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 THE 
 
 ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 f 
 
 BY CHARLES LAM1b 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 
 WILEY & PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY 
 
 1845 
 
ili^ 
 
 CONTENTS. \%^^ 
 
 PAOI 
 
 Thk Sovth-Sea Hottse I 
 
 Oxford in the Vacation 9 
 
 Christ's Hospital, Five-and-Thirty Years Ago 15 
 
 •^^HE Two Races of Men 28 
 
 ^Ew- Year's Eve 34 
 
 Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist 41 
 
 'A Chapter on Ears 48 
 
 All Fools' Day 53 
 
 A Quakers' Meeting 57 
 
 The Old and the New Schoolmaster 62 
 
 *^Imperfect Sympathies 71 
 
 •-IWlTCHES, AND OtHER NiGHT FeARS 80 
 
 Valentine's Day 87 
 
 My Relations 91 
 
 Mackery End, in Hertfordshire 98 
 
 My First Play 103 
 
 Modern Gallantry 108 
 
 >>d'HE Old Benchers of the Inner Temple 113 
 
 ^RACE Before Meat 124 
 
 XDream-Children ; a Reverie 131 
 
 Distant Correspondents 135 
 
 The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers 141 
 
 A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis. . 148 
 
 )t^ Dissertation upon Roast Pig 156 
 
 A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behavior of Married People 164 
 
 On Some of the Old Actors 171 
 
 On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century 183 
 
 On the Acting of Mundew 191 
 
E LI A 
 
 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 an- 
 nuitant like myself) — to the Flower Pot, to secure a place for 
 Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other thy suburban retreat 
 northerly, — didst thou never observe a melancholy-looking, hand- 
 some, brick and stone edifice, 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 business are still kept up, though the 
 soul be long since fled. Here are still to be seen stately porticos; 
 imposing. staircases, offices roomy as the state apartments in pal- 
 aces — deserted, or thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks ; 
 the still more sacred interiors of court and committee-rooms, with 
 venerable faces of beadles, door-keepers — directors seated in form 
 on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend), at long worm-eaten 
 tables, that have been mahogany, with tarnished gilt-leather cov- 
 erings, supporting 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 
 
 * I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate. — Osbian. 
 
 2 
 
2 ELIA. 
 
 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 
 cellerage under all, where dollars and pieces-of-eight once lay, 
 an " unsunned heap," for Mammon to have solaced his solitary 
 heart withal, — long since dissipated, or scattered into air at the 
 blast of the breaking of that famous Bubble. 
 
 Such is the Soutii-Sea House. At least, such it was forty 
 years ago, when I knew it, — a magnificent relic ! What altera- 
 tions may have been made in it since, I have had no opportunities 
 of verifying. Time, I take for granted, has not freshened it. 
 No wind has resuscitated the face of the sleeping waters. A 
 thicker crust by this time stagnates upon it. The moths, that 
 were then battening upon its obsolete ledgers and day-books, have 
 rested from their depredations, but other light generations have 
 succeeded, making fine fret-work among their single and double 
 entries. Layers of dust have accumulated (a superfoetation of 
 dirt !) upon the old layers, that seldom used to be disturbed, save 
 by some curious finger, now and then, inquisitive to explore the 
 mode of book-keeping in Queen Anne's reign ; or, with less hal- 
 lowed 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 admira- 
 tion, and hopeless ambition of rivalry, as would become the puny 
 face of modern 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 
 hey-day of present prosperity, with their important faces, as it 
 were, insulting thee, their poo^ neighbour out of business — to the 
 idle and merely contemplative, — to such as me, old house ! there 
 is a charm in thy quiet : — a cessation — a coolness from business 
 — an indolence almost cloistral — which is delightful ! With what 
 reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at even- 
 
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 tide ! They spoke of the past : — the shade of some dead ac- 
 countant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by me, stiff as in 
 life. Living accounts and accountants puzzle me. I have no 
 skill in figuring. But thy great dead tomes, which scarce three 
 degenerate clerks of the present day could lift from their en- 
 shrining shelves — with their old fantastic flourishes, and decora- 
 tive rubric interfacings — their sums in triple columniations, set 
 down with formal superfluity of ciphers — with pious sentences a* 
 the beginning, without which our religious ancestors never ven- 
 tured to open a book of business, or bill of lading — the costly 
 vellum covers of some of them almost persuading us that we an 
 got into some hetter library, — are very agreeable and edifying 
 spectacles. I can look upon these defunct dragons with compla- 
 cency. Thy heavy odd-shaped ivory-handled pen-knives (our 
 ancestors had everything on a larger scale than we have hearts 
 for) are as good as anything from Herculaneum. The pounce- 
 boxes of our days have gone retrograde. 
 
 The very clerks which I remember in the South-Sea House — 
 I speak of forty years back — had an air very different from those 
 in the public offices that I have had to do with since. They par- 
 took of the genius of the place ! 
 
 They were mostly (for the establishment did not admit of su- 
 perfluous 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 assimilate the members of 
 corporate bodies to each other), but, for the most part, placed in 
 this house in ripe or middle age, they necessarily carried into it 
 their separate habits and oddities, unqualified, if I may so speak, 
 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 consider- 
 able proficiency on the German flute. 
 
 The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cambro-Briton. He 
 had something of the choleric complexion of his countrymen 
 stamped on his visage, but was a worthy sensible man at bottom. 
 
4 ELIA. 
 
 He wore his hair, to the last, powdered and frizzed out, in the 
 fashion which I remember to have seen in caricatures of what 
 were termed, in my young days, Maccaronies. He was the last 
 of that race of beaux. 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 hypochondry ready to imagine him- 
 self one ; haunted, at least, with the idea of the possibility of his 
 becoming one ; his tristful visage clearing up a little over his 
 roast neck of veal at Anderton's at two (where his picture still 
 hangs, taken a little before his death, by desire of the master of 
 the coffee-house, which he had frequented for the last five-and- 
 twenty years), but not attaining the meridian of its animation till 
 evening brought on the hour of tea and visiting. The simulta- 
 neous sound of his welUknown rap at the door with the stroke of 
 the clock announcing six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in 
 the families which this dear old bachelor gladdened with his 
 presence. Then was his forte, his glorified hour ! How would 
 he chirp, and expand, over a muffin ! How would he dilate into 
 secret history ! His countryman. 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 paternal tradition, of those grotesque figures which 
 Hogarth 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 forwards, 
 which, in great men, must be supposed to be the effect of an ha- 
 bitual condescending attention 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 leisure to smile 
 
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 at the comparative insignificance of the pretensions which had 
 just awed you. His intellect was of the shallowest order. It 
 did not reach to a saw or a proverb. His mind was in its origi- 
 nal 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 gentle- 
 folks, 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 wi h any heraldic 
 certainty at this time of day, — to the illustrious, but unfortunate 
 house of Derwent water. This was the secret of Thomas's stoop. 
 This was the thought — the sentiment — the bright solitary star of 
 your lives, — ye mild and happy pair, — which cheered you in the 
 night of intellect, and in the obscurity of your station ! This 
 was to you instead of riches, instead of rank, instead of glitter- 
 ing attainments : and it was worth them altogether. You insult- 
 ed 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 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, indeed, scream and scrape most abom- 
 inably. 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 fort- 
 nightly to the notes of a concert of " sweet breasts," as our an- 
 cestors would have called them, culled from club-rooms and or- 
 chestras — chorus singers — first and second violoncellos — double 
 basses — and clarionets — who ate his cold mutton, and drank his 
 punch, and praised his ear. He sate like Lord Midas among 
 them. But at the desk Tipp was quite another sort of creature. 
 
6 ELIA. 
 
 Thence all ideas, that were purely ornamental, were banished. 
 You could not speak of anything romantic without rebuke. Pol- 
 itics were excluded. A newspaper was thought too refined and 
 abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in writing off div- 
 idend warrants. The striking of the annual balance in the com- 
 pany's books (which, perhaps, differed from the balance of lasl 
 year in the sum of 25/. Is. 6d.) occupied his days and nights foi 
 a month previous- Not that Tipp was blind to the deadness of 
 things (as they call 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 
 actor, 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 ac- 
 cordingly, which excited his spleen and soothed his vanity in 
 equal ratios. He would swear (for Tipp swore) at the little or- 
 phans, whose rights he would guard with a tenacity like the grasp 
 of the dying hand, that commended their interests to his protec- 
 tion. With all this there was about him a sort of timidity — (his 
 few enemies used to give it a worse name) — a sometliing which, 
 in reverence to the dead, we will place, if you please, a little on 
 this side of the heroic. Nature 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 de- 
 spise, 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 ; 
 
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 or would willingly let you go, if he could have helped it : neither 
 was it recorded of him, that for lucre, or for intimidation, he ever 
 forsook friend or principle. 
 
 Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead, in whom 
 common qualities become uncommon ? Can I forget thee, Henry 
 Man, the wit, the polished man of letters, the author, of the South 
 Sea House ? who never entered^it thy office in a morning, or quit- 
 tedst it in mid-day — (what didst thou in an office ?) — without 
 some quirk that left a sting ! Thy gibes and thy jokes are now 
 extinct, or survive but in two forgotten volumes, which I had tho 
 good fortune to rescue from a stall in Barbican, not three days 
 ago, and found thee terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as alive. Thy 
 wit is a little gone by in these fastidious days — thy topics are 
 staled by the " new-born gauds " of the time : — but great thou 
 used to be in Public Ledgers, and in Chronicles, upon Chatham, 
 and Shelburne, and Rockingham, and Howe, and Burgoyne, and 
 Clinton, and the war which ended in the tearing from Great Brit- 
 ain her rebellious colonies, — and Keppel, and Wilkes, and Saw- 
 bridge, and Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond, — and 
 such small politics. 
 
 A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstreperous, 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 Hert- 
 fordshire. So tradition gave him out ; and certainly family fea- 
 tures not a little sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old Walter 
 Plumer (his reputed author) had been a rake in his days, and 
 visited much in Italy, and had seen the world. He was uncle, 
 bachelor-uncle to the fine old whig still living, who has represent- 
 ed the county in so many successive parliaments, and has a fine 
 old mansion near Ware. Walter flourished in George the Sec- 
 ond's days, and was the same who was summoned before the 
 House of Commons about a business of franks, with the old Du- 
 chess of Marlborough. You may read of it in Johnson's Life of 
 Cave. Cave came off cleverly in that business. It is certain 
 our Plumer did nothing to discountenance the rumour. He rather 
 seemed pleased whenever it was, with all gentleness, insinuated. 
 
8 ELIA. 
 
 But, besides his family pretensions, Plumer was an engaging fel- 
 low, and sang gloriously. 
 
 Not so sweetly sang Plumef as thou sangest, mild, child-like, 
 
 pastoral M ; a fUite's breathing less divinely whispering than 
 
 thy Arcadian melodies, when, in tones worthy of Arden, thou 
 didst chant that song sung by Amiens to the banished Duke, 
 which proclaims the winter wind more lenient than for a man to 
 be ungrateful. Thy sire was old surly M , the unapproach- 
 able church-warden of Bishopsgate. He knew not what he did, 
 when he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring of blustering 
 winter : — only unfortunate in thy ending, which should have been 
 mild, conciliatory, swan-like. 
 
 Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up, but 
 they must be mine in private : — already have I fooled the readei 
 to the top "of his bent ; — else could I omit that strange creature 
 Woollett, who existed in trying the question, and bought litiga- 
 tions ? — and still stranger, inimitable, solemn Hep worth, from 
 whose gravity Newton might have deduced the law of gravita- 
 tion. How profoundly would he nib a pen — with what delibera- 
 tion would he wet a wafer ! 
 
 But it is time to close — night's wheels are rattling fast over 
 me — it is proper to have done with this solemn mockery. 
 
 Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this while ? 
 — peradventure the very names, which I have summoned up be- 
 fore thee, are fantastic — insubstantial — 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. 
 
OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 9 
 
 b^ 
 
 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 WooUet methinks I hear you exclaim. Read- 
 er, Who is Elia ? 
 
 Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half-forgot- 
 ten humours of some old clerks defunct, in an old house of busi- 
 ness, 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 people are said to do, through a quill. 
 
 Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I confess that it is 
 my humour, my fancy — in the fore-part of the day, when the 
 mind of your man of letters requires some 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 * * * * jjQi ^Q gay^ that your outside 
 sheets, and waste wrappers of foolscap, do receive into them, most 
 kindly and naturally, the impression of sonnets, epigrams, essays 
 — so that the very parings of a counting-house are, in some sort, 
 the settings up of an author. The enfranchised quill, that has 
 plodded all the morning among the cart-rucks of figures and ci- 
 phers, frisks and curvets so at its ease over the flowery carpet- 
 ground of a midnight dissertation. — It feels its promotion. 
 •***•"*■ So that you see, upon the whole, the 
 
10 ELIA. 
 
 literary dignity of Ella is very little, if at all, compromised in 
 the condescension. 
 
 Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities inci- 
 dental 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 1 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 I 
 was at school at Christ's. I remember their effigies, by the same 
 token, in the old Basket Prayer Book. There hung Peter in his 
 uneasy posture holy Bartlemy in the troublesome act of flay- 
 ing, after the famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti. 1 honoured 
 
 them all, and could almost have wept the defalcation of Iscariot 
 — so much did we love to keep holy memories sacred :— only me- 
 thought 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 dispensation. 
 
 These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's life — 
 " far oflT 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 arraign the wisdom of my civil superiors, 
 who have judged the further observation of these holy tides to be 
 papistical, superstitious. Only in a custom of such long stand- 
 ing, 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 
 1 am plain Elia — no Selden, nor Archbishop Usher — though 
 
OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 11 
 
 at present in the thick of their books, here in the heart of learn- 
 ing, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley. 
 
 I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To such a 
 me as myself, who has been defrauded in his young years of the 
 ^weet food of academic institution, nowhere is so pleasant, to 
 while away a 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 Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master 
 of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respecta- 
 ble character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed- 
 makers in spectacles, drop a bow or a curtsy, as I pass, wisely 
 mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, 
 which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend 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 groves of Magdalen ! The halls deserted, 
 and with open doors inviting one to slip 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 hospitality : the immense caves of kitchens, 
 kitchen fire-places, cordial recesses ; ovens whose first pies were 
 baked four centuries ago; and spits which have cooked for Chau- 
 cer ! Not the mpanest minister among the dishes but is hallowed 
 to me through his imagination, and the Cook goes forth a Man- 
 ciple. 
 
 Antiquity ! thou wondrous charm, what art thou ? that, being 
 nothing, art everything ! When thou wert, thou wert not anti- 
 quity — then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity^ as 
 thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration ; thou thy- 
 self being to thyself flat, jejune, modem ! What mystery lurks 
 
12 ELIA. 
 
 in this retroversion ? or what half Januses* are we, thai CRnnot 
 look forward with the same idolatry with which we for ever re- 
 vert ! 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 accompany- 
 ing feeling, as though a palpable obscure had dimmed the face of 
 things, and that our ancestors wandered to and fro groping ! 
 
 Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most arride and 
 solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering learning, thy 
 shelves 
 
 What a place to be in is an old library ! It seems as though 
 all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their labours 
 to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or 
 middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, 
 their 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 apples which grew amid the happy orchard. 
 
 Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of MSS. 
 Those varice, lectiones, so tempting to the more erudite palates, do. 
 but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am no Herculanean raker. 
 The credit of the three witnesses might have slept unimpeached 
 for me. I leave these curiosities to Person, and to G. D. — whom, 
 by the way, 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 learning. No in- 
 considerable portion of his moderate fortune, I apprehend, is con- 
 sumed in journeys between them and ClifTord's-inn where, 
 
 like a dove on the asp's nest, he has long taken up his uncon- 
 scious abode, amid an incongruous assembly of attorneys, attor- 
 
 * Januses of one face. — Sir Thomas Brown. 
 
OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 13 
 
 neys' 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 litigation blow over his humble 
 chambers — the hard sheriff's officer moves his hat as he passes — 
 legal nor illegal discourtesy touches him — none thinks of offering 
 violence or injustice to him — you would as soon " strike an ab- 
 stract idea." 
 
 D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course of labori- 
 ous years, in an investigation into all curious matter connected 
 with the two Universities ; and has lately lit upon a MS. collec- 
 tion of charters, relative to C , by which he hopes to settle 
 
 some disputed points — particularly that long controversy between 
 them as to priority of foundation. Tlie ardour 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 inquiring into the venerable gentle- 
 women'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 unbroke heifer, when I interrupted 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 ClifTord'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-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 unfortunate 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 fire-side circle at M.'s — Mrs. 
 M. presiding at it like a Queen Lar, with pretty A. S. at her 
 
14 ELIA. 
 
 side — striking irresistibly on his fancy, he makes another call 
 (forgetting that they were "certainly not to return from the 
 country before that day week"), and disappointed a second time, 
 inquires for pen and paper as before : again the book is brought, 
 and in the line just above that in which he is about to print his 
 second name (his re-script) — his first name (scarce dry) looks out 
 upon him like anotlier Sosia, or as if a man should suddenly en- 
 counter 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 recognition or, being stopped, starts like a thing surprised 
 
 — at that moment, reader, he is on Mount Tabor — or Parnassus 
 — or co-sphered with Plato — or, with Harrington, framing " im- 
 mortal commonwealths" — devising some plan of amelioration to 
 
 thy country, or thy species perad venture meditating some 
 
 individual kindness or courtesy, to be done to thee thyself, the re- 
 turning consciousness of which made him to start so guiltily at 
 thy obtruded personal presence. 
 
 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 ele- 
 ment 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 Shepherds 
 on the Delectable Mountains ; and when he goes about with you 
 to show you the halls and colleges, you think you have with you 
 the Interpreter at the House Beautiful. 
 
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 15 
 
 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY TEARS 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, drop- 
 ping 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 lived in town, and were near at hand ; and 
 he had the privilege of going to see ^hem, 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 
 morning, while we were battening upon our quarter of a penny 
 loaf — our crug — moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden 
 piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured 
 from. Our Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the 
 peas soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for 
 him with a slice of " extraordinary 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 palate with a lump of double-re- 
 fined, and a smack of ginger (to make it go down the more glibly) 
 or the fragrant cinnamon. In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, 
 or quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as caro equina), 
 
 * Recollections of Christ's Hospital. 
 
16 ELIA. 
 
 with detestable marigolds floating in the pail to poison the broth — 
 c^ir 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 excited our appetites, and 
 disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal proportion) — he had 
 his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting griskin (exotics 
 unknown to our palates), cooked in the paternal kitchen (a great 
 thing), and brought him daily by his maid or aunt ! I remember 
 the good old relative (in whom love forbade pride) squatting down 
 upon some odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the 
 viands (of higher regale than those cates which the ravens min- 
 istered 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 the top of all, 
 hunger (eldest, strongest of the passions !) predominant, breaking 
 down the stony fences of shame, and awkwardness, and a troub- 
 ling over-consciousness. 
 
 I 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 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 fail- 
 ed me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred playmates. 
 
 O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early home- 
 stead ! The yearnings which I used to have towards it in those 
 unfledged years ! How, in my dreams, would my nativo town 
 (far in the west) come back, with its church, and trees, and 
 faces ! Hpw I would wake weeping, and in the anguish of my 
 heart exclaim upon sweet Calme in Wiltshire ! 
 
 To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by the rec- 
 ollection 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 Ih^e-long day, 
 upon our own hands, whether we had friends to ga to, or none. 
 
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 17 
 
 I remember those bathing excursions to the New-River, which 
 L. recalls with such relish, better, I think, than he can — for he 
 was a home-seeking lad, and did not much care for such water- 
 pastimes : — How 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 pennyless (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 liberty, 
 setting a keener edge upon them! — How faint and languid, 
 finally, we would return, towards night-fall, to our desired morsel, 
 half- rejoicing, h&lf-reluctant, that the hours of our uneasy liberty 
 had expired ! 
 
 It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about the 
 streets objectless — shivering at cold windows of print-shops, to 
 extract a little amusement ; or haply, as a last resort in the hopes 
 of a little novelty, to pay a fifty-times repeated visit (where our 
 individual faces should be as well known to the warden as those 
 of his own charges) to the Lions in the Tower — ^to whose levee, 
 by courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive title to admission. 
 
 L.'s governor (so we called the patron who presented us to the 
 foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal roof Any 
 complaint which he had to make was sure of being attended to. 
 This was understood at Christ's, and was an effectual screen to 
 him against the severity of masters, or worse tyranny of the 
 monitors. The oppressions of these young brutes are heart-sick- 
 ening to call to recollection. 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 disci- 
 pline of a leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, because it 
 pleased my callow overseer, when there has been any talking 
 heard afler 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. Thei'same execrable tyranny drove the younger part of 
 us from the fires, when our feet were perishing with snow ; and, 
 
 PART I. 3 
 
18 ELIA. 
 
 under the crudest penalties, forbade the indulgence of a drink 
 of water, when we lay in sleepless summer nights, fevered with 
 the season, and the day's sports. 
 
 There was one H , who, I learned, in after days, was seen 
 
 expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. (Do I flatter my- 
 self in fancying that this might be the planter of that name, who 
 suffered — at Nevis, I think, or St. Kitts, — some few years since ? 
 My friend Tobin was the benevolent instrument of bringing him 
 to the gallows.) This petty Nero actually branded a boy, who 
 had offended him, with a red-hot iron ; and nearly starved forty 
 o^' us, with exacting contributions, to the one half of our bread, 
 to pamper a young ass, which, incredible as it may seem, with 
 the connivance of the nurse's daughter (a young flame of his) lie 
 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 — happier than Caligula's minion, could he 
 have kept his own counsel — but, foolisher, alas ! than any of his 
 species in the fables — waxing fat, and kicking, in the fulness of 
 bread, one unlucky minute would needs proclaim his good fortune 
 to the world below • and, laying out his simple throat, blew such 
 a ram's-horn blast, as (toppling down the walls of his own Jeri- 
 cho) set concealment any longer at defiance. The client was dis- 
 missed, with certain attentions, to Smithfield ; but I never under- 
 stood that the patron underwent any censure on the occasion. 
 This was in the stewardship of L.'s admired Perry. 
 
 Under the same facile 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 scru- 
 pulously weighed out for our dinners ? These things were daily 
 practised in that magnificent apartment, which L. (grown con- 
 noisseur since, we presume) praises so highly for the grand paint- 
 ings " by Verrio, and others," with which it is " hung round and 
 adorned." But the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat boys in pic- 
 tures was, at that time, I believe, little consolatory to him, or us, 
 the living ones, who saw the better part of our provisions carried 
 
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 19 
 
 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, ace detestable. A gag-eater in our time was 
 equivalent to a goule, and held in equal detestation. suf- 
 fered under the imputation : 
 
 'Twas said 
 
 He ate strange flesh. 
 
 He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up the rem- 
 nants 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 bedside. None saw when he ate them. 
 It was rumoured that he privately devoured them in the night. 
 He was watched, but no traces of such midnight practices were 
 discoverable. Some reported, that, on leave-days, he had been 
 seen to carry out of the bounds a large blue check handkerchief, 
 full of something. This then must be the accursed thing. Con- 
 jecture next was at work to imagine how he could dispose of it. 
 Some said he sold it to the beggars. This belief generally pre- 
 vailed. 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 school- fellows, who were deter- 
 mined 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 staircase. 
 After him they silently slunk in, and followed by stealth up four 
 
20 ELIA. 
 
 flights, and saw him tap at a poor wicket, which was opened by 
 an aged woman, meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened into 
 certainty. The informers had secured their victim. They had 
 him in their toils. Accusation was formally preferred, and retri- 
 bution most signal was looked for. Mr. Hathaway, the then 
 steward (for this happened a little after my time,) with that pa- 
 tient sagacity which tempered all his conduct, determined to in- 
 vestigate the matter, before he proceeded to sentence. The result 
 was, that the supposed mendicants, the receivers or purchasers 
 
 of the mysterious scraps, turned out to be the parents of , an 
 
 honest couple come to decay — whom this seasonable supply had, 
 in all probability, saved from mendicancy ; 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 occasion, 
 
 much to their honour, voted a present relief to the family of , 
 
 and presented him with a silver medal. The lesson which the 
 steward read upon rash judgment, on the occasion of publicly 
 
 delivering the medal to , I believe would not be lost upon his 
 
 auditory. — I had left school then, but I well remember . 
 
 He was a tall, shambling youth, with a cast in his eye, not at all 
 calculated to 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 ex- 
 actly 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 after- 
 wards substituted — with a peep of light, let in askance, from a 
 prison-orifice at top, barely enough to read by. Here the poor 
 boy was locked in by himself all day, without sight of any but 
 the porter who brought him his bread and water — who might not 
 speak to him ; or of the beadle, who came twice a week to call 
 him out to receive his periodical chastisement, which was almost 
 
CHRISPS HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. ,21 
 
 welcome, because it separated him for a brief interval from soli- 
 t'jde : — and here he was shut up by himseU of m'ghts 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 offender, and whose 
 expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible, was brought forth, 
 as at some solemn auto dafe, arrayed in uncouth and most ap- 
 palling attire — all trace of his late " watchet weeds " carefully 
 effaced, he was exposed in a jacket resembling those which Lon- 
 don lamplighters formerly delighted in, with a cap of the same. 
 The effect of this divestiture was such as the ingenious devisers 
 of it could have anticipated. With his pale and frighted features, 
 it was as if some of those disfigurements in Dante had seized 
 upon him. In this disguisement he was brought into the hall 
 y^L.^s favorite state-room), where awaited him the whole number 
 of his school- fellows, whose joint lessons and sports he was thence- 
 forth to share no more ; the awful presence of the steward, to be 
 seen for the last time ; of the executioner beadle, clad in his stato 
 robe for the occasion ; 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 ac- 
 customed to officiate at these Ultima Supplicia ; not to mitigate 
 (so at least we understood it), but to enforce the uttermost stripe. 
 Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert, I remember, were col- 
 leagues on one occasion, when the beadle turning rather pale a 
 glass of brandy was ordered to prepare him for the mysteries. 
 The scourging was, after the old Roman fashion, long and stately. 
 The lictor accompanied the criminal quite round the hall. We 
 were generally too faint with attending to the previous disgusting 
 circumstances, to make accurate report with our eyes of the de- 
 
 * One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accordingly, at 
 length convinced the governors of the impolicy of this part of the sentence, 
 and the midnight torture to the spirits was dispensed with. — This fancy of 
 dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard's brain ; for which (saving 
 the reverence due to Holy Paul) methinks, I could willingly spit upon his 
 ■tatue. 
 
22 ELIA. 
 
 gree of corporal suffering 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 community. We had plenty of 
 exercise and recreation after school hours ; and, for myself, I 
 must confess, that I was never happier, than in them. The 
 Upper and the Lower Grammar School 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 acci- 
 dence, or a grammar, for form : but, for any trouble it gave us, 
 we might take two years in getting through the verbs deponent, 
 and another two in forgetting all that we had learned about them. 
 There was now and then the formality of saying a lesson, but if 
 you had not learned it, a brush across the shoulders (just enough 
 to disturb a fly) was the sole remonstrance. Field never used 
 the rod ; and in truth he wielded the cane with no great good 
 will — holding it " like a dancer." It looked in his hands rather 
 like an emblem than an instrument of authority ; and an emblem, 
 too, he was ashamed of. He was a good easy man, that did not 
 care to ruffle his own peace, nor perhaps set any great conside- 
 ration upon the value of juvenile time. He came among us, now 
 and then, but often stayed away whole days from us ; and when 
 he came it made no difference to us — he had his private room to 
 retire too, the short time he stayed, to be out of the sound of our 
 noise. Our mirth and uproar went on. We had classics of our 
 own, without being beholden to " insolent Greece or haughty 
 Rome," that passed current among us — Peter Wilkins — the Ad- 
 ventures of the Hon. Captain Robert Boyle — the Fortunate Blue 
 Coat Boy — and the like. Or we cultivated a turn for mechanic 
 
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 23 
 
 and scientific operations ; making little sun-dials of paper ; or 
 weaving those ingenious parentheses called cat-cradles ; or mak- 
 ing dry peas to dance upon the end of a tin pipe ; or studying the 
 art military over the 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 gene- 
 rally 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 chil- 
 dren, 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 Phfedrus. How things were suffered 
 to go on thus I cannot guess. Boyer, who was the proper person 
 to have 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 dis- 
 pleased 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 battering their brains over Xenophon and 
 Plato, with a silence as deep as that enjoined by the Samite, we 
 were enjoying ourselves at our ease in our little Goshen. We 
 saw a little into the secrets of his discipline, and the prospect did 
 but the more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders rolled inno- 
 cuous 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 advantage in temper. His pupils cannot speak 
 of him without something of terror allaying their gratitude ; the 
 
 * Cowley. 
 
24 ELIA. 
 
 remembrance of Field comes back with all the soothing images 
 of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work like play, and in- 
 nocent idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and life itself a " play- 
 ing holiday." 
 
 Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of Boyer, we 
 were near enough (as I have said) to understand a little of his 
 system. We occasionally heard sounds of the Ululantes, and 
 caught glances of Tartarus. B. was a rabid pedant. His Eng- 
 lish style was crampt to barbarism. His Easter anthems (for his 
 duty obliged him to those periodical flights) were grating as 
 scrannel pipes.* — He would laugh, ay, and heartily, but then it 
 
 must be at Flaccus's quibble about Rex or at the trislis se- 
 
 verilas 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, be- 
 tokening a mild day. The other, an old, discolored, unkempt, 
 angry caxon, denoting frequent and bloody execution. Wo to 
 the school, when he made his morning appearance in his passy, 
 or passionate wig. No comet expounded surer. — J. B. had a 
 heavy hand. I have known him double his knotty fist at a poor 
 trembling child (the maternal milk hardly dry upon its lips) with a 
 " Sirrah, do you presume to set your wits at me ?" — Nothing was 
 more common than to see him make a headlong entry into the 
 school-room, from his inner recess, or library, and, with turbulent 
 eye, singling out a lad, roar out, " Od's my life, sirrah " (his 
 favorite adjuration), " I have a greatmind to whip you," — then, 
 with as sudden a retracting 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, 
 
 * 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 forgotten 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 itwas too clas- 
 sical for representation. 
 
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 25 
 
 piecing out his imperfect sense, as if it had been some Devil's 
 Litany, with the expletory yell — ^^ and I will, too." — In his 
 gentler moods, when the rabidus furor was assuaged, he had re- 
 sort 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 paragraph, 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 ineffec- 
 tual from his hand — when droll squinting W — having been caught 
 putting the inside of the master's desk to a use for which the 
 architect had clearly not designed it, to justify himself, with great 
 simplicity averred, that he did not know that the thing had been fore- 
 warned. 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 excepted) — ^that remis- 
 sion was unavoidable. 
 
 L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructor. Cole- 
 ridge, in his literary life, has pronounced 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 ejacula- 
 tion of C, when he heard that his old master was on his death- 
 bed : " Poor J. B. ! — may all his faults be forgiven ; and may he 
 be wafted to bliss by little cherub boys all head and wings, with 
 no bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities." 
 
 Under him were many good and sound scholars bred. — First 
 Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, kindest of boys 
 and men, since Co-grammar-master (and 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 
 almost immediate sub-appearance of the other. Generally arm- 
 in-arm, these kindly coadjutors lightened for each other the toil- 
 some duties of their profession, and when, in advanced age, one 
 found it convenient to retire, the other was notions in discovering 
 
26 ELIA. 
 
 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 Amiciiia, or some 
 tale of 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 Middle- 
 ton followed him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gen- 
 tleman in his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent critic ; 
 and is author (besides the Country Spectator) of a Treatise on 
 the Greek Article, against Sharpe. M. is said to bear his mitre 
 high in India, where the regni novitas (I dare say) sufficiently 
 justifies the bearing. A humility 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 insti- 
 tutions, and the church which those fathers watered. The man- 
 ners of M. at school, though firm, were mild and unassuming. — 
 Next to M. (if not senior to him) was Richards, author of the 
 Aboriginal Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems ; 
 
 a pale, studious Grecian. — Then followed poor S , ill-fated 
 
 M ! of these the Muse is silent. 
 
 Finding some of Edward's race 
 Unhappy, pass their annals by. 
 
 Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day-spring 
 of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee — the 
 dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Logician, 
 Metaphysician, Bard ! — How have I seen the casual passer 
 through the Cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration (while 
 he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garl of 
 the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet 
 intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (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 
 charity-hoy ! — Many were the " wit combats" (to dally awhile 
 with the words of old Fuller) between him and C. V. Le G , 
 
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 27 
 
 " which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an Eng- 
 lish man of war ; Master Coleridge, like the former, was built 
 far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances. C. 
 V. L., with the English man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter 
 in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advan- 
 tage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." 
 
 Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten, Allen, with 
 the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, with which thou 
 wert wont to make the old Cloisters shake, in thy cognition of 
 some poignant jest of theirs ; or the anticipation of some more 
 material, and peradventure practical one, of thine own. Extinct 
 are those smiles, with that beautiful countenance, with which (for 
 thou wert the Nireus fonnosus of the school), in the days of thy 
 maturer waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town- 
 damsel, who, incensed by provoking pinch, turning tigress-like 
 round, suddenly converted by thy angel look, exchanged the half- 
 formed terrible " hi ," for a gentler greeting — " bless thy hand- 
 some face P^ 
 
 Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the friends of 
 
 Elia — the junior Le Gr and F ; who impelled, the former 
 
 by a roving temper, the latter by too quick a sense of neglect — 
 ill capable of enduring the slights poor Sizars are sometimes sub- 
 ject to in our seats of learning — exchanged their Alma Mater for 
 the camp ; perishing, 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 Gieciaiis in my time. 
 
38 ELIA. 
 
 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 na- 
 turally fall in with one or other of these primary distinctions. 
 The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose 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, trust- 
 ing, generous manners of the other. 
 
 Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all ages — 
 Alcibiades — FalstafT — Sir Richard Steele— our late incomparable 
 Brinsley — what a family likeness in all four ! 
 
 What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower! what 
 rosy gills ! what a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he mani- 
 fest, — ^taking no more thought than lilies ! What contempt for 
 money, — accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better than 
 dross ! What a liberal confounding of those pedantic distinctions 
 of meum and tuum f or rather, what a noble simplification of lan- 
 guage (beyond Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites into one 
 clear, intelligible pronoun adjective ! — What near approaches doth 
 he make to the primitive community, — to the extent of one half of 
 the principle at least. 
 
 He is the true taxer who " calleth all the world up to be taxed ;'* 
 
THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 29 
 
 and the distance is as vast between him and one of us, as subsisted 
 between the Augustan Majesty and the poorest obolary Jew that 
 paid it tribute-pittance at 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 comelh to you with a 
 smile, and troubleth you with no receipt ; confining himself to no 
 set season. Every day is his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy 
 Michael. He applieth the lene tormentum of a pleasant look to 
 your purse, — which to that gentle warmth expands her silken 
 leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveller, for which sun 
 and wind contended ! He is the true Propontic which never 
 ebbeth ! The sea which taketh handsomely at each man's hand. 
 In vain the victim, whom he delighteth to honor, struggles with 
 destiny ; he is in the net. Lend therefore cheerfully, O man, 
 ordained to lend — that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly 
 penny, the reversion promised. Combine not preposterously in 
 thine own person the penalties of 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. 
 Reflections 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 descendent from mighty ancestors 
 of that name, who heretofore held ducal dignities in this realm. 
 In his actions and sentiments he belied not the stock to which he 
 pretended. Early in life he found himself invested with ample 
 revenues ; which, with that noble disinterestedness which I have 
 noticed as inherent in men of the great race, he took almost im- 
 mediate measures entirely to dissipate and bring to nothing : for 
 there is something revolting in the idea of a king holding a pri- 
 vate purse; and the thoughts of Bigod were all regal. Thus 
 furnished by the very act of disfurnishment ; getting rid of the 
 cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt (as one sings) 
 
 To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, 
 
 Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise. 
 
30 ELIA. 
 
 he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enterprise, " bor- 
 rowing and to borrow !" 
 
 In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout this island, 
 it has been calculated that he laid a tythe part of the inhabitants 
 under contribution. I reject this estimate as greatly exagge- 
 rated : but having had the honor 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 obliging as to explain the phenomenon. It 
 seems, these were his tributaries ; feeders of his exchequer ; 
 gentlemen, his good friends (as he was pleased to express him- 
 self), to whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan. 
 Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He rather took a 
 pride in numbering them ; and, with Comus, seemed pleased to 
 be " stocked with so fair a herd." 
 
 With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived to keep 
 his treasury always empty. He did it by force of an aphorism, 
 which he had often in his mouth, that " money kept longer than 
 three days stinks." So he made use of it while it was fresh. 
 A good part he drank away (for he was an excellent toss-pot) ; 
 some he gave away, the rest he threw away, literally tossing and 
 hurling it violently from him — as boys do burrs, or as if it had 
 been infectious, — into ponds, or ditches, or deep holes, inscrutable 
 cavities of the earth ; — or he would bury it (where he would 
 never seek it again) by a river's side under some bank, which (he 
 would facetiously observe) paid no interest — but out away from 
 him it must go peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into the wilder- 
 ness, while it was sweet. He never missed it. The streams 
 were perennial which fed his fisc. When new supplies became 
 necessary, the first person that had the felicity to fall in with 
 him, friend or stranger, was sure to contribute to the deficiency. 
 For Bigod had an 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 repug- 
 
THE TWO RACES OF MEN, 31 
 
 nant to the kindliness of his nature to refuse such a one as I am 
 describing, than to say tio to a poor petitionary rogue (your bas- 
 tard borrower), who, by his mumping visnomy, tells you, that he 
 expects nothing better ; and, therefore, whose preconceived notions 
 and expectations you do in reality so much less shock in the 
 refusal. 
 
 "When I think of this man ; his fiery glow of heart ; his swell 
 of feeling ; how magnificent, how ideal he was ; how great at 
 the midnight hour ; and when I compare with him the compa- 
 nions 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 J have touched upon ; I mean 
 your borrowers 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 — (y/)u are now with me in my little back study 
 
 in Bloomsbury, reader !) with the huge Switzer-like tomes on 
 
 each side (like the Guild-hall giants, in their reformed posture, 
 guardant of nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, Opera 
 BonaventurcE, choice and massy divinity, to which its two sup- 
 porters (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre, — Bellarmine, 
 and Holy Thomas), showed but as dwarfs, — itself an Ascapart ! — 
 that Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, 
 which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, 
 namely, that " the title to property in a book (my Bonaventure, 
 for instance), is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of under- 
 standing 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 Brown 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 
 
32 ELIA. 
 
 known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the presence of a 
 rival more qualified to carry her off than himself. Just below, 
 Dodsley's dramas want their fourth volume, where Vittoria Co- 
 rombona is ! The remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's 
 refuse sons, when the Fates lorrowed Hector. Here stood the 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. There loitered the 
 Complete Angler ; quiet as in life, by some stream side. In yon- 
 der nook, John Buncle, a widower-volume, with " eyes closed," 
 mourns his ravished mate. 
 
 Qne justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, like the 
 sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another time, sea-like, he throws 
 up as rich an equivalent to match it. I have a small under-col- 
 lection 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 Hebrews. There they stand in conjunction ; natives, and 
 naturalized. 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 account of the platter after it. But what 
 moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., to be so importunate to carry 
 off with thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, 
 the Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble Margaret 
 Newcastle ? — knowing at the time, and knowing that I knew 
 also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over one leaf of the 
 illustrious folio : — what but the mere spirit of contradiction, and 
 childish love of getting the better of thy friend ? Then, worst 
 cut of all ! to transport it with thee to the Gallican land — 
 
 Unworthy land to harbor 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 compa- 
 
THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 33 
 
 Dies with thy quips and mirthful tales ? Child of the Green- 
 room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy wife, too, that part- 
 French, better-part English- woman ! — 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 Zim- 
 merman on Solitude ? 
 
 Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collection, 
 be shy of showing it ; or if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, 
 lend thy books ; but let it be to such a one as S. T. C. — he will 
 return them (generally anticipating the time appointed) with 
 usury ; enriched with annotations tripling their value. I have 
 had experience. Many are these precious MSS. of his — (in 
 matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfrequently, vying 
 with the originals) in no very clerkly hand — legible in my 
 Daniel ; in old Burton ; in Sir Thomas Browne ; and those ab- 
 struser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas ! wandering in 
 Pagan lands. I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, 
 against S. T. C. 
 
 PART I 4 
 
34 ELIA. 
 
 NEW YEAR'S EVE 
 
 Every man hath two birth-days : two days, at least, in every year, 
 which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects his 
 mortal duration. The one is that which in an especial manner 
 he termeth his. In the gradual desuetude of old observances, 
 this custom of solemnizing our proper birth-day hath nearly 
 passed away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing at all about 
 the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond cake and orange. 
 But the birth of a New Year is of an interest too wide to be pre- 
 termitted by king or cobbler. 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 com- 
 mon Adam. 
 
 Of all sound of all bells — (bells, th i music nighest 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, perform- 
 ed or neglected — in that regretted time. I begin to know its 
 worth, as when a person dies. It takes a personal color ; nor 
 was it a poetical flight in a contemporary, when he exclaimed, 
 
 I saw the skirts of the departing Year. 
 
 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 com- 
 ing year, than any very tender regrets for the decease of its pre- 
 decessor. But I am none of those who— 
 
NEW YEAR'S EVE. 35 
 
 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 diffi- 
 cult in me to face the prospective. I have almost ceased to hope ; 
 and am sanguine only in the prospects of other (former) years. I 
 plunge into foregone visions and conclusions. I encounter pell- 
 mell with past disappointments. I am armor-proof against old 
 discouragements. 1 forgive, or overcome in lancy, old adversa- 
 ries. I play over again for 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-con- 
 trived novel. Methinks 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 that I should have at this moment two thousand pounds in 
 lanco, and be without the idea of the specious old rogue. 
 
 In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look back 
 upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox, when I say, 
 that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a man may 
 have leave to love himself, without the imputation of self-love ? 
 
 If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is introspec- 
 tive — and mine is painfully so — can have a less respect for hia 
 present identity, than I have for the man Elia. I know him to be 
 light, and vain, and humorsome ; a notorious * * * j 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 Elia, that 
 
 " other me," there, in the back-ground — 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 medica- 
 ments. I can lay its poor fevered head upon the sick pillow at 
 
36 ELIA. 
 
 Christ's and awake with it in surprise 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 color of false- 
 hood. God help thee, Elia, how art thou changed ! — Thou art 
 sophisticated. — I know how honest, how courageous (for a weak- 
 ling) it was — how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful ! From 
 what have I not fallen, if the child I remember was indeed 
 myself, — and not some dissembling guardian, presenting a false 
 identity, to give the rule to my unpractised steps, and regulate 
 the tone of my moral being ! 
 
 That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy, in 
 such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly idiosyn- 
 crasy. Or is it owing to another cause : simply, that being with- 
 out 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 favorite ? 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, im- 
 penetrable to ridicule, under the phantom cloud of Elia. 
 
 The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a character 
 not likely to let slip the sacred observance of any old institution ; 
 and the ringing out of the Old Year was kept by them with cir- 
 cumstances of peculiar ceremony. — In those days the sound of 
 those midnight chimes, though it seemed to raise hilarity in all 
 around me, never failed to bring a train of pensive imagery into 
 my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived what it meant, or thought 
 of it as a reckoning that concerned me. Not childhood alone but 
 the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. 
 He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily 
 on the fragility of life ; but he brings it not home to himself, any 
 more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination 
 the freezing days of December. But now, shall I confess a 
 truth ? — I feel these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count 
 the probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure 
 of moments and shortest periods, like misers' farthings. In pro- 
 portion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count 
 upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon 
 
NEW YEAR'S EVE. 37 
 
 the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away 
 "like a weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors solace me not, nor 
 sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be 
 carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity ; 
 and reluct at Jhe 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. 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 altera- 
 tion, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and dis- 
 composes me. My household-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and 
 are not rooted up without blood. They do not willingly seek 
 Lavinian shores. A new state of being staggers me. 
 
 Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer 
 holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of 
 meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle- 
 light and fire-side 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 armfulls) in my embra- 
 ces ? Must knowledge come to me, if it come at all, by some 
 awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by this familiar 
 process of reading ? 
 
 Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indications 
 which point me to them here, — ^the recognizable face — the " sweet 
 assurance of a look" — ? 
 
 In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying — ^to give it 
 its mildest name — does more especially haunt and beset me. In 
 a genial August noon, beneath a sweltering sky, death is almost 
 problematic. At those times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy 
 an immortality. Then we expand and bourgeon. Then we are 
 'as strong again, as valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal 
 taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts 
 of death. All things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that 
 
38 ELIA. 
 
 master feeling ; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity ; moonlight 
 itself, with its shadowy and spectral appearances, — that cold 
 ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that innutritious 
 one denounced in the Canticles : — I am none of her minions — I 
 hold with the Persian. 
 
 Whatever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings death 
 into my mind. All partial evils, like humors, run into that capi- 
 tal 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, exe- 
 crate, 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, melan- 
 choly Privation, or more frightful and confounding Positive f 
 
 Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, are alto- 
 gether frigid and insulting, like thyself. For what satisfaction 
 hath a man, that he shall " lie down with kings and emperors in 
 death," who in his life-time never greatly coveted the society 
 of such bed-fellows ? — or, forsooth, that " so shall the fairest face 
 
 appear ?" — why, to comfort me, must Alice W n be a goblin ? 
 
 More than all, I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbe- 
 coming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. 
 Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with 
 his odious truism, that " Such as he now is I must shortly be." 
 Not so shortly, friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the mean 
 time 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 turn-coat 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 occa- 
 sion, by hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton. 
 
NEW-YEAR'S EVE. 39 
 
 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 inform'd by clearer light. 
 
 Discerns sereneness in that brow. 
 
 That all contracted seem'd but now. 
 
 His reversed face may show distaste. 
 
 And frown ypon 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 tlie 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 brushed through 
 
 The last, why so we may this too ; 
 
 And then the next in reason should 
 
 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. 
 
40 ELIA. 
 
 Than those do of the other sort : 
 
 And who has one good year in three. 
 
 And yet repines at destiny, 
 
 Appears ungrateful in the case. 
 
 And merits not the good he has. v 
 
 Then let us welcome the New Guest 
 
 With lusty brimmers of the best ; 
 
 Mirth always should Good Fortune meet 
 
 And renders e'en Disaster sweet : 
 
 And though the Princess 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 English vein ? Do they not fortify like 
 a cordial ; enlarging the heart, and productive of sweet blood, 
 and generous spirits, in the concoction ? Where be those puling 
 fears of death, just now expressed or affected ? — Passed like a 
 cloud — absorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry — clean 
 washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your only Spa for 
 these hypochondries — And now another cup of the generous ! 
 and a merry New Year, and many of them, to you all, my 
 masters ! 
 
r^ 
 
 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 41 
 
 MRS, BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 
 
 " A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the game." 
 This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle (now with God), 
 who, next to her devotions, loved a good game of whist. She 
 was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your half-and-half play- 
 ers, who have no objection to take a hand, if you want one to 
 make up a rubber ; who affirm that they have no pleasure in 
 winning ; that they like to win one game and lose another ; that 
 they can while away an hour very agreeably at a card-table, but 
 are indifferent whether they play or no ; and will desire an ad- 
 versary 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 favors. She never 
 made a revoke, nor ever passed it over in her adversary without 
 exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought a good fight : cut and 
 thrust. She held not her good sword (her cards) " like a dancer." 
 She sate bolt upright ; and neither showed you her cards nor 
 desired to see yours. All people have their blind side — their 
 superstitions ; and I have heard her declare, under the rose, that 
 hearts was her favorite 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 j or ring for 
 
42 ELIA. 
 
 a servant till it was fairly over. She never introduced, or con- 
 nived at, miscellaneous conversation during its process. As she 
 emphatically observed, cards were cards ; and if I ever saw un- 
 mingled 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 candor, declared, that he thought there was no harm in un- 
 bending the mind now and then, after serious studies, in recrea- 
 tions of that kind ! She could not bear to have her noble occu- 
 pation, to which she wound up her faculties, considered 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 favorite author: his Rape of the Lock her 
 favorite work. She once did me the favor to play over with me 
 (with the cards) his celebrated game of Ombre in that poem ; 
 and to explain to me how far it agreed with, and in what points 
 it would be found to differ from, tradrille. Her illustrations were 
 apposite and poignant ; and I had the pleasure of sending the 
 substance of them to Mr. Bowles ; but I suppose they came too 
 late to be inserted among his ingenious notes upon that author. 
 
 Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love ; but whist had 
 engaged her maturer esteem. The former, she said, was showy and 
 specious, and likely to allure young persons. The uncertainty and 
 quick shifting of partners — a thing which the constancy of whist 
 abhors ; — the dazzling supremacy and regal investiture of Spa- 
 dille — absurd, as she justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of 
 whist, where his crown and garter gave him no proper power 
 above his brother-nobility of the Aces ; — the giddy vanity, so 
 taking to the inexperienced, of playing alone ; above all, the 
 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 steady enmities. She despised the 
 
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 43 
 
 chance-started, capricious, and ever-fluctuating alliances of the 
 other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, reminded 
 her of the petty ephemeral embroilments of the little Italian states, 
 depicted by Machiavel : perpetually changing postures and con- 
 nexions ; bitter foes to-day, sugared darlings to-morrow ; kissing 
 and scratching in a breath ; — but the wars of whist were com- 
 parable 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 fa- 
 vorite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the nob in crib- 
 bage — nothing superfluous. No flushes — that most irrational of 
 all pleas that a reasonable being can set up : — that any one should 
 claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same mark and 
 color, without reference to the playing of the game, or the indi- 
 vidual worth or pretensions of the cards themselves ! She held 
 this to be a solecism ; as pitiful an ambition at cards as allitera- 
 tion is in authorship. She despised superficiality, and looked 
 deeper than the color of things. Suits were soldiers, she would 
 say, and must have an uniformity of array to distinguish them: 
 but what should we say to a foolish squire, 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 stripped it of some appendages, which, in the slate of human 
 frailty, may be vcnially and even commendably, allowed of. She 
 saw no reason for the deciding of the trump by the turn of the 
 card. Why not one suit al>vays trumps ? — Why two colors, when 
 the mark of the suits would have sufficiently distinguished them 
 without it ? — 
 
 " But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably refreshed with the 
 Yariety. Man is not a creature of pure reason — he must have 
 his senses delightfully appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic 
 countries, where the music and the paintings draw in many to 
 worship, whom your quaker spirit of unsensualising would have 
 kept out. — You yourself have a pretty collection of paintings — 
 but confess to me, whether, walking in your gallery at Sandham, 
 among thos clear Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters in the 
 ante-room, } 3U ever fell your bosom glow with an elegant delight, 
 
44 ELIA 
 
 at all comparable 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 heralds in a procession — the gay 
 triumph-assuring scarlets — ^the contrasting deadly-killing sables— 
 the 'hoary majesty of spades' — Pam in all his glory ! — 
 
 " All these might be dispensed with ; and with their naked 
 names upon the drab pasteboard, the game might go on very well 
 pictureless. But the beauty of cards would be extinguished for 
 ever. Stripped of all that is imaginative in them, they must 
 degenerate into mere gambling. Imagine a dull deal board, or 
 drum head, to spread them on, instead of that nice verdant carpet 
 (next to nature's), fittest arena for those courtly combatants to 
 play their gallant jousts and tourneys in ! — Exchange those deli- 
 cately-turned ivory markers — (work of Chinese artist, unconscious 
 of their symbol, — or as profanely slighting their true application 
 as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that turned out those little 
 shrines for the goddess) — exchange them for little bits of leather 
 (our ancestor's money) or chalk and a slate ! " — 
 
 The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of my 
 logic, and to her approbation of my arguments on her favorite 
 topic that evening, I have always fancied myself indebted for the 
 legacy of a curious cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna 
 marble, which her maternal 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 pro- 
 nounce " Go " — or " Thafs ago." She called it an ungrammati- 
 cal game. The pegging teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a 
 rubber (a guinea stake), because she would not take advantage 
 of the turn-up knave, which would have given it her, but which 
 she must have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring 
 " two for his heels." There is something extremely genteel in 
 this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentlewo nan born. 
 
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 45 
 
 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 savored (she thought) of affec- 
 tation. 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 en- 
 counter, 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, without 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 incentives of profit with honor, common to every species 
 — though the latter can be but very imperfectly enjoyed in those 
 other games, where the spectator is only feebly a participator. 
 But the parties in whist are 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 because your partner 
 sympathizes in the contingency. You win for two. You triumph 
 for two. Two are exalted. Two again are mortified ; which 
 divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking off 
 the invidiousness) your glories. Two losing to two are better 
 reconciled, than one to one in that close butchery. The hostile 
 feeling is weakened by multiplying the channels. War becomes 
 a civil game. — By such reasonings as these the old lady was ac- 
 customed to defend her favorite pastime. 
 
 No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at any game, 
 where chance entered into the composition, ybr nothing. Chance, 
 she would argue — and here again admire the subtlety of her 
 conclusion; —chance is nothing, but where something else depends 
 
46 ELIA. 
 
 upon it. It is obvious that cannot he 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 hundred thousand tickets 
 wiih but one fortunate number — 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 
 circumstances. Games of pure skill were as little 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-engagernent at a review, bloodless and profitless. 
 She could not conceive a game wanting the sprightly infusion of 
 chance, the handsome excuses of good fortune. Two people 
 playing at chess in a corner of a room, whilst whist v/as stirring 
 in the centre, would inspire her with insufferable horror and 
 ennui. Those well-cut similitudes of Castles, and Knights, the 
 imagery 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 color. A pencil and dry-slate (she used to say) 
 were the proper arena for such combatants. 
 
 To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the bad 
 passions, she would retort, that man is a gaming animal. He 
 must be always trying to get the better in something or other : — 
 that this passion can scarcely be more safely expended than upon 
 a game at cards : that cards are a temporary illusion ; in truth, 
 a mere drama ; for we do but 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 an 
 kingdoms. They are a sort of dream-fighting ; much ado ; grea 
 battling, and little bloodshed ; mighty means for disproportionec 
 ends ; quite as diverting, and a great deal more innoxious, thai 
 many of those more serious games of life, which men play, with 
 out esteeming them to be such. 
 
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST, 47 
 
 With great deference to the old lady's judgment on these mat- 
 ters 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 hve 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 terms which my old friend objected to, 
 come in as something admissible. — I love to get a tierce or a 
 quatorze, though they mean nothing. I am subdued to an in- 
 ferior 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, thougli 
 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. , -.- . 
 
4S ELIA. 
 
 A CHAPTER ON EARS, 
 
 I HAVE no ear. — 
 
 Mistake me not, reader — nor imagine that I am by nature des- 
 titute of those exterior twin appendages, hanging ornaments, and 
 (architecturally speaking) handsome volutes to the human capi- 
 tal. 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 incur, 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 — -for music. To say that this heart never melted at 
 the concord of sweet sounds, would be a foul self-libel. " Water 
 parted from the sea " never fails to move it strangely. So does 
 " In infancy. ^^ But they were used to be sung at her harpsichord 
 (the old-fashioned instrument in vogue in those days) by a 
 gentlewoman — the gentlest, sure, that ever merited the appella- 
 tion — 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 day-spring of that absorb. 
 
A CHAPTER ON EARS. 49 
 
 ing sentiment which was afterwards destined to overwhelm and 
 subdue his nature quite for Alice W n. 
 
 I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to harmony. But 
 organically I am incapable of a tune. I have been practising 
 " God save the King^' all my life; whistling and humming of it 
 over to myself in solitary 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 undeveloped faculty 
 of music within me. For thrumming, in my wild way, on my 
 friend A.'s piano, the other morning, while he was engaged in an 
 adjoining parlor, — 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 dream- 
 ing of me, his suspicions had lighted on Jenny. But a grace, 
 snatched from a superior refinement, soon convinced him that 
 some being — technically perhaps deficient, but higher informed 
 from a principle common to all the fine arts — had swayed the 
 keys to a mood which Jenny, with all her (less cultivated) enthu- 
 siasm, could never have elicited from them. I mention this as a 
 proof of my friend's penetration, and not with any view of dis- 
 paraging Jenny. 
 
 Scientifically I could never be made to understand (yet have 1 
 taken some pains) what a note in music is ; or how one note 
 should diflfer from another. Much less in voices can I distinguish 
 a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes the thorough-bass I 
 contrive to guess at, from its being supereminently harsh and dis- 
 agreeable. 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 1 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 Baralijpton. 
 
 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, beyond all preceding ages, since Jubal stumbled 
 upon the gamut) to remain, as it were, singly unimpressible to 
 the magic influences of an art, which is said to have such an 
 
 PART I, 5 
 
50 ELIA. 
 
 especial stroke at soothing, elevating, and refining the passions. 
 — Yet, rather than break the candid current of my confessions, I 
 must avow to you, that I have received a great deal more pain 
 than pleasure from this so cried-up faculty. 
 
 I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A carpenter's 
 hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me into more than 
 midsummer madness. But those unconnected, unset sounds are 
 nothing to the measured malice of music. The 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 inaptitude, to thread the maze ; 
 like an unskilled eye painfully poring upon hieroglyphics. I 
 have sat through an Italian Opera, till, for sheer pain, and inex- 
 plicable 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 !) im- 
 moveable, 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 parlor 
 
 All silent, and all damned. 
 
 Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of music, as 
 they are called, do plague and embitter my apprehensions. 
 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 
 
A CHAPTER ON EARS. 51 
 
 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 undergone from a series 
 of the ablest-executed pieces of this empty instrumental music. 
 
 I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, I have experienced 
 something vastly lulling and agreeable: — afterwards followeth the 
 languor and the oppression. — Like that disappointing book in 
 Patmos; or, like the comings on of melancholy, described by 
 Burton, doth music make her first insinuating approaches : — " Most 
 pleasant it is to such as are melancholy given to walk alone in 
 some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by some brook side, 
 and to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, which 
 shall affect him most, amahilis insania, and mentis gratissimus 
 error. A most incomparable delight to build castles in the air, 
 to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, 
 which they suppose, and strongly imagine, they act, or that they see 
 done. — So delightsome these toys at first,_they could spend whole 
 days and nights without sleep, even whole years in such contem- 
 plations, and fantastical meditations, which are like so many 
 dreams, and will hardly be drawn from them — winding and un- 
 winding themselves as so many clocks, and still pleasing their 
 humors, until at the last the scene turns upon a sudden, and 
 they being now habituated to such meditations and solitary places, 
 can endure no company, can think of nothing but harsh and dis- 
 tasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, subrusticus pudor, 
 discontent, cares, and weariness of life, surprise them on a sudden 
 and they can think of nothing else ; continually suspecting, no 
 sooner are their eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy 
 seizeth on them, and terrifies their souls, representing some dismal 
 object to their minds; which now, by no means, no labor, no 
 persuasions, they can avoid, they cannot be rid of, they cannot 
 resist." 
 
 Something like this '^ scene turning " I have experienced at 
 the evening parties, at the house of my good Catholic friend 
 Nov : who, by the aid of a capital organ, himself the most 
 
52 ELIA. 
 
 finished of players, converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his 
 week days into Sundays, and these latter into minor heavens.* 
 
 When my friend commences 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, 
 waking a new sense, and putting a soul of old religion into my 
 young apprehension — (whether it be thaty 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, altars, censers, dazzle 
 before me — the genius of his religion hath me in her toils — a 
 shadowy triple tiara invests the brow of my friend, late so naked, 
 so ingenuous — he is Pope, — and by him sits, like as in the anomaly 
 of dreams, a she-Pope too, — tricoroneted like himself! — I am 
 converted, and yet a Protestant ; — at once malleus hereticorumy 
 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 dissi- 
 pates 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. 
 
 * I have been there, and still would go ; 
 'Tis like a little heaven below. — Br. Waffs 
 
ALL FOOLS' DAY. 53 
 
 ALL FOOLS' DAY. 
 
 'wv>*^^VV* 
 
 The compliments of the season to my worthy masters, and a merry 
 first of April to us all ! 
 
 Many happy returns of this day to you — and you — and youy 
 Sir — nay, never frown, man, nor put a long face upon the matter. 
 Do not we know one another ? what need of ceremony among 
 friends ? we have all a touch of that same — you understand me — 
 a speck of the 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 meaning of it to yourself for your pains. What ! 
 man, we have four quarters of the globe on our side, at the least 
 computation. 
 
 Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry — we will drink no 
 wise, melancholy, politic port on this day — and let us troll the 
 catch of Amiens — 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. Marry, of the present breed, I think I 
 could without 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. 
 
54 ELIA. 
 
 Good master Empedocles, you are welcome. It is long since 
 you went a salamander-gathering down Mina. Worse than sam- 
 phire-picking by some odds. 'Tis 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 Mediterranean ! You were founder, I take 
 it, of the disinterested sect of the Calenturists. 
 
 Gebir, my old free-mason, and prince of plasterers at Babel, 
 bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand ! You have claim to 
 a seat here at my right hand, as patron of the stammerers. You 
 left your work, if I remember Herodotus correctly, at eight 
 hundred million toises, or thereabout, above the level of the sea. 
 Bless us, what a long bell you must have pulled, to call your top 
 workmen to their nunchion on the low grounds of Shinar. Or did 
 you send up your garlic and onions by a rocket ? I am a rogue if 
 I am not ashamed to show you our Monument on Fish-street Hill, 
 after your altitudes. Yet we think it somewhat. 
 
 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 ! 
 
 Mister Adams 'odso, I honor your coat — pray do us the 
 
 favor to read to us that sermon, which you lent to Mistress Slip- 
 slop — ^the twenty and second in your portmanteau there — on 
 Female Incontinence — the same — it will come in most irre- 
 levantly and impertinently seasonable to the time of the day. 
 
 Good Master Raymund Lully, ygu 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 logical 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 ? — Ague-* 
 cheek, 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 hi somewhere. — You six will engross 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 
 
ALL FOOLS' DAY. 55 
 
 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, peradventure, 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 smiling to thyself, in courteous smiling upon others, in 
 the goodly ornature of well-apparelled speech, and the commenda- , 
 tion of wise sentences, thou art nothing inferior to those accom- 
 plished Dons of Spain. The spirit of chivalry forsake me for 
 ever, when I forget 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 could have given his invidi- 
 ous preference between a pair of so goodly-propertied and merito- 
 rious-equal damsels. * * ***** 
 
 To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract our Fool's 
 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 apprehen- 
 sions, that dived not below the surface of the matter, I read those 
 Parables — not guessing at the involved wisdom — I had more 
 yearnings towards that simple architect, that built his house upon 
 the sand, than I entertained for his more cautious neighbor ; 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, somewhat 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 
 
56 ELIA. 
 
 acquaintance since, that lasted ; or a friendship, that answered ; 
 with any that had not some tincture of the absurd in their charac- 
 ters. I venerate an honest obliquity 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 
 security, which a word out of season ratifies. And take 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 fool- 
 isher the fowl or fish, — woodcocks, — dotterels, — cod's-heads, &c., 
 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. 
 
A QUAKERS' MEETING. ' 57 / 
 
 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 mind ! 
 
 Secrecy's confidant, and he 
 
 Who makes religion mystery ! 
 
 Admiration's speaking'st tongue ! 
 
 Leave, thy desert shades among. 
 
 Reverend hermits' hallow'd cells, 
 
 Where retired devotion dwells I 
 
 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 clamors of the 
 multitude ; would'st thou enjoy at once solitude and society ; 
 would'st thou possess the depth of thy own spirit in stillness, 
 without being shut out from the consolatory 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 counte- 
 nance ; a unit in aggregate ; a simple in composite : — 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 pro- 
 fundities of the earth ; shut not up thy casements ; nor pour wax 
 into the little cells of thy ears, with little 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 multitude, it is great 
 mastery. 
 
 * From " Poems of all Sorts," by Richard Fleckno, 1653. 
 
58 ELIA. 
 
 1 ' 
 
 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 inter-confounding 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 intense by numbers, and by sympathy. She too 
 hath her deeps, that call unto deeps. Negation itself hath a 
 positive more and less ; and closed 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 no- 
 where so absolutely as in a Quakers' Meeting. — Those first her- 
 mits did certainly understand this principle, when they retired 
 into Egyptian solitudes, not singly but in shoals, to enjoy one 
 another's want of conversation. The Carthusian is bound to his 
 brethren by this agreeing spirit of incommunicativeness. In 
 secular occasions, what so pleasant as to be reading a book through 
 a long winter evening, with a friend sitting by — say, a wife — he, 
 or she, too (if that be probable), reading another, without inter- 
 ruption, or oral communication ? — can there be no sympathy 
 without the gabble of words ? — away with this inhuman, shy, sin- 
 gle, shade and cavern-haunting solitariness. Give me, Master 
 Zimmermann, 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 
 solitude. This is the loneliness " to be felt." — The Abbey 
 Church of Westminster 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 — 
 
A QUAKERS' MEETING. 59 
 
 but here is something, which throws Antiquity herself into the 
 fore-ground — Silence — eldest of things — language of old Night — 
 primitive Discourser — to which the insolent decays of 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, naught-caballing, unmischievous synod ! con- 
 vocation without intrigue ! parliament without debate ! what a 
 lesson dost thou read to council, and to consistory ! — if my pen 
 treat of you lightly — as haply it will wander — yet my spirit hath 
 gravely felt the wisdom of your custom, when sitting among you 
 in deepest peace, which some out-welling tears would rather con- 
 firm than disturb, I have reverted to the times of your beginnings, 
 and the sowings of the seed by Fox and Dewesbury. I have 
 witnessed that, which brought before my eyes your heroic tran- 
 quillity, inflexible to the rude jests and serious violences of the 
 insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to molest you — for 
 ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecutions, the outcast and off- 
 scouring of church and presbytery. I have seen the reeling sea- 
 ruffian, who had wandered into your receptacle, with the avowed 
 intention of disturbing your quiet, from the very spirit of the 
 place 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 Sewel's History of 
 the Quakers. It is in folio, and is the abstract of the Journals of 
 Fox and the primitive Friends. It is far more edifying and afl^ect- 
 ing than anything you will read of Wesley and his colleagues. 
 Here is nothing to stagger you, nothing to make you mistrust, no 
 suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the worldly or ambitious 
 spirit. You will here read the true story of that much-injured, 
 ridiculed man (who perhaps hath been a by- word in your mouth), 
 — ^James Naylor : what dreadful sufferings, with what patience. 
 
60 ELIA. 
 
 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 assemblies, upon which the dove sate visibly 
 brooding. Others again I have watched, when my thoughts 
 should have been better engaged, in which I could possibly detect 
 nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet was in all, and the dispo- 
 sition to unanimity, and the absence of the fierce controversial 
 workings. If the spiritual pretensions of the Quakers have abated, 
 at leasl 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 can- 
 not 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 lie was 
 malleable. I saw him shake all over with the spirit — I dare not 
 
A QUAKERS' MEETING. 61 
 
 say of delusion. The strivings of the outer man were unutter- 
 able ; 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 Preach- 
 ing ; the words he uttered were few and sound ; he was evidently- 
 resisting his will — keeping down his own word- wisdom with more 
 mighty effort, than the world's orators strain for theirs. " He had 
 been a wit in his youth," he told us, with expressions of a sober 
 remorse. And it was not till long after the impression had begun 
 to wear away, that I was enabled, with something like a smile, to 
 recall the striking incongruity of the confession — understanding 
 the term in its worldly acceptation — with the frame and physiog- 
 nomy of the person before me. His brow would have scared 
 away the Levities — the Jocos Risusque — faster than the Loves 
 fled the face of Dis at Enna. By wit, even in his youth, I will 
 be sworn he understood something far within the limits of an 
 allowable liberty. 
 
 More frequently the Meeting is broken up without a word hav- 
 ing 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 un- 
 ruly member, has strangely lain tied up and captive. You have 
 bathed with stillness. O when the spirit is sore fretted, even tired 
 to sickness of the janglings and nonsense-noises of the world, 
 what a balm and a solace it is, to go and seat yourself, for a quiet 
 half hour, upon some undisputed corner of a bench, among the 
 gentle Quakers ! 
 
 Their garb and stillness conjoined, present a uniformity, tran- 
 quil and herd-like — as in the pasture — " forty feeding like one." 
 
 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 wlien 
 they come up in bands to their Whitsun-conferences, whitening 
 the easterly streets of the metropolis, from all parts of the United 
 Kingdom, they show like tioops of the Shining Ones. 
 
62 ELIA. 
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 My reading has been lamentably desultory and immethodical. 
 Odd, out of the way, old English plays, and treatises, have sup- 
 plied me with most of my notions, and ways of feeling. In every- 
 thing that relates to science, I am a whole EncyclopEedia behind 
 the rest of the world. I should have scarcely cut a figure among 
 the franklins, or country gentlemen, in king John's days. I know 
 less geography than a school-boy 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 remot- 
 est conjecture of the position of New South Wales, or Van Die- 
 men's Land. Yet do I hold a correspondence with a very dear 
 friend in the first-named of these two Terree Incognitse. 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 appear- 
 ance in the West, I verily believe, that, while all the world were 
 gasping in apprehension about me, I alone should stand unterri- 
 fied, from sheer incuriosity and want of observation. Of history 
 and chronology I possess some vague points, such as one cannot 
 help picking up in the course of miscellaneous study ; but I never 
 deliberately sat down to a chronicle, even of my own country. I 
 have most dim apprehensions of the four great monarchies ; and 
 sometimes the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats as first, in 
 my fancy. I make the widest conjectures concerning Egypt, 
 and her shepherd kings. My friend M., with great pains-taking, 
 got me to think I understood the first proposition in Euclid, but 
 
THE OLD ANb THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 63 
 
 gave me over in despair at the second. I am entirely unacquaint- 
 ed 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 commonest 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 affect ignorance — but my head has not many mansions, 
 nor spacious ; and I have been obliged to fill it with such cabinet 
 curiosities as it can hold without aching. I sometimes wonder 
 how I have passed 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 company ; everybody is so much more 
 ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of your ac- 
 quisitions. But in a tete-d-tele 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 Shackle- 
 well, the coach stopped to take up a staid-looking gentleman, 
 about the wrong side of thirty, who was giving his parting direc- 
 tions (while the steps were adjusting), in a tone of mild authority, 
 to a tall youth, who seemed to be neither his clerk, his son, nor 
 his servant, but something partaking of all three. The youth 
 was dismissed, and we drove on. "As we were the sole passen- 
 gers, 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, having 
 bei^n drilled into this kind of etiquette by some years' daily prac- 
 tice of riding to and fro in the stage aforesaid — when he suddenly 
 alarmed me by a startling question, whether I had seen the show 
 of prize cattle that morning in Smithfield ? Now as I had not 
 seen it, and do not greatly care for such sort of exhibitions, I was 
 
64 ELIA. 
 
 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 fresh from the sight, and doubtless had hoped to com- 
 pare notes on the subject. However, he assured me that I had 
 lost a fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of last year. We 
 were now approaching Norton Falgate, when the sight of some 
 shop-goods 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 avocations had brought me into some 
 sort of familiarity with the raw material ; and I was surprised to 
 find how eloquent I was becoming on the state of the India mar- 
 ket — when, presently, he dashed my incipient vanity to the earth 
 at once, by inquiring whether I had ever made any calculation 
 as to the value of the rental of all the retail shops in London. 
 Had he asked of me, what song the Sirens sang, or what name 
 Achilles assumed when he hid himself among the women, I 
 might, with Sir Thomas Browne, have hazarded a " wide solu- 
 tion."* My companion saw my embarrassment, and, the alms- 
 houses beyond Shoreditch just coming in view, with great good- 
 nature and dexterity shifled his conversation to the subject of 
 public charities ; which led to the comparative merits of provision 
 for the poor in past and present times, with observations on the 
 old monastic institutions, and charitable orders ; but, finding me 
 rather dimly impressed with some glimmering notions from old 
 poetic associations, than strongly fortified with any speculations 
 reducible to calculation 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 termina- 
 tion 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 mut- 
 tering out something about the Panorama of those strange regions 
 (which I had actually seen), by way of parrying the question, 
 the coach stopping relieved me from any further apprehensions. 
 My companion getting out, lefl me in the comfortable possession 
 of my ignorance ; and I heard him, as he went off, putting ques- 
 
 * Urn Burial. 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 65 
 
 tions to an outside passenger, 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 neighborhood. 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 information 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-colored coat, 
 which he had on, forbade me to surmise that he was a clergyman. 
 The adventure gave birth to some reflections on the difference 
 between persons of his profession in past and present times. 
 ft 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 contained in the languages which they taught, 
 and despising 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. Re- 
 volving in a perpetual cycle of declensions, conjugations, syntaxes, 
 and prosodies ; renewing constantly the occupations which had 
 charmed their studious childhood ; rehearsing continually the 
 part of the past ; life must have slipped from them at last like 
 one day. They were always in their first garden, reaping har. 
 vests 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 Basileus ; the Greek and Latin, their stately Pamela and 
 their Philoclea ; with the occasional duncery of some untoward 
 tyro, serving for a refreshing interlude of a Mopsa, or a clown 
 Damoetas ! 
 
 With what a savor 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 understanding of the tongues, wherein is contained a great 
 treasury of wisdom and knowledge, it would seem but vain and 
 
 PART I. 6 
 
66 ELIA. 
 
 lost labor ; 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 with those 
 which Milton commendeth as " having been the usage to prefix 
 to some solemn law, then first promulgated by Solon, or Lycur- 
 gus") correspond with and illustrate that pious zeal for conformity, 
 expressed in a succeeding clause, which would fence about gram- 
 mar-rules with the severity of faith articles ! — " as for the diver- 
 sity of grammars, it is well profitably taken away by the king 
 majesties wisdom, who foreseeing the inconvenience, and favora- 
 bly 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 inculcate grammar-rules. 
 
 The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a little of every- 
 thing, because his pupil is required not to be entirely ignorant of 
 anything. He must be superficially, if I may so say, omniscient. 
 He is to know something of pneumatics ; of chemistry ; of what- 
 ever is curious, or proper to excite the attention of the youthful 
 mind ; an insight into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of 
 statistics; the quality of soils, &;c., botany, the constitution of his 
 country, cum multls aids. You may get a notion of some part of 
 his expected duties by consulting the famous Tractate on Educa- 
 tion addressed to Mr. Hartlib. 
 
 All these things — these, or the desire of them — he is expected 
 to instil, not by set lessons from professors, 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 insinuate knowledge at the 
 mollia lempora fanclL He must seize every occasion — the season 
 of the year — the time of the day — a passing cloud — a rainbow — 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 67 
 
 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 instruc- 
 tion. He must interpret beauty into the* picturesque. He can- 
 not relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for thihking of the suitable 
 improvement. Nothing comes to him, not spoiled by the sophis- 
 ticating 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 tedious homilies to 
 distasting school-boys. — Vacations themselves are none to him, he 
 is only rather worse off than before ; for commonly he has some 
 intrusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such times ; some cadet 
 of a great family ; some neglected lump of nobility, 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 favorite 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 re- 
 straint 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 Shackle- 
 well — by distance made more sweet — inexpressibly take from 
 the labor of «iiiy task. It is like writing to music. They seem 
 to modulate my periods. They ought at least to do so — for in the 
 voice of that tender age there is a kind of poetry, far unlike the 
 harsh prose-accents of man's conversation. — I should but spoil 
 their sport, and diminish my own sympathy for them, by mingling 
 in their pastime. 
 
 1 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 occa- 
 sional communion with such minds has constituted the fortune and 
 felicity of my life — but the habit of too constant intercourse with 
 
68 ELIA. 
 
 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 founds. You are walking with a tall 
 yarlet, whose strides out-pace yours to lassitude. The con- 
 stant operation of such potent agency would reduce me, I am 
 convinced, to imbecility. 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 intellectual frame. — 
 
 As little 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 trumpet 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 presence of a school- 
 master ? — because we are conscious that he is not quite at his 
 ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place, in the society of 
 his equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, 
 and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours. He 
 cannot meet you on the square. He wants a point given him, 
 like an indifferent whist-player. He is so used to teaching, that 
 he wants to be teaching you. One of these professors, upon my 
 complaining that these little sketches of mine were anything but « 
 methodical, and that I was unable to make them otherwise, kindly 
 offered to instruct me in the method by which young gentlemen 
 in liis seminary were taught to compose English themes. — The 
 jests of a schoolmaster are coarse, or thin. They do not tell out 
 of school. He is under the restraint of a formal or didactive hy- 
 pocrisy in company, as a clergyman is under a moral one. . He 
 can no more let his intellect loose in society, than the other can 
 his inclinations. — He is forlorn among his coevals ; his juniors * 
 cannot be his friends. 
 
 " I take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this profes- 
 sion, 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, 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 69 
 
 ardently affectionate hearts, but we can never hope to share an 
 atom of their affections. The relation of master and scholar for- 
 bids this. How pleasing this must be to you, how 1 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 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 happiness ; 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 re- 
 proved him ; but he did never love me — and what he now mis- 
 takes for gratitude and kindness for me, is but the pleasant 
 sensation, which all persons feel at revisiting the scenes of their 
 boyish hopes and fears ; and the seeing on equal terms the man 
 they were accustomed to look up to with reverence. My wife 
 too,'* this interesting correspondent goes on to say, " my once 
 darling Anna, is the wife of a schoolmaster. — When I married 
 her — knowing that the 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, promised for my sake to exert her- 
 self 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 propriety and decorum 
 unknown in other schools ; my boys are well fed, look healthy, 
 and have every proper accommodation ; and all this performed 
 with a careful economy, that never descends to meanness. But 
 I have lost my gentle helpless Anna ! — When we sit down to en- 
 joy an hour of repose after the fatigues of the day, I am compelled 
 
70 ELTA. 
 
 to listen to what have been her useful (and they are really useful) 
 employments 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 master'' s wife, and she looks up to me as the boys^ master ; 
 to whom all show of love and affection would be highly improper, 
 and unbecoming the dignity of her situation and mine. Yet this 
 my gratitude forbids me to hint to her. For my sake she sub- 
 mitted 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. 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 71 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 
 
 I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathizeth with 
 all things ; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy in anything. Those 
 natural repugnances 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 up- 
 per hand of the actual ; should have overlooked the impertinent 
 individualities of such poor concretions as mankind, is not much 
 to be admired. It is rather to be wondered at, that in the genus 
 of animals he should have condescended to distinguish that spe- 
 cies 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 in- 
 dividual, 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 preju- 
 dices — 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 I am a lover of my species. I can feel 
 for all indifferently, 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 
 
72 ELIA. 
 
 upon another account cannot be my mate or felhw. I cannot like 
 all people alike.* 
 
 I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am 
 obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They cannot 
 like me — and in truth, I never knew one of that nation who at- 
 tempted to do it. There is something more plain and ingenuous 
 in their mode of proceeding. We know one another at first 
 sight. There is an order of imperfect intellects (under yhich 
 mine must be content to rank), which in its constitution is es- 
 sentially anti-Caledonian. The owners of the sort of faculties I 
 allude to, have minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. 
 They have no pretences to much clearness or precision in their 
 ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. Their intellectual 
 wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They 
 are content 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 peradven- 
 
 * 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 indiriduals born and constellated so opposite to another in- 
 dividual 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 another 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 Heywood's " Hierarchic of Angels," and he sub- 
 joins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted to 
 assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack could 
 give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy which 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. 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 73 
 
 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 shifting : waxing, and again waning. Their 
 conversation is accordingly. They will throw out a random 
 word in or out of season, and be content to let it pass for what it 
 is worth. They cannot speak always as if they were upon their 
 oath — but must be understood, speaking or writing, with some 
 abatement. They seldom wait to mature a proposition, but e'en 
 bring it to market in the green ear. They delight to impart their 
 defective discoveries as they arise, without waiting for their full 
 development. They are no systematizers, and would but err more 
 by attempting it. Their minds, as I said before, are suggestive 
 merely. The brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) 
 is constituted upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is born 
 in panoply. You are never admitted to see his ideas in their 
 growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put together 
 upon principles of clock-work. You never 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 understand- 
 ing is always at its meridian — you never see the first dawn, the 
 early streaks. — He has no falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, 
 guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-consciousnesses, partial 
 illuminations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, 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 affirmative and the negative 
 there is no border-land with him. You cannot 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 ex- 
 cursions with him — for he sets you right. His taste never fluc- 
 tuates. His morality never abates. He cannot compromise, or 
 understand middle actions. There can be but a right and a 
 
74 ELIA. 
 
 wrong. His conversation is as a book. His affirmations have 
 the sanctity 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 ventured 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 considerable respect for my character and talents" 
 (so he was pleased to say), " but had not given himself much 
 thought about the degree of my personal pretensions." The mis- 
 conception 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 have such a love 
 of truth (as if, like virtue, it were valuable for itself) that all 
 truth becomes equally valuable, whether the proposition that con- 
 tains it be new or old, disputed, or such as is impossible to be- 
 come 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 im- 
 possible, 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 confines the passage 
 to the margin.* The tediousness of these people is certainly pro- 
 
 * There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit themselves, 
 and entertain their company, with relating facts of no consequence, not at 
 all out of the road of such common incidents as happen every day : and 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 75 
 
 yoking. 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 myself with his country^ 
 men by expressing it. But I have always found that a true Scot 
 resents your admiration of his compatriot, even more than he 
 would your contempt of him. The latter he imputes to your 
 " imperfect acquaintance with many of the words which he uses ;" 
 and the same objection makes it a presumption in you to suppose 
 that you can admire him. — Thompson they seem to have forgot- 
 ten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor forgiven, for his 
 delineation of Rory and his companion, upon their first introduc- 
 tion to our metropolis. — Speak of Smollett as a great genius, and 
 Ihey will retort upon you Hume's History compared with his 
 Continuation of it. What if the historian had cojatinued Hum- 
 phrey 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 enter their synagogues. 
 Old prejudices cling about me. I cannot shake off the story of 
 Hugh of Lincoln. Centuries of injury, contempt, and hate, on the 
 one side, — of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on the 
 other, between our and their fathers, must and ought, to affect the 
 blood of the children. I cannot believe it can run clear and 
 kindly yet ; or that a few fine words, such as candor, liberality, 
 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 on 'Change — for the mercantile spirit levels all 
 distinctions, as all are beauties in the dark. I boldly confess 
 that I do not relish the approximation of Jew and Christian, which 
 has become so fashionable. The reciprocal endearments have, to 
 
 this I have observed more frequently among the Scots than any other na- 
 tion, 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, aa well as accent and gesture peculiar to that 
 country, would be hardly tolerable. — Hints towards an Essay on Conver- 
 sation. 
 
76 ELIA. 
 
 me, something hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do not like 
 to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and congeeing in 
 awkward postures of an affected civility. If they are converted, 
 why do they not come over to us altogether ? Why keep up a 
 form of separation, when the life of it is fled 1 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 
 judeiizing — puzzle me. I like fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a 
 more confounding 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 Tsrael passed through the 
 Red Sea !" The auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to 
 him, and he rides over our necks in triumph. There is no mis- 
 taking him. B has a strong expression of sense in his coun- 
 tenance, and it is confirmed by his singing. The foundation of 
 his vocal excellence is sense. He sings with understanding, as 
 Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing the Commandments, 
 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-physiognomy. 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 associate with them, to share 
 my meals and my good-nights with them — because they are 
 black. 
 
 I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I venerate the 
 Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the day when 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 77 
 
 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 humors, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. 
 I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, 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 equi- 
 vocating than other people. They naturally look to their words 
 more carefully, and are more cautious of committing themselves. 
 They have a peculiar character to keep up on this head. They 
 stand in a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker is by law 
 exempted from taking an oath. The custom of resorting to an 
 oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all religious antiquity, 
 is apt (it must be confessed) to introduce 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 proceed- 
 ings of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the conscience 
 by an oath can be but truth, so in the common affirmations of the 
 shop and the market-place a latitude is expected, and conceded 
 upon questions wanting this solemn covenant. Something less 
 than truth satisfies. It is common to hear a person say, " You do 
 not expect me to speak as if I were upon my oath." Hence a 
 great deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short of falsehood, 
 creeps into ordinary 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 simple 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 indiffer- 
 
78 ELIA. 
 
 ent topics of life. He looks to them, naturally, with more 
 severity. You can have of him no more than his word. He 
 knows, if he is caught tripping 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 conscious- 
 ness of this particular watchfulness, exerted 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 presence 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 hum- 
 ble and secular scion of that old stock of religious constancy, 
 which never bent or faltered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave 
 way to the winds of persecution, to the violence of judge or ac- 
 cuser, under trials and racking examinations. " You will never 
 be the wiser, if 1 sit here answering your questions till midnight," 
 said one of those upright Justicers to Penn, who had been putting 
 law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. " Thereafter as the answers 
 may be," retorted the Quaker. The astonishing composure of 
 this people is sometimes ludicrously displayed in lighter instan- 
 ces. — I was travelling in a stage-coach with three male Quakers, 
 buttoned up in the straitest non-conformity of their sect. We 
 stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea apparatus, 
 partly supper, was set before us. My friends confined themselves 
 to the tea-table. I in my way took supper. When the landlady 
 brought in the bill, the eldest of my companions discovered that 
 she had charged for both meals. This was resisted. Mine hos- 
 tess 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 closing up 
 the rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the exam- 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 79 
 
 pie of such grave and warrantable 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 conscience, which the whim- 
 sical 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 sate as mute as at a meeting. At length the 
 eldest of them broke silence, in inquiring of his next neighbor, 
 " Hast thou heard how indigos go at the Indian House V and the 
 question operated as a soporific on my moral feeling as far as 
 Exeter. 
 
8C ELIA. 
 
 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS 
 
 We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the gross 
 for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they seem to us) 
 involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the relations of this 
 visible world we find them to have been as rational, and shrewd 
 to detect an historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when once the 
 invisible world was supposed to be opened, and the lawless agency 
 of bad spirits assumed, 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 maid- 
 ens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen images con- 
 sumed before a fire — that corn was lodged, and cattle lamed — 
 that whirlwinds uptore 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 fan- 
 tasy of indigent eld — has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood a 
 priori to us, who have no measure to guess at his policy, or stand- 
 ard to estimate what rate those anile souls may fetch in the devil's 
 market. Nor, when the wicked are expressly symbolised by a 
 goat, was it to be wondered at so much, that he should come some- 
 times in that body, and assert his metaphor. — That the intercourse 
 was opened at all between both worlds, was perhaps the mistake 
 — but that once assumed, I see no reason for disbelieving one 
 attested story of this nature more than another on the score of ab- 
 surdity. There is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by 
 which a dream may be criticised. 
 
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 81 
 
 I have sometimes thought that I could not have existed in the 
 days of received witchcraft ; that I could not have slept in a vil- 
 lage 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 ! — Prosper© 
 in his boat, with his books and wand about him, suffers himself 
 to be conveyed away at the mercy of his enemies to an unknown 
 island. He might have raised a storm or two, we think, on the 
 passage. His acquiescence is in exact analogy to the non-resist- 
 ance of witches to the constituted powers. — What stops the Fiend 
 in Spenser from tearing Guyon to pieces— or who had made it a 
 condition of his prey, that Guyon must take assay of the glorious 
 bait — ^we have no guess. We do not know the laws of that coun- 
 try. 
 
 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 di- 
 rected 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, deline- 
 ated with all the fidelity of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist 
 had been upon the spot — attracted my childish attention. There 
 was a picture, too, of the Witch raising up Samuel, which I wish 
 that I had never seen. We shall come to that hereafter. Stack- 
 house is in two huge tomes — and there was a pleasure in remov- 
 ing folios of that magnitude, which, with infinite straining, was as 
 much as I could manage, from the situation which they occupied 
 upon an upper shelf. I have not met with the work from that 
 time to this, but I remember it consisted of Old Testament stories, 
 orderly set down, with the objection appended to each story, and 
 the solution of the objection regularly tacked to that. The ohjec- 
 Hon was a summary of whatever difficulties had been opposed to 
 the credibility of the history, by the shrewdness of ancient or 
 modern infidelity, drawn up with an almost complunentary excess 
 
 PAET I. 7 
 
82 ELIA. 
 
 of candor. The solution was brief, modest and satisfactory. The 
 bane and antidote 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 — like 
 as was rather feared than realized from that slain monster in 
 Spenser — from the womb of those crushed errors young dragonets 
 would creep, exceeding the prowess of so tender a Saint George 
 as myself to vanquish. The habit of expecting objections to every 
 passage, set me upon starting more objections, for the glory of 
 finding a solution of my own for them. I became staggered and 
 perplexed, a sceptic in long-coats. The pretty Bible stories 
 which I had read, or heard read in church, lost their purity and 
 sincerity of impression, and were turned into so many historic or 
 chronologic theses to be defended against whatever impugners. 
 I was not to disbelieve them, but — the next thing to that — I was 
 to be quite sure that some one or other would or had disbelieved 
 them. Next to making a child an infidel, is the letting him know 
 that there are infidels at all. Credulity is the man's weakness, 
 but the child's strength. O, how ugly sound scriptural doubts 
 from the mouth of a babe and a suckling ! — I should have lost 
 myself in these mazes, and have pined away, I think, with such 
 unfit sustenance as these husks afforded, but for a fortunate piece 
 of ill-fortune, which about this time bt fel me. Turning over the 
 picture of the ark with too much haste, I unhappily made a 
 breach in its ingenious fabric — driving my inconsiderate finger 
 right through the two large quadrupeds — the elephant, and the 
 camel — that stare (as well they might) out of the two last windows 
 next the steerage in that unique piece of naval architecture. Stack- 
 house was henceforth locked up, and became an interdicted trea- 
 sure. With the book, the objections and solutions gradually clear- 
 ed out of my head, and have seldom returned since in any force 
 to trouble me. — But there was one impression which I had im- 
 bibed from Stackhouse, which no lock or bar could shut out, and 
 which was destined to try my childish nerves rather more seri- 
 ously. — That detestable picture ! 
 
 I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The night-time, 
 solitude, and the dark, were my hell. The sufferings I endured 
 in this nature would justify the expression. I never laid my 
 
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 83 
 
 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 his picture of the Witch raising up Sam- 
 uel — (O that old man covered with a mantle !) — I owe — not my 
 midnight terrors, the hell of my infancy — but the shape and 
 manner of their visitations. It was he who dressed up for me a 
 hag that nightly sate upon my pillow — a sure bedfellow, when 
 my aunt or my maid was far from me. All day long, while the 
 book was permitted me, I dreamed waking over his delineation, 
 and at night (if I may use so bold an expression) awoke into 
 sleep, and found the vision true. I durst not, even in the day- 
 light, once enter the chamber where I slept, without my face 
 turned to the 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 themT—what a ter- 
 rible shaking it is to their poor nerves ! The keeping them up 
 till midnight, through candle-light and the unwholesome hours, as 
 they are called, — would, I am satisfied, in a medical point of 
 view, prove the better caution. That detestable picture, as I 
 have said, gave the 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 picture, the fears would have come 
 self-pictured in some shape or other — 
 
 Headless bear, black man, or ape — 
 
 but, as it was, my imaginations took that form. — It is not book, or 
 picture, or the stories of foolish servants, which create these ter- 
 rors 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 superstition — who 
 was never allowed to hear of goblin or apparition, or scarcely to 
 be told of bad men, or to read or hear of any distressing story-— 
 finds all this world of fear, from which he has been so rigidly 
 
84 ELIA. 
 
 excluded 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 tradition, in sweats to which the reveries 
 of the cell-damned murderer are tranquillity. 
 
 Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimseras dire — stories of Celssno 
 and the Harpies — may reproduce themselves in the brain of 
 superstition — but they were there before. They are transcripts, 
 types — the archetypes are in us, and eternal. How else should 
 the recital of that, which we know in a waking sense to be false, 
 come to affect us at all ?- 
 
 Names, whose sense we see not. 
 
 Fray us with things that be not ? 
 
 Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, con- 
 sidered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily 
 injury ? — O, least of all ! These terrors are of older standing. 
 They date beyond body—or, without the body, they would have 
 been the same. All the cruel, tormenting, defined devils in 
 Dante — tearing, mangling, choking, stifling, scorching demons — 
 are they one-half so fearful to the spirit of a man, as the simple j^-^ 
 idea of a spirit unembodied following him — 
 
 Like one that on a lonesome road 
 Doth walk in fear and dread. 
 And having once turn'd round, walks on 
 And turns no more his head ; 
 Because he knows a frightful fiend 
 Doth close behind him tread.* 
 
 That the kind of fear here treated of is purely spiritual — ^that it 
 is strong in proportion as it is objectless upon earth — that it pre- 
 dominates in the period of sinless infancy — are difficulties, the 
 solution of which might afford some probable insight into our 
 ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadow-land 
 of pre-existence. 
 
 My night-fancies have long ceased to be afflictive. I confess 
 an occasional night-mare ; but I do not, as in early youth, keep a 
 stud of them. Fiendish faces, with the extinguished taper, will 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 
 
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 85 
 
 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 hope to see. I have traversed, for the seeming length of a 
 natural day, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon — their churches, 
 palaces, squares, market-places, shops, suburbs, ruins, with an 
 inexpressible sense of delight, — a map-like distinctness of trace — 
 and a day-light vividness of vision, that was all but being awake. — 
 I have formerly travelled among the Westmoreland fells — my 
 highest Alps, — but they are objects too mighty for the grasp of my 
 dreaming recognition ; and I have again and again awoke with 
 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 mountains were gone. The poverty of my dreams mor- 
 tifies me. There is Coleridge, at his will, can conjure up icy 
 domes, and pleasure-houses for Kubla-Khan, and Abyssinian 
 maids, and songs of Abora, and caverns. 
 
 Where Alph, the sacred river, runs, 
 
 to solace his night solitudes — when I cannot muster a fiddle. 
 Barry Cornwall has his tritons and his nereids 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 humor my folly in a sort of dream that very night. 
 Methought I was upon the ocean billows at some sea nuptials, 
 riding and mounted high, with the customary train sounding their 
 conches before me (I myself, you may be sure, the leading god), 
 aiid jollily 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- 
 roughness to a sea-calm, and thence to a river motion, and that 
 
86 ELIA. 
 
 river (as happens in the familiarisation 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 quantum 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 ambitious 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 inauspicious inland landing. 
 
 m. 
 
VALENTINE'S DAY. 87 
 
 VALENTINE'S DAY. 
 
 Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine ! Great is 
 thy name in the rubric, thou venerable Arch-flamen of Hymen ! 
 Immortal Go-between ; who and what manner of person art thou ? 
 Art thou but a name, typifying the restless principle which im- 
 pels poor humans to seek perfection in union ? or wert thou indeed 
 a mortal prelate, with thy tippet and thy rochet, thy apron on, and 
 decent lawn sleeves 1 Mysterious personage ! like unto thee, 
 assuredly there is no other mitred father in the calendar; not 
 Jerome, nor Ambrose, nor Cyril ; nor the consigner of undipt 
 infants to eternal torments, Austin, whom all mothers hate ; nor 
 he who hated all mothers, Origen ; nor Bishop Bull, nor Arch- 
 bishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou comest attended with thou- 
 sands and ten thousands of little Loves, and the air is 
 
 Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. 
 
 Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors ; and instead 
 of the crosier, the mystical arrow is borne before thee. 
 
 In other words, this is the day on which those charming little 
 missives, yclept Valentines, cross and intercross each other at 
 every street and turning. The weary and all for-spent two-penny 
 postman sinks beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his 
 own. It is scarcely credible to what an extent this ephemeral 
 courtship is carried on in this loving 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 hearty 
 — ^that little three-cornered exponent of all our hopes and fears, — 
 the bestuck and bleeding heart ; it is twisted and tortured into 
 
ELI A. - 
 
 more allegories and affectations than an opera hat. What 
 authority we have in history or myythology for placing the head- 
 quarters and metropolis of God Cupid in this anatomical seat 
 rather than in any other, is not very clear ; but we have got it, 
 and it will serve as well as any other. Else we might easily 
 imagine, upon some other system which might have prevailed for 
 anything which our pathology knows to the contrary, a lover 
 addressing his mistress, in perfect simplicity of feeling, " Madam, 
 my liver and fortune are entirely at your disposal ;" or putting a 
 delicate question, " Amanda, have you a midriff to bestow ?" 
 But custom has settled these things, and awarded the seat of 
 sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate neigh- 
 bors wait at animal and anatomical distance. 
 
 Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and 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 person 
 we want to see comes. But of all the clamorous 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 an- 
 nounced the fatal entrance of Duncan, so the knock of the post- 
 man on this day is light, airy, confident, and befitting 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 school-boy nor school-" 
 man 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. 
 
VALENTINE'S DAY. 89 
 
 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 parlor window in C — e street. She was all 
 joyousness and innocence, and just of an age to enjoy receiving 
 a Valentine, and just of a temper to bear the disappointment of 
 missing one with good humor. 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 favor 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 Valen- 
 tine's day three years since. He wrought, unseen and unsus- 
 pected, a wondrous work. We need not say it was on the finest 
 gilt paper with borders — full, not of common hearts and heartless 
 allegory, but all the prettiest stories of love from Ovid, and older 
 poets than Ovid (for E. B. is a scholar). There was Py ramus 
 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 Valentine's eve he commended to the 
 all-swallowing indiscriminate orifice — (O ignoble trust !) — of the 
 common post ; but the humble medium did its duty, and from his 
 watchful stand, the next morning he saw the cheerful messenger 
 knock, and by and by the precious charge delivered. He saw, 
 unseen, the happy girl unfold the Valentine, dance about, clap her 
 hands, as one after one the pretty emblems unfolded themselves. 
 She danced about, not with light love, or foolish expectations, for 
 she had no lover ; or, if she had, none she knew that could have 
 created those bright images which delighted her. It was mor^ 
 like some fairy present ; a God-send, as our familiarly pious an- 
 cestors termed a benefit received where the benefactor was un- 
 known. 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 
 
90 ELIA. 
 
 a specimen of E. B. and his modest way of doing a concealed 
 kindness. 
 
 Good morrow to my Valentine, sings poor Ophelia ; and no 
 better wish, but with better auspices, we wish to all faithful 
 lovers, who are not too wise to despise old legends, but are con- 
 tent to rank themselves humble diocesans of old Bishop Valentine 
 and his true church. 
 
EARLY RELATIONS. » . 91 
 
 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 feel- 
 ingly 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 scarce- 
 ly 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 sin- 
 gle 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 a mother's tears. 
 A partiality quite so exclusive my reason cannot altogether ap- 
 prove. She was from morning till night poring over good books, 
 and devotional exercises. Her favorite volumes were, Thomas a 
 Kempis, in Stanhope's translation ; and a Roman Catholic Prayer 
 Book, with the matins and complines regularly set down, — terms 
 which I was at that time too young to understand. She persisted in 
 reading them, although admonished daily concerning their Pa- 
 pistical 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 satisfaction the Adventures of an Unfortunate 
 Young Nobleman. Finding the door of the chapel in Essex 
 street open one day — it was in the infancy of that heresy — she 
 went in, liked the sermon, and the manner of worship, and fre- 
 quented it at intervals for some time after. She came not for 
 
92 ELIA. 
 
 doctrinal points, and never missed them. With some little asperi- 
 ties 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 wa- 
 ter. The odor of those tender vegetables to this day comes back 
 upon my sense, redolent of soothing recollections. Certainly 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 have been 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 about in Hertford- 
 shire — besides two, with whom I have been all my life in habits 
 of the closest intimacy, and whom I may term cousins par 
 excellence. These are James and Bridget Elia. They are 
 older than myself by twelve, and ten, years ; and neither of them 
 seems disposed, in matters of advice and guidance, to waive any 
 of the prerogatives which primogeniture confers. May they con- 
 tinue 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 climacteric 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 shaded, 
 which make up his story. I must limp after in my poor antithe- 
 tical manner, as the fates have given me grace and talent. J. E., 
 then, to the eye of a common observer at least — ^seemeth made up 
 of contradictory 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. 
 
MY RELATIONS. 93 
 
 is the systematic opponent of innovation, and crier down of every- 
 thing 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 the least approach to the romantic in others : and, 
 determined by his own sense in everything, commends you to the 
 guidance of common sense on all occasions. — With a touch of the 
 eccentric in all which he does, or says, he is only anxious that 
 I you should not commit yourself by doing anything absurd or sin- 
 gular. 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 fond- 
 ness for works of high art (whereof he hath amassed a choice col- 
 lection), 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 spe- 
 culative conclusions to the bent of their individual humors, his 
 theories are sure to be in diametrical opposition to his constitu- 
 tion. 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 necessity of forms, and manner, to a man's get- 
 ting on in the world. He himself never aims at either, that I can 
 discover, — and has a spirit that would stand upright in the pre- 
 sence of the Cham of Tartary. It is pleasant to hear him dis- 
 course of patience — extolling it as the truest wisdom — and to see 
 him during the last seven minutes that his dinner is getting ready. 
 Nature never ran up in her haste a more restless piece of work- 
 manship than when she moulded this impetuous cousin — and Art 
 never turned out a more elaborate orator than he can display him- 
 self to be, upon this favorite 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 obstruct- 
 ing manner, at the foot of John Murray's street, where you get 
 in when it is empty, and are expected to wait till the vehicle hath 
 
94 ELIA. 
 
 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, ihiis sitting, thus consulting V — " 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 pro- 
 fessed, and declares peremptorily, that '' the gentleman in the 
 coach is determined to get out, it he does not drive on that 
 instant." 
 
 Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting a sophistry, 
 he is incapable of attending you in any chain of arguing. In- 
 deed he makes wild work with logic, and seems to jump at most 
 admirable conclusions by some process not at all akin to it. Con- 
 sonantly enough to this, he hath been heard to deny, upon certain 
 occasions, that there exists such a faculty at all in man as reason ; 
 and wondereth how man came first to have a conceit of it — 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 peradventure 
 the next moment his lungs shall crow like Chanticleer. He says 
 some of the best things in the world, and declareth that wit is his 
 aversion. It was he who said, upon seeing the Eton boys at play 
 in their grounds — What a pity to think, that these fine ingenuous 
 lads in a few years will all he changed into frivolous Members of 
 Parliament ! 
 
 His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous — and in age he dis- 
 covereth no symptom of cooling. This is that which I admire in 
 him. I hate people who meet Time half-way. I am for no com- 
 promise 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 shining 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 such gauds. On these occasions he mostly 
 stoppeth me, to, read a short lecture on the advantage a person 
 
MY RELATIONS. 93 
 
 like me possesses above himself, in having his time occupied with 
 business which he must do ; assureth me that he often feels it hang 
 heavy on his hands ; wishes he had fewer holidays, and goes off — 
 Westward Ho ! — chanting a tune to Pall Mall, perfectly convinced 
 that he has convinced me — while I proceed in my opposite direc- 
 tion tuneless. 
 
 It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indifference doing 
 the honors of his new purchase, when he has fairly housed it. 
 You must view it in every light, till he has found the best — 
 placing it at this distance, and at that, but always suiting the 
 focus of your sight to his own. You must spy at it through 
 your fingers, to catch the aerial perspective, though you assure 
 him that to you the landscape shows much more agreeable 
 without that artifice. Wo be to the luckless wight, who does 
 not only not respond to his rapture, but who should drop an unsea- 
 sonable 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 parlor, 
 adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive lower- 
 ing ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its fall — consigned to 
 the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a Lucca Giordano, or 
 plain Carlo Maratti ! — which things when I beheld, musing upon 
 the chances and mutabilities of fate below, hath made me to 
 reflect upon the altered condition of great personages, or that 
 woful Queen of Richard the Second — 
 
 set forth in pomp, 
 
 She came adorned hither like sweet May 
 Sent back like HoUowmass or shortest day. 
 
 With great love for ym, 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 estab- 
 lished playgoer, that Mr. Such-a-one, of So-and-so (naming one 
 of the theatres), is a very lively comedian-^as a piece of news » 
 
96 ELIA. 
 
 He advertised me but the other day of some pleasant green lanes 
 which he had found out for me, knowing me to he 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 thai 
 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 affected by the 
 sight, or the bare supposition, of a creature in pain, to a degree 
 which I have never witnessed out of womankind. A constitu- 
 tional acuteness to this class of sufferings may in part account for 
 this. The animal tribe in particular he taketh under his especial 
 protection. A broken- winded or spur-galled horse is sure to find 
 an advocate in him. An over-loaded ass is his client for ever. 
 He is the apostle to the brute kind — the never-failing friend of 
 those who have none to care for them. The contemplation of 
 a lobster boiled, or eels skinned alive, will wring him so, that " all 
 for pity he could die." It will take the savor from his palate, and 
 the rest from his pillow, for days and nights. With the intense 
 feeling of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness of 
 pursuit, and unity of purpose, of that " 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 imper- 
 fectly formed for purposes which demand co-operation. He can- 
 not wait. His amelioration-plans must be ripened in a day. For 
 this reason he has cut but an equivocal figure in benevolent soci- 
 eties, and combinations for the alleviation of human sufferings. 
 His zeal constantly makes him to outrun, and put out, his coad- 
 jutors. He thinks of relieving, while they think of debating. 
 He was black-balled out of a society for the Relief of * "^ * * * 
 ******, because the fervor of his humanity toiled beyond 
 the formal apprehension, and creeping processes, of his associates. 
 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 up- 
 braid, my unique cousin ? Marry, heaven, and all good manners, 
 and the understanding 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 
 
MY RELATIONS. 97 
 
 I barter or exchange my wild kinsman for the most exact, regu- 
 lar, and everyway consistent kinsman breathing. 
 
 In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some account of 
 my cousin Bridget — if you are not already surfeited with cousins 
 — and take you by the hand, if you are willing to go with us, on 
 an excursion which we made a summer or two since, in search 
 Q^more cousins — 
 
 Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire 
 
 PART I. 8 , 
 
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 'JvfUiv, 
 
9S ELIA. 
 
 MACKEBY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 
 
 Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many a long year. 
 I have obligations 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 disposition 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 understood, than expressed ; and 
 once, upon my dissembling a tone in my voice more kind than 
 ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and complained that I was 
 altered. We are both great readers in different directions. While 
 I am hanging over (for the thousandth time) some passage in old 
 Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries, she is abstracted in 
 some modern tale, or adventure, whereof our common 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 stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. The fluc- 
 tuations of fortune in fiction — and almost in real life— ^have 
 ceased to interest, or operate but dully upon me. Out-of-the-way 
 humors and opinions — heads with some diverting twist in them — 
 the oddities of authorship please me most. My cousin has a 
 native disrelish of anything that sounds odd or bizarre. Nothing 
 goes down with her, that is quaint, irregular, or out of the road 
 of common sympathy. She " holds Nature more clever." I can 
 pardon her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the Religio 
 
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 99 
 
 Medici ; but she must apologise to me for certain disrespectful in- 
 sinuations, which she has been pleased to throw out laiierly, touch- 
 ing the intellectuals of a dear favorite of mine, of the last century 
 but one — the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, — but again some- 
 what fantastical, and original-brained, generous Margaret New- 
 castle. 
 
 It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I could 
 have wished, to have had for her associates and mine, free-think- 
 ers — leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies and systems ; 
 but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts, their opinions. That 
 which was good and venerable to her, when a child, retains its 
 authority over her mind still. She never juggles or plays tricks 
 with her understanding. 
 
 We are both of usThclined to be a little too positive ; and 1 
 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 
 where we have differed upon moral points ; upon something pro- 
 per 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 tio to a question, without fully 
 understanding its purport — which is provoking, and derogatory in 
 the highest degree to the dignity of the putter of the said question. 
 Her presence of mind is equal to the most pressing trials of life, 
 but will sometimes desert her upon trifling occasions. When the 
 purpose requires it, and is a thing of moment, she can speak to 
 it greatly ; but in matters which are not stuff of the conscience, 
 she hath been known sometimes to let slip a word less seasonably. 
 
 Her education in youth was not much attended to ; and she 
 happily missed all that train of female garniture, which passeth 
 by the name of accomplishments. She was tumbled early, by 
 accident or design, into a spacious closet of good old English 
 reading, without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at 
 will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty 
 
100 ' ELIAL 
 
 girl ^, they: shoU'M be brought up exactly ia thi^ fasbioi;^. I)^o^ 
 not whether their chance in .wedlock might not be dimimshed by. 
 it ; but I can answer for it, that it makes (if the worst come to 
 thfe worst) most' incomparable old maids. , , . , ;,,,., 
 
 'In a season' of distress, she is; the truest comfprt^r j , ,%t in ,tJje, 
 teasing accidents, and minor perplexities, which do not call put, 
 the z^?z7/ to meet them, she sometimes, maketh mattery worse^by an 
 excess of participation. If she does not always diyide ypijii;'. 
 trouble. Upon the pleasanter occasions of life she is sure always, 
 to treble your satisfaction. She is excellent to be at pl^j with, pJ!^, 
 lipbri ^a visit ; but best, when she goes a journey with ;you, ,, 
 
 Wte mad6 an^ excursicm together a few summers ^ince, into 
 Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of pnr.less-knowiji, 
 relations in that fine corn county. . .. . : , 
 
 The bldest thing I remember is Mackery End ; pr Mackerel 
 Ehd, as'it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some, old jjiaps pf; 
 Hertfordshire ; a farm-house,— delightfully situated within a^gentle 
 walk from Wheathai*npstead. I can just remember, having been 
 thiere, oil a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under the 
 dUre of Bridget ; who, as I have said, lis older ;than myself, by 
 some ten years. ' I wish that I could throw into a heap the .ri^- 
 mainder of our joint existences; that we might share them^in 
 6^ual division. But that is impossible. The Jiouse^was..at,.tl;^^ 
 tiiTh'e' iri the occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married,- 
 my grkndn^other's siste^r.' His name was Gladman. , My grand- 
 rriothei^'was a Bruton, married to a Field. The Gladnians an(i 
 the Bt-utons are still flourishing in that part of the county, bijit; 
 the Fields are almost extinct. - More than forty years had elapsed 
 sincP the" visit I spfeak of ; and, for. the greater portion i of that 
 p'^riod^'We had lost sight of the other two branohesalso. : AiVho 
 p'r "vt^hat *s6rt of' persons inherited Mackery End-^kindred o^ 
 strange folk^^^we were afraid almost ■ to conjecture, . but detex* 
 rilihed some day to explore. ;- ; . . ;. 
 
 '' By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble. park at Lutpn 
 ih ' our way from Saint Albans, wie arrived at the spot of our 
 anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old farm-house, 
 though every trace of it was effaced from my recollection, affected 
 me with a pleasure which I had not experienced for many a year. 
 
 *.A<#; 
 
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 101 
 
 For though / had forgotten it, we had never forgotten being there 
 together, and we had been talking about Mackery End all our, 
 lives, till memory on my part became mocked with a phantom of 
 itself, and I thought I knew the aspect of a place, which,. wbej[i 
 present,' O how unlike it was to //ifl/,r which I had conjured up soi 
 many times instead of it ! 
 
 Still the air breathed balmily about its; the season was in Ui©i 
 
 " heart of June/ ^ and I could say with the poet, r n; ■■u'l: 
 
 <"'" '^ 1 'M!' .'' ■ '■»•;(• ..•- , ••!.' -■ '• )) — I'M •)■(.• '■.••;••; h'.)'j:-' 
 
 • ' - . But tbp^:^ that didst appear so, fei|:, ^ ^ -.^.rj'-) m.-v' 
 
 To fond imagination, ' -. -• ..i 
 
 Dost rival in the light of day '»«'.• "i«" J I'" ""'•» 
 
 o ! ' .u } all o'l: 5 Her delieatfe cveitidh'l ''*Jf "'•' '*''. »'i *»» '" r >.'• 'ah/ 
 
 "U I X. .'ytl--- ,'l/J," ■ • ■■.,-,' KC / ' ii;. Mi M'.'f i! .' 1 •)* 
 
 Bridget^s was more a waking;; bliss than mine, fw she easily- 
 remembered her old acquaintance again— some altered featums,r 
 of 'course, a little grudged at. At first, indeed, she was ready- 
 to disbelieve for joy; but the scene soon re^con firmed itself ini 
 her affections — and she traversed every; outpst of the old man-> 
 sion, to the wood- house, the orchard^ the place Wihoi*© the pigeon* 
 house had stood (house and birds were alike flown) — with a: 
 breathless impatience of recognition, which was more j)ardoiiable: 
 perhaps than decorous at tlie age of fiilyodd. But Bridget in 
 some things is behind her years. ; " - n! • ...•• n'l / > t 
 
 The only thing left was to get into the Jwuse+^and; that was a; 
 difficulty which to me singly woiild have been insurniounlable';^ 
 f6r 1 am terribly shy in niakhig myself known to; strangers and 
 otit-of-dat6 kinsfolk. Love, stronger than scruple, winged my 
 cbusin in without me ; but she soon returned with a creature that 
 might haVis s^t to a sculptor for the image of Welcomes It was the 
 youngest of the Gladmans ; who, by marriage witli a Bruton, irad * 
 becomfe mistress of the old mansion i A comely brood arc the! 
 Brutons. Six of them, females, were noted as the handsomest 
 young women in the county. But tins 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 enougli. 
 Those slender ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending 
 
102 ELIA. 
 
 atmosphere of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, 
 homely, loving Hertfordshire. — In five minutes we were as 
 thoroughly acquainted as if we had been born and bred up toge- 
 ther ; were familiar, even to the calling each other by our Chris- 
 tian nan>es. So Christians should call one another. To have 
 seen Bridget, and her — it was like the meeting of the two scrip, 
 tural 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 meeting, if peradventure he shall read 
 this on the far distant shores where the kangaroo haunts. The 
 fatted calf was made read}^ or rather was already so, as if in an- 
 ticipation of our coming ; and, after an appropriate 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 re- 
 ceived by them also — how Bridget's memory, exalted by the 
 occasion, warmed into a thousand half-obliterated recollections of 
 things and persons, to my utter astonishment, and her own — and 
 to the astoundment of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing 
 that was 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. 
 
MY FIRST PLAY. 103 
 
 MY FIRST PLAY. 
 
 At the north end of Cross-court there yet stands a portal, of some 
 architectural pretensions, though reduced to humble use, serving 
 at present for an entrance to a printing-office. This old door- way, 
 if you are young, reader, you may not know was the identical pit 
 entrance to old Drury — Garrick's Drury — all of it that is left. I 
 never pass it without shaking some forty years from off my shoul- 
 ders, 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 pud- 
 dles, 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 Hoi born. 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 
 Holborn that young Brinsley brought his first wife on her elope- 
 ment with him from a boarding-school at Bath — the beautiful 
 Maria Linley. My parents were present (over a quadrille table) 
 when he arrived in the evening with his harmonious charge. 
 From either of these connexions it may be inferred that my god- 
 father could command an order for the then Drury-lane theatre at 
 pleasure — and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue of those cheap billets, 
 
104 ELIA. 
 
 in Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard him say was the sole 
 remuneration which he had received for many years' nightly illu- 
 mination of the orchestra and various avenues of that theatre — 
 and he was content it should be so. The honor of Sheridan's 
 familiarity— or supposed familiarity — was better to my godfather 
 than money. 
 
 F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen ; grandiloquent, yet 
 courteous. His delivery of the commonest matters of fact was 
 Ciceronian. He had two Latin words almost constantly in his 
 mouth (how odd sounds Latin from an oilman's lips !) which my 
 better knowledge since has enabled me to correct. In strict pro- 
 nunciation they should have been sounded vice versa — but in those 
 young years they impressed me with more awe than they would 
 now 4o, read aright from Seneca qr Varro— in ^i»,own pepjuliatr 
 pronunciation j monosyllabiqally el^bqifated,: or., Anglicized,^, ipto 
 something like verse verse. By an imposing n^^nner, and tjje iielp 
 of these distorted syllables, he <3limbed (but that was little) .to-,lh,e 
 highest parochial honors which St. Apdrew'^has to bestow., ^^ :Trri 
 
 He is dead — and thus much I thoughtd^vie to his memory y both 
 for my first orders (little wondrous talismans !- — slight keys, and 
 insignificant to outward sight, but opening to «>e, more thaij. Ara- 
 bian paradises !) and moreover that bfy his . testamentary benefi- 
 cence I came into possession of the only iaflded property which I 
 oould ever call my own-^situate neaf the .road- way village of 
 pleasant Puckeridge, in, Hertfordshire* When I journeyed dowa 
 to take possession, and planted my foot on my own groundyithe 
 stately habits of the donor descended ^upon me, and L strode (shall 
 I confess the' vanity ?) with larger 'paees over my allotment of 
 three-quarters of an acre, with .its copipnodious mansion in the 
 midst, withihe feeling of an Englishifreeholder that all betwixt 
 sky and centre was my own.. The estate has passed into niore 
 prudent hands, and nothing but an agrarian can restore it. 
 
 In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncomfortable 
 manager who abolished them !— with- one of these we went. I 
 remember the waiting at the door — not that which is left-r— but 
 between that and' an inner door in shelter— r-0 when shall I be such 
 an expectant again I^^with the cry of nonpareils, an indisper^sabJr 
 play-house accompaniment in those days. As near as Ici" 
 
MY FIRST PLAY. ^ ld# 
 
 recollect, the fashionable pronunciation of the theatrical fruiter- 
 esses then was, " Chase some oranges, chase some numparel^, 
 chase a bill of the play;" — chase ^ro choose. But when we got 
 ill, arid I beheld ^he green curtain that veiled a heaven tornoy 
 ihiigination, whifch was soon to be disclosed — the breathless anti- 
 cipations 1 endured! 1 had seen something like it in the plate 
 {Prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe's Shakspeare — theteot 
 sc6h6 with Diomede— -and a sight of ;that iplate can -always bring 
 back in a measure the feeling of that evening.— The boxes .at 
 tliat tirhe, full of welUdressed -women of quality, projected over 
 th6 pit : Ertld the ' pilasters : reaching down were ' adorned with ,a 
 glistering substance (1 know not what) under glass (as it seemed)^ 
 resembling—^ tiomely fancy^but I judged it to be sUgar-candy — 
 yet, to my raised ittiagiriation, divested of its homelier qualities^ it 
 appeared a glorified candy ! — The orchestra lights at length arose^ 
 those' *' fair Auroras P^ Once the bell sounded. It was to ring 
 6ut yet oride again^-^nd dnciapable of the anticipation, I repoSed 
 my" shut ^^' in a' sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It 
 rang the seteond tiWife.' ' The curtain drew up^*-I was not past six 
 years old and the play wa& Artaxerxes f : . • -t ; ^ >- . . ,,; 
 
 I had dabbled a little in the Universal History*^the ancient 
 pk'rt of it— "ahd here was the court of Persiait—^lt was being ad- 
 mitted to a sight' 6f th^ past.' I -took no proper interest in the 
 action going on, for I understood not its impoiJt-^but I heard tiie 
 Word Dariu^,' an'd I was iiilhe midst of Daniel. All feeling was 
 absoirbedlri vision; '■ Gbrgeoug Vests,' gardens, palaces, prineessear, 
 passed before me.' I ' k tie W riot players. I was'in Persepolia:for 
 the time, and the burriihg idol'of their * devotion almost converted 
 ini^ into a 'W6i*fehippei^, Twas awe-struckj and believed those sig- 
 riifications 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 re- 
 member, the transformation of the magistrates into reverend bel- 
 dams seemed to me a piece of grave historic justicej and the tailor 
 carrying his own head to be as sober a verity as the legend of St. 
 Denys. 
 
 i*he liext play to' which! was taken' wai^ the Ladjr 6f th6 
 T^anor, of which, with the 6xc6ption of sdriie scenery, Veiy fairit 
 
106 ELI A. 
 
 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 — transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden 
 sceptre) through countless ages. I saw the primeval Motley come 
 from his silent tomb in a ghastly vest of white patch-work, 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 
 followed ; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and the parrot, were as 
 good and authentic as in the story.— The clownery and pantaloon- 
 ery 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 intervention 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 feelings 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 inter- 
 val what had I not lost ! At the first period I knew nothing, 
 understood 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 certain 
 
MY FIRST PLAY. 107 
 
 quantity of green baize, which was to separate the audience for a 
 given time from certain of their fellowmen who were to come 
 forward and pretend those parts. The lights — the orchestra lights 
 — <;ame 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 a cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no hand seen or 
 guessed at which ministered to its warning. The actors were men 
 and women painted. I thought the fault was in them ; but it was 
 in myself, and the alteration which those many centuries, — of six 
 short twelve-months — 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 expecta- 
 tions, 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 Isabella. Comparison and retrospection 
 soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene ; and the theatre 
 became to me. upon a new stock, the most delightful of recrea- 
 tions. 
 
108 ELIA. 
 
 ■; •Ll£;:.]liii .-U a; JXtU 13 '-i .:/ xki-xl// .0 'V '.ITjrj. 
 
 /..^l 
 
 ^^^^^^ MODERN GALLANTRY. n^ /^ ^ 
 
 'N'VWV>Ni>\/V>/VX/S** 
 
 In comparing modem with sncient manners, we are pleased liotj 
 compliment ourselves ' upon- the point of gallaatryj .a certai^: 
 obsequiousness, or deferential respect, which we are supposed ta^ 
 pay to females, as females. i ' .1 r .i ■ - ntj-i.T 
 
 I shall believe that this principle actuates our conduci, when h 
 6tth foi^et, that in the- nineteenth century of the era from whiehf 
 we date our civility, we are but just beginning to leave pffjhQf 
 very frequent practice of vt^hipping females in public, in commpm 
 with the coarsest male offenders. 
 
 I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut my eyes to 
 the fact, that in England women 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 humbler 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 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 dis- 
 tress ; till one, that «eems to have more manners or conscience 
 than the rest, significantly declares " she should be welcome to 
 
MODERN GALLANTRY. 109 
 
 his seat, if she were a little younger and handsomer." Place this 
 dapper warehouseman, or that rider, in a circle of their own 
 female acquaintance, and you shall confess you have not seen a 
 politer-bred man in Lothbury. • i:./ - < , ... , 
 
 . 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 servitttdei of the world shall cease to bc' performed by 
 w6men. I ■■.', •■•■)-.-■", '•'-, ji, ; •> ■ ••• . ■• -,■ ■.•.[.;. 
 
 • Until that dajr comes, I shallmever believe! this, boasted point to 
 be ; any thing more than a coriventional fiction; a pageant got' up 
 betwixt the sexes, inva certain rank, and at a certain time of lii&y 
 in which both 'find their account equally. ',' t i ^^' ■•.. 
 
 ' I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salutary fictions 
 of life, ivhen in polite circles I shall see the same attentions paid 
 to age as to youth, to homely features as to handsome, to coarse 
 ftomplexions as to clear—- to the womany as she is a woman, not as 
 she is a beauty, a fortune, or a title. 
 
 -I shall believe it to be something itiore than a name,^ when a 
 Well-dreSsed gentleman in a welUdressed company can -ad vert to 
 the topic of female old age without exciting, and intending to excit^> 
 it^sneer :— "wheiii the phrases ^^antiquated virginity,^' i and such a 
 ®ne has *'overstood herimarket," pronounced in gpod companyy 
 ^all rai«e immediate ' offence in man, or woman, that shall. hear 
 them spoken; ' • ' i i-. ...• n- : <,-,<> 
 
 " - Joseph f Paice, of Bread-street-hill, merchant, and one o£ theDl* 
 rectors of the' South-Sea company- — the same to whom- Edwsards^ 
 the Shakspeare commentator, has addressed a fine sonnetr— was 
 the only pattern of consistent- gallantry I have' met i with. • He 
 tdok me under his shelter at an early age, and bestowed some 
 perins upo(n meJ Lowe to his precepts and example whatever 
 there is of 'the mam of business (and that is iK)t much) in my com^ 
 position. It was not his fault that 1 did not profit more^ Though 
 bred U Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, he was the 
 finest gentleman of his time. He had not one system' of attention 
 to females in thedrawinrg-room, and another in the shop^'or-atthe 
 stall. I do not mean: that he made no distinction.- But he neve? 
 lofet sight df'feex, or overlooked it* in the casualties of a disadvan* 
 tageous situation. I have seen him stand bareheaded— smile ifi 
 
110 ELI A. 
 
 r 
 
 you please — to a poor servant girl, while she has been inquiring 
 of him the way to some street — in such a posture of unforced 
 civility, as neither to embarrass her in the acceptance, nor him- 
 self in the offer, of it. He was no dangler, in the common accep- 
 tation of the word, after women ; but he reverenced and upheld, 
 in every form in which it came before him, womanhood. I have 
 seen him — nay, smile not — tenderly escorting a market-woman, 
 whom he had encountered in a shower, exalting his umbrella 
 over her poor basket of fruit, that it might receive no damage, 
 with as much carefulness as if she had been a Countess. To the 
 reverend form of Female Eld he would yield the wall (though it 
 were to an ancient beggar-woman) with more ceremony than we 
 can afford to show our grandams. He was the Preux Chevalier 
 of Age ; the Sir Calidore, or Sir Tristan, to those who have no 
 Calidores or Tristans to defend them. The roses, that had long 
 faded thence, still bloomed for him in those withered and yellow 
 cheeks. 
 
 He was never married, but in his youth he paid his addresses 
 to the beautiful Susan Winstanley — old Winstanley's daughter 
 of Clapton — who dying in the early days of their courtship, con- 
 firmed in him the resolution of perpetual bachelorship. It was 
 during their short courtship, he told me, that he had been one day 
 treating his mistress with a profusion of civil speeches — the com- 
 mon gallantries — to which kind of thing she had hitherto mani- 
 fested no repugnance — but in this instance with no effect. He 
 could not obtain from her a decent acknowledgment in return. 
 She rather seemed to resent his compliments. He could not set 
 it down to caprice, for the lady had always shown herself above 
 that littleness. When he ventured on the following day, finding 
 her a little better humored, to expostulate with her on her cold- 
 ness of yesterday, she confessed, with her usual frankness, that 
 she had no sort of dislike to his attentions ; that she could even 
 endure some high-flown compliments ; that a young woman placed 
 in her situation had a right to expect all sort of civil things said 
 to her ; that she. hoped she could digest a dose of adulation, short 
 of insincerity, with as little injury to her humility as most young 
 women : but that — a little before he had commenced his compli- 
 ments — she had overheard him by accident, in rather rough lan- 
 
 i^. 
 
MODERN GALLANTRY. lU 
 
 guage, rating a young woman, who had not brought home his 
 cravats quite at the appointed time, and she thought to herself, 
 " As I am Miss Susan Winstanley, and a young lady — a reputed 
 beauty, and known to be a fortune, — I can have my choice of the 
 finest speeches from the mouth of this very fine gentleman who is 
 courting me — but if I had been poor Mary Such-a-one {naming the 
 milliner), — and had failed of bringing home the cravats to the ap- 
 pointed hour — though perhaps I had sat up half the night to for- 
 ward 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 honor, a female, like myself, 
 miglit have received handsomer usage : and I was determined not 
 to accept aj?y fine speeches, to the compromise of that sex, the 
 belonging to which was after all my strongest claim and title to 
 them." 
 
 I think the lady discovered both generosity, and a just way of 
 thinking, in this rebuke which she gave her lover ; and I have 
 sometimes imagined, that the uncommon strain of courtesy, which 
 through life regulated the actions and behavior of my friend to- 
 wards 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 Winstanley 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 polite- 
 ness 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 handmaid, or dependent — she de- 
 serves to have diminished from herself on that score ; and proba- 
 bly will feel the diminution, when youth, and beauty, and advan- 
 tages, not inseparable from sex, shall lose of their attraction. 
 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 at- 
 
 A 
 
lia ELIA. 
 
 tentions, incident to individual preference, be so many pretty ad- 
 ditaments and ornament&r— as many, an4 as fanciful, as you please 
 — to that main structure. Let her first lesson be with sweet Susan 
 
 Winstanley— taTev6Wwe6 Aer. 5ea?. Mtir r 1 Ti^ • ' ' •< .- . 
 
 .-i ;k"'J . :: 'li'MUMi • :>-;• - jiiv ,o:"- j: O'Jin."; ",n o-u J ; '::'>.■>! k i/'.-i-^ 
 
 <ij >(i ; oi >;!j vcj r -fjjf ijjjo ^ --.!Hftn'« - ; -^il <,; fi //f :/; ;..».. ^'I^/t'v^ 
 
 ''■?i QJ I'.yj:'- *'!; X'H 1 -j5i j<;< .Oii i ni'\i I'.r, 'yun •-•■.iw v«fM-'v,Mi 
 *'-'■. i'.rj?'i rvit:* t d i nrv. ■.•/>»'I1'.h 'r'c.-> 'o ri' i iff '<— m-MiJ on;" 
 .< '» J ; ■ ymU h'.i y"\ oj ftTi'* ') ; ^M' , - I'^nuov, /{> iu\ ,—■■■' utrr 
 .!i !>7n ^'/ > '^''jf') t '? .H;jiOf. ^vn )t» -J ^m; :»'.'' '^•3i 'jv i.*»r« .^triivrri I 
 
 ■' , ;; V ' ■<, '•! • ;:y<.i': firiu rioc iJt '^i''^ C'it't?! , ' ' i 
 
 ■"Mi yi'.r >. roil o^/iii c^iKi < vmIv^ »>iii-Jv\ i-xju ;: ,u; »'!i i'^^ 
 (>•/?•• .'o: m; (iU i*i^ i(> ;!fr!( mH ^mv : >«!; ;.of 'r-ii^r;'. i'ji» jjoif e<; 
 -(•j vc 1 <E v< ' 1( 'f'jv. :-,;'>.» wMi ■'>'.>■ itiv. y\\ r'>: iiii;.'Vi Vit: ui^v >• 
 nijiiicj /ti'.- Kf li. -■•''.) / !'i yiiiiunjiibr t>v hjm 'if jo ] 4 .'■■>'? -•^ 
 
 .lodoa Jtiif?. oi' ?i!.R 'iM a-, .tiuov uncv :» . -; t jfioav* • <i/ : vjv/ ; 
 /);..••••■■'■' !?'^^ 1'. ff ,i''3-«ron- vt .UJiKUfr'. /k ?n- ^--jit" j .:>f »» kj 
 •t^'i 'f;ii-ij/i«i jiK) '• 'A"> < n) nun ■•;!::, u) :j:ji iiv un^ -';;' 
 
 - .WlJf M .i ,\' U^mSjJS rll.'Jii- / j:f !V» -|«j; l,v»?i *Vt 2m Vd'f'l .vU' vi-: 
 
 • I'Oi}:. T' f : J O;?-' jp^fwM J!'.';: . ;):# ^j/oT ^-Hi'ii HO Jfc'ii jou -^aM:;- 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 113 
 
 '()[ ; tv 
 
 THE plDBENCHEES OP THE INNER TEMPIB; ■•'^ 
 
 'jOC ji!r>7 or»:.i; w:iii "MIi !■ ^^/ijuj^u .U'lf iis 5/?'- ' ••• • 
 
 I'jift ft?.j.v/ ^^';-7 'Ot> "U .'-tno :-•. .«n .'•/(; .of^m i -k. 
 
 I . TjVA^ ^)orn, , , a.n^ passed the first seven ye^rs, of. my life, , in th^, t 
 Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountain, its i:iver, 
 I had almost said — for in those young years, what was this king 
 of rivers to me, jbut a stream that watered pui;. plea^nt places ? — 
 these are of my oldest recollections. I repeat, to this day, no 
 verses to myself more frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than 
 those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot. 
 
 ~fi'.:j:. 
 
 ^There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, . , , , 
 . The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, 
 Where how the studious lawyers have their bowers, 
 
 •" - ' '' '-There whylome wont the Temi)l'er knights to Bide, "^^ ' '^^^'' 
 
 ''/n I rl Till they decayed through pride. :.!' Im-. '.» ; '/j l.-S .!i :.'JJ 
 
 V • > • ; ■ ! ■• ). .,..,, • y. a; , . -A'-Myi \'\ 
 
 Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. What at 
 transition for a countryman visiting London for the first time — n 
 the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet-street, by unexpected 
 avenues, into its magnificent ample squares, its classic green re- 
 cesses ! What a cheerful,; liberal look hath that part of it, which, 
 from three sides^ overlooks the greater garden ; that goodly pile ■ 
 
 ,.i. J,.Jo^v^.^ ^^^Hildings^ng,.albeiJ;of.P^h^ '' [^^, ,,;^^^.,,, 
 
 confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, older, irtfiore'farif as- 
 ticdlly shrouded one, named of Haffcourt, A^)^ith tlie cheerful Crbwn- 
 office Row (plkce of m)/'' kindly erigertdure), right opposite 'the 
 stately stream, which washes the garden-foot' with her yet scarcely 
 trade-polluted' waters, and sterns Biit just weaned frorh her 
 Twickenham Naiades ! a man would give something to have 
 been born in such places^ ' What a collegiate aspect has that fine 
 
 PART I. 9 
 
114 ELIA. -^'%> 
 
 Klizabethan hall, where the fountain plays, which I have made 
 lo rise and fall, how many times ! to the astoundment of the young 
 urchins, my contemporaries, who, not being able to guess at its 
 recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the wondrous 
 work as magic ! What an antique air had the now almost effaced 
 sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that 
 Time which they measured, and to take their revelations of its 
 flight immediately from heaven, holding correspondence with the 
 fountain of light ! How would the dark line steal imperceptibly 
 on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement, 
 never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests 
 of sleep ! 
 
 Ah ! yet doth beauty like 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 simple altar-like structure, and silent heart- 
 language of the old dial ! It stood as the garden god of Christian 
 gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished ? If its busi- 
 ness-use be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral 
 uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It spoke 
 of moderate labors, of pleasures not protracted after sun-set, of 
 temperance, and good hours. It was the primitive clock, the 
 horologue of the first world. Adam could scarce have missed it in 
 Paradise. It was the measure appropriate for sweet plants and 
 flowers to spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver warb- 
 lings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd 
 " carved it out quaintly in the sun ;" and, turning philosopher by 
 the very occupation, provided it with mottoes more touching than 
 tombstones. It was a pretty device of the gardener, recorded by 
 Marvell, who, in the days of artificial gardening, made a dial out 
 of herbs and ilowers. I must quote his verses a little higher up, 
 for they are full, as all his serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy. 
 They will not come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains 
 and sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet garden scenes : — 
 
 What wondrous life is this I lead ! 
 Ripe apples drop about my head. 
 
If 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 115 
 
 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 gras^. 
 
 Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less 
 
 Withdraws into its happiness. 
 
 The mind, that ocean, where each kind 
 
 Does straight its own resemblance find ; 
 
 Yet it creates, transcending these, 
 
 Far other worlds, and other seas ; 
 
 Annihilating all that's made 
 
 To a green thought in a green shade. 
 
 Here at the fountain's sliding foot, 
 
 Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root. 
 
 Casting the body's vest aside, 
 
 My soul into the boughs does glide ; 
 
 There, like a bird, it sits and sings. 
 
 Then wets 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 reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers ?* 
 
 The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like manner, 
 fast vanishing. . Most of them are dried up, or bricked over. Yet, 
 where one is left, as in that little green nook behind the South- 
 Sea House, what a freshness it gives to the dreary pile ! Four 
 little winged marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, spout- 
 ing out ever fresh streams from their innocent-wanton lips in the 
 § square of Lincoln's Inn, when I was no bigger than they were 
 figured. They are gone, and the spring choked up. The fashion, 
 they tell me, is gone by, and these things are esteemed childish. 
 Why not then gratify children by letting them stand ? Lawyers, 
 I suppose, were children once. They are awakening images to 
 
 * From a copy of verses entitled The Garden. 
 
116 ELI A. 
 
 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 respond to its earliest enchantments ? The figures were 
 grotesque. Are the stiff- wigged living figures, that still flitter 
 and chatter about that area, less Gothic in appearance ? or is the 
 splutter of their hot rhetoric one-half so refreshing and innocent 
 as the little cool playful streams those exploded cherubs uttered ? 
 
 They have lately gothicised the entrance to the Inner Temple- 
 hall, and the library front ; to assimilate them, I suppose, to the 
 body of the hall, which they do not at all resemble. What is 
 become of the winged horse that stood over the former ? a stately 
 arms ! and who has removed those frescoes of the Virtues, which 
 Italianized the end of the Paper-buildings ? — my first hint of alle- 
 gory ! 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 become common and profane. The old 
 benchers had it 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 rogueish 'eye of J 11, ever ready to be 
 
 delivered 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 thei lion's, his gait peremptory and 
 path-keeping, indivertible from his way as a moving column, the 
 scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow-beater of equals and supe- 
 riors, who made a solitude of bHildren wherever he game, 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 ifi mirth or in rebuke, his invitator)'^ notes bein^, 
 indeed, of alii the most repulsive and horrid. Cloud,s of sniiff, 
 aggravating the natural terrors of his speech, broke from each 
 ihajestic nostril, darkening the air. He tC)ok it, not by pinches, 
 but a palmful at once, diving for it under the migl"*Y flaps of hia 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS OF TtlE INNER TEMPLE. 117 
 
 oldffashioned waistcoat pocket •; ' his waistcoat red and angry,* '■ his 
 coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original j and by adjuncts, with' 
 buttons of obsolete gold. Arid so he paced the terrace* ' ' ' ' '. 
 "By hi^ side a milder form wais sometimes to be'seten ; the pen- ■ 
 sive gentility of Samuel Salt. They were coevals, and had' 
 nothing but that and their benchership • in common. In politick 
 Salt was -a whig, and Coventry a staunch tory. Many a sarcastic- 
 growl did the latter cast out — ^for Coventry had a rough spinous i 
 humor — at the political confederates of his associate, which re- 
 bounded ; from the gentle bosom of the latter like cannon-balls 
 from wool. You could not ruffle Samuel Salt. - " . •. i .. un 
 ■S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and of excel- 
 lent discernment 4n the chamber practice of the law; I suspect 
 his knowledge did not amount to much. Wh^n a case of difficult 
 disposition of mdhey, testamentary or otherwise, came before him,' 
 he ordinarily handed it over with a few instructions to his man 
 Level, who was a quick little fellow, and' would d6spatch 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 — rindolent' andi procrastinating 
 to the last degree; Yet men would give him credit for vast ap- 
 plication, in spite of himself. He was not to be trusted with himi* 
 self with impunity. He never dressed for a dinner party but he 
 forgot his sword — ^they wore i swords then-;— or some other neces- 
 sary 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 s|l6ak unseasonably, he was sure to. do 
 it.-^Hewas to dine at a relative's of the unfortunate MissiBlandy' 
 on the day of her execution; — «,nd L.,>who had a wary foresight 
 of -his probable hallucinations, before he set outy schooled hinn 
 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 parlor, where the company was 
 expecting the dinner summons, four minuteSj 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 
 
 k 
 
118 ELI A. 
 
 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 embarrassments of conduct — from 
 force of manner entirely. He never laughed. He had the same 
 good fortune among the female world, — was a known toast with 
 the ladies, and one or two are said to have died for love of him — 
 I suppose, because he never trifled or talked gallantry 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 ad- 
 vanced age of sixty, was seen, in the cold evening time, unaccom- 
 panied, wetting the pavement of B d Row, with tears that fell 
 
 in drops which might be heard, because her frieriti had died that 
 day — he, whom she had pursued with a hopeless passion for the 
 last forty years — a passion, which years could not extinguish or 
 abate ; nor the long-resolved, yet gently-enforced, puttings off of 
 unrelenting bachelorhood dissuade from its cherished purpose. 
 
 Mild Susan P , thou hast now thy friend in heaven ! 
 
 Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family of that name. 
 He passed his youth in contracted circumstances, which gave him 
 early those parsimonious habits which in after-life never forsook 
 him ; so that, with one windfall or another, about the time I knew 
 him he was master of four or five hundred thousand pounds ; nor 
 did he look, or walk, worth a moidore less. He lived in a gloomy 
 house opposite the pump in Serjeant's-inn, Fleet-street. J., the 
 counsel, is doing self-imposed penarilfe 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 sum- 
 mer ; but preferred, during the hot months, standing at his win- 
 dow 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 upon a character, which cannot exist with- 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 119 
 
 out certain admirable points of steadiness and unity of purpose. 
 One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so easily de- 
 spise him. By taking care of the pence, he is often enabled to 
 part with the pounds, upon a scale that leaves us careless gene- 
 rous fellows, halting at an immeasurable distance behind. C. gave 
 away 30,000Z. at once in his life-time to a blind charity. His 
 housekeeping 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. Level 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 Level, 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 for- 
 gotten for a moment that he was a servant. 
 
 I knew this Level. He was a man of an incorrigible and 
 losing honesty. A good fellow, withal, and "would strike." In 
 the cause of the oppressed he never considered inequalities, oi 
 calculated the number 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 Level. He 
 would stand next day bareheaded to the same person, modestly 
 to excuse his interference — for L. never forgot rank, where some- 
 thing better was not concerned. L. was the liveliest little fellow 
 breathing, haJ a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he was said 
 greatly to resemble (I have a portrait of him which confirms it), 
 possessed a fine turn for humorous poetry — next to Swift and 
 Prior — moulded heads in clay or plaster of Paris to admiration, 
 by the dint of natural genius merely ; turne'd cribbage boards, 
 and such small cabinet toys, to perfection ; took a hand at qua- 
 
120 ELIA. • 
 
 drille or bowls with .equal . facility ,; made punch better than any 
 man of, his degree im England,; had the, merriest quips and; con- 
 ceits ; and was ; altogether as bjimful of rogueries^and invsentions. 
 as you could desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover,: 
 and just such, a free, hearty,, honest companion as Mr. Izaak Wal- 
 ton 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,"r-^yet even then his : eye would light up upon the mention 
 of his favorite Garrick. He was. greatest, he i would, say^ in 
 Bayes- — "was upon the stage nearly. throughout, the whole per- 
 formance, and as busy as a bee." . At intervals, too, he would 
 speak of his iformer 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 blessed, herself atthf 
 change, and. could hardly be brought to believe that, it was " he 
 own bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he would weep, 
 till I have wished that sad second-childhood might havc/a mother 
 still to lay his head upon her lap*. . ,But the common mother of us 
 all in no long time after. received him gently into hers* v.. :: >. > 
 ■' Withf Coventry, i and with Salt, in. their) walks i upon the ter- 
 race, most commonly Pesber Pierson would join to make up a third* 
 They did not walk linked arm, in arm in. those days— '^ as. now. 
 our stout triumviTS' sweep the streets,"- — ibut generally with both 
 hinds 'folded behind them for state, or with one at least: behind, 
 the other carrying a cane. P. was a benevolent, but not a pre^ 
 possessing man ; ; ; He had that. . in .his , face which you . could 
 nbt terni unhappiness; it rather implied an incapaijity of being 
 happy < ' His cheeks were, colorless /even Xo whiteness. His look 
 was uninviting, resembling (but, without. his sourness) -that ;Qf our 
 great philanthropist. I know.thatihe did good acts, but I. could 
 never make out what he was k^ Gontemporao with these, but 
 subordinate, was Daines Barrington- — another pddity — ^he walked 
 burly and square- — in imitation, I think, of .Coventry— hpwbeit 
 he attained not to the dignity of his prototype. Nevertheless, he 
 did pretty well, upon the strength of being a tolerable antiquarian, 
 and having a brother a bishop. When the account of his year's 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 121 
 
 treasurership came to be audited, the following singular charge 
 was unanimously disallowed by the bench : " Item, disbursed Mr. 
 Allen, the gardener, twenty shillings, for stuff to poison the spar- 
 rows, by rny orders." Next to him was old Barton — a jolly ne- 
 gation, who tx)k upon him the ordering of the bills of fare for 
 the parliament chamber, where the benchers dine — answerino- to 
 the combination rooms at College — much to the easement of his 
 less epicurean brethren. I know nothing more of him. — Then 
 Read, and Twopeny, — Read, good-humored and personable — 
 Twopeny, good-humored, but thin, and felicitous in jests upon 
 his own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was attenuated and 
 fleeting. Many must remember him (for he was of rather 
 later date) and his singular gait, which was performed by three 
 steps and a jump regularly succeeding. The steps were little 
 efforts, like that of a child beginning to walk ; the jump com- 
 paratively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. Where he learned this 
 figure, or what occasioned it, I could never discover. It was 
 neither graceful in itself, nor seemed to answer the purpose any 
 better than common walking. The extreme tenuity of his frame, 
 I suspect, set him upon it. It was a trial of poising. Twopeny 
 would often rally him upon his leanness, and hail him as Brother 
 Lusty ; but W. had no relish of a joke. His features were spite- 
 ful. I have heard that he would pinch his cat's ears extremely, 
 when anything had offended him. Jackson — the omniscient Jack- 
 son as he was called — was of this period. He had the reputa- 
 tion of possessing more multifarious knowledge than any man of 
 his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the less literate portion of 
 the Temple. I remember a pleasant passage, of the cook apply- 
 ing to him, with much formality of apology, for instructions how 
 to write down edge bone of beef in 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 author- 
 ity with such anatomical reasons as dismissed the manciple (for 
 the time) learned and happy. Some do spell it yet, perversely, 
 aitch bone, from a fanciful resemblance between its shape and 
 that of the aspirate so denominated, I had almost forgotten Min- 
 gay with the iron hand — but he was somewhat later. He had 
 lost his right hand by some accident, and supplied it with a grap- 
 
122 ELIA. 
 
 pling-hook, which he wielded with a tolerable adroitness. I de 
 tected 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 recon- 
 ciled the phenomenon to my ideas as an emblem of power — 
 somewhat like the horns in the forehead of Michael Angelo's 
 Moses. Baron Maseres, who walks (or did till very lately) in 
 the costume of the reign of George the Second, closes my imper- 
 feet 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, — ex- 
 tinct 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 every-day forms educing the 
 unknown and the uncommon. In that little Goshen there will 
 be light, when the grown world flounders about in the darkness 
 of sense and materiality. While childhood, and while dreams, 
 reducing childhood, shall be left, imagination shall not have 
 spread her holy wings totally to fly the earth. 
 
 P. S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of Samuel Salt. 
 See what it is to trust to imperfect memory, and the erring notices 
 of childhood ! Yet I protest I always thought that he had been a 
 bachelor ! This gentleman, R. N. informs me, married young, 
 and losing his lady in childbed, within the first year of their union, 
 fell into a deep melancholy, from the effects of which, probably, 
 he never thoroughly recovered. In whpt 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 ! Thoy are, in truth, but 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 123 
 
 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 inde- 
 corous liberties of Elia. The good man wots not, peradventure, 
 of the license which Magazines have arrived at in this plain- 
 speaking age, or hardly dreams of their existence beyond the 
 Gentleman's — his furthest monthly excursions in this nature hav- 
 ing 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 him- 
 self the kindliest of human creatures. Should infirmities over- 
 take him — he is yet in green and vigorous senility — make allow- 
 ances for them, remembering that " ye yourselves 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- 
 colored and cleanly nursery-maid, who, by leave, airs her play- 
 ful charge in your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing 
 curtsy as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion ! so may the 
 younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your stately terrace, 
 with the same superstitious veneration, with which the child Elia 
 gazed on the Old Worthies that solemnised the parade before ye ! 
 
124 ELIA. 
 
 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 precious things, and a full meal was something 
 more than a common blessing ! when a belly-full was a wind- 
 fall, and looked like a special providence. In the shouts and tri- 
 umphal songs with which, after a season of sharp abstinence, a 
 lucky booty of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be ushered 
 home, existed, perhaps, the germ of the modern grace. It is not 
 otherwise easy to be understood, why the blessing of food — ^the 
 act of eating — should have had a particular expression of thanks- 
 giving annexed to it, distinct from that implied and silent grati- 
 tude with which we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment of 
 the many other various gifts and good things of existence. 
 
 I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other 
 occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a 
 form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ram- 
 ble, 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 devotional exercise proper to be said 
 before reading the Fairy Queen ? — but the received ritual having 
 prescribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of manducation, 
 I shall confine my observations to the experience which I have had 
 of the grace, properly so called ; commending my new scheme 
 for extension to a niche in the grand philosophical, poetical, and 
 perchance in part heretical, liturgy, now compiling by my friend 
 Homo Humanus, for the use of a certain snug congregation of 
 Utopian Rabeloesian Christians, no matter where assembled. 
 
 The form, then, of the benediction before eating has its beauty 
 
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 125 
 
 at a poor man's table, or at the simple and unprovocative repasts 
 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 contemplated 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 stimulative to appetite, leaves the 
 mind most free for foreign considerations. A man may feel 
 thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mutton with tur- 
 nips, and have leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and institution 
 of eating ; when he shall confess a perturbation of mind, incon- 
 sistent with the purposes of the grace, at the presence of venison 
 or turtle. When I have sate (a rarus hospes) at rich men's tables, 
 with the savory 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 unsea- 
 sonable. With the ravenous orgasm upon you, it seems imper- 
 tinent to interpose a religious sentiment. It is a confusion of 
 purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth that waters. The 
 heats of epicurism put out the gentle flame of devotion. The 
 incense which rises round is pagan, and the belly-god intercepts 
 it for his own. The very excess of tljf provision beyond the 
 needs, takes away all the 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 paise the Gods amiss. 
 
 I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce consciously per- 
 haps, by the good man who says the grace. I have seen it in 
 clergymen and others — a sort of shame — a sense of the co-pre- 
 sence of circumstances which unhallow the blessing. After a 
 devotional tone put on for a few seconds, how rapidly the speaker 
 will fall into his common voice I helping himself or his neighbor, 
 as if to get rid of some uneasy sensation of hypocrisy. Not that 
 
126 ELIA. 
 
 the good man was a hypocrite, or was not most consei^'ntious in 
 the discharge of the duty; but he felt in his inmost mmd the 
 incompatibility of the scene and the viands be tore inm 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 post- 
 pone their benediction to a fitter season, when appetite is laid ; 
 when the still small voice can be heard, and the reason of the 
 grace returns — with temperate diet and restricted dishes. Glut- 
 tony 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 
 Celaeno anything but a blessing. We may be gratefully sensible 
 of the deliciousness of some kinds of food beyond others, though 
 that is a meaner and inferior gratitude : but the proper object of 
 the grace is sustenance, not relishes; daily bread, not delicacies; 
 4he means of life, and not the means of pampering the carcass. 
 With what frame or composure, I wonder, can a city chaplain 
 pronounce his benediction at some great Hall- feast, when he 
 knows that his last concluding pious word — and that in all pro- 
 bability, the sacred name which he preaches — is but the signal 
 for so many impatient harpies to commence their foul orgies, with 
 as little sense of true thankfulness (which is temperance) as those 
 Virgilian fowl ! It is well if the good man himself does not feel 
 his devotions a little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling 
 with and polluting the pure altar sacrifice. 
 
 The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is the banquet 
 which Satan, in the Paradise Regained, provides for a temptation 
 in the wilderness : 
 
 A table richly spread in regal mode 
 With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort 
 And savor ; 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. 
 
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 127 
 
 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 preface 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 Cam- 
 bridge ? This was a temptation fitter for a Heliogabalus. The 
 whole banquet is too civic and culinary, and the accompaniments 
 altogether a profanation of that deep, abstracted holy scene. The 
 mighty artillery of sauces, which the cook-fiend conjures up, is 
 out of proportion to the simple wants and plain hunger of the 
 guest. He that disturbed him in his dreams, from his dreams 
 might have been taught better. To the temperate fantasies of 
 the famished Son of God, what sort of feasts presented themselves ? 
 He dreamed indeed, 
 
 As appetite is wont to dream. 
 
 Of meatp and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet. 
 
 But what meats ? — 
 
 Him thoupjht, he by the brook of Cherith stood, 
 
 And saw the ravens with their horny beaks 
 
 Food to Elijah 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 ban- 
 quets, 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 practically I own 
 
128 ELIA. 
 
 that (before meat especially) they seem to involve something 
 avi^kward and unseasonable. Our appetites, of one or another 
 kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, which might otherwise 
 but feebly set about the great ends of preserving and continuing 
 the species. They are fit blessings to be contemplated at a dis- 
 tance with a becoming gratitude ; 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 busi- 
 ness of every description with more calmness 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 pas- 
 sionate 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 morsels of deer'^flesh were not 
 made to be received with dispassionate services. I hate a man 
 who swallows it, affecting not to know what he is eating. I sus- 
 pect his taste in higher matters. I shrink instinctively from one 
 who professes to like minced veal. There is a physiognomical 
 
 character in the tastes for food. C holds that a man cannot 
 
 have a pure mind who refuses apple-dumplings. I am not certain 
 but he is right. With the decay of my first innocence, I confess 
 a less and less relish daily for those innocuous cates. The whole 
 vegetable tribe have lost their gust with me. Only I stick to 
 asparagus, which still seems to inspire gentle thoughts. I am 
 impatient and querulous under culinary disappointments, as to 
 come home at the dinner hour, for instance, expecting some savory 
 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 Rambler used to make inarticulate 
 animal noises over a favorite 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 
 
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 129 
 
 with no man's tastes, nor would set my thin face against those 
 excellent things, in their way, jollity and feasting. But as these 
 exercises, however laudable, have little in them of grace or grace- 
 fulness, a man diould 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 children ; to the roots and severer repasts of the 
 Chartreuse ; to the slender, but not slenderly acknowledged, refec- 
 tion of the poor and humble man : but at the heaped-up boards 
 of the pampered and the luxurious they become of dissonant mood, 
 less timed and tuned to the occasion, methinks, than the noise of 
 those better befitting organs would be which children hear tales 
 of, at Hog's Norton. We sit too long at our meals, or are too 
 curious in the study of them, or too disordered in our application 
 to them, or engross too great a portion of those good things (which 
 should be common) to our share, to be able with any grace to say 
 grace. To be thankful for what we grasp exceeding our pro- 
 portion, 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-set- 
 tled 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 unwilling to shift the awkward burthen of an equivocal duty 
 from his own shoulders ? 
 
 I once drank tea in company with two Methodist divines of differ- 
 ent 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 sectaries 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 importance he 
 made answer that it was not a custom known in his church : in 
 
 PART I. 10 
 
130 ELIA. 
 
 which courteous evasion the other acquiescing for good manners' 
 sake, or in compliance 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 compliment of performing or omitting a sacri- 
 fice, — 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 slily leer- 
 ing down the table, " Is there no clergyman here," — significantly 
 adding, " Thank G — ." Nor do I think our old form at school 
 quite pertinent, where we were used to preface our bald bread-and- 
 cheese-suppers with a preamble, connecting with that humble 
 blessing a recognition of benefits the most awful and overwhelm- 
 ing to the imagination which religion 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 understanding that expression in a low 
 and animal sense, — ^till some one recalled a legend, which told 
 how, in the golden days of Christ's, the young Hospitallers 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. 
 
DREAM-CHILDREN; A REVERIE. 131 
 
 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 ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that 
 the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be 
 seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the 
 great-hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts ; till 
 a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble one of 
 modern invention in its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice 
 put out one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be called 
 upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how religious and how 
 good their great-grandmother Field was, how beloved and re- 
 spected by everybody, though she was not indeed the mistress 
 o£ this great house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in 
 some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) 
 committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer 
 and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased some- 
 where in the adjoining county ; but still she lived in it in a 
 manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity 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 carried away to the owner's other house, 
 
132 ELI A. 
 
 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 Ab- 
 bey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. 
 Here John smiled, as much as to say, " that would be foolish 
 indeed." And then I told how, when she came" to die, her fune- 
 ral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the 
 gentry, too, of the neighborhood, for many miles round, to show 
 their respect for her memory, because she had been such a 
 good and religious woman ; so good indeed that she knew all the 
 Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament besides. 
 Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, up- 
 right, 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 never bend her good 
 spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because 
 she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used 
 to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house ; 
 and Ijow she believed that an apparition of two infants was to 
 be seen at midnight gliding 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, because I was never half so. 
 good or religious as she — and yet I never saw the. infants. Here 
 John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look courageous. 
 Then I told how good she was to all her grandchildren, having 
 us to the great house in the holidays, 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 could never be tired with roaming 
 about that huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their 
 worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken pan- 
 nels, with the gilding almost rubbed out — sometimes in the spa- 
 cious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless 
 when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me — 
 
DREAM-CHILDREN ; A REVERIE. 133 
 
 and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, 
 without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were 
 forbidden fruit, unless now and then, — and because I ha,d more 
 pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy-looking 
 yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the red-berries, and the 
 fir-apples, which were good for nothing but to look at — or in 
 lying about upon the fresh grass with all the fine garden 
 smells around me — or basking in the orangery, till I could 
 almost fancy myself ripening too along with the oranges and 
 the limes in that grateful warmth — or in watching the dace 
 that darted to and fro in the fish pond, at the bottom of the 
 garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hanging mid- 
 way down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at their im- 
 pertinent friskings ; I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diver- 
 sions than in all the sweet flavors of peaches, nectarines, oranges, 
 and such-like common baits of children. Here John slily depo- 
 sited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unob- 
 served 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 grand-children, yet in 
 an especial manner she might be said to love their uncle, John 
 
 L , because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a 
 
 king to the rest of us ; and, instead of moping about in solitary 
 corners, like some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome 
 horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, 
 and make it carry him half over the county in a morning, and 
 join the hunters when there were any out ; and yet he loved the 
 old great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to 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 ad- 
 miration 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 
 
134 ELI A. 
 
 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 after- 
 wards it haunted and haunted me ; and though I did not cry or 
 take it to heart as some do, and as 1 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, 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 chil- 
 dren could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and 
 difficulty, and denial, meant in maidens — when suddenly, turning 
 to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with 
 such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of 
 them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was ; and 
 while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to 
 my view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at last but two 
 mournful features were seen in the uttermost 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 mil- 
 lions of ages before we have existence, and a name " and 
 
 immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my bache- 
 lor 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. 
 
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 135 
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 IN A LETTER TO B. F., ESQ., AT SIDNEY, 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 
 compunctious 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 posterity ; and reminds 
 me of one of Mrs. Rowe's superscriptions, " Alcander to Strephon 
 in the shades." Cowley's Post- Angel is no more than would be 
 expedient in such an intercourse. One drops a packet at Lom- 
 bard-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 dia- 
 logue exchanged with that interesting theosophist would take two 
 or three revolutions of a higher luminary in its passage. Yet for 
 aught I know, you may be some parasangs nigher that primitive 
 idea — Plato's man — ^than we in England here have the honor to 
 reckon ourselves. 
 
 Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics ; news, sen- 
 timent, and puns. In the latter, I include all non-serious sub- 
 jects ; or subjects serious in themselves, but treated after my 
 fashion, non-seriously. — And first, for news. In them the most 
 
136 ELI A. 
 
 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, unaccountably turn into a lie ? For in- 
 stance, our mutual friend P. is at this present writing — my Now 
 — in good health, and enjoys a fair share of worldly reputation. 
 You are glad to hear it. This is natural and friendly. But at 
 this present reading — 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, &c.), 
 or at least considerably to modify it. I am going to the play this 
 evening, to have a laugh with Munden. You have no theatre, I 
 think you told me, in your land of d <i realities. You natu- 
 rally lick your lips, and envy me my felicity. Think but a mo- 
 ment, and you will correct the hateful emotion. Why it is Sun- 
 day morning with you, and 1823. This confusion 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 
 moment you received the intelligence my full feast of fun would 
 be over, yet there would be for a day or two after, as you would 
 well know, a smack, a relish left upon my mental palate, which 
 would give rational encouragement for you to foster a portion at 
 least of the disagreeable passion, which it was in part my inten- 
 tion to produce. But ten months hence, your envy or your sym- 
 pathy would be as useless as a passion spent upon the dead. 
 Not only does truth, in these long intervals, un-essence herself, 
 but (what is harder) one cannot venture a 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 re- 
 member gravely consulting you how we were to receive her — 
 for Will's wife was in no case to be rejected ; and your no less 
 serious replication in the matter ; how tenderly you advised an 
 abstemious introduction of literary topics before the lady, with a 
 caution not to be too forward in bringing on the carpet matters 
 more within the sphere of her intelligence ; your deliberate judg- 
 ment, or rather wise suspension of sentence, how far jacks, and 
 spits, and mops, could with propriety be introduced as subjects j 
 
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 137 
 
 whether the conscious avoiding of all such matters in discourse 
 would not have a worse look than the taking of them casually in 
 our way ; in what manner we should carry ourselves to our 
 maid Becky, Mrs. William Weatherall being by ; whether we 
 should show more delicacy, and a truer sense of respect for Will's 
 wife, by treating Becky with our customary cliiding before her, 
 or by an unusual deferential civility paid to Becky as to a person 
 of great worth, but thrown by the caprice of fate into an humble 
 station. There were difficulties, 1 remember, on both sides, 
 which you did me the favor to state with the precision of a law- 
 yer, united to the tenderness of a friend. I laughed in my sleeve 
 at your solemn pleadings, when lo ! while I was valuing myself 
 upon this flam put upon you in New South Wales, the devil in 
 England, jealous possibly of any lie-children not his own, or 
 working after my copy, has actually instigated our friend (not 
 three days since) to the commission of a matrimony, which T 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 intelligence with 
 effect ; the epoch of the writer (Habbakuk) 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 have time to cool, it is the most tasteless of all cold 
 meats. I have oflen smiled at a conceit of the late Lord C. It 
 seems that travelling somewhere about Geneva, he came to some 
 pretty green spot, or nook, where a willow or something hung so 
 fantastically and invitingly over a stream — w^as it ? — or a rock ? 
 — no matter — but the stillness and the repose, after a weary jour- 
 ney '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 
 
133 ELIA. 
 
 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 dis- 
 posal, his remains were actually carried all that way from Eng- 
 land ; who was there, some desperate sentimentalist 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 siream as emblematic to his purpose, in Surrey, in Dorset, 
 or in Devon ? Conceive the sentiment boarded up, freighted, 
 entered at the Custom House (startling the tide-waiters with the 
 novelty), hoisted into a ship. Conceive it pawed about and 
 handled between the rude jests of tarpaulin ruffians — a thing of 
 its delicate texture — the salt bilge wetting it till it became as 
 vapid as a damaged lustring. Suppose it in material danger 
 (mariners have some superstition about sentiment) of being tossed 
 over in a fresh gale to some propitiatory shark (spirit of Saint 
 Gothard, save us from a quietus so foreign to the deviser's pur- 
 pose !) but it has happily evaded a fishy consummation. Trace 
 it then to its lucky landing — at Lyons shall we say ? — I have not 
 the map before me — jostled upon four men's shoulders — baiting 
 at this town — stopping to refresh at t'other village — waiting a 
 passport here, a license there ; the 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 sentiments, my dear F., I am afraid we 
 can set down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite sea- worthy. 
 
 Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though contempti- 
 ble in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which should irradiate 
 a right friendly epistle — your puns and small jests are, I appre- 
 hend, extremely circumscribed in their sphere of action. They 
 are so far from a capacity of being packed up and sent beyond 
 sea, they will scarce endure to be transported by hand from this 
 room to the next. Their \igor is as the instant of their birth. 
 Their nutriment for their brief existence is the intellectual atmo- 
 sphere of the bystanders : or this last is the fine slime of Nilus — 
 the melior lutus — whose maternal recipiency is as necessary as 
 the sol pater to their equivocal generation. A pun hath a hearty 
 
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 139 
 
 kind of present ear-kissing smack with it ; you can no more transr 
 mit it in its pristine flavor, 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 hear- 
 ing, 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 merchandise above all requires 
 a quick return. A pun, and its recognitory laugh, must be co- 
 instantaneous. The one is the brisk lightning, the other the 
 fierce thunder. 
 
 A moment's interval, and the link is snapped. A pun is re- 
 flected from a friend's face as from a mirror. Who would con- 
 suit 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 whereabouts you are. When f 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 fruitless lantern. What must you 
 be willing by this time to give for the sight of an honest 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 formed by nature to the pickpocket ! 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 hand-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 four 
 
140 ELIA. 
 
 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 profession, 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-dried barks, the theme of jesting 
 ruralists, I picked my first lady-birds ! My heart is as dry as 
 that spring sometimes proves in a thirsty August, when I revert 
 to the space that is between us ; a length of passage enough to 
 render obsolete the phrases of our English letters before they can 
 reach you. But while I talk, I think you hear me, thoughts dal- 
 lying 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 remem- 
 ber 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, cor- 
 rected my delusion. Since then the old divorcer has been busy. 
 
 If you do not make haste to return, there will be little left to 
 greet you, of me, or mine. 
 
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 141 
 
 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 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 th6ir little profes- 
 sional notes sounding like the peep peep of a young sparrow ; or 
 liker to the matin lark should I pronounce them, in their aerial 
 accents not seldom anticipating the sun-rise ? 
 
 I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks — poor blots 
 — innocent blacknesses — 
 
 I reverence these young Africans of our own growth — ^these 
 almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without assumption ; 
 and from their little pulpits (the tops of the 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 process, into what seemed the fauces Ax^erm 
 — to pursue him in imagination, as he went sounding on through 
 so many dark stifling caverns, horrid shades ! — to shudder with 
 the idea that " now, surely, he must be lost for ever !" — to revive 
 at hearing his feeble shout of discovered day-light — and then (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 conquer- 
 ed citadel !' I seem to remember having been told, that a bad 
 sweep was once left in a sta-ck with a brush, to indicate which 
 way the wind blew. It was an awful spectacle certainly -, not 
 
142 ELIA. 
 
 much unlike the old stage direction in Macbeth, where the " Ap. 
 parition 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 starving 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 humanity will surely 
 rise to a tester. 
 
 There is a composition, the ground- work of which I have un- 
 derstood to be the sweet wood 'yclept sassafras. This wood boil- 
 ed down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an infusion of rnilL 
 and sugar, hath to some tastes a delicacy beyond the China luxu- 
 ry. I know not how thy palate may relish it; for myself, 
 with every deference to the judicious Mr. Read, who hath time 
 out of mind kept open a shop (the only one he avers in London) 
 for the vending of this " wholesome and pleasant beverage," on 
 the south side of Fleet-street, as thou approachest Bridge-street — 
 the only Salopian house — I have never yet ventured to dip my 
 own particular lip in a basin of his commended ingredients — a 
 cautious premonition to the olfactories constantly whispering to 
 me, that my stomach must infallibly, with all due courtesy, de- 
 cline 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 surpris- 
 ingly gratifying to the palate of a youjig 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 practitioners ; 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 'odor to the sense 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 
 
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 143 
 
 something more in these sympathies than philosophy can in- 
 culcate. 
 
 Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, that his is 
 the only Salopmn house ; yet be it known to thee, reader — if thou 
 art one who keepest what are called good hours, thou art haply 
 ignorant of the fact — he hath a race of industrious imitators, who 
 from stalls, and under open sky, dispense the same savory mess 
 to humbler customers, at that dead time of the dawn, when (as 
 extremes meet) the rake, reeling home from his midnight cups, 
 and the hard-handed artisan leaving his bed to resume the pre- 
 mature labors of the day, jostle, not unfrequently to the manifest 
 disconcerting of the former, for the honors 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 odors. The rake, who wisheth to 
 dissipate his o'er-night vapors in more grateful coffee, curses the 
 ungenial fume, as he passeth ; but the artisan stops to taste, and 
 blesses the fragrant breakfast. 
 
 This is saloop — the precocious herb-woman's darling — the de- 
 light of the early gardener, who transports his smoking cabbages 
 by break of day from Hammersmith to Covent-garden's famed 
 piazzas — the delight, and oh ! I fear, too often the envy, of the un- 
 pennied sweep. Him shouldst thou haply encounter, with his dim 
 visage pendent over the grateful steam, regale him with a sump- 
 tuous basin (it will cost thee but three-halfpennies) and a slice 
 of delicate bread and butter (an added halfpenny) — so may thy 
 culinary fires, eased of the o'er-charged secretions from thy worse- 
 placed hospitalities, 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 Jlred chimney, invite the rattling engines from ten adjacent 
 parishes, to disturb for a casual scintillation thy peace and pocket ! 
 
 I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts; the 
 jeers and taunts of the populace ; the low-bred triumph they dis- 
 play over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a gentleman. 
 Yet can I endure the jocularity of a young sweep with something 
 more than forgiveness. — In the last winter but one, pacing along 
 Cheapside with my accustomed precipitation when I walked west- 
 
144 ELIA. 
 
 ward, a treacherous slide brought me upon my back in an instant. 
 I scrambled up with pain and shame enough — yet outwardly try- 
 ing to face it down, as if nothing had happened — when the roguish 
 grin of one of these young wits encountered me. There he 
 stood, pointing me out with his dusky finger to the mob, and to 
 a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in particular, till the tears 
 for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he thought it) worked them- 
 selves out at the corners of his poor red eyes, red from many 
 a previous weeping, and soot-inflamed, yet twinkling through all 
 
 with such a joy, snatched out of desolation, that Hogarth . 
 
 But Hogarth has got him already (how could he miss him ?) 
 
 in the March to Finchley, grinning at the pye-man there he 
 
 stood, as he stands in the picture, irremovable, as if the jest was 
 to last for ever — with such a maximum of glee, and minimum 
 of mischief, in his mirth — for the grin of a genuine sweep hath 
 absolutely no malice in it — that I could have been content, if 
 the honor of a gentlem'kn 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 tfeeth. Every pair of rosy lips (the ladies 
 must pardon me) is a casket presumably holding such jewels ; 
 but, methinks, they should take leave to " air " them as frugally 
 as possible. The fine lady, or fine gentleman, who show me their 
 teeth, show me bones. Yet must I confess, that from the mouth 
 of a true sweep a display (even to ostentation) of those white and 
 shining ossifications, 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 ob- 
 scuring darkness and double night of their forlorn disguisement, 
 oftentimes lurketh good blood, and gentle conditions, derived from 
 lost ancestry, and a lapsed pedigree. The premature apprentice- 
 ments of those tender victims give but too much encouragement, 
 I fear, to clandestine and almost infantile abductions ; the seeds 
 
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 145 
 
 of civility and true courtesy, so often discernible in these young 
 grafts (not otherwise to be accounted for) plainly hint at some 
 forced adoptions ; many noble Rachels mourning for their chil- 
 dren, even in our days, countenance the fact ; the tales of fairy- 
 spiriting may shadow a lamentable verity, and the recovery of the 
 young Montagu be but a solitary instance of good fortune out of 
 many irreparable and hopeless defiliations. 
 
 In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few years since — 
 under a ducal canopy — (that seat of the Howards is an object 
 of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, in which the late duke 
 was especially a connoisseur)— encircled with curtains of delicat- 
 est crimson, with starry coronets inwoven — folded between a pair 
 of sheets whiter and softer than the lap where Venus lulled As- 
 canius — was discovered by chance, after all methods of search 
 had failed, at noon-day, fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The 
 little creature, having somehow confounded his passage among 
 the intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by some unknown aper- 
 ture 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 creep- 
 ing between the sheets very quietly, laid his black head upon 
 the pillow, and slept like a young Howard. 
 
 Such is the account given to the visitors at the Castle. — But I 
 cannot help seeming to perceive a confirmation of what I have 
 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 penalty as he would be taught to 
 expect, to uncover the sheets of a Duke's bed, and deliberately to 
 lay himself down between them, when the rug or the carpet pre- 
 sented an obvious couch, still far above his pretensions — is this 
 probable, I would ask, if the great power of nature, which I con- 
 tend for, had not been manifested within him, prompting to the 
 adventure ? Doubtless this young nobleman (for such my mind 
 misgives me that he must be) was allured by some memory, not 
 amounting to full consciousness, of his condition in infancy, when 
 he was used to be lapped by his mother, of* his nurse, in just such 
 sheets as he there found, into which he was now but creeping back 
 
 PART I. 11 
 
146 ELIA. 
 
 as into his proper incunabula, -and resting-place. — By no other 
 than by this sentiment of a pre-existent state (as I may call it), 
 can I explain a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon any other 
 system, so indecorous, in this tender, but unseasonable sleeper. 
 
 My pleasant friend Jem White was so impressed with a belief 
 of metamorphoses like this frequently taking place, that in some 
 sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in these poor changelings, 
 he instituted an annual feast of chimney-sweepers, at which it 
 was his pleasure to officiate as host and waiter. It was a solemn 
 supper held in Smithfield, upon the yearly return of the fair of St. 
 Bartholomew. 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 stripling 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 inter- 
 ruption of every gaping spectator in it. The guests assembled 
 about seven. Tn those little temporary parlors 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 savor. 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 jostlingi you may be sure, who 
 should get at the first table — for Rochester in his maddest days 
 could not have done the humors of the scene with more spirit than 
 my friend. After some general expression of thanks for the 
 honor the company had done him, his inaugural ceremony was to 
 clasp the greasy waist of old dame Ursula (the fattest of the three), 
 that stood frying and" fretting, half-blessing, half-cursing " the 
 gentleman," and imprint upon her chaste lips a tender salute, 
 
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 147 
 
 whereat the universal host would set up a shout that tore the con- 
 cave, while hundreds of grinning teeth startled the night with 
 their brightness. 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 gentleman's eating " — 
 how he would recommend this slice of white bread, or that piece 
 of kissing-crust, to a tender juvenile, advising them all to have a 
 care of cracking their teeth, which were their best patrimony, — 
 how 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 understood or not, was 
 equally diverting and flattering ; — and for a crowning sentiment, 
 which never failed, " May the Brush supersede the Laurel !" All 
 these, and fifty other fancies, which were rather felt than compre- 
 hended by his guests, would he utter, standing upon tables, and 
 prefacing every sentiment with a " Gentlemen, give me leave to 
 propose so and so," which was a prodigious comfort to those young 
 orphans ; every now and tlien stuffing into his mouth (for it did 
 not do to be squeamish on these occasions) indiscriminate pieces 
 of those reeking sausages, which pleased them mightily, and was 
 the savoriest 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 suppers have long 
 ceased. He carried away with him half the fun of the world 
 when he died — of my world, at least. His old clients look for 
 him among the pens; and, missing him, reproach the altered 
 feast of St. Bartholomew, and thp glory of Smithfield departed 
 for ever. 
 
148 ELIA. 
 
 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 
 
 IN THE METROPOLIS. 
 
 The all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation — your only 
 modern Alcides' club to rid the time of its abuses — is uplift with 
 many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the 
 bugbear Mendicity from the metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags 
 — staves, dogs, and crutches — the whole mendicant fraternity with 
 all their baggage, are fast posting out of the purlieus of this 
 eleventh 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 imperti- 
 nent crusado, or helium ad exterminationem, proclaimed against a 
 species. Much good might be sucked from these Beggars. 
 
 They were the oldest and the honorablest form of pauperism. 
 Their appeals were to our common nature ; less revolting to an 
 ingenuous mind than to be a suppliant to the particular humors 
 or caprice of any fellow-creature, or set of fellow-creatures, paro- 
 chial or societarian. Theirs were the only rates uninvidious in 
 the levy, ungrudged in the assessment. 
 
 There was a dignity springing from the y,ery depth of their 
 desolation ; as to be naked is to be so much nearer to the being a 
 man, than to go in livery. 
 
 The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses ; and when 
 Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, do we feel anything 
 towards him but contempt ? Could Vandyke have made a picture 
 of him, swaying a ferula for a sceptre, which would have afl^ected 
 our minds with the same heroic pity, the same compassionate 
 
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 149 
 
 admiration, with which we regard his Belisarius begging for an 
 dbolum? 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, fleeing from the unjust 
 sentence of his liege lord, stript of all, and seated on the flowering 
 green of Bethnal, with his more fresh and springing daughter by 
 his side, illumining his rags and his beggary— would the child 
 and parent have cut a better figure, doing the honors of a counter, 
 or expiating their fallen condition upon the three-foot eminence 
 of some sempstering shop-board ? 
 
 In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just antipode to your 
 King. The poets and romancical writers (as dear Margaret New- 
 castle would call them), when they would most sharply and feel- 
 ingly 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, suppli- 
 cating 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 Alexander in the shades cobbling shoes, or 
 a Semiramis getting up foul linen. 
 
 How would it sound in song, that a great monarch 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 ? 
 
 Pai7perism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity, but pity 
 alloyed with contempt. No one properly contemns a beggar. 
 Poverty is a comparative thing, and each degree of it is mocked, 
 by its " neighbor grice." Its poor rents and cominffs-in are soon 
 
150 ELIA. 
 
 summed up and told. Its pretences to property are almost ludi- 
 crous. Its pitiful attempts to save excite a smile. Every scorn- 
 ful companion can weigh his trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor 
 man reproaches poor man in the streets with impolitic mention 
 of his condition, his own being a shade better, while the rich 
 pass by and jeer at both. No rascally comparative insults a 
 Beggar, or thinks of weighing purses with him. He is not in the 
 scale of comparison. He is not under the measure of property. 
 He confessedly hath none, any more than a dog or a sheep. No 
 one twitteth him with ostentation above his means. No one 
 accuses him of pride, or upbraideth him with mock humility. 
 None jostle with him for the wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. 
 No wealthy neighbor 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 profession, his tenure, his full dress^ 
 the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public. He is 
 never out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is 
 not required to put on court mourning. He weareth all colors, 
 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 concern 
 him no longer. He alone continueth in one stay. The price of 
 stock or land affecteth him not. The fluctuations of agricultural 
 or commercial prosperity touch him not, or at worst but change 
 his customers. He is not expected to become bail or surety for 
 any one. No man troubleth him with questioning his religion or 
 politics. He is the only free man in the universe. 
 
 The Mendicants of this great city were so many of her sights, 
 her lions. 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 indispensable as the Ballad Singer; and in their pic- 
 turesque attire as ornamental as the signs of old London. They 
 were the standing morals, emblems, mementos, dial-mottos, the 
 
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 151 
 
 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 Lin- 
 coln'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 half-penny Ho more consoles their 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 dropped into the 
 
 Thames, at the suggestion of B , the mild rector of ? 
 
 Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, most clas- 
 sical, and at the same time, most English of the Latinists ! — who 
 has treated of this human and quadrupedal alliance, this dog and 
 man friendship, in the sweetest of his poems, the EpUaphium in 
 Canein, or. Dog's Epitaph. Reader, peruse it ; and say, if cus- 
 tomary 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 : nee, me dueente, solebat, 
 
 Praetenso hinc atque hine baculo, per iniqua locorum 
 
 Ineertam explorare viam ; sed fila secutus, 
 
 Quae dubios regerent passus, vestigia tuta 
 
 Fixit inoffenso gressu ; gelidumque sedile 
 
 In nudo nactus saxo, qUa praetereuntium 
 
 Unda frequens eonfluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras 
 
 Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam. 
 
 Ploravit nee frustra ; obolum dedit alter et alter. 
 
152 ELI A. 
 
 Queis corda et mentem indiderat natura benignam. 
 
 Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile, 
 
 Vel mediis vigil in somnis ; ad herilia jussa 
 
 Auresque atque animum arrectus, seu frustula amice 
 
 Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei 
 
 Taedia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat. 
 
 Hi mores, haec 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 delecta 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 benignum. 
 
 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, 
 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. 
 
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 153 
 
 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, wheel- 
 ing 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 in- 
 fant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his own level. 
 The common cripple would despise his own pusillanimity, view- 
 ing the hale stoutness, 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 vigor from the soil which he neighbored. He was a 
 grand fragment ; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature, which 
 should have recruited Lis reft legs and thighs, was not lost, but 
 only retired into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. 
 I heard a tremendous voice thundering and growling, as before 
 an earthquake, and casting down my eyes, it was this mandrake 
 reviling a steed that had started at his portentous appearance. He 
 seemed to want but his just stature to have rent the offending 
 quadruped in shivers. He was as the man-part of a centaur, 
 from which the horse-half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan 
 controversy. He moved on, as if he could have made shift with 
 yet half of the body-portion which was left him. The os sitblime 
 was not wanting ; and he threw out yet a jolly countenance upon 
 the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this out-of-door 
 trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in the service, but his good 
 spirits no way impaired, because he is not content to exchange 
 his free air and exercise for the restraints of a poor-house, he is 
 expiating his contumacy in one of those houses (ironically chris- 
 tened) of Correction. 
 
 Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nuisance, which 
 called for legal interference to remove ? or not rather a salutary 
 and a touching object, to the passers-by in a great city ? Among 
 her shows, her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping curiosity 
 (and what else but an accumulation of sights — endless sights — 
 
154 ELIA. 
 
 is a great city ; or for what else is it desirable ?) was there not 
 room for one Lusus (not NaturcR, indeed, but) Accidentium? 
 What if in forty-and-two years' going about, the man had scraped 
 together enough to give a portion to his child (as the rumor ran), 
 of a few hundreds — whom had he injured ? — whom had he im- 
 posed upon ? The contributors had enjoyed their sight for their 
 pennies. What if after being exposed all day to the heats, the 
 rains, and the frosts of heaven — shuffling his ungainly trunk 
 along in an elaborate and painful motion — he was enabled to retire 
 at night to enjoy himself at a club of his fellow cripples over a 
 dish of hot meat and vegetables, as the charge was gravely 
 brought against him by a clergyman deposing before a House of 
 Commons' Committee — was this, or was his truly paternal consi- 
 deration, which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whip- 
 ping-post, and is inconsistent at least with the exaggeration of 
 nocturnal orgies which he has been slandered with — a reason that 
 he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay edifying, way 
 of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy vagabond ? — 
 
 There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have shamed to 
 have sate down at the cripples' feast, and to have thrown in his 
 benediction, ay, and his mite too, for a companionable symbol. 
 " Age, thou hast lost thy breed." — 
 
 Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made by 
 begging are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. One was much 
 talked of in the public papers some time since, and the usual 
 charitable inferences induced. 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 morning walks from Peckham (or some village 
 thereabouts) where he lived, to his office, it had been his practice 
 for the last twenty years to drop his halfpenny duly into the hat 
 ^f some blind Bartimeus, that sate begging alms by the way-side 
 '.n the Borough. The good old beggar recognized his daily bene- 
 factor by the voice only ; and, when he died, left all the aniassings 
 of his alms (that had been half a century perhaps in the accumu- 
 lating) to his old Bank friend. Was this a story to purse up 
 people's hearts, and pennies, against giving an alms to the blind ?— 
 
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 155 
 
 or not rather a beautiful moral of well-directed charity on the 
 one part, and noble gratitude upon the other ? 
 
 I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk. 
 
 I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature, blink- 
 ing, and looking up with his no eyes in the sun — 
 
 Is it possible I could have Steele^ my purse against him ? 
 
 Perhaps I had no small change. 
 
 Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, imposition, im- 
 posture — give, and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upon the 
 waters. Some have unawares (like this Bank clerk) entertained 
 angels. 
 
 Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted 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- 
 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 per- 
 sonate father of a family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou hast 
 relieved an indigent bachelor. When they come with their coun- 
 terfeit looks, and mumping tones, think them players. You pay 
 your money to see a comedian feign these things, which, concern- 
 ing these poor people, thou canst not certainly tell whether they 
 are feigned or not. 
 
156 ELI A. 
 
 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 Mutations, where he designates a 
 kind of golden age by the term of Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' 
 Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roast- 
 ing, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was 
 accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swine- 
 herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his 
 manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the 
 care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond 
 of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let 
 some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quick- 
 ly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, 
 till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry 
 antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may think it) what was 
 of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no 
 less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been es- 
 teemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest periods that 
 we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may 
 think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father 
 and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and 
 the labor 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 un- 
 timely sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent 
 
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 157 
 
 which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from ? 
 — not from the burnt cottage — he had smelt that smell before — 
 indeed this was by no means the first accident of the kind which 
 had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire- 
 brand. 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 understand- 
 ing, that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so 
 delicious ; and surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, 
 he fell to tearing up whole handfuUs of the scorched skin with the 
 flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly 
 fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed 
 with retributory cudgel, and* finding how aflairs stood, began to 
 rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, as thick as hail- 
 stones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been 
 flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower 
 regions, had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he 
 might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, 
 but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an 
 end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, 
 something like the following dialogue ensued. 
 
 " You graceless whelp, what have you got there 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 
 ►^urnt 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. 
 
158 ELI A. 
 
 Bo-bd, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, 
 soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust 
 the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, ^ill shouting 
 out, " Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste^O LordPy 
 — with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the wHUe 
 as if he would choke. 
 
 Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the abominable 
 thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an 
 unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, 
 as it had done his son's, and applying the same remedy to them, 
 he in his turn tasted some of its flavor, which, make what sour 
 mouths he would for a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing 
 to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious) 
 both father and son fairly sat 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 
 neighbors would certainly have stoned them for a couple of abo- 
 minable wretches, who could think of improving upon the good 
 meat which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories 
 get about. It was observed that Ho-ti's cottage 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 chastising his son, seemed to grow more 
 indulgent to him than ever. At length they were watched, the 
 terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take 
 their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evi- 
 dence was given, the obnoxious 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 ac- 
 cused, 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, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all present — without 
 
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST #IG. 159 
 
 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 
 nloney. In a few days his Lordship's town-house was observed 
 to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was notliing 
 to be seen but fire in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enor- 
 mously dear all over the district. The insurance-offices one and 
 all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, 
 until it was feared that the very science of 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 indeed of any other animal, might be cooked {hurntf 
 as they called it) without the necessity of consuming 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 
 manuscript, 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 favor of any culinary object, that pretext 
 and excuse might be found in roast pig. 
 
 Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, I will main- 
 tain it to be the most delicate — ^rinceps ohsoniorum. 
 
 I speak not of your grown porkers — things between pig and 
 pork — those hobbydehoys — 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,-3cet manifest — his voice as yet not broken, but something 
 between a childish treble and a grumble — the mild forerunner, 
 or pmludium of a grunt. 
 
 He must he roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate 
 them seethed; or boiled — but what a sacrifice of the exterior 
 tegument ! 
 
160 • ELI A. 
 
 There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, 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 plea- 
 sure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance — 
 with the adhesive oleaginous — O call it not fat ! but an indefin- 
 able 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 refresh- 
 ing 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 matprer swinehood ? Ten 
 to one he would have proved a glutton,v^sl oven y an obstinate, 
 disagreeable animal— -(sKalk) wing in all manner of filthy conversa- 
 tion]— from these sins he is happily snatched away — 
 
 Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade 
 Death came with timely care— 
 
 his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, while his stomach 
 half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coalheaver bolteth him in 
 reeking sausages — he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stom- 
 ach of the judicious 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 transcendant — a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to 
 sinning that really a tender-oonscienced person would do well to 
 pause — too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and ex- 
 coriateththe lips that approach her — like lovers' kisses, she biteth 
 — she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness and in- 
 sanity of her relish — but she stoppeth at the palate — she med- 
 
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 161 
 
 dleth 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 provocative of the 
 appetite, than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the censorious 
 palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the weakling 
 refuseth not his mild juices. 
 
 Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of 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 
 all neighbors' fare. 
 
 I am one of those, who freely and ungrudgingly impart a share 
 of the good things of this life which fall to their lot (few as mine 
 are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great an interest 
 in my friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as 
 in mine own. "Presents," I often say, "endear Absents." 
 Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those 
 "tame villatic fowl "), capons, 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 
 
 Cmewhere. One would not, like Lear, " give everything." I 
 ake my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the 
 Giver of all good flavors, to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the 
 house, slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I know not 
 what), a blessing so particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, 
 to my individual palate — It argues an insensibility. 
 
 I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. My 
 good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holiday 
 without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, 
 had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh 
 from the oven. In my way to school (it was over London bridge) 
 a grey-headed old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt, at this 
 time of day, that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to con- 
 sole him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very cox- 
 combry of charity, schoolboy-like, I made him a present of — the 
 whole cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such 
 
 PART I. 12 
 
102 ELI A 
 
 occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction ; but before 
 I had got to the end of the bridge, my better feelings returned, 
 and I burst into tears, 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 another — would eat 
 her nice cake — and what should I say to her the next time I saw 
 her — how naughty I was to part with her pretty present ! — and 
 the odor of that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and 
 the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, 
 and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed 
 she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at 
 last — and I blamed my impertinent spirit of alms-giving, and 
 out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness ; and above all I wished never 
 to see the face again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey 
 impostor. 
 
 Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing those 
 tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with something 
 of a shock, as we hear of any obsolete custom. The age of dis- 
 cipline is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philo- 
 sophical light merely) what effect this process might have towards 
 intenerating and dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and ^ 
 dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. 
 Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, 
 how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a 
 gusto. — 
 
 I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, 
 when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning 
 and pleasantry on both sides, " Whether, supposing that tne fla- 
 vor of a pig who obtained his death by whipping ( per jlagella- 
 tionem extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man 
 more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the 
 animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the ani- 
 mal 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 
 
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 163 
 
 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. 
 
164 ELIA. 
 
 A BACHEIOR'S COMPLAINT 
 
 OF 
 
 THE BEHAVIOR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my time in noting 
 down the infirmities of Married People, to console myself for 
 those superior pleasures, which they tell me I have lost by re- 
 maining 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 
 offends 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 enjoy- 
 ment 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 implied or taken for granted merely ; 
 but expressed, there is much offence in them. If a man were to 
 accost the first homely-featured or plain-dressed young woman of 
 
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT. 165 
 
 his acquaintance, and tell herMuntly, 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 
 que^on 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 that I am not : I do not want this perpetual 
 reminding. 
 
 The display of superior knowledge or riches may be made suf- 
 ficiently mortifying ; but these admit of a palliative. The know- 
 ledge which is brought out to insult me, may accidentally improve 
 me ; and in the rich man's houses and pictures, his parks and 
 gardens, I have a temporary usufruct at least. But the display 
 of married happiness has none of these palliatives ; it is through- 
 out pure, unrecompensed, unqualified 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 exclu- 
 sive privilege to keep their advantage as much out of sight as 
 possible, that their less favored neighbors, seeing little of the bene- 
 fit, may be less disposed to question the right. But these mar- 
 ried monopolists thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent 
 into our faces. 
 
 Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire complacency 
 and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new- mar- 
 ried couple — in that of the lady particularly ; it tells you, that 
 her lot is disposed of in this world : that you can have no hopes 
 of her. It is true, I have none ; nor wishes either, perhaps ; but 
 this is one of those truths which ought, as I said before, to be 
 taken for granted^ not expressed. 
 
 The excessive airs which those people give themselves, founded 
 on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would be more offen- 
 sive if they were less irrational. We will allow them to under- 
 stand the mysteries belonging to their own craft better than we, 
 who have not had the happiness to be made free of the company : 
 
166 ELIA. 
 
 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 in- 
 competent person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaint- 
 ance, who, the best of the jest was, had not changed her condi- 
 tion above a fortnight before, in a question on which I had the 
 misfortune 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 old Bachelor as I could pretend to 
 know anything about such matters ! 
 
 But wbat I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the airs which 
 these creatures give themselves when they come, as they gene- 
 rally 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 abun- 
 dance — that there are few marriages that are not blest with at 
 least one of these bargains — how often they turn out ill, and de- 
 feat the fond hope of their parents, taking to vicious courses, 
 which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, &c., I cannot for 
 my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having 
 them. If they were young 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 ex- 
 pected 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 excellent office in our Prayer-book 
 appointed for the churching of women. " Happy is the man that 
 hath his quiver full of them :" So say I ; but then don't- let him 
 discharge his quiver upon us that are weaponless ; let them be 
 arrows, but not to gall and stick us. I have generally observed 
 that these arrows are double-headed : they have two forks, to be 
 sure to hit with one or the other. As for instance, where you 
 come into a house which is full of children, if you happen to 
 take no notice of them (you are thinking of something else, per- 
 
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT. 167 
 
 haps, 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, particularly if the dog be set upon 
 you to tease you or snap at you in sport. But a dog, or a lesser 
 thing — any inanimate substance, as a keepsake, a watch or a ring, 
 a tree, or the place where we last parted when my friend went 
 away upon a long absence, I can make shift to love, because I 
 love him, and anything that reminds me of him, provided it be in 
 its nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue fancy can 
 give it. But children have a real character, and an essential be- 
 ing of themselves : they are amiable or unamiable per se ; I 
 must love or hate them, as I see cause for either in their quali- 
 ties. A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being 
 regarded as a mere appendage to another being, and to be loved 
 or hated accordingly : they stand with me upon their own stock, 
 as much as men and women do. Oh ! but you will say, sure it 
 is an attractive age — there is something in the tender years of 
 infancy that of itself charms us 1 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 crea- 
 tures 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 in 
 my women and children. 
 
 But this is not the worst : one must be admitted into their fami« 
 
168 ELI A. 
 
 liarity at least, before they can complain of inattention. It implies 
 visits, and some kind of intercourse. But if the husband be a man 
 with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage 
 — if you did not come in on the wife's side — if you did not sneak 
 into the house in her train, but were an old friend in fast habits 
 of intimacy before their courtship was so much as thought on, — 
 look about you — your tenure is precarious — before a 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 breaking with you. I have scarce a married friend of my ac- 
 quaintance, 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 insult and worm 
 you out of their husbands' confidence. Laughing at all you say 
 with a kind of wonder, as if you were a queer kind of fellow that 
 said good things, hut an oddity, is one of the ways ; — they have a 
 particular kind of stare for the 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 gene- 
 ral 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 
 
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT. 169 
 
 is, where they find you an object of especial regard with their 
 husband, who is not so easily to be shaken from the lasting attach- 
 ment founded on esteem which he has conceived towards you, by 
 never qualified exaggerations to cry up all thai you say or do, till 
 the good man, who understands well enough that it is all done in 
 compliment to him, grows weary of the debt of gratitude which i:J 
 due to so much candor, 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- 
 placejE^ kindness " towards you, where she herself can join in 
 sympathy with him without much stress and violence to her 
 sincerity. 
 
 Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so desira- 
 ble a purpose ane infinite) is, with a kind of innocent simplicity, 
 continually to mistake what it was which first made their husband 
 foid 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 cha^'m in your conversation that he first 
 grew to like you, and was content for this to overlook some trifling 
 irregularities in your moral deportment, upon the first notice of 
 any of these she as readily exclaims, " This, my dear, is your 
 good Mr. !" One good lady whom I took the liberty of ex- 
 postulating with for not showing me quite so much respect as I 
 thought due to her husband's old friend, had the candor to confess 
 to me that she had often heard Mr. speak of me before mar- 
 riage, and that she had conceived 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 representations 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 dif. 
 fered so much from his own ; for my friend's dimensions as near 
 as possible approximate to mine ; he standing five feet five in his 
 
170 ELI A. 
 
 shoes, in which I have the advantage of him by about half an 
 inch ; and he no more than myself exhibiting any indications of a 
 martial character 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 endeavor ; 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 familiarity, and their httsbands with 
 ceremony. Testacea, for instance, kept me the other night two 
 or three hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was 
 
 fretting because Mr. did not come home, till the oysters 
 
 were all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of the impolite- 
 ness of touching one in his absence. This was reversing the 
 point of good manners ; for ceremony is an invention to take off 
 the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be 
 less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than 
 some other person is. It endeavors to make up, by superior at- 
 tentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is 
 forced to deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept the oysters 
 back for me, and withstood her husband's importunities to go to 
 supper, she would have acted according to the strict rules of pro- 
 priety. I know no ceremony that ladies are bound to observe to 
 their husbands, beyond the point of a modest behavior and deco- 
 rum : therefore 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 extraordi- 
 nary gooseberries to my un wedded 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 siich desperate offenders in future. 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 171 
 
 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 
 principal figure in it. It presents the cast of parts of the Twelfth 
 Night, at the old Drury-lane Theatre two-and-thirty years ago. 
 There is something very touching in these old remembrances. 
 They make us think how we once used to read a Play Bill — not, 
 as now peradventure, singling out a favorite performer, and cast- 
 ing a negligent eye over the rest; but spelling out every name, 
 down to the very mutes and servants of the scene ; — when it was 
 a matter of no small moment to us whether Whitfield, or Packer, 
 took the part of Fabian ; when Benson, and Burton, and Philli- 
 more — names of small account — had an importance, beyond what 
 we can be content to attribute now to the time's best actors. — 
 " Orsino, by Mr. 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 performance 
 of such parts as Ophelia ; Plelena, in All's Well that Ends Well ; 
 and Viola in this play. Her voice had latterly acquired a coarse- 
 ness, which suited well enough with her Nells and Hoydens, but 
 in those days it sank, with her steady melting eye, into the heart. 
 ■ Her joyous parts — in which her memory now chiefly lives — ^in 
 her youth were outdone by her plaintive ones. There is no giv- 
 ing an account how she delivered the disguised story of her love 
 for Orsino. It was no set speech, that she had foreseen, so as to 
 weave it into an harmonious period, line necessarily following 
 
172 ELTA. 
 
 — « 
 
 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 
 suggestion — and the heightened image of " Patience" still followed 
 after that, as by some growing (and not mechanical) process, 
 thought springs up after thought, I would almost say, as they 
 were watered by her tears. So in those fine lines — 
 
 Write loyal cantos of contemned love — 
 Halloo your name to the reverberate hills — 
 
 there was no preparation made in the foregoing image for that 
 which was to follow. She used no rhetoric in her passion ; or it 
 was nature's own rhetoric, most legitimate then, when it seemed 
 altogether without rule or law. 
 
 Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Renard), then in the pride of her beauty, 
 made an admirable Olivia. She was particularly excellent in her 
 unbending scenes in conversation with the Clown. I have seen 
 some Olivias — and those very sensible actresses too — who in these 
 interlocutions have* seemed to set their wits at the jester, and to 
 vie conceits with him in downright emulation. But she used 
 him for her sport, like what he was, to trifle a leisure sentence or 
 two with, and then to be dismissed, and she to be the Great Lady 
 Btill. She touched the imperious fantastic humor of the charac- 
 ter with nicety. Her fine spacious person filled the scene. 
 
 The part of Malvolio has, in my judgment, been so often mis- 
 understood, and the general merits of the actor, who then played 
 it, so unduly appreciated,, that I shall hope for pardon, if I am a 
 little prolix upon these points. 
 
 Of all the actors who flourished in my time — a melancholy 
 phrase if taken aright, reader — Bensley had most of the swell of 
 soul, was greatest in the delivery of heroic conceptions, the emo- 
 tions consequent upon the presentment of a great idea to the 
 fancy. He had the true poetical enthusiasm — the rarest faculty 
 among players. None that I remember possessed even a portion 
 of that fine madness which he threw out in Hotspur's famous rant 
 about glory, or the transports of the Venetian incendiary at the 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 173 
 
 vision of the fired city. His voice had the dissonance, and at times 
 the inspiriting effect, of the trumpet. His gait was uncouth and 
 stiff, but no way embarrassed by affectation ; and the through-bred 
 gentleman was uppermost in every movement. He seized the 
 moment of passion with greatest truth ; like a faithful clock, never 
 striking before the time ; never anticipating or leading you to 
 anticipate. He was totally destitute of trick and artifice. He 
 seemed come upon the stage to do the poet's message simply, and 
 he did it with as genuine fidelity as the nuncios in Homer deliver 
 the errands of the gods. He let the passion or the 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 acting. For this reason, his lago was the 
 only endurable one 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 
 possession of the mystery. There were no by-intimations to 
 make the audience fancy their own discernment so much greater 
 than that of the Moor — who commonly stands like a great helpless 
 mark set up for mine Ancient, and a quantity of barren specta- 
 tors, to shoot their bolts at. The lago of Bensley did not go to 
 work so grossly. There was a triumphant tone about the char- 
 acter, natural to a general consciousness of power ; but none of 
 that petty vanity which chuckles and cannot contain itself upon 
 any little successful stroke of its knavery — as is common with 
 your small villains, and green probationers in mischief. It did 
 not clap or crow before its time. It was not a man setting his 
 wits at a child, and winking all the while at other children who 
 are mightily pleased at being let into the secret ; but a consum- 
 mate villain entrapping a noble nature into toils, against which 
 no discernment was available, where the manner was as fathom- 
 less as the purpose seemed dark, and without motive. The part 
 of Malvolio, in the Twelfth Night, was performed by Bensley, 
 with a richness and a dignity, of which (to judge from some re- 
 cent castings of that character) the very tradition must be worn 
 out from the stage. No manager in those days would have 
 dreamed of giving it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. Parsons : when 
 Bensley was occasionally absent from the theatre, John Kemble 
 
 *■ 
 
174 ELI A. 
 
 thought it no derogation to succeed to the part. Malvolio is not 
 essentially ludicrous. He becomes 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 honor in one of our old round-head families, in the service 
 of a Lambert, or a Lady Fairfax. But his morality and his. 
 manners are misplaced in lUyria. He is opposed to the proper 
 levities of the piece, and falls in the unequal contest. Still his 
 pride, or his gravity (call it which you will), is inherent, and 
 native to the man, not mock or affected, which latter only are the 
 fit objects to excite laughter. His quality is at the best unlovely, 
 but neither buffoon nor contemptible. His bearing is lofty, a lit- 
 tle above his station, but probably not much above his deserts. 
 We see no reason why he should not have been brave, honorable, 
 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, declares that she 
 " would not have him miscarry for half of her dowry." Does 
 this look as if the character was meant to appear little or insigni- 
 ficant ! Once, indeed, she accuses him to his face — of what ? — 
 of being " sick of self-love," — but with a gentleness and consider- 
 ateness 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 dis- 
 sembled mourning would draw the. eyes of the world upon her 
 house-affairs, Malvolio might feel the honor 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 respects at the buttery-hatch. That Malvolio was 
 meant to be represented as possessing estimable qualities, the ex- 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 175 
 
 pression of the Duke, in his anxiety to have him reconciled, 
 almost infers : " Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace." Even 
 in his abused state of chains and darkness, a sort of greatness 
 seems never to desert him. He argues highly and well with the 
 supposed Sir Topas, and philosophizes gallantly upon his straw.* 
 There must have been some shadow of worth about the man ; he 
 must have been someth^jg more than a mere vapor — 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, opinionated, but his superstructure of pride 
 seemed bottomed 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 mag- 
 nificent from the outset ; but when the decent sobrieties of the 
 character began to give way, and the poison of self-love, in his 
 conceit of the Countess's affection, gradually to work, you would 
 have thought that the hero of La Mancha in person stood before 
 you. How he went smiling to himself! with what ineffable 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 morality intruded 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 admired 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 principality but for a quarter of a 
 minute, sleeping or waking, to have been so deluded. The man 
 
 * Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl ? 
 Mai. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. 
 Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion ? 
 Mai. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his opinion. 
 
176 ELIA. 
 
 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 season, 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 insupportable triumph of the foolish knight 
 — the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked and " thus the whirli- 
 gig of time," as the true clown hath it, " brings in his revenges." 
 I confess that I never saw the catastrophe of this character, while 
 Bensley played it, without a kind of tragic interest. There was 
 good foolery too. Few now remember Dodd. What an Ague- 
 cheek the stage lost in him ! Lovegrove, who came nearest to 
 the old actors, revived the character some few seasons ago, and 
 made it sufficiently grotesque ; but Dodd was it, as it came out of 
 nature's hands. It might be said to remain in purls naturalibus. 
 In expressing slowness of apprehension, 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 pain- 
 ful process, ^11 it cleared up at last to the fullness of a twilight 
 conception — its highest meridian. He seemed to keep back his 
 intellect, as some have had the power to retard their pulsation. 
 The balloon takes less time in filling, than it took to cover the 
 expansion of his broad moony face over all its quarters with ex- 
 pression. A glimmer of understanding would appear in a cor- 
 ner 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 Veru- 
 1am Buildings had not encroached on all the east side of them, 
 cutting out delicate green crankles, and shouldering away one of 
 two of the stately alcoves of the terrace — ^the survivor stands gap- 
 ing and relationless as if it remembered its brother — they are still 
 the best gardens of any of the Inns of Court, my beloved Tem- 
 ple not forgotten — have the gravest character, their aspect being 
 altogether reverent and lawbreathing — Bacon has left the impress 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 177 
 
 of his foot upon their gravel walks — taking my afternoon solace 
 on a summer day upon the aforesaid terrace, a comely sad per- 
 sonage came toward me, whom, from his grave air and deportment, 
 I judged to be one of the old Benchers of the Inn. He had a se- 
 rious thoughtful forehead, and seemed to be in meditations of mor- 
 tality. As I have an instinctive awe of old Benchers, I was pass- 
 ing him with that sort of subindicative 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 mo- 
 tion of the body to that effect — a species of humility and will- 
 worship which I observe, nine times out of ten, rather puzzles 
 than pleases the person it is offered to — when the face turning 
 full upon me, strangely identified itself with that of Dodd. Upon 
 close inspection I was not mistaken. But could this sad thought- 
 ful countenance be the same vacant face of folly which I had 
 hailed so often under circumstances of gaiety ; which I had never 
 seen without a smile, or recognized but as the usher of mirth ; 
 that look^ out so formally flat in Foppington, so frothily pert in 
 Tattle, so impotently busy in Backbite ; so blankly divested of all 
 meaning, or resolutely expressive of none, in Acres, in Fribble, 
 and a thousand agreeable impertinences ? Was this the face — 
 full of thought and carefulness — that had so often divested itself 
 at will of every trace of either to give me diversion, to clear my 
 cloudy face for two or three hours at least of its furrows ? Was 
 this the face — manly, sober, intelligent — 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 pardon. 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 par- 
 ticularly — subjected to and suffering the common lot ; — their for- 
 tunes, their casualties, their deaths, seem to belong to the scene, 
 their actions to be amenable to poetic justice only. We can 
 hardly connect them with more awful responsibilities. The death 
 of this fine actor took place shortly after this meeting. He had 
 quitted the stage some months ; and, as I learned afterwards, had 
 been in the habit of resorting daily to these gardens almost to the 
 day of his decease. In these serious walks probably he was di- 
 PART I. 13 
 
17S ELIA. 
 
 vesting 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 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 he was 
 adjudged to lack something, even in those early years, of the 
 gravity indispensable to an occupation which professeth to " com- 
 merce 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 cathe- 
 dral 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 
 
 * Dodd was a man of reading, and had left at his death a choice collection 
 of old English literature. I should judge him to have been a man of wit. 
 I knew 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 recognizing Dodd the next day in Fleet street, was irre- 
 sistibly 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 waive of the hand, put him off with an " Away, Fool " 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 179 
 
 much blameless satisfaction to himself and to the public, be ac- 
 cepted for a surplice — his white stole, and albe. 
 
 The first fruits of his secularization was an engagement upon 
 the boards of Old Drury, at which theatre he commenced, as I 
 have been told, with adopting the name of Parsons in old men's 
 characters. At the period in which most of us knew him, he was 
 no more an imitator than he was in any true sense, himself imita- 
 ble. 
 
 He was the Robin Goodfellow of the stage. He came in to 
 trouble all things with a welcome perplexity, himself no whit 
 troubled for the matter. He was known, like Puck, by his note 
 — Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! — sometimes deepening to Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! 
 with an irresistible accession, derived, perhaps, remotely from his 
 ecclesiastical education, foreign to his prototype of, — O La! 
 Thousands of hearts yet respond to the chuckling O La! oi 
 Dicky Suett, brought back to their remembrance by the faithful 
 transcript of his friend Mathews' mimicry. The " force of nature 
 could no further go." He drolled upon the stock of these two 
 syllables richer than the cuckoo. 
 
 Care, that troubled all the world, was forgotten in his compo- 
 sition. 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 ex- 
 istence) as legs. A doubt or scruple must have made him totter, 
 a sigh have puffed him down ; the weight of a frown had stag- 
 gered him, a wrinkle made him lose his balance. But on he 
 went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of his, with Robin Good- 
 fellow, " thorough brake, thorough briar," reckless of a scratched 
 face or a torn doublet. 
 
 Shakspeare foresaw him, when he fram«d 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 
 favorites with the town than any actors before or after. The dif- 
 ference, I take it, was this : — ^Jack was more beloved for his sweet, 
 
180 ELIA. 
 
 good-natured, moral pretensions. Dicky was more liked for his 
 sweet, good-natured, no pretensions at all. Your whole con- 
 science stirred with Bannister's performance of Walter in the 
 Children in the Wood — ^but Dicky seemed like a thing, as Shak- 
 speare 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 accustomed tranquillity, nor tune, with the 
 simple exclamation, worthy to have been recorded in his epitaph 
 -^OLaf OLaf BoUy ! 
 
 The elder Palmer (of stage-treading celebrity) commonly 
 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 oHTie footman. 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 how a little of the more or less makes a difference 
 in these things. When you saw Bobby in the Duke's Servant,* 
 you said, '• What a pity such a pretty fellow was only a servant !" 
 When you saw Jack figuring in Captain Absolute, you thought 
 you could trace his promotion to some lady of quality who fan- 
 cied 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 insinuat- 
 ing ; but his secondary or supplemental voice still more decisively 
 histrionic than his common one. It was reserved for the specta- 
 tor ; and the dramatis personee were supposed to know nothing at 
 all about it. The lies of young Wilding, and the sentiments in 
 
 ♦ High Life Below Stairs 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. ISl 
 
 Joseph Surface, were thus marked out in a sort of italics to the 
 audience. This secret correspondence with the company before 
 the curtain (which is the bane and deatk 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 comedy — 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 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, and that be all.— Well, father, 
 and how do all at home ? how docs brother Dick, and brother Vail ? 
 
 Sir Sampson. Dick ! body o' me, Dick has been dead these two years. 
 I writ you word when you were at Leghorn. 
 
 £en. 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 insensibility which in real life would be 
 revolting, or rather in real life could not have co-existed with the 
 warm-hearted temperament of the character. But when you read it 
 in the spirit with which such playful selections and specious com- 
 binations 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 combination of all the accidents of 
 a sailor's character — his contempt of money — his credulity to 
 women — with that necessary estrangement from home which is 
 just within the verge of credibility to suppose might produce such 
 an hallucination as is here described. 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 — the crea- 
 ture dear to half-belief — which Bannister exhibited — displays be- 
 fore our eyes a downright concretion of a Wapping sailor — a 
 jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar — and nothing else — when instead 
 
182 ELIA. 
 
 of investing it with a delicious confusedness of the head, and a 
 veering undirected goodness of purpose — he gives to it a down- 
 right daylight understanding, and a full consciousness of its ac- 
 tions ; thrusting forward the sensibilities of the character with a 
 pretence as if it stood upon nothing else, and was to be judged by 
 them alone — we feel the discord of the thing ; the scene is dis- 
 turbed ; a real man has got in among the dramatis personse, 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. 
 
 %.» 
 
THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 183 
 
 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 occa- 
 sional licence of dialogue ? I think not altogether. 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 con- 
 sequence, with the severe eyes which inspect real vices with their 
 bearings upon two worlds. We are spectators to a plot or intrigue 
 (not reducible in life to the point of strict morality), and take it 
 all for truth. We substitute a real for a dramatic person, and 
 judge him accordingly. We try him in our courts, from which 
 there is no appeal to the dramatis personcB, 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 exclu- 
 sive and all-devouring drama of common life ; where the moral 
 point is everything ; where, instead of the fictitious half-believed 
 personages of the stage (the phantoms of old comedy), we recog- 
 nize 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 there transacting, by no modifi- 
 
184 ELIA. 
 
 cation is made to affect us in any other manner than the same 
 events or characters would do in our relationships of life. We 
 carry our fire-side concerns to the theatre with us. We do not go 
 thither, like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure 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 Ulysseis to descend 
 twice to the shades. All that neutral ground of character, which 
 stood between vice and virtue ; or which in fact was indifferent 
 to neither, where neither properly was called in question ; that 
 happy breathing-place from the burden of a perpetual moral ques- 
 tioning — 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 
 representation 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 precaution against the breeze and sun- 
 shine. 
 
 I confess for myself that (with no great delinquencies to answer 
 for) I am glad for a season to take an airing beyond the diocese 
 of the strict conscience, — not to live always in the precincts of the 
 law-courts, — but now and then, for a dream- while or so, to imagine 
 a world with no meddling restrictions — ^to get into recesses, 
 whither the hunter cannot 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 
 
 iT 
 
THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 185 
 
 , :& 
 
 world of themselves alraosC^iis much as iairy-land. Take one of 
 their characters, male or female (with few exceptions they are 
 alike), and place it in a modern play, and my virtuous indignation 
 shall rise against the profligate wretch as wannly as the Catos 
 of the pit could desire ; because in a modern play I am to judge of 
 the right and the wrong. The standard of police is the measure of 
 political justice. The atmosphere will blight it, it cannot live here. 
 It has got into a moral world, where it has no business, from 
 which it must needs fall headlong ; as dizzy, and incapable of 
 making a stand, as a Swedenborgian bad spirit that has wandered 
 unawares into the sphere of one of his Good Men, or Angels. 
 But in its own world do we feel the creature is so very bad ? — 
 The Fainalls and the .Mirables, 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 conscien- 
 tious restraints. They know of none. They have got out of 
 Christendom into the land — what shall I call it?— of cuckold ry — 
 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 perhaps excepted, 
 — not only anything like a faultless character, but any pretensions 
 to goodness or good feelings whatsoever. Whether he did this 
 designedly, or instinctively, the effect is as happy, as the design (if 
 design) 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 personages — ^and 
 I think it is owing to this very indifference 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 
 
186 ELI A. 
 
 . ^ Sl 
 
 preference. Had he introduced a good character, a single gush 
 of moral feeling, a revulsion of the judgment to actual life and 
 actual duties, the impertinent Goshen would have only lighted to 
 the discovery of deformities, which now are none, because we 
 think them none. 
 
 Translated into real life, the characters of his, and his friena 
 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 recog- 
 nized ; principles which, universally acted upon, must reduce this 
 frame of things to a chaos. But we do them wrong in so translat- 
 ing them. No such effects are produced in their world. When 
 we are among them, we are amongst a chaotic people. We 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 families 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 Dap- 
 perwit, 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 uncon- 
 cerned at the issues, for life or death,- as at a battle of the frogs 
 and mice. But, like Don Quixote, we take part against the 
 puppets, and quite as impertinently. We dare not contemplate 
 an Atlantis, a scheme, out of which our coxcombical moral sense 
 is for a little transitory ease excluded. We have not the courage 
 to imagine a state of things for which there is neither reward nor 
 punishment. We cling to the painful necessities of shame and 
 blame. We would indict our very dreams. 
 
 Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant upon growing 
 old, it is something to have seen the School for Scandal in its 
 glory. This comedy grew out of Congreve and Wycherley, but 
 gathered some alloys of the sentimental comedy which followed 
 
THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 1S7 
 
 theirs. It is impossible that it should be now acted, though it con- 
 tinues, at long intervals, to be announced in the bills. Its hero, 
 when Palmer played it at least, was Joseph Surface. When I 
 remember the gay boldness, the graceful solemn plausibility, the 
 measured step, the insinuating voice — to express it in a word — 
 the downright acled villainy of the part, so different from the 
 pressure of conscious actual wickedness, — the hypocritical assump- 
 tion of hypocrisy, — which made Jack so deservedly a favorite in 
 that character, 1 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 Jjetter brother; 
 that, in fact, I liked him quite as well. Not but there are passages, 
 — like that, for instance, where Joseph is made to refuse a 
 pittance to a poor relation, — incongruities which Sheridan was 
 fopced upon by the attempt to join the artificial with the senti- 
 mental comedy, either of which must destroy tlie other — but over 
 these obstructions Jack's manner floated him so lightly, that a 
 refusal from liim no more shocked you, tlian 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, wliere no cold moral reigns. The highly 
 artificial manner of Palmer in this character counteracted every 
 disagreeable impression wiiich you miglit 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 reality, the former 
 a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The comedy, I have said, is 
 incongruous ; a mixture of Congreve with sentimental incompati- 
 bilities : 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 manner. He would instinctively 
 avoid every turn which might tend to unrealize, and so to make 
 the character fascinating. He must take tiis cue from his spec- 
 tators, who would expect a bad man and a good man as rigidly 
 opposed to each other as the death-beds of those geniuses are con- 
 trasted in the prints, which I am sorry to say have disappeared 
 from the windows of my old friend Carrington Bowles, of St. 
 
188 ^\ ELI A. 
 
 Paul's Church-yard memory — (an exhibition as venerable as the 
 adjacent cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad and good man at 
 the hour of death ; where the ghastly apprehensions of the for- 
 mer, — and truly the grim phantom with his reality of a toasting- 
 fork is not to be despised, — so finely contrast with the meek com- 
 placent 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 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 lips. His altered voice was meant to you, and 
 you were to suppose that his fictitious co-fiutterers 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 plea- 
 sant 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 Surface, 
 to go down now, must be a downright revolting villain — no compro*- 
 mise — his first appearance must shock and give horror — his specious 
 plausil.ilities, which the pleasurable faculties of our fathers wel- 
 comed with such hearty greetings, knowing that no harm (dra- 
 matic harm even) could come, or was meant to come, of them, 
 must inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real cant- 
 ing person of the scene — for the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulte- 
 rior legitimate ends, but his brother's professions 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 con- 
 
THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 189 
 
 eern 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 vil- 
 lainous seducer Joseph. To realize him more, his sufferings under 
 his unfortunate match must have the downright pungency of life 
 — must (or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just 
 as the same predicament would move you in a neighbor or old 
 friend. The delicious scenes which give the play its name and 
 zest, must affect you in the same serious manner as if you heard 
 the reputation of a dear female friend attacked in your real pre- 
 sence. 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 realization into asps or amphisbaenas ; and Mrs. 
 Candor — O ! frightful ! — become a hooded serpent. Oh ! who 
 that remembers Parsons and Dodd — the wasp and butterfly of the 
 School for Scandal — in those two characters ; and charming natu- 
 ral Miss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman as distinguished from the 
 fine lady of comedy, in this latter part — would forego the true 
 scenic delight — the escape from life — the oblivion of consequences 
 — ^the holiday barring out of the pedant Reflection — those Satur- 
 nalia of two or three brief hours, well woa from the world — ^to sit 
 instead at one of our modern plays — to have his coward conscience 
 (that forsooth must not be lefl; for a moment )F*stimulated with per- 
 petual appeals — dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without 
 repose must be — and his moral vanity pampered with images of 
 notional justice, notional beneficence, lives saved without the 
 spectators' risk, and fortunes given away that cost the author 
 nothing ? 
 
 No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in all its parts 
 as this manager^s comedy. Miss Farren had succeeded to Mrs. 
 Abington in Lady Teazle ; and Smith, the original Charles, had 
 retired when I first saw it. The rest of the characters, with very 
 slight exceptions, remained. I 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 beforehand in lofty de- 
 
190 ELIA. 
 
 claraation. 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, the weighty- 
 sense of Kemble made up for mor^ personal incapacity than he 
 had to answer for. His harshest tones in this part came steeped, 
 and dulcified in good-humor. 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 
 sentences was lost. I remember minutely how he delivered 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 recollection, faultless. He flagged 
 sometimes in the intervals of tragic passion. He would slumber 
 over the level parts of an heroic character. His Macbeth has 
 been known to nod. But he always seemed to me to be particu- 
 larly alive to pointed and witty dialogue. 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 — hus- 
 bandry of the lungs, where nature pointed him to be an economist 
 — rather, I think, than errors of the judgment. They were, at 
 worst, less painful than the eternal tormenting unappeasable vigi- 
 lance, — the " lidless dragon eyes," of present fashionable tragedy. 
 
 '-^'^ 
 
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDKN. 191 
 
 •^.^ 
 
 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 
 
 Not many nights ago, I had come home from seeing this extra- 
 ordinary performer in Cockletop ; and when I retired to my pil- 
 low, his whimsical image still stuck by me, in a manner as to 
 threaten sleep. In vain I tried to divest myself of it, by conjur- 
 ing up the most opposite associations. I resolved to be serious. 
 I raised up the gravest topics of life ; private misery, public ca- 
 lamity. All would not do : 
 
 There the antic sate 
 
 Mocking our state 
 
 his queer visnoray — 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 pas- 
 sion of laughter, like grief in excess, relieved itself by its own 
 weight, inviting the sleep which in the first instance it had driven 
 away. 
 
 But I was not to escape so easily. No sooner did I fall into 
 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 strange mortals ever shot 
 his proper countenance into, from the day he came commissioned 
 to dry up the tears of the town for the loss of the now almost for- 
 gotten Edwin. O for the power of the pencil to have fixed them 
 when I awoke ! A season or two since, there was exhibited a 
 
192 ELIA. 
 
 Hogarth gallery. I do not see why there should not be a Mun- 
 den 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 Listen ; but Munden has none that you can 
 properly pin down, and call his. When you think he has ex- 
 hausted his battery of looks, in unaccountable warfare with your 
 gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an entirely new set of features, 
 like Hydra. He is not one, but legion ; not so much a comedian, 
 as a company. If his name could be multiplied like his coun- 
 tenance, it might fill a play-bill. He, and he alone, literally 
 makes faces : applied to any other person, the phrase is a mere 
 figure, denoting certain modifications of the human countenance. 
 Out of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his friend 
 Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as easily. I should 
 not be surprised to see him some day put out the head of a 
 river-horse ; or come forth a pewitt, or lapwing, some feathered 
 metamorphosis. 
 
 I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry — in Old 
 Dornton — diffuse a glow of sentiment which has made the pulse 
 of a crowded theatre beat like that of one man ; when he has 
 come in aid of the pulpit, doing good to the moral heart of a 
 people. I have seen some faint approaches to this sort of ex- 
 cellence 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 Mun- 
 den began, and must end, with himself. 
 
 Can any man wonder, like him ? can any man see ghosts, like 
 him ? or fght with his own shadow — " sessa" — as he does in that 
 strangely-neglected thing, the Cobbler of Preston — where his 
 alternations from the Cobbler to the Magnifico, and from the 
 Magnifico to the Cobbler, keep the brain of the spectator in as\ 
 wild a ferment, as if some Arabian Night were being acted be- 
 fore him. Who like him can throw, or ever attempted to throw, 
 a preternatural interest over the commonest daily-life objects ? 
 A table or a joint-stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity 
 equivalent to Cassiopeia's chair. It is invested with constellatory 
 importance. You could not speak of it with more deference, if 
 
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 193 
 
 it were mounted into the fimnament. A beggar in the hands of 
 Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, rose the Patriarch of Poverty. So 
 the gusto of Munden antiquates and ennobles what it touches, 
 His pots and his ladles are as grand and primal as the seething* 
 pots and hooks seen in old prophetic vision. A tub of butter, 
 contemplated by him, amounts to a Platonic idea. He under, 
 stands a leg of mutton in its quiddity. He stands wondering, 
 amid the common-place materials of life, like primeval man with 
 the sun and stars about him. 
 
 ^ 
 
1 
 
THE 
 
 ESSAYS OF ELI A. 
 
 BY CHARLES LAMB 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 
 
 NEW. YORK: 
 WILEY & PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY. 
 
 1845. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 BY A FRIEND OF THE LATE KLIA. 
 
 This poor gentleman, who for some months past h:id been 
 in a declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to 
 nature. 
 
 To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humor of 
 the thing, if there ever was much in it, was pretty well 
 exhausted ; and a two years' and a half existence has been 
 a tolerable duration for a phantom. 
 
 I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have 
 heard objected to my late friend's writings was well-found- 
 ed. Crude they are, I grant you — a sort of unlicked, incon- 
 dite things — villainously pranked in an aifected array of 
 antique modes and phrases. They had not been his, if they 
 had been other than such ; and better it is, that a writer 
 should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect 
 a naturalness (so called) that should be strange to him. 
 Egotistical they have been pronounced by some who did 
 not know, that what he tells us, as of himself, was often 
 true only (historically) of another ; as in a former Essay 
 (to save many instances) — where under the first person (his 
 favorite figure) he shadows forth the forlorn estate of a 
 country-boy placed at a London school, far from his friends 
 and connexions — in direct opposition to his own early his- 
 tory. If it be egotism to imply and twine with his own 
 identity the griefs and affections of another — making him- 
 self many, or reducing many unto himself — then is the skil- 
 ful novelist, who all along brings in his hero or heroine, 
 speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of all ; who 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 yet has never, therefore, been accused of that narrowness. 
 And how shall the intenser dramatist escape being faulty, 
 who doubtless, under cover of passion uttered by another, 
 oftentimes gives blameless vent to his most inward feelings, 
 and expresses his own story modestly ? 
 
 My late friend was in many respects a singular charac- 
 ter. Those who did not like him, hated him ; and some, 
 who once liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters. 
 The truth is, he gave himself too little concern what he 
 uttered, and in whose presence. He observed neither time 
 nor place, and would e'en out with what came uppermost. 
 With the severe religionist he would pass for a free-thinker ; 
 while the other faction set him down for a bigot, or per- 
 suaded themselves that he belied his sentiments. Few un- 
 derstood him ; and I am not certain that at all times he 
 quite understood himself. He too much affected that dan- 
 gerous figure — irony. He sowed doubtful speeches, and 
 reaped plain, unequivocal hatred. He would interrupt the 
 gravest discussion with some light jest ; and yet, perhaps, 
 not quite irrelevant in ears that could understand it. Your 
 long and much talkers hated him. The informal habits of 
 his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of speech, 
 forbade him to be an orator ; and he seemed determined 
 that no one else should play that part when he was present. 
 He was petit and ordinary in his person and appearance. 
 I have seen him sometimes in what is called good company, 
 but where he has been a stranger, sit silent, and be sus- 
 pected for an odd fellow ; till some unlucky occasion pro- 
 voking it, he would stutter out some senseless pun (not 
 altogether senseless, perhaps, if rightly taken), w^hich has 
 stamped his character for the evening. It was hit or miss 
 with him ; but nine times out of ten, he contrived by this 
 device to send away a whole company his enemies. 
 His conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance, and his 
 happiest impromptus had the appearance of effort. He has 
 been accused of trying to be witty, when in truth he was 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 out struggling to give his poor thoughts articulation. He 
 chose his companions for some individuality of character 
 which they manifested. Hence, not many persons of science, 
 and few professed literati, were of his councils. They were, 
 for the most part, persons of an uncertain fortune ; and, as 
 to such people commonly nothing is more obnoxious than a 
 gentleman of settled (though moderate) income, he passed 
 with most of them for a great miser. To my knowledge this 
 was a mistake. His intimados, to confess a truth, were in the 
 world's eye a ragged regiment. He found them floating on 
 the surface of society ; and the color, or something else, in 
 the weed pleased him. The burrs stuck to him — but they 
 were good and loving burrs for all that. He never greatly 
 cared for the society of what are called good people. If 
 any of these were scandalized (and offences were sure to 
 arise), he could not help it. When he has been remon- 
 strated with for not making more concessions to the feelings 
 of good people, he would retort by asking, what one point 
 did these good people ever concede to him ? He was tem- 
 perate in his meals and diversions, but always kept a little 
 on this side of abstemiousness. Only in the use of the In- 
 dian weed he might be thought a little excessive. He took 
 it, he would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry — as the 
 friendly vapor ascended, how his prattle would curl up 
 sometimes with it ! the ligaments which tongue-tied him, 
 were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded a statist ! 
 
 I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice that 
 my old friend is departed. His jests were beginning to 
 grow obsolete, and his stories to be found out. He felt the 
 approaches of age ; and while he pretended to cHng to life, 
 you saw how slender were the ties left to bind him. Dis- 
 coursing with him latterly on this subject, he expressed 
 himself with a pettishness, which I thought unworthy of 
 him. In our walks about his suburban retreat (as he called 
 it) at Shacklewell, some children belonging to a school of 
 industry had met us, and bowed and curtseyed, as he 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 thought, in an especial manner to him, " They take me 
 for a visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. He had a 
 horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like any- 
 thing important and pai'ochial. He thought that he ap- 
 proached nearer to that stamp daily. He had a general 
 aversion from being treated like a grave or respectable 
 character, and kept a wary eye upon the advances of age 
 that should so entitle him. He herded always, while it was 
 possible, with people younger than himself He did not 
 conform to the march of time, but was dragged along in 
 the procession. His manners lagged behind his years. He 
 was too much of the boy-man. The toga virilis never sate 
 gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions of infancy 
 had burnt into him, and he resented the impertinence of 
 manhood. These were weaknesses ; but such as they 
 were, they are a key to explicate some of his writings. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PASS 
 BliAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE • • • 1 
 
 Poor Relations 7 
 
 Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading 14 
 
 Stage Illusion 21 
 
 To the Shade of Elliston 25 
 
 Ellistoniana 28 
 
 The Old Margate Hot 34 
 
 The Convalescent 42 
 
 Sanity of True Genius. 47 
 
 Captain Jackson 51 
 
 The Superannuated Man 56 
 
 The Genteel Style in Writing 64 
 
 Barbara S 67 
 
 The Tombs in the Abbey 75 
 
 Amicus Redivivus 78 
 
 Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sydney 83 
 
 Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago , 92 
 
 Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions 
 
 of Modern Art 100 
 
 The Wedding Ill 
 
 Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age 117 
 
 Confessions of a Drunkard 123 
 
 Old China 132 
 
 The Child Angel ; a Dream 138 
 
 Popular Fallacies 
 
 I. That a Bully is always a Coward 141 
 
 II. That ill-gotten gain never prospers. ,^ 142 
 
 III. That a man must not laugh at his own jest ib. 
 
 IV. That such a One shows his Breeding. — ^That it is easy 
 
 TO PERCEIVE HE IS NO GENTLEMAN 143 
 
 V. That the Poor copy the Vices of the Rich. 144 
 
 VI. That Enough is as good as a Feast ,....,,. 145 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 VII. Of two Disputants the warmest is generally in the 
 
 WRONG 146 
 
 VIII. That Verbal Allusions are not Wit, because they 
 
 WILL NOT BEAR TRANSLATION 147 
 
 IX. That the Worst Puns are the Best 148 
 
 X. That Handsome is that Handsome does 150 
 
 XL That we must not look a Giet-Horse in the Mouth... . 153 
 
 XII. That H<wm[e is Home though it is never so Homely 155 
 
 XIII. That you must love me, and love my Dog 159 
 
 XIV. That we should rise with the Lark 162 
 
 XV. That we should lie down with the Lamb 164 
 
 XVI. That a sulky temper is a misfortune 166 
 
 I 
 
ELI A. 
 
 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 
 
 !« 
 
 I DO not know a pleasure more affecting than to range at will 
 over the deserted apartments of some fine old family mansion. 
 The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a better passion than 
 envy : and contemplations on the great and good, whom we fancy 
 in succession to have been its inhabitants, weave for us illusions, 
 incompatible with the bustle of modern occupancy, and vanities 
 of foolish present aristocracy. The same difference of ieeling, I 
 think, attends us between entering an empty and a crowded 
 church.. In the latter it is chance but some present human frailty 
 — an act of inattention on the part of some of the auditoiy — or 
 a trait of affectation, or worse, vain-glory on that of the preacher 
 •—puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and the 
 occasion. But wouldst thou know the beauty of holiness ? — go 
 alone on some week-day, borrowing the keys of good Master 
 Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some country church : think of 
 the piety that has kneeled there — the congregations, old and 
 young, that have found consolation there — the meejc pastor — the 
 docile parishioner. With no disturbing emotions, no cross con- 
 flicting comparisons, dn^k in the tranquillity of the place, till 
 thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies 
 that kneel and weep around thee. 
 
 Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going some few 
 ?niles out of my road to look upon the remains of an o}d great 
 
 PART II. 2 
 
3 ELIA. 
 
 house with which I had been impressed in this way in infancy. 
 I was apprised that the owner of it had lately pulled it down ; 
 still I had a vague notion that it could not all have perished, that 
 so much solidity with magnificence could not have been crushed 
 all at once into the mere dust and rubbish which I found it. 
 
 The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand indeed, 
 and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced it to — an anti- 
 quity. ^ 
 
 I was astonished at the indistinction of everything. Where 
 had stood the great gates ? What bounded the court-yard ? 
 Whereabout did the out-houses commence ? A few bricks only 
 lay as representatives of that which was so stately and so spa- 
 cious. 
 
 Death does not shrink up his human victim at this rate. The 
 burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their proportion. 
 
 Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their process of 
 destruction, at the plucking of every panel I should have felt the 
 varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to them to spare a 
 plank at least out of the cheerful store-room, in whose hot window- 
 seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plot before, and 
 the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted 
 it about me — it is in mine ears now, ps oft as summer returns ; 
 or a panel of the yellow room. 
 
 Why, every plank and panel in that house for me had magic 
 in it. The tapestried bed-rooms — tapestry so much better than 
 painting — not adorning merely, but peopling the wainscots — at 
 which childhood ever and anon would steal a look, shifting its 
 coverlid (replaced as quickly) to exercise its tender courage in a 
 momentary eye-encounter with those stern bright visages, staring 
 reciprocally — all Ovid on the walls, in colors vivider than his 
 descriptions. Actseon in mid sprout, with the unappeasable pru- 
 dery of Diana ; and the still more provoking, and almost culinary 
 coolness of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately divesting of 
 Marsyas. 
 
 Then, that haunted room — in which old Mrs. Battle died — 
 whereinto I have crept, but always in the day time, with a pas- 
 sion of fear ; and a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold 
 communication with the past. How shall they build it up again ? 
 
BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 
 
 It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted but that 
 traces of the splendor of past inmates were everywhere apparent. 
 Its furniture was still standing — even to the tarnished gilt leather 
 battledoors, and crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks in the nursery, 
 which told that children had once played there. But I was a 
 lonely child, and had the range at will of every apartment, 
 knew every nook and corner, wondered and worshipped every- 
 where. 
 
 The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of thought, 
 as it is the feeder of love, and silence, and admiration. So strange 
 a passion for the place possessed me in those years, that, though 
 there lay — I shame to say how few roods distant from the man- 
 sion — half hid by trees, what I judged some romantic lake, such 
 was the spell which bound me to the house, and such my careful- 
 ness not to pass its strict and proper precincts, that the idle waters 
 lay unexplored for me ; and not till late in life, curiosity prevail- 
 ing over elder devotion, I found, to my astonishment, a pretty 
 brawling brook had been the Lacus Incognitus of my infancy. 
 Variegated views, extensive prospects — and those at no great 
 distance from the house — I was told of such — what were they to 
 me, being out of the boundaries of my Eden ? So far from a 
 wish to roam, I would have drawn, methought, still closer the 
 fences of my chosen prison ; and have been hemmed in by a yet 
 securer cincture of those excluding garden walls. I could have 
 exclaimed with that garden-loving poet — 
 
 Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines ; 
 Curl me about, ye gadding vines ; 
 And oh so close your circles lace. 
 That I may never leave this place ; 
 But, lest your fetters prove too weak. 
 Ere I your silken bondage break. 
 Do you, brambles, chain me too. 
 And courteous briars, nail me through. 
 
 I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug fire-sides — the low- 
 built roof— parlors ten feet by ten — frugal boards, and all the home- 
 liness of home — these were the condition of my birth — the whole- 
 some soil which I was planted in. Yet, without impeachment to 
 tlieir tenderest lessons, I am not sorry to have had glances of 
 
4 ELIA. 
 
 something beyond ; and to have taken, if but a peep, in child- 
 hood, at the contrasting accidents of a great fortune. 
 
 To have the feeling of gentility, it is not necessary to have 
 been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be had on cheaper 
 terms than to be obliged to an importunate race of ancestors ; 
 and the coatless antiquary in his unemblazoned cell, revolving 
 the long line of a Mowbray's or De Clifford's pedigree, at those 
 sounding names may warm himself into as gay a vanity as these 
 who do inherit them. The claims of birth are ideal m'erely, and 
 what herald shall go about to strip me of an idea ? Is it trenchant 
 to their swords ? can it be hacked off as a spur can ? or torn 
 away like a tarnished garter ? 
 
 What else were the families of the great to us? what pleasure 
 should we take in their tedious genealogies, or their capitulatory 
 brass monuments ? What to us the uninterrupted current of 
 their bloods, if our own did not answer within us to a cognate 
 and correspondent elevation ? 
 
 Or wherefore else, O tattered and diminished 'Scutcheon that 
 hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely stairs, Blakes- 
 MOOR ! have I in childhood so ofl stood poring upon the mystic 
 characters — thy emblematic supporters, with their prophetic 
 " Resurgam " — till, every dreg of peasantry purging off, I re- 
 ceived into myself Very Gentility ? Thou wert first in my 
 morning eyes ; and of nights hast detained my steps from bed- 
 ward, till it was but a step from gazing at thee to dreaming on 
 thee. 
 
 This is the only true gentry by adoption ; the veritable change 
 of blood, and not, as empirics have fabled, by transfusion. 
 
 Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid trophy, I 
 know not, I inquired not ; but its fading rags, and colors cobweb- 
 stained, told that its subject was of two centuries back. 
 
 And what if my ancestor at that date was some Damoetas — 
 feeding flocks — not his own, upon the hills of Lincoln — did I in 
 less earnest vindicate to myself the family trappings of this once 
 proud JEgon ? repaying by a backward triumph the insults he 
 might possibly have heaped in his life-time upon my poor pastoral 
 progenitor. 
 
 If it were presumption so to speculate, the present owners of 
 
BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 
 
 the mansion had least reason to complain. They had long for- 
 saken the old house of their fathers for a newer trifle ; and I was 
 left to appropriate to myself what images I could pick up, to raise 
 my fancy, or soothe my vanity. 
 
 I was the true descendant of those old W s ; and not the 
 
 present family of that name, who had fled the old waste places. 
 
 Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, which as I 
 have gone over, giving them in fancy my own family name, one 
 and then another — would seem to smile, reaching forward from 
 the canvas, to recognize the new relationship ; while the rest 
 looked grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy in their dwelling, and 
 thoughts of fled posterity. 
 
 That Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and a lamb 
 — that hung next the great bay window — with the bright yel- 
 low H shire hair, and eye of watchet hue — so like my 
 
 Alice ! — I am persuaded she was a true Elia — Mildred Elia, I 
 take it. 
 
 Mine too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble Marble Hall with its 
 mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Caesars — stately busts in 
 marble — ranged round ; of whose countenances, young reader 
 of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, 
 had most of my wonder ; but the mild Galba had my love. 
 There they stood in the coldness of death, yet freshness of immor- 
 tality. 
 
 Mine too thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of authority, 
 high-backed and wickered, once the terror of luckless poacher, 
 or self-forgetful maiden — so common since, that bats have roosted 
 in it. 
 
 Mine too — whose else ? — thy costly fruit-garden, with its sun- 
 baked southern wall ; the ampler pleasure-garden, rising back- 
 wards from the house in triple terraces, with flower-pots now of 
 palest lead, save that a speck here and there, saved from the ele- 
 ments, bespake their pristine state to have been gilt and glit- 
 tering ; the verdant quarters backwarder still ; and stretching 
 still beyond, in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the haunt of 
 the squirrel, and the day- long murmuring wood-pigeon, with 
 that antique image in the centre, God or Goddess I wist not; 
 but child of Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer worship 
 
6 ELIA. 
 
 to Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to that frag- 
 mental mystery. 
 
 Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too fervently 
 in your idol-worship, walks and windings of Blakesmoor ! 
 for this, or what sin of mine has the plough passed over your 
 pleasant places ? I sometimes think that as men, when they die, 
 do not die all, so of their extinguished habitations there may be a 
 hope — a germ to be revivified. 
 
POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 POOR RELATIONS, 
 
 A Poor Relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature — a piece 
 of impertinent correspondency — an odious approximation — a 
 haunting conscience — a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the 
 noon-tide of our prosperity — an unwelcome remembrancer — ^a 
 perpetually recurring mortification — a drain on your purse, a 
 more intolerable dun upon your pride — a drawback upon success 
 — a rebuke to your rising — a stain in your blood — a blot on your 
 'scutcheon — a rent in your garment — ^a death's-head at your ban- 
 quet — Agathocles' pot — a Mordecai in your gate, a Lazarus at 
 your door — a lion in your path — a frog in your chamber — a fly 
 in your ointment — a mote in your eye — a triumph to your enemy, 
 an apology to your friends — the one thing not needful — the hail 
 in harvest — the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet. 
 
 He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you " That is 
 Mr. ." A rap, between familiarity and respect ; that de- 
 mands, and at the same time seems to despair of, entertainment. 
 He entereth smiling and — embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand 
 to you to shake, and— draweth it back again. He casually look- 
 eth in about dinner-time — when the table is full. He offereth to 
 go away, seeing you have company — but is induced to stay. He 
 filleth a chair, and your visitor's two children are accommodated 
 at a side table. He never cometh upon open days, when your 
 
 wife says with some complacency, " My dear, perhaps Mr. 
 
 will drop in to-day." He remembereth birth-days — and profess- 
 eth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He declareth 
 against fish, the turbot being small — yet he sufFereth himself to 
 be importuned into a slice, against his first resolution. He stick- 
 eth by the port — yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remain- 
 
8 ELIA. 
 
 der glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a 
 puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obsequious, or 
 not civil enough, to him. The guests think " they have seen 
 him before." Every one speculateth upon his condition; and 
 the most part take him to be — a tide-waiter. He calleth you by 
 your Christian name, to imply that his other is the same with your 
 own. He is too familiar by half, yet you wish he had less diffi- 
 dence. With half the familiarity, he might pass for a casual 
 dependant ; with more boldness, he would be in no danger of be- 
 ing taken for what he is. He is too humble for a friend ; yet 
 taketh on him more state than befits a client. He is a worse 
 guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent 
 — ^yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanor, that your guests take 
 him for one. He is asked to make one at the whist table ; re- 
 fuseth on the score of poverty, and — resents being left out. 
 When the company break up, he proffereth to go for a coach — 
 and lets the servant go. He recollects your grandfather ; and 
 will thrust in some mean and quite unimportant anecdote — of the 
 family. He knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as " he 
 is blest in seeing it now." He reviveth past situations, to insti- 
 tute what he calleth — favorable comparisons. With a reflecting 
 sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price of your furniture ; 
 and insults you with a special commendation of your win'dow- 
 curtains. He is of opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape, 
 but, after all, there was something more comfortable about the 
 old tea-kettle — which you must remember. He dare say you 
 must find a great convenience in having a carriage of your own, 
 and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. Inquireth if you have 
 had your arms done on vellum yet ; and did not know, till 
 lately, that such-and-such had been the crest of the family. 
 His memory is unseasonable ; his compliments perverse ; his 
 talk a trouble ; his stay pertinacious ; and when he goeth away, 
 you dismiss his chair in+o a corner, as precipitately as possible, 
 and feel fairly rid of two nuisances. 
 
 There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is — a female 
 Poor Relation. You may do something wilh the other; you 
 may pass him off tolerably well ; but your indigent she-relative 
 is hopeless. " He is an old humorist," you may say, " and affects 
 
POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 to go threadbare. His circumstances are better than folks 
 would take them to be. You are forfd of having a Character at 
 your table, and truly he is one." But in the indications of 
 female poverty there can be no disguise. No woman dresses 
 below herself from caprice. The truth must out without shuf- 
 fling. " She is plainly related to the L s ; or what does she 
 
 at their house ?" She is, in all probability, your wife's cousin. 
 Nine times out of ten, at least, this is the case. Her garb is 
 something between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former 
 evidently predominates. She is most provokingly humble, and 
 ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He may require to be 
 repressed sometimes — aliquando sufflaminandus erai — but there is 
 no raising her. You send her soup at dinner, and she begs to be 
 
 helped — after the gentlemen. Mr. requests the honor of 
 
 taking wine with her ; she hesitates between Port and Madeira, 
 and chooses the former — because he does. She calls the servant 
 Sir ; and insists on not troubling him to hold her plate. The 
 housekeeper patronises her. The children's governess takes upon 
 her to correct her, when she has mistaken the piano for harpsichord. 
 Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance of the 
 disadvantages to which this chimerical notion of affinity constitut- 
 ing a claim to acquaintance, may subject the spirit of a gentleman. 
 A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a lady with a 
 great estate. His stars are perpetually crossed by the malig- 
 nant maternity of an old woman, who persists in calling him 
 " her son Dick." But she has wherewithal in the end to recom- 
 pense his indignities, and float him again upon the brilliant sur- 
 face, under which it had been her seeming business and pleasure 
 all along to sink him. All men, besides, are not of Dick's tem- 
 perament. I knew an Amlet in real life, who, wanting Dick's 
 
 buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor W was of my own standing 
 
 at Christ's, a fine classic, and a youth of promise. If he had a 
 blemish, it was too much pride ; but its quality was inoffensive ; 
 it was not of that sort which hardens the heart, and serves to keep 
 inferiors at a distance ; it only sought to ward off* derogation from 
 itself. It was the principle of self-respect carried as far as it 
 could go, without infringing upon that respect, which he would 
 have every one else equally maintain for himself. He would 
 
10 ELIA. 
 
 have you to think alike with him on this topic. Many a quarrel 
 have I had with him, wherf we were rather older boys, and our 
 tallness made us more obnoxious to observation in the blue clothes, 
 because I would not thread the alleys and blind ways of the town 
 with him to elude notice, when we have been out together on a 
 holiday in the streets of this sneering and prying metropoli;s. 
 
 W went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, where the dig. 
 
 nity and sweetness of a scholar's life, meeting with the alloy of 
 an humble introduction, wrought in him a passionate devotion to 
 the place, with a profound aversion from the society. The ser- 
 vitor's gown (worse than his school array) clung to him with 
 Nessian venom. He thought himself ridiculous in a garb, under 
 which Latimer must have walked erect, and in which Hooker, in 
 his young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no discommendable 
 vanity. In the depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, 
 the poor student shrank from observation. He found shelter 
 among books, which insult not ; and studies, that ask no questions 
 of a youth's finances. He was lord of his library, and seldom 
 cared for looking out beyond his domains. The healing influ- 
 ence of studious pursuits was upon him, to soothe and to abstract. 
 He was almost a healthy man — when the waywardness of his 
 fate broke out against him with a second and worse malignity. 
 The father of W had hitherto exercised the humble profes- 
 sion of house-painter at N , near Oxford. A supposed inte- 
 rest with some of the heads of colleges had now induced him to 
 take up his abode in that city, with the hope of being employed 
 upon some public works which were talked of. From that moment 
 I read in the countenance of the young man the determination 
 which at length tore him from academical pursuits for ever. To 
 a person unacquainted with our universities, the distance between 
 the gownsmen and the townsmen, as they are called — the trading 
 part of the latter especially — is carried to an excess that would 
 
 appear harsh and incredible. The temperament of W 's 
 
 father was diametrically the reverse of his own. Old W 
 
 was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, who, with his son upon his 
 arm, would stand bowing and scraping, cap in hand, to anything 
 that wore the semblance of a gown — insensible to the winks and 
 opener remonstrances of the young man, to whose chamber-fel- 
 
POOR RELATIONS. 11 
 
 low, or equa. in standing, perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and 
 gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things could not last. 
 
 W must change the air of Oxford, or be suffocated. He 
 
 chose the former ; and let the sturdy moralist, who strains the 
 point of the filial duties as high as they can bear, censure the 
 dereliction ; he cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with 
 
 W , the last afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of his 
 
 paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading from the High 
 
 street to the back of * * * * college, where W kept his rooms. 
 
 He seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. I ventured to rally 
 him — finding him in a better mood — upon a representation of the 
 Artist Evangelist, which the old man, whose affairs were begin- 
 ning to flourish, had caused to be set up in a splendid sort of 
 frame over his really handsome shop, either as a token of pros- 
 perity or badge of gratitude to his saint. W looked up at 
 
 the Luke, and, like Satan, " knew his mounted sign — and fled." 
 A letter on his father's table the next morning announced that he 
 had accepted a commission in a regiment about to embark for 
 Portugal. He was among the first who perished before the walls 
 of St. Sebastian. 
 
 1 do not know how, upon a subject which I began with treating 
 half seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital so eminently 
 painful ; but this theme of poor relationship is replete with so 
 much matter for tragic as well as comic associations, that it is dif- 
 ficult to keep the account distinct without blending. The earliest 
 impressions which I received on this matter, are certainly not at- 
 tended with anything painful, or very humiliating, in the recall- 
 ing. At my father's table (no very splendid one) was to be found 
 every Saturday, the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman, 
 clothed in neat black, of a sad yet comely appearance. His de- 
 portment was of the essence of gravity ; his words few or none ; 
 and I was not to make a noise in his presence. I had little incli- 
 nation to have done so — for my cue was to admire in silence. A 
 particular elbow chair was appropriated to him, which was in no 
 case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which ap- 
 peared on no other occasion, distrnguished the days of his coming. 
 I used to think him a prodigiously rich man. All I could make 
 out of him was, that he and my father had been schoolfellows, a 
 
12 ELIA. 
 
 world ago, at Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The 
 Mint I knew to be a place where all the money was coined — and 
 I thought he was the owner of all that money. Awful ideas of 
 the Tower twined themselves about his presence. He seemed 
 above human infirmities and passions. A sort of melancholy 
 grandeur invested him. From some inexplicable doom 1 fancied 
 him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mournmg ; a captive 
 — a stately being, let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often have 
 I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in spite of an 
 habitual general respect which wo all in common manifested 
 towards him, would venture now and then to stand up against him 
 in some argument, touching their youthful days. The houses of 
 the ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my readers 
 know) J)etween the dwellers on the hill and in the valley. This 
 marked distinction formed an obvious division between the boys 
 who lived above (however brought together in a common school) 
 and the boys whose paternal residence was on the plain ; a suf- 
 ficient cause of hostility in the code of these young Grotiuses. My 
 father had been a leading Mountaineer ; and would still maintain 
 the general superiority, in skill and hardihood, of the Above Boys 
 (his own faction) over the Below Boys (so were they called), of 
 which party his contemporary had been a chieftain. Many and 
 hot were the skirmishes on this topic — the only one upon which 
 the old gentleman was ever brought out — and bad blood bred ; 
 even sometimes almost to the recommencement (so I expected) of 
 actual hostilities. But my father, who scorned to insist upon ad- 
 vantages, generally contrived to turn the conversation upon some 
 adroit by-commendation of the old Minster ; in the general pre- 
 ference of which, before all other cathedrals in the island, the 
 dweller on the hill and the plain-born, could meet on a conciliating 
 level, and lay down their less important differences. Once only 
 I saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and I remembered with 
 anguish the thought that came over me : " Perhaps he will never 
 come here again." He had been pressed to take another plate 
 of the viand, which I have already mentioned as the indispensable 
 concomitant of his visits. He had refused with a resistance 
 amounting to rigor — when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who 
 had something of this, in common with my cousin Bridget, that 
 
POOR RELATIONS. 13 
 
 she would sometimes press civility out of season — uttered the fol- 
 lowing memorable application — " Do take another slice, Mr. Billet, 
 for you do not get pudding every day." The old gentleman said 
 nothing at the time — but he took occasion in the course of the 
 evening, when some argument had intervened between them, to 
 utter with an emphasis which chilled the company, and which 
 chills me now as I write it — " Woman, you are superannuated !" 
 John Billet did not survive long, after the digesting of this affront ; 
 but he survived long enough to assure me that peace was actually 
 restored ! and, if I remember aright, another pudding was dis- 
 creetly substituted in the place of that which had occasioned the 
 offence. He died at the Mint (anno 1781), where he had long 
 held, what he accounted, a comfortable independence ; and with 
 five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which were found in 
 his escrutoire, after his decease, left the world, blessing God that 
 he had enough to bury him, and that he had never been obliged 
 to any man for a sixpence. This was — a Poor Relation. 
 
14 ELIA. 
 
 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced 
 product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding 
 may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own. 
 
 Lord Foppingtotii in the Relapse. 
 
 An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with 
 this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading alto- 
 gether, to the great improvement of his originality. At the hazard 
 of losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate 
 no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. 
 I dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose my- 
 self in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am read- 
 ing ; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me. 
 
 I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, 
 nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything which I call a 
 book. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow 
 fo^ such. 
 
 In this catalogue of books which are no books — biblia a-biblia — 
 I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket-Books, Draught 
 Boards, bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, 
 Almanacks, Statutes at Large : the works of Hume, Gibbon, Ro- 
 bertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally all those volumes 
 which "no gentleman's library should be without:" the Histories 
 of Flavins Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philo- 
 sophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I 
 bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. 
 
 I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in books' 
 clothing perched upon shelves like false saints, usurpers of true 
 shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate 
 
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING 15 
 
 occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, 
 and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what 
 " seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Es- 
 say. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find — Adam Smith. 
 To view a well-arranged assortment of block-headed Encyclopae- 
 dias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of russia, 
 or morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably 
 reclothe my shivering folios ; would renovate Paracelsus himself, 
 and enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself again in the 
 world. I never see these impostors, but I long to strip them, to 
 warm my ragged veterans in their spoils. 
 
 To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a 
 volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it can be 
 afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books indiscrimi- 
 nately. I would not dress a set of Magazines, for instance, in 
 full suit. The dishabille, or half-binding (with russia backs ever) 
 is our costume. A Shakspeare, or a Milton (unless the first 
 editions), it were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The 
 possession of them confers no distinction. The exterior of them 
 (the things themselves being so common), strange to say, raises no 
 sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the owner. 
 Thomson's Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little torn 
 and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are 
 the sullied leaves, and worn-out appearance, nay the very odor 
 (beyond russia), if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidious- 
 ness, of an old " Circulating Library " Tom Jones, or Vicar of 
 Wakefield ! How they speak of the thousand thumbs that have 
 turned over their pages with delight ! — of the lone sempstress, 
 whom they may have cheered (milliner, or hard-working mantua- 
 maker) after her long day's needle-toil, running far into midnight, 
 when she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep 
 her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchant- 
 ing contents ! Who would have them a whit less soiled ? What 
 better condition could we desire to see them in ? 
 
 In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from 
 binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of perpetu- 
 ally self-reproductive volumes — Great Nature's Stereotypes — we 
 see them individually perish with less regret, because we know 
 
18 ELIA, 
 
 the copies of them to be " eterne." But where a book is at once 
 both good and rare — where the individual is ahiiost the species, 
 and when that perishes, 
 
 We know not where is that Promethean torch 
 That can its light relumine — 
 
 such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, 
 by his Duchess — no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently 
 durable, to honor and keep such a jewel safe. 
 
 Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem hopeless 
 ever to be reprinted ; but old editions of writers, such as Sir 
 Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose works, Fuller — 
 of whom we have reprints, yet the books themselves, though they 
 go about, and are talked of here and there, we know, have not 
 endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever will) in the national 
 heart, so as to become stock books — it is good to possess these in 
 durable and costly covers. I do not care for a First Folio of 
 Shakspeare. I rather prefer the common editions of Rowe and 
 Tonson, without notes, and with plates, which, being so execrably 
 bad, serve as maps, or modest remembrancers, to the text ; and 
 without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are so 
 much better than the Shakspeare gallery engravings, which did. 
 I have a community of feeling with my countrymen about his 
 Plays, and I like those editions of him best, which have been 
 oftenest tumbled about and handled. — On the contrary, I cannot 
 read Beaumont and Fletcher but in Folio. The Octavo editions 
 are painful to look at. I have no sympathy with them. If they 
 were as nmch read as the current editions of the other poet, I 
 should prefer them in that shape to the older one. I do not know 
 a more heartless sight than the reprint of the Anatomy of Melan- 
 choly. What need was there of unearthing the bones of that fan- 
 tastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of the 
 newest fashion to modern censure ? what hapless stationer could 
 dream of Burton ever becoming popular ? — The wretched Malone 
 could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church 
 to let him whitewash the painted effigy of old Shakspeare, which 
 stood there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to the very color 
 of the cheek, the eye, the eye-brow, hair, the very dress he used 
 
{ 
 
 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 17 
 
 to wear — the only authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, 
 of these curious parts and parcels of him. They covered him 
 over with a coat of white paint. By , if I had been a jus- 
 tice of peace for Warwickshire, I would have clapt both com- 
 mentator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling 
 sacrilegious varlets. 
 
 I think I see them at their work — these sapient trouble-tombs. 
 
 Shall I be thought fantastical, if I confess, that the names o* 
 some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the 
 ear — to mine, at least — than that of Milton or of Shakspeare ? 
 It may be, that the latter are more staled and rung upon in com- 
 mon discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume 
 in the mention, are. Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Haw- 
 thornden, and Cowley. 
 
 Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the 
 five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, who 
 would think of taking up the Fairy Queen for a stop-gap, or a 
 volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons ? 
 
 Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played 
 before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, 
 who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and purged ears. 
 
 Winter evenings — the world shut out — with less of ceremony 
 the gentle Shakspeare enters. At such a season, the Tempest, or 
 his own Winter's Tale — 
 
 These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud — to yourself, 
 or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than one 
 • — and it degenerates into an audience. 
 
 Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are for the 
 eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could 
 never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without ex- 
 treme irksomeness. 
 
 A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of the Bank 
 offices it is the custom (to save so much individual time) for one 
 of the clerks — who is the best scholar — ^to commence upon the 
 Times, or the Chronicle, and recite its entire contents aloud, pro 
 hono publico. With every advantage of lungs and elocution, the 
 effect is singularly vapid. In barbers' shops and public-houses 
 a fellow will get up and spell out a paragraph, which he commu- 
 
 PART II. 3 
 
18 ELIA. 
 
 nicates as some discovery. Another follows with his selection. 
 So the entire journal transpires at length by piece-meal. Seldom- 
 readers are slow readers, and, without this expedient, no one in 
 the company would probably ever travel through the contents of 
 a whole paper. 
 
 Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one 
 down without a feeling of disappointment. 
 
 What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's, 
 keeps the paper ! I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling out 
 incessantly, " The Chronicle is in hand. Sir." 
 
 Coming in to an inn at night — having ordered your supper — what 
 can be more delightful than to find lying in the window-seat, left 
 there time out of mind by the carelessness of some former guest 
 — ^two or three numbers of the old Town and Country Magazine, 
 with its amusing tete-d-tete pictures — " The Royal Lover and 
 
 Lady G ;" " The Melting Platonic and the old Beau,"— and 
 
 such-like antiquated scandal ? Would you exchange it — at that 
 time, and in that place — for a better book ? 
 
 Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so much 
 for the weightier kinds of reading — the Paradise Lost, or Comus, 
 he could have read to him — but he missed the pleasure of skim- 
 ming over with his own eye a magazine, or a light pamphlet. 
 
 I should not care to be caught in tiie serious avenues of some 
 cathedral alone, and reading Candide. 
 
 I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having been 
 once detected — by a familiar damsel — reclined at my ease upon 
 the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera), reading — Pamela. 
 There was nothing in the book to make a man seriously ashamed at 
 the exposure ; but as she seated herself down by me, and seemed 
 determined to read in company, I could have wished it had been 
 — any other book. We read on very sociably for a few pages ; 
 and, not finding the author much to her taste, she got up, and — 
 went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture, 
 whether the blush (for there was one between us) was the pro- 
 perty of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. From me you 
 shall never get the secret. 
 
 I am not much the friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot 
 settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who was 
 
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 19 
 
 generally to be seen upon Snow-hill (as yet Skinner's-street was 
 not), between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, study- 
 ing a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of 
 abstraction beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled 
 along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate encounter 
 with a porter's knot, or a bread-basket, would have quickly put 
 to flight all the theology I am master of, and have left me worse 
 than indifferent to the five points. 
 
 There is a class of street-readers, whom I can never contem- 
 plate without affection — the poor gentry, who, not having where- 
 withal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open 
 stalls — the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious looks at 
 them all the while, and thinking when they will have done. Ven- 
 turing tenderly, page after page, expecting every moment when 
 * shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves 
 
 the gratification, they " snatch a fearful joy." Martin B , in 
 
 this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of Cla- 
 rissa, when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition, by 
 asking him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant to 
 purchase the work. M. declares, that under no circumstance in 
 his life did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction which 
 he took in those uneasy snatches. A quaint poetess of our day 
 has moralized upon this subject in two very touching but homely 
 stanzas. 
 
 I saw a boy with eager eye 
 
 Open a book upon a stall. 
 
 And read, as he'd devour it all ; 
 
 Which when the stall-man did espy. 
 
 Soon to the boy I heard him call, 
 
 " You, Sir, you never buy a book. 
 
 Therefore in one you shall not look." 
 
 The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh 
 
 He wish'd he never had been taught to read. 
 
 Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need. 
 
 Of sufferings the poor have many. 
 Which never can the rich annoy : 
 I soon perceived another boy. 
 Who look'd as if he had not any 
 Food, for that day at least— enjoy 
 
20 ELIA. 
 
 The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. 
 
 This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder. 
 
 Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny. 
 
 Beholding choice of dainty -dressed meat : 
 
 No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learned to eat. 
 
 1 
 
STAGE ILLUSION. 21 
 
 STAGE ILLUSION 
 
 A PLAY is said to be well or ill acted, in proportion to the scenical 
 illusion produced. Whether such illusion can in any case be 
 perfect, is not the question. The nearest approach to it, we are 
 told, is, when the actor appears wholly unconscious of the pre- 
 sence of spectators. In tragedy — in all which is to affect the 
 feelings — this undivided attention to his stage business seems in- 
 dispensable. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed with every day by our 
 cleverest tragedians ; and while these references to an audience, 
 in the shape of rant or sentiment, are not too frequent or palpa- 
 ble, a sufficient quantity of illusion for the purposes of the dra- 
 matic interest may be said to be produced in spite of them. But, 
 tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether, in certain characters 
 in comedy, especially those which are a little extravagant, or 
 which involve some notion repugnant to the moral sense, it is not 
 a proof of the highest skill in the comedian when, without abso- 
 lutely appealing to an audience, he keeps up a tacit understand- 
 ing with them ; and makes them, unconsciously to themselves, a 
 party in the scene. The utmost nicety is required in the mode 
 of doing this ; but we speak only of the great artists in the pro- 
 fession. 
 
 The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in our- 
 selves, or to contemplate in another, is, perhaps, cowardice. To 
 see a coward done to the life upon a stage would produce anything 
 but mirth. Yet we most of us remember Jack Bannister's cow- 
 ards. Could anything be more agreeable, more pleasant ? We 
 loved the rogues. How was this effected but by the exquisite art 
 of the actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us, the spectators, 
 even in the extremity of the shaking fit, that he was not half such 
 
22 ELIA. 
 
 a coward as we took him for ? We saw all the common symp 
 toms of the malady upon him ; the quivering lip, the cowering 
 knees, the leeth chattering ; and could have sworn " that man 
 was frightened." But we forgot all the while — or kept it almost 
 a secret to ourselves — that he never once lost his self-possession ; 
 that he let out by a thousand droll looks and gestures — meant at 
 us, and not at all supposed to be visible to his fellows in the scene, 
 that his confidence in his own resources had never once deserted 
 him. Was this a genuine picture of a coward ? or not rather a 
 likeness, which the clever artist contrived to palm upon us in- 
 stead of an original ; while we secretly connived at the delusion 
 for the purpose of greater pleasure, than a more genuine coun- 
 terfeiting of the imbecility, helplessness, and utter self-desertion, 
 which we know to be concomitants of cowardice in real life, 
 could have given us ? 
 
 Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so endurable on 
 the stage, but because the skilful actor, by a sort of sub-refer- 
 ence, rather than direct appeal to us, disarms the character of a 
 great deal of its odiousness, by seeming to engage our compas- 
 sion for the insecure tenure by which he holds his money-bags 
 and parchments ? By this subtle vent half of the hatefulness 
 of the character — the self-closeness with which in real life it 
 coils itself up from the sympathies of men — evaporates. The 
 miser becomes sympathetic ; i. e. is no genuine miser. Here 
 again a diverting likeness is substituted for a very disagreeable 
 reality. 
 
 Spleen, irritability — the pitiable infirmities of old men, which 
 produce only pain to behold in the realities, counterfeited upon a 
 stage, divert not altogether for the comic appendages to them, but 
 in part from an inner conviction that they are heing acted before 
 us ; that a likeness only is going on, and not the thing itself. 
 They please by being done under the life, or beside it ; not to the 
 life. When Gattie acts an old man, is he angry indeed ? or only 
 a pleasant counterfeit, just enough of a likeness to recognize, 
 without pressing upon us the uneasy sense of a reality ? 
 
 Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too natural. 
 It was the case with a late actor. Nothing could be more ear- 
 nest or true than the manner of Mr. Emery ; this told excellently 
 
STAGE ILLUSION. 23 
 
 in his Tyke, and characters of a tragic cast. But when he car- 
 ried the same rigid exclusiveness of attention to the stage busi- 
 ness, and wilful blindness and oblivion of everything before the 
 curtain into his comedy, it produced a harsh and dissonant effect. 
 He was out of keeping with the rest of the Personce Dramatis. 
 There was as little link between him and them, as betwixt him- 
 self and the audience. He was a third estate, dry, repulsive, and 
 unsocial to all. Individually considered, his execution was mas- 
 terly. But comedy is not this unbending thing ; for this reason, 
 that the same degree of credibility is not required of it as to seri-. 
 ous scenes. The degrees of credibility demanded to the two 
 things, may be illustrated by the different sort of truth which we 
 expect when a man tells us a mournful or a merry story. If we 
 suspect the former of falsehood in any one tittle, we reject it alto- 
 gether. Our tears refuse to flow at a suspected imposition. But 
 the teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are 
 content with less than absolute truth. 'Tis the same with dra- 
 matic illusion. We confess we love in comedy to see an audi- 
 ence naturalized behind the scenes, taken into the interest of the 
 drama, welcomed as bystanders however. There is something 
 ungracious in a comic actor holding himself aloof from all parti- 
 cipation or concern with those who are come to be diverted by 
 him. Macbeth must see the dagger, and no ear but his own be 
 told of it ; but an old fool in farce may think that he sees some- 
 things and by conscious words and looks express it, as plainly as 
 he can speak, to pit, box, and gallery. When an impertinent in 
 tragedy, as Osric, for instance, breaks in upon the serious pas- 
 sions of the scene, we approve of the contempt with which he is 
 treated. But when the pleasant impertinent of comedy, in a 
 piece purely meant to give delight, and raise mirth out of whim- 
 sical perplexities, worries the studious man with taking up his 
 leisure, or making his house his home, the same sort of contempt 
 expressed (however natural) would destroy the balance of delight 
 in the spectators. To make the intrusion comic, the actor who 
 plays the annoyed man must a little desert nature ; he must, in 
 short, be thinking of the audience, and express only so much dis- 
 satisfaction and peevishness as is consistent with the pleasure of 
 comedy. In other words, his perplexity must seem half put on. 
 
•24 ELIA. 
 
 If he repel the intruder with the sober set face of a man in ear- 
 nest, and more especially if he deliver his expostulations in a tone 
 which in the world must necessarily provoke a duel ; his real-life 
 manner will destroy the whimsical and purely dramatic existence 
 of the other character (which to render it comic demands an an- 
 tagonist comicality on the part of the character opposed to it), and 
 convert what was meant for mirth, rather than belief, into a 
 downright piece of impertinence indeed, which would raise no 
 diversion in us, but rather stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest 
 upon any unworthy person. A very judicious actor (in most of 
 his parts) seems to have fallen into an error of this sort in his 
 playing with Mr. Wrench in the farce of Free and Easy. 
 
 Many instances would be tedious ; these may suffice to show 
 that comic acting at least does not always demand from the per- 
 former that strict abstraction from all reference to an audience 
 which is exacted of it ; but that in some cases a sort of compro- 
 mise may take place, and all the purposes of dramatic delight be 
 attained by a judicious understanding, not too openly announced, 
 between the ladies and gentlemen — on both sides of the curtain. 
 
TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 25 
 
 TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON 
 
 JoYOUSEST of once embodied spirits, whither at length hast thou 
 flown ? to what genial region are we permitted to conjecture that 
 thou hast flitted ? 
 
 Art thou sowing thy wild oats yet (the harvest time was still 
 to come with thee) upon casual sands of Avemus ? or art thou 
 enacting Rover (as we would gladlier think) by wandering Ely- 
 sian streams ? 
 
 This mortal frame, while thou didst play thy brief antics 
 amongst us, was in truth anything but a prison to thee, as the 
 vain Platonist dreams of this body to be no better than a county 
 gaol, forsooth, or some house of durance vile, whereof the five 
 senses are the fetters. Tliou knewest better than to be in a 
 hurry to cast off those gyves ; and had notice to quit, I fear, be- 
 fore thou wert quite ready to abandon this fleshy tenement. It 
 was thy Pleasure-House, thy Palace of Dainty Devices: thy 
 Louvre, or thy White-Hall. 
 
 What new mysterious lodgings dost thou tenant now ? or when 
 may we expect thy aerial house-warming ? 
 
 Tartarus we know, and we have read of the Blessed Shades ; 
 now cannot I intelligibly fancy thee in either. 
 
 Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as tlie schoolmen 
 admitted a receptacle apart for Patriarchs and un-chrisom babes) 
 there may exist — not far perchance from that store-house of all 
 vanities, which Milton saw in vision — a Libibo somewhere for 
 Players ? and that 
 
 Up thither like aerial vapors fly 
 
 Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things 
 
 Built their fond hopes of glory, or lasting fame ? 
 
26 ELIA. 
 
 All the unaccomplished works of Authors' hands. 
 Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed, 
 Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither — 
 Play, Opera, P^arce, with all their trumpery. — 
 
 There by the neighboring moon (by some not improperly sup. 
 posed thy Regent Planet upon eartli), mayst thou not still be act- 
 ing thy managerial pranks, great disembodied Lessee ? but Les- 
 see still, and still a manager. 
 
 In Green Rooms, impervious to mortal eye, the muse beholds 
 thee wielding posthumous empire. 
 
 Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) circle thee 
 in endlessly, and still their song is Fie on sinful Phantasy f 
 
 Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe of earth, Robert 
 William Elliston ! for as yet we know not thy new name in 
 heaven. 
 
 It irks me to think, that, stript of thy regalities, thou shouldst 
 ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Stygian wherry. Me- 
 thinks I hear the old boatman, paddling by the weedy wharf, 
 with raucid voice, bawling " Sculls, Sculls :" to which, with 
 waving hand, and majestic action, thou deignest no reply, other 
 than in two curt monosyllables, " No : Oars." 
 
 But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference between 
 king, and cobbler ; manager, and call-boy ; and, if haply your 
 dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly taking your pas- 
 sage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) with the 
 shade of some recently departed candle-snuffer. 
 
 But mercy ! what strippings, what tearing off of histrionic 
 robes, and private vanities ! what denudations to the bone, before 
 the surly Ferryman will admit you to set a foot within his bat- 
 tered lighter. 
 
 Crowns, sceptres ; shield, sword, and truncheon ; thy own coro- 
 nation robes (for thou hast brought the whole property-man's 
 wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a navy) ; the judge's ermine ; 
 the coxcomb's wig ; the snuff-box a la Foppington — all must over- 
 board, he positively swears — and that Ancient Mariner brooks no 
 denial ; for, since the tiresome monodrame of the old Thracian 
 Harper, Charon, it is to be believed, hath shown small taste for 
 theatricals. 
 
TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 29 
 
 Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat- weight ; pura et puia 
 anima. 
 
 But, bless me, how little you look ! 
 
 So shall we all look — kings and keysars — stripped for the last 
 voyage. 
 
 But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu, pleasant, and thrice 
 pleasant shade ! with my parting thanks for many a heavy hour, 
 of life lightened by thy harmless extravaganzas, public or do- 
 mestic. 
 
 Rhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes below, leaving to 
 his two brethren the heavy calendars — honest Rhadamanth, always 
 partial to players, weighing their parti-colored existence here upon 
 earth, — making account of the few foibles that may have shaded 
 thy real life, as we call it (though, substantially, scarcely less a 
 vapor than thy idlest vagaries upon the boards of Drury), as but 
 of so many echoes, natural re-percussions, and results to be ex- 
 pected from the assumed extravagancies of thy secondary or mock 
 life, nightly upon the stage — after a lenient castigation, with rods 
 lighter than those of Medusean ringlets, but just enough to " whip 
 the offending Adam out of thee," shall courteously dismiss thee 
 at the right hand gate — the o. p. side of Hades — that conducts to 
 masques and merry-makings in the Theatre Royal of Proserpine. 
 
ELIA 
 
 EILISTONIANA 
 
 My acquaintance with the pleasant creature, whose loss we all 
 deplore, was but slight. 
 
 My first introduction to E., which afterwards ripened into an 
 acquaintance a little on this side of intimacy, was over a counter 
 in the Leamington Spa Library, then newly entered upon by a 
 branch of his family. E., whom nothing misbecame — ^to auspi- 
 cate, I suppose, the filial concern, and set it a-going with a lustre 
 — was serving in person two damsels fair, who had come into the 
 shop ostensibly to inquire for some new publication, but in reality 
 to have a sight of the illustrious shopman, hoping some confer- 
 ence. With what an air did he reach down the volume, dispas- 
 sionately giving his opinion of the worth of the work in question, 
 and launching out into a dissertation on the comparative merits 
 with those of certain publications of a similar stamp, its rivals ! 
 his enchanted customers fairly hanging on his lips, subdued to 
 their authoritative sentence. So have I seen a gentleman in 
 comedy acting the shopman. So Lovelace sold his gloves in 
 King Street. I admired the histrionic art, by which he contrived 
 to carry clean away every notion of disgrace, from the occupa- 
 tion he had so generously submitted to ; and from that hour I 
 judged him, with no after repentance, to be a person with whom 
 it would be a felicity to be more acquainted. 
 
 To descant upon his merits as a Comedian would be superflu- 
 ous. With his blended private and professional habits alone I 
 have to do ; that harmonious fusion of the manners of the player 
 into those of every-day life, which brought the stage boards into 
 streets, and dining-parlors, and kept up the play when the play 
 was ended. — " I like Wrench," a friend was saying to him one 
 day, " because he is the same, natural, easy creature, on th^ 
 
ELLISTONIANA. 29 
 
 stage, that he is off." " My case exactly," retorted EUiston — 
 with a charming forgetfulness, that the converse of a proposition 
 does not lead to the same conclusion — " I am the same person off 
 the stage that I am 071^ The inference, at first sight, seems 
 identical ; but examine it a little, and it confesses only, that the 
 one performer was never, and the other always, acting. 
 
 And in truth this was the charm of Elliston's private deport- 
 ment. You had spirited performance always going on before 
 your eyes, with nothing to pay. As where a monarch takes up 
 his casual abode for a night, the poorest hovel which he honors by 
 his sleeping in it, becomes ipso facto for that time a palace ; so 
 wherever Elliston walked, sate, or stood still, there Was the thea- 
 tre. He carried about with him his pit, boxes, and galleries, and 
 set up his portable playhouse at corners of streets, and in the 
 market-places. Upon flintiest pavements he trod the boards still ; 
 and if his theme chanced to be passionate, the green baize carpet 
 of tragedy spontaneously rose beneath his feet. Now this was 
 hearty, and showed a love for his art. So Apelles always paint- 
 ed — in thought. So G. D. always poetises. I hate a lukewarm 
 artist. I have known actors — and some of them of Elliston's own 
 stamp — who shall have agreeably been amusing you in the part 
 of a rake or a coxcomb, through the two or three hours of their 
 dramatic existence ; but no sooner does the curtain fall with its 
 leaden clatter, but a spirit of lead seems to seize on all their facul- 
 ties. They emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable to their 
 families, servants, &c. Another shall have been expanding your 
 heart with generous deeds and sentiments, till it even beats with 
 yearnings of universal sympathy ; you absolutely long to go home 
 and do some good action. The play seems tedious, till you can 
 get fairly out of the house, and realize your laudable intentions. 
 At length the final bell rings, and this cordial representative of 
 all that is amiable in the human breast steps forth — a miser. Ellis- 
 ton was more of a piece. Did he play Ranger ? and did Ranger 
 fill the general bosom of the town with satisfaction ? why should 
 he not be Ranger, and diffuse the same cordial satisfaction among 
 his private circles ? with his temperament, his animal spirits, his 
 good-nature, his follies perchance, could he do better than identify 
 himself with his impersonation ? Are we to like a pleasant rake 
 
30 ELIA. 
 
 or coxcomb, on the stage, and give ourselves airs of aversion for 
 the identical character, presented to us in actual life ? or what 
 would the performer have gained by divesting himself of the im- 
 personation ? Could the man Elliston have been essentially dif- 
 ferent from his part, even if he had avoided to reflect to us studi- 
 ously in private circles, the airy briskness, the forwardness, and 
 'scape-goat trickeries of his prototype ? 
 
 " But there is something not natural in this everlasting acting ; 
 we want the real man." 
 
 Are you quite sure that it is not the man himself, whom you 
 carmot, or will not see, under some adventitious trappings, which 
 nevertheless sit not at all inconsistently upon him ? What if it 
 is the nature of some men to be highly artificial ? The fault is 
 least reprehensible in 'players. Gibber was his own Foppington, 
 with almost as much wit as Vanburgh could add to it. 
 
 " My conceit of his person," — it is Ben Jonson speaking of Lord 
 Bacon, — " was never increased towards him by his place or honors. 
 But I have and do reverence him for the greatness, that was only 
 proper to himself; in that he seemed to me ever one of the great- 
 est men, that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever 
 prayed that Heaven would give him strength ; for greatness he 
 could not want." 
 
 The quality here commended was scarcely less conspicuous in 
 the subject of these idle reminiscences than in my Lord Verulam. 
 Those who have imagined that an unexpected elevation to the di- 
 rection of a great London Theatre affected the consequence of 
 Elliston, or at all changed his nature, knew not the essential 
 greatness of the man whom they disparage. It was my fortune 
 to encounter him near St. Dunstan's Church (which, with its 
 punctual giants, is now no more than dust and a shadow), on the 
 morning of his election to that high ofUce. Grasping my hand 
 with a look of significance, he only uttered, — " Have you heard 
 the news ?" — then with another look following up the blow, he 
 subjoined, " I am the future Manager of Drury Lane Theatre." 
 — Breathless as he saw me, he stayed not for congratulation or 
 reply, but mutely stalked away leaving me to chew upon his new- 
 blown dignities at leisure. In fact, nothing could be said to it. 
 
ELLISTONIANA. 31 
 
 Expressive silence alone could muse his praise. This was in his 
 great style. 
 
 But was he less great (be witness, O ye Powers of Equanimity, 
 that supported in the ruins of Carthage the consular exile, and 
 more recently transmuted, for a more illustrious exile, the barren 
 constableship of Elba into an image of Imperial France), when, 
 in melancholy after-years, again, much near the same spot, I 
 met him, when that sceptre had been wrested from his hand, and 
 his dominion was curtailed to the petty managership and part 
 proprietorship, of the small Olympic, Ms Elba ? He still played 
 nightly upon the boards of Drury, but in parts, alas ! allotted to 
 him, not magnificently distributed by him. Waiving his great 
 loss as nothing, and magnificently sinking the sense of fallen ma- 
 terial grandeur in the more liberal resentment of depreciations 
 done to his more lofty inlellectual pretensions, " Have you heard " 
 (his customary exordium) — " have you heard," said he, " how 
 they treat me ? they put me in comedy. ^^ Thought I — but his 
 finger on his lips forbade any verbal interruption — " where could 
 they have put you better ?" Then, after a pause — " Where I 
 formerly played Romeo, I now play Mercutio," — and so again he 
 stalked away, neither staying, nor caring for, responses. 
 
 (), it was a rich scene, — but Sir A C , the best of 
 
 story-tellers and surgeons, who mends a lame narrative almost as 
 well as he sets a fracture, alone could do justice to it, — that I was 
 a witness to, in the tarnished room (that had once been green) of 
 that same little Olympic. There, after his deposition from Impe- 
 rial Drury, he substituted a throne. That Olympic Hill was his 
 "highest heaven;" himself "Jove in his chair." There he sat 
 in state, while before him, on complaint of prompter, was brought 
 for judgment — how shall I describe her? — one of those little 
 tawdry things that flirt at the tails of choruses — a probationer for 
 the town, in either of its senses — ^the pertest little drab — a dirty 
 fringe and appendage of the lamps' smoke — who, it seems, on 
 some disapprobation expressed by a " highly respectable" audi- 
 ence, — had precipitately quitted her station on the boards, and 
 withdrawn her small talents in disgust. 
 
 "And how dare you," said her manager, — assuming a censorial 
 severity, which would have crushed the confidence of a Vestris, 
 
33 ELIA. 
 
 and disarmed that beautiful Rebel herself of her professional 
 caprices — I verily believe, he thought her standing before him — 
 " how dare you, Madam, withdraw yourself without a notice from 
 your theatrical duties ?" " I was hissed, Sir." " And you have 
 the presumption to decide upon the taste of the town ?" "I don't 
 know that, Sir, but I will never stand to be hissed," was the sub- 
 joinder of young Confidence — when gathering up his features 
 into one significant mass of wonder, pity, and expostulatory indig- 
 nation — ^in a lesson never to have been lost upon a creature less 
 forward than she who stood before him — his words were these : 
 " They have hissed me." 
 
 'Twas the identical argument a fortiori^ which the son of 
 Peleus uses to Lycaon trembling under his lance, to persuade him 
 to take his destiny with a good grace. " I too am mortal." And 
 it is to be believed that in both cases the rhetoric missed of its 
 application, for want of a proper understanding with the faculties 
 of the respective recipients. 
 
 " Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he was courteously 
 conducting me over the benches of his Surrey Theatre, the last 
 retreat, and recess, of his every-day waning grandeur. 
 
 Those who knew Elliston, will know the manner in which he 
 pronounced the latter sentence of the few words I am about to 
 record. One proud day to me he look his roast mutton with us 
 in the Temple, to which I had superadded a preliminary haddock. 
 After a rather plentiful partaking of the meagre banquet, not 
 unrefreshed with the humbler sort of liquors, I made a sort of 
 apology for the humility of the fare, observing that for my own 
 part I never ate but one dish at dinner. " I too never eat but one 
 thing at dinner," — was his reply — ^then after a pause — " reckon- 
 ing fish as nothing." The manner was all. It was as if by one 
 peremptory sentence he had decreed the annihilation of all the 
 savory esculents, which the pleasant and nutritious-food-giving 
 Ocean pours forth upon poor humans .from her watery bosom. 
 This was greatness, tempered with considerable tenderness, to the 
 feelings of his scanty but welcoming entertainer. 
 
 Great wert thou in thy life, Robert William Elliston ! and not 
 lessened in thy death, if report speak truly, which says that thou 
 didst direct that thy mortal remains should repose under no in" 
 
ELLISTONIANA. 33 
 
 scription but one of pure Latinity. Classical was thy bringing 
 up ! and beautiful was the feeling on thy last bed, which, con- 
 necting the man with the boy, took thee back to thy latest exer- 
 cise of imagination, to the days when, undreaming of Theatres 
 and Managerships, thou wert a scholar, and an early ripe one, 
 under the roofs builded by the munificent and pious Colet. For 
 thee the Pauline Muses weep. In elegies, that shall silence this 
 crude prose, they shall celebrate thy praise. 
 
 PART II. 4 
 
34 ELIA. 
 
 THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 
 
 I AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe I have said so 
 before) at one or other of the Universities. Next to these my 
 choice would fix me at some woody spot, such as the neighbor- 
 hood of Henley affords in abundance, on the banks of my beloved 
 Thames. But somehow or other my cousin contrives to wheedle 
 me, once in three or four seasons, to a watering-place. Old 
 attachments cling to her in spite of experience. We have been 
 dull at Worthing one summer, duller at Brighton another, dullest 
 at Eastbourn a third, and are at this moment doing dreary pen- 
 ance at — Hastings ! — and all because we were happy many years 
 ago for a brief week at Margate. That was our first sea-side 
 experiment, and many circumstances combined to make it the 
 most agreeable holiday of my life. We had neither of us seen 
 the sea, and we had never been from home so long together m 
 company. 
 
 Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy weather- 
 beaten, sun-burnt captain, and his rough accommodations — ill ex- 
 changed for the foppery and fresh-water niceness of the modern 
 steam-packet ? To the winds and waves thou committedst thy 
 goodly freightage, and didst ask no aid of magic fumes, and spells, 
 and boiling caldrons. With the gales of heaven thou wentest 
 swimmingly ; or, when it was their pleasure, stoodest still with 
 sailor-like patience. Thy course was natural, not forced, as in 
 a hot-bed ; nor didst thou go poisoning the breath of ocean with 
 sulphureous smoke — a great sea chimera, chimneying and fur- 
 nacing the deep ; or liker to that fire-god parching up Scamander. 
 
 Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their coy re- 
 luctant responses (yet to the suppression of anything like con- 
 
THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 35 
 
 tempt) to the raw questions, which we of the great city would be 
 ever and anon putting to them, as to the uses of this or that 
 strange naval implement? 'Specially can I forget thee, thou 
 happy medium, thou shade of refuge between us and them, con- 
 ciliating interpreter of their skill to our simplicity, comfortable 
 ambassador between sea and land ! — whose sailor-trousers did no* 
 more convincingly assure thee to be an adopted denizen of the 
 former, than thy white cap, and whiter apron over them, with thy 
 neat-figured practice in thy culinary vocation, bespoke thee to 
 have been of inland nurture heretofore — a master cook of East 
 cheap ? How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation, 
 cook, mariner, attendant, chamberlain : here, there, like another 
 Ariel, flaming at once about all parts of the deck, yet with kindlier 
 ministrations — not to assist the tempest, but, as if touched with a 
 kindred sense of our infirmities, to soothe the qualms which that 
 untried motion might haply raise in our crude land-fancies. And 
 when the o'er-washing billows drove us below deck (for it was 
 far gone in October, and we had stiff and blowing weather), how 
 did thy officious ministerings, still catering for our comfort, with 
 cards, and cordials, and thy more cordial conversation, alleviate 
 the closeness and the confinement of thy else (truth to say) not 
 very savory, nor very inviting, little cabin ? 
 
 With these additaments to boot, we had on board a fellow-passen- 
 ger, whose discourse in variety might have beguiled a longer voyage 
 than we meditated, and have made mirth and wonder abound as 
 far as the Azores. He was a dark, Spanish-complexioned young 
 man, remarkably handsome, with an officer-like assurance, and 
 an insuppressible volubility of assertion. He was, in fact, the 
 greatest liar I had met with then, or since. He was none of your 
 hesitating, half story-tellers (a most painful description of mortals) 
 who go on sounding your belief, and only giving you as much as 
 they see you can swallow at a time — the nibbling pickpockets of 
 your patience — but one who committed downright, day-light depre- 
 dations upon his neighbor's faith. He did not stand shivering upon 
 the brink, but was a hearty, thorough-paced liar, and plunged at 
 once into the depths of your credulity. I partly believe, he made 
 pretty sure of his company. Not many rich, not many wise, or 
 learned, composed at that time the common stowage of a Margate 
 
36' ELIA. 
 
 packet. We were, I am afraid, a set of as unseasoned Londoners 
 (let our enemies give it a worse name) as Aldermanbury, or 
 Watling-street, at that time of day could have supplied. There 
 might be an exception or two among us, but I scorn to make any 
 invidious distinctions among such a jolly, companionable ship's 
 company, as those were whom I sailed with. Something too 
 must be conceded to the Genius Loci. Had the confident fellow 
 told us half the legends on land, which he favored us with on the 
 other element, I flatter myself the good sense of most of us would 
 have revolted. But we were in a new world, with everything 
 unfamiliar about us, and the time and place disposed us to the 
 reception of any prodigious marvel whatsoever. Time has obli- 
 terated from my memory much of his wild fablings ; and the rest 
 would appear but dull, as written, and to be read on shore. He 
 had been Aide-de-camp (among other rare accidents, and for- 
 tunes) to a Persian Prince, and at one blow had stricken off the 
 head of the King of Carimania on horseback. He, of course, 
 married the Prince's daughter. I forget what unlucky turn in 
 the politics of that court, combining with the loss of his consort, 
 was the reason of his quitting Persia ; but, with the rapidity of a 
 magician, he transported himself, along with his hearers, back to 
 England, where we still found him in the confidence of great ladies. 
 There was some story of a princess — Elizabeth, if I remember — 
 having intrusted to his care an extraordinary casket of jewels, 
 upon some extraordinary occasion — but, as I am not certain of 
 the name or circumstance at this distance of time, I must leave it 
 to the Royal daughters of England to settle the honor among 
 themselves in private. I cannot call to mind half of his pleasant 
 wonders ; but I perfectly remember, that in the course of his 
 travels he had seen a phoenix ; and he obligingly undeceived us 
 of the vulgar error, that there is but one of that species at a time, 
 assuring us that they were not uncommon in some parts of 
 Upper Egypt. Hitherto he had found the most implicit listeners. 
 His dreaming fancies had transported us beyond the " ignorant 
 present." But when (still hardying more and more in his tri- 
 umphs over our simplicity) he went on to affirm that he had 
 actually sailed through the legs of the Colossus at Rhodes, it 
 really became necessary to make a stand. And here I must do 
 
THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 37 
 
 justice to the good sense and intrepidity of one of our party, a 
 youth, that had hitherto been one of his most deferential auditors, 
 who, from his recent reading, made bold to assure the gentleman, 
 that there must be some mistake, as " the Colossus in question 
 had been destroye'd long since;" to whose opinion, delivered with 
 all modesty, our hero was obliging enough to concede thus much, 
 that " the figure was indeed a little damaged." This was the 
 only opposition he met with, and it did not at all seem to stagger 
 him, for he proceeded with his fables, which the same youth appear- 
 ed to swallow with still more complacency than ever, — confirmed, 
 as it were, by the extreme candor of that concession. With these 
 prodigies he wheedled us on till we came in sight of the Reculvers, 
 which one of our own company (having been the voyage before) 
 immediately recognizing, and pointing out to us, was considered 
 by us as no ordinary seaman. 
 
 All this time sat upon the edge of the deck quite a different 
 character. It was a lad, apparently very poor, very infirm, and 
 very patient. His eye was ever on the sea, with a smile ; and, 
 if he caught now and then some snatches of these wild legends, 
 it was by accident, and they seemed not to concern him. The 
 waves to him whispered more pleasant stories. He was as one, 
 being with us, but not of us. He heard the bell of dinner ring 
 without stirring ; and when some of us pulled out our private 
 stores — our cold meat and our salads — he produced none, and 
 seemed to want none. Only a solitary biscuit he had laid in ; 
 provision for the one or two days and nights, to which these ves- 
 sels then were oftentimes obliged to prolong their voyage. Upon 
 a nearer acquaintance with him, which he seemed neither to court 
 nor decline, we learned that he was going to Margate, with the 
 hope of being admitted into the Infirmary there for sea-bathing. 
 His disease was a scrofula, which appeared to have eaten all over 
 him. He expressed great hope of a cure ; and when we asked 
 him, whether he had any friends whera he was going, he replied, 
 " he had no friends." 
 
 These pleasant, and some mournful passages, with the first sight 
 of the sea, co-operating with youth, and a sense of holidays, and 
 out-of-door adventure, to me that had been pent up in populous 
 cities for many months before, — have left upon my mind the fra- 
 
38 ELTA. 
 
 grance as of summer days gone by, bequeathing nothing but their 
 remembrance for cold and wintry hours to chew upon. 
 
 Will it be thought a digression (it may spare some unwelcome 
 comparisons), if I endeavor to account for the dissatisfaction which 
 I have heard so many persons confess to have felt (as I did my- 
 self feel in part on this occasion), at the sight of the sea for the first 
 time ? I think the reason usually given — referring to the inca- 
 pacity of actual objects for satisfying our preconceptions of them — 
 scarcely goes deep enough into the question. Let the same per- 
 son see a lion, an elephant, a mountain, for the first time in his 
 life, and he shall perhaps feel himself a little mortified. The 
 things do not fill up that space, which the idea of them seemed to 
 take up in his mind. But they have still a correspondency to his 
 first notion, and in time grow up to it, so as to produce a very 
 similar impression : enlarging themselves (if I may say so) upon 
 familiarity. But the sea remains a disappointment. — Is it not, that 
 in the latter we had expected to behold (absurdly, I grant, but I 
 am afraid, by the law of imagination, unavoidably) not a definite 
 object, as those wild beasts, or that mountain compassable by the 
 eye, but all the sea at once, the commensurate antagonist of 
 THE EARTH ? I do uot Say wc tell ourselves so much, but the 
 craving of the mind is to be satisfied with nothing less. I will 
 suppose the case of a young person of fifteen (as T then was) 
 knowing nothing of the sea, but from description. He comes to 
 it for the first time — all that he has been reading of it all his life, 
 and that the most enthusiastic part of life, — all he has gathered 
 from narratives of wandering seamen, — what he has gained from 
 true voyages, and what he cherishes as credulously from romance 
 and poetry, — crowding their images, and exacting strange tributes 
 from expectation. — He thinks of the great deep, and of those who 
 go down unto it ; of its thousand isles, and of the vast continents 
 it washes ; of its receiving the mighty Plate, or Orellana, into its 
 bosom, without disturbance, or sense of augmentation ; of Biscay 
 swells, and the mariner 
 
 For many a day, and many a dreadful night, 
 Incessant laboring round the stormy Cape ; 
 
 of fatal rocks, and the " still- vexed Bermocthes;" of great whirl- 
 
THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 39 
 
 pools, and the waterspout ; of sunken ships, and sumless treasures 
 swallowed up in the unrestoring depths ; of fishes and quaint 
 monsters, to which all that is terrible on earth — 
 
 Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal, 
 Compared with the creatures in the sea's entral ; 
 
 of naked savages, and Juar Fernandez ; of pearls, and shells ; 
 of coral beds, and of enchanted isles ; of mermaids' grots — 
 
 I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects to be shown all 
 these wonders at once, but he is under the tyranny of a mighty 
 faculty, which haunts him with confused hints and shadows of all 
 these ; and when the actual object opens first upon him, seen (in 
 tame weather, too, most likely) from our unromantic coasts — a 
 speck, a slip of sea- water, as it shows to him — what can it prove 
 but a very unsatisfying and even diminutive entertainment ! Or 
 if he has come to it from the mouth of a river, was it much more 
 than the river widening ? and, even out of sight of land, what 
 had he but a flat watery horizon about him, nothing comparable 
 to the vast o'er-curtaining sky, his familiar object, seen daily with- 
 out dread or amazement ? — Who, in similar circumstances, has 
 not been tempted to exclaim with Charoba, in the poem of Gebir, 
 
 Is this the mighty ocean ? is this all ? 
 
 1 love town, or country ; but this detestable Cinque Port is 
 neither. I hate these scrubbed shoots, thrusting out their starved 
 foliage from between the horrid fissures of dusty innutritions 
 rocks ; which the amateur calls " verdure to the edge of the sea." 
 I require woods, and they show me stunted coppices. I cry out 
 for the water brooks, and pant for fresh streams, and inland mur- 
 murs. I cannot stand all day on the naked beach, watching the 
 capricious hues of the sea, shifting like the colors of a dying 
 mullet. I am tired of looking out at the windows of this island- 
 prison. I would fain retire into the interior of my cage. While 
 I gaze upon the sea, I want to be on it, over it, across it. It binds 
 me in with chains, as of iron. Mj* thoughts are abroad. I should 
 not so feel in Staffordshire. There is no home for me here. 
 There is no sense of home at Hastings. It is a place of fugitive 
 
40 ELM. 
 
 resort, an heterogeneous assemblage of sea-mews and stock- 
 brokers, Amphitrites of the town, and misses that coquet with the 
 Ocean. If it were what it was in its primitive shape, and what 
 it ought to have remained, a fair, honest fishing-town, and no more, 
 it were something — with a few straggling fishermen's huts scat- 
 tered about, artless as its cliffs, and with their materials filched 
 from them, it were something. I could abide to dwell with Me- 
 schek ; to assort with fisher-swains, and smugglers. There are, oi 
 I dream there are, many of this latter occupation here. Their 
 faces become the place. I like a smuggler. He is the only honest 
 thief. He robs nothing but the revenue — an abstraction I nevei 
 greatly cared about. I could go out with them in their mackerel 
 boats, or about their less ostensible business, with some satisfac- 
 tion. I can even tolerate those poor victims to monotony, who 
 from day to day pace along the beach, in endless progress and re- 
 currence, to watch their illicit countrymen — townsfolk or brethren 
 perchance — whistling to the sheathing and unsheathing of their 
 cutlasses (their only solace), who, under the mild name of pre- 
 ventive service, keep up a legitimated civil warfare in the deplor- 
 able absence of a foreign one, to show their detestation of run 
 hoUands, and zeal for Old England. But it is the visitants from 
 town, that come here to say that they have been here, with no 
 more relish of the sea than a pond-perch or a dace might be sup- 
 posed to have, that are my aversion. I feel like a foolish dace in 
 these regions, and have as little toleration for myself here, as for 
 them. What can they want here ? if they had a true relish of 
 the ocean, why have they brought all this land luggage with them ? 
 or why pitch their civilized tents in the desert ? What mean these 
 scanty book-rooms — marine libraries as they entitle them — if the 
 sea were, as they would have us believe, a book " to read strange 
 matter in ?" what are their foolish concert-rooms, if they come, as 
 they would fain be thought to do," to listen to the music of the 
 waves ? All is false and hoUow pretension. They come, because 
 it is the fashion, and to spoil the nature of the place. They are, 
 mostly, as I have said, stock-brokers; but I have watched the 
 better sort of them — now and then an honest citizen (of the old 
 stamp), in the simplicity of his heart, shall bring down his wife 
 and daughters, to taste the sea breezes. I always know the date 
 
THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 41 
 
 of their arrival. It is easy to see it in their countenances. A day 
 or two they go wandering on the shingles, picking up cockle-shells, 
 and thinking them great things ; but, in a poor week, imagination 
 slackens : they begin to discover that cockles produce no pearls, 
 and then — O then ! — if I could interpret for the pretty creatures 
 (I know they have not the courage to confess it themselves), how 
 gladly would they exchange their sea-side rambles for a Sunday 
 walk on the green-sward of their accustomed Twickenham 
 meadows ! 
 
 I would ask of one of these sea-charmed emigrants, who think 
 they truly love the sea, with its wild usages, what would their 
 feelings be, if some of the unsophisticated aborigines of this place, 
 encouraged by their courteous questionings here, should venture, 
 on the faith of such assured sympathy between them, to return 
 the visit, and come up to see — London. I must imagine them 
 with their fishing-tackle on their back, as we carry our town 
 necessaries. What a sensation would it cause in Lothbury? 
 What vehement laughter would it not excite among 
 
 The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard-street ! 
 
 I am sure that no town-bred or inland-born subjects can feel 
 their true and natural nourishment at these sea-places. Nature, 
 where she does not mean us for mariners and vagabonds, bids us 
 stay at home. The salt foam seems to nourish a spleen. I am 
 not half so good-natured as by the milder waters of my natural 
 river. I would exchange these sea-gulls for swans, and scud a 
 Bwallow for ever about the banks of Thamesis. 
 
4S ELI A. 
 
 THE CONVALESCENT. 
 
 A PRETTY seyere fit of indisposition whieh, under the name of a 
 nervous fever, has made a prisoner of me for some weeks past, 
 and is but slowly leaving me, has reduced me to an incapacity of 
 reflecting upon any topic foreign to itself. Expect no healthy 
 conclusions from me this month, reader ; 1 can offer you only 
 sick men's dreams. 
 
 And truly the whole state of sickness is such ; for what else 
 is it but a magnificent dream for a man to lie a-bed, and draw 
 daylight curtains about him ; and, shutting out the sun, to induce 
 a total oblivion of all the works which are going on under it ? 
 To become insensible to all the operations of life, except the beat- 
 ings of one feeble pulse ? 
 
 If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick bed. How the patient 
 lords it there ; what caprices he acts without control ! how king- 
 like he sways his pillow — tumbling, and tossing, and shifting, and 
 lowering, and thumping, and flatting, and moulding it, to the ever- 
 varying requisitions of his throbbing temples. 
 
 He changes sides oftener than a politician. Now he lies full 
 length, then half-length, obliquely, transversely, head and feet 
 quite across the bed ; and none accuses him of tergiversation. 
 Within the four curtains he is absolute. They are his Mare 
 Clausum. 
 
 How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to him- 
 self! he is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is 
 inculcated upon him as his only duty. 'Tis the Two Tables of 
 the Law to him. He has nothing to think of but how to get 
 well. What passes out of doors, or within them, so he hear not 
 the jarring of them, affects him not. 
 
THE CONVALESCENT. 43 
 
 A little while ago he was greatly concerned in the event of a 
 lawsuit, which was to be the making or the marring of his dearest 
 friend. He was to be seen trudging about upon this man's errand 
 to fifty quarters of the town at once, jogging this witness, refresh- 
 ing that solicitor. The cause was to come on yesterday. He is 
 absolutely as indifferent to the decision, as if it were a question 
 to be tried at Pekin. Peradventure from some whispering, going 
 on about the house, not intended for his hearing, he picks up 
 enough to make him understand, that things went cross-grained in 
 the Court yesterday, and his friend is ruined. But the word 
 " friend," and the word " ruin," disturb him no more than so much 
 jargon. He is not thinking of anything but how to get better. 
 
 What a world of foreign cares are merged in that absorbing 
 consideration ! 
 
 He has put on the strong armor of sickness, he is wrapped in 
 the callous hide of suffering ; he keeps his sympathy, like some 
 curious vintage, under trusty lock and key, for his own use only. 
 
 He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to himself; he 
 yearneth over himself; his bowels are even melted within him, 
 to think what he suffers ; he is not ashamed to weep over himself. 
 
 He is for ever plotting how to do some good to himself; study- 
 ing little stratagems and artificial alleviations. 
 
 He makes the most of himself; dividing himself, by an allow- 
 able fiction, into as many distinct individuals, as he hath sore and 
 sorrowing members. Sometimes he meditates— as of a thing apart 
 from him — upon his poor aching head, and that dull pain which, 
 dozing or waking, lay in it all the past night like a log, or palpa- 
 ble substance of pain, not to be removed without opening the very 
 skull, as it seemed, to take it thence. Or he pities his long, 
 clammy, attenuated fingers. He compassionates himself all over ; 
 and his bed is a very discipline of humanity, and tender heart. 
 
 He is his own sympathizer ; and instinctively feels that none 
 can so well perform that office for him. He cares for few spec- 
 tators to his tragedy. Only that punctual face of the old nurse 
 pleases him, that announces his broths and his cordials. He 
 likes it because it is so unmoved, and because he can pour forth 
 his feverish' ejaculations before it as unreservedly as to his bed- 
 post. 
 
44 ELIA. 
 
 To the world's Vusiness he is dead. He understands not what 
 the callings and occupations of mortals are ; only he has a glim- 
 mering conceit of some such thing, when the doctor makes his 
 daily call : and even in the lines on that busy face he reads no 
 multiplicity of patients, but solely conceives of himself as the sick 
 man. To what other uneasy couch the good man is hastening, 
 when he slips out of his chamber, folding up his thin douceur so 
 carefully, for fear of rustling — is no speculation which he can at 
 present entertain. He thinks only of the regular return of the 
 J same phenomenon at the same hour to-morrow. 
 I V^^^ Household rumors touch him not. Some faint murmur, indi- 
 J^J f cative of life going on within the house, soothes him, while he 
 knows not distinctly what it is. He is not to know anything, not 
 to think of anything. Servants gliding up or down the distant 
 staircase, treading as upon velvet, gently keep his ear awake, so 
 long as he troubles not himself further than with some feeble 
 guess at their errands. Exacter knowledge would be a burthen 
 to him : he can just endure the pressure of conjecture. He opens 
 his eye faintly at the dull stroke of the muffled knocker, and 
 closes it again without asking " Who was it ?" He is flattered 
 by a general notion that inquiries are making after him, but he 
 cares not to know the name of the inquirer. In the general still- 
 ness, and awful hush of the house, he lies in state, and feels his 
 sovereignty. 
 
 To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives. Compare the 
 silent tread, and quiet ministry, almost by the eye only, with which 
 he is served — with the careless demeanor, the unceremonious 
 goings in and out (slapping of doors, or leaving them open) of the 
 very same attendants, when he is getting a little better — and you 
 will confess, that from the bed of sickness (throne let me rather 
 call it) to the elbow-chair of convalescence, is a fall from dignity, 
 amounting to a deposition. 
 
 How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine stature ! 
 where is now the space, which he occupied so lately, in his own, 
 in the family's eye ? T 
 
 The scene of his regalities, his sick room, which was the pre- 
 sence chamber, where he lay and acted his despotic fancies — how 
 is it reduced to a common bed-room ? The trimness of the very 
 
THE CONVALESCENT. 45 
 
 bed has something petty and unmeaning about it. It is made 
 every day. How unlike to that wavy, many-furrowed, oceanic 
 surfacej which it presented so short a time since, when to make it 
 was a service not to be thought of at oftener than three or four 
 day revolutions, when the patient was with pain and grief to be 
 lifted for a little while out of it, to submit to the encroachments of 
 unwelcome neatness, and decencies which his shaken frame 
 deprecated ; then to be lifted into it again, for another three or 
 four days' respite, to flounder it out of shape again, while every 
 fresh furrow was an historical record of some shifting posture, 
 some uneasy turning, some seeking for a little ease ; and the 
 shrunken skin scarce told a truer story than the crumpled 
 coverlid. 
 
 Hushed are those mysterious sighs — those groans — so much 
 more awful, while we knew not from what caverns of vast hidden 
 suffering they proceeded. The Lernean pangs are quenched. 
 The riddle of sickness is solved ; and Philoctetes is become, an 
 ordinary personage. 
 
 Perhaps some relic of the sick man's dream of greatness 
 survives in the still lingering visitations of the medical attendant. 
 But how is he, too, changed with everything else ! Can this be he 
 — this man of news — of chat — of anecdote — of everything but 
 physic — can this be he, who so lately came between the patient 
 and his cruel enemy, as on solemn embassy from Nature, erect- 
 ing herself into a high mediating party ? — Pshaw ! 'tis some old 
 woman. 
 
 Farewell with him all that made sickness pompous — the spell 
 that hushed the household — the desert-like stillness, felt through- 
 out its inmost chambers — the mute attendance — the inquiry by 
 looks — the still softer delicacies of self-attention — the sole and 
 single eye of distemper alonely fixed upon itself — world-thoughts 
 excluded — the man a world unto himself — his own theatre — 
 
 What a speck is he dwindled into ! 
 
 In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by the ebb of sickness, 
 yet far enough from the terra firma of established health, your 
 note, dear Editor, reached me, requesting— ran article. In Arti- 
 
46 ELIA. 
 
 culo Mortis, thought I ; but it is something hard — and the 
 quibble, wretched as it was, relieved me. The summons, unsea- 
 sonable as it appeared, seemed to link me on again to the petty 
 businesses of life, which I had lost sight of; a gentle call to 
 activity, however trivial ; a wholesome weaning from that pre- 
 posterous dream of self-absorption— the puffy state of sickness — 
 in which I confess to have lain so long, insensible to the maga- 
 zines and monarchies of the world alike ; to its laws, and to its 
 literature. The hypochondriac flatus is subsiding; the acres, 
 which in imagination I had spread over — for the sick man swells 
 in the sole contemplation of his single sufferings, till he becomes a 
 Tityus to himself— are wasting to a span ; and for the giant of 
 self-importance, which I was so lately, you have me again in my 
 natural pretensions — ^the lean and nieagre figure of your insignii^ 
 ficant Essayist. , ""^ \y. 
 
SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 47 
 
 SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 
 
 So far from the position holding true, that great wit (or genius, in 
 our modern way of speaking) has a necessary alliance with 
 insanity, the greatest wits, on the contrary, will ever be found to 
 be the sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind to conceive 
 of a mad Shakspeare. The greatness of wit, by which the poetic 
 talent is here chiefly to be understood, manifests itself in the 
 admirable balance of all the faculties. Madness is the dispropor- 
 tionate straining or excess of any one of them. " So strong a 
 wit," says Cowley, speaking of a poetical friend, 
 
 " did Nature to him frame. 
 
 As all things but his judgment overcame ; 
 His judgment like the heavenly moon did show. 
 Tempering that mighty sea below.'* 
 
 The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding in the raptures 
 of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation, to which they have 
 no parallel in their own experience, besides the spurious resem- 
 blance of it in dreams and fevers, impute a state of dreaminess 
 and fever to the poet. But the true poet dreams being awake. 
 He is not possessed by his subject, but has dominion over it. In 
 the groves of Eden he walks familiarly as in his native paths. 
 He ascends the empyrean heaven, and is not intoxicated. He 
 treads the burning marl without dismay ; he wings his flight with- 
 out self-loss through realms of chaos " and old night." Or if, 
 abandoning himself to that severer chaos of a " human mind 
 untuned," he is content awhile to be mad with Lear, or to hate 
 mankind (a sort of madness) with Timon, neither is that madness, 
 nor this misanthropy, so unchecked, but that, — ^never letting the 
 
48 ELIA. 
 
 reins of reason wholly go, while most he seems to do so, — he has 
 his better genius still whispering at his ear, with the good servant 
 Kent suggesting saner counsels, or with the honest steward 
 Flavins recommending kindlier resolutions. Where he seems 
 most to recede from humanity, he will be found the truest to it. 
 From beyond the scope of Nature if he summon possible exist- 
 ences, he subjugates them to the law of her consistency. He is 
 beautifully loyal to that sovereign directress, even when he 
 appears most to betray and desert her. His ideal tribes submit 
 to policy ; his very monsters are tamed to his hand, even as that 
 wild sea-brood, shepherded by Proteus. He tames, and he clothes 
 them with attributes of flesh and blood, till they wonder at them- 
 selves, like the Indian Islanders forced to submit to European 
 vesture. Caliban, the Witches, are as true to the laws of their 
 own nature (ours with a difference), as Othello, Hamlet, and Mac- 
 beth. Herein the great and the little wits are differenced ; that 
 if the latter wander ever so little from nature or actual existence, 
 they lose themselves, and their readers. Their phantoms are 
 lawless ; their visions night-mares. They do not create, which 
 implies shaping and consistency. Their imaginations are not 
 active — for to be active is to call something into act and form — 
 but passive, as men in sick dreams. For the super-natural, or 
 something super-added to what we know of nature, they give you 
 the plainly non-natural. And if this were all, and that these 
 mental hallucinations were discoverable only in the treatment of 
 subjects out of nature, or transcending it, the judgment might with 
 some plea be pardoned if it ran riot, and a little wantonised : but 
 even in the describing of real and every-day life, that which is 
 before their eyes, one of these lesser wits shall more deviate from 
 nature — show more of that inconsequence, which has a natural 
 alliance with frenzy, — than a great genius in his " maddest fits," 
 as Withers somewhere calls them. We appeal to any one that 
 is acquainted with the common run of Lane's novels, — as they 
 existed some twenty or thirty years back, — those scanty intellec- 
 tual viands of the whole female reading public, till a happier 
 genius arose, and expelled for ever the innutritious phantoms, — 
 whether he has not found his brain more " betossed," his memory 
 more puzzled, his sense of when and where more confounded, 
 
SANITY O.-'^ TRUE GENIUS. 4'9 
 
 among the improbable events, the incoherent incidents, the incon- 
 sistent characters, or no-characters, of some third-rate love-intrigue 
 — where the person shall be a Lord Glendamour and a Miss 
 Rivers, and the scene only alternate between Bath and Bond- 
 street — a more bewildering dreaminess induced upon him, than 
 he has felt wandering over all the fairy grounds of Spenser. lu 
 the productions we refer to, nothing but names and places is 
 familiar ; the persons are neither of this world nor of any other 
 conceivable one ; an endless string of activities without purpose, 
 of purposes destitute of motive : — we meet phantoms in our known 
 walks ; fantasques only christened. In the poet we have names 
 which announce fiction ; and we have absolutely no place at all, 
 for the things and persons of the Fairy Queen prate not of their 
 " whereabout." But in their inner nature, and the law of their 
 speech and actions, we are at home and upon acquainted ground. 
 The one turns life into a dream ; the other to the wildest dreams 
 gives the sobrieties of every day occurrences. By what subtle 
 art of tracing the mental processes it is etfected, we are not philo- 
 sophers enough to explain, but in that wonderful episode of the 
 cave of Mammon, in which the Money God appears first in the 
 lowest form of a miser, is then a worker of metals, and becomes 
 the god of all the treasures of the world ; and has a daughter. 
 Ambition, before whom all the world kneels for favors — with the 
 Hesperian fruit, the waters of Tantalus, with Pilate washing his 
 hands vainly, but not impertinently, in the same stream — that we 
 should be at one moment in the cave of an old hoarder of treasures, 
 at the next at the forge of the Cyclops, in a palace and yet in hell, 
 all at once, with the shifting mutations of the most rambling 
 dream, and our judgment yet all the time awake, and neither 
 able nor willing to detect the fallacy, — is a proof of that hidden 
 sanity whicli still guides the poet in the widest seeming-aberra- 
 tions. 
 
 It is not enough to say that the whole episode is a copy of the 
 mind's conceptions in sleep ; it is, in some sort — but what a copy ? 
 Let the most romantic of us, that has been entertained all night 
 with the spectacle of some wild and magnificent vision, recombine 
 it in the morning, and try it by his waking judgment. That which 
 appeared so shifting and vet so colierent, while that faculty was 
 
 PART TI, 5 
 
50 ELI A. 
 
 passive, when it comes under cool examination shall appear so 
 reasonless and so unlinked, that we are ashamed to have been so 
 deluded ; and to have taken, though but in sleep, a monster for a 
 god. But the transactions in this episode are every whit as vio- 
 lent as in the most extravagant dream, and yet the waking judg. 
 ment ratifies them. 
 
CAPTAIN JACKSON. M 
 
 CAPTAIN JACKSON. 
 
 Among the deaths in our obituary for this month, I observe with 
 concern, " At his cottage on the Bath road, Captain Jackson." 
 The name and attribution are common enough ; but a feeling like 
 reproach persuades me, that this could have been no other in fact 
 than my dear old friend, who some five-and-twenty years ago 
 rented a tenement, which he was pleased to dignify with the 
 appellation here used, about a mile from West bourn Green. 
 Alack, how good men, and the good turns they do, slide out of 
 memory, and are recalled but by the surprise of some such sad 
 memento as that which now lies before us ! 
 
 He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, with a wife 
 and two grown-up daughters, whom he maintained with the port 
 and notions of gentlewomen upon that slender professional allow- 
 ance. Comely girls they were too. 
 
 And was I in danger of forgetting this man ? — his cheerful sup- 
 pers — the noble tone of hospitality, when first you set your foot 
 in the cottage — the anxious ministerings about you, where little or 
 nothing (God knows) was to be ministered. — Althea's horn in a 
 poor platter — the power of self-enchantment, by which, in his 
 magnificent wishes to entertain you, he multiplied his means to 
 bounties. 
 
 You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed a bare 
 scrag — cold savings from the foregone meal — remnant hardly suf- 
 ficient to send a mendicant from the door contented. But in the 
 copious will — the revelling imagination of your host — ^the " mind, 
 the mind, Master Shallow," whole beeves were spread before you 
 — hecatombs — no end appeared to the profusion. 
 
 It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and fishes ; carving could 
 
62 ELIA. 
 
 not lessen, nor helping diminish it — ^the stamina were left — ^the 
 elemental bone still flourished, divested of its accidents. 
 
 " Let us live while we can," methinks I hear the open-handed 
 creature exclaim ; " while we have, let us not want," " here is 
 plenty left;" "want for nothing" — with many more such hos- 
 pitable sayings, the spurs of appetite, and old concomitants of 
 smoking-boards, and feast-oppressed chargers. Then sliding a 
 slender ratio of Single Gloucester upon his wife's plate, or the 
 daughters', he would convey the remanent rind into his own, with 
 a merry quirk of " the nearer the bone," &c., and declaring that 
 he universally preferred the outside. For we had our table dis- 
 tinctions, you are to know, and some of us in a manner sate above 
 the salt. None but his guest or guests dreamed of tasting luxu- 
 ries at night, the fragments were vere hospitibus sacra. But of 
 one thing or another there was always enough, and leavings: 
 only he would sometimes finish the remainder crust, to show that 
 he wished no savings. 
 
 Wine we had none ; nor, except on very rare occasions, spirits ; 
 but the sensation of wine was there. Some thin kind of ale I 
 remember — " British beverage," he would say ! " Push about, 
 my boys ;" " drink to your sweethearts, girls." At every meagre 
 draught a toast must ensue, or a song. All the forms of good 
 liquor were there, with none of the effects wanting. Shut your 
 eyes, and you would swear a capacious bowl of punch was foam- 
 ing in the centre, with beams of generous Port or Madeira, radi- 
 ating to it from each of the table corners. You got flustered, 
 without knowing whence ; tipsy upon words ; and reeled under 
 the potency of his unperforming Bacchanalian encouragements. 
 
 We had our songs — " V/hy, Soldiers, why " — and the " British 
 Grenadiers " — in which last we were all obliged to bear chorus. 
 Both the daughters sang. Their proficiency was a nightly theme 
 — ^the masters he had given them — the " no-expense " which he 
 spared to accomplish them in a science " so necessary to young 
 women." But then — they could not sing "without the instru- 
 ment." 
 
 Sacred, and, by me, never-to-be-violated, secrets of Poverty ! 
 Should I disclose your honest aims at grandeur, your makeshift 
 eflx)rts of magnificence ? Sleep, sleep, with all thy broken keys, 
 
4 
 
 CAPTAIN JACKSON. 3a 
 
 if one of the bunch be extant ; thrummed by a thousand ances- 
 tral thumbs ; dear, cracked spinnet of dearer Louisa ! Without 
 mention of mine, be dumb, thou thin accompanier of her thinner 
 warble ! A veil be spread over the dear delighted face -of the 
 well-deluded father, who now haply listening to cherubic notes, 
 scarce feels sincerer pleasure than when she awakened thy time- 
 shaken chords responsive to the twitterings of that slender image 
 of a voice. 
 
 We were not without our literary talk either. It did not ex- 
 tend far, but as far as it went, it was good. It was bottomed well ; 
 had good grounds to go upon. In the cottage was a room, which 
 tradition authenticated to have been the same in which Glover, in 
 his occasional retirements, had penned the greater part of his 
 Leonidas. This circumstance was nightly quoted, though none 
 of the present inmates, that I could discover, appeared ever to 
 have met with the poem in question. But that was no matter. 
 Glover had written there, and the anecdote was pressed into the 
 account of the family importance. It diffused a learned air 
 through the apartment, the little side casement of which (the 
 poet's study window), opening upon a superb view as far as the 
 pretty spire of Harrow, over domains and patrimonial acres, not 
 a rood nor square yard whereof our host could call his own, yet 
 gave occasion to an immoderate expansion of — vanity shall I call 
 it ? — in his bosom, as he showed them in a glowing summer 
 evening. It was all his, he took it all in, and communicated rich 
 . portions of it to his guests. It was a part of his largess, his hos- 
 pitality ; it was going over his grounds ; he was lord for the time 
 of showing them, and you the implicit lookers-up to his magnifi- 
 cence. 
 
 He was a juggler, who threw mists before your eyes — you 
 had no time to detect his fallacies. He would say, " Hand me 
 the silver sugar tongs ;" and before you could discover it was a 
 single spoon, ana that plated, he would disturb and captivate your 
 imagination by a misnomer of " the urn" for a tea-kettle ; or by 
 calling a homely bench a sofa. Rich men direct you to their 
 furniture, poor ones divert you from it ; he neither did one nor 
 the other, but by simply assuming that everything was handsome 
 about him, you were positively at a demur what you did, or did 
 
54 ELIA. 
 
 not see, at the cottage. With nothing to live on, he seemed to 
 live on everything. He had a stock of wealth in his mind ; not 
 that which is properly termed Content, for in truth he was not to 
 be contained at all, but overflowed all bounds by the force of a 
 magnificent self-delusion. 
 
 Enthusiasm is catching ; and even his wife, a sober native of 
 North Britain, who generally saw things more as they were, was 
 not proof against the continual collision of his credulity. Her 
 daughters were rational and discreet young women ; in the main, 
 perhaps, not insensible to their true circumstances. I have seen 
 them assume a thoughtful air at times. But such was the pre- 
 ponderating opulence of his fancy, that I am persuaded, not for 
 any half hour together did they ever look their own prospects 
 fairly in the face. There was no resisting the vortex of his tem- 
 perament. His riotous imagination conjured up handsome settle- 
 ments before their eyes, which kept them up in the eye of the 
 world too, and seem at last to have realized themselves; for 
 they both have married since, I am told, more than respectably. 
 
 It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some subjects, 
 or I should wish to convey some notion of the manner in 
 which the pleasant crtature described the circumstances of his 
 own wedding-day. I faintly remember something of a chaise- 
 and-four, in which he mad e his entry into Glasgow on that morn- 
 ing to fetch the bride home, or carry her thither, I forget which. 
 It so completely made out the stanza of the old ballad — 
 
 When we came down through Glasgow town. 
 
 We were a comely sight to see ; 
 My love was clad in black velvet. 
 
 And I myself in cramasie. 
 
 I suppose it was the only occasion upon which his own actual 
 splendor at all corresponded with the world's notions on that sub- 
 ject. In homely cart, or travelling caravan, by whatever humble 
 vehicle they chanced to be transported in less prosperous days, 
 the ride through Glasgow came back upon his fancy, not as a 
 humiliating contrast, but as a fair occasion for reverting to that 
 one day's state. It seemed an " equipage etern " from which no 
 
CAPTAIN JACKSON. 55 
 
 power of fate or fortune, once mounted, had power thereafter to 
 dislodge him. 
 
 There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon indigent 
 circumstances. To bully and swagger away the sense of them 
 before strangers, may not be always discommendable. Tibbs, 
 and Bobadil, even when detected, have more of our admiration 
 than contempt. But for a man to put the cheat upon himself; to 
 play the Bobabil at home ; and, steeped in poverty up to the lips, 
 to fancy himself all the while chin-deep in riches, is a strain of 
 constitutional philosophy, and a mastery over fortune, which was 
 reserved for my old friend Captain Jackson. 
 
66 ELIA. 
 
 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 
 
 Sera tamen respexit 
 Libertas. Virgil. 
 
 A Clerk I was in London gay. 
 
 O'Keefe. 
 
 If perad venture, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden 
 years of thy life — thy shining youth — in the irksome confinement 
 of an office ; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle 
 age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release 
 or respite ; to have lived to forget that there are such things as 
 holidays, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of child- 
 hood ; then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my 
 deliverance. 
 
 It is now six-and-thirty years since I took my seat at the desk 
 in Mincing-lane. Melancholy was the transition at fourteen from 
 the abundant playtime, and the frequently intervening vacations 
 of school-days, to the eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours' a-day 
 at a counting-house. But time partially reconciles us to any- 
 thing. I gradually became content — doggedly contented, as v/ild 
 animals in cages. 
 
 It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sundays, admira- 
 ble as the institution of them is for purposes of worship, are for 
 that very reason the very worst adapted for days of unbending 
 and recreation. In particular, there is a gloom for me attendant 
 upon a city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss the cheerful 
 cries of London, the music, and the ballad-singers — the buzz and 
 stirring murmur of the streets. Those eternal bells depress me. 
 The closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all the glittering 
 
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 57 
 
 and endless succession of knacks and gewgaws, and ostenta- 
 tiously displayed wares of tradesmen, which make a week-day 
 saunter through the less busy parts of the metropolis so delightful 
 — are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle over — ^no busy 
 faces to recreate the idle man who contemplates them ever pass- 
 ing by — the very face of business a charm by contrast to his 
 temporary relaxation from it. Nothing to be seen but unhappy 
 countenances — or half-happy at best — of emancipated 'prentices 
 and little tradesfolks, with here and there a servant maid that has 
 got leave to go out, who, slaving all the week, with the habit has 
 lost almost the capacity of enjoying a free hour ; and livelily ex- 
 pressing the hoUowness of a day's pleasuring. The very stroll- 
 ers in the fields on that day look anything but comfortable. 
 
 But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day at 
 Christmas, witli a full week in the summer to go and air myself 
 in my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last was a great 
 indulgence ; and the prospect of its recurrence, I believe, alone 
 kept me up through the year, and made my durance tolerable. 
 But when the week came round, did the glittering phantom ot 
 the distance keep touch with me ? or rather was it not a series of 
 seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, and a 
 wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the most of them ? 
 Where was the quiet, where the promised rest ? Before I had a 
 taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the desk again, counting 
 upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must intervene before such 
 another snatch would come. Still the prospect of its coming 
 threw something of an illumination upon the darker side of my 
 captivity. Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have sus- 
 tained my thraldom. 
 
 Independently of the rigors of attendance, I have ever been 
 haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for 
 business. This, during my latter years, has increased to such a 
 degree, that it was visible in all the lines of my countenance. 
 My health and my good spirits flagged. I had perpetually a 
 dread of some crisis, to which I should be found unequal. Be- 
 sides my daylight servitude, I served over again all night in my 
 sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, 
 errors in my accounts, and the like. I was fifty years of age, 
 
53 ELIA. 
 
 and no prospect of emancipation presented itself. I had grown to 
 my desk, as it were ; and the wood had entered into my soul. 
 
 My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me upon the 
 trouble legible in my countenance ; but I did not know that it 
 had raised the suspicions of any of my employers, when, on the 
 
 5th of last month, a day ever to be remembered by me, L , 
 
 the junior partner in the firm, calling me on one side, directly 
 taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly inquired the cause of 
 them. So taxed, I honestly made confession of my infirmity, and 
 added that I was afraid I should eventually be obliged to resign 
 his service. He spoke some words of course to hearten me, and 
 there the matter rested. A whole week I remained laboring un- 
 der the impression that I had acted imprudently in my disclosure ; 
 that I had foolishly given a handle against myself, and had been 
 anticipating my own dismissal. A week passed in this manner, 
 the most anxious one, I verily believe, in my whole life, when on 
 the evening of the 12th of April, just as I was about quitting my 
 desk to go home (it might be about eight o'clock) I received an 
 awful summons to attend the presence of the whole assembled 
 firm in the formidable back parlor. I thought now my time is 
 surely come, I have done for myself, I am going to be told that 
 
 they have no longer occasion for me. L , I could see, smiled 
 
 at the terror I was in, which was a little relief to me, — when to 
 
 my utter astonishment B , the eldest partner, began a formal 
 
 harangue to me on the length of my services, my very meritori- 
 ous conduct during the whole of the time (the deuce, thought I, 
 how did he find out that ? I protest I never had the confidence 
 to think as much). He went on to descant on the expediency of 
 retiring at a certain time of life (how my heart panted !), and 
 asking me a few questions as to the amount of my own property, 
 of which I have a little, ended with a proposal, to which his three 
 partners nodded a grave assent, that I should accept from the 
 house, which I had served so well, a pension for life to the amount 
 of two-thirds of my accustomed salary — a magnificent ofier ! 1 
 do not know what I answered between surprise and gratitude, but 
 it was understood that I accepted their proposal, and I was told 
 that I was free from that hour to leave their service. I stam- 
 mered out a bow, and at just ten minutes after eight I went home 
 
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 69 
 
 for ever. This noble benefit — gratitude forbids me to conceal 
 their names — I owe to the kindness of the most munificent firm in 
 the world — the house of Boldero, Merryweather, Bosanquet, and 
 Lacy. 
 
 Estoperpetua ! 
 
 For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I could 
 only apprehend my felicity ; 1 was too confused to taste it sin- 
 cerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy, and knowing 
 that I was not. I was in the condition of a prisoner in the old " 
 Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty years' confinement. I 
 could scarce trust myself with myself. It was like passing out 
 of Time into Eternity — for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to 
 have his Time all to himself. It seemed to me that I had more 
 time on my hands than I could ever manage. From a poor man, 
 poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue ; I 
 could see no end of my possessions ; I wanted some steward, or 
 judicious bailiff*, to manage my estates in Time for me. And 
 here let me caution persons grown old in active business, not 
 lightly, nor without weighing their own resources, to forego their 
 customary employment all at once, for there may be danger in it. 
 I feel it by myself, but I know that my resources are sufficient ; and 
 now that those first giddy raptures have subsided, I have a quiet 
 home-feeling of the blessedness of my condition. I am in no 
 hurry. Having all holidays, I am as though I had none. If 
 Time hung heavy upon me, I could walk it away ; but I do not 
 walk all day long, as I used to do in those old transient holidays, 
 thirty miles a day, to make the most of them. If Time were 
 troublesome, I could read it away ; but I do not read in that vio- 
 lent measure, with which, having no time my own but candle- 
 light Time, I used to weary out my head and eyesight in by- 
 gone winters. I walk, read, or scribble (as now), just when the 
 fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure ; I let it come to 
 me. I am like the man 
 
 that's born, and has his years come to him 
 
 In some green desert. 
 
 " Years !" you will say ; " what is this superannuated sim 
 
60 ELI A. 
 
 pleton calculating upon ? He has already told us that he is past 
 fifty." 
 
 I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of 
 them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to 
 myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is 
 the only true Time, which a man can properly call his own, that 
 which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he 
 may be said to live it, is other people's Time, not his. The 
 remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for 
 me threefold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as 
 long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair rule-of-three sum. 
 
 Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the commence- 
 ment of my freedom, and of which all traces are not yet gone, 
 one was, that a vast traict of time had intervened since I quitted 
 the Counting House. I could not conceive of it as an affair of 
 yesterday. The partners and the clerks with whom I had for so 
 many years, and for so many hours in each day of the year, 
 been closely associated — being suddenly removed from them — 
 they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine passage, which 
 may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Robert 
 Howard, speaking of a friend's death : — 
 
 'Twas but just now he went away ; 
 
 I have not since had time to shed a tear ; 
 And yet the distance does the same appear 
 As if he had been a thousand years from me. 
 Time takes no measure in Eternity. 
 
 To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to go 
 among them once or twice since ; to visit my old desk-fellows — 
 my co-brethren of the quill — that I had left below in the state 
 militant. Not all the kindness with which they received me 
 could quite restore to me that pleasant familiarity, which I had 
 heretofore enjoyed among them. We cracked some of our old 
 jokes, but methought they went off but faintly. My old desk ; 
 the peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated to another. I 
 
 knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. D 1 take me, 
 
 if I did not feel some remorse — beast, if I had not — at quitting 
 my old compeers, the faithful partners of my toil for six-and- 
 
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 61 
 
 thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and conun- 
 drums the ruggedness of my professional road. Had it been so 
 rugged then, after all ? or was I a coward simply ? Well, it is 
 too late to repent ; and I also know that these suggestions are a 
 common fallacy of the mind on such occasions. But my heart 
 smote me. I had violently broken the bands betwixt us. It was 
 at least not courteous. I shall be some time before I get quite 
 reconciled to the separation. Farewell, old cronies, yet not for 
 long, for again and again 1 will come among ye, if I shall have 
 
 your leave» Farewell, Ch , dry, sarcastic, and friendly ! 
 
 Do , mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly ! PI , officious 
 
 to do, and to volunteer, good services ! — and thou, thou dreary 
 pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a Whittington of old, stately 
 house of Merchants ; with thy labyrinthine passages, and light- 
 excluding, pent-up offices, where cahdles for one-half the year 
 supplied the place of the sun's light ; unhealthy contributor to 
 my weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell ! In thee remain, 
 and not in the obscure collection of some wandering bookseller, 
 my " works !" There let them rest, as I do from my labors, 
 piled on thy massy shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aqui- 
 nas left, and full as useful ! My mantle I bequeath among ye. 
 
 A fortnight has passed since the date of my first communica- 
 tion. At that period I was approaching to tranquillity, but had 
 not reached it. I boasted of a calm indeed, but it was compara- 
 tive only. Something of the first flutter was left ; an unsettling 
 sense of novelty ; the dazzle to weak eyes of unaccustomed 
 light. I missed my old chains, forsooth, as if they had been some 
 necessary part of my apparel. I was a poor Carthusian, from 
 strict cellular discipline suddenly by some revolution returned 
 upon the world. I am now as if I had never been other than my 
 own master. It is natural to me to go where I please, to do what 
 I please. I find myself at eleven o'clock in the day in Bond- 
 street, and it seems to me that I have been sauntering there at 
 that very hour for years past. I digress into Soho, to explore a 
 book-stall. Methinks I have been thirty years a collector. There 
 is nothing strange nor new in it. I find myself before a fine pic- 
 ture in the morning. Was it ever otherwise ? What is become 
 of Fish-street Hill ? Where is Fenchurch-street ? Stones of old 
 
62 ELIA. 
 
 Mincing-lane, which I have worn with my daily pilgrimage for 
 six-and-thirty years, to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are 
 your everlasting flints now vocal ? I indent the gayer flags of 
 Pall Mall. It is 'Change time, and I am strangely among the 
 Elgin marbles. It was no hyperbole when I ventured to com- 
 pare the change in my condition to a passing into another world. 
 Time stands still in a manner to me. I have lost all distinction 
 of season. I do not know the day of the week or of the month. 
 Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to 
 the foreign post days ; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the 
 next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday 
 night's sensations. The genius of each day was upon me dis- 
 tinctly during the whole of it, affecting my appetite, spirits, 
 &c. The phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to fol- 
 low, sate as a load upon my poor Sabbath recreations. What 
 charm has washed that Ethiop white ? What is gone of Black 
 Monday ? All days are the same. Sunday itself— that unfor- 
 tunate failure of a holiday, as it too often proved, what with my 
 sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quan- 
 tity of pleasure out of it — is melted down into a week day. I 
 can spare to go to church now, without grudging the huge cantle 
 which it used to seem to cut out of the holiday. I have Time 
 for everything. I can visit a sick friend. I can interrupt the 
 man of much occupation when he is busiest. I can insult over 
 him with an invitation to take a day's pleasure with me to Wind- 
 sor this fine May-morning. It is Lucretian pleasure to behold 
 the poor drudges, whom I have left behind in the world, carking 
 and caring ; like horses in a mill, drudging on in the same eter- 
 nal round — and what is it all for ? A man can never have too 
 much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I 
 would christen him Nothing-to-do ; he should do nothing. Man, 
 I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. 
 I am altogether for the life contemplative. Will no kindly earth- 
 quake come and swallow up those accursed cotton mills ? Take 
 me that lumber of a desk there, and bowl it down 
 
 As low as to the fiends. 
 I ana nc longer *****=«', clerk to the Firm of, &c. I am 
 
f 
 
 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 63 
 
 Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. I am 
 already come to be known by my vacant face and careless ges- 
 ture, perambulating at no fixed pace, nor with any settled pur- 
 pose. I walk about ; not to and from. They tell me, a certain 
 cum dignitate air, that has been buried so long with my other 
 good parts, has begun to shoot forth in my person. I grow into 
 gentility perceptibly. When I take up a newspaper, it is to read 
 the state of the opera. Opvs operaium est. I have done all 
 that I came into this world to do. I have worked task-work, and 
 have the rest of the day to myself. 
 
64 ELIA. 
 
 THE GfENTEEl STYLE IN WRITING. 
 
 It is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord Shaftesbury, and Sir 
 William Temple, are models of the genteel style in writing. 
 We should prefer saying — of the lordly, and the gentlemanly. 
 Nothing can be more unlike, than the inflated finical rhapsodies 
 of Shaftesbury and the plain natural chit-chat of Temple. The 
 man of rank is discernible in both writers ; but in the one it is 
 only insinuated gracefully, in the other it stands out offensively. 
 The peer seems to have written with his coronet on, and his Earl's 
 mantle before him ; the commoner in his elbow-chair and un- 
 dress. — What can be more pleasant than the way in which the 
 retired statesman peeps out in his essays, penned by the latter in 
 his delightful retreat at Shene ? They scent of Nimeguen, and 
 the Hague. Scarce an authority is quoted under an ambassador. 
 Don Francisco de Melo, a " Portugal Envoy in England," tells 
 him it was frequent in his country for men, spent with age and 
 other decays, so as they could not hope for above a year or two 
 of life, to ship themselves away in a Brazil fleet, and after their 
 arrival there to go on a great length, sometimes of twenty or 
 thirty years, or more, by the force of that vigor they recovered 
 with that remove. " Whether such an effect (Temple beautifully 
 adds) might grow from the air, or the fruits of that climate, or 
 by approaching nearer the sun, which is the fountain of light 
 and heat, when their natural heat was so far decayed : or whe- 
 ther the piecing out of an old man's life were worth the pains ; I 
 cannot tell : perhaps the play is not worth the candle." Mon- 
 sieur Pompone, " French Ambassador in his (Sir William's) time 
 at the Hague," certifies him, that in his lif9i|^ had never heard 
 of any man in France that arrived at a hunHred years of age ; 
 a limitation of life which the old gentleman imputes to the ex 
 
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 65 
 
 cellence of their climate, giving them such a liveliness of temper 
 and humor, as disposes them to more pleasures of all kinds than 
 in other countries ; and moralises upon the matter very sensibly. 
 The " late Robert Earl of Leicester" furnishes him with a story 
 of a Countess of Desmond, married out of England in Edward 
 the Fourth's time, and who lived far in King James's reign. The 
 " same noble person " gives him an account, how such a year, 
 in the same reign, there went about the country a set of morrice- 
 dancers, composed of ten men who danced, a Maid Marian, 
 and a tabor and pipe : and how these twelve, one with another, 
 made up twelve hundred years. " It was not so much (says 
 Temple) that so many in one small county (Hertfordshire) should 
 live to that age, as that they should be in vigor and in humor to 
 travel and to dance." Monsieur Zulichem, one of his " col- 
 leagues at the Hague," informs him of a cure for the gout; 
 which is confirmed by another " Envoy," Monsieur Serinchamps, 
 in that town, who had tried it. — Old Prince Maurice of Nassau 
 recommends to him the use of hammocks in that complaint ; 
 having been allured to sleep, while suffering under it himself, by 
 the " constant motion or swinging of those airy beds." Count 
 Egmont, and the Rhinegrave who " was killed last summer be- 
 fore Maestricht," impart to him their experiences. 
 
 But the rank of the writer is never more innocently disclosed 
 than where he takes for granted the compliments paid by foreign- 
 ers to his fruit-trees. For the taste and perfection of what we 
 esteem the best, he can truly say, that the French, who have, 
 eaten his peaches and grapes at Shene in no very ill year, have 
 generally concluded that the last are as good as any they have 
 eaten in France on this side Fontainebleau ; and the first as good 
 as any they have eaten in Gascony. Italians have agreed his white 
 figs to be as good as any of that sort in Italy, which is the earlier 
 kind of white fig there ; for in the later kind and the blue, we 
 cannot come near the warm climates, no more than in the Fron- 
 tignac or Muscat grape. His orange-trees, too, are as large as 
 any he saw when he was young in France, except those of Fon- 
 tainebleau ; or what he has seen since in the Low Countries, ex- 
 cept some very old ones of the Prince of Orange's. Of grapes 
 he had the honor of bringing over four sorts into England, which 
 
 PART II. 6 
 
66 ELIA. 
 
 he enumerates, and supposes that they are all by this time pretty 
 common among some gardeners in his neighborhood, as well as 
 several persons of quality ; for he ever thought all things of this 
 kind " the commoner they are made the better." The garden 
 pedantry with which he asserts that 'tis to little purpose to plant 
 any of the best fruits, as peaches or grapes, hardly, he doubts, 
 beyond Northamptonshire at the furthest northwards ; and praises 
 the " Bishop of Munster at Cosevelt," for attempting nothing be- 
 yond cherries in that tjold climate ; is equally pleasant and in 
 character. " I may perhaps" (he thus ends his sweet Garden 
 Essay with a passage worthy of Cowley) " be allowed to know 
 something of this trade, since I have so long allowed myself to 
 be good for nothing else, which few men will do, or enjoy their 
 gardens, without often looking abroad to see how other matters 
 play, what motions in the state, and what invitations they may 
 hope for into other scenes. For my own part, as the country 
 life, and this part of it more particularly, were the inclination of 
 my youth itself, so they are the pleasure of my age ; and I can 
 truly say that, among many great employments that have fallen 
 to my share, I have never asked or sought for any of them, but 
 have often endeavored to escape from them, into the ease and 
 freedom of a private scene, where a man may go his own way 
 and his own pace, in the common paths and circles of life. The 
 measure of choosing well is whether a man likes what he has 
 chosen, which, I thank God, has befallen me ; and though among 
 .the follies of my life, building and planting have not been the 
 least, and have cost me more than I have the confidence to own ; 
 yet they have been fully recompensed by the sweetness and satis- 
 faction of this retreat, where, since my resolution taken of never 
 entering again into any public employments, I have passed five 
 years without ever once going to town, though I am almost in 
 sight of it, and have a house there always ready to receive me. 
 Nor has this been any sort of affectation, as some have thought 
 it, but a mere want of desire or humor to make so small a re- 
 move ; for when I am in this comer, I can truly say with Horace, 
 Me quoties reficit, SfC. 
 
 " ' Me, when the cold Digentian stream revives. 
 What does my friend believe I think or ask ? 
 
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 67 
 
 Let me yet less possess, so I may live, 
 Whate'er of life remains, unto myself. 
 May I have books enough ; and one year's store, 
 Not to depend upon each doubtful hour : 
 This is enough of mighty Jove to pray. 
 Who, as be pleases, gives and takes away.' " 
 
 The writings of Temple are, in general, after this easy copy. 
 On one occasion, indeed, his wit, which was mostly subordinate 
 to nature and tenderness, has seduced him into a string of felici- 
 tous antitheses ; which, it is obvious to remark, have been a model 
 to Addison and succeeding essayists. " Who would not be cove- 
 tous, and with reason," he says, " if health could be purchased 
 with gold ? who not ambitious, if it were at the command of 
 power, or restored by honor ? but, alas ! a white staff will not 
 help gouty feet to walk better than a common cane ; nor a blue 
 riband bind up a wound so well as a fillet. The glitter of gold, 
 or of diamonds, will but hurt sore eyes instead of curing them ; 
 and an aching head will be no more eased by wearing a crown 
 than a common night-cap." In a far better style, and more ac- 
 cordant with his own humor of plainness, are the concluding 
 sentences of his " Discourse upon Poetry." Temple took a part 
 in the controversy about the ancient and the modern learning ; 
 and, with that partiality so natural and so graceful in an old man, 
 whose state engagements had lefl him little leisure to look into 
 modern productions, while his retirement gave him occasion to 
 look back upon the classic studies of his youth — decided in favor 
 of the latter. " Certain it is," he says, " that, whether the 
 fierceness of the Gothic humors, or noise of their perpetual wars, 
 frighted it away, or that the unequal mixture of the modern lan- 
 guages would not bear it — the great heights and excellency both 
 of poetry and music fell with the Roman learning and empire, 
 and have never since recovered the admiration and applauses that 
 before attended them. Yet, such as they are amongst us, they 
 must be confessed to be the softest and the sweetest, the most 
 general and the most innocent amusements of common time and 
 life. They still find room in the courts of princes, and the cot- 
 tages of shepherds. They serve to revive and animate the dead 
 calm of poor and idle lives, and to allay or divert the violent 
 
68 ELIA. 
 
 passions and perturbations of the greatest and the busiest men. 
 And both these effects are of equal use to human life ; for the 
 mind of man is like the sea, which is neither agreeable to the 
 beholder nor the voyager, in a calm or in a storm, but is so to 
 both when a little agitated by gentle gales; and so the mind, 
 when moved by soft and easy passions or affections. I know very 
 well that many who pretend to be wise by the forms of being 
 grave, are apt to despise both poetry and music, as toys and trifles 
 too light for the use or entertainment of serious men. But who- 
 ever find themselves wholly insensible to their charms, would, I 
 think, do well to keep their own counsel, for fear of reproach- 
 ing their own temper, and bringing the goodness of their 
 natures, if not of their understandings, into question. While 
 this world lasts, I doubt not but the pleasure and request of these 
 two entertainments will do so too ; and happy those that content 
 themselves with these, or any other so easy and so innocent, and 
 do not trouble the world or other men, because they cannot be 
 quiet themselves, though nobody hurts them." " When all is 
 done (he concludes), human life is at the greatest and the best 
 but like a froward child, that must be played with, and humored 
 a little, to keep it quiet, till it falls asleep, and then the care is 
 over." 
 
BARBARA S . 69 
 
 BARBARA S 
 
 On the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, 1 forget which it 
 
 was, just as the clock had struck one, Barbara S , with her 
 
 accustomed punctuality, ascended the long rambling staircase, 
 with awkward interposed landing-places, which led to the office, 
 or rather a sort of box with a desk in it, whereat sat the then 
 Treasurer of (what few of our readers may remember) the Old 
 Bath Theatre. All over the island it was the custom, and re- 
 mains so I believe to this day, for the players to receive their 
 weekly stipend on the Saturday. It was not much that Barbara 
 had to claim. 
 
 This little maid had just entered her eleventh year ; but her 
 important station at the theatre, as it seemed to her, with the bene- 
 fits which she felt to accrue from her pious application of her 
 small earnings, had given an air of womanhood to her steps and 
 to her behavior. You would have taken her to have been at least 
 five years older. 
 
 Till lately she had merely been employed in choruses, or where 
 children were wanted to fill up the scene. But the manager, ob- 
 serving a diligence and adroitness in her above her age, had for 
 some few months past intrusted to her the performance of whole 
 parts. You may guess the self-consequence of the promoted 
 Barbara. She had already drawn tears in young Arthur ; had 
 rallied Richard with infantine petulance in the Duke of York ; 
 and in her turn had rebuked that petulance when she was Prince 
 of Wales. She would have done the elder child in Morton's 
 pathetic after-piece to the life ; but as yet the " Children in the 
 Wood " was not. 
 
 Long after this little girl was grown an aged woman, I have 
 
70 ELIA. 
 
 seen some of these small parts, each making two or three pages 
 at most, copied out in the rudest hand of the then prompter, who 
 doubtless transcribed a little more carefully and fairly for the 
 grown-up tragedy ladies of the establishment. But such as they 
 were, blotted and scrawled, as for a child's use, she kept them 
 all ; and in the zenith of her after reputation it was a delightful 
 sight to behold them bound up in costliest morocco, each single — 
 each small part making a hook — with fine clasps, gilt-splashed, 
 &c. She had conscientiously kept them as they had been de- 
 livered to her ; not a blot had been effaced or tampered with. 
 They were precious to her for their affecting remembrancings. 
 They were her principia, her rudiments ; the elementary atoms ; 
 the little steps by which she pressed forward to perfection. 
 " What," she would say, " could Indian-rubber, or a pumice-stone 
 have done for these darlings !" 
 
 I am in no hurry to begin my story — indeed I have little or 
 none to tell — so I will just mention an observation of hers con- 
 nected with that interesting time. 
 
 Not long before she died I had been discoursing with her on the 
 quantity of real present emotion which a great tragic performer 
 experiences during acting. I ventured to think, that though in 
 the first instance such players must have possessed the feelings 
 which they so powerfully called up in others, yet by frequent re- 
 petition those feelings must become deadened in great measure, 
 and the performer trust to the memory of past emotion, rather 
 than express a present one. She indignantly repelled the notion, 
 that with a truly great tragedian the operation, by which such 
 effects were produced upon an audience, could ever degrade itself 
 into what was purely mechanical. With much delicacy, avoid- 
 ing to instance in her seZf-experience, she told me, that so long 
 ago as when she used to play the part of the Little Son to Mrs. 
 Porter's Isabella (I think it was), when that impressive actress 
 has been bending over her in some heart-rending colloquy, she 
 has felt real hot tears come trickling from her, which (to use her 
 powerful expression) have perfectly scalded her back. 
 
 I am not quite sure that it was Mrs. Porter ; but it was- some 
 great actress of that day. The name is indifferent ; but the fact 
 of the scalding tears I most distinctly remember. 
 
BARBARA S . 71 
 
 I was always fond of the society of players, and am not sure 
 that an impediment in my speech (which certainly kept me out 
 of the pulpit) even more than certain personal disqualifications, 
 which are often got over in that profession, did not prevent me at 
 one time of life from adopting it. I have had the honor (I must 
 ever call it) once to have been admitted to the tea-table of Miss 
 Kelly. I have played at serious whist with Mr. Liston. I have 
 chatted with ever good-humored Mrs. Charles Kemble. I have 
 conversed as friend to friend with her accomplished husband. I 
 have been indulged with a classical conference with Macready ; 
 and with a sight of the Player-picture gallery, at Mr. Mathews's, 
 when the kind owner, to remunerate me for my love of the old 
 actors (whom he loves so much), went over it with me, supplying 
 to his capital collection, what alone the artist could not give them 
 — voice ; and their living motion. Old tones, half- faded, of Dodd, 
 and Parsons, and Baddeley, have lived again for me at his bid- 
 ding. Only Edwin he could not restore to me. I have supped 
 with ; but I am growing a coxcomb. 
 
 As I was about to say — ^at the desk of the then treasurer of the 
 old Bath theatre — not Diamond's — presented herself the little Bar- 
 bara S . 
 
 The parents of Barbara had been in reputable circumstances. 
 The father had practised, I believe, as an apothecary in the town. 
 But his practice, from causes which I feel my own infirmity too 
 sensibly that way to arraign — or perhaps from that pure infelicity 
 which accompanies some people in their walk through life, and 
 which it is impossible to lay at the door of imprudence — was now 
 reduced to nothing. They were in fact in the very teeth of 
 starvation, when the manager, who knew and respected them in 
 better days, took the little Barbara into his company. 
 
 At the period I commenced with, her slender earnings were the 
 sole support of the family, including two younger sisters. I must 
 throw a veil over some mortifying circumstances. . Enough to 
 say, that her Saturday's pittance was the only chance of a Sun- 
 day's (generally their only) meal of meat. 
 
 One thing I will only mention, that in some child's part, where 
 in her theatrical character she was to sup off a roast fowl (O joy 
 to Barbara !) some comic actor, who was for the night caterer 
 
72 ELIA. 
 
 for this dainty — in the misguided humor of his part, threw over 
 the dish such a quantity of salt (O grief and pain of heart to Bar- 
 bara !) that when she crammed a portion of it into her mouth, 
 she was obliged sputteringly to reject it ; and what with shame 
 of her ill-acted part, and pain of real appetite at missing such a 
 dainty, her little heart sobbed almost to breaking, till a flood of 
 tears, which the well-fed spectators were totally unable to com- 
 prehend, mercifully relieved her. 
 
 This was the little, starved, meritorious maid, who stood before 
 old Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for her Saturday's payment. 
 
 Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old theatrical peo- 
 ple besides herself say, of all men least calculated for a treasurer 
 He had no head for accounts, paid away at random, kept scarce 
 any books, and summing up at the week's end, if he found him- 
 self a pound or so deficient, blest himself that it was no worse. 
 
 Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare half guinea. — By 
 mistake he popped into her hand — a whole one. 
 Barbara tripped away. 
 
 She was entirely unconscious at first of the mistake : God 
 knows, Ravenscroft would never have discovered it. 
 
 But when she had got down to the first of those uncouth land- 
 ing-places, she became sensible of an unusual weight of metal 
 pressing her little hand. 
 Now mark the dilemma. 
 
 She was by nature a good child. From her parents and those 
 about her she had imbibed no contrary influence. But then they 
 had taught her nothing. Poor men's smoky cabins are not always 
 porticoes of moral philosophy. This little maid had no instinct 
 to evil, but then she might be said to have no fixed principle. 
 She had heard honesty commended, but never dreamed of its ap- 
 plication to herself. She thought of it as something which con- 
 cerned grown-up people, men and women. She had never known 
 temptation, or thought of preparing resistance against it. 
 
 Her first impulse was to go back to the old treasurer, and ex- 
 plain to him his blunder. He was already so confused with age, 
 besides a natural want of punctuality, that she would have had 
 some diflficulty in making him understand it. She saw that in an 
 instant. And then it was such a bit of money ! and then the 
 
BARBARA S . 73 
 
 t 
 
 image of a larger allowance of butcher's-meat on their table next 
 day came across her, till her little eyes glistened, and her mouth 
 moistened. But then Mr. Ravenscroft had always been so good- 
 natured, had stood her friend behind the scenes, and even recom- 
 mended her promotion to some of her little parts. But again the 
 old man was reputed to be worth a world of money. He was 
 supposed to have fifty pounds a year clear of the theatre. And 
 then came staring upon her the figures of her little stockingless 
 and shoeless sisters. And when she looked at her own neat white 
 cotton stockings, which her situation at the theatre had made it 
 indispensable for her mother to provide for her, with hard strain- 
 ing and pinching from the family stock, and thought how glad 
 she should be to cover their poor feet with the same — and how 
 then they could accompany her to rehearsals, which they had 
 hitherto been precluded from doing, by reason of their unfashiona- 
 ble attire, — in these thoughts she reached the second landing- 
 place — the second, I mean, from the top — for there was still ano- 
 ther left to traverse. 
 
 Now virtue support Barbara ! 
 
 And that never-failing friend did step m — for at that moment a 
 strength not her own, I have heard her say, was revealed to her 
 — a reason above reasoning — and without her own agency, as it 
 seemed (for she never felt her feet to move) she found herself 
 transported back to the individual desk she had just quitted, and 
 her hand in the old hand of Ravenscroft, who in silence took back 
 the refunded treasure, and who had been sitting (good man) in- 
 sensible to the lapse of minutes, which to her were anxious ages, 
 and from that moment a dead peace fell upon her heart, and she 
 knew the quality of honesty. 
 
 A year or two's unrepining application to her profession bright- 
 ened up the feet, and the prospects, of her little sisters, set the 
 whole family upon their legs again, and released her from the 
 difficulty of discussing moral dogmas upon a landing-place. 
 
 I have heard her say, that it was a surprise, not much short of 
 mortification to her, to see the coolness with which the old man 
 pooketed the diflerence, which had caused her such mortal throes. 
 
 Xhis anecdote of herself I had in the year 180Q, from the mouth 
 
74 ELIA. 
 
 of the late Mrs. Crawford,* then sixty-seven years of age (she 
 died soon after) ; and to her struggles upon this childish occasion 
 I have sometimes ventured to think her indebted for that power of 
 rending the heart in the representation of conflicting emotions, for 
 which in after years she was considered as little inferior (if at all 
 so in the part of Lady Randolph) even to Mrs. Siddons. 
 
 * The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she changed by soe- 
 cessive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, and Crawford. She was Mrs. 
 Crawford, a third time a widow, when I knew her. 
 
THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 75 
 
 THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY 
 
 IN A LETTER TO R S , ESQ. 
 
 Though in some points of doctrine, and perhaps of discipline, I 
 am diffident of lending a perfect assent to that church which you 
 have so worthily historijied, yet may the ill time never come to 
 me, when with a chilled heart or a portion of irreverent senti- 
 ment, I shall enter her beautiful and time-hallowed Edifices. 
 Judge then of my mortification when, after attending the choral 
 anthems of last Wednesday at Westminster, and being desirous 
 of renewing my acquaintance, after lapsed years, with the tombs 
 and antiquities there, I found myself excluded ; turned out like a 
 dog, or some profane person, into the common street, with feel- 
 ings not very congenial to the place, or to the solemn service 
 which I had been listening to. It was a jar after that music. 
 
 You had your education at Westminster ; and doubtless among 
 those dim aisles and cloisters, you must have gathered much of 
 that devotional feeling in those young years, on which your purest 
 mind feeds still — and may it feed ! The antiquarian spirit, 
 strong in you, and gracefully blending ever with the religious, 
 may have been sown in you among those wrecks of splendid 
 mortality. You owe it to the place of your education ; you owe 
 it to your learned fondness for the architecture of your ancestors; 
 you owe it to the venerableness of your ecclesiastical establish- 
 ment, which is daily lessened and called in question through these 
 practices — ^to speak aloud your sense of them ; never to desist 
 raising your voice against them, till they be totally done away 
 with and abolished ; till the doors of Westminster Abbey be no 
 longer closed against the decent, though low-in-purse, enthusiast, 
 
•76 , ELIA. 
 
 or blameless devotee, who must commit an injury against his 
 family economy, if he would be indulged with a bare admission 
 within its walls. You owe it to the decencies, which you wish to 
 see maintained, in its impressive services, that our Cathedral be 
 no longer an object of inspection to the poor at those times only, 
 in which they must rob from their attendance on the worship 
 every minute which they can bestow upon the fabric. In vain 
 the public prints have taken up this subject, in vain such poor 
 nameless writers as myself express their indignation. A word 
 from you. Sir — a hint in your Journal — would be sufficient to 
 fling open the doors of the Beautiful Temple again, as we can re- 
 member them when we were boys. At that time of life, what 
 would the imaginative faculty (such as it is) in both of us, have 
 suffered, if the entrance to so much reflection had been obstructed 
 by the demand of so much silver ! — If we had scraped it up to 
 gain an occasional admission (as we certainly should have done) 
 would the sight of those old tombs have been as impressive to us 
 (while we have been weighing anxiously prudence against senti- 
 ment) as when the gates stood open as those of the adjacent Park ; 
 when we could walk in at any time, as the mood brought us, for a 
 shorter or longer time, as that lasted ? Is the being shown over 
 a place the same as silently for ourselves detecting the genius of 
 it ? In no part of our beloved Abbey now can a person find 
 entrance (out of service time) under the sum of two shillings. 
 The rich and the great will smile at the anticlimax, presumed to 
 lie in these two short words. But you can tell them. Sir, how 
 much quiet worth, how much capacity for enlarged feeling, how 
 much taste and genius, may coexist, especially in youth, with a 
 purse incompetent to this demand. — A respected friend of ours, 
 during his late visit to the metropolis, presented himself for ad- 
 mission to St. Paul's. - At the same time a decently clothed man, 
 with as decent a wife, and child, were bargaining for the same 
 indulgence. The price was only two-pence each person. The 
 poor but decent man hesitated, desirous to go in ; but there were 
 three of them, and he turned away reluctantly. Perhaps he 
 wished to have seen the tomb of Nelson. Perhaps the Interior of 
 the Cathedral was his object. But in the state of his finances, 
 even sixpence might reasonably seem too much. Tell the Aris- 
 
THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 
 
 tocracy of the country (no man can do it more impressively) ; 
 instruct them of what value these insignificant pieces of money, 
 these minims to their sight, may be to their humbler brethren. 
 Shame these Sellers out of the Temple. Stifle not the suggestions 
 of your better nature with the pretext, that an indiscriminate ad- 
 mission would expose the Tombs to violation. Remember your 
 boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear, of a mob in the Abbey, 
 while it was free to all ? Do the rabble come there, or trouble 
 their heads about such speculations ? It is all that you can do to 
 drive them into your churches; they do not voluntarily ofier 
 themselves. They have, alas ! no passion for antiquities ; for 
 tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. If they had, they would 
 be no longer the rabble. 
 
 For forty years that I have known the Fabric, the only well- 
 attested charge of violation adduced, has been — a ridiculous dis- 
 memberment committed upon the effigy of that amiable spy, 
 Major Andre. And is it for this — the wanton mischief of some 
 school-boy, fired perhaps with raw notions of Transatlantic Free- 
 dom — or the remote possibility of such a mischief occurring 
 again, so easily to be prevented by stationing a constable within 
 the walls, if the vergers are incompetent to the duty — is it upon 
 such wretched pretences, that the people of England are made to 
 pay a new Peter's Pence so long abrogated ; or must content 
 themselves with contemplating the ragged Exterior of their Cathe- 
 dral ? The mischief was done about the time that you were a 
 scholai ♦h'^re. Do you know anything about the unfortunate 
 relic ? 
 
18 ELIA. 
 
 AMICUS BEDIVIVUS. 
 
 Where were ye. Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
 Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? 
 
 I DO not know when I have experienced a stranger sensation, than 
 on seeing my old friend G. D., who had been paying me a morn- 
 ing visit a few Sundays back, at my cottage at Islington, upon 
 taking leave, instead of turning down the right-hand path by 
 which he had entered — with staff in hand, and at noon-day deli- 
 berately march right forwards into the midst of the stream that 
 runs by us, and totally disappear. 
 
 A spectacle like this at dusk would have been appalling enough ; 
 but in the broad open daylight, to witness such an unreserved 
 motion towards self-destruction in a valued friend, took from me 
 all power of speculation. 
 
 How I found my feet, I know not. Consciousness was quite 
 gone. Some spirit, not my own, whirled me to the spot. I re- 
 member nothing but the silvery apparition of a good white head 
 emerging ; nigh which a staff (the hand unseen that wielded it) 
 pointed upwards, as feeling for the skies. In a moment (if time 
 was in that time) he was on my shoulders, and I — freighted with a 
 load more precious than his who bore Anchises. 
 
 And here I cannot but do justice to the officious zeal of sundry 
 passers by, who, albeit arriving a little too late to participate in 
 the honors of the rescue, in philanthropic shoals came thronging 
 to communicate their advice as to the recovery ; prescribing va- 
 riously the application, or non-application, of salt, &c., to the 
 person of the patient. Life meantime was ebbing fast away, 
 amidst the stifle of conflicting judgments, when one, more saga- 
 cious than the rest, by a bright thought, proposed sending for the 
 
AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 
 
 Doctor. Trite as the counsel was, and impossible, as one should 
 think, to be missed on, — shall I confess ? — in this emergency it 
 was to me as if an Angel had spoken. Great previous exertions 
 — and mine had not been inconsiderable — are commonly followed 
 by a debility of purpose. This was a moment of irresolution. 
 
 MoNOCULUS — for so, in default of catching his true name, I 
 choose to designate the medical gentleman who now appeared — is 
 a grave, middle-aged person, who, without having studied at the 
 college, or truckled to the pedantry of a diploma, hath employed 
 a great portion of his valuable time in experimental processes 
 upon the bodies of unfortunate fellow-creatures, in whom the vital 
 spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would seem extinct, and lost for 
 ever. He omitteth no occasion of obtruding his services, from a 
 case of common surfeit suffocation to the ignobler obstructions, 
 sometimes induced by a too wilful application of the plant canna- 
 bis outwardly. But though he declineth not altogether these drier 
 extinctions, his occupation tendeth, for the most part, to water- 
 practice ; for the convenience of which, he hath judiciously fixed 
 his quarters near the grand repository of the stream mentioned, 
 where day and night, from his little watch-tower, at the Middle- 
 ton's Head, he listeneth to detect the wrecks of drowned mortality 
 — partly, as he saith, to be upon the spot — and partly, because 
 the liquids which he useth to prescribe to himself, and his patients, 
 on these distressing occasions, are ordinarily more conveniently to 
 be found at these common hostelries than in the shops and phials 
 of the apothecaries. His ear hath arrived to such finesse by 
 practice, that it is reported he can distinguish a plunge, at a half 
 furlong distance ; and can tell if it be casual or deliberate. He 
 weareth a medal suspended over a suit, originally of a sad brown, 
 but which, by time and frequency of nightly divings, has been 
 dinged into a true professional sable. He pagseth by the name 
 of Doctor, and is remarkable for wanting his left eye. His rem- 
 edy — after a sufficient application of warm blankets, friction, &c., 
 is a simple tumbler or more, of the purest Cognac, with water, 
 made as hot as the convalescent can bear it. Where he findeth, 
 as in the case of my friend, a squeamish subject, he condescend- 
 eth to be the taster ; and showeth, by his own example, the in- 
 nocuous nature of the prescription. Nothing can be more kind 
 
80 ELIA. 
 
 or encouraging than this procedure. It addeth confidence to the 
 patient, to see his medical adviser go hand in hand with himself 
 in the remedy. When the doctor sM^alloweth his own draught, 
 what peevish invalid can refuse to pledge him in the potion ? la 
 fine, MoNocuLUS is a humane, sensible man, who, for a slender 
 pittance, scarce enough to sustain life, is content to wear it out in 
 the endeavor to save the lives of others — his pretensions so mode- 
 rate, that with difficulty I could press a crown upon him, for the 
 price of restoring the existence of such an invaluable creature to 
 society as G. D. 
 
 It was pleasant to observe the effect of the subsiding alarm up- 
 on the nerves of the dear absentee. It seemed to have given a 
 shake to memory, calling up notice after notice, of all the provi- 
 dential deliverances he had experienced in the course of his long 
 and innocent life. Sitting up in my couch — my couch which 
 naked and void of furniture hitherto, for the salutary repose which 
 it administered, shall be Jionored with costly valance, at some 
 price, and henceforth be a state-bed at Colebrook, — he discoursed 
 of marvellous escapes — by carelessness of nurses — by pails of 
 gelid, and kettles of the boiling element, in infancy — by orchard 
 pranks, and snapping twigs, in schoolboy frolics — by descent of 
 tiles at Trumpington, and of heavier tomes at Pembroke — by 
 studious watchings, inducing frightful vigilance — by want, and 
 the fear of want, and all the sore throbbings of the learned head. 
 Anon, he would burst out into little fragments of chanting — of 
 songs long ago — ends of deliverance hymns, not remembered before 
 since childhood, but coming up now, when his heart was made 
 tender as a child's — for the tremor cordis, in the retrospect of a 
 recent deliverance, as in a case of impending danger, acting 
 upon an innocent heart, will produce a self-tenderness, which we 
 should do ill to christen cowardice ; and Shakspeare, in the latter 
 crisis, has made his good Sir Hugh to remember the sitting by 
 Babylon, and to mutter of shallow rivers. 
 
 Waters of 'Sir Hugh Middleton — what a spark you were like to 
 have extinguished for ever ! Your salubrious streams to this City, 
 for now nearly two centuries, would hardly have atoned for what 
 you were in a moment washing away. Mockery of a river — 
 liquid artifice — wretched conduit ! henceforth rank with canals, 
 
AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 81* 
 
 and sluggish aqueducts. Was it for this, that, smit in boyhood 
 with the exploration of that Abyssinian traveller, I paced the vales 
 of Amwell to explore your tributary springs^ to trace your salu- 
 tary waters sparkling through green Hertfordshire, and cultured 
 Enfield parks ? — Ye have no swans — no Naiads — no river God — 
 or did the benevolent hoary aspect of my friend tempt ye to suck 
 him in, that ye also might have the tutelary genius of your 
 waters ? 
 
 Had he been drowned in Cam, there would have been some 
 consonancy in it ; but what willows had ye to wave and rustle 
 over his moist sepulture ?— or, having no name, besides that un- 
 meaning assumption of eternal novity, did ye think to get one 
 by the noble prize, and henceforth to be termed the Stream 
 Dyerian ? 
 
 And could such spacious virtue find a grave 
 Beneath the imposthumed bubble of a wave ? 
 
 I protest, George, you shall not venture out again — no, not 
 by daylight — without a sufficient pair of spectacles — in your 
 musing moods especially. Your absence of mind we have borne, 
 till your presence of body came to be called in question by it. 
 You shall not go wandering into Euripus with Aristotle, if we can 
 help it. Fie, man, to turn dipper at your years, after your many 
 tracts in favor of sprinkling only ! 
 
 I have nothing but water in my head o'nights since this fright- 
 ful accident. Sometimes I am with Clarence in his dream. 
 At others, I behold Christian beginning to sink, and crying out to 
 his good brother Hopeful (that is, to me), " I sink in deep waters ; 
 the billows go over my head, all the waves go over me. Selah." 
 Then I have before me Palinurus, just letting go the steerage. I 
 cry out too late to save. Next follow — a mournful procession — 
 suicidal faces, saved against their wills from drowning ; dolefully 
 trailing a length of reluctant gratefulness, with ropy weeds pen- 
 dent from locks of watchet hue — constrained Lazari — Pluto's 
 half-subjects — stolen fees from the grave — bilking Charon of his 
 fare. At their head Arion — or is it G. D.? — in his singing gar- 
 ments marcheth singly, with harp in hand, and votive garland, 
 which Machaon (or Dr. Hawes) snatcheth straight, intending to 
 
 PART II. 7 
 
82 ELIA. 
 
 suspend it to the stern God of Sea. Then follow dismal streams 
 of Lethe, in which the half drenched on earth are constrained to 
 drown downright, by wharfs where Ophelia twice acts her muddy 
 death. 
 
 And, doubtless, there is some notice in that invisible world, 
 when one of us approacheth (as my friend did so lately) to their 
 inexorable precincts. When a soul knocks once, twice, at death's 
 door, the sensation aroused within the palace must be considera- 
 ble ; and the grim Feature, by modern science so often dispos- 
 sessed of his prey, must have learned by this time to pity Tan- 
 talus. 
 
 A pulse assuredly was felt along the line of the Elysian shades, 
 when the near arrival of G. D. was announced by no equivocal 
 indications. From their seats of Asphodel arose the gentler and 
 the graver ghosts — poet, or historian — of Grecian or of Roman 
 lore — to crown with unfading chaplets the half-finished love-la- 
 bors of their unwearied scholiast. Him Markland expected — him 
 Tyrwhitt hoped to encounter — him the sweet lyrist of Peter 
 House, whom he had barely seen upon earth,* with newest 
 
 airs prepared to greet ; and patron of the gentle Christ's 
 
 bay,-^who should have been his patron through life — the mild 
 Askew, with longing aspirations leaned foremost from his vene- 
 rable ^sculapian chair, to welcome into that happy company the 
 matured virtues of the man, whose tender scions in the boy \e 
 himself upon earth had so prophetically fed and watered. 
 
 * Graium tantum vidit. 
 
SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 83 
 
 SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 
 
 Sydney's Sonnets — I speak of the best of them — are among the 
 very best of their sort. They fall below the plain moral dignity, 
 the sanctity, and high yet modest spirit of self-approval, of Milton, 
 in his compositions of a similar structure. They are in truth 
 what Milton, censuring the Arcadia, says of that work (to which 
 they are a sort of after-tune or application), " vain and amatori- 
 ous " enough, yet the things in their kind (as he confesses to be 
 true of the romance) may be " full of worth and wit." They 
 savor of the Courtier, it must be allowed, and not of the Common- 
 wealthsman. But Milton was a Courtier when he wrote the 
 Masque at Ludlow Castle, and still more a Courtier when he 
 composed the Arcades. When the national struggle was to begin, 
 he becomingly cast these vanities behind him ; and if the order of 
 time had thrown Sir Philip upon the crisis which preceded the 
 Revolution, there is no reason why he should not have acted the 
 same part in that emergency, which has glorified the name of a 
 later Sydney. He did not want for plainness or boldness of spirit. 
 His letter on the French match may testify he could speak his 
 mind freely to Princes. The times did not call him to the 
 scaffold. 
 
 The Sonnets which we oflenest call to mind of Milton were the 
 composition of his maturest years. Those of Sydney, which 1 am 
 about to produce, were written in the very hey-day of his blood. 
 They are stuck full of amorous fancies — far-fetched conceits, 
 befitting his occupation : for True Love thinks no labor to send 
 out Thoughts upon the vast, and more than Indian voyages, to 
 bring home rich pearls, outlandish wealth, gums, jewels, spicery, 
 to sacrifice ii. self-depreciating similitudes, as shadows of true 
 
84 ELIA. 
 
 amiabilities in the Beloved. We mu Jt be Lovers — or at least the 
 cooling touch of time, the circum prcecordia frigus must not have 
 so damped our faculties, as to take away our recollection that we 
 were once so — before we can duly appreciate the glorious vanities 
 and graceful hyperboles of the passion. The images which lie 
 before our feet (though by some accounted the only natural) are 
 least natural for the high Sydnean love to express its fancies 
 by. They may serve for the loves of Tibullus, or the dear Au- 
 thor of the Schoolmistress ; for passions that creep and whine in 
 Elegies and Pastoral Ballads. I am sure Milton never loved at 
 this rate. I am afraid some of his addresses ( ad Leonoram, I 
 mean) have rather erred on the farther side ; and that the poet 
 came not much short of a religious indecorum, when he could 
 thus apostrophise a singing girl ; — 
 
 Angelua unicuique suus (sic credite gentes) 
 
 Obtigit setheriis ales ab ordinibus. 
 Quid mirum, Leonora, tibi si gloria major, 
 
 Nam tua praesentem vox sonat ipsa Deum ? 
 Aut Deus, aut vacui certe mens tertia ccsli. 
 
 Per tua secret© guttura serpit agens ; 
 Serpit agens, facilisque docet mortalia corda 
 
 Sensim immortali assuescere posse sono. 
 
 Q,UOD SI CUNCTA QUIDEM Deus EST, PER CUNCTAQUE FUSUS, 
 
 In te una loquitur, cetera mutus habet. 
 
 This is loving in a strange fashion : and it requires some can- 
 dor of construction (besides the slight darkening of a dead lan- 
 guage) to cast a veil over the ugly appearance of something verj' 
 like blasphemy in the last two verses. I think the Lover woula 
 have been staggered, if he had gone about to express the same 
 thought in English. I am sure, Sydney has no flights like this. 
 His extravaganzas do not strike at the sky, though he takes leave 
 to adopt the pale Dian into a fellowship with his mortal passions. 
 
 With how sad steps, Moon, thou climb'st the ski.B ; 
 How silently, and with how wan a face ! 
 What ! may it be, that even in heavenly place 
 That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries ? 
 Sure, if thatlong-vvith-love-acquainted eyes 
 
SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 85 
 
 Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case; 
 I read it in thy looks ; thy languisht grace 
 To me, that feel the like, thy state descries. 
 Then, even of fellowship, Moon, tell me. 
 Is constant love deera'd there but want of wit ? 
 Are beauties there as proud as here they be ? 
 Do they above love to be loved, and yet 
 Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess ? 
 Do they call virtue there — ungratefulness ! 
 
 The last line of this poem is a little obscured by transposition. 
 He means, Do they call ungratefulness there a virtue ? 
 
 Come, Sleep, Sleep, the certain knot of peace, 
 The baiting place of wit, the balm of wo. 
 The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release. 
 The indifferent judge between the high and low ; 
 With shield of proof shield me from out the prease" 
 Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw ; 
 
 make in me those civil wars to cease : 
 
 1 will good tribute pay, if thou do so. 
 
 Take thou of me sweet pillows, sweetest bed, 
 A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
 A rosy garland, and a weary head. 
 And if these things, as being thine by right. 
 Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, 
 Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see. 
 
 The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness 
 Bewray itself in my long-settled eyes. 
 Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise. 
 With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess. 
 Some that know how my spring I did address. 
 Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies ; 
 Others, because the Prince my service tries, 
 Think, that I think state errors to redress ; 
 But harder judges judge, ambition's rage. 
 Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place. 
 Holds my young brain captived in golden cage, 
 fools, or over-wise ! alas, the race 
 Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start. 
 But only Stella's eyes and Stella's heart. 
 
 * Press. 
 
86 ELI I. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Because I oft in dark abstracted guise 
 
 Seem most alone in greatest company, 
 
 With dearth of words, or answers quite awry. 
 
 To them that would make speech of speech arise ; 
 
 They deem, and of their doom the rumor flies. 
 
 That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie 
 
 So in my swelling breast, that only I 
 
 Fawn on myself, and others do despise ; 
 
 Yet Pride, I think, doth not my soul possess. 
 
 Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass ; 
 
 But one worse fault — Ambition — I confess. 
 
 That makes me oft my best friends overpass. 
 
 Unseen, unheard— while Thought to highest place 
 
 Bends all his powers, even unto Stella's grace. 
 
 V. 
 
 Having this day, my horse, my hand, my lance. 
 Guided so well that I obtained the prize. 
 Both by the judgment of the English eyes, 
 And of some sent from that sweet enemy — ^France ; 
 Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance. 
 Townsfolk my strength ; a daintier judge applies 
 His praise to sleight, which from good use doth rise : 
 Some lucky wits impute it but to chance ; 
 Others, because of both sides I do take 
 My blood from them, who did excel in this. 
 Think Nature me a man of arms did make. 
 How far they shot awry ! the true cause is, 
 Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face 
 Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race. 
 
 vi. 
 In martial sports I had my cunning tried 
 And yet to break more staves did me address. 
 While with the people's shouts (I must confess) 
 Youth, luck, and praise, even fiU'd my veins with pride- 
 When Cupid having me (his slave) descried 
 In Mars' livery, prancing in the press, 
 " What now, Sir Fool !" said he : "I would no less : 
 Look here, I say." I look'd, and Stella spied. 
 Who hard by made a window send forth light. 
 My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes : 
 One hand forgot to rule, th' other to fight ; 
 Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries. 
 My foe came on, and beat the air for me — 
 Till that her blush made me my shame to see. 
 
SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 67 
 
 VII. 
 
 No more, my dear, no more these counsels try ; 
 
 give my passions leave to run their race; 
 Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace ; 
 Let folk o'ercharged with brain against me cry : 
 Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye ; 
 Let me no steps, but of lost labor trace ; 
 
 Let all the earth with scorn recount my case — 
 But do not will me from my love to fly. 
 
 1 do not envy Aristotle's wit. 
 
 Nor do aspire to Caesar's bleeding fame ; 
 Nor aught do care though some above me sit. 
 Nor hope, nor wish, another course to frame : 
 But that which once may win thy cruel heart. 
 Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Love still a boy, and oft a wanton, is, 
 School'd only by his mother's tender eye ; 
 What wonder then, if he his lesson miss. 
 When for so soft a rod dear play he try ? 
 And yet my Star, because a sugar'd kiss 
 In sport I suck'd, while she asleep did lie. 
 Doth lour, nay chide, nay threat, for only this. 
 Sweet, it was saucy Love, not humble I. 
 But no *scuse serves ; she makes her wrath appear 
 In beauty's throne — see now who dares come near 
 Those scarlet judges, threat'ning bloody pain ? 
 
 heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face 
 Anger invests with such a lovely grace. 
 That anger's self I needs must kiss again. 
 
 IX. 
 
 1 never drank of Aganippe well. 
 Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit, 
 
 And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell ; 
 
 Poor layman I, for sacred rites unfit. 
 
 Some do I hear of Poet's fury tell. 
 
 But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it ; 
 
 And this I swear by blackest brook of hell, 
 
 I am no pick-purse of another's wit. 
 
 How falls it then, that with so smooth an ease 
 
 My thoughts I speak, and what I speak doth flow 
 
 In verse, and that my veTse best wits doth please ? 
 
 Guess me the cause — what is it thus ? — fye, no. 
 
 Or so ?— much less. How then ? sure thus it is. 
 
 My lips are sweet, inspired with Stella's kiss. 
 
89 ELIA. 
 
 X. 
 
 Of all the kings that ever here did reign, 
 Edward, named Fourth, as first in praise I name. 
 Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain — 
 Although less gifts imp feathers oft on Fame. 
 Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame 
 His sire's revenge, join'd with a kingdom's gain ; 
 And, gain'd by Mars could yet mad Mars so tame. 
 That Balance weigh'd what Sword did late obtain. 
 Nor that he made the Floure-de-luce so 'fraid. 
 Though strongly hedged of bloody Lions' paws 
 That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid. 
 Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause — 
 But only, for this worthy knight durst prove 
 To lose his crown rather than fall his love. 
 
 XI. 
 
 happjt Thames, that didst my Stella bear, 
 
 1 saw thyself, with many a smiling line 
 Upon thy cheH*-tnl face, Joy's livery wear. 
 While those fair planets on thy streams did shine 
 The boat for joy could not to dance forbear, 
 While wanton winds, with beauty so divine 
 Ravish'd, stay'd not, till in her golden hair 
 They did themselves (0 sweetest prison) twine, 
 And fain those iEol's youth there would they stay 
 Have made ; but, forced by nature still to fly. 
 First did with puffing kiss those locks display. 
 She, so dishevell'd, blush'd ; from window I 
 With sight thereof cried out, fair disgrace. 
 
 Let honor's self to thee grant highest place ! 
 
 Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be ; 
 And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet. 
 Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet. 
 More soft than to a chamber melody ; 
 Now blessed You bear onward blessed Me 
 To Her, where I my heart safe left shall meet, 
 My Muse and I must you of duty greet 
 With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully. 
 Be you still fair, honor'd by public heed. 
 By no encroachment wrong'd and time forgot; 
 Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed 
 And that you know, I envy you no lot 
 Of highest wish, I wish j'ou so much bliss 
 Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss. 
 
SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 89 
 
 Of the foregoing, the first, the second, and the last sonnet, are 
 my favorites. But the general beauty of them all is, that they 
 are so perfectly characteristical. The spirit of " learning and of 
 chivalry," — of which union, Spenser has entitled Sydney to have 
 been the "president," — shines through them. I confess I can 
 see nothing of the " jejune " or " frigid " in them ; much less 
 of the "stiff" and " cumbrous" — which I have sometimes heard 
 objected to the Arcadia. The verse runs off swiftly and gallantly. 
 It might have been tuned to the trumpet ; or tempered (as him- 
 self expressed it) to " trampling horses' feet." They abound in 
 felicitous phrases — 
 
 heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face — 
 
 8th Sonnet. 
 
 Sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 
 
 A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light; 
 A rosy garland, and a weary head. 
 
 2d Sonnet. 
 
 That sweet enemy,— France— 
 
 5th Sonnet. 
 
 But they are not rich in words only in vague and unlocaliscd 
 feelings — the failing too much of some poetry of the present day 
 — they are full, material, and circumstantiated. Time and place 
 appropriates every one of them. It is not a fever of passion 
 wasting itself upon a thin diet of dainty words, but a transcendant 
 passion pervading and illuminating action, pursuits, studies, feats 
 of arms, the opinions of contemporaries and his judgment of 
 them. An historical thread runs through them, which almost 
 affixes a date to them ; marks the when and where they were 
 written. 
 
 I have dwelt the longer upon what I conceive the merit of these 
 poems, because I have been hurt by the wantonness (I wish I 
 could treat it by a gentler name) with which W. H. takes every 
 occasion of insulting the memory of Sir Philip Sydney. But the 
 decisions of the Author of Table Talk, &c. (most profound and 
 subtle where they are, as for the mo^ part, just), are more safely 
 to be relied upon, on subjects and authors he has a partiality for, 
 than on such as he has conceived an accidental prejudice against. 
 
90 ELIA. 
 
 Milton wrote Sonnets, and was a king-hater ; and it was conge- 
 nial perhaps to sacrifice a courtier to a patriot. But I was un- 
 willing to lose a jine idea from my mind. The noble images, 
 passions, sentiments, and poetical delicacies of character, scattered 
 all over the Arcadia (spite of some stiffness and encumberment), 
 justify to me the character which his contemporaries have left 
 us of the writer. I cannot think with the Critic, that Sir Philip 
 Sydney was that opprobrious thing which a foolish nobleman in his 
 insolent hostility chose to term him. I call to mind the epitaph 
 made on him, to guide me to juster thoughts of him ; and I re- 
 pose upon the beautiful lines in the " Friend's Passion for his 
 Astrophel," printed with the Elegies of Spenser and others. 
 
 You knew — who knew not Astrophel ? 
 (That I should live to say I knew, 
 And have not in possession still !) 
 Things known permit me to renew— 
 
 Of him you know his merit such, 
 
 I cannot say— you hear — too much. 
 
 Within these woods of Arcady 
 He chief delight and pleasure took ; 
 And on the mountain Partheny, 
 Upon the crystal liquid brook. 
 
 The Muses met him every day. 
 
 That taught him sing, to write, and say 
 
 When he descended down the mount. 
 His personage seemed most divine : 
 A thousand graces one might count 
 Upon his lovely cheerful eyne. 
 
 To hear him speak, and sweetly smile. 
 
 You were in Paradise the while. 
 
 A sweet attractive kind of grace : 
 A full assurance given by looks ; 
 Continual comfort in a face^ 
 The lineaments of Gospel books — 
 
 I trow that count'nance cannot lye. 
 
 Whose thoughts are legible in the eye. 
 
 Above all others this is he, 
 Which erst approved in his song, 
 
SOME SONNETS OF SlA PHILIP SYDNEY 91 
 
 That love and honor might agree, 
 And that pure love will do no wrong. 
 
 Sweet saints, it is no sin or blame 
 
 To love a man of virtuous name. 
 
 Did never love so sweetly breathe 
 In any mortal breast before : 
 Did never Muse inspire beneath 
 A Poet's brain with finer store. 
 
 He wrote of Love with high conceit. 
 
 And Beauty rear'd above her height 
 
 Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief running into 
 rage) in the Poem, — the last in the collection accompanying the 
 above, — which from internal testimony I believe to be Lord 
 Brooke's, — beginning with "Silence augmenteth grief," — and 
 then seriously ask himself, whether the subject of such absorbing 
 and confounding regrets could have been that thing which Lo^d 
 Oxford termed him. 
 
94 ELIA. 
 
 ftEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 
 
 Dan Stuart once told us, that he did not remember that he ever 
 deliberately walked into the Exhibition at Somerset House in his 
 life. He might occasionally have escorted a party of ladies 
 across the way that were going in ; but he never went in of his 
 own head. Yet the office of the Morning Post newspaper stood 
 then just where it does now — we are carrying you back, Reader, 
 some thirty years or more — with its gilt-globe-topt front facing 
 that emporium of our artists' grand Annual Exposure. VVe 
 sometimes wish, that we had observed the same abstinence with 
 Daniel. 
 
 A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared to us one of the 
 finest-tempered of Editors. Perry, of the Morning Chronicle, was 
 equally pleasant, with a dash, no slight one either, of the courtier. 
 S. was frank, plain, and English all over. ^We have worked for 
 both these gentlemen. 
 
 It is soothing to contemplate the head of the Ganges ; to trace 
 the first little bubblings of a mighty river ; 
 
 With holy reverencei to approach the rocks, 
 Whence glide the streams renowned in ancient song. 
 
 Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian Pilgrim's exploratory 
 ramblings after the cradle of the infant Nilus, we well remember 
 on one fine summer holiday (a " whole day's leave" we called 
 it at Christ's hospital) sallying forth at rise of sun, not very well 
 provisioned either for such an undertaking, to trace the current 
 of the New River — Middletonian stream ! — to its scaturient 
 source, as we had read, in meadows by fair Amwell. Gallantly 
 did we commence our soltary quest — for it was essential to the 
 
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEA RS AGO. 93 
 
 dignity of a Discovery, that no eye of schoolboy, save our own, 
 should beam on the detection. By flowery spots, and verdant 
 lanes skirting Hornsey, Hope trained us on in many a bafiling 
 turn ; endless, hopeless meanders, as it seemed ; or as if the 
 jealous waters had dodged us, reluctant to have the humble spot 
 of their nativity revealed ; till spent, and nigh famished before set 
 of the same sun, we sate down somewhere by Bowes Farm near 
 Tottenham, with a tithe of our proposed labors only yet accom- 
 plished ; sorely convinced in spirit, that that Brucian enterprise 
 was as yet too arduous for our young shoulders. 
 
 Not more refreshing to the thirsty curiosity of the traveller is 
 the tracing of some mighty waters up to their shallow fontlet, 
 than it is to a pleased and candid reader to go back to the inex- 
 perienced essays, the first callow flights in authorship, of some 
 established name in literature ; from the Gnat which preluded to 
 the jEneid, to the Duck which Samuel Johnson trod on. 
 
 In those days every Morning Paper, as an essential retainer to 
 its establishment, kept an autlior, who was bound to furnish daily 
 a quantum of witty paragraphs. Sixpence a joke — and it was 
 thought pretty high too — was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration 
 in these cases. The chat of the day, scandal, but, above all, 
 dress, furnished the material. The length of no paragraph was 
 to exceed seven lines. Shorter they might be, but they must be 
 poignant. 
 
 A fashion of jlesh, or rather pm/j-colorcd hose for the ladies, 
 luckily coming up at the juncture when we were on our probation 
 for the place of Chief Jester to S.'s Paper, established our reputa- 
 tion in that line. We were pronounced a " capital hand." O 
 the conceits which we varied upon red in all its prismatic differ- 
 ences! from the trite and obvious flower of Cytherea, to the 
 flaming costume of the lady that has her sitting upon " many 
 waters." Then there was the collateral topic of ankles. What 
 an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like ourself, of touching that 
 nice brink, and yet never trembling over it, of a seemingly ever 
 approximating something " not quite proper ;" while, like a skil- 
 ful posture-master, balancing betwixt decorums and their oppo- 
 sites, he keeps the line, from which a hair's-breadth deviation is 
 destruction ; hovering in the confines of light and darkness, 
 
94 ELIA. 
 
 or "vhere " both seem either ;" a hazy uncertain delicacy ; 
 Autolycus-like in the Play, still putting off his expectant auditory 
 with " Whoop, do me no harm, good man !" But, above all, that 
 conceit arrided us most at that time, and still tickles our midriff 
 to remember, where, allusively to the flight of Astroea — ultima 
 Ccdestum terras reliquit — we pronounced — in reference to the 
 stockings still — that Modesty, taking her final leave of mor- 
 tals, HER LAST Blush was visible in her ascent to the 
 Heavens by the tract of the glowing instep. This might 
 be called the crowning conceit ; and was esteemed tolerable 
 writing in those days. 
 
 But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes away ; 
 as did the transient mode which had so favored us. The ankles 
 of our fair friends in a few weeks began to reassume their white- 
 ness, and left us scarce a leg to stand upon. Other female whims 
 followed, but none methought so pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd 
 conceits, and more than single meanings. 
 
 Somebody has said, that to swallow six cross-buns daily, con- 
 secutively for a fortnight, would surfeit the stoutest digestion. 
 But to have to furnish as many jokes daily, and that not for a 
 fortnight, but for a long twelvemonth, as we were constrained to 
 do, was a little harder exaction. " Man goeth forth to his work 
 until the evening" — from a reasonable hour in the morning, we 
 presume it was meant. Now, as our main occupation took us up 
 from eight till five every day in the City ; and as our evening 
 hours, at that time of life, had generally to do with anything 
 rather than business, it follows, that the only time we could spare 
 for this manufactory of jokes — our supplementary livelihood, that 
 supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and cheese — was 
 exactly that part of the day which (as we have heard of No Man's 
 Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time ; that is, no time 
 in which a man ought to be up and awake, in. To speak more 
 plainly, it is that time of an hour, or an hour and a half's dura- 
 tion, in which a man, whose occasions call him up so preposte- 
 rously, has to wait for his breakfast. 
 
 O those head-aches at dawn of day, when at five, or half-past 
 five in su nmer, and not much later in the dark seasons, we 
 were compelled to rise, having been perhaps not above four hours 
 
I 
 
 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 95 
 
 in bed — (for we were no go-to-beds with the lamb, though we 
 anticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising — we like a parting cup, 
 at midnight, as all young men did before these effeminate times, 
 and to have our friends about us — we were not constellated under 
 Aquarius, that watery sign, and therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold, 
 washy, bloodless— we were none of your Basilian water-sponges, 
 nor had taken our degrees at Mount Ague — we were right toping 
 Capulets, jolly companions, we and they) — but to have to get up, 
 as we said before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting, with 
 only a dim vista of refreshing bohea, in the distance — to be 
 necessitated to rouse ourselves at the detestable rap of an old hag 
 of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in her 
 announcement that it was "time to rise;" and whose chappy 
 knuckles we have often yearned to amputate, and string them up 
 at our chamber door, to be a terror to all such unseasonable rest- 
 breakers in future 
 
 " Facil" and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the " descending" 
 of the over-night, balmy the first sinking of the heavy head upon 
 the pillow ; but to get up, as he goes on to say, 
 
 — revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras — 
 
 and to get up moreover to make jokes with malice prepended — 
 there was the " labor," there the " work." 
 
 No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to that, 
 our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned out for half the 
 tyranny which this necessity exercised upon us. Half a dozen 
 jests in a day (bating Sundays too), why it seems nothing ! We 
 make twice the number every day in our lives as a matter of 
 • course, and claim no Sabbatical exemptions. But then they 
 come into our head. But when the head has to go out to them— 
 when the mountain must go to Mahomet — 
 
 Reader, try it for once, only for one short twelvemonth. 
 
 It was not every week that a fashion of pink stockings came 
 up ; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged, untractable subject ; 
 some topic impossible to be contorted into the risible ; some fea- 
 ture on which no smile could play ; some flint, from which no 
 process of ingenuity 30uld procure a scintillation. There they 
 
96 ELIA. 
 
 lay ; there yoxir appointed tale of brick-making was set before you, 
 which you must finish, with or without straw, as it happened. 
 The craving Dragon — the Public — like him in Bel's temple- 
 must be fed ; it expected its daily rations ; and Daniel, and our- 
 selves, to do us justice, did the best we could on this side bursting 
 him. 
 
 While we were wringing out coy sprightlinesses for the Post, 
 and writhing under the toil of what is called " easy writing," 
 Bob Allen, our quondam schoolfellow, was tapping his impractica- 
 ble brains in a like service for the " Oracle." Not that Robert 
 troubled himself much about wit. If his paragraphs had a 
 sprightly air about them, it was sufficient. He carried this non- 
 chalance so far at last, that a matter of intelligence, and that no 
 very important one, was not seldom palmed upon his employers 
 for a good jest ; for example sake — " Walking yesterday morning 
 casually down Snow Hill, who sJtould we meet but Mr. Deputy 
 Humphreys f we rejoice to add, that the worthy Deputy appeared to 
 enjoy a good state of liealth. We do not ever remember to have seen 
 him look better. ^^ This gentleman so surprisingly met upon Snow 
 dill, from some peculiarities in gait or gesture, was a constant 
 butt for mirth to the small paragraph-mongers of the day ; and 
 our friend thought that he might have his fling at him with the 
 rest. We met A. in Hoi born shortly after this extraordinary ren- 
 counter, which he told with tears of satisfaction in his eyes, and 
 chuckling at the anticipated effects of its announcement next day 
 in the paper. W^e did not quite comprehend where the wit of it 
 lay at the time ; nor was it easy to be detected, when the thing 
 came out advantaged by type and letter-press. He had better 
 have met anything that morning than a Common Council Man. 
 His services v/ere shortly after dispensed with, on the plea that 
 his paragraphs of late had been deficient in point. The one in 
 question, it must be owned, had an air, in the opening especially, 
 proper to awaken curiosity ; and the sentiment, or moral, wears 
 the aspect of humanity and good neighborly feeling. But some- 
 how the conclusion was not judged altogether to answer to the 
 magnificent promise of the premises. We traced our friend's pen 
 afterwards in the " True Briton," the " Star," the " Traveller " 
 
NEWSPAPERS T[iIRTY-FlVE YEAPvS AGO. 97 
 
 — from all which he was successively dismissed, the Proprietors 
 having "no further occasion for his services." Nothing was 
 easier than to detect him. When wit failed, or topics ran low, 
 there constantly appeared the following — " It is not generally 
 known that the three Blue Balls at the Pawnbrokers^ shops are 
 the ancient arms of Lonibardy. The Lomhards were the first 
 money-hrokers in Europe. ^^ Bob has done more to set the public 
 right on this important point of blazonry, than the whole College 
 of Heralds. 
 
 The appointment of a regular wit has long ceased to be a part 
 of the economy of a Morning Paper. Editors find their own 
 jokes, or do as well without them. Parson Este, and Topham, 
 brought up the set custom of " witty paragraphs " first in the 
 " World." Boaden was a reigning paragraphist in his day, and 
 succeeded poor Allen in the " Oracle." But, as we said, the 
 fashion of jokes passes away ; and it would be difiicult to discover 
 in the biographer of Mrs. Siddons, any traces of that vivacity and 
 fancy which charmed the whole town at the commencement of 
 the present century. Even the prelusive delicacies of the pre- 
 sent writer — the curt " Astrsean allusion " — would be thought 
 pedantic and out of date in these days. 
 
 From the office of the Morning Post (for we may as well ex- 
 haust our Newspaper Reminiscences at once) by change of pro- 
 perty in the paper, we were transferred, mortifying exchange ! to 
 the office of the Albion Newspaper, late Rackstrow's Museum, in 
 Fleet street. What a transition — from a handsome apartment, 
 from rose- wood desks, and silver ink-stands, to an office — no office, 
 but a den rather, but just redeemed from the occupation of dead 
 monsters, of which it seemed redolent — from the centre of loy- 
 alty and fashion, to a focus of vulgarity and sedition ! Here in 
 murky closet, inadequate from its square contents to the receipt 
 of the two bodies of Editor, and humble paragraph-maker, together 
 at one time, sat in the discharge of his new editorial functions 
 (the " Bigod " of Elia) the redoubted John Fenwick. 
 
 F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left not many 
 in the pockets of his friends whom he might command, had pur- 
 chased (on tick doubtless) the whole and sole Editorshipi Proprie- 
 
 PART II. 8 
 
98 ELIA. 
 
 torship, with all the rights and titles (such as they were worth) of 
 the Albion from one Lovell ; of whom we know nothing, save 
 that he had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. 
 With this hopeless concern — for it had been sinking ever since its 
 commencement, and could now reckon upon not more than a hun- 
 dred subscribers — F. resolutely determined upon pulling down 
 the Government in the first instance, and making both our for- 
 tunes by way of corollary. For seven weeks and more did this 
 infatuated democrat go about borrowing seven-shilling pieces, and 
 lesser coin, to meet the daily demands of the Stamp office, which 
 allowed no credit to publications of that side in politics. An out- 
 cast from politer bread, we attached our small talents to the for- 
 lorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation now v/as to write 
 treason. 
 
 Recollections of feelings — which were all that now remained 
 from our first boyish heats kindled by the French Revolution, 
 when, if we were misled, we erred in the company of some who 
 are accounted very good men now — rather than any tendency at 
 this time to Republican doctrines — assisted us in assuming a style 
 of writing, while the paper lasted, consonant in no very under 
 tone — to the right earnest fanaticism of F. Our cue was now to 
 insinuate, rather than recommend, possible abdications. Blocks, 
 axes, Whitehall tribunals, were covered with flowers of so cun- 
 ning a periphrasis — as Mr. Bayes says, never naming the thing 
 directly — that the keen eye of an Attorney General was insuffi- 
 cient to detect the lurking snake among them. There were times, 
 indeed, when we sighed for our more gentleman-like occupation 
 under Stuart. But with change of masters it is ever change of 
 service. Already one paragraph, and another, as we learned 
 afterwards from a gentleman at the Treasury, had begun to be 
 marked at that office, with a view of its being submitted at least 
 to the attention of the proper Law Officers — when an unlucky, 
 
 or rather lucky epigram from our pen, aimed at Sir J s 
 
 M h, who was on the eve of departing for India to reap the 
 
 fruits of his apostasy, as F. pronounced it (it is hardly worth 
 particularising), happening to offend the nice sense of Lord, or, 
 as he then delighted to be palled;, ^itizen Stanhope, deprived F. at 
 
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 99 
 
 once of the last hopes of a guinea from the last patron that had 
 stuck by us ; and breaking up our establishment, left us to the 
 safe, but somewhat mortifying, neglect of the Crown Lawyers. 
 It was about this time, or a little earlier, that Dan Stuart made that 
 curious confession to us, that he had " never deliberately walked 
 into an Exhibition at Somerset House in his life." 
 
 .1 
 
100 ELIA. 
 
 BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY 
 
 IN THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 
 
 Hogarth excepted, can we produce any one painter within the 
 last fifty years, or since the humor of exhibiting began, that has 
 treated a story imaginatively ? By this we mean, upon whom his 
 subject has so acted, that it has seemed to direct him — not to be ar- 
 ranged by him ? Any upon whom its leading or collateral points 
 have impressed themselves so tyrannically, that he dared not 
 treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a revelation ? Any that 
 has imparted to his compositions, not merely so much truth 
 as is enough to convey a story with clearness, but that indi- 
 vidualising property, which should keep the subject so treated 
 distinct in feature from every other subject, however similar, and 
 to common apprehensions almost identical ; so as that we might 
 say, this and this part could have found an appropriate place in 
 no other picture in the world but this ? Is there anything in mo- 
 dern art — we will not demand that it should be equal — but in 
 any way analogous to what Titian has effected, in that wonderful 
 bringing together of two times in the " Ariadne," in the National 
 Gallery 1 Precipitous, with his reeling satyr rout about him, 
 re-peopling and re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with 
 a new fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings 
 himself at the Cretan. This is the time present. With this tell- 
 ing of the story — an artist, and no ordinary one, might remain 
 richly proud. Guido, in his harmonious version of it, saw no 
 further. But from the depths of the imaginative spirit Titian has 
 recalled past time, and laid it contributory with the present to one 
 simultaneous effect. With the desert all ringing with the mad 
 
ON THF PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 101 
 
 cymbals of his followers, made lucid with the presence and new 
 offers of a god — as if unconscious of Bacchus, or but idly casting 
 her eyes as upon some unconcerning pageant — her soul undis- 
 tracted from Theseus — Ariadne is still pacing the solitary shore 
 in as much heart-silence, and in almost the same local solitude, 
 with which she awoke at day-break to catch the forlorn last 
 glances of the sail that bore away the Athenian. 
 
 Here are two points miraculously co-uniting ; fierce society, 
 with the feeling of solitude still absolute ; noon-day revelations, 
 with the accidents of the dull grey dawn unquenched and linger- 
 ing ; the present Bacchus, with the pa^i Ariadne ; two stories, 
 with double Time ; separate and harmonising. Had the artist 
 made the woman one shade less indifferent to the God ; still 
 more, had she expressed a rapture at his advent, where would 
 have been the story of the mighty desolation of the heart pre- 
 vious ? merged in the insipid accident of a flattering offer met 
 with a welcome acceptance. The broken heart for Theseus was 
 not lightly to be pieced up by a God. 
 
 We have before us a fine rough print, from a picture by Ra- 
 phael in the Vatican. It is the Presentation of the new-born Eve 
 to Adam by the Almighiy. A fairer mother of mankind we 
 might imagine, and a goodlier sire perhaps of men since born. 
 But these are matters subordinate to the conception of the situation, 
 displayed in this extraordinary production. A tolerably modern 
 artist would have been satisfied with tempering certain raptures 
 of connubial anticipation, with a suitable acknowledgment to the 
 Giver of the blessing, in the countenance of the first bridegroom ; 
 something like the divided attention of the child (Adam was here 
 a child-man) between the given toy, and the mother who had just 
 blessed it with the bauble. This is the obvious, the first-sight 
 view, the sup rficial. An artist of a higher grade, considering 
 the awful presence they were in, would have taken care to sub- 
 tract something from the expression of the more human passion, 
 and to heighten the more spiritual one. This would be as much 
 as an exhibition goer, from the opening of Somerset House to last 
 year's show, has been encouraged to look for. It is obvious to 
 hint at a lower expression yet, in a picture that, for respects of 
 drawing and coloring, might be deemed not wholly inadmissible 
 
108 ELIA. 
 
 within these art-fostering walls, in which the raptures should be as 
 ninety-nine, the gratitude as one, or perhaps zero ! By neither 
 the one passion nor the other has Raphael expounded the situation 
 of Adam. Singly upon his brow sits the absorbing sense of won- 
 der at the created miracle. The moment is seized by the intuitive 
 artist, perhaps not self-conscious of his art, in which neither of 
 conflicting emotions — a moment how abstracted ! — have had time 
 to spring up, or to battle for indecorous mastery. — We have seen 
 a landscape of a justly admired neoteric, in which he aimed at 
 delineating a fiction, one of the most severely beautiful in anti- 
 quity — the gardens of the Hesperides. To do Mr. justice, 
 
 he had painted a laudable orchard, with fitting seclusion, and a 
 veritable dragon (of which a Polypheme, by Poussin, is somehow 
 a fac-simile for the situation), looking over into the world, shut 
 out backwards, so that none but a " still-climbing Hercules " 
 could hope to catch a peep at the admired Ternary of Recluses. 
 No conventual porter could keep his eyes better than this custos 
 with the " lidless eyes." He not only sees that none do intrude 
 into that privacy, but, as clear as daylight, that none but Hercules 
 aut Diaiolus by any manner of means can. So far all is well. 
 We have absolute solitude here or nowhere. Ab extra the dam- 
 sels are snug enough. But here the artist's courage seems to 
 have failed him. He began to pity his pretty charge, and, to com- 
 fort the irksomeness, has peopled their solitude with a bevy of fair 
 attendants, maids of honor, or ladies of the bed-chamber, accord- 
 ing to the approved etiquette at a court of the nineteenth century ; 
 giving to the whole scene the air of a fete champetre, if we will 
 but excuse the absence of the gentlemen. This is well, and 
 Watteauish. But what is become of the solitary mystery — the 
 
 Daughters three, 
 That sing round the golden tree ? 
 
 This is not the way in which Poussin would have treated this 
 subject. 
 
 The paintings, or rather the stupendous architectural designs, 
 of a modern artist, have been urged as objections to the theory of 
 our motto. They are of a character, we confess, to stagger it. 
 His towered structures are of the highest order of the material 
 
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 103 
 
 sublime. Whether they were dreams, or transcripts of some elder 
 workmanship — Assyrian ruins old — restored by this mighty art- 
 ist, they satisfy our most stretched and craving conceptions of the 
 glories of the antique world. It is a pity that they were ever 
 peopled. On that side, the imagination of the artist halts, and 
 ^ appears defective. Let us examine the point of the story in the 
 " Belshazzar's Feast." We will introduce it by an apposite 
 anecdote. 
 
 The court historians of the day record, that at the first dinner 
 given by the late King (then Prince Regent) at the Pavilion, the 
 following characteristic frolic was played off. The guests were 
 select and admiring ; the banquet profuse and admirable ; the 
 lights lustrous and oriental ; the eye was perfectly dazzled with 
 the display of plate, among which the great gold salt-cellar, 
 brought from the regalia in the Tower for this especial purpose, 
 itself a tower ! stood conspicuous for its magnitude. And now 
 the Rev. * * * *^ the then admired court Chaplain, was proceed- 
 ing with the grace, when, at a signal given, the lights were sud- 
 denly overcast, and a huge transparency was discovered, in 
 gold letters — 
 
 " Brighton — Earthquake — Swallow-up-alive !" 
 
 Imagine the confusion of the guests ; the Georges and garters, 
 jewels, bracelets, moulted upon the occasion ! The fans dropped, 
 and picked up the next morning by the sly court pages ! Mrs. 
 Fitz-what's-her-name fainting, and the Countess of * * * holding 
 the smelling-bottle, till the good-humored Prince caused harmony 
 to be restored, by calling in fresh candles, and declaring that the 
 whole was nothing but a pantomime hoax, got up by the ingenious 
 Mr. Farley, of Covent Garden, from hints which his Royal High- 
 ness himself had furnished ! Then imagine the infinite applause 
 that followed, the mutual rallyings, the declarations that " they 
 were not much frightened," of the assembled galaxy. 
 
 The point of time in the picture exactly answers to the appear- 
 ance of the transparency in the anecdote. The huddle, the 
 flutter, the bustle, the escape, the alarm, and the mock alarm ; 
 the prettinesses heightened by consternation ; the courtier's fear 
 which was flattery ; and the lady's which was affectation ; all 
 
104 ELI A. 
 
 that we may conceive to have taken place in a mob of Brighton 
 courtiers, sympathizing with the well-acted surprise of their sove- 
 reign ; all this, and no more, is exhibited by the well-dressed 
 lords and ladies in the Hall of Belus. Just this sort of conster- 
 nation we have seen among a flock of disquieted wild geese at the 
 report only of a gun having gone off ! 
 
 But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal anxiety for the pre-* 
 servation of their persons, — such as we have witnessed at a thea- 
 tre, when a slight alarm of fire has been given — an adequate 
 exponent of a supernatural terror ? the way in which the finger 
 of God, writing judgments, would have been met by the withered 
 conscience ? There is a human fear, and a divine fear. The 
 one is disturbed, restless, and bent upon escape. The other is 
 bowed down, effortless, passive. When the spirit appeared before 
 Eliphaz in the visions of the night, and the hair of his flesh stood 
 up, was it in the thoughts of the Temanite to ring the bell of his 
 chamber, or to call up the servants ? But let us see in the text 
 what there is to justify all this huddle of vulgar consternation. 
 ^ From the words of Daniel it appears that Belshazzar had made 
 a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before 
 the thousand. The gold and silver vessels are gorgeously enu- 
 merated, with the princes, the king's concubines, and his wives. 
 Then follows — 
 
 " In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and 
 wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall 
 of the king's palace ; and the king saw the part of the hand thai 
 wrote. Then the king^s countenance was changed, and his 
 thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosen- 
 ed, and his knees smote one against another." 
 
 This is the plain text. By no hint can it be otherwise inferred 
 but that the appearance was solely confined to the fancy of Bel- 
 shazzar, that his single brain was troubled. Not a word is spoken 
 of its being seen by any else there present, not even by the queen 
 herself, who merely undertakes for the interpretation of the phe- 
 nomenon, as related to her, doubtless, by her husband. The 
 lords are simply said to be astonished ; /. e., at the trouble and 
 the change of countenance in their sovereign. Even the prophet 
 does not appear to have seen the scroll, which the king saw. He 
 
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 105 
 
 recals it only, as Joseph did the Dream to the King of Egypt. 
 " Then was the part of the hand sent from him [the Lord], and 
 this writing was written." He speaks of the phantasm as past. 
 
 Then what becomes of this needless multiplication of the mira- 
 cle ? this message to i. royal conscience, singly expressed — for it 
 was said, " Thy kingdom is divided," — simultaneously impressed 
 upon the fancies of a thousand courtiers, who were implied in it 
 neither directly nor grammatically ? 
 
 But admitting the artist's own version of the story, and that the 
 sight was seen also by the thousand courtiers — let it have been 
 visible to all Babylon — as the knees of Belshazzar were shaken, 
 and his countenance troubled, even so would the knees of every 
 man in Babylon, and their countenances, as of an individual man, 
 have been troubled ; bowed, bent down, so would they have 
 remained, stupor-fixed, with no thought of struggling with that 
 inevitable judgment. 
 
 Not all that is optically possible to be seen, is to be shown in 
 every picture. The eye delightedly dwells upon the brilliant 
 individualities in a " Marriage at Cana," by Veronese, or Titian, 
 to the very texture and color of the wedding-garments, the ring 
 glittering upon the bride's finger, the metal and fashion of the 
 wine-pots ; for at such seasons there is leisure and luxury to be 
 curious. But in a " day of judgment," or in a " day of lesser 
 horrors, yet divine," as at the impious feast of Belshazzar, the 
 eye should see, as the actual eye of an agent or patient in the 
 immediate scene would see, only in masses and indistinction. 
 Not only the female attire and jewelry exposed to the critical eye 
 of fashion, as minutely as the dresses in a Lady's Magazine, in 
 the criticized picture, — but perhaps the curiosities of anatomical 
 science, and studied diversities of posture, in the falling angels 
 and sinners of Michael Angelo, — have no business in their great 
 subjects. There was no leisure for them. 
 
 By a wise falsification, the great masters of painting got at 
 their true conclusions ; by not showing the actual appearances, 
 that is, all that was to be seen at any given moment by an indif- 
 ferent eye, but only what the eye might be supposed to see in the 
 doing or suffering of some portentous action. Suppose the mo- 
 ment of the swallowing up of Pompeii. There they were to be 
 
106 ELIA. 
 
 seen — houses, columns, architectural proportions, differences of 
 public and private buildings, men and women at their standing 
 occupations, the diversified thousand postures, attitudes, dresses, 
 in some confusion truly, but physically they were visible. But 
 what eye saw them at that eclipsing moment, which reduces con- 
 fusion to a kind of unity, and when the senses are upturned from 
 their proprieties, when sight and hearing are a feeling only ? A 
 thousand years have passed, and we are at leisure to contemplate 
 the weaver fixed standing at his shuttle, the baker at his oven, 
 and to turn over with antiquarian coolness the pots and pans of 
 Pompeii. 
 
 ♦' Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou. Moon, in the 
 valley of Ajalon." Who, in reading this magnificent Hebraism, 
 in his conception, sees aught but the heroic son of Nun, with the 
 outstretched arm, and the greater and lesser light obsequious ? 
 Doubtless there were to be seen hill and dale, and chariots and 
 horsemen, on open plain, or winding by secret defiles, and all the 
 circumstances and stratagems of war. But whose eyes would 
 have been conscious of this array at the interposition of the syn- 
 chronic miracle ? Yet in the picture of this subject by the artist 
 of the " Belshazzar's Feast" — no ignoble work either — the mar- 
 shalling and landscape of the war is everything, the miracle 
 sinks into an anecdote of the day ; and the eye may " dart through 
 rank and file traverse " for some minutes, before it shall discover, 
 among his armed followers, which is Joshua ! Not modem art 
 alone, but ancient, where only it is to be found if anywhere, 
 can be detected erring, from defect of this imaginative faculty. 
 The world has nothing to show of the preternatural in painting, 
 transcending the figure of Lazarus bursting his grave-clothes, in 
 the great picture at Angerstein's. It seems a thing between two 
 beings. A ghastly horror at itself struggles with newly-appre- 
 hending gratitude at second life bestowed. It cannot forget that 
 it was a ghost. It has hardly felt that it is a body. It has to tell 
 of the world of spirits. — Was it from a feeling, that the crowd of 
 half-impassioned bystanders, and the still more irrelevant herd of 
 passers-by at a distance, who have not heard, or but faintly have 
 been told of the passing miracle, admirable as they are in design 
 und hue — for it is a glorified work — do not respond adeouately to 
 
ON THE I RODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 107 
 
 the action — that the single figure of the Lazarus has been attri- 
 buted to Michael Angelo, and the mighty Sebastian unfairly- 
 robbed of the fame of tlie greater half of the interest ? Now that 
 there were not indifferent passers-by within actual scope of the 
 eyes of those present at the miracle, to whom the sound of it had 
 but faintly, or not at all, reached, it would be hardihood to deny ; 
 but would they see them ? or can the mind in the conception of 
 it admit of such unconceming objects ; can it think of them at all ? 
 or what associating league to the imagination can there be between 
 the seers, and the seers not, of a presential miracle ? 
 
 Were an artist to paint upon demand a picture of a Dryad, we 
 will ask whether, in the present low state of expectation, the pa- 
 tron would not, or ought not, be fully satisfied with a beautiful 
 naked figure recumbent under wide-stretched oaks ? Disseat those 
 woods, and place the same figure among fountains, and fall of 
 pellucid water, and you have a — Naiad ! Not so in a rough print 
 we have seen afler Julio Romano, we think — for it is long since — 
 there, by no process, with mere change of scene, could the figure 
 have reciprocated characters. Long, grotesque, fantastic, yet 
 with a grace of her own, beautiful in convolution and distortion, 
 linked to her connatural tree, co-twisting with its limbs her own, 
 till both seemed either — these, animated branches ; those, disani- 
 mated members — yet the animal and vegetable lives sufficiently 
 kept distinct — his Dryad lay — an approximation of two natures, 
 which to conceive, it must be seen ; analogous to, not the same 
 with, the delicacies of Ovidian transformations. 
 
 To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial comprehension, the 
 most barren, the Great Masters gave loftiness and fruitfulness. 
 The large eye of genius saw in the meanness of present objects 
 their capabilities of treatment from their relations to some grand 
 Past or Future. How has Raphael — we must still linger about 
 the Vatican — treated the humble craft of the ship-builders, in his 
 " Building of the Ark ?" It is in that scriptural series, to which 
 we have referred, and which, judging 1 im from some fine rough, 
 old graphic sketches of them which we possess, seem to be of a 
 higher and more poetic grade than even the Cartoons. The dim 
 of sight are the timid and the shrinking. There is a cowardice 
 in modern art. As the Frenchman, of whom Coleridge's friend 
 
tOS ■ ELIA. 
 
 made the prophetio guess at Rome, from the beard and horns of 
 the Moses of Michael Angelo, collected no inferences beyond that 
 of a He Goat and a Cornuto ; so from this subject, of mere me- 
 chanic promise, it would instinctively turn away, as from one in- 
 capable of investiture with any grandeur. The dock-yards at 
 Woolwich would object derogatory associations. The depdt at 
 Chatham would be the mote and the beam in its intellectual eye. 
 But not to the nautical preparations in the ship-yards of Civita 
 Vecchia did Raphael look for instructions, when he imagined the 
 Building of the Vessel that was to be conservatory of the wrecks 
 of the species of drowned mankind. In the intensity of the ac- 
 tion, he keeps ever out of sight the meanness of the operation. 
 There is the Patriarch, in calm forethought, and with holy pre- 
 science, giving directions. And there are his agents — ^the solitary 
 but sufficient Three — hewing, sawing, every one with the might 
 and earnestness of a Demiurgus ; under some instinctive rather 
 than technical guidance ! giant-muscled ; every one a Hercules, 
 or liker to those Vulcanian Three, that in sounding caverns under 
 Mongibello wrought in fire — Brontes, and black Steropes, and 
 Pyracmon. So work the workmen that should repair a world! 
 
 Artists again err in the confounding of poetic with pictorial 
 subjects. In the latter, the exterior accidents are nearly every- 
 thing, the unseen qualities as nothing. Othello's color — the 
 infirmities and corpulence of a Sir John Falstaff— do they haunt 
 us perpetually in the reading ? or are they obtruded upon our 
 conceptions one time for ninety-nine that we are lost in admiration 
 at the respective moral or intellectual attributes of the character ? 
 But in a picture Othello is alicays a Blackamoor ; and the other 
 only Plump Jack. Deeply corporealised, and enchained hope- 
 lessly in the grovelling fetters of externality, must be the mind, 
 to which, in its better moments, the image of the high-souled, 
 high-intelligenced Quixote — the errant Star of Knighthood, made 
 more tender by eclipse — has never presented itself, divested from 
 the unhallowed accompaniment of a Sancho, or a rabblement at 
 the heels of Rosinante. That man has read his book by halves ; 
 he has laughed, mistaking his author's purport, which was — tears. 
 The artist that pictures Quixote (and it is in this degrading point 
 ♦hat he is every season held up at our Exhibitions) in the shallow 
 
ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MOrERN ART. 109 
 
 hope of exciting mirth, would have joined the rabble at the heels 
 of his starved steed. We wish not to see i/ta^ counterfeited, which 
 we would not have wished to see in the reality. Conscious of the 
 heroic inside of the noble Quixote, who, on hearing that his 
 withered person was passing, would have stepped over his thresh- 
 old to gaze upon his forlorn habiliments, and the " strange bed- 
 fellows which misery brings a man acquainted with?" Shade of 
 Cervantes ! who in thy Second Part could put into the mouth of 
 thy Quixote those high aspirations of a super-chivalrous gallantry, 
 where he replies to one of the shepherdesses, apprehensive that 
 he would spoil their pretty net-works, and inviting him to be a 
 guest with them, in accents like these : " Truly, fairest Lady, 
 Actseon was not more astonished when he saw Diana bathing her- 
 self at the fountain, than I have been in beholding your beauty ; 
 I commend the manner of your pastime, and thank you for your 
 kind offers ; and, if I may serve you, so I may be sure you will 
 be obeyed, you may command me : for my profession is this. To 
 show myself thankful, and a doer of good to all sorts of people, 
 especially of the rank that your person shows you to be ; and if 
 those nets, as they take up but a little piece of ground, should 
 take up the whole world, I would seek out new worlds to pass 
 through, rather than break them : and (he adds) that you may 
 give credit to this my exaggeration, behold at least he that pro- 
 miseth you this, is Don Quixote de la Mancha, if haply this name 
 hath come to your hearing." Illustrious Romancer! were the 
 '• fine frenzies," which possessed the brain of thy own Quixote, a 
 fit subject, as in this Second Part, to be exposed to the jeers of 
 Duennas and Serving Men ? to be monstered, and shown up at 
 the heartless banquets of great men? Was that pitiable infirmity, 
 which in thy First Part misleads him, always from within, into half- 
 ludicrous, but more than half-compassionablc and admirable 
 errors, not infliction enough from heaven, that men by studied 
 artifices must devise and practise upon the humor, to inflame 
 where they should soothe it ? Why, Goneril would have blushed 
 to practise upon the abdicated king at this rate, and the she- wolf 
 Regan not have endured to play the pranks upon h-« fled wits, 
 
110 ELIA. 
 
 which thou hast made thy Quixote suffer in Duchesses' halls, 
 and at the hands of that unworthy nobleman.* 
 
 In the First Adventures, even, it needed all the art of the most 
 consummate artist in the Book way that the world hath yet seen, 
 to keep up in the mind of the reader the heroic attributes of the 
 character without relaxing ; so as absolutely that they shall suffer 
 no alloy from the debasing fellowship of the clown. If it ever 
 obtrudes itself as a disharmony, are we inclined to laugh ; or 
 not, rather, to indulge a contrary emotion ? — Cervantes, stung, 
 perchance, by the relish with which his Reading Public had re- 
 ceived the fooleries of the man, more to their palates than the 
 generosities of the master, in the sequel let his pen run riot, lost 
 the harmony and the balance, and sacrificed a great idea to the 
 taste of his contemporaries. We know that in the present day 
 the Knight has fewer admirers than the Squire. Anticipating, 
 what did actually happen to him — as afterwards it did to his 
 scarce inferior follower, the Author of " Guzman de Alfarache" 
 — ^that some less knowing hand would prevent him by a spurious 
 Second Part ; and judging that it would be easier for his com- 
 petitor to out-bid him in the comicalities, than in the romance, of 
 his work, he abandoned his Knight, and has fairly set up the 
 Squire for his Hero. For what else has he unsealed the eyes of 
 Sancho ? and instead of that twilight state of semi-insanity — the 
 madness at second hand — the contagion, caught from a stronger 
 mind infected — that war between native cunning, and hereditary 
 deference, with which he has hitherto accompanied his master — 
 two for a pair almost — does he substitute a downright Knave, with 
 open eyes, for his own ends only following a confessed Madman ; 
 and offering at one time to lay, if not actually laying, hands 
 upon him ! From the moment that Sancho loses his reverence, 
 Don Quixote is become — a treatable lunatic. Our artists handle 
 him accordingly. 
 
 • Yet from this Second Part, our cried-up pictures ure mostly selected ; 
 the waiting-women with beards, &c. 
 
THE WEDDING. m 
 
 THE WEDDING 
 
 I DO not know when I have been better pleased than at being in- 
 vited last week to be present at the wedding of a friend's daugh- 
 ter. I like to make one at these ceremonies, which to us old 
 people give back our youth in a manner, and restore our gayest 
 season, in the remembrance of our own success, or the regrets, 
 scarcely less tender, of our own youthful disappointments, in this 
 point of a settlement. On these occasions I am sure to be in 
 good-humor for a week or two after, and enjoy a reflected honey- 
 moon. Being without a family, I am flattered with these tem- 
 porary adoptions into a friend's family ; I feel a sort of cousin- 
 hood, or uncleship, for the season ; I am inducted into degrees 
 of affinity ; and, in the participated socialities of the little com- 
 munity, I lay down for a brief while my solitary bachelorship. 
 I carry this humor so far, that I take it unkindly to be left out, 
 even when a funeral is going on in the house of a dear friend. 
 
 But to my subject. 
 
 The union itself had been long settled, but its celebration had 
 been hitherto deferred, to an almost unreasonable state of sus- 
 pense in the lovers, by some invincible prejudices which the 
 bride's father had unhappily contracted upon the subject of the 
 too early marriages of females. He has been lecturing any 
 time these five years — for to that length the courtship has been 
 protracted — upon the propriety of putting off* the solemnity, till 
 the lady should have completed her five-and-twentieth year. We 
 all began to be afraid that a suit, which as yet had abated of none 
 of its ardors, might at last be lingered on, till passion had time to 
 cool, and love go out in the experiment. But a little wheedling 
 on the part of his wife, who was by no means a party to these 
 
1J2 ELI A. 
 
 overstrained notions, joined to some serious expostulations on tnai 
 of his friends, who, from the growing infirmities of the old gen- 
 tleman, could not promise ourselves many years' enjoyment of 
 his company, and were anxious to bring matters to a conclusion 
 during his lifetime, at length prevailed ; and on Monday last the 
 
 daughter of my old friend. Admiral , having attained the 
 
 womanly age of nineteen, was conducted to the church by her 
 
 pleasant cousin J , who told some few years older. 
 
 Before the youthful part of my female readers express their in- 
 dignation at the abominable loss of time occasioned to the lovers 
 by the preposterous notions of my old friend, they will do well to 
 consider the reluctance which a fond parent naturally feels at 
 parting with his child. To this unwillingness, I believe, in most 
 cases may be traced the difference of opinion on this point 
 between child and parent, whatever pretences of interest or pru- 
 dence may be held out to cover it. The hard-heartedness of 
 fathers is a fine theme for romance writers, a sure and moving 
 topic ; but is there not something untender, to say no more of it, 
 in the hurry which a beloved child is sometimes in to tear herself 
 from the paternal stock, and commit herself to strange graftings ? 
 The case is heightened where the lady, as in the present instance, 
 happens to be an only child. I do not understand these matters 
 experimentally, but I can make a shrewd guess at the wounded 
 pride of a parent upon these occasions. It is no new observa- 
 tion, I believe, that a lover in most cases has no rival so much 
 to be feared as the father. Certainly there is a jealousy in un- 
 parallel subjects, which is little less heart-rending than the pas- 
 sion which we more strictly christen by that name. Mothers' 
 scruples are more easily got over ; for this reason, I suppose, that 
 the protection transferred to a husband is less a derogation and a 
 loss to their authority than to the paternal. Mothers, besides, 
 have a trembling foresight, which paints the inconveniences (im- 
 possible to be conceived in the same degree by the other parent) 
 of a life of forlorn celibacy, which the refusal of a tolerable 
 match may entail upon their child. Mothers' instinct is a surer 
 guide here, than the cold reasonings of a father on such a topic. 
 To this instinct may be imputed, and by it alone may be excused, 
 the unbeseeming artifices, by which some wives push on the 
 
THE WEDDING. 113 
 
 matrimonial projects of their daughters, which the husband, how- 
 ever approving, shall entertain with comparative indifference. 
 A little shamelessness on this head is pardonable. With this ex- 
 planation, forwardness becomes a grace, and maternal impoitu- 
 nity receives the name of a virtue. — But the parson stays, while 
 I preposterously assume his office ; I am preaching, while the 
 bride is on the threshold. 
 
 Nor let any of my female readers suppose that the sage reflec- 
 tions which have just escaped me have the obliquest tendency of 
 application to the young lady, who, it will be seen, is about to 
 venture upon a change in her condition, at a mature and compe- 
 tent age, and not without the fullest approbation of all parties. I 
 only deprecate very hasty marriages. 
 
 It had been fixed that the ceremony should be gone through at 
 an early hour, to give time for a little dejeune afterwards, to which 
 a select party of friends had been invited. We were in church 
 a little before the clock struck eight. 
 
 Nothing could be more judicious or graceful than the dress of 
 the bride-maids — the three charming Miss Foresters — on this 
 morning. To give the bride an opportunity of shining singly, 
 they had come habited all in green. I am ill at describing female 
 apparel ; but while she stood at the altar in vestments white and 
 candid as her thoughts, a sacrificial whiteness, they assisted in 
 robes, such as might become Diana's nymphs — Foresters indeed 
 — as such who had not yet come to the resolution of putting off 
 cold virginity. These young maids, not being so blest as to have 
 a mother living, I am told, keep single for their father's sake, and 
 live all together so happy with their remaining parent, that the 
 hearts of their lovers are ever broken with the prospect (so in- 
 auspicious to their hopes) of such uninterrupted and provoking 
 home-comfort. Gallant girls ! each a victim worthy of Iphige- 
 nia ! 
 
 I do not know what business I have to be present in solemn 
 places. I cannot divest me of an unseasonable disposition to 
 levity upon the most awful occasions. I was never cut out for a 
 public functionary. Ceremony and I have long shaken hands ; 
 but I could not resist the importunities of the young lady's father, 
 whose gout unhappily confined him at home, to act as parent on 
 
 PART II. 9 
 
114 ELIA. 
 
 this occasion, and give away the bride. Something ludicrous oc- 
 curred to me at this most serious of all moments — a sense of my 
 unfitness to have the disposal, even in imagination, of the sweet 
 young creature beside me. I fear I was betrayed to some lightness, 
 for the awful eye of the parson — and the rector's eye of Saint Mil- 
 dred's in the Poultry is no trifle of a rebuke — was upon me in an 
 instant, souring my incipient jest to the tristful severities of a fu- 
 neral. 
 
 This was the only misbehavior which I can plead to upon this 
 solemn occasion, unless what was objected to me after the cere- 
 mony, by one of the handsome Miss T s, be accounted a sole- 
 cism. She was pleased to say that she had never seen a gentle- 
 man before me give away a bride, in black. Now black has 
 been my ordinary apparel so long — indeed I take it to be the 
 proper costume of an author — the stage sanctions it — ^that to have 
 appeared in some lighter color would have raised more mirth at 
 my expense, than the anomaly had created censure. But I could 
 perceive that the bride's mother, and some elderly ladies present 
 (God bless them !) would have been well content, if I had come 
 in any other color than that. But I got over the omen by a lucky 
 apologue, which I remembered out of Pilpay, or some Indian 
 author, of all the birds being invited to the linnet's wedding, at 
 which, when all the rest came in their gayest feathers, the raven 
 alone apologized for his cloak because " he had no other." This 
 tolerably reconciled the elders. But with the young people all 
 was merriment, and shaking of hands, and congratulations, and 
 kissing away the bride's tears, and kissing from her in return, 
 till a young lady, who assumed some experience in these matters, 
 having worn the nuptial bands some four or five weeks longer 
 than her friend, rescued her, archly observing, with half an eye 
 upon the bridegroom, that at this rate she would have " none 
 left." 
 
 My friend the admiral was in fine wig and buckle on this occa- 
 sion — a striking contrast to his usual neglect of personal appear- 
 ance. He did not once shove up his borrowed locks (his custom 
 ever at his morning studies) to betray the few grey stragglers of 
 his own beneath them. He wore an aspect of thoughtful satis- 
 faction. I trembled for the hour, which at length approached, 
 
 i 
 
THE WEDDING. 115 
 
 when after a protracted breakfast of three hours — if stores of cold 
 fowls, tongues, hams, botargoes, dried fruits, wines, cordials, &c., 
 can deserve so meagre an appellation — the coach was announced, 
 which was come to carry off the bride and bridegroom for a sea- 
 son, as custom has sensibly ordained, into the country j upon 
 which design, wishing them a felicitous journey, let us return to 
 the assembled guests. 
 
 As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage, 
 
 The eyes of men 
 
 Are idly bent on him that enters next, 
 
 so idly did we bend our eyes upon one another, when the chief 
 performers in the morning's pageant had vanished. None told 
 his tale. None sipped her glass. The poor Admiral made an 
 effort — it was not much. I had anticipated so far. Even the 
 infinity of full satisfaction, that had betrayed itself through the 
 prim looks and quiet deportment of his lady, began to wane into 
 something of misgiving. No one knew whether to take their 
 leaves or stay. We seemed assembled upon a silly occasion. In 
 this crisis, betwixt tarrying and departure, I must do justice to a 
 foolish talent of mine, which had otherwise like to have brought 
 me into disgrace in the fore-part of the day ; I mean a power, in 
 any emergeney, of thinking and giving vent to all manner of 
 strange nonsense. In this awkward dilemma I found it sovereign. 
 I rattled off some of my most excellent absurdities. All were 
 willing to be relieved, at any expense of reason, from the pres- 
 sure of the intolerable vacuum which had succeeded to the morn- 
 ing bustle. By this means I was fortunate in keeping together 
 the better part of the company to a late hour ; and a rubber of 
 whist (the Admiral's favorite game) with some rare strokes of 
 chance as well as skill, which came opportunely on his side — 
 lengthened out till midnight — dismissed the old gentleman at last 
 to his bed with comparatively easy spirits. 
 
 I have been at my old friend's various times since. I do not 
 know a visiting place where every guest is so perfectly at his 
 ease ; nowhere, where harmony is so strangely the result of con- 
 fusion. Everybody is at cross-purposes, yet the effect is so much 
 better than uniformity. Contradictory orders ; servants pulling 
 
116 ELI A. 
 
 one way ; master and mistress driving some other, yet both di- 
 verse ; visitors huddled up in corners ; chairs unsymmetrised ; 
 candles disposed by chance ; meals at odd hours, tea and supper 
 at once, or the ktter preceding the former ; the hoot and the guest 
 conferring, yet each upon a different topic, each understanding 
 himself, neither trying to understand or hear the other ; draughts 
 and politics, chess and political economy, cards and conversation 
 on nautical matters, going on at once, without the hope, or indeed 
 the wish, of distinguishing them, make it altogether the most per- 
 fect Concordia discors you shall meet with. Yet somehow the old 
 house is not quite what it should be. The Admiral still enjoys 
 his pipe, but he has no Miss Emily to fill it for him. The instru- 
 ment stands where it stood, but she is gone, whose delicate touch 
 could sometimes for a short minute appease the warring elements. 
 He has learnt, as Marvel expresses it, to " make his destiny his 
 choice." He bears bravely up, but he does not come out with 
 his flashes of wild wit so thick as formerly. His sea songs seldom 
 escape him. His wife,, too, looks as if she wanted some younger 
 body to scold and set to rights. We all miss a junior presence. 
 It is wonderful how one young maiden freshens up, and keeps 
 green, the paternal roof. Old and young seem to have an inte- 
 rest in her, so long as she is not absolutely disposed of. The 
 youthfulness of the house is flown. Emily is married. 
 
REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 117 
 
 REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 
 
 The Old Year being dead, and the New Year coming of age, 
 which he does, by Calendar Law, as soon as the breath is out of 
 the old gentleman's body, nothing would serve the young spark 
 but he must give a dinner upon the occasion, to which all the 
 Bays in the year were invited. The Festivals, whom he deputed 
 as his stewards, were mightily taken with the notion. They had 
 been engaged time out of mind, they said, in providing mirth and 
 good cheer for mortals below ; and it was time they should have 
 a taste of their own bounty. It was stiffly debated among them, 
 whether the Fasts should be admitted. Some said, the appear- 
 ance, of such lean, starved guests, with their mortified faces, 
 would pervert the ends of the meeting. But the objection was 
 over-ruled by Christmas Day, who had a design upon Ash Wed- 
 nesday (as you shall hear), and a mighty desire to see how the 
 old Domine would behave himself in his cups. Only the Vigila 
 were requested to come with their lanterns, to light the gentlefolks 
 home at night. 
 
 All the Bays came to their day. Covers were provided for 
 three hundred and sixty-five guests at the principal table ; with 
 an occasional knife and fork at the side-board for the TweiUy- 
 Ninth of February. 
 
 I should have told yoi , that cards of invitation had been issued. 
 The carriers were the Hours; twelve little, merry, whirligig 
 foot-pages, as you should desire to see, that went all round, and 
 found out the persons invited well enough, with the exception 
 of Easter Bay, Shrove Tuesday, and a few such Moveables, who 
 had lately shifted their quarters. 
 
 Well, they all met at last, foul Bays, fine Bays, all sorts of 
 
118 ELIA. 
 
 Days, and a rare din they made of it. There was nothing but, 
 Hail ! fellow Day, — well met — brother Day — sister Day — only 
 Lady Day kept a little on the aloof, and seemed somewhat scorn- 
 ful. Yet some said, Twelfth Day cut her out and out, for she 
 came in a tiffany suit, white and gold, like a green on a frost- 
 cake, all royal, glittering, and Epiphanous. The rest came, 
 some in green, some in white — but old Lent and his family were 
 not yet out of mourning. Rainy Days came in, dripping ; and 
 sun-shiny Days helped them to change their stockings. Wedding 
 Day was there in his marriage finery, a little the worse for wear. 
 Pay Day came late, as he always does ; and Doomsday sent word 
 — he might be expected. 
 
 April Fool (as my young lord's jester) took upon himself to 
 marshal the guests, and wild work he made with it. It would 
 have posed old Erra Pater to have found out any given Day in the 
 year, to erect a scheme upon — good Days, bad Days, were so 
 shuffled together, to the confounding of all sober horoscopy. 
 
 He had stuck the Twenty-First of June next to the Twenty- 
 Second of December, and the former looked like a Maypole siding 
 a marrow-bone. Ash Wednesday got wedged in (as was con- 
 certed) betwixt Christmas and Lord Mayor^s Day. Lord ! how 
 he laid about him ! Nothing but barons of beef and turkeys 
 would go down with him — ^to the great greasing and detriment of 
 his new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas Day was 
 at his elbow, plying him with the wassail-bowl, till he roared, and 
 hiccupp'd, and protested there was no faith in dried ling, but 
 commended it to the devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious, censo- 
 rious, hy-pocrit-crit-critical mess, and no dish for a gentleman. 
 Then he dipt his fist into the middle of the great custard that 
 stood before his left-hand neighbor, and daubed his hungry beard 
 all over with it, till you would have taken him for the Last Day 
 in December, it so hung in icicles. 
 
 At another part of the table, Shrove Tuesday was helping the 
 Second of September to some cock broth, — which courtesy the 
 latter returned with the delicate thigh of a hen pheasant — so there 
 was no love lost for that matter. The Last of Lent was sponging 
 upon Shrovetide's pancake ; which April Fool perceiving, told 
 him he did well, pancakes were proper to a goodfry-day. 
 
REJOICING UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 119 
 
 In another part, a hubbub arose about the Thirtieth of January ^ 
 who, it seems, being a sour puritanic character, that thought no- 
 body's meat good or sanctified enough for him, had smuggled into 
 the room a calf's head, which he had had cooked at home for that 
 purpose, thinking to feast thereon incontinently ; but as it lay in 
 the dish March Many weather s, who is a very fine lady, and 
 subject to the meagrims, screamed out there was a " human head 
 in the platter," and raved about Herodias' daughter to that degree, 
 that the obnoxious viand was obliged to be removed ; nor did she 
 recover her stomach till she had gulped down a Restorative, 
 confected of Oak Apple, which the merry Twenty-Ninth of May 
 always carries about with him for that purpose. 
 
 The King's health* being called for after this, a notable dispute 
 arose between the Twelfth of August (a zealous old Whig gentle- 
 woman), and the Twenty-Third of April (a new-fangled lady 
 of the Tory stamp), as to which of them should have the honor to 
 propose it. August grew hot upon the matter, affirming time out 
 of mind the prescriptive right to have lain with her, till her rival 
 had basely supplanted her ; whom she represented as little better 
 than a kept mistress, who went about in Jine clothes, while she 
 (the legitimate Birthday) had scarcely a rag, &c. 
 
 April Fool, being made mediator, confirmed the right in the 
 strongest form of words to the appellant, but decided for peace' 
 sake that the exercise of it should remain with the present posses 
 sor. At the same time, he slily rounded the first lady in the ear, 
 that an action might lie against the Crown for bi-geny. 
 
 It beginning to grow a little duskish, Candlemas lustily bawled 
 out for lights, which was opposed by all the Days, who protested 
 against burning daylight. Then fair water was handed round in 
 silver ewers, and the same lady was observed to take an unusual 
 time in Washing herself. 
 
 May Day, with that sweetness which is peculiar to her, in a 
 neat speech proposing the health of the founder, crowned her 
 goblet (and by her example the rest of the company) with gar- 
 lands. This being done, the lordly New Year from the upper 
 end of the table, in a cordial but somewhat lofty tone, returned 
 
 * King George IV. . 
 
120 ELIA. 
 
 thanks. He felt proud on an occasion of meeting so many of his 
 worthy father's late tenants, promised to improve their farms, and 
 at the same time to abate (if anything was found unreasonable) in 
 their rents. 
 
 At the mention of this, the four Quarter Days involuntarily 
 looked at each other, and smiled ; April Fool whistled to an old 
 tune of " New Brooms ;" and a surly old rebel at the further end 
 of the table (who was discovered to be no other than the Fifth of 
 November) muttered out, distinctly enough to be heard by the 
 whole company, words to this effect, that, " when the old one is 
 gone, he is a fool that looks for a better." Which rudeness of 
 his, the guests resenting, unanimously voted his expulsion ; and 
 the malcontent was thrust out neck and heels into the cellar, as 
 the properest place for such a boutefeu and firebrand as he had 
 shown himself to be. 
 
 Order being restored — the young lord (who, to say truth, had 
 been a little ruffled, and put beside his oratory) in as few, and yet 
 as obliging words as possible, assured them of entire welcome ; 
 and, with a graceful turn, singling out poor Twenty-Ninth of 
 Febmary, that had sate all this while mumchance at the side- 
 board, begged to couple his health with that of the good company 
 before him — which he drank accordingly ; observing, that he had 
 not seen his honest face any time these four years — with a num- 
 ber of endearing expressions besides. At the same time, remov- 
 ing the solitary Day from the forlorn seat which had been 
 assigned him, he stationed him at his own board, somewhere 
 between the Greek Calends and Latter Lammas. 
 
 Ash Wednesday, being now called upon for a song, with bis 
 eyes fast stuck in his head, and as well as the Canary he had 
 swallowed would give him leave, struck up a Carol, which Christ- 
 mas Day had taught him for the nonce ; and was followed by the 
 latter, who gave " Miserere " in fine style, hitting off the mump- 
 ing notes and lengthened drawl of Old Mortification with infinite 
 humor. April Fool swore they had exchanged conditions ; but 
 Good Friday was observed to look extremely grave ; and Sunday 
 held her fan before her face, that she might not be seen to 
 smile. 
 
REJOICINGS U5ON THE x\^EW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 121 
 
 Shrove-tide, Lord Mayor's Day, and April Fool, next joined in 
 a glee — 
 
 Which is the properest day to drink ? 
 
 in which all the Days chiming in, made a merry burden. 
 
 They next fell to quibbles and conundrums. The question 
 being proposed, who had the greatest number of followers — the 
 Quarter Days said, there could be no question as to that ; for they 
 had all the creditors in the world dogging their heels. But April 
 Fool gave it in favor of the Forty Days before Easter ; because 
 the debtors in all cases outnumbered the creditors, and they kept 
 lent all the year. 
 
 All this while Valentine's Day kept courting pretty May, who 
 sate next him, slipping amorous billets-doux under the table, till 
 the Dog Days (who are naturally of a warm constitution) began 
 to be jealous, and to bark and rage exceedingly. April Fool, who 
 likes a bit of sport above measure, and had some pretensions to 
 the lady besides, as being but a cousin once removed, — clapped 
 and halloo'd them on ; and as fast as their indignation cooled, 
 those mad wags, the Ember Days, were at it with their bellows, 
 to blow it into a flame ; and all was in a ferment : till old Madam 
 Septuagesima (who boasts herself the Mother of the Days) wisely 
 diverted the conversation with a tedious tale of the lovers which 
 she could reckon when she was young ; and of one Master Roga- 
 tion Day in particular, who was for ever putting the question to 
 her ; but she kept him at a distance, as the chronicle would tell — 
 by which I apprehend she meant the Almanack. Then she ram- 
 bled on to the Days that were gone, the good old Days, and so to 
 the Days before the Flood — which plainly showed her old head to 
 be little better than crazed and doited. 
 
 Day being ended, the Days called for their cloaks and great- 
 coats, and took their leaves. Lord Mayor's Day went off in a 
 Mist, as usual ; Shortest Day Jin a deep black Fog, that wrapt the 
 little gentleman all round like a hedge-hog. Two Vigils — so 
 watchmen are called in heaven — saw Christmas Day safe home — 
 they had been used to the business before. Another Vigil — a 
 Btout, sturdy patrole, called the Eve of St, Christopher — seeing 
 
122 ELIA 
 
 Ash Wednesday in a condition little better than he should be — e'en 
 whipt him over his shoulders, pick-a-back fashion, and Old Mor- 
 tification went floating home singing — 
 
 On the bat's back do I fly, 
 
 and a number of old snatches besides, between drunk and sober ; 
 but very few Aves or Penitentiaries (you may believe me) were 
 among them. Longest Day set off westward in beautiful crimson 
 and gold — the rest, some in one fashion, some in another ; but 
 Valentine and pretty May took their departure together in one of 
 the prettiest silvery twilights a Lover's Day could wish to set in. 
 
 .Mib^ 
 
CONrESSIONS OF A PRUNKARD. 193 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 
 
 Dehortations from the use of strong liquors have been the favor- 
 ite topic of sober declaimers in all ages, and have been received 
 with abundance of applause by water-drinking critics. But with 
 the patient himself, the man that is to be cured, unfortunately their 
 sound has seldom prevailed. Yet the evil is acknowledged, the 
 remedy simple. Abstain. No force can oblige a man to raise 
 the glass to his head against his will. 'Tis as easy as not to steal, 
 not to tell lies. 
 
 Alas ! the hand to pilfer, and the tongue to bear false witness, 
 have no constitutional tendency. These are actions indifferent to 
 them. At the first instance of the reformed will, they can be 
 brought off without a murmur. The itching finger is but a figure 
 in speech, and the tongue of the liar can with the same natural 
 delight give forth useful truths with which it has been accustomed 
 to scatter their pernicious contraries. But when a man has com- 
 menced sot 
 
 O pause, thou sturdy moralist, thou person of stout nerves and 
 a strong head, whose liver is happily untouched, and ere thy gorge 
 riseth at the name which I have written, first learn what the thijig 
 is ; how much of compassion, how much of human allowance, 
 thou mayst virtuously mingle with thy disapprobation. Trample 
 not on the ruins of man. Exact not, under so terrible a penalty 
 as infamy, a resuscitation from a state of death almost as real as 
 that from which Lazarus rose not but by a miracle. 
 
 Begin a reformation, and custom will make it easy. But what 
 if the beginning be dreadful, the first steps not like climbing a 
 mountain but going through fire ? what if the whole system must 
 undergo a change violent as that which we conceive of the muta- 
 
124 ELIA. 
 
 tion of form in some insects '? what if a process comparable to 
 flaying alive be to be gone through ? is the weakness that sinks 
 under such struggles to be confounded with the pertinacity which 
 clings to other vices, which have induced no constitutional neces- 
 sity, no engagement of the whole victim, body and soul ? 
 
 I have known one in that state, when he has tried to abstain 
 but for one evening, — though the poisonous potion had long ceased 
 to bring back its first enchantments, though he was sure it would 
 rather deepen his gloom than brighten it, — in the violence of the 
 struggle, and the necessity he has felt of getting rid of the present 
 sensation at any rate, I have known him to scream out, to cry 
 aloud, for the anguish and pain of the strife within him. 
 
 Why should I hesitate to declare, that the man of whom I speak 
 is myself? I have no puling apology to make to mankind. I see 
 them all in one way or another deviating from the pure reason. 
 It is to my own nature alone I am accountable for the wo that I 
 havq brought upon it. 
 
 I believe that there are constitutions, robust^heads and iron in- 
 sides, whom scarce any excesses can hurt ; whom brandy (I have 
 seen them drink it like wine), at all events whom wine, taken in 
 ever so plentiful measure, can do no worse injury to than just to 
 muddle their faculties, perhaps never very pellucid. On them 
 this discourse is wasted. They would but laugh at a weak bro- 
 ther, who trying his strength with them, and coming off foiled frona 
 the contest, would fain persuade them that such agonistic exer- 
 cises are dangerous. It is to a very different description of per- 
 sons I speak. It is to the weak, the nervous ; to those who feel 
 the want of some artificial aid to raise their spirits in society to 
 what is ao more than the ordinary pitch of all around them with- 
 out it. This is the secret of our drinking. Such must fly the 
 convivial board in the first instance, if they do not mean to sell 
 themselves for term of life. 
 
 Twelve years ago I had completed my six-and-twentieth year. 
 I had lived from the period of leaving school to that time pretty 
 much in solitude. My companions were chiefly books, or at most 
 one or two living ones of my own book-loving and sober stamp. 
 I rose early, went to bed betimes, and the faculties which God 
 had given me, I have reason to think, did not rust in me unused. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 135 
 
 About that time I fell in with some companions of a different 
 order. They were men of boisterous spirits, sitters up a-nights, 
 disputants, drunken ; yet seemed to have something noble about 
 them. We dealt about the wit, or what passes for it after mid- 
 night, jovially. Of the quality called fancy I certainly possessed 
 a larger share than my companions. Encouraged by their ap- 
 plause, I set up for a professed joker ! I, who of all men am 
 least fitted for such an occupation, having, in addition to the 
 greatest difficulty which I experience at all times of finding 
 words to express my meaning, a natural nervous impediment in 
 my speech ! 
 
 Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire to any 
 character but that of a wit. When you find a tickling relish 
 upon your tongue disposing you to that sort of conversation, es- 
 pecially if you find a preternatural flow of ideas setting in upon 
 you at the sight of a bottle and fresh glasses, avoid giving way to 
 it as you would fly your greatest destruction. If you cannot 
 crush the power of fancy, or that within you which you mistake 
 for such, divert it, give it some other play. Write an essay, pen 
 a character or description, — but not as I do now, with tears trick- 
 ling down your cheeks. 
 
 To be an object of compassion to friends, of derision to foes ; to 
 be suspected by strangers, stared at by fools ; to be esteemed dull 
 when you cannot be witty, to be applauded for witty when you 
 know that you have been dull ; to be called upon for the extem- 
 poraneous exercise of that faculty which no premeditation can 
 give ; to be spurred on to efforts which end in contempt ; to be 
 set on to provoke mirth which procures the procurer hatred ; to 
 give pleasure and be paid with squinting malice ; to swallow 
 draughts of life-destroying wine which are to be distilled into airy 
 breath to tickle vain auditors ; to mortgage miserable morrows 
 for nights of madness ; to waste whole seas of time upon those 
 who pay it back in little inconsiderable drops of grudging ap- 
 plause, — are the wages of buffoonery and death. 
 
 Time, which has a sure stroke at dissolving all connexions 
 which have no solider fastening than this liquid cement, more 
 kind to me than my own taste or penetration, at length opened my 
 eyes to the supposed qualities of my first friends. No trace of 
 
126 ELIA. 
 
 them is left but in the vices which they introduced, and the habits 
 they infixed. In them my friends survive still, and exercise am- 
 ple retribution for any supposed infidelity that I may have been 
 guilty of towards them. 
 
 My next more immediate companions were and are persons of 
 such intrinsic and felt worth, that though accidentally their ac- 
 quaintance has proved pernicious to me, I do not know that if the 
 thing were to do over again, T should have the courage to eschew 
 the mischief at the price of forfeiting the benefit. I came to them 
 reeking from the steams of my late over-heated notions of com- 
 panionship ; and the slightest fuel which they unconsciously 
 afforded, was sufficient to feed my old fires into a propensity. 
 
 They were no drinkers/ but, one from professional habits, and 
 another from a custom derived from his father, smoked tobacco. 
 The devil could not have devised a more subtle trap to re-take a 
 backsliding penitent. The transition, from gulping down 
 draughts of liquid fire to puffing out innocuous blasts of dry smoke, 
 was so like cheating him. But he is too hard for us when we 
 hope to commute. He beats us at barter ; and when we think to 
 set off a new failing against an old infirmity, 'tis odds but he puts 
 the trick upon us of two for one. That (comparatively) white 
 devil of tobacco brought with him in the end seven worse than 
 himself. 
 
 It were impertinent to carry the reader through all the processes 
 by which, from smoking at first with malt liquor, I took my de- 
 grees through thin wines, through stronger wine and water, through 
 small punch, to those juggling compositions, which, under the name 
 of mixed liquors, slur a great deal of brandy or other poison under 
 less and less water continually, until they come next to none, and 
 so to none at all . But it is hateful to disclose the secrets of my 
 Tartarus. 
 
 I should repel my readers, from a mere incapacity of believing 
 me, were I to tell them what tobacco has been to me, the drudg- 
 ing service which I have paid, the slavery which I have vowed to 
 it. How, when I have resolved to quit it, a feeling as of ingrati- 
 tude has started up ; how it has put on personal claims and made 
 the demands of a friend upon me. How the reading of it casu- 
 ally in a book, as where Adams takes his whiflT in the chimney- 
 
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 127 
 
 corner of some inn in Joseph Andrews, or Piscator in the Complete 
 Angler breaks his fast upon a morning pipe in that delicate room 
 Piscalorihus Sacrum^ has in a moment broken down the resistance 
 of weeks. How a pipe was ever in my midnight path before me, 
 till the vision forced me to realize it, — how then its ascending va- 
 pors curled, its fragrance lulled, and the thousand delicious min- 
 isterings conversant about it, employing every faculty, extracted 
 the sense of pain. How from illuminating it came to darken, 
 from a quick solace it turned to a negative relief, thence to a 
 restlessness and dissatisfaction, thence to a positive misery. How, 
 even now, when the whole secret stands confessed in all its dread- 
 ful truth before me, I feel myself linked to it beyond the power 
 of revocation. Bone of my bone 
 
 Persons not accustomed to examine the motives of their actions, 
 to reckon up the countless nails that rivet the chains of habit, or 
 perhaps being bound by none so obdurate as those I have confess- 
 ed to, may recoil from this as from an overcharged picture. But 
 what short of such a bondage is it, which in spite of protesting 
 friends, a weeping wife, and a reprobating world, chains down 
 many a poor fellow, of no original indisposition to goodness, to his 
 pipe and his pot ! 
 
 I have seen a print after Correggio, in which three female fig- 
 ures are ministering to a man who sits fast bound at the root of a 
 tree. Sensuality is soothing him. Evil Habit is nailing him to 
 a branch, and Repugnance at the same instant of time is applying 
 a snake to his side. In his face is feeble delight, the recollection 
 of past rather than perception of present pleasures, languid en- 
 joyment of evil with utter imbecility to good, a Sybaritic effemi- 
 nacy, a submission to bondage, the springs of the will gone down 
 like a broken clock, the sin and the suffering co-instantaneous, or 
 the latter forerunning the former, remorse preceding action — all 
 this represented in one point of time. When I saw this, I admir- 
 ed the wonderful skill of the painter. But when I went away, I 
 wept, because I thought of my own condition. 
 
 Of that there is no hope that it should ever change. The wa- 
 ters have gone over me. But out of the black depths could I be 
 heard, I would cry out to all those who have but set a foot in the 
 perilous flood. Could the youth, to whom the flavor of his first 
 
128 ELIA. 
 
 wine is delicious as the opening scenes of life or the entering upon 
 some newly discovered paradise, look into my desolation, and be 
 made to understand what a dreary thing it is when a man shall 
 feel himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a passive 
 will, — ^to see his destruction and have no power to stop it, and yet 
 to feel it all the way emanating from himself; to perceive all 
 goodness emptied out of him, and yet not to be able to forget a 
 time when it was otherwise ; to bear about the piteous spectacle 
 of his own self- ruins : — could he see my fevered eye, feverish with 
 last night's drinking, and feverishly looking for this night's repe- 
 tition of the folly ; could he feel the body of the death out of 
 which I cry hourly with feebler and feebler outcry to be deliver- 
 ed, — it were enough to make him dash the sparkling beverage 
 to the earth in all the pride of its mantling temptation j to make 
 him clasp his teeth, 
 
 and not undo 'em 
 To suffer wkt damnation to run thro' 'em. 
 
 Yes, but (methinks 1 liear somebody object) if sobriety be tiiat 
 fine thing you would have us to understand, if the comforts of a 
 cool brain are to be preferred to that state of heated excitement 
 which you describe and deplore, what hinders in your own in- 
 stance that you do not return to those habits from which you 
 would induce others never to swerve '? if the blessing be worth 
 preserving, is it not worth recovering ? 
 
 Recovering ! — O if a wish could transport me back to those 
 days of youth, when a draught from the next clear spring could 
 slake any heats which summer suns and youthful exercise had 
 power to stir up in the blood, how gladly would I return to thee, 
 pure element, the drink of children, and of child-like holy her- 
 mit ! In my dreams I can sometimes fancy thy cool refreshment 
 purling over my burning tongue. But my waking stomach 
 rejects it. That which refreshes innocence only makes me sick 
 and faint. 
 
 But is there no middle way betwixt total abstinence and the ex- 
 cess which kills you ? For your sake, reader, and that you may 
 never attain to my experience, with pain I must utter the dread- 
 ful truth, that there is none, none that I can find. In my stage 
 
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 129 
 
 of liabit (I speak not of habits less confirmed — for some of them 
 I believe the advice to be most prudential) in the stage which I 
 have reached, to stop short of that measure which is sufficient to 
 draw on torpor and sleep, the benumbing apoplectic sleep of the 
 drunkard, is to have taken none at all. The pain of the self-de- 
 nial is all one. And what that is, I had rather the reader should 
 believe on my credit, than know from his own trial. He will 
 come to know it, whenever he shall arrive at that state, in which, 
 paradoxical as it may appear, reason sJiall only visit him through 
 intoxication : for it is a fearful truth, that the intellectual faculties 
 by repeated acts of intemperance may be driven from their or- 
 derly sphere of action, their clear daylight ministeries, until they 
 shall be brought at last to depend, for the faint manifestation of 
 their departing energies, upon the returning periods of the fatal 
 madness to which they owe their devastation. The drinking man 
 is never less himself than during his sober intervals. Evil is so 
 far his good.* 
 
 Behold me then, in the robust period of life, reduced to imbe- 
 cility and decay. Hear me count my gains, and the profit which 
 I have derived from the midnight cup. 
 
 Twelve years ago, I was possessed of a healthy frame of mind 
 and body. I was never strong, but I think my constitution (for 
 a weak one) was as happily exempt from the tendency to any 
 malady as it was possible to be. I scarce knew what it was to 
 ail anything. Now, except when I am losing myself in a sea of 
 drink, I am never free from these uneasy sensations in head and 
 stomach, which are so much worse to bear than any definite pains 
 or aches. 
 
 At that time I was seldom in bed afler six in the morning, 
 summer and winter. I awoke refreshed, and seldom without 
 some merry thoughts in my head, or some piece of a song to 
 welcome the new-born day. Now, the first feeling which besets 
 
 * When poor M painted his last picture, with a pencil in one trem- 
 bling hand, and a glass of brandy and water in the other, his fingers owed 
 the comparative steadiness with which they were enabled to go through 
 their task in an imperfect manner, to a temporary firmness derived from a 
 repetition of practices, the general effect of which had shaken both them 
 and him so terribly. 
 
 PART II. 10 
 
130 ELIA. 
 
 me, after stretching out the hours of recumbence to their last 
 possible extent, is a forecast of the wearisome day that lies before 
 me, with a secret wish that I could have lain on still, or never 
 awaked. 
 
 Life itself, my waking life, has much of the confusion, the 
 trouble, and obscure perplexity, of an ill dream. In the day 
 time I stumble upon dark mountains. 
 
 Business, which, though never very particularly adapted to my 
 nature, yet as something of necessity to be gone through, and 
 therefore best undertaken with cheerfulness, I used to enter upon 
 with some degree of alacrity, now wearies, affrights, perplexes 
 me. I fancy all sorts of discouragements, and am ready to give 
 up an occupation which gives me bread, from a harrassing conceit 
 of incapacity. The slightest commission given me by a friend, 
 or any small duty which I have to perform for myself, as giving 
 orders to a tradesman, &c., haunts me as a labor impossible to 
 be got through. So much the springs of action are broken. 
 
 The same cowardice attends me in all my intercourse with 
 mankind. I dare not promise that a friend's honor, or his cause, 
 would be safe in my keeping, if I were put to the expense of any 
 manly resolution in defending it. So much the springs of moral 
 action are deadened within me. 
 
 My favorite occupations in times past now cease to entertain. 
 I can do nothing readily. Application for ever so short a time 
 kills me. This poor abstract of my condition was penned at long 
 intervals, with scarcely any attempt at connection of thought, 
 which is now difficult to me. 
 
 The noble passages which formerly delighted me in history or 
 poetic fiction, now only draw a few weak tears, allied to dotage. 
 My broken and dispirited nature seems to sink before anything 
 great and admirable. 
 
 I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any cause, or none. 
 It is inexpressible how much this infirmity adds to a sense of 
 shame, and a general feeling of deterioration. 
 
 These are some of the instances, concerning which I can say 
 with truth, that it was not always so with me. 
 
 Shall I lift up the veil of my weakness any further ? or is thi* 
 disclosure sufficient ? 
 
ppv 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. Ml 
 
 I am a poor nameless egotist, who have no vanity to consult 
 by these Confessions. I know not whether I shall be laughed at, 
 or heard seriously. Such as they are, I commend them to the 
 reader's attention, if he find his own case any way touched. I 
 have told him what I am come to. Let him stop in time. 
 
1S3 ELIA. 
 
 OLD CHINA. 
 
 I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. When I go 
 to see any great house, I inquire for the china-closet, and next for 
 the picture gallery. I cannot defend the order of preference, but 
 by saying, that we have all some taste or other, of too ancient a 
 date to admit of our remembering distinctly that it was an ac- 
 quired one. I can call to mind the first play, and the first 
 exhibition, that I was taken to ; but I am not conscious of a time 
 when china jars and saucers were introduced into my imagination. 
 
 I had no repugnance then — why should I now have ? — to those 
 little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that under the notion 
 of men and women, float about, uncircumscribed by any element, 
 in that world before perspective — a china tea-cup. 
 
 I like to see my old friends — whom distance cannot diminish — 
 figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics), yet on terra 
 finna still — for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of 
 deeper blue, — which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had 
 made to spring up beneath their sandals. 
 
 I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if possi- 
 ble, with still more womanish expressions. 
 
 Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady 
 from a salver — two miles off. See how distance seems to set off 
 respect ! And here the same lady, or another — for likeness is 
 identity on tea-cups — is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored 
 on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty minc- 
 ing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our 
 world) must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead — 
 a furlong off* on the other side of the same strange stream ! 
 
 Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of their world — 
 see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays. 
 
OLD CHINA. 13'3 
 
 Here — a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-extensive — so objects 
 show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay. 
 
 I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our Hyson 
 (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink unmixed still of an 
 afternoon) some of these speciosa miracula upon a set of extraor- 
 dinary old blue china (a recent purchase) which we were now 
 for the first time using ; and could not help remarking, how favor- 
 able circumstances had been to us of late years, that we could 
 afibrd to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort — when 
 a passing sentiment seemed to overshade the brows of my com- 
 panion. I am quick at detecting these summer clouds in Bridget. 
 
 " I wish the good old times would come again," she said, " when 
 we were not quite so rich. I do not mean, that I want to be 
 poor ; but there was a middle state " — so she was pleased to 
 ramble on, — *' in which I am sure we were a great deal happier* 
 A purchase is but a purchase, now that you have money enough 
 and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we 
 coveted a cheap luxury (and, O ! how much ado 1 had to get 
 you to consent in those times !) — we were used to have a debate 
 two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against^ and 
 think what we might spare it out of, and what saving we could 
 hit upon, that should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buy- 
 ing then, when we felt the money that we paid for it. 
 
 " Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang 
 upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so 
 thread-bare — and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Co vent- 
 Garden ? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before 
 we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come 
 to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday 
 night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too 
 late — and when the old book-seller with some grumbling opened 
 his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bed- 
 wards) lighted out the relic from his dup*y treasures — and when 
 you lugged it home, wishing it were t^vlce as cumbersome — and 
 when you presented it to me — and when we were exploring the 
 perfectness of it {collating you called it) — and while I was re- 
 pairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impa- 
 
134 ELIA. 
 
 tience would not suffer to be left till daybreak — was there no 
 pleasure in being a poor man ? or can those neat black clothes 
 which you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since 
 we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity, 
 with which you flaunted it about in that overworn suit — your old 
 corbeau — for four or five weeks longer than you should have 
 done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen — or 
 sixteen shillings was it ? — a great affair we thought it then — 
 which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can afford to 
 buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever 
 bring me home any nice old purchases now. 
 
 " When you came home with twenty apologies for laying out a 
 less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo, which we 
 christened the ' Lady Blanch ;' when you looked at the pur- 
 chase, and thought of the money — and thought of the money, 
 and looked again at the picture — was there no pleasure in being 
 a poor man ? Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into Col- 
 naghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you ? 
 
 " Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, and 
 Potter's bar, and Waltham, when we had a holiday — holidays, 
 and all other fun, are gone now we are rich — and the little hand- 
 basket in which I used to deposit our day's fare of savory cold 
 lamb and salad — and how you would pry about at noon-tide for 
 some decent house, where we might go in and produce our store 
 — only paying for the ale that you must call for — and speculate 
 upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was likely to 
 allow us a table-cloth — and wish for such another honest hostess, 
 as Izaak Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks 
 of the Lea, when he went a fishing — and sometimes they would 
 prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would look grudgingly 
 upon us — but we had cheerful looks still for one another, and 
 would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging Piscator his 
 Trout Hall ? Now — when we go out a day's pleasuring, which 
 is seldom moreover, we ride part of the way — and go into a fine 
 inn, and order the best oi dinners, never debating the expense — 
 which after all never has half the relish of those chance country 
 3naps, when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a 
 precarious welcome. . , 
 
OLD CHINA. 1S5 
 
 " You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the 
 pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, when we 
 saw the Battle of Hexham, and the surrender of Calais, and 
 Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in the Wood — when 
 we squeezed out our shillings a-piece to sit three or four times in 
 a season in the one-shilling gallery — where you felt all the time 
 that you ought not to have brought me — and more strongly I felt 
 obligation to you for having brought me — and the pleasure was 
 the better for a little shame — and when the curtain drew up, what 
 cared we for our place in the house, or what mattered it where 
 we were sitting, when our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, 
 or with Viola at the Court of Illyria ? You used to say, that the 
 Gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially — 
 that the relish of such exhibitions must be in proportion to the 
 infrequency of going — that the company we met there, not being 
 in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and 
 did attend, to what was going on, on the stage — because a word 
 lost would have been a chasm, which it was impossible for them 
 to fill up. With such reflections we consoled our pride then — 
 and I appeal to you, whether, as a woman, I met generally with 
 less attention and accommodation, than I have done since in more 
 expensive situations in the house ? The getting in indeed, and 
 the crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad enough, — 
 but there was still a law of civility to woman recognized to quite 
 as great an extent as we ever found in the other passages — and 
 how a little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat and the 
 play, afterwards ! Now we can only pay our money and walk 
 in. You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. I am sure 
 we saw, and heard too, well enough then — but sight, and all I 
 think, is gone with our poverty. 
 
 " There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they became 
 quite common — in the first dish of peas, while they were yet dear 
 — ^to have them for a nice supper, a treat. What treat can we have 
 now ? If we were to treat ourselves now — that is, to have dainties 
 a little above our means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is the 
 very little more that we allow ourselves beyond what the actual 
 poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat — when two people 
 living together, ^s we have done, now and then indulge then;. 
 
136 ELI A. 
 
 . . » ^ 
 
 selves in a cheap luxury, which both like ; while each apologises, 
 and is willing to take both halves of the blame to his single share. 
 I see no harm in people making much of themselves, in that 
 sense of the word. It may give them a hint how to make much 
 of others. But now — what I mean by the word — we never do 
 make much of ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do 
 not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we were, just 
 above poverty. 
 
 " I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty pleasant 
 at the end of the year to make all meet — and much ado we used 
 to have every Thirty-first Night of December to account for our 
 exceedings — many a long face did you make over your puzzled 
 accounts, and in contriving to make it out how we had spent so 
 much — or that we had not spent so much — or that it was impos- 
 sible we should spend so much next year — and still we found our 
 slender capital decreasing — but then, betwixt ways, and projects, 
 and compromises of one sort or another, and talk of curtailing 
 this charge, and doing without that for the future — and the hope 
 that youth brings, and laughing spirits (in which you were never 
 poor till now), we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with 
 * lusty brimmers ' (as you used to quote it out of hearty cheerful 
 Mr. Cotton, as you called him), we used to welcome in the ' com- 
 ing guest.' Now we have no reckoning at all at the end of the 
 old year — no flattering promises about the new year doing better 
 for us." 
 
 Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, that 
 when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how I interrupt 
 it. I could not help, however, smiling at the phantom of wealth 
 which her dear imagination had conjured up out of a clear income 
 of poor hundred pounds a year. " It is true we were hap- 
 pier when we were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. 
 [ am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were to 
 shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much mend our- 
 selves. That we had much to struggle with, as we grew up 
 together, we have reason to be most thankful. It strengthened, 
 and knit our compact closer. We could never have been what 
 we have been to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency 
 which you now complain of. The resisting power — ^those natural 
 
OLD CHINA. 187 
 
 dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten 
 — with us are long since passed away. Competence to age is 
 supplementary youth, a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the 
 best that is to be had. We must ride where we formerly walked 
 — live better and lie softer — and shall be wise to do so— than we 
 had means to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet could 
 those days return — could you and I once more walk our thirty 
 miles a day— could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, 
 and you and I be young to see them — could the good old one-shil- 
 ling gallery days return — they are dreams, my cousin, now — but 
 could you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, 
 by our well-carpeted fire-sjde, sitting on this luxurious sofa — be 
 once more struggling up those inconvenient stair-cases, pushed 
 about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor 
 gallery scramblers — could I once more hear those anxious 
 shrieks of yours — and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, which 
 always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first 
 light of the cheerful theatre down beneath us — I know not the 
 fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be 
 willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great 
 
 Jew R is supposed to have, to purchase it. And now do 
 
 just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, 
 big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that pretty insipid 
 half Madona-ish chit of a lady in that very blue summer-house." 
 
138 ELIA. 
 
 THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM. 
 
 I CHANCED Upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical thing of a 
 dream the other night, that you shall hear of. I had been 
 reading the " Loves of the Angels," and went to bed with my 
 head full of speculations, suggested by that extraordinary legend. 
 It had given birth to innumerable conjectures ; and I remember 
 the last waking thought, which I gave expression to on my pil- 
 low, was a sort of wonder " what could come of it." 
 
 I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could scarcely 
 make out — but to some celestial region. It was not the real 
 heavens neither — not the downright Bible heaven — but a kind 
 of fairy-land heaven, about which a poor human fancy may have 
 leave to sport and air itself, I will hope, without presumption. 
 
 Methought — what wild things dreams are ? — I was present — 
 at what would you imagine — at an angel's gossipping. 
 
 Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, or whe- 
 ther It came purely of its own head, neither you nor I know — but 
 there lay, sure enough, wrapt in its little cloudy swaddling-bands 
 — a Child Angel. 
 
 Sun-threads — filmy beams — ran through the celestial napery 
 of what seemed its princely cradle. All the winged orders 
 hovered round, watching when the new-born should open its yet 
 closed eyes ; which, when it did, first one, and then the other — 
 with a solicitude and apprehension, yet not such as, stained with 
 fear, dim the expanding eyelids of mortal infants, but as if to 
 explore its path in those its unhereditary palaces — what an inex- 
 tinguishable titter that time spared not celestial visages ! Nor 
 wanted there to my seeming — O the inexplicable simpleness of 
 dreams ! — bowls of that cheering nectar, 
 
 — which mortals caudle call below 
 
THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM. 139 
 
 Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants — stricken in years, 
 as it might seem — so dexterous were those heavenly attendants 
 to counterfeit kindly similitudes of earth, to greet, with terres- 
 trial child-rites the young present^ which earth had made to 
 heaven. 
 
 Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full symphony as 
 those by which the spheres are tutored ; but, as loudest instru- 
 ments on earth speak oftentimes muffled ; so to accommodate 
 their sound the better to the weak ears of the imperfect-born. 
 And, with the noise of those subdued soundings, the Angclet 
 sprang forth, fluttering its rudiments of pinions — but forthwith 
 flagged and was recovered into the arms of those full-winged an- 
 gels. And a wonder it was to see how, as years went round in 
 heaven — a year in dreams is as a day— continually its white 
 shoulders put forth buds of wings, but wanting the perfect angelic 
 nutriment, anon was shorn of its aspiring, and fell fluttering — 
 still caught by angel hands — for ever to put forth shoots, and to 
 fall fluttering, because its birth was not of the unmixed vigor of 
 heaven. 
 
 And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and it was to 
 be called Ge-Urania, because its production was of earth and 
 heaven. 
 
 And it could not taste of death, by reason of its adoption into 
 immortal palaces: but it was to know weakness, and reliance, 
 and the shadow of human imbecility ; and it wfent with a lame 
 gait ; but in its goings it exceeded all mortal children in grace 
 and swiftness. Then pity first sprang up in angelic bosoms; 
 and yearnings (like the human) touched them at the sight of the 
 immortal lame one. 
 
 And with pain did then first those Intuitive Essences, with pain 
 and strife, to their natures (not grief), put back their bright intel- 
 ligences, and reduce their ethereal minds, schooling them to 
 degrees and slower processes, so to adapt their lessons to the 
 gradual illumination (as must needs be) of the half-earth-born ; 
 and what intuitive notices they could not repel (by reason that 
 their nature is to know all things at once) the half-heavenly 
 novice, by the better part of its nature, aspired to receive into its 
 
140 ELIA. 
 
 understanding ; so that Humility and Aspiration went on even- 
 paced in the instruction of the glorious Amphibium. 
 
 But, by reason that Mature Humanity is too gross to breathe 
 the air of that super-subtile region, its portion was, and is, to be a 
 child for ever. • 
 
 And because the human part of it might not press into the 
 heart and inwards of the palace of its adoption, those full-natured 
 angels tended it by turns in the purlieus of the palace, where 
 were shady groves and rivulets, like this green earth from which 
 it came : so Love, with Voluntary Humility, waited upon the 
 entertainment of the new-adopted. 
 
 And myriads of years rolled round (in dreams Time is no- 
 thing), and still it kept, and is to keep, perpetual childhood, and is 
 the Tutelar Genius of Childhood upon earth, and still goes lame 
 and lovely. 
 
 By the banks of the river Pison is seen, lone sitting by the 
 grave of the terrestrial Adah, whom the angel Nadir loved, a 
 Child ; but not the same which I saw in heaven. A mournful 
 hue overcasts its lineaments ; nevertheless, a correspondency is 
 between the child by the grave, and that celestial orphan, whom 
 I saw above ; and the dimness of the grief upon the heavenly, is 
 a shadow or emblem of that which stains the beauty of the ter- 
 restrial. And this correspondency is not to be understood but by 
 dreams. 
 
 And in the archives of heaven I had grace to read, how that 
 once the angel Nadir, being exiled from his place for mortal 
 passion, upspringing on the wings of parental love (such power 
 had parental love for a moment to suspend the else-irrevocable 
 law), appeared for a brief instant in his station, and, depositing a 
 wondrous Birth, straightway disappeared, and the palaces knew 
 him no more. And this charge was the self-same Babe, who 
 goeth lame and lovely — but Adah sleepeth by the river Pison. 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 141 
 
 POPULAR FALLACIES 
 
 THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD. 
 
 This axiom contains a principle of compensation, whiph disposes 
 us to admit the truth of it. But there is no safe trusting to dic- 
 tionaries and definitions. We should more willingly fall in with 
 this popular language, if we did not find brutality sometimes 
 awkwardly coupled with valor in the same vocabulary. The 
 comic writers, with their poetical justice, have contributed not a 
 little to mislead us upon this point. To see a hectoring fellow 
 exposed and beaten upon the stage, has something in it wonder, 
 fully diverting. Some people's share of animal spirits is notori- 
 ously low and defective. It has not strength to raise a vapor, or 
 furnish out the wind of a tolerable bluster. These love to be told 
 that huffing is no part of valor. The truest courage with them 
 is that which is the least noisy and obtrusive. But confront one 
 of these silent heroes with the swaggerer of real life, and his 
 confidence in the theory quickly vanishes. Pretensions do not 
 uniformly bespeak non-performance. A modest inofliensive de- 
 portment does not necessarily imply valor ; neither does the 
 absence of it justify us in denying that quality. Hickman wanted 
 modesty — we do not mean Mm of Clarissa — but who ever doubted 
 his courage ? Even the poets — upon whom this equitable distri- 
 bution of qualities should be most binding — have thought it 
 agreeable to nature to depart from the rule upon occasion. 
 Harapha, in the " Agonistes," is indeed a bully upon the received 
 notions. Milton has made him at once a blusterer, a giant, and a 
 dastard. But Almanzor, in Dryden, talks of driving armies 
 
142 ELIA. 
 
 singly before him — and does it. Tom Brown has a shrewder 
 insight into this kind of character than either of his predecessors. 
 He divides the palm more equably, and allows his hero a sort of 
 dimidiate pre-eminence : — " Bully Dawson kicked by half the 
 town, and half the town kicked by Bully Dawson." This was 
 true distributive justice. 
 
 II. 
 
 THAT ILL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS. 
 
 The weakest part of mankind have this saying commonest In 
 their mouth. It is the trite consolation administered to the easy 
 dupe, when he has been tricked out of his money or estate, that 
 the acquisition of it will do the owner no good. But the rogues 
 of this world — the prudenter part of them, at least — know better ; 
 and if the observation had been as true as it is old, would not 
 have failed by this time to have discovered it. They have pretty 
 sharp distinctions of the fluctuating and the permanent. " Lightly 
 come, lightly go," is a proverb, which they can very well afford 
 to leave, when they leave little else, to the losers. They do not 
 always find manors, got by rapine or chicanery, insensible to melt 
 away, as the poets will have it ; or that all gold glides, like thaw- 
 ing snow, from the thief's hand that grasps it. Church land, 
 alienated to lay uses, was formerly denounced to have this slip- 
 pery quality. But some portions of it somehow always stuck so 
 fast, that the denunciators have been fain to postpone the prophecy 
 of refundment to a late posterity. 
 
 III. 
 
 THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS OWN JEST. 
 
 The severest exaction surely ever invented upon the self-denial 
 of poor human nature ! This is to expect a gentleman to give a 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 143 
 
 treat without partaking of it ; to sit esurient at his own table, and 
 commend the flavor of his venison upon the absurd strength of his 
 never touching it himself. On the contrary, we love to see a wag 
 taste his own joke to his party ; to watch a quirk or a merry 
 conceit flickering upon the lips some seconds before the tongue is 
 delivered of it. If it be good, fresh, and racy — begotten of the 
 occasion ; if he that utters it never thought it before, he is natu- 
 rally the first to be tickled with it ; and any suppression of such 
 complacency we hold to be churlish and insulting. What does 
 it seem to imply, but that your company is weak or foolish 
 enough to be moved by an image or a fancy, that shall stir you 
 not at all, or but faintly ? This is exactly the humor of the fine 
 gentleman in Mandeville, who, while he dazzles his guests with 
 the display of some costly toy, affects himself to " see nothing 
 considerable in it." 
 
 IV. 
 
 THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING. THAT IT IS EASY TO 
 
 PERCEIVE HE IS NO GENTLEMAN. 
 
 A SPEECH from the poorest sort of people, which always indicates 
 that the party vituperated is a gentleman. The very fact which 
 they deny, is that which galls and exasperates them to use this 
 language. The forbearance with which it is usually received, is 
 a proof what interpretation the bystander sets upon it. Of a 
 kin to this, and still less politic, are the phrases with which, in 
 this street rhetoric, they ply one another more grossly ; — He is a 
 
 poor creature. — He has not a rag to cover ^c. ; though this 
 
 last, we confess, is more frequently applied by females to females. 
 They do not perceive that the satire glances upon themselves. A 
 poor man, of all things in the world, should not upbraid an anta- 
 gonist with poverty. Are there no other topics — as, to tell him 
 
 his father was hanged — his sister, &c , without exposing a 
 
 secret, which should be kept snug between them ; and doing an 
 affront to the order to which they have the honor equally to be- 
 
144 ELIA. 
 
 long ? All this while they do not see how the wealthier man 
 stands by and laughs in his sleeve at both. 
 
 V. 
 
 THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF THE RICH. 
 
 A SMOOTH text to the letter; and, preached from the pulpit, is 
 sure of a docile audience from the pews lined with satin. It is 
 twice sitting upon velvet to a foolish squire to be told, that he — 
 and not perverse nature, as the homilies would make us imagine, 
 is the true cause of all the irregularities in his parish. This is 
 striking at the root of free-will indeed, and denying the originality 
 of sin in any sense. But men are not such implicit sheep as this 
 comes to. If the abstinence from evil on the part of the upper 
 classes is to derive itself from no higher principle than the appre- 
 hension of setting ill patterns to the lower, we beg leave to dis- 
 charge them from all squeamishness on that score : they may 
 even take their fill of pleasures, where they can find them. The 
 Genius of Poverty, hampered and straitened as it is, is not so bar- 
 ren of invention, but it can trade upon the staple of its own vice, 
 without drawing upon their capital. The poor are not quite such 
 servile imitators as they take them for. Some of them are very 
 clever artists in their way. Here and there we find an original. 
 Who taught the poor to steal, to pilfer ? They did not go to the 
 great for schoolmasters in these faculties surely. It is well if in 
 some vices they allow us to be — no copyists. In no other sense 
 is it true that the poor copy them, than as servants may be said to 
 take after their masters and mistresses, when they succeed to their 
 reversionary cold meats. If the master, from indisposition or 
 some other cause, neglect his food, the servant dines notwith- 
 standing. 
 
 " O, but (some will say) the force of example is great." We 
 knew a lady who was so scrupulous on this head, that she would 
 put up with the calls of the most impertinent visitor, rather than 
 let her servant say she was not at home, for fear of teaching her 
 maid to tell an untruth ; and this in the very face of the fact, 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 145 
 
 which she knew well enough, that the wench was one of ths 
 greatest liars upon the earth without teaching ; so much so, that 
 her mistress possibly never heard two words of consecutive truth 
 from her in her life. But nature must go for nothing : example 
 .must be everything. This liar in grain, who never opened her 
 mouth without a lie, must be guarded against a remote inference, 
 which she (pretty casuist !) might possibly draw from a form of 
 words — literally false, but essentially deceiving no one — that 
 under some circumstances a fib might not be so exceedingly sin- 
 ful — a fiction, too, not at all in her own way, or one that she 
 could be suspected of adopting, for few servant- wenches care to 
 be denied to visitors. 
 
 This word example reminds us of another fine word which is 
 in use upon these occasions — encouragement. " People in our 
 sphere must not be thought to give encouragement to such pro- 
 ceedings." To such a frantic height is this principle capable of 
 being carried, that we have known individuals who have thought 
 it within the scope of their influence to sanction despair, and give 
 eclat to — suicide. A domestic in the family of a county member 
 lately deceased, from love, or some unknown cause, cut his throat, 
 but not successfully. The poor fellow was otherwise much loved 
 and respected ; and great interest was used in his behalf, upon his 
 recovery, that he might be permitted to retain his place ; his word 
 being first pledged, not without some substantial sponsors to pro- 
 mise for him, that the like should never happen again. His mas- 
 ter was inclinable to keep him, but his mistress thought otherwise ; 
 and John in the end was dismissed, her ladyship declaring that 
 she " could not think of encouraging any such doings in the 
 county." 
 
 VI. 
 
 THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST. 
 
 Not a man, woman, or child, in ten miles round Guildhall, who 
 really believes this saying. The inventor of it did not believe it 
 himself. It was made in revenge by somebody, who was disap- 
 
 PART II. 11 
 
146 ELIA. 
 
 pointed of a regale. It is a vile cold-scrag-of-mutton sophism ; a 
 lie palmed upon the palate, which knows better things. If nothing 
 else could be said for a feast, this is sufficient that from the su- 
 perflux there is usually something left for the next day. Morally 
 interpreted, it belongs to a class of proverbs which have a ten- 
 dency to make us undervalue money. Of this cast are those no- 
 table observations, that money is not health ; riches cannot pur- 
 chase everything : the metaphor which makes gold to be mere 
 muck, with the morality which traces fine clothing to the sheep's 
 back, and denounces pearl as the unhandsome excretion of an 
 oyster. Hence, too, the phrase which imputes dirt to acres — a 
 sophistry so barefaced, that even the literal sense of it is true only 
 in a wet season. This, and abundance of similar sage saws 
 assuming to inculcate content, we verily believe to have been the 
 invention of some cunning borrower, who had designs upon the 
 purse of his wealthier neighbor, which he could only hope to 
 carry by force of these verbal jugglings. Translate any one of 
 these sayings out of the artful metonymy which envelopes it, and 
 the trick is apparent. Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton, ex- 
 hilarating cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of seeing 
 foreign countries, independence, heart's ease, a man's own time 
 to himself, are not muck — however we may be pleased to scanda- 
 lize with that appellation the faithful metal that provides them for 
 us. 
 
 VII. 
 
 OF TWO DISPUTANTS THE WARMEST IS GENERALLY IN THE WRONG. 
 
 Our experience would lead us to quite an opposite conclusion. 
 Temper, indeed, is no test of truth ; but warmth and earnestness 
 are a proof at least of a man's own conviction of the rectitude of 
 that which he maintains. Coolness is as often the result of an 
 unprincipled indifference to truth or falsehood, as of a sober con- 
 fidence in a man's own side in a dispute. Nothing is more in- 
 sulting sometimes than the appearance of this philosophic temper. 
 There is little Titubus, the stammering law-stationer in Lincoln's 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 147 
 
 Inn — we have seldom known this shrewd little fellow engaged in 
 an argument where we were not convinced he had the best of it, 
 if his tongue would but fairly have seconded him. When he has 
 been spluttering excellent broken sense for an hour together 
 writhing and laboring to be delivered of the point of dispute — 
 the very gist of the controversy knocking at his teeth, which like 
 some obstinate iron-grating still obstructed its deliverance — his 
 puny frame convulsed, and face reddening all over at an unfair- 
 ness in the logic which he wanted articulation to expose, it has 
 moved our gall to see a smooth portly fellow of an adversary, 
 that cared not a button for the merits of the question, by merely 
 laying his hand upon the head of the stationer, and desiring him 
 to be calm (your tall disputants have always the advantage), with 
 a provoking sneer carry the argument clean from him in the 
 opinion of all the bystanders, who have gone away clearly con- 
 vinced that Titubus must have been in the wrong, because he 
 
 was in a passion ; and that Mr. , meaning his opponent, is 
 
 one of the fairest and at the same time one of the most dispas- 
 sionate arguers breathing. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, BECAUSE THEY WILL 
 NOT BEAR A TRANSLATION. 
 
 The same might be said of the wittiest local allusions. A cus- 
 tom is sometimes as difficult to explain to a foreigner as a pun. 
 What would become of a great part of the wit of the last age, if 
 it were tried by this test ? How would certain topics, as alder- 
 manity, cuckoldry, have sounded to a Terentian auditory, though 
 Terence himself had been alive to translate them ? Senator urha^ 
 nus with Curruca to boot for a synonyme, would but faintly have 
 done the business. Words involving nations, are hard enough to 
 render ; it is too much to expect us to translate a sound, and give 
 an excellent version to a jingle. The Virgilian harmony is not 
 translated, but by substituting harmonious sounds in another lan^ 
 
148 ELIA. 
 
 guage for it. To Latinise a pun, we must seek ii pun in Latin, 
 that will answer to it ; as, to give an idea of the double endings 
 in Hudibras, we must have recourse to a similar practice in the 
 old monkish doggrel. Dennis, the fiercest oppugner of puns in 
 ancient or modern times, professes himself highly tickled with the 
 " a stick," chiming to " ecclesiastic." Yet what is this but a 
 species of pun, a verbal consonance ? 
 
 IX. 
 
 THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST. 
 
 If by worst be only meant the most farfetched and startling, we 
 agree to it. A pun is not bounded by the laws which limit nicer 
 wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear : not a feather to tickle the 
 intellect. It is an antic which does not stand upon manners, but 
 comes bounding into the presence, and does not show the less 
 comic for being dragged in sometimes by the head and shoulders. 
 What though it limp a little, or prove defective in one leg ? — all 
 the better. A pun may easily be too curious and artificial. Who 
 has not at one time or other been at a party of professors (him- 
 self perhaps an old offender in that line), where, after ringing a 
 round of the most ingenious conceits, every man contributing his 
 shot, and some there the most expert shooters of the day ; after 
 making a poor word run the gauntlet till it is ready to drop ; 
 after hunting and winding it through all the possible ambages o^ 
 similar sounds ; after squeezing, and hauling, and tugging at it, 
 till the very milk of it will not yield a drop further, — suddenly 
 some obscure, unthought-of fellow in a corner, who was never 
 'prentice to the trade, whom the company for very pity passed 
 over, as we do by a known poor man when a money-subscription 
 is going round, no one calling on him for his quota — has all at 
 once come out with something so whimsical, yet so pertinent ; so 
 brazen in its pretensions, yet so impossible to be denied ; so ex- 
 quisitely good, and so deplorably bad, at the same time, — that it 
 has proved a Robin Hood's shot ; anything ulterior to that is 
 deij)aired of; and the party breaks up, unanimously voting 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 149 
 
 it to be the very worst (that is, best) pun of the evening. This 
 species of wit is the better for not being perfect in all its parts. 
 What it gains in completeness, it loses in naturalness. The more 
 exactly it satisfies the critical, the less hold it has upon some other 
 faculties. The puns which are the most entertaining are those 
 which will least bear an analysis. Of this kind is the following, 
 recorded with a sort of stigma, in one of Swift's Miscellanies. 
 
 An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was carrying a hare 
 through the streets, accosts him with this extraordinary question : 
 
 " Prithee, friend, is that thy own hare, or a wig ?" 
 
 There is no excusing this, and no resisting it. A man might 
 blur ten sides of paper in attempting a defence of it against a 
 critic who should be laughter-proof. The quibble in itself is not 
 considerable. It is only a new turn given by a little false pro- 
 nunciation, to a very common, though not very courteous inquiry. 
 Put by one gentleman to another at a dinner-party, it would have 
 been vapid ; to the mistress of the house, it would have shown 
 much less wit than rudeness. We must take in the totality of 
 time, place, and person ; the pert look of the inquiring scholar, 
 the desponding look of the puzzled porter : the one stopping at 
 leisure, the other hurrying on with his burthen ; the innocent 
 though rather abrupt tendency of the first member of the question, 
 with the utter and inextricable irrelevancy of the second ; the 
 place — a public street, not favorable to frivolous investigations ; 
 the affrontive quality of the primitive inquiry (the common ques- 
 tion) invidiously transferred to the derivative (the new turn given 
 to it) in the implied satire ; namely, that few of that tribe are 
 expected to eat of the good things which they carry, they being 
 in most countries considered rather as the temporary trustees 
 than owners of such dainties, — which the fellow was beginning 
 to understand ; but then the wig again comes in, and he can 
 make nothing of it ; all put together constitute a picture : Ho- 
 garth could have made it intelligible on canvas. 
 
 Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this a very bad pun, 
 because of the defectiveness in 'the concluding member, which is 
 its very beauty, and caistitutes the surprise. The same persons 
 shall cry up for admirable the cold quibble from Virgil about the 
 
150 ELIA. 
 
 broken Cremona* ; because it is made out in all its parts, and 
 leaves nothing to the imagination. We venture to call it cold ; 
 because, of thousands who have admired it, it would be difficult 
 to find one who has heartily chuckled at it. As appealing to the 
 judgment merely (setting the risible faculty aside), we must pro- 
 nounce it a monument of curious felicity. But as some stories 
 are said to be too good to be true, it may with equal truth be as- 
 •serted of this biverbal allusion, that it is too good to be natural. 
 One cannot help suspecting that the incident was invented to fit 
 the line. It would have been better had it been less perfect 
 Like some Virgilian hemistichs, it has suftered by filling up. 
 The nimium Vicina was enough in conscience ; the CremoruE af- 
 terwards loads it. It is in fact a double pun ; and we have 
 always observed that a superfoetation in this sort of wit is dan- 
 gerous. When a man has said a good thing, it is seldom politic 
 to follow it up. We do not care to be cheated a second time ; or, 
 perhaps, the mind of man (with reverence be it spoken) is not 
 capacious enough to lodge two puns at a time. The impression, 
 to be forcible, must be simultaneous and undivided. 
 
 X. 
 
 THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES. 
 
 Those who use this proverb can never have seen Mrs. Conrady. 
 
 The soul, if we may believe Plotinus, is a ray from the celes- 
 tial beauty. As she partakes more or less of this heavenly light, 
 she informs, with corresponding characters, the fleshly tenement 
 which she chooses, and frames to herself a suitable mansion. 
 
 All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. Conrady, in her 
 pre-existent state, was no great judge of architecture. 
 
 To the same effect in a Hymn in honor of Beauty, divine 
 Spenser platonizing sings : — 
 
 -Every spirit as it is more pure, 
 
 And hath in it the more of heavenly light, 
 * Swift. 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 151 
 
 So it the fairer body doth procure 
 To habit in, and it more fairly dight 
 With cheerful grace and amiable sight. 
 For of the soul the body form doth take : 
 For soul is form and doth the body make." 
 
 But Spenser it is clear never saw Mrs. Conrady. 
 
 These poets, we find, are no safe guides in philosophy ; for 
 here, in his very next stanza but one, is a saving clause, which 
 throws us all out again, and leaves us as much to seek as ever : — 
 
 " Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind 
 Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd. 
 Either by chance, against the course of kind. 
 Or through unaptness in the substance found. 
 Which it assumed of some stubborn ground, 
 That will not yield unto her form's direction, , 
 
 But is performed with some foul imperfection.'* 
 
 From which it would follow, that Spenser had seen somebody 
 like Mrs. Conrady. 
 
 The spirit of this good lady — her previous auima — must have 
 stumbled upon one of these untoward tabernacles which he speaks 
 of. A more rebellious commodity of clay for a ground, as the 
 poet calls it, no gentle mind — and sure hers is one of the gentlest 
 — ever had to deal with- 
 
 Pondering upon her inexplicable visage — inexplicable, we 
 mean, but by this modification of the theory — we have come to a 
 conclusion that, if one must be plain, it is better to be plain all 
 over than amidst a tolerable residue of features, to hang out one 
 that shall be exceptionable. No one can say of Mrs. Conrady's 
 countenance that it would be better if she had but a nose. It is 
 impossible to pull her to pieces in this manner. We have seen 
 the most malicious beauties of her own sex baffled in the attempt 
 at a selection. The tout-ensemble defies particularizing. It is too 
 complete — too consistent, as we may say — to admit of these in- 
 vidious reservations. It is not as if some Apelles had picked out 
 here a lip — and there a chin — out of the collected ugliness of 
 Greece, to frame a mode by. It is a symmetrical whole. We 
 chal^ entire the minutest connoisseur to cavil at any part or parcel 
 
152 ELIA. 
 
 of the countenance in question ; to say that this, or that, is im- 
 properly placed. We are convinced that true ugliness, no less 
 than is affirmed of true beauty, is the result of harmony. Like 
 that too it reigns without a competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. 
 Conrady, without pronouncing her to be the plainest woman that 
 he ever met with in the course of his life. The first time that 
 you are indulged with a sight of her face, is an era in your exist- 
 ence ever after. You are glad to have seen it — like Stonehenge. 
 No one can pretend to forget it. No one ever apologised to her 
 for meeting her in the street on such a day and not knowing her : 
 the pretext would be too bare. Nobody can mistake her for ano- 
 ther. Nobody can say of her, " I think I have seen that face 
 somewhere, but I cannot call to mind where." You must remem- 
 ber that in such a parlor it first struck you — like a bust. You 
 wondered where the owner of the house had picked it up. You 
 wondered more when it began to move its lips — so mildly too ! 
 No one ever thought of asking her to sit for her picture. Lock- 
 ets are for remembrance ; and it would be clearly superfluous to 
 hang an image at your heart, which once seen, can never be out 
 of it. It is not a mean face either ;. its entire originality pre- 
 cludes that. Neither is it of that order of plain faces which im- 
 prove upon acquaintance. Some very good but ordinary people, 
 by an unwearied perseverance in good offices, put a cheat upon 
 our eyes ; juggle our senses out of their natural impressions; and 
 set us upon discovering good indications in a countenance, which af 
 first sight promised nothing less. We detect gentleness, which had 
 escaped us, lurking about an under lip. But when Mrs. Conrady 
 has done you a service, her face remains the same ; when she has 
 done you a thousand, and you know that she is ready to double 
 the number, still it is that individual face. Neither can you say 
 of it, that it would be a good face if it were not marked by the 
 small-pox — a compliment which is always more admissive than 
 excusatory — for either Mrs. Conrady never had the small-pox : 
 or, as we say, took it kindly. No, it stands upon its own merits 
 fairly. There it is. It is her mark, her token ; that which she 
 is known by. 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 153 
 
 XI. 
 
 THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT-HORSE IN THE MOUTH. 
 
 Nor a lady's age in the parish register. We hope we have more 
 delicacy than to do either ; but some faces spare us the trouble of 
 these dental inquiries. And what if the beast, which my friend 
 would force upon my acceptance, prove, upon the face of it, a 
 sorry Rosinante, a lean, ill-favored jade, whom no gentleman 
 could think of setting up in his stables ? Must I, rather than not 
 be obliged to my friend, make her a companion to Eclipse or 
 Lightfoot ? A horse-giver, no more than a horse-seller, has a 
 right to palm his spavined article upon us for good ware. An 
 equivalent is expected in either case ; and, with my own good 
 will, I would no more be cheated out of my thanks than out of 
 my money. Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts 
 of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We 
 thank them for nothing. Our friend Mitis carries this humor of 
 never refusing a present, to the very point of absurdity — if it were 
 possible to couple the ridiculous with so much mistaken delicacy, 
 and real good-nature. Not an apartment in his fine house (and 
 he has a true taste in household decorations), but is stuffed up with 
 some preposterous print or mirror — the worst adapted to his 
 panels that may be — the presents of his friends that know his 
 weakness ; while his noble Vandykes are displaced to make room 
 for a set of daubs, the work of some wretched artist of his ac- 
 quaintance, who, having had them returned upon his hands for 
 bad likenesses, finds his account in bestowing them here gratis. 
 The good creature has not the heart to mortify the painter at the 
 expense of an honest refusal. It is pleasant (if it did not vex one 
 at the same time) to see him sitting in his dining parlor, surround- 
 ed with obscure aunts and cousins to God knows whom, while the 
 true Lady Marys and Lady Bettys of his own honorable family, 
 in favor to these adopted frights, are consigned to the stair-case 
 and the lumber-room. In like manner his goodly shelves are one 
 by one stripped of his favorite old authors, to give place to a col- 
 lection of presentation copies — ^the flour and bran of modern poe- 
 try. A presentation copy, reader,^ — if haply you are yet innocent 
 
154 ELIA. 
 
 of such favors — is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you 
 by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it ; 
 for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship ; if a 
 brother author, he expects from you a book of yours, which does 
 sell, in return. We can speak to experience, having by us a tole- 
 rable assortment of these gift-horses. Not to ride a metaphor to 
 death — we are willing to acknowledge, that in some gifts there is 
 sense. A duplicate out of a friend's library (where he has more 
 than one copy of a rare author) is intelligible. There are favors, 
 short of the pecuniary — a thing not fit to be hinted at among gen- 
 tlemen — which confer as much grace upon the acceptor as the 
 offerer ; the kind, we confess, which is most to our palate, is of 
 those little conciliatory missives, which for their vehicle generally 
 choose a hamper — little odd presents of game, fruit, perhaps wine 
 — though it is essential to the delicacy of the latter, that it be 
 home-made. We love to have our friend in the country sitting 
 thus at our table by proxy ; to apprehend his presence (though a 
 hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, whose goodly 
 aspect reflect? to us his " plump corpusculum ;" to taste him in 
 grouse or woo.lcock : to feel him gliding down in the toast pecu- 
 liar to the latte*; to concorporate him in a slice of Canterbury 
 brawn. This it, indeed to have him with ourselves ; to know him 
 intimately ; such participation is methinks unitive, as the old theo- 
 logians phrase it. For these considerations we should be sorry 
 if certain restricti\e regulations, which are thought to bear hard 
 upon the peasantry of this country, were entirely done away 
 with. A hare, as the law now stands, makes many friends. 
 Caius conciliates Titips (knowing his gout) with a leash of par- 
 tridges. Titius (suspecting his partiality for them) passes them 
 to Lucius ; who in his turn, preferring his friend's relish to his 
 own, makes them over to Marcius ; till in their ever widening 
 progress, and round of unconscious circum-migration, they distri- 
 bute the seeds of harmony over half the parish. We are well dis- 
 posed to this kind of sensible remembrances ; and are the less 
 apt to be taken by those little airy tokens — impalpable to the pal- 
 ate — which, under the name of rings, lockets, keep-sakes, amuse 
 some people's fancy mightily. We could never away with these 
 indigestible trifles. They are the very kickshaws and foppery of 
 friendship. 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 155 
 
 XII. 
 
 THAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS NEVEE SO HOMELY. 
 
 Homes there are, we are sure, that are no homes ; the home of 
 the very poor man, and another which we shall speak to presently. 
 Crowded places of cheap entertainment, and the benches of ale- 
 houses, if they could speak, might bear mournful testimony to the 
 first. To them the very poor man resorts for an image of the 
 home which he cannot find at home. For a starved grate, and a 
 scanty firing, that is not enough to keep alive the natural heat in 
 the fingers of so many shivering children with their mother, he 
 finds in the depths of winter always a blazing hearth, and a hob 
 to warm his pittance of beer by. Instead of the clamors of a wife, 
 made gaunt by famishing, he meets with a cheerful attendance 
 beyond the merits of the trifle which he can afford to spend. He 
 has companions which his home denies him, for the very poor man 
 has no visitors. He can look into the goings on of the world, and 
 speak a little to politics. At home there are no politics stirring, 
 but the domestic. All interests, real or imaginary, all topics that 
 should expand the mind of man, and connect him to a sympathy 
 with general existence, are crushed in the absorbing considera- 
 tion of food to be obtained for the family. Beyond the price of 
 bread, news is senseless and impertinent. At home there is no 
 larder. Here there is at least a show of plenty ; and while he 
 cooks his lean scrap of butchers' meat before the common bars, or 
 munches his humbler cold viands, his relishing bread and cheese 
 with an onion, in a corner, where no one reflects upon his pover- 
 ty, he has a sight of the substantial joint providing for the land- 
 lord and his family. He takes an interest in the dressing of it ; 
 and while he assists in removing the trivet from the fire, he feels 
 that there is such a thing as beef and cabbage, which he was be- 
 ginning to forget at home. All this while he deserts his wife and 
 children. But what wife and what children ? Prosperous men, 
 who object to this desertion, image to themselves some clean con- 
 tented family like that which they go home to. But look at the 
 countenance of the poor wives who follow and persecute their 
 good-man to the door of the public-house, which he is ab ut to 
 
156 ELIA, 
 
 enter, when something like shame would restrain him, if stronger 
 misery did not induce him to pass the threshold. That face, ground 
 by want, in which every cheerful, every conversable lineament 
 has been long effaced by misery, — is that a face to stay at home 
 with ? is it more a woman, or a wild cat ? alas ! it is the face of 
 the wife of his youth, that once smiled upon him. It can smile 
 no longer. What comforts can it share ? what burdens can it 
 lighten ? Oh, 'tis a fine thing to talk of the humble meal shared 
 together ! But what if there be no bread in the cupboard ? The 
 innocent prattle of his children takes out the sting of a man's 
 poverty. But the children of the very poor do not prattle. It is 
 none of the least frightful features in that condition, that there is 
 no childishness in its dwellings. Poor people, said a sensible old 
 nurse to us once, do not bring up their children ; they drag them 
 up. The little careless darling of the wealthier nursery, in their 
 hovel, is transformed betimes into a premature reflecting person. 
 No one has time to dandle it, no one thinks it worth while to coax 
 it, to soothe it, to toss it up and down, to humor it. There is none 
 to kiss away its tears. If it cries, it can only be beaten. It has 
 been prettily said, that " a babe is fed with milk and praise." But 
 the aliment of this poor babe was thin, unnourishing ; the return 
 to its little baby-tricks, and efforts to engage attention, bitter cease- 
 less objurgation. It never had a toy, or knew what a coral 
 meant. It grew up without the lullaby of nurses, it was a 
 stranger to the patient fondle, the hushing caress, the attracting 
 novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper off-hand contrivance 
 to divert the child ; the prattled nonsense (best sense to it), the 
 wise impertinences, the wholesome lies, the apt story interposed, 
 that puts a stop to present sufferings, and awakens the passions of 
 young wonder. It was never sung to — no one ever told to it a tale 
 of the nursery. It was dragged up, to live or to die as it happened. 
 It had no young dreams. It broke at once into the iron realities 
 of life. A child exists not for the very poor as any object of dal- 
 liance ; it is only another mouth to be fed, a pair of little hands 
 to be betimes inured to labor. It is the rival, till it can be the 
 co-operator, for food with the parent. It is never his mirth, his 
 diversion, his solace : it never makes him young again, with re- 
 call! ig his young times. The children of the very poor have 
 
O ULAR FALLACIES. 157 
 
 no young times. It makes the very heart bleed to overhear the 
 casual street-talk between a poor woman and her little girl, a wo- 
 man of the better sort of poor, in a condition rather above the 
 squalid beings which we have been contemplating, It is not of 
 toys, of nursery books, of summer holidays (fitting that age) ; of 
 the promised sight or play ; of praised sufficiency at school. It 
 is of mangling and clear-starching, of the price of coals, or of 
 potatoes. The questions of the child, that should be the very 
 outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are marked with forecast and 
 melancholy providence. It has come to be a woman, — before it 
 was a child. It has learned to go to market ; it chaffers, it hag- 
 gles, it envies, it murmurs ; it is knowing, acute, sharpened ; it 
 never prattles. Had we not reason to say, that the home of the 
 very poor is no home ? 
 
 There is yet another home, which we are constrained to deny 
 to be one. It has a larder, which the home of the poor man wants ; 
 its fireside conveniences, of which the poor dream not. But with 
 all this, it is no home. It is — the house of the man that is infested 
 with many visitors. May we be branded for the veriest churl, if 
 we deny our heart to the many noble-hearted friends that at 
 times exchange their dwellings for our poor roof! It is not of 
 guests that we complain, but of endless, purposeless visitants ; 
 droppers in, as they are called. We sometimes wonder from what 
 sky they fall. It is the very error of the position of our lodging ; 
 its horoscopy was ill-calculated, being just situate in a medium — 
 a plaguy suburban mid-space — fitted to catch idlers from town or 
 country. We are older than we were, and age is easily put out of 
 its way. We have fewer sands in our glass to reckon upon, and 
 we cannot brook to see them drop in endlessly succeeding imper- 
 tinences. At our time of life, to be alone sometimes is as needful 
 as sleep. It is the refreshing sleep of the day. The growing in- 
 firmities of age manifest themselves in nothing more strongly, than 
 in an inveterate dislike of interruption. The thing which we are 
 doing, we wish to be permitted to do. We have neither much 
 knowledge nor devices ; but there are fewer in the place to which 
 we hasten. We are not willingly put out of our way, even at a 
 game of nine-pins. While youth was, we had vast reversions in 
 time future ; we are reduced to a present pittance, and obliged to 
 
158 ELIA. 
 
 economise in that article. We bleed away our moments now as 
 hardly as our ducats. We cannot bear to have our thin ward- 
 robe eaten and fretted into by moths. We are willing to barter 
 our good time with a friend, who gives us in exchange his own. 
 Herein is the distinction between the genuine guest and the visit- 
 ant. This latter takes your good time, and gives you his bad in 
 exchange. The guest is domestic to you as your good cat, or 
 household bird ; the visitant is your fly, that flaps in at your win- 
 dow, and out again, leaving nothing but a sense of disturbance, 
 and victuals spoiled. The inferior functions of life begin to move 
 heavily. We cannot concoct our food with interruptions. Our 
 chief meal, to be nutritive, must be solitary. With difficulty we 
 can eat before a guest ; and never understood what the relish of 
 public feasting meant. Meats have no savor, nor digestion fair 
 play, in a crowd. The unexpected coming-in of a visitant stops 
 the machine. There is a punctual generation who time their calls 
 to the precise commencement of your dining-hour — not to eat — 
 but to see you eat. Our knife and fork drop instinctively, and we 
 feel that we have swallowed our latest morsel. Others again 
 show their genius, as we have said, in knocking the moment you 
 have just sat down to a book. They have a peculiar compassion- 
 ate sneer, with which they " hope that they do not interrupt your 
 studies." Though they flutter off the next moment, to carry their 
 impertinences to the nearest student that they can call their friend, 
 the tone of the book is spoiled ; we shut the leaves, and, with 
 Dante's lovers, read no more that day. It were well if the effect 
 of intrusion were simply co-extensive with its presence ; but it 
 mars all the good hours afterwards. These scratches in appear- 
 ance leave an orifice that closes not hastily. " It is a prostitution 
 of the bravery of friendship," says worthy Bishop Taylor, " to 
 spend it upon impertinent people, who are, it may be, loads to 
 their families, but can never ease my loads." This is the secret 
 of their gaddings, their visits, and morning calls. They too have 
 homes, which are — no homes. 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 159 
 
 XIII. 
 
 THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME AND LOVE MY DOG. 
 
 " Good sir, or madam — as it may be — we most willingly embrace 
 the offer of your friendship. We have long known your excellent 
 qualities. We have wished to have you nearer to us ; to hold 
 you within the very innermost fold of our heart. We can have 
 no reserve towards a person of your open and noble nature. The 
 frankness of your humor suits us exactly. We have been long 
 looking for such a friend. Quick — let us disburthen our troubles 
 into each other's bosoms — let us make our single joys shine by 
 reduplication — But yap, yap, yap ! what is this confounded cur ? 
 he has fastened his tooth, which is none of the bluntest, just in the 
 fleshy part of my leg." 
 
 "It is my dog, sir. You must love him for my sake. Here, 
 Test— Test—Test !" 
 
 "But he has bitten me." 
 
 " Ay, that he is apt to do, till you are better acquainted with 
 him. I have had him three years. He never bites me." 
 
 Yap, yap, yap! — " He is at it again." 
 
 " Oh, sir, you must not kick him. He does not like to be 
 kicked. I expect my dog to be treated with all the respect due 
 to myself." 
 
 " But do you always take him out with you, when you go a 
 friendship-hunting ?" 
 
 " Invariably. 'Tis the sweetest, prettiest, best-conditioned 
 animal. I call him my test — ^*Jie touchstone by which to try a 
 friend. No one can properly be said to love me, who does not 
 love him." 
 
 " Excuse us, dear sir — or madam, aforesaid — if upon further 
 consideration we are obliged to decline the otherwise invaluable 
 ofler of your friendship. We do not like dogs." 
 
 " Mighty well, sir — you know the conditions — you may have 
 worse offers. Come along, Test.'^ 
 
 The above dialogue is not so imaginary, but that, in the inter- 
 course of life, we have had frequent occasions of breaking off an 
 agreeable intimacy by reason of these canine appendages. They 
 
160 ELIA. 
 
 do not always come in the shape of dogs ; they sometimes wear 
 the more plausible and human character of kinsfolk, near ac- 
 quaintances, my friend's friend, his partner, his wife, or his 
 children. We could never yet form a friendship — not to speak 
 of more delicate correspondence — however much to our taste, 
 without the intervention of some third anomaly, some impertinent 
 clog affixed to the relation — the understood dog in the proverb. 
 The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us 
 with a mixture ; like a school-boy's holiday, with a task affixed 
 to the tail of it. What a delightful companion is * * * *, if he 
 did not always bring his tall cousin with him ! He seems to grow 
 with him ; like some of those double births which we remember to 
 have read of with such wonder and delight in the old " Athenian 
 Oracle," where Swift commenced author by writing Pindaric 
 Odes (what a beginning for him !) upon Sir William Temple. 
 There is the picture of the brother, with the little brother peeping 
 out at his shoulder ; a species of fraternity, which we have no 
 name of kin close enough to comprehend. When * * * * comes, 
 poking in his head and shoulder into your room, as if to feel his 
 entry, you think, surely you have now got him to yourself — what 
 a three hours' chat we shall have ? — but ever in the haunch of 
 him, and before his diffident body is well disclosed in your apart- 
 ment, appears the haunting shadow of the cousin, over-peering his 
 modest kinsman, and sure to overlay the expected good talk with 
 his insufferable procerity of stature, and uncorresponding dwarfish- 
 ness of observation. Misfortunes seldom come alone. 'Tis hard 
 when a blessing comes accompanied. Cannot we like Sempro- 
 nia, without sitting down to chess with her eternal brother ? or 
 know Sulpicia, without knowing all the round of her card-playing 
 relations? — must my friend's brethren of necessity be mine also? 
 must we be hand and glove with Dick Selby the parson, or Jack 
 Selby the calico-printer, because W. S.. who is neither, but a 
 ripe wit and a critic, has the misfortune to claim a common 
 parentage with them ? Let him lay down his brothers ; and 'tis 
 odds but we will cast him in a pair of ours (we have a superflux) 
 to balance the concession. Let F. H. lay down his garrulous 
 uncle ; and Honorius dismiss his vapid wife, and superfluous 
 establishment of six boys : things belween boy and manhood — ^too 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 161 
 
 ripe for play, too raw for conversation — that come in, impudently 
 staring their father's old friend out of countenance; and will 
 neither aid, nor let alone, the conference ; that we may once more 
 meet upon equal terms, as we were wont to do in the disengaged 
 state of bachelorhood. 
 
 It is well if your friend or mistress be content with these cani- 
 cular probations. Few young ladies but in this sense keep a dog. 
 But when Rutilia hounds at you her tiger aunt ; or Respina expects 
 you to cherish and fondle her viper sister, whom she has prepos- 
 terously taken into her bosom, to try stinging conclusions upon 
 your constancy ; they must not complain if the house be rather 
 thin of suitors. Scylla must have broken off many excellent 
 matches in her time, if she insisted upon all that loved her, loving 
 her dogs also. 
 
 An excellent story to this moral is told of Merry, of Delia 
 Cruscan memory. In tender youth he loved and courted a 
 modest appanage to the Opera, — in truth a dancer, — who had won 
 him by the artless contrast between her manners and situation. 
 She seemed to him a native violet, that had been transplanted by 
 some rude accident into that exotic and artificial hotbed. Nor, in 
 truth, was she less genuine and sincere than she appeared to him. 
 He wooed and won his flower. Only for appearance' sake, and 
 for due honor to the bride's relations, she craved that she might 
 have the attendance of her friends and kindred at the approaching 
 solemnity. The request was too amiable not to be conceded : and 
 in this solicitude for conciliating the good-will of mere relations, 
 he found a presage of her superior attentions to himself, when the 
 golden shaft should have " killed the flock of all affections else." 
 The morning came : and at the Star and Garter, Richmond — the 
 place appointed for the breakfasting — accompanied with one 
 English friend, he impatiently awaited what reinforcements the 
 bride should bring to grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had 
 made. They came in six coaches — ^the whole corps du uallet — 
 French, Italian, men and women. Monsieur de B., the famous 
 pirouetter of the day, led his fair spouse, but craggy, from the 
 banks of the Seine. The Prima Donna had sent her excuse. 
 But the first and second Buffa were there ; and Signor Sc — , and 
 Signora Ch — , and Madame V — , with a countless cavalcade 
 
 PART II. 12 
 
162 ELIA. 
 
 besides of chorusers, figurantes ! at the sight of whom Merry 
 afterwards declared, that " then for the first time it struck him 
 seriously, that he was about to marry — a dancer." But there 
 was no help for it. Besides, it was her day ; these were, in fact, 
 her friends and kinsfolk. The assemblage, though whimsical, 
 was all very natural. But when the bride — handing out of the last 
 coach a still more extraordinary figure than the rest — presented 
 to him as her father — the gentleman that was to give her away — 
 no less a person than Signor Delpini himself — with a sort of pride, 
 as much as to say. See what I have brought to do us honor ! — the 
 thought of so extraordinary a paternity quite overcame him ; and 
 slipping away under some pretence from the bride and her mot- 
 ley adherents, poor Merry took horse from the backyard to the 
 nearest sea-coast, from which, shipping himself to America, he 
 shortly afterwards consoled himself with a more congenial match 
 in the person of Miss Brunton ; relieved from his intended clown 
 father, and a bevy of painted buffas for bridemaids. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 THAT WE SHOULD RISE W^ITH THE LARK. 
 
 At what precise minute that little airy musician doffs his night 
 gear, and prepares to tune up his unseasonable matins, we are 
 not naturalists enough to determine. But for a mere human gen- 
 tleman — that has no orchestra business to call him from his warm 
 bed to such preposterous exercises — we take ten, or half after ten 
 (eleven, of course, during this Christmas solstice), to be the very 
 earliest hour at which he can begin to think of abandoning his pillow. 
 To think of it, we say ; for to do it in earnest requires another half 
 hour's good consideration. Not but there are pretty sun- risings, 
 as we are told, and such like gawds, abroad in the world, in 
 summer-time especially, some hours before what we have assigned ; 
 which a gentleman may see, as they say, only for getting up. 
 But having been tempted once or twice, in earlier life, to assist at 
 those ceremonies, we confess our curiosity abated. We are no 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 16S 
 
 longer ambitious of being the sun's courtiers, to attend at his 
 morning levees. We hold the good hours of the dawn too sacred 
 to waste them upon such observances ; which have in them, 
 besides, something Pagan and Persic. To say truth, we never 
 anticipated our usual hour, or got up with the sun (as 'tis called), 
 to go a journey, or upon a foolish whole day's pleasuring, but we 
 suffered for it all the long hours after in listlessness and head- 
 aches ; Nature herself sufficiently declaring her sense of our pre- 
 sumption in aspiring to regulate our frail waking courses by the 
 measures of that celestial and sleepless traveller. We deny not 
 that there is something sprightly and vigorous at the outset espe- 
 cially, in these break-of-day excursions. It is flattering to get the 
 start of a lazy world ; to conquer death by proxy in his image. 
 But the seeds of sleep and mortality are in us ; and we pay 
 usually, in strange qualms before night falls, the penalty of the 
 unnatural inversion. Therefore, while the busy part of mankind 
 are fast huddling on their clothes, are already up and about their 
 occupations, content to have swallowed their sleep by wholesale ; 
 we choose to linger a-bed, and digest our dreams. It is the very 
 time to recombine the wandering images, which night in a con- 
 fused mass presented ; to snatch them from forgetfulness ; to shape 
 and mould them. Some people have no good of their dreams. 
 Like fast feeders, they gulp them too grossly, to taste them curi- 
 ously. We love to chew the cud of a foregone vision ; to collect 
 the scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over again, with 
 firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies ; to drag into day- 
 light a struggling and half- vanishing night-mare ; to handle and 
 examine his terrors, or the airy solaces. We have too much 
 respect for these spiritual communications, to let them go so lightly. 
 We are not so stupid, or so careless as that Imperial forgetter of 
 his dreams, that we should need a seer to remind us of the form 
 of them. They seem to us to have as much significance as our 
 waking concerns : or rather to import us more nearly, as more 
 nearly we approach by years to the shadowy world, whither we 
 are hastening. We have shaken hands with the world's business ; 
 we have done with it ; we have discharged ourself of it. Why 
 should we get up ? we have neither suit to solicit, nor affairs to 
 manage. The drama has shut in upon us at the fourth act. We 
 
164 ELI A 
 
 have nothing here to expect, but in a short time a sick bed, and a 
 dismissal. We delight to anticipate death by such shadows as 
 night affords. We are already half acquainted with ghosts. We 
 were never much in the world. Disappointment early struck a 
 dark veil between us and its dazzling illusions. Our spirits 
 showed grey before our hairs. The mighty changes of the 
 world already appear as but the vain stuff out of which dramas 
 are composed. We have asked no more of life than what the 
 mimic images in play-houses present us with. Even those types 
 have waxed fainter. Our clock appears to have struck. We 
 are superannuated. In this dearth of mundane satisfaction, 
 we contract politic alliances with shadows. It is good to have 
 friends at court. The abstracted media of dreams seem no ill 
 introduction to that spiritual presence, upon which, in no long 
 time, we expect to be thrown. We are trying to know a little 
 of the usages of that colony ; to learn the language, and the 
 faces we shall meet with there, that we may be the less awk- 
 ward at our first coming among them. We willingly call a 
 phantom our fellow, as knowing we shall soon be of their dark 
 companionship. Therefore, we cherish dreams. We try to 
 spell in them the alphabet of the invisible world ; and think we 
 know already, how it shall be with us. Those uncouth shapes, 
 which, while we clung to flesh and blood, affrighted us, have 
 become familiar. We feel attenuated into their meagre essences, 
 and have given the hand a half-way approach to incorporal being. 
 We once thought life to be something ; but it has unaccountably 
 fallen from us before its time. Therefore we choose to dally with 
 visions. The sun has no purposes of ours to light us to. Why 
 should we get up ? 
 
 XV. 
 
 THAT V7E SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB. 
 
 We could never quite understand the philosophy of this arrange- 
 ment, or the wisdom of our ancestors in sending us for instruction 
 to these woolly bedfellows. A sheep, when it is dark, has nothing 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 165 
 
 to do but to shut his silly eyes, and sleep if he can. Man found 
 out long sixes, — Hail, candle-light ! without disparagement to sun 
 or moon, the kindliest luminary of the three — if we may not 
 rather style thee the irradiant deputy, mild viceroy of the moon ! — 
 We love to read, talk, sit silent, eat, drink, sleep, by candle-light. 
 They are everybody's sun and moon. This is our peculiar and 
 household planet. Wanting it, what savage unsocial nights 
 must our ancestors have spent, wintering in caves and unillu- 
 mined fastnesses ! They must have lain about and grumbled at 
 one another in the dark. What repartees could have passed, 
 when you must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neigh- 
 bor's cheek to be sure that he understood it ? This accounts for 
 the seriousness of the elder poetry. It has a sombre cast (try 
 Hesiod or Ossian), derived from the tradition of those unlantern'd 
 nights. Jokes came in with candles. We wonder how they 
 saw to pick up a pin, if they had any. How did they sup ? what 
 a melange of chance carving they must have made it ! — here one 
 had got the leg of a goat, when he wanted a horse's shoulder — 
 there another had dipped his scooped palm in a kid-skin of wild 
 honey, when he meditated right mare's milk. There is neither 
 good eating nor drinking in fresco. Who, even in these civilized 
 times, has never experienced this, when at some economic table 
 he has commenced dining after dusk, and waited for the flavor 
 till the lights came ? The senses can absolutely give and take 
 reciprocally. Can you tell pork from veal in the dark ? or dis- 
 tinguish Sherris from pure Malaga ? Take away the candle 
 from the smoking man ; by the glimmering of the left ashes, he 
 knows that he is still smoking, but he knows it only by an infe- 
 rence ; till the restored light, coming in aid of the olfactories, 
 reveals to both senses the full aroma. Then how he redoubles 
 his puflJs ! how .le burnishes ! — There is absolutely no such thing 
 as reading but by a candle. We have tried the affectation of a 
 book at noon-day in gardens, and in sultry arbors ; but it was 
 labor thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam come about 
 you, hovering and teasing, like so many coquettes, that will have 
 you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By 
 the midnight taper, the writer digests his meditations. By the 
 same light we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch 
 
166 ELIA 
 
 the flame, the odor. Tt is a mockery, all that is reported of the 
 influential Phoebus. No true poem ever owed its birth to the 
 sun's light. They are abstracted works — 
 
 *' Things that were born, when none but the still night. 
 And his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes." 
 
 Marry, daylight — daylight might furnish the images, the crude 
 material ; but for the fine shapings, the true turning and filing 
 (as mine author hath it), they must be content to hold their inspi- 
 ration of the candle. The mild internal light, that reveals them, 
 like fires on the domestic hearth, goes out in the sun-shine. 
 Night and silence call out the starry fancies. Milton's Morning 
 Hymn in Paradise, we would hold a good wager, was penned at 
 midnight •; and Taylor's rich description of a sun-rise smells de- 
 cidedly of the taper. Even ourself, in these our humbler lucubra- 
 tions, tune our best-measured cadences (Prose has her cadences) 
 not unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier watchman, " bless- 
 ing the doors ;" or the wild sweep of winds at midnight. Even 
 now a loftier speculation than we have yet attempted, courts our 
 endeavors. We would indite something about the Solar System. 
 Betty, bring the candles. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A rtlSFOETUNE. 
 
 We grant that it is, and a very serious one — to a man's friends, 
 and to all that have to do with him ; but whether the condition 
 of the man himself is so much to be deplored may admit of a 
 question. We can speak a little to it, being ourself but lately 
 recovered — we whisper it in confidence, reader — out of a long 
 and desperate fit of the sullens. Was the cure a blessing ? The 
 conviction which wrought it, came too clearly to leave a scruple 
 of the fanciful injuries — for they were mere fancies — which had 
 provoked the humor. But the humor itself was too self-pleasing, 
 while it lasted — we know how bare we lay ourself in the con- 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 167 
 
 fession — to be abandoned all at once with the grounds of it. We 
 still brood over wrongs which we know to have been imaginary ; 
 
 and for our old acquaintance N , whom we find to have been 
 
 a truer friend than we took him for, we substitute some phantom 
 — a Caius or a Titius — as like him as we dare to form it, to 
 wreak our yet unsatisfied resentments on. It is mortifying to 
 fall at once from the pinnacle of neglect ; to forego the idea of 
 having been ill-used and contumaciously treated, by an old friend. 
 The first thing to aggrandize a man in his own conceit, is to con- 
 ceive of himself as neglected. There let him fix if he can. 
 To undeceive him is to deprive him of the most tickling morsel 
 within the range of self-complacency. No flattery can come 
 near it. Happy is he who suspects his friend of an injustice ; 
 but supremely blest, who thinks all his friends in a conspiracy to 
 depress and undervalue him. There is a pleasure (we sing not 
 to the profane) far beyond the reach of all that the world counts 
 joy — a deep, enduring satisfaction in the depths, where the super- 
 ficial seek it not, of discontent. Were we to recite one half of 
 this mystery, — which we were let into by our late dissatisfaction, 
 all the world would be in love with disrespect ; we should wear 
 a slight for a bracelet, and neglects and contumacies would be 
 the only matter for courtship. Unlike to that mysterious book 
 in the Apocalypse, the study of this mystery is unpalatable only 
 in the commencement. The first sting of a suspicion is grievous ; 
 but wait — out of that wound, which to flesh and blood seemed 
 so difl[icult, there is balm and honey to be extracted. Your 
 friend passed you on such or such a day, — having in his company 
 one that you conceived worse than ambiguously disposed towards 
 you, — passed you in the street without notice. To be sure he is 
 something short-sighted ; and it was in your power to have ac- 
 costed him. But facts and sane inferences are trifles to a true 
 adept in the ccience of dissatisfaction. He must have seen you ; 
 
 and S , who was with him, must have been the cause of the 
 
 contempt. It galls you, and well it may. But have patience. 
 Go home, and make the worst of it, and you are a made man for 
 this time. Shut yourself up, and — rejecting, as an enemy to 
 your peace, every whispering suggestion that but insinuates there 
 may be a mistake — reflect seriously ufon the many lesser in- 
 
168 ELIA. 
 
 stances which you had begun to perceive, in proof of your friend's 
 disaffection towards you. None of them singly was much to the 
 purpose, but the aggregate weight is positive ; and you have this 
 last affront to clench them. Thus far the process is anything but 
 agreeable. But now to your relief comes in the comparative 
 faculty. You conjure up all the kind feelings you have had for 
 your friend ; what you have been to him, and what you would 
 have been to him, if he would have suffered you ; how you de- 
 fended him in this or that place ; and his good name — his literary 
 reputation, and so forth, was always dearer to you than your 
 own ! Your heart, spite of itself, yearns towards him. You 
 could weep tears of blood but for a restraining pride. How say 
 you ! do you not yet begin to apprehend a comfort ? some alloy of 
 sweetness in the bitter waters ? Stop not here, nor penuriously 
 cheat yourself of your reversions. You are on vantage ground. 
 Enlarge your speculations, and take in the rest of your friends, 
 as a spark kindles more sparks. Was there one among them, 
 who has not to you proved hollow, false, slippery as water ? Be- 
 gin to think that the relation itself is inconsistent with mortality. 
 That the very idea of friendship, with its component parts, as 
 honor, fidelity, steadiness, exists but in your single bosom. 
 Image yourself to yourself, as the only possible friend in a world 
 incapable of that communion. Now the gloom thickens. The 
 little star of self-love twinkles, that is to encourage you through 
 deeper glooms than this. You are not yet at the half point of 
 your elevation. You are not yet, believe me, half sulky enough. 
 Adverting to the world in general (as these circles in the mind 
 will spread to infinity), reflect with what strange injustice you 
 have been treated in quarters where (setting gratitude and the 
 expectation of friendly returns aside as chimeras) you pretended 
 no claim beyond justice, the naked due of all men. Think the 
 very idea of right and fit fled from the earth, or your breast the 
 solitary receptacle of it, till you have swelled yourself into at 
 least one hemisphere ; the other being the vast Arabia Stony of 
 your friends and the world aforesaid. To grow bigger every 
 moment in your own conceit, and the world to lessen ; to deify 
 yourself at the expense of your species ; to judge the world — this 
 is the acme and supreme poinl of your mystery — these the true 
 
POPULAR FALLACIES. 169 
 
 Pleasures of Sulkiness. We profess no more of this grand 
 secret than what ourself experimented on one rainy afternoon in 
 the last week, sulking in our study. We had proceeded to the 
 penultimate point, at which the true adept seldom stops, where 
 the consideration of benefit forgot is about to merge in the medi- 
 tation of general injustice — when a knock at the door was followed 
 by the entrance of the very friend whose not seeing of us in the 
 morning (for we will now confess the case our own), an acci- 
 dental oversight, had given rise to so much agreeable generaliza- 
 tion ! To mortify us still more, and take down the whole flatter- 
 ing superstructure which pride had piled upon neglect, he had 
 
 brought in his hand the identical S , in whose favor we had 
 
 suspected him of the contumacy. Asseverations were needless, 
 where the frank manner of them both was convictive of the inju- 
 rious nature of the suspicion. We fancied that they perceived 
 our embarrassment ; but were too proud, or something else, to 
 confess to the secret of it. We had been but too lately in the 
 condition of the noble patient in Argos :— 
 
 Qui se credebat miros audire tragoedos, 
 In vacuo laetus sessor plausorque theatre — 
 
 an(^ could have exclaimed with equal reason against the friendly 
 hands that cured us — 
 
 Pol, me occidistis, amici, 
 Non servastis, ait ; cui sic extorta voluptas, 
 Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error. 
 
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