RAMBLES IN BOOK-LAND 
 
 DAVENPORT ADAMS 
 
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 RAMBLES IN BOOK-LAND
 
 RAMBLES IN BOOK-LAND 
 
 £f)orf ^ssajjs cm .iliievavs Subjects 
 
 U^ by 
 W&. DAVENPORT ADAMS 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'BY-WAYS IN BOOK-LAND,' ^DICTIONARY OF 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE,' ETC. 
 
 ' Circumcursans hinc illinc' 
 
 Catull. Carm. lxviii. 
 
 LONDON 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW 
 
 1889
 
 PR99
 
 TJncouraged by the kind reception accorded, 
 07i both sides of the Atlantic, to his ' By- 
 Ways in Book-Land] the author has ventured 
 to prepare another volume — similar in aim, 
 character, size, and appearance — in the hope 
 that it may meet with similar good fortune. 
 Here, as in the former case, the aim is unam- 
 bitious, The writer deals lightly, briefly, and 
 therefore not exhaustively, with some literary 
 topics which have interested him, and which, 
 he trusts, will prove not less acceptable to the 
 reader.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 — p— 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE TREATMENT OF BOOKS - - I 
 
 INITIALS - - - - - - IO 
 
 FOOD FOR JEST - - - - - 18 
 
 BARDS AND THE BOTTLE - - 26 
 
 ' CHARLES, HIS FRIEND ' - - - 34 
 
 DISJECTA MEMBRA POET/E - - - 41 
 
 POPULAR HISTORY - - - - 50 
 
 AMENITIES OF AUTHORS - - - 58 
 
 THE REIGN OF ROMANCE - - - 66 
 
 CUPID IN COMEDY - - - - 74 
 
 BARDS IN THE BALL-ROOM - - - 82 
 
 POCKET BOOKS - - - - - 90 
 
 PERSONAL SATIRE - - - "97 
 
 THE STAGE HANDKERCHIEF - - - 105 
 
 POETIC ECCENTRICS - - - - 112 
 
 MAXIMS - - - - - I20
 
 Vlll 
 
 Contents. 
 
 SHOP 
 
 THE REALM OF ROSES - 
 A PHILOSOPHICAL CRUSOE 
 POETS AT THE PLAY 
 WINTER READING 
 THE MARRIED MUSE 
 FAUST IN ENGLAND 
 SCIENCE AND SARCASM - 
 SHAKESPEARE IN OPERA 
 WIT IN QUOTATION 
 WIT IN ALLUSION 
 TWO OLD FRIENDS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 - 129 
 
 - 137 
 
 - 145 
 
 - 155 
 
 - I64 
 
 - 171 
 
 " 179 
 
 - lS8 
 
 - I96 
 
 - 204 
 
 - 212 
 
 - 219
 
 RAMBLES IN BOOK-LAND. 
 
 «j>Qr-— ■ 
 
 THE TREATMENT OF BOOKS. 
 
 I'HIS may seem to some a simple 
 matter, and one on which there is 
 scarcely need of advice or exhorta- 
 tion. Everybody, it may be said, knows how 
 to treat books. ' What is there of mystery 
 about it? What is there to learn ? You cut 
 a book open, you read it, and you lay it 
 down. What more is necessary?' One can 
 imagine these questions being put, but they 
 are heart-breaking to a bibliomaniac. What 
 indifference, what frivolity, what lack of 
 reverence ! To the book-worshipper it seems 
 terrible that the subject should be ap- 
 proached so flippantly. How to treat books
 
 2 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 — why, it is an art in itself ; a method which 
 comes, no doubt, by nature to the true believer, 
 but which the most careless can acquire in 
 time if they will but give their minds to it. 
 
 Of course the method applies only to 
 the books which are really books — to those 
 which, in exterior as well as internally, have 
 a right to claim the privileges of preserva- 
 tion. From this point of view there are 
 publications, commonly called books, which 
 do not count ; new volumes in paper-covers, 
 for example. They are very excellent, no 
 doubt, in the matter of letter-press (especially 
 when they are French) ; but what is to be 
 done with them ? How are they to be 
 treated ? It is fair to assume that they are 
 meant either not to last or to be bound. 
 Their corners turn up at the edges, and their 
 pages come unstitched. It is impossible to 
 regard them with respect. They are fit only 
 for the base uses of the smoking-room or 
 the easy-chair. They can be dog's-eared, or 
 pencilled, or what not, without shame com- 
 ing on the dog's-earer or the penciller. Till
 
 The Treatment of Books. 3 
 
 they are attired in cloth, or in something 
 even more permanent than that, they are 
 hardly books at all, and cannot hope or 
 expect to be dealt with as such. 
 
 Nor, indeed, can the ordinary 'railway- 
 novel' of everyday commerce look for much 
 more respectful or more kindly treatment. 
 Compassionate or avaricious people do in- 
 deed set store by these yellow, 'decorated' 
 emanations; ranging them, when read, in a 
 dingy, dilapidated row along a melancholy 
 bookshelf. But such persons are not biblio- 
 philes of the true kind. The genuine book- 
 lover may peruse the florin ' shocker,' but 
 either he leaves it in the railway-carriage in 
 which it has been read, or, if perchance he 
 takes it home, he relegates it to some obscure 
 cupboard where it ranks, not as a book, but 
 as mere lumber. He is even disposed to be 
 discourteous to the rich relation of the florin 
 'shocker,' the two-volume or three-volume 
 novel. This, to be sure, goes into the best 
 houses of the best people, and, for the time, 
 basks in the sunlight of prosperity. But it
 
 4 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 is, nevertheless, an ephemeral thing. It has 
 its day, and then ceases to be — so far as the 
 two- or the three-volume form is concerned. 
 In that shape it descends at last to the sea- 
 side circulating library, and thence passes 
 quietly out of existence. No one knows 
 exactly what becomes of the two- or the 
 three-volume fictions. They fade, somehow, 
 out of life, and revive only, when they revive 
 at all, in the one-volume shape— the shape 
 in which they find their way into the private 
 libraries. Then, and then only, do they 
 become the object of the bibliophile's atten- 
 tion. They are on their way to be classics, 
 and may rank as books indeed. 
 
 For the book which is really a book, only 
 'the most distinguished consideration' should 
 be possible. To begin with, it should be 
 taken up and held in hands which are wholly 
 spotless, and, moreover, absolutely dry. 
 These precautions neglected, the results to 
 the fair cover of the volume may be truly 
 sad. Then comes the question of the cut- 
 ting open, the severing of the leaves. Now,
 
 The Treatment of Books. 5 
 
 this is one of the things which everybody 
 fancies he can do, like the driving of a dog- 
 cart, the managing of a theatre, and the 
 editing of a newspaper. They all seem so 
 easy to achieve, and especially the manipula- 
 tion of the paper-knife. It looks a harmless 
 instrument, this last ; bat what ravages it has 
 committed in its time — what page-murders, 
 what book - slaughters, what jags, what 
 gashes ! In the grasp of an incompetent 
 person, it is a dreadful weapon. As if the 
 cutting open of a book were not an enter- 
 prise to approach with fear and trembling ! 
 The most accomplished cutter may well give 
 himself pause ere he begins. He has to 
 consider, first, the way in which the paper 
 in the book is folded, and, secondly, its 
 quality and texture. The unlearned will 
 insert the knife in each interstice formed by 
 the folding : the instructed, having studied 
 the folding, will open up several pages at 
 a time. And he will handle his instrument 
 according to the strength of the paper with 
 which he has to do. If it be thin and soft,
 
 6 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 great will be his danger, many the obstacles 
 to be overcome. And he will make sure 
 also, when running along the top edge of the 
 pages, that he cuts close up to the back- 
 stitching. Unskilful persons will, on occa- 
 sion, neglect this obvious duty, and slits and 
 tears will be the result. A well-cut volume is, 
 indeed, an object to be admired, for the era 
 of its usefulness has then been well begun, 
 and bright is the promise of the future. 
 
 Next comes the actual reading, with the 
 modes thereof. And, on this point, the 
 preliminary words must necessarily be of 
 warning. First, as to the way in which 
 books must not be read. They must not 
 be read by the fireside — unless, indeed, they 
 be books to which the reader attaches no 
 value. One can understand a devotee of 
 the fender and the hearthrug keeping near 
 his hand a volume or two concerning whose 
 fate he is not anxious, and ever and anon 
 revelling therein. But no book for which 
 the owner or custodian has the faintest atom 
 of respect should be exposed to the cer-
 
 The Treatment of Books. 7 
 
 tainty of having its covers curled up and 
 otherwise distorted by the action of the heat. 
 Nor, obviously, ought any but the lepers and 
 pariahs among books to be perused at meal- 
 times. This is a device of the forlorn 
 bachelor or spinster, whom one would be 
 sorry to deprive of any consolation. No 
 one says it is not pleasant to read at table. 
 It is pleasant ; we have all indulged in it, 
 and probably we shall all go on indulging in 
 it. But it ought not to be permitted, for all 
 that. It is bad, to begin with, for the diges- 
 tion : worse than that, it may by chance be 
 bad for the book. One may take all pos- 
 sible care, as one thinks, and yet disaster 
 may follow. The grease demon is cunning 
 and ubiquitous. Though the white cloth 
 may seem innocent of stain, yet stain may 
 come. Though the book be placed or held 
 well away from the potables and edibles, yet 
 it may happen that one or other may make, 
 on one page or more, a mark which not even 
 the anguish of the book-lover will erase. 
 And, in truth, what anguish is his who
 
 8 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 recognises that, through his own folly, he 
 has defaced, however slightly, a work of the 
 printer's and the binder's art ! Alas, there 
 are dangers for books even when the table 
 is destitute of potential grease. It is danger- 
 ous to set them down within reach of a 
 flower-vase. The vase may be upset, and 
 the book's cover stained irreparably. Evil 
 lurks in the tablecloth, wherever found. If 
 it be not damp, it may be dusty. There be 
 those who enclose their books in paper what 
 time they read : it is a sign of carefulness, 
 and preserves the covers from soiling. But 
 a paper-covered book is, nevertheless, a 
 most unlovely object, and one would be 
 glad to avoid it if one could. There be 
 those, again, who torture their volumes into 
 book-rests, thereby trying the binding too 
 severely, and haply going away and leaving 
 the pages open to the dusty air. This, to 
 be sure, is more — though not much more — 
 seemly, than placing the open book, pages 
 downwards, on the table (with cloth or with- 
 out it) : only the profane do that.
 
 The Treatment of Books. 9 
 
 Grave indeed are the trials through which 
 our poor books go. Of dog's-earing and pen- 
 cilling something has been said. They are 
 the inventions of the Evil One. They can 
 never be wholly eradicated, and they bring 
 with them everlasting disgrace to the reckless 
 perpetrator. Of such things no true book- 
 lover would be guilty. He would spread 
 his book out fair and square where no dust 
 was, make his notes on separate paper, keep 
 his 'place' with a marker, and by-and-by 
 store away the volume where it cannot be 
 abraded. That is the way in which to treat 
 books, and no other is possible to the 
 entirely well-regulated mind. 

 
 INITIALS. 
 
 OT very long ago a sort of quasi- 
 claim was put in, by a well-known 
 writer, to the more or less exclusive 
 use of the letter 'Q.' as a literary pseudonym. 
 He had written in daily and weekly papers, 
 and published a volume, under that appella- 
 tion ; and he was a little sore that the letter 
 should have been adopted for the same pur- 
 pose by another writer. As a matter of fact, 
 the authors of 'Troy Town' and ' Dramatists 
 of the Day' are not the only 'men of the 
 time' who have utilized 'Q.' in this fashion. 
 Mr. Edmund Yates, I believe, signed himself 
 in this way when contributing a series of 
 articles to a London evening paper now 
 defunct. And it may be noted that it had 
 occurred to a lady, Jane Taylor to wit, to
 
 Initials. 1 1 
 
 make use of the letter doubled, thus — 
 ' Q.Q.' — in certain contributions to the 
 magazines. 
 
 It must be confessed that the adoption of 
 a single letter, whether an initial or not, as 
 a nom de guerre, is always accompanied by 
 chances of muddlement. Who shall hope to 
 keep one letter all to himself? The thing 
 is obviously impossible. The number of 
 those entitled to append it to their work is 
 multitudinous. At the time, certainly, there 
 is every possibility, not to say probability, of 
 confusion between persons. By-and-by the 
 chaff gets sifted from the wheat, and, while the 
 one is thrown away, the other remains. Thus 
 initials become historical. Take 'A.,' for 
 example. In the realms of poetry it belongs 
 par excellence to Matthew Arnold, who issued 
 more than one volume of verse without any 
 other means of identification than the solitary 
 letter. Pope was known as 'A.' in the 
 1 Memoirs of the Society of Grub Street,' 
 Mrs. Southey appended it to some fugitive 
 contributions, and Keble can be recognised
 
 12 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 by it in the ' Tracts for the Times ;' but, so 
 far as celebrity goes, Arnold has the greatest 
 right to it. With him it was really an initial ; 
 with the others it was a pseudonym only. 
 
 Certain other members of the alphabet 
 have been not less, but even more, distin- 
 guished in their day. In our own time, a 
 noble and legal correspondent of the Times 
 has acquired a species of prescriptive right 
 to ( B.'; ' D.,' in the Greek form, stood both 
 for D. M. Moir and Benjamin Disraeli ; ' E.' 
 was sometime the simple signature of Thomas, 
 Lord Erskine ; ' M.' was used by Gerard 
 Moultrie, in the ' People's Hymnal,' and by 
 Hugh Miller in some letters on the herring 
 fishery ; while ' T.' was the modest sign 
 added by Lord Tennyson to his verses on 
 'The War,' when he published them originally 
 in the Times of 1859. All these were in- 
 stances of the utilization of initials. Of 
 letters adapted to the purposes of pseudo- 
 nymity the examples are not less numerous. 
 ' B.' in the ' Microcosm ' was Canning ; in 
 the Literary Gazette it was Bryan Waller
 
 Initials. 1 3 
 
 Procter. ' C in the ' Tracts for the Times' 
 was Dr. Pusey, and Lord Palmerston some- 
 times wrote as ' E.' Still more notable in 
 the history of literature are 'L.,' 'U.,' and 
 'V.,' for it was as 'V.' that Mrs. Archer 
 Give, the author of ' Paul Ferroll,' pub- 
 lished all her poems; 'U.' is the letter 
 which indicates Julius C. Hare's contri- 
 butions to the ' Guesses at Truth,' and it 
 was as ' L.' that Miss Catherine Swanwick 
 issued all her books of verse. 
 
 It might be thought that, when two initials 
 were given, the likelihood of securing them 
 for one's self would be increased. But it is not 
 so. Who shall say whether 'A. B.' conceals 
 Alexander Brome or Andrew Borde; whether 
 'A. G.' hides Agnes Giberne or Alfred Gatty ; 
 whether 'E. S.' means Edward Stillingfleet 
 or Elkanah Settle ? The two letters are not 
 sufficient for identification. Nor is such 
 identification certain even in the case of 
 three initials, though the chances are con- 
 siderably improved. In some cases such 
 triplets are as famous as any name in literary
 
 14 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 history. Look at ' L. E. L.,' for example; 
 it is much better known than the baptismal 
 appellation that it indicates. ' L. E. L.' has 
 admirers where Letitia Elizabeth Landon, 
 perhaps, is scarcely thought of. For years 
 C. S. Calverley was spoken and written of only 
 as ' C. S. C.,' and a contemporary writer of 
 familiar verse is hardly to be recognised 
 otherwise than as ' C. C. R.' How dear 
 ' H. A. L.' once was to the readers of works 
 on sport or travel, and how often 'S. G. O.' 
 used to pose in the pages of the 'Thunderer,' 
 I need not say. It was not then by any 
 means a matter of notoriety that the one was 
 Major H. A. Leveson and the other Lord 
 Sidney Godolphin Osborne. But perhaps 
 the most curious use ever made of initials 
 was that to which the American writer, 
 Eliza Brown Chase, appropriated hers — 
 the 'E. B. C being indicated by the 
 corresponding notes on the treble stave. 
 
 On the history of four initials in one group 
 I need not dwell. It is more or less 
 remarkably illustrated in the popularity ac-
 
 Initials. 1 5 
 
 corded to the stories of ' A. L. O. E.' and 
 the essays of ' A. K. H. B.' In the former 
 case they have meant, vaguely, ' A Lady of 
 England ;' in the latter, as most people know, 
 they are the genuine initials of an actual 
 name — that of the Rev. A. K. H. Boyd, of 
 St. Andrews. More interesting is it to 
 notice the variations which have been intro- 
 duced from time to time by different people 
 in the use of initial letters. Sometimes the 
 single letter has been followed by a dash, as 
 
 in 'J S ,' standing for Joseph Spence, 
 
 or ' D G.,' standing for George Daniel. 
 
 Sometimes dots or asterisks have been used, 
 
 as in ' Lord B ' for Lord Brougham. At 
 
 other times, again, both initials and finals 
 have been pressed into the service, as in 
 
 1 R d S le,' for Richard Steele ; and 
 
 so on. But in such cases, probably, the 
 desire of the writer was rather to be dis- 
 covered than to hide himself. In other 
 instances, the users of initials have added to 
 those of their names those of their occupa- 
 tions ; and thus ' H. K. B. C.' has meant
 
 1 6 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, while 
 'T.R.D.J.S.D.O.P.I.I.' has stood for The 
 Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of Patrick's 
 in Ireland. Once upon a time Mr. Owen 
 Manning published a book on ' The Several 
 Species of Ratiocination,' under the nom de 
 guerre of 'A.GO.T.U.O.C (a Gentleman of 
 the University of Cambridge); while Dr. A. A. 
 Sykes beat even this record by appearing on 
 the title-page of a work on New Testament 
 'demoniacks' as 'T.P.A.P.O.A.B.I.T.C.O.S.' 
 (the Precentor and Prebendary of Alton- 
 Borealis in the Church of Sarum). 
 
 But, in truth, the amount of ingenuity 
 expended upon the use of initial letters has 
 been practically unlimited. They have taken 
 all sorts of forms, from ' A. A. A. ' (Baroness 
 Blaze de Bury) to ' A. B. C. D. E. F. G.,' and 
 from ' F. A. C. T.' to <Q. E. D.,' etc. When 
 Halhed and Sheridan published their ' Love 
 Epistles of Aristsenetus,' they put their 
 initials together and figured as ' H. S. ;' while 
 Beaumont and Fletcher issued ' The Bloody 
 Brothers' under the disguise of *B. F. J.'
 
 Initials. 1 7 
 
 Other authors have been represented in print 
 by a combination of letters which afforded 
 no clue to the actual initials of their names, 
 as Dean Swift by ' C. B.,' Bishop Ken by 
 1 H. D.,' Daniel Defoe by ' L. M.,' Richard 
 Bentley by ' P. D.,' and so on ad infinitum. 
 Nor is it likely that the employment of 
 initials in this way and others will ever cease. 
 It is a natural resource of the modest and 
 mystifying penman. Very early in life we 
 are taught to describe ourselves as ' M. or 
 N.,' and the directions then given to us sink 
 deep into the literary character.
 
 
 ^1»P 
 
 FOOD FOR JEST. 
 
 HEN one of our countrymen, whose 
 French was that of Stratford-atte. 
 Bow, was asked by a Parisian 
 danseuse whereabouts in the theatre he was 
 sitting, he replied, ' Mademoiselle, dans une 
 loge rotie' (meaning 'grillee'). ' Ces diables 
 d'Anglais,' observed the lady, ' pensent tou- 
 jours k leur Rosbif.' And it must be admitted 
 that they do think of it pretty frequently, and, 
 moreover, without being ashamed of the fact. 
 'What is an Englishman made of?' asked 
 Shirley Brooks, an age ago, in Punch ; after- 
 wards supplying his own answer : 
 
 ' Roast beef and jam-tart, 
 And a pint of good clar't ; 
 
 That's what an Englishman's made of.' 
 
 There can be no question that the subject
 
 Food for Jest. 19 
 
 of eating, not to say of drinking, figures 
 largely in our everyday talk, and, naturally, 
 is fully represented in our literature — espe- 
 cially in that part of it which is inspired by 
 wit and humour. ' No man can be wise on 
 an empty stomach,' says Bartle Massey in 
 the story ; and, accordingly, the topics of 
 palate and provender have greatly com- 
 mended themselves to our lighter bards and 
 prosemen, as well as to our diseurs de bons 
 mots. The presence of a pyramid a la 
 Macedoine suggested to George Croly the 
 quip that it was intended to give a fillip to 
 the appetite ; and it was by his appetite, it 
 will be remembered, that the mother, in 
 William Sawyer's Tennysonian parody, was 
 able to recognise the strange visitor as her 
 son. 
 
 ' Seared is, of course, my heart ; but unsubdued 
 Is, and shall be, my appetite for food ' — 
 
 so wrote Calverley ; and the remark is typical 
 of many such epigrammatic contrasts be- 
 tween the eatable and the sentimental. 
 Byron, especially, was fond of putting the 
 
 2 — 2
 
 20 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 two in opposition. No one, he said, liked 
 
 to be disturbed ' at meals or love,' and he 
 
 records — though, I should say, without 
 
 sympathetic feeling — that Candide found 
 
 life most tolerable after taking food. 
 
 Byron himself suffered from indigestion, 
 
 and, though he called the dinner-bell 'the 
 
 tocsin of the soul,' he also conceded that, 
 
 when dinner has oppressed one, the result 
 
 is something more distressing than a mere 
 
 mauvais quart d'heure. Of his Don Juan 
 
 he relates how, on one occasion, poring on 
 
 the leaves and on the flowers, 
 
 ' He miss'd the pathway, he forgot the hours, 
 And when he look'd upon his watch again, 
 He found how much old Time had been a winner — 
 He also found that he had lost his dinner.' 
 
 Luttrell once said to Planche that the man 
 
 who professed not to like a good dinner was 
 
 either a fool or a liar. Horace Smith would 
 
 not have come within the limits of this 
 
 censure, for did he not make the meal the 
 
 subject of a ' love-song,' in which he asked : 
 
 ' Who can display such varied art, 
 
 To suit the taste of saint and sinner,
 
 Food for Jest. 2 1 
 
 Who go so near to touch their heart, 
 As you, my darling dainty dinner ?' 
 
 James Smith, masquerading as ' Horace in 
 
 London,' sang the praises of economy in 
 
 dining, ordering a sirloin instead of venison, 
 
 and asserting that 
 
 ' Who dines at a guinea a head 
 
 Will ne'er by his head get a guinea.' 
 
 Mr, Alfred Austin has even dwelt upon the 
 moral influence of a ' good square meal' : 
 
 ' What is the spell that 'twixt a saint and sinner 
 The diffrence makes? — A sermon? Bah — a dinner !' 
 
 The concomitants of the chief meal of the 
 day have not lacked the most varied celebra- 
 tion. ' Beautiful soup' is the topic and 
 refrain of one of Mr. Lewis Carroll's most 
 diverting travesties. 
 
 ' Who would not give all else for two p- 
 Ennyworth only of beautiful soup ?' — 
 
 such is the enthusiastic inquiry which he 
 puts into the mouth of one of the characters 
 in 'Alice.' Did he not also write the ballad 
 of the walrus, the carpenter, and the oysters, 
 of which it is difficult not to think whenever
 
 22 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 one partakes of the 'delicious bivalve'? The 
 salmon figures gloriously in Bon Gaultier's 
 ' Lay of the Love-Lorn,' where, as usual, it 
 is accepted as explaining all the symptoms 
 which might otherwise have been attributed 
 to the claret. ' All the soles that are, were 
 four feet once,' quoted a lively Shakespearean 
 scholar at a festive gathering ; and the 
 humble flounder, which is for less dignified 
 tables than those frequented by the sole, 
 has nevertheless been made the point of a 
 jest directed against an awkward orator at a 
 Fishmongers' banquet. When we come to 
 ' the birds,' and turn our attention to the 
 pheasant before us, we think, involuntarily, 
 of the wit who, observing a lady feed her 
 pheasants in the morning with crumbs and 
 milk, exclaimed, ' Ah ! I see — your ladyship 
 is preparing them here, for bread-sauce here- 
 after ■/' 
 
 James Smith, in the verses already quoted 
 from, declared in favour of roast beef. 
 Thackeray, in his free-and-easy version of 
 the ' Persicos Odi,' discoursed con amore of
 
 Food for Jest. 2 3 
 
 a leg of mutton. ' A plain leg of mutton ' 
 
 he exhorted Lucy to bring him — one which 
 
 should be 
 
 ' Smoking and tender and juicy, 
 
 And what better meat can there be ?' 
 
 Well, there might be, for instance, a leg of 
 pork ; though, let us hope, not, in one respect, 
 like that in which a certain host looked vainly 
 for the stuffing, inducing Poole the dramatist 
 to suggest that perhaps the article was in 
 'the other leg' ! It was, by the way, to some- 
 thing better than beef or pork — to a haunch 
 of venison, in fact — that the Sir George 
 Warrender of former times sat down on the 
 day which will always be famous in the 
 literature of anecdote. Sir George would 
 seem to have been a valiant trencherman, 
 for when he observed to the butler, in the 
 course of his meal, ' John, this will make a 
 capital hash to-morrow,' the servant replied, 
 ' Yes, Sir George, if you leave off now !' 
 
 After meat, pudding — the mention of which 
 suggests the well-known epigram addressed 
 to an accomplished lady :
 
 24 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 ' Your dressing, dancing, gadding, where's the good 
 in? 
 Tell me, sweet lady, can you make a pudding ?' 
 
 The subject of fruit in general was made 
 the peg for one of the cleverest passages 
 written by Charles Dudley Warner, the 
 American humourist ; while the name of a 
 special kind of pear — the 'Marie Louise' — 
 gave to Sir George Rose the idea of one of the 
 happiest compliments ever paid to women. 
 Dudley Warner, again, has penned some 
 sprightly sentences about lettuce ; and who 
 does not remember, not only Sydney Smith's, 
 but the late Mortimer Collins's, rhythmical 
 recipe for a salad ? 
 
 Perhaps the most notable tea of recent 
 times was that to which the characters of 
 ' The Sorcerer' were summoned in the well- 
 known chorus : 
 
 ' Now for the tea of our host, 
 Now for the rollicking bun, 
 Now for the muffin and toast, 
 Now for the gay Sally Lunn !' 
 
 Talking of muffins, one thinks of the man in 
 ' The Hunting of the Snark,' who, however,
 
 Food for Jest. 25 
 
 was 'roused,' not only with muffins, and 
 mustard and cress, and jam, but with ice 
 and judicious advice, which obviously have 
 nothing to do with tea-time. Ice has had 
 the honour of being poetically distinguished 
 by Dr. Wendell Holmes, who, in his verses 
 called ' Contentment,' has told us that 
 
 ' Plain food is quite enough for me ; 
 Three courses are as good as ten ; 
 If Nature can subsist on three, 
 
 Thank Heaven for three — Amen ! 
 I always thought cold victual nice — 
 My choice would be vanilla-ice." 
 
 Of supper, as a meal, less has been sung 
 than might have been expected from the bons 
 vivants of Parnassus ; in fact, for one of the 
 most amusing references to it we have to 
 go to the pages of Mr. Burnand's 'Happy 
 Thoughts,' where Miss Pellingle's most vigo- 
 rous 'variation' upon Rousseau's 'Dream' 
 suggests to the 'happy thinker' Rousseau 
 after a heavy supper. 
 
 w%
 
 BARDS AND THE BOTTLE. 
 
 11 F the subject of food has from time 
 to time been discussed with light- 
 ness and brightness by the wits in 
 prose and verse, that of ' drink,' both in 
 general and in particular, has assuredly not 
 attracted less attention. Numerous as have 
 been the serious celebrations of 'the bottle' 
 — whether it be of beer, or wine, or spirits — 
 the jesting treatment of the topic has been at 
 least equally elaborate and much more enter- 
 taining. Lord Neaves went so far as to hold 
 and to argue that man himself, in his rudi- 
 mentary condition, had been 'a leather bot- 
 tel,' which sufficiently accounted, in his view, 
 for the human propensity for liquor. ' The 
 bottle,' indeed, has had inspiration for many 
 a rhymer, both before and after Horace
 
 Bards and the Bottle. 27 
 
 Smith, who, professing to address ' a bright- 
 eyed nymph of sloping shoulders,' cried : 
 
 ' Oh ! when thy lips to mine are pressed, 
 What transports titillate my throttle ! 
 My love can find new life and zest 
 In thee, and thee alone, my bottle !' 
 
 Various are the ways in which the matter 
 has been regarded by various authorities. 
 Dr. Wendell Holmes once wrote an 'Ode 
 for a Social Meeting,' to which he appended 
 what he called ' slight alterations by a tee- 
 totaler,' after the following fashion : 
 
 scowl howl scoff sneer 
 
 Then a smile, and a glass, and a toast, and a cheer, 
 strychnine and whisky, and ratsbane and beer ! 
 
 For all the good wine, and we've some of it here ! 
 
 In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, 
 
 Down, down, with the ty rant that masters us all ! 
 
 Long live the gay servant that laughs for us all ! 
 
 It is to be feared that the scribe who could 
 make such emendations would scarcely have 
 approved of the Indians described by Artemus 
 Ward, who ' drink with impunity, or anybody 
 who invites them.' Bret Harte, again, has 
 drawn a genial picture of one Johnson — a
 
 28 Rambles in Book- Land. 
 
 Yankee, to be sure — whose particular failing 
 (if it be one !) was 
 
 'A wild desire to treat 
 Every able male white citizen he met upon the street' 
 
 Another hero of Mr. Harte's delightful 
 rhymes was prevented, it will be remem- 
 bered, from being so generous, in this 
 way, as he could wish, by reason of the 
 legend which he found posted up over the 
 bar counter — 'All liquors must be paid for 
 on leaving the room.' On one point, cer- 
 tainly, all drinkers are likely to agree — that 
 drinking should be 'fair.' It was to enforce 
 this dictum, one may assume, that John Hey- 
 wood, the Elizabethan, wrote the following 
 epigram : 
 
 ' I drink to thee, Tom.' ' Nay, thou drinkest from 
 
 me, John, 
 For when thou drinkest to me, drink thou leavest 
 
 none.' 
 
 When one descends from the general to 
 the particular, and turns first to the subject 
 of wine, one finds one's self in the presence
 
 Bards and the Bottle. 29 
 
 of a cloud of witnesses. Byron, with charac- 
 teristic cynicism, declared in favour of 
 
 1 Wine and women, mirth and laughter — 
 Sermons and soda-water the day after.' 
 
 Hook, just as characteristically, observed to 
 one who had allowed a bibliopolist friend to 
 take more than was good for him, that he 
 appeared to have emptied his wine-cellar into 
 his book-seller. James Smith, again, has told 
 us how he adapted his wine-drinking to the 
 time of year : 
 
 ' My glass I to each season shape, 
 Nor keep, in either, Lent ; 
 My drink, when winter frowns, is Cape, 
 My summer beverage Tent.' 
 
 Our contemporaries, let us be thankful, have 
 exerted their influence in a very wholesome 
 manner. Thus, Mr. Cholmondely-Pennell 
 has declared : 
 
 ' In vino Veritas ! — which means 
 
 A man's a very ass in liquor ; 
 The " thief that slowly steals our brains " 
 
 Makes nothing but the temper quicker. 
 Next morning brings a train of woes, 
 
 But finds the passions much sedater. 
 Who was it, now, that pulled my nose ? — 
 
 I'd better go and ask the waiter.'
 
 30 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Equally good in tendency is the remark of 
 the narrator in ' Happy Thoughts' about 
 that friend of his who has slapped him on 
 the back and evidently has stopped too long 
 in the wine-cellar — ' A little tasting is a dan- 
 gerous thing.' Professor Blackie has shown, 
 in an admirable song, that the absorption 
 by a man of the liquor which he swallows 
 is a proof that ' the subject and object are 
 one' — a metaphysic subtlety into which, 
 perhaps, it might be dangerous to enter. 
 
 1 Give me champagne, and contentment 
 be mine !' sings one of Whyte-Melville's 
 characters in 'Tilbury Nogo,' and a very 
 spirited argument he makes of it ' Lord 
 Elgin's dry champagne' was celebrated by 
 Sir George Trevelyan in one of his rhyth- 
 mical squibs, and Mr. Edmund Yates still 
 remains the acknowledged laureate of Pom- 
 mery and Greno : 
 
 • At the beakers brim, 
 
 Beading brittle bubbles, 
 Sea in which to swim, 
 
 And cast away all troubles, 
 Sea, where sorrow sinks, 
 
 Ne'er to rise again — oh,
 
 Bards and the Bottle. 31 
 
 Bles<edest of drinks, 
 
 Welcome, Pommery Greno !' 
 
 ' My dear curate,' says the Professor in Mr. 
 Mallock's 'New Paul and Virginia,' 'what I 
 am enjoying is the champagne that you 
 drink, and what you are enjoying is the 
 champagne that I drink. This is altruism — 
 this is benevolence.' The curate sees the 
 logic of it, and replies rapturously, ' I will 
 drink another bottle for your sake.' Sherry 
 has found fewer celebrants. It is to be 
 feared, indeed, that when the man in the 
 ' Bab Ballads,' addressing the lively con- 
 fectioner, said, 
 
 1 Why so very, very merry ? 
 Is it purity of conscience, or your one-and-seven sherry?? 
 
 the intention was to reflect injuriously 
 upon that species of libation. Port lives 
 in the story told of Hook, who, comment- 
 ing on an antique specimen, said, 'There 
 is food and drink in this wine — port, with a 
 crust.' More sardonic was Douglas Jerrold's 
 request for ' some old port — not elder port.' 
 Curacoa supplies the point of an epigram 
 by Luttrell, and it was H. S. Leigh who
 
 32 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 said of a man that he had had so much hoc 
 
 he could only say hie. As for the different 
 
 kinds of spirituous liquor, rum has had its 
 
 anything-but-i'rt^^ vates in Lord Byron, who 
 
 had the shockingly bad taste to rank it with 
 
 'true religion' as a spirit-calmer. Brandy, 
 
 again, figures for ever in a clever couplet 
 
 written by the other Byron — to wit, H. J. : 
 
 ' The least drop in the world I do not mind : 
 Cognac's a noun I never yet declined.' 
 
 Lord Neaves has written about getting 'dis- 
 mally drunk upon whisky,' and that potent 
 liquid has had many other bards, including 
 the American John Hay. 
 
 Beer, as a beverage, has had numerous 
 eulogists. Barry Cornwall speaks of 
 
 ' Brains made clear 
 By the irresistible strength of beer.' 
 
 The authors of 'Bon Gaultier' made Bulwer 
 Lytton say of ' Old England's fine time- 
 hallowed drink' that 
 
 ' This makes strong hearts— strong heads attest its 
 charm — 
 This nerves the might that sleeps in Britain's brawny 
 arm !'
 
 Bards and the Bottle. 33 
 
 C. S. Calverley declares : 
 
 ' Such power hath Beer. The heart which grief hath 
 canker'd 
 Hath one unfailing remedy — the tankard.' 
 
 It was for a pot of beer, drawn mild, that 
 the Queen of the May languished, in the 
 disrespectful parody. Even lager-beer has 
 found immortality, of a kind, in the pages of 
 the 'Breitmann Ballads.' 'Take him for 
 half-and-half,' said Thackeray, on a familiar 
 occasion, 'we ne'er shall look upon his like 
 again.' In the same way, ' He is always 
 ale-ing,' was said by Luttrell of a bibulous 
 servant. Just as Calverley has told us that 
 
 'The prima donna, smiling herself out, 
 Recruits her flagging powers with bottled stout,' 
 
 so C. S. Cayley has sounded the praises 
 of ' Brisk bottled stout in pewters creamy- 
 crowned.' Once more : while the former 
 rhymer has dwelt upon the value of ' draught 
 Allsopp' to one who would 'petrify his tutor,' 
 Mr. Savile Clarke has extolled the beauties 
 of 'Bass,' 'Bon Gaultier' having long ago 
 done the same for 'Perkins's Entire.' 
 
 3
 
 'CHARLES, HIS FRIEND.' 
 
 IS name is not always Charles, fre- 
 quently as it is so. Often he figures 
 under quite a different appellation. 
 He is Careless in 'The Double-dealer,' 
 Lovelace in ' Three Weeks after Marriage,' 
 Rovewell in ' The Upholsterer,' Scandal in 
 ' Love for Love,' Younger in ' The Patron,' 
 and so on, and so on. Truly Protean is he 
 in the designations he assumes ; and yet, 
 whatever the baptismal adornment, he is 
 always the same person — always the same 
 Charles — always 'his friend.' He is the 
 lineal descendant of the ancient Pythias, for 
 ever finding a Damon on whom to bestow 
 his loving acquaintance. The playwrights 
 have never been tired of him. He dates 
 from the beginnings of the drama. He is
 
 ' Charles, His Friend' 35 
 
 called Horatio in ' Hamlet ' and Caleb in 
 'Two Roses.' He is the utility man of the 
 stage. Wherever there is a hero, there you 
 may behold 'Charles, his friend,' beside him. 
 It is not, on the whole, a very dignified 
 position to occupy. Charles is usually of no 
 account personally ; his business is to play 
 second fiddle. How many people take any 
 interest in Horatio ? His raison d'etre is to be 
 confided in by the princely Dane, to be leaned 
 upon in moments of sadness or abstraction, 
 to be talked at, and occasionally to be slapped 
 upon the shoulder by way of tardy and con- 
 descending recognition. Hamlet has all the 
 ' fat,' as the players call it, Horatio all the 
 lean. He comes on and goes off, as he is 
 wanted. No ' points ' or ' situations ' for him 
 — Hamlet has them all. And this is the 
 badge of all the tribe of Charles — servitude, 
 more or less, to the men whom they call 
 'friend.' It is their duty simply to 'play up 
 to ' their principal. If they have a ' speech ' 
 to themselves, it is only to lead up to an 
 ' entrance ' by the 'star.' One could fancy
 
 36 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 that, if Charles were not so persistently 
 labelled ' his friend,' he might often be in- 
 clined to feel like ' his enemy.' ' How hard it 
 is,' says Orlando, 'to look at happiness 
 through another man's eyes !' How hard it 
 must be, one can imagine, for Charles to see 
 all the honours carried off by the man whose 
 ' friend' it is his sole distinction to be ! 
 
 And if it be fanciful to attribute such sen- 
 sations to Charles himself, it is scarcely so to 
 conceive that they exist in the person of his 
 interpreters. Of these there are two classes : 
 the young actors, who play the part while 
 they are acquiring capacity for higher things ; 
 and the older performers, who have never 
 been able to gain that capacity, and who go 
 on assuming the role, in some form or other, 
 all through their career. The novice envies 
 the ' leading man ' who takes all the kudos 
 and the applause ; but his envy is mitigated 
 by the hope which springs from youth and 
 ambition. Some day he, too, may have any 
 number of Charleses to be his ' friends,' and 
 the thought prevents his envy from deepen-
 
 ' C/iar/es, His Friend! ~$j 
 
 ing to bitterness. But for the men who per- 
 petually play Hastings to Marlow, and the 
 like, there is no such future, and therefore 
 no such consolation. For them the dream is 
 over, and for them there is nothing but 
 chronic discontent or easy indifference. Let 
 us hope that the latter state of mind is more 
 often reached than is generally supposed. It 
 is weary work reflecting on past visions and 
 scowling at the men who ' take the cake.' 
 Let us trust that the most disappointed 
 Charles gets tired of bemoaning the un- 
 kindness of fate, and learns to accept with 
 philosophy the position accorded him. 
 
 After all, the role of friend to the hero is 
 not wholly without its compensations. If it 
 does nothing else, it brings one into good 
 company. There is, at least, some second- 
 hand glory in the situation. Horatio might 
 reflect that it is something to be the confi- 
 dant of princes, to be the repository of their 
 thoughts and their emotions, to be constantly 
 on the stage with them, and therefore always 
 in immediate contact with the observed of
 
 38 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 all observers. There is even something in 
 being, as the eighteenth-century Charles was, 
 the hail-fellow-well-met of the young beau of 
 the drama, intimately associated with him in 
 his intrigues, his discomfitures, his successes. 
 There are modest men who would be con- 
 tented with this, and who would take credit 
 to themselves that, if they were not the rose, 
 at least they dwelt in its neighbourhood. 
 And then, Charles has often had some love- 
 business of his own, not so important or so 
 attractive to the spectator as ' his friend's,' 
 but, still, important to himself, and occupy- 
 ing public attention for at least a casual 
 moment or two. It is worth while, perhaps, to 
 be rushed through five acts of a comedy, if at 
 the end you do but hold the audience for a 
 space while you pair off with the lady of your 
 choice. Even when Marlow and Kate 
 Hardcastle are on the boards, Hastings and 
 Miss Neville are not quite forgotten. 
 
 And the representatives of Charles may 
 take this comfort to their souls, that the 
 subordination of Charles to ' his friend ' is
 
 ' Charles, His Friend! 39 
 
 wholly in accordance with life and nature. 
 The role exists, and somebody must fill it. 
 Some of the most admirable people whom 
 the world has seen have prided themselves 
 mainly upon being the friend of someone 
 else. It is a surrender of individuality, no 
 doubt. But how many are perfectly willing 
 thus to efface themselves ! Every day we 
 meet with men who are merely ' Charles, 
 his friend' to somebody, and who, more- 
 over, are wholly happy in the situation. In 
 ordinary life Charles is proud to be the con- 
 fidant of his superior in brains or monetary 
 resources. ' He called me " my friend," ' 
 thinks he, in ecstasy, and is more than ever 
 confirmed in his devotion. He does well to 
 be so confirmed, for the ' Charles, his friend,' 
 both of the stage and of life, differs from other 
 friends in this respect, that he is never very 
 badly treated by the man he serves. The 
 hero makes use of him, but is loyal to 
 him, and does not borrow money of him. 
 He does not make love to his sweetheart, or 
 in any way seek to supplant him. Nor can
 
 40 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 he be said strictly to bore him, for ' Charles, 
 his friend,' is always very willing to listen to 
 whatever is addressed to him, whether by 
 prince or by beau.
 
 DISJECTA MEMBRA POET^E. 
 
 NEW volume of poems by the 
 Laureate has of late years had a 
 double attraction for the most 
 devoted of his admirers. It has been not 
 only the prospect of fresh work by him that 
 has pleased them — though that, of course, 
 has been the chief source of their satis- 
 faction ; there has been the curiosity they 
 have felt as to what, if anything, he would 
 reproduce of the matter which he had pub- 
 lished formerly but had not since reprinted. 
 The current volume of the Laureate's 
 ' Works,' fairly bulky as it is, does not, it need 
 scarcely be said, by any means embody all 
 that he has given to the world. From time 
 to time he has included in his later books 
 selections from his earlier ones, and welcome, 
 in most cases, have those reprints been ; but
 
 42 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 there still remains much which even a 
 difficile criticism would be glad to see com- 
 prised in forthcoming editions of the 
 ' Works.' 
 
 From the volume published jointly by 
 Alfred and Charles Tennyson in 1827, it is 
 to be assumed that nothing will ever be 
 reprinted, though Tennysonians would be 
 delighted if the Laureate would but identify 
 those portions of it which were the products 
 of his pen. A good deal of the book is 
 worth resuscitating, but Lord Tennyson has 
 probably discarded definitely the verse that 
 he wrote before he was eighteen years of 
 age. ' Timbuctoo,' the Cambridge prize 
 poem of 1829, is also probably rejected as a 
 whole. And as a whole, of course, it is 
 immature and unequal. There are fine 
 passages in it, such as the description of the 
 visionary city itself, which is almost Miltonic 
 in its sonority ; such, too, as the pictures of 
 the moon's 'white cities ' and the rest — of the 
 
 days 
 
 ' When full-voiced Winter roofs 
 The headland with inviolate white snow ' —
 
 Disjecta Membra Poetce. 43 
 
 of 
 
 ' Gold-sanded bays 
 Blown round with happy airs of odorous winds ' — 
 
 and so on. But by the side of these there 
 are occasional descents into bathos and 
 triviality, which, unfortunately, mar the 
 general excellence of the work. The poet 
 has reproduced three or four lines from 
 ' Timbuctoo ' in the course of the ' Ode to 
 Memory ' — those about 
 
 ' Listening the lordly music flowing from 
 The illimitable years ;' 
 
 but he is not likely to draw upon the former 
 poem again, and he is still less likely, one 
 may say, to republish it in full. 
 
 When we come to the volume of 1830 the 
 position of affairs is different. From that 
 publication the Laureate has, at various 
 times, taken such pieces as the ' Elegiacs,' 
 the ' Supposed Confessions,' the ' Nothing 
 will die,' the ' All things will die,' the 
 1 Kraken,' and ' We are free.' Why should he 
 not go further and take more ? Why should
 
 44 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 we not have another sonnet or two ? espe- 
 cially that one on Love, beginning, 
 
 ' To know thee is all wisdom, and old age 
 Is but to know thee : dimly we behold thee 
 Athwart the veils of evil which infold thee ;' 
 
 and including the powerful line — 
 
 • Hollowed in awful chasms of wheeling gloom.' 
 
 Why should we not have ' Every day hath 
 its night,' and ' Hero and Leander,' and 
 the ' Chorus in an Unpublished Drama,' 
 and, in particular, the ' English War Song ' 
 and the 'National Song,' if only to make 
 better known to posterity the rough swing 
 and vigour which the Laureate has sometimes 
 put into his work ? Not very poetical, 
 perhaps, but full of earnest feeling, are such 
 utterances as these, in the song last named : 
 
 ' There is no land like England 
 
 Where'er the light of day be ; 
 There are no hearts like English hearts, 
 
 Such hearts of oak as they be. 
 There is no land like England 
 
 Where'er the light of day be ; 
 There are no men like Englishmen, 
 
 So tall and bold as they be.'
 
 Disjecta Membra Poetce. 45 
 
 And, again : 
 
 ' Our glory is our freedom, 
 We lord it o'er the sea ; 
 We are the sons of freedom, 
 We are free.' 
 
 In the same way with the volume of 1833. 
 Five of the sonnets in it, which were formerly 
 omitted from the ' Works,' have gradually 
 been included in them ; as has also ' My life 
 is full of weary days.' But why has the 
 Laureate so persistently relegated to obscurity 
 that truly passionate quatorzain, beginning, 
 
 1 O beauty, passing beauty ! sweetest Sweet ! 
 
 How can'st thou let me waste my youth in sighs ! 
 I only ask to sit beside thy feet. 
 
 Thou knowest I dare not look into thine eyes ;' 
 
 and ending, 
 
 ' Methinks if I should kiss thee, no control 
 Within the thrilling brain could keep afloat 
 The subtle spirit. Even while I spoke, 
 The bare word kiss hath made my inner soul 
 To tremble like a lute-string, ere the note 
 Hath melted in the silence that it broke. 
 
 This is the volume which includes ' The
 
 46 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Hesperides,' with its many felicities of 
 imagery and expression ; as, for example — 
 
 ' Wandering waters unto wandering waters call : 
 Let them clash together, foam and fall. 
 
 Out of watchings, out of wiles, 
 
 Comes the bliss of secret smiles. 
 All things are not told to all. 
 
 Half-round the mantling night is drawn, 
 
 Purple fringed with even and dawn. 
 
 Hesper hateth Phosphor, evening hateth morn.' 
 
 Here, also, is the spirited tribute to ' Kate,' 
 for whom, the poet says, 
 
 ' I would pierce 
 The blackest files of clanging tight, 
 And strongly strike to left and right, 
 In dreaming of my lady's eyes ' — 
 
 a tribute which surely is as well ' worth pre- 
 serving ' as the address to ' Rosalind,' which 
 now finds a place among the ' Works.' 
 
 Then there are the numerous fugitive 
 poems, commencing with 1831, in which 
 year the poet contributed three pieces to 
 ' The Gem.' Of these, the • Anacreontics,' 
 though a trifle, might well be perpetuated; 
 as might also the sonnet published in ' Friend-
 
 Disjecta Membra Poetce. 47 
 
 ship's Offering,' in 1833, wherein the reader 
 is exhorted to 
 
 ' Give up wholly 
 Thy spirit to mild-minded melancholy,' 
 
 and wherein we are told that, 
 
 ' In the middle of the sombre valley, 
 The crisped waters whisper musically.' 
 
 ' The New Timon and the poets ' (which 
 belongs to 1846) will, of course, never be 
 reprinted, because the quarrel to which it 
 owed its birth was afterwards closed ; but it 
 is so full of admirable passages that it must 
 always remain one of the jewels of our satiric 
 treasury. The pictures of ' The old Timon 
 with his noble heart,' and of 'The padded 
 man that wears the stays,' must ever linger, 
 with other lines, in the memory of the stu- 
 dent. So, too, with the sonnet to Macready 
 (185 1 ). How comes it that this is not to 
 be found in the collected • Works ' ? What 
 could be better than the references to Shake- 
 speare's ' bland and universal eye,' and to 
 
 ' Brainless pantomime, 
 And those gilt gauds men-children swarm to see'?
 
 48 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 The sonnet is given in Macready's 'Life,' 
 but it ought to receive both house-room and 
 honour in the authorised editions of ' Tenny- 
 son.' 
 
 Nor does the list of desirable reproductions 
 by any means end here. The Laureate has 
 rescued from decay ' The Third of February, 
 1852,' and the first verse of ' Hands All 
 Round ' (of the same year), adding to the 
 latter a couple of new verses ; but he has 
 ignored ' Britons, Guard your Own ' (also of 
 1852), and has left 'Riflemen, form !' (1859), 
 — or ' The War,' as it was called — to find a 
 resting-place where best it can. Yet would 
 one plead for the re-issue of ' Britons. Guard 
 your Own !' if only for the sake of such lines 
 
 as — 
 
 ' God save the Nation, 
 The toleration, 
 And the free speech that makes a Briton known ;' 
 
 and for the reproduction of ' The War,' if 
 
 only for the sake of such stirring quatrains 
 
 as — 
 
 ' Let your reforms for a moment go, 
 
 Look to your butts and take good aims.
 
 Disjecta Membra Poetce. 49 
 
 Better a rotten borough or so, 
 
 Than a rotten fleet or a city in flames !' 
 
 Moreover, who can fail to regret the omis- 
 sion, from ' Hands All Round,' of so vigorous 
 an appeal as this : 
 
 ' Gigantic daughter of the West, 
 
 We drink to thee across the flood ; 
 We know thee and we love thee best, 
 
 For art thou not of British blood ? 
 Should war's mad blast again be blown, 
 
 Permit not thou the tyrant powers 
 To fight thy mother here alone, 
 
 But let thy broadsides roar with ours.' 
 
 But I need not go further with the cata- 
 logue. It will be seen that, coming no fur- 
 ther down than 1859, there are neglected 
 poems of Tennyson which, if reprinted — as 
 they deserve to be, and should be, for the 
 advantage of the public — would make up a 
 goodly volume by themselves. And it is to 
 be hoped that, if they do not all figure in 
 forthcoming volumes issued by the poet, they 
 may eventually be put within reach of others 
 than those fortunate persons who possess 
 the earlier editions of his poems.
 
 POPULAR HISTORY. 
 
 HE writer of a recent monograph on 
 Henry V. confesses to the impossi- 
 bility of drawing a portrait of that 
 monarch which, however historically accurate, 
 should have any chance of being accepted in 
 preference to that which was sketched so long 
 ago by Shakespeare. The poet's Prince Hal 
 is, as Mr. Church, the writer in question, says, 
 ' one of those creations of genius which, be 
 they true to history or untrue, never lose their 
 hold on the minds of men.' While, there- 
 fore, Mr. Church shows there is everything 
 to prove that Henry was not the young 
 roysterer depicted by the dramatist, and that 
 the Judge Gascoigne incident, for example, 
 in all probability never took place, it is not 
 to be hoped — or feared — that the Prince Hal
 
 Popular History. 5 1 
 
 of Shakespeare will ever be eradicated from 
 the popular mind. Mr. Church may give an 
 exposition of the facts ; but what are the 
 facts of actuality compared with those of the 
 imagination ? We forget or falsify the one ; 
 we have an abiding memory of the other. 
 
 The worst of it — if there be any ' worst ' 
 about it — is that this matter of Prince Hal 
 is only one among very many. Not only in 
 this one crucial case does Shakespeare's 
 fantasy influence the thoughts of men. It is 
 remarkable how long and broad a tract of 
 English history is dominated for all time by 
 the genius of Shakespeare. For Englishmen, 
 almost the whole Middle Age is coloured by 
 the working of his intellect. John, Richard 
 II., the fourth, fifth and sixth Henrys, the 
 fourth and fifth Edwards, Richard III. and 
 Henry VIII. — all these monarchs are central 
 figures of plays by him, and they are sur- 
 rounded by a crowd of subsidiary persons, 
 every one of them lifelike, and every one of 
 them duly impressed upon the mental retina 
 of the people. And the impression is felt 
 
 4—2
 
 52 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 not only directly, but in the form of a mass of 
 tradition handed down through three cen- 
 turies. Not only through reading and public 
 representation, but through heredity, have 
 Englishmen gained their ideas of the English 
 worthies and unworthies whom Shakespeare 
 has put upon his canvas. The genius of our 
 great actors and the general vividness of 
 dramatic performance have taught history 
 after a fashion which many know to be un- 
 trustworthy, but whicli all recognise as 
 fascinating and irresistible. 
 
 The glamour of the footlights is not to be 
 repelled. There are many now living for whom 
 the Philip and Mary of Lord Tennyson, as 
 enacted by Mr. Irving and Miss Bateman, will 
 remain the only Philip and Mary they know. 
 The Laureate's ' Harold ' has never been re- 
 presented, but portions of his ' Becket' have 
 been seen, and, for those who saw them, his 
 Archbishop and his Henry, his Eleanor and 
 his Rosamond, will no doubt always be more 
 or less real. So with the Charles I. and 
 Cromwell of Mr. Wills, and the William III.
 
 Popular History. 53 
 
 of Tom Taylor. Was there ever a more striking 
 caricature than Mr. Wills's Lord Protector ? 
 Does anyone recognise in Taylor's William 
 the actual little Dutchman of historic record ? 
 It is not worth while answering the questions. 
 The Princess Elizabeth of ' : Twixt Axe and 
 Crown,' and the Queen Elizabeth of Giaco- 
 metti, are alike mere creatures of the intellect; 
 but they live and move in the memories of 
 playgoers. 
 
 Even more powerful in its effect upon the 
 public is the prose fiction which is dubbed 
 historical. While the play has its thousands 
 of votaries, the novel has its hundreds of 
 thousands. One begins to read the latter 
 long before one is permitted to see the 
 former ; romance has stored our minds with 
 its seductive imaginings long before the stage 
 has bodied forth to us the men and women 
 of the past. Of chronological necessity we 
 all had mastered Bulwer's ' Harold ' before 
 Tennyson's drama was available for perusal. 
 Of late years, too, how many have received 
 their most vivid impressions of the times of
 
 54 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 William the Norman from the pages of 
 ' Hereward the Wake ' — pages so much more 
 alluring than any which Mr. Freeman, vigor- 
 ous as is his style, has ever penned, or is ever 
 likely to pen. To whom, again, does the 
 public owe the greater debt in the matter of 
 enlightenment as to the tone and colour of 
 Elizabethan England — to Mr. Froude, or to 
 the romancist who wrote not only ' Here- 
 ward,' but ' Westward Ho !' ? Mr. Froude 
 has had his popular successes ; he has in- 
 duced many excellent people to modify their 
 conception of Henry VIII., so far as to con- 
 ceive that he may not have been quite so 
 black as he was painted. But the Eliza- 
 bethan England of popular belief is that 
 which Kingsley drew, not that which Mr. 
 Froude has attempted to portray. 
 
 From Bulwer, again, the public has received, 
 in ' The Last of the Barons,' sketches of Eng- 
 land under the later Plantagenets only less 
 attractive, in the general opinion, than those 
 obtained from the more inspired page of Shake- 
 speare. For them, at any rate, the King-maker
 
 Popular History. 5 5 
 
 of Bulwer is practically the only King-maker 
 they have ever known. Even Harrison Ains- 
 worth, man of mere talent as he was, contrived, 
 by dint of a certain picturesqueness, to sway the 
 fancy of the British boy and youth in favour 
 of his views of more than one character in 
 English history. For very many, Thackeray's 
 1 Esmond ' is responsible for all they know or 
 think of the historical personages who figure 
 in that work of genius. The Gordon Riots 
 live in ' Barnaby Rudge '; while, in the field 
 of fiction, Sir Walter Scott has long held, as 
 a teacher of history, the position which 
 Shakespeare has for 300 years held in the 
 field of the drama. Our Richard I., our 
 James I., and many more, are, in effect, 
 those of Scott, and of Scott only — distinct 
 altogether from the actual men of actual 
 life. 
 
 Moreover, the public has, in its time, been 
 subjected to influences more powerful even 
 than novels and the stage — the influences 
 which surrounded it in its infancy and its 
 youth ; the influences of the cheap school-
 
 56 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 book and the sentimental rhymes. On these 
 all popular history has been and is still based. 
 The average person, when he thinks of earlier 
 English history, thinks of Alfred and the 
 cakes, of Canute and the rising tide, of Rufus 
 and Sir Walter Tyrell, of Henry and the 
 lampreys (tempered by the tale which tells us 
 how, after the loss of his son by drowning, he 
 ' never smiled again '), of Queen Eleanor and 
 the bowl of poison, of Coeur de Lion and 
 Blondel — in a word, of all the old picturesque 
 legends, put before us just because they were 
 picturesque, and remembered by us now for 
 the same reason. If we want our children 
 to be wiser than their fathers, we must reform 
 the school manuals, and put away Cowper, 
 and Mrs. Hemans, and other gentle souls who 
 made twaddle out of unhistorical anecdote. 
 We must take care that the former are founded 
 upon positive and undoubted fact, and that 
 the latter are not read until the youthful 
 scholar has had time to acquire the infor- 
 mation which shall make them not mis- 
 leading.
 
 Popular History. 57 
 
 On the other hand, why take the trouble to 
 do either of these things ? 
 
 ' " Old things need not be therefore true " — 
 O brother men, nor yet the new.' 
 
 Suppose that the ' history ' of our boyhood were 
 a mass of insubstantial fable — suppose even 
 that, in Walpole's phrase, it were ' all lies '? 
 Suppose that Richard III. was really a states- 
 man, and Henry VIII. really a respectable 
 person ; that Elizabeth was not so ' good ' as 
 we have fancied, nor her sister so bad ; sup- 
 pose, indeed, that all the latest discoveries 
 are true. What then ? What should we gain 
 by banishing the good old stories, and putting 
 nothing in their place save some irrefragable 
 commonplaces ? Moreover, the end is not 
 yet. The personages who have of late been 
 whitewashed may, by-and-by, be smirched 
 again ; some record may leap to light by 
 which they shall once more be shamed. We 
 live in times of revolution, literary as well as 
 political, and it seems scarcely worth while 
 to take formal note of every turn of the 
 wheel.
 
 AMENITIES OF AUTHORS. 
 
 CARCELY a week passes nowadays 
 but some author accuses another of 
 plagiarism, either from the former's 
 own works, or from those of other people. 
 This is now the commonest form that 
 literary jealousy assumes. That it was 
 always more or less prevalent need scarcely 
 be said. When a writer brought out a book, 
 the handiest thing possible was to accuse 
 him of having ' conveyed ' it from somebody. 
 The literature of satire is full of such asper- 
 sions. There is, for example, that quatrain 
 upon ' modest Moore,' who, we are told, 
 ' always smiles whenever he recites ' ; 
 
 ' He smiles, you think, approving what he writes ; 
 And yet in this no vanity is shown — 
 A modest man may like what's not his own.' 
 
 So with the lines which Peter Pindar is said to
 
 A menities of A utJwrs. 59 
 
 have written about the dramatist O'Keefe, who 
 was declared to have stolen half his thunder : 
 
 ' I say, O'Keefe, thou art no thief; 
 Such stuff was never writ before.' 
 
 But whereas the literary gibes of to-day 
 rarely go beyond this accusation of pilfering, 
 tempered and varied by the occasional ascrip- 
 tion of sheer ignorance, former generations of 
 authors were wont to indulge in a much more 
 miscellaneous series of satiric charges. Great 
 ingenuity was shown by them in the mode of 
 their assaults. Nothing was too sacred to be 
 touched upon. They sped their darts wher- 
 ever they saw a chink in the enemy's armour. 
 They would begin, for instance, with their 
 victim's real name or nom de guerre, as in 
 Byron's jeu cfesprit on Tom Moore and his 
 pseudonym, 'Thomas Little;' or they would 
 let fly at the popular designation of a whole 
 body of bards, as in the case of the Lake 
 poets : 
 
 ' They came from the Lakes — an appropriate quarter 
 For poems diluted with plenty of water.' 
 
 Sometimes they would be content with poking
 
 60 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 fun at the titles of books, as in the anony- 
 mous couplet on some verses called 
 1 Trifles ': 
 
 ' Paul, I have read your book, and, though you 
 
 write ill, 
 I needs must praise your most judicious title.' 
 
 It was written of Tom Paine's ' Age of Reason ' 
 that ' 'Tis treason he means, and he's right to 
 a T.' Of Shelley's ' Prometheus Unbound ' 
 Hook declared that the poem was likely 
 always to be styled so, 
 
 1 For surely an age would be spent in the finding 
 A reader so weak as to pay for the binding !' 
 
 Of Scott's dull poem, ' The field of Water- 
 loo,' Lord Erskine said that ' On Waterloo's 
 ensanguined plain ' 
 
 ' None, by sabre or by shot, 
 Fell half so flat as Walter Scott.' 
 
 And it was in very much the same spirit that 
 Lady Blessington, pronouncing on Rogers's 
 finely illustrated 'Italy,' suggested that the 
 work would surely have been dished had it 
 not been for the plates.
 
 Amenities of Authors. 61 
 
 Although, however, all this was personal 
 enough, it is as nothing compared with the 
 lengths to which some critics have gone 
 in satirizing their opponents or their rivals. 
 They have passed beyond their names and 
 books, and made much out of the private 
 employments of their unhappy victims. 
 Everybody knows what fun used to be de- 
 rived from Sir John Hill's dual position as 
 physician and dramatist. Garrick's line, ' His 
 farces are physic, his physic a farce is,' is 
 familiar in our minds and mouths. Not so 
 well known is the player-rhymer's quatrain on 
 the same fruitful subject : 
 
 ' Thou essence of dock, and valerian, and sage, 
 At once the disgrace and the pest of your age, 
 The worst that we wish thee, for all thy sad crimes, 
 Is to take thine own physic and read thine own 
 rhymes.' 
 
 This, again, was capped by another satirist, 
 who suggested that if Sir John took his 
 physic first he would never read his rhymes. 
 Sir Richard Blackmore, physician and poet, 
 met with just the same unkind fate in his 
 own day — and later, for it was Tom Moore
 
 62 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 who described him as passing his time be- 
 twixt death and epics, ' scribbling and killing 
 all day long.' In like manner it was con- 
 sidered eminently discreditable to Stephen 
 Duck, author of ' The Shunamite ' and other 
 poems, that he had been originally a thresher. 
 In due time he entered the Church, and was 
 appointed by the Queen to an army chap- 
 laincy ; whereupon Swift wrote : 
 
 ' The thresher Duck could o'er the Queen prevail ; 
 The proverb says, " No fence against a flail." 
 From threshing corn he turns to thresh his brains, 
 For which Her Majesty allows him grains : 
 Though 'tis confest, that those who ever saw 
 His poems think them all not worth a straw.' 
 
 Kelly, the dramatist, was at one time a 
 corset-maker, and so an anonymous writer, 
 addressing Goldsmith, observed that if Kelly 
 found fault with the shape of ' Noll's Muse,' 
 and thought that it played too loosely, he 
 would surely never refuse to present it with a 
 new pair of stays ! 
 
 Worse than this, however, remains behind. 
 The satirists have not stopped here ; they 
 have gone beyond the occupations of authors
 
 Amenities of Authors. 63 
 
 to their individual dispositions and private 
 characteristics generally. Ben Jonson twitted 
 John Marston with personal cowardice. John 
 Lilburn, the pamphleteer, was said to be so 
 quarrelsome that if John and Lilburn were 
 buried together they would have a set-to in 
 their grave ! Sir John Denham chaffed 
 Cowley about his dull conversation, and 
 Killigrew about his dull plays. Dryden was 
 attacked by his brother-scribes for what they 
 called his apostasy. Warren, the novelist, 
 was laughed at by Sir George Rose for his 
 vanity. When there was nothing else to be 
 done, authors have been favoured with vague 
 abuse, implying for the most part that they 
 are fools. When George II. made Cibber 
 his Court poet, he was charged by Pope with 
 making a favourite of an ass. Johnson said, 
 more politely, that Nature formed the poet 
 for the King ; while an anonymous writer 
 intimated that, though in the old times a 
 monarch would have both a poet and a fool, 
 King George, more frugal, had secured both 
 in one. So much for Cibber, who, as a
 
 64 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 matter of fact, was as able a man as any of 
 his assailants. Byron's cousin, Lord Carlisle, 
 was not, it may be admitted, a great man of 
 letters ; yet he was hardly deserving of the 
 cruel things written about him both by Byron 
 and by Lord Holland, the former of whom 
 characterized him bluntly as ' a bore.' There 
 was more urbanity of phrase in the lines on 
 one of M. P. Andrews' plays : 
 
 ' Andrews, 'tis said, a comedy has writ, 
 Replete with novelty, replete with wit ; 
 If wit it has, to both I will agree, 
 For wit from Andrews must lie novelty.' 
 
 But even this amounts, practically, to calling 
 the playwright a dull man. 
 
 Among the more famous attacks of author 
 upon author are those by Byron on Southey 
 and Cobbett, by James Smith on Byron, by 
 Sneyd on Moore, and so on, and so on; 
 but among the most delightful of literary 
 amenities are the onslaughts by authors upon 
 critics, translators, memoir-writers, and other 
 natural enemies. Very bitter indeed was 
 Pope on Bentley, and very amusing was
 
 A men ities of A utJwrs. 6 $ 
 
 Tom Moore on Jeffrey; while anonymous 
 writers made themselves keenly felt in their 
 strictures upon Dr. Parr and Lewis Theo- 
 bald. In Carthy's edition of Horace the 
 original text is given on one page, and the 
 translation on the opposite page ; whereupon 
 Swift made Carthy say : 
 
 ' This I may boast, which few e'er could, 
 Half of my book at least is good.' 
 
 Burns called Elphinston's version of Martial 
 'murder,' and the same comment was made 
 on Trapp's translation of Virgil. The plague 
 of diarists and ' recollections '-writers is very 
 much greater nowadays than formerly ; still, 
 it is not peculiar to these times, and Thomas 
 Hood could write thus, half a century ago, 
 of Lady Charlotte Bury's 'Diary Illustrative of 
 the Times of George IV.': 
 
 • That flesh is grass is now as clear as day 
 To any but the merest purblind pup ; 
 Death cuts it down, and then, to make her hay, 
 My Lady Bury comes and rakes it up.' 
 
 eg
 
 THE REIGN OF ROMANCE. 
 
 ATTENTION is frequently called to 
 the fact that the most popular 
 fictions of to-day belong to the 
 region of the fanciful. Romance, it is pointed 
 out, reigns triumphant at the circulating 
 libraries. And no doubt, for the moment, that 
 is so. Nor is the fact so very remarkable as 
 it is sometimes thought. It would have 
 been strange indeed if there had not 
 speedily been a reaction against the species 
 of story-telling which has so long been 
 paramount among us. For a considerable 
 period the ' bread and butter ' and ' blood 
 and thunder ' schools have had things very 
 much their own way. Of late the so-called 
 realistic school has had an occasional innings, 
 but, for the most part, the field has been
 
 The Reign of Romance. 67 
 
 occupied by the ' domestic ' and the ' sensa- 
 tional ' — the story of the stable and the 
 still-room, the tale of the tremendous and 
 the terrible. The readers of fiction have 
 alternated, in the main, between these two 
 literary genres, and it was to be expected that 
 there would be a rebound from work so 
 theatrical on the one hand and so namby- 
 pamby on the other. The need for some- 
 thing more genuinely imaginative was too 
 clamant to remain long unsupplied. 
 
 But, in truth, there has always been, and 
 always will be, a demand for the romantic 
 in prose narrative. It may be more obvious 
 or persistent at one time than at another, 
 but it always exists to some extent. Among 
 the young it never expires altogether, and 
 it grows in earnestness with the growth of 
 the mind. The boy who has been fed on 
 ' Robinson Crusoe ' and ' Gulliver's Travels ' 
 insists upon having their modern equivalents, 
 and the production of stories of hairbreadth 
 'scapes by flood and field keeps the pens of 
 a dozen or more writers perpetually at work. 
 
 5—2
 
 6S Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Probably no boys' books of recent years 
 have been so highly esteemed as those of 
 Jules Verne; and they, we all know, are 
 romantic in the extreme, soaring to heights 
 of fancy to which the Aimards, the Mayne 
 Reids, the Edgars, and the Kingstons of the 
 past, never by any possibility aspired. The 
 feminine mind is even more imaginative 
 than the male, and girls in their teens absorb 
 at every pore the most fantastic narratives 
 on which they can lay their hands. The 
 adult intellect, naturally, is more balanced ; 
 but, probably, the older that one gets, the 
 more prone one is to put aside the realistic 
 representations of life in favour of the 
 fanciful. The more keenly we feel that 
 the romance is going out of our own existence, 
 the more desirous we are to seek it and enjoy 
 it in the realm of fiction. 
 
 It is extremely likely that hundreds of 
 very excellent people are devoted to literature 
 of this sort without knowing it. They read 
 an infinitude of what they, and others, call 
 simply ' novels,' without stopping to dis-
 
 The Reign of Romance. 69 
 
 tinguish what kind of stories they are. And 
 yet the difference between the novel and the 
 romance ought to be readily discernible. 
 There is nothing in common between the 
 two except that they are the products of the 
 invention. The kinds of invention employed 
 are obviously distinct. The novelist takes 
 the characters and events of every day, and 
 invents new combinations for them. He 
 does not supply his own material : that is 
 furnished for him by nature. All he has 
 to do is to present it to the reader in fresh 
 forms. To a certain extent he is a photo- 
 grapher ; his art consists in the skill with 
 which he arranges the details. This much is 
 certain — that he must not go outside the 
 bounds of the possible or the probable. 
 And therein lies his limited sphere as 
 compared with that of the romancist, to 
 whose imaginative flights no bounds are 
 placed. The romancist is the 'chartered 
 libertine ' of fiction. Like the British army 
 he can go anywhere and do anything. He 
 can soar into the heavens above or dive into
 
 ?o Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 the earth beneath. While the novelist is 
 chained to the surface of society, the 
 romancist can, if he chooses, descend with 
 his fascinated readers into ' the waters that 
 are under the earth.' 
 
 Broadly speaking, romance may be divided 
 into tales of adventure and tales of fantasy. 
 Sometimes, indeed, the adventure and the 
 fantasy are combined, as in the story of that 
 Peter Wilkins who wandered into the land 
 of the flying men and women, and took one 
 of the latter to wife. Similar elements are to 
 be found in the immortal ' Gulliver,' though 
 in that case the fantasy has a satiric origin 
 as well as a satiric moral. There is, as every- 
 body remembers, a soupcofi of the super- 
 natural in ' The Castle of Otranto.' There is 
 much more than a suspicion of it in the oft- 
 mentioned ' Frankenstein,' whose creation of 
 a mechanical human monster is clearly 
 abnormal. In ' Vathek ' the inventive 
 quality is of the ' Arabian Nights ' order ; 
 in ' Zanoni ' it is of the vaguely mystic kind, 
 which reappears, intensified and even more
 
 The Reign of Romance. yi 
 
 effective, in the ' Strange Story ' of the same 
 author. In ' Elsie Venner ' we have the 
 prototype of many ' creepy ' fictions, in which 
 there is much more fantasy than adventure. 
 Of fantasy, pure and simple, there could 
 hardly be better examples than are furnished 
 by the ' Phantastes ' of Mr. George Mac- 
 Donald, and the speculative narratives (such 
 as ' The Little Pilgrim ') of Mrs. Oliphant. 
 In the latter stories the writer may be said 
 to have given freer rein to her fancy, in 
 the attempted exploration of the unseen and 
 the unknown, than even the boldest of her 
 contemporaries. 
 
 The romance of adventure has always 
 obtained in England — from the days of 
 'Amadis de Gaul' and 'Ogier le Danois' 
 until now. It became native and literary in 
 the time of Elizabeth, to which we owe not 
 only the ' Arcadia,' but such works as Lyly's 
 ' Rosalynde ' (the origin of ' As You Like It ') 
 and Greene's ' Pandosto ' (the germ of ' The 
 Winter's Tale '), all of them partaking some- 
 what of the ' pastoral ' tone. With Mrs.
 
 72 Rambles in Book- Land. 
 
 Behn's 'Oronooko ' the romance took a new 
 departure and a broader scope ; and by-and- 
 by came ' Robinson Crusoe,' in all its 
 wonderful freshness, as the precursor of ' The 
 Hermit ' (Philip Quarll), and innumerable 
 other tales of life in solitude. The story 
 of mystery and blood was luridly introduced 
 in ' The Romance of the Forest ' and ' The 
 Monk ;' and then arrived the era of the 
 historical fiction, made illustrious by Scott, 
 distinguished by Lytton and by Kingsley, and 
 interesting, if not notable, by Miss Porter, 
 G. P. R. James, Harrison Ainsworth, and the 
 like. The romance of the sea flourished 
 under the auspices of Marryat and Cooper, 
 and that of the battle-field under the regime 
 of Lever and Maxwell. Peacock, Thackeray, 
 Dickens, and Disraeli all contributed some- 
 thing to romantic story ; so did Charles 
 Reade ; and so have Ouida, Mr. Wilkie 
 Collins, Mr. Blackmore, Mr. Shorthouse, and 
 the authors of ' Treasure Island ' and ' She.' 
 Nor is it likely that there will ever be a lack 
 of romantic fiction. The tales of adventure
 
 The Reign of Romance. 73 
 
 may become fewer and fewer as the remoter 
 parts of the world become more and more 
 familiar and common, but as yet we are very 
 far from any such consummation. There 
 is still plenty of room, both by land and by 
 sea, for narratives of pluck and hardship. 
 And as for the tales of fantasy, there can 
 never be a limit to their tether. The 
 imagination cannot be tied down, and 
 Campbell's ' last man,' surrounded by the 
 wreck of worlds, could still weave into 
 narrative the conceptions of his brain. 
 Probably, as the material for novels grows 
 more difficult to obtain, romances will be 
 more frequently essayed ; and, in particular, 
 those that are born of the fancy will increase 
 and flourish.
 
 CUPID IN COMEDY. 
 
 HE British dramatist has at least 
 one incurable tendency. Over 
 and over again that not-always- 
 imaginative person has fallen back, for sub- 
 ject, upon what may be called the primary 
 passion — the passion of love. There are 
 other human sentiments and qualities which 
 playwrights have dealt with from time to 
 time ; but on none have they dwelt so often 
 and so lovingly as on this. Pride, vanity, 
 avarice, curiosity, lying, misanthropy, and a 
 hundred other characteristics have been made 
 the basis of comedy ; but Cupid has outdone 
 them all. He is irrepressible, and practically 
 dominates the stage. 
 
 Sometimes he has done so in his own 
 proper person. Apart from the recent comedy,
 
 Cupid in Comedy. 75 
 
 'That Doctor Cupid,' one remembers at 
 least a couple of modern burlesques in 
 which Cupid is the central figure, and half 
 a dozen or more in which he is an individual 
 of 'leading,' if not of 'light.' One remem- 
 bers, too, how one comic writer has drawn 
 him as he appeared ' in Camp,' and how 
 another — Blanchard Jerrold — has pictured 
 his behaviour ' in Waiting.' His 'Revenge,' 
 limned tragically by Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 was portrayed in the ' musical pastoral ' man- 
 ner by an eighteenth-century writer, and he 
 is to be traced in other woods and pastures 
 of the drama. Usually, however, he figures 
 not so much in his own form as in the ab- 
 stract quality which he represents. As 
 ' Love ' he rules not only the court, the 
 camp, and the grove, but the footlights. One 
 bold dramatist — Sheridan Knowles — had the 
 assurance to lay violent hands upon him and 
 claim him wholly as his own. ' Love ' was 
 the simple but sufficient, not to say ambitious, 
 name which Knowles gave to a play produced 
 by him at Covent Garden just half a century
 
 y6 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 ago. Therein he showed how affection levels 
 all, in this case throwing a noble lady into 
 the arms of a low-born secretary. 'Love,' 
 nevertheless, was rather a comprehensive 
 title for a play which did not propose to 
 exhaust the inexhaustible feeling after which 
 it was named. 
 
 So far as can be ascertained, Knowles 
 stands alone in the sublimity of his self-con- 
 fidence in christening a work by this significant 
 monosyllable. None of his predecessors ap- 
 pear to have had the temerity to monopolize 
 ' Love,' and of course none of his successors 
 have done so. The boldest of them has 
 been content to associate love with some 
 other quality or faculty, impressive or humor- 
 ous. ' Love and Honour,' for instance, has 
 been a favourite collocation. It has given a 
 title to a tragi-comedy by Davenant, to an 
 operatic piece of the last century, and, in our 
 own times, to an adaptation from the French 
 of Dumas fils. ' Love and War,' again, has 
 been the appellation bestowed on a tragedy 
 by one writer and a musical piece by another,
 
 Cupidin Comedy. Jj 
 
 and, in like manner, there have been a 
 tragedy and a ballad-opera both called ' Love 
 and Revenge.' Love has been coupled, 
 dramatically, with Charity, Duty, Fortune, 
 Friendship, Glory, Liberty, Loyalty, Money, 
 and Magic, among serious things; while, in 
 the purely comic vein, it has been connected 
 with such various matters as ' a Bottle ' (as in 
 Farquhar's piece), Folly, Gout, Half-pence (a 
 French notion), Hunger (by Maddison Mor- 
 ton), Rain, and the Toothache, to say 
 nothing of Law and Physic, as in the farce 
 by Kenney. 
 
 But the ingenuity of the playwrights has 
 not ended here. Recognising love as the 
 sheet-anchor of their craft, they have clung to 
 it under all sorts of circumstances, manifesting 
 the greatest cleverness in the choice and ex- 
 ploitation of its multitudinous phases. While, 
 on the one hand, the serious dramatists have 
 celebrated ' Love's Martyrdom ' (portrayed by 
 no fewer than three of them within the last 
 thirty-five years), ' Love's Sacrifice' (illustrated 
 both by John Ford and G. W. Lovell),
 
 78 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 ' Love's Cruelty,' ' Love's Victim,' and ' Love's 
 Triumph,' the more irresponsible writers have 
 turned their attention to the softer and more 
 diverting aspects of the passion — its Adven- 
 tures, its Cunning, its Contrivances, its Dis- 
 guises, and the like. Cibber wrote a piece 
 descriptive of ' Love's Last Shift.' ' Love's 
 Young Dream ' has naturally been illustrated 
 on the stage ; and the Alarms, the Cure, the 
 Dominion, the Frailties, the Ordeal of Love 
 have also engaged the attention of the 
 dramatist. There is, indeed, no character- 
 istic, no aspect of the passion which that 
 worthy has not, at some time or other, set 
 himself to exhibit as best he may. He has 
 displayed it under all conceivable circum- 
 stances — as 'Betrayed,' ' Dragooned,' 'With- 
 out Interest,' ' Restored,' ' Freed from Ignor- 
 ance and Folly,' 'At a Loss,' and 'Among 
 the Roses.' This last is rather a favourable 
 position in which to find it. Etherege pic- 
 tures it ' in a Tub,' Benjamin Griffin ' in a 
 Sack,' and an anonymous writer 'in a Puddle.' 
 It has been presented both ' in a Blaze,' and
 
 Cupid in Comedy. 79 
 
 ' in the Dark.' It has been seen 'in a Mist ' 
 and ' in a Hurry,' ' in a Convent ' and ' in a 
 Camp,' 'in a Forest' and ' in a Wood,' 'in a 
 Village ' and ' in the City,' ' in Disguise,' ' in 
 a Riddle,' and 'in Limbo.' Mr. Boucicault and 
 the late Charles Mathews both presented it 
 to the public ' in a Maze.' And these include 
 by no means all the situations in which it has 
 been brought before the reader or spectator. 
 There could be no more convincing testi- 
 mony to the infinite variety of the sentiment 
 to which playwrights have devoted so much 
 of their time and ability. It seems inex- 
 haustible. There is ever some new point of 
 view from which to regard it. Insuperable 
 is its power. ' Love is Blind,' says Gilbert a 
 Beckett ; but, en revanche, ' Love Wins,' say 
 Messrs. Savile Clarke and Du Terreaux ; it 
 'Laughs at Locksmiths,' cry Colman Jun. 
 and Kelly; it 'Makes a Man,' asserts Cibber; 
 it ' Crowns the End,' declares Tatham ; and 
 it ' Will Find out the Way,' proclaims more 
 than one authority. After this, who cares 
 though someone assert that ' Love's a
 
 80 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Jest,' or that ' Love's a Lottery and a 
 Woman the Prize? Though it be, in one 
 view, ' a Leveller,' in another it is ' the Best 
 Physician ' possible (an idea taken from 
 Moliere). Though there be 'Cupboard 
 Love,' there is yet ' Loyal Love '; though 
 ' First Love,' yet ' Second Love.' Love has 
 been painted at different times as 'Heroic,' 
 as ' Eccentric,' as ' Fatal,' as ' Secret,' as ' Pla- 
 tonic' While D'Urfey has preached 'Love 
 for Money,' Congreve has offered ' Love 
 for Love'; and if Shakespeare held that 
 ' Love's Labour's Lost,' Lover has assured us 
 that ' True Love can ne'er Forget.' Other 
 things connected with love — ' the Love 
 Charm,' ' the Love Chase,' ' the Love Lock,' 
 'the Love Match,' and 'the Love Test' — 
 have all been duly celebrated either in 
 comedy or in drama. We have been told of 
 ' the Family of Love,' ' the Game of Love,' 
 and ' the Play of Love.' A living dramatist 
 has written of ' the Love Story ' as if there 
 were only one in the world. ' Loved and 
 Lost ' is the title of one play, ' For Love and
 
 Cupid in Comedy. 8 1 
 
 Money ' of another. ' The Love-sick King » 
 has been a topic for tragic, as ' The Love-sick 
 Court ' has been for comic, treatment. A 
 last-century dramatist supplied a picture of 
 ' Loving Enemies,' while one of yesterday en- 
 gaged to limn for us ' The Loving Woman.' 
 
 There is a whole dramatic literature about 
 lovers. Cibber Jun. discoursed of 'the Lover ' 
 par excellence; Mrs. Manley showed him 
 ' Lost '; while a less notable writer depicted 
 him as ' His Own Rival.' The ' Lover by 
 Proxy ' has been seen, and we have been in- 
 troduced of late years to ' A Lyrical Lover.' 
 We have further been asked to interest our- 
 selves in a lover's ' Luck,' his ' Melancholy,' 
 his 'Prayers,' his 'Quarrels,' his 'Watch,' 
 and what not ; while more generally our sym- 
 pathy has been solicited for ' Lovers' Amaze- 
 ments,' their ' Resolutions,' their ' Vows,' and 
 other belongings of theirs. There are, in 
 fact, no bounds to the fascinating subject. 
 Love's facets are practically illimitable. Turn 
 the gem how we will, it shines with undimin- 
 ished lustre. 
 
 6
 
 BARDS IN THE BALL-ROOM. 
 
 OME time ago there was a strenuous 
 discussion in the newspapers and 
 elsewhere as to the exact locality 
 of the famous ' dance ' which preceded the 
 Battle of Waterloo, and which Byron has 
 immortalized in a too-well-known passage. 
 
 Somehow or other, balls have a knack of 
 becoming historical. All sorts of notable 
 things have happened in connection with 
 them. Kings have been assassinated at 
 them : they are notable in the record of 
 love and intrigue. Landor, for instance, has 
 poetized the brilliant entertainments at 
 
 which, 
 
 ' Starchly mild, 
 Upon her high-heel'd Essex smiled 
 The brave Queen Bess.'
 
 Bards in the B all-Room. 83 
 
 In the same way, Gray — the poet of the 
 ' Elegy ' — has given distinction to that master 
 of deportment, Sir Christopher Hatton, 
 telling how 
 
 ' The grave Lord Keeper led the brawls — 
 The seals and maces danced before him.' 
 
 Sir Christopher, it may be remembered, 
 figures likewise in the ' Ingoldsby Legends,' 
 where we are told how he organized a grand 
 * house-warming,' and, at the ball which 
 formed a portion of it, entertained a bad 
 angel unawares. It might, indeed, be pos- 
 sible to trace the development of dancing in 
 the products of the poets. In the slim 
 volume which contains the verse of Catherine 
 Fanshawe may be read an elegy on the ' Final 
 Subversion of the Minuet ;' while the rise of 
 the waltz into popularity was made, as every- 
 body knows, the occasion of a fulmination 
 by the scandalized author of ' Don Juan.' 
 
 Certain it is that balls and ball-rooms have 
 a place, permanent and firmly fixed, in 
 English literature. We meet with them at 
 every turn. Some fictitious ' revels ' are as 
 
 6—2
 
 84 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 real to us as anything which actually hap- 
 pened. There is, for instance, that ' old- 
 accustomed feast ' at which Romeo and Juliet 
 first met and loved. Who, again, can ever 
 forget that wedding festivity — described for 
 us by Suckling — at which the bride so 
 graciously distinguished herself, dancing in 
 such a way that 
 
 ' No sun upon an Easter Day 
 Was half so fine a sight '? 
 
 By the side of that delightful ceremony may 
 not improperly be placed that other wedding 
 — the wedding of Shon Maclean — of whose 
 saltatory glories Mr. Robert Buchanan has 
 sung, in strains as humorous as they are 
 vivid. In the interval, Matthew Prior told 
 the story of that Lady Kitty Hyde (afterwards 
 Duchess of Queensberry) who complained 
 that, at balls, her sister Lady Jane (afterwards 
 Countess of Essex) 'made all the rout, 
 bringing home hearts by dozens,' while she 
 (Lady Kitty) was not allowed any such 
 favourable chances. It was to a ball, it will 
 be recollected, that Apollo, in Leigh Hunt's
 
 Bards in the Ball- Room. 85 
 
 ' Feast of the Violets,' invited all the blue- 
 stockings of the poet's day. The dances at 
 which Praed met his famous ' Belle ' and 
 equally famous ' Partner ' are as actual as 
 anything in life ; and who could fail to re- 
 member ' Mr. Moloney's Account of the Ball 
 given to the Nepaulese Ambassador,' as 
 related in Thackeray's best Irish lingo ? 
 
 ' With flags and shawls for these Nepauls 
 
 They hung the room of Willis up, 
 And decked the walls, and stairs, and halls 
 
 With roses and with lilies up ; 
 And Jullien's band it tuck its stand 
 
 So sweetly in the middle there, 
 And soft bassoons played heavenly chunes, 
 
 And violins did riddle there.' 
 
 Remembering this, one thinks at once — such 
 is the association of ideas — of ' the flute, 
 violin, bassoon' which the roses heard all 
 night in Lord Tennyson's poem, on the 
 memorable occasion when ' the music clash'd 
 in the hall,' and when Maud's lover was 
 not so very far gone that he could not note 
 how, 
 
 ' Low on the sand and loud on the stone, 
 The last wheel echoed away.'
 
 86 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Praed had much to say in praise of the 
 
 dancing both of his ' Belle ' and of his 
 
 ' Partner.' But in that respect he has at 
 
 least been equalled by his brother bards. 
 
 The example was set, no doubt, in Florizel's 
 
 exquisite eulogy of Perdita's capacity as a 
 
 dancer. Coventry Patmore, in 'The Angel 
 
 of the House,' says of his lady-love that 
 
 1 Her motion the pensive soul of tune ex- 
 
 press'd,' while her ball-dress seemed 
 
 ' a breathing mist 
 From the fair form exhaled and shed.' 
 
 Mr. Cholmondeley Pennell declared of his 
 Lady Bell's feet that they ' looked as if they 
 dreamed a valse ;' and while Mr. Hamilton 
 Aide remarks, concerning his Beauty Clare, 
 1 What perfection in your waltzing !' Mr. W. 
 W. Story likewise asserts of the lady he un- 
 kindly characterized as ' a musical box,' that 
 ' She's perfect to whirl with in a waltz.' 
 
 Other poets have approached the ball-room 
 in a different spirit. Some have seen in it 
 only a social mart in which the feminine 
 ' goods ' are disposed of to the highest bidder.
 
 Bards in the Bali-Room. 8y 
 
 That is Mr. Alfred Austin's point of view in 
 a vigorous passage in ' The Season.' Morti- 
 mer Collins tells also how his ' Little Laur- 
 ette ' waltzed one night with Sir Evelyn Vere, 
 and how she ' made up her mind in that very 
 dance' that 'she'd like to be Lady Vere.' 
 Where there are disturbing passions to be 
 raised, the ball-room raises them. In Mr. 
 Austin Dobson's ' Idyll of the Conservatory,' 
 Nellie shows herself as jealous of 'odious 
 Miss M'Tavish ' as Frank is of ' smoke-con- 
 suming Puffer.' There is sentiment amid the 
 dances, but it is often false, as Mr. Dobson 
 shows again in ' The Romaunt of the Rose ' 
 — the story of the flower which Edith gave to 
 Cyril, and which, by-and-by, Cyril, ' lighting 
 up his cynical cigar, tossed downward, scorn- 
 ing.' There can even be boredom in the ball- 
 room, as exhibited by that Transatlantic singer 
 who, though he went into supper with ' a silken 
 wonder ' by his side, thought the winter wind 
 not so cold as the smiles he won from her, 
 
 1 Nor the host's oldest wine so old 
 As our poor gabble sour and thin.'
 
 88 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Ball-room triumphs are not for everybody 
 — especially not for the physically slow or 
 heavy. Mr. Edmund Yates's hero, ' aged 
 forty,' finds, when he is introduced to Miss 
 Minnie Blair, ' on waltzing purposes bent,' 
 that she regards him with mingled pity and 
 astonishment, and promptly proclaims her- 
 self ' engaged.' Landor recognised in time 
 that through gallopade he could not swing 
 ' the entangling blooms of Beauty's spring,' 
 and admitted that he could not ' say the 
 tender thin^r, be't true or false.' A more 
 recent bard has shown that time must like- 
 wise disable the feminine devotee of the 
 dance — taking for example a Miss Thomson, 
 whose 'Seasons,' four in number, come to 
 a close without the landing of a connubial 
 fish : 
 
 • Miss Thomson's Season Number Four is gone ; 
 
 It brought experience she thought unpleasant ; 
 Miss Thomson, proud but beautilul, is on 
 The hooks at present.' 
 
 Of the arts by which young ladies have 
 sought to make themselves agreeable to
 
 Bards in the Bail-Room. 89 
 
 their partners, Thomas Haynes Bayly is 
 the laureate. Says one of his creations : 
 
 ' I know quite well what I should say 
 To partners at a ball ; 
 I've got a pretty speech or two, 
 And they would serve for all.' 
 
 The other sex, however, has not been spared, 
 and there is much well-deserved satire in 
 Professor Rankine's portrait of ' The Hand- 
 somest Man in the Room.' For the rest, the 
 county ball has been sung not only by Praed, 
 but by ' C.C.R.,' and the regimental ball has 
 been sketched for us by Thomas Hood. No 
 more brilliant ' Good-bye' to the ball-room has 
 been written than the familiar one by Edward 
 Fitzgerald ; while its ' Alphabet ' has been 
 compiled, once for all, by C S. Calverley, in 
 such lines as these : 
 
 O is the Olga (just then in its prime) : 
 P is the Partner who would not keep time : 
 Q's the Quadrille put instead of the Lancers : 
 R the Remonstrances made by the dancers : 
 S is the Supper, where all went in pairs : 
 T is the Twaddle they talked on the stairs.
 
 POCKET BOOKS. 
 
 OT ' pocket-books,' with a hyphen — 
 (so much significance can a hyphen 
 S ffiffia-fffl convey!) — not those eminently 
 useful but usually bulky pieces of manu- 
 facture in which the commercial and the 
 betting man find a solace. I do not mean any- 
 thing so prosaic — so dry, so literal. I recog- 
 nise, as one needs must, the practical service 
 done by the pocket-book of ordinary com- 
 merce, wherein men enter their engagements 
 and enclose their documents. There are people 
 who would not be complete without impedi- 
 menta of the sort — who certainly would not 
 be comfortable without them, and who, desti- 
 tute of them, would be a sight for gods and 
 men. A pocket-book means business, or 
 seems to do so. The stage tradesman or
 
 Pocket Books. 91 
 
 the stage lawyer would fare badly who could 
 not produce it with a flourish at the proper 
 moment. It is at once property and a 
 'property.' It is indispensable to many 
 people. But it is not what I mean — namely, 
 a ' book for the pocket ;' a. book which is 
 printed, and therefore really a book — a book 
 which can be carried about with ease and 
 pleasure. 
 
 Let it be admitted that the number of 
 those who patronize portable literature is 
 small. Those who rejoice in the possession 
 of pocket libraries are doubtless few. Such 
 things are certainly available ; one, very 
 charming at once in subject-matter, type, and 
 binding was but lately in course of publica- 
 tion. But it is not often, nevertheless, that 
 one sees a man bring a volume ' forth from 
 his breast and read it through ' — or anything 
 like it. Only now and then do we come 
 upon a studious person — in cab or omnibus, 
 in tramcar or railway carriage — who is re- 
 joicing in the perusal of a pocket classic. 
 And there are reasons why this should be so.
 
 92 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Reading ' from home ' is not usually an easy 
 process. The motion of the vehicle, what- 
 ever it may be, is apt to be disturbing. 
 Your cab oscillates to and fro ; your omnibus 
 groans and shakes distressingly ; in car or 
 carriage you are liable to constant interrup- 
 tion. Then, the light is often insufficient ; 
 on railways the aim of the lamp-porters is to 
 give you just enough illumination not to read 
 by. And so with omnibuses after dark — 
 even when you have managed craftily to get 
 close to the flickering flame, reading is often 
 a penance, or impossible. 
 
 And then, moralists will tell you not only 
 that you should be careful of your eyesight, 
 but. that, when you are abroad, you should 
 look about you and study your fellow-crea- 
 tures, men and women. You should be on 
 the qui vive for ' character.' Moreover, you 
 should give your brain some rest. But sup- 
 pose a man has studied character till he is 
 tired, and suppose it does not take long to 
 exhaust the psychological possibilities of 
 people in tramcars or omnibuses? Suppose
 
 Pocket Books. 93 
 
 the brain is too active to be still, and suppose 
 the capacity for boredom is infinitely great ? 
 Suppose, further, the newspaper has been 
 exhausted ? Is it not well to be able to 
 grope in a certain favourite pocket, and 
 thence to abstract an equally favourite tome ? 
 Well is it, perhaps, for those who can sleep 
 en voyage, if they have no fear of pickpockets, 
 or worse. But if one cannot doze, and 
 would otherwise be dull, how delightful to 
 be in a position to divert the mind by quiet 
 reading ! How many are the hours we pass 
 every year in going from place to place ; how 
 little we do with those hours, and yet how 
 much we might do with them ! We might 
 acquire in the course of them a liberal 
 education, if we did but set about it properly. 
 It is, of course, of the essence of a pocket 
 book that it should go into the pocket. 
 That is the first and most important of the 
 sine qua nons. And that, perhaps, is one of 
 the reasons why one sees so little casual 
 reading undertaken. The feminine pocket, 
 as a rule, is not capacious, or, if it be, it is
 
 94 Rambles in Book- Land. 
 
 so fitted with feminine treasures of a varied 
 kind that there is practically no room for the 
 most concentrated literature. And your 
 ' natty ' man, who thinks not unduly — I dare 
 say — of his ' appearance,' does not care to 
 impair the perfect outline of his closely- 
 buttoned coat by breaking it with the super- 
 ficies of a printed volume, however diminu- 
 tive it be. No ; your casual book reader must 
 either be fortunate in his supply of bijou litera- 
 ture, or else sufficiently enthusiastic not to be 
 affected by the destruction of the lines of 
 beauty described by his attire. It were pleasant, 
 I believe, for many, if the supply of books 
 fitted in size for the pocket were greater than 
 it is, and if, at the same time, the type most 
 often used for this purpose were not so small. 
 It does not follow, because the page is short 
 and narrow, that the letterpress should not 
 be both clearly and distinctly printed. 
 
 And then, granted that your pocket book 
 is right in size, it must be right in contents. 
 That, surely, is a vital matter. Not every- 
 thing is suited for occasional perusal. In
 
 Pocket Books. 95 
 
 this respect a pocket book is very like a bed- 
 side book. What is wanted is something 
 which can be both read and grasped in a brief 
 space of time. There are those who try to 
 read novels or tales in the odd moments 
 snatched while on the way from one point 
 to another. As well seek to read a philosophi- 
 cal treatise or a historical disquisition. No- 
 thing which requires sustained attention can 
 properly be perused in snatches and at 
 random. Attempt to compass a story in 
 this way, and you will make a most inglorious 
 jumble of the characters and incidents. 
 Treat a logician after the same fashion, and 
 you will fail to follow his argument. No ; the 
 books for the pocket are the books which 
 are scrappy — which deal in short lyrics, or 
 epigrams, or maxims, or anecdotes, or briefly- 
 stated facts that can be perused and 
 mastered in a moment. This is the only 
 species of literary fare which can, either 
 pleasantly or usefully, be consumed under 
 the peculiar circumstances. 
 
 And, of course, the contents of one's
 
 g6 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 favourite pocket books will be governed by 
 the idiosyncrasy of the individual. The 
 lover of poetry will patronize collections of 
 varied verse, or selections from favourite 
 authors, or those rhymers with whom brevity 
 has been the soul of wit — such as Herrick 
 and other cultivators of the ' epigraph.' The 
 student of human nature will turn to such 
 specimens of literary Liebig's Extract as the 
 maxims and 'sentences' which I discuss 
 elsewhere — always supposing that they 
 are accessible in the required shape. 
 The printed table talk of famous men 
 is also eminently calculated to delight 
 the spare minutes of the thoughtful way- 
 farer. All these things are to be acquired 
 almost at a glance, and they have, as a rule, 
 the great merit of being suggestive. They 
 not only give pleasure at the time, but set 
 one thinking. They supply just the stimulus 
 which is wanting, and thus enlighten and 
 enliven many a journey which might other- 
 wise be tedious.
 
 PERSONAL SATIRE. 
 
 FEW members of the Lower Cham- 
 ber have, during recent sessions, 
 stooped to that very abject weapon 
 — the calling of names, the affixing of op- 
 probrious epithets. There is but one step 
 further in the descensus Avemi, and that 
 is in the direction of alluding to personal 
 appearance. This is the extremest deep. It 
 is bad enough to insinuate that your adver- 
 sary is a fool or a liar, but that is as nothing 
 to making a reflection upon his face and 
 figure. The spretce injuria formce. is the most 
 poignant of all wrongs, and neither men nor 
 women ever forget or forgive it. An aspersion 
 of conduct or of motive — that is pardonable, 
 though hard to bear. But a reference to 
 physical peculiarity — that is dreadful. 
 
 7
 
 98 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 And it is so, mainly, because it is impos- 
 sible to repel it or ignore it. One may fancy 
 one's self clever and even wise ; one may 
 plume one's self on mental endowments, or 
 phases of character, which one does not 
 possess ; but to singularities of person one 
 cannot easily be blind. A squint, a broken 
 nose, unusual thinness, or phenomenal obesity 
 — these are things which their possessors 
 cannot overlook unless they be absolutely 
 fatuous. And, indeed, they are not allowed 
 to overlook them. They are forced to be 
 cognisant of them. No boy can go to school 
 without having his physical shortcomings 
 made very clear to him ; they are not 
 permitted to pass unnoticed when he goes to 
 college ; and when he grows to man's estate 
 there is always some genial good-natured 
 friend to make mild game of them. 
 
 It is baldness, apparently, which most 
 strikes the casual eye — save, of course, when 
 the victim's misfortune is hidden by his hat. 
 A man hairless as to his pate is dubbed 'a 
 polished gentleman,' and the groundlings 
 roar. This has been so, history tells us, from
 
 Personal Satire. 99 
 
 the earliest times. More than two centuries 
 ago a sufferer in this respect was told that 
 
 ' If by your hairs your vices numbered be, 
 Angels in heaven are not more pure than thee.' 
 
 Then, descending from the scalp, we come 
 first to the eyes, which, if they show a 
 tendency to regard each other, are at once 
 remarked upon. The unkindest things have 
 been, and are, said about those unfortunate 
 persons who have an obliquity of vision. 
 Everybody remembers Tom Moore's sneer 
 at a squinting poetess, who was said to confine 
 her gaze to no one Muse, but to have an eye 
 to all the Nine at once. And this may be 
 capped by an anonymous quatrain, arguing that 
 
 ' If ancient poets Argus prize, 
 Who boasted of a hundred eyes, 
 Sure greater praise to her is due, 
 Who looks a hundred ways with two.' 
 
 Then, again, there was that couplet — not 
 
 written, but quoted, by Moore — about a 
 
 doctor who, in addition to squinting, had a 
 
 large nasal organ : 
 
 * The reason why Doctor Dash squints, I suppose, 
 Is because his two eyes are afraid of his nose.' 
 
 7—2
 
 ioo Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Alas, poor nose ! — what fun has been poked 
 at you when you have not been of normal 
 size, length, and general contour ! The tip- 
 tilted variety has had the glamour of poetry 
 cast over it, but not so that which glories in 
 nothing but its length. That has been per- 
 secuted from the remotest periods. Cowper 
 adapted from the Greek the following on- 
 slaught on a (no doubt) inoffensive person — 
 inoffensive, that is, save for his nose : 
 
 ' Beware, my friend, of crystal brook 
 Or fountain, lest that hideous hook, 
 
 Thy nose, thou chance to see ; 
 Narcissus' fate would then be thine, 
 And self-detested thou wouldst pine, 
 
 As self-enamoured he.' 
 
 Then, in another quatrain from the same 
 classical source, we are shown at least two of 
 the disadvantages of noses too extensive : 
 
 ' Dick cannot blow his nose whene'er he pleases, 
 His nose so long is, and his arm so short ; 
 Nor ever cries, "God bless me !" when he sneezes — 
 He cannot hear so distant a report.' 
 
 It was not to be expected that the colour of 
 the nose should escape notice and remark,
 
 Personal Satire. ioi 
 
 especially when it has happened to be 
 rubicund. And so we find a satirist asking 
 how it is that in Clara's face the lily only has 
 a place, and suggesting that the absent rose 
 has gone to paint her husband's nose. 
 
 Such things will be. And, indeed, there 
 is no bound to the world's cruelty in these 
 matters. It is often said of a certain class 
 of countenance that it would make an ad- 
 mirable design for a door-knocker ; but 
 unkinder things than that, even, have been 
 uttered. Take, for instance, this, which 
 one is sorry to see attributed to an Imperial 
 pen : 
 
 ' With nose so long, and mouth so wide, 
 And those twelve grinders side by side, 
 Dick, with very little trial, 
 Would make an excellent sun-dial.' 
 
 And the ladies have been as hardly treated 
 as the gentlemen. In this respect chivalry 
 has been cast to the winds. A Greek satirist 
 wrote of a woman of his day : 
 
 ' Gallia, your mirror's false ; you could not bear, 
 If it were true, to see your image there !'
 
 102 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 And the German Lessing was guilty of this 
 
 scarcely less uncomplimentary performance : 
 
 ' A long way off, Lucinda strikes the men ; 
 As she draws near, 
 And one sees clear, 
 A long way off one wishes her again.' 
 
 To an English writer are attributed some 
 lines ' On an Ill-favoured Woman,' in which 
 he remarks upon the number of the patches 
 she wears, admits that they are necessary and 
 acceptable, but suggests that it would be still 
 better if she wore one big enough to hide her 
 face completely. 
 
 Stature and substance are two other 
 points on which the world is apt to insist in- 
 vidiously, reviling at once the extremes of 
 height and shortness, and those of thinness 
 and rotundity. Sydney Smith sketched Lord 
 Jeffrey as 
 
 ' Short, though not as fat, as Bacchus, 
 Riding on a little jackass ;' 
 
 and it was in reference to that ' tall dull man,' 
 Sir Thomas Robinson, that Chesterfield said 
 of his song that it should be witty and should 
 not be long. But fatness or leanness come in
 
 Personal Satire. 103 
 
 for the largest amount of chaffing comment. 
 There was an Oxford Fellow, named Tadlow, 
 whose obesity inspired countless epigrams : 
 
 1 Ten thousand tailors, with their length of line, 
 Strove, though in vain, his compass to confine ; 
 At length, bewailing their exhausted store, 
 Their packthread ceas'd, and parchment was no 
 
 more. 
 
 It was said, again, that 
 
 ' When Tadlow walks the streets the paviours cry, 
 " God bless you, sir !" and lay their rammers by.' 
 
 Of another very fat man it was asserted, very 
 similarly, that the paviours blessed his steps 
 where'er they came, while chair-men, dis- 
 mayed, fled the impending doom. Of a stout 
 elderly lady, who had asked for a definition 
 of ' space ' and ' time,' a satirist said, very 
 rudely, that if her ladyship would look at her 
 form and her face, she would gain excellent 
 notions of time and of space. But this vein 
 of humour, if humour it be, has been ex- 
 hausted. Of ' a very thin metaphysician ' it 
 was once written : 
 
 ' Thy face, in hieroglyphic style, 
 
 Seems just mark'd out ; thy waist a span ;
 
 104 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Thou sketch ! thou outline ! thou profile ! 
 Thou bas-relievo of a man !' 
 
 But perhaps the happiest bit of persiflage 
 
 directed against very attenuated people was 
 
 the following, of which the authorship is 
 
 anonymous : 
 
 1 St. Paul has declared that when persons, tho' twain, 
 Are in wedlock united, one flesh they remain ; 
 But had he been by when, like Pharoah's kine 
 
 pairing, 
 Dr. Douglas of Barnet espoused Miss Mainwaring, 
 The Apostle, no doubt, would have altered his tone, 
 And have said, " These two splinters shall now 
 make one bone." '
 
 THE STAGE HANDKERCHIEF. 
 
 T has been noted that Mr. Irving, 
 towards the close of his perform- 
 ance as Robert Macaire, introduces 
 a bit of expressive and suggestive 'business.' 
 He has just become aware of the presence 
 of his son, and is about to grasp him by the 
 hand ; but, before doing so, conscious of the 
 crimes which his own hand has committed, he 
 takes care to cover it with his handkerchief 
 before it meets the honest palm of his 
 innocent offspring. This avoidance of physical 
 contact is a happy idea, and has its due 
 effect. It is, I need scarcely say, only one 
 of very many stage incidents in which a 
 handkerchief has played an important part. 
 Mr. Irving, during his long career, and in 
 the course of his numerous impersonations,
 
 106 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 must often have made theatrical use of this 
 familiar article. And, in truth, what would 
 the stage be without its handkerchiefs, carried 
 by so many people and applied to so many 
 purposes? The mouchoir, in its various 
 forms, may be said to wave triumphantly 
 throughout the drama. 
 
 In some respects it is historical. One 
 thinks at once of Desdemona, and of the 
 1 napkin,' spotted with strawberries, which 
 was her first remembrance from the Moor, 
 and her loss of which gave Iago so fine an 
 opportunity. It was a wondrous handker- 
 chief, if all that Othello said of it be true. 
 An Egyptian charmer gave it to his mother ; 
 it was to have power, so long as she possessed 
 it, to preserve her husband's affection to her, 
 and when she lost it, that affection was to be 
 lost ; a sibyl, in her prophetic fury, sewed the 
 work, the worms were hallowed that did 
 breed the silk, and it was dyed in mummy 
 conserved by the skilful from maidens' hearts. 
 Surely this was the most marvellous of hand- 
 kerchiefs in dramatic literature. We know
 
 The Stage Handkerchief. 107 
 
 what effect it had on Desdemona's fate ; we 
 know how it dominates the third act of the 
 tragedy, and what occasions it gives to Iago 
 for impressive by-play. Then there is the 
 ' bloody napkin,' dyed in Orlando's blood, 
 which that sensational young man despatches 
 to Rosalind by means of Oliver, and which 
 causes that making-believe young lady to 
 counterfeit a faint so very successfully. 
 And, talking of Mr. Irving, one is reminded 
 of his speech, as Digby Grant, in reply to the 
 presentation made to him in the last act of 
 ' Two Roses,' and of the handkerchief which 
 he spreads over the head of Our Mr. Jenkins, 
 what time he addresses the little crowd 
 before him. This piece of ' business ' is not 
 quite worthy of the dignity of Digby Grant, 
 but Mr. Jenkins makes some capital out of 
 it, and so the incident is retained. What 
 Graves's handkerchiefs are to him in his 
 memorable interview with Lady Franklin, 
 everyone who has seen ' Money ' is aware. 
 Could any impersonator of the melancholy 
 widower be induced to part with articles
 
 108 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 whose successive appearances induce so many 
 laughs ? The contrast between the white 
 and the coloured emblems of sorrow and 
 emancipation is too ' fetching ' to be sur- 
 rendered without a struggle. 
 
 The truth is, the comedian, whether high 
 or 'low,' knows only too well how valuable 
 to him is the handkerchief with which he 
 can make comic play. The article is of more 
 practical utility to him than to any of his 
 masculine coadjutors, for all of whom, how- 
 ever, it has some attractions. The tragedian 
 does not largely sport it ; it is not altogether 
 an aid to sentiment in the purposes to which 
 it is usually put, and so it is concealed within 
 the folds of the little bag which your highly- 
 strung hero carries suspended from his waist. 
 That gentleman has been seen to retire to 
 the back of the stage and there blow his nose 
 in a manner delightfully surreptitious, the 
 hope being that the audience does not notice 
 so very unromantic a proceeding. With the 
 young lover of modern drama or old comedy 
 the thing is different. In the former case,
 
 The Stage Handkerchief. 109 
 
 the spotless white, perchance silk, handker- 
 chief is used to decorate the left breast of 
 the coat. In the latter, the embroidered 
 piece of cambric is an important adjunct to 
 the general costume. Where would your 
 beaux be without its aid — your ' sparks ' of 
 Congreve or Sheridan, whose ' nice conduct ' 
 of it is a part of the character and inseparable 
 from it ? No Wildair or Mirabell who re- 
 spected himself would dream of disappoint- 
 ing the public in the matter of that piece of 
 cambric. But it is the comedian, and espe- 
 cially the low comedian, who derives most pro- 
 fessional benefit from his pocket-handkerchief. 
 The listless swell will make a solemn point 
 of the wiping of his eyeglass, while the 'first 
 old man ' will with equal deliberation make 
 the most of cleaning his spectacles. Thereby 
 the playgoer is kept on the tenter-hooks of 
 expectation, and the actor ' scores ' the while. 
 But happiest of all is the comic personage 
 whom custom compels to come upon the 
 stage with a very gorgeous handkerchief 
 trailing out of his coat-tail pocket. There
 
 no Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 are comedians for whom this is the very soul 
 of humour. It may have been funny once, 
 when the world was young ; but the world is 
 now old and cynical, and that trailing piece 
 of vivid colour is productive, alas ! only of 
 indifference or irritation. 
 
 A certain amount of conventionality must, 
 however, be allowed. There are some things 
 we cannot, and ought not to, alter. We 
 cannot possibly interfere with the manipula- 
 tion of the delicate square-inch of lace which 
 the prima donna holds between her finger 
 and her thumb, while warbling the woes of 
 Lucia or Amina et hoc ge?ius omne. It would 
 be cruel to strike at a tradition which the 
 public respects and to which the prima donna 
 herself so tenderly clings. After all, there 
 is no harm in that tiny whiff of lace. Nor 
 can we deprive the ordinary heroine of 
 comedy or drama of one of the most 
 cherished of her perquisites. The attractive 
 young lady must still be allowed to drop 
 her handkerchief, merely that the attractive 
 young man may pick it up and return it ;
 
 The Stage Handkerchief. 1 1 1 
 
 she must still be permitted to hang it out — 
 somehow or other — as a signal to her 
 expectant lover ; and she must still be 
 tolerated while she buries her face in the 
 indispensable ' napkin ' and sobs out the 
 agony of her little heart. The handker- 
 chief with which she does all this, and more, 
 must ever be sacred — as sacred as that other 
 one, saturated, of course, in chloroform, with 
 which the 'villyun' stupefies the virtuous man 
 or maiden, previous to perpetrating an ab- 
 duction, a murder, or a robbery. The stage 
 would be nothing without its handkerchiefs. 
 They figure in nearly every situation, and the 
 right treatment of them is one of the essentials 
 of the histrionic art.
 
 POETIC ECCENTRICS. 
 
 N unsympathetic critic has been 
 making game, of late, of the poet 
 who wrote some lines ' On a Fair 
 Infant dying of a Cough.' The unregenerate 
 soul failed to see or to acknowledge that the 
 most delightful things can be written, by 
 those capable of them, on the most unpro- 
 mising topics. ' The Dean could write beau- 
 tifully about a broomstick,' said the proud 
 and jealous lady of Doctor Jonathan Swift. 
 And certainly the world's rhymers have never 
 been deterred, by an inconvenient sense of 
 humour, from bestowing on their verses titles 
 of dangerous simplicity and sometimes of 
 peculiar length. 
 
 Even so modern a poet as Wordsworth 
 could pen an ' Address to my Infant Daugh- 
 ter, on being reminded that she was a Month
 
 Poetic Eccentrics. 113 
 
 Old on that day.' He could also find it in 
 his heart to print lines ' Written with a Slate 
 Pencil upon a Stone, the largest of a Heap 
 lying near a deserted Quarry upon one of 
 the Islands at Rydal.' It was no doubt in 
 malice prepense that Leigh Hunt perpetrated 
 1 Politics and Poetics ; or, the Desperate 
 Situation of a Journalist unhappily smitten 
 with the Love of Rhyme.' And, talking of 
 journalism, one remembers that Burns once 
 produced some verses to which he gave this 
 heading : ' The following Poem was written 
 to a gentleman who had sent him a news- 
 paper and offered to continue it free of 
 expense.' Shenstone, it will be recollected, 
 was guilty of ' A Poem on the Temper and 
 Studies of the Author, and how great a mis- 
 fortune it is for a man of small estate to have 
 much taste,' which may appropriately be 
 coupled with what Cowley called ' The 
 Author's Epitaph, upon himself alive, but 
 withdrawn from the busy world to a country 
 life ; to be supposed written in his house.' 
 After this, one thinks but little of Tickell's 
 
 8
 
 114 Rambles in Book- Land. 
 
 1 Poem in Praise of the Horn-book, written 
 under a Fit of the Gout,' and still less of 
 Lord Roscommon's lines, ' On a Young 
 Lady who sang finely, and was afraid of a 
 Cold,' though, to be sure, his lordship was 
 evidently very much in earnest, exclaiming : 
 
 ' Let no ungentle cold destroy 
 All taste we have of heavenly joy !' 
 
 Sometimes the title of a poem is the very 
 last thing by which the public would recog- 
 nise it, as, for instance, Lord Dorset's 'Song, 
 Written at Sea, in the first Dutch War, 1665, 
 the Night before the Engagement,' in which 
 not everybody will recognise the well-known 
 sprightly verses, ' To all you ladies now 
 
 on land ' and so on. To Crashaw 
 
 we owe some observations, excellent per 
 se, ' On a Foul Morning, being then to 
 take a journey' — surely a not usually in- 
 spiring subject ; while Dryden favoured the 
 readers of his time with an attractive piece 
 of work called ' Song of a Scholar and his 
 Mistress, who, being crossed by their Friends, 
 fell mad for one another, and now first meet
 
 Poetic Eccentrics. 1 1 5 
 
 in Bedlam.' There was, one need hardly 
 say, no limit to the attentions paid by the 
 old gallants to the ladies, and so we find 
 Sir John Suckling making a ' Dialogue upon 
 the Lady Carlisle's walking in Hampton 
 Court Garden,' while Drayton discovered 
 ample material for discourse in the simple 
 fact ' Of his lady's not coming to London.' 
 The fifteenth-century bard was often not 
 only lengthy, but lachrymose, in his poem- 
 headings ; and thus, while Lord Surrey sup- 
 plied the world with a ' Description of the 
 restless state of a Lover, with Sute to his 
 Lady, to rue in his dieng hart,' Sir Thomas 
 Wyatt has told us how 'The Lover, unhappy, 
 biddeth happy lovers rejoice in May, while 
 he wayleth that month to him most un- 
 luckely.' 
 
 Everybody knows, of course, that the poets 
 have never wearied of celebrating the most 
 insignificant trifles that they have been 
 able to associate with the other sex. Gay's 
 poem on ' The Fan ' was but typical of a 
 whole literature of the sort, and Waller's 
 
 8—2
 
 1 1 6 Rambles in Book -Land. 
 
 lines ' On a Girdle ' find a judicious pendant 
 in those by Carew 'Upon a Ribband.' Suck- 
 ling had no difficulty in dwelling poetically 
 ' Upon the black Spots worn by my Lady,' 
 declaring : 
 
 ' They're your mourning-weeds for hearts forlorn, 
 Which, though you must not love, you could not 
 scorn. ' 
 
 The dress both of women and of men has 
 secured its laureates — from Bramston, who 
 asked, ' Without black velvet breeches, what 
 is man?' to Leigh Hunt, who did not hesitate 
 to make verses ' On a full-flowing Peruke.' 
 The poetry of games of all kinds is illustrated 
 in Gay's 'Ballad on Quadrille;' while dancing 
 was idealized and etherealized by the inge- 
 nious author of ' Orchestra ; or, a Poem 
 expressing the antiquity and excellence ' of 
 that pastime. 
 
 Even the unheroic topic of cooking has 
 had its fascinations for the muse. William 
 King, it is well known, devoted a whole poem 
 to the 'Art' of it, inditing, for example, the 
 following passage :
 
 Poetic Eccentrics. 1 1 7 
 
 'At Christmas-time, be careful of your fame. . . . 
 Then, if you would send up the brawner's head, 
 Sweet rosemary and bays around it spread ; 
 His foaming tusks let some large pippin grace, 
 Or midst those thundering spears an orange place ; 
 Sauce like himself, offensive to its foes, 
 The roguish mustard, dangerous to the nose ; 
 Sack and the well-spic'd hippocras the wine, 
 Wassail the bowl with ancient ribbands fine, 
 Porridge with plums, and turkeys with the chine.' 
 
 The same author descended still further, to 
 explain 'The Art of Making Puddings;' Gay 
 wrote a ' Receipt for Stewing Veal,' and 
 Cowper purred prettily about ' The High 
 Price of Fish.' So, while Waller sang ' Of 
 Tea,' Phillips penned a poem to ' Cider.' And, 
 as between edibles and potables and the 
 family doctor there is an obvious connection, 
 we may note that Armstrong did not con- 
 sider it below the poetic dignity to illustrate 
 'The Art of Preserving Health,' Garth to 
 distinguish 'The Dispensary,' and White- 
 head to urge the claims of exercise in ' The 
 Gymnasiad.' 
 
 There is practically no end to the prosaic 
 matters which the bards have been willing 
 to dignify (or otherwise) in their verse. Our
 
 n8 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 writers, and especially those of the last cen- 
 tury and its predecessor, deserve praise for 
 the ingenuity displayed by them in this par- 
 ticular. Waller was not ashamed to discourse 
 of ' A Tree Cut in Paper ;' and Congreve 
 was equally complacent in his observations 
 ' To a Candle ' — 
 
 ' Thou faithful witness of my secret pain, 
 To whom alone I venture to complain.' 
 
 Somerville wrote an 'Address to an Elbow 
 Chair,' Shenstonc an ' Ode to Indolence,' 
 Parnell some lines ' On the Number Three,' 
 Burns an ' Address to the Toothache,' and 
 Leigh Hunt some rhythmical remarks on 
 ' Sudden Fine Weather.' Everybody has 
 heard of Lord Rochester's poem ' Upon 
 Nothing ' and of Gay's ' Art of Walking the 
 Streets.' Among Cowley's works will be 
 found some verses ' Written in juice of 
 lemon ' — an ingenious notion. But the 
 lowest deep yet reached by the worshipful 
 company of singers has been that in which 
 they have consented to warble about the 
 noxious sort of insects. One can under-
 
 Poetic Eccentrics. 119 
 
 stand Aaron Hill's writing about 'The Gnat,' 
 and is not surprised that both Prior and 
 Parnell should have taken the race of flies 
 for topic : Carew managed to chatter quite 
 charmingly concerning ' A Fly that flew into 
 my Mistress's Eye ' — ' there scorched in 
 flames and drown'd in dew.' But one draws 
 the line at Burns's * To a Louse ' and Wolcot's 
 ' Lousiad,' and is even more shocked to find 
 that both Donne and Drummond could be 
 inspired by — a flea ! And yet the latter poet 
 could congratulate his subject upon having 
 been destroyed by a lady : 
 
 'Poor flea, then thou didst die ; 
 Yet by so fair a hand, 
 That thus to die was destiny to command.'
 
 MAXIMS 
 
 IHE hero of • Locksley Hall,' it will 
 be remembered, had a vision of his 
 Amy, ' his no more,' as she would 
 probably turn out as a matron — ' with a little 
 hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's 
 heart' But the gentleman was out of temper 
 at the time, and in his calmer moments — if 
 he ever had any — would probably have 
 spoken very differently of maxims. Few 
 things, indeed, deserve to be treated more 
 respectfully. They are a very great power 
 in the world. Not many are the people who 
 are unaffected by them. Most of us own 
 allegiance to them in some form or other. 
 Some accept and carry out in their daily 
 lives the maxims handed down to them 
 from their ancestors or impressed upon
 
 Maxims. 121 
 
 them by their pastors and masters. Others, 
 as their experience of existence grows, invent 
 their maxims for themselves, and act up to 
 them or not, according to temperament or 
 circumstances. But the influence is there. 
 Most people have a tendency to crystallize 
 their views of society into a few handy 
 sentences, which are more or less present 
 with them in every thought or action of 
 their lives. 
 
 And, in truth, a good maxim is doubly 
 acceptable, both from the social and from 
 the literary point of view. It has, to be 
 sure, its limitations. The man who is 
 bound hand and foot to his own ' wise 
 saws ' is to be pitied indeed. They are 
 not always to be received as embodying 
 the whole available truth. They do not 
 necessarily fit into every situation. It is 
 possible to imagine the very best of them 
 landing us in dire misfortune, if we did not 
 recognise the times when they were inappro- 
 priate or inadequate. That is the one draw- 
 back of the wise or witty sentence — that it
 
 122 Rambles in Book- Land. 
 
 usually requires some qualification in refer- 
 ence to particular individuals or events. 
 All wisdom cannot very well be crammed 
 into a brief utterance, however concise and 
 concentrated it may be. But then, no 
 thoughtful person expects from the maxim 
 more than it can give. Its value lies, not in 
 its bare meaning only, but in its suggestive- 
 ness, in the ideas it originates in the mind. 
 In its most successful shape it is delightful 
 and useful as an aperfu — a flash of intel- 
 lectual limelight upon life. Exception may 
 be taken to its mere literal meaning, but one 
 is conscious of its having brought with it 
 some mental illumination. 
 
 Unfortunately, maxims of the first class are 
 not very numerous. It is not everybody who 
 can compose them. The names of the 
 masters in this line of art can be counted on 
 the fingers of one hand. There is, of course, 
 no lack of pregnant sayings in the world. 
 Literature is full of them — our own literature 
 as full as any. The compilers of ' Gems of 
 Thought ' and the like are not distressed by
 
 Maxims. 123 
 
 the want of material ; rather are they over- 
 whelmed by its superabundance. Our prose 
 and poetry alike gleam with those 'jewels, 
 five words long ' — or more ! — ' which, on the 
 stretched forefinger of all Time, sparkle for 
 ever.' But embedded sentences, however 
 admirable in themselves, are not maxims 
 in the literary sense. Mrs. Poyser, for 
 example, is full of worldly wisdom, exqui- 
 sitely phrased ; but, nevertheless, George 
 Eliot is not among the maxim-writers. Nor, 
 strictly speaking, can we include in the list 
 those very able men whose ' table-talk,' 
 as preserved for us by careful listeners, 
 abounds in happy pronunciamientos upon 
 men and things. There is wisdom and there 
 is wit galore in the recorded chit-chat of 
 Selden, Coleridge, Rogers, Sydney Smith, 
 and others ; but those utterances are no 
 more maxims, in the proper acceptation 
 of the word, than are those clever defini- 
 tions which make bright the ' Tin Trumpet ' 
 of Horace Smith, and accompany the 'Poems 
 and Music ' of Anne Evans.
 
 124 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 There is only one model for the maxim, 
 and that is the French. Only in the pages 
 of Pascal and Larochefoucauld, Chamfort 
 and Vauvenargues, do we find the supreme 
 type of the genre. Probably the perfection 
 of maxim-writing is possible only to the 
 Frenchman, with his pellucid style and his 
 keen sense of form. The average English- 
 man is apt to be diffuse, both in his ideas 
 and in his method of expression. He does 
 not take kindly to the one rounded, polished 
 sentence, containing a philosophy in essence, 
 which is the perfection of the maxim. On 
 the other hand, the maxim, both in its 
 brevity and its finish, is highly congenial 
 to the Gallic artist, and receives its most 
 fortunate treatment at his hands. What 
 Larochefoucauld was and wrote, most Eng- 
 lishmen are aware of; his ' Reflections ' have 
 been more than once translated. Something 
 is known, too, of Pascal's 'Pensdles,' though 
 probably there are many who would be 
 surprised to find in him the author of a 
 saying so cynical as this : that ' Curiosity
 
 Maxims. 125 
 
 is but vanity ; most frequently we want to 
 know about a thing only in order that we 
 may talk about it.' Of Vauvenargues and 
 Chamfort still less is known among us, 
 selections only from their maxims having 
 obtained currency, and a translation of the 
 whole being still a literary labour which no 
 one has come forward to perform. 
 
 And yet there are respects in which the 
 sentences of Vauvenargues and Chamfort 
 are preferable to those of Larochefoucauld, 
 familiar and popular as they are. Laroche- 
 foucauld's, after all, are but multitudinous 
 variations upon a single theme. The 
 cynical Due plays on one string only — the 
 innate selfishness of man ; a fertile subject, 
 which he deals with searchingly, but which 
 has about it a certain measure of monotony. 
 His two great rivals have equal keenness and 
 polish, and more variety. They take a wider 
 view, an ampler range of topics. They are, 
 indeed, almost inexhaustible in their versa- 
 tility. And of the two Chamfort is even 
 more varied than Vauvenargues. ' Love
 
 126 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 is like all the epidemics : the more afraid 
 one is of it, the more likely one is to catch 
 it.' ' Society is made up of two classes : 
 those who have more dinner than appetite, 
 and those who have more appetite than 
 dinner.' ' He who has no individuality is 
 not a man ; he is a thing.' ' Of all days 
 the most wasted is that on which we have 
 not laughed.' Such are a few of his most 
 pregnant observations. But Vauvenargues' 
 are pregnant too. ' The art of pleasing is 
 that of deceiving.' ' Constancy is the 
 chimera of love.' 'If men did not flatter 
 each other, we should hardly have any 
 society.' ' The enmity of the feeble is not 
 so dangerous as their friendship.' Nothing 
 could well be more suggestive than such 
 sayings as these. 
 
 The roll of the English maxim-writers is a 
 short one, and contains no name which can 
 for a moment be placed in the same rank 
 with those of the distinguished Frenchmen. 
 Swift, Pope, and Chesterfield all left a few 
 prose "Thoughts' behind them, but they
 
 Maxims. 1 27 
 
 are so few as scarcely to be worth consider- 
 ing. ' It is with narrow-souled people as 
 with narrow-necked bottles : the less they 
 have in them the more noise they make in 
 pouring out.' That is a specimen of Pope. 
 ' We have just enough religion to make us 
 hate, but not enough to make us love, one 
 another.' That is a specimen of Swift. ' A 
 man of business should always have his eyes 
 open, but must often seem to have them 
 shut.' That is a specimen of Chesterfield. 
 But still better and more legitimate are 
 the best of the sentences to be found in 
 Shenstone's ' Essays,' Hazlitt's ' Character- 
 istics,' the Hares' ' Guesses at Truth,' Helps' 
 ' Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd,' 
 and Buxton's ' Notes of Thought' These, 
 as the phrase goes, will all ' repay perusal,' 
 most of all the work of Hazlitt. That 
 includes a larger number of good maxims — 
 good in idea and in phrase — than any other 
 English production of the kind. But, as I 
 have said, for the highest type of maxim, 
 whether of the cynical or of the earnest kind,
 
 128 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 we must go, not to our own writers, but to 
 the French. Pascal and Larochefoucauld, 
 Chamfort and Vauvenargues — these remain, 
 as ever, the great masters of the genre.
 
 &Q5VSSKBF 
 
 £■<-. 
 
 SHOP. 
 
 EW people have been more unmerci- 
 fully chaffed by the satiric than 
 those who have engaged in trade 
 pursuits. Lawyers, doctors, and other profes- 
 sional men, have been treated to an immense 
 amount of conventional sarcasm ; but the 
 commercial element of society has by no 
 means escaped the notice or efforts of the 
 wits. 'A nation of shopkeepers,' we have, 
 nevertheless, freely satirized the ' shop ' — 
 not usually in very good taste, but generally 
 with a certain rude effectiveness which has 
 claimed pardon for the offence. 
 
 The purveyors of articles of attire have, 
 naturally perhaps, come in for a large share 
 of this popular fun-making. The tailors, for 
 instance — the old joke about the ninth part 
 
 9
 
 130 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 of a man is but a sample of the indignities 
 to which they have been liable. One of the 
 most refined bits of quizzing of which they 
 have been the topic is, of course, Dr. Wendell 
 Holmes' comic ' piece,' called ' Evening,' in 
 which a tailor is supposed to discourse of 
 Nature in truly ' shoppy ' terms : 
 
 ' Day hath put on his jacket, and around 
 His burning bosom buttoned it with stars. . . 
 Ah me ! how lovely is the golden braid 
 That binds the skirt of night's descending robe ! 
 The thin leaves, quivering on their silken threads, 
 Do make a music like to rustling satin, 
 As the light breezes smoothe their downy nap.' 
 
 As the poetical Snip says, further on : 
 
 1 The vulgar know not all the hidden pockets 
 Where Nature stows away her loveliness.' 
 
 It is recorded of a fashionable tailor that, 
 when asked by a ducal customer what sort of 
 a gun he shot with, he replied : ' A double- 
 breasted one, your grace ;' but though the 
 story is vouched for by clerical authority, it 
 is a little difficult to believe. 
 
 Turning for a moment to the dress-pro- 
 viders for the gentler sex, we find James
 
 Shop. 1 3 1 
 
 Smith making a familiar phrase the point of 
 an epigram. Speaking to a lady, and re- 
 ferring to a certain bit of 'stuff' for a gown, 
 he says : 
 
 ' Should you quarrel with the dress, 
 You'll never make it uj>.' 
 
 The hat-making industry once suggested to 
 Luttrell one of the best of his puns. Some 
 one observing of a whilom hatmaker that he 
 looked as if the dye of his old trade had got 
 into his face, ' Yes,' said Luttrell, ' like dark- 
 ness that may be felt.' It has been a stand- 
 ing gibe against the shoemakers that, when 
 one of the fraternity put up over his door 
 1 Mens conscia recti,' a rival at once capped 
 the announcement with 'Men's and Women's 
 conscia recti;' but the latter worthy is not to be 
 taken as representative of his class. A more 
 distinguished spokesman is to be found in 
 the great Hoby, to whom Sir John Shelley 
 complained that some top-boots made by 
 him had split in several places. ' How did it 
 happen, Sir John ?' ' Why, walking to my 
 stable.' ' Walking to your stable !' was the 
 
 9—2
 
 132 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 reply ; ' I made the boots for riding, not for 
 walking.' 
 
 Everybody has heard of Home Tooke's 
 euphemism for a poulterer — ' a Turkey mer- 
 chant.' With fishmongers has often been 
 associated the uncomplimentary and obvious 
 idea of ' flounder '-ing — the point of one of 
 Lord Erskine's Jeux d'esprit. James Smith, 
 in one of his comicalities, makes an actor 
 comment upon the fact that he sees nothing 
 in a fishmonger's shop but turbot and eels : 
 
 ' I find in your house not a plaice to be had, 
 And yet not a sole to be seen. ' 
 
 It is told of a famous fashionable confec- 
 tioner that, riding one day in company with 
 Lord Midleton, he observed : ' My horse is 
 so hot, my lord, that I don't know what to 
 do with him.' 'Ice him, Gunter; ice him,' 
 was the happy but not very courteous reply. 
 Much more complimentary was James Smith's 
 tribute to a wealthy vinegar merchant : 
 
 ' Let Hannibal boast of his conquering sway, 
 
 Thy liquid achievements spread wider and quicker ; 
 By vinegar he through the Alps made his way, 
 But you through the world by the veiy same 
 liquor.'
 
 Shop. 133 
 
 And, talking of liquor, everyone remembers 
 Hook's epigram on 'Twining, the tea mer- 
 chant, who lives in the Strand,' and ' would 
 be whining if robbed of his TV Strictly 
 speaking, perhaps, an innkeeper cannot be 
 said to keep a shop, but he is at least a 
 tradesman, and, as a type, has received much 
 attention from the satirists. Of a drunken 
 Boniface it was once written : 
 
 ' Landlord, with thee now even is the wine, 
 For thou hast pierced his hogshead, and he thine.' 
 
 Of the inn at Inverary, Burns, it will be re- 
 membered, wrote that it contained 
 
 ' Nothing but Highland pride, 
 
 And Highland scab and hunger,' 
 
 adding that, if Providence had sent him there, 
 it must have been in anger. Less pungent 
 but more comic is the couplet on a public- 
 house of unknown locality : 
 
 ' Of this establishment how can we speak ? 
 Its cheese is mity, and its ale is weak.' 
 
 Of an actor who had left the stage and 
 become a wine merchant, Jerrold remarked : 
 1 1 am told that his wine off the stage is better
 
 134 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 than his whine on it.' Martial had long 
 
 before satirized a member of the trade in 
 
 some bitter lines, which have been thus 
 
 translated : 
 
 ' The vilest of compounds while Balderdash vends, 
 And brews his dear poison for all his good friends, 
 No wonder they never can get him to dine — 
 He's afraid they'll oblige him to drink his own wine.' 
 
 Adverting to some of the more mis- 
 cellaneous trades, we find Curran basing a 
 happy pun upon a word used in connection 
 with the coal wharf. A country squire dis- 
 puted a collier's bill, and was told by the 
 lively barrister that, though he had had the 
 coals, his payment had been 'slack.' It was 
 Curran also, I need scarcely say, who sug- 
 gested, as a motto for the crest on a tobac- 
 conist's carriage, ' Quid rides.' Akin to this 
 quip was one which was perpetrated at the 
 expense of a Bermondsey tanner, who was 
 overheard discussing with his wife what name 
 should be given to their villa : 
 
 ' A neighbour, thus hearing the skin-dresser talk, 
 Stole out, half an hour after dark, 
 Picked up on the roadway a fragment of chalk, 
 And wrote on the palings — " Hide Park ,: !'
 
 Shop. 135 
 
 To the sixteenth century belongs the follow- 
 ing distich on a drunken smith : 
 
 ' I heard that Smug, the smith, for ale and spice 
 Sold all his tools, and yet he kept his vice.' 
 
 This, of course, belongs to the category of 
 self-evident sarcasm. There was equal truth 
 to nature, as well as much more wit, in 
 Thackeray's remark upon the public announce- 
 ment of a ' Mutual Loan Office.' Asked 
 what it meant, he said he could not explain, 
 unless it was that two men, having nothing, 
 had agreed to lend it to each other. 
 
 Probably no set of men has ever been 
 more freely peppered with verbal shot than 
 the undertakers, who, in that respect, have 
 been almost as ill-treated as the doctors. 
 Here, for example, is a quatrain, written 
 some time before 1727, 'On the Death of an 
 Undertaker ' : 
 
 ' Subdu'd by Death, here Death's great herald lies, 
 And adds a trophy to his victories ; 
 Yet sure he was prepar'd, who, while he'd breath, 
 Made it his business still to look for death.' 
 
 Not so conventional are the terms of a 
 repartee recorded of Sir George Rose, the
 
 136 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 distinguished lawyer. Present at a funeral 
 on a bitterly cold day, he had his attention 
 drawn by a friend to the forlorn appearance 
 of the men with scarves and staves who ac- 
 companied the cortege. ' Poor fellows, they 
 look as if they were frozen.' 'Frozen, my 
 dear friend?' said Sir George; 'they are 
 mutes, not liquids.'
 
 THE REALM OF ROSES. 
 
 T is no wonder that the Shah of 
 Persia spoke of this as ' the land of 
 roses ' : he must have seen millions 
 
 of them during his recent stay among us — 
 in ladies' bouquets, on ladies' dresses, on the 
 banquet-table as forms of decoration, and, 
 in their native state, in such gardens as he 
 visited. It was a very carnival of roses : they 
 rained and reigned in every quarter, the supply 
 of them and the worship of them culminating 
 in a ' feast of roses,' on the model of a familiar 
 Continental custom. 
 
 Ours is, in truth, the land of roses. The 
 rose is our national emblem, and has figured 
 long and prominently in our history and our 
 literature. The white rose and the red (the 
 title, by the way, of one of Mr. Buchanan's
 
 138 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 poems) have been the badges of rival dynasties 
 among us, and have typified opposing factions 
 in a state of war. The Scotch poet, Dunbar, 
 sang of 'The Thrissil and the Rose,' and 
 ' The Romaunt of the Rose ' has been attri- 
 buted, rightly or wrongly, to the English 
 Chaucer. In the former case, the thrissil or 
 thistle had its human counterpart in James IV. 
 of Scotland ; while the rose had hers in 
 Margaret, daughter of our Henry VII. The 
 rose has always stood for England, just as the 
 thistle has stood for Scotland, the shamrock 
 for Ireland — and the leek for Wales ! It is 
 in England that the flower grows in its most 
 exquisite charm and most expansive profusion 
 — in England that it reigns most potently in 
 the hearts and imaginations of the people. 
 
 Due mention has, of course, been made in 
 literature of the connection between the rose 
 and its thorns. That would naturally receive 
 celebration. ' Sweet is the rose,' cries Spenser, 
 ' but grows upon a brere.' ' All my loveliness,' 
 Miss Rossetti makes the rose say, 'is born 
 upon a thorn.' ' I cared not for the thorns,'
 
 The Realm of Roses. 139 
 
 declares Tennyson ; ' the thorns were there.' 
 And, on the whole, too much insistance has 
 not been made upon this drawback. Much 
 more has been said about the brief existence, 
 the short glory, of the rose. That has struck 
 the universal imagination. ' Rose, elle a 
 vecu ce que vivent les roses — l'espace d'un 
 matin;' that, perhaps, is the most exquisite 
 line ever written by a Frenchman. And it 
 has found an echo in the breasts of multitu- 
 dinous English writers, notably in that of the 
 lady above quoted, who, speaking of a rose- 
 bud, says : 
 
 ' It opened at the matin-hour, 
 And fell at even-song.' 
 
 It was impossible that the poetic heart should 
 
 not be touched by the brevity of the rose's 
 
 reign. ' Her bared bosom she doth broad 
 
 display,' observes Spenser; ' Lo ! see soon 
 
 after how she fades and falls away.' 'Sweet 
 
 rose, fair flower, untimely plucked, soon 
 
 faded,' cries Shakespeare; and in the same 
 
 vein Sir Robert Ayton declares that 
 
 * Pluck'd and strain'd through ruder hands, 
 Her sweets no longer with her dwell.'
 
 140 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 ' Gather, then, the rose,' advises Giles Fletcher, 
 1 or it you lose.' Herrick's exhortation to the 
 same effect is only too familiar. Herbert 
 pointed out that the root of the rose was in 
 the grave, and it must die. Waller told his 
 ladylove to note in the swift death of the 
 flower ' the common fate of all things rare.' 
 'Blown in the morning,' said Sir Richard 
 Fanshawe to the rose, 'thou shalt fade ere 
 noon.' 'Read what those buds disclose,' 
 declaimed Mrs. Hemans, ' " Passing away." 
 And so with the rhymers of a later day. 
 Bryant has written of ' the rose that lives its 
 little hour ;' ' Pass, falling rose,' is the refrain 
 of well-known lines by Bennett ; ' The year 
 of the rose is brief,' asserts Mr. Swinburne ; 
 and Mrs. Webster points out that, despite the 
 aspiration of the rose to live through the rain 
 and feel her sweetness in the sun, 
 
 1 When the dawn sparkled through unclouded air, 
 She was not there.' 
 
 So much by way of tempering the rose's 
 
 pride. But the shortness of the blossom's 
 
 life is, in general, lost sight of in the perfection
 
 The Realm of Roses. 141 
 
 of its being, so long as that being lasts. No 
 flower has ever had so many to praise it, has 
 been so praised by the praised, has been 
 praised so beautifully. Its simple grace, its 
 delicious perfume, have conquered all dis- 
 positions. Spenser called it ' the glory of the 
 day.' Others, more enthusiastic still, have 
 asserted its superiority to all its sisters. ' Of 
 all flowers,' says one of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher's characters, ' methinks the rose is 
 best.' William Browne thought it the fairest 
 blossom of the garden, and Quarles declared 
 that it 'passed all the rest' ' What is fairer 
 than a rose ?' asked Herrick ; l what is 
 sweeter?' Thomson (of 'The Seasons') con- 
 sidered the bashful rose the queen of all the 
 flowers ; and the reflection has been often 
 echoed — by Cowper, for instance, who held 
 the rose to be ' the regent of them all ;' by 
 Mrs. Hemans, who addresses it as 'Thou 
 crowned one of all flowers ;' and by Hood, 
 who protested that, of all the floral beauties, 
 the rose is the queen — ' fairest of all is she.' 
 After that, one is not surprised by the tribute
 
 142 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 of Burns to ' the first o' flowers ;' by Southey's 
 description of the rose as 'the freshest, 
 sweetest flower that blooms ;' or by Aubrey 
 De Vere's reference to ' the red, all-conquering 
 rose.' A dozen other poets might be called 
 as witnesses to the rose's magnetic influence. 
 Raleigh thought that the 'radiance bright' 
 of ' vermillion roses' would put to shame 
 ' the rich adorned rays of roseate rising 
 morn ;' and, much in the same spirit, Cowley 
 has told us how he once saw a rosebud open, 
 and how he could swear that the blushing 
 morning opened not more fair. ' Rose !' 
 cried Tom Moore, 
 
 ' Thou art the sweetest flower 
 That ever drank the amber shower.' 
 
 Leigh Hunt held that 
 
 ' Whatsoe'er of beauty 
 Yearns and yet reposes, 
 Blush, and bosom, and sweet breath, 
 Took a shape in roses.' 
 
 ' 'Tis said the rose is Love's own flower, its 
 blush so bright,' wrote Peacock ; and, as for 
 the sweet scent of the rose, who shall even
 
 The Realm of Roses. 143 
 
 enumerate those who have paid testimony to 
 
 its delicacy ? Shakespeare, Herrick, Tom 
 
 Moore, Byron, Landor — these are only a few 
 
 among many. 
 
 The poets, however, have done more than 
 
 lament the transitoriness of the rose, and 
 
 celebrate its scent and beauty. They have 
 
 found in it many a lesson for themselves and 
 
 others. 
 
 ' Is there any moral shut 
 
 Within the bosom of the rose ?' 
 
 I should think there was ! Cowper, in rather 
 maudlin fashion, regretted that he had 
 handled so rudely the rose ' which Mary to 
 Anna conveyed ;' had he shaken it less, he 
 said, it might have bloomed for its owner 
 awhile ; as it was, the incident taught him 
 that 
 
 'A tear that is wiped with a little address 
 May be followed, perhaps, by a smile.' 
 
 Scott's stanza is equally familiar : 
 
 'The rose is fairest when 'tis budding new, 
 
 And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears ; 
 The rose is sweetest washed with morning dew, 
 And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.'
 
 144 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe had said very much the same 
 some time before, when, apropos of the rose, 
 and of 'the dews that bend the blushing 
 flower,' enriching its scent and reviving its 
 glow, she declared that 
 
 ' So Love's sweet tears exalt his power, 
 So bliss more brightly shines by woe !' 
 
 Everybody remembers Shelley's lovely lines 
 on rose-leaves (which, by the way, have also 
 found a celebrant in Mr. Austin Dobson) ; 
 while, in our own day, Mr. Theophile Mar- 
 zials has delivered himself of this reflection : 
 
 ' For love is like the China rose, 
 
 That leafs so quickly from the tree ; — 
 And life, though all the honey goes, 
 Lasts ever, like the pot-pourri.'
 
 A PHILOSOPHICAL CRUSOE. 
 
 IF all the fictions — and they were 
 many — suggested, more or less, by 
 the success of ' Robinson Crusoe,' 
 none, perhaps, was more curious, or, on the 
 whole, more original, than that which was 
 published in 1745 by one John Kirkby, 
 with a title characteristically long and self- 
 explanatory : 
 
 ' The Capacity and Extent of the Human Under- 
 standing ; exemplified in the Extraordinary Case of 
 Automathes ; a Young Nobleman, who was Accident- 
 ally left in his Infancy, upon a desolate Island, and 
 continued Nineteen Years in that Solitary State, 
 separate from all Human Society. A Narrative 
 abounding with many surprising Occurrences, both 
 Useful and Entertaining to the Reader.' 
 
 Kirkby had the distinction of being at one 
 time domestic tutor to Gibbon, who, in his 
 
 10
 
 146 Rambles in Book- Land. 
 
 autobiography, devotes some sentences to the 
 work. He cannot praise it, he says, either 
 for ' depth of thought or elegance of style,' 
 but it is ' not devoid,' he thinks, ' of enter- 
 tainment and instruction.' 
 
 The particulars in which Automathes 
 differs from Crusoe are sufficiently well 
 marked. Crusoe, before he is wrecked upon 
 his island, has arrived at years of (more or 
 less) discretion, and has secured some know- 
 ledge of the world. Automathes, when 
 stranded with his father and mother upon an 
 unknown shore, is ' some twelve months old,' 
 and before another year has elapsed is left 
 alone to battle for existence. It is from this 
 fact that the freshness and interest of the 
 work are derived. In ' Robinson Crusoe ' 
 there is but little psychology, conscious or 
 unconscious. In Kirkby's narrative, the 
 psychology, such as it is, is everything, or 
 almost everything. Automathes' ' case ' is 
 described, in order that the author may, by 
 means of it, exemplify ' the capacity and 
 extent of the human understanding.'
 
 A Philosophical Crusoe. 147 
 
 Unfortunately for the conscientious reader, 
 the excellent Kirkby does not plunge at once 
 in medias res. He first of all tells us how, 
 while a curate in Cumberland, he was one 
 day sitting by the sea-shore, when his atten- 
 tion was attracted by the appearance in the 
 water of ' a small cylindrical trunk, about a 
 foot long,' with a key tied to its handle. 
 Inside this trunk he finds a roll of manu- 
 script, bearing within it the proofs of being 
 the composition of an English priest, of the 
 Order of St. Benedict, ' as long ago as the 
 year 1614.' This ecclesiastic, expelled with 
 other missionaries from Japan, had set sail 
 for Panama, but had been wrecked ' within 
 sight of an unknown country, in Latitude 39 
 degrees, 15 Minutes North, and about 176 
 degrees West Longitude from London.' 
 The country, it turned out, was called Soteria, 
 and its inhabitants were found to be ' not 
 only a civilized white , People, but a Nation 
 of Christians,' rejoicing in a Church which 
 steadily adhered to ' the Apostolical Doctrine 
 and Discipline in their original purity.' 
 
 10 — 2
 
 148 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 The priest and his companions are one 
 day conversing with a Bishop of this Church, 
 when they are suddenly introduced to 'a 
 Nobleman named Automathes,' who invites 
 the party to accompany him on a visit to his 
 father. They observe his ' graceful Appear- 
 ance,' which ' seems to command esteem and 
 bespeak something extraordinary to be con- 
 cealed under it ;' and they are duly informed 
 by the Bishop that Automathes is really as 
 remarkable as he looks, inasmuch as, after 
 about nineteen years' continuance in solitude, 
 he had, when brought into human society, 
 discovered himself to be more like a philoso- 
 pher than a savage. It is suggested that he 
 may be persuaded to tell them the whole 
 story of his adventures. Of course he is 
 persuaded, and then we get at the pith and 
 marrow of the volume. 
 
 The father of Automathes had been 
 accused, years before, of treason to the State, 
 and, though innocent, had been despoiled of 
 his possessions and sent out of the kingdom. 
 On the way to his destination, the ship which
 
 A Philosophical Crusoe. 149 
 
 carried him struck upon a rock ; the crew, 
 crowding into a boat, were drowned, and the 
 father, with Automathes and his mother, 
 was thrown upon an uninhabited island — a 
 sort of Earthly Paradise, where there were 
 multitudes of deer, goats, and fowls of various 
 kinds, but no noxious animals, or venomous 
 creatures, or birds or beasts of prey. How- 
 ever, after seven months' experience of 
 banishment, the mother died, and the child 
 happily found sustenance in the milk of a 
 hind. Very soon the father grew restless and 
 discontented, and set off in a boat (rescued 
 from the wreck) to explore some adjacent 
 shore, of which glimpses were to be obtained 
 from the island. Alas ! he was blown out to 
 sea, and, though at length he set foot upon 
 terra firma not far from where his little son 
 lay, it was nineteen years before he saw 
 Automathes again. 
 
 Of these nineteen years Automathes does 
 not profess to give a consecutive account ; 
 but he mentions, in an order as chronological 
 as his memory will allow, the incidents which
 
 150 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 made most impression upon his mind. At 
 first he fed himself (he was then about two 
 years old) with roots and fruit, following, he 
 says, the example of the fowls of the air. 
 His only companion was a dog, which 
 followed him everywhere, and looked after 
 his safety. For a long period, naturally, his 
 4 rational faculty lay quite dormant,' and the 
 first thing, apparently, which gave him pause 
 was the sudden discovery that he possessed 
 a shadow. This alarmed him for the 
 moment, but in the end it induced him to 
 ask himself, ' What am I ? How came I 
 here ?' — questions on which he became so 
 intent that he would often stumble and fall 
 over whatever came in his way. By-and-by 
 he remarked his own reflection in the water, 
 and ' this, as it were, surprised me ' (he says) 
 1 into a Notion of other Creatures of my own 
 Species.' He reflected that the animals around 
 him brought forth after their kind, and he 
 concluded, therefore, that there were others, 
 somewhere, like unto himself. 
 
 After this he began to make a study of
 
 A Philosophical Crusoe. 151 
 
 Nature, and to note how the ground produced 
 its fruits — how the trees, grass, and flowers 
 grew — and how the successive renewals of 
 Nature exactly corresponded with the motions 
 of the sun. 
 
 ' I marked the Agreement between the Moon and 
 Tide, and the Revolutions of the lesser heavenly 
 Luminaries were the Subject of my nocturnal Contem- 
 plations. ... I considered the admirable Structure 
 of the Bodies of every Species of Animals within my 
 Observation ; and . . . was everywhere surprised with 
 an apparently wise Design, where the least Design of 
 all was expected.' 
 
 Thus, 'from the Works of Nature and of 
 
 Providence,' he was ' naturally led to the 
 
 Knowledge of the First Mover. For,' as he 
 
 says, 
 
 ' Beauty and Fitness are, as it were, the Signatures 
 of Reason impressed upon Matter ; and wherever 
 these are brought to our Observation, we are 
 necessarily constrained to acknowledge them for the 
 Work of some Intelligent Agent.' 
 
 At this time he still credited animals with 
 having the same thinking powers as himself, 
 and he had yet to argue himself into an 
 understanding of the causes of light and 
 darkness, to make acquaintance with the
 
 152 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 power of water when in violent motion, and. 
 
 by way of descending into bathos, to realize 
 
 what it is to be overcome by intoxicating 
 
 liquor. He found among the wreckage two 
 
 bottles, one of which, having been broken, 
 
 emitted a pleasing odour. This tempted him 
 
 to taste some of the liquid within it, 
 
 ' and, being transported with the delightful Relish 
 of the bewitching Juice, I found a Way to open the 
 other Bottle, of which I quaffed so largely that I 
 perceived the Effects of it in my Brain, before I was 
 aware. At first I wondered what should be the 
 matter with me, being in such a Condition as I had 
 never before experienced. The Ground on which I 
 stood seemed to rock from Side to Side, and every- 
 thing around appeared in a swimming Motion, so that 
 I could scarce stand upom my Feet.' 
 
 Later on came the death of Automathes' 
 
 dog from the fall of a tree, and with it, the 
 
 young philosopher's first reflections upon the 
 
 arrest of the current of existence. He tells 
 
 us what he thought of the first books which 
 
 he handled, but which he could not read, 
 
 though he could grasp the meaning of the 
 
 diagrams and figures. Striking a hatchet 
 
 against a stone, he saw the sparks emitted, 
 
 and, repeating the action, was the means of
 
 A Philosophical Crusoe. 153 
 
 setting fire to a coppice, which was soon 
 a mass of flame. Then Automathes be- 
 thought him of the injury he might have 
 done by this to animal life, and began to feel 
 the first intimations of his possession of a 
 conscience. This, by the way, is the passage 
 which Gibbon, in his autobiography, singles 
 out for special approbation. Thereafter 
 comes a description of the solitary's first 
 performance on a hand-organ (another relic 
 of the wreck), and, finally, we are told how, 
 at length, his father happily returned to 
 the island, not expecting, but rejoicing, to 
 see Automathes alive, and recognising him as 
 his son by various little corroborative inci- 
 dents. Those who accompanied the father 
 amused themselves by killing a number of 
 deer, and Automathes' horror at what he 
 regarded as murder will recall to many the 
 similar feelings entertained by Mr. Gilbert's 
 Galatea when she first saw the dead fawn in 
 the hands of Leucippe. 
 
 It is notable that Automathes did not 
 ascribe the progress he had made in self-
 
 154 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 culture to the strength of his own natural 
 faculties. On the contrary, he argues that 
 
 'The Education I received from my Parents, how 
 little soever it may seem, was some Advantage in 
 setting my Thoughts in Work, and awaking my 
 Attention to what was about me.' 
 
 Of even more importance than this, however, 
 were the ' secret Hints and Intimations ' 
 of which he was the recipient, and which 
 he attributed to the ' communications of some 
 separate intelligent Being — generally, if not 
 always, the Spirit of my deceased Mother.' 
 For if there is one thing more than another 
 which John Kirkby appears to have been 
 anxious to expound in this story, it is the 
 opinion that all knowledge came originally 
 from the Creator, that it has been renewed 
 from time to time by his prophets, and that, 
 in these our days, ' Man depends upon the 
 Care and Instruction of others to bring him 
 to act agreeably to his rational Character.'
 
 POETS AT THE PLAY. 
 
 [T is not surprising that the stage has 
 at all times found celebrants in 
 rhyme. If it has such powerful 
 attraction for the average man, how much 
 more may it fairly possess for the man of 
 imagination and insight, the man of poetic 
 feeling and expression ! There must always 
 be much, both in its past and in its present, 
 to impress the sympathetic mind. Its past, 
 especially, must ever appeal vividly to the 
 fancy. The most ephemeral of all the arts, 
 it has for professors the most rapidly forgotten 
 of all artists, because at best they leave 
 behind them but a name. 'Where,' says a 
 contemporary bard, discoursing ' Of Dead 
 Actors ' — 
 
 ' Where are the passions they essayed, 
 
 And where the tears they made to flow ?
 
 156 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Where the wild humours they portrayed 
 For laughing worlds to see and know ? 
 Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe ? 
 
 Sir Peter's whims and Timon's gall? 
 And Millamant and Romeo ? 
 
 Into the night go one and all.' 
 
 Thus Mr. W. E. Henley : and, even more 
 
 lately, Mr. Justin McCarthy, jun., has asked 
 
 much the same question about ' the ladies of 
 
 old time' — 'the actresses of long ago.' 
 
 The spectacle of a veteran artist lagging 
 
 more or less superfluous on the boards has 
 
 also had power to move the poet's heart, and 
 
 in ' The Old Player' we have one of the most 
 
 touching of Dr. Wendell Holmes's effusions. 
 
 An element of pathos has been found, besides, 
 
 in the indifference with which an audience 
 
 regards the minor members of a company. 
 
 It summons the ' principals,' but the humbler 
 
 players are ignored. ' Think,' says Mr. 
 
 Austin Dobson — 
 
 'Think what a crowd whom none recall, 
 Unsung — unpraised — unpitied ; — 
 Women for whom no bouquets fall, 
 And men whose names no galleries bawl, 
 The Great un-Benetit-ed !' 
 
 Thackeray long ago drew attention to the
 
 Poets at the Play. 157 
 
 fact that the life of the actor is very far from 
 
 being 'all beer and skittles.' 'When he has 
 
 laughed and said his say,' wrote the kindly 
 
 humorist, 
 
 ' He shows, as he removes the mask, 
 A face that's anything but gay.' 
 
 The actor's art, as an ordered system, has 
 been analyzed by Charles Lloyd in a com- 
 position which contains much sense but little 
 poetry. Mr. Robert Buchanan has sketched, 
 in the history of 'Kitty Kemble,' the career 
 of a typical actress of our time ; and while, 
 on the one hand, H. S. Leigh, recording what 
 had been told him, as a boy, about the heroics 
 of the footlights, says : — 
 
 ' The fairies I believed so fair, 
 
 Were not by any means 
 The kind of people one would care 
 To meet behind the scenes,' 
 
 Mr. Gilbert, in one of his ' Bab Ballads,' 
 
 admits, concerning the 'dancing-girl' whom 
 
 he describes, that, 
 
 ' Hung from the " flies " in air, 
 She acts a palpable lie, 
 She's as little a fairy there 
 As unpoetical I ;'
 
 158 Rambles i?i Book-Land. 
 
 yet, seen at home, going about her household 
 duties, 'she's a fairy truly, then.' Elsewhere, 
 Mr. Gilbert has made excellent fun of 'the 
 haughty actor' who will not accept a part he 
 thinks too small for him ; and in ' The 
 Pantomime "Super" to his Mask,' he has 
 contrived to illustrate something of the 
 drudgery of the super's life. Who, again, 
 does not remember H. J. Byron's comic 
 portrayal of ' The Villain at the Vic' ? ' The 
 'Clown's Lament' for the decay of pan- 
 tomime has been sung in feeling terms by 
 Mr. Clement Scott ; but that Christmas ex- 
 travaganza still has some charms, even for 
 the middle-aged among us, has been shown 
 by ' C. C. R.' in some graphic and genial 
 stanzas. 
 
 Individual actors have, of course, been 
 made the subject of many a poetic celebra- 
 tion, whether in praise or in blame. Ben 
 Jonson wrote in eulogy of Edward Alleyne, 
 founder of Dulwich College ; and Richard 
 Burbage survives, not only in the song of 
 Flecknoe and of Middleton, but in that of
 
 Poets at the Play. 159 
 
 Mr. Dobson, who has told us how the play- 
 goers of the time 
 
 'Thrilled through all changes of despair, 
 Hope, anger, fear, delight, and doubt, 
 When Eurbage played !' 
 
 Nell Gwynne found an enthusiastic laureate 
 in the Earl of Rochester, who declared that, 
 on the stage, 'in full lustre did her glories 
 shine.' In 'The Rosciad,' we have, of 
 course, a review of all the leading actors of 
 the author's day — from Tom Davies, whose 
 chief distinction it was that he had ' a pretty 
 wife,' and Henry Mossop, who 'in mono- 
 syllables his thunders rolled,' to Garrick and 
 his rival Barry, and the few others of whose 
 representations the Rev. Charles Churchill 
 condescended to approve. Garrick will 
 always live in the 'Retaliation' of Goldsmith 
 — the most successful poetic repartee ever 
 made. Mrs. Oldfield is consecrated in the 
 pages of Pope, as also is Barton Booth ; 
 while Quin had Garrick himself, and James 
 Thomson, for his literary immortalizers. 
 Horace Walpole sung the charms of Cathe-
 
 160 Rambles in Book- Land. 
 
 rine Clive and Frances Abington ; and Peg 
 Woffington secured a strenuous and tuneful 
 trumpeter in the person of Sir Charles 
 Hanbury Williams. 
 
 Lower, to be sure, than 'The Rosciad,' 
 must be ranked 'The Histrionade' (1802), 
 which discoursed, among others, about G. F. 
 Cooke, and 'The Thespiad' (1809), wherein 
 are embalmed the memories (for instance) 
 of stately J. P. Kemble, laughter-moving 
 Munden, Liston, and Charles Mathews, 
 manly Mayne Young, and joyous Mrs. 
 Jordan. Of J. P. Kemble we all remember 
 how eloquently Thomas Campbell wrote, 
 saluting him as 'Pride of the British stage,' 
 and asserting that 
 
 1 His was the spell o'er hearts, 
 Which only Acting lends.' 
 
 Charles Kemble's graces had a celebrant in 
 J. H. Reynolds, and those of Adelaide 
 Kemble in Mr. Justice Talfourd. The great 
 Siddons inspired a sonnet by Charles Lamb, 
 and a couplet by Lord Byron ; and while the 
 former bard dedicated a couple of quatorzains
 
 Poets at the Play. 161 
 
 to Miss Kelly, the latter supplied a fitting 
 tribute to Edmund Kean. Talfourd and 
 Barry Cornwall, as well as Tennyson, poetized 
 on the merits of Macready ; James Smith 
 had some well-turned stanzas about Miss 
 Farren, Miss Brunton, and Miss Stephens ; 
 Lalor Shiel went into rhythmical raptures 
 over the O'Neil ; and John Quincy Adams 
 indulged in hyperbole over Ellen Tree. 
 
 Coming down to the players of our own 
 day, it is pleasant to find the strain of eulogy 
 maintained. The actors and actresses of 
 these so-called degenerate times have not 
 lacked the hearty appreciation of their rhyme- 
 making contemporaries. The late Adelaide 
 Neilson has had eloquent elegiasts in Messrs. 
 William Winter and Clement Scott, the former 
 of whom has mourned that 
 
 ' Night has sealed her glorious eyes, 
 
 And silence hushed her heavenly tones.' 
 
 H. S. Leigh, going to Mr. Buckstone's play- 
 house, saw there ' a rare and radiant maiden/ 
 whose slightest utterance was music, and 
 who, his neighbour told him, was ' Nelly 
 
 ii
 
 1 62 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Moore.' Mr. Winter, by the way, has sung 
 about the late John Brougham, and Mr. 
 Scott about the late George Eelford. For 
 epigraphs on Buckstone, Webster, Charles 
 James Mathews, and others, vide the kindly 
 pages of Mr. Punch. Miss Fanny Kemble, 
 still happily spared to us, stirred to melody the 
 muse of Longfellow ; and Helen Faucit has 
 received the poetic homage, very gracefully 
 expressed, not only of her husband, Sir 
 Theodore Martin, but of Macready and of 
 Mr. Browning. 
 
 As for our working players, they have been 
 satirized in the pages of Mr. Alfred Austin 
 ('The Season') and Mr. G. F. Armstrong 
 (' Mephistopheles in Broadcloth'); but, in 
 recompense, they have received high com- 
 pliments indeed. Mr. Irving has been 
 addressed by Mr. Oscar Wilde as 'Thou 
 trumpet set for Shakespeare's lips to blow,' 
 and, while commended as Fabian dei 
 Franchi, has been exhorted to play Lear : 
 
 ' Frenzied Lear 
 Should at thy bidding wander on the heath, 
 With the shrill fool to mock him.'
 
 Poets at the Play. 163 
 
 In like manner, Mr. Wilde, though delighted 
 with Miss Ellen Terry's Henrietta Maria, 
 and her Camma, has suggested to her the 
 role of Cleopatra. Mr. Justin McCarthy, 
 jun., has been, perhaps, Miss Terry's most 
 enthusiastic poet. Mrs. Kendal has had 
 more than one sonnet tendered to her. 
 Mr. Toole and the Bancrofts have been 
 celebrated respectively by Mr. Winter and 
 Mr. Clement Scott. Of Continental and 
 American actors and actresses I have no 
 space to speak ; suffice it that they, too, have 
 not been without their recognition in rhythm 
 and rhyme. 
 
 1 1 — 2
 
 WINTER READING. 
 
 ]INTER is, par excellence, the time of 
 year for reading. The invitations 
 to pleasant study are then all 
 round us. The publishers' advertisements 
 of their wares stare us luringly in the face. 
 The booksellers' windows and counters are 
 resplendent with volumes of the most varied 
 size and hue. The railway bookstalls 
 threaten to collapse beneath their weight 
 of literary woe. The very hoardings remind 
 us that, if the season is one at which bodily 
 fare usurps a large portion of our attention, 
 it is also one at which we are expected to 
 draw up an ample menu for the mind. 
 
 One is quite willing to admit the ap- 
 propriateness of all this demonstration. This 
 bookish atmosphere is well in accordance
 
 Winter Reading. 165 
 
 with the period of the year. Let us grant 
 that summer also has its fascinations for the 
 lover of book or magazine. Pleasant it is as 
 Mr. Longfellow has said before us, when 
 woods are green, and winds are soft and 
 low, to lie amid some sylvan scene, where, 
 undisturbed by loudly-protesting babes or 
 street-vendors' strident ' calls,' one can devote 
 one's self to the study of a favourite author. 
 But how much and how long do we study ? 
 Let every man answer for himself. Do our 
 eyes not soon and often wander from the 
 page, to rest upon the beauties of the sur- 
 rounding landscape, or, if it is very hot, to 
 close in sleep ? It is not so certain that leafy 
 June, for example, is altogether the best 
 friend of the Muses, so far as the perusal 
 of their product goes. We stroll, say, into 
 Kensington Gardens, with Matthew Arnold's 
 poems in our pocket, and very soon are deep 
 in that always fresh and always delightful 
 piece of description : 
 
 ' Birds here make song, each bird has his, 
 Across the girdling city's hum. 
 How green under the boughs it is ! 
 
 How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come !
 
 1 66 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 ' Sometimes a child will cross the glade 
 
 To take his nurse his broken toy ; 
 Sometimes a thrush flit overhead 
 
 Deep in her unknown day's employ.' 
 
 But the worst of it is that we look up at the 
 birds, and look round at the children, and 
 note for ourselves how green the leaves 
 are ; and then perchance we lie back in our 
 chair or on the grass, and resign ourselves 
 peacefully to slumber, what time 'the 
 breezes blow — likewise the flowers.' 
 
 So, upon the whole, we ought — some of 
 us — to be ready to admit that the soft, sunny 
 hours are not specially conducive to the sway 
 of Polite Letters. The dull gray mornings, 
 the long dark evenings, are much more 
 friendly to the books, and other printed 
 things, of the old days and of these. And if 
 winter is, in particular, the time for reading, 
 it is, no doubt, to a large extent, the time for 
 a particular kind of reading. One is conscious 
 of being in the presence, not only of a large 
 amount of intellectual fare, but of intellectual 
 fare of a peculiar complexion. It is the 
 carnival of the fictionists; they fill the air
 
 Winter Reading. 1 6y 
 
 with their triumph. The essayist has no 
 chance, no following ; the poet is in little 
 favour, save he be a venerable singer, of 
 more than three-score years and ten, who 
 (like Lord Tennyson the other day) chooses 
 this moment of all others to give to the 
 world his latest reflections and his newest 
 prophecy. For the rest, the storytellers have 
 it all their way, as they have had it a hundred 
 times before ; and while the young people 
 revel once more in narratives of hair-breadth 
 'scapes and maidens' miseries, their elders sit 
 them down placidly, as of yore, to scan the 
 tales of family ghosts and Christmas love- 
 makings, of faces in the fire and mysterious 
 footprints in the snow. 
 
 And why not, messieurs and mesdames ? 
 Let us have no more cheap and nasty cynic- 
 ism. Everybody knows that these ghosts 
 and love-makings, faces and footprints, have 
 been 'done before,' over and over again, 
 even (in some instances) to nauseousness. 
 Admitted ; they are ancient and conventional. 
 But as Constable, the painter, after charac-
 
 1 68 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 terizing a certain ' sky ' as ' putty,' averred that 
 he ' liked putty,' so may many of us assert, 
 laying our hands upon such hearts as we 
 have, that we like the conventional and the 
 ancient — in its place. We like everything, 
 indeed, that goes with the season. It is no 
 argument to say that such and such is stale, 
 is not absolutely new. Goose and turkey are 
 not new ; nor are plum-puddings and mince- 
 pies ; yet do we return to them with a certain 
 kindliness, if not with the old zest. Let us 
 have, with the fogs and the frost and the ice, 
 the mental pabulum that accords with them. 
 Let us have whatever is in stock — whether it 
 be vegetables or the virtuous heroine, game 
 or the golden-haired princess who eventually 
 espouses the doughty knight. There are, as 
 the Latins say, whom it delights to spurn and 
 to asperse the hoary midwinter story. Let 
 those of us who believe in taking things in 
 due succession, take this, as we have taken it 
 yearly in the past. 
 
 But, assuredly, there is something to be 
 said upon another count. There is no reason
 
 Winter Reading. 169 
 
 why this rule of the seasonable should be 
 carried too far. There is no reason why the 
 winter reader should not have, when he 
 pleases, the agreeable effect of contrast. The 
 time comes, probably, when the pro re nata 
 literature is exhausted; when the Numbers 
 and Annuals are all ' cut,' and the books of 
 the season all run through ; and when one 
 finds one's self compelled to rest upon one's 
 own resources. Then, perchance, one turns 
 one's back upon the snow or the sleet out- 
 side, and draws the window curtains, and 
 pokes the fire (or, alas! 'turns on' the gas- 
 stove of the Victorian era), and, taking up a 
 poet or an essayist, in his printed guise, is 
 straightway transported to verdant lawns, and 
 blossoming trees, and budding flowers, and 
 blue skies, and delicious breezes, all the 
 more delightful because of the cold and wet 
 outside. This, in truth, should be one of the 
 greatest charms of the dull days and the long 
 nights — that of rising superior to ' environ- 
 ment,' of forgetting goloshes and pocket- 
 handkerchiefs, great-coats and respirators,
 
 170 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 and bathing the spirit in all the fancied, far- 
 off exquisiteness of summer-days. ' Remem- 
 bering happier things' is not always 'a 
 sorrow's crown of sorrow.' When the wind 
 blows hard against the window-panes, and 
 seems to shake the chimneys, all the more 
 welcome is the rhymer or the proser who 
 transforms it for us into a July zephyr, 
 redolent of the perfume of the roses.
 
 THE MARRIED MUSE. 
 
 jjIR EDWIN ARNOLD has brought 
 together, and published, those of 
 his verses which were directly in- 
 spired by his lately deceased wife ; and they 
 make up a volume of a hundred and forty 
 pages, all of them written 'In My Lady's 
 Praise,' and ' now collected for her memory.' 
 The tribute is one of which any wife might 
 well be proud. Not only is there in the 
 book a whole series of poems based on the 
 gems suggested by each letter of Lady 
 Arnold's name — Fanny Maria Adelaide ; but 
 side by side with these are lines written 
 shortly after marriage, others addressed to 
 her on various occasions, and others sug- 
 gested, finally, by her death, the last-named
 
 172 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 being full of tenderness and pathos. Says 
 
 the poet : 
 
 ' Dying has grown dear, 
 Now you are dead who turned all things to grace ;' 
 
 and his last words are : 
 
 ' God, making her, must love her — that's most certain. 
 So — she was weary, and He drew her curtain.' 
 
 It is not often, one may grant, that a votary 
 of the Muse thus consecrates the affection 
 subsisting between himself and his married- 
 life's companion. And the fact may, and 
 possibly will, tend to sharpen the tongue 
 and point the wit of those who are accus- 
 tomed not only to rail at matrimony, but to 
 deplore especially its effects upon the man of 
 song. It must be confessed that the history 
 of poets presents episodes not altogether 
 favourable to their entry into the 'united state.' 
 There are certain familiar examples which 
 the profane delight to bring forward when- 
 ever the opportunity occurs. Milton's first 
 matrimonial experience, for instance, was 
 notoriously unsuccessful, and should have its 
 lessons for all bards similarly situated. An
 
 The Married Muse. 173 
 
 epigrammatist ventured to put the husband's 
 dissatisfaction into words and rhyme. The 
 lady had been called ' a rose ' : 
 
 ' "I am no judge of flowers, but, indeed," cried the 
 poet, 
 " If she be a rose, by the thorns'I may know it." ' 
 
 Dryden did more than this. He did not leave 
 it to a brother penman to give tongue to his 
 feelings ; he relieved the latter by composing 
 for his spouse the well-known epitaph : 
 
 4 Here lies my wife ; here let her 
 Now she's at rest, and so am I !' 
 
 This, naturally, has formed a model for multi- 
 tudinous efforts of the kind, one writer ex- 
 panding the couplet in the following fashion : 
 
 ' Here lies my wife : poor Molly, let her lie ; 
 She's found repose at last, and so have I.' 
 
 Poets, it is to be feared, have often quarrelled 
 with their helpmates, but fortunately they 
 have not always celebrated the fact in verse. 
 Byron did so, but then he loved to write 
 about himself and his. Everybody re- 
 members his rhythmical endorsement of the
 
 174 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 deed of separation between himself and Lady 
 Byron : 
 
 ' A year ago you swore, fond she ! 
 
 "To love, to honour," and so forth ; 
 Such was the vow you pledged to me, 
 And here's exactly what it's worth.' 
 
 There is evidence of strong feeling in the 
 ' Lines on hearing that Lady Byron was 111,' 
 written a few months after the deed was 
 signed ; but it was hardly in his character of 
 poet that Byron arrived at his matrimonial 
 misadventures. 
 
 The instances in which bards have lived 
 happily with their wives are at least as 
 numerous as those in which they have done 
 the contrary. Spenser wrote his splendid 
 ' Epithalamion ' before marriage, but there is 
 no reason to believe that he was ever anxious 
 to withdraw or to suppress it. Even Milton, 
 though he had trouble with Mary Powell, 
 could pen a fervid sonnet to the memory of his 
 second wife, telling how he dreamed that his 
 ' late espoused saint ' came back to him, 
 ' vested all in white, pure as her mind ' — her
 
 The Married Muse. 175 
 
 face veiled; yet, to his fancied sight, 'love, 
 sweetness, goodness in her person shined.' 
 Shelley, too — he, if anybody ever had, had 
 grounds for doubting whether marriage was 
 precisely the chief joy of existence. Never- 
 theless, he could find it in his heart to write 
 very charming things about both his respec- 
 tive spouses, telling Harriett Shelley that she 
 was his ' purer mind/ the inspiration of his 
 song. ' Thine,' he said, in the preface to his 
 ' Juvenilia ' — 
 
 ' Thine are these early wilding flowers, 
 Though garlanded by me.' 
 
 So, with happy impartiality, he could write to 
 
 Mary Shelley : 
 
 ' Mary, dear, come to me soon, 
 
 I am not well whilst thou art far. 
 
 As sunset to the sphered moon, 
 As twilight to the western star, 
 
 Thou, beloved, art to me,' 
 
 and so on. We know that Wordsworth was 
 eminently fortunate in his matrimonial rela- 
 tions, and that Mrs. Wordsworth sat for the 
 delightful picture of ' a perfect woman, nobly 
 planned,' besides inspiring, through her por-
 
 176 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 trait, a couple of equally fine sonnets. How 
 happy Moore was with his ' Bessy ' is not 
 less notorious : she had been an actress, he 
 was a poet and a diner-out, and yet in their 
 little nest they did agree. Leigh Hunt has 
 a sonnet to his wife (' On Modelling my 
 Bust ') the tone of which is, in its tender 
 sweetness, all that could be wished. Hood 
 wrote some playful lines about a ' trouble 
 all his own ' — ' a wife who preaches in her 
 gown, and lectures in her night-dress ;' but 
 we get at his true, deep-seated sentiment in 
 the verses, addressed to Mrs. Hood, which 
 thus conclude : 
 
 ' So, love, however time may flow, 
 
 Fresh hours pursuing those that flee, 
 One constant image still shall show 
 My tide of life is true to thee.' 
 
 Of the late Mortimer Collins it may be 
 truly said that much, if not most, of what 
 was best in his verse was the direct result of 
 his married happiness. Not only his books 
 of lyrics, but his novels, overrun with rhyth- 
 mical testimonies to the success of his
 
 TJie Married Muse. 177 
 
 second matrimonial venture. To a birthday 
 
 letter, penned to 'Frances ' in 1875, he adds 
 
 this postscript : 
 
 ' I often think, my only love, 
 
 The world would be more true, 
 If half the ladies in the world 
 Were half as good as you. 
 
 ' And don't you think, my only love, 
 
 'Twere merrier 'neath the sky, 
 If half the men in half the world 
 Could love as well as I ?' 
 
 On the present-day proofs of my thesis there 
 
 is no call to dwell, for everybody knows what 
 
 the Laureate and Mr. Browning have written 
 
 in praise of marriage;- and poets like Mr. 
 
 Locker and Mr. Gerald Massey (to name no 
 
 others) have been not less earnest in their 
 
 celebration of the felicity which the married 
 
 state has brought to them. Mr. Massey has 
 
 written : 
 
 ' One so fair — none so fair. 
 Oh, my bosom-guest, 
 Love ne'er smiled a happier pair 
 To the bridal-nest. 
 
 ' One so fair — none so fair. 
 Lean on me, sweet Wife ; 
 Light will be the load we bear, 
 Two hearts in one life.' 
 
 12
 
 1 78 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 No doubt the poetic temperament is 
 peculiar, and not every lady is fitted by 
 nature to be a poet's spouse. Yet all that is 
 wanted is a genuine affection on both sides, 
 and on the wife's a certain sympathy with the 
 husband's point of view. Nor is even the 
 last named absolutely necessary in all cases, 
 for not every poet desires that his helpmate 
 shall also be his fervent applauder. That 
 love should be present is, however, indis- 
 pensable. And is it not also indispensable 
 for the happiness of other couples than those 
 of whom one unit is a poet ?
 
 FAUST IN ENGLAND. 
 
 j]0 the subject of Faust a peculiar 
 interest attaches. It is one which 
 has attracted Europe for several 
 centuries — from the Middle Ages, in which 
 the legend took its rise, to the days of 
 Spohr and Berlioz, Gounod, Boito, and the 
 rest. The story is one of the few which may 
 be said to be almost world-wide in reputation 
 — ranking with those of Vanderdecken, Don 
 Giovanni, Don Quixote, and other popular 
 heroes, round each of whom a voluminous 
 literature has grown up. 
 
 Every civilized person, probably, has heard 
 something about Faust. It would be curious 
 to inquire into the extent to which, in each 
 community, the details of his story are 
 generally known. In regard to our own 
 
 12 2
 
 180 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 country, for example — what, one may ask, is 
 the precise amount of knowledge of the 
 legend possessed by the average man or 
 woman ? Putting aside the specialists, 
 whose business it is to be acquainted with 
 these matters, and the students, who make a 
 point of investigating them as they come to 
 the fore, what has the English public in its 
 mind in reference to Faust ? When it thinks 
 of him, what does it think of him ? In what 
 light does it regard him ? Is its Faust the 
 Faust of history, or the Faust of legend, or 
 the Faust of Goethe? Who or what is 
 responsible, in short, for the conception of 
 Faust which exists, when it exists at all, 
 in the ordinary British household of to-day ? 
 The story of Faust was first treated in 
 England by Marlowe, whose ' Dr. Faustus,' 
 now nearly 300 years old, is to be read in 
 extant editions of the author's works. But 
 what does the average reader know about 
 1 Dr. Faustus ?' Has he ever dipped into 
 its pages ? Did he ever know anyone who 
 had ? There is a couplet in the drama —
 
 Faust in England. 1 8 1 
 
 ' Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air, 
 Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars,' 
 
 — which has got, somehow or other, into the 
 quotation-books ; but there's an end. Not 
 one in a hundred thousand, probably, could 
 stand examination even in the plot of the 
 play —is aware, for example, that no Margaret 
 figures in it, or, again, has noted Marlowe's 
 spelling of the word ' Mephistophilis.' And 
 while but little, if anything, is known of ' Dr. 
 Faustus,' we may be tolerably certain that 
 nothing whatever is known nowadays of the 
 farces and pantomimes, on the subject of 
 ' Faustus,' which amused or bored the British 
 playgoer during the two centuries between 
 Elizabeth and George IV, That anyone 
 should be wholly ignorant of those produc- 
 tions is not to be counted greatly to his 
 disadvantage. 
 
 Equally may a man be forgiven for having 
 his mind blank on the subject of a ' romantic 
 musical drama,' called ' Faustus,' produced 
 at Drury Lane at the end of the first quarter 
 of this century. Some of the Nestors among
 
 1 82 Rambles in Book-Land . 
 
 living playgoers may have seen that piece, 
 and had their conception of the legend 
 coloured by it ; but those who can claim so 
 long an experience of the stage, must, 1 
 imagine, be few and far between, and cannot 
 be regarded as perceptibly leavening the great 
 mass of their countrymen. Nor, probably, 
 has the existing public mind been much im- 
 pressed by the English versions of Goethe's 
 poem which made their appearance about 
 fifty years ago. There were Leveson-Gower's, 
 and Hayward's, and Blackie's, and Anster's, 
 and Filmore's, to name no others ; but of 
 these only Hayward's has had any special 
 vogue, and even that, one may suspect, is 
 not much read. Educated people have it on 
 their shelves, but they do not, probably, often 
 take it down. The versions of Sir Theodore 
 Martin and of Bayard Taylor, now nearly 
 twenty years old, have, to a large extent, 
 superseded Hayward's ; but even they, one 
 may surmise, are familiar only to the 
 cultivated few. 
 
 We are, however, anticipating somewhat,
 
 Faust in England. 183 
 
 for, eighteen years before Sir Theodore 
 Martin published his translation, Charles 
 Kean had produced in London a play (by 
 Robertson) called 'Faust and Marguerite,' 
 which no doubt has done a good deal towards 
 moulding opinion in England on the subject 
 of the Faust story. A good many playgoers 
 can look back thirty years, and conjure up 
 recollections, not only of the Mephistopheles 
 of Kean, but of the Marguerite of Miss 
 Carlotta Leclercq. Moreover, ' Faust and 
 Marguerite' has been revived more than 
 once, not only in London but in the 
 provinces. Nevertheless, the piece is 
 antiquated as we reckon time nowadays, 
 and to the younger portion of this generation 
 is but slightly known. It was of French 
 origin, though the French author had adapted, 
 of course, from Goethe's work, rejecting 
 everything but the compact with Mephis- 
 topheles and the ruin of Margaret. It was 
 from this play, certainly, that the British 
 public of to-day, taken as a whole, obtained 
 its first idea of Faust — an idea which has not
 
 184 Rambles in Book- Land. 
 
 been materially modified by succeeding 
 dramas. Bayle Bernard's ' Faust,' though 
 dating back only twenty odd years, is, one 
 may assume, virtually forgotten ; while Mr. 
 Gilbert's ' Gretchen,' which differed consider- 
 ably from the Goethean narrative — making 
 Faust (here called 'Faustus 1 again) a dis- 
 illusioned young man who has turned monk, 
 abolishing Valentine, and introducing one 
 Gottfried as a friend of Faust and the lover 
 of Gretchen — had but a brief career in 
 London, and has had no perceptible influ- 
 ence on playgoers generally. Mr. Wills's 
 ' Faust,' again, covered much the same 
 ground as the ' Faust and Marguerite ' pro- 
 duced by Kean, though it introduced the 
 witches' kitchen and the Brocken scene, and 
 has thus served to familiarize the public with 
 those features of Goethe's work. 
 
 The list of stage versions is, however, not 
 yet ended. Was there not, some fifteen years 
 since, a * Little Faust,' of French extraction, 
 which had at least its foundation in the 
 accepted story? Was there not, more
 
 Faust in England. 185 
 
 recently, a ' Little Dr. Faust,' by H. J. Byron, 
 in which the spirit of extravaganza was 
 wholly rampant ? Was there not a ' Mefisto- 
 fele II.' in which Faust once more figured, 
 and in which ' Menstofele' was curtailed to 
 flippant 'Mefisto'? There has been more 
 than one travestie of the operatic 'Faust' 
 from the witty pen of Mr. F. C. Burnand, 
 and, more lately, Messrs. G. R. Sims and 
 Henry Pettitt have brought the burlesque 
 view of the subject ' up to date.' No doubt 
 all these pieces have tended, more or less, to 
 impress upon the public the version of the 
 legend first made known to English people 
 in 'Faust and Marguerite.' 
 
 But whence has the story of the two lovers 
 derived the greater portion of its present 
 popularity in this country? What was the 
 work which fixed that story, once for all, upon 
 the tablets of the people's memory? On this 
 point, I imagine, there can be little hesita- 
 tion. When English people think of Faust, 
 they think, for the most part, of the Faust 
 brought before them in Gounod's opera. It
 
 1 86 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 is Gounod — not Goethe, or Marlowe, or 
 anyone else — who has made Faust, and his 
 compact, and his love, well-known to the 
 bulk of English men and women. The 
 opera was first heard here rather more than 
 twenty-five years ago, and since that time 
 has maintained its vogue unimpaired. It 
 has never cloyed upon the public palate. 
 Audiences go to see it whenever they have 
 the chance of doing so, and show no signs of 
 tiring. Boito's ' Mefistofele' has, during the 
 last few years, done something to confuse 
 the public on the subject, by reproducing 
 from Goethe not only the witches' scene, 
 but the prologue in heaven and the episode 
 of Helen. But, so far as the majority are 
 concerned, the earlier opera holds its own, 
 and it is to Gounod's hero that the thoughts 
 of the unlearned turn when the name of 
 Faust is mentioned. 
 
 Gounod's work, of course, was inspired, in 
 effect, by Goethe's poem. And, in regard 
 to the great German poet, there is always 
 this, in particular, to be remembered — that
 
 Faust in England. 187 
 
 if Faust, as a dramatic character, was really 
 created or moulded by Marlowe, to whom 
 Goethe was largely indebted, it is to Goethe 
 alone that we owe the conception of the 
 Margaret episode. Nearly everything else 
 in 'Faust' existed at one time in the shape 
 of solid fact or floating legend, but it was 
 reserved for Goethe to conceive the tragic 
 love-story which the music of Gounod has 
 enforced so powerfully on the mind and heart 
 of this generation.
 
 SCIENCE AND SARCASM. 
 
 HE publication of a volume of verse 
 of which the best, if not the main, 
 portion consistsof clever mockery of 
 scientific theories, is a sign of the times, but 
 by no means an unfamiliar one. Ever since 
 Darwin published his ' Descent of Man,' the 
 literature of the period has teemed with per- 
 siflage on the subject. In some cases the 
 motive power was the scorn born of in- 
 credulity. Because the savants said this or 
 that, it did not follow that it was all gospel. 
 On the other hand, there have been those 
 who, without accepting or denying scientific 
 results, have contented themselves with 
 cynical badinage concerning them — reducing 
 them, in their view, to absurdity, and then 
 laughing at the picture they themselves have 
 drawn.
 
 Science and Sarcasm. 1 89 
 
 Sometimes the satire is general in its ap- 
 plication, as in Miss May Kendall's portrait of 
 ' Education's Martyr,' who 'owned the scenery 
 was grand,' but objected to cliffs because they 
 were Laurentian and not Pleistocene, while, 
 as for flowers, 
 
 ' Primroses by the river's brim 
 Dicotyledons were to him, 
 And they were nothing more.' 
 
 This type of savant reminds one of Miss 
 
 Constance Naden's scientific wooer, who said 
 
 that his suit, ' with Optics well begun,' should 
 
 by Magnetism be won, and ' closed at last in 
 
 Chemic union !' He proposed to sing his 
 
 lady-love ' a deep Darwinian lay,' and was no 
 
 doubt identical with the evolutionary lover, 
 
 also described by Miss Naden, who, when 
 
 cut out by a more attractive man, saw in the 
 
 fact one more proof of the theory of natural 
 
 selection : 
 
 ' Shall I rage as they whirl in the valse ? 
 Shall I sneer as they carol and woo ? 
 Oh no ! for since Chloe is false, 
 I'm certain that Darwin is true !' 
 
 It is Darwin, indeed, who has all along
 
 190 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 come in for the hardest of satiric knocks. 
 The unkind treatment began with Lord 
 Neaves, whose ' Origin of Species ' and 
 ' Leather Bottel,' are, in their way, quite as 
 historical as ' The Descent of Man,' which 
 suggested them. In the one we learn how 
 ' all living things from a Monad have sprung,' 
 and are shown, with delightful humour, the 
 stages by which that Monad became man ; 
 in the other, the ' marine animal,' resembling 
 the existing Ascidian, from which humanity, 
 we are told, took rise, has special celebration. 
 Mr. Andrew Lang, too, has sung 'the Ascidian 
 tadpole, young and gay,' who ' doth Life with 
 one bright eye survey,' and has declared 
 that 
 
 ' He's sensitive to grief and pain, 
 Has tail and spine, and bears a brain ;' 
 
 adding, by way of moral, that his descendant, 
 man, has a habit of degenerating from his 
 high estate, and ' reverting to the Ascidian.' 
 
 Miss Naden, writing more recently, goes 
 further back than the ' bag of leather,' and
 
 Science and Sarcasm. 191 
 
 makes a Solomon of to-day say to his Queen 
 of Sheba, 
 
 ' We were a soft Amoeba 
 In ages past and gone,' 
 
 till the lady 
 
 ' incurred the odium 
 Of fissure and divorce,' 
 
 and then, 'a severed pseudopodium,' she 
 ' strayed her lonely course.' Lord Neaves, 
 it will be remembered, related in ' The Origin 
 of Species ' how 
 
 ' An Ape with a pliable thumb and big brain, 
 When the gift of the gab he had managed to gain, 
 As a lord of creation established his reign.' 
 
 "S" 
 
 Mortimer Collins, in his 'British Birds,' 
 adopted the notion, and turned it to a special 
 purpose, telling how 
 
 ' There was an Ape in the days that were earlier ; 
 Centuries passed, and his hair became curlier ; 
 Centuries more gave a turn to his wrist — 
 Then he was Man, and a Positivist.' 
 
 Still more lately, Mr. Cotsford Dick, in a 
 ' Ballade of Belief,' has made Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison patronize the Darwinian theory,
 
 192 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 but still adhere to his worship of 
 
 humanity : 
 
 ' Though from stock that is Simian hight, 
 He may trace out a pure pedigree, 
 Yet to Man will I anthems recite, 
 And that's the religion for me.' 
 
 The teachings of geology have always had 
 a great attraction for the humourists, and it 
 is now some years since Bret Harte penned 
 a ' geological address ' to ' a pliocene skull,' 
 which turned out to be that of one Bowers of 
 Calaveras County, and by no means con- 
 temporaneous with Lycopodiacea or Ptero- 
 dactyls. About equally long is it since the 
 same sarcastic writer described the break-up 
 of ' The Society upon the Stanislaus,' caused 
 by Jones's identification of 'a lot of fossil 
 bones ' (from which Brown had reconstructed, 
 theoretically, ' an animal that was extremely 
 rare ') as those of one of his lost mules. 
 As Miss Nadeu made her scientific wooer 
 suggest a Darwinian lay, so Bret Harte makes 
 one of his creations sing to his sweetheart. 
 1 A Geological Madrigal,' in the course of 
 which he promises to present her with ' a
 
 Science and Sarcasm. 193 
 
 perfect Cystedian shell ' and ' a whole holo- 
 cephalic fish ' — if he can find them. Pro- 
 fessor J. S. Blackie once wrote ' A Song of 
 Geology,' in which, among other things, he 
 pictured an ichthyosaurus, ' with a big goggle- 
 eye and a very small brain ;' and, in like 
 manner, Miss Kendall devotes one of her 
 lyrics to the complaint of an ichthyosaurus 
 that his ' brain was never a patch on his eye !' 
 It was, he says, 'shallow and simple and plain' 
 — very different from that of Aryan man, 
 which, to be sure, 
 
 ' Explodes at high pressure 
 Of some overwhelming demand, 
 But, plied in unmerciful measure, 
 'Tis wonderful what it will stand !' 
 
 To Miss Kendall we owe, further, an intro- 
 duction to an ancient trilobite, who discourses 
 so pleasantly of his agreeable immunity from 
 modern ills that the poetess is fain to wish 
 that evolution had stopped at that period : 
 
 ' For, oh, it was a happy plight, 
 Of liberty and ease, 
 To be a simple Trilobite 
 In the Silurian seas !' 
 
 13
 
 194 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Unfortunately, science does not busy itself 
 only with the past of Man, but concerns itself 
 with his future, respecting which it has quite 
 as many theories, in their way even more 
 marvellous than those about his ' origin and 
 progress.' To some of these fantasies the 
 satirists were bound to draw attention; and 
 so, while Mortimer Collins penned a carica- 
 ture which he called 'Sewing Machine, Esq.,' 
 Miss Kendall diverts us by imagining a time 
 when humanity will consist of so many per- 
 fect mechanical contrivances : 
 
 ' Volition vain will fret no more 
 The Automatic Soul ; 
 Emotion then will fail to score, 
 While reflex action takes the floor, 
 And dominates the whole !' 
 
 The same lady, discussing the conception of 
 a Nirvana, humorously describes what will 
 happen when ' each individual soul will in a 
 general soul be blended ' : 
 
 ' Critics no longer we shall flee ; 
 
 Nor care how base the things they say are. 
 They will be we, and we shall be 
 The critics, just as much as they are.'
 
 Science and Sarcasm. 195 
 
 Finally, most people remember Mortimer 
 Collins's delicious 'chaff' of Professor 
 Tyndall's 'particle' theory; while, in more 
 recent days, Mr. Cotsford Dick, in the ballade 
 already mentioned, has given witty expression 
 to Mr. Herbert Spencer's large satisfaction 
 with 'Infinite Energy.' 
 
 J 3-
 
 SHAKESPEARE IN OPERA. 
 
 HE Bard ' has lately been a good 
 deal in evidence upon our oper- 
 atic boards. A new setting of 
 ' Othello ' has been introduced to us, and 
 Gounod's ' Romeo et Juliette ' has been per- 
 formed in England for the first time with a 
 French libretto. The production of Verdi's 
 ' Otello ' was an event of much artistic im- 
 portance, presenting us with an Iago whose 
 acting placed him in the front rank of inter- 
 preters of the character. Then, we have had 
 representations of ' Macbeth ' and of ' The 
 Merry Wives of Windsor,' with elaborate 
 musical illustrations by Sir Arthur Sullivan ; 
 those in the former case being new, while 
 those in the latter have been in existence 
 for the past fifteen years. All these things,
 
 Shakespeare in Opera. 197 
 
 occurring so close together, must have led 
 many to reflect upon the extent to which the 
 works of Shakespeare have been taken as at 
 least the foundation of operas or operatic 
 dramas. 
 
 Shakespeare has been used very largely for 
 both purposes. Nor is the fact surprising. 
 There are certain of his pieces which lend 
 themselves very readily and obviously to 
 musical treatment. Indeed, Morris Barnett 
 (of ' Serious Family ' fame), writing on the 
 subject some forty years ago, gave it as his 
 opinion that Shakespeare would himself, in 
 some instances, have been only too glad to 
 avail himself of musical aid, if such aid had 
 been forthcoming. He would have turned 
 into operas more than one of the pieces 
 which have so long figured as dramas pure 
 and simple. Take, for example, ' A Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream 'and ' The Tempest.' 
 In each there is a supernatural, a fairy 
 element, which undoubtedly can best be 
 made impressive by the employment of 
 musical accompaniments. These, happily,
 
 198 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 have been provided for ' A Midsummer 
 Night's Dream ' by the genius of Mendels- 
 sohn, whose delicate and delicious work has 
 stood the test of nearly half a century. As 
 for ' The Tempest,' there is every reason to 
 believe that its peculiar suitability for melodic 
 treatment has been recognised and acted 
 upon, more or less, every time that it has 
 been brought out ' for a run.' From the time 
 of Robert Johnson to that of Arthur Sullivan 
 many notable musicians have been employed 
 upon it — Lock, Purcell, Arne, and others. 
 When Garrick revived it he endowed it with 
 melodies written for the occasion by a com- 
 poser bearing the unromantic name of Smith. 
 And then, just forty-nine years ago, came its 
 appearance in Italian form as a full-blown 
 opera, written by Halevy on the basis of a 
 ' book ' provided by the adroit but irreverent 
 Scribe. Here we have a typical instance of 
 what Shakespeare has had to suffer from the 
 vagaries of adapters. The story of 'The 
 Tempest,' as told by its author, was not good 
 enough for the French librettist, who, among
 
 Shakespeare in Opera. 199 
 
 other 'improvements,' made Miranda, wrought 
 upon by the lies of Sycorax, meditate the 
 slaughter of her lover Ferdinand. 
 
 Other Shakespearian plays than those just 
 mentioned have had to endure the tortures 
 of the adapter and composer. There is, for 
 instance, ' The Merry Wives.' That was 
 brought out, in the first quarter of the century, 
 as an 'opera ' both at the Haymarket and at 
 Drury Lane, where Braham, as Fenton, was 
 good enough to introduce ' Blow, blow, thou 
 winter wind.' ' Opera,' however, is not a 
 term which can be applied to such mere 
 musical adaptations as these, though it is ap- 
 propriate in the case of the two works called 
 'Falstaff,' performed in London in 1838 and 
 1864 respectively. The first of these was 
 composed by Balfe, on the foundation of a 
 version of ' The Merry Wives ' written by an 
 Italian author. In this Lablache was the 
 Falstaff and Mdme. Grisi the Mrs. Ford, 
 supported by Rubini, Tamburini, and Mdlle. 
 Albertazzi. The other ' Falstaff was the 
 1 Lustige Weiber von Windsor ' of Nicolai,
 
 200 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 which had first seen the light at Berlin fifteen 
 years before, and, in its English form, is 
 tolerably familiar to English amateurs. Of 
 the other comedies of Shakespeare which 
 have been turned into operas, one thinks at 
 once of 'The Taming of the Shrew,' by 
 Goetz, and of 'The Merchant of Venice,' 
 which has been set to music by an Italian 
 maestro of our day. Of these the former, as 
 adapted by Herr Widmann, is fairly well 
 known in England. For the ' Merchant ' Sir 
 Arthur Sullivan wrote music which was first 
 heard at Manchester some eighteen years ago. 
 But it is to the tragedies of Shakespeare 
 that composers generally have devoted most 
 attention, and to ' Romeo and Juliet ' in par- 
 ticular. This has been the prime favourite 
 of them all, attracting men of different nation- 
 alities, and, in most cases, successfully in- 
 spiring them. Of Gounod's effort something 
 has already been said. Of its rivals, the most 
 popular on the Continent has been that of 
 Zingarelli, which is only seven years short of 
 a century old. It was written, they say, in
 
 Shakespeare in Opera. 201 
 
 less than ten days, and had the distinccion 
 of being specially liked by the First Napoleon. 
 It had been preceded, by a few years, by 
 Steibelt's opera on the same subject, and was 
 followed by Vaccaj's and Bellini's, both of 
 which were heard in London in ' the thirties.' 
 Berlioz's work is, of course, a ' dramatic sym- 
 phony,' not an opera, though it has a prologue 
 in recitative, solos, and choruses. The oper- 
 atic writers showed some ingenuity in ringing 
 the changes upon the title of the tragedy. 
 Steibelt and Gounod both called their com- 
 positions ' Romeo et Juliette.' Zingarelli 
 and Vaccaj, by way of variety, reversed this, 
 and gave the pas to the heroine — ' Giulietta e 
 Romeo ' ; while Bellini, taking a broader 
 view of the scope of the tragic tale, named 
 his work ' I Capuletti ed i Montecchi.' Of 
 ' Macbeth ' there have been only two full 
 operatic settings — that by Chelard, also heard 
 in London in ' the thirties,' and that by Verdi, 
 which is now forty-two years old. Beethoven 
 sketched out an overture and a chorus, while 
 Von Collin produced a whole first act for an
 
 202 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 opera on the subject of ' Macbeth.' Mean- 
 while, three English composers had preceded 
 Sir Arthur Sullivan in supplying incidental 
 music for representations of the tragedy — 
 Matthew Lock, Eccles, and Leveridge— the 
 first of these for a production which, under 
 the auspices of Sir William Davenant, had 
 the character of an opera rather than of a 
 drama. It was ' dressed,' as Downes, the 
 prompter, tells us, 
 
 •in all its finery, as new clothes, new scenes, 
 machines, as flying for the witches, with all the 
 singing and dancing in it ... it being all excellently 
 performed, being in the nature of an Opera.' 
 
 Here, again, the poor bard fared badly at 
 the hands of his adapter, who was much less 
 respectful in his treatment of the text than 
 Boito, for example, has shown himself in his 
 version of 'Othello.' There we get much 
 that is genuinely Shakespearean. The 'Otello' 
 of Rossini may be said to have been per- 
 manently displaced by that of Verdi, which 
 is certainly the more powerfully dramatic. 
 The ' Hamlet ' of M. Ambroise Thomas we 
 all know, having heard Mr. Santley and
 
 Shakespeare in Opera. 203 
 
 Mdme. Nilsson in it ; let us hope that, some 
 day, English amateurs may have the pleasure 
 of making acquaintance with the ' Hamlet ' 
 which Signor Boito adapted and Signor 
 Faccio composed — a combination which 
 must surely have been productive of good 
 results.
 
 WIT IN QUOTATION. 
 
 HERE is, perhaps, no phase of wit 
 more agreeable to those who 
 understand it, than that which 
 consists in a propos quotation. It is, of 
 course, thrown away upon those who have 
 little or no literary culture. Obviously, it is 
 of no use citing a passage if the person to 
 whom it is cited has never met with it 
 before. A quotation which is not com- 
 prehended is apt to confuse, and even to 
 annoy, rather than impress. People, it may 
 be said in general terms, do not altogether 
 care for the wit which they are unable to 
 fathom. Not only do they dislike being 
 reminded of their unacquaintance with the 
 belles lettres, but they have a kind of 
 suspicion that they are being laughed at.
 
 Wit in Quotation. 205 
 
 Probably this is very far from the intention, 
 but the unpleasant idea is entertained. And, 
 no doubt, it is genuinely irritating to find 
 other people amused by a quotation which 
 conveys no meaning to one's own intelligence. 
 On the other hand, the very fact that a quo- 
 tation is caviare to the general enhances its 
 charm for those who can recognise the 
 happiness of the application. For many, 
 there is nothing more delightful than the 
 wit which lurks in the reproduction of some 
 line or lines by a classic or a modern 
 author. 
 
 The least acceptable, certainly, of all witty 
 quotation is that which is made from the 
 pages of the Bible. I do not say that the 
 citation is not sometimes amusing in its way. 
 Jekyll, for example, made a lucky hit when, 
 hearing that a stupid person had gone to 
 Greece, he recalled the phrase : ' To the 
 Greeks, foolishness.' And Mr. Trevelyan 
 tells of Macaulay, when a child, a story which 
 one may be permitted to reproduce. The 
 future historian, who appears to have been
 
 206 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 much exercised by the threats and terrors of 
 the law, had a little plot of ground at the 
 back of his father's house, marked out as his 
 own by a row of oyster shells. These shells 
 a maid-servant one day threw away as 
 rubbish : whereupon the boy went straight to 
 the drawing-room, where his mother was 
 receiving visitors, and solemnly observed : 
 ' Cursed be Sally ; for it is written, " Cursed 
 be he that removeth bis neighbour's land- 
 mark." ' Here, of course, the fun was un- 
 conscious and unintended. Where it is both 
 intended and conscious there is, unquestion- 
 ably, the risk of offending the susceptibilities 
 of those who hold, very rightly, that the text 
 of Scripture ought not to be applied to the 
 purposes of wit. Moreover, there is the 
 feeling that, in most cases, the witty applica- 
 tion of Biblical passages is not a very difficult 
 operation. It is, indeed, so easily performed 
 that, even on that ground alone, it cannot 
 afford much pleasure. 
 
 Quotation from the Greek and Latin, 
 whether it be in the form of poetry or
 
 Wit in Quotation. 207 
 
 proverb, or mere conventional expression, is, 
 it will be admitted, open to the objection 
 above-named — it is apt to be unintelligible, 
 and, therefore, so far a failure. There are, 
 however, a few phrases which the least 
 cultivated must recognise when used. Thus, 
 when Jekyll, by dining with the judges 
 instead of at Lansdowne House, escaped the 
 falling of a ceiling there, he described the 
 affair by saying that he had been asked to 
 Ruat caelum, but had dined with Fiat justitia. 
 Dr. Donaldson, again, made a truly obvious 
 bon mot when, requested to explain what a 
 1 sound divine ' was, he replied that he was 
 vox et prceterea nihil. Of Keller, the lawyer, 
 we read that he and some friends were 
 supping one evening at a friend's when it 
 was announced that the lady of the house 
 had just added to the population. It was 
 proposed that the party should adjourn to 
 an hotel opposite. ' Oh, certainly,' said 
 Keller — ' pro re natd.' This, again, is 
 obvious to the slenderest classic. Other 
 recorded mots are not so readily discerned
 
 208 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 by the 'vulgar,' and are, therefore, no doubt, 
 all the more dear to the educated. Take, 
 for instance, Sydney Smith's picture of a 
 dinner at Longman's, with Rees, his partner, 
 carving — plerumque secat res. Note, too, 
 the Canon's suggestion for a motto for 
 Bishop Burgess, whose brother was famous 
 for his sauces — Gravi jamdudum saucia curd,. 
 One may recall, by the way, the translation 
 proposed by the Canon's brother, ' Bobus,' 
 for the motto, Libertas sub rege pio — ' The 
 pious king has got liberty under !' 
 
 Luttrell is responsible for one very neat 
 classical quotation. Moore was telling him 
 of an old lady who, he thought, was crying at 
 one of his songs, but who was, it seemed, 
 only putting up her hands to settle her 
 spectacles. 'Ah,' said Luttrell, 'you thought 
 it was node pluit totd, instead of which it was 
 only redeunt spectacular Not less neat was 
 Jekyll's remark when he heard that Logier 
 taught thorough-bass in three lessons. He 
 said it quite contradicted the old saying, 
 Nemo repente fuit turpissimus. One of the
 
 Wit in Quotation. 209 
 
 cleverest quotations ever made was probably 
 that which was applied to a man named 
 Park, who was a very regular church-goer, 
 and was accordingly nicknamed, after Horace, 
 Parens deorum alitor. Horace, again, sug- 
 gested to Sir George Rose a truly charming 
 compliment. Sir George had met his old 
 friend, Archdeacon Robinson, walking deep 
 in thought in the neighbourhood of the 
 Temple, and had asked him the subject of 
 his reverie. ' Oh,' said the Archdeacon, ' I 
 was nescio quid meditans nugarumJ ' But 
 then,' said Sir George, ' with you, dear friend, 
 it is always in the Via sacra.' It would be 
 easy to multiply such examples. Curran, of 
 course, would furnish several, and of other 
 Irish lawyers some clever mots are recorded, 
 but these would require rather more ex- 
 planatory detail than I have space for. 
 
 Shakespeare has naturally been largely 
 drawn upon by the wits. As we all know, 
 Sydney Smith, when asked for a motto 
 for a dog called Spot, went of necessity to 
 ' Macbeth,' and produced ' Out, damned 
 
 14
 
 210 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Spot !' As a motto for a chapter on ' Crows 
 
 and Rooks,' James Smith, just as inevitably, 
 
 proposed ' The cause, my soul, the cause /' 
 
 Most people remember Thackeray's comment 
 
 on a clever man who was remarkably fond of 
 
 beer — ' Take him for half-and-half, we shall 
 
 not look upon his like again.' But perhaps 
 
 the two happiest quotations ever made from 
 
 Shakespeare were the work of John Hamilton 
 
 Reynolds, who remarked of some beef that 
 
 he was eating that it would have been very 
 
 good indeed if 'damned custom had not 
 
 brazed it so.' It was Reynolds, also, who 
 
 represented himself as taking leave of a 
 
 hostess ' under the shade of melancholy bo7vs.' 
 
 Luttrell, speaking of Daniel O'Connell, made 
 
 a happy adaptation from Dryden : 
 
 ' Through all the compass of the notes he ran, 
 The diapason closing full in Dan.'' 
 
 A line by Pope suggested to Charles Lamb 
 one of the most admirable of his jokes. 
 Crabb Robinson was speaking to him about 
 the first brief he had received. ' Did you 
 not exclaim,' said Lamb, ' " Thou great first
 
 Wit in Quotation. 211 
 
 cause, least understood " ?' Brindal, the 
 actor, slightly altering two lines of Pope, 
 made them apply amusingly to Mrs. Nisbett : 
 
 ' If to her share some female errors fall, 
 Look in her face — and you'll believe them all.' 
 
 But probably the most audacious quotation 
 ever attempted was that which greeted Lord 
 (then Mr.) Tennyson when he appeared, with 
 locks dishevelled, in the Oxford Theatre, to 
 receive the degree of D.C.L. — 'Did your 
 mother call you early, dear ?' 
 
 Much might be said of the part played by 
 witty quotation in the annals of Parlia- 
 ment. A famous instance of the kind was 
 O'Connell's reference to the ' Derby Dilly, 
 carrying six insides.' This is not likely to be 
 forgotten. For sheer readiness, however, it 
 would be difficult to surpass Peel's sly 
 suggestion, after Shiel had several times 
 begun a sentence with the word ' Necessity ' 
 — ' is not always the mother of invention.' 
 That was an ' impromptu ' indeed. 
 
 14 — 2
 
 WIT IN ALLUSION. 
 
 |F wit can be displayed in a happy 
 quotation, it can be exhibited, 
 even more notably, in an apt 
 allusion. Quotation, no doubt, has the more 
 obvious and more general effect ; it is the 
 more readily detected, and, therefore, the 
 more readily approved. But that, possibly, 
 is the very reason why allusion is, to those 
 who can appreciate its force, the more 
 acceptable. It is the more flattering to our 
 vanity. There are those to whom quotation 
 and allusion are alike unintelligible; and 
 therein lies one of the dangers, indeed the 
 greatest danger, of allusiveness. It is open 
 to misconception and misunderstanding. 
 But for those to whom a clever allusion is 
 palpable, how enjoyable it is ! how much
 
 Wit in Allusion. 213 
 
 more delightful even than the apropos citation 
 — how considerably more charming even than 
 the apposite anecdote ! There is something 
 about the very slyness of a successful allusion 
 which gratifies those who can detect it. It 
 steals suddenly upon the senses, and excites 
 instant inward. laughter. It does not arouse 
 the loud cachinnation that follows the more 
 marked and obvious joke. The reader or 
 listener is titillated rather than shaken, tickled 
 rather than smitten under the ribs. 
 
 To the range of allusion there is, of course, 
 no limit. All that is asked of it is that it 
 shall be pointed and to the purpose. If it 
 has those qualities, its extensive view may 
 stretch, like Dr. Johnson's ' observation,' 
 from China to Peru. And it is, perhaps, 
 inevitable, in respect of the universal study 
 of the sacred volume, that a certain amount 
 of the most impressive allusion should be 
 to matters Scriptural. It is not, however, 
 inevitable that such references should be 
 indecorous. There was no great harm done, 
 for example, when, hearing that a certain
 
 214 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 person had crossed the Channel in order to 
 evade his creditors, Selwyn remarked that it 
 was a pass-over which would not be relished 
 by the Jews. Nor, again, can Jekyll be said 
 to have sinned very grievously against good 
 taste when he declared that the farther he 
 went West the more convinced he was that 
 the wise men came from the East. Both 
 these mots have a Biblical flavour, but it is 
 not too pronounced. Then, again, there is 
 Sydney Smith's humorous remark, when Mrs. 
 Marcet expressed her admiration of a ham of 
 his — ' Oh, our hams are the only true hams ; 
 yours are Shems and Japhets.' That, surely 
 is innocent enough. Burns and Samuel 
 Beazley are also credited with Scriptural 
 allusions which may at least be regarded 
 with indulgence. Beazley's was in reply to 
 the suggestion that a melancholy letter he 
 had written shortly before his decease was 
 ' like the first chapter of Jeremiah.' ' You 
 are mistaken,' he said sadly, but admirably ; 
 ' it is the last chapter of Samuel.' Burns 
 once gave as a toast ' The last verse of the
 
 Wit in Allusion. 215 
 
 last chapter of the last Book of Kings,' and it 
 was sagely surmised that the reference boded 
 no friendliness to the monarchy. But the 
 verse speaks of ' a continual allowance given 
 him of the King,' and the poet may possibly 
 have had a pension in his mind's eye. 
 
 There can be no objection, at any rate, to 
 historical allusion, and of that, of courses 
 there has been plenty. Theodore Hook, in 
 all probability, was not much of a student of 
 the past, and there is certainly a little haziness 
 about his recorded reference to an old 
 English worthy. Hogg, the poet, had 
 inquired in company, ' What is mother-of- 
 pearl ?' to which Hook replied that he ' didn't 
 know, unless it was the Venerable Bede.' 
 This is not so clear as might be wished, but 
 it will ' repay perusal' Talleyrand is credited 
 with some of the ' most unkindest cuts ' of 
 which allusion of this sort could be susceptible. 
 It was he who said of the members of the 
 French Academy that it was possible that 
 they might some day do something remark- 
 able, because a flock of geese had once
 
 216 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 saved the capitol of Rome ; a jest which may 
 well be bracketed with Hannay's lines — 
 equally historical in basis — upon a Radical 
 reformer : 
 
 ' Tomkins will clear the land, they say, 
 Of every foul abuse ; 
 So chimneys in the olden time 
 Were cleansed by a goose.' 
 
 Again, it was Talleyrand who, rallied by 
 Louis XVIII. on his desire to leave Paris 
 as soon as Mdme. Talleyrand had entered it, 
 retorted, ' Yes, your Majesty, it is my 20th 
 of March ;' a suggestion which must have 
 been as unpalatable to the monarch as the 
 same wit's brutal response to Charles X.'s 
 assertion that there was no middle course 
 between the throne and the scaffold — ' Your 
 Majesty forgets the post-chaise.' 
 
 Literary allusion has naturally flourished 
 among literary people. Wit is apt to be of 
 the shop, shoppy ; and men of letters 
 have been no exception to the rule. It 
 was Charles Lamb who, invited to dinner, 
 and told that there would be a hare,
 
 Wit in Allusion. 217 
 
 promptly asked, ' And many friends ?' in 
 happy recollection of the familiar fable. 
 Again, it was Sydney Smith who suggested 
 to a young lady who disliked gravy, that they 
 should ' swear an eternal friendship,' though 
 probably the maiden did not recognise the 
 reference to the passage in ' The Rovers.' 
 Jekyll, who was not a literary man, certainly 
 made a literary, albeit an obscure, allusion 
 when he hinted, concerning the author of a 
 book on Rome, that his room (Rome !) was 
 better than his company. ' Locke on the 
 Human Understanding ' has, in its time, 
 been made the foundation of a couple oijeux 
 de. mots not particularly brilliant. One Dr. 
 Drake, we are told, objected to close glass 
 bookcases, because he never could stand 
 a ' lock on the human understanding.' 
 Similarly the Earl of Buchan, putting his 
 head beneath the lock of a door, delivered 
 himself of the identical witticism, which was 
 very properly crushed by Erskine's observa- 
 tion that what he saw was 'rather a poor 
 edition' of the work. And, talking of pro-
 
 218 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 fessional allusion, how guilty have the clever 
 lawyers been in this respect ! How they have 
 revelled in jests based upon the jargon of the 
 courts ! Old Lord Norbury hoped, concern- 
 ing a writ which had been swallowed, that it 
 had not been made ' returnable ' to his court ; 
 while Sir George Rose, on another occasion, 
 referring to the fact that he had daily prayers 
 at home, trusted that ' service at the house 
 would be deemed good service.' 
 
 In discussing the various phases of allusive 
 wit, one must not forget the proverbial, illus- 
 trated by Macaulay's famous exclamation of 
 ' All my eye and Hetty Martineau !' or the 
 personal, as embodied in Holmes's answer to 
 the haberdasher and M.P., who asked if he 
 could get ' a pair ' that evening : ' Of what ? 
 Gloves or stockings ?' But, as I have said, 
 the empire of allusion is boundless; it 
 extends in all directions, and every one can 
 bear sway in it who has adequate knowledge 
 and sufficient perception of the witty.
 
 TWO OLD FRIENDS. 
 
 EVERYBODY has heard of Mrs. 
 Grundy. She may be described 
 as ' our neighbours ' personified ; 
 as an incarnation of ' the world ' in general, 
 or, at any rate, of the spirit of 'respectability' 
 in the world. For long she has been the 
 unseen but all-powerful arbiter of manners 
 and morals. ' What will Mrs. Grundy say ?' 
 has been the speech or thought of millions 
 at many crises of their lives. Thousands 
 have ruled their conduct wholly by what 
 they have believed to be her unwritten but 
 unmistakable laws. Never was there so 
 potent a deterrent. ' Many,' says Mr. 
 Frederick Locker, ' are afraid of God, and 
 more of Mrs. Grundy.' An important 
 personage, truly ; yet how came she to ac-
 
 220 Rambles i)i Book-Land. 
 
 quire all this vogue and this value? To 
 paraphrase a familiar query, ' Who gave her 
 that name ?' Whence came she ? Who 
 first uttered the inquiry, fraught with so 
 much curiosity, not to say anxiety : ' What 
 will Mrs. Grundy say?' 
 
 It is a curious testimony to the impression 
 made on a people by the acting and printed 
 drama, that the incarnation and personifica- 
 tion of the spirit of respectability should owe 
 its christening and its popularity to a comedy- 
 drama, and to one, moreover, which long ago 
 dropped out of the everyday theatrical reper- 
 tory. ' What will Mrs. Grundy say ?' was 
 first asked by one of the persona in ' Speed 
 the Plough,' a play by Thomas Morton (father 
 of Mr. John Maddison Morton), which dates 
 from the last years of the last century. The 
 speaker was Dame Ash field, wife of Farmer 
 Ashfield — these two supplying the comic 
 relief in a piece of which the main interest is 
 melodramatic. The worthy couple pervade 
 the drama, which they open with the con- 
 versation that has made Mrs. Grundy prac-
 
 Two Old Friends. 221 
 
 tically immortal. This good woman is the wife 
 of a farmer in the same locality as that in- 
 habited by the Ashfields, and has aroused 
 the jealousy of Dame Ashfield, because of 
 her superior prosperity. ' Farmer Grundy's 
 wheat brought five shillings a quarter more 
 than ours did,' says the Dame in the dialogue 
 I refer to ; adding that Dame Grundy's 
 butter was ' the crack of the market.' Farmer 
 Ashfield does not share his wife's envy of the 
 Grundys' good fortune, and evidently has 
 grown tired of the constant iteration of their 
 name. ' Be quiet, wool ye,' cries the ex- 
 cellent agriculturist; 'always ding, dinging 
 Dame Grundy into my ears. " What will 
 Mrs. Grundy zay?" "What will Mrs. 
 Grundy think?" Can't thee be quiet, let 
 me aloane, and behave thyself pratty ?' The 
 Dame protests, of course, that she does not 
 envy Mrs. Grundy. 'Why dan't thee letten 
 her aloane, then ? I do verily think when 
 thee goest to t'other world, the vurst ques- 
 tion thee'll ax '11 be if Mrs. Grundy's there.' 
 But the farmer's taunts and protests are of
 
 222 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 no avail. His better hal has the Grundys 
 on the brain. ' Oh, Tummus,' she cries, ' had 
 you seen how Mrs. Grundy looked ' — when 
 Dame Ashfield was presented with a letter 
 by ' a handsome young gentleman, dressed 
 all in lace.' When the Dame hears that her 
 former servant Nelly has married a baronet, 
 her first thought and utterance is : ' I wonder, 
 Tummas, what Mrs. Grundy will say ?' And 
 again, when she fears that her daughter has 
 formed an unfortunate attachment — ' If 
 shame should come to the poor child, I say, 
 Tummus, what would Mrs. Grundy say 
 then ?' En revanche, the news that her 
 daughter is to be married to an aristocratic 
 and wealthy lover at once suggests to her the 
 opportunity of triumphing over Mrs. Grundy. 
 ' When we come out of church, Mrs. Grundy 
 will be standing about there. . . . Then I 
 will just look at her in this manner. . . . 
 
 Then, with a kind of half-curtsey, I shall ' 
 
 Here she is interrupted. Even the Misses 
 Grundy are included in the Dame's resent- 
 ment. She opines, concerning a young man
 
 Tzvo Old Friends. 223 
 
 in the play, that ' the Miss Grundys, genteel 
 as they think themselves, would be glad to 
 snap at him.' 
 
 It is easy to understand that a strongly- 
 marked character like the Dame's, fitted with 
 a sort of oft-recurring catch-phrase, would 
 have great effect upon the minds of con- 
 temporary playgoers and readers, and bring 
 about, in time, a wider and more philosophi- 
 cal application of the question : ' What will 
 Mrs. Grundy say?' It so happens that we 
 owe to another play by Thomas Morton the 
 creation of yet another fictitious personage, 
 not by any means so largely or familiarly 
 known as Mrs. Grundy, and yet very often 
 mentioned by us in public and in private 
 talk. I refer to that notable man, Sir 
 Hubert Stanley, whose ' approbation ' has 
 for so many years been regarded as ' praise 
 indeed.' Who was Sir Hubert, and why 
 should his approval be so peculiarly welcome? 
 
 A reference to the source of the saying 
 reveals the answer to these queries. Sir 
 Hubert Stanley is one of the characters in 'A
 
 224 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Cure for the Heartache,' a comedy brought 
 out by Morton within a year or two of 
 the production of ' Speed the Plough.' This 
 is the play in which Old and Young Rapid 
 figure : ' good characters,' Genest pronounced 
 them ; but he thought the rest of the piece 
 { poor stuff.' It is hardly that, however ; 
 while the extent to which the work gratified 
 the playgoers of the time is proved by the 
 survival of Sir Hubert in our common 
 speech. Dame Ashfield may be taken as a 
 type of the farmer's wife of the period ; Sir 
 Hubert is a type of the country gentleman 
 of the time. ' I've been,' he says, ' the 
 patriarch of my tribe — the scourge of the 
 aggressor — the protector of the injur'd.' His 
 hospitality is a by-word and a glory. The 
 servant of the nouveau riche in the piece (old 
 Vortex) says : ' Really the Baronet's house is 
 horrid vulgar. ... I peep'd through my 
 glass into the old hall, and beheld fifty 
 paupers at dinner, such wretches, and the 
 Baronet himself walking round the table to 
 see them properly fed.'
 
 Two Old Friends. 225 
 
 When Heartley warns Sir Hubert that 
 he is going beyond his income, the squire 
 admits that his head has long acknow- 
 ledged the truth of his steward's arith- 
 metic ; ' but my head could never teach 
 my heart' Alas ! it is this very open- 
 handedness which, by crippling his resources, 
 has compelled him to mortgage his estate. 
 A large sum has been advanced, and the 
 position of the baronet is critical. At length 
 the mortgagee (Old Rapid) is persuaded by 
 Vortex to foreclose ; and Vortex, who hates 
 Sir Hubert, makes an offer for the property ; 
 when, by the agency of Young Rapid, it is 
 discovered that Vortex has acquired his 
 wealth dishonestly. It belongs in reality to 
 Ellen Vortex, his niece, who is ready to 
 bestow her hand and fortune upon Charles 
 Stanley, ' of virtuous father virtuous son.' It 
 is immediately after young Rapid has effected 
 this coup that Sir Hubert, turning to him, 
 says : ' Mr. Rapid, by asserting your character 
 as a man of honour you command my praise; 
 for bestowing happiness upon my dear 
 
 *5
 
 226 Rambles in Book-Land. 
 
 Charles, receive an old man's blessing.' And 
 it is in reply to this benignant declaration 
 that young Rapid makes the sententious and 
 now famous observation : ' Approbation from 
 Sir Hubert Stanley is praise indeed.' 
 
 Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London.
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Fcap. Svo., tastefully printed and bound in Roxburgh, 
 price 7s. 6d. 
 
 BY-WAYS IN BOOK-LAND: 
 
 Short Essays on Literary Subjects, 
 
 INCLUDING 
 
 Paper-knife Pleasures. 
 Ruskin as Poet. 
 Elections in Literature. 
 Familiar Verse. 
 Shakespeare's England. 
 Heredity in Song. 
 Stings for the Stingy. 
 Dialogues of the Dead. 
 Sermons in Flowers. 
 Don Quixote in England. 
 Bedside Books. 
 Their Much Speaking. 
 Peers and Poetry. 
 The Praise of Thames. 
 
 English Epigraphs. 
 The ' Season ' in Song. 
 The ' Recess ' in Rhyme. 
 Jaques in Love. 
 Mocking at Matrimony. 
 Parson Poets. 
 The Outsides of Books. 
 The Not Impossible She. 
 Nonsense Verses. 
 Single-speech Hamiltons. 
 Dramatic Nomenclature. 
 Puns and Patronymics. 
 'Yours Truly.' 
 Postscripts. 
 
 LONDON : 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 [OVER.
 
 BY-WAYS IN BOOK-LAND. 
 
 gome 12?res5 Opinions. 
 
 ' A choicely-printed little volume of graceful and scholarly- 
 essays. ' — Daily News. 
 
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 LONDON : 
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