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THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
E L I A
CHARLES LAMB
A NEW EDITION
J.ONDOX: GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK STREET
COVENT GARDEN
' 1877
LONDON : PKINTED By WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFOKD STKELT
AND CIIAEING CHOSS.
4^6,1 LIBRARY
* 1 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
, J^^ SAIVTA BARBARA
NOTICE.
The present editiou of Elia's Essays is by far tlie mosi
complete ever published. Some fine passages have been
restored to the "Essays of Elia;" and "Eliana" consist?
of papers contributed to various magazines and miscel-
lanies Avhicb are almost unknown to readers of the present
day.
The chief alterations Charles Lamb made in his prose
■writings were in the way of excision. His Essays, when
republished in a collected form, were carefully, even
ruthlessly, relieved of all redundancies. Some passages,
however, were evidently withdi-awn for purely personal
reasons, and these have been restored, with a few cha-
racteristic notes, which, although they may have seemed to
Lamb too trifling to stand in his collected Essays, will be
extreme]}^ interesting to every lover of Elia. The other
suppressed passages have, as a rule, been given in the
Appendix. Almost the only exception is in the Essay on
'• Books and Beading." To these " Detaclied Tlioughfs " (as
they really are) we have ventured to restore some passages
of biographical rather than literary value.
In every case the restored passages have been enclosed
in brackets.
CONTENTS.
A BIOuRAPEICAL ESSAY ON ELIA
PAOB
xili
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA.
the south-sea house
oxford in the vacation .
Christ's hospital five and thirty years ago
the two races of men
NEW year's EVE
MRS. battle's opinions ON WHIST
A CHAPTER ON EARS .
ALL fools' day ....
a quakers' meeting .
the old and the new schoolmaster
imperfect sympathies
witches, and other night fears
valentine's day
my relations ....
mackery end, in hertfordshire
my first play ....
modern gallantry .
the old benchers op the inner temple
1
9
16
30
35
42
49
54
58
63
72
81
87
91
97
102
107
111
VUl
CONTENTS.
GRACE BEFORE MEAT
DREAM -CHILDREX : A REVERIE ....
DISTANT CORRESPOXDENTS
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS, IN THE MK
TROPOIJS .......
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG
A bachelor's complaint of THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED
PEOPLE .......
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS ....
ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN ....
I'AC.a
123
130
134
140
148
156
163
171
183
195
THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA.
PREFACE
BLAKESMOOR IN H-
POOR RELATIONS .
-SHIRE
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING
STAGE ILLUSION
TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON
ELLI3T0NIANA
THE OLD JIARGATE HOY
THE CONVALESCENT ....
SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS
CAPTAIN JACKSON ....
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN .
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING
109
204
211
218
222
224
230
238
243
246
250
258
CONTENTS. ix
FACE
BAKBARA S 263
THE TOMBS IX THE ABBEY ...'... 269
AMICUS REDIVIVDS 271
SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY .... 276
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY^-FIVE Y;EARS AGO .... 285
BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE
PRODUCTIONS OF 3I0DERN ART .... 292
THE WEDDING 304
REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR's COMING OF AGE . 310
OLD CHINA 315
THE CHILD ANGEL ; A DREAM 321
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD 324
POPULAR FALLACIES :
I. THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD . , 333
II. THAT JLL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS . 334
III. THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS OWN
JEST ib.
JV. THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING
THAT IT IS EASY TO PERCEIVE HE IS NO
GENTLEMAN 335
V. THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF THE RICH ib
Vr. THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST . . 337
VII. OF TWO DISPUTANTS, THE WARMEST IS GENE-
RALLY^ IN THE WRONG . . . .338
VIII. THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, BE-
CAUSE THEY WILL NOT BEAR A TRANSLATION 339
IX. THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST . . ib.
X. THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES . 342
XI. THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN
THE MOUTH 344
XII. THAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS NEVER SO
HOMELY .... . . 340
CONTENTS.
XIII. THAT YOU :iWSr LOVE ME AND LOVE :mY DOG
XIV. THAT -WE SHOULD KISE WITH THE LARK
XV. THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB
XVJ. THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE
PACE
350
354
356
358
ELIANA.
THE GENTLE GIANTESS
THE REYNOLDS GALLERY
GUY FAUX ....
A VISION OF HORNS
THE GOOD CLERK, A CHARACTER
REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN
ON A PASSAGE IN " THE TEMPEST "
THE MONTHS
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN .
THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT .
THE ASS .....
iN RE SQUIRRELS
ESTIMATE OF DEFOE's SECONDARY NOVELS
POSTSCRIPT TO THE " CHAPTER ON EARS "
ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS
UNITARIAN PROTESTS
ON THE CUSTOM OF HISSING AT THE THEATRES
CAPTAIN STARKEY
A POPULAR FALLACY : THAT A DEFORMED PERSON IS A
LORD ....
LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN WHOSE EDUCATION
BEEN NEGLECTED .
ON THE AMBIGUITIE.S ARISING FROM PROPER NAMES
HAS
363
367
368
377
383
390
392.
395
400
407
411
417
420
422
424
426
428
433
439
443
446
452
CONTENTS.
si
ELIA ON HIS "CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD
THE LAST PEACH . . . ' .
REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY . . ' .
CDPID's REVENGE
THE DEFEAT OF TIME; OK, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES
A DEATH-BED
PAGB
453
455
457
460
470
483
APPENDIX
485
lO ELIA.
£lia, thy reveries and visiouVl themes
To Care's low heart a luscious pleasure prove;
Wild as the mj'stery of delightful dreams,
Soft as the auguish of remeniher'd love :
Like records of past days their memory dances,
Mid the cool feelings manhood's reason brings.
As the unearthly visions of romances
Peopled with sweet and uncreated things ; —
And yet thy themes thy gentle worth enhances !
Then wake again thy wild harp's tenderest strings;
Sing on, sweet bard ; let fairy loves again
Smile in thy dreams with angel extacies ;
Bright o'er our souls will break the heavenly strain
Thi-ough the dull gloom of earth's realities.
TO ELIA.
Dehghtful author ! unto whom I owe
Moments and moods of fancy and of feeling,
Afresh to grateful memory now appealing.
Fain would I " bless thee ere I let thee go !"
From month to month has the exhaustless flow
Of thy original mind, its worth revealing
With quaintest humour and deep pathos healing
The world's rude wounds, reviv'd life's early glow ;
And mixt with this, at times, to earnest thought,
Ghmpses of truth, most simple and sublime,
By thy imagination have been brought
Over my spirit. From the olden time
Of authorship thy patent should be dated,
And thou with Marvell, Browne, and Burton mated.
Berxakd Babtok»
A BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY ON ELIA.
ONE of the great charms of the "Essays of Elia" is
the clearness with which they reveal the author's
habits, opinions, and history. We are told about Elia's
scliool-da}'S, Elia's friends (almost the whole alphabet of
capital letters comes in to represent them), and Elia's rela-
tions. We are informed what books he liked best, and
what dish he considered most delicious, '•'■ pinceps ohsonio-
rum." We are let into some of his weaknesses — that he
was extremely fond of a pipe ; that he was by no means
" incapable of Bacchus ;" that he loved lying in bed in the
morning ; that he liked sweeps. So constantly, indeed,
does this personal element enter into Lamb's writings, that
a very interesting life might be compiled from them alone.
The difficulty is to know what to receive as fact. Charles
Lamb drew largely on his own history for the material of
liis Essays, but he did not render it literally as if he were
wi-iting an autobiography, and were bound to be strictly
truthful and aiithentic. He modified and transformed his
experiences so as to produce a good artistic effect. And
the reader will often be puzzled to determine whether a
statement made with every appearance of sincerity is really
true, or is wholly or partially fictitious. In the Appendix
to this vohmie an attempt has been made to show what
pretensions the "Essays of Elia" have to biographical
accui'acy.
It has also been thought that a slight outline of Lamb's
history, by revealing some of the many beauties, and some
also of the weaknesses of his character, would bring the
reader into closer sympathy with Elia, and enhance his plea-
sure in perusing the Essays. \\ ith this object the following
xiv A BIOGRAPEICAL ESSAY ON ELTA.
brief and imperfect sketcli has been written. Those who
desire further information about this charming writer, and
no less charming man, may turn to the " Eecollections " of
Lamb's friend, Mr. Procter ; or may spend a pleasant hour
in listening to Mr. Percy Fitzgerald's easy familiar chat.
The inner life of Lamb, his moral and intellectual history,
is best told in his own delightful correspondence.
Charles Lamb was born on February 10th, 1775, in
Crown Office Eow, in the Temple ; and there he passed the
first seven years of his life. He was the youngest child of
]Mr. John Lamb,* a clerk in the employ of Mr. Salt, one of
the Benchers of the Inner Temple. Through life, Lamb
retained a strong affection for the place where he was born,
and everything connected with it. Its antiquated monas-
tic air had from childhood a deep attraction for him. He
loved " its magnificent ample squares, its classic green
recesses," its gardens, its fountain, and its sundial. It was
to him " the most elegant spot in the metropolis." When a
child, he was a frequent visitor at a fine old mansion in
Hertfordshire, called Gilston,f where his grandmother was
housekeeper. If we are justified in receiving the touching
retrospect in " Blakesmoor " as a substantially tnie account
of his childish feelings (as it is almost impossible to help
doing), this old house must have had a powerful influence
on his mind. He was "a lonely child," he tells us, "and
had the range at will of every apartment ;" he wandered
through its lofty tapestried rooms, filled with antique
moth-eaten furniture ; or lay dreaming in the stately gar-
dens with his favourite Cowley in his hand ; he " knew
every nook and corner, wondered and worshipped every-
where."
In 1782, when just seven years old, Charles received a
presentation to the foundation of Christ's Hospital, where
he remained till he was fourteen. Little is known of his
school-days. He was naturally of a shy and retiring dis-
position, and all the influences to which he had been ex-
posed had tended to confirm his reserved and solitary
* Lo\el, of the Essay " On some of the old Benchers," &c.
t Blakesmoor in H shire.
A BIOGBAPEICAL ESSAY ON ELI A. xv
habits, and to foster his early taste for quiet and studious
employments. An incurable impediment in his speech,
which any excitement rendered painful, and the delicacy ot
his frame, tended to separate him still more from the other
boys, and may account for the fact that no intimacy sprang
up, at that time, between him and any of his schoolfellows.
A kindly feeling, however, was felt for him by his com-
panions, and he made some acquaintances at Christ's Hos-
pital, whose friendship in later years strengthened his
taste for literature, and whose society afforded some of the
keenest delights of his life.
In his studies he progressed well, especially in Latin
composition ; and would most likely have taken an exhibi-
tion and entered into holy orders (as he himself tells us),
had not the impediment in his speech proved an insuperable
obstacle. He was therefore compelled to relinquish all
thoughts of the quiet scholastic life which even then must
have been intensely attractive to him, and to turn his mind
to the uncongenial realities of business. He did this witli
a quiet fortitude which distinguished him through life, and
which we cannot too much admire. It may, perhaps, not
seem to many a very extraordinary sacrifice for a lad to give
up the hope of a learned education, and settle to the dry
labours of the desk; but to Lamb, we cannot doubt it was
a bitter disappointment, and very hard indeed to bear. He
already loved learning and the ancient seats of learning,
with a more than boyish affection. And it was not merely
that he had to give up his favourite pursiiits, to lose his
only congenial associates, and to see them entering on a
course of life from which he was debarred, but that he
had to turn from those tantalising visions of loved studies
and pleasant companionship, to an employment that was
utterly distasteful to him; for which he felt, whether
rightly or not, that he was unfit ; and from which he saw
not even a distant prospect of release.
The first three years after he left Christ's Hospiirtl, in
1789, were spent in the employ of the South Sea Compan}-,
where his brother John (his senior by twelve 3'ears) held a
position of trust. And though his life at this time must
xvi A BJOQRAPHICAL ESSAY ON ELI A.
have been rather dully passed between the routine of a dis-
tasteful business, and the somewhat wearisome exactions
'however cheerfully submitted to) of a home where his father
was sinking into second childhood, and his mother was a
confirmed invalid, yet it was not altogether unenlivened
by congenial companionship. Pleasant Jem White, im-
mortal benefactor of chimney-sweepers, was his frequent
companion. And there was the constant intercourse with
his sister Mary, which now, perhaps, in the dearth of other
outlets for the tenderness of which his heart was full, pro-
duced that deep-seated aifection whose history will live as
long as the Essays of Elia. With Coleridge, Lamb had
occasionally met, while he was pursuing his studies at Cam-
bridge ; but it was not till he came to live in town, when
Charles was at the India House, that the intimacy sprang
up between them which has since become so celebrated.
Lamb always looked back with affectionate regret to the
evenings they used to spend together at this time, in a little
smoky public-house called the " Salutation and Cat," in
Smithfield, '• beguiling the cares of life with poesy." Their
friendship from that time was uninterrujDted, and they died
within a few weeks of each other. Lamb, indeed, never
fully recovered from the shock of Coleridge's death. He
would continually exclaim to his friends, in a half humour-
ous, more than half melancholy, under - tone of assumed
surprise or incredulity, " Coleridge is dead ! Coleridge is
dead !" And almost the last w^ords he wrote were a tribute
to the memory of his friend, perhajis the most eloquent and
touching ever paid by one noble-minded man to another.
Great as was the influence the more eager and expansive
intellect of Coleridge undoubtedly had on Lamb's mind, it
is impossible to acqinesce in Sir Thomas Talfourd's opinion,
that to him " the world is probably indebted for all that
Lamb has added to its sources of pleasure." The genius of
Elia was too original to have long lain dormant, even if it
had not been aroused by contact with a more active and, in
some respects, a greater spirit. Coleridge merely gave an
impulse to Lamb's powers, Avhich, had they never met, the
natural growth of his understanding would certainly have
A BIOGEAPniCAL ESSAY ON ELI A. xvii
developed in time. Nor, indeed, were Lamb's finest writ-
ings produced till he had come under more varied intel-
lectual influences than the society of Coleridge, however
vast his powers, and however extensive his erudition, could
possibly have supplied.
The poetical talent which now became apparent, was
probably awakened less by the society of Coleridge, than
by an attachment Lamb formed, late in the year 1795, for a
young lady living in the neighbourhood of Islington. We
know little of the history of his love. He speaks frequently
in his Essa3's of Alice W n, " the fair-haired maid,"
" with eyes of watchet hue ;" but whether the half-indicated
name was a real or assumed one, or whether her name was
Anna, to whom some of his love sonnets are addressed,
perhaps no one can now determine. Whether his suit
prospered or not, we cannot toll. There is a hint in one of
Lamb's letters to Coleridge, that a short period of insanity,
from which he suffered in 1796, was produced by this love
affair. " My mind ran upon you in my madness," he
writes, " as much, almost, as upon another person who I
am inclined to think was the more immediate cause of my
temporary phrensy." However it was, the wooing was of
short duration. In the autumn of 1796 came the tragical
event that clouded, if it did not altogether sadden, the
whole of his after life ; and, in view of the responsibilities
which it entailed, he relinquished an attachment which he
felt would interfere with their fulfilment.
There was an hereditary tendency to insanity in the
Lamb fiimily. Charles himself, it has been said, had for a
short time suffered from it, and had spent six weeks in an
asyhmi at Hoxton. The malady next seized his sister,
with fatal violence. Mary Lamb, worn down with a con-
stant and harassing struggle with poverty (for they were
very poor), had been for some time in bad health, which at
last resulted in madness. On the 22nd of September, in a
fit of STulden phrensy, she seized a knife from the dinner-
table and stabbed her bedridden mother to the heart.
At the coroner's inquest, which was held next day, the
jury returned a verdict of lunacy ; and Mary Lamb was
sviii A BIOGEAFHICAL ESSAY ON ELI A.
removed to an asylum, where she gradually recovered her
reasoB.
Charles at first bore this sudden and awful blow with an
unnatural calmness, which perhaps preserved him from mad-
ness. The responsibility that was thrown upon him, how-
ever, soon called forth the latent strength of his character.
He felt, to use his own words, that he "had something
else to do than regret," He saw that if his flither was to
have those comforts which his age and infirmities rendered
indispensable, and if his sister was ever to be restored to
the soothing occupations and endearments of home, instead
of being permanently consigned to a mad-house, it must be
through his own exertions. His brother John, though hold-
ing a lucrative place in the South Sea House, with a selfish-
ness which, notwithstanding Charles's affectionate excuses,
it is impossible to forgive, never even hinted a desire to
share the heavy burden which was thus cast upon him.
Charles Lamb felt that he could not contemplate any con-
nection which would interfere with the performance of these
sacred duties ; and, in accordance with this conviction, his
love for the unknown " fair-haired maid " was deliberately
and resolutely sacrificed.
During the few months that his father survived Mrs.
Lamb's death, Charles gave up almost the whole of his
precious leisure to him, and complied cheerfully with
all his childish caprices. A letter to Coleridge, dated
December 2nd, 1796, gives us a glimpse of the trials he
had to undergo to humour and amuse his father, " I am
got home," he writes, " and, after repeated games of crib-
bage, have got my father's leave to write awhile ; with
difficulty got it, for when I expostulated about playing any
more, he very aptly replied, ' If you won't play with me,
you might as well not come home at all.' The argument
was unanswerable, and I set to afresh."
Charles Lamb's first care, on Mr. Lamb's death early in
1790, was to release his sister from confinement. This was
opposed by his brother John, and some other members of
the family, who thought that, as there could be no assur-
ance given that her madness would not return, she ought
A BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY ON ELI A. xix
to be placed under permanent restraint. But Charles
was resolute ; and, on his entering into a solemn engage-
ment that he would take care of her and support her
through life, he was permitted to remove her to his home.
From that time they were hardly separated for a day,
except when the return of Mary Lamb's illness rendered it
necessary that she should be placed under temporary re-
straint. His income at this time was only a little more than
a hundred a-year ; but he always had a reserve fund suffi-
cient for these emergencies. He watched over his sister's
health with painful care ; and through life bore the heart-
breaking anxiety occasioned by her precarious state, and
frequent relapses — and which, to a man of his exquisite
sensibility, must have been so much more terrible than the
presence of any actual misfortune— if not without a murmur,
yet with a loving effort to spare her the knowledge of the
anguish he sometimes endured. Perhaps this life-long de-
votion was more truly hei'oic even than the sacrifice of his
love. Many a man cajiable of the one act of self-abnega-
tion might yet have missed this loving
" to the level of every day's
Most quiet need,"
Mary Lamb was always conscious of the approach of her
illnesses, and submitted voluntarily to medical treatment.
Charles Lloyd once met the brother and sister in the fields
near Hoxtou, both weeping bitterly, walking hand in hand
towards the asylum.
Charles Lamb's first efforts in literature were poetical.
In 1797, in conjunction with Coleridge and Charles Lloyd,
he published a few poems and sonnets ; and, in 1798, ap-
peared a little volume entitled "Blank Verse, by Charles
Lloyd and Charles Lamb." His poetry never excited much
attention ; and though it was perhaps undeservedly sneered
at by reviews, there can be little doubt it would have been
forgotten long ago if it had not been written by the author
of the " Essays of Elia." His sonnets can hardly be called
more than pleasing ; but some of his miscellaneous pieces,
such as " Hester," " The Old Familiar Faces," " The Fare-
XX A BIOGBAPHICAL ESSAY ON ELI A.
■well to Tobacco," " On an Infant Dying as soon as Bom,"
are certainly far above the average of modern verse.
In 1798, also, appeared tbe simple and touching tale,
"Eosamund Gray;" and the following year found Lamb
busy with his tragedy, "John Woodvil," It was submitted
■when finished to John Kemble, who was then manager of
Drury Lane Theatre, but was rejected. The flxrce, " Mr. H.,"
Lamb's only other considerable dramatic attempt, met with
scarcely a better fate. It was accepted, produced, and
decisively damned on the first night.
The " Essays of Elia," on which alone Lamb's claim to a
name great in literature can be founded, were almost all
published during the last fourteen years of his life. He
■was then in the maturity of his powers, and he poured forth
his original thoughts and quaint fancies with a richness and
variety which no other essayist has ever rivalled. He had
every qualification for an essayist. He had learnt English
from the best teachers — the old writers ; and he had been
an apt scholar, — not accumulating merely, but assimilating
what he learnt. His early style (as in " John Woodvil,"
for instance,) is often antiqiiated; but in the "Essays of
Elia " there is no trace of an excessive or servile adherence
to the manner of his models. Few writers, indeed, have
had a more leal command of English than Lamb had. He was
not restrained or impeded by the exigencies of the language ;
he rather controlled it, and moulded it, so to speak, to his
purposes. It might be possible, by a careful study and
imitation of Addison or Goldsmith, to form a good indepen-
dent style of composition. Their English is flexible ; it
can adapt itself, without much difficulty (except, of course,
on account of its surpassing beaut}-), to the peculiarities of
other minds. It is not so with Charles Lamb's writings.
His style is rigid, and cannot be copied or adapted. It is
Elia's English. To imitate it would be mere mimicry.
Sometimes it almost seems as if the impediment in Lamb's
speech had influenced his style. His sentences are often
very short, with frequent and long pauses ; — but brilliant,
suggestive. His ideas succeed each other with wonderful
richness and profusion : the}' seem to spring perfect from
A BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAi! ON ELI A. xxi
the brain. But tliese curt and broken sentences are merely
used by Elia as means to produce a desired effect. The
pauses were the " halting-stones and resting-places " of hig
wit. There were no "ligaments" that bound him when
the pen was in his hand. No one could write more sweet
or flowing English than he.
It would, be useless to cite instances of Elia's wonderful
refinement of thought and mastery of expression. The
essay on the popular mistake, " that we should rise with the
lark," is perhaps his masterpiece in this respect, '\^'hat an
array of fast-flocking, delightful images, too delicate almost
for laughter, does this inimitably witty little piece conjure
up before the mind ! The pathos and the humour of Elia
are alike admirable. It cannot be said that he excelled
more in the one than in the other ; for it is impossible to
compare styles so dissimilar as, for instance, the " Disser-
tation upon Eoast Pig," and the thoughts upon the homes
of the poor, " that are no homes," and the children of the
poor, that are never young. Both are perfect in their way.
In the richness of his humour and the depth of his pathos
Elia stands, amongst essayists, unrivalled —
" "With tears and laughters for all time."
It would be tedious to enlarge further on the various
characteristics of this delightful aiithor. It should never be
forgotten that the " Essays of Elia " require to be studied in
order to be thoroughly understood and enjoyed. It is a
great mistake to suppose that they are a light and flimsy
sort of reading, that is to be carelessly glanced through and
then laid aside : this is to miss their greatest beauties and
their highest use.
Even a short sketch of Lamb's life, such as this, would
be culpably imperfect did we omit all mention of those
companions whose affection cheered and brightened his
existence, and made it, on the whole, a happy one.
It seems, in reading his life, as if no one else can ever
have had such love and honour paid him, — such troops
of almost idolising friends. No mere eccentricity of cha-
racter or opinion debarred any one from Lamb's intimacy.
xxii A BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY ON ELI A.
The list of his friends includes Coleridge, Wordsworth,
Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Godwin, Bernard Barton, Talfourd,
Southey, Thelwall, ]\lanning, Charles Lloyd, H. C. Eobin-
son, Dyer, Barry Cornwall, and a host of others. All
these men, celebrated or unknown, with their conflicting
opinions, various oddities, and repelling differences, seem to
have gathered a-ound Charles Lamb as a common centre
where the discordant elements could meet in harmony. It
was this made Lamb's Wednesday evenings so delightful.
There is a weakness of Charles Lamb's, closely con-
nected with his social habits, which ought not to be un-
noticed — his fondness for spirituous liquors. This failing
of his has often been greatly exaggerated, but there is no
doixbt it existed. The fact seems to be that Lamb had a
constitutional craving for exhilarating drinks ; and the
relief they gave him from the dreadful anxiety and depres-
sion caused by his sister's precarious health and often-
recurring illness, tempted him to indulge in them to an
extent which, — while it would have been moderation to a
stronger man, — to his delicate and sensitive organization
was excess. It was not the mere, excitement of drinking
that fascinated him : it was the relaxation, the forgetful-
ness of care, the confidence, the ready flow of words to
embody the conceptions of his ever-fruitful fancy, that
gave an almost irresistible charm to brandy-and- water
At one time, he and his sister resolved to give up alco-
holic drinks altogether. As for Mary, he informed Miss
AVordsworth, " she has taken to water like a hungry otter.
I, too, limp after her in lame imitation, but it goes against
me a little at first. I have been acquaintance with it
now for full four dsijs, and it seems a moon. I am full of
cramps and rheumatisms, and cold internally, so that fire
won't warm me ; yet I bear all for virtue's sake." Total
abstinence plainly did not agi-ee with him, and was soon
given up. Another of Lamb's weaknesses was smoking. Of
this habit, after several fruitless attempts, he really suc-
ceeded in breaking himself. His " Farewell to Tobacco,"
written during one of these ineffectual struggles, shows
with what feelings Lamb regarded the " Gkeat Plant."
A BIOGBAPHICAL ESSAY ON ELIA. xxiii
Some fragments of Lamb's stammering talk, in which
thought and feeling and quaint humour so strangely mingled,
have been preserved. They are, naturally, almost all pieces
of broad fun, and can give no idea of the ordinary style of
his conversation. The maddest quibble even he ever
uttered was suiely the answer he gave to a lady who had
been boring him with a rather fatiguing dissertation upon
her love for her children : " And pray, Mr. Lamb," said she
at last, " how do you like children ?" " B-b-boiled, ma'am !"
In 1825 Lamb was released from his drudgery at the India
flouse, and retired upon a pension amounting to two-thirds
of his salary. He survived nine years. The illness that
ultimately proved fatal was caused by a fall, which induced
erysipelas in the head. He sank rapidly, and died on the
27th of December, 1834, only five days after the accident
occurred. His sister Mary survived him several years.
I think Charles Lamb's right place in literature is with
Goldsmith, and a few others, among writers that we love.
There may be loftier niches in the Temple of Fame, but
none, we may be sure, in which Elia would rather have
chosen to stand. "We read Shakespeare, and the deepest
impression left on our mind is a feeling of iconder that one
human mind could ever have conceived and written his
plays and poems. Do we love Shakespeare ? Does any one
ever feel intimate with him? Do we attempt to shape
him in the mind's eye at all ? Is he not rather an abstraction
— the dramatist — the vague outlines of whose form we never
try to resolve into something clear and definite ? Of course
we have all seen pictures of Shakespeare : massive fea-
tures, surmounted by a lofty forehead ; a pointed beard.
V/e recognise him at a glance. But does the familiar face
ever rise up before us in reading his plays ? Do we ever
think of Shakespeare then ? And do we feel anything like
the pleasure in a portrait of Shakespeare that we do in
looking at Goldsmith's ugly face, redeemed by its touching
expression of impending pain ?
Do we love Milton? I think not. We reverence him.
When we read his sonnet on his blindness, or on his de-
ceased wife, is not the natural emotion of pity for the man
xxiv A BIOGBAVEICAL ESSAY ON EL J A.
altogetlier overwhelmed by onr admiraiion of the power of
the poet? It would uot be so if we really loved him. Dc
we feel anything like the interest in Shakespeare's or in
Milton's life that we do in Goldsmith's ? And does not the
interest we do feel arise fi-om curiosity rather than affection ?
AVe may know too much of them. They do not appeal to
us as men, but as writers. We can derive no additional
pleasure from their works by knowing their history; but
it might be a severe shock to discover that they were subject
to the common weaknesses and failings of mankind. It is
better our thoughts of them should be vague.
But with Goldsmith and Charles Lamb it is not so. We
cannot know too much of them. We cannot spare one touch
from the picture ; not even a defect. They appeal to ua
not only as writers, but as men. AVe do not feel it a shock
to discover their weaknesses. They live in their writings ;
the}' become our friends ; they possess our hearts by virtue
of their complete humanity; they reconcile us with the
imperfections of our common nature ; their very failings
endear them to us the more.
There may be a literary immortality superior to this, but
there can hardly be one more attractive. The heights on
which Shakespeare and Milton stand are lofty, unattainable,
dazzling — but cold ; they are too high for sympathy to reach.
For Charles Lamb we love to anticipate a warmer place —
a home in the popular heart. The Essays will be like the
books of which Elia speaks so delightfull}' : — " How beau-
tiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves and
worn-out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond russia),
if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness,
of an old circulating-library ' Tom Jones ' or ' Vicar of
Wakefield ! ' How they speak of the thousand thumbs
that have turned over their pages with delight ! . . . .
Who would have them a whit less soiled ? What better
condition could we desire to see them in ? "
H. S.
i
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA.
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.
KEADEE, in thy passage from tlie Bank — where thou Last
been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (sui^posing
thou art a lean annuitant like myself) — to the Flower Pot,
to secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other
thy suburban retreat northerly — didst thou never observe
a melancholy-looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice,
to the left, where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishops-
gate ? I dare say thou hast often admired its magnificent
portals ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave
court, with cloisters and pillars, with few or no traces of
goers-in or comers-out — a desolation somethiug like Bal-
clutha's.*
This was once a house of trade — a centre of busy inter-
ests. The throng of merchants was here — the quick pulse
of gain — and here some forms of business are still kept up,
though the soul be long since fled. Here are still to be
seen stately porticos ; imposing staircases, ofiices roomy as
the state apartments in palaces — deserted, or thinly peopled
w ith a few straggling clerks ; the still more sacred interiors
of court and committee rooms, with venerable faces of
beadles, door-keepers — directors seated in form on solemn
days (to j)roclaim a dead dividend) at long worm-eaten
tables, that have been mahogany, with tarnished gilt-
leather coverings, supporting massy silver inkstands long
* I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate.-
OSSIAN.
B
2 THE BODTH'SEA HOUSE.
since diy ; — the oaken wainscots liung with pictures of
deceased governors and sub-governors, of Queen Anno, and
the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty ; — huge
charts, which subseqx^ent discoveries have antiquated ; —
dusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams, and soundings of the
liay of Panama ! The long passages hung with buckets,
appended, in idle row, to walls, whose substance might
defy anj', short of the last, conflagration : — with vast ranges
of cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces of eight
once lay, an " unsunned heap," for Mammon to have solaced
his solitary heart withal — long since dissipated, or scat-
tered into air at the blast of the breaking of that ftimous
Bubble.
Such is the Soutii-Sea House. At least such it was forty
jQa,YS ago, when I knew it — a magnificent relic ! What
alterations may have been made in it since, I have had no
opportunities of verifying. Time, I take for granted, has
not freshened it. No wind has resuscitated the face of the
sleeping waters. A thicker crust by this time stagnates
upon it. The moths, that were then battening upon its
obsolete ledgers and day-books, have rested from their
depredations, but other light generations have succeeded,
making fine fretwork among their single and double entries.
Laj^ers of dust have accumulated (a superfoetation of dirt!)
upon the old layers, that seldom used to be disturbed, save
by some curious finger, now and then, inquisitive to ex-
plore the mode of book-keeping in Qiteen Anne's reign ;
or, with less hallowed curiosity, seeking to unveil some of
the mysteries of that tremendous hoax, whose extent the
petty peculators of our day look back upon with the same
expression of incredulous admiration and hopeless ambition
of rivalry as would become the puny face of modern con-
spiracy contemplating the Titan size of Vaux's superhuman
plot.
Peace to the manes of the Bubble ! Silence and destitu-
tion are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial !
Situated, as thou art, in the very heart of stirring and
living commerce — amid the fret and fever of speculation —
with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India House about
TUB SOUTE-SEA HOUSE. 3
thee, in the he^-day of present prosperity, Avith their im-
portant faces, as it were, insulting thee, their poor neighbour
out of business — to the idle and merely contemplative — to
such as me, old house ! there is a charm in thy quiet : — a
cessation — a coolness from business — an indolence almost
cloistral — which is delightful ! With what reverence have
I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at eventide ! They
spoke of the past : — the shade of some dead accountant,
with visionary pen in ear, would flit b}' me, stiff as in life.
Living accounts and accountants puzzle me. I have no
skill in figuring. But thy great dead tomes, which scarce
three degenerate clerks of the present day could lift from
their enshrining slielves — with their old fantastic flourishes
and decorative rubric interlacings — their sums in triple
columniations, set down with formal superfluity of ciphers
— with pious sentences at the beginning, without which
our religious ancestors never ventured to open a book of
business, or bill of lading — the costly vellum covers of some
of them almost persuading us that we are got into some
hdter library — are very agreeable and edifying spectacles.
I can look upon these defunct dragons with complacency.
Thy heavy odd-shaped ivory-handled penknives (our an-
cestors had everything on a larger scale than we have
hearts for) are as good as anything from Herculaneum.
The pounce-boxes of our days have gone retrograde.
The very clerks which I remember in the South-Sea
House — I speak of forty years back — had an air very dif-
ferent from those in the public offices that I have had to do
Avith since. They partook of the genius of the place !
They were mostly (for the establishment did not admit
of superfluous salaries) bachelors. Generally (for they had
not much to do) persons of a curious and speculative tuni
of mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason mentioned before ;
humourists, for they were of all descriptions ; and, not
having been brought together in early life (which has a
tendency to assimilate the members of corporate bodies to
each other), but, for the most part, placed in this house in
ripe or middle age, they necessarily carried into it their
separate habits and oddities,, unqualified, if I may so speak,
B 2
4 THE SGUTE-SEA HOUSE.
as into a common stock. Hence tliey formed a sort of
Noali's ark. Odd fislics. A lay-monastery. Domestic
retainers in a great liouse, kept more for show tlian use.
Yet pleasant fellows, full of chat — and not a few among
them had arrived at considerable proficiency on the German
flute.
The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cambro-Briton.
He had something of the choleric complexion, of his counti'y-
men stamped on his visage, but was a worthy, sensible man
at bottom. He wore his hair, to the last, powdered and
frizzed out, in the fashion which I remember to have seen
in caricatures of what were termed, in my young days,
Maccaronies. He was the last of that race of beaux. Melan-
choly as a gib-cat over his counter all the forenoon, I think
I see him making up his cash (as they call it) with tremu-
lous fingers, as if he feared every one about him. was a
defaulter ; in his hypochondry, ready to imagine himself
one ; haunted, at least, with the idea of the possibility of
his becoming one : his tristful visage clearing up a little
over his roast neck of veal at Anderton's at two (where his
picture still hangs, taken a little before his death by desire
of the master of the coffee-house which he had frequented
for the last five-and-twenty years), but not attaining the
meridian of its animation till evening brought on the hour
of tea and visiting. The simultaneous sound of his well-
known rap at the door with the stroke of the clock an-
nouncing six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in the
families which this dear old bachelor gladdened with his
presence. Then was his forte, his glorified hour ! How
would he chirp and expand over a muflin ! How would he
dilate into secret history ! His countryman, Pennant him-
self, in particular, could not be more eloquent than he in
relation to old and new London — the site of old theatres,
churches, streets gone to decay — where Rosamond's pond
stood — the Mulberry-gardens — and the Conduit in Cheap —
with many a pleasant anecdote, derived from paternal tra-
dition, of those grotesque figures which Hogarth has im-
mortalized in his picture of Noon — the worthy descendants
of those heroic confessors, who, flying to this country from
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. S
tno wrath of Louis the Fourteenth and his draj^oons, kept
alive the flame of pni'e religion in the sheltering obscurities
of Hog- Lane and tbe vicinity of the Seven Dials !
Deput}^, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had the
air and stoop of a nobleman. You would have taken him
for one, had you met him in one of the passages leading to
Westminster Hall. B}' stoop, I mean that gentle bending of
the body forwards, which, in great men, must be supposed
to be the effect of an habitual condescending attention to the
applications of their inferiors. While he held you in con-
verse, you felt strained to the height in the colloquj'. The
conference over, you were at leisure to smile at the com-
parative insignificance of the pretensions which had just
awed you. His intellect was of the shallowest order. It
did not reach to a saw or a proverb. His mind was in its
original state of white paper. A sucking babe might_have
posed him. What was it then ? Was he rich ? Alas, no !
Thomas Tame was very poor. Both he and his wife looked
outwardly gentlefolks, when I fear all was not well at all
times within. She had a neat meagre person, which it was
evident she had not sinned in over-pampering ; but in its
veins was noble blood. She traced her descent, by some
labyrinth of relationship, which I never thoroughly under-
stood, — much less can explain with any heraldic certainty
at this time of day, — to the illustrious but unfortunate
house of Derwentwater. This was the secret of Thomas's
stoop. This was the thought— the sentiment — the bright
solitary star of your lives, — ye mild and happy pair, —
which cheered you in the night of intellect, and in the ob-
scurity of your station ! This was to you instead of riches,
instead of rank, instead of glittering attainments : and it
was worth them all together. You insulted none with it ;
but, while yoti wore it as a piece of defensive armour only,
no insult likewise could reach you through it. Deciis et
solamen.
Of quite another stamp -was the then accountant, JohnTipp.
He neither pretended to high blood, nor in good truth cared
one fig about the matter. He " thought an accountant the
greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest
fi THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.
acconntaut iu it." Yet Jolin was not witliout his liotby.
The fiddle relieved his vacant hours. He sang, certainly,
with other notes than to the Orphean lyre. He did, indeed,
scream and scrape raost ahominably. His fine suite of
official rooms in Threadneedle Street, which, without any-
thing very substantial appended to them, were enough to
enlarge a man's notions of himself that lived in them (I
know not who is the occupier of them now*), resounded fort-
nightly to the notes of a concert of " sweet breasts," as our
ancestors would have called them, culled from club-rooms,
and orchestras — chorus singers — first and second violoncel-
los — double basses — and clarionets — who ate his cold mutton
and drank his punch and praised his ear. He sat like Lord
Midas among them. But at the desk Tipp was quite another
sort of creature. Thence all ideas, that were purely orna-
mental, were banished. You could not speak of anything
romantic without rebuke. Politics were excluded. A
newspaper was thought too refined and abstracted. The
whole duty of man consisted in writing off dividend war-
rants. The striking of the annual balance in the company's
books (which, perhaps, differed from the balance of last year
in the sum of 251. Is. 6cL) occupied his days and nights for
a month previous. Not that Tipp was blind to the deadness
of tilings (as thc}^ called them in the city) in his beloved
house, or did not sigh for a return of the old stirring days
when South-Sea hopes were young (he was indeed equal
to the wielding of any the most intricate accounts of the
most flourishing company in these or those days) : but to
a genuine accountant the difference of proceeds is as no-
thina". The fractional farthing is as dear to his heart as the
thousands v/hich stand before it. He is the true actor, who,
whether his part be a prince or a peasant, must act it with
like intensity. AVith Tipp form was everything. His
[* I have since been informed, tliat the present tenant of them is u
Mr. Ijamb, a gentleman -who is happy in the possession of some clioico
pictures, and among them a rare portrait of Blilton, -whicli I mean to do
myself the pleasure of going to see, and at the same time to refresh my
memory ^Yitll the siglit of old scenes. Mr. Lamb has the character of a
right courteous and communicative collector.]
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 7
life was formal. His actions seemed ruled with a ruler.
His pen was not less erring than Lis heart. He made the
best execntor in the world : he was plagued with incessant
executorships accordingly, which excited his spleen and
soothed his vanity in equal ratios. He would swear (for
Tipp swore) at the little orphans, whoso rights he would
guard with a tenacity like the grasp of the dying hand that
commended their interests to his protection. "With all this
there was about him a sort of timidity (his few enemies
used to give it a worse name) — a something which, in re-
verence to the dead, we will place, if you please, a little on
this side of the heroic. Nature certainly had been jjleased
to endow John Tipp with a suflBcient measure of the prin-
ciple of self-preservation. There is a cowardice which we
do not despise, because it has nothing base or treacherous
in its elements ; it betrays itself, not you : it is mere tem-
perament ; the absence of the romantic and the enterpris-
ing ; it sees a lion in the way, and will not, with Fortinbras,
" greatly find quarrel in a straw," when some supposed
honour is at stalce. Tipp never mounted the box of a
stage-coach in his life ; or leaned against the rails of a
balcony ; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet ; or looked
down a precipice ; or let off a gun ; or went u^Don a water-
party; or would willingly let you go if he could have
helped it : neither was it recorded of him, that for lucre, or
for intimidation, he ever forsook friend or principle.
Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead, in
whom common qualities become uncommon ? Can I forget
thee, Henry Man, the wit, the polished man of letters, the
author, of the South-Sea House ? who never enteredst thv
office in a morning or quittedst it in mid-day (wliat didst
thrM in an office?) without some quirk that left a sting!
Thy gibes and thy jokes are now extinct, or survive but in
two forgotten volumes, which I had the good fortune to
rescue from a stall in Barbican, not three days ago, and
found thee terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as alive. Thy wit
is a little gone by in these fastidious days — thy topics are
staled by the " new-born gauds " of the time : — but great
thou used to be in Public Ledgers, and in Chronicles, upon
8 TEE SOVTE'SEA EOUSE.
Chatham, and Shelburne, and Eockingham, and Howe, and
Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the war which ended in the
tearing from Great Britain her rebellions colonies, — and
Keppel, and Wilkes, and Sawbridge, and Bnll, and Dun-
ning, and Pratt, and Eichraond — and such small politics.
A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstre-
perous, was fine rattling, rattleheaded Plumer. He was
descended, — not in a right line, reader (for his lineal
pretensions, like his personal, favoured a little of the
sinister bend) — from the Plumcrs of Hertfordshire. So
tradition gave him out ; and certain family features not a
little sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old Walter Plumer
(his reputed author) had been a rake in his days, and visited
much in Italy, and had seen the world. He was uncle,
bachelor-uncle, to the fine old whig still living, who has
represented the county in so many successive parliaments,
and has a fine old mansion near Ware. Walter flourished
in George the Second's days, and was the same who was
summoned before the House of Commons about a business
of franks, with the old Duchess of Marlborough. You may
read of it in .Johnson's Life of Cave. Cave came off cleverly
in that business. It is certain our Plumer did nothing to
discountenance the rumour. He rather seemed pleased
whenever it was, with all gentleness, insinuated. But
besides his family pretensions, Plumer was an engaging-
fellow, and sang gloriously. — —
Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild, child-
like, pastoral M ; a flute's brep.thing less divinely
whispering than thy Arcadian melodies, when, in tones
worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song sung by
Amiens to the banished duke, which proclaims the winter
wind more lenient than for a man to be ungrateful. Thy
sire was old surly M , the unapproachable church-
warden of Bishopsgate. He knew not what he did, when
he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring of blustering
winter : — only unfortunate in thy ending, which shoiild
have been mild, conciliator}-, swan-like.
Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up,
but they must be mine in private : — already I have fooled
OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 9
fcho readei- to the top of his bent ; — else could I omit that
strange creature Woollett, who existed in trying the ques-
tion, and bought litigations ! — and still stranger, inimitable,
solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton might have
deduced the law of gravitation. How profoundly would he nib
a pen — with what deliberation would he wet a wafer !
But it is time to close — night's wheels are rattling fast
over me — it is proper to have done with this solemn
mockery.
Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this
while — peradventure the very names, which I have sum-
moned up before thee, are fantastic — insubstantial — like
Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece :■ ■
Be satisfied that something answering to them has had
51 being. Their importance is from the past.
OXFORD IN THE VACATION.
CASTING a preparatorj' glance at the bottom of this article
— as the very connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye
(which, while it reads, seems as though it read not), never
fails to consult the qiiis sculiosit in the corner, before he pro-
nounces some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a Woollet —
methinks I hear you exclaim, Reader, Who is Ella ?
Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half-
forgotten humours of some old clerks defunct, in an old
house of business, long since gone to decay, doubtless you
have already set me dowTi in your mind as one of the self-
same college — a votary of the desk — a notched and cropt
scrivener — one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick
people are said to do, through a quill.
Well, I do agnise something of the sort. I confess that
it is my humour, my fancy — in the fore-part of the day,
when the mind of your man of letters requires some relax-
ation (and none better than such as at first sight seems
most abhorrent from his beloved studies ) — to while away
10 OXFORD IN THE VACATION.
some good hours of my time in the contemplation of
indigos, cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or other'
wise. In the first place * * * * * *
and then it sends you home with such increased appetite
to your books ********
not to sa}', that your outside sheets, and waste wrappers of
foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly and naturally,
the impression of sonnets, epigrams, essays — so that the
very parings of a counting-house are, in some sort, the
settings up of an author. The enfranchised quill, that has
plodded all the morning among the cart-rucks of figures
and ciphers, frisks and curvets so at its ease over the
flowery carpet-ground of a midnight dissertation. — It feels
its promotion. ********
So that you see, ujDon the whole, the literary dignity of
Mia is very little, if at all, compromised in the conde-
scension.
Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities
incidental to the life of a public ofBce, I would be thought
blind to certain flaws, which a cunning carper might be
able to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I must have
leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition,
and doing-away-with altogether, of those consolatory inter-
stices, and sprinklings of freedom, through the four seasons,
— the red-letter days, now become, to all intents and pur-
poses, dead-letter' days. There was Paul, and Stephen, and
Barnabas —
Andrew and John, men famous in old times
— we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back as
when I was at school at Christ's. I remember their efSgies,
by the same token, in the old Baskett Prayer Book. There
hung Peter in his uneasy posture — holy Bartlemy in the
troublesome act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by
Spagnoletti. — I honoured them all, and could almost have
wept the defalcation of Iscariot — so much did we love to
keep holy memories sacred :— only methought I a little
grudged at the coalition of the hotter Jude with Simon —
clnhbing (as it -were) their sanctities together, to make up
OXFOBD IN THE VACATION. 11
one poor gaudy-day between tliem — as an economy un-
worthy of tlie dispensation.
These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's
life — ^"far off their coming shone." — I was as good as an
almanac in those days. I could have told you such a,
saint's-day falls out next week, or the week after. Perad-
venture the Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity, would,
once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little
better than one of the profane. Let me not be thought to
arraign the wisdom of my civil superiors, who have judged
the further observation of these holy tides to be papistical,
superstitious. Only in a custom of such long standing,
methinkSj if their Holinesses the Bishops had, in decency,
been first sounded — but I am wading out of my depths.
I am not the man to decide the limits of civil and eccle-
siastical aiithority — I am plain Elia — no Selden, nor Arch-
bishop Usher — though at present in the thick of their
books, liere in the heart of learning, under the shadow of
the mighty Bodley.
I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To
such a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his young
years of the sweet food of academic institution, nowhere is
so pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks at, as one or
other of the Universities. Their vacation, too, at this
time of the year, falls in so pat with ours. Here I can take
my w^alks unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree or
standing I please. I seem admitted ad eimdem. I fetch
up past opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and
dream that it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be
a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut
a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed
Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike
that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed
vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or a
curtsy, as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the
sort. I go about in black, which favours the notion. Only
in Christ Church reverend quadrangle I can be content to
pass for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor.
The walks at these times are so much one's own, — the
12 OXFORD IN TEE VACATION.
tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen! The halls
deserted, and with open doors, inviting one to slip in un-
perceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble or
royal Benefactress (that should have been ours) whose
portrait seems to smile upon their over-looked beadsman,
and to adopt me for their own. Then, to take a peep in by
ihe way at the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of antique
hospitality : the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen fire-
places, cordial recesses ; ovens whose first pies were baked
four centuries ago ; and spits Avhich have cooked for
C]iaucer! Not the meanest minister among the dishes but
is hallowed to me through his imagination, and the Cook
goes forth a 3Ianciple.
Antiquity ! thou wondrous charm, what art thou ? that,
being nothing, art everything ! AVhen thou wert, thou
wert not antiquity ^ — -then thou wert nothing, but hadst a
remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with
blind veneration ; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune,
modern ! What mystery lurks in this retroversion ? or
what half Januses * are we, that cannot look forward with
tlie same idolatry with which we for ever revert ! The
mighty future is as nothing, being everything ! the past is
everything, being nothing !
What were thy darlc ages 1 Surely the sun rose as
brightly then as now, and man got him to his work in the
morning ? Why is it we can never hear mention of them
Avithout an accompanying feeling, as though a palpable
obscure had dimmed the face of things, and that our
ancestors wandered to and fro groping !
Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most
arride and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering
learning, thy shelves
What a place to be in is an old library ! It seems as
though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed
their labours to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in
some dormitor}', or middle state, I do not want to handle,
to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as
SOOE. dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking
* Januses of one face. — Sik Thomas Browne.
OXFORD IN THE VACATIOX. 13
amid their foliage ; and tlie odour of tlieir old moth-scented
coverings is fragrant as the first bloom, of those sciential
apples which grew amid the happy orchard.
Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of
MSS. Those varlce lectiones, so tempting to the more eriidite
palates, do but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am no
Herculanean raker. The credit of the three witnesses
might have slept unimpeached for me. I leave these
curiosities to Person, and to G. D. — whom, by the way, T
found busy as a moth over some rotten archive, rummaged
out of some seldom-explored press, in a nook at Oriel.
With long poring, he is grown almost into a book. He
stood as passive as one by the side of the old shelves. I
longed to new-coat him in russia, and assign him his place.
He might have mustered for a tall Scapula.
D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learnins;.
No inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortune, I appre-
hend, is consumed in journeys between them and Clifford's
Inn — where, like a dove on the asp's nest, he has long
taken up his unconscious abode, amid an incongruous
assembly of attorneys, attorneys' clerks, apparitors, pro-
moters, "vermin of the law, among whom he sits, " in calm
and sinless peace." The fangs of the law pierce him not —
the winds of litigation blow over his humble chambers —
the hard sheriff's officer moves his hat as he passes — legal
nor illegal discourtesy touches him — none thinks of offer-
ing violence or injustice to him — you would as soon
" strike an abstract idea."
D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course o±
laborious years, in an investigation into all curious matter
connected with the two Universities ; and has lately lit
upon a MS. collection of charters, relative to C , by
which he hopes to settle some disputed points — particu-
larly that long controversy between them as to priority of
foundation. The ardour with which he engages in these
liberal pursuits, I am afraid, has not met with all the en«
couragement it deseryed, either hero or at C . Your
caputs, and heads of colleges, care less than anybody else
ubout these questions. — Contented to suck the milky foun-
14 OXFORD IN THE VACATIOX.
tains of tlieir Alma Maters, -without inquiring into the
venerable gentlewomen's years, they rather hold such
cui-iosities to he impertinent — unreverend. They have
their good glebe lands m manu, and care not much to rake
into the title-deeds. I gather at least so much from other
sources, for D. is not a man to complain.
D. started like an unbroke heifer, when I interrupted
him. A piori it was not very probable that we should
have met in Oriel. But D. would have done the same,
had I accosted him on the sudden in his own walks in
Clifford's Inn, or in the Temple. In addition to a pro-
voking short-sightedness (the effect of late studies and
watchings at the midnight oil) D. is the most absent of
men. He made a call the other morning at our friend
M.'s in Bedford Square ; and, finding nobody at home, was
ushered into the hall, where, askiug for pen and ink, with
great exactitude of purpose he enters me his name in the
book — which ordinarily lies about in such places, to record
the failures of the untimely or unfortunate visitor — and
takes his leave with many ceremonies, and professions of
regret. Some two or three hours after, his walking desti-
nies returned him into the same neighbourhood again, and
again the quiet image of the fireside circle at M.'s — Mrs.
M. presiding at it like a Queen Lar, with pretty A. S. at
her side — striking irresistibly on his fancy, he makes
another call (forgetting that they were " certainly not to
return from the country before that day week ") and dis-
appointed a second time, inquires for pen and paper as
before : again the book is brought, and in the line just
above that in which he is about to print his second name
(his re-script) — his first name (scarce dry) looks out upon
him like another Sosia, or as if a man should suddenly
encounter his own duplicate ! — The effect may be con-
ceived. D. made many a good resolution against any
sTicli lapses in future. I hope he will not keep them too
rigorously.
For with G. D. — to be absent from the body, is some-
times (not to speak it profanely) to be present with the
Lord. At the very time when, personally encountering
OXFOBD IN THE VACATION. 15
thee, lie passes on with no recognition or, being stopped,
starts like a thing surprised — at that moment, reader, he
is on Mount Tabor — or Parnassus — or co-sphered with
Plato — or, with Harrington, framing "immortal common-
wealths" — devising some plan of amelioration to thy
country, or thy species peradvcnture meditating some
individual kindness or courtesy, to be done to thee thyself,
the returning consciousness of which made him to start so
guiltily at thy obtruded personal presence,
[D. commenced life, after a course of hard study in the
house of "pure Emanuel," as usher to a knavish fanatic
schoolmaster at * * * , at a salary of eight pounds per
annum, with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend, he
never received above half in all the laborious years he
served this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when
poverty, staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes
compelled him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint
at arrears. Dr. * * * would take no immediate notice, but
after supper, when the school was called together to even-
song, he would never fail to introduce some instructive
homily against riches, and the corruption of the heart oc-
casioned through the desire of them — ending with " Lord,
keep Thy servants, above all things, from the heinous sin
of avarice. Having food and raiment, let us therewithal be
content. Give me Agur's wish" — and the like — which,
to the little auditory, sounded like a doctrine full of
Christian prudence and simplicity, but to poor D. was a
receipt in full for that quarter's demand at least.
And D, has been under- working for himself ever eince; — ■
drudging at low rates for unappreciating booksellers, —
wasting his fine erudition in silent corrections of the
classics, and in those unostentatious but solid services to
learning which commonly fall to the lot of laborious
scholars, who have not the heart to sell themselves to the
best advantage. He has published poems, which do not
sell, because their character is unobtrusive, like his own,
and because he has been too much absorbed in ancient
literature to know what the popular mark in poetry is,
«ven if he could have hit it. And, therefore, his verses
16 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL
are properly, what lie terms them, crotcJiets ; voluntaries;
odes to liberty and spring; elFusions ; little tributes and
offerings, left behind him upon tables and windoAV-seats at
parting from friends' houses ; and from all the inns of
hospitality, where he has been^ courteously (or but toler-
ably) received in his pilgrimage. If his mtise of kindness
halt a little behind the strong lines in fashion in this
excitement-loving age, his prose is the best of the sort in
the world, and exhibits a faithful transcript of his own
healthy, natural mind, and cheerful, innocent tone of con-
versation.]
D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best in such
places as these. He cares not much for Bath. He is out
of his element at Buxton, at Scarborough, or Harrowgate.
The Cam and the Isis are to him " better than all the
"Svaters of Damascus." On the Muses' hill he is happy, and
good, as one of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains ;
and when he goes about with jon to show you the halls
and colleges, you think you have with you the Interpreter
at the House Beautiful.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL
FIVE AND THIRTr YEARS ACiO,
IN Mr. Lamb's " Works," published a year or two since, I
find a magnifi.cent eulogy on my old school,* such as it
was, or now appears to him to have been, between the years
1782 and 1789. It happens, very oddly, that my own
standing at Christ's was nearly corresponding with his ;
and, with all gratitude to him for his enthusiasm for the
cloisters, I think he has contrived to bring together what-
ever can be said in praise of them, dropping all the other
side of the argument most ingeniously.
I remember L. at school ; and can well recollect that he
liad some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his
* Tlecollections of Christ's Hospital.
FIVE AND TUIBTY YEABS AGO. 17
scTioolfellows had not. His friends lived in town, and wero
near at hand ; and he had the privilege of going to see them,
almost as often as he wished, through some invidious distinc-
tion, which was denied to us. The present worthy sub-
treasurer to the Inner Temple can explain how that hap-
pened. He had his tea and hot rolls in a morning, while
we were battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf— our
crug — moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden
piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured
from. Our Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and
the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were en-
riched for him with a slice of " exti'aordinary bread and
butter," from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's
mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant (we had three
banyan to four meat days in the week) — was endeared to
his palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of
ginger (to make it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant
cinnamon. In lieu of our lialf-incldcd Sundays, or quite fresh
boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as caro eqiiincC), with de-
testable marigolds floating in the pail to poison the broth —
our scanty mutton scrags on Fridays — and rather more sa-
voury, but grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten-
roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which
excited our appetites, and disappointed our stomachs, in
almost equal proportion) — he had his hot plate of roast veal,
or the more tempting griskin (exotics unknown to our
palates), cooked in the paternal kitchen (a great thing), and
brought him daily by his maid or aunt ! I remember the
good old relative (in whom love forbade pride) squatting
down upon some odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters,
disclosing the viands (of higher regale than those cates
which the ravens ministered to the Tishbite) ; and the con-
tending passions of L. at the unfolding. There was love for
the bringer ; shame for the thing brought, and the manner
of its bringing ; sympathy for those who were too many to
share in it; and, at top of all, hunger (eldest, strongest
of the passions!) predominant, breaking down the stony
fences of shame, and awkwardness, and a troubling over-
consciousness.
c
18 C HEIST'S HOSPITAL
I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and tliose who
should care for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances
of theirs, which they could reckon upon as being kind to me
in the great city, after a little forced notice, which they had
the grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, soon
grew tired of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to
recur too often, though I thought them few enough ; and,
one after another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone
among six hundi'ed playmates.
the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early
homestead ! The ^'earnings which I used to have towards
it in those unfledged years ! How, in my dreams, would my
native town (far in the west) come back, with its church, and
trees, and faces ! How I would wake weeping, and in the
anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet Calne in Wiltshire !
To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by
the recollection of those friendless holidays. The long warm
days of summer never return but they bring with them a
gloom from the haunting memory of those xolwlc-day-leaves,
when, by some strange arrangement, we were turned out,
for the live-long day, upon our own hands, whether we had
friends to go to, or none. I remember those bathing-excur-
sions to the New Eiver, which L. recalls with such relish,
better, I think, than he can — for he was a home-seeking lad,
and did not much care for such water-pastimes : — How mer-
rily we would sally forth into the fields ; and strip under
the first warmth of the sun ; and wanton like young dace
in the streams ; getting us appetites for noon, which those
of us that were penniless (our scanty morning crust long
since exhausted) had not the means of allaying — while the
cattle, and the birds, and the fishes, were at feed about xis,
and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings — the very beauty
of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of
liberty, setting a keener edge upon them ! — How faint and
languid, finally, we would return, towards night-fall, to our
desired morsel, half-rejoicing, half-reluctant, that the hours
of our uneasy liberty had expired !
It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about
the streets objectless — shivering at cold windows of print
FIVE AND THIliTY YEARS AGO. 19
eliops, to extract a little amusement; or haply, as a last
resort, in the hopes of a little novelty, to pay a fifty-times
repeated visit (where our individual faces should be as well
known to the warden as those of his own charges) to the
Lions in the Tower — to whose levee, by courtesy immemo-
rial, we had a prescriptive title to admission.
L.'s governor (so we called the patron who presented us
to the foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal
roof. Any complaint which he had to make was sure of
being attended to. This was understood at Christ's, and was
an effectual screen to him against the severity of masters,
or worse tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions of these
3'oung brutes are heart-sickening to call to recollection.
I have been called out of my bed, and looked for the purpose,
in the coldest winter nights — and this not once, but night
after night — in my shirt, to receive the discipline of a
leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, because it
pleased my callow overseer, when there has been any talking
heard after we were gone to bed, to make the six last beds
in the dormitory, where the youngest children of us slept,
answerable for an offence they neither dared to commit,
nor had the power to hinder. — The same execrable tyranny
drove the younger part of us from the fires, when our feet
were perishing with snow; and, under the crudest penalties,
forbade the indulgence of a drink of water, when we lay in
sleepless summer nights, fevered with the season, and the
day's sports.
There was one H , who, I learned in after days, was
seen expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. (Do I
flatter mj^self in fancying that this might be the planter of
that name, who suffered — at Nevis, I think, or St. Kitts, —
some few years since ? My friend Tobin Avas the benevo-
lent instrument of bringing him to the gallows.) This
petty Nero actually branded a boy, who had offended him,
with a red-hot iron ; and nearly starved forty of us, with
exacting contributions, to the one half of our bread, to
pamper a young ass, which, incredible as it may seem,
with the connivance of the nurse's daughter (a young flame
of his) he had contrived to smuggle in, and keep xipon the
c 2
20 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL
leads of tlae tcard, as they called our dormitories. Tliis
game Avcnt on for Letter than a week, till the foolish beast,
not able to fare well but he must cry roast meat — happier
than Caligula's minion, could he have kept his own counsel
— but, foolisher, alas ! than any of his species in the
fables — waxing fat, and kicking, in the fulness of bread,
one Tmlucky minute would needs proclaim his good fortune
to the world below ; and, laj-ing out his simple throat,
blew such a ram's horn blast, as (toppling down the walls
of his own Jericho) set concealment any longer at defiance.
The client was dismissed, with certain attentions, to Smith-
field ; but I never understood that the patron underwent
any censure on the occasion. This was in the stewardship
of L.'s admired Periy.
Under the same facile administration, can L. have for-
gotten the cool impunity with which the nurses used to
carry away openlj'-, in open platters, for their own tables,
one out of two of every hot joint, which the careful matron
Lad been seeing scrupulously weighed out for our dinners?
These things were daily practised in that magnificent
apartment, which L. (grown connoisseur since, we presume)
praises so highly for the grand paintings " by Verrio and
others," with which it is " hung round and adorned." But
the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat boys in pictures was,
at that time, I believe, little consolatory to him, or us, the
living ones, who saw the better part of our provisions
carried away before our faces by harpies ; and ourselves
reduced (with the Trojan in the hall of Dido)
To feed our mind •with idle portraiture.
L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags, or
the fat of fresh beef boiled ; and sets it down to some
superstition. But these unctuous morsels are never
grateful to young palates (children are universally fat-
liaters), and in strong, coarse, boiled meats, unsalted, are
detestable. A gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a
goulc, and held in equal detestation. suffered under
the imputation: _ _ 'Twas said
He ate stran£?e flesh.
FIVE A^W THIRTY YEARS AGO. 21
He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up
the remnants left at his table (not many, nor very choica
fragments, yon may credit me) — and, in an especial
manner, these disreputable morsels, which he would convey
away, and secretly stow in the settle that stood at his bed-
side. None saw when he ate them. It was rumoured that
he privately devoured them in the night. He was watched,
but no traces of such midnight practices were discoverable.
Some reported, that, on leave-days, he had been seen to
carry out of the bounds a large blue check handkerchief,
full of something. This then must be the accursed thing-.
Conjecture next was at work to imagine how he could
dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the beggars. This
belief generally prevailed. He went about moping. None
spake to him. No one would play with him. He was
excommunicated ; put out of the pale of the school. He
was too powerful a boy to bo beaten, but he underwent
every mode of that negative punishment, which is more
grievous than many stripes. Still he persevered. At
length he was observed by two of his schoolfellows, who
were determined to get at the secret, and had traced him.
one leave-day for the purpose, to enter a large worn-out
building, such as there exist specimens of in Chancery
Lane, which are let out to various scales of pauperism, with
open door, and a common staircase. After him they silently
slunk in, and followed by stealth up four flights, and saw
him tap at a poor wicket, which was opened by an aged
woman, meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened into
certainty. The informers had secured their victim. They
had him in their toils. Accusation was foiinally preferred,
and retribution most signal was looked for. Mr. Hathaway,
the then steward (for this happened a little after my time),
with that patient sagacity which tempered all his conduct,
determined to investigate the matter, before he proceeded
to sentence. The result was, that the supposed mendicants,
the receivers or purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned
out to be the parents of , an honest couple come io
decay, — whom this seasonable supply had, in all proba-
bility, saved from mendicancy ; and that this young stork^
22 CHUISrS HOSPITAL
at the expense of his owti good name, had all this while
heen only feeding the old birds! — The governors on this
occasion, much to their honour, voted a present relief to the
family of , and presented him with a silver medal. The
lesson which the steward read upon eash judgment, on the
occasion of publicly delivering the medal to , I believe,
would not be lost upon his auditory. — I had left school
then, but I well remember . He was a tall, shambling
youth, with a cast in his eye, not at all calculated to con-
ciliate hostile prejudices. I have since seen him carrying
a baker's basket. I think I hoard he did not do quite so
well b}' himself as he had done by the old folks.
I was a hypochondriac lad ; and the sight of a boy in
fetters, upon the day of my first putting on the blue
clothes, was not exactly fitted to assuage the natural
terrors of initiation. I was of tender years, barely tunied
of seven ; and had only read of such things in books, or
seen them but in dreams. I was told he had run moay.
This was the punishment for the first offence. — As a novice
I was soon after taken to see the dungeons. These were
little, square, Bedlam cells, where a boy could just lie at
his length upon straw and a blanket — a mattress, I think,
was afterwards substituted — with a peep of light, let in
askance, from a prison-orifice at top, barely enough to read
by. Here the poor boy was locked in by himself all day,
without sight of any but the porter who brought him his
bread and water — who might not spealc to Mm ; — or of the
beadle, who came twice a week to call him out to receive
his periodical chastisement, which was almost welcome,
because it separated him for a brief interval from solitude :
— and here he was shut up by himself of nigJds, out of the
reach of any sound, to sufler whatever horrors the weak
nerves, and superstition incident to his time of life, might
subject him to.* This was the penalty for the second
* One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accordingly,
at length convinced the governors of the impolicy of this part of the
.sentence, and the midnight torture to the spirits was dispensed with. —
This fancy of dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard's brain;
for which (saving the reverence due to Holy Paul) methinks I coulc!
willingly spit upon his statue.
FIVE AND TniBTY YEAMS AGO. 23
oifence. Wouldst tliou like, reader, to see what became of
liim in the next degree ?
The culprit, who had been a third time an offender, and
whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible, was
brought forth, as at some solemn auto da fe, arrayed in
uncouth and most appalling attire- all trace of his late
'' watchet-weeds" carefully effaced, he was exposed in a
jacket, resembling those which London lamplighters for-
merly delighted in, with a cap of the same. The effect of
this divestiture was such as the ingenious devisers of it
could have anticipated. With his pale and frighted fea-
tures, it was as if some of those disfigurements in Dante
had seized upon him. In this disguisement he was brought
into the hall (L.'s favourite state-room), where awaited him
the whole number of his schoolfellows, whose joint lessons
and sports he was thenceforth to share no more ; the awful
presence of the steward, to be seen for the last time ; of
the executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the oc-
casion; and of two faces more, of direr import, because
never but in these extremities visible. These were gov-
ernors ; two of whom, b}'' choice, or charter, were always
accustomed to officiate at these Ultima Sujjplicia ; not to
mitigate (so at least we understood it), but to enforce
the uttermost stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter
Aubert, I remember, were colleagues on one occasion,
when the beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was
ordered to prepare him for the mysteries. The scourging
was, after the old lioman ftishion, long and stately. The
lictor accompanied the criminal quite round the hall. We
were generally too faint with attending to the previous
disgusting circumstances to make accurate report with
our eyes of the degree of corporal suffering inflicted.
Eeport, of cuurtie, gave out the back knotty and livid.
After scourging, he was made over, in his San Benito, to
his friends, if he had any (but commonly such poor run-
agates were friendless), or to his parish officer, who, to
enhance the effect of the scene, had his station allotted to
him on the outside of the hall gate.
These solemn pageantries were not played off' so often
24 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL
as to spoil the geneTal mirth of the community. AVe had
plenty of exercise and recreation after school hours ; and,
for myself, I must confess, that 1 was never happier than
in them. The Upper and the Lower Grammar Schools
were held in the same room ; and an imaginary line only
divided their bounds. Their character was as different as
that of the inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyrenees.
The Kev. James Boyer was the Upper Master ; but the
Eev. Matthew Feilde presided over that portion of the
apariment, of which I had the good fortune to be a mem-
ber. AVe lived a life as careless as birds. We talked and
did just what we pleased, and nobody molested us. We
carried an accidence, or a grammar, for form ; but, for any
trouble it gave us, we might take two years in getting
through the verbs deponent, and another two in forgetting
all that we had learned about them. There was now and
then the formality of saying a lesson, but if you had not
learned it, a brush across the shoulders (just enough to
disturb a fly) was the sole remonstrance. Feilde never used
the rod ; and in truth he wielded the cane with no great
o-ood will — holding it " like a dancer." It looked in his
hands rather like an emblem than an instrument of autho-
rity ; and an emblem, too, he was ashamed of. He was a
good easy man, that did not care to ruffle his own peace,
nor perhaps set any great consideration upon the value of
juvenile time. He came among us, now and then, but
often staid away whole days from us ; and when he came,
it made no difference to us — he had his private room to
retire to, the short time he staid, to be out of the sound
of our noise. Our mirth and uproar went on. We had
classics of our own, without being beholden to " insolent
Greece or haughty Eome," that passed current among us —
Peter Wilkins — the Adventures of the Hon. Captain E-obert
Boyle — the Fortunate Blue-coat Boy — and the like. Or we
cultivated a turn for mechanic and scientific operations ;
making little sun-dials of paper ; or weaving those in-
genious parentheses, called cat-cradles ; or making dry
peas to dance upon the end of a tin pipe ; or studying the
art military over that laudable game " French and English,'*
FIVE AND THIRTY YEAnS AGO. 25
aad a himdred other sncli devices to pass away the time —
Biixlng the useful Avith the agreeable— as would have
made the souls of Eousseau and John Locke chuckle to havo
seen us.
Matthew Feildebelonged to that class of modest divines
who affect to mix in equal proportion the gentleman, the
scholar, and the Christian ; but, I know not how, the first
ingredient is generally found to be the predominating dose
in the composition. He was engaged in gay parties, or
with his courtly bow at some episcopal levee, when he
should have been attending upon us. He had for many
years the classical charge of a hundred children, during
the four or five first years of their education ; and his very
highest form seldoaa. proceeded further than two or three
of the introductory fables of Pha3drus. How things were
suffered to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was
the proper person to have remedied these abuses, always
afi'ected, perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering in a province
not strictly his own. I have not been without my sus-
picions, that he was not altogether displeased at the con-
trast we presented to his end of the school. AVe were a
sort of Helots to his young Spartans. He would some-
times, with ironic deference, send to borrow a rod of the
Under Master, and then, with Sardonic grin, observe to
one of his upper boys, " how neat and fresh the twigs
looked." While his pale students were battering their
brains over Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep as
that enjoined by the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves
at our ease in our little Goshen. We saw a little into the
secrets of his discipline, and the prospect did but the more
reconcile us to our lot. His thunders rolled innocuous for
us ; his storms came near, but never toiiched tis ; contrary
to Gideon's miracle, while all around were drenched, our
fleece was dry.* His boys turned out the better scholars ;
we, I suspect, have the advantage in temper. His pupils
cannot speak of him without something of terror allay-
ing their gratitude; the remembrance ofFeilde comes back
with all the soothing images of indolence, and summer
* Cowley.
26 CHBIST'S HOSPITAL
slumbers, and work like play, and innocent idleness, and
Eljsian exemptions, and life itself a " playing holiday."
Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of
Boyer, wo were near enough (as I have said) to understand
a little of his system. We occasionally heard sounds of
the Ululantes, and caught glances of Tartarus. B. was a
rabid pedant. His English style was crampt to barbarism.
His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged him to those
periodical flights) were grating as scrannel pipes.* — He
would laugh — ay, and heartily — but then it must be at
Flaccus's quibble about Bex or at the tristis severitas in
vultu, or inspicere in patinas^ of Terence — thin jests, which
at their first broaching could hardly have had vis enough
to move a Eoman muscle. — He had two wigs, both pedantic,
but of different omen. The one serene, smiling, fresh
powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old dis-
coloured, unkempt, angiy caxon, denoting frequent and
bloody execution. Woe to the school, when he made his
morning appearance in his passy, or passionate wig. No
comet expounded surer. — J. B. had a heavy hand. I have
known him double his knotty fist at a poor trembling
child (the maternal milk hardly dry upon its lips) with a
" Sirrah, do you presume to set joux wits at me ? " — Nothing-
was more common than to see him make a headlong
entry into the school-room, from his inner recess, or library,
and, with turbulent eye, singling out a lad, roar out, " Od's
my life, sirrah " (his favourite adjuration), " I have a great
mind to whip you," — then, with as sudden a retracting im-
pulse, fling back into his lair — and, after a cooling lapse of
some minutes (during which all but the culprit had totally
forgotten the context) drive headlong out again, piecing out
his imperfect sense, as if it had been some Devil's Litany,
* In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadjutor.
"While the formci' was digging his brains for crude anthems, -worth a
pig-nut, F. would be recreating his gentlemanly fancy in the more
flowery walks of the Bluses. A little dramatic efi'usion of his, under the
name of Vertunmus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the chroniclers
of that sort (jf literature. It was accepted by Garrick, but the town did
not give it their sanction. — B. used to say of it, ni a way of half-compU-
inent, half-irony that it was too classical for representation.
FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 27
•with the expletozy yell — " and 7 will too." — In his gentler
moods, when the rabidus furor was assuaged, he had resort
to an ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to
himself, of whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, at
the same time ; a paragraj^h and a lash between ; which in
those times, when parliamentary oratory was most at a
height and flourishing in these realms, was not calculated
to impress the patient with a veneration for the diffuser
graces of rhetoric.
Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to fall
ineffectual from his hand — when droll squinting W
having been caught putting the inside of the master's desk
to a use for which the architect had clearly not designed it,
to justify himself, with great simplicity averred, that he did
not know tliat tlie tiling had been forewarned. This exquisite
irrecognition of any law antecedent to the oral or declara-
tory, struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who heard
it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) that remission was
unavoidable.
L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructor.
Coleridge, in his literary life, has pronounced a more in-
telligible and ample encomium on them. The author of
the Country Spectator doubts not to compare him with the
ablest teachers of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss
him better than with the pious ejaculation of C. — when
he heard that his old master was on his death-bed : " Poor
J. B. ! — may all his faults be forgiven ; and may he be
wafted to bliss by little cherub boys, all head and wings,
with no bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities."
Under him were many good and sound scholars bred. —
First Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens,
kindest of boys and men, since Co-grammar-master (and in-
separable companion) with Dr. T e. What an edifying
spectacle did this brace of friends present to those who re-
membered the anti-socialities of their predecessors ! — You
never met the one by chance in the street without a wonder,
which was quickly dissipated by the almost immediate sub-
appearance of the other. Generally arm-in-arm, these kindly
coadjutors lightened for each other the toilsome duties of
2S CHEIST'S HOSPITAL
their profession, and when, in advanced age, one found it
convenient to retire, the other was not long in discovering
that it suited him to lay down the fasces also. Oh, it is
pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same arm linked in yours
at forty, which at thirteen helped it to turn over the Cicero
De Amicitid, or some tale of Antique Friendship, which the
3-oung heart even then was burning to anticipate ! — Co-
Grecian with S. was Th , who has since executed with
ability various diplomatic functions at the Northern courts.
Th was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of speech,
Avith raven locks. — Thomas Fanshaw Middleton followed
him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gentleman in
his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent critic ; and
is author (besides the Country Spectator) of a Treatise on
the Greek Article, against Sharpe. — M. is said to bear his
mitre high in India, where the regni novitas (I dare say)
sufficient!}^ justifies the bearing. A humility quite as pri-
mitive as that of Jewel or Hooker might not be exactly
fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo- Asiatic diocesans
with a reverence for home institutions, and the church which
those fathers watered. The manners of M. at school, though
firm, were mild and unassuming. — Next to M. (if not senior
to him) was Iiichards, author of the Aboriginal Britons, the
most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems ; a pale, studious
Grecian. — Then followed poor S , ill-fated M ! of
these the Muse is silent.
Finding some of Edward's race
Unha^jpy, jjass their annals by.
Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day-
spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before
thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor
Coleridge — Logician, Metaphysician, Bard ! — How have I
seen the casual passer through the Cloistei's stand still,
intranced with admiration (while he weighed the dispro-
portion between the speech and the garh of the young
Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet
intonations, the mj'steries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for
■even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philo-
FIVE AND THIfiTY YEARS AGO. 29
Bophic draiiglits), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or
Pindar while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed
to the accents of the insjnred charity-boy ! — Many were the
" wit-combats " (to dally awhile with the words of old
Fuller), between him and C. V. Le G— — , " which two 1
behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an English man of
war : Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher
in learning, solid, but slow in his performances. C. V. L.,
with the English man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in
sailing, could turn with all times, tack about, and take
advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and
invention."
Nor shalt thoii, their compeer, be quickly forgotten,
Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh,
with which thou wert wont to make the old Cloisters
shake, in thy cognition of some poignant jest of theirs ; or
the anticipation of some more material, and, peradven-
ture jDractical one, of thine own. Extinct are those smiles,
with that beautiful countenance, with which (for thou wert
the Nireus formosiis of the school), in the days of thy
maturer waggery, thou didst disarm the wi-ath of infuri-
ated town-damsel, who, incensed by provoking pinch, turn-
ing tigress-like round, suddenly converted by thy angel-
look, exchanged the half- formed terrible " hi ," for a
gentler greeting — " bless thy handsome face !"
Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the
friends of Elia — the junior Le G and F ; who
impelled, the former by a roving temper, the latter by too
quick a sense of neglect — ill capable of enduring the slights
poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in our seats of learn-
ing — exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp ; perishing,
one by climate, and one on the plains of Salamanca : — Lo
G , sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured ; F , dogged,
faithful, anticipative of insult, warm-hearted, with some-
thing of the old Roman height about him.
Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master of Hert-
ford, with Marmaduke T , mildest of Missionaries — and
both my good friends still — close the catalogue of Grecians
in my time.
30.
THE TWO EACES OF MEN.
THE linman species, according to the best theory I can
form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men
zoho borrow, and the men who lend. To these two original
diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classi-
fications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men,
red men. All the dwellers upon earth, " Parthians, and
Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, and do naturally fall
in with one or other of these primary distinctions. The
infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to desig-
nate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port,
and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are
born degraded. "He shall serve his brethren." There
is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and sus-
picious ; contrasting with the open, trusting, generous
manners of the other.
Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all
ages — Alcibiades — Falstafi" — Sir Eichard Steele — our late
incomparable Brinsley — what a family likeness in all
four !
What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower !
what rosy gills ! what a beautiful reliance on Providence
doth he manifest, — taking no more thought than lilies !
What contemj)t for money, — accounting it (yours and mine
especially) no better than dross ! What a liberal confound-
ing of those pedantic distinctions of mmm and iiium ! or
rather, what a noble simplification of language (beyond
Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites into one clear,
intelligible pronoun adjective! — What near approaches doth
he make to the primitive community, — to the extent of one
half of the principle at least.
He is the true taxer who " calleth all the world up to bo
taxed ; " and the distance is as vast between him and one
of us, as subsisted between the Augustan Majesty and the
poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at Jeru-
TEE TWO RACES OF MEN. 31
saleni ! — His exactions, too, have siicli a cheerful, voluntary
air! So far removed from your sour parochial or state-
gatherers, — those ink-horn varlets, who carry their want of
welcome in their faces ! He cometh to you with a smile,
and troubleth you with no receipt ; confining himself to no
set season. Every day is his Candlemas, or his Feast of
Holy Michael. He applieth the lene tormentum of a pleasant
look to your purse, — which to that gentle warmth expands
her silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveller,
for which sun and wind contended ! He is the true Pro-
pontic which never ehbeth ! The sea which taketh hand-
somely at each man's hand. In vain the victim, whom he
delighteth to honour, struggles with destiny ; he is in the
net. Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordained to lend —
that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the
reversion promised. Combine not preposterously in thino
own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives ! — but,
when thou seest the proper authority coming, meet it smil-
ingly, as it were half-way. Come, a handsome sacrifice !
See how light he makes of it ! Strain not courtesies with a
noble enemy.
Eeflections like the foregoing were forced upon my mind
by the death of my old friend, Ealph Bigod, Esq., who
parted this life on Wednesday evening ; dying, as he had
lived, without much trouble. He boasted himself a descen-
dant from mighty ancestors of that name, who heretofore
held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions and
sentiments he belied not the stock to which he pretended.
Early in life he found himself invested with ample revenues ;
which, with that noble disinterestedness which I have no-
ticed as inherent in men of the great race, he took almost
immediate measures entirely to dissipate and bring to
nothing : for there is something revolting in the idea of a
king holding a private purse ; and the thoughts of Bigod
were all regal. Thus furnished, by the very act of dis-
furnishment ; getting rid of the cumbersome luggage of
riches, more apt (as one sings)
To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise.
S2 THE TWO RACES OF 3IEN.
he set fortli, like some Alexander, tipon his great enterprise,
" borrowing and to borrow ! "
In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throtighout this
island, it has been calculated that he laid a tythe part of the
inhabitants under oontribution. I reject this estimate as
greatly exaggerated : — but having had the honour of accom-
panying my friend, divers times, in his .perambulations
about this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at first
-with the prodigious number of faces we met, who claimed
a sort of respectful acquaintance with us. He was one day
so obliging as to explain the phenomenon. It seems, these
were his tributaries ; feeders of his exchequer; gentlemen,
his good friends (as he was pleased to express himself), to
■whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan. Their
multitudes did no way disconcert him. He rather took a
pride in numbering them ; and, with Comus, seemed pleased
to be " stocked with so fair a herd."
AVith such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived to
keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force of an
aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that " money
kept longer than three days stinks." So he made use of it
while it was fresh. A good part he drank away (for he was
an excellent toss-pot), some he gave away, the rest he threw
away, literally tossing and hurling it violently from him —
as boys do burrs, or as if it had been infectious, — into ponds,
or ditches, or deep holes, inscrutable cavities of the earth ;
— or he would bury it (where he would never seek it again)
by a river's side under some bank, which (he would face-
tiously observe) paid no interest — but out away from him
it must go peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into the
wilderness, while it was sweet. He never missed it. The
streams were perennial which fed his fisc. When new sup-
plies became necessary, the first person that had the felicity
to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure to contribute
to the deficiency. For Bigod had an mideniable way with
him. He had a cheerful, open exterior, a quick jovial eye,
a bald forehead, just touched with grey (cana fides). He
anticipated no excuse, and found none. And, waiving for
a while my theory as to the great race, I would put it to the
THE TWO BACES OF MEN. 33
luost nutlieorising reader, who may at times have disposable
coin in his pocket, whether it is not more repugnant to the
kindliness of his nature to refuse such a one as I am de-
scribing, than to say no to a poor petitionary rogue (your
bastard borrower), who, by his mumping visnomy, tells
you that he expects nothing bettor ; and, therefore, whose
preconceived notions and expectations you do in reality so
much less shock in the refusal.
When I think of this man ; his fiery glow of heart ; his
swell of feeling ; how magnificent, how ideal he was ; how
great at the midnight hour ; and when I compare with him
the companions with whom I have associated since, I grudge
the saving of a few idle ducats, and think that I am fallen
into the society of lenders, and little men.
To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in \
leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of \
alienators more formidable than that which I have touched \
upon ; I mean your borroivers of hooks — those mutilators I
of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and '
creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless '
in his depredations !
That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great
eye-tooth knocked out — (you are now with me in my little
back study in Bloomsbury, reader !) — with the huge
Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants,
in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing) once held
the tallest of my folios. Opera Bonaventurce, choice and massy
divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also,
but of a lesser calibre, — Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas),
showed but as dwarfs, — itself an Ascapart ! — that Comber-
hatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which
is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute,
namely, that " the title to property in a book (my Bona-
venture, for instance), is in exact ratio to the claimant's
powers of understanding and appreciating the same."
Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our
shelves is safe ?
The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — tw^o shelves
from the ceiling — scarcely distinguishable but by the quick
D
34 THE TWO RACES OF MEX.
e}e of a loser — was whilom tlie commodious resting-placo
of Brownf on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he
Icnows moi"e about that treatise than I do, who introduced
it to him, and was indeed the first (of the moderns) to dis-
cover its beauties — but so have I known a foolish lover to
praise his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified
to carry her off than himself — Just below, Dodsley's dramas
want their fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is !
The remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse
Bons, when the Fates borrowed Hector. Here stood the
Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. — There loitered
the Complete Angler ; quiet as in life, by some stream
side. In yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower-volume,
with " eyes closed," mourns his ravished mate.
One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes,
like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another time, sea-
like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. I have
a small under-collection of this nature (my friend's gather-
ings in his various calls), picked up, he has forgotten at what
odd places, and deposited with as little memory at mine. I
take in these orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes
of the gate are welcome as the true Hebrews. They stand in
conjunction ; natives, and naturalised. The latter seem as
little disposed to inquire out their true lineage as I am. —
I charge no warehouse-room for these deodands, nor shall
ever put myself to the ungentlemanly trouble of advertis-
ing a sale of them to pay expenses.
To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning in
it. You are sure that he will make one hearty meal on your
viands, if he can give no account of the platter after it.
But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., to be so impor-
tunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and adjui'ations
to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the
thrice noble Margaret Newcastle — knowing at the time,
and knowing that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst
never turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio :— what but
the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love of getting
the better of thy friend ? —Then, worst cut of all ! to trans,
port it with thcc to the Gallican laud —
NEW YEARS EVE. 35
Unworthy laud to liarljour sut-li a sweetness,
A virtue iu which all cunoMiug- thoughts dwelt,
Pure thoughts, kiud thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder J
-hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and
fancies, abont thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keepest
all companies with thy qnips and mirthful tales ? Child of
the Green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy wife,
too, that part-French, better-part-Englishwoman ! — that she
could fix upon no other treatise to bear away, in kindly
token of remembering iis, than the works of Fulke Greville
Lord Brook — of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France,
Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted to com-
prehend a tittle ! Was there not Zimmerman on Solitude ?
Keader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collec-
tion, be shy of showing it ; or if thy heart overfloweth to
lend them, lend thy books ; but let it be to such a one as
S. T, C. — he will return them (generally anticipating the
time appointed) with usury ; enriched with annotations,
tripling- their value. I have had experience. Many are
these precious MSS. of his — (iu matter oftentimes, and
almost in quantity not unfrequentl}-, vying with the ori-
ginals) in no very clerkly hand — legible in my Daniel ; in
old Burton ; in Sir Thomas Browne ; and those abstrusei
cogitations of the Greville, now, alas ! wandering in Pagan
lands. — I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library,
against S. T. C,
NEW YEAE'S EVK.
EVEEY man hath two birth-days : two days at least, in
every year, which set him upon revolving the lapse ol
time, as it affects his moral duration. The one is that which
in an especial manner he termeth his. In the gradual de-
suetude of old observances, this custom of solemnizing OTir
proper birth-day hath nearly passed away, or is left to
children, who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor
understand anything in it beyond cake and orange. But
D 2
3G iVrH' YEARS EVE.
Ike 'birtli of a New Year is of an interest too wide to be
pretermitted by king or cobbler, Ko one ever regarded the
First of January with indifference. It is that from which
all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the
iiativity of our common Adam.
Of all sound of all bells — (bells, the music nighest border-
ino- upon heaven) — most solemn and touching is the peal
which rings out the Old Year. I never hear it without a
gathering-up of my mind to a concentration of all the images
that have been diffused over the past twelvemonth ; all I
have done or suffered, performed or neglected, in that re-
gretted time. I begin to know its worth, as when a person
dies. It takes a personal colour ; nor was it a poetical
Might in a contemporary, when he exclaimed
I saw the skirts of the departing Year.
It is no more than what in sober sadness every oue of us
seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave-taking. I am
sure I felt it, and all felt it with me, last night ; though
some of my companions affected rather to manifest an ex-
hilaration at the birth of the coming year, than any very
tender regrets for the decease of its predecessor. But I am
none of those who —
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.
I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties; new books,
new faces, new years, — from some mental twist which
makes it difficult in me to face the prospective. I have
almost ceased to hope ; and am sanguine only in the pro-
spects of other (former) years. I plunge into foregone
visions and conclusions. I encounter pell-mell with past
disappointments. I am armour- proof against old discourage-
ments. I forgive, or overcome in fancy, old adversaries.
I play over again for love, as the gamesters phrase it, games-
for Avhich I once paid so dear. I would scarce now have
any of those untoward accidents and events of my life re-
versed. I would no more alter them than the incidents of
some well-contrived novel. Methinks, it it better that I
NEW YEAR'S EVE. 27
slioiild liave pined away seven of my goldeuest years, when
I was thrall to the fair hair, and fairer eyes, of Alico
W — n, than that so passionate a love adventure should bo
lost. It was better that our family should have missed
that legacy, which old Dorrell cheated us of, than that 1
"should have at this moment two thousand pounds in banco,
and be without the idea of that specious old rogue.
In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look
back upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox,
when I say, that, skipping over the intervention of forty
years, a man may have leave to love himself, without the
imputation of self-love ?
If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is intro-
spective — and mine is painfully so— can have a less respect
for his present identity than I have for the man Elia. I
know him to be light, and vain, and humoursome ; a noto-
rious * * *; addicted to * * * *; averse from counsel,
neither taking it, nor offering it ; — * * * besides ; a stam-
mering buffoon ; what jou will ; lay it on, and spare not ;
I subscribe to it all, and much more, than thou canst
be willing to lay at his door — but for the child Elia —
that " other me," there, in the background — I must take
leave to cherish the remembrance of that young master —
with as little reference, I protest, to his stupid changeling
of five-and-forty, as if it had been a child of some other
house, and not of my parents. I can cry over its patient
small-pox at five, and rougher medicaments. I can lay its
poor fevered head upon the sick pillow at Christ's, and wake
with it in surprise at the gentle posture of maternal tender-
ness hanging over it, that unknown had watched its sleep.
I know how it shrank from any the least colour of false-
hood. — God help thee, Elia, how art thou changed ! — Thou
art sophisticated.— I know how honest, how courageous
(for a weakling) it was — how religious, how imaginative,
how ho}>eful ! From what have I not fiillen, if the child 1
remember was indeed myself, — and not some dissembling
guardian, presenting a false identity, to give the rule to my
unpractised steps, and regulate the tone of my moral being !
'i hat I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy.
:1S NEW YEAR'S EVE.
in such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly
idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another cause : simply,
that being v/ithout wife or family, I have not learned to
project myself enough out of myself; and having no off-
spring of my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory,
and adopt my own early idea, as my heir and favourite ? If
these speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader (a busy
man, perchance), if I tread out of the waj^ of thy sympathy,
and am singularly conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to
ridicule, under the phantom cloud of Elia.
The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a
character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of any
old institution ; and the ringing out of the Old Year was
kept by them with circumstances of peculiar ceremony. —
In those days the sound of those midnight chimes, though
it seemed to raise hilarity in all ai"ound me, never failed to
bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I
then scarce conceived what it meant, or thought of it as a
reckoning that concerned me. Xot childhood alone, but
the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is
mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could
preach a homily on the fragility of life ; but he brings it
not home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can
appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of Decem-
ber. But now, shall I confess a truth ? — I feel these audits
but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of
my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments
and shortest periods, like misers' farthings. In proportion
as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon
their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon
the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass
away " like a weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors solace
me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality.
I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears
human life to eternity ; and reluct at the inevitable course
of destiny. I am in love with this green earth ; the face of
town and coixntry ; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the
Bweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle
here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am
NEW TEAB'S EVE. 33 '
arrived ; I, tind my friends : to be no younger, no richer,
no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age ; oi'
drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave. — Any
alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging,
puzzles and discomposes me. My household-gods plant ;\
terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood.
They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state
of being staggers me.
Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and sum-
mer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious
juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful
glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversations, and in-
nocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself — do these things
go out with life ?
Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you
are pleasant with him ?
And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ; must I part
with the intense delight of having you (huge armfuls) in
my embraces? Must knowledge come to me, if it come
at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no
longer by this familiar process of reading ?
Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling in-
dications which point me to them here, — the recognisable
face — the " sweet assurance of a look ?" —
In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying — to
give it its mildest name — does more especially haunt and
beset me. In a genial August noon, beneath a sweltering
sky, death is almost problematic. At those times do such
poor snakes as myself enjoy an immortality. Then we
expand and burgeon. Then we are as strong again, as
valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The
blast that nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts of
death. All things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon
that master feeling ; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity ;
moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral aj^pear-
ances, — that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister,
like that innutritions one denounced in the Canticles ; — I •
am none of her minions — I hold with the Persian.
AVhatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings
40 XEW YEARS EVE.
deatli imto my mind. All partial evils, like humours, inn
into that capital plague-sore. — I have heard some pr<jfesn
an iudiiierence to life. Such hail the end of their existence
as a port of refagc ; and speak of the grave as of some sof^
arms, in which they may slumber as on a pillow. Some
have •wooed death hut out upon thee, I say, thou foul,
ugly phantom ! I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friai-
John) give thee to six score thousand devils, as in no
instance to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as an
universal viper; to be branded, proscribed, and spoken evil
of! In no way can I bo brought to digest thee, thou thin,
melancholy Privation, or more frightful and confounding
Positive !
Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, arc
altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself. For what
satisfaction hath a man, that ho shall " lie down with kings
and emperors in death," who in his lifetime never greatly
coveted the society of such bed-fellows ? — or, forsooth, that
"so shall the fairest face appear?" — why, to comfort me,
must Alice W — n be a goblin ? More than all, I conceive
disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiari-
ties, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every
dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with
his odious truism, that "Such as he now is I must shortly
be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest.
In the meantime I am alive, I move about. I am worth
twenty of thee. Know thy betters ! Thy New Years' days
are past. I survive, a ]o\\y candidate for 1821. Anothci-
cup of wine — and while that turncoat bell, that just now
mournfully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with
changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to
its peal the song made on a like occasion, by heart}',
cheerful ]\lr. Cotton.
THE NEW YEAR.
Hauk, the cock crows, and yon bright star
Tells us, the day himselfs not far ;
And sec wliere, breakinsj from the nip;lit.
He gilds the western hills with light.
NEW YEARS EVE. 41
With liim old Janus doth appear,
Peeping into the future year.
With such a look as seems to say
Tiie prospect is not good that way.
'J'hus do we rise ill sights to see,
And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy ;
When the prophetic fear of tilings
A more tormenting mischief brings,
IMorc full of soul-tormenting gall
Than direst mischiefs can befall.
J3ut stay ! but stay ! methinks my sigl , fc.
Better informed by clearer light.
Discerns sereneness in that brow
That all contracted seemed but now.
His revers'd face may show distaste.
And frown iipon the ills are past ;
But that which this way looks is clear.
And smiles upon the New-born Year.
He looks too from a place so high,
The year lies open to his eye;
And nil the moments open are
To the exact discoverer.
Yet more and more he smiles upon
The happy revolution.
Why slioidd we then suspect or fear
The influences of a year,
So smiles upon us the first morn.
And speaks us good so soon as born ?
Plague on't ! the last was ill enough.
This cannot but make better proof;
Or, at the worst, as we brush"d through
The last, why so we may this too;
And then the next in reason shouM
Be superexcellently good :
For the worst ills (we daily see)
Have no more perpetuity
Than the best fortunes that do fall ;
Which also bring us wlierewithal
Longer their being to support,
Than those do of the other sort :
And who has one good j'ear in three,
And yet repines at destiny,
Appears ungrateful in the ease.
And merits not the good he has.
Then let us welcome the New Guest
With lusty brimmers of the best :
Mirtli always should Good Fortune meet.
And renders e'en Disaster sweet :
And though the Princess turn hei- bfick,
Jjct lis but line ourselves with sar-l;.
We better shall by far liold out.
Till the next year she face about.
12 MES. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WBIST.
How say 3'ou, reader — do not these verses smack of the
rough raagnanimity of the old English vein ? Do they not
fortify like a cordial ; enlarging the heart, and productive
of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the concoction?
Where be those puling fears of death, just now expressed
or aflfected ? — Passed like a cloud — absorbed in the purging
sunlight of clear poetry — clean washed away by a wave of
genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondrias.
And now another cup of the generous ! and a raerry New
Year, and many of them to you all, my masters !
MES. BATTLE'S OFINIOXS ON WHIST.
• A CLEAE fire, a clean hearth,* and the rigour of the
JTl. game." This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah
Battle (now with God), who, next to her devotions, loved
a good game of whist. She was none of your lukewarm
gamesters, your half-and-half players, who have no objection
to take a hand, if you want one to make up a rubber ; who
affirm that they have no pleasure in winning ; that they like
to win one game and lose another ; that they can while away
an hour very agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent
whether they play or no ; and will desire an adversary,
who has slipped a wrong card, to take it up and play
another.f These insufferable triflers are the curse of a
table. One of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such
it may be said that they do not play at cards, but only play
at playing at them,
Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested them,
ns I do, from her heart and soul, and would not, save upon
[* This was before the iutrodnction of rugs, reader. Yon must rc«
member the intolerable crash of the imswcpt cinders betwixt yoiu" foot
and the marble.]
[t As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one day and
lose him the nest.]
MES. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 43
a striking emergency, willingly seat lierself at tlie same
table with them. She loved a thorough-paced partner, a
determined enemy. She took, and gave, no concessions.
She hated favours. She never made a revoke, nor ever
passed it over in her adversary without exacting the utmost
forfeiture. She fought a good fight : cut and thrust. She
held not her good sword (her cards) " like a dancer." She
sate bolt upright ; and neither showed you her cards, nor
desired to see yours. All people have their blind side —
their superstitions ; and I have heard her declare, under
the rose, that Plearts was her favourite suit.
I never in my life — and I knew Sarah Battle many of
the best years of it — saw her take out her sniiff-box when
it was her turn to play ; or snuff a candle in the middle of
a game ; or ring for a servant, till it was fairly over. She
never introduced, or connived at, miscellaneous conversa-
tion during its process. As she emphatically observed,
cards were cards ; and if 1 ever saw unmingled distaste in
her fine last-century countenance, it was at the airs of a
young gentleman of a literary turn, who had been with
difficulty persuaded to take a hand ; and who, in his excess
of candour, declared, that he thought there was no harm
in unbending the mind now and then, after serious studies,
in recreations of that kind ! She could not bear to have her
noble occupation, to which she wound up her faculties, con-
sidered in that light. It Avas her business, her duty, the
thing she came into the world to do,' — and she did it. She
unbent her mind afterwards — over a book.
Pope was her favourite author : his Eape of the Lock her
favourite work. She once did me the favour to play over
with me (with the cards) his celebrated game of Ombre in
that poem ; and to explain to me how far it agreed with,
and in what points it would be found to differ from, tra-
drille. Her illustrations were apposite and poignant ; and
I had the pleasure of sending the substance of them to Mr,
Bowles ; but I suppose they came too late to be inserted
among his ingenious notes upon that author.
Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love ; but
whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The former, she
44 MnS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS OX WIIIST.
said, was sLowy and specious, and likely to allnre young
persons. The uncertainty and quick shifting of partners —
a thing which the constancy of whist abhors; the dazzling
supremac}' and regal investiture of Spadille — absurd, as she
justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where his
crown and garter give him no proper power above his
brother-nobility of the Aces ; — the giddy vanity, so taking
to the inexperienced, of playing alone ; above all, the over-
jwwerlng attractions of a Sans Prendre Vole, — to the trivimph
(jf which there is certainly nothing parallel or approaching,
in the contingencies of whist ; — all these, she would say,
make quadrille a game of captivation to the young and
enthusiastic. But Avhist was the solider game : that was
her word. It was a long meal ; not like quadrille, a feast
(jf snatches. One or two rubbers might co-extend in dura-
tion with an evening. They gave time to form rooted
friendships, to cultivate steady enmities. She despised the
chance-started, capricious, and ever-fluctuating alliances of
the other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say,
reminded her of the petty ephemeral embroilments of the
little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel : perpetuallj'
changing postures and connexions ; bitter foes to-day,
sugared darlings to-morrow ; kissing and scratching in a
breath ; — but the wars of whist were comparable to the
long, stead}^, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the great
French and English nations.
A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in her
favourite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the nob
in cribbage — nothing superfluous. No flushes — that most
irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being can set up : —
that any one should claim four by virtue of holding cards
of the same mark and colour, without reference to the play-
ing of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions of
the cards themselves ! She held this to be a solecism ; as
pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship.
She despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the
colours of things. — Suits were soldiers, she would say, and
must have an uniformity of array to distinguish them : but
what should we say to a foolish squire, v.'lio should claim a
AIRS. BATTLE'S OFINIOXS OX WHIST. 45
merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets, that
never were to be marshalled — never to take the field ? —
She even wished that whist were more simple than it is ;
and, in my mind, would have stripped it of some appen-
dages, which, in the state of human frailty, may be venially,
and even commendably, allowed of. She saw no reason
for the deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why
not one suit always trumps ? — Why two colours, when the
mark of the suit would have sufficiently distinguished them
without it ?
" But the eye, my dear madam, is agreeably refreshed
with the variety. Man is not a creature of pure reason —
he must have his senses delightfully appealed to. We see
it in Koman Catholic countries, Avhere the music and the
paintings draw in many to worship, whom your quaker
spirit of unsensualising would have kept out. — You your-
self have a pretty collection of paintings — but confess to
me, whether, walking in your gallery at Sandham, among
those clear Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters in the
ante-room, you ever felt your bosom glow with an ele-
gant delight, at all comparable to ihat 3'ou have it in your
jDower to experience most evenings over a well-arranged
assortment of the court-cards ? — the pretty antic habits, like
heralds in a procession — the gay triumph-assuring scarlets
— the contrasting deadly-killing sables — the ' hoary majesty
of spades ' — Pam in all his glory ! —
" All these might be dispensed with ; and with their
naked names upon the drab pasteboard, tho game might go
on very well, pictureless. But the 'beauty of cards would
be extinguished for ever. Stripped of all that is imagina-
tive in them, they must degenerate into mere gambling.
Imagine a dull deal board, or drum head, to spread them
on, instead of that nice verdant carpet (next to nature's),
fittest arena for those courtly combatants to play their
gallant jousts and turner's in ! — Exchange those delicately-
turned ivoiy markers — (work of Chinese artist, unconscious
of their symbol, — or as profanely slighting their true appli-
cation as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that turned
out those little shrines for the goddess) — exchange them for
46 MRS. BATTLE'S OPns'IONS ON WHIST.
little bits of leather (our ancestors' money), or chalk and
a slate !" —
The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of
my logic ; and to her approbation of my arguments on her
favourite topic that evening, I have always fancied myself
indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage-board, made
of the finest Sienna marble, which her maternal imcle
(old Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated),
brought with him from Florence : — this, and a trifle of five
hundred pounds, came to me at her death.
The former bequest (which I do not least value), I have
kept with religious care ; though she herself, to confess a
truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. It was an
essentially vulgar game, I have heard her say, — disputing
with her uncle, who was very partial to it. She could never
heartily bring her mouth to pronounce " Go " — or " TJiafs a
go." She called it an ungrammatical game. The pegging
teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five-dollar
stake) because she would not take advantage of the turn-up
knave, which would have given it her, but which she must
have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring " two for
his heels.'" There is something extremely genteel in this sort
of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentlewoman born.
Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two per-
sons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the terms
— such as pique — repique — the capot — they savoured (she
thought) of affectation. But games for tvfo, or even three,
she never greatly cared for. She loved the quadrate, or
square. She would argue thus : — Cards are warfare ; the
ends are gain, with glory. But cards are war, in dis-
guise of a sport : when single adversaries encounter, the
ends proposed are too palpable. By themselves, it is too
dose a fight ; with spectators, it is not much bettered. No
looker-on can be interested, except for a bet, and then it is
a mere affair of money ; he cares not for your luck sijvipa-
iheticaUy, or for your play. — Three are still worse ; a mere
naked war of every man against every man, as in cribbage,
without league or alliance ; or a rotation of petty and con-
tradictory interests, a succession of heartless leagues, and
ME8. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 47
not much more hearty infractions of them, as in tradrille. —
But in square games {she meant whist), all that is possible to
be attained in card-playing is accomplished. There are
the incentives of profit with honour, common to every
species— though the latter can be but very imperfectly
enjoyed in those other games, -where the spectator is only
feebly a participator. But the parties in whist are specta-
tors and principals too. They are a theatre to themselves,
and a looker-on is not wanted. Pie is rather worse than
nothing, and an impertinence. "Whist abhors neutrality,
or interests beyond its sphere. You glory in some surpris-
ing stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold — or even
an interested — bystander witnesses it, but because your
lyartner sympathises in the contingency. You win for two.
You triumph for two. Two are exalted. Two again are
mortified; which divides their disgrace, as the conjunction
doubles (by taking off the invidiousness) your glories.
Two losing to two are better reconciled, than one to one
in that close butchery. The hostile feeling is weakened
by multiplying the channels. War becomes a civil game.
By such reasonings as these the old lady was accustomed
to defend her favourite pastime.
No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at
any game, where chance entered into the composition, for
nothing. Chance, she would argue — and here again, admire
the subtlety of her conclusion; — chance is nothing, but
where something else depends upon it. It is obvious that
cannot be glory. What rational cause of exultation could
it give to a man to turn up size ace a hundred times to-
gether by himself? or before spectators, where no stake was
depending ? — Make a lottery of a hundred thousand tickets
with but one fortunate number — and what possible prin-
ciple of our nature, except stupid wonderment, could it
gratify to gain that number as many times successively
without a prize? Therefore she disliked the mixture of
chance in backgammon, where it was not played for money.
She called it foolish, and those people idiots, who wero
taken with a lucky hit under such circumstances. Games
of pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played for a stake.
JS MliS BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST.
they were a mere system of over-reachiug. Played for
5j;lory, they were a mere setting of one man's wit, — his
memory, or combination-faculty rather —against another's ;
like a mock-engagement at a review, bloodless and profit-
less. She could not conceive a game wanting the spritely
infusion of chance, the handsome excuses of good fortune.
IVo people playing at chess in a corner of a room, whilst
whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with
insutferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut similitudes
of Castles and Knights, the imager ij of the board, she would
argue, (and I think in this case justly) were entirely mis-
placed and senseless. Those hard-head contests can in no
instance ally with the fancy. They reject form and colour.
A pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper
arena for such combatants.
To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the
bad passions, she would retort, that man is a gaming
animal. He must be always trying to get the better in
something or other: — that this passion can scarcely bo
r.iore safely expended than upon a game at cards : that
cards are a temporaiy illusion ; in truth, a mere drama ;
for we do but 'plmj at being mightily concerned, where a
few idle shillings are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we
are as mightily concerned as those whose stake is crowns
and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream-fighting ; much
ado ; great battling, and little bloodshed ; mighty means
for disproportioned ends : quite as diverting, and a great
deal more innoxious, than many of those more serious games
of life, which men play without esteeming them to be such.
With great deference to the old lady's judgment in these
matters, I think I have experienced some moments in my
life, when playing at cards /or nothing has even been agree-
able. When I am in sickness, or not in the best spirits, 1
sometimes call for the cards, and play a game at piquet for
love with my cousin Bridget —Bridget Elia.
I grant there is something sneaking in it ; but with a
tooth-ache, or a sprained ankle, — when you are subdued
and humble, — you are glad to put up with an inferior
spring of action.
A CHAPTEli ON EABS. 49
There is such a thing in nature, I am conviuceJ, as sick
v:hist.
I grant it is not the highest style of man — I deprecate
the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, alas ! to Avhom I
should apologise.
At such times, those terms which my old friend objected
to, come in as something admissible. — I love to get a tierce
or a quatorze, though they mean nothing. I am subdued
to an inferior interest. Those shadows of winning amuse
me.
That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capotted
ner) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish I am ?) — I wished it
might have lasted for ever, though we gained nothing, and
lost nothing, though it was a mere shade of play : I Avould
be content to go on in. that idle folly for ever. The pipkin
should be ever boiling, that was to prepare the gentle
lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was doomed to apply
after the game was over : and, as I do not much relish
appliances, there it should ever bubble. Bridget and I
should be ever plaj'iug.
A CHAPTER ON EAES.
I HAVE no ear.—
Mistake me not, reader — nor imagine that I am by
nature destitute of those exterior twin appendages, hanging
ornaments, and (architecturally speaking) handsome volutes
to the human capital. Better my mother had never borne
me. — I am, I think, rather delicately than copiously pro-
vided with those conduits ; and I feel no disposition to
envy the mule for his plenty, or the mole for her exactness,
in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets — those indispensable
side -intelligencers.
Neither have I incurred, or done anything to incur, with
Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which constrained him
to draw upon assurance — to feel " quite unabashed,"* and
* p' Earless on high stood, unabaslied, Defoe." — Dunciad.']
E
CO A CHAPTER ON EARS.
at ease upon tliat article. I was never, I tliank my stars,
in the pillory ; nor, if I read them aright, is it within the
compass of ni}- destiny, that I ever should be.
' When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will under-
stand me to mean — for music. To say that this heart never
melted at the concord of sweet sounds, would be a foul self-
libel. " Water parted from the sea " never fails to move it
strangely. So does " In infancy." But they were used to
be sung at her harpsichord (the old-fashioned instrument
in vogue in those days) by a gentlewoman — the gentlest,
sure, that ever merited the appellation — the sweetest — why
should I hesitate to name Mrs. S , once the blooming-
Fanny AVeatheral of the Temple — who had power to thrill
the soul of Elia, small imp as he was, even in his long
coats ; and to make him glow, tremble, and blush with a
passion, that not faintly indicated the day-spring of that
absorbing sentiment which was afterwards destined to
overwhelm and subdue his nature quite for Alice W n.
I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to harmony.
But organically I am incapable of a tune. I have been
practising " God save the King " all my life ; whistling and
humming of it over to myself in solitary comers; and am
not yet arrived, they tell me, within many quavers of it.
Yet Jhath the loyalty of Elia never been impeached.
I am not without suspicion, that I have an undeveloped
faculty of music within me. For thmmming, in my mild
way, on my friend A.'s piano, the other morning, while he
was engaged in an adjoining parlour, — on his return he
was pleased to say, " /ic thought it coidd not be the maid!"
On his first surprise at hearing the keys touched in some-
what an airy and masterful way, not dreaming of me, his
suspicions had lighted on Jenny. But a grace, snatched
from a superior refinement, soon convinced him that some
being-— technically perhaps deficient, but higher informed
from a principle common to all the fine arts — had swayed
the keys to a mood which Jenny, with all her (less culti-
vated) enthusiasm, could never have elicited from them. I
mention this as a proof of my friend's penetratioDj and not
with any view of disparaging Jenny.
A CHAPTER ON EAES. 51
Scientifically I could never ho made to understand (yet
have I taken some pains) what a note in music is ; or how
one note should difibr from another. Much less in voices
can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes
the thorough-bass I contrive to guess at, from its being
supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, how-
ever, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of iJiat
which I disclaim. Yv hile I profess my ignorance, I scarce
know what to say I am ignorant of. I hate, perhaps,
by misnomers. Sostenuto and adagio stand in the like rela-
tion of obscurity to me ; and Sol, Fa, Ml, He, is as conjur-
ing as Baralijyfon.
It is hard to stand alone in an age like this, — (constituted
to the quick and critical perception of all harmonious com-
binations, I verily believe, beyond all preceding ages, since
Jubal stumbled upon the gamut,) to remain, as it were,
singly unimpressible to the magic influences of an art,
which is said to have such an especial stroke at soothing,
elevating, and refining the passions. — Yet, rather than
break the candid current of my confessions, I must avow
to you that I have received a great deal more pain than
pleasure from this so cried-up faculty.
I am constitutionall}'" susceptible of noises. A carpenter's
hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me into more
than midsummer madness. But those unconnected, unset
sounds, are nothing to the measured malice of music. The
€ar is passive to those single strokes ; willingly enduring
stripes while it hath no task to con. To mu^ic it cannot be
passive. It will strive — mine at least will — spite of its
inaptitude, to thrid the maze ; like an unskilled eye pain
fully poring upon hieroglyphics. I have sat through an
Italian Opera, till, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish,
I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded
streets, to solace myself with sounds, which I was not obliged
to follow, and get rid of the distracting torment of endless,
fruitless, barren attention ! I take refuge in the unpre-
tending assemblage of honest common-life sounds ; — and tlio
purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes my pfi.radise.
I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the pur«
E 2
r2 A CHAPTEB ON EABS.
poses of tlie clieerful playhouse) watcliing the faces of tho
auditory in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's Laughing
Audience !) immoveable, or effecting some faint emotion —
till (as some have said, that our occupations in the next
world will be but a shadow of what delighted us in this) I
have imagined myself in some cold Theatre in Hades,
Avhere some of the forms of the earthly one should be kepi
up, with none of the enjoyment ; or like that
rarty iu a parlour
All sik'ut, and all damned.
Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of
music, as they are called, do plague and embitter my
apprehension. — Words are something ; but to be exj)osed
to an endless battery of mere sounds ; to be loug a dying ;
to lie stretched upon a rack of roses ; to keep up languor
by unintermittcd effort; to pile honey upon sugar, and
sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness ;
to fill up sormd with feeling, and strain ideas to keej) pace
with it ; to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to make
the pictures for yourself ; to read a book, all stops, and be
obliged to supply the verbal matter ; to invent extempore
tragedies to answer to the vague gestures of an inexplicable
lambling mime — these are faint shadows of what I have
undergone from a series of the ablest-execrted pieces of
tlds empty instrumental music.
I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, I have expe-
rienced something vastly lulling and agreeable: — after-
wards foUoweth the languor and the oppression. — Liko
that disappointing book in Patmos ; or, like the comings on
of melancholy, described by Burton, doth music make her
lirst insinuating approaches : — " Most pleasant it is to such
as are melancholy given, to walk alone in some solitary
grove, betwixt wood and water, by some brook side, and
to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject,
which shall affect him most, amahilis insania, and mentis
{jratissimus error. A most incomparable delight to build
<-astles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an
infinite variety of parts, which they suppose, and strongly
A CHAPTER ON HAMS. 53
imagine, tliey act, or tliat they see done. — So deliglitsome
these toys at first, they conld spend whole daj's and nights
without sleep, even whole years in such contemplations,
and fantastical meditations, which are like so many dreams,
and will hardlj^ be drawn from them — winding and un-
winding themselves as so many clocks, and still pleasing
their humours, until at the last the scene turns upon a
SUBDEX, and they being now habitated to such meditations
and solitary places, can endure no company, can think of
nothing but harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow,
suspicion, suhntsticus piidor, discontent, cares, and weariness
of life, surprise them on a sudden, and they can think of
nothing else : continually suspecting, no sooner are their
eyes open, but this infernal j)lague of melancholy seizetli
on them, and terrifies their souls, representing some dismal
object to their miuds ; which now, by no means, no labour,
no persuasions, they can avoid, they cannot be rid of, they
cannot resist."
Something like this " scene turning " I have experienced
at the evening parties, at the house of my good Catholic
friend Nov ; who, by the aid of a capital organ, himself
the most finished of players, converts his drawing-room
into a chapel, his week days into Sundays, and these latter
into minor heavens.*
"When my friend commences xipon one of those solemn
anthems, which peradventure struck upon my heedless ear,
rambling in the side aisles of the dim Abbey, some five-
and-thirty years since, waking a new sense, and putting a
soul of old religion into my young aj)prehension — (whether
it be that, in which the Psalmist, weary of the persecutions
of bad men, wishetli to himself dove's wings — or that otJif^-
which, with a like measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireta
b}'' Avhat means the 3'oung man shall best cleanse his mind)
— a holy calm pervadeth me. — I am for the time
rapt above earth,
Aud possess joys not promised at my birth.
But when this master of the spell, not content to hav<j
* I have been there, and still would go
"Tis like a little heaven below. — Dj;. Watts.
5t ALL FOOLS' DAY.
laid a soul i^rosti-ate, goes on, iu Lis power, to inflict more
bliss than lies in her capacity to receive — impatient to
overcome her " earthly " with his " heavenly," — still pour-
ing in, for protracted hours, fresh waves and fresh from tho
sea of soiind, or from that inexhansted German ocean, above
which, in triumphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride those
Arions Haydn and Mozart, with their attendant Tritons,
Bach, Beethoven, and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to
reckon up would but plunge me again in the deeps,— I
.stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling to and fro at
my wits' end ; — clouds, as of frankincense, oppress me —
priests, altars, censers, dazzle before me — the genius of h{$
religion hath me in her toils — a shadowy triple tiara
invests the brow of my friend, late so naked, so ingenuous
— he is Pope, — and by him sits, like as in the anomaly of
dreams, a she-Pope too, — tri-coroneted like himself! — I am
converted, and yet a Protestant ; — at once malleus here-
tlcorum, and myself grand heresiarch : or three heresies
centre in my person : — I am Marcion, Ebion,and Cerinthus
— Gog and Magog — what not ? — till the coming in of the
friendly supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a draught
of true Lutheran beer (iu which chiefly my friend shows
himself no bigot) at once reconciles me to the rationalities
of a purer faith ; and restores to me the genuine unterrify-
ing aspects of my pleasant-coimtenanced host and hostess.
ALL FOOLS' DAY.
THE compliments of the season to my worthy masters,
and a merry first of April to us all !
Many happy returns of this day to you — and you — and
you. Sir — nay, never frown, man, nor put a long face upon
the matter. Do not we know one another ? what need of
ceremony among friends ? we have all a touch of that same
— you understand me — a speck of the motlej'. Beshrew
tiae man who on such a day as this, the general festival^
ALL FOOLS' DAY. .^5
fihould affect to stand aloof. I am noiio of those sneakers.
I am free of the corporation, and care not who knows it.
He that meets me in the forest to-day, shall meet with no
wise-acre, I can tell him. Stultus sum. Translate me that,
and take the meaning of it to yourself for your pains.
What ! man, we have four quarters of the globe on our side,
at the least computation.
Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry — we will drink
no wise, melancholy, politic port on this day — and let us troll
the catch of Amiens — clue ad me — due ad me — how goes it?
Here sliall he see
Gross fools as he.
Now would I give a trifle to know, historically and
authentically, who was the greatest fool that ever lived.
I would certainly give him in a bumper. Marry, of the
pi'esent breed, I think I could without much diflSculty
name you the party.
Eemove your cap a little further, if you please : it hides
my bauble. And now each man bestride his hobby, and
dust away his bells to what tune he pleases. I will give
you, for my part,
The crazy old church clock,
And the bewildered chimes.
Good master Empedocles,* you are welcome. It is long
since you went a salamander-gathering down ^tna. Worse
than samphire-picking by some odds. 'Tis a mercy your
worship did not singe your mustachios.
Ha ! Cleombrotus ! f and what salads in faith did you light
upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean ? You were founder,
I take it, of the disinterested sect of the Calenturists.
Gebir, my old free-mason, and prince of plasterers at
Babel,| bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand ! You
have claim to a seat here at my right hand, as patron of
the stammerers. You left your work, if I remember Hero-
[* He who, to he deem'd
A god, Jeap'd fondly into Etna flames — ]
[t He who, to enjoy
Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the sea — |
[J The builders next of Babel on the plain
Of Senaar — 1
56 ALL FOOLS' BAY.
(lotus correctly, at ciglit hundred million toisos, or there-
about, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what a long
bell-rope you must have pulled, to call your top workmen to
their nuncheon on the low grounds of Shinar. Or did you
send up your garlic and onions by a rocket ? I am a rogue if
I am not ashamed to show you our Monument on Fish-street
Hill, after your altitudes. Yet we think it somewhat.
■^Vhat, the magnanimous Alexander in tears ? — cry, baby,
put its finger in its eye, it shall have another globe, round
as an orange, pretty moppet !
Mister Adams ■ odso, I honour your coat — pray do us the
favour to read to us that sermon, which you lent to Mistress
Slipslop — the twenty and second in your portmanteau there
— on Female Incontinence — the same^it will come in most
irrelevantly and impertinently seasonable to the time of day.
Good Master Eaymund Liilly, you look wise. Pray
correct that error.
Duns, spare your definitions. 1 must fine you a bumper,
or a paradox. We will have nothing said or done syllo-
gistically this day. Eemove those logical forms, waiter,
that no gentleman break the tender shins of his apprehen-
sion stumbling across them.
Master Stephen, you are late. — Ha ! Cokes, it is you ? —
Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay my devoir to
you. — Master Shallow, your worship's poor servant to com-
mand. — Master Silence, I will use few words with you. —
Slender, it shall go hard if I edge not you in somewhere —
You six will engross all the poor wit of the company to-
day. — I know it, I know it.
Ha ! honest E , my fine old Librarian of Ludgate,
time out of mind, art thou here again ? Bless my doublet,
it is not over-new, threadbare as thy stories : — what dost
thou flitting about the world at this rate ? — Thy customers
are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, have ceased to read long ago. —
Thou goest still among them, seeing if, peradventure, thoti
canst hawk a volume or two. — Good Granville S , thy
last patron, is flown.
King Paudion, he is dead,
All thy friends arc lapt in lead. —
ALL FOOLS' DAY. SJ
Nevertheless, noble R , come in, and take your seat
here, between Aimado and Quisada ; for in true courtesy,
in gravity, in fantastic smiling to thyself, in courteous
smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature of well-ap-
parelled speech, and the commendation of wise sentences,
thou art nothing inferior to those accomplished Dons of
Spain. The spirit of chivalry forsake me for ever, when I
forget thy singing the song of Macheath, which declares
that he might be happy idtli either, situated between those
two ancient spinsters — when I forget the inimitable formal
love which thou didst make, turning now to the one, and
now to the other, with that Malvolian smile — as if Cer-
vantes, not Gay, had written it for his hero; and as if
thousands of periods must revolve, before the mirror of
courtesy could have given his invidious preference be-
tween a pair of so goodly -propertied and meritorious-equal
damsels. * * * *
To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract our
Fools' Banquet beyond its appropriate day, — for I fear the
second of April is not many hours' distant — in sober verity
I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I love a Fool — as
naturally, as if I were of kith and kin to him. "When a
child, with child-like apprehensions, that dived not below
the surface of the matter, I read those Parables — not guess-
ing at the involved wisdom — I had more yearnings towards
tliat simple architect, that built his house upon the sand,
than I entertained for his more cautious neighbour: I
grudged at the hard censure pronounced upon the quiet
soul that kept his talent; and — prizing their simplicity
beyond the more provident, and, to my apprehension, some-
what unfeminine wariness of their competitors — I felt a
kindliness, that almost amounted to a iendre, for those five
thoughtless virgins. — I have never made an acquaintance
since, that lasted : or a friendship, that answered ; with
any that had not some tincture of the absurd in their
characters. I venerate an honest obliquity of understand-
ing. The more laxighable blunders a man shall commit in
your company, the more tests he giveth you, that he will
not betray or overreach you. I love the safety which a
58 A QUAKERS' MEETING.
palpable hallucination warrants; tlie security, which a
word out of reason ratifies. And take my word for this,
reader, and say a fool told it jou, if you please, that he
who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds
of much worse matter in his composition. It is observed,
that "the foolisher the fowl or fish, — woodcocks, — dot-
terels — cods'-heads, &c., the finer the flesh thereof," and
what are commonly the world's received fools but such
whereof the world is not worthy? f<nd what have been
some of the kindliest patterns of our species, but so many
darlings of absurdity, minions of the goddess, and her white
boys? — Eeader, if you wrest my words beyond their fair
construction, it is you, and not I, that are the Ap-il Fool.
A QUAKEES' MEETING.
Still-born Silence ! thou that art
riood-gate of the deeper heart !
Offspring of a heavenly kind !
Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the miud I
Secrecy's confidant, and he
Who makes religion mystery !
Admiration's speaking'st tongue !
Leave, thy desert shades among.
Reverend hermit's liallow'd cells,
Where retu'ed devotion dwells !
With thy enthusiasms come,
Seize oiu- tongues, and strike us dumb ! *
f) EADER, would'st thou know what true peace and quiet
_X\} mean ; would'st tliou find a refuge from the noises and
clamours of the multitude ; would'st thou enjoy at once
solitude and society ; would'st thou possess the depth of
thine own spirit in stillness, without being shut out from
the consolatory faces of thy species ; would'st thou be alono
and yet accompanied ; solitary, yet not desolate ; singular,
yet .not without some to keep thee in countenance; a unit
* From "Poems of all sorts," t>y liichard Fleckno, 1653
A QUAKERS' MEETING. 59'
in aggregate ; a simple in composite : — como with me into
a Quakers' Meeting.
Dost thou love silence deep as that "before the winds
were made ?" go not out into the wilderness, descend not
into the profundities of the earth ; shut not up thy case
ments ; nor pour wax into the little cells of thy ears, with
little-faith'd self-mistrusting Ulysses. — Eetire with me into
a Quakers' Meeting.
For a man to refrain even from good words, and to hold
his jjeace, it is commendable ; but for a multitude it is
great mastery.
What is the stillness of the desert compared with this-
place? what the uncommunicating muteness of fishes? —
here the goddess reigns and revels. — " Boreas, and Cesias,
and Argestes loud," do not with their interconfounding
uproars more augment the brawl — nor the waves of th©
blown Baltic with their clubbed sounds — than their oppo-
site (Silence her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered
more intense by numbers, and by sympathy. She too hath
her deeps, that call unto deeps. Negation itself hath a
positive more and less; and closed ej^es would seem to
obscure the great obscurity of midnight.
There are wounds which an imperfect solitude cannot
heal. By imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth by
himself. The perfect is that which he can sometimes
attain in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely as in a Quakers'
Meeting. — Those first hermits did certainly understand
this principle, when they retired into Egyptian solitudes,
not singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another's want of
conversation. The Carthusian is bound to his brethren by
this agreeing spirit of incommunicativeness. In secular
occasions, what so pleasant as to be reading a book through
a long winter evening, with a friend sitting by — say, a
wife — he, or she, too, (if that be probable,) reading another
without interruption, or oral communication? — can there
be no sympathy without the gabble of words ? — away with
this inhuman, shy, single, shade-and-cavern-haunting soli-
tariness. Give me. Master Zimmerman, a sympathetic
solitude.
Ca A QVAKEltS' MEETING.
To pace alone in tlic cloisters or side aisles of some
cathedral, time-stricken ;
Ov under hanging mountains,
Or by the fall of fountains ;
is but a vulgar luxury compared with that which those
enjoy who come together for the purposes of more complete,
ahstracted solitude. This is the loneliness " to be felt." —
The Abbey Church of Westminster hath nothing so solemn,
f.o spirit soothing, as the naked walls and benches of a
Quakers' Meeting. Here are no tombs, no inscriptions.
Sands, ignoble things,
Dropt from the ruined sides of kings — •
but here is something which throws Antiquity herself into
the fore-ground — Silence — eldest of things — language of
old Night — primitive discourser — to which the insolent
decays of mouldering grandeur have but arrived by a
violent, and, as we may say, unnatural progression.
How reverend is the view of these hushed heads,
Looking tranquillity !
Notliing-];)lotting, nought-caballing, unraischievous sy-
nod ! convocation without intrigue ! parliament without
debate ! what a lesson dost thou read to council, and to
consistory ! — if my pen treat of you lightly — as haply it
will wander — yet my spirit hath gravely felt the wisdom
of your custom, when, sitting among you in deepest peace,
which some out-welling tears would rather confirm than
disturb, I have reverted to the times of j'our beginnings,
and the sowings of the seed by Fox and Dewesbury. — I
have witnessed that which brought before my eyes your
heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the rude jests and serious
violences of the insolent soldiery, republican or royalist,
sent to molest you — for ye sate betwixt the fires of two
persecutions, the outcast and oif-scouring of church and
presbytery. — I have seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who had
wandered into your receptacle with the avowed intention
of disturbing your quiet, from the very spirit of the place
A QUAKEES- MEETING. 61
receive iu a moment a new heart, and presently sit among
ye as a lamb amidst lambs. And I remember Penn before
his accusers, and Fox in the bail dock, where ho was lifted
np in spirit, as ho tells ns, and " the Judge and tho Jury
became as dead men under his feet."
Eeader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would recom-
mend to you, above all church-narratives, to read Sewel's
History of the Quakers. It is in folio, and is the abstract
of the journals of Fox and the primitive Friends. It is far
more edifying and affecting than anything you will read of
Wesley and his colleagues. Here is nothing to stagger
you, nothing to make you mistrust, no suspicion of alloy,
no drop or dreg of the worldly or ambitious spirit. You
will here read the true story of that much-injured, ridiculed
man (who perhaps hath been a byword in your mouth) —
James Naylor : what dreadful sufferings, with what
patience, he endured, even to the boring through of his
tongue with red-hot irons, without a murmur ; and Avith
what strength of mind, when the delusion he had fallen
into, which they stigmatised for blasphemy, had given way
to clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error, in a strain
of the beautifullest humility, yet keep his first grounds, and
be a Quaker still ! — so different from the practice of your
common converts from enthusiasm, who, when they aposta-
tize, apostatize all, and think they can never get far enough
from the society of their former errors, even to the renun-
ciation of some saving truths, with which they had been
mingled, not implicated.
Get the writings of John Woolman by heart ; and love
the early Quakers.
How far the followers of these good men in our days
nave kept to the primitive spirit, or in what proportion
they have substituted formality for it, the Judge of Spirits
can alone determine. I have seen faces in their assemblies
upon which the dove sate visibly brooding. Others, again,
I have watched, when my thoughts should have been better
engaged, in which I could possibly detect nothing but a
blank inanity. But quiet was in all, and the disposition to
unanimity, and the absence of the fierce controversial
G2 A QUAKERS' MEETING
workings. — ]f the spiritual pretensions of the Quakers have
abated, at least they make few pretences. Hj^Docrites they
certainly are not, in their preaching. It is seldom, indeed,
that you shall see one get up amongst them to hold forth.
Only now and then a trembling, female, generally ancient,
voic;e is heard — you cannot guess from what part of the
meeting it proceeds — with a low, buzzing, musical sound,
laying out a few words which " she thought might suit the
condition of some present," with a quaking diffidence, which
leaves no possibility of supposing that anything of female
vanity was mixed up, where tlie tones were so full of ten-
derness, and a restraining modesty. — The men, for what I
have observed, speak seldomer.
Once only, and it was some years ago, I witnessed a
sample of the old Foxian orgasm. It was a man of giant
stature, who, as Wordsworth phrases it, might have danced
" from head to foot equipt in iron mail." His frame was oi
iron, too. But lie was malleable. I saw him shake all over
with the spirit — I dare not say of delusion. The strivings
of the outer man were unutterable — he seemed not to
speak, but to be spoken from. I saw the strong man bowed
down, and his knees to fail — his joints all seemed loosening
— it was a figure to set off against Paul preaching — the
words he uttered were few, and sound — he was evidently
resisting his will — keeping down his own word- wisdom
with more mighty effort than the world's orators strain for
theirs. " He had been a wit in his youth," he told us, with
expressions of a sober remorse. And it was not till long
after the impression had begun to wear away that I was
enabled, with something like a smile, to recall the striking
incongruity of the confession — understanding the term in
its worldly acceptation — with the frame and physiognomy
of the person before me. His brow would have scared away
the Levities — the 7ocos Tiisus-que — faster than the Loves
fled the face of Dia at Enna. — By icit, even in his youth, I
will bo sworn he imderstood something far within the
limits of an allowable liberty.
More frequently the Meeting is broken up without a
word having been spoken. But the mind has been fed.
THE OLD AXD TUE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 63
You go away -vdih. a sermon not made with hands. You
have been in the mildei' caverns of Trophonius ; or as in
Bome den, where that fiercest and savagest of all wild
creatures, the Toxgue, that unruly member, has strangely
lain tied up and captive. You have bathed with stillness.
— 0, when the spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness
of the janglings and nonsense-noises of the world, what a
balm and a solace it is to go and seat yourself for a quiet
half-hour upon some undisputed corner of a bench, among
the gentle Quakers !
Their garb and stillness conjoined, present a uniformity,
tranquil and herd-like — as in the pasture — " forty feeding
like one." —
The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of receiv-
ing a soil ; and cleanliness in them to be something more
than the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is a
lily ; and when they come up in bands to their Whitsun
conferences, whitening the easterly streets of tlie metro-
polis, from all parts of the United Kingdom, they show like
troops of the Shining Ones.
THE OLD AXD THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. '
MY reading has been lamentably desultory and imme-
■Uiodical. Odd, out of the way, old English pla3^s, and
treatises, have supplied me with most of my notions, and
ways of feeling. In every thing that relates to science, I
am a w-hole Encyclopsedia behind the rest of the world. I
should have scarcely cut a figure among the franklins, or
country gentlemen, in king John's days. I know less geo-
graphy than a schoolboy of six weeks' standing. To me a
map of old Ortelius is as authentic as Arrowsmith. I do
not know whereabout Africa merges into Asia ; whether
Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great divisions ; nor
can form the remotest conjecture of the position of New
South Wales, or Van Dicmen's Land. Yet do I hold a cor-
6* THE OLD ASD THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.
respondence -witli a very dear friend in the first-named of
these two Terras Incognitas. I have no astronomy. I do
not know where to look for the Bear, or Charles's Wain ;
the place of any star ; or the name of any of them at sight.
I guess at Venus only by her brightness — and if the sun on
some portentous morn were to make his first appearance in
the West, 1 verily believe, that, while all the world were
gasping in apprehension about me, I alone should stand un-
terrified, from sheer incuriosity and want of observation.
Of history and chronology I possess some vague points, such
as one cannot help picking up in the course of miscellaneous
•study; but I never deliberately sat down to a chronicle,
even of my own country. I have most dim apprehensions
of the four great monarchies ; and sometimes the Assyrian,
sometimes the Persian, floats as first in my fmcy. I make
the widest conjectures concerning Egypt, and her shepherd
kings. My friend M., with great painstaking, got me to
think I understood the first proposition in Euclid, but gave
me over in despair at the second. I am entirely un-
acquainted with the modern languages ; and, like a better
man than myself, have " small Latin and less Greek." I
am a stranger to the shapes and texture of the commonest
trees, herbs, flowers — not from the circumstance of my
being town-born — for 1 should have brought the same in-
observant spirit into the world with me, had I first seen it
" on Devon's leafy shores," — and am no less at a loss among
purely town objects, tools, engines, mechanic processes. —
Not that I affect ignorance — but my head has not many
mansions, nor spacious ; and I have been obliged to fill it
with such cabinet curiosities as it can hold without aching.
I sometimes wonder how I have passed jnj probation with
so little discredit in the woi'ld, as I have done, upon so
meagre a stock. But the fact is, a man may do very well
Avith a very little knowledge, and scarce be found out, in
mixed company ; everybody is so much more ready to pro-
duce his own, than to call for a display of your acquisitions.
But in a tete-a-tete there is no shuffling. The truth will out.
There is nothing which I dread so much, as the being left
alone for a quarter of an hour with a sensible, well-informed
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCUOOLMASTEB. C5
man, that does not know me. I lately got into a dileuiiiui
of this sort. — •
In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgato and
Shacklewell, the coach stopped to take up a staid-looking
gentleman, about the wrong side of thirty, who was giving
his parting directions (while the steps wore adjusting), in a
tone of mild authority, to a tall youth, who seemed to be
neither his clerk, his son, nor his servant, but something
partaking of all three. The youth was dismissed, and wo
drove on. As we were the sole passengers, ho naturally
enough addressed his conversation to me ; and we discuhscd
the merits of the fare ; the civility and punctuality of tlio
driver ; the circumstance of an opposition coach having
been lately set up, with the probabilities of its success — -to
all which I was enabled to return pretty satisfactory
answers, having been drilled into this kind of etiquette by
some years' daily practice of riding to and fro in the stage
aforesaid — when he suddenly alarmed me by a startling
question, whether I had seen the show of prize cattle that
morning in Smithfield ? Now, as I had not seen it, and do
not greatly care for such sort of exhibitions, I was obliged
to return a cold negative. He seemed a little mortified, as
vvell as astonished, at my declaration, as (it appeared) ho
Avas just come fresh from the sight, and doubtless had hoped
to compare notes on the subject. However, he assured me
that I had lost a fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of
last year. We were now approaching Norton Falgate, when
the sight of some shop-goods ticheted freshened him up into
a dissertation upon the cheapness of cottons this spring. I
was now a little in heart, as the nature of my morning
avocations had brought me into some sort of familiarity
with the raw material ; and I was surprised to find how
eloquent I was becoming on the state of the India market ;
when, presently, he dashed my incipient vanity to the
earth at once, by inquiring whether I had ever made any
calculation as to the value of the rental of all the retail
shops ia Loudon. Had he asked of me what song tlie
Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed whsn he hid
himself among women, I might, with Sir Thomas Browne,
F
66 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCUOOLMASTEll.
have hazarded a " wide solution." * My companion sa\v
my embarrassment, and, the almshouses beyond Shoreditch
just coming in view, with great good-nature and dexterity
shifted his conversation to the subject of public charities ;
which led to the comparative merits of provision for the
poor in past and present times, with observations on the old
monastic institutions, and charitable orders ; but, finding
me rather dimly impressed with some glimmering notions
from old poetic associations, than strongly fortified witli
any speculations reducible to calculation on the subject, ho
gave the matter up ; and, the country beginning to open
more and more upon us, as we approached the turnpike at
Kingsland (the destined termination of his journey), he put
a home thrust upon me, in the most unfortunate position he
could have chosen, by advancing some queries relative to
the North. Pole Expedition. "While I was muttering out
something about the Panorama of those strange regions
(which I had actually seen), by way of parrying the ques-
tion, the coach stopping relieved me from any further ap-
prehensions. My companion getting out, left me in the
comfortable possession of my ignorance ; and I heard him,
as he went oit', putting questions to an outside passenger,
who had alighted with him, regarding an epidemic disorder
that had been rifo about Dalston, and which, my friend
assured him had gone through five or six schools in that
neighbourhood. The truth, now flashed upon me, that my
companion was a schoolmaster ; and that the youth, whom
he had parted from at our first acquaintance, must have
been one of the bigger boys, or the usher. — He was evi-
dently a kind-hearted man, who did not seem so much
desirous of provoking discussion by the questions which he
put, as of obtaining information at any rate. It did not
appear that he took any interest, either, in such kind of in-
quiries, for their own sake ; but that he was in some way
bound to seek for knowledge. A greenish-coloured coat,
which he had on, forbade mc to surmise that he was a
clergyman. The adventure gave birth to some lefleotions
T7in Burial
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. G7
071 the difference between persons of liis profession in past
and present times.
Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagognes ; the Lreeil,
long since extinct, of the Lilys, and the Linacres : who be-
lieving that all learning was contained in the languages
Avhich they taught, and despising every other acquirement;
as superficial and iiseless, came to their task as to a sport !
Passing from infancy to age, they dreamed away all then-
days as in a grammar-school. Pevolving in a perpetual
cycle of declensions, conjugations, syntaxes, and prosodies ;
renewing constantly the occupations which had charmed
their studious childhood ; rehearsing continually the part
of the past ; life must have slipped from them at last like
one day. They were always in their first garden, reaping
harvests of their golden time, among their Flori- and their
Spici-legia; in Arcadia still, but kings; the ferule of their
sway not much harsher, than of like dignity with that mild
sceptre attributed to king Basileus ; the Greek and Latin,
their stately Pamela and their Philoclea ; with the occa-
sional duncery of some untoward tyro, serving for a refresh-
ing interlude of a Mopsa, or a clown Damoitas !
With what a savour doth the Preface to Colet's. or (as it
is sometimes called) Paul's Accidence, set forth! "To ex
Jiort every man to the learning of gi-ammar, that intendeth
to attain the understanding of the tongues, wherein is con
tained a great treasury of wisdom and knowledge, it would
seem but vain and lost labour; for so much as it is known,
that nothing can surely be ended, whose beginning is either
feeble or faulty; and no building be perfect whereas the
foundation and groundwork is ready to fall, and unable to
tiphold the burden of the frame." How well doth this
stately preamble (comparable to those which Milton coni-
mendeth as "having been the usage to prefix to sonio
solemn law, then first promulgated by Solon or Lycurgus ")
correspond with and illustrate that pious zeal for con-
formity, expressed in a succeeding clause, which would
fence about grammar - rules witli the severity of faith-
articles ! — " as for the diversity of grammars, it is well pni-
fitiibl}- taken away by the King's Majesties wisdom, who
Y 2
68 TEE OLD AND TEE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.
foreseeing the inconvenience, and favourably providing tlie
remedie, caused one kind of grammar by sundry learned
men to be diligently drawn, and so to be set out, only
everywhere to be taught for the use of learners, and for the
Imrt in changing of schoolmaisters." What a gtisto in that
which follows : " wherein it is profitable that he (the
impil) can orderly decline his noun and his verb." His
noun
The fine dream is fading away fast ; and the least con-
cern of a teacher in the present day is to incidcate gram-
mar-rules.
The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a little of
everything, because his pupil is required not to be entirely
ignorant of anything. lie must be superficially, if I may so
say, omniscient. He is to know something of pneumatics ;
of chemistry ; of whatever is curious or proper to excite the
attention of the youthful mind ; an insight into mecha.nics
is desirable, with a touch of statistics; the quality of soils,
«tc., botany, the constitution of his country, cum multis aliis.
You may get a notion of some part of his expected duties by
consulting the famous Tractate on Education, addressed to
J\Ir. Hartlib.
All these things — these, or the desire of them — he is
expected to instil, not by set lessons from professors, which
lie may charge iu the bill, but at school intervals, as ho
Avalks the streets, or saunters through green fields (those
natural instructors), with his pupils. The least part of
what is expected from him is to be done in school-hours,
lie must insinuate knowledge at the mollia iemj^ora fandi.
He must seize every occasion — the season of the year — the
lime of the day — a passing cloud — a rainbow — a waggon of
, liay — a regiment of soldiers going by — to inculcate some-
thing useful. Ho can receive no pleasure from a casual
- glimpse of Nature, but must catch at it as an object of in-
I .struction. Be must interpret beauty into the picturesque.
I lie cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for thinking of
the suitable improvement. Nothing conies to him, not
.spoiled by the sophisticating medium of moral uses. The
Universe — that Great Book, as it has been called —is to
THE OLD AND TEE NEW SCUOOLMASTER. G9
him, indeed, to all intents and piu"poses, a book out of
which he is doomed to i-ead tedious homilies to distastin<^
schoolboys. — Vacations themselves are none to him, he is
only rather worse off than before ; for commonly he has some
intrusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such times; some
cadet of a great family ; some neglected lump of nobilit}-,
or gentry ; that he must drag after him to the play, to tho
Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrer}^ to the Panopticon, or
into the country, to a friend's house, or his favourite water-
ing-place. Wherever he goes this uneasy shadow attend?^
him. A boy is at his board, and in his path, and in all hi.s
movements. He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy.
Boys arc capital fellows in their own way, among their
mates ; but the}' are unwholesome companions for grown
people. The restraint is felt no less on the one side than
on the other. — Even a child, that " plaything for an hour,"
tires always. The noises of children, playing their own
fancies — as I now hearken to them, by fits, sporting on tho
green before my window, while I am engaged in these
grave speculations at my neat suburban retreat at Shackle-
well — by distance made more sweet — inexpressibly take
from the labour of my task. It is like writing to music.
They seem to modulate my periods. They ought at least to
do so — for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind of
poetry, far unlike the harsh prose-accents of man's conver-
sation. — I should but spoil their sport, and diminish m}-
own sympathy for them, by mingling in their pastime.
I would not be domesticated all my days with a person
of very superior capacity to my own — not, if I know myself
at all, from any considerations of jealousy or self-compa-
rison, for the occasional communion with such minds has
constituted the fortune and felicity of my life— but tho
habit of too constant intercourse with spirits above you,
instead of raising you, keeps you down. Too frequent
doses of original thinking from others restrain what lesser
portion of that faculty you may possess of your own. You
get entangled in another man's mind, even as you lose
youT'self in another man's groimds. You are walking with
a tall varlet, whose strides out-pace yours to lassitude.
70 TEE OLD AND THE NE\V SCHOOLMABTEB.
The coustant operation of sncb. potent agency would re-
duce me, I am convinced, to imbecility. You may deiive
thoughts from others ; your way of thinking, the mould in
Avhich your thoughts are cast, must be your owti. Intellect
may be imparted, but not each man's intellectual frame. —
As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged up-
ward, as little (or rather still less) is it desiia''4e to be
stunted dowuAvards by your associates. The trumpet does
not more than stun you by its loudness, than a whisper
teases you by its provoking inaudibility.
Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence of a
schoolmaster? — because we are conscious that he is not
quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place
in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from
among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of
his understanding to yourg. He cannot meet you on the
square. He wants a point given him, like an indifferent
wliist-player. He is so used to teaching, that he wants to
ho teaching you. One of these professors, upon my com-
plaining that these little sketches of mine were anything
but methodical, and that I was unable to make them other-
wise, kindly offered to instruct me in the method by which
young gentlemen in Ms seminary were taught to compose
English themes. The jests of a schoolmaster are coarse,
or thin. They do not tell out of school. He is under the
3-estraint of a formal or didactive hypocrisy in company, as
u clergyman is inider amoral one. He can no more let his
intellect loose in society than the other can his inclinations.
He is forlorn among his coevals ; his juniors cannot be his
friends.
" I take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this
profession, writing to a friend respecting a youth who had
quitted his school abruptly, " that y our nephew was not
more attached to me. But persons in my situation are
moi'e to be pitied than can well be imagined. We are sur-
rounded by young, and, consequently, ardently aiFectionate
hearts, but toe can never hope to share an atom of their
affections. The relation of master and scholar forbids this.
How pleasing this must he to you, how I envy your fedinrjs ! my
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCU00L2IASTEE. 71
friends will sometimes say to me, when they see yoting
men whom I have educated, retiirn after some years'
absence from school, their eyes shining with pleasure,
while they shako hands with their old master, bringing a
present of game to me, or a toy to my wife, and thanking
me in the warmest terms for my care of their education.
A holiday is begged for the boys ; the house is a scene
of happiness ; I, only, am sad at heart. — This fine-spirited
and warm-hearted youth, Avho fancies he repays his master
with gratitude for the care of his boyish 3-ears — this young
raan — in the eight long years I watched over him with a
parent's anxiety, never could repay me with one look of
genuine feeling. He was proud, when I praised ; he was
submissive, when I reproved him; but he did never love
me — and what he now mistakes for gratitude and kindness
for me, is but the pleasant sensation which all persons feel
at revisiting the scenes of their boyish hopes and fears ;
and the seeing on equal terms the man they were accus-
tomed to look up to with reverence. My wife, too," this
interesting correspondent goes on to say, -'my once darling-
Anna, is the wife of a schoolmaster. — When I married her
— knowing that the v/ife of a schoolmaster ought to be a
busy notable creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna
^\"0uld ill supply the loss of my dear bustling mother, just
then dead, who never sat still, was in every part of the
house in a moment, and whom I was obliged sometimes to
threaten to fasten down in a chair, to save her from fatigu-
ing herself to death — I expressed my fears that I was bring-
ing her into a way of life unsuitable to her; and she, who
loved me tenderly, promised for my sake to exert herself to
perform the duties of her new situation. She promised,
and she kept her word. What wonders will not woman's
love perform ? — My house is managed with a propriety and
decorum unknown in other schools ; my boys are well fed,
look healthy, and have every proper accommodation ; and
all this performed with a careful econom}'-, that never de-
scends to meanness. But I have lost my gentle helpless
Anna ! When we sit down to enjoy an hour of repose after
the fatigue of the day, 1 am compelled to listen to what
72 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.
have been her useful (and they are really useful) employ-
ments through the day, and what she jjroposes for her to-
morrow's task. Her heart and her features are changed
by the duties of her situation. To the boys, she never
appears other than the master's wife, and she looks up to me
as the hoTjs' master ; to whom all show of love and affection
Avould be highly improper, and unbecoming the dignity of
her situation and mine. Yet iliis my gratitude forbids me
to hint to her. For my sake she submitted to be this
altered creature, and can I reproachher for it ?" — For the
communication of this letter I am indebted to my cousin
Bridcret.
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.
I am of a constitution so general, tliat it consorts and sympathiselh
•witli all things ; I have no antipatliy, or rather idiosyncrasy in anytliing.
Those natural repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I behold with prc-
iudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — Belirjio Medici.
THAT the author of the Ecligio Medici mounted upon
the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about notional
and conjectural essences ; in whose categories of Being the
possible took the upper hand of the actual ; should have
overlooked the impertinent individualities of such poor
concretions as mankind, is not much to be admired. It is
rather to be v/ondercd at, that in the genus of animals he
should have condescended to distinguish that species at alL
For myself — earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my
activities, —
Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky,
1 confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national
or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no
indifferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is
to me a matter of taste or distaste ; or when once it becomes
indifferent it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer
words, a bundle of prejudices — made up of likings and
dislikings — the veriest thrall to sj'mpathies, apathies,
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 73
antipathies. In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of rao
that I am a lover of my species, 1 can feel for all indif-
ferentl}', but I cannot feel towards all equally. The more
purely-English word that expresses sympathy, will better
explain my meaning. I can bo a friend to a worthy man,
who upon another account cannot be my mate or felloiu. I
cannot like all people alike.*
I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am
obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They
cannot like me — and in truth, I never knew one of that
nation who attempted to do it. There is something more
plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceeding. We know
one another at first sight. There is an order of imperfect
intellects (under which mine must be content to rank)
which in its constitution is essentially anti-Caledonian.
The owners of the sort of faculties I allude to, have minds
rather suggestive than comprehensive. They have no
pretences to much clearness or precision in their ideas, or
in their manner of expressing them. Their intellectual
* I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of imperfect
sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no direct antipathy.
There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite to another
individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them. I have met
with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons meet-
ing (who never saw one another before in their lives) and instantly
ti.Ljliting.
Wc by i^rooi find there should be
'Twixt man and man such an antipathy.
That though he can show no just reason why
For any former wrong or injury,
Can neither find a blemish in his fame.
Nor aught in face or feature justly Idame,
Can challenge or accuse him of no e\i\.
Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil.
The lines are from old Heywood's " Hierarchie of Angels," and he sub-
joins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted to
assassinate a king Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack could
give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy which ha
had taken to the first sight of the king.
The cause which to that act compell'd him
Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him.
74 niFEBFECT SYMPATHIES.
■wardroLe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it.
They arc content with fragments and scattered pieces of
Truth. She presents no full front to them — a featnre or
side-face at the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and
crude essays at a system, is the utmost they pretend to.
They beat up a little game peradventure — and leave it to
knottier heads, more robust constitutions, to run it down.
The light that lights them is not steady and polar, but
mutable and shifting : waxing, and again waning. Their
conversation is accordingly. They will throw out a random
word in or out of season, and be content to let it pass for
what it is worth. They cannot speak always as if they
were upon their oath — but must be understood, speaking
or writing, with some abatement. They seldom wait to
mature a proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the
green ear. They delight to impart their defective discoveries
as they arise, without waiting for their development. They
are no systematizers, and would but err more by attempting,
it. Their minds, as I said before, are suggestive merel}'.
The brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is con-
stituted ixpon quite a different plan. His Minerva is born in
panoply. You are never admitted to see his ideas in their
growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put
together upon principles of clock-work. You never catcli
his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests any-
thing, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order and
completeness. He brings his total wealth into company,
and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always about him.
He never stoops to catch a glittering something in your
l^resence to share it with you, before he quite knows
whether it be true touch or not. You cannot cry halves to
anything that he finds. He does not find, but bring. You
never witness his first apprehension of a thing. His under-
standing is always at its meridian — you never see the first
dawn, the early streaks. — He has no falterings of self-
suspicion. Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions,
semi-consciousnesses, partial illuminations, dim instincts,
embryo conceptions, hpve no place in his brain or vocabu-
lary. The twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. la-
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. ^!^
he orthodox — he has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he has-
none either. Between the affirmative and the negative
there is no border-land with him. You cannot hover witl:
him upon the confines of truth, or wander in the maze of a
probable argument. He always keeps the path. You can-
not make excursions with him — for he sets 3'ou right. His
taste never fluctuates. His morality never abates. He
cannot compromise, or understand middle actions. There
can be but a right and a wrong. His conversation is as a
book. His affirmations have the sanctity of an oath. Y^oii
must speak upon the square with him. He stops a meta-
phor like a suspected person in an enemy's country. " A
healthy book !" — said one of his countrymen to me, who had
ventured to give that appellation to John Buncle, — " Did I
catch rightly what you said ? I liave heard of a man in
health, and of a healthy state of body, but I do not see how
that epithet can be properly applied to a book." Above
all, you must beware of indirect expressions before a Cale-
donian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you are
unhappily blest with a vein of it. Eemember j'ou are
upon your oath. I have a print of a graceful figure after
Leonardo da Vinci, which I was showing ofi" to Mr. * * * *
After he had examined it minutely, I ventured to ask
him how he liked my beauty (a foolish name it goes by
among my friends) — when he very gravely assui'cd me,
that " he had considerable respect for my character and
talents " (so he was pleased to say), " but had not given
himself much thought about the degree of my personal pre-
tensions." The misconception staggered me, but did not
seem much to disconcert him. — Persons of this nation ai'o
particularly fond of affirming a truth — which nobody doubts.
They do not so properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do
indeed appear to have such a love of truth (as if, like virtue,
it were valuable for itself) that all truth becomes equally
valuable, whether the proposition that contains it be new
or old, disputed, or such as is impossible to become a sub-
ject of disputation. I was present not long since at a party
of North Britons, where a son of Burns was expected ; and
iiappened to drop a silly expression (in my South British
76 IMPERFECT SYMFATHIES.
^\■ay), that I wished it were the father instead of the son— •
Avhen four of them started np at once to inform me, that
'• that was impossible, because he was dead." An imprac-
ticable wish, it seems, was more than they could conceive.
Swift has hit off this part of their character, namely
llieir love of tiiith, in his biting way, but with an illibe-
i-ality that necessarily confines the passage to the margin.*
The todiousness of these people is certainly provoking. 1
wonder if they ever tire one another ! — In my early life I
had a passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns. I have
sometimes foolishly hoped to ingratiate myself with, his
countrymen by expressing it. But I have always foxmd
that a true Scot resents your admiration of his compatriot
even more than ho would your contempt of him. The
latter he imputes to your " imperfect acquaintance with
many of the words which he uses;" and the same objection
•makes it a presumption in you to suppose that j^ou can
admire him. — Thomson they seem to have forgotten.
Smollett they have neither forgotten nor forgiven, for his
delineation of Eory and his comj3anion, upon their first
introduction to our metropolis. — Speak of Smollett as a
great genius, and they will retort upon you Hume's History
■compared Avith Ms Continuation of it. AVhat if the his-
torian had continued Humphrey Clinker ?
I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for the Jews. They
are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared witli which
Stonehengo is in its nonage. They date beyond the pyra-
mids. But I should not care to be in habits of familiar
intercourse with any of that nation. I confess that I have
tiot the nerves to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices
cling about me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh, of
* There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit them-
selves, and entertain their corapanj', with relating facts of no conse-
(juence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as happen
every day ; and this I have observed more frequently among the Scots
llian any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the minutest
circumstances of time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not
a Uttlo relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and
gesture, peculiar to that country, would be hardly tolerable. — Hints
toicards an Essay on Conversation.
niPEEFUCT SY3irATUIES. 77
Lincoln. Centuries of injury, contempt, and liate, on tlio.
one side, — of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on
the other, between our and their fathers, must and ought
to afiect the blood of the children. I cannot believe it caa
run clear and kindly yet ; or that a few words, such as
candour, libeiality, the light of the nineteenth century, can
close up the breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew
is nowhere congenial to me. Pie is least distasteful on
'Change — for the mercantile spirit levels all distinctions, as
all are beauties in the dark. I boldly confess that I do not
relish the approximation of Jew and C'hristian, which has
become so fashionable. The reciprocal endearments have,
to me, something hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do
not like to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and con-
geeing in awkward postures of an afiected civilit}-. If tJieij
are converted, why do they not come over to us altogether?
AVhy keep up a form of separation, when the life of it is
fled ? If they can sit with us at table, why do they keck
at our cookery ? I do not understand these half conver-
tites. Jews christianizing — Christians judaizing— puzzle
me. I like fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more con-
founding piece of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spirit
of the synagogue is essentially separative. B would
have been more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of
his forefathers. There is a fine scorn in his face, which
nature meant to be of Christians. — The Hebrew spirit
is strong in him, in spite of his proselytism. He cannot
conquer the Shibboleth. How it breaks out, when he sings,
"The Children of Israel passed through the Red Sea!"
The auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and
he rides over our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking
him. B has a strong expression of sense in his coun-
tenance, and it is confirmed by his singing. The founda-
tion of his vocal excellence is sense. He sings with
understanding, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would
sing the Commandments, and give an appropriate charac-
ter to each prohibition. His nation, in general, have not
over-sensibls coimtenances. How should they ? — but you
seldom see a silly expression among them. — Gain, and the
73 IMPEBFECT SYMFATIIIES.
pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never lieard of
an idiot being born among them. — Some admire the Jewish
female-physiognomy. I admire it — but with trembling.
Jael had those full dark inscrutable eyes.
In the Negro countenance you will often meet Avith
strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tender-
ness towards some of these faces — or rather masks — that
have looked out kindly upon one in casual encounters in
the streets and highways. I love what Fuller beautifully
calls — these "images of God cut in ebony." But I should
not like to associate with them, to share my meals and my
good nights with them— because they are black.
I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I venerate
the Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the
day when I meet any of their people in my path. "When
I am ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, or
quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator,
lightening the air, and taking off a load from the bosom.
But I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say)
"to live with them." I am all over sophisticated — with
humours, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. I must have
books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, jokes, ambi-
guities, and a thousand whim-whams, which their simpler
taste can do without. I should starve at their primitive
banquet. My appetites are too high for the salads which
(according to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel ; my gusto
too excited
To sit a guest witli Daniul at his pulse.
The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to
return to a question put to them may be explained, I think,
without the vulgar assumption, that they are more given
to evasion and equivocating than other people. They
naturally look to their words more carefully, and are
more cautious of committing themselves. They have
a peculiar character to keep up on this head. They
stand in a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker is by
law exempted from taking an oath. The custom of resort-
ing to an oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 79
Tcligious antiqiuty, is fipt (it must be confessed) to
introduce into the laxer sort of minds the notion of
two kinds of trutli — the one applicable to the solemn
affairs of justice, and the other to the common proceedings
of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the conscience
by an oath can be but truth, so in the common affirmations
of the shop and the market-place a latitude is expected
and conceded upon questions wanting this solemn covenant.
Something less than truth satisfies. It is common to hear
a person say, " You do not expect me to speak as if I were
upon my oatli." Hence a groat deal of incorrectness and
inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps into ordinary conver-
sation ; and a kind of secondary or laic-truth is tolerated,
where clergy-truth — oath-truth, by the nature of the circum-
stances, is not required. A Quaker knows none of this dis-
tinction. His simple affirmation being received upon the
juost sacred occasions, without any further test, stamps a
value upon the woixls which he is to use Tipon the most
indifferent topics of life. He looks to them, naturally,
with more severity. You can have of hina no more than
his word. He knows, if he is caught tripping in a casual ex-
pression, he forfeits, for himself at least, his claim to the in-
vidious exemption. He knows that his syllables are weighed
— and how far a consciousness of this particular watchful-
ness, exerted against a person, has a tendency to produco
indirect answers, and a diverting of the qiiestion by honest
means, might be illustrated, and the practice justified by a
more sacred example than is proper to be adduced upon this
occasion. The admirable presence of mind, which is noto-
rious in Quakers upon all contingencies, might be traced
to this imposed self-watchfulness — if it did not seem rather
an humble and secular scion of that old stock of religious
constancy, which never bent or faltered, in the Primitive
Friends, or gave way to the winds of persecution, to the
violence of judge or accuser, under trials and racking
examinations. " You will never be the wiser, if I sit here
answering your questions till midnight," said one of those
upright Justicers to Penn, who had been putting law-casea
with a puzzling subtlety. " Thereafter as the answers
80 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.
may be," retorted the Quaker. The astonishing composure
of this people is sometimes ludicrously displayed in lighter
instances. — I was travelling in a stage-coach with three
male Quakers, buttoned up in the straitest nonconformity
of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, where a
meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was set before
us. My friends confined themselves to the tea-table. I in
my way took supper. When the landlady brought in the
bill, the eldest of my companions discovered that she had
charged for both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess
was very clamorous and positive. Some mild arguments
were used on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated
mind of the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient.
The guard came with his usual peremptory notice. The
Quakers pulled out their money and formally tendered it
— so much for tea — I, in humble imitation, tendering mine
— for the supper which 1 had taken. She would not relax
in her demand. So they all three quietly put up their
silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the
eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the
rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the
example of such grave and warrantable personages. Wo
got in. The steps went up. The coach drove off. The
murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambigu-
ously pronounced, became after a time inaudible— and now
my conscience, which the whimsical scene had for a while
suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in
the hope that some justification would be offered by these
serious persons for the seeming injustice of their conduct.
To my great surprise not a syllable was dropped on the
subject. They sat as mute as at a meeting. At length the
eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next
neighbour, " Hast thee heard how indigos go at the India
House?" and the question operated as soporific on my
moral feelinsr as far as Exetor.
81
WITCHES, AND OTHER KIGHT FEAES.
WE are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the
gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as
they seem to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft. In
the relations of this visible world we find them to have been
as rational, and shrewd to detect an historic anomaly, as
ourselves. But when once the invisible world was sup-
posed to be open, and the lawless agency of bad spirits
assumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of fit-
ness, or proportion — of that which distinguishes the likely
from the palpable absurd — could they have to guide them
in the rejection or admission of any particular testimony ?
— That maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their
waxen images consumed before a fire — that corn was lodged,
and cattle lamed — that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic re-
velry the oaks of the forest — or that spits and kettles only
danced a fearful-innocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen
when no wind was stirring — were all equally probable
where no law of agency was understood. That the prince
of the powers of darkness, passing by the flower and pomp
of the earth, should lay preposterous siege to the weak
fantasy of indigent eld — ^has neither likelihood nor unlike-
lihood a priori to us, who have no measure to guess at his
policy, or standard to estimate what rate those anile souls
may fetch in the devil's market. Nor, when the wicked
are expressly symbolised by a goat, was it to be wondered
at so much, that he should come sometimes in that body,
and assert his metaphor. — That the intercourse was opened
at all between both worlds was perhaps the mistake — but
that once assumed, 1 see no reason for disbelieving one at-
tested story of this nature more than another on the score
of absurdity. There is no law to judge of the lawless, or
canon by which a dream may be criticised.
I have sometimes thought that I could not have existed
in the days of received witchcraft ; that I could not have
slept in a village where one of those reputed hags dwelt.
Our ancestors were bolder or more obtuse. Amidst the
82 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEAES.
universal belief that these wretches were in league with
the author of all evil, holding hell tributary to their mut-
tering, no simple justice of the peace seems to have scrupled
issu ing, or silly headborough sei-ving, a warrant upon them
— as if they should subpcena Satan ! — Prospero in his boat,
with his books and wand about him, suffers himself to be
conveyed away at the mercy of his enemies to an unknown
island. He might have raised a storm or two, we think,
on the passage. His acquiescence is in exact analogy to
the non-resistance of witches to the constituted powers. —
What stops the Fiend in Spenser from tearing Guyon to
pieces — or who had made it a condition of his prey that
Guyon must take assay of the glorious bait — we have no
guess. We do not know the laws of that country.
From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive about
witches and witch-stories. My maid, and more legendary
aunt, supplied me with good store. But I shall mention
the accident which directed my curiosity originally into
this channel. In my father's book- closet the history of the
Bible by Stackhouse occuj^ied a distinguished station. The
pictures with which it abounds — one of the ark, in par-
ticular, and another of Solomon's temple, delineated with
all the fidelity of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist
had been upon the spot — attracted my childish attention.
There was a picture, too, of the Witch raising up Samuel,
Avhich I wish that I had never seen. AVe shall come to
that hereafter. Stacldiouse is in two huge tomes ; and
there was a pleasure in removing folios of that magnitude,
which, with infinite straining, was as much as I could
manage, from the situation which they occupied upon an
upper shelf. I have not met with the work from that time
to this, but I remember it consisted of Old Testament
stories, orderly set down, with the objection appended to
each story, and the solution of the objection regularly tacked
to that. The objection was a summary of whatever diffi-
culties had been opposed to the credibility of the history
by the shrewdness of ancient or modern infidelity, drawn
up with an almost complimentary excess of candour. The
solution was brief, modest, and satisfactory. The bane and
WITCHES. AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 83
antidote were both befcjre you. To dovibts so put, and so
quashed, there seemed to be an end for ever. The dragon
lay dead, for the foot of the veriest babe to trample on.
Jjut — like as was rather feared than realized from that slain
monster in Spenser — from the womb of those crushed errors
young dragonets would creep, exceeding the prowess of so
tender a Saint George as myself to vanquish. The habit of
expecting objections to every passage set me upon starting
more objections, for the glory of finding a solution of my
own for them. I became staggered and perplexed, a sceptic-
in long-coats. The pretty Bible stories which I had read,
or heard read in church, lost their purity and sincerity of
impression, and were turned into so many historic or chro-
nologic theses to be defended against whatever impugners.
I was not to disbelieve them, but — the next thing to that —
I was to be quite sure that some one or other would or
had disbelieved them. Next to making a child an infidel
is the letting him know that there are infidels at all.
Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.
O, how ugly sound scriptural doubts from the mouth of a
babe and a suckling ! — I should have lost myself in these
mazes, and have pined away, I think, with such unfit sus-
tenance as these husks afforded, but for a fortunate piece
of ill-fortune which about this time befell me. Turning
over the picture of the ark with too much haste, I un-
happily made a breach in its ingenioiis fabric — driving my
inconsiderate fingers right through the two larger quadru-
peds, the elephant and the camel, that stare (as well they
might) out of the two last windows next the steerage in
that unique piece of naval architecture. Stackhouse wat-:
henceforth locked up, and became an interdicted treasure.
With the book, the objections and solutions gradually cleared
out of my head, and have seldom returned since in any force
to trouble me. But there was one impression which I had
imbibed from Stackhouse which no lock or bar could shur.
out, and which was destintd to try my childish nerves
rather more seriously. — That detestable picture !
I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The night-
time, solitude, and the dark, were my hell. The suffering^!
G 2
m WITCHES, a:nd other night fears.
I endured in this nature would justify the expression. I
never laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, froia tho
fourth to the seventh or eighth year of my life — so far sm
memory serves in things so long ago — without an assur-
Ance, which realized its own prophecy, of seeing some fright-
ful spectre. Be old Stacldiouse then acquitted in part, if I
say, that to his picture of the Witch raising up Samuel —
(0 that old man covered with a mantle !) — I owe — not my
midnight terrors, the hell of my infancy — but the shape
and manner of their visitation. It was he who dressed up
for me a hag that nightly sate uj)on my pillow — a sure
bedfellow, when my aunt or my maid was far from me.
All day long, while the book was permitted me, I dreamed
waking over his delineation, and at night (if I may use so
bold an expression) awoke into sleep, and found the vision
true. I durst not, even in the day-light, once enter the
chamber where I slept, without my face turned to the
>indow, aversely from the bed where my witch-ridden
pillow was. Parents do not know what they do when they
leave tender babes alone to go to sleep in the dark. The
feeling about for a friendly arm — the hoping for a familiar
voice — when they wake screaming — and find none to soothe
them — what a terrible shaking it is to their poor nerves !
The keeping them up till midnight, through candle-light
and the i;n wholesome hours, as they are called, — would, I
am satisfied, in a medical point of view, prove the better
caution. — That detestable picture, as I have said, gave the
iashion to my dreams — if dreams they were — for the scene
of them was invariably the room in which I lay. Had I
3iever met with the picture, the fears would have come
self-pictured in some shape or other —
Headless bear, black man, or ape —
"but, as it was, my imaginations took that form. — It is not
l)ook, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants, which
create these terrors in children. They can at most but
give them a direction. Dear little T. H., who of all
ohildreu has been brought up with the most scrupulous
exclusion of every taint of superstition — who was never
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEAIIS. 85
allowed to hear of goblin or apparition, or scarcely to be
told of bad men, or read or hear of any distressing story —
finds all this world of fear, from which he has been so
rigidly excluded ab extra, in his own " thick-coming fan-
cies ;" and fron"; his little midnight pillow, this nni'se-child
of optimism V/dll start at shapes, unborrowed of tradition,
in sweats to which the reveries of the cell-damned mur-
derer are tranquillity.
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chirateras dire — stories of Ce-
loeno and the Harpies — may reproduce themselves in the
brain of superstition — but they were there before. They
are transcripts, types — the archetypes are in us, and eternal.
How else should the recital of that, which we know in a
waking sense to be false, come to aifect us at all ? — or
Names, -whose sense vre see not,
Fray us with things that be not?
Is it that we naturall}" conceive terror from such objects,
considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us
bodily injury ? — 0, least of all ! These terrors are of older
standing. They date beyond body — or, without the body,
they would have been the same. All the cruel, torment-
ing, defined devils in Dante — tearing, mangling, choking,
stifling, scorching demons — are they one half so fearful to
the S23irit of a man, as the simple idea of a spirit unen^-
bodied following him —
Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turn'd round, walks on
And turns no more his head ;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.*
That the kind of fear here treated of is purely spiritual —
that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless upon
earth — that it predominates in the period of sinless in-
fancy — are difiSculties, the solution of which might afi'ord
some probable insight into our ante-mundane condition, and
a ppep at least into the shadowland of pre-oxistence.
* Mr. Colcvidgo's Ancient Mariner.
86 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS.
My night-fancies liave long ceased to be afflictive. I
confess an occasional nightmare ; but I do not, as in early
3'-ontli, keep a stud of them. Fiendish faces, with the ex
tinguished taper, will come and look at me ; but I know
them for mockeries, even while I cannot elude their pre-
sence, and I fight and grapple with them. For the credit,
of my imagination, I am almost ashamed to say how tamo
and prosaic my dreams are grown. They are never ro-
mantic, seldom even rural. Tbej^ are of architecture and
of buildings — cities abroad, which I have never seen and
hardly have hoped to see. I have traversed, for the seeming
length of a natural day, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon
— their churches, palaces, squares, market-places, shops,
suburbs, ruins, with an inexpressible sense of delight — a
map-like distinctness of trace, and a day -light vividness of
vision, that was all but being awake. — I have formerly
travelled among the Westmoreland fells — my highest Alps,
— but they are objects too mighty for the grasp of my
dreaming recognition ; and I have again and again awoke
with ineifectual struggles of the inner eye, to make out a
shape, in any way whatever, of Helvellyn. Methought I
was in that country, but the mountains were gone. The
poverty of my dreams mortifies me. There is Coleridge,
at his will can conjure up icy domes, and pleasure-houses
for KublaKhan, and Abyssinian maids, and songs of Abara,
and caverns,
"Where Alph, the sacred river, runs,
to solace his night solitudes—when I cannot muster a
fiddle. Barry Cornwall has his tritons and his nereids gam-
boling before him in nocturnal visions, and proclaiming-
sons born to Neptune — when my stietch of imaginative
activity can hardly, in the night season, raise up the ghost
of a fish-wife. To set my failures in somewhat a morti-
fying light — it was after reading the noble Dream of this
poet, that my fancy ran strong upon these marine spectra ;
and the poor plastic power, such as it is, within me set
to work to humour my folly in a sort of dream that very
night. Methought I was upon the ocean billows at some
VALENTINE'S DAY. 87
sea nuptials, riding and mounted high, with the customary
train sounding their concbs before me, (I myself, you may
be sure, the leading god,) and jollily we went careering over
the main, till just where Ino Leucothca should have greeted
me (1 think it was Ino) with a white embrace, the billows
gradually subsiding, fell from a sea roughness to a sea calm,
and thence to a river motion, and thiit river (as happens in
the familiarization of dreams) was no other than the gentle
Thames, which landed me in the wafturo of a placid wave
or two, alone, safe and inglorious, somewhere at the foot of
Lambeth palace.
The degree of the soul's creativeness in sleep might
furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poetical
faculty resident in the same soul waking. An old gentle-
man, a friend of mine, and a humorist, used to carry this
notion so far, that when ho saw any stripling of his ac-
quaintance ambitious of becoming a poet, his first question
would be, — " Young man, what sort of dreams have you ?"
T have so much faith in my old friend's theory, that when
I feel that idle vein returning upon me, I presently subside
into my proper element of prose, remembering those eluding
nereids, and that inauspicious inland landing.
VALENTINE'S DAY.
HAIL to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine !
Great is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable Arch-
flamen of Hymen ! Immortal Go-between ; who and vraaz
manner of person art thou ? Art thou but a name, typU
fying the restless principle which impels poor humans to
seek perfection in union? or wert thou indeed a mortal
prelate, with thy tippet and thy rochet, thy apron on, and
decent lawn sleeves ? Mysterious personage ! Like unto thee,
assuredly, there is no other mitred father in the calendar ;
not Jerome, nor Ambrose, nor Cyril; nor the consigner
of undipt infants to eternal torments, Austin, whom all
mothers hate ; nor he who hated all mothers, Origen ; nor
88 VALENTINE'S DAY.
Bishop Bull, nor Archbishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou
comest attended with thousands and ten thousands of little
Loves, and the air is
Brush'd with tlie hiss of rustling wings.
Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors ; and
instead of the crosier, the mystical arrow is borne before
thee.
In other words, this is the day on which those charming
little missives, ycleped Valentines, c-ross and intercross each
other at every street and turning. The weary and all for-
spent twopenny postman sinks beneath a load of delicate
embarrassments, not his own. It is scarcely credible to
what extent this ephemeral courtship is carried on in this
loving town, to the great enrichment of porters, and detri-
ment of knockers and bell -wires. In these little visual
interpretations, no emblem is so common as the heart, —
that little three-cornered exponent of all our hopes and
fears, — the bestuck and bleeding heart ; it is twisted and
tortvired into more allegories and affectations than an opera-
hat. AYhat authority we have in history or mythology for
placing the headqiiarters and metropolis of god Cupid in
this anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not very
clear ; but we have got it, and it will serve as well as any
other. Else we might easily imagine, upon some other
system which might have prevailed for anything which our
pathology knows to the contrary, a lover addressing his mis-
tress, in perfect simplicity of feeling, " Madam, my liver
and fortune are entirely at your disposal;" or putting a
delicate question, " Amanda, have you a midriff to bestow ?"
But custom has settled these things, and awarded the seat
of sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less for-
tunate neighbours wait at animal and anatomical distance.
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all
rural sounds, exceed in interest a JcnocJc at the door. It
" gives a very echo to the throne where hope is seated."
But its issues seldom answer to this oracle within. It is
so seldom that just the person we want to see comes. But
of all the clamorous visitations the welcomest in expecta-
VALENTINES BAY 89
tion is the sound that ushers in, or seems to usher in, a
Valentine. As the raven himself was hoarse that announced
the fatal entrance of Duncan, so the knock of the postman
on this day is light, airy, confident, and befitting one that
hringeth good tidings. It is less mechanical than on other
days; you will say, "That is not the post, I am sure."
Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymens ! — delightful eternal
commonplaces, which " having been will always be ;"
which no school-boy nor school-man can write away ;
having yoiir irreversible throne in the fancy and affections
— what are yonr transports, when the happy maiden, open-
ing with careful finger, careful not to break the emblematic
seal, bursts upon the sight of some well-designed allegory,
some tj^pe, some youthful fancy, not without verses —
Lovers all,
A madrigal,
or some such devise, not over-abundant in sense — ^young
Love disclaims it, — and not quite silly — something between
wind and water, a chorus where the sheep might almost
join the shepherd, as they did, or as I apprehend they did,
in Arcadia.
All Valentines are not foolish ; and I shall not easily
forget thine, my kind friend (if I may have leave to call
you so) E. B . E. B. lived opposite a young maiden
whom he had often seen, unseen, from his parlour window in
C e Street. She was all joyousness and innocence, and
just of an age to enjoy receiving a Valentine, and just of a
temper to bear the disappointment of missing one with
good humour. E. B. is an artist of no common powers; in
the fancy parts of designing, perhaps inferior to none ; his
name is known at the bottom of many a well-executed
vignette in the way of his profession, but no further ; for
E. B. is modest, and the world meets nobody half way.
E. B. meditated how he could repay this young maiden for
many a favour which she had done him unknown; for
when a kindly face greets us, though but passing by, and
never knows iis again, nor we it, we should feel it as au
oblio;ation : and E. B. did. This arood artist set himself at
90 VALENTINE'S DAY.
work to please the damsel. It was just before Valentine's
day tliree years since. He wrought, unseen and unsus-
pecied, a wondrous work. We need not say it was on the
finest gilt paper with borders — full, not of common hearts
and heartless allegory, but all the prettiest stories of love
from Ovid, and older poets than Ovid (for E, B. is a scholar).
There was Pyramus and Thisbe, and be sure Dido was not
forgot, nor Hero and Leander, and swans more than sang
in Cayster, with mottoes and fanciful devices, such as be-
seemed — a work, in sbort, of magic. Iris dipt the woof.
This on Valentine's eve he commended to the all-swallow-
ing indiscriminate orifice (0 ignoble trust !) of the common
post ; but the humble medium did its duty, and from his
watchful stand the next morning he saw the cheerful
messenger knock, and by-and-by the pi'ocious charge deli-
vered. He saw, unseen, the happy girl unfold the Valen-
tine, dance about, clap her hands, as one after one the
pretty emblems unfolded themselves. She danced about,
not with light love, or foolish expectations, for she had
no lover ; or, if she had, none she knew that could have
created those bright images which delighted her. It was
more like some fairy present ; a God-send, as our familiarly
pious ancestors termed a benefit received where the bene-
factor was unknown. It would do her no harm. It would
do ber good for ever after. It is good to love the unknown.
I only give this as a specimen of E. B. and his modest way
of doing a concealed kindness.
Good morrow to my Valentine, sings poor Ophelia ; and
no better wish, but with, better auspices, we wish to all
faithful lovers, who are not too wise to despise old legends,
but are content to rank themselves humble diocesans of old
Bishop Valentine and his true cluirch.
91
MY EELATIONS.
AM arrived at that point of life at whicla a nian may
account it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he have
either of his parents surviving. I have not that felicity
— and sometimes think feelingly of a passage in " Browne's
Christian Morals," where he speaks of a man that hath lived
sixty or seventy years in the world. " In such a compass
of time," he says, " a man may have a close apprehension
what it is to be forgotten, when he hath lived to find none
who could remember his father, or scarcely the friends of
his youth, and may sensibly see with what a face in no
long time Obliviox will look upon himself."
I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was one whom
single blessedness had soured to the world. She often used
to say, that I was the only thing in it which she loved ;
and, when she thought I was quitting it, she grieved over
me with mother's tears. A partiality quite so exclusive
my reason cannot altogether approve. She was from
morning till night poring over good books and devo-
tional exercises. Her favourite volumes were, " Thomas a
Kempis," in Stanhope's translation ; and a Eoman Catholic
Prayer Book, with the matins and complines regularl}^ set
down — terms which I was at that time too young to
understand. She persisted in reading them, although ad-
monished daily concerning their Papistical tendency ; and
went to church every Sabbath, as a good Protestant should
do. These were the only books she studied ; though, 1
think at one period of her life, she told me, she had read
with great satisfaction the " Adventures of an Unfortunate
Young Nobleman." Finding the door of the chapel in
Essex Street open one day — it was in the infancy of that
heresy — she went in, liked the sermon, and the manner of
worship, and frequented it at intervals for some time after.
She came not for doctrinal points, and never missed them.
With some little asperities in her constitution, which I
have above hinted at, she was a steadfast, friendly being,
and a fine old Christian. She was a woman of strong sense^
02 MY UELATIOKS.
and a shrewd mind — extraoixlinaiy at a repartee ; one of the
few occasions of her breaking silence — else she did not
much value wit. The only secular employment 1 remem-
her to have seen her engaged in, was the splitting of
French beans, and dropping them into a china basin of
fair water. The odour of those tender vegetables to this
day comes back u]3on my senses, redolent of soothing
recollections. Certainly it is the most delicate of culinary
operations.
Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none — to re-
member. By the uncle's side I may be said to have been
born an orphan. Brother, or sister, I never had any — to
know them. A sister, I think, that should have been
Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. What a comfort, or
what a care, may I not have missed in her ! — But I have
cousins sprinkted about in Hertfordshire — besides two, with
whom I have been all my life in habits of the closest inti-
macy, and whom I may term cousins par excellence. These
are James and Bridget Elia. They are older than myself
by twelve, and ten, years ; and neither of them seems dis-
posed, in matters of advice and guidance, to waive any of
the prerogatives which primogeniture confers. May they
continue still in the same mind ; and when they shall be
seventy-five, and seventy-three, years old (I cannot spare
them sooner), persist in treating me in my grand climac-
teric precisely as a stripling, or younger brother !
James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath her uni-
ties, which not every critic can penetrate ; or, if we feel,
we cannot explain them. The i:)en of Yorick, and of none
.since his, could have drawn J. E. entire — those fine Shan-
dean lights and shades, which make up his story. I must
limp after in my poor antithetical manner, as the fates
have given me grace and talent. J. E. then — to the eye of
a common observer at least — seemeth made up of contra-
dictor}' principles. The genuine child of impulse, the frigid
philosoiDher of prudence — the phlegm of my cousin's doc-
trine, is invariably at war with his temperament, which is
high sanguine. With always some fire-new project in his
brain, J. E. is the systematic opponent of innovation, and
MY RELATIONS. 9a
crier down of everything that has not stood the test of age
and experiment. With a hundred fine notions cliasing one
another hourly in his fancy, he is startled at the least
approach to the romantic in others ; and, determined by
his own sense in everything, commends you to the guidance
of common sense on all occasions. — With a touch of the
eccentric in all which he does or says, he is only anxious
that ijou should not commit yourself by doing anything,
absurd or singular. On my once letting slip at table, that
I was not fond of a certain popular dish, he begged me at
any rate not to say so — for the world would think me mad.
He disguises a passionate fondness for w^orks of high art
(whereof he hath amassed a choice collection), under the
pretext of buying only to sell again — that his enthusiasm
may give no encouragement to yours. Yet, if it were so,
why does that piece of tender, pastoral Domenichino hang
still by his wall ? — is the ball of his sight much more dear
to him ? — or what picture-dealer can talk like him ?
Whereas mankind in general are observed to warp their
speculative conclusions to the bent of their individual
humours, Ms theories are sure to be in diametrical opposi-
tion to his constitution. He is courageous as Charles of
Sweden, upon instinct ; chary of his person upon principle,
as a travelling Quaker. He has been preaching up to me,
all my life, the doctrine of bowing to the gi'eat^the neces-
sity of forms, and manner, to a man's getting on in the
world. He himself never aims at either, that I can dis-
cover, — and has a spirit that would stand upright in the
presence of the Cham of Tartary. It is pleasant to hear him
discourse of patience — extolling it as the truest wisdom —
and to see him during the last seven minutes that his
dinner is getting ready. Nature never ran up in her haste
a more restless piece of workmanship than when she
moulded this impetuous cousin — and Art never turned out
a more elaborate orator than he can display himself to be,
upon his favourite topic of the advantages of quiet and con-
tentedness in the state, whatever it be, that we are placed
in. He is triumphant on this theme, when he has you safe
in one of those short stages that ply for the western road.
■94 MY llELATIONS.
in a very obstructing manner, at tlie foot of Jobn Murray's
street — where you get in when it is empty, and are ex-
l)ected to wait till the vehicle hath completed her just
freight — a trying three quarters of an hour to some people.
He wonders at your fidgetiness, — "where could we be
better than we are, thus sitting, thus consulting f — " prefers,
for his part, a state of rest to locomotion," — with an eye
all the while upon the coachman, — till at length, waxing
out of all patience, at your want of it, he breaks out into a
pathetic remonstrance at the fellow for detaining us so
long over the time which he had professed, and declares
peremptorily, that " the gentleman in the coach is deter-
mined to get out, if he does not drive on that instant."
Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting a
pophistry, he is incapable of attending you in any chain of
arguing. Indeed, he makes wild work with logic ; and seems
to jump at most admirable conclusions by some process
not at all akin to it. Consonantly enough to this, he hath
been heard to deny, upon certain occasions, that there
exists such a faculty at all in man as reason ; and wondereth
how man came first to have a conceit of it — enforcing his
negation with all the might of reasoning he is master of.
He has some speculative notions against laughter, and will
maintain that laughing is not natural to him — when per-
adventure the next moment his lungs shall crow like
chanticleer. He says some of the best things in the world,
and declareth that wit is his aversion. It was he who said,
upon seeing the Eton boys at play in their grounds — What
a pity to tlnnh that these fine ingenuous lads in a few years
will all he changed into frivolous 3Iemhers of Parliament !
His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous — and in age
he discovereth no symptom of cooling. This is that
which I admire in him. I hate people who meet Time
half way. I am for no compromise with that inevitable
spoiler. "While he lives, J. E. will take his swing. — It
does me good, as I walk towards the street of my daily
avocation, on some fine May morning, to meet him march-
ing in a quite opposite direction, with a jolly handsome
presence, and shining sanguine fece, that indicates some
MY RELATIONS. 95
purchase in his eye — a Claude — or a HoLbima — for much
of his enviable leisure is consumed at Christie's and
Phillips's — or where not, to pick up pictures, and such
gauds. On these occasions he mostly stoppeth me, to read
a short lecture on the advantage a person like me possesses
above himself, in having his time occupied with business
which he must do — assureth me that he often feels it hang
heavy on his hands — wishes he had fewer holidays — and
goes off — Westward Ho ! — chanting a tune, to Pall Mall —
perfectly convinced that he has convinced me — while I
proceed in my opposite direction tuneless.
It is pleasant, again, to see this Professor of Indifference
doing the honours of his new purchase, when he has fairly
housed it. You must view it in every light, till he has
found the best — placing it at this distance, and at that, but
always suiting the focus of your sight to his own. You
must spy at it through your fingers, to catch the aerial
perspective — though you assure him that to you the land-
scape shows much more agreeable without that artifice.
Woe be to the luckless wight who does not only not respond
to his rapture, but who should drop an unseasonable inti-
mation of preferring one of his anterior bargains to the
jDresent! — The last is always his best hit — his "Cynthia of
the minute." — Alas ! how many a mild Madonna have I
known to come in — a Eaphael ! — keep its ascendancy for a
few brief moons — then, after cei'tain intermedial degrada-
tions, from the front drawing-room to the back galler}-,
thence to the dark parlour, — adopted in turn by each of
the Carracci, under successive lowering ascriptions of filia-
tion, mildly breaking its fall — consigned to the oblivious
lumber-room, go out at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain
Carlo Maratti ! — which things when I beheld — musing
upon the chances and mutabilities of fate below hath mad©
me to reflect upon the altered condition of great personages,
or that woeful Queen of Eichard the Second —
set forth in pomp,
She came adorned hither like sweet May ;
Sent back hke Hallowmass or shortest day.
With great love for you, J. E. hath but a limited sym-
S6 MY RELATIONS.
pathy witli wliat you feel or do. He lives in a world of
]iis own, and makes slender guesses at what passes in your
mind. He never pierces the marrow of your habits. He
Avill tell an old-established play-goer, that Mr. Such-a-one,
of So-and-so (naming one of the theatres), is a very lively
comedian — as a piece of news ! He advertised me but the
other day of some pleasant green lanes which he had
found out for me, Jcnowing me to he a great waiter, in my own
immediate vicinity — who have haunted the identical spot
any time these twenty years ! — He has not much respect
for that class of feelings which goes by the name of senti-
mental. He applies the definition of real evil to bodily
suiierings exclusively — and rejecteth all others as imagi-
nary. He is aifected by the sight, or the hare supposition,
uf a creature in pain, to a degi'ee which I have never
witnessed out of womankind. A constitutional acuteness
lO this class of sufferings may in part account for this.
The animal tribe in particular he taketh under his especial
protection. A broken-winded or spur-galled horse is sure
to find an advocate in him. An over-loaded ass is his
client for ever. He is the apostle to the brute kind — the
never-failing friend of those who have none to care for
them. The contemplation of a lobster boiled, or eels
skinned alive, will wring him so, that " all for pity he
could die." It will take the savour from his palate, and
the rest from his pillow, for days and nights. With the
intense feeling of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only the
steadiness of pursuit, and unity of purpose, of that " tnie
yoke-fellow with Time," to have effected as much for the
Animal as he hath done for the Negro Creation. But my
uncontrollable cousin is but imperfectly formed for pur-
poses which demand co-operation. He cannot wait. His
amelioration-plans must he ripened in a day. For this
reason he has cut but an equivocal figure in benevolent
societies, and combinations for the alleviation of human
sufferings. His zeal constantly makes him to outrun, and
put out, his coadjutors. He thinks of relieving, — while
they think of debating. He was black-balled out of a
society for the Eelief of * * * * *
MACKERY END, IN IIEETFORDSJIIEE. 97
because tlie fervour of Iiis humanity toiled beyond iho
formal apprehension and creeping processes of his asso-
ciates. 1 shall always consider this distinction as a patent
of nobility in the Elia family !
Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile at,
or upbraid, my unique cousin ? Marry, heaven, and all
good manners, and the tmderstanding that should be be-
tween kinsfolk, forbid ! — With all the strangenesses of this
strangest of the Ellas — I would not have him in one jot or
tittle other than he is ; neither would I barter or exchange
my wild kinsman for the most exact, regular, and every
way consistent kinsman breathing.
In my next, reader, I may perhaps give yon some
account of my cousin Bridget — if you ai'e not already sur-
feited with cousins — and take you by the hand, if you are
willing to go with us, on an excursion which we made a
summer or two since, in search of more cousins —
Through the gi'oen plains of pleasant Hertfordshire.
MACKEKY END, IN HERTFOEDSHIKE.
BRIDGET ELIA has been my housekeeper for many a
long year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending
beyond the period of memor3^ We house together, old
bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness ; with such
tolerable comfort, ujion the whole, that I, for one, find in my-
self no sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with
the rash king's ofifsj)ring, to bewail my celibacy. We agree
pretty well in our tastes and habits — yet so, as " with a
difference." We are generally in harmony, with occasional
bickerings — as it should be among near relations. Our
sympathies are rather understood than expressed ; and
once, upon my dissembling a tone in my voice more kind
than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and complained
that I was altered. We are both great readers in different
directions. While I am hanging over (for the thousandth
time) some passage in old Burton, or one of his strange
Q
98 MACKERY END IN HEBTFORDSHIBE.
contemporaries, sbe is abstracted in some modern tale
or adventure, whereof our common reading-table is daily
fed with assiduously fresh supplies. Karrative teases me.
I have little concern in the progress of events. She must
have a stor}^ — well, ill, or indiiferently told — so there be
life stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents.
The fluctuations of fortune in fiction — and almost in real
life — have ceased to interest, or operate but dullj^ upon me.
Out-of-the-way humours and opinions — heads with some
diverting twist in them — the oddities of authorship, please
me most. My cousin has a native disrelish of anything
that sounds odd or bizarre. Nothing goes down with her
that is quaint, irregular, or out of the road of common
sympathy. She " holds Nature more clever." I can pardon
her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the Eeligio
Medici ; but she must apologize to me for certain disre-
sj^ectful insinuations, which she has been pleased to throw
out latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear favourite
of mine, of the last century but one — the thrice noble,
chaste, and virtuous, but again somewhat fantastical and
original brained, generous Margaret Newcastle.
It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I
could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine,
free-thinkers — leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies
and systems ; but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts,
their opinions. That which was good and venerable to
her, when a child, retains its aiithority over her mind still.
She never juggles or plays tricks with her understanding.
We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive ; and
I have observed the result of oTir disjDutes to be almost
uniformly this — that in matters of fact, dates, and circum-
stances, it turns out that I was in the right, and my cousin
in the wrong. But where we have differed upon moral
points ; upon something proper to be done, or let alone ;
whatever heat of opposition or steadiness of conviction I
set out with, I am sure always, in the long-run, to be
brought over to her way of thinking.
I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a
gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of hor
M ACKER Y END, IN UEBTFOEDSEIBE. 93
faults. She hath, an awkward trick (to say no worse of it\
of reading in company : at which times she will answer yes
or no to a question, Avithout fully understanding its purport
— which is provoking, and derogatory in the highest degree
to the dignity of the putter of the said question. Her
presence of mind is equal to the most pressing trials of life,
but will sometimes desert her upon trifling occasions. When
the purpose requires it, and is a thing of moment, she can
speak to it greatly ; but in matters which are not stuff of
the conscience, she hath been known sometimes to let slip
a word less seasonably.
Her education in youth was not much attended to ; and
she happily missed all that train of female garniture which
passeth b}'^ the name of accomplishments. She was tumbled
early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good
old English reading, without much selection or prohibition,
and browsed at w'ill upon that fair and wholesome pas-
turage. Had I twenty girls, they should be brought upj
exactly in this fashion. I know not w^hether their chance
in wedlock might not be diminished by it, but I can answer*
for it that it makes (if the worst come to the worst) most
incomparable old maids.
In a season of distress, she is the tiTiest comforter ; but
in the teasing accidents and minor perplexities, which do
not call out the idll to meet them, she sometimes maketli
matters worse by an excess of participation. If she does
not always divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter occa-
sions of life she is sure always to treble your satisfaction.
She is excellent to be at a play with, or upon a visit; but
best, when she goes a journey with you.
We made an excursion together a few summers since
into Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our
less-known relations in that fine corn countrj'.
The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End, or
Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more propserl}-, in
some old maps of Hertfordshire ; a farm-house, — delight-
fully situated w-ithin a gentle walk from Wheathampstead..
I can just remember having been there, on a visit to a
great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of Bridget ;
h2
1.09 MACKERY END, IN HERTFOBDSEIRE.
■vvho, as I have said, is older than mj-self hy some ten j'ears,
I wish that I coukl throAV into a heap the remainder of
our joint existences, that we might share them in equal
division. But that is impossible. The house was at that
time in the occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had
married my grandmother's sister. His name was Gladmau.
My grandmother was a Bruton, married to a Field. The
Gladmans and the Brutons are still flourishing in that part
of the county, but the Fields are almost extinct. More than
forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak of ; and, for
the greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of the
other two branches also. Who or what sort of persons
inherited Mackery End— -kindred or strange folk — Ave were
afraid almost to conjecture, but determined some day to
explore.
By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park at
Luton in our way from St. Albans, we arrived at the spot
of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old
farm-house, though every trace of it was effaced from my
recollections, aflected me with a pleasure which I had not
exj)erienced for many a year. For though I had forgotten
it, lue had never forgotten being there together, and we
liad been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till
memory on my part became mocked with a phantom of
itself, and I thought I knew the aspect of a place which,
when present, how unlike it was to that which I had
co))jured up so many times instead of it !
Still the air breathed balmily about it ; the season was in
the " heart of June," and I could say with the poet,
But thou, that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation !
Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she
*>asily remembered her old acquaintance again — some
altered features, of course, a little grudged at. At first,
indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy ; but the scene
«oon re-confirmed itself in her affections — and she traversed
svery out]30st of the old mansion, to the" wood-house, the
MACKEhY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 101
orchard, tlie place where the pigeon-house had stood (honso
and birds were alike flown) — with a breathless impatienco
of recognition, which was more pardonable perhaps than
decorous at the age of fifty odd. But Bridget in somo
things is behind her years.
The only thing left was to get into the house — and that
was a difficulty wdiich to me singly would have been insur-
mountable ; for I am terribly shy in making myself known
to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, stronger than
scruple, winged my cousin in without me ; but she soon
i-cturned with a creature that might have sat to a sculptor
for the image of Welcome. It was the yoiingest of tho
Gladmans ; who, by marriage with a Bmton, had become
mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood ai'e the Bru-
tons. Six of them, females, were noted as the handsomest
young women in the county. But this adopted Bniton, in
my mind, was better than they all — more comely. She was
born too late to have remembered me. She ju.st recollected
in early life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed
out to her, climbing a stile. But the name of kindred and
of cousinship was enough. Those slender ties, that prove
slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of a metro-
polis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely, loving
Hertfordshire. In five minutes we were as thoroughly
acquainted as if we had been bom and bred up together ;
were familiar, even to the calling each other by our
Christian names. So Christians should call one another.
To have seen Bridget and her — it was like the meeting ol
the two scriptural cousins ! There was a grace and dignity,
an amplitude of form and stature, answering to her mind,
in this farmer's wife, which would have shined in a palace
' — or so we thought it. We were made welcome by hus-
band and wife equally — we, and our friend that was with
lis. — I had almost forgotten him — but B. F. will not so
soon forget that meeting, if peradventure he shall read this
on the far distant shores where the kangaroo haunts. Thr;
fatted calf was made ready, or rather was already so, as it
in anticipation of our coming ; and, after an appropriate
glass of native -wine, never let me forget with what honest
102 MY FIRST FLAY.
pride this hospitable cousin made us proceed to Whoat-
liampstead, to introduce ns (as some new-found rarity) to her
mother and sister Gladmans, who did indeed know some-
thino- more of us, at a time when she almost knew nothing.
— With what corresponding kindness we were received by
them also — how Bridget's memory, exalted by the occasion,
warmed into a thousand half-obliterated recollections of
things and persons, to my utter astonishment, and her
own — and to the astoimdment of B. F. who sat by, almost
the only thing that was not a cousin thei'e, — old eifaced
images of more than half-forgotten names and circum-
stances still crowding back upon her, as words written in
lemon come out tipon exposure to a friendly warmth, —
when I forget all this, then may my country cousins forget
me ; and Bridget no more remember, that in the days of
weakling infancy I was her tender charge — as I liave been.
her care in foolish manhood since — in those pretty pastoral
walks, long ago, about Mackery End, in Hertfordshire.
MY FIEST PLAY.
T the north end of Cross-court there yet stands a portal^
^\_ of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to
humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-
oifice. This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you may
not know was the identical pit entrance to old Drury —
Garrick's Drury — all of it that is left. I never pass it
without shaking some forty years from off my shoulders,
recurring to the evening when I passed through it to see
my first play. The afternoon had been wet, and the con-
dition of our going (the elder folks and myself) was, that
the rain should cease. AVith what a beating heart did I
watch from the window the puddles, from the stillness of
Avhich I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation I
I seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with which
I ran to announce it.
MY FIUST PLAY. 103
"We went with orders, wlaicli my godfather F. had sent
us. He kept the oil shop (now Davies's) at, the corner of
Featherstone-bniklings, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave
person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions above his rank.
He associated in those days with John rainier, the come-
dian, whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy ; if John
(which is quite as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat
of his manner from my godfather. He was also known to
and visited by Sheridan. It was to his house in Holborn
that young Brinsley brought his first wife on her elope-
ment with him from a boarding-school at Bath — the beau-
tiful Maria Linley. My parents were present (over a
quadrille table) when he arrived in the evening with his
harmonious charge. From either of these connections it
may be inferred that my godfather could command an
order for the then Drury-lane theatre at pleasure — and,
indeed, a pretty liberal issue of those cheap billets, in
Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard him say was the
sole remuneration which he had received for many years'
nightly illumination of the orchestra and various avenues
of that theatre — and he was content it should be so. The
honour of Sheridan's familiarity — or supposed familiarity —
was better to my godfather than money.
F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen ; grandiloquent,
yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest matters of
fact was Ciceronian, He had two Latin words almost
constantly in his mouth (how odd sounds Latin from an
oilman's lips !), which my better knowledge since has
enabled mo to correct. In strict pronunciation they
should have been sounded vice versa — but in those young-
years they impressed mo with more awe than they
would now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro — in hiss
own peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated,
or Anglicised, into something like verse verse. 'By an im-
posing manner, and the help of these distorted syllables,
he climbed (but that was little) to the highest parochial
honours which St. Andrew's has to bestow.
He is dead — and thus much I thought due to his memovyf
both for my first orders (little wondrous talismans !^
104 MY FIRST FLAY.
sliglit kej' s, and insigBificant to out-ward bight, "but opening
to me more than Arabian paradises !) and, moreover, that,
by his testamentary beneficence I came into possession of
the only landed property which I could ever call my
own — situate near the road- way village of pleasant Pucke-
ridge, in Hertfordshire. AVhen I journeyed do%\Ti to take
possession, and planted foot on my own ground, the stately
habits of the donor descended upon me, and I strode (shall
I confess the vanity ?) with larger paces over my allotment
of thi-ee quarters of an acre, with its commodious mansion
in the midst, with the feeling of an English freeholder
that all betwixt sky and centre was my own. The estate
nas passed into more prudent hands, and nothing but an
agrarian can restore it.
In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncomfort-
able manager who abolished them ! — with one of these we
went. I remember the waiting at the dooi" — not that
which is left— but between that and an inner door in
shelter — when shall I be such an expectant again ! —
with the cry of nonpareils, an indispensable play-house
accompaniment in those days. As near as I can recollect,
the fashionable pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses
then was, " Chase some oranges, chase some numparels,
chase a bill of the play ;" — chase jjro chuse. But when we
got in, and I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven
to my imagination, which was soon to be disclosed — the
breathless anticipations I endured ! I had seen something
like it in the plate prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in
Eowe's Shakspeare — the tent scene with Diomede — and a
sight of that plate can always bring back in a measure the
feeling of that evening. — The boxes at that time, full of
well-dressed women of quality, projected over the pit; and
the pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistening
substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed),
resembling — a homely fancy — but I judged it to be sugar-
candy — yet to my raised imagination, divested of its
homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy ! — The
crchesti-a liglits at length rose, those " fiiir Auroras !" Once
the bell sounded. It was to ring out yet once again— and.
MY FIEST PLAY. 105
incapable of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes in a
«ort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It rang the
second time. The curtain drew up — I was not past six
years old, and the play was Artaxerxes !
I had dabbled a little in the Universal History — the
ancient part of it — and here was the court of Persia. — It
was being admitted to a sight of the past. I took no proper
interest in the action going on, for I understood not its
import — but I heard the word Darius, and I was in the
]uidst of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision.
Oorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, passed before
me. I knew not players. I was in Persepolis for the time,
and the burning idol of their devotion almost converted me
into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed those
significations to be something more than elemental fires.
It was all enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure
lias since visited me but in dreams. — Harlequin's invasion
followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the
magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me a piece of
grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying his own head
to be as sober a verity as the legend of St. Denys.
The next play to which I was taken was the Lady of the
Manor, of which, with the exception of some scenery, very
faint traces are left in my memory. It was followed by a
pantomime, called Lun's Ghost — a satiric touch, I appre-
hend, upon Eich, not long since dead — but to my appre-
hension (too sincere for satire), Lun was as remote a piece
of antiquity as Ltid — the father of a line of Harlequins — ■
transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through
countless ages. I saw the primeval Motley come from his
silent tomb in a ghastly vest of white patchwork, like the
apparition of a dead rainbow. So Harlequins (thought 1)
look when they are dead.
My third play followed in quick succession. It was the
Way of the World. I think I must have sat at it as grave
as a judge ; for I remember the hysteric affectations of
good Lady Wishfort affected me like some solemn tragic
passion. Eobinson Crusoe followed ; in which Crusoe, man
Friday, and the parrot, were as good and authentic as in the
106 MY FIRST PLAY.
story. — The clownery and pantaloonery of these panto-
mimes have clean passed out of my head. I helieve, I no
more laughed at them, than at the same age I should have
been disposed to laugh at the grotesque Gothic heads
(seeming to mo then replete with devout meaning) that
gape, and grin, in stone around the inside of the old Eound
Church (my church) of the Templars.
I saw these plays in the season 1781-2, when I was from
six to seven years old. After the intervention of six or
seven other years (for at school all play-going was inhi-
hited) I again entered the doors of a theatre. That old
Artaxerxes evening had never done ringing in my fancy. I
expected the same feelings to come again with the same
occasioii. But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and
fcixteen, than the latter does from six. In that interval
what had I not lost ! At the first period I knew nothing,
understood nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved
all, wondered all —
Was uourislied, I could not tell liow —
I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a
rationalist. The same tilings were there materially ; hut
the emblem, the reference, was gone ! — The green curtain
was no longer a veil, drawn between two worlds, the xiu-
folding of which was to bring back past ages, to present a
" roj'al ghost," — but a certain quantity of green baize, which
was to separate the audience for a given time from certain
of their fellow-men who were to come forward and pretend
those parts. The lights — the orchestra lights — came up u
clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring,
was now but a trick of the prompter's bell — which had
been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no
hand seen or guessed at which ministered to its warning.
The actors were men and women painted. I thought the
fault was in them ; but it was in myself, and the alteration
v.'hich those many centuries — of six short twelvemonths —
had wj-ought in me. — Perhaps it was fortunate for mo that
the play of the evening was but an indifferent comedy, as it
gave me time to crop some unreasonable expectations, which
MODERN GALLANTRY. 107
miglit have interfered witli the genuine emotions with
which I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first
appearance to me of Mrs. Siddons in IsabeHa. Comparison
and retrospection soon yiekled to the present atti'action of
the scene ; and the theatre became to me, npon a new
stock, the most delightful of recreations.
MODEEN GALLAXTEY.
IN comparing modern with ancient manners, we are
pleased to compliment ourselves upon the point of gal-
lantry ; a certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect,
which we are supposed to pay to females, as females.
I shall believe that this principle actuates our condiict,
when I can forget, that in the nineteenth century of the
era from which wo date our civility, we are but just begin-
ning to leave oif the very frequent practice of whipping
females in public, in common with the coarsest male
offenders.
I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut my
eyes to the fact, that in England women arc still occa-
sionally — hanged.
I shall believe in it, when actresses are no longer subject
to be hissed off a stage by gentlemen.
I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a fish-wif&
across the kennel ; or assists the apple- woman to pick up
her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has just
dissipated.
I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants in humblei
life, who would be thought in their way notable adepts iu
this refinement, shall act iipon it in places where they are
not known, or think themselves not observed — when I shall
see the traveller for some rich tradesman part with his ad-
mired box-coat, to sj^read it over the defenceless shoulders
of the poor woman, who is passing to her parish on the roof
of tl:.e same stage-coach with him, drenched in the rain — -
108 MODERN GALLANTRY.
"when I shall no longer see a woman standing np in the pit
of a London theatre, till she is sick and faint with the exer-
tion, with men abont her, seated at their ease, and jeering
at her distress ; till one, that seems to have more manners
or conscience than the rest, significantly declares " she
should he welcome to his seat, if she were a little younger
and handsomer." Place this dapper warehouseman, or that
rider, in a circle of their own female acquaintance, and
you shall confess you have not seen a politer-bred man in
Lothbury.
Lastl}', I shall begin to believe that there is some such
principle influencing our conduct, when more than one-half
of the drudgery and coarse servitude of the world shall
cease to be performed by women.
Until that day comes, I shall never believe this boasted
2")oint to be anything more than a conventional fiction ; a
pageant got up between the sexes, in a certain rank, and at
a certain time of life, in which both find their account
equally.
I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salutary
fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall see the same
attentions paid to age as to j'outh, to homely features as to
handsome, to coarse complexions as to clear— to the woman,
as she is a vfoman, not as she is a beauty, a fortune, or a
title.
I shall believe it to be something more than a name,
when a well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed company
can advert to the topic of female old age without exciting,
and intending to excite, a sneer : — when the phrases "anti-
quated virginity," and such a one has " overstood her mar-
ket," pronounced in good company, shall raise immediate
offence in man, or woman, that shall hear them spoken.
Joseph Paice, of Bread-street-hill, merchant, and one of
the Directors of the South Sea company — the same to whom
Edwards, the Shakspeare commentator, has addressed a fine
sonnet — was the only pattern of consistent gallantry I have
met with. lie took me under his shelter at an early age,
and bestowed some pains upon me. I owe to his precepts
and example whatever there is of the man of business (and
MODEBN GALLANTBY. 109<
that is Bot uiiicli) in my composition. It was not his fault
that I did not profit more. Though bred a Presbyterian,
and brought up a merchant, he was the finest gentleman of
his time. He had not one system of attention to females in
the drawing-room, and another in the shop, or at the stall.
I do not mean that he made no distinction. But he never
lost sight of sex, or overlooked it in the casualties of a dis-
advantageous situation. I have seen him stand bareheaded
— smile if you please — to a poor servant-girl, while she has
been inquiring of him the way to some street — in such a
posture of unforced civility, as neither to embarrass her in
the acceptance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He was no
dangler, in the common ncceptation of the word, after
women ; but he reverenced and upheld, in every form in
which it came before him, womanhood. I have seen him —
nay, smile not — tenderly escorting a market-woman, whom-
he had encountered in a shower, exalting his umbrella over
her poor basket of fruit, that it might receive no damage,
with as much carefulness as if she had been a countess.
To the reverend form of Female Eid he would yield the
wall (though it were to an ancient beggar-woman) with
more ceremony than we can afford to show our grandams.
He was the Preux Chevalier of Age ; the Sir Calidore, or
Sir Tristan, to those who have no Calidores or Tristans to
defend them. The roses, that had long faded thence, still
bloomed for him in those withered and yellow cheeks.
He was never married, but in his youth he paid his
addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanlcy — old Win-
•stanley's daughter of Clapton — who djdng in the early
days of their courtship, confirmed in him the resolution of
perpetual bachelorship. It was during their short court-
ship, he told me, that he had been one day treating his
mistress with a profusion of civil speeches — the common-
gallantries — to which kind of thing she had hitherto mani-
fested no repugnance — but in this instance with no effect.
He could not obtain from her a decent acknowledgment in
return. She rather seemed to resent his compliments. He
could not set it down to caprice, for the lady had always
shown herself above that littleness. When he ventured on-
no MODERN GALLANTRY.
tlie following day, finding her a little better humoured, to
expostulate with her on her coldness of yesterdaj^ she con-
fessed, with her usual frankness, that she had no sort of
dislike to his attentions ; that she could even endure some
high-flown compliments; that a young woman placed in
her situation had a right to expect all sort of civil things
said to her; that she hoped she could digest a dose of
adulation, short of insincerity, with as little injury to her
humility as most young women ; but that — a little before
he had commenced his compliments — she had overheard
him by accident, in rather rough language, rating a young
woman, who had not brought home his cravats quite to the
appointed time, and she thought to herself, " As I am Miss
Susan Winstanley, and a yoiing lady — a reputed beauty,
and known to be a fortune — I can have my choice of the
finest speeches from the mouth of this very fine gentleman
who is courting me — but if I had been poor Mary Such-a-
one {naming ilie milliner), — and had failed of bringing home
the cravats to the appointed hour — though perhaps I had
sat up half the night to forward them — what sort of com-
pliments should I have received then? — And my woman's
pride came to my assistance ; and I thought, that if it
■were only to do me honour, a female, like myself, might
have received handsomer usage ; and I was deteimined not
to accept any fine speeches, to the compromise of that sex,
the belonging to which was after all my strongest claim
and title to them."
I think the lady discovered both generosity, and a just
"svay of thinking, in this rebuke which she gave her lover ;
and I have sometimes imagined, tliat the uncommon strain
of courtesy, which through life regulated the actions and
behaviour of my friend towards all of womankind indiscri-
minately, owed its happy origin to this seasonable lesson
from the lips of his lamented mistress.
I wish the whole female world would entertain the same
notion of these things that Miss Winstanley showed. Then
•we should see something of the spirit of consistent gal-
lantry ; and no longer witness the anomaly of the same
maa^a pattern of true politeness to a wife — of cold con-
TRE OLD BENCHERS OF TEE INNER TEMPLE. Ill
tempt, or rudeness, to a sister — the idolater of his female
mistress — the disparager and despiser of his no less femalo
aunt, or unfortunate — still female — maiden cousin. Just
so much respect as a woman derogates from her own sex,
in whatever condition placed — her hand-maid, or depen-
dent — she deserves to Lave diminished from herself ou
that score ; and probably will feel the diminution, when
yoTith, and beauty, and advantages, not inseparable from
sex, shall lose of their attraction. What a woman should
demand of a man in courtship, or after it, is fu'st — respect
for her as she is a woman; — and next to that — to be
respected by him above all other women. But let her
stand upon her female character as upon a foundation ; and
let the attentions, incident to individual preference, be so
many pretty additaments and ornaments — as many, and
as fanciful, as you please — to that main structure. Let her
first lesson be with sweet Susan Winstanley — to reverence
her sex.
THE OLD EENCIIEES OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
WAS bom, and passed the first seven years of my life, in
the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its foun-
tains, its river, I had almost said — for in those young years,
what was this king of rivers to me but a stream that watered
our pleasant places ? — these are of my oldest recollections.
I repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more frequently, or
with kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser, where ho
speaks of this spot :
There ■when tliey came, ■wlierco.s those bricky towers.
The which on TJiemmcs brode aged baoiv dotli ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
There whylome wout the Tciupler kuiglits to bide,
Till they decayed through pride.
Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis.
^^'hat a transition for a countryman visiting London for the
first time — the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet
112 THE OLD BENCHEBS OF TUE INNER TEMPLE.
Sh-eet, by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent ample
squares, its classic green recesses ! What a cheerful, liberal
look hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, over-
looks the greater garden ; that goodly pile
Of building strong, albeit of Paper bight,
confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more
fantastically-shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the
cheerful Crown-Office-row (place of my kindly engendrure),
right opposite the stately stream, which washes the garden-
foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems
but just weaned from her Twickenham Naiades ! a man
would give something to have been born in such places.
What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall,
where the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and
fall, how many times ! to the astoundment of the young
xirchins, my contemporaries, who, not being able to guess
at its recondite machinerj'-, were almost tempted to hail the
wondrous work as magic ! What an antique air had the
now almost eifaced sun-dials, with their moral inscrijotions,
seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and
to take their revelations of its flight immediately from
heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light !
How would the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched
by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement,
never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first
arrests of sleep !
Ah ! yet cloth beauty like a dial hand
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived !
What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous em-
bowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of
communication, compared with the simple altar-like struc-
ture and silent heart-language of the old dial ! It stood as
the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost
everywhere vanished ? If its business-use be superseded
by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty,
might have pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of mode-
rate labours, of pleasures not protracted after sunset, of
TEE OLD BENCEEBS OF TEE INNEB TEMPLE, ]]3
temperance, and good hours. It was the primitive clock,
the horologe of the first world. Adam could scarce have
missed it in Paradise. It was the measure appropriate for
sweet plants and flowers to spring by, for the birds to
apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture
and be led to fold by. The shepherd "carved it out
quaintly in the sun;" and, turning philosopher by the
very occupation, provided it with mottoes more touching
than tombstones. It was a pretty device of the gardener,
recorded by Mai'vell, who, in the days of artificial gardening,
made a dial out of herbs and flowers. I must quote his
verses a little higher up, for they are full, as all his serious
poetry was, of a witty delicacy. They will not come in
awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains and sun-diais.
He is speaking of sweet garden scenes : —
What ■wondrous life is this I lead !
Kipe apples drop about my head.
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their "u inc.
The nectarine, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach.
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness.
The mind, that ocean, where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find ;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds and other seas :
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot.
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
]\Iy soul into the boughs docs glide ;
There, like a bird, it sits and sings, *
Then whets and claps its silver wiugs,
And, till prepared for longer flight.
Waves in its plumes the various light
How well the skilful gardener drew
Of flowers and herbs, this dial new
Where, from above, the milder sun
Docs through a fragrant zodiac run ;
114 THE OLD BENCUERS OF THE II<NER TEMPLE.
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers ? *
The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like
manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up or
bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that little
green nook behind the South- Sea House, what a freshness
it gives to the dreary pile ! Four little winged marble
boys used to play their virgin fancies, spouting out ever
fresh streams from their innocent- wanton lips in the square
of Lincoln's Inn, when I was no bigger than they were
figured. They are gone, and the spring choked up. The
fashion, they tell me, is gone by, and these things are
esteemed childish. Why not, then, gratify children, by
letting them stand? Law^-ers, I suppose, were children
once. They are awakening images to them at least. Why
must everything smack of man, and mannish? Is the world
all grown up ? Is childhood dead ? Or is there not in the
bosoms of the wisest and the best some of the daild's heart
left, to respond to its earliest enchantments ? The figures
were grotesque. Are the stiflf-wigged living figures, that
still flitter and chatter about that area, less Gothic in
appearance ? or is the splutter of their hot rhetoric one-half
so refreshing and innocent as the little cool playful sti'eams
those exploded cherubs uttered ?
They have lately gothicised the entrance to the Inner
Temple-hall, and the library front ; to assimilate them, I
suppose, to the body of the hall, which they do not at all
resemble. What is become of the winged horse that stood
over the former ? a stately arms ! and who has removed
those frescoes of the Virtues, which Italianised the end of
the Paper-buildings ? — my first hint of allegory ! They
miist account to me for these things, which I miss so
greatly.
The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call the
parade; but the traces are passed away of the footsteps
which made its pavement awful ! It is become commo»
* From a copy of verses entitled " The Garden."
TEE OLD BENCHERS OF THE TNNER TEMPLE. IIS
and profane. The old Lencliers liad it almost sacred tc
themselves, in the forepart of the day at least. They
might not be sided or jostled. Their air and dress asserted
the parade. Yon left wide spaces betwixt you when you
passed them. We walk on even terms with their succes-
sors. The roguish eye of J 11 , ever ready to be delivered
of a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee wi!h
it. But what insolent familiar durst have mated Thomas
Coventry ? — whose person was a quadrate, his step massy
and elephantine, his face square as the lion's, his gait
peremptory and path-keeping, indivertible from his way as
a moving cohimn, the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow-
beater of equals and superiors, who made a solitude of
children wherever he came, for they fled his insufferable
presence, as they would have shunned an Elisha bear.
His growl was as thunder in their ears, whether he spake
to them in mirth or in rebuke ; his invitatory notes being,
indeed, of all, the most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of
snufi", aggravating the natural terrors of his speech, broke
from each majestic nostril, darkening the air. He took it,
not by pinches, but a palmful at once, — diving for it under
the mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket ; his
waistcoat red and angry, his coat dark rappee, tinctured by
■dye original, and by adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete gold.
And so he paced the terrace.
By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen; the
pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They were coevals, and
had nothing but that and their benchership in common.
In politics Salt was a whig, and Coventry a staunch tory.
Many a sarcastic growl did the latter cast out — for Coventry
had a rough spinous humour — at the political confederate.s
of his associate, which i-ebounded from the gentle bosom of
the latter like cannon-balls from wool. You could not ruffle
Samuel Salt.
S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and of
excellent discernment in the chamber practice of the law.
I suspect his knowledge did not amount to much. When a
case of difficult disposition of money, testamentary or other-
wise, came before him, he ordinarily handed it over, with a
I 2
IIG THE OLD BENCHEES OF THE INNEE TEMPLE.
few iustrnctions, to liis man Lovel, who was a quick little
fellow, aud would despatch it out of hand by the light of
natural understanding, of which he had an uncommon
share. It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed
by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man ; a child
might jDOse him in a minute — indolent and procrastinating
to the last degree. Yet men would give him credit for vast
application, in spite of himself. He was not to be trusted
with himself with impunity. He never dressed for a dinner
party but he forgot his sword — they wore swords then — or
some other necessary part of his equipage. Lovel had his
eye upon him on all these occasions, and ordinarily gave
him his cue. If there was anything which he could speak
unseasonably, he was sure to do it. — He was to dine at a
relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of her
execution ; — and L., who had a wary foresight of his pro-
bable hallucinations, before he set out schooled him, with
great anxiety, not in any possible manner to allude to her
stoiy that day. S. promised faithfully to observe the
injunction. He had not been seated in the parlour, where
the company was expecting the dinner summons, four
minutes, when, a pause in the conversation ensuing, he got
up, looked out of window, and pulling down his ruffles — an
ordinary motion Avith him — observed, " it was a gloomy
day," and added, " Miss Blandy must be hanged by this
time, I suppose." Instances of this sort are perpetual.
Yet S. was thought by some of the greatest men of his time
a fit person to be consulted, not alone in matters pertaining
to the law, but in the ordinary niceties and embarrassments
of conduct — from force of manner entirely. He never
laughed. He had the same good fortune among the female
world, — was a known toast with the ladies, and one or two
are said to have died for love of him — I suppose, because he
never trifled or talked gallantly with them, or paid them,
indeed, hardly common attentions. He had a fine fice and
person, but wanted, methonght, the spirit that should have
.shown them ofi" with advantage to the women. His eye
lacked lustre. — Not so, thought Susan P ; who, at the
advanced age of sixty, was seen, in the cold evening time.
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 117
unaccompanied, wetting the pavement of B d Row, with
tears that fell in drops which might be heard, becaiise her
friend had died that day — he, whom she had pursued -with.
a hopeless passion for the last forty years — a passion which
years could not extinguish or abate ; nor the long- resolved,
yet gently-enforced, puttings off of unrelenting bachelorhood
dissuade from its cherished purpose. Mild Susan P ,
thou hast now thy friend in heaven !
Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble famity of that
name. He passed his youth in contracted circumstances,
which gave him early those parsimonious habits which in
after life never forsook him ; so that with one windfall or
another, about the time I knew him, he was master of four
or five hundred thousand pounds ; nor did he look or walk
worth a moidore less. He lived in a gloomy house opposite
the pump in Serjeant's-inn, Fleet-street. J., the counsel, is
doing self-imposed penance in it, for what reason I divine
not, at this day. C. had an agreeable seat at North Cray,
where he seldom spent above a day or two at a time in the
summer ; but preferred, during the hot months, standing at
his window in this damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch,
as he said, "the maids drawing water all day long." I
suspect he had his within-door reasons for the preference.
Hie currus d arma fuere. He might think his treasures
more safe. His house had the aspect of a strong box. (,'.
was a close hunks — a hoarder rather than a miser — or, if a
miser, none of the mad Elwcs breed, who have brought
discredit upon a character which cannot exist without
certain admirable points of steadiness and unity of purpose.
One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so easily
despise him. By taking care of the pence he is often
cuablcd to part with the pounds, upon a scale that leaves
us careless generous fellows halting at an immeasurable
distance behind. C. gave away 30,00 OZ. at once in his life-
time to a blind charity. His house-keeping was severely
looked after, but he kept the table of a gentleman. He
would know who came in and who went out of his house,
but his kitchen chimney was never suffered to freeze.
Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never knew what
118 THE OLD BENCHEBS OF THE IN^EB TEMFLE.
he was wortli in the world ; and having hnt a competency
for his rank, which his indolent habits were little calcu-
lated to improve, might have suffered severely if he had
not had honest people about him. Lovel took care of everj'-
thing. He was at once his clerk, his good servant, his
dresser, his friend, his "flapper," his guide, stop-watch,
auditor, treasurer. He did nothing without consulting
Lovel, or failed in anything without expecting and fearing
his admonishing. He put himself almost too much in his
hands, had they not been the purest in the world. He
resigned his title almost to respect as a master, if L. could
ever have forgotten for a moment that he was a servant.
I knew this Lovel. He was a man of incorrigible and
losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and " would strike."
In the cause of the oppressed he never considered in-
equalities, or calculated the number of his opponents. Ho
once wrested a sword out of the hand of a inan of quality
that had drawn upon him, and pommelled him severely
with the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered insult to
a female — an occasion upon which no odds against him
could have prevented the interference of Lovel. He
Avould stand next day bareheaded to the same person
modestly to excuse his interference — for L. never forgot
rank where something better was not concerned. L. was
the liveliest little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as
Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to resemble (I have a
portrait of him which confirms it), possessed a fine turn
for humorous poetr}'- — next to Swift and Prior — moulded
heads in clay and plaster of Paris to admiration, by the
dint of natural genius merely ; turned cribbage boards,
and such small cabinet toys, to perfection; took a hand at
quadrille or bowls with equal facility ; made punch better
than any man of his degree in England ; had the merriest
quips and conceits ; and was altogether as brimful of
I'ogueries and inventions as you could desire. He was a
brother of the angle, moreover, and just such a free,
hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak Walton would have
chosen to go a-fishing with. I saw him in his old age and
the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten, in the last sad
THE OLD BLls'CIIEBS OF THE INNEli TEMPLE. 119
stage of human weakness — " a remnant most forlorn of
what he Avas," — yet even then his eye woukl light iip upon
t!ie mention of his favotirite Garrick. He was greatest, lie
would saj^, in Bayes — " was upon the stage nearly through-
out the whole performance, and as busy as a bee." At
intervals, too, he would speak of his former life, and how
ho came up a little boy from Lincoln, to go to service, and
how his mother cried at parting with him, and how he
returned, after some few yeai's' absence, in a smart new
livery, to see her, and she blest herself at the change, and
could hardly be brought to believe that it was " her own
bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he would
weep, till I have wished the sad second-childhood might
have a mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the
common mother of us all in no long time after received him
gently into hers.
With Coventry and with Salt, in their walks upon the
terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson would join to make
lip a third. They did not walk linked arm-in-arm in those
(lays — " as now our stout triumvirs sweep the streets," — ■
])ut generally with both hands folded behind them for
state, or with one at least behind, the other carrying a
<ane. P. was a benevolent, but not a prepossessing man.
1 [e had that in his face which you could not term unhap-
piness; it rather implied an incapacity of being happy.
His cheeks were colourless, even to whiteness. His look
was uninviting, resembling (but without his sourness) that
of our great philanthropist. I know that he did good acts,
but I could never make out what he toas. Contemporary
■with these, but subordinate, was Daines Banington — ■
another oddity — he walked burly and square — in imi-
tation, I think, of Coventry — howbeit he attained not to
the dignity of his prototype. Nevertheless, he did pretty
well, upon the strength of being a tolerable antiquarian,
and having a brother a bishop. When the account of his
year's treasurership came to be aiidited, the following sin-
gular charge was unanimously disallowed by the bench:
"Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, the gardener, tv/enty shillings
for stufi" to poison the sparrows, by my orders." Next to
120 niE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
him was old Barton — a jolly negation, who took upon him
the ordering of the bills of fare for the parliament chamber,
where the benchers dine — answering to the combination
rooms at College — much to the easement of his less epi-
curean brethren. I know nothing more of him. — Then
Eead, and Twopeny — Eead, good-humoured and personable
— Twopeny, good-humoured, but thin, and felicitous in
jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was
attenuated and fleeting. Many must remember him (for
he was rather of later date) and his singular gait, which
was performed by three steps and a jump regularly suc-
ceeding. The steps were little efforts, like that of a child
beginning to walk ; the jump comparatively vigorous, as a
foot to an inch. Where he learned this figure, or what
occasioned it, I could never discover. It was neithe]'
graceful in itself, nor seemed to answer the purpose any
better than common walking. The extreme tenuity of his
frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a trial of poising.
Twopeny would often rally him upon his leanness, and
hail him as Brother Lusty ; but W. had no relish of a joke.
His features were spiteful. I have heard that he would
pinch his cat's ears extremely when anything had offended
him. Jackson — the omniscient Jackson, he was called —
was of this period. He had the reputation of possessing
more multifarious knowledge than any man of his time.
He was the Friar Bacon of the less literate portion of the
Temple. I remember a pleasant passage of the cook apply-
ing to him, with much formality of apology, for instructions
how to write down edge bone of beef in the bill of commons.
He was supposed to knov/, if any man in the world did.
He decided the orthography to be — as I have given it —
fortifying his authority with such anatomical reasons as
dismissed the manciple (for the time) learned and happy.
iSome do spell it yet, pei"versely, aitch bone, from a fanciful
resemblance between its shape and that of the aspirate so
denominated. I had almost forgotten Mingay with the
iron hand — but he was somewhat later. He had lost his
right hand by some accident, and supplied it with a
grappling-hook, Avhich he wielded with a tolerable adroit-
THE OLD BENCHERS 01 THE INNER TEMPLE. 121
ness. I detected the substitute before I was old enough
to reason whether it were artificial or not. I remember
the astonishment it raised in me. He was a blustering,
loud-talking person ; and I reconciled the phenomenon to
my ideas as an emblem of power — somewhat like the horns
in the forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses. Baron Maseres,
who walks (or did till very lately) in the costume of the
reign of George the Second, closes my imperfect recollec-
tions of the old benchers of the Inner Temple.
Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled ? Or, if the like of
you exist, why exist they no more for me? Ye inexpli-
cable, half-imderstood appearances, why comes in reason to
tear away the preternatural mist, bright or gloomy, that
enshrouded you ? Why make ye so sorry a figure in my
lelation, who made up to me — to vay childish eyes — the
mythology of the Temple ? In those days I saw Gods, as
"old men covered with a mantle," walking upon the earth.
Let the dream of classic idolatry perish, — extinct be the
fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling, in the
heart of childhood there will, for ever, spring up a well
of innocent or wholesome superstition — the seeds of ex-
aggeration will be busy there, and vital — from everj'-day
forms educing the unknown and the uncommon. In that
little Goshen there will be light when the grown world
flounders about in the darkness of sense and materiality.
While childhood, and while dreams, reducing childhood,
shall be left, imagination shall not have spread her holy
wings totally to fly the earth.
P.S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of Samuel
Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect memory, and the
erring notices of childhood ! Yet I protest I always
thought that he had been a bachelor! This gentleman,
R. N. informs me, married young, and losing his lady in
childbed, within the first year of their union, fell into a
deep melancholy, from the eifects of which, probably, he
never thoroughly recovered. In what a new light does
this place his rejection (0 call it by a gentler name !) of
mild Susan P , unravelling into beauty certain pecu-
122 THE OLD BENCEEES OF THE INNEB TEMPLE.
liarities of this very shy and retiring character ! Hence-
forth let no one receive the narratives of Elia for true
records ! They are, in truth, but shadows of fact — veri-
similitudes, not verities — or sitting but upon the remote
edges and outskirts of history. He is no such honest
chronicler as E. N., and v?ould have done better perhaps
to have consulted that gentleman before he sent these
incondite reminiscences to press. But the worthy su))-
treasurer — who respects his old and new masters — would
but have been puzzled at the indecorous liberties of Elia,
The good man wots not, peradventure, of the licence which
Magazines have arrived at in this plain-speaking age, or
hardly dreams of their existence beyond the Gentleman's —
his furthest monthly excursions in this nature having been
long confined to the holy ground of honest Urhaiis obituary.
May it be long before his own name shall help to swell
those columns of unenvied flattery ! — Meantime, ye New
Benchers of the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he
is himself the kindliest of human creatures. Should infir-
mities overtake him — he is yet in green and vigorous
senility — make allowances for them, remembering that
" ye yourselves are old." So may the Winged Horse, your
ancient badge and cognizance, still flourish ! so may future
Hookers and Seldens illustrate your church and chambers!
so may the sparrows, in default of more melodious quiristers,
unpoisoned hop about your walks ! so may the fresh-coloured
and cleanly nursery-maid, who, by leave, airs her playful
charge in your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing
courtesy as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion ! so
may the younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your
stately terrace, with the same superstitious veneration
with which the child Elia gazed oi +.he Old Worthies that
solemnized the parade before ye i
123
GRACE BEFOEE MEAT.
MlJE custom of saying grace at meals had, pi'obably, its
origin in the early times of the world, and the hunter-
state of man, when dinners were precarious things, and a
full meal was something more than a common blessing!
when a belly -full was a wind-fall, and looked like a special
providence. In the shouts and triumphal songs with which,
after a season of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty of deer's
or goat's flesh would naturally be ushered home, existed,
perhaps, the germ of the modern grace. It is not otherwise
easy to be understood, why the blessing of food — the act of
eating — should have had a particular expression of thanks-
giving annexed to it, distinct from that implied and silent
gratitude with which we are expected to enter upon the
enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good things
of existence.
I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other
occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I
want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a
moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved
problem. AVhy have we none for books, those spiritiial
repasts — a grace before Milton — a grace before Shakspeare
— a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading
the Fairy Queen? — but the received ritual having pre-
scribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of manduca-
tion, I shall confine my observations to the experience
which I have had of the grace, properly so called ; com-
mending my new scheme for extension to a niche in the
grand philosophical, poetical, and perchance in part here-
tical, liturgy, now compiling by my friend Homo Humanus ,
for the use of a certain snug congregation of Utopiac
Eabelsesian Christians, no matter where assembled.
The form, then, of the benediction before eating has its
beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and unprc-
vocative repast of children. It is here that the grace
becomes exceedingly graceful. The indigert man, who
hardly knows whether he shall have a meal the next day
J2i GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
or not, sits clown to his fare with a present sense of the
blessing, which can be but feebly acted by the I'ich, into
whose minds the conception of wanting a dinner could
never, but by some extreme theory, have entered. The
proper end of food — the animal sustenance — is barely
contemplated by them. The poor man's bread is his daily
bread, literally his bread for the day. Their courses are
joerennial.
Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be preceded
by the grace. That which is least stimulative to appetite,
leaves the mind most free for foreign considerations. A
man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of
l^lain mutton ^vith turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon
the ordinance and institution of eating ; when he shall
confess a perturbation of mind, inconsistent with the pur-
poses of the grace, at the presence of venison or turtle.
"When I have sate (a ranis liospes) at rich men's tables,
Avith the savoury soup and messes steaming up the nostrils,
and moistening the lips of the guests with desire and a
distracted choice, I have felt the introduction of that
ceremony to be unseasonable. With the ravenous orgasm
upon you, it seems impertinent to interjjose a religious
sentiment. It is a confusion of purpose to mutter out
praises from a mouth that waters. The heats of epicurism
put out the gentle flame of devotion. The incense which
rises round is pagan, and the belly-god intercepts it for its
own. The very excess of the provision beyond the needs,
takes away all sense of proportion between the end and
means. The giver is veiled by his gifts. You are startled
at the injustice of returning thanks — for what? — for having
too much while so many starve. It is to praise the Gods
amiss.
I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce consciously
perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. I have
seen it in clergymen and others — a sort of shame — a sense
of the co-presence of circumstances which unhallow the
blessing. After a devotional tone put on for a few seconds,
how rapidly the speaker will fall into his common voice !
iielping himself or his neighbour, as if to get rid of some
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 125
Tineas}'' sensation of hypocrisy. Not that the good man was
a hypocrite, or was not most conscientious in the discharge
of tlie duty; but he felt in his inmost mind the incom-
patibility of the scene and the viands before him with the
exercise of a calm and rational gratitude.
I hear somebody exclaim, — Would you have Christians
sit down at table, like hogs to their troughs, without
remembering the Giver? — no — I would have them sit
down as Christians, remembering the Giver, and less like
hogs. Or, if their appetites must run riot, and they must
pamper themselves with delicacies for which east and west
are ransacked, I would have them postpone their bene-
diction to a fitter season, when appetite is laid ; when the
still small voice can be heard, and the reason of the gi'ace
returns — with temperate diet and restricted dishes. Glut-
tony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanks-
giving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he kicked.
Virgil knew the harpy-nature better, when he put into the
mouth of Celaeno anything but a blessing. We may be
gratefully sensible of the deliciousness of some kinds of
food beyond others, though that is a meaner and inferior
gratitude : but the proper object of the grace is sustenance,
not relishes ; daily bread, not delicacies ; the means of life,
and not the means of pampering the carcass. With what
frame or composure, I wonder, can a city chaplain pro-
nounce his benediction at some great Hall-feast, when he
knows that his last concluding pious word — and that in all
probability, the sacred name which he preaches — is but
the signal for so many impatient harpies to commence their
foul orgies, with as little sense of true thankfulness (which
is temperance) as those Virgilian fowl ! It is well if the
good man himself does not feel his devotions a little
clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling with and
polluting the pure altar sacrifice.
The severest satire upon full tables is the banquet which
Satan, in the " Paradise Regained," provides for a tempta-
tion in the wilderness :
A table richly spread ia regal mode
■\Vith dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort
126 GBACE BEFOBE MEAT.
And savour ; beasts of chase, or fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,
Gris-amber-steamed ; all fish from sea or shore.
Freshet or purling brook, for which was di-aiued
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast.
The Tempter, I warrant you, thouglit these cates would
go down without the recommendatory preface of a bene-
diction. They are like to be short graces where the devil
plays the host. I am afraid the poet wants his usual
decorum in this place. Was he thinking of the old Eoman
luxury, or of a gaudy day at Cambridge? This was a
temptation fitter for a Heliogabalus. The whole banquet
is too civic and culinary, and the accompaniments alto-
gether a profanation of that deep, abstracted, holy scene.
The mighty artillery of sauces, which the cook-fiend
conjures up, is out of proportion to the simple wants and
plain hunger of the guest. He that disturbed him in his
dreams, from his dreams might have been taught better.
To the temperate fantasies of the famished Son of God,
^vhat sort of feasts presented themselves? — He dreamed
indeed,
As appetite is wont to dream,
Of meats and drinks, nature "s refreshment sweet.
But what meats ? — ■
Him thought he by the brook of Cherith stood,
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
Food to Elijah bringing even and morn ;
Though ravenous, tauglit to abstain from what they brought •
He saw the jirophet also how he fled
Into the desert, and how there he slept
Under a junijier ; then how awaked
He found his supper on the coals pre|3ared,
And by tlie angel was bid rise and eat,
And ate the second time after repose.
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days :
Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook.
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse.
Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than these temperate
dreams of the divine Hungerer. To which of these twc
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 127
visionary banquets, think yon, would the introduction of
what is called the grace have been the most fitting and
pertinent ?
Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; but practically
I own that (before meat especially) they seem to involve
something awkward and unseasonable. Our appetites, of
one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason,
which might otherwise but feebly set about the great ends
of preserving and continuing the species. They are fit
blessings to be contemplated at a distance with a becoming
gratitude ; but the moment of appetite (the judicious reader
Avill apprehend me) is, perhaps, the least fit season for that
exercise. The Quakers, who go about their business of
every description with more calmness than we, have more
title to the use of these bejiedictory prefaces, I have
always admired their silent grace, and more because I
have observed their applications to the meat and drink
following to be less passionate and sensual than ours.
They are neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people.
They eat, as a horse bolts his chopped hay, v/ith indif-
ference, calmness, and cleanly circumstances. They neither
grease nor slop themselves. "When I see a citizen in his
bib and tucker, I cannot imagine it a surplice.
I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not indif-
ferent to the kinds of it. Those unctuous morsels of deer't;
flesh were not made to be received with dispassionate
services. I hate a man who swallows it, affecting not to
know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher
matters. I shrink instinctively from one who professes
to like minced veal. There is a physiognomical character
in the tastes for food. C holds that a man cannot
have a pure mind who refuses apple-dumplings. I am not
certain but he is right. With the decay of my first
innocence, I confess a less and less relish daily for those
innocuous cates. The whole vegetable tribe have lost
their gust with me. Only I stick to asparagus, which
still seems to inspire gentle thoughts. I am impatient
and querulous under culinary disappointments, as to come
home at the dinner hour, for instance, expecting somt>
128 GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
savoury mess, and to find one quite tasteless and sapidless.
Butter ill melted — that commonest of kitchen failures —
puts me beside my tenor. — The author of the Eambler
used to make inarticulate animal noises over a favourite
food. Was this the music quite proper to be preceded b}^
the grace ? or would the pious man have done better to
postpone his devotions to a season when the blessing
might be contemplated with less perturbation ? I quarrel
with no man's tastes, nor would set my thin face against
those excellent things, in their way, jollity and feasting.
But as these exercises, however laudable, have little in
them of grace or gracefulness, a man should be sure, before
he ventures so to grace them, that while he is pretending
his devotions otherwhere, he is not secretly kissing his
hand to some great fish — his Dagon — with a special con-
secration of no ark but the fat tureen before him. Graces
are the sweet preluding strains to the banquets of angels
and children ; to the roots and severer repasts of the
Chartreuse ; to the slender, but not slenderly acknow-
ledged, refection of the poor and humble man : but at the
heaped-up boards of the pampered and the luxurious they
become of dissonant mood, less timed and tuned to the
occasion, methinks, than the noise of those better befitting
organs would be which children hear tales of, at Hog's
Norton. We sit too long at our meals, or are too curious
in the study of them, or too disordered in our application
to them, or engross too great a portion of those good
things (which should be common) to our share, to be
able with any grace to say grace. To be thankful for
what we grasp exceeding our proportion, is to add
hypocrisy to injustice. A lurking sense of this truth is
what makes the performance of this diity so cold and
spiritless a service at most tables. In houses where the
grace is as indispensable as the napkin, who has not seen
that never-settled question arise, as to wlio shall say it?
while the good man of the house and the visitor clergyman,
or some other guest belike of next authority, from years or
gravity, shall be bandj^ing about the office between them
as a matter of compliment, each of them not unwilling to
GEACE BEFORE MEAT. 129
fcliift the awkward burthen of an equivocal duty from Lis
own shoulders ?
I once drank tea in company with two Methodist di^dnes
of different persuasions, whom it was my fortune to intro-
duce to each other for the first time that evening. Before
the first cup was handed round, one of these reverend
gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solemnity,
whether he chose to say anytliing. It seems it is the custom
with some sectaries to jjut np a short prayer before this
meal also. His reverend brother did not at first quite
apprehend him, but upon an explanation, with little less
importance he made answer that it was not a custom
knoAvn in his church : in which courteous evasion the
other acquiescing for good manners' sake, or in compliance
with a weak brother, the sx;pplementary or tea grace was
waived altogether. With what spirit might not Lucian
have painted two priests, of his religion, playing into each
other's hands the compliment of performing or omitting
a sacrifice, — the hungry God meantime, doubtful of his
incense, with expectant nostrils hovering over the two
flamens, and (as between tAvo stools) going away in the
end without his supper.
A short form upon these occasions is felt to want re-
verence ; a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape the charge
of impertinence. I do not quite approve of the epigram-
matic conciseness with which that equivocal wag (but my
pleasant school-fellow) C. V. L., when importuned for a
grace, used to inquire, first slyly leering down the table,
" Is there no clergyman here ?" — significantly adding,
*' Thank G — ." Nor do I think our old form at school
quite pertinent, where we were used to preface our bald
bread-and-cheese-suppers with a preamble, connecting
with that humble blessing a recognition of benefits the
most awful and overwhelming to the imagination which
religion has to offer. Non tunc illis erat locus. 1 remember
we were put to it to reconcile the phrase "good creatures,"
upon which the blessing rested, with the fare set before
us, wilfully understanding that expression in a low and
animal sense, — till some one recalled a legend, which told
K
130 DREAM CniLDREN; A REVERIE.
how, iu the golden days of Christ's, the young TTospitallei'S
were wont to have smoking joints of roast meat upon their
nightly boards, till some pious benefactor, commiserating
the decencies, rather than the palates, of the children,
c;om milted our flesh for garments, and gave us — horresco
ref evens — trousers instead of mutton.
DEE AM CHILDREN; A EEVEEIE.
CHILDREN love to listen to stories about their elders,
when tliey were children ; to stretch their imagination
to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame,
whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little
ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their
great-gi'andmother Field, who lived in a great house in Nor-
folk (a hundred times bigger than that in which they and
papa lived) which had been the scene — so at least it was
generally believed in that part of the country — of the
tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar with
from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it
is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle
was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-
piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Eobin
Redbreasts ; till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set
up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no
story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's
looks, too tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went on
to say, how religious and how good their great-grandmother
Field was, how beloved and respected by everybody, though
she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but
had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might
"he said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by
the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more
fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere
in the adjoining county ; but still she lived in it in a
manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity
DREAM CHILDREN; A REVERIE. 131
of the great house in a sort while she lived, which after-
wards came to deca}', and was nearly pulled down, and all
its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's
other house, where they were set up, and looked as awk-
ward as if some one were to carry away the old toiubs they
had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s
tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as
to say, " that would be foolish indeed." And then I told
how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended by
a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of
the neighbourhood for many miles round, to show their
respect for her memory, because she had been such a good
and religious woman ; so good indeed that she knew all
the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testa-
ment besides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then
I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-
grandmother Field once was ; and how in her youth sho
was esteemed the best dancer — here Alice's little right
foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my look-
ing grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, in
the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and
bowed her doMTi with pain ; but it could never bend her
good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still up-
right, because she was so good and religious. Then I told
how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of
the great lone house ; and how she believed that an appa
rition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up
and down the great staircase near where she slept, but sho
said "those innocents would do her no harm;" and how
frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my
maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or
religious as she — and 3-et I never saw the infants. Hero
John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look coura-
geous. Then 1 told how good she was to all her grand-
children, having us to the great house in the holjdays,
where I in particular used to spend many hours by myself,
in gazing upon the old busts of the twelve Ca3sarSj that hai^
been Emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would
seem to live again, or I to be turned into marble with
K 2
132 BREAM CHILI BEN; A REVERIE.
tliera ; how I never could be tired with roaming about that
huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-
out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken panels,
•with the gilding almost rubbed out — sometimes in the
spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to
myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening
man would cross me — and how the nectarines and peaches
hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck
them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and
then, — and because I had more pleasure in strolling about
among the old melancholy-looking yew-trees, or the firs,
and picking up the red berries, and the fir-apples, which
were good for nothing but to look at — or in lying about
upon the fresh grass with all the fine garden smells around
me — or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy
myself ripening too along with the oranges and the limes
in that grateful warmth — or in watching the dace that
darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom of the
garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hanging-
midway down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at
their impertinent friskings, — I had more pleasure in these
busy-idle diversions than in all the sweet flavours of peaches,
nectarines, oranges, and such-liko common baits of children.
Here John slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of
grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated
dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish
them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in somewhat a
more heightened tone, I told how, though their great-
grandmother Field loved all her grandchildren, yet in an
especial manner she might be said to love their uncle,
John L , because he was so handsome and spirited a
youth, and a king to the rest of us ; and, instead of moping
about in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount
the most mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp
no bigger than themselves, and make it carry him half
over the county in a morning, and join the hunters when
there were any out — and yet he loved the old great house
and gardens too, but had too much spirit to bo always
2)ent up within their boimdavies — and how their uncle
DBF AM CHILDREN; A REVERIE. 133
grew up to man's estate as "brave as he was handsome, to
<he admiration of everybody, but of their great-grand
mother Field most especially ; and how he used to cany
me upon his back when I was a lame-footed boy — for he
was a good bit older than me — many a mile when I could
not walk for pain ; — and how in after life he became lame-
footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make all owances
enough for him when he was impatient and in pain, nor
remember sufficiently how considerate he had been to me
when I was lame-footod , and how when he died, though,
he had not been dead an hou r, it seemed as if he had died
a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and
death ; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at
first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me ; and tliough
I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think
he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day-
long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him.
I missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness, and
wished him to be alive again, to be quarrelling with him
(for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him
again, and was as uneasy without him, as he, their poor
uncle, must have been when the doctor took oif his limb. —
Here the children fell a-crying, and asked if their littlo
moiu-ning which they had on was not for uncle John, and
they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about their
uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty
dead mother. Then I told how for seven long years, in
hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever,
I courted the fair Alice W — n ; and as much as children
could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and
difficulty, and denial, meant in maidens — when suddenly
turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at
her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I
became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or
whose that bright hair was ; and while I stood gazing, both
the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding,
and still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful fea-
tures were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without
speech, strangely impressed upon me the efi'ects of speech :
134 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS,
*' We are not of Alice, nor of tliee, nor are we children at
all. I'he children of Alice call Bartrnm father. We are
nothing ; less than nothing, and dreams. Wo are only
what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious
shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence,
and a name " and immediately awaking, I found myself
quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had
fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my
Bide — but John L. (or James Elia) was gone for ever.
DISTANT COEEESPONDENTS.
IN A LETTER TO B. F. ESQ., AT SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES.
■ Y DEAE F. — When I think how welcome the sight of a
letter from the world where you were born must be to
you in that strange one to which you have been transplanted,
I feel some compunctious visitiugs at my long silence.
But, indeed, it is no easy effort to set about a correspondence
at our distance. The weary world of waters between us
oppresses the imagination. It is difficult to conceive how
a scrawl of mine should ever stretch across it. It is a sort
of presumption to expect that one's thoughts should live so
far. It is like writing for posterity; and reminds me of
one of Mrs. Eowe's superscriptions, " Alcander to Strephon
in the shades." Cowley's Post-Augel is no more than
would be expedient in such an intercourse. One drops a
packet at Lombard Street, and in twenty -four hours a friend
in Cumberland gets it as fresh as if it came in ice. It ic
only like whispering throiigh a long trumpet. But suppose
a tube let down from the moon, with yourself at one end
and tlic man at the other ; it would be some balk to the
spirit of conversation, if you knew that the dialogue ex-
changed with that interesting theosophist would take two
or three revolutions of a higher luminary in its passage.
Yet, for aught I know, you may be some parasangs nigher
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 135
that primitive idea — Plato's man — than we in England
here have the honour to reckon ourselves.
Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics ; news,
sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include all non-
serious subjects ; or subjects serious in themselves, but
treated after my fashion, non-seriously. — And first, for
news. In them the most desirable circumstance, I suppose,
is that they shall be true. But what security can 1 have
that what I now send you for truth shall not, before you
get it, unaccountably turn into a lie? For instance, our
mutual friend P. is at this present writing — my Now — in
good health, and enjoys a fair share of worldly reputation.
You are glad to hear it. This is natural and friendly.
But at this present reading— ?/ottr Noio — he may possibly
l>e in the Bench, or going to be hanged, which in reason
3Ught to abate something of your transport (i.e., at hearing
he was well, &c.), or at least considerably to modify it. I
am going to the play this evening, to have a laugh with
Munden. You have no theatre, I think you told me, in
your land of d d realities. You naturally lick your
lips, and envy me my felicity. Think but a moment, and
you will correct the hateful emotion. Why, it is Sunday
morning with you, and 1823. This confusion of tenses,
this grand solecism of tico presents, is in a degree common
to all postage. But if I sent you word to Bath or Devizes,
that I was expecting the aforesaid treat this evening,
though at the moment you received the intelligence my
full feast of fun would be over, yet there would be for a
day or two after, as you would well know, a smack, a
relish left upon my mental palate, which would give
rational encouragement for you to foster a portion, at least,
of the disagreeable passion, which it was in part my in-
tention to produce. But ten months hence, your envy or
your sympathy would be as useless as a passion spent upon
the dead. Not only does truth, in these long intervals, un-
essence herself, but (what is harder) one cannot venture a
ci-ude fiction, for the fear that it may ripen into a truth
upon the voyage. What a wild improbable banter I put
upon you, some three years since, of AVill Weatherall
13G DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS.
having married a servant-maid ! I remember gravely con-
sulting you how we were to receive her — for Will's wife
was in no case to he rejected ; and your no less serious
replication in the matter; how tenderly you advised an
abstemious introduction of literary topics before the lady,
with a caution not to be too forward in bringing on the
carpet matters more within the sphere of her intelligence ;
your deliberate judgment, or rather wise suspension of
sentence, how far jacks, and spits, and mops, could, with
propriety, be introduced as subjects ; whether the conscious
avoiding of all such matters in discourse would not have a
worse look than the taking of them casually in our way;
in what manner we should carry ourselves to our maid
Becky, Mrs. William Weathcrall being by ; whether we
should show more delicacy, and a truer sense of respect for
Will's wife, by treating Becky with our customary chiding
before her, or by an unusual deferential civility paid to
Becky, as to a person of great worth, but thrown by the
caprice of fate into a humble station. There were diffi-
culties, I remember, on both sides, which you did me the
favour to state with the precision of a lawyer, united to the
tenderness of a friend. I laughed in my sleeve at your
solemn pleadings, when lo ! while I was valuing myself
upon this flam put upon you in New South Wales, the devil
in England, jealous possibly of any lie-children not his
own, or working after my copy, has actually instigated our
friend (not three days since) to the commission of a matri-
mony, which I had only conjured up for your diversion.
William Weatherall has married Mrs. Cotterel's maid.
But to take it in its truest sense, you will see, my dear F.,
that news from me must become history to you ; which I
neither profess to write, nor indeed care much for reading.
No person, imder a diviner, can, with any prospect of
veracity, conduct a correspondence at such an arm's length.
Two prophets, indeed, might thus interchange intelligence
with effect ; the epoch of the writer (Habakkuk) falling in
with the true present time of the receiver (Daniel) ; but
then we arc no prophets.
Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. l37
that. This kind of dish, ahovo all, requires to be served
up hot, or sent off in. water-plates, that your friend may
have it almost as warm as yourself. If it have time to
cool, it is the most tasteless of all cold meats. I have ofteu
smiled at a conceit of the late Lord C. It seems that
travelling somewhere about Geneva, he came to some
pretty green spot, or nook, where a willow, or something,
hung so fantastically and invitingly over a stream — was
it? — or a rock? — no matter — but the stillness and the
repose, after a weary journey, 'tis likely, in a languid
moment of his Lordship's hot, restless life, so took his
fancy that he could imagine no place so proper, in the
event of his death, to lay his bones in. This was all very
natural and excusable as a sentiment, and shows his cha-
i"acter in a very pleasing light. But when from a passing
sentiment it came to be an act ; and when, by a positive
testamentary disposal, his remains were actually carried all
that way from England ; who was there, some desperate
.sentimentalists excepted, that did not ask the question.
Why could not his Lordship have found a spot as solitary,
a nook as romantic, a tree as green and pendent, with a
stream as emblematic to his purpose, in Surrey, in Dorset,
or in Devon ? Conceive the sentiment boarded up, freighted,
entered at the Custom House (startling the tide-waiters
with the novelty), hoisted into a ship. Conceive it pawed
about and handled between the rude jests of tarpaulin
ruffians — ^a thing of its delicate texture — the salt bilgo
wetting it till it became as vapid as a damaged lustring.
Suppose it in material danger (mariners have some super-
stition about sentiments) of being tossed over in a fresh
gale to some propitiatory shark (spirit of Saint Gothard,
save us from a quietus so foreign to the deviser's purpose !)
but it has happily evaded a fishy consummation. Trace it
then to its lucky landing — at Lyons shall we say ? — I have
not the map before me — jostled upon four men's shoulders
— baiting at this town — stopping to refresh at t'other
village — waiting a passport here, a license there ; the
fianction of the magistracy in this district, the concurrence
of the ecclesiastics in that canton ; till at length it arrives
138 DISTANT COBRESPONDENTS.
at its destination, tired out and jaded, from a brisk senti-
ment into a feature of silly pride or tawdry senseless affec-
tation. How few sentiments, my dear F., I am afraid we
can set down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite seaworthy.
Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which though con-
temptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which
should irradiate a right friendly epistle — your puns and
small jests are, I apprehend, extremely circumscribed in
their sphere of action. They are so far from a capacity of
being packed up and sent beyond sea, they will scarco
endure to be transported by hand from this room to the
next. Their vigour is as the instant of their birth. Their
nutriment for their brief existence is the intellectual atmo-
sphere of the by-standers : or this last is the fine slime of
Nilus — the melior lutus — whose maternal recipiency is as
necessary as the sol pater to their equivocal generation. A
pun hath a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack witli
it ; you can no more transmit it in its pristine flavour thart
you can send a kiss. — Have you not tried in some instances
to palm off a yesterday's pun upon a gentleman, and has it
answered ? Not but it was new to his hearing, but it did
not seem to come new from you. It did not hitch in. It
was like picking up at a village ale-house a two days'-old
newspaper. You have not seen it before, but you resent
the stale thing as an affront. This sort of merchandize
above all requires a quick return. A pim, and its recog-
nitory laugh, must be co-instantaneous. The one is tho
brisk lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A moment's
interval, and the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from
a friend's face as from a mirror. Who would consult his
Bweet visnomy, if the polished surface were two or three
minutes (not to speak of twelve months, my dear F.) \\\
giving back its copy ?
I cannot image to myself whereabout you are. When I
tiy to fix it, Peter Wilkins's island comes across me. Some-
times you seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. I see
Diogenes prying among you with his perpetual fruitless
lantern. What must you be willing by this time to give
for the siarht of an honest man ! You must almost have
DISTANT COEBESFONDENTS. 139'
forgotten how we look. And tell me -what your SyJneyites
do y are they th**v*ng all day long ? Merciful Heaven '
what property can stand against such a depredation ! The
kangaroos — your Aborigines — do they keep tlieir primitivo
simplicity nn Europe-tainted, with those little short foro
puds, looking like a lesson framed b}-- nature to the pick-
pocket ! Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely
provided a priori ; but if the hue and cry were once up,
they would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the
expertest loco-motor in the colony. We hear the most
improbable tales at this distance. Pray is it true that tho
3'oung Spartans among yon are born with six fingers, which
spoils their scanning? — It must look very odd; but use re-
conciles. For their scansion, it is less to regretted ; for if
they take it into their heads to be poets, it is odds but they
turn out, the greater part of them, vile plagiarists. Is there
much difference to see, too, between the son of a th**f and
the grandson ? or where does the taint stop ? Do you bleach
in three or in four generations? I have many questions
to put, but ten Delphic voyages can be made in a shorter
time than it will take to satisfy my scruples. Do yoii
grow your own hemp ? — What is j^our staple trade, — ex-
clusive of the national profession, I mean ? Your lock-
smiths, I take it, are some of your great capitalists.
I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarl}'' as when we
used to exchange good-morrows out of our old contiguous
windows, in pump-famed Hare Court in the Temple. Why
did you ever leave that quiet corner ? — Why did I ? — with
its complement of four poor elms, from whose smoke-dyed
barks, the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first lady-
birds ! My heart is as diy as that spring sometimes proves
in a thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is
between us ; a length of passage enough to render obsolete
the phrases of our English letters before they can reach
you. But while I talk I think yoxi hear me, — thoughts
dallying with vain surmise — •
Aye me ! ■while thee the seas and sounding shores
Hold far away.
Come back, before I am gro-mi into a very old man, so
no THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPEBS.
ns you shall hardly know me. Come, before Bridget walka
on crutclies. Girls whom you left children have become
sage matrons while you are tarrying there. The blooming-
Miss W — r (you remember Sally W — r) called upon us
yesterday, an aged crone. Folks whom you knew die off
every year. Formerly, I thought that death was wearing-
out, — I stood ramparted about with so many healthy friends.
The departure of J. W., two springs back, corrected my
delusion. Since then the old divorcer has been busy. If
you do not make haste to return, there will be little left to
greet you, of me, or mine.
[Something of home matters I could add ; but that, with
certain remembrances never to be omitted, I reserve for
the grave postscript to this light epistle ; which postscript,
for weighty reasons, justificatory in any court of feeling, I
think better omitted in this first edition.]
THE PEAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPEKS.
I LIKE to meet a sweep — understand me — not a grown
sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no means
attractive — but one of those tender novices, blooming
•through their first nigritude, the maternal washings not
quite effaced from the cheek — such as come forth with the
dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little professional
notes sounding like the peep-peep of a young sparrow ; or
liker to the matin lark should I pronounce them, in their
aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the sun-rise ?
I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks —
poor blots — innocent blacknesses —
I reverence these young Africans of our own growth —
these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without
assumption; and from their little pulpits (the tops of
chimneys), in the nipping air of a December morning,
preach a lesson of patience to mankind.
"When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to
THE PBAISE OF CHI3INEY-SWEEFESS. HI
witness their operation ! to see a chit no bigger tlian one's-
self, enter, one knew not by what process, into what
seemed the fauces Avcrni — to pursue him in imagination, as
he went sounding on throiigh so many dark stifling caverns,
horrid shades ! to shudder with the idea that " now, surely
he must be lost for ever !" — to revive at hearing his feeble
shout of discovered day-light — and then (0 fulness of de-
light !) running out of doors, to come just in time to see the
sable phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished weapon
of his art victorious like some flag waved over a conquered
citadel ! I seem to remember having been told, that a bad
sweep was once left in a stack with his brush, to indicate
which way the wind blew. It was an awful spectacle, cer-
tainly ; not much unlike the old stage direction in Macbeth,
where the " Apparition of a child crowned, with a tree in.
his hand, rises."
Eeader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in thy
early rambles, it is good to give him a penny, — it is better
to give him two-pence. If it be starving weather, and to
the proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair of kibed
heels (no unusual accompaniment) be superadded, the
demand on thy humanity will surely rise to a tester.
There is a composition, the ground-work of which I have
understood to be the sweet wood 'yclept sassafras. This
wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an
infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some tastes a delicacy
beyond the China luxury. I know not how thy palate may
relish it ; for myself, with every deference to the judicious
Mr. Read, who hath time out of mind kept open a shop (the
only one he avers in London) for the vending of this
*• wholesome and pleasant beverage," on the south side of
Fleet Street, as thou approachest Bridge Street — the only
Salopian house — I have never yet adventured to dip my own
particular lip in a basin of his commended ingredients — a
cautious premonition to the olfactories constantly whisper-
ing to me, that my stomach must infallibly, with all due
courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, otherwise
not uninstructcd in dietetical elegancies, sup it up with
avidity'.
142 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPEBS.
I know not by what particular conformations of tlio
organ it happens, but I have always found that this com-
position is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young
chimney-sweeper — whether the oily particles (sassafras is
slio-htly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous
concretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) to
adhere to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged piacti-
tioners ; or whether Nature, sensible that she had mingled
too much of bitter wood in tho lot of these raw victims,
caused to grow out of the earth her sassafras for a sweet
lenitive— but so it is, that no possible taste or odour to the
senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a delicate
excitement comparable to this mixture. Being penniless,
they will yet hang their black heads over the ascending
steam, to gratify one sense if possible, seemingly no less
pleased than those domestic animals — cats — when they
ptirr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is some-
thing more in these sympathies than philosophy can
inculcate.
Now albeit Mr. Eead boasteth, not without reason, that
his is the only Salopian house ; yet be it known to thee,
reader — if thou art one who keepest what are called good
hours, thou art haply ignorant of the fact — he hath a race
of industrious imitators, who from stalls, and under open
sky, dispense the same savoury mess to humbler customers,
at that dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the
rake, reeling home from his midnight cups, and the hard-
handed artisan leaving his bed to resume the premature
labours of the day, jostle, not unfi-equently to the manifest
disconcerting of the former, for the honours of the pave-
ment. It is the time when, in summer, between the expired
and the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, the kennels of our
fair metropolis give forth their least satisfactory odours.
The rake, who wisheth to dissipate his o'ernight vapoars
in more grateful coffee, curses the ungenial fume, as he
passeth ; but the artisan stojDs to taste, and blesses the
fragrant breakfast.
This is saloop — the precocious herb-woman's darling —
tho delight of tho early gardener, who transports hia
TEE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEJ'ERS. 143
tiaoking cabbages by break of day from Hammersmith to
Covent Garden's famed piazzas — tlie delight, and oh! I fear,
too often the envy, of the nnpennied sweep. Him shouldst
tbon haply encounter, with his dim visage pendent over
ih.Q grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin (it
will cost but three-halfpennies) and a slice of delicate
bread and butter (an added halfpenny) — so may th}^ cu-
linary fires, eased of the o'ercharged secretions from thy
worse-placed hosj)italities, curl up a lighter volume to the
welkin — so may the descending soot never taint thy costly
well-ingredienced soups — nor the odious cry, quick- reaching
from street to street, of the fired chimney, invite the rattling
engines from ten adjacent parishes, to disturb for a casual
scintillation thy peace and pocket !
I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts ;
the jeers and taunts of the populace ; the low-bred triumph
they display over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of
a gentleman. Yet can I endure the jocularity of a young
sweep with something more than forgiveness. — In the last
v/inter but one, pacing along Cheapside with my accus-
tomed precipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous
slide brought me izpon my back in an instant. I scrambled
up with pain and shame enoxigh — yet outwardly trying to
face it down, as if nothing had happened — when the roguish
grin of one of these young wits encountered me. There
he stood, pointing me out with his dusky finger to the
mob, and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in pai'-
ticular, till the tears for the exqiiisiteness of the fun (so he
thought it) worked themselves out at the corners of his
poor red eyes, red from many a previous weeping, and
soot-inflamed, yet twinkling through all with such a joy,
snatched out of desolation, that Hogarth but Hogarth
has got him already (how coiald he miss him?) in the
Mai'ch to Finchley, grinning at the pieman — there he
stood, as he stands in the picture, irremovable, as if the
jest was to last for ever — with such a maximum of glee,
and minimum of mischief, in his mii-th — for the grin of
a genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice in it — that I
could have been content, if the honour of a gentleman
Hi THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.
migLt endure it, to have remained his butt anel his mockery
till midnight.
I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what
are called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips (the
ladies must pardon me) is a casket presumably holding
6uch jewels ; but, methinks, they should take leave to
" air " them as frugally as possible. The fine lady, or
fine gentleman, who show me their teeth, show me bones.
Yet must I confess, that from the mouth of a true sweep a
display (even to ostentation) of those white and shiny ossi-
fications, strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in manners,
and an allowable piece of foppery. It is, as when
A sable cloud
Turns forth her silver lining on the night.
It is like some remnant of gentr}^ not quite extinct; a
badge of better days ; a hint of nobility : — and, doubtless,
under the obscuring darkness and double night of their
forlorn disguisement^ oftentimes lurketh good blood, and
gentle conditions, derived from lost ancestry, and a lapsed
pedigree. The premature apprenticements of these tender
victims give but too much encouragement, I fear, to clan-
destine and almost infantile abductions; the seeds of
civility and true courtesy, so often discernible in these
young grafts (not otherwise to be accounted for) plainly
hint at some forced adoptions ; many noble Eachels mourn-
ing for their children, even in our daj's, countenance the
fact ; the tales of fairy spiriting may shadow a lamentable
verity, and the recovery of the young Montagu be but a
solitary instance of good fortune out of many irreparable
and hopeless defiliations.
In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few years
since — under a ducal canopy — (that seat of the Howards
is an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds,
in which the late duke was especially a connoisseur)—-
encircled with curtains of delicatest crimson, with starry
coronets inwoven — folded between a pair of sheets whiter
and softer than the lap where Venus lulled Ascanius — was
discovered by chance, after all methods of search had
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 145
failed, at noon-day, fast asleep, a lost cliimney-sweeper.
The little creature, having somehow confounded his passage
among the intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by some
unknown aperture had alighted upon this magnificent
chamber; and, tired with his tedious explorations, was
unable to resist the delicious incitement to repose, which
he there saw exhibited ; so creeping between the sheets
very quietly, laid his black head upon the pillow, and
slept like a young Howard.
Such is the account given to the visitors at the Castle.^ —
But I cannot help seeming to perceive a confirmation of
what I had just hinted at in this story. A high instinct
was at work in the case, or I am mistaken. Is it probable
that a poor child of that description, with whatever weari-
ness he might be visited, would have ventured, under such
a penalty as he would be taught to expect, to uncover the
sheets of a Duke's bed, and deliberately to lay himself
down between them, when the rug, or the carpet, presented
an obvious couch, still far above his pretensions — is this
probable, I would ask, if the great power of nature, which
I contend for, had not been manifested within him, prompt-
ing to the adventure? Doubtless this young nobleman
(for such my mind misgives me that he must be) was
allured by some memory, not amounting to full conscious-
ness, of his condition in infancy, when he was used to be
lapped by his mother, or his nurse, in just such sheets as
he there found, into which he was now but creeping back
as into his proper incunabula, and resting-place. — ^By no
other theory than by this sentiment of a pre-existent state
(as I may call it), can I explain a deed so venturous, and,
indeed, upon any other system, so indecorous, in this tender,
but unseasonable, sleeper.
My pleasant friend Jem "White was so impressed with a
belief of metamorphoses like this frequently taking place,
that in some sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in these
poor changelings, he instituted an annual feast of chimney-
sweepers, at which it was his pleasure to officiate as host
and waiter. It was a solemn supper held in Smithfield,
upon the yearly return of the fair of St. Bartholomew.
146 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.
Cards were issued a week before to tlie master-sweeps in
and aboiit the metropolis, confining the invitation to their
younger fry. Now and then an elderly stripling would
get in among us, and he good-naturedly winked at ; but
our main body were infantry. One unfortunate wight,
indeed, who, relying upon his dusky suit, had intruded
himself into our part}^ but by tokens was providentially
discovered in time to be no chimney-sweeper, (all is not
soot which looks so,) was quoited out of the presence with
universal indignation, as not having on the wedding gar-
}nent ; but in general the greatest harmony prevailed. The
place chosen was a convenient spot among the pens, at the
north side of the fair, not so far distant as to be impervious
to the agreeable hubbub of that vanity, but remote enough
not to be obvious to the interruption of eveiy gaping spec-
tator in it. The guests assembled about seven. In those
little temporary parlours three tables were spread with
napery, not so fine as substantial, and at every board a
comely hostess presided with her pan of hissing sausages.
The nostrils of the young rogues dilated at the savour.
Tames White, as head waiter, had charge of the first table ;
and myself, with our trusty companion Bigod, ordinarily
ministered to the other two. There was clambering and
jostling, you may be sure, who should get at the first table,
for Kochester in his maddest days could not have done
the humours of the scene with more spirit than my friend.
After some general expression of thanks for the honour the
company had done him, his inaugural ceremony was to
clasp the greasy waist of old dame Ursula (the fattest of
the three), that stood frying and fretting, half-blessing,
half-cursing " the gentleman," and imprint upon her chaste
lips a tender salute, whereat the universal host would set
up a shout that tore the concave, while hundreds of grin-
ning teeth startled the night with their brightness. it
was a pleasure to see the sable younkers lick in the
unctuous meat, with Ms more unctuous sayings — how ho
would fit the tit-bits to the pimy mouths, reserving the
lengthier links for the seniors — how he would intercept a
morsel even in the jaws of some }'t)ung desperado, declaring
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPEBS. 147
it " must to the pan again to be browned, for it was not
fit for a gentleman's eating " — how he would recommeud
this slice of white bread, or that piece of kissing- crust, to
a tender juvenile, advising them all to have a care of
cracking their teeth, which were their best patrimony,- —
how genteely he would deal about the small ale, as if it
were wine, naming the brewer, and protesting, if it were
not good, he should lose their custom; with a special
recommendation to wipe the lip before drinking. Then
we had our toasts — "the King," — "the Cloth," — which,
whether they understood or not, was equally diverting and
flattering; and for a crowning sentiment, which never
failed, " May the Brush supersede the Laurel!" All these,
and fifty other fancies, which were rather felt than com-
prehended by his guests, would he utter, standing upon
tables, and prefacing every sentiment with a " Gentlemen,
give me leave to propose so and so," which was a prodigious
comfort to those j^oung orphans ; every now and then
stuffing into his mouth (for it did not do to be squeamish
on these occasions) indiscriminate pieces of those reek-
ing sausages, which pleased them mightily, and was the
savouriest part, you may believe, of the entertainment.
Golden lads and lasses must,
As cliimney-sweepers, come to dust —
James White is extinct, and with him these suppers
have long ceased. He carried away with him half the fun
of the world when he died — of my world at least. His
old clients look for him among the pens ; and, missing
him, reproach the altered feast of St. Bartholomew, and
the glory of Smithfiold departed for ever.
L'J,
H8
A COxMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS,
IN THE METROPOLIS.
THE all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation —
your only modern Alcides' club to rid the time of its
abuses — is uplift with many -handed sway to extirpate the
last fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity from the
metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags — staves, dogs, and crutches
— the whole mendicant fraternity, with all their baggage,
are fast posting out of the purlieus of this eleventh per-
secution. From the crowded crossing, from the corners
of streets and turnings of alleys, the parting Genius of
Beggary is "with sighing sent."
I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this
impertinent crusado, or helium ad exterminationem, pro-
claimed against a species. Much good might be sucked
from these Beggars.
They were the oldest and the honourablest form of
pauperism. Their appeals were to our common nature ;
less revolting to an ingenuous mind than to be a suppliant
to the particular humours or caprice of any fellow-creature,
or set of fellow-creatures, parochial or societarian. Theirs
were the only rates uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in
the assessment.
There was a dignity springing from the very depth of
their desolation ; as to be naked is to be so much nearer to
the being a man, than to go in livery.
The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses ; and
when Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, do wu
feel anything towards him bu.t contempt ? Could Vandyke
have made a picture of him, swaying a ferula for a scef)tre,
which would have affected our minds with the same heroic
pity, the same comjiassionate admiration, with which wo
regard his Belisarius begging for an oholu '? Would the
moral have been more graceful, more pathetic?
The Blind Beggar in the legend — the father of pretty
Bessy — whose story doggrel rhymes and ale-house signs
cannot so degrade or attenuate but that some sparks of s-
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 149
lustrous spirit will shine through the disguisements —
this noble Earl of Cornwall (as indeed he was) and memo-
rable sport of fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence of
his liege lord, stript of all, and seated on the flowering
green of Bethnal, with his more fresh and springing
daughter by his side, illumining his rags and his beggary
— ^would the child and parent have cut a better figure
doing the honours of a counter, or expiating their fallen
condition upon the three-foot eminence of some sempstering
shop-board ?
In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just antipode
to your King. The poets and romancical writers (as dear
Margaret Newcastle would call them,) when they would
most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse of fortune, never
stop till they have brought down their hero in good earnest
to rags and the wallet. The depth of the descent illus-
trates the height he falls from. There is no medium Avhich
can be presented to the imagination without off"ence. There
is no breaking the fall. I^ear, thrown from his palace,
must divest him of his garments, till he answer "mere,
nature ;" and Cresseid, fallen from a prince's love, must
extend her pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of
beauty, supplicating lazar arms with bell and clap-dish.
The Lucian wits knew this very well ; and, Avitli a con-
verse policy, when they would express scorn of greatness
without the pity, they show us an Alexander in the shades
cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting tap foul linen.
How would it sound in song, that a great monarch had
declined his affections upon the daughter of a baker ! yel
do we feel the imagination at all violated when we read
the " true ballad," where King Cophetua woos the beggar
maid ?
Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity,
but pity alloyed with contempt. No one properly contemns
a Beggar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and each degree
of it is mocked by its " neighbour grice.'" Its poor rents
and comings-in are soon summed up and told. Its pre-
tences to property are almost ludicrous. Its pitiful attempts
to save excite a smile. Everj'- scornful companion can
150 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS.
weigli liis trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor man re-
proaclies poor man in the street with impolitic mention of
his condition, his own being a shade better, while the
rich pass by and jeer at both. No rascally comparative
insults a Beggar, or thinks of weighing purses with him.
He is not in the scale of comparison. He is not under the
measure of property. He confessedly hath none, any more
than a dog or a sheep. No one twitteth him with ostenta-
tion above his means. No one accuses him of pride, or
upbraideth him with mock humility. None jostle with
him for the wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No
wealthy neighbour seeketh to eject him from his tenement.
No man sues him. No man goes to law with him. If I
were not the independent gentleman that I am, rather
than I would be a retainer to the great, a led captain, or a
poor relation, I would choose, out of the delicacy and true
greatness of my mind, to be a Beggar.
Eags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the Beggar's
robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure,
his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show
himself in public. He is never out of the fashion, or
limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not required to put
on court mourning. He weareth all colours, fearing none.
His costume hath undergone less change than the Quaker's.
Ho is the only man in the universe who is not obliged to
study appearances. The ups and downs of the world
concern him no longer. He alone continueth in one stay.
The price of stock or land afiecteth him not. The fluctua-
tions of agricultural or commercial prosperity touch him
not, or at worst but change his customers. He is not
expected to become bail or surety for any one. No man
troubleth him with questioning his religion or politics.
He is the only free man in the universe.
The Mendicants of this great city were so many of her
sights, her lions. 1 can no more spare them than I could
the Cries of London. No corner of a street is complete
without them. They are as indispensable as the Ballad
Singer; and in their picturesque attire as ornamental as
the signs of old London. They were the standing morals,
A COMPLAINT OF THE UECA Y OF BEGGABS. 151
emblems, mementos, dial-mottos, the spital sermons, the
books for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the
high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry — •
Look
Upon that poor aud broken banki-upt there.
Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall
of Lincoln's-inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had
expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray
of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful Dog-
Guide at their feet, — whither are they fled ? or into what
corners, blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of
the wholesome air and sun-warmth ? immersed between
four walls, in what withering poor-house do they endure
the penalty of double darkness, where the chink of the
dropt halfpenny no more consoles their forlorn bereave-
ment, far from the sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring
tread of the passenger ? Where hang their useless staves ?
and who will farm their dogs? — Have the overseers of
St. L — caiTsed them to be shot ? or were they tied up in
sacks and dropt into the Thames, at the suggestion of B —
the mild rector of ?
Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, —
most classical, and, at the same time, most English of the
Latinists ! — who has treated of this human and quadru-
pedal alliance, this dog and man friendship, in the sweetest
of his poems, the EjpitapJiium in Canem, or. Dog's Epitaph.
Eeader, peruse it; and say, if customary sights, which
could call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a nature
to do more harm or good to the moral sense of the passen-
gers through the dail}' thoroughfares of a vast and busy
meti'opolis.
Pauperis hie Iri rcquiesco Lyciscus, herilis,
Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectre,
Dux c£ECO fidus : nee, me dueente, solebat,
Praetenso bine atque hinc baculo, per iniqua locorum
Incertara explorare viam ; sed fila sccutus.
Quod dubioa regerent passiis, vestigia tuta
Fixit inoffenso gressu ; gelidumque sedilc
lu nudo nactus saxo. qua praetereuntiuin
152 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS.
Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras
Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam.
Ploravit nee frustra ; obolum dedit alter et alter,
Queis corda et mentem indiderat natura benignam.
Ad latus interea jactii sopitus herile.
Vol mediis vigil in somnis ; ad herilia jussa
Auresque atque aniinum arrectus, seu frustula aroicfe
Forrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei
Taedia perpessns, reditum sub nocte parabat.
Hi mores, hsec vita fuit, dum fata sinebant,
Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inerte senecta
Qua3 tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite caecum
Orbavit dominum ; prisci sed gratia facti
Ne tota intereat. longos del eta per annos,
Exiguum bunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit,
Etsi inopis, non ingratse, munuscula dextrse ;
Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemque,
Quod memoret, fidumque Oanem dominumque Benignum,
Poor Irus faitbful wolf-dog here I lie.
That wont to tend my old blind master's steps.
His guide and guard ; nor, while my service lasted.
Had he occasion for that staff, with which
He now goes picking out his path in fear
Over the highways and crossings ; but would plant,
Safe in the conduct of my friendly string,
A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd
His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide
Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd :
To whom with loud and passionate laments
From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd.
Nor wail'd to all in vain : some here and there,
The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave.
I meantime at his feet obsequious slept ;
Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear
Prick'd up at his least motion ; to receive
At his kind hand my customary crumbs.
And common portion in his feast of scraps ;
Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent
With our long day and tedious beggary.
These were my manners, this my way of life
Till age and slow disease me overtook.
And sever'd from my sightless master's side.
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die.
Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost,
This slender tomb of turf hath L-us reared.
A COMPLAINT OF TEE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 153
Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand.
And with short verse inscribed it, to attest,
In long and lasting union to attest.
The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog.
These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months
past a well-known figure, or part of the figure, of a man,
who used to glide his comely upper half over the pave-
ments of London, wheeling along with most ingenious
celerity upon a machine of wood ; a spectacle to natives,
to foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make,
with a florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare
to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a
speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The
infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his
own level. The common cripple would despise his own
pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty heart,
of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed
iiim ; for the accident which brought him low took place
during the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so
long. He seemed earth-born, an AntiEus, and to suck in
fresh vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He was
a gi'and fragment ; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature,
which should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was
not lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was
half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering
and growling, as before an earthquake, and casting down
my eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had
started at his portentous appearance. He seemed to want
but his just stature to have rent the offending quadruped
in shivers. He was as the man-part of a centaur, from
which the horse-half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan
controversy. He moved on, as if he could have made shift
with yet half of the body-portion which was left him. The
OS .niblime was not wanting ; and he threw out yet a jolly
countenance upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had
he driven this out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is
grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no way im-
paired, because he is not content to exchange his free
air and exercise for the restraints of a poor-house, he ia
154 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS.
expiating his contumacy in one of those houses (ironically
christened) of Correction.
Was a daily spectacle like this to he deemed a nuisance,
which called for legal interference to remove ? or not
rather a salutary and a touching object to the passers-by in
a great city ? Among her shows, her museums, and sup-
plies for ever-gaping curiosity (and what else but an accu-
mulation of sights — endless sights — is a great city ; or for
what else is it desirable?) was there not room for one
Lusus (not Naturce, indeed, but) Accidentium ? What if in
forty-and-two-years' going about, the man had scraped
together enough to give a portion to his child (as the
rumour ran) of a few hundreds — whom had he injured ? —
whom had he imposed upon ? The contributors had en-
joyed their sight for their pennies. What if after being
exposed all day to the heats, the rains, and the frosts of
heaven — shuffling his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate
and painful motion — he was enabled to retire at night to
enjoy himself at a club of his fellow cripples over a dish
of hot meat and vegetables, as the charge was gravely
brought against him by a clergyman deposing before a
House of Commons' Committee — was this, or was his truly
paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved a statue
rather than a whipping-post, and is inconsistent, at least,
with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which he has
been slandered with — a reason that he should be deprived
of his chosen, harmless, nay, edifying way of life, and be
committed in hoary age for a sturdy vagabond ? —
There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have
.shamed to have sate down at the cripples' feast, and to
have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite too,
for a companionable symbol. "Age, thou hast lost thy
breed."—
Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made
by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. One
was much talked of in the public papers some time since,
and the usual charitable inferences deduced. A clerk in
the Bank was surprised Avith the annoiincement of a five
hundred-pound legacy left him by a person whose namo
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 1j5
lie was a stranger to. It seems tliat in his daily morning-
walks from Peckham (or some village thereabouts) where
he lived, to his office, it had been his practice for the last
twenty years to drop his halfpenny duly into the hat of
some blind Bartimeus, that sate begging alms by the way-
side in the Borough. The good old beggar recognised his
daily benefactor by the voice only; and, when he died,
left all the amassings of his alms (that had been half a
century perhaps in the accumulating) to his old Bank
friend. Was this a story to purse up people's hearts, and
pennies, against giving an alms to the blind ? — or not
rather a beautiful moral of well-directed charity on the
one part, and noble gratitude upon the other ?
I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk.
I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creatm-e,
blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the sun —
Is it possible I could have steeled my pui'se against
him?
Perhaps I had no small change.
Eeader, do not be frightened at the hard words imposi-
tion, imposture — give, and ash no questions. Cast thy bread
upon the waters. Some have unawares (like this Bank
clerk) entertained angels.
Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted dis-
tress. Act a charity sometimes. AVhen a poor creaturo
(outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not sta}-
to inquire whether the " seven small children," in whoso
name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence.
Pake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth to save a
halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If he be not all
that he pretendeth, give, and under a personate father of a
family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an
indigent bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit
looks, and mumping tones, think them players. You pay
your money to see a comedian feign these things, which,
concerning these poor people, thou canst not certainly tell
whether they are feigned or not.
|_" Pray God, your honour, relieve me," said a poor beads-
woman to my friend L one day : " I have seen better
150 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.
days." " So have I, my good woman," retorted he, looking
np at the welkin, which was just then threatening a storm —
and the jest (he will have it) was as good to the beggar as
,M tester. It was, at all events, kinder than consigning her
to the stocks, or the parish beadle. —
But L. has a way of viewing things in rather a para-
doxical light on some occasions.]
A DISSEETATION UPON EOAST PIG.
MANKIND, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend
M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for
the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing
or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in
Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted
at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of
his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of
golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks'
Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of
roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder
brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner fol-
lowing. The swine-herd, Ilo-ti, having gone out into the
woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for
his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo,
a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with
fire, as yonnkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks
escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly,
spi-ead the conflagration over every part of their poor
mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the
cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, you
may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine
litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number,
perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all
over the East, from the remotest periods that we read of.
Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think,
not so mnch for the sake of the tenement, which his father
and ho could easily build up again with a few dry branches.
A DISSEETATION UPON BOAST PIG. 157
and the labour of an lionr or two, at any time, as for tlie
loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should
say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking
remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour
assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before
experienced. What could it proceed from ? — not from the
burnt cottage — he had smelt that smell before — indeed, this
was by no means the first accident of the kind which had
occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young
firebrand. Much less did it resemble that of any known-
herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the
same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what
to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there-
were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to
cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his
mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come
away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in
the world's life indeed, for before him no man had known
it) he tasted — crackling ! Again he felt and fumbled at the
pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his
fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke
into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt
so, and the pig that tasted so delicious ; and surrendering
himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up
whole haudfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it,
and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion,
when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed
with retributory cudgel, and finding how afiairs stood,
began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, as
thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more
than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which
he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him
quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those
remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could
not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end
of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation,
something like the following dialogue ensued.
" You graceless whelp, what have you got there devour-
ing ? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three-
158 A DISSERTATION UPON BOAST PIG.
houses witli your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you ! but
you must be eating fire, and I laiow not what — what have
3'ou got ihere, I say ?"
" father, the pig, the pig ! do come and taste how
nice the burnt pig eats."
The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his
son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son
that should eat burnt pig.
Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since
moming, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it
asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists
of Ho-ti, still shouting out, " Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig,
father, only taste — Lord!" — with such-like barbarous
ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.
Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the abomin-
able thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to
death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling
scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, and apply-
ing the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some
of its flavour, which, make what sour mouths he would for
a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In
conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious),
both father and son fairly set down to the mess, and never
left off till they had despatched all that I'cmained of the
litter.
Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape,
for the neighbours would certainly have stoned them for a
couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improv-
ing upon the good meat which God had sent them. Never-
theless, strange stories got about. It was observed that
Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more freqiiently than
ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some
would break out in broad day, others in the night-time.
As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of
Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, which was the
more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to
grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they
were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father
and eon summoned to take their trial at Pekin, lb en au
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 159
tnconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the
obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict aboxit
to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged
that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood
accused, might be handed into the box. He handled it,
and they all handled it ; and burning their fingers, as
Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature
prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the
face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge
had ever given, — to the surprise of the whole court, towns-
folk, strangers, reporters, and all present — without leaving
the box, or any manner of consultation whatever, they
brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty.
The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the
manifest iniquity of the decision : and when the court was
dismissed, went privily and bought up all the pigs that
could be had for love or money. In a few days his lord-
ship's town-house was observed to be on fire. The thing
took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires
in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear
all over the district. The insurance-offices one and all
shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every
day, until it was feared that the very science of architec-
ture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus
this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of
time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke,
who made a discovery that the flesh of swine, or indeed of
any other animal, might be cooked (burnt, as they called
it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to
dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridiron.
Eoasting by the string or spit came in a century or two
later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees,
concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and seem-
ingly the most obvious, arts make their way among man-
kind
Without placing too implicit faith in the account above
given, it must be agreed that if a worthy pretext for so
dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (espe-
cially in these days) could be assigned in favour of any
160 A DISSERTATION UPON IWAST PIG.
culinary object, tLat pretext and excuse miglit be found in
KOAST PIG.
Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, I will
maintain it to be the most delicate — prlnceps ohsoniorum.
I speak not of your grown porkers — things between pig
and pork — those hobbledehoys — but a young and tender
suckling — under a moon old — guiltless as yet of the sty —
with no original speck of the amor imrmmditice, the here-
ditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest — his voice
as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble
and a grumble — the mild forerunner or p-celudium of a
grunt.
B^e must he roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors
ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a sacrifice of the
exterior tegument !
There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that
of the crisp, tawny, well- watched, not over-roasted, cracJc-
ling, as it is well called — the very teeth are invited to
their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming
the coy, brittle resistance — with the adhesive oleaginous —
call it not fat ! but an indefinable sweetness growing up
to it — the tender blossoming of fat — fat cropped in the bud
— taken in the shoot — in the first innocence — the cream
and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food — the lean,
no lean, but a kind of animal manna — or, rather, fat and
lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each
other, that both together make but one ambrosian result or
common substance.
Behold him while he is " doing " — it seemeth rather a
refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so pas-
sive to. How equably he twirleth round the string ! Now
he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that
tender age ! he hath wept out his pietty eyes — radiant
jellies — shooting stars. — •
See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he
licth ! — wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to
the grossness and indocility Avhich too often accompany
maturer swinehood ? Ten to one he would have proved
u glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal —
A DISSERTATION UFON MO AST PIG. 161
wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation — from theso
sins he is happily snatched away —
Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely care —
his memoiy is odoriferous — no clown curseth, while his
stomach, half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coalheaver
bolteth him in reeking sausages — he hath, a fair sepulchre
in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure — and for
such a tomb might be content to die.
He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is
indeed almost too transcendent — a delight, if not sinful, yet
so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person
would do well to pause — too ravishing for mortal taste, she
woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach, her —
like lovers' kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering
on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish — but
she stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth not with the
appetite — and the coarsest hunger might barter her con-
sistently for a mutton-chop.
Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provocative of
the appetite than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of
the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him,
and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices.
Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of vir-
tues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be
unravelled without hazard, he is — good throughout. No
part of him is better or worse than another. He helpetli ,
as far as his little means extend, all around. He is the
least envious of banquets. He is all neighbours' fare.
I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly impart
a share of the good things of this life which fall to their
lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest
I take as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his
relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. " Pre-
sents," I often say, " endear Absents." Hares, pheasants,
partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those " tame villatio
fowl "), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense
as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as ii
162 A DISSERTATION UPON BOAST PIG.
were, upou the tongue of my friend. But a stop must be
put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, " give every-
thing." I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an
ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavours to extra-domi-
ciliate, or send out of the house slightingly (under pretext
of friendship, or I know not what) a blessing so particularly
adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual palate. —
It argues an insensibility.
I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school.
My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of
a holiday without stu ffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing,
into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a
smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to
school (it was over London Bridge) a grey-headed old
beggar saluted me (I have no doubt, at this time of day,
that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him
with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very cox-
combry of charity, school-boy like, I made him a present
of — the whole cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as
one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-
satisfaction ; but, before I had got to the end of the bridge,
my better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, think-
ing how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and
give her good gift away to a stranger that I had never
seen before, and who might be a bad man for aught I
knew ; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would
be taking in thinking that I — I myself, and not another —
would eat her nice cake — and what should I say to her the
next time I saw her — how naughty I was to part with her
pretty present ! — and the odour of that spicy cake came
back upon my recollection, and the pleasure and the
curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her joy
when she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she
would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at
last — and I blamed my impertinent spirit of alms-giving,
and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness ; and above all I
wished never to see the face again of that insidious, good-
for-notking, old gi'ey impostor.
Our ancestors v/cro nico in their method of sacrificing
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT Ot MARRIED FEOPLE. 16S
these tender victims. We read of pigs wliipt to death
with something of a shock, as we hear of any other ohsolete
custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would he
curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what
effect this process might have towards intenerating and
dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the
flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet
we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity,
how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might
impart a gusto. —
I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young
students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with
much learning and pleasantry on both sides, " Whether,
supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his death
by whipping (^per flagellationem extremavi) superadded a
pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any
possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man
justified in using that method of putting the animal to
death ?" I forget the decision.
His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few bread
crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of
mild sage. But banish, dear Mi-s. Cook, I beseech you, the
whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your
palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with planta-
tions of the rank and guilty garlic ; you cannot poison
them, or make them stronger than they ai-e— but consider,
he is a weaklino- — a flower.
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR
OF MARRIED PEOPLE.
A S a single man, I have spent a good deal of my time
JJL in noting down the infirmities of Married People, to
console myself for those superior pleasures, which they
tell me I have lost by remaining as I am.
I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their wives
164 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF
ever made any great impression upon me, or had much
tendency to strengthen me in those anti-social resolutions
which I took np long ago npon more substantial considera-
tions. What oftenest oftends me at the houses of married
persons where I visit, is an error of quite a difierent
description ; — it is that they are too loving.
Not too loving neither : that does not explain my mean-
ing. Besides, why should that offend me ? The very act
of separating themselves from the rest of the world, to have
the fuller enjoyment of each other's society, implies that
they prefer one another to all the world.
But what I complain of is, that they carry this preference
so undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces of us single
people so shamelessly, you cannot be in their company a
moment without being made to feel, by some indirect hint
or open avowal, that yoic are not the object of tliis prefer-
ence. Now there are some things which give no offence,
while implied or taken for granted merely ; but expressed,
there is much offence in them. If a man were to accost
the first homely-featured or plain-dressed young woman of
his acquaintance, and tell her bluntly, that she was not
handsome or rich enough for him, and he could not marry
her, he would deserve to be kicked for his ill-manners ; yet
no less is implied in the fact, that having access and oppor-
tunity of putting the question to her, he has never yet
thought fit to do it. The young woman understands this
as clearly as if it were put into words ; but no reasonable
young woman would think of making this the ground of a
quarrel. Just as little light have a married couple to tell
me by speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain than
speeches, that I am not the liappy man, — the lady's choice.
It is enough that I know I am not : I do not want this
perpetual reminding.
The display of superior knowledge or riches may bo
made sufficiently mortifying, but these admit of a pallia-
tive. The knowledge which is brought out to insult me,
may accidentally improve me ; and in the rich man's houses
und pictui'es, — his parks and gardens, I have a temporary
usufruct at least. But the display of married happiness
TEE BEHAVIOUR OF MAEBIED PEOPLE. 165
has none of these palliatives : it is tliroiigliont pure, un-
recompensed, nnqualified insult.
Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the
least invidious sort. It is the cunning of most possessors
of any exclusive privilege to keep their advantage as much
out of sight as possible, that theif less favoured neighbours,
seeing little of the benefit, may the less bo disposed to
question the right. But these married monopolists thrust
the most obnoxious part of their patent into our faces.
Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire com-
placency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances
of a new-married couple, — in that of the lady particu-
larly : it tells you, that her lot is disposed of in this world :
that you can have no hopes of her. It is true, I have none :
nor wishes either, perhaps : but this is one of those truths
which ought, as I said before, to be taken for granted, not
expressed.
The excessive airs which those people give themselves,
founded on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would be
more offensive if they were less irrational. We will allow
them to understand the mysteries belonging to their own
craft better than we, who have not had the happiness to be
made free of the company : but their arrogance is not con-
tent within these limits. If a single person presume to
offer his opinion in their presence, though upon the most
indifferent subject, he is immediately silenced as an incom-
petent person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaint-
ance, who, the best of the jest was, had not changed her
condition above a fortnight before, in a question on which
I had the misfortune to differ from her, respecting the pro-
perest mode of breeding oysters for the London market,
had the assurance to ask with a sneer, how such an old
Bachelor as I could pretend to know anything about such
matters !
But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the airs
which these creatures give themselves when they come, as
they generally do, to have children. When I consider how
little of a rarity children are,— that every street and blind
alley swarms with them, — that the poorest people com-
ICG A BACHELOR'S COMFLAINT OF
monly have tliem in most abundance, — that there are few
marriages that are not West with at least one of these bar-
gains, — how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond
hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end
in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, &c. — I cannot for my life
tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having
them. If they were young phoeni^ies, indeed, that were
bom but one in a year, there might be a pretext. But
when they are so common •
I do not advert to the insolent merit which they assume
with their husbands on these occasions. Let them look to
that. But why xve, who are not their natural-born sub-
jects, should be expected to bring our spices, mj'rrh, and
incense, — our tribute and homage of admiration, — I do not
see.
" Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so
are the young children ;" so says the excellent office in
our Prayer-book appointed for the churching of women.
" Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them." So
say I ; but then don't let him discharge his quiver upon us
that are weaponless ; — let them be arrows, but not to gall
and stick us. I have generally observed that these arrows
are double-headed : they have two forks, to be sure to hit
with one or the other. As for instance, when you come
into a house which is full of children, if you happen to take
no notice of them (you are thinking of something else,
perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their innocent caresses),
you are set down as untractable, morose, a hater of chil-
dren. On the other hand, if you find them more than
usually engaging, — if you are taken with their pretty
manners, and set about in earnest to romp and play with
them, — some pretext or other is sure to be found for sending
them out of the room ; they are too noisy or boisterous, or
Mr. does not like children. With one or other of
these forks the arrow is sure to hit you.
I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with tojang
with their brats, if it gives them any pain ; but I think it
unreasonable to be called upon to love them, where I see
no occasion, — to love a whole family, perhaps eight, nine.
THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 1G7
or ten, indiscriminately, — to love all the pretty dears, bo-
cause children arc so engaging !
I know there is a proverb, " Love me, love my dog :"
that is not always so very practicable, particularly if the
dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport.
But a dog, or a lesser thing — any inanimate substance, as a
keepsake, a watch or a ring, a tree, or the place where we
last parted when my friend went away upon a long ab-
sence, I can make shift to love, because I love him, and
anything that reminds me of him ; provided it be in its
nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue fancy
can give it. But children have a real character, and an
essential being of themselves : they are amiable or un-
amiable per se ; I must love or hate them as I see cause for
either in their qualities. A child's nature is too serious a
thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage
to another being, and to be loved or hated accordingly;
they stand with me upon their own stock, as much as men
and women do. Oh ! but you will say, sure it is an at-
tractive age, — there is something in the tender years of
infancy that of itself charms us ? That is the very reason
wiiy I am more nice about them. 1 know that a sweet
child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting
the delicate creatures which bear them ; but the prettier
the kind of thing is, the more desirable it is that it should
be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not much from
another in glory ; but a violet should look and smell the
daintiest. — I was alwaj^s rather squeami;:-]! in my women
and children.
But this is not the worst : one must be admitted into
their familiarity at least, before they can complain of inat-
tention. It implies visits, and some kind of intercourse
But if the husband be a man with whom you have lived on
a friendly footing before marriage —if you did not come in
on the wife's side — if you did not sneak into the house in
her train, but were an old friend in fast habits of intimacy
before their courtship was so much as thought on, — look
about you — your tenure is precarious — before a twelve-
month shall roll over your head, you shall find your old
168 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF
friend gradually grow cool and altered towards yon, and at
last seek opportunities of breaking with yon. I have scarce
a married friend of my acquaintance, upon whose firm faith
I can rely, whose friendship did not commence after the
■veriod of Ms marriage. With some limitations, they can
endure that ; but that the good man should have dared to
enter into a solemn league of friendship in which they were
not consulted, though it happened before they knew him,
—before they that are now man and wife ever met, — this
is intolerable to them. Every long friendship, every old
authentic intimacy, must be brought into their office to be
new stamped with their currency, as a sovereign prince
calls in the good old money that was coined in some reign,
before he was born or thought of, to be new marked and
minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will let
it pass current in the world. You may guess what luck
generally befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in
these neio mintings.
Innumeiabie are the ways which they take to insult and
worm you out of their husband's confidence. Laughing at
all you say with a kind of wonder, as if you were a queer
kind of fellow that said good things, hut an oddity, is one of
the ways ; — they have a particular kind of stare for the
pui-pose ; — till at last the husband, who used to defer to
your judgment, and would pass over some excrescences of
understanding and manner for the sake of a general vein
of observation (not quite vulgar) which he perceived in
you, begins to suspect whether you are not altogether a
humorist, — a fellow well enough to have consorted with
in his bachelor days, but not quite so proper to be intro-
duced to ladies. This may be called the staring way;
and is that which has oftenest been put in practice against
me.
Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of irony ;
that is, where they find you an object of especial regard
with their husband, who is not so easily to be shaken from
the lasting attachment founded on esteem which he has
conceived towards you, by never qualified exaggerations to
cry up all that you say or do, till the good man, who under-
THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 169
stands well enougli that it is all done in compliment to
him, grows weary of the debt of gratitude which is dno
to so much candour, and by relaxing a little on his part,
and taking down a peg or two in his enthusiasm, sinks
at length to the kindly level of moderate esteem — that
" decent affection and complacent kindness " towards you,
where she herself can join in sympathy with him without
much stretch and violence to her sincerity.
Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so
desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of innocent
simplicity, continually to mistake what it was which first
made their husband fond of you. If an esteem for some-
thing excellent in your moral character was that which
riveted the chain which she is to break, upon any ima-
ginary discovery of a want of poignancy in your conversa-
tion, she will cry, "I thought, my dear, you described
jour friend, ]\Ir. , as a great wit ?" If, on the other
hand, it was for some supposed charm in your conversation
that he first grew to like you, and was content for this to
overlook some trifling irregularities in your moral deport-
ment, upon the first notice of any of these she as readily
exclaims, " This, my dear, is your good Mr. !" One
good lady whom I took the liberty of expostulating with
for not showing me quite so much respect as I thought
due to her husband's old friend, had the candour to confess
to me that she had often heard Mr. speak of me
before marriage, and that she had conceived a great desire
to be acquainted with me, but (hat the sight of me had
very much disappointed her expectations ; for, from her
husband's representations of me, she had formed a notion
that she was to see a fine, tall, ofScer-like looking man (I
nse her very words), the very reverse of which proved to
be the truth. This was candid ; and I had the civility not
to ask her in return, how she came to pitch upon a standard
of personal accomplishments for her husband's friends
which differed so much from his own; for my friend's
dimensions as near as possible approximate to mine; he
standing five feet five in his shoes, in which I have the
advantage of him by about half an inch; and he no more
170 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF MARRIED PEOPLE.
than myself exhibiting any indications of a martial cha-
racter in his air or countenance.
These are some of the mortifications which I have en-
countered in the ahsnrd attempt to visit at their house?
To enumerate them all would be a vain endeavour ; I shalx
therefore just glance at the very common impropriety of
which married ladies are guilty, — of treating us as if we
were their husbands, and vice versa. I mean, when they
use us with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony.
Testacea, for instance, kept me the other night two or
three hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she
was fretting because Mr. — did not come home, till
the oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be
guilty of the impoliteness of touching one in his absence.
This was reversing the point of good manners : for cere-
mony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which
we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of
love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other
person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior atten-
tions in little points, for that invidious preference which it
is forced to deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept the
oysters back for me, and withstood her husband's impor-
tunities to go to supper, she would have acted according to
the strict rules of propriety. I know no ceremony that
ladies are bound to observe to their husbands, beyond the
point of a modest behaviour and decorum : therefore I
must protest against the vicarious gluttonj^ of Cerasia, who
at her own table sent away a dish of Morellas, which I
was applying to with great good-will, to her husband at
the other end of the table, and recommended a plate of
less extraordinary gooseberries to my unwedded palate
in their stead. Neither can I excuse the wanton affront
of
But I am weary of stringing up all m}^ married acquaint-
ance by Eoman denominations. Let them amend and
change their manners, or I promise to record the full-
length English of their names, to the terror of all such
(desioerato oifenders in future.
171
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTOES.
THE casual sight of an old Play Bill, which I picked
up the other day — I know not by what chance it was
Dreserved so long — tempts me to call to mind a few of the
Players, who make the principal figure in it. It presents
the cast of parts in the Twelfth -Night, at the old Drnry-
lane Theatre two-and-thirty years ago. There is something
very touching in these old remembrances. The}' make iis
think how we once used to read a Play Bill — not, as now
peradventure, singling out a favourite performer, and cast-
ing a negligent eye over the rest ; but spelling out every
name, down to the very mutes and servants of the scene ;
when it was a matter of no small moment to us whether
Whitfield, or Packer, took the part of Fabian ; when Benson,
and Burton, and Phillimore — names of small account — had
an importance, beyond what we can be content to attribute
now to the time's best actors. — " Orsino, by Mr. Barry
more." — What a full Shaksperian sound it carries ! how
fresh to memory arise the image and the manner of the
gentle actor ! Those who have only seen Mrs, Jordan
within the last ten or fifteen years, can have no adequate
notion of her performance of such parts as Ophelia ; Helena,
in All's AVell that Ends Well; and Viola, in this play.
Her voice had latterly acquired a coarseness, which suited
well enough with her Nells and Hoydens, but in those days
it sank, with her steady, melting eye, into the heart. Her
joyous parts — in which her memory now chiefly lives — in
her youth were outdone by her plaintive ones. There is
no giving an account how she delivered the disguised story
of her love for Orsino. It was no set speech, that she had
foreseen, so as to weave it into an harmonious period, line
necessarily following line, to make up the music — yet I
have heard it so spoken, or rather read, not without its
grace and beauty — but, when she had declared her sister's
history to be a " blank," and that she " never told her
love," there was a pause, as if the story had ended — and
then the image of the " worm in the bud " came up as a
172 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.
new suggestion — and the LeigMened image of " Patience "
still followed after that, as by some growing (and not
mechanical) process, thought springing up after thought, I
\f/ould almost say, as they were watered by her tears. Sy
in those fine lines —
Right loyal cantons of contemned love —
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills —
there was no preparation made in the foregoing image for
that which was to follow. She used no rhetoric in her
passion ; or it was nature's own rhetoric, most legitimate
then, when it seemed altogether without rule or law.
Mrs, Powel (now Mrs. Eenard), then in the pride of her
beauty, made an admirable Olivia. She was particularly
excellent in her unbending scenes in conversation with the
Clown. I have seen some Olivias — and those very sensible
actresses too — who in these interlocutions have seemed to
set their wits at the jester, and to vie conceits with him in
downright emulation. But she used him for her sport, like
what he was, to trifle a leisure sentence or two with, and
then to be dismissed, and she to be the Great Lady still.
She touched the imperioiis fantastic humour of the character
with nicety. Her fine spacious person filled the scene.
The part of Malvolio has, in my judgment, been so often
misunderstood, and the general merits of the actor, who then
played it, so unduly appreciated, that I shall hope for
pardon, if I am a little prolix upon these points.
Of all the actors who flourished in my time — a melan-
choly phrase if taken aright, reader — Bensley had most of
the swell of soul, was greatest in the delivery of heroic
conceptions, the emotions consequent upon the presentment
of a great idea to the fancy. He had the true poetical
enthusiasm — the rarest faculty among players. None that
I remember possessed even a portion of that fine madness
which he threw out in Hotspur's famous rant about glory,
or the transports of the Venetian incendiary at the vision
of the fired city. His voice had the dissonance, and at
times the inspiriting effect, of the trumpet. His gait was
uncouth and stiff, but no way embarrassed by afl'ectation ;
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTOBS. 173
find the thorougli-bred gentleman was uppermost in ever^'
movement. He seized the moment of passion with greatest
truth ; like a faithful clock, never striking before the time ;
never anticipating or leading you to anticipate. He was
totally destitute of trick and artifice. He seemed come
upon the stage to do the poet's message simply, and he did
it with as genuine fidelity as the nuncios in Homer deliver
the errands of the gods. He let the passion or the senti-
ment do its own work without prop or bolstering. He
would have scorned to mountebank it ; and betrayed none
of that cleverness which is the bane of serious acting. Foi-
this reason, his lago was the only endurable one which I
remember to have seen. No spectator, from his action,
could divine more of his artifice than Othello was supposed
to do. His confessions in soliloquy alone put you in posses-
sion of the mystery. There were no by-intimations to make
the audience fancy their own discernment so much greater
than that of the Moor — who commonly stands like a great
helpless mark, set up for mine Ancient, and a quantity of
barren spectators, to shoot their bolts at. The lago of
Bensley did not go to work so grossly. There was a trium-
phant tone about the character, natural to a general con-
sciousness of power ; but none of that petty vanity which
chuckles and cannot contain itself upon any little successful
stroke of its knavery — as is common with your small
villains, and green probationers in mischief. It did not
clap or crow before its time. It was not a man setting his
wits at a child, and winking all the while at other children,
who are mightily pleased at being let into the secret ; but
a consummate villain entrapping a noble nature into toils
against which no discernment was available, where the
manner was as fathomless as the purpose seemed dark, and
without motive. The part of Malvolio, in the Twelfth
Night, was performed by Bensley with a richness and a
dignity, of which (to judge from some recent castings of
that character) the very traditon must be worn out from
the stage. No manager in those days would have dreamed
of giving it to Mr. Baddely, or Mr. Parsons ; when Bensley
wa.s occasionally absent from the theatre, John Kemble
174 ON S03IE OF THE OLD ACTORS.
thought it no derogation to succeed to the part. Malvulio
is not essentially Indicrous. He becomes comic but by
;iccident. He is cold, austere, repelling ; but dignified, con-
sistent, and, for what appears, rather of an over-stretched
morality. Maria describes him as a sort of Puritan ; and
he might have worn his gold chain with honour in one of
our old roundhead families, in the service of a Lambert, or
a Lady Fairfax. But his morality and his manners are
misplaced in Illyria. He is opposed to the proper levities of
the piece, and falls in the unequal contest. Still his pride,
or his gravity, (call it which you will,) is inherent, and
native to the man, not mock or affected, which latter only
are the fit objects to excite laughter. His quality is at the
best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor contemptible. His
bearing is lofty, a little above his station, but probably not
much above his deserts. We see no reason why he should
not have been brave, honourable, accomplished. His careless
committal of the ring to the ground (which he was com-
missioned to restore to Cesario), bespeaks a generosity of
birth and feeling. His dialect on all occasions is that of a
gentleman and a man of education. We must not confound
him with the eternal old, low steward of comedy. He is
master of the household to a great princess ; a dignity
probably conferred upon him for other respects than age or
length of service. Olivia, at the first indication of his
supposed madness, declares that she " would not have him
miscarry for half of her dowry." Does this look as if the
character was meant to appear little or insignificant ? Once,
indeed, she accuses him to his face — of what ? — of being
" sick of self-love," — but with a gentleness and considerate-
ness, which could not have been, if she had not thought
that this particular infirmity shaded some virtues. His
rebuke to the knight and his sottish revellers, is sensible
and spirited; and when we take into consideration the
unprotected condition of his mistress, and the strict regard
with which her state of real or dissembled mourning would
draw the eyes of the world upon her house-afifairs, Malvolio
might feel the honour of the family in some sort in his
keeping ; as it appears not that Olivia had any more
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTOBS. 175
brothers, or Idnsmen, to look to it — for Sir Toby liad dropped
all such nice respects at the buttery-hatch. That Jlalvolio
■was meant to bo represented as possessing estimable
qualities, the expression of the Duke, in his anxiety to have
him reconciled, almost infers : " Pursue him, and entreat
him to a peace." Even in his abused state of chains and
darkness, a sort of greatness seems never to desert him. He
argues highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas, and
philosophizes gallantly upon his straw.* There must have
been some shadow of worth about the man ; he must have
been something more than a mere vapour — a thing of
straw, or Jack in office — before Fabian and Maria could
nave ventured sending him upon a courting-errand to
Olivia. There was some consonancy (as he would say) in
the undertaking, or the jest would have been too bold even
for that house of misrule.
Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part an air of
Spanish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like an old
Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opinionated, but his
.superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon a sense of
Avorth. There was something in it beyond the coxcomb.
It was big and swelling, but you could not be sure that it
was hollow. You might wish to see it taken down, but
3'ou felt that it was upon an elevation. He was magnificent
from the outset ; but when the decent sobrieties of the
character began to give way, and the poison of self-love, in
his conceit of the Countess's affection, gradually to work,
you would have thought that the hero of La Mancha in
person stood before you. How he went smiling to himself!
with what ineffable carelessness would he twirl his gold
chain ! what a dream it was ! you were infected with the
illusion, and did not wish that it should be removed ! you
had no room for laughter ! if an unseasonable reflection of
morality obtmded itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable
infirmity of man's nature, that can lay him open to such
* Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl ?
Mai. That the soul of our granJam might haply inhabit a bird.
Cloivn. What thinkest thou cf his opinion ?
Mai. I think nobly of the sou], and no way approve of his opinion.
176 ON SOME OF TEE OLD ACTORS.
frenzies — but, in truth, you ratlier admired than pitied the
lunacy Avhile it lasted — you felt that an hour of such mistake
was -worth an age with the eyes open. Who would not
wish to live but for a day in the conceit of such a lady's
love as Olivia? Why, the Duke would have given his
pi-incipality but for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or
waking, to have been so deluded. The man seemed to tread
upon air, to taste manna, to walk with his head in the
clouds, to mate Hyperion. ! shake not the castles of his
pride — endure yet for a season, bright moments of con-
fidence — " stand still, ye watches of the element," that
Malvolio may be still in fancy fair Olivia's lord! — but fate
and retribution say no — I hear the mischievous titter of
Maria — the witty taunts of Sir Toby — the still more insup-
portable triumph of the foolish knight — the counterfeit Sir
Topas is unmasked — and " thus the whirligig of time," as
the true clown hath it, " brings in his revenges." I confess
that I never saw the catastrophe of this character, while
Bensley played it, without a kind of tragic interest. There
was good foolery too. Few now remember Dodd. What
an Aguecheek the stage lost in him ! Lovegrove, who
came nearest to the old actors, revived the character some
few seasons ago, and made it sufficiently grotesque*; bat
Dodd was it, as it came out of nature's hands. It might be
said to remain in piiris naturalibus. In expre^ing slowness
of apprehension, this actor surpassed all others. You could
see the first dawn of an idea stealing slowly over his coun-
tenance, climbing up by little and little, with a painful
process, till it cleared up at last to the fulness of a twilight
conception — its highest meridian. He seemed to keep back
his intellect, as some have had the power to retard their
pulsation. The balloon takes less time in filling than it
took to cover the expansion of his broad moony face over
all its quarters with expression, A glimmer of understand-
ing would appear in a corner of his eye, and for lack of fuel
go out again. A part of his forehead would catch a little
intelligence, and be a long time in communicating it to the
remainder.
I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than five-
ON SOME OF THE OLD AC TOES. 177
and-twenty years ago, that Avalking in the gardens of Gray's
Inn — they were then far finer than they are now — tlis
accnrsed A^erulain Buildings had not encroached upon all
the east side of them, cutting out delicate green crankles,
and shouldering away one or two of the stately alcoves of
the terrace — the survivor stands gaping and relationless as
if it rememhered its brother — they are still the best gardens
of any of the Inns of Court, my beloved Temple not forgotten
— have the gravest character ; their aspect being altogether
reverend and law-breathing— Bacon has left the impress of
his foot upon their gravel walks taking my afternoon
solace on a summer day upon the aforesaid terrace, a comely
sad personage came towards me, whom, from his grave air
and deportment, I judged to be one of the old Benchers of
the Inn. He had a serious, thoughtful forehead, and seemed
to be in meditations of mortalit3^ As I have an instinctive
awe of old Benchers, I was passing him with that sort of
sub-indicative token of respect which one is apt to demon-
strate towards a venerable stranger, and which rather
denotes an inclination to greet him, than any positive
motion of the body to that effect — a species of humility
and will- worship which I observe, nine times out of ten,
rather puzzles than pleases the person it is offered to —
when the face turning full upon me strangely identified
itself with that of Dodd. Upon close inspection I was not
mistaken. But could this sad thoughtful countenance be
the same vacant face of folly which I had hailed so often
under circumstances of gaiety ; which I had never seen
without a smile, or recognized but as the usher of mirth ;
that looked out so formally flat in Foppington, so frothily
pert in Tattle, so impotently busy in Backbite ; so blankly'-
divested of all meaning, or resolutely expressive of none, in
Acres, in Fribble, and a thousand agreeable impertinences ?
Was this the face — full of thought and carefulness — that
had so often divested itself at will of every trace of either
to give me diversion, to clear my cloudy face for two or three
hours at least of its furrows ! Was this the face — manly,
sober, intelligent — Avliich I had so often despised, made
mocks at, made merry with ! The remembrance of the
N
178 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTOES.
freedoms wLicli I had taken with, it came upon me with a
leproach of insult. I could have asked it pardon. I
thought it looked upon me with a sense of injur3\ There
is something strange as well as sad in seeing actors — youj-
pleasant fellows particularly — subjected to and suffering
the common lot;- — their fortunes, their casualties, theii-
deaths, seem to belong to the scene, their actions to
be amenable to poetic justice only. We can hardly connect
them with more awful responsibilities. The death of this fine
actor took place shortly after this meeting. lie had quitted
the stage some months ; and, as I learned afterwards, had
been in the habit of resorting daily to these gardens, almost
to the day of his decease. In these serious walks, probably,
he was divesting himself of many scenic and some real
vanities — weaning himself from the frivolities of the lesser
and the greater theatre — doing gentle penance for a life o-^'
no very reprehensible fooleries — taking off by degrees the
buffoon mask which he might feel he had worn too long —
and rehearsing for a more solemn cast of part. Dying, ho
" put on the weeds of Dominic." *
If few can remember Dodd, many yet living will not easily
forget the pleasant creature, who in those days enacted the
part of the Clown to Dodd's Sir Andrew. — Eichard, or rather
Dicky Suett — for so in his life-time he delighted to be
called, and time hath ratified the appellation — lieth buried
on the north side of the cemetery of Holy Paul, to whoso
service his nonage and tender years were dedicated. There
are who do yet remember him at that period — his pipe
clear and harmonious. He would often speak of his
chorister days, when he was " cherub Dicky."
* Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice collection
of old English literature. I should jndge him to have been a man of
wit. I know one instance of an imjiromptu which no length of study
could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem Wliite, had seen him one
evening in Aguecheelc, and recognising Dodd the next day in Fleet
Street, was ii-rer istibly impelled to take off his hat and salute him as the
identical Knight of the preceding evening with a " Save you. Sir
Andrew." Dodd, not at all disconcerted at this imusual address from a
stranger, witli a courteous half-rebulring wave of the hand, put him ollf
with an " Awav, Fool."
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 179
"\Vhat clijiped liis wings, or made it expedient that lie
should exchange the holy for the profane state; whether he
iiad lost his good voice (his best recommendation to that
office), like Sir John, " with hallooing and singing of
anthems ;" or whether he was adjudged to lack something,
even in those early years, of the gravity indispensable to au
occupation which pro fesseth to " commerce wi'th the skies,"
— 1 could never rightly learn ; but we find him, after tho
probation of a twelvemonth or so, reverting to a secular
condition and become one of us.
I think he was not altogether of that timber out of whicli
cathedral seats and sounding-boards are hewed. But if a
glad heart — kind, and therefore glad — be any part of
sanctity, then might the robe of Motley, Avith which he
invested himself with so much humility after his depriva-
tion, and which he wore so long with so much blameless
satisfaction to himself and to the public, be accepted for a
surplice — his white stole, and alhe.
The first fruits of his secularization was an engagement
upon the boards of Old Drury, at which theatre he com-
menced, as I have been told, with adopting the manner of
Parsons in old men's characters. At the period in which
most of us knew him, he was no more an imitator than he.
was in any true sense himself imitable.
He was the Robin Goodfellow of the stage. He came
in to trouble all things with a welcome perplexity, himself
no whit troubled for the matter. He was known, like Puck,
by his note — Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! — sometimes deepening to
Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! with an irresistible accession, derived,
perhaps, remotely from his ecclesiastical education, foreign
to his prototype of — La ! Thousands of hearts yet respond
to the chuckling ha ! of Dicky Suett, brought back ti»
their remembrance by the faithful transcript of his friend
Mathews's mimicry. The " force of nature could no further
go." He drolled upon the stock of these two syllables
richer than the cuckoo.
Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his
composition. Had ho had but two grains (nay, half a grain)
of it, he could never have supported himself upon those twa
N 2
ISO ox SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.
spider's strings, wliich sei"\'ed him (iu the latter part of his
unmixed existence) as legs. A doubt or a scruple must
have made him totter, a sigh have puiTed him dov^^l ; the
weight of a frown had staggered him, a wrinkle made him
lose his balance. But on he went, scrambling upon thoso
aiiy stilts of his, with Robin Goodfellow, " thorough brake,
thorough briar," reckless of a scratched face or a toiii
doublet.
Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed his fools and
jesters. They have all the true Suett stamp, a loose and
jshambling gait, a slippery tongue, this last the ready
midwife to a without-pain- delivered jest ; in words, light as
air, venting truths deep as the centre ; with idlest rhj^mes
tagging conceit when busiest, singing with Lear in the
tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery-hatch.
Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of
personal favourites with the town than any actors before
or after. The difference, I take it, was this : — Jack was
more beloved for his sweet, good-natured, moral pretensions.
Dicky was more liJicd for his sweet, good-natured, no pre-
tensions at all. Your whole conscience stirred with Ban-
nister's performance of Walter in the Children in the Wood
— but Dicky seemed like a thing, as Shakspeare saj's of
Love, too young to know what conscience is. lie put us
into Vesta's days. Evil fled before him — not as from Jack,
as from an antagonist, — but because it could not touch him,
any more than a cannon-ball a fly. He was delivered from
the burthen of that death ; and, when Death came himself,
not in metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it is recorded of him by
Kobert Palmer, wdio kindly watched his exit, that he
I'eceived the last stroke, neither varying his accustomed
tranquillity, nor tune, with the simple exclamation, worthy
to have been recorded in his epitaph — La ! La I
Bdbhy !
The elder Palmer (of stage-ti'eading celebrity) commonly
])layed Sir Toby in those days ; but there is a solidity of
Avit in the jests of that half-Falstaff which he did not quite
iill out. He was as much too shoAvy as Moody (who some-
times took the part) was dry and sottish. In sock or buskin
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTOliS. 181
there was an air of swaggering gentility about Jack Palmer.
He was a gentleman with a slight infusion of iJie footman.
His brother Bob (of recenter memory), who was his shadow
in everytLing while he lived, and dwindled into loss than
a shadow afterwards — was a gentleman with a little stronger
infusion of the latter ingredient ; that was all. It is amazing
liow a little of the more or less makes a difference in these
things. When you saw Bobby in the Duke's Servant,*
you said, "What a pity such a pretty fellow was only a
servant!" When you saw Jack figuring in Captain Abso-
lute, you thought you could trace his promotion to somo
lady of quality who fancied the handsome fellow in his
topknot, and had bought him a commission. Thereforo
Jack in Dick Amlet was insuperable.
Jack had two voices, both plausible, hypocritical, and
insinuating; but his secondary or supplemental voice still
more decisively histrionic than his common one. It was
reserved for the spectator ; and the dramatis personal wero
supposed to know nothing at all about it. The lies of
Young Wilding, and the sentiments in Joseph Surface, wero
thus marked out in a sort of italics to the audience. This
secret correspondence with the company before the curtain
(which is the bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely
happy effect in some kinds of comedy, in the more highly
artificial comedy of Congreve or of Sheridan especially,
where the absolute sense of reality (so indispensable to
scenes of interest) is not required, or would rather interfere
to diminish your pleasure. The fact is, you do not believt>
in such characters as Surface — the villain of artificial
comedy — even while you read or see them. If you did,
tliey would shock and not divert you. When Ben, in Lovo
for Love, returns from sea, the following exquisite dialoguo
■occurs at his first meeting with his father : — •
Sir Sampson. Tliou hast been many a weary league, Ben, since I sa\r
tliee.
Ben. Ey, cy, been. Been far cuougli, an that be all.— Well, father
and how do all at home ? how does brother Dick and brother Val 'i
* Higli Life Below Stairs.
182 OX SOME OF THE OLD AGTOBS.
Sir Sam2)Son. Dick ! body o' me, Dick lias been dead tliese two ycarai
I writ you word when you were at Leftborn.
Ben. Mess, that's true; Marry, I bad forgot. Dick's dead, as you say
—well, and bow ? — I bave a many questions to ask you —
Here is an instance of insensibility -wliich in real lifo
would be revolting, or rather in real life could not have co-
existed with tho "warm-liearted temperament of the cha-
racter. But when you read it in the spirit with which such
playful selections and specious combinations rather than
strict mctajpJirases of nature should be taken, or when you
gaw Bannister play it, it neither did, nor does, wound the
moral sense at all. For what is Ben — the pleasant sailor
which Bannister gives us — but a piece of satire — a crea-
tion of Congreve's fancy — a dreamy combination of all
the accidents of a sailor's character — his contempt of money
— his credulity to women—with that necessary estrange-
ment from home which it is just within the verge of
credibility to suppose might produce such an hallucination
as is here described. We never think tbe worse of Ben for
it, or feel it as a stain upon his character. But when an
actor comes, and instead of the delightful phantom — the
creature dear to half-belief — which Bannister exhibited —
displays before our eyes a do^vnright concretion of a Wapping
sailor — a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar — and nothing else — ■
when instead of investing it with a delicious confusedness
of the head, and a veering undirected goodness of purpose
— he gives to it a downright daylight understanding, and a
full consciousness of its actions ; thrusting forward the
sensibilities of the character with a pretence as if it stood
■upon nothing else, and was to be judged by them alone —
we feel the discord of the thing ; the scene is distu.rbed ; a
real man has got in among the dramatis personoe, and puts
them out. We want the sailor turned out. We feel that
his true place is not behind the curtain, but in the first oi*
Bccond gallery.
183
o:n the aetificial comedy of the last
CENTUEY.
THE artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is qnifo
extinct on onr stage. Congreve and Farqnbar show
their heads once in seven years only, to be exploded and put
down instantly. The times cannot bear them. Is it for a
few wild speeches, an occasional license of dialogue ? I
think not altogether. The business of their dramatic cha-
racters will not stand the moral test. We screw everything
up to that. Idle gallantry in a fiction, a dream, the passing
pageant of an evening, startles us in the same way as the
alarming indications of profligacy in a son or ward in real
life should startle a parent or guardian. We have no such
middle emotions as dramatic interests left. We see a stage
libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours' duration,
and of no after consequence, with the severe eyes which
inspect real vices with their bearings upon two worlds.
We are spectators to a plot or intrigue (not reducible in
life to the point of strict morality), and take it all for truth.
We substitute a real for a dramatic person, and judge him
accordingly. We try him in our courts, from which there
is no appeal to the dramatis personce, his peers. We have
been spoiled with — not sentimental comed}' — but a tyrant
ihx more pernicious to our pleasures which has succeeded to
it, the exclusive and all-devouring drama of common life ;
where the moral point is eveiything ; where, instead of the
fictitious half-believed personages of the stage (the phantoms
of old comedy), we recognise ourselves, our brothers, aunts,
kinsfolk, allies, patrons, enemies, — the same as in life, —
Avith an interest in what is going on so hearty and sub-
stantial, that we cannot afford our moral judgment, in its
deepest and most vital results, to compromise or slumber for
a moment. What is there ti'ansacting, by no modification is
made to affect us in any other manner than the same events
or characters would do in our relationships of life. We
carry our fire-side concerns to the theatre with us. We do
not go thither like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure
3S'l ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY
of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it ; to
raake assurance double, and take a bond of fate. We mu.st
live our toilsome lives twice over, as it was the mournful
piivilege of Ulysses to descend twice to the shades. All
that neuti-al ground of character, which stood between vice
and virtue ; or which in fact was indiflerent to neither,
where neither properly was called in question ; that happy
breathing-place from the burthen of a perpetual moral
questioning — the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted
casuistiy — is broken up and disfranchised, as injurious to
the interests of society. The privileges of the place are
taken a\\ay by law. We dare not dally wdth images, or
names, of wrong. We bark like foolish dogs at shadows.
"VVe dread infection from the scenic representation of dis-
order, and fear a painted pustule. In our anxiety that our
morality should not take cold, we wrap it up in a great
blanket surtout of precaution against the breeze and sun-
shine.
I confess for myself that (with no great delinquencies to
answer for) I am glad for a season to take an airing beyond
the diocese of the strict conscience, — not to live always in
the precincts of the law-courts, — but now and then, for a
dream-while or so, to imagine a Avorld with no meddling
restiictions — to get into recesses, whither the hunter cannot
follow me—-
Secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
Wiiilc yet there was no fear of Jove.
I come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher and
more healthy for it. I wear my shackles more contcntedl}'
for having respired the breath of an imaginaiy freedom. 1
do not know how it is with others, but I feel the better
always for the perusal of one of Congreve's — nay, why should
I not add even of W^xherlcy's — comedies. I am the gayer
at least for it ; and 1 could never connect those sports of a
witty fancy in any shape with any result to be drawn from
them to imitation in real life. They are a world of them-
selves almost as much as fairy land. Take one of their
characters, male or female (with few exceptions they are
OF THE LAST CENTURY. 185
alike), and place it in a modern play, and my virtuous
indignation shall viae against the profligate wretch, as
warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire ; because in a
modern play I am to judge of the right and the wrong.
The standard of police is the measure of political justice.
The atmosphere will blight it ; it cannot live here. It has
got into a moral world, where it has no business, from
which it must needs fall headlong ; as dizzy, and incapable
of making a stand, as a Swedei:iborgian bad spirit that has
wandered unawares into the sphere of one of his Good Men,
or Angels. But in its own world do we feel the creature is
so very bad ? — The Fainalls and the Mirabels, the Dorimants
and the Lady Touchwoods, in their own sphere, do not
offend my moral sense ; in fact, they do not appeal to it at
all. They seem engaged in their proper element. They
break through no laws or conscientious restraints. They
know of none. They have got out of Christendom into the
land — what shall I call it r — of cuckoldry — the Utopia of
gallantry, where pleasure is duty, and the manners perfect
freedom. It is altogether a speculative scene of things,
which has no reference whatever to the world that is. Ko
good person can be justly offended as a spectator, becausu
no good person suffers on the stage. Judged morally, every
character in these plays — the few exceptions only are
mistalces — is alike essentially vain and worthless. The
great art of Congreve is especially shown in this, that ho
has entirely excluded from his scenes— some little gene-
rosities in the part of Angelica perhaps excepted — not onh*
anj^thing like a faultless character, but any pretensions to
goodness or good feelings whatsoever. Whether he did
this designedly, or instinctively, the effect is as happy as
the design (if design) %vas bold. I used to wonder at the
strange power which his Way of the World in particular
possesses of interesting you all along in the pursuits of
characters, for whom you absolutely care nothing — for you
neither hate nor love his personages — and I think it is
owing to this very indifference for any, that you endure tha
whole. lie has spread a privation of moral light, I will
call it, rather than by the ugly name of palpable darkness.
T8G ON THE AliTIFlCIAL COMEDY
over his creations ; and Lis shadows flit before you without
distinction or preference. Had he introduced a good cha-
racter, a single gush of moral feeling, a revulsion of the
judgment to actual life and actual duties, the impertinent
Goshen would have only lighted to the discovery of
deformities, Avhich now are none, because wo think them
none.
Translated into real life, the characters of his, and his
friend Wycherley's dramas, are profligates and strumpets,
— tJie business of their brief existence, the undivided pur-
suit of lawless gallantry. No other spring of action, or
possible motive of conduct, is recognised ; principles which,
universally acted upon, must reduce this frame of things to
a chaos. But we do them wrong in so translating them.
iNo such effects are produced, in their world. When wo aro
among them, we are amongst a chaotic people. We aro
not to judge them by our usages. No reverend institutions
are insulted by their proceedings — for they have none
among them. No peace of families is violated — for no
family ties exist among them. Ko purity of the marriage
bed is stained — for none is supposed to have a being." No
deep affections are disquieted, no holy wedlock bands are
snapped asunder — for aii'ection's depth and wedded faith aro
not of the growth of that soil. There is neither right nor
wrong, — gratitude or its opposite, — claim or duty, — pater-
nity or sonship. Of what consequence is it to Virtue, or
how is she at all concerned about it, whether Sir Simon or
Dapperwit steal away Miss Martha ; or who is the father of
Lord Froth's or Sir Paul Pliant's children ?
The whole is a passing pageant, where we should sit as
unconcerned at the issues, for life or death, as at the battle
of the frogs and mice. But, like Don Quixote, we take part
against the puppets, and quite as impertinently. We dare
not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme, out of which our
coxcombical moral sense is for a little transitory ease
excluded. We have not the courage to imagine a state of
things for which there is neither reward nor punishment.
We cling to the painful necessities of shame and blame.
We would indict our very dreams.
OF THE LAST CENTURY. 187'
Amidst Iho mortifying circumstances attendant npon
j>ro\ving old, it is sometliing to have seen the School for
Scandal in its glory. This comedy grew out of Congrevo
and AVychcidey, but gathered some allays of the senti-
mental comedy "which followed theirs. It is impos.siblo
that it should bo noAV acted, though it continues, at long
intervals, to be announced in the bills. Its hero, when
Palmer played it at least, was Joseph Surface. When I
remember the gay boldness, the graceful solemn plausibility,
the measured step, the insinuating voice — to express it in a
word — the downright acted villany of the part, so different
from the pressure of conscious actual "wickedness, — -tho
hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy, — which made Jack so
deservedly a favourite in that character, I must needs con-
clude the present generation of playgoers more virtuous
than myself, or more dense. I freely confess that he
divided the po,lm with me with his better brother ; that, in
fact, I liked him quite as well. Xot but there are passages,.
— like that, for instance, where Joseph is made to refuse a
pittance to a poor relation, — incongruities which Sheridan
was forced upon by the attempt to join the artificial with
the sentimental comedy, either of which must destroy tho
other — but over these obstructions Jack's manner floated
him so lightly, that a refusal from him no more shocked you,
than the easy compliance of Charles gave you in reality any
pleasure ; you got over the paltry question as quickly as
you could, to get back into the regions of pure comedy,
where no cold moral reigns. The highly artificial mannc»
of Palmer in this character counteracted eveiy disagreeabl<i,
impression which you might have received from the con-
trast, supposing them real, between the two brothers. Yon
did not believe in Joseph with the same faith with which
you believed in Charles. The latter was a pleasant realit}-,
the former a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The
comedy, I have said, is incongruous ; a mixture of Con-
greve with sentimental incompatibilities; the gaiety upon
the whole is buoyant ; but it required the consummate art
of Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements.
A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now, would
i8S ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY
not dare io do the part in the same manner. He would
instinctively avoid every turn which might tend to un-
rcalise, and so to make the character fascinating. He must
take his cue from his spectators, who would expect a bad
jnan and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other as
the deathbeds of those geniuses are contrasted in the prints,
which 1 am sorry to sa^' have disappeared from the windows
of my old friend Carrington Bowles, of St. Paul's Church-
yard memory — (an exhibition as venerable as the adjacent
cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad and good man at
the hour of death ; where the ghastly apprehensions of the
former, — and truly the grim phantom with his reality of a
toasting-fork is not to be despised, — so finely contrast with
the meek complacent kissing of the rod, — taking it in liko
lioney and butter, — with which the latter submits to the
scythe of the gentle bleeder, Time, who wields his lancet
with the apprehensive finger of a popular young ladies'
surgeon. What flesh, liko loving grass, would not covet
to meet half-way the stroke of such a delicate mower ? —
John Palmer was twice an actor in this exquisite part. Ho
\vas playing to j'ou all the while that he was playing upon
Sir Peter and his lady. You had the first intimation of a
sentiment before it was on his lips. His altered voice was
meant to you, and you were to suppose that his fictitious
co-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all of it.
What was it to you if that half reality, the husband, was
overreached by the puppetry — or the thin thing (Lady
Teazle's reputation) was persuaded it was dying of a
]ilethory? The fortunes of Othello and Desdemona were
not concerned in it. Poor Jack has passed from the stage
in good time, that he did not live to tliis our age of serious-
iicss. The pleasant old Teazle King, too, is gone in good
1 ime. His manner would scarce have passed current in our
day. We must love or hate — acquit or condemn — censure?
or pity — exert our detestable coxcombry of moral judg-
ment upon everything, Joseph Surface, to go down now,
must be a downright revolting villain — no compromise —
his first appearance must shock and give horroi'— his
specious plausibilities, which the pleasurable faculties of
OF THE LAST CENTURY. 189
onr fathers welcomed with such hearty gi-eetlngs, knowing
that no harm (dramatic harm even) conld come, or was
meant to come, of them, must inspire a cokl and killing
aversion. Charles (the real canting person of the scene —
for the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends,
but his brother's professions of a good heart centre in down-
right self-satisfaction) must bo loved, and Joseph hated. To'
balance one disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter
Teazle must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old:
bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings (while King acted it)
were evidently as much played off at you, as they were
meant to concern anybody on the stage, — he must bo a real
person, capable in law of sustaining an injury — a persoii
towards whom duties are to be acknowledged — the genuine
crim. con. antagonist of the villanous seducer Joseph. To
realise him more, his sufferings under his unfortunate match
must have the downright pungency of life — must (or should)
make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same
predicament would move you in a neighbour or old friend.
The delicious scenes which give the play its name and
zest, must affect you in the same serious manner as if you
heard the reputation of a dear female friend attacked in
your real presence. Crabtrco and Sir Benjamin — thoso
poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of yoxir mirth —
must be ripened by this hot-bed process of realization into
asps or amphisbaanas ; and Mrs. Candour — ! frightful !
— become a hooded serpent. Oh ! who that remembers
Parsons and Dodd — the wasp and butterfly of the School for
Scandal — in those two characters ; and charming natuial
Miss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman as distinguished from
the fine lady of comedy, in the latter part — would forego
the true scenic delight — the escape from life — the oblivion
of consequences — the holiday barring out of the pedant
Reflection — those Saturnalia of two or three brief hours,
well won fi'om the world — to sit instead at one of our modern
plays — to have his cowa d conscience (that forsooth must
not be left for a moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals
— dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without reposo
must be — and his moral vanity pampered with images of
I GO ON THE AETIFICTAL COM ED i'
notional justice, notional beneficence, lives saved without
tlie spectator's risk, and fortunes given away that cost the
author nothing ?
No x^iece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in all its
parts as this manager'' s comedy. Miss Farren had succeeded
to Mrs. Abington in Lady Teazle; and Smith, the original
Charles, had retired when I first saw it. The rest of the
characters, with very slight exceptions, remained. I re-
member it was then the fashion to cry down John Kemble,
who took the part of Charles after Smith ; but, I thought,
very unjustly. Smith, I fancy, was more airy, and took the
eye with a certain gaiety of person. He brought with him
no sombre recollections of tragedy. He had not to expiate
the fault of having pleased beforehand in lofty declamation.
He had no sins of Hamlet or of Eichard to atone for. His
failure in these parts was a passport to success in one of so
opposite a tendency. But, as far as I could judge, the
weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal in-
capacity than he had to answer for. His harshest tones
in this part came steeped and dulcified in good-humour.
He made his defects a grace. His exact declamatory
manner, as he managed it, only served to convey the points
of his dialogue with more precision. It seemed to head
the shafts to carry them deeper. JSot one of his sparkling
sentences was lost. I remember minutely how he deli-
vered each in succession, and cannot by any effort imagine
how any of them could be altered for the better. No man
could deliver brilliant dialogue — the dialogue of Congreve
or of Wycherlcy — because none understood it — ^half so well
as John Kemble. His Valentine, in Love for Love, was, to
my recollection, faultless. He flagged sometimes in the
intervals of tragic passion. He would slumber over the
level parts of an heroic character. His Macbeth has
been known to nod. But he always seemed to me to be
particularly alive to pointed and ivitty dialogue. The
icl axing levities of tragedy have not been touched by an 3^
.since him — the playful court-bred spirit in which he con-
descended to the players in Hamlet — the sportive relief
wliich ho thi-ew into the darker shades of Eichard — dis-
OF THE LAST CENTURY. 19J
appeared witli liim. [Tragedy is become a uniform dead
wciglit. They have fastened lead to her buskins, Sho
never pulls them off for the ease of a moment. To invert
a commonplace from Niobe, she never forgets herself to
liquefaction.] He had his sluggish moods, his torpors — bnt
they were the halting-stones and resting-place of his tragedy
— politic savings, and fetches of the breath — husbandry' of
the lungs, where nature pointed him to be an economist —
rather, I think, tlian errors of the judgment. They were, at
vporst, less painful than the eternal tormenting unappeasable
vigilance,— the " lidless dragon eyes," of present fasliion-
able tragedy.
[The story of his swallowing opium pills to keep him
lively on the first night of a certain tragedy, we may pre-
sume to be a piece of retaliatory pleasantry on the part of
the suflering author ; but, indeed, John had the art of
diffusing a complacent equable dulness (which you knew
not where to quarrel with), over a piece which he did not
like, beyond any of his contemporaries. John Kemble had
made up his mind earl}'', that all the good tragedies which
could be written, had been written ; and he resented any
new attempt. His shelves were full. The old standards
were scope enough for his ambition. He ranged in them
absolute — and fair " in Otway, full in Shakspeare shone."
He succeeded to the old lawful thjones, and did not care
to adventure bottomry with a Sir Edward Mortimer or any
casual speculator that offered. I remember, too acutely for
my peace, the deadly extinguisher which he put ujDon my
friend G.'s "Antonio." G., satiate with visions of political
justice (possibly not to be realized in our time), or willing
to let the sceptical worldlings see that his anticipations of
the future did not preclude a warm sympathy for men as
they are and have been — wrote a tragedy. He chose a
story, affecting, romantic, Spanish — the plot simple, with-
out being naked — the incidents uncommon, without being
overstrained. Antonio, who gives the name to the piece, is
a sensitive young Castilian, who, in a fit of his country
honour, immolates his sister —
But I must not anticipate the catastrophe — the play
102 OX TUE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY
reader, is extant in choice English — and yon will emplo}" a
spare half-crown not injndicioiisly in the quest of it.
The conception was hold, and the denouement — the time
and place in which the hero of it existed, considered — not
much out of keeping; yet it must he confessed, that it
required a delicacy of handling both from the author and
the performer, so as not much to shock the prejudices of a
modern English audience. G., in my opinion, had done his
part,
John, who was in familiar habits with the philosopher,
had undertaken to play Antonio. Great expectations were
formed. A philosopher's first play was a new era. The
night arrived. I was favoured with a seat in an advan-
tageous box, between the author and his friend M . G.
sat cheerful and confident. In his friend M.'s looks, who
had perused the manuscript, I read some terroi\ Antonio, in
the person of John Philip Kemble, at length appeared,
starched out in a ruff which no one could dispute, and in
most irreproachable moustachios. John always dressed
most provokingly correct, on these occasions. The first act
swept by, solemn and silent. It went off, as G assured M.,
exactly as the opening act of a piece — the protasis — should
do. The cue of the spectators was, to be mute. The cha-
i-acters were but in their introduction. The passions and
the incidents would be developed hereafter. Applause
hitherto would bo impertinent. Silent attention was the
effect all-desirable. Poor M. acquiesced — but in his honest,
friendly face 1 could discern a working which told how
much more acceptable the plaudit of a single hand (however
misplaced) would have been than all this reasoning. The
second act (as in duty bound) rose a little in interest, but
still John kept his forces under — in policy, as G. would,
liave it — and the audience were most complacently attentive.
The protasis, in fact, was scarcely unfolded. The interest
would warm in the next act, against which a special
incident was provided. M. wiped his cheek, flushed with
a friendly perspiration — 'tis M.'s way of showing his zeal
— " from every jiorc of him a perfume falls " — I honour it
above Alexander's. ITc had once or twice during this act
OF THE LAST CENTURY. 193
joined his palms, in a feeble endeavour to elicit a sound —
they emitted a solitary noise, without an echo — there was
no deep to answer to his deep. G. repeatedly begged him
to be quiet. The third act at length brought on the scene
which was to Avarm the piece, progressively, to the final
flaming forth of the catastrophe. A philosophic calm
settled upon the clear brow of G., as it approached. The
lips of M, quivered. A challenge was held forth upon
the stage, and there was a promise of a fight. The pit
roused themselves on this extraordinary occasion, and, as
their manner is, seemed disposed to make a ring, — when
suddenly, Antonio, who was the challenged, turning the
tables upon the hot challenger, Don Gusman (who, by the
way, should have had his sister) baulks his humour, and
the pit's reasonable expectation at the same time, with
some speeches out of the ' New Philosophy against Duel-
ling.' The audience were here fairly caught — their courage
was up, and on the alert — a few l)lows, ding-dong, as E — s,
the dramatist, afterwards expressed it to me, might have
done the business, when their most exquisite moral sense
was suddenly called in to assist in the mortifj-ing negation
of their own pleasure. They could not applaud for dis-
appointment ; the}^ would not condemn for morality's sake.
The interest stood stone still ; and John's manner was not
at all calculated to unpetrify it. It was Christmas time,
and the atmosphere furnished some pretext for asthmatic
affections. One began to cough — his neighbour S3'mpa-
thized with him — till a cough became epidemical. But
when, from being half artificial in the pit, the cough got
frightfully naturalised among the fictitious persons of the
drama, and Antonio himself (albeit it was not set down in
the stage directions) seemed more intent upon relieving
his own lungs than the distresses of the author and his
friends, — then G. "first knew fear;" and, mildly turning
to M., intimated that he had not been aware that Mr. K.
laboured under a cold ; and that the performance might
possibly have been postponed with advantage for some
nights further — still keeping the same serene counte-
nance, while M. sweat like a bull. It would be invidious to
o
194 ■ ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY, &c.
pursue the fiites of this ill-starred evening, in vain did
the plot tbicken in the scenes that followed ; in vain the
dialogue waxed more passionate and stirring, and the
progress of the sentiment point more and more clearly to
the arduous development which impended. In vain the
action was accelerated, while the acting stood still. From
the beginning John had taken his stand ; had wound him-
self up to an even tenor of stately declamation, from which
no exigence of dialogue or person could make him swerve
for an instant. To dream of his rising with the scene (the
common trick of tragedians) was preposterous; for, from
the onset, he had planted himself, as upon a terrace, on an
eminence vastly above the audience, and he kept that
sublime level to the end. He looked from his throne of
elevated sentiment upon the under-world of spectators
with a most sovereign and becoming contempt. There
was excellent pathos delivered out to them : an they
would receive it, so ; an they would not receive it, so ;
there was no offence against decorum in all this ; nothing
to condemn, to damn. Not an irreverent symptom of a
sound was to be heard. The procession of verbiage stalked
on through four and five acts, no one venturing to predict
what would come of it, when, towards the winding up of
the latter, Antonio, with an irrelevancy that seemed to
stagger Elvira herself — 'for she had been coolly arguing
the point of honour with him — suddenly whips out a
poniard, and stabs his sister to the heart. The effect was
as if a murder had been committed in cold blood. The
whole house rose up in clamorous indignation, demanding
justice. The feeling rose far above hisses. I believe at
that instant, if they could have got him, they would have
torn the unfortunate author to pieces. Not that the act
itself was so exorbitant, or of a complexion different from
what they themselves would have applauded upon another
occasion, in a Brutus or an Appius, but for want of attend-
ing to Antonio's loorcls, which palpably led to the expec-
tation of no less dire an event, instead of being seduced
by his mourner, which seemed to promise a sleep of a less
alarming nature than it was his cue to inflict upon Elvira ;
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 195
they found themselves betrayed into an accompliceship
of murder, a perfect misprision of parricide, while they
dreamed of nothing less. M., I believe, was the only
person who suffered acutely from the failure ; for G.
thenceforward, with a serenity unattainable but by the
true philosophy, abandoning a precarious popularity, re-
tired into his fasthold of speculation, — the drama in which
the world was to be his tiring-room, and remote posterity
his applauding spectators, at once, and actors.]
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN.
NOT many nights ago I had come home from seeing this
extraordinary performer in Cockletop ; and when I
retired to my pillow, his whimsical image still stuck by me,
in a manner as to threaten sleep. In vain I tried to divest
myself of it, hj conjuring up the most opposite associations.
I resolved to be serious. I raised up the gravest topics of
life ; private misery, public calamity. All would not do :
There the antic sate
Mocking our state
his queer visnomy — his bewildering costume — all the
strange things which he had raked together — his serpentine
rod swagging about in his pocket — Cleopatra's tear, and
the rest of his relics — O'Keefe's wild farce, and his wilder
commentary — till the passion of laughter, like grief in ex-
cess, relieved itself by its own weight, inviting the sleep
which in the first instance it had driven away.
But I was not to escape so easily. No sooner did I fall
into slumbei's, than the same image, only more perplexing,
assailed me in the shape of dreams. Not one Munden, but
five hundred, were dancing before me, like the faces which,
whether you will or no, come when you have been taking
opium — all the strange combinations, which this strangest
of all strange mortals ever shot his proper countenance
into, from the day he came commissioned to dry up the
196 ON THE ACTING OF MJJNDEN.
tears of tlie town for tlie loss of' tlie now almost forgotten
Edwin. for the power of the pencil to have fixed them
when I awoke ! A season or two since, there was exhibited
a Hogarth gallery. I do not see why there should not be a
Miinden gallery. In richness and variety, the latter would
not fall short of the former.
There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one (but
what a one it is ! ) of Liston ; but Munden has none that
you can properly pin down, and call Ms. When you think
he has exhausted his battery of looks, in unaccountable
warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an
entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He is not one,
but legion ; not so much a comedian, as a company. If his
name could be multiplied like his countenance, it might fill
a play-bill. He, and he alone, literally makes faces : applied
to any other person, the phrase is a mere figure, denoting-
certain modifications of the human countenance. Out of
some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his friend
Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as easily. I
should not be surprised to see him some day put out the
head of a river-horse : or come forth a pewitt, or lapwing,
some feathered metamorphosis.
I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry —
in old Dornton — diffuse a glow of sentiment which has
made the pulse of a crowded theatre beat like that of one
man ; when he has come in aid of the pulpit, doing good
to the moral heart of a people. I have seen some faint
approaches to this sort of excellence in other players. But
in the grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands out as single
and unaccompanied as Hogarth. Hogarth, strange to tell,
had no followers. The school of Munden began, and must
<<ind, with himself.
Can any man ivonder, like him ? can any man see ghosts,
like him? ov fight imth Ms oion shadow — " sessa" — as he does
in that strangely-neglected thing, the Cobbler of Preston —
where his alternations from the Cobbler to the Magnifico,
and from the Magnifico to the Cobbler, keep the brain of
the spectator in as wild a ferment, as if some Arabian
Night were being acted before him. Who like him can
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 197
throw, or ever attempted to throw, a preternatural interest
over the commonest daily-life objects ? A table or a joint-
stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity equivalent to
Cassiopeia's chair. It is invested with constellatory im-
portance. You could not speak of it with more deference,
if it were mounted into the firmament. A beggar in the
hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, rose the Patriarch of
Poverty. So the gusto of Munden antiquates and ennobles
what it touches. His pots and his ladles are as grand and
primal as the seething-pots and hooks seen in old prophetic
vision. A tub of butter, contemplated by him, amounts to
a Platonic idea. He understands a leg of mutton in its
quiddity. He stands wondering, amid the commonplace
materials of life, like primseval man with the sun and stars
about him.
02
THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELI A
PEEFACE.
BY A FRIEND OF THE LATE KLIA .
This poor gentleman, who for some months past had been
in a declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to
nature.
To say truth, it is time ho were gone. The humour of
the thing, if ever there was much in it, was pretty well
exhausted ; and a two years' and a half existence has been
a tolerable duration for a phantom.
I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have
heard objected to my late friend's writings was well-
founded. Crude they are, I grant you — a sort of unlicked,
incondite things — villanously pranked in an affected array
of antique modes and phrases. They had not been his, if
they had been other than such ; and better it is. that a
writer should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than
to affect a natl^ralness (so called) that should be strange to
him. Egotistical they have been pronounced by some
who did not know, that what he tells us, as of himself, was
often true only (historically) of another; as in a formei
Essay (to save many instances) — where under the first
person (his favourite figure) he shadows forth the forlorn
estate of a country-boy placed at a London school, far from
his friends and connections — in direct opposition to his
own early history. If it be egotism to imply and twine
with his own identity the griefs and aff"ections of anothe?'—
making himself many, or reducing many unto himselt—
then is the skilfnl novelist, who all along brings in his hear
or heroine, speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of
It preface.
all ; who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that
narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist escape
being faulty, who, doubtless, under cover of passion uttered
by another, oftentimes gives blameless vent to his most
inward feelings, and expresses his own story modestly?
My late friend was in many respects a singular character.
Those who did not like him, hated him ; and some, who
once liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters.
The truth is, he gave himself too little concern what he
uttered, and in whose presence. He observed neither time
nor place, and would e'en out with what came uppermost.
With the severe religionist he would pass for a free-thinker ;
while the other faction set him down for a bigot, or per-
suaded themselves that he belied his sentiments. Few
understood him ; and I am not certain that at all times
he quite understood himself. He too much aifected that
dangerous figure — irony. He sowed doubtful speeches,
and reaped plain, unequivocal hatred. He would interrupt
the gravest discussion with some light jest ; and yet,
perhaps, not quite irrelevant in ears that could understand
it. Your long and much talkers hated him. The informal
habit of his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of
speech, forbade him to be an orator ; and he seemed deter-
mined that no one else should play that part when he was
present. He was petit and ordinary in his person and
appearance. I have seen him sometimes in what is called
good company, but where he has been a stranger, sit silent,
and be suspected for an odd fellow ; till some unlucky
occasion provoking it, he would stutter out some senseless
pun (not altogether senseless, perhaps, if rightly taken),
which has stamped his character for the evening. It was
hit or miss with him; but nine times out of ten, he con-
trived by this device to send away a whole company his
enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance,
and his happiest imp-omptus had the appearance of eifort.
He has been accused of trying to be witty, when in truth
he was but struggling to give his poor thoughts articula-
tion. He chose his companions for some individuality of
character which they manifested. Hence, not many persons
FEE FACE. X
ot science, and few professed literati, were of his councils.
They were, for the most part, persons of an uncertain for-
tune j and, as to such people commonly nothing is more
obnoxious than a gentleman of settled (though moderate)
income, he passed with most of them for a great miser. To
my knowledge this was a mistake. His intimados, to con-
fess a truth, were in the world's eye a ragged regiment.
He found them floating on the surface of society ; and the
colour, or something else, in the weed pleased him. The
burrs stuck to him — but they were good and loving burrs
for all that. He never greatly cared for the society of what
are called good people. If any of these were scandalised
(and offences were sure to arise) he could not help it.
When he has been remonstrated with for not making more
concessions to the feelings of good people, he would retort
by asking, what one point did these good people ever con-
cede to him ? He was temperate in his meals and diversions,
but always kept a little on this side of abstemiousness. Only
in the use of the Indian weed he might be thought a little
excessive. He took it, he would say, as a solvent of speech.
Marry — as the friendly vapour ascended, how his prattle
would curl up sometimes with it! the ligaments which
tongue-tied him were loosened, and the stammerer pro-
ceeded a statist !
I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice
that my old friend is departed. His jests were beginning
to grow obsolete, and his stories to be foimd out. He felt
the appi'oaches of age ; and while he pretended to cling to
life, you saw how slender were the ties left to bind him.
Discoui'sing with him latterly on this subject, he expressed
himself with a pettishness, which I thought unworthy of
him. In our walks about his suburban retreat (as he
called it) at Shacklewell, some children belonging to a
school of industry had met us, and bowed and curtseyed,
as he thought, in an especial manner to Mm. " They take
me for a visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. He
had a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like
anything important and parochial. He thought that he
approached nearer to that stamp daily. He had a genej'al
vi PREFACE.
aversion from being treated like a grave or respectable
charactei-, and kept a wary eye upon the advances of age
that should so entitle him. He herded always, while it
was possible, with people younger than himself. He did
not conform to the march of time, but was dragged along
in the procession. His manners lagged behind his years.
He was too much of the boy-man. The toga virilis never
sate gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions of in-
fancy had burnt into him, and he resented the impertinence
of manhood. These were weaknesses ; but such as they
were, they are a key to explicate some of his writings.
THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA.
BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIEE.
I DO not know a pleasure more affecting than to range
at will over the deserted apartments of some fine old
family mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit of
a better passion than envy : and contemplations on the
great and good, whom we fancy in succession to have been
its inhabitants, weave for us illusions, incompatible with
the bustle of modern occupancy, and vanities of foolish
present aristocracy. The same difference of feeling, I
think, attends us between entering an empty and a crowded
cliurch. In the latter it is chance but some present human
frailt}' — an act of inattention on the part of some of the
auditory — or a trait of affectation, or worse, vain-glory, on
that of the preacher, puts us by our best thoughts, dishar-
monising the place and the occasion. But wouldst thou
know the beauty of holiness ? — go alone on some week-day,
borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the
cool aisles of some country church : think of the piety that
has kneeled there — the congregations, old and young, that
have found consolation there — the meek pastor — the docile
parishioner. With no disturbing emotions, no cross con-
flicting comparisons, drink in the tranquillity of the place,
till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the
marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee.
Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going
some few miles out of my road to look upon the remains of
an old great house with which I had been impressed in this
way in infancy. I was apprised that the owner of it had
lately pulled it down ; still I had a vague notion that it
P
200 BLAKESMOOR IN JT SniRE.
coula not all liave perished, — that so much solidity with
magnificence conld not have been crushed all at once into
the mere dust and rubbish which I found it.
The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand in-
deed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced it to
■ — an antiquity.
I was astonished at the indistinction of everything.
Where had stood the great gates? "What bounded the
court-yard ? Whereabout did the out-houses commence ?
A few bi-icks only lay as representatives of that which was
so stately and so spacious.
Death does not shrink up his human victim at this rate.
The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their proportion.
Had 1 seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their pro-
cess of destruction, at the plucking of every panel I should
Lave felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out
to them to spare a plank at least out of the cheerful stoi-e-
room, in whose hot window-seat I used to sit and read Cow
ley, with the grass-plot before, and the hum and flappings
of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it about me —
it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns ; or a panel
of the yellow-room.
Why, ever}^ plank and panel of that house for me had
magic in it. The tapestried bedrooms — tapestry so much
better than painting — not adorning merely, but peopling
the wainscots — at which childhood ever and anon would
steal a look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as quickly) to
exercise its tender courage in a momentary eye- encounter
with those stern bright visages, staring reciprocally — all
Ovid on the walls, in colours vivider than his description.
Actfeon in mid sprout, with the unappeasable prudery of
Diana; and the still more provoking and almost culinary
coolness of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately divesting
of Marsyas.
Then, that haunted room — in which old Mrs. Battle died
— whereinto I have crept, but always in the daytime, with
a passion of fear ; and a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted,
to hold communication with the past. — How shall they hiiild
it up nrjain?
BLAKESMOOR IN E SHIRE. 201
It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted
that the traces of the splendour of past inmates were every-
where apparent. Its furniture was still standing — even
to the tarnished gilt leather battledores, and crumbling
feathers of shuttlecocks in the nursery, which told that
children had once played there. But I was a lonely child,
and liad the range at will of every apartment, knew every
nook and corner, wondered and worshipped everywhere.
The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of
thought as it is the feeder of love, of silence, and admira-
tion. So strange a passion for the place possessed me in
those years, that, though there lay — I shame to say how few
roods distant from the mansion — half hid by trees, what I
judged some romantic lake, such was the spell which bound
to the house, and such my carefulness not to pass its strict
and proper precincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored
for me ; and not till late in life, curiosity prevailing over
elder devotion, 1 found, to my astonishment, a pretty brawl-
ing brook had been the Lacus Incognitus of my infancy.
Variegated views, extensive prospects — and those at no
great distance from the house — I was told of such — what
were they to me, being out of the boundaries of my Eden ~
So far from a wish to roam, I would have drawn, me-
thought, still closer the fences of my chosen prison, and
have been hemmed in by a yet securer cincture of those
excluding garden walls. I could have exclaimed with the
garden-loving poet —
Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines ;
Curl me about, ye gadding vines ;
And oh so close your circles lace,
That I may never leave this place ;
But, lest your fetters prove too weak,
Ere I your silken bondage break.
Do you, O brambles, chain me too,
And, courteous briars, nail me through.*
I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug fire-sides — the
low-built roof — parlours ten feet by ten — frugal boards,
and all the homeliness of home — these were the condition
of my birth — the wholesome soil which I was planted in,
* [Marrell, on Appleton House, to the Lord Fairfax.]
p 2
202 BLAKESMOOR IN U SHIRE.
Yet, without impeachment to their tenderest lessons, I am
not sorry to have had glances of something beyond, and to
have taken, if but a peep, in childhood, at the contrasting
accidents of a great fortune.
To have the feeling of gentility, it is not necessary to
have been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be had
uu cheaper terms than to be obliged to an importunate race
of ancestors ; and the coatless antiquary in his unembla-
zoned cell, revolving the long line of a Mowbray's or De
Clifford's pedigree, at those sounding names may warm
himself into as gay a vanity as those who do inherit them.
The claims of birth are ideal merely, and what herald shall
go about to strip me of an idea ? Is it trenchant to their
swords ? can it be hacked off as a spur can ? or torn away
ike a tarnished garter ?
What, else, were the families of the great to us ? what
pleasure should we take in their tedious genealogies, or
their capitulatory brass monuments ? What to us the un-
interrupted current of their bloods, if our own did not
answer within us to a cognate and corresponding elevation ?
Or wherefore, else, tattered and diminished 'Scutcheon
that hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely stairs,
Blakesmoor ! have I in childhood so oft stood poring upon
thy mystic characters — thy emblematic supporters, with
their prophetic " Resurgam " — till, every dreg of peasantry
purging off, I received into myself Very Gentility ? Thou
wert first in my morrJng eyes ; and of nights hast detained
my steps from bedward, till it was but a step from gazing
at thee to dreaming on thee.
This is the only true gentry by adoption ; the veritable
change of blood, and not as empirics have fabled, by trans-
fusion.
Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid
trophy, I know not, I inquired not ; but its fading rags,
and colours cobweb-stained, told that its subject was of
two centuries back.
And what if my ancestor at that date was some Damoetas,
■ — feeding flocks, not his own, upon the hills of Lincoln —
did I in less earnest vindicate to myself the family trap-
BLAKESnrOOR IN H SIIIEE. 203
pings of this once proud Mgon ? repaying by a backward
triumph the insults he might possibly have heaped in his
life-time upon my poor pastoral progenitor.
If it were presumption so to speculate, the present owners
of the mansion had least reason to complain. They had
long forsaken the old house of their fathers for a newer
trifle ; and I was left to appropriate to myself what images
I could pick up, to raise my fancy, or to soothe my vanity.
I was the true descendant of those old W s, and not the
present family of that name, who had fled the old waste places.
Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, which
as I have gone over, giving them in fancy my own family
name, one — and then another — would seem to smile, reach-
ing forw^ard from the canvas, to recognise the new relation-
ship ; while the rest looked grave, as it seemed, at the
vacancy in their dwelling, and thoughts of fled posterity.
The Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and a
lamb — that hung next the great bay window — with the
bright yellow H 'shire hair, and eye of watchet hue —
so like my Alice! — I am persuaded she was a true Elia —
]\lildred Elia, I take it.
[From her, and from my passion for her — for I first
learned love from a picture — Bridget took the hint of those
pretty whimsical lines, which thou mayst see, if haply thou
hast never seen them, Eeader, in the margin.* But my
Mildred grew not old, like the imaginary Helen.]
Mine, too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble Marble Hall, with
its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Ceesars — stately busts
in marble — ranged round ; of whose countenances, young
reader of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, 1
remember, had most of my wonder ; but the mild Galba had
my love. There they stood in the coldness of death, yet
freshness of immortality.
Mine, too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of
authority, high -backed and wickered, once the terror of
luckless poacher, or self-forgetful maiden — so common since,
that bats have roosted in it.
* Here was inserted the little poem by Mary Laml), called "Helen."
— Ep.
204 FOOn liELATIONS.
Mine, too,^ — -whose else ? — thy costly fruit-garden, with
its sun-baked southern wall ; the ampler pleasure-garden,
rising backwards from the house in triple terraces, with
flower-pots now of palest lead, save that a speck here and
there, saved from the elements, bespake their pristine state
to have been gilt and glittering ; the verdant quarters
backwarder still ; and, stretching still beyond, in old for-
mality, thy firry wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel, and
the day-long murmuring wood-pigeon, with that antique
image in the centre, God or Goddess I wist not; but child
of Athens or old Kome paid never a sincerer worship to
Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to that
fragmental mystery.
Was it for this that I kissed my childish hands too fer-
vently in your idol- worship, walks and windings of Blakes-
aioou! for this, or what sin of mine, has the plough passed
over your pleasant places ? I sometimes think that as men,
when they die, do not die all, so of their extinguished
habitations there may be a hope — a germ to be revivified.
POOR RELATIONS.
A POOR RELATION— is the most irrelevant thing in
nature, — a piece of impertinent correspondency, — an
odious approximation, — a haunting conscience, — a prepos-
terous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our pros-
perity, — an unwelcome remembrancer, — a perpetually re-
curring mortification, —a drain on your purse, — a more in-
tolerable dun upon your pride, — a drawback upon success,
— a rebuke to your rising, — a stain in your blood, — a blot
on your 'scutcheon, — a rent in your garment, — a death's
head at your banquet, — Agathocles' pot, — a Mordecai in
your gate, — a Lazarus at your door, — a lion in your path, —
a frog in your chamber, — a fly in your ointment, — a mote in
your eye, — a triumph to your enemy, — an apology to your
friends, — the one thing not needful, — the hail in harvest,^
the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet.
POOR RELATIONS. 205
He is known bj his knock. Your heart telleth you
•' That is Mr. ." A rap, between familiarity and
respect; that demands, and at the same time seems to
despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling and — em-
barrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and
— draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about
dinner-time — when the table is full. He olfereth to go
away, seeing you have company — but is induced to stay.
He iilleth a chair, and your visitor's two children are ac-
commodated at a side-table. He never cometh upon open
days, when your wife says, with some complacency, "My
dear, perhaps Mr. will drop in to-day." He remem-
bereth birth-daj^s — and professeth he is fortunate to have
stumbled upon one. He declareth against fish, the turbot
being small — yet suffereth himself to be importuned into
a slice, against his first resolution. He sticketh by the
port — yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remainder
glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a
puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obse-
quious, or not civil enough, to him. The guests think
" they have seen him before." Every one speculateth upon
his condition ; and the most part take him to be a — tide-
waiter. He calleth you by your Christian name, to imply
that his other is the same with your own. He is too
familiar by half, yet you wish he had less difSdence. With
half the familiarity, he might pass for a casual dependent ;
with more boldness, he would be in no danger of being
taken for what he is. He is too humble for a friend ; yet
taketh on him more state than befits a client. He is a
worse guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth
up no rent — yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanour,
that your guests take him for one. He is asked to make
one at the whist table ; refuseth on the score of poverty,
and — resents being left out. When the company break up,
he proffereth to go for a coach — and lets the servant go.
He recollects your grandfather; and will thrust in some
mean and quite unimportant anecdote — of the family. He
knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as " he is blest
in seeing it now." He reviveth past situations, to institute
206 POOR RELATIONS.
what lie calletli — favourable comparisons. With a reflect-
ing sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price of your
furniture : and insults you with a special commendation of
your window-curtains. He is of opinion that the urn is
the more elegant shape ; but, after all, there was something
more comfortable about the old tea-kettle —which you must
remember. He dare say you must find a great convenience
in having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to your
lady if it is not so. Inquire th if you have had your arms done
on vellum yet ; and did not know, till lately, that such-and-
such had been the crest of the family. His memory is unsea-
sonable ; his compliments perverse ; his talk a trouble ; his
stay pertinacious ; and when he goeth away, you dismiss
his chair into a corner as precipitately as possible, and feel
fairly rid of two nuisances.
There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is — a
female Poor Eelation, You may do something with the
other ; you may pass him off tolerably well ; but your
indigent she-relative is hopeless. " He is an old hu-
morist," you may say, " and affects to go threadbare. His
circumstances are better than folks would take them to
be. You are fond of having a Character at your table, and
tnily he is one." But in the indications of female poverty
there can be no disguise. No woman dresses below herself
from caprice. The truth must out without shuffling. " She
is plainly related to the L 's ; or what does she at their
house?" She is, in all probability, your wife's cousin.
Nine times out of ten, at least, this is the case. — Her garb
is something between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the
former evidently predominates. She is most provokingly
humble, and ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He
may require to be repressed sometimes — aliquando sufflami-
nandus erat — but there is no raising her. You send her soup
at dinner, and she begs to be helped — after the gentlemen.
Mr. requests the honour of taking wine with her ; she
hesitates between Port and Madeira, and chooses the former
— because he does. She calls the sei'vant Sir ; and insists
on not troubling him to hold her plate. The housekeeper
patronises her. The children's governess takes upon her to
FOOn RELATIONS. 207
correct her, when she has mistaken the piano for a harpsi-
chord.
Eichard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance of
the disadvantages to which this chimerical notion of affinity
constituting a claim to acquaintance, may subject the spirit of
a gentleman. A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt
him and a lady with a gr-eat estate. His stars are per-
petually crossed by the malignant maternity of an old
woman, who persists in calling him " her son Dick." But
she has wherewithal in the end to recompense his indigni-
ties, and float him again upon the brilliant surface, under
which it had been her seeming business and pleasure all
along to sink him. All men, besides, are not of Dick's
temperament. I knew an Amlet in real life, who, wanting
Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor W was of my
own standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and a youth of
promise. If he had a blemish, it was too much pride ; but
its quality was inoffensive ; it was not of that sort which
hardens the heart, and serves to keep inferiors at a distance ;
it only sought to ward off derogation from itself. It was the
principle of self-respect carried as far as it could go, without
infringing upon that respect, which he would have every one
else equally maintain for himself. He would have you to
think alike with him on this topic. Many a quarrel have
I had with him, when we were rather older boys, and our
tallness made us more obnoxious to observation in the blue
clothes, because I would not thread the alleys and blind
ways of the town with him to elude notice, when we have
been out together on a holiday in the streets of this sneer-
ing and prying metropolis. W went, sore with these
notions, to Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of a
scholar's life, meeting with the alloy of a hinnble introduc-
tion, wrought in him a passionate devotion to the place,
with a profound aversion from the society. The servitor's
gown (worse than his school array) clung to him with
Kessian venom. He thought himself ridiculous in a garb,
under which Latimer must have walked erect, and in which
Hooker, in his young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no
discommendable vanity. In the depth of college shadeSj
208 POOE RELATIONS.
or in his lonely cliamber, the poor student shrunk from
observation. He found shelter among books, which insult
not ; and studies, that ask no questions of a youth's finances
He was lord of his library, and seldom cared for looking
out beyond his domains. The healing influence of studious
pursuits was upon him to soothe and to abstract. He was
almost a healthy man, when the waywardness of his fate
broke out against him with a second and worse malignity.
The father of AV had hitherto exercised the humble
profession of house-painter, at N , near Oxford. A
supposed interest with some of the heads of colleges had
now induced him to take up his abode in that city, with
the hope of being employed upon some public works which
were talked of. From that moment I T-ead in the counte-
nance of the young man the determination which at length
tore him from academical pursuits for ever. To a person
vmacquainted with our universities, the distance between
the gownsmen and the townsmen, as they are called — the
trading part of the latter especially — is carried to an excess
that would appear harsh and incredible. The temperament
of W 's father was diametrically the reverse of his own.
Old W was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, who,
with his son upon his arm, would stand bowing and
soaping, cap in hand, to anything that wore the semblance
of a gown — insensible to the winks and opener remon-
strances of the yoimg man, to whose chamber-fellow, or
equal in standing, perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and
gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things could not
last. W must change the air of Oxford, or be suffo-
cated. He chose the former ; and let the sturdy moralist,
who strains the point of the filial duties as high as they can
bear, censure the dereliction ; he cannot estimate the
struggle. I stood with W , the last afternoon I ever
saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It was
in the fine lane leading froin the High Street to the back
of * * * * college, where W kept his rooms. He
seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. 1 ventured to
lally him — finding him in a better mood — upon a repre-
bentation of the Artist Evangelist, which the old man,
FOOJi RELATIONS. 209
whose affairs were beginning tcj flourish, had caused to bo
set up in a splendid sort of frame over his really handsome
shop, either as a token of prosperity or badge of gratitude
to his saint. W looked up at the Luke, and, like
Satan, " knew his mounted sign —and fled." A letter on
his father's table, the next morning, announced that he had
accepted a commission in a regiment about to embark for
Portugal. Ho was among the first who perished before the
walls of St. Sebastian.
I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with
treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital
so eminently painful ; but this theme of poor relationship
is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic
associations, that it is difficult to keep the account distinct
without blending. The earliest impressions which I re-
ceived on this matter are certainly not attended with any-
thing painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At
my father's table (no very splendid one) was to be found,
ever}' Saturday, the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman,
clothed in neat black, of a sad yet comely appearance
His deportment was of the essence of gravity ; his words
few or none ; and I was not to make a noise in his pre-
sence, I had little inclination to have done so — for my cue
was to admire in silence. A particular elb(jw-chair was
appropriated to him, which was in no case to be violated.
A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which appeared on no
other occasion, distinguished the days of his coming. I
used to think him a prodigiously rich man. All I could
make out of him was, that he and my father had been
schoolfellows, a world ago, at Lincoln, and that he came
from the Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place where all
the money was coined — and I thought he was the owner of
all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined them-
selves about his presence. He seemed above human in-
firmities and passions. A sort of melancholy grandeur
invested him. From some inexplicable doom I fancied
him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mourning ; a
captive — a stately being let out of the Tower on Saturdays.
Often have I wondered, at the temerity of my father, who,
210 POOB RELATIONS.
in spite of an habitual general respect which we all in
common manifested towards him, would venture now and
then to stand up against him in some argument touching
their youthful days. The houses of the ancient city of
Lincoln are divided (as most of my readers know) between
the dwellers on the hill and in the valley. This marked
distinction formed an obvious division between the boys who
lived above (however brought together in a common school)
and the boys whose paternal residence was on the plain ;
a sufficient cause of hostility in tho code of these young
Grotiuses. My father had been a leading Mountaineer ;
and would still maintain the general superiority in skill and
hardihood of the Above Boys (his own faction) over the Below
Boys (so were they called), of which party his contemporaiy
had been a chieftain. Many and hot were the skirmishes on
this topic — the only one upon which the old gentleman was
ever broiight out — and bad blood bred ; even sometimes
almost to the recommencement (so I expected) of actual
hostilities. But my father, who scorned to insist upon
advantages, generally contrived to turn the conversation
upon some adroit by-commendation of the old Minster ; in
the general preference of which, before all other cathedrals
in the island, the dweller on the hill, and the plain-born,
could meet on a conciliating level, and lay down their less
important ditferences. Once only I saw the old gentleman
really ruffled, and I remember with anguish the thought
that came over me : " Perhaps he will never come here
again." He had been pressed to take another plate of the
viand, which I have already mentioned as the indispensable
concomitant of his visits. He had refused with a resistance
amounting to rigour, when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but
who had something of this, in common with my cousin
Bridget, that she would soanetimes press civility oi;t of
season^uttered the following memorable application —
" Do take another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get
pudding every day." The old gentleman said nothing at
the time — but he took occasion in the course of the even-
ing, when some ai'gument had intervened between them, to
utter with an emphasis which chilled the company, and
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND BEADING. 211
which chills me now as I write it — "Woman, yon are
superannuated !" John Billet did not survive long, after
the digesting of this affront ; but he survived long enough
to assure me that peace was actually restored ! and if I re-
member aright, another pudding was discreetly substituted
in Ihe place of that which had occasioned the offence. He
died at the Mint (anno 1781) where he had long held, what
he accounted, a comfortable independence ; and with five
pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which were found
in his escritoir after his decease, left the world, blessing
God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never
been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was — a Poor
Kelation.
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND
HEADING.
To mind tlie inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced
product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and
brei ding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of iiis own. —
Lord Foppington, in " The Relapse."
A N ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much.
JjL struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he
has left oft' reading altogether, to the great improvement of
his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit on this
head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable por-
tion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away
my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in
other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am read-
ing ; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me.
I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel
for me, nor Jonathan \Vild too low. I can read anything
which I call a hook. There are things in that shape which
I cannot allow for such.
In this catalogue of hoolcs which are no books — hiblia a-hildia
—I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books [the
212 DETACHED TUOUGJITS ON BOOKS AND BEADING.
Literary excepted], Draught Boards, bound and lettered on
the back, Scientific Treatises, Ahuanacs, Statutes at Large :
the works of Hume, Gibbon, Eobertson, Beattie, Soame
Jenyns, and generally, all those volumes which "no gentle-
man's library should be without : " the Histories of Flavins
Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy.
With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. 1 bless
my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding.
I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things
in hooks' clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints,
usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary,
thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a
well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some kind-
hearted play- book, then, opening what " seem its leaves,"
to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To
expect a Steele or a Farquhar, and find — Adam Smith,
To view a well-arranged assortment of blockheaded Ency-
clopEedias (Anglicanas or Metropoli tanas) set out in an array
of russia, or morocco, when a tithe of that good leather
would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios, would
renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Eaj^mund
Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never see
these impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my
ragged veterans in their spoils.
To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum
of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it
can be aiforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of
books indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of maga
zines, for instance, in full suit. The dishabille, or half
binding (with russia backs ever) is our costume. A Shaks-
peare or a Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere
foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The possession of
them confers no distinction. The exterior of them (the
things themselves being so common), strange to say, raises
no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the
owner. Thomson's Seasons, again, looks beat (I maintain
'.t) a little torn and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a
genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, .and worn-
out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond russia) if we
DETACHED THOUGnTS ON BOOKS AND HEADING. 213
would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old
" Circulating Library " Tom Jones, or Vicar of U'akefield !
How they speak of the thousand thumbs that have turned
over their pages with delight! — of the lone sempstress,
whom they may have cheered (milliner, or harder-working
mantua-makor) after her long day's needle-toil, running
far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill spared
from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in
spelling out tlieir enchanting contents! ^Vho would have
them a whit less soiled ? What better condition could we
desire to see them in ?
In some respects the better a book is, the less it demandu
from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class
of pei-petually self-reproductive volumes — Great Nature's
Stereotypes — we see them individually perish with less
regret, because we know the copies of them to be " eterne."
But where a book is at once both good and rare — where
the individual is almost the species, and when that perishes,
We know not where is that Promethean torch
That can its light relumine, —
such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of New-
castle, by his Duchess — no casket is rich enough, no casing
sufiSciently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel.
Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem
hopeless ever to be reprinted, but old editions of writers,
such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his
prose works, Fuller — of whom we have reprints, yet the
books themselves, though they go about, and are talked of
here and there, we know have not endenizened themselves
(nor possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as to be-
come stock books — it is good to possess these in durable and
costly covers. I do not care for a First Folio of Shakspeare.
[You cannot make a pet book of an author whort; everybody
reads.] I rather prefer the common editions of Eowe and
Tonson, without notes, and with plates, which, being so
execrably bad, serve as maps or modest remembrancers, to
the text ; and, without pretending to any snpposable emula-
tion with it, are so much better than the Shakspeare galleiy
214 DETACHED THOVGRTS ON BOOKS AND HEADING.
engravings, which did. I have a community of feeling with
my countrymen about his Plays, and I like those editions
of him best which have been oftenest tumbled about and
handled. — On the contrary, I cannot read Beaumont and
Fletcher but m Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to
look at. I have no sympathy with them. If they were as
much read as the current editions of the other poet, I
should prefer them in that shape to the older one. I do
not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the
Anatomy of Melancholy. What need was there of unearth-
ing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose them
in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion to modern censure ?
whstt hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever be-
coming popular? — The wretched Malone could not do
worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church to
let him whitewash the painted effigy of old Shakspeare,
which stood there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to
the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair,
the very dress he used to wear — the only authentic testi-
monj' we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts
and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of
white paint. * By , if I had been a justice of peace for
Warwickshire, I would have clapt both commentator and
sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious
varlets.
I think. I see them at their work — these sapient trouble-
tombs.
Shall I be thought fantastical if I confess that the names
of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish
to the ear — to mine, at least — than that of Milton or of
Shakspeare ? It may be that the latter are more staled and
rung upon in common discourse. The sweetest names, and
which carry a perfume in the mention, are, Kit Marlowe,
Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley.
Much depends upon when and loJiere you read a book. In
the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is quite
ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy Queen for
a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons ?
Miltcm almost requires a solemn service of music to be
DETACHED THOUGHTS O.V BOOKS A:W READING. 215
played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music,
to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and
purged ears.
Winter evenings — the world shut out — with less of cere-
mony the gentle Shakspeare enters. At such a season the
Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale —
These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud — to
yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listening.
More than one — and it degenerates into an audience.
Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are
for the aye to glide over only. It will not do to read them
out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern
novels without extreme irksomeness.
A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of the
Bank offices it is the custom (to save so much individual
time) for one of the clerks — who is the best scholar —
t-o commence upon the Times or the Chronicle and recite
its entire contents aloud, ]^ro bono publico. \Vith every
advantage of lungs and elocution, the effect is singularly
vapid. In barbers' shops and public-houses a fellow will
get up and spell out a paragraph, which he communicates
as some discovery. Another follows with his selection.
So the entire journal transpires at length by piecemeal.
Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, without this expe-
dient, no one in the company would probably ever travel
through the contents of a whole paper.
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays
one down without a feeling of disappointment.
What an etei-nal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's,
keeps the paper ! I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling
out incessantly, " The Chronicle is in hand, Sir."
[As in these little diurnals I generally skip the Foreign
News, the Debates and the Politics, I find the Morning
Herald by far the most entertaining of them. It is an
agreeable miscellany rather than a newspaper.]
Coming into an inn at night — - having ordered your
supper — what can be more delightful than to find lying in
the window-seat, left there time out of mind by the care-
lessness of some former guest — two or three numbers of the
216 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND BEADING.
old Town and Country Magazine, with its amusing tete-a-
iete pictures — " The Eoyal Lover and Lady G ;" "The
Melting Platonic and the old Beau," — and such-like anti-
quated scandal ? ^Vould you exchange it — at that time, and
in that place — for a better book?
Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so
much for the weightier kinds of reading — the Paradise
Lost, or Comus, he could have read to him— but he missed
the pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a maga-
zine, or a light pamphlet.
I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of
some cathedral alone, and reading Candide.
I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having
been once detected — by a familiar damsel — reclined at my
ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera) read-
ing — Pamela. There was nothing in the book to make a
man seriously ashamed at the exposure ; but as she seated
herself down by me, and seemed determined to read in
company, I could have wished it had been — any other
book. We read on very sociably for a few pages ; and,
not finding the author much to her taste, she got up, and —
went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjec-
ture, whether the blush (for there was one between us) was
the property of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma.
From me you shall never get the secret.
I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot
settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who
was generally to be seen upon Snow Hill (as yet Skinner's
Street icas not), between the hours of ten and eleven in the
morning, studying a volume of Lardner, I own this to
have been a strain of abstraction beyond my reach. I used
to admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of secular
contacts. An illiterate encounter with a porter's knot, or
a bread basket, would have quickly put to flight all the
theology I am master of, and have left me worse than in-
different to the five points.
[I was once amused — there is a pleasure in affecting affec-
tation — at the indignation of a crowd that was jostling in
with me at the pit-door of Covent Garden Theatre, to have
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 217
a sight of Master Betty — then at once in his dawn and his
meridian — in Hamlet, I had been invited, quite unex-
pectedly, to join a party, whom I met near the door of the
playhouse, and I happened to have in my hand a large oc-
tavo of Johnson and Steevens's Shakspeare, which, the time
not admitting of my carrying it home, of course went with
me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and piessure of
the doors opening — the rush, as they term it — 1 deliberately
held the volume over my head, open at the scene in which
the young Eoscius had been most cried up, and quietlj- read
by the lamp-light. The clamour became universal. " The
affectation of the fellow," cried one. " Look at that gentle-
man reading, papa," squeaked a young lady, who, in her
admiration of the novelty, almost forgot her feai's. I read
on. " He ought to have his book knocked out of his hand,"
exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms were too fast pinioned to
his side to suffer him to execute his kind intention. Still I
read on — and, till the time came to pa}' my money, kept as
unmoved as Saint Anthony at his holy offices, with the
satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins, mopping, and making mouths
at him, in the picture, while the good man sits as tmdis-
turbed at the sight as if he were the sole tenant of the
desert. — The individual rabble (I recognised more than
one of their ugly faces) had damned a slight piece of mine
a few nights before, and I was determined the culprits
should not a second time put me out of countenance, j
There is a class of street readers, whom I can never con-
template without affection — the poor gentry, who, not
having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little
learning at the open stalls — the owner, with his hard eye,
casting envious looks at them all the while, and thinking
when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after
page, expecting every moment when he shall interpose his
interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratifica-
tion, they " snatch a fearful joy." Martin B , in this
way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of Cla-
rissa, when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition,
by asking him (it was in his younger days) whether h')
meant to purchase the work. M. declares, that under no
Q 2
218 STAGE ILLUSION.
circumstance in liis life did lie ever peruse a book with
half the satisfaction whicli he took in those uneasy snatches.
A quaint poetess of our day has moralised upon this subject
in two very touching but homely stanzas :
I saw a boy with eager eye
Open a book upon a stall,
And read, as he'd devour it all ;
Which, when the stall-man did espy.
Soon to the boy I heard him call,
" You Sir, you never buy a book,
Therefore in one you shall not look."
The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh
He wish'd he never hud been taught to read,
Then of tlie old churl's books he sliould have had no need.
Of sufferings the poor have many,
Which never can the rich annoy
I soon perceived another boy,
Who look'd as if he had not any
Food, for that day at least — enjoy
The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder.
This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder.
Thus huugrj', longing, thus without a penny,
Beholding choice of dainty-tlressed meat :
No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat.
STAGE ILLUSION.
A PLAY is said to be well or ill acted, in proportion to
the scenical illusion produced. Whether such illusion
can in an}' case be perfect, is not the question. The nearest
approach to it, we are told, is when the actor appears
wholly unconscious of the presence of spectators. In tra-
gedy—in all which is to afiect the feelings — this undivided
attention to his stage business seems indispensable. Yet it
is, in fact, dispensed with every day by our cleverest tra-
gedians ; and while these references to an audience, in the
shape of rant or sentiment, are not too frequent or palpable,
a sufficient quantit}' of illusion for the purposes of dramatic
interei;t may be said to be produced in spite of them Eut,
STAGE ILLUSION. 219
tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether, in certain cha-
racters in comedy, especially those which are a little extra-
vagant, or which involve some notion repugnant to the
moral sense, it is not a proof of the highest skill in the
comedian when, without absolutely appealing to an audi-
ence, he keeps up a tacit understanding with them ; and
makes them, unconsciously to themselves, a party in the
scene. The utmost nicety is required in the mode of doing
this ; but we speak only of the great artists in the profession.
The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel
in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is, perhaps,
cowardice. To see a coward done to the life upon a stage
would produce anything but mirth. Yet we most of us
remember Jack Bannister's cowards. Could anything bo
more agreeable, more pleasant? AVe loved the rogues.
How was this effected but by the exquisite art of the actor
in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us, the spectators, even in
the extremity of the shaking fit, that he was not half such
a coward as we took him for ? We saw all the common
symptoms of the malady ujDon him ; the quivering lip, the
cowering knees, the teeth chattering ; and could have
sworn " that man was frightened." But we forgot all the
while — or kept it almost a secret to ourselves — that he
never once lost his self-possession ; that he let out, by a
thousand droll looks and gestures — meant at us, and not at
all supposed to be visible to his fellows in the scene, that
his confidence in his own resources had never once deserted
him. Was this a genuine picture of a coward ; or not
rather a likeness, which the clever artist contrived to palm
upon us instead of an original ; while we secretly connived
at the delusion for the purpose of greater pleasure, than a
more genuine counterfeiting of the imbecility, helplessness,
and utter self-desertion, which we know to be concomitants
of cowardice in real life, could have given us ?
Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so endurable
on the stage, but because the skilful actor, by a sort of sub-
reference, rather than direct appeal to us, disarms the
character of a great deal of its odiousness, by seeming to
engage our compassion for the insecure tenure by which he
220 STAGE ILLUSION.
holds his money-bags and parchments? By this subtle
vent half of the hatefulness of the character — the self-close-
ness witli which in real life it coils itself up from the
sympathies of men— evaporates. The miser becomes sym-
pathetic ; i.e., is no genuine miser. Here again a diverting
likeness is substituted for a very disagreeable reality.
Spleen, irritability — the pitiable infirmities of old men,
which produce only pain to behold in the realities, coun-
terfeited upon a stage, divert not altogether for the comic
appendages to them, but in part from an inner conviction
that they are being acted before us ; that a likeness only is
going on, and not the thing itself. They please by being
done under the life, or beside it ; not to the life. When
Gattie acts an old man, is he angry indeed ? or only a plea-
sant counterfeit, just enough of a likeness to recognise,
without pressing upon us the uneasy sense of a reality ?
Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too
natural. It was the case with a late actor. Nothing coidd
be more earnest or true than the manner of Mr. Emery ;
this told excellently in his Tyke, and characters of a tragic
cast. But when he carried the same rigid exolusiveness
of attention to the stage business, and wilful blindness and
oblivion of everything before the curtain into his comedy,
it produced a harsh and dissonant effect. He was out of
keeping with the rest of the dramatis personcB. Thei'e was
as little link between him and them, as betwixt himself
and the audience. He was a third estate — dry, repulsive,
and unsocial to all. Individually considered, his execution
was masterly. But comedy is not this unbending thing ;
for this reason, that the same degree of credibility is not
required of it as to serious scenes. The degrees of credi-
bility demanded to the two things may be illustrated by
the different sort of truth which we expect when a man
tells us a mournful or a merry story. If we suspect the
former of falsehood in any one tittle, we reject it alto-
gether. Our tears refuse to flow at a suspected imposition.
But the teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him.
We are content with less than absolute truth. 'Tis the
same with dramatic illusion. ^\q confess we love in
STAGE ILLUSION 221
comedy to see an audience naturalised behind the scenes —
taken into the interest of the drama, welcomed as bystanders,
however. There is something ungracious in a comic actor
holding himself aloof from all participation or concern with
those who are come to be diverted b}^ him. Macbeth must
see the dagger, and no ear but his own be told of it ; but
an old fool in farce may think he sees something, and by
conscious words and looks express it, as plainly as he can
speak, to pit, box, and gallery. When an impertinent in
tragedy, an Osric, for instance, breaks in upon the serious
passions of the scene, we approve of the contempt with
which he is treated. But when the pleasant impertinent
of comedy, in a piece purely meant to give delight, and
raise mirth out of whimsical perplexities, worries the
studious man with taking up his leisure, or making his
house his home, the same sort of contempt expressed Chow-
ever natural) would destroy the balance of delight in the
spectators. To make the intrusion comic, the actor who
plays the annoyed man must a little desert nature ; he
must, in short, be thinking of the audience, and express
only so much dissatisfaction and peevishness as is consistent
with the pleasure of comedy. In other words, his perplexity
must seem half put on. If he repel the intruder with the
sober set face of a man in earnest, and moi'e especially if
he deliver his expostulations in a tone which in the world
must necessarily provoke a duel, his real-life manner will
destroy the whimsical and purely dramatic existence of
the other character (which to render it comic demands an
antagonist comicality, on the part of the character opposed
to it), and convert what was meant for mirth, rather than
belief, into a downright piece of impertinence indeed,
which would raise no diversion in us, but rather stir pain,
to see inflicted in earnest upon any worthy person. A
very judicious actor (in most of his parts) seems to have
fallen into an error of this sort in his playing with Mr.
Wrench in the farce of Free and Easy.
Many instances would be tedious ; these may suffice to
show that comic acting at least does not always demand
from the performer that strict abstraction from all reference
222 TO TUE SHADE OF ELLISTON.
to an audience wTiicli is exacted of it ; but that in some cases
a sort of compromise may take place, and all the pui-poses
of dramatic delight be attained by a judicious under-
standing, not too openly announced, between the ladies and
gentlemen — on both sides of the curtain.
TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON.
JOYOUSEST of once embodied spirits, whither at length
hast thou flown ? to what genial region are we per-
mitted to conjecture that thou hast flitted ?
Art thou sowing thy wild oats yet (the harvest-time was
still to come with thee) upon casual sands of Avernus ? or
art thou enacting Eover (as we would gladlier think) by
wandering Elysian streams ?
This mortal fiame, while thou didst play thy brief antics
amongst us, was in truth anything but a prison to thee, as
the vain Platonist dreams of this hody to be no better than
a county gaol, forsooth, or some house of durance vile,
whereof the fi.ve senses are the fetters. Thou knewest
better than to be in a hurry to cast off these gyves ; and
had notice to quit, I fear, before thou wert quite ready to
abandon this fleshy tenement. It was thy Pleasure-House,
thy Palace of Dainty Devices : thy Louvre, or thy White-
Hall.
What new mysterious lodgings dost thou tenant now?
or when may we expect thy aerial house-warming ?
Tartarus we know, and we have read of the Blessed
Shades ; now cannot I intelligibly fancy thee in either.
Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as the school-
men admitted a receptacle apart for Patriarchs and un-
chrisom babes) there may exist — not far perchance from
that store-house of all vanities, which Milton saw in visions,
— a Limbo somewhere for Platers ? and that
Up thither like aerial vapours fly
Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things
Built their fond hopes of glory, or lasting fame?
TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 223
All tlie unaccomplished works of Authors' hands,
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed,
Darau'd upon earth, fleet thitlier —
Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery. —
There, by the neighbouring moon (by some not impro-
perly supposed thy Regent Planet upon earth), mayst thou
not still be acting thy managerial pranks, great disembodied
Lessee ? but Lessee still, and still a manager.
In Green Eooms, impervious to mortal eye, the muse
beholds thee wielding posthumous empire.
Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) circle
thee in endlessly, and still their song is Fie on sinful Phantasy !
Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe of earth,
fioBEiiT William Elliston ! for as yet we know not thy new
name in heaven.
It irks me to think, that, stript of thy regalities, thou
shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Stygian
wherry. Methinks I hear the old boatman, paddling by
the weedy Avharf, with raucid voice, bawling " Sculls,
Sculls!" to which, with waving hand, and majestic action,
thou deignest no reply, other than in two curt mono-
syllables, " No : Oars."
But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference
between king and cobbler ; manager and call-boy ; and, if
haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly
taking your passage, cheek by cheek (0 ignoble levelling
of Death) with the shade of some recently departed candle-
snuffer.
But mercy ! what strippings, what tearing off of his-
trionic robes, and private vanities ! what denudations to
the bone, before the surly Ferryman will admit you to set
a foot within his battered lighter.
Crowns, sceptres; shield, sword, and truncheon; thy
own coronation robes (for thou hast brought the whole
property-man's wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a navy) ;
the judge's ermine ; the coxcomb's wig ; the snuff-box a la
Fo'pipington — all must overboard, he positively swears — and
that Ancient ]\Iariner brooks no denial ; for, since the
tiresome monodrame of the old Thracian Harper, Charon,
22 i ELLISTONIANA.
it is to be believed, hath shown small taste for thea-
tricals.
Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat-weight; pura et
puta anima.
But, bless me, how little you look !
So shall we ail look — kings and keysars — stripped for the
last voyage.
But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu pleasant, and
thrice pleasant shade ! with my parting thanks for many a
heavy hour of life lightened by thy harmless extravaganzas,
public or domestic.
Ehadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes below, leaving
to his two brethren the heavy calendars — honest Ehada-
manth, always partial to players, weighing their parti-
coloured existence here upon earth, — making account of
the few foibles, that may have shaded thy real life, as we
call it, (though, substantially, scarcely less a vapour than
thy idlest vagaries upon the boards of the Drury,) as but
of so many echoes, natural re-percussions, and results to be
expected from the assumed extravagancies of thy secondary
or mock life, nightly upon a stage — after a lenient casti-
gation with rods lighter than of those Medusean ringlets,
but just enough to " whip the offending Adam out of thee,"
shall courteously dismiss thee at the right hand gate — the
0. r. side of Hades— that conducts to masques and merry-
makings in the Theatre Eoyal of Prosei'pine.
PLAUDITO, ET VALETO.
ELLISTONIANA.
'Y acquaintance with the pleasant creature, whose loss
we all deplore, was but slight.
My first introduction to E., which afterwards ripened
into an acquaintance a little on this side of intimacy, was
over a counter in the Leamington Spa Library, then newly
entered upon by a branch of his family. E., whom nothing
ELLISTONIA^A. 225
miabecame — to auspicate, I suppose, the filial concern, and
set it a-going with a lustre — was serving in person two
damsels fair, who had come into the shop ostensibly to in-
quire for some new publication, but in reality to have a
sight of the illustrious shopman, hoping some conference.
With what an air did he reach down the volume, dispas-
sionately giving his opinion of the worth of the work in
question, and launching out into a dissertation on its com-
parative merits with those of certain publications of a
similar stamp, its rivals ! his enchanted customers fairly
hanging on his lips, subdued to their authoritative sentence.
So have I seen a gentleman in comedy acting the shopman.
So Lovelace sold his gloves in King Street. I admired the
histrionic art, by which he contrived to carry clean away
every notion of disgrace, from the occupation he had so
generously submitted to ; and from that hour I judged him,
with no after repentance, to be a person with whom it
would be a felicity to be more acquainted.
To descant upon his merits as a Comedian would be
superfluous. With his blended private and professional
habits alone I have to do : that harmonious fusion of the
manners of the player into those of every-day life, which
brought the stage boards into streets and dining-parlours,
and kept up the play when the play was ended. — " I like
Wrench," a friend was saying to him one day, " because he
is tlie same natural, easy creature, on the stage, that he is
off." " My case exactly," retorted Elliston — with a charm-
ing forgetfulness, that the converse of a proposition does
not always lead to the same conclusion — " I am the same
person off the stage that I am on." The inference, at first
sight, seems identical ; but examine it a little, and it con
fesses only, that the one performer was never, and the other
always, acting.
And in truth this was the charm of Elliston's private
deportment. You had spirited performance always going
on before your eyes, with nothing to pay. As where a
monarch takes up his casual abode for the night, the poorest
hovel which he honours by his sleeping in it, becomes ijjso
facto for that time a palace ; so wherever Elliston walked,
22G ELLISTONIANA.
sate, or stood still, there was the theatre. He carried about
■with him his pit, boxes, and galleries, and set up his port-
able play-house at corners of streets, and in the market-
places. Upon flintiest pavements he trod the boards still ;
and if his theme chanced to be passionate, the green baize
carpet of tragedy spontaneously rose beneath his feet.
Kovv this was hearty, and showed a love for his art. So
Apelles always painted — in thought. So G. D. always
poetises. I hate a lukewarm artist. I have known actors
— and some of them of Elliston's own stamp — who shall
have agreeably been amusing you in the part of a rake or a
coxcomb, through the two or three hours of their dramatic
existence ; but no sooner does the curtain fall with its
leaden clatter, but a spirit of lead seems to seize on all their
faculties. They emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable to
their families, servants, &c. Another shall have been ex-
panding your heart with generous deeds and sentiments,
till it even beats with yearnings of universal sympathy ;
you absolutely long to go home and do some good action.
The play seems tedious, till you can get fairly out of the
house, and realise your laudable intentions. At length the
final bell rings, and this cordial representative of all that is
amiable in human breasts steps forth — a miser. Elliston was
more of a piece. Did he play Eanger ? and did Eanger fill the
general bosom of the town with satisfaction? why should
he not be Eanger, and diffuse the same cordial satisfaction
among his private circles ? with his temperament, Ms animal
spirits, his good nature, his follies perchance, could he do
better than identify himself with his impersonation? Are
we to like a pleasant rake, or coxcomb, on the stage, and
give ourselves airs of aversion for the identical character,
presented to us in actual life ? or what would the performer
have gained by divesting himself of the impersonation ?
Could the man Elliston have been essentially different from
his part, even if he had avoided to reflect to us studiously,
in private circles, the airy briskness, the forwardness, the
'scape-goat trickeries of the prototype?
" But there is something not natural in this everlasting
acting ; we want the real man."
ELLISTONIANA. 227
Are yoti quite sure tliat it is net the man himself, whom
you cannot, or will not see, under some adventitious trap-
pings which, nevertheless, sit not at all inconsistently upon
him ? \\ hat if it is the nature of some men to be highly
artificial? The fault is least reprehensible in players.
Gibber was his own Foppington, with almost as much wit
as Vanbrugh could add to it.
" My conceit of his person," — it is Ben Jonson speaking
of Lord Bacon, — " was never increased towards him by his
place or honours. But I have, and do reverence him for the
greatness, that was only proper to himself; in that he seemed
to me ever one of the greatest men, that had been in many
ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that Heaven would
give him strength; for greatness he could not want."
The quality here commended was scarcely less conspi-
cuous in the subject of these idle reminiscences than in my
Lord Verulam. Those who have imagined that an unex-
pected elevation to the direction of a great London Theatre
affected the consequence of Elliston, or at all changed his
nature, knew not the essential greatness of the man whom
they disparage. It was my fortune to encomiter him near
St. Dunstan's Church (which, with its jDunctual giants, is
now no more than dust and a shadow), on the morning of
his election to that high office. Grasping my hand with a
look of significance, he only uttered, — " Have you heard the
news?" — then, with another look following up the blow,
he subjoined, " I am the future manager of Drury Lane
Theatre." — Breathless as he saw me, he stayed not for con-
gratulation or reply, but mutely stalked away, leaving me
to chew upon his new-blown dignities at leisure. In fact,
nothing could be said to it. Expressive silence alone could
muse his praise. This was in his great style.
But was he less great (be witnesij, ye powers of Equa-
nimity, that supported in the ruins of Carthage the consular
exile, and more recently transmuted, for a more illustrious
exile, the barren constableship of Elba into an image of
Imperial France), when, in melancholy after-years, again,
much nearer the same spot, I met him, when that sceptre
had been wrested from his hand, and his dominion waa
228 ELLTSTONIANA.
curtailed to the petty managership, and part proprietorship,
of the small Olympic, Ma Elba ? He still played nightly
npon the boards of Drnry, but in parts, alas ! allotted to
him, not magnificently distributed by him. Waiving his
gi-eat loss as nothing, and magnificently sinking the sense
of fallen material grandeur in the more liberal resentment
of depreciations done to his more lofty intellectual preten-
sions, " Have 3^ou heard " (his customary exordium) — •' have
you heard," said he, "how they treat me? they put me in
comedy." Thought I— but his finger on his lips forbade any
verbal interruption — "where could they have put you
better?" Then, after a pause — " Where I formerlj' played
Komeo, I now play Mercutio," — and so again he stalked
away, neither staying, nor caring for, responses.
0, it was a rich scene, — but Sir A C , the best
of story-tellers and surgeons, who mends a lame narrative
almost as well as he sets a fractuie, alone could do justice
to it, — that I was a witness to, in the tarnished room (that
had once been green) of that same little Olympic. There,
after his deposition from Imperial Drury, ho substituted a
throne. That Olympic Hill was his "highest heaven;"
himself " Jove in his chair." There he sat in state, while
before him, on complaint of prompter, was brought for
judgment — how shall I describe her? — one of those little
tawdry things that flirt at the tails of choruses — a proba-
tioner for the town, in either of its senses — the pertest
little drab — a dirty fringe and appendage of the lamp's
smoke — who, it seems, on some disapprobation expressed by
a " highly respectable " audience — had precipitately quitted
her station on the boards, and withdrawn her small talents
in disgust.
" And how dare yoiT," said her manager, — assuming a
censorial severity, which would have crushed the confi-
dence of a Vestris, and disarmed that beautiful Eebel her-
self of her professional caprices — I verily believe, he
thought her standing before him — " how dare you. Madam,
withdraw yourself, without a notice, from your theatrical
duties? " " I was hissed. Sir." " And you have the pre-
sumption to decide upon the taste of the town?" "I
ELLISTONIANA. 229
don't know that, Sir, but I will never stand to be hissed,"
was the subjoinder of young Contidence — when gathering
up his features into one significant mass of wonder, pity,
and expostulatory indignation — in a lesson never to have
been lost upon a creature less forward than she who stood
before him — his words were these : " They have hissed me."
'Twas the identical argument a fortiori, which the son
of Peleus uses to Lycaon trembling under his lance, to
persuade him to take his destinj^ with a good grace. " I
too am mortal." And it is to be believed that in both
cases the rhetoric missed of its application, for want of a
proper understanding with the faculties of the respective
recipients.
" Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he was courteously
conducting me over the benches of his Surrey Theatre, the
last retreat, and recess, of his every-day waning grandeur.
Those who knew Elliston, will know the man/ter in which
he pronounced the latter sentence of the few words I am
about to record. One proud day to me he took his roast
mutton with us in the Temple, to which I had superadded
a preliminary haddock. After a rather plentiful partaking
of the meagre banquet, not unrefreshed with the hrimbler
sort of liquors, I made a sort of apology for the humility of
the fare, observing that for my own part I never ate but of one
dish at dinner. " I too never eat but one thing at dinner,"
— was his reply — then after a pause — " reckoning fish as
nothing." The manner was all. It was as if by one
peremptory sentence he had decreed the annihilation of all
the savoury esculents, which the pleasant and nutritious-
food-giving Ocean pours forth upon poor humans from her
watery bosom. This was greatness, tempered with con
siderate tenderness to the feelings of his scanty but wel-
coming entertainer.
Great wert thou in thy life, Robert William Elliston ! and
not lessened in thy death, if report speak truly, which says
that thou didst direct that thy mortal remains should reposo
under no inscription but one of pure Latimty. Classical was
thy bringing up ! and beautiful was the feeling on thy last
bud, which, connecting the man with the boy, took thee
230 THE OLD MARGATE EOT.
back to thy latest exercise of imagination, to tlie dajB
when, undreaming of Theatres and Managerships, thou
wert a schohxr, and an early ripe one, under the roofs
builded by the munificent and pious Colet. For thee the
Pauline Muses weep. In elegies, that shall silence this
crude prose, they shall celebrate thy praise.
THE OLD MARGATE HOY.
I AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe I have said
so before) at one or other of the Universities. Next to
these my choice would fix me at some woody spot, such as the
neighbourhood of Henley affords in abundance, on the banks
of my beloved Thames. But somehow or other my cousin
contrives to wheedle me, once in three or four seasons, to a
watering-place. Old attachments cling to her in spite of
experience. We have been dull at Worthing one sum-
mer, duller at Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourn a
third, and are at this moment doing dreary penance at —
Hastings !— and all because we were happy many years ago
for a brief week at Margate. That was our first sea-side
experiment, and many circumstances combined to make it
the most agreeable holiday of my life. We had neither of
us seen the sea, and we had never been from home so long
together in company.
Can I forget thee, thou old ]\Iargate Hoy, with thy
weather-beaten, sim-burnt captain, and his rough accom
modations — ill exchanged for the foppery and fresh-water
niceness of the modern steam-packet ? To the winds and
waves thou committedst thy goodly freightage, and didst
ask no aid of magic fumes, and spells, and boiling cauldrons.
With the gales of heaven thou wentest swimmingly ; or,
when it was their pleasiire, stoodest still with sailor-like
patience. Thy course was natural, not forced, as in a hot-
bed : nor didst thou go poisoning the breath of ocean with
sulphureous smoke — a great sea chimera, chimneying and
THE OLD MAIiGATE BOY. 231
fumacing the deep ; or liker to that fire-god parching up
Scamander,
Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their coy
reluctant responses (yet to the suppression, of anything like
contempt) to the raw questions, which we of the great city
would be ever and anon putting to them, as to the uses of
this or that strange naval implement ? 'Specially can I
forget thee, thou happy medium, thou shade of refuge
between us and them, conciliating interpreter of their skill
to our simplicity, comfortable ambassador between sea and
land ! — whose sailor-trousers did not more convincingly
assure thee to be an adopted denizen of the former, than
thy white cap, and whiter apron over them, Avith thy neat-
fingered practice in thy culinarj' vocation, bespoke thee to
have been of inland nurture heretofore — a master cook of
Eastcheap ? How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious
occupation, cook, mariner, attendant, chamberlain ; here,
there, like another Ariel, flaming at once about all parts of
the deck, yet with kindlier ministrations— not to assist the
tempest, but, as if touched with a kindred sense of our
infirmities, to soothe the qualms which that untried motion
might haply raise in our crude land-fancies. And when
the o'erwashing billows drove us below deck (for it was far
gone in October, and we had stiff and blowing weather),
how did thy officious ministerings, still catering for our
comfort, with cards, and cordials, and thy more cordial
conversation, alleviate the closeness and the confinement of
thy else (truth to say) not very savoury, nor very inviting,
little cabin !
With these additaments to boot, we had on board a
fellow-passenger, whoso discourse in verity might have
beguiled a longer voyage than we meditated, and have
made mirth and wonder abound as far as the Azores. He
was a dark, Spanish-complexioncd young man, remarkably
handsome, with an oflBcer-like assurance, and an insuppres-
sible volubility of assertion. He was, in fact, the greatest
liar I had met with then, or since. He was none of your
hesitating, half story-tellers (a most painful description of
mortals) who go on sounding your belief, and only giving
R
232 THE OLD MARGATE HOT.
yon as much as they see yon can swallow at a time — the
uibbling pickpockets of your patience — bxit one who com-
mitted downrip;ht, daylight depredations upon his neigh-
bour's faith. He did not stand shivering upon the brink,
but was a hearty, thorough-paced liar, and plunged at once
into the depths of your credulity, I partly believe, he
made pretty sure of his company. Not many rich, not
many wise, or learned, composed at that time the common
stowage of a Margate packet. We were, I am afraid, a set
of as unseasoned Londoners (let our enemies give it a worse
name) as Aldermanbury, or AWatling Street, at that time of
day could have supplied. There might be an exception or
two among us, but I scorn to make any invidious distinc-
tions among such a jolly, companionable ship's company
as those were whom I sailed with. Something too must
be conceded to the Genius Loci. Had the confident fellow
told us half the legends on land which he fevonred us with
on the other element, I flatter myself the good sen&e of most
of us would have revolted. But we were in a new world,
with everything unfamiliar about us, and the time and
place disposed us to the reception of any prodigious marvel
whatsoever. Time has obliterated fi'om my memory much
of his wild fablings ; and the rest would appear but dull,
as written, and to be read on shore. He had been Aide-de-
camp (among other rare accidents and fortunes) to a Per-
sian Prince, and at one blow had stricken off the head of
the King of Carimania on horseback. Pie, of course, married
the Prince's daughter. I forget what unlucky turn in the
politics of that court, combining with the loss of his con-
sort, was the reason of his quitting Persia ; but, with the
rapidity of a magician, he transported himself, along with
his hearers, back to England, where we still found him in
the confidence of great ladies. There was some story of a
princess — Elizabeth, if I remember — having intrusted to
his care an extraordinary casket of jewels, upon some ex-
traoidinary occasion — but, as I am not certain of the name
or circumstance at this distance of time, I must leave it to
the Eoyal daughters of England to settle the honour among
themselves in private. I cannot call to mind half his
THE OLD MAllGATE BOY. 233
pleasant wonders ; but 1 perfectly remember that, in the
course of his travels, he had seen a phoenix ; and he
obligingly undeceived us of the vulgar error, that there is
but one of that species at a time, assuring us that they
were not uncommon in some parts of Upper Egypt.
Hitherto he had found the most implicit listeners. IJis
dreaming fancies had transported us beyond the " ignorant
present." But when (still hardying more and more in his
triumphs over our simplicity) he went on to affirm that he
had actually sailed through the legs of the Colossus at lihodes,
it really became necessary to make a stand. And here I
must do justice to the good sense and intrepidity of one of
our party, a youth, that had hitherto been one of his most
deferential auditors, who, from his recent reading, made
bold to assure the gentleman, that there must be some
mistake, as " the Colossus in question had been destroyed
long since ; " to whose opinion, delivered with all mo-
desty, our hero was obliging enough to concede thus much,
that " the figure was indeed a little damaged." This was
the only opposition he met with, and it did not at all
seem to stagger him, for he proceeded with his fables,
which the same youth appeared to swallow with still more
complacency than ever, — confirmed, as it were, by the
extreme candour of that concession. A\ ith these prodigies
he wheedled us on till we came in sight of the L'eculvers,
which one of our own company (having been the voyage
before) immediately recognizing, and pointing out to us,
was considered by us as no ordinary seaman.
All this time sat upon the edge of the deck quite a dif-
ferent character. It was a lad, apparently very poor, very
infirm, and very patient. His eye was ever on the sea,
with a smile ; and, if he caught now and then some
snatches of these wild legends, it was by accident, and
they seemed not to concern him. The waves to him whis-
pered more pleasant stories. He was as one being with
us, but not of us. He heard the bell of dinner ring without
stirring ; and when some of us pulled out our private
stores — our cold meat and our salads — he produced none,
and seemed to want none. Only a solitary biscuit he had
R 2
234 THE OLD MARGATE HOY.
laid in ; provision for the one or two days and nights, to
which these vessels then were oftentimes obliged to prolong
their voyage. Upon a nearer acquaintance with him,
which he seemed neither to court nor decline, we learned
that he was going to Margate, with the hope of being ad-
mitted into the Infirmary there for sea-bathing. His
disease was a scrofula, which appeared to have eaten all
over him. He expressed great hopes of a cure ; and when
we asked him whether he had any friends where he was
going, he replied, "he had no friends."
These pleasant, and some mournful passages, with the
first sight of the sea, co-operating with youth, and a sense
of holidays, and out-of-door adventure, to me that had been
pent up in populous cities for many months before, — have
left upon my mind the fragrance as of summer days gone
by, bequeathing nothing but their remembrance for cold
and wintry hours to chew upon.
Will it be thought a digression (it may spare some un-
welcome comparisons) if I endeavour to account for the
dissatisfaction which I have heard so many persons confess
to have felt (as I did myself feel in part on this occasion),
at the sight of the sea for the first time ? I think the reason
usually given — referring to the incapacity of actual objects
for satisfying our preconceptions of them — scarcely goes
deep enough into the question. Let the same person see a
lion, an elephant, a mountain for the first time in his life,
and he shall perhaps feel himself a little mortified. The
things do not fill up that space which the idea of them
seemed to take up in his mind. But they have still a cor-
respondency to his first notion, and in time grow up to it,
so as to produce a very similar impression : enlaiging
themselves (if I may say so) upon familiarity. But the sea
remains a disappointment. — Is it not, that in the latter we
had expected to behold (absurdl}', I grant, but, I am afraid,
by the law of imagination, unavoidably) not a definite
object, as those wild beasts, or that mountain compassable
by the eye, but all the sea at once, the commensurate anta-
gonist OF THE EARTH ? I do not Say we tell ourselves so
much, but the craving of the mind is to be satisfied with
TEE OLD MARGATE HOY. 235
nothing less. I will suppose the case of a young person of
fifteen (as I then was) knowing nothing of the sea, but
from description. He comes to it for the fiist time — all
that he has been reading of it all his life, and that the most
enthusiastic part of life, — all he has gathered from narra-
tives of wandering seamen, — what he has gained from true
voyages, and what he cherishes as credulously from romance
and poetry, — crowding their images, and exacting strange
tributes from expectation. — He thinks of the great deep,
and of those who go down unto it; of its thousand isles,
and of the vast continents it washes ; of its receiving the
mighty Plata, or Orellana, into its bosom, withoiat dis-
turbance, or sense of augmentation ; of Biscay swells, and
the mariner
For many a day, and many a dreadful night.
Incessant labomiug round the stormy Cape ;
of fatal rocks, and the " still-vexed Bermoothes ; " of great
whirlpools, and the water-spout ; of sunken ships, and
sumless treasures swallowed uj) in the unrestoring depths ;
of fishes and quaint monsters, to which all that is terrible
on earth —
Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal,
Compared with the creatures in the sea's eatral ;
of naked savages, and Juan Fernandez; of pearls, and
shells ; of coral beds, and of enchanted isles ; of mermaids'
grots — ■
I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects to be
shown all these wonders at once, but he is under the
tyranny of a mighty faculty, which haunts him with con-
fused hints and shadows of all these ; and when the actual
object opens first upon him, seen (in tame weather, too,
most likely) from our unromantic coasts — a speck, a slip of
sea- water, as it shows to him — what can it prove but a very
unsatisfying and even diminutive entertainment ? Or if
he has come to it from the mouth of a river, was it much
more than the river widening ? and, even out of sight of
land, what had he but a flat watery horizon about him,
nothing comparable to the vast o'er-curtaining sky, his
TM THE OLD MA EG ATE HOY.
familiar object, seen daily without dread or amazement ? —
Who, in similar circumstances, has not been tempted to
exclaim with Charoba, in the poem of Gebir,
Is this the mighty ocean ? is this all ?
I love town or country ; but this detestable Cinque Port
is neither. I hate these scrubbed shoots, thrusting out
their starved foliage from between the horrid fissures of
dusty innutritious rocks ; which the amateur calls " verdure
to the edge of the sea." I require woods, and they show
me stunted coppices. I cry out for the water-brooks, and
pant for fresh streams, and inland murmurs. I cannot
stand all day on the naked beach, watching the capricious
hues of the sea, shifting like the colours of a dying mullet,
I am tired of looking out at the windows of this island-
prison. I would fain retire into the interior of my cage.
While I gaze upon the sea, I want to be on it, over it, across
it. It binds me in with chains, as of iron. My thoughts
are abroad, I should not so feel in Staffordshire, There
is no home for me here. There is no sense of home at
Hastings, It is a place of fugitive resort, an heterogeneous
assemblage of sea-mews and stock-brokers, Amphitrites of
the town, and misses that coquet with the Ocean, If it
were what it was in its primitive shape, and what it ought
to have remained, a fair, honest fishing-town, and no more,
it were something — with a few straggling fishermen's huts
scattered about, artless as its cliffs, and with their materials
filched from them, it were something, I could abide to
dwell with Meshech ; to assort with fisher-swains, and
smugglers. There are, or I dream there are, many of this
latter occupation here. Their faces become the place, I
like a smuggler. He is the only honest thief. He robs
nothing but the reveniae — an abstraction I never greatly
cared about, I could go out with them in their mackerel
boats, or about their less ostensible business, with some
satisfaction, I can even tolerate those poor victims to
monotony, who from day to day pace along the beach, in
endless progress and recurrence, to watch their illicit
countrymen — townsfolk or brethren, perchance — whistling
THE OLD MARGATE UOY. 237
to the sheathing and unsheathing of their cutlasses (their
only solace), who, under the mild name of preventive ser-
vice, keep up a legitimated civil warfare in the deplorable
absence of a foreign one, to show their detestation of run
hollands, and zeal for Old England. But it is the visitants
from town, that come here to say that they have been here,
with no more relish of the sea than a pond-perch or a dace
might be supposed to have, that are my aversion, I feel
like a foolish dace in these regions, and have as little tole-
ration for myself here as for them. What can they want
here ? If they had a true relish of the ocean, why have they
brought all this land luggage with them ? or why pitch
their civih"zed tents in the desert ? What mean these
scanty book-rooms — marine libraries as they entitle them —
if the sea were, as they would have us believe, a book " to
read strange matter in ?" what are their foolish concert-
rooms, if they come, as they would fain be thought to do,
to listen to the music of the waves ? All is false and
hollow pretension. They come because it is the fashion,
and to spoil the nature of the place. They are, mostly, as
I have said, stock-brokers ; but I have watched the better
sort of them — now and then, an honest citizen (of the old
stamp), in the simplicity of his heart, shall bring down his
wife and daughters to taste the sea breezes. I always
know the date of their arrival. It is easy to see it in their
countenance. A day or two they go wandering on the
shingles, picking up cockle-shells, and thinking them great
things ; but, in a poor week, imagination slackens : they
begin to discover that cockles produce no pearls, and then
— then ! — if I could interpret for the pretty creatures (I
know they have not the courage to confess it themselves),
how gladly would they exchange their sea-side rambles for
a Sunday walk on the green sward of their accustomed
Twickenham meadows !
I would ask one of these sea-charmed emigrants, who
think they truly love the sea, with its wild usages, what
would their feelings be if some of the unsophisticated abo-
rigines of this place, encouraged by their courteous question-
ings here, should venture, on the faith of such Jissured
238 TEE CONVALESCENT.
sympathy between them, to return the visit, and come up
to see — London. I must imagine them with their fishing-
tackle on their back, as we carry our town necessaries.
What a sensation would it cause in Lothbury ! What
vehement laughter would it not excite among
Tlie daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard-street !
I am sure that no town-bred or inland-born subjects can
feel their true and natural nourishment at these sea-places.
Nature, where she does not mean us for mariners and vaga-
bonds, bids us stay at home. The salt foam seems to
nourish a spleen. I am not lialf so good-natured as by the
milder waters of my natural river. I would exchange
these sea-gulls for swans, and scud a swallow for ever about
the banks of Thamesis.
THE CONVALESCENT.
APEETTY severe fit of indisposition which, under the
name of a nervous fever, has made a prisoner of me
for some weeks past, and is but slowly leaving me, has
reduced me to an incapacity of reflecting upon any topic
foreign to itself. Expect no healthy conclusions from me
this month, reader ; I can offer you only sick men's dreams.
And truly the whole state of sickness is such ; for what
else is it but a magnificent dream for a man to lie a-bed,
and draw daylight curtains about him ; and, shutting oi;t
the sun, to induce a total oblivion of all the works which
are going on under it ? To l^ecome insensible to all the
operations of life, except the beatings of one feeble pulse ?
If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick bed. How the
patient lords it there ; what caprices he acts without
control ! how king-like he sways his pillow — tumbling,
and tossing, and shifting, and lowering, and thumping,
and flatting, and moulding it, to the ever-varying requisi-
tions of his throbbing temples.
THE CONVALiiSCENT. 239
He changes sides oftenertlian a politician. Now he lies
full length, then half length, obliquely, transversely, head
and feet quite across the bed ; and none accuses him of
tergiversation. Within the four curtains he is absolute.
They are his Mare Clausum.
How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to
himself! he is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfish-
ness is inculcated upon him as his only duty. 'Tis the Two
Tables of the Law to him. He has nothing to think of but
how to get well. What passes out of doors, or within
them, so he hear not the jarring of them, afTects him not.
A little while ago he was greatly concerned in the event
of a lawsuit, which was to be the making or the marring of
his dearest friend. Ho was to be seen trudging about upon
this man's errand to fifty quarters of the town at once,
jogging this witness, refreshing that solicitor. The cause
was to come on yesterday. He is absolutely as indifferent
to the decision as if it were a question to be tried atPekin.
Peradventure from some whispering, going on about the
house, not intended for his hearing, he picks up enough to
make him understand that things went cross-grained in the
court yesterday, and his friend is ruined. But the word
"friend," and the word "ruin," disturb him no more than
so much jargon. He is not to think of anything but how
to get better.
\\'hat a woi'ld of foreign cares are merged in that ab-
sorbing consideration !
He has put on the strong armour of sickness, he is
wrapped in the callous hide of suffering ; he keeps his
sympathy, like some curious vintage, under trusty lock and
key, for his own use only.
He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to himself;
he yearneth over himself; his bowels are even melted
within him, to think what he suffers ; ho is not ashamed to
weep over himself.
He is for ever plotting how to do some good to himself;
studying little stratagems and artificial alleviations.
He makes the most of himself ; dividing himself, by an
allowable fiction, into as many distinct individuals as ha
240 TEE CONVALESCENT.
hatli sore and sorrowing members. Sometimes he meditates
— as of a thing apart from him — npon his poor aching head,
and that dull pain which, dozing or waking, lay in it all
the past night like a log, or palpable substance of pain, not
to be removed without opening the very skull, as it seemed,
to take it thence. Or he pities his long, clammy, attenuated
fingers. He compassionates himself all over ; and his bed
is a very discipline of humanity, and tender heart.
lie is his own sympathizer ; and instinctively feels that
none can so well perform that office for him. He cares for
few spectators to his tragedy. Only that punctual face of
the old nurse pleases him, that announces his broths and
his cordials. He likes it because it is so unmoved, and
because he can pour forth bis feverish ejaculations before
it as unreservedly as to his bed-post.
To the world's business he is dead. He understands not
what the callings and occupations of mortals are ; only he
has a glimmering conceit of some such thing, when the
doctor makes his daily call ; and even in the lines on that
busy face he reads no multiplicity of patients, but solely
conceives of himself as the sick man. To what other uneasy
couch the good man is hastening, when he slips out of his
chamber, folding up his thin douceur so carefully, for fear
of rustling — is no speculation which he can at present
entertain. He thinks only of the regular retuin of the
same phenomenon at the same hour to-morrow.
Household rumours touch him not. Some faint murmur,
indicative of life going on within the house, soothes him,
while he knows not distinctly what it is. He is not to
know anything, not to think of anything. Servants gliding
up or down the distant staircase, treading as upon velvet,
gently keep his ear awake, so long as he troubles not him-
self further than with some feeble guess at their errands.
Exacter knowledge would be a burthen to him; he can just
endure the pressure of conjecture. He opens his eye faintly
at the dull stroke of the muffled knocker, and closes it again
without asking " Who was it ?" He is flattered by a general
notion that inquiiies are making after him, but he cares not
to know the name of the inquirer. In the general stillness,
THE CONVALESCENT. 241
aud awful hush of the house, he lies in state, and feels his
sovereignty.
To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives. Com-
pare the silent tread and quiet ministry, almost by the eye
only, with which he is served — with the careless demeanour,
the unceremonious goings in and out (slapping of doors, or
leaving them open) of the very same attendants, when he
is getting a little better — and you will confess, that from
the bed of sickness (throne let me rather call it) to the
elbow-chair of convalescence, is a fall from dignity, amount-
ing to a deposition.
How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine
stature ! Where is now the space, which he occupied so
lately, in his own, in the family's eye ?
The scene of his regalities, his sick room, which was his
presence-chamber, where he lay and acted his despotic
fancies — how is it reduced to a common bed-room ! The
ti-iiuness of the very bed has something petty and unmean-
ing about it. It is made every day. How unlike to that
wavy, many-furrowed, oceanic surface, which it presented
so short a time since, when to make it was a service not to
be thought of at oftener than three or four day revolutions,
when the patient was with pain and grief to be lifted for a
little while out of it, to submit to the encroachments of
unwelcome neatness, and decencies which his shaken frame
deprecated ; then to be lifted into it again, for another three
or four days' respite, to flounder it out of shape again, while
every fresh furrow was an historical record of some shifting
posture, some uneasy turning, some seeking for a little
ease ; and the shrunken skin scarce told a truer story than
the crumpled coverlid.
Hushed are those mysterious sighs — those groans — so
much more awful, while we knew not from what caverns of
vast hidden suffering they proceeded. The Lernean pangs
are quenched. The riddle of sickness is solved ; and
Philoctetes is become an ordinary personage.
Perhaps some relic of the sick man's dream of greatness
survives in the still lingering visitations of the medical at-
tendant. But how is he, too, changed with everything else?
242 TEE CONVALESCENT.
Can this be lie — this man of news — of chat — of anecdote — •
of everything but physic — can this be he, who so lately
came between the patient and his cruel enemy, as on some
solemn embassy from Nature, erecting herself into a high
mediating party ? — Pshaw ! 'tis some old woman.
Farewell with him all that made sickness pompous — the
spell that hiished the household — the desert-like stillness,
felt throughout its inmost chambers — the mute attendance
■ — the inquiry by looks— the still softer delicacies of self-
attention — the sole and single eye of distemper alonely
fixed upon itself — world-thoughts excluded — the man a
world unto himself — his own theatre —
Wliat a speck is he dwindled into !
In this flat swamp of convalescence, left b}^ the ebb of
sickness, yet far enough from the terra-firma of established
health, your note, dear Editor, reached me, requesting — an
article. In Articulo Mortis, thought I ; but it is something
hard — and the quibble, wretched as it was, relieved me
The summons, unseasonable as it appeared, seemed to link
me on again to the petty businesses of life, which I had
lost sight of ; a gentle call to activity, however trivial; a
wholesome weaning from that preposterous dream of self-
absorption — the puify state of sickness — in which I confess
to have lain so long, insensible to the magazines and
monarchies of the world alike ; to its laws, and to its
literature. The hypochondriac flatus is subsiding ; the
acres, which in imagination I had spread over — for the
sick man swells in the sole contemplation of his single
suiferings, till he becomes a Tityus to himself— are wasting
to a span ; and for the giant of self-importance, which I
was so lately, you have me once again in my natural pre-
tensions — the lean and meagre figure of your insignificant
Essayist.
243
SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS.
SO far from the position holding true, that great wit (or
genius, in our modern way of speaking) has a neces-
sary alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the con-
trary, will ever be found to be the sanest writers. It is
impossible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shakspeare.
The greatness of wit, by which the poetic talent is here
chiefly to be understood, manifests itself in the admirable
balance of all the faculties. Madness is the disproportionate
straining or excess of any one of them. " So strong a wit,"
says Cowley, speaking of a poetical friend,
" did Nature to him frame,
As all things but his judgment overcame ;
His judgment like the heavenly moon did show,
Tempering that mighty sea below."
The gi'ound of the mistake is, that men, finding in the
raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation, to
which they have no parallel in their own experience,
besides the spurious resemblance of it in dreams and
fevers, impute a state of dreaminess and fever to the poet.
But the true poet dreams being awake. He is not pos-
sessed by his subject, but has dominion over it. In the
groves of Eden he walks familiar as in his native paths.
He ascends the empyrean heaven, and is not intoxicated.
He treads the burning marl without dismay ; he wins his
flight without self-less through realms of chaos " and old
nio-ht." Or if, abandoning himself to that severer chaos of
a " human mind untuned," he is content a\vhile to be mad
with Lear, or to hate mankind (a sort of madness) with
Timon, neither is that madness, nor this misanthropy, so
unchecked, but that, — never letting the reins of reason
wholly go, while most he seems to do so, — he has his better
genius still whispering at his ear, with the good servant
Kent suggesting saner counsels, or with the honest steward
214 S.lATrr OF TRUE GENIUS.
Flavius recommending kindlier resolutions. Where he seems
most to recede from humanity, he will be found the truest
to it. From beyond the scope of Nature if he summon
possible existences, he subjugates them to the law of her
consistency. He is beautifully loyal to that sovereign
directress, even when he appears most to betray and desert
her. His ideal tribes submit to policy ; his very monsters
are tamed to his hand, even as that wild sea-brood, shep-
herded by Troteiis. He tames, and he clothes them with
attributes of flesh and blood, till they wonder at themselves,
like Indian Islanders forced to submit to European vesture.
Caliban, the Witches, are as true to the laws of their own
nature (ours with a difference), as Othello, Hamlet, and
Macbeth. Herein the great and the little wits are dif-
ferenced ; that if the latter wander ever so little from
nature or actual existence, they lose themselves and their
readers. Their phantoms are lawless ; their visions night-
mares. They do not create, which implies shaping and
consistency. Their imaginations are not active — for to be
active is to call something into act and form — but passive,
as men in sick dreams. For the super-natural, or some-
thing super-added to what we know of nature, they give
you the plainly non-natural. And if this were all, and that
these mental hallucinations were discoverable only in the
treatment of subjects out of nature, or transcending it, the
judgment might with some plea be pardoned if it ran riot,
and a little wantonized : but even in the describing of real
and every-day life, that which is before their eyes, one of
these lesser wits shall more deviate from nature — show
more of that inconsequence, which has a natural alliance
with frenzy, — than a great genius in his " maddest fits,"
as Wither somewhere calls them. We appeal to any one
that is acquainted with the common run of Lane's novels,
— as they existed some twenty or thirty 3'ears back, — those
scanty intellectual viands of the whole female reading
public, till a happier genius arose, and expelled for ever
the innutritions phantoms, — whether he has not found his
brain more " betossed," his memory more puzzled, his sense
of when and where mure confounded, among the impi'o-
SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 245
baDle events, the incoherent incidents, the inconsistent
characters, or no characters, of some third-rate love-in-
trigue — where the persons shall be a Lord Glendamour
and a Miss Eivers, and the scene only alternate between
Bath and Bond Street — a more bewildering dreaminess in-
duced upon him than he has felt wandering over all the
fairy-grounds of Spenser. In the productions we refer to,
nothing but names and places is familiar ; the persons are
neither of this world nor of aAy other conceivable one ; an
endless stream of activities without purpose, of purposes
destitute of motive : — we meet phantoms in our known
walks; fantasques only christened. In the poet we have
names which announce fiction ; and we have absolutely no
place at all, for the things and persons of the lairy Queen
prate not of their " whereabout." But in their inner nature,
and the law of their speech and actions, we are at home,
and upon acquainted ground. The one turns life into a
dream ; the other to the wildest dreams gives the sobrieties
of every-day occurrences. By what subtle art of tracing
the mental processes it is effected, we are not philosophers
enough to explain, but in that wonderful episode of the
cave of Mammon, in Avhich the Money God appears first in
the lowest form of a miser, is then a worker of metals, and
becomes the god of all the treasiTres of the world ; and has
a daughter. Ambition, before whom all the world kneels
for favours — with the Hesperian fruit, the waters of Tan-
talus, with Pilate washing his hands vainly, but not im-
pertinently, in the same stream — that we should be at one
moment in the cave of an old hoarder of treasures, at the
next at the forge of the Cyclops, in a palace and yet in
hell, all at once, with the shifting mutations of the most
rambling dream, and our judgment yet all the time awake,
and neither able nor willing to detect the fallacy, — is a
proof of that hidden sanit}^ which still guides the poet in
the wildest seeming-aberrations.
It is not enough to say that the whole episode is a copy
of the mind's conceptions in sleep ; it is, in some sort —
but what a copy ! Let the most romantic of us, that has
been entertained all night with the spectacle of some wild
24« CAFTAI^ JACKSON.
and magnificeut vision, recombine it in the morning, and
try it by his waking judgment. That which appeared so
shifting, and yet so coherent, while that faculty was pas-
sive, when it comes under cool examination shall appear so
reasonless and so unlinked, that we are ashamed to have
been so dehided ; and to have taken, though biit in sleep,
a monster for a god. But the transitions in this episode
are every whit as violent as in the most extravagant dream,
and yet the waking judgment ratifies them.
CAPTAIN JACKSON.
AMONG- the deaths in our obituary for this month, I
observe with concern "At his cottage on the Bath
Eoad, Captain Jackson." The name and attribution are
common enough ; but a feeling like repi'oach persuades
me that this could have been no other in fact than my
dear old friend, who some five-and-twenty years ago rented
a tenement, which he was pleased to dignify with the ap-
pellation here used, about a mile from Westbourn Green.
Alack, how good men, and the good turns they do us, slide
out of memory, and are recalled but by the surprise of some
such sad memento as that which now lies before us !
He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, with a
wife and two grown-up daughters, whom he maintained
with the port and notions of gentlewomen upon that slen-
der professional allowance. Comely girls they were too.
And was I in danger of forgetting this man ? — his cheer-
ful suppers — the noble tone of hospitality, when first you
set your foot in the cottage — the anxious ministerings about
you, where little or nothing (God knows) was to be minis-
tered. — Althea's horn in a poor platter — the power of self
enchantment, by which, in his magnificent wishes to en-
tertain you, he multiplied his means to bounties.
You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed a
bare scra-r — cold saving's from the foregone meal — remnaiit
CAPTAIN JACKSON. 247
hardly sufficient to send a mendicant, from the door con-
tented. But in the copious will — the revelling imagina-
tion of 3'our host — the " mind, the mind, Master Shallow,"
whole beeves were spread before you — hecatombs — no end
appeared to the profusion.
It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and fishes ; carving:
could not lessen, nor helping diminish it — the stamina
were left — the elemental bono still flourished, divested of
its accidents.
" Let us live while we can," methinks I hear the open-
handed creature exclaim ; " while we have, let us not want,"
"here is plenty left;" "want fur nothing" — with many
more such hospitable sayings, the spurs of appetite, and
old concomitants of smoking boards and feast-oppressed
chargers. Then sliding a slender ratio of Single Glou-
cester upon his wife's plate, or the daughters', he would
convey the remanent rind into his own, with a merry
quirk of " the nearer the bone," &c., and declaring that he
universally preferred the outside. For we had our table
distinctions, you are to know, and some of us in a manner
sate above the salt. None but his guest or guests dreamed
of tasting flesh luxuries at night, the fragments were vere
Iwsyitlhus sacra. But of one thing or another there was
always enough, and leavings : only he would sometimes
finish the remainder crust, to show that he wished no
savings.
^Vine we had none ; nor, except on very rare occasions,
spirits ; but the sensation of wine was there. Some thin
kind of ale I remember — •' British beverage," he would
say! "Push about, my boys;" " Driwk to your sweet-
hearts, girls." At every meagre draught a toast must
ensue, or a song. All the forms of good liquor vrere there,
with none of the effects wanting. Shut your eyes, and
you would swear a capacious bowl of punch was foaming
in the centre, with beams of generous Port or Madeira
radiating to it from each of the table corners. You got
flustered, without knowing whence ; tipsy upon words ;
and reeled under the potency of his unperforming Baccha-
nalian encouragements.
s
248 CAPTAIN JACKSON.
We had our songs — "Why, SoLliers, why," — and the
"British Grenadiers'' — in which hist we were all ohliged to
bear chorus. Both the daughters sang. Their proficiency
was a nightly theme — the masters he had given them — the
" no-expense " which he spared to accomplish them in a
science " so necessary to young women." But then — they
could not sing " without the instrument."
Sacred, and, by me, never-to-be-violated, secrets of
Poverty ! Should I disclose your honest aims at grandeur,
your makeshift efforts of magnificence ? Sleep, sleep, with
all thy broken keys, if one of the bunch be extant ;
thrummed by a thousand ancestral thumbs ; dear, cracked
spinnet of dearer Louisa! Without mention of mine, be
dumb, thou thin accompanier of her thinner warble ! A
veil be spread over tlie dear delighted face of the well-
deluded father, who now hajjly listening to cherubic notes,
scarce feels sincerer pleasure than when she awakened thy
time-shaken chords responsive to the twitterings of that
slender image of a voice.
We were not without our literarj^ talk either. It did
not extend far, but as far as it went it was good. It was
bottomed well ; had good grounds to go upon. In the
cottage was a room, which tradition authenticated to have
been the same in which Glover, in his occasional retire-
ments, had penned the greater part of his Leonidas. This
circumstance was nightl}' quoted, though none of the
present inmates, that I could discover, ap23eared ever to
have met with, the poem in question. Bnt that was no
matter. Glover had written there, and the anecdote was
pressed into the account of the fixmily importance. It
diffused a learned air through the apartment, the little side
casement of which (the poet's study window), opening
upon a sujxjrb view as far as the pretty spire of Harrow,
over domains and patrimonial acres, not a rood nor square
yard whereof our host cotild call his own, yet gave occa-
sion to an immoderate expansion of — vanity shall I call
it ? — in his bosom, as he showed them in a glowing summer
evening. It was all his, he took it all in, and communi-
cated rich portions of it to his guests. It was a part of his
CAPTAIN JACKSON. 249
largess, liis hospitality ; it was going over his groTinds ; he
was lord for the time of showing them, and you the im-
plicit lookers-np to his magnificence.
He was a juggler, who threw mists before your eyes —
you had no time to detect his fallacies. He would say,
" Hand me the silver sugar-tongs ;" and before you could
discover it was a single spoon, and that ]jlated, he w^ould
disturb and captivate your imagination by a misnomer of
" the urn " for a tea-kettle ; or by calling a homely bench
a sofa. Eich men direct you to their furniture, poor ones
divert you from it ; he neither did one nor the other, but
by simply assuming that everything was handsome about
him, you were positively at a demur what you did, or did
not see, at tlie cottage. ^\ ith nothing to live on, he seemed
to live on everything. He had a stock of wealth in his
mind ; not that which is properly termed Content, for in
truth he was not to be contained at all, but overflowed all
bounds by the force of a magnificent self-delusion.
Entlmsiasm is catching ; and even his wife, a sober native
of North Britain, who genei-ally saw things more as they
were, was not proof against the continual collision of his
credulity. Her daughters were rational and discreet young
women ; in the main, perhaps, not insensible to their true
circumstances. I have seen them assume a thoughtful air
at times. But such was the preponderating opulence of
his fancy, that I am persuaded not for any half hour toge-
ther did they ever look their own prospects fairly in the
face. There was no resisting the vortex of his tempera-
ment. His riotous imagination conjured up handsome
settlements before their eyes, which kept them up in the
eye of the world too, and seem at last to have realized
themselves ; for they both have married since, I am told,
more than respectably.
It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some
subjects, or I should wish to convey some notion of the
manner in which the pleasant creature described the cir-
cumstances of his own wedding-day. I faintly remember
something of a chaise-and-four, in which he made his entry
into Glasgow on that morning to fetch the bride home, or
s 2
250 THE SUFEEANNUATED MAN.
carry her tliitlier, 1 forget which. It so completely made
out the stanza of the old ballad —
When we came down through Glasgow town,
We were a comely sight to see ;
My love was clad in Mack velvet,
And I myself in cramasie.
I suppose it was the only occasion upon which his own
actual splendour at all corresponded with the world's
notions on that subject. In homely cart, or travelling
caravan, by whatever humble vehicle they chanced to be
transported in less prosperous days, the ride through Glas-
gow came back upon his fancy, not as a humiliating con-
ti'ast, but as a fair occasion for reverting to that one day's
state. It seemed an "equipage etern" from which no
power of fate or fortune, once mounted, had power there-
after to dislodge him.
There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon
indigent circumstances. To bully and swagger away the
sense of them before strangers, may not be always discom-
mendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, even when detected, have
more of our admiration than contempt. But for a man to
put the cheat upon himself; to play the Bobadil at home;
and, steeped in poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all
the while chin-deep in riches, is a strain of constitutional
philosophy, and a niastery over fortune, which was reserved
for my old friend Captain Jackson.
THE SUFEEANNUATED MAN.
Sera tamen respexit
Libeitas. Virgil.
A Clerk 1 was in London gay. — O'Keefe.
IF peradventure, Header, it has been thy lot to waste the
golden years of thy life — thy shining youth — in the
irksome confinement of an office ; to have thy prison days
prolonged through middle ago down to decrepitude and
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 251
silver hairs, without hope of release or respite ; to have
lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or
to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood ;
then, and then onl}^, will you bo able to appreciate my
deliverance.
It is now fcix-and-thirty years since 1 took my seat at the
desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy was the transition at
fourteen from the abundant playtime, and the frequently-
intervening vacations of school days, to the eight, nine, and
sometimes ten hours' a-day attendance at the counting-
house. But time partially reconciles us to anything. I
gradually became content — doggedly contented, as wild
animals in cages.
It is true 1 had my Sundays to myself; but Sundays,
admirable as the institution of them is for purposes of wor-
ship, are for that very reason the very worst adapted for
days of unbending and recreation.* In particular, there is
a gloom for me attendant upon a city Sunda}', a weight in
the air. I miss the cheerful cries of London, the music,
and the ballad-singers — the buzz and stirring murmur of
the streets. Those eternal bells depress me. The closed
shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all the glittering and
endless succession of knacks and gewgaws, and ostenta-
tiously displayed wares of tradesmen, which make a week-
day saunter through the less busy parts of the metropolis
so delightful — are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to
idle over — no busy faces to recreate the idle man who con-
templates them ever passing by — the very face of business
a charm by contrast to his temporary relaxation from it.
Nothing to be seen but unhajDpy countenances — or half-
* [Our ancestors, the noble old Puritans of Croniwell's day, could
distinguish between a day of religious rest and a day of recreation ; and
while they exacted a rigorous abstinence from all amusements (even to
the walking out of nurserymaids with their little charges in the fields^
upon the Subbatli ; m the lieu of the superstitious observance of tlie
saints' days, which they abrogated, they humanely gave to the appren-
tices and poorer sort of people every alternate Thursday for a day of
entire sport and recreation. A strain of piety and policy to be com-
mended above the profane mockery of the Stuarts and their book o*
sports.]
252 THE SUPERANNUATED lilAN.
happy at best — of emancipated 'prentices and little trades-
folks, with here and there a servant-maid that has got leave
to go out, who, slaving all the week, with the habit has lost
almost the capacity of enjoying a free hour ; and livelily
expressing the hollowness of a day's pleasuring, Tlie very
strollers in the fields on that day look anything but com-
fortable.
But besides Sundaj^s, I had a day at Easter, and a day at
Christmas, with a full week in tlie summer to go and air
myself in my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last was
a great indulgence ; and the prospect of its recurrence, I
believe, alone kept me up through the year, and made my
durance tolerable. But when the week came round, did
the glittering phantom of the distance keep touch with me r
or rather was it not a series of seven uneasy days, spent in
restless pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find
out how to make the most of them? Where was the quiet,
where the promised rest ? Before I had a taste of it, it was
vanished. I was at the desk again, counting upon the fifty-
one tedious weeks that must intei'vene before such another
snatch would come. Still the prospect of its coming threw
something of an illumination upon the darker side of my
captivity. Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have
sustained my thraldom.
Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever
been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of in-
capacity for business. This, during my latter years, had
increased to such a degree, that it was visible in all the
lines of my countenance. My health and my good spirits
■flagged. I had perpetually a dread of some crisis, to which
I should be found unequal. Besides my daylight servitude,
I served over again all night in my sleep, and would awake
with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my ac-
counts, and the like. I was fifty years of age, and no pi"os-
pect of emancipation presented itself. I had grown to
my desk, as it were ; and the wood had entered into my
soul.
My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me upon
the trouble legible in my countenance ; but I did not know
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 253
that it had raised the suspicions of any of my employers,
when, on the fifth of last month, a day ever to be remem-
bered by me, L , the junior partner in the firm, calling
me on one side, directly taxed me with my bad looks, and
frankly inquired the cause of them. So taxed, I honestly
made confession of my infirmity, and added that I was
afraid I should eventually be obliged to resign his service.
He spoke some words of course to hearten me, and there
the matter rested. A whole week I remained labouring
imder the impression that I had acted imprudently in my
disclosure ; that I had foolishly given a handle against my-
self, and had been anticipating my own dismissal. A week
passed in this manner — the most anxious one, I verily
believe, in my whole life — when on the evening of the 12 th
of April, just as I was about quitting my desk to go home
(it might be about eight o'clock), I received an awful sum-
mons to attend the presence of the whole assembled firm in
the formidable back parlour. I thought now my time is
surely come, I have done for myself, I am going to be told
that they have no longer occasion for me. L , I could
see, smiled at the terror I was in, which was a little relief
to me, — when to my utter astonishment B , the eldest
partner, began a formal harangue to me on the length of
my services, my very meritorious conduct during the whole
of the time (the deuce, thought I, how did he find out that ?
I protest I never had the confidence to think as much). He
went on to descant on the expediency of retiring at a cer-
tain time of life (how my heart panted !), and asking me a
few questions as to the amount of my own property, of
which I have a little, ended with a proposal, to which his
three partners nodded a grave assent, that I should accept
from the house, which I had served so well, a pension for
life to the amount of two-thirds of my accustomed salary —
a magnificent oft'er ! I do not know what I answered
between suiprise and gratitude, but it was understood that
I accepted their proposal, and I was told that I was free
from that hour to leave their service. I stammered out a
bow, and at just ten minutes after eight I went home — for
ever. This noble benefit — gratitude forbids me to conceal
254 TUE SUPEltAKNUATED MAN.
tlieir names — I owe to the kindness of the most munificent
firm in the world — the house of Boldero, Merrywcather,
Bosanquet, and Lac}'.
Eato perpetita I
For the first day or two I felt stunned — overwhelmed. I
could only apprehend my felicity ; I was too confused to
taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking 1 was happy,
and knowing that I was not. I was in the condition of
a prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty
years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself with my-
self. It was like passing out of Time into Eternity — for it
is a sort of Eternity for a man to have all his Time to him-
self. It seemed to me that I had more time on my hands
than I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in
Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I
could see no end of my possessions ; I wanted some steward,
or judicious bailiif, to manage my estates in Time for me.
And here let me caution persons grown old in active busi-
ness, not lightly, nor without weighing their own resources,
to forego their customary employment all at once, for there
may be danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know that
my resources are sufficient ; and now that those first gidd}''
raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling of the
blessedness of my condition, I am in no hurry. Having
all holidays, I am as though I had none. If Time hung
heavy upon me, I could walk it away ; but I do not walk
all day long, as I used to do in those old transient holidays,
thirty miles a day, to make the most of them. If Time
were troublesome, I could read it away ; but I do not read
in that violent measure, with which, having no Time my
own but candlelight Time, I used to wear}^ out my head
and eyesight in bygone winters. I walk, read, or scribble
(as now) just when the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt
after pleasure ; I let it come to me. I am like the man
that's born, and lias his years come to him,
In some green desert.
"Years!" you will say, ''what is this superannuated
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 255
simj)leton calculating upon? lie has already told us he is
past fifty."
I have indeed lived nominally fil'ty years, but deduct out
of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and
not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow,
I'or that is the only true Time, which a man can properly
call his own — that which he has all to himself; the rest,
though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other
people's Time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long
or short, is at least multiplied for me threefold. My ten
next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any pre-
ceding thirty. 'Tis a fi\ir rule-of-three sum.
Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the com '
mencement of my freedom, and of which all traces are not
yet gone, one was, that a vast tract of time had intervened
since I quitted the Counting House. I could not conceive
of it as an affair of yesterday. The partners, and the clerks
with whom I had for so many years, and for so many
hours in each day of the year, been closely associated —
being suddenly removed from them — they seemed as dead
to me. There is a fine passage, which may serve to illus-
trate this fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Eobert Howard,
speaking of a friend's death : —
'Twas but just now he went away ;
I have not since had time to shed a tear ;
And yet tlie distance does the same appear
As if he had been a thousand years from me.
Time takes no measure in Eternity.
To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to
go among them once or twice since ; to visit my old desk-
fellows— my co-brethren of the quill — that I had left
below in the state militant. Not all the kindness with
which they received me could quite restore to me that
pleasant familiarity, which I liad heretofore enjoj^ed among
them. We ci'acked some of our old jokes, but methought
they went off but faintly. My old desk ; the peg where T
hung my hat, were appropriated to another. I knew it
must be, but I could not take it kindly. D 1 take
me, if I did not feel some remorse — beast, if I had not — at
256 Tm£ SUPEBANNUATED MAN.
quitting my old compeers, the faithful partners of my
toils for six-and-tliirty years, that smoothed for me with
their jokes and conundrums the ruggedness of m}^ profes-
sional road. Had it been so rugged then, after all? or
was I a coward simplj' ? Well, it is too late to repent ;
and I also know that these suggestions are a common
fallacy of the mind on such occasions. But my heart
smote me. I had violently broken the bands betwixt us.
It was at least not courteous. I shall be some time before
I get quite reconciled to the separation. Farewell, old
cronies, yet not for long, for again and again I will come
among ye, if I shall have your leave. Farewell, Ch ,
dry, sarcastic, and friendly ! Do , mild, slow to move,
and gentlemanly ! PI , officious to do, and to volunteer,
good services ! — and thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion
for a Gresham or a Whittington of old, stately house of
Merchants ; with thy labyrinthine passages, and light-
excluding, pent-up offices, where candles for one- half the
year supplied the place of the sun's light ; inihealthy con-
tributor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell !
In thee remain, and not in the obscure collection of some
wandering bookseller, my " works ! " There let them rest,
as I do from my labours, piled on thy massy shelves, more
MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left, and full as useful !
My mantle I bequeath among ye.
A fortnight has passed since the date of my first commu-
nication. At that period I was approaching to tranquillity,
but had not reached it. I boasted of a calm indeed, but it
was comparative only. Something of the first flutter was
left; an unsettling sense of novelty; the dazzle to weak
eyes of unacciistomed light. I missed my old chains, for-
sooth, as if they had been some necessary part of my
apparel. I was a poor Carthusian, from strict cellular
discipline suddenly by some revolution returned upon the
world. I am now as if I had never been other than my
own master. It is natural for me to go where I please,
to do what I please. I find myself at 11 o'clock in the
day in Bond Street, and it seems to me that I have been
sauntering th(ire at that very hour for years past. I diij;resa
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 257
into Solio, t(j explore a bookstall. Methinks I have been
thirty years a collector. There is nothing strange nor
new in it. I find myself before a fine picture in the
morning. Was it ever otherwise ? What is become of
Fi«h Street Hill ? \\'here is Fenchurch Street ? Stones of
old Mincing Lane, which I have woin with my daily pil-
grimage fur six-and-thirty years, to the footsteps of what
toil-worn clerk are your everlasting flints now vocal ? I
indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change time,
and I am strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was no
hyperbole when I ventured to compare the change in my
condition to passing into another world. Time stands still
in a manner to me. I have lost all distinction of season.
I do not know the day of the week or of the month. Each
day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to
the foreign post days ; in its distance from, or propinquity
to, the next Sunday. I bad my Wednesday feelings, my
Saturday nights' sensations. The genius of each day was
upon me distinctly during the whole of it, affecting my
appetite, spirits, &c. The phantom of the next day, with
the dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor Sab-
bath recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop
white? What is gone of Black Monday? All days are
the same. Sunday itself — that unfortunate failure of a
holiday, as it too often proved, what with my sense of its
fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of
pleasure out of it — is melted down into a week-day. I
can spare to go to church now, without grudging the huge
cantle which it used to seem to cut out of the holiday. I
have time for everything. I can visit a sick friend. I can
interrupt the man of much occupation when he is busiest.
I can insult over him with an invitation to take a day's
pleasure with me to Windsor this fine May-morning. It is
Lucretiaii pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have
left behind in the world, carking and caring ; like horses in
a mill, drudging on in the same eternal round — and what
is it all for ? A man can never have too much Time to
himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would
christen him Kothj^'g-to-do ; he should do nothing. Man,
258 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING.
1 verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is
operative. I am altogethei" for the life contemplative.
AVill no kindly earthqiaake come and swallow up those
acctirsed cotton-mills? Take me that lumber of a desk
there, and bowl it down
As low as to the fiends.
I am no longer ******, clerk to the Firm of, &c. I
am Retired Leisure, I am to be met with in trim gardens.
I am already come to be known by my vacant face and
careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace, nor with
any settled purpose. I walk about ; not to and from. They
tell me, a certain cum dignitate air, that has been buried so
long with my other good parts, has begun to shoot forth in
my person. I grow into gentility perceptibly. A\"hen I
take up a newspaper, it is to read the state of the opera-
Opus ojjeratum est. I have done all that I came into this
W'Orld to do. I have worked task-work, and have the rest
of the day to myself.
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING.
IT is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord Shaftesbury
and Sir William Temple are models of the genteel
style in writing. We should prefer sayuig — of the lordly,
and the gentlemanly. Nothing can be more unlike, than
the inflated finical rhapsodies of Shaftesbury and the plain
natural chit-chat of Temple. The man of rank is dis-
cernible in both writers ; but in the one it is only insinuated
gracefully, in the other it stands out offensively. The peer
seems to have written with his coronet on, and his Earl's
mantle before him ; the commoner in his elbow-chair and
undress. — What can be more pleasant than the way in
which the retired statesman peeps out in his essays, penned
by the latter in his delightful retreat at Shene ? They
scent of Nimeguen and the Hague. Scarce an authority is
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 259
quoted under an arinbassador. Don Francisco de Melo, a
" Portugal Envoy in England," tells him it was frequent in
his country for men, spent with age and. other decaj^s, so as
they could not hope for above a year or two of life, to ship
themselves away in a Brazil fleet, and after their arrival
there to go on a great length, sometimes of twenty or
thirty years, or more, by the force of that vigour they
recovered with that remove. " Whether such an effect
(Temple beaiatifully adds) might grow from the air, or
the fruits of that climate, or by approaching nearer the sun,
which is the fountain of light and heat, when llieir natural
heat was so far decayed ; or whether the piecing out of an
old man's life were worth the pains; I cannot tell : perhaps
the play is not worth the candle." Monsieur Pompone,
"French Ambassador in his (Sir William's) time at the
Hague," certifies him, that in his life he had never heard
of any man in France that arrived at a hundred years of
age ; a limitation of life which the old gentleman imputes
to the excellence of their climate, giving them such a liveli-
ness of temper and humour, as disj)oses them to more plea-
sures of all kinds than in other countries; and moralizes
upon the matter very sensibly. The " late Kobert Earl of
Leicester " furnishes him with a story of a Countess of Des-
mond, married out of England in Edward the Fourth's time,
and who lived far in King James's reign. The " same
noble person " gives him an account, how such a year, in
the same reign, there went about the country a set of mor-
rice-dancers, composed of ten men who danced, a Maid
Marian, and a tabor and pipe ; and how these twelve, one
with another, made up twelve hundred years. " It was not
so much (says Temple) that so many in one small count}'
(Hertfordshire) should live to that age, as that the}^ should
be in vigour and in humour to travel and to dance." Mon-
sieur Zulichem, one of his " colleagues at the Hague," informs
him of a cure for the gout ; which is confirmed by another
"Envoy," Monsieur Serinchamps, in that town, who had
tried it. — Old Prince ]\[aurice of Nassau recommends to him
the use of hammocks in that complaint ; having been allured
to sleep, while suffering under it himself, by the "constant
260 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING.
motion or swinging of those air}' beds." Count Egmont,
and the Rliincgrave wlio " was killed last summer before
Maestricht," impart to liim their experiences.
But the rank of the writer is never more innocently dis-
closed, than where he takes for granted the compliments
paid by foreigners to his fruit-trees. For the taste and per-
fection of what we esteem the best, he can truly say, tliat
the French, who have eaten his peaches and grapes at
Shene in no very ill year, have generally concluded that the
last are as good as any they have eaten in France on this
side Fontainebleau ; and the first as good as any they have
eat in Gascony. Italians have agreed his white figs to be
as good as any of that sort in Italy, which is the earlier kind
of white fig there ; for in the latter kind and the blue, we
cannot come near the warm climates, no more than in the
Frontignac or Muscat grape. His orange-trees, too, are as
large as any he saw when he was young in France, except
those of Fontainebleau ; or what he had seen since in the
Low Countries, except some very old ones of the Prince of
Orange's. Of grapes he had the honour of bringing over
four sorts into England, which he enumerates, and supposes
that they are all by this time pretty common among some
gardeners in his neighbourhood, as well as several persons
of quality ; for he ever thought all things of this kind
" the commoner they are made the better." The garden
pedantry with which he asserts that 'tis to little purpose to
plant any of the best fruits, as peaches or grapes, hardly, he
doubts, beyond Northamptonshire at the farthest north-
wards ; and praises the " Bishop of Munster at Cosevelt,"
for attempting nothing beyond cherries in that cold climate ;
is equally pleasant and in character. " I may perhaps "
(he thus ends his sweet Garden Essay with a passage
worthy of Cowley) " be allowed to know something of this
trade, since I have so long allowed myself to be good for
nothing else, which few men will do, or enjoy their gardens,
without often looking abroad to see how other matters play,
what motions in the state, and what invitations they may
hope for into other scenes. For my own part, as the country
life, and this part of it more particularly, were the inclina-
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 261
tion of my youth itself, so they are the plca.siires of my age ;
and I can truly say that, among many great eniplo3meuts
that have fallen to my share, I have never asked or sought
for any of them, but have often endeavoured to escape from
them, into the ease and freedom of a private scene, where a
man may go his own way and his own pace in the common
paths and circles of life. The measure of choosing well is
whether a man likes what he has chosen, which, 1 thank
God, has befiillen me ; and though among the follies of my
life, building and planting have not been the least, and
have cost me more than I have the confidence to own ; yet
they have been fully recompensed by the sweetness and
satisfaction of this retreat, where, since my resolution taken
of never entering again into any public employments, I
have passed five years without ever once going to town,
though I am almost in sight of it, and have a house there
always ready to receive me. Xor has this been any sort
of affectation, as some have thought it, but a mere want of
desire or humour to make so small a remove ; for when I
am in this corner I can truly say with Horace, Me quoties
reficit, &c.
' Me, when the cold Digeutian stream revives,
What does my friend believe I think or ask '
Let me yet less possess, so I may live,
Whate'er of life remains, unto myself.
May I have books enough ; and one year's store,
Not to depend upon each doubtful hour :
This is enough of mighty Jove to pray,
Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away.' "
The "wa-itings of Temple are, in general, after this easy
copy. On one occasion, indeed, his wit, which was mostly
subordinate to nature and tenderness, has seduced him into
a string of felicitous antitheses ; which, it is obvious to
remark, have been a model to Addison and succeeding
essayists. " \\ ho would not be covetous, and with reason,"
he says, "if health could be purchased with gold? who not
ambitious, if it were at the command of power, or restored
\j honour? but, alas! a white staff will not help gouty
feet to walk better than a common cane : nor a blue
2G2 TEE GENTEEL STYLE IX WEITJNG.
riband bind up a wound so well as a fillet. The glitter of
gold, or of diamonds, will but hurt sore eyes instead of
curing them ; and an aching head will be no more eased by
wearing a crown than a common nightcap." In a far better
style, and more accordant with his own humour of plain-
ness, are the concluding sentences of his "Discourse upon
Poetry." Temple took a part in the controversy about the
ancient and the modern learning ; and, with that partiality
so natural and so graceful in an old man, whose state en-
gagements had left him little leisure to look into modern
productions, while his retirement gave him occasion to look
back upon the classic studies of his youth — decided in fla-
vour of the latter. " Certain it is," he says, " that, whether
the fierceness of the Gothic humours, or noise of their per-
petual wars, frighted it away, or that the unequal mixture
of the modern languages would not bear it — the great
heights and excellency both of poetry and music fell with
the Eoman learning and empire, and have never since re-
covered the admiration and applauses that before attended
them. Yet, such as they are amongst us, they must be
confessed to be the softest and the sweetest, the most
general and most innocent amusements of common time
and life. They still find room in the courts of princes, and
the cottages of shepherds. They serve to revive and ani-
mate the dead calm of poor and idle lives, and to allay or
divert the violent passions and perturbations of the greatest
and the busiest men. And both these effects are of equal
use to himian life ; for the mind of man is like the sea,
which is neither agreeable to the beholder nor the voyager,
in a calm or in a storm, but is so to both when a little
agitated bj^ gentle gales ; and so the mind, when moved by
soft and easy passions or affections. I know very well that
many who pretend to be wise by the forms of being grave,
are apt to despise both poetry and music, as toys and trifles
too light for the use or entertainment of serious men. But
whoever find themselves wholly insensible to their charms,
would, I think, do well to keep their own counsel, for fear
of reproaching their own temper, and bringing the good-
ness of their natures, if not of their understandings, into
BARBARA S . 263
question. While this world lasts, I doubt not but the
pleasure and request of these two entertainments will do so
too ; and happy those that content themselves with these,
or any other so easy and so innocent, and do not trouble the
world or other men, because they cannot be quiet them-
selves, though nobody hurts them." " When all is done
(he concludes), human life is at the greatest and the best
but like a froward child, that must be played with, and
humoured a little, to keep it quiet, till it falls asleep, and
then the care is over,"
BARBARA S-
ON the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, 1
forget which it was, just as the clock had struck one,
Barbara S , with her accustomed punctuality, ascended
the long rambling staircase, with awkward interposed
landing-places, which led to the office, or rather a sort of
box with a desk in it, whereat sat the then treasurer of
(what few of our readers may remember) the old Bath
Theatre. All over the island it was the custom, and remains
so I believe to this day, for the players to receive their
weekly stipend on the Saturday. It was not much that
Barbara had to claim.
The little maid had just entered her eleventh year ; but
her important station at the theatre, as it seemed to her,
with the benefits which she felt to accrue from her pious
application of her small earnings, had given an air of
womanhood to her steps and to her behaviour. You would
have taken her to have been at least five years older.
Till latterly she had merely been emplo3ed in choruses,
or where children were wanted to fill up the scene. But
the manager, observing a diligence and adroitness in her
above her age, had for some few months jDast intrusted to
her the performance of whole parts. You may guess the
self-consequence of the promoted Barbara. She had already
T
ZG4 BARBARA S-
dravm tears in yotrng Ai'thur; had rallied Eichard with
infantine petulance in the Duke of York ; and in her turn
had rebuked that petulance when she was Prince of Wales.
She would have done the elder child in Morton's pathetic
afterpiece to the life ; hut as yet the " Children in the
Wood" was not.
Long after this little girl was grown an aged woman, I
have seen some of these small parts, each making two or
three pages at most, copied out in the rudest hand of the
then prompter, who doubtless transcribed a little more
carefully and fairly for the grown-up tragedy ladies of the
establishment. But such as they were, blotted and scrawled,
as for a child's use, she kept them all ; and in the zenith of
her after reputation it was a delightful sight to behold
them bound up in costliest morocco, each single — each
small part making a boolc — -with fine clasps, gilt-splashed,
&c. She had conscientiously kept them as they had been
delivered to her ; not a blot had been effaced or tampered
with. They were precious to her for their affecting re-
membrancings. They were her principia, her rudiments ;
the elementary atoms ; the little steps by which she pressed
forward to perfection. " What," she would say, " could
India-rubber, or a pumice-stone, have done for these
darlings ?"
I am in no huiTy to begin my story — indeed, I have little
or none to tell — so I will just mention an observation of
hers connected with that interesting time.
Not long before she died I had been discoursing with
her on the quantity of real present emotion which a great
tragic performer experiences during acting. I ventured to
think, that though in the first instance such players must
have possessed the feelings which they so powerfully called
up in others, yet by frequent repetition those feelings must
become deadened in great measure, and the performer trust
to the memory of past emotion, rather than express a pre-
sent one. She indignantly repelled the notion, that with a
truly great tragedian the operation, by which such effects
were produced upon an audience, could ever degrade itself
into what was purely mechanical. With much delicacy,
BABBAEA S , 265
avoiding to instance in her sc7/"-experience, she told me,
that so long ago as when she used to play the part of the
Little Son to Mrs. Porter's Isabella (I think it was), when
that impressive actress has been bending over her in some
heart-rending colloquy, she has felt real hot tears come
trickling from her, which (to use her powerful espression)
have perfectly scalded her back.
I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter ; but it
was some great actress of that day. The name is indif-
ferent ; but the fact of the scalding tears I most distinctly
remember.
I was always fond of the society of players, and am not
sure that an impediment in my speech (which certainly
kept me out of the pulpit), even more than certain per-
sonal disqualifications, which are often got over in that
profession, did not prevent me at one time of life from
adopting it. I have had the honour (I must ever call it) once
to have been admitted to the tea-table of Miss Kelly. I have
played at serious whist with Mr. Listen. I have chattered
with ever good-humoured Mrs. Charles Kemble. I have
conversed as friend to friend with her accomplished husband.
I have been indulged with a classical conference with Mac-
ready ; and with a sight of the Player-picture gallery, at
Mr. Mathews's, when the kind owner, to remunerate me for
my love of the old actors (whom he loves so much), went
over it with me, supplying to his capital collection, what
alone the artist could not give them — voice ; and their
living motion. Old tones, half-faded, of Dodd, and Parsons,
and Baddeley, have lived again for me at his bidding.
Only Edwin he could not restore to me. I have supped
with ; but I am growing a coxcomb.
As I was about to say — at the desk of the then treasurer
of the old Bath Theatre — not Diamond's — presented herself
the little Barbara S .
The parents of Barbara had been in reputable circum-
stances. The father had practised, I believe, as an apothe-
cary in the town. But his practice, from causes which I
feel my own infirmity too sensibly that way to arraign —
or perhaps from that pure infelicity which accompanies
T 2
266 BARBARA S-
some people in tlieir walk tlirough life, and which it is
impossible to lay at the door of imprudence — was now
reduced to nothing. They were, in fact, in the very
teeth of starvation, when the manager, who knew and re-
spected them in better days, took the little Barbara into
his company.
At the period I commenced with, her slender earnings
were the sole support of the family, including two younger
sisters. I must throw a veil over some mortifying circum-
stances. Enough to say, that her Saturday's pittance was
the only chance of a Sunday's (generally their only) meal
of meat.
One thing I will only mention, that in some child's part,
where in her theatrical character she was to sup off a roast
fowl (0 joy to Barbara !) some comic actor, who was for the
night caterer for this dainty — in the misguided humour of
his part, threw over the dish such a quantity of salt (0
grief and pain of heart to Barbara !) that when she crammed
a portion of it into her mouth, she was obliged sputteringly
to reject it; and what with shame of her ill-acted part,
and pain of real appetite at missing such a dainty, her
little heart sobbed almost to breaking, till a flood of tears,
which the well-fed spectators were totally unable to com-
prehend, mercifully relieved her.
This was the little starved, meritorious maid, who stood
before old Eavenscroft, the treasurer, for her Saturday's
payment.
Eavenscroft was a man, I have heard many old theatrical
people besides herself say, of all men least calculated for a
treasurer. He had no head for accounts, paid away at ran-
dom, kept scarce any books, and summing up at the week's
end, if he found himself a pound or so deficient, blest him-
self that it was no worse.
Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare half-guinea. —
By mistake he popped into her hand — a whole one.
Barbara tripped a^vay.
She was entirely unconscious at first of the mistake :
God knows, Eavenscroft would never have discovered it.
But when she had got down to the first of those uncouth
BAIIBABA S . 2(J7
landing-places, she became sensible of an unusual weight
of metal j^ressing in her little hand.
Now mark the dilemma.
She was by nature a good child. From her parents and
those about her, she had imbibed no contrary influence.
But then they had taught her nothing. Poor men's smoky
cabins are not always porticoes of moral philosophy. This
little maid had no instinct to evil, but then she might be
said to have no fixed principle. She had heard h(mesty
commended, but never dreamed of its application to her-
self. She thought of it as something which concerned
grown-up people, men and women. She had never known
temptation, or thought of preparing resistance against it.
Her first impulse was to go back to the old treasurer,
and explain to him his blunder. He was already so con-
fused with age, besides a natural want of punctuality, that
she would have had some difficulty in making him i;nder-
stand it. She saw that in an instant. And then it was such
a bit of money ! and then the image of a larger allowance
of butcher's meat on their table the next day came across
her, till her little eyes glistened, and her mouth moistened.
But then Mr. Eavenscroft had always been so good-natured,
had stood her friend behind the scenes, and even recom-
mended her promotion to some of her little parts. But again
the old man was reputed to be worth a world of money. He
was supposed to have fifty pounds a- year clear of the theatre.
And then came staring upon her the figures of her little
stockingless and shoeless sisters. And when she looked at
her own neat white cotton stockings, which her situation at
the theatre had made it indispensable for her mother to pro-
vide for her, with hard straining and pinching from the
family stock, and thought how glad she should be to cover
their poor feet with the same — and how then they could
accompany her to rehearsals, which they had hitherto been
precluded from doing, by reason of their unfashionable attire,
— in these thoughts she reached the second landing-place — ■
the second, I mean, from the top — for there was still another
left to ti'averse.
Now virtue support Barbara I
2C8 BAliBAUA S-
And that never-failing friend did step in — for at that
moment a strength nut her own, I have heard her say, was
revealed to her — a reason above reasoning — and without
her own agency, as it seemed (for she never felt her feet to
move), she found herself transported back to the individual
desk she had just quitted, and her hand in the old hand of
Eavenscroft, who in silence took back the refunded treasure,
and who had been sitting (good man) insensible to the lapse
of minutes, which to her were anxious ages, and from that
moment a deep peace fell upon her heart, and slie knew
the quality of honesty.
A year or two's unrepining application to her profes-
sion brightened up the feet and the prospects of her little
sisters, set the whole family upon their legs again, and
released her from the difBculty of discussing moral dogmas
upon a landing-place.
I have heard her say that it was a surprise, not much
short of mortification to her, to see the coolness with which
the old man pocketed the difference, which had caused her
such mortal throes.
This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, from
the mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,* then sixty-seven
years of age (she died soon after) ; and to her struggles
upon this childish occasion I have sometimes ventured to
think her indebted for that power of rending the heart in
the representation of conflicting emotions, for which in
after years she was considered as little inferior (if at all
80 in the part of ^^ady Randolph) even to Mrs. Siddons.
* Tlie maiden name of this lady was Street, which she changed, by
Buecessive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, and Crawford. She
was Mrs. Crawford, a third time a widow, when I knew her.
2G9
THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY.
IN A LETTER TO U S , ESQ.
THOUGH in some points of doctrine, and perhaps of
discipline, I am diffident of lending a perfect assent to
that chnrch which you have so worthily historijied, yet may
the ill time never come to me, when with a chilled heart
or a portion of irreverent sentiment, I shall enter her beau-
tiful and time-hallowed Edifices. Judge, then, of my mor-
tification when, after attending the choral anthems of
last Wednesday at Westminster, and being desirous of
renewing my acquaintance, after lapsed years, with the
tombs and antiquities there, I found myself excluded ;
turned out, like a dog, or some profane person, into the
common street, with feelings not very congenial to the
place, or to the solemn service which I had been listening
to. It was a jar after that music.
You had your education at Westminster ; and doubtlese
among those dim aisles and cloisters, you must have
gathered much of that devotional feeling in those young
years, on which your purest mind feeds still — and may it
feed ! The antiquarian spirit, strong in you, and gracefully
blending ever with the religious, may have been sown in
you among those wrecks of splendid mortality. You owe it
to the place of your education ; you owe it to your learned
fondness for the architecture of your ancestors ; you owe it
to the venerableness of your ecclesiastical establishment,
which is daily lessened and called in question through
these practices — to speak aloud your sense of them ; never
to desist raising your voice against them, till they be totally
done away with and abolished; till the doors of West
minster Abbey be no longer closed against the decent,
though low-ln-purse, enthusiast, or blameless devotee, who
must commit an injury against his family economy, if he
would be indulged with a bare admission within its walls.
You owe it to the decencies which you wish to see main-
tained in its impressive services, that our Cathedral be no
longer an object of inspection to the poor at those t-'mes
270 THE TOMBS IN TEE ABBEY.
only, in -which they must rob from their attendance on the
worship every minute which they can bestow upon tlie
fabric. In vain the public prints have taken up this sub-
ject, — in vain such poor, nameless writers as myself express
their indignation. A word from you, sir,— a hint in your
Jouraal — would be sufficient to fling open the doors of the
Beautiful Temple again, as we can remember them when
we were boys. At that time of life, what would the imagi-
native faculty (such as it is) in both of us, have suffered, if
the entrance to so much reflection had been obstructed by the
demand of so much silver !• — If we had scraped it up to gain
an occasional admission (as we certainly should have done),
would the sight of those old tombs have been as impressive
to us (while we have been weighing anxiously prudence
against sentiment) as when the gates stood open as those of
the adjacent Park ; when we could walk in at any time, as
the mood brought us, for a shorter or longer time, as that
lasted ? Is the being shown over a place the same as
silently for ourselves detecting the genius of it ? In no
part of our beloved Abbey now can a person find entrance
(out-of service-time) under the sum of tico shillings. 1'he
rich and the great will smile at the anti-climax, presumed to
lie in these two short words. But you can tell them, sir, how
much quiet worth, how much capacity for enlarged feeling,
how much taste and genius, may coexist, especially in
youth, with a purse incompetent to this demand. A re-
spected friend of ours, during his late visit to the metro-
polis, presented himself for admission to St. Paul's. At the
same time a decently-clothed man, with as decent a wife
and child, were bargaining for the same indulgence. The
price was only two-pence each person. The poor but
decent man hesitated, desirous to go in ; but there were
three of them, and he turned away reluctantly. Perhaps
he wished to have seen the tomb of Nelson. Perhaps
the Interior of the Cathedral was his object. But in the
state of his finances, even sixpence might reasonably seem
too much. Tell the Aristocracy of the country (no man
can do it more impressively) ; instruct them of what value
these in!<iguiticant pieces of money, these minims to their
AMICUS BEDIVIVUS. 271
sight, may be to their humbler brethren. Shame these
Sellers out of the Temple. Stifle not the suggestions of
your better nature with the pretext, that an indiscriminate
admission would expose the Tombs to violation. Eemem-
ber your boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear, of a mob in
the Abbey, while it was free to all ? Do the rabble come
there, or trouble their heads about such speculations ? It
is all that you can do to drive them into your churches ;
they do not voluntarily offer themselves. They have, alas !
no passion for antiquities ; for tomb of king or prelate, sage
or poet. If they had, they would be no longer the rabble.
For forty years that I have known the Fabric, the only
well-attested charge of violation adduced, has been — a ridi-
culous dismemberment committed upon the effigy of that
amiable spy. Major Andre. And is it for this— the wanton
mischief of some school-bo}', fired perhaps with raw notions
of Transatlantic Freedom — or the remote possibility of
such a mischief occurring again, so easily to be prevented
by stationing a constable within the walls, if the vergers
are incompetent to the duty — is it upon such wretched pre-
tences that the people of England are made to pay a new
Peter's Pence, so long abrogated; or must content them-
selves with contemplating the ragged Exterior of their
Cathedral? The mischief was done about the time that
you were a scholar there. Do you know anything about
the unfortunate relic ? —
AMICUS KEDIVIVUS.
Where were ye, Nymplis, wheu tlie remorseless deep
Closed o'er the head of yoiir loved Lycidas ?
I DO not know when I have experienced a stranger sensa-
tion than on seeing my old friend, G. D., who had
been paying me a morning vit^it, a few Sundays back, at
my cottage at Islington, upon taking leave, instead of tui-n-
ing down the right-hand path by which he had entered —
272 AMICUS BEDIVIVUS.
with staif in hand, and at noonday, deliberately inarch
right forwards into the midst of the stream that runs by us,
and totally disappear.
A spectacle like this at dusk would have been appalling
enough; but in the broad, open daylight, to witness such
an unreserved motion towards self-destruction in a valued
friend, took from me all power of speculation.
How I found my feet I know not. Consciousness was
quite gone. Some spirit, not my own, whirled me to the
spot. I remember nothing but the silvery apparition of a
good white head emerging ; nigh which a staff (the hand
unseen that wielded it) pointed upwards, as feeling for the
skies. In a moment (if time was in that time) he was on
my shoulders, and I — freighted with a load more precious
than his who bore Anchises.
And here I cannot but do justice to the officious zeal of
sundry passers-bj^ who, albeit arriving a little too late to
participate in the honours of the rescue, in philanthropic
shoals came thronging to communicate their advice as to
the recovery ; prescribing variously the application, or
non-application, of salt, &c., to the person of the patient.
Life, meantime, was ebbing fast away, amidst the stifle of
conflicting judgments, when one, more sagacious than the
rest, by a bright thought, proposed sending for the Doctor.
Trite as the counsel was, and impossible, as one should
think, to be missed on, — shall I confess? — in this emer-
gency it was to me as if an Angel had spoken. Great pre-
vious exertions — and mine had not been inconsiderable —
are commonly followed by a debility of purpose. This
was a moment of irresolution.
MoNOCULus — for so, in default of catching his true name,
I choose to designate the medical gentleman who now
appeared — is a grave, middle-aged person, who, without
having studied at the college, or truckled to the pedantry
of a diploma, hath employed a great portion of his valuable
time in experimental processes upon the bodies of unfor-
tunate fellow- creatures, in whoiu the vital spark, to mere
vulgar thinking, would seem extinct and lost for ever. He
omitteth no occasion of obtruding his services, from a case
AMICUS EEDIVIVUS. 273
of commou surfeit suffocation to the ignobler obstructions,
sometimes induced by a too wilful application of the plant
cannabis outwardly. But though he declineth not alto-
gether these drier extinctions, his occupation tendeth, for
the most part, to water-practice ; for the convenience of
which, he hath judiciously fixed his quarters near the
grand I'epository of the stream mentioned, where day and
night, from his little watch-tower, at the Middleton's Head,
ho listeneth to detect the wrecks of drowned mortality —
partly, as he saith, to be upon the spot — and partly, be-
cause the liquids which he useth to prescribe to himself
and his patients, on these distressing occasions, are ordi-
narily more conveniently to be found at these common
hostelries than in the shops and phials of the apothecaries.
His ear hath arrived to such finesse by practice, that it is
reported he can distinguish a plunge, at half a furlong
distance ; and can tell if it be casual or deliberate. He
weareth a medal, suspended over a suit, originally of a
sad brown, but which, by time and frequency of nightly
divings, has been dinged into a true professional sable.
He passeth by the name of Doctor, and is remarkable for
wanting his left eye. His remedy — after a sufficient appli-
cation of warm blankets, friction, &c., is a simple tumbler,
or more, of the purest Cognac, with water, made as hot as
the convalescent can bear it. Where he findeth, as in the
case of my friend, a squeamish subject, he condescendeth
to be the taster ; and showeth, by his own example, the
innocuous nature of the prescription. Nothing can be
more kind or encouraging than this procedure. It addeth
confidence to the patient, to see his medical adviser go
hand in hand with himself in the remedy. When the
doctor swalloweth his own draught, what peevish invalid
can refuse to pledge him in the potion ? In fine, Monoculus
is a humane, sensible man, who, for a slender pittance,
scarce enough to sustain life, is content to wear it out in
the endeavour to save the lives of others — his pretensions
so moderate, that with difficulty I coidd press a crown upon
him, for the price of restoring the existence of such an
invaluable creature to society as G. D.
274 AMICUS BEDIVIVUS.
It was pleasant to observe the effect of the subsiding alarm
upon the nerves of the dear absentee. It seemed to have
given a shake to memory, calling up notice after notice,
of all the providential deliverances he had experienced
in the course of his long and innocent life. Sitting up on
my couch — my couch which, naked and void of furniture
hitherto, for the salutary repose which it administered,
shall be honoured with costly valance, at some price, and
henceforth be a state-bed at Colebrook, — he discoursed of
marvellous escapes — by carelessness of nurses — by pails of
gelid, and kettles of the boiling element, in infancy — by
orchard pranks, and snapping twigs, in schoolboy frolics —
by descent of tiles at Trumpington, and of heavier tomes at
Pembroke— by studious watchings, inducing frightful vigi-
lance — by want, and the fear of want, and all the sore
throbbings of the learned head. — Anon, he would burst out
into little fragments of chanting — of songs long ago— ends
of deliverance hymns, not remembered before since child-
hood, but coming up now, when his heart was made tender
as a child's — -for the tremor cordis, in the retrospect of a
recent deliverance, as in a case of impending danger, acting
upon an innocent heart, will produce a self-tenderness, which
we should do ill to christen cowardice ; and Shakspeare,
in the latter crisis, has made his good Sir Hugh to remem-
ber the sitting by Babylon, and to mutter of shallow rivers.
Waters of Sir Hugh Middleton — what a spark you were
like to have extinguished for ever 1 Your salubrious
streams to this City, for now near two centuries, would
hardly have atoned for what you were in a moment wash-
ing away. Mockery of a river — liqiiid artifice — wretched
conduit ! henceforth rank with canals and sluggish aque-
ducts. AVas it for this that, smit in boyhood with the
explorations of that Abj'ssinian traveller, I paced the vales
of Am well to explore j-our tributary springs, to trace your
salutary waters sparkling through green Hertfordshire, and
cultured Enfield parks ? — Ye have no swans — no Naiads —
no river God — or did the benevolent hoary aspect of my
friend tempt ye to suck him in, that ye also might have
the tutelary genius of your waters ?
AMICUS REDIVirUS. 275
Had he been drowned in Cam, there would have been
some consonancy in it ; but w^hat willows had ye to wave
and rustle over his moist sepulture? — or, having no name,
besides that unmeaning assumption of eternal novity, did ye
tliink to get one by the noble prize, and henceforth to be
termed the Stream Dyerian ?
And could such spacious virtue find a grave
Beneath the imposthumed bubble of a wave ?
I protest, George, you shall not venture out again — no,
not by daylight — without a sufficient pair of spectacles —
in your musing moods especially. Your absence of mind
we have borne, till your presence of body came to be
called in question by it. You shall not go wandering into
Euripus with Aristotle, if we can help it. Fie, man, to
turn dipper at your years, after your many tracts in favour
of sprinkling only !
I have nothing but water in my head o'uights since this
frightful accident. Sometimes I am with Clarence in his
dream. At others, I behold Christian beginning to sink,
and crying out to his good brother Hopeful (that is, to me),
" I sink in deep waters; the billows go over my head, all
the waves go over me. Selah." Then I have before me
Palinurus, just letting go the steerage. I cry out too late
to save. Next follow — a mournful procession — suicidal
faces, saved against their will from drowning ; dolefully
trailing a length of reluctant gratefulness, with ropy weeds
pendent from locks of watchet hue — constrained Lazari —
Pluto's half-subjects — stolen fees from the grave — bilking
Charon of his fare. At their head Arion — or is it G. D. ? —
in his singing garments marcheth singly, with harp in
hand, and votive garland, which Machaon (or Dr. Hawes)
snatcheth straight, intending to suspend it to the stern
God of Sea. Then follow dismal streams of Lethe, in
which the half-drenched on earth are constrained to drown
downright, by wharfs where Ophelia twice acts her muddy
death.
And, doubtless, there is some notice in that invisible
world when one of us approacheth (as my friend did so
27G SOME SONNETS OF STB PHILIP SYDNEY.
lately) to their inexorable precincts. When a soul knocts
once, twice, at Death's door, the sensation aroused within
the palace mvist he considerable ; and the grim Feature, by
modern science so often dispossessed of his prey, must
have learned by this time to pity Tantalus.
A pulse assuredly was felt along the line of the Elysian
shades, when the near arrival of G, D. was announced by
no equivocal indications. From their seats of Asphodel
arose the gentler and the graver ghosts — poet, or historian
— of Grecian or of Eoman lore — to crown with unfading
chaplets the half-finished love-labours of their unwearied
scholiast. Him Markland expected — him Tyrwhitt hoped
to encounter — him the svs^eet lyrist of Peter House, w^hom
he had barely seen upon earth,* with newest airs prepared
to greet ; and patron of the gentle Christ's boy, — who
should have been his patron through life — the mild Askew,
with longing aspirations leaned foremost from his vener-
able -(Esculapian chair, to welcome into that happy com-
pany the matured virtues of the man, whose tender scions
in the boy he himself upon earth had so prophetically fed
and watered.
SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.
SYDNEY'S SONNETS— I speak of the best of them—
are among the very best of their sort. They fall below
the plain moral dignity, the sanctity, and high yet modest
spirit of self-approval, of Milton, in his compositions of a
similar structure. They are in truth what Milton, cen-
suring the Arcadia, says of that work (to which they are a
sort of after-tune or application), "vain and amatorious"
enough, yet the things in their kind (as he confesses to be
true of the romance) may be " full of worth and wit."
They savour of the Courtier, it must be allowed, and not
of the Commonwealthsman. But Milton was a Courtier
* Graitjm tantum vidit.
SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 277
when lie wrote the Masque at Ludlow Castle, and still
more a Courtier when he composed the Arcades. When
the national struggle was to begin, he becomingly cast
these vanities behind him ; and if the order of time had
thrown Sir Philip upon the crisis which preceded the
revolution, there is no reason why he should not have
acted the same part in that emergency, which has glorified
the name of a later Sydney. He did not want for plainness
or boldness of spirit. His letter on the French match may
testify he could speak his mind freely to Princes. The
times did not call him to the scaffold.
The Sonnets which we oftenest call to mind of Milton
were the compositions of his maturest years. Those of
Sydney, which I am about to produce, were written in the
very heyday of his blood. They are stuck full of amorous
fancies — far-fetched conceits, befitting his occupation ; for
True Love thinks no labour to send out Thoughts upon
the vast and more than Indian voyages, to bring home rich
pearls, outlandish wealth, gums, jewels, spiceiy, to sacri-
fice in self-depreciating .similitudes, as shadows of true
amiabilities in the Beloved. We must be Lovers — or at
least the cooling touch of time, the circum prcBcordia frigus,
must not have so damped our faculties, as to take away our
recollection that we were once so — before we can duly
appreciate the glorious vanities and graceful hyperboles of
the passion. The images which lie before our feet (though
by some accounted the only natural) are least natural for
the high Sydnean love to express its fancies b}'. They
may serve for the loves of Tibullus, or the dear Author of
the Schoolmistress ; for passions that creep and whine in
Elegies and Pastoral Ballads. I am sure Milton never
loved at this rate. I am afraid some of his addiesses (ad
Leonoram I mean) have rather erred on the farther side ;
and that the poet came not much short of a religious
indecorum, when he could thus apostrophize a singing-
girl :—
Angelus unicuique suus (sic credite gentes)
Obtigit sethereis ales ab ordinibus.
Quid mirum, Leonora, tibi si gloria major,
Nam tua prsesentem vox sonat ipsa Deum ?
278 SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.
Aut Deus, aut vacui certe mens tertia coeli
Per tua secreto guttura serpit agens ;
Serpit agens. lacilisque docet mortalia corda
Sensim immortali assuescere posse sono.
Quod si cuncta quidem Deus est, per cunctaque fusus,
In te una loquitur, cetera mutus habet.
This is loviug in a strange fasliion ; and it requires some
candour of construction (besides tiie slight darkening of a
dead language) to cast a veil over the ugly appearance of
something very like blasphemy in the last two verses. 1
think the Lover would have been staggered if he had gone
about to express the same thought in English. I am sure
Sydney has no flights like this. His extravaganzas do not
strike at the sky, though he takes leave to adopt the pale
Dian into a fellowship with his mortal passions :
With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies
How silently ; and with how wan a face !
"What ! may it be. that even in heavenly place
That busy Archer his sharp arrow tries ?
Sure, if that loug-with-love-acquaiuted eyes
Can jiidge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;
I read it iu tliy looks ; thy lauguisht grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, toll me,
Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be ?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess ?
Do they call virtue there— ungratefulness !
The last line of this poem is a little obscured by trans-
position. He means, Do they call ungratefulness there a
virtue ?
Come, Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealtli, the prisoner's release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low ;
SOME SONNETS OF SIE PHILIP SYDNEY. 279
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease*
Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw ;
make in me those civil wars to cease :
1 will good tribute pay if thou do so.
Take thou of me sweet pillows, sweetest bed ;
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light;
A. rosy garland, and a weary head.
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou slialt in me.
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.
The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness
Bewray itself in my long- settled eyes,
Wlience tliose same fumes of melancholy rise,
With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess.
Some, that know how my spring I did address,
Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies
Others, because the I'rince my service tries.
Think, that I tliiuk state errors to redress ;
But harder judges judge, ambition's rage.
Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place.
Holds my young brain captiv'd in golden cage.
O fools, or over-wise ! alas, the race
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start,
But only Stella's eyes, and Stella's heart.
Because I oft in dark abstracted guise
Seem most alone in greatest company.
With dearth of words, or answers quite awry,
To them that would make speecli of speech arise
They deem, and of their doom the rumour flies.
That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie
So in my swelling breast, that only I
Fawn on myself, and others do despise ;
Yet Pride, I think, doth not my soul possess.
Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass ;
But one worse fault — Ambition — I confess.
That makes me oft my best friends oveipass.
Unseen, unheard — while Tliought to highest place
Bends all his powers, even unto Stella's grace.
rrcsSi
280 SOME SONNETS OF SIR FEILIP SYDNEY.
Having this tiny, my horse, my haiiil, my lance,
Guided so well tliat I ubtaiuel the prize.
Both by the judgment of the English eyes.
And of some sent from tliat sweet enemy, — France :
Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance ;
Townsfolk my strength ; a damtit;r judge applies
His praise to sleight, which from good use doth rise ;
Some lucky wits impute it hut to ciiance ;
Others, because of both sides I do take
Tily blood from them, who did excel in this.
Think Natm-e me a man of arms did make.
How far they shot awry ! the true cause is,
Stella look'd on, and from her heavenly face
Sent fo)-th the beams which made so fair my race.
VI.
In martial sjiorts I had my cuiming tried.
Ami yet to break more staves did me address.
While with the people's shouts fl must confess)
Vouth, luck, aud praise, even fill'd my veins with prido —
When Cupid having me (his slave) descried
In Mars's livery, prancing in the press,
" What now. Sir Fool !" said he ; " I would no less:
Look here, I say." I look'd, and Stella spied,
Wlio hard by made a window send forth light.
My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes;
One hand forgot to rule, th' other to fight :
Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries.
]\Iy foe came on, and beat the air for me — •
Till that her blush made me my shame to see.
VII.
No more, my dear, no more these counsels try ;
give my passions leave to run their race ;
Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace ;
Let folk o'ercharged M'ith brain against me cry :
Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye ;
Let me no steps, but of lost labour, trace ;
Let all the earth with scorn recount my case — •
But do not will me from my love to fly.
1 do not 3nvy Aristotle's wit.
Nor do aspire to U;iesar's bleeding fame ;
Nor aught do care, though some above me sit ;
Nor hope, nor wish, auother course to fiamc.
But that which once may win thy cruel heart :
Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art.
SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 281
VIII.
Love still a boy, and oft a wanton, is,
School'd only by his mother's tender eye ;
What wonder, then., i^ he his lesson miss,
When for so soft a rod dear play he try?
And yet my Star, beeause a sugar'd kiss
In sport I .snck'd, while she asleep did lie.
Doth lorn-, nay chide, nay threat, for only thi)?.
Sweet, it was saucy Love, not humble I.
But no 'scuse serves ; she makes her wrath appear
In Beauty's throne — see now who dares come near
Those scarlet jud.iies, thrcat'ning bloody pain ?
heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face
Anger invests with such a lovely grace,
That anger's self I needs must kiss again.
IX.
1 never drank of Aganippe well.
Nor ever did in shade of Teuijje sit,
And Jluses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell ;
Poor lay-man I, for sacred rights unfit.
Some do I hear of Poet's fury tell.
But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it ;
And this I swear by blackest brook of hell,
I am no pick-purse of another's wit.
How falls it tiien, that with so smooth an ease
My thoughts I speak, and what I speak doth flow
In verse, and that my verse best wits doth please?
Guess me the cause — what is it tlius ? — fye, no !
Or so? — much less. How then ? sure tlius it is,
My lips are sweet, iuspir'd with Stella's kiss.
X.
Of all the kings that ever here did reign,
Edward, named Fourth, as first in praise I name.
Not for his fair outside, nor v.'cli-lincd brain —
Although less gifts imp featliers oft on Fame.
Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame
His sire's revenge, join'd with a kingdom's gain ;
And, gain'd by Mars could j'et mad Mars so tame,
That Balance weigh'd wliat Sword did late obtain
Nor that lie made the Floure-ile-luee so 'fraid,
Though strongly hedged, of bloody Lions paws,
That witty Lewis to liim a tribute paid.
Nor this, nor that, nor any such sinull cause —
But only, for tliis wortliy knight durst prove
To lose his crown rather than fail his love.
u 2
2S2 SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.
happy Thames, that didst my Stella, bear,
1 saw thyself, with many a Biniling line
Upou tliy cheerful face, Joy's livery wear,
While those fair planets on thy streams did shine
Tlie boat for joy could not to dance forbear,
Wiiile wanton winds, with beauty so divine
Ravish'd, stay'd not, till in her golden hair
They did themselves ( sweetest prison) twine.
And fain those ^ol's youth there would their stay
Have made ; but, forced by nature still to fly.
First did with putting kiss those locks display.
She, so dishevell'd, blush'd ; from window I
With sight thereof cried out, fau- disgrace,
Let Honour's self to thee grant highest place !
Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be ;
And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet,
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet,
More soft than to a chamber melody ;
Now blessed You bear onward blessed Me
To Her, where I my heart safe left shall meet,
My Muse and I must you of duty greet
With thanks aud wishes, wishing thankfully.
Be you still fair, honour' d by public heed,
By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot ;
Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed.
And that you know, I envy you no lot
Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss,
Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss.
Of the foregoing, tlie first, the second, and the last
sonnet, are my favourites. But the general beauty of tueui
all is, that they arc so perfectly characteristical. The
spirit of " learning and of chivalry," — of which union,
Spenser has entitled Sydney to have been the " president,"
— shines through them. I confess I can see nothing of the
"• jejune" or " frigid " in them ; much less of the " stiff" and
" cumbrous " — which I have sometimes heard objected to
the Arcadia. The verse runs off swiftly and gallantly. It
might have been tuned to the trumpet ; or tempered (as
himself expresses it) to " trampling horses' feet." They
abound in felicitous phrases —
SOME SONNETS OF SIB rUILIP SYDNEY. 283
O heav'uly Fool, thy most kiss-wortliy face —
Sth Sonnet.
Sweet pillows, sweetest bed ;
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ;
A rosy garland, and a weary head.
2nd Sonnet.
That sweet enemy, — France —
btli Sonnet.
But tliey are not rich in words only, in vague and i;n
localised feelings — the failing too much of some poetry of the
present day — they are full, material, and circumstantiated.
Time and place appropriates eveiy one of them. It is not
a fever of passion wasting itself upon a thin diet of dainty
words, but a transcendent passion pervading and illuminat-
ing action, pursuits, studies, feats of arms, the opinions of
contemporaries, aud his judgment of them. An historical
thread runs through them, which almost affixes a date to
them ; marks the when and where they were written.
I have dwelt the longer upon what I conceive the merit
of these poems, because I have been hurt by the wanton-
ness (I wish I could treat it by a gentler name) with
which W. H. takes every occasion of insulting the memory
of Sir Philip Sydney. But the decisions of the Author of
Table Talk, &c. (most profound and subtle where they are,
as for the most part, just) are more safely to be relied
upon, on subjects and authors he has a partiality for, than
on such as he has conceived an accidental prejudice against.
Milton wrote sonnets, and was a king-hater ; and it was
congenial perhaps to sacrifice a courtier to a patriot. But
I was unwilling to lose a fine idea from my mind. The
noble images, passions, sentiments, and poetical delicacies
of character, scattered all over the Arcadia (spite of some
stiffness and encumberment), justify to aue the character
which his contemporaries have left us of the writer. I
cannot think with the Critic, that Sir Philip Sydney
was that opprobrious thing which a foolish nobleman in his
insolent hostility chose to term him. I call to mind the
epitaph made on him, to guide mo to juster thoughts of
him; and I repose upon the beautiful lines in the " Friend's
284 SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.
Passion for his Asti-opliel," printed with the Elegies of
Spenser and others :
You knew — who knew not Astropliel?
(^Tliat I shonkl live to s:iy I knew,
And have not in possession still !) —
Things known permit me to renew —
Of him you Imow his merit such,
I cannot say — you hear — too much.
■VVilhin these woods of Arcady
He chief delii;ht and pleasure took ;
And ou the mountain Partheny,
Upon the crystal liquid brook,
The Muses met him every day.
That tauglit him sing, to write, and say.
When he descended down the mount,
His personage seemed most divine :
A thousand graces one might count
Upon his lovely cheerful eyne.
To hear hira sj^eak, and sweetly smile.
You were iu Paradise the while.
A sweet altracti've Idiul of grace ;
A full assurance given hy loolcs ;
Continual comfort in a face.
The lineaments of Gospel boolis —
I trow that count'nance cjinnot lye,
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.
Above all others this is he,
Which erst approved in his song.
That love and honour might agree,
And that pure love will do no wrong.
Sweet saints, it is no sin or hlo,me
T5 love a man of virtuous name.
Did never love so sweetly breathe
In any mortal breast before ,
Did never Muse inspire beneath
, A Poet's bruin with finer store !
He wrote of Love with high conceit,
And Beauty rear'd above her height.
Or let any ono read the deeper sorrows (grief running
NEWSPAPEIiS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 285
into rage) in the Poem, — the last in the collection accom-
panying the above, — which from internal testimony 1
believe to be Lord Brooke's — beginning with "Silence
augmenteth grief," and then seriously ask himself, whether
the subject of such absorbing and confounding regrets
could have been that thing which Lord Oxford termed him.
KEWSPAPEES THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.
DAN STUART once told us, that he did not remember
that he ever deliberately walked into the Exhibition at
Somerset House in his life. He might occasionally have
escorted a party of ladies across the way that were going
in, but lie never went in of his own head. Yet the ofiSce
of the Morning Post newspaper stood then just where it
does now — we are carrying you back, Reader, some thirty
years or more — with its gilt-globe-topt front facing that
emporium of our artists' grand Annual Exposure. We
sometimes wish that we had observed the same abstinence
with Daniel.
A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared to us one of
the finest-tempered of Editors. Perry, of the Morning
Chronicle, was equally pleasant, with a dash, no slight one
either, of the courtier. S. was frank, plain, and English
all over. AVe have worked for both these gentlemen.
It is soothing to contemplate the head of the Ganges; to
ti'ace the first little bubblings of a mighty river,
With lioly revtreuce to approach tho rocks,
Whence glide the streams renowned iu ancient song.
Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian Pilgrim's explo-
ratory ramblings after the cradle of the infant Nilus, we
well remember on one fine summer holyday (a " whole
day's leave" we called it at Christ's hospital) sallying forth
at rise of sun, not very well provisioned either for such
an undertaking, to trace the current of tho New River —
2SG NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.
Middletonian stream ! — to its scaturient source, as we had
read, iu meadows by fair Amwell. Gallantly did we com-
mence our solitary quest — for it was essential to the
dignity of a Discovery, that no eye of schoolboy, save our
own, should beam on the detection. By flowery sj^ots,
and verdant lanes skirting Hornsey, Hope trained us on
in many a baffling turn ; endless, hopeless meanders, as
it seemed ; or as if the jealous waters had dodged us, re-
luctant to have the humble spot of their nativity revealed ;
till spent, and nigh famished, before set of the same sun,
we sate down somewhere by Bowes Farm near Tottenham,
with a tithe of our proposed labours only yet accomplished ;
sorely convinced in spirit, that that Brucian enterprise was
as 3'et too aiduous for our young shoulders.
Not more refreshing to the thirsty curiosity of the
traveller is the tracing of some mighty waters up to their
shallow fontlet, than it is to a pleased and candid reader to
go back to the inexperienced essays, the first callow flights
in authorship, of some established name in literature ; from
the Gnat which preluded to the yEneid, to the Duck which
Samuel Johnson trod on.
In those days, every Morning Paper, as an essential
retainer to its establishment, kept an author, who was
bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs.
Sixpence a joke — and it was thought pretty high too — was
Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in these cases. The chat
of the day — scandal, but, above all, dress — furnished the
material. The length of no paragraph was to exceed seven
lines. Shorter they might be, but they must be poignant.
A fashion of flesh, or rather pmi;-coloured liose for the
ladies, luckily coming up at the juncture when we were
on our probation for the place of Chief Jester to S.'s Paper,
established our reputation in that line. We were pro-
nounced a " capital hand." the conceits which we varied
upon red in all its prismatic differences ! from the trite
and obvious flower of Cytherea, to the flaming costume of
the lady that has her sitting upon " many waters." Then
there was the collateral topic of ankles. What an occa-
ision to a truely chaste writer, like ourself, of touching
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 287
that nice brink, and yet never tumbling over it, of a seem-
ingly ever approximating something "not quite proper;"
while, like a skilful posture-master, balancing betwixt
decorums and their opposites, he keeps the line, from
which a hair's-breadth deviation is destruction ; hovering
in the confines of light and darkness, or where "both seem
either ;" a hazy uncertain delicacy ; Autolycus-like in the
Play, still putting ofl' his expectant auditory with ' Whoop,'
do me no harm, good man !" But above all, that conceit
arrided us most at that time, and still tickles our midriff
to remember, where, allusively to the flight of Astrasa —
ultima Cadestum terras rdiquit — we pronounced — in reference
to the stockings still — that Modesty, taking her final
LEAVE OF MORTALS, HER LAST BlUSH WAS VISIBLE IN HER
ASCENT TO THE HeAVENS BY THK TRACT OF THE GLOWING
INSTEP. This might be called the crowning conceit: and
was esteemed tolerable writing in those days.
But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes
away ; as did the transient mode which had so favoured us.
The ankles of our fair friends in a few weeks began to
reassume their whiteness, and left us scarce a leg to stand
upon. Other female whims followed, but none, methought,
so pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd conceits, and more
than single meanings.
Somebody has said, that to swallow six cross-buns daily
consecutively for a fortnight, would surfeit the stoutest
digestion. But to have to furnish as many jokes daily,
and that not for a fortnight, but for a long twelvemonth,
as we were constrained to do, was a little harder exaction.
" Man goeth forth to his work until the evening" — from a
reasonable hour in the morning, we presume it was meant.
Now, as our main occupation took us up from eight till
five every day in the City ; and as our evening hours, at
that time of life, had generally to do with anything rather
than business, it follows, that the only time we could spare
for this manufactory of jokes — our supplementary livelihood,
that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and
cheese — was exactly that part of the day which (as we
have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly denominated
288 NEWSPAPEES THIRTY-FIVE YE APS AGO.
No Man's Time ; that is, no time in which a man ought to
be up, and awake, in. To speak more plainly, it is that
time of an hour, or an hour and a half's duration, in which
a man, whose occasions call him up so preposterously, has
to ^vait for his breakfast.
those head-aches at dawn of day, when at five, or half-
past five in summer, and not much later in the dark
seasons, we were compelled to rise, having been perhaps
not above four hours in bed — (for we were no go-to-beds
with the lamb, though we anticipated the lark oftimes in
her rising — we like a parting cup at midnight, as all young
men did before these effeminate times, and to have our
friends about us — we were not constellated under Aquarius
that watery sign, and therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold,
washy, bloodless — we were none of your Basilian water-
sponges, nor had taken our degrees at Mount Ague — wo
were right toping Capulets, jolly companions, we and
they) — but to have to get up, as we said before, curtailed
of half our fair sleep, fasting, with only a dim vista of re-
freshing bohea in the distance — to be necessitated to rouse
ourselves at the detestable rap of an old hag of a domestic,
who seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in her announce-
ment, that it was "time to rise;" and whose chappy
knuckles we have often yearned to amputate, and string
them up at our chamber door, to be a terror to all such
unseasonable rest-breakers in future ■
" Facil " and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the
"descending" of the over-night, balmy the first sinking of
the heavy head upon the pillow ; but to get up, as he goes
on to sa}^,
— revocare gradus, siipcrasque evadere ad auras —
and to get up, moreover, to make jokes with malice pre-
pended — there was the " labour," there the " work."
No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to
that, our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned out
for half the tyi'anny which this necessity exercised upon
us. Half a dozen jests in a day, (bating Sundays too,)
why, it seems nothing ! We make twice the num bor every
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 2S9
day in our lives as a matter of course, and claim no Sab-
batical exemptions. But tben they come into our head.
But when the head has to go out to them — whoi the
mountain must go to Mahomet —
Eeader, try it for once, only for a sh.ort twelvemonth.
It was not every week that a fashion of pink stockings
came up ; but mostly, instead of it, som-e rugged untract-
able subject ; some topic impossible to be contorted into
the risible ; some feature, upon which no smile could play;
some flint, from which no process of ingenuity could pro-
cure a scintillation. There they lay ; there your appointed
tale of brick-making was set before you, which you must
finish, with or without straw, as it happened. The craving
Dragon — the Public — like him in Bel's Temple — must be
fed, it expected its daily rations; and Daniel, and our-
selves, to do us justice, did the best we could on this side
bursting him.
While we were wringing out coy sprightlinesses for the
Post, and writhing under the toil of what is called " easy
writing," Bub Allen, our quondam schoolfellow, was tapping
his impracticable brains in a like service for the Oracle.
Not tliat Eobert troubled himself much about wit. If his
paragraphs had a sprightly air about them, it was sufficient.
He carried this nonchalance so far at last, that a matter
of intelligence, and that no very important one, was not
seldom palmed upon his employers for a good jest ; for
example sake — " Walking yesterday morning casually doion
Snow Hill, loho sJioidd we meet but Mr. Deputy Humphreys ! we
rejoice to add, that the worthy Deputy appeared to enjoy a good
state of health. We do not remember ever to have seen him look
better." This gentleman so surprisingly met upon Snow
Hill, from some peculiarities in gait or gesture, was a con-
stant butt for mirth to the small paragraph-mongers of the
day ; and our friend thought that he might have his fling
at him with the rest. We met A. in Holborn shortly after
this extraordinary rencounter, which he told with tears of
satisfaction in his eyes, and chuckling at the anticipated
effects of its announcement next day in the paper.
We did not quite comprehend where the wit of it lay at
290 NEWSFAPEIiS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.
the time ; nor was it easy to be detected, when the thing
came out advantaged by type and lettei'iDvess, He had
better have met anything that morning than a Common
Council Man. His services were shortly after dispensed
with, on the plea that his paragraphs of late had been
deficient in point. The one in question, it must be owned,
had an air, in the opening especially, proper to awaken
curiosity ; and the sentiment, or moral, wears the aspect
of humanity and good neighbourly feeling. But some-
how the conclusion was not judged altogether to answer
to the magnificent promise of the premises. We traced
our friend's pen afterwards in the True Briton, the Star,
the Traveller, — from all which he was successively dis-
missed, the Proprietors having "no further occasion for
his services." Nothing was easier than to detect him.
When wit failed, or topics ran low, there constantly
appeared the following — " It is not generally known that the
three Blue Balls at the Paicnbrohers' shops are the ancient
arms of Lombard)/. The Lombards ivere tlie first money-brolcers
in Europe.'' Bob has done more to set the public right on
this important point of blazonry, than the whole (Allege
of Heralds.
The appointment of a regular wit has long ceased to be
a part of the economy of a Morning Paper. Editors find
their own jokes, or do as Avell without them. Parson Este,
and Topham, brought up the set custom of " wiW;y para-
graphs " first in the World. Boaden was a reigning
paragraphist in his da}-, and succeeded poor Allen in the
Oracle. But, as we said, the fashion of jokes passes
away ; and it would be difficult to discover in the bio-
grapher of Mrs. Sieldons, any traces of that vivacity and
fancy which charmed the whole town at the commence-
ment of the present century. Even the prelusive deli-
cacies of the present writer — the curt " Astrgean allusion "
— would be thought pedantic and out of date, in these
days.
From the office of the Morning Post (for we may as well
exhaust our Newspaper Keminiscences at once) by change
of property in the paper, we were transferred, mortifying
NEWSPAPERS THIETY-FIVE YEAIiS AGO. 291
exchange ! to the office of the Albion Newspaper, late
Eackstrow'y Musevim, in Fleet Street. What a transition —
from a handsome apartment, from rosewood desks and
silver inkstands, to an office — no office, but a den rather,
but just redeemed from the occupation of dead monsters,
of which it seemed redolent — from the centre of loyalty
and fashion, to a focus of vulgarity and sedition ! Hero
in murky closet, inadequate from its scjuare contents to
the receipt of the two bodies of Editor and humble para-
graph-maker, together at one time, sat in the discharge of
his new editorial functions (the " Bigod " of Elia) the re-
doubted John Fen wick.
F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left not
many in the pockets of his friends whom he might com-
mand, had purchased (on tick, doubtless) the whole and
sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the rights and
titles (such as they were worth) of the Albion from one
Lovell ; of whom we know nothing, save that he had stood
in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With
this hopeless concern — for it had been sinking ever since
its commencement, and could now reckon upon not more
than a hundred subscribers — F. resolutely determined upon
pulling down the Government in the first instance, and
making both our fortunes by way of corollary. For seven
weeks and more did this infatuated democrat go about
borrowing seven-shilling pieces, and lesser coin, to meet
the daily demands of the Stamp Office, which allowed no
credit to publications of that side in politics. An outcast
from politer bread, we attached our small talents to the
forlorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation now was to
write treason.
Recollections of feelings — which were all that now re-
mained from our first boyish heats kindled by the French
Eevolution, when, if we were misled, we erred in the com-
pany of some who are accounted very good men now —
rather than any tendency at this time to Republican doc-
trines — assisted us in assuming a style of writing, while
the paper lasted, consonant in no very undertone to the
right earnest fanaticism of F. Our cue was now to
292 ON THE FIIODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.
insinuate, rather than recommend, possible abdications.
Blocks, axes, Whitehall tribunals, were covered with
flowers of so cunning a periphrasis — as Mr. Bayes says,
never naming the thing directly — that the keen eye of an
Attorney-General was insufficient to detect tlie lurking
snake among them. There were times, indeed, when we
sighed for our more gentleman-like occupation under Stuart.
But with change of masters it is ever change of service.
Already one paragraph, and another, as we learned after-
wards from a gentleman at the Treasury, had begun to be
marked at that office, with a view of its being submitted at
least to the attention of the proper Law Officers — when an
unlucky, or rather lucky epigram from our pen, aimed at
Sir J s M h, who was on the eve of depai-ting for
India to reap the fruits of his apostacy, as F. pronounced
it, (it is hardly worth particularizinu,) happening to offend
the nice sense of Lord (or, as he then delighted to be called
Citizen) Stanhope, deprived F. at once of the last hopes of
a guinea from the last patron that had stuck by us ; and
breaking up our establishment, left us to the safe, but some-
what mortifying, neglect of the Crown Lawyers. It was
about this time, or a little earlier, that Dan Stuart made
that curious confession to us, that lie had "never delibe-
ratel}^ walked into an Exhibition at Somerset House in his
life."
BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY
IN THE PEODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.
HOGARTH excepted, can we produce any one painter
within the last fifty years, or since the humour of ex-
hibiting began, that has treated a story imaginatively'? By
this we mean, upon whom his subject has so acted, that it
has seemed to direct liini — not to be arranged by him ? Any
upon whom its leading or collateral points have impressed
themselves so tyrannically, that lie dared not treat it other-
v/ise, lest he should falsify a revelation ? Any that has
ON THE rSODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 293
imparted to his compositions, not merely so mucli truth as
is enough to convey a story with clearness, but that indi-
vidualizing propert}', which should keep the subject so
treated distinct in feature from every other subject, however
similar, and to common apprehensions almost identical ; so
that we might say, this and this part could have found au
appropriate place in no other picture in the world but this?
Is there anytlung in modern art — we will not demand that
it should be equal — but iu an}' way analogous to what
Titian has effected, in that wonderful bringing together
of two times in the " Ariadne," in the Kational Gallery?
Precipitous, with his reeling satyr rout about him, re-
peopling and re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk
with a new fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire,
fire-like flings himself at the Cretan. This is the time
present. With this telling of the story, an artist, and no
ordinary one, might remain richly proud. Guido, in his
harmonious version of it, saw no farther. But from the
depths of the imaginative spirit Titian has recalled past
time, and laid it contributory with the present to one simul-
taneous effect. With the desert all ringing with the mad
cymbals of his followers, made litcid with the presence and
new offers of a god, — as if unconscious of Bacchus, or but
idly casting her e^'es as upon some unconcerning pageant —
her soul undistracted from Theseus — Ariadne is still pacing
the solitary shore in as much heart-silence, and in almost
the same local solitude, with which she awoke at day -break
to catch the forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away
the Athenian.
Here are two points miraculously co-uniting ; fierce
society, with the feeling of solitude still absolute ; noon-
day revelations, with the accidents of the dull grey dawn
unquenched and lingering ; the present Bacchus, with the
fast Ariadne : two stories, with double Time ; separate, and
harmonizing. Had the artist made the woman one shade
less indifferent to the God ; still more, had she expressed a
rapture at his advent, where would have been the story of
the mighty desolation of the heart previous ? merged in the
insipid accident of a flattering offer met with a welcome
294 OX THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.
acceptance. The broken heart for Theseus was not likely
to be pieced up by a God.
We have before us a fine rough print, from a picture by
Kaphael iu the Vatican. It is the Piesentation of the new-
born Eve to Adam by the Almighty. A fairer mother of
mankind we might imagine, and a goodlier sire perhaps of
men since born. But these are matters subordinate to the
conception of the situation, displayed in this extraordinary
production. A tolerable modern artist would have been
satisfied with tempering certain raptures of connubial anti-
cipation, with a suitable acknowledgment to the Giver of
the blessing, in the countenance of the first bridegroom :
something like the divided attention of the child (Adam was
here a child-man) between the given toy, and the mother
who had just blest it with the bauble. This is the obvious,
the fiist-siglit view, the superficial. An artist of a higher
grade, considering the awful presence they were in, would
have taken care to subtract something from the expression
of the more human passion, and to heighten the more
spiritual one. This would be as much as an exhibition-goer,
from the opening of Somerset House to last year's show, has
been encouraged to look for. It is obvious to hint at a
lower expression yet, in a picture that, for respects of
drawing and colouring, might be deemed not wholly inad-
missible within these art-fostering walls, in which the rap-
tures should be as ninety-nine, the gratitude as one, or
perhaps zero ! By neither the one passion nor the other
has Raphael expounded the situation of Adam. Singly
upon his brow sits the absorbing sense of wonder at the
created miracle. The moment is seized by the intuitive
artist, perhaps not self-conscious of his art, in which neither
of the conflicting emotions — a moment how abstracted ! —
have had time to spring up, or to battle for indecorous mas-
tery. — We have seen a landscape of a justly-admired neoteric,
in which he aimed at delineating a fiction, one of the most
severely beautiful in antiquity — the gardens of the Hespe-
rides. To do Mr. justice, he had painted a laudable
orchard, with fitting seclusion, and a veritable dragon (of
which a Polypheme, by I'oussiu, is somehow a fac-simile for
ON THE rilODVCTlOXS OF MODERN ART. 205
the sitiiatiun), looking over into the world shut out Lack-
wards, so that uone but a "still-climbing Hercules" could
hope to catch a peep at the admii-ed Ternary of Eocluscs.
No conventual porter could keep his keys better than this
custos with the "lidless eyes." He not only sees that none
do intrude into that privacy, but, as clear as daylight, that
none but Hercules aid Diabolus by any manner of means can.
So far all is well. We have absolute solitude here or no-
where. Ab extra, the damsels are snug enough. But hero
the artist's courage seems to have failed him. He began to
pity his pretty charge, and, to comfort the irksomeness, has
peopled their solitude with a bevy of fair attendants, maids
of honour, or ladies of the bed-chamber, according to the
approved etiquette at a court of the nineteenth centiiry;
giving to the whole scene the air of a fete-champetre, if we
will but excuse the absence of the gentlemen. This is well,
and Watteauish. But what is become of the solitary
mystery — the
Daughters three,
That sing around the golden tree ?
This is not the way in which Poussin would have treated
this subject.
The paintings, or rather the stupendous architectural
designs, of a modern artist, have been urged as objections
to the theory of our motto; They are of a character, we
confess, to stagger it. His towered structures are of the
highest order of the material sublime. Whether they were
dreams, or transcripts of soine elder workmanship — Assyrian
niins old — restored by this mighty artist, they satisfy our
most stretched and craving conceptions of the glories of the
antique world. It is a pity that they were ever peopled.
On that side, the imagination of the artist halts, and appears
defective. Let us examine the poiijt of the story in the
" Belshazzar's Feast." ^Ve will introduce it by an apposite
anecdote.
The court historians of the day record, that at the first
dinner given by the late King (then Prince Pi-egent) at the
Pavilion, the following characteristic frolic was jdayed off.
29fi ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MOTJERN ART.
The gueats Avere select and admiring; the banquet profuse
and admirable ; the lights lustrous and oriental ; the eye
was perfectly dazzled with the display of plate, among-
which the great gold salt-cellar, brought from the regalia
in the Tower for this especial purptise, itself a tower ! stood
conspicuous for its magnitude. And now the Eev. * * *,
the then admired court Chaplain, was proceeding with the
grace, when, at a signal given, the lights were suddenly
overcast, and a huge transparency was discovered, in which
glittered in gold letters —
" Brighton — Earthquake — Swallow-uf-Alive ! "
Imagine the confusion of the guests ; the Georges and gar-
ters, jewels, bracelets, moulted upon the occasion ! The fans
dropped, and picked up the next morning by the sly court-
pages ! Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name fainting, and the Countess
of * * * holding the smelling-bottle, till the good-humoured
Prince caused harmony to be restored, by calling in fresh
candles, and declaring that the whole was nothing but a
pantomime lioax, got up by the ingenious ]\lr. Farley, of
Covent Garden, from hints which his Koyal Highness him-
self had furnished ! Then imagine the infinite applause
that followed, the mutual rallyings, the declarations that
" they were not much frightened," of the assembled galaxy.
The point of time in the picture exactly answers to the
appearance of the transparency in the anecdote. The huddle,
the flutter, the bristle, the escape, the alarm, and the mock
alarm ; the prettinesses heiglitened by consternation ; the
courtier's fear which was flattery; and the lady's which
was affectation ; all that we may conceive to have taken
])lace in a mob of Brighton courtiers, s^-mpathizing with the
well-acted surprise of their sovereign ; all this, and no
moi'e, is exhibited by the well-dressed lords and ladies in
the Hall of Behis. Just this sort of consternation we have
seen among a flock of disquieted wild geese at the report
only of a gun having gone off" !
But is this A'ulgar fright, this mere animal anxiety for the
preservation of their persons — such as we have witnessed
at a theatre, when a slight alarm of fire has been given — •
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ABT. 297
an atlequate exponent of a supernatural terror ? the way in
which the finger of God, writing judgments, woukl have
been met by the withered conscience ? There is a human
feai', and a divine fear. The one is disturbed, restless, and
bent upon escape ; the other is bowed down, effortless,
passive. AVhen the s}>irit appeared before Eliphaz in the
visions of the night, and the hair of his flesh stood up, was
it in the thoughts of the Temanite to ring the bell of his
chamber, or to call up the servants? But let us see in the
text what there is to justify all tliis huddle of vulgar
consternation.
From the words of Daniel it appears that Bclshazzar
had made a great feast to a thousand of his loi'ds, and
drank wine before the thousand. The golden and silver
vessels are gorgeously enumerated, with the princes, the
king's concubines, and his wives. Then follows —
" In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand,
and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster
of the wall of the king's palace ; and the hing saw the part
of the hand that wrote. Then the king's countenance was
changed, and bis thoughts troubled him, so that the joints
of his loins were loosened, and his knees smote one against
another."
This is the plain text. By no hint can it be otherwise
inferred, but that the a])pearance was solely confined to
the fancy of Belshazzar, that his single brain was troubled.
Not a word is spoken of its being seen by any else there
present, not even by the queen herself, who merely under-
takes for the interpretation of the phenomenon, as related
to her, doubtless, by her husband. The lords are simply
said to be astonished ; i. e. at the trouble and the change
of countenance in their sovereign. Even the prophet does
not appear to have seen the scroll, which the king saw.
lie recalls it only, as Joseph did the Dream to the King of
Egypt. " Then was the part of the hand sent from him
[the Lord], and this writing was written." He speaks of
the phantasm as past.
Then what becomes of this needless multiplication of
the miracle? this message to a royal conscience, singly
X 2
298 OX THE rEODfJCTIONS OF MODERN AUT
expressed — for it was said, "Thy kingdom is divided," —
simultaneously impressed upon the fancies of a thousand
courtiers, who were implied in it neither directly nor
grammatically ?
r>ut, admitting the artist's own version of the story, and
that the sight was seen alsob}^ the thousand courtiers — let
it have been visible to all Babylon — as the knees of Bel-
shazzar were shaken, and his countenance troubled, even so
would the knees of every man in Bab3don, and their coun-
tenances, as of an individual man, liave been, troubled ;
bowed, bent down, so would ihey have remained, stupor-
fixed, with no thought of struggling with that inevitable
judgment.
Not all that is optically possible to be seen, is to be
shown in every picture. The eye delightedly dwells upon
the brilliant individualities in a "Maniage at Cana," by
Veronese, or Titian, to the very texture and colour of the
^vcdding garments, the ring glittering upon the bride's
finger, the metal and fashion of the wine-pots ; for at such
seasons there is leisure and luxury to be curious. But in
a " day of judgment," or in a " day of lesser horrors, yet
divine," as at the impious feast of Belshazzar, the eye
should see, as the actual eye of an agent or patient in the
immediate scene would see, only in masses and indistinction.
Not only the female attire and jewelry exposed to the
critical eye of the fashion, as minutely as the dresses in a
Ladj^'s Magazine, in the criticised picture — but perhaps
the curiosities of anatomical science, and studied diversities
of posture, in the falling angels and sinners of Michael
Angelo, — have no business in their great subjects. Thei'e
was no leisure for them.
By a wise falsification, the great masters of painting got
at their true conclusions ; by not showing the actual ap-
jiearances, that is, all that was to be seen at any given
moment by an indifferent eye, but onl^^ what the eye might
be supposed to see in the doing or suffering of some por-
tentous action. Suppose the moment of the swallowing
up of Pompeii. There they were to be seen — houses,
columns, architectural proportions, differences of public
ON THE FEODUCTIONS OF MODEL'N ART. 200
and private buildings, men and women at their standing
ucciipatious, the diversified thousand postures, attitudes,
dresses, in some confusion truly, but physically they were
visible. But what eye saw them at that eclipsing moment,
which reduces confusion to a kind of unity, and when the
senses are upturned from their proprieties, when sight and
hearing are a feeling only ? A thousand years have passed,
and we are at leisure to contemplate the weaver fixed
standing at his shuttle, the baker at his oven, and to turn
over with antiquarian coolness the pots and pans of Pompeii.
" Sun, stand thou still upon Gibcon, and thou, Moon, in
the valley of Ajalon." Who, in reading this magnificent
Hebraism, in his conception, sees aught but the heroic son
of Nun, with the outstretched arm, and the greater and
lesser light obsequious ? Doubtless there were to be seen
hill and dale, and chariots and horsemen, on open plain, or
winding by secret defiles, and all the circumstances and
stratagems of war. But whose eyes would have been
conscious of this array at the interposition of the syn-
chronic miracle? Yet in the picture of this subject by
the artist of the " Belshazzar's Feast "—no ignoble work,
either — the marshalling and landscape of the war is every-
thing, the miracle sinks into an anecdote of the day ; and
the eye may "dart through rank and file traverse" for
some minutes, before it shall discover, among his armed
followers, ivhich is Joshua ! Not modern art alone, but
ancient, where only it is to be found if anywhere, can be
detected erring, from defect of this imaginative faculty.
The world has nothing to show of the preternatural in
painting, transcending the figure of Lazarus bursting his
grave-clothes, in the great picture at Angerstein's. It
seems a thing between two beings. A ghastly horror at
itself struggles with newly-apprehending gratitude at se-
cond life bestowed. It cannot forget that it was a ghost.
It has hardly felt that it is a body. It has to tell of the
world of spirits. — Was it from a feeling, that the crowd of
half-impassioned by-standers, and the still more irrelevant
herd of passers-by at a distance, who have not heard, or but
laintly have been told of the passing miracle, admirable as
:^00 ON THE FRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.
they are in design and line — for it is a glorified work — do
not respond adecpiatoly to the action — that the single fignre
of the Lazarus has been attributed to Michael Angelo, and
the mighty Sebastian unfairly robbed of the fame of the
greater half of the interest? Now that there were not
indifferent .passers-by within actual scope of the eyes of
those present at the miracle, to whom the sound of it had
but faintly, or not at all, reached, it would be hardihood to
deny ; but would they see them ? or can the mind in the
conception of it admit of such unconcerning objects; can
it think of them at all? or what associating league to the
imagination can there be between the seers and the seers
not, of a presential miracle ?
Were an artist to paint upon demand a picture of a
Dryad, we will ask whether, in the present low state of
expectation, the patron would not, or ought not be fully
satisfied with a beautiful naked figure recumbent imder
wide-stretched oaks ? Dis-seat those woods, and place the
same figure among fountains, and falls of pellucid water,
and you have a — Naiad ! Not so in a rough print we
have seen after Julio Eomano, we think — for it is long
since — there, hy no process, with mere change of scene,
could the figure have reciprocated characters. Long, gro-
tesque, fantastic, yet with a grace of her own, beautiful
in convolution and distortion, linked to her connatural
tree, co-twisting with its limbs her own, till both seemed
either — these, animated branches ; those, disanimated mem-
bers — yet the animal and vegetable lives sufficiently kept
distinct — Ms Dryad lay — an approximation of two natures,
which to conceive, it must be seen ; analogous to, not the
same with, the delicacies of Ovidian transformations.
To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial comprehen-
sion, the most barren, the Great blasters gave loftiness and
fruitfuluess. The large eye of genius saw in the meanness
of present objects their capabilities of treatment fi'om their
relations to some grand Past or Future. How has Raphael
— we must still linger about the Vatican — treated the
humble craft of the ship-builder, in his " Building of the
Ark ? " It is in that scriptural series, to which we havo
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 301
rofened, and which, judging from some fine rough old
graphic sketches of them which we possess, seem to be of
a higher and more poetic grade than even the Cartoons.
The dim of sight are the timid and the shrinking. There
is a cowardice in modern art. As the Frenchman, of whom
Coleridge's fi'iend made the prophetic guess at Kome, from
the beardi and horns of the JMoses of IMichael Angelo
collected no inferences beyond that of a He Goat and a
Cornuto ; so from this subject, of mere mechanic promise,
it would instinctively turn away, as from one incapable of
investiture with any grandeur. The dock-yards at Wool-
wich would object derogatory associations. The depot at
Chatham would be the mote and the beam in its intellectual
eye. But not to the naiitical preparations in the ship -yards
of Civita Vecchia did Eaphael look for instructions, when
he imagined the building of the Vessel that was to be
conservatory of the wrecks of the species of drowned man-
kind. In the intensity of the action he keeps ever out of
sight the meanness of the operation. There is the Patri-
arch, in calm forethought, and with hol}^ prescience, giving
directions. And there are his agents— the solitary but
sufficient Three — hewing, sawing, every one with the
might and earnestness of a Demiui'gus ; under some in-
stinctive rather than technical guidance ! giant-muscled ;
every one a Hercules ; or liker to those Vnlcanian Three,
that in sounding caverns under Mongibello wrought in fire
■—Brontes, and black Steropes, and Pyracmon. So work
the workmen that should repair a world !
Artists again err in the confoundingof j9oei/c with jm-ior/aZ
subjects. In the latter, the exterior accidents are nearly
everything, the unseen qualities as nothing. Othello's
colour — -the infirmities and corpulence of a Sir John Fal-
staff — do they haunt us perpetually in the reading ? or are
they obtruded upon our conceptions one time for ninety-
nine that we are lost in admiration at the respective moral
or intellectual attributes of the character ? But in a pic-
ture Othello is alicmjs a Blackamoor ; and the other onl}--
Plump Jack. Deeply corporealized, and enchained hope-
lessly in the grovelling fetters of externality., must be the
802 ON THE PEODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.
mind, to which, in its better moments, the image of the
high-souled, high-intelligenced Quixote — the errant Star ot
Knighthood, made more tender by eclipse — has never pre-
sented itself divested from the unhallowed accompaniment
of a Sancho, or a rabblement at the heels of Rosinante.
That man has read his book by halves ; he has laughed,
mistaking his author's purport, which was — tears. The
artist that pictures Quixote (and it is in this degrading
point that he is every season held up at our Exhibitions)
in ihe shallow hope of exciting mirth, would have joined
the rabble at the heels of his starved steed. We wish not
to see that counterfeited, which we would not have wished
to see in the reality. Conscious of the heroic inside of the
noble Quixote, who, on hearing that his withered person
Avas passing, would have stepped over his threshold to gaze
upon his forlorn habiliments, and the " strange bed-fellows
which misery brings a man acquainted with ? " Shade of
Cervantes ! who in thy Second Part could put into the
mouth of thy Quixote those high aspirations of a super-
chivalrous gallantry, where he replies to one of tlie sliep-
herdesses, apprehensive that he would spoil their pretty
net- works, and inviting him to be a guest with them, in
accents like these : " Truly, fairest Lady, Acta?on was not
more astonished when he saw Diana bathing herself at the
fountain, than I have been in beholding your beauty : I
commend the manner of your pastime, and thank you for
your kind offers ; and, if I may serve you, so I may be sure
you will be obeyed, yoii may command me : for my profes-
sion is this, To show myself thankful, and a doer of good
to all sorts of people, especially of the rank that your per-
son shows you to be ; and if those nets, as they take Tip
but a little piece of ground, should take up the whole
Avorld, I would seek out new worlds to pass through, rather
than break them : and (he adds) that you may give credit
to this my exaggeration, behold at least he tliat promiseth
you this, is Don Quixote de la Mancha, if haply this
name hath come to your hearing." Illus-trious Eomancer I
were the " fine frenzies," which possessed the brain of
thy own Quixote, a fit subject, as in this Second Part, to bo
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 303
exposed to the jeers of Dnennas and Serving-men ? to be
jnonstered, and shown np at the heartless banquets of great
men ? Was that pitiable infirmity, which in thy First
Part misleads him, always from icithin, into half-ludicrous,
but more than lialf-compassionable and admirable errors,
not infliction enough from heaven, that men by studied
artifices must devise and practise upon the humour, to in-
flame where they shoidd sootlie it ? Why, Goneril would
have blushed to practise upon the abdicated king at this
rate, and the she-wolf Eegan not have endured to play the
pranks upon his fled wits, which thou hast made thy
Quixote sutifer in Duchesses' halls, and at the hands of that
unworthy nobleman.*
In the First Adventures, even, it needed all the art of the
most consummate artist in the Book way that the world
hath yet seen, to keep up in the mind of the reader the
heroic attributes of the character without relaxing ; so as
absolutely that they shall suffer no alloy from the debasing
fellowship of the clown. If it ever obtrudes itself as a
disharmony, are we inclined to laugh; or not, rather, to
indulge a contrary emotion ? — Cervantes, stung, perchance,
by the relish with which his heading Public had received
the fooleries of the man, more to their palates than the
generosities of the master, in the sequel let his pen run
riot, lost the harmonj^ and the balance, and sacrificed a
great idea to the taste of his contemporaries. We know
that in the present day the Knight has fewer admirers than
the Squiie. Anticipating, what did actually happen to
him — as afterwards it did to his scarce inferior follower,
the Author of " Guzman de Alfarache "• — that some less
knowing hand would prevent him by a spurious Second
Part ; and judging that it would be easier for his compe-
titor to outbid him in the comicalities, than in the romance,
of his work, he abandoned his Knight, and has fairly set
up the Squire for his Hero. For what else has he unsealed
the eyes of Sancho ? and instead of that twilight state of
* Yet from this Second Part, our criccl-up pictures are mostly selected ;
the waiting-womeu with beards, &c.
304 THE WEDDING.
semi-insanity — the madness at second-liand — the contagion,
caught from a stronger mind infected — that war bt^tween
native cunning, and hereditary deference, with which he
has hitherto accompanied his master — two for a pair ahnost
— does he substitute a downright Knave, with open eyes,
for his own ends only following a confessed Madman ; and
offering at one time to lay, if not actually laying, hands
upon him ! From the moment that Sancho loses his re-
verence, Don Quixote is become — a treatable lunatic. Our
artists handle him accordingly.
THE WEDDING.
I DO not know when I have been better pleased than at
being invited last week to be present at the wedding
of a friend's dangliter. I like to make one at these cere-
monies, wliich to us old people give back our youth in a
manner, and restore our gayest season, in the remembrance
of our own success, or the regrets, scarcely less tender, of
our own youthful disappointments, in this point of a settle-
ment. On these occasions I am sure to be in good-humour
for a week or two after, and enjoy a reflected honeymoon.
Being without a family, I am tlattored with these tempo-
rary adoptions into a friend's family ; I feel a sort of
cousinhood, or imcleship, for the season ; I am inducted
into degrees of affinity ; and, in the participated socialities
of the little community, I lay down for a brief while my
solitary bachelorship. I carry this humour so far, that I
take it unkindly to be left out, even when a funeral is
going on in the house of a dear ft-iend. But to my
subject. — ■ —
The union itself had been long settled, but its celebration
had been hitherto deferred, to an almost unreasonable state
of suspense in the lovers, by some invincible prejudices
which the bride's father had unhappily contracted upon
the subject of the too early marriages of females. He has
THE WEDDING. 305
been lecturing any time these five years — for to that lengtli
the courtship had been protracted — upon the propriet}- of
putting off tlie solenanit}-, till the lady should have com-
pleted her five-and-twentieth year. \\'e all began to bo
afraid that a suit, which as yet had abated of none of its
ardours, might at last be lingered on, till passion had time
to cool, and love go out in the experiment. But a little
wheedling on the part of his wife, who was by no means a
party to these overstrained notions, joined to some serious
expostulations on that of his friends, who, from the growing
infirmities of the old gentleman, could not promise our-
selves many years' enjoyment of his company, and were
anxious to bring matters to a conclusion during his lifetime,
at length prevailed ; and on Monday last the daughter of
my old friend, Admiral , having attained the womanlij
age of nineteen, was conducted to the church by her
pleasant cousin J , who told some few j-ears older.
Before the youthful part of my female readers express
their indignation at the abominable loss of time occasioned
to the lovers by the preposterous notions of my old friend,
they will do Avell to consider the reluctance which a fond
parent naturally feels at parting with his child. To this
miwilliugness, I believe, in most cases may be traced the
difference of opinion on this point between child and
parent, whatever pretences of interest or prudence may be
held out to cover it. The hard-heartedness of fathers is a
fine theme for romance writers, a sure and moving topic ;
but is there not something untendor, to say no moi'e of it,
in the burry which a beloved child is sometimes in to tear
herself from the paternal stock, and commit herself to
strange graftings ? The case is heightened where the lady,
as in the present instance, happens to be an only child. I
do not understand these matters experimentally, but I can
make a shrewd guess at the wounded pride of a parent
upon these occasions. It is no new observation, I believe,
that a lover in most cases has no rival so much to be feared
as the father. Certainly there is a jealousy in unjoaraUel
subjects, which is little less heartrending tlian the passion
which we more strictly christen by that name. Mothers'
306 THE WEDDING.
scruples are more easily got over ; for this reason, I suppose,
that the protection transferred to a husband is less a dero-
gation and a loss to their authority than to the paternal.
^Mothers, besides, have a trembling foresight, which paints
the inconveniences (impossible to be conceived in the same
degree by the other parent) of a life of forlorn celibacy,
which the refusal of a tolerable match may entail upon
their child. Mothers' instinct is a surer guide here than
the cold reasonings of a father on such a topic. To this in-
stinct may be imputed, and by it alone may be excused, the
unbeseeming artifices, by which some wives push on the
matrimonial projects of their daughters, which the husband,
however approving, shall entertain with comparative indif-
ference. A little shamelessness on this head is pardonable.
With this explanation, forwardness becomes a grace, and
maternal imj^ortunity receives the name of a virtue. — But
the parson stays, while I preposterously assume his office ;
I am preaching, while the bride is on the threshold.
Nor let any of my female readers suppose that the sage
reflections which have just escaped me have the obliquest
tendency of application to the young lady, who, it will be
seen, is about to venture upon a change in her condition, at
a mature and competent age, and not without the fullest
approbation of all parties. I only deprecate very hasty
marriages.
It had been fixed that the ceremony should be gone
through at an early hour, to give time for a little dejeune
afterwards, to which a select party of friends had been in-
vited. We were in church a little before the clock struck
eight.
Nothing could be more judicious or graceful than tho
dress of the bride-maids — the three charming Miss Foresters
— on this morning. To give the bride an opportunity of
shining singly, they had come habited all in green. I am
ill at describing female apparel ; but while she stood at the
altar in vestments white and candid as her thoughts, a
sacrificial whiteness, they assisted in robes such as might
become Diana's n3'mphs — Foresters indeed — as such who
had not yet come to the resolution of putting off cold vir-
THE WEDDING. 307
ginity. These young maids, not being so blest as to have
a mother living, I am told, keep single for their father's
sake, and live altogether so happy with their remaining
parent, that the hearts of tlieir lovers are ever broken with
the prospect (so inaiispicions to their hopes) of such unin-
terrupted and provoking home-comfort. Gallant girls !
each a victim worthy of Iphigenia !
I do not know what business I have to be present in
solemn places. I cannot divest me of an unseasonable dis-
position to levity upon the most awful occasions. I was
never cut out for a public functionary. Ceremony and I
have long shaken hands ; but I could not resist the impor-
tunities of the young lady's father, whose gout unhappily
confined him at home, to act as parent on this occasion, and
give away the bride. Something ludicrous occurred to me at
this most serious of all moments — a sense of my unfitness
to have the disposal, even in imagination, of the sweet
young creature beside me. I fear 1 was betrayed to some
lightness, for the awful eye of the parson — and the rector's
eye of Saint Mildred's in the Poultry is no trifle of a rebiike
— was upon me in an instant, souring my incipient jest to
the tristful severities of a fnneral.
This was the only misbehaviour which I can plead to
upon this solemn occasion, unless what was objected to me
after the ceremony, by one of the handsome Miss T s,
be accoimted a solecism. She was pleased to say that she
had never seen a gentleman before me give away a bride,
in black. Now black has been my ordinary apparel so
long — indeed, I take it to be the proper costume of an
author — the stage sanctions it — that to have appeared in
some lighter colour would have raised more mirth at my
expense than the anomaly had created censure. But I
could perceive that the bride's mother, and some elderly
ladies present (God bless them !) would have been well con-
tent, if I had come in any other colour than that. But I
got over the omen by a lucky apologue, which I remem-
bered out of Pilpay, or some Indian author, of all the birds
being invited to the linnet's wedding, at which, when all
the rest came in their gayest feathers, the raven alone
308 THE WEDDING.
apologised for his cloak because " he had no other." This
tolerably reconciled the elders. " But with the young peo-
ple all was merriment, and shaking of hands, and congra-
tulations, and kissing away the bride's tears, and kissing
from her in return, till a young lady, who assumed some
experience in these matters, having worn the nuptial bands
some four or five weeks longer than he)- friend, rescued
her, archly observing, with half an eye upon the bride-
s-room, that at this rate she would have " none left."
My friend the Admiral was in fine wig and buckle on
this occasion — a striking contrast to his usual neglect of
personal appearance. He did not once shove up his bor-
rowed locks (his custom ever at his morning studies) to
betray the few grey stragglers of his own beneath them.
He wore an aspect of thoughtful satisfaction. I trembled
for the hour, which at length approached, when after a
protracted breakfast of three hours — if stores of cold fowls,
tongues, hams, botargoes, dried fruits, wines, cordials, &c.,
can deserve so meagre an appellation — the coach was
announced, which was come to carry off the bride and
bridegroom for a season, as custom has sensibly ordained,
into the country ; upon which design, wishing them a
felicitous journey, let us return to the assembled guests.
As -svlicn a well-gvaccd actor leaves the stage,
The eyes of men
Are idly hcut on him that entci-s next,
so idly did we bend our eyes upon one another, when the
chief performers in the morning's pageant had vanished.
None told his tale. Isone sipped her glass. The poor
Admiral made an effort — it was" not much. I had antici-
pated so far. Even the infinity of full satisfaction, that had
betrayed itself through the prim looks and quiet deportment
of his lady, began to wane into something of misgiving. No
one knew whether to take their leave or stay. We seemed
assembled upoir a silly occasion. In this crisis, betwixt
tarrying and departure, I must do justice to a foolish talent
of mine, which had otherwise like to have brought me into
disgrace in the fore-part of the day ; I mean a power, in
THE WEDDING. 309.
any emergency, of thinking and giving vent to all manner
of strange nonsense. In this awkward dilemma I found it
sovereign. I i-attled off some of my most excellent absur-
dities. All were willing to be relieved, at any expense ot
reason, from the pressure of the intolerable vacuum which
had succeeded to the morning bustle. By this means I was
fortunate in keeping together the better part of the com-
pany to a late hour ; and a rubber of whist (the Admiral's
favourite game) with some rare strokes of chance as well as
skill, which came opportunely on his side — lengthened out
till midnight — dismissed the old gentleman at last to his
bed with comparatively easy spirits.
I have been at my old friend's various times since, I do
not know a visiting place where every guest is so perfectly
at his ease ; nowhere, where harmony is so strangely the
result of confusion. Everybody is at cross purposes, yet
the etiect is so much better than uniformity. Contradictory
orders ; servants pulling one way ; master and mistress
driving some other, yet both diverse; visitors huddled up
in corners ; chairs unsymmetrized ; candles disposed by
chance ; meals at odd hours, tea and supper at once, or the
latter preceding the former ; the host and the guest con-
ferring, yet each upon a different topic, each understanding
himself, neither tiying to understand or hear the other ;
draughts and politics, chess and political economy, cards
and conversation on nautical matters, going on at once,
without the hope, or indeed the wish, of distinguishing
them, make it altogether the most perfect concorcHa discors
you shall meet with. Yet somehow the old house is not
quite what it should be. The Admiral still enjoys his pipe,
but he has no Miss Emily to fill it for him. The instrument
stands where it stood, but she is gone, whose delicate touch
could sometimes for a short minute appease the warring
elements. He has learnt, as Marvel expresses it, to " make
his destiny his choice." He bears bravely up, but he does
not come out with his flashes of wild wit so thick as
formerly. His sea-songs seldomer escape him. His wife,
too, looks as if she wanted some younger body to scold
and set to rights. Wo all miss a junior presence. It is
310 REJOICINGS UPON THE
wonderful liow one young maiden freshens up, and keeps
green, the paternal roof. Old and young seem to h<ave an
interest in her, so long as she is not absolutely disposed of.
The youthfulness of the house is ilown. Emily is married.
EEJOICINGS UPON THE KEW YEAR'S COMING
OF AGE.
THE Old Tear being dead, and the New Year coming of
age, which he does, by Calendar Law, as soon as the
breath is out of the old gentleman's body, nothing would
serve the young spark but he must give a dinner upon the
occasion, to which all the Days in the year were invited.
The Festivals, whom he deputed as his stewards, were
mightily taken with the notion. They had been engaged
time out of mind, they said, in providing mirth and good
cheer for mortals below ; and it was time they should have
a taste of their own bountj'. It was stiffly debated among
them whether the Fasts should be admitted. Some said the
appearance of such lean, starved guests, with their morti-
fied faces, would pervert the ends of the meeting. But the
objection was oven-uled by Christmas Day, who had a design
upon Ash Wednesday (as you shall hear), and a mighty desire
to see how the old Domine would behave himself in his
cups. Only the Vigils were requested to come with their
lanterns, to light the gentlefolks home at night.
All the Days came to their day. Covers were provided
for three hundred and sixty-five guests at the principal
table ; with an occasional kuifc and fork at the side-board
for the Twenty- Ninth cf February.
1 should have told you that cards of invitation had been
issued. The carriers were the Hours ; twelve little, merry,
whirligig foot-pages, as you should desire to see, that went
all round, and found out the persons invited well enough,
with the exce]ition of Easter Day, Shrove Ttiesday, and a
few such Moveables, who had lately shifted their quarters.
NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 311
Well, they all met at last — foul Days, fine Days, all sorts
of Days, and a rare din they made of it. There was no<
thing but, Hail ! fellow Day, well met — brother Da?/ — sistel
Day — only Lady Day kept a little on the alOof, and seemed
somewhat scornful. Yet some said Twelfth Day cut her out
and out, for she came in a titfany suit, white and gold, like
a queen on a frost-cake, all royal, glittering, and Epiplianous.
The rest came, some in green, some in white — but old Lent
and Ids family were not yet out of mourning. Rainy Days
came in, dripping ; and sunshiny Days helped them to
change their stockings. Wedding Day was there in his
marriage finery, a little the worse for wear. Pay Day came
late, as he always does ; and Doomsday sent word — he might
bo expected.
April Fool (as my young lord's jester) took upon himself
to marshal the guests, and wild work he made with it. It
would have posed old Erra Pater to have found out any
given Day in the year to erect a scheme upon — good Days,
bad Days, were so shufiled together, to the confounding of
all sober horoscopy.
He had stuck the Twenty-First of June next to the Twenty-
Second of December, and the former looked like a Maypole
siding a marrow-bone. Ash Wednesday got wedged in (as
was concerted) betwixt Christmas and Lord Mayor s Days.
Lord ! how he laid about him ! Nothing but barons of beef
and turkeys would go down with him — to the great greasing
and detriment of his new sackcloth bib and tucker. And
still Christinas Day was at his elbow, plying him with the
wassail-bowl, till he roared, and hiccupjj'd, and protested
there was no faith in dried ling, biit commended it to the
devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious, hy-po-crit-
crit-critical mess, and no dish for a gentleman. Then he
dipt his fist into the middle of the great custard that stood
before his left-hand neighbour, and daubed his hungry beard
all over with it, till you would have taken him for the Last
Day in December, it so hung in icicles.
At another part of the table. Shrove Tuesday was helping
the Second of September to some cock broth, — which cour-
tesy the latter returned with the delicate thigh of a hen
y
312 BEJOICINGS UPON THE
pheasant — so that there was no love lost for that matter.
Tlie Last of Lent was spunging npon Shrovetide s pancakes ;
which A2)ril Fool perceiving, told him that he did well, for
pancalies were proper to a good fry-day.
In another part, a hubbub arose about the Tliirtictli of
January, who, it seems, being a sour, puritanic character,
that thought nobody's meat good or sanctified enough for
him, had smuggled into the room a calf's head, which he
had had cooked at home for tliat purpose, thinking to feast
thereon incontinently ; but as it lay in the dish, March
Manyweathers, who is a very fine lady, and subject to the
meagrims, screamed out there was a " human head in the
platter," and raved about Herodias' daughter to that degree,
that the obnoxious viand was obliged to be removed ; nor
did she recover her stomach till she had gulped down a
Besforative, confected of OaJc Apple, which the merry Twenty-
Ninth of May always carries about with him for that purpose.
The King's health* being called for after this, a notable
dispute arose between the Twelfth of Aucjust (a zealous old
AVliig gentlewoman) and the Twenty-Third of April (a new-
fangled lady of the Tory stamp), as to which of them should
liavc the honour to propose it. August grew hot ui^on the
matter, affirming time out of mind the prescriptive right to
have lain with her, till her rival had basely supplanted her;
wliDiu slie represented as little better than a kept mistress,
Avho went about in fine clothes, while she (the legitimate
Biuthday) had scarcely a rag, &c.
April Fool, being made mediator, confirmed the right, in
the strongest form of words, to the appellant, but decided
fi-ir peace' sake, that the exercise of it sliould remain with
the present possessor. At the same time, he slyly rounded
ihe first lady in the eai-. that an action might lie against
the Crown for hi-geny.
It beginning to grow a litile duskish, Candlemas lustily
bawled out for lights, which was opposed by all the Days,
who protested against burning daylight. Then fair water
was handed roimd in silver ewers, and the same lady was
observed to take an unusual time in Washing herself.
'' KiiiK George IV.
NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 31S
3[ay Day, with that sweetness which is peculiar to liei',
in a neat speech proposing the health of the founder,
crowned her goblet (and by her example the rest of the
company) with garlands. This being done, the lordly New
Year, from the upper end of the table, in a cordial but
somewhat lofty tone, returned thanks. He felt proud on
an occasion of meeting so many of his worthy father's late
tenants, promised to improve their farms, and at the same
time to abate (if anything was found unreasonable) in their
rents.
At the mention of this, the four Quarter Days involun-
tarily looked at each other, and smiled ; April Fool whistled
to an old tune of " New Brooms ; " and a surly old rebel at
the farther end of the table (who was discovered to be no
other than the Fifth of November) muttered out, distinctly
enough to be heard by the whole company, words to this
effect — that "when the old one is gone, he is a fool that
looks for a better." Which rudeness of his, the guests
resenting, unanimously voted his expulsion ; and the mal-
content was thrust out neck and heels into the cellar, as
the properest place for such a houtefeu and firebrand as he
had shown himself to be.
Order being restored — the young lord (who, to say truth,
had been a little rufSed, and put beside his oratoiy) in as
few and yet as obliging words as possible, assured them of
entire welcome ; and, with a graceful turn, singling out
poor T'weniy-Ninth of February, that had sate all this while
mumchance at the side-board, begged to couple his health
with that of the good company before him — which he
drank accordingly ; observing that he had not seen his
honest face any time these four years — with a number of
endearing expressions besides. At the same time removing
the solitary Day from the forlorn seat which had been as-
signed him, he stationed him at his own board, somewhere
between the G^-eek Calends and Latter Lammas.
Ash Wednesday, being now called upon for a song, with
his eyes fast stuck in his head, and as well as the Canary
he had swallowed would give him liaA'e, struck up a Carol,
^hich Christmas Day had taught him for the nonce; and
1 jj
314 REJOICINGS UPOX THE NEW YEARS COMING OF AGE.
was followed by tlie latter, who gave " Miserere" in fine
style, hitting oft' the mumping notes and lengthened drawl
nf Old Mortification with infinite humour. April Fool swore
they had exchanged conditions; but Good Friday was ob-
served to look extremely grave ; and Sunday held her fan
before her face that she might not be seen to smile.
Shrove-tide, Lord Mayors Dat/, and Ajml Fool, next joined
in a glee —
Which is the propercst day to drink ?
in which all the Days chiming in, made a merry burden.
They next fell to quibbles and conundrums. The ques-
tion being proposed, who had the greatest number of fol-
lowers — the Quarter Days said, there could be no question
as to that ; for they had all the creditors in the world dog-
ging their heels. But April Fool gave it in favour of the
Forty Days before Easter; because the debtors in all cases
outnumbered the creditors, and they kept Lent all the year.
All this while Valentine's Day kept courting pretty May,
who sate next him, slipping amorous billets-doux under the
table, till the Dog Days (who are naturally of a warm con-
stitution) began to be jealous, and to bark and rage ex-
ceedingly. Ajyril Fool, who likes a bit of sport above
measure, and had some pretensions to the lady besides, as
being but a cousin once removed, — clapped and halloo'd
them on ; and as fast as their indignation cooled, those mad
wags, the Ember Days, were at it with their bellows, to
bhjw it into a flame ; and all was in a ferment, till old
Madam Septuagesima (who boasts herself the Mother of the
Days) wisely diverted the conversation with a tedious tale
of the lovers which she could reckon when she was young,
and of one Master Rogation Day in particular, who was for
ever putting the question to her ; but she kept him at a
distance, as the chronicle would tell — by which I appre-
hend she meant the Almanack. Then she rambled on to
the Days that ivsre gone, the good old Days, and so to the
Days before the Flood — which plainly sliowed her old head
to be little better than crazed and doited.
Day being ended, the Days called for their cloaks and
great-coats, and took their leave. Lord Mayor s Day went
OLD CHINA. 315
oif in a j\Iist, as usual ; Shortest Day in a deep black Fog,
that wrapt the little gentleman all I'ound like a hedge-hog.
Two Vigils — so watchmen are called in heaven — saw Christ-
mas Day safe home — they had been used to the business
before. Another Vigil — a stout, sturdy patrole, called the
Eve of St. Christopher — seeing Ash Wednesday in a condition
little better than he should be — e'en whipt him over bis
shoulders, pick-a-back fashion, and Old Mo7-tiJication went
floating home singing —
On the bat's back I do fly,
and a number of old snatches besides, between drunk and
sober ; but very few Aves or Penitentiaries (you may
believe me) wei'e among them. Lonrjest Day set off west-
ward in beautiful crimson and gold — the rest, some in one
fashion, some in another ; but Valentine and pretty May
took their departure together in one of the prettiest silvery
twilights a Lover's Day could wish to set in.
OLD CHINA.
I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china.
When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the
china-closet, and next for the picture-gallery. I cannot de-
fend the order of preference, but by saying that we have
all some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of
our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one. I
can call to mind the fi.rst play, and the first exhibition, that
I was taken to ; but I am not conscious of a time when
china jars and saucers were introduced into my imagina-
tion.
I had no repugnance then — why should I now have ? —
to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that,
under the notion of men and women, float about, uncircum-
scribed by any element, in that world before perspective —
a china tea-cup.
316 OLD CHINA.
I like to see my old friends — whom distance cannot
diminish — figuring up in the air (so they appear to our
optics), yet on terra Jirma still — for so we must in c(mrtesy
interpret that speck of deeper blue, which the decorous
artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring up beneath
their sandals.
I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if
possible, with still more womanish expressions.
Here is a young and coixrtly Mandarin, handing tea to a
lady from a salver — two miles off. See how distance seems
to set off respect ! And here the same lady, or another —
for likeness is identity on tea-cups — is stepping into a little
fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden
river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle
of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly
land her in the midst of a flowery mead — a furlong off on
the other side of the same strange stream !
Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of their
world— see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays.
Here — ^a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-extensive — so
objects show, seen through tlio lucid atmosphere of fine
Cathay.
I was pointing out to my cousin last evenifig, over our
Hyson (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink un-
mixed still of an afternoon), some of these speciosa miracula
upon a set of extraordinary old blue china (a recent pur-
chase) which we were now for the first time using ; and
could not help remarking, how favourable circumstances
had been to us of late years, that we could afford to please
the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort — when a passing
sentiment seemed to overshade the brows of my companion.
I am quick at detecting these summer cloads in Bridget.
" I \^■ish the good old times would come again," she said,
" when wo were not quite so rich. I do not mean that I
want to be poor ; but there was a middle state " — so she
was pleased to ramble on, — " in which I am sure we were
a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now
that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it
used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury
OLD CHINA. 317
(and, O ! how mncli ado I had to get you to consent in
tho.se times !) — we were used to have a debate two or three
days before, and to weigh the for and against, and think
what we might spare it out of, and what saving we coukl
hit upon, that should be an ecjuivalent. A thing was worth
buying then, when we felt the money that we paid for it.
" Do you remember the brown suit, which you made
to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon
you, it grew so threadbare --and all because of that folio
Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at
night from Barker's in Covent Garden ? Do you remember
how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our
minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determina-
tion till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when
}ou set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late —
and when the old bookseller with some gruml;)ling opened
his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting
bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures —
and when 3'ou lugged it home, wishing it were twice as
cumbersome — and when you presented it to me — and when
we were exploring the perfectness of it (^collating, you called
it) — and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves
with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left
till day-break — was there no pleasure in being a poor man?
or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are
so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and
finical — give you half the honest vanity with which you
flaunted it about in that overworn suit — your old corbeau
— for four or five weeks longe^' than you should have done,
to pacify your conscience for tne mig'hty sum of fifteen — or
sixteen shillings was it? — a great affair we thought it then
— which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you
can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not
see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases
now,
" When you came home with twenty apologies for laying
out a less number of shillings upon that print after Lio-
nardo, which we christened the ' Lady Blanch;' when you
looked at the purchase, and thought of the money — and
318 OLD CniNA.
thought of the money, and looked again at the picture-^
was there no pleasure in being a poor man ? Now, you
have nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a
wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you ?
" Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield,
and Potter's bar, and AValtbam, when we had a holyday —
holydays and all other fun are gone now we are rich — and
the little hand-basket in which I used to deposit our day's
fare of savoury cold lamb and salad — and how you would
pry about at noon-tide for some decent house, where we
might go in and produce our store — only paying for the a.le
that you must call for — and speculate upon the looks of the
landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a table-
cloth — and wish for such another honest hostess as Izaak
AValton has described many a one on the pleasant banks of
the Lea, when he went a-fishing — and sometimes they would
prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would look
grudgingly upon us — but we had cheerful looks still for
one another, and would eat our plain food savourily, scarcely
grudging Piscator his Trout Hall ? Now — when we go out
a day's pleasuring, which is seldom, moreover, we ride part
of the way, and go into a fine inn, and order the best of
dinners, never debating the expense — which, after all, never
has half the relish of those chance country snaps, when we
were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a precarious
welcome.
" You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in
the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit,
when we saw the battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of
Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in
the Wood — when we squeezed out our shillings a-piece to
sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling
gallery — where you felt all the time that you ought not to
have brought me — and more strongly I felt obligation to
you for having brought me — and the pleasure was the
better for a little shame — and when the curtain drew up,
what eared we for our place in the house, or what mattered
it where we were sitting, when our thoughts were with
Posalind in Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria?
OLD CHINA. 31&
You used to say that the Gallery was the best place of all
for enjoying a play socially — that the relish of such exhi-
bitions must be in proportion to the infreqnency of going —
that the company we met there, not being in general
readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did
attend, to what was going on, on the stage — because a word
lost would have been a chasm, which it was impossible for
them to fill up. With such reflections we consoled our
pride then — and I appeal to you whether, as a woman, I
met generally with less attention and accommodation than
I have done since in more expensive situationsin the house?
The getting in, indeed, and the crowding up those incon-
venient staircases, was bad enough — but there was still a
law of civility to woman recognized to quite as great an
extent as we ever found in the other passages — and how a
little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat and the
play, afterwards ! Now we can only pay our money and
walk in. You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. I
am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then — but
sight, and all, I think, is gone with our poverty.
" There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they
became quite common — in the first dish of peas, while they
were yet dear — to have them for a nice supper, a treat.
What treat can we have now ? If we were to treat our-
selves now — that is, to have dainties a little above our
means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little
more that we allow ourselves beyond what the actual poor
can get at, that makes what I call a treat — when two
people, living together as we have done, now and then
indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like ;
while each apologizes, and is williaig to take both halves ot
the blame to his single share. I see no harm in people
making much of themselves, in that sense of the word.
It may give them a hint how to make much of others.
But now — what I mean by the word — we never do make
much of ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do
not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we were,
just above poverty.
" I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty
320 OLD CHINA.
pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet, — and much
ado we used to have every Thirty-first Night of December
to account for our exceedings — many a long face did you
make over your pu'zzled accounts, and in contriving to
make it out how we had spent so much — or that we had
not spent so much — or that it was impossible we should
spend so much next year — and still we found our slender
capital decreasing — but then, — betwixt ways, and projects,
and compromises of one sort or another, and talk of cur-
tailing this charge, and doing without that for the future —
and the hope that youth brings, and laughing spirits (in
which you were never poor till now), we pocketed up our
loss, and in conclusion, with ' lusty brimmers ' (as you used
to quote it out of hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called
him), we used to welcome in the ' coming guest.' Now
we have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year— no
flattering promises about the new year doing better for us."
Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions,
that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how
I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling at the
phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had con-
jured up out of a clear income of poor hundred pounds
a year. " It is true we were happier when we were poorer,
but we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid we
must put up with the excess, for if we were to shake the
superflux into the sea, we should not much mend ourselves
That we had much to struggle with, as we grew up together,
we have reason to be most thankful. It strengthened and
knit our compact closer. We could never have been what
we have been to each other, 'A we had always had tlie
sufficiency which you now complain of. The resisting
power — those natural dilations of the 3'outhful spirit, which
circumstances cannot straiten — with us are long since
passed away. Competence to age is supplementary youth,
a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be
had. We must ride where we formerly walked : live better
and lie softer — and shall be wise to do so — than we had
means to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet
could those days return — could you and I once more walk
THE CHILD ANGEL : A DREAM. 321
our thirty miles a day — could Bannister and Mrs. Bland
again be yonng, and you and I be yonng to see tliem — could
tbe good old one-sliilling gallery days return — they are
dreams, my cousin, now — but could you and I at this
moment, instead of this quiet argument, by our well-
carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa — be once
more struggling up those inconvenient staircases, pushed
about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble of
poor gallery scramblers — could I once more hear those
anxious shrieks of yours — and the delicious Thanh God, we
are safe, which always followed when the topmost stair,
conquered, let in the first light of the wliole cheerful
theatre down beneath us — I know not the fathom line that
ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to
bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew
E is supposed to have, to purchase it. And now do
just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an
umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that
pretty insipid half Madonna-ish chit of a lady in that very
blue summer-house."
THE CHILD ANGEL ; A DREAM.
T CHANCED upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical thing
i of a dream tbe other night., that you shall hear of, I
had been reading the " Tjovefc; of the Angels," and went to
bed with my head full of speculations, suggested by that
extraordinary legend. It had given birth to innumerable
conjectures ; and, I remember the last waking thought,
which I gave expression to on my pillow, was a sort of
wonder, " what could come of it."
I was siiddenly transported, how or whither I could
scarcely make out — but to some celestial region. It was
not the real heavens neither — not the downright Bible
heaven — but a kind of fairy-land heaven, about which a
822 THE CHILD ANGEL; A BREAM.
poor linman fancy may have leave to sport and air itself, I
will hope, without presumption.
Methought — what wild things dreams are! — I was
present — at what would you imagine? — at an angel's
gossiping.
Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, or
whether it came purely of its own head, neither you nor I
know — hut there lay, sure enough, wrapt in its little cloudy
swaddling-hands — a Child Angel.
Sun-threads — filmy beams — ran through the celestial
napory of what seemed its princely cradle. All the winged
orders hovered round, watching when the newborn should
open its yet closed eyes ; which, when it did, first one, and
then the other — with a solicitude and apprehension, yet
not such as, stained with fear, dim the expanding eyelids
of mortal infants, but as if to explore its path in those its
unhereditary palaces — what an inextinguishable titter that
time spared not celestial visages ! Kor wanted there to my
seeming — 0, the inexplicable simpleness of dreams ! — bowls
of that cheering nectar,
— which mortals caudle call below.
Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants, — stricken
in years, as it might seem, — so dexterous were those hea-
venly attendants to counterfeit kindly similitudes of earth,
to greet with terrestrial child-rites the young present, which
earth had made to heaven.
Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full sym-
phony, as those bj which the spheres are tutored ; but, as
loudest instrx;ments on earth speak oftentimes, muffled ; so
to accommodate their sound the better to the weak ears
of the imperfect-born. And, with the noise of these sub-
di;ed soundings, the Angelet sprang forth, fluttei'ing its
rudiments of pinions — but forthwith flagged and was re-
covered into the arms of those full-winged angels. And a
wonder it was to see how, as years went round in heaven
— a year in dreams is as a da}' — continually its white
shoulders put forth buds of wings, but wanting the perfect
angelic nutriment, anon w^as shorn of its aspiring, and fell
THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM. 323
fliTtteriog — still caught by angel hands, for ever to put forth
shoots, and to fall fluttering^ because its birth was not of
the unmixed vigour of heaven.
And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and it was to
bo called Ge-Urania, because its jiroduction was of earth
and heaven.
And it could not taste of death, by reason of its adoption
into immortal palaces ; but it was to know weakness, and
reliance, and the shadow of human imbecility ; and it Avent
with a lame gait ; but in its goings it exceeded all mortal
children in grace and swiftness. Then pity first sprang up
in angelic bosoms ; and yearnings (like the human) touched
them at the sight of the immortal lame one.
And with pain did then first those Intuitive Essences,
with pain and strife to their natures (not grief), put back
their bright intelligences, and reduce their ethereal minds,
schooling them to degrees and slower processes, so to
adapt their lessons to the gradual illumination (as must
needs be) of the half-earth-born ; and what intuitive
notices they could not repel (by leason that their nature is,
to know all things at once) the half-heavenly novice, by
the better part of its nature, aspired to receive into its
understanding; so that Humility and Aspiration went on
even-paced in the instruction of the glorious Amphibium.
But, by reason that Mature Humanity is too gross to
breathe the air of that super-subtile region, its portion was,
and is, to be a child for ever.
And because the human part of it might not press into
the heart and inwards of the palace of its adoption, those
fuU-natured angels tended it by turns in the purlieus of
the palace, where were shady groves and rivulets, like this
green earth from which it came ; so Ijove, Avith Voluntary
Humility; waited upon the entertainment of the new-
adopted.
And myriads of years rolled round (in dreams Time is
nothing), and still it kept, and is to keep, perpetual child-
hood, and is the Tutelar Genius of Childhood upon earth,
and still goes lame and lovely.
By the banks of the river Bison is seen, lone sitting b\
324 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD.
the grave of tlie terrestrial Adah, whom the angel Nadir
loved, a Child ; but not the same which I saw in heaven.
A mournful hue overcasts its lineaments ; nevertheless, a
correspondency is between the child by the grave, and that
celestial orphan, whom I saw above ; and the dimness of
the grief iipon the heavenly, is a shadow or emblem of that
which stains the beauty of the terrestrial. And this cor-
lespondency is not to be understood but by dreams.
And in the archives of heaven I had grace to read, how
that once the angel Nadir, being exiled from his place for
mortal passion, upspringing on the wings of parental love
(such power had parental love for a moment to suspend the
else-irrevocable law) appeared for a brief instant in his
station, and, depositing a wondrous Birth, straightway dis-
appeared, and the palaces knew him no more. And this
charge was the self-same Babe, who goeth lame and lovely
— but Adah sleepeth by the river Pison.
CONFESSIONS OF A DEUNKAED.
DEHOETATIONS from the use of strong liquors have
been the favourite topic of sober declaimers in all ages,
and have been received with abundance of applause by
water-drinking critics. But with the patient himself, the
man that is to be cured, unfortunately their sound has
seldom prevailed. Yet the evil is acknowledged, the remedy
simple. Abstain. No force can oblige a man to raise the
glass to his head againt-1: his will. 'Tis as easy as not to
steal, not to tell lies.
Alas ! the hand to pilfer, and the tongue to bear false
witness, have no constitutional tendency. These are actions
indiiferent to them. At the first instance of the reformed
will, thej' (tan be brought off without a murmur. The
itching finger is but a figure in speech, and the tongue of
the liar can with the same natural delight give forth useful
truths with which it has been accustomed to scatter their
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 325
pernicious contraries. But when a man has commenced
sot
pause, thou sturdy moi'alist, thou person of stout nen'^es
and a strong head, whose liver is happily untouched, and
ere thy gorge riseth at the name which I had written, first
learn what the ihmg is; how much of compassion, how
much of human allowance, thou mayest virtuoiisly mingle
with thy disapprobation. Trample not on the ruins of a
man. Exact not, under so terrible a penalty as infamy, a
resuscitation from a state of death almost as real as that
from which Lazarus rose not but by a miracle.
Begin a reformation, and custom will make it easy. But
what if the beginning be dreadful, the first steps not like
climbing a mountain but going through fire ? what if the
whole system must undergo a change violent as that which
we conceive of the mutation of form in some insects ? what
if a process comparable to flaying alive be to be gone
through? is the weakness that sinks under such struggles
to be confounded with the pertinacity which clings to other
vices, which have induced no constitutional necessity, no
engagement of the whole victim, body and soul?
1 have known one in that state, when he has tried to
abstain but for one evening, — though the poisonous potion
had long ceased to bring back its first enchantments,
though he w^as sure it would rather deepen his gloom than
brighten it, — in the violence of the struggle, and the neces-
sity he had felt of getting rid of the present sensation at
any rate, I have known him to scream out, to cry aloud,
for the anguish and pain of the strife within him.
Why should I hesitate to declare, that the man of whom
I speak is myself ? I have no puling apology to make to
mankind. I see them all in one Avay or another deviating
from the pure reason. It is to my own nature alone I am
ac-countable for the woe that I have brought upon it.
I believe that there are constitutions, robust heads and
iron insides, whom scarce any excesses can hurt ; whom
brandy (I have seen them drink it like wine), at all events
whom wine, taken in ever so plentiful a measure, can do
no worse injury to than just to muddle their faculties,
32G CONFESSIONS OF A DBUNKARD.
perhaps never very pellucid. On tliem this discourse is
wasted. They would but laugh at a weak brother, who,
trying his strength with them, and coming off foiled from
the contest, would fain persuade them that such agonistic
exercises are dangerous. It is to a very different descrip-
tion of persons 1 speak. It is to the weak — the nervous ;
to those who feel the want of some artificial aid to raise
their spirits in society to what is no more than the ordinary
pitch of all around them without it. This is the secret of
our drinking. Such must fly the convivial board in the
first instance, if they do not mean to sell themselves for
term of life.
Twelve years ago I had completed my six-and-twentieth
year. I had lived from the period of leaving school to that
time pretty much in solitude. My companions were chiefly
books, or at most one or two living ones of my own book-
loving and sober stamp. I I'ose early, went to bed betimes,
and the faculties which God had given mo, I have reason
to think, did not rust in me unused.
About that time I fell in with some companions of a
different order. They were men of boisterous spirits,
sitters up a-nights, disputants, drunken ; yet seemed to
have something noble about them. We dealt about the
wit, or what passes for it after midnight, jovially. Of the
quality called fancy I certainly possessed a larger share
than my compaaions. Encouraged by their applause, I set
up for a professed joker ! I, who of all men am least fitted
for such an occupation, having, in addition to the greatest
difficulty which I experience at all times of finding words
to express my meaning, a natural nervous impediment in
my speech !
Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire to
any character but that of a wit. When you find a tickling
relish upon your tongxie disposing you to that sort of con-
versation, especially if you find a preternatural flow of ideas
setting in upon you at the sight of a bottle and fresh
glasses, avoid giving way to it as 3'ou would fly your
greatest destruction. If you cannot crush the power of
fancy, or that within you which you mistake for such,
CONFESSIOXS OF A DEUNKARD. 327
divert it, give it some other play. Write an essay, pen a
character or description, — but not as I do now, with tears
trickling down your cheeks.
To be an object of compassion to friends, of derisior* to
foes ; to be suspected by strangers, stared at by fools ; to
be esteemed dull when you cannot be witty, to be ap-
plauded for witty when you know that you have been dull ;
to be called upon for the extemporaneous exercise of that
faculty which no premeditation can give ; to be spurred on
to efforts which end in contempt ; to be set on to provoke
mirth which procures the procurer hatred ; to give pleasure
and bo paid with squinting malice ; to swallow draughts of
life-destroying wine which are to be distilled into airy breath
to tickle vain auditors ; to mortgage miserable morrows for
nights of madness ; to waste whole seas of time upon those
who pay it back in little inconsiderable drops of grudging
applause, — are the wages of buftbonery and death.
Time, which has a sure stroke at dissolving all connec-
tions which have no solider fastening than this liquid
cement, more kind to me than my own taste or j^enetra-
tion, at length opened my eyes to the supposed qualities of
my first friends. No trace of them is left but in the vices
which they introduced, and the habits they infixed. In
them my friends survive still, and exercise ample retribu-
tion for any supposed infidelity that I may have been guilty
of towards them.
My next more immediate companions were and are pei'-
sons of such intrinsic and felt ^vorth, that though acci-
dentally their acquaintance has proved pernicious to me, I
do not know that if the thing were to do over again, I
should have the courage to eschew the mischief at the price
of forfeiting the benefit. I came to them reeking from the
steams of my late over-heated notions of companionship ;
and the slightest fuel which they unconsciously afforded,
was sufficient to feed my own fires into a propensity.
They were no drinkers ; but, one from professional habits,
and another from a custom derived from his father, smoked
tobacco. The devil could not have devised a more subtle
trap to re-take a backsliding penitent. The transition,
z
328 COXFESSIOXS OF A DBUXKAni).
from gulping down dranghts of liquid fire to puffing out
innocuous blasts of dry smoke, was so like cheating him.
But he is too hard for us when we hope to commute. He
beats us at barter ; and when we think to set off a new
failing against an old infirmity, 'tis odds but he puts the
trick upon us of two for one. That (comparatively) white
devil of tobacco brought with him in the end seven worse
than himself.
It were impertinent to carry the reader through all the
]M'ocesses by which, from smoking at first with malt liquor,
I took my degrees through thin wines, through stronger
wine and water, through small punch, to those juggling
compositions, which, under the name of mixed liquors, slur
a great deal of brandy or other poison under less and less
water continually, until they come next to none, and so to
none at all. But it is hateful to disclose the secrets of my
Tartarus.
I should repel my readers, from a mere incapacity of
believing me, were I to tell them what tobacco has been
to me, the drudging service which I have paid, the slavery
Avhich I have vowed to it. How, when I have resolved to
quit it, a feeling as of ingratitude has started np ; how it
has put on personal claims and made the demands of a
friend upon me. How the reading of it casually in a book,
as where Adams takes his whifl' in the chimney-corner of
some inn in Joseph Andrews, or Piscator in the Complete
Angler breaks his fast upOn a morning pipe in that delicate
room Piscatorihus Sacrum, has in a moment broken down
the resistance of weeks. How a pipe was ever in my mid-
night path before me, till the vision forced me to realise it,
— how then its ascending vapours curled, its fragrance
lulled, and the thousand delicious ministerings conversant
about it, employing every faculty, extracted the sense of
l^ain. How from illuminating it came to darken, from a
quick solace it turned to a negative relief, thence to a rest-
lessness and dissatisfaction, thence to a positive misery.
How, even now, when the whole secret stands confessed in
all its dreadful truth before me, I feel myself linked to it
beyond the power of revocation. Bone of my bone
CONFESSIONS OF A DEUNKAED. 323
Persons not accustomed to examine the motives of their
actions, to reckon up the countless nails that rivet the
chains of habit, or perhaps being bound by none so obdurate
as those 1 have confessed to, may recoil from this as from
an overcharged picture. But what short of such a bondage
is it, which in spite of protesting friends, a weeping wife,
and a reprobating world, chains down many a poor fellow,
of no original indisposition to goodness, to his pipe and his
pot?
I have seen a print after Correggio, in which three
female figures are ministering to a man who sits fast bound
at the root of a tree. Sensuality is soothing him, Evil
Habit is nailing him to a branch, and Eepugnance at the
same instant of time is applying a snake to his side. In
his face is feeble delight, the recollection of past rather
than perception of present pleasures, languid enjoyment of
evil with utter imbecility to good, a Sybaritic efteminacy,
a submission to bondage, the springs of the will gone down
like a broken clock, the sin and the suffering co-instanta-
neous, or the latter forerunning the former, remorse prece-
ding action — all this represented in one point of time. —
\\ hen I saw this, I admired the w^onderfal skill of the
painter. But when I went away, I wept, because I thought
of my own condition.
Of that there is no hope that it should ever change. The
waters have gone over me. But out of the black depths,
could I be heard, I would cry out to all those who have but
set a foot in the perilous flood. Could the youth, to whom
the flavour of his first wine is delicious as the opening
scenes of life oi- the entering upon some newly-discuvered
paradise, look into my desolation, and be made to under-
stand what a dreary thing it is when a man shall feel
himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a
passive will, — to see his destruction and have no power to
stop it, and yet to feel it all the Avay emanating from him-
self ; to perceive all goodness emptied out of him, and yet
not to be able to forget a time when it was otherwise ; to
bear about the piteous spectacle of his own self-ruins : —
could he see my fevered eye, feverish with last night's
z 2
330 CONFESSICA'3 OF A DRUNKARD.
drinking, and feverislily looking for this niglit's repetition
of the fully ; could he feel the body of the death out of
which I cry hourly with feebler and feebler outcry to be
delivered, — it were enough to make him dash the sparkling
beverage to the earth in all the pride of its mantling
temptation; to make him clasp his teeth,
and not undo 'em
To suffer wet uamnatiox to run thro' 'em.
Yea, but (methinks I hear somebod}' object) if sobriety
be that fine thing you would have us to understand, if the
comfm-ts of a cool brain are to be preferred to that state
of heated excitement which you describe and deploi'e,
what hinders in your instance that you do not return to
those habits from which you would induce others never to
swerve ? if the blessing be worth preserving, is it not worth
recovering ?
Becovering ! — if a wish could transport me back to
those days of youth, when a draught from the next clear
spring could slake any heats which summer suns and
youthful exercise had power to stir up in the blood, how
gladly would T return to tliee, pure element, tlie drink of
children and of child-like holy hermit ! In my dreams 1
can sometimes fancy th_y cool refreshment purling over my
burning tongne. But my waking stomach rejects it. That
which refreshes innocence only makes me sick and faint.
But is there no middle way betwixt total abstinence and
the excess which kills you ? — For your sake, reader, and
that you may never attain to my experience, with pain I
must utter the di'eadful truth, that there is none, none that
I can find. In my stage of habit, (I speak not of habits less
confirmed — for some of them I believe the advice to be
most prudential) in the stage which I have reached, to stop
short of that measure which is sufficient to draw on torpor
and sleep, the benumbing apoplectic sleep of the drunkard,
is to have taken none at all. The pain of the self-denial is
all one. And what that is, I had rather the reader shoxild
believe on my credit, than know from his own trial. He
will come to know it, whenever he shall arrive in that state
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 331
in which, paradoxical as it may appear, rmso;« shall only visit
lain through intoxication ; for it is a fearful truth, that the
intellectual faculties by repeated acts of intemperance may
be driven from their orderly sphere of action, their clear
daylight ministeries, until they shall be brought at last to
depend, for the faint manifestation of their departing
enei-gies, upon the returning periods of the fatal madness to
which they owe their devastation. The drinking man is
never less himself than during his sober intervals. Evil is
so far his good.*
Behold me then, in the robust period of life, reduced to
imbecility and decay. Hear me count ray gains, and the
profits which I have derived from the midnight cup.
Twelve years ago, I was possessed of a healthy frame of
mind and body. I was never strong, but I think my con-
stitution (for a weak one) was as happily exempt from the
tendency to any malady as it was possible to be. I scarce
knew what it was to ail anything. Now, except when I am
losing myself in a sea of drink, I am never free from those
uneasy sensations in head and stomach, which are so much
worse to bear than any definite pains or aches.
At that time I was seldom in bed after six in the
morning, summer and winter. I awoke refreshed, and
seldom without some merry thoughts in my head, or some
piece of a song to welcome the new-burn day. Now, the
first feeling which besets me, after stretching out the hours
of recumbence to their last possible extent, is a forecast of
the wearisome day that lies before me, with a secret wish
that I could have lain on still, or never awaked.
Life itself, my waking life, has much of the confusion,
the trouble, and obscure perplexity, of an ill dream. In
the day-time I stumble upon dark mountains.
Business, which, though never very particularly adapted
* When poor M painted his last picture, with a peucil in one
trembling hand, and a glass of brandy and water in the other, his fingers
owed the comparative steadiness with which they were enabled to go
through their task in an impeifect manner, to a temporary firmness
derived from a repetition of practices, the general efiect of which had
shaken both them and him so terribly.
332 CONFESSIONS OF A DEUNEARD.
to my nature, j'et as something of necessity to be gone
Ikrougli, and therefore best nndertaken with cheerfulness,
1 used to enter upon with some degi'ee of alacrity, now
wearies, affrights, perplexes me. I fancy all sorts of dis-
couragements, and am leady to give up an occupation
Avhich gives me bread, from a harassing conceit of incapa-
city. The slightest comuiission given me by a friend, or
any small duty which T have to j^erform for myself, as
giving orders to a tradesman, &c., haunts me as a labour
impossible to be got through. So luuch the springs of
action are broken.
The same cowardice attends me in all my intercourse
with mankind. I dare not promise that a friend's honour,
or his cause, would be safe in my keeping, if I were put to
the expense of any manly resolution in defending it. So
much the springs of moral action are deadened within me.
My favourite occiipations in times past now cease to
entertain. I can do nothing readilj'. Application for ever
so short a time kills me. This poor abstract of my condition
was penned at long intervals, with scarcely an attempt
at connexion of thought, which is now difficult to me.
The noble passages which formerly delighted me in
history or poetic fiction now only diaw a few tears, allied
to dotage. My broken and dispirited nature seems to sink
before anything great and admirable.
I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any cause, or
none. It is inexpressible how much this infirmity adds to
a sense of shame, and a genei'al feeling of deterioration.
These are some of the instances, concernii:g which I can
say with truth, that it was not always so with me.
Shall I lift up the veil of my weakness any further ? — or
is this disclosure sufficient?
I am a poor nameless egotist, who have no vanity to
consult by these Confessions. I know not whether I shall
be laughed at, or heard seriously. Such as they are, I
commend them to the reader's attention, if he find his own
case any way touched. I have told him what I am come
lo. Let him stop in time.
333
POPULAR FALLACIES.
I. THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD.
rilHIS axiom contains a principle of compensation, which
_L disposes us to admit the truth of it. But there is no
safe trusting to dictionaries and definitions. We should
more willingly fall in with this popular language, if we did
not find hrutality sometimes awkwardl}- coupled with valour
in the same vocabulary. The comic writers, with their
poetical justice, have contributed not a little to mislead us
upon this point. To see a hectoring fellow exjDOsed and
beaten upon the stage, has something in it wonderfully
diverting. Some people's share of animal spirits is noto-
riously low and defective. It as not strength to raise a
vapour, or furnish out the wind of a tolerable blustei-.
These love to be told that huffing is no part of valour.
The truest courage with them is that which is the least
noisy and obtrusive. But confront one of these silent
heroes with the swaggerer of real life, and his confidence
in the theory quickly vanishes. Pretensions do not uni-
formly bespeak non-performance. A modest, inofi'ensive
deportment does not necessarily imply valour ; neither does
the absence of it justify us in denying that quality.
Hickman wanted modesty — we do not mean him of Clarissa
— but who ever doubted his courage ? Even the poets —
upon whom this equitable distribution of qualities should
be most binding — have thought it agreeable to nature to
depart from the rule upon occasion. Harajiha, in the
"Agonistes," is indeed a bully upon the received notions.
Milton has made him at once a blusterer, a giant, and
a dastard. But Almanzor, in Dryden, talks of driving
aimies singly before hira — and docs it. T(jm Brown had
a shrewder insight into this kind of character than cither
of his predecessors. He divides the palm more equably,
and allows his hero a sort of dimidiate pre-eminence : —
" Bully Dawson kicked by half the town, and half the town
kicked by Bully Dawson." This was true distributive
justice.
331 POPULAR FALLACIES.
II. THAT ILL-GOTTEX GAIX NKVEU PP^OSPERS.
The weakest part of mankind have this saying commonest
in their mouth. It is the trite consolation administered to
the easy dupe, when he has been tricked out of his money
or estate, that the acquisition of it will do the owner no
good. But the rogues of this world — the prudenter part
of them at least, — know better ; and if the observation had
been as true as it is old, would not have failed by this time
to have discovered it. They have pretty sharp distinctions
of the fluctuating and the permament. " Lightly come,
lightly go," is a proverb which they can very well afford
to leave, when they leave little else, to the losers. They do
not always find manors, got by rapine or chicanery, in-
sensibly to melt away as the poets will have it ; or that all
p-old glides, like thawing snow, from the thief's hand that
grasps it. Church land, alienated to lay uses, was formerly
denounced to have this slippery qualit}'. But some portions
of it somehow always stuck so fast, that the denunciators
have been fain to postpone the prophecy of refundment to
a late posterity.
III. THAT A MAX MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS OWN JEST.
The severest exaction surely ever invented upon the self-
denial of poor human nature ! This is to expect a gentleman
to give a treat without partaking of it ; to sit esurient at
his own table, and commend the flavour of his venison upon
the absurd strength of his never touching it himself. On
the contrai'y, wo love to see a wag taste his own joke to his
party ; to watch a quirk or a merry conceit flickering upon
tlie lips some seconds before the tongue is delivered of it.
If it be good, fresh, and racy — begotten of the occasion ; if
he that letters it neve?; thought it before, he is naturally
the first to be tickled with it, and any suppression of such
complacence we hold to be churlish and insulting. What
does it seem to imply but that your company is weak or
foolish to be moved by an image or a fancy, that shall stir
you not at all, or but faintly ? This is exactly the humour
POPULAR FALLACIES. 335
of the fine gentleman in Mandeville, who, while he dazzles
his guests with the display of some costly toy, affects himself
to " see nothing considerable in it."
IV. THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BUEEDING. THAT IT IS
EASY TO PERCEIVE HE IS NO GENTLEMAN.
A SPEECH from the poorest sort of people, which always
indicates that the party vituperated is a gentleman. The
very fact which they deny, is that which galls and exas-
perates them to use this language. The forbearance with
which it is usually received is a proof what interpretation
the by-stander sets upon it. Of a kin to this, and still less
politic, are the phrases with which, in their street rhetoric,
they ply one another more grossly ; — He is a j^oor creature.
— He has not a rag to cover dc. ; though this last, we
confess, is more frequently applied by females to females.
They do not perceive that the satire glances upon them-
selves. A poor man, of all things in the world, should not
upbraid an antagonist with poverty. Are there no other
topics — as, to tell him his father was hanged — his sister, &c.
without exposing a secret which shoiild be kept snug
between them ; and doing an affront to the order to which
they have the honour equally to belong ? All this while
they do not see how the wealthier man stands by and
laughs in his sleeve at both.
V. THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF THE RICH.
A SMOOTH text to the letter ; and, preached from the
pulpit, is sure of a docile audience from the pews lined
with satin. It is twice sitting upon velvet to a foolish
squire to be told that he — and not perverse nature, as the
homilies would make us imagine, is the tnie cause of all
the irregulai-ities in his parish. This is striking at the
root of free-will indeed, and denying the originality of sin
in any sense. But men are not siich implicit sheep as this
comes to. If the abstinence from evil on the part of the
upper classes is to derive itself from no higher principle
than the apprehension of setting ill patterns to the lower,
33G POPULAR FALLACIES.
we beg leave to discharge them from all squeamishness on
that score : they may even take their till of pleasures, where
they can find them. The Genius of Poverty, hampered and
straitened as it is, is not so barren of invention but it can
trade upon the staple of its own vice, without drawing
uj^on their capital. The poor are not quite such servile
imitators as they take them for. Some of them are very
clever artists in their way. Here and there, we find an
original. Who taught the poor to steal — to pilfer? They
did not go to the great for schoolma^iters in these faculties,
surel}'. It is well if in some vices they allow us to be — no
copyists. In no other sense is it true that the poor co2:)y
them, than as servants maybe said to take after their masters
and mistresses, when they succeed to their reversionary
cold meats. If the master, from indisjiosition, or some
other cause, neglect his food, the servant dines notwith-
standing.
" 0, but (some will say) the force of example is great."
We knew a lady wlio was so scrupulous on this head, that
she would put up with the calls of the most impertinent
visitor, rather than let her servant say she was not at home,
for fear of teaching her maid to tell an untruth ; and this
in the very face of the fact, which she knew well enough,
that the wench was one of the greatest liars upon the earth
without teaching ; so much so, that her mistress possibly
never heard two words of consecutive truth from her in her
life. But nature must go for nothing ; example must be
everything. This liar in grain, who never opened her
mouth without a lie, must be guarded against a remote
inference, which she (pretty casuist ! ) might possibly draw
from a form of words — literally false, but essentially deceiv-
ing no one — that under some circumstances a fib might
not be so exceedingly sinful — a fiction, too, not at all in her
own way, or one that she could be suspected of adopting,
for few servant-wenches care to be denied to visitors.
This word example reminds us of another fine word which
is in use upon these occasionH —encouragement. "People in
our sphere must not be thought to give encouragement to
such proceedings." To such a frantic height is this prin-
POP UL All FALLACIES. 337
ciple capable of being carried, that we have known indi-
viduals who have thought it within the scope of their
influence to sanction despair, and give eclat to — suicide. A
domestic in the family of a county member lately deceased,
from love, or some unknown cause, cut his throat, but not
siaccessfully. The poor fellow was otherwise much loved
and respected; and great interest was used in his behalf,
upon his recovery, that he might be permitted to retain his
place ; his word being first pledged, not without some sub-
stantial sponsors to promise for him, that the like should
never happen again. His master was inclinable to keep
him, but his mistress thought otherwise ; and John in the
end was dismissed, her ladyship declaring that she " could
not think of encouraging any such doings in the county."
VI. THAT ENOUGH IS AS- GOOD AS A FEAST.
KoT a man, woman, or child, in ten miles round Guildhall,
who really believers this saying. The inventor of it did not
believe it himself. It was made in revenge by somebody,
who was disappointed of a regale. It is a vile cold-scrag-
of-mutton sophism ; a lie palmed upon the palate, which
knows better things. If nothing else could be said for a
feast, this is sufficient — that from the superflus there is
usually something left for the next day. ]\Iorally inter-
preted, it belongs to a class of proverbs which have a
tendency to make us undervalue money. Of this cast are
those notable observations, that money is not health ; riches
cannot purchase everything : the metaphor which makes
gold to be mere muck, with the morality which traces fine
clothing to the sheep's back, and denounces pearl as the
unhandsome excretion of an oyster. Hence, too, the phrase
which imputes dirt to acres — a sophistiy so barefaced, that
even the literal sense of it is true only in a wet season.
This, and abundance of similar sage saws assuming to
inculcate content, we verily believe to have been the inven-:
tion of some cunning borrower, who had designs upon the
purse of his wealthier neighbour, which he could only hope
to cairy by force of these verbal jugglings. Translate any
one of these sayings out of the artful metonymy which
338 POP UL All FALLACIES.
envelopes it, and tlie trick is apparent. Goodly legs and
shoulders of mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures,
the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, independence,
heart's ease, a man's own time to himself, are not much —
however we may be pleased to scandalise with that appella-
tion the faithful metal that provides them for us.
VII. — OF TWO DISPUTANTS, THE WAltMKST IS GENERALLY IN
THE WRONG.
Our experience would lead us to quite an opposite con-
clusion. Temper, indeed, is no test of truth ; but warmth
and earnestness are a proof at least of a man's own convic-
tion of the rectitude of that which he maintains. Coolness
is as often the result of an vmprincipled indifi'erence to
truth or falsehood, as of a sober confidence in a man's own
side in a dispute. Nothing is more insulting sometimes
than the appearance of this philosophic temper. There is
little Titubus, the stammering law-stationer in Lincoln's
Inn — Ave have seldom known this shrewd little fellow
engaged in an argument where we were not convinced he
had the best of it, if his tongue would but fairly have
seconded him. "When he has been spluttering excellent
broken sense for an hour together, writhing and labouring
to be delivered of the point of dispute — the very gist of the
controversy knocking at his teeth, which like some obsti-
nate iron-grating still obstructed its deliverance — his puny
frame convulsed, and face reddening all over at an unfair-
ness in the logic which he wanted articulation to expose, it
has moved our gall to see a smooth portly fellow of an
adversary, that cared not a button for the merits of the
question, by merely laying his hand upon the head of the
stationer, and desiring him to be cahn (your tall disputants
have always the advantage), with a provoking sneer carry
the argument clean from him in the opinion of all the by-
standers, who have gone away clearly convinced that
Titubus must have been iu the wrong, because he was in a
passion ; and that Mr. , meaning his opponent, is one
of the fairest and at the same time one of the most dispas-
sionate arguers breathing.
rorULAR FALLACIES. 339
VIII. — THAT VERliAL AIXUSIONS AUK NOT WIT, BECAUSE THF:Y
WILL NOT BEAU A TUANSLATION.
The same might be said of the wittiest local allusions.
A custom is sometimes as difficult to explain to a foreigner
as a pun. "What would become of a great part of the wit
of the last age, if it were tried by this test ? How would
certain topics, as aldermanity, cuckoldry, have sounded to a
Terentian auditory, though Terence himself had been alive
to translate them ? Senator urhanus with Curruca to boot
for a synonym, would but faintly have done the business.
Words, involving notions, are hard enough to render ; it is
too much to exj^ect us to translate a sound, and give an
elegant version to a jinglo. The Virgilian harmony is not
translatable, but by substituting harmonious sounds in
another language for it. To Latinise a pun, we must seek
a pun in Latin that will answer to it ; as, to give an idea
of the double endings in Hudibras, we must have recoui'se
to a similar practice in old monkish doggrel. Dennis, the
fiercest oppugner of puns in ancient or modern times, pro-
fesses himself highly tickled with the " a stick," chiming to
" ecclesiastic." Yet what is this but a species of pun, a
verbal consonance ?
IX. — THAT THE WORST TUNS ARE THE BEST.
If by worst be only meant the most far-fetched and
startling, we agree to it. A pun is not bound by the laws
which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear ; not
a feather to tickle the intellect. It is an antic which does
not stand upon manners, but comes bounding into the
presence, and does not show tlie less comic for being
dragged in sometimes by the head and shoulders. What
though it limp a little, or prove defective in one leg? — all
the better. A pun may easily be too curious and artificial.
Who has not at one time or other been at a party of pi'o-
fessors (himself perhaps an old offender in that line),
where, after ringing a round of the most ingenious conceits,
every man contributing his shot, and some there the most
expert shooters of the day ; after making a poor word run
340 rOFULAR FALLACIES.
ihe gauntlet till it is ready to drop ; after hunting and
winding it through all the possible ambages of similar
sounds ; after squeezing, and hauling, and tugging at it, till
the very milk of it will not yield a drop further, — suddenly
some obscure, unthought-of fellow in a corner, who was
never 'prentice to the trade, whom the company for very
pity passed over, as we do by a known poor man when a
money -subscription is going round, no one calling upon him
for his quota — has all at once come out with something so
whimsical, yet so pertinent ; so brazen in its pretensions,
yet so impossible to be denied; so exquisitely good, and so
deplorably bad, at the same time, — that it has proved a
Eobin Hood's shot ; anything ulterior to that is despaired
of; and the party bi-eaks up, unanimously voting it to be
the very worst (that is, best) pun of the evening. This
species of wit is the better for not being perfect in all its
parts. What it gains in completeness, it loses in natural-
ness. The more exactly it satisfies the critical, the less
hold it has upon some other faculties. The puns which
are most entertaining are those which will least bear an
analysis. Of this kind is the following, recorded with a
sort of stigma, in one of Swift's Miscellanies.
An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was carrying a
hare through the streets, accosts him with this extraordinary
question : " Piithee, friend, is that thy own hair or a wig?"
There is no excusing this, and no resisting it. A man
might blur ten sides of paper in attempting a defence of it
against a critic who should bo laughter -proof. The quibble
in itself is not considerable. It is only a new turn given
by a little false pronunciation to a very common though
not very courteous inquiry. Put by one gentleman to an-
other at a dinner-party, it would have been vapid ; to the
mistress of the house, it would have shown much less wit
than rudeness. We must take in the totality of time, place,
and person ; the pert look of the inquiring scholar, the
desponding looks of the puzzled porter : the one stopping
at leisure, the other hurrying on with his burden ; the
innocent though rather abrupt tendency of the first member
of the question, with the utter and inextricable irrelevancy
POPULAR FALLACIES. 341
uf the second ; the place — a public street, not favourable to
frivolous investigations ; the affrontive quality of the pri-
mitive inquiry (the common question) invidiously trans-
ferred to the derivative (the new tuin given to it) in the
implied satire ; namely, that few of that tribe are expected
to eat of the good things which they carry, they being in
most countries considered rather as the temporary trustees
than owners of such dainties, — which the fellow was begin-
ning to understand ; but then the ivtg again comes in, and
he can make nothing of it ; all put together constitute a
picture : Hogarth could have made it intelligible on
canvas.
Yet nine out of ten critics will pronoiince this a very bad
pun, becaxise of the defectiveness in the concluding member,
which is its very beauty, and constitutes the surprise. The
same person shall cr}' up for admirable the cold quibble
from Virgil about the broken Cremona ;* because it is made
out in all its parts, and leaves nothing to the imagination,
AVe venture to call it cold ; because, of thousands who have
admired it, it would be difficult to find one who has heartily
chuckled at it. As appealing to the judgment merely (set-
ting the risible faculty aside), we must pronounce it a
monument of curious felicity. But as some stories are said
to be too good to be true, it may with equal truth be asserted
of this biverbal allusion, that it is too good to be natural.
One cannot help sufspecting that the incident was invented
to fit the line. It would have been better had it been less
perfect. Like some Virgilian hemistichs, it has suffered by
filling up. The niniium Vicina was enough in conscience ;
the Cremonce afterwards loads it. It is, in fact, a double
pun ; and we have always observed that a superfoetation in
this sort of wit is dangerous. When a man has said a good
thing, it is seldom politic to follow it up. We do not care
to be cheated a second time ; or, perhaps the mind of man
(with reverence be it spoken) is not capacious enough to
lodge two puns at a time. The impression, to be forcible,
must ];e simultaneous and undivided.
* Swift.
342 POPULAE FALLACIES.
X. — THAT HAND.SOMK TS THAT HANUSOME DOES.
Those who use this proverb can never have seen Mrs.
Conrady.
The soul, if we may believe I'lotinus, is a ray froin the
celestial beauty. As she partakes more or less of this
heavenly light, she informs, with corresponding characters,
tlie fleshly tenement which she chooses, and frames io
herself a suitable mansion.
All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. Conrady, in
her pre-existent state, was no great judge of architecture.
To the same effect, in a Hymn in honour of Beauty,
divine Spenser platonising sings : —
Every spirit as it is more pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light.
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerful face and amiable siglit.
For of the soul the body form doth take:
For soul is form, and doth the body make.
But Spenser, it is cleai-, never saw Mrs. Conrady.
These poets, we find, are no safe guides in johilosoph}' ;
for here, in his very next stanza but one, is a saving clause,
which throws us all out again, and leaves us as much to
seek as ever :— -
Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd.
Either by chance, against the course of kind,
Or through unaptness in the substance found,
AVhieli it assinncd of some stubborn ground.
That Tvill not yield imto her form's direction.
But is 2ierformed with some foul imperfection.
From which it would follow, that Spenser had seen some-
body lilce Mrs. Conrady.
The spirit of this good lady — her previous anima — must
have stumbled upon one of these untoward tabernacles
which he speaks of. A more I'ebellious commodity of clay
for a ground, as the poet calls it, no gentle mind— and sure
hers is one of the gentlest — ever had to deal with.
Pondering upon her inexplicable visage — inexplicable, wo
POVULAU FALLACIES. 343
mean, but by tliis inodificatiou of the theory — we have come
to a conclusion that, if one must be phiin, it is better to bo
plain all over, than amidst a tolerable lesidue of features to
hang out one that sshall be exceptionable. Ko one can say
of Mrs. Conrady's countenance that it would be better if
she had but a nose. It is impossible to pull her to pieces
in this manner. We have seen the most malicious beauties
of her own sex baffled in the attempt at a selection. I'he
tout-ensemble defies particularizing. It is too complete — too
consistent, as we may say — to admit of these invidious je-
servations. It is not as if some Apelles had picked out here
a li]5 — and there a chin — out of the collected ugliness of
Greece, to frame a model by. It is a sj'mmetrical whole.
We challenge the minutest connoisseur to cavil at any part
or parcel of the countenance in question ; to say that this,
or that, is improperly placed. We are convinced that true
ugliness, no less than is affirmed of true beauty, is the
result of harmony. Like that, too, it reigns without a
competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. Conrady without pi'o-
nouncing her to be the plainest woman that he ever met
with in the course of his life. The first time that you are
indulged with a sight of her face, is an era in your exist-
ence ever after. You are glad to have seen it — like Stone-
henge. No one can pretend to forget it. No one ever
apologised to her for meeting her in the street on such a
day and not knowing her : the pretext would be too bare.
Nobody can mistake her for another. Nobody can say of
her, "I think I have seen that face somewhere, but I can-
not call to mind where." You must remember that in such
a parlour it first struck you^like a bust. You wondered
where the owner of the house had picked it up. You
wondered more when it began to move its lips — so mildly
too ! No one ever thought of asking her to sit for her
picture. Lockets are for remembrance; and it would be
clearly superfluous to hang an image at your heart, which,
once seen, can never be out of it. It is not a mean face
either ; its entire originality precludes that. Neither is
it of that order of plain faces which improve upon ac-
quaintance. Some very good but ordinary people, by an
2 a
344 POPULAB FALLACIES!.
unwearied perseverance in good offices, ])ut a cheat upon our
eyes ; juggle our senses out of their natural impressions ;
and set us upon discovering good indications in a coun-
tenance, which at first sight promised nothing less. We
detect gentleness, which had escaped us, lurking about an
under lip. But when Mrs. Conrady has done you a service,
her face remains the same ; when she has done you a
thousand, and you know that she is ready to double the
number, still it is that individual face. Neither can you
say of it, that it would be a good face if it were not marked
by the small-pox — a compliment which is always more
admissive than excusatory — for either Mrs. Conrady never
had the small-pox ; or, as we say, took it kindly. No, it
stands upon its own merits fairly. There it is. It is her
mark, her token ; that which she is known by.
XI. — THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH:
Nor a lady's age in the parish register. We hope we
have more delicacy than to do either ; but some faces
spare us the trouble of these dental inquii-ies. And what
if the beast, which my friend would force upon my ac-
ceptance, prove, upon the face of it, a sorry Rosinante, a
lean, ill-favoured jade, whom no gentleman could think of
setting up in his stables ? Must I, rather than not be
obliged to my friend, make her a companion to Eclipse or
Lightfoot ? A horse-giver, no more than a horse-seller, has
a right to palm his spavined article upon us for good ware.
An equivalent is expected in either case ; and, with my
own good-will, I could no more be cheated out of my thanks
than out of my money. Some people have a knack of
putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to
substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing. Our
friend Mitis carries this humour of never refusing a present
to the very point of absurdity — if it were possible to couple
the ridiculous with so much mistaken delicacy and real
good-nature. Not an apartment in his fine house (and he
has a true taste in household decorations), but is stuffed up
with some preposterous print or mirror — the worst adapted
to his panels that may be — the presents of his friends that
FOFULAB FALLACIES. 345
know his weakness ; while his noble Vandykes are diisplacied
to make room for a set of daubs, the work of some wretched
artist of his acquaintance, who, having had them returned
upon his hands for bad likenesses, finds his account in
bestowing them liei-e gratis. The good creature has not
the heart to mortify the painter at the expense of an honest
refusal. It is pleasant (if it did not vex one at the same
time) to see him sitting in his dining parlour, surrounded
with obscure aunts and cousins to God knows whom, while
the true Lady Marys and Lady Bettys of his own honour-
able family, in favour to these adopted frights, are con-
signed to the staircase and the lumber-room. In like
manner, his goodly shelves are one by one stripped of his
favourite old authors, to give place to a collection uf pre-
sentation copies — the flour and bran of modern poetry. A
presentation copy, reader — if haply you are yet innocent of
such favours — is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent
you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the begin-
ning of it ; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your
friendship ; if a brother author, he expects from j'ou a book
of yours, which does sell, in return. We can sjDeak to
experience, having by us a tolerable assortment of these
gift-horses. Not to ride a metaphor to death — we are
willing to acknowledge, that in some gifts there is sense.
A duplicate out of a friend's library (where he has more
than one copy of a rare author) is intelligible. There are
favours, short of the pecuniary — a thing not fit to be hinted
at among gentlemen — which confer as much grace upon the
acceptor as the offerer ; the kind, we confess, which is most
to our palate, is of those little conciliatory missives, which
for their vehicle generally choose a hamper — little odd
presents of game, fruit, i^erhaps wine — though it is essential
to the delicacy of the latter, that it be home-made. We
love to have our friend in the country sitting thus at our
table by proxy ; to apprehend his presence (though a
hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, whose
goodly aspect reflects to us his "plump corpusculum ;" to
taste him in grouse or woodcock; to feel him gliding down
in the toast peculiar to the latter ; to concoi"poi'ate him in
2 a2
S16 POFULAU FALLACIES.
a slice of Canterbuiy brawn. This is indeed to have him
within ourselves ; to know him intimately : such particijoa
tiun is methinks nnitive, as the old theologians phrase it.
For these considerations we should be sorr}' if certain re-
strictive regulations, which are thought to bear hard upon
the peasantry of this country, were entirely done away with.
A hare, as the law now stands, makes many friends. Caius
conciliates Titius (knowing his rjuut) with a leash of par-
tridges. Titius (suspecting his partiality for them) passes
them to Lucius ; who, in his turn, preferring his friend's
relish to his own, makes them over to Marcius ; till in their
ever-widening progress, and round of unconscious circum-
migration, they distribute the seeds of harmony over half a
parish. We are well-disposed to this kind of sensible
remembrances; and are the less apt to be taken by those
little airy tokens — impalpable to tire palate — which, under
the names of rings, lockets, keep-sakes, amuse some people's
fancy mightily. We could never away with these indi-
gestible triiies. They are the very kickshaAvs and foppery
of friendship.
XII. THAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS NEVKR SO HOMELY.
Homes there are, we are sure, that are no homes ; the homo
of the Aery poor man, and another which we shall speak to
presently. Crowded places of cneap entertainment, and
the benches of alehouses, if they could speak, might bear
mournful testimon}^ to the first. To them the very pour
man resorts for an image of the home which he cannot
find at home. For a starved grate, and a scant}' firing, that
is not enough to keep alive the natural heat in the fingers
of so many shivering children with their mother, he finds
in the depths of winter always a blazing hearth, and a hob
to warm his pittance of beer by. Instead of the clamours
of a wife, made gaunt by famishing, ho meets with a cheer-
ful attendance beyond the merits of the trifle which he
can afford to spend. lie has companions which his home
denies him, for the very poor man has no visitors. He can
look into the goings on of the world, and speak a little to
politics. At home there aie no politics stirring, but the
VOrJfLAK FALLACIES. 347
domestic. All interests, real or imaginary, all topics tliat
should txpand the mind of man, and connect him to a
sympathy with general existence, are crushed in the
absorbing consideration of food to be obtained for the
family. Beyond the price of bread, news is senseless and
impertinent. At home there is no larder. Here there is
at least a show of plenty ; and while he cooks his lean
scrap of butcher's meat before the common bars, or munches
his humbler cold viands, his relishing bread and cheese
with an onion, in a corner, where no one reflects upon his
poNcrty, he has a sight of the substantial joint providing
for the landlord and his family. He takes an interest in
the dressing of it; and while he assists in removing the
trivet from the fire, he feels that there is such a thing as
beef and cabbage, which he was beginning to forget at
home. All this while he deserts his wife and children.
But what wife, and what children ! Prosperous men, who
object to this desertion, image to themselves some clean
contented family like that which they go home to. But
look at the countenance of the poor wives who follow and
j)ersecute their good-man to the door of the public-house,
which he is about to enter, when something like shame
would restrain him, if stronger misery did not induce him
to pass the threshold. That face, ground by want, in which
every cheerful, every conversable lineament has been long
efiaced by misery, — is that a face to stay at home with? is
it more a woman, or a wild cat ? alas ! it is the face of the
wife of his youth, that once smiled upon him. It can
smile no longei'. What comforts can it share ? what bur-
thens can it lighten? Oh, 'tis a fi.ne thing to talk of the
humble meal shared together ! But what if there be
no bread in the cupboard? The innocent prattle of his
children takes out the sting of a man's poverty. But the
children of the very poor do not prattle. It is none of the
least frightful features in that condition, that there is no
childishness in its dwellings. Poor people, said a sensible
old nurse to us once, do not bring up their children ; they
diag them up.
The little careless darling of the wealthier nursery, in
348 POFULAB FALLACIES.
their lio\x4 is transformed betimes into a premature/eflect-
ing person. Ko one has time to dandle it, no one minks it
worth while to coax it, to soothe it, to toss it ^^p and down,
to humour it. There is none to kiss away its tears. If it
cries, it can only be beaten. It has been ])rettily said, that
" a babe is fed with milk and praise." But the aliment of
this poor babe was thin, unnourishing ; the return to its
little baby-tricks, and efforts to engage attention, bitter
ceaseless objurgation. It never had a toy, or knew what a
coral meant. It grew up without the lullaby of nurses, it
was a stranger to- the patient fondle, the hushing caress, the
attracting novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper
off-hand contrivance to divert the child ; the prattled non-
sense (best sense to it), the wise impertinences, the whole-
some lies, the apt story interposed, that puts a stop to
present sufferings, and awakens the passions of young
wonder. It was never sung to — no one ever told to it a
tale of the nursery. It was dragged up, to live or to die as
it happened. It had no young dreams. It broke at once
into the iron realities of life. A child exists not for the
very poor as any object of dalliance ; it is only another
mouth to be fed, a pair of little hands to be betimes inured
to labour. It is the rival, till it can be the co-operator, for
food with the parent. It is never his mirth, his diversion,
his solace : it never makes him young again, with recalling
his young times. The children of the very poor have no
young times. It makes the very heart to bleed to over-
liear the casual street-talk between a poor woman and her
little gill, a woman of the better sort of poor, in a condition
rather above the squalid beings which vre have been con-
templating. It is not of toys, of nursery books, of summel
holidays (titting that age) ; of the promised sight, or play ;
of praised sufficiency at school. It is of mangling and
clear-starching, of the price of coals, or of potatoes. The
questions of the child, that should be the very outpourings
of curiosity in idleness, are marked with forecast and
melancholy providence. It has come to be a woman, —
before it was a child. It has learned to go to market ; it
chaffers, it haggles, it envies, it mm murs ; it is knowing,
POPULAR FALLACIES. 34U
acute, sliarpened ; it Bever prattles. Had we not reason to
say that the home of the very poor is no home ?
There is yet another home, which we are constrained to
deny to be one. It has a larder, which the home of the
poor man wants ; its fireside conveniences, of which the
poor dream not. But with all this, it is no home. It is — •
the house of a man that is infested with many visitors.
May we be branded for the veriest churl, if we deny our
heart to the many noble-hearted friends that at times
exchange their dwelling for our poor roof! It is not of
guests that we complain, but of endless, purposeless vis-
itants ; droppers-in, as they are called. We sometimes
wonder from what sky they fall. It is the very error of
the position of our lodging; its horoscopy was ill calcu-
lated, being just situate in a medium — a plaguy suburban
mid-space — fitted to catch idlers from town or country.
^Ve are older than we were, and age is easily put out of its
wa}'. V\^e have fewer sands in our glass to leckon upon,
and we cannot brook to see them drop in endlessly succeed-
ing impertinences. At our time of life, to be alone some-
times is as needful as sleep. It is the refreshing sleep of
the day. The growing infirmities of age manifest them-
selves in nothing more strongly than in an inveterate
dislike of interruption. The thing which we are doing, Ave
wish to be permitted to do. We have neither much know-
ledge nor devices ; but there are fewer in the place to
which we hasten. We are not willingly put out of our
way, even at a game of nine-pins. While youth was, we
had vast reversions in time future ; we are reduced to a
present pittance, and obliged to economise in that article.
We bleed away our moments now as hardly as our ducats.
We cannot bear to have our thin wardrobe eaten and fretted
into by moths. We are willing to barter our good time
with a friend, who gives us in exchange his own. Herein
is the distinction between the genuine guest and the vis-
itant. This latter takes your good time, and gives you his
bad in exchange. The guest is domestic to you as your
good cat, or household bird ; the visitant is your fly, that
flaps in at youi- window and out again, leaving nothing but
3r.O VOi'ULAR FALLACIES.
a sense of disturbance, and victuals spoiled. The inferior
functions of life begin to move heavily. We cannot con-
coct our food with interruptions. Our chief meal, to be
nutritive, must be solitary. "With diflSculty we can eat
before a guest ; and never understood what the relish of
jiublic feasting meant. Meats have no sapor, nor digestion
fair pla}^, in a crowd. The unexpected coming in of a
visitant s.tops the machine. There is a punctual genera-
tion who time their calls to the precise commencement of
your dining-hour — not to eat — but to see you eat. Our
knife and fork drop instinctively, and we feel that we have
swallowed our latest nioi'sel. Others again show their
genius, as we have said, in knocking the moment you
have just sat down to a book. They have a peculiar com-
passionate sneer, with which they " hope that they do not
interrupt your studies." Though they flutter off the next
inoment, to carry their impertinences to the nearest s-tudent
that they can call their friend, the tone of the book is
spoiled ; we shut the leaves, and with Dante's lovers, read
no more that day. It were well if the effect of intrusion
were simply co-extensive with its presence, but it mars all
the good hours afterwards. These scratches in appearance
leave an orifice that closes not hastily. "It is a prostitution
of the bravery of friendship," says worthy Bishop Taylor,
' ' to spend it upon impertinent people, who are, it may be,
loads to their families, but can never ease my loads." This
is the secret of their gaddings, their visits, and morning
calls. They too have homes, which aie — no homes.
XIII. — THAT YOU MUST LOVE MK AND LOVE ?fY DOG.
" Good sir, or madam — as it may be — we most willingly
embrace the offer of yoiir friendship. We have long
known your excellent qualities. AVe have wished to have
you nearer to us ; to hold you within the very innermost
fold of our heart. ^^ e can have no reserve towards a
person of your open and noble nature. The frankness of
your humour suits us exactl}'. We have been long looking
for such a friend. Quick — let us disburthen our troubles
into each other s bosom — let us make our single joys shine
TOFUhAH FALLACIES. 351
by reduplication. — -But yai), yap, yap ! what is this con-
founded cur? he has fastened his tooth, which is none of
the bluntest, just in the fleshy part of my leg."
" It is my dog, sir. "ion must love him for my sake.
Here, Test— Test— Test !"
"But he has bitten me."
" Ay, that he is apt to do, till you are better acquainted
with him. I have had him three years. He never bites me."
Yap, yap, yap ! — " He is at it again."
" Oh, sir, you must not kick him. He does not like to be
kicked. I expect my dog to be treated with all the respect
due to myself."
" But do you always take him out with you, when you go
a friendship-hunting?"
" Invariably. 'Tis the sweetest, prettiest, best-condi-
tioned animal. I call him my test — the touchstone by
which to try a friend. Ko one can proj)erly be said to love
me, who does not love him."
"Excuse us, dear sir — or madam, aforesaid — -if upon
further consideration we are obliged to decline the otherwise
invaluable ofl'er of your friendship. We do not like dogs."
"Mighty well, sir, — you know the conditions — you may
have worse offers. Come along. Test."
The above dialogue is not so imaginary, but that, in the
intercourse of life, we have had frequent occasions of break-
ing off an agreeable intimacy by reason of these canine
appendages. They do not always come in the shape of
dogs ; they sometimes wear the more plausible and human
character of kinsfolk, near acquaintances, my friend's friend,
his partner, his wife, or his children. We could never yet
form a friendship — not to speak of more delicate corre-
spondence — however much to our taste, without the inter-
vention of some third anomaly, some impertinent clog
affixed to the relation — the understood dog in the proverb.
The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come
to us with a mixture ; like a school-boy's holiday, with a
task affixed to the tail of it. ^Vhat a delightful companion
is * * * *, if he did not always bring his tall cousin with
him ! He seems to gi ow with him ; like some of thos3
352 FOFULAR FALLACIES.
double births wliich we remember to have read of with srrch
wonder and delight in the old " Athenian Oracle," where
Swift commenced author by writing Pindaric Odes (what a
beginning for him!) upon Sir William Temple. There is
the picture of the brother, with the little brother peeping
out at his shoulder ; a species of fraternit}-, which we have
no name of kin close enough to comprehend. When * * * *
comes, poking in his head and shoulder into your room, as
if to feel his entry, you think, surely you have now got him
to yourself — what a three hours' chat we ishall have ! — but
ever in the haunch of him, and before his diffident body is
well disclosed in j'our apartment, appears the haunting-
shadow of the cousin, overpeering his modest kinsman, and
sure to overlay the expected good talk with his insufferable
procerity of stature, and uncorresponding dwarfishness of
observation. Misfortunes seldom come alone. 'Tis hard
when a blessing comes accompanied. Cannot we like
Sempronia, without sitting down to chess with her eternal
brother ; or know Sulpicia, without knowing all the round
of her card-playing relations ? — must my friend's brethren
of necessity be mine also? must we be hand and glove with
Dick Selby the parson, or Jack Selby the calico-printer,
because AV. S., who is neither, but a ripe wit and a critic,
has the misfortune to claim a common parentage with
them ? Let him lay down his brothers ; and 'tis odds but
we will cast him in a pair of ours (we have a superflux) to
balance the concession. Let F. II. lay down his garrulous
uncle ; and Ilonorius dismiss his vapid wife, and super-
fluous establishment of six boys : things between boy and
manhood — too ripe for play, too raw for conversation — that
come in, impudently staring his father's old friend out of
countenance; and will neither aid nor let alone, the con-
fei'ence ; that we may once more meet upon equal terms, as
we were wont to do in the disengaged Ftate of bachelorhood.
It is well if your friend, or mistress, be content with
these canicular probations. Few young ladies but in this
sense keep a dog. But when Rutilia hounds at you her
tiger aunt ; or Euspina expects you to cherish and fondle
her viper sister, whom she has preposterously taken into
POPULAR FALLACIES. 353
lier bosom, to try stinging conclusions upon your con-
stancy ; they must not complain if the house be rather thin,
of suitors. Scylla must have broken off many excellent
matches in her time, if she insisted upon all that loved her
loving her dogs also.
An excellent story to this moral is told ot" Merry, of Delia
Cruscan memory. In tender youth he loved and courted a
modest appanage to the Opera — in truth, a dancer — who
had won him by the artless contrast between her manners
and situation. She seemed to him a native violet, that had
been ti'ansplanted by some rude accident into that exotic
and artificial hotbed. Nor, in truth, was she less genuine
and sincere than she appeared to him. He wooed and won
this flower. Only for appearance sake, and for due honour
to the bride's relations, she craved that she might have the
attendance of her friends and kindred at the approaching
solemnity. The request was too amiable not to be con-
ceded ; and in this solicitude for conciliating the good- will
of mere relations, he found a presage of her superior atten-
tions to himself, when the golden shaft should have " killed
the flock of all affections else." The morning came : and
at the Star and Garter, Richmond — ^the place appointed for
the breakfasting — accompanied with one English friend, he
impatiently awaited what reinforcements the bride should
bring to grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had made.
They came in six coaches — the whole corps du ballet — ■
French, Italian, men and women. Monsieur de B., the
famous pirouettes- of the day, led his fair spouse, but craggy,
from the banks of the Seine. The Prima Donna had sent
her excuse. But the first and second Buffa were there ; and
Signer So — , and Signora Ch — , and Madame V — , with a
countless cavalcade besides of chorusers, figurantes ! at the
sight of whom Merry afterwards declared, that " then for
the first time it struclc him seriously, that he was about to
marry — a dancer." But there was no help for it. Besides,
it was her day ; these were, iu fiict, her friends and kins-
folk. The assemblage, though whimsical, was all very
natural. Bat when the bride — handing out of the last
coach a still more extraordinary figure than the rest —
354 TOPVLAB IWLLACIES.
iDresented to him as lier /a^'/iej- — the gentleman that was to
(jive her away — no less a person than Signor Delpini himself
— with a sort of pride, as much as to say, See what I have
brought to do us honour ! — the thought of so extraordinary
a paternity quite overcame him ; and slipping away under
some pretence from the bride and her motley adherents,
poor Merry took horse from the back yard to the nearest
sea-coast, from which, shipping himself to America, he
shortly after consoled himself with a more congenial match
in the person of Miss Brunton ; relieved from his intended
clown father', and a bevy of painted buiTas for bridemaids.
XiV. THAT WE SHOULD RISH: AVITH THE LARK.
At what precise minute that little airy musician doffs
his night gear, and prepares to tune up his unseasonable
matins, we are not naturalist enough to determine. But
for a mere human gentleman — that has no orchestra business
to call him from his warm bed to such preposterous exer-
cises — we take ten, or half after ten (eleven, of course,
during this Christmas solstice), to be the very earliest hour
at which he can begin to think of abandoning his pillow.
To think of it, we say ; for to do it in earnest requires
another half hour's good consideration. Not but there are
pretty sun-risings, as we are told, and such like gawds,
abroad in the world, in summer-time especially, some hours
before what we have assigned ; which a gentleman may see,
as they say, only for getting up. But having been tempted
once or twice, in earlier life, to assist at those ceremonies,
we confess our curiosity abated. We are no longer am-
bitious of being the sun's courtiers, to attend at his
morning levees. We hold the good hours of the dawn too
sacred to waste them upon such observances ; which havo
in them, besides, something Pagan and Persic. To say
truth, we never anticipated our usual hour, or got up with
the sun (as 'tis called), to go a journey, or upon a foolish
Avhole day's pleasuring, but we suffered for it all the long
iiuurs after in listlessness and headaches; Nature herself
sufficiently declaring her sense of our presumption in as-
piring to regulate our frail waking courses by the measures
POPULAR FALLACIES. 355
of that celestial and sleepless traveller. We deny not that
there is something sprightly and vigorous, at the outset
especially, in these break-of-day excursions. It is flattering
to get the start of a lazy world ; to conquer Death by proxy
in his image. But the seeds of sleep and mortality are in
us ; and v^^e pay usually, in strange qualms before night
falls, the penalty of the unnatuial inversion. Therefore,
■while the busy part of mankind are fust huddling on their
clothes, are already up and about their occupations, content
to have swallowed their sleep by M^holesale ; we choose to
linger a-bed and digest our dreams. It is the very time to
recombine the wandering images, which night in a confused
mass presented ; to snatch them from furgetfulness ; to
shape, and mould them. Some i^eople have no good of
their dreams. Like fast feeders, they gulp them too grossly,
To taste them curiously. We love to chew the cud of a
foregone vision ; to collect the scattered rays of a brighter
phantasm, or act over again, with firmer nerves, the sadder
nocturnal tragedies ; to diag into day-light a struggling
and half-vanishing night-mare ; to handle and examine the
terrors, or the airy solaces. 'We have too much respect for
these spiritual communications, to let them go so lightl}\
We are not so stupid, or so careless as that Imperial for-
getter of his dreams, that we should need a seer to remind
us of the form of them. They seem to us to have as much
significance as our waking concerns ; or rather to import
us more neai-ly, as more nearly we approach by years to
the shadowy world, whither we are hastening. We have
shaken hands with the world's business ; we have done
with it , we have discharged ourself of it. Why should
we get up ? we have neither suit to solicit, nor afi'airs to
manage. The diama has shut upon us at the fourth act.
We have nothing here to expect, but in a short time a
sick-bed, and a dismissal. AVe delight to anticipate death
by such shadows as night affords. We are already half
acquainted with ghosts. AVe were never much in the world.
Disappointment early struck a dark veil between us and its
dazzling illusions. Our spirits showed grey before our
hairs. The mighty changes of the world already appear as
356 FOFULAR FALLACIES.
but tlie vain stuff out of which dramas are composed. "We
have asked no more of life than what the mimic images in
play-houses present us with. Even those types have waxed
fainter. Our clock appears to have struck. We are supkr-
ANNUATED. In this dearth of mundane satisfaction, we
contract politic alliances with shadows. It is good to have
friends at court. The extracted media of dreams seem no
ill introduction to that spiritual presence, upon which, in
no long time, we expect to be thrown. We are trying to
know a little of the usages of that colony ; to learn the
language and the faces we shall meet with there, that we
may be the less awkward at our first coming among them.
We willingly call a phantom our fellow, as knowing we
shall soon be of their dark companionship. Therefore we
cherish dreams. ^Ve try to spell in them the alphabet of
the invisible world ; and think we know already how it
shall be with us. Those uncouth shapes which, while we
clung to flesh and blood, affrighted us, have become familiar.
We feel attenuated into their meagre essences, and have
given the hand of half-way approach to incorporeal being.
We once thought life to be something ; but it has unac-
countably fallen from us before its time. Therefore we
choose to dally with visions. The sun has no purposes of
ours to light us to. Why should we get up ?
XV. THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB.
We could never quite understand the philosophy of this
arrangement, or the wisdom of our ancestors in sending us
for instruction to these woolly bedfellows. A sheep, when
it is dark, has nothing to do but to shut his silly ejes, and
sleep if he can. Man found out long sixes — Hail, candle-
light ! without disparagement to sun or moon, the kindliest
luminary of the three — if we may not rather stj'le thee
their radiant deputy, mild viceroy of the moon ! — We love
to read, talk, sit silent, eat, drink, sleep, by candle-light.
They are everybody's sun and moon. This is our peculiar
and household planet. A\ anting it, what savage unsocial
nights must our ancestors have spent, wintering in caves
and unillumined fastnesses! They must have lain about and
POPULAR FALLACIES. 357
giumbled at oue another in the dark. What repartees could
have passed, when yon mnst have felt abont for a smile,
and handled a neighbour's cheek to be sure that he under-
stood it ? This accounts for the seriousness of the elder
poetry. It has a sombre cast (try Hesiod or Ossian),
derived from the tradition of those unlantern'd nights.
Jokes came in with candles. We wonder how the v saw to
pick up a pin, if tliey had any. IIow did they sup ? what
a melange of chance carving they must have made of it ? —
here oue had got a leg of a goat when he wanted a horse's
shoulder — there another had dipped his scooped palm in a
kid-skin of wild honey, when he meditated right mare's
milk. There is neither good eating nor drinking in fresco.
^Vho, even in these civilized times, has never experienced
this, when at some economic table he has commenced dining
after dusk, and waited for the flavour till the lights came ?
The senses absolutely give and take reciprocally. Can you
tell pork from veal in the dark ? or distinguish Sherris
from pure Malaga ? Take away the candle from the smoking
man ; by the glimmering of the left ashes, he knows that
he is still smoking, but he knows it only by an inference ;
till tlie restored light, coming in aid of the olfactories,
reveals to both senses the full aroma. Then how he re-
doubles his puffs ! how he burnishes ! — there is absolutely
no such thing as reading but by a candle. We have tried
the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, and in
sultry arbours ; but it was labour thrown away. Those gay
motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teasing,
like so many coquettes, that will have you all to their self
and are jealous of your abstractions. By the midnight
taper, the writer digests his meditations. By the same
light we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch
the flame, the odour. It is a mockery, all that is reported
of the influential Phoebus. No true poem ever owed its
birth to the sun's light. I'hey are abstracted works —
Things that were bora, when none but the still night,
And liis dumb candle, saw his pinching throes,
MaiTy, daylight — daylight might furnish the images, the
C58 rOFULAR FALLACIES.
cmtle material ; but for the fine shapings, the true turning
and filing (as mine author hath it), they must be content to
hold their inspiration of the candle. — The mild internal
light, that reveals them, like fires on the domestic hearth,
goes out in the sun-shine. Kight and silence call oxit the
starry fancies. Milton's Morning Hymn in Paradise, we
would hold a good wager, was penned at midnight; and
Taylor's rich description of a sun-rise smells decidedly of the
taper. Even ourself, in these our humbler lucubrations
tune our best-measured cadences (Prose has her cadences)
not unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier watchman,
" blessing the doors ;" or the wild sweep of winds at mid-
night. Even now a loftier speculation than we have yet
attempted, courts our endeavours. We would indite some-
thing about the Solar System.— i:>e%, bring the candles.
XVI. — THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A I\IISF0RTUXE.
We grant that it is, and a very serious one — to a man's
friends, and to all that have to do -with him; but whether
the condition of the man himself is so much to be dejilored,
may admit of a question. We can speak a little to it,
being ourselves but lately recovered — we whisper it in
confidence, reader- — out of a long and desperate fit of the
sullens. Was the cure a blessing? The conviction which
wrought it, came too clearly to leave a scruple of the
fanciful injuries— for they were mere fancies — which had
provoked the humour. But the humoin- itself was too self-
pleasing while it lasted — we know hoAv bare we lay ourself
in the confession — to be abandoned all at once with the
grounds of it. We still brood over wrongs which we know
to have been imaginary ; and for our old acquaintance
N , whom we find to have been a truer friend than we
took him for, we substitute some phantom — a Caius or a
Titins — as like him as we dare to form it, to wreak our yet
unsatisfied resentments on. It is mortifying to fall at once
from the pinnacle of neglect; to forego the idea of having
been ill-used and contumaciously treated by an old friend.
The first thing to aggrandize a man in his own conceit, is
to conceive of himself as neglected. There let him fix if
POPULAE FALLACIES. 359
he can. To undeceive him is to deprive him of the most
tickling morsel within the range of self-complacency. No
flattery can come near it. Happy is he who suspects his
friend of an injustice ; but supremely blest, who thinks all
his friends in a conspiracy to depress and undervalue him.
There is a pleasure (we sing not to the profane) for beyond
the reach of all that the world calls joy — a deep, enduring
satisfaction in the depths, where the superficial seek it not,
of discontent. "Were we to recite one half of this mystery
— which we were let into by our late dissatisfaction, all the
world would be in love with disiespcct; we should wear a
slight for a bracelet, and neglects and contumacies would
be the only matter for courtship. Unlike to that mysterious
book in the iVpocalypse, the study of this mystery is un-
palatable only in the commencement. The first sting of a
suspicion is grievous ; but wait — out of that wound, which
to tlesh and blood seemed so difficult, there is balm and
honey to be extracted. Your friend passed you on such or
such a day, — having in his company one that you conceived
worse than ambiguously disposed towards you, — passed
3"ou in the street without notice. To be sure, he is some-
thing short-sighted ; and it was in your power to have
accosted him. But facts and sane inferences are trifles to a
true adept in the science of dissatisfaction. He must have
seen you ; and S , who was with him, must have been
the cause of the contempt. It galls you, and well it may.
But have patience. Go home, and make the worst of it,
and you aro a made man from this time. Shut yourself up,
and — rejecting, as an enemy to your peace, every whisper-
ing suggestion that but insinuates there may be a mistake
— reflect seriously upon the many lesser instances which
you had begun to perceive, in proof of your friend's dis-
affection towards you. None of them singly was much to
the purpose, but the aggregate weight is positive ; and you
have this last affront to clench them. Thus far the process
is anything but agreeable. But now to your relief comes
the comparative faculty. You conjure up all the kind
feelings you have had for your friend ; what you have been
to him, and what you would have been to him, if he would
2 B
3G0 POPULAR FALLACIES.
have suffered you ; liow you defended him in this or that
place ; and his good name — his literary reputation, and so
forth, was always dearer to you than your own ! Your
heart, spite of itself, yearns towards him. You could weep
tears of blood but for a restraining pride. How say you ?
do you not yet begin to apprehend a comfort ? — some allay
of sweetness in the bitter waters? Stop not here, nor
penuriously cheat yourself of your reversions. You are on
vantage ground. Enlarge your speculations, and take in
the rest of your friends, as a spark kindles more sparks.
Was there one among them who has not to you proved
hollow, false, slippery as water ? Begin to think that the
relation itself is inconsistent with mortality. That the
very idea of friendship, with its component parts, as honour,
fidelity, steadiness, exists but in your single bosom. Image
yourself to yourself as the only possible friend in a world
incapable of that communion. Now the gloom thickens.
The little star of self-love twinkles, that is to encourage
you through deeper glooms than this. You are not yet at
the half point of your elevation. You are not yet, believe
me, half sulky enough. Adverting to the world in general
(as these circles in the mind will spread to infinity), reflect
with what strange injustice you have been treated in
quarters where (setting gratitude and the expectation of
friendly returns aside as chimeras) you pretended no claim
beyond justice, the naked due of all men. Think the very
idea of right and fit fled from the earth, or your breast the
solitary receptacle of it till j'ou have swelled yourself into
at least one hemisphere ; the other being the vast Arabia
Stony of your friends and the world aforesaid. To grow
bigger every moment in your own conceit, and the world
to lessen ; to deify yourself at the expense of your species ;
to judge the world — this is the acme and supreme point of
your mystery — these the true Pleasures of Sulkiness. We
p-ofess no more of this grand secret than what ourself
experimented on one rainy afternoon in the last week,
sulking in our study. We had proceeded to the penulti-
mate point, at which the true adept seldom stops, where the
consideration of benefit forgot is about to merge in the
FOPULAB FALLACIES. 361
meditation of general injustice — when a knock at the door
was followed by the entrance of the very friend whoso not
seeing of us in the morning (for we will now confess the
case our own), an accidental oversight, had given rise to so
much agreeable generalization ! To mortify us still more,
and take down the whole flattering superstructure which
pride had piled upon neglect, he had brought in his hand
the identical S , in whose favour we had suspected him
of the contumacy. Asseverations were needless, where the
frank manner of them both was convictive of the injurious
nature of the suspicion. We fancied that they perceived
our embarrassment ; but were too proud, or something else,
to confess to the secret of it. We had been but too lately
in the condition of the noble patient in Argos : —
Qui se crcdebat miros audire tragcedos,
In vacuo hetus sessor plausorque theatre —
and could have exclaimed with equal reason against tlie
friendly hands that cured us —
Pol, me occidistis, amici,
Non servastis, ait ; cui sic extort;^ voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis sratissimus error.
LONDON :
■PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS
ELIANA
EL I ANA.
THE GEXTLE GIANTESS.
THE Widow Blacket, of Oxford, is tlie largest female I
erer had the pleasure of beholding. There may he
her parallel upon the earth ; but surely I never saw it. I
take her to be lineall}' descended from the maid's aunt of
Brainford, who caused Master Ford such uneasiness. She
hath Atlantean shoulders ; and, as she stoopeth in her
gait, — with as few offences to answer for in her own par-
ticular as any of Eve's daughters, — her back seems broad
enough to bear the blame of all the peccadilloes that have
been committed since Adam. She girdeth her waist — or
what she is pleased to esteem as such — nearly up to her
shoulders ; from beneath which that huge dorsal expanse,
in mountainous declivity, emergeth. Eespect for her alone
preventeth the idle boys, who follow her about in shoals,
whenever she cometh abroad, from getting up, and riding.
But her presence inMlibly commands a reverence. She
is indeed, as the Americans would express it, something
awful. Her person is a burden to herself no less than to
the ground which bears her. To her mighty bone, she
hath a piuguitude withal, which makes the depth of
winter to her the most desirable season. Her distress in
the warmer solstice is pitiable. During the months of
July and August, she usually renteth a cool cellar, where
ices are kept, whereinto she descendeth when Sirius rageth.
She dates from a hot Thursday, — some twenty-five years
ago. Her apartment in summer is pervious to the four
2c
364 TEE GENTLE GIANTESS.
winds. Two doors, in north and south direction, and two
windows, fronting the rising and the setting snn, never
closed, from every cardinal point catch the contributory
breezes. She loves to enjoy what she calls a quadruple
draught. That must be a shrewd zephyr that can escape
her. I owe a painful face-ache, which oppresses me at this
moment, to a cold caught, sitting by her, one day in last
July, at this receipt of coolness. Her fan, in ordinary,
resembleth a banner sj)read, which she keepeth continually
on the alert to detect the least breeze. She possesseth an
active and gadding mind, totally incommensurate with her
person. No one delighteth more than herself in country
exercises and pastimes. I have passed many an agreeable
holy-day with her in her favourite park at Woodstock.
She performs her part in these delightful ambulatory
excursions by the aid of a portable garden-chair. She
setteth out with you at a fair foot-gallop, which she keepeth
Tip till you are both well breathed, and then reposeth she for
a few seconds. Then she is up again for a Imndred paces
or so, and again resteth ; her movement, on these sprightly
occasions, being something between walking and flying.
Her great weight seemeth to propel her forward, ostrich-
fashion. In this kind of relieved marching, I have tra-
versed with her many scores of acres on those well-wooded
and well-watered domains. Her delight at Oxford is in
the public walks and gardens, where, when the weather is
not too oppressive, she passeth much of her valuable time.
There is a bench at Maudlin, or rather situated between
the frontiers of that and 's College (some litigation,
latterly, aboxxt repairs, has vested the property of it finally
in 's), where, at the hour of noon, she is ordinarily to
be found sitting, — so she calls it by courtesy, — but, in fact,
pressing and breaking of it down with her enormous settle-
ment ; as both those foundations, — who, however, are good-
natured enough to wink at it, — have found, I believe, to
their cost. Here she taketh the fresh air, principally at
vacation-times, when the walks are freest from interrup-
tion of the younger fry of students. Here she passeth
her idle hours, not idly, but generally accompanied with a
THE GENTLE GIANTESS. 3G5
book, — blessed if she can but intercept some resident
Fellow (as usually there are some of that brood left behind
at these periods), or stray Master of Arts (to most of whom
she is better known than their dinner-bell), with whom
she may confer upon any curious topic of literatui'e. I
have seen these shy gownsmen, who truly set but a very
slight value upon female conversation, cast a haAvk's eye
upon her from the length of Maudlin Grove, and warily
glide off into another walk, — true monks as they are ; and
iingently neglecting the delicacies of her polished converse
for their own jDerverse and uncommunicating solitariness !
Within-doors, her principal diversion is music, vocal and
instrumental ; in both which she is no mean professor.
Her voice is wonderfully fine ; but, till I got used to it, I
confess it staggered me. It is, for all the world, like that
of a piping bullfinch ; while, from her size and stature, you
would expect notes to drown the deep organ. The shake,
which most fine singers reserve for the close or cadence,
by some unaccountable flexibility, or tremulousness of
pipe, she carrieth quite through the composition ; so that
her time, to a common air or ballad, keeps double motion,
like the earth, — running the primary circuit of the tune,
and still revolving upon its own axis. The effect, as I
said before, when you are used to it, is as agreeable as it
is altogether new and surprising. The spacious apartment
of her outward frame lodgeth a soitl in all respects dis-
proportionate. Of more than mortal make, she evinceth
withal a trembling sensibility, a yielding infirmity of pur
pose, a quick susceptibility to reproach, and all the train
of diffident and blushing virtues, which for their habitation
usually seek out a feeble frame, an attenuated and meagre
constitution. With more than man's bulk, her humours
and occupations are eminently feminine. She sighs, —
being six foot high. She languisheth, — being two feet
wide. She worketh slender sprigs upon the delicate
muslin, — her fingers being capable of moulding a Colossus.
She sippeth her wine out of her glass daintily, — her capa-
city being that of a tun of Heidelberg. She goeth min-
cingly with those feet of hers, whose solidity need not
2c2
366 THE REYNOLDS GALLERY.
fear tlie black ox's pressure. Softest and largest of tliy sex,
adieu ! By what parting attribute may I salute thee, last
and best of the Titanesses, — Ogress, fed with milk instead
of blood : not least, or least handsome, among Oxford's
stately structures, — Oxford, who, in its deadest time of
Tacation, can never properly be said to be empty, having
thee to fill it.
THE EEYNOLDS GALLEEY.
THE Eeynolds Gallery has, upon the whole, disap
pointed me. Some of the portraits are interesting.
They are faces of characters whom we (middle-aged gentle-
men) were born a little too late to remember, but about
whom we have heard our fathers tell stories till we almost
fancy to have seen them. There is a charm in the j)ortrait
of a Eodney or a Keppel, Avhich even a picture of Xelsou
must want for me, I should turn away after a slight
inspection from the best likeness that could be made of
Mrs. Anne Clarke ; but Kitty Fisher is a considerable per-
sonage. Then the dresses of some of the women so exactly
remind us of modes which we can just recall ; of the forms
under which the venerable relationship of aunt or mother
first presented themselves to our young eyes ; the api'ons,
the coifs, the lappets, the hoods. Mercy on us ! what a
load of head-ornaments seem to have conspired to bury a
pretty face in the picture of Mrs. Long, yet could not !
Beauty must have some " charmed life " to have been able
to surmount the conspiracy of fashion in those days to
destroy it.
The portraits which least pleased me were those of boys,
as infant Bacchuses, Jupiters, &c. But the artist is not
to be blamed for the disguise. No doubt, the parents
Avished to see their children deified in their lifetime. It
was but putting a thunderbolt (instead of a squib) into
young master's hands ; and a whey-faced chit was trans-
formed into the infant ruler of Olympus, — him who was
THE EEYXOLDS GALLERY. 367
afterward to sliake heaven and earth Avith his black brow.
Another good boy pleased his grandmamma with saying
his prayers so well, and the blameless dotage of the good
old woman imagined in him an adequate representative of
the infancy of the awful Prophet Samuel. But the great
historical compositions, where the artist was at liherty to paint
from his own idea, — the Beaufort and the Ugolino : why,
then, 1 must confess, pleading the liberty of table-talk for
my presumption, that they have not left any very elevat-
ing impressions on my mind. Pardon a ludicrous com-
parison. I know, madam, you admire them both ; but
placed opposite to each other as they are at the Gallery, as
if to set the one work in competition with the other, they
did remind me of the famous contention for the prize of
deformit}', mentioned in the 173rd number of the "Spec-
tator." The one stares, and the other grins ; but is there
common dignity in their countenances? Does anj^thing
of the history of their life gone by peep through the ruins
of the mind in the face, like the unconquerable grandeur
that surmounts the distortions of the Laocoon ? The
figures which stand b}'' the bed of Beaufort are indeed
happy representations of the plain unmannered old no-
bility of the English historical plays of Shakspeare ; but,
for anything else, give me leave to recommend those
macaroons.
After leaving the Keynolds Gallery (where, upon the
whole, I received a good deal of pleasure), and feeling that
I had quite had my fill of ' paintings, I stumbled iipon a
picture in Piccadilly (Xo. 22, 1 think), which purports
to be a portrait of Francis the First by Leonardo da Vinci.
Heavens, what a difference ! It is but a portrait, as most
of those I had been seeing ; but, placed by them, it would
kill them, swallow them up as Moses' rod the other
rods. Where did these old painters get their models ? I
see no such figures, not in my dreams, as this Francis, in
the character, or rather with the attributes of John the
Baptist. A more than martial majesty in the brow and
upon the eyelid ; an arm muscular, beautifully formed ;
the long, graceful, massy fingers compiessing, yet so as
S6S GUY FAUX,
not to hurt, a lamb more lovely, more sweetly shrinking,
than we can conceive that milk-white one which followed
Una ; the picture altogether looking as if it were eternal,
■ — combining the tnith of flesh with a promise of perma-
nence like marble.
Leonardo, from the one or two si^ecimens we have of
him in England, must have been a stupendous genius. I
scarce can think he has had his full fame, — he who could
paint that wonderful personification of the Logos, or third
person of the Trinity, grasping a globe, late in the posses-
sion of Mr. Troward of Pall Mall, where the hand was, by
the boldest license, twice as big as the truth of drawing
warranted ; yet the effect, to every one that saw it, by
some magic of genius was confessed to be not monstrous,
but miraculous and silencing. It could not be gainsaid.
GUY FAUX.
AVEEY ingenious and subtle writer, whom there is good
reason for suspecting to be an ex-Jesuit, not unknown
at Douay some five-and-twenty 3'ears since (he will not
obtrude himself at M th again in a hurry), about a
twelvemonth back set himself to prove the character of the
Powder Plot conspirators to have been that of heroic self-
devotedness and true Christian martyrdom. Under the
mask of Protestant candour, he actually gained admission
for his treatise into a London weekly paper not particularly
distinguished for its zeal towards either religion. But,
admitting Catholic principles, his arguments are shrewd
and incontrovertible. lie says : — •
"Guy Faux was a faaatic; but he was no hypocrite.
He ranks among good haters. He was cruel, bloody-
minded, reckless of all considerations but those of an in-
furiated and bigoted faith ; but he was a true son of the
Catholic Church, a martyr, and a confessor, for all that.
He who can prevail upon himself to devote his life for a
cause, however we may condemn his opinions or abhor his
GUY FAUX. 369
actions, vouclies at least for the honesty of his principles
and the disinterestedness of his motives. lie may be
guilty of the worst practices ; but he is capable of the
greatest. He is no longer a slave, but free. The contempt
of death is the beginning of virtue. The hero of the Gun-
powder riot was, if you will, a fool, a madman, an assassin ;
call him what names you please : still he was neither knave
nor coward. He did not propose to blow up the parlia-
ment, and come oif scotfree himself: he showed that he
valued his own life no more than theirs in such a cause,
wliere the integrity of the Catholic faith and the salvation
of perhaps millions of souls was at stake. He did not call
it a murder, but a sacrifice, which he was about to achieve :
he was armed with the Holy Spirit and with fire : he was
the Church's chosen servant and her blessed martyr. He
comforted himself as ' the best of cut-throats.' How many
wretches are there that would have undertaken to do what
he intended, for a sum of money, if they could have got off
with impunity ! How few are there who would have put
themselves in Guy Fatix's situation to save the universe !
Yet, in the latter case, we affect to be thrown into greater
consternation than at the most unredeemed acts of villany ;
as if the absolute disinterestedness of the motive doubled
the horror of the deed ! The cowardice and selfishness of
mankind are in fact shocked at the consequences to them-
selves (if such examples are held up for imitation) ; and
they make a fearful outcry against the violation of every
principle of morality, lest they, too, should be called on for
any such tremendous sacrifices ; lest they, in their turn,
should have to go on the forlorn hope of extra-official duty.
Charity begins at home is a maxim that prevails as well in
the courts of conscience as in those of prudence. ^\e would
be thought to shudder at the consequences of crime to
others, while we tremble for them to ourselves. Wo talk
of the dark and cowardly assassin ; and this is well, when
an individual shrinks from the face of an enemy, and pur-
chases his own safety by striking a blow in the dark : but
how the charge of cowardly can be applied to the public
assassin, who, in the very act of destroying another, lays
370 GUY FAUX.
down his life as the pledge and forfeit of his sincerity and
boldness, I am at a loss to devise. There may be barbarous
prejudice, rooted hatred, unprincipled treachery in such
an act ; but he who resolves to take all the danger and
odium upon himself can no more be branded with cowardice,
than Eegulus devoting himself for his country, or Codrus
leaping into the fiery gulf. A wily Father Inquisitor,
coolly and with plenary authority condemning hundi-eds of
helpless, unoffending victims to the flames, or the horrors
of a living tomb, while he himself would not suffer a hair
of his head to be hurt, is, to me, a character without any
qualifying trait in it. Again : The Spanish conqueror and
hero, the favourite of his monarch, who enticed thirty
thousand poor Mexicans into a large open buildirtg under
promise of strict faith and cordial good-will, and then set
fire to it, making sport of the cries and agonies of these
deluded creatures, is an instance of uniting the most
hardened cruelty with the most heartless selfishness. His
plea was, keeping no faith with heretics ; this was Guy
Faux's too : but I am sure at least that the latter kept
faith with himself; he was in earnest in his professions.
His was not gay, wanton, unfeeling depravity ; he did not
murder in sport : it was serious work that he had taken in
hand. To see this arch-bigot, this heart-whole traitor, this
pale miner in the infernal regions, skulking in his retreat
with his cloak and dark lantern, moving cautiously about
among his barrels of gunpowder loaded with death, but not
yet ripe for destruction, regardless of the lives of others,
and more than indifferent to his own, presents a picture of
the strange infatuation of the human understanding, but
not of the depravity of the human will, withou.t an equal.
There were thousands of pious Papists privy to and ready
to applaud the deed when done : there was no one but our
old fifth-of-November friend, who still flutters in rags and
straw on the occasion, that had the courage to attempt it.
In him stern duty and unshaken faith prevailed over
natural frailty."
It is impossible, upon Catholic principles, not to admit
the force of this reasoning : we can only not help smiling
GVY FAUX. :!7I
(with, the writer) at the simplicity of the galled editor,
swallowing the dregs of Loyola for the very quintessence
of sublimated reason in England at the commencement of
the nineteenth century. AVe will just, as a contrast, show
what we Protestants (who are a party concerned) thought
upon the same subject at a period rather nearer to the
heroic project in question.
The Gunpowder Treason was the subject which called
forth the earliest specimen which is left us of the pulpit
eloquence of Jeremy Taylor. "When he preached the ser-
mon on that anniversary, which is printed at the end of
the folio edition of his Sermons, he was a young man, just
commencing his ministry under the auspices of Archbishop
Laud. From the learning and maturest oratory which it
manifests, one should rather have conjectured it to have
proceeded from the same person after he was ripened by
time into a Bishop and Father of the Church. " And,
really, these Bomano-harhari could never pretend to any
precedent for an act so barbarous as theirs. Adramelech,
indeed, killed a king ; but he spared the people. Haman
would have killed the people, but spared the king ; but
that both king and people, princes and judges, branch and
rush and root, should die at once (as if Caligida's wish
were actuated, and all England upon one head), w^as never
known till now, that all the malice of the w^orld met in
this as in a centre. The Sicilian even-song, the matins of
St. Bartholomew, known for the pitiless and damned mas-
sacres, were but kolttvov o-Ktas ovap, the dream of the shadow
of smoke, if compared with this great fire. In tam occuixdo
sceculo fahulas vulgares nequitia non invenit. This was a busy
age. Herostratus must have invented a more sublimed
malice than the burning of one temple, or not have been so
much as spoke of since the discovery of the powder treason.
But I must make more haste ; I shall not else climb the
sublimity of this impiety. Nero was sometimes the popu-
lare odium, was popularly hated, and deserved it too : for
he slew his master, and his wife, and all his family, once
or twice over ; opened his mother's womb ; fired the city,
laughed at it, slandered the Christians for it : but yet all
372 GUY FAUX.
these wei'e but p-incipia malorum, the very first rudiments
of evil. Add, then, to these, Herod's masterpiece at Eamah,
as it was deciphered by the tears and sad threnes of the
matrons in a universal mourning for the loss of their pretty
infants ; yet this of Herod will prove but an infant wicked-
ness, and that of Nero the evil but of one city. I would
willingly have found out an example, but see I cannot.
Should I put into the scale the extract of the old tyrants
famous in antique stories : — ■
Bistonii stabulum regis, Busiritlis aras,
Antipliataj mensas, et Taurica regna Tlioautis ; —
should I take for true story the highest cruelty as it was
fancied by the most hieroglyphical Egyptian, — -this alone
would weigh them down, as if the Alps were put in scale
against the dust of a balance. For, had this accursed trea-
son prospered, we should have had the whole kingdom
mourn for the inestimable loss of its chiefest glory, its
life, its present joy, and all its very hopes for the future.
¥oT such was their destined malice, that th.ey would not
only have inflicted so cruel a blow, but have made it in-
curable, by Clotting off our supplies of joy, the whole suc-
cession of the Line Eoyal. Not only the vine itself, but
ail the gemmnlce, and the tender olive branches, should
either have been bent to their intentions, and made to
grow crooked, or else been broken.
" And now, after such a sublimity of malice, I will not
instance in the sacrilegious ruin of the neighbouring tem-
ples, which needs must have perished in the flame ; nor in
the disturbing the ashes of our entombed kings, devour-
ing their dead ruins like sepulchral dogs : these are but
minutes in respect of the ruin prepared for the living
temples : —
Stragem seil islam non tulit
Cbristua cacleutum Piiucipum
Impune, ne forsaii aul
Patris pcrii-ct fabiica.
Ergo qu£o potcrit lingua retexere
Laudes, Cbriste, tiias, qui domitum struis
Infidum popuhun cum Duce pcrfido !"
GUY FAUX. 373
In such strains of eloquent indignation did Jeremy-
Taylor's young oratory inveigh against that stupendous
attempt which he truly says had no parallel in ancient or
modern times. A century and a half of European crimes
has elapsed since he made the assertion, and his position
remains in its strength. He wrote near the time in which
the nefarious project had like to have been completed.
Men's minds still were shuddering from the recentness of
the escape. It must have been within his memory, or have
been sounded in his ears so young by his parents, that he
would seem, in his maturer years, to have remembered it.
No wonder, then, that he describes it in words that burn.
But to us, to whom the tradition has come slowly down,
and has had time to cool, the story of Giiido Vaux sounds
rather like a tale, a ftible, and an invention, than true his-
tory. It supposes such gigantic audacity of daring, com-
bined with such more than infantile stupidity in the
motive, — such a combination of the fiend and the monkey,
— that credulity is almost swallowed up in contemplating
the singularity of the attempt. It has accordingly, in
some degree, shared the fate of fiction. It is familiarized
to us in a kind of serio-ludicrous way, like the story of
Guy of WaricicJc, or Valentine and Orson. The way which
we take to perpetuate the memory of this deliverance is
well adapted to keep up this fabular notion. Boys go
about the streets annually with a beggarly scarecrow
dressed up, which is to be burnt indeed, at night, with
holy zeal ; but, meantime, they beg a penny for j^oor Guy :
this periodical petition, which we have heard from our
infancy, combined with the dress and appearance of tho
effigy, so well calculated to move compassion, has the effect
of quite removing from our fancy the horrid circumstances
of the story which is thus commemorated ; and in poor Guy
vainly should we try to recognise any of the features of
that tremendous madman in iniquity, Guido Vaux, with
his horrid crew of accomplices, that sought to emulate
earthquakes and bursting volcanoes in their more than
mortal mischief.
Indeed, the whole ceremony of burning Guy Faux, or
374 GUY FAUX.
the Fope, as iie is indifferently called, is a sort of Treason
Travesiie, and admirably adapted to lower our feelings npon
this memorable subject. The printers of the little duo-
decimo Prayer Boole, printed by T. Baskett,* in 1749, which
lias the efQgy of his sacred majesty George II. piously
prefixed, have illustrated the service (a very fine one in
itself), which is appointed for the anniversary of this day,
with a print, which it is not very easy to describe ; but
the contents appear to be these : The scene is a room, I
conjecture, in the king's palace. Two persons — one of
whom I take to be James himself, from his wearing his
hat, while the other stands bare-headed — are intently sur-
veying a sort of speculum, or magic mirror, which stands
upon a pedestal in the midst of the room, in which a little
figin-e of Guy Faux with his dark lantern, approaching
the door of the Parliament House, is made discernible by
the light proceeding from a great eye which shines in from
the topmost corner of the aj)artment; by which eye the
pious artist no doubt meant to designate Providence. On
the other side of the mirror is a figure doing something,
which puzzled me when a child, and continues to puzzle
me now. The best I can make of it is, that it is a con-
spirator busy laying the train ; but, then, why is he repre-
sented in the king's chamber ? Conjecture upon so fan-
tastical a design is vain ; and I only notice the print as
being one of the earliest graphic representations which
woke my childhood into wonder, and doubtless combined,
with the mummery before mentioned, to take off the edge
of that horror which the naked historical mention of Guido's
conspiracy could not have failed of exciting.
!Now that so many years are past since that abominable
machination was happily frustrated, it will not, I hope, be
considered a profane sporting wdth the subject, if we take
* The same, I presume, ui:)on wliom the clergyman in the song ot
the '• Vicar and Moaes," not without judgment, passes this memorable
censme :
" Here, Moses the Icing :
'Tis a scandalous thing
That this Baskett should print for the Crown."
GUY FAUX. 375
no very serious survey of the consequences that would
have flowed from this plot if it had had a successful issue.
The first thing that strikes us, in a selfish point of view, is
the material change Avhich it must have produced in the
course of the nobility. All the ancient peerage being ex-
tinguished, as it was intended, at one blow, the Bed Booh
must have been closed for ever, or a new race of peers
must have been created to supply the deficiency. As the
first part of this dilemma is a deal too shocking to think of,
Avhat a fund of mouth-watering reflections does this give
rise to in the breast of us plebeians of a.d. 1823 ! ^Vhy,
you or I, reader, might have been Duke of , or Earl
of . I particularize no titles, to avoid the least sus-
picion of intention to usurp the dignities of the two noble-
men whom I have in my eye ; but a feeling more dignifiec*-
than envy sometimes excites a sigh, when I think how the
posterity of Guide's Legend of Honour (among whom you or
I might have been) might have rolled down " dulcified," as
Burke expresses it, "by an exposure to the influence of
heaven in a long flow of generations, from the hard, acidu-
lous, metallic tincture of the spring."* A^'hat new orders
of merit, think you, this English Kapoleon would have
chosen ? Knights of the Barrel, or Lords of the Tub,
Grand Almoners of the Cellar, or Ministers of Explosion ?
We should have given the train coucliant, and the fire
rampant, in our arms ; we should have quartered the dozen
white matches in our coats : the Shallows would have been
nothing to us.
Turning away from these mortifying reflections, let us
contemplate its effects i:pon the other house ; for they were
all to have gone together, — king, lords, commons.
To assist our imagination, let us take leave to suppose
(and we do it in the harmless wantonness of fancy) — to
suppose that the tremendous explosion had taken place in
our days. We bettor know what a House of Commons is
in our days, and can better estimate our loss. Let us
imagine, then, to ourselves, the united members sitting in
* Letter to a Noble Lord.
376 GUY FAUX.
full conclave above; Faux just ready with his train and
matches below, — in his hand a " reed tipt with fire." He
applies the fiital engine.
To assist our notions still further, let us suppose some
luck}' dog of a reporter, who had escaped by miracle upon
some plank of St. Stephen's benches, and came plump upon
the roof of the adjacent Abbey ; from whence descending,
at some neighbouring coffee-house, first wiping his clothes
and calling for a glass of lemonade, he sits down and
reports what he had heard and seen (quorum pars magna
fuit), for the Morning Post or the Courier. We can scarcely
imagine him describing the event in any other words but
some such as these : —
" A motion was put and carried, that this House do ad-
journ ; that the speaker do quit the chair. The House rose
amid clamours for order."
In some such way the event might most technically have
been conveyed to the public. But a poetical mind, not
content with this dry method of narration, cannot help
pursuing the eifects of this tremendous blowing up, this
adjournment in the air, sine die. It seems the benches
mount, — the chair first, and then the benches ; and first
the treasury bench, hurried up in this nitrous explosion, —
the members, as it were, pairing off; Whigs and Tories
taking their friendly apotheosis together (as they did their
sandwiches below in Bellamy's room). Fancy, in her
■flight, keeps pace with the aspiring legislators : she sees
the awful seat of order mounting, till it becomes finally
fixed, a constellation, next to Cassiopeia's chair, — the wig
■of him that sat in it taking its place near Berenice's curls.
St. Peter, at heaven's wicket, — no, not St. Peter, — St.
Stephen, with open arms, receives his own.
While Fancy beholds these celestial appropriations, Eea-
son, no less pleased, discerns the mighty benefit which so
complete a renovation must produce below. Let the most
determined foe to cor>'uption, the most thorough-paced
redresser of abuses, try to conceive a more absolute puri-
fication of fhe house than this was calculated to pro-
duce. Why, pride's purge was nothing to it. The whole
A VISION OF HOBNS. 377
boroiigli-mongering system would have been got rid of, fairly
exploded ; with it the senseless distinctions of party must
have disappeared, faction must have vanished, corruption
have expired in air. From Hundred, Ty thing, and Wapen-
take, some new Alfred would have convened, in all its
purity, the primitive Witenagemote, — fixed upon a basis of
property or population permanent as the poles.
From this dream of universal restitution, Eeason and
Fancy with difficulty awake to view the real state of
things. But, blessed be Heaven ! St. Stephen's walls are
yet standing, all her seats firmly secured ; nay, some have
doubted (since the Septennial Act) whether gunpowder
itself, or anj^thing short of a committee above stairs, would
be able to shake any one member from his seat. That
gi-eat and final improvement to the Abbey, which is all
that seems wanting, — the removing Westminster Hall and
its appendages, and letting in the view of the Thames, — •
must not be expected in our days. Dismissing, therefore,
all such speculations as mere tales of a tub, it is the duty
of every honest Englishman to endeavour, by means less
wholesale than Guide's, to ameliorate, without extinguish-
ing, parliaments ; to hold the lantern to the dark places of
corruption ; to apply the match to the rotten parts of the
system only ; and to wrap himself up, not in the muffling
mantle of conspiracy, but in the warm, honest cloaJc of
integrity and patriotic intention.
A VISION OF HORNS.
MY thoughts had been engaged last evening in solving
the problem, why in all times and places the Jiorn
has been agreed upon as the sjmibol, or honourable badge,
of married men. Moses' horn, the horn of Ammon, of
Amaltliea, and a cornucopia of legends besides, came to my
recollection, but afforded no satisfactory solution, or rather
involved the question in deeper obscurity. Tired with
37S A VISION OF IIOBNS.
the fruitless chase of inexplicant analogies, I fell asleep,
and dreamed in this fashion : —
Methonght certain scales or films fell from my eyes,
which had hitherto hindered these little tokens from being
visible. I was somewhere in the Cornhill (as it might be
termed) of some Utopia. Busy citizens jostled each other,
as they may do in our streets, with care (the care of making
a penny) written upon their foreheads ; and something else,
Avhich is rather imagined than distinctly imaged, upon the
brows of my own friends and fellow-townsmen.
In my first surprise, I supposed myself gotten into some
forest, — Arden, to be sure, or Sherwood ; but the dresses
and deportment, all civic, forbade me to continue in that
delusion. Then a scriptural thought crossed me (especially
as there were nearly as many Jews as Christians among
them), whether it might not be the children of Israel going
up to besiege Jericho. I'was undeceived of both errors by
the sight of many faces which were familiar to me. I
found myself strangely (as it will happen in dreams) at
one and the same time in an imknown country with known
companions. I met old friends, not with new faces, but
with their old faces oddly adorned in front, with each man
a certain corneous excrescence. Dick Mitis, the little cheese-
monger in St. 's Passage, was the first that saluted
me, with his hat off (you know Dick's way to a customer) ;
and, I not being aware of him, he thrust a strange beam
into my left eye, which pained and grieved me exceed-
ingly; but, instead of apology, he only grinned and fleered
in my face, as much as to say, " It is the custom of the
country," and passed on.
I had scarce time to send a civil message to his lady,
whom I have alwaj's admired as a pattern of a wife, and
do indeed take Dick and her to be a model of conjugal
agreement and harmony, when I felt an ugly smart in my
neck, as if something had gored it behind ; and, turning
round, it was my old friend and neighbour, Dulcet, the
confectioner, who, meaning to be pleasant, had thrust his
protuberance right into my nape, and seemed proud of his
power of otfending.
A VISION OF HORNS. 379
Now I was assailed right and left, till in my own defence
I was obliged to walk sideling and wary, and look about me,
as yon guard your eyes in London streets ; for the horns
thickened, and came at me like the ends of umbrellas poking
in one's face.
I soon found that these towns- folk were the civilest,
best-mannered people in the world ; and that, if they had
offended at all, it was entirely owing to their blindness.
They do not know what dangerous weapons they protrude
in front, and will stick their best friends in the eye with
provoking complacency. Yet the best of it is, they can see
the beams on their neighbours' foreheads, if they are as
small as motes ; but their own beams they can in no wise
discern.
There was little Mitis, that I told you I just encountered.
He has simply (I speak of him at home in his own shop)
the smoothest forehead in his own conceit. He will stand
you a quarter of an hour together, contemplating the sere-
nity of it in the glass, before he begins to shave himself
in a morning ; yet you saw what a desperate gash he
gave me.
Desiring to be better informed of the ways of this extra-
ordinary people, I applied myself to a fellow of some assur-
ance, who (it appeared) acted as a sort of interpreter to
strangers : he was dressed in a military uniform, and
strongly resembled Col. , of the Guards. And " Pray,
sir," said I, " have all the inhabitants of your city these trou-
blesome excrescences ? I beg pardon : I see you have none.
You perhaps are single." — " Truly, sir," he replied with a
smile, "for the most part we have, but not all alike. There
are some, like Dick, that sport but one tumescence. Their
ladies have been tolerably faithful, — have confined them-
selves to a single aberration or so : these we call Unicorns<
Dick, you must know, is my Unicorn. [He spoke this with
air of invincible assurance.] Then we have Bicorns, Tri-
corns, and so on up to Millecorns. [Here methought I
crossed and blessed myself in my dream.] Some again we
have, — there goes one : you see how happy the rogue
looks, — how he walks smiling, and working up his face,
2d
380 A VISION OF HOBNS.
as if he thought himself the only man. He is not married
yet ; but on Monday next he leads to the altar the accom-
plished widow Dacres, relict of our late sheriff."
" I see, sir," said I, " and observe that he is happily free
from the national goitre (let mo call it) which distinguishes
most of your countrymen."
" Look a little more narrowly," said my conductor.
I put on my spectacles ; and, observing the man a little
more diligently, above his forehead I could mark a thou-
sand little twinkling shadows dancing the hornpipe ; little
hornlets, and rudiments of horn, of a soft and pappy consist-
ence (for I handled some of them), but which, like coral out
of water, my guide informed me, would infallibly stiffen and
grow rigid within a week or two from the expiration of his
bachelorhood.
Then I saw some horns strangely growing out behind ;
and my interpreter explained these to be married men,
whose wives had conducted themselves with infinite pro-
priety since the period of their marriage, but were thought
to have antedated their good men's titles, by certain liber-
ties they had indulged themselves in, prior to the cere-
mony. This kind of gentry wore their horns backwards,
as has been said, in the fashion of the old pig-tails ; and, as
there was nothing obtrusive or ostentatious in them, nobody
took any notice of it.
Some had pretty little budding antlers, like the first
essays of a young fawn. These, he told me, had wives
whose affairs were in a hopeful way, but not quite brought
to a conclusion.
Others had nothing to show : only by certain red angry
marks and swellings in their foreheads, which itched the
more they kept rubbing and chafing them, it was to be
hoped that something was brewing.
I took notice that every one jeered at the rest, only none
took notice of the sea-captains ; yet these were as well
provided with their tokens as the best among them. This
kind of people, it seems, taking their wives upon so contin-
gent tenures, their lot was considered as nothing but na-
tural : so they wore their marks without impeachment, as
A VISION OF EOBNS. 381
they might cany their cockades ; and nobody respected
them a whit the less for it.
I observed, that the more sprouts grew out of a man's
head, the less weight they seemed to carry with them ;
whereas a single token would now and then appear to give
the wearer some uneasiness. This shows that use is a great
thing.
Some had their adornings gilt, which needs no explana-
tion ; while others, like musicians, went sounding theirs
befoi'e them, — a sort of music which I thought might very
well have been spared.
It was pleasant to see some of the citizens encounter
between themselves ; how they smiled in their sleeves at
the shock they received from their neighbour, and none
seemed conscious of the shock which their neighbour expe-
rienced in return.
Some had great corneous stumps, seemingly torn off and
bleeding. These, the interpreter warned me, were hus-
bands who had retaliated upon their wives, and the badge
was in equity divided between them.
While I stood discerning these things, a slight tweak on
my cheek unawares, which brought tears into my eyes, in-
troduced to me my friend Placid, between whose lady and a
certain male cousin some idle flirtations I remember to have
heard talked of; but that was all. He saw he had some-
how hurt me, and asked my pardon with that round, un-
conscious face of his ; and looked so tristful and contrite
for his no-offence, that I was ashamed for the man's peni-
tence. Yet I protest it was but a scratch. It was the
least little hornet of a horn that could be framed. " Shame
on the man," I secretly exclaimed, " who could thrust so
much as the value of a hair into a brov,"- so unsuspecting
and inoffensive! What, then, must they have to answer
for, who plant great, monstrous, timber-like, projecting
antlers upon the heads of those whom they call their
friends, when a puncture of this atomical tenuity made
my eyes to water at this rate ! All the pincers at Sur-
geons' Hall cannot pidl out for Placid that little hair."
I was curious to know what became of these frontal
2 D 2
382 A VISION OF HORNS.
excrescences when tlie husbands died ; and my guide in-
formed me that the chemists in their country made a con-
siderable profit by them, extracting from them certain
subtile essences : and then I remembered that nothing was
so efficacious in my own, for restoring swooning matrons,
and wives troubled with the vapours, as a strong snifi" or
two at the composition appropriatel}- called hartshorn, —
far beyond sal volatile.
Then also I began to understand why a man, who is the
jest of the company, is said to be the butt, — as much as to
say, such a one butteth with the horn.
I inquired if by no operation these wens were ever ex-
tracted ; and was told that there was indeed an order of
dentists, whom they call canonists in their language, who
undertook to restore the forehead to its pristine smooth-
ness ; but that ordinarily it was not done without much
cost and trouble ; and, when they succeeded in plucking
out the offending part, it left a painful void, which could
not be filled up ; and that many patients who had sub-
mitted to the excision were eager to marry again, to supjoly
with a good second antler the baldness and deformed gap
left by the extraction of the former, as men losing their
natural hair substitute for it a less becoming periwig.
Some horns I observed beautifully taper, smooth, and (as
it were) flowering. These I understand were the portions
brought by handsome women to their spouses ; and I pitied
the rough, homely, unsightly deformities on the brows of
others, who had been deceived by plain and ordinary part-
ners. Yet the latter I observed to be by far the most
common ; the solution of which I leave to the natural
philosopher.
One tribe of married men I j^articularly admired at, who,
instead of horns, wore ingrafted on their forehead a sort of
horn-book. " This," quoth my guide, " is the greatest mys-
tery in our country, and well worth an explanation. You
must know that all infidelity is not of the senses. We
have as well intellectual as material wittols. These, whom
you see decorated with the order of the book, are triflers,
who encourage about their wives' j^resence the society of
THE GOOD CLERK. 383
your men of genius (tlieir good friends, as they call tliern;,
— literary disputants, wlio ten to one out-talk the poor
husband, and commit upon the understanding of the woman
a violence and estrangement in the end, little less painful
than the coarser sort of alienation. ^Vhip me these knaves
— [my conductor here expressed himself with a becoming
warmth], — whip me them, I say, who, with no excuse
from the passions, in cold blood seduce the minds, rather
than the persons, of their friends' wives ; who, for the
tickling pleasure of hearing themselves prate, dehonestate
the intellects of married women, dishonouring the husband
in what should be his most sensible part. If I must be
[here he nsed a plain word] let it be by some honest
sinner like myself, and not by one of these gad-flies, these
debauchers of the understanding, these flattery-buzzers."
He was going on in this manner, and I was getting insen-
sibly pleased with my friend's manner (I had been a little
shy of him at first), when the dream suddenly left me,
vanishing, as Virgil speaks, through the gate of Horn.
THE GOOD CLERK, A CHARACTER;
WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF "THE COMPLETE ENGLISH
TRADESMAN."
THE GOOD CLERK.— He writeth a fair and swift hand,
and is competently versed in the four first rules of
arithmetic, in the Rule of Three (which is sometimes called
the Golden Rule), and in Practice. We mention these
things that we may leave no room for cavillers to say that
anything essential hath been omitted in our definition ;
else, to speak the truth, these are but ordinary accomplish-
ments, and such as every understrapper at a desk is com-
monly furnished with. The character we treat of soareth
higher.
He is clean and neat in his person, not from a vain-
S84 THE GOOD GLEllK.
o-lorious desire of setting himself forth to advantage in the
eyes of the other sex, with which vanity too many of onr
yonng sparks now-a-days are infected ; but to do credit, as
we say, to the office. For this reason, he evermore taketh
care thtit his desk or his books receive no soil ; the which
things he is commonly as solicitous to have fair and un-
blemished, as the owner of a fine horse is to have him
appear in good keep.
He riseth early in the morning; not because early rising
conduceth to health (though he doth not altogether despise
that consideration), but chiefly to the intent that he may be
first at the desk. There is his post, — there he delighteth
to be, unless when his meals or necessity calleth him away ;
which time he alway esteemeth as lost, and maketh as
short as possible.
He is temperate in eating and drinking, that he may
preserve a clear head and steady hand for his master's ser-
vice. He is also partly induced to this observation of the
rules of temperance by his respect for religion and the laws
of his country ; which things, it may once for all be noted,
do add special assistances to his actions, but do not and can-
not furnish the main spring or motive thereto. His first
ambition, as appeareth all along, is to be a good clerk ; his
next, a good Christian, a good patriot, &c.
Correspondent to this, he keepeth himself honest, not for
fear of the laws, but because he hath observed how un-
seemly an article it maketh in the day-book or ledger when
a sum is set down lost or missing ; it being his pride to
make these books to agrfie and to tally, the one side with
the other, with a sort of architectural symmetry and corre-
spondence.
He marrieth, or marrieth not, as best suiteth with his
employer's views. Some merchants do the rather desire to
have married men in their counting-houses, because they
think the married state a pledge for their servants' in-
tegi'ity, and an incitement to them to be industrious ; and
it was an observation of a late Lord Mayor of London, that
the sons of clerks do generally prove clerks themselves,
and that merchants encouraging persons in their employ
THE GOOD CLEBK. 385
to marry, and to liave families, was the best method of
securing a breed of sober, industrious young men attached
to the mercantile interest. Be this as it may, such a
character as we have been describing will wait till the
pleasure of his employer is known on this point; and
regulateth his desires by the custom of the house or firm
to which he belongeth.
He avoideth profane oaths and jesting, as so much time
lost from his employ. What spare time he hath for conver-
sation, which, in a counting-house such as we have been
supposing, can be but small, he spendeth in putting season-
able questions to such of his fellows (and sometimes respect-
fully to the master himself) who can give him information
respecting the price and quality of goods, the state of ex-
change, or the latest improvements in book-keeping ; thus
making the motion of his lips, as well as of his fingers, sub-
servient to his master's interest. Not that he refuseth a
brisk saying, or a cheerful sally of wit, when it comes un-
forced, is free of offence, and hath a convenient brevity.
For this reason, he hath commonly some such phrase as
this in his mouth : —
It's a slovenly look
To blot your book.
Or,
Eed ink for ornameut, black for use :
The best of things are open to abuse.
So upon the eve of any great holy- day, of which he
keepeth one or two at least every year, he will merrily
say, in the hearing of a confidential friend, but to none
other, —
All work and no piny
Makes Jack a dull boy.
Or,
A bow always bent must crack at last.
But then this must always be understood to be spoken
confidentially, and, as we say, under the rose.
Lastly, his dress is plain, without singularity ; with no
other ornament than the quill, which is the badge of his
function, stuck behind the dexter ear, and this rather for
38e THE GOOD CLERK.
convenience of having it at hand, when he hath been called
away from his desk, and expecteth to resume his seat there
again shortly, than from any delight which he taketh in
foppery or ostentation. The colour of his clothes is gene-
rail}' noted to be black rather than brown, brown rather
than blue or green. His whole deportment is staid, modest,
and civil. His motto is " Eegularity."
This character was sketched in an interval of business,
to divert some of the melancholy hours of a counting-house.
It is so little a creature of fancy, that it is scarce anything
more than a recollection of some of those frugal and econo-
mical maxims, which, about the beginning of the last
century (England's meanest period), were endeavoured to
be inculcated and instilled into the breasts of the London
Apprentices* by a class of instructors who might not
inaptly be termed " The Masters of Mean Morals." The
astonishing narrowness and illiberality of the lessons con-
tained in some of those books is inconceivable by those
whose studies have not led them that way, and would
almost induce one to subscribe to the hard censure which
Drayton has passed upon the mercantile spirit : —
The gripple mercliant, born to be the curse
Of this brave isle.
1 have now lying before me that curious book by Daniel
Defoe, " The Complete English Tradesman." The pompous
detail, the studied analysis of every little mean art, every
sneaking address, every trick and subterfuge, short of
larceny, that is necessary to the tradesman's occupation,
with the hundreds of anecdotes, dialogues (in Defoe's
liveliest manner) interspersed, all tending to the same
amiable purpose, — namely, the sacrificing of every honest
emotion of the soul to what he calls the main chance, — ^if
you read it in an ironical sense., and as a piece of covered
satire, make it one of the most amusing books which Defoe
ever writ, as much so as any of his best novels. It is diffi-
* This term designated a larger class of young men than that to
■which it is now confined. It took in the articled clerks of merchants
and bankers, the George Barnwells of the day.
TEE GOOD CLERK. 387
cult to say what his intention was in writing it. It is
almost impossible to suppose him in earnest. Yet such is
the bent of the book to narrow and to degrade the heart,
that if such maxims were as catching and infectious as
those of a licentious cast, which happily is not the case,
had I been living at that time, I certainly should have re-
commended to the Grand Jury of Middlesex, who pre-
sented " The Fable of the Bees," to have presented this
book of Defoe's in preference, as of a far more vile and
debasing tendency. I will give one specimen of his
advice to the young tradesman on the government of his
temper : " The retail tradesman in especial, and even everj^
tradesman in his station, must furnish himself with a com-
petent stock of patience. I mean that sort of patience
which is needful to bear with all sorts of impertinence,
and the most provoking curiosity that it is possible to
imagine the buyers, even the worst of them, are, or can be,
guilty of. A tradesman behind his counter must have no flesh
and blood about him, no passions, no resentment ; he must
never be angry, — no, not so much as seem to be so, if a cus-
tomer tumbles him five hundred pounds' worth of goods,
and scarce bids money for anything ; nay, though they
really come to his shop with no intent to buy, as many do,
only to see what is to be sold, and though he knows they
cannot be better pleased than they are at some other shop
where they intend to buy, 'tis all one ; the tradesman must
take it ; he must place it to the account of his calling, that
'//s his business to be ill used, and resent nothincj ; and so must
answer as obligingly to those that give him an hour or
two's trouble, and buy nothing, as he does to those who, in
half the time, lay out ten or twenty pounds. The case is
plain ; and if some do give him trouble, and do not buy,
others make amends, and do buy ; and as for the trouble,
'tis the business of the shop."
Hei'e follows a most admirable story of a mercer, who by
his indefatigable meanness, and more than Socratic patience
under affronts, overcame and reconciled a lady, who, upon
the report of another lady that he had behaved saucil}'- to
Bome third lady, had determined to shun his shop, but, by
388 THE GOOD CLEItK.
the over-persuasions of a fourtli lady, was induced to go to
it ; wliicli she does, declaring beforehand that she will buy
nothing, but give him all the trouble she can. Her attack
and his defence, her insolence and his persevering patience,
are described in colours worthy of a Mandeville ; but it is
too long to recite. " The short inference from this long
discourse," says he, " is this, — that here you see, and I
could give you many examples like this, how and in what
manner a shopkeeper is to behave himself in the way of
his business; what impertinences, what taunts, flouts, and
ridiculous things, he must bear in his trade ; and must not
show the least return, or the least signal of disgust : he
must have no passions, no fire in his temper ; he must be
all soft and smooth; nay, if his real temper be naturally
fiery and hot, he must show none of it in his shop ; he must
be a perfect complete hyjyocrite, if he will be a comj^lete trades-
man.*' It is true, natural tempers arc not to be always
counterfeited : the man cannot easily be a lamb in his shop,
and a lion in himself; but, let it be easy or hard, it must
be done, and is done. There are men who have by custom
and usage brought themselves to it, that nothing could be
meeker and mildei* than they when behind the counter,
and yet nothing be more furious and raging in eveiy other
part of life : nay, the provocations they have met with in
their shops have so irritated their rage, that they would go
upstairs from their shop, and fall into frenzies, and a kind
of madness, and beat their heads against the wall, and
perhaps mischief themselves, if not prevented, till the
violence of it had gotten vent, and the passions abate and
cool. I heard once of a shopkeeper that behaved himself
thus to such an extreme, that, when he was provoked by
the impertinence of the customers beyond what his temper
could bear, he would go upstairs and beat his wife, kick
his children about like dogs, and be as furious for two or
three minutes as a man chained down in Bedlam; and
again, when that heat was over, would sit doAvn, and cry
faster than the children he had abused ; and, after the fit,
* As no qualification accompanies this maxim, it must be understood
as the genuine sentiment of the author 1
THE GOOD CLEBK. 389
he would go down into the shop again, and be as humble,
courteous, and as calm, as any man whatever ; so absolute
a government of his passions had he in the shop, and so
little out of it : in the shop, a soulless animal that would
resent nothing ; and in the family, a madman : in the shop,
meek like a lamb; but in the family outrageous, like a
Lybian lion. The sum of the matter is, it is necessary for
a tradesman to subject himself, by all the ways possible, to
his business ; Ms customers are to he his idols : so far as he may
loorship idols hy alloioance, he is to hoio down to them, and iwrship
them ; at least, he is not in any way to displease them, or
show any disgust or distaste, whatsoever they may say or
do. The bottom of all is, that he is intending to get money
by them ; and it is not for him that gets money to offer the
least inconvenience to them by whom he gets it : he is to
consider, that, as Solomon says, " the borrower is servant
to the lender ;" so the seller is servant to the buyer. What
he says on the head of " Pleasures and Eecreations " is not
less amusing : " The tradesman's pleasure should be in his
business; his companions should be his books (he means
his ledger, waste-book, &c.) ; and, if he has a family, he
makes his excursions upstairs, and no further. None of my
cautions aim at restraining a tradesman from diverting
himself, as we call it, with his fireside, or keeping com-
pany with his wife and children." Liberal allowance!
nay, almost licentious and criminal indulgence ! But it is
time to dismiss this Philosopher of Meanness. More of this
stuff would illiberalize the pages of the " Eeflector." Was
the man in earnest, when he could bring such powers of
description, and all the charms of natural eloquence, in
commendation of the meanest, vilest, wretchedest degrada-
tions of the human character ? or did he not rather laugh in
his sleeve at the doctrines which he inculcated ; and, re-
torting upon the grave citizens of London their own arts,
palm upon them a sample of disguised satire under the
name of wholesome instruction ?
390
REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN.
TiO yonr account of Sir Jeifeiy Dunstan, in columns 829-
oO (where, by an unfortunate erratum, tlie effigies of
two Sir Jefferys appear, when the uppermost figure is clearly
meant for Sir Harry Dimsdale), you may add that the writer
of this has frequently met him in his latter days, about 1790
or 1791, returning in an evening, after his long day's itine-
racy, to his domicile, — a wretched shed in the most beggarly
purlieu of Bethnal Green, a little on this side the Mile-end
Turnpike. The lower figure in that leaf most correctly
describes his then appearance, except that no graphic art
can convey an idea of the general squalor of it, and of his
bag (his constant concomitant) in particular. Whether it
contained " old wigs " at that time, I know not ; but it
seemed a fitter repository for bones snatched out of kennels
than for any part of a gentleman's dress, even at second-
hand.
The ex-member for Garrat w^as a melancholy instance of
a great man whose popularity is worn out. He still carried
his sack ; but it seemed a part of his identity rather than an
implement of his profession ; a badge of past grandeur : could
anything have divested him of that., he would have shown
a " poor forked animal " indeed. My life upon it, it con-
tained no curls at the time I speak of. The most decayed
and spiritless remnants of what was once a peruke would
have scorned the filthy case; would absolutely have
" burst its cerements." No : it was empty, or brought
home bones, or a few cinders, possibly. A strong odour of
burnt bones, I remember, blended with the scent of horse-
flesh seething into dog's meat, and, only relieved a little by
the breathings of a few brick-kilns, made up the atmo-
sphere of the delicate suburban spot which this great man
had chosen for the last scene of his earthly vanities. The
cry of " old wigs " had ceased with the possession of any
such fripperies : his sack miglit have contained not unaptly
BEMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFEEY DUN8TAN. 391
a little mould to scatter upon that grave to which he was
now advancing ; but it told of vacancy and desolation. His
quips were silent too, and his brain was empty as his sack :
he slank along, and seemed to decline popular observation.
If a few boys followed him, it seemed rather from habit
than any expectation of fun.
Alas ! how changed from him,
The life of humour, and the soul of whim,
Gallant and gay on Garrat's hustings proud !
But it is thus that the world rewards its favourites in
decay. What faults he had, I know not. I have heard
something of a peccadillo or so. But some little deviation
from the precise line of rectitude might have been winked
at in so tortuous and stigmatic a frame. Poor Sir Jeffery !
it were well if some M.P.s in earnest have passed their
parliamentary existence with no more oifences against in-
tegrity than could be laid to thy charge ! A fair dismissal
was thy due, not so unkind a degradation ; some little snug
retreat, with a bit of green before thine eyes, and not a
burial alive in the fetid beggaries of Bethnal. Thou
wouldst have ended thy days in a manner more appropriate
to thy pristine dignity, installed in munificent mockery
(as in mock honours 3-011 had lived), — a poor knight of
Windsor !
Every distinct place of public speaking demands an
oratory peculiar to itself. The forensic fails within the
walls of St. Stephen. Sir Jeifery was a living instance of
this ; for, in the flower of his popularity, an attempt was
made to bring him out upon the stage (at which of the
winter theatres I forget, but I well remember the anecdote)
in tlie part of Doctor Last* The announcement drew a
crowded house ; but, notwithstanding infinite tutoring, —
by Toote or Garrick, I forget which, — when the curtain
drew up, the heart of Sir Jeffery failed, and he faltered on,
and made nothing of his part, till the hisses of the house
at last, in very kindness, dismissed him from the boards.
Great as his parliamentary eloquence had shown itself,
* It was at the Ilaj-market Theatre.
392 0^ A PASSAGE IN « THE TEMPEST."
brilliantly as his off-hand sallies had sparkled on a hust-
ings, they here totally failed him. Perhaps he had an
aversion to bon'owed wit, and, like my Lord Foppington,
disdained to entertain himself (or others) with the forced
products of another man's brain. Your man of quality is
more diverted with the natural sprouts of his own.
ON A PASSAGE IN " THE TEMPEST."
AS long as I can remember the play of " The Tempest,"
one passage in it has always set me upon wondering.
It has puzzled me beyond measure. In vain I strove to
find the meaning of it. I seemed doomed to cherish in-
finite, hopeless curiosity.
It is where Prospero, relating the banishment of Sycorax
from Argier, adds : —
For one thing tliat she did,
They would not take her life.
How have I pondered over this when a boy ! How have
I longed for some authentic memoir of the witch to clear
up the obscurity ! Was the story extant in the chronicles
of Algiers ? Could I get at it by some fortunate introduc-
tion to the Algerine ambassador ? Was a voyage thither
practicable ? The Spectator, I knew, went to Grand Cairo
only to measure the pyramid. Was not the object of my
quest of at least as much importance ? The blue-ej-ed hag !
<30uld she have done an^^thing good or meritorious ? might
that succubiis relent ? then might there be hope for the
Devil. I have often admired since that none of the com-
mentators have boggled at this passage ; how they could
swallow this camel, — such a tantalizing piece of obscurity,
such an abortion of an anecdote.
At length, I think I have lighted upon a clue which
may lead to show what was passing in the mind of Shak-
speare when he dropped this imperfect rumour. In the
ON A PASSAGE IN " THE TEMPEST." 393
" Accurate Description of Africa, "by John Ogilby (folio),
1670," page 230, I find written as follows. ITie marginal
title to the narrative is, " Charles the Fifth besieges
Algier :"—
" In the last place, we will briefly give an account of
the emperour, Charles the Fifth, when he besieg'd this
city ; and of the great loss he sufier'd therein.
" This prince, in the year one thousand five hundred
forty-one, having embarqued upon the sea an army of
twenty-two thousand men aboard eighteen gallies, and an
hundred tall ships, not counting the barques and shallops,
and other small boats, in which he had engaged the prin-
cipal of the Spanish and Italian nobility, with a good num-
ber of the Knights of Malta ; he was to land on the coasts
of Barbary, at a cape call'd Matifou. From this place unto
the city of Algier, a flat shore or strand extends itself for
about four leagues, the which is exceeding favourable to
gallies. There he put ashore with his army, and in a few
days caused a fortress to be built, which unto this day is
call'd the castle of the Emperour.
" In the meantime the city of Algier took the alarm,
having in it at that time but eight hundred Turks, and six
thousand Moors, poor-spirited men, and unexercised in
martial affairs ; besides it was at that time fortifi'd only
with walls, and had no outworks : insomuch that by reason
of its weakness, and the great forces of the Emperour, it
could not in appearance escape taking. In fine, it was
attempted with such order, that the army came up to
the very gates, where the Chevalier de Sauignac, a French-
man by nation, made himself remarkable above all the rest,
by the miracles of his valour. For having repulsed the
Turks, who, having made a sally at the gate call'd Babason,
and there desiring to enter along with them, when he saw
that they shut the gate upon him, he ran his ponyard into
the same, and left it sticking deep therein. They next fell
to battering the city by the force of cannon ; which the
assailants so weakened, that in that great extremity the
defendants lost their courage, and resolved to surrender.
" But as they were thus intending, there was a witch of
394 ON A PASSAGE IN " THE TEMPEST."
the town, whom the history does not name, which went to
seek oiTt Assam Aga, that commanded within, and pray'd
him to make it good yet nine days longer, with assurance,
that within that time he should infallibly see Algier de-
livered from that siege, and the whole armj^ of the enemy
dispersed, so that Christians should be as cheap as birds.
In a word, the thing did happen in the manner as foretold ;
for upon the twenty-first day of October, in the same year,
there fell a continual rain upon the land, and so furious a
storm at sea, that one might have seen ships hoisted into
the clouds, and in one instant again precipitated into the
bottom of the water : insomuch that tliat same dreadful
tempest was followed with the loss of fifteen gallies, and
above an hundred other vessels ; which was the cause why
the Emperour, seeing his army wasted by the bad weather,
pursued by a famine, occasioned by wrack of his ships, in
which was the greatest part of his victuals and amunition,
he was constrain'd to raise the siege, and set sail for Sicily,
whither he retreated with the miserable reliques of his
fleet.
" In the meantime that witch being acknowledged the
deliverer of Algier, was richly remunerated, and the credit
of her charms authorized. So that ever since, witchcraft
hath been very freely tolerated ; of which the chief of the
town, and even those who are esteem'd to be of greatest
sanctity among them, such as are the Marabous, a religious
order of their sect, do for the most part make profession ol
it, under a goodly pretext of certain revelations which they
say they have had from their prophet, Mahomet.
" And hereupon those of Algier, to palliate the shame
and the reproaches that are thrown upon them for making
use of a witch in the danger of this siege, do say that the
loss of the forces of Charles V. was caused by a prayer of
one of their Marabous, named Cidy Utica, which was at
that time in great credit, not under the notion of a magi-
tian, but for a person of a holy life. Afterwards in remem-
brance of their success, they have erected unto him a small
mosque without the Babason gate, where he is bitried, and
in which they keep sundry lamps burning in honour of him :
THE MONTHS, 395
nay, they sometimes repair thither to make their sala, for a
testimon}' of greater veneration."
Can it be doubted, for a moment, that the dramatist had
come fresh from reading some older narrative of this deliver-
ance of Algier by a "witch, and transferred the merit of the
deed to his S3'corax, exchanging only the " rich remunera-
tion," which did not suit his purpose, to the simple pardon
of her life? Ogilby wrote in 1670 ; btit the authorities to
which he refers for his account of Barbary are Johannes de
Leo or Africanus, Louis Marmol, Diego de Haedo, Johannes
Gramaye, Braeves, Cel. Curio, and Diego de Torres, names
totally unknown to me, and to which I beg leave to refer
the curious reader for his fuller satisfaction.
THE MONTHS.
"p UMMAGING over the contents of an old stall at a half
Xi/ hooh, half old-iron shop, in an alley leading from Wardour
Street to Soho Square, yesterday, I lit upon a ragged duode-
cimo which had been the strange delight of my infancy, and
which I had lost sight of for more than forty years, — the
" Queen-like Closet, or Eich Cabinet;" written by Hannah
Woolly, and printed for E. C. and T. S., 1681 ; being an
abstract of receipts in cookery, confectionery, cosmetics,
needlework, morality, and all such branches of what were
then considered as female accomplishments. The price
demanded was sixpence, which the owner (a little squab
duodecimo character himself) enforced with the assurance
that his " own mother should not have it for a farthing
less." On my demurring at this extraordinary assertion,
the dirty little vendor reinforced his assertion with a sort
of oath, which seemed more than the occasion demanded :
" And now," said he, " I have put my soul to it." Pressed
by so solemn an asseveration, I could no longer resist a
demand which seemed to set me, however unworthy, upon
a level with his dearest relations ; and, depositing a tester,
2 E
396 TEE MONTHS.
1 bore away tlie tattered prize in triumph. I remembered
a gorgeous descri|)tion of tlie twelve montlis of tlie year,
which I thought would be a fine substitute for those
poetical descriptions of them which your " Every-day
Book '" had nearly exhausted out of Spenser. " This will
be a treat," thought I, " for friend Hone." To memory
they seemed no less fantastic and splendid than the other.
But what are the mistakes of childhood ! On reviewina-
them, they turned out to be only a set of commonplace
receipts for working the seasons, months, heathen gods and
goddesses, &c., in samplers ! Yet, as an instance of the
homely occupation of our great-grandmothers, they may be
amusing to some readers. " I have seen," says the notable
Hannah Woolly, " such ridiculous things done in work, as
it is an abomination to any artist to behold. As for ex-
ample : You may find, in some pieces, Abraham and Sarali,
and many other persons of old time, clothed as they go
now-a-days, and truly sometimes worse ; for they most re-
semble the pictures on ballads. Let all ingenious women
have regard, that when they work any image, to represent
it aright. First, let it be drawn well, and then observe the
directions which are given by knowing men. I do assure
you, I never durst work any Scripture story without in-
forming myself from the ground of it ; nor any other story,
or single person, without informing myself both of the
visage and habit ; as followeth : —
" If you work Jupiter, the imperial feigned God, he must
have long, black, curled hair, a purple garment trimmed
with gold, and sitting upon a golden throne, with bright
yellow clouds about him."
THE TWELVE MONTHS OF THE YEAR.
March. Is drawn in tawny, with a fierce aspect : a hel-
met upon his head, and leaning on a spade ; and a basket
of garden-seeds in his left hand, and in his right hand the
sign of Aries ; and winged.
April. A young man in green, with a garland of myrtle
and hawthorn-buds ; winged ; in one hand primroses and
violets, in the other the sign Taurus.
THE MONTHS. 397
May. "With a sweet and lovely countenance ; clad in a
robe of white and green, embroidered with several flowers ;
upon his head a garden of all manner of roses ; on tlie one
hand a nightingale, in the other a lute. His sign must be
Gemini.
June. In a mantle of dark grass-green ; upon his head a
garland of bents, kings-cups, and maiden-hair ; in his left
hand an angle, with a box of cantharides ; in his right, the
sign Cancer ; and upon his arms a basket of seasonable fruits.
July. In a jacket of light yellow, eating cherries ; with
his face and bosom sun-burnt ; on his head a wreath of
centaury and wild thyme ; a scythe on his shoulder, and
a bottle at his girdle ; carrying the sign Leo.
August. A young man of fierce and choleric aspect, in a
flame-coloured garment ; upon his head a garland of wheat
and rye ; upon his arm a basket of all manner of ripe
fruits ; at his belt a sickle : his sign Virgo.
Septemher. A merry and cheerful countenance, in a purple
robe ; upon his head a wreath of red and white grapes ; in
his left hand a handful of oats ; withal carrying a horn of
plenty, full of all manner of ripe fruits ; in his right hand
the sign Libra.
October, In a garment of yellow and carnation ; upon his
head a garland of oak-leaves with acorns ; in his right hand
the sign Scorpio ; in his left hand a basket of medlars, ser-
vices, and chestnuts, and anj^ other fruits then in season.
November. In a garment of changeable green and black ;
upon his head a garland of olives, with the fruit in his left
hand ; bunches of parsnips and turnips in his right : his
sign Sagittarius.
December. A horrid and fearful aspect, clad in Irish rags,
or coarse frieze girt unto him ; upon his head three or four
night-caps, and over them a Turkish turban ; his nose red,
his mouth and beard clogged with icicles ; at his back a
bundle of holly, ivy, or mistletoe ; holding in furred mit-
tens the sign of Capricornus.
January. Clad all in white, as the earth looks with the
snow, blowing his nails ; in his left arm a billet ; the sign
Aquarius standing by his side.
2 E 2
398 TEE MONTHS.
February. Clotlied in a dark sky-colour, carrying in liis
right hand the sign Pisces.
The follo^ving receipt " To dress up a chimney very fine
for the summer-time, as I have done many, and they have
been liked very well," may not be unprofitable to the
housewives of this century : — ■
" First, take a pack-thread, and fasten it even to the
inner part of the chimney, so high as that you can see no
higher as you walk up and down the house. You must
drive in several nails to hold up all your work. Then get
good store of old green moss from trees, and melt an equal
proportion of beeswax and rosin together ; and, while it is
hot, dip the wrong ends of the moss in it, and presently
clap it upon your j)ack-thread, and press it down hard with
your hand. You must make haste, else it will cool before
you can fasten it, and then it will fall down. Do so all
around where the pack-thread goes ; and the next row you
must join to that, so that it may seem all in one : thus do
till you have finished it down to the bottom. Then take
some other kind of moss, of a whitish colour and stiff, and
of several sorts or kinds, and place that upon the other,
here and there carelessly, and in some places put a good
deal, and some a little ; then any kind of fine snail-shells,
in which the snails are dead, and little toad-stools, which
are very old, and look like velvet, or any other thing that was
old and p-eliy : place it here and there as your fancy serves,
and fasten all with wax and rosin. Then, for the hearth ot
your chimney, you may lay some orpan-sprigs in order all
over, and it will grow as it lies ; and, according to the
season, get what flowers you can, and stick in as if they
grew, and a few sprigs of sweet-briar : the flowers you
must renew every week; but the moss will last all the
summer, till it will be time to make a fire ; and the orpan
will last near two months. A chimney thus done doth
grace a room exceedingly."
One phrase in the above should particularly recommend
it to such of your female readers as, in the nice language
of the day, have done growing some time, — "little toad-
stools, &c., and anything that is old and pretty'^ Was ever
THE MONTHS. 399
antiquity so sniootlied over? The culinary recipes have
nothing remarkable in them, except the costliness of them.
Every thing (to the meanest meats) is sopped in claret,
steeped in claret, basted with claret, as if claret were as
cheap as ditch-water. I remember Bacon recommends
opening a turf or two in your garden walks, and pouring
into each a bottle of claret, to recreate the sense of smell-
ing, being no less grateful than beneficial. We hope the
Chancellor of the Exchequer will attend to this in his next
reduction of French wines, that we may once more water
our gardens with right Bourdeaux. The medical recipes
are as whimsical as they are cruel. Our ancestors were
not at all effeminate on this head. Modern sentimentalists
would shrink at a cock plucked and bruised in a mortar
alive to make a cullis, or a live mole baked in an oven (be
sure it be alive) to make a powder for consumption. But the
whimsicalest of all are the directions to servants (for this
little book is a compendium of all duties) : the footman is
seriously admonished not to stand lolling against his mas-
ter's chair while he waits at table ; for " to lean on a chair
when they wait is a particular favour shown to any supe-
rior servant, as the chief gentleman, or the waiting- woman
when she rises from the table." Also he must not " hold
the plates before his mouth to be defiled with his breath,
nor touch them on the right [inner] side." Surely Swift
must have seen this little treatise.
Hannah concludes with the following address, by which
the self-estimate which she formed of her usefulness may
be calculated : —
" Ladies, I hope you're pleas'd, aud so shall I,
If what I've ■writ, you may be gainers by :
If not, it ia yoiu' fault, it is not mine,
Yom- benefit in this I do design.
Much laboxir and much time it hath me cost,
Therefore, I beg, let none of it be lost.
The money you shall pay for this my book,
You'll not repent of, when in it you look.
No more at present to you I shall say,
But wisli you all the happiness I may.'
400
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIE OF MK. LISTOK
THE subject of our Memoir is lineally descended from
Jolian de L'Estonne (see " Domesday Book," where
he is so written), who came in with the Conqueror, and had
lands awarded him at Lupton Magna, iu Kent. His parti-
cular merits or services, Fabian, whose authority I chiefly
follow, has forgotten, or perhaps thought it immaterial,
to specify. Fuller thinks that he was standard-bearer to
Hugo de Agmondesham, a powerful Norman baron, who
was slain by the hand of Harold himself at the fatal battle
of Hastings. Be this as it may, we find a family of that
name flourishing some centuries later in that county. John
Delliston, knight, was High Sheriff for Kent, according to
Fabian, quinto Henrici Sexti ; and we trace the lineal branch
flourishing downwards, — the orthography varying, accord-
ing to the tuisettled usage of the times, from Delleston to
Leston or Listen, between which it seems to have alter
nated, till, in the latter end of the reign of James I., it
finally settled into the determinate and pleasing dissyl-
labic arrangement which it still retains. Aminadab Listen,
the eldest male representative of the family of that day, was
of the strictest order of Puritans. Mr. Foss, of Pall Mall,
has obligingly communicated to me an undovibted tract of
his, which bears the initials only, A. L., and is entitled,
•'The Grinning Glass, or Actor's Mirrour; where in the
vituperative Visnomy of Vicious Players for the Scene is
as virtuously reflected back upon their mimetic Monstrosi-
ties as it has viciously (hitherto) vitiated with its vile Vani-
ties her Votarists." A strange title, bi;t beaiing the impress
of those absurdities with which the title-pages of that
pamphlet-spawning age abounded. The work bears date
1617. It preceded the " Ilistriomastix" by fifteen years;
and, as it went before it in time, so it comes not far short
of it in virulence. It is amusing to find an ancestor of
Listen's thus bespattering the players at the commence-
ment of the seventeenth century : —
" Thinlieth He " (the actor), " with his costive counte*
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF 3IR. LISTON. 401
nances, to wry a sorrowing sonl out of her anguish, or
by defacing the divine denotement of destinate dignity
(daignely described in the face humane and no other) to
reinstamp the Paradice-plotted similitude with a novel and
naughty approximation (not in the first intention) to those
abhorred and ugly God - forbidden correspondences, with
flouting Apes' jeering gibberings, and Babion babbling-
like, to hoot out of countenance all modest measure, as if
our sins were not sufBcing to stoop out backs without He
wresting and crooking his members to mistimed mirth
(rather malice) in deformed fashion, leering when he
should learn, prating for praying, goggling his eyes (better
upturned for grace), whereas in Paradice (if we can go thus
high for His profession) that develish Serpent appeareth
his undoubted Predecessor, first induing a mask like some
roguish roistering Eoscius (I spit at them all) to beguile
with Stage shows the gaping Woman, whose Sex hath still
chiefly upheld these Mysteries, and are voiced to be the
chief Stage-haunters, where, as I am told, the custom is
commonl}^ to mumble (between acts) ajiples, not ambigu-
ously derived from that pernicious Pippin (worse in eflect
than the Apples of Discord), whereas sometimes the hiss-
ing sounds of displeasure, as I hear, do lively reintonate
that snake-taking-lcave, and diabolical goings ofi', in Para-
dice."
The Puritanic effervescence of the early Presbyterians
appears to have abated with time, and the opinions of the
more immediate ancestors of our subject to have subsided
at length into a strain of moderate Calvinism. Still a tinc-
ture of the old leaven was to be expected among the pos-
terity of A. L.
Our hero was an only son of Habakkuk Listen, settled
as an Anabaptist minister upon the patrimonial soil of his
ancestors. A regular certificate appears, thus entered in
the Church-book at Lupton Magna : — " Johannes, films Ha-
baklcuk et JReheccce Liston, Dissentientium, natiis quinto Decemhri,
1780, baptizatus sexto Febriiarii sequent is ; Sponsorihus J. et W.
Woollaston, una cum Maria Merry weather." The singularity
of an Anabaptist minister conforming to the child-rites of
402 BIOGBAPniCAL MEMOIR OF MB. LISTON.
the Clmrcli would have tempted me to doubt the authenti-
city of this entry, had I not been obliged with the actual
sight of it by the favour of Mr. Minns, the intelligent and
worthy parish clerk of Lupton. Possibly some expectation
in point of worldly advantages from some of the sponsors
might have induced this unseemly deviation, as it must
have appeared, from the practice and principles of that
generally rigid sect. The term Dissentientium was pos-
.sibly intended by the orthodox clergyman as a slur upon
the supposed inconsistency. What, or of what nature, the
expectations we have hinted at may have been, we have
now no means of ascertaining. Of the Woollastons no
trace is now discoverable in the village. The name of
Menyweather occurs over the front of a grocer's shop at
the western extremity of Lupton.
Of the infant Liston we find no events recorded before
his fourth year, in which a severe attack of the measles bid
fair to have robbed the rising generation of a fund of inno-
cent entertainment. He had it of the confluent kind, as it
is called; and the child's life was for a w^eek or two de-
spaired of. His recovery he always attributes (under
Heaven) to the humane interference of one Dr. Wilhelm
Eichter, a German empiric, who, in this extremity, pre-
scribed a copious diet of sauer-hraut, which the child was
observed to reach at with avidity, when other food repelled
him ; and from this change of diet his restoration was rapid
and complete. We have often heard him name the cir-
cumstance with gratitude ; and it is not altogether sui*-
prising that a relish for this kind of aliment, so abhorrent
and harsh to common English palates, has accompanied
him through life. When any of Mr. Listen's intimates
invite him to supper, he never fails of finding, nearest to
his knife and fork, a dish of sauer-hraut.
At the age of nine, we find our subject under the tuition
of the Eev. Mr. Goodenough (his father's health not per-
mitting him probably to instruct him himself), by whom
ho was inducted into a competent portion of Latin and
Greek, with some mathematics, till the death of Mr.
Goodenough, in his own seventieth, and Master Listen's
BIOGBAFEICAL MEMOIR OF MB. LISTON. 403
eleventh year, put a stop for the present to his classical
progress.
We have heard onr hero, with emotions w^hich do his
heart honour, describe the awfid circumstances attending
the decease of this worthy old gentleman. It seems they
had been walking out together, master and pupil, in a fine
sunset, to the distance of three-quarters of a mile west of
Lupton, when a sudden curiosity took Mr. Goodenough to
look down upon a chasm, where a shaft had been lately
sunk in a mining speculation (then projecting, but aban-
doned soon after, as not answering the promised success, by
Sir Ealph Shepperton, knight, and member for the county).
The old clergyman leaning over, either with incaution or
siidden giddiness (probably a mixture of both), suddenly lost
his footing, and, to use Mr. Liston's phrase, disappeared, and
■was doubtless broken into a thousand pieces. The sound
of his head, &c., dashing successively upon the projecting
masses of the chasm, had such an effect upon the child,
that a serious sickness ensued ; and, even for many years
after his recovery, he was not once seen so much as to
smile.
The joint death of both his parents, which happened not
man}'- months after this disastrous accident, and were
probably (one or both of them) accelerated by it, threw
our youth upon the protection of his maternal great-aunt,
Mrs. Sittingboiim. Of this aunt we have never heard him
speak but with expressions amounting almost to reverence.
To the influence of her early counsels and manners he has
always attributed the firmness with which, in maturer
years, thrown upon a way of life commonly not the best
adapted to gravity and self-retirement, he has been able to
maintain a serious character, tmtinctured with the levities
incident to his profession. Ann Sittingbourn (we have
seen her portrait by Hudson) was stately, stiff, tall, with a
cast of features strikingly resembling the subject of this
memoir. Her estate in Kent was spacious and well
wooded ; the house one of those venerable old mansions
which are so impressive in childhood, and so hardly for-
gotten in succeeding years. In the venerable solitudes of
404 BIOGBAFHICAL MEMOIB OF MB. LISTON.
Cliarnwood, among thick shades of the oak and beech (this
last his favourite tree), the young Listen cultivated those
contemplative habits which have never entirely deserted
him in after years. Here he was commonly in the summer
months to be met with, with a book in his hand, — not a
play-book, — meditating. Boyle's " Eeflections " was at one
time the darling volume ; which, in its turn, was superseded
by Young's " Night Thoughts," which has continiied its
hold upon him through life. He carries it always about
him; and it is no uncommon thing for him to be seen, in
the refreshing intervals of his occupation, leaning against a
side-scene, in a sort of Herbert-of-Cherbury posture, turn-
ing over a pocket-edition of his favourite aiithor.
But the solitudes of Charnwood were not destined always
to obscure the path of our young hero. The premature
death of Mrs. Sittingbourn, at the age of seventy, occa-
sioned by incaiitious burning of a pot of charcoal in her
sleeping-chamber, left him in his nineteenth year nearly
without resources. That the stage at all should have pre-
sented itself as an eligible scope for his talents, and, in par-
ticular, that he should have chosen a line so foreign to
what appears to have been his turn of mind, may require
some explanation.
At Charnwood, then, we behold him thoughtful, grave,
ascetic. From his cradle averse to flesh-meats and strong
drink; abstemious even beyond the genius of the place,
and almost in spite of the remonstrances of his great-aunt,
who, though strict, was not rigid, — water was his habitual
drink, and his food little beyond the mast and beech-nuts
of his favourite groves. It is a medical fact, that this kind
of diet, however favourable to the contemplative powers of
the primitive hermits, &c., is but ill adapted to the less
robust minds and bodies of a later generation. Hypochon-
dria almost constantly ensues. It was so in the case of the
young Listen. He was subject to sights, and had visions.
Those arid beech-niits, distilled by a complexion naturally
advibt, mounted into an occiput already prepared to kindle
by long seclusion and the fervour of strict Calvinistic notions.
In the glooms of Charnwood, he was assailed by illusions
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON. 405
similar in kiud to those which are related of the famous
Anthony of Padua. AVild antic faces would over aiid anon
protrude themselves upon his sensorium. Whether he shut
his eyes, or kept them open, the same illusions operated.
The darker and more profound were his cogitations, the
droller and more Avhimsical became the apparitions. They
buzzed about him thick as flies, flapping at him, flouting
him, hooting in his ear, yet with such comic appendages,
that what at first was his bane became at length his solace ;
and he desired no better society than that of his merry
phantasmata. We shall presently find in what way this
remarkable phenomenon influenced his future destiny.
On the death of Mrs. Sittingbourn, we find him received
into the family of Mr. Willoughby, an eminent Turkey mer-
chant, resident in Birchin Lane, London. We lose a little
while here the chain of his history, — by what inducements
this gentleman was determined to make him an inmate
of his house. Probably he had had some personal kind-
ness for Mrs. Sittingbourn formerly ; bi\t, however it was,
the young man was here treated more like a son than a
clerk, though he was nominally but the latter. Different
avocations, the change of scene, with that alternation of
business and recreation which in its greatest perfection is
to be had only in London, appear to have weaned him in a
short time from the hypochondriacal affections which had
beset him at Charnwood.
In the three years which followed his removal to Birchin
Lane, we find him making more than one voyage to the
Levant, as chief factor for Mr. Willoughby at the Porte.
We could easily fill our biography with the pleasant
passages which we have heard him relate as having hap-
pened to him at Constantinople ; such as his having been
taken up on suspicion of a design of penetrating the
seraglio, &c. ; but, with the deepest convincement of this
gentleman's own veracity, we think that some of the stories
are of that whimsical, and others of that romantic nature,
which, however diverting, would be out of jMace in a
narrative of this kind, which aims not only at strict truth,
but at avoiding the very appearance of the contrary.
406 BIOGRAPHICAL 3IEM0IB OF MB. LISTON.
We will now bring him over the seas again, and suppose
him in the conntiug-house in Birchin Lane, his protector
satisfied with the returns of his factorage, and all going on
so smoothly, that we may expect to find Mr. Listen at last
an optilent merchant upon 'Change, as it is called. But see
the turns of destiny! Upon a summer's excursion into
Korfolk, in the year 1801, the accidental sight of pretty
Sally Parker, as she was called (then in the Norwich com-
pany), diverted his inclinations at once from commerce ;
and he became, in the language of commonplace biography,
stage-struck. Happy for the lovers of mirth was it that
our hero took this turn ; he might else have been to this
hour that unentertaining character, a plodding London
merchant.
We accordingly find him shortly after making his debut,
as it is called, upon the Norwich boards, in the season
of that year, being then in the twentj^-second year of his
age. Having a natural bent to tragedy, he chose the part
of Byrrhus, in the "Distressed Mother," to Sally Parker's
Hermione. We find him afterwards as Barnwell, Altamont,
Chamont, &c. ; but, as if Nature had destined him to the
sock, an unavoidable infirmity absolutely discapacitated
him for tragedy. His person, at this latter period of which
I have been speaking, was graceful, and even commanding ;
his countenance set to gravity : he had the power of arrest-
ing the attention of an audience at first sight almost beyond
any other tragic actor. But he could not hold it. To
understand this obstacle, we must go back a few years to
those appalling reveries at Charnwood. Those illusions,
which had vanished before the dissipation of a less recluse
life and more free society, now in his solitary tragic
studies, and amid the intense calls upon feeling incident
to tragic acting, came back upon him with tenfold vivid-
ness. In the midst of some most pathetic passage (the part-
ing of Jafiier with his dying friend, for instance), he would
suddenly be surprised with a fit of violent horse-laughter.
While the sjoectators were all sobbing before him with
emotion, suddenly one of those grotesque faces would peep
out upon him, and he could not resist the impulse. A
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN, 407
timely excuse once or twice served his purpose ; but no
audiences could bo expected to bear repeatedly this viola ■
tiou of the continuity of feeling. He describes tliem (the
illusions) as so many demons haunting him, and paralyzing
every effect. Even now, I am told, he cannot recite the
famous soliloquy in " Hamlet," even in private, without
immoderate bursts of laughter. However, what he had
not force of reason sufficient to overcome, he had good
sense enough to turn into emolument, and determined
to make a commodity of his distemper. He prudently ex-
changed the buskin for the sock, and the illusions instantly
ceased ; or, if they occurred for a short season, by their
very co-operation added a zest to his comic vein, — some of
his most catching faces being (as he expresses it) little
more than transcripts and copies of those extraordinary
phantasmata.
We have now drawn out our hero's existence to the
period when he was about to meet, for the first time, the
sympathies of a London audience. The particulars of his
success since have been too much before our eyes to render
a circumstantial detail of them expedient. I shall only
mention, that Mr. Willoughby, his resentments having had
time to subside, is at present one of the fastest friends of his
old renegado factor ; and that Mr. Liston's hopes of Miss
Parker vanishing along with his unsuccessful suit to Mel-
pomene, in the autumn of 1811 he married his present ladj',
by whom he has been blessed with one son, Philip, and two
daughters, Ann and Angustina.
AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN.
IX A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE " LOXDON MAGAZINE."
HAEK'EE, Mr. Editor. A word in your ear. They tell
me you are going to put me in print, — in print, sir ;
to publish my life. What is my life to you, sir? What is
408 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ME. MUNDEN.
it to you wlietlier I ever lived at all ? My life is a very
good life, sir. I am insured at the Pelicau, sir. I am three-
score years and six, — six ; mark me, sir ; hut I can play
Polonius, which, I believe, few of your corre — correspon-
dents can do, sir. I suspect tricks, sir : I smell a rat ; I
do, I do. You would cog the die upon us ; you would, you
would, sir. But I will forestall you, sir. You would be
deriving rae from William the Conqueror, with a murrain
to you. It is no such thing, sir. The town shall know
better, sir. They begin to smoke your flams, sir. Mr.
Liston may be born where he pleases, sir ; but I will not be
born at Lup — Lupton Magna for anybody's pleasure, sir.
]My son and I have looked over the great map of Kent
together, and we can find no such place as you would palm
upon us, sir; palm upon us, I say. Neither Magna nor
Parva, as my son says, and he knows Latin, sir ; Latin.
If you write my life true, sir, you must set down, that I,
Joseph Munden, comedian, came into the world upon All-
hallows Day, Anno Domini, 1759 — 1759; no sooner nor
later, sir ; and I saw the first light — the first light, re-
member, sir, at Stoke Pogis — Stoke Pogis, comitatu Bucks,
and not at Lup — Lup Magna, which I believe to be no better
than moonshine — moonshine; do you mark me, sir? I
wonder you can put such flim-flams upon us, sir ; I do, I do.
It does not become you, sir ; I say it, — I say it. And my
father was an honest tradesman, sir : he dealt in malt and
hops, sir; and was a corporation -man, sir; and of the
Church of England, sir, and no Presbyterian ; nor Ana —
Anabaptist, sir ; however you may be disposed to make
honest people believe to the contrary, sir. Your bams are
found out, sir. The town will be your stale-puts no longer,
sir ; and you must not send us jolly fellows, sir, — we that
are comedians, sir,' — you must not send us into groves and
char — charnwoods a moping, sir. Neither charns, nor
charnel-houses, sir. It is not our constitution, sir : I tell it
you — I tell it you. I was a droll dog from my cradle. I
came into the world tittering, and the midwife tittered, and
the gossips spilt their caudle with tittering; and, when I
was brought to the font, the parson could not christen me
AUTOBIOGBAPHY OF MB. MUNBEN. 409
for tittering. So I was never more tlian half baptized.
And, when I was little Joey, I made 'em all titter ; there
was not a melancholy face to he seen in Pogis. Pure
nature, sir. I was born a comedian. Old Screwx;p, the
undertaker, could tell you, sir, if he were living. Why, I
was obliged to be locked up every time there was to be a
funeral at Pogis. I was — I was, sir. I used to grimace at
the mutes, as he called it, and put 'em out with my mops
and my mows, till they couldn't stand at a door for me.
And. when I was locked ujj, with nothing but a cat in my
company, I followed my bent with trying to make her
laugh ; and sometimes she would, and sometimes she would
not. And my schoolmaster could make nothing of me : I
had only to thrust my tongue in my cheek— in my cheek,
sir, and the rod dropped from his fingers ; and so my edu-
cation was limited, sir. And I grew up a young fellow,
and it was thought convenient to enter me upon some course
of life that should make me serious ; but it wouldn't do,
sir. And I was articled to a dry-salter. My father gave
forty pounds premium with me, sir. I can show the indent
— dent — dentures, sir. But I was born to be a comedian,
sir : so I ran away, and listed with the players, sir : and
I topt my parts at Amersham and Gerrard's Cross, and
played my own father to his face, in his own town of Pogis.
in the part of Gripe, when I was not full seventeen years
of age ; and he did not know me again, but he knew me
afterwards ; and then he laughed, and I laughed, and, what
is better, the dry-salter laughed, and gave me up my articles
for the joke's sake: so that I came into court afterwards
with clean hands — with clean hands — do you see, sir ?
[Here the manuscript becomes illegible for two or three
sheets onwards, which we presume to be occasioned by the
absence of Mr. Munden, jun., who clearly transcribed it for
the press thus far. The rest (with the exception of the
concluding paragraph, which is seemingly resumed in
the first handwriting) appears to contain a confused ac-
count of some lawsuit, in which the elder Munden was
engaged ; with a circumstantial histoiy of the proceedings
410 AUTOBIOGBAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN.
of a case of breach of promise of marriage, made to or bj
(we cannot pick out which) Jemima Munden, spinster ;
probably the comedian's consin, for it does not appear he
had any Ksister ; with a few dates, rather better preserved,
of this great actor's engagements, — as " Cheltenham (spelt
Cheltnam), 1776;" "Bath, 1779;" "London, 1789;"
together with stage anecdotes of Messrs. Edwin, Wilson,
Lee, Lewis, &c, ; over which we have strained our eyes to
no purpose, in the hope of presenting something amusing
to the public. Towards the end, the manuscript brightens
up a little, as we said, and concludes in the following
manner :]
• stood before them for six and thirty years [we
suspect that Mr. Munden is here speaking of his final leave-
taking of the stage], and to be dismissed at last. But I was
heart-whole to the last, sir. What though a few drops did
course themselves down the old veteran's cheeks : who
could help it, sir ? I was a giant that night, sir ; and could
have played fifty parts, each as arduous as Dozy. My
faculties were never better, sir. But I was to be laid upon
the shelf. It did not suit the public to laugh with their
old servant any longer, sir. [Here some moisture has
blotted a sentence or two.] But I can play Polonius still,
sir ; I can, I can.
Your servant, sir,
Joseph Munden.
411
THE ILLUSTEIOUS DEFUNCT.*
, Nought but a blank remains, a dead void space,
A step of life that promised such a race. — Dryden.
NAPOLEON lias now sent us back from the grave suffi-
cient echoes of his living renown : the twilight of
posthumous fame has lingered long enotigh over the spot
where the sun of his glory set ; and his name must at length
repose in the silence, if not in the darkness, of night. In
this busy and evanescent scene, other spirits of the age are
rapidly snatched away, claiming our undivided sympathies
and regrets, until in turn they yield to some newer and
more absorbing grief. Another name is now added to the
list of the mighty departed, — a name whose influence upon
the hopes and fears, the fates and fortunes, of our country-
uien, has rivalled, and perhaps eclipsed, that of the defunct
" child and champion of Jacobinism," while it is associated
with all the sanctions of legitimate government, all the
sacred authorities of social order and our most holy religion.
We speak of one, indeed, under whose warrant heavy and
incessant contributions were imposed upon our fellow-citi-
zens, but who exacted nothing without the signet and the
sign-manual of most devout Chancellors of the Exchequer.
Not to dally longer with the sympathies of our readers, we
think it right to premonish them that we are composing an
epicedium upon no less distinguished a personage than the
Lottery, whose last breath, after many penultimate pufis,
has been sobbed forth by sorrowing contractors, as if the
world itself were about to be converted into a blank.
* Since writing this article, we have been informed that the object of
our funeral oration is not definitively deatl, but only moribund. So much
tlie better : we shall have an opportunity of granting the request made
to Walter by one of the children in the wood, and " kill him two times."
The Abbe de Vertot having a siege to write, and not receiving the
materials in time, composed the whole from his invention. Shortly
after its completion, the expected documents arrived, when he threw
them aside, exclaiming, " You are of no use to me now : I have carried
the town."
2 F
412 THE ILLUSTMIOUS DEFUNCT.
There is a fiisliion of eulogy, as well as of vituperation ;
and, though the Lottery stood for some time in the latter
predicament, we hesitate not to assert that multis ille bonis
flehilis occidiL Never have we joined in the senseless clamour
which condemned the only tax whereto we became volun-
tary contriLutors, — the only resource which gave the sti-
mulus without the danger or infatuation of gambling ; the
only alembic which in these plodding days sublimized om*
imaginations, and filled them with more delicious dreams
than ever flitted athwart the sensorium of Alnaschar.
Never can the writer forget, when, as a child, he was
hoisted upon a servant's shoulder in Guildhall, and looked
down upon the installed and solemn pomp of the then
drawing Lottery. The two awful cabinets of iron, upon
whose massy and mysterious portals the royal initials were
gorgeously emblazoned, as if, after having deposited the
unfulfilled prophecies within, the king himself had turned
the lock, and still retained the key in his pocket ; the blue-
coat boy, with his naked arm, first converting the invisible
wheel, and then diving into the dark recess for a ticket ;
the grave and reverend faces of the commissioners eyeing
the announced number ; the scribes below calmly com-
mitting it to their huge books ; the anxious countenances
of the surrounding populace ; while the giant figures of Gog
and Magog, like presiding deities, looked down with a grim
silence upon the whole proceeding, — constituted altogether
a scene, which, combined with the sudden wealth supposed
to be lavished from those inscrutable wheels, was well cal-
culated to impress the imagination of a boy with reverence
and amazement. Jupiter, seated between the two fatal
urns of good and evil, the blind goddess with her cornu-
copia, the Parcai wielding the distaif, the thread of life, and
the abhorred shears, seemed but dim and shadowy abstrac-
tions of mythology, when I had gazed upon an assemblage
exercising, as I dreamt, a not less eventful power, and all
presented to me in palpable and living operation. Eeason
and experience, ever at their old spiteful work of catching
and destroying the bubbles which youth delighted to follow,
have indeed dissipated much of this illusion ; but my mind
TEE ILLUSTBIOUS DEFUNCT. 413
BO far retained the influence of that early impression, that
I have ever since continued to deposit my humble offerings
at its shrine, whenever the ministers of the Lottery went
forth with typo and trumpet to announce its periodical dis-
pensations; and though nothing has been doled out to me
from its undiscerning coffers but blanks, or those more vexa-
tious tantalizers of the spirit denominated small prizes,
yet do I hold myself largely indebted to this most generous
diffuser of universal happiness. Ingrates that we are ! are
we to be thankful for no benefits that are not palpable to
sense, to recognize no favours that are not of marketable
value, to acknowledge no wealth unless it can be counted
with the five fingers ? If we admit the mind to be the sole
depository of genuine joy, where is the bosom that has not
been elevated into a temporary Elysium by the magic of
the Lottery ? \Vhich of us has not converted his ticket, or
even his sixteenth share of one, into a nest-egg of Hope,
upon which he has sate brooding in the secret roosting-
places of his heart, and hatched it into a thousand fantas-
tical apparitions?
What a startling revelation of the passions if all the aspi-
rations engendered by the Lottery could be made manifest !
Many an imiDCCuniary epicure has gloated over his locked-
up warrant for future wealth, as a means of realizing the
dream of his namesake in the " Alchemist : " —
" My meat shall all come in in Indian shells —
Dishes of agate set in gold, and studded
With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies ;
The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels' heels,
Boiled i' the spirit of Sol, and chssolved in pearl
(Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsy).
And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber,
Headed with diamant and carbuncle.
My footboy shall cat pheasants, calvered salmons,
Knots, godwits, lampreys : I myself will have
The beards of barbels served, instead of salads ;
Oiled mushrooms, and the swcUing unctuous paps
Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off.
Dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce.
For which I'll say unto my cook, • There's gold :
Go forth, and be a knight !' "
2 F 2
414 THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.
Many a doting lover has kissed the scrap of paper whose
promissoiy shower of gold -was to give tip to him his
otherwise unattainable Danae ; Ninirods have transformed
the same narrow symbol into a saddle, by which they have
been enabled to bestride the backs of peerless hunters ;
while nymphs have metamorphosed its Protean form
into —
" Rings, gauds, conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats,"
and all the braveries of dress, to say nothing of the obse-
qnions husband, the two-footmann'd carriage, and the opera-
box. By the simple charm of this numbered and printed
rag, gamesters have, for a time at least, recovered their
losses ; sjoendthrifts have cleared oif mortgages from their
estates ; the imprisoned debtor has leapt over his lofty
boundary of circumscription and restraint, and revelled in
all the joys of liberty and fortune ; the cottage- walls have
swelled out into more goodly proportion than those of
Baucis and Philemon ; poverty has tasted the luxuries of
competence ; labour has lolled at ease in a perpetual arm-
chair of idleness ; sickness has been bribed into banish-
ment ; life has been invested with new charms ; and death
deprived of its former terrors. Nor have the affections
been less gratified than the wants, appetites, and ambi-
tions of mankind. By the conjurations of the same potent
spell, kindred have lavished anticipated benefits upon one
another, and charity upon all. Let it be termed a delu-
sion, — a fool's paradise is better than the wise man's
Tartarus; be it branded as an ignis- fatuus, — it was at
least a benevolent one, which, instead of beguiling its
followers into swamps, caverns, and pitfalls, allured them
on with all the blandishments of enchantment to a garden
of Eden, — an ever-blooming Elysium of delight. True,
the pleasures it bestowed were evanescent : but which of
our joys are permanent ? and who so inexperienced as not
to know that anticipation is always of higher relish than
reality, which strikes a balance both in our sufferings and
enjoyments? "The fear of ill exceeds the ill we fear;"
and fruition, in the same proportion, invariably falls short
THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT. 415
of hope. "Men are but children of a larger growth," who
may amuse themselves for a long time in gazing at the
reflection of the moon in the water ; but, if they jump in
to grasp it, they may grope for ever, and only get the
farther from their object. He is the wisest who keeps
feeding upon the future, and refrains as long as possible
from undeceiving himself by converting his pleasant specu-
lations into disagreeable certainties.
The true mental epicure always purchased his ticket
early, and postponed inquiry into its fate to the last pos-
sible moment, during the whole of which intervening
period he had an imaginary twenty thousand locked up in
his desk ; and was not this well worth all the money ?
Who would scruple to give twenty pounds interest for
even the ideal enjoyment of as many thousands during
two or three months ? Crede quod Jiabes, et habes ; and
the usufruct of such a capital is surely not dear at such
a price. Some years ago, a gentleman in passing along
Cheapside saw the figures 1,069, of which number he was
the sole proprietor, flaming on the window of a lottery-
ofiSce as a capital prize. Somewhat flurried by this dis-
covery, not less welcome than unexpected, he resolved to
walk round St. Paul's that he might consider in what way
to communicate the happy tidings to his wife and family ,
but, upon re-passing the shop, he observed that the number
was altered to 10,069, and, upon inquiry, had the mortifi-
cation to learn that his ticket was a blank, and had only
been stuck up in the window by a mistake of the clerk.
This efiectually calmed his agitation ; but he always speaks
of himself as having once possessed twenty thousand pounds,
and maintains that his ten-minutes' walk round St. Paul's
was worth ten times the purchase-money of the ticket. A
prize thus obtained has, moreover, this special advantage,
— it is bej'ond the reach of fate ; it cannot be squandered ;
bankruptcy cannot lay siege to it ; friends cannot pull it
down, nor enemies blow it up; it bears a charmed life,
and none of woman born can break its integrity, even by
the dissipation, of a single fraction. Show me the property
in these perilous times, that is equally compact and im-
416 THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.
pregnable. We can no longer become enriclied for a
quarter of an hour; we can no longer succeed in such
splendid failures : all our chances of making such a miss
have vanished with the last of the Lotteries.
Life will now become a flat, prosaic routine of matter-of-
fact ; and sleep itself, erst so proliiic of numerical con-
figurations and mysterious stimulants to lottery adventure,
will be disfurnished of its figures and figments. People
will cease to harp upon the one lucky number suggested
in a dream, and which forms the exception, while they are
scrupulously silent upon the ten thousand falsified dreams
which constitute the rule. Morpheus will stifle Cocker
with a handful of poppies, and our pillows will be no
longer haunted by the book of numbers.
And who, too, shall maintain the art and mystery of
puffing, in all its pristine glory, when the lottery pro-
fessors shall have abandoned its cultivation ? They were
the first, as they Avill assuredly be the last, who fully
developed the resources of that ingenious art ; who cajoled
and decoyed the most suspicious and wary reader into
a perusal of their advertisements by devices of endless
variety and cunning ; who baited their lurking schemes
with midnight murders, ghost-stories, crim-cons, bon-mots,
balloons, dreadful catastrophes, and every diversity of joy
and sorrow, to catch newspaper -gudgeons. Ought not
such talents to be encouraged ? Verily the abolitionists
have much to answer for !
And now, having established the felicity of all those
who gained imaginary prizes, let us proceed to show that
the equally numerous class who were presented with real
blanks have not less reason to consider themselves happy.
Most of us have cause to be thankful for that which is
bestowed ; but we have all, probably, reason to be still
more grateful for that which is withheld, and more espe-
cially for our being denied the sudden possession of riches.
In the Litany, indeed, we call upon the Lord to deliver us
•' in all time of our wealth ;" but how few of us are sin-
cere in deprecating such a calamity ! Massinger's Luke,
and Ben Jonson's Sir Epicure Mammon, and Pope's Sir
THE ASS. 417
Balaam, and oixr own daily observation, might convince us
that the Devil " now tempts by making rich, not making
poor." We may read in the " Guardian" a circumstantial
account of a man who was utterly ruined by gaining a
capital j)rize; we may recollect what Dr. Johnson said to
Garrick, when the latter was making a display of his
wealth at Hampton Court, — " Ah, David, David! these are
the things that make a death-bed terrible ;" we may recall
the Scripture declaration, as to the difficulty a rich man
finds in entering into the kingdom of Heaven ; and, com-
bining all these denunciations against opulence, let us
heartily congratulate one another upon our lucky escape
from the calamity of a twenty or thirty thousand pound
prize ! The fox in the fable, who accused the unattainable
grapes of sourness, was more of a philosopher than we are
generally willing to allow. He was an adept in that
species of moral alchemy which turns everything to gold,
and converts disappointment itself into a ground of resig-
nation and content. Such we have shown to be the great
lesson inculcated by the Lottery, when rightly contem-
plated; and, if we might parody M. de Chateaubriand's
jingling expression, — " le Moi est mort : vive le Boi f — we
should be tempted to exclaim, " The Lottery is no more:
long live the Lottery !"
THE ASS.
ME. COLLIER, in his "Poetical Decameron" (Third
Conversation), notices a tract printed in 1595, with
the author's initials only, A. B., entitled " The Noblenesse
of the Asse ; a work rare^ learned, and excellent." He has
selected the following pretty passage from it : " He (the
ass) refuseth no burden : he goes whither he is sent, with-
out any contradiction. He lifts not his foote against any
one ; he bytes not; he is no fugitive, nor malicious aifected.
He doth all things in good sort, and to his liking that hath
418 THE ASS.
cause to employ Mm. If strokes be given him, he cares
not for them ; and, as our modern poet singeth, —
'• ' Thou wouldst (perhaps) he should become thy foe,
And to that end dost beat him many times :
He cares not for himselfe, much less thy blow.' "
Certainly Nature, foreseeing the cruel usage which this
useful servant to man should receive at man's hand, did
prudently in furnishing him with a tegument impervious
to ordinary stripes. The malice of a child or a weak hand
can make feeble impressions on him. His back oifers no
mark to a puny foeman. To a common whip or switch his
hide presents an absolute insensibility. You might as
well pretend to scourge a schoolboy with a tough pair of
leather breeches on. His jerkin is well fortified ; and
therefore the costermongers, "between the years 1790 and
1800," did more politicly than piously in lifting up a part
of his upper garment. I well remember that beastly aad
bloody custom. I have often longed to see one of those
refiners in discipline himself at the cart's tail, with just
such a convenient spot laid bare to the tender mercies of
the whipster. But, since Nature has resumed her rights,
it is to be hoj)ed that this patient creature does not suffer
to extremities ; and that, to the savages who still belabour
his poor carcase with their blows (considering the sort of
anvil they are laid upon), he might in some sort, if he
could speak, exclaim with the philosopher, " Lay on : you
beat but upon the case of Anaxarchus."
Contemplating this natural safeguard, this fortified ex-
terior, it is with pain I view the sleek, foppish, combed,
and curried person of this animal as he is disnaturalized at
watering-places, &c., where they affect to make a palfry of
him. Fie on all such sophistications ! It will never do,
master groom. Something of his honest, shaggy exterior
will still peep up in spite of you, — his good, rough, native,
pine-apple coating. You cannot " refine a scorpion into a
fish, though you rinse it and scour it with ever so cleanly
cookery."*
* Milton, from memory.
THE ASS. 419
The modern poet quoted by A. B. proceeds to celebrate
a virtue for wliicli no one to this day had been aware that
the ass was remarkable : —
" One other gift this beast hath as his owne,
Wherewith the rest could not be furnished ;
On man himself the same was not bestowue :
To wit, on liim is ne'er engendered
The hateful vermine that doth teare the skin,
And to the bode [body] doth make his passage in."
And truly, when one thinks on the suit of impenetrable
armour with which Nature (like Vulcan to another Achilles)
has provided him, these subtile enemies to our repose would
have shown some dexterity in getting into his quarters. As
the bogs of Ireland by tradition expel toads and reptiles,
he may well defy these small deer in his fastnesses. It
seems the latter had not arrived at the exquisite policy
adopted by the human vermin " between 1790 and 1800."
But the most singular and delightful gift of the ass,
according to the writer of this pamphlet, is his voice, the
" goodly, sweet, and continual brayings " of which, "whereof
they forme a melodious and proportionable kinde of
musicke," seem to have affected him with no ordinary
pleasure. "Nor thinke I," he adds, "that any of our
immoderate musitians can deny but that their song is full
of exceeding pleasure to be heard ; because therein is to be
discerned both concord, discord, singing in the meane, the
beginning to sing in large compasse, then following into
rise and fall, the halfe-note, whole note, musicke of five
voices, firme singing by four voices, three together, or one
voice and a halfe. Then their variable contrarieties
amongst them, when one delivers forth a long tenor or a
short, the pausing for time, breathing in measure, breaking
the minim or very least moment of time. Last of all, to
heare the musicke of five or six voices chaunged to so
many of asses is amongst them to heare a song of world
without end."
There is no accounting for ears, or for that laudable
enthusiasm with which an author is tempted to invest a
favourite subject with the most incompatible perfections :
420 IN BE SQUIRRELS.
I should otherwise, for my own taste, have been inclined
i-ather to have given a place to these extraordinary mu-
sicians at that banquet of nothing-less-than-sweet-soimds,
imagined by old Jeremy Collier (Essays, 1698, part ii. on
Music), where, after describing the inspiriting effects ol
martial music in a battle, he hazards an ingenious con-
jecture, whether a sort of anti-music might not be invented,
which should have quite the contrary effect of "sinking
the spirits, shaking the nerves, curdling the blood, and
inspiring despair and cowardice and consternation. 'Tis
probable," he says, " the roaring of lions, the warbling of
cats and screech-owls, together with a mixture of the howl-
ing of dogs, judiciously imitated and compounded, might
go a great way in this invention." The dose, we confess,
is pretty potent, and skilfully enough prepared. But what
shall we say to the Ass of Silenus, who, if we may trust to
classic lore, by his own proper sounds, without thanks to
cat or screech-owl, dismayed and put to rout a whole army
of giants ? Here was anti- music with a vengeance ; a
whole Pan-Dis-Harmonicon in a single lungs of leather !
But I keep you trifling too long on this asinine subject,
I have already passed the Pons Asinorum, and will desist,
remembering the old pedantic pun of Jem Boyer, my
schoolmaster, —
" Ass inprcesenti seldom makes a wise man infuturo"
IN EE SQUIEEELS.
WHAT is gone with the cages with the climbing squirrel,
and bells to them, which were formerly the indispens-
able appendage to the outside of a tinman's shop, and were,
in fact, the only live signs? One, we believe, still hangs
out on Holbom ; but they are fast vanishing with the good
old modes of our ancestors. They seem to have been
superseded by that still more ingenious refinement of
modern humanity, — the tread-mill ; in which human squir-
IN BE SQUIRRELS. 421
rels still perform a similar round of ceaseless, improgressive
clambering, wliicli must be nnts to them.
We almost doubt the fact of the teeth of this creature
being so purely orange - coloured as Mr. Urban's corre-
spondent gives out. One of otir old poets — and they were
pretty sharp obsei-vers of Nature — describes them as brown.
But perhaps the naturalist referred to meant " of the colour
of a Maltese orange,"* which is rather more obfuscated
than your fruit of Seville or St. Michael's, and may help to
reconcile the difference. We cannot speak from observa-
tion ; but we remember at school getting our fingers into
the orangery of one of these little gentry (not having a due
caution of the traps set there), and the result proved sourer
than lemons. The author of the " Task " somewhere speaks
of their anger as being "insignificantly fierce;" but wo
found the demonstration of it on this occasion quite as
significant as we desired, and have not been disposed since
to look any of these " gift horses " in the mouth. Maiden
aunts keep these " small deer," as they do parrots, to bito
people's fingers, on purpose to give them good advice " not
to adventure so near the cage another time." As for their
" six quavers divided into three quavers and a dotted
crotchet," I suppose they may go into Jeremy Bentham's
next budget of fallacies, along with the "melodious and
proportionable kinde of musicke " recorded, in your last
number, of an highly-gifted animal.
* Fletclier iu the " Faithful Shepherdess." The satyi* offers to
Clorin —
" Grapes ■whose lusty blood
Is the learned poet's good, —
Sweeter yet did never crown
The head of Bacchus ; nuts more brown
Than the squirrels' teeth that crack them."
422
ESTIMATE OF DE FOE'S SECONDAEY NOVELS.
IT Las happened not seldom that one work of somo
author has so transcendentlj' sur^iassed in execution the
rest of his compositions, that the world has agreed to pass a
sentence of dismissal upon the latter, and to consign them
to total neglect and oblivion. It has done wisely in this
not to suffer the contemplation of excellences of a lower
standard to abate or stand in the way of the pleasure it has
agreed to receive from the masterpiece.
Again : it has happened, that from no inferior merit of
execution in the rest, but from superior good fortune in the
choice of its subject, some single work shall have been
suffered to eclipse and cast into shade the deserts of its
less fortunate brethren. This has been done with more or
less injustice in the case of the popular allegory of Bunyan,
in which the beautiful and scriptural image of a pilgrim or
wayfarer (we are all such upon earth), addressing itself
intelligibly and feelingly to the bosoms of all, has silenced,
and made almost to be forgotten, the more awful and
scarcely less tender beauties of the " II0I3' War made by
Shaddai upon Diabolus," of the same author, — a romance
less happy in its subject, but surely well worthy of a
secondary immortality. But in no instance has this ex-
cluding partiality been exerted with more unfairness than
against what may be termed the secondary novels or
romances of De Foe.
While all ages and descriptions of people hang delighted
over the " Adventures of Eobinson Crusoe," and shall con-
tinue to do so, we trust, while the world lasts, how few
comparatively will bear to be told that there exist other
fictitioi;s narratives by the same writer, — four of them at
least of no inferior interest, except what results from a less
felicitous choice of situation! "Koxana," "Singleton,"
" Moll Flanders," " Colonel Jack," are all genuine offspring
of the same father. They bear the veritable impress of De
Foe. An unpractised midwife that would not swear to the
DE FOES SECONDARY NOVELS. 423
nose, lip, forehead, and eye of eveiy one of them ! They
are, in their way, as full of incident, and some of them
every bit as romantic; only they want the uninhabited
island, and the charm that has bewitched the world, of the
striking solitary situation.
But are there no solitudes out of the cave and the desert :
or cannot the heart in the midst of crowds feel frightfully
alone ? Singleton on the world of waters, prowling about
with pirates less merciful than the creatures of any howl-
ing wilderness, — is he not alone, with the faces of men
about him, but without a guide that can conduct him
through the mists of educational and habitual ignorance,
or a fellow-heart that can interpret to him the new-born
yearnings and aspirations of unpractised penitence ? Or
when the boy Colonel Jack, in the loneliness of the heart
(the worst solitude), goes to hide his ill-purchased treasure
in the hollow tree by night, and miraculously loses, and
miraculously finds it again, — whom hath he there to sym
pathize with him ? or of what sort are his associates ?
The narrative manner of De Foe has a naturalness about
it beyond that of any other novel or romance writer. His
fictions have all the air of true stories. It is impossible to
believe, while you are reading them, that a real person is
not narrating to you everywhere nothing but what really
happened to himself. To this the extreme Jiomeliness of
their style mainly contributes. We use the word in its
best and heartiest sense, — that which comes Jioine to the
leader. The narrators everywhere are chosen from low
life, or have had their origin in it : therefore they tell their
own tales (Mr. Coleridge has anticipated us in this remark),
as persons in their degree are observed to do, with infinite
repetition, and an overacted exactness, lest the hearer
shoiald not have minded, or have forgotten, some things
that had been told before. Hence the emphatic sentences
marked in the good old (but deserted) Italic type; and
hence, too, the frequent interposition of the reminding old
colloquial parenthesis, " I say," " IVlind," and the like,
when the story-teller repeats what, to a practised reader,
might appear to have been sufficiently insisted upon
421 POSTSCRIPT TO THE " CHAPTER ON EARS."
before : which made an iDgenious critic observe, that his
■works, in this kind, were excellent reading for the kitchen.
'And, in truth, the heroes and heroines of De Foe can
never again hope to be popular with a much higher class of
readers than that of the servant-maid or the sailor. Crusoe
keeps its rank only by tough prescription. Singleton, the
pirate ; Colonel Jack, the thief; Moll Flanders, both thief
and harlot ; Koxana, harlot and something worse, — would
be startling ingredients in the bill of fare of modern lite-
rary delicacies. But, then, what pirates, what thieves, and
what harlots, is the thief, the harlot, and the pirate of De Foe !
We would not hesitate to say, that in no other book of
fiction, where the lives of such characters are described, is
guilt and delinquency made less seductive, or the suffering
made more closely to follow the commission, or the peni-
tence more earnest or more bleeding, or the intervening
flashes of religious visitation upon the rude and unin-
structed soul more meltingly and fearfully painted. They,
in this, come near to the tenderness of Bunyan ; while the
livelier pictures and incidents in them, as in Hogarth or in
Fielding, tend to diminish that fastidiousness to the con-
cerns and pursuits of common life which an unrestrained
passion for the ideal and the sentimental is in danger of
producing.
POSTSCEIPT TO THE "CHAPTEE ON EAES."
AWEITEE, whose real name, it seems, is Boldero, but
who has been entertaining the town for the last twelve
months with some very pleasant lucubrations under the
assumed signature of Leigh Hunt* in his " Indicator " of
the 31st Januarj^ last has thought fit to insinuate that I,
Elia, do not write the little sketches which bear my signa-
ture in this magazine, but that the true author of them is
* Clearly a fictitious appellation ; for, if we admit the latter of these
names to be in a manner English, what is Leigh ? Christian nomenclature
knows no such.
POSTSCRIPT TO THE « CHAPTER ON EARS" 425
a Mr. L h. Observe tlie critical period at which he
has chosen to impute the calumny, — on the very eve of the
publication of our last number, — affording no scope for ex-
planation for a full month ; during which time I must
needs lie writhing and tossing under the cruel imputation
of nonentity. Good Heavens ! that a plain man must not
be allowed to he
They call this an age of personality ; but surely this
spirit of anti-personality (if I may so express it) is some-
thing worse.
Take away my moral reputation, — I may live to discredit
that calumny ; injure my literary fame, — I may write that
up again ; but, when a gentleman is robbed of his identity,
where is he ?
Other murderers stab but at our existence, a frail and
perishing trifle at the best ; but here is an assassin who
aims at our very essence ; who not only forbids us to he any
longer, but to have heen at all. Let our ancestors look to it.
Is the parish register nothing ? Is the house in Princes
Street, Cavendish Square, where we saw the light six and
forty years ago, nothing? Were our progenitors from
stately Genoa, where we flourished four centuries back,
before the barbarous name of Boldero* was known to a
European mouth, nothing? Was the goodly scion of our
name, transplanted into England in the reign of the seventh
Henry, nothing? Are the archives of the steelyard, in
succeeding reigns (if haply they survive tlie fury of our
envious enemies), showing that we flourished in prime
repute, as merchants, down to the period of the Common-
wealth, nothing?
" Why, then the world, and all that's iu't, is nothing ;
The covering sky is nothing ; Bohemia nothing."
I am ashamed that this trifling writer should have powoi
to move me so.
* It is clearly of transatlantic origin.
426
ELIA TO HIS COKRESPONDENTS.
ACOERESPONDENT, who writes himself Peter Ball,
or Bell, — for his handwriting is as ragged as his
manners, — admonishes me of the old saying, that some
people (under a courteous periphrasis, I slur his less cere-
monious epithet) had need have good memories. In my
" Old Benchers of the Inner Temple," I have delivered
myself, and truly, a Templar born. Bell clamours upon
this, and thinketh that he hath caught a fox. It seems
that in a former paper, retorting upon a weekly scribbler
who had called my good identity in question (see Post-
script to my " Chapter on Ears "), I profess myself a native
of some spot near Cavendish Square, deducing my remoter
origin from Italy. But who does not see, except this
tinkling cymbal, that, in the idle fiction of Genoese an-
cestry, I was answering a fool according to his folly, — that
Elia there expresseth himself ironically as to an approved
slanderer, who hath no right to the truth, and can be no
fit recipient of it ? Such a one it is usual to leave to his
delusions ; or, leading him from eiTor still to contradictory
error, to plunge him (as we say) deeper in the mire, and
give him lino till he suspend himself. No understanding
reader could be imposed upon by such obvious rhodomon-
tade to suspect me for an alien, or believe me other than
English.
To a second correspondent, who signs himself " A Wilt-
shire Man," and claims me for a countryman upon the
strength of an equivocal phrase in my "Christ's Hospital,"
a more mannerly reply is due. Passing over the Genoese
fable, which Bell makes such a ring about, he nicely detects
a more subtle discrepancy, which Bell was too obtuse to
strike upon. Referring to the passage, I must confess that
the term " native town," applied to Calne, prhnd facie
seems to bear out the construction which my friendly cor-
respondent is willing to put upon it. The context too, I
am afraid, a little favours it. But where the words of an
ELIA TO HIS COBBESPONDENTS. i27
autlior, taken literally, compared with some other passage
in his writings, admitted to be authentic, involve a pal-
pable contradiction, it hath been the custom of the inge-
nuous commentator to smooth the difficulty by the suppo-
sition that in the one case an allegorical or tropical sense
was chiefly intended. So, by the word "native,"! laay
be supposed to mean a town where I might have been bom,
or where it might be desirable that I should have been
born, as being situate in wholesome air, upon a dry, chalky
soil, in which I delight ; or a town with the inhabitants of
which I passed some weeks, a summer or two ago, so agree-
ably that they and it became in a manner native to me.
Without some such latitude of interpretation in the present
case, I see not how we can avoid falling into a gross error
in physics, as to conceive that a gentleman may be born in
two places, from which all modern and ancient testimony
is alike abhorrent. Bacchus cometh the nearest to it, whom
I remember Ovid to have honoured with the epithet "twice
born."* But, not to mention that he is so called (we con-
ceive) in reference to the places ivhence rather than the
places ivhere he was delivered, — for, by either birth, he
may probably be challenged for a Theban, — in a strict
way of speaking, he was a filiusfemoris by no means in the
same sense as he had been before a films alvi ; for that latter
was but a secondaiy and tralatitious way of being born,
and he but a denizen of the second house of his geniture.
Thus much by way of explanation was thought due to the
coiirteous " Wiltshire Man."
To " Indagator," "Investigator," "Incei-tus," and the
rest of the pack, that are so importunate about the true
localities of his birth, — as if, forsooth, Elia were presently
aboiit to be passed to his parish, — to all such churchwarden
critics he answereth, that, any explanation here given not-
withstanding, he hath not so fixed his nativity (like a
* " Imperfectus adliuc infans genetricis abalvo
Eripitur, patrioque tener (si credere dignum)
Insuitiu- feinori
Tutaque bis geniti sunt incunabula Bacchi."
Metamorph., lib. iii.
2 G
428 UNITABIAN PBOl^ESTS.
rusty vane) to one dull spot, but that, if he seeth occasion,
or the argument shall demand it, he will be born again, in
future papers, in whatever place, and at whatever period,
shall seem good unto him.
" Modo me Tliebis, modo Athenis."
UNITAEIAN PEOTESTS ;
IX A LETTER TO A FRIEND OF THAT PERSUASION NEAVLY
MARRIED.
DEAE M , — Though none of your acquaintance can
with greater sincerity congratulate you upon this
happy conjuncture than myself, one of the oldest of them,
it was with pain I found you, after the ceremony, deposit-
ing in the vestry -room what is called a Protest. I thought
you superior to this little sophistry. What ! after sub-
mitting to the service of the Church of England, — after
consenting to receive a boon from her, in the person of
your amiable consort, — was it consistent with sense, or
common good manners, to turn round upon her, and flatly
taunt her with false worship ? This language is a little of
the strongest in your books and from your pulpits, though
there it may well enough be excused from religious zeal
and the native warmth of nonconformity. But at the
altar, — the Church-of-England altai^, — adopting her forms,
and complying with her requisitions to the letter, — to be
consistent, together with the practice, I fear, you must
drop the language of dissent. You are no longer sturdy
non-cons : you are there occasional conformists. You sub-
mit to accept the privileges communicated by a form of
words, exceptionable, and perhaps justly, in your view ;
but, so submitting, you have no right to quarrel with the
ritual which you have just condescended to owe an obliga-
tion to. They do not force you into their churches. You
come voluntarily, knowing the terms. You marry in the
name of the Trinity. There is no evading this by pretend-
UNITARIAN PROTESTS. 429
ing that you take the formula with your own interpreta-
tion : (and, so long as you can do this, where is the neces-
sity of protesting ?) for the meaning of a yow is to be
settled by the sense of the imposer, not by any forced con-
struction of the taker ; else might all vows, and oaths too,
be eluded with impunity. You marry, then, essentially as
Trinitarians ; and the altar no sooner satisfied than, hey,
presto! with the celerity of a juggler, you shift habits,
and proceed pure Unitarians again in the vestry. You cheat
the church out of a wife, and go home smiling in your
sleeves that you have so cunningly despoiled the Egyptians.
In plain English, the Church has married you in the name
of so and so, assuming that you took the words in her sense :
but you outwitted her ; you assented to them in your sense
only, and took from her what, upon a right understanding,
she would have declined giving you.
This is the fair construction to be put upon all Unitarian
marriages, as at present contracted ; and, so long as you
Unitarians could salve your consciences with the equivoque,
I do not see why the Established Church should have
troubled herself at all about the matter. But the pro-
testers necessarily see farther. They have some glimmei'-
ings of the deception ; they apprehend a flaw somewhere ;
they would fain be honest, and yet they must marry not-
withstanding ; for honesty's sake, they are fain to de-
honestate themselves a little. Let me try the very words
of your own protest, to see what confessions we can pick
out of them.
" As Unitarians, therefore, we " (you and your newly-
espoused bride) "most solemnly protest against the service"
(which yourselves have just demanded), " because we are
thereby called upon not only tacitly to acquiesce, but to
profess a belief in a doctrine which is a dogma, as we
believe, totally unfounded." But do you profess that belief
during the ceremony ? or are you only called upon for the
profession, but do not make it ? If the latter, then you
fa.ll in with the rest of your more consistent brethren who
waive the protest ; if the former, then, I fear, your protest
cannot save you.
2 Q 2
430 UNITARIAN PROTESTS.
Hard and grievous it is, tliat, in any case, an institution
so broad and general as the union of man and wife should
he so cramped and straitened hy the hands of an imposing
hierarchy, that, to plight troth to a lovely woman, a man
must be necessitated to compromise his truth and faith to
Heaven ; but so it must be, so long as you choose to marry
by the forms of the Church over which that hierarchy
presides.
" Therefore," say you, " wo protest." Oh, poor and
•much-fallen word, Protest ! It was not so that the first
heroic reformers protested. They departed out of Babylon
once for good and all ; they came not back for an occasional
contact with her altars, — a dallying, and then a protesting
against dalliance ; they stood not shuffling in the porch,
with a Popish foot within, and its lame Lutheran fellow
without, halting betwixt. These were the true Protestants.
You are — protesters.
Besides the inconsistency of this proceeding, I must
think it a piece of impertinence, unseasonable at least, and
out of place, to obtrude these papers upon the officiating
clergyman ; to offer to a public functionary an instrument
which by the tenor of his function he is not obliged to
accept, but rather he is called upon to reject. Is it done in
his clerical capacity ? He has no power of redressing the
grievance. It is to take the benefit of his ministry, and
then insult him. If in his capacity of fellow-Christian
only, what are your scruples to him, so long as you your-
selves are able to get over them, and do get over them by
the very fact of coming to require his services? The
thing you call a Protest might with just as good a reason
be presented to the churchwarden for the time being, to
the parish-clerk, or the pew-opener.
The Parliament alone can redress your grievance, if any.
Yet I see not how with any grace your people can petition
for relief, so long as, by the very fact of your coming to
church to be married, they do bond fide and strictly relieve
themselves. The Upper House, in particular, is not un-
used to these same things, called Protests, among them-
selves. But how would this honourable body stare to find
UNITABIAN PROTESTS. 431
a noble lord conceding a measure, and in the next breath,
by a solemn protest, disowning it! A protest there is a
reason given for non-compliance, not a subterfuge for an
equivocal occasional compliance. It was reasonable in the
primitive Christians to avert from their persons, by what-
ever lawful means, the compulsory eating of meats which
had been oifered unto idols. I dare say the Eoman pre-
fects and exarchates had plenty of petitioning in their
days. But what would a Festus or Agrippa have replied
to a petition to that effect, presented to him by some eva-
sive Laodicean, with the very meat between his teeth,
which he had been cliewing voluntarily, rather than abide
the penalty ? Eelief for tender consciences means nothing,
where the conscience 1ms previously relieved itself; that
is, has complied with the injunctions which it seeks pre-
posterously to be rid of. Eelief for conscience there is
properly none, but what by better information makes an
act appear innocent and lawful with which the previous
conscience was not satisfied to comply. All else is but
relief from penalties, from scandal incurred by a complying
practice, where the conscience itself is not fully satisfied.
" But," say you, " we have hard measure : the Quakers
are indulged with the liberty denied to us." They are;
and dearly have they earned it. You have come in (as
a sect at least) in the cool of the evening, — at the eleventh
hour. The Quaker character was hardened in the fires of
persecution in the seventeenth century; not quite to the
stake and faggot, but little short of that ; they grew up and
thrived against noisome prisons, cruel beatings, whippings,
stockings. They have since endured a century or two of
scoffs, contempts; they have been a by-word and a nay-
word ; they have stood unmoved : and the consequence of
long conscientious resistance on one part is invariably, in
the end, remission on the other. The Legislature, that
denied you the tolerance, which I do not know that at
that time you even asked, gave them the liberty, which,
without granting, they would have assumed. Ko penal-
ties could have driven them into the churches. This
is the consequence of entire measures. Had the early
432 UNITABIAN PBO TESTS.
Quakers consented to take oaths, leaving a protest with the
clerk of the court against them in the same breath with
which they had taken them, do you in j^our conscience
think that they would have been indulged at this day in
their exclusive privilege of affirming ? Let your people go
on for a century or so, marrying in your own fashion, and
I will warrant them, before the end of it, the Legislature
will be willing to concede to them more than they at pre-
sent demand.
Either the institution of marriage depends not for its
validity upon hypocritical compliances with the ritual of
an alien Church and then I do not see why you cannot
marry among yourselves, as the Quakers, without their
indulgence, would have been doing to this day), or it does
depend upon such ritual comj)liance ; and then, in your
protests, you offend against a divine ordinance. I have
read in the Essex Street Liturgy a form for the celebra-
tion of marriage. "Why is this become a dead letter ? Oh !
it has never been legalized; that is to say, in the law's
eye, it is no marriage. But do you take upon you to say,
in the view of the gospel it would be none ? Would your
own people, at least, look upon a couple so paired to be
none? But the case of dowries, alimonies, inheritances,
&c., which depend for their validity ujion the ceremonial of
the Church by law established, — are these nothing ? That
our children are not legally Filii Nullius, — is this nothing ?
I answer, Nothing ; to the preservation of a good con-
science, nothing ; to a consistent Christianity, less than
nothing. Sad worldly thorns they are indeed, and stum-
bling-blocks well worthy to be set out of the way by a Legis-
latvire calling itself Christian ; but not likely to be removed
in a hurry by any shrewd legislators who perceive that the
petitioning complainants have not so much as bruised a
shin in the resistance, but, prudently declining the briers
and the prickles, nestle quietly down in the smooth two-
sided velvet of a protesting occasional conformity.
I am, dear sir.
With much respect, yours, &c,,
Elia.
133
on the custom of hissing at the
th:eatees ;
WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF A CLUB OF DAMNED AUTHORS.
MR. EEFLECTOK,— I am one of those persons whom
the world has thought proper to designate by the title
of Damned Authors. In that memorable season of dramatic
failures, 1806-7, — in which no fewer, I think, than two
tragedies, four comedies, one opera, and three farces, suf-
fered at Drury Lane Theatre, — I was found guilty of con-
structing an afterpiece, and was damned.
Against the decision of the public in such instances
there can be no appeal. The clerk of Chatham might as
well have protested against the decision of Cade and his
followers, who were then the public. Like him, I was con-
demned because I could write.
Not but it did appear to some of us that the measures of
the popular tribunal at that period savoured a little of
harshness and of the summum jiis. The public mouth was
early in the season fleshed upon the " Vindictive Man,"
and some pieces of that nature ; and it retained, through
the remainder of it, a relish of blood. As Dr. Johnson
would have said, " Sir, there was a habit of sibilation in
the house."
Still less am I disposed to inquire into the reason of the
comparative lenity, on the other hand, with which some
pieces were treated, which, to indifferent jvidges, seemed
at least as much deserving of condemnation as some of
those which met with it. I am willing to put a favourable
construction upon the votes that were given against us ; I
believe that there was no bribery or designed partiality in
the case : only " our nonsense did not happen to suit their
nonsense ; " that was all.
But against the manner in which the public, on these
occasions, think fit to deliver their disapi^robation, I must
and ever will protest.
434 HISSING AT THE THEATRES.
Sir, imagine — but you have been present at the damning
of a piece (those who never had that felicity, I beg them
to imagine) — a vast theatre, like that which Drury Lane
Avas before it was a heap of dust and ashes (I insult not
over its fallen greatness ; let it recover itself when it can
for me, let it lift up its towering head once more, and take
in poor authors to Avrite for it ; Mc ccestus artemque repono),
— a theatre like that, filled with all sorts of disgusting-
sounds, — shrieks, groans, hisses, but chiefly the last, like
the noise of many waters, or that which Don Quixote
heard from the fulling-mills, or that wilder combination
of devilish sounds which St. Anthony listened to in the
wilderness.
Oh ! Mr. Keflector, is it not a pity that the sweet human
voice, which was given man to speak with, to sing with, to
whisper tones of love in, to express compliance, to convey
a favour, or to grant a suit, — that voice, which in a Sid-
dons or a Braham rouses us, in a siren Catalani charms and
captivates us, — that the musical, expressive human voice
should be converted into a rival of the noises of silly geese,
and irrational, venomous snakes ?
I never shall forget the sounds on my flight. I never
before that time fully felt the reception which the Author
of All 111, in the " Paradise Lost," meets with from the
critics in the jj«7, at the final close of his " Tragedy upon
the Human Kace," — though that, alas ! met with too much
success : —
" From innumerable tongues
A dismal universal Jdss, the sound
Of public scorn. Dreadful was the din
Of hissing tlu-ough the hall, thick swarming now
With complicated monsters, head and tail,
Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbrena dire,
Cerastes horned, Hydi-us, and Elops drear,
And Dipsas."
For Jiall substitute theatre, and you have the very image
of what takes place at what is called the damnation of a
piece, — and properly so called ; for here you see its origin
plainly, whence the custom was derived, and what the first
HISSING AT THE THEATRES. 435
piece was that so suffered. After this, none can doubt the
propriety of the appellation.
But, sir, as to the justice of bestowing such appalling,
heart-withering denunciations of the popular obloquy upon
the venial mistake of a poor author, who thought to please
us in the act of filling his pockets, — for the sum of his de-
merits amounts to no more than that, — it does, I own, seem
to me a species of retributive justice far too severe for the
offence. A culprit in the pillory (bate the eggs) meets
with no severer exprobration.
Indeed, I have often wondered that some modest critic has
not proposed that there should be a wooden machine to that
effect erected in some convenient part of the proscenium,
which an unsuccessful author should be required to mount,
and stand his hour, exposed to the apples and oranges of the
pit. This amende honorable would well suit with the mean-
ness of some authors, who, in their prologues, fairly prostrate
their skulls to the audience, and seem to invite a pelting.
Or why should they not have their pens publicly broke
over their heads, as the swords of recreant knights in old
times were, and an oath administered to them that they
should never write again ?
Seriously, Messieurs the Public, this outrageous way which
you have got of expi-essing your displeasures is too much
for the occasion. When I was deafening under the effects
of it, I could not help asking what crime of great moral
turpitude I had committed : for every man about me
seemed to feel the offence as personal to himself ; as some-
thing which public interest and private feelings alike called
upon him, in the strongest possible manner, to stigmatize
with infamy.
The Eomans, it is well known to you, Mr. Eeflector, took
a gentler method of marking their disapprobation of an
author's work. They were a humane and equitable nation.
They left the furca and the patibidum, the axe and the rods,
to great offenders : for these minor and (if I may so term
them) extra-moral offences, the bent thumb was considered
as a sufficient sign of disapprobation, — vertere pollicem ; as
the pressed thumb, p-emere pollicem, was a mark of approving.
436 HISSING AT THE THEATBES.
And really there seems to liave been a sort of fitness in
this method, a correspondency of sign in the punishment to
the oiience. For, as the action of writing is performed by
bending the thumb forward, the retroversion or bending
back of that joint did not unaptly point to the opposite of
that action ; implying that it was the will of the audience
that the author should write no more : a much more signifi-
cant as well as more humane way of expressing that desire
than our custom of hissing, which is altogether senseless
and indefensible. Nor do we find that the Eoman au-
diences deprived themselves, by this lenity, of any tittle
of that supremacy which audiences in all ages have thought
themselves bound to maintain over such as have been can-
didates for their applause. On the contrary, by this method
they seem to have had the author, as we should express it,
completely under finger and thumb.
The provocations to which a dramatic genius is exposed
from the public are so much the more vexatious as they are
removed from any possibility of retaliation, the hope of
which sweetens most other injuries; for the public never
writes itself. Not but something very like it took place at
the time of the O. P. differences. The placards which were
nightly exhibited were, properly speaking, the composition
of the public. The public wrote them, the public ap-
plauded them ; and precious morceaux of wit and eloquence
the}' were, — except some few, of a better quality, which it
is well known were furnished by professed di'amatic writers.
After this specimen of what the public can do for itself, it
should be a little slow in condemning what others do for it.
As the degrees of malignancy vary in people according as
they have more or less of the Old Serpent (the father of
hisses) in their composition, I have sometimes amused my-
self with analyzing this many-headed hydra, which calls
itself the public, into the component parts of which it is
" complicated, head and tail," and seeing how many
varieties of the snake kind it can afford.
Eirst, there is the Common English Snake. — This is that
part of the aiiditory who are always the majority at damna-
tions ; but who, having no critical venom in themselves to
B1S8ING AT THE THEATRES. 437
sting them on, stay till they hear others hiss, and then join
in for company.
The Blind Worm is a species very nearly allied to the
foregoing. Some naturalists have doubted whether they
are not the same.
The Eattlesnake. — These are your obstreperous talking
critics, — the impertinent guides of the pit, — who will not
give a plain man leave to enjoy an evening's entertain-
ment ; but, with their frothy jargon and incessant finding
of faults, either drown his pleasure quite, or force him, in
his o^vvn defence, to join in their clamorous censure. The
hiss always originates with these. When this creature
springs his rattle, you would think, from the noise it
makes, there was something in it; but you have only to
examine the instrument from which the noise proceeds,
and you will find it typical of a critic's tongue, — a shallow
membrane, empty, voluble, and seated in the most con-
temptible part of the creature's body.
The Whipsnake. — This is he that lashes the poor author
the next day in the newspapers.
The Deaf Adder, or Surcla Echidna of Linnaeus. — Under
this head may be classed all that portion of the spectators
(for audience they properly are not), who, not finding the
first act of a piece answer to their preconceived notions of
what a first act should be, like Obstinate in John Bunyan,
positively thrust their fingers in their ears, that they may
not hear a word of what is coming, though perhaps the very
next act may be composed in a style as different as possible,
and be written quite to their own tastes. These adders
refuse to hear the voice of the charmer, because the tuning
of his instrument gave them offence.
I should weaiy you, and myself too, if I were to go
through all the classes of the serpent kind. Two qualities
are common to them all. They are creatures of remarkably
cold digestions, and chiefly haunt pits and low grounds.
I proceed with more pleasure to give you an account of
a club to which I have the honour to belong. There are
fourteen of us, who are all authors that have been once in
438 HISSING AT THE THEATRES.
our lives "what is called damned. We meet on the anni-
versaries of our respective nights, and make ourselves
merry at the expense of the public. The chief tenets
which distinguish our society, and which every man among
us is bound to hold for gospel, are, —
That the public, or mob, in all ages, have been a set of
blind, deaf, obstinate, senseless, illiterate savages. That no
man of genius, in his senses, would be ambitious of pleasing
such a capricious, ungrateful rabble. That the only legiti-
mate end of writing for them is to pick their pockets ; and,
that failing, we are at full liberty to vilify and abuse them
as much as ever we think fit.
That authors, by their affected pretences to humility,
which they made use of as a cloak to insinuate their
writings into the callous senses of the multitude, obtuse
to everything but the grossest flattery, have by degrees
made that great beast their master; as we may act sub-
mission to children till we are obliged to practise it in
earnest. That authors are and ought to be considered the
masters and preceptors of the public, and not vice versa.
That it was so in the days of Orpheus, Linus, and Musseus ;
and would be so again, if it were not that writers prove
traitors to themselves. That, in particular, in the days
of the first of those three great authors just mentioned,
audiences appear to have been perfect models of what
audiences should be ; for though, along with the trees and
the rocks and the wild creatures which he drew after him
to listen to his strains, some serpents doubtless came to
hear his music, it does not appear that any one among
them ever lifted up a dissentient voice. They knew what
was due to authors in those days. Now every stock and
stone turns into a serpent, and has a voice.
That the terms "courteous reader" and "candid audi-
tors," as having given rise to a false notion in those to
whom they were applied, as if they conferred upon them
some right, ivliich they cannot have, of exercising their judg-
ments, ought to be utterly banished and exploded.
These are our distinguishiug tenets. To keep up the
memory of the cause in which we suffered, as the ancients
CAPTAIN STABKEY. 439
sacrificed a goat, a supposed unliealthj'- animal, to iSscula-
pius, on our feast-niglits we cut up a goose, an animal
typical of the pojmlar voice, to the deities of Candour and
Patient Hearing. A zealous member of the society once
proposed that we should revive the obsolete luxury of
viper-broth; but, the stomachs of some of the company-
rising at the proposition, we lost the benefit of that highly
salutar-y and antidotal dish.
The privilege of admission to our club is strictly limited
to such as have been fairly damned. A piece that has met
with ever so little applause, that has but languished its
night or two, and then gone out, will never entitle its
author to a seat among us. An exception to our usual
readiness in conferring this privilege is in the case of a
writer, who, having been once condemned, writes again,
and becomes candidate for a second martyrdom. Simple
damnation we hold to be a merit ; but to be twice damned
we adjudge infamous. Such a one we utterly reject, and
blackball without a hearing : —
" The common damned shun his society."
Hoping that your publication of our regulations may be a
means of inviting some more members into our society, I
conclude this long letter.
I am, sir, yours,
Semel-Damnatus.
CAPTAIN STARKEY.
DEAR SIR, — I read your account of this unfortunate
being, and his forlorn piece of self-history,* with that
smile of half-interest which the annals of insignificance
* " Memoirs of the Life of Benjamin Starkey, late of London, but
now an inmate of the Freeman's Hospital in Newcastle. "Written by
himself. With a portrait of the author, and a fac-simile of his hand-
Avriting. Printed and sold by William Hall, Great Market, Newcastle."
1818. 12mo, pp. 14.
UO CAPTAIN STABKEY.
excite, till I came to where lie says, " I was bound appren-
tice to Mr. William Bird, an eminent writer, and teacher of
languages and mathematics," &c. ; when I started as one
does in the recognition of an old acquaintance in a sup-
posed stranger. This, then, was that Starkey of whom I
have heard my sister relate so many pleasing anecdotes ;
and whom, never having seen, I yet seem almost to re-
member. For nearly fifty years, she had lost all sight of
him; and, behold! the gentle usher of her youth, grown
into an aged beggar, dubbed with an opprobrious title to
which he had no pretensions ; an object and a May-game !
To what base pui-poses may we not return ! What may not
have been the meek creature's sufferings, what his wander-
ings, before he finally settled down in the comparative com-
fort of an old hospitaller of the almonry of Newcastle ? And
is poor Starkey dead ?
I was a scholar of that " eminent writer " that he speaks
of ; but Starkey had quitted the school about a year before
I came to it. Still the odour of his merits had left a
fragrancy upon the recollection of the elder pupils. The
schoolroom stands where it did, looking into a discoloured,
dingy garden in the passage leading from Fetter Lane into
Bartlett's Buildings. It is still a school, though the main
prop, alas ! has fallen so ingloriously ; and bears a Latin
inscription over the entrance in the lane, which was un-
known in our humbler times. Heaven knows what
" languages " were taught in it then ! I am sure that
neither my sister nor mj^self brought any out of it but a
little of our native English. By "mathematics," reader,
must be understood " ciphering." It was, in fact, a humble
day-school, at which reading and writing were taught to us
boys in the morning ; and the same slender erudition was
communicated to the girls, our sisters, &c., in the evening.
Now, Starkey presided, under Bird, over both establish-
ments. In my time, Mr. Cook, now or lately a respectable
singer and perfonner at Drury Lane Theatre, and nephew
to Mr. Bird, had succeeded to him. I well remember Bird.
He was a squat, corpulent, middle-sized man, with some-
thing of the gentleman about him, and that peculiar mild
CAPTAIN STABKEY. 441
tone — especially while lie was inflicting ptinishment — ■
which is so much more tenible to children than the
angriest looks and gestures. Whippings were not fre-
quent; but, when they took place, the correction was
performed in a private room adjoining, where we could
only hear the plaints, but saw nothing. This heightened
the decorum and the solemnity. But the ordinary chastise-
ment was the bastinado, a stroke or two on the palm with
that almost obsolete weapon now, — the ferule. A ferule
was a sort of flat ruler, widened, at the inflicting end, into
a shape resembling a pear, — but nothing like so sweet, —
with a delectable hole in the middle to raise blisters, like a
cupping-glass. I have an intense recollection of that dis-
used instniment of torture, and the malignancy, in propor-
tion to the apparent mildness, with which its strokes were
applied. The idea of a rod is accompanied with something
ludicrous; but by no process can I look back upon this
blister-raiser with anything but unmingled horror. To
make him look more formidable, — if a pedagogue had need
of these heightenings, — Bird wore one of those flowered
Indian gowns formerly in use with schoolmasters, the
strange figures upon which we used to interpret into hiero-
gtyphics of pain and sufiering. But, boyish fears ajDart,
Bird, I believe, was, in the main, a humane and judicious
master.
Oh, how I remember our legs wedged into those uncom-
fortable sloping desks, where we sat elbowing each other ;
and the injunctions to attain a free hand, unattainable
in that position; the first copy I wrote after, with its
moral lesson, " Art improves Nature ;" the still earlier pot-
hooks and the hangers, some traces of which I fear may yet
be apparent in this manuscript ; the truant looks side-long
to the garden, which seemed a mockery of our imprison-
ment ; the prize for best spelling which had almost turned
my head, and which, to this day, I cannot reflect upon
without a vanity, which I ought to bo ashamed of; our
little leaden inkstands, not separately subsisting, but sunk
into the desks; the bright, punctually - washed morning
fingers, darkening gradually with another and another
442 CAPTAIN STABKE7.
ink-spot ! What a world of little associated circumstances
pains, and pleasures, mingling their quotas of pleasure,
arise at the reading of those few simple words, — " Mr.
William Bird, an eminent writer, and teacher of languages
and mathematics, in Fetter Lane, Holborn !"
Poor Starlcey, when young, had that peculiar stamp of
old-fashionedness in his face which makes it impossible for
a beholder to predicate any particular age in the object.
You can scarce make a guess between seventeen and seven
and thirty. This antique cast always seems to promise ill-
luck and penury. Yet it seems he was not always the
abject thing he came to. My sister, who well remembers
him, can hardly forgive Mr. Thomas Eanson for making an
etching so unlike her idea of him when he was a youthful
teacher at Mr. Bird's school. Old age and poverty — a life-
long poverty, she thinks — could at no time have so effaced
the marks of native gentility which were once so visible in
a face otherwise strikingly ugly, thin, and care-worn. From
her recollections of him, she thinks that he would have
wanted bread before he would have begged or borrowed a
halfpenny. "If any of the girls," she says, "who were
my school-fellows, should be reading, through their aged
spectacles, tidings, from the dead, of their 3'outhful friend
{Starkey, they will feel a pang, as I do, at having teased his
gentle spirit." They were big girls, it seems — too old to
attend his instructions with the silence necessary ; and,
however old age and a long state of beggary seem to have
reduced his writing faculties to a state of imbecility, in
those days his language occasionally rose to the bold and
figurative ; for, when he was in despair to stop their chat-
tering, his ordinary phrase was, " Ladies, if you will not
hold your peace, not all the powers in heaven can make
yoa." Once he was massing for a day or two : he had run
away. A little, old, unhappy-looking man brought him
back, — it was his father, — and he did no business in the
school that day, but sat moping in a corner, with his hands
before his face ; and the giiis, his tormentors, in pity for his
case, for the rest of that day forbore to annoy him. " I had
been there but a few months," adds she, " when Star key,
A POFULAR FALLACY. 443
who was the chief instructor of ns girls, communicated to
us a profound secret, — that the tragedy of ' Cato ' was
shortly to be acted by the elder boys, and that we were to
be invited to the representation." That Starkey lent a
helping hand in fashioning the actors, she remembers ; and,
but for his unfortunate person, he might have had some dis-
tinguished part in the scene to enact. As it was, he had the
arduous task of prompter assigned to him, and his feeble
voice was heard clear and distinct, repeating the text during
the whole performance. She describes her recollection of
the cast of characters, even now, with a relish. ]\Iartia, by
the handsome Edgar Hickman, who afterwards went to
Africa, and of whom she never afterwards heard tidings ;
Lucia, by Master Walker, whose sister was her particular
friend ; Cato, by John Hunter, a masterly declaimer, but a
plain boy, and shorter by the head than his two sons in the
scene, &c. In conclusion, Starkey appears to have been one
of those mild spirits, which, not originally deficient in un-
derstanding, are crushed by penury into dejection and
feebleness. He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not
an ornament, to society, if fortune had taken him into a
very little fostering ; but, wanting that, be became a cap-
tain, — a ])y-word, — and lived and died a broken bulrush.
A POPULAE FALLACY,
THAT A DEFORMED PERSON JS A LORD.
AFTER a careful perusal of the most approved works that
treat of nobility, and of its origin in these realms in
particular, wo are left very much in the dark as to the
original patent in which this branch of it is recognised.
Neither Camden in his " Etymologic and Original of
Barons," nor Dugdale in his " Baronage of England," nor
Seldcn (a more exact and laborious inquirer than either) in
his " Titles of Honour," afford a glimpse of satisfaction
2 H
444 A FOFULAB FALLACY.
upon the subject. There is an heraldic term, indeed,
which seems to imply gentility, and the right to coat
armour (hut nothing further), in persons thus qualified.
But the sinister bend is more probably interpreted by the
best ^vl•iter.s on this science, of some irregularity of birth
than of bodily conformation. Nobility is either hereditary
or by creation, commonly called patent. Of the former
kind, the title in question cannot be, seeing that the notion
of it is limited to a personal distinction which does not
necessarily follow in the blood. Honours of this nature, as
Mr. Anstey very well observes, descend, moreover, in a
right line. It must be by patent, then, if anything. But
who can show it ? How comes it to be dormant ? Under
what king's reign is it patented ? Among the grounds of
nobility cited by the learned Mr. Ashmole, after " Services
in the Field or in the Council Chamber," he judiciously
sets down " Honours conferred by the sovereign out of
mere benevolence, or as favouring one subject rather than
another for some likeness or conformity observed (or but
supposed) in him to the royal nature ;" and instances the
graces showered upon Charles Brandon, who, " in his
goodly person being thought not a little to favour the port
and bearing of the king's own majesty, was by that sove-
reign, King Henry the Eighth, for some or one of these
respects, highly promoted and preferred." Here, if any-
where, we thought we had discovered a clue to our re-
tsearches. But after a painful investigation of the rolls and
records under the reign of Eichard the Third, or " Eichard
Crouchback," as he is more usually designated in the
chronicles, — from a traditionary stoop or gibbosity in that
part, — we do not find that that monarch conferred any such
lordships as here pretended, upon any subject or subjects,
on a simple plea of "conformity" in that respect to the
" roj'al nature." The posture of affairs, in those tumul-
tuous times preceding the battle of Bosworth, possibly left
him at no leisure to attend to such niceties. Further than
his reign, we have not extended our inquiries ; the kings
of England who preceded or followed him being generally
desciibed by historians to have been of straight and clean
A FOPULAR FALLACY. 445
limts, the "natural derivative," says Daniel,* "of high
blood, if not its primitive recommendation to such ennoble-
ment, as denoting strength and martial prowess, — the
qualities set most by in that fighting age." Another mo-
tive, which inclines us to scruple the validity of this claim,
is the remarkable fact, that none of the persons in whom
the right is sxipposed to be vested do ever insist upon it
themselves. There is no instance of any of them " suing
his patent," as the law books call it ; much less of his having
actually stepped up into his proper seat, as, so qualified, we
might expect that some of them would have had the spirit
to do, in the House of Lords. On the contrary, it seems to
be a distinction thrust upon them. " Their title of ' lord,' "
says one of their own body, speaking of the common people,
" I never much valued, and now I entirely despise ; and
yet they will force it upon me as an honour which they
have a right to bestow, and which I have none to refuse."f
Upon a dispassionate review of the subject, we are disposed
to believe that there is no right to the peerage incident to
mere bodily configuration ; that the title in dispute is merely
honorary, and depending upon the breath of the common
people, which in these realms is so far from the power of
conferring nobility, that the ablest constitutionalists have
agreed in nothing more unanimously than in the maxim,
that " the king is the sole fountain of honour."
* History of England, " Temporibus Edwardi Primi et sequentibus."
t Hay on Deformity.
2 H 2
UG
LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN WHOSE
EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED.
Dear Sir, — I send you a bantering " Epistle to an Old Gentleman
whoso Education is supposed to liave been neglected." Of course, it was
Migijested by some letters of your admirable Opium-Eater, the discon-
tinuance of which has caused so much regret to myself in common with
most of your readers. You will do me injustice by supposing that, in
the remotest degree, it was my intention to ridicule those papers. The
fact is, the most serious things may give rise to an innocent bm-lesque ;
and, the more serious they are, the titter they become for that purpose.
It is not to bo supposed that Charles Cotton did not entertain a very
high regard for Virgil, notwithstanding he travestied tliat poet. Your-
self can testify the deep respect I have always held for the profound
learning and penetrating genius of our friend. Nothing upon earth
would give me greater pleasure than to find that he has not lost sight of
his entertaining and instructive purpose.
I am, dear sir, yours and Ids sincerely,
Elia.
MY DEAE SIE, — The question whicli you have done
me the honour to propose to me, through the medium
of our common friend, Mr. Grierson, I shall endeavour to
answer with as much exactness as a limited observation
and expeiience can warrant.
You aslc, — or rather Mr. Grierson, in his own interesting
language, asks for you, — " Wliether a person at the age
of sixty-three, with no more proficiency than a tolerable
knowledge of most of the characters of the English alpha-
bet at first sight amounts to, by dint of persevering applica-
tion and good masters, — a docile and ingenuous disposition
on the part of the pupil always presupposed, — may hope
to arrive, within a presumable number of years, at that
degree of attainments which shall entitle the possessor to
the character, which you are on so many accounts justly
desirous of acquiring, of a learned man."
This is fairly and candidly stated, — only I could wish
that on one point you had been a little more explicit. In
the mean time, I will take it for granted, that by a
LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN. U7
" knowledge of the alphabetic characters " 3'ou confine
your meaning to the single powers only, as you are silent
on the subject of the diphthongs and harder combina-
tions.
Why, truly, sir, when I consider the vast circle of
sciences, — it is not here worth while to trouble you with
the distinction between leaming and science, which a
man must be understood to have made the tour of in these
days, before the world will be willing to concede to him
the title which you aspire to, — I am almost disposed to
reply to your inquiry by a direct answer in the negative.
However, where all cannot be compassed, a great deal
that is truly valuable may be accomplished. I am unwill-
ing to throw out any remarks that should have a tendency
to damp a hopeful genius ; but I must not, in fairness, con-
ceal from you that you have much to do. The conscious-
ness of difficulty is sometimes a spur to exertion. Eome —
or rather, my dear sir, to borrow an illustration from a
place as yet more familiar to you, Eumford — Rumford was
not built in a day.
Your mind as yet, give me leave to tell you, is in the
state of a sheet of white paper. We must not blot or blur
it over too hastily. Or, to use an opposite simile, it is like
a piece of parchment all bescrawled and bescribbled over
with characters of no sense or import, which we must care-
fully erase and remove before we can make way for the
authentic charactoi-s or impresses which are to be substi-
tuted in their stead by the corrective hand of science.
Your mind, my dear sir, again, resembles that same
parchment, which we will suppose a little hardened by
time and disuse. We may apply the characters ; but are
we sure that the ink will sink ?
You are in the condition of a traveller that has all his
journey to begin. And, again, you are worse ofi" than the
traveller which I have supposed ; for you have already lost
your way.
You have much to learn, which you have never been
taught ; and more, I fear, to unlearn, which you have been
taught erroneously. You have hitherto, I dare say, ima-
44S LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN
gined that the sun moves round the earth. ^Vhen you
shall have mastered the true solar system, you -will have
quite a different theory upon that point, I assure you. I
mention but this instance. Your own experience, as know-
ledge advances, will furnish you with many parallels.
I can scarcely approve of the intention, which Mr. Grier-
son informs me you have contemplated, of entering yourself
at a common seminary, and working your way up fi'om the
lower to the higher forms with the children. I see more
to admire in the modesty than in the expediency of such a
resolution. I own I cannot reconcile myself to the spec-
tacle of a gentleman at your time of life, seated, as must be
your case at first, below a tyro of four or five ; for at that
early age the rudiments of education usually commence in
this country. I doubt whether more might not be lost in
the point of fitness than would be gained in the advantages
which you propose to yourself by this scheme.
You say you stand in need of emulation ; that this incite-
ment is nowhere to be had but at a public school ; that you
should be more sensible of your progress by comparing it
with the daily progress of those around you. But have you
considered the nature of emulation, and how it is sustained
at these tender years which you would have to come in
competition with ? I am afraid yoii are dreaming of
academic prizes and distinctions. Alas ! in the univer-
sity for which you are preparing, the highest medal
would be a silver penny ; and you must graduate in nuts
and oranges.
I know that Peter, the Great Czar — or Emperor — of
Muscovy, submitted himself to the discipline of a dockyard
at Deptford, that he might learn, and convey to his coun-
trymen, the noble art of ship-building. You are old enough
to remember him, or at least the talk about him. I call to
mind also other great princes, who, to instruct themselves
in the theory and practice of war, and set an example of
subordination to their subjects, have condescended to enrol
themselves as private soldiers ; and, passing through the
successive ranks of corporal, quartermaster, and the rest,
have served their way up to the station at which most
WHOSE UDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED. 449
princes are willing enough to set out, — of general and
commander-in-chief over their own forces. But — besides
that there is oftentimes great sham and pretence in their
show of mock humility — the competition which they
stooped to was with their coevals, however inferior to
them in birth. Between ages so very disparate as those
which you contemplate, I fear there can no salutary emu-
lation subsist.
Again : in the other alternative, could you submit to the
ordinary reproofs and discipline of a day-school ? Could
you bear to be corrected for your faults ? Or how would it
look to see you put to stand, as must be the case sometimes,
in a corner ?
I am afraid the idea of a public school in your circum-
stances must be given up.
But is it impossible, my dear sir, to find some person of
your own age, — if of the other sex, the more agreeable,
perhaps, — whose information, like your own, has rather
lagged behind his years, who should be willing to set out
from the same point with yoxxrself ; to undergo the same
tasks ? — thus at once inciting and sweetening each other's
labours in a sort of friendly rivalry. Such a one, I think,
it would not be diificult to find in some of the western parts
of this island, — about Dartmoor, for instance.
Or what if, from your own estate, — that estate, which,
unexpectedly acquired so late in life, has inspired into you
this generous thirst after knowledge, — you were to select
some elderly peasant, that might best be spared from the
land, to come and begin his education with you, that you
might till, as it were, your minds together, — one whose
heavier progress might invite, without a fear of discouraging,
your emulation ? We might then see — starting from an
equal post — the difference of the clownish and the gentle
blood.
A private education, then, or such a oue as I have been
describing, being deteitnined on, we must in the next place
look out for a preceptor ; for it will be some time before
either of you, left to yourselves, will be able to assist the
other to any great purpose in his studies.
450 LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN
And now, my dear sir, if, in describing such a tutor as I
have iuiagined for you, I use a style a little above the
familiar one in which I have hitherto chosen to address
3''ou, the nature of the subject must be my apology. Diffi-
cile est de scientiis inscienter loqui ; which is as much as to
say, that, " in treating of scientific matters, it is difficult to
avoid the use of scientific terms." But I shall endeavour
to be as plain as possible. I am not going to present you
with the ideal of a pedagogue as it may exist in my fancy,
or has possibly been realized in the persons of Buchanan
and Busby. Something less than perfection will serve our
turn. The scheme which I propose in this first or intro-
ductory letter has reference to the first four or five years of
your education only ; and in enumerating the qualifications
of him that should undertake the direction of your studies,
I shall rather point out the minimum, or least, that I shall
require of him, than trouble you in the search of attain-
ments neither common nor necessary to our immediate
purpose.
lie should be a man of deep and extensive knowledge.
So much at least is indispensable. Something older than
yourself, I could wish him, because years add reverence.
To his age and great learning, he should be blessed with
a temper and a patience willing to accommodate itself to
the imperfections of the slowest and meanest capacities.
Such a one, in foi*mer days, Mr. Hartlib appears to have
been ; and such, in our days, I take Mr. Grierson to be :
but our friend, you know, unhappily, has other engage-
ments. I do not demand a consummate grammarian ; but
he must be a thorough master of vernacular orthography,
with an insight into the accenttialities and punctualities
of modern Saxon, or English. He must be competently
instructed (or how shall he instruct you ?) in the tetra-
logy, or four first rules, upon which not only arithmetic,
but geometry, and the pure mathematics themselves, are
grounded. I do not require that he should have measui'ed
the globe with Cook or Ortelius ; but it is desirable that
he should have a general knowledge (I do not mean a
very nice or pedantic one) of the great division of the
WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED. 451
earth into four parts, so as to teach you readily to name
the quarters. He must have a genius capable in some
degree of soaring to the upper element, to deduce from
thence the not much dissimilar computation of the car-
dinal points, or hinges, upon which those invisible pheno-
mena, which naturalists agree to term toinds, do perpetually
shift and turn. He must instruct you, in imitation of the
old Orphic fragments (the mention of which has possibly
escaped you), in numeric and harmonious responses, to
deliver the number of solar revolutions within which each
of the twelve periods, into which the Aiinus Vulgaris, or
common year, is divided, doth usually complete and ter-
minate itself. The intercalaries and other subtle problems
he will do well to omit, till riper years and course of study
shall have rendered you more capable thereof. He must
be capable of embracing all history, so as, from the count-
less myriads of individual men who have peopled this
globe of earth, — for it is a globe, — by comparison of their
respective births, lives, deaths, fortunes, conduct, prowess,
&c., to pronounce, and teach you to pronounce, dogmatically
and catechetically, who was the richest, who was the
strongest, who was the wisest, who was the meekest, man
that ever lived ; to the facilitation of which solution, you
will readily conceive, a smattering of biography would in
no inconsiderable degree conduce. Leaving the dialects of
men (in one of which I shall take leave to svippose you by
this time at least superficially instituted), you will learn
to ascend with him to the contemplation of that unarticu-
lated language which was before the written tongue ; and,
with the aid of the elder Phrygian or jEsopic key, to
interpret the sounds by which the animal tribes com-
municate their minds, evolving moral instruction with
delight from the dialogue of cocks, dogs, and foxes.
Or, marrying theology with verse, from whose mixture a
beautiful and healthy offspring may be expected, in your
own native accents (but purified), you will keep time to-
gether to the profound harpings of the more modern or
Wattsian hymnics.
Thus far I have ventured to conduct you to a " hill-side,
452 AMBIGUITIES FROM PROPER NAMES.
whence you may discern the right path of a virtuous and
noble education ; laborious, indeed, at the first ascent, but
else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospects and
melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus
was not more charming." *
With my best respects to Mr. Grierson, when you see
him,
I remain, dear sir, your obedient servant,
Elia.
ON THE AMBIGUITIES ARISING FEOM
PROPEE NAMES.
HOW oddly it happens that the same sound shall sug-
gest to the minds of two persons hearing it ideas the
most opposite ! I was conversing, a few years since, with
a young friend upon the subject of poetry, and particularly
that species of it which is known by the name of the
epithalamium. I ventured to assert that the most perfect
specimen of it in our language was the " Epithalamium"
of Spenser upon his own marriage.
My young gentleman, who has a smattering of taste,
and would not willingly be thought ignorant of anything
remotely connected with the belles-lettres, expressed a degree
of surprise, mixed with mortification, that he should never
have heard of this poem ; Spenser being an author with
whose writings ho thought himself peculiarly conversant.
I offered to show him the poem in the fine folio copy of
the poet's works which I have at home. He seemed pleased
with the ofier, though the mention of the folio seemed
again to puzzle him. But, presently after, assuming a
grave look, ho compassionately muttered to himself, " Poor
Spencer !"
There was something in the tone with which he spoke
these words that struck me not a little. It was more like
the accent with which a man bemoans some recent calamity
* Milton's " Tractate on Education," addressed to IMr. Hartlib.
ELIA ON " CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNK ABD." 453
that has happened to a friend, than that tone of sober grief
with which we lament the sorrows of a person, however
excellent and however grievous his afflictions may have
been, who has been dead more than two centuries. I had
the cui-iosity to inquire into the reasons of so uncommon
an ejaculation. My young gentleman, with a more solemn
tone of pathos than before, repeated, " Poor Spencer !" and
added, " He has lost his wife !"
My astonishment at this assertion rose to such a height,
that I began to think the brain of my young friend must
be cracked, or some unaccountable reverie had gotten pos-
session of it. But, upon further explanation, it appeared
that the word " Spenser" — which to you or me, reader, in
a conversation upon poetry too, would naturally have
called up the idea of an old poet in a ruff, one Edmund
Spenser, that flourished in the days of Queen Elizabeth,
and wi'ote a poem called " The Fairy Queen," with " The
Shepherd's Calendar," and many more verses besides — did,
in the mind of my young friend, excite a very different and
quite modern idea ; namely, that of the Honourable William
Spencer, one of the living ornaments, if I am not misin-
formed, of this present poetical era, a.d. 1811.
ELIA ON HIS "CONFESSIONS OF A
DEUNKAED."
MANY are the sayings of Elia, painful and frequent his
lucubrations, set forth for the most part (such his
modesty !) without a name ; scattered about in obscure
periodicals and forgotten miscellanies. From the dust of
some of these it is our intention occasionally to revive a
tract or two that shall seem worthy of a better fate,
especially at a time like the present, when the pen of our
industrious contributor, engaged in a laborious digest of
his recent Continental tour, may haply want the leisure
to expatiate in more miscellaneous speculations. We have
been induced, in the first instance, to reprint a thing which
454 ELIA ON " COXFESSIOXS OF A DBUNEARD."
he put forth in a friend's volume some years since, entitled
'• The Confessions of a Drunkai'd," seeing that Messieurs
the Quarterly Reviewers have chosen to embellish their
last dry pages with fruitful quotations therefrom ; adding,
from their peculiar brains, the gi-atuitous affirmation, that
they have reason to believe that the describer (in his
delineations of a drunkard, forsooth !) partly sat for his
own pictm-e. The tnith is, that our friend had been read-
ing among the essays of a contemporary, who has per-
versely been confounded with him, a paper, in which Edax
(or the Great Eater) humorously complaineth of an inor-
dinate appetite ; and it struck him that a better paper —
of deeper interest and wider usefulness — might be made
out of the imagined experiences of a Great Drinker. Ac-
cordingly he set to work, and, with that mock fervour and
counterfeit earnestness with which he is too apt to over-
realize his descriptions, has given us — a frightful picture
indeed, but no more resembling the man Elia than the
fictitious Edax may be supposed to identify itself with Mr.
L., its author. It is, indeed, a compound extracted out of
his long observations of the effects of drinking upon all the
world about him ; and this accumulated mass of misery he
hath centred (as the custom is with judicious essayists) in
a single figure. We deny not that a portion of his own
experiences may have passed into the picture (as who,
that is not a washy fellow, but must at some times have
felt the after-ojDeration of a too-generous cup ?) ; but then
how heightened ! how exaggerated ! how little within the
sense of the Eeview, where a part, in their slanderous
usage, must be understood to stand for the whole ! But
it is useless to expostulate with this Quarterly slime,
brood of Nilus, wateiy heads with hearts of jelly, spawned
under the sign of Aquarius, incapable of Bacchus, and
therefrom cold, washy, spiteful, bloodless. Elia shall
string them up one day, and show their colours, — or,
rather how colourless and vapid the whole fry, — when
he putteth forth his long-promised, but unaccountably
hitherto delayed, " Confessions of a Water-drinker."
455
THE LAST PEACH.
I AM the miserablest man living. Give me counsel;
dear Editor. I was l)red up in the strictest prin-
ciples of honesty, and have passed my life in punctual
adherence to them. Integrity might be said to be in-
grained in onr family. Yet I live in constant fear of one
day coming to the gallows.
Till the latter end of last autumn, I never experienced
these feelings of self-mistrust, which ever since have im-
bittered my existence. From the apprehension of that
unfortimate man,* whose stoiy began to make so great an
impression upon the public aboiit that time, I date my
horrors. I never can get it out of my head that I shall
some time or other commit a forgery, or do some equally
vile thing. To make matters worse, I am in a bankino--
house. I sit surrounded with a cluster of bank-notes.
These were formerly no more to me than meat to a
butcher's dog. They are now as toads and aspics. I
feel all day like one situated amidst gins and pitfalls.
SovereigTis, which I once took such pleasure in counting
out, and scraping up with my little tin shovel (at which I
was the most expert in the banking-house), now scald mv
hands. AYhen I go to sign my name, I set down that of
another person, or wi-ite my own in a counterfeit character.
I am beset with temptations without motive. I want no
more wealth than I possess. A more contented being than
myself, as to money matters, exists not. What should I fear ?
AVhen a child, I was once let loose, by favour of a noble
man's gardener, into his lordship's magnificent frait-garden
with full leave to pull the currants and the gooseberries ;
only I was interdicted from touching the wall-fruit. In-
deed, at that season (it was the end of autumn), there was
little left. Only on the south wall (can I forget the hot
feel of the brick- work ?) lingered the one last peach. Now,
peaches are a fruit which I always had, and still have, an
almost utter aversion to. There is something to my palate
* Fauntlerov.
456 THE LAST PEACH.
singularly harsh and repulsive in the flavour of them. I
know not by what demon of contradiction inspired, but I
Avas haunted with an irresistible desire to pluck it. Tear
mj'self as often as I would from the spot, I found myself
still recurring to it; till, maddening with desire (desire I
cannot call it), with wilfulness rather, — without appetite,
— against appetite, I may call it, — in an evil hour I reached
out my hand, and plucked it. Some few raindrops just
then fell ; the sky (from a bright day) became overcast ;
and I was a type of our first parents, after the eating of
that ftital fruit. I felt myself naked and ashamed, stripped
of my virtue, spiritless. The downy fruit, whose sight
rather than savour had tempted me, dropped from my hand
never to be tasted. x\ll the commentators in the world
cannot persuade me but that the Hebrew word, iij the
second chapter of Genesis, translated " apple," should be
rendered "peach." Only this way can I reconcile that
mysterious story.
Just such a child at thirty am I among the cash and
valuables, longing to pluck, without an idea of enjoyment
further. I cannot reason myself out of these fears : I dare
not laugh at them. I was tenderly and lovingly brought
up. What then ? Who that in life's entrance had seen
the babe F , from the lap stretching out his little fond
mouth to catch the maternal kiss, could have predicted, or
as much as imagined, that life's very different exit ? The
sight of my own fingers torments me ; they seem so admi-
rably constructed for — pilfering. Then that jugular vein
which I have in common ; in an emphatic sense may
I say with David, I am " fearfully made." All m}' mirth is
poisoned by these unhappy suggestions. If, to dissipate
reflection, I hum a tune, it changes to the " Lamentations
of a Sinner." My very dreams are tainted. I awake with
a shocking feeling of my hand in some j^ocket.
Advise me, dear Editor, on this painful heart-malady.
Tell me, do you feel anything allied to it in yourself? Do
you never feel an itching, as it were, — a daciylomania, — or
am I alone ? You have my honest confession. My next
may appear from Bow Street. Suspensukus.
457
EEFLECTIONS IN THE PILLOEY.
About the year 18 — , one R d, a respectable London merchant
(since dead), stood in the pillory for some alleged fraud upon the
revenue. Among his papers were found the following " Reflections,"
which we liave obtained by favour of our friend Elia, who knew him
well, and had heard him describe the train of his feelings, upon that
trying occasion, almost in the words of the manuscript. Elia speaks of
him as a man (with the exception of the peccadillo aforesaid) of singular
integrity in all his private dealings, possessing great suavity of manner,
with a certain turn for humour. As our object is to present human
nature under every possible circumstance, we do not thiulv that we shall
sully our pages by inserting it. — Editor.
Scene, — Opposite the Royal Exchange.
Time, — Twelc-e to One, Noon.
KETCH, my good fellow, you have a neat hand. Prithee
adjust this new collar to my neck gingerly. I am
not used to these wooden cravats. There, softly, softly.
That seems the exact point between ornament and stran-
gulation. A thought looser on this side. Now it will do.
And have a care, in turning me, that I present my aspect
due vertically. I now face the orient. In a quarter of an
hour I shift southward, — do you mind ? — and so on till I
face the east again, travelling with the sun. No half-points,
I beseech you, — N. N. b}'" W., or any such elaborate niceties.
They become the shipman's card, but not this mystery.
Now leave me a little to my own reflections.
Bless us, what a company is assembled in honour of me I
How grand I stand here ! I never felt so sensibly before
the effect of solitude in a crowd. I muse in solemn silence
upon that vast miscellaneous rabble in the pit there. From
my private box I contemplate, with mingled j^ity and
wonder, the gaping curiosity of those underlings. There are
my Whitechapel supporters. Eosemary Lane has emptied
herself of the very flower of her citizens to grace my show.
Duke's Place sits desolate. What is there in my face, that
458 REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY.
strangers sliould come so far frora the east to gaze upon it !
[Here an egg narroivhj misses lnm.~\ That offering was well
meant, bnt not so cleanly executed. By the tricklings, it
should not be either myrrh or frankincense. Spare your
presents, my friends : I am noways mercenary. I desire no
missive tokens of your approbation. I am past those valen-
tines. Bestow these coffins of untimely chickens upon
mouths that water for them. Comfort your addle spouses
with them at home, and stop the mouths of your brawling
brats with such 011a Podridas : they have need of them.
[J. hide is let fly.'] Disease not, I pray you, nor dismantle
your rent and ragged tenements, to furnish me with archi-
tectural decorations, which I can excuse. This fragment
might have stopped a flaw against snow comes. [A coal
flies.] Cinders are dear, gentlemen. This nubbling might
have helped the pot boil, when your dirty cuttings from
the shambles at three-ha'pence a pound shall stand at a cold
simmer. Now, south about. Ketch. I would enjoy Australian
popularity.
What, my friends from over the water ! Old benchers —
flies of a day — ephemeral Eomans — welcome ! Doth the
sight of me draw souls from limbo ? Can it dispeople
purgatory ? — Ha !
What am I, or what was my father's house, that I should
thus be set up a spectacle to gentlemen and others ? Why
are all faces, like Persians at the sunrise, bent singly on
mine alone ? It was wont to be esteemed an ordinary vis-
nomy, a quotidian merely. Doubtless these assembled
myriads discern some traits of nobleness, gentility, breeding,
which hitherto have escaped the common observation, —
some intimations, as it were, of wisdom, valour, piety, and so
forth. My sight dazzles ; and, if I am not deceived by the
too-familiar pressure of this strange neckcloth that envelops
it, my countenance gives out lambent glories. For some
painter now to take me in the lucky point of expression ! —
the posture so convenient ! — the head never shifting, but
standing quiescent in a sort of natural frame. But these
artisans require a westerly aspect. Ketch, turn me.
Something of St. James's air in these my new friends.
REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLOEY. 459
How my prospects sliift and brighten ! Now, if Sir Thomas
Lawrence be anywhere in that group, his fortune is made
for ever, I think I see some one taking ont a crayon. I
will compose my whole face to a smile, which yet shall not
so predominate but that gravity and gaiety shall contend,
as it were, — you understand mo? I will work up my
thoughts to some mild rapture, — a gentle enthusiasm, —
which the artist may transfer, in a manner, warm to the
canvas. I will inwardly apostrophise my tabernacle.
Delectable mansion, hail! House not made of every
wood ! Lodging that pays no rent ; airy and commodious ;
which, owing no windoAv-tax, art yet all casement, out of
which men have such pleasure in peering and overlooking,
that they will sometimes stand an hour together to enjoy
thy prospects ! Cell, recluse fi'om the vulgar! Quiet re-
tirement from the great Babel, yet affording sufficient
glimpses into it ! Pulpit, that instructs without note or
sermon -book; into which the preacher is inducted without
tenth or first-fruit ! Throne, unshared and single, that dis-
dainest a Brentford competitor ! Honour without co-rival I
Or hearest thou, rather, magnificent theatre, in which the
spectator comes to see and to be seen ? From thy giddj-
heights I look down upon the common herd, who stand with
eyes upturned, as if a winged messenger hovered over them ;
and mouths open, as if they expected manna. I feel, I feel,
the true episcopal yearnings. Behold in me, my flock, your
true overseer ! What though I cannot lay hands, because
my own are laid ; yet I can mutter benedictions. True
otium cum clignitate ! Proud Pisgah eminence ! pinnacle
sublime ! Pillory ! 'tis thee I sing ! Thou younger
brother to the gallows, without his rough and Esau palms,
that with ineffable contempt surveyest beneath thee the
grovelling stocks, which claim presumptuously to be of
thy great race ! Let that low wood know that thou art far
higher born. Let that domicile for groundling rogues and
base earth-kissing varlets envy thy preferment, not seldom
fated to be the wanton baiting-house, the temporary retreat^
of poet and of patriot. Shades of Bastwick and of Prj'nne
hover over thee, — Defoe is there, and more greatly daring
2i
460 CUFIDS EEVESGE.
Shebbeare, — from their (little more elevated) stations tbey
look down with recognitions. Ketch, turn me,
I now veer to the north. Open yonr widest gates, thou
proud Exchange of London, that I may look in as proudly !
Gresham's wonder, hail ! I stand upon a level with all
your kings. They and I, from equal heights, with equal
superciliousness, o'erlook the plodding money-hunting tribe
l)elow, who, busied in their sordid speculations, scarce elevate
their eyes to notice your ancient, or my recent, grandeur.
The second Charles smiles on me from three pedestals ! *
He closed the Exchequer : I cheated the Excise. Equal
our darings, equal be our lot.
Are those the quarters ? 'tis their fatal chime. That the
ever--o-inged hours would but stand still! but T must descend,
■ — descend from this dream of greatness. Stay, stay, a little
while, importunate hour-hand ! A moment or two, and I
shall walk on foot with the undistinguished many. The
clock speaks one. I return to common life. Ketch, let me
out.
CUPID'S EEYEXGE.
T EOXTIUS, Duke of Lycia, who in times past had boiTie
J_J the character of a wise and just governor, and was en-
deared to all ranks of his subjects, in his latter days fell
into a sort of dotage, which manifested itself in an extra-
vagant fondness for his daughter Hidaspes. This young-
maiden, with the Prince Leucippus, her brother, were the
only remembrances left to him of a deceased and beloved
consort. For her, nothing was thought too precious. Exist-
ence was of no value to him but as it afforded opportunities
* A statue of Charles II., by the elder Gibber, adorns the front of the
Exchange. He stands also on high, in the train of his crowned ancestors,
in his proper order, icitliin that building. But the merchants of London,
in a superfetation of loyaltj', have, Avithin a few years, caused to be
erected another effigy of him on the ground in the centre of the interior.
We do not hear that a fourth is in contemplation.
CUFIL'S EEVEXGE. 4G1
of gratifying her wishes. To be instrumental in relieving
her from the least little pain or grief, he would have
lavished his treasures to the giving away of the one-half of
his dukedom.
All this deference on the part of the parent had yet no
power upon the mind of the daughter to move her at any
time to solicit any unbecoming suit, or to disturb the even
tenor of her thoughts. The humility and dutifulness of
her carriage seemed to keep pace with his apparent willing-
ness to release her from the obligations of either. She
might have satisfied her wildest humours and capiices ;
but, in tnith, no such troublesome guests foimd harbour in
the bosom of the quiet and unaspiring maiden.
Thus far the prudence of the princess sei-ved to counter-
act any ill effects which this ungovernable partiality in a
parent was calculated to produce in a less virtuous nature
than Hidaspes' ; and this foible of the duke's, so long as no
evil resulted from it, was passed over by the courtiers as a
piece of harmless frenzy.
But upon a solemn day, — a sad one, as it proved for
Lycia, — when the returning anniversary of the princess's
birth was kept with extraordinary rejoicings, the infatuated
father set no bounds to his folly, but would have his sub-
jects to do homage to her for that day, as to their natural
sovereign ; as if he, indeed, had been dead, and she, to the
exclusion of the male succession, was become the rightful
iTiler of Lycia. He saluted her by the style of Duchess ;
and with a terrible oath, in the presence of his nobles, he
confirmed to her the grant of all things whatsoever that she
should demand on that day. and for the six next following;
and if she should ask anything, the execution of which
must be deferred until after his death, he pronounced a
dreadful curse upon his son and successor, if he failed tu see
to the performance of it.
Thus encouraged, the princess stepped forth with a
modest boldness ; and, as if assured of no denial, spake as
follows.
But, before we acquaint you with the purport of her
speech, we must premise, that in the land of Lycia, which
2 I 2
462 CUFIB'S REVENGE.
was at that time pagan, above all their other gods the inha-
bitants did in an especial manner adore the deity who was
supposed to have influence in the disposing of people's
affections in love. Him, by the name of God Cupid, they
feigned to be a heautiful hoy, and icinged ; as indeed, between
young persons, these frantic passions are usually least
under constraint ; while the wings might signify the haste
with which these ill-judged attachments are commonly
dissolved, and do indeed go away as lightly as they come,
flying away in an instant to light upon some newer fancy.
They painted him hlindfolded, because these silly affections
of lovers make them blind to the defects of the beloved
object, which every one is quick-sighted enough to discover
but themselves ; or because love is for the most part led
blindly, rather than directed by the open eye of the judg-
ment, in the hasty choice of a mate. Yet with that incon-
sistency of attributes with which the heathen people com-
monly over-complimented their deities, this blind love, this
Cupid, they figured with a bow and arrows ; and, being
sightless, they yet feigned him to be a notable archer and
an tmerring marksman. No heart was supposed to be
proof against the point of his inevitable dart. By such
incredible fictions did these poor pagans make a shift to
excuse their vanities, and to give a sanction to their irre-
gular affections, under the notion that love was irresist-
ible; whereas, in a well-regulated mind, these amorous
conceits either find no place at all, or, having gained a
footing, are easily stifled in the beginning by a wise and
manly resolution.
This frenzy in the people had long been a source of
disquiet to the discreet princess ; and many wei'e the con-
ferences she had held with the virtuous prince, her brother,
as to the best mode of taking off the minds of the Lycians
from this vain superstition. An occasion, furnished by the
blind grant of the old duke, their father, seemed now to
present itself.
The courtiers then, being assembled to hear the demand
which tlie princess should make, began to conjecture, each
one according to the bent of his own disposition, what the
CUriD'S REVENGE. 4C3
tiling would he that she should ask for. One said, " Kow
surely she will ask to have the disposal of the revenues of
some wealthy province, to lay them out — as was the man-
ner of Eastern princesses — in costly dresses and jewels be-
coming a lady of so great expectancies." Another thought
that she Avould seek an extension of power, as women
naturally love rule and dominion. But the most part were
in hope that she was about to beg the hand of some neigh-
bour prince in marriage, who, by the wealth and contiguity
of his dominions, might add strength and safety to the
realm of Lycia, But in none of these things was the ex-
pectation of these crafty and worldly-minded courtiers
gratified ; for llidaspes, first making lowl}^ obeisance to
her father, and thanking him on bended knees for so great
grace conferred upon her, — according to a plan preconcerted
with Leucippus, — made suit as follows : —
" Your loving care of me, O princely father ! by which
in my tenderest age you made up to me for the loss of a
mother at those years when I was scarcel}^ able to compre-
hend the misfortune, and your bounties to me ever since,
have left me nothing to ask for myself, as wanting and
desiring nothing. But, for the people whom you govern,
I beg and desire a boon. It is known to all nations, that
the men of Lycia arc noted for a vain and fruitless super-
stition, — the more hateful as it bears a show of true reli-
gion, but is indeed nothing more than a self-pleasing and
bold wantonness. Many ages before this, when every man
had taken to himself a trade, as hating idleness far worse
than death, some one that gave himself to sloth and wine,-
finding himself by his neighbours rebuked for his unpro-
fitable life, framed to himself a god, whom he pretended to
obey in his dishonesty; and, for a name, he called him
Cupid. This god of merely man's creating — as the nature
of man is ever credulous of any vice which takes part with
his dissolute conditions — quickly found followers enough.
They multiplied in every age, especially among your
Lycians, who to this day remain adorea-s of this drowsy
deity, who certainly was first invented in drink, as sloth
and luxury are commonly the first movers in these idle
iGi CUFID'S BEVENGE.
love-passions. This winged hoy — for so tlioy fancy him' — •
has his sacrifices, his loose images set up in the land,
through all the villages ; nay, yoi;r own sacred palace is
not exempt from them, to the scandal of sound devotion,
and dishonour of the true deities, which are only they who
give good gifts to man, — as Ceres, who gives us corn ; the
planter of the olive, Pallas ; Neptune, who directs the
track of ships over the great ocean, and binds distant lands
together in friendly commerce ; the inventor of medicine
and music, Apollo ; and the cloud-compelling Thunderer of
Olympus : whereas the gifts of this idle deity — if indeed
he have a being at all out of the brain of his frantic wor-
shippers — usually prove destructive and pernicious. My
suit, then, is, that this unseemly idol throughout the land
be plucked down, and cast into the fire ; and that the
adoring of the same may bo prohibited on pain of death to
any of your subjects henceforth found so ofiending."
Leontius, startled at this unexpected demand from the
princess, with tears besought her to ask some wiser thing,
and not to bring down upon herself and him the indigna-
tion of so great a god.
" There is no such god as you dream of," said then Leu-
cippus boldly, who had hitherto forborne to second the
petition of the princess ; *' but a vain opinion of him has
tilled the land with love and wantonness. Every young
man and maiden, that feel the least desire to one another,
dare in no case to suppress it ; for they think it to be Cupid's
motion, and that he is a god !"
Thus pressed by the solicitations of both his children,
and fearing the oath which he had taken, in an evil hour
the misgiving father consented ; and a proclamation w^as
sent throughoiit all the provinces for the putting-down of
the idol, and suppression of the established Cupid-worship.
Notable, 3'ou may be sure, was the stir made in all places
among the priests, and among the artificers in gold, in
silver, or in marble, who made a gainful trade, either in
serving at the altar, or iii the manufacture of the images
no longer to be tolerated. The cry was clamorous as that
at Ephesus when a kindred idol was in danger ; for " great
CUPID'S REVENGE. 465
liad been Cupid of the Lycians." Nevertheless, the power
of the duke, backed by the power of his more popular
children, prevailed ; and the destruction of every vestige of
the old religion was but as the work of one day throughoxit
the country.
And now, as the pagan chronicles of Lycia inform us,
the displeasure of Cupid went out, — the displeasure of a
gTcat god, — flying through all the dukedom, and sowing
evils. But upon the first movers of the profanation his
angry hand lay heaviest ; and there was imposed upon
them a strange misery, that all might know that Cupid's
revenge was mighty. With his arrows hotter than plagues,
or than his own anger, did he fiercely right himself; nor
could the prayers of a few concealed worshippers, nor the
smoke arising from an altar here and there which had es-
caped the general overthrow, avert his wralh, or make him
to cease from vengeance, until he had made of the once-
flourishing country of Lycia a most wretched land. He
sent no famines, he let loose no cruel wild beasts among
them, — inflictions with one or other of which the rest of
the Olympian deities are fabled to have visited tlie nations
under their displeasure, — but took a nearer course of his
own ; and his invisible arrows went to the moral heart of
Lycia, infecting and filling court and country with desires
of unlawful marriages, unheard-of and monstrous affections,
prodigious and misbecoming unions.
The symptoms were first visible in the changed bosom
of Hidaspes. This exemplary maiden, — whose cold mo-
desty, almost to a failing, had discoui'aged the addresses of
so many princely suitors that had sought her hand in mar-
riage, — by the venom of this inward pestilence, came on a
sudden to cast eyes of affection upon a mean and deformed
creature, Zoilus by name, who was a dwarf, and lived
about the palace, the common jest of the courtiers. In her
besotted eyes he was grown a goodly gentleman; and to
her maidens, when any of them reproached him. with the
defect of his shape in her hearing, she would reply, that
" to them, indeed, he might appear defective, and unlike a
man, as, indeed, no man was like unto him; for in form
4GG CUPID'S REVENGE.
and complexion he was beyond painting. He is like," she
said, " to nothing that we have seen ; yet he doth resemble
Apollo, as I liave fancied him, when, rising in the east, he
bestirs himself, and shakes daylight from his hair." And,
overcome with a passion which Avas heavier than she could
bear, she confessed herself a wretched creature, and im-
plored forgiveness of God Cupid, whom she had provoked ;
and, if possible, that he would grant it to her that she
might enjoy her love. Kay, she would court this piece of
deformity to his face ; and when the wretch, supposing it
to be done in mockery, has said that he could wish himself
more ill-shaped than he Avas, so it would contribiite to make
her grace merry, she would reply, " Oh ! think not that I
jest ; unless it be a jest not to esteem my life in comparison
with thine ; to hang a thousand kisses in an hour upon
those lips ; xmless it be a jest to vow that I am willing to
become your wife, and to take obedience upon me." And
by his " own white hand," taking it in hers, — so strong-
was the delusion, — she besought him to swear to marry
her.
The term had not yet expired of the seven days within
which the doting duke had sworn to fulfil her will, when,
in pursuance of this frenxj', she presented herself before
her father, leading in the dwarf by the hand, and, in the
face of all the courtiers, solemnly demanding his hand in
marriage. And, when the apeish creature made show of
blushing at the unmerited honour, she, to comfort him,
bade him not to be ashamed ; for, " in her eyes, he was
worth a kingdom."
And now, too late, did the fond father repent him of his
dotage. But when by no importunity he could prevail
upon her to desist from her suit, for his oath's sake he
must needs consent to the marriage. But the ceremony
was no sooner, to the derision of all present, performed,
than, with the just feelings of an outraged parent, he com-
manded the head of the presumptuous bridegroom to be
stricken off, and committed the distracted princess close
prisoner to her chamber, where, after many deadly swoon-
ings, with intermingled outcries upon the cruelty of her
CUPID'S REVENGE. 467
father, she, in no long time after, died; making ineffectual
appeals, to the last, to the mercy of the offended Power, —
the Power that had laid its heavy hand upon her, to the
bereavement of her good judgment first, and to the ex-
tinction of a life that might have proved a blessing to
Lycia.
Leontins had scarcely time to be sensible of her danger
before a fresh cause for mourning overtook him. His son
Leucippus, who had hitherto been a pattern of strict life
and modesty, was stricken with a second arrow from the
deity, offended for his overturned altars, in which the
prince had been a chief instrument. The god caused his
heart to fall away, and his crazed fancy to be smitten with
the excelling beauty of a wicked widow, by name Bacha.
This woman, in the first days of her mourning for her
husband, by her dissembling teai's and affected coyness,
had drawn Leucippus so cunningly into her snares, that,
before she would grant him a return of love, she extorted
from the easy-hearted prince a contract of marriage, to be
fulfilled in the event of his father's death. This guilty
intercourse, which they covered with the name of mar-
riage, was not carried with such secrecy but that a rumour
of it ran about the palace, and by some officious courtier
was brought to the ears of the old duke, who, to satisfy
himself of the truth, came hastily to the house of Bacha,
where he found his son courting. Taking the prince to
task roundly, he sternly asked who that creature was that
had bewitched him out of his honour thns. Then Bacha,
pretending ignorance of the duke's person, haughtily de-
manded of Leucippus what saucy old man that was, that
without leave had burst into the house of an afflicted widow
to hinder her paying her tears (as she pretended) to the
dead. Then the duke declaring himself, and tlueatening
her for having corrupted his son, giving her the reproachful
terms of witch and sorceress, Leucippus mildly answered,
that he " did her wrong." The bad woman, imagining
that the prince for very fear would not betray their secret,
now conceived a project of monstrous wickedness; which
was no less than to ensnare the father with the same arts
468 CUPID'S EEVENGE.
■wMcli had siibdiied tlie son, tliat she might no longer be a
concealed wife, nor a princess only under cover, but, by a
union with the old man, become at once the true and
acknowledged Duchess of Lycia. In a posture of humility,
she confessed her ignorance of the duke's quality; but,
now she knew it, she besought his pardon for her wild
speeches, which proceeded, she said, from a distempered
head, which the loss of a dear husband had affected. He
might command her life, she told him, which was now of
small value to her. The tears which accompanied her
Avords, and her mourning weeds (which, for a blind to the
world, she had not yet cast off), heightening her beauty,
gave a credence to her protestations of her innocence. But
the duke continuiug to assail her with reproaches, with a
matchless confidence, assuming the air of injured virtue, in
a somewhat lofty tone she replied, that though he were her
sovereign, to whom in any lawful cause she was bound to
submit, yet, if he sought to take away her honour, she
stood up to defy him. That, she said, was a jewel dearer
thau any he could give her, which, so long as she should
keep, she should esteem herself richer than all the princes
of the earth that were without it. If the prince, his son,
knew anything to her dishonotir, let him tell it. And here
she challenged Leucippus before his father to speak the
worst of her. If he would, however, sacrifice a woman's
character to please an imjust humour of the duke's, she
saw no remedy, she said, now he was dead (meaning her
late husband) that with his life would have defended her
reputation.
Thus appealed to, Leucippus, who had stood a while
astonished at her confident falsehoods, though ignorant of
the full drift of them, considering that not the I'eputation
only, but probably the life, of a woman whom he had so
loved, and who had made such sacrifices to him of love
and beauty, depended upon his absolute concealment of
their contract, framed his mouth to a compassionate un-
truth, and with solemn asseverations confirmed to his
father her assuT'ances of her innocence. He denied not
that with rich gifts he had assailed her virtue, but had
CUPID'S REVENGE. 469
foimd her relentless to his solicitations ; that gold nor
greatness had any power over her. Nay, so far he went
on, to give force to the protestations of this artful woman,
that he confessed to having offered marriage to her, which
she, who scorned to listen to any second wedlock, had
rejected.
All this while, Lencipptis secretly prayed to Heaven to
forgive him while he uttered these bold untruths ; since it
was for the prevention of a greater mischief only, and had
no malice in it.
But, warned by the sad sequel which ensued, be thou
careful, young reader, how in any case jou tell a lie. Lie
not, if any man but ask you "how you do," or "Avhat
o'clock it is." Be sure you make no false excuse to screen
a friend that is most dear to you. Never let the most
well intended falsehood escape your lips; for Heaven,
which is entirely Truth, will make the seed which you
have sowti of untruth to yield miseries a thousand-fold
upon j-ours, as it did upon the head of the ill-fated and
mistaken Leucippus.
Leontius, finding the assurances of Bacha so confidently
seconded by his son, could no longer withhold his belief;
and, only forbidding their meeting for the future, took a
courteous leave of the lady, presenting her at the same
time with a valuable ring, in recompense, as he said, of the
injustice which he had done her in his false surmises of
her guiltiness. In truth, the surpassing beauty of the
lady, with her appearing modesty, had made no less impres-
sion upon the heart of the fond old duke than they had
awakened in the bosom of his more pardonable son. His
first design was to make her his mistress ; to the better
accomplishing of which, Leucippus was dismissed from the
court, under the pretext of some honourable employment
abroad. In his absence, Leontius spared no offers to in-
duce her to comply with his purpose. Continually he
solicited her with rich offers, with messages, and by per-
sonal visits. It was a ridiculous sight, if it were not rather
a sad one, to behold this second and worst dotage, which
by Cupid's wrath had fallen upon this fantastical old new
470 CUFIUS REVENGE.
lover. All liis occupation now was in cL'essing and prank-
ing himself up in youthful attire to please the eyes of his
new mistress. His mornings were employed in the de-
vising of trim fashions, in the company of tailors, em-
broiderers, and feather-dressers. So infatuated was he
with these vanities, that, when a servant came and told
him that his daughter was dead, — even she whom he had
hut lately so highly prized, — the words seemed spoken to a
deaf person. He either could not or would not understand
them ; hut, like one senseless, fell to babbling about the
shape of a new hose and doublet. His crutch, the faithful
prop of long aged years, was discarded ; and he resumed
the youthful fashion of a sword by his side, when his years
wanted strength to have drawn it. In this condition of
folly, it was no difficult task for the widow, by affected
pretences of honour, and arts of amorous denial, to draw in
this doting duke to that which she had all along aimed at,
— the oifer of his crown in marriage. She was now Duchess
of Lycia ! In her new elevation, the mask was quickly
thrown aside, and the impious Bacha appeared in her true
qualities. She had never loved the duke, her husband ;
but had used him as the instrument of her greatness.
Taking advantage of his amorous folly, which seemed to
gain growth the nearer he approached to his grave, she
took upon her the whole rule of Lycia ; placing and dis-
placing, at her will, all the gi-eat officers of state ; and fill-
ing the court with creatures of her own, the agents of her
guilt}' pleasures, she removed from the duke's person the
oldest and trustiest of his dependants.
Leucippus, who at this juncture was returned from his
foreign mission, was met at once with the news of his
sister's death and the strange wedlock of the old duke. To
the memory of Ilidaspes he gave some tears; but these
were swiftly swallowed up in his horror and detestation of
the conduct of Bacha. In his first fury, he resolved upon
a full disclosure of all that had passed between him and
his wicked step-mother. Again, he thought, by killing
I'acha, to rid the world of a monster. But tenderness for
his father recalled him to milder counsels. The fatal
CUPIDS REVENGE. 471
secret, nevertheless, sat upon liim like lead, while he was
determined to confide it to no other. It took his sleep
away, and his desire of food ; and, if a thought of mirth at
any time crossed him, the dreadful truth would recur to
check it, as if a messenger should have come to whisper to
him of some friend's death. With difficulty he was brought
to wish their highnesses faint joy of their marriage ; and,
at the first sight of Bacha, a friend was fain to hold his
wrist hard to prevent him from fainting. In an interview,
which after, at her request, ho had with her alone, the had
woman shamed not to take up the subject lightly ; to treat
as a trifle the marriage vow that had passed between them ;
and, seeing him sad and silent, to threaten him with the
displeasure of the duke, his father, if by words or looks he
gave any suspicion to the world of their dangerous secret.
" What had happened," she said, " was by no fault of hers.
People would have thought her mad if she had refused the
duke's ofi"er. She had used no arts to entrap his father. It
was Leucippus' own resolute denial of any such thing as a
contract having passed between them which had led to the
proposal."
The prince, unable to extenuate his share of blame in
the calamitj'-, humbly besought her, that " since, by his
own great fault, things had been brought to their present
pass, she would only live honest for the future, and not
abuse the credulous age of the old duke, as he well knew
she had the power to do. For himself, seeing that life was
no longer desirable to him, if his death was judged by her
to be indispensable to her security, she was welcome to lay
what trains she pleased to compass it, so long as she would
only sufter his father to go to his grave in peace, since he
had never wronged hei\"
This temperate appeal was lost upon the heart of Bacha,
who from that moment was secretly bent ujpon effecting
the destruction of Leucippus. Her project was, by feeding
the ears of the duke with exaggerated praises of his son, to
awaken a jealousy in the old man, that she secretly pre-
ferred Leucippus. Next, by wilfully insinuating the great
popularity of the prince (which was no more, indeed, than
472 CUPID'S BEVENGE.
tlie trutli) among the Lycians, to instil subtle fears into the
duke that his son had laid plots for circnmventing his life
and throne. By these arts she was working upon the weak
mind of the duke almost to distraction, when, at a meeting
concocted by herself between the prince and his father, the
latter taking Leucippus soundly to task for these alleged
treasons, the prince replied onl}- by humbly drawing his
sword, with the intention of laying it at his father's feet ;
and begging him, since he suspected him, to sheathe it in
his own bosom, for of his life he had been long weary.
Bacha entered at the crisis, and, ere Leucippus could finish
his submission, with loud outcries alarmed the courtiers,
who, rushing into the presence, found the prince with
sword in hand indeed, but with far other intentions than
this bad woman imputed to him, plainly accusing him of
having drawn it tipon his father! Leucippus was quickly
disarmed ; and the old duke, trembling between fear and
age, committed him to close prison, from which, by Bacha's
aims, he never should have come out alive but for the
interference of the common people, who, loving their
prince, and equally detesting Bacha, in a simultaneous
mutiny arose, and rescued him from the hands of the
officers.
The court was now no longer a place of living for Leucip-
pus ; and, hastily thanking his countrymen for his deliver-
ance, which in his heart he rather deprecated than welcomed,
as one that v/ished for death, he took leave of all court hopes,
and, abandoning the palace, betook himself to a life of peni-
tence in solitudes.
Not so secretly did he select his place of penance, in a
cave among lonely woods and fastnesses, but that his
retreat was traced by Bacha, who, baffled in her pur-
pose, raging like some she-wolf, despatched an emissary of
her own to destroy him privatel}^
There was residii:g at the court of Lycia, at this time, a
yoimg maiden, the daughter of Bacha by her first husband,
who had hitherto been brought up in the obscurity of a
poor country abode with an uncle, but whom Bacha now
publicly owned, and had prevailed upon the easy duke to
CUPTDS BEVENGE. 473
adopt as successor to tlie throne in wrong of tlie true heir,
his suspected son Leucippus.
This young creature, Urania by name, was as artless and
harmless as her mother was crafty and wicked. To the un-
natural Bacha she had been an object of neglect and aver-
sion ; and for the project of suj)planting Leucippus only
had she fetched her out of retirement. The bringing-up of
Urania had been among country hinds and lasses : to tend
her flocks or superintend her neat dairy had been the extent
of her breeding. From her calling, she had contracted a
pretty rusticity of dialect, which, among the fine folks of
the court, passed for simplicity and folly. She was the un-
fittest instrument for an ambitious design that could be
chosen ; for her manners in a palace had a tinge still of her
old occupation ; and, to her mind, the lowly shepherdess's
life w^as best.
Simplicity is oft a match for prudence : and Urania was
not so simple but she understood that she had been sent for
to court only in the prince's wrong ; and in her heart she
was determined to defeat any designs that might be contriv-
ing against her brother-in-law. The melancholy bearing of
Lexicippus had touched her with pity. This wrought in her
a kind of love, which, for its object, had no further end than
the well-being of the beloved. She looked for no return of
it, nor did the possibility of such a blessing in the remotest
waj' occur to her, — so vast a distance she had imaged be-
tween her lowly bringing-up and the courtly breeding and
graces of Leucippus. Hers was no raging flame, such as
had burned destructive in the bosom of poor Hidaspes.
Either the vindictive god in mercy had spared this young
maiden, or the wrath of the confounding Cupid was re-
strained by a higher Power from discharging the most
malignant of his arrows against the peace of so much inno-
cence. Of the extent of her mother's malice she was too
guileless to have entertained conjecture ; but from hints
and whispers, and, above all, from that tender watchful-
ness with which a true affection like Urania's tends the
safety of its object, — fearing even where no cause for fear
subsists, — she gathered that some danger was impending
474 CUriD'S REVENGE.
oxGX tlie i5rincc, and with simple heroism resolved to
conntermino the treason.
It chanced iipon a day that Lencippns had been indulg-
ing his sad meditations in forests far from human converse,
when he was str^^ck with the appearance of a human being,
so unusual in that solitude. There stood before him a
seeming youth, of delicate appearance, clad in coarse and
peasantly attire. " He was come," he said, " to seek oiit
the prince, and to be his poor boy and servant, if he would
let him." — " Alas ! poor youth," replied Leucippus ; " why
do you follow me, who am as poor as you are ?" — " In good
faith," """as his pretty answer, " I shall be well and rich
enough, if you will but love me." And, saying so, he wept.
The prince, admiring this strange attachment in a boy, was
moved with compassion ; and seeing him exhausted, as if
with long travel and hunger, invited him in to his poor
habitation, setting such refreshments before him as that
barren spot afforded. But by no entreaties could he be
prevailed upon to take any sustenance ; and all that day,
and for the two following, he seemed supported only by
some gentle flame of love that was within him. He fed
only upon the sweet looks and courteous entertainment
which he received from Leucippus. Seemingly, he wished
to die under the loving eyes of his master. " I cannot eat,"
he prettily said; "but I shall eat to-morrow." — " You will
be dead by that time," replied Leucippus. " I shall be well
then," said he ; " since you will not love me." Then the
prince asking him why he sighed so, " To think," was his
innocent reply, " that such a fine man as you should die,
and no gay lady love him." — "But you will love me," said
Leucippus. " Yes, sure," said he, " till I die ; and, when I
am in heaven, I shall wish for you." " This is a love,"
thought the other, " that I never yet heard tell of. But
come, thou art sleepy, child : go in, and I will sit with
thee." Then, from some words which the poor youth
dropped, Leucippus, suspecting that his wits were begin-
ning to ramble, said, "What portends this?" — "I am not
sleepy," said the youth ; " but you are sad. I would that
I could do anything to make you merry ! Shall I sing ?"
CUPID'S BEVENGE. 475
Btit soon, as if recovering strength, " There is one approach-
ing !" he wildly cried out. " ]\Iaster, look to yourself 1"
His words were true : for now entered, with provided
weapon, the wicked emissary of Bacha, that we told of;
and, directing a mortal thrust at the prince, the supposed
hoy, with a last effort, interposing his weak body, received
it in his bosom, thanking the heavens in death that he had
saved " so good a master."
Leucippus, having slain the villain, was at leisure to dis-
cover, in the features of his poor servant, the countenance
of his devoted sister-in-law ! Through solitary and dan-
gerous ways she had sought him in that disguise ; and,
linding him, seems to have resolved upon a voluntary death
by fasting, — partly that she might die in the presence of
her beloved, and partly that she might make known to him
in death the love which she wanted boldness to disclose to
him while living, but chiefly because she knew that, loj her
demise, all obstacles would be removed that stood between
her prince and his succession to the throne of Lycia.
Leucippus had hardly time to comprehend the strength of
love in his Urania, when a trampling of horses resounded
through his solitude. It was a party of Lycian horsemen,
that had come to seek him, dragging the detested Bacha in
their train, who was now to receive the full penalty of her
misdeeds. Amidst her frantic fury upon the missing of her
daughter, the old duke had suddenly died, not without sus-
picion of her having administered poison to him. Her
punishment was submitted to Leucippus, who was now,
with joyful acclaims, saluted as the rightful Duke of Lycia.
He, as no way moved Avith his great wrongs, but consider-
ing her simply as the parent of Urania, saluting her only
by the title of " Wicked Mother," bade her to live. " That
reverend title," he said, and pointed to the bleeding remains
of her child, " must be her pardon. He would use no ex-
tremity against her, but leave her to Heaven." The
hardened mother, not at all relenting at the sad spectacle
that lay before her, but making show of dutiful submission,
to the young duke, and with bended knees approaching
him, suddenly with a dagger inflicted a mortal stab tipon
2 K
476 THE DEFEAT OF TIME.
liim; and, with a second stroke stabbing herself, ended
both their wretched lives.
Now was the tragedy of Cupid's wrath awfully com-
pleted; and, the race of Leontius failing in the deaths of
both his children, the chronicle relates that, under their
new duke, Ismenus, the oifence to the angry Power was
expiated ; his statues and altars were, with more magnifi-
ceuce than ever, re-edified ; and he ceased thenceforth from
plagiiing the land.
Thus far the pagan historians relate enring. But from
this vain idol story a not unprofitable moral may be
gathered against the abuse of the natural but dangerous
passion of love. In the story of Hidaspes, we see the pi'e-
posterous linking of beauty with deformity ; of princely
expectancies with mean and low conditions, in the case of
the prince, her brother; and of decrepit age with youth,
in the ill end of their doting father, Leontius. By their
examples we are warned to decline all unequal and ill-
assorted unions.
THE DEFEAT OF TIME;
OR, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES.
TITANIA and her moonlight elves were assembled under
the canopy of a huge oak, that served to shelter them
from the moon's I'adiance, which, being now at her full
moon, shot forth intolerable rays, — intolerable, I mean, to
the subtile texture of their little shadowy bodies, — but dis-
pensing an agreeable coolness to us grosser mortals. An
air of discomfort sate upon the queen and upon her
courtiers. Their tiny friskings and gambols were forgot;
and even Eobin Goodfellow, for the first time in his little
airy life, looked grave. For the queen had had melancholy
forebodings of late, founded upon an ancient prophecy laid
up in the records of Fairyland, that the date of fairy
existence should be tlien extinct when men should cease
TEE DEFEAT OF TIME. 477
to believe in them. And slie knew liow that the race of
the Nymphs, which were her predecessors, and had been
the guardians of the sacred floods, and of the silver foun-
tains, and of the consecrated hills and woods, had utterly
disappeared before the chilling touch of man's incredulity ;
and she sighed bitterly at the approaching fate of herself and
of her subjects, which was dependent upon so fickle a lease
as the capricious and ever-mutable faith of man. When, as
if to realise her fears, a melancholy shape came gliding in,
and iJiat was — Time, who with his intolerable scythe mows
down kings and kingdoms ; at whose dread approach the
fays huddled together as a flock of timorous sheep ; and the
most courageous among them crept into acorn-cups, not
enduring the sight of that ancientest of monarchs. Titania's
first impulse was to wish the presence of her false lord,
King Oberon, — who was far away, in the pursuit of a
strange beauty, a fay of Indian Land, — that with his good
lance and sword, like a faithful knight and husband, he
might defend her against Time. But she soon checked
that thought as vain; for what could the prowess of the
mighty Oberon himself, albeit the stoutest champion in
Fairyland, have availed against so huge a giant, whose
bald top touched the skies? So, in the mildest- tone, she
besought the spectre, that in his mercy he would overlook
and pass by her small subjects, as too diminutive and
powerless to add any worthy trophy to his renown. And
she besought him to employ his resistless strength figainst
the ambitious children of men, and to lay waste their aspir-
ing works ; to tumble down their towers and turrets, and
the Babels of their pride, — fit objects of his devouring
scythe, — but to spare her and her harmless race, who had
no existence beyond a dream ; frail objects of a creed that
lived but in the faith of the believer. And with her little
arms, as well as she could, she grasped the stern knees of
Time ; and, waxing speechless with fear, she beckoned to
her chief attendants and maids of honour to come forth
from their hiding-places, and to plead the plea of the
fairies. And one of those small, delicate creatures came
forth at her bidding, clad all in white like a chorister, and
2k 2
478 THE DEFEAT OF TIME.
in a low, melodious tone, not louder than the hum of a
pretty bee, — when it seems to be demurring whether it shall
settle upon this sweet flower or that before it settles, — set
forth her humble petition. "We fairies," she said, "are
the most inoffensive race that live, and least deserving to
perish. It is we that have the care of all sweet melodies,
that no discords may offend the sun, who is the great soul
of music. We rouse the lark at morn ; and the pretty
Echoes, which respond to all the twittering choir, are of
our making. Wherefore, great King of Years, as ever you
have loved the music which is raining from a morning
cloud sent from the messenger of day, the lark, as ho
mounts to heaven's gate, beyond the ken of mortals ; or if
ever you have listened with a charmed ear to the night-
bird, that —
" ' In the flowery spring.
Amidst the leaves set, makes the thickets ring
Of her sour sorrows, sweetened with her song — ' "
spare our tender tribes, and we will muffle up the sheep-
bell for thee, that thy pleasure take no interruption when-
ever thou shalt listen unto Philomel."
And Time answered, that " he had heard that song too
long; and he was even wearied with that ancient strain
that recorded the wrong of Tereus. But, if she would
know in what music Time delighted, it was, when sleep
and darkness lay upon crowded cities, to hark to the mid-
night chime which is tolling from a hundred clocks, like
the last knell over the soul of a dead world ; or to the
crush of the fall of some age-worn edifice, which is as the
voice of himself when he disparteth kingdoms."
A second female fay took aip the plea, and said, " We be
the handmaids of the Spring, and tend upon the birth of all
sweet buds : and the pastoral cowslips are our friends ; and
the pansies and the violets, like nuns ; and the qiaaking
harebell is in our wardship : and the hyacinth, once a fair
youth, and dear to Phoebus."
Then Time made answer, in his wrath striking the harm-
less ground with his hurtful scythe, that " they must not
THE DEFEAT OF TIME- 479
think that he was one that cared for flowers, except to see
them wither, and to take her heanty from the rose."
And a third fairy took up the plea, and said, "We are
kij^.dly things : and it is we that sit at evening, and shake
rich odours from sweet bowers upon discoursing lovers,
Ihat seem to each other to he their own sighs ; and we
keep off the bat and the owl fiom their privacy, and the
ill-boding whistler ; and we flit in sweet dreams across the
brains of infancy, and conjure up a smile upon its soft lips
to beguile the careful mother, while its little soul is fled
for a brief minute or two to sport with our youngest
fairies."
Then Saturn (which is Time) made answc]-, that " they
should not think that he delighted in tender babes, that
had devoured his own, till foolish Ehea cheated him with
a stone, which he swallowed, thinking it to be the infant
Jupiter." And thereat, in token, he disclosed to view hi.s
enormous tooth, in which appeared monstrous dents left
by that unnatural meal ; and his great throat, that seemed
capable of devouring up the earth and all its inhabitants at
one meal. "And for lovers," he continued, "my delight
is, with a hurrying hand to snatch them away from their
love-meetings by stealth at nights; and, in absence, to
stand like a motionless statue, or their leaden planet of
mishap (whence I had my name), till I make their minutes
seem ages."
Next stood tip a male fairy, clad all in green, like a
forester or one of Eobin Hood's mates, and, doffing his
tiny cap, said, " We are small foresters, that live in woods,
training the young boughs in graceful intricacies, with blue
snatches of the sky between : we frame all shady roofs and
arches rude ; and sometimes, when we are pljdng our ten-
der hatchets, men say that the tapping woodpecker is nigh.
And it is we that scoop the hollow cell of the squirrel, and
carve quaint letters upon the rinds of trees, which in sylvan
solitudes sweetly recall to the mind of the heat-oppressed
swain, ere he lies down to slumber, the name of his fair one,
dainty Aminta, gentle Rosalind, or chastest Laura, as it
may happen."
480 THE DEFEAT OF TIME.
Satin-n, notliing moved with this courteous address, bade
him be gone, or, " if he would be a woodman, to go forth
and fell oak for the fairies' coffins which would forthwith
be wanting. For himself, he took no delight in haunting
the woods, till their golden plumage (the yellow leaves)
were beginning to fall, and leave the brown-black limbs
bare, like Kature in her skeleton dress,"
Then stood up one of those gentle fairies that are good to
man, and blushed red as any rose while he told a modest
story of one of his own good deeds. " It chanced upon a
time," he said, " that while we were looking cowslips in
the meads, while yet the dew was hanging on the buds
like beads, we found a babe left in its swathing-clothes, —
a little sorrowful, deserted thing, begot of love, but beget-
ting no love in others ; guiltless of shame, but doomed to
shame for its parents' offence in bringing it by indirect
courses into the world. It was pity to see the abandoned
little orphan left to the world's care by an unnatural
mother. How the cold dew kept wetting its childish
coats ! and its little hair, how it was bedabbled, that was
like gossamer ! Its pouting mouth, unknowing how to
speak, lay half opened like a rose - lipped shell ; and its
cheek was softer than any peach, upon which the tears,
for ver}'' roundness, could not long dwell, but fell off, in
clearness like pearls, — some on the gi-ass, and some on his
little hand ; and some haply wandered to the little dimpled
well under his mouth, which Love himself seemed to have
planned out, but less for tears than for smilings. Pity it
was, too, to see how the burning sun had scorched its help-
less limbs ; for it lay without shade or shelter, or mother's
breast, for foul weather or fair. So, having compassion on
its sad plight, my fellows and I turned ourselves into grass-
hoppers, and swarmed about the babe, making such shrill
cries as that jiretty little chirping creature makes in its
mirth, till with our noise we attracted the attention of a
passing rustic, a tender-hearted hind, who, wondering at
our small but loud concert, strayed aside curiously, and
found the babe, where it lay in the remote grass, and,
taking it up, lapped it in his russet coat, and bore it to his
THE DEFEAT OF TIME. 481
cottage, where his wife kindly nurtured it till it grew up
a goodly personage. How this babe prospered afterwards,
lot proud London tell. This was that famous Sir Thomas
Gresham, who was the chiefest of her merchants, the
richest, the wisest. Witness his many goodly vessels on
the Thames, freighted with costly merchandise, jewels
from Ind, and pearls for courtly dames, and silks of Sa-
marcand. And witness, more than all, that stately Bourse
(or Exchange) which he caused to bo built, a mart for mer-
chants from east and west, whose graceful summit still
bears, in token of the fairies' favours, his chosen crest, the
grasshopper. And, like the grasshopper, may it please you,
great king, to suffer us also to live, partakers of the green
earth ! "
The fairy had scarce ended his plea, when a shrill cry,
not unlike the grasshopper's, was heard. Poor Puck — or
Eobin Goodfellow, as he is sometimes called — had reco-
vered a little from his first fright, and, in one of his mad
freaks, had perched upon the beard of old Time, which was
flowing, ample, and majestic ; and was amusing himself
with plucking at a hair, which was indeed so massy, that it
seemed to him that he was removing some huge beam of
timber, rather than a hair ; which Time by some ill chance
perceiving, snatched up the impish mischief with his great
hand, and asked what it was,
" Alas ! " quoth Puck, " a little random elf am I, born in
one of Nature's sports ; a very weed, created for the simple,
sweet enjoyment of myself, but for no other purpose, worth,
or need, that ever I could learn. 'Tis I that bob the
angler's idle cork, till the patient man is ready to breathe a
curse. I steal the morsel from the gossip's fork, or stop
the sneezing chanter in mid psalm ; and when an infant
has been born with hard or homely features, mothers say I
changed the child at nurse : but to fulfil any graver pur-
pose I have not wit enough, and hardly the will. I am a
pinch of lively dust to frisk upon the wind : a tear would
make a puddle of me ; and so I tickle myself with the
lightest sti'aw, and shun all griefs that might make me
stagnant. This is my small philosophy."
482 THE DEFEAT OF TIME.
Then Time, dropping him on the gi'onnd, as a thing too
inconsiderable for his vengeance, grasped fast his mighty
scj'the : and now, not Puck alone, but the whole state of
faii-ies, had gone to inevitable wreck and destruction, had
not a timely apparition interposed, at whose boldness Time
was astounded ; for he came not with the habit or the forces
of a deity, who alone might cope Avith Time, but as a simple
mortal, clad as j^ou might see a forester that hunts after
wild conies by the cold moonshine ; or a stalker of stray
deer, stealthy and bold. But by the golden lustre in his
eye, and the passionate wanness in his cheek, and by the
fair and ample space of his forehead, which seemed a palace
framed for the habitation of all glorious thoughts, he knew
that this was his great rival, who had power given him to
rescue whatsoever victims Time should clutch, and to cause
them to live for ever in his immortal verse. And, mutter-
ing the name of Shakspeare, Time spread his roc-like wings,
and fled the controlling presence ; and the liberated court
of the fairies, with Titania at their head, flocked around the
gentle ghost, giving him thanks, nodding to him, and doing
him courtesies, who had crowned them henceforth with a
permanent existence, to live in the minds of men, while verse
shall have power to charm, or midsummer moons shall
brighten.
******
What particular endearments passed between the fairies
and their poet, passes my pencil to delineate ; but, if you
are curious to be informed, I mixst refer you, gentle reader,
to the " Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," a most agreeable
poem lately put forth by my friend Thomas Hood ; of the
first half of which the above is nothing but a meagre and
harsh prose abstract. Farewell !
Hie words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.
483
A DEATH-BED.
IN A LKTTER TO R. H., ESQ., OF B .
I CALLED upon yoti this inoming, and found tliat you
were gone to visit a dying friend. I had been upon a like
errand. Poor N. E. has lain dying now for almost a week ;
such is the penalty we pay for having enjoyed through life
a strong constitution. Whether he knew me or not, I know
not, or wliether he saw me through his poor glazed eyes ;
but the group I saw about him I shall not forget. Upon
the bed, or about it, were assembled his wife, their two
daughters, and poor deaf Eobert, looking doubly stupified.
There they were, and seemed to have been sitting all the
week. I could only reach out a hand to Mrs. R. Speaking-
was impossible in that mute chamber. By this time it must
be all over with him. In him I have a loss the world can-
not make up. He was my friend, and my father's friend,
for all the life that I can remember. I seem to have made
foolish friendships since. Those are the friendships, which
outlast a second generation. Old as I am getting, in his
eyes I was still the child he knew me. To the last he
called me Jemmy. I have none to call me Jemmy now.
He was the last link that bound me to B . You are but
of yesterday. In him I seem to have lost the old plainness
of manners and singleness of heart. Lettered he was not ;
his reading scarcely exceeded the obituary of the old " Gen-
tleman's Magazine," to which he has never failed of having
recourse for these last fifty years. Yet there was the pride
of literature about him from that slender perusal ; and,
moreover, from his office of archive-keeper to your ancient
city, in which he must needs pick up some eqviivocal Latin;
which, among his less literary friends, assumed the air of
a very pleasant pedantry. Can I forget the erudite look
with which, having tried to puzzle out the text of a black-
lettered Chaucer in your Corporation Library, to which he
was a sort of librarian, he gave it up with this consolatory
484 A DEATH-BED.
reflection — " Jemmy," said lie, " I do not know what you
find in these very old books, but I observe there is a deal
of very indifferent spelling in them." His jokes (for he had
some) are ended ; but they were old perennials, staple, and
always as good as new. He had one song, that spake ot
the " flat bottoms of our foes coming over in darkness," and
alluded to a threatened invasion, many years since blown
over ; this he reserved to be sung on Christmas night, which
we always passed with him, and he sang it with the fresh-
ness of an impending event. How his eyes would sparkle
when he came to the passage : —
" We'll still make 'cm run, and we'll still make 'em sweat,
In spite of the devil and Brussels' Gazette !"
^Yhat is the " Brussels' Gazette " now ? I cry, while I
endite these trifles. His poor girls, who are, I believe,
compact of solid goodness, will have to receive their afflicted
mother at an unsuccessful home in a petty village in
shire, where for years they have been struggling to
raise a girls' school with no efiect. Poor deaf Eobert (and
the less hopeful for being so) is thrown upon a deaf world,
without the comfort to his father on his death-bed of know-
ing him provided for. They are left almost provisionless.
Some life assurance there is ; but, I fear, not exceeding
. Their hopes must be from your corporation, which
their father has served for fifty years. Who or what are
your leading members now, I know not. Is there any, to
whom, without impertinence, you can represent the true
circumstances of the family ? You cannot say good enough
of poor E. and his poor wife. Oblige me and the dead, if
you can.
485
APPENDIX.
[In these Essays Charles Lamb assumed the name of an Italian, who
was one of his colleaguea in the South Sea House.]
SOUTH SEA HOUSE.
Mr. John Lamb, the Essayist's brother, was a clerk in the South Sea
House. His passion for picture collecting is recorded in the admirable
sketch of him (as James Elia) in " My Relations."
OXFORD IN THE VACATION.
" G. D.," Mr. George Dyer, author of a " Histoiy of the University
and Colleges of Cambridge." The passage in brackets was suppressed
at the earnest remonstrance of Dyer, who complained that it conveyed
• [xiite a false impression of the treatment he had received from his
various employers. Mr. Procter vouches for the truth of the anecdote
about Dyer's calling at " M 's, in Bedford Square ;" another example
of his extreme absence of mind will be found m a later Essay, " Amicus
Redivivus."
To Elia's confession of his aversion to MSS., on page 13, line 5, was
appended the following note in the original Essay : —
There is sometliing to me repugnant at any time in
written hand. The text never seems determinate. Print
.settles it. I had thought of the Lycidas as of a full-grown
beanty — as springing np with all its parts absolute — till, in
an evil hour, I was shown the original written copy of it,
together with the other minor poems of its author, in the
libraiy of Trinity, kept like some treasure, to be proud of.
I wish they had thrown them in the Cam, or sent them
after the latter cantos of Spenser, into the Irish Channel.
How it staggered me to see the fine things in their ore !
interlined, corrected ! as if their words were mortal, alter-
able, displaceable at pleasure ! as if they might have been
otherwise, and just as good ! as if inspiration were made
np of parts, and those fluctuating, successive, indifferent !
4SG APPENDIX.
I will never go into the workshop of any great artist again,
nor desire a sight of his picture till it is fairly off the
easel; no, not if Eaphael were to be alive again, and
painting another Galatea.
After " none thinks of offering violence or injustice to him," page 13,
line 26, there was reference to the following note : —
Violence or injustice, certainly none, Mr. Elia. But you
will acknowledge that the charming unsuspectingness of
our friend has sometimes laid him open to attacks, which,
though savouring (we hope) more of waggery than of
malice — such is our unfeigned respect for G. D. — might, we
think, much better have been omitted. Such was that silly
joke of L , who, at the time the question of the Scotch
novels was first agitated, gravely assured our friend — who
as gravely went about repeating it in all companies — that
Lord Castlereagh had acknowledged himself to be the
author of Waverley !^ — Note, not hy Elia.
This is a fact. " L " was Elia himself.
CHEIST'S HOSPITAL THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.
This Essay is a review of, or rather, perhaps, a pendant to, 0. Lamb's
own " Recollections of Christ's Hospital," and gives some of the less
flivourablc characteristics of the system adopted there. Tobin was a friend
of Lamb's, of whom little is known. In a letter to Wordsworth, full of
elation at the acceptance of Jjis farce, entitled " Mr. H.," by the managers
of Drury Lane Theatre, Lamb says : — " On the following Sunday, IMr.
Tobin comes. The scent of a manager's letter brought him. He would
have gone farther any day on such a business. I read the letter to
him. He deems it authentic and peremptory." In a subsequent letter
to Southey, dated August 15, 1815, he says : — " Tobin is dead." God-
win's tragedy " Antonio," we learn from a letter of Lamb's, came out
" in a feigned name, as one Tobin's."
This Essay contains a very faithful representation of Lamb's teachers
and schoolfellows at Christ's Hospital. Boyer and Field both received
their appointments in 1776. The Rev. L. P. Stevens, who was Grecian
in 1788, left Christ's Hospital in 1807. Dr. T e (the Rev. Arthur
William Trollope) retired in 1827, and died in the same year. The
Eight Houoiu-able Sir Edward Thornton was Grecian in 1785, and third
wrangler at Cambridge in 1789. Through the interest of Mr. Pitt,
he became Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the
Court of Portiigal and the Brazils. George Richards was Grecian in
1785, before Middleton. Mr. Charles Valentine Le Grice supplied a
APPENDIX. 487
good deal of information about Elia's school - days. His younger
brother, Samuel Le Grice, was " like a brother " to Lamb at the timo
of his mother's death. He died of the yellow fever, in Jamaica. Robert
Allen was Grecian in 1792. (See also " Newspapers Tliu'ty-five Years
Ago.") Frederick William Franklir., Master of Hertford, and Marma-
duke Thompson, complete the list of those companions of Lamb's
school-days who can now be identiticd.
TWO EACES OF MEN.
" Ealph Bigod ." John Fenwick, editor of the Albion newspaper, to
which Lamb at one time contributed, was the original of this character.
(See " Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago," in the " Last Essays of EHa.")
S. T. Coleridge, in early manhood, enlisted in a regiment of dragoons
under the assimred name of Comberback, or Comberbatch.
Tlie initial " K " was probably intended for Kenney, the farce writer,
whom Lamb visited at Versailles (Sir. Percy Fitzgerald tells us) during
a short trip to France.
MES. BATTLE'S OPINION ON WHIST.
Mr. Procter says that Mrs. Battle is an imaginary character. She
bears, however, some resemblance, as BIr. Percy Fitzgerald remarks, to
Elia's Grandmother Field, in " Dream Cliildren." In " Blakesmoor, in
PI shire" (the house in whicli this old relative was housekeeper for
many years), Elia speaks of "the room in whicli old Mrs. Battle died."
" Bridget Elia," — his sister Blary. Under tliis name she is always
mentioned in the Essays.
A CHAPTEE ON EAES.
" My good Catholic friend Nov — ," was Mr. Novello, the well-known
composer.
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTEE.
The " very dear friend " in New South Wales was Mr. Barron Field,
to whom the Essay called "Distant Correspondents" was originally
addressed.
" M." was no doubt Mr. Thomas Manning, who was a mathematical
tutor at Cambridge at the time Lamb made his acquaintance.
Page 71, "Can I reproach her for it?" Between this and the con-
cluding sentence the following words appeared in the original Essay : —
" These kind of complaints are not often drawn from me.
1 am aware that I am a fortunate, I mean a prosperous,
man."
My feelings prevent me from transcribing any further.
488 » APPENDIX.
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.
"B ," Brahara, the celebrated tenor. Lamb elsewhere describes
liim as a mixture of "the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel."
The Quaker story Lamb had from Carlisle, the celebrated surgeon,
who was an eyewitness of the scene.
WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS.
" Dear little T. H.," one of Mr. Leigh Hunfs children, of whom
Lamb was extremely fond, and to whom he addresaed some pretty lines.
MY RELATIONS.
" James and Bridget Elia." His brother and sister, John and Mary
Lamb.
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.
" B. F." Mr. Barron Field.
MODERN GALLANTRY.
Sir T. Talfourd says, in his Memoir of Lamb, that " his account ot
Mr. Paice's politeness could be attested to the letter by living wit-
nesses." (1834.)
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
IMi-. Procter says that all these " old Benchers " are fictitious cha-
racters, with the exception of " Samuel Salt," the barrister, in whose
employ C. Lamb's father was.
" Lovel ;" this admirable sketch is a portrait of Elia's father, Blr. John
Lamb.
" R. N.," probably Mr. Robert Norris, a very old friend of the Lambs,
and an officer of the Inner Temple.
GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
Mr. C. V. Le Grice's witticism has often been attributed to other
humorists.
DREAM CHILDREN.
Some fmiher account of the " great house in Norfolk " will be found
in " Blakesmoor," the first of the " Last Essays of Elia." The house
is there rejireseuted as situated in Hertfordshire, as it really was.
In a letter to Coleridge, Lamb says of Ms Grandmother Field, that
she " lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or sixty last years of her
life ; that she was a woman of exemplary piety and goodness, and for
many years before her death was terribly afllicted with a cancer in her
breast, which she bore with true Christian patience."
" John L.," Charles's brother, a clerk in the South Sea House. He
was lamed by the fall of a stone, which v,-as blown down in a high wind.
APPENDIX. 489
DISTANT COKKESPONDENTS.
This Essay originally formed part of a letter to Mr. Barron Field,
who had received a judicial appointment in New South Wales.
"J, \V.," ;Mr. James AVhite, who died in 1821. (See note to the
followiiig Essay.)
THE PKAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS,
James White was Lamb's schoolfellow at Christ's, and his constant
companion in Jiis early years. He was the author of " Letters of Sir
John Falstaff, Knt.," iu the writing of which Southey says Lamb had a
share.
COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS.
The following postscript was appended to this Essay in the " London
Magazine :" —
P.S. — My friend Hume (not M.P.) has a curious manu-
script in his possession, the original draft of the celebrated
" Beggar's Petition " (who cannot say by heart the
"Beggar's Petition?"), as it was written by some school
usher (as I remember), with corrections interlined from the
pen of Oliver Goldsmith. As a specimen of the Doctor's
improvement, I recollect one most judicious alteration —
" A pamper'd menial di-ove me from the door."
It stood originally —
"A livery servant drove me,"' &c.
Here is an instance of poetical or artificial language pro-
perly substituted for the phrase of common conversation ;
against Wordsworth, I think I must get H. to send it to
the " London," as a corollary to the foregoing.
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.
Lamb confessed that he borrowed the idea of this Essay from his
friend Manning, who had resided several years in China.
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.
Three articles in the " London Magazine," on "The Old Actors," were
considerably altered by EMa, both in matter and arrangement, and were
republished, in his collected woi'ks, as the present Essays " On some of
the Old Actors," " On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," and
" On the Acting of Munden."
490 APPENDIX.
The following passage, -whicli commenced the last of the original
Essays, was omitted in then- altered form : —
I do not know a more mortifying- thing than to be
conscious of a foregone delight, with a total oblivion of the
person and manner which conveyed it. In dreams, I often
stretch and strain after the countenance of Edwin, whom I
once saw in " Peeping Tom." I cannot catch a feature ot
him. He is no more to me than Nokes or Pinkethman.
Parsons, and, still more, Dodd, were near being lost to me
till I was refreshed M'ith their portraits (fine treat) the
other day at Mr. Mathews's gallery at Highgate; which,
with the exception of the Hogarth pictures, a few years
since exhibited in Pall Mall, was the most delightful col-
lection I ever gained admission to. There hang the players,
in their single persons and in grouped scenes, from the
Eestoration, — Bettertons, Booths, Garricks, — justifying the
prejudices which we entertain for them ; the Bracegirdles,
the Mountforts, and the Oldfields, fresh as Gibber has
described them ; the AYofSngton (a true Hogarth) upon
a couch, dallying and dangerous ; the screen scene in
Brinsley's famous comedy ; with Smith and Mrs. Abingdon,
whom I have not seen ; and the rest, whom, having seen,
I see still there. There is Henderson, unrivalled in Gomus,
whom I saw at secondhand in the elder Harley ; Harley,
the rival of Holman, in Horatio ; Holman, with the bright
glittering teeth, in Lothario, and the deep pavior's sighs in
Eomeo, the j oiliest person (" our son is fat ")of any Hamlet
I have yet seen, with the most laudable attempts (for a
personable man) at looking melancholy ; and Pope, the
abdicated monarch of tragedy and comedy, in Harry the
Eighth and Lord Townley. There hang the two Aickins,
brethren in mediocrity ; AVroughton, who in Kitely seemed
to have forgotten that in prouder dajj-s he had personated
Alexander ; the specious form of John Palmer, with the
special effrontery of Bobby ; Bensley, with the trumpet-
tongue ; and little Quick (the retired Dioclesian of Isling-
ton), with his squeak like a Bart'lemew fiddle. There are
fixed, cold as in life, the immoveable features of Mood}^,
who, afraid of o'erstepping Nature, sometimes stopped short
APPENDIX. 491
of her ; and the restless fidgetiness of Lewis, who, with no
such fears, not seklom leaped o' the other side. There hang
Farren and AYhitfield, and Burton and rhillimore, names of
small account in those times, but which, remembered now,
or casually recalled by the sight of an old play-bill, with
their associated recordations, can " drown an eye unused to
flow." There too hangs, not far removed from them in
death, the graceful plainness of the first Mrs. Pope, with a
voice unstrung by age, but which in her better days must
have competed with the silver tones of Barry himself, so
enchanting in decay do I remember it, — of all her lady
parts, exceeding herself in the " Lady Quakeress " (there
earth touched heaven !) of O'Keefe, when she played it to
the " merry cousin " of Lewis ; and Mrs. Mallocks, the sen-
siblest of viragoes ; and Miss Pope, a gentlewoman ever, to
the verge of ungentility, with Churchill's compliment still
burnishing upon her gay Honeycomb lips. There are the
two Bannisters, and Sedgwick, and Kelly, and Dignum
(Diggy), and the bj^gone features of Mrs. Ward, matchless
in Lady Loverule ; and the collective majesty of the whole
Kemble famil}^ ; and (Shakespeare's woman) Dora Jordan ;
and, by her, two Antics, who, in former and in latter days,
have chiefly beguiled us of our griefs ; whose portraits we
shall strive to recall, for the sympathy of those who may
not have had the benefit of viewing the matchless Highgate
collection.
MR. SUETT.
for a " slip-shod muse," to celebrate in numbers, loose
and shambling as himself, the merits and the person of
Mr. Eichard Suett, Comedian !
Then followed the characteristic sketches of Suett and Mimdeu, on
pages 178 and 195.
To the suggestion (on page 17-4) that the stewardship of the Lady
Olivia's household was probably conferred on Malvolio " for other
respects than age or length of service," a note was appended.
Mrs. Inchbald seems to have fallen into the common
mistake of the character in some sensible observations,
otherwise, on this comedy. " It might be asked," she says,
"whether this credulous steward was much deceived in
2 L
492 APPENDIX.
imputing a degraded taste, iu the sentiments of love, to liis
fair lady Olivia, as she actually did fall in love vsrith a
domestic, and one who, from his extreme youth, was per-
haps a greater reproach to her discretion than had she cast
a tender regard upon her old and faithful sei-vant." But
where does she gather the fact of his age ? Is either Maria
nor Fabian ever cast that reproach upon him.
The following passage, which originally formed part of Eiia's acute
viiiJication of Malvolio, was omitted when the Essay was republished,
to its manifest improvement. It is interesting as showing how real
Shakespeare's creations were to Lamb, After the word " misrule," at
the end of the first paragraph on page 175, the paper in the " London
Magazine " continued : —
There was "example for it," said Malvolio; "the lady
of the Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe."
Possibly, too, he might remember — for it must have hap-
pened about his time — an instance of a Duchess of Malfy
(a countrywoman of Olivia's, and her equal at least)
descending from her state to court a steward :
" The misery of them that are born great !
Tliey are forced to woo because none dare woo them."
To be sure, the lady was not veiy tenderly handled for it
by her brothers in the sequel, but their vengeance apx^ears
to have been whetted rather by her presumption in re-
marrying at all (when they had meditated the keeping of
her fortune in their family), than by her choice of an
inferior, of Antonio's noble merits especially, for her hus-
band ; and, besides, Olivia's brother was just dead. Mal-
volio was a man of reading, and possibly reflected upon
these lines, or something like them, in his own country
poetry : —
" Ceremony has made many fools.
It is as easy way unto a duchess
As to a hatted dame, if her love answer ;
But that by timorous honours, pale respects,
Idle degrees of fear, men make their ways
Hard of themselves."
" 'Tis but fortune ; all is fortune. Maria once told me she
did affect me ; and I have heard herself come thus near,
that, should she fancy, it should be one of my complexion."
APPENDIX. 493
If here was no encouragement, tlie devil is in it. I wish
we could get at the private history of all this. Between
the countess herself, serious or dissembling — for one hardly
knows how to apprehend this fantastical great lady — and
the practices of that delicious little piece of mischief,
Maria —
" The lime-twigs laid
By Machiavei, the waiting-maid" —
the man might well he rapt into a fool's paradise.
Bensley throw over the part, &c.
ON THE AKTIFICIAL COIMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY.
The long passage, extending from page 191 to page 195, -which we
have restored to this Essay, was probably withdrawn at the request of
either Kemble or Godwin, with both of whom Lamb was intimate. The
story of the " damning " of his tragedy, altliough told in such a delight-
fully easy and lively manner, perhaps made Godwin wince, notwith-
standing his philosophy. As it is impossible the passage should have
been suppressed as unworthy of Elia, we have preferred to insert it with
the context rather than in the Appendix, though it has little connection
with the real subject of the Essay. "M." was Mr. Marshall, an old
friend of Godwin's. " R s " was, probably, J. Hamilton Reynolds, a
dramatist, and one of the contributors to the "London Magazine."
PREFACE TO THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA.
The so-called preface to the "Last Essays of Elia" was evidently
intended originally as a postscript to the first series of Essays. Lamb
at the time did not intend to furnish any more contributions to the
" London " (except, possibly, a few pieces he may have had in hand), and
was only prevailed upon to continue them at th e earnest solicitation of
the publishers. The present preface first appeared as
A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA.
BY A FKIEKD.
This gentleman, who for some months past had been in
a declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to
nature- He just lived long enough (it was what be wished)
to see his papers collected into a volume. The pages of
the " London Magazine " will henceforth know him no
more.
Exactly at twelve last night, his queer spirit departed ;
and the bells of Saint Bride's rang him. out with the old
2 L 2
494 APFEXDIX.
year. The luoiimful vibrations were cauglit in the dining-
room of his friends T. and H,,* and the company, assembled
there to welcome in another 1st of January, checked their
carousals in mid-mirth, and were silent. Janus f wept.
The gentle P r, + in a whisper, signified his intention
of devoting an elegy ; and Allan C, § nobly forgetful of his
countrymen's wrongs, vowed a memoir to his manes full
and friendly as a " Tale of Lyddalcross."
To say truth, it is time he were gone
And so on to the end. After the last jiaragraph of the " Preface " as
it now stands, the " Character " continued : —
He left little property behind him. Of course, the little
that is left (chiefly in India bonds) devolves iipon his
cousin Bridget. A few critical dissertations were found in
his escritoire, which have been handed over to the editor of
this magazine, in which it is to be hoped they will shortly
appear, retaining his accustomed signature.
He has himself not obscurely hinted that his employ-
ment lay in a public oflSce. The gentlemen in the exj)ort
department of the East India House will forgive me if I
acknowledge the readiness with which tliey assisted me in
the retrieval of his few manuscripts. They pointed out in
a most obliging manner the desk at which he had been
planted for forty years ; showed me ponderous tomes of
figures, in his own remarkably neat hand, which, more
properly than his few printed tracts, might be called his
" Works." They seemed afiectionate to his memory, and
universally commended his expertness in book-keeping.
It seems he was the inventor of some ledger which should
combine the precision and certainty of the Italian double
entry (I think they called it) with the brevity and facility
of some newer German system ; but I am not able to
appreciate the worth of the discovery. I have often heard
him express a warm regard for his associates in ofiice, and
* Taylor and Hessey, the publishers of the " London Magazine."
t Janus Weathercock, the nom de plume of Mr. Wainwright, one of
the contributors to the " London."
Z. Mr. Procter, better Imown as Barry Cornwall.
§ Allan Cuuniugliam, the Scotch poet
APPENDIX, 495
how fortunate he considered himself in having his lot
thrown in amongst them. There is more sense, more dis-
course, more shrewdness, and even talent, among these
clerks (he would say), than in twice the number of authors
by profession that I have conversed with. He would
brighten up sometimes upon the " old days of the India
House," when he consorted with Woodroffe and Wissett,
and Peter Corbet (a descendant and worthy representa-
tive, bating the point of sanctity, of old facetious Bishop
Corbet) ; and Hoole, who translated Tasso ; and Bartlemy
Brown, whose father (God assoil him therefor !) modern-
ised Walton ; and sly, warm-hearted old Jack Cole (King
Cole they called him in those days) and Campe and Fom-
belle, and a world of choice sj^irits, more than I can
remember to name, who associated in those days with Jack
Burrell (the hon-vivant of the South Sea House) ; and little
Eyton (said to be a fac-simile of Pope, — he was a miniature
of a gentleman), that was cashier under him ; and Dan
Voight of the Custom-house, that left the famous library.
Well, Elia is gone, — for aught I know, to be re-united
with them, and these poor traces of his pen are all we
have to show for it. How little survives of the wordiest
authors ! Of all they said or did in their lifetime, a few
glittering words only ! His Essays found some favourers,
as they appeared separately. They shuffled their way in
the crowd well enough singly : how they will read, now
they are brought together, is a question for the publishers,
who have thus ventured to draw out into one piece his
" weaved-up follies."
Phil-Elia.
BLAKESMOOR, IN H SHIRE.
The real name of this place was Gilston. It belonged to the Plumers,
a Hertfordshire family, who preferred to live in a more modern dwell-
ing, and left the old house entirely under the control of Lamb's grand-
mother, Mrs. Field ; and Charles in his boyhood was a frequent visitor
there. The description of Blakesmoor is very exact ; even the " Beauty
with the cool blue pastoral drapery " has been identified. But although
there is an air of sincerity in Elia's lamentations which it is diflScult to
believe only assumed, the house was never pulled down at all : it was
in excellent preservation not many years ago, and probably remains so
496 APPENDIX.
to this day. Lamb visited Gilstou in 1799, when it was undergoing
some repairs, which he may have mistaken for the process of demoli-
tion; or, as Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has suggested, the rumour of the
alterations that wore being made in the place may have been exagge-
rated into a report of its destruction; or, possibly (a less inviting
solution), Elia, by an " allowable fiction," merely imagined the fall of
' Blakcsmoor " in order to give himself an opportunity of expressing his
rigret at the catastrophe.
POOR RELATIONS.
"Poor W ," in his Essay, bears a striking resemblance ti
"F ," in "Christ's Hospital" (page 29), who perished on the plains
" of Salamanca."
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING.
In these " Detached Thoughts " we have ventured to restore two or
tlu'ee characteristic touches which were omitted in the collected Essays.
The passage on page 217 is a genuine piece of autobiogi-aphy. The piece
the •• ugly rabble " had damned was Lamb's farce, " Mr. PL"
" Poor Tobin." See Appendix to " Christ's Hospital."
" Martin B." Martin Burney, one of Lamb's most intimate friends.
ELLISTONIANA.
" Sir A C " was Sir Anthony Carlisle, a celebrated surgeon
of that day, from whom EUa had the droll anecdote of the three Quakers,
in the Essay on " Imperfect Sympathies." Lamb said in one of his
letters that Carlisle was " the best story-teller he ever heard."
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN.
This Essay records Lamb's delight at escaping from his thirty-three
years' drudgery at the India House.
After '' what is it all for ?" at the bottom of page 257, the original
Essay continued : —
I recite those verses of Cowley which so mightily agree
with my constitution : —
" Business ! the frivolous pretence
Of human lusts to shake off innocence :
Business ! the grave impertinence :
Business ! the thing which I, of all things, hate :
Business ! the contradiction of my fate."
Or I repeat my own lines, written in my clerk state : —
" Who first-invented work — and bound the free
And holiday-rejoicing spirit down
To the ever-haunting importunity
Of business, in the green fields, and the town —
APPENDIX. 497
To plough, loom, anvil, spade — and, oh ! most sad.
To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead 'wood !
Who but the being unblest, alien from good,
Sabbathless Satan ! he who his unglad
Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings
That roimd and round incalculably reel —
For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel —
In that red realm from whence are no returuings,
Where toiling and turmoiling, ever and aye
He and his thoughts keep jDensive worky-day."
tliis divine leisure ! Eeader, if thou art furnished
svith the old series of the " London," turn incontinently to
the third volume (page 367), and you will see my present
condition there touched in a " Wish " by a daintier pen
than I can pretend to. I subscribe to that Sonnet toto
corcle. A man can never have too much time to himself, &c.
BAKBAEA S .
The real heroine of this charming sketch was Miss Kelly, a well-
known actress of the time, with whom Lamb was on friendly terms.
She survived him some years.
THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY,
This Essay is an extract from Elia's fine letter to Kobert Southey.
The rest of the letter, given below, svifiiciently explains the cause of
the quarrel. Southey noticed the book to assist the sale, not retard it,
of which Lamb was afterwards convinced. " Sounder" had been hastily
substituted for " Saner," the word originally used, and which Southey
felt, in the peculiar cii'cumstances Lamb was placed in, it was impossible
to retain.
Sir, — You have done me an unfriendly office, without
perhaps much considering what you were doing. You
have given an ill name to my poor lucubrations. In a
recent paper on Infidelity, you usher in a conditional
commendation of them with an exception ; which, pre-
ceding the encomium, and taking up nearly the same
space with it, must impress your readers with the notion,
that the objectionable parts in them are at least equal in
quantity to the pardonable. The censure is in fact the
criticism; the praise — a concession merely. Exceptions
usually follow, to qualify praise or blame. But there
stands your reproof, in the very front of your notice, iu
498 APPENDIX^
ugly characters, like some bugbear, to frighten all good
Christians from purchasing. Through you I become an
object of suspicion to preceptors of youth, and fathers of
families. "A hooJc tvJdch wants only a sounder religious feeling
to be as delightful as it is original." With no further expla-
nation, what must your readers conjecture, but that my
little volume is some vehicle for heresy or infidelity ? The
quotation, which you honour me by subjoining, oddly
enough, is of a character which bespeaks a temperament
in the Avriter the very reverse of that your reproof goes to
insinuate. Had you been taxing me with superstition, the
passage would have been pertinent to the censure. Was
it worth your while to go so far out of your way to affront
the feelings of an old friend, and commit yourself by an
irrelevant quotation, for the pleasure of reflecting upon a
poor child, an exile at Genoa ?
I am at a loss what particular essay you had in view (if
my poor ramblings amount to that appellation) when you
were in such a hurry to thrust in your objection, like bad
news, foremost. — Perhaps the paper on " Saying Graces"
was the obnoxious feature. I have endeavoured there to
rescue a voluntary duty — good in place, but never, as I
remember, literally commanded — from the charge of an
undecent formality. Eightly taken, sir, that paper was
not against graces, but want of grace; not against the
ceremony, but the carelessness and slovenliness so often
observed in the performance of it.
Or was it that on the "New Year" — in which I have
described the feelings of the merely natural man, on a
consideration of the amazing change, which is supposable
to take place on our removal from this fleshly scene ? If
men would honestly confess their misgivings (which few-
men ■v\dll) there are times when the strongest Christian of
us, I believe, has reeled under questions of such staggering
obscurity. I do not accuse you of this weakness. There
are some who tremblingly reach out shaking hands to the
guidance of Faith— others who stoutly venture into the
dark (their Human Confidence their leader, whom thej
mistake for Faith) ; and, investing themselves beforehand
APPENDIX. 499
with cherubic wings, as they fancy, find their new rohes as
familiar, and fitting to their supposed growth and stature
in godliness, as the coat they left oE yesterday — some
\vhoso hope totters upon crutches — others who stalk into
futurity upon stilts.
The contemplation of a Spiritual World, — which, with-
out the addition of a misgiving conscience, is enough to
shake some natures to their foundation — is smoothly got
over by others, who shall float over the black billows in
their little boat of No-Distrust, as unconcernedly as over a
summer sea. The difference is chiefly constitutional.
One man shall love his friends and his friends' faces ;
and, tinder the uncertainty of conversing with them again,
in the same manner and familiar circumstances of sight,
speech, &c., as upon earth — in a moment of no irreverent
weakness — for a dream-while — no more — would be almost
content, for a reward of a life of virtue (if he could ascribe
such acceptance to his lame performances), to take up his
portion with those he loved, and was made to love, in this
good world, which he knows — which was created so lovely,
bej^ond his deservings. Another, embracing a more ex-
alted vision — so that he might receive indefinite addita-
ments of power, knowledge, beauty, glory, &c. — is ready to
forego the recognition of humbler individualities of earth,
and the old familiar faces. The shapings of our heavens
are the modifications of our constitution ; and Mr. Feeble
Mind, or Mr. Great Heart, is born in every one of us.
Some (and such have been accounted the safest divines)
have shrunk from pronouncing upon the final state of any
man ; nor dare they pronounce the case of Judas to be
desperate. Others (with stronger optics), as plainly as
with the eye of flesh, shall behold a given Icing in bliss, and
a given cJiamberlain in torment ; even to the eternising of a
cast of the eye in the latter, his own self-mocked and good-
humouredly- borne deformity on earth, but supposed to
aggravate the uncouth and hideous expression of his pangs in
the other place. That one man can presume so far, and that
another would with shuddering disclaim such confidences,
is, I believe, an efiect of the nerves purely.
500 APPENDIX.
If, in cither of these papers, or elsewhere, I have been
betrayed into some levities — not affronting the sanctuary,
but glancing perhaps at some of the outskirts and extreme
edges, the debateable land between the holy and profane re-
gions — (forthe admixture of man's inventions, twisting them-
selves with the name of the religion itself, has artfully made
it difficult to touch even the alloy, without, in some men's
estimation, soiling the fine gold) — if I have sported within
the purlieus of serious matter — it was, I dare say, a humour
■ — be not startled, sir, — which I have tmwittingly derived
from yourself. You have all your life been making a jest
of the Devil, Not of the scriptural meaning of that dark
essence — personal or allegorical ; for the nature is nowhere
plainly delivered. I acquit yon of intentional irreverence.
But indeed yoiT have made wonderfull}' free with, and been
mighty pleasant upon, the popular idea and attributes of
him. A Noble Lord, your brother Visionar}', has scarcely
taken greater liberties with the material keys, and merely
Catholic notion of St, Peter, You have flattered him in
prose : you have chanted him in goodly odes. You have
been his Jester ; volunteer Laureate, aitcl self-elected Court
Poet to Beelzebub.
You have never ridiculed, I believe, what you thought
to be religion, but yon are always giixling at what some
pio:is, but perhaps mistaken folks, think to be so. For this
reason, I am sorry to hear that yoTi are engaged upon a
life of George Fox. I know you will fall into the error of
intermixing some comic stuff with your seriousness. The
Quakers tremble at the subject in your hands. The Me-
thodists are shy of you, upon account of their founder. But,
above all, our Popish brethren are most in your debt. The
errors of that Church have proved a fruitful source to your
scoffing vein. Their Legend has been a Golden one to
you. And here your friends, sir, have noticed a notable
inconsistency. To the imposing rites, the solemn penances,
devout austerities of that communion ; the affecting though
erring piety of their hermits ; the silence and solitude of
the Chartreux — their crossings, their holy waters — their
Virgin, and their saints — to these, they say, you have been
AFFEXDIX. 501
indebted for the best feelings, and the richest imageiy, of
your epic poetry. You have drawn copious drafts upon
Loretto. We thought at one time you were going post to
Eome — but that in the facetious commentaries, which it is
your custom to append so plentifully, and (some say) inju-
diciously, to your loftiest performances in this kind, you
spurn the uplifted toe, which you but just now seemed to
court ; leave his holiness in the lurch ; and show him a
fair pair of Protestant heels under your Eomish vestment.
When we think you already at the wicket, suddenly a
violent cross wind blows you transverse —
" Ten thousand leagues awry
Then mi<?ht we see
Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost
And flutter'd into rags ; then reliques, beads.
Indulgences, dispenses, i^ardons, bulls,
The sport of winds."
You pick up pence by showing the hallowed bones, shrine,
and ciaicifix ; and you take money a second time by expos-
ing the trick of them afterwards. You carry your verse to
Castle Angelo for sale in a morning ; and, swifter than a
pedlar can transmute his pack, you are at Canterbury with
your prose ware before night.
Sir, is it that I dislike you in this merry vein ? The
very reverse. No countenance becomes an intelligent jest
better than your own. It is your grave aspect, when you
look awful upon your poor friends, which I would deprecate.
In more than one place, if I mistake not, you have
been pleased to compliment me at the expense of my com-
panions. I cannot accept your compliment at such a price.
The upbraiding a man's poverty naturally makes him look
about him to see whether he be so poor indeed as he is
presumed to be. You have put me upon counting my
riches. Eeally, sir, I did not know I was so wealthy in
the article of friendships. There is , and , whom
you never heard of, but exemplary characters both, and
excellent church-goers; and Noms, mine and my father's
friend for nearly half a century ; and the enthusiast for
Wordsworth's poetry, , a little tainted with Socinianism
502 AFPENDIX.
it is to be feared, but constant in his attacliments, and a
capital critic ; and , a sturdy old Atlianasian, so that
sets all to rights again ; and Wainwright, the light, and
warm-as-light hearted, Janus of the " London ;" and the
translator of Dante, still a curate, modest and amiable C. ;
and Allan C, the large-hearted Scot; and P r, candid and
affectionate as his own poetry ; and A p, Coleridge's
friend ; and G n, his more than friend ; and Coleridge
himself, the same to me still, as in those old evenings,
when we used to sit and speculate (do you remember them,
sir?) at our old Salutation tavern, upon Pantisocracy and
golden days to come on earth ; and W th (why, sir, I
might drop my rent-roll here ; such goodly farms and
manors have I reckoned up already. In what possession
has not this last name alone estated me ? — but I will go on)
— and Monkhouse, the noble-minded kinsman, by wedlock,
of W th ; and H, C. E., unwearied in the offices of a
friend ; and Clarkson, almost above the narrowness of that
relation, yet condescending not seldom heretofore from the
labours of his world-embracing charity to bless my humble
roof; and the gall-less and single-minded Dyer; and the
liigh-minded associate of Cook, the veteran Colonel, with
his lusty heart still sending cartels of defiance to old Time :
and, not least, "VV. A., the last and steadiest left to me of
that little knot of whist-players, that used to assemble
weekly, for so many years, at the Queen's Gate (you re-
member them, sir ?) and called Admiral Burney friend.
I will come to the point at once. I believe you will
not make many exceptions to my associates so far. But I
have purposely omitted some intimacies, which I do not
yet repent of having contracted, with two gentlemen, dia-
metrically opposed to 3'ourself in principles. You will
understand me to allude to the authors of " Eimini " and
of the " Table Talk." And first of the former.—
It is an error more particularly incident to persons of
the correctest principles and habits, to seclude themselves
from the rest of mankind, as from another species, and form
into knots and clubs. The best people herding thus ex-
clusively, are in danger of contracting a narrowness. Heat
APPENDIX. 503
and cold, dryness and moisture, in the natural world, do
not ily asunder, to S2:)lit the globe iuto sectarian parts and
separations ; but mingling, as they best may, correct the
malignity of any single predominance. The analogy holds,
I suppose, in the moral world. If all the good people were
io ship themselves off to Ten-a Incognita, Avhat, in huma-
aity's name, is to become of the refuse? If the persons,
whom I have chiefly in view, have not pushed matters to
this extremity yet, tlie}^ carry them as far as they can go.
Instead of mixing with the infidel and the freethinker — in
the room of opening a negotiation, to try at least to find
out at which gate the error entered — they huddle close to-
gether, in a weak fear of infection, like that pusillanimous
underling in Spenser —
" This is tlie -wandering wood, this Error's den ;
A monster vile, whom God and man docs hate :
Therefore, I reed, beware." Fly, fly, quoth then
The fearful Dwarf.
And, if they be writers in orthodox journaiS, addressing
themselves only to the irritable passions of the unbeliever
— they proceed in a safe system of strengthening the strong-
hands, and confirming the valiant knees ; of converting the
already converted, and proselyting their own party. I am
the more convinced of this from a passage in the very
treatise which occasioned this letter. It is where, having
recommended to the doubter the writings of Michaelis and
Lardner, you ride triumphant over the necks of all infidels,
sceptics, and dissenters, from this time to the world's end,
upon the wheels of two imanswerable deductions. I do
not hold it meet to set down, in a miscellaneous compila-
tion like this, such religious words as you have thought fit
to introduce into the pages of a petulant literary journal.
I therefore beg leave to substitute numerals, and refer to
the " Quarterly Eeview " (for January) for filling of them
up. " Here," say you, " as in the history of 7, if these books
are authentic, the events which they relate must be true ;
if they were written by 8, 9 is 10 and 11." Your first
deduction, if it means honestly, rests upon two identical
504 APPENDIX.
propositions ; thotigli I suspect an unfairness in one of the
terms, whicli this -would not be quite the proper place for
explicating. At all events, you have no cause to triumph ;
you have not been proving the premises, but refer for satis-
faction therein to very long and laborious works, which
may well employ the sceptic a twelvemonth or two to
digest, before he can possibly be ripe for your conclusion.
When he has satisfied himself about the premises, he will
concede to you the inference, I dare say, most readily. —
But your latter deduction, viz., that because 8 has written
a book concerning 9, therefore 10 and 11 was certainly his
meaning, is one of the most extraordinary conclusions per
saltum, that I have had the good fortune to meet with. As
far as 10 is verbally asserted in the writings, all sects must
agree with you ; but you cannot be ignorant of the many
various ways in which the doctrine of the ******* has been
understood, from a low figurative expression (with the
Unitarians) up to the most mysterious actuality ; in which
highest sense alone you and your church take it. And for
11, that there is no other possible conclusion — to hazard this
in the face of so many thousands of Arians and Socinians,
&c., who have drawn so opposite a one, is such a piece ot
theological hardihood, as, I think, warrants me in conclud-
ing that, when you sit down to pen theology, you do not
at all consider your opponents, but have in your eye,
merely and exclusively, readers of the same way of think-
ing with yourself, and therefore have no occasion to trouble
yourself with the quality of the logic to which you treat them.
Neither can I think, if you had had the welfare of the
poor child — over whose hopeless condition you whine so
lamentably and (I must think) unseasonably — seriously at
heart, that you could have taken the step of sticking him
up by name — T. H. is as good as naming him — to perpetuate
an outrage upon the parental feelings, as long as the " Quar-
terly Eeview" shall last. Was it necessary to specify an
individual case, and give to Christian compassion the
appearance of a personal attack? Is this the way to
conciliate unbelievers, or not rather to widen the breach
irreparably ?
APPENDIX. 505
I own I could never think so considerably of mj'self as
to decline the society of an agreeable or worthy man npon
difference of opinion only. The impediments and the faci-
litations to a sound belief are various and inscrutable as the
heart of man. Some believe upon weak principles ; others
cannot feel the efficacy of the strongest. One of the most
candid, most upright, and shigle-meaning men, I ever knew,
was the late Thomas Holcroft. I believe he never said one
thing and meant another, in his life ; and, as near as I can
guess, he never acted otherwise than with the most scru-
pulous attention to conscience. Ought we to wish the
character false, for the sake of a hollow compliment to
Christianity ?
Accident introduced me to the acquaintance of Mr.
L. H. — and the experience of his many friendly- qualities
confirmed a friendship between us. You, who have been
misrepresented yourself, I should hope, have not lent an
idle ear to the calumnies which have been spread abroad
respecting this gentleman. I was admitted to his house-
hold for some years, and do most solemnly aver that I be-
lieve him to be in his domestic relations as correct as any
man. He chose an ill-judged subject for a poem, the pec-
cant humours of which have been visited on him tenfold
by the artful use, which his adversaries have made, of an
equivocal term. The subject itself was started by Dante,
but better because brieflier treated of. But the crime of the
lovers, in the Italian and the English poet, with its aggra-
vated enormity of circumstance, is not of a kind (as the
critics of the latter well knew) with those conjunctions, for
which Nature herself has provided no excuse, because no
temptation. It has nothing in common with the black
horrors, sung by Ford and Massinger. The familiarising
of it in tale and fable may be for that reason incidentally
more contagious. In spite of Eimini, I must look upon its
author as a man of taste and a poet. He is better than so ;
he is one of the most cordial-minded men I ever knew, and
matchless as a fireside companion. I mean not to affront
or wound your feelings when I say that in his more genial
moods he has often reminded me of you. There is the same
50G APPENDIX.
air of mild dogmatism — tlie same condescending to a boyish
sportiveness — in both your conversations. His handwriting
is so much the same with your own, that I have opened
more than one letter of his, hoping, nay, not doubting, but
it was from you, and have been disappointed (he will bear
with my saying so) at the discovery of my error. L, H. is
unfortunate in holding some loose and not very definite
speculations (for at times I think he hardly knows whither
his premises would carry him) on marriage — the tenets, I
conceive, of the "Political Justice" carried a little farther.
For anything I could discover in his practice, they have
reference, like those, to some future possible condition of
society, and not to the present times. But neither for these
obliquities of thinking (upon which my own conclusions
are as distant as the poles asunder) — nor for his political
asperities and petulancies, which are wearing out with the
heats and vanities of youth — did I select him for a friend ;
but for qualities which fitted him for that relation. I do
not know whether I flatter myself with being the occasion,
but certain it is, that, touched with some misgivings for
sundry harsh things which lie had written aforetime against
our friend C, before he left this country he sought a recon-
ciliation with that gentleman (himself being his own intro-
ducer), and found it.
L. H. is now in Italy ; on his departure to which land,
with much regret I took my leave of him and of his little
family — seven of them, sir, with their mother — and as kind
a set of little people (T. H. and all), as affectionate chil-
dren as ever blessed a parent. Had you seen them, sir, I
think you could not have looked upon them as so many
little Jonases — but rather as pledges of the vessel's safety
that was to bear such a freight of love.
I wish you would read Mr. H.'s lines to that same T, H.,
" six years old, during a sickness : " —
' Sleep breaks at last from out tkce.
My little patient boy'
(they are to be found in the 47th page of " Foliage ") — and
ask yourself how far they are out of the spirit of Chris-
APPENDIX. 507
tianity. I have a letter from Italy, received but the other
day, into which L. II. has put as much heart, and as many
friendly yearnings after old associates, and native country,
as, I think, paper can well hold. It would do you no hurt
to give that the perusal also.
From the other gentleman I neither expect nor desire (as
he is well assured) any stxch concessions as L. H. made to
C. What hath soured him, and made him to suspect his
friends of iufidelit}' towards him, when there was no such
matter, I know not. I stood well with him for fifteen years
(the proudest of my life), and have ever spoken my full
mind of him to some, to whom his panegyric must natu-
rally be least tasteful. I never in thought swerved from
him, I never betrayed him, I never slackened in my admi-
ration of him ; I was the same to him (neither better nor
worse), though he could not see it, as in the days when he
thought fit to trust me. At this instant, he may be pre-
paring for me some compliment, above my deserts, as he
has sprinkled many such among his admirable books, for
which I rest his debtor ; or, for anything I know, or can
guess to the contrary, he may be about to read a lecture ou
my weaknesses. He is welcome to them (as he was to my
humble hearth), if they can divert a spleen, or ventilate a
fit of sullenness. I wish he would not quarrel with the
world at the rate he does ; but the reconciliation must be
effected by himself, and I despair of living to see that day.
But, protesting against much that he has written, and some
things which he chooses to do ; judging him hy his conver-
sation which I enjoyed so long, and relished so deeply ; or
by his books, in those places where no clouding passion in-
tervenes — I should belie my own conscience, if I said less,
than that I think W. H. to be, in his natural and healthy
state, one of the wisest and finest spirits breathing. So far
from being ashamed of that intimacy, which was betwixt us,
it is my boast that I was able for so many years to have pre-
sei'ved it entire ; and I think I shall go to my grave without
finding, or expecting to find, such another companion. But
I forget my manners — you will pardon me, sir — I return to
the correspondence.
2 u
508 APPENDIX.
Sir, you were pleased (you know where) to invffe me to
a compliance with the wholesome forms and doctrines of
the Church of England. I take your advice with as much
kindness as it was meant. But I must think the invitation
rather more kind than seasonahle. I am a Dissenter. The
last sect, with which you can remember me to have made
common profession, were the Unitarians. You would think
it not very pertinent, if (fearing that all was not well with
you), I were gravely to invite you (for a remedy) to attend
with me a course of Mr. Belsham's Lectures at Hackney.
Perhaps 1 have scruples to some of your forms and doc-
trines. But if I come, am I secure of civil treatment? —
The last time I was in any of your places of worship was
on Easter Sunday last. I had the satisfaction of listening
to a very sensible sermon of an argumentative turn, deli-
vered with great propriety, by one of your bishops. The
place was Westminster Abbey. As such religion, as I have,
has always acted on me more by way of seiitiment than
argumentative process, I was not unwilling, after ser-
mon ended, by no unbecoming transition, to pass over
to some serious feelings, impossible to be disconnected from
the sight of those old tombs, &c. But, by whose order I
know not, I was debarred that privilege even for so short a
space as a few minutes ; and turned, like a dog or some pro-
fane person, out into the common street; with feelings,
which I could not help, but not very congenial to the day
or the discourse. I do not know that I shall ever venture
myself again into one of your churches.
You had your education at Westminster, &c.
The friends Lamb indicated in this letter by their initials were : — The
Rev. H. F. Gary, the translator of Dante ; Procter ; Allsop ; Gillman,
at whose house Coleridge died ; Wordsworth, the poet; H. C. Robinson,
lately dead ; William Ayrton; Leigh Hunt; and William Hazlitt.
It seems a pity that, in reprinting part of the letter, Lamb did not
add a conclusion more in harmony with the rest of the Essay than the
&ly insinuation with which it now ends: —
The mischief was done about the time that you were a
scholar there. Do ijoii know anything about the unfor.
tunate relic?
APPENDIX. 509
The banter wfis carried on a little farther in the letter : —
Can you help ns in this emergency to find the nose, or
can yon give Chantrey a notion (from memory) of its pristine
life and vigour ? I am willing for peace's sake to subscribe
my guinea towards the restoration of the lamented feature.
I am, Sir, your humble servant,
Elia.
AMICUS EEDIVIVUS.
The hero of this Essay was Mr. Georj^e Dyer, the dim-sighted, absent-
minded, childlike, learned G. D. of" Oxford in the Vacation," for whom
through life Lamb had a hearty friendship. " The oftener I see him,"
he wrote to Coleridge, " the more deeply I admire him. He is good-
ness itself" A presumably true account of the accident on which this
delightful Essay is founded, is contained in a letter to Mrs. Hazlitt, in
1823. Lamb was away from home at the time it occmred, and when he
returned at four o'clock, he found G. D. in bed, " raving and light-
headed [tipsy, in fact] with the brandy and water which the doctor —
a one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk — had ordered to be administered."
The following strange note was appended to the account of G. D.'a
immersion in the New Eiver : —
The topography of the cottage and its relation to the
river will explain this, as I have been at some cost to have
the whole engraved (in time, I hope, for our next number),
as well for the satisfaction of the reader as to commemorate
so signal a deliverance.
Whatever may have been intended, the promised illustration did not
appear, Elia had " a mind turned to fictions."
SOME SONNETS OF SIK THILIP SYDNEY.
** W. H.," William Ilazlitt, the great critic.
NEWSPAPEKS THIETY-FIVS YEAES AGO.
In this paper liamb gives an account (most likely a pretty accurate
one) of his newspaper experiences. Sir J s M h is of course
Sir James Macintosh, tlie author of " Vindicia? Gallicse," who was much
abused at this time for his .supposed apostacy from the principles he
had professed at the time of the first French Eevolution. In a letter
to Manning, dated 1801, Lamb informs him that "the poor Albion died
610 APPENDIX.
last Saturday of the world's neglect," and with it " the fonntaia of his
puns was chokeil up for ever." He adds, " I will close my letter with
an epigram oii Blaciutosh, the " VindicifB Gallicse " man, who lias got a
place at last ; one of the last I did for the Albion : —
" Though thou'rt, like Judas, au apostate black,
In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack;
When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf,
He went away, and wisely hanged himself.
This thou may'st do at last ; yet much I doubt.
If thou hast any Bowels to gush out."
This was, no doubt, the " lucky epigram " spoken of in the Essay.
BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE
PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.
The " modem artist " spoken of on page 295 was John Martin, whose
picture of Belshazzar's Feast is well known.
THE WEDDING.
Admiral was possibly Admiral Burney, a whist-jjlaying friend
of Lamb's.
The " Miss T s " appeared as the " Miss Turners," in the original
Essay. One cannot help remarking that, if Emily was married at
nineteen, and had been engaged for five years, she must have been
betrothed at rather an early age — at the same age, too, that Eosaiuuad
Gray fell in love with Allan Clare.
REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE.
A few words of explanation may render the meaning of this Essay
more intelligible.
The cruel sport called " cock-throwing " was formerly common on
Shrove Tuesday.
It is said the Roundheads celebrated the anniversary of Charles the
Firsfs execution by having a calf s head for dinner every Thirtieth oj
January.
After the Restoration, it was customary to wear sprigs of oak, and
to decorate bouses with oak brandies, on the Ticentij-ninlh of May,
Charles tlie Second's birthday, in commemoration of his escape from the
Parliamentary troops by climbing into Boscobel oak-tree.
Geoige tlie Fourth was born August I2th, but his buthday was kept on
April 'lord, St. George's Day,
A PF EN I) IX. 511
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKAED.
Lest the reader should suppose, as many have done, that Lamb him-
self was the " jjoor nameless egotist " of this Essay, we refer him to
Klia's explanation on page 453.
A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.
This was one of Lamb's " lie-children." He confessed to Miss
Hutchinson that it was " from top to toe, every paragraph, pm-e inven-
tion ;■' and yet it was "republished in the newspapers and in the penny
playbills of the night as an authentic account." Lamb prided himself
very much on the success of his hoax.
THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.
When Lamb was a young man, he tried to increase his small income
by writing lottery pulis. He did not succeed very well: his attempts
were rejected as " done in too severe and terse a style."
THE ASS.
" Jem Boyer." (See " Christ's Hospital Thirty-five Years Ago.")
ON THE CUSTOM OF HISSING AT THE THEATRES.
The only dramatic piece of Charles Lamb's which was produced on
tlio stage was his farce, " Mr. H.," which was sernel damnatus. It was
never represented again.
THE LAST PEACH.
The germ of this paper will be found very clearly indicated in a
letter to Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, writtein the day after
Fuuntlcroy was executed. Bernard Barton (the "Busy B.," Hood
called him) was a clerk in a banking house; and Lamb warns him,
with mock solemnity, to beware lest tlie " cash that constantly passed
through his hands, — in an unguarded hour ;" but will "hope better"
things ; and he is shocked at the exquisite adaptation of his own fingera
to tlie piu-poses of " picking, fingering." &c. " No one that is so
framed," he maintains, " but should ti'emble."
CUPID'S REVENGE.
This is a rendering (after the manner of the " Tales from Sliake-
epeare ") of Beaumont and Fletcher's jday of tiie same name.
512 APPENDIX.
%
A DEATH-BED.
This touching letter was written to Mr. H. C. Eohinson, of the
Temple. The dying friend was Mr. Eobert Norris. In the original
letter, Lamb calls him " the last link that bound me to the Temple ;'
(he was librarian there.) The name of Mr. Norris's deaf sou was
Richard, not Robert ; aud " Charley " stands for " Jemmy " in the letter
THE END,
U)mX)N : PRTNIKD BV WII.I.IAM CLOWRS AND SONS, ST.UIFORD Sri;FJIt
AMU CHARIKG CROSS.
York Stki-.f.t, Cu\i;nt Gakdkn,
June, 1878.
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workmen, the various Marks used, Facsimiles from the old Derby
Books, and original Price Lists of more than 400 Figures and
Groups, &c. With 12 Coloured Plates and numerous Woodcuts.
By John Haslem. Imp. Bvo. 3i.f. 6d.
' That which has been done so well by Miss Meteyard for Etruria, by Mr.
Binns for Worcester, and by Mr. Owen for Bristol, has now been done for the
Derby works with at least equal zeal, intelligence, and ability, by Mr. Haslem.' — •
Staffordshire A dvcrttscr.
18 George. Bell and Sons'
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.
AUNT JUDY'S MAGAZINE. Edited by H. K. F. Gatty.
An Illustrated Magazine for Young People. 8(/. Montlily.
The CHRISTMAS VOLUME for 1877 contains Stories by Mrs. Ewing,
ASCOTT R. Hope, Flora Masson, and others. Translations
from the German, French, and Swedish — Short Stories — Fairy
Tales — Papers on Historical Subjects — Natural History Articles.
Short Biographies of Eminent Persons — Verses — A Christmas
Play by Douglas Straight — Acrostics — Correspondence — Book
Notices, and numerous Illustrations. Imp. i6mo. Handsomely
bound, price 8j. 6d.
Former Volumes may still be had, some at reduced prices.
By Mrs. Alfred Gatty.
PARABLES FROM NATURE. With Notes on the Natural
History ; and numerous large Illustrations by eminent Artists. 4to.
cloth gilt, 2i,f. Also in 2 vols. io.f. 6d. each.
i6mo. with Illustrations. First .Series, 17th Edition, \s. 6d.
Second Series, loth Edition, 2s. The two Series in i vol. 3J. 6d.
Third Series, 6th Edition, zs. Fourth .Series, 4th Edition, 2s. The
two Series in i -vol. 4J-. Fifth Series, zs.
WORLDS NOT REALIZED. i6mo. 4th Edition. 2s.
PROVERBS ILLUSTRATED, i6mo. With Illustrations.
4th Edition, zs.
A BOOK OF EMBLEMS. Drawn by F. Gilbert. With
Introduction and Explanations. Imp. i6nio. 4J. 6d.
WAIFS AND STRAYS OF NATURAL HISTORY. With
Coloured Frontispiece and Woodcuts. Fcap. 3J. 6d.
THE POOR INCUMBENT. Fcap. 8vo. u. and i.?. 6^.
AUNT SALLY'S LIFE. With Si.x Illustrations. Square i6mo.
3rd Edition, 3j-. 6d.
SefccM Worls. i ;)
THE MOTHER'S BOOK OF POETRY. Selected and
Arranged by Mrs. A. Gatty. Crown 8vo. y- 6'?'.; or with Illustra-
tions, elegantly bound, js. 6d.
A BIT OF BREAD. By Jean Mack. Translated by Mrs.
AlI'KKU Gatty. 2 vols. fcap. 8vo. Vol. I. 4J. 6d. Vol. II. 3J. 6i/.
The Uniform Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3.?. 6d. each volume.
PAR,\BLES FROM NATURE.
2 vols. With Portrait.
THE HUMAX FACIi DIVINE,
and other Tales. With Illus-
trations. 3rd Edition.
THE FAIRY GODMOTHERS,
and other Tales. With Frontis-
piece. 7th Edition. 2s. 6</.
AUNT JUDY'S TALES. Illus-
trated. 7th Edition.
AUNT JUDY'S LETTERS ; a
Sequel to 'Aunt Judy's Tales.'
Illustrated. 5th Edition.
DOMESTIC PICTURES AND
TALES. With 6 Illustrations.
WORLDS NOT REALIZED,
and Proverbs Illustrated.
THE HUNDREDTH BIRTH-
DAY, and other Tales. With
Illustrations by Phiz. New-
Edition.
MRS. ALFRED GATTY'S PRE-
SENTATION BOX for Young
People, containing the above
volumes, neatly bound, and en-
closed in a cloth box. 31.?. 61/.
By Mrs. Ewing.
' Everj-thing Mrs. Ewing writes is full of talent, and also full of perception
and common sense.' — Saturday Rc-Z'iav.
A GREAT EMERGENCY, and other Tales. With 4 Illustra-
tions. Fcap. Bvo. ^s. . {^Lately published.
' Never has Mrs. Ewing publi.shed a more charming volume of stories, and
that is saying a verj' great deal. From the first to the last the book overflows
with the strange knowledge of child-nature which so rarely survives childhood ;
and, moreover, with ine.xhaustible quiet humour, which is never anything but
innocent and well-bred, never priggish, and never clumsy.' — Academy.
THE BROWNIES, and other Tales. Illustrated by George
Cruiksh.vnk. 3rd Edition. Imp. i6mo. ^s.
' Mrs. Ewing gives us some really charming writing. While her first story
most prettily teaches children how much they can do to help their parents, the
immediate result will be, we fear, anything but good. For if a child once begins
" The Brownies," it will get so deeply interested in it, that when bed-time comes
it will altogether forget the moral, and will weary its parents with importunities
for just a few minutes more to see how everything ends. The frontispiece, by
the old friend of our childhood, George Cruikshank, is no less pretty than the
story.' — Saturday /\c'7'ic7i'.
MRS. OVERTHEWAY'S REMEMBRANCES. Illustrated
with 10 fine Full-page Engravings on Wood, after Drawings by
Pasqi'ikk and Wolf. 2nd Edition, cloth gilt, 3^. 6d.
' It is not often nowadays the privilege of a critic to grow enthusiastic over a
new work ; and the rarity of the occasion that calls forth the delight is apt to
lead one into the sin of hyperbole. And yet we think we shall not be accused of
extravagance when we say that, without exception, " Mrs. Overtheway's Re-
membrances " is the most delightful work avowedly written for children that we
have ever read. There are passages in this book which the genius of George
Eliot would be proud to own It is full of a peculiar, heart-stirring pathos
of its own, which culminates in the last pages, when Ida finds that her father is
not dead. The book is one that may be recurred to often, and always with the
same delight. We predict for it a great popularity.' — Lradi-r.
20 George Bell and Sons'
By Mfs. Eyeing — Continued.
MELCHIOR'S DREAM, and other Tales. Illustrated. 3rd
Kdition. Fcap. 8vo. y. bd.
' " Melchior's Dream " is an exquisite litde story, charming by original
humour, buoyant spirits, and tender pathos.' — Atheiueum.
A FLAT IRON FOR A FARTHING; or, Some Passages in
the Life of an Only Son. With 12 Illustrations by H. Allingham.
6th Edition. Small 8vo. 5.?.
' Let every parent and guardian who wishes to be amused, and at the same
time to please a child, purchase " A Flat Iron for a Farthing ; or, some Passages
in the Life of an Only Son," by J. H. Ewing. We will answer for the delight
with which they will read it themselves, and we do not doubt that the young and
fortunate recipients will also like it. The story is quaint, original, and altogether
delightful.' — Athcncnun.
'A capital book for a present. No child who is fortunate enough to possess
it will be in a hurry to put it down, for it is a book of uncommon fascination.
The story is good, the principles inculcated admirable, and some of the illustra-
tions simply delicious.' — Jolm Bull.
LOB-LIE-BY-THE-FIRE ; or, the Luck of Lingl^orough. And
other Tales. Illustrated by George Ckuikshank. 2nd Edition.
Imp. i6mo. 5J.
' A charming tale by another of those clever writers, thanks to whom the
children are now really better served than their neighbours.' — Spectator.
' Mrs. Ewing has writteTi as good a story as her " Brownies," and that is
saying a great deal. " Lob-lie-by-the-fire " has humour and pathos, and teaches
what is right without making children think they are reading a .sermon.' —
Saturday Review.
SIX TO SIXTEEN : A Story for Girls. With 10 Illustrations
by Mrs. Ali,iN(jHAM. 3rd lidition. Small post 8vo. 5^-.
'The homely good sense and humour of the bulk of the story are set off by
the pathos of its opening and its close ; and a soft and beautiful light, as of dawn
and sunset, is thrown round the substantial English ideal of what a girl's
education ought to be, which runs through the tale.' — Spectator.
' It is a beautifully told story, full of humour and pathos, and bright sketches
of scenery and character. It is all told with great naturalness, and will amuse
grown-up people quite as much as children. In reading the story, we have been
struck especially by characteristic bits of description, which show very happily
the writer's appreciation of child life.' — Fall Mall Gazette.
' We have rarely met, on such a modest scale, with characters so ably and
simply drawn. . . . The merits of the volume, in themselves not small, are
much enhanced by some clever illustrations from the pencil of Mrs. Allingham.' —
Atheittriiin.
' The tone of the book is pleasant and healthy, and singularly free from that
sentimental, not to say "mawkish," stain which is apt to disfigure such produc-
tions. The illustrations by Mrs. Allingham add a special attraction to the little
volume.' — Times.
' It is scarcely necessary to say that Mrs. Ewing's book is one of the best of
the year.' — Saturday Review.
' There is in it not only a great deal of common sense, but there is true
humour. . . . We have not met a healthier or breezier tale for girls for a long
period.' — Acadoiiy.
Spleded WorliH. 21
By Mrs. E7cniig — Coni-imied.
JAN OF THE WINDMILL; a Story of the Plains. With
u Illustrations by Helen Aelingham. Crown 8vo. 8^. dd.
' A capital story, which, like all that Mrs. Ewing gives us, will be read with
pleasure .Some well-drawn illustrations materially increase the attractive-
ness of the volume.' — C/ty Ptrss.
By Mrs. O'Reilly.
' Mrs. O'Reilly's works need no commendation . . . the style is so good, the
narrative so engrossing, and the tone so e.\cellent.' — yo/tu Bull.
LITTLE PRESCRIPTION, and other Tales. With 6 Illus-
trations by W. H. Petherick and others. i6mo. 2.$. 6d.
' A worthy successor of some charming little volumes of the same kind. . . .
The tale from which the title is taken is for its grace and pathos an especial
favourite.' — SJ>ectator.
'Mrs. O'Reilly could not write otherwise than well, even if she were to try.
— Morning Post.
CICELY'S CHOICE. A .Story for Girls. With a Frontispiece
by J. A. Pasquier. Fcap. Svo. gilt edges, 3.:. 6J.
' A pleasant story. . . . It is a book for girls, and grown people will also enjoy
reading it.' — AtJienceitm.
' A pleasant, well-written, interesting story, likely to be acceptable to young
people who are in their teens.' — Scotsman.
GILES'S MINORITY; or, Scenes at the Red House. With
8 Illustrations. i6mo. 2s. 6d.
' In one of our former reviews we praised " Deborah's Drawer." " Giles's
Minority" no less deserves our goodwill. It is a picture of school-room life, and
is so well drawn that grown-up readers may delight in it. In literary excellence
this little book is above most of its fellows.' — Times.
DOLL WORLD; or, Play and Earnest. A Study from Real
Life. With 8 Illustrations. By C. A. Saltmarsh. i6mo. ■zs. bd.
It is a capital child's book, and it has a charm for grown-up people also, as
the fairy haze of "long-ago" brightens every page. We are not ashamed to
confess to the "thrilling interest" with which we followed the history of
" Robertina " and " Mabel." ' — Athcncpum.
DEBORAH'S DRAWER. With 9 Illustrations. i6mo. 2.;. 6</.
' Any godmamma who wishes to buy an unusually pretty and artistically-
written gift-book for an eight-year-old pet cannot do better than spend a florin or
two on the contents of " Aunt Deborah's Drawer." ' — AtheJiaian.
DAISY'S COMPANIONS; or, -Scenes from Child Life. A
Story for Little Girls. With 8 Illustrations. 3rd Edit. i6mo. 2s. 6d.
' If anybody wants a pretty little present for a pretty (and good) little
daughter, or a niece or grand-daughter, we cannot recommend a better or tastier
one than "Daisy's Companions."' — Tiutcs.
9->
Gcoiujc Bell and Sons'
Captain Afartyafs Books for Boys.
Uniform Illustrated Edition, neatly bound in cloth, post 8vo. 35. 6d.
each ; gilt edges, 4-$-. 6d.
POOR JACK. With Sixteen Il-
lustrations after Designs by
Clarkson Stanfield, R.A.
THE MISSION ; or. Scenes in
Africa. With Illustrations by
John Gilbkkt.
THE PIRATE, AND THREE
CUTTERS. With Memoir of the
Author, and 20 Steel Engravings
byCLARKSoN Stanfield, R.A.
Cheap Edition, without Illus-
trations, i-f. 6d.
THE SETTLERS IN CANADA.
With Illustrations by Gilbert
and Dalziel.
THE PRIVATEERSMAN.
Adventures by Sea and Land in
Civil and Savage Life One
Hundred Years ago. Illustrated
with Eight Steel Engravings.
MASTERMAN READY; or, the
Wreck of the Pacific. Embel-
lished with Ninety-three En-
gravings on Wood.
A BOY'S LOCKER.
Books for Boys, in
box, 2.1s.
A Smaller Edition of Captain Marryat's
12 vols. Fcap. 8vo. in a compact cloth
By Hans Cliristian Andersen.
FAIRY TALES AND SKETCHES. Translated by C. C.
Peachey, H. Ward, A. Plesner, &c. With 104 Illustrations by
Otto Speckter and others. Crown 8vo. ds.
'The translation most happily hits the delicate quaintiiess of Andersen —
most happily transposes into simple English words the tender precision of the
famous storj'-teller ; in a keen examination of the book we scarcely recall a
single phrase or turn that obviously could have been bettered.' — Daily Telegraph.
TALES FOR CHILDREN. With 48 Full-page Illustrations by
Wehnekt, and 57 Small Engravings on Wood by W. Thomas.
A new Edition. Crown Bvo. bs.
This and the above volume form the most complete English Edition of
Andersen's Tales.
LATER TALES. Translated from the Danish by Augu.sta
Plesnek and H. Ward. With Illustrations by Otto Speckter,
W. Cooper, and other Artists. Cloth gilt, y. 6d.
WONDER WORLD. A Collection of Fairy Tales, Old and
New. Translated from the French, German, and Danish. With
4 Coloured Illustrations and numerous Woodcuts by L. Richter,
Oscar Pletsch, and others. Royal i6mo. cloth, gilt edges, 3s. 6d.
' It will delight the children, and has in it a wealth of wisdom that may be of
practical service when they have grown into men and women.' — Literaty World.
Scire ted Worhs. 23
GUESSING STORIES; or, The Surprising Adventures of the
Man with the Extra Pair of Eyes. By the late Archdeacon Frkk-
MAN. 3rd Edition. 2,f. 6if.
GRIMM'S GAMMER GRETHEL; or, German Fairy Talcs
and Popular Stories. Translated by ICdgau Taylor. Numerous
Woodcuts after G. Ckuiksh.\ni<.'s designs. Post 8vo. y. 6d.
LITTLE PLAYS FOR LITTLE PEOPLE ; with Hints for
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' Rana, the .Story of a Frog.' i6mo. with Illustrations, 2s. 6d.
ROBINSON CRUSOE. With a Biographical Account of
Defoe. Illustrated with 70 Wood Engravings, chiefly after Designs
by Harvey ; and 12 Engravings on Steel after Stothard. Post
8vo. y.
THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. By E. Wetherell. With 10
Illustrations. Post 8vo. 3.?. 6d.
UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. By H. B. Stowe. Illustrated.
Post Bvo. y. 6d.
KIRSTIN'S ADVENTURES. A Story of Jutland Life. By
the Author of ' Casimir the Little Exile,' &c. With Illustrations.
Crown Bvo. 3.f. 6d.
' There is so much true art and natural talent in the book that we are half
inclined to take it away from the boys and girls for whom it is written.' — Times.
KATIE ; or, the Simple Heart. By D. Richmond, Author of
'Annie MaiUand.' Illustrated by M. I. Booth. 2nd Edition.
Crown Bvo. 3^. 6d.
'The family life which surrounds Katie is both pretty and natural. The tone
is good, and the plot — we speak from experience — engages a child's interest with
almost too keen a sympathy.' — Guardian.
QUEENS OF ENGLAND from the Norman Conquest. By
A. Strickland. An Abridged Edition, with Portrait of Matilda
of Flanders. In i vol. crown Bvo. cloth, 6s. 6d.
GLIMPSES INTO PET-LAND. By the Rev. J. G. Wood,
M.A., F. L.S. \\'ith Frontispiece. Fcap. y. 6d.
FRIENDS IN FUR AND FEATHERS. By Gwynfryn.
Illustrated with 8 Full-page Engravings by F. W. Keyl, &c. 5th
Edition. Handsomely bound, 3^'. 6d.
'We have already characterised some other book as the best cat-and-dog
book of the season. We said so because we had not seen the present little book,
which is delightful. It is written on an artistic principle, cori.,-.jt;ng ofactual
biographies of certain elephants, squirrels, blackbirds, and what not, who lived in
the flesh ; and we only wish that human biographies were always as entertaining
and instructive.' — Satitrdaj Kevicic.
24 George Bell and Sons'' Selected WorJcs.
INSECT ARCHITECTURE. By Rennie. Edited by the
Rev. J. G. Wood, Author of ' Homes Without Hands.' Post 8vo.
with nearly 200 Illustrations, 5,1-.
THE ENTERTAINING NATURALIST. By Mrs. Loudon.
Revised and enlarged by W. S. DALLA.S, F. L.S. With nearly 500
Illustrations. Post 8vo. 5J.
ANECDOTES OF DOGS. By Edward Jesse. With Illus-
trations. Post 8vo. cloth, 55. With 34 Steel Engravings after
CouPEK, L.V.NDSEER, (S;c. js. 6d.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. By Gilbert
White. Edited by Jesse. Illustrated with 40 Engravings. Post
Bvo. 5^. ; or, with the Plates Coloured, js. 6d.
CHARADES, ENIGMAS, AND RIDDLES. Collected by a
Cantab. 5th Edition, enlarged. Illustrated. Fcap. Bvo. is.
POETRY- BOOK FOR SCHOOLS. Illustrated with 37
highly finished Engravings by C. W. Cope, R.A., W. Helmsley,
S. Palmer, F. Skill, G. Thomas, and H. Weir. Crown 8vo.
gilt, 2s. 6d. ; cloth i.r.
GILES WITHERNE; or, the Reward of Disobedience. A
Village Tale for the Young. BytheRev. J. P. Parkinson, D.C.L.
6th Edition. Illustrated by the Rev. F. W. Mann. Super-royal
i6mo. IS.
THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. By John Bunyan. With
281 Engravings from Designs by William Harvey. Post 8vo.
2s. 6d.
OLD NURSERY RHYMES AND CHIMES. Collected and
arranged by a Peal of Bells. Fcap. 4to. Ornamental binding,
2S. 6d.
NURSERY CAROLS. By the late Rev. Dr. Monsell, Rector
of St. Nicholas, Guildford, with upwards of 100 Illustrations by
LuDWiG RiCHTER and Oscar Pletsch. Imp. i6mo. y. 6d.
' At once a poet and a child lover, full of fun and j'et disposed gently to instil
what is good, Dr. Monsell is inimitable in this particular department. — Jo/ui
Bull.
LONDON :
GEORGE BELL & SONS, York Street,
Covent Garden.
P^ '■'■ THE LIBRARY
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