H Meyev, p 
 
 6^ Q/Z,C£^ ^Oy^ /^
 
 
 Cbitton be Huxe 
 
 
 
 THE WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 CHARLKS LAMB 
 
 muitxatth 
 
 # 
 
 THE 
 
 ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY 
 
 ALFRED AINGER 
 
 
 
 VLf^t Cljesiterfielb ^ocietp 
 
 Uonbon Mt\o |?orb 

 
 EDITION DE LUXE 
 
 One thousand copies of this 
 edition have been printed for 
 sale in america, of which this is 
 
 ^0 ._,..
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE two volumes of miscellaneous writings 
 by Charles Lamb, published by the Olliers 
 in 1818, contained a variety of prose sufficient 
 to prove once more that the study and practice 
 of verse is one of the best trainings for a prose 
 style. In his dedication of the poetical volume 
 to Coleridge, Lamb half apologises for having for- 
 saken his old calling, and for having "dwindled 
 into prose and criticism." The apology, as I have 
 elsewhere remarked, was hardly needed. If we ex- 
 cept the lines to Hester Savory and a few of the 
 sonnets and shorter pieces, there was little in the 
 volume to weigh against the two essays on Ho- 
 garth and the tragedies of Shakspeare. It was the 
 result of the miscellaneous and yet thorough char- 
 acter of Lamb's reading from a boy that the criti- 
 cal side of his mind was the first to mature. The 
 shorter papers contributed by Lamb to Leigh 
 Hunt's Reflector in 1811 — the year to which be- 
 long the two critical essays just mentioned — more 
 or less framed on the model of the Toiler and its 
 successors, give by comparison little promise of the 
 richness and variety of the Elia series of ten years
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 later. On the other hand, there are passages in the 
 critical essays, such as that on LeaVy as represented 
 on the stage, and the vindication of Hogarth as a 
 moral teacher, which represent Lamb at his highest. 
 On the republication of these miscellanies in 
 1818, it could not be overlooked that a prose 
 writer of something like genius was coming to the 
 front. One of the younger critics of the day, Henry 
 Nelson Coleridge, reviewing the volumes in the 
 fifth number of the Etonian, in 1821, does not 
 hesitate to declare that "Charles Lamb writes the 
 best, the purest, and most genuine English of any 
 man living," and adds the following acute remark : 
 — "For genuine Anglicism, which amongst all other 
 essentials of excellence in our native literature, is 
 now recovering itself from the leaden mace of the 
 Rambler, he is quite a study ; his prose is absolutely 
 perfect, it conveys thought, without smothering it 
 in blankets." Lamb was indeed to do more than 
 any man of his time to remove the Johnsonian 
 incubus from our periodical literature. But the full 
 scope of the writer's powers was not known, per- 
 haps even to himself, till the opportunity afforded 
 him by the establishment of the London Magazine 
 in 1820. It did credit to the discernment of the 
 editors of that publication, that no control seems 
 
 vi
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 to have been exercised over the matter or manner 
 of Lamb's contributions. The writer had not to see 
 all that made the individuality of his style disappear 
 under the editor's hand, as his review of the Excin^- 
 sion in the Quarterly had suffered under GifFord's. 
 To "wander at its own sweet will" was the first 
 necessity of Lamb's genius. And this miscellaneous - 
 ness of subject and treatment is the first surprise 
 and dehght felt by the reader of Lamb. It seems as 
 if the choice of subject came to him almost at hap- 
 hazard, — as if, Hke Shakspeare, he found the first 
 plot that came to hand suitable, because the hand 
 that was to deal with it was absolutely secure of 
 its power to transmute the most unpromising mate- 
 rial into gold. Roast Pig, The Praise of Chimney- 
 sweepers, A Bachelors Complaint of the Conduct 
 of Married People, Grace before 3feat — the incon- 
 gruity of the titles at once declares the humorist's 
 confidence in the certainty of his touch. To have 
 been commonplace on such topics would have been 
 certain failure. 
 
 In the Character of the late Elia, by a Friend, 
 which Lamb wrote in the interval between the pub- 
 lication of the first and second series of essays, he 
 hits off the characteristics of his style in a tone half 
 contemptuous, half apologetic, which yet contains a 
 
 vii
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 criticism of real value. " I am now at liberty to con- 
 fess," he writes, "that much which I have heard ob- 
 jected to my late friend's writings was well founded. 
 Crude, they are, I grant you — a sort of unhcked, 
 incondite things — villainously pranked in an affected 
 array of antique words and phrases. They had not 
 been his, if they had been other than such ; and bet- 
 ter it is that a writer should be natural in a self- 
 pleasing quaintness than to affect a naturalness (so 
 called) that should be strange to him." No better 
 text could be found from which to discourse on 
 Charles Lamb's English. The plea put forth almost 
 as a paradox is nevertheless a simple truth. What 
 appears to the hasty reader artificial in Lamb's style 
 was natural to him. For in this matter of style he 
 was the product of his reading, and fi*om a child his 
 reading had lain in the dramatists, and generally in 
 the great imaginative writers of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries. Shakspeare and Milton he 
 knew almost by heart : Beaumont and Fletcher, Mas- 
 singer, Ford, and Webster were hardly less famihar 
 to him ; and next to these, the writers of the so-called 
 metaphysical school, the later developments of the 
 Euphuistic fashion, had the strongest fascination for 
 him. Where the Fantastic vein took the pedantic- 
 humorous shape, as in Burton; or the metaphysical- 
 
 Vlll
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 humorous, as in Sir Thomas Browne; or where it 
 was combined with true poetic sensibiUty, as in 
 Wither and Marvell, — of these springs Lamb had 
 drunk so deeply that his mind was saturated with 
 them. His own nature became "subdued to what it 
 worked in." For him to bear, not only on his style, 
 but on the cast of his mind and fancy, the mark of 
 these writers, and many more in whom genius and 
 eccentricity went together, was no matter of choice. 
 It was this that constituted the "self-pleasing quaint- 
 ness" of his literary manner. The phrase could not 
 be improved. Affectation is a manner put on to im- 
 press others. Lamb's manner pleased himself — and 
 that is why, to use a famiUar phrase, he was "happy 
 in it." 
 
 To one of the writers just named Lamb stands in 
 a special relation. Sir Thomas Browne was at once a 
 scholar, a mystic, and a humorist. His humour is so 
 grave that, when he is enunciating one of those para- 
 doxes he loves so well, it is often impossible to tell 
 whether or not he wears a smile upon his face. To 
 Lamb this combination of characters was irresistible, 
 for in it he saw a reflection of himself. He knew the 
 writings of Browne so well that not only does he 
 quote him more often than any other author, but 
 whenever he has to confront the mysteries of life and 
 
 IX
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 death his mental attitude at once assimilates to 
 Browne's, and his English begins to dilate and to 
 become sombre. The dominant influence on Lamb 
 in his reflective mood is Browne. His love of para- 
 dox, and the colour of his style, derived from the 
 use of Latinised words never thoroughly acchma- 
 tised, is also from the same source — a use which, in 
 the hands of a less skilful Latinist than Lamb, 
 might have been hazardous. We do not resent his 
 use of such words as agnize^ arride, reluct^ reduce 
 (in the sense of "bring back"), or even such por- 
 tentous creations as sciential, cognition, intellectuals, 
 and the like. Lamb could not have lived so long 
 among the writers of the Renascence without shar- 
 ing their fondness for word-coinage. And the flavour 
 of the antique in style he felt to be an almost indis- 
 pensable accompaniment to the antique in fancy. 
 
 Another feature of his style is its allusiveness. 
 He is rich in quotations, and in my notes I have 
 succeeded in tracing most of them to their source, 
 a matter of some difficulty in Lamb's case, for his 
 inaccuracy is all but perverse. But besides those 
 avowedly introduced as such, his style is fiill of 
 quotations held — if the expression may be allowed 
 — in solution. One feels, rather than recognises, that 
 a phrase or idiom or turn of expression is an echo of
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 something that one has heard or read before. Yet 
 such is the use made of his material, that a charm 
 is added by the very fact that we are thus continu- 
 ally renewing our experience of an older day. His 
 style becomes aromatic, Hke the perfume of faded 
 rose-leaves in a china jar. With such allusiveness as 
 this, I need not say that I have not meddled in my 
 notes. Its whole charm Ues in our recognising it for 
 ourselves. The "prosperity" of an allusion, as of a 
 jest, "hes in the ear of him that hears it," and it 
 were doing a poor service to Lamb or his readers to 
 draw out and arrange in order the threads he has 
 wrought into the very fabric of his EngUsh. 
 
 But although Lamb's style is essentially the pro- 
 duct of the authors he had made his own, nothing 
 would be more untrue than to say of him that he 
 read nature, or anything else, "through the spec- 
 tacles of books." Wordsworth would never have 
 called to hivi to leave his books that he might come 
 forth, and bring with him a heart 
 
 "That watches and receives." 
 
 It is to his own keen insight and intense sympathy 
 that we owe everything of value in his writing. His 
 observation was his own, though when he gave it 
 back into the world, the manner of it was the crea- 
 
 xi
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 tion of his reading. Where, for instance, he describes 
 (and it is seldom) the impression produced on him 
 by country sights and sounds, there is not a trace 
 discoverable of that conventional treatment of na- 
 ture which had been so common with mere book- 
 men, before Cowper and Burns. Lamb did not care 
 greatly for the country and its associations. Cus- 
 tom had made the presence of society, streets and 
 crowds, the theatre and the picture gallery, an ab- 
 solute necessity. Yet if he has to reproduce a mem- 
 ory of rural life, it is with the precision and tender- 
 ness of a Wordsworth. Take, as an example, this 
 exquisite glimpse of a summer afternoon at Blakes- 
 ware: — "The cheerful store-room, in whose hot 
 window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with 
 the grass-plot before, and the hum and flappings of 
 that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it, about 
 me — it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer 
 returns:" or again, the sweet garden scene from 
 Dream Children, where the spirit of AYordsworth 
 seems to contend for mastery with the fancifulness 
 of Marvell, "because I had more pleasure in stroll- 
 ing 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 
 
 xii
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 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 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." It is hard to say whether the poet's eye 
 or the painter's is more surely exhibited here. The 
 "solitary wasp" and the "sulky pike" are master- 
 touches ; and in the following passage it is perhaps 
 as much of Cattermole as of Goldsmith or Gray, 
 that we are reminded: — "But would'st thou know 
 the beauty of holiness? — go alone on some week- 
 day, borrowing the keys of good IMaster Sexton, 
 traverse the cool aisles of some countiy church: 
 think of the piety that has kneeled there — the 
 meek pastor — the docile parishioner. With no dis- 
 turbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, 
 drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thy- 
 self become as fixed and motionless as the marble 
 effigies that kneel and weep around thee." 
 
 The idea that some readers might derive from 
 the casual titles and subjects of these essays, and 
 the discursiveness of their treatment, that they are 
 
 Xlll
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 hasty things thrown off in a moment of high spirits, 
 is of course erroneous. Lamb somewhere writes of 
 the essay just quoted, as a "futile effort wrung from 
 him with slow pain." Perhaps this was an extreme 
 case, but it is clear that most of the essays are the 
 result of careful manipulation. They are elaborate 
 studies in style, and even in colour. Nothing is more 
 remarkable about the essays than the contrasts of 
 colour they present — another illustration of Lamb's 
 sympathy with the painter's art. The essay on the 
 Chimney-Sweepers is a study in black: — 
 
 "I hke 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, 
 shall I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not 
 seldom anticipating the sunrise? I have a kindly 
 yearning towards those dim specks — poor blots — 
 innocent blacknesses — I reverence these young Af- 
 ricans of our own growth — these almost clergy 
 imps, who sport their cloth without assumption." 
 
 And if one would understand Lamb's skill as a 
 
 XIV
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 colourist, let him turn as a contrast to the essay on 
 Quakers, which may be called a study in dove- 
 colour: — "The very garments of a Quaker seem 
 incapable of receiving a soil ; and cleanliness in them 
 to be something more than the absence of its con- 
 trary. Every Quakeress is a lily; and when they 
 come up in bands to their Whitsun conferences, 
 whitening the easterly streets of the metropoUs, 
 from all parts of the United Kingdom, they show 
 like troops of the Shining Ones." 
 
 The essay on Chimney-Sweepers is one blaze of 
 wit, which yet may pass unobserved from the very 
 richness of its setting. How surprising, and at the 
 same time how picturesque, is the following: — "I 
 seem to remember having been told that a bad 
 sweep was once left in the stack with his brush, to 
 indicate which way the wind blew. It was an awful 
 spectacle, certainly, not much unhke the old stage 
 direction in Macbeth, where the 'apparition of a child 
 crowned, with a tree in his hand, rises.'" Lamb's 
 wit, original as it is, shows often enough the influ- 
 ence of particular models. Of all old writers, none 
 had a firmer hold on his affection than Fuller. Now 
 and then he has passages in deliberate imitation of 
 Fuller's manner. The descriptions, in detached sen- 
 tences, of the Poor Relation and the Convalescent 
 
 XV
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 are Fuller all over. When Lamb writes of the Poor 
 Relation — "He entereth smiling and embarrassed. 
 He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and draw- 
 eth it back again. He casually looketh in about din- 
 ner-time, when the table is full," — and so on, there 
 can be no doubt that he had in mind such charac- 
 terisation as that in the Good Yeoman, or the De- 
 generous Gentleman. The manner is due originally, 
 of course, to Theophrastus, but it was from Fuller, 
 I think, that Lamb derived his fondness for it. And 
 throughout his writings the influence of this hu- 
 morist is to be traced. How entirely in the vein of 
 Fuller, for instance, is the following: — "They (the 
 sweeps), from their little pulpits (the tops of chim- 
 neys), preach a lesson of patience to mankind"; or 
 this, again, from the essay G?^ace Before Meat: — 
 "Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions 
 for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we 
 read that he kicked"; or, once more, this fine com- 
 ment on the stillness of the Quaker's worship: — 
 "For a man to refrain even from good words and 
 to hold his peace, it is commendable ; but for a mul- 
 titude, it is great mastery." 
 
 But Lamb's wit, Uke his English, is Protean, and 
 just as we think we have fixed its character and 
 source, it escapes into new forms. In simile he finds 
 
 XVI
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 opportunity for it that is all his own. What, for 
 instance, can be more surprising in its unexpected- 
 ness than the description in The Old Margate Hoy 
 of the ubiquitous sailor on board: — "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"? Again, what wit — or shall we call it 
 humour — is there in the gravity of his detail, by 
 which he touches springs of delight unreached even 
 by Defoe or Swift; as in Roast Pig, where he says 
 that the "father and son were summoned to take 
 their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize 
 town"; or more delightful still, later on: — "Thus 
 this custom of firing houses continued, till in pro- 
 cess 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 neces- 
 sity of consuming a whole house to dress it." Or, 
 for another vein, take the account of the menda- 
 cious traveller he affects to remember as a fellow- 
 passenger on his early voyage in the old Margate 
 Hoy, who assures his admiring listeners that, so far 
 from the Phoenix being a unique bird, it was by no 
 means uncommon "in some parts of Upper Egypt," 
 
 XVU
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 where the whole episode is not one jot the less hu- 
 morous because it is clear to the reader, not that the 
 traveller invented his facts, but that Lamb mvented 
 the traveller. Or yet once more, how exquisitely 
 unforeseen, and how rich in tenderness, is the fol- 
 lowing remark as to the domestic happiness of him- 
 self and his "cousin Bridget" in Mackcry End: — 
 "We are generally in harmony, with occasional 
 bickerings — as it should be among near relations." 
 What is the name for this antithesis of irony — this 
 hiding of a sweet after-taste in a bitter word ? What- 
 ever its name, it is a dominant flavour in Lamb's 
 humour. There are two features, I think, of Lamb's 
 method which distinguish him from so many hu- 
 morists of to-day. He takes homely and familiar 
 things, and makes them fresh and beautiful. The 
 fashion of to-day is to vulgarise great and noble 
 things by burlesque associations. The humorist's 
 contrast is obtained in both cases ; only that in the 
 one it elevates the commonplace, and in the other 
 it degrades the excellent. And, secondly, in this 
 generation, when what is meant to raise a laugh has, 
 nine times out of ten, its root in cynicism, it should 
 be refreshing to turn again and dwell in the humane 
 atmosphere of these essays of Elia. 
 
 To many other qualities that go to make up that 
 
 xviii
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 highly composite thing, Lamb's humour — to that 
 feature of it that consists in the unabashed display 
 of his own unconventionaUty — his difference from 
 other people, and to that "metaphysical" quality of 
 his wit which belongs to him in a far truer sense 
 than as appHed to Cowley and his school, it is suffi- 
 cient to make a passing reference. But the mention 
 of Cowley, by whom with Fuller, Donne, and the 
 rest, his imagination was assuredly shaped, reminds 
 us once more of the charm that belongs to the "old 
 and antique" strain heard through all his more ear- 
 nest utterances. As we listen to Eha the moralist, 
 now with the terse yet stately egotism of one 
 old master, now in the long-drawn-out harmonies 
 of another, we live again with the thinkers and 
 dreamers of two centuries ago. Sometimes he con- 
 fides to us weaknesses that few men are bold enough 
 to avow, as when he tells how he dreaded death 
 and clung to Hfe. "I am not content to pass away 
 *like a weaver's shuttle.' These metaphors solace me 
 not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mor- 
 tality. I care not to be carried with the tide, and 
 reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in 
 love with this green earth; the face of town and 
 country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the 
 sweet security of streets." There is an essay by 
 
 XIX
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 Lamb's friend Hazlitt on the Fear of Deathy which 
 it is interesting to compare with this. The one essay 
 may have been possibly suggested by the other. 
 Hazhtt is that one of Lamb's contemporaries with 
 whom it is natural to compare him. There are, in- 
 deed, obvious points of resemblance between them. 
 Hazlitt wrote a vigorous and flexible style ; he could 
 quote Shakspeare and Milton as copiously as Lamb ; 
 he wrote on Lamb's class of subjects ; he shared his 
 love of paradoxes and his frank egotistical method. 
 But here all Hkeness ends. HazUtt's essay is on the 
 text that, since it does not pain us to reflect that 
 there was once a time when we did not exist, so 
 it should be no pain to think that at some future 
 time the same state of things shall be. But this 
 Hght-hearted attempt at consolation is found to be 
 more depressing than the melancholy of Lamb, for 
 it lacks the two things needful, the accent of abso- 
 lute sincerity, and a nature unsoured by the world. 
 But Lamb had his serener moods, and in one of 
 these let us part from him. The essay on the Old 
 Benchers of the Inner Temple is one of the most 
 varied and beautiful pieces of prose that English 
 literature can boast. Eminently, moreover, does it 
 show us Lamb as the product of two different ages 
 — the child of the Renascence of the sixteenth cen- 
 
 XX
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 tury and of that of the nineteenth. It is as if both 
 Spenser and Wordsworth had laid hands of bless- 
 ing upon his head. This is how he writes of his 
 childhood, when the old lawyers paced to and fro 
 before him on the Terrace Walk, making up to his 
 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 
 dreams 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 exaggeration will be busy there, and vital, 
 from everyday forms educing the unknown and 
 the uncommon. In that little Goshen there will be 
 hght 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." 
 
 It is in such passages as these that Lamb shows 
 himself, what indeed he is, the last of the Eliza- 
 bethans. He had "learned their great language," 
 and yet he had early discovered, with the keen eye 
 of a humorist, how effective for his purpose was 
 the touch of the pedantic and the fantastical from 
 
 XXI
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 which the noblest of them were not wholly free. 
 He was thus able to make even their weaknesses a 
 fresh source of delight, as he dealt with them from 
 the vailtage ground of two centuries. It may seem 
 strange, on first thoughts, that the fashion of Lamb's 
 style should not have grown, in its turn, old-fash- 
 ioned ; that, on the contrary, no literary reputation 
 of sixty years' standing should seem more certain 
 of its continuance. But it is not the antique man- 
 ner — the "self-pleasing quaintness" — that has em- 
 balmed the substance. Rather is there that in the 
 substance which ensures immortality for the style. 
 It is one of the rewards of purity of heart that, 
 allied with humour, it has the promise of perennial 
 charm. "Saint Charles!" exclaimed Thackeray one 
 day, as he finished reading once more the original 
 of one of Lamb's letters to Bernard Barton. There 
 was much in Lamb's habits and manners that we 
 do not associate with the saintly ideal ; but patience 
 under suffering and a boundless sympathy hold a 
 large place in that ideal, and in Charles Lamb these 
 were not found wanting. 
 
 I would add a few words on the kind of infor- 
 mation I have sought to furnish in my Notes. The 
 impertinence of criticism or comment, I hope has 
 
 xxii
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 been almost entirely avoided. But there was a cer- 
 tain waywardness and love of practical joking in 
 Charles Lamb that led him often to treat matters 
 of fact with dehberate falsification. His essays are 
 full of autobiography, but often purposely disguised, 
 whether to amuse those who were in the secret, or 
 to perplex those who were not, it is impossible to 
 say. In his own day, therefore, corrections of fact 
 would have either been superfluous, or would have 
 spoiled the jest; but now that Lamb's contempora- 
 ries are all but passed away, much of the humour 
 of his method is lost without some clue to the 
 many disguises and perversions of fact with which 
 the essays abound. They are full, for instance, of 
 references to actual persons, by means of initials or 
 other devices. To readers fairly conversant with the 
 literary history of Lamb's time, many of these dis- 
 guises are transparent enough ; but for others, notes 
 here and there are indispensable. We have an au- 
 thentic clue to most of the initials or asterisks 
 employed in the first series of EUa. There is in 
 existence a list of these initials drawn up by some 
 unknown hand, and filled in with the real names 
 by Lamb himself. Through the kindness of its pos- 
 sessor, Mr. Alexander Ireland of Manchester, the 
 original of this interesting relic has been in my 
 
 xxui
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 hands, and I can vouch for the handwriting, phra- 
 seology, and (it may be added) the spelling being 
 indubitably Lamb's. 
 
 There is much information in these essays, more 
 or less disguised, about Lamb's relatives, and I 
 have tried to illustrate these points by details of 
 his family history for which I had not space in 
 my Memoir of Lamb. In a few instances I have 
 permitted myself to repeat some sentences from 
 that memoir, where the same set of circumstances 
 had to be narrated again. But apart from changes 
 of names and incidents in the essays, there is in 
 Lamb's humour the constant element of a mis- 
 chievous love of hoaxing. He loves nothing so 
 much as to mingle romance with reality, so that 
 it shall be difficult for the reader to disentangle 
 them. Sometimes he deals with fiction as if it were 
 fact; and sometimes, after supplying Uteral facts, 
 he ends with the insinuation that they are ficti- 
 tious. And besides these deliberate mystifications, 
 there is found also in Lamb a certain natural in- 
 capacity for being accurate — an inveterate turn for 
 the opposite. "What does Elia care for dates?" he 
 asks in one of his letters, and indeed about ac- 
 curacy in any such trifles he did not greatly care. 
 In the matter of quotation, as already remarked. 
 
 XXIV
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 this is curiously shown. He seldom quotes even 
 a hackneyed passage from Shakspeare or Milton 
 correctly ; and sometimes he half-remembers a pas- 
 sage from some old author, and re-writes it, to suit 
 the particular subject he wishes it to illustrate. I 
 have succeeded in tracing all but two or three of 
 the many quotations occurring in the essays, and 
 they serve to show the remarkable range and va- 
 riety of his reading. 
 
 It is generally known that when Lamb collected 
 his essays, for publication in book form, from the 
 pages of the London and other magazines, he 
 omitted certain passages. These I have thought it 
 right, as a rule, not to restore. In most cases the 
 reason for their omission is obvious. They were ex- 
 crescences or digressions, injuring the effect of the 
 essay as a whole. In the few instances in which I 
 have retained a note, or other short passage, from 
 the original versions of the essays, I have shown 
 that this is the case by enclosing it in brackets. 
 
 I have to thank many friends, and many known 
 to me only by their high literary reputation, for 
 courteous and ready help in investigating points 
 connected with Lamb's writings. Among these I 
 would mention Mr. Alexander Ireland of Man- 
 chester; Mr. Richard Garnett of the British Mu- 
 
 XXV
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 seum; and, as before, my friend Mr. J. E. Davis, 
 counsel to the Commissioners of Police, who has 
 given many valuable suggestions and constant as- 
 sistance of other kinds. I must also express my ac- 
 knowledgments to Mr. W. J. Jeaffreson, of Folke- 
 stone, and to the family of the late Mr. Arthur 
 Loveday of Wardington, Banbury, for permis- 
 sion to make extracts from unpubhshed letters 
 of Lamb's in their possession. 
 
 1883
 
 NOTES 
 
 NOTE TO NEW EDITION 
 
 Several corrections and additions have been made in 
 the Notes to the present Edition. 
 
 January 1887 
 
 NOTE TO PRESENT EDITION 
 
 A few corrections, and some further additions, it is 
 hoped, of interest and value, are made in the present 
 Edition, 
 
 June 1899
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 VAOE 
 
 the south-sea house 1 
 
 oxford in the vacation 13 
 Christ's hospital five and thirty years ago 24 
 
 the two races of men 44 
 
 NEW year's eve 53 
 
 MRS. battle's opinions ON WHIST 63 
 
 A chapter on ears 74 
 
 ALL fools' day 82 
 
 A QUAKERS' MEETING 88 
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 9^ 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 109 
 
 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS 122 
 
 valentine's day 132 
 
 MY RELATIONS 137 
 
 MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 147 
 
 MY FIRST PLAY 155 
 
 MODERN GALLANTRY l62 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE l69 
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 186 
 • XX ix
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DREAM children; A REVERIE IpT 
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 208 
 
 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 212 
 
 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS IN 
 
 THE METROPOLIS 223 
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 235 
 
 A bachelor's complaint of THE BEHAVIOUR 
 
 OF MARRIED PEOPLE 246 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 267 
 
 ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST 
 
 CENTURY 275 
 
 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 288 
 
 NOTES 295
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PORTRAIT OF CHARLES LAMB frontispiece 
 
 Photogravure after the portrait hy H. Meyer 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 PORTRAIT OF ROBERT SOUTHEY ' 182 
 
 "A SAGE AROSE — WHO MADE A DISCOVERY" 240 
 
 " A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOR 
 OF MAR-IIED PEOPLE" S46 
 
 PORTRAIT OF MADAME D'ARBLAY <96»
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 
 
 READER, in thy passage from the Bank — 
 where thou hast been receiving thy half-yearly 
 dividends (supposing thou art a lean annuitant like 
 myself) — to the Flower Pot, to secure a place for 
 Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other thy subur- 
 ban retreat northerly — didst thou never observe a 
 melancholy-looking, handsome, brick and stone edi- 
 fice, to the left, where Threadneedle Street abuts 
 upon Bishopsgate? I dare say thou hast often ad- 
 mired 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 something like Balclutha's.^ 
 
 This was once a house of trade — a centre of busy 
 interests. The throng of merchants was here — the 
 quick pulse of gain — and here some forms of busi- 
 ness are still kept up, though the soul be long since 
 fled. Here are still to be seen stately porticoes; im- 
 posing staircases; offices roomy as the state apart- 
 ments in palaces — deserted, or thinly peopled with 
 a few stragghng clerks; the still more sacred inte- 
 riors of court and committee rooms, with venerable 
 
 ^ I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate. — 
 
 OSSIAN. 
 
 1
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 faces of beadles, door-keepers — directors seated in 
 form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend) 
 at long worm-eaten tables, that have been mahog- 
 any, with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, support- 
 ing massy silver inkstands long since dry; — the 
 oaken wainscots hung with pictures of deceased 
 governors and sub-governors, of Queen Anne, and 
 the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty ; 
 — huge charts, which subsequent discoveries have 
 antiquated ; — dusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams, 
 and soundings of the Bay of Panama! The long 
 passages hung with buckets, appended, in idle row, 
 to walls, whose substance might defy any, 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 dissi- 
 pated, or scattered into air at the blast of the break- 
 ing of that famous Bubble. 
 
 Such is the South-Sea House. At least such it 
 was forty years ago, when I knew it — a magnifi- 
 cent 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 depre- 
 dations, but other light generations have succeeded, 
 making fine fretwork among their single and double 
 2
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 
 
 entries. Layers of dust have accumulated (a super- 
 foetation of dirt!) upon the old layers, that seldom 
 used to be disturbed, save by some curious finger, 
 now and then, inquisitive to explore the mode of 
 book-keeping in Queen Anne's reign; cr, 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 modem conspiracy contemplating the 
 Titan size of Vaux's superhuman plot. 
 
 Peace to the manes of the Bubble! Silence and 
 destitution 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 thee, in the heyday of pres- 
 ent prosperity, with their important faces, as it were, 
 insulting thee, their poor ndghhour 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 by me, stiff as in life. Living ac- 
 counts and accountants puzzle me. I have no skill 
 
 3
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 in figuring. But thy great dead tomes, which scarce 
 three degenerate clerks of the present day could lift 
 from their enshrining shelves — with their old fan- 
 tastic 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 ances- 
 tors 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 
 better library — are very agreeable and edifying spec- 
 tacles. I can look upon these defunct dragons with 
 complacency. Thy heavy odd-shaped ivory-handled 
 penknives (our ancestors had everything on a larger 
 scale than we have hearts for) are as good as any- 
 thing 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 different from those in the public offices 
 that I have had to do with 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 turn 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 as- 
 similate the members of corporate bodies to each
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 
 
 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, as into a common stock. Hence 
 they formed a sort of Noah's ark. Odd fishes. A lay- 
 monastery. Domestic retainers in a great house, kept 
 more for show than 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 Cam- 
 bro-Briton. He had something of the choleric com- 
 plexion of his countrymen 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 cari- 
 catures of what were termed, in my young days, 
 Maccaronies. He was the last of that race of beaux. 
 Melancholy as a gib-cat over his counter all the 
 forenoon, I think I see him making up his cash (as 
 they call it) with tremulous fingers, as if he feared 
 every one about him was a defaulter; in his hypo- 
 chondry, ready to imagine himself one ; haunted, at 
 least, with the idea of the possibility of his becom- 
 ing 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 ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 The simultaneous sound of his well-known rap at 
 the door with the stroke of the clock announcing 
 six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in the fami- 
 lies which this dear old bachelor gladdened with 
 his presence. Then was \iis forte, his glorified hour! 
 How would he chii-p and expand over a muffin ! How 
 would he dilate into secret history! His country- 
 man, Pennant himself, 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 pater- 
 nal tradition, of those grotesque figures which Ho- 
 garth has immortalized in his picture of Noon — the 
 worthy descendants of those heroic confessors, who, 
 flying to this country from the wrath of Louis the 
 Fourteenth and his dragoons, kept alive the flame 
 of pure religion in the sheltering obscurities of Hog 
 Lane and the vicinity of the Seven Dials ! 
 
 Deputy, 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. By 
 stoop, I mean that gentle bending of the body for- 
 wards, which, in great men, must be supposed to 
 be the effect of an habitual condescending atten- 
 tion to the applications of their inferiors. While he 
 held you in converse, you felt strained to the height 
 in the colloquy. The conference over, you were at 
 6
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 
 
 leisure to smile at the comparative insignificance of 
 the pretensions which had just awed you. His in- 
 tellect 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 understood, 
 — much less can explain with any heraldic certainty 
 at this time of day, — to the illustrious but unfor- 
 tunate house of Derwentwater. This was the secret 
 of Thomas's stoop. This was the thought — the sen- 
 timent — the bright solitary star of your lives, — ye 
 mild and happy pair, — which cheered you in the 
 night of intellect, and in the obscurity of your sta- 
 tion! 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 you wore it as a piece of defensive 
 armour only, no insult likewise could reach you 
 through it. Decus et solamen. 
 
 Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, 
 John Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, nor 
 in good truth cared one fig about the matter. He 
 "thought an accountant the greatest character in 
 
 7
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 the world, and himself the greatest accountant in 
 it." Yet John was not without his hobby. The fiddle 
 relieved his vacant hours. He sang, certainly, with 
 other notes than to the Orphean lyre. He did, in- 
 deed, scream and scrape most abominably. His fine 
 suite of official rooms in Threadneedle Street, which, 
 without anything 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 fortnightly to 
 the notes of a concert of "sweet breasts," as our an- 
 cestors would have called them, culled from club- 
 rooms and orchestras — chorus singers — first and 
 second violoncellos — 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 any- 
 thing romantic without rebuke. Politics were ex- 
 cluded. A newspaper was thought too refined and 
 abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in 
 writing off dividend warrants. The striking of the 
 annual balance in the company's books (which, per- 
 
 ^ [I have since been informed, that the present tenant of them 
 is a Mr. Lamb, a gentleman who is happy in the possession of 
 some choice pictures, and among them a rare portrait of Milton, 
 which I mean to do myself the pleasure of going to see, and at 
 the same time to refresh my memory with the sight of old 
 scenes. Mr. Lamb has the character of a right courteous and 
 communicative collector.] 
 8
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 
 
 haps, differed from the balance of last year in the 
 sum of £25 : 1 : 6) occupied his days and nights for 
 a month previous. Not that Tipp was bhnd to the 
 deadness of things (as they 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 nothing. 
 The fractional farthing is as dear to his heart as the 
 thousands which stand before it. He is the true ac- 
 tor, who, whether his part be a prince or a peasant, 
 must act it with like intensity. With Tipp form was 
 everything. His life was formal. His actions seemed 
 ruled with a ruler. His pen was not less erring than 
 his heart. He made the best executor in the world: 
 he was plagued with incessant executorships accord- 
 ingly, which excited his spleen and soothed his van- 
 ity in equal ratios. He would swear (for Tipp swore) 
 at the little orphans, whose 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 some- 
 thing which, in reverence to the dead, we will place, 
 if you please, a little on this side of the heroic. Na- 
 ture certainly had been pleased to endow John Tipp 
 with a sufficient measure of the principle of self- 
 preservation. There is a cowardice which we do not 
 
 9
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 despise, because it has nothing base or treacherous 
 in its elements; it betrays itself, not you: it is mere 
 temperament; the absence of the romantic and the 
 enterprising ; it sees a lion in the way, and will not, 
 with Fortinbras, "greatly find quarrel in a straw," 
 when some supposed honour is at stake. 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 upon 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 uncom- 
 mon? Can I forget thee, Henry Man, the wit, the 
 polished man of letters, the author^ of the South- 
 Sea House? who never enteredst thy office in a 
 morning or quittedst it in mid-day (what didst thou 
 in an office?) without some quirk that left a sting I 
 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 fastid- 
 ious 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 Chatham, 
 and Shelburne, and Rockingham, and Howe, and 
 Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the war which ended in 
 10
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 
 
 the tearing from Great Britain her rebellious colo- 
 nies, — and Keppel, and Wilkes, and Sawbridge, and 
 Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond — 
 and such small politics. 
 
 A little less facetious, and a great deal more ob- 
 streperous, was fine rattling, rattle-headed 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 Plumers of 
 Hertfordshire. So tradition gave him out; and cer- 
 tain family features not a little sanctioned the opin- 
 ion. Certainly old Walter Plumer (his reputed au- 
 thor) 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 nothino; 
 to discountenance the rumour. He rather seemed 
 pleased whenever it was, with all gentleness, insin- 
 uated. 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 breathing less 
 
 divinely whispering than thy Arcadian melodies, 
 
 11
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 churchwarden of Bish- 
 
 opsgate. He knew not what he did, when he begat 
 thee, like spring, gentle offspring of blustering win- 
 ter: — only unfortunate in thy ending, which should 
 have been mild, conciliatory, swan-like. 
 
 Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise 
 up, but they must be mine in private: — already I 
 have fooled the reader to the top of his bent; else 
 could I omit that strange creature Woollett, who 
 existed in trying the question, and bought litigations! 
 — and still stranger, inimitable, solemn Hepworth, 
 from whose gravity Newton naight 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 rat- 
 tling 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 summoned up before thee, are fantastic — in- 
 substantial — like Henry Pimpernel, and old John 
 Naps of Greece: 
 
 Be satisfied that something answering to them 
 has had a being. Their importance is from the past. 
 
 12
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION 
 
 CASTING a preparatory glance at the bottom 
 of this article — as the wary connoisseur in 
 prints, with cursory eye (which, while it reads, 
 seems as though it read not), never fails to consult 
 the quis sculpsit in the corner, before he pronounces 
 some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a Woollet — 
 methinks I hear you exclaim. Reader, Who is Elia? 
 
 Because in my last I tried to divert thee with 
 some half-forgotten humours of some old clerks de- 
 funct, in an old house of business, long since gone 
 to decay, doubtless you have already set me down 
 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 peo- 
 ple are said to do, through a quill. 
 
 Well, I do agnise something of the sort. I con- 
 fess that it is my humour, my fancy — in the fore- 
 part of the day, when the mind of your man of 
 letters requires some relaxation (and none better 
 than such as at first sight seems most abhorrent 
 from his beloved studies) — to while away some 
 good hours of my time in the contemplation of 
 indigos, cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or 
 otherwise. In the first place . . . and then it sends 
 you home with such increased appetite to your 
 
 books not to say, that your outside sheets, 
 
 and waste wrappers of foolscap, do receive into 
 
 13
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 disser- 
 tation. — It feels its promotion So that you see, 
 
 upon the whole, the literary dignity of Elia is very 
 little, if at all, compromised in the condescension. 
 
 Not that, in my anxious detail of the many com- 
 modities incidental to the life of a public office, 
 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 
 interstices, and sprinklings of freedom, through the 
 four seasons, — the red-letter days, now become, to 
 all intents and purposes, 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 effigies, 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 
 14
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION 
 
 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 better Jude 
 with Simon — clubbing (as it were) their sanctities 
 together, to make up one poor gaudy- day between 
 them — as an economy unworthy of the dispensa- 
 tion. 
 
 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. Peradventure 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 ar- 
 raign 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, methinks, 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 ecclesiastical 
 authority — I am plain Elia — no Selden, nor Arch- 
 bishop Usher — though at present in the thick of 
 their books, here 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 
 
 15
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 few idle weeks at, as one or other of the Universi- 
 ties. Their vacation, too, at this time of the year, 
 falls in so pat with ours. Here I can take my walks 
 unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree or 
 standing I please. I seem admitted ad eundem. 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 Com- 
 moner. 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 some- 
 thing of the sort. I go about in black, which favours 
 the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quad- 
 rangle 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 tall trees of Christ's, the gi'oves of INIagdalen ! 
 The halls deserted, and with open doors, inviting 
 one to shp in unperceived, 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 the way at 
 the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of antique 
 hospitaUty : the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen 
 fireplaces, cordial recesses; ovens whose first pies 
 were baked four centuries ago; and spits which 
 16
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION 
 
 have cooked for Chaucer! Not the meanest mmis- 
 ter among the dishes but is hallowed to me through 
 his imagination, and the Cook goes forth a Manciple. 
 
 Antiquity ! thou wondrous charm, what art thou ? 
 that, being nothing, art everything! When 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 
 the 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 dark ages? 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 without 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 re- 
 posing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. 
 I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their 
 
 * Januses of one face. — Sir Thomas Browne. 
 
 IT
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I 
 seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; 
 and the odour of their old moth-scented coverings 
 is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential ap- 
 ples which grew amid the happy orchard. 
 
 Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder re- 
 pose of MSS. Those varice lectiones, so tempting to 
 the more erudite palates, do but disturb and unset- 
 tle my faith. I am no Herculanean raker. The credit 
 of the three witnesses might have slept unimpeached 
 for me. I leave these curiosities to Porson, and to 
 G. D. — whom, by the way, I 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 learn- 
 ing. No inconsiderable portion of his moderate for- 
 tune, I apprehend, is consumed in journeys between 
 them and Cliiford's Inn — where, hke a dove on the 
 asp's nest, he has long taken up his unconscious 
 abode, amid an incongruous assembly of attorneys, 
 attorneys' clerks, apparitors, promoters, vermin of 
 the law, among whom he sits, "in calm and sinless 
 peace." The fangs of the law pierce him not — the 
 winds of htigation blow over his humble chambers 
 — the hard sheriff's officer moves his hat as he 
 passes — legal nor illegal discourtesy touches him — 
 18
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION 
 
 none thinks of offering violence or injustice to him 
 — you would as soon "strike an abstract idea." 
 
 D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course 
 of 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 dis- 
 puted points — particularly that long controversy 
 between them as to priority of foundation. The ar- 
 dour with which he engages in these liberal pursuits, 
 I am afraid, has not met with all the encouragement 
 
 it deserved, either here or at C . Your caputs, 
 
 and heads of colleges, care less than anybody else 
 about these questions. — Contented to suck the 
 milky fountains of their Alma Maters, without in- 
 quiring into the venerable gentlewomen's years, 
 they rather hold such curiosities to be impertinent 
 — unreverend. They have their good glebe lands in 
 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 unbroken heifer, when I inter- 
 rupted him. A priori 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 provoking 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 
 
 19
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 Square; and, finding nobody at home, was ushered 
 into the hall, where, asking 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 un- 
 fortunate visitor — and takes his leave with many 
 ceremonies, and professions of regret. Some two or 
 three hours after, his walking destinies 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 "cer- 
 tainly not to return from the country before that 
 day week"), and disappointed a second time, in- 
 quires 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 
 conceived. D. made many a good resolution against 
 any such lapses in future. I hope he will not keep 
 them too rigorously. 
 
 For with G. D. — to be absent from the body, is 
 sometimes (not to speak it profanely) to be present 
 with the Lord. At the very time when, personally 
 encountering thee, he passes on with no recogni- 
 tion or, being stopped, starts like a thing sur- 
 prised — at that moment, Reader, he is on Mount 
 20
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION 
 
 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 peradventure medi- 
 tating 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 knav- 
 ish 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 ar- 
 rears. Dr. * * * would take no immediate notice, 
 but after supper, when the school was called to- 
 gether to evensong, he would never fail to intro- 
 duce some instructive homily against riches, and 
 the corruption of the heart occasioned through the 
 desire of them — ending with "Lord, keep Thy ser- 
 vants, above all things, from the heinous sin of 
 avarice. Having food and raiment, let us there- 
 withal be content. Give me Agur's wish" — and the 
 like — which, to the little auditory, sounded like a 
 doctrine full of Christian prudence and simphcity, 
 but to poor D. was a receipt in full for that quar- 
 ter's demand at least. 
 
 21
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 And D. has been under- working for himself ever 
 since; — drudging at low rates for unappreeiating 
 booksellers, — wasting his fine erudition in silent 
 corrections of the classics, and in those unostenta- 
 tious 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 be- 
 cause he has been too much absorbed in ancient lit- 
 erature to know what the popular mark in poetry 
 is, even if he could have hit it. And, therefore, his 
 verses are properly, what he terms them, crotchets; 
 voluntaries; odes to liberty and spring; effusions; 
 little tributes and offerings, left behind him upon 
 tables and window-seats at parting from friends' 
 houses; and from all the inns of hospitality, where 
 he has been courteously (or but tolerably) received 
 in his pilgrimage. If his muse 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 conversation.] 
 
 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 waters of Damascus." On the 
 Muses' hill he is happy, and good, as one of the 
 22
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION 
 
 Shepherds on the Delectable IMountains; and when 
 he goes about with you to show you the halls and 
 colleges, you think you have with you the Inter- 
 preter at the House Beautiful.
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 
 
 FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO 
 
 IN Mr. Lamb's "Works," published a year or two 
 since, I find a magnificent 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 
 whatever 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 had some peculiar advantages, which I and 
 others of his schoolfellows had not. His friends 
 hved in town, and were near at hand; and he had 
 the privilege of going to see them, almost as often 
 as he wished, through some invidious distinction, 
 which was denied to us. The present worthy sub- 
 treasurer to the Inner Temple can explain how that 
 happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in a morn- 
 ing, while we were battening upon our quarter of a 
 penny loaf — our crw^— 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, 
 
 ^ Recollections of Christ's Hospital. 
 24
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 
 
 were enriched for him with a sHce of "extraordi- 
 nary bread and butter," from the hot-loaf of the 
 Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, some- 
 what less repugnant (we had three banyan to four 
 meat days in the week) — was endeared to his pal- 
 ate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of 
 ginger (to make it go down the more ghbly) or the 
 fragrant cinnamon. In Heu of our half-pickled Sun- 
 days, or quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays (strong 
 as caro equina)^ with detestable marigolds floating 
 in the pail to poison the broth — our scanty mutton 
 scrags on Fridays — and rather more savoury, but 
 grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten -roasted 
 or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which ex- 
 cited 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 rela- 
 tive (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 
 Gates which the ravens ministered to the Tishbite); 
 and the contending 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 
 
 25
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 shame, and awkwardness, and a troubling over- 
 consciousness. 
 
 1 was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and those 
 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 hundred play- 
 mates. 
 
 O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his 
 early homestead! The yearnings 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 whole-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 bath- 
 ing-excursions to the New River, which L. recalls 
 with such relish, better, I think, than he can — for 
 26
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 
 
 he was a home-seeking lad, and did not much care 
 for such water-pastimes: — How merrily 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 us, and we had nothing 
 to satisfy our cravings — the very beauty of the day, 
 and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of 
 hberty, setting a keener edge upon them! — How 
 faint and languid, finally, we would return, towards 
 nightfall, 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 prowl- 
 ing about the streets objectless — shivering at cold 
 windows of print shops, to extract a little amuse- 
 ment; or haply, as a last resort, in the hopes of 
 a httle 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 
 immemorial, we had a prescriptive title to admission. 
 
 L.'s governor (so we called the patron who pre- 
 sented us to the foundation) lived in a manner un- 
 der 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 
 
 27
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 to him against the severity of masters, or worse 
 tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions of these 
 young brutes are heart-sickening to call to recollec- 
 tion. I have been called out of my bed, and waked 
 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 cruellest penalties, for- 
 bade 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 myself 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 was the benevolent instru- 
 ment 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 
 28
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 
 
 it may seem, with the connivance of the nurse's 
 daughter (a young flame of his) he had contrived 
 to smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of the ward, 
 as they called our dormitories. This game went on 
 for better than a week, till the foolish beast, not 
 able to fare well but he must cry roast meat — hap- 
 pier 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 unlucky minute would 
 needs proclaim his good fortune to the world be- 
 low; and, laying 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 
 Smithfield ; but I never understood that the patron 
 underwent any censure on the occasion. This was 
 in the stewardship of L.'s admired Perry. 
 
 Under the same Jacile administration, can L. have 
 forgotten the cool impunity with which the nurses 
 used to carry away openly, in open platters, for their 
 own tables, one out of two of every hot joint, which 
 the careful matron had 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 consola- 
 
 29
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 tory to him, or us, the hving ones, who saw the bet- 
 ter 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-haters), and in strong, coarse, boiled 
 meats, unsalted, are detestable. A gag-eater in our 
 time was equivalent to a goule, and held in equal 
 detestation. suffered under the imputation: 
 
 . . . . 'T was said 
 He ate strange flesh. 
 
 He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather 
 up the remnants left at his table (not many, nor 
 very choice fragments, you 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 de- 
 voured 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 
 30
 
 CHRISTS HOSPITAL 
 
 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 be 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 that 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 stair- 
 case. 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 cer- 
 tainty. The informers had secured their victim. They 
 had him in their toils. Accusation was formally pre- 
 ferred, 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 in- 
 vestigate the matter, before he proceeded to sen- 
 tence. The result was, that the supposed mendi- 
 cants, the receivers or purchasers of the mysterious 
 
 scraps, turned out to be the parents of , an 
 
 honest couple come to decay, — whom this season- 
 able supply had, in all probability, saved from men- 
 
 31
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 dicancy : and that this young stork, at the expense 
 of his own good name, had all this while been only 
 feeding the old birds! — The governors on this occa- 
 sion, 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 
 RASH JUDGMENT, on tlic occasiou of publicly deliv- 
 ering the medal to , I beheve, would not be 
 
 lost upon his auditory. — I had left school then, but 
 
 I well remember . He was a tall, shambhng 
 
 youth, with a cast in his eye, not at all calculated 
 to conciliate hostile prejudices. I have since seen 
 him carrying a baker's basket. I think I heard he 
 did not do quite so well by 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 turned of seven ; and had only read of such 
 things in books, or seen them but in dreams. I was 
 told he had run away. 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 him- 
 self all day, without sight of any but the porter who
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 
 
 brought him his bread and water — who might not 
 speak to him,; — or of the beadle, who came twice a 
 week to caU him out to receive his periodical chas- 
 tisement, which was almost welcome, because it 
 separated him for a brief interval from solitude: — 
 and here he was shut up by himself of nights, out of 
 the reach of any sound, to suffer whatever horrors 
 the weak nerves, and superstition incident to his 
 time of life, might subject him to.^ This was the 
 penalty for the second offence. Wouldst thou like, 
 Reader, to see what became of him in the next 
 degree ? 
 
 The culprit, who had been a third time an of- 
 fender, and whose expulsion was at this time deemed 
 irreversible, was brought forth, as at some solemn 
 auto dafe, 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 formerly delighted in, 
 with a cap of the same. The effect of this divesti- 
 ture was such as the ingenious devisers of it could 
 have anticipated. With his pale and frightened 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- 
 
 ^ One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accord- 
 ingly, 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 could willingly spit upon his statue. 
 
 33
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 ex- 
 ecutioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the occa- 
 sion ; and of two faces more, of direr import, because 
 never but in these extremities visible. These were 
 governors; two of whom, by choice, or charter, were 
 always accustomed to officiate at these Ultima Sup- 
 plicia; 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 pre- 
 pare him for the mysteries. The scourging was, after 
 the old Roman fashion, long and stately. The Hctor 
 accompanied the criminal quite round the hall. We 
 were generally too faint with attending to the pre- 
 vious disgusting circumstances to make accurate 
 report with our eyes of the degree of corporal suf- 
 fering inflicted. Report, of course, 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 runagates 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 as to spoil the general mirth of the commu- 
 nity. We had plenty of exercise and recreation after 
 34
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 
 
 school hours; and, for myself, I must confess, that 
 I 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 Rev. James Boyer was the Upper Master, 
 but the Rev. Matthew Field presided over that 
 portion of the apartment, of which I had the good 
 fortune to be a member. We 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 formahty 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. 
 Field never used the rod ; and in truth he wielded 
 the cane with no great good will — holding it "hke 
 a dancer." It looked in his hands rather like an em- 
 blem than an instrument of authority ; and an em- 
 blem, 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 
 
 S5
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 be out of the sound of our noise. Our mirth and 
 uproar went on. We had classics of our own, with- 
 out being beholden to "insolent Greece or haughty 
 Rome," that passed current among us — Peter Wil- 
 kins — The Adventures of the Hon. Captain Robert 
 Boyle — the Fortunate Blue-coatBoy — and the like. 
 Or we cultivated a turn for mechanic and scientific 
 operations ; making Httle sun-dials of paper ; or weav- 
 ing those ingenious 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," and a hundred other 
 such devices to pass away the time — mixing the 
 useful with the agreeable — as would have made the 
 souls of Rousseau and John Locke chuckle to have 
 seen us. 
 
 Matthew Field belonged 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 seldom proceeded further than 
 two or three of the introductory fables of Pheedrus. 
 How things were suffered to go on thus, I cannot 
 guess. Boyer, who was the proper person to have 
 36
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 
 
 remedied these abuses, always affected, perhaps felt, 
 a delicacy in interfering in a province not strictly his 
 own. I have not been without my suspicions, that 
 he was not altogether displeased at the contrast we 
 presented to his end of the school. We were a sort of 
 Helots to his young Spartans. He would sometimes, 
 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 batter- 
 ing 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 dis- 
 cipline, and the prospect did but the more reconcile 
 us to our lot. His thunders rolled innocuous for us; 
 his storms came near, but never touched us; con- 
 trary 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 advan- 
 tage in temper. His pupils cannot speak of him 
 without something of terror allaying their grati- 
 tude; the remembrance of Field comes back with 
 all the soothing images of indolence, and summer 
 slumbers, and work like play, and innocent idleness, 
 and Elysian exemptions, and life itself a "playing 
 holiday." 
 
 Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction 
 of Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to 
 
 ^ Cowley. 
 
 37
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 Flac- 
 
 cus's quibble about Rex or at the tristis severi- 
 
 tas in vultu, or inspicere in patinas^ of Terence — thin 
 jests, which at their first broaching could hardly have 
 had vis enough to move a Roman 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 discoloured, unkempt, 
 angry caxon, denoting frequent and bloody execu- 
 tion. Woe to the school, when he made his morn- 
 ing 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 your 
 wits at me?" — Nothing was more common than to 
 see him make a headlong entry into the school-room, 
 
 ^ In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadjutor. 
 While the former 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 Muses. A little dramatic effusion of 
 his, under the name of Vertumnus and Pomona, is not yet forgot- 
 ten by the chroniclers of that sort of literature. It was accepted 
 by Garrick, but the town did not give it their sanction. — B. used 
 to say of it, in a way of half-compliment, half-irony, that it was 
 too classical for representation. 
 38
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 
 
 from his inner recess, or library, and, with turbu- 
 lent 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 re- 
 tracting impulse, 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, with 
 the expletory yell — '^and I will too.''' — In his gen- 
 tler 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 para- 
 graph 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 squint- 
 ing W having been caught putting the inside 
 
 of the master's desk to a use for which the archi- 
 tect had clearly not designed it, to justify himself, 
 with great simplicity averred, that he did not know 
 that the thing had been forenoarned. This exquisite 
 irrecognition of any law antecedent to the oral or 
 declaratory, struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of 
 all who heard it (the pedagogue himself not ex- 
 cepted) that remission was unavoidable. 
 
 39
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an in- 
 structor. Coleridge, in his literary life, has pro- 
 nounced a more intelligible 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 bhss 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 inseparable companion) with 
 
 Dr. T e. What an edifying spectacle did this 
 
 brace of friends present to those who remembered 
 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 al- 
 most immediate sub-appearance of the other. Gen- 
 erally arm-in-arm, these kindly coadjutors lightened 
 for each other the toilsome duties of their profes- 
 sion, and when, in advanced age, one found it con- 
 venient to retire, the other was not long in discov- 
 ering 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 
 40
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 
 
 Antique Friendship, which the young 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, with raven locks. — Thomas Fanshaw Mid- 
 dleton 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 (be- 
 sides 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) sufficiently justifies the bearing, A humil- 
 ity quite as primitive 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 fa- 
 thers watered. The manners of M. at school, though 
 firm, were mild and unassuming. — Next to M. (if not 
 senior to him) was Richards, author of the Aborigi- 
 nal Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize 
 Poems; a pale, studious Grecian. — Then followed 
 
 poor S , iU-fated INI ! of these the IVIuse is 
 
 silent. 
 
 Finding some of Edward's race 
 Unhappy, pass their annals by. 
 
 Come back into memory, hke as thou wert in the 
 dayspring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery col- 
 umn before thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Logician, Metaphysi- 
 al
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 cian, Bard! — How have I seen the casual passer 
 through the Cloisters stand still, entranced with 
 admiration (while he weighed the disproportion be- 
 tween the speech and the garb of the young Miran- 
 dula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet 
 intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Ploti- 
 nus (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale 
 at such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in 
 
 his Greek, or Pindar while the walls of the old 
 
 Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired 
 chajity-boy! — Many were the "wit-combats" (to 
 dally awhile with the words of old Fuller) between 
 
 him and C. V. Le G , "which two I behold 
 
 hke a Spanish great galleon, and an English man 
 of war: Master Coleridge, like the former, was built 
 far higher in learning, sohd, but slow in his per- 
 formances. 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 thou, their compeer, be quickly forgot- 
 ten, 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 peradventure practical one, of 
 thine own. Extinct are those smiles, with that beau- 
 tiful countenance, with which (for thou wert the 
 Nireus formosus of the school), in the days of thy 
 maturer waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath of 
 42
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 
 
 infuriated town-damsel, who, incensed by provok- 
 ing pinch, turning tigress-hke round, suddenly con- 
 verted by thy angel-look, exchanged the half-formed 
 
 terrible *'6/ ," 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 tem- 
 per, 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 learning — 
 exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp; per- 
 ishing, one by climate, and one on the plains of 
 
 Salamanca: — Le G , sanguine, volatile, sweet- 
 
 natured; F , dogged, faithful, anticipative of 
 
 insult, warm-hearted, with something of the old 
 Roman height about him. 
 
 Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master 
 
 of Hertford, with Marmaduke T , mildest of 
 
 Missionaries — and both my good friends still — 
 close the catalogue of Grecians in my time. 
 
 48
 
 THE TWO RACES OF MEN 
 
 THE human species, according to the best theory 
 I can form of it, is composed of two distinct 
 races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend. 
 To these two original diversities may be reduced 
 all those impertinent classifications 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 chose to 
 designate 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 suspicious; contrasting with the 
 open, trusting, generous manners of the other. 
 
 Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of 
 all ages — Alcibiades — FalstafF — Sir Richard Steele 
 — our late incomparable Brinsley — what a family 
 likeness in all four! 
 
 What a careless, even deportment hath your bor- 
 rower! what rosy gills! what a beautiful reliance on 
 Providence doth he manifest, — taking no more 
 thought than lilies! What contempt for money, — 
 accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better 
 than dross! What a hberal confounding of those 
 pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum! or rather, 
 44
 
 THE TWO RACES OF MEN 
 
 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 commu- 
 nity, — to the extent of one half of the principle at 
 least. 
 
 He is the true taxer who "calleth all the world 
 up to be taxed"; and the distance is as vast be- 
 tween him and one of us, as subsisted between the 
 Augustan JNIajesty and the poorest obolary Jew 
 that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusalem! — His 
 exactions, too, have such 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 ap- 
 plieth 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 Propontic which never ebbeth! The 
 sea which taketh handsomely 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 pre- 
 posterously in thine own person the penalties of 
 
 45
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 Lazarus and of Dives! — but, when thou seest the 
 proper authority coming, meet it smilingly, as it 
 were half-way. Come, a handsome sacrifice! See 
 how light he makes of it ! Strain not courtesies with 
 a noble enemy. 
 
 Refl^ections like the foregoing were forced upon 
 my mind by the death of my old friend, Ralph 
 Bigod, Esq., who parted this life on Wednesday 
 evening; dying, as he had lived, without much 
 trouble. He boasted himself a descendant 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 disin- 
 terestedness which I have noticed 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 disfurnishment; getting rid of the cumber- 
 some luggage of riches, more apt (as one sings) 
 
 To slacken virtue, and abate her edge. 
 
 Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise, 
 
 he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great 
 enterprise, "borrowing and to borrow!" 
 
 In his periegesis, or triumphant progress through- 
 out this island, it has been calculated that he laid a 
 46
 
 THE TWO RACES OF MEN 
 
 tythe part of the inhabitants under contribution. I 
 reject this estimate as greatly exaggerated: — but 
 having had the honour of accompanying 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 obhging as to explain the phenomenon. It 
 seems, these were his tributaries ; feeders of his ex- 
 chequer; gentlemen, his good friends (as he was 
 pleased to express himself), to whom he had occa- 
 sionally 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." 
 
 With such sources, it was a wonder how he con- 
 trived 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 infec- 
 tious, — into ponds, or ditches, or deep holes, inscru- 
 table 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 facetiously 
 observe) paid no interest — ^but out away from him 
 it must go peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into 
 
 47
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 the wilderness, while it was sweet. He never missed 
 it. The streams were perennial which fed his fisc. 
 When new supplies became necessary, the first per- 
 son that had the felicity to fall in with him, friend 
 or stranger, was sure to contribute to the deficiency. 
 For Bigod had an undeniable 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 most untheorising 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 describ- 
 ing, than to say no to a poor petitionary rogue (your 
 bastard borrower), who, by his inumping visnomy, 
 tells you that he expects nothing better; and, there- 
 fore, 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 borrowers 
 
 48
 
 THE TWO RACES OF MEN 
 
 of books — those mutilators 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 httle 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 
 foUos, Opei^a Bonaventurce, choice and massy di- 
 vinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity 
 also, but of a lesser calibre, — Bellarmine, and Holy 
 Thomas), showed but as dwarfs, — itself an Asca- 
 partl — that Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith 
 of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I con- 
 fess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, 
 that "the title to property in a book (my Bona ven- 
 ture, 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 — two 
 shelves from the ceiling — -scarcely distinguishable 
 but by the quick eye of a loser — was whilom the 
 commodious resting-place of Browne on Urn Burial. 
 C. will hardly allege that he knows more about that 
 treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, and 
 was indeed the first (of the moderns) to discover its 
 beauties ^ — but so have I known a foolish lover to 
 
 49
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 praise his mistress in the presence of a rival more 
 quaUfied 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 sons, when the Fates 
 borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of Mel- 
 ancholy, in sober state. — There loitered the Com- 
 plete Angler; quiet as in Hfe, 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 some- 
 times, like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at an- 
 other time, sea-like, he throws up as rich an equiva- 
 lent to match it. I have a small under- collection of 
 this nature (my friend's gatherings 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 He- 
 brews. There 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 
 advertising 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 ac- 
 count of the platter after it. But what moved thee, 
 wayward, spiteful K., to be so importunate to carry 
 50
 
 THE TWO RACES OF MEN 
 
 off with thee, m spite of tears and adj urations to 
 thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, 
 the thrice noble JNIargaret 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 I to transport 
 it with thee to the Gallican land — 
 
 Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness, 
 A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt. 
 Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's 
 wonder! 
 
 hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of 
 
 jests and fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, 
 even as thou keepest all companies with thy quips 
 and mirthful tales ? Child of the Greenroom, it was 
 unkindly done of thee. Thy wife, too, tha*^ part- 
 French, better-part-Englishwoman ! — that she could 
 fix upon no other treatise to bear away, in kindly 
 token of remembering us, 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 comprehend a tittle! Was 
 there not Zimmerman oji Solitude? 
 
 Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moder- 
 ate collection, be shy of showing it; or if thy heart 
 overfloweth to lend them, lend thy books; but let 
 it be to such a one as S. T. C. — he will return 
 them (generally anticipating the time appointed) 
 
 hi
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 with usury ; enriched with annotations, tripUng their 
 value. I have had experience. Many are these pre- 
 cious MSS. of his — (in matter oftentimes, and al- 
 most in quantity not unfrequently, vying with the 
 originals) in no very clerkly hand — legible in my 
 Daniel ; in old Burton ; in Sir Thomas Browne ; and 
 those abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, 
 alas! wandering in Pagan lands. — I counsel thee, 
 shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against S. T. C. 
 
 52
 
 NEW YEAR'S EVE 
 
 EVERY man hath two birthdays: two days at 
 least, in every year, which set him upon revolv- 
 ing the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal dura-*, 
 tion. The one is that which in an especial manner 
 he termeth his. In the gradual desuetude of old ob- 
 servances, this custom of solemnizing our proper 
 birthday hath nearly passed away, or is left to chil- 
 dren, who reflect nothing at all about the matter, 
 nor understand anything in it beyond cake and 
 orange. But the birth of a New Year is of an in- 
 terest too wide to be pretermitted by king or cob- 
 bler. No 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 
 nativity of our common Adam. 
 
 Of all sound of all bells — (bells, the music nigh- 
 est bordering 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 flight in a contemporary, when he ex- 
 claimed — 
 
 I saw the skirts of the departing Year. 
 
 53
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 It is no more than what in sober sadness every 
 one 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 exhilaration at the 
 birth of the coming year, than any very tender re- 
 grets 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 pro- 
 spective. I have almost ceased to hope ; and am san- 
 guine only in the prospects of other (former years). 
 I plunge into foregone visions and conclusions. I 
 encounter pell-mell with past disappointments. I 
 am armour-proof against old discouragements. I for- 
 give, or overcome in fancy, old adversaries. I play 
 over again /b?' love, as the gamesters phrase it, games 
 for which I once paid so dear. I would scarce now 
 have any of those untoward accidents and events of 
 my life reversed. I would no more alter them than 
 the incidents of some well-contrived novel. Me- 
 thinks, it is better that I should have pined away 
 seven of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to 
 
 the fair hair, and fairer eyes, of Alice W n, than 
 
 that so passionate a love adventure should be lost. 
 It was better that our family should have missed 
 that legacy, which old Dorrell cheated us of, than 
 54
 
 NEW YEAR'S EVE 
 
 that I should have at this moment two thousand 
 pounds i?i 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 in- 
 tervention 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 
 introspective — and mine is painfully so — can have 
 a less respect for his present identity than I have for 
 the man EUa. I know him to be light, and vain, and 
 humoursome ; a notorious * * * ; addicted to * * * ; 
 averse from counsel, neither taking it, nor offering 
 it ; — * * * besides ; a stammering buffoon ; what you 
 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 EUa — 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 this 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 sur- 
 prise at the gentle posture of maternal tenderness 
 hanging over it, that unknown had watched its 
 sleep. I know how it shrank from any the least 
 colour of falsehood. — God help thee, Elia, how art 
 
 55
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 thou changed! — Thou art sophisticated. — I know 
 how honest, how courageous (for a weakhng) it was 
 — how reUgious, how imaginative, how hopefull 
 From what have I not fallen, if the child I remem- 
 ber 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! 
 
 That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of 
 sympathy, in such retrospection, may be the symp- 
 tom of some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to 
 another cause : simply, that being without wife or 
 family, I have not learned to project myself enough 
 out of myself; and having no offspring 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 
 way 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 ob- 
 servance of any old institution ; and the ringing out 
 of the Old Year was kept by them with circum- 
 stances of peculiar ceremony. — In those days the 
 sound of those midnight chimes, though it seemed 
 to raise hilarity in aU around me, never failed to 
 bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet 
 I then scarce conceived what it meant, or thought 
 56
 
 NEW YEAR'S EVE 
 
 of it as a reckoning that concerned me. Not child- 
 hood alone, but the young man till thirty, never 
 feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it in- 
 deed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily 
 on the fragihty of hfe; but he brings it not home to 
 himself, any more than in a hot June we can appro- 
 priate to our imagination the freezing days of De- 
 cember. But now, shall I confess a truth? — I feel 
 these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count 
 the probabihties of my duration, and to grudge at 
 the expenditure of moments and shortest periods, 
 hke miser's farthings. In proportion as the years 
 both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon 
 their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual fin- 
 ger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not con- 
 tent to pass away "like a weaver's shuttle." Those 
 metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpala- 
 table draught of mortahty. I care not to be carried 
 with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to 
 eternity ; and reluct at the inevitable course of des- 
 tiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of 
 town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, 
 and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my 
 tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the 
 age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends: to be 
 no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want 
 to be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as 
 they say, into the grave. — Any alteration, on this 
 earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and dis- 
 composes me. My household-gods plant a terrible 
 
 57
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 
 summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and 
 the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, 
 and the cheerful glass, and candlelight, and fireside 
 conversations, and innocent 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 smil- 
 ing indications 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, be- 
 neath a sweltering sky, death is almost problematic. 
 At those times do such poor snakes as myself en- 
 joy 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 
 58
 
 NEW YEAR'S EVE 
 
 things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that 
 master feeling ; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity; 
 moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral ap- 
 pearances, — 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. 
 
 Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, 
 brings death unto my mind. All partial evils, like 
 humours, run into that capital plague-sore. — ^I have 
 heard some profess an indifference to life. Such hail 
 the end of their existence as a port of refuge ; and 
 speak of the grave as of some soft arms, in which 
 they may slumber as on a pillow. Some have wooed 
 
 death but out upon thee, I say, thou foul, ugly 
 
 phantom! I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar 
 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 be brought to 
 digest thee, thou thin, melancholy Privation, or 
 more frightful and confounding Positive! 
 
 Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of 
 thee, are altogether frigid and insulting, like thy- 
 self. For what satisfaction hath a man, that he 
 shall "lie down with kings and emperors in death," 
 who in his hfetime never greatly coveted the so- 
 ciety of such bed-fellows? — or, forsooth, that "so 
 shall the fairest face appear"? — why, to comfort 
 
 me, must Alice W n be a goblin? JNIore than 
 
 59
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 aU, I conceive disgust at those impertinent and 
 misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordi- 
 nary 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 jolly candidate for 1821. 
 Another cup of wine— and while that turncoat 
 bell, that just now mournfully chanted the obse- 
 quies 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 hearty, cheerful 
 Mr. Cotton. 
 
 The New Year 
 
 HARK, the cock crows, and yon bright star 
 Tells us, the day himself 's not far; 
 And see where, breaking from the night. 
 He gilds the western hills with light. 
 With him old Janus doth appear. 
 Peeping into the future year. 
 With such a look as seems to say 
 The prospect is not good that way. 
 Thus do we rise ill sights to see. 
 And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy; 
 When the prophetic fear of things 
 A more tormenting mischief brings. 
 More full of soul-tormenting gall 
 Than direst mischiefs can befall. 
 But stay! but stay! methinks my sight. 
 Better informed by clearer light, 
 
 60
 
 NEW YEARS EVE 
 
 Discerns sereneness in that brow 
 
 That all contracted seemed but now. 
 
 His revers'd face may show distaste. 
 
 And frown upon 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 all the moments open are 
 
 To the exact discoverer. 
 
 Yet more and more he smiles upon 
 
 The happy revolution. 
 
 Why should 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 shou'd 
 
 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 wherewithal 
 
 Longer their being to support. 
 
 Than those do of the other sort: 
 
 And who has one good year in three. 
 
 And yet repines at destiny, 
 
 Appeal's ungrateful in the case, 
 
 And merits not the good he has. 
 
 Then let us Avelcome the New Guest 
 
 With lusty brimmers of the best: 
 
 Mirth always should Good Fortune meet. 
 
 And renders e'en Disaster sweet: 
 
 61
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 And though the Princerss turn her back. 
 Let us but line ourselves with sack. 
 We better shall by far hold out, 
 Till the next year she face about. 
 
 How say you, reader — do not these verses smack 
 of the rough magnanimity of the old EngUsh vein ? 
 Do they not fortify Uke 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 affected? — 
 Passed like a cloud— absorbed in the purging sun- 
 light of clear poetry — clean washed away by a wave 
 of genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypo- 
 chondries. And now another cup of the generous! 
 and a merry New Year, and many of them to you 
 all, my masters! 
 
 62
 
 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 
 
 AC LEAR fire, a clean hearth/ and the rigour 
 of the game." This was the celebrated xvish 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 
 hke to win one game and lose another ;2 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. 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, as I do, from her heart and soul; and would 
 not, save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat 
 herself at the same table with them. She loved a 
 thorough-paced partner, a determined enemy. She 
 took, and gave, no concessions. She hated favours. 
 
 [^ This was before the introduction of rugs. Reader. You must 
 remember the intolerable crash of the unswept cinders betwixt 
 your foot and the marble.] 
 
 [^ As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one day 
 and lose him the next.] 
 
 63
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 She never made a revoke, nor ever passed it over in 
 her adversary without exacting the utmost forfei- 
 ture. She fought a good fight: cut and thrust. She 
 held not her good sword (her cards) *'hke 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 Hearts 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 
 snuff-box when it was her turn to play; or snufF a 
 candle in the middle of a game; or ring for a ser- 
 vant, till it was fairly over. She never introduced, or 
 connived at, miscellaneous conversation during its 
 process. As she emphatically observed, cards were 
 cards; and if I 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 occu- 
 pation, to which she wound up her faculties, con- 
 sidered in that light. It was 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 Rape of the 
 64
 
 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 
 
 Lock her favourite work. She once did me the fa- 
 vour to play over with me (with the cards) his cele- 
 brated 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, tradrille. Her illus- 
 trations 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 in- 
 serted 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 said, was showy and specious, and 
 likely to allure young persons. The uncertainty and 
 quick shifting of partners — a thing which the con- 
 stancy of whist abhors ; the dazzling supremacy 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 van- 
 ity, so taking to the inexperienced, of playing alone ; 
 above all, the overpowering attractions of a Sans 
 Prendre Vole, — to the triumph of 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 whist was the solider game: 
 that was her word. It was a long meal; not like 
 quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers 
 might co-extend in duration with an evening. They 
 gave time to form rooted friendships, to cultivate 
 
 65
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 steady enmities. She despised the chance-started, 
 capricious, and ever-fluctuating aUiances 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: 
 perpetually changing postures and connexions ; bit- 
 ter foes to-day, sugared darlings to-morrow ; kissing 
 and scratching in a breath ;^ — but the wars of whist 
 were comparable to the long, steady, 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, Hke the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous. 
 ^o 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 playing 
 of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions 
 of the cards themselves ! She held this to be a sole- 
 cism; as pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration 
 is in authorship. She despised superficiaUty, and 
 looked deeper than the colours of things.— Suits 
 were soldiers, she would say, and must have a uni- 
 formity of array to distinguish them: but what 
 should we say to a foolish squire, who should claim 
 a 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 
 66
 
 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 
 
 stripped it of some appendages, which, in the state 
 of human frailty, may be venially, and even com- 
 mendably, 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 re- 
 freshed with the variety. Man is not a creature of 
 pure reason — he must have his senses delightfully 
 appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic coun- 
 tries, where the music and the paintings draw in 
 many to worship, whom your quaker spirit of un- 
 sensualising would have kept out. — You, yourself, 
 have a pretty collection of paintings — but confess 
 to me, whether, walking in your gallery at Sand- 
 ham, among those clear A^andykes, or among the 
 Paul Potters in the ante-room, you ever felt your 
 bosom glow with an elegant dehght, at all compar- 
 able to that you have it in your power to experience 
 most evenings over a well-arranged assortment of 
 the court-cards ? — the pretty antic habits, like her- 
 alds 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, the 
 game might go on very well, pictureless ; but the 
 beauty of cards would be extinguished for ever. 
 Stripped of all that is imagmative in them, they 
 
 67
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 na- 
 ture's), fittest arena for those courtly combatants to 
 play their gallant jousts and turneys in! — Exchange 
 those delicately-turned ivory markers— (work of 
 Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol, — or as 
 profanely slighting their true application as the ar- 
 rantest Ephesian journeyman that turned out those 
 little shrines for the goddess) — exchange them for 
 little bits of leather (our ancestors' money), or chalk 
 and a slate!" — 
 
 The old lady, with a smile, confessed the sound- 
 ness 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 Si- 
 enna marble, which her maternal uncle (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 "G^o," or ''That's a go'' 
 She called it an ungrammatical game. The pegging 
 teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a 
 68
 
 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 
 
 five-dollar stake) because she would not take advan- 
 tage of the turn-up knave, which would have given 
 it her, but which she must have claimed by the 
 disgraceful tenure of declaring ''tvco for his heehr 
 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 persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry 
 of the terms — such as pique — repique — the capot 
 — they savoured (she thought) of affectation. But 
 games for two, 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 disguise 
 of a sport: when single adversaries encounter, the 
 ends proposed are too palpable. By themselves, it 
 is too close 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 sympathetically, or for your 
 play. — Three are still worse; a mere naked war of 
 every man against every man, as in cribbage, with- 
 out league or alliance ; or a rotation of petty and 
 contradictory interests, a succession of heartless 
 leagues, and 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 incen- 
 tives of profit with honour, common to every spe- 
 cies — though the latter can be but very imperfectly 
 
 69
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 enjoyed in those other games, where the spectator 
 is only feebly a participator. But the parties in 
 whist are spectators and principals too. They are 
 a theatre to themselves, and a looker-on is not 
 wanted. He is rather worse than nothing, and an 
 impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or interests 
 beyond its sphere. You glory in some surprising 
 stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold — or 
 even an interested — bystander witnesses it, but be- 
 cause your pa?~tner sympathises in the contingency. 
 You win for two. You triumph for two. Two are ex- 
 alted. 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 multi- 
 plying the channels. War becomes a civil game. By 
 such reasonings as these the old lady was accus- 
 tomed 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 con- 
 clusion; — 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 
 together by himself? or before spectators, where no 
 stake was depending? — Make a lottery of a hun- 
 dred thousand tickets with but one fortunate num- 
 70
 
 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 
 
 ber — and what possible principle 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 
 were taken with a lucky hit under such circum- 
 stances. Games of pure skill were as Httle to her 
 fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere system 
 of over-reaching. Played for glory, 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 
 profitless. She could not conceive a game wanting 
 the spritely infusion of chance, the handsome ex- 
 cuses of good fortune. Two people playing at chess 
 in a corner of a room, whilst whist was stirring in 
 the centre, would inspire her with insufferable hor- 
 ror and ennui. Those well-cut similitudes of Castles 
 and Knights, the magery of the board, she would 
 argue (and I think in this case justly), were entirely 
 misplaced 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 nurtur- 
 ing 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 be more safely expended than upon a
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 game at cards : that cards are a temporary illusion ; 
 in truth, a mere drama; for we do hut play 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 king- 
 doms. 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 es- 
 teeming 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 for 
 nothing has even been agreeable. When I am in 
 sickness, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes call 
 for the cards, and play a game at piquet ybr 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. 
 
 There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced,, 
 as sick whist. 
 
 I grant it is not the highest style of man — I 
 deprecate the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, 
 alas! to whom I should apologise. 
 
 At such times, those te?^i?is which my old friend 
 objected to, come in as something admissible — I 
 love to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean 
 72
 
 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 
 
 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 her) — (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 would 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 playing. 
 
 78
 
 A CHAPTER ON EARS 
 
 I HAVE no ear.— 
 Mistake me not, Reader — nor imagine that I 
 am by nature destitute of those exterior twin ap- 
 pendages, 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 provided 
 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 in- 
 cur, with Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which 
 constrained him to draw upon assurance — to feel 
 "quite unabashed,"^ and at ease upon that article. 
 I was never, I thank my stars, in the pillory; nor, 
 if I read them aright, is it within the compass of 
 my destiny, that I ever should be. 
 
 When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will 
 understand me to mean— ^or 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 harp- 
 sichord (the old-fashioned instrument in vogue in 
 those days) by a gentlewoman — the gentlest, sure, 
 
 \} "Earless on high stood^ unabashed, Defoe." — Dunciad.^ 
 
 74
 
 A CHAPTER ON EARS 
 
 that ever merited the appellation — the sweetest — 
 
 why should I hesitate to name Mrs. S , once the 
 
 blooming Fanny Weatheral 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 dayspring 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; whisthng and humming of it over to myself 
 in soUtary corners; and am not yet arrived, they 
 tell me, within many quavers of it. Yet hath the 
 loyalty of Elia never been impeached. 
 
 I am not without suspicion, that I have an un- 
 developed faculty of music within me. For thrum- 
 ming, in my wild way, on my friend A.'s piano, the 
 other morning, while he was engaged in an adjoin- 
 ing parlour, — on his return he was pleased to say, 
 *'he thought it could not be the maid!'' On his first 
 surprise at hearing the keys touched in somewhat 
 an airy and masterful way, not dreaming of me, 
 his suspicions had lighted on Jenny. But a grace, 
 snatched from a superior refinement, soon con- 
 vinced him that some being — technically perhaps 
 deficient, but higher informed from a principle com- 
 mon to all the fine arts — had swayed the keys to a 
 mood which Jenny, with all her (less cultivated) en- 
 
 75
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 thusiasm, could never have elicited from them. I 
 mention this as a proof of my friend's penetration, 
 and not with any view of disparaging Jenny. 
 
 Scientifically I could never be made to under- 
 stand (yet have I taken some pains) what a note 
 in music is; or how one note should differ from 
 another. Much less in voices can I distinguish a so- 
 prano from a tenor. Only sometimes the thorough- 
 bass I contrive to guess at, from its being superemi- 
 nently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, however, 
 for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that 
 which I disclaim. While 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 relation of obscurity to me; and Sol, Fa, 
 Mi, Re, is as conjuring as Baralipton. 
 
 It is hard to stand alone in an age like this, — 
 (constituted to the quick and critical perception of 
 all harmonious combinations, I verily believe, be- 
 yond all preceding ages, since Jubal stumbled upon 
 the gamut,) to remain, as it were, singly unimpres- 
 sible to the magic influences of an art, which is said 
 to have such an especial stroke at soothing, elevat- 
 ing, 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 constitutionally susceptible of noises. A car- 
 penter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret 
 me into more than midsummer madness. But those 
 76
 
 A CHAPTER ON EARS 
 
 unconnected, unset sounds, are nothing to the mea- 
 sured maUce of music. The ear is passive to those 
 single strokes; willingly enduring stripes, while it 
 hath no task to con. To music it cannot be passive. 
 It will strive — mine at least will — spite of its in- 
 aptitude, to thrid the maze; like an unskilled eye 
 painfully poring upon hieroglyphics. I have sat 
 through an Italian Opera, till, for sheer pain, and 
 inexpHcable 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 unpretending assemblage of honest common- 
 life sounds; — and the purgatory of the Enraged 
 Musician becomes my paradise. 
 
 I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the 
 purposes of the cheerful playhouse) watching the 
 faces of the auditory in the pit (what a contrast 
 to Hogarth's Laughing Audience!) immoveable, or 
 affecting 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, 
 where some of the forms of the earthly one should 
 be kept up, with none of the enjoyment; or like that 
 
 — Party in a parlour 
 All silent, and all damned. 
 
 Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces 
 
 77
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 of music, as they are called, do plague and embitter 
 my apprehension. — Words are something; but to 
 be exposed to an endless battery of mere sounds; 
 to be long a-dying; to lie stretched upon a rack of 
 roses; to keep up languor by unintermitted effort; 
 to pile honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, 
 to an interminable tedious sweetness; to fill up 
 sound with feeling, and strain ideas to keep 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 rambling mime 
 — these are faint shadows of what I have under- 
 gone from a series of the ablest-executed pieces of 
 this empty instrumental 7?iusic. 
 
 I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, 
 I have experienced something vastly lulling and 
 agreeable: — afterwards folio weth the languor and 
 the oppression. Like that disappointing book in 
 Patmos; or, like the comings on of melancholy, de- 
 scribed by Burton, doth music make her first insinu- 
 ating approaches: — "Most pleasant it is to such as 
 are melancholy given, to walk alone in some soli- 
 tary grove, betwixt wood and water, by some brook 
 side, and to meditate upon some delightsome and 
 pleasant subject, which shall affect him most, ama- 
 bilis insania, and mentis gi^atissimus error. A most 
 incomparable delight to build castles in the air, to 
 go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety 
 78
 
 A CHAPTER ON EARS 
 
 of parts, which they suppose, and strongly imagine, 
 they act, or that they see done. — So dehghtsome 
 these toys at first, they could spend whole days 
 and nights without sleep, even whole years in such 
 contemplations, and fantastical meditations, which 
 are like so many dreams, and will hardly be drawn 
 from them — winding and unwinding themselves as 
 so many clocks, and still pleasing their humours, 
 until at the last the scene turns upon a sudden, 
 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, subrusticus pudor, discon- 
 tent, cares, and weariness of life, surprise them on 
 a sudden, and they can think of nothing else : con- 
 tinually suspecting, no sooner are their eyes open, 
 but this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth on 
 them, and terrifies their souls, representing some 
 dismal object to their minds; 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 ex- 
 perienced 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.^ 
 
 ^ I have been there, and still would go — 
 'Tis like a little heaven below. — Dr. Watts. 
 
 79
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 When my friend commences upon 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, wak- 
 ing a new sense, and putting a soul of old religion 
 into my young apprehension — (whether it be that, 
 in which the Psalmist, weary of the persecutions of 
 bad men, wisheth to himself dove's wings — or that 
 other which, with a like measure of sobriety and 
 pathos, inquireth by what means the young man 
 shall best cleanse his mind) — a holy calm pervadeth 
 me. — I am for the time 
 
 rapt above earth. 
 
 And possess joys not promised at my birth. 
 
 But when this master of the spell, not content to 
 have laid a soul prostrate, goes on, in his power, to 
 inflict more bliss than lies in her capacity to receive 
 — impatient to overcome her "earthly" with his 
 "heavenly," — still pouring in, for protracted hours, 
 fresh waves and fresh from the sea of sound, or 
 from that inexhausted 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, al- 
 tars, censers, dazzle before me — the genius of his 
 80
 
 A CHAPTER ON EARS 
 
 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, Hke 
 as in the anomaly of dreams, a she-Pope too, — 
 tri-coroneted like himself! — I am converted, and 
 yet a Protestant; — at once malleus hereticorum^ 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 (in 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 unterrifying aspects 
 of my pleasant-countenanced host and hostess. 
 
 81
 
 ALL FOOLS' DAY 
 
 THE compliments of the season to my worthy 
 masters, and a merry first of April to us all 1 
 
 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 un- 
 derstand me — a speck of the motley. Beshrew the 
 man who on such a day as this, the general festival^ 
 should affect to stand aloof. I am none 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 mean- 
 ing 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 — due ad 
 me — due ad me — how goes it? 
 
 Here shall 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.
 
 ALL FOOLS' DAY 
 
 Marry, of the present breed, I think I could with- 
 out much difficulty name you the party. 
 
 Remove 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 sarnphire-picking by some 
 odds. 'T is a mercy your worship did not singe your 
 mustachios. 
 
 Ha! Cleombrotus!^ and what salads in faith did 
 you light upon at the bottom of the Mediterra- 
 nean ? You were founder, I take it, of the disinter- 
 ested sect of the Calenturists. 
 
 Gebir, my old free-mason, and prince of plas- 
 terers 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 Herodotus correctly, at eight 
 hundred million toises, or thereabout, above the 
 level of the sea. Bless us, what a long bell you 
 
 [^ He who, to be deem'd 
 
 A god, leap'd fondly into Etna flames — ] 
 
 P He who, to enjoy 
 
 Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the sea — ] 
 
 P The builders next of Babel on the plain 
 Of Senaar — ] 
 
 8S
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 must have pulled, to call your top workmen to 
 their nuncheon on the low grounds of Senaar. Or 
 did you send up your garhc and onions by a rocket? 
 I am a rogue if 1 am not ashamed to show you our 
 Monument on Fish-street Hill, after your altitudes. 
 Yet we think it somewhat. 
 
 What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears? — 
 cry, baby, put its finger in its eye, it shall have 
 another globe, round as an orange, pretty moppet I 
 
 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 ir- 
 relevantly and impertinently seasonable to the time 
 of the day. 
 
 Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. 
 Pray correct that error. 
 
 Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you a 
 bumper, or a paradox. We will have nothing said 
 or done syllogistically this day. Remove those logi- 
 cal forms, waiter, that no gentleman break the 
 tender shins of his apprehension stumbling across 
 them. 
 
 Master Stephen, you are late. — Ha! Cokes, is it 
 you? — Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay my 
 devoir to you. — Master Shallow, your worship's 
 poor servant to command. — Master Silence, I will 
 use few words with you. — Slender, it shall go hard 
 if I edge not you in somewhere. — You six will en- 
 84
 
 ALL FOOLS' DAY 
 
 gross all the poor wit of the company to-day. — I 
 know it, I know it. 
 
 Ha! honest R , my fine old Librarian of 
 
 Ludgate, time out of mind, art thou here again? 
 Bless thy 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, peradven- 
 ture, thou canst hawk a volume or two. — Good 
 Granville S , thy last patron, is flown. 
 
 King Pandion, he is dead. 
 
 All thy friends are lapt in lead. — 
 
 Nevertheless, noble R -, come in, and take 
 
 your seat here, between Armado and Quisada; for 
 in true courtesy, in gravity, in fantastic smihng to 
 thyself, in courteous smiling upon others, in the 
 goodly ornature of well-apparelled 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 for- 
 get thy singing the song of Macheath, which de- 
 clares that he might be happy with 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 Cervantes, not Gay, 
 had written it for his hero; and as if thousands of 
 periods must revolve, before the mirror of courtesy 
 
 85
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 could have given his invidious preference between 
 a pair of so goodly-propertied and meritorious-equal 
 damsels. * * * * 
 
 To descend from these altitudes, and not to pro- 
 tract 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 
 guessing at their involved wisdom — I had more 
 yearnings towards that 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 tendre» 
 for those five thoughtless virgins. — I have never 
 made an acquaintance since, that lasted : or a friend- 
 ship, that answered; with any that had not some 
 tincture of the absurd in their characters. I vener- 
 ate an honest obUquity of understanding. The more 
 laughable 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 palpable hallucination warrants; the secu- 
 rity, which a word out of season ratifies. And take 
 86
 
 ALL FOOLS' DAY 
 
 my word for this, Reader, and say a fool told it 
 you, 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 
 fooUsher the fowl or fish, — woodcocks, — dotterels 
 — cods'-heads, etc., the finer the flesh thereof," and 
 what are commonly the world's received fools but 
 such whereof the world is not worthy? and 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? — Reader, if 
 you wrest my words beyond their fair construction, 
 it is you, and not I, that are the April Fool. 
 
 87
 
 A QUAKERS' MEETING 
 
 Still-born Silence ! thou that art 
 
 Flood-gate of the deeper heart! 
 
 Offspring of a heavenly kind! 
 
 Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mindl 
 
 Secrecy's confidant, and he 
 
 Who makes religion mystery! 
 
 Admiration's speaking' st tongue! 
 
 Leave, thy desert shades among. 
 
 Reverend hermit's hallow^'d cells. 
 
 Where retired devotion dwells! 
 
 With thy enthusiasms come. 
 
 Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb!* 
 
 READER, would'st thou know what true peace 
 and quiet mean; would'st thou 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 con- 
 solatory faces of thy species ; would'st thou be alone 
 and yet accompanied; solitary, yet not desolate; 
 singular, yet not without some to keep thee in 
 countenance; a unit in aggregate; a simple in com- 
 posite: — come 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 casements; nor pour wax into the little 
 
 ^ From "Poems of all sorts," by Richard Fleckno, l653. 
 88
 
 A QUAKERS' MEETING 
 
 cells of thy ears, with Mttle-faith'd self-mistrusting 
 Ulysses. — Retire with me into a Quakers' Meeting. 
 
 For a man to refrain even from good words, and 
 to hold his peace, it is commendable ; but for a mul- 
 titude 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 the blown Baltic with 
 their clubbed sounds — than their opposite (Silence 
 her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered more in- 
 tense by numbers, and by sympathy. She too hath 
 her deeps, that call unto deeps. Negation itself hath 
 a positive more and less; and closed eyes 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 sohtudes, 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 incommunica- 
 tiveness. In secular occasions, what so pleasant as 
 to be reading a book through a long winter even- 
 ing, with a friend sitting by — say, a wife — he, or 
 
 89
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 solitariness. Give me. 
 Master Zimmerman, a sympathetic solitude. 
 
 To pace alone in the cloisters or side aisles of 
 some cathedral, time-stricken ; 
 
 Or 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, abstracted sohtude. This is the lone- 
 Uness "to be felt."— The Abbey Church of West- 
 minster hath nothing so solemn, so 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 Dis- 
 courser — to which the insolent decays of moulder- 
 ing 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! 
 
 Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmischiev- 
 90
 
 A QUAKERS' MEETING 
 
 ous synod! convocation without intrigue! parlia- 
 ment 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 dis- 
 turb, I have reverted to the times of your begin- 
 nings, 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 inso- 
 lent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to molest 
 you — for ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecu- 
 tions, the outcast and ofFscouring of church and 
 presbytery. — I have seen the reeling sea-ruflftan, 
 who had wandered into your receptacle with the 
 avowed intention of disturbing your quiet, from the 
 very spirit of the place receive in 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 he was lifted up 
 in spirit, as he tells us, and "the Judge and the Jury 
 became as dead men under his feet." 
 
 Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would 
 recommend to you, above all church-narratives, to 
 read SeweFs 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 af- 
 fecting than anything you will read of Wesley and 
 
 91
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 his colleagues. Here is nothing to stagger you, noth- 
 ing 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 suffer- 
 ings, with what patience, he endured, even to the 
 boring through of his tongue with red-hot irons, 
 without a murmur ; and with 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 prac- 
 tice of your common converts from enthusiasm, 
 who, when they apostatize, apostatize all, and think 
 they can never get far enough from the society of 
 their former errors, even to the renunciation 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 have 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 assembhes upon which the dove 
 sate visibly brooding. Others, again, I have watched, 
 when my thoughts should have been better en- 
 gaged, in which I could possibly detect nothing but 
 92
 
 A QUAKERS' MEETING 
 
 a blank inanity. But quiet was in all, and the dispo- 
 sition to unanimity, and the absence of the fierce 
 controversial workings. — If the spiritual preten- 
 sions of the Quakers have abated, at least they 
 make few pretences. Hypocrites 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, voice 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 the tones were 
 so full of tenderness, 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 of iron too. But he 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 — 
 
 93
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 con- 
 fession — understanding the term in its worldly ac- 
 ceptation — with the frame and physiognomy of the 
 person before me. His brow would have scared away 
 the Levities — the Jocos Risus-que — faster than the 
 Loves fled the face of Dis at Enna. — By voit, even 
 in his youth, I will be sworn he understood some- 
 thing far within the limits of an allowable liberty. 
 
 More frequently the Meeting is broken up with- 
 out a word having been spoken. But the mind has 
 been fed. You go away with a sermon not made 
 with hands. You have been in the milder caverns of 
 Trophonius ; or as in some den, where that fiercest 
 and savagest of all wild creatures, the Tongue, that 
 unruly member, has strangely lain tied up and cap- 
 tive. You have bathed with stillness. — O, when the 
 spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness of the 
 j anglings 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 uni- 
 formity, tranquil and herd-like — as in the pasture 
 — "forty feeding like one." — 
 94
 
 A QUAKERS' MEETING 
 
 The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable 
 of receiving 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 the metropoUs, from all parts 
 of the United Kingdom, they show like troops of 
 the Shining Ones. 
 
 98
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW 
 SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 MY reading has been lamentably desultory and 
 immethodical. Odd, out of the way, old Eng- 
 lish plays, and treatises, have supplied me with most 
 of my notions, and ways of feeling. In everything 
 that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopsedia 
 behind the rest of the world. I should have scarcely 
 cut a figure among the franklins, or country gentle- 
 men, in King John's days. I know less geography 
 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 Diemen's 
 Land. Yet do I hold a correspondence with a very 
 dear friend in the first-named of these two Terrae 
 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, I verily 
 beheve, that, while all the world were gasping in 
 apprehension about me, I alone should stand unter- 
 rified, from sheer incuriosity and want of obser- 
 vation. Of history and chronology I possess some 
 96
 
 OLD AND NEW SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 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 Sisjirst in my fancy. 
 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 unacquainted with the 
 modern languages; and, like a better man than my- 
 self, have "small Latin and less Greek." I am a 
 stranger to the shapes and texture of the common- 
 est trees, herbs, flowers — not from the circumstance 
 of my being town-born — for I should have brought 
 the same inobservant 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 af- 
 fect ignorance — but my head has not many man- 
 sions, nor spacious; and I have been obliged to fill 
 it with such cabinet curiosities as it can hold with- 
 out aching. I sometimes wonder how I have passed 
 my probation with so little discredit in the world, 
 as I have done, upon so meagre a stock. But the 
 fact is, a man may do very well with a very little 
 knowledge, and scarce be found out, in mixed com- 
 pany ; everybody is so much more ready to produce 
 his own, than to call for a display of your acquisi- 
 
 97
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 tions. 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 man, that does 
 not know me. I lately got into a dilemma of this 
 sort. — 
 
 In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate 
 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 were adjusting), in a tone of mild author- 
 ity, to a tall youth, who seemed to be neither his 
 clerk, his son, nor his servant, but something par- 
 taking of all three. The youth was dismissed, and 
 we drove on. As we were the sole passengers, he 
 naturally enough addressed his conversation to me ; 
 and we discussed the merits of the fare; the civility 
 and punctuality of the 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, hav- 
 ing 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 star- 
 tling 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 well as astonished, 
 at my declaration, as (it appeared) he was just come 
 98
 
 OLD AND NEW SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 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 Folgate, when the sight of some shop-goods 
 ticketed 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 avoca- 
 tions 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 stat^ of the 
 India market; when, presently, he dashed my incipi- 
 ent 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 in London. Had he 
 asked of me what song the Sirens sang, or what 
 name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among 
 women, I might, with Sir Thomas Browne, have 
 hazarded a "wide solution. "^ My companion saw 
 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 com- 
 parative 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 no- 
 tions from old poetic associations, than strongly for- 
 tified with any speculations reducible to calculation 
 
 ^ Urn Burial. 
 
 99
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 on the subject, he 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 question, the coach stop- 
 ping relieved me from any further apprehensions. 
 My companion getting out, left me in the comfort- 
 able possession of my ignorance ; and I heard him, 
 as he went of, putting questions to an outside pas- 
 senger, who had alighted with him, regarding an 
 epidemic disorder that had been rife 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 evidently a kind-hearted man, who did not 
 seem so much desirous of provoking discussion by 
 the questions which he put, as of obtaining infor- 
 mation at any rate. It did not appear that he took 
 any interest, either, in such kind of inquiries, 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 me to surmise that he 
 100
 
 OLD AND NEW SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 was a clergyman. The adventure gave birth to some 
 reflections on the difference between persons of his 
 profession in past and present times. 
 
 Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagogues; 
 the breed, long since extinct, of the Lilys, and the 
 Linacres : who believing that all learning was con- 
 tained in the languages which they taught, and de- 
 spising every other acquirement as superficial and 
 useless, came to their task as to a sport! Passing 
 from infancy to age, they dreamed away all their 
 days as in a grammar-school. Revolving in a per- 
 petual cycle of declensions, conjugations, syntaxes, 
 and prosodies ; renewing constantly the occupations 
 which had charmed their studious childhood; re- 
 hearsing 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, but of like dignity 
 with that mild sceptre attributed to king Basilius ; 
 the Greek and Latin, their stately Pamela and their 
 Philoclea; with the occasional duncery of some un- 
 toward Tyro, serving for a refreshing interlude of a 
 Mopsa, or a clown Damoetas ! 
 
 With what a savour doth the Preface to Colet's, 
 or (as it is sometimes called) Paul's Accidence, set 
 forth! "To exhort every man to the learning of 
 grammar, that intendeth to attain the understand- 
 ing of the tongues, wherein is contained a great 
 
 101
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 uphold the burden of the frame." 
 How well doth this stately preamble (comparable to 
 those which Milton commendeth as "having been 
 the usage to prefix to some solemn law, then first 
 promulgated by Solon or Lycurgus") correspond 
 with and illustrate that pious zeal for conformity, 
 expressed in a succeeding clause, which would fence 
 about grammar-rules with the severity of faith-arti- 
 cles! — "as for the diversity of grammars, it is well 
 profitably taken away by the King's Majesties wis- 
 dom, who foreseeing the inconvenience, and favour- 
 ably providing the 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 hurt in 
 changing of schoolmaisters." What a gusto in that 
 which follows: "wherein it is profitable that he (the 
 pupil) can orderly decline his noun and his verb." 
 His noun ! 
 
 The fine dream is fading away fast ; and the least 
 concern of a teacher in the present day is to incul- 
 cate grammar-rules. 
 
 The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a 
 little of everything, because his pupil is required 
 not to be entirely ignorant of anything. He must 
 102
 
 OLD AND NEW SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 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 mechanics 
 is desirable, with a touch of statistics; the quahty 
 of soils, etc., 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 INIr. Harthb. 
 
 All these things — these, or the desire of them — 
 he is expected to instil, not by set lessons from pro- 
 fessors, which he may charge in the bill, but at 
 school intervals, as he walks 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. He must insinu- 
 ate knowledge at the mollia tempora fandi. He must 
 seize every occasion — the season of the year — the 
 time of the day — a passing cloud — a rainbow — a 
 waggon of hay — a regiment of soldiers going by — 
 to inculcate something useful. He can receive no 
 pleasure from a casual glimpse of Nature, but must 
 catch at it as an object of instruction. He must 
 interpret beauty into the picturesque. He cannot 
 relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for thinking of the 
 suitable improvement. Nothing comes to him, not 
 spoiled by the sophisticating medium of moral uses. 
 The Universe — that Great Book, as it has been 
 called — is to him, indeed, to all intents and pur- 
 poses, a book out of which he is doomed to read 
 
 103
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 tedious homilies to distasting schoolboys. — Vaca- 
 tions themselves are none to him, he is only rather 
 worse off than before; for commonly he has some in- 
 trusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such times ; 
 some cadet of a great family ; some neglected lump 
 of nobihty, or gentry; that he must drag after him 
 to the play, to the Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's 
 Orrery, to the Panopticon, or into the country, to 
 a friend's house, or his favourite watering-place. 
 Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow attends him. 
 A boy is at his board, and in his path, and in all his 
 movements. He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy. 
 
 Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among 
 their mates ; but they 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 the green 
 before my window, while I am engaged in these 
 grave speculations at my neat suburban retreat at 
 Shacklewell — by distance made more sweet — inex- 
 pressibly take from the labour of my task. It is hke 
 writing to music. They seem to modulate my pe- 
 riods. They ought at least to do so — for in the 
 voice of that tender age there is a kind of poetry, 
 far unhke the harsh prose-accents of man's conver- 
 sation. — I should but spoil their sport, and dimin- 
 ish my own sympathy for them, by minghng in 
 their pastime. 
 104
 
 OLD AND NEW SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 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- comparison, for the occasional com- 
 munion with such minds has constituted the fortune 
 and felicity of my life — but the habit of too con- 
 stant 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 yourself in another man's grounds. 
 You are walking with a tall varlet, whose strides 
 out-pace yours to lassitude. The constant operation 
 of such potent agency would reduce me, I am con- 
 vinced, to imbecihty. You may derive thoughts 
 from others; your way of thinking, the mould in 
 which your thoughts are cast, must be your own. 
 Intellect may be imparted, but not each man's in- 
 tellectual frame. — 
 
 As httle as I should wish to be always thus dragged 
 upward, as little (or rather still less) is it desirable to 
 be stunted downwards by your associates. The trum- 
 pet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a 
 whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility. 
 
 Why are we never quite at our ease in the pres- 
 ence of a schoolmaster? — because we are conscious 
 that he is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awk- 
 ward, and out of place in the society of his equals. 
 He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, 
 
 105
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to 
 yours. He cannot meet you on the square. He wants 
 a point given him, Uke an indifferent whist-player. 
 He is so used to teaching, that he wants to be teach- 
 ing you. One of these professors, upon my com- 
 plaining that these little sketches of mine were any- 
 thing but methodical, and that I was unable to make 
 them otherwise, kindly offered to instruct me in the 
 method by which young gentlemen in his seminary 
 were taught to compose Enghsh themes. — The jests 
 of a schoolmaster are coarse, or thin. They do not tell 
 out of school. He is under the restraint of a formal 
 and didactive hypocrisy in company, as a clergyman 
 is under a moral one. He can no more let his intel- 
 lect loose in society than the other can his inclina- 
 tions. 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 your 
 nephew was not more attached to me. But persons 
 in my situation are more to be pitied than can well 
 be imagined. We are surrounded by young, and, 
 consequently, ardently affectionate hearts, but we 
 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 feel- 
 ings! my friends will sometimes say to me, when 
 they see young men whom I have educated, return 
 after some years' absence from school, their eyes 
 106
 
 OLD AND NEW SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 shining with pleasure, while they shake 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 happi- 
 ness; I, only, am sad at heart. — This fine-spirited 
 and warm-hearted youth, who fancies he repays 
 his master with gratitude for the care of his boyish 
 years — this young man — 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 kind- 
 ness 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 accustomed to look up to with rev- 
 erence. 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 wife of a schoolmaster ought to be a busy 
 notable creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna 
 would 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 fatiguing herself to death — I expressed 
 my fears that I was bringing her into a way of life 
 unsuitable to her; and she, who loved me tenderly, 
 
 107
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 promised for my sake to exert herself to perform the 
 duties of her new situation. She promised, and she 
 has kept her word. What wonders will not woman's 
 love perform ? — My house is managed with a pro- 
 priety 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 economy, that never descends 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, I am compelled to listen to what have 
 been her useful (and they are really useful) employ- 
 ments through the day, and what she proposes 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 masters wife, 
 and she looks up to me as the boys' master; to whom 
 all show of love and affection would be highly im- 
 proper, and unbecoming the dignity of her situation 
 and mine. Yet this my gratitude forbids me to hint 
 to her. For my sake she submitted to be this altered 
 creature, and can I reproach her for it ? " — For the 
 communication of this letter I am indebted to my 
 cousin Bridget. 
 
 108
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 
 
 I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympa- 
 thiseth with all things; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyn- 
 crasy in anything. Those natural repugnancies do not touch me, 
 nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or 
 Dutch. — Religio Medici. 
 
 THAT the author of the Religio 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 imperti- 
 nent individualities of such poor concretions as man- 
 kind, is not much to be admired. It is rather to be 
 wondered 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, 
 
 I 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 sympathies, apathies, antipathies. 
 In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me that 
 
 109
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 I am a lover of my species. I can feel for all indif- 
 ferently, but I cannot feel towards all equally. The 
 more purely-English word that expresses sympathy, 
 will better explain my meaning. I can be a friend to 
 a worthy man, who upon another account cannot be 
 my mate or fellow. I cannot like all people alike.^ 
 
 I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, 
 and am obliged to desist horn the experiment in 
 despair. They cannot hke me — and in truth, I never 
 knew one of that nation who attempted to do it. 
 There is something more plain and ingenuous in 
 
 * 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 meeting (who never saw one an- 
 other before in their lives) and instantly fighting. 
 
 We by proof 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 blame. 
 Can challenge or accuse him of no evil. 
 Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil. 
 
 The lines are from old Hey wood's ''Hierarchic of Angels," and 
 he subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who at- 
 tempted to assassinate a king Ferdinand of Spain, and being put 
 to the rack could give no other reason for the deed but an in- 
 veterate antipathy which he 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. 
 110
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 
 
 their mode of proceeding. We know one another 
 at first sight. There is an order of imperfect intel- 
 lects (under which mine must be content to rank) 
 which in its constitution is essentially anti- Caledo- 
 nian. The owners of the sort of faculties I allude 
 to, have minds rather suggestive than comprehen- 
 sive. They have no pretences to much clearness or 
 precision in their ideas, or in their manner of ex- 
 pressing them. Their intellectual wardrobe (to con- 
 fess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They are con- 
 tent with fragments and scattered pieces of Truth. 
 She presents no full front to them — a feature 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 perad ven- 
 ture — 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 shift- 
 ing: 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 under- 
 stood, 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 full development. They 
 are no systematizers, and would but err more by at- 
 tempting it. Their minds, as I said before, are sug- 
 
 111
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 gestive merely. The brain of a true Caledonian (if I 
 am not mistaken) is constituted upon quite a differ- 
 ent 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 to- 
 gether upon principles of clock-work. You never 
 catch his mind in an undress. He never hints or 
 suggests anything, 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 presence 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 understanding 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 con- 
 ceptions, have no place in his brain or vocabulary. 
 The twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he 
 orthodox — he has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he 
 has none either. Between the affiraiative and the 
 negative there is no border-land with him. You can- 
 not hover with him upon the confines of truth, or 
 wander in the maze of a probable argument. He 
 always keeps the path. You cannot make excur- 
 sions with him — for he sets you right. His taste 
 112
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 
 
 never fluctuates. His morality never abates. He 
 cannot compromise, or understand middle actions. 
 There can be but a right and a wrong. His conver- 
 sation is as a book. His affirmations have the sanc- 
 tity of an oath. You must speak upon the square 
 with him. He stops a metaphor like a suspected 
 person in an enemy's country. "A healthy book!" 
 — said one of his countrymen to me, who had ven- 
 tured to give that appellation to John Buncle, — 
 "Did I catch rightly what you said ? I have 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 Caledonian. Clap an 
 extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily 
 blest with a vein of it. Remember you are upon 
 your oath. I have a print of a graceful female after 
 Leonardo da Vinci, which I was showing off 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 assured me, that "he had consider- 
 able 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 
 pretensions." The misconception staggered me, but 
 did not seem much to disconcert him. — Persons of 
 this nation are particularly fond of affirming a truth 
 — which nobody doubts. They do not so properly 
 affirm, as annunciate it. They do indeed appear to 
 
 lib
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 have such a love of truth (as if, Uke 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 subject of disputation. I was present not 
 long since at a party of North Britons, where a son 
 of Burns was expected; and happened to drop a 
 silly expression (in my South British way), that I 
 wished it were the father instead of the son — when 
 four of them started up at once to inform me, that 
 "that was impossible, because he was dead." An 
 impracticable wish, it seems, was more than they 
 could conceive. Swift has hit off this part of their 
 character, namely their love of truth, in his biting 
 way, but with an illiberality that necessarily con- 
 fines the passage to the margin.^ The tediousness 
 of these people is certainly provoking. I 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 my- 
 self with his countrymen by expressing it. But I 
 have always found that a true Scot resents your 
 
 ^ There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit them- 
 selves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no con- 
 sequence, 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 than 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 little relieved by the uncouth 
 terms and phrases, as well as accent and gesture, peculiar to that 
 country, would be hardly tolerable. — Hints towards an Essay on 
 Conversation. 
 114
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 
 
 admiration of his compatriot even more than he 
 would your contempt of him. The latter he im- 
 putes to your "imperfect acquaintance with many 
 of the words which he uses"; and the same objec- 
 tion makes it a presumption in you to suppose that 
 you can admire him. — Thomson they seem to have 
 forgotten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor 
 forgiven for his delineation of Rory and his com- 
 panion, upon their first introduction to our me- 
 tropoHs. — Speak of Smollett as a great genius, and 
 they will retort upon you Hume's History com- 
 pared with Ms Continuation of it. What if the his- 
 torian had continued Humphrey Clinker? 
 
 I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. 
 They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared 
 with which Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date 
 beyond the pyramids. But I should not care to be 
 in habits of familiar intercourse with any of that 
 nation. I confess that I have not the nerves to en- 
 ter their synagogues. Old prejudices cling about 
 me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh of Lin- 
 coln. Centuries of injury, contempt, and hate, on 
 the one side, — of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, 
 and hate, on the other, between our and their fa- 
 thers, must and ought to affect the blood of the chil- 
 dren. I cannot believe it can run clear and kindly 
 yet ; or that a few fine words, such as candour, lib- 
 erality, the light of a nineteenth century, can close 
 up the breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew 
 is nowhere congenial to me. He is least distasteful 
 
 115
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 on 'Change — for the mercantile spirit levels all dis- 
 tinctions, as all are beauties in the dark. I boldly 
 confess that I do not relish the approximation of 
 Jew and Christian, which has become so fashion- 
 able. The reciprocal endearments have, to me, some- 
 thing hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do not 
 like to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and 
 congeeing in awkward postures of an affected civil- 
 ity. If they are converted, why do they not come 
 over to us altogether? Why keep up a form of sepa- 
 ration, 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 convertites. 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 Egyp- 
 tians to him, and he rides over our necks in triumph. 
 There is no mistaking him. B has a strong ex- 
 pression of sense in his countenance, and it is con- 
 firmed by his singing. The foundation of his vocal 
 excellence is sense. He sings with understanding, as 
 116
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 
 
 Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing the Com- 
 mandments, and give an appropriate character to 
 each prohibition. His nation, in general, have not 
 over-sensible countenances. How should they? — 
 but you seldom see a silly expression among them. 
 — Gain, and the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's 
 visage. I never heard of an idiot being born among 
 them. — Some admire the Jewish female-physiog- 
 nomy. I admire it — but with trembling. Jael had 
 those full dark inscrutable eyes. 
 
 In the Negro countenance you will often meet 
 with strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings 
 of tenderness 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 as- 
 sociate with them, to share my meals and my good 
 nights with them — because they are black. 
 
 I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I ven- 
 erate 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 hu- 
 mours, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. I must 
 have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, 
 
 117
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 jokes, ambiguities, 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 with Daniel 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 equivocat- 
 ing than other people. They naturally look to their 
 words more carefully, and are more cautious of com- 
 mitting themselves. They have a pecuHar 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 resorting to an 
 oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all re- 
 hgious antiquity, is apt (it must be confessed) to in- 
 troduce into the laxer sort of minds the notion of two 
 kinds of truth — the one applicable to the solemn 
 affairs of justice, and the other to the common pro- 
 ceedings 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 ques- 
 tions 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 oath." Hence a great deal of incorrectness 
 118
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 
 
 and inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps into or- 
 dinary conversation ; and a kind of secondary or laic- 
 truth is tolerated, where clergy -truth — oath -truth, 
 by the nature of the circumstances, is not required. 
 A Quaker knows none of this distinction. His sim- 
 ple affirmation being received upon the most sacred 
 occasions, without any further test, stamps a value 
 upon the words which he is to use upon the most 
 indifferent topics of Hfe. He looks to them, natu- 
 rally, with more severity. You can have of him no 
 more than his word. He knows, if he is caught trip- 
 ping in a casual expression, he forfeits, for himself 
 at least, his claim to the invidious exemption. He 
 knows that his syllables are weighed — and how far 
 a consciousness of this particular watchfulness, ex- 
 erted against a person, has a tendency to produce 
 indirect answers, and a diverting of the question 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 pres- 
 ence of mind, which is notorious 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 con- 
 stancy, which never bent or faltered, in the Primi- 
 tive Friends, or gave way to the winds of persecu- 
 tion, 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 mid- 
 '::ght," said one of those upright Justicers to Penn, 
 
 119
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 who had been putting law-cases with a puzzling sub- 
 tlety. "Thereafter as the answers may be," retorted 
 the Quaker. The astonishing composure of this peo- 
 ple is sometimes ludicrously displayed in hghter in- 
 stances. — 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 them- 
 selves 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 in 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 I 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 clos- 
 ing up the rear, who thought I could not do better 
 than follow the example of such grave and warrant- 
 able personages. We got in. The steps went up. 
 The coach drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, 
 not very indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, 
 became after a time inaudible — and now my con- 
 120
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 
 
 science, 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 a soporific 
 on my moral feeling as far as Exeter. 
 
 121
 
 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT 
 FEARS 
 
 WE are too hasty when we set down our ances- 
 tors 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 supposed to 
 be open, and the lawless agency of bad spirits as- 
 sumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of 
 fitness, 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 con- 
 sumed before a fire — that corn was lodged, and 
 cattle lamed — ^that whirlwinds up tore in diabolic 
 revelry 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 
 unlikelihood a prioji to us, who have no measure 
 to guess at his policy, or standard to estimate what 
 122
 
 WITCHES, AND NIGHT FEARS 
 
 rate those anile souls may fetch in the devil's mar- 
 ket. 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 mis- 
 take — but that once assumed, I see no reason for 
 disbelieving one attested 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 universal belief that these 
 wretches were in league with the author of all evil, 
 holding hell tributary to their muttering, no simple 
 Justice of the Peace seems to have scrupled issuing, 
 or silly Headborough serving, a warrant upon them 
 — as if they should subpoena Satan ! — Prospero in 
 his boat, with his books and wand about him, suf- 
 fers 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 glo- 
 
 123
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 rious 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 
 occupied a distinguished station. The pictures with 
 which it abounds — one of the ark, in particular, 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 atten- 
 tion. There was a picture, too, of the Witch raising 
 up Samuel, which I wish that I had never seen. We 
 shall come to that hereafter. Stackhouse is in two 
 huge tomes; and there was a pleasure in removing 
 folios of that magnitude, which, with infinite strain- 
 ing, was as much as I could manage, from the situa- 
 tion 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 regu- 
 larly tacked to that. The objection was a summary 
 of whatever difficulties had been opposed to the 
 credibility of the history by the shrewdness of an- 
 cient or modern infidelity, drawn up with an almost 
 complimentary excess of candour. The solution was 
 brief, modest, and satisfactory. The bane and anti- 
 124
 
 WITCHES, AND NIGHT FEARS 
 
 dote were both before you. To doubts 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. But — hke 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 chrono- 
 logic theses to be defended against whatever im- 
 pugners. 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 sustenance as these husks afforded, but 
 for a fortunate piece of ill-fortune which about this 
 time befel me. Turning over the picture of the ark 
 with too much haste, I unhappily made a breach 
 in its ingenious fabric — driving my inconsiderate 
 
 125
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 fingers right through the two larger quadrupeds, 
 the elephant and the camel, that stare (as well they 
 might) out of the two last windows next the steer- 
 age in that unique piece of naval architecture. Stack- 
 house was henceforth locked up, and became an in- 
 terdicted 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 shut 
 out, and which was destined to try my childish nerves 
 rather more seriously. — That detestable picture! 
 
 I was dreadfully ahve to nervous terrors. The 
 night-time, solitude, and the dark, were my hell. 
 The sufferings I endured in this nature would jus- 
 tify the expression. I never laid my head on my 
 pillow, I suppose, from the fourth to the seventh or 
 eighth year of my life — so far as' memory serves in 
 things so long ago — without an assurance, which 
 realized its own prophecy, of seeing some frightful 
 spectre. Be old Stackhouse then acquitted in part, 
 if I say, that to this picture of the Witch raising 
 up Samuel — (O that old man covered with a man- 
 tle!) — 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 upon my pillow — a sure bedfel- 
 low, 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 
 126
 
 WITCHES, AND NIGHT FEARS 
 
 (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 window, 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 unwhole- 
 some hours, as they are called, — would, I am satis- 
 fied, in a medical point of view, prove the better 
 caution. — That detestable picture, as I have said, 
 gave the fashion to my dreams — if dreams they 
 were — for the scene of them was invariably the 
 room in which I lay. Had I never met with the pic- 
 ture, 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 book, 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 children has been brought up with 
 the most scrupulous exclusion of every taint of su- 
 perstition — who was never allowed to hear of goblin 
 or apparition, or scarcely to be told of bad men, or to 
 
 127
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 read or hear of any distressing story — finds all this 
 world of fear, from which he has been so rigidly ex- 
 cluded ab extra, in his own "thick-coming fancies"; 
 and from his little midnight pillow, this nurse-child 
 of optimism will start at shapes, unborrowed of tra- 
 dition, in sweats to which the reveries of the cell- 
 damned murderer are tranquillity. . 
 
 Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras dire— sto- 
 ries of Celseno and the Harpies — way 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 affect us at all? — or 
 
 — Names, whose sense we see not. 
 Fray us with things that be not? 
 
 Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such 
 objects, considered in their capacity of being able 
 to inflict upon us bodily injury? — O, least of all! 
 These terrors are of older standing. They date be- 
 yond body — or, without the body, they would have 
 been the same. All the cruel, tormenting, defined 
 devils in Dante — tearing, mangling, choking, sti- 
 fling, scorching demons — are they one half so fear- 
 ful to the spirit of a man, as the simple idea of a 
 spirit unembodied following him — 
 
 Like one that on a lonesome road 
 Doth walk in fear and dread, 
 And having once tum'd round, walks on 
 128
 
 WITCHES, AND NIGHT FEARS 
 
 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 infancy — are difficulties, the solu- 
 tion of which might afford some probable insight 
 into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at 
 least into the shadowland of pre-existence. 
 
 My night fancies have long ceased to be afflictive. 
 I confess an occasional nightmare ; but I do not, as 
 in early youth, keep a stud of them. Fiendish faces, 
 with the extinguished taper, will come and look at 
 me; but I know them for mockeries, even while I 
 cannot elude their presence, and I fight and grapple 
 with them. For the credit of my imagination, I am 
 almost ashamed to say how tame and prosaic my 
 dreams are grown. They are never romantic, seldom 
 even rural. They 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 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 
 
 129
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 are objects too mighty for the grasp of my dream- 
 ing recognition ; and I have again and again awoke 
 with ineffectual struggles of the inner eye, to make 
 out a shape, in any way whatever, of Helvellyn. 
 Methought I was in that country, but the moun- 
 tains were gone. The poverty of my dreams mortifies 
 me. There is Coleridge, at his will can conjure up icy 
 domes, and pleasure-houses for Kubla Khan, and 
 Abyssinian maids, and songs of Abara, and caverns, 
 
 Where Alph, the sacred river, runs, 
 
 to solace his night solitudes — when I cannot mus- 
 ter a fiddle. Barry Cornwall has his tritons and his 
 nereids gamboling before him in nocturnal visions, 
 and proclaiming sons born to Neptune — when my 
 stretch of imaginative activity can hardly, in the 
 night season, raise up the ghost of a fish-wife. To 
 set my failures in somewhat a mortifying 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 bil- 
 lows at some sea nuptials, riding and mounted high, 
 with the customary train sounding their conchs be- 
 fore me, (I myself, you may be sure, the leading 
 god), and joUily we went careering over the main, 
 till just where Ino Leucothea should have greeted 
 me (I think it was Ino) with a white embrace, the 
 billows gradually subsiding, fell from a sea rough- 
 130
 
 WITCHES, AND NIGHT FEARS 
 
 ness to a sea calm, and thence to a river motion, 
 and that river (as happens in the famiharization of 
 dreams) was no other than the gentle Thames, 
 which landed me, in the wafture 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 quan- 
 tum of poetical faculty resident in the same soul 
 waking. An old gentleman, a friend of mine, and 
 a humorist, used to carry this notion so far, that 
 when he saw any stripling of his acquaintance am- 
 bitious of becoming a poet, his first question would 
 be, — "Young man, what sort of dreams have you ?" 
 I 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 inaus- 
 picious uiland landing. 
 
 131
 
 VALENTINE'S DAY 
 
 HAIL to thy returning festival, old Bishop Val- 
 entine ! Great is thy name in the rubric, thou 
 venerable Arch-flamen of Hymen! Immortal Go- 
 between ! who and what manner of person art thou ? 
 Art thou but a name, typifying the restless princi- 
 ple 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 de- 
 cent 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 tor- 
 ments, Austin, whom all mothers hate ; nor he who 
 hated all mothers, Origen; nor Bishop Bull, nor 
 Archbishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou comest at- 
 tended with thousands and ten thousands of little 
 Loves, and the air is 
 
 Brush'd with the hiss of rustUng wings. 
 
 Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precen- 
 tors ; 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, cross 
 and intercross each other at every street and turn- 
 ing. The weary and all forspent twopenny postman 
 sinks beneath a load of dehcate embarrassments, not 
 132
 
 VALENTINE'S DAY 
 
 his own. It is scarcely credible to what an extent 
 this ephemeral courtship is carried on in this lov- 
 ing town, to the great enrichment of porters, and 
 detriment 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 tortured into more allegories 
 and affectations than an opera hat. What authority 
 we have in history or mythology for placing the 
 headquarters 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 con- 
 trary, a lover addressing his mistress, in perfect sim- 
 plicity 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 fortunate 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 knock 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 per- 
 son we want to see comes. But of all the clamorous 
 
 133
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 visitations the welcomest in expectation 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 post- 
 man on this day is light, airy, confident, and be- 
 fitting one that bringeth 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 common- 
 places, which "having been will always be"; which 
 no schoolboy nor schoolman can write away ; having 
 your irreversible throne in the fancy and affections 
 — what are your transports, when the happy maiden, 
 opening with careful finger, careful not to break the 
 emblematic seal, bursts upon the sight of some well- 
 designed allegory, some type, some youthful fancy, 
 not without verses — 
 
 Lovers all, 
 A madrigal, 
 
 or some such device, 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 
 
 134
 
 VALENTINE'S DAY 
 
 all joyoiisness 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 us again, nor we it, we should feel it 
 as an obligation: and E. B. did. This good artist 
 set himself at work to please the damsel. It was 
 just before Valentine's day three years since. He 
 wrought, unseen and unsuspected, 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 aU 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 beseemed — a work, in 
 short, of magic. Iris dipt the woof This on Valen- 
 tine s eve he commended to the all-swallowing in- 
 discriminate orifice (O ignoble trust!) of the com- 
 mon post; but the humble medium did its duty, 
 and from his watchful stand the next morning he 
 
 135
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 saw the cheerful messenger knock, and by-and-by 
 the precious charge delivered. He saw, unseen, the 
 happy girl unfold the Valentine, dance about, clap 
 her hands, as one after one the pretty emblems un- 
 folded 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 cre- 
 ated those bright images which delighted her. It 
 was more like some fairy present; a God-send, as 
 our familiarly pious ancestors termed a benefit re- 
 ceived where the benefactor was unknown. It would 
 do her no harm. It would do her 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 Ophe- 
 lia; 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 them- 
 selves humble diocesans of old Bishop Valentine 
 and his true church. 
 
 136
 
 MY RELATIONS 
 
 I AM arrived at that point of life, at which a man 
 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 Oblivion 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 al- 
 together approve. She was from morning till night 
 poring over good books and devotional exercises. 
 Her favourite volumes were Thomas a Kempis, 
 in Stanhope's translation ; and a Roman Catholic 
 Prayer Book, with the matins and coviplines regu- 
 larly set down — tenns which I was at that time too 
 young to understand. She persisted in reading them, 
 although admonished daily concerning their Papis- 
 
 137
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 tical tendency; and went to church every Sabbath, 
 as a good Protestant should do. These were the only 
 books she studied ; though, I think, at one period of 
 her life, she told me, she had read with great satis- 
 faction 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, 
 and a shrewd mind — extraordinary at a repartee; 
 one of the few occasions of her breaking silence — 
 else she did not much value wit. The only secular 
 employment I remember 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 upon 
 my sense, redolent of soothing recollections. Cer- 
 tainly it is the most delicate of culinary operations. 
 Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none 
 — to remember. 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 sprinkled 
 138
 
 MY RELATIONS 
 
 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 ^^ar excellence. 
 These are James and Bridget Elia. They are older 
 than myself by twelve, and ten, years; and neither 
 of them seems disposed, 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 
 unities, which not every critic can penetrate; or, if 
 we feel, we cannot explain them. The pen of Yorick, 
 and of none since his, could have drawn J. E. entire 
 — those fine Shandean 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 com- 
 mon observer at least — seemeth made up of con- 
 tradictory principles. The genuine child of impulse, 
 the frigid philosopher of prudence — the phlegm of 
 my cousin's doctrine, is invariably at war with his 
 temperament, which is high sanguine. With always 
 some fire-new project in his brain, J. E. is the sys- 
 tematic opponent of innovation, and crier down of 
 everything that has not stood the test of age and 
 experiment. With a hundred fine notions chasing 
 one another hourly in his fancy, he is startled at 
 
 139
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 the least approach to the romantic in others; and, 
 determined by his own sense in everything, com- 
 mends 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 you 
 should not commit yourself by doing anything ab- 
 surd 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 works 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, his theories are sure to be 
 in diametrical opposition 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 great — 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 discover, — and has a spirit that would stand 
 upright in the presence of the Cham of Tartary. It 
 140
 
 MY RELATIONS 
 
 is pleasant to hear him discourse of patience — ex- 
 tolHng it as the truest wisdom — and to see him dur- 
 ing the last seven minutes that his dinner is getting 
 ready. Nature never ran up in her haste a more rest- 
 less 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 contentedness 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, in a very ob- 
 structing manner, at the foot of John IMurray's 
 Street — where you get in when it is empty, and 
 are expected 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 sittings 
 thus consulting?'' — "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 determined to get out, if he does not 
 drive on that instant." 
 
 Very quick at inventing an argument, or detect- 
 ing a sophistry, he is incapable of attending you in 
 any chain of arguing. Indeed, he makes wild work 
 
 141
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 i^eason; and wondereth 
 how man came first to have a conceit of it — en- 
 forcing 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 perad venture the next 
 moment his lungs shall crow like Chanticleer. He 
 says some of the best things in the world, and de- 
 clareth that wit is his aversion. It was he who said, 
 upon seeing the Eton boys at play in their grounds 
 — What a pity to think that these fine ingenuous 
 lads in a few years will all be changed into frivolous 
 Members of Parliament I 
 
 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 marching in a quite opposite 
 direction, with a jolly handsome presence, and shin- 
 ing sanguine face, that indicates some purchase in 
 his eye — a Claude— or a Hobbima — for much of 
 his enviable leisure is consumed at Christie's and 
 Phillips's — or where not, to pick up pictures, and 
 142
 
 MY RELATIONS 
 
 such gauds. On these occasions he mostly stoppeth 
 me, to read a short lecture on the advantage a per- 
 son 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 
 oif — 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 In- 
 difference 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 perspec- 
 tive — 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 intimation of preferring one 
 of his anterior bargains to the present! — 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 Raphael! — keep its ascendency for a 
 few brief moons — then, after certain intermedial 
 degradations, from the front drawing-room to the 
 back gallery, thence to the dark parlour, — adopted 
 in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive 
 lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its 
 
 143
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 made 
 me to reflect upon the altered condition of great 
 personages, or that woeful Queen of Richard the 
 Second — 
 
 set forth in pomp, 
 
 She came adorned hither hke sweet May; 
 Sent back like Hallowmass or shortest day. 
 
 With great love for you, J. E. hath but a limited 
 sympathy with what you feel or do. He lives in a 
 world of his own, and makes slender guesses at what 
 passes in your mind. He never pierces the marrow 
 of your habits. He will 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, knowing me to be a great walker^ 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 sentimental. He applies the 
 definition of real evil to bodily sufferings exclusively 
 — and rejecteth all others as imaginary. He is af- 
 fected by the sight, or the bare supposition, of a 
 creature in pain, to a degree which I have never wit- 
 nessed out of womankind. A constitutional acute- 
 ness to this class of sufferings may in part account 
 144
 
 MY RELATIONS 
 
 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 con- 
 templation of a lobster boiled, or eels skinned alivei 
 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 in- 
 tense feeling of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only 
 the steadiness of pursuit, and unity of purpose, of 
 that "true 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 purposes which demand 
 co-operation. He cannot wait. His amelioration- 
 plans must be ripened in a day. For this reason he 
 has cut but an equivocal figure in benevolent socie- 
 ties, 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 Relief of * "^ ^ * because the 
 fervour of his humanity toiled beyond the formal 
 apprehension and creeping processes of his asso- 
 ciates. I 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, 
 
 146
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 heaven, and all good manners, and the understand- 
 ing that should be between kinsfolk, forbid! — With 
 all the strangenesses of this strangest of the Elias — 
 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 you some 
 account of my cousin Bridget — if you are not al- 
 ready surfeited with cousins — and take you by the 
 hand, if you are willing to go with us, on an excur- 
 sion which we made a summer or two since, in search 
 of more cousins — 
 
 Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. 
 
 146
 
 MACKERY END 
 IN HERTFORDSHIRE 
 
 BRIDGET ELIA has been my housekeeper for 
 many a long year. I have obhgations to Bridget, 
 extending beyond the period of memory. We house 
 together, old bachelor and maid, in a sort of double 
 singleness; with such tolerable comfort, upon the 
 whole, that I, for one, find in myself no sort of dis- 
 position to go out upon the mountains, with the 
 rash king's offspring, 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 under- 
 stood than expressed ; and once, upon my dissem- 
 bling 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 thou- 
 sandth time) some passage in old Burton, or one 
 of his strange contemporaries, she is abstracted in 
 some modern tale or adventure, whereof our com- 
 mon reading-table is daily fed with assiduously fresh 
 supplies. Narrative teases me. I have little concern 
 in the progress of events. She must have a story — 
 well, ill, or indifferently told — so there be life stir- 
 ring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. The 
 fluctuations of fortune in fiction — and almost in 
 
 147
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 real life — have ceased to interest, or operate but 
 dully upon me. Out-of-the-way humours and opin- 
 ions — 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 Religio Medici ; but she must apologize to me 
 for certain disrespectful insinuations, which she has 
 been pleased to throw out latterly, touching the in- 
 tellectuals of a dear favourite of mine, of the last 
 century but one — the thrice noble, chaste, and vir- 
 tuous, 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 as- 
 sociates and mine, free-thinkers — leaders, and dis- 
 ciples, 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 authority over her mind still. She 
 never juggles or plays tricks with her understand- 
 ing. 
 
 We are both of us inclined to be a little too posi- 
 tive ; and I have observed the result of our disputes 
 to be almost uniformly this — that in matters of 
 fact, dates, and circumstances, it turns out that I 
 was in the right, and my cousin in the wrong. But 
 148
 
 MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 
 
 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 her 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, with- 
 out fully understanding its purport — which is pro- 
 voking, 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 by the name of accomphsh- 
 ments. She was tumbled early, by accident or de- 
 sign, into a spacious closet of good old English 
 reading, without much selection or prohibition, and 
 browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pas- 
 turage. Had I twenty girls, they should be brought 
 up exactly in this fashion. I know not whether their 
 chance in wedlock might not be diminished by it, 
 
 149
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 truest comforter; 
 but in the teasing accidents and minor perplexities, 
 which do not call out the will to meet them, she 
 sometimes maketh matters worse by an excess of 
 participation. If she does not always divide your 
 trouble, upon the pleasanter occasions of life she is 
 sure always to treble your satisfaction. She is excel- 
 lent 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 com 
 country. 
 
 The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End, or 
 Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, 
 in some old maps of Hertfordshire; a farm-house, 
 — delightfully situated within 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 ; who, as I have said, is 
 older than myself by some ten years. I wish that I 
 could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint 
 existences, that we might share them in equal di- 
 vision. 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 Gladman. My grandmother was a Bruton, mar- 
 ried to a Field. The Gladmans and the Brutons are 
 150
 
 MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 
 
 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 — we were afraid almost to conjecture, but de- 
 termined some day to explore. 
 
 By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble 
 park at Luton in our way from St. Albans, we ar- 
 rived 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, affected 
 me with a pleasure which I had not experienced for 
 many a year. For though / had forgotten it, we 
 had never forgotten being there together, and we 
 had been talking about JNIackery 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, O how unlike it 
 was to that which I had conjured 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 Hght of day 
 
 Her deHcate creation! 
 
 Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for 
 
 151
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 she easily 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 soon reconfirmed itself in her 
 affections — and she traversed every outpost of the 
 old mansion, to the wood-house, the orchard, the 
 place where the pigeon-house had stood (house and 
 birds were alike flown) — with a breathless impa- 
 tience of recognition, which was more pardonable 
 perhaps than decorous at the age of fifty odd. But 
 Bridget in some things is behind her years. 
 
 The only thing left was to get into the house — 
 and that was a difficulty which to me singly would 
 have been insurmountable ; 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 returned with 
 a creature that might have sat to a sculptor for 
 the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of the 
 Gladmans ; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had be- 
 come mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood 
 are the Brutons. Six of them, females, were noted 
 as the handsomest young women in the county. But 
 this adopted Bruton, in my mind, was better than 
 they all — more comely. She was born too late to 
 have remembered me. She just 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 atmos- 
 152
 
 MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 
 
 phere of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in 
 hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire. In five min- 
 utes we were as thoroughly acquainted as if we had 
 been born 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 of 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 husband and wife equally — we, and our 
 friend that was with us. — I had almost forgotten 
 him — but B. F. will not so soon forget that meet- 
 ing, if peradventure he shall read this on the far dis- 
 tant shores where the kangaroo haunts. The fatted 
 calf was made ready, or rather was already so, as if 
 in anticipation of our coming; and, after an appro- 
 priate glass of native wine, never let me forget with 
 what honest pride this hospitable cousin made us 
 proceed to Wheathampstead, to introduce us (as 
 some new-found rarity) to her mother and sister 
 Gladmans, who did indeed know something 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 as- 
 tonishment, and her own — and to the astoundment 
 of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing that was 
 
 153
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 not a cousin there, — old effaced images of more 
 than half-forgotten names and circumstances still 
 crowding back upon her, as words written in lemon 
 come out upon 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 have been her care in foolish manhood 
 since — in those pretty pastoral walks, long ago, 
 about Mackery End, in Hertfordshire. 
 
 154
 
 MY FIRST PLAY 
 
 AT the north end of Cross-court there yet stands 
 l\. a portal, of some architectural pretensions, 
 though reduced to humble use, serving at present 
 for an entrance to a printing-office. This old door- 
 way, if you are young. Reader, you may not know 
 was the identical pit entrance to old Drury — Gar- 
 rick'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 condition of our going (the elder 
 folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease. 
 With what a beating heart did I watch from the 
 window the puddles, from the stillness of which I 
 was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation! 
 I seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with 
 which I ran to announce it. 
 
 We went with orders, which my godfather F. 
 had sent us. He kept the oil shop (now Davies's) 
 at the corner of Featherstone-buildings, in Holborn. 
 F. was a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had 
 pretensions above his rank. He associated in those 
 days with John Palmer, the comedian, 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 
 
 155
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 Holborn that young Brinsley brought his first wife 
 on her elopement with him from a boarding-school 
 at Bath — the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents 
 were present (over a quadrille table) when he ar- 
 rived 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 Brins- 
 ley '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 va- 
 rious 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 god- 
 father than money. 
 
 F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen ; grandilo- 
 quent, yet courteous. His delivery of the common- 
 est 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 me to cor- 
 rect. In strict pronunciation they should have been 
 sounded vice versa — but in those young years they 
 impressed me with more awe than they would now 
 do, read aright from Seneca or Varro — in his own 
 peculiar pronunciation, monosyUabically elaborated, 
 or Anglicised, into something Uke verse verse. By an 
 imposing manner, and the help of these distorted 
 syllables, he climbed (but that was little) to the 
 156
 
 MY FIRST PLAY 
 
 highest parochial honours which St. Andrew's has 
 to bestow. 
 
 He is dead — and thus much I thought due to his 
 memory, both for my first orders (Uttle wondrous 
 tahsmans! — shght keys, and insignificant to out- 
 ward sight, 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 Puckeridge, 
 in Hertfordshire. When I journeyed down to take 
 possession, and planted foot on my ow^n 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 three 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 has 
 passed into more prudent hands, and nothing but 
 an agrarian can restore it. 
 
 In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the un- 
 comfortable manager who abolished them! — with 
 one of these we went. I remember the waiting at 
 the door — not that which is left — but between that 
 and an inner door in shelter — O when shall I be 
 such an expectant again!— with the cry of nonpa- 
 reils, an indispensable play-house accompaniment in 
 those days. As near as I can recollect, the fashion- 
 able pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses then 
 was, "Chase some oranges, chase some numparels, 
 
 167
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 chase a bill of the play"; — chase pro 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 en- 
 dured! I had seen something like it in the plate 
 prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe's Shak- 
 speare — 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 orchestra lights at length rose, those "fair Au- 
 roras ! " Once the bell sounded. It was to ring out 
 yet once again — and, incapable of the anticipation, 
 I reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation upon 
 the maternal lap. It rang the second time. The cur- 
 tain 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 midst of Daniel. 
 All feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, 
 158
 
 MY FIRST PLAY 
 
 gardens, palaces, princesses, passed before me. 1 
 knew not players. I was in Persepolis for the time, 
 and the burning idol of their devotion almost con- 
 verted 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 has 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 apprehend, upon Rich, not long 
 since dead — but to my apprehension (too sincere for 
 satire), Lun was as remote a piece of antiquity as 
 Lud — the father of a line of Harlequins — transmit- 
 ting 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 I) 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. Robinson Crusoe fol- 
 
 159
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 lowed; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and the par- 
 rot, were as good and authentic as in the story. — 
 The clownery and pantaloonery of these pantomimes 
 have clean passed out of my head. I believe, 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 me then replete with devout 
 meaning) that gape and grin, in stone around the 
 inside of the old Round 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 inter- 
 vention of six or seven other years (for at school all 
 play -going was inhibited) I again entered the doors 
 of a theatre. That old Artaxerxes evening had never 
 done ringing in my fancy. I expected the same feel- 
 ings to come again with the same occasion. But we 
 differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than 
 the latter does from six. In that interval what had 
 I not lost ! At the first period I knew nothing, un- 
 derstood nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, 
 loved all, wondered all — 
 
 Was nourished, I could not tell how — 
 
 I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a 
 rationalist. The same things were there materially; 
 but the emblem, the reference, was gone! — The 
 green curtain was no longer a veil, drawn between 
 two worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring 
 back past ages, to present a "royal ghost," — but a 
 160
 
 MY FIRST PLAY 
 
 certain quantity of green baize, which was to sepa- 
 rate 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 hghts 
 — came up a 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 ac- 
 tors were men and women painted. I thought the 
 fault was in them ; but it was in myself, and the al- 
 teration which those many centuries — of six short 
 twelvemonths — had wrought in me. — Perhaps it 
 was fortunate for me that the play of the evening 
 was but an indifferent comedy, as it gave me time 
 to crop some unreasonable expectations, which 
 might have interfered with the genuine emotions 
 with which I was soon after enabled to enter upon 
 the first appearance to me of Mrs. Siddons in Isa- 
 bella. Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to 
 the present attraction of the scene ; and the theatre 
 became to me, upon a new stock, the most delight- 
 ful of recreations. 
 
 161
 
 MODERN GALLANTRY 
 
 IN comparing modern with ancient manners, we 
 are pleased to compliment ourselves upon the 
 point of gallantry ; a certain obsequiousness, or def- 
 erential respect, which we are supposed to pay to 
 females, as females. 
 
 I shall believe that this principle actuates our 
 conduct, when I can forget, that in the nineteenth 
 century of the era from which we date our civility, 
 we are but just beginning to leave off the very fre- 
 quent practice of whipping females in public, in 
 common with the coarsest male offenders. 
 
 I shall beheve it to be influential, when I can shut 
 my eyes to the fact that in England women are still 
 occasionally — 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- 
 wife 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 hum- 
 bler life, who would be thought in their way notable 
 adepts in this refinement, shall act upon 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 admired box-coat, to 
 spread it over the defenceless shoulders of the poor 
 162
 
 MODERN GALLANTRY 
 
 woman, who is passing to her parish on the roof of 
 the same stage-coach with him, drenched in the 
 rain — when I shall no longer see a woman standing 
 up in the pit of a London theatre, till she is sick 
 and faint with the exertion, with men about 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 be 
 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 acquain- 
 tance, and you shall confess you have not seen a 
 politer-bred man in Lothbury. 
 
 Lastly, 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 point to be anything more than a conven- 
 tional 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 sal- 
 utary fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall 
 see the same attentions paid to age as to youth, to 
 homely features as to handsome, to coarse com- 
 plexions as to clear — to the woman, as she is a wo- 
 man, 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- 
 
 163
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 dressed company can advert to the topic oi female 
 old age without exciting, and intending to excite, 
 a sneer: — when the phrases "antiquated virginity," 
 and such a one has "overstood her market," pro- 
 nounced 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 com- 
 mentator, has addressed a fine sonnet — was the only 
 pattern of consistent gallantry I have met with. He 
 took me under his shelter at an early age, and be- 
 stowed some pains upon me. I owe to his precepts 
 and example whatever there is of the man of busi- 
 ness (and that is not much) 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 disadvantageous situation. I have seen him stand 
 bareheaded — smile if you please — to a poor ser- 
 vant-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 accep- 
 tance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He was no dan- 
 gler, in the common acceptation of the word, after 
 164
 
 MODERN GALLANTRY 
 
 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, ex- 
 alting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, that 
 it might receive no damage, with as much careful- 
 ness as if she had been a Countess. To the reverend 
 form of Female Eld he would yield the wall (though 
 it were to an ancient beggar-woman) with more cere- 
 mony than we can afford to show our grandams. He 
 was the Preux ChevaUer 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 Winstanley — 
 old Winstanley 's daughter of Clapton — who dying 
 in the early days of their courtship, confirmed in him 
 the resolution of perpetual bachelorship. It was dur- 
 ing their short courtship, 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 manifested no repug- 
 nance — but in this instance with no effect. He could 
 not obtain from her a decent acknowledgment in re- 
 turn. 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 the following day, finding her a little 
 
 165
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 better humoured, to expostulate with her on her 
 coldness of yesterday, she confessed, with her usual 
 frankness, that she had no sort of dislike to his at- 
 tentions; that she could even endure some high- 
 flown compliments; that a young woman placed in 
 her situation had a right to expect all sorts 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 com- 
 pliments — she had overheard him by accident, in 
 rather rough language, rating a young woman, who 
 had not brought home his cravats quite to the ap- 
 pointed time, and she thought to herself, "As I am 
 Miss Susan Winstanley, and a young lady — a re- 
 puted 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 {nam- 
 ing the 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 compliments 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 determined not to accept any fine 
 speeches to the compromise of that sex, the belong- 
 ing to which was after all my strongest claim and 
 title to them." 
 166
 
 MODERN GALLANTRY 
 
 I think the lady discovered both generosity, and a 
 just way of thinking, in this rebuke which she gave 
 her lover; and I have sometimes imagined, that the 
 uncommon strain of courtesy, which through hfe 
 regulated the actions and behaviour of my friend 
 towards all of womankind indiscriminately, 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 Winstan- 
 ley showed. Then we should see something of the 
 spirit of consistent gallantry ; and no longer witness 
 the anomaly of the same man — a pattern of true 
 politeness to a wife — of cold contempt, or rudeness, 
 to a sister — the idolater of his female mistress — the 
 disparager and despiser of his no less female 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 dependent — she deserves to have diminished from 
 herself on that score ; and probably will feel the dim- 
 inution, when youth, and beauty, and advantages, 
 not inseparable from sex, shall lose of their attrac- 
 tion. What a woman should demand of a man in 
 courtship, or after it, is first — 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 
 
 167
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 many, and as fanciful, as you please — to that main 
 structure. Let her first lesson be — with sweet Susan 
 Winstanley — to reverence her sex. 
 
 168
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE 
 INNER TEMPLE 
 
 I WAS born, and passed the first seven years of 
 my life, in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its 
 gardens, its fountains, 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 kindUer emotion, than those of Spenser, where 
 he speaks of this spot: — 
 
 There when they came, whereas those bricky towers. 
 The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride. 
 Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers. 
 There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide. 
 Till they decayed through pride. 
 
 Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metrop- 
 ohs. What a transition for a countryman visiting 
 London for the first time — the passing from the 
 crowded Strand or Fleet Street, by unexpected av- 
 enues, into its magnificent ample squares, its classic 
 green recesses! What a cheerful, liberal look hath 
 that portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks 
 the greater garden ; that goodly pile 
 
 Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight, 
 
 confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, older, 
 more fantastically-shrouded one, named of Har- 
 
 169
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 court, with the cheerful Crown-Office-row (place 
 of my kindly engendure), 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 Ehz- 
 abethan hall, where the fountain plays, which I have 
 made to rise and fall, how many times! to the as- 
 toundment of the young urchins, my contempora- 
 ries, who, not being able to guess at its recondite 
 machinery, were almost tempted to hail the won- 
 drous work as magic ! What an antique air had the 
 now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral in- 
 scriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which 
 they measured, and to take their revelations of its 
 flight immediately from heaven, holding correspon- 
 dence 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 doth beauty hke a dial hand 
 
 Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived! 
 
 What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous 
 embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn 
 dulness of communication, compared with the sim- 
 ple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of 
 th^ old dial ! It stood as the garden god of Christian 
 170
 
 OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEMPLE 
 
 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 moderate 
 labours, of pleasures not protracted after sunset, of 
 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 mea- 
 sure 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 oc- 
 cupation, provided it with mottoes more touching 
 than tombstones. It was a pretty device of the gar- 
 dener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the days of arti- 
 ficial 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 del- 
 icacy. They will not come in awkwardly, I hope, in 
 a talk of fountains and sun-dials. He is speaking of 
 sweet garden scenes: — 
 
 What wondrous life is this I lead! 
 Ripe apples drop about my head. 
 The luscious clusters of the vine 
 Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 
 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 
 
 171
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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, 
 
 My soul into the boughs does glide; 
 
 There, like a bird, it sits and sings, 
 
 Then whets and claps its silver wings, 
 
 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 
 
 Does through a fragrant zodiac run: 
 
 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 metropoUs 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 fan- 
 cies, spouting out ever fresh streams from their in- 
 nocent-wanton lips in the square of Lincoln's Inn, 
 when I was no bigger than they were figured. They 
 
 1 From a copy of verses entitled "The Garden." 
 172
 
 OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEMPLE 
 
 are gone, and the spring choked up. The fashion, 
 they tell me, is gone by, and these things are es- 
 teemed childish. Why not, then, gratify children, by 
 letting them stand ? Lawyers, I suppose, were chil- 
 dren 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 child's heart left, to re- 
 spond to its earliest enchantments ? The figures were 
 grotesque. Are the stifF-wigged hving figures, that 
 still flitter and chatter about that area, less Gothic 
 in appearance ? or is the splutter of their hot rhet- 
 oric one-half so refreshing and innocent as the little 
 cool playful streams those exploded cherubs ut- 
 tered ? 
 
 They have lately gothicised the entrance to the 
 Inner Temple-hall, and the library front ; to assim- 
 ilate 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 must 
 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 be- 
 come common and profane. The old benchers had it 
 
 173
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 almost sacred to themselves, in the forepart of the 
 day at least. They might not be sided or jostled. 
 Their air and dress asserted the parade. You left 
 wide spaces betwixt you when you passed them. 
 We walk on even terms with their successors. The 
 
 roguish eye of J 11, ever ready to be deUvered of 
 
 a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee 
 with 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 column, the 
 scarecrow of his inferiors, the browbeater 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 invita- 
 tory notes being, indeed, of all, the most repulsive 
 and horrid. Clouds of snuff*, aggravating the natural 
 terrors of his speech, broke from each majestic nos- 
 tril, 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 ter- 
 race. 
 
 By his side a milder form was sometimes to be 
 seen; the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They 
 174
 
 OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEMPLE 
 
 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 confed- 
 erates of his associate, which rebounded 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 prac- 
 tice of the law. I suspect his knowledge did not 
 amount to much. When a case of difficult disposi- 
 tion of money, testamentary or otherwise, came be- 
 fore him, he ordinarily handed it over, with a few 
 instructions, to his man Lovel, who was a quick 
 little fellow, and 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 pose 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 
 
 175
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 at a relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the 
 day of her execution; — and L., who had a wary 
 foresight of his probable hallucinations, before he 
 set out, schooled him, with great anxiety, not in any 
 possible manner to allude to her story that day. S. 
 promised faithfully to observe the injunction. He 
 had not been seated in the parlour, where the com- 
 pany was expecting the dinner summons, four min- 
 utes, when, a pause in the conversation ensuing, he 
 got up, looked out of window, and pulling down his 
 ruffles — an ordinary motion with him — observed, 
 "it was a gloomy day," and added, "Miss Blandy 
 must be hanged by this time, I suppose." Instances 
 of this sort were 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 embarrass- 
 ments 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 face and 
 person, but wanted, methought, the spirit that 
 should have shown them off 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, unaccompanied, 
 
 wetting the pavement of B d Row, with tears 
 
 176
 
 OLD BENCHEKS OF INNER TEMPLE 
 
 that fell in drops which might be heard, because her 
 friend had died that day — he, whom she had pur- 
 sued 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 fam- 
 ily of that name. He passed his youth in contracted 
 circumstances, which gave him early those parsi- 
 monious 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 et armafuere. He might 
 think his treasures more safe. His house had the 
 aspect of a strong box. C. was a close hunks — a 
 hoarder rather than a miser — or, if a miser, none of 
 the mad Elwes breed, who have brought discredit 
 
 177
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 enabled to part with the pounds, upon a 
 scale that leaves us careless generous fellows halting 
 at an immeasurable distance behind. C. gave away 
 30,000/. at once in his lifetime 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 he was worth in the world; and having 
 but a competency for his rank, which his indolent 
 habits were little calculated to improve, might have 
 suffered severely if he had not had honest people 
 about him. Lovel took care of everything. 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 mo- 
 ment that he was a servant. 
 
 I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrig- 
 ible and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and 
 "would strike." In the cause of the oppressed he 
 178
 
 OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEMPLE 
 
 never considered inequalities, or calculated the num- 
 ber of his opponents. He once wrested a sword out 
 of the hand of a man 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 
 would stand next day bareheaded to the same per- 
 son modestly to excuse his interference — for L. 
 never forgot rank where something better was not 
 concerned. L. was the liveliest little fellow breath- 
 ing, 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 humor- 
 ous poetry — next to Swift and Prior — moulded 
 heads in clay or 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 facil- 
 ity; made punch better than any man of his degree 
 in England; had the merriest quips and conceits; 
 and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and in- 
 ventions 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 stage of human weakness — "a remnant 
 most forlorn of what he was," — yet even then his 
 eye would light up upon the mention of his favour- 
 
 179
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 ite Garrick. He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes 
 — "was upon the stage nearly throughout the whole 
 performance, and as busy as a bee." At intervals, 
 too, he would speak of his former life, and how he 
 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 years' absence, in 
 his smart new livery to see her, and she blest her- 
 self 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 that 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 re- 
 ceived him gently into hers. 
 
 With Coventry and with Salt, in their walks 
 upon the terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson 
 would join to make up a third. They did not walk 
 linked arm-in-arm in those days — "as now our 
 stout triumvirs sweep the streets," — but generally 
 with both hands folded behind them for state, or 
 with one at least behind, the other carrying a cane. 
 P. was a benevolent, but not a prepossessing man. 
 He had that in his face which you could not term 
 unhappiness; it rather implied an incapacity of be- 
 ing happy. His cheeks were colourless, even to 
 whiteness. His look was uninviting, resembhng 
 (but without his sourness) that of our great phi- 
 lanthropist. I know that he did good acts, but I 
 could never make out what he tvas. Contemporary 
 180
 
 OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEJMPLE 
 
 with these, but subordinate, was Daines Barrington 
 — another oddity — he walked burly and square — 
 in imitation, I think, of Coventry — howbeit he at- 
 tained not to the dignity of his prototype. Never- 
 theless, 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 treasurer- 
 ship came to be audited, the following singular 
 charge was unanimously disallowed by the bench: 
 "Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, the gardener, twenty 
 shilUngs, for stuff to poison the sparrows, by my 
 orders." Next to him was old Barton — a jolly nega- 
 tion, 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 Col- 
 lege — much to the easement of his less epicurean 
 brethren. I know nothing more of him. — Then 
 Read, and Twopenny — Read, good-humoured and 
 personable — Twopenny, good-humoured, but thin, 
 and felicitous in jests upon his own figure. If T. 
 was thin, W harry was attenuated and fleeting. 
 Many must remember him (for he was rather of 
 later date) and his singular gait, which was per- 
 formed 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 dis- 
 cover. It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed 
 to answer the purpose any better than common 
 
 181
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 walking. The extreme tenuity of his frame, I sus- 
 pect, set him upon it. It was a trial of poising. 
 Twopenny would often rally him upon his lean- 
 ness, 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 ex- 
 tremely 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 pas- 
 sage of the cook applying to him, with much for- 
 mality of apology, for instructions how to write 
 down edge bone of beef in his bill of commons. He 
 was supposed to know, if any man in the world did. 
 He decided the orthography to be — as I have 
 given it — fortifying his authority with such ana- 
 tomical reasons as dismissed the manciple (for the 
 time) learned and happy. Some do spell it yet, per- 
 versely, aitch bone, from a fanciful resemblance be- 
 tween its shape and that of the aspirate so denomi- 
 nated. 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, which he wielded with a tolerable 
 adroitness. 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 rec- 
 182
 
 OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEMPLE 
 
 onciled the phenomenon to my ideas as an emblem 
 of power — somewhat hke 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 
 recollections 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 inexplicable, half-understood 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 relation, who made 
 up to me — to my 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 dreams of classic idolatry perish, — 
 extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of legen- 
 dary fabling, in the heart of childhood there will, 
 for ever, spring up a well of innocent or wholesome 
 superstition — the seeds of exaggeration will be 
 busy there, and vital — from every-day forms educ- 
 ing 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 mate- 
 riality. While childhood, and while dreams, reduc- 
 ing 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 
 
 183
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 memory, and the erring notices of childhood I Yet I 
 protest I always thought that he had been a bach- 
 elor! 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 melan- 
 choly, from the effects of which, probably, he never 
 thoroughly recovered. In what a new light does this 
 place his rejection (O call it by a gentler name!) of 
 
 mild Susan P , unravelling into beauty certain 
 
 peculiarities of this very shy and retiring character! 
 Henceforth let no one receive the narratives of Elia 
 for true records! They are, in truth, but shadows of 
 fact — verisimilitudes, not verities — or sitting but 
 upon the remote edges and outskirts of history. He 
 is no such honest chronicler as R. N,, and would 
 have done better perhaps to have consulted that 
 gentleman before he sent these incondite reminis- 
 cences to press. But the worthy sub-treasurer — who 
 respects his old and his 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 exist- 
 ence beyond the Gentleman s — his furthest monthly 
 excursions in this nature having been long confined 
 to the holy ground of honest Urban s obituary. May 
 it be long before his own name shall help to swell 
 those columns of unenvied flattery! — Meantime, 
 O ye New Benchers of the Inner Temple, cherish 
 him kindly, for he is himself the kindliest of hu- 
 184
 
 OLD BENCHERS OF INNER TEMPLE 
 
 man creatures. Should infirmities overtake him — 
 he is yet in green and vigorous senility — make 
 allowances for them, remembering that '*ye your- 
 selves are old." So may the Winged Horse, your 
 ancient badge and cognisance, 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 emo- 
 tion! so may the younkers of this generation eye 
 you, pacing your stately terrace, with the same 
 superstitious veneration with which the child Elia 
 gazed on the Old Worthies that solemnized the 
 parade before ye! 
 
 185
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 
 
 THE custom of saying grace at meals had, 
 probably, 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 some- 
 thing more than a common blessing! when a belly- 
 full was a wind-fall, and looked like a special provi- 
 dence. 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 under- 
 stood, why the blessing of food— the act of eat- 
 ing — should have had a particular expression of 
 thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from that im- 
 plied and silent gratitude with which we are ex- 
 pected 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. Why have 
 we none for books, those spiritual repasts — a grace 
 before Milton — a grace before Shakspeare — a de- 
 votional exercise proper to be said before reading 
 the Fairy Queen? — but the received ritual having 
 prescribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of 
 186
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 
 
 manducation, I shall confine my observations to 
 the experience which I have had of the grace, prop- 
 erly so called; commending my new scheme for ex- 
 tension to a niche in the grand philosophical, poeti- 
 cal, and perchance in part heretical, liturgy, now 
 compiling by my friend Homo Human us, for the 
 use of a certain snug congregation of Utopian Ra- 
 belaesian 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 sim- 
 ple and unprovocative repast of children. It is here 
 that the grace becomes exceedingly graceful. The 
 indigent man, who hardly knows whether he shall 
 have a meal the next day or not, sits down to his 
 fare with a present sense of the blessing, which can 
 be but feebly acted by the rich, 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 con- 
 templated by them. The poor man's bread is his 
 daily bread, literally his bread for the day. Their 
 courses are perennial. 
 
 Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be 
 preceded by the grace. That which is least stimu- 
 lative to appetite, leaves the mind most free for 
 foreign considerations. A man may feel thankful, 
 heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mutton with 
 turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon the ordi- 
 nance and institution of eating; when he shall con- 
 fess a perturbation of mind, inconsistent with the 
 
 187
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 purposes of the grace, at the presence of venison or 
 turtle. When I have sate (a varus hospes) at rich 
 men's tables, with 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 interpose a religious senti- 
 ment. 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 copresence of cir- 
 cumstances which unhallow the blessing. After a 
 devotional tone put on for a few seconds, how rap- 
 idly the speaker will fall into his common voice! 
 helping himself or his neighbour, as if to get rid of 
 some uneasy sensation of hypocrisy. Not that the 
 good man was a hypocrite, or was not most con- 
 scientious in the discharge of the duty ; but he felt 
 188
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 
 
 in his inmost mind the incompatibility 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, remem- 
 bering 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 
 benediction to a fitter season, when appetite is laid ; 
 when the still small voice can be heard, and the rea- 
 son of the grace returns — with temperate diet and 
 restricted dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are no 
 proper occasions for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun 
 waxed fat, we read that he kicked. Virgil knew the 
 harpy-nature better, when he put into the mouth 
 of Celffino 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 deli- 
 cacies ; the means of life, and not the means of pam- 
 pering the carcass. With what frame or composure, 
 I wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his bene- 
 diction 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 com- 
 
 189
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 mence their foul orgies, with as Httle sense of true 
 thankfulness (which is temperance) as those Vir- 
 gilian 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 and surfeits 
 is the banquet which Satan, in the "Paradise Re- 
 gained," provides for a temptation in the wilderness : 
 
 A table richly spread in regal mode 
 With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort 
 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 drained 
 Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. 
 
 The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates 
 would go down without the recommendatory pre- 
 face of a benediction. 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 Roman 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 altogether a prof- 
 anation 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 dis- 
 turbed him in his dreams, from his dreams might 
 190
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 
 
 have been taught better. To the temperate fantasies 
 of the famished Son of God, what sort of feasts pre- 
 sented 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 EHjah bringing, even and morn; 
 
 Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought. 
 
 He saw the prophet also how he fled 
 
 Into the desert, and how there he slept 
 
 Under a juniper; then how awaked 
 
 He found his supper on the coals prepared. 
 
 And by the 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 two visionary banquets, think you, would 
 the introduction of what is called the grace have 
 been the most fitting and pertinent ? 
 
 Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; but prac- 
 tically 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 
 
 191
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 continuing the species. They are fit blessings to be 
 contemplated at a distance with a becoming grati- 
 tude; but the moment of appetite (the judicious 
 reader will apprehend me) is, perhaps, the least fit 
 season for that exercise. The Quakers, who go about 
 their business of every description with more calm- 
 ness than we, have more title to the use of these 
 benedictory prefaces. I have always admired their 
 silent grace, and the 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, with 
 indifference, 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 
 indifferent to the kinds of it. Those unctuous mor- 
 sels of deer's flesh were not made to be received 
 with dispassionate services. I hate a man who swal- 
 lows it, affecting not to know what he is eating. I 
 suspect his taste in higher matters. I shrink in- 
 stinctively 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 vege- 
 192
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 
 
 table 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 culi- 
 nary disappointments, as to come home at the din- 
 ner hour, for instance, expecting some 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 Ram- 
 bler used to make inarticulate animal noises over a 
 favourite food. Was this the music quite proper to 
 be preceded by 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 ex- 
 cellent 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 consecration of no ark but 
 the fat tureen before him. Graces are the sweet 
 preluding strains to the banquets of angels and chil- 
 dren ; to the roots and severer repasts of the Char- 
 treuse; 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 
 
 193
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 of those better befitting organs would be which chil- 
 dren 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 duty 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 who 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 bandying about the office between them as 
 a matter of compliment, each of them not unwill- 
 ing to shift the awkward burthen of an equivocal 
 duty from his own shoulders ? 
 
 I once drank tea in company with two Methodist 
 divines of different persuasions, whom it was my 
 fortune to introduce 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 
 anything. It seems it is the custom with some sec- 
 taries to put up a short prayer before this meal also. 
 His reverend brother did not at first quite appre- 
 hend him, but upon an explanation, with little less 
 194
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 
 
 importance he made answer that it was not a custom 
 known in his church: in which courteous evasion 
 the other acquiescing for good manners' sake, or in 
 compUance with a weak brother, the supplementary 
 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 com- 
 pliment 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 two stools) going away in the end 
 without his supper. 
 
 A short form upon these occasions is felt to want 
 reverence; a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape 
 the charge of impertinence. I do not quite approve 
 of the epigrammatic 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 clergy- 
 man 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 rehgion has to offer. Non tunc illis erat locus. 
 I remember we were put to it to reconcile the 
 phrase "good creatures," upon which the blessing 
 rested, with the fare set before us, wilfully under- 
 standing that expression in a low and animal sense, 
 
 195
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 — till some one recalled a legend, which told how, 
 in the golden days of Christ's, the young Hospi- 
 tallers 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, commuted our 
 flesh for garments, and gave us — horresco refer ens 
 — trousers instead of mutton. 
 
 196
 
 DREAM CHILDREN; A REVERIE 
 
 CHILDREN love to listen to stories about 
 their elders, when they 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-grandmother Field, who lived in a great 
 house in Norfolk (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 bal- 
 lad 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 Robin Redbreasts, tiU 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 up- 
 braiding. 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 re- 
 spects she might be said to be the mistress of it 
 
 197
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred 
 living in a newer and more fashionable mansion 
 which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoin- 
 ing county; but still she lived in it in a manner as 
 if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of 
 the great house in a sort while she lived, which 
 afterwards came to decay, and was nearly pulled 
 down, and all its old ornaments stripped and car- 
 ried away to the owner's other house, where they 
 were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one 
 were to carry away the old tombs 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 foohsh 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 neigh- 
 bourhood for many miles round, to show their re- 
 spect 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 Testament 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 she was esteemed the 
 best dancer — here Alice's little right foot played 
 an involuntary movement, till, upon my looking 
 grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, 
 in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, 
 came, and bowed her down with pain ; but it could 
 198
 
 DREAM CHILDREN; A REVERIE 
 
 never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, 
 but they were still upright, because she was so 
 good and religious. Then 1 told how she was used 
 to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great 
 lone house; and how she believed that an appari- 
 tion of two infants was to be seen at midnight glid- 
 ing up and down the great staircase near where she 
 slept, but she 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, be- 
 cause I was never half so good or religious as she 
 — and yet I never saw the infants. Here John ex- 
 panded all his eyebrows and tried to look coura- 
 geous. Then I told how good she was to all her 
 grandchildren, having us to the great house in the 
 holy-days, where I in particular used to spend many 
 hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the 
 twelve Caesars, that had been Emperors of Rome, 
 till the old marble heads would seem to live again, 
 or I to be turned into marble with them; 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 
 
 199
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 then, — and because I had more pleasure in stroll- 
 ing 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 bask- 
 ing 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 bot- 
 tom 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-like 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 them- 
 selves, and make it carry him half over the county 
 200
 
 DREAM CHILDREN; A REVERIE 
 
 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 be always 
 pent up within their boundaries — and how their 
 uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was 
 handsome, to the admiration of everybody, but of 
 their great-grandmother Field most especially ; and 
 how he used to carry 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 allowances 
 enough for him when he was impatient and in pain, 
 nor remember sufficiently how considerate he had 
 been to me when I was lame-footed; and how 
 when he died, though he had not been dead an 
 hour, 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 though 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 off his limb. — Here the children fell a-crying, 
 
 201
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 and asked if their little mourning 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 persist- 
 ing 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 gaz- 
 ing, both the children gradually gTew fainter to my 
 view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at 
 last but two mournful features were seen in the ut- 
 termost distance, which, without speech, strangely 
 impressed upon me the effects of speech: "We are 
 not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. 
 The children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are 
 nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We 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 immedi- 
 ately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my 
 bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with 
 the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side — but 
 John L. (or James Elia) was gone for ever. 
 
 202
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 
 
 IN A LETTER TO B. F. ESQ., AT SYDNEY, 
 NEW SOUTH WALES 
 
 MY DEAR 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 com- 
 punctious visitings 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 pos- 
 terity ; and reminds me of one of Mrs. Rowe's super- 
 scriptions, "Alcander to Strephon in the shades." 
 Cowley's Post- Angel is no more than would be ex- 
 pedient 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 is only like whispering through a long trumpet. 
 But suppose a tube let down from the moon, with 
 yourself at one end and the man at the other; it 
 would be some balk to the spirit of conversation, if 
 you knew that the dialogue exchanged with that 
 interesting theosophist would take two or three rev- 
 olutions of a higher luminary in its passage. Yet, for 
 aught I know, you may be some parasangs nigher 
 
 203
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 that primitive idea — Plato's man — than we in Eng- 
 land here have the honour to reckon ourselveSo 
 
 Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics; 
 news, sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include 
 all non-serious subjects; or subjects serious in them- 
 selves, 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 I have that what I now send 
 you for, truth shall not, before you get it, unac- 
 countably 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 rep- 
 utation. You are glad to hear it. This is natural and 
 friendly. But at this present reading — your Now — 
 he may possibly be in the Bench, or going to be 
 hanged, which in reason ought to abate something 
 of your transport {i. e., at hearing he was well, etc.), 
 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 con- 
 fusion of tenses, this grand solecism of two 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 mo- 
 ment you received the intelligence my full feast of 
 204
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 
 
 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 ra- 
 tional encouragement for you to foster a portion, at 
 least, of the disagreeable passion, which it was in 
 part my intention 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, unessence her- 
 self, but (what is harder) one cannot venture a crude 
 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 Will 
 
 Weatherall having married a servant-maid I I re- 
 member gravely consulting you how we were to 
 receive her — for AVill's wife was in no case to be 
 rejected; and your no less serious replication in the 
 matter; how tenderly you advised an abstemious in- 
 troduction 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 intel- 
 ligence; your deliberate judgment, or rather wise 
 suspension of sentence, how far jacks, and spits, and 
 mops, could, with propriety, be introduced as sub- 
 jects; 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. Wilham Weatherall being by ; whether 
 we should show more delicacy, and a truer sense of 
 
 205
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 respect for Will's wife, by treating Becky with our 
 customary chiding before her, or by an unusual def- 
 erential civility paid to Becky, as to a person of 
 great worth, but thrown by the caprice of fate into 
 a humble station. There were difficulties, I remem- 
 ber, 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 valu- 
 ing 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 matrimony, 
 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, under a 
 diviner, can, with any prospect of veracity, conduct 
 a correspondence at such an arm's length. Two 
 prophets, indeed, might thus interchange intelli- 
 gence with effect ; the epoch of the writer (Habak- 
 kuk) falling in with the true present time of the 
 receiver (Daniel); but then we are no prophets. 
 
 Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with 
 
 that. This kind of dish, above 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 
 
 206
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 
 
 have time to cool, it is the most tasteless of all cold 
 meats. I have often 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 fan- 
 tastically 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 character 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 sentimen- 
 talists 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 Sur- 
 rey, in Dorset, or in Devon? Conceive the senti- 
 ment 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 bilge wet- 
 ting it till it became as vapid as a damaged lustring. 
 Suppose it in material danger (mariners have some 
 superstition about sentiments) of being tossed over 
 
 207
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 land- 
 ing — at Lyons shall we say? — 1 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 sanction of the magistracy in this district, the 
 concurrence of the ecclesiastics in that canton ; till 
 at length it arrives at its destination, tired out and 
 jaded, from a brisk sentiment into a feature of silly 
 pride or tawdry senseless affectation. How few sen- 
 timents, 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 
 contemptible 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 be- 
 yond sea, they will scarce 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 atmosphere 
 of the bystanders: or this last is the fine slime of 
 Nilus — the melior lutus — whose maternal recipi- 
 ency is as necessary as the sol pater to their equivo- 
 cal generation. A pun hath a hearty kind of present 
 ear-kissing smack with it; you can no more trans- 
 208
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 
 
 mit it in its pristine flavour than 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 pun, and its recognitory laugh, 
 must be co-instantaneous. The one is the brisk light- 
 ning, the other the fierce thunder. A moment's in- 
 terval, and the link is snapped. A pun is reflected 
 from a friend's face as from a mirror. Who would 
 consult his sweet visnomy, if the polished surface 
 were two or three minutes (not to speak of twelve 
 months, my dear F.) in giving back its copy? 
 
 I cannot image to myself whereabout you are. 
 When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's island comes 
 across me. Sometimes you seem to be in the Hades 
 of Thieves. I see Diogenes prying among you with 
 his perpetual fi-uitless lantern. What must you be 
 willing by this time to give for the sight of an hon- 
 est man ! You must almost have forgotten how we 
 look. And tell me what your Sydneyites do? are 
 they th**v*ng all day long ? Merciful Heaven 1 what 
 property can stand against such a depredation ! The 
 kangaroos — your Aborigines — do they keep their 
 primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those 
 little short fore-puds, looking like a lesson framed 
 
 209
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 by 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 the young 
 Spartans among you are born with six fingers, 
 which spoils their scanning? — It must look very 
 odd ; but use reconciles. For their scansion, it is less 
 to be 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 differ- 
 ence 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 you grow your own hemp ? — What 
 is your staple trade, — exclusive of the national pro- 
 fession, I mean? Your locksmiths, I take it, are 
 some of your great capitalists. 
 
 I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly 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 ladybirds! My 
 heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves in a 
 thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is 
 210
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 
 
 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 you 
 hear me, — thoughts dallying with vain surmise — 
 
 Aye me! while thee the seas and sounding shores 
 Hold far away. 
 
 Come back, before I am grown into a very old 
 man, so as you shall hardly know me. Come, before 
 Bridget walks on crutches. Girls whom you left 
 children have become sage matrons while you are 
 tarrying there. The blooming Miss W — r (you re- 
 member 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 Uttle left to greet you, of me, or mine. 
 
 311
 
 THE PRAISE 
 OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 
 
 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 nov- 
 ices, blooming through their first nigritude, the ma- 
 ternal 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 sunrise ? 
 
 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 pul- 
 pits (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 witness their operation ! to see a chit no bigger 
 than one's self, enter, one knew not by what pro- 
 cess, into what seemed \he fauces Averni-^lo pur- 
 sue him in imagination, as he went sounding on 
 through so many dark stifling caverns, horrid shades I 
 to shudder with the idea that "now, surely he must 
 be lost for ever!" — to revive at hearing his feeble 
 212
 
 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 
 
 shout of discovered day-light — and then (O fulness 
 of delight!) 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 spec- 
 tacle, certainly ; not much unlike the old stage di- 
 rection in Macbeth, where the "Apparition of a child 
 crowned, with a tree in his hand, rises." 
 
 Reader, 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 starv- 
 ing weather, and to the proper troubles of his hard 
 occupation, a pair of kibed heels (no unusual accom- 
 paniment) be superadded, the demand on thy hu- 
 manity will surely rise to a tester. 
 
 There is a composition, the ground- work of which 
 I have understood to be the sweet wood 'yclept sas- 
 safras. 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 INIr. 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 
 
 213
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 adventured to dip my own particular lip in a basin 
 of his commended ingredients — a cautious premo- 
 nition to the olfactories constantly whispering to me, 
 that my stomach must infallibly, with all due cour- 
 tesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, otherwise 
 not uninstructed in dietetical elegancies, sup it up 
 with avidity. 
 
 I know not by what particular conformation of 
 the organ it happens, but I have always found that 
 this composition is surprisingly gratifying to the 
 palate of a young chimney-sweeper — whether the 
 oily particles (sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do at- 
 tenuate and soften the fuliginous concretions, which 
 are sometimes found (in dissections) to adhere to 
 the roof of the mouth in these unfledged practi- 
 tioners; or whether Nature, sensible that she had 
 mingled too much of bitter wood in the 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 purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. 
 There is something more in these sympathies than 
 philosophy can inculcate. 
 
 Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without rea- 
 son, that his is the only Salopian house; yet be it 
 214
 
 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 
 
 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 artizan leaving his bed to resume 
 the premature labours of the day, jostle, not unfre- 
 quently to the manifest disconcerting of the former, 
 for the honours of the pavement. 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 
 vapours in more grateful coffee, curses the ungenial 
 fume, as he passeth ; but the artizan stops to taste, 
 and blesses the fragrant breakfast. 
 
 This is Saloop — the precocious herb- woman's 
 darling — the delight of the early gardener, who 
 transports his smoking cabbages by break of day 
 from Hammersmith to Covent Garden's famed pi- 
 azzas — the delight, and oh! I fear, too often the 
 envy, of the unpennied sweep. Him shouldst thou 
 haply encounter, with his dim visage pendent over 
 the grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous 
 basin (it will cost thee but three-halfpennies) and a 
 shce of delicate bread and butter (an added lialf- 
 penny) — so may thy culinary fires, eased of the 
 o'ercharged secretions from thy worse-placed hos- 
 
 215
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 pitalities, 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 Jired chimney, 
 invite the rattling engines from ten adjacent par- 
 ishes, 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 en- 
 dure the jocularity of a young sweep with some- 
 thing more than forgiveness. — In the last winter 
 but one, pacing along Cheapside with my accus- 
 tomed precipitation when I walk westward, a treach- 
 erous slide brought me upon my back in an instant. 
 I scrambled up with pain and shame enough — 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, point- 
 ing me out with his dusky finger to the mob, and 
 to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in particu- 
 lar, till the tears for the exquisiteness of the fun (so 
 he thought it) worked themselves out at the corners 
 of his poor red eyes, red from many a previous weep- 
 ing, and soot-inflamed, yet twinkling through all 
 with such a joy, snatched out of desolation, that 
 
 Hogarth but Hogarth has got him already (how 
 
 could he miss him ? ) in the March to Finchley, grin- 
 ning at the pieman — there he stood, as he stands in 
 216
 
 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 
 
 the picture, irremovable, as if the jest was to last 
 for ever — with such a maximum of glee, and mini- 
 mum of mischief, in his mirth — for the grin of a 
 genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice in it — that 
 I could have been content, if the honour of a gen- 
 tleman might endure it, to have remained his butt 
 and 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 pre- 
 sumably holding such jewels; but, methinks, they 
 should take leave to "air" them as frugally as pos- 
 sible. 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 shining ossifica- 
 tions, strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in man- 
 ners, 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 gentry 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 lurk- 
 eth 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 clandestine and 
 almost infantile abductions ; the seeds of civility and 
 
 217
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 true courtesy, so often discernible in these young 
 grafts (not otherwise to be accounted for) plainly 
 hint at some forced adoptions ; many noble Rachels 
 mourning for their children, even in our days, coun- 
 tenance 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 defili- 
 ations. 
 
 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 es- 
 pecially 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 failed, at noonday, fast asleep, a lost chimney- 
 sweeper. The little creature, having somehow con- 
 founded 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 invitement 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 
 218
 
 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 
 
 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 weariness he might 
 be visited, would have ventured, under such a pen- 
 alty 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, L would ask, if the 
 great power of nature, which I contend for, had not 
 been manifested within him, prompting to the ad- 
 venture ? 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 
 
 219
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 was a solemn supper held in Smithfield, upon the 
 yearly return of the fair of St. Bartholomew. Cards 
 were issued a week before to the master-sweeps in 
 and about the metropolis, confining the invitation 
 to their younger fry. Now and then an elderly strip- 
 ling would get in among us, and be 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 party, 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 garment; 
 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 every gaping spectator 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. James 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 Rochester in his maddest days could not have 
 220
 
 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 
 
 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 inau- 
 gural 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, w^hereat the universal host would set 
 up a shout that tore the concave, while hundreds of 
 grinning teeth startled the night with theu* bright- 
 ness. O it was a pleasure to see the sable younkers 
 lick in the unctuous meat, with his more unctuous 
 sayings — how he would fit the tit-bits to the puny 
 mouths, reserving the lengthier links for the seniors 
 — how he would intercept a morsel even in the jaws 
 of some young desperado, declaring it "must to the 
 pan again to be browned, for it was not fit for a gen- 
 tleman's eating" — how he would recommend this 
 slice of w^hite 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 pat- 
 rimony, — how genteelly 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 under- 
 stood or not, was equally diverting and flattering; 
 and for a crowning sentiment, which never failed, 
 "May the Brush supersede the Laurel!" All these, 
 
 2S1
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 and fifty other fancies, which were rather felt than 
 comprehended by his guests, would he utter, stand- 
 ing upon tables, and prefacing every sentiment with 
 a •* Gentlemen, give me leave to propose so and so," 
 which was a prodigious comfort to those young or- 
 phans; every now and then stuffing into his mouth 
 (for it did not do to be squeamish on these occa- 
 sions) indiscriminate pieces of those reeking sau- 
 sages, which pleased them mightily, and was the sa- 
 vouriest part, you may believe, of the entertainment. 
 
 Golden lads and lasses must, 
 
 As chimney-sweepers, come to dust — 
 
 James White is extinct, and with him these sup- 
 pers 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 Smith- 
 field departed for ever. 
 
 3^
 
 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY 
 
 OF BEGGARS IN THE 
 
 METROPOLIS 
 
 THE all-sweeping besom of societarian refor- 
 mation — 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 bag- 
 gage, are fast posting out of the purlieus of this 
 eleventh persecution. 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 belliim ad extermina- 
 tionem, proclaimed 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 ca- 
 price of any fellow-creature, or set of fellow-crea- 
 tures, parochial or societarian. Theirs were the only 
 rates uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in the 
 
 assessment. 
 
 9S»
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 hvery. 
 
 The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses; 
 and when Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, 
 do we feel anything towards him but contempt? 
 Could Vandyke have made a picture of him, sway- 
 ing a ferula for a sceptre, which would have affected 
 our minds with the same heroic pity, the same com- 
 passionate admiration, with which we regard his 
 Belisarius begging for an obolus ? 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 a lustrous spirit will shine through 
 the disguisements — this noble Earl of Cornwall (as 
 indeed he was) and memorable sport of fortune, flee- 
 ing 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 romanci- 
 
 cal writers (as dear Margaret Newcastle would call 
 
 them), when they would most shaiply and feehngly 
 
 224
 
 THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 
 
 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 illustrates 
 the height he falls from. There is no medium which 
 can be presented to the imagination without offence. 
 There is no breaking the fall. Lear, 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 
 alms with bell and clap-dish. 
 
 The Lucian wits knew this very well ; and, with 
 a converse policy, when they would express scorn 
 of greatness without the pity, they show us an Alex- 
 ander in the shades cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis 
 getting up foul linen. 
 
 How would it sound in song, that a great mon- 
 arch had declined his affections upon the daughter 
 of a baker! yet 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 prop- 
 erly contemns a Beggar. Poverty is a comparative 
 thing, and each degree of it is mocked by its "neigh- 
 bour grice." Its poor rents and comings-in are soon 
 summed up and told. Its pretences to property are 
 almost ludicrous. Its pitiful attempts to save excite 
 a smile. Every scornful companion can weigh his 
 trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor man reproaches 
 
 225
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 poor man in the streets with impohtic mention of 
 his condition, his own being a shade better, while 
 the rich pass by and jeer at both. No rascally com- 
 parative insults a Beggar, or thinks of weighing 
 purses with him. He is not in the scale of compari- 
 son. 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 ostentation above 
 his means. No one accuses him of pride, or up- 
 braideth 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. 
 
 Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the 
 Beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profes- 
 sion, 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. He is the 
 only man in the universe who is not obliged to study 
 appearances. The ups and downs of the world con- 
 cern him no longer. He alone continueth in one stay. 
 The price of stock or land afFecteth him not. The 
 2^
 
 THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 
 
 fluctuations of agricultural or commercial prosper- 
 ity touch him not, or at worst but change his cus- 
 tomers. He is not expected to become bail or surety 
 for any one. No man troubleth him with question- 
 ing 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. I can no more spare them 
 than I could the Cries of London. No corner of a 
 street is complete without them. They are as indis- 
 pensable as the Ballad Singer ; and in their pictu- 
 resque attire as ornamental as the Signs of old 
 London. They were the standing morals, emblems, 
 mementoes, dial-mottoes, 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 and broken bankrupt 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 
 
 227
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 forlorn bereavement, 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 — caused 
 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 Eng- 
 lish of the Latinists! — who has treated of this hu- 
 man and quadrupedal alliance, this dog and man 
 friendship, in the sweetest of his poems, the Epi- 
 taphium in Canem, or. Dog's Epitaph. Reader, pe- 
 ruse 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 
 passengers through the daily thoroughfares of a vast 
 and busy metropolis. 
 
 PAUPERIS hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, 
 Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectae. 
 Dux caeco fidus: nec^ me ducente, solebat, 
 Praetenso hinc atque hinc baculo^ per iniqua locorum 
 Incertam explorare viam; sed fila secutus, 
 Quae dubios regerent passus, vestigia tuta 
 Fixit inoffenso gressu ; gelidumque sedile 
 In nudo nactus saxo, qua praetereuntium 
 Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras 
 Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam. 
 Ploravit nee frustra; obolum dedit alter et alter, 
 Quels eorda et mentem indiderat natura benignam. 
 Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile, 
 Vel mediis vigil in somuis; ad herilia jussa 
 228
 
 THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 
 
 Auresque atque aniraum arrectus, seu frustuk amioe 
 Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei 
 Tsedia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat. 
 
 Hi mores, haee vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, 
 Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inerte senectA 
 Quae tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite caecum 
 Orbavit dominum ; prisci sed gratia facti 
 Ne tota intereat, longos deleta per annos, 
 Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit, 
 Etsi inopis, non ingratae, munuscula dextrae; 
 Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemque. 
 Quod memoret, fidumque canem dominumque benignuin. 
 
 POOR Irus' faithful 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, 
 
 229
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 Irus reared. 
 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 pavements 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 stout- 
 ness, and hearty heart, of this half-limbed giant. Few 
 but must have noticed him ; 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 Antaeus, and to suck in fresh 
 vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He was 
 a grand 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 
 230
 
 THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 
 
 tremendous voice thundering and growling, as be- 
 fore an earthquake, and casting down my eyes, it 
 was this mandrake revihng a steed that had started 
 at his portentous appearance. He seemed to want 
 but his just stature to have rent the offending quad- 
 ruped in shivers. He was as the man-part of a Cen- 
 taur, 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 sublime 
 was not wanting ; and he threw out yet a jolly coun- 
 tenance 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 impaired, because he is not content to ex- 
 change his free air and exercise for the restraints of 
 a poor-house, he is expiating his contumacy in one 
 of those houses (ironically christened) of Correction. 
 Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a 
 nuisance, which called for legal interference to re- 
 move ? or not rather a salutary and a touching ob- 
 ject to the passers-by in a great city? Among her 
 shows, her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping 
 curiosity (and what else but an accumulation 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) Accidentiuin? 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 
 
 231
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 had he injured? — whom had he imposed upon? The 
 contributors had enjoyed their sight for their pen- 
 nies. 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 pain- 
 ful 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 depos- 
 ing 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 exagger- 
 ation of nocturnal orgies which he has been slan- 
 dered 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 for- 
 tunes made by begging are (I verily believe) misers' 
 calumnies. One was much talked of in the pubhc 
 papers some time since, and the usual charitable 
 inferences deduced. A clerk in the Bank was sur- 
 prised with the announcement of a five-hundred- 
 pound legacy left him by a person whose name he 
 was a stranger to. It seems that in his daily morn-
 
 THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 
 
 ing walks from Peckham (or some village there- 
 abouts) where he lived, to his office, it had been his 
 practice for the last twenty years to drop his half- 
 penny duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus, 
 that sate begging alms by the wayside in the Bor- 
 ough. The good old beggar recognised his daily ben- 
 efactor 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 grati- 
 tude upon the other? 
 
 I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk. 
 
 I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of 
 creature, blinking and looking up with his no eyes 
 in the sun — 
 
 Is it possible I could have steeled my purse 
 against him ? 
 
 Perhaps I had no small change. 
 
 Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words 
 imposition, imposture — give, and ask no questions. 
 Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have una- 
 wares (like this Bank clerk) entertained angels. 
 
 Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted 
 distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor 
 creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before 
 thee, do not stay to inquire whether the "seven 
 small children," in whose name he implores thy as- 
 
 2^
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 sistance, have a veritable existence. Rake 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 re- 
 lieved an indigent bachelor. When they come with 
 their counterfeit looks and mumping tones, think 
 them players. You pay your money to see a come- 
 dian feign these things, which, concerning these 
 poor people, thou canst not certainly tell whether 
 they are feigned or not. 
 
 S84
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST 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 INIutations, 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 following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, hav- 
 ing 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 younkers of his age commonly are, let some 
 sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling 
 quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of 
 their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. To- 
 gether 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 
 
 235
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, 
 not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his 
 father and he could easily build up again with a few 
 dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two, 
 at any time, as for the 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 ex- 
 perienced. 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 negli- 
 gence 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 de- 
 licious ; and surrendering himself up to the new-born 
 236
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 
 
 pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the 
 scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cram- 
 ming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when 
 his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed 
 with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs 
 stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's 
 shoulders, as thick as hailstones, which Bo- bo heeded 
 not any more than if they had been flies. The tick- 
 ling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower 
 regions, had rendered him quite callous to any in- 
 conveniences he might feel in those remote quar- 
 ters. His father might lay on, but he could not beat 
 him from his pig, tiU he had fairly made an end of 
 it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situ- 
 ation, something like the following dialogue ensued. 
 
 "You graceless whelp, what have you got there 
 devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt 
 me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and 
 be hanged to you! but you must be eating fire, and 
 I know not what — what have you got there, I say ?" 
 
 "O 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 morning, soon raked out another pig, and 
 fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser lialf by 
 main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, 
 "Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste— 
 
 237
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 O Lord!" — with such-like barbarous ejaculations, 
 cramming all the while as if he would choke. 
 
 Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the 
 abominable thing, wavering whether he should not 
 put his son to death for an unnatural young mon- 
 ster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it 
 had done his son's, and applying the same remedy 
 to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, 
 which, make what sour mouths he would for a pre- 
 tence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In 
 conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little te- 
 dious), both father and son fairly set down to the 
 mess, and never left off till they had despatched all 
 that remained 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 improving upon the good meat 
 which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange 
 stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's cot- 
 tage was burnt down now more frequently 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 chastis- 
 ing his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to him 
 than ever. At length they were watched, the ter- 
 rible mystery discovered, and father and son sum- 
 moned to take their trial at Pekin, then an incon- 
 238
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 
 
 siderable assize town. Evidence was given, the ob- 
 noxious food itself produced in court, and verdict 
 about 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 Lordship'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. Peo- 
 ple built slighter and slighter every day, until ii was 
 feared that the very science of architecture 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 in- 
 
 239
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 deed of any other animal, might be cooked {burnt, 
 as they called it) without the necessity of consum- 
 ing a whole house to dress it. Then first began the 
 rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string or 
 spit came in a century or two later, I forget in whose 
 dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the man- 
 uscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the most 
 obvious, arts make their way among mankind 
 
 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 (especially in these days) could be 
 assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pre- 
 text and excuse might be found in roast pig. 
 
 Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, 
 I will maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps 
 obsomorum. 
 
 I speak not of your grown porkers — things be- 
 tween 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 immunditice, the hereditary 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 prceludium of a 
 grunt. 
 
 He must be 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, 
 240
 
 
 ^z-r-iJi^ 
 
 <.-.- L;,, 

 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 
 
 to that of the crisp, tawny, well -watched, not over- 
 roasted, crackling, as it is well called — the very- 
 teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at 
 this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resis- 
 tance — with the adhesive oleaginous — O 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 com- 
 mon substance. 
 
 Behold him while he is doing — it seemeth rather 
 a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he 
 is so passive 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 pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shooting stars. — 
 
 See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek 
 he lieth! — wouldst thou have had this innocent 
 grow up to the grossness and indocility which too 
 often accompany maturer swinehood ? Ten to one he 
 would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, 
 disagreeable animal — wallowing in all manner of 
 filthy conversation — from these sins he is happily 
 snatched away — 
 
 Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade. 
 Death came with timely care — 
 
 241
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, while 
 his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coal- 
 heaver bolteth him in reeking sausages — he hath a 
 fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judi- 
 cious epicure — and for such a tomb might be con- 
 tent 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 exco- 
 riateth 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 
 consistently for a mutton-chop. 
 
 Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provoc- 
 ative 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 virtues 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 helpeth, as far as his little means ex- 
 tend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets. 
 He is aU neighbours' fare. 
 
 I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly 
 242
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 
 
 impart a share of the good things of this Hfe wliich 
 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 satisfac- 
 tions, as in mine own. "Presents," I often say, "en- 
 dear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, 
 barn-door chickens (those "tame villatic fowl"), ca- 
 pons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as 
 freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as it 
 were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop 
 must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, 
 *'give everything." I make my stand upon pig. Me- 
 thinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good 
 flavours, to extradomiciliate, 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 hoUday without stuffing a sweet- 
 meat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dis- 
 missed 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 sa- 
 luted 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 
 coxcombry of charity, school-boy like, I made him 
 a present of— the whole cake! I walked on a little, 
 
 243
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 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 feeUngs returned, 
 and I burst into tears, thinking 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 an- 
 other — 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 recol- 
 lection, 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 good- 
 ness; and above all I wished never to see the face 
 again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey 
 impostor. 
 
 Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacri- 
 ficing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt 
 to death with something of a shock, as we hear of 
 any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline 
 is gone by, or it would be 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 
 244
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 
 
 of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet 
 we should be cautious, while we condemn the in- 
 humanity, how we censure the wisdom of the prac- 
 tice. 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 
 jiagellationem extremam) super-added 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 Mrs. Cook, I 
 beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your 
 whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, 
 stuff them out with plantations of the rank and 
 guilty garlic; you cannot poison them, or make 
 them stronger than they are — but consider, he is a 
 weakling — a flower. 
 
 245
 
 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE 
 BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE 
 
 AS a single man, I have spent a good deal of my 
 jljL time in noting down the infirmities of Married 
 People, to console myself for those superior plea- 
 sures, which they tell me I have lost by remaining 
 as I am. 
 
 I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their 
 wives ever made any great impression upon me, or 
 had much tendency to strengthen me in those anti- 
 social resolutions which I took up long ago upon 
 more substantial considerations. What oftenest of- 
 fends me at the houses of married persons where I 
 visit, is an error of quite a different description; — 
 it is that they are too loving. 
 
 Not too loving neither : that does not explain my 
 meaning. 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 
 you are not the object of this preference. Now there 
 are some things which give no offence, while imphed 
 246
 
 BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE 
 
 or taken for gi-anted 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 opportunity 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 right have a married couple to 
 tell me by speeches, and looks that are scarce less 
 plain than speeches, that I am not the happy 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 
 be made sufficiently mortifying, but these admit of 
 a palliative. The knowledge which is brought out to 
 insult me, may accidentally improve me; and in the 
 rich man's houses and pictures, — his parks and gar- 
 dens, I have a temporary usufi'uct at least. But the 
 display of married happiness has none of these pal- 
 liatives : it is throughout pure, unrecompensed, un- 
 qualified 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 ad- 
 vantage as much out of sight as possible, that their 
 
 247
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 less favoured neighbours, seeing little of the benefit, 
 may the less be disposed to question the right. But 
 these married monopolists thrust the most obnox- 
 ious part of their patent into our faces. 
 
 Nothing is to me more distasteful than that en- 
 tire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the 
 countenances of a new-married couple, — in that of 
 the lady particularly : it tells you, that her lot is dis- 
 posed 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 ex- 
 pressed. 
 
 The excessive airs which those people give them- 
 selves, 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 content 
 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 incompetent person. Nay, a young married 
 lady of my acquaintance, who, the best of the jest 
 was, had not changed her condition above a fort- 
 night before, in a question on which I had the mis- 
 fortune to differ from her, respecting the properest 
 mode of breeding oysters for the London market, 
 had the assurance to ask with a sneer, how such an 
 248
 
 BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE 
 
 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 commonly have 
 them in most abundance, — that there are few mar- 
 riages that are not blest with at least one of these 
 bargains, — 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, 
 etc. — I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride 
 there can possibly be in having them. If they were 
 young phoenixes, indeed, that were born 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 we, who are not their 
 natural-born subjects, should be expected to bring 
 our spices, myrrh, 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 excel- 
 lent 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 wea- 
 
 249
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 ponless; — let them be arrows, but not to gall and 
 stick us. I have generally observed that these ar- 
 rows are double-headed ; they have two forks, to be 
 sure to hit with one or the other. As for instance, 
 where you come into a house which is full of chil- 
 dren, 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 children. 
 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 
 toying 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, or ten, indiscriminately, 
 — to love all the pretty dears, because children are 
 so engaging! 
 
 I know there is a proverb, "Love me, love my 
 dog": that is not always so very practicable, par- 
 ticularly 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 
 250
 
 BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE 
 
 when my friend went away upon a long absence, I 
 can make shift to love, because I love him, and any- 
 thing 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 ami- 
 able or unamiable 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 wo- 
 men do. Oh ! but you will say, sure it is an attrac- 
 tive age, — there is something in the tender years of 
 infancy that of itself charms us ? That is the very 
 reason why I am more nice about them. I 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 a 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 always rather squeamish hi my 
 women and children. 
 
 But this is not the worst: one must be admitted 
 into their familiarity at least, before they can com- 
 plain of inattention. It imphes visits, and some kind 
 of intercourse. But if the husband be a man with 
 whom you have hved on a friendly footing before 
 marriage — if you did not come in on the life's side 
 
 251
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 — 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 twelvemonth shall roll over your head, you shall 
 find your old friend gradually grow cool and altered 
 towards you, and at last seek opportunities of break- 
 ing with you. I have scarce a married friend of my 
 acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I can rely, 
 whose friendship did not commence after the period 
 of his 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 new mintings. 
 
 Innumerable are the ways which they take to in- 
 sult 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, but an oddity, is one of the ways; — they 
 252
 
 BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE 
 
 have a particular kind of stare for the purpose; — 
 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 gen- 
 eral 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 introduced 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 attacimient 
 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- 
 stands well enough that it is all done in compliment 
 to him, grows weary of the debt of gratitude which 
 is due 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 com- 
 placent 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 accom- 
 plish so desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a 
 kind of innocent simplicity, continually to mistake 
 
 253
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 what it was which first made their husband fond of 
 you. If an esteem for something excellent in your 
 moral character was that which riveted the chain 
 which she is to break, upon any imaginary discovery 
 of a want of poignancy in your conversation, she 
 will cry, "I thought, my dear, you described your 
 
 friend, Mr. , as a great wit?" If, on the other 
 
 hand, it was for some supposed charm in your con- 
 versation that he first grew to like you, and was 
 content for this to overlook some trifling in'egular- 
 ities in your moral deportment, upon the first no- 
 tice of any of these she as readily exclaims, "This, 
 
 my dear, is your good Mr. 1" 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 con- 
 ceived a great desire to be acquainted with me, but 
 that the sight of me had very much disappointed 
 her expectations; for, from her husband's represen- 
 tations of me, she had formed a notion that she was 
 to see a fine, tall, officer-like looking man (I use 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 pos- 
 sible approximate to mine; he standing five feet 
 254
 
 BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE 
 
 five in his shoes, in which I have the advantao-e of 
 him by about half an inch; and he no more than 
 myself exhibiting any indications of a martial char- 
 acter in his air or countenance. 
 
 These are some of the mortifications which I have 
 encountered in the absurd attempt to visit at their 
 houses. To enumerate them all would be a vain en- 
 deavour; I shall 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 fa- 
 miHarity, and their husbands with ceremony. Tes- 
 tacea, for instance, kept me the other night two 
 or three hours beyond my usual time of supping, 
 
 while she was fretting because JMr. 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 ceremony is an inven- 
 tion 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 
 attentions in little points, for that invidious prefer- 
 ence which it is forced to deny in the greater. Had 
 Testacea kept the oysters back for nic, and with- 
 stood her husband's importunities 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 
 
 256
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 point of a modest behaviour and decorum : there- 
 fore I must protest against the vicarious gluttony 
 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 my married 
 acquaintance by Roman 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 desperate offenders in future. 
 
 256
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 
 
 THE casual sight of an old Play Bill, which I 
 picked up the other day — I know not by what 
 chance it was preserved so long — tempts me to call 
 to mind a few of the Players, who make the prin- 
 cipal figure in it. It presents the cast of parts in the 
 Twelfth Night, at the old Drury-lane Theatre two- 
 and-thirty years ago. There is something very touch- 
 ing in these old remembrances. They make us think 
 how we once used to read a Play Bill — not, as now 
 peradventure, singling out a favourite performer, 
 and casting a negligent eye over the rest; but spell- 
 ing 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 at- 
 tribute now to the time's best actors. — "Orsino, by 
 Mr. Barrymore." — What a full Shakspearian 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 perform- 
 ance of such parts as Opheha; Helena, in All's AV^ell 
 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 
 
 257
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 days it sank, with her steady, melting eye, into the 
 heart. Her joyous parts — in which her memory 
 now chiefly Hves — 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 fore- 
 seen, 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 new sugges- 
 tion — and the heightened image of "Patience" still 
 followed after that, as by some growing (and not 
 mechanical) process, thought springing up after 
 thought, I would almost say, as they were watered 
 by her tears. So in those fine lines — 
 
 Write 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 rhet- 
 oric, most legitimate then, when it seemed alto- 
 gether without rule or law. 
 
 Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Renard), then in the pride 
 of her beauty, made an admirable Olivia. She was 
 particularly excellent in her unbending scenes in 
 258
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 
 
 conversation with the Clown. I have seen some 
 Ohvias — 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 sen- 
 tence or two with, and then to be dismissed, and 
 she to be the Great Lady still. She touched tlie 
 imperious 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 appre- 
 ciated, 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 
 melancholy phrase if taken aright, reader — Bensley 
 had most of the swell of soul, was greatest in the 
 delivery of heroic conceptions, the emotions conse- 
 quent upon the presentment of a great idea to tlie 
 fancy. He had the true poetical entluisiasm — the 
 rarest faculty among players. None tliat I remem- 
 ber 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 dis- 
 sonance, and at times the inspiriting effect, of the 
 trumpet. His gait was uncouth and stiff', but no 
 way embarrassed by affectation; and the thoroiiii:li- 
 bred gentleman was uppermost in every movenient.
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 He seized the moment of passion with the greatest 
 truth ; hke a faithful clock, never striking before the 
 time; never anticipating or leading you to antici- 
 pate. 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 fidel- 
 ity as the nuncios in Homer deliver the errands of 
 the gods. He let the passion or the sentiment 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 act- 
 ing. For this reason, his lago was the only en- 
 durable 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 com- 
 monly 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 triumphant tone 
 about the character, natural to a general conscious- 
 ness 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 mis- 
 chief. It did not clap or crow before its time. It was 
 not a man setting his wits at a child, and winking 
 260
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 
 
 all the while at other children who are mightily- 
 pleased at being let into the secret; but a consum- 
 mate 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 Malvoho, 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 
 tradition must be worn out from the stage. No 
 manager in those days would have dreamed of giv- 
 ing it to Mr. Baddely, or Mr. Parsons; when Bens- 
 ley was occasionally absent from the theatre, John 
 Kemble thought it no derogation to succeed to the 
 part. Malvolio is not essentially ludicrous. He be- 
 comes comic but by accident. He is cold, austere, 
 repelling; but dignified, consistent, 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 f[imilies, in the service of a Lambert, 
 or a Lady Fairfax. But his morality and his man- 
 ners 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 ob- 
 jects to excite laughter. His quality is at the best 
 unlovely, but neither buffoon nor contemptible. 
 His bearing is lofty, a Uttle above his station, but 
 
 261
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 probably not much above his deserts. We see no 
 reason why he should not have been brave, honour- 
 able, accomplished. His careless committal of the 
 ring to the ground (which he was commissioned 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, de- 
 clares that she "would not have him miscarry for 
 half of her dowry." Does this look as if the charac- 
 ter 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 considerateness, 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-affairs, 
 Malvolio might feel the honour of the family in 
 some sort in his keeping; as it appears not that 
 Olivia had any more brothers, or kinsmen, to look 
 to it — for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice re- 
 spects at the buttery-hatch. That Malvolio was 
 262
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 
 
 meant to be represented as possessing estimable 
 qualities, the expression of the Duke, in his anxi- 
 ety 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 great- 
 ness seems never to desert him. He argues highly 
 and well with the supposed Sir Topas, and philoso- 
 phizes gallantly upon his straw.^ There must have 
 been some shadow of worth about the man; he 
 must have been something more than a mere va- 
 pour — a thing of straw, or Jack in office — before 
 Fabian and Maria could have 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, opin- 
 ionated, but his superstructure of pride seemed bot- 
 tomed upon a sense of worth. 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 you felt that 
 it was upon an elevation. He was magnificent from 
 the outset; but when the decent sobrieties of the 
 
 * Clonm. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl ? 
 Mai That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. 
 Cbnm. What thinkest thou of his opinion ? 
 
 Mai I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his opinion. 
 
 263
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 character began to give way, and the poison of self- 
 love, in his conceit of the Countess's affection, grad- 
 ually 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 care- 
 lessness 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 
 morahty obtruded itself, it was a deep sense of the 
 pitiable infirmity of man's nature, that can lay him 
 open to such frenzies — but, in truth, you rather ad- 
 mired than pitied the lunacy while 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 prin- 
 cipality 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. O! shake 
 not the castles of his pride — endure yet for a sea- 
 son, bright moments of confidence — "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 in- 
 supportable triumph of the foolish knight — the 
 counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked — and "thus the 
 whirhgig of time," as the true clown hath it, "brings 
 264
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 
 
 in his revenges." I confess that I never saw the ca- 
 tastrophe 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 I Lovegrove, who 
 came nearest to the old actors, revived the char- 
 acter some few seasons ago, and made it sufficiently 
 grotesque ; but Dodd was it, as it came out of na- 
 ture's hands. It might be said to remain in puris 
 naturalibus. In expressing slowness of apprehen- 
 sion, this actor surpassed all others. You could see 
 the first dawn of an idea stealing slowly over his 
 countenance, climbing up by little and little, with 
 a painful process, till it cleared up at last to the ful- 
 ness 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 bal- 
 loon 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-and-twenty years ago, that walking in the 
 gardens of Gray's Inn — they were then far finer 
 than they are now — the accursed Verulam Build- 
 ings had not encroached upon all the east side of 
 them, cutting out delicate green crankles, and shoul- 
 
 265
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 dering away one of two of the stately alcoves of the 
 terrace — the survivor stands gaping and relation- 
 less as if it remembered 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 af- 
 ternoon 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 mortality. 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 demonstrate 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 mis- 
 taken. 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 recognised but as the 
 usher of mirth ; that looked out so formally fiat in 
 Foppington, so frothily pert in Tattle, so impotently 
 ^66
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 
 
 busy in Backbite; so blankly divested of all mean- 
 ing, 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, intelli- 
 gent — which I had so often despised, made mocks 
 at, made merry with! The remembrance of the 
 freedoms which I had taken with it came upon me 
 with a reproach of insult. I could have asked it par- 
 don. I thought it looked upon me with a sense of 
 injury. There is something strange as well as sad in 
 seeing actors — your pleasant fellows particularly — 
 subjected to and suffering the common lot; — their 
 fortunes, their casualties, their deaths, seem to be- 
 long 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. 
 He had quitted the stage some months; and, as I 
 learned afterwards, had been in the habit of resort- 
 ing 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 of no very reprehensible fooleries 
 — taking off by degrees the buffoon mask which he 
 
 267
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 might feel he had worn too long — and rehearsing 
 for a more solemn cast of part. Dying, he "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. — Richard, 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 whose 
 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." 
 
 What clipped his wings, or made it expedient 
 that he should exchange the holy for the profane 
 state; whether he had lost his good voice (his best 
 recommendation to that office), like Sir John, 
 "with hallooing and singing of anthems " ; or whether 
 
 * Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice 
 collection of old English literature. I should judge him to have 
 been a man of wit. I know one instance of an impromptu which 
 no length of study could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem 
 White, had seen him one evening in Aguecheek, and recognising 
 Dodd the next day in Fleet Street, was irresistibly 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 unusual address from a stranger, with a 
 courteous half-rebuking wave of the hand, put him off with an 
 "Away, Fool." 
 268
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 
 
 he was adjudged to lack something, even m those 
 early years, of the gravity indispensable to an occu- 
 pation which professeth to "commerce with the 
 skies," — I could never rightly learn; but we find 
 him, after the 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 which 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, with which he invested himself with so 
 much humility after his deprivation, 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 albe. 
 
 The first fruits of his secularization was an en- 
 gagement upon the boards of Old Drury, at which 
 theatre he commenced, as I have been told, with 
 adopting the manner of Parsons in old men's char- 
 acters. 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 per- 
 plexity, himself no whit troubled for the matter. He 
 was known, hke 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 
 
 269
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 of — O La! Thousands of hearts yet respond to the 
 chuckling O La! of Dicky Suett, brought back to 
 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 he had but two grains (nay, 
 half a grain) of it, he could never have supported 
 himself upon those two spider's strings, which served 
 him (in the latter part of his unmixed existence) as 
 legs. A doubt or a scruple must have made him 
 totter, a sigh have puffed him down ; the weight of 
 a frown had staggered him, a wrinkle made him 
 lose his balance. But on he went, scrambling upon 
 those airy stilts of his, with Robin Goodfellow, 
 "thorough brake, thorough briar," reckless of a 
 scratched face or a torn doublet. 
 
 Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed his fools 
 and jesters. They have all the true Suett stamp, a 
 loose and shambling 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 rhymes 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- 
 
 270
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 
 
 natured, moral pretensions. Dicky was more liked 
 for his sweet, good-natured, no pretensions at all. 
 Your whole conscience stirred with Bannister's per- 
 formance of Walter in the Children in the Wood — 
 but Dicky seemed like a thing, as Shakspeare says 
 of Love, too young to know what conscience is. He 
 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 
 Robert Palmer, who kindly watched his exit, that 
 he received the last stroke, neither varying his ac- 
 customed tranquillity, nor tune, with the simple 
 exclamation, worthy to have been recorded in his 
 epitaph— O La! O La! Bobby! 
 
 The elder Palmer (of stage-trading celebrity) com- 
 monly played Sir Toby in those days; but there is 
 a solidity of wit in the jests of that half-Falstaff 
 which he did not quite fill out. He was as much too 
 showy as Moody (who sometimes took the part) 
 was dry and sottish. In sock or buskin there was an 
 air of swaggering gentility about Jack Palmer. He 
 was a gentleman with a slight infusion of the foot- 
 man. His brother Bob (of recenter memory), who 
 was his shadow in everything while he lived, and 
 dwindled into less than a shadow afterwards — was 
 a gentleman with a little stronger infusion of the 
 latter ingredient; that was all. It is amazing liow a 
 
 271
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 little of the more or less makes a difference in these 
 things. When you saw Bobby in the Duke's Ser- 
 vant,^ you said, "What a pity such a pretty fellow 
 was only a servant!" When you saw Jack figuring 
 in Captain Absolute, you thought you could trace 
 his promotion to some lady of quality who fancied 
 the handsome fellow in his topknot, and had bought 
 him a commission. Therefore 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 com- 
 mon one. It was reserved for the spectator; and the 
 dramatis 'personoe were supposed to know nothing 
 at all about it. The lies of Young Wilding, and the 
 sentiments in Joseph Surface, were thus marked out 
 in a sort of italics to the audience. This secret corre- 
 spondence with the company before the curtain 
 (which is the bane and death of tragedy) has an ex- 
 tremely 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 believe in such 
 characters as Surface — the villain of artificial com- 
 edy — even while you read or see them. If you did, 
 they would shock and not divert you. When Ben, 
 in Love for Love, returns from sea, the following 
 ^ High Life Below Stairs.
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 
 
 exquisite dialogue occurs at his first meeting with 
 his father : — 
 
 Sir Sampson. Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben, since 
 I saw thee. 
 
 Ben. Ey, ey, been. Been far enough, an that be all. — Well, 
 father, and how do all at home? how does brother Dick and 
 brother Val.'' 
 
 Sir Sampson. Dick ! body o' me, Dick has been dead these two 
 years. I writ you word when you were at Leghorn. 
 
 Ben. Mess, that's true; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's dead, as 
 you say — well, and how.-* — I have a many questions to ask you. 
 
 Here is an instance of insensibihty which in real 
 life would be revolting, or rather in real life could 
 not have co-existed with the warm-hearted temper- 
 ament of the character. But when you read it in tlie 
 spirit with which such playful selections and spe- 
 cious combinations rather than strict metaphrases of 
 nature should be taken, or when you saw 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 creation of Congreve's fancy — a dreamy combi- 
 nation of all the accidents of a sailor's character— 
 his contempt of money— his credulity to women — 
 with that necessary estrangement from home whicli 
 it is just within the verge of credibility to suppose 
 might produce such an hallucination as is here de- 
 scribed. We never think the 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 
 
 273
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 — the creature dear to half- belief — which Bannister 
 exhibited — displays before our eyes a downright 
 concretion of a Wapping sailor — a jolly warm- 
 hearted Jack Tar — and nothing else — when in- 
 stead of investing it with a delicious confusedness 
 of the head, and a veering undirected goodness of 
 purpose — he gives to it a downright daylight under- 
 standing, and a fuU 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 dis- 
 cord of the thing; the scene is disturbed; a real man 
 has got in among the dramatis pet'sonce, 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 or second gallery. 
 
 374
 
 ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF 
 THE LAST CENTURY 
 
 THE artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, 
 is quite extinct on our stage. Congreve and 
 Farquhar 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 alto- 
 gether. The business of their dramatic characters 
 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 ap- 
 peal to the dramatis personce, his peers. We have 
 been spoiled with— not sentimental comedy- but 
 a tyrant far more pernicious to our pleasures which 
 has succeeded to it, the exclusive and all-devouring 
 
 275
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 drama of common life; where the moral point is 
 everything ; where, instead of the fictitious half- be- 
 lieved personages of the stage (the phantoms of old 
 comedy), we recognise ourselves, our brothers, aunts, 
 kinsfolk, allies, patrons, enemies, — the same as in 
 life, — with an interest in what is going on so hearty 
 and substantial, that we cannot afford our moral 
 judgment, in its deepest and most vital results, to 
 compromise or slumber for a moment. What is 
 theix transacting, by no modification is made to af- 
 fect 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 es- 
 cape from the pressure of reality, so much as to 
 confirm our experience of it; to make assurance 
 double, and take a bond of fate. We must live our 
 toilsome lives twice over, as it was the mournful 
 privilege of Ulysses to descend twice to the shades. 
 All that neutral ground of character, which stood 
 between vice and virtue ; or which in fact was indif- 
 ferent 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 casuistry — 
 is broken up and disfranchised, as injurious to the 
 interests of society. The privileges of the place are 
 taken away by law. We dare not dally with images, 
 or names, of wrong. We bark like foolish dogs at 
 shadows. We dread infection from the scenic repre- 
 276
 
 ON ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 
 
 sentation of disorder, 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 precau- 
 tion against the breeze and sunshine. 
 
 I confess for myself that (with no great delin- 
 quencies to answer for) I am glad for a season to 
 take an airing beyond the diocese of the strict con- 
 science, — not to live always in the precincts of the 
 law courts, — but now and then, for a dream- while 
 or so, to imagine a world with no meddling restric- 
 tions — to get into recesses, whither the hunter can- 
 not follow me — 
 
 — Secret shades 
 Of woody Ida's inmost grove. 
 While 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 contentedly for having respired the breath 
 of an imaginary freedom. I 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 Wycherley's — comedies. I am the 
 gayer at least for it; and I 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 themselves almost as much 
 as fairy land. Take one of their characters, male or 
 female (with few exceptions they are alike), and 
 place it in a modem play, and my n irtuous indig- 
 
 m
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 nation shall rise against the profligate wretch as 
 warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire; be- 
 cause in a modern play I am to judge of the right 
 and the wrong. The standard of police is the mea- 
 sure 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 Swedenborgian bad spirit that has wan- 
 dered 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? — 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. No good person can 
 be justly offended as a spectator, because no good 
 person suffers on the stage. Judged morally, every 
 character in these plays — the few exceptions only 
 are mistakes — is alike essentially vain and worthless. 
 The great art of Congreve is especially shown in 
 this, that he has entirely excluded from his scenes 
 — some little generosities in the part of Angelica 
 278
 
 ON ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 
 
 perhaps excepted — not only anything like a fault- 
 less character, but any pretensions to goodness or 
 good feelings whatsoever. Whether he did this de- 
 signedly, or instinctively, the effect is as happy as 
 the design (if design) was 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 per- 
 sonages — and I think it is owing to this very indif- 
 ference for any, that you endure the whole. He has 
 spread a privation of moral light, I will call it, 
 rather than by the ugly name of palpable darkness, 
 over his creations; and his shadows flit before you 
 without distinction or preference. Had he intro- 
 duced a good character, a single gush of moral feel- 
 ing, a revulsion of the judgment to actual life and 
 actual duties, the impertinent Goshen would have 
 only lighted to the discovery of deformities, which 
 now are none, because we think them none. 
 
 Translated into real life, the characters of his, and 
 his friend Wycherley's dramas, are profligates and 
 strumpets, — the business of their brief existence, 
 the undivided pursuit 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. No sudi ef- 
 fects are produced, in their world. When we are 
 among them, we are amongst a chaotic people. We 
 
 279
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 are not to judge them by our usages. No reverend 
 institutions are insulted by their proceedings — for 
 they have none among them. No peace of famiUes 
 is violated — for no family ties exist among them. 
 No 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 affection's depth and wedded faith are 
 not of the growth of that soil. There is neither right 
 nor wrong, — gratitude or its opposite, — claim or 
 duty, — paternity 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 contem- 
 plate an Atlantis, a scheme, out of which our cox- 
 combical 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 necessi- 
 ties of shame and blame. We would indict our very 
 dreams. 
 
 Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant 
 upon growing old, it is something to have seen the 
 School for Scandal in its glory. This comedy grew 
 280
 
 ON ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 
 
 out of Congreve and Wycherley, but gathered some 
 allays of the sentimental comedy which followed 
 theirs. It is impossible that it should be now acted, 
 though it continues, at long intervals, to be an- 
 nounced 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 ex- 
 press it in a word — the downright acted villany of 
 the part, so different from the pressure of conscious 
 actual wickedness, — the hypocritical assumption of 
 hypocrisy, — which made Jack so deservedly a fa- 
 vourite in that character, I must needs conclude 
 the present generation of playgoers more virtuous 
 than myself, or more dense. I freely confess that he 
 divided the palm with me with his better brother; 
 that, in fact, I Mked him quite as well. Not but 
 there are passages, — like that, for instance, where 
 Joseph is made to refuse a pittance to a poor re- 
 lation, — incongruities which Sheridan was forced 
 upon by the attempt to join the artificial with tlie 
 sentimental comedy, either of which must destroy 
 the other — but over these obstructions Jack's man- 
 ner 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 higlily artificial manner of 
 Palmer in this character counteracted every disa- 
 
 281
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 greeable impression which you might have received 
 from the contrast, supposing them real, between the 
 two brothers. You did not believe in Joseph with 
 the same faith with which you believed in Charles. 
 The latter was a pleasant reahty, the former a no 
 less pleasant poetical foil to it. The comedy, I have 
 said, is incongruous; a mixture of Congreve 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 not dare to do the part in the same man- 
 ner. He would instinctively avoid every turn which 
 might tend to unrealise, and so to make the char- 
 acter fascinating. He must take his cue from his 
 spectators, who would expect a bad man and a good 
 man as rigidly opposed to each other as the death- 
 beds of those geniuses are contrasted in the prints, 
 which I am sorry to say 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 co- 
 eval) 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 con- 
 trast with the meek complacent kissing of the rod, — 
 taking it in like honey and butter, — with which the 
 latter submits to the scythe of the gentle bleeder. 
 Time, who wields his lancet with the apprehensive 
 282
 
 ON ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 
 
 finger of a popular young ladies' surgeon. What 
 flesh, like 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. He was playing to you 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 hps. 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 plethory? 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 this our age of seriousness. The pleasant 
 old Teazle King, too, is gone in good time. 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 judgment upon everything. Joseph Sur- 
 face, to go down now, must be a downright revolt- 
 ing villain — no compromise — his first appearance 
 must shock and give horror — his specious plausi- 
 bilities, which the pleasurable faculties of our fa- 
 thers welcomed with such hearty greetings, know- 
 ing that no harm (dramatic harm even) could come, 
 or was meant to come, of them, must inspire a cold 
 and kilhng aversion. Charles (the real canting pcr- 
 
 283
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 son of the scene — for the hypocrisy of Joseph has 
 its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's pro- 
 fessions of a good heart centre in downright self- 
 satisfaction) must be 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 be a real person, capable 
 in law of sustaining an injury — a person towards 
 whom duties are to be acknowledged — the genuine 
 crim. con. antagonist of the villainous seducer Jo- 
 seph. To realise him more, his sufferings under his 
 unfortunate match must have the downright pun- 
 gency of life — must (or should) make you not mirth- 
 ful 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 man- 
 ner as if you heard the reputation of a dear female 
 friend attacked in your real presence. Crabtree and 
 Sir Benjamin — those poor snakes that live but 
 in the sunshine of your mirth — must be ripened 
 by this hot-bed process of reahzation into asps or 
 amphisbsenas ; and Mrs. Candour — O! frightful! 
 — become a hooded serpent. O! who that remem- 
 bers Parsons and Dodd — the wasp and butterfly 
 of the School for Scandal — in those two charac- 
 ters; and charming natural Miss Pope, the perfect 
 284
 
 ON ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 
 
 gentlewoman as distinguished from the fine lady of 
 comedy, in this latter part — would forego the true 
 scenic delight — the escape from life — the obhv- 
 ion of consequences — the hohday barring out of 
 the pedant Reflection — those Saturnalia of two or 
 three brief hours, well won from the world — to sit 
 instead at one of our modern plays — to have his 
 coward conscience (that forsooth must not be left 
 for a moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals 
 — dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without 
 repose must be — and his moral vanity pampered 
 with images of notional justice, notional benefi- 
 cence, lives saved without the spectator's risk, and 
 fortunes given away that cost the author notliing ? 
 No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast 
 in all its parts as this manager's comedy. Miss Far- 
 ren 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 remember 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 be- 
 forehand in lofty declamation. He had no sins of 
 Hamlet or of Richard 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, 
 
 285
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 the weighty sense of Kemble made up for more 
 personal incapacity than he had to answer for. His 
 harshest tones in this part came steeped and dulci- 
 fied 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. Not one of his sparkling sen- 
 tences was lost. I remember minutely how he de- 
 livered 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 Wycherley — because 
 none understood it — half so well as John Kemble. 
 His Valentine, in Love for Love,, was, to my recol- 
 lection, faultless. He flagged sometimes in the in- 
 tervals 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 witty dia- 
 logue. The relaxing levities of tragedy have not been 
 touched by any since him — the playful court-bred 
 spirit in which he condescended to the players in 
 Hamlet — the sportive relief which he threw into 
 the darker shades of Richard — disappeared with 
 him. He had his sluggish moods, his torpors — but 
 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, than 
 286
 
 ON ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 
 
 errors of the judgment. They were, at worst, less 
 painful than the eternal tormenting unappeasable 
 vigilance, — the "lidless dragon eyes," of present 
 fashionable tragedy. 
 
 «T
 
 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 
 
 NOT many nights ago I had come home from 
 seeing this extraordinary performer in Cockle- 
 top ; 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, by 
 conjuring up the most opposite associations. I re- 
 solved 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 excess, relieved it- 
 self 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 slumbers, 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 
 ^88
 
 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 
 
 strange mortals ever shot his proper countenance 
 mto, from the day he came commissioned to dry up 
 the tears of the town for the loss of the now almost 
 forgotten Edwin. O 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 Munden gallery. 
 In richness and variety, the latter would not fall far 
 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 
 his. 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 fea- 
 tures, 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 sur- 
 prised 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 senti- 
 ment which has made the pulse of a crowded then 
 
 £89
 
 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 
 
 tre 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 be- 
 gan, and must end, with himself. 
 
 Can any man wonder, like him ? can any man see 
 ghosts i hke him? or Jight with his own shadow — 
 "sessa" — as he does in that strangely-neglected 
 thing, the Cobbler of Preston — where his alterna- 
 tions 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 throw, or ever attempted to throw, a preter- 
 natural interest over the commonest daily-life ob- 
 jects? A table or a joint-stool, in his conception, 
 rises into a dignity equivalent to Cassiopeia's chair. 
 It is invested with constellatory importance. 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 Pla- 
 tonic idea. He understands a leg of mutton in its 
 290
 
 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 
 
 quiddity. He stands wondering, amid the common- 
 place materials of life, like primaeval man with the 
 sun and stars about him. 
 
 SOI
 
 NOTES
 
 NOTES 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 
 
 ("London Magazine,"" August 1820) 
 
 CHARLES LAMB left Chrises Hospital in the year 1789, 
 at the age of fourteen, and at some date within the next 
 two years he obtained a situation in the South-Sea House. His 
 father''s employer, Samuel Salt, the Bencher of the Inner Tem- 
 ple, was a Deputy-Governor of the South-Sea House at the 
 time, and it was doubtless by the influence of this kind friend 
 that the appointment was obtained. Charles's elder brother, 
 John, was already a clerk in the office. In the Royal Calendar 
 for 1792 John LamVs name appears as holding the position 
 of Deputy-Accountant. Other of the names mentioned by 
 Lamb in this Essay are also found in the official records of 
 the day — John Tipp, on whose promotion to the office of 
 Accountant (as "John Tipp, Esq."), John Lamb succeeded 
 to the post just mentioned; W. Evans, Deputy-Cashier in 
 1791; Thomas Tame, Deputy-Cashier in 1793; and Richard 
 Plumer, Deputy-Secretary in 1800. Lamb's fondness for gra- 
 tuitous mystification is thus curiously illustrated in the in- 
 sinuation towards the close of the Essay that the names he 
 has recorded are fictitious, after all. Lamb's old colleague, 
 Elia, whose name he borrowed, has not (as far as I am aware) 
 been yet traced in the annals of the office. But he probably 
 held, like Lamb himself, a very subordinate position. 
 
 A full account of the famous South-Sea Bubble will be 
 found in Lord Stanhope's History, and also in Chambers's 
 Book of Days. For an account of the constitution of the 
 Company at the end of the last century, Hughson's Walks 
 through London (1805) may be consulted. He says— "Not- 
 withstanding the terms of the charter by which we are to 
 
 295
 
 NOTES 
 
 look upon this Company as merchants, it is observable that 
 they never carried on any considerable trade, and now they 
 have no trade. They only receive interest for their capital 
 which is in the hands of the Government, and d£'8000 out 
 of the Treasury towards the expense attending the manage- 
 ment of their affairs, which is done by a Governor, Sub-Gov- 
 ernor, Deputy-Governor, and twenty-one Directors annually 
 chosen on the 6th of February by a majority of votes." Pen- 
 nant (who is refeiTed to in this Essay, and wrote in 1790) 
 says — "In this (Threadneedle) Street also stands the South- 
 Sea House, the place in which the Company did business, 
 when it had any to transact." 
 
 Henry Man^ the Wit, etc. 
 
 The two "forgotten volumes" — "Miscellaneous Works in 
 Verse and Prose of the late Henri/ Man. London, 1802"" — are 
 now before me. They contain a variety of light and amusing 
 papers in verse and prose. The humour of them, however, 
 is naturally still more out of date now than in Lamb's day. 
 One of the epigrams found there may be said to have become 
 classical, — that upon the two Earls (Spencer and Sandwich) 
 who invented respectively "half a coat" and "half a dinner." 
 Henry Man was Deputy-Secretary in 1793. 
 
 Rattle-headed Plumer. 
 
 Lamb had a special interest in the family bearing this name, 
 because his grandmother, Mary Field, was for more than half 
 a century housekeeper at the Dower House of the family, 
 Blakesware in Hertfordshire. The present Mr. Plumer, of 
 Allerton, Totness, a grandson of Richard Plumer of the 
 South-Sea House, by no means acquiesces in the tradition 
 here recorded as to his grandfather's origin. He believes that 
 though the links are missing, Richard Plumer was descended 
 in regular line from the Baronet, Sir Walter Plumer, who 
 died at the end of the seventeenth century. Lamb's memoiy 
 296
 
 NOTES 
 
 has failed him here in one respect. The "Bachelor Uncle," 
 Walter Plumer, uncle of William Plumer of Blakesware, was 
 most certainly not a bachelor (see the Pedigree of the family 
 in Cussans' Hertfordshire ). Lamb is further inaccurate as to 
 the connection of this Walter Plumer with the affair of the 
 franks. A reference to Johnson's Life of Cave will show that 
 it was Cave, and not Plumer, who was summoned before the 
 House of Commons. Walter Plumer, member for Aldborough 
 and Appleby, had given a frank to the Duchess of Marl- 
 borough, which had been challenged by Cave, who held the 
 post of Clerk of the Franks in the House of Commons. For 
 this, Cave was cited before the House, as a Breach of Privilege. 
 In the passage on John Tipp, Lamb, speaking of his fine 
 suite of rooms in Threadneedle Street, adds — "I know not 
 who is the occupier of them now." When the Essay first 
 appeared in the London Magazine, the note in brackets was 
 appended. Thus we learn that John Lamb was still, in 1820, 
 occupying rooms in the old building. 
 
 Mild, child-like, pastoral M . 
 
 "Maynard, hang'd himself" (Lamb's Key). Mr. T. Maynard 
 was chief clerk of the Old Annuities and Three per Cents 
 from 1788 to 1793. His name does not appear in the alma- 
 nacs of the day after this date. 
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION 
 
 ("London Magazine," October 1820) 
 
 LAMB was fond of spending his annual holiday in one or 
 J other of the great university towns, more often perhaps 
 in Cambridge. It was on one such visit, it will be remembered, 
 that Charles and Mary first made the acquaintance of little 
 Emma Isola. On its first appearance in the London, the paper 
 wa» dated "August 5, 1820. From my rooms facing the Bod- 
 
 297
 
 NOTES 
 
 leian.^* A sonnet written a year before at Cambridge, tells of 
 the charm that University associations had for one who had 
 been debarred through infirmity of health and poverty from 
 a university education: — 
 
 "1 was not trained in Academic bowers. 
 And to those learned streams I nothing owe 
 Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow ; 
 Mine have been anything but studious hours. 
 Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers. 
 Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap ; 
 My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap. 
 And I walk gowned; feel unusual powers. 
 Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech. 
 Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain ; 
 And my skull teems with notions infinite. 
 Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach 
 Truths which transcend the searching schoolmen's vein, 
 And half had staggered that stout Stagirite !" 
 
 ** Andrew and John, men famous in old times" 
 Quoted, quite at random, from Paradise Regained, ii. 7. 
 
 Baskett Prayer Book. 
 
 John Baskett, King's Printer in the early years of the eigh- 
 teenth century. He published a variety of Bibles and Prayer- 
 books, including the famous "Vinegar Bible."" 
 
 G.D. 
 
 George Dyer (1755-1841), educated at Christ's Hospital and 
 Emmanuel College, Cambridge. A compiler and editor and 
 general worker for the booksellers, short-sighted, absent- 
 minded, and simple, for whom Lamb had a life-long affection. 
 He compiled, among other books, a History of the Univer' 
 sity and Colleges of Cambridge, and contributed the original 
 matter (preface excepted) to Valpy's edition of the Classics. 
 The account of him given by Crabb Robinson in his Diary 
 well illustrates Lamb's frequent references to this singular 
 ^8
 
 NOTES 
 
 character. " He was one of the best creatures, morally, that 
 ever breathed. He was the son of a watchman in Wapping, 
 and was put to a charity school by some pious Dissenting 
 ladies. He afterwards went to Christ's Hospital, and from 
 there was sent to Cambridge. He was a scholar, but to the 
 end of his days (and he lived to be eighty-five) was a book- 
 seller's drudge. He led a life of literary labour in poverty. 
 He made indexes, corrected the press, and occasionally gave 
 lessons in Latin and Greek. When an undergraduate at 
 Cambridge he became a hearer of Robert Robinson, and 
 consequently a Unitarian. This closed the Church against 
 him, and he never had a fellowship. . . . He wrote one good 
 book — The Life of Robert Robinson, which I have heard 
 Wordsworth mention as one of the best works of biography 
 in the language. . . . Dyer had the kindest heart and simplest 
 manners imaginable. It was literally the case with him that 
 he would give away his last guinea. . . . Not many years be- 
 fore his death he man-ied his laundress, by the advice of his 
 friends — a very worthy woman. He said to me once, 'Mrs. 
 Dyer is a woman of excellent natural sense, but she is not 
 literate.' That is, she could neither read nor write. Dyer was 
 blind for a few years before his death. I used occasionally to 
 go on a Sunday morning to read to him. . . . After he came 
 to London, Dyer lived always in some very humble cliambers 
 in Clifford's Inn, Fleet Street." 
 
 Crive me Agurs wish. 
 
 See the Book of Proverbs xxx. 10. 
 
 Our friend M.'s in Bedford Square. 
 M. was Basil Montagu, Q. C., and editor of Bacon. Mrs. M. 
 was of course Irving's "noble lady," so familiar to us from 
 Carlyle's Reminiscences. "Pretty A. S." was Mrs. Montagu's 
 daughter, Anne Skepper, aftenvards the wife of Mr. Procter 
 (Barry Cornwall). In his Memoir of Lamb, Mr. Procter sig- 
 
 299
 
 NOTES 
 
 nificantly remarks that he could vouch personally for the truth 
 of this anecdote of Dyer's absent-mindedness. 
 
 Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose 
 ofMSS. 
 
 In the London Magazine was appended the following note: 
 — "There is something to me repugnant at any time in writ- 
 ten hand. The text never seems determinate. Print settles it. 
 I had thought of the Lycidas as of a full-grown beauty — as 
 springing up with all its parts absolute — till, in an evil hour, 
 I was shown the original copy of it, together with the other 
 minor poems of its author, in the library 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, alterable, displaceable at pleasure! as if they might 
 have been otherwise, and just as good! as if inspiration were 
 made up of parts, and these fluctuating, successive, indifferent! 
 I will never go into the workshop of any great artist again, 
 nor desire a sight of his picture till it is fairly off the easel : 
 no, not if Raphael were to be alive again, and painting an- 
 other Galatea." 
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 
 
 ("London Magazine,"" November 1820) 
 
 THE first collected edition of Lamb's Prose and Verse ap- 
 peared in the year 1818, published by C. and J. Oilier. 
 Among other papers it contained one entitled Recollections of 
 Chrisfs Hospital. The Essay was a reprint from the Gentle' 
 man's Magazine for June 1813, where it originally owed its 
 appearance to an alleged abuse of the presentation system in 
 force at the Blue Coat School. 
 300
 
 NOTES 
 
 This earlier article on Christ's Hospital had been written in 
 a serious and genuine vein of enthusiasm for the value and 
 dignity of the old Foundation. Lamb now seems to have re- 
 membered that there were other aspects of schoolboy Hfe 
 imder its shelter that might be profitably dealt with. The 
 "poor friendless boy," in whose character he now writes, was 
 his old schoolfellow Coleridge, and the general truth of the 
 sketch is shown by Coleridge's own reference to his schooldays 
 in the early chapters of his Biographia Literaria. "In my 
 friendless wanderings on our leave-days (for I was an orphan, 
 and had scarce any connections in London) highly was I de- 
 lighted if any passenger, especially if he were dressed in black, 
 would enter into conversation with me.'" 
 
 Lamb's love of mystification shows itself in this Essay in 
 many forms. "Sweet Calne in Wiltshire" is a quite giatuitous 
 substitution for Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire, the home after 
 which young Coleridge did actually yeai'n. Coleridge did, how- 
 ever, reside for a time at Calne in later life. Moreover, as will 
 be seen, the disguise of identity with Coleridge is dropped al- 
 together towards the close of the Essay. The general account 
 of the school here given it is interesting to compare with that 
 given by Leigh Hunt in his autobiography. 
 
 Li's governor (so we called the patron who presented 
 us to the foundation) lived in a manner under his pa- 
 ternal roof. 
 
 It was under Samuel Salt's roof that John Lamb and his 
 family lived, and as the presentation to Christ's was obtained 
 from a friend of Salt's, Lamb considers it fair to speak of the 
 old Bencher as the actual benefactor. 
 
 There was one H . 
 
 Hodges (Lamb's Key). 
 
 801
 
 NOTES 
 
 " To feed our mind with idle portraiture.'* 
 A line apparently extemporised by Lamb as a translation 
 of the passage in Virgil to which he refers, ^^ animum pictura 
 pascit inani.^'' 
 
 **'Twas said 
 He ate strange Jlesh" 
 
 As usual, a new quotation formed out of Lamb's general 
 recollection of an old one. He had in his mind, no doubt, a 
 passage in Antony and Cleopatra (Act I. Sc. 4) — 
 
 ''It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh 
 Which some did die to look on." 
 
 Mr. Hathaway, the then steward. 
 Perry was steward in Lamb's day (see the former Essay on 
 Christ's Hospital). Leigh Hunt says of his successor: — "The 
 name of the steward, a thin stiff man of invincible formality 
 of demeanour, admirably fitted to render encroachment im- 
 possible, was Hathaway. We of the grammar school used to 
 call him 'the Yeoman,"* on account of Shakspeare having mar- 
 ried the daughter of a man of that name, designated as 'a 
 substantial yeoman.'" 
 
 The Rev. James Boyer. 
 
 The Rev. James Boyer became upper master of Christ's in 
 1777. For the better side of Boyer's qualifications as a teacher, 
 see Coleridge's BiograpMa Literaria, the passage beginning, 
 **At school I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sen- 
 sible, though at the same time a very severe master." Else- 
 where Coleridge entirely confirms Lamb's and Leigh Hunt's 
 accounts of Boyer's violent temper and severe discipline. Lamb 
 never reached the position of Grecian, but it is the tradition 
 in Christ's Hospital that he was under Boyer's instruction 
 some time before leaving school. 
 
 SOS
 
 NOTES 
 
 The Rev. Matthew Field. 
 
 Some charming additional traits in this character, entirely 
 confirming Lamb's account, will be found in Leigh Hunt's 
 autobiography. "A man of a more handsome incompetence 
 for his situation perhaps did not exist. He came late of a 
 morning; went away soon in the afternoon; and used to walk 
 up and down, languidly bearing his cane, as if it were a lily, 
 and hearing our eternal Dominuses and As in praesentis with 
 an air of ineffable endurance. Often he did not hear at all. It 
 was a joke with us when any of our friends came to the door, 
 and we asked his permission to go to them, to address him 
 with some preposterous question wide of the mark; to which 
 he used to assent. We would say, for instance, *Are you not a 
 great fool, sir.-*' or 'Isn't your daughter a pretty girl.''' to 
 which he would reply, * Yes, child.' When he condescended to 
 hit us with the cane, he made a face as if he were taking 
 physic." 
 
 The Fortunate Blue-coat Boy. 
 
 A rather foolish Romance, showing how a Blue-coat Boy came 
 to many a rich lady of rank. Its subsidiary title is " Memoirs 
 of the Life and Happy Adventures of Mr. Benjamin Temple- 
 man; Formerly a scholar in Christ's Hospital." By an Or- 
 phanotropian. London, 1770. 
 
 TTie author of the Country Spectator. 
 
 For an amusing account of the origin of this periodical, see 
 
 Mozley's Reminiscences of Oriel College, vol. ii. addenda. 
 
 Dr. T e. 
 
 Dr. TroUope, who succeeded Boyer as head-ma«tcr. 
 
 Th . 
 
 Thornton (Lamb's Key). 
 
 SOS
 
 NOTES 
 
 Poor S . 
 
 "Scott, died in Bedlam'' (Lamb's Kei/), 
 
 Ill-fated M . 
 
 "Maunde, dismissed school" (Lamb's Key). 
 
 "Finding some of Edward's race 
 Unhappy, pass their annals by.'" 
 Adapted from Matt. Prior's Carmen Saeculare for 1700 
 (stanza viii.) — 
 
 *' Janus, mighty deity. 
 Be kind, and as thy searching eye 
 Does our modern story trace. 
 Finding some of Stuart's race 
 Unhappy, pass their annals by." 
 
 C, V. Le G . 
 
 Charles Valentine Le Grice and a younger brother of the 
 name of Samuel were Grecians and prominent members of 
 the school in Lamb's day. They were from the eastern coun- 
 ties. Charles became a clergyman and held a living in Corn- 
 wall. Samuel went into the army, and died in the West Indies. 
 It was he who was staying in London in the autumn of 1796, 
 and showed himself a true friend to the Lambs at the season 
 of the mother's death. Lamb writes to Coleridge, "Sam Le 
 Grice, who was then in town, was with me the three or four 
 first days, and was as a brother to me; gave up every hour of 
 his time to the very hurting of his health and spirits in con- 
 stant attendance, and humouring my poor father; talked with 
 him, read to him, played at cribbage with him." He was a 
 "mad wag," according to Leigh Hunt, who tells some pleas- 
 ant anecdotes of him, but must have been a good-hearted 
 fellow. "Le Grice the elder was a wag," adds Hunt, "like his 
 brother, but more staid. He went into the church as he ought 
 to do, and married a rich widow. He published a translation, 
 abridged, of the celebrated pastoral of Longus; and report 
 304
 
 NOTES 
 
 at school made him the author of a Httle anonymous tract on 
 the Art of Poking the FvreP 
 
 " Which two I behold,'' etc. 
 
 This is Fuller's account of the wit-combats between Ben 
 
 Jonson and Shakspeare. 
 
 The Junior Le G and F . 
 
 The latter of these was named Favell, also a Grecian in the 
 school. These two, according to Leigh Hunt, when at the 
 University wrote to the Duke of York to ask for commis- 
 sions in the army. "The Duke good-natm-edly sent them.'" 
 Favell was killed in the Peninsula. His epitaph will be found 
 on a tablet in Great St. Andrew's Church, Cambridge: — 
 *'Samuel, a Captain in the 61st Regiment, having been en- 
 gaged in the expedition to Egypt, afterwards served in the 
 principal actions in the Peninsula, and fell whilst heading 
 his men to the charge in the Battle of Salamanca, July 21, 
 1812." We shall meet with him again, under a different ini- 
 tial, in the essay on Poor Relations. 
 
 THE TWO RACES OF MEN 
 ("London Magazine," Decembee 1820) 
 
 Ralph Bigod. 
 
 John Fenwick, editor of the Albion. See later essay on Next>»- 
 
 papers Thirty-Jive Years Ago. 
 
 " To slacken virtue, and abate her edge. 
 
 Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise J* 
 Paradise Regained, ii. 455. 
 
 Comberbatch, 
 
 More properly ComberbacTc, the name adopted by Coleridge 
 when he enlisted in the 15th Light Dragoons, in December 
 
 805
 
 NOTES 
 
 1793. He gave his name to the authorities as Silas Titus 
 Coraberback, with initials corresponding to his own, perhaps in 
 order that the marks on his clothes might not raise suspicion. 
 *' Being at a loss when suddenly asked my name,"" he writes, 
 "I answered Comberback; and, verily, my habits were so little 
 equestrian, that my horse, I doubt not, was of that opinion." 
 
 Wayward, spiteful K, 
 
 Kenney, the dramatist, who married a Frenchwoman and 
 
 lived for some years at Versailles. Lamb visited him there in 
 
 1822. 
 
 " Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness.^' 
 
 I have not been able as yet to trace this quotation to it« 
 
 source. 
 
 s. T. a 
 
 Of course, Coleridge again. It is a good illustration of LamVs 
 fondness for puzzling that, having to instance his friend, he 
 indicates him three times in the same essay by a different 
 alias. Coleridge's constant practice of enriching his own and 
 other's books with these marginalia is well known. 
 
 NEW YEAR'S EVE 
 ("London Magazine," January 1821) 
 
 IT was probably this paper, together with that on Witches 
 and other Night Fears, which so shocked the moral sense 
 of Southey, and led to his lamenting publicly, in the pages of 
 the Quarterly, the "absence of a sounder religious feeling" in 
 the Essays of Elia. The melancholy scepticism of its strain 
 would appear to have struck others at the time. A graceful 
 and tenderly-remonstrative copy of verses, suggested by it, 
 appeared in the London Magazine for August 1821, signed 
 306
 
 NOTES 
 
 *^Oleny Lamb noticed them in a letter to his publislier Mr. 
 Taylor, of July 30. "You will do me injustice if vou do not 
 convey to the writer of the beautiful lines, which I here re- 
 turn you, my sense of the extreme kindness which dictates 
 them. Poor Elia (call him Ellia) does not pretend to so very 
 dear revelations of a future state of being as 'Olen' seems 
 gifted with. He stumbles about dark mountains at best; but 
 he knows at least how to be thankful for this life, and is too 
 thankful, indeed, for certain relationships lent him here, not 
 to tremble for a possible resumption of the gift." 
 
 Lamb suggests that the verses were by James Montgomery, 
 who was on the staff of the London Magazine, but he was mis- 
 taken. "Olen"''' was a nam de guerre of Charles A. Elton, of 
 Clevedon Court, Somerset, author of several volumes of poems, 
 and contributions to classical learning. The poem in the Lon- 
 don was afterwards included by Mr. Elton in a volume "Boy- 
 hood and other Poems,"" published in 1835. 
 
 "I saw the skirts of the departing Year." 
 From the first strophe of Coleridge's "Ode to the depart- 
 ing Year,"" as printed in the original edition of his poems in 
 1796. He afterwards altered the line to 
 
 "I saw the train of the departing Year." 
 
 "Welcome the coming, speed the jiarting giicst.'" 
 From Pope's translation of the Odyssey. (Book xv. line 84.) 
 
 Alice JV n. 
 
 According to Lamb's Key, for Winterton. In any case tlie 
 fictitious name by which Lamb chose to indicate the object 
 of his boyish attachment, whose form and features he lovo<l to 
 dwell on in his early sonnets, Rosamund Gray, and aftcrward« 
 in his essays. We shall meet her again later on. 
 
 807
 
 NOTES 
 
 "Sweet assurance of a look."* 
 
 From Lamb's favourite Elegy on Philip Sidney, by Matthew 
 
 Roy don. 
 
 From what have I notfallen^ if the child I remember 
 was indeed myself. 
 
 The best commentary on this passage is that supplied by 
 Lamb's beautiful sonnet, written as far back as 1795: — 
 
 " We were two pretty babes ; the youngest she. 
 The youngest, and the loveliest far (I ween) 
 And Innocence her name : the time has been 
 We two did love each other's company ; 
 Time was, we two had wept to have been apart. 
 But when, by show of seeming good beguiled, 
 I left the garb and manners of a child. 
 And my first love for man's society. 
 Defiling with the world my virgin heart — 
 My loved companion dropt a tear, and fled. 
 And hid in deepest shades her awful head. 
 Beloved ! who shall tell me, where thou art? 
 In what delicious Eden to be found? 
 That I may seek thee, the wide world around.** 
 
 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 
 
 ("London Magazine," February 1821) 
 
 SEVERAL of Lamb's commentators have assumed Mrs. 
 Battle's identity with Mary Field, Lamb's grandmother, 
 so long resident with the Plumer family; the sole fact common 
 to them being that Lamb represents Mrs. Battle (in the essay 
 on Blakesmoor) as having died at Blakesware, where also Mrs. 
 Field ended her days. But any one who will read, after the 
 present essay, Lamb's indisputably genuine and serious verses 
 on Mrs. Field's death (The Grandame) will feel that to have 
 transformed her into this "gentlewoman bom" with the fine 
 308
 
 NOTES 
 
 "last century countenance,"" would have been little short of a 
 mauvaise plaisanterie, of which Lamb was not likely to have 
 been guilty. The original of Mrs. Battle, as I was informed 
 by the late Mrs. Lefroy, in her youth the intimate friend of 
 Charles Lamb and of the Bumey family, was the wife of Ad- 
 miral Burney, and like all her family an ardent votary of 
 Whist. The details and embellishments of the character were 
 Lamb'^s own, but the outline of it, according to my informant, 
 was recognisable by all Mrs. Burney's friends. 
 
 Mr. Bowles. 
 
 William Lisle Bowles brought out his edition of Pope in 1807. 
 
 Bridget JElia. 
 
 The name by which Lamb always indicates his sister in this 
 
 series of essays. 
 
 A CHAPTER ON EARS 
 
 ("London Magazine,*' Maech 1821) 
 
 LAMB'S indifference to music is one of the best-known 
 J features of his personality. Compare the admirably liu- 
 morous verses, "Free Thoughts on several Eminent Com- 
 posers," beginning — 
 
 "Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, 
 Just as the whim bites ; for my part 
 I do not care a farthing candle 
 For either of them, or for Handel, — 
 Cannot a man live free and easy 
 Without admiring Pergolesi.'' 
 Or through the world with comfort go 
 That never heard of Dr. Blow.?" 
 
 My friend A.'s. 
 
 Doubtless Lamb's friend, William Ayrton, the well-know-n 
 
 musical critic of that day (1777-1858). 
 
 309
 
 NOTES 
 
 Party in a parlour^ etc. 
 
 From a stanza in the original draft of Wordsworth's Peter 
 Bell. The stanza was omitted in all editions of the poem after 
 the first (1819). 
 
 My good Catholic friend Nov . 
 
 Vincent Novello, the well-known organist and composer, fa- 
 ther of Mde. Clara Novello and Mrs. Cowden Clarke (1781- 
 1861). 
 
 — rapt above earth. 
 And possess joys not promised at my birth. 
 
 "As I thus sat, these and other sights had so fully pos- 
 .sessed my soul with content that I thought, as the poet has 
 happily expressed it, — 
 
 I was for that time lifted above earth ; 
 
 And possessed joys not promised at my birth.** 
 
 Walton's Complete Angler, Part I. chap. 4. 
 
 ALL FOOLS' DAY 
 
 ("London Magazine," April 1821) 
 
 — The crazy old church clock. 
 
 And the bewildered chimes. 
 
 Wordsworth, "The Fountain: a Conversation.'* 
 
 Ha! honest R . 
 
 According to Lamb's Key, one Ramsay, who kept the "Lon- 
 don Library"" in Ludgate Street. 
 
 Granville S . 
 
 Granville Sharp, the abolitionist, died in 1813. 
 310
 
 NOTES 
 
 Kin^ Pandion, he is dead. 
 All thy friends are lapt in lead. 
 From the verses on a Nightingale, beginning — 
 ''As it fell upon a day," 
 
 formerly ascribed to Shakspeare, but now known to b« written 
 by Richard Bamfield, 
 
 A QUAKERS' MEETING 
 
 ("London Magazine,"" April 1821) 
 
 "Boreas, and Cesias, and Argestes loud," 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, x. 699. 
 
 — Sands, ignoble things, 
 
 Dropt from the ruined sides of kings. 
 
 From "Lines on the Tombs in Westminster Abbey," by 
 
 Francis Beaumont. 
 
 How reverend is the view of these hushed heads. 
 Looking tranquillity! 
 
 A good example of Lamb's habit of constructing a quota- 
 tion out of his general recollection of a passage. The lines he 
 hjid in his mind are from Congreve's Mourning Bride, Act 
 IL Scene 1: — 
 
 *' How reverend is the face of this tall pile, 
 Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads 
 To bear aloft its arched and ponderous roof. 
 By its own weight made stedfast and immoveable. 
 Looking tranquillity." 
 
 The writings of John Woolman. 
 
 "A jomnal of the life, gospel laboura, and Christian expe- 
 riences of that faithful minister of Jesus Christ, John Wool- 
 Si 1
 
 NOTES 
 
 man, late of Mount Holly, in the Province of Jersey, North 
 America" (1720-1772). Woolman was an American Quaker 
 of humble origin, an "illiterate tailor,'' one of the first who 
 had "misgivings about the institution of slavery."" Crabb 
 Robinson, to whom Lamb introduced the book, becomes rap- 
 turous over it. "His religion is love; his whole existence and 
 all his passions were love!" 
 
 "Forty feeding like one" 
 
 From Wordsworth's verses, written in March 1801, begin- 
 ning—- 
 
 *'The cock is crowing. 
 The stream is flowing." 
 
 I have noted elsewhere Lamb's strong native sympathy with 
 the Quaker spirit and Quaker manners and customs, a sym- 
 pathy so marked that it is difficult to believe it was not in- 
 herited, and that on one or other side of his parentage he had 
 not relations with the Society of Friends. His picture of the 
 Quakerism of sixty years ago is of almost historical value, so 
 great are the changes that have since divided the Society 
 against itself. 
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 ("London Magazine," May 1821) 
 
 My friend M. 
 
 Thomas Manning, the mathematician and explorer, whose 
 
 acquaintance Lamb made early in life at Cambridge. 
 
 King Basilius. 
 
 See Sidney's Arcadia, Book i. (vol. ii. p. 17 of the edition 
 
 of 1725).
 
 NOTES 
 
 E>oen a child, that "plaything for an hour" 
 One of Lamb's quotations from himself. The phrase oc- 
 curs in a charming poem, of three stanzas, in the Poetry for 
 Children:— 
 
 "A child 's a plaything for an hour; 
 Its pretty tricks we try 
 For that or for a longer space; 
 Then tire and lay it by. 
 
 "But I knew one that to itself 
 All seasons could control ; 
 That would have mocked the sense of pain 
 Out of a graved soul. 
 
 "Thou straggler into loving arms. 
 Young climber up of knees, 
 When I forget thy thousand ways. 
 Then life and all shall cease." 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 
 ("London Magazine,"" August 1821) 
 
 Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky. 
 
 Quoted, not with perfect accuracy, from Paradise Lost, vii. 23. 
 
 John Buncle. 
 
 "The Life of John Buncle, Esq.; containing various observa- 
 tions and reflections, made in several parts of the world, and 
 many extraordinary relations." By Thomas Amory (1756-66). 
 Amory was a staunch Unitarian, an eaniest moralist, a hu- 
 morist, and eccentric to the verge of insanity — four qualifica- 
 tions which would appeal iiTesistibly to Lamb's sympathies. 
 
 A graceful female after Leonardo da Vinci. 
 This print, a present to Lamb from Crabb Robinson in 181G, 
 was of Leonardo da Vinci's Vierge aux Rockers. It was a spo- 
 
 SIS
 
 NOTES 
 
 cial favourite with Charles and Mary, and is the subject of 
 some verses by Charles. 
 
 B would have been more in keeping if he had 
 
 abided by the faith of his forefathers. 
 
 Braham, the singer. In a letter to Manning, Lamb describes 
 
 him as a compound of the "Jew, the gentleman, and the 
 
 angel." 
 
 " To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse.'' 
 Slightly altered from Paradise Regained, Book ii. line 278. 
 
 / was travelling in a stage-coach with three male 
 
 Quakers. 
 
 This adventure happened not to Lamb, but to Sir Anthony 
 
 Carlisle, the surgeon, from whom Lamb had the anecdote. 
 
 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS 
 
 ("London Magazine,"" October 1821) 
 
 Headless bear, black man, or ape. 
 
 From "The Author's Abstract of Melancholy," prefixed to 
 
 Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. 
 
 Dear little T. H. 
 
 Thornton Hunt, Leigh Hunt's eldest boy. This passage is 
 interesting as having provoked Southey's violent attack on 
 Leigh Hunt and his principles, in the Quarterly Review for 
 January 1823. 
 
 " — Names, whose sense we see not. 
 Fray us with things that be not.'' 
 From Spenser's Epithalamium, line 343. 
 
 314
 
 NOTES 
 
 / have formerly travelled among the Westmoreland 
 fells. 
 
 See Lamb's letter to Manning, in 1802, describing his and 
 Mary''s visit to Coleridge at Keswick. "We got in in the even- 
 ing, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of 
 a gorgeous sunset, which transmuted all the mountains into 
 colours. We thought we had got into Fairyland. . . . Such an 
 impression I never received from objects of sight before, nor 
 do I suppose that I can ever again." 
 
 VALENTINE'S DAY 
 
 (Leigh Hunt's "Indicator," February 14, 1821; and 
 "Examiner," February 14, 1819) 
 
 "Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings." 
 Milton's Paradise Lost, i. 768. 
 
 ''Gives a very echo to the throne where Hope is seated." 
 Another of Lamb's adaptations of Shakspeare. The original 
 is in Twelfth Night (Act II. Sc. 4). 
 
 A little later on will be noticed a similar free-and-easy use 
 of a passage from Wordsworth. 
 
 E.B. 
 
 Edward Francis Bumey (1760-1848), a portrait-pamter, and 
 book-illustrator on a large scale. He was a cousin of Mde. 
 D'Arblay, and not a half-brother as stated in Iamb's Key. 
 His name may be seen "at the bottom of many a well-exe- 
 cuted vignette in the way of his profession" in the periodicals 
 of his day. He illustrated for Harrison, the WorUU Taller, 
 Guardian, Adventurer, etc., besides the Arabian Niglits, and 
 novels of Richardson and Smollett. 
 
 815
 
 NOTES 
 
 MY RELATIONS 
 ("London Magazine,"' June 1821) 
 
 IN these two successive essays, and in that on the Benchers 
 of the Inner Temple, Lamb draws portraits of singular 
 interest to us, of his father, aunt, brother, and sister — all his 
 near relations with one exception. The mother's name never 
 occurs in letter or published writing after the first bitterness 
 of the calamity of September 1796 had passed away. This was 
 doubtless out of consideration for the feelings of his sister. 
 Very noticeable is the frankness with which he describes the 
 less agreeable side of the character of his brother John, who 
 was still living, and apparently on quite friendly terms with 
 Charles and Mary. 
 
 / had an aunt. 
 
 A sister of John Lamb the elder, who generally lived with 
 the family, and contributed something to the common in- 
 come. After the death of the mother, a lady of comfortable 
 means, a relative of the family, offered her a home, but the 
 arrangement did not succeed, and the aunt returned to die 
 among her own people. Charles writes, just before her death 
 in February 1797 — "My poor old aunt, who was the kindest 
 creature to me when I was at school, and used to bring me 
 good things ; when I, schoolboy-like, used to be ashamed to 
 see her come, and open her apron, and bring out her basin 
 with some nice thing which she had saved for me, — the good 
 old creature is now dying. She says, poor thing, she is glad 
 she is come home to die with me. I was always her favourite." 
 See also the lines "written on the day of my aunt's funeral'' 
 in the little volume of Blank Verse, by Charles Lloyd and 
 Charles Lamb, published in 1798. 
 
 816
 
 NOTES 
 
 Brother, or sister, I never had any — to hnoiv them. 
 In this and the next sentence is a curious blending of fact and 
 fiction. Besides John and Mary, four other children had been 
 born to John and Elizabeth Lamb in the Temple, between 
 the years 1762 and 1775, but had apparently not survi\ed 
 their infancy. Two daughters had been christened Elizabeth, 
 one in 1762 and another after her death, in 1768. John and 
 Mary Lamb are now to be described as cousins, under the 
 names of James and Bridget Elia. Charles Lamb actually had 
 relations, in that degree, living in Hertfordshire, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Wheathampstead. 
 
 James is an inexplicable cousin. 
 
 The mixture of the man of the world, dilettante, and sen- 
 timentalist — not an infrequent combination — is here de- 
 scribed with graphic power. All that we know of John I^inb, 
 the "broad, burly, jovial," living his bachelor-life in cham- 
 bers at the old Sea-House, is supported and confirmed by this 
 passage. Touching his extreme sensibility to the physical suf- 
 ferings of animals, there is a letter of Charles to Crabb Rob- 
 inson of the year 1810, which is worth noting. "]\Iy brother, 
 whom you have met at my rooms (a plump, good-looking man 
 of seven-and-forty), has written a book about humanity, which 
 I transmit to you herewith. Wilson the publisher has put it 
 into his head that you can get it reviewed for him. I daresay 
 it is not in the scope of your review; but if you could put it 
 into any likely train, he would rejoice. For, alas! our boasted 
 humanity partakes of vanity. As it is, he teases me to death 
 with choosing to suppose that I could get it into all the Re- 
 views at a moment's notice. I ! ! ! — who have been set up as 
 a mark for them to throw at, and would willingly consign 
 them all to Megaera'^s snaky locks. But here's the book, and 
 don't show it to Mrs. Collier, for I remember she makes ex- 
 
 S17
 
 NOTES 
 
 cellent eel soup, and the leading points of the book are directed 
 against that very process." 
 
 Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. 
 From an early sonnet of Lamb's. Mr. W. J. Craig has been 
 the first to point out that the line is an imperfect recollection 
 of one in Vallans's "Tale of the Two Swans," which Lamb no 
 doubt met with in Hearne's edition of Leland''s Itinerary — 
 
 ** About this time the Lady Venus views 
 The fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire." 
 
 MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 
 ("London Magazine," July 1821) 
 
 Bridget Elia. 
 
 Mary Lamb. The lives of the brother and sister are so bound 
 together, that the illustrations of their joint life afforded 
 by this essay, and that on Old China, are of singular interest. 
 They show us the brighter and happier intervals of that life, 
 without which indeed it could hardly have been borne for 
 those eight-and -thirty years. In 1805, during one of Mary 
 LamVs periodical attacks of mania, and consequent absences 
 from home, Charles writes — "I am a fool bereft of her co- 
 operation. I am used to look up to her in the least and big- 
 gest perplexities. To say all that I find her would be more 
 than, I think, anybody could possibly understand. She is 
 older, wiser, and better than I am ; and all my wretched im- 
 perfections I cover to myself by thinking on her goodness."" 
 Compare also the sonnet written by Charles, in one of his 
 "lucid intervals" when himself in confinement, in 1796, end- 
 ing with the words — 
 
 " — the mighty debt of love I owe, 
 Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend." 
 
 318
 
 NOTES 
 
 The oldest thing I remember is Mockery End, or 
 Mackarel End. 
 
 The place, now further contracted into "Mackrye End,"" is 
 about a mile and a half from Wheathampstead, on the Lu- 
 ton Branch of the Great Northern Railway. On leaving the 
 Wheathampstead Station, the traveller must follow the road 
 which runs along the valley towards Luton, nearly parallel with 
 the railway for about a mile, to a group of houses near the 
 "Cherry Trees."" At this point he will turn short to the right, 
 and then take the first turning on his left, along the edge of 
 a pretty little wood. He will soon see the venerable old Jaco- 
 bean mansion, properly called Mackrye End, and close to it a 
 whitish farmhouse, which is the one occupied by Lamb's rela- 
 tives, the Gladmans, at the time of the pilgrimage recorded 
 in this essay. The present writer has visited the spot, also in 
 the "heart of June,"" and bears the pleasantest testimony to its 
 rural beauty and seclusion. The farmhouse has had an impor- 
 tant addition to it since Lamb"'s day, but a large portion of 
 the building is evidently still the same as when the "image 
 of welcome" came forth from it to greet the brother and sis- 
 ter. May I, without presumption, call attention to the almost 
 unique beauty of this prose idyll ? 
 
 But thou, that didst appear so fair 
 
 To fond imagination. 
 Wordsworth''s "Yarrow Visited." 
 
 B,F. 
 
 Barron Field, who accompanied Lamb and his sister on thii 
 
 expedition. See the essay on Distant Correspondents. 
 
 Compare a letter of Lamb to Manning in May 1819. "How 
 
 axe my cousins, the Gladmans of Wheathampstead, and farmer 
 
 Bruton? Mrs. Bruton is a glorious woman. 'Hail, Mackery 
 
 End.' This is a fragment of a blank verse poem which I once 
 
 meditated, but got no further." 
 
 ^ 319
 
 NOTES 
 
 MY FIRST PLAY 
 ("London Magazine,'" December 1821) 
 
 The only landed property I could ever call my own, 
 Mrs. Procter informs me that a relative of Lamb's did act- 
 ually bequeath to him a small "landed estate"" — probably no 
 more than a single field — producing a pound or two of rent, 
 and that Lamb was fond of referring to the circumstance, and 
 declaring that it had revolutionised his views of Property. 
 
 The first appearance to me of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella, 
 One of Lamb"'s earliest, perhaps his first sonnet, was inspired 
 by this great actress. It was published, with some of Cole- 
 ridge's, in the columns of the Morning Chronicle in 1794. 
 
 As when a child, on some long winter's night 
 Affrighted clinging to its grandam's knees, 
 With eager wondering and perturbed delight 
 Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees 
 Muttered to wretch by necromantic spell; 
 Or of those hags, who at the witching time 
 Of murky midnight ride the air sublime, 
 And mingle foul embrace with fiends of Hell: 
 Cold Horror drinks its blood ! Anon the tear 
 More gentle starts, to hear the beldame tell 
 Of pretty babes that loved each other dear. 
 Murdered by cruel Uncle's mandate fell: 
 Even such the shivering joys thy tones impart. 
 Even so thou, Siddons, meltest my sad heart! 
 
 MODERN GALLANTRY 
 
 ("London Magazine," November 1822) 
 
 Joseph Pake, of Bread-street-hill, merchant. 
 Some very interesting particulars of the life and character of 
 820
 
 NOTES 
 
 this generous and self-sacrificing person, in whom most un- 
 questionably "manners were not idle,"" will be found in the 
 Mhencmm for the year 1841 (pp. 366 and 387), contributed 
 by the late Miss Anne Manning. Thomas Edwards, author of 
 Canons of Critkism^ a very acute commentary upon AVar- 
 burton's emendations of Shakspeare, was his uncle. Edwards 
 was a mediocre poet, but his sonnets are carefully constructed 
 on the Miltonic scheme, which perhaps accounts for Lamb's 
 exaggerated epithet. The sonnet may be given here as at least 
 a curiosity: — 
 
 To Mr. J. Paice 
 Joseph, the worthy son of worthy sire. 
 Who well repay' st thy pious parents' care 
 To train thee in the ways of Virtue fair, 
 And early with the Love of Truth inspire. 
 What farther can my closing eyes desire 
 To see, but that by wedlock thou repair 
 The waste of death ; and raise a virtuous heir 
 To build our House, e'er I in peace retire .'' 
 Youth is the time for Love : Then choose a wife. 
 With prudence choose; 'tis Nature's genuine voice; 
 And what she truly dictates must be good ; 
 Neglected once that prime, our remnant life 
 la soured, or saddened, by an ill-timed choice. 
 Or lonely, dull, and friendless solitude. 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 
 ("London Magazine,"" September 1821) 
 
 CHARLES LAMB was bom on the 10th of February 
 1775, in Crown Office Row, Temple, where Samuel Salt, 
 a Bencher of the Inn, owned two sets of chambei-s. This waa 
 Lamb's home for the seven years preceding his admission into 
 Christ's Hospital in 1782, and afterwards, in holiday seasons, 
 
 321
 
 NOTES 
 
 till he left school in 1789, and later, at least till Salt's death 
 in 1792, A recent editor of Lamb's works has stated that, 
 with the exception of Salt, almost all the names of Benchers 
 given in this essay are "purely imaginary."" The reverse of 
 this is the fact. All the names here celebrated are to be found 
 in the records of the honourable society. 
 
 There when they came^ whereas those bricky towers. 
 Spenser's Prothalamion, stanza viii. 
 
 Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight. 
 
 Paper Buildings, facing King's Bench Walk in the Temple. 
 
 The line is doubtless improvised for the occasion. 
 
 That fine Elizabethan hall. 
 
 The hall of the Middle Temple. The fountain still plays, but 
 
 "quantum mutatus." 
 
 Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial hand, 
 Shakspeare's Sonnet, No. 104. 
 
 ** Carved it out quaintly in the sun" 
 3 Henry VI. , ii. 5. 
 
 The roguish eye of J II. 
 
 Jekyll, the Master in Chancery. The wit, and friend of wits, 
 among the old Benchers — the Sir George Rose of his day. 
 Called to the Bench 1805, died 1837. 
 
 Thomas Coventry, 
 
 Nephew of William, fifth Earl of Coventry; of North Cray 
 
 Place, Bexley, Kent. Called to the Bench in 1766, died in 
 
 1797. 
 
 Samuel Salt. 
 
 Called to the Bench 1782; died in 1792. The Bencher in 
 whom Lamb had the most peculiar interest. John Lamb, the 
 S2^
 
 NOTES 
 
 father, was in the service of Salt for some five and forty jeap» 
 — he acting as clerk and confidential servant, and his wife as 
 housekeeper. As we have seen, Mr. Salt occupied two sets of 
 chambers in Crown Office Row, forming a substantial house. 
 He had two indoor servants, besides John and Elizabeth Lamb, 
 and kept his carriage. Salt died in 1792. By his will, dated 
 1786, he gives "To my servant, John Lamb, who has lived 
 with me near forty years," <£*500 South Sea stock; and "to 
 Mrs. Lamb ^£^100 in money, well deserved for her care and 
 attention during my illness.'" By a codicil, dated December 
 20, 1787, his executors are directed to employ John Lamb to 
 receive the testator''s "Exchequer annuities of i^210 and £14! 
 during their term, and to pay him ^£"10 a-year for his trouble 
 so long as he shall receive them,"" a delicate and ingenious 
 way of retaining John Lamb in his service, as it were, after 
 his own decease. By a later codicil he gives another hundred 
 pounds to Mrs. Lamb. These benefactions, and not the small 
 pension erroneously stated, on the authority of Talfourd, in 
 my memoir of Lamb, formed the provision made by Salt for 
 his faithful pair of attendants. The appointment of Charles 
 to the clerkship in the India House in 1792 must have been 
 the last of the many kind acts of Samuel Salt to the family. 
 Where the Lamb family moved to after Salt's death in 1792, 
 and how they struggled on between that date and the fatal 
 year 1796, is one of the unsettled points of Dunb's history. 
 Mary Lamb's skill with her needle was probably used as a 
 means of increasing the common income, Crabb Robinson tells 
 us of an article on needlework contributed by her some years 
 later to one of the magazines. 
 
 The unfortunate Miss Blmidy. 
 
 The heroine of a came celebre in the year 1752. Her whole 
 story will be found, a propos of the town of Henley, in Mr. 
 Leslie's charming book on the Thames, entitled Our River. 
 
 323
 
 NOTES 
 
 Miss Blandy, the daughter of an attorney at Henley, with 
 good expectations from her father, attracted the attention of 
 an adventurer, a certain Captain Cranstoun. The father dis- 
 approved of the intimacy, and the Captain entrusted Miss 
 Blandy with a certain powder which she administered to her 
 father with a fatal result. Her defence was that she believed 
 the powder to be of the nature of a love-philtre, which would 
 have the effect of making her father well-afFected towards her 
 lover. The defence was not successful, and Miss Blandy was 
 found guilty of murder, and executed at Oxford in April 1752. 
 
 Susan P . 
 
 Susannah Pierson, sister of Salfs brother-Bencher, Peter Pier- 
 son, mentioned in this essay, and one of Salt's executors. By 
 his second codicil, Salt bequeaths her, as a mark of regard, 
 0^500; his silver inkstand; and the "works of Pope, Swift, 
 Shakspeare, Addison, and Steele"; also Sherlock's Sermons 
 (Sherlock had been Master of the Temple), and any other 
 books she likes to choose out of his library, hoping that, "by 
 reading and reflection,"" they will "make her life more com- 
 fortable." How oddly touching this bequest seems to us, 
 in the light thrown on it by Lamb's account of the rela- 
 tion between Salt and his friend's sister! What a pleasant 
 glimpse, again, is here afforded of the "spacious closet of 
 good old English reading" into which Charles and Mary 
 were "tumbled," as he told us, at an early age, when they 
 "browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage." 
 
 / knew this Lovel. 
 
 Lamb's father, John Lamb. The sketch of him given in Mr. 
 Procter's memoir of Charles, taken doubtless from the por- 
 trait here mentioned, confirms the statement of a general 
 resemblance to Garrick. The late Mrs. Arthur Tween, a 
 daughter of Randal Norris, had in her possession a medallion 
 portrait of Samuel Salt, executed in plaster of Paris by John 
 324
 
 NOTES 
 
 Lamb. He published a collection of his verses, "Poetical 
 Pieces on several occasions,'" in a rough pamphlet of quarto 
 size. A few lines from the (rather doggerel) verses describing 
 the life of a footman in the last century (doubtless reflecting 
 his own experiences of the time when he wore "the smart 
 new livery") may be given as a sample of his efforts in the 
 manner of "Swift and Prior." The footman has just been 
 sent on an errand to inquire after the health of a friend of 
 his mistress who has lost her monkey: — 
 
 **Then up she mounts — down I descend. 
 To shake hands with particular friend ; 
 And there I do some brothers meet, 
 And we each other kindly greet ; 
 Then cards they bring and cribbage-boardj 
 And I must play upon their word, 
 Altho' I tell them I am sent 
 To know how th' night a lady spent. 
 *Pho! make excuse, and have one bout. 
 And say the lady was gone out;* 
 Th' advice I take, sit down and say, 
 'What is the sum for which we play?' 
 'I care not much/ another cries, 
 *But let it be for Wets and Drys.'" 
 
 Since the death of Mrs. Tween, the medallion portrait and 
 the collection of verses have passed into the present Editor's 
 possession. 
 
 ''A remnant most forlorn of what he rcas.^ 
 
 One of Lamb's quotations from himself. It occurs in the lines 
 
 (February 1797) "written on the day of my aunt's funeral": — 
 
 "One parent yet is left, —a wretched thing, 
 A sad survivor of his buried wife, 
 A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man, 
 A semblance most forlorn of what he wa«, 
 A merry cheerful man." 
 
 John Lamb lingered till April 1799. 
 
 825
 
 NOTES 
 
 Pet^ Pierson. 
 
 Called to the Bench 1800, died 1808. It will be seen that 
 Salt and Pierson, though friends and contemporaries at the 
 Bar, were not so as Benchers. Salt had been some years dead 
 when his friend was called to the Bench. 
 
 Daines Barrington. 
 
 The antiquary, naturalist, and correspondent of White of 
 
 Selbome. Called to the Bench in 1777, died 1800. 
 
 Thomas Barton, 
 
 Called to the Bench 1775, died 1791. 
 
 John Read, 
 
 Called to the Bench 1792, died in 1804. 
 
 Txvopenny. 
 
 There never was a Bencher of the Inner Temple of this 
 name. The gentleman here intended, Mr. Richard Twopeny, 
 was a stockbroker, a member of the Kentish family of that 
 name, who, being a bachelor, lived in chambers in the Temple. 
 On his retirement from business he resided at West Mailing 
 in Kent, and died in 1809, at the age of eighty-two. Mr. 
 Edward Twopeny of Woodstock, Sittingbourne, a great- 
 nephew of this gentleman, remembers him well, and informs 
 me that he was, as Lamb describes him, remarkably thin. 
 Lamb evidently recalled him as a familiar figure in the Tem- 
 ple in his own childish days, and supposed him to have been 
 a member of the Bar. Mr. Twopeny held the important po- 
 sition of stockbroker to the Bank of England. 
 
 John Wharry. 
 
 Called to the Bench 1801, died in 1812. 
 
 Richard Jackson. 
 
 Called to the Bench 1770, died 1787. This gentleman was 
 326
 
 NOTES 
 
 M. P. for New Romney and a member of Lord Shelbiirne's 
 Government in 1782. From his wide reading and extraordi- 
 nary memory he was Icnown, beyond the circle of his brother- 
 Benchers, as "the omniscient."" Dr. Johnson (reversing the 
 usual order of his translations) styles him the "all-knowing.'" 
 See Boswell, under date of April 1776: — "No, Sir; Mr. Thrale 
 is to go by my advice to Mr. Jackson (the all-knowing), and 
 get from him a plan for seeing the most that can be seen in 
 the time that we have to travel." 
 
 James Mingay. 
 
 Called to the Bench 1785, died 1812. Mr. Mingay was an 
 eminent King's Counsel, and in his day a powerful rival at 
 the Bar, of Thomas Erskine — according to an obituary notice 
 in the Gentleinaii's Magazine, of "a persuasive oratory, infi- 
 nite wit, and most excellent fancy."'"' His retort upon Erskine, 
 about the knee-buckles, goes to confirm this verdict. 
 
 Baron Maseres. 
 
 Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer, a post which he filled for 
 fifty years. Born 1731, died May 1824. He persevered to the 
 end of his days in wearing the costume of the reign in which 
 he was bom. 
 
 R.N. 
 
 Randal Norris, for many years Sub-Treasurer and Librarian 
 of the Inner Temple. At the age of fourteen he was articled 
 to Mr. Walls of Paper Buildings, and from that time, for 
 more than half a century, resided in the Inner Temple. His 
 wife was a native of Widford, the village adjoining Blakes- 
 ware, in Hertfordshire, and a friend of Mrs. Field, the house- 
 keeper, and there was thus a double tie connecting Ran- 
 dal Norris with Lamb"'s family. His name appears early in 
 Charles"'s correspondence. At the season of his mother''s death, 
 be tell« Coleridge that Mr. Norris had been mor? than a 
 
 327
 
 NOTES 
 
 father to him, and Mrs. Norris more than a mother. Mr. 
 Norris died in the Temple in January 1827, at the age of 
 seventy-six, and was buried in the Temple churchyard. Tal- 
 fourd misdates the event by a year. It was then that Charles 
 Lamb wrote to Crabb Robinson — "In him I have a loss the 
 world cannot make up. He was my friend and my father's 
 friend all the life I can remember. I seem to have made fool- 
 ish friendships ever since. Those are the friendships which 
 outlive a second generation. Old as I am waxing, in his eyes 
 I was still the child he first knew me. To the last he called 
 me Charley. I have none to call me Charley now." 
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT 
 ("London Magazine,** Novembee 1821) 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 c. r. L, 
 
 Charles Valentine le Grice, Lamb^s schoolfellow at Christ's 
 Hospital. See the Essay on that Institution. 
 
 Some one recalled a legend. 
 
 Leigh Hunt tells the story in his account of Christ's Hos- 
 pital: — "Our dress was of the coarsest and quaintest kind, 
 but was respected out of doors, and is so. It consisted of a 
 blue drugget gown, or body, with ample skirts to it; a yellow 
 vest underneath in winter time; small clothes of Russia duck; 
 worsted yellow stockings; a leathern girdle; and a little black 
 worsted cap, usually carried in the hand. I believe it was the 
 ordinary dress of children in humble life during the reign of 
 the Tudors. We used to flatter ourselves that it was taken 
 from the monks; and there went a monstrous tradition, that 
 at one period it consisted of blue velvet with silver buttons. 
 328
 
 NOTES 
 
 It was said, also, that during the blissful era of the blue vel- 
 vet, we had roast mutton for supper; but that the small 
 clothes not being then in existence, and the mutton suppers 
 too luxurious, the eatables were given up for the ineffables." 
 The following beautiful passage from the Recreations and 
 Studies by a Country Clergyman of the Eighteenth Century 
 (John Murray, 1882), shows that others, besides Lamb, had 
 thought the main thought of this essay. The writer is describ- 
 ing, in 1781, the drive from Huddersfield, along the banks of 
 the Calder: — "I never felt anything so fine: I shall remember 
 it and thank God for it as long as I live. I am sorry I did not 
 think to say grace after it. Are we to be grateful for nothing 
 but beef and pudding.? to thank God for life, and not for 
 happiness?'' 
 
 DREAM CHILDREN; A REVERIE 
 
 ("London Magazine,** January 1822) 
 
 THE mood in which Lamb was prompted to this sin- 
 gularly affecting confidence was clearly due to a family 
 bereavement, a month or two before the date of the essay. I 
 may be allowed to repeat words of my own, used elsewhere, 
 on this subject. "Lamb"'s elder brother John was then lately 
 dead. A letter to Wordsworth, of March 1822, mentions his 
 death as even then recent, and speaks of a certain 'deadness 
 to everything"' which the writer dates from that event. The 
 *broad, burly, jovial,' John Lamb (so Talfourd describes him) 
 had lived his own easy prosperous life up to this time, not al- 
 together avoiding social relations with his brother and sister, 
 but evidently absorbed to the last in his owti interests and 
 pleasures. The death of this brother, wholly unsympathetic as 
 he was with Charles, served to bring home to him his loneli- 
 
 329
 
 NOTES 
 
 ness. He wm left in the world with but one near relation, and 
 that one too often removed from him for months at a time 
 by the saddest of afflictions. No wonder if he became keenly 
 aware of his solitude.'' The emotion discernible in this essay is 
 absolutely genuine; the blending of fact with fiction in the 
 details is curiously arbitrary. 
 
 Their great-grandmother Field. 
 
 Lamb's grandmother, Mary Field, for more than fifty years 
 housekeeper at Blakesware, a dower-house of the Hertford- 
 shire family of Plumers, a few miles from Ware. William 
 Plumer, who represented his county for so many years in 
 Parliament, was still living, and Lamb may have disguised 
 the whereabouts of the "great house" out of consideration for 
 him. Why he substituted Norfolk is only matter for conjec- 
 ture. Perhaps there were actually scenes from the old legend 
 of the Children in the Wood carved upon a chimneypiece at 
 Blakesware; possibly there was some old story in the annals 
 of the Plumer family touching the mysterious disappearance 
 of two children, for which it pleased Lamb to substitute the 
 story of the familiar ballad. His grandmother, as he has told 
 us in his lines The Grandame^ was deeply versed "in anecdote 
 domestic" 
 
 Which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly 
 pulled down. 
 
 The dismantling of the Blakesware house had therefore be- 
 gun, it appears, before the death of William Plumer. Cussans, 
 in his History of' Hertfordshire ^ says it was pulled down in 
 1822. Perhaps the complete demolition was not carried but 
 till after Mr. Plumer's death in that year. The "other house" 
 was Gilston, the principal seat of the Plumers, some miles 
 distant. See notes on the essay Blakesmoor in Hertfordihirt.
 
 NOTES 
 
 And then I told how^ when she came to die. 
 Mrs. Field died in the summer of 1792, and was buried in 
 the adjoining churchyard of Widford. Her gravestone, with 
 the name and date of death, August 5, 1792, is still to be 
 seen, and is one of the few tangible memorials of Lamb's 
 family history still existing. By a curious fatality, it narrowly 
 escaped destruction in the great gale of October 1881, when 
 a tree was blown down across it, considerably reducing its 
 proportions. 
 
 John L . 
 
 Of course John Lamb, the brother. Whether Charles was 
 ever a "lame-footed"" boy, through some temporary cause, we 
 cannot say. We know that at the time of the mother's death 
 John Lamb was suffering from an injury to his foot, and 
 made it (after his custom) an excuse for not exerting himself 
 unduly. See the letter of Charles to Coleridge written at the 
 time. "My brother, little disposed (I speak not without ten- 
 derness for him) at any time to take care of old age and in- 
 firmities, had now, with his bad leg, an exemption from such 
 duties."" 
 
 I courted the fair Alice W n. 
 
 In my memoir of Charles Lamb, I have given the reasons 
 
 for identifying Alice W n with the Anna of the early 
 
 sonnets, and again with the form and features of the village 
 maiden described as Rosamund Gray. The girl who is cele- 
 brated under these various names won the heart of Charles 
 Lamb while he was yet little more than a boy. He does not 
 care to conceal from us that it was in Hertfordshire, while 
 under his grandmother's roof, that he first met her. The 
 Beauty "with the yellow Hertfordshire hair — so like my 
 Alice," is how he describes the portrait in the picture gallery 
 *t Blakesmoor. Moreover, the "winding wood-walks green"" 
 
 331
 
 NOTES 
 
 where he roamed with his Anna, can hardly be unconnected 
 with the "walks and windings of Blakesmoor,'"' apostrophised 
 at the close of that beautiful essay. And there is a group 
 of cottages called Blenheim, not more than half a mile from 
 the site of Blakesware House, where the original Anna, 
 according to the traditions of the village, resided. "Alice 
 
 W n" is one of Lamb's deliberate inventions. In the key 
 
 to the initials employed by him in his essays, he explains 
 
 that Alice W n stood for Alice Winterton, but that the 
 
 name was "feigned.'' Anna was, in fact, the nearest clue to 
 the real name that Lamb has vouchsafed. Her actual name 
 was, I have the best reason to believe, Ann Simmons. She 
 afterwards married Mr. Bartram, the pawnbroker of Princes 
 Street, Leicester Square. The complete history of this epi- 
 sode in Lamb's life will probably never come to light. There 
 are many obvious reasons why any idea of marriage should 
 have been indefinitely abandoned. The poverty in Lamb's 
 home is one such reason; and one, even more decisive, may 
 have been the discovery of the taint of madness that was 
 inherited, in more or less degree, by all the children. Why 
 Lamb chose the particular alias of Winterton, under which 
 to disguise his early love, will never be known. It was a name 
 not unfamiliar to him, being that of the old steward in 
 Colman's play of the Iron Chesty a part created by Lamb's 
 favourite comedian Dodd. The play was first acted in 1796, 
 about the time when the final separation of the lovers seems 
 to have taken place. 
 
 The tedious shores of Lethe, 
 
 Lamb here refers to the famous passage in the sixth book 
 of the Aeneid^ where Anchises, the father of Aeneas, reveals 
 to the latter, who is allowed to visit him in the under world, 
 a mingled Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine of purgatory 
 and transmigration of souls. After mentioning the necessary 
 332
 
 NOTES 
 
 punishments and purifying tortures, and the bhss of a chosen 
 few who abide in the Happy Fields of Elysium, Anchises pro- 
 ceeds, "ifoj omnes,'''' i.e. the purified souls — 
 
 **Has omnes, ubi mille rotam volvere per annos, 
 Lethaeum ad fluvium deus evocat agmine magno; 
 Scilicet immemores supera ut convexa revisant 
 Rursus, et incipiant in corpora velle reverti." 
 
 It is interesting to observe how Lamb, even while his emo- 
 tions are so deeply stirred, turns back to his old Virgilian 
 studies at Christ's Hospital for an image of hopes not to be 
 fulfilled. The parallel between the imaginary forms of which 
 he dreams, and the living spirits on the shores of Lethe, 
 is indeed no parallel, but is not the less touching for that 
 reason. 
 
 In illustration of LamVs fondness for children, I have the 
 pleasure of adding the following pretty letter to a child, not 
 hitherto printed. It was written to a little girl (one of twin- 
 sisters), the daughter of Kenney the dramatist, after Lamb 
 and his sister''s visit to the Kenneys at Versailles in Septem- 
 ber 1822. The letter has been most kindly placed at my dis- 
 posal by my friend Mr. W. J. Jeaffi-eson, whose mother was 
 the Sophy of the letter. At the close of a short note to Mrs. 
 Kenney, Lamb adds: — "Pray deliver what follows to my dear 
 wife, Sophy: — 
 
 "My dear Sophy — The few short days of connubial felicity 
 which I passed with you among the pears and apricots of 
 Versailles were some of the happiest of my life. But they are 
 flown! 
 
 "And your other half, your dear co-twin — that she-you — 
 that almost equal sharer of my affections — you and she are 
 my better half, a quarter apiece. She and you are my pretty 
 sixpence, you the head, and she the tail. Sure, Heaven that 
 made you so alike must pardon the error of an inconsiderate 
 
 3S8
 
 NOTES 
 
 moment, should I for love of you, love her too wtll. Do yon 
 think laws were made for lovers? I think not. 
 "Adieu, amiable pair. 
 
 "Yours, and yours, 
 
 "C. Lamb. 
 "P. S. — I enclose half a dear kiss apiece for you." 
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 
 ("London Magazine,'' March 1822) 
 
 B.F, 
 
 Barron Field. Bom October 23, 1786. He was educated for 
 the Bar and practised for some years, going the Oxford Cir- 
 cuit. In 1816 he married, and went out to New South Wales 
 as Judge of the Supreme Court at Sydney. In 1824 he re- 
 turned to England, having resigned his judgeship; but two 
 or three years afterwards he was appointed Chief-Justice of 
 Gibraltar. He died at Torquay in 1846. His brother, Francis 
 John Field, was a fellow-clerk of Charles Lamb's at the India 
 House, which was perhaps the origin of the acquaintance. 
 Barron Field edited a volume of papers (Geographical Me- 
 moirs) on New South Wales for Murray, and the appendix 
 contains some short poems, entitled First-Fruits of Austra- 
 lian Poetry. Some papers of his are to be found in Leigh 
 Hunfs Reflector^ to which Lamb also contributed. 
 
 One of Mrs. Howes superscriptions. 
 Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe (1674-1737), an exemplary person, and 
 now forgotten moralist in verse and prose. Among other 
 works she wrote. Friendship in Death — in Twenty Letters 
 from the Dead to the Living. The following are from the 
 "superscriptions'" of these letters: — "To Sylvia from Alexis;" 
 **From Oleander to his Brother, endeavouring to reclaim him 
 S34
 
 NOTES 
 
 from his extravagances;'' "To Emilia from Delia, giving her 
 a description of the invisible regions, and the happy state of 
 the inhabitants of Paradise." 
 
 The late Lord C. 
 
 The second Lord Camelford, killed in a duel with Mr. Best 
 in 1804. The day before his death he gave directions that his 
 body should be removed "as soon as may be convenient to a 
 country far distant! to a spot not near the haunts of men, 
 but where the surrounding scenery may smile upon my re- 
 mains. It is situated on the borders of the lake of St. Lam- 
 pierre, in the Canton of Berne, and three trees stand in the 
 particular spot." The centre tree he desired might be taken 
 up, and his body being there deposited, innnediately re- 
 placed. At the foot of this tree, his lordship added, he had 
 formerly passed many solitary hours, contemplating the mu- 
 tability of human affairs. — Anmud Register for 1804. 
 
 Aye me! "vhile thee the seas and sounding shores 
 
 Hold far away. 
 
 LycidaSf quoted incorrectly, as usual. 
 
 J. w, 
 
 James White, Lamb's schoolfellow at Christ's Hospital. Died 
 in 1820. 
 
 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 
 ("London Magazine," May 1822) 
 
 A sable cloud 
 Turns forth her silver lining on the night, 
 Milton, ComiLSy line 223. 
 
 My pleasant fiend Jem TFhite. 
 
 James White, a schoolfellow of Lamb's at Christ's Hospital, 
 
 335
 
 NOTES 
 
 and the author of a Shakspearian squib, suggested by the 
 Ireland Forgeries — "Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Fal- 
 staff and his friends, now first made public by a gentle- 
 man, a descendant of Dame Quickly, from genuine manu- 
 scripts which have been in the possession of the Quickly 
 family near four hundred years."" It was published in 1796, 
 and Sou they believed thf t Lamb had in some way a hand in 
 it. The Preface in particular bears some traces of his peculiar 
 vein, but LamVs enthusiastic recommendation of the book 
 to his friends seems to show that it was in the main the pro- 
 duction of James White. The Jen d'esprif is not more success- 
 ful than such parodies usually are. White took to journalism, 
 in some form, and was at the time of his death in March 
 1820 an "agent of Provincial newspapers."" His annual supper 
 to the little climbing-boys was imitated by many charitable 
 persons in London and other large towns. 
 
 Our trusty companion, Bigod. 
 
 Lamb's old friend and editor John Ben wick, ot the Albion. 
 
 See Essay on the Two Races of Men. 
 
 Golden lads and lasses must. 
 Cymbeliney Act IV. Sc. 2 — 
 
 '^ Golden lads and girls all must, 
 As chimney-sweepers, come to dust." 
 
 It is curious that in this essay Lamb does not even allude 
 to the grave subject of the cruelties incident to the climbing- 
 boys' occupation — a question which for some years past had 
 attracted the attention of philanthropic persons, in and out 
 of Parliament. A year or two later, however, he made a char- 
 acteristic offering to the cause. In 1824 James Montgomery 
 of Sheffield edited a volume of Prose and Verse — The Chini' 
 ney-Sweeper's Friend, and Climhing-hoifs Album, to which 
 many writers of the day contributed. Lamb, who had been 
 336
 
 NOTES 
 
 applied to, sent Blake's poem — The Chimney-Siceeper. It was 
 headed, "Communicated by Mr. Charles Lamb, from a very 
 rare and curious little work'' — doubtless a true description 
 of the Songs of Innocence in 1824. It is noteworthy that, be- 
 fore sending it, this incorrigible joker could not refrain from 
 quietly altering Blake's "Little Tom Dacre'' into "Little Tom 
 Toddyr 
 
 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 
 IN THE METROPOLIS 
 
 ("London Magazine,'" June 1822) 
 
 Each degree of it is mocked by its "neighbour grice." 
 A reference, apparently, to Timon of AthenSt iv. 3 — 
 
 —''every ^ise of fortune 
 Is smoothed by that below." 
 
 Unfastidious J^ncent Bourne (1697-1747). 
 The "dear Vinny Bourne" of Cowper, who had been his pupil 
 at Westminster. Cowper, it will be remembered, translated 
 many of Bourne''s Latin verses. 
 
 B , the mild Rector of . 
 
 In LamVs Key to the Initials, etc., used in his essays, this 
 is affirmed to be a quite imaginary personage. 
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST FIG 
 
 ("London Magazine,'' September 1822) 
 
 THE tradition as to the origin of cooking, which is 
 of course the salient feature of this essay, had been 
 communicated to Lamb, he here tells us, by his friend M., 
 Thomas Manning, whose acquaintance he had made long ago 
 
 337
 
 NOTES 
 
 «t Cambridge, and who since those da3rs had spent much of 
 his life in exploring China and Thibet. Lamb says the same 
 thing in one of his private letters, so we may accept it as a 
 literal fact. The question therefore arises whether Manning 
 had found the legend existing in any form in China, or 
 whether Lamb's detail of the Chinese manuscript is wholly 
 fantastic. It is at least certain that the story is a very old 
 one, and appears as early as the third century, in the writ- 
 ings of Porphyry of Tyre. The following passage, a literal 
 translation from the Treatise De Abstinentia oi that philoso- 
 pher, sets forth one form of the legend: — 
 
 "Asclepiades, in his work on Cyprus and Phoenice, writes 
 as follows: — * Originally it was not usual for anything having 
 life to be sacrificed to the gods — not that there was any law 
 on the subject, for it was supposed to be forbidden by the 
 law of nature. At a certain period, however (tradition says), 
 when blood was required in atonement for blood, the first 
 victim was sacrificed, and was entirely consumed by fire. On 
 one occasion, in later times, when a sacrifice of this kind was 
 being offered, and the victim in process of being burned, a 
 morsel of its flesh fell to the ground. The priest, who was 
 standing by, immediately picked it up, and on removing his 
 fingers from the burnt flesh, chanced to put them to his 
 mouth, in order to assuage the pain of the bum. As soon 
 as he had tasted the burnt flesh he conceived a strange long- 
 ing to eat of it, and accordingly began to eat the flesh him- 
 self, and gave some to his wife also. Pygmalion, on hearing 
 of it, directed that the man and his wife should be put to 
 death, by being hurled headlong from a rock, and appointed 
 another man to the priest's office. When, moreover, not long 
 after, this man was offering the same sacrifice, and in the 
 same way ate of the flesh, he was sentenced to the same pun- 
 ishment. When, however, the thing made further progress, 
 and men continued to offer sacrifice, and in order to gratify 
 338
 
 NOTES 
 
 their appetite could not refrain from the flesh, but regularly 
 adopted the habit of eating it, all punishment for so doing 
 ceased to be inflicted.*'* 
 
 Manning may have been aware of this passage, and have 
 told the story in his own language to Charles Lamb. It is worth 
 noticing that in 1823, the year following the appearance of 
 this essay, Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, published a trans- 
 lation of certain Treatises of Porphyry, including the De Ah- 
 stinentia. It is possible that Manning may, on some occasion, 
 have learned the tradition from Taylor. 
 
 Recent editors of Lamb have asserted, without offering any 
 sufficient evidence, that he owed the idea of this rhapsody 
 on the Pig to an Italian Poem, by Tigrinio Bistonio, published 
 in 1761, at Modena, entitled Gli Elogi del Porco (Tigrinio Bis- 
 tonio was the pseudonym of the Abate Giuseppe Ferrari). Mr. 
 Richard Gamett of the British Museum, to whom I am in- 
 debted for calling my attention to the passage in Porphyry, 
 has kindly examined for me the Italian poem in question, and 
 assures me that he can find in it no resemblance whatever to 
 Lamb's treatment of the same theme. There is no affectation 
 in Lamb's avowal of his fondness for this delicacy. Towards 
 the close of his life, however. Roast Pig declined somewhat in 
 his favour, and was superseded by hare, and other varieties of 
 game. Indeed Lamb was as fond of game as Cowper was of 
 fish; and as in Cowper's case, his later letters constantly open 
 with acknowledgments of some recent offering of the kind 
 from a good-natured correspondent. 
 
 Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade. 
 Death came with timely care. 
 
 From Coleridge's Epitaph on an Infant, It must have been 
 with unusual glee that Lamb here borrowed half of his friend'* 
 quatrain. The epitaph had appeared in the very earliest vol- 
 
 839
 
 NOTES 
 
 nme to which he was himself a contributor — the little rolumt 
 of Coleridge's poems, published in 1796, by Joseph Cottle, of 
 Bristol. The lines are there allotted a whole page to themselves. 
 
 It was over London Bridge. 
 
 The reader will not fail to note the audacious indifference to 
 fact that makes Lamb assert in a parenthesis that his school 
 was on the other side of London Bridge, and that he was after- 
 wards "at St. Omer's.'* 
 
 ON THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE 
 
 ("London Magazine,"" September 1822) 
 
 T 
 
 HE essay had previously appeared, in 1811, in Leigh 
 Hunt's Reflector, 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 
 
 ("London Magazine," February 1822) 
 
 THIS essay was originally one of three which appeared in 
 the London under the title of The Old Actors. When 
 Lamb collected and edited his essays for publication in a vol- 
 ume in 1823, he abridged and rearranged them under differ- 
 ent headings. Many of Lamb's favourites, here celebrated, 
 had died or left the stage almost before Lamb entered man- 
 hood, showing how early his critical faculty had matured. 
 
 Bensley, whose performance of Malvolio he has analysed in 
 such a masterly way, retired from his profession in 1796, and 
 Palmer in 1798. Parsons died in 1795, and Dodd in the au- 
 tumn of 1796, three months after quitting the stage. Suett 
 survived till 1805, and Mrs. Jordan till 1816. 
 
 S40
 
 NOTES 
 
 ON COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTUHT 
 ("London Magazine," Apeil 1822) 
 
 ORIGINALLY the second part of the essay on The Old 
 Actors. This essay is noteworthy as having provoked 
 a serious remonstrance from Lord Macaulay, in reviewing 
 Leigh Hunt's edition of the Restoration Dramatists, Lamb's 
 apology for the moral standards of Congreve and Wycherley 
 is simply an exercise of ingenuity, or rather, as Hartley Cole- 
 ridge pointed out, is an apology for himself — Charles Lamb 
 — who found himself quite able to enjoy the unparalleled wit 
 of Congreve without being in any way thrown off his moral 
 balance. It is in a letter to Moxon on Leigh Hunt's proposed 
 edition that Hartley Coleridge's comment occurs. He wTites: 
 "Nothing more or better can be said in defence of these 
 writers than what Lamb has said in his delightful essay on 
 The Old Actors; which is, after all, rather an apology for the 
 audiences who applauded and himself who delighted in their 
 plays, than for the plays themselves. . . . But Lamb always 
 took things by the better handle." 
 
 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 
 ("London Magazine," Octobee 1822) 
 
 CocJcletop. 
 
 In O'Keefe's farce of Modem Antiques; or^The Merry Moumert. 
 
 — There the antic sate 
 
 Mocking our state. 
 
 Adapted from Richard //., Act III. Sc. 2. 
 
 THE END
 
 "^•xmi 
 
 Tl^} 
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 1/ / THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW. 
 
 Series 9482 
 
 
 ^*^.',r-iS^&^
 
 ^^ •*