THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 LAMB'S ESSAYS. 
 
 u.
 
 ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 AND 
 
 ELIANA 
 
 BY CHARLES LAMB 
 
 WITH A MEMOIR 
 
 BY BARRY CORNWALL 
 
 t 
 
 VOL. 11. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 SCOTT-THAW CO. 
 
 MDCCCCIII
 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. II. 
 
 PAG 8 
 
 Preface by a Friend of the late Elia . . . . ix 
 
 LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 
 
 Blakesmoor in H shire i 
 
 Poor Relations _ . • . 8 
 
 Detached Thoughts on Bool;s and Reading. . . 17 
 
 Stage Illusion -27 
 
 To the Shade of EUiston 32 
 
 Ellistoniana 3^ 
 
 The Old Margate Hoy 44 
 
 The Convalescent 55 
 
 Sanity of True Genius 61 
 
 Captain Jackson 66 
 
 The Superannuated Man 72 
 
 The Genteel Style in Writing 82 
 
 Barbara S 88 
 
 The Tombs in the Abbey 95 
 
 Amicus Redivivus . 99 
 
 Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sydney . . . .106 
 Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago .... 116 
 Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Produc- 
 tions of Modern Art 126 
 
 The Wedding ........ 141 
 
 Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age . 149 
 
 Old China 157 
 
 The Child Angel ; a Dream 165 
 
 Confessions of a Drunkard 169 
 
 Popular Fallacies : — 
 
 i. That a Bully is always a Coward . . . 180 
 
 ii. That Ill-gotten Gain never Prospers . . 181 

 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 V \GE 
 
 iii. That a Man must not Laugh at his Own Jest. 182 
 iv. That such a one shows his Breeding — that it is 
 
 easy to perceive he is no Gentleman . . ib. 
 
 V. That the Poor copy the Vices of the Rich . 183 
 
 vi. That Enough is as Good as a Feast . . 185 
 vii. Of Two Disputants, the Warmest is Generally 
 
 in the Wrong 186 
 
 viii. That Verbal Allusions are not Wit, because 
 
 they will not bear a Translation . . . 1S7 
 ix. That the Worst Puns are the Best . . .188 
 
 X. That Handsome Is that Handsome Does . 191 
 xi. That we must not Look a Gift Horse in the 
 
 Mouth 194 
 
 xii. That Home is Home, though it is never so 
 
 homely ........ 197 
 
 xiii. That you must Love Me and Love My Dog . 202 
 
 xiv. That we should Rise with the Lark . . 107 
 
 XV. That we should Lie Down with the Lamb . 210 
 
 xvi. That a Sulky Temper is a Misfortune . . 212 
 
 ELIANA. 
 
 A Biographical Essay on Elia 219 
 
 The Gentle Giantess 235 
 
 The Reynolds Gallery 239 
 
 Guy Faux 242 
 
 A Vision of Horns 244 
 
 The Good Clerk, a Character ..... 262 
 
 Reminiscence of Sir Jeftery Dunstan .... 271 
 
 On a Passage in " The Tempest " .... 274 
 
 The Months 279 
 
 Biographical Memoir of Mr. Liston .... 283 
 
 Autobiography of Mr. Munden 295 
 
 The Illustrious Defunct 299 
 
 The Ass . . 308 
 
 In Re Squirrels 312 
 
 Estimate of Defoe's Secondary Novels . . . 314 
 
 Postscript to the " Chapter on Ears " .... 318 
 
 Elia to his Correspondents 320 
 
 Unitarian Protests 323 
 
 On the Custom of Hissing at the Theatres . . . 330 
 
 Captain Starkey . 339 
 
 A Popular Fallacy : that a Deformed Person is a Lord 345 
 Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education has been 
 Neglected . . . . . . . .348 
 
 On the Ambiguities arising from Proper Names . . 357
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 vu 
 
 Elia on his " Confessions of a Drunkard " . 
 
 The Last Peach 
 
 Reflections in the Pillory 
 
 Cupid's Revenge ...... 
 
 The Defeat of Time ; or, a Tale of the Fairies 
 A Death-bed 
 
 PAGE 
 
 359 
 361 
 364 
 369 
 389 
 
 Appendix 
 
 4CI
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 BY A FRIKND OF THE LATE ELIA. 
 
 HIS poor gentleman, who for some 
 months past had been in a declining 
 way, hath at length paid his final tribute 
 to nature. 
 
 To say truth, it is time he were gone. The 
 humour of the thing, if ever there was much in it, 
 was pretty well exhausted ; and a two years' and 
 a half existence has been a tolerable duration for a 
 phantom. 
 
 I am now at liberty to confess, that much which 
 I have heard objected to my late friend's writings 
 was well-founded. Crude they are, I grant you — 
 a sort of unlicked, incondite things — villanously 
 pranked in an affected array of antique modes and 
 phrases. They had not been his, if they had been 
 other than such ; and better it is, that a writer 
 should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than 
 to affect a naturalness (so called) that should be 
 strange to him. Egotistical they have been pro- 
 nounced by some who did not know, that what he 
 tells us, as of himself, was often true only (his- 
 torically) of another ; as in a former Essay (to save 
 many instances) — where under \^\& first person (his 
 favourite figure) he shadows forth the forlorn estate 
 of a country-boy placed at a London school, far 
 from his friends and connections — in direct oppo-
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 gition to his own early history. If it be egotism to 
 imply and twine with his own identity the griefs and 
 affections of another — making hiiiiself many, or re- 
 ducing many unto himself— then is the skilful no- 
 velist, who all along brings in his hero or heroine, 
 speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of all ; 
 who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that 
 narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist 
 escape being faulty, who, doubtless, under cover of 
 passion uttered by another, oftentimes gives blame- 
 less vent to his most inward feelings, and expresses 
 his own story modestly ? 
 
 My late friend was in many respects a singular 
 character. Those who did not like him, hated him ; 
 and some, who once liked him, afterwards became 
 his bitterest haters. The truth is, he gave himself 
 too little concern what he uttered, and in whose 
 presence. He observed neither time nor place, and 
 would e'en out with what came uppermost. With 
 the severe religionist he would pass for a free- 
 thinker ; while the other faction set him down for 
 a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he belied his 
 sentiments. Few understood him ; and I am not 
 certain that at all times he quite understood himself. 
 He too much affected that dangerous figure — irony. 
 He sowed doubtful speeches, and reaped plain, 
 unequivocal hatred. He would interrupt the gravest 
 discussion with some light jest ; and yet, perhaps, 
 not quite irrelevant in ears that could understand 
 it. Your long and much talkers hated him. The 
 informal habit of his mind, joined to an inveterate 
 impediment of speech, forbade him to be an orator ; 
 and he seemed determined that no one else should 
 play that part when he was present. He was petit 
 and ordinary in his person and appearance. I have 
 sctn him sometimes in what is called good com-
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 t>s.ny, but where he has been a stranger, sit silent, 
 and be suspected for an odd fellow ; till some un- 
 lucky occasion provoking it, he would stutter out 
 some senseless pun (not altogether senseless, per- 
 haps, if rightly taken), which has stamped his 
 character for the evening. It was hit or miss with 
 him, but nine times out of ten, he contrived by this 
 device to send away a whole company his enemies. 
 His conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance, 
 and his happiest impromptus had the appearance 
 of effort. He has been accused of trying to be 
 witty, when in truth he was but struggling to give 
 his poor thoughts articulation. He chose his com- 
 panions for some individuality of character which 
 they manifested. Hence, not many persons of 
 science, and few professed litei-ati, were of his 
 councils. They were, for the most part, persons 
 of an uncertain fortune ; and, as to such people 
 commonly nothing is more obnoxious than a gen- 
 tleman of settled (though moderate) income, he 
 passed with most of them for a great miser. To 
 my knowledge this was a mistake. His intimados, 
 to confess a truth, were in the world's eye a ragged 
 regiment. He found them floating on the surface 
 of society ; and the colour, or something else, in 
 the weed pleased him. Tlie burrs stuck to him— 
 but they were good and loving burrs for all that. 
 He never greatly cared for the society of what are 
 called good people. If any of these were scan- 
 dalized (and offences were sure to arise) he could 
 not help it. When he has been remonstrated with 
 for not making more concessions to the feelings of 
 good people, he would retort by asking, what one 
 point did these good people ever concede to him ? 
 He was temperate in his meals and diversions, but 
 always kept a little on this side of abstemiousness.
 
 «ii PREFACE. 
 
 Only in the use of the Indian weed he might be 
 thought a little excessive. He took it,he would say, as 
 a solvent of speech. Marry— as the friendly vapour 
 ascended, how his prattle would curl up sometimes 
 with it ! the ligaments which tongue-tied him were 
 loosened, and the stammerer proceeded a statist ! 
 
 I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or 
 rejoice that my old friend is departed. His jests 
 were beginning to grow obsolete, and his stories to 
 be found out. He felt the approaches of age ; and 
 while he pretended to cling to life, you saw how 
 slender were the ties left to bind him. Discoursing 
 with him latterly on this subject, he expressed 
 himself with a pettisbness, which I thought un- 
 worthy of him. In our walks about his suburban 
 retreat (as he called it) at Shacklewell, some chil- 
 dren belonging to a school of industry had met us, 
 and bowed and curtseyed, as he thought, in an 
 especial manner to him. "They take me for a 
 visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. He 
 had a horror, which he carried to a foible, of 
 looking like anything important and parochial. He 
 thought that he approached nearer to that stamp 
 daily. He had a general aversion from being 
 treated like a grave or respectable character, and 
 kept a wary eye upon the advances of age that 
 should so entitle him. He herded always, while it 
 was possible, with people younger than himself. 
 He did not confonn to the march of time, but was 
 dragged along in the procession. His manners 
 lagged behind his years. He was too much of the 
 boy-man. The/i3^ai///77Mneversate gracefully on his 
 shoulders. The impressions of infancy had burnt into 
 him, and he resented the impertinence of manhood. 
 These were weaknesses ; but such as they were, 
 they are a key to explicate some of his writings.
 
 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 
 
 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 
 
 DO not know a pleasure more affecting 
 than to range at will over the deserted 
 apartments of some fine old family man- 
 sion. The traces of extinct grandeur 
 admit of a better passion than envy : and contem- 
 plations on the great and good, whom we fancy in 
 succession to have been its inhabitants, weave for 
 us illusions, incompatible with the bustle of modern 
 occupancy, and vanities of foolish present aristo- 
 cracy. The same difference of feeling, I think, at- 
 tends us between entering an empty and a crowded 
 church. In the latter it is chance but some present 
 human frailty — an act of inattention on the part of 
 some of the auditory — or a trait of affectation, or 
 worse, vain-glory, on that of the preacher, puts us 
 by our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and 
 the occasion. But wouldst thou know the beauty 
 of holiness? — go alone on some week-day, borrow- 
 ing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the 
 cool aisles of some country church : think of the 
 
 II. B
 
 » LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 piety that has kneeled there — the congregations, old 
 and young, that have found consolation there — the 
 meek pastor — the docile parishioner. With no dis- 
 turbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, 
 drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thy- 
 self become as fixed and motionless as the marble 
 effigies that kneel and weep around thee. 
 
 Journeying northward lately, I could not resist 
 going some few miles out of my road to look upon 
 the remains of an old great house with which I had 
 been impressed in this way in infancy. I was ap- 
 prised that the owner of it had lately pulled it 
 down ; still I had a vague notion that it could not 
 all have perished-, — that so much solidity with mag- 
 nificence could not have been crushed all at once 
 into the mere dust and rubbish which I found it. 
 
 The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift 
 hand indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks 
 had reduced it to — an antiquity. 
 
 I was astonished at the indistinction of every- 
 thing. Where had stood the great gates ? What 
 bounded the court-yard ? Whereabout did the out- 
 houses commence ? A few bricks only lay as re- 
 presentatives of that which was so stately and so 
 spacious. 
 
 Death does not shrink up his human victim at 
 this rate. The burnt ashes of a man weigh more 
 in their proportion. 
 
 Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at 
 their process of destruction, at the plucking of 
 every panel I should have felt the varlets at my 
 heart. I should have cried out to them to spare a 
 plank at least out of the cheerful store-room, in 
 whose hot window-seat I used to sit and read 
 Cowley, with the grass-plot before, and the hum and 
 flappings of that one solitaiy wasp that ever haunted
 
 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 3 
 
 it about me — it is in mine ears now, as oft as sum- 
 mer returns ; or a panel of the yellow-room. 
 
 Why, every plank and panel of that house for 
 me had magic in it. The tapestried bedrooms — 
 tapestry so much better than painting — not adorning 
 merely, but peopling the wainscots — at which child- 
 hood ever and anon would steal a look, shifting its 
 coverlid (replaced as quickly) to exercise its tender 
 courage in a momentary eye-encounter with those 
 stern bright visages, staring reciprocally — all Ovid 
 on the walls, in colours vivider than his description. 
 Acteeon in mid sprout, with the unappeasable pru- 
 dery of Diana ; and the still more provoking and 
 almost culinary coolness of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, 
 deliberately divesting of Marsyas. 
 
 Then, that haunted room — in which old Mrs. 
 Battle died — whereinto I have crept, but always in 
 the daytime, with a passion of fear ; and a sneaking 
 curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold communication 
 with the past. — How shall they build it up again ? 
 
 It was an old deserted place, yet not so long de- 
 serted that the traces of the splendour of past in- 
 mates were everywhere apparent. Its furniture was 
 still standing— even to the tarnished gilt leather 
 battledores, and crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks 
 in the nursery, which told that children had once 
 played there. But I was a lonely child, and had 
 the range at \\\\\ of every apartment, knew every 
 nook and corner, wondered and worshipped every- 
 where. 
 
 The solitude of childhood is not so much the 
 mother of thought as it is the feeder of love, ol 
 silence, and admiration. So strange a passion for 
 the place possessed me in those years, that, though 
 there lay — I shame to say how few roods distant 
 from the mansion — half hid by trees, what I judged
 
 t, LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 some romantic lake, such was the spell which bound 
 to the house, and such my carefulness not to pass 
 its strict and proper precincts, that the idle waters 
 lay unexplored for me ; and not till late in life, cu- 
 riosity prevailing over elder devotion, I found, to 
 my astonishment, a pretty brawling brook had been 
 the Lacus Incognitus of my infancy. Variegated 
 views, extensive prospects — and those at no gieat 
 distance from the house — I was told of such — what 
 were they to me, being out of the boundaries of my 
 Eden ? So far from a wish to roam, I would have 
 drawn, methought, still closer the fences of my 
 chosen prison, and have been hemmed in by a yet 
 securer cincture of those excluding garden walls. 
 I could have exclaimed with the garden-loving 
 poet — 
 
 Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines ; 
 Curl me about, ye gadding vines ; 
 And oh so close your circles lace, 
 That I may never leave this place ; 
 But, lest your fetters prove too weak, 
 Ere I your silken bondage break, 
 Do you, O brambles, chain me too. 
 And, courteous briars, nail me through.' 
 
 I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug fire-sides 
 — the low-built roof^parlours ten feet by ten — 
 frugal boards, and all the homeliness of home — 
 these were the condition of my birth— the whole- 
 some soil which I was planted in. Yet, without 
 impeachment to their tenderest lessons, I am not 
 sorry to have had glances of something beyond, 
 and to have taken, if but a peep, in childhood, at 
 the contrasting accidents of a great fortune. 
 
 To have the feeling of gentihty, it is not neces- 
 sary to have been born gentle. The pride of an- 
 
 ' rMaryell, on Appleton House, to ths Lord Fairfax.]
 
 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. j 
 
 cestry may be had on cheaper terms than to be 
 obliged to an importunate race of ancestors ; and 
 the coatless antiquary in his unemblazoned cell, 
 revolving the long line of a Mowbray's or De 
 Clifford's pedigree, at those sounding names may 
 ^\■arm himself into as gay a vanity as those who do 
 inherit them. The claims of birth are ideal merely, 
 and what herald shall go about to strip me of an 
 idea ? Is it trenchant to their swords ? can it be 
 hacked off as a spur can ? or torn away like a tar- 
 nished garter ? 
 
 What, else, were the families of the great to us ? 
 what pleasure should we take in their tedious gene- 
 alogies, or their capitulatory brass monuments ? 
 What to us the uninterrupted cuiTent of their 
 bloods, if our own did not answer within us to a 
 cognate and corresponding elevation ? 
 
 Or wherefore, else, O tattered and diminished 
 'Scutcheon that hung upon the time-worn walls of 
 thy princely stairs, Blakesmoor ! have I in child- 
 hood so oft stood poring upon thy mystic characters 
 — thy emblematic supporters, with their prophetic 
 " Resurgam " — till, every dreg of peasantiy purging 
 off, I received into myself Very Gentility ? Thou 
 wert first in my morning eyes; and of nights hast 
 detained my steps from bedward, till it was but a 
 step from gazing at thee to dreaming on thee. 
 
 This is the only true gentry by adoption; the 
 veritable change of blood, and not as empirics have 
 fabled, by transfusion. 
 
 Who it was by dying that had earned the splen- 
 did trophy, I know not, I inquired not ; but its 
 fading rags, and colours cobweb-stained, told that 
 its subject was of two centuries back. 
 
 And what if my ancestor at that date was some 
 Damoetas, — feeding flocks, not his own, upon the
 
 6 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 hills of Lincoln — did I in less earnest vindicate to 
 myself the family trappings of this once proud 
 ^gon ? repaying by a backward triumph the in- 
 sults he might possibly have heaped in his life-time 
 upon my poor pastoral progenitor. 
 
 If it were presumption so to speculate, the pre- 
 sent owners of the mansion had least reason to 
 complain. They had long forsaken the old house 
 of their fathers for a newer trifle ; and I was left to 
 appropriate to myself what images I could pick up, 
 to raise my fancy, or to soothe my vanity. , 
 
 I was the true descendant of those old W s, 
 
 and not the present family of that name, who had 
 fled the old waste places. 
 
 Mine was that gallery of good old family por- 
 traits, which as I have gone over, giving them in 
 fancy my own family name, one — and then another 
 — would seem to smile, reaching forward from the 
 canvas, to recognize the new relationship; while 
 the rest looked grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy 
 in their dwelling, and thoughts of fled posterity. 
 
 The Beauty with the cool blue pastoral draper}-, 
 and a lamb — that hung next the great bay window 
 
 — with the bright yellow H shire hair, and eye 
 
 of watchet hue — so like my Alice ! — I am persuaded 
 she was a true Elia — Mildred Elia, I take it. 
 
 [From her, and from my passion for her — for I 
 first learned love from a picture — Bridget took the 
 hint of those pretty whimsical lines, which thou 
 mayst see, if haply thou hast never seen them. 
 Reader, in the margin.' But my Mildred grew not 
 old, like the imaginary Helen.] 
 
 Mine, too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble Marble 
 Hall, with its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve 
 
 ' Here was inserted the little poem by Mary Lamb, called 
 " Helen."— Ed.
 
 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 7 
 
 Caesars — stately busts in marble— ranged round ; 
 of whose countenances, young reader of faces as I 
 was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, 
 had most of my wonder ; but the mild Galba had 
 my love. There they stood in the coldness of death, 
 yet freshness of immortality. 
 
 Mine, too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one 
 chair of authority, high-backed and wickered, once 
 the terror of luckless poacher, or self-forgetful 
 maiden — so common since, that bats have roosted 
 in it. 
 
 Mine, too, — whose else? — thycostlyfrait-garden, 
 with its sun-baked southern wall ; the ampler plea- 
 sure-garden, rising backwards from the house in 
 triple terraces, with flower-pots now of palest lead, 
 save that a speck here and there, saved from the 
 elements, bespake their pristine state to have been 
 gilt and glittering ; the verdant quarters backwarder 
 still ; and, stretching still beyond, in old formality, 
 thy firry wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel, and 
 the day-long murmuring wood-pigeon, with that 
 antique image in the centre, God or Goddess I wist 
 not ; but child of Athens or old Rome paid never 
 a sincerer worship to Pan or to Sylvanus in their 
 native groves, than I to that fragmental mystery. 
 
 Was it for this that I kissed my childish hands 
 too fervently in your idol- worship, walks and wind- 
 ings of Blakesmoor ! for this, or what sin of mine, 
 has the plough passed over your pleasant places ? 
 I sometimes think that as men, when they die, do 
 not die all, so of their extinguished habitations 
 there may be a hope — a germ to be revivified.
 
 POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 POOR RELATION— is the most irre- 
 levant thing in nature, — a piece of im- 
 pertinent correspondency, — an odious 
 approximation, — a haunting conscience, 
 — a preposterous sliadow, lengthening in the noon- 
 tide of our prosperity, — an unwelcome remem- 
 brancer, — a perpetually recurring mortification, — 
 a drain on your purse, — a more intolerable dun 
 upon your pride, — a drawback upon success, — a 
 rebuke to your rising, — a stain in your blood, — 
 a blot on your 'scutcheon, — a rent in your garment, 
 — a death's head at your banquet, — Agathocles' pot, 
 — a Mordecai in your gate, — a Lazarus at your 
 door, — a lion in your path, — a frog in your cham- 
 ber, — a fly in your ointment, — a mote in your eye, 
 — a triumph to your enemy, — an apology to your 
 friends, — the one thing not needful, — the hail in 
 harvest, — the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet. 
 
 He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth 
 you "That is Mr. ." A rap, between fami- 
 liarity and respect ; that demands, and at the same 
 time seems to despair of, entertaniment. He en- 
 tereth smiling and — embarrassed. He holdeth out 
 his hand to you to shake, and — draweth it back 
 again. He casually looketh in about dinner-time 
 —when the table is full. He offereth to go away,
 
 POOR RELATIONS. 9 
 
 seeing you have company — but is induced to slay. 
 He fiUeth a chair, and your visitor's two children 
 are accommodated at a side-table. He never 
 conieth upon open days, when your wife says, with 
 
 some complacency, "My dear, perhaps Mr. 
 
 will drop in to-day." He remembereth birth-days 
 — and professeth he is fortunate to have stumbled 
 upon one. He declareth against fish, the turbot 
 being small — yet suffereth himself to be importuned . 
 into a slice, against his first resolution. He stick- 
 eth by the port — yet will be prevailed upon to 
 empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger 
 press it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, 
 who are fearful of being too obsequious or not civil 
 enough, to him. The guests think "they have 
 seen him before." Eveiy one speculateth upon his 
 cor.dition ; and the most part take him to be a — 
 tide-waiter. He calleth you by your Christian 
 name, to imply that his other is the same with 
 your own. He is too familiar by half, yet you 
 wish he had less diffidence. With half the fami- 
 liarity, he might pass for a casual dependent ; with 
 more boldness, he would be in no danger of being 
 taken for what he is. He is too humble for a friend ; 
 yet taketh on him more state than befits a client. 
 He is a worse guest than a country tenant, inas- 
 much as he bringeth up no rent — yet 'tis odds, from 
 his garb and demeanour, that your guests take him 
 for one. He is asked to make one at the whist 
 table ; refuseth on the score of poverty, and — re- 
 sents being left out. When the company break up, 
 he profifereth to go for a coach — and lets the ser- 
 vant go. He recollects your grandfather ; and will 
 thrust in some mean and quite unimportant anec- 
 dote — of the family. He knew it when it was not 
 quite so flourishing as "he is blest in seeing it now."
 
 lo LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 He reviveth past situations, to institute what he 
 calleth — favourable comparisons. With a reflect- 
 ing sort ot congratulation, he will inquire the price 
 of your furniture ; and insults you with a special 
 commendation of your window-curtains. He is of 
 opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape; 
 but, after all, there was something moi^e comfort- 
 able about the old tea-kettle — which you must re- 
 member. He dare say you must find a great con- 
 venience in having a carriage of your own, and 
 appealeth to your lady if it is not so. Inquireth if 
 you have had your arms done on vellum yet ; and 
 did not know, till lately, that such-and-such had 
 been the crest of the family. His memory is un- 
 seasonable ; his compliments perverse ; his talk a 
 trouble ; his stay pertinacious ; and when he goeth 
 away, you dismiss his chair into a corner as pre- 
 cipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid of two 
 nuisances. 
 
 There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is 
 —a female Poor Relation. You may do some- 
 thing with the other ; you may pass him off tole- 
 rably well ; but your indigent she-relative is hope- 
 less. "He is an old humorist," you may say, 
 "and affects to go threadbare. His circumstances 
 are better than folks would take them to be. You 
 are fond of ha.ving a Character at your table, and 
 truly he is one." But in the indications of female 
 poverty there can be no disguise. No woman 
 dresses below herself from caprice. The truth must 
 out without shuffling. " She is plainly related to 
 
 the L 's; or what does she at their house?" 
 
 She is, in all probability, your wife's cousin. Nine 
 times out of ten, at least, this is the case. — Her 
 garb is something between a gentlewoman and a 
 beggar, yet the former evidently predominates.
 
 POOR RELATIONS. ii 
 
 She is most provokingly humble, and ostentati- 
 ously sensible to her inferiority. He may require 
 to be repressed sometimes — aliqtiando sufflaini- 
 nandus erat — but there is no raising her. You 
 send her soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped 
 
 — after the gentlemen. Mr. requests the 
 
 honour of taking wine with her; she hesitates be- 
 tween Port and Madeira, and chooses the former 
 — because he does. She calls the servant Sir; and 
 insists on not troubling him to hold her plate. The 
 housekeeper patronizes her. The children's go- 
 verness takes upon her to correct her when she has 
 mistaken the piano for a harpsichord. 
 
 Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable 
 instance of the disadvantages to which this chime- 
 rical notion of affinity co7istituting a claim to ac- 
 quaintance, may subject the spirit of a gentleman. 
 A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and 
 a lady with a great estate. His stars are perpe- 
 tually crossed by the malignant maternity of an 
 old woman, who persists in calling him " her son 
 Dick." But she has wherewithal in the end to 
 recompense his indignities, and float him again 
 upon the brilliant surface, under which it had been 
 her seeming business and pleasure all along to sink 
 him. All men, besides, are not of Dick's tempera- 
 ment. I knew an Amlet in real life, who, wanting 
 
 Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor W was 
 
 of my own standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and 
 a youth of promise. If he had a blemish, it was 
 too much pride ; but its quality was inoffensive ; 
 it was not of that sort which hardens the heart, 
 and serves to keep inferiors at a distance ; it only 
 sought to ward off derogation from itself. It was 
 the principle of self-respect carried as far as it could 
 go, without infringing upon that respect, which he
 
 12 LAST ESSAVS OF ELI A. 
 
 would have every one else equally maintain for him- 
 self. He would have you to think alike with him 
 on this topic. Many a quarrel have I had with 
 him, when we were rather older boys, and our 
 tallness made us more obnoxious to observation in 
 the blue clothes, because 1 M'ould not thread the 
 alleys and blind ways of the town with him to 
 elude notice, when we have been out together on 
 a holiday in the streets of this sneering and prying 
 
 metropolis. W M'ent, sore with these notions, 
 
 to Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of a 
 scholar's life meeting with the alloy of a humble 
 introduction, wrought in him a passionate devotion 
 to the place, with a profound aversion from the so- 
 ciety. The servitor's gown (worse than his school 
 array) clung to him with Nessian venom. He 
 thought himself ridiculous in a garb, under which 
 Latimer must have walked erect, and in which 
 Hooker, in his young days, possibly flaunted in a 
 vein of no discommendable vanity. In the depth 
 of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, the 
 poor student shrunk from observation. He found 
 shelter among books, which insult not ; and studies, 
 that ask no questions of a youth's finances. He 
 was lord of his library, and seldom cared for look- 
 ing out beyond his 'domains. The healing influence 
 of studious pursuits was upon him to soothe and to 
 abstract. He was almost a healthy man, when the 
 waywardness of his fate broke out against him 
 with a second and worse malignity. The father 
 of W had hitherto exercised the humble pro- 
 fession of house-painter, at N , near Oxford. 
 
 A supposed interest with some of the heads of 
 colleges had now induced him to take up his abode 
 in that city, with the hope of being employed upon 
 some public works which were talked of. From
 
 POOR RELATIONS. 13 
 
 that moment I read in the countenance of the 
 young man the detenninalion which at length tore 
 him from academical pursuits for ever. To a per- 
 son unacquainted with our imiversities, the distance 
 between the gownsmen and the townsmen, as they 
 are called — the trading part of the latter especially 
 — is carried to an excess that would appear harsh 
 
 and incredible. The temperament of W 's 
 
 father was diametrically the reverse of his own. 
 
 Old W was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, 
 
 who, with his son upon his arm, would stand bow- 
 ing and scraping, cap in hand, to anything that 
 wore the semljlance of a gown — insensible to the 
 winks and opener remonstrances of the young man, 
 to whose chamber-fellow, or equal in standing, 
 perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously 
 ducking. Such a state of things could not last. 
 W must change the air of Oxford, or be suffo- 
 cated. He chose the former; and let the sturdy 
 moralist, who strains the point of the filial duties 
 as high as they can bear, censure the dereliction ; 
 he cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with 
 
 W , the last afternoon I ever saw him, under 
 
 the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It was in the 
 fine lane leading from the High Street to the back 
 
 of * * * * college, where W kept his rooms. 
 
 lie seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. I ven- 
 tured to rally him — finding him in a better mood 
 — upon a representation of the Artist Evangelist, 
 which the old man, whose affairs were beginning 
 to flourish, had caused to be set up in a splendid 
 sort of frame over his really handsome shop, either 
 as a token of prosperity or badge of gratitude to 
 
 his saint. W lookcxi up at the Luke, and, like 
 
 Satan, "knew his mounted sign — and fled." A 
 letter on his father's table, the next morning, an-
 
 14 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 nounced that he had accepted a commission in a 
 regiment about to embark for Portugal. He was 
 among the first who perished before the walls of 
 St. Sebastian. 
 
 I do not know how, upon a subject which I 
 began with treating half seriously, I should have 
 fallen upon a recital so eminently painful ; but 
 this theme of poor relationship is replete with so 
 much matter for tragic as well as comic associa- 
 tions, that it is diflicult to keep the account dis- 
 tinct without blending. The earliest impressions 
 which I received on this matter are certainly not 
 attended with anything painful, or very humiliating, 
 in the recalling. At my father's table (no very 
 splendid one) was to be found, every Saturday, 
 the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman, clothed 
 in neat black, of a sad yet comely appearance. 
 His deportment was of the essence of gravity ; his 
 words few or none ; and I was not to make a 
 noise in his presence. I had little inclination to 
 have done so — for my cue was to admire in silence. 
 A particular elbow-chair was appropriated to him, 
 which was in no case to be violated. A peculiar 
 sort of sweet pudding, which appeared on no other 
 occasion, distinguished the days of his coming. I 
 used to think him a prodigiously rich man. All 
 I could make out of him was, that he and my 
 father had been schoolfellows, a world ago, at 
 Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The 
 Mint I knew to be a place where all the money 
 was coined — and I thought he was the owner of 
 all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined 
 themselves about his presence. He seemed above 
 human infirmities and passions. A sort of melan- 
 choly grandeur invested him. From some inex 
 plicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about
 
 POOR RELATIONS. 15 
 
 in an eternal suit of mourning ; a captive — a 
 stately being let out of the Tower on Saturdays. 
 Often have I wondered at the temerity of my 
 father, who, in spite of an habitual general respect 
 which we all in common manifested towards him, 
 would venture now and then to stand up against 
 him in some argument touching their youthful 
 days. The houses of the ancient city of Lincoln 
 are divided (as most of my readers know) between 
 the dwellers on the hill and in the valley. This 
 marked distinction formed an obvious division 
 between the boys who lived above (however 
 brought together in a common school) and the 
 boys whose paternal residence was on the plain ; 
 a sufficient cause of hostility in the code of these 
 young Grotiuses. My father had been a leading 
 Mountaineer ; and would still maintain the general 
 superiority in skill and hardihood of the Above 
 Boys (his own faction) over the Below Boys (so 
 were they called), of which party his contemporaiy 
 had been a chieftain. Many and hot were the 
 skirmishes on this topic — the only one upon which 
 the old gentleman was ever brought out — and bad 
 blood bred ; even sometimes almost to the recom- 
 mencement (so I expected) of actual hostilities. 
 But my father, who scorned to insist upon advan- 
 tages, generally contrived to turn the conversation 
 upon some adroit by-commendation of the old 
 Minster ; in the general preference of which, before 
 all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller on 
 the hill, and the plain-born, could meet on a con- 
 ciliating level, and lay down their less important 
 differences. Once only I saw the old gentleman 
 really ruffled, and I remember with anguish the 
 thought that came over me : " Perhaps he will 
 never come here again." He had been pressed to
 
 i6 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 take another plate of the viand, which I have 
 already mentioned as the indispensable concomi- 
 tant of his visits. He had refused with a resistance 
 amounting to rigour, when my aunt, an old Lin- 
 colnian, but who had something of this, in com- 
 mon with my cousin Bridget, that she would some- 
 times press civility out of season — uttered the 
 following memorable application — " Do take an- 
 other slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding 
 every day." The old gentleman said nothing at 
 the time — but he took occasion in the course of 
 the evening, when some argument had intervened 
 between them, to utter M'ith an emphasis which 
 chilled the company, and which chills me now 
 as I write it — "Woman, you are superannu- 
 ated ! " John Billet did not survive long, after 
 the digesting of this affront ; but he survived 
 long enough to assure me that peace was actually 
 restored ; and if I remember aright, another pud- 
 ding was discreetly substituted in the place of that 
 which had occasioned the offence. He died at the 
 Mint (anno 1781) where he had long held, what 
 he accounted, a comfortable independence; and 
 with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, 
 which were found in his escritoir after his decease, 
 left the world, blessing God that he had enough 
 to bury him, and that he had never been obliged 
 to any man for a sixpence. This was — a Poor 
 Relation. 
 
 v^fM]^
 
 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS 
 AND READING. 
 
 To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with 
 the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a 
 man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the 
 natural sprouts of his ov/n.— Lord Foppington, in " '^'•' 
 Relapse." 
 
 The 
 
 i N ingenious acquaintance of my own was 
 so much struck with this bright sally of 
 his Lordship, that he has left off reading 
 altogether, to the great improvement of 
 his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit 
 on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no in- 
 considerable portion of my time to other people's 
 thoughts. I dream away my life in others' specu- 
 lations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. 
 When I am not walking, I am reading ; I cannot 
 sit and think. Books think for me. 
 
 I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too 
 genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can 
 read anything which I call a book. There are 
 things in that shape which I cannot allow for such. 
 In this catalogue of books -which are no books — 
 biblia a-biblia — I reckon Court Calendars, Direc- 
 tories, Pocket Books [the Literary excepted], 
 Draught Boards, botmd and lettered on the back, 
 11. C
 
 i8 LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large : 
 the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, 
 Soame Jenyns, and generally, all those volumes 
 which *' no gentleman's library should be without :" 
 the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned 
 Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these 
 exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless 
 my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. 
 
 I confess that it moves my spleen to see these 
 things in books' clothing perched upon shelves, like 
 false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into 
 the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occu- 
 pants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of 
 a volume, and hope it some kindhearted play-book, 
 then, opening what "seem its leaves, ' to come 
 bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To ex- 
 pect a Steele or a Farquhar, and find — Adam 
 Smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of 
 hlockheaded Encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or Me- 
 tropolitanas) set out in an array of russia, or mo- 
 rocco, when a tithe of that good leather would 
 comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios, would 
 renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Ray- 
 mund Lully to look like himself again in the world. 
 I never see these impostors, but I long to strip 
 them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils. 
 
 To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the de- 
 sideratum of a volume. Magnificence comes after. 
 This, when it can be afforded, is not to be lavished 
 upon all kinds of books indiscriminately. I would 
 not dress a set of magazines, for instance, in full 
 suit. The dishabille, or half binding (with russia 
 backs ever) is our costume. A Shakspeare or a 
 Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere fop- 
 pery to trick out in gay apparel. The possession 
 of them confers no distinction. The exterior of
 
 ON BOOKS AND READING. 19 
 
 them (the things themselves being so common), 
 strange to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tick- 
 ling sense of property in the owner. Thomson's 
 Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little 
 torn and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine 
 lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and worn- 
 out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond russia) 
 if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, 
 of an old "Circulating Library" Tom Jones, or 
 Vicar of Wakefield ! How they speak of the thou- 
 sand thumbs that have turned over their pages with 
 delight ! — of the lone sempstress, whom they may 
 have cheered (milliner, or harder-working mantua- 
 maker) after her long day's needle-toil, running far 
 into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill 
 spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some 
 Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchanting con- 
 tents ! Who would have them a whit less soiled ? 
 What better condition could we desire to see them 
 in? 
 
 In some respects the better a book is, the less it 
 demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, 
 and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive 
 volumes — Great Nature's Stereotypes — we see them 
 individually perish with less regret, because we 
 know the copies of them to be " eterne." But where 
 a book is at once both good and rare — where the 
 individual is almost the species, and when that 
 perishes, 
 
 We know not where is that Promethean torch 
 That can its light relumine, — 
 
 such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke 
 of Newcastle, by his Duchess — no casket is rich 
 enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour 
 and keep safe such a j.ewel.
 
 20 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 Not only rare volumes of this description, which 
 seem hopeless ever to be reprinted, but old editions 
 of writers, such as Sir Philip Sidney, Bishop Tay- 
 lor, Milton in his prose works. Fuller — of whom 
 we have reprints, yet the books themselves, though 
 they go about, and are talked of here and there, 
 we know have not endenizened themselves (nor 
 possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as to 
 become stock books — it is good to possess these in 
 durable and costly covers. I do not care for a First 
 Folio of Shakspeare. [You cannot make a pet 
 book of an author whom everybody reads.] I 
 rather prefer the common editions of Rowe and 
 Tonson, without notes, and with plates, which, 
 being so execrably bad, serve as maps or modest 
 remembrancers, to the text ; and, without pretend- 
 ing to any supposable emulation with it, are so 
 much better than the Shakspeare gallery engravings 
 which did. I have a community of feeling with 
 my countryman about his Plays, and I like those 
 editions of him best which have been oftenest 
 tumbled about and handled. — On the contrary, I 
 cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in Folio. 
 The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I have 
 no sympathy with them. If they were as much 
 read as the current editions of the other poet, I 
 should prefer them in that shape to the older one. 
 I do not know a more heartless sight than the re- 
 print of the Anatomy of Melancholy. What need 
 was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic 
 old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet 
 of the newest fashion to modem censure? what 
 hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever be- 
 coming popular? — The wretched Malone could 
 not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Strat- 
 ford church to let him whitewash the painted effigy
 
 ON BOOKS AND READING. 21 
 
 of old Shakspeare, which stood there, in rude b\it 
 lively fashion depicted, to the very colour of the 
 cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress 
 he used to wear — the only authentic testimony we 
 had, however imperfect, of these curious parts and 
 parcels of him. They covered him over with a 
 coat of white paint. By , if I had been a jus- 
 tice of peace for Warwickshire, I would have clapt 
 both commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, for 
 a pair of meddling sacrilegious varlets. 
 
 I think I see them at their work — these sapient 
 trouble-tombs. 
 
 Shall I be thought fantastical if I confess that 
 the names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and 
 have a finer relish to the ear — to mine, at least — 
 than that of Milton or of Shakspeare ? It may be 
 ' that the latter are more staled and rang upon in 
 common discourse. The sweetest names, and which 
 carry a perfume in the mention, are, Kit Marlowe, 
 Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley. 
 
 Much depends upon when and where you read a 
 book. In the five or six impatient minutes, before 
 the dinner is quite ready, who would think of tak- 
 ing up the Fairy Queen for a stop-gap, or a volume 
 of Bishop Andrewes' sermons ? 
 
 Milton almost requires a solemn service of music 
 to be played before you enter upon him. But he 
 brings his music, to which, who listens, had need 
 bring docile thoughts, and purged ears. 
 
 Winter evenings — the world shut out — with less 
 of ceremony the gentle Shakspeare enters. At such 
 a season the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale — 
 
 These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud 
 — to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single per- 
 son listening. More than one — and it degenerates 
 into an audience.
 
 2P LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 Books of quick interest, that hurry on for inci- 
 dents, are for the eye to glide over only. It will not 
 do to read them out. I could never listen to even the 
 better kind of modem novels without extreme irk- 
 someness. 
 
 A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some 
 of the Bank offices it is the custom (to save so much 
 individual time) for one of the clerks — who is the 
 best scholar — to commence upon the Times or the 
 Chronicle and recite its entire contents aloud, pro 
 bono publico. With every advantage of lungs and 
 elocution, the effect is singularly vapid. In barbers' 
 shops and public-houses a fellow will get up and 
 spell out a paragraph, which he communicates as 
 some discovery. Another follows with his selection. 
 So the entire journal transpires at length by piece- 
 meal. Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, with- 
 out this expedient, no one in the company would 
 probably ever travel through the contents of a whole 
 paper. 
 
 Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one 
 ever lays one down without a feeling of disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at 
 Nando's, keeps the paper ! I am sick of hearing 
 the waiter bawling out incessantly, "The Chronicle 
 is in hand. Sir. " 
 
 [As in these little diurnals I generally skip the 
 Foreign News, the Debates and the Politics, I find 
 the Morning Herald by far the most entertaining 
 of them. It is an agreeable miscellany rather than 
 a newspaper.] 
 
 Coming into an inn at night — having ordered 
 your supper— what can be more delightful than to 
 find lying in the window-seat, left there time out of 
 mind by the carelessness of some former guest —
 
 ON BOOKS AND READING. 23 
 
 two or three numbers of the old Town and Countiy 
 Magazine, with its amusing tete-i-tite pictures — 
 
 "The Royal Lxjver and Lady G ;" "The 
 
 Melting Platonic and the old Beau," — and such- 
 like antiquated scandal ? Would you exchange it — 
 at that time, and in that place — for a better book ? 
 
 Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret 
 it so much for the weightier kinds of reading — the 
 Paradise Lost, or Comus, he could have read to 
 him — but he missed the pleasure of skimming over 
 with his own eye a magazine, or a light pamphlet. 
 
 I should not care to be caught in the serious 
 avenues of some cathedral alone, and reading Can- 
 dide. 
 
 I do not remember a more whimsical surprise 
 than having been once detected — by a familiar 
 damsel — reclined at my ease upon the grass, on 
 Primrose Hill (her Cythera) reading — Pamela. 
 There was nothing in the book to make a man 
 seriously asliamed at the exposure ; but as she 
 seated herself down by me, and seemed determined 
 to read in company, I could have wished it had 
 been — any other book. We read on very sociably 
 for a few pages ; and, not finding the author much 
 to her taste, she got up, and — went away. Gentle 
 casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture, whether the 
 blush (for there was one between us) was tlie pro- 
 perty of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. 
 From me you shall never get the secret, 
 
 I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. 
 I cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian 
 minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow 
 Hill (as yet Skinner's Street luas not), between the 
 hours of ten and eleven in the morning, studying a 
 volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a 
 strain of abstraction beyond my reach, I used to
 
 14 LAST ESSAVS OF ELIA. 
 
 admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of secu- 
 lar contacts. An illiterate encounter with a porter's 
 knot, or a bread basket, would have quickly put to 
 flight all the theology I am master of, and have left 
 me worse than indifferent to the five points. 
 
 [I was once amused — there is a pleasure in 
 affecting affectation — at the indignation of a 
 crowd that was jostling in with me at the pit- 
 door of Covent Garden Theatre, to have a sight 
 of Master Betty — then at once in his dawn and 
 his meridian — in Hamlet. I had been invited, 
 quite unexpectedly, to join a party, whom I met 
 near the door of the playhouse, and I happened to 
 have in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and 
 Steevens's Shakspeare, which, the time not admit- 
 ting of my carrying it home, of course went with 
 me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pres- 
 sure of the doors opening— the rush, as they term 
 it— I deliberately held the volume over my head, 
 open at the scene in which the young Roscius had 
 been most cried up, and quietly read by the lamp- 
 light. The clamour became universal. " The 
 affectation of the fellow," cried one. "Look at 
 that gentleman reading, papa," squeaked a young 
 lady, who, in her admiration of the novelty, almost 
 forgot her fears. I read on. " He ought to have 
 his book knocked out of his hand, " exclaimed a 
 pursy cit, whose arms were too fast pinioned to his 
 side to suffer him to execute his kind intention. 
 Still I read on— and, till the time came to pay my 
 money, kept as unmoved as Saint Anthony at his 
 holy offices, with' the satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins, 
 mopping, and making mouths at him, in the pic- 
 ture, while the good man sits as undisturbed at the 
 sight as if he were the sole tenant of the desert. — 
 The individual rabble (I recognized more than one
 
 ON BOOKS AND READING. 25 
 
 of their ugly faces) had damned a slight piece of 
 mine a few nights before, and I was determined 
 the culprits should not a second time put me out of 
 countenance.] 
 
 There is a class of street readers, whom I can 
 never contemplate without affection — the poor gen- 
 try, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a 
 book, filch a little learning at the open stalls— the 
 owner, with his hard eye, casting envious looks at 
 them all the while, and thinking when they will 
 have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, 
 expecting every moment when he shall interpose 
 his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the 
 gratification, they " snatch a fearful joy." Martin 
 
 B , in this way, by daily fragments, got through 
 
 two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper 
 damped his laudable ambition, by asking him (it 
 was 'in his younger days) whether he meant to pur- 
 chase the work. M. declares, that under no cir- 
 cumstances in his life did he ever peruse a book 
 with half the satisfaction which he took in those 
 uneasy snatches. A quaint pofetess of our day has 
 moralized upon this subject in two very touching but 
 homely stanzas : 
 
 I saw a boy with eager eye 
 
 Open a book upon a stall, 
 
 And read, as he'd devour it all ; 
 
 Which, when the stall-man did espy. 
 
 Soon to the hoy I heard him call, 
 
 " You Sir, you never buy a book, 
 
 Therefore in one you shall not look." 
 
 The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh 
 
 He wish'd he never had been taught to read. 
 
 Then of the old churl's books he should have ha«i ao need. 
 
 Of sufferings the poor have many 
 Which never can the rich annoy. 
 I soon perceived another boy. 
 Who look'd as if he had not any
 
 26 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 Food, for that day at least — enjoy 
 
 The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. 
 
 This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder. 
 
 Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny. 
 
 Beholding choice of dainty-dressfed meat : 
 
 No wonder if he wish he ne'er had leam'd to eat.
 
 STAGE ILLUSION. 
 
 PLAY is said to be well or ill acted, in 
 proportion to the scenical illusion pro- 
 duced. Whether such illusion can in 
 
 any case be perfect, is not the question. 
 
 The nearest approach to it, we are told, is when 
 the actor appears wholly unconscious of the pre- 
 sence of spectators. In tragedy — in all which is to 
 affect the feelings — this undivided attention to 
 his stage business seems indispensable. Yet it is, 
 in fact, dispensed with every day by our cleverest 
 tragedians ; and while these references to an au- 
 dience, in the shape of rant or sentiment, are not 
 too frequent or palpable, a sufficient quantity of 
 illusion for the purposes of dramatic interest may 
 be said to be produced in spite of them. But, 
 tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether, in cer- 
 tain characters in comedy, especially those which 
 are a little extravagant, or which involve some 
 notion repugnant to the moral sense, it is not a 
 proof of the highest skill in the comedian when, 
 without absolutely appealing to an audience, he 
 keeps up a tacit understanding with them ; and 
 makes them, unconsciously to themselves, a party 
 in the scene. The utmost nicety is required in the 
 mode of doing this ; but we speak only of the great 
 artists in the profession.
 
 28 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 The most mortifying infinnity in human nature, 
 to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is, 
 perhaps, cowardice. To see a coward done to the 
 life upon a stage would produce anything but mirth. 
 Yet we most of us remember Jack Bannister's cow- 
 ards. Could anything be more agreeable, more 
 pleasant ? We loved the rogues. How was this 
 effected but by the exquisite art of the actor in a 
 perpetual sub-insinuation to us, the spectators, even 
 in the extremity of the shaking fit, that he was not 
 half such a coward as we took him for ? We saw all 
 the common symptoms of the malady upon him ; 
 the quivering lip, the cowering knees, the teeth 
 chattering ; and could have sworn "that man was 
 frightened." But we forgot all the while — or kept 
 it almost a secret to ourselves — that he never once 
 lost his self-possession ; that he let out, by a thou- 
 sand droll looks and gestures — ineant at us, and 
 not at all supposed to be visible to his fellows in 
 the scene, that his confidence m his own resources 
 had never once deserted him. Was this a genuine 
 picture of a coward ; or not rather a likeness, which 
 the clever artist contrived to palm upon us instead 
 of an original ; while we secretly connived at the 
 delusion for the purpose of greater pleasure, than a 
 more genuine counterfeiting of the imbecility, help- 
 lessness, and utter self-desertion, which we know to 
 be concomitants of cowardice in real life, could 
 have given us ? 
 
 Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so 
 endurable on the stage, but because the skilftil 
 actor, by a sort of sub-reference, rather than direct 
 appeal to us, disarms the character of a great deal 
 of its odiousness, by seeming to engage our com- 
 passion for the insecure tenure by which he holds t 
 his money-bags and parchments ? By this subtle
 
 STAGE ILLUSION. ag 
 
 vent half of the hatefulness of the character — 
 the self-closeness with which in real life it coils 
 itself up from the synjpathies of men— evaporates. 
 The miser becomes sympathetic ; i.e. , is no genuine 
 miser. Here again a diverting likeness is substi- 
 tuted for a veiy disagreeable reality. 
 
 Spleen, irritability — the pitiable infirmities of 
 old men, which produce only pain to behold in 
 the realities, counterfeited upon a stage, divert not 
 altogether for the comic appendages to them, but 
 in part from an inner conviction that they are being 
 acted before us ; that a likeness only is going on, 
 and not the thing itself. They please by being done 
 under the life, or beside it ; not to the life. When 
 Gattie acts an old man, is he angry indeed ? or 
 only a pleasant counterfeit, just enough of a likeness 
 to recognize, without pressing upon us the uneasy 
 sense of a reality ? 
 
 Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be 
 too natural. It was the case with a late actor. 
 Nothing could be more earnest or true than the 
 manner of Mr. Epiery ; this told excellently in his 
 Tyke, and characters of a tragic cast. But when he 
 carried the same rigid exclusiveness of attention to 
 the stage business, and wilful blindness and ob- 
 livion of everything before the curtain into his 
 comedy, it produced a harsh and dissonant effect. 
 He was out of keeping with the rest of the dramatis 
 fersonce. There was as little link between him and 
 them, as betwixt himself and the audience. He 
 was a third estate — dry, repulsive, and unsocial to 
 all. Individually considered, his execution was 
 masterly. But comedy is not this unbending thing ; 
 for this reason, that the same degree of credibility 
 *is not required of it as to serious scenes. The de- 
 grees of credibility demanded to the two things
 
 30 LAST ESSAVS OF ELIA. 
 
 may be illustrated by the different sort of truth 
 which we expect when a man tells us a mournful or 
 a merry story. If we suspect the former of false- 
 hood in any one tittle, we reject it altogether. Our 
 tears refuse to flow at a suspected imposition. But 
 the teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed 
 him. We are content with less than absolute truth. 
 Tis the same with dramatic illusion. We confess 
 we love in comedy to see an audience naturalized 
 behind the scenes — taken into the interest of the 
 drama, welcomed as bystanders, however. There 
 is something ungracious in a comic actor holding 
 himself aloof from all participation or concern with 
 those who are come to be diverted by him. Mac- 
 beth must see the dagger, and no ear but his own 
 be told of it ; but an old fool in farce may think he 
 sees something, and by conscious words and looks 
 express it, as plainly as he can speak, to pit, box, 
 and gallery. When an impertinent in tragedy, an 
 Osric, for instance, breaks in upon the serious 
 passions of the scene, we approve of the contempt 
 with which he is treated. But when the pleasant 
 impertinent of comedy, in a piece purely meant to 
 give delight, and raise mirth out of whimsical per- 
 plexities, worries the studious man with taking up 
 his leisure, or making his house his home, the 
 same sort of contempt expressed (however natural) 
 would destroy the balance of delight in the spec- 
 tators. To make the intrusion comic, the actor 
 who plays the annoyed man must a little desert 
 nature ; he must, in short, be thinking of the 
 audience, and express only so much dissatis- 
 faction and peevishness as is consistent with the 
 pleasure of comedy. In other words, his perplexity 
 must seem half put on. If he repel the intruder 
 with the sober set face of a man in earnest, and
 
 STAGE ILLUSION. 3, 
 
 more especially if he deliver his expostulations in 
 a tone which in the world must necessarily provoke 
 a duel, his real-life manner \vill destroy the whim- 
 sical and purely dramatic existence of the other 
 character (which to render it comic demands an 
 antagonist comicality on the part of the character 
 opposed to it), and convert what was meant for 
 mirth, rather than belief, into a downright piece 
 of impertinence indeed, which would raise no diver- 
 sion in us, but rather stir pain, to see inflicted in 
 earnest upon any worthy person. A very judicious 
 actor (in most of his parts) seems to have fallen 
 into an error of this sort in his playing with Mr. 
 Wrench in the farce of Free and Easy. 
 
 Many instances would be tedious ; these may 
 suffice to show that comic acting at least does not 
 always demand from the performer that strict ab- 
 straction from all reference to an audience which is 
 exacted of it ; but that in some cases a sort of com- 
 promise may take place, and all the purposes of 
 dramatic delight be attained by a judicious under- 
 standing, not too openly announced, between the 
 ladies and gentlemen— on both sides of the curtain.
 
 TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 
 
 OYOUSEST of once embodied spirits, 
 whither at length hast thou flown ? tc 
 what genial region are we permitted to 
 conjecture that thou hast flitted ? 
 
 Art thou sowing thy wild oats yet (the har- 
 vest-time was still to come with thee) upon casual 
 sands of Avernus? or art thou enacting Rover 
 (as we would gladlier think) by wandering Elysian 
 streams ? 
 
 This mortal frame, while thou didst play thy 
 brief antics amongst us, was in truth anything but 
 a prison to thee, as the vain Platonist dreams of 
 this body to be no better than a county gaol, for- 
 sooth, or some house of durance vile, whereof the 
 five senses are the fetters. Thou knewest better 
 than to be in a hurry to cast off these gyves ; and 
 had notice to quit, I fear, before thou wert quite 
 ready to abandon this fleshy tenement. It was thy 
 Pleasure-House, thy Palace of Dainty Devices : 
 thy Louvre, or thy White- Hall. 
 
 What new mysterious lodgings dost thou tenant 
 now ? or when may we expect thy aerial house- 
 warming ? 
 
 Tartarus we know, and we have read of the 
 Blessed Shades ; now cannot I intelligibly fancy 
 tliee in either.
 
 TO THE SHADE OF EL LIS TON. 33 
 
 I-, il too much to hazard a conjecture, thai (as 
 the schoolmen admitted a receptacle apart for 
 Patriarchs and un-chrrsom babes) there may exist 
   — not far perchance from that store-house of all 
 vanities, which Milton saw in visions, — a Limbo 
 somewhere for Players ? and that 
 
 Up thither like aerial vapours fly- 
 Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things 
 Built their fond hopes of glory, or lasting fame? 
 AH the unaccomplished works of Authors' hands, 
 Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed, 
 Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither — 
 Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery.— 
 
 There, by the neighbouring moon (by some not 
 improperly supposed thy Regent Planet upon 
 earth), mayst thou not still be acting thy mana- 
 gerial pranks, great disembodied Lessee? but 
 Lessee still, and still a manager. 
 
 In Green Rooms, impervious to mortal eye, the 
 muse beholds thee wielding posthumous empire. 
 
 Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) 
 circle thee in endlessly, and still their song is Fie 
 on sinfid Phantasy! 
 
 Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe of 
 earth, Robert William Elliston ! for as yet 
 we know not thy new name in heaven. 
 
 It irks me to think, that^ stript of thy regalities, 
 thou shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in 
 crazy Stygian wherry. Methinks I hear the old 
 boatman, paddling by the weedy wharf, with 
 raucid voice, bawling " ScULLS, ScULLS ! " to 
 which, with waving hand, and majestic action, 
 thou deignest no reply, other than in two curt 
 monosyllables, "No: Oars." 
 
 But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small 
 difference between king and cobbler; manager and 
 
 11. D
 
 34 LAST ESSAYS OF ELl^. 
 
 call-boy ; and, if haply your dates of life were con- 
 terminant, you are quietly taking your passage, 
 cheek by cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) with 
 the shade of some recently departed candle-snuffer. 
 
 But mercy ! what strippings, what tearing off of 
 histrionic robes, and private vanities ! what de- 
 nudations to the bone, before the surly Ferryman 
 will admit you to set a foot within his battered 
 lighter. 
 
 Crowns, sceptres; shield, sword, and truncheon : 
 thy own coronation robes (for thou hast brought 
 the whole property-man's wardrobe with thee, 
 enough to sink a navy); the judge's ermine ; the 
 coxcomb's wig; the snuff-box lI la Foppington—?i\\ 
 must overboard, he positively swears — and that 
 Ancient Mariner brooks no denial ; for, since the 
 tiresome monodrame of the old Thracian Harper, 
 Charon, it is to be believed, hath shown small 
 taste for theatricals. 
 
 Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat-weight ; 
 pura et puta anima. 
 
 But, bless me, how little you look ! 
 
 So shall we all look — kings and keysars — 
 stripped for the last voyage. 
 
 But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu plea- 
 sant, and thrice pleasant shade ! with my parting 
 thanks for many a heavy hour of life lightened by 
 thy harmless extravaganzas, public or domestic. 
 
 Rhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes 
 below, leaving to his two brethren the heavy 
 calendars — honest Rhadamanth, always partial to 
 players, weighing their parti-coloured existence 
 here upon earth,— making account of the few 
 foibles, that may have shaded their real life, as we 
 call it, (though, substantially, scarcely less a vapour 
 than thy idlest vagaries upon the boards of the
 
 TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 35 
 
 Dniry,) as but of so many echoes, natural re-per- 
 cussions, and results to be expected from the as- 
 sumed extravagances of thy secondary or fucck life, 
 nightly upon a stage— after a lenient castigation 
 with rods lighter than of those Medusean ringlets, 
 but just enough to " whip the offending Adam out 
 of thee, " shall courteously dismiss thee at the right 
 hand gate — the o. P. side of Hades — that conducts 
 to masques and merry-makings in the Theatre 
 Royal of Proserpine. 
 
 PLAUDITO, ET VALETO.
 
 ELLISTONIANA. 
 
 Y acquaintance with the pleasant crea- 
 ture, whose loss we all deplore, was but 
 slight. 
 
 My first introduction to E., which 
 afterwards ripened into an acquaintance a little 
 on this side of intimacy, was over a counter in 
 the Leamington Spa Library, then newly entered 
 upon by a branch of his family. E. , whom nothing 
 misbecame — to auspicate, I suppose, the filial con- 
 cern, and set it a-going with a lustre — was serving 
 in person two damsels fair, who had come into the 
 shop ostensibly to inquire for some new publica- 
 tion, but in reality to have a sight of the illustrious 
 shopman, hoping some conference. With what an 
 air did he reach down the volume, dispassionately 
 giving his opinion of the worth of the work in 
 question, and launching out into a dissertation on 
 its comparative merits with those of certain publi- 
 cations of a similar stamp, its rivals ! his enchanted 
 customers fairly hanging on his lips, subdued to 
 their authoritative sentence. So have I seen a 
 gentleman in comedy acting the shopman. So 
 Lovelace sold his gloves in King Street. I admired 
 the histrionic art, by which he contrived to carry 
 clean away every notion of disgrace, from the occu-
 
 ELLISTONIANA. 37 
 
 pation he had so generously submitted to ; and 
 from that hour I judged him, with no after repen- 
 tance, to be a person with whom it would be a 
 felicity to be more acquainted. 
 
 To descant upon his merits as a Comedian would 
 be superfluous. "With his blended private and pro- 
 fessional habits alone I have to do : that har- 
 monious fusion of the manners of the player into 
 those of every-day life, which brought the stage 
 boards into streets and dining-parlours, and kept 
 up the play when the play was ended. — " I like 
 Wrench," a friend was saying to him one day, 
 "because he is the same natural, easy creature, on 
 the stage, that he is ^" " My case exactly," re- 
 torted Elliston— with a charming forgetfulness, 
 that the converse of a proposition does not always 
 lead to the same conclusion—" I am the same per- 
 son offXht stage that I am f«." The inference, at 
 first sight, seems identical ; but examine it a little, 
 and it confesses only, that the one performer was 
 never, and the other always, actmg. 
 
 And in truth this was the charm of Elliston's 
 private deportment. You had spirited performance 
 always going on before your eyes, with nothing to 
 pay. As where a monarch takes up his casual 
 abode for the night, the poorest hovel which he 
 honours by his sleeping in it, becomes ipso facto for 
 that time a palace ; so vi'hcrever Elliston walked, 
 sate, or stood still, there was the theatre. He 
 carried about with him his pit, boxes, and galleries, 
 and set up his portable play-house at corners ol 
 streets, and in the market-places. Upon flintiest 
 pavements he trod the boards still ; and if his 
 theme chanced to be passionate, the green baize 
 carpet of tragedy spontaneously rose beneath his 
 feet. Now this was hearty, and showed a love for
 
 38 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 his art. So Apelles always painted — in thought. 
 So G. D. always poetizes. I hate a lukewarm 
 artist. I have known actors — and some of them of 
 Elliston's own stamp — who shall have agreeably 
 been amusing you in the part of a rake or a cox- 
 comb, through the two or three hours of their dra- 
 matic existence ; but no sooner does the curtain 
 fall with its leaden clatter, but a spirit of lead 
 seems to seize on all their faculties. They emerge 
 sour, morose persons, intolerable to their families, 
 servants, &c. Another shall have been expanding 
 your heart with generous deeds and sentiments, till it 
 even beats with yearnings of universal sympathy ; 
 you absolutely long to go home and do some goocl 
 action. The play seems tedious, till you can get 
 fairly out of the house, and realize your laudable 
 intentions. At length the final bell rings, and 
 this cordial representative of all that is amiable in 
 human breasts steps forth — a miser. Elliston was 
 more of a piece. Did he play Ranger? and did 
 Ranger fill the general bosom of the town witli 
 satisfaction ? why should he not be Ranger, and 
 diffuse the same cordial satisfaction among his 
 private circles ? with his temperament, his animal 
 spirits, his good nature, his follies perchance, 
 could he do better than identify himself with his 
 impersonation ? Are we to like a pleasant rake, or 
 coxcomb, on the stage, and give ourselves airs of 
 aversion for the identical character, presented to us 
 in actual life? or what would the performer have 
 gained by divesting himself of the impersonation ? 
 Could the man Elliston have been essentially dif- 
 ferent from his part, even if he had avoided to re- 
 flect to us studiously, in private circles, the airy 
 briskness, the forwardness, the 'scape-goat trick- 
 eries of the prototype ?
 
 ELLlSrONIANA. 39 
 
 " But there is something not natural in this ever- 
 iZ&'aa^ acting; we want the real man." 
 
 Are you quite sure that it is not the man himself, 
 whom you cannot, or will not see, under some ad- 
 ventitious trappings which, nevertheless, sit not at 
 all inconsistently upon him ? What if it is the 
 nature of some men to be highly artificial ? The 
 fault is least reprehensible in players. Gibber was 
 his own Foppington, with almost as much wit as 
 Vanbrugh could add to it. 
 
 " My conceit of his person," — it is Ben Jonson 
 speaking of Lord Bacon, — "was never increased 
 towards him by his place or honours. But I have, 
 and do reverence him for the greatness, that was 
 only proper to himself ; in that he seemed to me 
 ever one of the greatest men, that had been in many 
 ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that Heaven 
 would give him strength ; for greatness he could 
 not want." 
 
 The quality here commended was scarcely less 
 conspicuous in the subject of these idle reminis- 
 cences than in my Lord Verulam. Those who have 
 imagined that an unexpected elevation to the direc- 
 tion of a great London Theatre affected the conse- 
 quence of Elliston, or at all changed his nature, 
 knew not the essential greatness of the man whom 
 they disparage. It was my fortune to encounter 
 him near St. Dunstan's Church (which, with its 
 punctual giants, is now no more than dust and a 
 shadow), on the morning of his election to that 
 high office. Grasping my hand with a look of sig- 
 nificance, he only uttered, — " Have you heard the 
 news ? " — then, with another look following up the 
 blow, he subjoined, " I am the future manager of 
 Drury Lane Theatre." — Breathless as he saw me, 
 he stayed not for congratulation or reply, but
 
 40 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 mutely stalked away, leaving me to chew upon 
 his new-blown dignities at leisure. In fact, no- 
 thing could be said to it. Expressive silence 
 alone could muse his praise. This was in his 
 ^reat style. 
 
 But was he less g>-eat (be witness, O ye powers 
 of Equanimity, that supported in the ruins of Car- 
 thage the consular exile, and more recently trans- 
 muted, for a more illustrious exile, the barren con- 
 stableship of Elba into an image of Imperial 
 France), when, in melancholy after-years, again, 
 much nearer the same spot, I met him, when that 
 sceptre had been wrested from his hand, and his 
 dominion was curtailed to the petty managership, 
 and part proprietorship, of the small Olympic, his 
 Elba ? He still played nightly upon the boards of 
 Drury, but in parts, alas ! allotted to him, not 
 magnificently distributed by him. Waiving his 
 great loss as nothing, and magnificently sinking 
 the sense of fallen fnaterial grandeur in the more 
 liberal resentment of depreciations done to his more 
 lofty intellectual pretensions, "Have you heard" 
 (his customary exordium) — "have you heard," 
 said he, "how they treat me? they put me in 
 comedy.'" Thought I — but his finger on his lips 
 forbade any verbal interruption — "where could 
 ihey have put you better?" Then, after a pause — 
 ' ' Where I formerly played Romeo, I now play 
 Mercutio," — and so again he stalked away, neither 
 staying, nor caring for, responses. 
 
 O, it was a rich scene, — but Sir A C , 
 
 the best of story-tellers and surgeons, who mends a 
 lame narrative almost as well as he sets a fracture, 
 alone could do justice to it, — that I was a witness 
 to, in the tarnished room (that had once been green) 
 of that same little Olympic. There, after his de-
 
 ELLISTONIANA. 4' 
 
 position from Imperial Drury, he substituted a 
 throne. That Olympic Hill was his "highest 
 heaven ; " himself " Jove in his chair." There he 
 sat in state, while l)efore him, on complaint of 
 prompter, was brought for judgment— how shall I 
 describe her?— one of those little tawdry things 
 that flirt at the tails of choruses — a probationer 
 for the town, in either of its senses— the pertest 
 httle drab— a dirty fringe and appendage of the 
 lamp's smoke — who, it seems, on some disappro- 
 bation expressed by a "highly respectable" au- 
 dience—had precipitately quitted her station on 
 the boards, and withdrawn her small talents in 
 disgust. 
 
 "And how dare you," said her manager,— as- 
 suming a censorial severity, which would have 
 crushed the confidence of a Vestris, and disarmed 
 that beautiful Rebel herself of her professional 
 caprices— I verily believe, he thought her standing 
 before him— "how dare you, Madam, withdraw 
 yourself, without a notice, from your theatrical 
 duties?" " I was hissed. Sir. " "And you have 
 the presumption to decide upon the taste of the 
 town?" "I don't know that, Sir, but I will 
 never stand to be hissed," was the subjoinder of 
 voung Confidence — when gathering up his features 
 into one significant mass of wonder, pity, and ex- 
 postulatory indignation — in a lesson never to have 
 been lost upon a creature less forward than she who 
 stood before him — his words were these : " They 
 have hissed »z^." 
 
 'Twas the identical argument h fortiori, which 
 the son of Peleus uses to Lycaon trembling under 
 his lance, to persuade him to take his destiny with 
 a good grace. " I too am mortal." And it is to 
 be believed that in both cases the rhetoric missed
 
 ,1 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 of its application, for want of a proper under- 
 standing with the facuhies of the respective reci- 
 pients. 
 
 " Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he was 
 courteously conducting me over the benches of his 
 Surrey Theatre, the last retreat, and recess, of his 
 every-day waning grandeur. 
 
 Those who knew Elliston, will know the manner 
 in which he pronounced the latter sentence of the 
 few words I am about to record. One proud day to 
 me he took his roast mutton with us in the Temple, 
 to which I had superadded a preliminary haddock. 
 After a rather plentiful partaking of the meagre 
 banquet, not unrefreshed with the humbler sort of 
 liquors, I made a sort of apology for the humility 
 of the fare, observing that for my own part I never 
 ate but of one dish at dinner. " I too never eat but 
 one thing at dinner," — was his reply — then after a 
 pause — "reckoning fish as nothing." The manner 
 was all. It was as if by one peremptory sentence 
 he had decreed the annihilation of all the savoury 
 esculents, which the pleasant and nutritious-food- 
 giving Ocean pours forth upon poor humans from 
 her watery bosom. This was g^-eatness, tempered 
 with considerate tenderness to the feelings of his 
 scanty but welcoming entertainer. 
 
 Great wert thou in thy life, Robert William 
 Elliston ! and not lessened in thy death, if report 
 speak truly, which says that thou didst direct that 
 thy mortal remains should repose under no inscrip- 
 tion but one of pure Latiyiity. Classical was thy 
 bringing up ! and beautiful was the feeling on thy 
 last bed, which, connecting the man with the boy, 
 took thee back to thy latest exercise of imagination, 
 to the days when, undreaming of Theatres and 
 Managerships, thou wert a scholar, and an early
 
 ELLISTONIANA. 
 
 43 
 
 ripe one, under the roofs builded by the munificent 
 and pious Colet. For thee the Pauline Muses weep. 
 In elegies, that shall silence this crude prose, they 
 shall celebrate thy praise.
 
 THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 
 
 AM fond of passing my vacations (I be- 
 lieve I have said so before) at one or 
 otlier of the Universities. Next to these 
 my choice would fix me at some woody 
 spot, such as the neiglibourhood of Henley af- 
 fords in abundance, on the banks of my beloved 
 Thames. But somehow or other my cousin con- 
 trives to wheedle me, once in three or four sea- 
 sons, to a watering-place. Old attachments cling 
 to her in spite of experience. We have been dull at 
 Worthing one summer, duller at Brighton another, 
 dullest at Eastbourne a third, and are at this moment 
 doing dieary penance at — Hastings ! — and all be- 
 cause we were happy many years ago for a brief 
 week at Margate. That was our first sea-side ex- 
 periment, and many circumstances combined to 
 make it the most agreeable holiday of my life. We 
 had neither of us seen the sea, and we had never 
 been from home so long together in company. 
 
 Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with 
 thy weather-beaten, sun-burnt captain, and his rough 
 •iccommodations — ill exchanged for the foppery 
 and fresh-water niceness of the modem steam- 
 packet ? To the winds and waves thou committedst 
 thy goodly freightage, and didst ask no aid of 
 m.agic fumes, and spells, and boiling cauldrons.
 
 THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 45 
 
 With the gales of heaven thou wentest swimmingly ; 
 or, when it was their pleasure, stoodest still with 
 sailor-like patience. Thy course was natural, not 
 forced, as in a hotbed ; nor didst thou go poisoning 
 the breath of ocean with sulphureous smoke— a 
 great sea chimera, chimneying and fumacing the 
 deep ; or liker to that fire-god parching up Sca- 
 mander. 
 
 Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with 
 their coy reluctant responses (yet to the suppression 
 of anything like contempt) to the raw questions, 
 which we of the great city would be ever and anon 
 putting to them, as to the uses of this or that strange 
 naval implement? 'Specially can I forget thee, thou 
 happy medium, thou shade of refuge between us and 
 them, conciliating interpreter of their skill to our 
 simplicity, comfortable ambassador between sea 
 and land ! — whose sailor-trousers did not more con- 
 vincingly assure thee to be an adopted denizen of 
 the former, than thy white cap, and whiter apron 
 over them, with thy neat-fingered practice in thy 
 culinary vocation, bespoke thee to have been of 
 inland nurture heretofore — a master cook of East- 
 cheap ? How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious 
 occupation, cook, mariner, attendant, chamberlain ; 
 here, there, like another Ariel, flaming at once 
 about all parts of the deck, yet with kindlier 
 ministrations — not to assist the tempest, but, as if 
 touched with a kindred sense of our infirmities, to 
 soothe the qualms which that untried motion might 
 haply raise in our crude land-fancies. And when 
 the o'erwashing billows drove us below deck (for it 
 was far gone in October, and we had stiff and 
 blowing weather), how did thy officious minister- 
 ings, still catering for our comfort, with cards, and 
 cordials, and thy more cordial conversation, alle-
 
 i6 LAST ESSAVS OF ELI A. 
 
 viate the closeness and the confinement of thy else 
 (truth to say) not veiy savoury, nor very inviting, 
 little cabin ! 
 
 With these additaments to boot, we had on board 
 a fellow-passenger, whose discourse in verity might 
 have beguiled a longer voyage than we meditated, 
 and have made mirth and wonder abound as far as 
 the Azores. He was a dark, Spanish-complexioned 
 young man, remarkably handsome, with an officer- 
 like assurance, and an insuppressible volubility of 
 assertion. He was, in fact, the greatest liar I had 
 met with then, or since. He was none of your 
 hesitating, half story-tellers (a most painful de- 
 scription of mortals) who go on sounding your 
 belief, and only giving you as much as they see you 
 can swallow at a time — the nibbling pickpockets of 
 your patience — but one who committed downright, 
 daylight depredations upon his neighbour's faith. 
 He did not stand shivering upon the brink, but was 
 a hearty, thorough-paced liar, and plunged at once 
 into the depths of your credulity. I partly believe, 
 he made pretty sure of his company. Not many 
 rich, not many wise, or learned, composed at that 
 time the common stowage of a Margate packet. 
 We were, I am afraid, a set of as unseasoned 
 Londoners (let our enemies give it a worse name) 
 as Aldennanbury, or Watling Street, at that time 
 of day could have supplied. There might be an 
 exception or two among us, but I scorn to make 
 any invidious distinctions among such a jolly, com- 
 panionable ship's company as those were whom I 
 sailed with. Something too must be conceded to 
 the Genius Loci. Had the confident fellow told us 
 half the legends on land which he favoured us with 
 on the other element, I flatter myself the good 
 sense of most of us would have revolted. But we
 
 THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 47 
 
 were in a new world, with everything unfamiliar 
 about us, and the time and place disposed us to 
 the reception of any prodigious marvel whatsoever. 
 Time has obliterated from my memory much of his 
 wild fablings; and the rest would appear but dull, 
 as written, and to be read on shore. He had been 
 Aide-de-camp (among other rare accidents and for- 
 tunes) to a Persian Prince, and at one blow had 
 stricken off the head of the King of Carimania on 
 horseback. He, of course, married the Prince's 
 daughter. I forget what unlucky turn in the po- 
 litics of that court, combining with the loss of his 
 consort, was the reason of his quitting Persia ; but, 
 with the rapidity of a magician, he transported 
 himself, along with his hearers, back to England, 
 where we still found him in the confidence of great 
 ladies. There was some story of a princess— Eliza- 
 beth, if I remember — having intrusted to his care 
 an extraordinary casket of jewels, upon some ex- 
 traordinary occasion — but, as I am not certain of 
 the name or circumstance at this distance of time, 
 I must leave it to the Royal daughters of England 
 to settle the honour among themselves in private. 
 I cannot call to mind half his pleasant wonders ; 
 but I perfectly remember that, in the course of his 
 travels, he had seen a phoenix ; and he obligingly 
 undeceived us of the vulgar error, that there is but 
 one of that species at a time, assuring us that they 
 were not uncommon in some parts of Upper Egypt. 
 Hitherto he had found the most implicit listeners. 
 His dreaming fancies had transported us beyond 
 the "ignorant present." But when (still hardying 
 more and more in his triumphs over our simplicity) 
 he went on to affinn that he had actually sailed 
 through the legs of the Colossus at Rhodes, it really 
 became necessary to make a stand. And here I
 
 48 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 must do justice to the good sense and intrepidity of 
 one of our party, a youth, that had hitherto been 
 one of his most deferential auditors, who, from his 
 recent reading, made bold to assure the gentleman, 
 that there must be some mistake, as "the Colossus 
 in question had been destroyed long since;" to 
 whose opinion, delivered with all modesty, our hero 
 was obliging enough to concede thus much, that 
 ' ' the figure was indeed a little damaged. " This 
 was the only opposition he met with, and it did not 
 at all seem to stagger him, for he proceeded with 
 his fables, which the same youth appeared to 
 swallow with still more complacency than ever, — 
 confirmed, as it were, by the extreme candour of 
 that concession. With these prodigies he wheedled 
 us on till we came in sight of the Reculvers, which 
 one of our own company (having been the voyage 
 before) immediately recognizing, and pointing out 
 to us, was considered by us as no ordinary seaman. 
 All this time sat upon the edge of the deck quite 
 a different character. It was a lad, apparently very 
 poor, very infinn, and very patient. His eye was 
 ever on the sea, with a smile; and, if he caught 
 now and then some snatches of these wild legends, 
 it was by accident, and they seemed not to concern 
 him. The M^aves to him whispered more pleasant 
 stories. He was as one being with us, but not of 
 us. He heard the bell of dinner ring without stir- 
 ring ; and when some of us pulled out our private 
 stores — our cold meat and our salads— he produced 
 none, and seemed to want none. Only a solitary 
 biscuit he had laid in ; provision for the one or two 
 days and nights, to which these vessels then were 
 oftentimes obliged to prolong their voyage. Upon 
 a nearer acquaintance with him, which he seemed 
 neither to court nor decline, we learned that he
 
 THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 49 
 
 was going to Margate, with the hope of being ad- 
 mitted into the Infirmary there for sea-bathing. His 
 disease was a scrofula, which appeared to have 
 eaten all over him. He expressed great hopes of a 
 cure ; and when we asked him whether he had any 
 friends where he was going, he replied, "he had 
 no friends." 
 
 These pleasant, and some mournful passages, 
 with the first sight of the sea, co-operating with 
 youth, and a sense of holidays, and out-of-door ad- 
 venture, to me that had been pent up in populous 
 cities for many months before, — have left upon my 
 mind the fragrance as of summer days gone by, 
 bequeathing nothing but their remembrance for 
 cold and wintry hours to chew upon. 
 
 Will it be thought a digression (it may spare 
 some unwelcome comparisons) if I endeavour to 
 account for the dissatisfaction which I have heard 
 so many persons confess to have felt (as I did my- 
 self feel in part on this occasion), at the sight of the 
 sea for the first time ? I think the reason usually 
 given— referring to the incapacity of actual objects 
 for satisfying our preconceptionsof them — scarcely 
 goes deep enough into the question. Let the same 
 person see a lion, an elephant, a mountain for the 
 first time in his life, and he shall perhaps feel him- 
 self a little mortified. The things do not fill up that 
 space which the idea of them seemed to take up in 
 his mind. But they have still a correspondency to 
 his first notion, and in time grow up to it, so as to 
 produce a very similar impression : enlarging them- 
 selves (if I may say so) upon familiarity. But the 
 sea remains a disappointment. — Is it not, that in 
 the latter we had expected to behold (absurdly, I 
 grant, but, I am afraid, by the law of imagination, 
 unavoidably) not a definite object, as those v/Ud 
 
 II. E
 
 50 LAST ESSAYS OF EL J A. 
 
 beasts, or that mountain compassable by the eye, 
 but all the sea at once, THE COMMENSURATE an- 
 tagonist OF THE EARTH? I do not say we tell 
 ourselves so much, but the craving of the mind is 
 to be satisfied with nothing less. I will suppose 
 the case of a young person of fifteen (as I then was) 
 knowing nothing of the sea, but from description. 
 He comes to it for the first time — all that he has 
 been reading of it all his life, and that the most 
 enthusiastic part of life, — all he has gathered from 
 narratives of wandering seamen, — what he has 
 gained from true voyages, and what he cherishes 
 as credulously from romance and poetry, — crowding 
 their images, and exacting strange tributes from 
 expectation. — He thinks of the great deep, and of 
 those who go down unto it ; of its thousand isles, 
 and of the vast continents it washes ; of its receiving 
 the mighty Plata, or Orellana, into its bosom, 
 without disturbance or sense of augmentation ; of 
 Biscay swells, and the mariner 
 
 For many a day, and many a dreadful night, 
 Incessant labouring round the stormy Cape ; 
 
 of fatal rocks, and the "still-vexed Bermoothes;" 
 of great whirlpools, and the water-spout ; of sunken 
 ships, and sumless treasures swallowed up in the 
 unrestoring depths ; of fishes and quaint monsters, 
 to which all that, is terrible on earth — 
 
 Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal. 
 Compared with the creatures in the sea's ential ; 
 
 of naked savages, and Juan Fernandez; of pearls, 
 and shells ; of coral beds, and of enchanted isles ; 
 of mermaids' grots — 
 
 I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects 
 to be shown all these wonders at once, but he is 
 under the tyranny of a mighty faculty, which
 
 THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 51 
 
 haunts him with confused hints and shadows of all 
 these ; and when the actual object opens first upon 
 him, seen (in tame weather, too, most likely) from 
 our unromantic coasts — a speck, a slip of sea- 
 water, as it shows to him — what can it prove but 
 a very unsatisfying and even diminutive entertain- 
 ment? Or if he has come to it from the mouth of 
 a river, was it much more than the river widening ; 
 and, even out of sight of land, what had he but a 
 flat watery horizon about him, nothing comparable 
 to the vast o'er-curtaining sky, his familiar object, 
 seen daily without dread or amazement? — Who, 
 in similar circumstances, has not been tempted to 
 exclaim with Charoba, in the poem of Gebir, 
 
 Is this the mighty ocean ? is this all ? 
 
 I love town or country ; but this detestable 
 Cinque Port is neither. I hate these scrubbed 
 shoots, thrusting out their starved foliage from 
 between the horrid fissures of dusty innutritious 
 rocks ; which the amateur calls " verdure to the 
 edge of the sea." I require woods, and they show 
 me stunted coppices. I cry out for the water- 
 brooks, and pant for fresh streams, and inland 
 murmurs. I cannot stand all day on the naked 
 beach, watching the capricious hues of the sea, 
 shifting like the colours of a dying mullet. I am 
 tired of looking out at the windows of this island- 
 prison. I would fain retire into the interior of 
 my cage. While I gaze upon the sea, I want to 
 be on it, over it, across it. It binds me in with 
 chains, as of iron. My thoughts are abroad. I 
 should not so feel in Staffordshire. There is no 
 home for me here. There is no sense of home 
 at Hastings. It is a place of fugitive resort, 
 an heterogeneous assemblage of sea-mews and
 
 52 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 stock -brokers, Amphitrites of the town, and misses 
 that coquet with the Ocean. If it were what it 
 was in its primitive shape, and what it ought to 
 have remained, a fair, honest fishing-town, and no 
 more, it were something— with a few straggling 
 fishermen's huts scattered about, artless as its cHffs, 
 and with their materials filched from them, it were 
 something. I could abide to dwell with Meshech ; 
 to assort with fisher-swains and smugglers. There 
 are, or I dream there are, many of this latter occu- 
 pation here. Their faces become the place. I like 
 a smuggler. He is the only honest thief. He robs 
 nothing but the revenue— an abstraction I never 
 greatly cared about. I could go out with them in 
 their mackerel boats, or about their less ostensible 
 business, with some satisfaction. I can even tole- 
 rate those poor victims to monotony, who from day 
 to day pace along the beach, in endless progress 
 and recurrence, to watch their illicit countrymen — 
 townsfolk or brethren, perchance — whistling to the 
 sheathing and unsheathing of their cutlasses (their 
 only solace), who, under the mild name of pre- 
 ventive service, keep up a legitimated civil warfare 
 in the deplorable absence of a foreign one, to show 
 their detestation of run hollands, and zeal for Old 
 England. But it is the visitants from town, that 
 come here to say that they have been here, with no 
 more relish of the sea than a pond-perch or a dace 
 might be supposed to have, that are my aversion. 
 I feel like a foolish dace in these regions, and have 
 as little toleration for myself here as for them. 
 What can they want here ? If they had a true 
 relish of the ocean, why have brought all this land 
 luggage with them? or why pitch their civilized 
 tents in the desert ? What mean these scanty book- 
 rooms— marine libraries as they entitle them — if
 
 THE OLD MARGATE HOY. S3 
 
 the sea were, as they would have us believe, a 
 book "to read strange matter in?" what are their 
 foolish concert-rooms, if they come, as they would 
 fain be thought to do, to listen to the music of the 
 waves ? All is false and hollow pretension. They 
 come because it is the fashion, and to spoil the 
 nature of the place. They are, mostly, as I have 
 said, stock-brokers ; but I have watched the better 
 sort of them — now and then, an honest citizen (of 
 the old stamp), in the simplicity of his heart, shall 
 bring down his wife and daughters to taste the sea 
 breezes. I always know the date of their arrival. 
 It is easy to see it in then- countenance. A day or 
 two they go wandering on the shingles, picking up 
 cockle-shells, and thinking them great things ; but, 
 in a poor week, imagination slackens : they begin 
 to discover that cockles produce no pearls, and 
 then — O then !— if I could interpret for the pretty 
 creatures (I know they have not the courage to 
 confess it themselves), how gladly would they ex- 
 change their sea-side rambles for a Sunday walk 
 on the green sward of their accustomed Twicken 
 ham meadows ! 
 
 I would ask one of these sea-charmed emigrants, 
 who think they truly love the sea, with its wild 
 usages, what would their feelings be if some of 
 the unsophisticated aborigines of this place, encou- 
 raged by their courteous questionings here, should 
 venture, on the faith of such assured sympathy be- 
 tween them, to return the visit, and come up to 
 see — London. I must imagine them with their 
 fishing-tackle on their back, as we carry our town 
 necessaries. What a sensation would it cause in 
 Lothbury ! What vehement laughter would it not 
 excite among 
 The daughters of Cheapsidu, anj wives of Loiiibard-slreet !
 
 54 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 I am sure that no town- bred or inland-born sub- 
 jects can feel their true and natural nourishment 
 at these sea-places. Nature, where she does not 
 mean us for mariners and vagabonds, bids us stay 
 at home. The salt foam seems to nourish a spleen. 
 I am not half so good-natured as by the milder 
 waters of my natural river. I would exchange 
 these sea-gulls for swans, and scud a swallow for 
 ever about the banks of Thamesis.
 
 THE CONVALESCENT. 
 
 PRETTY severe fit of indisposition 
 which, under the name of a nervous 
 fever, has made a prisoner of me for 
 
 ,.„ , some weeks past, and is but slowly 
 
 leaving me, has reduced me to an incapacity of 
 reflecting upon any topic foreign to itself. Expect 
 no healthy conclusions from me this month, reader ; 
 I can offer you only sick men's dreams. 
 
 And truly the whole state of sickness is such ; 
 for what else is it but a magnificent dream for a 
 man to lie a-bed, and draw daylight curtains about 
 him ; and, shutting out the sun, to induce a total 
 oblivion of all the works which are going on under 
 it ? To become insensible to all the operations of 
 life, except the beatings of one feeble pulse ? 
 
 If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick bed. 
 How the patient lords it there ; what caprices he 
 acts without control ! how king-like he sways his 
 pillow — tumbling, and tossing, and shifting, and 
 lowering, and thumping, and flatting, and mould- 
 ing it, to the ever- varying requisitions of his throb- 
 bing temples. 
 
 He changes sides oftener than a politician. Now 
 he lies full lengtli, then half length, obliquely, 
 transversely, head and feet quite across the bed ; 
 and none accuses him of tergiversation. Within the
 
 56 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 four curtains he is absolute. They are his Mare 
 Clausum. 
 
 How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's 
 self to himself! he is his own exclusive object. 
 Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his 
 only duty. 'Tis the Two Tables of the Law to 
 him. He has nothing to think of but how to get 
 well. What passes out of doors, or within them, 
 so he hear not the jarring of them, affects him not. 
 
 A little while ago he was greatly concerned in 
 the event of a lawsuit, which was to be the making 
 or the marring of his dearest friend. He was to be 
 seen trudging about upon this man's errand to fifty 
 quarters of the town at once, jogging this witness, 
 refreshing that solicitor. The cause was to come 
 on yesterday. He is absolutely as indifferent to 
 the decision as if it were a question to be tried at 
 Pekin. Peradventure from some whispering, going 
 on about the house, not intended for his hearing, 
 he picks up enough to make him understand that 
 things went cross-grained in the court yesterday, 
 and his friend is ruined. But the word " friend," 
 and the word "ruin," disturb him no more than 
 so much jargon. He is not to think of anything 
 but how to get better. 
 
 What a world of foreign cares are merged in 
 that absorbing consideration ! 
 
 He has put on the strong armour of sickness, he 
 is wrapped in the callous hide of suffering ; he keeps 
 his sympathy, like some curious vintage, under 
 trusty lock and key, for his own use only. 
 
 He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to 
 himself; he yearneth over himself; his bowels are 
 even melted within him, to think what he suffers ; 
 he is not ashamed to weep over himself. 
 
 He is for ever plotting how to do some good to
 
 THE CONVALESCENT. 57 
 
 himself; studying little stratagems and artificial 
 alleviations. 
 
 He makes the most of himself; dividing him- 
 self, by an allowable fiction, into as many distinct 
 individuals as he hath sore and sorrowing mem- 
 bers. Sometimes he meditates — as of a thing apart 
 from him — upon his poor aching head, and that 
 dull pain which, dozing or waking, lay in it all the 
 past night like a log, or palpable substance of 
 pain, not to be removed without opening the very 
 skull, as it seemed, to take it thence. Or he pities 
 his long, clammy, attenuated fingers. He com- 
 passionates himself all over ; and his bed is a very 
 discipline of humanity, and tender heart. 
 
 He is his own sympathizer ; and instinctively 
 feels that none can so well perform that office for 
 him. He cares for few spectators to his tragedy. 
 Only that punctual face of the old nurse pleases 
 him, that announces his broths and his cordials. 
 He likes it because it is so unmoved, and because 
 he can pour forth his feverish ejaculations before it 
 as unreservedly as to his bed-post. 
 
 To the world's business he is dead. He under- 
 stands not what the callings and occupations of 
 mortals are ; only he has a glimmering conceit of 
 some such thing, when the doctor makes his daily 
 call ; and even in the lines on that busy face he 
 reads no multiplicity of patients, but solely con- 
 ceives of himself as the sick man. To what other 
 uneasy couch the good man is hastening, when he 
 slips out of his chamber, folding up his thin douceur 
 so carefully, for fear of rustling — is no speculation 
 which he can at present entertain. He thinks only 
 of the regular return of the same phenomenon at 
 the same hour to-morrow. 
 
 Household rumours touch him not. Some faint
 
 ^8 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 murmur, indicative of life going on within the 
 house, soothes him, while he knows not distinctly 
 what it is. He is not to know anything, not to 
 think of anything. Servants gliding up or down 
 the distant staircase, treading as upon velvet, gently 
 keep his ear awake, so long as he troubles not him- 
 self further than with some feeble guess at their 
 en-ands. Exacter knowledge would be a burthen 
 to him; he can just endure the pressure of conjec- 
 ture. He opens his eye faintly at the dull stroke 
 of the muffled knocker, and closes it again without 
 asking "Who was it?" He is flattered by a ge- 
 neral notion that inquiries are making after him, 
 but he cares not to know the name of tlie inquirer. 
 In the general stillness, and awful hush of the 
 house, he lies in state, and feels his sovereignty. 
 
 To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives. 
 Compare the silent tread and quiet ministry, al- 
 most by the eye only, with which he is served — 
 with the careless demeanour, the unceremonious 
 goings in and out (slapping of doors, or leaving 
 them open) of the very same attendants, when he 
 is getting a little better — and you will confess, that 
 from the bed of sickness (throne let me rather call 
 it) to the elbow-chair of convalescence, is a fail 
 from dignity, amounting to a deposition. 
 
 How convalescence shrinks a man back to his 
 pristine stature ! Where is now the space, which 
 he occupied so lately, in his own, in the family's 
 eye? 
 
 The scene of his regalities, his sick room, which 
 was his presence-chamber, where he lay and acted 
 his despotic fancies— how is it reduced to a com- 
 mon bed -room! The trimness of the very bed has 
 something petty and unmeaning about it. It is 
 made every day. How unlike to that wavy, many-
 
 THE CONVALESCENT. 59 
 
 furrowed, oceanic surface, which it presented so 
 short a time since, when to tnake it was a service 
 not to be thought of at oftener than three or four 
 day revolutions, when the patient was with pain 
 and grief to be lifted for a little while out of it, to 
 submit to the encroachments of unwelcome neat- 
 ness, and decencies which his shaken frame depre- 
 cated ; then to be lifted into it again, for another 
 three or four days' respite, to flounder it out of 
 shape again, while every fresh furrow was an his- 
 torical record of some shifting posture, some un- 
 easy turning, some seeking for a little ease ; and 
 the shrunken skin scarce told a truer story than 
 the crumpled coverlid. 
 
 Hushed are those mysterious sighs — those groans 
 — so much more awful, while we knew not from what 
 caverns of vast hidden suffering they proceeded. 
 The Lernean pangs are quenched. The riddle of 
 sickness is solved ; and Philoctetes is become an 
 ordinary personage. 
 
 Perhaps some relic of the sick man's dream of 
 greatness survives in the still lingering visitations 
 of the medical attendant. But hovv^ is he, too, 
 changed with everything else? Can this be he^ 
 this man of news — of chat — of anecdote — of every- 
 thing but physic — can this be he, who so lately 
 came between the patient and his cruel enemy, as 
 on some solemn embassy from Nature, erecting 
 herself into a high mediating party ? — Pshaw ! 'tis 
 some old woman. 
 
 Farewell with him all that made sickness pom 
 pous — the spell that hushed the household — the 
 desert-like stillness, felt throughout its inmost cham- 
 bers — the mute attendance — the inquiry by looks — 
 the still softer delicacies of self-attention — the sole 
 and single eye of distemper alonely fixed upon itself
 
 6o LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 —world-thoughts exduded — the man a world unto 
 himself— his own theatre — 
 
 What a speck is he dwindled into ! 
 
 In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by the 
 ebb of sickness, yet far enough from the terra- 
 firma of established health, your note, dear Edi- 
 tor, reached me, requesting — an article. In Arti- 
 culo Mortis, thought I ; but it is something hard 
 — and the quibble, WTetched as it was, relieved 
 me. The summons, unseasonable as it appeared, 
 seemed to link me on again to the petty businesses 
 of life, which I had lost sight of ; a gentle call to 
 activity, however trivial ; a wholesome weaning 
 from that preposterous dream of self-absorption — 
 the puffy state of sickness — in which I confess to 
 have lain so long, insensible to the magazines and 
 monarchies of the world alike ; to its laws, and to 
 its literature. The hypochondriac flatus is sub- 
 siding ; the acres, which in imagination I had 
 spread over — for the sick man swells in the sole 
 contemplation of his single sufferings, till he be- 
 comes a Tityus to himself — are wasting to a span ; 
 and for the giant of self-importance, which I was 
 so lately, you have me once again in my natural 
 pretensions — the lean and meagre figure of your 
 insignificant Essayist.
 
 SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 
 
 ' O far from the position holding true, that 
 great wit (or genius, in our modern 
 way of speaking) has a necessary alli- 
 
 ance with insanity, the greatest wits, 
 
 on the contrar)', will ever be found to be the 
 sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind to 
 conceive of a mad Shakespeare. The greatness 
 of wit, by which the poetic talent is here chiefly to 
 be understood, manifests itself in the admirable 
 balance of all the faculties. .Madness is the dis- 
 proportionate straining or excess of any one of 
 them. "So strong a wit," says Cowley, speaking 
 of a poetical friend, 
 
 did Nature to him frame, 
 
 As all things but his judgment overcame ; 
 
 His judgment like the heavenly moon did show, 
 
 Tempering that mighty sea below. 
 
 The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding 
 in the raptures of the higher poetry a condition of 
 exaltation, to which they have no parallel in their 
 own experience, besides the spurious resemblance of 
 it in dreams and fevers, impute a state of dreami- 
 ness and fever to the poet. But the true poet 
 dreams being awake. He is not possessed by his 
 subject, but has dominion over it. In the groves
 
 62 LAST ESSAYS OF EL J A. 
 
 of Eden he walks familiar as in his native paths. 
 He ascends the empyrean heaven, and is not in- 
 toxicated. He treads the burning marl without 
 dismay ; he wings his flight without self-loss through 
 realms of chaos "and old night." Or if, abandon- 
 ing himself to that severer chaos of a " human 
 mind untuned," he is content awhile to be mad 
 with Lear, or to hate mankind (a sort of madness) 
 with Timdn, neither is that madness, nor this mis- 
 anthropy, so unchecked, but that, — never letting 
 the reins of reason wholly go, while most he seems 
 to do so, — he has his better genius still whispering 
 at his ear, with the good servant Kent suggesting 
 saner counsels, or with the honest steward Flavins 
 recommending kindlier resolutions. Where he 
 seems most to recede from humanity, he will be 
 found the truest to it. From beyond the scope of 
 Nature if he summon possible existences, he sub- 
 jugates them to the law of her consistency. He is 
 beautifully loyal to that sovereign directress, even 
 when he appears most to betray and desert her. 
 His ideal tribes submit to policy ; his very monsters 
 are tamed to his hand, even as that wild sea-brood, 
 shepherded by Proteus. He tames, and he clothes 
 them with attributes of flesh and blood, till they 
 wonder at themselves, like Indian Islanders forced 
 to submit to European vesture. Caliban, the 
 Witches, are as true to the laws of their own na- 
 ture (ours with a difference), as Othello, Hamlet, 
 and Macbeth. Herein the great and the little wits 
 are differenced; that if the latter wander ever so 
 little from nature or actual existence, they lose 
 themselves and their readers. Their phantoms 
 are lawless ; their visions nightmares. They do 
 not create, which implies shaping and consistency. 
 Their imaginations are not active — for to be active
 
 SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 63 
 
 IS to call something into act and form — but passive, 
 as men in sick dreams. For the super-natural, or 
 something super-added to what we know of nature, 
 they give you the plainly non-natural. And if this 
 were all, and that these mental hallucinations were 
 discoverable only in the treatment of subjects out 
 of nature, or transcending it, the judgment might 
 with some plea be pardoned if it ran riot, and a 
 little wantonized : but even in the describing of 
 real and every-day life, that which is before their 
 eyes, one of these lesser wits shall more deviate 
 from nature — show more of that inconsequence, 
 which has a natural alliance with frenzy, — than a 
 great genius in his "maddest fits," as Wither some- 
 where calls them. We appeal to any one that is 
 acquainted with the common run of Lane's novels, 
 — as they existed some twenty or thirty years back, 
 — those scanty intellectual viands of the whole 
 female reading public, till a happier genius arose, 
 and expelled for ever the innutritious phantoms, 
 — whether he has not found his brain more " be- 
 tossed," his memory more puzzled, his sense of 
 when and where more confounded, among the im- 
 probable events, the incoherent incidents, the in- 
 consistent characters, or no characters, of some 
 third-rate love-intrigue — where the persons shall 
 be a Lord Glendamour and a Miss Rivers, and the 
 scene only alternate between Bath and Bond Street 
 — a more bewildering dreaminess induced upon 
 him than he has felt wandering over all the fairy- 
 grounds of Spenser. In the productions we refer 
 to, nothing but names and places is familiar ; the 
 persons are neither of this world nor of any other 
 conceivable one; an endless stream of activities 
 without purpose, of purposes destitute of motive ; 
 — we meet phantoms in our known walks ; fan-
 
 64 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 tasques only christened. In the poet we have 
 names which announce fiction ; and we have ab- 
 solutelj- no place at all, for the things and persons 
 of the Fairy Queen prate not of their "where- 
 about." But in their inner nature, and the law of 
 their speech and actions, we are at home, and 
 upon acquainted ground. The one turns life into 
 a dream ; the other to the wildest dreams gives 
 the sobrieties of every-day occurrences. By what 
 subtle art of tracing the mental processes it is 
 effected, we are not philosophers enough to explain, 
 but in that wonderful episode of the cave of Mam- 
 mon, in which the Money God appears first in the 
 lowest form of a miser, is then a worker of metals, 
 and becomes the god of all the treasures of the 
 world ; and has a daughter, Ambition, before whom 
 all the world kneels for favours — with the Hes- 
 perian fruit, the waters of Tantalus, with Pilate 
 washing his hands vainly, but not impertinently, 
 in the same stream — that we should be at one mo- 
 ment in the cave of an old hoarder of treasures, at 
 the next at the forge of the Cyclops, in a palace 
 and yet in hell, all at once, with the shifting mu- 
 tations of the most rambling dream, and our judg- 
 ment yet all the time awake, and neither able nor 
 willing to detect the fallacy, — is a proof of that hid- 
 den sanity which still guides the poet in the wildest 
 seeming aberrations. 
 
 It is not enough to say that the whole episode is 
 a copy of the mind's conceptions in sleep ; it is, in 
 some sort — but what a copy! Let the most ro- 
 mantic of us, that has been entertained all night 
 with the spectacle of some wild and magnificent 
 vision, recombine it in the morning, and try it by 
 his waking judgment. That which appeared so 
 shifting, and yet so coherent while that faculty
 
 SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 65 
 
 was passive, when it comes under cool examination 
 shall appear so reasonless and so unlinked, that we 
 are ashamed to have been so deluded; and to have 
 taken, though but in sleep, a monster for a god. 
 But the transitions in this episode are every whit 
 as violent as in the most extravagant dream, and 
 yet the waking judgment ratifies them. 
 
 11
 
 CAPTAIN JACKSON. 
 
 MONG the deaths in our obituary for 
 this month, I observe with concern 
 "At his cottage on the Bath Road, 
 Captain Jackson." The name and at- 
 tribution are common enough ; but a feeling hke 
 reproach persuades me that this could have been 
 no other in fact than my dear old friend, who 
 some five-and-twenty years ago rented a tene- 
 ment, which he was pleased to dignify with the 
 appellation here used, about a mile from West- 
 bourn Green. Alack, how good men, and the 
 good turns they do us, slide out of memory, and 
 are recalled but by the surprise of some such sad 
 memento as that which now lies before us. 
 
 He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, 
 with a wife and two grown-up daughters, whom 
 he maintained with the port and notions of gentle- 
 women upon that slender professional allowance. 
 Comely girls they were too. 
 
 And was I in danger of forgetting this man? — 
 his cheerful suppers — the noble tone of hospitality, 
 when first you set your foot in the coUage—ihe. anxi- 
 ous ministerings about you, where little or nothing 
 (God knows) was to be ministered. — Althea's horn 
 in a poor platter — the power of self-enchantment.
 
 CAPTAIN JACKSON. 67 
 
 by which, in his magnificent wishes to entertain 
 you, he multiplied his means to bounties. 
 
 You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what 
 seemed a bare scrag — cold savings frcm the fore- 
 gone meal — remnant hardly sufficient to send a 
 mendicant from the door contented. But in the 
 copious will — the revelling imagination of your 
 host— the "mind, the mind, Master Shallow," 
 whole beeves were spread before you — hecatombs 
 — no end appeared to the profusion. 
 
 It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and fishes; 
 carving could not lessen, nor helping diminish it — 
 the stamina were left — the elemental bone still 
 flourished, divested of its accidents. 
 
 " Let us live while we can," methinks I hear the 
 open-handed creature exclaim ; " while we have, 
 let us not want," "here is plenty left;" "want 
 for nothing " — with many more such hospitable 
 sayings, the spurs of appetite, and old concomitants 
 of smoking boards and feast-oppressed chargers. 
 Then sliding a slender ratio of Single Gloucester 
 upon his wife's plate, or the daughters', he vi^ould 
 convey the remanent rind into his own, with a 
 merry quirk of "the nearer the bone," &c., and 
 declaring that he universally preferred the outside. 
 For we had our table distinctions, you are to know, 
 and some of us in a manner sate above the salt. 
   None but his guest or guests dreamed of tasting flesh 
 luxuries at night, the fragments were vere hospitibus 
 sacra. But of one thing or another there was 
 always enough, and leavings : only he would some- 
 times finish the remainder crust, to show that he 
 wished no savings. 
 
 Wine we had none ; nor, except on very rare oc- 
 casions, spirits ; but the sensation of wine was 
 there. Some thin kind of ale I remember —
 
 68 LAST ESSAVS OF EL/A. 
 
 " British beverage," he would say ! " Push about, 
 my boys;" "Drink to your sweethearts, girls." 
 At evei7 meagre draught a toast must ensue, or a 
 song. All the forms of good liquor were there, 
 with none of the effects wanting. Shut your eyes, 
 and you would swear a capacious bowl of punch 
 was foaming in the centre, with beams of generous 
 Port or Madeira radiating to it from each of the 
 table corners. You got flustered, without knowing 
 whence ; tipsy upon words ; and reeled under the 
 potency of his unperforming Bacchanalian en- 
 couragements. 
 
 We had our songs— " Why, Soldiers, why,"— 
 and the "British Grenadiers "—in which last we 
 were all obliged to bear chorus. Both the daughters 
 sang. Their proficiency was a nightly theme — the 
 masters he had given them — the "no-expense" 
 which he spared to accomplish them in a science 
 " so necessary to young women." But then — they 
 could not sing "without the instrument." 
 
 Sacred, and, by me, never-to-be- violated, secrets 
 of Poverty ! Should I disclose your honest aims 
 at grandeur, your makeshift efforts of magnificence? 
 Sleep, sleep, with all thy broken keys, if one of 
 the bunch be extant ; thrummed by a thousand 
 ancestral thumbs ; dear, cracked spinnet of dearer 
 Louisa ! Without mention of mine, be dumb, thou 
 thin accompanier of her thinner warble ! A veil 
 be spread over the dear delighted face of the well- 
 deluded father, who now haply listening to cheru- 
 bic notes, scarce feels sincerer pleasure than when 
 she awakened thy time-shaken chords respoiisive 
 to the twitterings of that slender image of a voice. 
 
 We were not without our literary talk either. It 
 did not extend far, but as far as it went it was 
 good. It was bottomed well ; had good grounds
 
 CAPTAIN JACKSON. 69 
 
 to go upon. In the coUage was a room, which tra- 
 dition authenticated to have been the same in which 
 Glover, in his occasional retirements, had penned 
 the greater part of his Leonidas. This circum- 
 stance was nightly quoted, though none of the pre- 
 sent inmates, that I could discover, appeared ever 
 to have met with the poem in question. But that 
 was no matter. Glover had written there, and the 
 anecdote was pressed into the account of the family 
 importance. It diffused a learned air through the 
 apartment, the little side casement of which (the 
 poet's study window), opening upon a superb view as 
 far as the pretty spire of Harrow, over domains and 
 patrimonial acres, not a rood nor square yard where- 
 of our host could call his own, yet gave occasion 
 to an immoderate expansion of — vanity shall I call 
 it ? — in his bosom, as he showed them in a glowing 
 summer evening. It was all his, he took it all in, 
 and communicated rich portions to his guests. It 
 was a part of his largess, his hospitality ; it was 
 going over his grounds ; he was lord for the time 
 of showing them, and you the implicit lookers-up 
 to his magnificence. 
 
 He was a juggler, who threw mists before your 
 eyes — you had no time to detect his fallacies. He 
 would say, " Hand me the silver sugar-tongs ; " 
 and before you could discover it was a single spoon, 
 and that plated, he would disturb and captivate 
 vour imagination by a misnomer of "the urn " for 
 a tea-kettle ; or by calling a homely bench a sofa. 
 Rich men direct you to their furniture, poor ones 
 divert you from it ; he neither did one nor the 
 other, but by simply assuming that everything was 
 handsome about him, you were positively at a 
 demur what you did, or did not see, at the cottage. 
 With nothing to live on, he seemed to live on every-
 
 70 LAST ESSAYS OP ELI A. 
 
 thing. He had a stock of wealth inhis mind ; not that 
 which is properly termed Content, for in truth he was 
 not to be contained 3.\.zS\., but overflowed all bounds 
 by the force of a magnificent self-delusion. 
 
 Enthusiasm is catching ; and even his wife, a 
 sober native of North Britain, who generally saw 
 things more as they were, was not proof against 
 the continual collision of his credulity. Her 
 daughters were rational and discreet young women ; 
 in the main, pexhaps, not insensible to their true 
 circumstances. I have seen them assume a 
 thoughtful air at times. But such was the pre- 
 ponderating opulence of his fancy, that I am per- 
 suaded not for any half hour together did they ever 
 look their own prospects fairly in the face. There 
 was no resisting the vortex of his temperament. 
 His riotous imagination conjured up handsome 
 settlements before their eyes, which kept them up 
 in the eye of the world too, and seem at last to 
 have realized themselves ; for they both have 
 married since, I am told, more than respectably. 
 
 It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on 
 some subjects, or I should wish to convey some 
 notion of the manner in which the pleasant creature 
 described the circumstances of his own wedding- 
 day. I faintly remember something of a chaise- 
 aiid-four, in which he made his entry into Glasgow 
 on that morning to fetch the bride home, or cany 
 her thither, I forget which. It so completely made 
 out the stanza of the old ballad — 
 
 WTien we came down through Glasgow town, 
 
 We were a comely sight to see ; 
 My love was clad in black velvet. 
 
 And 1 myself in cramasie. 
 
 T suppose it was the only occasion upon which 
 his own actual splendour at all corresponded with
 
 , CAPTAIN JACKSON. 71 
 
 the world's notions on that subject. In homely 
 cart, or travelling caravan, by whatever humble 
 vehicle they chanced to be transported in less pros- 
 perous days, the ride through Glasgow came back 
 upon his fancy, not as a humiliating contrast, but 
 as a fair occasion for reverting to that one day's 
 state. It seemed an "equipage etern " from which 
 no power of fate or fortime, once mounted, had 
 power thereafter to dislodge him. 
 
 There is some merit in putting a handsome face 
 upon indigent circumstances. To bully and 
 swagger away the sense of them before strangers, 
 may not be always discommendable. 1 ibbs, and 
 Bobadil, even when detected, have more of our ad- 
 miration than contempt. But for a man to put 
 the cheat upon himself; to play the Bobadil at 
 home ; and, steeped in poverty up to the lips, to 
 fancy himself all the while chin-deep in riches, is a 
 strain of constitutional philosophy, and a mastery 
 over fortune, which was reserved for my old friend 
 Captain Jackson.
 
 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 
 
 Sera tamen respexLt 
 Libertas. — Virgil. 
 
 A Clerk I was in London gay. — O'Keefe. 
 
 F peradventure, Reader, it has been thy 
 lot to waste the golden years of thy life 
 — thy shining youth — in the irksome 
 confinement of an office ; to have thy 
 prison days prolonged through middle age down 
 to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of 
 release or respite ; to have lived to forget that 
 there are such things as holidays, or to remem- 
 ber them but as the prerogatives of childhood ; 
 then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate 
 my deliverance. 
 
 It is now six-and-thiity years since I took my 
 seat at the desk in Mincing Lane. Melanclioly 
 was the transition at fourteen from the abundant 
 playtime, and the frequently-intervening vacations 
 of school days, to the eight, nine, and sometimes 
 ten hours' a-day attendance at the counting-house. 
 But time partially reconciles us to anything. I 
 gradually became content — doggedly contented, as 
 wild animals in cages. 
 
 It is true I had my Sundays to myself ; but Sim- 
 days, admirable as the institution of them is for
 
 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 73 
 
 purposes of worship, are for that very reason the 
 very worst adapted for days of unbending and re- 
 creation. ' In particular, there is a gloom for me 
 attendant upon a city Sunday, a weight in the air. 
 i miss the cheerful cries of London, the music, and 
 the ball ad -singers — the buzz and stirring murmur 
 of the streets. Those eternal bells depress me. 
 The closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all 
 the glittering and endless succession of knacks and 
 gewgaws, and ostentatiously displayed wares of 
 tradesmen, which make a week-day saunter through 
 the less busy parts of the metropolis so delightful 
 — are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle 
 over — no busy faces to recreate the idle man who 
 contemplates them ever passing by— the very face 
 of business a charm by contrast to his temporary 
 relaxation from it. Nothing to be seen but un- 
 happy countenances — or half-happy at best — of 
 emancipated 'prentices and little tradesfolks, witli 
 here and there a servant-maid that has got leave to 
 go out, who, slaving all the week, with the habit 
 has lost almost the capacity of enjoying a free hour; 
 and livelily expressing the hollowncss of a day's 
 pleasuring. The very strollers in the fields on 
 that day look anything but comfortable. 
 
 But besides Sundays, I had a day at Easter, and 
 
 ' [Our ancestors, the noble old Puritans of Cromwell's 
 day, could distinguish between a day of religious rest and 
 a day of recreation ; and while they exacted a rigorous 
 abstinence from all amusements (even to the walking out of 
 nurserymaids with their little charges in the fields) upon the 
 Sabbath ; in the lieu of the superstitious observance of the 
 saints' days, which they abrogated, they humanely gave to 
 the apprentices and poorer sort of people every alternate 
 Thursday for a day of entire sport and recreation. A strain 
 of piety and policy to be commended above the profane 
 mockery of the Stuarts and their book of spoits.]
 
 74 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 a day at Christmas, with a full week in the summei 
 to go and air myself in my native fields of Hert- 
 fordshire. This last was a great indulgence ; and 
 the prospect of its recurrence, I believe, alone kept 
 me up through the year, and made my durance 
 tolerable. But when the week came round, did 
 the glittering phantom of the distance keep touch 
 with me ? or rather was it not a series of seven 
 uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, 
 and a wearisome anxiety to find out how to make 
 the most of them ? Where was the quiet, where 
 the promised rest ? Before I had a taste of it, it 
 was vanished. I was at the desk again, counting 
 upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must intervene 
 before such another snatch would come. Still_ the 
 prospect of its coming threw something of an illu- 
 mination upon the darker side of my captivity. 
 Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have 
 sustained my thraldom. 
 
 Independently of the rigours of attendance, I 
 have ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a 
 mere caprice) of incapacity for business. This, 
 during my latter years, had increased to such a de- 
 gree, that it was visible in all the lines of my coun- 
 tenance. My health and my good spirits flagged. 
 I had perpetually a dread of some crisis, to which 
 I should be found unequal. Besides my daylight 
 servitude, I sei-ved over again all night in my sleep, 
 and would awake with terrors of imaginary false 
 entries, errors in my accounts, and the like. I 
 was fifty years of age, and no prospect of emanci- 
 pation presented itself. I had grown to my desk, 
 as it were ; and the wood had entered into my soul. 
 
 My fellows in the office would sometimes rally 
 me upon the trouble legible in my countenance ; 
 but I did not know that it had raised the sus-
 
 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 75 
 
 picions of any of my employers, when, on the fifth 
 of last month, a day ever to be remembered by 
 
 me, L , the junior partner in the firm, calling 
 
 me on one side, directly taxed me with my bad 
 looks, and frankly inquired the cause of them. So 
 taxed, I honestly made confession of my infirmity, 
 and added that I was afraid I should eventually be 
 obliged to resign his service. He spoke some 
 words of course to hearten me, and there the matter 
 rested. A whole week I remained labouring under 
 the impression that I had acted imprudently in my 
 disclosure ; that I had foolishly given a handle 
 against myself, and had been anticipating my own 
 dismissal. A week passed in this manner — the 
 most anxious one, I verily believe, in my whole 
 life — when on the evening of the I2th of April, 
 just as I was about quitting my desk to go home 
 (it might be about eight o'clock), I received an 
 awful summons to attend the presence of the whole 
 assembled firm in the formidable back parlour. I 
 thought now my time is surely come, I have done 
 for myself, I am going to be told that they have 
 
 no longer occasion for me. L , I could see, 
 
 smiled at the terror I was in, which was a little relief 
 
 to me, — when to my utter astonishment B , the 
 
 eldest partner, began a formal harangue to me on the 
 length of my services, my very meritorious conduct 
 during the whole of the time (the deuce, thought 
 I, how did he find out that? I protest I never 
 had the confidence to think as much). lie went 
 on to descant on the expediency of retiring at a 
 certain time of life (how my heart panted!), and 
 asking me a few questions as to the amount of my 
 own property, of which I have a little, ended with 
 a proposal, to which his three partners nodded a 
 grave assent, that I should accept from the house,
 
 76 LAST ESSAYS OF EL! A. 
 
 which I had served so well, a pension for life to 
 the amount of two-thirds of my accustomed salary 
 — a magnificent offer! I do not know what I 
 answered between surprise and gratitude, but it 
 was understood that I accepted their proposal, and 
 I was told that I was free from that hour to leave 
 their service. I stammered out a bow, and at just 
 ten minutes after eight I went home — for ever. 
 This noble benefit— gratitude forbids me to conceal 
 their names — I owe to the kindness of the most 
 munificent firm in the world — the house of Boldero, 
 Merryweather, Bosanquet, and Lacy. 
 
 Esto perj'etna ! 
 
 For the first day or two I felt stunned — over- 
 whelmed. I could only apprehend my felicity ; I 
 was too confused to taste it sincerely. I wandered 
 about, thinking I was happy, and knowing that I 
 was not. I was in the condition of a prisoner in 
 the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty 
 years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself 
 with myself. It was like passing out of Time into 
 Eternity — for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to 
 have all his Time to himself. It seemed to me that 
 I had more time on my hands than I could ever 
 manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I was 
 suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see 
 no end of my possessions ; I wanted some steward, 
 or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time 
 for me. And here let me caution persons grown 
 old in active business, not lightly, nor without 
 weighing their own resources, to forego their cus- 
 tomary employment all at once, for there may be 
 danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know that 
 my resources are sufficient ; and now that those 
 first giddy raptures have subsided, I have a quiet
 
 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 77 
 
 home-feeling of the blessedness of my condition. 
 I am in no hurry. Having all holidays, I am as 
 though I had none. It Time hung heavy upon 
 me, I could walk it away ; but I do not walk all 
 day long, as I used to do in those old transient 
 holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the most of 
 them. If Time were troublesome, I could read it 
 away ; but I do not read in that violent measure, 
 with which, having no Time my own but candle- 
 light Time, I used to weary out my head and eye- 
 sight in bygone winters. I walk, read, or scribble 
 (as now) just when the fit seizes me. I no longer 
 hunt after pleasure ; I let it come to me. I am 
 like the man 
 
   that's born, and has his years come to him, 
 
 In jome green desert. 
 
 "Years!" you will say; "what is this superannuated 
 simpleton calculating upon ? He has already told 
 us he is past fifty." 
 
 I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but 
 deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to 
 other people, and not to myself, and you will find 
 me still a young fellow. For that is the only true 
 Time, which a man can properly call his own — that 
 which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some 
 sense he may be said to live it, is other people's 
 Time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, 
 long or short, is at least multiplied for me threefold. 
 My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as 
 long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair rule-of- 
 tiiree sum. 
 
 Among the strange fantasies which beset me at 
 the commencement of my freedom, and of which 
 all traces are not yet gone, one was, that a vast 
 tract of time had intervened since I quitted the
 
 78 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 Counting House. I could not conceive of it as an 
 affair of yesterday. The partners, and the clerks 
 with whom I had for so many years, and for so 
 many hours in each day of the year, been closely 
 associated — being suddenly removed from them — 
 they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine pas- 
 sage, which may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a 
 Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard, speaking of a 
 friend's death : — 
 
 'Twas but just now he went away ; 
 
 I have not since had time to shed a tear : 
 And yet the distance does the same appear 
 As if he had been a thousand years from me. 
 Time takes no measure in Eternity. 
 
 To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been 
 fain to go among them once or twice since ; to visit 
 my old desk-fellows — my co-brethren of the quill — 
 that I had left below in the state militant. Not all 
 the kindness with which they received me could 
 quite restore to me that pleasant familiarity, which 
 I had heretofore enjoyed among them. We 
 cracked some of our old jokes, but methought they 
 went off but faintly. My old desk ; the peg where 
 I himg my hat, were appropriated to another. 1 
 knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. 
 
 D 1 take me, if I did not feel some remorse — 
 
 beast, if I had not — at quitting ni)' old compeers, 
 the faithful partners of my toils for six-and-thirty 
 years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and 
 conundrums the ruggedness of my professional 
 road. Had it been so rugged then, after all ? or 
 was I a coward simply ? Well, it is too late to re- 
 pent ; and I also know that these suggestions are a 
 common fallacy of the mind on such occasions. 
 But my heart smote me. I had violently broken 
 the bands betwixt us. It was at least not courteous.
 
 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 79 
 
 I shall be some time before I get quite reconciled to 
 the separation. Farewell, old cronies, yet not for 
 long, for again and again I will come among ye, if I 
 
 shall have your leave. Farewell, Ch , dry, 
 
 sarcastic, and friendly ! Do , mild, slow to 
 
 move, and gentlemanly ! PI , officious to do, 
 
 and to volunteer, good services ! — and thou, thou 
 dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a Whit- 
 tington of old, stately house of Merchants ; with 
 thy labyrinthine passages, and light-excluding, 
 pent-up offices, where candles for one-half the year 
 supplied the place of the sun's light ; unhealthy 
 contributor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, 
 farewell ! In thee remain, and not in the obscure 
 collection of some wandering bookseller, my 
 " works !" There let them rest, as I do from my 
 labours, piled on thy massy shelves, more MSS. in 
 folio than ever Aquinas left, and full as useful ! 
 My mantle I bequeath among ye. 
 
 A fortnight has passed since the date of my first 
 communication. At that period I was approaching 
 to tranquillity, but had not reached it. I boasted 
 of a calm indeed, but it was comparative only. 
 Something of the first flutter was left ; an unsettling 
 sense of novelty ; the dazzle to weak eyes of un- 
 accustomed light. I missed my old chains, for- 
 sooth, as if they had been some necessary part of 
 my apparel. I was a poor Carthusian, from strict 
 cellular discipline suddenly by some revolution re- 
 turned upon the world. I am now as if Hiad never 
 been other than my own master. It is natural for 
 me to go where I please, to do what I please. I 
 find myself at 1 1 o'clock in the day in Bond Street, 
 and it seems to me that I have been sauntering there 
 at that very hour for years past. I digress into Soho, 
 to explore a bookstall. Methinks I have been
 
 (fe LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 thirty years a collector. There is nothing strange 
 nor new in it. I find myself before a fine picture 
 in the morning. Was it ever otherwise ? What is 
 become of Fish Street Hill ? Where is Fenchurch 
 Street? Stones of old Mincing Lane, which I have 
 worn with my daily pilgrimage for six-and- thirty 
 years, to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are 
 your everlasting flints now vocal ? I indent the 
 gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change time, and 
 I am strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was 
 no hyperbole when I ventured to compare the 
 change in my condition to passing into another 
 world. Time stands still in a manner to me. I 
 have lost all distinction of season. I do not know 
 the day of itie week or of the month. Each day 
 used to be individually felt by me in its reference 
 to the foreign post days ; in its distance from, or 
 propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my Wed- 
 nesday feelings, my Saturday nights' sensations. 
 The genius of each day was upon me distinctly 
 during the whole of it, affecting my appetite, spirits, 
 &c. The phantom of the next day, with the dreary 
 five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor Sabbath 
 recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop 
 white? What is gone of Black Monday? All 
 days are the same. Sunday itself — that unfortu- 
 nate failure of a holiday, as it too often proved, 
 what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over- 
 care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of 
 it —is melted down into a week-day. I can spare 
 to go to church now, without grudging the huge 
 cantle which it used to seem to cut out of the holi- 
 day. I have time for everything. I can visit a 
 sick firiend. I can interrupt the man of much oc- 
 cupation when he is busiest. I can insult over him 
 with an invitation to take a day's pleasure with me
 
 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. Hi 
 
 to Windsor this fine May-morning. It is Lucretian 
 pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have 
 left behind in the world, carking and caring ; like 
 horses in a mill, drudging on in the same eternal 
 round — and what is it all for? A man can never 
 have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. 
 Had I a little son, I would christen him Nothing- 
 TO-DO ; he should do nothing. Man, I verily be- 
 lieve, is out of his element as long as he is opera- 
 tive. I am altogether for the life contemplative. 
 Will no kindly earthquake come and swallow up 
 those accursed cotton-mills? Take me that lumber 
 of a desk there, and bowl it down 
 
 As low as to the fiends. 
 
 I am no longer ******j clerk to the Firm of, &c. 
 I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in 
 trim gardens. I am already come to be known by 
 my vacant face and careless gesture, perambulating 
 at no fixed pace, nor with any settled purpose. I 
 walk about ; not to and from They tell me, a 
 certain cum dignitate air, that has been buried so 
 long with my other good parts, has begun to shoot 
 forth in my person. I gi-ow into gentility percep- 
 tibly. When I take up a newspaper, it is to read 
 the state of the opera. Opus operatum est. I have 
 done all that I came into this world to do. I have 
 worked task-work, and have the rest of the day to 
 myself. 
 
 II.
 
 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 
 
 T is an ordinary criticism, tliat my Lord 
 Shaftesbury and Sir William Temple 
 are models of the genteel style in writ- 
 ing. We should prefer saying — of the 
 lordly, and the gentlemanly. Nothing can be 
 more unlike, than the inflated finical rhapsodies 
 of Shaftesbury, and the plain natural chit-chat 
 of Temple. The man of rank is discernible in 
 both writers ; but in the one it is only insinu- 
 ated gracefully, in the other it stands out offen- 
 sively. The peer seems to have written with his 
 coronet on, and his Earl's mantle before him ; the 
 cvtnmoner in his elbow-chair and undress. — What 
 can be more pleasant than the way in which the 
 retii-ed statesman peeps out in his essays, penned 
 by the latter in his delightful retreat at Shene? 
 They scent of Nimeguen and the Hague. Scarce 
 an authority is quoted under an ambassador. Don 
 Francisco de Melo, a "Portugal Envoy in Eng- 
 land," tells him it was frequent in his country for 
 men, spent with age and other decays, so as they 
 could not hope for above a year or two of life, to 
 ship themselves away in a Brazil fleet, and after 
 their arrival there to go on a great length, some- 
 times of twenty or thirty years, or more, by the
 
 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 83 
 
 force of that vigour they recovered with that remove. 
 " Whether such an effect (Temple beautifully adds) 
 might grow from the air, or the fruits of that climate, 
 or by approaching nearer the sun, which is the 
 fountain of light and heat, when their natural heat 
 was so far decayed ; or whether the piecing out of 
 an old man's life were worth the pains ; I cannot 
 tell: perhaps the play is not worth the candle." 
 Monsieur Pompone, " French Ambassador in his 
 (Sir William's) time at the Hague," certifies him, 
 that in his life he had never heard of any man in 
 France that arrived at a hundred years of age ; a 
 limitation of life which the old gentleman imputes 
 to the excellence of their climate, giving them such 
 a liveliness of temper and humour, as disposes them 
 to more pleasures of all kinds than in other coun- 
 tries ; and moralizes upon the matter very sensibly. 
 The "late Robert Earl of Leicester " furnishes him 
 with a story of a Countess of Desmond, married 
 out of England in Edward the Fourth's time, and 
 who lived far in King James's reign. The "same 
 noble person " gives hira an account, how such a 
 year, in the same reign, there went about the coun- 
 try a set of morrice-dancers, composed of ten men 
 who danced, a Maid Marian, and a tabor and pipe ; 
 and how these twelve, one with another, made up 
 twelve hundred years. " It was not so much (says 
 Temple) that so many in one small county (Hert- 
 fordshire) should live to that age, as that they 
 should be in vigour and in humour to travel and to 
 dance." Monsieur Zulichem, one of his "collea- 
 gues at the Hague," informs him of a cure for the 
 gout; which is confirmed by another "Envoy," 
 Monsieur Serinchamps, in that town, who had 
 ;ried it. — Old Prince Maurice of Nassau recom- 
 mends to him the use of hammocks in that com-
 
 34 LAST ESSAYS OF EL/A. 
 
 plaint ; having been allured to sleep, while suffering 
 under it himself, by the "constant motion or 
 swinging of those airy beds." Count Egmont, and 
 the Rhinegrave who " was killed last summer be- 
 fore Maestricht," impart to him their experiences. 
 But the rank of the writer is never more inno- 
 cently disclosed, than where he takes for granted 
 the compliments paid by foreigners to his fruit-trees. 
 For the taste and perfection of what we esteem the 
 best, he can truly say, that the French, who have 
 eaten his peaches and grapes at Shene, in no very 
 ill year, have generally concluded that the last are 
 as good as any they have eaten in France on this 
 side Fontainebleau ; and the first as good as any 
 they have eat in Gascony. Italians have agreed 
 his white figs to be as good as any of that sort in 
 Italy, which is the earlier kind of white fig there ; 
 for in the latter kind and the blue, we cannot come 
 near the warm climates, no more than in the Fron- 
 tigTiac or Muscat grape. His orange-trees, too, 
 are as large as any he saw when he was young in 
 France, except those of Fontainebleau ; or what he 
 had seen since in the Low Countries, except some 
 very old ones of the Prince of Orange's. Of grapes 
 he had the honour of bringing over four sorts into 
 England, which he enumerates, and supposes that 
 they are all by this time pretty common among 
 some gardeners in his neighbourhood, as well as 
 several persons of quality ; for he ever thought all 
 things of this kind "the commoner they are made 
 the better." The garden pedantry with which he 
 asserts that 'tis to little purpose to plant any of the 
 best fruits, as peaches or grapes, hardly, he doubts, 
 beyond Northamptonshire at the farthest north- 
 wards ; and praises the " Bishop of Munster at 
 Cosevelt," for attempting nothing beyond cherries
 
 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 85 
 
 in that cold climate ; is equally pleasant and in 
 character. "I may perhaps" (he thus ends his 
 sweet Garden Essay with a passage worthy of 
 Cowley) "be allowed to know something of this 
 trade, since I have so long allowed myself to be 
 good for nothing else, which few men will do, or 
 enjoy their gardens, without often looking abroad 
 to see how other matters play, what motions in the 
 state, and what invitations they may hope for into 
 other scenes. For my own part, as the country 
 life, and this part of it more particularly, were the 
 inclination of my youth itself, so they are the 
 pleasures of my age ; and I can truly say that, 
 among many great employments that have fallen 
 to my share, I have never asked or sought for any 
 of them, but have often endeavoured to escape from 
 them, into the ease and freedom of a private scene, 
 Avhere a man may go his own way and his own pace 
 in the common paths and circles of life. The 
 measure of choosing well is whether a man likes 
 what he has chosen, which, I thank God, has be- 
 fallen me ; and though among the follies of my life, 
 building and planting have not been the least, and 
 have cost me more than I have the confidence to 
 own ; yet they have been fully recompensed by the 
 sweetness and satisfaction of this retreat, whei'e, 
 since my resolution taken of never entering again 
 into any public employments, I have passed five 
 years without ever once going to town, though 
 I am almost in sight of it, and have a house 
 there always ready to receive me. Nor has this 
 been any sort of affectation, as some have thought 
 it, but a mere want of desire or humour to make 
 so small a remove ; for when I am in this corner 
 I can truly say with Horace, Mc qtwties reficii, 
 &c.
 
 V.C LAS T ESS A YS OF ELI A 
 
 Me, when the cold Digentian stream revives. 
 What does my friend believe I think or ask ? 
 Let me yet less possess, so I may live, 
 Whate'er of life remains, unto myself. 
 May I have books enough ; and one year's store. 
 Not to depend upon each doubtful hour : 
 This is enough of mighty Jove to pray. 
 Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away. 
 
 The writings of Temple are, in general, after 
 this easy copy. On one occasion, indeed, his wit, 
 which was mostly subordinate to nature and ten- 
 derness, has seduced him into a string of felicitous 
 antitheses ; which, it is obvious to remark, have 
 been a model to Addison and succeeding essayists. 
 "Who would not be covetous, and with reason," 
 he says, " if health could be purchased with gold ? 
 who not ambitious, if it were at the command of 
 power, or restored by honour ? but, alas ! a white 
 staff will not help gouty feet to walk better than a 
 common cane ; nor a blue riband bind up a wound 
 so well as a fillet. The glitter of gold, or of dia- 
 monds, will but hurt sore eyes instead of curing 
 them ; and an aching head will be no more eased 
 by wearing a crown than a common nightcap." In 
 a far better style, and more accordant with his own 
 humour of plainness, are the concluding sentences 
 of his "Discourse upon Poetiy." Temple took a 
 part in the controversy about the ancient and the 
 modern learning ; and, with that partiality so natural 
 and so graceful in an old man, whose state engage- 
 ments had left him little leisure to look into modern 
 productions, while his retirement gave him occasion 
 to look back upon the classic studies of his youth — 
 decided in favour of the latter. " Certain it is," he 
 says, "that, whether the fierceness of the Gothic 
 humours, or noise of their perpetual wars, frighted 
 it away, or that the unequal mixture of the modem 
 languages would not bear it— the great heights and
 
 s 
 
 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 87 
 
 excellency both of poetry and music fell with the 
 Roman learning and empire, and have never since 
 recovered the admiration and applauses that before 
 attended them. Yet, such as they are amongst us, 
 they must be confessed to be the softest and the 
 sweetest, the most general and most innocent amuse- 
 ments of common time and life. They still find 
 room in the courts of princes, and the cottages of 
 shepherds. They serve to revive and animate the 
 dead calm of poor and idle lives, and to allay or 
 divert the violent passions and perturbations of the 
 greatest and the busiest men. And both these 
 effects are of equal use to human life ; for the mind 
 of man is like the sea, which is neither agreeable to 
 the beholder nor the voyager, in a calm or in a 
 storm, but is so to both when a little agitated by 
 gentle gales ; and so the mind, when moved by 
 soft and easy passions or affections. I know very 
 well that many who pretend to be wise by the 
 forms of 1 leing grave, are apt to despise both poetry 
 and music, as toys and trifles too light for the use 
 or entertainment of serious men. But whoever find 
 themselves wholly insensible to their charms, would, 
 I think, do well to keep their own counsel, for fear of 
 reproaching theirown temper, and bringingthegood- 
 ness of their natures, if not of their understandings, 
 into question. While this world lasts, I doubt not 
 but the pleasure and request of these two entertain- 
 ments will do so too ; and happy those that content 
 themselves with these, or any other so easy and so 
 innocent, and do not trouble the world or other 
 men, because they cannot be quiet themselves, 
 though nobody hurts them." " When all is done 
 'he concludes), human life is at the greatest and the 
 best but like a froward child, that must be played 
 with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet, till it 
 falls asleep, and then the care is over,"
 
 BARBARA S- 
 
 X the noon of the 14th of November, 
 1743 or 4, I forget which it was, just as 
 
 the clock had struck one, Barbara S , 
 
 with her accustomed punctuality, as- 
 cended the long rambling staircase, with awkward 
 interposed landing-places, which led to the office, 
 or rather a sort of box with a desk in it, whereat 
 sat the then treasurer of (what few of our readers 
 may remember) the old Bath Theatre. All over 
 the island it was the custom, and remains so I 
 believe to this day, for the players to receive their 
 weekly stipend on the Saturday. It v/as not much 
 that Barbara had to claim. 
 
 The little maid had just entered her eleventh 
 year; but her important station at the theatre, as 
 it seemed to her, with the benefits which she felt 
 to accme from her pious application of her small 
 earnings, had given an air of womanhood to her 
 steps and to her behaviour. You would have taken 
 her to have been at least five years older. 
 
 Till latterly she had merely been employed in 
 choruses, or where children were \\anted to fill up 
 the scene. But the manager, observing a diligence 
 and adroitness in her above her age, had for some 
 few months past intrusted to her the performance of
 
 BARBARA S . 89 
 
 vvliole parts. You may guess the self-consequence 
 of the promoted Barbara. She had already drawn 
 tears in young Arthur ; had rallied Richard with 
 infantine petulance in the Duke of York ; and in 
 her turn had rebuked that petulance when she was 
 Prince of Wales. She would have done the elder 
 child in Morton's pathetic afterpiece to the life; 
 but as yet the " Children in the Wood" was not. 
 
 Long after this little girl was grown an aged 
 woman, I have seen some of these small parts, each 
 making two or three pages at most, copied out in 
 the rudest hand of the then prompter, who doubt- 
 less transcribed a little more carefully and fairly 
 for the grown-up tragedy ladies of the establish- 
 ment. But such as they were, blotted and scrawled, 
 as for a child's use, she kept them all; and in the 
 zenith of her after reputation it was a delightful 
 sight to behold them bound up in costliest morocco, 
 each single — each small part making a I'oo.'c — with 
 fine clasps, gilt-splashed, &c. She had conscien- 
 tiously kept them as they had been delivered to 
 her ; not a blot had been effaced or tampered with. 
 They were precious to her for their affecting re- 
 membrancings. They were her principia, her ru- 
 diments ; the elementary atoms ; the little steps by 
 which she pressed forward to perfection. " What, '' 
 she would say, "could India-rubber, or a pumice- 
 stone, have done for these darlings ? " 
 
 I am in no hurry to begin my story — indeed, I 
 have little or none to tell — so I will just mention 
 an observation of hers connected with that in- 
 teresting time. 
 
 Not long before she died I had been discoursing 
 with her on the quantity of real present emotion 
 which a great tragic performer experiences during 
 acting. 1 ventured to think, that though in the
 
 go LAST £SSAVS OF ELI A. 
 
 first instance such players must have possessed the 
 feelings which they so powerfully called up in 
 others, yet by frequent repetition those feelings must 
 become deadened in great measure, and the per- 
 former trust to the memory of past emotion, rather 
 than express a present one. She indignantly re- 
 pelled the notion, that with a truly great tragedian 
 the operation, by which such effects were produced 
 upon an audience, could ever degrade itself into 
 what was purely mechanical. With much delicacy, 
 avoiding to instance in her je-^-experience, she told 
 me, that so long ago as when she used to play tlie 
 part of the Little Son to Mrs. Porter's Isabella (I 
 think it was), when that impressive actress has been 
 bending over her in some heartrending colloquy, 
 she has felt real hot tears come trickling from her, 
 which (to use her powerful expression) have per- 
 fectly scalded her back. 
 
 I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter ; 
 but it was some great actress of that day. The 
 name is indifferent ; but the fact of the scalding 
 tears I most distinctly remember. 
 
 I was always fond of the society of players, and 
 am not sure that an impediment in my speech 
 (which certainly kept me out of the pulpit), even 
 more than certain personal disqualifications, which 
 are often got over in that profession, did not pre- 
 vent me at one time of life from adopting it. I 
 have had the honour (I must ever call it) once to 
 have been admitted to the tea-table of Miss Kelly. 
 I have played at serious whist with Mr. Listen. I 
 have chattered with ever good-humoured Mrs. 
 Charles Kemble. I have conversed as friend to 
 friend with her accomplished husband. I have 
 been indulged with a classical conference with 
 Macready ; and with a sight of the Player picture-
 
 BARBARA S , 91 
 
 gallery, at Mr. Mathews's, when the kind owner, 
 to remunerate me for my love of the old actors 
 (whom he loves so much), went over it with me, 
 supplying to his capital collection, what alone the 
 artist could not give them— voice ; and their living 
 motion. Old tones, half-faded, of Dodd, and 
 Parsons, and Baddeley, have lived again for me at 
 his bidding. Only Edwin he could not restore to 
 
 me. I have supped with ; but I am growing 
 
 a coxcomb. 
 
 As I was about to say — at the desk of the then 
 treasurer of the old Bath Theatre — not Diamond's 
 — presented herself the little Barbara S . 
 
 The parents of Barbara had been in reputable 
 circumstances. The father had practised, I believe, 
 as an apothecary in the town. But his practice, 
 from causes which I feel my own infirmity too sen- 
 sibly that -way to arraign — or perhaps from that 
 pure infelicity which accompanies some people in 
 their walk through life, and which it is impossible 
 to lay at the door of imprudence— was now reduced 
 to nothing. They were, in fact, in the very teeth 
 of starvation, when the manager, who knew and 
 respected them in better days, took the little Bar- 
 bara into his company. 
 
 At the period I commenced with, her slender 
 earnings were the sole support of the family, in- 
 cluding two younger sisters. I must throw a veil 
 over some mortifying circumstances. Enough to 
 say, that her Saturday's pittance was the only 
 chance of a Sunday^s (generally their only) meal of 
 meat. 
 
 One thing I will only mention, that in some 
 child's part, where in her theatrical character she 
 was to sup off a roast fowl (O joy to Barbara !) 
 some comic actor, who was for the night caterer
 
 92 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 for til is dainty— in the misguided humour of his 
 part, threw over the dish such a quantity of salt (O 
 grief and pain of heart to Barbara !) that when she 
 crammed a portion of it into lier mouth, she was 
 obliged sputteringly to reject it ; and what with 
 shame of her ill -acted part, and pain of real ap- 
 petite at missing such a dainty, her little heart 
 sobbed almost to breaking, till a flood of tears, 
 which tiie well-fed spectators were totally unable 
 to comprehend, mercifully relieved her. 
 
 This was the little starved, meritorious maid, 
 who stood before old Ravenscroft, the ti-easurer, 
 for her Saturday's payment. 
 
 Ravenscroft was a man. I have heard many old 
 theatrical people besides herself say, of all men 
 least calculated for a treasurer. He had no head 
 for accounts, paid away at random, kept scarce 
 any books, and summing up at the week's end, if 
 he found himself a pound or so deficient, blest him- 
 self that it was no worse. 
 
 Now Barbara's weekly stipend v^-as a bare half- 
 guinea. — By mistake he popped into her hand — a 
 whole one. 
 
 Barbara tripped away. 
 
 She was entirely unconscious at first of the mis- 
 take : God knows, Ravenscroft would never have 
 discovered it. 
 
 But when she had got down to the first of those 
 uncouth landing-places, she became sensible of an 
 unusual weight of metal pressing in her little hand. 
 
 Now mark the dilemma. 
 
 She was by nature a good child. From her 
 parents and those about her, she had imbibed no 
 contrary influence. But then they had taught her 
 nothing. Poor men's smoky cabins are not always 
 porticoes of moral philosophy. This little maid
 
 BARBARA S . 93 
 
 had no instinct to evil, but then she might be said 
 to have no fixed principle. She had heard honesty 
 commended, but never dreamed of its application 
 to herself. She thought of it as something which 
 concerned grown-up people, men and women. She 
 liad never known temptation, or thought of pre- 
 paring resistance against it. 
 
 Her first impulse was to go back to the old trea 
 surer, and explain to him his blunder. He was 
 already so confused with age, besides a natural 
 want of punctuality, that she would have had some 
 difficulty in making him understand it. She saw 
 ikat in an instant. And then it was such a bit of 
 money ! and then the image of a larger allowance 
 of butcher's meat on their table the next day came 
 across her, till her little eyes glistened and her 
 mouth moistened. But then Mr. Ravenscroft had 
 always been so good-natured, had stood her friend 
 behind the scenes, and even recommended her pro- 
 motion to some of her little parts. But again the 
 old man was reputed to be worth a world of money. 
 He was supposed to have fifty pounds a-year clear 
 of the theatre. And then came staring upon her the 
 figures of her little stockingless and shoeless sisters. 
 And when she looked at her own neat white cotton 
 stockings, which her situation at the theatre had 
 made it indispensable for her mother to provide 
 for her, with hard straining and pinching from the 
 family stock, and thought how glad she should be 
 to cover their poor feet with the same — and how 
 then they could accompany her to rehearsals, which 
 they had hitherto been precluded from doing, by 
 reason of their unfashionable attire, — in these 
 thoughts she reached the second landing-place — 
 the second, I mean, from the top — for there was 
 still another left to traverse.
 
 94 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 Now virtue support Barbara ! 
 
 And that never-failing friend did step in — for at 
 that moment a strength not her own, I have heard 
 her say, was revealed to her — a reason above rea- 
 soning — and without her own agency, as it seemed 
 (for she never felt her feet to move), she found 
 herself transported back to the individual desk she 
 had just quitted, and her hand in the old hand of 
 Ravenscroft, who in silence took back the refunded 
 treasure, and who had been sitting (good man) in- 
 sensible to the lapse of minutes, which to her were 
 anxious ages, and from that moment a deep peace 
 fell upon her heart, and she knew the quality of 
 honesty. 
 
 A year or two's unrepining application to her 
 profession brightened up the feet and the prospects 
 of her little sisters, set the whole family upon their 
 legs again, and released her from the difficulty of 
 discussing moral dogmas upon a landing-place. 
 
 I have heard her say that it was a surprise, not 
 much short of mortification to her, to see thecoolness 
 with which the old man pocketed the difference, 
 which had caused her such mortal throes. 
 
 This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1 800, 
 from the mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,' then 
 sixty-seven years of age (she died soon after) ; and 
 to her struggles upon this childish occasion I have 
 sometimes ventured to think her indebted for that 
 power of rending the heart in the representation of 
 conflicting emotions, for which in after years she 
 was considered as little inferior (if at all so in the 
 part of Lady Randolph) even to Mrs. Siddons. 
 
 ' The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she 
 changed, by succes-iive marriages, for those of Dancer, 
 Barry, and Crawford. She was Mrs. Crawford, a third 
 time a widow, when I knew her.
 
 THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 
 
 IN A LETTER TO R- 
 
 -, ESQ. 
 
 HOUGH in some points of doctrine, 
 and perhaps of discipline, I am diffident 
 of lending a perfect assent to that church 
 which you have so worthily historijied, 
 yet may the ill time never come to me, when with 
 a chilled heart or a portion of irreverent senti- 
 ment, I shall enter her beautiful and time-hal- 
 lowed Edifices. Judge, then, of my mortification 
 when, after attending the choral anthems of last 
 Wednesday at Westminster, and being desirous 
 of renewing my acquaintance, after lapsed years, 
 with the tombs and antiquities there, I found my- 
 self excluded ; turned out, like a dog, or some 
 profane person, into the common street, with feel- 
 ings not very congenial to the place, or to the 
 solemn service which I had been listening to. It 
 was a jar after that music. 
 
 You had your education at Westminster ; and 
 doubtless among those dim aisles and cloisters, you 
 must have gathered much of that devotional feeling 
 in those young years, on which your purest mind 
 feeds still — and may it feed ! The antiquarian 
 spirit, strong in you, and gracefully blending ever 
 with the religious, may have been sown in you
 
 96 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 among those wrecks of splendid mortality. You 
 owe it to the place of your education ; you owe it 
 to your learned fondness for the architecture of 
 your ancestors ; you owe it to the venerableness of 
 your ecclesiastical establishment, which is daily 
 lessened and called in question through these prac- 
 tices — to speak aloud your sense of them ; never to 
 desist raising your voice against them, till they be 
 totally done away with and abolished ; till the 
 doors of Westminster Abbey be no longer closed 
 against the decent, though low-in-purse, enthusiast, 
 or blameless devotee, who must commit an injury 
 against his family economy, if he would be indulged 
 with a bare admission within its walls. You owe 
 it to the decencies which you wish to see main- 
 tained in its impressive services, that our Cathedral 
 be no longer an object of inspection to the poor at 
 those times only, in which they must rob from their 
 attendance on the worship every minute which they 
 can bestow upon the fabric. In vain the public 
 prints have taken up this subject, — in vain such 
 poor, nameless writers as myself express their in- 
 dignation. A word from you, sir, — a hint in your 
 Journal — would be sufiicient to fling open the 
 doors of the Beautiful Temple again, as we can re- 
 member them when we were boys. At that time 
 of life, what would the imaginative faculty (such as 
 it is) in both of us, have suffered, if the entrance to 
 so much reflection had been obstructed by the de- 
 mand of so much silver ! — If we had scraped it up 
 to gain an occasional admission (as we certainly 
 should have done), would the sight of those old 
 tombs have been as impressive to us (while we 
 have been weighing anxiously prudence against 
 sentiment) as when the gates stood open as those 
 of the adjacent Park ; when we could walk in at
 
 THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 97 
 
 any time, as the mood brought us, for a shorter or 
 longer time, as that lasted ? Is the being shown 
 over a place the same as silently for ourselves de- 
 tecting the genius of it ? In no part of our beloved 
 Abbey now can a person find entrance (out-of ser- 
 vice-time) under the sum of tivo shillings. The 
 rich and the great will smile at the anti-climax, 
 presumed to lie in these two short words. But you 
 can tell them, sir, how much quiet worth, how 
 much capacity for enlarged feeling, how much 
 taste and genius, may coexist, especially in youth, 
 with a purse incompetent to this demand. A re- 
 spected friend of ours, during his late visit to the 
 metropolis, presented himself for admission to St. 
 Paul's. At the same time a decently-clothed man, 
 with as decent a wife and child, were bargaining 
 for the same indulgence. The price was only two- 
 pence each person. The poor but decent man 
 hesitated, desirous to go in ; but there were three 
 of them, and he turned away reluctantly. Perhaps 
 he wished to have seen the tomb of Nelson. Per- 
 haps the Interior of the Cathedral was his object. 
 But in the state of his finances, even sixpence might 
 reasonably seem too much. Tell the Aristocracy 
 of the country (no man can do it more impres- 
 sively); instruct them of what value these insignifi- 
 cant pieces of money, these minims to their sight, 
 may be to their humbler brethren. Shame these 
 Sellers out of the Temple. Stifle not the sugges- 
 tions of your better nature with the pretext, that ar. 
 indiscriminate admission would expose the Tombs 
 to violation. Remember your boy-days. Did you 
 ever see, or hear, of a mob in the Abbey, while it 
 was free to all ? Do the rabble come there, or 
 trouble their heads about such speculations ? It is 
 all that you can do to drive them into your 
 II. H
 
 oS LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 churches ; they do not voluntarily offer themselves. 
 They have, alas ! no passion for antiquities ; for 
 tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. If they 
 had, they would be no longer the rabble. 
 
 For forty years that I have known the Fabric, the 
 only well-attested charge of violation adduced, has 
 been — a ridiculous dismemberment committed upon 
 the effigy of that amiable spy, Major Andre. And 
 is it for this — the wanton mischief of some school- 
 boy, fired perhaps with raw notions of Transat- 
 lantic Freedom — or the remote possibility of such 
 a mischief occurring again, so easily to be prevented 
 by stationing a constable within the walls, if the 
 vergers are incompetent to the duty^is it upon 
 such wretched pretences that the people of England 
 are made to pay a new Peter's Pence, so long 
 abrogated ; or must content themselves with con- 
 templating the ragged Exterior of their Cathedral? 
 The mischief was done about the time that you 
 were a scholar there. Do you know anything 
 about the unfortunate relic ? —
 
 AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 
 
 Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
 Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? 
 
 DO not know when I have experienced 
 a stranger sensation than on seeing my 
 old friend, G. D., who had been paying 
 me a morning visit, a few Sundays back, 
 at my cottage at IsHngton, upon taking leave, in- 
 stead of turning down the right-hand path by 
 which he had entered— with staff in hand, and 
 at noonday, deliberately march right forward into 
 the midst of the stream that runs by us, and totally 
 disappear. 
 
 A spectacle like this at dusk would have been 
 appalling enough ; but in the broad, open daylight, 
 to witness such an unreserved motion towards self- 
 destruction in a valued friend, took from me all 
 power of speculation. 
 
 How I found my feet I know not. Conscious- 
 ness was quite gone. Some spirit, not my own, 
 whirled me to the spot. I remember nothing but 
 the silvery apparition of a good white head emerg- 
 ing ; nigh which a staff (the hand unseen that 
 wielded it) pointed upwards, as feeling for the 
 skies. In a moment (if time was in that time) he 
 
 /■
 
 loo LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 was on my shoulders, and I — freighted with a 
 load more precious than his who bore Anchises. 
 
 And here I cannot but do justice to the officious 
 zeal of sundry passers-by, who, albeit arriving a 
 little too late to participate in the honours of the 
 rescue, in philanthropic shoals came thronging to 
 communicate their advice as to the recovery ; pre- 
 scribing variously the application, or non-applica- 
 tion, of salt, &c., to the person of the patient. Life, 
 meantime, was ebbing fast away, amidst the strife 
 of conflicting judgments, when one, more sagacious 
 than the rest, by a bright thought, proposed send- 
 ing for the Doctor. Trite as the counsel was, and 
 impossible, as one should think, to be missed on, 
 — shall I confess ? — in this emergency it was to me 
 as if an Angel had spoken. Great previous exer- 
 tions — and mine had not been inconsiderable — are 
 commonly followed by a debility of purpose. This 
 was a moment of irresolution. 
 
 MONOCULUS — for so, in default of catching his 
 true name, I choose to designate the medical gen- 
 tleman who now appeared — is a grave, middle-aged 
 person, who, without having studied at the college, 
 or truckled to the pedantry of a diploma, hath em- 
 ployed a great portion of his valuable time in ex- 
 perimental processes upon the bodies of unfortunate 
 fellow-creaturqs, in whom the vital spark, to mere 
 vulgar thinking, would seem extinct and lost for 
 ever. He omitteth no occasion of obtruding his 
 services, from a case of common surfeit suffocation 
 to the ignobler obstructions, sometimes induced by 
 a too wilful application of the plant cannabis out- 
 wardly. But though he declineth not altogether 
 these drier extinctions, his occupation tendeth, for 
 the most part, to water-practice ; for the conve- 
 nience of which, he hath judiciously fixed his
 
 AMICUS REDIVIVUS. -loi 
 
 quarters near the grand repository of the stream 
 mentioned, wliere day and night, from his httle 
 watch-tower, at the Middleton's Head, he listenerti 
 to detect the wrecks of drowned mortality — partly, 
 as he saith, to be upon the spot — and partly, be- 
 cause the liquids which he useth to prescribe to 
 himself and his patients, on these distressing occa- 
 sions, are ordinarily more conveniently to be found 
 at these common hostelries than in the shops and 
 phials of the apothecaries. His ear hath arrived 
 to such finesse by practice, that it is reported he 
 can distinguish a plunge, at half a furlong distance; 
 and can tell if it be casual or deliberate. He 
 weareth a medal, suspended over a suit, originally 
 of a sad brown, but which, by time and frequency 
 of nightly divings, has been dinged into a true pro- 
 fessional sable. He passeth by the name of Doc- 
 tor, and is remarkable for wanting his left eye. 
 His remedy — after a sufficient application of warm 
 blankets, friction, &c., is a simple tumbler, or 
 more, of the purest Cognac, with water, made as 
 hot as the convalescent can bear it. Where he 
 findeth, as in the case of my friend, a squeamish 
 subject, he condescendeth to be the taster ; and 
 showeth, by his own example, the innocuous nature 
 of the prescription. Nothing can be more kind or 
 encouraging than this procedure. It addeth con- 
 fidence to the patient, to see his medical adviser 
 go hand in hand with himself in the remedy. 
 When the doctor swalloweth his own draught, 
 what peevish invalid can refuse to pledge him in 
 the potion ? In fine, Monoculus is a humane, 
 sensible man, who, for a slender pittance, scarce 
 enough to sustain life, is content to wear it out in 
 the endeavour to save the lives of others — his pre- 
 tensions 50 moderate, that with difficulty I could
 
 I02 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 press a crown upon him, for the price of restoring 
 the existence of such an invaluable creature to so- 
 ciety as G. D. 
 
 It was pleasant to observe the effect of the sub- 
 siding alarm upon the nerves of the dear absentee. 
 It seemed to have given a shake to memory, calling 
 up notice after notice, of all the providential deliver- 
 ances he had experienced in the course of his long 
 and innocent life. Sitting up on ray couch, — my 
 couch which, naked and void of furniture hitherto, 
 for the salutary repose which it administered, shall 
 be honoured with costly valance, at some price, 
 and henceforth be a state-bed at Colebrook, — he 
 discoursed of man'ellous escapes — by carelessness 
 of nurses — by pails of gelid, and kettles of the 
 boiling element, in infancy— by orchard pranks, 
 and snapping twigs, in schoolboy frolics— by de- 
 scent of tiles at Trumpington, and of heavier tomes 
 at Pembroke — by studious watchings, inducing 
 frightful vigilance — by want, and the fear of want, 
 and all the sore throbbings of the learned head. — 
 Anon, he would blust out into little fragments of 
 chanting — of songs long ago — ends of deliverance 
 hymns, not remembered before since childhood, but 
 coming up now, when his heart was made tender 
 as a child's — for the tremor coj-dis, in the retrospect 
 of a recent deliverance, as in a case of impending 
 danger, acting upon an innocent heart, will pro- 
 duce a self-tenderness, which we should do ill to 
 christen cowardice ; and Shakspeare, in the latter 
 crisis, has made his good Sir Hugh to remember 
 the sitting by Babylon, and to mutter of shallow 
 rivers. 
 
 Waters of Sir Hugh Middleton — what a spark 
 you were like to have extinguished forever! Your 
 salubrious streams to this City, for now near two
 
 AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 103 
 
 centuries, would hardly have atoned for what you 
 were in a moment washing away. Mockery of a 
 river — liquid artifice — wretched conduit ! hence- 
 forth rank with canals and sluggish aqueducts. 
 Was it for this that, smit in boyhood with the ex- 
 plorations of that Abyssinian traveller, I paced the 
 vales of Amwell to explore your tributary springs, 
 to trace your salutary waters sparkling through 
 green Hertfordshire, and cultured Enfield parks ? 
 — Ye have no swans — no Naiads— no river God — 
 or did the benevolent hoary aspect of my friend 
 tempt ye to suck him in, that ye also might have 
 the tutelary genius of your waters ? 
 
 Had he been drowned in Cam, there would 
 have been some consonancy in it ; but what wil- 
 lows had ye to wave and rustle over his moist 
 sepulture ? — or, having no name, besides that un- 
 meaning assumption of eternal ttovity, did ye think 
 to get one by the noble prize, and henceforth to be 
 termed the Stream Dyerian ? 
 
 And could such spacious virtue find a' grave 
 Beneath the imposthumed bubble of a wave ? 
 
 I protest, George, you shall not venture out 
 again — no, not by daylight — without a sufficient 
 pair of spectacles — in your musing moods es- 
 pecially. Your absence of mind we have borne, 
 till your presence of body came to be called in 
 question by it. You shall not go wandering into 
 Euripus with Aristotle, if we can help it. Fie, 
 man, to turn dipper at your years, after your many 
 tracts in favour of sprinkling only ! 
 
 I have nothing but water in my head o'nights 
 since this frightful accident. Sometimes I am with 
 Clarence in his dream. At others, I behold 
 Christian beginning to sink, and crying out to his
 
 I04 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 good brother Hopeful (that is, to me), " 1 sink in 
 deep waters ; the billows go over my head, all the 
 waves go over me. Selah. " Then I have before 
 me Palinurus, just letting go the steerage. I cry 
 out too late to save. Next follow — a moui-nful 
 procession — suicidal faces, saved against their will 
 from drowning ; dolefully trailing a length of re- 
 luctant gratefulness, with ropy weeds pendent from 
 locks of watchet hue — constrained Lazari — Pluto's 
 nalt-subjects — stolen fees from the grave — bilking 
 Charon of his fare. At their head Arion — or is i't 
 G. D.? — in his singing garments marcheth singly, 
 with harp in hand, and votive garland, which Ma- 
 chaon (or Dr. Hawes) snatcheth straight, intend- 
 ing to suspend it to the stern God of Sea. Then 
 follow dismal streams of Lethe, in which the half- 
 drenched on earth are constrained to drown down- 
 right, by wharfs where Ophelia twice acts her 
 muddy death. 
 
 And, doubtless, there is some notice in that in- 
 visible world when one of us approacheth (as my 
 friend did so lately) to their inexorable precincts. 
 When a soul knocks once, twice, at Death's door, 
 the sensation aroused within the palace must be 
 considerable ; and the grim Feature, by modern 
 science so often dispossessed of his prey, must have 
 learned by this time to pity Tantalus. 
 
 A pulse assuredly was felt along the line of the 
 Elysian shades, when the near arrival of G. D. 
 was announced by no equivocal indications. From 
 their seats of Asphodel arose the gentler and the 
 graver ghosts — poet, or historian — of Grecian or of 
 Roman lore — to crown with imfading chaplets the 
 half-finished love-labours of their unwearied scho- 
 liast. Him Markland expected — him Tyrwhitt 
 hoped to encounter — him the sweet lyrist of Peter
 
 AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 105 
 
 House, whom he had barely seen upon earth,' 
 
 with newest airs prepared to greet ; and 
 
 patron of the gentle Christ's boy, — who should 
 have been his patron through life — the mild Askew, 
 with longing aspirations leaned foremost from his 
 venerable iEsculapian chair, to welcome into thai 
 happy company the matured virtues of the man, 
 whose tender scions in the boy he himself upon 
 earth had so prophetically fed and watered. 
 
 ' Graium tantum vidit.
 
 SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP 
 SYDNEY. 
 
 •YDNEY'S SONNETS— I speak of the 
 best of them — are among the very best 
 of their sort. They fall below the plain 
 moral dignity, the sanctity, and high 
 yet modest spirit of self-approval, of Milton, in 
 his compositions of a similar structure. The)' are 
 in truth what Milton, censuring the Arcadia, says 
 of that work (to which they are a sort of after-tune 
 or application), "vain and amatorious " enough, 
 yet the things in their kind (as he confesses to be 
 true of the romance) may be " full of worth and 
 wit." They savour of the Courtier, it must be al- 
 lowed, and not of the Commonwealthsman. But 
 Milton was a Courtier when he wrote the Masque 
 at Ludlow Castle, and still more a Courtier when 
 he composed the Arcades. When the national 
 struggle was to begin, he becomingly cast these 
 vanities behind him ; and if the order of time had 
 thrown Sir Philip upon the crisis which preceded 
 the revolution, there is no reason why he should 
 not have acted the same part in that emergency, 
 which has glorified the name of a later Sydney. 
 He did not want for plainness or, boldness of spirit. 
 His letter on the French ^natch may testify he
 
 SOME SONNETS OF SIR P. SVDNEV. 107 
 
 could speak his mind freely to Princes. The times 
 did not call him to the scaffold. 
 
 The Sonnets wliich we oftenest call to mind of 
 Milton were the compositions of his maturest years. 
 Those of Sydney, which I am about to produce, 
 were written in the very heyday of his blood. They 
 are stuck full of amorous fancies — far-fetched con- 
 ceits, befitting his occupation ; for True Love 
 thinks no labour to send out Thoughts upon the 
 vast and more than Indian voyages, to bring home 
 rich pearls, outlandish wealth, gums, jewels, spicciy, 
 to sacrifice in self-depreciating similitudes, as sha- 
 dows of true amiabilities in the Beloved. We must 
 be Lovers — or at least the cooling touch of time, 
 the ciraini pracordia fngus, must not have so 
 damped our faculties, as to take away our recol- 
 lection that we were once so — before we can duly 
 appreciate the glorious vanities and graceful hyper- 
 boles of the passion. The images which lie before 
 our feet (though by some accounted the only natural) 
 are least natural for the high Sydnean love to express 
 its fancies by. They may serve for the loves of 
 Tibullus, or the dear Author of the Schoolmistress ; 
 for passicms that creep and whine in Elegies and 
 Pastoral Ballads. I am sure Milton never loved at 
 this rate. I am afraid some of his addresses {ad 
 Leonoram I mean) have rather erred on the farther 
 side ; and that the poet came not much short of a 
 religious indecorum, when he could thus apostrophize 
 a singing-girl : — 
 
 Angelus unicuique suus (sic credite gentes) 
 Obtigit Eethereis ales ab ordinibus. 
 
 Quid mirum, Leonora, tibi si gloria major, 
 Nam tua praesentem vox sonat ipsa Deum 
 
 Aut Deus, aut vacui certe mens tertia coeli 
 Per tua secreto guttura sei'pit agens ;
 
 ,o8 LAST ESSAVS OF ELIA. 
 
 Serpit agens, facilisque docet mortalia corda 
 
 Sensim immortali assuescere posse sono. 
 Quod si cuncta quidem Deus est, per cunctaque 
 
 FUSUS, 
 
 In te una loquitur, C/Etera mutus habet. 
 
 This is loving in a strange fashion ; and it re- 
 quires some candour of construction (besides the 
 slight darkening of a dead language) to cast a veil 
 over the ugly appearance of something very like 
 blasphemy in the last two verses. I think the 
 Lover would have been staggered if he had gone 
 about to express the same thought in English. I 
 am sure Sydney has no flights like this. His ex- 
 travaganzas do not strike at the sky, though he takes 
 leave to adopt the pale Dian into a fellowship with 
 his mortal passions : 
 
 I. 
 With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies 
 How silently ; and with how wan a face 1 
 What ! may it be, that even in heavenly place 
 That busy Archer his sharp arrow tries? 
 Siure, if tnat long-with-love-acquainted eyes 
 Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case ; 
 I read it in thy looks ; thy languisht grace 
 To me, that feel the like, thy state descries. 
 Then, even of fellows-hip, O Moon, tell me, _ 
 Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit? 
 Are beauties there as proud as here they be? 
 Do they above love to be loved, and yet 
 Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess? 
 Do they call virtue tYiex^—ungrate/ulness 1 
 
 The last line of this poem is a little obscured by 
 transposition. He means. Do they call ungrateful- 
 ness there a virtue ? 
 
 II. 
 Come, Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, 
 The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe. 
 The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release. 
 The mdifferent judge between the high and low ;
 
 SOME a&NNETS OF SIR P. SYDNEY. loj 
 
 With shield of proof shield me from out the prease ' 
 Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw ; 
 
 make in me those civil wars to cease : 
 
 1 will good tribute pay if thou do so. 
 
 Take thou of me sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 
 A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
 A rosy garland, and a weary head. 
 And if these things, as being thine by right, 
 Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, 
 Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see. 
 
 The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness 
 Bewray itself in my long-settled eyes, 
 Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise, 
 With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess. 
 Some, that know how my spring I did address. 
 Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies : 
 Others, because the Prince my service tries. 
 Think, that I think state errors to redress ; 
 But harder judges judge, ambition's rage, 
 Scourge of itself, still climbint; slippery place. 
 Holds my young brain captiv'd in golden cage. 
 O fools, or over-wise ! alas, the race 
 Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start, 
 But only Stella's eyes, and Stella's heart. 
 
 Because I oft in dark abstracted guise 
 Seem most alone in greatest company. 
 With dearth of words, or answers quite awry. 
 To them that would make speech of speech arise, 
 They deem, and of their doom the rumour flies. 
 That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie 
 So in my swell ng breast, that only I 
 Fawn on myself, and others do despise ; 
 Yet Pride, I think, doth not my soul possess. 
 Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass ; 
 But one worst {3.v\t— Ambition— \. confess. 
 That makes me oft my best friends overpass. 
 Unseen, unheard — while Thought to highest place 
 Bends all his powers, even unto Stella's giace. 
 
 • Press.
 
 LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 
 
 Having this day, my horse, my hand, my lance, 
 
 Guided so well that I obtainedtthe prize, 1 
 
 Both by the judgment of the English eyes, ! 
 
 And of some sent fram that sweet ettemy, — France i 
 
 Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance ; ! 
 
 Townsfolk my strength ; a daintier judge applies _ | 
 
 His praise to sleight, which from good use doth rise ; 
 
 Some lucky wits impute it but to chance ; \ 
 
 Others, because of both sides I do take 
 
 My blood from them, who did excel in this, '■. 
 
 Think Nature me a man of arms did make. 
 
 How far they shot awry ! the true cause is, 
 
 Stella look'd on, and from her heavenly face 
 
 Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race. j 
 
 lu martial sports I had my cunning tried, 
 
 And yet to break more staves did me address, 
 
 While with the people's shouts (I must confess) 
 
 Youth, luck, and praise, even fiil'd my veins with pride 
 
 When Cupid having me (his slave) descried 
 
 In Mars's livery, prancing m the press, 
 
 "What now, Sir Fool ! " said he ; "I would no less : 
 
 Look here, I say." I look'd, and Stella spied, 
 
 Who hard by made a window send forth light. 
 
 My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes ; 
 
 One hand forgot to rule, th' other to fight ; 
 
 Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries. 
 
 My foe came on, and beat the air for me — 
 
 Till that her blush made me my shame to see. 
 
 No more, my dear, no more these counsels try ; 
 
 give my pa.^sions leave to run their race ; 
 Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace ; 
 Let folk o'ercharged with brain against me cry ; 
 Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye ; 
 Let me no steps, but of lost labour, trace ; 
 
 Let all the earth with scorn recount my case- 
 But do not will me from my love to fly. 
 
 1 do not envy Aristotle's wit. 
 
 Nor do aspire to Cassar's bleeding fame ; 
 
 Nor aught do care, though some above me sit ; 
 
 Nor hope, nor wish, another course to frame,
 
 SOME SONNETS OF SIR P. SYDNEY, iii 
 
 But that which once may win thy cruel heart : 
 Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art. 
 
 Love still a boy, and oft a wanton, is, 
 School'd only by his mother's tender eye ; 
 What wonder, then, if he his lesson miss, 
 When for so soft a rod dear play he try ? 
 And yet my Star, because a sugar'd kiss 
 In sport I suck'd, while she asleep did lie, 
 Doth lour, nay chide, nay threat, for only this. 
 Sweet, it was saucy Love, not humble L 
 But no 'scuse serves ; she makes her wrath appear 
 In Beauty's throne — see now who dares come near 
 Those scarlet judges, threat'nijig bloody pain? 
 O heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face 
 Anger invests with such a lovely grace. 
 That anger's self I needs must kiss again. 
 
 I never drank of Aganippe well, 
 
 Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit, 
 
 And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell ; 
 
 Poor lay-man I, for sacred rights unfit. 
 
 Some do I hear of Poet's fury tell. 
 
 But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it ; 
 
 And this I swear by blackest brook of hell, 
 
 I am no pick-purse of another's wit. 
 
 How falls it then, that with so smooth an ease 
 
 My thoughts I speak, and what I speak doth flow 
 
 In verse, and that my verse best wits doth please? 
 
 Guess me the cause — what is it thus ? — fye, no ! 
 
 Or so ?— much less. How tiien ? sure thus it is. 
 
 My lips are sweet, inspir'd with Stella's kiss. 
 
 X. 
 
 Of all the kings that ever here did reign, 
 Edward, named Fourth, as first in praise I name. 
 Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain — 
 Although less gifts imp feathers oft on Fame. 
 Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame 
 His sire's revenge, join'd with a kingdom's gain ; 
 And, gain'd by Mars could yet mad Mars so tame 
 That Balance weigh'd what Sword did late obtain. 
 Nor that he made the Floure-de-luce so 'fraid, 
 Though strongly hedged, of bloody Lions' paws,
 
 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid. 
 Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause — 
 But only, for this worthy knight durst prove 
 To lose his crown rather than fail his love. 
 
 happy Thames, that didst my Stella bear, 
 
 1 saw thyself, with many a smiling line 
 Upon thy cheerful face, Joy's livery wear, 
 While those fair planets on thy streams did shine 
 The boat for joy could not to dance forbear. 
 While wanton winds, with beauty so divine 
 Ravish'd, stay'd not, till in her golden hair 
 They did themselves (O sweetest prison) twine. 
 And fain those yEol's youth there would their stay 
 Have made ; but, forced by nature still to fly, 
 First did with puffing kiss those locks display. 
 She, so dishevell'd, blush'd ; from window I 
 With sight thereof cried out, O fair disgrace, 
 
 Let Honour's self to thee grant highest place ! 
 
 Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be ; 
 And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet, 
 Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet. 
 More soft than to a chamber melody ; 
 Now blessed You bear onward blessed Me 
 To Her, where 1 my heart safe left shall meet. 
 My Muse and I must you of duty greet 
 With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully. 
 Be you still fair, honour 'd by public heed, 
 By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot ; 
 Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed. 
 And that you know, I envy you no lot 
 Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss. 
 Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss. 
 
 Of the foregoing, the first, the second, and the 
 last sonnet, are my favourites. But the general 
 beauty of them all is, that they are so perfectly 
 characteristical. The spirit of "learning and of 
 , chivalry," — of which union, Spenser has entitled 
 Sydney to have been the "president," — shines 
 through them. I confess I can see nothing of the
 
 SOME SON' NETS OF SIR P. SYDNEY. 113 
 
 "jejune " or "frigid " in them ; much less of the 
 "stiff" and "cumbrous" — which I have some- 
 times heard objected to the Arcadia. The verse 
 runs off swiftly and gallantly. It might have been 
 tuned to the trumpet ; or tempered (as himself ex- 
 presses it) to "trampling horses' feet." They abound 
 in felicitous phrases — 
 
 O heav'niy Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face— 
 
 Zih Sonnet. 
 
 Sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 
 
 A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
 A rosy garland, and a weary head. 
 
 2!td Sonnet. 
 
 That sweet enemy, — France — 
 
 $ih Sonnet. 
 
 But they are not rich in words only, in vague 
 and unlocalized feelings — the failing too much of 
 some poetry of the present day — they are full, 
 material, and circumstantiated. Time and place 
 appropriates every one of them. It is not a fever 
 of passion wasting itself upon a thin diet of dainty 
 words, but a transcendent passion pervading and 
 illuminating action, pursuits, studies, feats of arms, 
 the opinions of contemporaries, and his judgment 
 of them. An historical thread runs through them, 
 which almost affixes a date to them ; marks the 
 when and where they were written. 
 
 I have dwelt the longer upon what I conceive 
 the merit of these poems, because I have been hurt 
 by the wantonness (I wish I could treat it by a 
 gentler name) with which W. H. takes every occa- 
 sion of insulting the memory of Sir Philip Sydney. 
 But the decisions of the Author of Table Talk, &c. 
 (most profound and subtle where they are, as for 
 the most part, just) are more safely to be relied 
 upon, on subjects and authors he has a partiality 
 
 II. I
 
 ti4 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 for, than on such as he has conceived an accidental 
 prejudice against. Milton wrote sonnets, and was 
 a king-hater -, and it was congenial perhaps to sacri- 
 fice a courtier to a patriot. But I was unwilling to 
 lose 2. fine idea from my mind. The noble images, 
 passions, sentiments, and poetical delicacies of cha- 
 racter, scattered all over the Arcadia (spite of some 
 stiffness and encumberment), justify to me the 
 character which his contemporaries have left us of 
 the writer. I cannot think with the Critic, that 
 Sir Philip Sydney was that opprobn'oits thing v^'\iid\ 
 a foolish nobleman in his insolent hostility chose to 
 term him. I call to mind the epitaph made on him, 
 to guide me to juster thoughts of him ; and I repose 
 upon the beautiful lines m the " Friend's Passion 
 for his Astrophel," printed with the Elegies of 
 Spenser and others : 
 
 You knew — who knew not Astrophel ? 
 
 (I'hat I should live to say I knew, 
 
 And have not in possession still !) — 
 
 Things known permit me to renew — 
 Of him you know his merit such, 
 I cannot say — j-ou hear — too much. 
 
 Within these woods of Arcady 
 
 He chief delight and pleasure took ; 
 
 And on the mountain Partheny, 
 
 Upon the crystaJ liquid brook, 
 The Muses met him every day, 
 That taught him sing, to write, and say. 
 
 When he descended down the mount, 
 His personage seemed most divine : 
 A thousand graces one might count 
 Upon his lovely cheerful eyne. 
 
 To hear him speak, and sweetly smile, 
 
 You were in Paradise the while. 
 
 A sweet attractive kind of grace ; 
 A full assurance gi'nen by looks ; 
 Continual comfort in a face, 
 The lineaments of Gospel books —
 
 SOME SONNETS OF SIR P. SYDNEY. 115 
 
 I trow that count'nance cannot lye, 
 Whose thoughts are legible in the eye. 
 
 Above all others this is he, 
 Which erst approved in his song. 
 That love and honour might agree, 
 And that pure love will do no wrong. 
 
 Sweet saints, it is no sin or blame 
 
 To love a man of virtuous name. 
 
 Did never love so sweetly breathe 
 
 In any mortal breast before ; 
 
 Did never Muse inspire beneath 
 
 A Poet's brain with finer store ! 
 
 He wrote of Love with high conceit. 
 And Beauty rear'd above her height. 
 
 Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief 
 running into rage) in the Poem, — the last in the 
 collection accompanying the above, — which from 
 internal testimony I believe to be Lord Brooke's — 
 beginning with "Silence augmenteth grief," and 
 then seriously ask himself, whether the subject of 
 such absorbing and confounding regrets could have 
 been that thing which Lord Oxford termed him.
 
 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS 
 AGO. 
 
 Ian STUART once told us, that he did 
 not remember that he ever deliberately 
 walked into the Exhibition at Somerset 
 House in his life. He might occasion- 
 ally have escorted a party of ladies across the way 
 that were going in, but he never went in of his 
 own head. Yet the office of the Morning Post 
 newspaper stood then just where it does now — we 
 are carrying you back, Reader, some thirty years 
 or more — with its gilt-globe-topt front facing that 
 emporium of our artists' grand Annual Exposure. 
 We sometimes wish that we had observed the same 
 abstinence with Daniel. 
 
 A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared to 
 us one of the finest-tempered of Editors. Perry, ot 
 the Morning Chronicle, was equally pleasant, with 
 a dash, no slight one either, of the courtier. S. was 
 frank, plain, and English all over. We have 
 worked for both these gentlemen. 
 
 It is soothing to contemplate the head of the 
 Ganges ; to trace the first little bubblings of a 
 mighty river. 
 
 With holy reverence to approach the rocks, 
 Whence glide the streams renowned in ancient song.
 
 NEWSPAPERS. 117 
 
 Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian Pilgiim's 
 exploratory ramblings after the cradle of the infant 
 Nilus,we\vell rememberonone fine summer holyday 
 (a " whole day's leave " we called it at Christ's hos- 
 pital) sallying forth at rise of sun, not very well 
 provisioned either for such an undertaking, to trace 
 the current of the New River— Middletonian stream! 
 — to its scaturient source, as we had read, in meadows 
 by fair Amwell. Gallantly did we commence our 
 solitary quest — for it was essential to the dignity of 
 a Discovery, that no eye of schoolboy, save our 
 own, should beam on the detection. By flowery 
 spots, and verdant lanes skirting Hornsey, Hope 
 trained us on in many a baffling turn ; endless, 
 hopeless meanders, as it seemed ; or as if the 
 jealous waters had dodged us, reluctant to have the 
 humble spot of their nativity revealed ; till spent, 
 and nigh famished, before set of the same sun, we 
 sate down somewhere by Bowes Farm near Totten- 
 ham, with a tithe of our proposed labours only yet 
 accomplished ; sorely convinced in spirit, that that 
 Brucian enterprise was as yet too arduous for our 
 young shoulders. 
 
 Not more refreshing to the thirsty curiosity of 
 the traveller is the tracing of some mighty waters 
 up to their shallow fontlet, than it is to a pleased 
 and candid reader to go back to the inexperienced 
 essays, the first callow flights in authorship, of some 
 established name in literature ; from the Gnat which 
 preluded to the ^neid, to the Duck which Samuel 
 Johnson trod on. 
 
 In those days, every Morning Paper, as an es- 
 sential retainer to its establishment, kept an author, 
 who was bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty 
 paragraphs. Sixpence a joke — and it was thougK* 
 pretty high too— was Dan Stuart's settled remune-
 
 ii8 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 ration in these cases. The chat of the day — scan- 
 dal, but, above all, dirss — furnished the material. 
 The length of no paragraph was to exceed seven 
 lines. Shorter they might be, but they must be 
 poignant. 
 
 A fashion of flesh, or rather pink-co\o\xxtA. hose 
 for the ladies, "luckily coming up at the juncture 
 when we were on our probation for the place of 
 Chief Jester to S.'s Paper, established our reputa- 
 tion in that line. We were pronounced a "capital 
 hand." O the conceits which we varied upon red 
 in all its prismatic differences ! from the trite and 
 obvious flower of Cytherea, to the flaming costume 
 of the lady that has her sitting upon *' many waters. " 
 Then there was the collateral topic of ankles. 
 What an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like 
 ourself, of touching that nice brink, and yet never 
 tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approximating 
 something " not quite proper ;" while, like a skil- 
 ful posture-master,balancing betwixt decorums and 
 their opposites, he keeps the line, from which a 
 hair's-breadth deviation is destruction ; hovering in 
 the confines of light and darkness, or where "both 
 seem either ;" ahazy uncertain delicacy ; Autolycus- 
 like in the Play, still putting off his expectant 
 auditory with "'Whoop,' do me no harm, good 
 man !" But above all, that conceit arrided us most 
 at that time, and still tickles our midriff to remem- 
 ber, where, allusively to the flight of Astrsea — 
 ultima Ccclcstdm terras rdiquit — we pronounced — 
 in reference to the stockings still— that MoDESTV, 
 
 TAKING HER FINAL LEAVE OF MORTALS, HER 
 
 LAST Blush was visible in her ascent to the 
 Heavens by the tract of the glowing in- 
 step. This might be called the crowning conceit : 
 and was esteemed tolerable writing in those days.
 
 NEWSPAPERS. iig 
 
 But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, 
 passes away ; as did the transient mode which had 
 so favoured us. The ankles of our fair friends in a 
 few weeks began to reassume their whiteness, and 
 left us scarce a leg to stand upon. Other female 
 whims followed, but none, methought, so pregnant, 
 so invitatory of shrewd conceits, and more than 
 single meanings. 
 
 Somebody has said, that to swallow six cross- 
 buns daily consecutively for a fortnight, would sur- 
 feit the stoutest digestion. But to have to furnish 
 as many jokes daily, and that not for a fortnight, 
 but for a long twelvemonth, as we were constrained 
 to do, was a little harder exaction. " Man goeth 
 forth to his work until the evening" — from a reason- 
 able hour in the morning, we presume it was meant. 
 Now, as our main occupation took us up from eight 
 till five every day in the City ; and as our evening 
 hours, at that time of life, had generally to do with 
 anything rather than business, it follows, that the 
 only time we could spare for this manufactory of 
 jokes — our supplementary livelihood, that supplied 
 us in every want beyond mere bread and cheese — 
 was exactly that part of the day which (as we have 
 heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly denominated 
 No Man's Time ; that is, no time in which a man 
 ought to be up, and awake, in. To speak more 
 plainly, it is that time of an hour, or an hour and a 
 half's duration, in which a man, whose occasions 
 call him up so preposterously, has to wait for his 
 breakfast. 
 
 O those head-aches at dawn of day, when at five, 
 or half-past five in summer, and not much later in 
 the dark seasons, we were compelled to rise, having 
 been perhaps not above four hours in bed — (for we 
 were no go-to-beds with the lamb, though we an-
 
 I20 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 ticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising — we like a 
 parting cup at midnight, as all young men did be- 
 fore these effeminate times, and to have our friends 
 about us— we were not constellated under Aquarius 
 that watery sign, and therefore incapable of Bac- 
 chus, cold, washy, bloodless — we were none of your 
 Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken our degrees 
 at Mount Ague — we were right toping Capulets, 
 jolly companions, we and they) — but to have to get 
 up, as we said before, curtailed of half our fair 
 sleep, fasting, with only a dim vista of refreshing 
 bohea in the distance — to be necessitated to rouse 
 ourselves at the detestable rap of an old hag of a 
 domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical pleasure 
 in her announcement, that it was " time to rise ;" 
 and whose chappy knuckles we have often yearned 
 to amputate, and string them up at our chamber 
 door, to be a terror to all such unseasonable rest- 
 breakers in future 
 
 " Facil " and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the 
 "descending" of the over-night, balmy the first 
 sinking of the heavy head upon the pillow ; but to 
 get up, as he goes on to say, 
 
 — revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras — 
 
 and to get up, moreover, to make jokes with malice 
 prepended — there was the "labour," there the 
 "work." 
 
 No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery 
 like to that, our slavery. No fractious operants 
 ever turned out for half the tyranny which this ne- 
 cessity exercised upon us. Half a dozen jests in a 
 day, (bating Sundays too,) why, it seems nothing ! 
 We make twice the number every day in our lives 
 as a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical ex- 
 emptions. But then they come into our head. But
 
 NEWSPAPERS. 121 
 
 when the head has to go out to them — when the 
 mountain must go to Mahomet — 
 
 Reader, try it for once, only for a short twelve- 
 month. 
 
 It was not eveiy week that a fashion of pink 
 stockings came up ; but mostly, instead of it, some 
 rugged untractable subject ; some topic impossible 
 to be contorted into the risible ; some feature, upon 
 which no smile could play ; some flint, from which 
 no process of ingenuity could procure a scintillation. 
 There they lay ; there your appointed tale of brick- 
 making was set before you, which you must finish, 
 with or without straw, as it happened. The craving 
 Dragon — the Public — like him in Bel's Temple — 
 must be fed, it expected its daily rations ; and 
 Daniel, and ourselves, to do us justice, did the best 
 we could on this side bursting him. 
 
 While we were wringing out coy sprightliness 
 for the Post, and writhing under the toil of what is 
 called "easy writing," Bob Allen, our quondam 
 schoolfellow, was tapping his impracticable brains 
 in a like service for the Oracle. Not that Robert 
 troubled himself much about wit. If his paragraphs 
 had a sprightly air about them, it was sufiicient. 
 He carried this nonchalance so far at last, that a 
 matter of intelligence, and that no very important 
 one, was not seldom palmed upon his employers 
 for a good jest ; for example sake — "Walking yes- 
 terday morning casually down Snow Hill, zvko should 
 7ve meet but Air. Deputy Humphreys I we rejoice to 
 add, that the worthy Deputy appeared to enjoy a 
 good state of health. We do not remember ever to 
 have seen him look better." This gentleman so sur- 
 prisingly met upon Snow Hill, from some peculi- 
 arities in gait or gesture, was a constant butt for 
 mirth to the small paragraph-mongers of the day ;
 
 122 LAS 7- ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 and our friend thought that he might have his fling 
 at him with the rest. We met A. in Holborn 
 shortly after this extraordinary rencounter, which lie 
 told with tears of satisfaction in his eyes, and 
 chuckling at the anticipated effects of its announce- 
 ment next day in the paper. 
 
 We did not quite comprehend where the wit of 
 it lay at the time ; nor was it easy to be detected, 
 when the thing came out advantaged by type and 
 letterpress. He had better have met anything that 
 morning than a Common Council Man. His ser- 
 vices were shortly after dispensed with, on the plea 
 that his paragraphs of late had been deficient in 
 point. The one in question, it must be owned, 
 had an air, in the opening especially, proper to 
 awaken curiosity ; and the sentiment, or moral, 
 wears the aspect of humanity and good neighbourly 
 feeling. But somehow the conclusion was not 
 judged altogether to answer to the magnificent 
 promise of the premises. We traced our friend's 
 pen afterwards in the Ti-ue Briton, the Star, the 
 Traveller, — from all which he was successively dis- 
 missed, the Proprietors having " no further occa- 
 sion for his services. " Nothing was easier than to 
 detect him. When wit failed, or topics ran low, 
 there constantly appeared the following — "// is 
 not generally known that the three Blue Balls at the 
 Pawnbrokers'' shops are the ancient arms of Lom- 
 bardy. The Lombards were the first money-brokers 
 in Europe!''' Bob has done more to set the public 
 right on this important point of blazonry, than the 
 whole College of Heralds. 
 
 The appointment of a regular wit has long ceased 
 to be a part of the economy of a Morning Paper. 
 Editors find their own jokes, or do as well without 
 them. Parson Este, and Topham, brought up the
 
 NEWSPAPERS. 123 
 
 set custom of "witty paragraphs" first in the 
 IVorld. Boadai was a reigning paragraphist in his 
 day, and succeeded poor Allen in the Oracle. But, 
 as we said, the fashion of jokes passes away ; and 
 it would be difficult to discover in the biographer 
 of Mrs. Siddons, any traces of that vivacity and 
 fancy which charmed the whole town at the com- 
 mencement of the present century. Even the pre- 
 lusive delicacies of the present writer — the curt 
 " Astrsean allusion " — would be thought pedantic 
 and out of date, in these days. 
 
 From the office of the Moiiiing Post (for we may 
 as well exhaust our Newspaper Reminiscences at 
 once) by change of property in the paper, we were 
 transferred, mortifying exchange ! to the office of 
 the Albion Newspaper, late Rackstrow's Museum, 
 in Fleet Street. What a transition — from a hand- 
 some afiartment, from rosewood desks and silver 
 inkstands, to an office— no office, but a den rather, 
 but just redeemed from the occupation of dead mon- 
 sters, of which it seemed redolent — from the centre 
 of loyally and fashion, to a focus of vulgarity and 
 sedition ! Here in murky closet, inadequate from 
 its square contents to the receipt of the two bodies 
 of Editor and humble paragraph-maker, together 
 at one time, sat in the discharge of his new editorial 
 functions (the ' ' Bigod " of Elia) the redoubted John 
 Fenwick. 
 
 F. , without a guinea in his pocket, and having 
 left not many in the pockets of his friends whom 
 he might command, had purchased (on tick, doubt- 
 less) the whole and sole Editorship, Proprietor- 
 ship, with all the rights and titles (such as they 
 were worth) of the Albion from one Lovell ; of 
 whom we know nothing, save that he had stood 
 to. the pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales.
 
 124 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 With this hopeless concern — for it had been sink- 
 ing ever since its commencement, and could now 
 reckon upon not more than a hundred subscribers 
 — F. resolutely determined upon pulling down the 
 Government in the first instance, and making both 
 our fortunes by way of corollary. For seven weeks 
 and more did this infatuated democrat go about 
 borrowing seven-shilling pieces, and lesser coin, to 
 meet the daily demands of the Stamp Office, which 
 allowed no credit to publications of that side in 
 politics. An outcast from politer bread, we at- 
 tached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of 
 our friend. Our occupation now was to write 
 treason. 
 
 Recollections of feelings — which were all that 
 now remained from our first boyish heats kindled 
 by the French Revolution, when, if we were mis- 
 led, we erred in the company of some who are 
 accounted very good men now — rather than any 
 tendency at this time to Republican doctrines — 
 assisted us in assuming a style of writing, while 
 the paper lasted, consonant in no veiy undertone 
 to the right earnest fanaticism of F. Our cue 
 was now to insinuate, rather than recommend, 
 possible abdications. Blocks, axes, Whitehall tri- 
 bunals, were covered with flowers of so cunning a 
 periphrasis — as Mr. Bayes says, never naming the 
 thing directly — that the keen eye of an Attorney- 
 General w-as insufficient to detect the lurking snake 
 among them. There were times, indeed, when 
 we sighed for our more gentleman-like occupation 
 under Stuart. But with change of masters it is 
 ever change of service. Already one paragraph, 
 and another, as we learned afterwards from a gen- 
 tleman at the Treasury, had begun to be marked 
 at that office, with a view of its being submitted at
 
 NEIVSPAPEHS. 125 
 
 least to the attention of the proper Law Officers — 
 when an unlucky, or rather lucky epigram from our 
 
 pen, aimed at Sir J s M h, who was on the 
 
 eve of departing for India to reap the fruits of his 
 apostacy, as F. pronounced it, (it is hardly worth 
 particularizing,) happening to offend the nice sense 
 of Lord (or, as he then delighted to be called Citi- 
 zen) Stanhope, deprived F. at once of the last 
 hopes of a guinea from the last patron that had 
 stuck by us ; and breaking up our establishment, 
 left us to the safe, but somewhat mortifying, neglect 
 of the Crown Lawyers. It was about this time, or 
 a little earlier, that Dan Stuart made that curious 
 confession to us, that he had " never deliberately 
 walked into an Exhibition at Somerset House in 
 his life."
 
 BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE 
 
 FACULTY IN THE PRODUCTIONS 
 
 OF MODERN ART. 
 
 OGARTH excepted, can we produce 
 any one painter within the last fifty 
 years, or since the humour of exhibiting 
 began, that has treated a story imagina- 
 tively 'i By this we mean, upon whom his sub- 
 ject has so acted, that it has seemed to direct him 
 — not to be arranged by him? Any upon whom 
 its leading or collateral points have impressed 
 themselves so tyrannically; that he dared not treat 
 it otherwise, lest he should falsify a revelation? 
 Any that has imparted to his compositions, not 
 merely so much truth as is enough to convey a 
 story with clearness, but that individualizing pro- 
 perty, which should keep the subject so treated 
 distinct in feature from every other subject, how- 
 ever similar, and to common apprehensions almost 
 identical ; so that we might say, this and this part 
 could have found an appropriate place in no other 
 picture in the world but this? Is there anything in 
 modern art — we will not demand that it should be 
 equal — but in any way analogous to what Titian 
 has effected, in that wonderful bringing together
 
 THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY. 127 
 
 of two times in the "Ariadne," in the National 
 Gallery ? Precipitous, with his reeling satyr rout 
 about him, re-peopling and re-illuming suddenly 
 the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond 
 the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings 
 himself at the Cretan. This is the time present. 
 With this telling of the story, an artist, and no 
 ordinary one, might remain richly proud. Guido, 
 in his harmonious version of it, saw no farther. 
 But from the depths of the imaginative spirit Titian 
 has recalled past time, and laid it contributory 
 with the present to one simultaneous effect. With 
 the desert all ringing with the mad cymbals of his 
 followers, made lucid with the presence and new 
 offers of a god, — as if unconscious of Bacchus, or 
 but idly casting her eyes as upon some unconcern - 
 ing pageant — her soul undistracted from Theseus 
 — Ariadne is still pacing the solitary shore in as 
 much heart-silence, and in almost the same local 
 solitude, with which she awoke at day-break to 
 catch the forlorn last glances of the sail that bore 
 away the Athenian. 
 
 Here are two points miraculously co-uniting ; 
 fierce society, with the feeling of solitude still ab- 
 solute ; noonday revelations, with the accidents of 
 the dull grey dawn unquenched and lingering; 
 the present Bacchus, with the past Ariadne : two 
 stories, with double Time ; separate, and harmo- 
 nizing. Had the artist made the woman one shade 
 less indifferent to the God ; still more, had she ex- 
 pressed a rapture at his advent, where would have 
 been the story of the mighty desolation of the 
 heart previous ? merged in the insipid accident of 
 a flattering offer met with a welcome acceptance. 
 The broken heart for Theseus was not likely to be 
 pieced up by a God.
 
 128 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 We have before us a fine rough print, from a 
 picture by Raphael in the Vatican. It is the Pre- 
 sentation of the new-born Eve to Adam by the 
 Almighty. A fairer mother of mankind we might 
 imagine, and a goodlier sire perhaps of men since 
 born. But these are matters subordinate to the 
 conception of the sittcatioii, displayed in this ex- 
 traordinary production. A tolerable modern artist 
 would have been satisfied with tempering certain 
 raptures of connubial anticipation, with a suitable 
 acknowledgment to the Giver of the blessing, in 
 the countenance of the first bridegroom : something 
 like the divided attention of the child (Adam was 
 here a child-man) between the given toy, and the 
 mother who had just blest it with the bauble. This 
 is the obvious, the first-sight view, the superficial. 
 An artist of a higher grade, considering the awful 
 presence they were in, would have taken care to 
 subtract something from the expression of the more 
 human passion, and to heighten the more spiritual 
 one. This would be as much as an exhibition- 
 goer, from the opening of Somerset House to last 
 year's show, has been encouraged to look for. It 
 is obvious to hint at a lower expression yet, in a 
 picture that, for respects of drawing and colouring, 
 might be deemed not wholly inadmissible within 
 these art-fostering walls, in which the raptures 
 should be as ninety-nine, the gratitude as one, or 
 perhaps zero ! By neither the one passion nor the 
 other has Raphael expounded the situation of Adam. 
 Singly upon his brow sits the absorbing sense of 
 wonder at the created miracle. The moment is 
 seized by the intuitive artist, perhaps not self- 
 conscious of his art, in which neither of the con- 
 flicting emotions — a moment how abstracted ! — 
 have had time to spring up, or to battle for inde-
 
 THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY. 139 
 
 corous mastery. — We have seen a landscape of a 
 justly-admired neoteric, in which he aimed at de- 
 lineating a fiction, one of the most severely beau- 
 tiful in antiquity — the gardens of the Hesperides. 
 
 To do Mr. justice, he had painted a laudable 
 
 orchard, with fitting seclusion, and a veritable 
 dragon (of which a Polypheme, by Poussin, is 
 somehow a fac-simile for the situation), looking 
 over into the world shut out backwards, so that 
 none but a "still-climbing Hercules" could hope 
 to catch a peep at the admired Ternary of Recluses. 
 No conventual porter could keep his keys better 
 than this custos with the "lidless eyes." He not 
 only sees that none do intrude into that privacy, 
 but, as clear as daylight, that none but Hercules 
 aut Diabolus by any manner of means cati. So far 
 all is well. We have absolute solitude here or no- 
 where. Ab extra, the damsels are snug enough. 
 But here the artist's courage seems to have failed 
 him. He began to pity his pretty charge, and, to 
 comfort the irksomeness, has peopled their solitude 
 with a bevy of fair attendants, maids of honour, or 
 ladies of the bed-chamber, according to the ap- 
 proved etiquette at a court of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury ; giving to the whole scene the air of a fete- 
 champetre, if we will but excuse the absence of the 
 gentlemen. This is well, and Watteauish. But 
 what is become of the solitary mystery — the 
 
 Daughters three. 
 That sing around the golden tree ? 
 
 This is not the way in which Poussin would have 
 treated this subject. 
 
 The paintings, or rather the stupendous archi- 
 tectural designs, of a modem artist, have been 
 urged as objections to the theory of our motto. 
 
 II. K
 
 I30 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 They are of a character, we confess, to stagger it. 
 His towered structures are of the highest order of 
 the material subhine. Whether they were dreams, 
 or transcripts of some elder workmanship — Assyrian 
 ruins old — restored by this mighty artist, they satisfy 
 our most stretched and craving conceptions of the 
 glories of the antique world. It is a pity that they 
 were ever peopled. On that side, the imagination 
 of the artist halts, and appears defective. Let us 
 examine the point of the story in the " Belshazzar's 
 Feast." We will introduce it by an apposite anec- 
 dote. 
 
 The court historians of the day record, that at the 
 first dinner given by the late King (then Prince 
 Regent) at the Pavilion, the following characteristic 
 frolic was played off. The guests were select and 
 admiring ; the banquet profuse and admirable ; the 
 lights lustrous and oriental ; the eye was perfectly 
 dazzled with the display of plate, among which the 
 great gold salt-cellar, brought from the regalia in 
 the Tower for this especial purpose, itself a tower ! 
 stood conspicuous for its magnitude. And now the 
 Rev. * * *^ the then admired court Chaplain, 
 was proceeding with the grace, when, at a signal 
 given, the lights were suddenly overcast, and a 
 huge transparency was discovered, in which glit- 
 tered in gold letters — 
 
 "Brighton — Earthquake — Swallow-up- 
 Alive ! " 
 
 Imagine the confusion of the guests ; the Georges 
 and garters, jewels, bracelets, moulted upon the 
 occasion ! The fans dropped, and picked up the 
 next morning by the sly court -pages ! Mrs. Fitz- 
 what's-her-name fainting, and the Countess of * * * 
 holding the smelling-bottle, till the good-humoured
 
 THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY. 131 
 
 Prince caused harmony to be restored, by calling in 
 fresh candles, and declaring that the whole was 
 nothing but a pantomime hoax, got up by the in- 
 genious Mr. Farley, of Covent Garden, from hints 
 which his Royal Highness himself had furnished! 
 Then imagine the infinite applause that followed, 
 the mutual rallyings, the declarations that "they 
 were not much frightened," of the assembled 
 galaxy. 
 
 The point of time in the picture exactly answers 
 to the appearance of the transparency in the anec- 
 dote. The huddle, the flutter, the bustle, the es- 
 cape, the alarm, and the mock alarm ; the pretti- 
 nesses heightened by consternation ; the courtier's 
 fear which was flatteiy ; and the lady's which was 
 affectation ; all that we may conceive to have taken 
 place in a mob of Brighton courtiers, sympathizing 
 with the well-acted surprise of their sovereign ; all 
 this, and no more, is exhibited by the well-dressed 
 lords and ladies in the Hall of Belus. Just this sort 
 of consternation we have seen among a flock of 
 disquieted wild geese at the report only of a gun 
 having gone off! 
 
 But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal anxiety 
 for the preservation of their persons — such as we 
 have witnessed at a theatre, when a slight alarm of 
 fire has been given — an adequate exponent of a 
 supernatural terror ? the way in which the finger of 
 God, writing judgments, would have been met by 
 the withered conscience ? There is a human fear, 
 and a divine fear. The one is disturbed, restless, 
 and bent upon escape ; the other is bov/ed down, 
 effortless, passive. When the spirit appeared before 
 Eliphaz in the visions of the night, and the hair of 
 his flesh stood up, was it in the thoughts of the 
 Temanite to ring the bell of his chamber, or to
 
 132 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 call up the servants ? But let us see in the text 
 what there is to justify all this huddle of vulgar 
 consternation. 
 
 From the words of Daniel it appears that Bel- 
 ciiazzar had made a great feast to a thousand of his 
 lords, and drank wine before the thousand. The 
 golden and silvervessels are gorgeously enumerated, 
 with the princes, the king's concubines, and his 
 wives. Then follows — 
 
 " In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's 
 hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon 
 the plaster of the wall of the king's palace ; and the 
 king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the 
 king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts 
 troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were 
 loosened, and his knees smote one against an- 
 other. " 
 
 This is the plain text. By no hint can it be 
 otherwise inferred, but that the appearance was 
 solely confined to the fancy of Belshazzar, that his 
 single brain was troubled. Not a word is spoken 
 of its being seen by any else there present, not even 
 by the queen herself, who merely undertakes for 
 the interpretation of the phenomenon, as related to 
 her, doubtless, by her husband. The lords are 
 simply said to be astonished ; i.e. at the trouble 
 and the change of countenance in their sovereign. 
 Even the prophet does not appear to have seen the 
 scroll, which the king saw. He recalls it only, as 
 Joseph did the Dream to the King of Egypt. 
 ' ' Then was the part of the hand sent from him 
 [the Lord], and this writing was written." He 
 speaks of the phantasm as past. 
 
 Then what becomes of this needless multiplica- 
 tion of the miracle ? this message to a royal con- 
 science, singly expressed — for it was said, "Thy
 
 THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY. 133 
 
 kingdom is divided," — simultaneously impressed 
 upon the fancies of a thousand courtiers, who 
 were implied in it neither directly nor grammati- 
 cally? 
 
 But, admitting the artist's own version of the 
 story, and that the sight was seen also by the thou- 
 sand courtiers — let it have been visible to all 
 Babylon — as the knees of Belshazzar were shaken, 
 and his countenance troubled, even so would the 
 knees of every man in Babylon, and their counte- 
 nances, as ofan individual man, have been troubled ; 
 bowed, bent down, so would they have remained, 
 stupor-fixed, with no thought of struggling with 
 that inevitable judgment. 
 
 Not all that is optically possible to be seen, is to 
 be shown in every picture. The eye delightedly 
 dwells upon the brilliant individualities in a "Mar- 
 riage at Cana," by Veronese, or Titian, to the very 
 texture and colour of the wedding garments, the 
 ring glittering upon the bride's finger, the metal 
 and fashion of the wine-pots ; for at such seasons 
 there is leisure and luxury to be curious. But in a 
 "day of judgment, " or in a " day of lesser horrors, 
 yet divine," as at the impious feast of Belshazzar, 
 the eye should see, as the actual eye of an agent or 
 patient in ihe immediate scene would see, only in 
 masses and indlstinction. Not only the female 
 attire and jewellery exposed to the critical eye of 
 the fashion, as minutely as the dresses in a Lady's 
 Magazine, in the criticized picture — but perhaps 
 the curiosities of anatomical science, and studied 
 diversities of posture, in the falling angels and 
 sinners of Michael Angelo, — have no business in 
 their great subjects. There was no leisure for 
 them. 
 
 By a wise falsification, the great masters of
 
 134 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 painting got at their true conclusions; by not 
 showing the actual appearances, that is, all that 
 was to be seen at any given moment by an indif- 
 ferent eye, but only what the eye might be supposed 
 to see in the doing or suffering of some portentous 
 action. Suppose the moment of the swallowing up 
 of Pompeii. There they were to be seen — houses, 
 columns, architectural proportions, differences of 
 public and private buildings, men and women at 
 their standing occupations, the diversified thousand 
 postures, attitudes, dresses, in some confusion truly, 
 but physically they were visible. But what eye saw 
 them at that eclipsing moment, which reduces con- 
 fusion to a kind of unity, and when the senses are 
 upturned from their proprieties, when sight and 
 hearing are a feeling only ? A thousand years have 
 passed, and we are at leisure to contemplate the 
 M'eaver fixed standing at his shuttle, the baker at 
 his oven, and to turn over with antiquarian coolness 
 the pots and pans of Pompeii. 
 
 " Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, 
 Moon, in the valley of Ajalon." Who, in reading 
 this magnificent Hebraism, in his conception, sees 
 aught but the heroic son of Nun, with the out- 
 stretched arm, and the greater and lesser light ob- 
 sequious ? Doubtless there were to be seen hill and 
 dale, and chariots and horsemen, on open plain, or 
 winding by secret defiles, and all the circumstances 
 and stratagems of war. But whose eyes would have 
 been conscious of this array at the interposition of 
 the synchronic miracle ? Yet in the picture of this 
 subject by the artist of the " Belshazzar's Feast" — 
 no ignoble work, either — the marshalling and land- 
 scape of the war is everything, the miracle sinks 
 into an anecdote of the day ; and the eye may ' ' dart 
 through rank and file traverse" for some minutes,
 
 THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY. ns 
 
 before it shall discover, among his armed followers, 
 7vhich is Joshua I Not modern art alone, but an- 
 cient, where only it is to be found if anywhere, can 
 be detected erring, from defect of this imaginative 
 faculty. The world has nothing to show of the 
 preternatural in painting, transcending the figure 
 of Lazarus bursting his grave-clothes, in the great 
 picture at Angerstein's. It seems a thing between 
 two beings. A ghastly horror at itself struggles 
 with newly-apprehending gratitude at second life 
 bestowed. It cannot forget that it was a ghost. It 
 has hardly felt that it is a body. It has to tell of 
 the world of spirits. — Was it from a feeling, that 
 the crowd of half-impassioned by-standers, and the 
 still more irrelevant hei'd of passers-by at a distance, 
 who have not heard, or but faintly have been told 
 of the passing miracle, admirable as they are in 
 design and hue — for it is a glorified work— do not 
 respond adequately to the action— that the single 
 figure of the Lazarus has been attributed to Michael 
 Angelo, and the mighty Sebastian unfairly robbed 
 of the fame of the greater half of the interest ? Now 
 that there were not indifferent passers-by within 
 actual scope of the eyes of those present at the 
 miracle, to whom the sound of it had but faintly, 
 or not at all, reached, it would be hardihood to 
 deny ; but would they see them? or can the mind 
 in the conception of it admit of such unconceming 
 objects; can it think of them at all? or M'hat as- 
 sociating league to the imagination can there be 
 between the seers and the seers not, of a presential 
 miracle ? 
 
 Were an artist to paint upon demand a picture of 
 a Dryad, we will ask whether, in the present low 
 state of expectation, the patron would not, or ought 
 not be fully satisfied with a beautiful naked figure
 
 136 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 recumbent under wide-stretched oaks? Dis-seat 
 those woods, and place the same figure among 
 fountains, and falls of pellucid water, and you have 
 a — Naiad ! Not so in a rough print we have seen 
 after Julio Romano, we think— for it is long since 
 — there, by no process, with mere change of scene, 
 could the figure have reciprocated characters. Long, 
 grotesque, fantastic, yet with a grace of her own, 
 beautiful in convolution and distortion, linked to 
 her connatural tree, co-twisting with its limbs her 
 own, till both seemed either — these, animated 
 branches ; those, disanimated members — yet the 
 animal and vegetable lives sufficiently kept distinct 
 — his Dryad lay — an approximation of two natures, 
 which to conceive, it must be seen ; analogous to, 
 not the same with, the delicacies of Ovidian trans- 
 formations. 
 
 To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial com- 
 prehension, the most barren, the Great Masters 
 gave loftiness and fruitfulness. The large eye of 
 genius saw in the meanness of present objects their 
 capabilities of treatment from their relations to 
 some grand Past or Future. How has Raphael — 
 we must still linger about the Vatican— treated the 
 humble craft of the ship-builder, in his " Building 
 of the Ark?" It is in that scriptural series, to 
 which we have referred, and which, judging from 
 some fine rough old graphic sketches of them which 
 v/e possess, seem to be of a higher and more poetic 
 grade than even the Cartoons. The dim of sight are 
 the timid and the shrinking. There is a cowardice 
 in modern art. As the Frenchman, of whom Cole- 
 ridge's friend made the prophetic guess at Rome, 
 from the beard and horns of the Moses of Michael 
 Angelo collected no inferences beyond that of a 
 He Goat and a Cornuto; so from this subject, of
 
 THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY 137 
 
 mere mechanic promise, it would instinctively turn 
 away, as from one incapable of investiture with any 
 grandeur. The dock-yards at Woolwich would 
 object derogatory associations. The depot at 
 Chatham would be the mote and the beam in its in- 
 tellectual eye. But not to the nautical preparations 
 in the ship-yards of Civita Vecchia did Raphael 
 look for instructions, when he imagined the building 
 of the Vessel that was to be conservatory of the 
 wrecks of the species of drowned mankind. In the 
 intensity of the action he keeps ever out of sight 
 the meanness of the operation. Therj is the 
 Patriarch, in calm forethought, and with holy pre- 
 science, giving directions. And there are his agents 
 — the solitary but sufficient Three — hewing, sawing, 
 every one with the might and earnestness of a Demi- 
 urgus ; under some instinctive rather than technical 
 guidance ! giant-muscled ; every one a Hercules ; 
 or liker to those Vulcanian Three, that in sounding 
 caverns under Mongibello wrought in fire — Brontes, 
 and black Steropes, and Pyracmon. So work the 
 workmen that should repair a world ! 
 
 Artists again err in the confounding of /o^/?l- with 
 pictorial subjects. In the latter, the exterior acci- 
 dents are nearly everything, the unseen qualities as 
 nothing. Othello's colour— the infirmities and 
 corpulence of a Sir John Falstaff — do they haunt 
 us perpetually in the reading? or are they ob- 
 truded upon our conceptions one time for ninety- 
 nine that we are lost in admiration at the respective 
 moral or intellectual attributes of the character? 
 But in a picture Othello is always a Blackamoor ; 
 and the other only Plump Jack. Deeply corpo- 
 realized, and enchained hopelessly in the grovelling 
 fetters of externality, must be the mind, to which, 
 in its bet';er moments, the image of the high-souled,
 
 138 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 high-intelligenced Quixote — the errant Star of 
 Knighthood, made more tender by eclipse— has 
 never presented itself divested from the unhallowed 
 accompaniment of a Sancho, or a rabblement at 
 the heels of Rosinante. That man has read his 
 book by halves; he has laughed, mistaking his 
 author's purport, which was— tears. The artist 
 that pictures Quixote (and it is in this degrading 
 point that he is every season held up at our Ex- 
 hibitions) in the shallow hope of exciting mirth, 
 would have joined the rabble at the heels of his 
 starved steed. We wish not to see that counter- 
 feited, which we would not have wished to see in 
 the reality. Conscious of the heroic inside of the 
 noble Quixote, who, on hearing that his withered 
 person was passing, would have stepped over his 
 threshold to gaze upon his forlorn habiliments, and 
 the "strange bed-fellows which misery brings a 
 man acquainted with ?" Shade of Cervantes ! who 
 in thy Second Part could put into the mouth of thy 
 Quixote those high aspirations of a super-chivalrous 
 gallantr}', where he replies to one of the shep- 
 herdesses, apprehensive that he would spoil theV 
 pretty net-works, and inviting him to be a guest 
 with them, in accents like these : "Truly, fairest 
 Lady, Actaeon was not more astonished when he 
 saw Diana bathing herself at the fountain, than I 
 have been in beholding your beauty : I commend 
 the manner of your pastime, and thank you for 
 your kind offers ; and, if I may serve you, so I 
 maybe sure you will be obeyed, you may command 
 me : for my profession is this. To show myself 
 thankful, and a doer of good to all sorts of people, 
 especially of the rank that your person shows you 
 to be ; and if those nets, as they take up but a little 
 piece of ground, should take up the whole world.
 
 THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY. 139 
 
 I would seek out new worlds to pass through, rather 
 than break them : and (he adds) that you may give 
 credit to this my exaggeration, behold at least he 
 that promiseth you this, is Don Quixote de la 
 Mancha, if haply this name hath come to your 
 hearing." Illustrious Romancer! were the "fine 
 frenzies," which possessed the brain of thy own 
 Quixote, a fit subject, as in this Second Part, to be 
 exposed to the jeers of Duennas and Serving-men ? 
 to be monstered, and shown up at the heartless 
 banquets of great men ? Was that pitiable infirmity, 
 which in thy First Part misleads him, always from 
 within, into half-ludicrous, but more than half- 
 compassionable and admirable errors, not infliction 
 enough from heaven, that men by studied artifices 
 must devise and practise upon the humour, to in- 
 flame where they should soothe it ? Why, Goneril 
 would have blushed to practise upon the abdicated 
 king at this rate, and the she-wolf Regan not have 
 endured to play the pranks upon his fled wits, which 
 thou hast made thy Quixote suffer in Duchesses' 
 halls, and at the hands of that unworthy noble- 
 man.' 
 
 In the First Adventures, even, it needed all the 
 art of the most consummate artist in the Book way 
 that the world hath yet seen, to keep up in the 
 mind of the reader the heroic attributes of the cha- 
 racter without relaxing ; so as absolutely that they 
   shall suffer no alloy from the debasing fellowship 
 of the clown. If it ever obtrudes itself as a dis- 
 harmony, are we inclined to laugh ; or not, rather, 
 to indulge a contrary emotion? — Cervantes, stung, 
 perchance, by the relish with which his Reading 
 Public had received the fooleries of the man, more 
 
 1 Yet from this Second Part, our crted-up pictures are 
 mostly selected : the waiting-women with beards, &c.
 
 I40 LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 
 
 to their palates than the generosities of the master, 
 in the sequel let his pen run riot, lost the harmony 
 and the balance, and sacrificed a great idea to the 
 taste of his contemporaries. We know that in the 
 present day the Knight has fewer admirers than the 
 Squire. Anticipating, what did actually happen to 
 him — as afterwards it did to his scarce inferior fol- 
 lower, the Author of " Guzman de Alfarache " — 
 that some less knowing hand would prevent him 
 by a spurious Second Part ; and judging that it 
 would be easier for his competitor to outbid him 
 in the comicalities, than in the romaiue, of his 
 work, he abandoned his Knight, and has fairly set 
 up the Squire for his Hero. For what else has he 
 unsealed the eyes of Sancho ? and instead of that 
 twilight state of semi-insanity — the madness at se- 
 cond-hand — the contagion, caught from a stronger 
 mind infected — that war between native cunning, 
 and hereditary deference, with which he has hitherto 
 accompanied his master — two for a pair almost — 
 does he substitute a downright Knave, with open 
 eyes, for his own ends only following a confessed 
 JMadman ; and offering at one time to lay, if not 
 actually laying, hands upon him ! From the mo- 
 ment that Sancho loses his reverence, Don Quixote 
 is become — a treatable lunatic. Our artists handle 
 him accordingly.
 
 THE WEDDING. 
 
 DO not know when I have been better 
 plfeased than at being invited last week 
 to be present at the wedding of a friend's 
 daughter. I like to make one at these 
 ceremonies, which to us old people give back 
 our youth in a mannei", and restore our gayest 
 season, in the remembrance of our own success, 
 or the regrets, scarcely less tender, of our own 
 youthful disappointments, in this point of a settle- 
 ment. On these occasions I am sure to be in good 
 humour for a week or two after, and enjoy a re- 
 flected honeymoon. Being without a family, I am 
 flattered with these temporary adoptions into a 
 friend's family ; I feel a sort of cousinhood, or 
 uncleship, for the season ; I am inducted into de- 
 grees of affinity ; and, in the participated socialities 
 of the little community, I lay down for a brief while 
 my solitary bachelorship. I carry this humour so 
 far, that I take it unkindly to be left out, even 
 when a funeral is going on in the house of a dear 
 
 friend. But to my subject. 
 
 The union itself had been long settled, but its 
 celebration had been hitherto deferred, to an almost 
 unreasonable state of suspense in the lovers, by 
 some invincible prejudices which the bride's father
 
 142 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 had unhappily contracted upon the subject of the 
 too early marriages of females. He has been lec- 
 turing any time these five years — for to that length 
 the courtship had been protracted — upon the pro- 
 priety of putting off the solemnity, till the lady 
 should have completed her five-and-twentieth year. 
 We all began to be afraid that a suit, which as yet 
 had abated of none of its ardours, might at last be 
 lingered on, till passion had time to cool, and love 
 go out in the experiment. But a little wheedling 
 on the par^ of his wife, who was by no means a 
 party to these overstrained notions, joined to some 
 serious expostulations on that of his friends, who, 
 from the growing infirmities of the old gentleman, 
 could not promise ourselves many years' enjoy- 
 ment of his company, and were anxious to bring 
 matters to a conclusion during his lifetime, at 
 length prevailed ; and on Monday last the daughter 
 
 of my old friend. Admiral , having attained 
 
 the womanly age of nineteen, was conducted to the 
 
 church by her pleasant cousin J , who told 
 
 some few years older. 
 
 Before the j'outhful part of my female readers 
 express their indignation at the abominable loss of 
 time occasioned to the lovers by the prepostei^ous 
 notions of my old friend, they will do well to con- 
 sider the reluctance which a fond parent naturally 
 feels at parting with his child. To this unwilling- 
 ness, I believe, in most cases may be traced the 
 difference of opinion on this point between child 
 and parent, whatever pretences of interest or pru- 
 dence may be held out to cover it. The hard- 
 heartedness of fathers is a fine theme for romance 
 writers, a sure and moving topic ; but is there not 
 something untender, to say no more of it, in the 
 hurry which a beloved child is sometimes in to tear
 
 THE WEDDING. 143 
 
 herself from the paternal stock, and commit her- 
 self to strange graftings? The case is heightened 
 where the lady, as in the present instance, happens 
 to be an only child. I do not understand these 
 matters experimentally, but I can make a shrewd 
 guess at the wounded pride of a parent upon these 
 occasions. It is no new observation, I believe, that 
 a lover in most cases has no rival so much to be 
 feared as the father. Certainly there is a jealousy 
 in tmparallel subjects, which is little less heartrend- 
 ing than the passion which we more strictly christen 
 by that name. Mothers' scruples are more easily 
 got over ; for this reason, I suppose, that the pro- 
 tection transferred to a husband is less a derogation 
 and a loss to their authority than to the paternal. 
 Mothers, besides, have a trembling foresight, which 
 paints the inconveniences (impossible to be con- 
 ceived in the same degree by the other parent) 
 of a life of forlorn celibacy, which the refusal of 
 a tolerable match may entail upon their child. 
 Mothers' instinct is a surer guide here than the 
 cold reasonings of a father on such a topic. To 
 this instinct may be imputed, and by it alone may 
 be excused, the unbeseeming artifices, by which 
 some wives push on the matrimonial projects of 
 their daughters, which the husband, however ap- 
 proving, shall entertain with comparative indif- 
 ference. A little shamelessness on this head is 
 pardonable. With this explanation, forwardness 
 becomes a grace, and maternal importunity receives 
 the name of a virtue. — But the parson stays, while 
 I preposterously assume his office ; I am preach- 
 ing, while the bride is on the threshold. 
 
 Nor let any of my female readers suppose that 
 the sage reflections which have just escaped me 
 have the obliquest tendency of application to the
 
 144 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 young lady, who, it will be seen, is about to ven- 
 ture upon a change in her condition, at a mature 
 and competent age, and not without the fullest ap- 
 probation of all parties. I only deprecate very 
 hasty marriages. 
 
 It had been fixed that the ceremony should be 
 gone through at an early hour, to give time for a 
 little dejcune afterwards, to which a select party of 
 friends had been invited. We were in church a 
 little before the clock struck eight. 
 
 Nothing could be more judicious or graceful than 
 the dress of the bride-maids — the three charming 
 Miss Foresters — on this morning. To give the 
 bride an opportunity of shining singly, they had 
 come habited all in green. I am ill at describing 
 female apparel ; but while she stood at the altar in 
 vestments white and candid as her thoughts, a 
 sacrificial whiteness, they assisted in robes such as 
 might become Diana's nymphs — Foresters indeed 
 — as such who had not yet come to the resolution 
 of putting off cold virginity. These young maids, 
 not being so blest as to have a mother living, I am 
 told, keep single for their father's sake, and live 
 altogether so happy with their remaining parent, 
 that the hearts of their lovers are ever broken with 
 the prospect (so inauspicious to their hopes) of such 
 uninterrupted and provoking home-comfort. Gal- 
 lant girls ! each a victim worthy of Iphigenia ! 
 
 I do. not know what business I have to be pre- 
 sent in solemn places. I cannot divest me of an 
 unseasonable disposition to levity upon the most 
 awful occasions. I was never cut out for a public 
 functionary. Ceremony and I have long shaken 
 hands ; but I could not resist the importunities of 
 the young lady's father, whose gout unhappily 
 confined him at home, to act ai parent on this oc-
 
 THE WEDDING. i.jg 
 
 casion, and give away the bride. Something ludi- 
 crous occurred to me at this most serious of all 
 moments — a sense of my unfitness to have the dis- 
 posal, even in imagination, of the sweet young 
 creature beside me. I fear I was betrayed to some 
 lightness, for the awful eye of the parson — and the 
 rector's eye of Saint Mildred's in the Poultry is 
 no trifle of a rebuke — was upon me in an instant, 
 souring my incipient jest to the tristful severities of 
 a funeral. 
 
 This was the only misbehaviour which I can 
 plead to upon this solemn occasion, unless what 
 was objected to me after the ceremony, by one of 
 the handsome Miss T s, be accounted a sole- 
 cism. She was pleased to say that she had never 
 seen a gentleman before me give away a bride in 
 black. Now black has been my ordinary apparel 
 so long — indeed, I take it to be the proper costume 
 of an author — the stage sanctions it— that to have 
 appeared in some lighter colour would have raised 
 more mirth at my expense than the anomaly had 
 created censure. But I could perceive that the 
 bride's mother, and some elderly ladies present 
 (God bless them !) would have been well content, 
 if I had come in any other colour than that. But 
 I got over the omen by a lucky apologue, which I 
 remembered out of Pilpay, or some Indian author, 
 of all the birds being invited to the linnet's wed- 
 ding, at which, when all the rest came in their 
 gayest feathers, the raven alone apologized for his 
 cloak because "he had no other." This tolerably 
 reconciled the elders. But with the young people 
 all was merriment, and shaking of hands, and con- 
 gratulations, and kissing away the bride's tears, 
 and kissing from her in return, till a young lady, 
 who assumed some experience in these matters, 
 
 II. L
 
 146 LAST ESSAVS OF ELI A. 
 
 having worn the nuptial bands some four or nve 
 weeks longer than her friend, rescued her, archly 
 observing, with half an eye upon the bridegroom, 
 that at this rale she would have " none left." 
 
 My friend the Admiral was in fine wig and buckle 
 on this occasion — a striking contrast to his usual 
 neglect of personal appearance. He did not once 
 shove up his borrowed locks (his custom ever at 
 his morning studies) to betray the few grey stragglers 
 of his own beneath them. He wore an aspect of 
 thoughtful satisfaction. I trembled for the hour, 
 which at length approached, when after a pro- 
 tracted breakfast of three hours — if stores of cold 
 fowls, tongues, hams, botargoes, dried fruits, wines, 
 cordials, &c., can deserve so meagre an appella- 
 tion — the coach was announced, which was come 
 to carry off the bride and bridegroom for a season, 
 as custom has sensibly ordained, into the country ; 
 upon which design, wishing them a felicitous jour- 
 ney, let us return to the assembled guests. 
 
 As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage, 
 
 The eyes of men 
 
 Are idly bent on him that enters next, 
 
 so idly did we bend our eyes upon one another, 
 when the chief performers in the morning's pa- 
 geant had vanished. None told his tale. None 
 sipped her glass. The poor Admiral made an effort 
 — it was not much. I had anticipated so far. 
 Even the infinity of full satisfaction, that had be- 
 trayed itself through the prim looks and quiet de- 
 portment of his lady, began to wane into some- 
 thing of misgiving. No one knew whether to take 
 their leave or stay. We seemed assembled upon a 
 silly occasion. In this crisis, betwixt tarrying and 
 departure, I must do justice to a foolish talent oi
 
 THE WEDDING. 147 
 
 mine, which had otherwise like to have brought 
 me into disgrace in the fore-part of the day; I 
 mean a power, in any emergency, of thinking and 
 giving vent to all manner of strange nonsense. In 
 this awkward dilemma I found it sovereign. I 
 rattled off some of my most excellent absurdities. 
 All were wilHng to be relieved, at any expense of 
 reason, from the pressure of the intolerable vacuum 
 which had succeeded to the morning bustle. By 
 this means I was fortunate in keeping together the 
 better part of the company to a late hour ; and a 
 rubber of whist (the Admiral's favourite game) 
 with some rare strokes of chance as well as skill, 
 which came opportunely on his side — lengthened 
 out till midnight— dismissed the old gentleman at 
 last to his bed with comparatively easy spirits. 
 _ I have been at my old friend's various times 
 since. _ I do not know a visiting place where every 
 guest is so perfectly at his ease; nowhere, where 
 harmony is so strangely the result of confusion. 
 Everybody is at cross purposes, yet the eftect is 
 so much better than uniformity. Contradictory 
 orders ; servants pulling one way ; master and 
 mistress driving some other, yet both diverse ; 
 visitors huddled up in corners ; chairs unsym- 
 metrized ; candles disposed by chance ; meals at 
 odd hours, tea and supper at once, or the latter 
 preceding the former ; the host and the guest con- 
 ferring, yet each upon a different topic, each under- 
 standing himself, neither trying to understand 01 
 hear the other ; draughts and politics, chess and 
 political economy, cards and conversation on nau- 
 tical matters, going on at once, without the hope, ' 
 or indeed the wish, of distinguishing them, make 
 it altogether the most perfect concordia discors 
 you shall meet with. Yet somehow the old house
 
 i,i8 LAST ESSAYS OF EL/A 
 
 is not quite what it should be. The Admiral still 
 enjoys his pipe, but he has no Miss Emily to fill 
 it for him. The instrument stands where it stood, 
 but she is gone, whose delicate touch- could some- 
 times for a short minute appease the warring ele- 
 ments. He has learnt, as Marvel expresses it, to 
 " make his destiny his choice." He bears bravely 
 up, but he does not come out with his flashes of 
 wild wit so thick as formerly. His sea-songs sel- 
 domer escape him. His wife, too, looks as if she 
 wanted some younger body to scold and set to 
 rights. We all miss a junior presence. It is won- 
 derful how one young maiden freshens up, and 
 keeps green, the paternal roof. Old and young 
 seem to have an interest in her, so long as she is 
 not absolutely disposed of. The youthfulness of 
 the house is flown. Emily is married.
 
 REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW 
 YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 
 
 ^irfjHE Old Year being dead, and the Neiv 
 ^Ma Year coming of age, which he does, by 
 j^ Calendar Law, as soon as the breath is 
 out of the old gentleman's body, nothing 
 would serve the young spark but he must give a 
 dinner upon the occasion, to which all the Days in 
 the year were invited. The Festivals, whom he 
 deputed as his servants, were mightily taken with 
 the notion. They had been engaged time out of 
 mind, they said, in providing mirth and good cheer 
 for mortals below ; and it was time they should 
 have a taste of their own bounty. It was stiffly 
 debated among them whether the Fasts should be 
 admitted. Some said the appearance of such lean, 
 starved guests, with their mortified faces, would 
 pervert the ends of the meeting. But the ob- 
 jection was overruled by Christinas Day, who had 
 a design upon Ash Wednesday (as you shall hear), 
 and a mighty desire to see how the old Domine 
 would behave himself in his cups. Only the Vigils 
 were requested to come with their lanterns, to light 
 the gentlefolks home at night. 
 
 All the Days came to their day. Covers were
 
 i5<. LAST ESSAYS OF ^LIA. 
 
 provided for three hundred and sixty-five guests at 
 the principal table ; with an occasional knife and 
 fork at the side-board for the T%venty-ninth of 
 February. 
 
 I should have told you that cards of invitation 
 had been issued. The carriers were the Hours , 
 twelve little, merry, whirligig foot-pages, as you 
 should desire to see, that went all round, and 
 found out the persons invited well enough, with 
 the exception of Easter Day, Shrove Tuesday, and 
 a few such Movables, who had lately shifted their 
 quarters. 
 
 Well, they all met at last — foul Days, fine Days, 
 all sorts of Days, and a rare din they made of it. 
 There was nothing but, Hail ! fellow Day, well 
 met — brother Day — sister Day — only Lady Day 
 kept a little on the aloof, and seemed somewhat 
 scornful. Yet some said Twelfth Day cut her out 
 and out, for she came in a tiffany suit, white and 
 gold, like a queen on a frost-cake, all royal, glit- 
 tering, and Epiphanous. The rest came, some in 
 green, some in white— but old Le^it and his family 
 were not yet out of mourning. Rainy Days came 
 in, dripping ; nnd sunshiny Days helped them to 
 change their stockings. Wedding Day was there 
 in his marriage finery, a little the worse for wear. 
 Pay Day came late, as he always does ; and Dooms- 
 day sent word — he might be expected. 
 
 April Fool (as my young lord's jester) took upon 
 himself to marshal the guests, and wild work he 
 made with it. It would have posed old Erra Pater 
 to have found out any given Day in the year to 
 erect a scheme upon — good Days, bad Days, were 
 so shuffled together, to the confounding of all sober 
 horoscopy. 
 
 He had stuck the Twenty-First of June next to
 
 REyOJCINGS ON THE NEW YEAR. 151 
 
 the Tivmty-Second of December, and the former 
 looked like a Maypole siding a manow-bone. Ask 
 Wednesday got wedged in (as was concerted) be- 
 twixt Christmas and Lord Mayors Days. Lord ! 
 how he laid about him ! Nothing but barons of 
 beef and turkeys would go down with him — to the 
 great greasing and detriment of his new sackcloth 
 bib and tucker. And still Christmas Day was at 
 his elbow, plying him with the wassail-bowl, till 
 he roared, and hiccupp'd, and protested there was 
 no faith in dried ling, but commended it to the 
 devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious, 
 hy-po-crit-crit-critical mess, and no dish for a gen- 
 tleman. Then he dipt his fist into the middle of 
 the great custard that stood before his left-hand 
 neighbour, and daubed his hungry beard all over 
 with it, till you woidd have taken him for the Last 
 Day in Deeember, it so hung in icicles. 
 
 At another part of the table, Shrove Tuesday 
 was helping the Second of September to some cock 
 broth, — which courtesy the latter returned with 
 the delicate thigh of a hen pheasant — so that there 
 was no love lost for that matter. The Last of Lent 
 was spunging upon Shrovetide's pancakes; which 
 April Fool perceiving, told him that he did well, 
 for pancakes were proper to a good pry-day. 
 
 In another part, a hubbub arose about the Thir- 
 tieth of January, who, it seem?, being a sour, 
 puritanic character, that thought nobody's meat 
 good or sanctified enough for him, had smuggled 
 into the room a calf's head, which he had had 
 cooked at home for that purpose, thinking to feast 
 thereon incontinently ; but as it lay in the dish, 
 March Manyweathers, who is a very fine lady, and 
 subject to the meagrims, screamed out there was 
 a "human head in the platter," and raved about
 
 152 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 Herodias' daughter to that degree, that the ob- 
 noxious viand was obliged to be removed ; nor 
 did she recover her stomach till she had gulped 
 down a Restorative, confected of Oak Apple, which 
 the merry Twenty-N'inth of May always carries 
 about with him for that purpose. 
 
 The King's health' being called for after this, a 
 notable dispute arose between the Twelfth ofAttgust 
 (a zealous old Whig gentlewoman) and the Twenty- 
 Third of April (a new-fangled lady of the Tory 
 stamp), as to which of them should have the 
 honour to propose it. August grew hot upon the 
 matter, affirming time out of mind the prescriptive 
 right to have lain with her, till her rival had basely 
 supplanted her; whom she represented as little 
 better than a kept mistress, who went about mfine 
 clothes, while she (the legitimate Birthday) had 
 scarcely a rag, &c. 
 
 April Fool, being made mediator, confirmed the 
 right, in the strongest form of words, to the appel- 
 lant, but decided for peace' sake, that the exercise 
 of it should remain with the present possessor. 
 At the same time, he slyly rounded the first lady in 
 the 'ear, that an action might lie against the Crown 
 for bi-geny. 
 
 It beginning to grow a little duskish, Candletiias 
 lustily bawled out for lights, which was opposed 
 by all the Days, who protested against burning 
 dayligth. Then fair water was handed round in 
 silver ewers, and the same lady was observed to 
 take an unusual time in Washing herself. 
 
 May Day, with that sweetness which is peculiar 
 to her, in a neat speech proposing the health of 
 the founder, crowned her goblet (and by her ex- 
 
 ' King George IV.
 
 REyOIClXGS ON THE NEW YEAR. 153 
 
 ample the rest of the company) with garlands. 
 This being done, the lordly Neiv ] 'ear, from the 
 upper end of the table, in a cordial but somewhat 
 lofty tone, returned thanks. He felt proud on an 
 occasion of meeting so many of his worthy father's 
 late tenants, promised to improve their farms, and 
 at the same time to abate (if anything was fcrund 
 unreasonable) in their rents. 
 
 At the mention of this, the four Quarter Days 
 involuntarily looked at each other, and smiled ; 
 April Fool whistled to an old tune of " New 
 Brooms ;" and a surly old rebel at the farther end 
 of the table (who was discovered to be no other 
 than the Fifth of November) muttered out, dis- 
 tinctly enough to be heard by the whole company, 
 words to this effect — that "when the old one is 
 gone, he is a fool that looks for a better." Whicli 
 rudeness of his, the guests resenting, unanimously 
 voted his expulsion ; and the malcontent was thrust 
 out neck and heels into the cellar, as the properest 
 place for such a boutefeu and firebrand as he had 
 shown himself to be. 
 
 Order being restored — the young lord (who, to 
 say truth, had been a little ruffled, and put beside 
 his oratory) in as few and yet as obliging words as 
 possible, assured them of entire welcome; and, 
 with a graceful turn, singling out poor Twenty- 
 Ninth of February, that had sate all this while 
 mumchance at the side-board, begged to couple 
 his health with that of the good company before 
 him — which he drank accordingly ; observing that 
 he had not seen his honest face any time these four 
 years — with a number of endearing expressions 
 besides. At the same time removing the solitary 
 Day from the forlorn seat which had been assigned 
 him, he stationed him at his own board, some-
 
 154 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 where between the Greek Calends and Latter Lam- 
 mas. 
 
 Ash Wednesday, being now called upon for a 
 song, with his eyes fast stuck in his head, and as 
 well as the Canary he had swallowed would give 
 him leave, struck up a Carol, which Christmas 
 Day had taught him for the nonce ; and was fol- 
 lowed by the latter, who gave " Miserere" in fine 
 style, hitting off the mumping notes and lengthened 
 drawl of Old Mortification with infinite humour. 
 April Fool swore they had exchanged conditions ; 
 but Good Friday was observed to look extremely 
 grave ; and Sunday held her fan before her face 
 that she might not be seen to smile. 
 
 Shro^e-tide, Lord Mayor s Day, and April Fool, 
 next joined in a glee — 
 
 Which is the properest day to drink? 
 
 in which all the Days chiming in, made a merry 
 burden. 
 
 They next fell to quibbles and conundrums. 
 The question being proposed, who had the greatest 
 number of followers — the Quarter Days said, there 
 could be no question as to that ; for they had all 
 the creditors in the world dogging their heels. 
 But April Fool gave it in favour of the Forty Days 
 before Faster ; because the debtors in all cases out- 
 numbered the creditors, and they kept Lent all the 
 year. 
 
 All this while Valentine's Day kept courting 
 pretty Alay, who sate next him, slipping amorous 
 billets-doux under the table, till the Dog Days 
 (who are naturally of a warm constitution) began 
 to be jealous, and to bark and rage exceedingly. 
 April Fool, who likes a bit of sport above measure, 
 and had some pretensions to the lady besides, as
 
 REJOICINGS ON THE NEW YEAR. 153 
 
 being but a cousin once removed, — clapped and 
 halloo'd them on ; and as fast as tlieir indignation 
 cooled, those mad wags, the Ember Days, were at 
 it with their bellows, to blow it into a flame ; and 
 all was in ferment, till old Madam Septuagcsima 
 (who boasts herself the Mother of the Days) wisely 
 diverted the conversation with a tedious tale of 
 the lovers which she could reckon when she was 
 young, and of one Master Rogatio7i Day in par- 
 ticular, who was for ever putting the question to 
 her ; but she kept him at a distance, as the chro- 
 nicle would tell — by which I apprehend she meant 
 the Almanack. Then she rambled on to the 
 Days that were gone, the good old Days, and so to 
 the Days before the Flood — which plainly showed 
 her old head to be little better than crazed and 
 .doited. 
 
 Day being ended, the Days called for their 
 cloaks and great-coats, and took their leave. Loi'd 
 Mayor's Day went off in a Mist, as usual ; Shortest 
 Day in a deep black Fog, that wrapt the little gen- 
 tleman all round like a hedge-hog. Two Vigils 
 — so watchmen are called in heaven — saw Christ- 
 mas Day safe home — they had been used to the 
 business before. Another Vigil — a stout, sturdy 
 patrole, called the Eve of St. Christopher — seeing 
 Ash Wednesday in a condition little better than he 
 should be — e'en whipt him over his shoulders, 
 pick-a-back fashion, and Old Mortification went 
 floating home singing — 
 
 On the bat's back I do fly, 
 
 and a number of old snatches besides, between 
 drunk and sober ; but very few Aves or Peniten- 
 tiaries (you may believe me) were among them. 
 Longest Day set off westward in beautiful crimson
 
 '56 
 
 and gold 
 
 LAST ESSAYS OF EL I A 
 
 the rest, some in one fashion, some in 
 another ; but Valentine and pretty May took their 
 departure together in one of the prettiest silvery 
 twilights a Lover's Day could wish to set in.
 
 OLD CHINA. 
 
 HAVE an almost feminine partiality 
 for old china. When I go to see any 
 great house, I inquire for the china- 
 
 closet, and next for the picture-gallery. 
 
 I cannot defend the order of preference, but by 
 saying that we have all some taste or other, of too 
 ancient a date to admit of our remembering dis- 
 tinctly that it was an acquire<:l one. I can call to 
 mind the first play, and the first exhibition, that I 
 was taken to ; but I am not conscious of a time 
 when china jars and saucers were introduced into 
 my imagination. 
 
 I had no repugnance then — why should I now 
 have? — to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured gro- 
 tesques, that, under the notion of men and women, 
 float about, uncircumscribed by any element, in 
 that world before perspective — a china tea-cup. 
 
 I like to see my old friends — whom distance 
 cannot diminish — figuring up in the air (so they 
 appear to our optics), yet on terra finna still — for 
 so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of 
 deeper blue, which the decorous artist, to prevent 
 absurdity, had made to spring up beneath their 
 sandals. 
 
 I love the men with women's faces, and tlie
 
 iSS LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 women, if possible, with still more womanish ex- 
 pressions. 
 
 Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing 
 tea to a lady from a salver — two miles off. See 
 how distance seems to set off respect ! And here 
 the same lady, or another — for likeness is identity 
 on tea-cups — is stepping into a little fairy boat, 
 moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, 
 with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle 
 of incidence (as angles go in our world) must in- 
 fallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead — 
 a furlong off on the other side of the same strange 
 stream ! 
 
 Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of 
 their world— see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing 
 the hays. 
 
 Here — a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-ex- 
 tensive— so ol^jects show, seen through the lucid 
 atmosphere of line Cathay. 
 
 I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, 
 over our Hyson (which we are old-fashioned enough 
 to drink unmixed still of an afternoon), some of 
 these speciosa miractda upon a set of extraordinary 
 old blue china (a recent purchase) v/hich we were 
 now for the first time using ; and could not help 
 remarking, how favourable circumstances had been 
 to us of late years, that we could afford to please 
 the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort — when a 
 passing sentiment seemed to overshade the brows 
 of my companion. I am quick at detecting these 
 summer clouds in Bridget. 
 
 "I wish the good old times would come again," 
 she said, "when we were not quite so rich. I do 
 not mean that I want to be poor ; but there was a 
 middle state "—so she was pleased to ramble on, — 
 " in which I am sure we were a great deal happier.
 
 OLD CHINA. 159 
 
 A purchase is but a purchase, now that you have 
 money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to 
 be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury 
 (and, O ! how much ado I had to get you to con- 
 sent in those times !) — we were used to have a 
 debate two or three days before, and to weigh the 
 for and against, and think what we might spare it 
 out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that 
 should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying 
 then, when we felt the money that we paid for it. 
 
 "Do you remember the brown suit, which you 
 made to hang upon you, till all your friends cried 
 shame upon you, it grew so threadbare— and all 
 because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which 
 you dragged home late at night from Barker's in 
 Covent Garden ? Do you remember how we eyed 
 it for weeks before we could make up our minds to 
 the purchase, and had not come to a determination 
 till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, 
 when you set off from Islington, fearing you should 
 be too late — and when the old bookseller with 
 some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twink- 
 ling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out 
 the relic from his dusty treasures — and when you 
 lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumber- 
 some — and when you presented it to me — and when 
 we were exploring the perfectness of it [collating, 
 you called it) — and while I was repairing some of 
 the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience 
 would not suffer to be left till day -break — was there 
 no pleasure in being a poor man ? or can those neat 
 black clothes which you wear now, and are so 
 careful to keep brushed, since we have become 
 rich arid finical — give you half the honest vanity 
 with which you flaunted it about in that overworn 
 suit — your old corbeau — for four or five weeks
 
 iCo LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 longer than you should have done, to pacify your 
 conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen — or sixteen 
 shillings was it? — a great affair we thought it then 
 — which you had lavished on the old folio. Now 
 you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, 
 but I do not see that you ever bring me home any 
 nice old purchases now. 
 
 "When you came home with twenty apologies 
 for laying out a less number of shillings upon that 
 print after Lionardo, which we christened the 
 ' Lady Blanch ; ' when you looked at the purchase, 
 and thought of the money — and thought of the 
 money, and looked again at the picture — was there 
 no pleasure in being a poor man ? Now, you have 
 nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy 
 a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you ? 
 
 "Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to 
 Enfield, and Potter's bar, and Waltham, when we 
 had a holyday— holydays and all other fun are gone 
 now we are rich — and the little hand-basket in 
 which I used to deposit our day's fare of savoury 
 cold lamb and salad — and how you would pry 
 about at noon-tide for some decent house, where 
 we might go in and produce our store — only paying 
 for the ale that you must call for — and speculate 
 upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she 
 was likely to allow us a tablecloth — and wish for 
 such another honest hostess as Izaak Walton has 
 described many a one on the pleasant banks of the 
 Lea, when he went a-fishing — and sometimes they 
 would prove obliging enough, and sometimes they 
 would look grudgingly upon us — but we had cheer- 
 ful looks still for one another, and would eat our 
 plain food savourily, scarcely grudging Piscatorhis 
 Trout Hall ? Now — when we go out a day's 
 pleasuring, which is seldom, moreover, we ride
 
 OLD CHINA. i6i 
 
 part of the way, and go into a fine inn, and order 
 the best of dinners, never debating the expense — 
 which, after all, never has half the relish of those 
 chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy 
 of uncertain usage, and a precarious M'elcome. 
 
 " You are too proud to see a play anywhere now 
 but in the pit. Do you remember where it was we 
 used to sit, when we saw the battle of Hexham, 
 and the Surrender of Calais, and Bannister and 
 Mrs. Bland in the Children in the Wood — when 
 we squeezed out our shillings a-piece to sit three 
 or four times in a season in the one-shilling galleiy 
 — where you felt all the time that you ought not to 
 have brought me — and more strongly I felt obliga- 
 tion to you for having brought me — -and the pleasure 
 was the better for a little shame — and when the 
 curtain drew up, what cared we for our place in the 
 house or what mattered it where we were sitting, 
 when our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, 
 or with Viola at the Court of Illyria ? You used to 
 say that the Gallery was the best place of all for 
 enjoying a play socially — that the relish of such 
 exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency 
 of going — that the company we met there, not 
 being in general readers of plays, were obliged to 
 attend the more, and did attend, to what was going 
 on, on the stage — because a word lost would have 
 been a chasm, which it was impossible for them to 
 fill up. With such reflections we consoled our 
 pride then— and I appeal to you whether, as a 
 woman, I met generally with less attention and 
 accommodation than I have done since in more 
 expensive situations in the house ? The getting in, 
 indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient 
 staircases, was bad enough — but there was still a 
 law of civility to woman recognized to quite as - 
 
 II. M
 
 i62 LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 
 
 great an extent as we ever found in the other pas- 
 sages — and how a little difficulty overcome heigh- 
 tened the snug seat and the play, afterwards ! Now 
 we can only pay our money and walk in. You 
 cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. I am 
 sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then — 
 but sight, and all, I think, is gone with our po- 
 verty. 
 
 " There was pleasure in eating strawberries, be- 
 fore they became quite common— in the first dish 
 of peas, while they were yet dear — to have them 
 for a nice supper, a treat. What treat can we have 
 now ? If we were to treat ourselves now — that is, 
 to have dainties a little above our means, it would 
 be selfish and wicked. It is the veiy little more 
 that we allow ourselves beyond what the actual 
 poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat — 
 when two people, living together, as we have done, 
 now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, 
 which both like ; while each apologizes, and is 
 willing to take both halves of the blame to his 
 single share. I see no harm in people making much 
 of themselves, in that sense of the word. It may 
 give them a hint how to make much of others. 
 But now — what I mean by the word — we never do 
 make much of ourselves. None but the poor can 
 do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but 
 persons as we Were, just above poverty. 
 
 ' ' I know what you were going to say, that it is 
 mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all 
 meet, — and much ado we used to have every Thirty- 
 first Night of December to account for our exceed- 
 ings — many a long face did you make over your 
 puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out 
 how we had, spent so much^or that we had not 
 spent so much — or that it was impossible we should
 
 OLD cnmA. 163 
 
 spend so much next year — and still we found our 
 slender capital decreasing — but then, — betwixt 
 ways, and projects, and compromises of one sort 
 or another, and talk of curtailing this charge, and 
 doing without that for the future — and the hope 
 that youth brings, and laughing spirits (in which 
 you were never poor till now), we pocketed up our 
 loss, and in conclusion, with ' lusty brimmers ' (as 
 you used to quote it out of hearty cheerful Mr. 
 Cotton, as you called him), we used to welcome in 
 the ' coming guest.' Now we have no reckoning 
 at all at the end of the old year — no flattering pro- 
 mises about the new year doing better for us." 
 
 Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most oc- 
 casions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, 
 I am careful how I interrupt it. I could not help, 
 however, smiling at the phantom of wealth which 
 her dear imagination had conjured up out of a clear 
 
 income of poor hundred pounds a year. " It 
 
 is true we were happier when we were poorer, but 
 we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid we 
 must put up with the excess, for if we were to shake 
 the superflux into the sea, we should not much 
 mend ourselves. That we had much to struggle 
 with, as we grew up together, we have reason to be 
 most thankful. It strengthened and knit our com- 
 pact closer. We could never have been what we 
 have been to each other, if we had always had the 
 sufficiency which you now complain of The re- 
 sisting power — those natural dilations of the youth- 
 ful spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten — 
 with us are long since passed away. Competence 
 to age is supplementary youth, a sorry supplement 
 indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We 
 must ride where we formerly walked : live better 
 and lie softer — and shall be wise to do so — than we
 
 i64 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 had means to do in those good old days you speak 
 of. Yet could those days return — could you and I 
 once more walk our thirty miles a day — could Ban- 
 nister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and you and 
 I be young to see them — could the good old one- 
 shilling gallery days return — they are dreams, my 
 cousin, now — but could you and I at this moment, 
 instead of this quiet argument, by our well-carpeted 
 fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa — be once 
 more struggling up those inconvenient staircases, 
 pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the 
 poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers — could I 
 once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours — and 
 the delicious Tha7ik God, we are safe,-vi\(\<::k\. always 
 followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in 
 the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down 
 beneath us — I know not the fathom line that ever 
 touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to 
 bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great 
 
 Jew R is supposed to have, to purchase it. 
 
 And now do just look at that merry little Chinese 
 waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed- 
 tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half 
 Madonna-ish chit of a lady in that very blue sum- 
 mer-house."
 
 THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM. 
 
 CHANCED upon the prettiest, oddest, 
 fantastical thing of a dream the other 
 night, that you shall hear of. I had 
 been reading the "Loves of the Angels,'" 
 and went to bed with my head full of speculations, 
 suggested by that extraordinary legend. It had 
 given birth to innumerable conjectures ; and, I re- 
 member the last waking thought, which I gave ex- 
 pression to on my pillow, was a sort of wonder, 
 " what could come of it." 
 
 I was suddenly transported, how or whither I 
 could scarcely made out — but to some celestial 
 region. It was not the real heavens neither — not 
 the downright Bible heaven— but a kind of fairy- 
 land heaven, about which a poor human fancy 
 may have leave to sport and air itself, I will hope, 
 without presumption. 
 
 Methought — what wild things dreams are ! — I 
 was present — at what would you imagine? — at an 
 angel's gossiping. 
 
 Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it 
 come, or whether it came purely of its own head, 
 neither you nor I know — but there lay, sure enough, 
 wrapt in its little cloudy swaddling-bands— a Child 
 Angel.
 
 i66 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 Sun-threads — filmy beams — ran through the ce- 
 lestial napery of what seemed its princely cradle. 
 All the winged orders hovered round, watching 
 when the new bom should open its yet closed eyes ; 
 which, when it did, first one, and then the other — 
 with a solicitude and apprehension, yet not such 
 as, stained with fear, dim the expanding eyelids of 
 mortal infants, but as if to explore its path in those 
 its unhereditary palaces— what an inextinguishable 
 titter that time spared not celestial visages ! Nor 
 wanted there to my seeming — O, the inexplicable 
 simpleness of dreams ! — bowls of that cheering 
 nectar, 
 
 — which mortals caucik call below. 
 
 Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants, — 
 stricken in years, as it might seem, — so dexterous 
 were those heavenly attendants to counterfeit 
 kindly similitudes of earth, to greet with terrestrial 
 child-rites the young present, which earth had made 
 to heaven. 
 
 Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full 
 symphony, as those by which the spheres are 
 tutored ; but, as loudest instruments on earth speak 
 oftentimes, muffled ; so to accommodate their 
 sound the better to the weak ears of the imperfect- 
 born. And, with the noise of these subdued 
 soundings, the Angelet sprang forth, fluttering its 
 rudiments of pinions— but forthwith flagged and 
 was recovered into the arms of those full-winged 
 angels. And a wonder it was to see how, as years 
 went round in heaven — a year in dreams is as a 
 day — continually its white shoulders put forth buds 
 of wings, but wanting the perfect angelic nutri- 
 ment, anon was shorn of its aspiring, and fell flut- 
 tering — still caught by angel hands, for ever to put
 
 THE CHILD ANGEL. 167 
 
 forth shoots, and to fall fluttering, because its birth 
 was not of the unmixed vigour of heaven. 
 
 And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and 
 it was to be called Ge-Urania, because its produc- 
 tion was of earth and heaven. 
 
 And it could not taste of death, by reason of its 
 adoption into immortal palaces ; but it was to 
 know weakness, and reliance, and the shadow of 
 human imbecility ; and it went with a lame gait ; 
 but in its goings it exceeded all mortal children in 
 grace and swiftness. Then pity first sprang up in 
 angelic bosoms ; and yearnings (like the human) 
 touched them at the sight of the immortal lame one. 
 
 And with pain did then first those Intuitive Es- 
 sences, with pain and strife to their natures (not 
 grief), put back their bright intelligences, and re- 
 duce their ethereal minds, schooling them to de- 
 grees and slower processes, so to adapt their lessons 
 to the gradual illumination (as must needs be) of 
 the half-earth-bom ; and what intuitive notices they 
 could not repel (by reason that their nature is, to 
 know all things at once) the half-heavenly novice, 
 by the better part of its nature, aspired to receive 
 into its understanding ; so that Humility and As- 
 piration went on even-paced in the instruction of 
 the glorious Amphibium. 
 
 But, by reason that Mature Humanity is too 
 gross to breathe the air of that super-subtile region, 
 its portion was, and is, to be a child for ever. 
 
 And because the human part of it might not 
 press into the heart and inwards of the palace of 
 its adoption, those full-natured angels tended it by 
 turns in the purlieus of the palace, where were 
 sliady groves and rivulets, like this green earth from 
 which it came ; so Love, with Voluntary Humility, 
 waited upon the entertainment of the new-adopted
 
 i68 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 And myriads of years rolled round (in dreams 
 Time is nothing), and still it kept, and is to keep, 
 perpetual childhood, and is the Tutelar Genius of 
 Childhood upon earth, and still goes lame and 
 lovely. 
 
 By the banks of the river Pison is seen, lone sit- 
 ting by the grave of the terrestrial Adah, whom 
 'the angel Nadir loved, a Child ; but not the same 
 which I saw in heaven. A mournful hue overcasts 
 its lineaments ; nevertheless, a correspondency is 
 between tlie child by the grave, and that celestial 
 orphan, whom I saw above ; and the dimness of 
 the grief upon the heavenly, is a shadow or emblem 
 of that whicli stains the beauty of the terrestrial. 
 And this correspondency is not to be understood 
 but by dreams. 
 
 And in the archives of heaven I had grace to 
 read, how that once the angel Nadir, being exiled 
 from his place for mortal passion, upspringing on 
 the wings of parental love (such power had parental 
 love for a moment to suspend the else-irrevocable 
 law) appeared for a brief instant in his station, 
 and, depositing a wondrous Birth, straightway dis- 
 appeared, and the palaces knew him no more. 
 And this charge was the self-same Babe, who 
 goeth lame and lovely — but Adah sleepeth by the 
 river Pison.
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 
 
 EHORTATIONS from the use of strong 
 liquors have been the favourite topic of 
 sober declaimers in all ages, and have 
 been received with abundance of ap- 
 plause by water-drinking critics. But with the 
 patient himself, the man that is to be cured, unfor- 
 tunately their sound has seldom prevailed. Yet the 
 evil is acknowledged, the remedy simple. Abstain. 
 No force can oblige a man to raise the glass to his 
 head against his will. 'Tis as easy as not to steal, 
 not to tell lies. 
 
 Alas ! the hand to pilfer, and the tongue to bear 
 false witness, have no constitutional tendency. 
 These are actions indifferent to them. At the first 
 instance of the reformed will, they can be brought 
 off without a murmur. The itching finger is but a 
 figure in speech, and the tongue of the liar can 
 with the same natural delight give forth useful 
 truths with which it has been accustomed to scatter 
 their pernicious contraries. But when a man has 
 
 commenced sot 
 
 O pause, thou sturdy moralist, thou person of 
 stout nerves and a strong head, whose liver is hap- 
 pily untouched, and ere thy gorge riseth at the 
 tianie which I had written, first learn what the
 
 I70 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 thing is ; how much of compassion, how much of 
 human allowance, thou mayest virtuously mingle 
 with thy disapprobation. Trample not on the 
 ruins of a man. Exact not, under so terrible a 
 penalty as infamy, a resuscitation from a state of 
 death almost as real as that from which Lazarus 
 rose not but by a miracle. 
 
 Begin a reformation, and custom will make it 
 easy. But what if the beginning be dreadful, the 
 first steps not like climbing a mountain but going 
 through fire ? what if the whole system must 
 undergo a change violent as that which we conceive 
 of the mutation of form in some insects ? what if a 
 process comparable to flaying alive be to be gone 
 through ? is the weakness that sinks under such 
 struggles to be confounded with the pertinacity 
 which clings to other vices, which have induced no 
 constitutional necessity, no engagement of the 
 whole victim, body and soul ? 
 
 I have known one in that state, when he has 
 tried to abstain but for one evening, — though the 
 poisonous potion had long ceased to bring back its 
 first enchantments, though he was sure it would 
 rather deepen his gloom than brighten it, — in the 
 violence of the struggle, and the necessity he had 
 felt of getting rid of the present sensation at any 
 rate, I have known him to scream out, to cry 
 aloud, for the anguish and pain of the strife within 
 him. 
 
 Why should I hesitate to declare, that the man 
 of whom I speak is myself? I have no puling 
 apology to make to mankind. I see them all in 
 one way or another deviating from the pure reason. 
 It is to my own nature alone I am accountable for 
 the woe that I have brought upon it. 
 
 I believe that there are constitutions, robust
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 171 
 
 heads and iron insides, whom scarce any excesses 
 can hurt ; whom brandy (I have seen them drink 
 it like wine), at all events whom wine, taken in 
 ever so plentiful a measure, can do no worse injury 
 to than just to muddle their faculties, perhaps 
 never very pellucid. On them this discourse is 
 wasted. They would but laugh at a weak brother, 
 who, trying his strength with them, and coming off 
 foiled from the contest, would fain persuade them 
 that such agonistic exercises are dangerous. It is 
 to a very different description of persons I speak. 
 It is to the weak — the nervous ; to those who feel 
 the want of some artificial aid to raise their spirits 
 in society to what is no more than the ordinary 
 pitch of all around them without it. This is the 
 secret of our drinking. Such must fly the con- 
 vivial board in the first instance, if they do not 
 mean to sell themselves for term of life. 
 
 Twelve years ago I had completed my six-and- 
 twentieth year. I had lived from the period of 
 leaving school to that time pretty much in solitude. 
 My companions were chiefly books, or at most one 
 or two living ones of my own book-loving and 
 sober stamp. I rose early, went to bed betimes, 
 and the faculties which God had given me, I have 
 reason to think, did not rust in me unused. 
 
 About that time I fell in with some companions 
 of a different order. They were men of boisterous 
 spirits, sitters up a-nights, disputants, drunken ; 
 yet seemed to have something noble about them. 
 We dealt about the wit, or what passes for it after 
 midnight, jovially. Of the quality called fancy I 
 certainly possessed a larger share than my com- 
 panions. Encouraged by their applause, I set up 
 for a professed joker ! I, who of all men am least 
 fitted for such an occupation, having, in ixldition
 
 172 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 to the greatest difficulty which I experience at all 
 times of finding words to express my meaning, a 
 natural nervous impediment in my speech ! 
 
 Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, 
 aspire to any character but that of a wit. When 
 you find a tickling relish upon your tongue dispos- 
 ing you to that sort of conversation, especially if 
 you find a preternatural flow of ideas setting in 
 upon you at the sight of a bottle and iresh glasses, 
 avoid giving way to it as you would fly your 
 greatest destruction. If you cannot crush the power 
 of fancy, or that within you which you mistake for 
 such, divert it, give it some other play. Write an 
 essay, pen a character or description, — but not as 
 I do now, with tears trickling down your cheeks. 
 
 To be an object of compassion to friends, of de- 
 rision to foes ; to be suspected by strangers, stared 
 at by fools ; to be esteemed dull when you cannot 
 be witty, to be applauded for witty when you know 
 that you have been dull ; to be called upon for the 
 extemporaneous exercise of that faculty which no 
 premeditation can give ; to be stirred on to efforts 
 which end in contempt ; to be set on to provoke 
 mirth which procures the procurer hatred ; to give 
 pleasure and be paid with squinting malice ; to 
 swallow draughts of life-destroying wine which are 
 to be distilled into airy breath to tickle vain au- 
 ditors ; to mortgage miserable morrows for nights 
 of madness ; to waste whole seas of time upon those 
 who pay it back in little inconsiderable drops of 
 grudging applause, — are the wages of buffoonery 
 and death. 
 
 Time, which has a sure stroke at dissolving all 
 connections which have no solider fastening than 
 this liquid cement, more kind to me than my own 
 taste or penetration, at length opened my eyes to
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 173 
 
 the supposed qualities of my first friends. No 
 trace of them is left but in the vices which they 
 introduced, and the habits they infixed. In them 
 my friends survive still, and exercise ample retri- 
 bution for any supposed infidelity that I may have 
 been guilty of towards them. 
 
 My next more inmiediate companions were and 
 are persons of such intrinsic and felt worth, that 
 though accidentally their acquaintance has proved 
 pernicious to me, I do not know that if the thing 
 were to do over again, I should have the courage 
 to eschew the mischief at the price of forfeiting the 
 benefit. I came to them reeking from the steams 
 of my late over-heated notions of companionship ; 
 and tlie slightest fuel which they unconsciously 
 afforded, was sufficient to feed my own fires into a 
 propensity. 
 
 They were no drinkers ; but, one from profes- 
 sional habits, and another from a custom derived 
 from his father, smoked tobacco. The devil could 
 not have devised a more subtle trap to retake a 
 backsliding penitent. The transition, from gulp- 
 ing down draughts of liquid fire to puffing out in- 
 nocuous blasts of dry smoke, was so like cheating 
 him. But he is too hard for us when we hope to 
 commute. He beats us at barter ; and when we 
 think to set off a new failing against an old in- 
 firmity, 'tis odds but he puts the trick upon us of 
 two for one. That (comparatively) white devil of 
 tobacco brought with him in the end seven worse 
 than himself. 
 
 It were impertinent to carry the reader through 
 all the processes by which, from smoking at first 
 with malt liquor, 1 took my degrees through thin 
 wines, through stronger wine and water, through 
 small punch, to those juggling compositions, which,
 
 174 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 under the name of mixed liquors, slur a great deal 
 of brandy or other poison under less and less water 
 continually until they come next to none, and so 
 to none at all. But it is hateful to disclose the 
 secrets of my Tartarus. 
 
 I should repel my readers, from a mere inca- 
 pacity of believing me, were I to tell them what 
 tobacco has been to me, the drudging service which 
 I have paid, the slavery which I have vowed to it. 
 How, when I have resolved to quit it, a feeling as 
 of ingratitude has started up ; how it has put on 
 personal claims and made the demands of a friend 
 upon me. How the reading of it casually in a book, 
 as where Adams takes his whifiF in the chimney- 
 comer of some inn in Joseph Andrews, or Piscator 
 in the Complete Angler, breaks his fast upon a 
 morning pipe in that delicate room Piscatoribus 
 Sacrum, has in a moment broken down the resis- 
 tance of weeks. How a pipe was ever in my mid- 
 night path before me, till the vision forced me to 
 realize it, — how then its ascending vapours curled, 
 its fragrance lulled, and the thousand delicious 
 ministerings conversant about it, employing every 
 faculty, extracted the sense of pain. How from 
 illuminating it came to darken, from a quick solace 
 it turned to a negative relief, thence to a restless- 
 ness and dissatisfaction, thence to a positive misery. 
 How, even now, when the whole secret stands 
 confessed in all its dreadful truth before me, I feel 
 myself linked to it beyond the power of revocation. 
 Bone of my bone 
 
 Persons not accustomed to examine the motives 
 of their actions, to reckon up the countless nails 
 that rivet the chains of habit, or perhaps being 
 bound by none so obdurate as those I have con- 
 fessed to, may recoil from this as from an over-
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 175 
 
 charged picture. But what short of such a bondage 
 is it, which in spite of protesting friends, a weep- 
 ing wife, and a reprobating world, chains down 
 many a poor fellow, of no original indisposition to 
 goodness, to his pipe and his pot ? 
 
 I have seen a print after Correggio, in which 
 three female figures are ministering to a man who 
 sits fast bound at the root of a tree. Sensuality is 
 soothing him. Evil Habit is nailing him to a branch, 
 and Repugnance at the same instant of time, is 
 applying a snake to his side. In his face is feeble 
 delight, the recollection of past rather than per- 
 ception of present pleasures, languid enjoyment 
 of evil with utter imbecility to good, a Sybaritic 
 effeminacy, a submission to bondage, the springs 
 of the will gone down like a broken clock, the sin 
 and the suffering co-instantaneous, or the latter 
 forerunning the former, remorse preceding action 
 — all this represented in one point of time. — When 
 T saw this, I admired the wonderful skill of the 
 painter. But when I went away, I wept, because 
 I thought of my own condition. 
 
 Of that there is no hope that it should ever 
 change. The waters have gone over me. But out 
 of the black depths, could I be heard, I would cry 
 out to all those who have but set a foot in the 
 perilous flood. Could the youth, to whom the 
 flavour of his first wine is delicious as the opening 
 scenes of life or the entering upon som.e newly- 
 discovered paradise, look into my desolation, and 
 be made to understand what a dreary thing it is 
 M'hen a man shall feel himself going down a pre- 
 cipice with open eyes and a passive will, — to see 
 his destruction and have no power to stop it, and 
 yet to feel it all the way emanating from himself ; 
 to perceive all goodness emptied out of him, and
 
 175 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 yet not to be able to forget a time when it was 
 otherwise ; to bear about the piteous spectacle of 
 his own self-ruins : — could he see my fevered eye, 
 feverish with last night's drinking, and feveinshly 
 looking for this night's repetition of the folly ; 
 could he feel the body of the death out ol which I 
 cry hourly with feebler and feebler outcry to be 
 delivered, — it were enough to make him dash the 
 sparkling beverage to the earth in all the pride of 
 its mantling temptation ; to make him clasp his 
 teeth, 
 
 and not undo 'em 
 To suffer wet dAiMNATION to run thro' 'em. 
 
 Yea, but (methinks I hear somebody object) if 
 sobriety be that fine thing you would have us to 
 understand, if the comforts of a cool brain are to 
 be preferred to that state of heated excitement 
 which you describe and deplore, what hinders in 
 your instance that you do not return to those 
 habits from which you would induce others never 
 to swerve? if the blessing be worth preserving, is 
 it not worth recovering? 
 
 Recoveritig! — O if a wish could transport me 
 back to those days of youth, when a draught from 
 the next clear spring could slake any heats which 
 summer suns and youthful exercise had power to 
 stir up in the blood, how gladly would I return to 
 thee, pure element, the drink of children and of 
 child-like holy hermit ! In my dreams I can some- 
 times fancy thy cool refreshment purling over my 
 burning tongue. But my waking stomach rejects 
 it. That which refreshes innocence only makes me 
 sick and faint. 
 
 But is there no middle way betwixt total absti- 
 nence and the excess which kills you ? — For your
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 177 
 
 srJce, reader, and that you may never attain to my 
 experience, with pain I must utter the dreadful 
 truth, that tliere is none, none that I can find. In 
 my stage of habit, (I speali not of habits less con- 
 firmed — for some of them I believe the advice to 
 be most prudential) in the stage which I have 
 reached, to stop short of that measure which is 
 suflicient to draw on torpor and sleep, the be- 
 numbing apoplectic sleep of the drunkard, is to 
 have taken none at all. The pain of the self-de- 
 nial is all one. And what that is, I had rather the 
 reader should believe on my credit, than know 
 from his own trial. He will come to know it, 
 whenever he shall arrive in that state in which, 
 paradoxical as it may appear, reason shall otily visit 
 him through intoxication ; for it is a fearful truth, 
 that the intellectual faculties by repeated acts of 
 intemperance may be driven from their orderly 
 sphere of action, their clear daylight ministeries, 
 until they shall be brought at last to depend, for 
 the faint manifestation of their departing energies, 
 upon the returning periods of the fatal madness 
 to which they owe their devastation. The drink- 
 ing man is never less himself than during his sober 
 intervals. Evil is so far his good.' 
 
 Behold me then, in the robust period of life, re- 
 duced to imbecility and decay. Hear me count 
 my gains, and the profits which I have derived 
 from the midnight cup. 
 
 ' When poor M painted his last picture, with a pencil 
 
 in one trembling hand, and a glass of brandy and water in 
 the other, his fingers owed the comparative steadiness with 
 which they were enabled to go through their task in an 
 imperfect manner, to a temporary firmness derived from a 
 repetition of practices, the general effect of which had 
 shaken both them and him so terribly. 
 II N
 
 ijS LAST ESSAVS OF ELIA. 
 
 Twelve years ago, I was possessed of a healthy 
 frame of mind and body. I was never strong, but 
 I think my constitution (for a weak one) was as 
 happily exempt from the tendency to any malady 
 as it was possible to be. I scarce knew what it 
 was to ail anything. Now, except when I am 
 losing myself in a sea of drink, I am never free 
 from those uneasy sensations in head and stomach, 
 which are so much worse to bear than any definite 
 pains or aches. 
 
 At that time I was seldom in bed after six in the 
 morning, summer and winter. I awoke refreshed, 
 and seldom without some merry thoughts in my 
 head, or some piece of a song to welcome the new- 
 born day. Now, the first feeling which besets me, 
 after stretching out the hours of recumbence to 
 their last possible extent, is a forecast of the weari- 
 some day that lies before me, with a secret wish 
 that I could have lain on still, or never awaked. 
 
 Life itself, my waking life, has much of the con- 
 fusion, the trouble, and obscure perplexity, of an 
 ill dream. In the day-time I stumble upon dark 
 mountains. 
 
 Business, which, though never very particularly 
 adapted to my nature, yet as something of necessity 
 to be gone through, and therefore best undertaken 
 with cheerfulness, I used to enter upon with some 
 degree of alacrity, now wearies, affrights, perplexes 
 me. I fancy all sorts of discouragements, and am 
 ready to give up an occupation which gives me 
 bread, from a harassing conceit of incapacity. The 
 slightest commission given me by a friend, or any 
 small duty which I have to perfonn for myself, as 
 giving orders to a tradesman, &c., haunts me as a 
 labour impossible to be got through. So much 
 the springs of action are broken.
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 179 
 
 The same cowardice attends me in all my inter- 
 course with mankind. I dare not promise that a 
 friend's honour, or his cause, would be safe in my 
 keeping, if I were put to the expense of any manly 
 resolution in defending it. So much the springs 
 of moral action are deadened within me. 
 
 My favourite occupations in times past now 
 cease to entertain. I can do nothing readily. 
 Application for ever so short a time kills me. This 
 poor abstract of my condition was penned at long 
 intervals, with scarcely an attempt at connection 
 of thought, which is now difficult to me. 
 
 The noble passages which formerly delighted 
 me in history or poetic fiction now only draw a few 
 tears, allied to dotage. My broken and dispirited 
 nature seems to sink before anything great and ad- 
 mirable. 
 
 I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any cause, 
 or none. It is inexpressible how much this in- 
 firmity adds to a sense of shame, and a general 
 feeling of deterioration. 
 
 These are some of the instances, concerning 
 which I can say with truth, that it was not always 
 so with me. 
 
 Shall I lift up the veil of my weakness any 
 further ? — or is this disclosure sufficient ? 
 
 I am a poor nameless egotist, who have no vanity 
 to consult by these Confessions. I know not 
 whether I shall be laughed at, or heard seriously. 
 Such as they are, I commend them to the reader's 
 attention, if he find his own case any way touched. 
 I have told him what I am come to. Let him 
 stop in time.
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 
 
 I. — THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD. 
 
 [HIS axiom contains a principle of com- 
 pensation, which disposes us to admit 
 the truth of it. But there is no safe 
 trusting to dictionaries and definitions. 
 We should more willingly fall in with this popular 
 language, if we did not find brutality sometimes 
 awkwardly coupled with valour in the same vo- 
 cabulary. The comic writers, with their poetical 
 justice, have contributed not a little to mislead us 
 upon this point. To see a hectoring fellow ex- 
 posed and beaten upon the stage, has something 
 in it wonderfully diverting. Some people's share 
 of animal spirits is notoriously low and defective. 
 It has not strength to raise a vapour, or furnish out 
 '.he wind of a tolerable bluster. These love to be 
 told that huffing is no part of valour. The truest 
 courage with them is that which is the least noisy 
 and obtrusive. But confront one of these silent 
 heroes with the swaggerer of real life, and his con- 
 fidence in the theory quickly vanishes. Preten- 
 sions do not uniformly bespeak non-performance. 
 A modest, inoffensive deportment does not neces- 
 sarily imply valour ; neither does the absence of it
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. i8i 
 
 justify us in denying that quality. Hickman wanted 
 modesty — we do not mean him of Clarissa — but 
 who ever doubted his courage ? Even the poets — 
 upon whom this equitable distribution of qualities 
 should be most binding — have thought it agreeable 
 to nature to depart from the rule upon occasion. 
 Harapha, in the "Agonistes," is indeed a bully 
 upon the received notions. Milton has made him 
 at once a blusterer, a giant, and a dastard. But 
 Almanzor, in Dryden, talks of driving armies 
 singly before him — and does it. Tom Brown had 
 a shrewder insight into this kind of character than 
 either of his predecessors. He divides the palm 
 more equably, and allows his hero a sort of dimi- 
 diate pre-eminence: — "Bully Dawson kicked by 
 half the town, and half the town kicked by Bully 
 Dawson." This was true distributive justice. 
 
 II. — THAT ILL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS. 
 
 The weakest part of mankind have this saying 
 commonest in their mouth. It is the trite consola- 
 tion administered to the easy dupe, when he has 
 been tricked out of his money or estate, that the 
 acquisition of it will do the owner no good. But 
 the rogues of this world — the pmdenter part of 
 them at least,— know better; and if the observation 
 had been as true as it is old, would not have failed 
 by this time to have discovered it. They have 
 pretty sharp distinctions of the fluctuating and the 
 permanent. " Lightly come, lightly go, " is a pro- 
 verb which they can very well afford to leave, 
 when they leave little else, to the losers. They do 
 not always find manors, got by rapine or chicanery, 
 insensibly to melt away as the poets will have it ; 
 or that all gold glides, like thawing snow, from
 
 i82 LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 
 
 the thief's hand that grasps it. Church land, alie- 
 nated to lay uses, was formerly denounced to have 
 this slippery quality. But some portions of it some- 
 how always stuck so fast, that the denunciators 
 have been fain to postpone the prophecy of refund- 
 ment to a late posterity. 
 
 III. — THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS 
 OWN JEST. 
 
 TiiE severest exaction surely ever invented upon 
 the self-denial of poor human nature ! This is to 
 expect a gentleman to give a treat without par- 
 taking of it ; to sit esurient at his own table, and 
 commend the flavour of his venison upon the ab- 
 surd strength of his never touching it himself. On 
 the contrary, we love to see a wag taste his own 
 joke to his party ; to watch a quirk or a merry 
 conceit flickering upon the lips some seconds be- 
 fore the tongue is delivered of it. If it be good, 
 fresh, and racy — begotten of the occasion ; if he 
 that utters it never thought it before, he is naturally 
 the first to be tickled with it, and any suppression 
 of such complacence we hold to be churlish and 
 insulting. What does it seem to imply but that 
 your company is weak or foolish to be moved by 
 an image or a fancy that shall stir you not at all, or 
 but faintly? This is exactly the humour of the tine 
 gentleman in Mandeville, who, while he dazzles 
 his guests with the display of some costly toy, 
 affects himself to "see nothing considerable in it." 
 
 l\. — THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING. 
 — THAT IT IS EASY TO PERCEIVE HE IS NO 
 GENTLEMAN. 
 
 A SPEECH from the poorest .-^ort of people, which 
 always indicates that the party vituperated is a
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 183 
 
 gentleman. The veiy fact wliicli they deny, is 
 that which galls and exasperates them to use this 
 language. The forbearance with which it is usually 
 received is a proof what interpretation the by- 
 stander sets upon it. Of a kin to this, and still 
 less politic, are the phrases with which, in their 
 street rhetoric, they ply one another more grossly ; 
 — He is a poor creature. — He has not a rag to cover 
 , &^f.; though this last, we confess, is more fre- 
 quently applied by females to females. They do 
 not perceive that the satire glances upon them- 
 selves. A poor man, of all things in the world, 
 should not upbraid an antagonist with poverty. 
 Are there no other topics — as, to tell him his 
 father was hanged — his sister, &c. without ex- 
 posing a secret which should be kept snug between 
 them ; and doing an affront to the order to which 
 they have the honour equally to belong? All this 
 while they do not see how the wealthier man stands 
 by and laughs in his sleeve at both. 
 
 V. — THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF 
 THE RICH. 
 
 A SMOOTH text to the letter ; and, preached from 
 the pulpit, is sure of a docile audience from the 
 pews lined with satin. It is twice sitting upon 
 velvet to a foolish squire to be told that he — and 
 not perverse nature, as the homilies would make 
 us imagine, is the true cause of all the irregula- 
 rities in his parish. This is striking at the root of 
 free-will indeed, and denying the originality of sin 
 in any sense. But men are not such implicit sheep 
 as this comes to. If the abstinence from evil on 
 the part of the upper classes is to derive itself from 
 no higher principle than the apprehension of setting 
 ill patterns to the lower, we beg leave to discharge
 
 1% LAST ESSAVS OF ELI A. 
 
 them from all squeamishness on that score : they 
 may even take their fill of pleasures, where they 
 can find them. The Genius of Poverty, hampered 
 and straitened as it is, is not so barren of invention 
 but it can trade upon the staple of its own vice, 
 without drawing upon their capital. The poor are 
 not quite such sei'vile imitators as they take them 
 for. Some of them are very clever artists in their 
 way. Here and there, we find an original. Who 
 taught the poor to steal — to pilfer ? They did not 
 go to the great for schoolmasters in these faculties, 
 surely. It is well if in some vices they allow us to 
 be — no copyists. In no other sense is it true that 
 the poor copy them, than as servants may be said 
 to tal-e after their masters and mistresses when 
 they succeed to their reversionaiy cold meats. 
 If the master, from indisposition, or some other 
 cause, neglect his food, the servant dines notwith- 
 standing. 
 
 "O, but (some will say) the force of example is 
 gieat." We knew a lady who was so scrupulous 
 on this head that she would put up with the calls 
 of the most impertinent visitor, rather than let her 
 servant say she was not at home, for fear of teach- 
 ing her maid to tell an untruth; and this in the 
 very face of the fact, which she knew well enough, 
 that the wench was one of the greatest liars upon 
 the earth witliout teaching ; so much so, that her 
 mistress possibly never heard two words of conse- 
 cutive truth from her in her life. But nature must 
 go for nothing ; example must be everything. This 
 liar in grain, who never opened her mouth without 
 a lie, must be guarded against a remote inference, 
 which she (pretty casuist!) might possibly draw 
 from a form of words — ^literally false, but essen- 
 tially flcceiving no one — that under some circum-
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 185 
 
 stances a fib might not be so exceedingly sinful — 
 a fiction, too, not at all in her own way, or one 
 that she could be suspected of adopting, for few 
 servant-wenches care to be denied to visitors. 
 
 This word example reminds us of another fine 
 word which is in use upon these occasions — encou- 
 ragement. " People in our sphere must not be 
 thought to give encouragement to such proceed- 
 ings." To such a frantic height is this principle 
 capable of being carried, that we have known in- 
 dividuals who "have thought it within the scope of 
 their influence to sanction despair, and give eclat 
 to — suicide. A domestic in the family of a county 
 member lately deceased, from love, or some un- 
 known cause, cut his throat, but not successfully 
 The poor fellow was otherwise much loved and re- 
 spected ; and great interest was used in his behalf, 
 upon his recovery, that he might be permitted to 
 retain his place ; his word being first pledged, not 
 without some substantial sponsors to promise for 
 him, that the like should never happen again. His 
 master was inclinable to keep him, but his mistress 
 thought otherwise ; and John in the end was dis- 
 missed, her ladyship declaring that she "could 
 not think of encouraging any such doings in the 
 county. " 
 
 VI. — THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST. 
 
 Not a man, woman, or child, in ten miles round 
 Guildhall, who really believes this saying. The 
 inventor of it did not believe it himself. It was 
 made in revenge by somebody, who was disap- 
 pointed of a regale. It is a vile cold-scrag-of- 
 mutton sophism ; a lie palmed upon the palate, 
 which knows better things. If nothing else could 
 be said for a feast, this is sufficient — that from the
 
 i86 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 superflux there is usually something left for the 
 next day. Morally interpreted, it belongs to a 
 class of proverbs which have a tendency to make 
 us undervalue money. Of this cast are those no- 
 table observations, that money is not health ; riches 
 cannot purchase everything : the metaphor which 
 makes gold to be mere muck, with the morality 
 which traces fine clothing to the sheep's back, and 
 denounces pearl as the unhandsome excretion of 
 an oyster. Hence, too, the phrase which imputes 
 dirt to acres — a sophistry so barefaced, that even 
 the literal sense of it is true only in a wet season. 
 This, and abundance of similar sage saws assuming 
 to inculcate eontent, we verily believe to have been 
 the invention of some cunning boiTower, who had 
 designs upon the purse of his wealthier neighbour, 
 which he could only hope to carry by force of these 
 verbal jugglings. Translate any one of these say- 
 ings out of the artful metonymy which envelopes 
 it, and the trick is apparent. Goodly legs and 
 shoulders of mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, 
 pictures, the opportunities of seeing foreign coun- 
 tries, independence, heart's ease, a man's own time 
 to himself, are not 77iuck — however we may be 
 pleased to scandalize with that appellation the 
 faithful metal that provides them for us. 
 
 Vn. — OF TWO DISPUTANTS, THE WARMEST IS 
 GENERALLY IN THE WRONG. 
 
 Our experience would lead us to quite an oppo- 
 site conclusion. Temper, indeed, is no test of 
 truth ; but warmth and earnestness are a proof at 
 least of a man's ovrn conviction of the rectitude of 
 that which he maintains. Coolness is as often the 
 result of an unprincipled indifference to truth or
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. iS', 
 
 falsehood, as of a sober confidence in a man's own 
 side in a dispute. Nothing is more insulting some- 
 times than the appearance of this philosophic tem- 
 per. There is little Titubus, the stammering law- 
 stationer in Lincoln's Inn— we have seldom known 
 this shrewd little fellow engaged in an argument 
 where we were not convinced he had the best of 
 it, if his tongue would but fairly have seconded 
 him. When he has been spluttering excellent 
 broken sense for an hour together, writhing and 
 labouring to be delivered of the point of dispute — 
 the very gist of the controversy knocking at his 
 teeth, which, like some obstinate iron-grating, still 
 obstructed its deliverance — his puny frame con- 
 vulsed, and face reddening all over at an unfairness 
 in the logic which he wanted articulation to ex- 
 pose, it has moved our gall to see a smooth portly 
 fellow of an adversary, that cared not a button for 
 the merits of the question, by merely laying his 
 hand upon the head of the stationer, and desiring 
 him to be calm (your tall disputants have always 
 the advantage), with a provoking sneer carry the 
 argument clean from him in the opinion of all the 
 bystanders, who have gone away clearly convinced 
 that Titubus must have been in the wrong, be- 
 cause he was in a passion; and that Mr. , 
 
 meaning his opponent, is one of the fairest and at 
 f he same time one of the most dispassionate arguers 
 breathing. 
 
 VIII. — THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, 
 BECAUSE THEY WILL NOT BEAR A TRANSLA- 
 TION. 
 
 The same might be said of the wittiest local al- 
 lusions.   A custom is sometimes as difficult to e.x-
 
 iS8 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 plain to a foreigner as a pun. What would become 
 of a great part of the wit of the last age, if it were 
 tried by this test ? How would certain topics, as 
 aldemianity, cuckoldry, have sounded to a Teren- 
 tian auditory, though Terence himself had been 
 alive to translate them ? Senator tirbanus witTi 
 Curruca to boot for a synonym, would but faintly 
 have done the business. Words, involving notions, 
 are hard enough to render ; it is too much to ex- 
 pect us to translate a sound, and give an elegant 
 version to a jingle. The Virgilian harmony is not 
 translatable, but by substituting harmonious sounds 
 in another language for it. To Latinize a pun, we 
 must seek a pun in Latin that will answer to it ; 
 as, to give an idea of the double endings in Hudi- 
 bras, we must have recourse to a similar practice 
 in old monkish doggrel. Dennis, the fiercest op- 
 pugner of puns in ancient or modern times, pro- 
 fesses himself highly tickled with the "a stick," 
 chiming to "ecclesiastic." Yet what is this but a 
 species of pun, a verbal consonance ? 
 
 IX. — THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST. 
 
 If by worst be only meant the most far-fetched 
 and startling, we agree to it. A pun is not bound 
 by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol 
 let off at the ear ; not a feather to tickle the intel- 
 lect. It is an antic which does not stand upon 
 manners, but comes bounding into the presence, 
 and does not show the less comic for being dragged 
 in sometimes by the head and shoulders. What 
 though it limp a little, or prove defective in one 
 leg ? — all the better. A pun may easily be too 
 curious and artificial. Who has not at one time or 
 other been at a party of professors (himself perhaps
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 189 
 
 an old offender in that line), where, after ringing 
 a round of the most ingenious conceits, every man 
 contributing his shot, and some there the most ex- 
 pert shooters of the day ; after making a poor word 
 run the gauntlet till it is ready to drop ; after hunt- 
 ing and winding it through all the possible ambages 
 of similar sounds ; after squeezing, and hauling, 
 and tugging at it, till the veiy milk of it will not 
 yield a drop further, — suddenly some obscure, un- 
 thought-of fellow in a corner, who was never 'pren- 
 tice to the trade, whom the company for ver)' pity 
 passed over, as we do by a known poor man when 
 a money-subscription is going round, no one calling 
 upon him for his quota — has all at once come out 
 with something so whimsical, yet so pertinent; so 
 brazen in its pretensions, yet so impossible to be 
 denied ; so exquisitely good, and so deplorably 
 bad, at the same time, — that it has proved a Robm 
 Hood's shot; anything ulterior to that is despaired 
 of; and the party breaks up, unanimously voting it 
 to be the very worst (that is, best) pun of the even- 
 ing. This species of wit is the better for not being 
 perfect in all its parts. What it gains in com- 
 pleteness, it loses in naturalness. The more ex- 
 actly it satisfies the critical, the less hold it has 
 upon some other faculties. The puns which are 
 most entertaining are those which will least bear 
 an analysis. Of this kind is the following, recorded 
 with a sort of stigma, in one of Swift's Miscel- 
 lanies. 
 
 An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was 
 carrying a hare through the streets, accosts him 
 with this extraordinary question : " Prithee, friend, 
 is that thy own hair or a wig?" 
 
 There is no excusing this, and no resisting it. 
 A man might blur ten sides of paper in attempting
 
 ISO LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 a defence of it against a critic who should be laugh- 
 ter-proof. The quibble in itself is not considerable. 
 It is only a new turn given by a little false pro- 
 nunciation to a very common though not very 
 courteous inquiry. Put by one gentleman to an- 
 other at a dinner-party, it would have been vapid ; 
 to the mistress of the house, it would have shown 
 much less wit than rudeness. We must take in 
 the totality of time, place, and person ; the pert 
 look of the inquiring scholar, the desponding looks 
 of the puzzled porter : the one stopping at leisure, 
 the other hurrying on with his burden ; the inno- 
 cent though rather abnipt tendency of the first 
 member of the question, with the utter and inex- 
 tricable irrelevancy of the second; the place — a 
 public street, not favourable to frivolous investi- 
 gations ; the affrontive quality of the primitive in- 
 quiry (the common question) invidiously trans- 
 ferred to the derivative (the new turn given to it) 
 in the implied satire; namely, that few of that 
 tribe are expected to eat of the good things which 
 they carry, they being in most countries considered 
 rather as the temporary trustees than owners of 
 such dainties, — which the fellow was beginning to 
 understand ; but then the img again comes in, and 
 he can make nothing of it ; all put together con- 
 stitute a picture : Hogarth could have made it in- 
 telligible on canvas. 
 
 Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this a 
 very bad pun, because of the defectiveness in the 
 concluding member, which is its very beauty, and 
 constitutes the-surprise. The same person shall cry 
 up for admirable the old quibble from Virgil about 
 the broken Cremona ;' because it is made out in 
 
 ' Swift.
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 191 
 
 all its parts, and leaves nothing to the imagination. 
 We venture to call it cold ; because, of thousands 
 Tvho have admired it, it would be difficult to find 
 one who has heartily chuckled at it. As appealing 
 to the judgment merely (setting the risible faculty 
 aside), we must pronounce it a monument of curious 
 felicity. But as some stories are said to be too good 
 to be true, it may with equal truth be asserted of 
 this biverbal allusion, that it is too good to be 
 natural. One cannot help suspecting that the 
 incident was invented to fit the line. It would 
 have been better had it been less perfect. Like 
 some Virgilian hemistichs, it has suffered by filling 
 up. The nijnium Vicina was enough in conscience ; 
 the Cremona afterwards loads it. It is, in fact, a 
 double pun ; and we have always observed that a 
 superfcetation in this sort of wit is dangerous. When 
 a man has said a good thing, it is seldom politic to 
 follow it up. We do not care to be cheated a 
 second time ; or, perhaps the mind of man (with 
 reverence be it spoken) is not capacious enough to 
 lodge two puns at a time. The impression, to be 
 forcible, must be simultaneous and undivided. 
 
 X. — THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOE^. 
 
 Those who use this proverb can never have seen 
 Mrs. Conrady. 
 
 The soul, *f we may believe Plotinus, is a ray 
 from the celestial beauty. As she partakes more 
 or less of this heavenly light, she informs, with 
 corresponding characters, the fleshly tenement which 
 she chooses, and frames to herself a suitable mansion. 
 
 All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. 
 Conrady, in her pre-existent state, was no great 
 judge of architecture.
 
 irj2 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 To the same effect, in a Hymn in honour of 
 Beauty, divine Spenser plaioniaing sings : — 
 
 Every spirit as it is more pure, 
 
 And hath in it the more of heavenly Hght, 
 So it the fairer body doth procure 
 To habit in, end it more fairly dight 
 With cheerlul face and amiable sight. 
 For of the soul the body form doth take : 
 For soul is form, and doth the body make. 
 
 But Spenser, it is clear, never saw Mrs. Conrady. 
 
 These poets, vv'e find, are no safe guides in 
 philosophy ; for here, in his very next stanza but 
 one, is a saving clause, which throws us all out 
 again, and leaves us as much to seek as ever : — 
 
 Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind 
 Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd, 
 Either by chance, against the course of kind. 
 Or through unaptness in the substance found, 
 Which it assumed of some stubborn ground, 
 That virill not yield unto her form's direction. 
 But is performed with some foul imperfection. 
 
 From which it would follow, that Spenser had seen 
 somebody like Mrs. Conrady. 
 
 The spirit of this good lady — her previous anima 
 — must have stumbled upon one of these untoward 
 tabernacles which he speaks of. A more rebellious 
 commodity of clay for aground, as the poet calls it, 
 no gentle mind — and sure hers is one of the gentlest 
 — ever had to deal with. 
 
 Pondering upon her inexplicable visage — inex- 
 plicable, we mean, but by this modification of the 
 theory — we have come to a conclusion that, if one 
 must be plain, it is better to be plain all over, than 
 amidst a tolerable residue of features to hang out 
 one that shall be exceptionable. No one can say 
 of Mrs. Conrady's countenance that it would be
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 193 
 
 Letter if she had but a nose. It is impossible to 
 pull her to pieces in this manner. We have seen 
 the most malicious beauties of her own sex baffled 
 in the attempt at a selection. The tout-ensemble 
 defies particularizing. It is too complete — too con- 
 sistent, as we may say — to admit of these invidious 
 reservations. It is not as if some Apelles had picked 
 out here a lip — and there a chin — out of the col- 
 lected ugliness of Greece, to frame a model by. It 
 is a symmetrical whole. We challenge the minutest 
 connoisseur to cavil at any part or parcel of the 
 countenance in question : to say that this, or that, 
 is improperly placed. We are convinced that true 
 ugliness, no less than is affirmed of true beauty, 
 is the result of harmony. Like that, too, it reigns 
 without a competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. 
 Conrady without pronouncing her to be the plainest 
 woman that he ever met with in the course of his 
 life. The first time that you are indulged with a 
 sight of her face, is an era in your existence ever 
 after. You are glad to have seen it — like Stone- 
 henge. No one can pretend to forget it. No one 
 ever apologized to her for meeting her in the street 
 on such a day and not knowing her : the pretext 
 would be too bare. Nobody can mistake her for 
 another. Nobody can say of her, "I think I have 
 seen that face somewhere, but I cannot call to mind 
 where." You must remember that in such a parlour 
 it first struck you — like a bust. You wondered where 
 the owner of the house had picked it up. You won- 
 dered more when it began to move its lips — so 
 mildly too ! No one ever thought of asking her to sit 
 for her picture. Lockets are for remembrance ; and 
 it would be clearly superfluous to hang an image at 
 your heart, which, once seen, can never be out of 
 it. It is not a mean face either ; its entire originality 
 II. o
 
 194 
 
 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 precludes that. Neither is it of that order of plain 
 faces which improve upon acquaintance. Some very 
 good but ordinary people, by an unwearied perse- 
 verance in good offices, put a cheat upon our eyes ; 
 juggle our senses out of their natural impressions ; 
 and set us upon discovering good indications in a 
 countenance, which at first sight promised nothing 
 less. We detect gentleness, which had escaped us, 
 lurking about an under lip. But when Mrs. Conrady 
 has done you a service, her face remains the same ; 
 when she has done you a thousand, and you know 
 that she is ready to' double the number, still it is 
 that individual face. Neither can you say of it, that 
 it v/ould be a good face if it were not marked by 
 the small-pox — a compliment which is always more 
 admissive than excusatory— for either Mrs. Conrady 
 never had the small-pox ; or, as we say, took it 
 kindly. No, it stands upon its own merits fairly. 
 There it is. It is her mark, her token ; that which 
 she is known by. 
 
 XI. — THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT HORSE 
 IN THE MOUTH : 
 
 Nor a lady's age in the parish register. We hope 
 we have more delicacy than to do either ; but some 
 faces spare us the trouble of these dental inquiries. 
 And what if the beast, which my friend would force 
 upon my acceptance, prove, upon the face of it, a 
 sorry Rosinante, a lean, ill-favoured jade, whom no 
 gentleman could think of setting up in his stables ? 
 Must I, rather than not be obliged to my friend, 
 make her a companion to Eclipse or Lightfoot ? A 
 horse-giver, no more than a horse-seller, has a right 
 to palm his spavined article upon us for good ware. 
 An equivalent is expected in either case ; and, with
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 195 
 
 my own good-will, I could no more be cheated out 
 of my thanks than out of my money. Some people 
 have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real 
 value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We 
 thank them for nothing. Our friend Mitis carries 
 this humour of never refusing a present to the veiy 
 point of absurdity — if it were possible to couple the 
 ridiculous with so much mistaken delicacy and real 
 good-nature. Not an apartment in his fine house 
 (and he has a true taste in household decorations), 
 but is stuffed up with some preposterous print or 
 mirror— the worst adapted to his panels that may be 
 — the presents of his friends that know his weakness ; 
 while his noble Vandykes are displaced to make 
 room for a set of daubs, the work of some wretched 
 artist of his acquaintance, who, having had them 
 returned upon his hands for bad likenesses, finds 
 his account in bestowing them here gratis. The 
 good creature has not the heart to mortify the 
 painter at the expense of an honest refusal. It is 
 pleasant (if it did not vex one at the same time) to 
 see him sitting in his dining parlour, surrounded 
 with obscure aunts and cousins to God knows whom, 
 while the trae Lady Marys and Lady Bettys of his 
 own honourable family, in favour to these adopted 
 frights, are consigned to the staircase and the lum- 
 ber room. In like manner, his goodly shelves are 
 one by one stripped of his favourite old authors, to 
 give place to a collection of presentation copies — 
 the flour and bran of modern poetry. A presenta- 
 tion copy, reader — if haply you are yet innocent of 
 such favours — is a copy of a book which does not 
 sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish auto- 
 graph at the beginning of it ; for which, if a stran- 
 ger, he only demands your friendship ; if a brother 
 author, he expects from you a book of yours, which
 
 196 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 does sell, in return. We can speak to experience, 
 having by us a tolerable assortment of these gift- 
 horses. Not to ride a metaphor to death — we are 
 willing to acknowledge, that in some gifts there is 
 sense. A duplicate out of a friend's library (where 
 he has more than one copy of a rare author) is in- 
 telligible. There are favours, short of the pecuniary 
 — a thing not fit to be hinted at among gentlemen— 
 which confer as much grace upon the acceptor as 
 the offerer ; the kind, we confess, which is most to 
 our palate, is of those little conciliatory missives, 
 which for their vehicle generally choose a hamper 
 — little odd presents of game, fruit, perhaps wine- 
 though it is essential to the delicacy of the latter, 
 that it be home-made. We love to have our friend 
 in the country sitting thus at our table by proxy ; 
 to apprehend his presence (though a hundred miles 
 may be between us) by a turkey, whose goodly 
 aspect reflects to us his " plump corpusculum ; " to 
 taste him in grouse or woodcock ; to feel him 
 gliding down in the toast peculiar to the latter ; to 
 concorporate him in a slice of Canterbury brawn. 
 This is indeed to have him within ourselves ; to 
 know him intimately : such participation is me- 
 thinks unitive, as the old theologians phrase it. 
 For these considerations we should be sorry if 
 certain restrictive regulations, which are thought to 
 bear hard upon the peasantry of this country, were 
 entirely done away with. A hare, as the law now 
 stands, makes many friends. Caius conciliates 
 Titius (knovidng hhgoUt) with a leash of partridges. 
 Titius (suspecting his partiality for them) passes 
 them to Lucius ; who, in his turn, preferring his 
 friend's relish to his own, makes them over to 
 Marcius ; till in their ever-widening progress, and 
 round of unconscious circum-migration, they dis-
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 197 
 
 tribute the seeds of harmony over half a parish. 
 We are well-disposed to this kind of sensible re- 
 membrances ; and are the less apt to be taken by 
 those little airy tokens— impalpable to the palate — 
 which, under the names of rings, lockets, keep- 
 sakes, amuse some people's fancy mightily. We 
 could never away with these indigestible trifles. 
 They are the very kickshaws and foppery of friend- 
 ship. 
 
 XII. — THAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS NEVER 
 SO HOMELY. 
 
 Homes there are, we are sure, that are no homes ; 
 the home of the very poor man, and another which 
 we shall speak to presently. Crowded places of 
 cheap entertainment, and the benches of alehouses, 
 if they could speak, might bear mournful testimony 
 to the first. To them the very poor man resorts 
 for an image of the home which he cannot find at 
 home. For a starved grate, and a scanty firing, 
 that is not enough to keep alive the natural heat 
 in the fingers of so many shivering children with 
 iheir mother, he finds in the depths of winter 
 always a blazing hearth, and a hob to warm his 
 pittance of beer by. Instead of the clamours of a 
 wife, made gaunt by famishing, he meets with a 
 cheerful attendance beyond the merits of the trifle 
 which he can afford to spend. He has companions 
 which his home denies him, for the very poor man 
 has no visitors. He can look into the goings on 
 of the world, and speak a little to politics. At 
 home there are no politics stirring, but the do- 
 mestic. All interests, real or imaginary, all topics 
 that should expand the mind of man, and connect 
 him to a sympathy with general existence, aie
 
 igS, LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 crushed in the absorbing consideration of food to 
 be obtained for the family. Beyond the price of 
 bread, news is senseless and impertinent. At home 
 there is no larder. Here there is at least a show 
 of plenty ; and while he cooks his lean scrap of 
 butcher's meat before the common bars, or munches 
 his humbler cold viands, his relishing bread and 
 cheese with an onion, in a corner, where no one 
 reflects upon his poverty, he has a sight of the 
 substantial joint providing for the landlord and his 
 family. He takes an interest in the dressing of it ; 
 and while he assists in removing the trivet from the 
 fire, he feels that there is such a thing as beef and 
 cabbage, which he was beginning to forget at home. 
 All this while he deserts his wife and children. 
 But what wife, and what children ! Prosperous 
 men, who object to this desertion, image to them- 
 selves some clean contented family like that which 
 they go home to. But look at the countenance of 
 the poor wives who follow and persecute their good- 
 man to the door of the public-house, which he is 
 about to enter, when something like shame would 
 restrain him, if stronger misery did not induce 
 him to pass the threshold. That face, ground by 
 want, in which every cheerful, every conversable 
 lineament has been long effaced by misery — is that 
 a face to stay at home with ? is it more a woman, 
 or a wild cat? alasl it is the face of the wife of his 
 youth, that once smiled upon him. It can smile 
 no longer. What comforts can it share? what 
 burthens can it lighten ? Oh, 'tis a fine thing to 
 talk of the humble meal shared together ! But 
 what if there be no bread in the cupboard ? The 
 innocent ]:> rattle of his children takes out the sting 
 of a man's poverty. But the children of the very 
 poor do not prattle. It is none of the least frightful
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 199 
 
 , features in that condition, that there is no childish- 
 ness in its dwellings. Poor people, said a sensible 
 old nurse to us once, do not bring up their children ; 
 they drag them up. 
 
 The little careless darling of the wealthier nursery, 
 in their hovel is transfonned betimes into a prema- 
 ture reflecting person. No one has time to dandle 
 it, no one thinks it worth while to coax it, to soothe 
 it, to toss it up and down, to humour it. There is 
 none to kiss away its tears. If it cries, it can only 
 be, beaten. It has been prettily said, that "a babe 
 is fed with milk and praise." But the aliment of 
 this poor babe was thin, unnourishing ; the return 
 to its little baby-tricks, and efforts to engage at- 
 tention, bitter ceaseless objurgation. It never had 
 a toy, or knew what a coral meant. It grew up 
 without the lullaby of nurses, it was a stranger to 
 the patient fondle, the hushing caress, the attract- 
 ing novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper 
 off-hand contrivance to divert the child ; the prat- 
 tled nonsense (best sense to it), the wise imperti- 
 nences, the wholesome lies, the apt story inter- 
 posed, that puts a stop to present sufferings, and 
 awakens the passions of young wonder. It was 
 never sung to — no one ever told to it a tale of the 
 nursery. It was dragged up, to live or to die as it 
 happened. It had no young dreams. It broke at 
 once into the iron realities of life. A child exists 
 not for the very poor as any object of dalliance ; it 
 is only another mouth to be fed, a pair of little 
 hands to be betimes inured to labour. It is the 
 rival, till it can be the co-operator, for food with 
 the parent. It is never his mirth, his diversion, 
 his solace : it never makes hira young again, with 
 recalling his young times. The cliildren of the 
 very poor have no young times. It makes the
 
 joo LAST ESSAYS OF EL I A. 
 
 very heart to bleed to overhear the casual street- 
 talk between a poor woman and her little girl, a 
 woman of the better sort of poor, in a condition 
 rather above the squalid beings which we have 
 been contemplating. It is not of toj's, of nursery 
 books, of summer holidays (fitting that age) ; of the 
 promised sight, or play ; of praised sufficiency at 
 school. It is of mangling and clear-starching, of 
 the price of coals, or of potatoes. The questions 
 of the child, that should be the very outpourings 
 of curiosity in idleness, are marked with forecast 
 and melancholy providence. It has come to be a 
 woman, — before it was a child. It has learned to 
 go to market ; it chaffers, it haggles, it envies, it 
 murmurs ; it is knowing, acute, sharpened ; it never 
 prattles. Had we not reason to say that the home 
 of the very poor is no home ? 
 
 There is yet another home, which we are con- 
 strained to deny to be one. It has a larder, which 
 the home of the poor man wants ; its fireside con- 
 veniences, of which the poor dream not. But with 
 all this, it is no home. It is — the house of a man 
 that is infested with many visitors. May we be 
 branded for the veriest churl, if we deny our heart 
 to the many noble-hearted friends that at times 
 exchange their dwelling for our poor roof ! It is 
 not of guests that we complain, but of endless, 
 purposeless visitants ; droppers-in, as they are 
 called. We sometimes wonder from what sky 
 they fall. It is the very error of the position of 
 our lodging ; its horoscopy was ill calculated, 
 being just situate in a medium — a plaguy suburban 
 mid-space — fitted to catch idlers from town or 
 country. We are older than we were, and age is 
 easily put out of its way. We have fewer sands 
 in our glass to reckon upon, and we cannot brook
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 201 
 
 to see them drop in endlessly succeeding imper- 
 tinences. At our time of life, to be alone some- 
 times is as needful as sleep. It is the refreshing 
 sleep of the day. The growing infirmities of age 
 manifest themselves in nothing more strongly than 
 in an inveterate dislike of interruption. The thing 
 which we are doing, we wish to be permitted to 
 do. We have neither much knowledge nor de- 
 vices; but there are fewer in the place to which 
 we hasten. We are not willingly put out of our 
 way, even at a game of nine-pins. While youth 
 was, we had vast reversions in time future ; we are 
 reduced to a present pittance, and obliged to 
 economize in that article. We bleed away our 
 moments now as hardly as our ducats. We cannot 
 bear to have our thin wardrobe eaten and fretted 
 into by moths. We are willing to barter our good 
 time with a friend, who gives us in exchange his 
 own. Herein is the distinction between the genuine 
 guest and the visitant. This latter takes your good 
 time, and gives you his bad in exchange. The 
 guest is domestic to you as your good cat, or house- 
 hold bird ; the visitant is your fly, that flaps in at 
 your window and out again, leaving nothing but 
 a sense of disturbance, and victuals spoiled. The 
 inferior functions of life begin to move heavily. 
 We cannot concoct our food with interruptions. 
 Our chief meal, to be nutritive, must be solitary. 
 With difficulty we can eat before a guest ; and 
 never understood what the relish of public feasting 
 meant. Meats have no sapor, nor digestion fair 
 play in a crowd. The unexpected coming in of a 
 visitant stops the machine. There is a punctual 
 generation who time their calls to the precise com- 
 mencement of your dining-hour — not to eat — but 
 to see you eat. Our knife and fork drop instinc-
 
 3r« LAST £SSAyS OF ELI A. 
 
 lively, and we feel that we have swallowed our 
 latest morsel. Others again show their genius, as 
 we have said, in knocking the moment you have 
 just sat down to a book. They have a peculiar 
 compassionate sneer, with which they " hope that 
 they do not interrupt yoiu" studies." Though they 
 flutter off the next moment, to carry their imper- 
 tinences to the nearest student that they can call 
 their friend, the tone of the book is spoiled ; we 
 shut the leaves, and with Dante's lovers, read no 
 more that day. It were well if the effect of in- 
 trusion were simply co-extensive with its presence, 
 but it mars all the good hours afterwards. These 
 scratches in appearance leave an orifice that closes 
 not hastily. "It is a prostitution of the bravery 
 of friendship," says worthy Bishop Taylor, "to 
 spend it upon impertinent people, who are, it may 
 be, loads to their families, but can never ease my 
 loads." This is the secret of their gaddings, their 
 visits, and morning calls. They too have homes, 
 which are — no homes. 
 
 Xin. — THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME AND LOVE 
 MY DOG. 
 
 "Good sir, or madam — as it may be — we most 
 willingly embrace the offer of your friendship. We 
 have long kno\v'ii your excellent qualities. We 
 have wished to have you nearer to us ; to hold you 
 within the very innermost fold of our heart. We 
 can have no reserve towards a person of your open 
 and noble nature. The frankness of j'our humour 
 suits us exactly. We have been long looking for 
 such a friend. Quick — let us disburthen our trou- 
 bles into each other's bosom— let us make our 
 single joys shine by reduplication. — But_>'(z/, yap.
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 203 
 
 yap! what is this confounded cur? he has fastened 
 his tooth, which is none of the bluntest, just in the 
 fleshy part of my leg. " 
 
 " It is my dog, sir. You must love him for my 
 sake. Here, Test— Test— Test !" 
 
 " But he has bitten me." 
 
 " Ay, that he is apt to do, till you are better 
 acquainted with him. I have had him three years. 
 He never bites me." 
 
 Yap, yap, yap! — " He is at it again." 
 
 "Oh, sir, you must not kick him. He does not 
 like to be kicked. I expect my dog to be treated 
 with all the respect due to myself." 
 
 "But do you always take him out with you, 
 when you go a friendship-hunting ?" 
 
 " Invariably. 'Tis the sweetest, prettiest, best- 
 conditioned animal, I call him my test — the touch- 
 stone by which to try a friend. No one can pro- 
 perly be said to love me, who does not love him." 
 
 "Excuse us, dear sir — or madam, aforesaid — if 
 upon further consideration we are obliged to de- 
 cline the otherwise invaluable offer of your friend- 
 ship. We do not like dogs." 
 
 " Mighty well, sir, — you know the conditions — 
 you may have worse offers. Come along. Test." 
 
 The above dialogue is not so imaginary, but 
 that, in the intercourse of life, we have had fre- 
 quent occasions of breaking off an agreeable inti- 
 macy by reason of these canine appendages. They 
 do not always come in the shape of dogs ; they 
 sometimes wear the more plausible and human 
 character of kinsfolk, near acquaintances, my 
 friend's friend, his partner, his wife, or his children. 
 We could never yet form a friendship — not to 
 speak of more delicate correspondence — however 
 much to our taste, without the intervention of some
 
 204 LAST ESSAVS OF ELI A. 
 
 third anomaly, some impertinent clog affixed to 
 the relation — the understood dog in the proverb. 
 The good things of life are not to be had singly, 
 but come to us with a mixture; like a school-boy's 
 holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it. What 
 a delightful companion is * * * *, if he did not 
 always bring his tall cousin with him ! He seems 
 to grow with him; like some of those double 
 births which we remember to have read of with 
 such wonder and delight in the old " Athenian 
 Oracle," where Swift commenced author by writing 
 Pindaric Odes (what a beginning for him !) upon 
 Sir William Temple. There is the picture of the 
 brother, with the little brother peeping out at his 
 shoulder; a species of fraternity, which we have 
 no name of kin close enough to comprehend; When 
 * * * * comes, poking in his head and shoulder 
 into your room, as if to feel his entiy, you think, 
 surely you have now got him to yourself — what a 
 three hours' chat we shall have ! But ever in the 
 haunch of him, and before his diffident body is 
 well disclosed in your apartment, appears the 
 haunting shadow of the cousin, overpeering his 
 modest kinsman, and sure to overlay the expected 
 good talk with his insufferable procerity of stature, 
 and uncorresponding dwarfishness of observation. 
 Misfortunes seldom come alone. 'Tis hard when 
 a blessing comes accompanied. Cannot we like 
 Sempronia, without sitting down to chess with her 
 eternal brother ; or know Sulpicia, without know- 
 ing all the round of her card-playing relations ?— 
 must my friend's brethren of necessity be mine 
 also ? must we be hand and glove with Dick Selby 
 the parson, or Jack Selby the calico-printer, be- 
 cause W. S., who is neither, but a ripe wit and a 
 critic, has the misfortune to claim a common
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 205 
 
 parentage with them ? Let him lay down his 
 brothers ; and 'tis odds but we will cast him in a 
 pair of ours (we have a superflux) to balance the 
 concession. Let F. H. lay down his garrulous 
 uncle ; and Honorius dismiss his vapid wife, and 
 superfluous establishment of six boys : things be- 
 tween boy and manhood — too ripe for play, too 
 raw for conversation — that come in, impudently 
 staring his father's old friend out of countenance ; 
 and will neither aid nor let alone, the conference ; 
 that we may once more meet upon equal terms, as 
 we were wont to do in the disengaged state of 
 baclielorhood. 
 
 It is well if your friend, or mistress, be content 
 with these canicular probations. Few young ladies 
 but in this sense keep a dog. But when Rutilia 
 hounds at you her tiger aunt ; or Ruspina expects 
 you to cherish and fondle her viper sister, whom 
 she has preposterously taken into her bosom, to 
 try stinging conclusions upon your constancy ; they 
 must not complain if the house be rather thin of 
 suitors. Scylla must have broken off many excel- 
 lent matches in her time, if she insisted upon all 
 that loved her loving her dogs also. 
 
 An excellent story to this moral is told of Merry, 
 of Delia Cruscan memory. In tender youth he 
 loved and courted a modest appanage to the Opera 
 — in truth, a dancer — who had won him by the 
 artless contrast between her manners and situation. 
 She seemed to him a native violet, that had been 
 transplanted by some rude accident into that exotic 
 and artificial hotbed. Nor, in truth, was she less 
 genuine and sincere than she appeared to hun. 
 He wooed and won this flower. Only for appear- 
 ance sake, and for due honour to the bride's rela- 
 tions, she craved that she might have the atten-
 
 2o6 LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 
 
 dance of her friends and kindred at the approaching 
 solemnity. The request was too amiable not to 
 be conceded ; and in this solicitude for conciliat- 
 ing the good-will of mere relations, he found a 
 presage of her superior attentions to himself, when 
 the golden shaft should have "killed the flock of 
 all affections else." The morning came : and at the 
 Star and Garter, Richmond — the place appointed 
 for the breakfasting — accompanied with one Eng- 
 lish friend, he impatiently awaited what reinforce- 
 ments the bride should bring to grace the ceremony. 
 A rich muster she had made. They came in six 
 coaches — the whole corps du ballet — French, Ita- 
 lian, men and women. Monsieur de B., the fa- 
 mous piroiietter of the day, led his fair spouse, but 
 craggy, from the banks of the Seine. The Prima 
 Donna had sent her excuse. But the first and se- 
 cond Buffa were there; and Signor Sc , and 
 
 Signora Ch , and Madame V , with a count- 
 less cavalcade besides of chorusers, figurantes ! at 
 the sight of whom Merry afterwards declared, that 
 ' ' then for the first time it struck him seriously, 
 that he was about to marry — a dancer. " But there 
 was no help for it. Besides, it was her day ; these 
 were, in fact, her friends and kinsfolk. The as- 
 semblage, though whimsical, was all very natural. 
 But when the bride — handing out of the last coach 
 a still more extraordinary figure than the rest —   
 presented to him as h.tx father — the gentleman that 
 was to give her away — no less a person than Signor 
 Delpini himself— with a sort of pride, as much as 
 to say. See what I have brought to do us honour ! 
 — the thought of so extraordinary a paternity quite 
 overcame him ; and slipping away under some pre- 
 tence from the bride and her motley adherents, 
 poor Merry took horse from the back-yard to the
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 207 
 
 nearest sea-coast, from which, shipping himself to 
 America, he shortly after consoled himself with a 
 more congenial match in the person of Miss Brunton; 
 relieved from his intended clown father, and a bevy 
 of painted buflas for bridemaids. 
 
 XIV. — THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE 
 LARK. 
 
 At what precise minute that little airy musician 
 doffs his night gear, and prepares to tune up his 
 unseasonable matins, we are not naturalist enough 
 to determine. But for a mere human gentleman — 
 that has no orchestra business to call him from his 
 warm bed to such preposterous exercises^we take 
 ten, or half after ten (eleven, of course, during this 
 Christmas solstice), to be the very earliest hour at 
 which he can begin to think of abandoning his pil- 
 low. To think of it, we say ; for to do it in earnest 
 requires another half hour's good consideration. 
 Not but there are pretty sun-risings, as we are 
 told, and such like gawds, abroad in the world, in 
 summer-time especially, some hours before what 
 we have assigned ; which a gentleman may see, as 
 they say, only for getting up. But having been 
 tempted once or twice, in earlier life, to assist at 
 those ceremonies, we confess our curiosity abated. 
 We are no longer ambitious of being the sun's 
 courtiers, to attend at his morning levees. We 
 hold the good hours of the dawn too sacred to 
 waste them upon such observances ; which have in 
 them, besides, something Pagan and Persic. To 
 say truth, we never anticipated our usual hour, or 
 got up with the sun (as 'tis called), to go a journey, 
 or upon a foolish whole day's pleasuring, but we 
 suffered for it all the long hours after in listless-
 
 2o8 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 ness and headaches ; Nature herself sufficiently de- 
 claring her sense of our presumption in aspiring to 
 regulate our frail waking courses by the measures 
 of that celestial and sleepless traveller. We deny 
 not that there is something sprightly and vigorous, 
 at the outset especially, in these break-of-day ex- 
 cursions. It is flattering to get the start of a lazy 
 world ; to conquer Death by proxy in his image. 
 But the seeds of sleep and mortality are in us ; and 
 we pay usually, in strange qualms before night falls, 
 the penalty of the unnatural inversion. Therefore, 
 while the busy part of mankind are fast huddling 
 on their clothes, are already up and about their 
 occupations, content to have swallowed their sleep 
 by wholesale ; we choose to linger a-bed and digest 
 our dreams. It is the very time to recombine the 
 wandering images which night in a confused mass 
 presented ; to snatch them from forgetfulness ; to 
 shape and mould them. Some people have no 
 good of their dreams. Like fast feeders, they gulp 
 them too grossly, to taste them curiously. We love 
 to chew the cud of a foregone vision ; to collect the 
 scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over 
 again, with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal 
 tragedies ; to drag into daylight a struggling and 
 half-vanishing night-mare ; to handle and examine 
 the terrors, or the airy solaces. We have too much 
 respect for these spiritual communications, to let 
 them go so lightly. We are not so stupid, or so 
 careless as that Imperial forgetter of his dreams, 
 that we should need a seer to remind us of the 
 form of them. They seem to us to have as much 
 significance as our waking concerns ; or rather to 
 import us more nearly, as more nearly we approach 
 by years to the shadowy world, whither we are 
 hastening. We have shaken hands wnth the world's
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. ■icxi 
 
 business ; we have done with it ; we have di.s- 
 charged ourself of it. Why should we get up ? we 
 have neither suit to solicit, nor affairs to manage. 
 The drama has shut upon us at the fourth act. 
 We have nothing here to expect, but in a short 
 time a sick-bed, and a dismissal. We delight to 
 anticipate death by such shadows as night affords. 
 We are already half acquainted with ghosts. We 
 were never much in the world. Disappointment 
 early struck a dark veil between us and its dazzling 
 illusions. Our spirits showed grey befoie our hairs. 
 The mighty changes of the world already appear 
 as but the vain stuff out of which dramas are com- 
 posed. We have asked no more of life than what 
 the mimic images in play-houses present us with. 
 Even those types have waxed fainter. Our clock 
 appears to have struck. We are superannuated. 
 In this dearth of mundane satisfaction, we contract 
 politic alliances with shadows. It is good to have 
 friends at court. The extracted media of dreams 
 seem no ill introduction to that spiritual presence, 
 upon which, in no long time, we expect to be 
 thrown. We are trying to know a little of the 
 usages of that colony ; to learn the language and 
 the faces we shall meet with there, that we may be 
 the less awkward at our first coming among them. 
 We willingly call a phantom our fellow, as know- 
 ing we shall soon be of their dark companionship. 
 Therefore we cherish dreams. We try to spell 
 in them the alphabet of the invisible world ; and 
 think we know already how it shall be with us. 
 Those uncouth shapes which, while we clung to 
 flesh and blood, affrighted us, have become fami- 
 liar. We feel attenuated into their meagre essences, 
 and have given the hand of half-way approach to 
 incorporeal being. We once thought life to be 
 II. P
 
 210 LAST ESSAVS OF ELI A. 
 
 something ; but it has unaccountably fallen from 
 us before its time. Therefore we choose to dally 
 with visions. The sun has no purposes of ours to 
 light us to. Why should we get up ? 
 
 XV. — THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH 
 THE LAMB. 
 
 We could never quite understand the philosophy of 
 this arrangement, or the wisdom of our ancestors 
 in sending us for instruction to these woolly bed- 
 fellows. A sheep, when it is dark, has nothing to 
 do but to shut his silly eyes, and sleep if he can. 
 Man found out long sixes — Hail, candlelight ! with- 
 out disparagement to sun or moon, the kindliest 
 luminary of the three — if we may not rather style 
 thee their radiant deputy, mild viceroy of the moon ! 
 — We love to read, talk, sit silent, eat, drink, sleep, 
 by candle-light. They are everybody's sun and 
 moon. This is our peculiar and household planet. 
 Wanting it, what savage unsocial nights must our 
 ancestors have spent, wintering in caves and un- 
 illumined fastnesses ! They must have lain about 
 and grumbled at one another in the dark. What 
 repartees could have passed when you must have 
 felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbour's 
 cheek to be sure that he imderstood it ? This ac- 
 counts for the seriousness of the elder poetiy. It 
 has a sombre cast {try Hesiod or Ossian), derived 
 from the tradition of those unlantern'd nights. 
 Jokes came in with candles. We wonder how they 
 saw to pick up a pin, if they had any. How did 
 they sup ? what a melange of chance carving they 
 must have made of it ! — here one had got a leg of 
 a goat when he wanted a horse's shoulder — there 
 another had dipped his scooped palm in a kid-skin
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 211 
 
 of wild honey, when he meditated right mare's 
 milk. There is neither good eating nor drinking 
 in fresco. Who, even in these civilized times, has 
 never experienced this, when at some economic 
 table he has commenced dining after dusk, and 
 waited for the flavour till tlie lights came? The 
 senses absolutely give and take reciprocally. Can 
 you tell pork from veal in the dark? or distinguish 
 Sherris from pure Malaga ? Take away the candle 
 from the smoking man ; by the glimmering of the 
 left ashes, he knows that he is still smoking, but 
 he knows it only by an inference ; till the restored 
 light, coming in aid of the olfactories, reveals to 
 both senses the full aroma. Then how he redoubles 
 his puffs ! how he burnishes ! — there is absolutely 
 no such thing as reading but by a candle. We 
 have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in 
 gardens, and in sultry arbours; but it was labour 
 thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam come 
 about you, hovering and teasing, like so many co- 
 quettes, that will have you all to their self and 
 are jealous of your abstractions. By the midnight 
 taper, the writer digests his meditations. By the 
 same light we must approach to their perusal, 
 if we would catch the flame, the odour. It is a 
 mockery, all that is reported of the influential 
 Phoebus. No true poem ever owed its birth to the 
 sun's light. They are abstracted works — 
 
 Things that were born, when none but the still night. 
 And his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes. 
 
 Marry, daylight — daylight might furnish the images, 
 the crude material ; but for the fine shapings, 
 the true turning and filing (as mine author hath 
 it), they must be content to hold their inspira- 
 tion of the candle. — The mild internal light, that
 
 212 LAS7 ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 reveals them, like fires on the domestic hearth, 
 goes out in the sun-shine. Night and silence call 
 out the staiTy fancies. Milton's Morning Hymn 
 in Paradise, we would hold a good wager, was 
 penned at midnight ; and Taylor's rich description 
 of a sun-rise smells decidedly of the taper. Even 
 ourself, in these our humbler lucubrations, tune our 
 best-measured cadences (Prose has her cadences) 
 not unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier 
 watchman, "blessing the doors;" or the wild 
 sweep of winds at midnight. Even now a loftier 
 speculation than we have yet attempted, courts our 
 endeavours. We would indite something about the 
 Solar System. — Betty, biing the candles. 
 
 XVI. — THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE. 
 
 We grant that it is, and a very serious one — to a 
 man's friends, and to all that have to do with him ; 
 but whether the condition of the man himself is so 
 much to be deplored, may admit of a question. We 
 can speak a little to it, being ourselves but lately 
 recovered — we whisper it in confidence, reader — 
 out of a long and desperate fit of the sullens. Was 
 the cure a blessing ? The conviction which wrought 
 it, came too clearly to leave a scruple of the fanciful 
 injuries — for they were mere fancies — which had 
 provoked the humour. But the humour itself was 
 too self- pleasing while it lasted — we know how bare 
 we lay ourself in the confession — to be abandoned 
 all at once with the grounds of it. We still brood 
 over wrongs which we know to have been imagi- 
 nary ; and for our old acquaintance N , whom 
 
 we find to have been a truer friend than we took 
 him for, we substitute some phantom — a Caius or 
 a Titius — as like him as we dare to form it, to wreak
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 313 
 
 our yet unsatisfied resentments on. It is mortifying 
 to fall at once from the pinnacle of neglect ; to 
 forego the idea of having been ill-used and contu- 
 maciously treated by an old friend. The first thing 
 to aggrandize a man in his own conceit, is to con- 
 ceive of himself as neglected. There let him fix if 
 he can. To undeceive him is to deprive him of the 
 most tickling mors'^l within the range of self-com- 
 placency. No flattery can come near it. Happy is 
 he who suspects his friend of an injustice ; but su- 
 premely blest, who thinks all his friends in a con- 
 spiracy to depress and undervalue him. There is a 
 pleasure (we sing not to the profane) far beyond the 
 reach of all that the world calls joy — a deep, en- 
 during satisfaction i:i the depths, where the super- 
 ficial seek it not, of discontent. Were we to recite 
 one half of this mystery — which we were let into by 
 our late dissatisfaction, all the world would be in 
 love with disrespect ; we should wear a slight for 
 a bracelet, and neglects and contumacies would be 
 the only matter for courtship. Unlike to that mys- 
 terious book in the Apocalypse, the study of this 
 mystery is unpalatable only in the commencement. 
 The first sting of a saspicion is grievous ; but wait 
 — out of that wound, which to flesh and blood 
 seemed so difficult, there is balm and honey to be 
 extracted. Your friend passed you on such or such 
 a day, — having in his company one that you con- 
 ceived worse than ambiguously disposed towards 
 you, — passed you in the street without notice. To 
 be sure, he is something short-sighted ; and it was 
 in your power to have accosted him. But facts and 
 sane inferences are trifles to a true adept in the 
 science of dissatisfaction. He must have seen you ; 
 
 and S , who was with him, must have been the 
 
 cause of the contempt. It galls you, and well it
 
 »i4 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 may. But have patience. Go home and make the 
 worst of it, and you are a made man from this time. 
 Shut yourself up, and — rejecting, as an enemy to 
 your peace, every whispering suggestion that but 
 insinuates there may be a mistake — reflect seriously 
 upon the many lesser instances which you had begun 
 to perceive, in proof of your friend's disaffection 
 towards you. None of them singly was much to 
 the purpose, but the aggregate weight is positive ; 
 and you have this last affront to clench them. Thus 
 far the process is anything but agreeable. But now 
 to your relief comes the comparative faculty. You 
 conjure up all the kind feelings you have had for 
 your friend ; what you have been to him, and what 
 you would have been to him, if he would have suf- 
 fered you ; how you defended him in this or that 
 place ; and his good name — his literary reputation, 
 and so forth, was always dearer to you than your 
 own ! Your heart, spite of itself, yeams towards 
 him. You could weep tears of blood but for a re- 
 straining pride. How say you? do you not yet 
 begin to apprehend a comfort? — some allay of 
 sweetness in the bitter waters ? Stop not here, nor 
 penuriously cheat yourself of your reversions. You 
 are on vantage ground. Enlarge your speculations, 
 and take in the rest of your friends, as a spark 
 kindles more sparks. Was there one among them 
 who has not to you proved hollow, false, slippery 
 as water? Begin to think that the relation itself is 
 inconsistent with mortality. That the very idea of 
 friendship, with its component parts, as honour, 
 fidelity, steadiness, exists but in your single bosom. 
 Image yourself to yourself as the only possible friend 
 in a world incapable of that communion. Now the 
 gloom thickens. The little star of self-love twinkles, 
 that is to encourage you through deeper glooms
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES. 215 
 
 than this. You are not yet at the half point of your 
 elevation. You are not yet, believe me, half sulky 
 enough. Adverting to the world in general (as 
 these circles in the mind will spread to infinity), re- 
 flect with what strange injustice you have been 
 treated in quartere where (setting gratitude and the 
 expectation of friendly returns aside as chimeras) 
 you pretended no claim beyond justice, the naked 
 due of all men. Think the very idea of right and 
 fit fled from the earth, or your breast the solitary 
 receptacle of it till you have swelled yourself into 
 at least one hemisphere ; the other being the vast 
 Arabia Stony of your friends and the world afore- 
 said. To grow bigger every moment in your own 
 conceit, and the world to lessen ; to deify yourself 
 at the expense of your species ; to judge the world 
 — this is the acme and supreme point of your mys- 
 tery — these the true Pleasures of Sulkiness. 
 We profess no more of this grand secret than what 
 ourself experimented on one rainy afternoon in the 
 lasrt week, sulking in our study, \^'e had proceeded 
 to the penultimate point, at which the true adept 
 seldom stops, where the consideration of benefit 
 forgot is about to merge in the meditation of general 
 injustice — when a knock at the door was followed 
 by the entrance of the very friend whose not seeing 
 of us in the morning (for we will now confess the 
 case our own), an accidental oversight, had given 
 rise to so much agreeable generalization ! To mor- 
 tify us still more, and take down the whole flattering 
 superstructure which pride had piled upon neglect, 
 
 he had brought in his hand the identical S , in 
 
 whose favour we had suspected him of the contu- 
 macy. Asseverations were needless, where the 
 frank manner of them both was convictive of the 
 injurious nature of the suspicion. We fancied that
 
 2i6 LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 they perceived our embarrassment ; but were too 
 proud, or something else, to confess to the secret 
 of it. We had been but too lately in the condition 
 of the noble patient in Argos : — 
 
 Qui se credebat miros audire tragoedos, 
 111 vacuo Isetus sessor plausorque theatro - 
 
 and could have exclaimed with equal reason against 
 the friendly hands that cured us — 
 
 Pol, me occidistis, amici, 
 Non servastis, ait ; cui sic extorta voluptas, 
 Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.
 
 E L I A N A.
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY ON 
 ELIA. 
 
 NE of the great charms of the " Essays 
 of Elia " is the clearness with which 
 they reveal the author's habits, opinions, 
 and history. We are told about Ella's 
 school-days, Elia's friends (almost the whole alpha- 
 bet of capital letters comes in to represent them), 
 and Elia's relations. We are informed what books 
 he liked best, and what dish he considered most 
 delicious, " princeps obsonioriim." We are let into 
 some of his weaknesses — that he was extremely 
 fond of a pipe ; that he was by no means "in- 
 capable of Bacchus;" that he loved lying in bed 
 in the morning ; that he liked sweeps. So con- 
 stantly, indeed, does this personal element enter 
 into Lamb's writings that a very interesting life 
 might be compiled from them alone. The diffi- 
 culty is to know what to receive as fact. Charles 
 Lamb drew largely on his own history for the ma- 
 terial of his Essays, but he did not render it lite- 
 rally as if he were writing an autobiography, and 
 were bound to be strictly truthful and authentic. 
 He modified and transformed his experiences so as
 
 ELI AN A. 
 
 to produce a good artistic effect. And the reader 
 will often be puzzled to determine whether a state- 
 ment made with every appearance of sincerity is 
 really true, or is wholly or partially fictitious. In 
 the Appendix to this volume an attempt has been 
 made to show what pretensions the "Essays of 
 Elia " have to biographical accuracy. 
 
 It has also been thought that a slight outline of 
 Lamb's history, by revealing some of the many 
 beauties, and some also of the weaknesses of his 
 character, would bring the reader into closer sym- 
 pathy with Eha, and enhance his pleasure in pe- 
 rusing the Essays. "With this object the following 
 brief and imperfect sketch has been written. Those 
 who desire further information about this charming 
 writer, and no less charming man, may turn to the 
 "Recollections" of Lamb's friend, Mr. Procter; 
 or may spend a pleasant hour in listening to Mr. 
 Percy Fitzgerald's easy familiar chat. The inner 
 life of Lamb, his moral and intellectual history, is 
 best told in his own delightful correspondence. 
 
 Charies Lamb was born on February loth, 1775, 
 in Crown Office Row, in the Temple; and there 
 he passed the first seven years of his life. He was 
 the youngest child of Mr. John Lamb,' a clerk in 
 the employ of Mr. Salt, one of the Benchers of 
 the Inner Temple. Through life Lamb retained a 
 strong affection for the place where he was born, 
 and everything connected with it. Its antiquated 
 monastic air had from childhood a deep attraction 
 for him. He loved "its magnificent ample squares, 
 its classic green recesses," its gardens, its fountain, 
 and its sundial. It was to him " the most elegant 
 spot in the metropolis." When a child, he was a 
 
 ' Lovel, of the Essay "On some of the old Benchers," &0.
 
 ESSAV ON ELI A. 
 
 fj-equent visitor at a fine old mansion in Hertford- 
 shire, called Gilston," where his grandmother was 
 housekeeper. If we are justified in receiving the 
 touching retrospect in " Blakesmoor " as a substan- 
 tially true account of his childish feelings (as it is 
 almost impossible to help doing), this old house 
 must have had a powerful influence on his mind. 
 He was "a lonely child," he tells us, "and had 
 the range at will of every apartment;" he wandered 
 through its lofty tapestried rooms, filled with an- 
 tique moth-eaten furniture ; or lay dreaming in the 
 stately gardens with his favourite Cowley in his 
 hand ; he "knew every nook and corner, wondered 
 and worshipped everywhere." 
 
 In 1782, when just seven years old, Charles re- 
 ceived a presentation to the foundation of Christ's 
 Hospital, where he remained till he was fourteen. 
 Little is known of his school-days. H« was na- 
 turally of a shy and retiring disposition, and all 
 the influences to which he had been exposed had 
 tended to confirm his reserved and solitary habits, 
 and to foster his early taste for quiet and studious 
 employments. An incurable impediment in his 
 speech, which any excitement rendered painful, 
 and the delicacy of his frame, tended to separate 
 him still more from the other boys, and may ac- 
 count for the fact that no intimacy sprang up, at 
 that time, between him and any of his schoolfel- 
 lows. A kindly feeling, however, was felt for him 
 by his companions, and he made some acquain- 
 tances at Christ's Hospital, whose friendship in 
 later years strengthened his taste for literature, 
 and whose society aff"orded some of the keenest 
 delights of his life. 
 
 ' Blakesmoor in H shire.
 
 saa ELIANA 
 
 In his studies he progressed well, especially in 
 Latin composition ; and would most likely have 
 taken an exhibition and entered into holy orders 
 (as he himself tells us), had not the impediment in 
 his speech proved an insuperable obstacle. He 
 was therefore compelled to relinquish all thoughts 
 of the quiet scholastic life which even then must 
 have been intensely attractive to him, and to turn 
 his mind to the uncongenial realities of business. 
 He did this wdth a quiet fortitude which distin- 
 guished him through life, and which we cannot 
 too much admire. It may, perhaps, not seem to 
 many a very extraordinary sacrifice for a lad to 
 give up the hope of a learned education, and settle 
 to the dry labours of the desk ; but to Lamb we 
 cannot doubt it was a bitter disappointment, and 
 very hard indeed to bear. He already loved learn- 
 ing and the ancient seats of learning, with a more 
 than boyish affection. And it was not merely that 
 he had to give up his favourite pursuits, to lose his 
 only congenial associates, and to see them entering 
 on a course of life from which he was debarred, 
 but that he had to turn from those tantalizing vi- 
 sions of loved studies and pleasant companionship, 
 to an employment that was utterly distasteful to 
 him; for which he felt, whether rightly or not, 
 that he was unfit ; and from which he saw not 
 even a distant prospect of release. 
 
 The first three years after he left Christ's Hos- 
 pital, in 1789, were spent in the employ of the 
 South Sea Company, where his brother John (his 
 senior by twelve years) held a position of trust. 
 And though his life at this time must have been 
 rather dully passed between the routine of a dis- 
 tasteful business, and the somewhat waarisome ex- 
 actions (however cheerfully submitted to) of a home
 
 ESSAV ON' ELI A. 223 
 
 where his father was sinking into second child- 
 hood, and his mother was a confirmed invalid, yet 
 it was not altogether unenlivened by congenial com- 
 panionship. Pleasant Jem White, immortal be- 
 nefactor of chimney-sweepers, was his frequent 
 companion. And there was the constant inter- 
 course with his sister Mary, which now, perhaps, 
 in the dearth of other outlets for the tenderness of 
 which his heart was full, produced that deep-seated 
 affection whose history will live as long as the 
 Essays of Elia. With Coleridge, Lamb had occa- 
 sionally met, while he was pursuing his studies at 
 Cambridge ; but it was not till he came to live in 
 town, when Charles was at the India House, that 
 the intimacy sprang up between them which has 
 since become so celebrated. Lamb always looked 
 back with affectionate regret to the evenings they 
 used to spend together at this time, in a little 
 smoky public-house called the "Salutation and 
 Cat," in Smithfield, "beguiling the cares of life 
 with poesy." Their friendship from that time was 
 uninterrupted, and they died within a few weeks 
 of each other. Lamb, indeed, never fully recovered 
 from the shock of Coleridge's death. He would 
 continually exclaim to his friends, in a half humou- 
 rous, more than half melancholy, under-tone of as- 
 sumed surprise or incredulity, "Coleridge is dead ! 
 Coleridge is dead ! " And almost the last words he 
 wrote were a tribute to the memory of his friend, 
 perhaps the most eloquent and touching ever paid 
 by one noble-minded man to another. 
 
 Great as was the influence the more eager and 
 expansive intellect of Coleridge undoubtedly had 
 on Lamb's mind, it is impossible to acquiesce in 
 Sir Thomas Talfourd's opinion, that to him "the 
 world is probably indebted for all that Lamb has
 
 7,, EL I ANA. 
 
 added to its sources of pleasure." The genius of 
 Elia was too original to have long lain dorniant, 
 even if it had not been aroused by contact with a 
 more active and, in some respects, a greater spirit. 
 Coleridge merely gave an impulse to Lamb's 
 powers, which, had they never met, the natural 
 growth of his understanding would certainly have 
 developed in time. Nor, indeed, were Lamb's 
 finest writings produced till he had come under 
 more varied intellectual influences than the society 
 of Coleridge, however vast his powers, and how- 
 ever extensive his erudition, could possibly have 
 supplied. 
 
 The poetical talent, which now became appa- 
 rent, was probably awakened less by the society of 
 Coleridge, than by an attachment Lamb formed, 
 late in the year 1795, for a young lady living in 
 the neighbourhood of Islington. We know little 
 of the history of his love. He speaks frequently 
 
 in his Essays of Alice W n, "the fair haired 
 
 maid," "with eyes of watchet hue;" but whether 
 the half-indicated name was a real or assumed one, 
 or whether her name was Anna, to whom some of 
 his love sonnets are addressed, perhaps no one can 
 now determine. Whether his suit prospered or not, 
 we cannot tell. There is a hint in one of Lamb's 
 letters to Coleridge, that a short period of insanity, 
 from which he suffered in 1796, was produced by 
 this love affair. "My mind ran upon you in my 
 madness," he writes, "as much, almost, as upon 
 another person who I am inclined to think was the 
 more immediate cause of my temporary phrensy." 
 However it was, the wooing was of short duration. 
 In the autumn of 1796 came the tragical event that 
 clouded, if it did not altogether sadden, the whole 
 of his after life; and, in view of the responsibilities
 
 ESSA V ON ELI A. 323 
 
 which it entailed, he relinquished an attachment 
 wliich he felt would interfere with their fulfil- 
 ment. 
 
 There was an hereditary tendency to insanity in 
 the Lamb family. Charles himself, it has been 
 said, had for a short time suffered from it, and had 
 spent six weeks in an asylum at Hoxton. The 
 malady next seized his sister, with fatal violence. 
 Mary Lamb, worn down with a constant and ha- 
 rassing struggle with poverty (for they were very 
 poor), had been for some time in bad health, which 
 at last resulted in madness. On the 22nd of Sep- 
 tember, in a fit of sudden phrenzy, she seized a 
 knife from the dinner-table and stabbed her bed- 
 ridden mother to the heart. 
 
 At the coroner's inquest, which was held next 
 day, the jury returned a verdict of lunacy; and 
 Mary Lamb was removed to an asylum, where she 
 gradually recovered her reason. 
 
 Charles at first bore this sudden and awful blow 
 with an unnatural calmness, which perhaps pre- 
 served him from madness. The responsibility that 
 was thrown upon him, however, soon called forth 
 the latent strength of his character. He felt, to 
 use his own words, that he "had something else 
 to do than regret." He saw that if his father was 
 to have those comforts which his age and infirmi- 
 ties rendered indispensable, and if his sister was 
 ever to be restored to the soothing occupations 
 and endearments of home, instead of being per- 
 manently consigned to a mad-house, it must be 
 through his own exertions. His brother John, 
 though holding a lucrative place in the South Sea 
 House, with a selfishness which, notwithstanding 
 Charles's affectionate excuses, it is impossible to for- 
 give, never even hinted a desire to share the heavy 
 11. Q
 
 226 ELI AN A. 
 
 burden which was thus cast upon him. Charles 
 Lamb felt that he could not contemplate any con- 
 nection which would interfere with the performance 
 of these sacred duties : and, in accordance with this 
 conviction, his love for the unknown " fair-haired 
 maid " was deliberately and resolutely sacrificed. 
 
 During the few months that his father survived 
 Mrs. Lamb's death, Charles gave up almost the 
 whole of his precious leisure to him, and complied 
 cheerfully with all his childish caprices. A letter 
 to Coleridge, dated December 2nd, 1796, gives us 
 a glimpse of the trials he had to undergo to hu- 
 mour and amuse his father. "I am got home," 
 he writes, "and, after repeated games of cribbage, 
 have got my father's leave to write awhile ; with 
 difficulty got it, for when I expostulated about 
 playing any more, he very aptly replied, ' If you 
 won't play with me, you might as well not come 
 home at all.' The argument was unanswerable, 
 and I set to afresh." 
 
 Charles Lamb's first care, on Mr. Lamb's death 
 early in 1796, was to release his sister from confine- 
 ment. This was opposed by his brother John, and 
 some other members of the family, who thought 
 that, as there could be no assurance given that her 
 madness would not return, she ought to be placed 
 under permanent restraint. But Charles was re- 
 solute ; and, on his entering into a solemn engage- 
 ment that he would take care of her and support 
 her through life, he was permitted to remove her 
 to his home. From that time they were hardly 
 separated for a day, except when the return of 
 Mary Lamb's illness rendered it necessary that she 
 should be placed under temporary restraint. His 
 income at this time was only a little more than a 
 hundred a-year ; but he always had a reserve fund
 
 £SSAr ON' ELI A. 22^ 
 
 sufficient for these emergencies. He watched over 
 his sister's heaUh with painful care ; and through 
 life bore the heartbreaking anxiety occasioned by 
 her precarious state, and frequent relapses — and 
 which, to a man of his exquisite sensibility, must 
 have been so much more terrible than the presence 
 of any actual misfortune — if not without a murmur, 
 yet with a loving effort to spare her the knowledge 
 of the anguish he sometimes endured. Perhaps 
 this life-long devotion was more truly heroic even 
 than the sacrifice of his love. Many a man ca- 
 pable of the one act of self-abnegation might yet 
 have missed this loving 
 
 tothe level of every day's 
 Most quiet need. 
 
 Mary Lamb was always conscious of the ap- 
 proach of her illnesses, and submitted voluntarily 
 to medical treatment. Charles Lloyd once met 
 the brother and sister in the fields near Hoxton, 
 both weeping bitterly, walking hand in hand to- 
 wards the asylum. 
 
 Charles Lamb's first efforts in literature were 
 poetical. In 1797, in conjunction with Coleridge 
 and Charles Lloyd, he published a few poems and 
 sonnets; and, in 1798, appeared a little volume 
 entitled "Blank Verse, by Charles Lloyd and 
 Charles Lamb." His poetry never excited much 
 attention ; and though it was perhaps undeservedly 
 sneered at by reviews, there can be little doubt it 
 would have been forgotten long ago if it had not 
 been written by the author of the " Essays of 
 Elia." His sonnets can hardly be called more 
 than pleasing ; but some of his miscellaneous 
 pieces, such as "Hester," "The Old Familiar 
 Faces," "The Farewell to Tobacco," "On an
 
 228 ELIANA. 
 
 Infant Dying as soon as Bom," are certainly far 
 above the average of modern verse. 
 
 In 1798, also, appeared the simple and touching 
 tale, " Rosamund Gray ;" and the following year 
 found Lamb. busy with his tragedy, " John Wood- 
 vil." It was submitted when finished to John 
 Kemble, who was then manager of Drury Lane 
 Theatre, but was rejected. The farce, " Mr. H.," 
 Lamb's only other considerable dramatic attempt, 
 met with scarcely a better fate. It was accepted, 
 produced, and decisively damned on the first night. 
 
 The " Essays of Elia, " on which alone Lamb's 
 claim to a name great in literature can be founded, 
 were almost all published during the last fourteen 
 years of his life. He was then in the maturity of 
 his powers, and he poured forth his original 
 thoughts and quaint fancies with a richness and 
 variety which no other essayist has ever rivalled. 
 He had every qualification for an essayist. He 
 had learnt English from the best teachers — the 
 old writers ; and he had been an apt scholar, — 
 not accumulating merely, but assimilating what 
 he learnt. His early style (as in "John Wood* 
 vil," for instance,) is often antiquated ; but in the 
 " Essays of Elia" there is no trace of an excessive 
 or servile adherence to the manner of his models. 
 Few writers, indeed, have had a more real com- 
 mand of English than Lamb had. He was not 
 restrained or impeded by the exigencies of the 
 language; he rather controlled it, and moulded it, 
 so to speak, to his purposes. It might be possible, 
 by a careful study and imitation of Addison or 
 Goldsmith, to form a good independent style of 
 composition. Their English is flexible; it can 
 adapt itself, without much difficulty (except, of 
 course, on account of its surpassing beauty), to the
 
 ESSAY ON ELIA. 229 
 
 peculiarities of other minds. It is not so with 
 Charles Lamb's writings. His style is rigid, and 
 cannot be copied or adapted. It is Elicits English. 
 To imitate it would be mere mimicry. Some- 
 times it almost seems as if the impediment in 
 Lamb's speech had influenced his style. His sen- 
 tences are often very short, with frequent and long 
 pauses; but brilliant, suggestive. His ideas suc- 
 ceed each other with wonderful richness and pro- 
 fusion: they seem to spring perfect from the brain. 
 But these curt and broken sentences are merely 
 used by Elia as means to produce a desired effect. 
 The pauses were the "halting-stones and resting- 
 places " of his wit. There were no " ligaments " 
 that bound him when the pen was in his hand. 
 JVo one could write more sweet or flowing English 
 than he. 
 
 It would be useless to cite instances of Elia's 
 wonderful refinement of thought and mastery of 
 expression. The essay on the popular mistake, 
 "that we should rise with the lark," is perhaps 
 his masterpiece in this respect. What an array of 
 fast-flocking, delightful images, too delicate almost 
 for laughter, does this inimitably witty little piece 
 conjure up before the mind ! The pathos and the 
 humour of Elia are alike admirable, It cannot be 
 said that he excelled more in the one than in the 
 other; for it is impossible to compare styles so 
 dissimilar as, for instance, the " Dissertation upon 
 Roast Pig," and the thoughts upon the homes of 
 the poor, " that are no homes," and the children 
 of the poor, that are never young. Both are per- 
 fect in their way. In the richness of his humour 
 and the depth of his pathos Elia stands, amongst 
 essayists, unrivalled — 
 
 With tears and laughters for all time.
 
 230 ELIANA. 
 
 It would be tedious to enlarge further on the 
 various characteristics of this delightful author. It 
 should never be forgotten that the "Essays of 
 Elia " require to be studied in order to be tho- 
 roughly understood and enjoyed. It is a great 
 mistake to suppose that they are a light and flimsy 
 sort of reading, that is to be carelessly glanced 
 through and then laid aside : this is to miss their 
 greatest beauties and their highest use. 
 
 Even a short sketch of Lamb's life, such as this, 
 would be culpably imperfect did we omit all 
 mention of those companions whose affection 
 cheered and brightened his existence, and made it, 
 on the whole, a happy one. It seems, in reading 
 his life, as if no one else can ever have had such 
 love and honour paid him, — such troops of almost 
 idolizing friends. No mere eccentricity of cha- 
 racter or position debarred any one from Lamb's 
 intimacy. The list of his friends includes Cole- 
 ridge, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Godwin, 
 Bernard Barton, Talfourd, Southey, Thelwall, 
 Manning, Charles Lloyd, H. C. Robinson, Dyer, 
 Barry Cornwall, and a host of others. All these 
 men, celebrated or unknown, with their conflicting 
 opinions, various oddities, and repelling dift'erences, 
 seem to have gathered round Charles Lamb as a 
 common centre where the discordant elements 
 could meet in harmony. It was this made Lamb's 
 Wednesday evenings so delightful. 
 
 There is a weakness of Charles Lamb's, closely 
 connected with his social habits, which ought not 
 to be unnoticed — his fondness for spirituous liquors. 
 This failing of his has often been greatly exagge- 
 rated, but there is no doubt it existed. The fact 
 seems to be that Lamb had a constitutional craving 
 br exhilaratmg drinks ; and the relief they gave
 
 ESSAY ON ELI A. 231 
 
 hiin from the dreadful anxiety and depression 
 caused by his sister's precarious health and often- 
 recurring illness, tempted him to indulge in them 
 to an extent which, — while it would have been 
 moderation to a stronger man, — to his delicate 
 and sensitive organization was excess. It was not 
 the mere excitement of drinking that fascinated 
 him: it was the relaxation, the forgetfulness of 
 care, the confidence, the ready flow of words to 
 embody the conceptions of his ever-fruitful fancy, 
 that gave an almost irresistible charm to brandy- 
 and-water. At one time, he and his sister re- 
 solved to give up alcoholic drinks altogether. As 
 for Maiy, he informed Miss Wordsworth, "she 
 has taken to water like a hungry otter. I, too, 
 limp after her in lame imitation, but it goes against 
 me a little at first. I have been acquaintance with 
 it now for full four days, and it seems a moon. I 
 am full of cramps and rheumatisms, and cold in- 
 ternally, so that fire won't warm me; yet I bear 
 all for virtue's sake." Total abstinence plainly 
 did not agree with him, and was soon given up. 
 Another of Lamb's weaknesses was smoking. Of 
 this habit, after several fruitless attempts, he really 
 succeeded in breaking himself. His "Farewell to 
 Tobacco," written during one of these ineffectual 
 struggles, shows with what feeling Lamb regarded 
 the " Great Plant." 
 
 Some fragments of Lamb's stammering talk, in 
 which thought and feeling and quaint humour so 
 strangely mingled, have been preserved. They 
 are, naturally, almost all pieces of broad fun, and 
 can give no idea of the ordinary style of his con- 
 versation. The maddest quibble even he ever 
 uttered was surely the answer he gave to a lady 
 who had been boring him with a rather fatiguing
 
 232 ELIANA. 
 
 dissertation upon lier love for her children : "And 
 pray, Mr. Lamb," said she at last, " how ilo you 
 like children?" " B-b-boiled, ma'am !" 
 
 In 1825, Lamb was released from his drudgery 
 at the India House, and retired upon a pension 
 amounting to two-thirds of his salary. He survived 
 nine years. The illness that ultimately proved fatal 
 was caused by a fall, which induced erysipelas in 
 the head. He sank rapidly, and died on the 27th 
 of December, 1834, only five days after the acci- 
 dent occurred. His sister Mary survived him 
 several years. 
 
 I think Charles Lamb's right place in literature 
 is with Goldsmith, and a few others, among writers 
 that we love. There may be loftier niches in the 
 Temple of Fame, but none, we may be sure, in 
 which Elia would rather have chosen to stand. We 
 read Shakespeare, and the deepest impression left on 
 our mind is a feeling oi wonder that one human mind 
 could ever have conceived and written his plays 
 and poems. Do we love Shakespeare ? Does any 
 one ever feel intimate with him ? Do we attempt 
 to shape him in the mind's eye at all ? Is he not 
 rather an abstraction — the dramatist— the vague 
 outlines of whose fonii we never try to resolve into 
 something clear and definite ? Of course v/e have 
 all seen pictures of Shakespeare : massive features, 
 surmounted by a lofty forehead ; a pointed beard. 
 We recognize him at a glance. But does the fa- 
 miliar face ever rise up before us in reading his 
 I plays? Do we ever think of Shakespeare then? 
 And do we feel anything like the pleasure in a 
 portrait of Shakespeare that we do in looking at 
 Goldsmith's ugly face, redeemed by its touching 
 expression of impending pain ? 
 
 Do we love Milton? I think not. We reve-
 
 JESSAV ON ELI A. 233 
 
 renceMww. When we read his sonnet on his blind- 
 ness, or on his deceased wife, is not the natural 
 emotion of pity for the man altogether overwhelmed 
 by our admiration of the power of the poet ? It 
 would not be so if we really loved him. Do we 
 feel anytliing like the interest in Shakespeare's or 
 in Milton's life that we do in Goldsmith's? And 
 does not the interest we do feel arise from airiosity 
 rather than affection ? We may know too much of 
 them. They do not appeal to us as men, but as 
 writers. We can derive no additional pleasure 
 from their works by knowing their history ; but it 
 might be a severe shock to discover that they were 
 subject to the common weaknesses and failings of 
 mankind. It is better our thoughts of them should 
 be vague. 
 
 But with Goldsmith and Charles Lamb it is not 
 so. We cannot know too much of them. We 
 cannot spare one touch from the picture ; not even 
 a defect. They appeal to us not only as writers, 
 but as men. We do not feel it a shock to discover 
 their weaknesses. They live in their writings ; 
 they become our friends ; they possess our hearts 
 by virtue of their complete humanity ; they recon- 
 cile us with the imperfections of our common 
 nature ; their very failings endear them to us the 
 more. 
 
 There may be a literary immortality superior to 
 this, but there can hardly be one more attractive. 
 The heights on which Shakespeare and Milton 
 stand are lofty, unattainable, dazzling — but cold ; 
 they are too high for sympathy to reach. For 
 Charles Lamb we love to anticipate a warmer 
 place — a home in the popular heart. The Essays 
 will be like the books of which Elia speaks so de- 
 lightfully : — " How beautiful to a genuine lover of
 
 23/, ELIANA. 
 
 reading are the sullied leaves and worn-out appear- 
 ance, nay, the very odour (beyond russia), if we 
 would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of 
 an old circulating-library ' Tom Jones ' or ' Vicar 
 of Wakefield ! ' How they speak of the thousand 
 thumbs that have turned over their pages with de- 
 light ! . . . . Who would have them a whit less 
 soiled? What better condition could we desire 
 to see them in ? " 
 
 H. S.
 
 E L I A N A. 
 
 THE GENTLE GIANTESS. 
 
 f|HE Widow Blacket, of Oxford, is the 
 largest female I ever had the pleasure of 
 beholding. There may be her parallel 
 upon the earth ; but surely I never saw 
 it. 1 take her to be lineally descended from the 
 maid's aunt of Brainford, who caused Master Ford 
 such uneasiness. She hath Atlantean shoulders ; 
 and, as she stoopeth in her gait, — with as few of- 
 fences to answer for in her own particular as any of 
 Eve's daughters, — her back seems broad enough to 
 bear the blame of all the peccadilloes that have 
 been committed since Adam, She girdeth her 
 waist — or what she is pleased to esteem as such — 
 nearly up to her shoulders ; from beneath which 
 that huge dorsal expanse, in mountainous declivity, 
 emergeth. Respect for her alone preventeth the 
 idle boys, who follow her about in shoals, whenever 
 she cometh abroad, from getting up, and riding. 
 But her presence infallibly commands a reverence. 
 She is indeed, as the Americans would express it.
 
 236 ELIANA. 
 
 something awful. Her person is a burden to herself 
 no less than to the ground which bears her. To her 
 mighty bone, she hath a pinguitude withal, which 
 makes the depth of winter to her the most desirable 
 season. Her distress in the warmer solstice is piti- 
 able. During the months of July and August, she 
 usually renteth a cool cellar, where ices are kept, 
 whereinto she descendeth when Sirius rageth. She 
 dates from a hot Thursday, — some twenty-five years 
 ago. Her apartment in summer is pervious to the 
 four winds. Two doors, in north and south direc- 
 tion, and two windows, fronting the rising and the 
 setting sun, never closed, from every cardinal point 
 catch the contributory breezes. She loves to enjoy 
 what she calls a quadruple draught. That must be 
 a shrewd zephyr that can escape her. I owe a 
 painful face-ache, which oppresses me at this mo- 
 ment, to a cold caught, sitting by her, one day in 
 last July, at this receipt of coolness. Her fan, in 
 ordinary, resembleth a banner spread, which she 
 keepeth continually on the alert to detect the least 
 breeze. She possesseth an active and gadding mind, 
 totally incommensurate with her person. No one 
 delighteth more than herself in country exercises 
 and pastimes. I have passed many an agreeable 
 holy-day with her in her favourite park at Wood- 
 stock. She performs her part in these delightful 
 ambulatory excursions by the aid of a portable 
 garden-chair. She setteth out with you at a fair 
 foot-gallop, which she keepeth up till you are both 
 well breathed, and then reposeth she for a few 
 seconds. Then she is up again for a hundred paces 
 or so, and again resteth ; her movement, on these 
 sprightly occasions, being something between walk- 
 ing and flying. Her great weight seemeth to propel 
 her forward, ostrich-fashion. In this kind of re-
 
 THE GENTLE GIANTESS. 237 
 
 lieved marching, I have traversed with her many 
 scores of acres on those well- wooded and well- 
 watered domains. Her delight at Oxford is in the 
 public walks and gardens, where, when the weather 
 is not too oppressive, she passeth much of her valu- 
 able time. There is a bench at Maudlin, or rather 
 
 situated between the frontiers of that and 's 
 
 College (some litigation, latterly, about repairs, has 
 
 vested the property of it finally in 's), where, 
 
 at the hour of noon, she is ordinarily to be found 
 sitting, — so she calls it by courtesy, — but, in fact, 
 pressing and breaking of it down with her enormous 
 settlement ; as both those foundations, — who, how- 
 ever, are good-natured enough to wink at it, — have 
 found, I believe, to their cost. Here she taketh the 
 fresh air, principally at vacation-times, when the 
 walks are freest from interruption of the younger 
 fry of students. Here she passeth her idle hours, 
 not idly, but generally accompanied with a book, 
 — blessed if she can but intercept some resident 
 Fellow (as usually there are some of that brood left 
 behind at these periods), or stray Master of Arts 
 (to most of whom she is better known than their 
 dinner-bell), with whom she may confer upon any 
 curious topic of literature. I have seen these shy 
 gownsmen, who truly set but a very slight value 
 upon female conversation, cast a hawk's eye upon 
 her from the length of Maudlin Grove, and warily 
 glide off into another walk, — true monks as they 
 are ; and ungently neglecting the delicacies of her 
 polished converse for their own perverse and un- 
 communicating solitariness ! Within-doors, her 
 principal diversion is music, vocal and instru- 
 mental ; in both which she is no mean professor. 
 Her voice is wonderfully fine ; but, till I got used 
 to it, I confess it staggered me. It is, for all the
 
 238 EL I AN A. 
 
 world, like that of a piping bullfinch ; while, from 
 her size and stature, you would expect notes to 
 drown the deep organ. The shake, which most fine 
 singers reserve for the close or cadence, by some 
 unaccountable flexibility, or tremulousness of pipe, 
 she carrieth quite through the composition : so that 
 her time, to a common air or ballad, keeps double 
 motion, like the earth, — running the primary circuit 
 of the tune, and still revolving upon its own axis. 
 The effect, as I said before, when you are used to 
 tt, is as agreeable as it is altogether new and sur- 
 prising. The spacious apartment of her outward 
 frame lodgeth a soul in all respects disproportionate. 
 Of more than mortal make, she evinceth withal a 
 trembling sensibility, ayielding infirmity of purpose, 
 a quick susceptibility to reproach, and all the train 
 of diffident and blushing virtues, which for their 
 habitation usually seek out a feeble frame, an at- 
 tenuated and meagre constitution. With more than 
 man's bulk, her humours and occupations are emi- 
 nently feminine. She sighs, — being six foot high. 
 She languisheth, — being two feet wide. She 
 worketh slender sprigs upon the delicate muslin, — 
 her fingers being capable of moulding a Colossus. 
 She sippeth her wine out of her glass daintily, — 
 her capacity being that of a tun of Heidelberg. She 
 goeth mincingly with those feet of hers, whose 
 solidity need not fear the black ox's pressure. Softest 
 and largest of thy sex, adieu ! By what parting 
 attribute may I salute thee, last and best of the 
 Titanesses, — Ogress, fed with milk instead of 
 blood ; not least, or least handsome, among Ox- 
 ford's stately structures, — Oxford, who, in its 
 deadest time of vacation, can never properly be 
 said to be empty, having thee to fill it.
 
 THE REYNOLDS GALLERY. 
 
 /|HE Reynolds Gallery has, upon the 
 whole, disappointed me. Some of the 
 portraits are interesting. They are faces 
 of characters whom we (middle-aged 
 gentlemen) were born a little too late to remem- 
 ber, but about whom we have heard our fathers 
 tell stories till we almost fancy to have seen them. 
 There is a charm in the portrait of a Rodney or a 
 Keppel, which even a picture of Nelson must want 
 for me. I should turn away after a slight inspec- 
 tion from the best likeness that could be made of 
 Mrs. Anne Clarke ; but Kitty Fisher is a consider- 
 able personage. Then the dresses of some of the 
 women so exactly remind us of modes which we 
 can just recall ; of the forms under which the vene- 
 rable relationship of aunt or mother first presented 
 themselves to our young eyes ; the aprons, the coifs, 
 the lappets, the hoods. Mercy on us ! what a load 
 of head-ornaments seem to have conspired to bury 
 a pretty face in the picture of Mrs. Long, jri" cotdd 
 not! Beauty must have some "charmed life" to 
 have been able to surmount the conspiracy of 
 fashion in those days to destroy it. 
 
 The portraits which least pleased me were those 
 of boys, as infant Bacchuses, Jupiters, &c. But the
 
 240 ELI ANA. 
 
 artist is not to be blamed for the disguise. No 
 doubt, the parents wished to see their children 
 deified in their lifetime. It was but putting a thun- 
 derbolt (instead of a squib) into young master's 
 hands ; and a whey-faced chit was transformed into 
 the infant ruler of Olympus, — him who was after- 
 wards to shake heaven and earth with his black 
 brow. Another good boy pleased his grandmamma 
 with saying his prayers so well, and the blameless 
 dotage of the good old woman imagined in him an 
 adequate representative of the infancy of the awful 
 Prophet Samuel. But the great historical com- 
 positions, where the artist was at liberty to paint 
 from his own idea,— the Beaufort and the Ugolitio: 
 why, then, I must confess, pleading the liberty of 
 table-talk for my presumption, that they have not 
 left any very elevating impressions on my mind. 
 Pardon a ludicrous comparison. I know, madam, 
 you admire them both ; but placed opposite to each 
 other as they are at the Gallery, as if to set the one 
 work in competition with the other, they did re- 
 mind me of the famous contention for the prize of 
 deformity, mentioned in the 173rd number of the 
 " Spectator." The one stares, and the other grins ; 
 but is there common dignity in their countenances ? 
 Does anything of the history of their life gone by 
 peep through the ruins of the mind in the face, like 
 I he 'unconquerable grandeur that surmounts the dis- 
 tortions of the Laocoon ? The figures which stand 
 by the bed of Beaufort are indeed happy represen- 
 tations of the plain unmaimered old nobility of the 
 English historical plays of Shakespeare ; but, for 
 anything else, give me leave to recommend those 
 macaroons. 
 
 After leaving the Reynolds Gallery (where, upon 
 the whole, I received a good deal of pleasure), and
 
 THE REYNOLDS GALLERY. 241 
 
 feeling that I had quite had my fill of paintings, I 
 stumbled upon a picture in Piccadilly (No. 22, I 
 think), which purports to be a portrait of Francis 
 the First by Leonardo da Vinci. Heavens, what a 
 difference ! It is but a portrait, as most of those I 
 had been seeing ; but, placed by them, it would 
 kill them, swallow them up as Moses' rod the other 
 lods. Where did these old painters get their models? 
 I see no such figures, not in my dreams, as this 
 Francis, in the character, or rather with the attri- 
 butes of John the Baptist. A more than martial 
 majesty in the brow and upon the eyelid ; an arm 
 muscular, beautifully formed ; the long, gx-aceful, 
 massy fingers compressing, yet so as not to hurt, a 
 lamb more lovely, more sweetly shrinking, than we 
 can conceive that milk-white one which followed 
 Una ; the picture altogether looking as if it were 
 eternal, — combining the truth of flesh with a pro- 
 mise of permanence like marble. 
 
 Leonardo, from the one or two specimens we 
 have of him in England, must have been a stupen- 
 dous genius. I scarce can think he has had his full 
 fame, — he who could paint that wonderful personi- 
 fication of the Logos, or third person of the Trinity, 
 grasping a globe, late in the possession of Mr, 
 Troward of Pall Mall, where the hand was, by the 
 boldest license, twice as big as the truth of drawing 
 warranted ; yet the effect, to every one that saw it, 
 by some magic of genius was confessed to be not 
 monstrous, but miraculous and silencing. It could 
 not be gainsaid. 
 
 IL ft
 
 GUY FAUX. 
 
 VERY ingenious and subtle writer, 
 whom there is good reason for sus- 
 pecting to be an ex Jesuit, not unknown 
 at Douay some five-and-twenty years 
 
 since (he will not obtrude himself at M th again 
 
 in a hurry), about a twelvemonth back set himself 
 to prove the character of the Powder Plot con- 
 spirators to have been that of heroic self-devoted- 
 ness and true Christian martyrdom. Under the 
 mask of Protestant candour, he actually gained ad- 
 mission for. his treatise into a London weekly paper 
 not particularly distinguished for its zeal towards 
 either religion. But, admitting Catholic-principles, 
 his arguments are shrewd and incontrovertible. He 
 says : — 
 
 " Guy Faux was a fanatic ; but he was no hypo- 
 crite. He ranks among good haters. He was cruel, 
 bloody-minded, reckless of all considerations but 
 those of an infuriated and bigoted faith ; but he 
 was a true son of the Catholic Church, a martyr, 
 and a confessor, for all that. He who can prevail 
 upon himself to devote his life for a cause, however 
 we may condemn his opinions or abhor his actions, 
 vouches at least for the honesty of his principles and 
 the disinterestedness of his motives. He may l)e
 
 GUV FAUX. 843 
 
 guilty of the worst practices ; but he is capable of 
 the greatest. He is no longer a slave, but free. 
 The contempt of death is the beginning of virtue. 
 The hero of the Gunpowder Plot was, if you will, a 
 fool, a madman, an assassin ; call him what names 
 you please : still he was neither knave nor coward. 
 He did not propose to blow up the parliament, and 
 come oft' scotfree himself : he showed that he valued 
 his own life no more than theirs in such a cause, 
 where the integrity of the Catholic faith and the 
 salvation of perhaps millions of souls was at stake. 
 He did not call it a murder, but a sacrifice, which 
 he was about to achieve : he was armed with the 
 Holy Spirit and with fire : he was the Church's 
 chosen servant and her blessed martyr. He com- 
 forted himself as 'the best of cut-throats.' How 
 many wretches are there that would have under- 
 taken to do what he intended, for a sum of money, 
 if they could have got off" with impunity ! How few 
 are there who would have put themselves in Guy 
 Faux's situation to save the universe ! Yet, in the 
 latter case, we affect to be thrown into greater con- 
 sternation than at the most unredeemed acts of 
 villany ; as if the absolute disinterestedness of the 
 motive doubled the horror of the deed ! The 
 cowardice and selfishness of mankind are in fact 
 shocked at the consequences to themselves (if such 
 examples are held up for imitation) ; and they make 
 a fearful outcry against the violation of every prin- 
 ciple of morality, lest they, too, should be called 
 on for any such tremendous sacrifices ; lest they, in 
 their turn, should have to go on the forlorn hope of 
 extra-official duty. Charity begins at home is a 
 maxim that prevails as well in the courts of con- 
 science as in those of prudence. We would be 
 thought to shudder at the consequences of crime to
 
 a44 ELI AN A. 
 
 others, while we tremble for them to ourselves. We 
 talk of the dark and cowardly assassin ; and this is 
 well, when an individual shrinks from the face of 
 an enemy, and purchases his own safety by striking 
 a blow in the dark : but how the charge of cowardly 
 can be applied to the public assassin, who, in the 
 very act of destroying another, lays down his life as 
 the pledge and forfeit of his sincerity and boldness, 
 I am at a loss to devise. There may be barbarous 
 prejudice, rooted hatred, unprincipled treachery in 
 such an act ; but he who resolves to take all the 
 danger and odium upon himself can no more be 
 branded with cowardice, than Regulus devoting 
 himself for his country, or Codrus leaping into the 
 fiery gulf. A wily Father Inquisitor, coolly and 
 with plenary authority condemning hundreds of 
 helpless, unoffending victims to the flames, or the 
 horrors of a living tomb, while he himself would 
 not suffer a hair of his head to be hurt, is, to me, a 
 character without any qualifying trait in it. Again : 
 The Spanish conqueror and hero, the favourite of 
 his monarch, who enticed thirty thousand poor 
 Mexicans into a large open building under promise 
 of strict faith and cordial good-will, and then set 
 fire to it, making sport of the cries and agonies of 
 these deluded creatures, is an instance of uniting 
 the most hardened cruelty with the most heartless 
 selfishness. His plea was, keeping no faith with 
 heretics ; this was Guy Faux's too : but I am sure 
 at least that the latter kept faith with himself; he 
 was in earnest in his professions. His was not gay, 
 wanton, unfeeling depravity ; he'did not murder in 
 sport : it was serious work that he had taken in 
 hand. To see this arch-bigot, this heart-whole 
 traitor, this pale miner in the infernal regions, 
 skulking in his retreat with his cloak and dark
 
 GUY FAUX. 24s 
 
 lantern, moving cautiously about among his barrels 
 of gimpowder loaded with death, but not yet ripe 
 for destruction, regardless of the lives of others, 
 and more than indifferent to his own, presents a 
 picture of the strange infatuation of the human un- 
 derstanding, but not of the depravity of the human 
 will, without an equal. There were thousands of 
 pious Papists privy to and ready to applaud the 
 deed when done : there was no one but our old 
 fifth-of- November friend, who still flutters in rags 
 and straw on the occasion, that had the courage to 
 attempt it. In him stern duty and unshaken faith 
 prevailed over natural frailty. " 
 
 It is impossible, upon Catholic principles, not to 
 admit the force of this reasoning : we can only not 
 help smiling (with the writer) at the simplicity of 
 the gulled editor, swallowing the dregs of Loyola 
 for the very quintessence of sublimated reason in 
 England at the commencement of the nineteenth 
 centuiy. We will just, as a contrast, show what 
 we Protestants (who are a party concerned) thought 
 upon the same subject at a period rather nearer to 
 the heroic project in question. 
 
 The Gunpowder Treason was the subject which 
 called forth the earliest specimen which is left us of 
 the pulpit eloquence of Jeremy Taylor. When he 
 preached the sermon on that anniversary, which is 
 printed at the end of the folio edition of his Ser- 
 mons, he was a young man, just commencing his 
 ministry under the auspices of Archbishop Laud. 
 From the learning and maturest oratory which it 
 manifests, one should rather have conjectured it to 
 have proceeded from the same person after he was 
 ripened by time into a Bishop and Father of the 
 Church. "And, really, these Romano-barbari co\\\i. 
 'lever pretend to any precedent for an act so bar-
 
 3/^ ELIANA. 
 
 barous as theirs. Adramelech, indeed, killed a 
 king ; but he spared the people. Haman would 
 have killed the people, but spared the king ; but 
 that both king and people, princes and judges, 
 branch and rush and root, should die at once (as if 
 Caligula's wish were actuated, and all England 
 upon one head), was never known till now, that 
 all the malice of the world met in this as in a centre. 
 The Sicilian even-song, the matins of St. Bartho- 
 lomew, known for the pitiless and damned mas- 
 sacres, were but Kanvov criciag bvap, the dream 
 of the shadow of smoke, if compared with this 
 great fire. In tani occtipato saculo fabtdas vulgares 
 nequitia fion invenit. This M'as a busy age. Hero- 
 stratus must have invented a more sublimed malice 
 than the burning of one temple, or not have been 
 so much as spoke of since the discovery of the 
 powder treason. But I must make more haste ; I 
 shall not else climb the sublimity of this impiety. 
 Nero was sometimes the poptilare odium, was popu- 
 larly hated, and deserved it too : for he slew his 
 master, and his wife, and all his family, once or 
 twice over ; opened his mother's womb ; fired the 
 city, laughed at it, slandered the Christians for it : 
 but yet all these were but principia maloruni, the 
 very first rudiments of evil. Add, then, to these, 
 Herod's masterpiece at Ramah, as it was deciphered 
 by the tears and sad threnes of the matrons in a 
 universal mourning for the loss of their pretty in- 
 fants ; yet this of Herod will prove but an infant 
 wickedness, and that of Nero the evil but of one 
 city. I would willingly have found out an example, 
 but see I cannot. Should I put into the scale the ex- 
 tract of the old tyrants famous in antique stories : — 
 
 Bistonii stabulum regis, Busiridis aras, 
 Antiphatae mensas, et Taurica regna Thoantis ; —
 
 Gl/y FAUX. 247 
 
 should I take for true story the highest cruelty as it 
 was fancied by the most hieroglyphical Egyptian, — 
 this alone would weigh them down, as if the Alps 
 were put in scale against the dust of a balance. 
 For, had this accursed treason prospered, we should 
 have had the whole kingdom mourn for the ines- 
 timable loss of its chiefest glory, its life, its present 
 joy, and all its very hopes for the future. For such 
 was their destined malice, that they would not only 
 have inflicted so cruel a blow, but have made it in- 
 curable, by cutting off our supplies of joy, the whole 
 succession of the Line Royal. Not only the vine 
 itself, but all the gemmulce, and the tender olive 
 branches, should either have been bent to their 
 intentions, and made to grow crooked, or else been 
 broken. 
 
 "And now, after such a sublimity of malice, I 
 will not instance in the sacrilegious ruin of the 
 neighbouring temples, which needs must have 
 perished in the flame ; nor in the disturbing the 
 ashes of our entombed kings, devouring their dead 
 ruins like sepulchral dogs : these are but minutes 
 in respect of the ruin prepared for the living tem- 
 ples : — 
 
 Stragem sed istam non tulit 
 
 Christus cadentum Principum 
 
 Impune, ne forsan sui 
 
 Patris periret fabrica. 
 Ergo quae poterit lingua retexere 
 X^audes, Christe, tuas, qui domitum struis 
 Infidum populum cum Duce perfido !" 
 
 In such strains of eloquent indignation did Jeremy 
 Taylor's young oratory inveigh against that stupen- 
 dous attempt which he truly says had no parallel in 
 ancient or modem times. A century and a half of 
 European crimes has elapsed since he made the
 
 248 ELIANA. 
 
 assertion, and his position remains in its strength. 
 He wrote near the time in wliich the nefarious 
 project had like to have been completed. Men's 
 minds still were shuddering from the recentness of 
 the escape. It must have been within his memory, 
 or have been sounded in his ears so young by his 
 parents, that he would seem, in his maturer years, 
 to have remembered it. No wonder, then, that he 
 describes it in words that burn. But to us, to whom 
 the tradition has come slowly down, and has had 
 time to cool, the story of Guido Vaux sounds rather 
 like a tale, a fable, and an invention, than true 
 history. It supposes such gigantic audacity of 
 daring, combined with such more than infantile 
 stupidity in the motive, — such a combination of the 
 fiend and the monkey, — that credulity is almost 
 swallowed up in contemplating the singularity of 
 the attempt. It has accordingly, in some degree, 
 shared the fate of fiction. It is familiarized to us in 
 a kind of serio-ludicrous way, like the story of Guy 
 of Warwick, or Valentine and Orson. The way 
 which we take to peipetua-te the memory of this 
 deliverance is well adapted to keep up this fabular 
 notion. Boys go about the streets annually with a 
 beggarly scarecrow dressed up, which is to be 
 burnt indeed, at night, with holy zeal ; but, mean- 
 time, they beg a penny for poor Guy : this perio- 
 dical petition, which we have heard from our in- 
 fancy, combined with the dress and appearance of 
 the effigy, so well calculated to move compassion, 
 has the effect of quite removing from our fancy 
 the horrid circumstances of the story which is thus 
 commemorated ; and in poor Guy vainly should we 
 try to recognize any of the features of that tremen- 
 dous madman in iniquity, Guido Vaux, with his 
 horrid crew of accomplices, that sought to emulate
 
 GUV FAUX. 249 
 
 earthquakes and bursting volcanoes in their more 
 than mortal mischief. 
 
 Indeed, the whole ceremony of burning Guy 
 Faux, or the Pope, as he is indifferently called, is a 
 sort of Treason Travestie, and admirably adapted 
 to lower our feelings upon this memorable subject. 
 The printers of the little duodecimo Prayer Book, 
 printed by T. Baskett,' in 1749, which has the 
 effigy of his sacred majesty George II. piously pre- 
 fixed, have illustrated the service (a very fine one 
 in itself), which is appointed for the anniversary of 
 this day, with a print, which it is not very easy to 
 describe ; but the contents appear to be these : 
 The scene is a room, I conjecture, in the king's 
 palace. Two persons — one of whom I take to be 
 James himself, from his wearing his hat, while the 
 other stands bare-headed — are intently surveying a 
 sort of speculum, or magic mirror, which stands 
 upon a pedestal in the midst of the room, in which 
 a little figure of Guy Faux with his dark lantern, 
 approaching the door of the Parliament House, is 
 made discernible by the light proceeding from a 
 g>-eat eye which shines in from the topmost corner 
 of the apartment ; by which eye the pious artist 
 no doubt meant to designate Providence. On the 
 other side of the mirror is a figure doing something, 
 which puzzled me when a child, and continues to 
 puzzle me now. The best I can make of it is, that 
 it is a conspirator busy laying the train ; but, then, 
 why is he represented in the king's chamber ? 
 
 1 The same, I presume, upon whom the clergyman in tlie 
 song of the "Vicar and Moses," not without judgment, 
 {.asses this memorable censure : 
 
 " Here, Moses the king : 
 'Tis a scandalous thing 
 That this Baskett should print for the Crowu."
 
 3SO ELIANA. 
 
 Conjecture upon so fantastical a design is vain ; 
 and I only notice the print as being one of the 
 earliest graphic representations which woke my 
 childhood into wonder, and doubtless combined, 
 with the mummery before mentioned, to take off 
 the edge of that horror which the naked historical 
 mention of Guide's conspiracy could not have 
 failed of exciting. 
 
 Now that so many years are past since that 
 abominal;le machination was happily frustrated, it 
 will not, I hope, be considered a profane sporting 
 with the subject, if we take no very serious survey 
 of the consequences that would have flowed from 
 this plot if it had had a successful issue. The first 
 thing that strikes us, in a selfish point of view, is 
 tlie material change which it must have produced in 
 the course of the nobility. All the ancient peerage 
 being extinguished, as it was intended, at one blow, 
 the Red Book must have been closed for ever, or a 
 new race of peers must have been created to supply 
 the deficiency. As the first part of this dilemma is 
 a deal too shocking to think of, what a fund of 
 mouth-watering reflections does this give rise to in 
 the breast of us plebeians of A.D. 1823 ! Why, you 
 
 or I, reader, might have been Duke of , or 
 
 Earl of . I particularize no titles, to avoid the 
 
 least suspicion of intention to usurp the dignities of 
 the two noblemen whom I have in my eye ; but a 
 feeling more dignified than envy sometimes excites 
 a sigh, when I think how the posterity of Guido's 
 Legend of Honour (among whom you or I might 
 have been) might have rolled down " dulcified," as 
 Burke expresses it, "by an exposure to the influ- 
 ence of heaven in a long flow of generations, from 
 the hard, acidulous, metallic tincture of the spring. " ' 
 ' Letter to a Noble Lord.
 
 GUY FAUX. 251 
 
 What new orders of merit, think you, this English 
 Napoleon would have chosen? Knights of the 
 Barrel, or Lords of the Tub, Grand Almoners of 
 the Cellar, or Ministers of Explosion ? We should 
 have given the train coiichant, and the fire rampant, 
 in our arms ; we should have quartered the dozen 
 white matches in our coats : the Shallows would 
 have been nothing to us. 
 
 Turning away from these mortifying reflections, 
 let us contemplate its effects upon the other house ; 
 for they were all to have gone together, — king, 
 lords, commons. 
 
 To assist our imagination, let us take leave tc 
 suppose (and we do it in the harmless wantonness 
 of fancy)— to suppose that the tremendous ex- 
 plosion had taken place in our days. We better 
 know what a House of Commons is in our days, 
 and can better estimate our loss. Let us imagine, 
 then, to ourselves, the united members sitting in 
 full conclave above : Faux just ready with his 
 train and matches below, — in his hand a "reed 
 tipt with fire. " He applies the fatal engine. 
 
 To assist our notions still further, let us suppose 
 some lucky dog of a reporter, who had escaped by 
 miracle upon some plank of St. Stephen's benches, 
 and came plump upon the roof of the adjacent 
 Abbey ; from whence descending, at some neigh- 
 bouring coffee-house, first wiping his clothes and 
 calling for a glass of lemonade, he sits down and 
 reports what he had heard and seen (quorum pars 
 magna fuit), for the Morning Post or the Courier. 
 We can scarcely imagine him describing the event 
 in any other words but some such as these : — 
 
 *' A jnotion was put and carried, that this House 
 do adjourn ; that the speaker do quit the chair. 
 The House rose amid clamours for order. "
 
 352 ELIANA. 
 
 In some such way the event might most tech- 
 nically have been conveyed to the public. But a 
 poetical mind, not content with this dry method of 
 narration, cannot help pursuing the effects of this 
 tremendous blowing up, this adjournment in the 
 air, sine die. It seems the benches mount, — the 
 chair first, and then the benches ; and first the 
 treasury bench, hurried up in this nitrous explosion, 
 — the members, as it were, pairing off; Whigs and 
 Tories taking their friendly apotheosis together (as 
 they did their sandwiches below in Bellamy's room). 
 Fancy, in her flight, keeps pace with the aspiring 
 legislators : she sees the awful seat of order mount- 
 ing, till it becomes finally fixed, a constellation, 
 next to Cassiopeia's chair, — the wig of him that 
 sat in it taking its place near Berenice's curls. St. 
 Peter, at heaven's wicket, — no, not St. Peter, — • 
 St. Stephen, with open arms, receives his own. 
 
 While Fancy beholds these celestial appropria- 
 tions, Reason, no less pleased, discerns the mighty 
 benefit which so complete a renovation must pro- 
 duce below. Let the most determined foe to cor- 
 ruption, the most thorough-paced redresser of 
 abuses, try to conceive a more absolute purification 
 of the house than this was calculated to produce. 
 Why, pride's purge was nothing to it. The whole 
 borough-mongering system would have been got 
 rid of, fairly exploded ; with it the senseless dis- 
 tinctions of party must have disappeared, faction 
 must have vanished, corruption have expired in air. 
 From Hundred, Tything, and Wapentake, some 
 new Alfred would have convened, in all its purity, 
 the primitive Witenagemote, — fixed upon a basis 
 of property or population permanent as the poles. 
 
 From this dream of universal restitution, Reason 
 and Fancy with difficulty awake to view the real
 
 GUY FAUX. aS3 
 
 State of things. But, blessed be Heaven ! St. 
 Stephen's walls are yet standing, all her seats 
 firmly secured ; nay, some have doubted (since the 
 Septennial Act) whether gunpowder itself, or any- 
 thing short of a committee above stairs, would be 
 able to shake any one member from his seat. That 
 great and final improvement to the Abbey, which 
 is all that seems wanting, — the removing West- 
 minster Hall and its appendages, and letting in the 
 view of the Thames, — must not be expected in our 
 days. Dismissing, therefore, all such speculations 
 as mere tales of a tub, it is the duty of every honest 
 Englishman to endeavour, by means less wholesale 
 than Guide's, to ameliorate, without extinguishing, 
 parliaments ; to hold the lantern to the dark places 
 of corruption; to apply the match to the rotten 
 parts of the system only ; and to wrap himself up, 
 not in the muffling mantle of conspiracy, but in 
 the warm, honest cloak of integrity and patriotic 
 intention.
 
 A VISION OF HORNS. 
 
 ' Y thoughts had been engaged last even- 
 ing in solving the problem, why in all 
 times and places the horn has been 
 ^ agreed upon as the symbol, or honour- 
 able badge, of married men. Moses' horn, the 
 horn of Ammon, of Amalthea, and a cornucopia 
 of legends besides, came to my recollection, but 
 afforded no satisfactory solution, or rather involved 
 the question in deeper obscurity. Tired with the 
 fruitless chase of inexplicant analogies, I fell asleep, 
 and dreamed in this fashion : — 
 
 Methought certain scales or films fell from my 
 eyes, which had hitherto hindered these little tokens 
 from being visible. I was somewhere in the Corn- 
 hill (as it might be termed) of some Utopia. Busy 
 citizens jostled each other, as they may do in our 
 streets, with care (the care of making a penny) 
 written upon their foreheads ; and something else, 
 which is rather imagined than distinctly imaged, 
 upon the brows of my own friends and fellow- 
 townsmen. 
 
 In my first surprise, I supposed myself gotten 
 into some forest, — Arden, to be sure, or Sherwood ; 
 but the dresses and deportment, all civic, forbade 
 me to continue in that delusion. Then a scrip-
 
 A VISION OF HORNS. 255 
 
 tural thought crossed me (especially as there were 
 nearly as many Jews as Christians among them), 
 whether it might not be the children of Israel going 
 up to besiege Jericho. I was undeceived of both 
 errors by the sight of many faces which were fami- 
 liar to me. I found myself strangely (as it will 
 happen in dreams) at one and the same time in an 
 unknown country with known companions. I met 
 old friends, not with new faces, but with their old 
 faces oddly adorned in front, with each man a cer- 
 tain corneous excrescence. Dick Mitis, the little 
 
 cheesemonger in St. 's Passage, was the first 
 
 that saluted me, with his hat off (you know Dick's 
 way to a customer) ; and, I not being aware of him, 
 he thrust a strange beam into my left eye, which 
 pained and grieved me exceedingly ; but, instead 
 of apology, he only grinned and fleered in my face, 
 as much as to say, "It is the custom of the coun- 
 try, " and passed on. 
 
 I had scarce time to send a civil message to his 
 lady, whom I have always admired as a pattern of 
 a wife, and do indeed take Dick and her to be a 
 model of conjugal agreement and harmony, when 
 I felt an ugly smart in my neck, as if something 
 had gored it behind; and, turning round, it was 
 my old friend and neighbour, Dulcet, the confec 
 tioner, who, meaning to be pleasant, had thrust 
 his protuberance right into my nape, and seemed 
 proud of his power of offending. 
 
 Now I was assailed right and left, till in my 
 own defence I was obliged to walk sideling and 
 wary, and look about me, as you guard your eyes 
 in London streets; for the horns thickened, and 
 came at me like the ends of umbrellas poking in 
 one's face. 
 
 I soon found that these towns-folk were the civil-
 
 356 ELI ANA. 
 
 est, best-mannered people in the world ; and that, 
 if they had offended at all, it was entirely owing 
 to their blindness. They do not know what dan- 
 gerous weapons they protrude in front, and will 
 stick their best friends in the eye with provoking 
 complacency. Yet the best of it is, they can see 
 the beams on their neighbours' foreheads, if they 
 are as small as motes ; but their own beams they 
 can in no wise discern. 
 
 There was little Mitis, that I told you I just en- 
 countered. He has simply (I speak of him at home 
 in his own shop) the smoothest forehead in his own 
 conceit. He will stand you a quarter of an hour 
 together, contemplating the serenity of it in the 
 glass before he begins to shave himself in a morn- 
 ing ; yet you saw what a desperate gash he gave 
 me. 
 
 Desiring to be better informed of the ways of 
 this extraordinary people, I applied myself to a 
 fellow of some assurance, who (it appeared) acted 
 as a sort of interpreter to strangers : he was dressed 
 in a military uniform, and strongly resembled CoL 
 
 , of the Guards. And " Pray, sir," said I, 
 
 " have all the inhabitants of your city these trouble- 
 some excrescences ? I beg pardon : I see you have 
 none. You perhaps are single." — " Truly, sir," he 
 replied with a smile, "for the most part we have, 
 but not all alike. There are some, like Dick, that 
 sport but one tumescence. Their ladies have been 
 tolerably faithful, — have confined themselves to a 
 single aberration or so : these we call Unicorns. 
 Dick, you must know, is my Unicorn. [He spoke 
 this with air of invincible assurance.] Then we 
 have Bicorns, Tricorns, and so on up to Millecorns. 
 [Here methought I crossed and blessed myself in 
 my dream.] Some again we have, — there goes
 
 A VISION OF HORNS. 237 
 
 one : you see how happy the rogue looks, — how he 
 walks smiling, and perking up his face, as if he 
 thought himself the only man. He is not married 
 yet ; but on Monday next he leads to the altar 
 the accomplished widow Dacres, relict of our late 
 sheriff" 
 
 "I see, sir," said I, "and observe that he is 
 happily free from the national goitre (let me call 
 it) which distinguishes most of your countrymen." 
 
 "Look a little more narrowly," said my con- 
 ductor. 
 
 I put on my spectacles ; and, observing the man 
 a little more diligently, above his forehead I could 
 mark a thousand little twinkling shadows dancing 
 the hornpipe; little hornlets, and rudiments of horn, 
 of a soft and pappy consistence (for I handled some 
 of them), but which, like coral out of water, my 
 guide informed me, would infallibly stiffen and grow 
 rigid within a week or two from the expiration of 
 his bachelorhood. 
 
 Then I saw some horns strangely growing out 
 behind ; and my interpreter explained these to be 
 married men whose wives had conducted them- 
 selves with infinite propriety since the period of 
 their marriage, but were thought to have antedated 
 their good men's titles, by certain liberties they 
 had indulged themselves in prior to the ceremony. 
 This kind of gentry wore their horns backwards, 
 as has been said, in the fashion of the old pig-tails ; 
 and, as there was nothing obtrusive or ostentatious 
 in them, nobody took any notice of it. 
 
 Some had pretty little budding antlers, like the 
 first essays of a young fawn. These, he told me, 
 had wives whose affairs were in a hopeful way, but 
 not quite brought to a conclusion. 
 
 Others had nothing to show: only by certain 
 
 11. s
 
 258 ELIANA. 
 
 red angry marks and swellings in their foreheads, 
 which itched the more they kept rubbing and 
 chafing them, it was to be hoped that something 
 was brewing. 
 
 I took notice that every one jeered at the rest, 
 only none took notice of the sea-captains ; yet 
 these were as well provided with their tokens as 
 the best among them. This kind of people, it 
 seems, taking their wives upon so contingent 
 tenures, their lot was considered as nothing but 
 natural : so they wore their marks without im- 
 peachment, as they might cany their cockades ; 
 and nobody respected them a whit the less for it. 
 
 I observed, that the more sprouts grew out of a 
 man's head, the less weight they seemed to carry 
 with them ; whereas a single token would now and 
 then appear to give the wearer some uneasiness. 
 This shows that use is a great thing. 
 
 Some had their adornings gilt, which needs no 
 explanation; while others, like musicians, went 
 sounding theirs before them, — a sort of music which 
 I thought might very well have been spared. 
 
 It was pleasant to see some of the citizens en- 
 counter between themselves; how they smiled in 
 their sleeves at the shock they received from their 
 neighbour, and none seemed conscious of the shock 
 which their neighbour experienced in return. 
 
 Some had great corneous stumps, seemingly torn 
 off and bleeding. These, the interpreter warned 
 me, were husbands who had retaliated upon their 
 wives, and the badge was in equity divided be- 
 tween them. 
 
 While I stood discerning these things, a slight 
 tweak on my cheek unawares, which brought tears 
 into my eyes, introduced to me my friend Placid, 
 between whose lady and a certain male cousin
 
 A VISION OF HORNS. 259 
 
 some idle flirtations I remember to have heard 
 talked of; but that was all. He saw he had some- 
 how hurt me, and asked my pardon with that 
 round, unconscious face of his ; and looked so 
 tristful and contrite for his no-offence, that I was 
 ashamed for the man's penitence. Yet I protest it 
 was but a scratch. It was the least little hornet of 
 a horn that could be framed. "Shame on the 
 man," I secretly«exclaimed, "who could thrust so 
 much as the value of a hair into a brow so un- 
 suspecting and inoffensive! What, then, must 
 they have to answer for, who plant great, mon- 
 strous, timber-like, projecting antlers upon the heads 
 of those whom they call their friends, when a 
 puncture of this atomical tenuity m<ade my eyes to 
 water at this rate ! All the pincers at Surgeons' 
 Hall cannot pull out for Placid that little hair." 
 
 I was curious to know what became of these 
 frontal excrescences when the husbands died ; and 
 my guide infonned me that the chemists in their 
 country made a considerable profit by them, ex- 
 tracting from them certain subtile essences : and 
 then I remembered that nothing was so efficacious 
 in my own, for restoring swooning matrons, and 
 wives troubled with the vapours, as a strong sniff 
 or two at the composition appropriately called 
 hartshorn, — far beyond sal volatile. 
 
 Then also I began to understand why a man, 
 who is the jest of the company, is said to be the 
 butt, — as much as to say, such a one butteth with 
 the horn. 
 
 I inquired if by no operation these wens were 
 ever extracted ; and was told that there was in 
 deed an order of dentists, whom they call canonists 
 in their language, who undertook to restore the 
 forehead to its pristine smoothness ; but that ordina-
 
 »6o ELI AN A. 
 
 rily it was not done without much cost and trouble; 
 and, when they succeeded in plucking out the offend- 
 ing part, it left a painful void, which could not be 
 tilled up J and that many patients who had sub- 
 mitted to the excision were eager to marry again, 
 to supply with a good second antler the baldness 
 and deformed gap left by the extraction of the 
 former, as men losing their natural hair substitute 
 for it a less becoming periwig. 
 
 Some horns I observed beautifully taper, smooth, 
 and (as it were) flowering. These I understand 
 were the portions brought by handsome women to 
 their spouses ; and I pitied the rough, homely, un- 
 sightly deformities on the brows of others, who 
 had been deceived by plain and ordinary partners. 
 Vet the latter I observed to be by far the most 
 common ; the solution of which I leave to the na- 
 tural philosopher. 
 
 One tribe of married men I particularly admired 
 at, who, instead of horns, wore ingrafted on their 
 forehead a sort of horn-book. " This," quoth my 
 guide, "is the greatest mystery in our country, 
 and well worth an explanation. You must know 
 that all infidelity is not of the senses. We have 
 as well intellectual as material wittols. These, 
 whom you see decorated with the order of the book, 
 are triHers, who encourage about their wives' pre- 
 sence the society of your men of genius (their good 
 friends, as they call them), — literary disputants, 
 who ten to one out-talk the poor husband, and 
 commit upon the understanding of the woman a 
 violence and estrangement in the end, little less 
 painful than the coarser sort of alienation. Whip 
 me these knaves— [my conductor here expressed 
 himself with a becoming warmth],— whip me them, 
 I say, who, with no excuse from the passions, in
 
 A VISION OF HORNS. zCi 
 
 cold blood seduce the minds, rather than the per- 
 sons, of their friends' wives; who, for the tickling 
 pleasure of hearing themselves prate, dehonestate 
 the intellects of married women, dishonouring the 
 husband in what should be his most sensible part. 
 
 If I must be [here he used a plain word] let 
 
 it be by some honest sinner like myself, and not 
 by one of these gad-flies, these debauchers of the 
 understanding, these flattery-buzzers." _ He was 
 going on in this manner, and I was getting insen- 
 sibly pleased with my friend's manner (I had been 
 a little shy of him at first), when the dream sud- 
 denly left me, vanishing, as Virgil speaks, through 
 the gate of Horn.
 
 THE GOOD CLERK, A CHARACTER; 
 
 WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF "THE COMPLETE 
 ENGLISH TRADESMAN." 
 
 flHE GOOD CLERK.— He writeth a 
 fair and swift hand, and is competently 
 versed in the four first rules of arith- 
 metic, in the Rule of Three (which is 
 sometimes called the Golden Rule), and in Prac- 
 tice. We mention these things that we may leave 
 no room for cavillers to say that anything essential 
 hath been omitted in our definition ; else, to speak 
 the truth, these are but ordinary accomplishments, 
 and such as every understrapper at a desk is com- 
 monly furnished with. The character we treat of 
 soareth higher. 
 
 He is clean and neat in his person, not from a 
 vain-glorious desire of setting himself forth to ad- 
 vantage in the eyes of the other sex, with which 
 vanity too many of our young sparks now-a-days 
 are infected ; but to do credit, as we say, to the 
 office. For this reason, he evermore taketh care 
 that his desk or his books receive no soil; the 
 which things he is commonly as solicitous to 
 have fair and unblemished, as the owner of a fine 
 horse is to have him appear in good keep.
 
 THE GOOD CLERK. 26j 
 
 He riseth early in the morning; not because 
 early rising conduceth to health (though he doth 
 not altogether despise that consideration), but 
 chiefly to the intent that he may be first at the 
 desk. There is his post, — there he delighteth to 
 be, unless when his meals or necessity calleth him 
 away; which time he alway esteemeth as lost, 
 and maketh as short as possible. 
 
 He is temperate in eating and drinking, that he 
 may preserve a clear head and steady hand for his 
 master's service. He is also partly induced to this 
 observation of the rules of temperance by his 
 respect for religion and the laws of his country ; 
 which things, it may once for all be noted, do add 
 special assistances to his actions, but do not and 
 cannot furnish the main spring or motive thereto. 
 His first ambition, as appeareth all along, is to be 
 a good clerk ; his next, a good Christian, a good 
 patriot, &c. 
 
 Correspondent to this, he keepeth himself honest, 
 not for fear of the laws, but because he hath ob- 
 served how unseemly an article it maketh in the 
 day-book or ledger when a sum is set down lost or 
 missing ; it being his pride to make these books to 
 agree and to tally, the one side with the other, 
 with a sort of architectural symmetry and corre- 
 spondence. 
 
 He marrieth, or marrieth not, as best suiteth 
 with his employer's views. Some merchants do 
 the rather desire to have married men in their 
 counting-houses, because they think the married 
 state a pledge for their servants' integrity, and an 
 incitement to them to be industrious ; and it was 
 an observation of a late Lord Mayor of London, 
 that the sons of clerks do generally prove clerks 
 themselves, and that merchants encouraging per-
 
 264 ELI ANA. 
 
 sons in their employ to marry, and to have families, 
 was the best method of securing a breed of sober, 
 industrious young men attached to the mercantile 
 interest. Be this as it may, such a character as we 
 have been describing will wait till the pleasure of 
 his employer is known on this point; and regu- 
 lateth his desires by the custom of the house or 
 firm to which he belongeth. 
 
 He avoideth profane oaths and jesting, as so 
 much time lost from his employ. What spare time 
 he hath for conversation, which, in a counting- 
 house such as we have been supposing, can be but 
 small, he spendeth in putting seasonable questions 
 to such of his fellows (and sometimes 7-especifuUy 
 to the master himself) who can give him informa- 
 tion respecting the price and quality of goods, the 
 state of exchange, or the latest improvements in 
 book-keeping ; thus making the motion of his lips, 
 as well as of his fingers, subservient to his master's 
 interest. Not that he refuseth a brisk saying, or a 
 cheerful sally of wit, when it comes unforced, is 
 free of offence, and hath a convenient brevity. 
 For this reason, he hath commonly some such 
 phrase as this in his mouth : — 
 
 It's a slovenly look 
 To blot your book. 
 Or, 
 
 Red ink for ornament, black for use : 
 The best of things are open to abuse. 
 
 So upon the eve of any great holy-day, of which 
 he keepeth one or two at least every year, he will 
 merrily say, in the hearing of a confidential friend, 
 but to none other, — 
 
 All work and no play 
 Wakes Jack a dull boy
 
 THE GOOD CLERK. 265 
 
 Or, 
 
 A bow always bent must crack at last. 
 
 But then this must always be understood to be 
 spoken confidentially, and, as we say, under the 
 rose. 
 
 Lastly, his dress is plain, without singularity; 
 with no other ornament than the quill, which is 
 the badge of his function, stuck behind the dexter 
 ear, and this rather for convenience of having it at 
 hand, when he hath been called away fi-om his 
 desk, and expecteth to resume his seat there again 
 shortly, than from any delight which he taketh in 
 foppery or ostentation. The colour of his clothes 
 is generally noted to be black rather than brown, 
 brown rather than blue or green. His whole de- 
 portment is staid, modest, and civil. His motto 
 is " Regularity." 
 
 This character was sketched in an interval of 
 business, to divert some of the melancholy hours 
 of a counting-house. It is so little a creature of 
 fancy, that it is scarce anything more than a recol- 
 lection of some of those frugal and economical 
 maxims, which, about the beginning of the last 
 century (England's meanest period), were endea- 
 voured to be inculcated and instilled into the 
 breasts of the London Apprentices^ by a class of 
 instructors who might not inaptly be termed " The 
 Masters of Mean Morals." The astonishing nar- 
 rowness and illiberality of the lessons contained in 
 some of those books is inconceivable by those 
 whose studies have not led them that way, and 
 
 ' This term designated a larger class of young men than 
 that to which it is now confined. It took in the articled 
 clerks of merchants and bankers, the George Baruwells of 
 the day
 
 266 ELI AN A. 
 
 would almost induce one to subscribe to the hard 
 censure which Drayton has passed upon the mer- 
 cantile spirit : — 
 
 The gripple merchant, born to be the curse 
 Of this brave isle. 
 
 I have now lying before me that curious book by 
 Daniel Defoe, "The Complete English Trades- 
 man." The pompous detail, the studied analysis 
 of every little mean art, every sneaking address, 
 every trick and subterfuge, short of larceny, that is 
 necessary to the tradesman's occupation, with the 
 hundreds of anecdotes, dialogues (in Defoe's live- 
 liest manner) interspersed, all tending to the same 
 amiable purpose, — namely, the sacrificing of every 
 honest emotion of the soul to what he calls the 
 main chance, — if you read it in an ironical sense, 
 and as a piece of covered satire, make it one of the 
 most amusing books which Defoe ever writ, as 
 much so as any of his best novels. It is difficult 
 to say what his intention was in writing it. It is 
 almost impossible to suppose him in earnest. Yet 
 such is the bent of the book to narrow and to de- 
 grade the heart, that if such maxims were as catch- 
 ing and infectious as those of a licentious cast, 
 which happily is not the case, had I been living at 
 tliat time, I certainly should have recommended 
 to the Grand Jury of Middlesex, who presented 
 " The Fable of the Bees," to have presented this 
 book of Defoe's in preference, as of a far more vile 
 and debasing tendency. I will give one specimen 
 of his advice to the young tradesman on ik^e^ govern- 
 ment of his temper: "The retail tradesman in 
 especial, and even every tradesman in his station, 
 must furnish himself with a competent stock of 
 patience. I mean that sort of patience whicU is
 
 THE GOOD CLERK. 267 
 
 needful to bear with all sorts of impertinence, and 
 the most provoking curiosity that it is possible to 
 imagine the buyers, even the worst of them, are, or 
 can be, guilty of. A tradesman behind his counter 
 must have no flesh and blood about him, no passions, 
 no resentment ; he must never be angry, — no, not 
 so much as seem to be so, if a customer tumbles 
 him five hundred pounds' worth of goods, and 
 scarce bids money for anything ; nay, though 
 they really come to his shop with no intent to buy, 
 as many do, only to see what is to be sold, and 
 though he knows they cannot be better pleased 
 than they are at some other shop where they intend 
 to buy, 'tis all one ; the tradesman must take it ; 
 he must place it to the account of his calling, that 
 Vw his business to be ill used, and resent nothing; 
 and so must answer as obligingly to those that give 
 him an hour or two's trouble, and buy nothing, as 
 he does to those who, in half the time, lay out ten 
 or twenty pounds. The case is plain; and if some 
 do give him trouble, and do not buy, others make 
 amends, and do buy ; and as for the trouble, 'tis 
 the business of the shop." 
 
 Here follows a most admirable story of a mercer, 
 who by his indefatigable meanness, and more than 
 Socratic patience under affronts, overcame and re- 
 conciled a lady, who, upon the report of another 
 lady that he had behaved saucily to some third 
 lady, had determined to shun his shop, but, by the 
 over-persuasions of a fourth lady, was induced to 
 go to it ; which she does, declaring beforehand 
 that she will buy nothing, but give him all the 
 trouble she can. Her attack and his defence, her 
 insolence and his persevering patience, are de- 
 scribed in colours worthy of a Mandeville ; but it 
 is too long to recite. "Theu short inference from
 
 268 EL I AN A. 
 
 this long discourse," says he, "is this, — that here 
 you see, and I could give you many examples like 
 this, how and in what manner a shopkeeper is to 
 behave himself in the way of his business ; what 
 impertinences, what taunts, flouts, and ridiculous 
 things, he must bear in his trade ; and must not 
 show the least return, or the least signal of disgust : 
 he must have no passions, no fire in his temper ; 
 he must be all soft and smooth; nay, if his real 
 temper be naturally fiery and hot, he must show 
 none of it in his shop ; he must be a perfect com- 
 plete hypocrite, if he will be a complete tradesman} 
 It is true, natural tempers are not to be always 
 counterfeited : the man cannot easily be a lamb in 
 his shop, and a lion in himself; but, let it be easy 
 or hard, it must be done, and is done. There are 
 men who have by custom and usage brought them- 
 selves to it, that nothing could be meeker and 
 milder than they when behind the counter, and yet 
 nothing be more furious and raging in every other 
 part of life : nay, the provocations they have met 
 with in their shops have so irritated their rage, 
 that they would go upstairs from their shop, and 
 fall into frenzies, and a kind of madness, and beat 
 their heads against the wall, and perhaps mischief 
 themselves, if not prevented, till the violence of it 
 had gotten vent, and the passions abate and cool. 
 I heard once of a shopkeeper that behaved himself 
 thus to such an extreme, that, when he was pro- 
 voked by the impertinence of the customers beyond 
 what his temper could bear, he would go upstairs 
 and beat his wife, kick his children about like 
 dogs, and be as furious for two or three minutes 
 as a man chained down in Bedlam ; and again, 
 
 I As no qualification accompanies this maxim, it must be 
 understood as the genuine sentiment of the author !
 
 THE GOOD CLERK. 269 
 
 when that heat was over, would sit down, and cry 
 faster than the children he had abused ; and, after 
 the fit, he would go down into the shop again, and 
 be as humble, courteous, and as calm, as any man 
 whatever ; so absolute a government of his pas- 
 sions had he in the shop, and so little out of it : 
 in the shop a soulless animal that would resent 
 nothing ; and in the family, a madman : in the shop, 
 meek like a lamb ; but in the family, outrageous, 
 like a Lybian lion. The sum of the matter is, it 
 is necessary for a tradesman to subject himself, by 
 all the ways possible, to his business; his customers 
 are to be his idols : so far as he may worship idols 
 by allozvance, he is to bow down to them, and -wor- 
 ship them; at least, he is not in any way to displease 
 them, or show any disgust or distaste, whatsoever 
 they may say or do. l"he bottom of all is, that he 
 is intending to get money by them ; and it is not for 
 him that gets money to offer the least inconveni- 
 ence to them by whom he gets it : he is to consider, 
 that, as Solomon says, " the borrower is servant 
 %o the lender ;" so the seller is servant to the buyer. 
 What he says on the head of "Pleasures and Re- 
 creations " is not less amusing : " The tradesman's 
 pleasure should be in his business ; his companions 
 should be his books (he means his ledger, waste- 
 book, &c.) ; and, if he has a family, he makes his 
 excursions upstairs, and no further. None of my 
 cautions aim at restraining a tradesman from di- 
 verting himself, as we call it, with his fireside, or 
 keeping company with his wife and children." 
 Liberal allowance ! nay, almost licentious and cri- 
 minal indulgence ! But it is time to dismiss this 
 Philosopher of Meanness. More of this stuff would 
 illiberalize the pages of the " Reflector." Was the 
 man in earnest, when he could bring such powers
 
 270 ELIANA. 1 
 
 of description, and all the charms of natural elo- i 
 
 quence, in commendation of the meanest, vilest, ' 
 
 wretchedest degradations of the human character ? \ 
 
 or did he not rather laugh in his sleeve at the doc- ' 
 
 trines vyhich he inculcated ; and, retorting upon the '■ 
 
 grave citizens of London their own arts, palm upon ; 
 
 them a sample of disguised satire under the name ' 
 
 of wholesome instruction ? "
 
 REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY 
 DUNSTAN. 
 
 O your account of Sir Jeffeiy Dunstan, 
 in columns 829-30 (where, by an unfor- 
 tunate erratum, the effigies of tivo Sir 
 yefferys appear, when the uppermost 
 figure is clearly meant for Sir Han-y Dimsdale), 
 you may add that the writer of this has frequently 
 met him in his latter days, about 1790 or 1791, re- 
 turning in an evening after his long day's itineracy, 
 to his domicile, — a wretched shed in the most beg- 
 garly purlieu of Bethnal Green, a little on this side 
 the Mile-end Turnpike. The lower figure in that 
 leaf most correctly describes his then appearance, 
 except that no graphic art can convey an idea of 
 the general squalor of it, and of his bag (his con- 
 stant concomitant) in particular. Whether it con- 
 tained " old wigs" at that time, I know not ; but 
 it seemed a fitter repository for bones snatched out 
 of kennels than for any part of a gentleman's dress, 
 even at secondhand. 
 
 The ex-member for Garrat was a melancholy in- 
 stance of a great man whose popularity is worn 
 out. He still carried his sack ; but it seemed a 
 part of his identity rather than an implement of 
 his profession ; a badge of past giandeur : could
 
 272 ELI AN A. 
 
 anything have divested him of that, he would have 
 shown a "poor forked animal " indeed. My life 
 upon it, it contained no curls at the time I speak 
 of. The most decayed and spiritless remnants oi 
 what was once a peruke would have scorned the 
 filthy case; would absolutely have "burst its cere- 
 ments. " No : it was empty, or brought home bones, 
 or a few cinders, possibly. A strong odour of 
 burnt bones, I remember, blended with the scent 
 of horse-flesh seething into dog's meat, and, only 
 relieved a little by the breathings of a few brick- 
 kilns, made up the atmosphere of the delicate 
 suburban spot which this great man had chosen 
 for the last scene of his earthly vanities. The cry 
 of "old wigs" had ceased with the possession of 
 any such fripperies : his sack might have contained 
 not unaptly a little mould to scatter upon that 
 grave to which he was now advancing ; but it told 
 of vacancy and desolation. His quips were silent 
 too, and his brain was empty as his sack : he slank 
 along, and seemed to decline popular observation. 
 If a few boys followed him, it seemed rather from 
 habit than any expectation of fun. 
 
 Alas ! how changed from him, 
 The Ufe of humour, and the soul of whim, 
 Gallant and gay on Garrat's hustings proud ! 
 
 But it is thus that the world rewards its favourites 
 in decay. What faults he had, I know not. I have 
 heard something of a peccadillo or so. But some 
 little deviation from the precise line of rectitude 
 might have been winked at in so tortuous and stig- 
 matic a frame. Poor Sir Jeffery! it were well if 
 some M.P.s in earnest have passed their parlia- 
 mentary existence with no more offences against 
 integrity than could be laid to thy charge ! A fair
 
 REMINISCENCE OF SIR J. DUNSTAN. 273 
 
 dismissal was thy due, not so unkind a degradation ; 
 some little snug retreat, with a bit of green before 
 thine eyes, and not a burial alive in the fetid beg- 
 garies of IJethnal. Thou wouldst have ended thy 
 days in a manner more appropriate to thy pristine 
 dignity, installed in munificent mockery (as in 
 mock honours you had lived), — a poor knight of 
 Windsor ! 
 
 Every distinct place of public speaking demands 
 an oratory peculiar to itsself. The forensic fails 
 within the walls of St. Stephen. Sir Jeffeiy was 
 a living instance of this ; for, in the flower of his 
 popularity, an attempt was made to bring him out 
 upon the stage (at which of the winter theatres I 
 forget, but I well remember the anecdote) in the 
 part oi Doctor Last} The announcement drew a 
 crowded house ; but, notwithstanding infinite tu- 
 toring, — by Foote or Garrick, I forget which, — 
 when the curtain drew up, the heart of Sir Jeffery 
 failed, and he faltered on, and made nothing of 
 his part, till the hisses of the house at last, in very 
 kindness, dismissed him from the boards. Great 
 as his parliamentary eloquence had shown itself, 
 brilliantly as his off-hand sallies had sparkled on a 
 hustings, they here totally failed him. Perhaps 
 he had an aversion to borrowed wit, and, like my 
 Lord Foppingt-on, disdained to entertain himselt 
 (or others) with the forced products of another 
 man's brain. Your man of quality is more di- 
 verted with the natural sprouts of his own. 
 
 1 It was at the Haymarket Theatre. 
 
 II. T
 
 ON A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST." 
 
 S long as I can remember the play of 
 
 " The Tempest," one passage in it has 
 
 always set me upon wondering. It has 
 
 puzzled me beyond measure. In vain 
 
 I strove to find the meaning of it. I seemed 
 
 doomed to cherish infinite, hopeless curiosity. 
 
 It is where Prospero, relating the banishment of 
 Sycorax from Argier, adds : — 
 
 For one thing that she did, 
 They would not take her life. 
 
 How have I pondered over this when a boy! 
 How have I longed for some authentic memoir of 
 the witch to clear up the obscurity! Was the 
 story extant in the chronicles of Algiers ? Could 
 I get at it by some fortunate introduction to the 
 Algerine ambassador ? Was a voyage thither prac- 
 ticable? The Spectator, I knew, went to Grand 
 Cairo only to measure the pyramid. Was not the 
 object of my quest of at least as much importance ? 
 The blue-eyed hag ! could j,^^ have done anything 
 good or meritorious ? might that succubus relent ? 
 then might there be hope for the Devil. I have 
 often admired since that none of the commentators 
 have boggled at this passage; how they could
 
 ON A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST." 273 
 
 swallow this camel, — such a tantalizing piece of ob 
 scurity, such an abortion of an anecdote. 
 
 At length, I think I have lighted upon a clue 
 which may lead to show what was passing in the 
 mind of Shakespeare when he dropped this imper- 
 fect rumour. In the " Accurate Description of 
 Africa, by John Ogilby (folio), 1670," page 230, 
 I find written as follows. The marginal title to 
 the narrative is, "Charles the Fifth besieges Al- 
 gier:"- 
 
 " In the last place, we will briefly give an ac- 
 count of the emperour, Charles the Fifth, when he 
 besieg'd this city ; and of the great loss he suffer'd 
 therein. 
 
 "This prince, in the year one thousand five 
 hundred forty-one, having embarqued upon the sea an 
 army of twenty-two thousand men aboard eighteen 
 gallies, and an hundred tall ships, not counting the 
 barques and shallops, and other small boats, in 
 which he had engaged the principal of the Spanish 
 and Italian nobility, with a good number of the 
 Knights of Malta ; he was to land on the coasts of 
 Barbary, at a cape call'd Matifou. From this 
 place unto the city of Algier, a flat shore or strand 
 extends itself for about four leagues, the which is 
 exceeding favourable to gallies. There he put 
 ashore with his army, and in a few days caused a 
 fortress to be built, which unto this day is call'd 
 the castle of'the Emperour. 
 
 ' ' In the meantime the city of Algier took the 
 alarm, having in it at that time but eight hundred 
 Turks, and six thousand Moors, poor-spirited men, 
 and unexercised in martial affairs ; besides it was 
 at that time fortifi'd only with walls, and had no 
 outworks : insomuch that by reason of its weakness, 
 and the gi'eat forces of the Emperour, it could not
 
 270 ELI AN A. 
 
 in appearance escape taking. In fine, it was at- 
 tempted with such order, that the army came up to 
 the very gates, where the Chevaher de Sauignac, a 
 Frenchman by nation, made himself remarkable 
 above all the rest, by the miracles of his valour. 
 For having repulsed the Turks, who, having made 
 a sally at the gate call'd Babason, and there de- 
 siring to enter along with them, when he saw that 
 they shut the gate upon him, he ran his ponyard 
 into the same, and left it sticking deep therein. 
 They next fell to battering the city by the force of 
 cannon ; which the assailants so weakened, that in 
 that great extremity the defendants lost their cou- 
 rage, and resolved to surrender. 
 
 "But as they were thus intending, there was a 
 witch of the town, whom the history does not name, 
 Avhich went to seek out Assam Aga, that com- 
 manded within, and pray'd him to make it good 
 yet nine days longer, with assurance, that within 
 that time he should infallibly see Algier delivered 
 from that siege, and the whole army of the enemy 
 dispersed, so that Christians should be as cheap as 
 birds. In a word, the thing did happen in the 
 manner as foretold ; for upon the twenty-first day 
 of October, in the same year, there fell a continual 
 rain upon the land, and so furious a storm at sea, 
 that one might have seen ships hoisted into the 
 clouds, and in one instant again precipitated into 
 the bottom of the water : insomuch that the same 
 dreadful tempest was followed with the loss of 
 fifteen gallies, and above an hundred other vessels ; 
 which was the cause why the Emperour, seeing his 
 army wasted by the bad weather, pursued by a 
 famine, occasioned by wrack of his ships, in which 
 was the greatest part of his victuals and ammuni- 
 tion, he was constrain'd to raise the siege, and set
 
 ON A PASSAGE IN " THE TEMPEST." 277 
 
 sail for Sicily, whither he retreated with the mise- 
 rable reliques of his fleet. 
 
 "In the meantime that witch being acknow- 
 ledged the deliverer of Algier, was richly remune- 
 rated, and the credit of her charms authorized. So 
 that ever since, witchcraft hath been very freely 
 tolerated ; of which the chief of the town, and even 
 those vi'ho are esteem'd to be of greatest sanctity 
 among them, such as are the Marabous, a religious 
 order of their sect, do for the most part make pro- 
 fession of it, under a goodly pretext of certain reve- 
 lations which they say they have had from their 
 prophet, Mahomet. 
 
 "And hereupon those of Algier, to palliate the 
 shame and the reproaches that are thrown upon 
 them for making use of a witch in the danger of 
 this siege, do say that the loss of the forces of 
 Charles V. was caused by a prayer of one of their 
 Marabous, named Cidy Utica, which was at that 
 time in great credit, not under the notion of a ma- 
 gitian, but for a person of a holy life. Afterwards 
 in remembrance of their success, they have erected 
 unto him a small mosque without the Babason gate, 
 where he is buried, and in which they keep sundry 
 lamps burning in honour of him : nay, they some- 
 times repair thither to make their sala, for a testi- 
 mony of greater veneration. " 
 
 Can it be doubted, for a moment, that the dra- 
 matist had come fresh from reading some older 
 narrative of this deliverance of Algier by a v^tch, 
 and transferred the merit of the deed to his Sycorax, 
 exchanging only the "rich remuneration," which 
 did not suit his purpose, to the simple pardon of 
 her life ? Ogilby wrote in 1670 ; but the authorities 
 to which he refers for his account of Barbary are 
 Johannes de Leo or Africanus, Louis Marmol,
 
 27S 
 
 EL I ANA. 
 
 Diego de Ilaedo, Johannes Gramaye, Braeves, Cel. 
 Curio, and Diego de Torres, names totally unknown 
 to me, and to which I beg leave to refer the curious 
 reader for his fuller satisfaction.
 
 THE MONTHS. 
 
 UMMAGING over the contents of an 
 old stall at a half Ifook, YiaXi old-iron shop, 
 in an alley leading from Wardour Street 
 
 _., to Soho Square, yesterday, I lit upon a 
 
 ragged duodecimo which had b«;en the strange de- 
 light of my infancy, and which I had lost sight of 
 for more than forty years,— the "Queen-like Closet, 
 or Rich Cabinet ; " written by Hannah Woolly, 
 and printed for R. C. and T. S., 1681 ; being an 
 abstract of receipts in cookery, confectionery, cos- 
 metics, needlework, morality, and all such branches 
 of what were then considered as female accom- 
 plishments. The price demanded was sixpence, 
 which the owner (a little squab duodecimo cha- 
 racter himself) enforced with the assurance that his 
 " own mother should not have it for a farthing less. " 
 On my demurring at this extraordinary assertion, 
 the dirty little vendor reinforced his assertion with 
 a sort of oath, which seemed more than the oc- 
 casion demanded : "And now," said he, " I have 
 put my soul to it. " Pressed by so solemn an as- 
 severation, I could no longer resist a demand which 
 seemed to set me, however unworthy, upon a level 
 with his dearest relations ; and, depositing a tester, 
 I bore away the tattered prize in triumph. I re-
 
 28o ELIANA. 
 
 membered a gorgeous description ot the twelve 
 months of the year, which I thought would be a 
 fine substitute for those poetical descriptions of 
 them which your " Every-day Book " had nearly 
 exhausted out of Spenser. "This will be a treat," 
 thought I, "for friend Hone." To memory they 
 seemed no less fantastic and splendid than the 
 other. But what are the mistakes of childhood ! 
 On reviewing them, they turned out to be only a 
 set of commonplace receipts for working the sea- 
 sons, months, heathen gods and goddesses, &c., in 
 samplers! Yet, as an instance of the homely oc- 
 cupation of our great -grand mothers, they may b^ 
 amusing to some readers. " I have seen," says the 
 notable Hannah Woolly, " such ridiculous things 
 done in work, as it is an abomination to any artist 
 to behold. As for example : You may find, in some 
 pieces, Abraham and Sarah, and many other per- 
 sons of old time, clothed as they go now-a-days, 
 and truly sometimes worse ; for they most resemble 
 the pictures on ballads. Let all ingenious women 
 have regard, that when they work any image, to 
 represent it aright. First, let it be drawn well, and 
 then observe the directions which are given by 
 knowing men. I do assure you, I never durst work 
 any Scripture story without informing myself from 
 the ground of it ; nor any other story, or single 
 person, without informing myself both of the visage 
 and habit : as followeth : — 
 
 " If you work Jitpiter, the imperial feigned God, 
 he must have long, black, curled hair, a purple 
 garment trimmed with gold, and sitting upon a 
 golden throne, with bright yellow clouds about 
 him."
 
 THE MONTHS. 281 
 
 THE TWELVE MONTHS OF THE YEAR. 
 
 March. Is drawn in tawny, with a fierce aspect : 
 a helmet upon his head, and leaning on a spade ; 
 and a basket of garden-seeds in his left hand, and 
 in his right hand the sign oi Aries ; and winged. 
 
 April. A young man in green, with a garland 
 of myrtle and hawthorn-buds ; winged ; in one 
 hand primroses and violets, in the other the sign 
 Tatirus, 
 
 May. With a sweet and lovely countenance ; 
 clad in a robe of white and green, embroidered with 
 several flowers ; upon his head a garden of all man- 
 ner of roses ; on the one hand a nightingale, in the 
 other a lute. His sign must be a Gemini. 
 
 yune. In a mantle of dark grass-green ; upon 
 his head a garland of bents, kings-cups, and maiden- 
 hair ; in his left hand an angle, with a box of 
 cantharides; in his right, the sign Cancer; and 
 upon his arms a basket of seasonable fruits. 
 
 yiily. In a jacket of light yellow, eating cher- 
 ries ; with his face and bosom sun-burnt ; on his 
 head a wreath of centaury and wild thyme ; a scythe 
 on his shoulder, and a bottle at his girdle ; carrying 
 the sign Leo. 
 
 August. A young man of fierce and choleric 
 aspect, in a flame-coloured garment ; upon his head 
 a garland of wheat and rye ; upon his arm a basket 
 of all manner of ripe fruits ; at his belt a sickle : 
 his sign Virgo. 
 
 September. A merry and cheerful countenance, 
 in a purple robe ; upon his head a wreath of red 
 and white grapes ; in his left hand a handful of 
 oats ; withal carrying a horn of plenty, full of all 
 manner of ripe fruits ; in his nght hand the sign 
 Libra.
 
 282 EL TANA. 
 
 October . In a garment of yellow and carnation 
 upon his head a garland of oak-leaves with acorns ; 
 in his right hand the sign Scorpio; in his left hand 
 a basket of medlars, services, and chestnuts, and 
 any other fruits then iu season. 
 
 November. In a garment of changeable green 
 and black : upon his head a garland of olives, with 
 the fruit in his left hand ; bunches of parsnips and 
 turnips in his right : his sign Sagittarhis. 
 
 December. A horrid and fearful aspect, clad in 
 Irish rags, or coarse frieze girt unto him ; upon his 
 head three or four night-caps, and over them a 
 Turkish turban ; his nose red, his mouth and beard 
 clogged with icicles ; at his back a bundle of holly, 
 ivy, or mistletoe ; holding in furred mittens the 
 sign of Capricormis. 
 
 January. Clad all in white, as the earth looks 
 with the snow, blowing his nails ; in his left arm a 
 billet ; the sign Aquarius standing by his side. 
 
 February. Clothed in a dark sky-colour, car- 
 rying in his right hand the sign Pisces. 
 
 The following receipt "To dress up a chimney 
 very fine for the summer-time, as I have done 
 many, and they have been liked very well," may 
 not be unprofitable to the housewives of this cen- 
 tury : — 
 
 "First, take a pack-thread, and fasten it even to 
 the inner part of the chimney, so high as that you can 
 see no higher as you walk up and down the house. 
 You must drive in several nails to hold up all your 
 work. Then get good store of old green moss from 
 trees, and melt an equal proportion of beeswax and 
 rosin together ; and, while it is hot, dip the wrong 
 ends of the moss in it, and presently clap it upon 
 your pack-thread, and press it down hard with your 
 hand. You must make haste, or else it will cool
 
 THE MONTHS. 283 
 
 before you can fasten it, and then it will fall down. 
 Do so all around where the pack-thread goes ; and 
 the next row you must join to that, so that it may 
 seem all in one : thus do till you have finished it 
 down to the bottom. Then take some other kind 
 of moss, of a whitish colour and stiff, and of several 
 sorts or kinds, and place that upon the other, here 
 and there carelessly, and in some places put a good 
 deal, and some a little ; then any kind of fine snail- 
 shells, in which the snails are dead, and little toad- 
 stools, which are very old, and look like velvet, or 
 any other thing that 7i.ias old and pretty: place it 
 here and there as your fancy serves, and fasten all 
 with wax and rosin. Then, for the hearth of your 
 chimney, you may lay some orpan-sprigs in order 
 all over, and it will grow as it lies ; and, according 
 to the season, get what flowers you can, and stick 
 in as if they grew, and a few sprigs of sweet-briar : 
 the flowers you must renew every week ; but the 
 moss will last all the summer, till it will be time to 
 make a fire ; and the orpan will last near two 
 months. A chimney thus done doth grace a room 
 exceedingly. " 
 
 One phrase in the above should particularly re- 
 commend it to such of your female readers as, in 
 the nice language of the day, have done growing 
 some time, — "little toad-stools, &c., and anything 
 that is old and pretty." Was ever antiquity so 
 smoothed over? The culinaiy recipes have nothing 
 remarkable in them, except the costliness of them. 
 Every thing (to the meanest meats) is sopped in 
 claret, steeped in claret, basted with claret, as if 
 claret were as cheap as ditch-water. I remember 
 Bacon recommends opening a turf or two in your 
 garden walks, and pouring into each a bottle of 
 claret, to recreate the sense of smelling, being no
 
 2S4 ELI ANA. 
 
 less gn.teful than beneficial. We hope the Chan- 
 cellar of the Exchequer will attend to this in his 
 next reduction of French wines, that we may once 
 more water our gardens with right Bordeaux. The 
 medical recipes are as whimsical as they are cruel. 
 Our ancestors were not at all effeminate on this 
 head. Modern sentimentalists would shrink at a 
 cock plucked and bruised in a mortar alive to make 
 a cullis, or a live mole baked in an oven (be stire it 
 be alive) to make a powder for consumption. But 
 the whimsicalest of all are the directions to servants 
 (for this little book is a compendium of all duties ): 
 the footman is seriously admonished not to stand 
 lolling against his master's chair while he waits at 
 table ; for " to lean on a chair when they wait is 
 a particular favour shown to any superior servant, 
 as the chief gentleman, or the waiting- woman when 
 she rises from the table." Also he must not " hold 
 the plates before his mouth to be defiled with his 
 breath, nor touch them on the right [inner] side." 
 Surely Swift must have seen this little treatise. 
 
 Hannah concludes with the following address, 
 by which the self-estimate which she formed of her 
 usefulness may be calculated : — 
 
 Ladies, I hope you're pleased, and so shall I, 
 If what 1 ve writ, you may be gainers by : 
 If not, it is your fault, it is not mine, 
 Your benefit in this 1 do design. 
 Much labour and much time it hath me cost. 
 Therefore, I beg, let none of it be lost. 
 The money you shall pay for this my book, 
 You'll not repent of> when in it you look. 
 Ko more at present to you I shall say, 
 But wish you all the happiness I may
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. 
 LISTON. 
 
 (HE subject of our Memoir is lineally 
 descended from Johan de L'Estonne 
 (see "Domesday Book," where he is 
 so written), who came in with the 
 Conqueror, and had lands awarded him at Lupton 
 Magna, in Kent. His particular merits or services, 
 Fabian, whose authority I chiefly follow, has for- 
 gotten, or perhaps thought it immaterial, to specify. 
 Fuller thinks that he was standard-bearer to Hugo 
 de Agmondesham, a powerful Norman baron, who 
 was slain by the hand of Harold himself at the fatal 
 battle of Hastings. Be this as it may, we find a 
 family of that name flourishing some centuries later 
 in that county. John Delliston, knight, was High 
 Sheriff for Kent, according to Fabian, qtiinto Hen- 
 rici Scxti ; and we trace the lineal branch flourish- 
 ing downwards, — the orthography varying, accord- 
 ing to the unsettled usage of the times, froro Del- 
 leston to Leston or Liston, between which it seems 
 to have alternated, till, in the latter end of the 
 reign of James I., it finally settled into the deter- 
 jninate and pleasing dissyllabic arrangement which 
 it still retains. Aminadab Liston, the eldest male 
 representative of the family of that day, was of the
 
 286 ELI AN A. 
 
 strictest order of Puritans. Mr. Foss, of Pall Mall, 
 has obligingly communicated to me an undoubted 
 tract of his, which bears the initials only, A. L., 
 and is entitled, " The Grinning Glass, or Actor's 
 Mirrour ; where in the vituperative Visnomy of 
 Vicious Players for the Scene is as virtuously re- 
 flected back upon their mimetic Monstrosities as it 
 has viciously (hitherto) vitiated with its vile Vani- 
 ties her Votarists. " A strange title, but bearing the 
 impress of those absurdities with which the title- 
 pages of that pamphlet-spawning age abounded. 
 The work bears date 1617. It preceded the " His- 
 triomastix " by fifteen years ; and, as it went before 
 it in time, so it comes not far short of it in virulence. 
 It is amusing to find an ancestor of Liston's thus 
 bespattering the players at the commencement of 
 the seventeenth century : — 
 
 "Thinketh He" (the actor), "with his costive 
 countenances, to wry a sorrowing soul out of her 
 anguish, or by defacing the divine denotement of 
 destinate dignity (daignely described in the face 
 humane and no other) to reinstamp the Paradice- 
 plotted similitude with a novel and naughty ap- 
 proximation (not in the first intention) to those 
 abhorred and ugly God -forbidden correspondences, 
 with flouting Apes' jeering gibberings, and Babion 
 babbling-like, to hoot out of countenance all modest 
 measure, as if our sins were not sufficing to stoop 
 out backs without He wresting and crooking his 
 members to mistimed mirth (rather malice) in de- 
 formed fashion, leering when he should learn, 
 prating for praying, goggling his eyes (better up- 
 turned for grace), whereas in Paradice (if we can 
 go thus high for His profession) that develish Ser- 
 pent appeareth his undoubted Predecessor, first in- 
 duing a mask like some rog^uish roistering Roscius
 
 MEMOIR OF MR. LIS TON. 087 
 
 (I spit at them all) to beguile with Stage shows 
 the gaping Woman, whose Sex hath still chiefly 
 upheld these Mysteries, and are voiced to be the 
 chief Stage-haunters, where, as I am told, the 
 custom is commonly to mumble (between acts) 
 apples, not ambiguously derived from that per- 
 nicious Pippin (worse in effect than the Apples of 
 Discord), whereas sometimes the hissing sounds of 
 displeasure, as I hear, do lively reintonate that 
 snake-taking-leave, and diabolical goings off, in 
 Paradice. " 
 
 The Puritanic effervescence of the early Presby- 
 terians appears to have abated with time, and the 
 opinions of the more immediate ancestors of our 
 subject to have subsided at length into a strain of 
 moderate Calvinism. Still a tincture of the old 
 leaven was to be expected among the posterity of 
 A. L. 
 
 Our hero was an only son of Ilabakkuk Listen, 
 settled as an Anabaptist minister upon the patri- 
 monial soil of his ancestors. A regular certificate 
 appears, thus entered in the Church-book at Lup- 
 ton Magna: — ^'■Johannes, filius Habakknk et Re- 
 becca Listen, Dissentientium, naius quinto Decem- 
 bri, 1780, baptizatus sexto Februarii sequentis ; 
 Sponsoribus J. et W. Woollaston, una cum Maria 
 Merry weather." The singularity of an Anabaptist 
 minister conforming to the child-rites of the Church 
 would have tempted me to doubt the authenticity 
 of this entry, had I not been obliged with tlie actual 
 sight of it by the favour of Mr. Minns, the intel- 
 ligent and worthy parish clerk of Lupton. Pos- 
 sibly some expectation in point of worldly advan- 
 tages from some of the sponsors might have induced 
 this unseemly deviation, as it must have appeared, 
 from the practice and principles of that generally
 
 288 ELI ANA. 
 
 rigid sect. The term Dissentientium was possibly 
 intended by the orthodox clergyman as a slur upon 
 the supposed inconsistency. Wliat, or of what 
 nature, the expectations we have hinted at may 
 have been, we have now no means of ascertaining. 
 Of the Woollastons no trace is now discoverable 
 in the village. The name of Merryweather occurs 
 over the front of a grocer's shop at the western ex- 
 tremity of Lupton. 
 
 Of the infant Liston we find no events recorded 
 before his fourth year, in which a severe attack of 
 the measles bid fair to have robbed the rising gene- 
 ration of a fund of innocent entertainment. He 
 had it of the confluent kind, as it is called ; and 
 the child's life was for a week or two despaired of. 
 His recovery he always attributes (under Heaven) 
 to the humane interference of one Dr. Wilhelm 
 Richter, a German empiric, who, in this extremity, 
 prescribed a copious diet of saiier-kraut, which the 
 child was observed to reach at with avidity, when 
 other food repelled him ; and from this change of 
 diet his restoration was rapid and complete. We 
 have often heard him name the circumstance with 
 gratitude ; and it is not altogether surprising that 
 a relish for this kind of aliment, so abhorrent and 
 harsh to common English palates, has accompanied 
 him through life. When any of Mr. Liston's inti- 
 mates invite him to supper, he never fails of find- 
 ing, nearest to his knife and fork, a dish oi sauer- 
 kraut. 
 
 At the age of nine, we find our subject under 
 the tuition of the Rev. Mr. Goodenough (his father's 
 health not permitting him probably to instruct 
 him himself), by whom he was inducted into a 
 competent portion of Latin and Greek, with some 
 mathematics, till the death of Mr. Goodenough, in
 
 MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON. 285 
 
 his own seventieth, and Master Liston's eleventh 
 year, put a stop for tire present to his classical 
 progress. 
 
 We have heard our hero, with emotions which do 
 his heart honour, describe the awful circumstances 
 attending the decease of this worthy old gentleman. 
 It seems they had been walking out together, 
 master and pupil, in a fine sunset, to the distance 
 of three-quarters of a mile west of Lupton, when a 
 sudden curiosity took Mr. Goodenough to look 
 down upon a chasm, where a shaft had been lately 
 sunk in a mining speculation (then projecting, but 
 abandoned soon after, as not answering the pro- 
 mised success, by Sir Ralph Shepperton, knight, 
 and member for the county). The old clergyman 
 leaning over, either with incaution or sudden gid- 
 diness (probably a mixture of both), suddenly lost 
 his footing, and, to use Mr. Liston's phrase, dis 
 appeared, and was doubtless broken into a thou- 
 sand pieces. The sound of his head, &c., dashing 
 successively upon the projecting masses of the 
 chasm, had such an effect upon the child, that a 
 serious sickness ensued ; and, even for many years 
 after his recovery, he was not once seen so much 
 as to smile. 
 
 The joint death of both his parents, which hap- 
 pened not many months after this disastrous acci- 
 dent, and were probably (one or both of them) 
 accelerated by it, threw our youth upon the pro- 
 tection of his maternal great-aunt, Mrs. Sitting- 
 bourn. Of this aunt we have never heard him 
 speak but with expressions amounting almost to 
 reverence. To the influence of her early counsels 
 and manners he has always attributed the fii-mness 
 with which, in maturer years, thrown upon a way 
 of life commonly not the best adapted to gravity 
 
 II. u
 
 zgo EL I AN A. 
 
 and self-retirement, he has been able to maintain 
 a serious character untinctured with the levities in- 
 cident to his profession. Ann Sittingbourn (we 
 have seen her portrait by Hudson) was stately, stiff, 
 tall, with a cast of features strikingly resembling the 
 subject of this memoir. Her estate in Kent was 
 spacious and well wooded ; the house one of those 
 venerable old mansions which are so impressive in 
 childhood, and so hardly forgotten in succeeding 
 years. In the venerable solitudes of Chamwood, 
 among thick shades of the oak and beech (this last 
 his favourite tree), the young Liston cultivated 
 those contemplative habits which have never en- 
 tirely deserted him in after years. Here he was 
 commonly in the summer months to be met with, 
 with a book in his hand, — not a play-book, — me- 
 ditating. Boyle's " Reflections" was at one time 
 the darling volume ; which, in its turn, was super- 
 seded by Young's "Night Thoughts," which has 
 continued its hold upon him through life. He 
 carries it always about him ; and it is no uncommon 
 thing for him to be seen, in the refreshing intervals 
 of his occupation, leaning against a side-scene, in 
 a sort of Herbert-of-Cherbury posture, turning over 
 a pocket-edition of his favourite author. 
 
 But the solitudes of Charnwood were not des- 
 tined always to obscure the path of our young 
 hero. The premature death of Mrs. Sittingbourn, at 
 the age of seventy, occasioned by incautious burn- 
 ing of a pot of charcoal in her sleeping-chamber, 
 left him in his nineteenth year nearly without re- 
 sources. That the stage at all should have pre- 
 sented itself as an eligible scope for his talents, 
 and, in particular, that he should have chosen a 
 line so foreign to what appears to have been his 
 turn of mind, may require some explanation.
 
 MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON. igj 
 
 At Charnwood, then, we behold him thoughtful, 
 grave, ascetic. From his cradle averse to flesh- 
 meats and strong drink ; abstemious even beyond 
 the genius of the place, and almost in spite of the 
 remonstrances of his great-aunt, who, though strict, 
 was not rigid, — water was his habitual drink, and 
 his food little beyond the mast and beech-nuts of 
 his favourite groves. It is a medical fact, that this 
 kind of diet, however favourable to the contem- 
 plative powers of the primitive hermits, &c., is but 
 ill adapted to the less robust minds and bodies 
 of a later generation. Hypochondria almost con- 
 stantly ensues. It was so in the case of the young 
 Liston. He was subject to sights, and had visions. 
 Those arid beech-nuts, distilled by a complexion 
 naturally adust, mounted into an occiput already 
 prepared to kindle by long seclusion and the fer- 
 vour of strict Calvinistic notions. In the glooms 
 of Charnwood, he was assailed by illusions similar 
 in kind to those which are related of the famous 
 Anthony of Padua. Wild antic faces would ever 
 and anon protrude themselves upon his sensorium. 
 Whether he shut his eyes, or kept them open, the 
 same illusions operated. The darker and more pro- 
 found were his cogitations, the droller and more 
 whimsical became the apparitions. They buzzed 
 about him thick as flies, flapping at him, flouting 
 him, hooting in his ear, yet with such comic ap- 
 pendages, that what at first was his bane became 
 at length his solace ; and he desired no better so- 
 ciety than that of his merry phantasmata. We 
 shall presently find in what way this remarkable 
 phenomenon influenced his future destiny. 
 
 On the death of Mrs. Sittingbourn, we find him 
 received into the family of Mr. Willoughby, an 
 eminent Turkey merchant, resident in Birchin
 
 292 ELIANA. 
 
 Lane, London. We lose a little while here the 
 chain of his histoiy, — by what inducements this 
 gentleman was determined to make him an inmate 
 of his house. Probably he had had some personal 
 kindness for Mrs. Sittingbourn formerly ; but, how- 
 ever it was, the young man was here treated more 
 like a son than a clerk, though he was nominally 
 but the latter. Different avocations, the change of 
 scene, with that alternation of business and recrea- 
 tion which in its greatest perfection is to be had 
 only in London, appear to have weaned him in 
 a short time from the hypochondriacal affections 
 which had beset him at Charnwood. 
 
 In the three years which followed his removal 
 to Birchin Lane, we find him making more than 
 one voyage to the Levant as chief factor for Mr. 
 Willoughby at the Porte. We could easily fill 
 our biography with the pleasant passages which 
 we have heard him relate as having happened to 
 him at Constantinople ; such as his having been 
 taken up on suspicion of a design of penetrating 
 the seraglio, &c. ; but, with the deepest convince- 
 ment of this gentleman's own veracity, we think 
 that some of the stories are of that whimsical, and 
 others of that romantic nature, which, however 
 diverting, would be out of place in a narrative of 
 this kind, which aims not only at strict truth, but 
 at avoiding the very appearance of the contrary. 
 
 We will now bring him over the seas again, and 
 suppose him in the counting-house in Birchin Lane, 
 his protector satisfied with the returns of his fac- 
 torage, and all going on so smoothly, that we may 
 expect to find Mr. Liston at last an opulent mer- 
 chant upon 'Change, as it is called. But see the 
 turns of destiny ! Upon a summer's excursion into 
 Norfolk, in the year 1801, the accidental sight of
 
 MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON. 293 
 
 pretty Sally Parker, as she was called (then in the 
 Norwich company), diverted his inclinations at once 
 from couimerce ; and he became, in the language 
 of commonplace biography, stage-struck. Happy 
 for the lovers of mirth was it that our hero took 
 this turn ; he might else have been to this hour 
 that unentertainmg character, a plodding London 
 merchant. 
 
 We accordingly find him shortly after making 
 his debut, as it is called, upon the Norwich boards, 
 in the season of that year, being then in the twenty- 
 second year of his age. Having a natural bent 
 to tragedy, he chose the part of Pyrrhus, in the 
 "Distressed Mother," to Sally Parker's Hermione. 
 We find him afterwards as Barnwell, Altamont, 
 Chamont, &c. ; but, as if Nature had destined him 
 to the sock, an unavoidable infirmity absolutely 
 discapacitated him for tragedy. His person, at 
 this latter period of which I have been speaking, 
 was graceful, and even commanding; his counte- 
 nance set to gravity : he had the power of arrest- 
 ing the attention of an audience at first sight 
 almost beyond any other tragic actor. But he could 
 not hold it. To understand this obstacle, we must 
 go back a few years to those appalling reveries at 
 Charnwood. Those illusions, which had vanished 
 before the dissipation of a less recluse life and 
 more free society, now in his solitai-y tragic studies, 
 and amid the intense calls upon feeling incident to 
 tragic acting, came back upon him with tenfold 
 vividness. In the midst of some most pathetic 
 passage (the parting of Jaffier with his dying friend, 
 for instance), he would suddenly be surprised with 
 a fit of violent horse- laughter. While the spec- 
 tators were all sobbing before him with emotion, 
 suddenly one of those grotesque faces would peep
 
 29-t ELI AN A. 
 
 out upon him, and he could not resist the impulse. 
 A timely excuse once or twice served his purpose ; 
 but no audiences could be expected to bear re- 
 peatedly this violation of the continuity of feeling. 
 He describes them (the illusions) as so many de- 
 mons haunting him, and paralyzing every effect. 
 Even now, I am told, he cannot recite the famous 
 soliloquy in "Hamlet," even in private, without 
 immoderate bursts of laughter. However, what 
 he had not force of reason sufficient to overcome, he 
 had good sense enough to turn into emolument, and 
 determined to make a commodity of his distemper. 
 He prudently exchanged the buskin for the sock, 
 and the illusions instantly ceased ; or, if they oc- 
 curred for a short season, by their very co-opera- 
 tion added a zest to his comic vein, — some of his 
 most catching faces being (as he expresses it) little 
 more than transcripts and copies of those extra- 
 ordinary phantasmata. 
 
 We have now drawn out our hero's existence to 
 the period when he was about to meet, for the first 
 time, the sympathies of a London audience. The 
 particulars of his success since have been too much 
 before our eyes to render a circumstantial detail of 
 them expedient. I shall only mention, that Mr. 
 Willoughby, his resentments having had time to 
 subside, is at present one of the fastest friends of 
 his old renegado factor; and that Mr. Liston's 
 hopes of Miss Parker vanishing along with his un- 
 successful suit to Melpomene, in the autumn of 
 iSll he married his present lady, by whom he 
 has been blessed with one son, Philip, and two 
 daughters, Ann and Angustina.
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. 
 
 MUNDEN. 
 
 IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE "LONDON 
 MAGAZINE." 
 
 >/j 
 
 ARK'EE, Mr. Editor. A word in your 
 ear. Tliey tell me you are going to put 
 me in print, — in print, sir ; to publish my 
 life. What is my life to you, sir? What 
 is it to you whether I ever lived at all? My life is 
 a very good life, sir. I am insured at the Pelican, 
 sir. I am threescore years and six, — six; mark 
 me, sir ; but I Can play Polonius, which, I iDelieve, 
 few of your corre — correspondents can do, sir. I 
 suspect tricks, sir : I smell a rat ; I do, I do. You 
 would cog the die upon us ; you would, you would, 
 sir. But I will forestall you, sir. You would be 
 deriving me from William the Conqueror, with a 
 murrain to you. It is no such thing, sir. The 
 town shall know better, sir. They begin to smoke 
 your flams, sir. Mr. Liston may be born where 
 he pleases, sir; but I will not be born at Lup — 
 Lupton Magna for anybody's pleasure, sir. My 
 son and I have looked over the great map of Kent 
 together, and we can find no such place as you 
 would palm upon us, sir ; palm upon us, I say.
 
 296 ELI AN A. 
 
 Neither Magna nor Parva, as my son says, and 
 he knows Latin, sir ; Latin. If you write my 
 life true, sir, you must set down that I, Joseph 
 Munden, comedian, came into the world upon 
 Allhallows Day, Anno Domini, 1759— 1759; "o 
 sooner nor later, sir ; and I saw the first light — 
 the first light, remember, sir, at Stoke Pogis — 
 Stoke Pogis, coinitatu Bucks, and not at Lup — 
 Lup Magna, which I believe to be no better than 
 moonshine — moonshine; do you mark me, sir? 
 I wonder you can put such flim-flams upon us, 
 sir ; I do, I do. It does not become you, sir ; 
 I say it, — I say it. And my father was an 
 honest tradesman, sir : he dealt in malt and hops, 
 sir ; and was a corporation-man, sir ; and of the 
 Church of England, sir, and no Presbyterian ; nor 
 Ana — Anabaptist, sir; however you may be dis- 
 posed to make honest people believe to the con- 
 traiy, sir. Your bams are found out, sir. The 
 town will be your stale-puts no longer, sir; and 
 you must not send us jolly fellows, sir, — we that are 
 comedians, sir, — you must not send us into groves 
 and char — charnwoods a moping, sir. Neither 
 charns, nor charnel-houses, sir. It is not our con- 
 stitution, sir : I tell it you — I tell it you. I was a 
 droll dog from my cradle. I came into the world 
 tittering, and the midwife tittered, and the gossips 
 spilt their caudle with tittering; and, wlien I was 
 brought to the font, the parson could not christen 
 me for tittering. So I was never more than half 
 baptized. And, when I was little Joey, I made 
 'em all titter ; there was not a melancholy face to 
 be seen in Pogis. Pure nature, .sir. I was born a 
 comedian. Old Screwup, the undertaker, could 
 tell you, sir, if he were living. Why, I was obliged 
 to be locked up every time there was to be a fu-
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. M UN DEN. 297 
 
 neial at Pogis. I was — I was, sir. I used to gri- 
 mace at the mutes, as he called it, and put 'em out 
 with my mops and my mows, till they couldn't 
 stand at a door for me. And when I was locked 
 up, with nothing but a cat in my company, I fol- 
 lowed my bent with trying to make her laugh; 
 and sometimes she would, and sometimes she 
 would not. And my schoolmaster could make 
 nothing of me : I had only to thrust my tongue 
 in my cheek — in my cheek, sir, and the rod 
 dropped from his fingers; and so my education 
 was limited, sir. And I grew up a young fellow, 
 and it was thought convenient to enter me upon 
 some course of life that should make me serious ; 
 but it wouldn't do, sir. And I was articled to a 
 dry-salter. My father gave forty pounds premium 
 with me, sir. I can show the indent — dent — 
 dentures, sir. But I was born to be a comedian, 
 sir : so I ran away, and listed with the players, sir : 
 and 1 topt my parts at Amersham and Gerrard's 
 Cross, and played my own father to his face, in his 
 own town of Pogis, in the part of Gripe, when I 
 was not full seventeen years of age ; and he did 
 not know me again, but he knew me afterwards ; 
 and then he laughed, and I laughed, and, what is 
 better, the dry-salter laughed, and gave me up my 
 articles for the joke's sake : so that I came into 
 court afterwards with clean hands — with clean hands 
 — do you see, sir? 
 
 [Here the manuscript becomes illegible for two 
 or three sheets onwards, which we presume to be 
 occasioned by the absence of Mr. Munden, jun.; 
 who clearly transcribed it for the press thus far. 
 The rest (with the exception of the concluding 
 paragraph, which is seemingly resumed in the first
 
 398 ELI AN A. 
 
 handwriting) appears to contain a confused account 
 of some lawsuit, in which the elder Munden was 
 engaged ; with a circumstantial history of the pro- 
 ceedings of a case of breach of promise of marriage, 
 made to or by (we cannot pick out which) Jemima 
 Munden, spinster ; probably the comedian's cousin, 
 for it does not appear he had any sister ; with a few 
 dates, rather better preserved, of this great actor's 
 engagements, —as "Cheltenham (spelt Cheltnam), 
 1776;" "Bath, 1779;" "London, 1789;" to- 
 gether with stage anecdotes of Messrs. Edwin, Wil- 
 son, Lee, Lewis, &c. ; over which we have strained 
 our eyes to no purpose, in the hope of presenting 
 something amusing to the public. Towards the 
 end, the manuscript brightens up a little, as we 
 said, and concludes in the following manner :] 
 
 stood before them for six and thirty years 
 
 [we suspect that Mr. Munden is here speaking of 
 his final leave-taking of the stage], and to be dis- 
 missed at last. But I was heart-whole to the last, 
 sir. What though a few drops did course them- 
 selves down the old veteran's cheeks : who could 
 help it, sir? I was a giant that night, sir; and 
 could have played fifty parts, each as arduous as 
 Dozy. My faculties were never better, sir. But 
 I was to be laid upon the shelf. It did not suit 
 the public to laugh with their old servant any longer, 
 sir. [Here some moisture has blotted a sentence 
 or two.] But I can play Polonius still, sir ; I can, 
 I can. 
 
 Your servant, sir, 
 
 Joseph Munden,
 
 THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.' 
 
 Nought but a blank remains, a dead void space, 
 A step of life that promised such a race. — Dryden. 
 
 APOLEON has now sent us back from 
 the grave sufficient echoes of his Hving 
 renown : tlie twilight of posthumous 
 fame has Hngered long enough over the 
 spot where the sun of his glory set ; and his name 
 must at length repose in tlie silence, if not in the 
 darkness of night. In this busy and evanescent 
 scene, other spirits of the age are rapidly snatched 
 avi'ay, claiming our undivided sympathies and re- 
 grets, until in turn they yield to some newer and 
 more absorbing grief Another name is now added 
 to the list of the mighty departed, — a name whose 
 influence upon the hopes and fears, the fates and 
 fortunes, of our countrymen, has rivalled, and per- 
 
 ' Since writing this article, we have been informed that 
 the object of our funeral oration is not definitively dead, but 
 only moribund. So much the better : we shall have an 
 opportunity of granting the request made to Walter by one 
 of the children in the wood, and " kill him two times." The 
 Abbe de Vertot having a siege to write, and not receiving 
 the materials in time, composed the whole from his inven- 
 tion. Shortly after its completion, the expected documents 
 arrived, when he threw them aside, exclaiming, "You are 
 of no use to me now ; I have carried the town."
 
 30O ELIANA. 
 
 haps eclipsed, that of the defunct " child and cham- 
 pion of Jacobinism," while it is associated with 
 all the sanctions of legitimate government, all the 
 sacred authorities of social order and our most holy 
 religion. We speak of one, indeed, under whose 
 warrant heavy and incessant contributions were 
 imposed upon our fellow-citizens, but who exacted 
 nothing without the signet and the sign-manual of 
 most devout Chancellors of the Exchequer. Not 
 to dally longer with the sympathies of our readers, 
 we think it right to premonish them that we are 
 composing an epicedium upon no less distinguished 
 a personage than the Lottery, whose last breath, 
 after many penultimate puffs, has been sobbed forth 
 by sorrowing contractors, as if the world itself 
 were about to be converted into a blank. There is 
 a fashion of eulogy, as well as of vituperation ; and, 
 though the Lottery stood for some time in the latter 
 predicament, we hesitate not to assert that vniltis 
 ille bo7iis flebilis occidit. Never have we joined in 
 the senseless clamour which condemned the only 
 tax whereto we became voluntary contributors, — 
 the only resource which gave the stimulus without 
 the danger or infatuation of gambling ; the only 
 alembic which in these plodding days sublimized 
 our imaginations, and filled them with more deli- 
 cious dreams than ever flitted athwart the senso- 
 rium of Alnaschar. 
 
 Never can the writer forget, when, as a child, he 
 was hoisted upon a servant's shoulder in Guildhall, 
 and looked down upon the installed and solemn 
 pomp of the then drawing Lottery. The two 
 awful cabinets of iron, upon whose massy and mys- 
 terious portals the royal initials were gorgeously 
 emblazoned, as if, after having deposited the un- 
 fulfilled prophecies within, the king himself had
 
 THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT. 301 
 
 turned the lock, and still retained the key in his 
 pocket ; the bluecoat hoy, with his naked arm, 
 first converting the invisible wheel, and then diving 
 into the dark recess for a ticket ; the gi'ave and 
 reverend faces of the commissioners eyeing the 
 announced number ; the scribes below calmly com- 
 mitting it to their huge books ; the anxious counte- 
 nances of the surrounding populace ; while the 
 giant figures of Gog and Magog, like presiding 
 deities, looked down with a grim silence upon the 
 whole proceeding, — constituted altogether a scene, 
 which, combined with the sudden Avealth supposed 
 to be lavished from those inscrutable wheels, was 
 well calculated to impress the imagination of a boy 
 •with reverence and amazement. Jupiter, seated 
 between the two fatal urns of good and evil, the 
 blind goddess with her cornucopia, the Parcae 
 wielding the distaff, the thread of life, and the ab- 
 horred shears, seemed but dim and shadowy ab- 
 stractions of mythology, when I had gazed upon 
 an assemblage exercising, as I dreamt, a not less 
 eventful power, and all presented to me in pal- 
 pable and living operation. Reason and experi- 
 ence, ever at their old spiteful work of catching 
 and destroying the bubbles which youth delighted 
 to follow, have indeed dissipated much of this illu- 
 sion : but my mind so far retained the influence of 
 that early impression, that I have ever since con- 
 tinued to deposit my humble offerings at its shrine, 
 whenever the ministers of the Lottery went forth 
 with type and trumpet to announce its periodical 
 dispensations ; and though nothing has been doled 
 out to me from its undiscerning coffers but blanks, 
 or those more vexatious tantalizers of the spirit 
 denominated small prizes, yet do I hold myself 
 largely indebted to this most generous diffuser of
 
 302 ELIANA. 
 
 universal happiness. Ingrates that we are ! are 
 we to be thankful for no benefits that are not pal- 
 pable to sense, to recognize no favours that are 
 not of marketable value, to acknowledge no wealth 
 unless it can be counted with the five fingers? If 
 we admit the mind to be the sole depository of 
 genuine joy, where is the bosom that has not been 
 elevated into a temporary Elysium by the magic of 
 the Lottery? Which of us has not converted his 
 ticket, or even his sixteenth share of one, into a 
 nest-egg of Hope, upon which he has sate brood- 
 ing in the secret roosting-places of his heart, and 
 hatched it into a thousand fantastical apparitions ? 
 What a startling revelation of the passions if all 
 the aspirations engendered by the Lottery could 
 be made manifest ! Many an impecuniary epicure 
 has gloated over his locked-up warrant for future 
 wealth, as a means of realizing the dream of his 
 namesake in the " Alchemist ;" — 
 
 My meat shall all come in in Indian shells — 
 
 Dishes of agate set in gold, and studded 
 
 With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies ; 
 
 The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels' heels. 
 
 Boiled i" the spirit of Sol, and dissolved in pearl 
 
 (Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsy). 
 
 And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber, 
 
 Headed with diamant and carbuncle. 
 
 My footboy shall eat pheasants, calvered salmons. 
 
 Knots, godwits, lampreys : I myself will have 
 
 The beards of barbels served, instead of salads ; 
 
 Oiled mushrooms, and the swelling unctuous paps 
 
 Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off, 
 
 Dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce. 
 
 For which I'll say unto my cook, " There's gold : 
 
 Go forth, and be a knight ! " 
 
 Many a doting lover has kissed the scrap of 
 paper whose promissory shower of gold was to 
 give up to him his otherwise unattainable Danae ;
 
 THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT. 303 
 
 Nimrods have transformed the same narrow symbol 
 into a saddle, by which they have been enabled 
 to bestride the backs of peerless hunters ; while 
 nymphs have metamorphosed its Protean form 
 into — 
 
 Rings, gauds, conceits. 
 Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats," 
 
 and all the braveries of dress, to say nothing of the 
 obsequious husband, the two-footmann'd carriage, 
 and the opera-box. By the simple charm of this 
 numbered and printed rag, gamesters have, for a 
 time at least, recovered their losses ; spendthrifts 
 have cleared off mortgages from their estates ; the 
 imprisoned debtor has leapt over his lofty boundary 
 of circumscription and restraint, and revelled in all 
 the joys of liberty and fortune ; the cottage-walls 
 have swelled out into more goodly proportion than 
 those of Baucis and Philemon ; poverty has tasted 
 the luxuries of competence ; labour has lolled at 
 ease in a perpetual arm-chair of idleness ; sickness 
 has been bribed into banishment ; life has been in- 
 vested with new charms ; and death deprived of 
 its former terrors. Nor have the affections been 
 less gratified than the wants, appetites, and am- 
 bitions of mankind. By the conjurations of the 
 same potent spell, kindred have lavished antici- 
 pated benefits upon one another, and charity upon 
 all. Let it be termed a delusion,— a fool's paradise 
 is better than the wise man's Tartarus ; be it 
 branded as an ignis-fatuus, — it was at least a bene- 
 volent one, which, instead of beguiling its followers 
 into swamps, caverns, and pitfalls, allured them 
 on with all the blandishments of enchantment to 
 a garden of Eden, — an ever-blooming Elysium of 
 delight. True, the pleasures it bestowed were
 
 304 ELI ANA. 
 
 evanescent : but which of our joys are permanent? 
 and who so inexperienced as not to know that an- 
 ticipation is always of higlier relish than reality, 
 which strikes a balance both in our sufferings and 
 enjoyments? "The fear of ill exceeds the ill we 
 fear;" and fruition, in the same proportion, in- 
 variably falls short of hope. " JVIen are but children 
 of a larger gi-owth," who may amuse themselves 
 for a long time in gazing at the reflection of the 
 moon in the water ; but, if they jump in to grasp 
 it, they may grope for ever, and only get the far- 
 ther from their object. He is the wisest who 
 keeps feeding upon the future, and refrains as long 
 as possible from undeceiving himself by converting 
 his pleasant speculations into disagreeable cer- 
 tainties. 
 
 The true mental epicure always purchased his 
 ticket early, and postponed inquiry into its fate to 
 the last possible moment, during the whole of 
 which intervening period he had an imaginary 
 twenty thousand locked up in his desk ; and was 
 not this well worth all the money? Who would 
 scruple to give twenty pounds interest for even the 
 ideal enjoyment of as many thousands during two 
 or three months? Crede quod habes, et habes ; 
 and the usufruct of such a capital is surely not dear 
 at such a price. Some years ago, a gentleman in 
 passing along Cheapside saw the figures 1 ,069, of 
 which number he was the sole proprietor, flaming 
 on the window of a lotteiy office as a capital prize. 
 Somewhat flurried by this discovery, not less wel- 
 come than unexpected, he resolved to walk round 
 St. Paul's that he might consider in what way to 
 communicate the happy tidings to his wife and 
 family ; but, uppn re-passing the shop, he observed 
 that the number was altered to 10,069, ^"'^j upon
 
 THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT. 305 
 
 inquiry, had the mortification to learn that his 
 ticket was a blank, and had only been stuck up in 
 the window by a mistake of the clerk. This efiectu- 
 ally calmed his agitation ; but he always speaks 
 of himself as having once possessed twenty thou- 
 sand pounds, and maintains that his ten-minutes' 
 walk round St. Paul's was worth ten times the 
 purchase-money of the ticket. A prize thus ob- 
 tained has, moreover, this special advantage, — it is 
 beyond the reach of fate ; it cannot be squandered ; 
 bankruptcy cannot lay siege to it ; friends cannot 
 pull it down, nor enemies blow it up ; it bears a 
 charmed life, and none of woman born can break 
 its integrity, even by the dissipation, of a single 
 fraction. Show me the property in these perilous 
 times, that is equally compact and impregnable. 
 We can no longer become enriched for a quarter 
 of an hour; we can no longer succeed in such 
 splendid failures : all our chances of making such 
 a miss have vanished with the last of the Lotteries. 
 
 Life will now become a fiat, prosaic routine of 
 matter-of-fact ; and sleep itself, erst so prolific of 
 numerical configurations and mysterious stimulants 
 to lottery adventure, will be disfurnished of its 
 figures and figments. People will cease to harp 
 upon the one lucky number suggested in a dream, 
 and which forms the exception, while they are 
 scrupulously silent upon the ten thousand falsified 
 dreams which constitute the rule. Morpheus will 
 stifle Cocker with a handful of poppies, and our 
 pillows will be no longer haunted by the book of 
 numbers. 
 
 And who, too, shall maintain the art and mys- 
 tery of puffing, in all its pristine glory, when the 
 lottery professors shall have abandoned its cultiva 
 tion ? They were the first, as they will assuredly 
 
 II. X
 
 3o6 ELIANA. 
 
 be the last, who fully developed the resources of 
 that ingenious art ; who cajoled and decoyed the 
 most suspicious and wary reader into a perusal of 
 their advertisements by devices of endless variety 
 and cunning ; who baited their lurking schemes 
 with midnight murders, ghost-stories, crim-cons, 
 bon-mots, balloons, dreadful catastrophes, and 
 every diversity of joy and sorrow, to catch news- 
 paper gudgeons. Ought not such talents to be 
 encouraged ? Verily the abolitionists have much 
 to answer for ! 
 
 And now, having established the felicity of all 
 those who gained imaginary prizes, let us pro- 
 ceed to show that the equally numerous class who 
 were presented with real blanks have not less 
 reason to consider themselves happy. Most of us 
 have cause to be thankful for that which is be- 
 stowed ; but we have all, probably, reason to be 
 still more grateful for that which is withheld, and 
 more especially for our being denied the sudden 
 possession of riches. In the Litany, indeed, we 
 call upon the Lord to deliver us "in all time of 
 our wealth ;" but how few of us are sincere in de- 
 precating such a calamity ! Massinger's Luke, 
 and Ben Jonson's Sir Epicure Mammon, and Pope's 
 Sir Balaam, and our own daily observation, might 
 convince us that the Devil ' ' now tempts by making 
 rich, not making poor," We may read in the 
 " Guardian " a circumstantial account of a man 
 who was utterly ruined by gaining a capital prize ; 
 we may recollect what Dr. Johnson said to Garrick, 
 when the latter was making a display of his wealth 
 at Hampton Court,—" Ah, David, David ! these 
 are the things that make a death-bed terrible;" we 
 may recall the Scripture declaration, as to the 
 difficulty a rich man finds in entering into the
 
 THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT. 307 
 
 kingdom of Heaven ; and, combining all these de 
 nunciations against opulence, let us heartily con- 
 gratulate one another upon our lucky escape from 
 the calamity of a twenty or thirty thousand pound 
 prize ! The fox in the fable, who accused the un- 
 attainable grapes of sourness, was more of a phi- 
 losopher than we are generally willing to allow. 
 He was an adept in that species of moral alchemy 
 which turns everything to gold, and converts dis- 
 appointment itself into a ground of resignation and 
 content. Such we have shown to be the great 
 lesson inculcated by the Lottery, when rightly con- 
 templated ; and, if we might parody M. de Cha- 
 teaubriand's jingling expression, — '■' le Roiest niort: 
 vive le Roi!"—yie. should be tempted to exclaim, 
 " The Lottery is no more : long live the Lottery ! "
 
 THE ASS. 
 
 R. COLLIER, in his "Poetical De- 
 cameron " (Third Conversation), notices 
 a tract printed in 1595, with the author's 
 _^^__^ initials only, A. B., entitled "The No- 
 blenessc of the Asse ; a work rare, learned, and 
 excellent." He has selected the following pretty 
 passage from it : " He (the ass) refuseth no burden : 
 he goes whither he is sent, without any contra- 
 diction. He lifts not his foote against any one ; 
 he bytes not ; he is no fugitive, nor malicious 
 affected. He doth all things in good sort, and to 
 his liking that hath cause to employ him. If 
 strokes be given him, he cares not for them ; and, 
 as our modern poet singeth, — 
 
 Thou wouldst (perhaps) he should become thy foe. 
 And to that end dost beat him many times : 
 He cares not for himselfe, much less thy blow. 
 
 Certainly Nature, foreseeing the cruel usage 
 which this useful servant to man should receive at 
 man's hand, did prudently in furnishing him with 
 a tegument impervious to ordinary stripes. The 
 malice of a child or a weak hand can make feeble 
 impressions on him. His back offers no mark to,
 
 THE ASS. 309 
 
 .1 puny foeman. To a common whip or switch his 
 hide presents an absolute insensibility. You might 
 as well pretend to scourge a schoolboy with a tough 
 pair of leather breeches on. His jerkin is well 
 fortified; and therefore the costermongers, "be- 
 tween the years 1790 and iSoo," did more politicly 
 than piously in lifting up a part of his upper gar- 
 ment. I well remember that beastly and bloody 
 custom. I have often longed to see one of those 
 refiners in discipline himself at the cart's tail, with 
 just such a convenient spot laid bare to the tender 
 mercies of the whipster. But, since Nature has 
 resumed her rights, it is to be hoped that this 
 patient creature does not suffer to extremities ; and 
 that, to the savages who still belabour his poor 
 carcase with their blows (considering the sort of 
 anvil they are laid upon), he might in some sort, 
 if he could speak, exclaim with the philosopher, 
 " Lay on: you beat but upon the case of Anaxar- 
 chus." 
 
 Contemplating this natural safeguard, this forti- 
 fied exterior, it is with pain I view the sleek, fop- 
 pish, combed, and curried person of this animal as 
 he is disnaturalized at watering-places, &c., where 
 they affect to make a palfry of him. Fie on all 
 such sophistications ! It will never do, master 
 groom. Something of his honest, shaggy exterior 
 will still peep up in spite of you,— his good, rough, 
 native, pine-apple coating. You cannot " refine a 
 scorpion into a fish, though you rinse it and scour 
 it with ever so cleanly cookeiy.^" 
 
 The modern poet quoted by A. B. proceeds to 
 celebrate a virtue for which no one to this day had 
 been aware that the ass was remarkable : — 
 
 ' Mi\ton,yro»i 7ne!iiory.
 
 310 ELIANA. 
 
 One other gift this beast hath as his owne. 
 Wherewith the rest could not be furnished : 
 On man himself the same was not bestowne 1 
 To wit, on him is ne'er engendered 
 The hateful vermine that doth teare the skin, 
 And to the bode [body] doth make his passage In. 
 
 And truly, when one thinks on the suit of im 
 penetrable armour with which Nature (like Vulcan 
 to another Achilles) has provided him, these sub- 
 tile enemies to our repose would have shown some 
 dexterity in getting into his quarters. As the bogs 
 of Ireland by tradition expel toads and reptiles, he 
 may well defy these small deer in his fastnesses. 
 It seems the latter had not arrived at the exquisite 
 policy adopted by the human vermin "between 
 1790 and 1800." 
 
 But the most singular and delightful gift of the 
 ass, according to the writer of this pamphlet, is his 
 voice, the " goodly, sweet, and continual brayings " 
 of which, " whereof they forme a melodious and 
 proportionable kinde of musicke," seem to have 
 affected him with no ordinary pleasure. " Nor 
 thinke I," he adds, "that any of our immoderate 
 musitians can deny but that their song is full of 
 exceeding pleasure to be heard ; because therein is 
 to be discerned both concord, discord, singing in 
 the meane, the beginning to sing in large com- 
 passe, then following into rise and fall, the halfe- 
 note, whole note, musicke of five voices, firme 
 singing by four voices, three together, or one voice 
 and a halfe. Then their variable contrarieties 
 amongst them, when one delivers forth a long 
 tenor or a short, the pausing for time, breathing in 
 measure, breaking the minim or very least moment 
 of time. Last of all, to heare the musicke of five 
 or six voices chaunged to so many of asses is
 
 THE ASS. 311 
 
 amongst them to heaie a song of world without 
 end." 
 
 There is no accounting for ears, or for that 
 laudable enthusiasm with which an author is 
 tempted to invest a favourite subject with the 
 most incompatible perfections : I should other- 
 wise, for my own taste, have been inclined rather 
 to have given a place to these extraordinary mu- 
 sicians at that banquet of nothing-less-than-sweet- 
 sounds, imagined by old Jeremy Collier (Essays, 
 1698, part ii. on Music), where, after describing 
 the inspiriting effects of martial music in a battle, 
 he hazards an ingenious conjecture, whether a sort 
 of anti-music might not be invented, which should 
 have quite the contrary effect of " sinking the 
 spirits, shaking the nerves, curdling the blood, 
 and inspiring despair and cowardice and consterna- 
 tion. 'Tis probable," he says, " the roaring of 
 lions, the warbling of cats and screech-owls, toge- 
 ther with a mixture of the howling of dogs, judi- 
 ciously imitated and compounded, might go a great 
 way in this invention. " The dose, we confess, is 
 pretty potent, and skilfully enough prepared. But 
 what shall we say to the Ass of Silenus, who, if 
 we may trust to classic lore, by his own proper 
 sounds, without thanks to cat or screech-owl, dis- 
 mayed and put to rout a whole army of giants ? 
 Here was ajiti-nmsic with a vengeance ; a whole 
 Pan-Dis-Harmo7iico7i in a single lungs of leather ! 
 
 But I keep you trifling too long on this asinine 
 subject. I have already passed the Pons Asinorujn, 
 and will desist, remembering the old pedantic pun 
 of Jem Boyer, my schoolmaster, — 
 
 " Ass in prasenti seldom makes a wise man in 
 futuro, "
 
 IN RE SQUIRRELS. 
 
 I HAT is gone with the cages with the 
 climbing squirrel, and bells to them, 
 which were formerly the indispensable 
 appendage to the outside of a tinman's 
 shop, and were, in fact, the only live signs ? One, 
 we believe, still hangs out on Holborn ; but they 
 are fast vanishing with the good old modes of our 
 ancestors. They seem to have been superseded by 
 that still more ingenious i-efinement of modern 
 humanity,- — the tread-mill ; in which huinafi squir- 
 rels still perform a similar round of ceaseless, im- 
 progressive clambering, which must be nuts to them. 
 We almost doubt the fact of the teeth of this 
 creature being so purely orange-coloured as Mr. 
 Urban's correspondent gives out. One of our old 
 poets — and they were pretty sharp observers of 
 Nature — describes them as brown. But perhaps 
 the naturalist referred to meant "of the colour of 
 a Maltese orange,'" which is rather more obfus- 
 
 ' Fletcher in the " Faithful Shepherdess." 
 offers to Clorin — 
 
 The satyr 
 
 Grapes whose lusty blood 
 Is the leained poet's good, — 
 Sweeter yet did never crown 
 The head of Bacchus ; nuts more brown 
 Than the squirrels' teeth that crack them.
 
 IN RE SQUIRRELS. 313 
 
 cated than your fruit of Seville or St. Michael's, 
 and may help to reconcile the difference. We 
 cannot speak from observation ; but we remember 
 at school getting our fingers into the orangery of 
 one of these little gentry (not having a due caution 
 of the traps set there), and the result proved sourer 
 than lemons. The author of the "Task " some- 
 where speaks of their anger as being "insignifi- 
 cantly fierce ;" but we found the demonstration of 
 it on this occasion quite as significant as we de- 
 sired, and have not been disposed since to look 
 any of these " gift horses " in the mouth. Maiden 
 aunts keep these "small deer," as they do parrots, 
 to bite people's fingers, on purpose to give them 
 good advice "not to adventure so near the cage 
 another time." As for their " six quavers divided 
 into three quavers and a dotted crotchet," I sup- 
 pose they may go into Jeremy Bentham's next 
 budget of fallacies, along with the "melodious 
 and proportionable kinde of musicke" recorded, 
 in your last number, of a highly-gifted animal.
 
 ESTIMATE OF DE FOE'S SECON- 
 DARY NOVELS. 
 
 T has happened not seldom that one 
 work of some author has so transcen- 
 dently surpassed in execution the rest of 
 his compositions, that the world has 
 agreed to pass a sentence of dismissal upon the 
 latter, and to consign them to total neglect and 
 oblivion. It has done wisely in this not to suffer 
 the contemplation of excellences of a lower stand- 
 ard to abate or stand in the way of the pleasure it 
 has agreed to receive from the masterpiece. 
 
 Again : it has happened, that from no inferior 
 merit of execution in the rest, but from superior 
 good fortune in the choice of its subject, some 
 single work shall have been suffered to eclipse and 
 cast into shade the deserts of its less fortunate 
 brethren. This has been done with more or less 
 injustice in the case of the popular allegory of 
 Banyan, in which the beautiful and scriptural image 
 of a pilgrim or wayfarer (we are all such upon 
 earth), addressing itself intelligibly and feelingly 
 to the bosoms of all, has silenced, and made almost 
 to be forgotten, the more awful and scarcely less 
 tender beauties of the "Holy War made by Shaddai 
 upon Diabolus," of the same author, — a romance
 
 DE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS. 31s 
 
 less happy in its subject, but surely well worthy 
 of a secondary immortality. But in no instance has 
 this excluding partiality been exerted with more 
 unfairness than against what may be termed the 
 secondaiy novels or romances of Defoe. 
 
 While all ages and descriptions of people hang 
 delighted over the "Adventures of Robinson 
 Cnisoe," and shall continue to do so, we trust, 
 while the world lasts, how few comparatively will 
 bear to be told that there exist other fictitious nar- 
 ratives by the same writer, — four of them at least 
 of no inferior interest, except what results from 
 a less felicitous choice of situation ! " Roxana," 
 "Singleton," "Moll Flanders," " Colonel Jack," 
 are all genuine offspring of the same father. They 
 bear the veritable impress of De Foe. An unprac- 
 tised midwife that would not swear to the nose, lip, 
 forehead, and eye of every one of them ! They 
 are, in their way, as full of incident, and some of 
 them every bit as romantic ; only they want the 
 uninhabited island, and the charm that has be- 
 witched the world, of the striking solitary situ- 
 ation. 
 
 But are there no solitudes out of the cave and 
 the desert? or cannot the heart in the midst of 
 crowds feel frightfully alone? Singleton on the 
 world of waters, prowling about with pirates less 
 merciful than the creatures of any howling wilder- 
 ness, — is he not alone, with the faces of men about 
 him, but without a guide that can conduct him 
 through the mists of educational and habitual ig- 
 norance, or a fellow-heart that can interpret to him 
 the new-bom yearnings and aspirations of unprac- 
 tised penitence ? Or when the boy Colonel Jack, 
 in the loneliness of the heart (the worst solitude), 
 goes to hide his ill-purchased treasure in the hollow
 
 3i6 ELI AN A. 
 
 tree by night, and miraculously loses, and miracu- 
 lously finds it again, — whom hath he there to sym- 
 pathize with him? or of what sort are his asso- 
 ciates ? 
 
 The nanative manner of De Foe has a natural- 
 ness about it beyond that of any other novel or 
 romance writer. His fictions have 'all the air of 
 true stories. It is impossible to believe, while you 
 are reading them, that a real pei'son is not narrating 
 to you everywhere nothing but what really happened 
 to himself. To this the extreme homeliness of their 
 style mainly contributes. We use the word in its 
 best and heartiest sense, — that which comes home 
 to the reader. The narrators everywhere are "chosen 
 from low life, or have had their origin in it : therefore 
 they tell their own tales (Mr. Coleridge has antici- 
 pated us in this remark), as persons in their degree 
 are observed to do, with infinite repetition, and an 
 overacted exactness, lest the hearer should not have 
 minded, or have forgotten, some things that had 
 been told before. Hence the emphatic sentences 
 marked in the good old (but deserted) Italic type ; 
 and hence, too, the frequent interposition of the 
 reminding old colloquial parenthesis, "I say," 
 "Mind," and the like, when the stoiy-teller re- 
 peats what, to a practised reader, might appear to 
 have been sufficiently insisted upon before : which 
 made an ingenious critic observe, that his works, in 
 this kind, were excellent reading for the kitchen. 
 And, in truth, the heroes and heroines of De Foe 
 can never again hope to be popular with a much 
 higher class of readers than that of the servant-maid 
 or the sailor. Crusoe keeps its rank only by tough 
 prescription. Singleton, the pirate ; Colonel Jack, 
 the thief ; Moll Flanders, both thief and harlot ; 
 Roxana, harlot and something worse, — would be
 
 DE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS. 317 
 
 slartling ingredients in the bill of fare of modern 
 literary delicacies. But then, what pirates, what 
 thieves, and what harlots, is the thief, the harlot, 
 and the pirate of De Foe ! We would not hesitate 
 to say, that in no other book of fiction, where the 
 lives of such characters are described, is guilt nnd 
 delinquency made less seductive, or the suffering 
 made more closely to follow the commission, or 
 the penitence more earnest or more bleeding, or 
 the intervening flashes of religious visitation upon 
 the rude and vminstructed soul more meltingly and 
 fearfully painted. They, in this, come near to the 
 tenderness of Bunyan ; while the livelier pictures 
 and incidents in them, as in Hogarth or in Fielding, 
 tend to diminish that fastidiousness to the concerns 
 and pursuits of common life which an unrestrained 
 passion for the ideal and the sentimental is in danger 
 of producing.
 
 POSTSCRIPT TO THE "CHAPTER 
 ON EARS." 
 
 WRITER, whose real name, it seems, 
 is Boldero, but who has been entertaining 
 the town for the last twelve months with 
 some very pleasant lucubrations under 
 
 assumed signature of 
 
 Leigh 
 
 Hunt} in his 
 
 " Indicator " of the 31st January last has thought 
 fit to insinuate that I, Elia, do not write the little 
 sketches which bear ray signature in this magazine, 
 
 but that the true author of them is a Mr. L b. 
 
 Observe the critical period at which he has chosen 
 to impute the calumny, — on the very eve of the 
 publication of our last number, — affording no scope 
 for explanation for a full month ; during which 
 time I must needs lie writhing and tossing under 
 the cruel imputation of nonentity. Good Heavens ! 
 that a plain man must not be allowed to be 
 
 They call this an age of personality ; but surely 
 this spirit of anti-personality (if I may so express 
 it) is something worse. 
 
 Take away my moral reputation, — I may live to 
 discredit that calumny ; injure my literary fame, — 
 
 ' Clearly a fictitious appellation ; for, if we admit the 
 latter of these names to be in a manner English, what is 
 Leigh ? Christian nomenclature knows no such.
 
 POSTSCRIPT TO "CHAPTER ON EARS. 319 
 
 I may write that up again ; but, when a gentlemar. 
 is robbed of his identity, where is he ? 
 
 Other murderers stab but at our existence, a frail 
 and perishing trifle at the best ; but here is an 
 assassin who aims at our very essence ; who not 
 only forbids us to be any longer, but to have been 
 at all. Let our ancestors look to it. 
 
 Is the parish register nothing ? Is the house in 
 Princes Street, Cavendish Square, where we saw 
 the light six and forty years ago, nothing ? Were 
 our progenitors from stately Genoa, where we 
 flourished four centuries back, before the barbarous 
 name of Boldero ' was known to a European mouth, 
 nothing ? Was the goodly scion of our name, trans- 
 planted into England in the reign of the seventh 
 Henry, nothing ? Are the archives of the steelyard, 
 in succeeding reigns (if haply they survive the fury 
 of our envious enemies), showing that we flourished 
 in prime repute, as merchants, down to the period 
 of the Commonweath, nothing ? 
 
 Why, then the world, and all that's in't, is nothing ; 
 The covering sky is nothing ; Bohemia nothing. 
 
 I am ashamed that this trifling writer should have 
 power to move me so. 
 
 ' It is clearly of transatlantic origin.
 
 ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 CORRESPONDENT, who writes him- 
 self Peter Ball, or Bell, — for his hand- 
 writing is as ragged as his manners, — 
 admonishes me of the old saying, that 
 some people (under a courteous periphrasis, I slur 
 his less ceremonious epithet) had need have good 
 memories. In my ' ' Old Benchers of the Inner 
 Temple," I have delivered myself, and truly, a 
 Templar born. Bell clamours upon this, and 
 thinketh that he hath caught a fox. It seems that 
 in a former paper, retorting upon a weekly scrib- 
 bler who had called my good identity in question 
 (see Postscript to my "Chapter on Ears "), I profess 
 myself a native of some spot near Cavendish Square, 
 deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But who 
 does not see, except this tinkling cyinbal, that, in 
 the idle fiction of Genoese ancestry, I was answering 
 a fool according to his folly, — that Elia there ex- 
 presseth himself ironically as to an approved slan- 
 derer, who hath no right to the truth, and can be 
 no fit recipient of it. Such a one it is usual to leave 
 to his delusions ; or, leading him from error still to 
 contradictory error, to plunge him (as we say) deeper 
 in the mire, and give him line till he suspend him- 
 self. No understa\iding reader could be imposed
 
 ELI A TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS. 321 
 
 upon by such obvious rhodomontade to suspect me 
 for an alien, or believe me other than English. 
 
 To a second correspondent, who signs himself 
 " A Wiltshire Man," and claims me for a counti-y- 
 man upon the strength of an equivocal phrase in 
 my "Christ's Hospital," a more mannerly reply is 
 due. Passing over the Genoese fable, which Bell 
 makes such a ring about, he nicely detects a more 
 subtle discrepancy, which Bell was too obtuse to 
 strike upon. Referring to the passage, I must con- 
 fess that the term "native town," applied to Calne, 
 primd fade seems to bear out the construction which 
 my friendly correspondent is willing to put upon it. 
 The context too, I am afraid, a little favours it. 
 But where the words of an author, taken literally, 
 compared with some other passage in his writings 
 admitted to be authentic, involve a palpable con- 
 tradiction, it hath been the custom of the ingenious 
 commentator to smooth the difficulty by the sup- 
 position that in the one case an allegorical or 
 tropical sense was chiefly intended. So, by the 
 word "native," I may be supposed to mean a town 
 where I might have been born, or where it might 
 be desirable that I should have been born, as being 
 situate in wholesome air, upon a dry, chalky soil, 
 in which I delight ; or a town with the inhabitants 
 of which I passed some weeks, a summer or two 
 ago, so agreeably that they and it became in a 
 manner native to me. Without some such latitude 
 of interpretation in the present case, I see not how 
 we can avoid falling into a gross error in physics, 
 as to conceive that a gentleman may be born in 
 two places, from which all modern and ancient tes- 
 timony is alike abhorrent. Bacchus cometh the 
 nearest to it, whom I remember Ovid to have 
 
 II. Y
 
 332 ELI AN A. 
 
 honoured with the epithet "twice born."^ But, 
 not to mention that he is so called (we conceive) 
 in reference to the places whence rather than the 
 places where he was delivered, — for, by either 
 birth, he may probably be challenged for a Theban, 
 — in a strict way of speaking, he was 2, filius femoris 
 by no means in the same sense as he had been 
 before 2. films alvi ; for that latter was but a secon- 
 dary and tralatitious way of being born, and he but 
 a denizen of the second house of his geniture. Thus 
 much by way of explanation was thought due to the 
 courteous "Wiltshire Man." 
 
 To "Indagator," "Investigator," "Incertus," 
 and the rest of the pack, that are so importunate 
 about the true localities of his birth, — as if, for- 
 sooth, Elia were presently about to be passed to 
 his parish,— to all such churchwarden critics he 
 answereth, that, any explanation here given not- 
 withstanding, he hath not so fixed his nativity (like 
 a rusty vane) to one dull spot, but that, if he seeth 
 occasion, or the argument shall demand it, he will 
 be bom again, in future papers, in whatever place, 
 and at whatever period, shall seem good unto him. 
 Modu me Thebis, mod6 Athenis. 
 
 • Imperfectus adhuc infans genetricis ab alvo 
 Eripitur, patrioque tener (si credere dignum) 
 
 Insuitur femori 
 
 Tutaque bis geniti sunt incunabula Bacchi. 
 
 Metamorph., lib. iii.
 
 UNITARIAN PROTESTS; 
 
 IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND OF THAT 
 PERSUASION NEWLY MARRIED. 
 
 EAR M- 
 
 , — Though none of your 
 acquaintance can with greater sincerity 
 congratulate you upon this happy con- 
 juncture than myself, one of the oldest 
 of them, it was with pain I found you, after the 
 ceremony, depositing in the vestry-room what is 
 called a Protest. I thought you superior to this 
 little sophistry. What ! after submitting to the 
 service of the Church of England, — after consenting 
 to receive a boon from her, in the person of your 
 amiable consort, — was it consistent with sense, or 
 common good manners, to turn round upon her, and 
 flatly taunt her with false worship ? This language 
 is a little of the strongest in your books and from 
 your pulpits, though there it may well enough be 
 excused from religious zeal and the native warmth 
 of nonconformity. But at the altar, — the Church- 
 of-England altar, — adopting her forms, and com- 
 plying with her requisitions to the letter, — to be 
 consistent, together with the practice, I fear, you 
 must drop the language of dissent. You are no 
 longer sturdy non-cons : you are there occasional
 
 324 EL r ANA. 
 
 conformists. You submit to accept the privileges 
 communicated by a form of words, exceptionable, 
 and perhaps justly, in your view ; but, so sub- 
 mitting, you have no right to quarrel with the ritual 
 which you have just condescended to owe an obli- 
 gation to. They do not force you into their 
 churches. You come voluntarily, knowing the 
 terms. You marry in the name of the Trinity. 
 There is no evading this by pretending that you 
 take the formula with your own interpretation : 
 (and, so long as you can do this, where is the ne- 
 cessity of protesting ?) for the meaning of a vow is 
 to be settled by the sense of the imposer, not by 
 any forced construction of the taker ; else might all 
 vows, and oaths too, be eluded with impunity. 
 You marry, then, essentially as Trinit^ians ; and 
 the altar no sooner satisfied than, hey, presto ! with 
 the celerity of a juggler, you shift habits, and pro- 
 ceed pure Unitarians again in the vestry. You 
 cheat the church out of a wife, and go home smiling 
 in your sleeves that you have so cunningly despoiled 
 the Egyptians. In plain English, the Church has 
 married you in the name of so and so, assuming 
 that you took the words in her sense : but you 
 outwitted her ; you assented to them in your sense 
 only, and took from her what, upon a right under 
 standing, she would have declined giving you. 
 
 This is the fair construction to be put upon all 
 Unitarian marriages, as at present contracted ; and, 
 so long as you Unitarians could salve your con- 
 sciences with the Equivoque, I do not see why the 
 Established Church should have troubled herself at 
 all about the matter. But the protesters necessa- 
 rily see farther. They have some glimmerings of 
 the deception ; they apprehend a flaw somewhere ; 
 they would fain be honest, and yet they must marry
 
 UNITARIAN PROTESTS. 325 
 
 notwithstanding ; for honesty's sake, they are fain 
 to dehonestate themselves a little. Let me try the 
 very words of your own protest, to see what con- 
 fessions we can pick out of them. 
 
 •'As Unitarians, therefore, we" (you and your 
 newly -espoused bride) "most solemnly protest 
 against the service" (which yourselves have just 
 demanded), "because we are thereby called upon 
 not only tacitly to acquiesce, but to profess a belief 
 in a doctrine which is a dogma, as we believe, 
 totally unfounded. " But do you profess that belief 
 during the ceremony? or are you only called upon 
 for the profession, but do not make it? If the 
 latter, then you fall in with the rest of your more 
 consistent brethren who waive the protest ; if the 
 former, then, I fear, your protest cannot save you. 
 
 Hard and grievous it is, that, in any case, an 
 institution so broad and general as the union of 
 man and wife should be so cramped and straitened 
 by the hands of an imposing hierarchy, that, to 
 plight troth to a lovely woman, a man must be 
 necessitated to compromise his truth and faith to 
 Heaven ; but so it must be, so long as you choose 
 to marry by the forms of the Church over which 
 that hierarchy presides. 
 
 " Therefore," say you, "we protest." Oh, pour 
 and much-fallen word. Protest ! It was not so that 
 the first heroic reformers protested. They de- 
 parted out of Babylon once for good and all ; they 
 came not back for an occasional contact with her 
 altars, — a dallying, and then a protesting against 
 dalliance ; they stood not shuffling in the porch, 
 with a Popish foot within, and its lame Lutheran 
 fellow without, halting betwixt. These were the 
 true Protestants. You are — protesters. 
 
 Besides the inconsistency of this proceeding, I
 
 326 ELIANA. 
 
 must think it a piece of impertinence, miseasonable 
 at least, and out of place, to obtrude these papers 
 upon the officiating clergyman ; to offer to a public 
 functionary an instrument which by the tenor of 
 his function he is not obliged to accept, but rather 
 he is called upon to reject. Is it done in his cle- 
 rical capacity ? He has no power of redressing the 
 grievance. It is to take the benefit of his ministry, 
 and then insult him. If in his capacity of fellow- 
 Christian only, what are your scruples to him, so 
 long as you yourselves are able to get over them, 
 and do get over them by the very fact of coming 
 to require his services ? The thing you call a Pro- 
 test might with just as good a reason be presented 
 to the churchwarden for the time being, to the 
 parish-clerk, or the pevs'-opener. 
 
 The Parliament alone can redress your grievance, 
 if any. Yet I see not how with any grace your 
 people can petition for relief, so long as, by the 
 very fact of your coming to church to be married, 
 they do bond fide and strictly relieve themselves. 
 The Upper House, in particular, is not unused to 
 these same things, called Protests, among them- 
 selves. But how would this honourable body stare 
 to find a noble lord conceding a measure, and in 
 the next breath, by a solemn protest, disowning 
 it ! A protest there is a reason given for non- 
 compliance, not a subterfuge for an equivocal oc- 
 casional compliance. It was reasonable in the 
 primitive Christians to avert from their persons, 
 by whatever lawful means, the compulsory eating 
 of meats which had been offered unto idols. I 
 dare say the Roman prefects and exarchates had 
 plenty of petitioning in their days. But what would 
 a Festus or Agrippa have replied to a petition to 
 that effect, presented to him by some evasive Lao-
 
 UNITARIAN PROTESTS, 327 
 
 dicean, with the very meat between his teeth, 
 which he had been chewing voluntarily, rather 
 than abide the penalty? Relief for tender con- 
 sciences means nothing, where the conscience has 
 previously relieved itself; that is, has complied 
 with the injunctions which it seeks preposterously 
 to be rid of. Relief for conscience there is pro- 
 perly none, but what by better information makes 
 an act appear innocent and lawful with which the 
 previous conscience was not satisfied to comply. 
 All else is but relief from penalties, from scandal 
 incurred by a complying practice, where the con- 
 science itself is not fully satisfied. 
 
 " But," say you, " we have hard measure : the 
 Quakers are indulged with the liberty denied to 
 us. " They are ; and dearly have they earned it. 
 You have come in (as a sect at least) in the cool of 
 the evening, — at the eleventh hour. The Quaker 
 character was hardened in the fires of persecution 
 in the seventeenth century ; not quite to the stake 
 and faggot, but little short of that ; they grew up 
 and thrived against noisome prisons, cruel beatings, 
 whippings, stockings. They have since endured 
 a century or two of scoffs, contempts ; they have 
 been a by-word and a nay-word ; they have stood 
 unmoved : and the consequence of long conscien- 
 tious resistance on one part is invariably, in the 
 end, remission on the other. The Legislature, 
 that denied you the tolerance, which I do not know 
 that at that time you even asked, gave them the 
 liberty, which, %vithout granting, they would have 
 assumed. No penalties could have driven them 
 into the churches. This is the consequence of entire 
 treasures. Had the early Quakers consented to 
 take oaths, leaving a protest with the clerk of the 
 court against them in the same breath with which
 
 338 ELI ANA. 
 
 they had taken them, do you in your conscience 
 think that they would have been indulged at this 
 day in their exclusive privilege of affirming ? Let 
 your people go on for a century or so, marrying in 
 your own fashion, and 1 will warrant them, before 
 the end of it, the Legislature will l)e willing to 
 conceda to them more than they at present de- 
 mand. 
 
 Either the institution of marriage depends not 
 for its validity upon hypocritical compliances with 
 the ritual of an alien Church (and then I do not see 
 why you cannot marry among yourselves, as the 
 Quakers, without their indulgence, would have 
 been doing to this day), or it does depend upon 
 such ritual compliance ; and then, in your protests, 
 you offend against a divine ordinance. I have read 
 in the Essex Stred; Liturgy a form for the celebra- 
 tion of marriage. Why is this become a dead 
 letter? Oh ! it has never been legalized; that is 
 to say, in the law's eye, it is no marriage. But do 
 you take upon you to say, in the view of the gospel 
 it would be none? Would your own people, at 
 least, look upon a couple so paired to be none? 
 But the case of dowries, alimonies, inheritances, 
 &c. , which depend for their validity upon the cere- 
 monial of the Church by law established, — are 
 these nothing? That our children are not legally 
 Filii Nullius, — is this nothing? I answer, No- 
 thing; to the preservation of a good conscience, 
 nothing ; to a consistent Christianity, less than 
 nothing. Sad worldly thorns they are indeed, and 
 stumbling-blocks well worthy to be set out of the 
 • way by a Legislature calling itself Christian ; but 
 not likely to be removed in a hurry by any shrewd 
 legislators who perceive that the petitioning com- 
 plainants have not so much as bruised a shin in the
 
 UNITARIAN PROTESTS. 
 
 329 
 
 resistance, but, prudently declining the briers and 
 the prickles, nestle quietly down in the smooth 
 two-sided velvet of a protesting occasional con- 
 formity. 
 
 I am, dear sir, 
 
 With much respect, yours, &c., 
 
 Elia.
 
 ON THE CUSTOM OF HISSING 
 AT THE THEATRES; 
 
 WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF A CLUB OF DAMNED 
 AUTHORS. 
 
 ]R. reflector,— I am one of those 
 persons whom the world has thought 
 proper to designate by the title of 
 Damned Authors. In that memorable 
 season of dramatic failures, 1806-7, — in which no 
 fewer, I think, than two tragedies, four comedies, 
 one opera, and three farces, suffered at Drury Lane 
 Theatre, — I was found guilty of constructing an 
 afterpiece, and was damned. 
 
 Against the decision of the public in such in- 
 stances there can be no appeal. The clerk of Chat- 
 ham might as well have protested against the de- 
 cision of Cade and his followers, who were then 
 the public. Like him, I was condemned because 
 I could write. 
 
 Not but it did appear to some of us that the 
 measures of the popular tribunal at that period sa- 
 voured a little of harshness and of the su?nnmmjus. 
 The public mouth was early in the season fleshed 
 upon the "Vindictive Man," and some pieces of
 
 HISSING AT THE THEATRES. 331 
 
 that nature ; and it retained, through the remain- 
 der of it, a relish of blood. As Dr. Johnson would 
 have said, " Sir, there was a habit of sibilation in 
 the house." 
 
 Still less am I disposed to inquire into the reason 
 of the comparative lenity, on the other hand, with 
 which some pieces were treated, which, to indiffe- 
 rent judges, seemed at least as much deserving of 
 condemnation as some of those which met with it. 
 I am willing to put a favourable construction upon 
 the votes that were given against us ; I believe that 
 there was no bribery or designed partiality in the 
 case: only " our nonsense did not happen to suit 
 their nonsense ; " that was all. 
 
 But against the inantier in which the public on 
 these occasions, think fit to deliver their disapproba- 
 tion, I must and ever will protest. 
 
 Sir, imagine — but you have been present at the 
 damning of a piece (those who never had that fe- 
 licity, I beg them to imagine)^a vast theatre like 
 that which Drury Lane was before it was a heap of 
 dust and ashes (I insult not over its fallen great- 
 ness ; let it recover itself when it can for me, let it 
 lift up its towering head once more, and take in 
 poor authors to write for it ; fiic castiis artemque 
 repono), — a theatre like that, filled with all sorts 
 of disgusting soundsj — shrieks, groans, hisses, but 
 chiefly the last, like the noise of many waters, or 
 that which Don Quixote heard from the fulling- 
 mills, or that wilder combination of devilish sounds 
 which St. Anthony listened to in the wilderness. 
 
 Oh! Mr. Reflector, is it not a pity that the 
 sweet human voice, which was given man to speak 
 with, to sing with, to whisper tones of love in, 
 to express compliance, to convey a favour, or to 
 grant a suit, — that voice, which in a Siddons or a
 
 332 ELIANA. 
 
 Braliam rouses us, in a siren Catalan! charms and 
 captivates us, — that the musical, expressive human 
 voice should be converted into a rival of the noises 
 of silly geese, and irrational, venomous snakes? 
 
 I never shall forget the sounds on 7ny night. I 
 never before that time fully felt the reception which 
 the Author of All 111, in the "Paradise Lost," 
 meets with from the critics in the pit, at the final 
 close of his " Tragedy upon the Human Race," — 
 though that, alas ! met with too much success : — 
 
 From innumerable tongues 
 A dismal universal hiss, the sound 
 Of public scorn. Dreadful was the din 
 Of hissing- through the hall, thick swarming nov/ 
 With complicated monsters, head and tail, 
 Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbasna dire, 
 Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear. 
 And Dipsas. 
 
 For hall substitute theatre, and you have the 
 very image of what takes place at what is called 
 the danmation of a piece, — and properly so called ; 
 for here you see its origin plainly, whence the cus- 
 tom was derived, and what the first piece was that 
 so suffered. After this, none can doubt the pro- 
 priety of the appellation. 
 
 But, sir, as to the justice of bestowing such ap- 
 palling, heart-withering denunciations of the popu- 
 lar obloquy upon the venial mistake of a poor 
 author, who thought to please us in the act^ of 
 filling his pockets, — for the sum of his demerits 
 amounts to no more than that, — it does, I ov^w, 
 seem to me a species of retributive justice far too 
 severe for the offence. A culprit in the pillory 
 (bate the eggs) meets with no severer exprobration. 
 
 Indeed, I have often wondered that some modest 
 critic has not proposed that there should be a
 
 HISSING AT THE THEATRES. 333 
 
 wooden machine to that effect erected in some con- 
 venient part of the proscenmm, which an unsuc- 
 cessful author should be required to mount, and 
 stand his hour, exposed to the apples and oranges 
 of the pit. This amende honorable would well suit 
 with the meanness of some authors, who, in their 
 prologues, fairly prostrate their skulls to the au- 
 dience, and seem to invite a pelting. 
 
 Or why should they not have their pens publicly 
 broke over their heads, as the swords of recreant 
 knights in old times were, and an oath adminis- 
 tered to them that they should never write again ? 
 
 Seriously, Messieurs the Pttblic, this outrageous 
 way which you have got of expressing your dis- 
 pleasures is too much for the occasion. When I 
 was deafening under the effects of it, I could not 
 help asking what crime of great moral turpitude I 
 had committed : for every man about me seemed 
 to feel the offence as personal to himself ; as some- 
 thing which public interest and private feelings 
 alike called upon him, in the strongest possible 
 manner, to stigmatize with infamy. 
 
 The Romans, it is well known to you, Mr. Re- 
 flector, took a gentler method of marking their 
 disapprobation of an author's work. They were a 
 humane and equitable nation. They left \.h.e.furca 
 and the patihuhnn, the axe and the rods, to great 
 offenders : for these minor and (if I may so term 
 them) extra-moral offences, the bent thumb was con- 
 sidered as a sufficient sign of disapprobation,— 
 vertere potliccm ; as the pressed thumb, premere 
 pollicem, was a mark of approving. 
 
 And really there seems to have been a sort of 
 fitness in this method, a correspondency of sign in 
 the punishment to the offence. For, as the action 
 of writing is performed by bending the thumb for-
 
 334 ELI ANA. 
 
 ward, the retroversion or bending back of that 
 joint did not unaptly point to the opposite of that 
 action ; implying that it was the will of the au- 
 dience that the author should write no more: a 
 much more significant as well as more humane way 
 of expressing that desire than our custom of hissing, 
 which is altogether senseless and indefensible. Nor 
 do we find that the Roman audiences deprived 
 themselves, by this lenity, of any tittle of that su- 
 premacy which audiences in all ages have thought 
 themselves bound to maintain over such as have 
 been candidates for their applause. On the con- 
 trary, by this method they seem to have had the 
 author, as we should express it, completely under 
 finger and tkutnh. 
 
 The provocations to which a dramatic genius is 
 exposed from the public are so much the more 
 vexatious as they are removed from any possibility 
 of retaliation, the hope of which sweetens most 
 other injuries ; for the public never writes itself. 
 Not but something very like it took place at the 
 time of the O. P. differences. The placards which 
 were nightly exliibited were, properly speaking, 
 the composition of the public. The public wrote 
 them, the public applauded them ; and precious 
 morceaux of wit and eloquence they were, — except 
 some few, of a, better quality, which it is well 
 known were furnished by professed dramatic 
 writers. After this specimen of what the public 
 can do for itself, it should be a little slow in con- 
 demning what others do for it. 
 
 As the degrees of malignancy vary in people ac- 
 cording as they have more or less of the Old Serpent 
 (the father of hisses) in their composition, I have 
 sometimes amused myself with analyzing this many- 
 headed hydra, which calls itself the public, into the
 
 HISSING AT THE THEATRES. 333 
 
 component parts of which it is "complicated, head 
 and tail," and seeing how many varieties of the 
 snake kind it can afford. 
 
 First, there is the Common English Snake. — 
 This is that part of the auditory who are always 
 the majority at damnations ; but who, having no 
 critical venom in themselves to sting them on, stay 
 till they hear others hiss, and then join in for 
 company. 
 
 The Blind Worm is a species very nearly allied 
 to the foregoing. Some naturalists have doubted 
 whether they are not the same. 
 
 The Rattlesnake. — These are your obstreperous 
 talking critics, — the impertinent guides of the pit, — 
 who will not give a plain man leave to enjoy an 
 evening's entertainment ; but, with their frothy 
 jargon and incessant finding of faults, either drown 
 his pleasure quite, or force him, in his own defence, 
 to join in their clamorous censure. The hiss always 
 originates with these. When this creature springs 
 his rattle, you would think, from the noise it makes, 
 there was something in it ; but you have only to 
 examine the instrument from which the noise pro- 
 ceeds, and you will find it typical of a critic's 
 tongue,— a shallow membrane, empty, voluble, and 
 seated in the most contemptible part of the crea- 
 ture's body. 
 
 The Whipsnake.— This is he that lashes the 
 poor author the next day in the newspapers. 
 
 The Deaf Adder, or Surda Echidna of Linnaeus. 
 — Under this head may be classed all that portion 
 of the spectators (for audience they properly are 
 not), who, not finding the first act of a piece an- 
 swer to their preconceived notions of what a first 
 act should be, like Obstinate in John Bunyan, 
 positively thrust their fingers in their ears, that
 
 336 ELI ANA. 
 
 they may not hear a word of what is coming, 
 though perhaps the very next act may be composed 
 in a style as different as possible, and be written 
 quite to their own tastes. These adders refuse to 
 hear the voice of the charmer, because the tuning 
 of his instrument gave them offence. 
 
 I should weary you, and myself too, if I were to 
 go through all the classes of the serpent kind. Two 
 qualities are common to them all. They are crea- 
 tures of remarkably cold digestions, and chiefly 
 haunt /?Vj and low grounds. 
 
 I proceed with more pleasure to give you an 
 account of a club to which I have the honour to 
 belong. There are fourteen of us, who are all 
 authors that have been once in our lives what is 
 called damned. We meet on the anniversaries of 
 our respective nights, and make ourselves merry at 
 the expense of the public. The chief tenets which 
 distinguish our society, and which every man among 
 us is bound to hold for gospel, are, — 
 
 That the public, or mob, in all ages, have been 
 a set of blind, deaf, obstinate, senseless, illiterate 
 savages. That no man of genius, in his senses, 
 would be ambitious of pleasing such a capricious, 
 ungrateful rabble. That the only legitimate end of 
 writing for them is to pick their pockets ; and, that 
 failing, we are at full liberty to vilify and abuse 
 them as much as ever we think fit. 
 
 That authors, by their affected pretences to hu- 
 mility, which they made use of as a cloak to in- 
 sinuate their writings into the callous senses of the 
 multitude, obtuse to everything but the grossest 
 flattery, have by degrees made that great beast 
 their master ; as we may act submission to children 
 till we are obliged to practise it in earnest. Tliat
 
 HISSING AT THE THEATRES. 337 
 
 authors are and ought to be considered the masters 
 and preceptors of the public, and not vice versd. 
 That it was so in the days of Orpheus, Linus, and 
 Musaeus ; and would be so again, if it were not 
 that writers prove traitors to themselves. That, in 
 particular, in the days of the first of those three 
 great authors just mentioned, audiences appear to 
 have been perfect models of what audiences should 
 be ; for though, along with the trees and the rocks 
 and the wild creatures which he drew after him to 
 listen to his strains, some serpents doubtless came 
 to hear his music, it does not appear that any one 
 among them ever lifted up a dissentient voice. They 
 knew what was due to authors in those days. Now 
 every stock and stone turns into a serpent, and has 
 a voice. 
 
 Thatthe terms " courteous reader " and "candid 
 auditors," as having given rise to a false notion in 
 those to whom they were applied, as if they con- 
 ferred upon them some right, ivhich they cannot 
 have, of exercising their judgments, ought to be 
 utterly banished and exploded. 
 
 These are our distinguishing tenets. To keep up 
 the memory of the cause in which we suffered, as 
 the ancients sacrificed a goat, a supposed unhealthy 
 animal, to ^sculapius, on our feast-nights we cut 
 up a goose, an animal typical of t/ie popular voice, 
 to the deities of Candour and Patient Hearing. A 
 zealous member of the society once proposed that 
 we should revive the obsolete luxury of viper-broth; 
 but, the stomachs of some of the company rising at 
 the proposition, we lost the benefit of that highly 
 salutary and antidotal dish. 
 
 The privilege of admission to our club is strictly 
 limited to such as have been fairly damned. A piece 
 that has met with ever so little applause, that has 
 
 II. z
 
 338 EL I ANA. 
 
 but languished its night or two, and then gone out, 
 will never entitle its author to a seat among us. 
 An exception to our usual readiness in conferring 
 this privilege is in the case of a writer, who, having 
 been once condemned, writes again, and becomes 
 candidate for a second martyrdom. Simple dam- 
 nation we hold to be a merit; but to be twice 
 damned we adjudge infamous. Such a one we 
 utterly reject, and blackball without a hearing : — 
 
 T/ie common damiied shun his society. 
 
 Hoping that your publication of our regulations 
 may be a means of inviting some more members 
 into our society, I conclude this long letter. 
 I am, sir, yours, 
 
 Semel-Damnatus.
 
 CAPTAIN STARKE Y. 
 
 JEAR SIR, — I read your account of this 
 unfortunate being, and his forlorn piece 
 of self-history,' with that smile of half- 
 interest which the annals of insignifi- 
 cance excite, till I came to where he says, " I was 
 bound apprentice to Mr. William Bird, an eminent 
 writer, and teacher of languages and mathematics," 
 &c. ; when I started as one does in the recognition 
 of an old acquaintance in a supposed stranger. 
 This, then, was that Starkey of whom I have heard 
 my sister relate so many pleasing anecdotes ; and 
 whom, never having seen, I yet seem almost to 
 remember. For nearly fifty years, she had lost all 
 sight of him ; and, behold ! the gentle usher of her 
 youth, grown into an aged beggar, dubbed with an 
 opprobrious title to which he had no pretensions ; 
 an object and a May-game ! To what base pur- 
 poses may we not return ! What may not have 
 been the meek creature's sufferings, what his wan- 
 
 ' " Memoirs of the Life of Benjamin Starkey, late of Lon- 
 don, but now an inmate of the Freeman's Hospital in New- 
 castle. Written by himself. With a portrait of the author, 
 and a fac-simile of his handwriting. Printed and sold by 
 William Hall, Great Market, Newcastle." 1818, i2mo, 
 pu. 14.
 
 340 ELI ANA. 
 
 derings, before he finally settled down in the 
 comparative comfort of an old hospitaller of the 
 almoniy of Newcastle? And is poor Starkey 
 dead? 
 
 I was a scholar of that "eminent writer" tliat 
 he speaks of; but Starkey had quitted the school 
 about a year before I came to it. Still the odour 
 of his merits had left a fragrancy upon the recol- 
 lection of the elder pupils. The schoolroom stands 
 where it did, looking into a discoloured, dingy 
 garden in the passage leading from Fetter Lane into 
 Bartlett's Buildings. It is still a school, though the 
 main prop, alas ! has fallen so ingloriously ; and 
 bears a Latin inscription over the entrance in the 
 lane, which was unknown in our humbler times. 
 Heaven knows what "languages" were taught in 
 it then ! I am sure that neither my sister nor my- 
 self brought any out of it but a little of our native 
 English. By "mathematics," reader, must be un- 
 derstood "ciphering." It was, in fact, a humble 
 day-school, at which reading and writing were 
 taught to us boys in the morning ; and the same 
 slender erudition was communicated to the girls, 
 our sisters, &c. , in the evening. Now, Starkey pre- 
 sided, under Bird, over both establishments. In 
 my time, Mr. Cook, now or lately a respectable 
 singer and performer at Drury Lane Theatre, and 
 nephew to Mr. Bird, had succeeded to him. I 
 well remember Bird. He was a squat, corpulent, 
 middle-sized man, with something of the gentle- 
 man about him, and that peculiar mild tone — 
 especially while he was inflicting punishment — 
 which is so much more terrible to children than the 
 angriest looks and gestures. Whippings were not 
 frequent ; but, when they took place, the correction 
 was performed in a private room adjoining, where
 
 CAPTAIN STARKEV. 341 
 
 we could only hear the plaints, but saw nothing. 
 This heightened the decorum and the solemnity. 
 But the ordinary chastisement was the bastinado, 
 a stroke or two on the palm with that almost ob- 
 solete weapon now, — the ferule. A ferule was a 
 sort of flat ruler, widened, at the inflicting end, 
 into a shape resembling a pear, — but nothing like 
 so sweet, — with a delectable hole in the middle to 
 raise blisters, like a cupping-glass. I have an in- 
 tense recollection of that disused instrument of 
 torture, and the malignancy, in proportion to the 
 apparent mildness, with which its strokes were ap- 
 plied. The idea of a rod is accompanied with some- 
 thing ludicrous ; but by no process can I look back 
 upon this blister-raiser with anything but un- 
 mingled horror. To make him look more for- 
 midable, — if a pedagogue had need of these 
 heightenings, — Bird wore one of those flowered 
 Indian gowns formerly in use with schoolmasters, 
 the strange figures upon which we used to interpret 
 into hieroglyphics of pain and suffering. But, 
 boyish fears apart, Bird, I believe, was, in the 
 main, a humane and judicious master. 
 
 Oh, how I remember our legs wedged into those 
 uncomfortable sloping desks, where we sat elbowing 
 each other ; and the injunctions to attain a free 
 hand, unattainable in that position ; the first copy 
 I wrote after, with its moral lesson, " Art improves 
 Nature ; " the still earlier pothooks and the hangers, 
 some traces of which I fear may yet be apparent in 
 this manuscript ; the truant looks side-long to the 
 garden, which seemed a mockery of our imprison- 
 ment ; the prize for best spelling which had almost 
 turned my head, and which, to this day, I cannot 
 reflect upon without a vanity, which I ought to be 
 ashamed of; our little leaden inkstands, not sepa-
 
 342 ELIANA. 
 
 rately subsisting, but sunk into the desks ; the 
 bright, punctually-washed morning fingers, dark- 
 ening gradually with another and another ink- 
 spot ! What a world of little associated circum- 
 stances, pains, and pleasures, mingling their quotas 
 of pleasure, arise at the reading of those few simple 
 words, — "Mr. William Bird, an eminent writer, 
 and teacher of languages and mathematics, in 
 Fetter Lane, Holborn ! " 
 
 Poor Starkey, when young, had that peculiar 
 stamp of old-fashionedness in his face which makes 
 it impossible for a beholder to predicate any par- 
 ticular age in the object. You can scarce make a 
 guess between seventeen and seven and thirty. 
 This antique cast always seems to promise ill-luck 
 and penury. Yet it seems he was not always the 
 abject thing he came to. My sister, who well re- 
 members him, can hardly forgive Mr. Thomas 
 Ransor for making an etching so unlike her idea 
 of him when he was a youthful teacher at Mr. Bird's 
 school. Old age and poverty — a lifelong poverty, 
 she thinks — could at no time have so effaced the 
 marks of native gentility which were once visible 
 in a face otherwise strikingly ugly, thin, and care- 
 worn. From her recollections of him, she thinks 
 that he would have wanted bread before he would 
 have begged or borrowed a halfpenny. " If any 
 of the girls," she says, "who were my school- 
 fellows, should be reading, through their aged 
 spectacles, tidings, from the dead, of their youthful 
 friend Starkey, they will feel a pang, as I do, at 
 having teased his gentle spirit." They were big 
 girls, it seems — too old to attend his instructions 
 with the silence necessary ; and, however old age 
 and a long state of beggary seem to have reduced 
 his writing faculties to a state of imbecility, in
 
 CAPTAIN STARKEV. 343 
 
 those days his language occasionally rose to the 
 bold and figurative ; for, when he was in despair 
 to stop their chattering, his ordinary phrase was, 
 " Ladies, if you will not hold your peace, not all 
 the powers in heaven can make you." Once he 
 was missing for a day or two : he had run away. 
 A little, old, unhappy-looking man brought him 
 back, — it was his father, — and he did no business 
 in the school that day, but sat moping in a comer, 
 with his hands before his face ; and the girls, his 
 tormentors, in pity for his case, for the rest of that 
 day forbore to annoy him. "I had been there but 
 a few months," adds she, "when Starkey, who was 
 the chief instructor of us girls, communicated to us 
 a profound secret, — that the tragedy of ' Cato ' was 
 shortly to be acted by the elder boys, and that we 
 were to be invited to the representation." That 
 Starkey lent a helping hand in fashioning the ac- 
 tors, she remembers ; and, but for his unfortunate 
 person, he might have had some distinguished part 
 in the scene to enact. As it was, he had the arduous 
 task of prompter assigned to him, and his feeble 
 voice was heard clear and distinct, repeating the 
 text during the whole performance. She describes 
 her recollection of the cast of characters, even now, 
 with a relish. Martia, by the handsome Edgar 
 Hickman, who afterwards went to Africa, and of 
 whom she never afterwards heard tidings ; Lucia, 
 by Master Walker, whose sister was her particular 
 friend ; Cato, by John Hunter, a masterly de- 
 claimer, but a plain boy, and shorter by the head 
 than his two sons in the scene, &c. In conclusion, 
 Starkey appears to have been one of those mild 
 spirits, which, not originally deficient in under- 
 standing, are crushed by penury into dejection and 
 feebleness. He might have proved a useful ad-
 
 344 
 
 ELI AN A. 
 
 junct, if not an ornament, to society, if Fortune 
 had taken him into a very little fostering ; but, 
 wanting that, he became a captain, — a by- word, — 
 and lived and died a broken bulrush.
 
 A POPULAR FALLACY, 
 
 THAT A DEFORMED PERSON IS A LORD. 
 
 FTER a careful perusal of the most ap- 
 proved works that treat of nobility, and 
 of its origin in these realms in particular, 
 
 we are left very much in the dark as to 
 
 the original patent in which this branch of it is re- 
 cognized. Neither Camden in his "Etymologic 
 and Original of Barons," nor Dugdale in his " Ba- 
 ronage of England," nor Selden (a more exact and 
 laborious inquirer than either) in his "Titles of 
 Honour," afford a glimpse of satisfaction upon the 
 subject. There is an heraldic term, indeed, which 
 seems to imply gentility, and the right to coat armour 
 (but nothing further), in persons thus qualified. 
 But the sinister bend is more probably interpreted 
 by the best writers on this science, of some irregu- 
 larity of birth than of bodily conformation. No- 
 bility is either hereditary or by creation, commonly 
 called patent. Of the former kind, the title in 
 question cannot be, seeing that the notion of it is 
 limited to a personal distinction which does not 
 necessarily follow in the blood. Honours of this 
 nature, as Mr. Anstey very well observes, descend, 
 moreover, in a right line. It must be by patent,
 
 346 ELI ANA. 
 
 then, if anything. But who can show it ? How 
 eomes it to be dormant ? Under what king's reign 
 is it patented? Among the grounds of nobility 
 cited by the learned Mr. Ashmole, after " Services 
 in the Field or in the Council Chamber," he ju- 
 diciously sets down " Honours conferred by the 
 sovereign out of mere benevolence, or as favouring 
 one subject rather than another for some likeness 
 or conformity (or but supposed) in him to the royal 
 nature ; " and instances the graces showered upon 
 Charles Brandon, who, "in his goodly person being 
 thought not a little to favour the port and bearing 
 of the king's own majesty, was by that sovereign, 
 King Henry the Eighth, for some or one of these 
 respects, highly promoted and preferred." Here, 
 if anywhere, we thought we had discovered a clue 
 to our researches. But after a painful investigation 
 of the rolls and records under the reign of Richard 
 the Third, or " Richard Crouchback, " as he is more 
 usually designated in the chronicles, — from a tra- 
 ditionary stoop or gibbosity in that part, — we do 
 not find that that monarch conferred any such 
 lordships as here pretended, upon any subject or 
 subjects, on a simple plea of "conformity" in that 
 respect to the "royal nature." The posture of 
 affairs, in those tumultuous times preceding the 
 battle of Bosworth, possibly left him at no leisure 
 to attend to such niceties. Further than his reign, 
 we have not extended our inquiries ; the kings of 
 England who preceded or followed him being gene- 
 rally described by historians to have been of straight 
 and clean limbs, the "natural derivative," says 
 Daniel," "of high blood, if not its primitive re- 
 commendation to such ennoblement, as denoting 
 
 ' History of England, "Temporibus Edwardi Prinii et 
 sequentibus."
 
 A POPULAR FALLACY. 347 
 
 strength and martial prowess, — the qualities set 
 , most by in that fighting age." Another motive, 
 which inclines us to scruple the validity of this 
 claim, is the remarkable fact, that none of the 
 persons in whorii the right is supposed to be vested 
 do ever insist upon it themselves. There is no in- 
 stance of any of them "suing his patent," as the 
 law books call it ; much less of his having actually 
 stepped up into his proper seat, as, so qualified, we 
 might expect that some of them would have had 
 the spirit to do, in the House of Lords. On the 
 contrary, it seems to be a distinction thrust upon 
 them. " Their title of ' lord,' " says one of their 
 own body, speaking of the common people, "I 
 never much valued, and now I entirely despise ; 
 and yet they will force it upon me as an honour 
 which they have a right to bestow, and which I 
 have none to refuse."' Upon a dispassionate re- 
 view of the subject, we are disposed to believe 
 that there is no right to the peerage incident to 
 mere bodily configuration ; that the title in dispute 
 is merely honorary, and depending upon the breath 
 of the common people, which in these realms is so 
 far from the power of conferring nobility, that the 
 ablest constitutionalists have agreed in nothing 
 more unanimously than in the maxim, that "the 
 king is the sole fountain of honour." 
 
 ' Hay on Deformity.
 
 LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN 
 WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN 
 NEGLECTED. 
 
 Dear Sir,— I send you a bantering "Epistle to an Old 
 Gentleman whose Education is supposed to have been 
 neglected." Of course, it was suggested by some letters of 
 your admirable Opium-Eater, the discontinuance of which 
 has caused so much regret to myself in common with most 
 of your readers. You will do me injustice by supposing 
 that, in the remotest degree, it was my intention to ridicule 
 those papers. The fact is, the most serious things may give 
 rise to an innocent burlesque ; and, the more serious they 
 are, the fitter they become for that purpose. It is not to be 
 supposed that Charles Cotton did not entertain a very high 
 regard for Virgil^ notwithstanding he travestied that poet. 
 Yourself can testify the deep respect I have always held for 
 the profound learning and penetrating genius of our friend. 
 Nothing upon earth would give me greater pleasure than 
 to find that he has not lost sight of his entertaining and in- 
 structive purpose. 
 
 I am, dear sir, yours and his sincerely, 
 
 Eli A. 
 
 Y DEAR SIR,— The question which 
 you have done me the honour to propose 
 to me, through the medium of our com- 
 mon friend, Mr. Grierson, I shall en- 
 deavour to answer with as much exactness as a 
 limited observation and experience can warrant.
 
 LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN. 349 
 
 You ask, — or rather Mr. Grierson, in his own 
 interesting language, asks for you, — " Whether a 
 person at the age of sixty-three, with no more pro- 
 ficiency than a tolerable knowledge of most of the 
 characters of the English alphabet at first sight 
 amounts to, by dint of persevering application and 
 good masters, — a docile and ingenuous disposition 
 on the part of the pupil always presupposed, — may 
 hope to arrive, within a presumable number of 
 years, at that degree of attainments which shall 
 entitle the possessor to the character, which you 
 are on so many accounts justly desirous of ac- 
 quiring, oi z. lea?-ned man." 
 
 This is fairly and candidly stated, — only I could 
 wish that on one point you had been a little more 
 explicit. In the mean time, I will take it for 
 granted, that by a "know edge of the alphabetic 
 characters " you confine your meaning to the single 
 powers only, as you are silent on the subject of the 
 diphthongs and harder combinations. 
 
 Why, truly, sir, when I consider the vast circle 
 of sciences, — it is not here worth while to trouble 
 you with the distinction between learning and 
 science, which a man must be understood to 
 have made the tour of in these days, before the 
 world will be willing to concede to him the title 
 which you aspire to, — I am almost disposed to 
 reply to your inquiry by a direct answer in the 
 negative. 
 
 However, where all cannot be compassed, a 
 great deal that is truly valuable may be accom- 
 plished. I am unwilling to throw out any remarks 
 that should have a tendency to damp a hopeful 
 genius ; but I must not, in fairness, conceal from 
 you that you have much to do. The consciousnes.s 
 of difficulty is sometimes a spur to exertion. Rome
 
 3S0 ELI AN A. 
 
 — or rather, my dear sir, to borrow an illustration 
 from a place as yet more familiar to you, Rumford 
 — Rumford was not built in a day. 
 
 Your mind as yet, give me leave to tell you, is 
 in the state of a sheet of white paper. We must 
 not blot or blur it over too hastily. Or, to use an 
 opposite simile, it is like a piece of parchment all 
 bescrawled and bescribbled over with characters of 
 no sense or import, which we must carefully erase 
 and remove before we can make way for the au- 
 thentic characters or impresses which are to be sub- 
 stituted in their stead by the corrective hand of 
 science. 
 
 Your mind, my dear sir, again, resembles that 
 same parchment, which we will suppose a little 
 hardened by time and disuse. We may apply the 
 characters ; but are we sure that the ink will 
 sink? 
 
 You are in the condition of a traveller that has 
 all his journey to begin. And, again, you are 
 worse off than the traveller which I have supposed ; 
 for you have already lost your way. 
 
 You have much to learn, which you have never 
 been taught ; and more, I fear, to unlearn, which 
 you have been taught erroneously. You have 
 hitherto, I dare say, imagined that the sun moves 
 round the earth. When you shall have mastered 
 the true solar system, you will have quite a diffe- 
 rent theory upon that point, I assure you. I men- 
 tion but this instance. Your own experience, as 
 knowledge advances, will furnish you with many 
 parallels, 
 
 I can scarcely approve of the intention, which 
 Mr. Grierson informs me you have contemplated, 
 of entering yourself at a common seminary, and 
 working your way up from the lower to the higher
 
 LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN. 331 
 
 forms with the children. I see more to admire in 
 the modesty than in the expediency of such a reso- 
 hition. I own I cannot reconcile myself to the 
 spectacle of a gentleman at your time of life, seated, 
 as must be your case at first, below a tyro of four 
 or five ; for at that early age the rudiments of 
 education usually commence in this country. I 
 doubt whether more might not be lost in the 
 point of fitness than would be gained in the ad- 
 vantages which you propose to yourself by this 
 scheme. 
 
 You jay you stand in need of emulation ; that 
 this incitement is nowhere to be had but at a 
 public school; that you should be more sensible 
 of your progress by comparing it with the daily 
 progress of those around you. But have you con- 
 sidered the nature of emulation, and how it is 
 sustained at these tender years which you would 
 have to come in competition with? I am afraid 
 you are dreaming of academic prizes and distinc- 
 tions. Alas ! in the university for which you 
 are preparing, the highest medal would be a 
 silver penny ; and you must graduate in nuts and 
 oranges. 
 
 I know that Peter, the Great Czar— or Emperor 
 — of Muscovy, submitted himself to the discipHne 
 of a dockyard at Deptford, that he might learn, 
 and convey to his countrymen, the noble art of 
 ship-building. You are old enough to remember 
 him, or at least the talk about him. I call to mind 
 also other great princes, who, to instruct them- 
 selves in the theory and practice of war, and set 
 an example of subordination to their subjects, have 
 condescended to enrol themselves as private sol- 
 diers ; and, passing through the successive ranks of 
 corporal, quartermaster, and the rest, have served
 
 352 ELIANA. 
 
 their way up to the station at whicli most princes 
 are willing enough to set out, — of general and 
 commander-in-chief over their own forces. But — 
 besides that there is oftentimes great sham and pre- 
 tence in their show of mock humility — the com- 
 petition which they stooped to was with their 
 coevals, however inferior to them in birth. Be- 
 tween ages so very disparate as those which you 
 contemplate, I fear there can no salutary emula- 
 lation subsist. 
 
 Again : in the other alternative, could you sub- 
 mit to the ordinary reproofs and discipline of a 
 day-school? Could you bear to be corrected for 
 your faults? Or how would it look to see you 
 put to stand, as must be the case sometimes, in a 
 comer? 
 
 I am afraid the idea of a public school in your 
 circumstances must be given up. 
 
 But is it impossible, my dear sir, to find some 
 person of your own age, — if of the other sex, the 
 more agreeable, perhaps, — whose information, like 
 your own, has rather lagged behind his years, who 
 should be willing to set out from the same point 
 with yourself ; to undergo the same tasks ? — thus 
 at once inciting and sweetening each other's la- 
 bours in a sort of friendly rivalry. Such a one, I 
 think, it would not be difficult to find in some of 
 the western parts of this island, — about Dartmoor, 
 for instance. 
 
 Or what if, from your own estate, — that estate, 
 which, unexpectedly acquired so late in life, has 
 inspired into you this generous thirst after know- 
 ledge, — you were to select some elderly peasant, 
 that might best be spared from the land, to come 
 and begin his education with you, that you might 
 till, as it were, your minds together, — one whose
 
 LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN. 353 
 
 heavier progress might invite, without a fear of 
 discouraging, your emulation ? We might then see 
 — starting from an equal post — the difference of the 
 clownish and the gentle blood. 
 
 A private education, then, or such a one as I 
 have been describing, being determined on, we 
 must in the next place look out for a preceptor ; 
 for it will be some time before either of you, left 
 to yourselves, will be able to assist the other to any 
 great purpose in his studies. 
 
 And now, my dear sir, if, in describing such a 
 tutor as I have imagined for you, I use a style 
 a little above the familiar one in which I have 
 hitherto chosen to address you, the nature of the 
 subject must be my apology. Difficile est de scien- 
 iiis inscienter loqui ; which is as much as to say, 
 that, "in treating of scientific matters, it is diffi- 
 cult to avoid the use of scientific terms." But I 
 shall endeavour to be as plain as possible. I am 
 not going to present you with the ideal of a peda- 
 gogue as it may exist in my fancy, or has possibly 
 been realized in the persons of Buchanan and 
 Busby. Something less than perfection will serve 
 our turn. The scheme which I propose in this 
 first or introductory letter has reference to the first 
 four or five years of your education only ; and in 
 enumerating the qualifications of him that should 
 undertake the direction of your studies, I shall 
 rather point out the i7iinimum, or least, that I 
 shall require of him, than trouble you in the search 
 of attainments neither common nor necessai-y to 
 our immediate purpose. 
 
 He should be a man of deep and extensive know- 
 ledge. So much at least is indispensable. Some- 
 thing older than yourself, I could wish him, be- 
 cause years add reverence. 
 
 II. A A
 
 354 ELIAN A. 
 
 To his age and great learning, he should be 
 blessed with a temper and a patience willing to 
 accommodate itself to the imperfections of the 
 slowest and meanest capacities. Such a one, in 
 former days, Mr. Hartlib appears to have been ; 
 and such, in our days, I take Mr. Grierson to be : 
 but our friend, you know, unhappily, has other 
 engagements. I do not demand a consummate 
 grammarian ; but he must be a thorough master of 
 vernacular orthography, with an insight into the 
 accentualities and punctualities of modern Saxon, or 
 English. He must be competently instructed (or 
 how shall he instruct you?) in the tetralogy, or four 
 first i-ules, upon which not only arithmetic, but 
 geometry, and the pure mathematics themselves, 
 are grounded. I do not require that he should 
 have measured the globe with Cook or Ortelius ; 
 but it is desirable that he should have a general 
 knowledge (I do not mean a very nice or pedantic 
 one) of the great division of the earth into four 
 parts, so as to teach you readily to' name the 
 quarters. He must have a genius capable in some 
 degree of soaring to the upper element, to deduce 
 from thence the not much dissimilar computation 
 of the cardinal points, or hinges, upon which those 
 invisible phenomena, vi'hich naturalists agree to 
 term winds, do perpetually shift and turn. He 
 must instruct you, in imitation of the old Orphic 
 fragments (the mention of which has possibly 
 escaped you), in numeric and harmonious re- 
 sponses, to deliver the number of solar revolutions 
 within which each of the twelve periods, into which 
 the Annus'Vulgaris, or common year, is divided, 
 doth usually complete and terminate itself. The 
 intercalaries and other subtle problems he will do 
 well to omit, till riper years and course of study
 
 LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN. 355 
 
 shall have rendered you more capable thereof. He 
 must be capable of embracing all history, so as, 
 from the countless myriads of individual men who 
 have peopled this globe of earth, — -for it is a globe, 
 — by comparison of their respective births, lives, 
 deaths, fortunes, conduct, prowess, &c., to pro- 
 nounce, and teach you to pronounce, dogmatically 
 and catechetically, who was the richest, who was 
 the strongest, who was the wisest, who was the 
 meekest, man that ever lived ; to the facilitation of 
 which solution, you will readily conceive, a smat- 
 tering of biography would in no inconsiderable 
 degree conduce. Leaving the dialects of men (in 
 one of which I shall take leave to suppose you by 
 this time at least superficially instituted), you will 
 learn to ascend with him to the contemplation of 
 that unaiticulated language which was before the 
 written tongue ; and, with the aid of the elder 
 Phrygian or .(^isopic key, to interpret the sounds 
 by which the animal tribes communicate their 
 minds, evolving moral instruction with delight from 
 the dialogue of cocks, dogs, and foxes. Or, mar- 
 rying theology with verse, from whose mixture a 
 beautiful and healthy offspring may be expected, 
 in your own native accents (but purified), you will 
 keep time together to the profound harpings of the 
 more modern or Wattsian hymnics. 
 
 Thus far I have ventured to conduct you to a 
 "hill-side, whence you may discern the right path 
 of a virtuous and noble education ; laborious, in- 
 deed, at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so 
 green, so full of goodly prospects and melodious 
 sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus 
 was not more charming." ' 
 
 ' Milton's "Tractate on Education," addressed to Mr. 
 Hartlib.
 
 356 
 
 ELI AN A. 
 
 With my best respects to Mr. Grierson, when 
 you see him, 
 
 I remain, dear sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 Elia,
 
 ON THE AMBIGUITIES ARISING 
 FROM PROPER NAMES. 
 
 ' OW oddly it happens that the same sound 
 shall suggest to the minds of two per- 
 sons hearing it ideas the most opposite ! 
 ,^ „^^, I was conversing, a few years since, with 
 a young friend upon the subject of poetry, and par- 
 ticularly that species of it which is known by the 
 name of the epithalamium. I ventured to assert 
 that the most perfect specimen of it in our language 
 was the "Epithalamium " of Spenser upon his own 
 
 marriage. 
 
 My young gentleman, who has a smattermg of 
 taste, and would not willingly be thought ignorant 
 of anything remotely connected with the belles- 
 lettres, expressed a degree of surprise, mixed with 
 mortification, that he should never have heard of 
 this poem ; Spenser being an author with whose 
 writings he thought himself peculiarly conversant. 
 
 I offered to show him the poem in the fine foho 
 copy of the poet's works which I have at home. 
 He seemed pleased with the offer, though the men- 
 tion of the folio seemed again to puzzle him. But, 
 presently after, assuming a grave look, he com^- 
 passionately muttered to himself, "Poor Spencer! 
 
 There was something in the tone with which he
 
 358 ELIANA. 
 
 spoke these words that struck me not a little. It 
 was more like the accent with which a maftjbe- 
 moans some recent calamity that has happeflM to 
 a friend, than that tone of sober grief with which 
 we lament the sorrows of a person, however excel- 
 lent and however giievous his afflictions may have 
 been, who has been dead more than two centuries. 
 I had the curiosity to inquire into the reasons of so 
 uncommon an ejaculation. My young gentleman, 
 with a more solemn tone of pathos than before, 
 repeated, " Poor Spencer ! " and added, " He has 
 lost his wife ! " 
 
 My astonishment at this assertion rose to such a 
 height, that I began to think the brain of my young 
 friend must be cracked, or some unaccountable 
 reverie had gotten possession of it. But, upon 
 further explanation, it appeared that the word 
 "Spenser" — which to you or me, reader, in a 
 conversation upon poetry too, would naturally 
 have called up the idea of an old poet in a ruff, 
 one Edmund Spenser, that flourished in the days 
 of Queen Elizabeth, and wrote a poem called 
 "The Fairy Queen," with "The Shepherd's 
 Calendar," and many more verses besides — did, in 
 the mind of my young friend, excite a very dif- 
 ferent and quite modern idea ; namely, that of the 
 Honourable William Spencer, one of the living 
 ornaments, if I am not misinformed, of this pre- 
 sent poetical era, a.d. i8ii.
 
 ELIA ON HIS "CONFESSIONS OF A 
 D-RUNKARD." 
 
 ANY are the sayings of Elia, painful 
 and frequent his kicubrations, set forth 
 for the most part (such his modesty!) 
 ^____^ without a name ; scattered about in 
 obscure periodicals and forgotten miscellanies, 
 PVom the dust of some of these it is our intention 
 occasionally to revive a tract or two that shall 
 seem worthy of a better fate, especially at a time 
 like the present, when the pen of our industrious 
 contributor, engaged in a laborious digest of his 
 recent Continental tour, may haply want the leisure 
 to expatiate in more miscellaneous speculations. 
 We have been induced, in the first instance, to 
 reprint a thing which he put forth in a friend's 
 volume some years since, entitled "The Con- 
 fessions of a Drunkard," seeing that Messieurs the 
 Quarterly Reviewers have chosen to embellish 
 their last dry pages with fruitful quotations there- 
 from ; adding, from their peculiar brains, the gra- 
 tuitous affirmation, that they have reason to believe 
 that the describer (in his delineations of a drunkard, 
 forsooth !) partly sat for his own picture. The 
 truth is, that our friend had been reading among 
 the essays of a contemporary, who has perversely
 
 36o ELI ANA. 
 
 been confounded with him, a paper, in which Edax 
 (or the Great Eater) humorously complaineth of 
 an inordinate appetite ; and it struck him thit a 
 better paper — of deeper interest and wider useful- 
 ness — might be made out of the imagined expe- 
 riences of a Great Drinker. Accordingly he set to 
 work, and with that mock fervour and counterfeit 
 earnestness with which he is too apt to over-realize 
 his descriptions, has given us — a frightful picture 
 indeed, but no more resembling the man Elia than 
 the fictitious Edax may be supposed to identify 
 itself with Mr. L., its author. It is, indeed, a 
 compound extracted out of his long observations of 
 the effects of drinking upon all the world about 
 him ; and this accumulated mass of misery he hath 
 centred (as the custom is with judicious essayists) 
 in a single figure. We deny not that a portion 
 of his own experiences may have passed into the 
 picture (as who, that is not a washy fellow, but 
 must at some times have felt the after-operation of 
 a too-generous cup?); but then how heightened ! 
 how exaggerated ! how little within the sense of 
 the Review, where a part, in their slanderous usage, 
 raust be understood to stand for the whole ! But 
 it is useless to expostulate with this Quarterly 
 slime, brood of Nilus, watery heads with hearts of 
 jelly, spawned under the sign of Aquarius, inca- 
 pable of Bacchus, and therefrom cold, washy, spite- 
 ful, bloodless. Elia shall string them up one day, 
 and show their colours,— or, rather how colourless 
 and vapid the whole fry, — when he putteth forth 
 his long-promised, but unaccountably hitherto de- 
 layed, " Confessions of a Water-drinker. "
 
 THE LAST PEACH. 
 
 AM the miserablest man living. Give 
 me counsel, dear Editor. I was bred 
 up in the strictest principles of honesty, 
 and have passed my life in punctual 
 adherence to them. Integrity might be said to be 
 ingrained in our family. Yet I live in constant 
 fear of one day coming to the gallows. 
 
 Till the latter end of last autumn, I never ex- 
 perienced these feelings of self-mistrust, which 
 ever since have embittered my existence. From 
 the apprehension of that unfortunate man,' whose 
 story began to make so great an impression upon 
 the public about that time, I date my horrors. I 
 never can get it out of my head that I shall some 
 time or other commit a forgery, or do some equally 
 vile thing. To make matters worse, I am in a 
 banking-house. I sit surrounded with a cluster 
 of bank-notes. These were formerly no more to 
 me than meat to a butcher's dog. They are now 
 as toads and aspics. I feel all day like one situated 
 amidst gins and pitfalls. Sovereigns, which I once 
 took such pleasure in counting out, and scraping up 
 with my little tin shovel (at which I was the most 
 
 ' Fauntleroy.
 
 362 ELI ANA. 
 
 expert in the banking-house), now scald my hands. 
 When I go to sign my name, I set down that of 
 another person or write my own in a counterfeit 
 character. I am beset with temptations without 
 motive. I want no more wealth than I possess. 
 A more contented being than myself, as to money 
 matters, exists not. What should I fear ? 
 
 When a child, I was once let loose, by favour 
 of a nobleman's gardener, into his lordship's mag- 
 nificent fruit-garden, with full leave to pull the 
 currants and the gooseberries ; only I was inter- 
 dicted from touching the wall-fruit. Indeed, at 
 that season (it was the end of autumn), there was 
 little left. Only on the south wall (can I forget the hot 
 feel of the brick-work?) lingered the one last peach. 
 Now, peaches are a fruit which I always had, and 
 still have, an almost utter aversion to. There is 
 something to my palate singularly harsh and re- 
 pulsive in the flavour of them. I know not by 
 what demon of contradiction inspired, but I was 
 haunted with an irresistible desire to pluck it. 
 Tear myself as often as I would from tlie spot, I 
 found myself still recurring to it ; till, maddening 
 with desire (desire I cannot call it), with wilful- 
 ness rather, — without appetite, — against appetite, 
 I may call it, — in an evil hour I reached out my 
 hand, and plucked it. Some few raindrops just 
 then fell; the sky (from a bright day) became 
 overcast ; and I was a type of our first parents, 
 after the eating of that fatal fruit. I felt myself 
 naked and ashamed, stripped of my virtue, spiritless. 
 The downy fruit, whose sight rather than savour 
 had tempted me, dropped from my hand never to 
 be tasted. All the commentators in the world 
 cannot persuade me but that the Hebrew word, in 
 the second chapter of Genesis, translated "apple,"
 
 THE LAST PEACH. 3^3 
 
 should be rendered " peach." Only this way can 
 I reconcile that mysterious story. 
 
 Just such a child at thirty am I among the cash 
 and valuables, longing to pluck, without an idea of 
 enjoyment further. I cannot reason myself out of 
 these fears : I dare not laugh at them. I was ten- 
 derly and lovingly brought up. What then ? Who 
 
 that in life's entrance had seen the babe F , 
 
 from the lap stretching out his little fond mouth to 
 catch the maternal kiss, could have predicted, or 
 as much as imagined, that life's very different exit? 
 The sight of my own fingers torments me ; they 
 seem so admirably constructed for — pilfering. 
 Then that jugular vein which I have in common 
 
 ; in an emphatic sense may I say with David, 
 
 I am " fearfully made." All my mirth is poisoned 
 by these unhappy suggestions. If, to dissipate re- 
 flection, I hum a tune, it changes to the " Lamenta- 
 tions of a Sinner." My very dreams are tainted. 
 I awake with a shocking feeling of my hand in 
 some pocket. 
 
 Advise me, dear Editor, on this painful heart - 
 malady. Tell me, do you feel anything allied to 
 it in yourself ? Do you never feel an itching, as it 
 were, — a dadylomania, — or am I alone ? You 
 have my honest confession. My next may appear 
 from Bow Street Suspensurus.
 
 REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY. 
 
 About the year 18 — , one R d, a respectable London 
 
 merchant (since dead), stood in the pillory for some alleged 
 fraud upon the revenue. Among his papers were found the 
 following " Reflections," which we have obtained by favour 
 of our friend Elia, who knew him well, and had heard him 
 describe the train of his feelings, upon that trying occasion, 
 almost in the words of the manuscript. Elia speaks of him 
 as a man (with the exception of the peccadillo aforesaid) of 
 singular integrity in all his private dealings, possessing great 
 suavity of manner, with a certain turn for humour. As our 
 object is to present human nature under every possible cir- 
 cumstance, we do not think that we shall suHy our pages by 
 inserting it. — Editor. 
 
 Scene, — Opposite the Royal Exchange. 
 Time, — Twelve to One, Noon. 
 
 ETCH, my good fellow, you have a neat 
 hand. Prithee adjust this new collar to 
 my neck gingerly. I am not used to 
 •these wooden cravats. There, softly, 
 softly. That seems the exact point between orna- 
 ment and strangulation. A thought looser on this 
 side. Now it will do. And have a care, in turning 
 me, that I present my aspect due vertically. I now 
 face the orient. In a quarter of an hour I shift
 
 REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY. 365 
 
 southward, — do you mind? — and so on till I face 
 the east again, travelling with the sun. No half- 
 points, I beseech you, — N.N. by W., or any such 
 elaborate niceties. They become the shipman's 
 card, but not this mystery. Now leave me a little 
 to my own reflections. 
 
 Bless us, what a company is assembled in honour 
 of me ! How grand I stand here ! I never felt so 
 sensibly before the effect of solitude in a crowd. I 
 muse in solemn silence upon that vast miscellaneous 
 rabble in the pit there. From my private box I 
 contemplate, with mingled pity and wonder, the 
 gaping curiosity of those underlings. There are 
 my Whitechapel supporters. Rosemary Lane has 
 emptied herself of the very flower of her citizens to 
 grace my show. Duke's Place sits desolate. What 
 is there in my face, that strangers should come so 
 far from the east to gaze upon it ? \He7-e an egg 
 narrowly misses Aim.] That offering was well 
 meant, but not so cleanly executed. By the trick- 
 lings, it should not be either myrrh or frankincense. 
 Spare your presents, my friends : I am noways 
 mercenary. I desire no missive tokens of your ap- 
 probation. I am past those valentines. Bestow 
 these coffins of untimely chickens upon mouths that 
 water for them. Comfort your addle spouses with 
 them at home, and stop the mouths of your braw- 
 ling brats with such Olla Podridas : they have need 
 of them. [A brick is let Jly.~\ Disease not, I pray 
 you, nor dismantle your rent and ragged tenements, 
 to furnish me with architectural decorations, which. 
 I can excuse. This fragment might have stopped 
 a flaw against snow comes. [^A coal flies.] Cinders 
 are dear, gentlemen. This nubbling might have 
 helped the pot boil, when your dirty cuttings from 
 the shambles at three-ha'pence a pound shall stand
 
 366 ELI ANA. 
 
 at a cold simmer. Now, south about, Ketch. I 
 would enjoy Australian popularity. 
 
 What, my friends from over the water ! Old 
 benchers — flies of a day — ephemeral Romans — 
 welcome ! Doth the sight of me draw souls from 
 limbo ? Can it dispeople purgatory ? — Ha ! 
 
 What am I, or what was my father's house, that 
 I should thus be set up a spectacle to gentlemen 
 and others ? W'hy are all faces, like Persians at the 
 sunrise, bent singly on mine alone ? It was wont 
 to be esteemed an ordinary visnomy, a quotidian 
 merely. Doubtless these assembled myriads discern 
 some traits of nobleness, gentility, breeding, which 
 hitherto have escaped the common observation, — 
 some intimations, as it were, of wisdom, valour, 
 piety, and so forth. My sight dazzles ; and, if I 
 am not deceived by the too familiar pressure of 
 this strange neckcloth that envelops it, my coun- 
 tenance gives out lambent glories. Yox some 
 painter now to take me in the lucky point of ex- 
 pression ! — the posture so convenient ! — the head 
 never shifting, but standing quiescent in a sort of 
 natural frame. But these artisans require a westerly 
 aspect. Ketch, turn me. 
 
 Something of St. James's air in these my new 
 friends. How my prospects shift and brighten ! 
 Now, if Sir Thomas Lawrence be anywhere in 
 that group, his fortune is made for ever. I think 
 I see some one taking out a crayon. I will com- 
 pose my whole face to a smile, which yet shall not 
 so predominate but that gravity and gaiety shall 
 contend, as it were, — you understand me ? I will 
 work up my thoughts to some mild rapture, — a 
 gentle enthusiasm, — which the artist may transfer, 
 in a manner, warm to the canvas. I will inwardly 
 apostrophize my tal>ernacle.
 
 REFLkCTIONS IN THE PILLORY. 367 
 
 Delectable mansion, hail ! House not made of 
 every wood ! Lodging that pays no rent ; airy and 
 commodious ; which, owing no window-tax, art 
 yet all casement, out of which men have such 
 pleasure in peering and overlooking, that they will 
 sometimes stand an hour together to enjoy thy 
 prospects ! Cell, recluse from the vulgar ! Quiet 
 retirement from the great Babel, yet affording sufft- 
 cient glimpses into it ! Pulpit, that instructs with- 
 out note or sermon-book ; into which the preacher 
 is inducted without tenth or first-fruit ! Throne, 
 unshared and single, that disdainest a Brentford 
 competitor ! Honour without co-rival ! Or hearest 
 thou, rather, magnificent theatre, in which the 
 spectator comes to see and to be seen ? From thy 
 giddy heights I look down upon the common herd, 
 who stand with eyes upturned, as if a winged mes- 
 senger hovered over them ; and mouths open, as if 
 they expected manna. I feel, I feel, the true epis- 
 copal yearnings. Behold in me, my flock, your 
 true overseer ! What though I cannot lay hands, 
 because my own are laid ; yet I can mutter bene- 
 dictions. True otium cum dignitate ! Proud Pisgah 
 eminence ! pinnacle sublime ! O Pillory ! 'tis thee 
 I sing ! Thou younger brother to the gallows, 
 without his rough and Esau palms, thut with in- 
 effable contempt surveyest beneath thee the gro- 
 velling stocks, which claim presumptuously to be 
 of thy great race ! Let that low wood know that 
 thou art far higher born. Let that domicile for 
 groundling rogues and base earth-kissing varlets 
 envy thy preferment, not seldom fated to be the 
 wanton baiting-house, the temporary retreat, of 
 poet and of patriot. Shades of Bastwick and of 
 Prynne hover over thee, — Defoe is there, and more 
 greatly daring Shebbeare,— from their (little more
 
 368 ELI ANA 
 
 elevated) stations they look down with recognitions. 
 Ketch, turn me. 
 
 I now veer to the north. Open your widest 
 gates, thou proud Exchange of London, that I may 
 look in as proudly ! Gresham's wonder, hail ! I 
 stand upon a level with all your kings. They and 
 I, from equal heights, with equal superciliousness, 
 o'erlook the plodding money-hunting tribe below, 
 who, busied in their sordid speculations, scarce 
 elevate their eyes to notice your ancient, or my 
 recent, grandeur. The second Charles smiles on 
 me from three pedestals ! ' He closed the Ex- 
 chequer : I cheated the Excise. Equal our darings, 
 equal be our lot. 
 
 Are those the quarters? 'tis their fatal chime. 
 That the ever-winged hours would but stand still ! 
 but I must descend, — descend from this dream of 
 greatness. Stay, stay, a little while, importunate 
 hour-hand ! A moment or two, and I shall walk 
 on foot with the undistinguished many. The clock 
 speaks one. I return to common life. Ketch, let 
 me out. 
 
 ' A statue of Charles II., by the elder Cibber, adorns 
 the front of the Exchange. He stands also on high, in the 
 train of his crowned ancestors, in his proper order, -jHthin 
 thai building. But the merchants of London, in a superfe- 
 tation of loyalty, have, within a few years, caused to bpi 
 erected another effigy of him on the ground in the centre of 
 the interior. We do not hear that a fourth is in contem- 
 plation.
 
 CUPID'S REVENGE. 
 
 EONTIUS, Duke of Lycia, who in times 
 past had borne the character of a wise 
 and just governor, and was endeared to 
 all ranks of his subjects, in his latter 
 days fell into a sort of dotage, which manifested 
 itself in an extravagant fondness for his daughter 
 Hidaspes. This young maiden, with the Prince 
 Leucippus, her brother, %vere the only remembrances 
 left to him of a deceased and beloved consort. For 
 her, nothing was thought too precious. Existence 
 was of no value to him but as it afforded .oppor- 
 tunities of gratifying her wishes. To be instru- 
 mental in relieving her from the least little pain or 
 grief, he would have lavished his treasures to the 
 giving away of the one-half of his dukedom. 
 
 All this deference on the part of the parent had 
 yet no power upon the mind of the daughter to 
 move her at any time to solicit any unbecoming 
 suit, or to disturb the even tenor of her thoughts. 
 The humility and dutifulness of her carriage seemed 
 to keep pace with his apparent willingness to re- 
 lease her from the obligations of either. She might 
 have satisfied her wildest humours and caprices ; 
 but, in truth, no such troublesome guests found 
 harbour in the bosom of the quiet and unaspiring 
 maiden. 
 
 II. 
 
 BB
 
 370 ELIANA. 
 
 Thus far the prudence of the princess served to 
 counteract any ill effects which this ungovernable 
 partiality in a parent was calculated to produce in 
 a less virtuous nature than Hidaspes'; and this 
 foible of the duke's, so long as no evil resulted 
 from it, was passed over by the courtiers as a piece 
 of harmless frenzy. 
 
 But upon a solemn day, — a sad one, as it proved 
 for Lycia, — when the returning anniversary of the 
 princess's birth was kept with extraordinary re- 
 joicings, the infatuated father set no bounds to his 
 folly, but would have his subjects to do homage to 
 her for that day, as to their natural sovereign ; as 
 if he, indeed, had been dead, and she, to the ex- 
 clusion of the male succession, was become the 
 rightful ruler of Lycia. He saluted her by the style 
 of Duchess ; and with a terrible oath, in the pre- 
 sence of his nobles, he confirmed to her the grant 
 of all things whatsoever that she should demand on 
 that day, and for the six next following ; and if she 
 should ask anything, the execution of which must 
 be deferred until after his death, he pronounced a 
 dreadful curse upon his son and successor, if he 
 failed to see to the performance of it. 
 
 Thus encouraged, the princess stepped forth with 
 a modest boldness ; and, as if assured of no denial, 
 spake as follows. 
 
 But, before we acquaint you with the purport of 
 her speech, we must premise, that in the land of 
 Lycia, which was at that time pagan, above all 
 their other gods the inhabitants did in an especial 
 manner adore the deity who was supposed to have 
 influence in the disposing of people's affections in 
 love. Him, by the name of God Cupid, they 
 feigned to be a beautiful boy, and winged ; as in- 
 deed, between young persons, these frantic passions
 
 CUPID'S REVENGE. 371 
 
 are usually least under constraint ; while the wings 
 might signify the haste with which these ill-judged 
 attachments are commonly dissolved, and do indeed 
 go away as lightly as they come, flymg away in aE 
 instant to light upon some newer fancy. They 
 painted him blindfolded, because these silly affec- 
 tions of lovers make them blind to the defects of 
 the beloved object, which every one is quick- 
 sighted enough to discover but themselves ; or be- 
 cause love is for the most part led blindly, rather 
 than directed by the open eye of the judgment, in 
 the hasty choice of a mate. Yet with that incon- 
 sistency of attributes with which the heathen people 
 commonly over-complimented their deities, this 
 blind love, this Cupid, they figured with a bow 
 and arrows ; and, being sightless, they yet feigned 
 him to be a notable archer and an unerring marks- 
 man. No heart was supposed to be proof against   
 the point of his inevitable dart. By such incredible 
 fictions did these poor pagans make a shift to excuse 
 their vanities, and to give a sanction to their ir- 
 regular affections, under the notion that love was 
 irresistible ; whereas, in a well-regulated mind, 
 these amorous conceits either find no place at all, 
 or, having gained a footing, are easily stifled in the 
 beginning by a wise and manly resolution. 
 
 This frenzy in the people had long been a source 
 of disquiet to the discreet princess ; and many were 
 the conferences she had held with the virtuous 
 prince, her brother, as to the best mode of taking 
 off the minds of the Lycians from this vain super- 
 stition. An occasion, furnished by the blind grant 
 of the old duke, their father, seemed now to present 
 itself. 
 
 The courtiers then, being assembled to hear the 
 demand which the princess should make, began to
 
 37» ELI AN A. 
 
 conjecture, each one according to the bent of his 
 own disposition, what the thing would be that she 
 should ask for. One said, " Now surely she will 
 aik to have the disposal of the revenues of some 
 wealthy province, to lay them out — as was the 
 manner of Eastern princesses — in costly dresses 
 and jewels becoming a lady of so great expectan- 
 cies." Another thought that she would seek an 
 extension of power, as women naturally love rule 
 and dominion. But the most part were in hope 
 that she was about to beg the hand of some neigh- 
 bouring prince in marriage, who, by the wealth 
 and contiguity of his dominions, might add strength 
 and safety to the realm of Lycia. But in none of 
 these things was the expectation of these 'crafty and 
 worldly-minded courtiers gratified ; for Hidaspes, 
 first making lowly obeisance to her father, and 
 thanking him on bended knees for so great grace 
 conferred upon her, — according to a plan precon- 
 certed with Leucippus, — made suit as follows ; — 
 
 "Your loving care of me, O princely father ! by 
 which in my tenderest age you made up to me for 
 the loss of a mother at those years when I was 
 scarcely able to comprehend the misfortune, and 
 your bounties to me ever since, have left me no- 
 thing to ask for myself, as wanting and desiring 
 nothing. But, for the people whom you govern, I 
 beg and desire a boon. It is known to all nations, 
 that the men of Lycia are noted for a vain and 
 fruitless superstition, — the more hateful as it bears 
 a show of true religion, but is indeed nothing more 
 than a self-pleasing and bold wantonness. Many 
 ages before this, when every man had taken to 
 himself a trade, as hating idleness far worse than 
 death, some one that gave himself to sloth and 
 wine, finding himself by his neighbours rebuked
 
 CUPIDS REVENGE. 373 
 
 for his unprofitable life, framed to himself a god, 
 whom he pretended to obey in his dishonesty ; and, 
 for a name, he called him Cupid. This god of 
 merely man's creating — as the nature of man is 
 ever credulous of any vice which takes part with 
 his dirsolute conditions — quickly found followers 
 enough. They multiplied in every age, especially 
 among your Lycians, who to this day remain 
 adorers of this drowsy deity, who certainly was 
 first invented in drink, as sloth and luxury are com- 
 monly the first movers in these idle love-passions. 
 This winged boy — for so they fancy him — has his 
 sacrifices, his loose images set up in the land, 
 through all the villages; nay, your own sacred 
 palace is not exempt from them, to the scandal of 
 sound devotion, and dishonour of the true deities, 
 which are only they who give good gifts to man, — 
 as Ceres, who gives us corn ; the planter of the 
 olive, Pallas; Neptune, who directs the track of 
 ships over the great ocean, and binds distant lands 
 together in friendly commerce ; the inventor of me- 
 dicine and music, Apollo ; and the cloud-compel- 
 ling Thunderer of Olympus : whereas the gifts of 
 this idle deity — if indeed he have a being at all 
 out of the brain of his frantic worshippers — usually 
 prove destructive and pernicious. My suit, then, 
 is, that this unseemly idol throughout the land be 
 plucked down, and cast into the fire ; and that the 
 adoring of the same may be prohibited on pain of 
 death to any of your subjects henceforth found so 
 offending." 
 
 Leontius, startled at- this unexpected demand 
 frqm the princess, with tears besought her to ask 
 some wiser thing, and not to bring down upon her- 
 self and him the indignation of so great a god. 
 
 " There is no such god as you dream of," said
 
 374 ELIANA. 
 
 then Leucippus, boldly, who had hitherto forborne 
 to second the petition of the princess ; " but a vain 
 opinion of him has filled the land with love and 
 wantonness. Every young man and maiden, that 
 feel the least desire to one another, dare in no case 
 to suppress it ; for they think it to be Cupid's mo- 
 tion, and that he is a god !" 
 
 Thus pressed by the solicitations of both his chil- 
 dren, and fearing the oath which he had taken, in 
 an evil hour the misgiving father consented ; and a 
 proclamation was sent throughout all the provinces 
 for the putting-down of the idol, and the suppression 
 of the established Cupid-worship. 
 
 Notable, you may be sure, was the stir made in 
 all places among the priests, and among the arti- 
 ficers in gold, in silver, or in marble, who made a 
 gainful trade, either in serving at the altar, or in 
 the manufacture of the images no longer to be tole- 
 rated. The cry was clamorous as that at Ephesus 
 when a kindred idol was in danger; for "great 
 had been Cupid of the Lycians." Nevertheless, 
 the power of the duke, backed by the power of his 
 more popular children, prevailed ; and the destruc- 
 tion of every vestige of the old religion was but as 
 the work of one day throughout the country. 
 
 And now, as the pagan chronicles of Lycia in- 
 form us, the displeasure of Cupid went out, — the 
 displeasure of a great god, — flying through all the 
 dukedom, and sowing evils. But upon the first 
 movers of the profanation his angry hand lay 
 heaviest; and there was imposed upon them a 
 strange misery, that all might know that Cupid's 
 revenge was mighty. With his arrows hotter than 
 plagues, or than his o^vn anger, did he fiercely 
 right himself; nor could the prayers of a few con- 
 cealed worshippers, nor the smoke arising from an
 
 CUPID'S REVENGE. 375 
 
 altar here and there which had escaped the general 
 overthrow, avert his wrath, or make him to cease 
 from vengeance, until he had made of the once- 
 flourishing country of Lycia a most wretched land. 
 He sent no famines, he let loose no cruel wild 
 beasts among them, — inflictions with one or other 
 of which the rest of the Olympian deities are fabled 
 to have visited the nations under their displeasure, 
 — but took a nearer course of his own ; and his in- 
 visible arrows went to the 7noral heart of Lycia, 
 infecting and filling court and country with desires 
 of unlawful marriages, unheard-of and monstrous 
 affections, prodigious and misbecoming unions. 
 
 The symptoms were first visible in the changed 
 bosom of Hidaspes. This exemplary maiden, — 
 whose cold modesty, almost to a failing, had dis- 
 couraged the addresses of so many princely suitors 
 that had sought her hand in marriage, — by the 
 venom of this inward pestilence, came on a sudden 
 to cast eyes of affection upon a mean and deformed 
 creature, Zoilus by name, who was a dwarf, and 
 lived about the palace, the common jest of the 
 courtiers. In her besotted eyes he was grown a 
 goodly gentleman ; and to her maidens, when any 
 of them reproached him with the defect of his 
 shape in her hearing, she would reply, that "to 
 them, indeed, he might appear defective, and un- 
 like a man, as, indeed, no man was like unto him ; 
 for in form and complexion he was beyond paint- 
 ing. He is like," she said, "to nothing that we 
 have seen ; yet he doth resemble Apollo, as I have 
 fancied him, when, rising in the east, he bestirs 
 himself, and shakes daylight from his hair." And, 
 overcome with a passion which was heavier than 
 she could bear, she confessed herself a wretched 
 creature, and implored forgiveness of God Cupid,
 
 376 ELI ANA 
 
 whom she had provoked ; and, if possible, that he 
 would grant it to her that she might enjoy her love. 
 Nay, she would court this piece of deformity to his 
 face ; and when the wretch, supposing it to be 
 done in mockery, has said that he could wish him- 
 self more ill-shaped than he was, so it would con- 
 tribute to make her grace merry, she would reply, 
 " Oh ! think not that I jest ; unless it be a jest not 
 to esteem my life in comparison with thine ; to 
 hang a thousand kisses in an hour upon those lips ; 
 unless it be a jest to vow that I am willing to be- 
 come your wife, and to take obedience upon me." 
 And by his " own white hand," taking it in hers, 
 — so strong was the delusion, — she besought him 
 to swear to marry her. 
 
 The term had not yet expired of the seven days 
 within which the doting duke had sworn to fulfil 
 her will, when, in pursuance of this frenzy, she 
 presented herself before her father, leading in the 
 dwarf by the hand, and, in the face of all the cour- 
 tiers, solemnly demanding his hand in marriage. 
 And, when the apeish creature made show of blush- 
 ing at the unmerited honour, she, to comfort him, 
 bade him not to be ashamed; for, " in her eyes, he 
 was worth a kingdom." 
 
 And now, too late, did the fond father repent 
 him of his dotage. But when by no importunity 
 he could prevail upon her to desist from her suit, 
 for his oath's sake he must needs consent to the 
 marriage. But the ceremony was no sooner, to 
 the derision of all present, performed, than, with 
 the just feelings of an outraged parent, he com- 
 manded the head of the presumptuous bridegroom 
 to be stricken off, and committed the distracted 
 princess close prisoner to her chamber, where after 
 many deadly swoonings, with intermingled outcries
 
 CUPID'S REVENGE. yn 
 
 upon the cruelty of her father, she, in no long time 
 after, died ; making ineffectual appeals, to the last, 
 to the mercy of the offended Power, — the Power 
 that had laid its heavy hand upon her, to the be- 
 reavement of her good judgment first, and to the 
 extinction of a life that might have proved a bless- 
 ing to Lycia. 
 
 Leontius had scarcely time to be sensible of her 
 danger before a fresh cause for mourning overtook 
 him. His son Leucippus, who had hitherto been 
 a pattern of strict life and modesty, was stricken 
 with a second arrow from the deity, offended for 
 his overturned altars, in which the prince had been 
 a chief instrament. The god caused his heart to 
 fall away, and his crazed fancy to be smitten with 
 the excelling beauty of a wicked widow, by name 
 Bacha. This woman, in the first days of her 
 mourning for her husband, by her dissembling tears 
 and affected coyness, had drawn Leucippus so cun- 
 ningly into her snares, that, before she would grant 
 him a return of love, she extorted from the easy- 
 hearted prince a contract of marriage, to be ful- 
 filled in the event of his father's death. This guilty 
 intercourse, which they covered with the name of 
 marriage, was not carried with such secrecy but 
 that a rumour of it ran about the palace, and by 
 some officious courtier was brought to the ears 
 of the old duke, who, to satisfy himself of the truth, 
 came hastily to the house of Bacha, where he found 
 his son courting. Taking the prince to task roundly, 
 he sternly asked who that creature was that had 
 bewitched him out of his honour thus. Then 
 Bacha, pretending ignorance of the duke's person, 
 haughtily demanded of Leucippus what saucy old 
 man that was, that without leave had burst into 
 the house of an afflicted widow to hinder her pay-
 
 378 EL I AN A. 
 
 ing her tears (as she pretended) to the dead. Then 
 the duke declaring himself, and threatening her for 
 having corrupted his son, giving her the reproach- 
 ful terms of witch and sorceress, Leucippus mildly 
 answered, that he "did her wrong." The bad 
 woman, imagining that the prince for very fear 
 would not betray their secret, now conceived a 
 project of monstrous wickedness ; which was no 
 less than to ensnare the father with the same arts 
 which had subdued the son, that she might no 
 longer be a concealed wife, nor a princess only 
 under cover, but, by a union with the old man, be- 
 come at once the true and acknowledged Duchess 
 of Lycia. In a posture of humility, she confessed 
 her ignorance of the duke's quality ; but, now she 
 knew it, she besought his pardon for her wild 
 speeches, which proceeded, she said, from a dis- 
 tempered head, which the loss of a dear husband 
 had affected. He might command her life, she 
 told him, which was now of small value to her. 
 The tears which accompanied her words, and 
 her mourning weeds (which, for a blind to the 
 world, she had not yet cast off), heightening her 
 beauty, gave a credence to her protestations of her 
 innocence. But the duke continuing to assail her 
 with reproaches, with a matchless confidence as- 
 suming the air of injured virtue, in a somewhat 
 lofty tone she replied, that though he were her 
 sovereign, to whom in any lawful cause she was 
 bound to submit, yet, if he sought to take away her 
 honour, she stood up to defy him. That, she said, 
 was a jewel dearer than any he could give her, 
 which, so long as she should keep, she should 
 esteem herself richer than all the princes of the 
 earth that were without it. If the prince, his son, 
 knew anything to her dishonour, let him tell it.
 
 CUPID'S REVENGE. 379 
 
 And here she challenged Leucippus before his 
 father to speak the worst of her. If he would, 
 however, sacrifice a woman's character to please 
 an unjust humour of the duke's, she saw no re- 
 medy, she said, now he was dead (meaning her late 
 husband) that with his life would have defended her 
 reputation. 
 
 Thus appealed to, Leucippus, who had stood a 
 while astonished at her confident falsehoods, though 
 ignorant of the full drift of them, considering that 
 not the reputation only, but probably the life, of a 
 woman whom he had so loved, and who had made 
 such sacrifices to him of love and beauty, depended 
 upon his absolute concealment of their contract, 
 framed his mouth to a compassionate untruth, and 
 with solemn asseverations confirmed to his father 
 her assurances of her innocence. He denied not 
 that with rich gifts he had assailed her virtue, but 
 had found her relentless to his solicitations ; that 
 gold nor greatness had any power over her. Nay, 
 so far he went on, to give force to the protes- 
 tations of this artful woman, that he confessed to 
 having offered marriage to her, which she, who 
 scorned to listen to any second wedlock, had re- 
 jected. 
 
 All this while, Leucippus secretly prayed to 
 Heaven to forgive him while he uttered these bold 
 untruths; since it was for the prevention of a 
 greater mischief only, and had no malice in it. 
 
 But, warned by the sad sequel which ensued, be 
 thou careful, young reader, how in any case you 
 tell a lie. Lie not, if any man but ask you " how 
 you do," or "what o'clock it is." Be sure you 
 make no false excuse to screen a friend that is most 
 dear to you. Never let the most well-intended 
 falsehood escape your lips; for Heaven, which is
 
 38o ELIANA. 
 
 entirely Truth, will make the seed which you have 
 sown of untruth to yield miseries a thousand-fold 
 upon yours, as it did upon the head of the ill- 
 fated and mistaken Leucippus. 
 
 Leontius, finding the assurances of Bacha so con- 
 fidently seconded by his son, could no longer with- 
 hold his belief; and, only forbidding their meeting 
 for the future, took a courteous leave of the lady, 
 presenting her at the same time with a valuable 
 ring, in recompense, as he said, of the injustice 
 which he had done her in his false surmises of her 
 guiltiness. In truth, the surpassing beauty of the 
 lady, with her appearing modesty, had made no 
 less impression upon the heart of the fond old duke 
 than they had awakened in the bosom of his more 
 pardonable son. His first design was to make her 
 his mistress ; to the better accomplishing of which, 
 Leucippus was dismissed from the court, under the 
 pretext of some honourable employment abroad. 
 In his absence, Leontius spared no offers to induce 
 her to comply with his purpose Continually he 
 solicited her with rich offers, with messages, and 
 by personal visits. It was a ridiculous sight, if it 
 were not rather a sad one, to behold this second 
 and worse dotage, which by Cupid's wrath had 
 fallen upon this fantastical old new lover. All his 
 occupation now was in dressing and pranking him- 
 self up in youthful attire to please the eyes of his 
 new mistress. His mornings were employed in 
 the devising of trim fashions, in the company of 
 tailors, embroiderers, and feather-dressers. So in- 
 fatuated was he with these vanities, that, when a 
 servant came and told him that his daughter was 
 dead, — even she whom he had but lately so highly 
 prized, — the words seemed spoken to a deaf per- 
 son. He either could not or would not understand
 
 CUPID'S REVENGE. 381 
 
 them ; but, like one senseless, fell to babbling about 
 the shape of a new hose and doublet. His crutch, 
 the faithful prop of long aged years, was discarded ; 
 ind he resumed the youthful fashion of a sword by 
 his side, when his years wanted strength to have 
 drawn it. In this condition of folly, it was no 
 difficult task for the widow, by affected pretences 
 of honour, and arts of amorous denial, to draw in 
 this doting duke to that which she had all along 
 limed at, — the offer of his crown in marriage. 
 She was now Duchess of Lycia ! In her new ele- 
 vation, the mask was quickly thrown aside, and 
 the impious Bacha appeared in her true qualities. 
 She had never loved the duke, her husband ; but 
 had used him as the instrument of her greatness. 
 Taking advantage of his amorous folly, which 
 seemed to gain growth the nearer he approached 
 to his grave, she took upon her the whole rule of 
 Lycia ; placing and displacing, at her will, all the 
 great officers of state ; and filling the court with 
 creatures of her own, the agenfs of her guilty plea- 
 sures, she removed from the duke's person the 
 oldest and trustiest of his dependants. 
 
 Leucippus, who at this juncture was returned 
 from his foreign mission, was met at once with the 
 news of his sister's death and the strange wedlock 
 of the old duke. To the memory of Hidaspes he 
 gave some tears; but these were swiftly swallowed 
 up in his horror and detestation of the conduct of 
 Bacha. In his first fury, he resolved upon a full 
 disclosure of all that had passed between him and 
 his wicked stepmother. Again, he thought, by 
 killing Bacha, to rid the world of a monster. But 
 tenderness for his father recalled him to milder 
 counsels. The fatal secret, nevertheless, sat upon him 
 like lead, while he was determined to confide it to
 
 ^82 ELI AN A. 
 
 no other. It took his sleep away, and his desire 
 of food ; and, if a thought of mirth at any time 
 crossed him, the dreadful truth would recur to 
 check it, as if a messenger should have come to 
 whisper to him of some friend's death. With diffi- 
 culty he was brought to wish their highnesses faint 
 joy of their marriage ; and, at the first sight of 
 Bacha, a friend was fain to hold his wrist hard to 
 prevent him from fainting. In an interview, which 
 after, at her request, he had with her alone, the 
 bad woman shamed not to take up the subject 
 lightly ; to treat as a trifle the marriage vow that 
 had passed between them; and, seeing him sad and 
 silent, to threaten him with the displeasure of the 
 duke, his father, if by words or looks he gave any 
 suspicion to the world of their dangerous secret. 
 "What had happened," she said, "was by no fault 
 of hers. People would have thought her mad if 
 she had refused the duke's offer. She had used 
 no arts to entrap his father. It was Leucippus' 
 own resolute denial of any such thing as a contract 
 having passed between them which had led to the 
 proposal." 
 
 The prince, unable to extenuate his share of 
 blame in the calamity, humbly besought her, that 
 "since, by his own great fault, things had been 
 brought to their present pass, she would only live 
 honest for the future, and not abuse the credulous 
 age of the old duke, as he well knew she had the 
 power to do. For himself, seeing that life was no 
 longer desirable to him, if his death was judged by 
 her to be indispensable to her security, she was 
 welcome to lay what trains she pleased to compass 
 it, so long as she would only suffer his father to go 
 to his grave in peace, since he had never wronged 
 her."
 
 CUPID'S REVENGE. 383 
 
 This temperate appeal was lost upon the heart 
 of Bacha, M'ho from that moment was secretly bent 
 upon effecting the destruction of Leucippus. Her 
 project was, by feeding the ears of the duke with 
 exaggerated praises of his son, to awaken a jealousy 
 in the old man, that she secretly preferred Leu- 
 cippus. Next, by wilfully insinuating the great 
 popularity of the prince (which was no more, in- 
 deed, than the truth) among the Lycians, to instil 
 subtle fears into the duke that his son had laid plots 
 for circumventing his life and throne. By these arts 
 she was working upon the weak mind of the duke 
 almost to distraction, when, at a meeting concocted 
 by herself between the prince And his father, the 
 latter taking Leucippus soundly to task for these 
 alleged treasons, the prince replied only by humbly 
 drawing his sword, with the intention of laying it 
 at his father's feet ; and begging him, since he sus- 
 pected him, to sheathe it in his own bosom, for of 
 his life he had been long weary. Bacha entered 
 at the crisis, and ere Leucippus could finish his 
 submission, with loud outcries alarmed the cour- 
 tiers, who, rushing into the presence, found the 
 prince with sword in hand, indeed, but with far 
 other intentions than this bad woman imputed to 
 him, plainly accusing him of having drawn it upon 
 his father ! Leucippus was quickly disarmed ; and 
 the old duke, trembling between fear and age, 
 committed him to close prison, from which by 
 Bacha's aims he never should have come out alive 
 but for the interference of the common people, 
 who, loving their prince, and equally detesting 
 Bacha, in a simultaneous mutiny arose, and res- 
 cued him from the hands of the officers. 
 
 The court was now no longer a place of living 
 for Leucippus ; and, hastily thanking his country-
 
 384 ELI ANA. 
 
 men for his deliverance, which in his heart he rather 
 deprecated than welcomed, as one that wished for 
 death, he took leave of all court hopes, and, aban- 
 doning the palace, betook himself to a life of peni- 
 tence in solitudes. 
 
 Not so secretly did he select his place of penance, 
 in a cave among lonely woods and fastnesses, but 
 that his retreat was traced by Bacha, who, baffled 
 in her purpose, raging like some she-wolf, de- 
 spatched an emissary of her own to destroy him 
 privately. 
 
 There was residing at the court of Lycia, at this 
 time, a young maiden, the daughter of Bacha by 
 her first husband, who had hitherto been brought 
 up in the obscurity of a poor country abode with 
 an uncle, but whom Bacha now publicly owned, 
 and had prevailed upon the easy duke to adopt as 
 successor to the throne in wrong of the true heir, 
 his suspected son Leucippus. 
 
 This young creature, Urania by name, wis as 
 artless and harmless as her mother was crafty and 
 wicked. To the unnatural Bacha she had been an 
 object of neglect and aversion ; and for the project 
 of supplanting Leucippus only had she fetched her 
 out of retirement. The bringing-up of Urania had 
 been among country hinds and lasses : to tend her 
 flocks, or superintend her neat dairy had been the 
 extent of her breeding. From her calling, she 
 had contracted a pretty rusticity of dialect, which, 
 among the fine folks of the court, passed for sim- 
 plicity and folly. She was the unfittest instrument 
 for an ambitious design that could be chosen ; for 
 her manners in a palace had a tinge still of her 
 old occupation ; and, to her mind, the lowly shep- 
 herdess's life was best. 
 
 Simplicity is oft a match for prudence : and
 
 CUPID'S REVENGE. 385 
 
 Urania was not so simple but she understood that 
 she had been sent for to court only in the prince's 
 wrong; and in her heart she was determined to 
 defeat any designs that might be contriving against 
 her brother-in-law. The melancholy bearing of Leu- 
 cippus had touched her with pity. This wrought 
 in her a kind of love, which, for its object, had 
 no further end than the well-being of the beloved. 
 She looked for no return of it, nor did the possi- 
 bility of such a blessing in the remotest way occur 
 to her, — so vast a distance she had imaged between 
 her lowly bringing-up and the courtly breeding and 
 graces of Leucippus. Hers was no raging flame, 
 such as had burned destructive in the bosom of 
 poor Hidaspes. Either the vindictive god in mercy 
 had spared this young maiden, or the wrath of the 
 confounding Ctipid was restrained by a higher 
 Power from discharging the most malignant of his 
 arrows against the peace of so much innocence. 
 Of the extent of her mother's malice she was too 
 guileless to have entertained conjecture ; but from 
 hints and whispers, and, above all, from that ten- 
 der watchfulness with which a true affection like 
 Urania's tends the safety of its object, — fearing 
 even where no cause for fear subsists, — she gathered 
 that some danger was impending over the prince, 
 and with simple heroism resolved to countermine 
 the treason. 
 
 It chanced upon a day that Leucippus had been 
 indulging his sad meditations in forests far from 
 human converse, when he was struck with the ap- 
 pearance of a human being, so unusual in that soli- 
 tude. There stood before him a seeming youth, of 
 delicate appearance, clad in coarse and peasantly 
 attire. "He was come," he said, "to seek out 
 the princei and to be his poor boy and servant, if 
 
 II. c c
 
 ,86 ELIANA. 
 
 he would let him."—" Alas! poor youth," replied 
 Leucippus; "why do you follow me, who am as 
 poor as you are?" — " In good faith," was his pretty 
 answer, " I shall be well and rich enough, if you 
 will but love me." And, saying so, he wept. The 
 prince, admiring this strange attachment in a boy, 
 was moved with compassion ; and seeing him ex- 
 hausted, as if with long travel and hunger, invited 
 him in to his poor habitation, setting such refresh- 
 ments before him as that barren spot afforded. But 
 by no entreaties could he be prevailed upon to take 
 any sustenance ; and all that day, and for the two 
 following, he seemed supported only by some gentle 
 ilame of love that was within him. He fed only 
 upon the gweet looks and courteous entertainment 
 which he received from Leucippus. Seemingly, he 
 wished to die under the loving eyes of his master. 
 "I cannot eat," he prettily said; " but I shall eat 
 to-morrow." — " You will be dead by that time," re- 
 plied Leucippus. " I shall be well then," said he ; 
 " since you will not love me." Then the prince 
 asking him why he sighed so, "To think," was 
 his innocent reply, "that such a fine man as you 
 should die, and no gay lady love him." — "But 
 you will love me," said Leucippus. "Yes, sure," 
 said he, "till I die; and, when I am in heaven, 
 I shall wish for you." "This is a love," thought 
 the other, "that I never yet heard tell of. But 
 come, thou art sleepy, child : go in, and I will sit 
 with thee." Then, from some words which the 
 poor youth dropped, Leucippus, suspecting that his 
 wits were beginning to ramble, said, "What por- 
 tends this?"—" I am not sleepy," said the youth; 
 "but you are sad. I would that I could do any- 
 thing to make you merry! Shall I sing?" But 
 soon, as if recovering strength, "There is one ap-
 
 CUPID'S REVENGE. 387 
 
 preaching!" he wildly cried out. "Master, look 
 to yourself ! " 
 
 His words were true : for now entered, with pro- 
 vided weapon, the wicked emissary of Bacha, that 
 we told of; and, directing a mortal thrast at the 
 prince, the supposed boy, with a last effort, inter- 
 posing his weak body, received it in his iDOsom, 
 thanking the heavens in death that he had saved 
 " SO good a master." 
 
 Leucippus, having slain the villain, was at leisure 
 to discover, in the features of his poor servant, the 
 countenance of his devoted sister-in-law ! Through 
 solitary and dangerous ways she had sought him in 
 that disguise ; and, finding him, seems to have 
 resolved upon a voluntary death by fasting,— partly 
 that she might die in the presence of her beloved, 
 and partly that she might make known to him in 
 death the love which she wanted boldness to dis- 
 close to him while living, but chiefly because she 
 knew that, by her demise, all obstacles would be 
 removed that stood between her prince and his 
 succession to the throne of Lycia. 
 
 Leucippus had hardly time to comprehend the 
 strength of love in his Urania, when a trampling 
 of horses resounded through his solitude. It was 
 a party of Lycian horsemen, that had come to 
 seek him, dragging the detested Bacha in their 
 train, who was now to receive the full penalty of 
 her misdeeds. Amidst her frantic fury upon the 
 missing of her daughter, the old duke had suddenly 
 died, net without suspicion of her having adminis- 
 tered poison to him. Her punishment was sub- 
 mitted to Leucippus, who was now, with joyful 
 acclaims, saluted as the rightful Duke of Lycia. 
 He, as no way moved with his great wrongs, but 
 considering her simply as the parent of Urania,
 
 38S ELIANA. 
 
 saluting her only by the title of " Wicked Mother," 
 bade her to live. " That reverend title," he said, 
 and pointed to the bleeding remains of her child. 
 " must be her pardon. He would use no extremity 
 against her, but leave her to Heaven." The har- 
 dened mother, not at all relenting at the sad spec- 
 tacle that lay before her, but making show of duti- 
 ful submission to the young duke, and with bended 
 knees approaching him, suddenly with a dagger 
 inflicted a mortal stab upon him ; and, with a 
 second stroke stabbing herself, ended both their 
 wretched lives. 
 
 Now was the tragedy of Cupid's wrath awfully 
 completed ; and, the race of Leontius failing in 
 the deaths of both his children, the chronicle re- 
 lates that, under tlieir new duke, Ismenus, the 
 offence to the angry Power was expiated; his 
 statues and altars were, with more magnificence 
 than ever, re-edified ; and he ceased thenceforth 
 from plagning the land. 
 
 Thus far the pagan historians relate erring. 
 But from this vain idol story a not unprofitable 
 moral may be gathered against the abuse of the 
 natural but dangerous /aw /c« of love. In the story 
 of Hidaspes, we see the preposterous linking of~ 
 beauty with deformity ; of princely expectancies 
 with mean and low conditions, in the case of the 
 prince, her brother ; and of decrepit age with 
 youth, in the ill end of their doting father, Leon- 
 tius. By their examples we are warned to decline 
 all unequal and ill-assorted unions.
 
 THE DEFEAT OF TIME; 
 
 OR, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES. 
 
 [ITANIA and her moonlight elves were 
 assembled under the canopy of a huge 
 oak, that served to shelter them from 
 the moon's radiance, which, being now 
 at her full moon, shot forth intolerable rays, — in- 
 tolerable, I mean, to the subtile texture of their 
 little shadowy bodies, — but dispensing an agreeable 
 coolness to us grosser mortals. An air of discom- 
 fort sate upon the queen and upon her courtiers. 
 Their tiny friskings and gambols were forgot ; and 
 even Robin Goodfellow, for the first time in his 
 little airy life, looked grave. For the queen had 
 had melancholy forebodings of late, founded upon 
 an ancient prophecy laid up in the records of Fairy- 
 land, that the date of fairy existence should be 
 then extinct when men should cease to believe in 
 them. And she knew how that the race of the 
 Nymphs, which were her predecessors, and had 
 been the guardians of the sacred floods, and of the 
 silver fountains, and of the consecrated hills and 
 woods, had utterly disappeared from the chilling 
 touch of man's increduhty ; and she sighed bitterly 
 at the approaching fate of herself and of her sub- 
 jects, which was dependent upon so fickle a lease
 
 390 ELIANA. 
 
 as the capricious and ever-mutable faith of man. 
 When, as if to realize her fears, a melancholy shape 
 came gliding in, and that was — Time, who with 
 his intolerable scythe mows down kings and king- 
 doms ; at whose dread approach the fays huddled 
 together as a flock of timorous sheep; and the 
 most courageous among them crept into acom- 
 cups, not enduring the sight of that ancientest of 
 monarchs. Titania's first impulse was to wish the 
 presence of her false lord. King Oberon, — who was 
 far away, in the pursuit of a strange beauty, a fay 
 of Indian Land, — that with his good lance and 
 sword, like a faithful knight and husband, he 
 might defend her against Time. But she soon 
 checked that thought as vain ; for what could the 
 prowess of the mighty Oberon himself, albeit the 
 stoutest champion in Fairyland, have availed 
 against so huge a giant, whose bald top touched 
 the skies ? So, in the mildest tone, she besought 
 the spectre, that in his mercy he would overlook 
 and pass by her small subjects, as too diminutive 
 and powetless to add any worthy trophy to his 
 renown. And she besought him to employ his 
 resistless strength against the ambitious children of 
 men, and to lay waste their aspiring works ; to 
 tumble down their towers and turrets, and the 
 Babels of their pride, — fit objects of his devouring 
 scythe, — but to spare her and her harmless race, 
 who had no existence beyond a dream ; frail objects 
 of a creed that lived but in the faith of the believer. 
 And with her little arms, as well as she could, she 
 grasped the stern knees of Time ; and, waxing 
 speechless with fear, she beckoned to her chief 
 attendants and maids of honour to come forth from 
 their hiding-places, and to plead the plea of the 
 fairies. And one of those small, delicate creatures
 
 THE DEFEAT OF TIME. 391 
 
 came forth at her bidding, clad all in white like a 
 chorister, and in a low, melodious tone, not louder 
 than the hum of a pretty bee,— when it seems to 
 be demurring whether it shall settle upon this 
 sweet flower or that before it settles, — set forth her 
 humble petition. " We fairies, " she said, "are 
 the most inoffensive race that live, and least de- 
 serving to perish. It is we that have the care of 
 all sweet melodies, that no discords may offend the 
 sun, who is the great soul of music. We rouse the 
 lark at morn ; and the pretty Echoes, which respond 
 to all the twittering choir, are of our making. 
 Wherefore, great King of Years, as ever you have 
 loved the music which is raining from a morning 
 cloud sent from the messenger of day, the lark, 
 as he mounts to heaven's gate, beyond the ken 
 of mortals ; or if ever you have listened with a 
 charmed ear to the night-bird, that — 
 
 In the flowery spring, 
 Amidst the leaves set, makes the thickets ring 
 Of her sour sorrows, sweetened with her song— 
 
 spare our tender tribes, and we will muffle up the 
 sheep-bell for thee, that thy pleasure take no in- 
 terruption whenever thou shalt listen unto Phi- 
 lomel." 
 
 And Time answered, that "he had heard that 
 song too long ; and he was even wearied with that 
 ancient strain that recorded the wrong of Tereus. 
 But, if she would know in what music Time de- 
 lighted, it was, when sleep and darkness lay upon 
 crowded cities, to hark to the midnight chime 
 which is tolling from a hundred clocks, like the 
 last knell over the soul of a dead world ; or to the 
 crush of the fall of some age-worn edifice, which
 
 39« ELIANA. 
 
 is as^lhe voice of himself when he disparteth king-   
 doms." 
 
 A second female fay took up the plea, and said, 
 '* We be the handmaids of the Spring, and tend 
 upon the birth of all sweet buds : and the pastoral 
 cowslips are our friends ; and the pansies and the 
 violets, like nuns ; and the quaking harebell is in 
 our wardship : and the hyacinth, once a fair youth, 
 and dear to Phoebus." 
 
 Then Time made answer, in his wrath striking 
 the harmless ground with his hurtful scythe, that 
 "they must not think that he was one that cared 
 for flowers, except to see them wither, and to take 
 her beauty from the rose. " 
 
 And a third fairy took up the plea, and said, 
 ' ' We are kindly things : and it is we that sit at 
 evening, and shake rich odours from sweet bowers 
 upon discoursing lovers, that seem to each other to 
 be their own sighs : and we keep off the bat and 
 the owl from their privacy, and the ill-boding 
 whistler ; and we flit in sweet dreams across the 
 brains of infancy, and conjure up a smile upon its 
 soft lips to beguile the careful mother, while its 
 little soul is fled for a brief minute or two to sport 
 with our youngest fairies." 
 
 Then Saturn (which is Time) made answer, that 
 " they should not think that he delighted in tender 
 babes, that had devoured his own, till foolish Rhea 
 cheated him with a stone, which he swallowed, 
 thinking it to be the infant Jupiter." And thereat, 
 in token, he disclosed to view his enormous tooth, 
 in which appeared monstrous dents left by that 
 unnatural meal ; and his great throat, that seemed 
 capable of devouring up the earth and all its in- 
 habitants at one meal. ' ' And for lovers, " he con- 
 tinued, "my delight is, with a hurrying band to
 
 THE DEFEAT OF TIME. 393 
 
 snatch them away from their love-meetings by 
 stealth at nights ; and, in absence, to stand like a 
 motionless statue, or their leaden planet of mishap 
 (whence I had my name), till I make their minutes 
 seem ages." 
 
 Next stood up a male fairy, clad all in green, 
 like a forester or one of Robin Hood's mates, and, 
 doffing his tiny cap, said, "We are small foresters, 
 that live in woods, training the young boughs in 
 graceful intricacies, with blue snatches of the sky 
 between : we frame all shady roofs and arches 
 rude ; and sometimes, when we are plying our ten- 
 der hatchets, men say that the tapping woodpecker 
 is nigh. And it is we that scoop the hollow cell 
 of the squirrel, and carve quaint letters upon the 
 rinds of trees, which in sylvan solitudes sweetly re- 
 call to the mind of the heat-oppressed swain, ere 
 he lies down to slumber, the name of his fair one, 
 dainty Aminta, gentle Rosalind, or chastest Laura, 
 as it may happen." 
 
 Saturn, nothing moved with this courteous ad- 
 dress, bade him be gone, or, "if he would be a 
 woodman, to go forth and fell oak for the fairies' 
 coffins which would forthwith be wanting. For 
 himself, he took no delight in haunting the woods, 
 till their golden plumage (the yellow leaves) were 
 beginning to fall, and leave the brown-black limbs 
 bare, like Nature in her skeleton dress." 
 
 Then stood up one of those gentle fairies that are 
 good to man, and blushed red as any rose while 
 he told a modest story of one of his own good 
 deeds. "It chanced upon a time," he said, "that 
 while we were looking cowslips in the meads, while 
 yet the dew was hanging on the buds like beuds, 
 we found a babe left in its swathing-clothes, — a 
 little sorrowful, deserted thing, begot of love, but
 
 394 E LIANA. 
 
 begetting no love in others ; guiltless of shame, 
 but doomed to shame for its parents' offence in 
 bringing it by indirect courses into the world. It 
 was pity to see the abandoned little orphan left to 
 the world's care by an unnatural mother. How 
 the cold dew kept wetting its childish coats ! and 
 its little hair, how it was bedabbled, that was like 
 gossamer ! Its pouting mouth, unknowing how 
 to speak, lay half opened like a rose-lipped shell ; 
 and its cheek was softer than any peach, upon 
 which the tears, for very roundness, could not long 
 dwell, but fell off, in clearness like pearls, — some 
 on the grass, and some on his little hand ; and 
 some haply wandered to the little dimpled well 
 under his mouth, which Love himself seemed to 
 have planned out, but less for tears than for smil- 
 ings. Pity it was, too, to see how the burning sun 
 had scorched its helpless limbs ; for it lay without 
 shade or shelter, or mother's breast, for foul weather 
 or fair. So, having compassion on its sad plight, 
 my fellows and I turned ourselves into grass- 
 hoppers, and swarmed about the babe, making 
 such shrill cries as that pretty little chirping crea- 
 ture makes in its mirth, till with our noise we at- 
 tracted the attention of a passing rustic, a tender- 
 hearted hind, who, wondering at our small but 
 loud concert, strayed aside curiously, and found, 
 the babe, where it lay in the remote grass, and, 
 taking it up, lapped it in his russet coat, and bore 
 it to his cottage, where his wife kindly nurtured it 
 till it grew up a goodly personage. How this babe 
 prospered afterwards let proud London tell. This 
 was that famous Sir Thomas Gresham, who was 
 the chiefest of her merchants, the richest, the wisest. 
 Witness his many goodly vessels on the Thames, 
 freighted with costly merchandise, jewels from Ind,
 
 THE DEFEAT OF TIME. 395 
 
 and pearls for courtly dames, and silks of Samar- 
 cand. And witness, more than all, that stately 
 Bourse (or Exchange) which he caused to be built, 
 a mart for merchants fi'om east and west, whose 
 graceful summit still bears, in token of the fairies' 
 favours, his chosen crest, the grasshopper. And, 
 like the grasshopper, may it please you, great king, 
 fo suffer us also to live, partakers of the green 
 earth ! " 
 
 The fairy had scarce ended his plea, when a 
 shrill cry, not unlike the grasshopper's was heard. 
 Poor Puck — or Robin Goodfellow, as he is some- 
 times called — had recovered a little from his first 
 fright, and, in one of his mad freaks, had perched 
 upon the beard of old Time, which was flowing, 
 ample, and majestic ; and was amusing himself 
 with plucking at a hair, which was indeed so massy, 
 that it seemed to him that he was removing some 
 huge beam of timber, rather than a hair ; which 
 Time by some ill chance perceiving, snatched up 
 the impish mischief with his great hand, and asked 
 what it was. 
 
 " Alas ! " quoth Puck, "a little random elf am 
 I, born in one of Nature's sports ; a very weed, 
 created for the simple, sweet enjoyment of myself, 
 but for no other purpose, worth, or need, that ever 
 I could learn. 'Tis I that bob the angler's idle 
 cork, till the patient man is ready to breathe a 
 curse. I steal the morsel from the gossip's fork, or 
 stop the sneezing chanter in mid psalm ; and when 
 an infant lias been bom with hard or homely fea- 
 tures, mothers say I changed the child at nurse : 
 but to fulfil any graver purposes I have not wit 
 enough, and hardly the will. I am a pinch of 
 lively dust to frisk upon the wind : a tear would 
 make a puddle of me j and so I tickle myself with
 
 396 ELI ANA. 
 
 the lightest straw, and shun all griefs that might 
 make me stagnant. This is my small philosophy." 
 Then Time, dropping him on the ground, as a 
 thing too inconsiderable for his vengeance, grasped 
 fast his mighty scythe : and now, not Puck alone, 
 but the whole state of fairies, had gone to inevitable 
 wreck and destruction, had not a timely apparition 
 interposed, at whose boldness Time was astounded ; 
 for he came not with the habit or the forces of a 
 deity, who alone might cope with Time, but as a 
 simple mortal, clad as you might see a forester that 
 hunts after wild conies by the cold moonshine ; or 
 a stalker of stray deer, stealthy and bold. But by 
 the golden lustre in his eye, and the passionate 
 wanness in his cheek, and by the fair and ample 
 space of his forehead, which seemed a palace 
 framed for the habitation of all glorious thoughts, 
 he knew that this was his great rival, who had 
 power given him to rescue whatsoever victims 
 Time should clutch, and to cause them to live for 
 ever in his immortal verse. And, muttering the 
 name of Shakespeare, Time spread his roc-like 
 wings, and fled the controlling presence ; and the 
 liberated court of the fairies, with Titania at their 
 liead, flocked around the gentle ghost, giving him 
 thanks, nodding to him, and doing him courtesies, 
 who had crowned them henceforth with a permanent 
 existence, to live in the minds of men, while verse 
 shall have power to charm, or midsummer moons 
 shall brighten. 
 
 What particular endearments passed between the 
 fairies and their poet, passes my pencil to delineate ; 
 but, if you are curious to be informed, I must refer 
 you, gentle reader, to the " Plea of the Midsummer
 
 THE DEFEAT OF TIME. 397 
 
 Fairies," a most agreeable poem lately put forth 
 by my friend Thomas Hood ; of the first half of 
 which the above is nothing but a meagre and harsh 
 prose abstract. Farewell ! 
 
 77/1? words of Mercury ate harsh after the songs 
 of Apollo.
 
 A DEATH-BED. 
 
 IN A LETTER TO R. H., ESQ., OF B . 
 
 CALLED upon you this morning, and 
 found that you were gone to visit a 
 dying friend. I had been upon a like 
 
 errand. Poor N. R. has lain dying now 
 
 for almost a week ; such is the penalty we pay for 
 having enjoyed through life a strong constitution. 
 Whether he knew me or not, I know not, or 
 whether he saw me through his poor glazed eyes ; 
 but the group I saw about him I shall not forget. 
 Upon the bed, or about it, were assembled his 
 wife, their two daughters, and poor deaf Robert, 
 looking doubly stupefied. There they were, and 
 seemed to have been sitting all the v/eek. I could 
 only reach out a hand to Mrs. R. Speaking was 
 impossible in that mute chamber. By this time it 
 must be all over with him. In him I have a loss 
 the world cannot make up. He was my friend, 
 and my father's friend, for all the life that I can 
 remember. I seem to have made foolish friend- 
 ships since. Those are the friendships, which out- 
 last a second generation. Old as I am getting, in 
 his eyes I was still the child he knew me. To the 
 last he called me Jemmy. I have none to call me 
 Jemmy now. He was the last link that bound me
 
 A DEATH -bED. 399 
 
 to B . You are but of yesterday. In him I 
 
 seem to have lost the old plainness of manners and 
 singleness of heart. Lettered he was not ; his 
 reading scarcely exceeded the obituary of the old 
 "Gentleman's Magazine," to which he has never 
 failed of having recourse for these last fifty years. 
 Yet there was the pride of literature about him 
 from that slender perusal ; and, moreover, from 
 his office of archive-keeper to your ancient city, in 
 which he must needs pick up some equivocal Latin ; 
 which, among his less literaiy friends, assumed the 
 air of a very pleasant pedantry. Can I forget the 
 erudite look with which, having tried to puzzle out 
 the text of a black-lettered Chaucer in your Cor- 
 poration Library, to which he was a sort of libra- 
 rian, he gave it up with this consolatory reflection — 
 "Jemmy, "said he, "I do not know what you find 
 in these very old books, but I observe there is a 
 deal of very indifferent spelling in them." His 
 jokes (for he had some) are ended ; but they were 
 old perennials, staple, and always as good as new. 
 He had one song, that spake of the "flat bottoms 
 of our foes coming over in darkness," and alluded 
 to a threatened invasion, many years since blown 
 over ; this he reserved to be sung on Christmas 
 night, which we always passed with him, and he 
 sang it with the freshness of an impending event. 
 How his eyes would sparkle when he came to the 
 passage : — 
 
 We'll still make 'em run, and we'll still make 'em sweat, 
 In spite of the devil and Brussels' Gazette ! 
 
 What is the " Brussels' Gazette " now ? I ciy, while 
 I endite these trifles. His poor girls, who are, I 
 believe, compact of solid goodness, will have to 
 receive their afflicted mother at an unsuccessful
 
 400 ELI ANA. 
 
 home in a petty village in shire, where for 
 
 years they have been struggling to raise a girls' 
 school with no effect. Poor deaf Robert (and the 
 less hopeful for being so) is thrown upon a deaf 
 world, without the comfort to his father on his 
 death-bed of knowing him provided for. They 
 are left almost provisionless. Some life assurance 
 
 there is ; but, I fear, not exceeding . Their 
 
 hopes must be from your corporation, which their 
 father has served for fifty years. Who or what are 
 your leading members now, I know not. Is there 
 any, to whom, without impertinence, you can re- 
 present the true circumstances of the family ? You 
 cannot say good enough of poor R. and his poor 
 wife. Oblige me and the dead, if you can.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 [In these Essays Charles Lamb assumed the name of an 
 Italian, who was one of his colleagues in the South Sea 
 House.] 
 
 SOUTH SEA HOUSE. 
 
 IMr. John Lamb, the Essayist's brother, was a clerk in the 
 South Sea House. His passion for picture collecting is 
 recorded in the admirable sketch of him (as James Elia) in 
 " My Relations." 
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 
 
 "G. D.," Mr. George Dyer, author of a " History of the 
 
 University and Colleges of Cambridge." The passage in 
 brackets was suppressed at the earnest remonstrance of 
 Dyer^ who complained that it conveyed quite a false im- 
 pression of the treatment he had received from his various 
 employers. Mr. Procter vouches for the truth of the anec- 
 dote about Dyer's calling at " M 's, in Bedford Square ; " 
 
 another e.xample of his extreme absence of mind will be 
 found in a later Essay, " Amicus Redivivus." 
 
 To Elia's confession of his aversion to MSS., on page 172, 
 line 26, was appended the following note in the original 
 Essay : — 
 
 There is something to me repugnant at any time 
 in written hand. The text never seems determinate. 
 Print settles it. I had thought of the Lycidas as of 
 a full-grown beauty — as springing up with all its 
 
 II. D D
 
 402 APPENDIX. 
 
 parts absolute — till, in an evil hour, I was shown 
 the original written copy of it, together with the 
 other minor poems of its author, in the libraiy of 
 Trinity, liept like some treasure, to be proud of. 
 I wisli they had thrown them in the Cam, or sent 
 them after the latter cantos of Spenser, into the 
 Irish Channel. How it staggered me to see the 
 fine things in their ore ! interlined, corrected ! as if 
 their words were mortal, alterable, displaceable at 
 pleasure ! as if they might have been otherwise, 
 and just as good ! as if inspiration were made up 
 of parts, and those fluctuating, successive, indif- 
 ferent ! I will never go into the workshop of any 
 great artist again, nor desire a sight of his picture 
 till it is fairly off the easel ; no, not if Raphael 
 were to be alive again, and painting another 
 Galatea. 
 
 After "none thinks of offering violence or injustice to 
 him," page 173, line 16, there was reference to the following 
 note : — 
 
 Violence or injustice, certainly none, Mr. Elia. 
 But you will acknowledge that the charming un- 
 suspectingness of our friend has sometimes laid 
 him open to attacks, which, though savouring (we 
 hope) more of waggery than of malice — such is our 
 unfeigned respect for G. D. — might, we think, 
 much better have been omitted. Such was that 
 
 silly >oke of L , who, at the time the question 
 
 of the Scotch novels was first agitated, gravely 
 assured our friend — who as gravely went about re- 
 peating it in all companies — that Lord Castlereagh 
 had acknowledged himself to be the author of 
 Waverley ! — Note, not by Elia. 
 
 This is a fact. " L " was Elia himself
 
 APPENDIX. 403 
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL THIRTY-FIVE 
 YEARS AGO. 
 
 This Essay is a review of, or rather, perhaps, a pendant 
 to, C. Lamb's own " Recollections of Christ's Hospital," 
 and gives some of the less favourable characteristics of the 
 system adopted there. Tobin was a friend of Lamb's, of 
 whom little is known. In a letter to Wordsworth, full of 
 elation at the acceptance of his farce, entitled " Mr. H.," by 
 the managers of Drury Lane Theatre, Lamb says: — "On 
 the following Sunday, Mr. Tobin comes. The scent of a 
 manager's letter brought him. He would have gone farther 
 any day on such a business. I read the letter to him. He 
 deems it authentic and peremptory." In a subsequent letter 
 to Southey, dated August 15, 1815, he says: — "Tobin is 
 dead." Godwin's tragedy ''Antonio," we learn from a 
 letter of Lamb's, came out " in a feigned name, as one 
 Tobin's." 
 
 This Essay contains a very faithful representation of 
 Lamb's teachers and schoolfellows at Christ's Hospital. 
 Boyer and Field both received their appointments in 1776. 
 The Rev. L. P. Stevens, who was Grecian in 1788, left 
 
 Christ's Hospital in 1807. Dr. T e (the Rev. Arthur 
 
 William TroUope) retired in 1827, and died in the same 
 year. The Right Honourable Sir Edward Thornton was 
 Grecian in 1785, and third wrangler at Cambridge in 1789. 
 Through the interest of Mr. Pitt, he became Envoy Extra- 
 ordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Por- 
 tugal and the Brazils. George Richards was Grecian in 
 1785, before Middleton. Mr. Charles Valentine Le Grice 
 supplied a good deal of information about Elia's school- 
 days. His younger brother, Samuel Le Grice, was "like a 
 brother" to Lamb at the time of his mother's death. He 
 died of the yellow fever, in Jamaica. Robert Allen was 
 Grecian in 1792. (See also " Newspapers Thirty-five Years 
 Ago.") Frederick William Franklin, Master of H.j.lford, 
 and Marmaduke Thompson, complete the list of those com- 
 panions of Lamb's school-days who can now be identified. 
 
 TWO RACES OF MEN 
 
 "Ralph Bigod." John Fenwick, editor of the Albion 
 newspaper, to which Lamb at one time contributed, was the 
 original of this character. (See "Newspapers Thirty-five 
 Years Ago," in the " Last Essays of Elia.")
 
 -c4 APPENDIX. 
 
 S. T. Coleridge, in early manhood, enlisted in a regiment 
 of dragoons under the assumed name of Comberback, or 
 Comberbatch. 
 
 The initial " K." was probably intended for Kenney, the 
 farce writer, whom Lamb visited at Versailles (Mr. Percy 
 Fitzgerald tells us) during a short trip to France. 
 
 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINION ON WHIST. 
 
 Mr. Procter says that Mrs. Battle is an imag'nary cha- 
 racter. She bears, however, some resemblance, as Mr. 
 Percy Fitzgerald remarks, to Elia's Grandmother Field, in 
 
 "Dream Children." In " Blakesmoor, in H shire" (the 
 
 house in which this old relative was housekeeper for many 
 years), Elia speaks of " the room in which old Mrs. Battle 
 died." 
 
 " Bridget Elia," — his sister Blary. Under this name she 
 is always mentioned in the Essays. 
 
 A CHAPTER ON EARS. 
 
 "My good Catholic friend Nov ," was Mr. Novello, 
 
 the well-known composer. 
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 The "very dear friend" in New South Wales was Mr. 
 Barron Field, to whom the Essay called " Distant Cor- 
 respondents " was originally addressed. 
 
 " M." was no doubt Mr. Thomas Manning, who was a 
 mathematical tutor at Cambridge at the time Lamb made 
 his acquaintance. 
 
 Page 252, " Can I reproach her for it ?" Between this and 
 the concluding sentence the following words appeared in the 
 original Essay : — 
 
 ' ' These kind of complaints are not often drawn 
 from me. I am aware that I am a fortunate, I 
 mean a prosperous, man." 
 
 My feelings prevent me from transcribing any 
 further. 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 " B ," Braham, the celebrated tenor. Lamb else- 
 where describes him as a mixture of "the Jew, the gentle- 
 man, and the angel."
 
 APPENDIX. 405 
 
 The Quaker story Lamb had from Carlisle, the celebrated 
 surgeon, who was an eyewitness of the scene. 
 
 WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 
 
 "Dear little T. H.," one of Mr. Leigh Hunt's children, 
 of whom Lamb was extremely fond, and to whom he ad- 
 dressed some pretty lines. 
 
 MY RELATIONS. 
 
 James and Bridget Elia." His brother and sister, John 
 and Mary Lamb. 
 
 MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 
 " B. F." Mr. Barron Field. 
 
 MODERN GALLANTRY. 
 
 Sir T. Talfourd says, in his Memoir of Lamb, that "his 
 account of Mr. Paice's politeness could be attested to the 
 letter by living witnesses." (1834.) 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER 
 TEMPLE. 
 
 l\Ir. Proct«r says that all these "old Benchers" are fic- 
 titious characters, with the exception cf " Samuel Salt," the 
 barrister, in whose employ C. Lamb's father was. 
 
 " Lovel ; " this admirable sketch is a portrait of Elia's 
 father, Mr. John Lamb. 
 
 " R. N.," probably Mr. Robert Norris, a very old friend 
 of the Lambs, and an officer of the Inner Temple. 
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 Mr. C. V. Le Grice's witticism has often been attributed 
 to other humorists. 
 
 DREAM CHILDREN. 
 
 Some further account of the "great house in Norfolk" 
 will be found in " Blakesmoor," the first of the " Last Essays 
 of Elia." The house is there represented as situated in 
 Hertfordshire, as it really was.
 
 4o6 APPENDIX. 
 
 In a letter to Coleridge, Lamb says of his Grandmother 
 Field, that she " lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or 
 sixty last years of her life ; that she was a woman of exem- 
 plary piety and goodness, and for many years before her 
 dealh was terribly afflicted with a cancer in her breast, 
 which she bore with true Christian patience.' 
 
 "John L.," Charles's brother, a clerk in the South Sea 
 House. He was lamed by the fall of a stone, which was 
 blown down in a high wind. 
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 This Essay originally formed part of a letter to Mr. 
 Earron Field, who had received a judicial appointment in 
 New South Wales. 
 
 " J. W.," Mr. James White, who died in 1821. (See note 
 to the following Essay.) 
 
 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 
 
 James White was Lamb's schoolfellow at Christ's, and 
 his constant companion in his early years. He was the 
 author of" Letters of Sir John Falstaff, Knt.,"in the writing 
 cf which Southey says Lamb had a share. 
 
 COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 
 
 The following postscript was appended to this Essay in 
 the " London Magazine : " — 
 
 P. S. — My friend Hume (not M.P.) has a curious 
 manuscript in his possession, the original draft of 
 the celebrated "Beggar's Petition " (who cannot 
 say by heart the " Beggar's Petition ?"), as it was 
 written by some school usher (as I remember), 
 with corrections interlined from the pen of Oliver 
 Goldsmith. As a specimen of the Doctor's im- 
 provement, I recollect one most judicious altera- 
 tion — 
 
 A pamper'd menial drove me from the door. 
 
 It stood originally — 
 
 A livery servant drove me, &c.
 
 APPENDIX. 407 
 
 Here is an instance of poetical or artificial language 
 properly substituted for the phrase of common 
 conversation ; against Wordsworth, I think I must 
 get H. to send, it to the "London," as a corollary 
 to the foregoing. 
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 
 
 Lamb confessed that he borrowed the idea of this Essay 
 from his friend Manning, who had resided several years in 
 China. 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 Three articles in the "London Magazine," on "The Old 
 Actors," were considerably altered by Elia, both in matter 
 and arrangement, and were republished, in his collected 
 works, as the present Essays "On some of the Old Actors," 
 " On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," and " On 
 the Acting of Munden." 
 
 The following passage, which commenced the last of the 
 original Essays, was omitted m their altered form : — 
 
 I do not know a more mortifying thing than to 
 be conscious of a foregone delight, with a total ob- 
 livion of the person and manner which conveyed 
 it. In dreams, I often stretch and strain after the 
 countenance of Edwin, whom I once saw in 
 "Peeping Tom." I cannot catch a feature of him. 
 He is no more to me than Nokes or Pinkethman. 
 Parsons, and, still more, Dodd, were near being 
 lost to me till I was refreshed with their portrait? 
 (fine treat) the other day at Mr. Mathews's gallery 
 at Highgate ; which, with the exception of the 
 Hogarth pictures, a few years since exhibited in 
 Pall Mall, was the most delightful collection I ever 
 gained admission to. There hang the players, in 
 their single persons and in grouped scenes, from 
 the Restoration, — Bettertons, Booths, Garricks, — 
 justifying the prejudices which we entertain for 
 them ; the Bracegirdles, the Mountforts, and the
 
 4o8 APPENDIX. 
 
 Oldfields, fresh as Gibber has described them ; the 
 Woffington (a true Hogarth) upon a couch, dallying 
 and dangerous ; the screen scene in Brinsley's 
 famous comedy; with Smith and Mrs. Abingdon, 
 whom I have not seen ; and the rest, whom, having 
 seen, I see still there. There is Henderson, un- 
 rivalled in Comus, whom I saw at secondhand in 
 the elder Harley ; Harley, the rival of Holman, 
 in Horatio ; Holman, with the bright glittering 
 teeth, in Lothario, and the deep paviour's sighs in 
 Romeo, the jolliest person ("our son is fat") of 
 any Hamlet 1 have yet seen, with the most laud- 
 able attempts (for a personable man) at looking 
 melancholy ; and Poue, the abdicated monarch of 
 tragedy and comedy, in Harry the Eighth and 
 Lord Townley. There hang the two Aickins, 
 brethren in mediocrity ; Wroughton, who in Kitely 
 seemed to have forgotten that in prouder days he 
 had personated Alexander ; the specious form of 
 John Palmer, with the special effronteiy of Bobby ; 
 Bensley, with the trumpet-tongue ; and little Quick 
 (the retired Dioclesian of Islington), with his squeak 
 like a Bart'lemew fiddle. There are fixed, cold as 
 in life, the immovable features of Moody, who, 
 afraid of o'erstepping Nature, sometimes stopped 
 short of her ; and the restless fidgetiness of Lewis, 
 who, with no such fears, not seldom leaped o' the 
 other side. There hang Farren and Whitfield, and 
 Burton and Phillimore, names of small account in 
 those times, but which, remembered now, or casu- 
 ally recalled by the sight of an old play-bill, with 
 their associated recordations, can "drown an eye 
 unusedt o flow." There too hangs, not far removed 
 from them in death, the graceful plainness of the 
 first Mrs. Pope, with a voice unstrung by age, but 
 which in her better days must have competed with
 
 APPENDIX. 409 
 
 the silver tones of Barry himself, so enchanting in 
 decay do I remember it, — of all her lady parts, ex- 
 ceeding herself in the " Lady Quakeress " (there 
 earth touched heaven !) of O'Keefe, when she 
 played it to the " merry cousin " of Lewis; and 
 Mrs. Mallocks, the sensiblest of viragoes ; and 
 Miss Pope, a gentlewoman ever, to the verge of 
 ungentility, with Churchill's compliment still bur- 
 nishing upon her gay Honeycomb lips. There are 
 the two BannisterS; and Sedgwick, and Kelly, and 
 Dignum (Diggy), and the bygone features of Mrs. 
 Ward, matchless in Lady Loverule ; and the col- 
 lective majesty of the whole Kemble family ; and 
 (Shakespeare's woman) Dora Jordan ; and, by her, 
 iiLW Antics, who, in former and in latter days, have 
 chiefly beguiled us of our griefs ; whose portraits 
 we shall strive to recall, for the sympathy of those 
 who may not have had the benefit of viewing the 
 matchless Highgate collection. 
 
 MR. SUETT. 
 
 O for a "slip-shod muse," to celebrate in num- 
 bers, loose and shambling as himself, the merits 
 and the person of Mr. Richard Suett, Comedian ! 
 
 Then followed the characteristic sketches of Suett and 
 Munden, on pages 395 and 417. 
 
 To the suggestion (on page 3S9) that the stewardship of 
 the Lady Olivia's household was probably conferred on 
 Malvolio "for other respects than age or length of service," 
 a note was appended. 
 
 Mrs. Inchbald seems to have fallen into the 
 common mistake of the character in some sensible 
 observations, otherwise, on this comedy. " It 
 might be asked," she says, "whether this credulous 
 steward was much deceived in imputing a degraded
 
 4IO APPENDIX. 
 
 taste, in the sentiments of love, to his fair lady 
 Olivia, as she actually did fall in love with a do- 
 mestic, and one who, from his extreme youth, was 
 perhaps a greater reproach to her discretion than 
 had she cast a tender regard upon her old and 
 faithful servant. " But where does she gather the 
 fact of his age? Neither Maria nor Fabian ever 
 cast that reproach upon him. 
 
 The following passage, which originally formed part of 
 Elia's acute vindication of Malvolio, was omitted when the 
 Essay was republished, to its manifest improvement. It is 
 interesting as showing how real Shakespeare's creations 
 were to Lamb. After the word " misrule," at the end of the 
 first paragraph on page 390, the paper in the "London 
 Magazine " continued : — 
 
 There was "example for it," said Malvolio; 
 "the lady of the Strachy married the yeoman of 
 the wardrobe." Possibly, too, he might remember 
 — for it must have happened about his time — an 
 instance of a Duchess of Malfy (a countrywoman 
 6f Olivia's, and her equal at least) descending from 
 her state to court a steward : — 
 
 The misery of them that are born great ! 
 
 They are forced to woo because none dare woo them. 
 
 To be sure, the lady was not very tenderly handled 
 for it by her brothers in the sequel, but their ven- 
 geance appears to have been whetted rather by her 
 presumption in re-marrying at all (when they had 
 meditated the keeping of her fortune in their 
 family), than by her choice of an inferior, of An- 
 tonio's noble merits especially, for her husband ; 
 and, besides, Olivia's brother was just dead. Mal- 
 volio was a man of reading, and possibly reflected 
 upon these lines, or something like them, in his 
 own country poetry : —
 
 APPENDIX. 4" 
 
 Ceremony has made many fools. 
 It is as easy way unto a duchess 
 As to a hatted dame, if her love answer ; 
 But that by timorous honours, pale respects, 
 Idle degrees of fear, men make their ways 
 Hard of themselves. 
 
 *"Tis but fortune ; all is fortune. Maria once told 
 me she did affect me ; and I have heard herself 
 come thus near, that, should she fancy, it should 
 be one of my complexion." If here was no en- 
 couragement, the devil is in it. I wish we could 
 get at the private history of all this. Between the 
 countess herself, serious or dissembling — for one 
 hardly knows how to apprehend this fantastical 
 great lady — and the practices of that delicious little 
 piece of mischief, Maria — 
 
 The lime-twigs laid 
 
 By Machiavel, the waiting-maid — 
 
 the man might well be rapt in a fool's paradise. 
 Bensley threw over the part, &c. 
 
 ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST 
 CENTURY. 
 
 The long passage, extending from page 411 to page 416, 
 which we have restored to this Essay, was probably with- 
 drawn at the request of either Kemble or Godwin with both 
 of whom Lamb was intimate. The story of the " damning" 
 of his tragedy, although told in such a delightfully easy and 
 lively manner, perhaps made Godwin 'jvince, notwithstanding 
 his philosophy. As it is impossible the passage should have 
 been suppressed as unworthy of Elia, we have preferred to 
 insert it with the context rather than in the Appendix, 
 though it has little connection with the real subject of the 
 Essay. " M." was Mr. Marshall, an old friend of Godwin's. 
 "R s" was, probably, J. Hamilton Reynolds, a dra- 
 matist, and one of the contributors to the " London Maga- 
 zine."
 
 414 APPENDIX. 
 
 PREFACE TO THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 
 
 The so-called preface to the "Last Essays of Elia"was 
 evidently intended originally as a postscript to the first 
 series of Essays. Lamb at the time did not intend to furnish 
 any more contributions to the "London" (except, possibly, 
 a few pieces he may have had in hand), and was only pre- 
 vailed upon to continue them at the earnest solicitation of 
 the publishers. The present preface first appeared as 
 
 A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. 
 
 BY A FRIEND. 
 
 This gentleman, who some months past had 
 been in a declining way, hath at length paid his 
 final tribute to nature. He just lived long enough 
 (it was what he wished) to see his papers collected 
 into a volume. The pages of the " London Maga- 
 zine " will henceforth know him no more. 
 
 Exactly at twelve last night, his queer spirit de- 
 parted ; and the bells of Saint Bride's rang him 
 out with the old year. The mournful vibrations 
 were caught in the dining-room of his friends T. 
 and H.,' and the company, assembled there to 
 welcome in another 1st of January, checked their 
 carousals in mid-mirth, and v/ere silent. Janus* 
 
 wept. The gentle P- r,^ in a whisper, signified 
 
 his intention of devoting an elegy; and Allan C.,-* 
 nobly forgetful of his countrymen's wrongs, vowed 
 a memoir to his mattes full and friendly as a "Tale 
 of Lyddalcross." 
 
 ' Taylor and Hessey, the publishers of the " London 
 Magazine." 
 
 ^ Janus Weathercock, the nom de plume of Mr. Wain- 
 vvright, one of the contributors to the " London." 
 
 ^ Mr. Procter, better known as Barry Cornwall. 
 
 * Allan Cunningham, the Scotch poet.
 
 APPENDIX. 413 
 
 To say trulTi, it is time he were gone — 
 
 And so on to the end. After the last paragraph of the 
 " Preface," as it now stands, the " Character " continued : — 
 
 He left little property behind him. Of course, 
 the little that is left (chiefly in India bonds) de- 
 volves upon his cousin Bridget. A few critical 
 dissertations were found in his escritoire, which 
 have been handed over to the editor of this maga- 
 zine, in which it is to be hoped they will shortly 
 appear, retaining his accustomed signature. 
 
 He has himself not obscurely hinted that his em- 
 ployment lay in a public office. The gentlemen 
 in the export department of the East India House 
 will forgive me if I acknowledge the readiness with 
 which they assisted me in the retrieval of his few 
 manuscripts. They pointed out in a most obliging 
 manner the desk at which he had been planted for 
 forty years ; showed me ponderous tomes of figures, 
 in his own remarkably neat hand, which, more 
 properly than his few printed tracts, might be 
 called his " Works." They seemed affectionate to 
 his memory, and universally commended his ex- 
 pertness in book-keeping. It seems he was the 
 inventor of some ledger which should combine the 
 precision and certainty of the Italian double entry 
 (I think they called it) with the brevity and facility 
 of some newer German system ; but I am not able 
 to appreciate the worth of the discovery. I have 
 often heard him express a warm regard for his as- 
 sociates in office, and how fortunate he considered 
 himself in having his lot thrown in amongst them. 
 There is more sense, more discourse, more shrewd- 
 ness, and even talent, among these clerks (he would 
 say), than in twice the number of authors by pro- 
 fession that I have conversed with. He would
 
 414 APPENDIX. 
 
 brighten up sometimes upon the "old days of the 
 India House," when he consorted with Woodroffe 
 and Wissett, and Peter Corbet (a descendant and 
 worthy representative, bating the point of sanctity, 
 of old facetious Bishop Corbet) ; and Hoole, who 
 translated Tasso ; and Bartlemy Brown, whose 
 father (God assoil him therefor !) modernized 
 Walton ; and sly, warm-hearted old Jack Cole 
 (King Cole they called him in those days) and 
 Campe and Fombelle, and a world of choice spirits, 
 more than I can remember to name, who associated 
 in those days with Jack Burrell (the bon-vivant of 
 the South Sea House) ; and little Eyton (said to 
 be a fac-simile of Pope, — he was a miniature of a 
 gentleman), that was cashier under him ; and Dan 
 Voight of the Custom-house, that left the famous 
 library. 
 
 Well, Elia is gone, — for aught I know, to be 
 re-united with them, and these poor traces of his 
 pen are all we have to show for it. How little 
 survives of the wordiest authors ! Of all they said 
 or did in their lifetime, a few glittering words only ! 
 His Essays found some favourers, as they appeared 
 separately. They shuffled their way in the crowd 
 well enough singly : how they will read, now they 
 are brought together, is a question for the pub- 
 lishers, who have thus ventured to draw out into 
 one piece his "weaved-up follies." 
 
 Phil-Elia. 
 
 BLAKESMOOR, IN H SHIRE. 
 
 The real name of this place was Gilston. It belonged to 
 the Plumers, a Hertfordshire family, who preferred to live 
 in a more modern dwelling, and left the old house entirely 
 under the control of Lamb's grandmother, Mrs. Field ; and 
 Charles in his boyhood was a frequent visitor there. The 
 description of Blakesmoor is very exact ; even the " Beauty
 
 APPENDIX. 415 
 
 with the cool blue pastoral drapery" has been identified. 
 But although there is an air of sincerity in Elia's lamenta- 
 tions which it is difficult to believe only assumed, the house 
 was never pulled down at all : it was in excellent preser- 
 vation not many years ago, and probably remains so to this 
 day. Lamb visited Gilston in 1799, when it was undergoing 
 some repairs, which he may have mistaken for the process 
 of demolition ; or, as Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has suggested, 
 the rumour of the alterations that were being made may 
 have been exaggerated into a report of its destruction ; or, 
 possibly (a less inviting solution), Elia, by an "allowable 
 fiction," merely imagined the fall of " Blakesmoor " in order 
 to give himself an opportunity of expressing his regret at the 
 catastrophe. 
 
 POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 " Poor W -," in his Essay, bears a striking resemblancs 
 
 to " F ," in " Christ's Hospital " (page 193), who perished 
 
 on the plains " of Salamanca." 
 
 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND 
 
 READING. 
 
 In these " Detached Thoughts " we have ventured to re- 
 store two or three characteristic touches which were omitted 
 in the collected Essays. The passage on page 24, vol. ii., 
 is a genuine piece of autobiography. The piece the " ugly 
 rabble " had damned was Lamb's farce, " Mr. H." 
 
 " Poor Tobin." See Appendix to "Christ's Hospital." 
 "Martin B." Martin Burney, one of Lamb's most inti- 
 mate friends. 
 
 ELLISTONIANA. 
 
 "Sir A C " was Sir Anthony Carlisle, a cele- 
 brated surgeon of that day, from whom Elia had the droll 
 anecdote of the three Quakers, in the Essay on " Imperfect 
 Sympathies." Lamb said in one of his letters that Carlisle 
 was " the best story-teller he ever heard." 
 
 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 
 
 This Essay records Lamb's delight at escaping from his 
 thirty-three years' drudgery at the India House.
 
 4i6 APPENDIX. 
 
 After "what is it all for?" page 8i, vol. ii., line 5, the 
 original Essay continued : — 
 
 I recite those verses of Cowley which so mightily 
 
 agree with my constitution : — 
 
 Business ! the frivolous pretence 
 
 Of human lusts to shake off innocence : 
 
 Business ! the grave impertinence : 
 
 Business ! the thing which I, of all things, hate : 
 
 Business ! the contradiction of my fate. 
 
 Or I repeat my own lines, written in my clerk 
 state : — 
 
 Who first invented work — and bound the free 
 
 And holiday-rejoicing spirit down 
 
 To the ever-haunting importunity 
 
 Of business, in the green fields, and the town — 
 
 To plough, loom, anvil, spade — and. oh ! most sad, 
 
 To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood ! 
 
 Who but the being unblest, alien from good, 
 
 Sabbathless Satan ! he who his unglad 
 
 Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings 
 
 That round and round incalculably reel — 
 
 For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel — 
 
 In that red realm from whence are no returnings. 
 
 Where toiling and turmoiling, ever and aye 
 
 He and his thoughts keep pensive worky-day. 
 
 O this divine leisure ! Reader, if thou art fur- 
 nished with the old series of the "London," turn 
 incontinently to the third volume (page 367), and 
 you will see my present condition there touched in 
 a " Wish " by a daintier pen than I can pretend to. 
 I subscribe to that Sonnet toto corde. A man can 
 never have too much time to himself, &c. 
 
 BARBARA S . 
 
 The real heroine of this charming sketch was Miss Kellj', 
 a well-known actress of the time, with whom Lamb was on 
 friendly terms. She survived him some years.
 
 APPENDIX. 417 
 
 THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEV. 
 
 This Essay is an extract from Elia's fine letter to Robert 
 Southey. The rest of the letter, given below, sufficiently 
 explains the cause of the quarrel. Southey noticed the book 
 to assist the sale, not retard it, of which Lamb was after- 
 wards convinced. " Sounder" had been hastily substituted 
 for "Saner," the word originally used, and which Southey 
 felt, in the peculiar circumstances Lamb was placed in, it 
 was impossible to retain. 
 
 Sir, — You have done me an unfriendly ofifice, 
 without perhaps much considering what you were 
 doing. You have given an ill name to my poor 
 lucubrations. In a recent paper on Infidelity, you 
 usher in a conditional commendation of them with 
 an exception ; which, preceding the encomium, 
 and taking up nearly the same space with it, must 
 impress your readers with the notion, that the 
 objectionable parts in them are at least equal in 
 quantity to the pardonable. The censure is in 
 fact the criticism ; the praise — a concession merely. 
 Exceptions usually follow, to qualify praise or 
 blame. But there stands your reproof, in the very 
 front of your notice, in ugly characters, like some 
 bugbear, to frighten all good Christians from pur- 
 chasing. Through you I become an object of 
 suspicion to preceptors of youth, and fathers of 
 families. "^4 book zvhich wants only a sounder 
 religious feeling io be as delightful a sit is original." 
 With no further explanation, what must your 
 readers conjecture, but that my little volume is 
 sortie vehicle for heresy or infidelity ? The quota- 
 tion, which you honour me by subjoining, oddly 
 enough, is of a character which bespeaks a tem 
 }>erament in the wTiter the very reverse of that 
 your reproof goes to insinuate. Had you been 
 taxing me with superstition, the passage would 
 
 II. E E
 
 41 8 APPENDIX. 
 
 have been pertinent to the censure. Was it wortii 
 your while to go so far out of your way to affront 
 the feehngs of an old friend, and commit yourself 
 by an irrelevant quotation, for the pleasure of re- 
 flecting upon a poor child, an exile at Genoa? 
 
 I am at a loss what particular essay you had in 
 view (if my poor ramblings amount to that appel- 
 lation) when you were in such a hurry to thrust in 
 your objection, like bad news, foremost. — Perhaps 
 the paper on ' ' Saying Graces " was the obnoxious 
 feature. I have endeavoured there to rescue a 
 voluntary duty — good in place, but never, as I 
 remember, literallycommanded — from the charge of 
 an undecent formality. Rightly taken, sir, that paper 
 was not against graces, but want of grace ; not 
 against the ceremony, but the carelessness and slo- 
 venliness so often observed in the performance of it. 
 
 Or was it that on the " New Year " — in which 
 I have described the feelings of the merely natural 
 man, on a consideration of the amazing change, 
 which is supposable to take place on our removal 
 from this fleshly scene ? If men would honestly 
 confess their misgivings (which few men will) 
 there are times when the strongest Christian of us, 
 I believe, has reeled under questions of such stag- 
 gering obscurity. I do not accuse you of this 
 weakness. There are some who tremblingly reach 
 out shaking haiids to the guidance of Faith— others 
 who stoutly venture into the dark (their Human 
 Confidence their leader, whom they mistake for 
 Faith) ; and, investing themselves beforehand with 
 cherubic wings, as they fancy, find their new robes 
 as familiar, and fitting to their supposed growth 
 and stature in godUness, as the coat they left off 
 yesterday— some whose hope totters upon crutches 
 — others who stalk into futurity upon stilts.
 
 APPENDIX. 419 
 
 The contemplation of a Spiritual World, — which, 
 without the addition of a misgiving conscience, is 
 enough to shake some natures to their foundation 
 — is smoothly got over by others, who shall float 
 over the black billows in their little boat of No- 
 Distrust, as unconcernedly as over a summer sea. 
 The difference is chiefly constitutionnl. 
 
 One man shall love his friends and his friends' 
 faces; and, under the uncertainty of conversing 
 with them again, in the same manner and familial 
 circumstances of sight, speech, &c., as upon earth 
 — in a moment of no irreverent weakness— for a 
 dream-while — no more — would be almost content, 
 for a reward of a life of virtue (if he could ascribe 
 such acceptance to his lame performances), to take 
 up his portion with those he loved, and was made 
 to love, in this good world, which he knows — 
 which was created so lovely, beyond his deservings. 
 Another, embracing a more exalted vision— so that 
 he might receive indefinite additaments of power, 
 knowledge, beauty, glory, &c. — is ready to forego 
 the recognition of humbler individualities of earth, 
 and the old familiar faces. The shapings of our 
 heavens are the modifications of our constitution ; 
 and Mr. Feeble Mind, or Mr. Great Heart, is born 
 in every one of us. 
 
 Some (and such have been accounted the safest 
 divines) have shrunk from pronouncing upon the 
 final state of any man ; nor dare they pronounce 
 the case of Judas to be desperate. Others (with 
 stronger optics), as plainly as with the eye of flesh, 
 shaH behold a given king in bliss, and a given 
 chamberlain in torment ; even to the eternizing of 
 a cast of the eye in the latter, his own self-mocked 
 and good-humouredly-borne deformity on earth, 
 but supposed to aggravate the uncouth and hideous
 
 420 APPENDIX. 
 
 expression of his pangs in the other place. That 
 one man can presume so far, and that another 
 would with shuddering disclaim such confidences, 
 is, I believe, an effect of the nerves purely. 
 
 If, in either of these papers, or elsewhere, I have 
 been betrayed into some levities — not affronting 
 the sanctuary, but glancing perhaps at some of the 
 outskirts and extreme edges, the debateable land 
 between the holy and profane regions — (for the 
 admixture of man's inventions, twisting themselves 
 with the name of the religion itself, has artfully 
 made it difficult to touch even the alloy, without, 
 in some men's estimation, soiling the fine gold) — 
 if I have sported within the purlieus of serious 
 matter — it was, I dare say, a humour — be not 
 startled, sir, — which I have unwittingly derived 
 from yourself. You have all your life been making 
 a jest of the Devil. Not of the scriptural meaning 
 of that dark essence — personal or allegorical ; for 
 the nature is nowhere plainly delivered. I acquit 
 you of intentional irreverence. But indeed you 
 have made wonderfully free with, and been mighty 
 pleasant upon, the popular idea and attributes of 
 him. A Noble Lord, your brother Visionary, has 
 scarcely taken greater liberties with the material 
 keys, and merely Catholic notion of St. Peter. 
 You have flattered him in prose : you have chanted 
 him in goodly odes. You have been his Jester ; 
 volunteer Laureate, and self-elected Court Poet to 
 Beelzebub. 
 
 You have never ridiculed, I believe, what you 
 thought to be religion, but you are always girding 
 at what some pious, but perhaps mistaken folks, 
 think to be so. For this reason, I am sorry to 
 hear that you are engaged upon a life of George 
 Fox. I know you will fall into the error of inter-
 
 APPENDIX. 421 
 
 mixing some comic stuff with your seriousness. 
 The Quakers tremble at the subject in your hands. 
 Tlie Methodists are shy of you, upon account of 
 their founder. But, above all, our Popish brethren 
 are most in your debt. The errors of that Church 
 have proved a fniitful source to your scoffing vein. 
 Their Legend has been a Golden one to you. And 
 here your friends, sir, have noticed a notable in- 
 consistency. To the imposing rites, the solemn 
 penances, devout austerities of that communion ; 
 the affecting though erring piety of their hermits ; 
 the silence and solitude of the Chartreux — their 
 crossings, their holy waters — their Virgin, and 
 their saints — to these, they say, you have been 
 indebted for the best feelings, and the richest 
 imagery, of your epic poetry. You have drawn 
 copious drafts upon Loretto. We thought at one 
 time you were going post to Rome — but that in 
 the facetious commentaries, which it is your cus- 
 tom to append so plentifully, and (some say) inju- 
 diciously, to your loftiest performances in this 
 kind, you spurn the uplifted toe, which you but 
 just now seemed to court ; leave his holiness in the 
 lurch ; and show him a fair pair of Protestant heels 
 under your Romish vestment. When we think 
 you already at the wicket, suddenly a violent cross 
 wind blows you transverse — 
 
 Ten thousand leagues awry- 
 
 Then might we see 
 Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost 
 And flutter'd into rags ; then reliques, beads, 
 Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls, 
 The sport of winds. 
 
 You pick up pence by showing the hallowed bones, 
 shrine, and crucifix ; and you take money a second 
 rime by exposing the trick of them afterwards.
 
 422 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 You cany your verse to Castle Angelo for sale in 
 a morning ; and, swifter than a pedlar can trans- 
 mute his pack, you are at Canterbury with your 
 prose ware before night. 
 
 Sir, is it that I dislike you in this merry vein ? 
 The very reverse. No countenance becomes an 
 intelligent jest better than your own. It is your 
 grave aspect, when you look awful upon your poor 
 friends, which I would deprecate. 
 
 In more than one place, if I mistake not, you 
 have been pleased to compliment me at the expense 
 of my companions. I cannot accept your compli- 
 ment at such a price. The upbraiding a man's 
 poverty naturally makes him look about him to see 
 whether he be so poor indeed as he is presumed to 
 be. You have put me upon counting my riches. 
 Really, sir, I did not know I was so wealthy in the 
 
 article of friendships. There is , and , 
 
 whom you never heard of, but exemplary charac- 
 ters both, and excellent church-goers ; and Norris, 
 mine and my father's friend for nearly half a cen- 
 tury; and the enthusiast for Wordsworth's poetry, 
 
 , a little tainted with Socinianism it is to be 
 
 feared, but constant in his attachments, and a 
 
 capital critic ; and , a sturdy old Athanasian, 
 
 so that sets all to rights again ; and Wainwright, 
 the light, and warm-as-light hearted, Janus of the 
 "London;" and the translator of Dante, still a 
 curate, modest and amiable C. ; and Allan C, the 
 large-hearted Scot ; and P r, candid and affec- 
 tionate as his own poetry ; and A p, Coleridge's 
 
 friend ; and G n, his more than friend ; and 
 
 Coleridge himself, the same to me still, as in those 
 old evenings, when we used to sit and speculate 
 (do you remember them, sir ?) at our old Salutation 
 tavern, upon Pantisocracy and golden days to come
 
 APPENDIX. 421 
 
 on earth; and W th (why, sir, I might drop 
 
 my rent-roll here ; such goodly forms and manors 
 have I reckoned up already. In what possession 
 has not this last name alone estated me ? — but I 
 will go on) — and Monkhouse, the noble-minded 
 
 kinsman, by wedlock, of W th; and H. C. R., 
 
 unwearied in the offices of a friend ; and Clarkson, 
 almost above the narrowness of that relation, yet 
 condescending not seldom heretofore from the 
 labours of his world-embracing charity to bless my 
 humble roof; and the gall-less and single-minded 
 Dyer; and the high-minded associate of Cook, the 
 veteran Colonel, with his lusty heart still sending 
 cartels of defiance to old Time; and, not least, 
 W, A., the last and steadiest left to me of that 
 little knot of whist-players, that used to assemble 
 weekly, for so many years, at the Queen's Gate 
 (you remember them, sir ? ) and called Admiral 
 Burney friend. 
 
 I will come to the point at once. I believe you 
 will not make many exceptions to my associates 
 so far. But I have purposely omitted some inti- 
 macies, which I do not yet repent of having con- 
 tracted, with two gentlemen, diametrically opposed 
 to yourself in principles. You will understand me 
 to allude to the authors of "Rimini" and of the 
 ' ' Table Talk. " And first of the former. — 
 
 It is an error more particularly incident to per- 
 sons of the correctest principles and habits, to 
 seclude themselves from the rest of mankind, as 
 from another species, and form into knots and 
 clubs. The best people herding thus exclusively, 
 are in danger of contracting a narrowness. Heat 
 and cold, dryness and moisture, in the natural 
 world, do not fly asunder, to split the globe into 
 sectarian parts and separations ; but mingling, as
 
 ♦24 APPENDIX. 
 
 they best may, correct the malignity of any single 
 predominance. The analogy holds, I suppose, in 
 the moral world. If all the good people were to 
 ship themselves off to Terra Incognita, what, in 
 humanity's name, is to become of the refuse ? If 
 the persons, whom I have chiefly in view, have not 
 pushed matters to this extremity yet, they carry 
 them as far as they can go. Instead of mixing 
 with the infidel and the freethinker — in the room 
 of opening a negotiation, to try at least to find out 
 at which gate the error entered — they huddle 
 close together, in a weak fear of infection, like 
 that pusillanimous underling in Spenser — 
 
 "This is the wandering wood, this Error's den ; 
 A monster vile, whom God and man does hate : 
 Therefore, I reed, beware." Fly, fly, quoth then 
 The fearful Dwarf 
 
 And, if they be writers in orthodox journals, ad- 
 dressing themselves only to the irritable passions 
 of the unbeliever— they proceed in a safe system of 
 strengthening the strong hands, and confirming 
 the valiant knees ; of converting the already con- 
 verted, and proselyting their own party. I am the 
 more convinced of this from a passage in the very 
 treatise which occasioned this letter. It is where, 
 having recommended to the doubter the writings 
 of Michaelis and Lardner, you ride triumphant 
 over the necks of all infidels, sceptics, and dis- 
 senters, from this time to the world's end, upon 
 the wheels of two unanswerable deductions. I do 
 not hold it meet to set down, in a miscellaneous 
 compilation like this, such religious words as you 
 have thought fit to introduce into the pages of a 
 petulant literary journal. I therefore beg leave to 
 substitute wMw^ra/f, and refer to the "Quarterly
 
 APPENDIX. 42s 
 
 Review " (for January) for filling of them up. 
 " Here," say you, " as in the history of "], if these 
 books are authentic, the events which they relate 
 must be true ; if they were written by 8, 9 is 10 
 and II." Your first deduction, if it means honestly, 
 rests upon two identical propositions ; though I 
 suspect an unfairness in one of the terms, which 
 this would not be quite the proper place for ex- 
 plicating. At all events, you have no cause to 
 triumph ; you have not been proving the premises, 
 but refer for satisfaction therein to very long 
 and laborious works, which may well employ the 
 sceptic a twelvemonth or two to digest, before he 
 can possibly be ripe for your conclusion. When 
 he has satisfied himself about the premises, he will 
 concede to you the inference, I dare say, most 
 readily.— But your latter deduction, viz., that 
 because 8 has written a book concerning 9, there- 
 fore 10 and 1 1 was certainly his meaning, is one 
 of the most extraordinary conclusions /^r saltum, 
 that I have had the good fortune to meet with. 
 As far as 10 is verbally asserted in the writings, all 
 sects must agree with you ; but you cannot be 
 ignorant of the many various ways in which the 
 doctrine of the ******* has been understood, 
 from a low figurative expression (with the Unita- 
 rians) up to the most mysterious actuality; in 
 which highest sense alone you and your church 
 take it. And for il, that there is no other possible 
 conclusion — to hazard this in the face of so many 
 thousands of Arians and Socinians, &c. , who have 
 drawn so opposite a one, is such a piece of theolo- 
 gical hardihood, as, I think, warrants me in con- 
 cluding that, when you sit down to pen theology, 
 you do not at all consider your opponents, but 
 have in your eye, merely and exclusively, readers
 
 426 APPENDIX. 
 
 of the same way of thinking with yourself, and 
 therefore have no occasion to trouble yourself with 
 the quality of the logic to which you treat them. 
 
 Neither can I think, if you had had the welfare 
 of the poor child — over whose hopeless condition 
 you whine so lamentably and (I must think) un- 
 seasonably — seriously at heart, that you could 
 have taken the step of sticking him up by name — 
 T. H, is as good as naming him — to perpetuate 
 an outrage upon the parental feelings, as long as 
 the ' ' Quarterly Review " shall last. Was it neces- 
 sary to specify an individual case, and give to 
 Christian compassion the appearance of a personal 
 attack ? Is this the way to conciliate unbelievers, 
 or not rather to widen the breach irreparably ? 
 
 I own I could never think so considerably of 
 myself as to decline the society of an agreeable or 
 worthy man upon difference of opinion only. The 
 impediments and the facilitations to a sound belief 
 are various and inscrutable as the heart of man. 
 Some believe upon weak principles ; others cannot 
 feel the efficacy of the strongest. One of the most 
 candid, most upright, and single-meaning men, I 
 ever knew, was the late Thomas Holcroft. I be- 
 lieve he never said one thing and meant another, 
 in his life ; and, as near as I can guess, he never 
 acted otherwise than with the most scrupulous at- 
 tention to conscience. Ought we to wish the cha- 
 racter false, for the sake of a hollow compli- 
 ment to Christianity? 
 
 Accident introduced me to the acquaintance of 
 Mr. L. H. — and the experience of his many friendly 
 qualities confirmed a friendship between us. You> 
 who have been misrepresented yourself, I should 
 hope, have not lent an idle ear to the calumnies 
 which have been spread abroad respecting this
 
 APPENDIX. 497 
 
 gentleman. I was admitted to his household for 
 some years, and do most solemnly aver that I be- 
 lieve him to be in his domestic relations as correct 
 as any man. He chose an ill-judged subject for a 
 poem, the peccant humours of which have been 
 visited on him tenfold by the artful use, which his 
 adversaries have made, of an equivocal term. The 
 subject itself was started by Dante, but better be- 
 cause brieflier treated of But the crime of the 
 lovers, in the Italian and the English poet, with 
 its aggravated enormity of circumstance, is not of 
 a kind (as the critics of the latter well knew) with 
 those conjunctions, for which Nature herself has 
 provided no excuse, because no temptation. It 
 has nothing in common with the black horrors, 
 sung by Ford and Massinger. The familiarizing 
 of it in tale and fable may be for that reason inci- 
 dentally more contagious. In spite of Rimini, I 
 must look upon its author as a man of taste and 
 a poet. He is better than so ; he is one of the 
 most cordial-minded men I ever knew, and match- 
 less as a fireside companion. I mean not to affront 
 or wound your feelings when I say that in his more 
 genial moods he has often reminded me of you. 
 There is the same air of mild dogmatism — the 
 same condescending to a boyish sportiveness — in 
 both your conversations. Ilis handwriting is so 
 much the same with your own, that I have opened 
 more than one letter of his, hoping, nay, not doubt-- 
 ing, but it was from you, and have been dis- 
 appointed (he will bear with my saying so) at 
 the discovery of my error. L. H. is unfortunate 
 in holding some loose and not very definite specu- 
 lations (for at times I think he hardly knows whither 
 his premises would carry him) on marriage — the 
 tenets, I conceive, of the " Political Justice " car-
 
 42S APPENDIX. 
 
 ried a little farther. For anything I could dis- 
 cover in his practice, they have reference, like 
 those, to some future possible condition of society, 
 and not to the present times. But neither for 
 these obliquities of thinking (upon which my own 
 conclusions are as distant as the poles asunder) — 
 nor for his political asperities and petulancies, 
 which are wearing out with the heats and vanities 
 of youth — did I select him for a friend ; but for 
 qualities which fitted him for that relation. I do 
 not know whether I flatter myself with being the 
 occasion, but certain it is, that, touched with some 
 misgivings for sundry harsh things which he had 
 written aforetime against our friend C, before he 
 left this country he sought a reconciliation with 
 that gentleman (himself being his own introducer), 
 and found it. 
 
 L. H. is now in Italy; on his departure to 
 which land, with much regret I took my leave of 
 him and of his little family — seven of them, sir, 
 with their mother — and as kind a set of little 
 people (T. H. and all), as affectionate children as 
 ever blessed a parent. Had you seen them, sir, 
 I think you could not have looked upon them as so 
 many little Jonases — but rather as pledges of the 
 vessel's safety, that was to bear such a freight of 
 love. 
 
 I wish you would read Mr. H.'s lines to that 
 same T. H., "six years old, during a sick- 
 ness : ' ' — 
 
 Sleep breaks at last from out thee, 
 
 My little patient boy 
 
 (they are to be found in the 47th page of "Foli- 
 age " ) — and ask yourself how far they are out of 
 the spirit of Christianity. I have a letter from 
 Italy, received but the other day, into which L. H.
 
 APPENDIX. 429 
 
 has put as much heart, and as many friendly yearn- 
 ings after old associates, and native country, as, I 
 think, paper can well hold. It would do you no 
 hurt to give that the perusal also. 
 
 From the other gentleman I neither expect nor 
 desire (as he is well assured) any such concessions 
 as L. H. made to C. What hath soured him, 
 and made him to suspect his friends of infidelity 
 towards him, when there was no such matter, I 
 know not. I stood well with him for fifteen years 
 (the proudest of my life), and have ever spoken 
 my full mind of him to some, to whom his pane- 
 gyric must naturally be least tasteful. I never in 
 thought swerved from him, I never betrayed him, 
 I never slackened in my admiration of him ; I was 
 the same to him (neither better nor worse), though 
 he could not see it, as in the days when he thought 
 fit to trust me. At this instant, he may be pre- 
 paring for me s^me compliment, above my de- 
 serts, as he has sprinkled many such among his 
 admirable books, for which I rest his debtor ; or, 
 for anything I know, or can guess to the con- 
 trary, he may be about to read a lecture on my 
 weaknesses. He is welcome to them (as he was to 
 my humble hearth), if they can divert a spleen, or 
 ventilate a fit of sullenness. I wish he would not 
 quarrel with the world at the rate he does ; but 
 the reconciliation must be efiected by himself, and 
 I despair of living to see that day. But, protesting 
 against much that he has written, and some things 
 which he chooses to do ; judging him by his con- 
 versation which I enjoyed so long, and relished so 
 deeply ; or by his books, in those places where no 
 clouding passion intervenes — I should belie my 
 own conscience, if I said less, than that I think 
 W. H. to be, in his natural and healthy state, one
 
 430 APPENDIX. 
 
 of the wisest and finest spirits breathing. So 
 far from being ashamed of that intimacy, which 
 was betwixt us, it is my boast that I was able for 
 so many years to have preserved it entire ; and I 
 think I shall go to my grave without finding, or 
 expecting to find, such another companion. But 
 I forget my manners — you will pardon me, sir — I 
 return to the correspondence. 
 
 Sir, you were pleased (you know where) to invite 
 me to a compliance with the wholesome forms and 
 doctrines of the Church of England. I take your 
 advice with as much kindness as it was meant. 
 But I must think the invitatio.i rather more kind 
 than seasonable. I am a Dissenter. The last sect, 
 with which you can remember me to have 
 made common profession, were the Unitarians. 
 You would think it not very pertinent, if (fearing 
 that all was not well with you), I were gravely to 
 invite you (for a remedy) to attend with me a course 
 of Mr. Belsham's Lectures at Hackney. Perhaps I 
 have scruples to some of your forms and doctrines. 
 But if I come, am I secure of civil treatment ? — 
 The last time I was in any of your places of wor- 
 ship was on Easter Sunday last. I had the satis- 
 faction of listening to a very sensible sermon of an 
 argumentative turn, delivered with great propriety, 
 by one of your bishops. The place was West- 
 minster Abbey. As such religion, as I have, has 
 always acted on me more by way of sentiment 
 than argumentative process, I was not unwilling, 
 after sermon ended, by no unbecoming transition, 
 to pass over to some serious feelings, impossible to 
 be disconnected from the sight of those old tombs, 
 &c. But, by whose order I know not, I was de- 
 barred that privilege even for so short a space as 
 a few minutes ; and turned, like a dog or some
 
 APPENDIX. 43 1 
 
 proiane person, out into the common street ; with 
 feelings, \\hich I could not help, but not very con- 
 genial to the day or the discourse. I do not know- 
 that I shall ever venture myself again into one of 
 your churches. 
 
 You had your education at Westminster, &c. 
 
 The friends Lamb indicated in this letter by their initials 
 were : — The Rev. H. F. Cary, the translator of Dante ; 
 Procter ; AUsop ; Gillman, at whose house Coleridge died ; 
 Wordsworth, the poet ; H. C. Robinson, lately dead ; 
 William Ayrton ; Leigh Hunt ; and William Hazlitt. 
 
 It seems a pity that, in reprinting part of the letter, Lamb 
 did not add a conclusion more in harmony with the rest 
 of the Essay than the sly insinuation with which it now 
 ends : — 
 
 The mischief was done about the time that you 
 were a scholar there. Do you know anything 
 about the unfortunate relic ? 
 
 The banter was carried on a little farther in the letter : — 
 
 Can you help us in this emergency to find the 
 nose, or can you give Chantrey a notion (from 
 memory) of its pristine life and vigour? I am 
 willing for peace's sake to subscribe my guinea 
 towards the restoration of the lamented feature. 
 I am, Sir, your humble servant, 
 
 Elia. 
 
 AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 
 
 The hero of this Essay was Mr. George Dyer, the dim- 
 sighted, absent-minded, childlike, learned G. D. of "Oxford 
 in the Vacation," for whom through life Lamb had a hearty 
 friendship. " The oftener I see him," he wrote to Coleridge, 
 " the more deeply I admire him. Heisgoodness itself " Apre- 
 sumably true account of the accident on which this delightful 
 Essay is founded, is containjd in a letter to Mrs. Hazlitt, in 
 1823. Lamb was away from home at the time it occurred.
 
 432 APPENDIX. 
 
 and when he returned at four o'clock, he fourtd G. D. in 
 bed, " raving and light-headed [tipsy, in fact] with the 
 brandy and water which the doctor — a one-eyed fellow, 
 dirty and drunk — had ordered to be administered." 
 
 The following strange note was appended to the account 
 of G. D.'s immersion in the New River : — 
 
 The topography of the cottage and its i-elation 
 to- the river will explain this, as I have been at 
 some cost to have the whole engraved (in time, I 
 hope, for our next number), as well for the satis- 
 faction of the reader as to commemorate so signal 
 a deliverance. 
 
 Whatever may have been intended, the promised illustra- 
 tion did not appear. Elia had "a. mind turned to fictions." 
 
 SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 
 "W. H.," William Hazlitt, the great critic. 
 
 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 
 
 In this paper Lamb gives an account (most likely a pretty 
 
 accurate one) of his newspaper experiences. Sir J s 
 
 M h is of course Sir James Macintosh, the author of 
 
 " Vindicise Gallicae," who was much abused at this time for 
 his supposed apostacy from the principles he had professed 
 at the time of the first French Revolution. In a letter to 
 Manning, dated 1801, Lamb informs him that " the poor 
 Albion died last Saturday of the world's neglect," and with 
 it " the fountain of his puns was choked up for ever." He 
 adds, " I will close my letter with an epigram on Macintosh, 
 the ' ' Vindiciae Gallicae " man, who has got a place at last ; 
 one of the last I did for the A Ibion :^ 
 
 Though th ju'rt, like Judas, .an apostate black. 
 In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack ; 
 When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf, 
 He went away, and wisely hanged himself. 
 This thou may'st do at last ; yet much I doubt, 
 If thou hast any Bowels to gush out. 
 
 This was, no doubt, the " lucky epigram" spoken of in 
 the Essay.
 
 APPENDIX. 4?3 
 
 BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY 
 IN THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 
 
 The " modern artist" spoken of on page I2q, vol. ii., was 
 John Martin, whose picture of Belshazzar's Feast is well 
 known. 
 
 THE WEDDING. 
 
 Admiral was possibly Admiral Burney, a whist- 
 playing friend of Lamb's. 
 
 The " Miss T s" appeared as the " Miss Turners," in 
 
 the original Essay. One cannot help remarking that, if 
 Emily was married at nineteen, and had been engaged for 
 five years, she must have been betrothed at rather an early 
 age — at the same age, too, that Rosamund Gray fell in love 
 with Allan Clare. 
 
 REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S 
 COMING OF AGE. 
 
 A few words of explanation may render the meaning of 
 this Essay more intelligible. 
 
 The cruel sport called "cock-throwing" was formerly 
 common on Shrove Tuesday, 
 
 It is said the Roundheads celebrated the anniversary of 
 Charles the First's execution by having a calf's head for 
 dinner every Thirtieth of January. 
 
 After the Restoration, it was custom.iry to wear sprigs of 
 oak, and to decorate houses with oak branches, on the 
 Twenty-ninth of May, Charles the Second's birthday, in 
 commemoration of his escape from the Parliamentary troops 
 by climbing into Boscobel oak-tree. _ 
 
 Gecrge the Fourth was born August xztk, but his birth- 
 day was kept on April 23rd, St. George's Day. 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 
 
 Lest the reader should suppose, as many have done, thai 
 Lamb himself was the "poor nameless egotist" of this 
 Essay, we refer him to Elia's explanation on page 359, vol. 11. 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON. 
 This was one of Lamb's " lie-children." He confessed to 
 Miss Hutchinson that it was "from top to toe, every para- 
 II. F F
 
 4 34 APPENDIX. 
 
 graph, pure invention ;" and yet it was "republished in the 
 newspapers and in the penny playbills of the night as an 
 authentic account." Lamb prided himself very much on 
 the success of his hoax. 
 
 THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT. 
 
 When Lamb was a young man, he tried to increase his 
 small income by writing lottery puffs. He did not succeed 
 very well : his attempts ^^•ere rejected as "done in too severe 
 and terse a style." 
 
 THE ASS. 
 
 "Jem Boyer." (See "Christ's Hospital Thirty-five 
 Years Ago.") 
 
 ON THE CUSTOM OF HISSING AT THE 
 
 THEATRES. 
 
 The only dramatic piece of Charles Lamb's which was 
 produced on the stage was his farce, " Mr. H.," which was 
 semel.damtiatjis. It was never represented again. 
 
 THE LAST PEACH. 
 
 The germ of this paper will be found very clearly in- 
 dicated in a letter to Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, 
 written the day after Fauntleroy was executed. Bernard 
 Barton (the " Busy B.," Hood called him) was a clerk in a 
 banking house ; and Lamb warns him, with mock solemnity, 
 to beware lest the " cash that constantly passed through his 
 
 hands, — in an unguarded hour ;" but will "hope 
 
 better " things ; and he is shocked at the exquisite adap- 
 tation of his own fingers to the purposes of " picking, fin- 
 gering," &c. " No one that is so framed," he maintains, 
 
 but should tremble." 
 
 CUPID'S REVENGE. 
 
 This is a rendering (after the manner of the "Tales from 
 Shakespeare ") of Beaumont and Fletcher's play of the same 
 name. 
 
 A DEATH-BED. 
 
 This touching letter was written to Mr. H. C. Robinson, 
 of the Temple. The dying friend was Mr. Robert Norris.
 
 APPENDIX. 435 
 
 In the original letter, Lamb calls him "the last link that 
 bound me to the Temple ; " (he was librarian there.) The 
 name of Mr. Norris's deaf son was Richard, not Robert ; 
 and " Charley" stands for "Jemmy" in the letter 
 
 THE END, 
 
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