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Proofs on India paper, bevelled morocco, $7. CURZON'S MONASTERIES OF THE LEVANT. Seventeen Illustrations. Cloth, extra gilt edges, $2. WARBURTON'S CRESCENT AND THE CROSS. Illustrated. Gilt edge. $:> 00 2% r* THE COMPANION. THE COMPANION! "This is the motley-minded gentleman.-' As Yov LIKE IT. NEW YORK: GEORGE P. PUTNAM, 155 BROADWAY. 1850, Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, Bv GEORGE P. PUTNAM, In the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. STEREOTYPED BY 1:11.1. IN ; FRENCH LANGUAGE. When some one was expatiating on the merits of the French language to Mr. Canning, he exclaimed : " Why, what on earth, sir, can be expected of a lan- guage, which has but one word for liking and loving, and puts a fine woman and a leg of mutton on a par : J'aime Julie; faime un gigotf" PULPIT ELOQUENCE. Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking to reading ; a practice, of itself, sufficient to stifle every germ of eloquence. It is only by the fresh feelings of the heart, that mankind can be very powerfully affected. What can be more ludicrous, 106 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. than an orator delivering stale indignation, and fer- vour of a week old; turning over whole pages of violent passions, written out in German text ; reading the tropes and apostrophes into which he is hurried by the ardour of his mind ; and so affected at a pre- concerted line and page, that he is unable to proceed any farther ! Sydney Smith. VOLUMINOUS TRIPLING. Dr. Shaw, the naturalist, was one day showing to a friend two volumes written by a Dutchman, upon the wings of a butterfly, in the British Museum. " The dissertation is rather voluminous, perhaps you will think," said the Doctor, gravely, "but it is im- mensely important." The Doctor. A SHARP SET. The sexton of Salisbury Cathedral, was telling Lamb, that eight persons had dined together upon the top of the spire ; upon which he remarked, that "They must have been sharp set." SMALL KNOWLEDGE. A luckless undergraduate of Cambridge, being ex- amined for his degree, and failing in every subject upon which he was tried, complained that he had not been questioned upon the things which he knew. Upon which, the examining master tore off about an inch of paper, and pushing it towards him, desired him to write upon that all he knew. AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 107 DEFINITION OF TIMBER. Lord Caernarvon defined timber as an excrescence on the face of the earth, placed there by Providence, for the payment of debts. PUNNING TRANSLATION. Coleridge's motto, " sermoni proprwrfa" was trans- lated by Lamb, as " properer for a sermon." NARROW MINDS. Dr. Johnson describes a class of persons, who make a figure in the House of Commons, while they have minds as narrow as the neck of a vinegar cruet. PARLIAMENTARY JOKES. Of what use a story may be, even in the most serious debates, may be seen from the circulation of old Joes in Parliament, which are as current there as their current namesakes used to be in the city some threescore years ago. A jest, though it shall be as stale as last year's newspaper, and as flat as Lord Flounder's face, is sure to be received with laughter by the collective wisdom of the nation : nay, it is some- times thrown out like a tub to the whale, or like a trail of carrion to draw off hounds from the scent. The Doctor. PLEASANT TIMES. From the beginning of the century to the death of Lord Liverpool, was an awful period for those who 108 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. had the misfortune to entertain liberal opinions, and who were too honest to sell them for the ermine of the judge, or the lawn of the prelate : a long and hopeless career in your profession the chuckling grin of noodles, the sarcastic leer of the genuine political rogue prebendaries, deans, and bishops made over your head reverend renegadoes advanced to the highest dignities of the Church, for helping to rivet the fetters of Catholic and Protestant Dissenters and no more chance of a whig administration than of a thaw in Zembla these were the penalties exacted for liberality of opinion at that period ; and not only was there no pay, but there were many stripes. Sydney Smith. ROYAL SAYING. Alphonsus, surnamed the Wise, king of Aragon, used to say, " That among so many things as are by men possessed or pursued in the course of their lives, all the rest are baubles, besides old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to converse with, and old books to read." ST. EVREMONT. St. Evremont was a celebrated duellist. He had discovered a particular thrust, which was honoured with his name, and called la botte de St. Evremont. This brave was witty and capricious, and would ac- cept or refuse a challenge according to the fancy of the moment. Some of his duels were remarkable. AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 109 One day at the Cafe Procope, at dinner-time, he saw a gentleman seated at a bafvaroise, and he exclaimed, " That is a, confounded bad dinner for a gentleman !" The stranger thus insulted insisted upon satisfaction, which was granted; when St. Foix was wounded. Notwithstanding his injury, he coolly said to his antagonist, " If you had killed me, sir, I still should have persisted in maintaining that a bafvaroise is a confounded bad dinner." Another time he asked a gentleman, whose aroma was not of the most pleasant nature, " Why the devil he smelt so confoundedly ?" The offended party sent a challenge, which he refused in the following terms : " Were you to kill me you would not smell the less, and were I to kill you, you would smell the more." One day, meeting a lawyer whose countenance did not please him, he walked up to him and whispered in his ear, " Sir, I have some business with you." The attorney, not understand- ing the drift of his speech, quietly named an hour when he would find him in his office. The meeting was, of course, most amusing, the expression of St. Foix being, " that he wanted to have an affaire with him," a term which is equally applicable to a duel and a legal transaction. Millingen's History of Duel- ling. HUMAN ABILITIES. The abilities of a man must fall short upon one side or the other, " like too scanty a blanket when you are abed, if you pull it upon your shoulders, you 10 110 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. leave your feet bare ; if you thrust it down upon your feet, your shoulders are uncovered." IMPERTINENCE OF AN OPINION. Sydney Smith says, that it is always considered as a piece of impertinence in England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a year has any opinions at all upon important subjects. TOO LATE. Some men are always too late, and, therefore, ac- complish, through life, nothing worth naming. If they promise to meet you at such an hour, they are never present till thirty minutes after. No matter how important the business, either to yourself or to him, he is just as tardy. If he takes a passage in the steamboat, he arrives just as the boat has left the wharf, and the cars have started a few moments be- fore he arrives. His dinner has been waiting for him so long that the cook is out of patience, and half the tune is obliged to set the table again. This course, the character we have described, always pursues. He is never in season, at church, at a place of business, at his meals, or in his bed. Persons of such habits we cannot but despise. Much rather would we have a man too early to see us, and always ready, even if he should carry out his principle to the extent of the good deacon, who, in following to the tomb the re- mains of a husband and father, hinted to the bereaved widow, that, at a proper time, he should be happy to AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. Ill marry her. The deacon was in season ; for scarcely had the relatives and friends retired to the house, before the parson made the same proposition to the widow. "You are too late," said she, "the deacon spoke to me at the grave." PUN OF HOOK. Hook and one of his friends happened to come to a bridge, " Do you know who built this bridge," said he to Hook. "No, but if you go over you'll be tolled." HENDERSON, THE ACTOR. Henderson, the actor, was seldom known to be in a passion. When at Oxford, he was one day de- bating with a fellow-student, who not keeping his temper, threw a glass of wine in the actor's face, when Henderson took out his handkerchief, wiped his face and coolly said, " That, sir, was a digression ; now for the argument." ANECDOTES OF THE LATE JAMES SMITH, (One of the Authors of the Rejected Addresses.) The Law Quarterly Magazine informs us, that James Smith's coup d'essai in literature " was a hoax, in the shape of a series of letters to the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, detailing some extraordi- nary antiquarian discoveries and facts in natural history, which the worthy Sylvanus Urban inserted without the least suspicion ; and we understand that 112 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. the members of the Antiquarian and Zoological Societies are still occasionally in the habit of ap- pealing to them in corroboration of their theories." In the same article we find many characteristic and humorous anecdotes of Smith, some of which we shall quote. "One of James Smith's favourite anecdotes re- lated to Colonel Greville. The colonel requested his young ally to call at his lodgings, and in the course of their first interview related the particulars of the most curious circumstance in his life. He was taken prisoner during the American war, along with three other officers of the same rank; one evening they were summoned into the presence of Washington, who announced to them that the con- duct of their government, in condemning one of his officers to death, as a rebel, compelled him to make reprisals, and that, much to his regret, he was under the necessity of requiring them to cast lots, without de- lay, to decide which of them should be hanged. They were then bowed out, and returned to their quarters. Four slips of paper were put into a hat, and the shortest was drawn by Captain Asgill, who ex- claimed, ' I knew how it would be ; I never won so much as a hit at backgammon in my life.' As Greville told the story, he was selected to sit up with Captain Asgill, under the pretence of com- panionship, but in reality to prevent him from escaping, and leaving the honour amongst the re- maining three. ' And what,' inquired Smith, ' did AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 113 you say to comfort him ?' ' Why, I remember say- ing to him, when they left us, D it, old fellow, never mind;' but it may be doubted (added Smith) whether he drew much comfort from the exhortation. Lady Asgill persuaded the French minister to inter- pose, and the captain was permitted to escape. " The fame of the brothers, James and Horatio Smith, was confined to a limited circle, until the pub- lication of The Rejected Addresses. James used to dwell with much pleasure on the criticism of a Lei- cestershire clergyman: 'I do not see why they (the Addresses) should have been rejected: I think some of them very good.' This, he would add, is almost as good as the avowal of the Irish bishop, that there were some things in Gulliver's Travels which he could not believe. "Though never guilty of intemperance, James Smith was a martyr to the gout ; and, independently of the difficulty he experienced in locomotion, he partook largely of the feeling avowed by his old friend Jekyll, who used to say that, if compelled to live in the country, he would have the drive before his house paved like the streets of London, and hire a hackney-coach to drive up and down all day long. " He used to tell, with great glee, a story showing the general conviction of his dislike to ruralities. He was sitting in the library at a country-house, when a gentleman proposed a quiet stroll into the pleasure- grounds :-^- ' Stroll ! why don't you see my gouty shoe?' 10* 114 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 'Yes, I see that plain enough, and I wish I'd brought one too, but they're all out now.' 'Well, and what then?' 'What, then? why, my dear fellow, you don't mean to say that you have really got the gout ? I thought you had only put on that shoe to get off being shown over the improvements.' "James Smith was also in the habit of sending Lady Blessington occasional epigrams, complimentary scraps of verse, or punning notes, like the following: ' The newspapers tell us that your new carriage is very highly varnished. This, I presume, means your wheeled-carriage. The merit of your personal car- riage has always been to my mind, its absence from all varnish. The question requires that a jury should be impanelled? " Or this : ' DEAE LADY BLESSINGTON : ' When you next see your American friend, have the goodness to accost him as follows, 1 In England rivers all are males For instance, Father Thames ; Whoever in Columbia sails, Finds them ma'mselles or dames. ' Yes, there the softer sex presides, Aquatic, I assure ye, And Mrs. Sippy rolls her tides, Responsive to Miss SourL * Your ladyship's faithful and devoted servant, 'JAMES SMITH.' AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 115 " His bachelorship is thus recorded in his niece's album ' Should I seek Hymen's tie As a poet I die, Te Benedicts mourn my distresses 1 For what little fame Is annexed to my name, Is derived from Rejected Addresses! "His solitary state, however, certainly proceeded rather from too discursive than too limited an admira- tion of the sex, for to the latest hour of his life, he gave a marked preference to their society, and dis- liked a dinner-party composed exclusively of males. "The following is among the best of his good things. A gentleman, with the same Christian and surname, took lodgings in the same house. The con- sequence was, eternal confusion of calls and letters. Indeed, the postman had no alternative but to share the letters equally between the two. ' This is intol- erable, sir,' said our friend, 'and you must quit.' ' Why am I to quit more than you ?' ' Because you are James the Second and must abdicate? " As lawyers, we are glad to be able to add, that he had an unfeigned respect for the profession. "Smith was rather fond of a joke on his own branch of the profession ; he always gave a peculiar emphasis to the line in his song, on the contradiction in names ; ' Mr Makepeace was bred an attorney ;' and would frequently quote Goldsmith's lines on 116 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. Hickey, the associate of Burke and other distin- guished contemporaries : ' He cherished his friend, and he relished a bumper ; Yet one fault he had, and that was a thumper. Then, what was his failing ? come tell it, and burn ye. He was, could he help it ? a special attorney. "The following playful colloquy in verse took place at a dinner-table between Sir George Eose and Smith, in allusion to Craven-street, Strand, where he resided: J. S. ' In Craven-street, Strand, ten attorneys find place, And ten dark coal-barges are moored at its base : Fly, Honesty, fly to some safer retreat, For there's craft in the river, and craft in the street.' Sir G. R. ' Why should Honesty fly to some safer retreat, From attorneys and barges, od rot 'em ? For the lawyers are just at the top of the street, And the barges are just at the bottom.' " He had a keen relish for- life, but he spoke calm- ly and indifferently about dying as in the verses on revisiting Chigwell : ' I fear not, Fate, thy pendant shears ; There are who pray for length of years, To them, not me, allot 'em : Life's cup is nectar at the brink, Midway a palatable drink, And wormwood at the bottom.' "This is not quite reconcilable with a remark he once made to the writer, that if he could go back to any former period of his life, he would prefer going back to forty. He was about that age when he first came into celebrity. AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 117 " On the occasion of another visit to Chigwell lie wrote thus : ' World, in thy ever busy mart, I've acted no unnoticed part. Would I resume it ? Oh, no ! Four acts are done the jest grows stale, The waning lamps burn dim and pale, And reason asks cui bono ? " One of the happiest, and assuredly the most profit- able of epigrams, that was ever made, was written by Smith. Happening to dine out one day, he met at table an old gentleman, very weak in the legs, but with a fine, noble-looking head ; Smith wrote the following on a scrap of paper, and slipped it around to him : " That which supports the body's length, In due proportion spread, In you mounts upward, and your strength All settles in your head." He thought no more of it, until some time after he was surprised to learn that the old gentleman dying, had left him twelve hundred pounds by his will. " But Mr. Smith's happiest effort," says Barham, " was inclosed in a short note to his friend Count D'Orsay : 27 Craven-street, Monday, June 6. " MY DEAR COUNT Will you give me Gallic im- mortality by translating the subjoined into French. Sincerely yours, &c. 118 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. PIUS AENEAS. ' Virgil, whose magic verse enthralls, And who in verse is greater ? By turns his wand'ring hero calls, Now pius, and now pater. But when prepared the worse to brave, An action that must pain us, Queen Dido meets him in the cave, He dubs him Dux TKOJAMJS. And well he changes thus the word On that occasion, sure Pius JENEAS were absurd, And PATEB premature.' " CLEVER PUN. An actor, named Priest, was playing at one of the principal theatres. Some one remarked, at the Gar- rick Club, that there were a great many men in the pit. "Probably clerks, who have taken Priest's or- ders," said Mr. Poole, one of the best punsters, as well as one of the cleverest comic satirists of the day. WIT AND LEARNING. Wit is often found united with great learning; three of the most learned men that have ever lived, have been three of the wittiest Cervantes, Rabelais, Butler. HUMOUR AND GENIUS. Men of humour are, in some degree, men of ge- nius : wits are rarely so, although a man of genius may, amongst other gifts, possess wit as Shakspeare. Coleridge. AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 119 PRISON RETIREMENT. Since the benevolent Howard attacked our prisons, incarceration has become not only healthy, but ele- gant; and a county jail is precisely the place to which any pauper might wish to retire, to gratify his taste for magnificence as well as for comfort. Upon the same principle, there is some risk that transpor- tation will be considered as one of the surest roads to honour and wealth; and that no felon will hear a verdict of "not guilty" without considering himself as cut off in the fairest career of prosperity. Sydney Smith. TREASON. Home Tooke, on being asked by a foreigner of distinction, how much treason an Englishman might venture to write, without being hanged, replied, that "he could not inform him just yet, but that he was trying." BOOK MADNESS. A collector of scarce books, was one day showing me his small but curious hoard. "Have you ever seen a copy of this book ?" he asked, with every vol- ume that he put into my hands ; and when my reply was, that I had not, he always rejoined, with a look and tone of triumphant delight, " I should have been exceedingly sorry if you had!" The Doctor. ENGLISH FRENCH. The author of Eothen, after relating his conversa- 120 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. tion with, a Frenchman at Cairo, says: "These an- swers of mine, as given above, are not meant for specimens of mere French, but of that fine, terse, nervous, Continental English, with which I and my compatriots make our way through Europe. This language, by-the-bye, is one possessing great force and energy, and is not without its literature a lite- rature of the very highest order. Where will you find more sturdy specimens of downright honest and noble English, than in the Duke of Wellington's ' French' dispatches ?" PARASITES. Nature descends down to infinite' smallness. A great man has his parasites ; and if you take a large buzzing blue-bottle fly, and look at it in a micro- scope, you may see twenty or thirty little ugly in- sects crawling about it, which, doubtless, think their fly to be the bluest, grandest, merriest, most import- ant animal in the universe; and are convinced the world would be at an end if it ceased to buzz. Syd- ney Smith. CHARLES LAMB. Lamb never affected any spurious gravity. Nei- ther did he ever act the Grand Senior. He did not exact that common copy-book respect, which some asinine persons would fain command, on account of the mere length of their years ; as if, forsooth, what is bad in itself, could be the better for keeping ; as if AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 121 intellects already mothery, got any thing but grand- mothery by lapse of time ! Hood. VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN RACE. Lady Mary Wortley Montague said, that during all her travels she had never met with but three kinds of persons, Men, Women, and Herveys. These were the earls of Bristol, a family noted for their ec- centricity. JOHN KEMBLE. I always had a great liking, I may say, a sort of nondescript reverence, for John Kemble. What a quaint creature he was! I remember a party, in which he was discussing, in his measured manner af- ter dinner, when the steward announced his carriage. He nodded, and went on. The announcement took place twice afterward; Kemble each time nodding his head a little more impatiently, but still going on. At last, and for the fourth time, the steward entered and said, " Mrs. Kemble says, sir, she has the rheu- matise and cannot stay." " Add ism /" dropped John, in a parenthesis, and proceeded quietly in his ha- rangue. Kemble would correct any body at any time, and in any place. Dear Charles Matthews a true genius in his line, in my judgment told me that he was once performing privately before the king. The king was very much pleased with the imitation of 11 122 AFTER-DINNER. TABLE-TALK. Kemble, and said, " I liked Kemble very much. He was one of my earliest friends. I remember once he was talking, and found himself out of snuff. I offered him my box. He declined taking any ' He, a poor actor, could not put his fingers into a royal box.' I said, 'take some, pray; you will obleege me!' Upon which Kemble replied, 'It would be- come your royal mouth better to say, oblige me;' and took a pinch." Coleridge's Table-Talk. INFLUENCE OF WOMEN. Man is but a rough pebble, without the attrition received from contact with the gentler sex : it is won- derful how the ladies pumice a man down into a smoothness which occasions him to roll over and over with the rest of his species, jostling but not wound- ing his neighbours, as the waves of circumstances bring him into collision with them. Capt. Marry at. FRENCHMEN. Coleridge says of the French, that they are like grains of gunpowder, each by itself smutty and con- temptible; but mass them together, and they are terrible indeed. SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. The first points of character which every body noticed in Mackintosh, were the total absence of envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness. He could not hate, he did not know how to set about it. The gall-bladder was omitted in his composition, and if AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 123 he could have been persuaded into any scheme of revenging himself upon an enemy, I am sure (unless he had been narrowly watched) it would have ended in proclaiming the good qualities, and promoting the interests of his adversary. Till subdued by age and illness, ms conversation was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human being I ever had the good fortune to be ac- quainted with. His memory (vast and prodigious as it was) he so managed as to make it a source of pleas- ure and instruction, rather than that dreadful engine of colloquial oppression into which it is sometimes erected. He remembered things, words, thoughts, dates, and every thing that was wanted. His language was beautiful, and might have gone from the fireside to the press ; but though his ideas were always clothed in beautiful language, the clothes were sometimes too big for the body, and common thoughts were dressed in better and larger apparel than they deserved. He certainly had this fault, but it was not one of fre- quent commission. Sir James had a good deal of humour ; and I re- member, amongst many other examples of it, that he kept us for two or three hours in a roar of laughter, at a dinner-party at his own house, playing upon the simplicity of a Scotch cousin, who had mistaken me for my gallant synonym, the hero of Acre. I never saw a more perfect comedy, nor heard ridicule so long and so well sustained. Sir James had not only humour, but he had wit also ; at least, new and sud- 124 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. den relations of ideas flashed across his mind in rea- soning, and produced the same effect as wit, and would have been called wit, if a sense of their utility and importance had not often overpowered the admi- ration of novelty, and entitled them to the higher name of wisdom. Then the great thoughts and fine sayings of the great men of all ages were intimately present to his recollection, and came out dazzling and delighting in his conversation. Justness of thinking was a strong feature in his understanding ; he had a head in which nonsense and error could hardly vegetate : it was a soil utterly unfit for them. Curran, the master of the rolls, said to Mr. Grattan, " You would be the greatest man of your age, if you would buy a few yards of red tape, and tie up your bills and papers." This was the fault or misfortune of Sir James Mackintosh ; he never knew the use of red tape, and was utterly unfit for the common busi- ness of life. That a guinea represented a quantity of shillings, and that it would barter for a quantity of cloth, he was well aware ; but the accurate num- ber of the baser coin, or the just measurement of the manufactured article to which he was entitled for his gold, he could never learn, and it was impossible to teach him. Hence his life was often an example of the ancient and melancholy struggle of genius, with the difficulties of existence. Sydney Smith. HAPPINESS. If you cannot be happy in one way, be happy in AFTER-DINNER. TABLE-TALK. 125 another ; and this facility of disposition wants but little aid from philosophy, for health and good-hu- mour are almost the whole affair. Many run about after felicity, like an absent man hunting for his hat, while it is on his head, or in his hand. Sharp. These persons want nothing to make them the happiest people in the world but the knowledge that they are so. A SHE FOOL. Lord Burleigh, in a capital letter of advice to his son Kobert Cecil, advises him never to "choose a base and uncomely creature altogether for wealth ; for it will cause contempt in others, and loathing in thee. Neither make choice of a dwarf or a fool ; for by the one thou shalt beget a race of pigmies ; the other will be thy continual disgrace ; and it will yirk thee to hear her talk. For thou shalt find it, to thy great grief, that there is nothing more fulsome than a she fool" LORD CHIEF JUSTICE HOLT. When Holt was Lord Chief Justice, he committed some enthusiasts to prison. The next day, one Lacy, who was of the same persuasion, went to his house, and asked to speak to him. The porter answered, his lordship was not well, and could not be seen. Lacy insisted that he must see him, for he was sent to him by the Lord. When this message was delivered, he obtained admittance. " I come," said he, " from the Lord, commanding thee to grant a noli prosequi to his 11* 126 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. faithful servants, whom thou hast unjustly committed to prison." " Thou canst not, certainly, have come from the Lord," replied Holt ; " for he would have sent thee to the Attorney-General, knowing very well that it is not in my power to grant thy demand. Therefore, thou art a false prophet ; and thou shalt go and keep thy friends company in prison." PEDANTRY. As I take it, the word is not properly used : be- cause pedantry is the too frequent or unseasonable obtruding our own knowledge in common discourse, and placing too great a value upon it ; by which defi- nition, men of the court, or of the army, may be as guilty of pedantry as a philosopher or a divine ; and it is the same vice in women, when they are over copious upon the subject of their petticoats, or their fens, or their china. Swift. SLEEPING IN CHURCH. Many stories have been related of Swift, tending to show his utter disregard of all decorum in matters of religion, and among the rest one that has obtained universal belief, and which deserves to be killed off. This is an absurd story of his having one day found no one present at morning service but himself and the clerk, Roger Coxe, and commencing, "Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places, to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness;" and so proceeding through the AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 127 service. The whole of this story is untrue, no such scene ever occurred. It seems to have been an in- vention of Lord Orrery to discredit the dean's respect for religion. Swift's nephew said he had seen it in an old jest-book printed about the year 1560 ; proba- bly all the other stories of the same nature may be disposed of in a like manner. The following extract, however, is from a sermon actually preached by Swift in the cathedral at Dub- lin, with the text from Acts xx. 9 : " And there sat in the window a certain young man, named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep ; and while Paul was long preaching, he sunk down from sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead." Swift then proceeds to say, "I have chosen these words with a design, if possible, to disturb some part of this audience of half an hour's sleep, for the convenience and exercise whereof this place, at this season of the day, is very much celebrated. "There is, indeed, one mortal disadvantage to which all preaching is subject; that those who by the wickedness of their lives stand in the greatest need have usually the smallest share ; for either they are absent upon account of idleness, or spleen, or ha- tred to religion, or in order to doze away the intem- perance of the week ; or, if they do come, they are sure to employ their minds any other way than regarding or attending to the business of the place. " The accident which happened to the young man in the text, hath not been sufficient to discourage his 128 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. successors; but, because the preachers now in the world however they do exceed St. Paul in the art of setting men to sleep, do extremely fall short of him in the working of miracles; therefore men are be- come so cautious as to choose more safe and conve- nient stations and postures for taking their repose, without hazard of their persons ; and upon the whole matter, choose rather to trust their destruction to a miracle, than their safety." THE THEATRE. There is something in the word Playhouse which seems so closely connected, in the minds of some people, with sin and Satan, that it stands in their vocabulary for every species of abomination. And yet why? Where is every feeling more roused in favor of virtue than at a good play? Where is goodness so feelingly, so enthusiastically learned? What so solemn as to see the excellent passions of the human heart called forth by a great actor, ani- mated by a great poet? To hear Siddons repeat what Shakspeare wrote? To behold the child and his mother the noble and the poor artisan the monarch and his subjects all ages and all ranks convulsed with one common passion wrung with one common anguish, and, with loud sobs and cries, doing involuntary homage to the (rod that made their hearts! What wretched infatuation to inter- dict such amusements as these! What a blessing that mankind can be allured from sensual gratifica- AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 129 tion, and find relaxation and pleasure in such pur- suits ! Sydney Smith. HINT TO AUTHORS. If I might give a short hint to an impartial writer, it would be to tell him his fete. If he resolved to venture upon the dangerous precipice of telling un- biassed truth, let him proclaim war with mankind neither to give nor to take quarter. If he tells the crimes of great men, they fall upon him with the iron hands of the law ; if he tells them of virtues, when they have any, then the mob attacks him with slan- der. But if he regards truth, let him expect martyr- dom on both sides, and then he may go on fearless ; and this is the course I take myself. De Foe. SUCCESS IN LIFE. Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping. Guesses at Truth. FINE SPEAKING. It is an admirable thing to see how some people will labour to find out terms that may obscure a plain sense, like a gentleman I know, who would never say the weather grew cold, but that winter began to salute us : I have no patience with such coxcombs. Lady Temple. VOLTAIRE. M. de Saint Ange, translator of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, was noted for a certain languishing and 130 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. mawkish air in his conversation and deportment; having been, like every other member of the literary world, to pay his respects to Voltaire, and being am- bitious of concluding his visit with some stroke of genius, said, twirling his hat prettily between his thumbs : "I am only come to-day, sir, to see Homer ; another day I shall come to see Euripides and Sopho- cles, afterward Tacitus, and then Lucian." " /Sir," answered Homer, " / am very old, could you not make all the visits at once ?" I! The proudest word in English, to judge of its way of carrying itself is I. It is the least of monosyl- lables, if it be indeed a syllable : yet who in good society ever saw a little one. Indeed, this big one- lettered pronoun is quite peculiar to John Bull ; as much so as Magna Charta, with which, perchance, it may not be altogether unconnected. At least, it cer- tainly is an apt symbol of the national character, both in some of its nobler and of its harsher features. In it you may discern the Englishman's freedom, his unbending firmness, his straightforwardness, his indi- viduality of character ;. you may also see his self- importance, his arrogance, his opinionativeness, his propensity to separate and seclude himself from his neighbours, and to look down on all mankind with contempt. Look at four Englishmen in a stage- coach : the odds are, they will be sitting as stiff and as unsociable as four /'s. Guesses at Truth. AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 131 THE ART OF HAPPINESS. Sharp gives us the true method to be happy: " The chief secret of comfort, lies in not suffering trifles to vex one, and in prudently cultivating an undergrowth of small pleasures, since very few great ones, alas I are let on long leases." USE AND ABUSE. A certain authoress interdicts cards and assemblies. No cards, because cards are employed in gaming ; no assemblies, because many dissipated persons pass their lives in assemblies. Carry this but a little further, and we must say, no wine, because of drunkenness ; no meat, because of gluttony ; no use, that there may be no abuse ! Sydney Smith. THE MIDDLE STATION. My father bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind ; nay, they were not subject to so many distempers and uneasiness, either of body or mind, as those were who by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances, on one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet, on the other hand, bring distempers upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living ; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind 132 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. of virtues and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune ; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life ; that this way men went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the labours of the hand or the head, not sold to a life of slavery for daily bread, or harassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace, and the body of rest ; nor enraged by the passion of envy, or the secret burning lust of ambition for great things ; but in easy circumstances, sliding gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the sweets of living, without the bitter; feeling that they are happy, and learning by every day's experience to know it more sensibly. Robinson Orusoe. SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE AND LORD BROUNCKER. Sir William Temple and Lord Brouncker, the President of the Koyal Society, being neighbours in the country, had frequently very sharp contentions ; like other great men, one would not bear an equal, and the other would not admit of a superior. Lord Brouncker was a great admirer of curiosities, of which he had a very good collection, which Sir William Temple used to undervalue on all occasions, dispar- aging every thing of his neighbour's, and giving his own things the preference. This by no means pleased his lordship, who took all opportunities of being re- AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 133 venged. One day, as they were discoursing together of their several rarities, Brouncker replied to him very seriously and gravely : " Sir William, say no more of the matter ; you must at length yield to me, I having lately got something which it is impossible for you to obtain, for my Welsh steward has sent me a flock of geese ; and these are what you can never have, since all your geese are swans" MISCELLANEOUS WRITING. Peace be with the soul of that charitable and courteous author, who, for the common benefit of his fellow-authors, introduced the ingenious way of miscellaneous writing ! Shafiesbury. CONVERSATION. Conversation must and ought to grow out of ma- terials on which men can agree, not upon subjects which try the passions.' 'Sydney Smith. A companion that feasts the company with wit and mirth, and leaves out the sin which is usually mixed with them, he is the man ; and let me tell you, good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue. Izaak Walton. Surely one of the best rules in conversation, is never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish we had rather left unsaid. Swift. It is a secret known but to few, yet of no small use in the conduct of life, that when you fall into a 12 134 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. man's conversation, the first thing that you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him. Steele. Conversation is a traffic ; and if you enter into it without some stock of knowledge to balance the ac- count perpetually betwixt you, the trade drops at once. /Sterne. The most necessary talent in a man of conversa- tion, is a good judgment. Steele. The wit of conversation consists more in finding it in others, than in showing a great deal yourself; he who goes from your conversation pleased with him- self and his own wit, is perfectly well pleased with you. La Bruybre. A general fault in conversation, is that of those who affect to talk of themselves. Some, without any ceremony, will run over the history of their lives; will relate the annals of their diseases, with the seve- ral symptoms and circumstances of them; will enum- erate the hardships and injustice they have suffered in court, in parliament, in love, or in law. Others are more dexterous, and with great art will lie on the watch to hook in their own praise. They will call a witness to remember, they always foretold what would happen in such a case, but none would believe them ; they advised such a man from the beginning, and told him the consequences, just as they hap- pened, but he would have his own way. Others AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 135 make a vanity of telling their faults; they are the strangest men in the world ; they cannot dissemble ; they own it is a folly ; they have lost abundance of advantages by it ; but if you would give them the world, they cannot help it; there is something in their nature that abhors insincerity and constraint; with many other insufferable topics of the same alti- tude. Swift. FLATTERING EPITAPHS. Charles Lamb, when a little boy, walking in a church-yard with his sister, and reading the epitaphs, said to her, " Mary, where are all the naughty people buried?" VOLUMINOUS AUTHORS. There is an event recorded in the Bible, which men who write books, should keep constantly in their remembrance. It is there set forth, that many cen- turies ago, the earth was covered with a great flood, by which the whole of the human race, with the ex- ception of one family, were destroyed. It appears, also, that from thence, a great alteration was made in the longevity of mankind, who, from a -range of seven or eight hundred years, which they enjoyed before the flood, were confined to their present period of seventy or eighty years. This epoch in the his- tory of man, gave birth to the two-fold division of the antediluvian and postdiluvian style of writing, the latter of which naturally contracted itself into 136 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. those inferior limits which were better accommodated to the abridged duration of human life and literary labour. Now, to forget this event to write without the fear of the deluge before his eyes, and to handle a subject as if mankind could lounge over a pamphlet for ten years, as before their submersion' is to be guilty of the most grievous error into which a writer can possibly fall. Sydney Smith. SIR HENRY WOTTON. The following beautiful, but not enough known verses, were written by Sir Henry Wotton on his " dear mistress," Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia, daughter of James the First, and for whom he bore such an extraordinary respect as to give away a val- uable diamond, presented to him by the emperor of Germany, because it " came from an enemy to his Koyal Mistress, the queen of Bohemia." " You meaner beauties of the night, That poorly satisfy our eyes More by your number than your light, You common people of the skies ; What are you when the sun shall rise ? You curious chanters of the wood, That warble forth dame Nature's lays, Thinking your voices understood By your weak accents ; what your praise, When Philomel her voice shall raise ? You violets that first appear, By your pure purple mantles known, Like the proud virgins of the year, AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 137 As if the spring were all your own ; What are you when the rose is blown ? So when my mistress shall be seen, In form and beauty of her mind, By virtue first, then choice a Queen, Tell me, if she were not designed The eclipse and glory of her kind ?" ENGLISH AND FRENCH SUICIDES. There is an absurd and ancient accusation against us, which ought, by this time, to be known by our accusers, the French, to be unfounded on fact, viz. : our unequalled propensity to suicide. That offence is far more frequent among the French themselves than with us. In the year 1816, the number of suicides committed in London amounted to seventy-two; in the same year, at Paris, they amounted to one hun- dred and eighty-eight, (not taking into account the number of unfortunates exposed at the Morgue,) the population of Paris being some 400,000 less than that of London ! But suicides, if not unequalled in num- ber by those of other countries, are indeed frequent with us, and so they always will be in countries where men can be reduced in a day from affluence to beggary. The loss of fortune is the general cause of the voluntary loss of life. Wounded pride, disap- pointment, the schemes of an existence laid in the dust, the insulting pity of friends, the humbled despair of all our dearest connections for whom per- haps we toiled and wrought, the height from which we have fallen, the impossibility of regaining what 138 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. we have lost, the searching curiosity of the public, the petty annoyance added to the great woe, all rushing upon a man's mind in the sudden convulsion and turbulence of its elements, what wonder that he welcomes the only escape from the abyss into which he has been hurled. If the Spaniards rarely commit suicides, it is be- cause they, neither a commercial nor gambling peo- ple, are not subject to such reverses. With the French it is mostly the hazard of dice, with the En- glish, the chances of trade that are the causes of this melancholy crime melancholy, for it really deserves that epithet with us. We do not set about it with the mirthful gusto which characterizes the felo de se in the Frenchman's native land. We have not yet among our numerous clubs, instituted a club of sui- cides, all sworn to be the happiest dogs possible, and not outlive the year ! These gentlemen ask you to see them "go off," as if death were a place in the malk poste. " Will you dine with me to-morrow, my dear Dubois?" " With the greatest pleasure ; yet now I think of it, I am particularly engaged to shoot myself; I am really au desespoir I but one can't get off such an engagement you know." " I would not ask such a thing, my dear fellow. Adieu ! By the way if you ever come back to Paris again, I have changed my lodgings, au plaisir ! " Exeunt the two friends; the one twirling his moustaches, the other humming an opera tune. AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 139 This gayety of suicidalism, is not the death d la mode with us ; neither are we so sentimental in these delicate matters, as our neighbours over the water. We do not shoot each other by way of being roman- tic. Ladies and gentlemen forced to "part compa- ny," do not betake themselves "to a retired spot," and tempt the dread unknown, by a brace of pistols, tied up with cherry-coloured ribbons. England and the English. ODDS AND ENDS. A dinner of fragments is often said to be the best dinner. So are there few minds but might furnish some instruction and entertainment out of their scraps, their odds and ends of thoughts. They who cannot weave a uniform web, may at least produce a piece of patchwork. Guesses at Truth. TRUE RICHES. Providence has decreed, that those common ac- quisitions money, gems, plate, noble mansions, and dominion, should be sometimes bestowed on the in- dolent and unworthy; but those things which con- stitute our true riches, and which are properly our own, must be procured by our own labour. Erasmus. ENJOYING AND POSSESSING. When I walk the streets, I use the following nat- ural maxim, viz. : that he is the true possessor of a thing who enjoys it, and not he that owns it without 140 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. the enjoyment of it, to convince myself that I have a property in the gay part of all the gilt chariots that I meet, which I regard as amusements designed to delight my eyes, and the imagination of those kind people who sit in them gayly attired only to please me. I have a real, and they only have an imaginary pleasure from their exterior embellishments. Upon the same principle, I have discovered that I am the natural proprietor of all the diamond necklaces, the crosses, stars, brocades, and embroidered clothes, which I see at a play or birthnight, as giving more natural delight to the spectator than to those that wear them. And I look on the beaux and ladies as so many paroquets in an aviary, or tulips in a garden, designed purely for my diversion. A gallery of pictures, a cabinet, or library, that I have free access to, I think my own. In a word, all that I desire is the use of things, let who will have the keeping of them. By which maxim, I am grown one of the richest men in Great Britain ; with this difference, that I am not a prey to my own cares, or the envy of others. Berkeley, BUTTS. A man is not qualified for a butt, who has not a good deal of wit and vivacity, even in the ridiculous side of his character. A stupid butt is only fit for the conversation of ordinary people men of wit re- quire one that will give them play, and bestir himself in the absurd part of his behaviour. A butt with AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 141 these accomplishments frequently gets the laugh on his side, and turns the ridicule upon him that attacks him. Sir John Falstaff was a hero of this species, and gives a good description of himself, after the capacity of a butt, after the following manner: "Men of all sorts," says that merry knight, "take a pride to gird at me. The brain of man is not able to invent any thing that tends to laughter more than I invent, or is invented on me. I am not only witty in my- self, but the cause that wit is in other men." Steele. SOURCE OF CONCEIT. All affectation and display proceed from the sup- position of possessing something better than the rest of the world possesses. Nobody is vain of possessing two legs and two arms ; because that is the precise quantity of either sort of limb which every body possesses. Sydney Smith. GENTLEMAN. A very expressive word in our language, a word denoting an assemblage of many real virtues, and a union of manners at once pleasing and commanding respect. Charles Butler. There exists in England, a gentlemanly character, a gentlemanly feeling, very different even from that which is the most like it the character of a well- born Spaniard and unexampled in the rest of Eu- rope. Coleridge. 142 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. The French, generally speaking, have the gentk- manly manners without the gentlemanly spirit; with the English, it is often the reverse, they have the gentlemanly spirit, without the manners. HORRORS OF SEASICKNESS. "Mind cannot conceive," says Matthews, in his very entertaining "Diary of an Invalid," after inform- ing us of his state on board ship, "nor imagination paint the afflicted agonies of this state of suffering. I am surprised the poets have made no use of it in their descriptions of the place of torment ; for it might have furnished an excellent hint for improving the punishment of their hells. What are the waters of Tantalus, or the stone of Sisyphus, when compared with the throes of seasickness ? " The depression and despondency of spirit which accompany this sickness, deprive the mind of all its energy, and fill up the last trait in the resemblance, by taking away even the consolations of hope that last resource of the miserable which comes to all, but the damned and the seasick." EMPHATIC OATH. Some time after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the deputies sent by those of the reformed religion were treating with the king, the queen-mother, and some of the council for a peace. The articles were mutually agreed upon ; and they were debating on what should be the security for the performance of AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 143 these articles. After some particulars had been pro- posed and rejected, the queen-mother said, "Is not the word of a king sufficient security ?" One of the deputies answered, " No, madam, by St. Bartholo- mew." MEN AND BEASTS. I should be very sorry to do injustice to the poor brutes, who have no professors to revenge their cause by lecturing on our faculties ; and at the same time I know there is a very strong anthropological party, who view all eulogisms on the brute creation with a very considerable degree of suspicion, and look upon every compliment which is paid to the ape as high treason to the dignity of man. There may, perhaps, be more of rashness and ill- fated security in my opinion, than of magnanimity or liberality ; but I confess I feel myself so much at my ease about the superiority of mankind I have such a marked and decided contempt for the understanding of every baboon I have yet seen I feel so sure that the blue ape without a tail will never rival us in poetry, painting, and music, that I see no reason whatever why justice may not be done to the few fragments of soul and tatters of understanding which they may really possess. I have sometimes, perhaps, felt a little uneasy at Exeter 'Change, from contrasting the monkeys with the 'prentice-boys who are teazing them ; but a few pages of Locke, or a few lines of Milton, have always restored me to tranquillity, and 144 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. convinced me that the superiority of man had nothing to fear. Sydney Smith. POPE AND GARRICK. Grarrick's first theatrical appearance was in 1741, not long before the death of Pope, who was then in a weak and declining state. The poet had, however, the satisfaction of seeing him in one of his principal characters, and was boundless in his praise of the actor. " I am afraid that that young man will be spoiled," said he, "for he will never have a competitor." Grarrick gives the following interesting account of the occasion upon which Pope was present at the theatre, when he was to play the part of King Richard : " When I was told that Pope was in the house, I instantaneously felt a palpitation at my heart; a tumultuous, not a disagreeable emotion in my mind. I was then in the prime of youth, and in the zenith of my theatrical ambition. It gave me particular pleasure that Richard was my character, when Pope was to see and hear me. As I opened my part, I saw our little poetical hero, dressed in black, seated in a side box near the stage, and viewing me with a serious and earnest attention. His look shot and thrilled, like lightning, through my frame ; and I had some hesitation in proceeding, from anxiety and from joy. As RICHAED gradually blazed forth, the house was in a roar of applause, and the aspiring hand of POPE shadowed me with laurels." AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 145 OPPOSITE MINDS. If black and white men live together, the conse- quence is, that unless great care be taken they quarrel and fight. There is nearly as strong a disposition in men of opposite minds to despise each other. A grave man cannot conceive what is the use of a wit in society ; a person who takes a strong common-sense view of a subject, is for pushing out by the head and shoulders an ingenious theorist who catches at the lightest and faintest analogies; and another man, who scents the ridiculous from afar, will hold no commerce with him who tastes exqui- sitely the fine feelings of the heart, and is alive to nothing else; whereas talent is talent, and mind is mind, in all its branches ! Wit gives to life one of its best flavours ; common sense leads to immediate action, and gives society its daily motion ; large and comprehensive views, its annual rotation; ridicule chastises folly and imprudence, and keeps men in their proper sphere ; subtlety seizes hold of the fine threads of truth ; analogy darts away to the most sublime discoveries ; feeling paints all the exquisite passions of man's soul, and rewards him by a thou- sand inward visitations for the sorrows that come from without ! God made it all ! It is all good ! We must despise no sort of talent : they all have their separate duties and uses; all the happiness of man for their object ; they all improve, exalt, and gladden life. Sydney Smith. 13 146 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. MASCULINENESS AND EFFEMINACY. Men ought to be manly ; women ought to be wo- manly or feminine. They are sometimes masculine, which men cannot be ; but only men can be effemi- nate : for masculineness and effeminacy imply the palpable predominance in one sex, of that which is the peculiar characteristic of the other. Guesses at Truth. TALLEYRAND. Talleyrand's sayings his mots, as the French have it are renowned ; but these, alone, convey an imperfect idea of his whole conversation. They show, indeed, the powers of his wit, and the felicity of his concise diction ; and they have a peculiarity of style, such that, if shown without a name, no one could be at a loss to whom he should attribute them. But they are far enough from showing the style of his conversation to those who have never heard it. A gentleman in company was one day making a some- what zealous eulogy of his mother's beauty, dwelling on the topic at uncalled-for length he himself hav- ing, certainly, inherited no portion of that kind under the marriage of his parents. " C'etait, done, mon- sieur votre pere qui apparemment n'e"tait pas trop bien," was the remark which at once released the circle from the subject. When Madame de Stae'l published her celebrated novel of Delphine, she was supposed to have painted herself in the person of the heroine, and M. Talleyrand in that of an elderly lady, AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 147 who is one of the principal characters. " On me dit, (said he, the first time he met her,) que nous sommes tons les deux dans votre roman deguises en femme." Eubhieres, the celebrated author of the work on the Polish Ee volution, having said, "Je n'ai fait qu'un mechancete de ma vie." "Et quand finira-t-elle ?" was M. Talleyrand's reply. " Geneve est ennuyeuse, n'est-ce pas?" asked a friend. "Surtout quand on s'y amuse," was the answer. " Elle est insupportable," (said he, with a marked emphasis, of one well known ; but as if he had gone too far, and to take something off of what he laid on, he added,) " Elle n'a que ce defaut-la." "Ah, je sens les tourmens d'enfer," said a person, whose life had been supposed to be somewhat of the loosest. " Deja ?" was the inquiry suggested by M. Talleyrand. Brougham. There is an anecdote recorded of Talleyrand, which shows that he not only could say witty things, but also could do them. Upon Charles the Tenth's death, he drove for a few days about Paris, carrying a piece of crape in his pocket ; when he came by the neighbourhood of the Carlists, the crape was taken out and tied around his hat, and when he arrived at the quarter of the Tuilleries, he again slipped off the crape, and put it in his pocket. STORY-TELLING. I would advise all professors of the art of story- telling, never to tell stories but as they seem to grow out of the subject-matter of the conversation, or as 148 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. they serve to illustrate, or enliven it. Stories that are very common, are generally irksome ; but may be aptly introduced, provided they be only hinted at, and mentioned by way of allusion. Those that are altogether new, should never be ushered in, without a short and pertinent character of the chief persons concerned, because, by that means, you may make the company acquainted with them ; and it is a cer- tain rule, that slight and trivial accounts of those who are familiar to us, administer more mirth than the brightest points of wit in unknown characters. A little circumstance in the complexion or dress of the man you are talking of, sets his image before the hearer, if it be chosen aptly for the story. Steele. LIFE. Democritus was a wiser man than Heraclittis. Those are the wisest, and the happiest, who can pass through life as a play ; who, without making a farce of it, and turning every thing into ridicule, consider the whole period from the cradle to the coffin, as a well-bred comedy ; and maintain a cheerful smile to the very last scene. For what is happiness but a Will-o'-the-wisp a delusion a terra-incognita in pursuit of which thousands are tempted out of the harbour of tranquillity, to be tossed about, the sport of the winds of passion and the waves of disappoint- ment, to be wrecked perhaps at last on the rocks of despair ; unless they be provided with the sheet-an- chor of religion the only anchor that will hold in AFTER DINNER TABLE-TALK. 149 all weathers. This is a very stupid allegory, but it was preached to me this morning by a beautiful piece of sculpture which I saw. A female figure of Hope has laid aside her anchor, and is feeding a monstrous chimera. The care and solicitude of Hope in tend- ing this frightful creature, are most happily ex- pressed ; and the general effect is so touching, that it illustrates Shakspeare's phrase of sermons in stones with great felicity. Matthews. ROGUES. Few people think better of others than of them- selves, nor do they readily allow the existence of any virtue of which they perceive no traces in their own minds ; for which reason it is next to impossible to persuade a rogue that you are an honest man ; nor would you ever succeed by the strongest evidence, was it not for the comfortable conclusion which the rogue draws, that he who proves himself honest, proves himself a fool at the same time. Fielding. INDUSTRY. It is better to wear out than to rust out. Cum- berland. We must not only strike the iron while it is hot, but strike it till " it is made hot." Sharp. "WHAT'S IN A NAME." There are not a few of the best and most humane Englishmen of the present day, who, when under the influence of fear or anger, would think it no great 13* 150 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. crime to put to death people whose names begin with or Mac. The violent death of Smith, Green, or Thomson, would throw the neighbourhood into con- vulsions, and the regular forms would be adhered to but little would be really thought of the death of any body called O'Dogherty or O'Toole. Sydney Smith. COOKERY AND ASTRONOMY. M. Henrion de Pensey, president of the Court of Cassation, expressed himself as follows, to three of the most distinguished men of science of their day : "I regard the discovery of a dish as a far more interest- ing event than the discovery of a star, for we have always stars enough, but we can never have too many dishes ; and I shall not regard the sciences as sufficiently honoured or adequately represented, until 1 see a cook in the first class of the Institute." NAPOLEON. The most remarkable feature in the character of this strange being is his inconsistency ; displaying as he does, at different times, the most opposite ex- tremes of great and little magnificence and mean- ness. This inconsistency, however, is sufficiently explained by his utter want of fixed principles of right and wrong. What can be expected of him who laughs at religion, and does not even possess a sense of honour to keep him steady in the path of great- ness ? Selfishness seems to have been the foundation AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 151 of his system, the only principle which he acknowl- edged ; and this will reconcile all the apparent incon- sistencies of his conduct. Every thing was right to him that conduced to his own interest, by any means, however wrong ; and as his mind seems to have had the power of expanding with his situation, so it had an equal power of contracting again ; and he could at once descend from the elevation of his throne, to the pettiest considerations connected with his altered con- dition, accommodating himself in a moment, to all the variations of fortune. In a word, he was the Garrick of the great stage of the world, who could play in the Imperial Tragedy carrying terror and pity into all bosoms and reappearing in the part of Scrub, in the after-piece, with equal truth and fidelity of representation. We might admire the equanimity of such a temperament, if we did not find it associa- ted with such a selfish and exclusive attention to his own personal safety, as robs it of all claims to our ap- plause. After all, he is a truly extraordinary being a wonderful creature, furnishing the most curious subject for examination to those who, abstractedly from all the national and political feelings of the present time, can consider him merely as a singular phenomenon, an anomalous variety in the strange history of human nature. Matthews. NARROW-MINDED PERSONS. A narrow-minded person has not a thought be- yond the little sphere of his own vision. "The 152 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. snail," say the Hindoos, " sees nothing but his own shell, and thinks it the grandest palace in the uni- verse."' Sydney Smith. COLERIDGE'S NOTES IN BOOKS. It was the custom of Coleridge whenever he read a book, to write down any thought, &c., which might oc- cur to him while thus engaged, no matter to whom the volume might belong, or whether it was bound ; and he appears to have deposited on their margins and blank leaves, "as in a confessional, the deepest, light- est, strangest, and, alas ! saddest of his mental work- ings." Some of these notes are curious; in one of the books which Jie had borrowed from Charles Lamb, (a copy of Donne's poems,) he writes as follows: "I shall die soon, my dear Charles Lamb, and then you will not be angry that I have bescribbled your book. S. T. C., 2d May, 1811." His friend alludes to this practice, in one of the most delightful of his essays, " The Two Races of Men:" "To lose a volume to Coleridge," says Lamb, "carries some sense and meaning in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty meal on your viands, if he can give you no account of the platter after it Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collection, be shy of showing it ; or if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, lend thy books, but let it be to such a one as S. T. C. he will return them (generally anticipating the time appoint- AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 153 ed) with usury; enriched with annotations, tripling their value. I have had experience. Many are these precious MMS. of his, (in matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity, not unfrequently vying with the originals,) in no very clerkly hand, legible in my Daniel; in old Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abtruser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas ! wandering in Pagan lands." VOLTAIRE'S SEAL-BOOK. Voltaire was in the habit of keeping a book in which he pasted the seals of all his correspondents, and underneath each wrote the address of the person whose it happened to be. Whenever he received a letter, he would examine and ascertain from whence it came, by referring to his book; and if it came from a quarter he did not like, he replaced it in an- other envelope, and returned it unopened to the writer. SERVANTS. " This class of persons," says Ude, " assimilate no little to cats, enjoying what they can pilfer, but very difficult to please in what is given to them." EXAGGERATION. The passion of laughter, the strongest effect of ludicrous impressions, seems to be produced by the intensity, or more properly the excess of pleasurable ideas : circum praecordia ludere, is the proper charac- ter of this class of emotions. Thus a certain degree 154 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. of fullness improves the figure, but if it be so in- creased to excessive fatness, it becomes risible. So, in the qualities of the mind, modesty is agreeable extreme bashfulness is ridiculous: we are amused with vivacity we laugh at levity. If we observe the conversation of a professed jester, it will appear that his great secret consists in exaggeration. This is also the art of caricaturists ; add but a trifling degree of length or breadth to the features of an agreeable face, and they become ludicrous. In a like manner, unbolster Falstaff, and his wit will affect us less, the nearer he approaches to the size of a reasonable man. Ferriar. ITALIAN DINNER. Matthews thus describes a dinner in Italy at which he was present : " Dined to-day with an Italian fam- ily, to whom I had brought letters of recommenda- tion from Kome. This was the first occasion that I have had of seeing an Italian dress dinner ; but there was scarcely any thing strange to excite re- mark. The luxury of the rich is nearly the same throughout Europe. Some trifling peculiarities struck me, though I think the deviations from our own customs were all improvements. There was no for- mal top and bottom to the table, which was round, and the host could not be determined from his place. All the dishes were removed from the table as they were wanted, carved by a servant at the sideboard and handed round. Each person was provided with a bottle of wine and a bottle of water, as with a AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 155 plate and knife and fork. There was no asking to drink wine, nor drinking of healths, no inviting to eat nor carving for them. All these duties devolved on the domestics; and the conversation, which, in England, as long as the dinner lasts, is often con- fined to the business of eating, with all its important auxiliaries of sauces and seasonings, took its free course, unchecked by any interruptions arising out of the business in hand. This is surely the perfec- tion of comfort to be able to eat and drink what you please without exciting attention or remark and I cannot but think it would be a great improve- ment upon our troublesome fashion of passing the bottle, to substitute the Italian mode of placing a separate decanter to each person." LORD NORTH. Lord North's wit was never surpassed, and it was attended with this singular quality, that it never gave oifence, and the object of it was sure to join with pleasure in the laugh. The assault of Mr. Adam on Mr. Fox, and of Colonel Fullarton on Lord Shel- burne, had once put the house into the worst possi- ble humour, and there was more or less of savageness in every thing that was said. Lord North depreca- ted the too great readiness to take offence, which then seemed to possess the house. "One member," he said, "who spoke of me, called me, 'that thing called a minister;' to be sure," he said, patting his large form, "I am a thing; the member, therefore, 156 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. when he called me a thing, said what was true ; and I could not be angry with him ; but, when he added, that thing called a minister, he called me the thing, which of all things, he himself wished most to be ; and, therefore," said Lord North, "I took it as a compliment." These good-natured sallies dropped from him incessantly. Charles Sutler. JOHN BULL. There is nothing which an Englishman enjoys more than the pleasure of sulkiness of not being forced to hear a word from any body which may occasion to him the necessity of replying. It is not so much that Mr. Bull disdains to talk, as that Mr. Bull has nothing to say. His forefathers have been out of spirits for six or seven hundred years, and seeing nothing but fog and vapour he is out of spirits too ; and when there is no selling or buying, or no business to settle, he prefers being alone and looking at the fire. If any gentleman was in distress, he would lend a helping hand ; but he thinks it no part of good neighbourhood to talk to a person because he happens to be near him. In short, with many excellent qualities, it must be acknowledged that the English are the most disagreeable of the nations of Europe more surly and morose, with less disposition to please, to exert themselves for the good of society, to make small sacrifices, and to put themselves out of their way. They are content with Magna Charta and trial by jury ; and think they are not bound to AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 157 excel the rest of the world in small behaviour, if they are superior to them in great institutions. Sydney Smith. A COLD. "Do you know what it is," asked Lamb of Ber- nard Barton, describing his own state, "to succumb under an insurmountable daymare ' a whoreson lethargy,' Falstaff calls it an indisposition to do any thing, or to be any thing a total deadness and dis- taste a suspension of vitality an indifference to locality a numb soporifical good-for-nothingness an ossification all over an oysterlike indifference to passing events a mind-stupor a brawny defiance to the needles of a thrusting-in conscience with a total irresolution to submit to water-gruel processes ?" " SIXTY YEARS SINCE." The late Mr. Huddlestone, an amiable and accom- plished gentleman, believed himself to be lineally descended from Athelstane, and consequently enti- tled to take precedence of all, including the proudest nobles, who did not equally partake of the blood- royal of the heptarchy. Some of this excellent person's evidences bore a strong resemblance to those of the Scotchman, who, in proof of his own descent from the Admirable Crichton, was wont to produce an ancient shirt marked A. C. in the tail, preserved, he said, as an heir-loom by the family ; but Mr. Hud- dlestone's pedigree was admitted, and Huddlestone 14 158 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. allowed to be an undeniable corruption of Athelstane by many of the distinguished amateur readers of Gwyllim ; amongst others ]py the late Duke of Nor- folk, who was sufficiently tenacious on such points. These two originals often met over a bottle to discuss the respective pretensions of their pedigrees, and on one of these occasions, when Mr. Huddlestone was dining with the duke, the discussion was prolonged till the descendant of the Saxon kings, fairly rolled from his chair upon the floor. One of the younger members of the family hastened, by the duke's de- sire, to re-establish him, but he sturdily repelled the proffered hand of the cadet " Never," he hiccuped out, " shall it be said that the head of the house of Huddlestone was lifted from the ground by a younger branch of the house of Howard." " Well, then, my good old friend," said the good-natured duke, "I must try what I can do for you myself The head of the house of Howard is too drunk to pick up the head of the house of Huddlestone, but he will lie down be- side him with all the pleasure in the world :" so say- ing, the duke also took his place upon the floor. The concluding part of this anecdote has been plagiarized and applied to other people ; but the authenticity of our version may be relied upon. Quarterly Review. FLEAS. Except at Jerusalem, never think of attempting to go to sleep in a "holy city." Old Jews from all parts of the world go to lay their bones upon the sa- AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 159 cred soil, and as these people never return to their homes, it follows that any domestic vermin which they may bring with them are likely to become per- manently resident, so that the population is continu- ally increasing. No recent census had been taken when I was at Tiberias, but I know that the congre- gation of fleas which attended at my church alone, must have been something enormous. It was a carnal, self-seeking congregation, wholly inattentive to the service which was going on, and devoted to the one object, of having my blood. The fleas of all nations were there. The smug, steady, importunate flea from Holy well-street ; the pert, jumping "puce," from hungry France; the wary, watchful "pulce," with his poisoned stiletto; the vengeful "pulga," of Cas- tile, with his ugly knife; the German "floh," with his knife and fork insatiate not rising from table ; whole swarms from all the Kussias, and Asiatic hordes unnumbered : all these were there, and all re- joiced in one great international feast. I could no more defend myself against my enemies, than if I had been "pain a discretion," in the hands of a French patriot. Eothen. THE PENITENTS. At Padre Caravita's, during Lent, the friars dress in sackcloth, trimmed with ashes ; lights are put out, and every penitent, credits himself to heaven some dozen lashes, (the walls and pillars getting all the slashes,) the flogger setting up a pious moan, at every 160 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. item of the bill he cashes ; still working desperately at the stone, but giving not a touch to his own flesh and bone. One evening, as they sung their "miserere," with half the city listening at the door, (I think this famous chorus dull and dreary,) was heard a yell within, 'twas soon a roar, then a pitched battle on the holy floor ; screams to the Virgin, howls to every saint ! All thought the Fiend had come to claim his score; the men began to fly, the sex to faint. And still the battle raged, the howls came thicker ; matters seemed looking black for " Church and State." Up marched the pursy guards of Kome's " Grand Vicar," heroes not much inclined to tempt their fate, for not a soul of them would touch the gate. At last, out burst the penitents all whipped, roaring at this new payment of "Church Rate." The truth transpired an Englishman, equipped in cowl and gown, through the padre's door had slipped. He waited till the holy farce began ; all stripped, all dark ; not even a taper's smoke : then, marking a fat friar for his man, and taking a stout horsewhip from his cloak, on his broad back he laid a hearty stroke ! the victim shrieked, as if he felt a sabre ; John Bull amazingly enjoyed the joke, proceeding all the mum- mers to belabour, while each revenged the stripes upon his naked neighbour ! T/ie Modern Orlando. PLEASURES OF OLD AGE. One forenoon I did prevail with my mother, to let them carry her to a considerable distance from the AFTKK-JJ1N N E K. TABLE-TALK. 161 house, to a sheltered, sunny spot, whereunto we did often resort, formerly to hear the wood-pigeons which frequented the fir-trees thereabouts. We seated our- selves and did pass an hour or two very pleasantly. She remarked how merciful it was ordered, that these pleasures should remain to the last days of life ; that when the infirmities of age make the company of others burdensome to us, and ourselves a burden to them, the quiet contemplation of the works of God affords a simple pleasure which needeth naught else than a contented mind to enjoy; the singing of birds, even a single flower, or a pretty spot like this, with its bank of primroses, and the brook running in there below, and this warm sunshine, how pleasant they are. They take back our thoughts to our youth, which age doth love to look back upon. Diary of Lady Wil- loughby. FRIGHTFUL TO THINK OF. An injudicious adherent of Mr. Percival, the col- league of Canning, having mentioned drugs among the articles to be intercepted by the English ships, in order to make the French more disposed for peace, the opportunity which it offered to Sydney Smith for displaying his powers of ridicule, was too tempting to be lost, and he has thus "shown up" the affair, in the " Letters of Peter Plymley :" "What a sublime thought," exclaims Peter, "that no purge can now be taken between the Weser and the 'Garonne ; that the bustling pestle is still, the can- orous mortar mute, and the bowels of mankind lock- 14* 162 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. ed up for fourteen degrees of latitude! When, I should be curious to know, were all the powers of crudity and flatulence fully explained to his majesty's ministers? At what period was this great plan of conquest and constipation fully developed? In whose mind was the idea of destroying the pride and the plasters of France first engendered? Without castor oil they might, for some months, to be sure, have carried on a lingering war ; but can they do without bark? Will the people live under a government where antimonial powders cannot be procured ? Will they bear the loss of mercury ? ' There's the rub.' Depend upon it, the absence of materia medica will soon bring them to their senses, and the cry of Bourbon and holus burst forth from the Baltic to the Mediterranean." VOLTAIRE S PHYSIOGNOMY. Voltaire's physiognomy, which is said to have been a combination of the eagle and the monkey, was illustrative of the character of his mind. If the soaring wing and piercing eye of the eagle opened to him all the regions of knowledge, it was only to col- lect materials for the gratification of that apish dispo- sition, which seems to have delighted in grinning, with a malicious spirit of mockery, at the detected weaknesses and infirmities of human nature. Though a man may often rise the wiser, yet I believe none ever rose the better from the perusal of Voltaire. Matthews. AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 163 NECESSITIES. Mr. Wellesley Pole used to say, that it was impos- sible to live like a gentleman in England, under forty thousand a year ; and Mr. Brummel told a lady who asked him, how much she ought to allow her son for dress, that it might be done for 800 a year with strict economy. Mr. Senior, in an excellent Essay on Political Economy recently published in the Encyclo- paedia Metropolitana, states that a carriage for a woman of fashion must be regarded as one of the necessaries of life, and we presume he would be equally imperative in demanding a cabriolet for a man. Quarterly Review. GIL BLAS. At a house of great distinction, ten gentleman of taste were desired to frame, each of them, a list of the ten most entertaining works, which they had read. One work only found its way into every list Gil Bias. Campbell the poet, once said that he would rather have written Gil Bias than any of the "Waverly Novels. A CHANGER OF DYNASTIES. In the third year of his present majesty, and in the 30th of his own age, Mr. Isaac Hawkins Brown, then upon his travels, danced one evening at the court of Naples. His dress was a volcanic silk with 164 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. lava buttons. Whether (as the Neapolitan wits said) he had studied dancing under St. Vitus, or whether David, dancing in a linen vest, was his model, is not known ; but Mr. Brown danced with such incon- ceivable alacrity and vigour, that he threw the queen of Naples into convulsions of laughter, which termi- nated in a miscarriage, and changed the dynasty of the Neapolitan throne. Sydney Smith. ABSENT-MINDEDNESS . La Fontaine having attended the funeral of a friend, was so absent-minded as to call upon him a short time afterward. Being reminded of the fact, he was at first greatly surprised, but recollecting himself, said : " It is true enough, for I was there." A NEW LIGHT. Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amuse- ment, of another race altogether. Coleridge. SCOTCH AND IRISH. When George IV. went to Ireland, one of the " pisintry," delighted with his affability to the crowd on landing, said to the toll-keeper as the king passed through, "Och now! and his Majesty, God bless him, never does." "We lets 'em go free," was the answer. " Then there's the dirty money for ye," says Pat. "It shall never be said that the king came here, and AFTER-DINNER. T ABLE-T A L K. 165 found nobody to pay the turnpike for him." Moore, on his visit to Abbotsford. told this story to Sir Walter, when they were comparing notes as to the two royal visits. " Now, Mr. Moore," replied Scott, " there ye have just the advantage of us ; there was no want of enthusiasm here ; the Scotch folk would have done any thing in the world for his Majesty, but pay the turnpike." CHANGING HATS Barry, the painter, was with Nollekens, at Eome, in 1760, and they were extremely intimate. Barry took the liberty one night, when they were about to leave the English coffee-house, to exchange hats with him ; Barry's being edged with lace, and Nollekens' a very shabby plain one. Upon his returning the hat the next morning, he was requested by his friend, to let him know why he left him his gold-laced hat. " Why, to tell you the truth, my dear Joey," answer- ed Barry, " I fully expected assassination last night, and I was to have been known by my laced hat." Nollekens often used to relate the story, adding, " It's what the Old Bailey people would call a true bill against Jem." ENNUI AND TRAVEL. If a man and an Englishman be not born of his mother with a natural Chiffney-bit in his mouth, there comes to him a time for loathing the wearisome ways of society- -a time for not dancing quadrilles 166 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. not sitting in pews a time for pretending that Mil- ton, and Shelley, and all sorts of mere dead people, were greater in death than the first living Lord of the Treasury a time for scoffing and railing for speaking lightly of the very opera, and all our most cherished institutions. It is from nineteen to two or three and twenty perhaps, that this war of man against men is like to be waged most sullenly , The downs and moors of England can hold you no longer ; with larger stride you burst away from these slips and patches of free land you tread your path through the crowds of Europe, and at- last on the banks of the Jordan, you joyfully know that you are upon the very frontier of all accustomed respectabili- ties. A little while you are free, and unlabelled, like the ground you compass ; but civilization is coming and coming ; you and your much-loved waste lands will be inclosed, and, sooner or later, you will be brought down to a state of utter usefulness. Eoitien. JOHN WILKES. Wilkes himself, in his soberer years, used to laugh pleasantly enough at the folly of his former dupes. One day, in his latter life, he went to court, and was asked by George III., in a good-humoured tone of banter, "how his friend, Serjeant Grlynn was." This man had been one of his most furious partisans. " Pray, sir," replied Wilkes with affected gravity, "don't call Serjeant Grlynn a friend of mine, the fellow was a Wilkite, which your majesty knows I never was." AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 167 Brougham relates an anecdote of Wilkes, charac- teristic of this celebrated demagogue. Colonel Lut- trell and he were standing on the Brentford hustings, when he asked his adversary privately, whether he thought there were more fools or rogues among the multitude of Wilkites spread out before them. " I'll tell them what you say, and put an end to you," said the Colonel ; but perceiving the threat gave Wilkes no alarm, he added, " surely you don't mean to say you could stand here one hour after I did so?" "Why," answered the other, "you would not be alive one instant after." "How so?" "I should merely say it was a fabrication, and they would destroy you in the twinkling of an eye !" TESTS. We remember a remark of the late Earl of Dud- ley, to the effect that good melted butter is an uner- ring test of the moral qualities of your host. A distinguished connoisseur, still spared to the world, contends that the moral qualities of your hostess may in a like manner be tested by the potatoes, and he assures us that he was never known to re-enter a house where a badly dressed potato had been seen. The importance attached by another equally unim- peachable authority to the point, is sufficiently shown by what took place a short time since at the meeting of a club-committee specially called for the selection of a cook. The candidates were an Englishman from the Albion Club, and a Frenchman recom- 168 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. mended by Tide; the eminent divine to whom we allude was deputed to examine them, and the first question he put to each was, " Can you boil a pota- to?" Quarterly Review. BOILED MUTTON. A farmer, Charles Lamb's chance companion in a coach, kept boring him to death with questions as to the state of the crops. At length he put a poser "And pray, sir, how are turnips t'year?" "Why, that, sir, (stammered out Lamb,) will depend upon the boiled legs of mutton." RISE AND FALL OF KINGDOMS. Middleton, in his Life of Cicero, speaking of the opinion entertained of Britain by that orator and his contemporary Eomans, has the following pas- sage: "From their railleries of this kind, on the barbarity and misery of our island, one cannot help reflecting on the surprising fate and revolutions of kingdoms ; how Home, once the mistress of the world, the seat of arts, empire, and glory, now lies sunk in sloth, ignorance, and poverty, enslaved to the most cruel, as well as to the most contemptible of tyrants, superstition and religious imposture: while this remote country, anciently the jest and con- tempt of the polite Romans, is become the happy seat of liberty, plenty, and letters ; flourishing in all the arts and refinements of civil life ; yet running, per- haps, the same course which Rome itself had run AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 169 before it, from virtuous industry to wealth; from wealth to luxury ; from luxury to an impatience of discipline and corruption of morals ; till by a total degeneracy and loss of virtue, being grown ripe for destruction, it falls a prey at last to some hardy op- pressor, and with the loss of liberty, losing every thing that is valuable, sinks gradually again into its original barbarism." RED-HAIRED MEN. Sydney Smith, alluding to the foolishness of ex- cluding Catholics from Parliament, says: "I have often thought if the wisdom of our ancestors had ex- cluded all persons with red hair from the House of Commons, of the throes and convulsions it would oc- casion to restore them to their natural rights. What mobs and riots would it produce ? To what infinite abuse and obloquy would the capillary patriot be ex- posed ? what wormwood would distil from one politi- cian? what froth would drop from another? how one lord would work away about the hair of King Wil- liam and Lord Somers, and the authors of the great and glorious Revolution? how another* would ap- peal to the Deity and his own virtues, and to the hair of his children? Some would say that red-haired men were superstitious ; some would prove they were atheists; they would be petitioned against as the friends of slavery, and the advocates for revolt ; * Lord Eldon, celebrated for his lachrymal qualities, and for " ap- pealing to his own virtues" in his speeches. 15 170 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. in short, such a corrupter of the heart and the un- derstanding is the spirit of persecution, that these unfortunate people, (conspired against by their fellow-subjects of every complexion,) if they did not emigrate to countries where hair of another colour was persecuted, would be driven to the falsehood of perukes, or the hypocrisy of the Tricosian fluid." A GOOD DINNER. " A good soup," said the late Earl of Dudley, " a small turbot, a neck of venison, ducklings with green peas, or chicken with asparagus, and an apricot tart, is a dinner for an emperor when he cannot get a better." LIFE'S SECOND MORNING. There are not many more beautiful lines in the English language, there are certainly none so beau- tiful in the writings of their author, as those of Mrs. Barbauld, which the poet Rogers is fond of repeating to his friends, in his fine, deliberate manner, with just enough of tremulousness in that grave voice of his, to give his recitation the effect of deep feeling. " Life ! we've been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather. Tis hard to part when friends are dear, Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear. Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time ; Say not good night, but, in some happier clime, Bid me good morning." AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 171 It makes the thought of Death cheerful to repre- sent it thus, as Life looking in upon you with a glad greeting, amidst fresh airs and glorious light. The lines I infer were written by Mrs. Barbauld in her late old age, and I do not wonder that the aged poet, who some years since entered upon the fifth score of his years, should find them haunting his memory. Bryant. EDUCATION. There is a tendency in modern education to cover the fingers with rings, and at the same time to cut the sinews at the wrist. The worst education, which teaches self-denial, is better than the best which teaches every thing else, and not that. Sterling. CURRAN. As an example of powerful unpremeditated elo- quence, may be given a short answer of Curran, the Irish orator, to a certain Judge Eobinson "the author of many stupid, slavish, and scurrilous political pamphlets," and by his demerits and servility raised to the eminence which he thus disgraced who, upon one occasion, when the barrister was arguing a case before him, had the brutality to reproach Curran with his poverty, by telling him that he suspected "his law library was rather contracted." " It is true, my lord," said Curran, with dignified respect, " that I am poor, and the circumstance has cer- 172 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. tainly somewhat curtailed my library : my books are not numerous, but they are select, and I hope they have been perused with proper dispositions. I have prepared myself for this high profession rather by the study of a few good works, than by the composition of a great many bad ones. I am not ashamed of my poverty ; but I should be ashamed of my wealth, could I have stooped to acquire it, by servility and corruption. If I rise not to rank, I shall at least be honest ; and should I ever cease to be so, many an example shows me that an ill-gained reputation, by making me the more conspicuous, would only make me the more universally and the more notoriously contemptible 1" FEMALE EDUCATION. The pursuit of knowledge is the most innocent and interesting occupation which can be given to the female sex ; nor can there be a better method of checking a spirit of dissipation than by diffusing a taste for literature. The true way to attack vice, is by setting up something else against it. Give to women, in early youth, something to acquire, of sufficient in- terest and importance to command the application of their mature faculties, and to excite their per- severance in future life ; teach them that happiness is to be derived from the acquisition of knowledge, as well as the gratification of vanity ; and you will raise up a much more formidable barrier against dissipa- tion than a host of invectives and exhortations can supply. Sydney Smith. AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 173 EDUCATION AT BOTANY BAY. Sydney Smith, in enforcing the necessity of edu- cating the children of the convicts at Botany Bay, humorously remarks, "Nothing but the earliest at- tention to the habits of children, can restrain the erratic finger from the contiguous scrip, or prevent the hereditary tendency to larcenous abstraction." PITT AND WALPOLE. In a debate, in which Mr. Pitt and some of his young friends had violently attacked old Horace Walpole, the latter complained of the self-sufficiency of the young men of the day, on which Mr. Pitt got up with great warmth, beginning with these words : " With the greatest reverence for the gray hairs of the honourable gentleman " upon which Walpole pulled off his wig, and showed his head covered with gray hairs, which occasioned a general laughter, in which Pitt joined, and the dispute subsided. CULTIVATION OP THE MENTAL POWERS. The age of a cultivated mind is often more com- placent, and even more luxurious than the youth. It is the reward of the due use of the endowments bestowed by nature : while they, who in youth have made no provision for age, are left like an, unshel- tered tree, stripped of its leaves and branches, sha- king and withering before the cold blasts of winter. In truth, nothing is so happy to itself and so attractive to others, as a genuine and ripened imagination, that 15* 174 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. knows its own powers, and throws forth its treasures with frankness and fearlessness. The more it pro- duces, the more capable it becomes of production; the creative faculty grows by indulgence; and the more it combines, the more means and varieties of combinations it discovers. Sir Egerton Brydges. GOOD RULE. One of the wisest rules that can be observed in study, is to eschew those subjects which afford no footing to the mind. St. John. ACCESSION TO THE THRONE. A traveller, benighted in a wild and mountainous country, at length beheld the welcome light of a neighbouring habitation. He urged his horse towards it, when, instead of a house, he approached a kind of illuminated chapel, from whence issued the most alarming sounds he had ever heard. Though greatly surprised and terrified, he ventured to look through a window of the building, when he was amazed to see a large assembly of cats, who, arranged in solemn order, were lamenting over the corpse of one of their own species, which lay in state, and was surrounded with the various emblems of sovereignty. Alarmed and terrified at this extraordinary spectacle, he hast- ened from the place with greater eagerness than he approached it, and arriving some time after at the house of a gentleman, who never turned the wan- derer from his gate, the impressions of what he had AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 175 seen were so visible on his countenance, that his friendly host inquired into the cause of his anxiety. He accordingly told him his story, and having fin- ished it, a large family cat, who had lain during the narrative before the fire, immediately started up, and very articulately exclaimed, " Then I am King of the Cats /" and having thus announced his new dignity, the animal darted up the chimney, and was seen no more. Lord Lyttleton's Letters. SHERIDAN S WIT. Sheridan's wit was eminently brilliant, and almost always successful; it was like all his speaking, exceed- ingly well prepared, but it was skillfully introduced and happily applied; and it was well mingled also with humour, occasionally descending to farce. How little it was the inspiration of the moment, all men were aware who knew his habits ; and in the secret note-books of this famous wit, we are enabled to trace the jokes in embryo, with which he had so often made the walls of St. Stephen's shake, in a merriment excited by the happy appearance of a sudden unpre- meditated effusion. Take an instance in an extract from Sheridan's common-place book : " He emploj^s his fancy in his narrative, and keeps his recollections for his wit." The same idea is expanded into, " When he makes his jokes you applaud the accuracy of his memory, and 'tis only when he states his facts that you admire the flights of his imagination." But the thought was 176 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. too good to be thus wasted on the desert air of a common-place book. So it came forth at the ex- pense of Kelly, who, having been a composer of music, became a wine merchant. "You will," said the ready wit, "import your music, and compose your wine." Nor was this service exacted from an old idea thought sufficient : so in the House of Commons, an easy, and apparently off-hand parenthesis was thus filled with it, at the cost of Mr. Dundas : " (who gen- erally resorts to his memory for his jokes, and to his imagination for his facts.)" Brougham. OATS IN SCOTLAND. Lord Blibank made a happy retort on Dr. John- son's definition of oats : "a grain, which in England is generally given to the horses, but in Scotland sup- ports the people." " Yes," said he, " and where else will you see such horses and such men?" DR. JOHNSON'S CLUB-ROOM. The club-room is before us, and the table on which stands the omelet for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled .those heads which live for ever on the canvas of Eeynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke, and the tail thin form of Langton; the courtly sneer of Beauclerc, and the beaming smile of Garrick ; Gibbon rapping his snuff- box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure, which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 177 have been brought up the gigantic body, the huge massy face, seamed with scars of disease ; the brown coat, the black worsted stockings ; the gray wig, with the scorched foretop ; the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and nose moving with convulsive twitches ; we see the heavy form rolling ; we hear it puffing ; and then comes the "Why, sir?" and the "What then, sir?" and the " No, sir !" and the " You don't see your way through the question, sir !" Macaulay. INVITATION TO DINNER. The following, one of the latest unpublished pro- ductions of the poet Moore, addressed to the Mar- quis of Lansdowne, shows, that though, by this time inclining to threescore and ten, he retains all the fire and vivacity of early youth. It is full of those exquisitely apt allusions and felicitous turns of ex- pression in which the English Anacreon excels. It breathes the very spirit of classic festivity. Such an invitation to dinner, is enough to create an appetite in any lover of poetry : " Some think we bards have nothing real That poets live among the stars, so Their very dinners are ideal, (And heaven knows, too oft they are so :) For instance, that we have, instead Of vulgar chops and stews and hashes, First course, a phosnix at the head, Done in its own celestial ashes ; At foot, a cygnet, which kept singing All the time its neck was wringing. 178 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. Side dishes, thus, Minerva's owl, Or any such like learned fowl ; Doves, such as heaven's poulterer gets When Cupid shoots his mother's pets. Larks stewM in morning's roseate breath, Or roasted by a sunbeam's splendour ; And nightingales, be-rhymed to death Like young pigs whipp'd to make them tender. Such fare may suit those bards who're able To banquet at Duke Humphrey's table ; But as for me, who've long been taught To eat and drink like other people, And can put up with mutton, bought Where Bromham rears its ancient steeple , If Lansdowne will consent to share My humble feast, though rude the fare, Yet, seasoned by that salt he brings From Attica's salinest springs, 'Twill turn to dainties ; while the cup, Beneath his influence brightening up, Like that of Baucis, touched by Jove, Will sparkle fit for gods above !" MATHEMATICAL SAILORS. Nathaniel Bowditch, the translator of Laplace's Mecanique Celeste, displayed in very early life a taste for mathematical studies. In the year 1788, when he was only fifteen years old, he actually made an alma- nac for the year 1790, containing all the usual tables, calculations of the eclipses and other phenomena, and even the customary predictions of the weather. Bowditch was bred to the sea, and in his early voyages taught navigation to the common sailors about him. Captain Prince, with whom he often AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 179 sailed, relates, that one day tlie supercargo of the vessel said to him, "Come, captain, let us go forward, and hear what the sailors are talking about, under the lee of the long-boat." They went forward ac- cordingly, and the captain was surprised to find the sailors, instead of spinning their long yarns, earnestly engaged with book, slate, and pencil, discussing the high matters of tangents and secants, altitudes, dip, and refraction. Two of them, in particular, were very zealously disputing, one of them calling out to the other, "Well, Jack, what have you got?" I've got the sine," was the answer. "But that ain't right," said the other; "/say it is the cosine" DILATORY INCLINATIONS. Sir Robert Peel, speaking of Lord Eldon, remark- ed, that "even his failings leaned to virtue's side;" upon which it was observed, that his lordship's fail- ings resembled the leaning tower of Pisa, which, in spite of its long inclination, had never yet gone over. TURNER RETALIATION. Campbell relates : " Turner, the painter, is a ready wit. Once, at a dinner, where several artists, amateurs, and literary men were convened, a poet, by way of being facetious, proposed as a toast, the health of the painters and glaziers of Great Britain. The toast was drank ; and Turner, after returning thanks for it, proposed the health of the British paper- stainers." 180 AFTER-DINNEE TABLE-TALK. DANGEROUS FOOLS. If men are to be fools, it were better that they were fools in little matters than in great; dullness, turned up with temerity, is a livery all the worse for the facings ; and the most tremendous of all things is a magnanimous dunce. Sydney Smith. HORNE TOOKE AND WILKES. Home Tooke having challenged Wilkes, then sheriff of London and Middlesex, received the follow- ing reply : " Sir, I do not think it my business to cut the throat of every desperado that may be tired of his life, but as I am at present High Sheriff of the city of London, it may happen that I shall shortly have an opportunity of attending you in my official capacity, in which case I will answer for it, that you shall have no ground to complain of my endeavours to serve you." FOOTE S WOODEN LEG. There is no Shakspeare or Eoscius upon record, who, like Foote, supported a theatre for a series of years by his own acting, in his own writings ; and for ten years of the time upon a wooden leg ! This prop to his person I once saw standing by his bedside, ready dressed in a handsome silk stocking, with a polished shoe and gold buckle, awaiting the owner's getting up ; it had a kind of tragic, comical appearance, and I leave to inveterate wags the ingenuity of punning upon a Foote in bed, and a leg out of it. The proxy AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 181 for a limb thus decorated, though ludicrous, is too strong a reminder of amputation, to be very laugh- able. His undressed supporter was the common wooden stick, which was not a little injurious to a well-kept pleasure-ground. I remember following him after a shower of rain, upon a nicely rolled ter- race, in which he stumped a deep round hole at every other step he took, till it appeared as if the gardener had been there with his dibble, preparing, against all horticultural practice, to plant a long row of cabbages in a gravel walk. George Colman. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLD'S DINNERS. Sir Joshua Reynolds appears to have been but an irregular manager in his conviviality. " Often," says Forster, "was the dinner-board, prepared for seven or eight, required to accommodate itself to fifteen or sixteen ; for often, on the very eve of dinner, would Sir Joshua tempt afternoon visitors with intimation that Johnson, or Grarrick, or Goldsmith was to dine there. Nor was the want of seats the only difficulty. A want of knives and forks, of plates and glasses, as often succeeded. In something of the same style too, was the attendance; the kitchen had to keep pace with the visitors, and it was easy to know the guests best acquainted with the house, by their never failing to call instantly for beer, bread, or wine, that they might get them before the first course was over, and the worst confusion began. Once was Sir Joshua prevailed upon to furnish his table with dinner- 16 182 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. glasses and decanters, and some saving of time they proved ; yet, as they were demolished in the course of service, he could never be prevailed upon to re- place them." "But these trifling embarrassments," says Mr. Courtenay, describing them to Sir James Mackintosh; "only served to enhance the hilarity and the singular pleasure of the entertainment. It was not the wine, dishes, and cookery ; not the fish and venison that were talked of or recommended; those social hours, that irregular convivial talk, had matter of higher relish, and far more eagerly enjoyed. And amid all the animated bustle of his guests, the host sat perfectly composed; always attentive to what was said, never minding what was ate or drank, and leaving every one at perfect liberty to scramble for himself." Life of Goldsmith. DOMESTIC HAPPINESS. Nothing hinders the constant agreement of people who live together, but mere vanity; a secret insist- ing upon what they think their dignity or merit, and inward expectation of such an over-measure of def- erence and regard, as answers to their own extrava- gant false scale, and which nobody can pay, because none but themselves can tell readily to what pitch it amounts. Pope. LORD BATHURST. This peer died at the age of 91. Till within a month of his death, he constantly rode out two hours AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. 183 in the morning, and drank his bottle of wine after dinner. Upon one occasion he invited a large party to meet his son, who had become Lord Chancellor, when the whole company sat late except the latter, who took his leave at the decorous hour of twelve. "Come," said the aged earl, "now the old gentleman is gone, we can manage to take another bottle." TRANSFORMATIONS. Some would trace the pope himself, with his triple crown on his head, and the keys of heaven and hell in his pocket, to our old acquaintance Cerberus, with his three heads, who kept guard as the custos of Tartarus and Elysium. Be this as it may the pun of Swift is completely realized. The very same piece, which the Romans adored, now, with a new head on its shoulders like an old friend with a new face is worshipped with equal devotion by the modern Italians ; and Jupiter appears again, with as little change of name as of materials, in the character of the Jew, Peter. And, as if they wished to make the resemblance as perfect as possible, they have, in imitation of the Centum aras posuit, vigilemque, sacraverat ignem of his pagan prototype, surrounded the tomb of the Apostle with a hundred ever-burning lights. It is really surprising to see with what apparent fervour of devotion, all ranks, and ages, and sexes, kneel to, and kiss the toe of this brazen image ; for there is certainly 184 AFTER-DINNER TABLE-TALK. nothing in the "christened Jove" of St. Peter's, as a piece of sculpture, to palliate the superstition of its vo- taries. They rub it against their lips, with the most reverential piety. I have sat by the hour to see the crowds of people, who flock in to perform this cere- mony, waiting for their turn to kiss ; and yet the catholic would laugh at the pious Mussulman, who performs a pilgrimage to Mecca, to wash the holy pavement and kiss the black stone of the Caaba which, like his own St. Peter, is also a relic of heathenism. Alas, poor human nature! The catholic laughs at the Mussulman we do not scruple to laugh at the cath- olic the deist laughs at us and the atheist laughs at all. What is truth? We must wait for an an- swer. But though all must wait the great teacher- Death, to decide between them, let m repose our hopes and fears, with humble confidence, in the promises of Christianity; not as it appears disfigured and disguised at Rome, but as it is written and re- corded in that sacred volume, which, in the words of Locke, has " God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its mat- ter." Matthews. fetrak PAGE Wit and Professed Wits Sydney Smith 9 Raillery Swift 13 Passing One's Time Cowley 14 Witty Simile Bulwer 14 Truth Steele 15 Anglers Walton 15 Libraries Bacon 15 Affectation of Grandeur Seneca 15 Love of Littleness Cowley 16 "The Great Vulgar" Kurd 10 The Strawberry 16 A Habitual Bore Sydney Smith 1G Difficult Questions Charles Lamb 17 Genius and Common Understanding Swift 18 Stupid Stories Walpole 18 Losing Time 19 Delicate Praise 19 A Happy Character Lord Lyttleton's Letters 19 Heraldry v. Agriculture Cowley 20 Moving Charles Lamb 20 Monk Lewis's Tragedy of Alfonso Sydney Smith 21 English Conversation Bulwer's England and the English 21 Mr. Thomas Hill Quarterly Review 23 Titles of Books Butler 24 The Pleasures of London Charles Lamb 24 Gentleman's Magazine The Doctor 25 Alexander Hamilton Daniel Webster 25 George Selwyn's Bon-Mots Edinburgh Review 25 American Ice 28 Pleasant Times Hobbes 28 Mechanical Duty 28 Curran Charles Philips 28 Action Hazlitt 30 Every Man's House his Castle" Lord Chatham 30 186 TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE Atterbury'8 Wit 30 Curious Remark on Vanity Franklin 31 Happy Epithet 31 Bad Translators Madame La Fayette 31 Bores Byron 32 Sir Philip Francis Lord Brougham 32 Pope's Compliments 33 Intellect in Tall Men Fuller 35 Whitefleld 35 Astonishing Persons Walpole 35 Originality Va.nb-u.rgVs Relapse 35 Nothing to Do , Charles Lamb 35 Mind and Body 35 Holy Bullies Sydney Smith 36 Anecdote of Pope, the Actor Quarterly Review 36 Curiosity Fuller 37 Want of a Pursuit Sharp 37 Brandy and Water 37 Love of the Wonderful Shaftesbury 37 Clerical Fops Sydney Smith 38 Lying Swtft 38 The Healthy Man Hood 38 Plain Truth Bulwer 39 Self-importance Swift 39 Misers Charles Lamb 39 Taverns Dr. Johnson 40 Mistake on Both Sides 41 Presents Charles Lamb 41 Infants Fuller 42 Discretion Sicift 42 Intelligibility 42 Antiquity of Agriculture Cowley 43 Mr. Perkins, the Divine Fuller..* 43 Suspicion Bolingbroke 43 Cannibals 43 Flogging at School The Doctor 44 A Dinner-Party Sydney Smith 44 Literary Entertainments Menage 45 Dullness Tom Broicn 45 Scolding and Quarrelling Charles Lamb 45 Human Life Sir Wm. Temple 45 The English Language The Doctor 46 Excuse for a Long Letter Pascal 46 Real Manners Sicift 46 Eccentric Taste . . 46 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 187 PACK John Randolph 47 Duelling Sydney Smith 47 Narrow-Minded Person 47 Fastidious Tastes The Doctor 47 Ill-Natured Persons Izaak Walton 48 Empty Minds Fuller 48 Burning Chimney-Sweeps Sydney Smith 48 Butler's Wit .' 49 The Protestant Church 49 The Power of Habit 49 Essays on Taste The Doctor 50 Empty and Crowded Church Charles Lamb 50 Tedious Persons Ben Jonson 50 Mortality Fuller 51 Late Hours 51 The Best Style The Doctor 51 Notes of Admiration Swift 52 The Best Kind of Acid 52 Brevity JVorris 52 Children Southey 52 Old Angels 52 Nature Sir Thomas Browne 53 Idleness Burke 58 Wit and the Greater Passions Sydney Smith 53 School Learning The Doctor 54 Difference of Opinion Sir Thomas Browne 54 Great Men Lord Brougham 54 The Pyramids Fuller , 55 Conversation of Philosophers Coleridge 55 Preaching Damnation Selden 55 Moderation Fuller 55 Wilkie and the Monk of the Escurial The Doctor 55 Mr. Fievee Sydney Smith 56 Private Family History The Doctor 57 A Popular Fallacy Bulwer 57 Englishmen Edinburgh Review 57 A Good Stomach Beaumont and Fletcher 58 Lovers of Literature The Doctor 58 Virtue in a Short Person Fuller 59 Enjoyment of Life Sydney Smith 59 Classification of Novels Southey 59 Pamphlets and Ballads Seldtn's Table-Talk 60 Ancestry Sir Thomas Overbury 60 Elegance Hailitt 61 Richard L. Edgeworth Sydney Smith 61 188 TABLE OF CONTENTS. FADE Vanity of Human Fame The Doctor 62 French and English Vanity Bvlwer 62 Pockets The Doctor 63 Choice of Books Hooker 63 Schoolmasters The Doctor 63 Wit and Judgment Sir Thomas Ouerbury 64 Curates Sydney Smith 64 Fate of Poets Byron 64 Opinion Bulwer 65 Conversation Scott 65 Wisdom of Mirth Bolingbroke 65 Strawberry Hill 65 Bulls Sydney Smith 67 Preaching and Practice 68 Love of Money 69 Mark of Genius 69 Indestructibility of Enjoyment Sydney Smith 69 Handwriting Hood 70 Patriotism 71 Punch The Doctor 71 Class of Conversationalists Swift 71 Puns Sydney Smith 72 True Courtesy Ben Jonson 73 Roman Banquets Quarterly Review 73 Living in the World Walpole 74 Spinning Virtue Sir W. Scott 74 Unthinking Good Man's Soul Coleridge 75 Classical Glory Sydney Smith 75 Pleasing the Public The Doctor 75 Giving Dinners Bulwer 75 Mathew's Deceptive Powers 76 Charades Sydney Smith 76 Applicable to Idlers 76 Pope and Swift 77 Pleasures of a Bookworm Southey 77 Fugitive Verses Pope 78 Dirty Hands 78 Montaigne's Plagiarisms 78 Sleeping in Church Swift 78 Rousseau and Madame D'Epinay Sydney Smith 79 Coleridge and the Jews Coleridge's Table-Talk 79 A Love of Literature Sir John fferschel 80 Charity of a Miser Hood 81 Good Actions Charles Lamb 81 Retiring to the Country Sydney Smith 81 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 189 PAGE Selfishness The Doctor 82 Lord North Lord Brougham 82 Theodore Hook's Hoaxing Barham 84 King of Ceylon Sydney Smith 86 English After-Dinner Speeches JVezo Monthly Magazine 86 Two Evils Hannah More 87 Reserved Persons Walpole 87 Retirement The Doctor 87 Licensed Jester Edinburgh Review 88 Natural Curiosities of Ceylon Sydney Smith 89 Tenderness of Wit Swift 90 The Turkish Language The Doctor 90 Lord Thurlow Charles Butler's Reminiscences. 91 Pickpocket 92 Almanacs The Doctor 93 Materialism 93 School Recollections Thackeray 93 Four Ingredients in Conversation Sir W. Temple 94 English-German Hood, 94 Sydney Smith on Canning 95 Paying for Things Charles Lamb 96 Gain of a Loss Montaigne 96 Odd Parallel Southey 96 An Interruption Coleridge 97 Secret History of Books Thackeray 97 Religious Persecution Sydney Smith 97 Unanimity 98 Official Dress Sydney Smith 98 Preaching to the Poor The Doctor 99 Search after Contentment Izaak Walton 99 Labour of Idleness Tom Brown 100 Old Beauties Walpole 100 Hypocrisy of a Lord Chancellor Brougham ,. 100 Evenings at Holland House Macaulay 101 Religious Intolerance Sydney Smith 103 Playing Cards Guesses at Truth 104 Sign for a School Charles Lamb 105 French Language 105 Pulpit Eloquence Sydney Smith 105 Voluminous Trifling The Doctor 106 A Sharp Set 106 Small Knowledge 106 Definition of Timber Lord Caernarvon 107 Punning Translation 107 Narrow Minds Dr. Johnson 107 190 TABLE OP CONTENTS. BMP Parliamentary Jokes The Doctor 107 Pleasant Times Sydney Smith 107 Royal Saying ,, 108 St-Evremont Milligen's History of Duelling .. 108 Human Abilities Sir W. Temple 109 Impertinence of an Opinion Sydney Smith 110 Too Late 110 Pun of Hook Ill Henderson, the Actor Ill Anecdotes of the late James Smith Law Magazine Ill Clever Pun .". 118 Wit and Learning 118 Humour and Genius Coleridge 118 Prison Retirement Sydney Smith 119 Treason 119 Book Madness The Doctor 119 English-French Eothen 119 Parasites Sydney Smith 130 Charles Lamb Hood 120 Varieties of the Human Race Lady Montague 121 John Kemble Coleridge's Table-Talk 121 Influence of Women Capt. Marryat 122 Frenchmen Coleridge 122 Sir James Mackintosh Sydney Smith 122 Happiness Sharp 124 A She Fool Lord Burleigh 125 Lord Chief Justice Holt 125 Pedantry Swift 126 Sleeping in Church Saift 126 The Theatre Sydney Smith 128 Hint to Authors De Foe 129 Success in Life Guesses at Truth 129 Fine Speaking Lady Temple 129 Voltaire 129 I ! Guesses at Truth 130 The Art of Happiness Sharp 131 Use and Abuse Sydney Smith 131 The Middle Station De Foe 131 Sir W. Temple and Lord Brouncker 132 Miscellaneous Writing Shaftesbury 133 Conversation Various 133 Flattering Epitaphs 135 Voluminous Authors Sydney Smith 135 Sir Henry Wotton 136 English and French Suicides Bultcer 137 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 191 PAGE Odds and Ends Guesses at Truth 139 True Riches Erasmus 139 Enjoying and Possessing Berkeley 139 Butts Steele 140 Source of Conceit Sydney Smith 141 Gentleman Butler Coleridge 141 Horrors of Seasickness Matthews 142 Emphatic Oath 142 Men and Beasts Sydney Smith 143 Pope and Garrick 144 Opposite Minds Sydney Smith 145 Masculinenesa and Effeminacy Guesses at Truth 146 Talleyrand Brougham 146 Story-Telling Steele 147 Life Matthews 148 Rogues fielding 149 Industry Sharp 149 " What's in a Name" Sydney Smith 149 Cookery and Astronomy .. . . 150 Napoleon Matthews 150 Narrow-Minded Persons Sydney Smith 151 Coleridge's Notes in Books 152 Voltaire's Seal-Book 153 Servants Ude 153 Exaggeration Ferriar 153 Italian Dinner Matthews 154 Lord North Charles Butler 155 John Bull Sydney Smith 156 A Cold Charles Lamb 157 " Sixty Years Since" Quarterly Review 157 Fleas Eothen 158 The Penitents The Modem Orlando 159 Pleasures of Old Age Lady Willoughby' l s Diary 160 Frightful to think of Sydney Smith 161 Voltaire's Physiognomy Matthews 162 Necessities Quarterly Review 163 Gil Bias 163 A Changer of Dynasties Sydney Smith 163 Absent-Mindedness 164 A New Light Coleridge 164 Scotch and Irish 164 Changing Hats 165 Ennui and Travel Eothen 165 John Wilkes 166 Tests Quarterly Review 167 192 TABLE OF CONTENTS. FABK BueaadFaOof n -g*"~r Mfrfm MB Bed-Haired Ifea Sf*uy SmXi MB A Good Diner I^rdDmOtf 170 Ufcto Second MomBg.. ... ....^F^BBC.... .................... 179 .SteHimff 171 in .SfimtfSmitM 172 latBotujBaj SyJmey Smitk 173 Pin awl Walpofe 173 CwkiTxoaB of ifae Mesial Power* Sir Egtrtf* BryJgvt 173 Goad Brie SLJUks 174 .L~*LyttUt~i>t Lttter* 174 ilWt Bnmgtom 173 m 177 n 179 ITS i Fools SyimeySmiai 181 Home Toobe awl WHkes ISO Foote\ Woodea L GtmrgtCtlmn 130 181 M 183 GEORGE P. PUTNAM'S NEW PUBLICATIONS. g. Prepared for the tit-$nnks far Cnllrgcs nnfr Ingjj Irljnnli The Practical Elocutionist For Colleges, Academies, and High Schools. By JOHN W. S. Hows, Professor of Elocu- tion in Columbia College. 1vol. lOino., half-bound, $1. " The book is a good book, well planned, well executed, and well got up ; we trnt it will speedily work its way into the academical and collegiate institutions of the United States." JVcw- York Mbion. 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