matter of course. But a translation into old British would have been particularly curious to one, who had meditated an epic poem on the exploits of King Arthur, and had no doubt made himself as well acquainted as -possible with Welsh antiquities, for that purpose. The overflowings of this first intention of his, when it was afterwards diverted, are visible in the little streams of romance which occa- sionally run into its other sphere. Among the subjects also which he has left on record for tragedy, are passages from the same period ; and when he began a History of Britain, he delighted to go as far back as possible, and do justice to Briton as well as Saxon. He speaks of the intended epic poem in various parts of his writings, and talks of his subject with a zeal and even a British sort of partiality, which is as striking as the ardor of his verse. See particularly the famous passage in his Latin poem to Tasso's friend, Manso, where after expressing his wish to meet with so understanding a patron, and to write about the Round Table and Arthur, who "at that moment was preparing his wars under ground," he bursts out in a strain like the clang of metal : Et, O modo spiritus adsit, Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte phalangas I And oh, did spirit come on me but fit for those high wars, I'd crash the Saxon phalanxes beneath the British Mars 1 Perhaps considering what a proud patriot Milton was, notwithstanding all his cosmopolitical qualities, it affords THE BUI.L-FIGHT. 343 some additional explanation to this British part of his enthusiasm, to find that his mother was of Welsh origin. His connections were probably a good deal among the countrymen of her family. His first wife was the daughter of a Powell. That he did not do what he intended, has been regretted by every poet who has alluded to it, from Dryden to Walter Scott We remember a note in the latter's edition of Dryden, where he asks, what would not have been done with such subjects as the Perilous Chapel and the Forbidden Seat ? So much, that being compelled to bring this article to a close, we dare not trust ourselves with dwelling upon it, with fancying a thousandth part of the grand and the gorgeous things, the warlike and the peaceful, the bearded and the vermeil-cheeked, the manly, the supernatural, and the gentle, with which his poem would have burnt brightly down to us, like windows painted by enchantment. THE BULL-FIGHT; OR, THE STORY OF DON ALPHONSO DE MELOS AND THE JEWELLER'S DAUGHTER. VERYBODY has heard of the bull-fights in Spain. The noble animal is brought into an arena to make sport, as Samson was among the Philistines. And truly he presents him- self to one's imagination, as a creature equally superior with Samson to his tormentors ; for the sport which he is brought in to furnish, is that of being mur- dered. The poor beast is not actuated by a perverse will, 344 THE BULL-FIGHT. and by a brutality which is deliberate. He does but obey to the last the just feelings of his nature. He would not be forced to revenge himself, if he could help it. He would fain return to the sweet meadow and the fresh air, but his tyrants will not let him. He is stung with arrows, goaded and pierced with javelins, hewn at with swords, beset with all the devilries of horror and astonishment that can ex- asperate him into madness ; and the tormentors themselves feel that he is in the right, if he can but give bloody deaths to his bloody assassins. The worst of it is, that some of these assassins, who are carried away by custom, are per- sons who are otherwise among the best in the kingdom. They err from that very love of sympathy, and of the ad- miration of their fellows, which should have been employed to teach them better. The excuse for this diabolical pastime is, that it keeps up old Spanish qualities to their height, and prevents the nation from becoming effeminate. To what purpose ? And in how many instances ? Are not the Spanish nobility the most degenerate in Europe ? Has not its court, for three generations, been a scandal and a burlesque ? and would any other nation in Christendom consent to be made the puppets of such superiors ? What could Spain have done against France without England ? What have all its bull-fights, and all its other barbarities, done for it, to save it from the shame of being the feeblest and most supersti- tious of European communities, and of having no voice in the affairs of the world ? Poor foolish Matadore ! Poor, idle illiterate, unreflect- ing cavallero ! that is to say, " horseman ! " which, by the noble power or privilege of riding a horse (a thing that any groom can do in any decent country), came to mean " gen- tleman ! " (and no other country has derived its idea of a THE BULL-FIGHT. 345 gentleman from that of a centaur), can you risk your life for nothing better than this ? Must you stake wife, chil- dren, mistress, father and mother, friends, fortune, love, and all which all of them may bring you, at no higher price than the power of having it said you are a better man than the butcher ? Is there no sacred cause of country to fight for ? No tyrant to oppose ? No doctrine worth martyrdom ? that you must needs, at the hazard of death and agony, set the only wits or the best qualities you possess on outdoing the greatest fools and ruffians in your city ? And can you wonder that your country has no cause which it can stand to without help, or to any purpose ? that your tyrants are cruel and laugh at you ? and that your very wives and mistresses (for the most part) think there is nothing better in the world than a flaring show and a brutal sensation ? Bull-fights are going on now, and bull-fights were going on in the wretched time of King Charles the Second, of the House of Austria, whose very aspect seemed ominous of the disasters about to befall his country ; for his face was very long, his lips very thick, his mouth very wide, his nose very hooked, and he had no calves to his legs, and no brains in his skull. His clemency consisted in letting assassins go, because passion was uncontrollable ; and his wit, in sending old lords to stand in the rain, because they intimated that it would be their death. However, he was a good-natured man, as times went, especially for a King of Spain ; and it is not of public disasters that we are to speak, but of the misery that befell two lovers in his day, in consequence of these detestable bull-fights. Don Alphonso de Melos, a young gentleman of some five-and-twenty years of age, was the son of one of those 346 THE BULL-FIGHT. Titulados of Castile, more proud than rich, of whom it was maliciously said, that " before they were made lords, they didn't dine ; and after they were made lords, they didn't sup." He was, however, a very good kind of man, not too poor to give his sons good educations ; and of his second son, Alphonso, the richest grandee might have been proud ; for a better or pleasanter youth, or one of greater good sense, conventionalisms apart, had never ventured his life in a bull-fight, which he had done half a dozen times. He was, moreover, a very pretty singer ; and it was even said, that he not only composed the music for his serenades, but that he wrote verses for them equal to those of Gar- cilaso. So, at least, thought the young lady to whom they were sent, and who used to devour them with her eyes, till her very breath failed her, and she could not speak for delight. Poor, loving Lucinda ! We call her poor, though she was at that minute one of the richest as well as happiest maidens in Madrid ; and we speak of her as a young lady, for such she was in breeding and manners, and as such the very grandees treated her, as far as they could, though she was only the daughter of a famous jeweller, who had supplied half the great people with carcanets and rings. Her father was dead : her mother too ; she was under the care of guardians ; but Alphonso de Melos had loved her more than a year ; had loved her with a real love, even though he wanted her money ; would, in fact, have thrown her money to the dogs, rather than have ceased to love her ; such a treasure he had found in the very fact of his passion. Their marriage was to take place within the month ; and as the lady was so rich, and the lover, how- ever noble otherwise, was only of the lowest or least privileged order of nobility (a class who had the misfor- THE BULL-FIGHT. 347 tune of not being able to wear their hats in the king's pres- ence, unless his majesty expressly desired it), the loftiest grandees, who would have been but too happy to marry the lovely heiress, had her father been anything but a mer- chant, thought that the match was not only pardonable in the young gentleman, but in a sort of way noticeable, and even in some measure to be smilingly winked at and en- couraged ; nay, perhaps, envied ; especially as the future husband was generous, and had a turn for making presents, and for sitting at the head of a festive table. Suddenly, therefore, appeared some of the finest emeralds and sap- phires in the world upon the fingers of counts and mar- quises, whose jewels had hitherto been of doubtful value ; and no little sensation was made, on the gravest and most dignified of the old nobility, by a certain grandee, remark- able for his sense of the proprieties, who had discovered " serious reasons for thinking " that the supposed jeweller's offspring was a natural daughter of a late prince of the blood. Be this as it may, Don Alphonso presented himself one morning, as usual, before his mistress, and after an inter- change of transports, such as may be imagined between two such lovers, about to be joined for ever, informed her, that one only thing more was now remaining to be done, and then in the course of three mornings they would be living in the same house. " And what is that ? " said Lucinda, the tears rushing into her eyes for excess of adoring happiness. " Only the bull-fight," said the lover, affecting as much indifference, as he could affect in anything when speaking with his eyes on hers. But he could not speak it in quite the tone he wished. "The bull-fight ! " scarcely ejaculated his mistress, turn- THE BULL-FIGHT. ing pale. " Oh, Alphonso ! you have fought and conquered in a dozen ; and you will not quit me, now that we can be so often together ? Besides " And here her breath began already to fail her. But Alphonso showed her, or tried to show her, how he must inevitably attend the bull-fight. " Honor demanded it ; custom ; everything that was expected of him ; " his mistress herself, who would "otherwise despise him." His mistress fainted away. She fell, a death-like burden, into his arms. When she came to herself, she wept, entreated, implored, tried even with pathetic gayety to rally and be pleasant ; then again wept ; then argued, and for the first time in her life was a logician, pressing his hand, and saying with a sudden force of conviction, " But hear me ; " then begged again ; then kissed him like a bride ; reposed on him like a wife ; did everything that was becoming and beautiful, and said everything but an angry word ; nay, would have dared perhaps to pretend to say even that, had she thought of it ; but she was not of an angry kind, or of any kind but the loving, and how was the thought to enter her head ? Entire love is a worship, and cannot be angry. The heart of the lover openly and fondly sympathized with that of his poor mistress ; and, secretly, it felt more even than it showed. Not that Don Alphonso feared for consequences, though he had not been without pangs and thoughts of possibilities, even in regard to those ; for to say nothing of the danger of the sport in ordinary, the chief reason of his being unpersuadable in the present instance was a report that the animals to be encountered were of more than ordinary ferocity ; so that the cavalleros who were expected to be foremost in the lists in general, now felt themselves to be particularly called on to make THE BULL-FIGHT. 349 their appearance, at the hazard of an alternative too dread- ful for the greatest valor to risk. The final argument which he used with his mistress was, the very excess of that love, and the very position in which it stood at that bridal moment, to which he in vain appealed. He showed how it had ever and irremediably been the custom to estimate the fighter's love by the meas- ure of his courage ; the more " apparent " the risk (for he pretended to laugh at any real danger), the greater the evidence of passion and the honor done to the lady ; and so, after many more words and tears, the honor was to be done accordingly, grievously against her will, and custom triumphed. Custom ! That " little thing," as the people called it to the philosopher. "That great and terrible thing," as the philosopher justly thought it. To show how secure he was, and how securer still it would render him, he made her promise to be there ; and she required little asking : for a thought came into her head, which made her pray with secret and sudden earnestness to the Virgin ; and the same thought enabled her to give him final looks, not only of resigned lovingness, but of a sort of cheered composure ; for, now that she saw there was no remedy, she would not make the worst of his resolve, and so they parted. How differently from when they met ! and how dread- fully to be again brought together ! The day has arrived ; the great square has been duly set out ; the sand, to receive the blood, is spread over it ; the barricadoes and balconies (the boxes) are all right ; the king and his nobles are there ; Don Alphonso and his Lucinda are there also ; he, in his place on the square, on horse- back, with his attendants behind him, and the door out of 35O THE BULL-FIGHT. which the bull is to come, in front ; she, where he will be- hold her before long, though not in the box to which he has been raising his eyes. All the gentlemen who are to fight the bulls, each in his turn, and who, like Alphonso, are dressed in black, with plumes of white feathers on their heads, and scarfs of different colors round the body, have ridden round the lists a quarter of an hour ago, to salute the ladies of their acquaintance ; and all is still and wait- ing. The whole scene is gorgeous with tapestries, and gold, and jewels. It is a theatre in which pomp and pleas- ure are sitting in a thousand human shapes to behold a cruel spectacle. The trumpets sound ; crashes of other music succeed ; the door of the stable opens ; and the noble creature, the bull, makes his appearance, standing still awhile, and looking as it were with a confused composure before him. Sometimes when the animal first comes forth, it rushes after the horseman who has opened the door, and who has rushed away from the mood in which it has shown itself. But the bull on this occasion was one that, from the very perfection of his strength, awaited provoking. He soon has it. Light, agile footmen, who are there on pur- pose, vex him with darts and arrows, garnished with paper set on fire. He begins by pursuing them hither and thither, they escaping by all the arts of cloaks and hats thrown on the ground, and deceiving figures of pasteboard. Soon he is irritated extremely ; he stoops his sullen head to toss ; he raises it, with his eyes on fire, to kick and trample ; he bellows ; he rages ; he grows mad. His breath gathers like a thick mist about his head. He gal- lops, amidst cries of men and women, franticly around the square, like a racer, following and followed by his tor- mentors ; he tears the horses with his horns ; he disem- THE BULL-FIGHT. 351 bowels them ; he tosses the howling dogs that are let loose on him ; he leaps and shivers in the air like a very stag or goat. His huge body is nothing to him in the rage and might of his agony. For Alphonso, who had purposely got in his way to shorten his Lucinda's misery (knowing her surely to be there, though he has never seen her), has gashed the bull across the eyes with his sword, and pierced him twice with the javelins furnished him by his attendants. Half blinded with the blood, and yet rushing at him, it should seem, with sure and final aim of his dreadful head, the creature is just upon him, when a blow from a negro who is helping one of the pages, turns him distractedly in that new direction, and he strikes down, not the negro, but the youthful, and in truth wholly frightened and helpless, page. The page, in falling, loses his cap, from which there flows a profusion of woman's hair, and Alphonso knows it on the instant. He leaps off his horse, and would have shrieked, would have roared out with horror ; but something which seemed to wrench and twist round his very being within him, prevented it, and in a sort of stifled and almost meek voice, he could only sobbingly articulate the word, " Lucinda ! " But in an instant he rose out of that self- pity into frenzy ; he hacked wildly at the bull, which was now spinning as wildly round ; and though the assembly rose, crying out, and the king bade the brute be dispatched, which was done by a thrust in the spine by those who knew the trick, (ah ! why did they not do it before ?) the poor youth has fallen, not far from his Lucinda, gored alike with herself to death, though neither of them yet expiring. As recovery was pronounced hopeless, and the deaths of the lovers close at hand, they were both carried into 35 2 THE BULL-FIGHT. the nearest house, and laid, as the nature of the place required, on the same bed. And, indeed, as it turned out, nothing could be more fitting. Great and sorrowful was the throng in the room : some of the greatest nobles were there, and a sorrowing message was brought from the king. Had the lovers been princes, their poor insensible faces could not have been watched with greater pity and respect. At length they opened their eyes, one after the other, to wonder to suffer to discover each otherwhere they lay and to weep from abundance of wretchedness, and from the difficulty of speaking. They attemped to make a movement towards each other, but could not even raise an arm. Lucinda tried to speak, but could only sigh and attempt to smile. Don Alphonso said at last, half sobbing, looking with his languid eyes on her kind and patient face " She does not reproach me, even now." They both wept afresh at this, but his mistress looked at him with such unutterable love and fondness, making, at the same time, some little ineffectual movements of her hand, that the good old Duke de Linares said, " She wishes to put her arm over him ; and he too see his arm over her." Tenderly, and with the softest caution, were their arms put accordingly ; and then, in spite of their anguish, the good Duke said, " Marry them yet." And the priest opened his book, and well as he could speak for sympathy, or they seem to answer to his words, he married them ; and thus in a few moments, from excess of mingled agony and joy, with their arms on one another, and smil- ing as they shut their eyes their spirits passed away from them, and they died. LOVE AND WILL. 353 LOVE AND WILL. JINDING, upon inquiry, that Steele's little periodical paper, called " The Lover," is still less known than we supposed, we shall here give some account of it, and then pro- ceed to some other reflections to which it has given rise. We have already intimated,* that it was one of the numerous publications of the kind to which Steele's necessities and lively impulses united gave birth, and which, for similar reasons, were speedily brought to a close. Ton- son collected the forty papers of which it consisted into a duodecimo volume, in which he included a political paper entitled " The Reader," which reached only its ninth number ; and this is the book now before us. The dedi- cation to Garth is surmounted by one of those rude little wood-cuts or copperplates, half flower and half figure, formerly, we believe, called head-pieces (perhaps still so, otherwise we know not the technical word). It presents us with Sir Samuel's coats of arms (two lions passant gardant between three-cross crosslets) supported, or rather attended, by two Cupids : one with a lyre for the doctor's poetry, and the other holding his professional emblem, the staff of .^Esculapius. The first number is, in like manner, graced with a head of Queen Anne, and so is that of " The Reader." We reckon upon our own reader's not being averse to the mention of these amenities, partly from his love of anything connected with books, and * In an article on "Garth, Physicians, and Love-Letters," in "Men, Women, and Books." ED. 23 354 LOVE AND WILL. partly because they help to show the manners and feel- ings of the times ; and we confess we have another regard for them ourselves, owing to school recollections, and to the minutes of bliss we snatched, during the hardness of our tasks, from those figures of Venuses and Amphitrites, which sail along the tops of Ovid and other classics in the edition of Mattaire. Steele, whether as an attraction, or a blind (if the latter, it was the most transparent of all blinds), puts forth his "Lover," as "written in imitation of the 'Tatler.'" He supposes himself to be one " Marmaduke Myrtle," a ten- der-hearted and speculative gentleman " about town," crossed in love, assisted in his lucubrations by four others, who have met with various good or ill success in their honorable passion for some lady, particularly one Mr. Severn, a young gentleman who is his "hero," and whom he describes in the most exquisite manner of the " Tat- ler," as one that treats every woman of a " certain age " so respectfully, " that in his company she can never give herself the compunction of having lost anything which made her agreeable." Of this hero, however, we hear nothing further but in one paper, and the author makes but the like mention of one of his other assistants. In short, beautiful as some of the papers are, and touched with equal knowledge of the world and delicacy of feeling, it did not "take," and Steele soon got tired. It went upon too exclusive a subject, and professed too open an intention of discountenancing the town ideas of love, to be acceptable to those who could have brought a man of wit his greatest number of readers ; while, on the other hand, Steele had such a healthy and unhypocritical sense of the corporeal as well as spiritual part of the passion, that he offended such of his readers as had chosen to take LOVE AND WILL. 355 him for a kind of sermonizer on love. In one of his papers is an account of an accident which happened to a young lady on horseback in the cross-country road, between Hampstead and Highgate, and which with an exquisite mixture of playfulness and delicacy, he represented as furnishing a sort of compulsory, but charming, reason why the young gentleman who happened to be with her was to be accepted as her husband. With this anecdote some " heavy rogue," as he truly calls him in a contem- porary publication, chose to pick one of those quarrels which, by the degrading turn of their thoughts and the stupidity of their ostentation, create the indecency of which they complain ; and this, no doubt, did him a disservice with the dull and commonplace, and added to the per- plexity arising from his own mixed pretensions. To com- plete his causes of failure, he was a zealous politician, and, before he had written a dozen papers, could not help falling foul of the Tories ; which in a gentleman so ab- sorbed in the belle passion as Mr. Myrtle, was certainly not so well, and must have frightened such of his fair readers as patched their cheeks on the Tory side, and could only fall in love on high-church principles.* * About the Middle of Last Winter I went to see an Opera at the Theatre in the Haymarket, where I could but take notice of two Parties of very fine Women, that had placed themselves in the Opposite Side-Boxes, and seemed drawn up in a kind of Battle- Array one against another. After a short Survey of them, I found they were Patched differently ; the Faces on one Hand being spotted on the Right side of the Forehead, and those upon the other on the Left. I quickly perceived that they cast hostile Glances upon one another ; and that their Patches were placed in those different Situations, as Party-Sig- nals to distinguish Friends from Foes. In the Middle-Boxes, between those two opposite Bodies, were several Ladies who patched indifferently on both Sides of their Faces, and seemed to sit there with no other Intention but to see the Opera. Upon inquiry I found that the Body of the Amazons on my Right Hand, were Whigs, and those on my Left, Tories ; And that those who had 356 LOVE AND WILL. In our last number, we extracted from this book two charmingly pathetic letters, which brought the reader ac- quainted with a pair of real lovers.* It shall now furnish us with a tragedy of a different sort, though pretending to be equally founded on love, and (as the paragraph adver- tisements say) of " startling interest." Steele says he had it from a gentleman who was " an eye-witness of several parts of it." The relief which the feelings experienced amidst the terrors of the former story arose from the sweetness of its affections. In the present, the love is of as bitter a sort as the catastrophe, but consoles us by driving matters to a pitch of the ludicrous in the very excess of its will. The heroine is a great spoiled child, who insists upon tearing her lover's breast open, and taking him with her into the other world, just as a smaller one might its drum. "About ten years ago," says Steele, "there lived at Vienna a German count, -who had long entertained a secret amour with a young lady of a considerable family. After a correspondence of gallantries, which had lasted two or three years, the father of the young count, whose family was reduced to a low condition, found out a very advantageous match for him ; and made his son sensible, that he ought in common prudence to close with it. The count, upon the first opportunity, acquainted his mistress very fairly with what had passed, and laid the whole mat- placed themselves in the Middle-Boxes were a Neutral Party, whose Faces had not yet declared themselves. These last, however, as I afterwards found, di- minished daily, and took their Party with one Side or the other ; inasmuch as that I observed, in several of them, the Patches which were before dispersed equally, are now all gone over to the Whig or Tory Side of the Face. AD- DISON, The Spectator, No. 81. ED. * See the article on "Garth, Physicians, and Love-Letters, " in "Men, Women, and Books." ED LOVE AND WILL. 357 ter before her with such freedom and openness of heart, that she seemingly consented to it. She only desired of him that they might have one meeting more, before they parted for ever. The place appointed for this their meet- ing was a grove, which stands at a little distance from the town. They conversed together in this place some time, when on a sudden the lady pulled out a pocket-pistol, and shot her lover into the heart, so that he immediately fell dead at her feet. She then returned to her father's house, telling every one she met what she had done. Her friends, upon hearing her story, would have found out means for her to make her escape ; but she told them she had killed her dear count, because she could not live without him ; and that, for the same reason, she was resolved to follow him by whatever way justice should determine. She was soon seized, but she avowed her guilt ; rejected all excuses that were made in her favor, and only begged that her exe- cution might be speedy. She was sentenced to have her head cut off, and was apprehensive of nothing but that the interest of her friends would obtain a pardon for her. When the confessor approached her, she asked him where he thought was the soul of her dead count. He replied that his case was very dangerous, considering the circum- stances in which he died. Upon this so desperate was her frenzy, that she bid him leave her, for that she was resolved to go to the same place where the count was. The priest was forced to give her better hopes for the deceased, from considerations that he was upon the point of breaking off so criminal a commerce, and leading a new life, before he could bring her mind into a temper fit for one who was so near her end. Upon the day of her execution she dressed herself in all her ornaments, and walked toward the scaffold more like a bride than a con- LOVE AND WILL. demned criminal. My friend tells me that he saw her placed in the chair, according to the custom of that place, where, after having stretched out her neck with an air of joy, she called upon the name of the count, which was the appointed signal for the executioner, who, with a single blow of his sword, severed her head from her body." What a woman ! and what a love, to stick to the poor devil of a count to all eternity ! very lucky for him was it, that she could not settle matters in the next world with the same tragical nonchalance as in this ! though, in the excess of her vanity, she seems to have taken for granted that she could ; and that the angels were all to tremble before her, as the poor foolish people had been accus- tomed to do in her father's house. For, observe, she reckons confidently upon going to heaven, instead " of the other way." The very mention of the latter puts her in a frenzy, to which the priest himself is obliged to accommo- date his last offices, before he can bring her mind to a temper fit to die in. It is impossible her "dear count" can go to the devil, precisely because she has made up her mind to go elsewhere ; such an erroneous proceed- ing is not to be thought of : she has taken him from his new mistress (upon the contrast of whose mild manners he had just been hugging himself) has given him his directions with a pocket-pistol which way to go, as much as to say, " There, get you along first," and then sets out for heaven after him by the execution-stage, shaking her loving fist towards the stars, and resolved to have him all to herself, till time and termagancy shall be no more ! This is, perhaps, the most extraordinary sample on record of the modesty and tenderness of self-will of the having the "reciprocity" (as the Irishman said) "all on one side." I love you, says the lady, therefore you LOVE AND WILL. 359 must love me ; or it is no matter whether you do or not, compared with my treating you as if you did, and tor- menting you if you don't. You are very amiable, there- fore be so to me above anybody else, whether I am amiable or not. You have a will and wishes of your own, perhaps, as well as other people ; but yours and all other people's must of course give way to mine ; for that is but reason- able : all are fools and scoundrels who " offer to believe otherwise," and I could knock them all on the head, if I cared for them enough to do so ; but that is a favor which I reserve for yourself. So there (shoots him through the body) and now, with this new wound in your heart, come you along with me, and be delighted with me and my com- pany, world without end ! To go to the other extreme of lovely generosity, how different is the wish expressed by Shakespeare, in the con- templation of his own death : of Shakespeare himself, ob- serve not of the dramatist speaking in the person of another, but of the great poet and human being speaking in his own person of the creator of the characters of Imogen and Desdemona and of the man who could create those characters, because he felt as he spoke in uttering these sentiments. How else, indeed, could he so have spoken them? Observe the simple words the pure and daring trust in the belief of his reader the great and good mind, that in spite of its having run the whole round of experience, or rather because it had done so, could retain feelings so enthusiastic and generous above all worldly price. " No longer mourn for me when I am dead, Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell : Nay, if you read this LINE, remember not 360 LOVE AND WILL. The hand that writ it ; FOR I LOVE YOU so, THAT I IN YOUR SWEET THOUGHTS WOULD BE FORGOT, IF THINKING ON ME THEN SHOULD MAKE YOU WOE. Oh, if, (I say), you look upon this verse, When I, perhaps, compounded am with clay, Do not so imich as my poor name rehearse, But let your love even -with my life decay ; Lest the wise world should look into your moan, And mock you with me after I am gone." What beautiful writing ! What common, every-day words made divine by love ! But it may be said that the poet may have written all this, without exactly feeling what he said ; that other poets have done as much who were notoriously no very admirable lovers ; that it is imagina- tion an art fiction. Do not believe it. Put no faith in the envy, or the want of faith, that thus attempts to level performance with pretension. You might as well proclaim truth to be a lie. No poets have so written who have not thoroughly felt what they professed to feel. If they had, if incom- pleteness could thus be completeness, we should have had a thousand Shakespeares instead of one a thousand Chaucers, a thousand Homers, a thousand Burnses for we do not mean to say that in every instance the very greatest genius must accompany the truest feeling. It is sufficient that there is entire truth in the feeling to be ex- pressed, and genius enough to express that truth. " Here's a health to ane I lo'e dear ! Here's a health to ane I lo'e dear ! Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, A nd soft as their parting teat Jessy \ " Although thou maun never be mine, Although even hope is denied, 'Tis sweeter for thee despairing, Than aught in the world beside." And so he goes on through the whole of that exquisite LOVE AND WILL. 361 song, the last but one that he wrote (so unwitherable is the heart of a true poet). Hear the verse of another : " Yestreen when to the trembling string, The dance gaed through the lighted ha', To thee my fancy took its wing, I sat, but neither heard nor saw. Though this was fair and that was braw, And you the boast of a' the town, / sigh'd, and said among them a* : ' Ye are na Mary Morrison.' 1 " And again in a lighter strain, " The deil himself he could na scaith Whatever wad belang thee ; He 'd look into thy bonnie face, A nd say, ' I canna ivrang theeJ " Burns and Ariosto had here hit upon the same thought, because they had received the same truthful impression of the power of a beautiful face to turn away from injury. Stese la mano in quella chioma d'oro, E strasimollo a se con violensa ; Ma come gli occhi a quel bel velto mise, Gli ne venne pietade, e non Puccise. ORLANDO FURIOSO, Canto 19. "The warrior thrust his hand into those locks of gold, and fiercely dragged back the youth ; but when he set eyes on that sweet face, pity came into his heart, and he did not kill him." Which Mr. Hoole (the most presump- tuous of translators, but the most pardonable in his pre- sumption, because the dullest), thus defaces, as if no such feeling had existed. (It should be mentioned that the youth had been begging a respite from death, in order to bury his prince's body ; otherwise the reader would see no reason at all for his being spared !) " Zerbino soon, his wrath decreasing, felt His manly soul with love and pity melt /' ' 362 LOVE AND WILL. Not a word of the face ! not a word of the dragging back, nor the locks of gold, nor the whole beautiful picture ! (When will the booksellers cease to give us editions of this absurd versifier ?) We have not at hand the old translation of Sir John Harrington (better, at all events, than Hoole's), nor the new one by Mr. Stewart Rose, who is a man full of sympathy with his species, and therefore has doubtless loved this passage as it deserves.* What has made Marot, almost the only French poet till the days of Beranger, that an Englishman or Italian can read with thorough faith in his faith, but such passages as the following, simple and straightforward as those of Shakespeare : " Ou sont ces yeux, lesqiiels me regardozent Souvent en ris, souvent avecques larmes ? Ou sont les mots, qui tant ni ont fait d'alarmes ; Ou est la bouche aussi qui ni appaisoit, Quand tant defois et si bien me baisoit ? " " Where are those eyes which used to look at me, often in smiles, often with tears? Where are the words which made my heart beat so? Where the mouth which gave me peace, when it kissed me so often and so well ? " Compared with such writing as this, and some passages in their very greatest dramatic poets and Madame des Houlieres, the whole French Parnassus up to the present * Here is Mr. Rose's version of the passage : " In furious heat, he springs upon Medore, Exclaiming, ' Thou of this shalt bear the pain." One hand he in his locks of golden ore Enwreathes, and drags him to himself amain ; But, as his eyes that beauteous face survey, Takes pity on the boy, and does not slay." Hunt, however, in the preface to the " Stories from the Italian Poets," says that although Rose was a man of wit and a scholar, " he has undoubtedly turned the ease and animation of Ariostointo inversion and insipidity." ED. LOVE AND WILL. 363 day, in their most serious moments, seem never to have had a thorough belief in what they were saying, apart from that curse of all half-performance, the wish to produce an effect ! They could not love a woman, without beseeching some by-standers to admire them ! nor go into solitude itself, unaccompanied by a pocket-mirror to adjust their wigs in ! It is thus, whether in word or deed, that the something true is spoiled by the something impertinent something that does not belong to it. The writer, who is only half in earnest, wishes to produce a whole true effect, and of course cannot do it, any more than half a motive is suffi- cient for what is wholly to be moved. The love that is not wholly love pieces itself out with vanity, with will, with fury, perhaps is more than half made up of it, and yet ex- pects wholly to be loved. Nay, the more expects it in pro- portion as it is violent instead of strong, and demands instead of deserves. It is for this reason we ought always to be cautious how we bestow our sympathy on the pro- fession of one passion, while the .demand is evidently made us by another. Even in those unhappy cases of suicide, for instance, which so frequently appear in the newspapers, how manifest is it that, in nine cases out of ten, the claim is of very equivocal worth indeed ! The hasty pity of society (we are the last to quarrel with it we would only have it not misbestowed) is too apt to take for granted, that so violent an end proves whatsoever is charged against the party living ; whereas, all which it unanswerably proves, is the violence (one way or other) of the suicide's feelings ; and it would be generally found, we suspect, on due inquiry, that this was the very feature in the character which produced the alienation on the part of the supposed offender. Often do these poor wretches, 364 LOVE AND WILL. whether male or female, threaten the catastrophe long beforehand, in order to substitute their will for that of the person threatened. Often do they declare, in loud sullen tones, their determination to repeat the attempt when it is prevented. Sometimes they abuse the people that help them out of it, and not seldom are suicides committed out of avowed spite and revenge, and for the most trivial con- tradiction. We have read of a girl who threw herself into the water because her sister had refused her some more bread and butter ! All this has nothing to do with so gentle, and generous, and enduring, and sweet-seeing a passion as love ; which, like charity, makes the best of what it cannot help, tends to repose on all loving aids and patiences, and desires above everything the happiness of its object not indeed as its every-day wish (that would be too much to expect of human nature), but certainly as its preference in the last resort, if it is to bequeath miser- able or consolatory thoughts to its object. " For I love you so, That I in your thoughts would be forgot, If thinking on me then should make you woe." Not that he desired to be forgot ; oh no, he desired infinitely to be remembered, but not " If thinking on me then should make you woe." In that case he desired that the object of his love, whom he would fain think of in his grave to his last dust, should clean forget that ever there was such a being as one Will- iam Shakespeare, whose love had brought tears into her eyes, and with whose memory she might associate, per- haps, something to blame in her own treatment of him. The newspapers now and then give an account, some- times touching, sometimes provoking, sometimes as ludi- crous as a scene in a farce, of some enamored youth LOVE AND WILL. 365 or female who follows the beloved object about with an inveteracy of passion that leaves it no repose, some romantic post-boy or milkmaid that besets the other's door or person, and at length brings the neighbors about it, to the destruction of business on both sides, and some- times of the windows. In proportion to the violence or gentleness of the suffering in these cases, you may know whether there is any real love or otherwise. If there is, the object is pursued in so much the better taste accord- ingly, and the pursuer is content with eternal gazing and a reasonable quantum of the self-pity of tears : in short, the love may be altogether true in that case, however fan- tastically set ; for love is in the heart and imagination of the lover, and not of necessity founded on real merit in the object. But if there is no real love, but simply a childish or fierce desire of having " one's way," then the tears, the noise, the visitations, are violent accordingly, and the hap- piness of the object is clearly of no importance whatever in the persecutor's eyes, compared with the ridiculous assumption that it must and shall arise from nothing but the happiness of the persecutor ! of that sole and modest individual, who is taking such pains to show an utter unfitness for the task of making happy. Love, in every mind, is colored by the prevailing passion or quality of that mind ; and in proportion as the latter is more or less, so is the love. Thus pride will fall in love (as far as it can) on account of something to be proud of in the object ; mere animal passion for mere animal beauty ; sentiment with sentiment ; and a violent will shall ardently desire to become master or mistress of a char- acter totally the reverse of itself, out of the same will and pleasure with which it shall please it to desire anything else that is best of its kind, and the attainment of which 366 LOVE AND WILL. is a confirmation of power. " How dearly I love my own sweet Will /" said the lady in the epigram ; and the hus- band doubted her not. " I would rather see my husband dead, than guilty of the crime of infidelity," said a lady of what has been happily termed "outrageous virtue."* It was the selfish Abelard who made Eloisa shut herself up in a convent, when she could no longer be his property. The stupid monster Caligula delighted to handle the little throat of his favorite wife Caesonia, and to think of the power which his throne gave him to order it to be cut off, wishing that all Rome had but one such throat, that he might enjoy the greater idea in the less. Henry VIII., the beast of prosperity, did cut off his wife's, nay, two of them ; and was within an ace of doing as much for a third ; in the last instance, for the lady's differing with him in theology ! Yet all these people, when it suited them, thought themselves in love ; and they were so after their respective fashions ; that is to say, with their own "sweet will." It is impossible for such natures to love anybody but themselves. When the question comes, which is to get the better, the sense of their own self- importance, or the happiness of the supposed beloved object, down goes the happiness, like a thing kicked and despised. Its very worth becomes an aggravation of the offence. The despot's charming little beauty is sent to the scaffold. The heart that would have endeared thou- sands is thrust into the nunnery, "Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon." God forbid, for our own sakes as well as theirs, that any one's fellow-creatures should be denied such merits or * By Steele : " Will Honeycomb calls these over-offended Ladies, the Outrageously Virtuous." The Spectator, No. 266. ED. LOVE AND WILL. 367 excuses as they may have, let their natures otherwise be as provoking, or even revolting, as they may much less that all impulses to suicide should be confounded, and the fascinated terror of a gentle mind like Cowper's be dealt with like vulgar rage and resentment, or the 'desperation of a Nero. The Neros and Henrys themselves were the growth of circumstances. Many a disturber of the peace of private life nay, all must have had causes for being what they are, apart from their full-grown wills and mis- takes ; otherwise there would be no such things in the world as parents and ancestors, and educations and breed- ings, and nurses, and imperfect laws, and all that makes society what it is a commonplace so obvious, that it would be ridiculous to repeat it, did not intelligent people sometimes startle you with arguing as if the case was otherwise, only showing, all the while, one of the conse- quences of their own breeding, and thus confirming every word they think they are refuting. Our heroine who mur- dered her " dear count," had an energy which might have been turned to better purpose ; she evinced a taste for a companionship better than her own (for we may suppose the count to have had no mean attractions that way) ; and, at all events, she did not mind going through pain and death, to secure, as she thought, the society of another fellow-creature. There was probably no little need of our charity on the count's own part, if we knew all the story. Where indeed is the fellow-creature who shall say he has none ? And how ill would it become those whose need is the least, to be finally bitter against such as have had the misfortune to want more. The editor of the new " Pic- torial Edition " of Shakspere (by the way, we adopt with him that new spelling of the name, happy to do the least and most trivial thing as Shakspere himself appears to 368 LOVE AND WILL. have done it) has well defended the great poet from the strange charge brought against him of being too chari- table. The sky might as well be accused of bending too equally " over all." If the very representative of Nature must not be as charitable as he is inclined to be, then would it be no inclination of Nature herself; and what an awful consideration for us, in the last resort, would that be ! But the great mother is "justified of her children ; " and no depth of the human heart was ever sounded to its extreme point, in which the rod did not pierce through sweet waters as well as through stubborn clay. Cambridge : Press of John Wilson & Son. The American Publishers of WILLIAM MORRIS'S Books, desirous of preserving the many good things which the critics have said about " The Earthly Paradise," as well as to aid in spreading the fame of the " rising poet," have collected these criti- cisms, a few of the many " Tributes " of the English and American press. TRIBUTES WILLIAM MORRIS, ON THE PUBLICATION OF THE EARTHLT PARADISE. 1 It is a very good office one man does another, when he tells him the manner of his being pleased." SIR RICHARD STEELS. The "TRIBUTES," a pamphlet of 36 pages, will be mailed free to any address by the publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. " The Earthly Paradise, by Mr. Morris, one of the few great poems of our cen- tury." JOHN G. WHITTIER. " The largest of the late crop of poets." JOHN G. SAXE. " Much the most notable poem recently published." GEO. W. CURTIS. " The world is richer by a new poet, a genuine born maker and singer." RICH- ARD GRANT WHITE. " It brings back the golden age of poetry, and is most delicious reading." HAR- RIET PRESCOTT SFOFFORD. "Poems of rare and fresh excellence." CHARLES E. NORTON. " Since Chaucer, the most truly imaginative (narrative) poet that has appeared." PAUL H. HAYNE. " Every page increases the wonderful charm of the poem." HARRIET McEwEN KIMBALL. " Mr. Morris has made a bold and successful step towards a return to the simplicity and strength of nature, against which our poets have resolutely closed their eyes for many a day." GEO. H. BOKER. " Like a reawakening of Spenser, in its long, sweet, meandering rhythms, and like a resurrection of the Greek gods themselves, in the life-like beauty with which the familiar stories of mythology are told." LUCY LARCOM. Mr. MORRIS'S Poems are published in America by arrangement with him, and he receives a stated copyright on all sold. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JASON. A POEM, in one volume, i6mo, cloth. Price, $1.50. THE EARTHLT PARADISE. A POEM. ^One 1 VcZn"' i Comprising March, April, May, June, July, and August. In OneVo^ume. | Com P risin September, October, and November. PART IV. j Comprising December, January, and February. In One Volume. ) (In Preparation.) There are two editions of the Earthly Paradise : The crown 8vo (English) Edition, green vellum cloth, gilt top. Price $3.00. The \6rno Edition, vellum cloth, gilt top. Price $2.25. Sold by all booksellers everywhere, or mailed, post paid, on receipt of the advertised price, by the publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. By the same Author, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JASON, A POEM IN 17 BOOKS, In one volume, i6mo, cloth, price $ 1.50. " Morris's ' Jason ' is in the purest, simplest, most idiomatic English ; full of freshness, full of life, vivid in landscape, vivid in human action, worth reading at the cost of many leisure hours even to a busy man." The Times. " Not many living Englishmen have written so good a poem on such a scale. Mr. Morris is a most skilful narrator, full of the sweet garrulity proper to the olden time and those that love it." The Guardian. "Mr. Morris has displayed poetic qualities rare in themselves, and especially rare in these days. We should have to go back for a quarter of a century to find any labor of equal pretension that exhibits the same amount of fortitude in the writer and the same intimate knowledge of all that relates to his theme." The A then&um. " 'The Life and Death of Jason ' is a fine poem, which never flags in interest for a single line, and is full of music, life, and clear vision. The freshness of the early world ' has taken complete possession of Mr. Morris as he wrote." The Spectator. " In all the noble roll of our poets there has been since Chaucer no second teller of Tales, no second rhapsode comparable to the first, till the advent of this one. Rarely but in the ballad and romance periods has such poetry been written, so broad and sad and simple, so full of deep and direct fire, certain of its aim, without finish, without fault." Fort- nightly Review. " Open this poem where the reader may, he will find in it broad and simple pictures of the olden days. It is true art alone which can draw pictures with this living simplicity, whether in bare outline or in full blaze of color ; and this art Mr. Morris possesses in a high degree. " The Standard. " Musical, clear, and flowing, strangely imaginative and suggestive, presenting pictures of almost incomparable beauty, it is a work of which aa epoch may be proud." Sunday Times. MR. WILLIAM MORRIS'S WORKS. THE EARTHLY PARADISE, A COLLECTION OF TALES IN VERSE. Parts I. and II. Prologue, March, April, May, June, July, and August, containing the Stories of THE WANDERERS. THE WRITING ON THE IMAGE. ATALANTA'S RACE. THE LOVE OF ALCESTIS. THE MAN BORN TO BE KING. THE LADY OF THE LAND. THE DOOM OF KING ACRISIUS. ' THE SON OF CRCESUS. THE PROUD KING. THE WATCHING OF THE FALCON. CUPID AND PSYCHE. PYGMALION AND THE IMAGE. OGIER THE DANE. In one volume, Crown 8vo Edition, Cloth, gilt top, price, $ 3.00. " i6mo $2.25. Part III. September, October, and November, containing the Stories of THE DEATH OF PARIS. THE MAN WHO NEVER LAUGHED THE LAND EAST OF THE SUN AND AGAIN. WEST OF THE MOON. THE STORY OF RHODOPB. ACCONTIUS AND CYDIPPE. THE LOVERS OF GuDRUN. In one volume, Crown 8vo Edition, Cloth, gilt top, price, $ 3.00. " " i6mo " " " $2.25. IN PREP A RA TION. The 4th and concluding part of THE EARTHLY PARADISE, December, January, and February. A New Edition of THE DEFENCE OF GUENEVERE, And other Early Poems, with the addition of some Pieces not hitherto collected. Sixth Edition. i6mo, cloth, price, $ 1.50. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JASON. A Poem, in Seventeen Books. Mailed, post-paid, by the Publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston.