The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2,
by Charles Lamb, et al, Edited by E. V. Lucas
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Title: The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2
Author: Charles Lamb
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***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF CHARLES AND MARY
LAMB, VOLUME 2***
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THE WORKS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB, VOLUME 2
ELIA; and THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA
BY
CHARLES LAMB
EDITED BY
E.V. LUCAS
[Illustration]
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
INTRODUCTION
This volume contains the work by which Charles Lamb is best known and
upon which his fame will rest--_Elia_ and _The Last Essays of Elia_.
Although one essay is as early as 1811, and one is perhaps as late as
1832, the book represents the period between 1820 and 1826, when Lamb
was between forty-five and fifty-one. This was the richest period of
his literary life.
The text of the present volume is that of the first edition of each
book--_Elia_, 1823, and _The Last Essays of Elia_, 1833. The principal
differences between the essays as they were printed in the _London
Magazine_ and elsewhere, and as they were revised for book form by
their author, are shown in the Notes, which, it should be pointed out,
are much fuller in my large edition. The three-part essay on "The Old
Actors" (_London Magazine_, February, April, and October, 1822), from
which Lamb prepared the three essays; "On Some of the Old Actors,"
"The Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," and "The Acting of
Munden," is printed in the Appendix as it first appeared. The absence
of the "Confessions of a Drunkard" from this volume is due to the fact
that Lamb did not include it in the first edition of _The Last Essays
of Elia_. It was inserted later, in place of "A Death-Bed," on account
of objections that were raised to that essay by the family of
Randal Norris. The story is told in the notes to "A Death-Bed." The
"Confessions of a Drunkard" will be found in Vol. I.
In Mr. Bedford's design for the cover of this edition certain Elian
symbolism will be found. The upper coat of arms is that of Christ's
Hospital, where Lamb was at school; the lower is that of the Inner
Temple, where he was born and spent many years. The figures at the
bells are those which once stood out from the façade of St. Dunstan's
Church in Fleet Street, and are now in Lord Londesborough's garden in
Regent's Park. Lamb shed tears when they were removed. The tricksy
sprite and the candles (brought by Betty) need no explanatory words of
mine.
E.V.L.
CONTENTS
APPENDIX
TEXT NOTE
PAGE PAGE
The South-Sea House 1 342
Oxford in the Vacation 8 345
Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago 14 350
The Two Races of Men 26 355
New Year's Eve 31 358
Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist 37 361
A Chapter on Ears 43 363
All Fools' Day 48 367
A Quaker's Meeting 51 367
The Old and the New Schoolmaster 56 369
Valentine's Day 63 370
Imperfect Sympathies 66 370
Witches, and other Night-Fears 74 372
My Relations 80 373
Mackery End, in Hertfordshire 86 375
Modern Gallantry 90 377
The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple 94 379
Grace Before Meat 104 384
My First Play 110 385
Dream-Children; A Reverie 115 388
Distant Correspondents 118 389
The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers 124 390
A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis 130 392
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 137 395
A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married
People 144 397
On Some Old Actors 150 397
On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century 161 399
On the Acting of Munden 168 400
THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA
TEXT NOTE
PAGE PAGE
Preface, by a Friend of the late Elia 171 402
Blakesmoor in H----shire 174 405
Poor Relations 178 408
Stage Illusion 185 408
To the Shade of Elliston 188 409
Ellistoniana 190 410
Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading 195 411
The Old Margate Hoy 201 415
The Convalescent 208 416
Sanity of True Genius 212 416
Captain Jackson 215 416
The Superannuated Man 219 417
The Genteel Style in Writing 226 420
Barbara S---- 230 421
The Tombs in the Abbey 235 423
Amicus Redivivus 237 424
Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sydney 242 426
Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago 249 428
Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the
Productions of Modern Art 256 433
Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age 266 436
The Wedding 271 436
The Child Angel: a Dream 276 437
A Death-Bed 279 437
Old China 281 438
Popular Fallacies--
I. That a Bully is always a Coward 286 440
II. That Ill-gotten Gain never Prospers 287 440
III. That a Man must not Laugh at his own Jest 287 440
IV. That such a One shows his Breeding.--That
it is Easy to Perceive he is no Gentleman 288 440
V. That the Poor Copy the Vices of the Rich 288 440
VI. That Enough is as Good as a Feast 290 440
VII. Of Two Disputants, the Warmest is Generally
in the Wrong 291 440
VIII. That Verbal Allusions are not Wit, because
they will not Bear a Translation 292 440
IX. That the Worst Puns are the Best 292 440
X. That Handsome is that Handsome does 294 441
XI. That We must not look a Gift-horse in the
Mouth 296 441
XII. That Home is Home though it is never so
Homely 298 442
XIII. That You must Love Me, and Love my Dog 302 442
XIV. That We should Rise with the Lark 305 443
XV. That We should Lie Down with the Lamb 308 443
XVI. That a Sulky Temper is a Misfortune 309 443
APPENDIX
TEXT NOTE
PAGE PAGE
On Some of the Old Actors (_London Magazine_, Feb., 1822) 315 444
The Old Actors (_London Magazine_, April, 1822) 322 444
The Old Actors (_London Magazine_, October, 1822) 331 444
NOTES 337
INDEX 447
FRONTISPIECE
ELIA
From a Drawing by Daniel Maclise, now preserved in the Victoria and
Albert Museum.
ELIA
(_From the 1st Edition, 1823_)
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE
Reader, in thy passage from the Bank--where thou hast been receiving
thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean annuitant
like myself)--to the Flower Pot, to secure a place for Dalston, or
Shacklewell, or some other thy suburban retreat northerly,--didst thou
never observe a melancholy looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice,
to the left--where Threadneedle-street abuts upon Bishopsgate? I dare
say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals ever gaping wide,
and disclosing to view a grave court, with cloisters and pillars, with
few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out--a desolation something
like Balclutha's.[1]
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 palaces--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 coverings, 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 have antiquated;--dusty maps of Mexico, dim as
dreams,--and soundings of the Bay of Panama!--The long passages hung
with buckets, appended, in idle row, to walls, whose substance might
defy any, short of the last, conflagration;--with vast ranges of
cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces of eight once lay,
an "unsunned heap," for Mammon to have solaced his solitary heart
withal,--long since dissipated, or scattered into air at the blast of
the breaking of that famous BUBBLE.--
Such is the SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. At least, such it was forty years ago,
when I knew it,--a magnificent relic! What alterations may have been
made in it since, I have had no opportunities of verifying. Time, I
take for granted, has not freshened it. No wind has resuscitated the
face of the sleeping waters. A thicker crust by this time stagnates
upon it. The moths, that were then battening upon its obsolete ledgers
and day-books, have rested from their depredations, but other light
generations have succeeded, making fine fretwork among their single
and double entries. 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 hallowed
curiosity, seeking to unveil some of the mysteries of that tremendous
HOAX, whose extent the petty peculators of our day look back upon with
the same expression of incredulous admiration, and hopeless ambition
of rivalry, as would become the puny face of modern 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 _poor neighbour out of business_--to the idle and merely
contemplative,--to such as me, old house! there is a charm in thy
quiet:--a cessation--a coolness from business--an indolence almost
cloistral--which is delightful! With what reverence have I paced thy
great bare rooms and courts at eventide! They spoke of the past:--the
shade of some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit
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 enshrining shelves--with their old fantastic flourishes, and
decorative rubric interlacings--their sums in triple columniations,
set down with formal superfluity of cyphers--with pious sentences at
the beginning, without which our religious ancestors never ventured to
open a book of business, or bill of lading--the costly vellum covers
of some of them almost persuading us that we are got into some _better
library_,--are very agreeable and edifying spectacles. I can look
upon these defunct dragons with complacency. Thy heavy odd-shaped
ivory-handled penknives (our ancestors had every thing on a larger
scale than we have hearts for) are as good as any thing from
Herculaneum. The pounce-boxes of our days have gone retrograde.
The very clerks which I remember in the South-Sea House--I speak of
forty years back--had an air very different from those in the public
offices that I have had to do with since. They partook of the genius
of the place!
They were mostly (for the establishment did not admit of superfluous
salaries) bachelors. Generally (for they had not much to do) persons
of a curious and speculative turn of mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason
mentioned before. Humorists, 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
considerable proficiency on the German flute.
The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cambro-Briton. He had
something of the choleric complexion of his countrymen stamped on his
visage, but was a worthy sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, to
the last, powdered and frizzed out, in the fashion which I remember
to have seen in 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 himself one; haunted, at least, with the idea of
the possibility of his becoming one: his tristful visage clearing
up a little over his roast neck of veal at Anderton's at two (where
his picture still hangs, taken a little before his death by desire
of the master of the coffee-house, which he had frequented for the
last five-and-twenty years), but not attaining the meridian of its
animation till evening brought on the hour of tea and visiting. The
simultaneous sound of his well-known rap at the door with the stroke
of the clock 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 habitual 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 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 original state of white paper. A sucking babe might have posed
him. What was it then? Was he rich? Alas, no! Thomas Tame was very
poor. Both he and his wife looked outwardly gentlefolks, when I fear
all was not well at all times within. She had a neat meagre person,
which it was evident she had not sinned in over-pampering; but in
its veins was noble blood. She traced her descent, by some labyrinth
of relationship, which I never thoroughly understood,--much less can
explain with any heraldic certainty at this time of day,--to the
illustrious, but unfortunate house of Derwentwater. This was the
secret of Thomas's stoop. This was the thought--the sentiment--the
bright solitary star of your lives,--ye mild and happy pair,--which
cheered you in the night of intellect, and in the obscurity of your
station! This was to you instead of riches, instead of rank, instead
of glittering attainments: and it was worth them altogether. You
insulted none with it; but, while you wore it as a piece of defensive
armour only, no insult likewise could reach you through it. _Decus et
solamen._
Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, John Tipp. He neither
pretended to high blood, nor in good truth cared one fig about the
matter. He "thought an accountant the greatest character in 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 abominably. His fine suite of official rooms in
Threadneedle-street, which, without any thing very substantial
appended to them, were enough to enlarge a man's notions of himself
that lived in them, (I know not who is the occupier of them now)
resounded fortnightly to the notes of a concert of "sweet breasts,"
as our ancestors would have called them, culled from club-rooms and
orchestras--chorus singers--first and second 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. Thence all ideas, that
were purely ornamental, were banished. You could not speak of any
thing romantic without rebuke. Politics were excluded. A newspaper was
thought too refined and abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in
writing off dividend warrants. The striking of the annual balance in
the company's books (which, perhaps, differed from the balance of last
year in the sum of 25_l._ 1_s._ 6_d._) occupied his days and nights
for 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 every thing. 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 accordingly, which excited his spleen and soothed his
vanity in equal ratios. He would swear (for Tipp swore) at the little
orphans, whose rights he would guard with a tenacity like the grasp of
the dying hand, that commended their interests to his protection. With
all this there was about him a sort of timidity--(his few enemies used
to give it a worse name)--a something 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 despise, because it has nothing base or treacherous in
its elements; it betrays itself, not you: it is mere temperament; the
absence of the romantic and the enterprising; it sees a lion in the
way, and will not, with Fortinbras, "greatly find quarrel in a straw,"
when some supposed honour is at stake. Tipp never mounted the box of a
stage-coach in his life; or leaned against the rails of a balcony; or
walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or looked down a precipice; or let
off a gun; or went upon a water-party; or would willingly let you go
if he could have helped it: neither was it recorded of him, that for
lucre, or for intimidation, he ever forsook friend or principle.
Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead, in whom common
qualities become uncommon? Can I forget thee, Henry Man, the wit,
the polished man of letters, the _author_, of the South-Sea House?
who never enteredst thy office in a morning, or quittedst it in
mid-day--(what didst _thou_ in an office?)--without some quirk that
left a sting! Thy gibes and thy jokes are now extinct, or survive
but in two forgotten volumes, which I had the good fortune to rescue
from a stall in Barbican, not three days ago, and found thee terse,
fresh, epigrammatic, as alive. Thy wit is a little gone by in these
fastidious days--thy topics are staled by the "new-born gauds" of the
time:--but great thou used to be in Public Ledgers, and in Chronicles,
upon Chatham, and Shelburne, and Rockingham, and Howe, and Burgoyne,
and Clinton, and the war which ended in the tearing from Great Britain
her rebellious colonies,--and Keppel, and Wilkes, and Sawbridge,
and Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond,--and such small
politics.--
A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstreperous, was fine
rattling, rattleheaded Plumer. He was descended,--not in a right line,
reader, (for his lineal pretensions, like his personal, favoured a
little of the sinister bend) from the Plumers of Hertfordshire. So
tradition gave him out; and certain family features not a little
sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old Walter Plumer (his reputed
author) had been a rake in his days, and visited much in Italy, and
had seen the world. He was uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine old whig
still living, who has represented the county in so many successive
parliaments, and has a fine old mansion near Ware. Walter flourished
in George the Second's days, and was the same who was summoned before
the House of Commons about a business of franks, with the old Duchess
of Marlborough. You may read of it in Johnson's Life of Cave. Cave
came off cleverly in that business. It is certain our Plumer did
nothing to discountenance the rumour. He rather seemed pleased
whenever it was, with all gentleness, insinuated. But, besides
his family pretensions, Plumer was an engaging fellow, and sang
gloriously.--
Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild, child-like, pastoral
M----; a flute's 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 unapproachable church-warden of Bishopsgate. He knew not
what he did, when he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring of
blustering winter:--only unfortunate in thy ending, which should have
been mild, conciliatory, swan-like.--
Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up, but they must
be mine in private:--already I have fooled the reader to the top of
his bent;--else could I omit that strange creature Woollett, who
existed in trying the question, and _bought litigations_?--and still
stranger, inimitable, solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton might
have deduced the law of gravitation. How profoundly would he nib a
pen--with what deliberation would he wet a wafer!--
But it is time to close--night's wheels are rattling fast over me--it
is proper to have done with this solemn mockery.
Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this
while--peradventure the very _names_, which I have summoned up before
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.
[Footnote 1: I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were
desolate.--Ossian.]
OXFORD IN THE VACATION
Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this article--as the
wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye (which, while it reads,
seems as though it read not,) never fails to consult the _quis
sculpsit_ in the corner, before he pronounces some rare piece to be a
Vivares, or a Woollet--methinks I hear you exclaim, Reader, _Who is
Elia?_
Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half-forgotten
humours of some old clerks defunct, in an old house of business, long
since gone to decay, doubtless you have already set me down in your
mind as one of the self-same college--a votary of the desk--a notched
and cropt scrivener--one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick
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 forepart of the day, when the mind of your
man of letters requires some relaxation--(and none better than such
as at first sight seems most abhorrent from his beloved studies)--to
while away some good hours of my time in the contemplation of indigos,
cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In the first
place ******* and then it sends you home with such increased appetite
to your books ***** not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste
wrappers of foolscap, do receive into 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 cyphers, 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
literary dignity of _Elia_ is very little, if at all, compromised in
the condescension.
Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities incidental
to the life of a public office, I would be thought blind to certain
flaws, which a cunning carper might be able to pick in this Joseph's
vest. And here I must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret
the abolition, and doing-away-with altogether, of those consolatory
interstices, and sprinklings of freedom, through the four
seasons,--the _red-letter days_, now become, to all intents and
purposes, _dead-letter days_. There was Paul, and Stephen, and
Barnabas--
Andrew and John, men famous in old times
--we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back as I was at
school at Christ's. I remember their effigies, by the same token,
in the old _Baskett_ Prayer Book. There hung Peter in his uneasy
posture--holy Bartlemy in the troublesome act of flaying, after the
famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti.--I honoured them all, and could almost
have wept the defalcation of Iscariot--so much did we love to keep
holy memories sacred:--only methought I a little grudged at the
coalition of the _better Jude_ with Simon-clubbing (as it were) their
sanctities together, to make up one poor gaudy-day between them--as an
economy unworthy of the dispensation.
These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's life--"far
off their coming shone."--I was as good as an almanac in those days.
I could have told you such a saint's-day falls out next week, or the
week after. 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 standing, methinks, if their Holinesses
the Bishops had, in decency, been first sounded--but I am wading out
of my depths. I am not the man to decide the limits of civil and
ecclesiastical authority--I am plain Elia--no Selden, nor Archbishop
Usher--though at present in the thick of their books, here in the
heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley.
I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To such a one as
myself, who has been defrauded in his young years of the sweet food of
academic institution, nowhere is so pleasant, to while away a few idle
weeks at, as one or other of the Universities. Their vacation, too, at
this time of the year, falls in so pat with _ours_. Here I can take
my 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 respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and
bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsy, as I pass, wisely
mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, which
favours the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle, I can
be content to pass for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor.
The walks at these times are so much one's own,--the 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 Chaucer! Not the meanest minister among the dishes but
is hallowed to me through his imagination, and the Cook goes forth a
Manciple.
Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that, being nothing,
art every thing! When thou _wert_, thou wert not antiquity--then thou
wert nothing, but hadst a remoter _antiquity_, as thou called'st it,
to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself
flat, _jejune, modern_! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or
what half Januses[1] are we, that cannot look forward with the same
idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty future is as
nothing, being every thing! the past is every thing, 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 that we can
never hear mention of them without an accompanying feeling, as though
a palpable obscure had dimmed the face of things, and that our
ancestors wandered to and fro groping!
Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most arride and solace
me, are thy repositories of mouldering learning, thy shelves--
What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the
souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their labours to these
Bodleians, were 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 _variæ 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 Porson, and to G.D.--whom, by the way, I
found busy as a moth over some rotten archive, rummaged out of some
seldom-explored press, in a nook at Oriel. With long poring, he is
grown almost into a book. He stood as passive as one by the side of
the old shelves. I longed to new-coat him in Russia, and assign him
his place. He might have mustered for a tall Scapula.
D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning. No
inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortune, I apprehend, is
consumed in journeys between them and Clifford's-inn--where, like a
dove on the asp's nest, he has long taken up his unconscious abode,
amid an incongruous assembly of attorneys, attorneys' clerks,
apparitors, 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 sheriffs 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 abstract idea."
D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course of laborious years,
in an investigation into all curious matter connected with the two
Universities; and has lately lit upon a MS. collection of charters,
relative to C----, by which he hopes to settle some disputed
points--particularly that long controversy between them as to
priority of foundation. The ardor 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 any body else about these
questions.--Contented to suck the milky fountains of their Alma
Maters, without inquiring into the venerable gentlewomen's years, they
rather hold such curiosities to be impertinent--unreverend. They have
their good glebe lands _in manu_, and care not much to rake into the
title-deeds. I gather at least so much from other sources, for D. is
not a man to complain.
D. started like an 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 Clifford's-inn, or in the Temple. In addition to a provoking
short-sightedness (the effect of late studies and watchings at the
midnight oil) D. is the most absent of men. He made a call the other
morning at our friend _M.'s_ in Bedford-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
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 another Sosia, or as if a man should suddenly encounter his
own duplicate!--The effect may be conceived. D. made many a good
resolution against any such lapses in future. I hope he will not keep
them too rigorously.
For with G.D.--to be absent from the body, is sometimes (not to speak
it profanely) to be present with the Lord. At the very time when,
personally encountering thee, he passes on with no recognition--or,
being stopped, starts like a thing surprised--at that moment, reader,
he is on Mount Tabor--or Parnassus--or co-sphered with Plato--or, with
Harrington, framing "immortal commonwealths"--devising some plan of
amelioration to thy country, or thy species--peradventure meditating
some individual kindness or courtesy, to be done to _thee thyself_,
the returning consciousness of which made him to start so guiltily at
thy obtruded personal presence.
D. is delightful any where, but he is at the best in such places as
these. He cares not much for Bath. He is out of his element at Buxton,
at Scarborough, or Harrowgate. The Cam and the Isis are to him "better
than all the waters of Damascus." On the Muses' hill he is happy, and
good, as one of the 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.
[Footnote 1: Januses of one face.--SIR THOMAS BROWNE.]
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO
In Mr. Lamb's "Works," published a year or two since, I find a
magnificent eulogy on my old school,[1] such as it was, or now appears
to him to have been, between the years 1782 and 1789. It happens,
very oddly, that my own standing at Christ's was nearly corresponding
with his; and, with all gratitude to him for his enthusiasm for the
cloisters, I think he has contrived to bring together whatever can be
said in praise of them, dropping all the other side of the argument
most ingeniously.
I remember L. at school; and can well recollect that he had some
peculiar advantages, which I and others of his schoolfellows had not.
His friends lived in town, and were near at hand; and he had the
privilege of going to see them, almost as often as he wished, through
some invidious distinction, which was denied to us. The present worthy
sub-treasurer to the Inner Temple can explain how that happened. He
had his tea and hot rolls in a morning, while we were battening upon
our quarter of a penny loaf--our _crug_--moistened with attenuated
small beer, in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack
it was poured from. Our Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless,
and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched
for him with a slice of "extraordinary bread and butter," from the
hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat less
repugnant--(we had three banyan to four meat days in the week)--was
endeared to his palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of
ginger (to make it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon.
In lieu of our _half-pickled_ Sundays, or _quite fresh_ boiled beef
on Thursdays (strong as _caro equina_), with detestable marigolds
floating in the pail to poison the broth--our scanty mutton crags 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 ministered
to the Tishbite); and the contending passions of L. at the unfolding.
There was love for the bringer; shame for the thing brought, and the
manner of its bringing; sympathy for those who were too many to share
in it; and, at top of all, hunger (eldest, strongest of the passions!)
predominant, breaking down the stony fences of shame, and awkwardness,
and a troubling 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 failed me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred
playmates.
O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early homestead! The
yearnings which I used to have towards it in those unfledged years!
How, in my dreams, would my native town (far in the west) come back,
with its church, and trees, and faces! How I would wake weeping, and
in the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet Calne in Wiltshire!
To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by the
recollection of those friendless holidays. The long warm days of
summer never return but they bring with them a gloom from the haunting
memory of those _whole-day-leaves_, when, by some strange arrangement,
we were turned out, for the live-long day, upon our own hands, whether
we had friends to go to, or none. I remember those 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
nightfall, to our desired morsel, half-rejoicing, half-reluctant, that
the hours of our uneasy liberty had expired!
It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about the streets
objectless--shivering at cold windows of printshops, to extract a
little amusement; or haply, as a last resort, in the hope 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 levée, 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-sickening 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 discipline of a leathern thong, with eleven
other sufferers, because it pleased my callow overseer, when there has
been any talking heard after we were gone to bed, to make the six
last beds in the dormitory, where the youngest children of us slept,
answerable for an offence they neither dared to commit, nor had the
power to hinder.--The same execrable tyranny drove the younger part of
us from the fires, when our feet were perishing with snow; and, under
the cruelest penalties, forbad the indulgence of a drink of water,
when we lay in sleepless summer nights, fevered with the season, and
the day's sports.
There was one H----, who, I learned, in after days, was seen expiating
some maturer offence in the hulks. (Do I flatter myself in fancying
that this might be the planter of that name, who suffered--at Nevis,
I think, or St. Kits,--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 of us, with exacting contributions, to the one
half of our bread, to pamper a young ass, which, incredible as it may
seem, with the connivance of the nurse's daughter (a young flame of
his) he had contrived to smuggle in, and keep 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 Jericho) set concealment any
longer at defiance. The client was dismissed, with certain attentions,
to Smithfield; but I never understood that the patron underwent any
censure on the occasion. This was in the stewardship of L.'s admired
Perry.
Under the same _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 scrupulously weighed out for
our dinners? These things were daily practised in that magnificent
apartment, which L. (grown connoisseur since, we presume) praises so
highly for the grand paintings "by Verrio, and others," with which it
is "hung round and adorned." But the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat
boys in pictures was, at that time, I believe, little consolatory to
him, or us, the living ones, who saw the better part of our provisions
carried away before our faces by harpies; and ourselves reduced (with
the Trojan in the hall of Dido)
To feed our mind with idle portraiture.
L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to _gags_, or the fat
of fresh beef boiled; and sets it down to some superstition. But
these unctuous morsels are never grateful to young palates (children
are universally fat-haters) and in strong, coarse, boiled meats,
_unsalted_, are detestable. A _gag-eater_ in our time was equivalent
to a _goul_, and held in equal detestation.--suffered under the
imputation.
--'Twas said
He ate strange flesh.
He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up the remnants
left at his table (not many, nor very choice fragments, you may credit
me)--and, in an especial manner, these disreputable morsels, which
he would convey away, and secretly stow in the settle that stood at
his bed-side. None saw when he ate them. It was rumoured that he
privately devoured them in the night. He was watched, but no traces
of such midnight practices were discoverable. Some reported, that, on
leave-days, he had been seen to carry out of the bounds a large blue
check handkerchief, full of something. This then must be the accursed
thing. Conjecture next was at work to imagine how he could dispose
of it. Some said he sold it to the beggars. This belief generally
prevailed. He went about moping. None spake to him. No one would play
with him. He was excommunicated; put out of the pale of the school.
He was too powerful a boy to 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 determined to get at the secret, and had
traced him one leave-day for that purpose, to enter a large worn-out
building, such as there exist specimens of in Chancery-lane, which are
let out to various scales of pauperism with open door, and a common
staircase. After him they silently slunk in, and followed by stealth
up four flights, and saw him tap at a poor wicket, which was opened by
an aged woman, meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened into certainty.
The informers had secured their victim. They had him in their toils.
Accusation was formally preferred, and retribution most signal was
looked for. Mr. Hathaway, the then steward (for this happened a little
after my time), with that patient sagacity which tempered all his
conduct, determined to investigate the matter, before he proceeded to
sentence. The result was, that the supposed mendicants, the receivers
or purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned out to be the parents
of ----, an honest couple come 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 exactly fitted
to assuage the natural terrors of initiation. I was of tender years,
barely turned of seven; and had only read of such things in books, or
seen them but in dreams. I was told he had _run away_. This was the
punishment for the first offence.--As a novice I was soon after taken
to see the dungeons. These were little, square, Bedlam cells, where a
boy could just lie at his length upon straw and a blanket--a mattress,
I think, was afterwards substituted--with a peep of light, let in
askance, from a prison-orifice at top, barely enough to read by. Here
the poor boy was locked in by 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 welcome,
because it separated him for a brief interval from solitude:--and here
he was shut up by himself of _nights_, out of the reach of any sound,
to suffer whatever horrors the weak nerves, and superstition incident
to his time of life, might subject him to.[2] 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 da fe_, arrayed in uncouth and most appalling
attire--all trace of his late "watchet weeds" carefully effaced, he
was exposed in a jacket, resembling those which London lamplighters
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 (_L.'s
favourite state-room_), where awaited him the whole number of his
school-fellows, whose joint lessons and sports he was thenceforth to
share no more; the awful presence of the steward, to be seen for the
last time; of the executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the
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 accustomed 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 colleagues on one occasion, when the beadle
turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was ordered to prepare him for
the mysteries. The scourging was, after the old 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 degree
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 Schools were held in the same room; and an imaginary line only
divided their bounds. Their character was as different as that of the
inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyrennees. The Rev. James Boyer
was the Upper Master; but the Rev. Matthew Field presided over that
portion of the apartment, of which I had the good fortune to be a
member. We lived a life as careless as birds. We talked and did just
what we pleased, and nobody molested us. We carried an accidence, or
a grammar, for form; but, for any trouble it gave us, we might take
two years in getting through the verbs deponent, and another two in
forgetting all that we had learned about them. There was now and then
the 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
consideration upon the value of juvenile time. He came among us, now
and then, but often staid away whole days from us; and when he came,
it made no difference to us--he had his private room to retire to, the
short time he staid, to be out of the sound of our noise. Our mirth
and uproar went on. We had classics of our own, without being beholden
to "insolent Greece or haughty Rome," that passed current among
us--Peter Wilkins--the Adventures of the Hon. Capt. Robert Boyle--the
Fortunate Blue Coat Boy--and the like. Or we cultivated a turn for
mechanic or scientific operations; making little sun-dials of paper;
or weaving those ingenious parentheses, called _cat-cradles_; or
making dry peas to dance upon the end of a tin pipe; or studying the
art military over that laudable game "French and English," and a
hundred other such devices to pass away the time--mixing the useful
with the agreeable--as would have made the souls of Rousseau and John
Locke chuckle to have seen us.
Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest divines who affect
to mix in equal proportion the _gentleman_, the _scholar_, and the
_Christian_; but, I know not how, the first ingredient is generally
found to be the predominating dose in the composition. He was engaged
in gay parties, or with his courtly bow at some episcopal levée, when
he should have been attending upon us. He had for many years the
classical charge of a hundred children, during the four or five first
years of their education; and his very highest form seldom proceeded
further than two or three of the introductory fables of Phædrus. 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
displeased at the contrast we presented to his end of the school.
We were a sort of Helots to his young Spartans. He would sometimes,
with ironic deference, send to borrow a rod of the Under Master, and
then, with Sardonic grin, observe to one of his upper boys, "how neat
and fresh the twigs looked." While his pale students were battering
their brains over Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep as that
enjoined by the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves at our ease in our
little Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets of his discipline, and
the prospect did but the more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders
rolled innocuous for us; his storms came near, but never touched us;
contrary to Gideon's miracle, while all around were drenched, our
fleece was dry.[3] 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 remembrance
of Field comes back with all the soothing images of indolence, and
summer slumbers, and work like play, and innocent idleness, and
Elysian exemptions, and life itself a "playing holiday."
Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of Boyer, we were
near enough (as I have said) to understand a little of his system.
We occasionally heard sounds of the _Ululantes_, and caught glances
of Tartarus. B. was a rabid pedant. His English style was crampt to
barbarism. His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged him to those
periodical flights) were grating as scrannel pipes.[4]--He would
laugh, ay, and heartily, but then it must be at Flaccus's quibble
about _Rex_--or at the _tristis severitas in vultu_, or _inspicere in
patinas_, of Terence--thin jests, which at their first broaching could
hardly have had _vis_ enough to move a Roman muscle.--He had two wigs,
both pedantic, but of differing omen. The one serene, smiling, fresh
powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old discoloured,
unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent and bloody execution. Woe to
the school, when he made his morning appearance in his _passy_, or
_passionate wig_. No comet expounded surer.--J.B. had a heavy hand. I
have known him double his knotty fist at a poor trembling child (the
maternal milk hardly dry upon its lips) with a "Sirrah, do you presume
to set your wits at me?"--Nothing was more common than to see him make
a head-long entry into the school-room, from his inner recess, or
library, and, with turbulent eye, singling out a lad, roar out, "Od's
my life, Sirrah," (his favourite adjuration) "I have a great mind to
whip you,"--then, with as sudden a retracting impulse, fling back into
his lair--and, after a cooling lapse of some minutes (during which
all but the culprit had totally forgotten the context) drive headlong
out again, piecing out his imperfect sense, as if it had been some
Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell--"_and I WILL, too._"--In
his gentler moods, when the _rabidus furor_ was assuaged, he had
resort to an ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to
himself, of whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, at the same
time; a 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 ineffectual
from his hand--when droll squinting W---- having been caught putting
the inside of the master's desk to a use for which the architect had
clearly not designed it, to justify himself, with great simplicity
averred, that _he did not know that the thing had been forewarned_.
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 remission was
unavoidable.
L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructor. Coleridge,
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 ejaculation of C.--when he
heard that his old master was on his death-bed--"Poor J.B.!--may all
his faults be forgiven; and may he be wafted to bliss by little cherub
boys, all head and wings, with no _bottoms_ to reproach his sublunary
infirmities."
Under him were many good and sound scholars bred.--First Grecian of
my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, kindest of boys and men, since
Co-grammar-master (and 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 toilsome duties of their profession, and when, in advanced
age, one found it convenient to retire, the other was not long in
discovering that it suited him to lay down the fasces also. Oh, it
is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same arm linked in yours
at forty, which at thirteen helped it to turn over the _Cicero De
Amicitia_, 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 Middleton followed him
(now Bishop of Calcutta) a scholar and a gentleman in his teens. He
has the reputation of an excellent critic; and is author (besides
the Country Spectator) of a Treatise on the Greek Article, against
Sharpe.--M. is said to bear his mitre high in India, where the _regni
novitas_ (I dare say) 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 institutions, and the church which those fathers
watered. The manners of M. at school, though firm, were mild, and
unassuming.--Next to M. (if not senior to him) was 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, intranced with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion
between the _speech_ and the _garb_ 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-boy_!--Many were the "wit-combats,"
(to dally awhile with the words of old Fuller,) between him and C.V.
Le G----, "which two I behold like a Spanish great gallion, and an
English man of war; Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far
higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances. C.V.L., with
the English man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could
turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by
the quickness of his wit and invention."
Nor shall 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 _Nircus
formosus_ 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 "_bl----_," for a
gentler greeting--"_bless thy handsome face_!"
Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the friends of
Elia--the junior Le G---- and F----; who impelled, the former by
a roving temper, the latter by too quick a sense of neglect--ill
capable of enduring the slights poor Sizars are sometimes subject to
in our seats of 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 Grecians in my time.
[Footnote 1: Recollections of Christ's Hospital.]
[Footnote 2: 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 statue.]
[Footnote 3: Cowley.]
[Footnote 4: In this and every thing B. was the antipodes of his
co-adjutor. 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 it was _too classical for
representation_.]
THE TWO RACES OF MEN
The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is
composed of two distinct races, _the men who borrow_, and _the men
who lend_. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those
impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men,
black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, "Parthians, and
Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, and do naturally fall in with
one or other of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority
of the former, which I 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, trusting, generous manners of
the other.
Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all
ages--Alcibiades--Falstaff--Sir Richard Steele--our late incomparable
Brinsley--what a family likeness in all four!
What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower! what rosy gills!
what a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he manifest,--taking
no more thought than lilies! What contempt for money,--accounting
it (yours and mine especially) no better than dross! What a liberal
confounding of those pedantic distinctions of _meum_ and _tuum_!
or rather what a noble simplification of language (beyond Tooke),
resolving these supposed opposites into one clear, intelligible
pronoun adjective!--What near approaches doth he make to the primitive
_community_,--to the extent of one half of the principle at least!--
He is the true taxer who "calleth all the world up to be taxed:" and
the distance is as vast between him and _one of us_, as subsisted
betwixt 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 cometh to you with a smile, and troubleth
you with no receipt; confining himself to no set season. Every day is
his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy Michael. He applieth the _lene
tormentum_ of a pleasant look to your purse,--which to that gentle
warmth expands her silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the
traveller, for which sun and wind contended! He is the true Propontic
which never ebbeth! The sea which taketh handsomely at each man's
hand. In vain the victim, whom he delighteth to honour, struggles with
destiny; he is in the net. Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordained
to lend--that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the
reversion promised. Combine not 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 departed this life on
Wednesday evening; dying, as he had lived, without much trouble. He
boasted himself a descendant from mighty ancestors of that name, who
heretofore held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions and
sentiments he belied not the stock to which he pretended. Early in
life he found himself invested with ample revenues; which, with that
noble disinterestedness which I have noticed as inherent in men of the
_great race_, he took almost immediate measures entirely to dissipate
and bring to nothing: for there is something revolting in the idea of
a king holding a private purse; and the thoughts of Bigod were all
regal. Thus furnished, by the very act of disfurnishment; getting rid
of the 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,
he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enterprise,
"borrowing 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 exaggerated:--but
having had the honour of accompanying my friend, divers times, in his
perambulations about this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at
first with the prodigious number of faces we met, who claimed a sort
of respectful acquaintance with us. He was one day so obliging as to
explain the phenomenon. It seems, these were his tributaries; feeders
of his exchequer; gentlemen, his good friends (as he was pleased to
express himself), to whom he had occasionally been beholden for a
loan. Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He rather took
a pride in numbering them; and, with Comus, seemed pleased to be
"stocked with so fair a herd."
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 wilderness, while it was sweet. He never missed
it. The streams were perennial which fed his fisc. When new supplies
became necessary, the first stranger, was sure to contribute to the
deficiency. For Bigod had an _undeniable_ way with him. He had a
cheerful, open exterior, a quick jovial eye, a bald forehead, just
touched with grey (_cana fides_). He anticipated no excuse, and found
none. And, waiving for a while my theory as to the _great race_, I
would put it to the most untheorising reader, who may at times have
disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is not more repugnant to the
kindliness of his nature to refuse such a one as I am describing, than
to say _no_ to a poor petitionary rogue (your bastard 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 companions with whom I
have associated since, I grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, and
think that I am fallen into the society of _lenders_, and _little
men_.
To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers
than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more
formidable than that which I have touched upon; I mean your _borrowers
of books_--those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry
of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch,
matchless in his depredations!
That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth
knocked out--(you are now with me in my little back study in
Bloomsbury, reader!)--with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side
(like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of
nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, _Opera Bonaventuræ_,
choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school
divinity also, but of a lesser calibre,--Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas),
showed but as dwarfs,--itself an Ascapart!--_that_ 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 understanding and appreciating the
same." Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves
is safe?
The slight vacuum in the left-hand case--two shelves from the
ceiling--scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser--was
whilom the commodious resting-place of 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 known a foolish lover to praise
his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her
off than himself.--Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth
volume, where Vittoria Corombona is! The remainder nine are as
distasteful as Priam's refuse sons, when the Fates _borrowed_ Hector.
Here stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state.--There loitered
the Complete Angler; quiet as in life, by some stream side.--In yonder
nook, John Buncle, a widower-volume, with "eyes closed," I mourns his
ravished mate.
One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, like the sea,
sweeps away a treasure, at another time, sea-like, he throws up as
rich an equivalent to match it. I have a small under-collection of
this nature (my friend's gathering's in his various calls), picked
up, he has forgotten at what odd places, and deposited with as little
memory as 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 naturalised. The latter seem as
little disposed to inquire out their true lineage as I am.--I charge
no warehouse-room for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the
ungentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of them to pay expenses.
To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning in it. You are
sure that he will make one hearty meal on your viands, if he can give
no 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 harbour such a sweetness,
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt,
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder!
--hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and fancies,
about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keepest all companies
with thy quips and mirthful tales?--Child of the Green-room, it was
unkindly done of thee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, better-part
Englishwoman!--that _she_ could fix upon no other treatise to bear
away, in kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke
Greville, Lord Brook--of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France,
Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a
tittle! _Was there not Zimmerman 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 abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas!
wandering in Pagan lands.--I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy
library, against S.T.C.
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 any thing in it beyond cake and orange. But the birth of
a New Year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted 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 common Adam.
Of all sounds of all bells--(bells, the 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, performed or neglected--in
that regretted time. I begin to know its worth, as when a person
dies. It takes a personal colour; nor was it a poetical flight in a
contemporary, when he 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 coming year,
than any very tender regrets for the decease of its predecessor. But I
am none of those who--
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.
I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties; new books, new faces,
new years,--from some mental twist which makes it difficult in me to
face the prospective. I have almost ceased to hope; and am sanguine
only in the prospects of other (former) years. I plunge into
foregone visions and conclusions. I encounter pell-mell with past
disappointments. I am armour-proof against old discouragements. I
forgive, or overcome in fancy, old adversaries. 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-contrived 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
banco_, and be without the idea of that specious old rogue.
In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look back upon
those early days. Do I advance a paradox, when I say, that, skipping
over the intervention of forty years, a man may have leave to love
_himself_, without the imputation of self-love?
If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is introspective--and
mine is painfully so--can have a less respect for his present
identity, than I have for the man Elia. I know him to be light, and
vain, and humorsome; a notorious ***; addicted to ****: averse
from counsel, neither taking it, nor offering it;--*** besides;
a stammering buffoon; what you will; lay it on, and spare not; I
subscribe to it all, and much more, than thou canst be willing to lay
at his door--but for the child 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 medicaments I can lay its poor fevered head upon the
sick pillow at Christ's and wake with it in surprise at the gentle
posture of maternal tenderness hanging over it, that unknown had
watched its sleep. I know how it shrank from any the least colour
of falsehood.--God help thee, Elia, how art thou changed! Thou art
sophisticated.--I know how honest, how courageous (for a weakling) 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 idiosyncrasy. Or
is it owing to another cause; simply, that being without wife or
family, I have not learned to project myself enough out of myself;
and having no offspring of my own to dally with, I turn back upon
memory and adopt my own early idea, as my heir and favourite? If
these speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader--(a busy man,
perchance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and am
singularly-conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, under
the phantom cloud of Elia.
The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a character not likely
to let slip the sacred observance of any old institution; and the
ringing out of the Old Year was kept by them with circumstances of
peculiar ceremony.--In those days the sound of those midnight chimes,
though it seemed to raise hilarity in all 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 miser's farthings.
In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count
upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon
the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away "like a
weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the
unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the
tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the
inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the
face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the
sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am
content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my
friends: to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to
be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the
grave.--Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging,
puzzles and discomposes 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 armfuls) in my embraces? Must knowledge
come to me, if it come at all, by some awkward experiment of
intuition, and no longer by this familiar process of reading?
Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indications which
point me to them here,--the recognisable face--the "sweet assurance of
a look"--?
In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying--to give it its
mildest name--does more especially haunt and beset me. In a genial
August noon, beneath a sweltering sky, death is almost problematic.
At those times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy an immortality.
Then we expand and burgeon. Then are we as strong again, as valiant
again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The blast that nips
and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts of death. All things allied to
the insubstantial, wait upon that master feeling; cold, numbness,
dreams, perplexity; moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral
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.
Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings death into
my mind. All partial evils, like humours, run into that capital
plague-sore.--I have heard some profess an indifference to life. Such
hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge; and speak of
the grave as of some soft arms, in which they may slumber as on a
pillow. Some have wooed death--but out upon thee, I say, thou foul,
ugly phantom! I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar John) give
thee to six-score thousand devils, as in no instance to be excused
or tolerated, but shunned as a universal viper; to be branded,
proscribed, and spoken evil of! In no way can I be brought to digest
thee, thou thin, melancholy _Privation_, or more frightful and
confounding _Positive!_'
Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, are altogether
frigid and insulting, like 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 misbecoming 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 meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee.
Know thy betters! Thy New Years' Days are past. I survive, a jolly
candidate for 1821. Another cup of wine--and while that turn-coat
bell, that just now mournfully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed,
with changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to
its peal the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, cheerful Mr.
Cotton.--
THE NEW YEAR
Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star
Tells us, the day himself's not far;
And see where, breaking from the night,
He gilds the western hills with light.
With him old Janus doth appear,
Peeping into the future year,
With such a look as seems to say,
The prospect is not good that way.
Thus do we rise ill sights to see,
And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy;
When the prophetic fear of things
A more tormenting mischief brings,
More full of soul-tormenting gall,
Than direst mischiefs can befall.
But stay! but stay! methinks my sight,
Better inform'd by clearer light,
Discerns sereneness in that brow,
That all contracted seem'd but now.
His revers'd face may show distaste,
And frown upon the ills are past;
But that which this way looks is clear,
And smiles upon the New-born Year.
He looks too from a place so high,
The Year lies open to his eye;
And all the moments open are
To the exact discoverer.
Yet more and more he smiles upon
The happy revolution.
Why should we then suspect or fear
The influences of a year,
So smiles upon us the first morn,
And speaks us good so soon as born?
Plague on't! the last was ill enough,
This cannot but make better proof;
Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through
The last, why so we may this too;
And then the next in reason shou'd
Be superexcellently good:
For the worst ills (we daily see)
Have no more perpetuity,
Than the best fortunes that do fall;
Which also bring us wherewithal
Longer their being to support,
Than those do of the other sort:
And who has one good year in three,
And yet repines at destiny,
Appears ungrateful in the case,
And merits not the good he has.
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!
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST
"A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game." This was
the celebrated _wish_ of old Sarah Battle (now with God) who, next
to her devotions, loved a good game at whist. She was none of your
lukewarm gamesters, your half and half players, who have no objection
to take a hand, if you want one to make up a rubber; who affirm that
they have no pleasure in winning; that they like to win one game,
and lose another; that they can while away an hour very agreeably at
a card-table, but are indifferent whether they play or no; and will
desire an adversary, who has slipt a wrong card, to take it up and
play another. These insufferable triflers are the curse of a table.
One of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may be said,
that they do not play at cards, but only play at playing at them.
Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested them, as I do, from
her heart and soul; and would not, save upon a striking emergency,
willingly seat herself at the same table with them. She loved a
thorough-paced partner, a determined enemy. She took, and gave,
no concessions. She hated favours. 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 favourite suit.
I never in my life--and I knew Sarah Battle many of the best years of
it--saw her take out her snuff-box when it was her turn to play; or
snuff a candle in the middle of a game; or ring for a servant, till it
was fairly over. She never introduced, or connived at, miscellaneous
conversation during its process. As she emphatically observed,
cards were cards: and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her fine
last-century countenance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman of a
literary turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded to take a hand;
and who, in his excess of candour, declared, that he thought there was
no harm in unbending the mind now and then, after serious studies,
in recreations of that kind! She could not bear to have her noble
occupation, 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 favourite author: his Rape of the Lock her favourite
work. She once did me the favour to play over with me (with the cards)
his celebrated game of Ombre in that poem; and to explain to me how
far it agreed with, and in what points it would be found to differ
from, 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
Spadille--absurd, as she justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of
whist, where his crown and garter give him no proper power above his
brother-nobility of the Aces;--the giddy vanity, so taking to the
inexperienced, of playing alone:--above all, the 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 coextend in duration with an
evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships, to cultivate
steady enmities. She despised the chance-started, capricious, and ever
fluctuating alliances of the other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she
would say, reminded her of the petty ephemeral embroilments of the
little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel; perpetually changing
postures and connexions; bitter foes to-day, sugared darlings
to-morrow; kissing and scratching in a breath;--but the wars of
whist were comparable to the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational,
antipathies of the great French and English nations.
A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in her favourite game.
There was nothing silly in it, like the nob in cribbage--nothing
superfluous. No _flushes_--that most irrational of all pleas that
a reasonable being can set up:--that any one should claim four by
virtue of holding cards of the same mark and colour, without reference
to the playing of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions
of the cards themselves! She held this to be a solecism; as pitiful
an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She despised
superficiality, and looked deeper than the colours of things.--Suits
were soldiers, she would say, and must have a 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 stript it of some appendages, which, in the state of human
frailty, may be venially, and even commendably allowed of. She saw no
reason for the deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not
one suit always trumps?--Why two colours, when the mark of the suits
would have sufficiently distinguished them without it?--
"But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably refreshed with the variety.
Man is not a creature of pure reason he must have his senses
delightfully appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic countries, where
the music and the paintings draw in many to worship, whom your quaker
spirit of unsensualizing would have kept out.--You, yourself, have a
pretty collection of paintings--but confess to me, whether, walking
in your gallery at Sandham, among those clear Vandykes, or among the
Paul Potters in the ante-room, you ever felt your bosom glow with
an elegant delight, 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, picture-less.
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 turneys
in!--Exchange those delicately-turned ivory markers--(work of Chinese
artist, unconscious of their symbol,--or as profanely slighting their
true application as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that turned out
those little shrines for the goddess)--exchange them for little bits
of leather (our ancestors' money) or chalk and a slate!"--
The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of my logic;
and to her approbation of my arguments on her favourite topic that
evening, I have always fancied myself indebted for the legacy of a
curious cribbage board, made of the finest Sienna marble, which her
maternal uncle (old Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated)
brought with him from Florence:--this, and a trifle of five hundred
pounds, came to me at her death.
The former bequest (which I do not least value) I have kept with
religious care; though she herself, to confess a truth, was never
greatly taken with cribbage. It was an essentially vulgar game, I have
heard her say,--disputing with her uncle, who was very partial to
it. She could never heartily bring her mouth to pronounce "_go_"--or
"_that's a go_." She called it an ungrammatical game. The pegging
teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five dollar stake),
because she would not take advantage of the turn-up knave, which would
have given it her, but which she must have claimed by the disgraceful
tenure of declaring "_two for his heels_." There is something
extremely genteel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a
gentlewoman born.
Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two persons, though she
would ridicule the pedantry of the terms--such as pique--repique--the
capot--they savoured (she thought) of affectation. But games for two,
or even three, she never greatly cared for. She loved the quadrate,
or square. She would argue thus:--Cards are warfare: the ends are
gain, with glory. But cards are war, in disguise of a sport: when
single adversaries encounter, the ends proposed are too palpable.
By themselves, it is too close a fight; with spectators, it is not
much bettered. No looker on can be interested, except for a bet,
and then it is a mere affair of money; he cares not for your luck
_sympathetically_, or for your play.--Three are still worse; a mere
naked war of every man against every man, as in cribbage, 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 honour, common
to every species--though the _latter_ can be but very imperfectly
enjoyed in those other games, where the spectator is only feebly a
participator. But the parties in whist are 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 interest beyond its sphere. You glory in some
surprising stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold--or even
an interested--by-stander witnesses it, but because your _partner_
sympathises in the contingency. You win for two. You triumph for
two. Two are exalted. Two again are mortified; which divides their
disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking off the invidiousness)
your glories. Two losing to two are better reconciled, than one to one
in that close butchery. The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying
the channels. War becomes a civil game.--By such reasonings as these
the old lady was accustomed to defend her favourite pastime.
No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at any game, where
chance entered into the composition, _for nothing_. Chance, she would
argue--and here again, admire the subtlety of her conclusion!--chance
is nothing, but where something else depends upon it. It is obvious,
that cannot be _glory_. What rational cause of exultation could it
give to a man to turn up size ace a hundred times together by himself?
or before spectators, where no stake was depending?--Make a lottery
of a hundred thousand tickets with but one fortunate number--and what
possible 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 idots, 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-engagement
at a review, bloodless and profitless.--She could not conceive a
_game_ wanting the spritely infusion of chance,--the handsome excuses
of good fortune. Two people playing at chess in a corner of a room,
whilst whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with
insufferable 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 colour. A pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper
arena for such combatants.
To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the bad passions,
she would retort, that man is a gaming animal. He must be always
trying to get the better in something or other:--that this passion can
scarcely 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 and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream-fighting;
much ado; great battling, and little bloodshed; mighty means for
disproportioned ends; quite as diverting, and a great deal more
innoxious, than many of those more serious _games_ of life, which men
play, without esteeming them to be such.--
With great deference to the old lady's judgment on these matters, I
think I have experienced some moments in my life, when playing at
cards _for nothing_ has even been agreeable. When I am in sickness, or
not in the best spirits, I sometimes call for the cards, and play a
game at piquet _for love_ with my cousin Bridget--Bridget Elia.
I grant there is something sneaking in it; but with a toothache, or a
sprained ancle,--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 inferior interest. Those shadows
of winning amuse me.
That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capotted her)--(dare I
tell thee, how foolish I am?)--I wished it might have lasted for ever,
though we gained nothing, and lost nothing, though it was a mere shade
of play: I would be content to go on in that idle folly for ever. The
pipkin should be ever boiling, that was to prepare the gentle lenitive
to my foot, which Bridget was doomed to apply after the game was over:
and, as I do not much relish appliances, there it should ever bubble.
Bridget and I should be ever playing.
A CHAPTER ON EARS
I have no ear.--
Mistake me not, reader,--nor imagine that I am by nature destitute
of those exterior twin appendages, hanging ornaments, and
(architecturally speaking) handsome volutes to the human capital.
Better my mother had never borne me.--I am, I think, rather delicately
than copiously 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 any thing 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
concourse of sweet sounds, would be a foul self-libel.--"_Water
parted from the sea_" never fails to move it strangely. So does "_In
Infancy_." But they were used to be sung at her harpsichord (the
old-fashioned instrument in vogue in those days) by a gentlewoman--the
gentlest, sure, that ever merited the appellation--the sweetest--why
should I hesitate to name Mrs. S----, once the blooming Fanny
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 absorbing sentiment, which was afterwards destined
to overwhelm and subdue his nature quite, for Alice W----n.
I even think that _sentimentally_ I am disposed to harmony. But
_organically_ I am incapable of a tune. I have been practising "_God
save the King_" all my life; whistling and humming of it over to
myself in solitary 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
parlour,--on his return he was pleased to say, "_he thought it could
not be the maid_!" On his first surprise at hearing the keys touched
in somewhat an airy and masterful way, not dreaming of me, his
suspicions had lighted on _Jenny_. But a grace, snatched from a
superior refinement, soon 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) enthusiasm, could never have elicited from them.
I mention this as a proof of my friend's penetration, and not with any
view of disparaging Jenny.
Scientifically I could never be made to understand (yet have I taken
some pains) what a note in music is; or how one note should differ
from another. Much less in voices can I distinguish a soprano from a
tenor. Only sometimes the thorough bass I contrive to guess at, from
its being supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, however,
for my misapplication of the simplest terms of _that_ which I
disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, I scarce know what to _say_ I
am ignorant of I hate, perhaps, by misnomers. _Sostenuto_ and _adagio_
stand in the like relation of obscurity to me; and _Sol_, _Fa_, _Mi_,
_Re_, is as conjuring as _Baralipton_.
It is hard to stand alone--in an age like this,--(constituted to the
quick and critical perception of all harmonious combinations, I verily
believe, beyond all preceding ages, since Jubal stumbled upon the
gamut)--to remain, as it were, singly unimpressible to the magic
influences of an art, which is said to have such an especial stroke at
soothing, elevating, and refining the passions.--Yet rather than break
the candid current of my confessions, I must avow to you, that I have
received a great deal more pain than pleasure from this so cried-up
faculty.
I am 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 thrid
the maze; like an unskilled eye painfully poring upon hieroglyphics.
I have sat through an Italian Opera, till, for sheer pain, and
inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of
the crowded streets, to solace myself with sounds, which I was not
obliged to follow, and get rid of the distracting torment of endless,
fruitless, barren attention! I take refuge in the unpretending
assemblage of honest common-life sounds;--and the purgatory of the
Enraged Musician becomes my paradise.
I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the purposes of the
cheerful playhouse) watching the faces of the auditory in the pit
(what a contrast to Hogarth's Laughing Audience!) immoveable, or
affecting some faint emotion,--till (as some have said, that our
occupations in the next world will be but a shadow of what delighted
us in this) I have imagined myself in some cold Theatre in Hades,
where some of the _forms_ of the earthly one should be kept up, with
none of the _enjoyment_; or like that--
--Party in a parlour,
All silent, and all DAMNED!
Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of music, as
they are called, do plague and embitter my apprehension.--Words are
something; but to be exposed to an endless battery of mere sounds; to
be long a dying, to lie stretched upon a rack of roses; to keep up
languor by unintermitted effort; to pile honey upon sugar, and sugar
upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness; to fill up sound
with feeling, and strain ideas to keep pace with it; to gaze on empty
frames, and be forced to make the pictures for yourself; to read a
book, _all stops_, and be obliged to supply the verbal matter; to
invent extempore tragedies to answer to the vague gestures of an
inexplicable rambling mime--these are faint shadows of what I have
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, _amabilis 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 contemplations, and fantastical
meditations, which are like so many dreams, and will hardly be drawn
from them--winding and unwinding themselves as so many clocks, and
still pleasing their humours, until at last the SCENE TURNS UPON A
SUDDEN, and they being now habitated to such meditations and solitary
places, can endure no company, can think of nothing but harsh and
distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, _subrusticus pudor_,
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 labour, no persuasions they
can avoid, they cannot be rid of it, they cannot resist."
Something like this "SCENE-TURNING" I have experienced at the evening
parties, at the house of my good Catholic friend _Nov----_; who, by
the aid of a capital organ, himself the most finished of players,
converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his week days into Sundays,
and these latter into minor heavens.[1]
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 _that_, in which the psalmist, weary of
the persecutions of bad men, wisheth to himself dove's wings--or _that
other_, which, with a like measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth
by what means the young man shall best cleanse his mind)--a holy calm
pervadeth me.--I am for the time
--rapt above earth,
And possess joys not promised at my birth.
But when this master of the spell, not content to have laid a soul
prostrate, goes on, in his power, to inflict more bliss than lies in
her capacity to receive,--impatient to overcome her "earthly" with his
"heavenly,"--still pouring in, for protracted hours, fresh waves and
fresh from the sea of sound, or from that inexhausted _German_ ocean,
above which, in triumphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride those
Arions _Haydn_ and _Mozart_, with their attendant tritons, _Bach_,
_Beethoven_, and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to reckon up
would but plunge me again in the deeps,--I stagger under the weight
of harmony, reeling to and fro at my wit's 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,--tri-coroneted like himself!--I am converted,
and yet a Protestant;--at once _malleus hereticorum_, and myself grand
heresiarch: or three heresies centre in my person:--I am Marcion,
Ebion, and Cerinthus--Gog and Magog--what not?--till the coming in of
the friendly supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a draught of true
Lutheran beer (in which chiefly my friend shows himself no bigot) at
once reconciles me to the rationalities of a purer faith; and restores
to me the genuine unterrifying aspects of my pleasant-countenanced
host and hostess.
[Footnote 1:
I have been there, and still would go;
'Tis like a little heaven below.--_Dr. Watts_.]
ALL FOOLS' DAY
The compliments of the season to my worthy masters, and a merry first
of April to us all!
Many happy returns of this day to you--and you--and _you_, Sir--nay,
never frown, man, nor put a long face upon the matter. Do not we know
one another? what need of ceremony among friends? we have all a touch
of _that same_--you understand me--a speck of the 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--_duc ad me_--_duc 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.
Good master Empedocles, you are welcome. It is long since you went a
salamander-gathering down Ætna. Worse than samphire-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 nuncheon on the
low grounds of Sennaar. Or did you send up your garlick 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 honour your coat--pray do us the favour to read
to us that sermon, which you lent to Mistress Slipslop--the twenty and
second in your portmanteau there--on Female Incontinence--the same--it
will come in most irrelevantly and impertinently seasonable to the
time of the day.
Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. Pray correct that error.--
Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you a bumper, or a paradox.
We will have nothing said or done syllogistically this day. Remove
those 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?--Aguecheek,
my dear knight, let me pay my devoir to you.--Master Shallow, your
worship's poor servant to command.--Master Silence, I will use few
words with you.--Slender, it shall go hard if I edge not you in
somewhere.--You six will 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 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 commendation of wise
sentences, thou art nothing inferior to those accomplished Dons of
Spain. The spirit of chivalry forsake me for ever, when I forget thy
singing the song of Macheath, which declares that he might be _happy
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 invidious preference between a pair of so goodly-propertied
and meritorious-equal damsels, * * * * *
To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract our Fools'
Banquet beyond its appropriate day,--for I fear the second of April
is not many hours distant--in sober verity I will confess a truth to
thee, reader. I love a _Fool_--as naturally, as if I were of kith and
kin to him. When a child, with child-like apprehensions, that dived
not below the surface of the matter, I read those _Parables_--not
guessing at their involved wisdom--I had more yearnings towards
that simple architect, that built his house upon the sand, than I
entertained for his more cautious neighbour; I grudged at the
hard censure pronounced upon the quiet soul that kept his talent;
and--prizing their simplicity beyond the more provident, and, to my
apprehension, 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 acquaintance since, that
lasted; or a friendship, that answered; with any that had not some
tincture of the absurd in their characters. I venerate an honest
obliquity of 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 foolisher 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 QUAKER'S 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 confident, and he
Who makes religion mystery!
Admiration's speaking'st tongue!
Leave, thy desert shades among,
Reverend hermits' hallowed cells,
Where retired devotion dwells!
With thy enthusiasms come,
Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb![1]
Reader, would'st thou know what true peace and quiet mean; would'st
thou find a refuge from the noises and clamours of the multitude;
would'st thou enjoy at once solitude and society; would'st thou
possess the depth of 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 countenance; a unit in aggregate; a
simple in composite:--come with me into a Quaker's Meeting.
Dost thou love silence deep as that "before the winds were made?" go
not out into the wilderness, descend not into the profundities of the
earth; shut not up thy casements; nor pour wax into the little cells
of thy ears, with little-faith'd self-mistrusting Ulysses.--Retire
with me into a Quaker's 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.
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 nowhere so
absolutely as in a Quaker's Meeting.--Those first hermits did
certainly understand this principle, when they retired into Egyptian
solitudes, not singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another's want of
conversation. The Carthusian is bound to his brethren by this agreeing
spirit of incommunicativeness. In secular occasions, what so pleasant
as to be reading a book through a long winter evening, with a friend
sitting by--say, a wife--he, or she, too, (if that be probable),
reading another, without interruption, or oral communication?--can
there be no sympathy without the gabble of words?--away with this
inhuman, shy, single, shade-and-cavern-haunting solitariness. Give me,
Master Zimmerman, a sympathetic solitude.
To pace alone in the cloisters, or side aisles of some cathedral,
time-stricken;
Or under hanging mountains,
Or by the fall of fountains;
is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which those enjoy, who come
together for the purposes of more complete, abstracted 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 Quaker's Meeting. Here are no tombs, no inscriptions,
--sands, ignoble things,
Dropt from the ruined sides of kings--
but here is something, which throws Antiquity herself into
the fore-ground--SILENCE--eldest of things--language of old
Night--primitive Discourser--to which the insolent decays of
mouldering grandeur have but arrived by a violent, and, as we may say,
unnatural progression.
How reverend is the view of these hushed heads,
Looking tranquillity!
Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmischievous synod! convocation
without intrigue! parliament without debate! what a lesson dost
thou read to council, and to consistory!--if my pen treat of you
lightly--as haply it will wander--yet my spirit hath gravely felt the
wisdom of your custom, when sitting among you in deepest peace, which
some out-welling tears would rather confirm than disturb, I have
reverted to the times of your beginnings, and the sowings of the seed
by Fox and Dewesbury.--I have witnessed that, which brought before
my eyes your heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the rude jests and
serious violences of the insolent soldiery, republican or royalist,
sent to molest you--for ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecutions,
the out-cast and off-scowering 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 remembered 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 affecting than any
thing 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, 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 practice 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 disposition to unanimity,
and the absence of the fierce controversial workings.--If the
spiritual pretensions of the Quakers have abated, at least they make
few pretences. Hypocrites they certainly are not, in their preaching.
It is seldom indeed that you shall see one get up amongst them to hold
forth. Only now and then a trembling, female, generally _ancient_,
voice is heard--you cannot guess from what part of the meeting it
proceeds--with a low, buzzing, musical sound, laying out a few words
which "she thought might suit the condition of some present," with a
quaking diffidence, which leaves no possibility of supposing that any
thing of female vanity was mixed up, where the tones were so full of
tenderness, and a restraining modesty.--The men, for what I observed,
speak seldomer.
Once only, and it was some years ago, I witnessed a sample of the
old Foxian orgasm. It was a man of giant stature, who, as Wordsworth
phrases it, might have danced "from head to foot equipt in iron mail."
His frame was of iron too. But _he_ was malleable. I saw him shake
all over with the spirit--I dare not say, of delusion. The strivings
of the outer man were unutterable--he seemed not to speak, but to
be spoken from. I saw the strong man bowed down, and his knees to
fail--his joints all seemed loosening--it was a figure to set off
against Paul Preaching--the words he uttered were few, and sound--he
was evidently resisting his will--keeping down his own word-wisdom
with more mighty effort, than the world's orators strain for theirs.
"He had been a WIT in his youth," he told us, with expressions of a
sober remorse. And it was not till long after the impression had begun
to wear away, that I was enabled, with something like a smile, to
recall the striking incongruity of the confession--understanding the
term in its worldly acceptation--with the frame and physiognomy of the
person before me. His brow would have scared away the Levities--the
Jocos Risus-que--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 having been
spoken. But the mind has been fed. You go away with a sermon, not made
with hands. You have been in the milder caverns of Trophonius; or as
in some den, where that fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures,
the TONGUE, that unruly member, has strangely lain tied up and
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 an uniformity, tranquil
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 when 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
troops of the Shining Ones.
[Footnote 1: From "Poems of all sorts," by Richard Fleckno, 1653.]
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 supplied me with most
of my notions, and ways of feeling. In every thing that relates to
_science_, I am a whole Encyclopædia 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 remotest conjecture of the position of New South
Wales, or Van Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a correspondence with a
very dear friend in the first-named of these two Terræ Incognitæ.
I have no astronomy. I do not know where to look for the Bear, or
Charles's Wain; the place of any star; or the name of any of them at
sight. I guess at Venus only by her brightness--and if the sun on
some portentous morn were to make his first appearance in the West, I
verily believe, that, while all the world were gasping in apprehension
about me, I alone should stand unterrified, 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
painstaking, got me to think I understood the first proposition in
Euclid, but gave me over in despair at the second. I am entirely
unacquainted with the modern languages; and, like a better man than
myself, have "small Latin and less Greek." I am a stranger to the
shapes and texture of the commonest trees, herbs, flowers--not from
the circumstance of my being town-born--for I should have brought the
same inobservant spirit into the world with me, had I first seen it
in "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; every body is so
much more ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of your
acquisitions. But in a _tête-à-tête_ there is no shuffling. The truth
will out. There is nothing which I dread so much, as the being left
alone for a quarter of an hour with a sensible, well-informed man,
that does not know me. I lately got into a dilemma of this sort.--
In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate and Shacklewell, the
coach stopped to take up a staid-looking gentleman, about the wrong
side of thirty, who was giving his parting directions (while the
steps were adjusting), in a tone of mild 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 passengers, he naturally enough
addressed his conversation to me; and we discussed the merits of the
fare, the civility and punctuality of the driver; the circumstance of
an opposition coach having been lately set up, with the probabilities
of its success--to all which I was enabled to return pretty
satisfactory answers, having been drilled into this kind of etiquette
by some years' daily practice of riding to and fro in the stage
aforesaid--when he suddenly alarmed me by a startling question,
whether I had seen the show of prize cattle that morning in
Smithfield? Now as I had not seen it, and do not greatly care for
such sort of exhibitions, I was obliged to return a cold negative. He
seemed a little mortified, as well as astonished, at my declaration,
as (it appeared) he was just come fresh from the sight, and doubtless
had hoped to compare notes on the subject. However he assured me that
I had lost a fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of last year. We
were now approaching Norton Falgate, when the sight of some shop-goods
_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 market--when, presently, he dashed
my incipient vanity to the earth at once, by inquiring whether I had
ever made any calculation as to the value of the rental of all the
retail shops in London. Had he asked of me, what song the Sirens sang,
or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, I
might, with Sir Thomas Browne, have hazarded a "wide solution."[1] My
companion saw my embarrassment, and, the almshouses beyond Shoreditch
just coming in view, with great good-nature and dexterity shifted
his conversation to the subject of public charities; which led to
the 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 termination of his journey), he put a home thrust upon me, in
the most unfortunate position he could have chosen, by advancing some
queries relative to the North Pole Expedition. While I was muttering
out something about the Panorama of those strange regions (which I had
actually seen), by way of parrying the question, the coach stopping
relieved me from any further apprehensions. My companion getting out,
left me in the comfortable possession of my ignorance; and I heard
him, as he went off, putting questions 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 neighbourhood. The truth now flashed upon
me, that my companion was a schoolmaster; and that the youth, whom he
had parted from at our first acquaintance, must have been one of the
bigger boys, or the usher.--He was evidently a kind-hearted man, who
did not seem so much desirous of provoking discussion by the questions
which he put, as of obtaining 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-coloured 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.
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. Revolving in a perpetual
cycle of declensions, conjugations, syntaxes, and prosodies; renewing
constantly the occupations which had charmed their studious childhood;
rehearsing continually the part of the past; life must have slipped
from them at last like one day. They were always in their first
garden, reaping harvests of their golden time, among their _Flori_ and
their _Spici-legia_; in Arcadia still, but kings; the ferule of their
sway not much harsher, 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
Damætas!
With what a savour doth the Preface to Colet's, or (as it is sometimes
called) Paul's Accidence, set forth! "To exhort every man to the
learning of grammar, that intendeth to attain the understanding of
the tongues, wherein is contained a great treasury of wisdom and
knowledge, it would seem but vain and lost labour; for so much as it
is known, that nothing can surely be ended, whose beginning is either
feeble or faulty; and no building be perfect, whereas the foundation
and ground-work is ready to fall, and unable to uphold the burden of
the frame." How well doth this stately preamble (comparable to those
which Milton commendeth as "having been the usage to prefix to some
solemn law, then first promulgated by Solon, or Lycurgus") correspond
with and illustrate that pious zeal for conformity, expressed in a
succeeding clause, which would fence about grammar-rules with the
severity of faith-articles!--"as for the diversity of grammars, it
is well profitably taken away by the king majesties wisdom, who
foreseeing the inconvenience, and favourably 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 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 any
thing. He must be superficially, if I may so say, omniscient. He is to
know something of pneumatics; of chemistry; of whatever is curious,
or proper to excite the attention of the youthful mind; an insight
into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of statistics; the quality
of soils, &c. botany, the constitution of his country, _cum multis
aliis_. You may get a notion of some part of his expected duties by
consulting the famous Tractate on Education addressed to 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 tempera
fandi_. He must seize every occasion--the season of the year--the time
of the day--a passing cloud--a rainbow--a wagon of hay--a regiment of
soldiers going by--to inculcate something useful. He can receive no
pleasure from a casual glimpse of Nature, but must catch at it as an
object of instruction. He must interpret beauty into the picturesque.
He cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for thinking of the
suitable improvement. Nothing comes to him, not spoiled by the
sophisticating medium of moral uses. The Universe--that Great Book, as
it has been called--is to him indeed, to all intents and purposes, a
book, out of which he is doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting
schoolboys.--Vacations themselves are none to him, he is only rather
worse off than before; for commonly he has some intrusive upper-boy
fastened upon him at such times; some cadet of a great family; some
neglected lump of 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 to his favourite
watering-place. Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow attends him. A
boy is at his board, and in his path, and in all his movements. He is
boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy.
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but
they are unwholesome companions for grown people. The restraint is
felt no less on the one side, than on the other.--Even a child, that
"plaything for an hour," tires _always_. The noises of children,
playing their own fancies--as I now hearken to them by fits, sporting
on the green before my window, while I am engaged in these grave
speculations at my neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell--by distance
made more sweet--inexpressibly take from the labour of my task. It is
like writing to music. They seem to modulate my periods. They ought at
least to do so--for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind of
poetry, far unlike the harsh prose-accents of man's conversation.--I
should but spoil their sport, and diminish my own sympathy for them,
by mingling in their pastime.
I would not be domesticated all my days with a person of very
superior capacity to my own--not, if I know myself at all, from any
considerations of jealousy or self-comparison, for the occasional
communion with such minds has constituted the fortune and felicity of
my life--but the habit of too constant intercourse with spirits above
you, instead of raising you, keeps you down. Too frequent doses of
original thinking from others, restrain what lesser portion of that
faculty you may possess of your own. You get entangled in another
man's mind, even as you lose yourself in another man's grounds. You
are walking with a tall varlet, whose strides out-pace yours to
lassitude. The constant operation of such potent agency would reduce
me, I am 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 upwards, 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
schoolmaster?--because we are conscious that he is not quite at his
ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place, in the society of his
equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he
cannot fit the stature of his understanding to 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 any thing but methodical, and that I was unable
to make them otherwise, kindly offered to instruct me in the method by
which young gentlemen in _his_ seminary were taught to compose 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 and
didactive hypocrisy 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 co-evals; his juniors
cannot be his friends.
"I take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this profession,
writing to a friend respecting a youth who had quitted his school
abruptly, "that your nephew was not more attached to me. But persons
in my situation are more to be pitied, than can well be imagined. We
are surrounded by young, and, consequently, ardently affectionate
hearts, but _we_ can never hope to share an atom of their affections.
The relation of master and scholar forbids this. _How pleasing this
must be to you, how I envy your feelings_, 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 reproved him; but he did never
_love_ me--and what he now mistakes for gratitude and kindness for me,
is but the pleasant sensation, which all persons feel at revisiting
the scene 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 herself to perform the duties
of her new situation. She promised, and she has kept her word. What
wonders will not woman's love perform?--My house is managed with a
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 enjoy an
hour of repose after the fatigue of the day, I am compelled to listen
to what have been her useful (and they are really useful) 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 submitted to be this altered creature, and can
I reproach her for it?"--For the communication of this letter, I am
indebted to my cousin Bridget.
[Footnote 1: Urn Burial.]
VALENTINE'S DAY
Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine! Great is thy
name in the rubric, thou venerable Archflamen of Hymen! Immortal
Go-between! who and what manner of person art thou? Art thou but a
_name_, typifying the restless principle which impels poor humans to
seek perfection in union? or wert thou indeed a mortal prelate, with
thy tippet and thy rochet, thy apron on, and decent lawn sleeves?
Mysterious personage! like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other
mitred father in the calendar; not Jerome, nor Ambrose, nor Cyril;
nor the consigner of undipt infants to eternal torments, Austin, whom
all mothers hate; nor he who hated all mothers, Origen; nor Bishop
Bull, nor Archbishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou comest attended with
thousands and ten thousands of little Loves, and the air is
Brush'd with 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, ycleped Valentines, cross and intercross each other at every
street and turning. The weary and all forspent twopenny 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 _heart_,--that little three-cornered
exponent of all our hopes and fears,--the bestuck and bleeding heart;
it is twisted and tortured into more allegories and affectations
than an opera hat. What authority we have in history or mythology
for placing the 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 any thing 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 neighbours wait at
animal and anatomical distance.
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds,
exceed in interest a _knock at the door_. It "gives a very echo to
the throne where Hope is seated." But its issues seldom answer to
this oracle within. It is so seldom that just the 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 announced the fatal
entrance of Duncan, so the knock of the postman 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.
All Valentines are not foolish; and I shall not easily forget thine,
my kind friend (if I may have leave to call you so) E. B.--E.B. lived
opposite a young maiden, whom he had often seen, unseen, from his
parlour window in C--e-street. She was all joyousness and innocence,
and just of an age to enjoy receiving a Valentine, and just of a
temper to bear the disappointment of missing one with good humour.
E.B. is an artist of no common powers; in the fancy parts of
designing, perhaps inferior to none; his name is known at the bottom
of many a well executed vignette in the way of his profession, but no
further; for E.B. is modest, and the world meets nobody half-way. E.B.
meditated how he could repay this young maiden for many a favour which
she had done him unknown; for when a kindly face greets us, though but
passing by, and never knows us again, nor we it, we should feel it as
an obligation; and E.B. did. This good artist set himself at work to
please the damsel. It was just before Valentine's day three years
since. He wrought, unseen and unsuspected, a wondrous work. We need
not say it was on the finest gilt paper with borders--full, not of
common hearts and heartless allegory, but all the prettiest stories
of love from Ovid, and older poets than Ovid (for E.B. is a scholar.)
There was Pyramus and Thisbe, and be sure Dido was not forgot, nor
Hero and Leander, and swans more than sang in Cayster, with mottos
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 more like some fairy present; a God-send, as
our familiarly pious ancestors termed a benefit received, where the
benefactor was unknown. It would do her no harm. It would do her good
for ever after. It is good to love the unknown. I only give this as a
specimen of E.B. and his modest way of doing a concealed kindness.
Good-morrow to my Valentine, sings poor Ophelia; and no better wish,
but with better auspices, we wish to all faithful lovers, who are not
too wise to despise old legends, but are content to rank themselves
humble diocesans of old Bishop Valentine, and his true church.
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES
I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathized
with all things, I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncracy in any
thing. Those national repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I behold with
prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch.--_Religio Medici_.
That the author of the Religio Medici, mounted upon the airy stilts
of abstraction, conversant about notional and conjectural essences;
in whose categories of Being the possible took the upper hand of
the actual; should have overlooked the 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 species at all. For
myself--earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my activities,--
Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky,
I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national or
individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no indifferent
eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is to me a matter of taste
or distaste; or when once it becomes indifferent, it begins to be
disrelishing. I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices--made up
of likings and dislikings--the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies,
antipathies. In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me that 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 upon another account cannot be my mate or _fellow_. I cannot
_like_ all people alike.[1]
I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to
desist from the experiment in despair. They cannot like me--and in
truth, I never knew one of that nation who attempted to do it. There
is something more plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceeding.
We know one another at first sight. There is an order of imperfect
intellects (under which mine must be content to rank) which in its
constitution is essentially anti-Caledonian. The owners of the
sort of faculties I allude to, have minds rather suggestive than
comprehensive. They have no pretences to much clearness or precision
in their ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. Their
intellectual 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 peradventure--and leave
it to knottier heads, more robust constitutions, to run it down.
The light that lights them is not steady and polar, but mutable and
shifting: waxing, and again waning. Their conversation is accordingly.
They will throw out a random word in or out of season, and be content
to let it pass for what it is worth. They cannot speak always as
if they were upon their oath--but must be understood, speaking
or writing, with some abatement. They seldom wait to mature a
proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the green ear. They
delight to impart their defective discoveries as they arise, without
waiting for their full developement. 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 any thing, but unlades his stock of ideas
in perfect order and completeness. He brings his total wealth into
company, and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always about him. He
never stoops to catch a glittering something in your presence, to
share it with you, before he quite knows whether it be true touch or
not. You cannot cry _halves_ to any thing that he finds. He does not
find, but bring. You never witness his first apprehension of a thing.
His understanding is always at its meridian--you never see the first
dawn, the early streaks.--He has no falterings of self-suspicion.
Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-consciousnesses,
partial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo 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 excursions with him--for he sets you right.
His taste never fluctuates. His morality never abates. He cannot
compromise, or understand middle actions. There can be but a right
and a wrong. His conversation is as a book. His affirmations have the
sanctity of an oath. 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 misconception staggered me, but did not seem much
to disconcert him.--Persons of this nation are particularly fond
of affirming a truth--which nobody doubts. They do not so properly
affirm, as annunciate it. They do indeed appear to have such a love of
truth (as if, like virtue, it were valuable for itself) that all truth
becomes equally valuable, whether the proposition that contains it be
new or old, disputed, or such as is impossible to become a subject of
disputation. I was present not long since at a party of North Britons,
where a son of Burns was expected; and happened to drop a silly
expression (in my South British way), that I wished it were the father
instead of the son--when four of them started up at once to inform
me, that "that was impossible, because he was dead." An impracticable
wish, it seems, was more than they could conceive. Swift has hit off
this part of their character, namely their love of truth, in his
biting way, but with an illiberality that necessarily confines the
passage to the margin.[2] The tediousness of these people is certainly
provoking. I wonder if they ever tire one another!--In my early life
I had a passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns. I have sometimes
foolishly hoped to ingratiate myself with his countrymen 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.--Thomson they seem to have
forgotten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor forgiven for his
delineation of Rory and his companion, upon their first introduction
to our metropolis.--peak of Smollett as a great genius, and they will
retort upon you Hume's History compared with _his_ Continuation of it.
What if the historian had continued Humphrey Clinker?
I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. They are a piece of
stubborn antiquity, compared with which Stonehenge is in its nonage.
They date beyond the pyramids. But I should not care to be in habits
of familiar intercourse with any of that nation. I confess that I
have not the nerves to 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
candour, 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
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? If they can sit with us at table, why do they
keck at our cookery? I do not understand these half convertites. Jews
christianizing--Christians judaizing--puzzle me. I like fish or flesh.
A moderate Jew is a more 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 Israel passed through the Red Sea!"
The auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he rides
over our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking him.--B---- has a
strong expression of sense in his countenance, 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 ever-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 I meet any
of their people in my path. When I am ruffled or disturbed by any
occurrence, the sight, or quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon me as a
ventilator, lightening the air, and taking off a load from the bosom.
But I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say) "to live with
them." I am all over sophisticated--with humours, fancies, craving
hourly sympathy. I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat,
scandal, jokes, 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 equivocating than
other people. They naturally look to their words more carefully, and
are more cautious of committing themselves. They have a peculiar
character to keep up on this head. They stand in a manner upon their
veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted from taking an oath. The custom
of 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 proceedings of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the
conscience by an oath can be but truth, so in the common affirmations
of the shop and the market-place a latitude is expected, and conceded
upon questions wanting this solemn covenant. Something less than truth
satisfies. It is common to hear a person say, "You do not expect me to
speak as if I were upon my 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 indifferent 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 consciousness 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 humble and secular scion of that old stock
of religious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in the Primitive
Friends, or gave way to the winds of persecution, to the violence of
judge or accuser, under trials and racking examinations. "You will
never be the wiser, if I sit here answering your questions till
midnight," said one of those upright Justicers to Penn, who had been
putting law-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 instances.--I was
travelling in a stagecoach 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 hostess was very clamorous and positive. Some mild
arguments were used on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated
mind of the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The guard
came in with his usual peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out
their money, and formally tendered it.--so much for tea--I, in humble
imitation, tendering mine--for the supper which I had taken. She
would not relax in her demand. So they all three quietly put up their
silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest and
gravest going first, with myself closing up the rear, who thought
I could not do better than follow the example 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 whimsical scene had for a while suspended, beginning to give
some twitches, I waited, in the hope that some justification would be
offered by these serious persons for the seeming injustice of their
conduct. To my great surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the
subject. They sate as mute as at a meeting. At length the eldest of
them broke silence, by inquiring of his next neighbour, "Hast thee
heard how indigos go at the India House?" and the question operated as
a soporific on my moral feeling as far as Exeter.
[Footnote 1: I would be understood as confining myself to the subject
of _imperfect sympathies_. To nations or classes of men there can be
no direct _antipathy_. There may be individuals born and constellated
so opposite to another individual nature, that the same sphere cannot
hold them. I have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the
story of two persons meeting (who never saw one 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 "Hierarchie of Angels," and he
subjoins 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.]
[Footnote 2: 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 this I have observed more frequently among the
Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the
minutest circumstances of time or place; which kind of discourse, if
it were not a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as
well as accent and gesture peculiar to that country, would be hardly
tolerable.--_Hints towards an Essay on Conversation_.]
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 maidens pined away, wasting
inwardly as their waxen images consumed before a fire--that corn was
lodged, and cattle lamed--that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry
the oaks of the forest--or that spits and kettles only danced a
fearful-innocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen when no wind
was stirring--were all equally probable where no law of agency was
understood. That the prince of the powers of darkness, passing by the
flower and pomp of the earth, should lay preposterous siege to the
weak fantasy of indigent eld--has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood
_à priori_ to us, who have no measure to guess at his policy, or
standard to estimate what rate those anile souls may fetch in the
devil's market. Nor, when the wicked are expressly symbolized by
a goat, was it to be wondered at so much, that _he_ should come
sometimes in that body, and assert his metaphor.--That the intercourse
was opened at all between both worlds was perhaps the mistake--but
that once assumed, I see no reason for disbelieving one attested story
of this nature more than another on the score of absurdity. There
is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by which a dream may be
criticised.
I have sometimes thought that I could not have existed in the days of
received witchcraft; that I could not have slept in a village where
one of those reputed hags dwelt. Our ancestors were bolder or more
obtuse. Amidst the universal belief that these wretches were in
league with the author of all evil, holding hell tributary to their
muttering, no simple Justice of the Peace seems to have scrupled
issuing, or silly Headborough serving, a warrant upon them--as if they
should subpoena Satan!--Prospero in his boat, with his books and wand
about him, suffers himself to be conveyed away at the mercy of his
enemies to an unknown island. He might have raised a storm or two, we
think, on the passage. His acquiescence is in exact analogy to the
non-resistance of witches to the constituted powers.--What stops the
Fiend in Spenser from tearing Guyon to pieces--or who had made it a
condition of his prey, that Guyon must take assay of the glorious
bait--we have no guess. We do not know the laws of that country.
From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive about witches and
witch-stories. My maid, and more legendary aunt, supplied me with good
store. But I shall mention the accident which directed my curiosity
originally into this channel. In my father's book-closet, the History
of the Bible, by Stackhouse, occupied a distinguished station. The
pictures with which it abounds--one of the ark, in particular,
and another of Solomon's temple, delineated with all the fidelity
of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had been upon the
spot--attracted my childish 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. Stackhouse is in two huge tomes--and
there was a pleasure in removing folios of that magnitude, which, with
infinite straining, was as much as I could manage, from the situation
which they occupied upon an upper shelf. I have not met with the work
from that time to this, but I remember it consisted of Old Testament
stories, orderly set down, with the _objection_ appended to each
story, and the _solution_ of the objection regularly tacked to that.
The _objection_ was a summary of whatever difficulties had been
opposed to the credibility of the history, by the shrewdness of
ancient or modern infidelity, drawn up with an almost complimentary
excess of candour. The _solution_ was brief, modest, and satisfactory.
The bane and 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 realised 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 befel me. Turning over the picture
of the ark with too much haste, I unhappily made a breach in its
ingenious fabric--driving my inconsiderate fingers right through the
two larger quadrupeds--the elephant, and the camel--that stare (as
well they might) out of the two last windows next the steerage in
that unique piece of naval architecture. Stackhouse was henceforth
locked up, and became an interdicted treasure. With the book, the
_objections_ and _solutions_ gradually cleared out of my head, and
have seldom returned since in any force to trouble me.--But there was
one impression which I had imbibed from Stackhouse, which no lock or
bar could shut out, and which was destined to try my childish nerves
rather more seriously.--That detestable picture!
I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The night-time solitude,
and the dark, were my hell. The sufferings I endured in this nature
would justify the expression. I never laid my head on my pillow, I
suppose, from the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of my life--so
far as memory serves in things so long ago--without an assurance,
which realized its own prophecy, of seeing some frightful spectre. Be
old Stackhouse then acquitted in part, if I say, that to his picture
of the Witch raising up Samuel--(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 visitation. It was he who dressed up for
me a hag that nightly sate upon my pillow--a sure bed-fellow, 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 them--what a
terrible 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
terrors in children. They can at most but give them a direction. Dear
little T.H. who of all children has been brought up with the most
scrupulous exclusion of every taint of 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 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 Chimæras--dire stories of Celæno 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?--or
--Names, whose sense we see not,
Fray us with things that be not?
Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered
in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily injury?--O,
least of all! These terrors are of older standing. They date 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 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.[1]
That the kind of fear here treated of is purely spiritual--that it
is strong in proportion as it is objectless upon earth--that it
predominates in the period of sinless infancy--are difficulties,
the solution of which might afford some probable insight into our
antemundane 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 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 mortifies me. There is Coleridge, at his will
can conjure up icy domes, and pleasure-houses for Kubla Khan, and
Abyssinian maids, and songs of Abara, and caverns,
Where Alph, the sacred river, runs,
to solace his night solitudes--when I cannot 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 humour 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 conchs before me, (I myself, you may be
sure, the _leading god_,) and 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
river (as happens in the familiarization 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.
[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner.]
MY RELATIONS
I am arrived at that point of life, at which a man may account it a
blessing, as it is a singularity, if he have either of his parents
surviving. I have not that felicity--and sometimes think feelingly of
a passage in Browne's Christian Morals, where he speaks of a man that
hath lived sixty or seventy years in the world. "In such a compass of
time," he says, "a man may have a close apprehension what it is to
be forgotten, when he hath lived to find none who could remember his
father, or scarcely the friends of his youth, and may sensibly see
with what a face in no long time OBLIVION will look upon himself."
I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was one whom single
blessedness had soured to the world. She often used to say, that I
was the only thing in it which she loved; and, when she thought I was
quitting it, she grieved over me with mother's tears. A partiality
quite so exclusive my reason cannot altogether approve. She was from
morning till night poring over good books, and devotional exercises.
Her favourite volumes were Thomas à 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 Papistical 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 frequented it at intervals
for some time after. She came not for doctrinal points, and never
missed them. With some little asperities in her constitution, which
I have above hinted at, she was a steadfast, friendly being, and a
fine _old Christian_. She was a woman of strong sense, and a shrewd
mind--extraordinary at a _repartee;_ one of the few occasions of her
breaking silence--else she did not much value wit. The only secular
employment I remember to have seen her engaged in, was, the splitting
of French beans, and dropping them into a China basin of fair water.
The odour of those tender vegetables to this day comes back upon my
sense, redolent of soothing recollections. 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 be said to have been born an orphan. Brother, or
sister, I never had any--to know them. A sister, I think, that should
have been Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. What a comfort,
or what a care, may I not have missed in her!--But I have cousins,
sprinkled about in Hertfordshire--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 continue still in
the same mind; and when they shall be seventy-five, and seventy-three,
years old (I cannot spare them sooner), persist in treating me in my
grand 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 Shandian lights and shades, which make up his
story. I must limp after in my poor antithetical manner, as the fates
have given me grace and talent. J.E. then--to the eye of a common
observer at least--seemeth made up of 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. 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 every thing, 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 _you_
should not commit yourself by doing any thing absurd or singular.
On my once letting slip at table, that I was not fond of a certain
popular dish, he begged me at any rate not to _say_ so--for the world
would think me mad. He disguises a passionate fondness for works of
high art (whereof he hath amassed a choice collection), under the
pretext of buying only to sell again--that his enthusiasm may give no
encouragement to yours. Yet, if it were so, why does that piece of
tender, pastoral Dominichino hang still by his wall?--is the ball of
his sight much more dear to him?--or what picture-dealer can talk like
him?
Whereas mankind in general are observed to warp their speculative
conclusions to the bent of their individual humours, _his_ theories
are sure to be in diametrical opposition to his constitution. He is
courageous as Charles of Sweden, upon instinct; chary of his person,
upon principle, as a travelling Quaker.--He has been preaching up to
me, all my life, the doctrine of bowing to the great--the necessity
of forms, and manner, to a man's getting on in the world. He himself
never aims at either, that I can discover,--and has a spirit, that
would stand upright in the presence of the Cham of Tartary. It is
pleasant to hear him discourse of patience--extolling it as the truest
wisdom--and to see him during the last seven minutes that his dinner
is getting ready. Nature never ran up in her haste a more restless
piece of workmanship than when she moulded this impetuous cousin--and
Art never turned out a more elaborate orator than he can display
himself to be, upon his favourite topic of the advantages of quiet,
and contentedness in the state, whatever it may 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
obstructing 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
completed her just freight--a trying three quarters of an hour to some
people. He wonders at your fidgetiness,--"where could we be better
than we are, _thus silting, thus consulting_?"--"prefers, for his
part, a state of rest to locomotion,"--with an eye all the while upon
the coachman--till at length, waxing out of all patience, at _your
want of it_, he breaks out into a pathetic remonstrance at the fellow
for detaining us so long over the time which he had professed, and
declares peremptorily, that "the gentleman in the coach is determined
to get out, if he does not drive on that instant."
Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting a sophistry, he is
incapable of attending _you_ in any chain of arguing. Indeed he makes
wild work with logic; and seems to jump at most admirable conclusions
by some process, not at all akin to it. Consonantly enough to this,
he hath been heard to deny, upon certain occasions, that there exists
such a faculty at all in man as _reason_; and wondereth how man came
first to have a conceit of it--enforcing his negation with all the
might of _reasoning_ he is master of. He has some speculative notions
against laughter, and will maintain that laughing is not natural
to _him_--when 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 be changed into
frivolous Members of Parliament!_
His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous--and in age he discovereth
no symptom of cooling. This is that which I admire in him. I hate
people who meet Time half-way. I am for no compromise with that
inevitable spoiler. While he lives, J.E. will take his swing.--It does
me good, as I walk towards the street of my daily avocation, on some
fine May morning, to meet him 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 like me possesses above himself, in having his time occupied
with business which he _must do_--assureth me that he often feels
it hang heavy on his hands--wishes he had fewer holidays--and goes
off--Westward Ho!--chanting a tune, to Pall Mall--perfectly convinced
that he has convinced me--while I proceed in my opposite direction
tuneless.
It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indifference doing the
honours of his new purchase, when he has fairly housed it. You must
view it in every light, till _he_ has found the best--placing it at
this distance, and at that, but always suiting the focus of your sight
to his own. You must spy at it through your fingers, to catch the
aërial 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 unseasonable intimation of preferring one of his anterior
bargains to the present!--The last is always his best hit--his
"Cynthia of the minute."--Alas! how many a mild Madonna have I
known to _come in_--a Raphael!--keep its ascendancy for a few brief
moons--then, after certain intermedial degradations, from the front
drawing-room to the back gallery, thence to the dark parlour,--adopted
in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive lowering ascriptions
of filiation, mildly breaking its 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 Hollowmass or shortest day.
With great love for _you_, J.E. hath but a limited sympathy with what
you feel or do. He lives in a world of his own, and makes slender
guesses at what passes in your mind. He never pierces the marrow of
your habits. He will tell an old established play-goer, that Mr.
Such-a-one, of So-and-so (naming one of the theatres), is a very
lively comedian--as a piece of news! He advertised me but the other
day of some pleasant green lanes which he had found out for me,
_knowing me to be a great walker_, in my own immediate vicinity--who
have haunted the identical spot any time these twenty years! He has
not much respect for that class of feelings which goes by the name
of sentimental. He applies the definition of real evil to bodily
sufferings exclusively--and rejecteth all others as imaginary. He
is 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
constitutional 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 savour from his palate, and the rest from
his pillow, for days and nights. With the intense feeling of Thomas
Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness of pursuit, and unity of
purpose, of that "true yolk-fellow with Time," to have effected as
much for the _Animal_, as _he_ hath done for the _Negro Creation_. But
my uncontrollable cousin is but imperfectly formed for purposes which
demand co-operation. He cannot wait. His amelioration-plans must be
ripened in a day. For this reason he has cut but an equivocal figure
in benevolent societies, and combinations for the alleviation of human
sufferings. His zeal constantly makes him to outrun, and put out, his
coadjutors. He thinks of relieving,--while they think of debating.
He was black-balled out of a society for the 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
upbraid, 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 I barter or
exchange my wild kinsman for the most exact, regular, 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 of _more cousins_--
Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire.
MACKERY 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 teazes 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 fluctuations of fortune in fiction--and
almost in real life--have ceased to interest, or operate but dully
upon me. Out-of-the-way humours and opinions--heads with some
diverting twist in them--the oddities of authorship please me most. My
cousin has a native disrelish of any thing that sounds odd or bizarre.
Nothing goes down with her, that is quaint, irregular, or out of the
road of common sympathy. She "holds Nature more clever." I can pardon
her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the Religio Medici; but
she must apologise to me for certain disrespectful insinuations, which
she has been pleased to throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals
of a dear favourite of mine, of the last century but one--the thrice
noble, chaste, and virtuous,--but again somewhat fantastical, and
original-brain'd, generous Margaret Newcastle.
It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I
could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine,
free-thinkers--leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies and
systems; but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts, their opinions.
That which was good and venerable to her, when a child, retains its
authority over her mind still. She never juggles or plays tricks with
her understanding.
We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive; and I have
observed the result of 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 proper to be done, or let alone;
whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of conviction, I set out
with, I am sure always, in the long run, to be brought over to her way
of thinking.
I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a gentle hand,
for Bridget does not like to be told of her faults. She hath an
awkward trick (to say no worse of it) of reading in company: at which
times she will answer _yes_ or _no_ to a question, 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 girls, they should be brought up exactly in
this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not be
diminished by it; but I can answer for it, that it makes (if the worst
come to the worst) most incomparable old maids.
In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter; but in the
teazing accidents, and minor perplexities, which do not call out the
_will_ to meet them, she sometimes maketh matters worse by an excess
of participation. If she does not always divide your trouble, upon
the pleasanter occasions of life she is sure always to treble your
satisfaction. She is excellent to be at a play with, or upon a visit;
but best, when she goes a journey with you.
We made an excursion together a few summers since, into Hertfordshire,
to beat up the quarters of some of our less-known relations in that
fine corn country.
The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End; or Mackarel End, as it
is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire;
a farm-house,--delightfully situated within a gentle walk from
Wheathampstead. I can just remember having been there, on a visit to a
great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of Bridget; who, as I
have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish that I could
throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might
share them in equal division. But that is impossible. The house was at
that time in the occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married
my grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. My grandmother was a
Bruton, married to a Field. The Gladmans and the Brutons are still
flourishing in that part of the county, but the Fields are almost
extinct. More than forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak of;
and, for the greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of the
other two branches also. Who or what sort of persons inherited Mackery
End--kindred or strange folk--we were afraid almost to conjecture, but
determined some day to explore.
By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park at Luton in
our way from Saint Alban's, we arrived at the spot of our anxious
curiosity about noon. The sight of the old farm-house, though every
trace of it was effaced from my recollection, affected me with a
pleasure which I had not experienced for many a year. For though _I_
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, when present, O how unlike it was to _that_,
which I had conjured up so many times instead of it!
Still the air breathed balmily about it; the season was in the "heart
of June," and I could say with the poet,
But them, that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation!
Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she easily remembered
her old acquaintance again--some altered features, of course, a little
grudged at. At first, indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy;
but the scene soon re-confirmed itself in her affections--and she
traversed every out-post of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the
orchard, the place where the pigeon-house had stood (house and birds
were alike flown)--with a breathless impatience of recognition, which
was more pardonable perhaps than decorous at the age of fifty odd. But
Bridget in some things is behind her years.
The only thing left was to get into the house--and that was a
difficulty which to me singly would have been insurmountable; for I
am terribly shy in making myself known to strangers and out-of-date
kinsfolk. Love, stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in without
me; but she soon returned with a creature that might have sat to
a sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of the
Gladmans; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had become mistress of the
old mansion. A comely brood are the Brutons. Six of them, females,
were noted as the handsomest young women in the county. But this
adopted Bruton, in my mind, was better than they all--more comely. She
was born too late to have remembered me. She just recollected in early
life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed out to her, climbing
a style. But the name of kindred, and of cousinship, was enough. Those
slender ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending 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 together; were familiar, even to
the calling each other by our Christian names. So Christians should
call one another. To have seen Bridget, and her--it was like the
meeting of the two scriptural cousins! There was a grace and dignity,
an amplitude of form and stature, answering to her mind, in this
farmer's wife, which would have shined in a palace--or so we thought
it. We were made welcome by husband and wife equally--we, and our
friend that was with us--I had almost forgotten him--but B.F. will not
so soon forget that meeting, if peradventure he shall read this on the
far distant shores where the Kangaroo haunts. The fatted calf was made
ready, or rather was already so, as if in anticipation of our coming;
and, after an 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 received by them also--how Bridget's memory, exalted
by the occasion, warmed into a thousand half-obliterated recollections
of things and persons, to my utter astonishment, and her own--and to
the 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.
MODERN GALLANTRY
In comparing modern with ancient manners, we are pleased to compliment
ourselves upon the point of gallantry; a certain obsequiousness, or
deferential respect, which we are supposed to pay to females, as
females.
I shall believe that this principle actuates our conduct, when I can
forget, that in the nineteenth century of the era from which we date
our civility, we are but just beginning to leave off the very frequent
practice of whipping females in public, in common with the coarsest
male offenders.
I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut my eyes to the
fact, that in England women 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 distress; till one, that seems to
have more manners or conscience than the rest, significantly declares
"she should be welcome to his seat, if she were a little younger and
handsomer." Place this dapper warehouseman, or that rider, in a circle
of their own female acquaintance, and you shall confess you have not
seen a politer-bred man in Lothbury.
Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some such principle
influencing our conduct, when more than one-half of the drudgery and
coarse servitude of the world shall cease to be performed by women.
Until that day comes, I shall never believe this boasted point to be
any thing more than a conventional fiction; a pageant got up between
the sexes, in a certain rank, and at a certain time of life, in which
both find their account equally.
I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salutary fictions of
life, when in polite circles I shall see the same attentions paid
to age as to youth, to homely features as to handsome, to coarse
complexions as to clear--to the woman, as she is a woman, not as she
is a beauty, a fortune, or a title.
I shall believe it to be something more than a name, when a
well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed company can advert to the
topic of _female old age_ without exciting, and intending to excite,
a sneer:--when the phrases "antiquated virginity," and such a one
has "overstoocl her market," pronounced in good company, shall raise
immediate offence in man, or woman, that shall hear them spoken.
Joseph Paice, of Bread-street-hill, merchant, and one of the Directors
of the South-Sea company--the same to whom Edwards, the Shakspeare
commentator, has addressed a fine sonnet--was the only pattern of
consistent gallantry I have met with. He took me under his shelter at
an early age, and bestowed some pains upon me. I owe to his precepts
and example whatever there is of the man of business (and that is not
much) in my composition. It was not his fault that I did not profit
more. Though bred a Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, he was
the finest gentleman of his time. He had not _one_ system of attention
to females in the drawing-room, and _another_ in the shop, or at the
stall. I do not mean that he made no distinction. But he never lost
sight of sex, or overlooked it in the casualties of a disadvantageous
situation. I have seen him stand bare-headed--smile if you please--to
a poor servant girl, while she has been inquiring of him the way to
some street--in such a posture of unforced civility, as neither to
embarrass her in the acceptance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He
was no dangler, in the common acceptation 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 marketwoman, 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, confirmed 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 common gallantries--to which
kind of thing she had hitherto manifested 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 humoured, to expostulate with her on her
coldness of yesterday, she confessed, with her usual frankness, that
she had no sort of dislike to his attentions; that she could even
endure some high-flown compliments; that a young woman placed in her
situation had a right to expect all sort of civil things said to
her; that she hoped she could digest a dose of adulation, short of
insincerity, with as little injury to her humility as most young
women: but that--a little before he had commenced his compliments--she
had overheard him by accident, in rather rough language, rating
a young woman, who had not brought home his cravats quite to the
appointed time, and she thought to herself, "As I am Miss Susan
Winstanley, and a 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 appointed hour--though perhaps I had sat up
half the night to forward them--what sort of compliments should I have
received then?--And my woman's pride came to my assistance; and I
thought, that if it were only to do _me_ honour, a female, like
myself, might have received handsomer usage: and I was determined
not to accept any fine speeches, to the compromise of that sex, the
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 behaviour of my friend towards
all of womankind indiscriminately, owed its happy origin to this
seasonable lesson from the lips of his lamented mistress.
I wish the whole female world would entertain the same notion of these
things that Miss 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 politeness to a wife--of
cold contempt, or rudeness, to a sister--the idolater of his female
mistress--the disparager and despiser of his no less female aunt, or
unfortunate--still female--maiden cousin. Just so much respect as a
woman derogates from her own sex, in whatever condition placed--her
handmaid, or dependent--she deserves to have diminished from herself
on that score; and probably will feel the diminution, when youth, and
beauty, and advantages, not inseparable from sex, shall lose of their
attraction. What a woman should demand of a man in courtship, or after
it, is first--respect for her as she is a woman;--and next to that--to
be respected by him above all other women. But let her stand upon
her female character as upon a foundation; and let the attentions,
incident to individual preference, be so many pretty additaments and
ornaments--as many, and as fanciful, as you please--to that main
structure. Let her first lesson be--with sweet Susan Winstanley--to
_reverence her sex_.
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE
I was born, and passed the first seven years of my life, in the
Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountain, its river,
I had almost said--for in those young years, what was this king of
rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleasant places?--these are
of my oldest recollections. I repeat, to this day, no verses to myself
more frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser,
where he speaks of this spot.
There when they came, whereas those bricky towers,
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide;
Till they decayd through pride.
Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. What a
transition for a countryman visiting London for the first time--the
passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet-street, by unexpected
avenues, into its magnificent ample squares, its classic green
recesses! What a cheerful, liberal look hath that portion of it,
which, from three sides, overlooks the greater garden: that goodly
pile
Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight,
confronting, with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more
fantastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the cheerful
Crown-office Row (place of my kindly engendure), right opposite the
stately stream, which washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely
trade-polluted waters, and seems but just weaned from her Twickenham
Naiades! a man would give something to have been born in such places.
What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, where the
fountain plays, which I have made to 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 sundials, 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 every where vanished? If its business-use be superseded by more
elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded
for its continuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of pleasures not
protracted after sun-set, of temperance, and good-hours. It was the
primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam could scarce
have missed it in Paradise. It was the measure appropriate for sweet
plants and flowers to spring by, for the birds to apportion their
silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The
shepherd "carved it out quaintly in the sun;" and, turning philosopher
by the very occupation, provided it with mottos 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 flowers. I must quote his verses a little higher up, for
they are full, as all his serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy.
They will not come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains and
sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet garden scenes:
What wondrous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head.
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine.
The nectarine, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach.
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness.
The mind, that ocean, where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
How well the skilful gardener drew,
Of flowers and herbs, this dial new!
Where, from above, the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run:
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers?[1]
The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like manner, fast
vanishing. Most of them are dried up, or bricked over. Yet, where one
is left, as in that little green nook behind the South-Sea House,
what a freshness it gives to the dreary pile! Four little winged
marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, spouting out ever
fresh streams from their innocent-wanton lips, in the square of
Lincoln's-inn, when I was no bigger than they were figured. They are
gone, and the spring choked up. The fashion, they tell me, is gone by,
and these things are esteemed childish. Why not then gratify children,
by letting them stand? Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. They
are awakening images to them at least. Why must every thing 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 allegory! They must account to me
for these things, which I miss so greatly.
The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call the parade; but
the traces are passed away of the footsteps which made its pavement
awful! It is 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 roguish eye of J----ll, 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 the 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 superiors,
who made a solitude of children wherever he came, for they fled his
insufferable presence, as they would have shunned an Elisha bear. His
growl was as thunder in their ears, whether he spake to them in mirth
or in rebuke, his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the most
repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating the natural terrors
of his speech, broke from each majestic nostril, darkening the air. He
took it, not by pinches, but a palmful at once, diving for it under
the mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket; his waistcoat
red and angry, his coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original, and by
adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete gold. And so he paced the terrace.
By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen; the pensive
gentility of Samuel Salt. They were coevals, and had nothing but
that and their benchership in common. In politics Salt was a whig,
and Coventry a staunch tory. Many a sarcastic growl did the latter
cast out--for Coventry had a rough spinous humour--at the political
confederates of his associate, which rebounded from the gentle bosom
of the latter like cannon-balls from wool. You could not ruffle Samuel
Salt.
S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and of excellent
discernment in the chamber practice of the law. I suspect his
knowledge did not amount to much. When a case of difficult disposition
of money, testamentary or otherwise, came before him, he ordinarily
handed it over with a few instructions to his man Lovel, who was
a quick little fellow, and would despatch it out of hand by the
light of natural understanding, of which he had an uncommon share.
It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed by the mere
trick of gravity. He was a shy man; a child might pose him in a
minute--indolent and procrastinating to the last degree. Yet men would
give him credit for vast application in spite of himself. He was not
to be trusted with himself with impunity. He never dressed for a
dinner party but he forgot his sword--they wore swords then--or some
other necessary part of his equipage. Lovel had his eye upon him on
all these occasions, and ordinarily gave him his cue. If there was
anything which he could speak unseasonably, he was sure to do it.--He
was to dine at a relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day
of her execution;--and L. who had a wary foresight of his probable
hallucinations, before he set out, schooled him with great anxiety not
in any possible manner to allude to her story that day. S. promised
faithfully to observe the injunction. He had not been seated in the
parlour, where the company was expecting the dinner summons, four
minutes, when, a pause in the conversation ensuing, he got up, looked
out of window, and pulling down his ruffles--an ordinary motion with
him--observed, "it was a gloomy day," and added, "Miss Blandy must
be hanged by this time, I suppose." Instances of this sort were
perpetual. Yet S. was thought by some of the greatest men of his time
a fit person to be consulted, not alone in matters pertaining to the
law, but in the ordinary niceties and 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 advanced age of sixty, was seen, in the cold
evening time, unaccompanied, wetting the pavement of B----d Row, with
tears that fell in drops which might be heard, because her friend had
died that day--he, whom she had pursued with a hopeless passion for
the last forty years--a passion, which years could not extinguish or
abate; nor the long resolved, yet gently enforced, puttings off of
unrelenting bachelorhood dissuade from its cherished purpose. Mild
Susan P----, thou hast now thy friend in heaven!
Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble 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 penance in it, for what reason I divine not, at this day.
C. had an agreeable seat at North Cray, where he seldom spent above
a day or two at a time in the summer; but preferred, during the hot
months, standing at his window in this damp, close, well-like mansion,
to watch, as he said, "the maids drawing water all day long." I
suspect he had his within-door reasons for the preference. _Hic currus
et arma fuêre_. 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 without certain
admirable points of steadiness and unity of purpose. One may hate a
true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so easily despise him. By taking
care of the pence, he is often enabled to part with the pounds,
upon a scale that leaves us careless generous fellows halting at an
immeasurable distance behind. C. gave away 30,000_l_. at once in his
life-time to a blind charity. His house-keeping was severely looked
after, but he kept the table of a gentleman. He would know who came
in and who went out of his house, but his kitchen chimney was never
suffered to freeze.
Salt was his opposite in this, as in all--never knew what he was worth
in the world; and having but a competency for his rank, which his
indolent habits were little calculated to improve, might have suffered
severely if he had not had honest people about him. Lovel took care of
every thing. He was at once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser,
his friend, his "flapper," his guide, stop-watch, auditor, treasurer.
He did nothing without consulting Lovel, or failed in any thing
without expecting and fearing his admonishing. He put himself almost
too much in his hands, had they not been the purest in the world. He
resigned his title almost to respect as a master, if L. could ever
have forgotten for a moment that he was a servant.
I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible and losing honesty.
A good fellow withal, and "would strike." In the cause of the
oppressed he never considered inequalities, or 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 Lovel. He would stand next day bare-headed to the same person,
modestly to excuse his interference--for L. never forgot rank, where
something better was not concerned. L. was the liveliest little fellow
breathing, had a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he was said greatly
to resemble (I have a portrait of him which confirms it), possessed a
fine turn for humorous poetry--next to Swift and Prior--moulded heads
in clay or plaster of Paris to admiration, by the dint of natural
genius merely; turned cribbage boards, and such small cabinet toys,
to perfection; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with equal facility;
made punch better than any man of his degree in England; had the
merriest quips and conceits, and was altogether as brimful of
rogueries and inventions as you could desire. He was a brother of the
angle, moreover, and just such a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr.
Isaac Walton would have chosen to go a fishing with. I saw him in his
old age and the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten, in the last sad
stage of human weakness--"a remnant most forlorn of what he was,"--yet
even then his eye would light up upon the mention of his favourite
Garrick. He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes--"was upon the stage
nearly throughout the whole performance, and as busy as a bee." At
intervals, too, he would speak of his former life, and how he came up
a little boy from Lincoln to go to service, and how his mother cried
at parting with him, and how he returned, after some few years'
absence, in his smart new livery to see her, and she blessed herself
at the change, and could hardly be brought to believe that it was "her
own bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he would weep, till I
have wished that sad second-childhood might have a mother still to lay
its head upon her lap. But the common mother of us all in no long time
after received him gently into hers.
With Coventry, and with Salt, in their walks upon the terrace, most
commonly Peter Pierson would join, to make up a third. They did not
walk linked arm in arm in those days--"as now our stout triumvirs
sweep the streets,"--but generally with both hands folded behind them
for state, or with one at least behind, the other carrying a cane.
P. was a benevolent, but not a pre-possessing man. He had that in
his face which you could not term unhappiness; it rather implied
an incapacity of being happy. His cheeks were colourless, even to
whiteness. His look was uninviting, resembling (but without his
sourness) that of our great philanthropist. I know that he _did_ good
acts, but I could never make out what _he_ was. Contemporary with
these, but subordinate, was Daines Barrington--another oddity--he
walked burly and square--in imitation, I think, of Coventry--howbeit
he attained not to the dignity of his prototype. Nevertheless, he
did pretty well, upon the strength of being a tolerable antiquarian,
and having a brother a bishop. When the account of his year's
treasurership came to be audited, the following singular charge was
unanimously disallowed by the bench: "Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, the
gardener, twenty shillings, for stuff to poison the sparrows, by my
orders." Next to him was old Barton--a jolly negation, who took upon
him the ordering of the bills of fare for the parliament chamber,
where the benchers dine--answering to the combination rooms at
college--much to the easement of his less epicurean brethren. I know
nothing more of him.--Then Read, and Twopenny--Read, good-humoured
and personable--Twopenny, good-humoured, but thin, and felicitous in
jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was attenuated and
fleeting. Many must remember him (for he was rather of later date)
and his singular gait, which was performed by three steps and a jump
regularly succeeding. The steps were little efforts, like that of a
child beginning to walk; the jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot to
an inch. Where he learned this figure, or what occasioned it, I could
never discover. It was 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.
Twopenny would often rally him upon his leanness, and hail him as
Brother Lusty; but W. had no relish of a joke. His features were
spiteful. I have heard that he would pinch his cat's ears extremely,
when any thing had offended him. Jackson--the omniscient Jackson he
was called--was of this period. He had the reputation of possessing
more multifarious knowledge than any man of his time. He was the
Friar Bacon of the less literate portion of the Temple. I remember a
pleasant passage, of the cook applying 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
authority 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 Mingay with the iron
hand--but he was somewhat later. He had lost his right hand by some
accident, and supplied it with a grappling hook, which he wielded
with a tolerable adroitness. I detected the substitute, before I was
old enough to reason whether it were artificial or not. I remember
the astonishment it raised in me. He was a blustering, loud-talking
person; and I reconciled the phenomenon to my ideas as an emblem of
power--somewhat like the horns in the forehead of Michael Angelo's
Moses. Baron Maseres, who walks (or did till very lately) in the
costume of the reign of George the Second, closes my imperfect
recollections of the old benchers of the Inner Temple.
Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled? Or, if the like of you exist,
why exist they no more for me? Ye inexplicable, half-understood
appearances, why comes in reason to tear away the preternatural mist,
bright or gloomy, that enshrouded you? Why make ye so sorry a figure
in my relation, who made up to me--to my childish eyes--the mythology
of the Temple? In those days I saw Gods, as "old men covered with a
mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of classic idolatry
perish,--extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of 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 child-bed, within the first year of their union, fell into a deep
melancholy, from the effects of which, probably, he never thoroughly
recovered. In what a new light does this place his rejection (O
call it by a gentler name!) of mild Susan P----, unravelling
into beauty certain peculiarities of this very shy and retiring
character!--Henceforth let no one receive the narratives of Elia for
true records! They are, in truth, but shadows of fact-verisimilitudes,
not verities--or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts of
history. He is no such honest chronicler as R.N., and would have done
better perhaps to have consulted that gentleman, before he sent these
incondite reminiscences to press. But the worthy sub-treasurer--who
respects his old and his new masters--would but have been puzzled
at the indecorous liberties of Elia. The good man wots not,
peradventure, of the 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 having
been long confined to the holy ground of honest _Urban's_ obituary.
May it be long before his own name shall help to swell those columns
of unenvied flattery!--Meantime, O ye New Benchers of the Inner
Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is himself the kindliest of human
creatures. Should infirmities over-take him--he is yet in green and
vigorous senility--make allowances for them, remembering that "ye
yourselves are old." So may the Winged Horse, your ancient badge
and cognisance, still flourish! so may future Hookers and Seldens
illustrate your church and chambers! so may the sparrows, in default
of more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop about your walks! so may
the fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery maid, who, by leave, airs her
playful charge in your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing
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 solemnized the parade before ye!
[Footnote 1: From a copy of verses entitled The Garden.]
GRACE BEFORE MEAT
The custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, its origin in the
early times of the world, and the hunter-state of man, when dinners
were precarious things, and a full meal was something more than a
common blessing; when a belly-full was a windfall, and looked like
a special providence. In the shouts and triumphal songs with which,
after a season of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty of deer's or goat's
flesh would naturally be ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of
the modern grace. It is not otherwise easy to be understood, why the
blessing of food--the act of eating--should have had a particular
expression of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from that implied
and silent gratitude with which we are expected to enter upon
the enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good things of
existence.
I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in
the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out
upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting,
or a solved problem. 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 Rabelæsian Christians, no matter where
assembled.
The form then of the benediction before eating has its beauty at
a poor man's table, or at the simple and 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 turnips, and have
leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and institution of eating;
when he shall confess a perturbation o f mind, inconsistent 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 savoury
soup and messes steaming up the nostrils, and moistening the lips
of the guests with desire and a distracted choice, I have felt the
introduction of that ceremony to be unseasonable. With the ravenous
orgasm upon you, it seems impertinent to interpose a religious
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 the provision beyond the
needs, takes away all sense of proportion between the end and means.
The giver is veiled by his gifts. You are startled at the injustice
of returning thanks--for what?--for having too much, while so many
starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss.
I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce consciously perhaps,
by the good man who says the grace. I have seen it in clergymen and
others--a sort of shame--a sense of the co-presence of circumstances
which unhallow the blessing. After a devotional tone put on for a few
seconds, how rapidly the speaker will fall into his common voice,
helping himself or his neighbour, as if to get rid of some uneasy
sensation of hypocrisy. Not that the good man was a hypocrite, or was
not most conscientious in the discharge of the duty; but he felt in
his inmost mind the incompatibility of the scene and the viands before
him with the exercise of a calm and rational gratitude.
I hear somebody exclaim,--Would you have Christians sit down at table,
like hogs to their troughs, without remembering the Giver?--no--I
would have them sit down as Christians, remembering the Giver,
and less like hogs. Or if their appetites must run riot, and they
must pamper themselves with delicacies for which east and west are
ransacked, I would have them postpone their 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. Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for
thanksgiving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he kicked. Virgil
knew the harpy-nature better, when he put into the mouth of Celasno
any thing but a blessing. We may be gratefully sensible of the
deliciousness of some kinds of food beyond others, though that is a
meaner and inferior gratitude: but the proper object of the grace is
sustenance, not relishes; daily bread, not delicacies; the means of
life, and not the means of pampering the carcass. With what frame or
composure, I wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his benediction
at some great Hall feast, when he knows that his last concluding
pious word--and that, in all probability, the sacred name which he
preaches--is but the signal for so many impatient harpies to commence
their foul orgies, with as little sense of true thankfulness (which
is temperance) as those Virgilian fowl! It is well if the good man
himself does not feel his devotions a little clouded, those foggy
sensuous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar sacrifice.
The severest satire upon full tables 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 savour; beasts of chase, or fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,
Gris-amber-steamed; all fish from sea or shore,
Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast.
The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates would go down without
the recommendatory 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 Cambridge? 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 meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet.
But what meats?--
Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood,
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
Food to Elijah bringing, even and morn;
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought:
He saw the prophet also how he fled
Into the desert, and how there he slept
Under a juniper; then how awaked
He found his supper on the coals prepared,
And by the angel was bid rise and eat,
And ate the second time after repose,
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days:
Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook,
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse.
Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than these temperate dreams of
the divine Hungerer. To which of these two visionary banquets, think
you, would the introduction of what is called the grace have been most
fitting and pertinent?
Theoretically I am no enemy to graces; but practically I own that
(before meat especially) they seem to involve something awkward and
unseasonable. Our appetites, of one or another kind, are excellent
spurs to our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set about the
great ends of preserving and continuing the species. They are fit
blessings to be contemplated at a distance with a becoming gratitude;
but the moment of appetite (the judicious reader will apprehend me)
is, perhaps, the least fit season for that exercise. The Quakers who
go about their business, of every description, with more calmness
than we, have more title to the use of these benedictory prefaces. I
have always admired their silent grace, and the more because I have
observed their applications to the meat and drink following to be
less passionate and sensual than ours. They are neither gluttons nor
wine-bibbers as a people. They eat, as a horse bolts his chopt 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's flesh were not made to
be received with dispassionate services. I hate a man who swallows
it, affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in
higher matters. I shrink instinctively from one who professes to
like minced veal. There is a physiognomical character in the tastes
for food. C---- holds that a man cannot have a pure mind who refuses
apple-dumplings. I am not certain but he is right. With the decay of
my first innocence, I confess a less and less relish daily for those
innocuous cates. The whole vegetable tribe have lost their gust with
me. Only I stick to asparagus, which still seems to inspire gentle
thoughts. I am impatient and querulous under culinary disappointments,
as to come home at the dinner hour, for instance, expecting some
savoury mess, and to find one quite tasteless and sapidless. Butter
ill melted--that commonest of kitchen failures--puts me beside my
tenour.--The author of the Rambler used to make inarticulate animal
noises over a favourite food. Was this the music quite proper to
be preceded by the grace? or would the pious man have done better
to postpone his devotions to a season when the blessing plight be
contemplated with less perturbation? I quarrel with no man's tastes,
nor would set my thin face against those excellent things, in their
way, jollity and feasting. But as these exercises, however laudable,
have little in them of grace or gracefulness, a man should be sure,
before he ventures so to grace them, that while he is pretending his
devotions otherwhere, he is not secretly kissing his hand to some
great fish--his Dagon--with a special 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,
refection of the poor and humble man: but at the heaped-up boards of
the pampered and the luxurious they become of dissonant mood, less
timed and tuned to the occasion, methinks, than the noise of those
better befitting organs would be, which children hear tales of, at
Hog's Norton. We sit too long at our meals, or are too curious in
the study of them, or too disordered in our application to them, or
engross too great a portion of those good things (which should be
common) to our share, to be able with any grace to say grace. To
be thankful for what we grasp exceeding our proportion is to add
hypocrisy to injustice. A lurking sense of this truth is what makes
the performance of this duty so cold and spiritless a service at most
tables. In houses where the grace is as indispensable as the napkin,
who has not seen that never settled question arise, as to _who shall
say it_; while the good man of the house and the visitor clergyman, or
some other guest belike of next authority from years or gravity, shall
be bandying about the office between them as a matter of compliment,
each of them not 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 different
persuasions, whom it was my fortune to introduce to each other for the
first time that evening. Before the first cup was handed round, one of
these reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solemnity,
whether he chose to _say any thing_. 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 apprehend him, but upon an
explanation, with little less importance he made answer, that it was
not a custom known in his church: in which courteous evasion the other
acquiescing for good manner's 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 sacrifice,--the hungry God meantime, doubtful of his
incense, with expectant nostrils hovering over the two flamens, and
(as between two stools) going away in the end without his supper.
A short form upon these occasions is felt to want reverence; a long
one, I am afraid, cannot escape the charge of impertinence. I do
not quite approve of the epigrammatic conciseness with which that
equivocal wag (but my pleasant school-fellow) C.V.L., when importuned
for a grace, used to inquire, first slyly leering down the table, "Is
there no clergyman here?"--significantly adding, "thank G----." Nor do
I think our old form at school quite pertinent, where we were used to
preface our bald bread and cheese suppers with a preamble, connecting
with that humble blessing a recognition of benefits the most awful
and overwhelming to the imagination which religion has to offer. _Non
tunc illis erat locus._ 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 referens_--trowsers instead of mutton.
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 shoulders, recurring
to the evening when I passed through it to see _my first play_. The
afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going (the elder
folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease. With what a beating
heart did I watch from the window the puddles, from the stillness of
which I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation! I seem to
remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce it.
We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent us. He kept the
oil shop (now Davies's) at the corner of Featherstone-building,
in Holborn. F. was a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had
pretensions above his rank. He associated in those days with John
Palmer, the comedian, whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy; if
John (which is quite as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat of
his manner from my godfather. He was also known to, and visited by,
Sheridan. It was to his house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought
his first wife on her elopement with him from a boarding-school at
Bath--the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents were present (over a
quadrille table) when he arrived in the evening with his harmonious
charge.--From either of these connexions it may be inferred that
my godfather could command an order for the then Drury-lane
theatre at pleasure--and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue of those
cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard him say
was the sole remuneration which he had received for many years'
nightly illumination of the orchestra and various avenues of that
theatre--and he was content it should be so. The honour of Sheridan's
familiarity--or supposed familiarity--was better to my godfather than
money.
F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen; grandiloquent, yet courteous.
His delivery of the commonest matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had
two Latin words almost constantly in his mouth (how odd sounds Latin
from an oilman's lips!), which my better knowledge since has enabled
me to correct. In strict pronunciation they should have been sounded
_vice versâ_--but in those young years they impressed me with more awe
than they would now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro--in his own
peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, or Anglicized,
into something like _verse verse_. By an imposing manner, and the help
of these distorted syllables, he climbed (but that was little) to the
highest parochial honours which St. Andrew's has to bestow.
He is dead--and thus much I thought due to his memory, both for
my first orders (little wondrous talismans!--slight keys, and
insignificant to outward sight, but opening to me more than Arabian
paradises!) and moreover, that by his testamentary beneficence I came
into possession of the only landed property which I could ever call
my own--situate near the road-way village of pleasant Puckeridge, in
Hertfordshire. When I journeyed down to take possession, and planted
foot on my own ground, the stately habits of the donor descended upon
me, and I strode (shall I confess the vanity?) with larger paces over
my allotment of three quarters of an acre, with its commodious mansion
in the midst, with the feeling of an English freeholder that all
betwixt sky and centre was my own. The estate has passed into more
prudent hands, and nothing but an agrarian can restore it.
In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncomfortable manager who
abolished them!--with one of these we went. I remember the waiting at
the door--not that which is left--but between that and an inner door
in shelter--O when shall I be such an expectant again!--with the cry
of nonpareils, an indispensable play-house accompaniment in those
days. As near as I can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation of
the theatrical fruiteresses then was, "Chase some oranges, chase
some numparels, chase a bill of the play;"--chase _pro_ chuse. But
when we got in, and I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven
to my imagination, which was soon to be disclosed--the breathless
anticipations I endured! I had seen something like it in the plate
prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe's Shakspeare--the tent scene
with Diomede--and a sight of that plate can always bring back in a
measure the feeling of that evening.--The boxes at that time, full
of well-dressed women of quality, projected over the pit; and the
pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance
(I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling--a homely
fancy--but I judged it to be sugar-candy--yet, to my raised
imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a
glorified candy!--The orchestra lights at length arose, those
"fair Auroras!" Once the bell sounded. It was to ring out yet once
again--and, incapable of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes in
a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It rang the second time.
The curtain drew up--I was not past six years old--and the play was
Artaxerxes!
I had dabbled a little in the Universal History--the ancient part of
it--and here was the court of Persia. It was being admitted to a sight
of the past. I took no proper interest in the action going on, for
I understood not its import--but I heard the word Darius, and I was
in the midst of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous
vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, passed before me. I knew not
players. I was in Persepolis for the time; and the burning idol
of their devotion almost converted me into a worshipper. I was
awe-struck, and believed those significations to be something more
than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream. No such
pleasure has since visited me but in dreams.--Harlequin's Invasion
followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the magistrates
into reverend beldams seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice,
and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a verity as the
legend of St. Denys.
The next play to which I was taken was the Lady of the Manor, of
which, with the exception of some scenery, very faint traces are left
in my memory. It was followed by a pantomime, called Lun's Ghost--a
satiric touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since dead--but to my
apprehension (too sincere for satire), Lun was as remote a piece of
antiquity as Lud--the father, of a line of Harlequins--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 pantaloonery of these pantomimes have
clean passed out of my head. I believe, I no more laughed at them,
than at the same age I should have been disposed to laugh at the
grotesque Gothic heads (seeming to me then replete with devout
meaning) that gape, and grin, in stone around the inside of the old
Round Church (my church) of the Templars.
I saw these plays in the season 1781-2, when I was from six to seven
years old. After the 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 interval what had I not lost!
At the first period I knew nothing, understood nothing, discriminated
nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all--
Was 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 quantity of green baize, which was
to separate the audience for a given time from certain of their
fellow-men who were to come forward and pretend those parts. The
lights--the orchestra lights--came up a clumsy machinery. The first
ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's
bell--which had been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a
voice, no hand seen or guessed at which ministered to its warning.
The 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
expectations, which might have interfered with the genuine emotions
with which I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first appearance
to me of Mrs. Siddons in 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 recreations.
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 respected by every
body, though she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but
had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might 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 somewhere in the adjoining county; but still she lived in it
in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity 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, where they were set up, and
looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they
had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry
gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, "that would
be foolish indeed." And then I told how, when she came to die, her
funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the
gentry too, of the neighbourhood for many miles round, to show their
respect for her memory, because she had been such a good and religious
woman; so good indeed that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay,
and a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread
her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their
great-grandmother Field once was; and how in her youth she was
esteemed the best dancer--here Alice's little right foot played an
involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted--the
best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called
a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain; but it could 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
how 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 eye-brows and
tried to look courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her
grand-children, having us to the great-house in the holydays, where I
in particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the
old busts of the Twelve Cæsars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till
the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned into
marble with them; how I never could be tired with roaming about that
huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings,
fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken pannels, with the gilding almost
rubbed out--sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I
had almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening
man would cross me--and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the
walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were
forbidden fruit, unless now and then,--and because I had more pleasure
in strolling about among the old melancholy-looking yew trees, or the
firs, and picking up the red berries, and the fir apples, which were
good for nothing but to look at--or in lying about upon the fresh
grass, with all the fine garden smells around me--or basking in the
orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too along with the
oranges and the limes in that grateful warmth--or in watching the dace
that darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden,
with here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the water
in silent state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings,--I
had more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than in all the sweet
flavours of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such like common baits
of children. Here John slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch
of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing
with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the present
as irrelevant. Then in somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how,
though their great-grandmother Field loved all her 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 admiration of every body, but of their great-grandmother Field
most especially; and how he used to carry me upon his back when I was
a lame-footed boy--for he was a good bit older than me--many a mile
when I could not walk for pain;--and how in after life he became
lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough
for him when he was impatient, and in pain, nor remember sufficiently
how considerate he had been to me when I was lame-footed; and how
when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he
had died a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and
death; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, but
afterwards it haunted and haunted me; and though I did not cry or take
it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had
died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much
I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness,
and wished him to be alive again, to be quarrelling with him (for
we quarreled 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 persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W--n; and, as much as
children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and
difficulty, and denial meant in maidens--when suddenly, turning to
Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a
reality of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood
there before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I stood
gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding,
and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful 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 called
Bartrum father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We
are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores
of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name"--and
immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor
arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget
unchanged by my side--but John L. (or James Elia) was gone for ever.
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS
IN A LETTER TO B.F. ESQ. AT SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES
My dear F.--When I think how welcome the sight of a letter from the
world where you were born must be to you in that strange one to which
you have been transplanted, I feel some 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
Lombard-street, and in twenty-four hours a friend in Cumberland gets
it as fresh as if it came in ice. It is only like whispering through a
long trumpet. But suppose a tube let down from the moon, with yourself
at one end, and _the man_ at the other; it would be some balk to the
spirit of conversation, if you knew that the dialogue exchanged with
that interesting theosophist would take two or three 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 honour to reckon ourselves.
Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics; news, sentiment,
and puns. In the latter, I include all non-serious subjects; or
subjects serious in themselves, but treated after my fashion,
non-seriously.--And first, for news. In them the most desirable
circumstance, I suppose, is that they shall be true. But what security
can I have that what I now send you for truth shall not before you
get it unaccountably turn into a lie? For instance, our mutual friend
P. is at this present writing--_my Now_--in good health, and enjoys
a fair share of worldly reputation. You are glad to hear it. This is
natural and friendly. But at this present reading--_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----d realities. You naturally
lick your lips, and envy me my felicity. Think but a moment, and you
will correct the hateful emotion. Why, it is Sunday morning with
you, and 1823. This confusion of tenses, this grand solecism of _two
presents_, is in a degree common to all postage. But if I sent you
word to Bath or the Devises, 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
intention to produce. But ten months hence your envy or your sympathy
would be as useless as a passion spent upon the dead. Not only does
truth, in these long intervals, 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 remember 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 judgment,
or rather wise suspension of sentence, how far jacks, and spits, and
mops, could with propriety be introduced as subjects; whether the
conscious avoiding of all such matters in discourse would not have a
worse look than the taking of them casually in our way; in what manner
we should carry ourselves to our maid Becky, Mrs. William 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 chiding
before her, or by an unusual deferential civility paid to Becky as
to a person of great worth, but thrown by the caprice of fate into a
humble station. There were difficulties, I remember, on both sides,
which you did me the favour to state with the precision of a lawyer,
united to the tenderness of a friend. I laughed in my sleeve at your
solemn pleadings, when lo! while I was valuing myself upon this
flam put upon you in New South Wales, the devil in England, jealous
possibly of any lie-children not his own, or working after my copy,
has actually instigated our friend (not three days since) to the
commission of a matrimony, which I had only conjured up for your
diversion. William Weatherall has married Mrs. Cotterel's maid. But to
take it in its truest sense, you will see, my dear F., that news from
me must become history to you; which I neither profess to write, nor
indeed care much for reading. No person, under a diviner, can with any
prospect of veracity conduct a correspondence at such an arm's length.
Two prophets, indeed, might thus interchange 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 often smiled at a conceit of the late Lord C. It seems that
travelling somewhere about Geneva, he came to some pretty green spot,
or nook, where a willow, or something, hung so fantastically and
invitingly over a stream--was it?--or a rock?--no matter--but the
stillness and the repose, after a weary journey 'tis likely, in a
languid moment of his lordship's hot restless life, so took his fancy,
that he could imagine no place so proper, in the event of his death,
to lay his bones in. This was all very natural and excusable as a
sentiment, and shows his character in a very pleasing light. But when
from a passing sentiment it came to be an act; and when, by a positive
testamentary disposal, his remains were actually carried all that way
from England; who was there, some desperate sentimentalists excepted,
that did not ask the question, Why could not his lordship have found
a spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree as green and pendent,
with a stream as emblematic to his purpose, in Surrey, in Dorset, or
in Devon? Conceive the sentiment boarded up, freighted, entered at the
Custom House (startling the tide-waiters with the novelty), hoisted
into a ship. Conceive it pawed about and handled between the rude
jests of tarpaulin ruffians--a thing of its delicate texture--the
salt bilge wetting it till it became as vapid as a damaged lustring.
Suppose it in material danger (mariners have some superstition about
sentiments) of being tossed over in a fresh gale to some propitiatory
shark (spirit of Saint Gothard, save us from a quietus so foreign
to the deviser's purpose!) but it has happily evaded a fishy
consummation. Trace it then to its lucky landing--at Lyons shall
we say?--I have not the map before me--jostled upon four men's
shoulders--baiting at this town--stopping to refresh at t'other
village--waiting a passport here, a license there; the 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 contemptible
in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which should irradiate a
right friendly epistle--your puns and small jests are, I apprehend,
extremely circumscribed in their sphere of action. They are so far
from a capacity of being packed up and sent beyond sea, they will
scarce endure to be transported by hand from this room to the next.
Their vigour is as the instant of their birth. Their nutriment
for their brief existence is the intellectual atmosphere of the
bystanders: or this last, is the fine slime of Nilus--the _melior
Lutis_,--whose maternal recipiency is as necessary as the _sol pater_
to their equivocal generation. A pun hath a hearty kind of present
ear-kissing smack with it; you can no more transmit it in its pristine
flavour, than you can send a kiss.--Have you not tried in some
instances to palm off a yesterday's pun upon a gentleman, and has
it answered? Not but it was new to his hearing, but it did not seem
to come new from you. It did not hitch in. It was like picking up
at a village ale-house a two days old newspaper. You have not seen
it before, but you resent the stale thing as an affront. This sort
of 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 reflected from a friend's face as from a
mirror. Who would consult his sweet visnomy, if the polished surface
were two or three minutes (not to speak of twelve-months, my dear F.)
in giving back its copy?
I cannot image to myself where about you are. When I try to fix it,
Peter Wilkins's island comes across me. Sometimes you seem to be in
the _Hades_ of _Thieves_. I see Diogenes prying among you with his
perpetual 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! what property can stand against such
a depredation! The kangaroos--your Aborigines--do they keep their
primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short
fore-puds, looking like a lesson framed 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 hind-shifters as the expertest loco-motor in the colony.--We
hear the most improbable tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that
the young Spartans among you are born with six fingers, which spoils
their scanning?--It must look very odd; but use reconciles. For their
scansion, it is less to be regretted, for if they take it into their
heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn out, the greater part of
them, vile plagiarists.--Is there much difference to see to between
the son of a th**f, and the grandson? or where does the taint stop? Do
you bleach in three or in four generations?--I have many questions to
put, but ten Delphic voyages can be made in a shorter time than it
will take to satisfy my scruples.--Do you grow your own hemp?--What is
your staple trade, exclusive of the national profession, I mean? Your
lock-smiths, I take it, are some of your great capitalists.
I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as when we used
to exchange good-morrows out of our old contiguous windows, in
pump-famed Hare-court in the Temple. Why did you ever leave that quiet
corner?--Why did I?--with its complement of four poor elms, from whose
smoke-dyed barks, the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first
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 dallying with vain surmise--
Aye me! while thee the seas and sounding shores
Hold far away.
Come back, before I am grown into a very old man, so as you shall
hardly know me. Come, before Bridget walks on crutches. Girls whom you
left children have become sage matrons, while you are tarrying there.
The blooming Miss W----r (you remember Sally W----r) called upon us
yesterday, an aged crone. Folks, whom you knew, die off every year.
Formerly, I thought that death was wearing out,--I stood ramparted
about with so many healthy friends. The departure of J.W., two springs
back corrected my delusion. Since then the old divorcer has been busy.
If you do not make haste to return, there will be little left to greet
you, of me, or mine.
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 their little professional notes sounding like
the _peep peep_ of a young sparrow; or liker to the matin lark should
I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the
sun-rise?
I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks--poor
blots--innocent blacknesses--
I reverence these young Africans of our own growth--these almost
clergy imps, who sport their cloth without assumption; and from
their little pulpits (the tops of chimneys), in the nipping air of a
December morning, preach a lesson of patience to mankind.
When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to 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 Averni_--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 conquered citadel! I seem to remember having been told,
that a bad sweep was once left in a stack with his brush, to indicate
which way the wind blew. It was an awful spectacle certainly; not much
unlike the old stage direction in Macbeth, where the "Apparition of a
child crowned with a tree in his hand rises."
Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in thy early
rambles, it is good to give him a penny. It is better to give him
two-pence. If it be starving weather, and to the proper troubles of
his hard occupation, a pair of kibed heels (no unusual accompaniment)
be superadded, the demand on thy humanity will surely rise to a
tester.
There is a composition, the ground-work of which I have understood to
be the sweet wood 'yclept sassafras. This wood boiled down to a kind
of tea, and tempered with an infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some
tastes a delicacy beyond the China luxury. I know not how thy palate
may relish it; for myself, with every deference to the judicious Mr.
Read, who hath time out of mind kept open a shop (the only one he
avers in London) for the vending of this "wholesome and pleasant
beverage, on the south side of Fleet-street, as thou approachest
Bridge-street--_the only Salopian house_,"--I have never yet
adventured to dip my own particular lip in a basin of his commended
ingredients--a cautious premonition to the olfactories constantly
whispering to me, that my stomach must infallibly, with all due
courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, otherwise not
uninstructed in dietetical elegances, sup it up with avidity.
I know not by what particular conformation of the organ it happens,
but I have always found that this composition is surprisingly
gratifying to the palate of a young chimney-sweeper--whether the oily
particles (sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate 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 odour to the senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a
delicate excitement comparable to this mixture. Being penniless, they
will yet hang their black heads over the ascending steam, to gratify
one sense if possible, seemingly no less pleased than those domestic
animals--cats--when they purr over a new-found sprig of valerian.
There is something more in these sympathies than philosophy can
inculcate.
Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, that his is the
_only Salopian house;_ yet be it known to thee, reader--if thou art
one who keepest what are called good hours, thou art haply ignorant
of the fact--he hath a race of industrious imitators, who from
stalls, and under open sky, dispense the same savoury mess to humbler
customers, at that dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the
rake, reeling home from his midnight cups, and the hard-handed artisan
leaving his bed to resume the premature labours of the day, jostle,
not unfrequently to the manifest disconcerting of the former, for the
honours of the pavement. It is the time when, in summer, between the
expired and the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, the kennels of our
fair metropolis give forth their least satisfactory odours. The rake,
who wisheth to dissipate his o'er-night vapours 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 delight 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 unpennied sweep. Him
shouldest thou haply encounter, with his dim visage pendent over the
grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin (it will cost thee
but three half-pennies) 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, quickreaching from
street to street, of the _fired chimney_, invite the rattling engines
from ten adjacent parishes, to disturb for a casual scintillation thy
peace and pocket!
I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts; the jeers
and taunts of the populace; the low-bred triumph they display over
the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a gentleman. Yet can I
endure the jocularity of a young sweep with something more than
forgiveness.--In the last winter but one, pacing along Cheapside with
my accustomed precipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous slide
brought me upon my back in an instant. I scrambled up with pain and
shame enough--yet outwardly trying to face it down, as if nothing had
happened--when the roguish grin of one of these young wits encountered
me. There he stood, 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
themselves out at the corners of his poor red eyes, red from many a
previous weeping, and soot-inflamed, yet twinkling through all with
such a joy, snatched out of desolation, that Hogarth--but Hogarth has
got him already (how 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 honour of a gentleman might endure it, to have
remained his butt and his mockery till midnight.
I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what are called a fine
set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips (the ladies must pardon me) is
a casket, 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 manners, and an allowable piece of foppery. It
is, as when
A sable cloud
Turns forth her silver lining on the night.
It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct; a badge of
better days; a hint of nobility:--and, doubtless, under the obscuring
darkness and double night of their forlorn disguisement, oftentimes
lurketh good blood, and gentle conditions, derived from lost ancestry,
and a lapsed pedigree. The premature apprenticements of these tender
victims give but too much encouragement, I fear, to clandestine, and
almost infantile abductions; the seeds of civility and true courtesy,
so often discernible in these young grafts (not otherwise to be
accounted for) plainly hint at some forced adoptions; many noble
Rachels mourning for their children, 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 delicatest crimson, with
starry coronets inwoven--folded between a pair of sheets whiter and
softer than the lap where Venus lulled Ascanius--was discovered by
chance, after all methods of search had failed, at 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 aperture had alighted upon this magnificent chamber;
and, tired with his tedious explorations, was unable to resist the
delicious invitement to repose, which he there saw exhibited; so,
creeping between the sheets very quietly, laid his black head upon the
pillow, and slept like a young Howard.
Such is the account given to the visitors at the Castle.--But I cannot
help seeming to perceive a 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, presented an obvious couch, still far
above his pretensions--is this probable, I would ask, if the great
power of nature, which I contend for, had not been manifested within
him, 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 lapt by his mother, or his nurse, in just such
sheets as he there found, into which he was now but creeping back as
into his proper _incunabula_, and resting-place.--By no other theory,
than by this sentiment of a pre-existent state (as I may call it), can
I explain a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon any other system, so
indecorous, in this tender, but unseasonable, sleeper.
My pleasant friend JEM WHITE was so impressed with a belief of
metamorphoses like this frequently taking place, that in some sort to
reverse the wrongs of fortune in these poor changelings, he instituted
an annual feast of chimney-sweepers, at which it was his pleasure
to officiate as host and waiter. It was a solemn supper held in
Smithfield, upon the yearly return of the fair of St. Bartholomew.
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
interruption of every gaping spectator in it. The guests assembled
about seven. In those little temporary parlours three tables were
spread with napery, not so fine as substantial, and at every board a
comely hostess presided with her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils
of the young rogues dilated at the savour. JAMES WHITE, as head
waiter, had charge of the first table; and myself, with our trusty
companion BIGOD, ordinarily ministered to the other two. There was
clambering and jostling, you may be sure, who should get at the first
table--for Rochester in his maddest days could not have done the
humours of the scene with more spirit than my friend. After some
general expression of thanks for the honour the company had done him,
his inaugural ceremony was to clasp the greasy waist of old dame
Ursula (the fattest of the three), that stood frying and fretting,
half-blessing, half-cursing "the gentleman," and imprint upon her
chaste lips a tender salute, whereat the universal host would set up a
shout that tore the concave, while hundreds of 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 comprehended 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 then 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 savouriest 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 the
glory of Smithfield departed for ever.
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 allies, the parting Genius of Beggary is "with sighing
sent."
I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this impertinent
crusado, or _bellum ad exterminationem_, proclaimed against a species.
Much good might be sucked from these Beggars.
They were the oldest and the honourablest form of pauperism. Their
appeals were to our common nature; less revolting to an ingenuous mind
than to be a suppliant to the particular humours or caprice of any
fellow-creature, or set of fellow-creatures, parochial or societarian.
Theirs were the only rates uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in the
assessment.
There was a dignity springing from the very depth of their desolation;
as to be naked is to be so much nearer to the being a man, than to go
in livery.
The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses; and when
Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, do we feel any thing towards
him but contempt? Could Vandyke have made a picture of him, swaying
a ferula for a sceptre, which would have affected our minds with the
same heroic pity, the same compassionate admiration, with which we
regard his Belisarius begging for an _obolum_? 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 honours of a counter, or expiating
their fallen condition upon the three-foot eminence of some
sempstering shop-board?
In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just antipode to your King.
The poets and romancical writers (as dear Margaret Newcastle would
call them) when they would most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse
of fortune, never stop till they have brought down their hero in good
earnest to rags and the wallet. The depth of the descent illustrates
the height he falls from. There is no medium which can be presented
to the imagination without offence. There is no breaking the fall.
Lear, thrown from his palace, must divest him of his garments, till
he answer "mere nature;" and Cresseid, fallen from a prince's love,
must extend her pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of beauty,
supplicating lazar alms with bell and clap-dish.
The Lucian wits knew this very well; and, with a converse policy, when
they would express scorn of greatness without the pity, they show us
an 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 wooes the beggar maid?
Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity, but pity alloyed
with contempt. No one properly contemns a beggar. Poverty is a
comparative thing, and each degree of it is mocked by its "neighbour
grice." Its poor rents and comings-in are soon summed up and told.
Its pretences to property are almost ludicrous. Its pitiful attempts
to save excite a smile. Every scornful companion can weigh his
trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor man reproaches 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 neighbour
seeketh to eject him from his tenement. No man sues him. No man goes
to law with him. If I were not the independent gentleman that I am,
rather than I would be a retainer to the great, a led captain, or a
poor relation, I would choose, out of the delicacy and true greatness
of my mind, to be a Beggar.
Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the Beggar's robes, and
graceful _insignia_ of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, the
suit in which he is expected to show himself in public. He is never
out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not required
to put on court mourning. He weareth all colours, fearing none. His
costume hath undergone less change than the Quaker's. 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 picturesque attire as ornamental as the
Signs of old London. They were the standing morals, emblems, mementos,
dial-mottos, the spital sermons, the books for children, the salutary
checks and pauses to the high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry--
--Look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there.
Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall of
Lincoln's Inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had expelled them,
casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray of pity, and (if possible)
of light, with their faithful Dog Guide at their feet,--whither are
they fled? or into what corners, blind as themselves, have they been
driven, out of the wholesome air and sun-warmth? immersed between
four walls, in what withering poor-house do they endure the penalty
of double darkness, where the chink of the dropt half-penny no 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 dropt into
the Thames, at the suggestion of B----, the mild rector of ----?
Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, most classical, and
at the same time, most English, of the Latinists!--who has treated
of this human and quadrupedal alliance, this dog and man friendship,
in the sweetest of his poems, the _Epitaphium in Canem_, or, _Dog's
Epitaph_. Reader, peruse it; and say, if customary sights, which could
call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a nature to do more
harm or good to the moral sense of the passengers through the daily
thoroughfares of a vast and busy metropolis.
Pauperis hic Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis,
Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectæ,
Dux cæco fidus: nec, me ducente, solebat,
Prætenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per iniqua locorum
Incertam explorare viam; sed fila secutus,
Quæ dubios regerent passûs, vestigia tuta
Fixit inoffenso gressu; gelidumque sedile
In nudo nactus saxo, qua prætereuntium
Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras
Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam.
Ploravit nec frustra; obolum dedit alter et alter,
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
Tædia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat.
Hi mores, hæc vita fuit, dum fata sinebant,
Dum neque languebam morbis, nec inerte senectâ;
Quæ tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite cæcum
Orbavit dominum: prisci sed gratia facti
Ne tola intereat, longos deleta per annos,
Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit,
Etsi inopis, non ingratæ, munuscula dextræ;
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 ray customary crums,
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.
These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months past a well-known
figure, or part of the figure, of a man, who used to glide his comely
upper half over the pavements of London, wheeling along with most
ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood; a spectacle to natives,
to foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make, with a
florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare to the storm and
sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific,
a prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at the mighty man
brought down to his own level. The common cripple would despise his
own pusillanimity, viewing the hale 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 Antæus,
and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He
was a grand fragment; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature, which
should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was not lost, but only
retired into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a
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 sublime_ 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
christened) 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--_is_ a great city; or for
what else is it desirable?) was there not room for one _Lusus_ (not
_Naturæ_, indeed, but) _Accidentium_? What if in forty-and-two years'
going about, the man had scraped together enough to give a portion
to his child (as the rumour ran) of a few hundreds--whom had he
injured?--whom had he imposed upon? The contributors had 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 consideration, which
(if a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is
inconsistent at least with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which
he has been slandered with--a reason that he should be deprived of his
chosen, harmless, nay edifying, way of life, and be committed in hoary
age for a sturdy vagabond?--
There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have shamed to have sate
down at the cripples' feast, and to have thrown in his benediction,
ay, and his mite too, for a companionable symbol. "Age, thou hast lost
thy breed."--
Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made by begging
are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. One was much talked of in
the public papers some time since, and the usual charitable inferences
deduced. A clerk in the Bank was surprised 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 half-penny
duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus, that sate begging alms
by the way-side in the Borough. The good old beggar recognised his
daily benefactor by the voice only; and, when he died, left all the
amassings of his alms (that had been half a century perhaps in the
accumulating) to his old Bank friend. Was this a story to purse up
people's hearts, and pennies, against giving an alms to the blind?--or
not rather a beautiful moral of well-directed charity on the one part,
and noble gratitude upon the other?
I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk.
I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature, blinking, and
looking up with his no eyes in the sun--Is it possible I could have
steeled my purse against him?
Perhaps I had no small change.
Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, imposition,
imposture--_give, and ask no questions_. Cast thy bread upon the
waters. Some have 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 assistance, have a veritable
existence. Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save
a halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If he be not all that he
pretendeth, _give_, and under a personate father of a family, think
(if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent bachelor. When
they come with their counterfeit looks, and mumping tones, think them
players. You pay your money to see a comedian feign these things,
which, concerning these poor people, thou canst not certainly tell
whether they are feigned or not.
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 Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' holiday. The manuscript goes on
to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take
to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner
following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, 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 quickly,
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 esteemed a luxury all
over the East from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in
the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake
of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again
with a few dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two, at any
time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he
should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking
remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour assailed his
nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before 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 crums of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers,
and for the first time in his life (in the world's life indeed, for
before him no man had known it) he tasted--_crackling_! Again he felt
and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he
licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke
into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so, and
the pig that tasted so delicious; and, surrendering himself up to the
newborn pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls 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 affairs 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 burnt pig
eats."
The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he
cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt
pig.
Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since moming, soon raked
out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser
half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out "Eat,
eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste--O Lord,"--with such like
barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.
Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the abominable thing,
wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural
young 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 flavour, which, make what sour mouths he would for
a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In conclusion
(for the manuscript here is a little tedious) both father and son
fairly 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
neighbours would certainly have stoned them for a couple of abominable
wretches, who could think of improving upon the good meat which
God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was
observed that Ho-ti's 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. Evidence 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 accused, might be handed into
the box. He handled it, and they all handled it, and burning their
fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature
prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the face of all
the facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever given,--to
the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and
all present--without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation
whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty.
The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity
of the decision: and, when the court was dismissed, went privily, and
bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a few
days his Lordship's town house was observed to be on fire. The thing
took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every
direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district.
The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. 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
(_burnt_, as they called it) without the necessity of consuming a
whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridiron.
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
favour 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 maintain
it to be the most delicate--_princeps obsoniorum_.
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 immunditiæ_, the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet
manifest--his voice as yet not broken, but something between a
childish treble, and a grumble--the mild forerunner, or _præludium_,
of a grunt.
_He must be roasted._ I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate them
seethed, or boiled--but what a sacrifice of the exterior tegument!
There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp,
tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, _crackling_, as it is well
called--the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure
at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance--with the
adhesive oleaginous--O call it not fat--but an indefinable sweetness
growing up to it--the tender blossoming of fat--fat cropped in the
bud--taken in the shoot--in the first innocence--the cream and
quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food--the lean, no lean, but
a kind of animal manna--or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so
blended and running into each other, that both together make but one
ambrosian result, or common substance.
Behold him, while he is doing--it seemeth rather a refreshing warmth,
than a scorching heat, that he is so passive to. How equably he
twirleth round the string!--Now he is just done. To see the extreme
sensibility of that tender age, he hath wept out his pretty
eyes--radiant jellies--shooting stars--
See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he lieth!--wouldst
thou have had this innocent grow up to the grossness and indocility
which too often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would
have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable
animal--wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation--from these
sins he is happily snatched away--
Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely care--
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 stomach of the
judicious epicure--and for such a tomb might be content to die.
He is the best of Sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is indeed almost
too transcendent--a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to sinning,
that really a tender-conscienced person would do well to pause--too
ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips
that approach her--like lovers' kisses, she biteth--she is a pleasure
bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish--but
she stoppeth at the palate--she meddleth not with the appetite--and
the coarsest hunger might barter her 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 extend, all around. He is the
least envious of banquets. He is all neighbours' fare.
I am one of those, who freely and ungrudgingly impart a share of the
good things of this life which fall to their lot (few as mine are in
this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my
friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine
own. "Presents," I often say, "endear Absents." Hares, pheasants,
partridges, snipes, barn-door chicken (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 somewhere. One would not, like
Lear, "give every thing." I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an
ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavours, to extra-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 sweet-meat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had
dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the
oven. In my way to school (it was over London bridge) a grey-headed
old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day that he was
a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity
of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, school-boy-like,
I made him a present of--the whole cake! I walked on a little,
buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of
self-satisfaction; but before I had got to the end of the bridge,
my better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, 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 odour
of that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the pleasure
and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her joy
when she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would feel
that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last--and I blamed
my impertinent spirit of alms-giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of
goodness, and above all I wished never to see the face again of that
insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey impostor.
Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these tender
victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with something of a shock,
as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is
gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light
merely) what effect this process might have towards intenerating and
dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh
of young, pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet we should be
cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom
of the practice. It might impart a gusto--
I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, when I
was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on
both sides, "Whether, supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained
his death by whipping (_per flagellationem 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 animal to death?" I forget the decision.
His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few bread crums, done up
with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear
Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole
hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with
plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them, or
make them stronger than they are--but consider, he is a weakling--a
flower.
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR 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 remaining as I
am.
I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their wives ever made any
great impression upon me, or had much tendency to strengthen me in
those anti-social resolutions, which I took up long ago upon more
substantial considerations. What oftenest 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 enjoyment of each other's
society, implies that they prefer one another to all the world.
But what I complain of is, that they carry this preference so
undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces of us single people so
shamelessly, you cannot be in their company a moment without being
made to feel, by some indirect hint or open avowal, that _you_ are not
the object of this preference. Now there are some things which give
no offence, while implied or taken for granted merely; but expressed,
there is much offence in them. If a man were to accost the first
homely-featured or plain-dressed young woman of his acquaintance, and
tell her bluntly, that she was not handsome or rich enough for him,
and he could not marry her, he would deserve to be kicked for his ill
manners; yet no less is implied in the fact, that having access and
opportunity of putting the question to her, he has never yet thought
fit to do it. The young woman understands this as clearly as if it
were put into words; but no reasonable young woman would think of
making this the ground of a quarrel. Just as little right have a
married couple to tell me by speeches, and looks that are scarce less
plain than speeches, that I am not the happy man,--the lady's choice.
It is enough that I know I am not: I do not want this perpetual
reminding.
The display of superior knowledge or riches may be made sufficiently
mortifying; but these admit of a palliative. The knowledge which is
brought out to insult me, may accidentally improve me; and in the rich
man's houses and pictures,--his parks and gardens, I have a temporary
usufruct at least. But the display of married happiness has none of
these palliatives: it is throughout 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 exclusive
privilege to keep their advantage as much out of sight as possible,
that their less favoured neighbours, seeing little of the benefit,
may the less be disposed to question the right. But these married
monopolists thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent into our
faces.
Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire complacency and
satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new-married couple,
in that of the lady particularly: it tells you, that her lot is
disposed of in this world: that _you_ can have no hopes of her.
It is true, I have none; nor wishes either, perhaps: but this is
one of those truths which ought, as I said before, to be taken for
granted, not expressed. The excessive airs which those people give
themselves, founded on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would be
more offensive if they were less irrational. We will allow them to
understand the mysteries belonging to their own craft better than we
who have not had the happiness to be made free of the company: but
their arrogance is not content within these limits. If a single person
presume to offer his opinion in their presence, though upon the most
indifferent subject, he is immediately silenced as an incompetent
person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaintance, who, the best
of the jest was, had not changed her condition above a 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 any thing about such matters.
But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the airs which these
creatures give themselves when they come, as they generally do,
to have children. When I consider how little of a rarity children
are,--that every street and blind alley swarms with them,--that the
poorest people commonly have them in most abundance,--that there
are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these
bargains,--how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes
of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty,
disgrace, the gallows, &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 expected to bring our
spices, myrrh, and incense,--our tribute and homage of admiration,--I
do not see.
"Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are the young
children:" so says the excellent office in our Prayer-book appointed
for the churching of women. "Happy is the man that hath his quiver
full of them:" So say I; but then don't let him discharge his
quiver upon us that are weaponless;--let them be arrows, but not to
gall and stick us. I have generally observed that these arrows are
double-headed: they have two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the
other. As for instance, when you come into a house which is full of
children, if you happen to take no notice of them (you are thinking
of something else, perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their innocent
caresses), you are set down as untractable, morose, a hater of
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 keep-sake, 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 any thing
that reminds me of him; provided it be in its nature indifferent, and
apt to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. But children have a
real character and an essential being of themselves: they are amiable
or unamiable _per se_; I must love or hate them as I see cause for
either 'in their qualities. A child's nature is too serious a thing to
admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being, and
to be loved or hated accordingly: they stand with me upon their own
stock, as much as men and women do. O! but you will say, sure it is
an attractive age,--there is something in the tender years of infancy
that of itself charms us. That is the very reason why I am more nice
about them. I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature,
not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them; but the
prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it
should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not much from another
in glory; but a violet should look and smell the daintiest.--I was
always rather squeamish in my women and children.
But this is not the worst: one must be admitted into their familiarity
at least, before they can complain of 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 twelve-month 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 acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I
can rely, whose friendship did not commence _after the period of his
marriage_. With some limitations they can endure that: but that the
good man should have dared to enter into a solemn league of friendship
in which they were not consulted, though it happened before they
knew him,--before they that are now man and wife ever met,--this
is intolerable to them. Every long friendship, every old authentic
intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new stamped with
their currency, as a sovereign Prince calls in the good old money that
was coined in some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new
marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will
let it pass current in the world. You may guess what luck generally
befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in these _new mintings_.
Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult and worm you out
of their husband's confidence. Laughing at all you say with a kind of
wonder, as if you were a queer kind of fellow that said good things,
_but 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 general vein of observation (not quite
vulgar) which he perceived in you, begins to suspect whether you are
not altogether a humorist,--a fellow well enough to have consorted
with in his bachelor days, but not quite so proper to be introduced
to ladies. This may be called the staring way; and is that which has
oftenest been put in practice against me.
Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of irony: that is,
where they find you an object of especial regard with their husband,
who is not so easily to be shaken from the lasting attachment founded
on esteem which he has conceived towards you; by never-qualified
exaggerations to cry up all that you say or do, till the good man,
who understands well enough that it is all done in compliment to him,
grows weary of the debt of gratitude which is due to so much candour,
and by relaxing a little on his part, and taking down a peg or two
in his enthusiasm, sinks at length to that kindly level of moderate
esteem,--that "decent affection and complacent kindness" towards you,
where she herself can join in sympathy with him without much stretch
and violence to her sincerity.
Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so desirable
a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of innocent simplicity,
continually to mistake what it was which first made their husband fond
of you. If an esteem for something excellent in your moral character
was that which riveted the chain which she is to break, upon any
imaginary discovery of a want of poignancy in your conversation, she
will cry, "I thought, my dear, you described your friend, Mr. ---- as
a great wit." If, on the other hand, it was for some supposed charm
in your 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 expostulating with for not showing me quite so
much respect as I thought due to her husband's old friend, had the
candour to confess to me that she had often heard Mr. ---- speak
of me before marriage, and that she had conceived a great desire
to be acquainted with me, but 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 differed so
much from his own; for my friend's dimensions as near as possible
approximate to mine; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in which
I have the advantage of him by about half an inch; and he no more 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 endeavour: 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 versâ_. I mean, when they use us
with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony. _Testacea_, for
instance, kept me the other night two or three hours beyond my usual
time of supping, while she was fretting because Mr. ---- did not come
home, till the oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be
guilty of the impoliteness of touching one in his absence. This was
reversing the point of good manners: for 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 endeavours to make up, by superior attentions 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 propriety. I know no ceremony
that ladies are bound to observe to their husbands, beyond the point
of a modest behaviour and decorum: therefore I must protest against
the vicarious gluttony of _Cerasia_, who at her own table sent away a
dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great good will, to her
husband at the other end of the table, and recommended a plate of
less extraordinary gooseberries to my unwedded palate in their stead.
Neither can I excuse the wanton affront of ----.
But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaintance by Roman
denominations. Let them amend and change their manners, or I promise
to record the full-length English of their names, to the terror of all
such desperate offenders in future.
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 in 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 casting a negligent eye over the rest; but
spelling out every name, down to the very mutes and servants of
the scene;--when it was a matter of no small moment to us whether
Whitfield, or Packer, took the part of Fabian; when Benson, and
Burton, and Phillimore--names of small account--had an importance,
beyond what we can be content to attribute now to the time's best
actors.--"Orsino, by Mr. 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; Helena, in All's Well that Ends Well; and Viola in this play.
Her voice had latterly acquired a coarseness, which suited well enough
with her Nells and Hoydens, but in those days it sank, with her steady
melting eye, into the heart. Her joyous parts--in which her memory now
chiefly lives--in her youth were outdone by her plaintive ones. There
is no giving an account how she delivered the disguised story of her
love for Orsino. It was no set speech, that she had foreseen, so as to
weave it into an harmonious period, line necessarily following line,
to make up the music--yet I have heard it so spoken, or rather _read_,
not without its grace and beauty--but, when she had declared her
sister's history to be a "blank," and that she "never told her love,"
there was a pause, as if the story had ended--and then the image of
the "worm in the bud" came up as a new suggestion--and the heightened
image of "Patience" still followed after that, as by some growing (and
not mechanical) process, thought springing up after thought, I would
almost say, as they were watered by her tears. So in those fine
lines--
Write loyal cantos of contemned love--
Hollow 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 still. She touched the
imperious fantastic humour of the character with nicety. Her fine
spacious person filled the scene.
The part of Malvolio has in my judgment been so often misunderstood,
and the _general merits_ of the actor, who then played it, so unduly
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 emotions
consequent upon the presentment of a great idea to the fancy. He had
the true poetical enthusiasm--the rarest faculty among players. None
that I remember possessed even a portion of that fine madness which he
threw out in Hotspur's famous rant about glory, or the transports of
the Venetian incendiary at the vision of the fired city. His voice had
the dissonance, and at times the inspiriting effect of the trumpet.
His gait was uncouth and stiff, but no way embarrassed by affectation;
and the thorough-bred gentleman was uppermost in every movement. He
seized the moment of passion with the 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 Iago was the only endurable one
which I remember to have seen. No spectator from his action could
divine more of his artifice than Othello was supposed to do. His
confessions in soliloquy alone put you in 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 spectators, to shoot their bolts at. The Iago of Bensley did
not go to work so grossly. There was a triumphant tone about the
character, 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 consummate villain entrapping a noble
nature into toils, against which no discernment was available, where
the manner was as fathomless as the purpose seemed dark, and without
motive. The part of Malvolio, in the Twelfth Night, was performed by
Bensley, with a richness and a dignity, of which (to judge from some
recent castings of that character) the very 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 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 honour 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 Illyria. He is opposed to the proper
_levities_ of the piece, and falls in the unequal contest. Still his
pride, or his gravity, (call it which you will) is inherent, and
native to the man, not mock or affected, which latter only are the
fit objects to excite laughter. His quality is at the best unlovely,
but neither buffoon nor contemptible. His bearing is lofty, a little
above his station, but probably not much above his deserts. We see no
reason why he should not have been brave, honourable, accomplished.
His careless committal of the ring to the ground (which he was
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 insignificant? Once, indeed, she accuses him to his face--of
what?--of being "sick of self-love,"--but with a gentleness and
considerateness which could not have been, if she had not thought
that this particular infirmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke to the
knight, and his sottish revellers, is sensible and spirited; and when
we take into consideration the unprotected condition of his mistress,
and the strict regard with which her state of real or dissembled
mourning would draw the eyes of the world upon her house-affairs,
Malvolio might feel the honour of the family in some sort in his
keeping; as it appears not that Olivia had any more brothers, or
kinsmen, to look to it--for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice
respects at the buttery hatch. That Malvolio was meant to be
represented as possessing estimable qualities, the expression of the
Duke in his anxiety to have him reconciled, almost infers. "Pursue
him, and entreat him to a peace." Even in his abused state of chains
and darkness, a sort of greatness seems never to desert him. He
argues highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas, and philosophises
gallantly upon his straw.[1] There must have been some shadow of worth
about the man; he must have been something more than a mere vapour--a
thing of straw, or Jack in office--before Fabian and Maria could 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 magnificent from the outset; but when the decent
sobrieties of the character began to give way, and the poison of
self-love, in his conceit of the Countess's affection, gradually to
work, you would have thought that the hero of La Mancha in person
stood before you. How he went smiling to himself! with what ineffable
carelessness would he twirl his gold chain! what a dream it was! you
were infected with the illusion, and did not wish that it should be
removed! you had no room for laughter! if an unseasonable reflection
of morality obtruded itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable
infirmity of man's nature, that can lay him open to such frenzies--but
in truth you rather 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 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 whirligig of time,"
as the true clown hath it, "brings in his revenges." I confess that I
never saw the catastrophe of this character, while Bensley played it,
without a kind of tragic interest. There was good foolery too. Few now
remember Dodd. What an Aguecheek the stage lost in him! Lovegrove, who
came nearest to the old actors, revived the character some few seasons
ago, and made it sufficiently grotesque; but Dodd was _it_, as it
came out of Nature's hands. It might be said to remain _in puris
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 painful process, till it cleared up at last to the fulness of a
twilight conception--its highest meridian. He seemed to keep back
his intellect, as some have had the power to retard their pulsation.
The balloon takes less time in filling, than it took to cover
the expansion of his broad moony face over all its quarters with
expression. A glimmer of understanding would appear in a corner of his
eye, and for lack of fuel go out again. A part of his forehead would
catch a little intelligence, and be a long time in communicating it to
the remainder.
I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than five and twenty
years ago that walking in the gardens of Gray's Inn--they were then
far finer than they are now--the accursed Verulam Buildings had not
encroached upon 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 gaping and relationless as if
it remembered its brother--they are still the best gardens of any
of the Inns of Court, my beloved Temple not forgotten--have the
gravest character, their aspect being altogether reverend and
law-breathing--Bacon has left the impress of his foot upon their
gravel walks--taking my afternoon solace on a summer day upon the
aforesaid terrace, a comely sad personage came towards me, whom, from
his grave air and deportment, I judged to be one of the old Benchers
of the Inn. He had a serious thoughtful forehead, and seemed to be
in meditations of mortality. As I have an instinctive awe of old
Benchers, I was passing 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 motion of the body to that effect--a species of humility and
will-worship which I observe, nine times out of ten, rather puzzles
than pleases the person it is offered to--when the face turning
full upon me strangely identified itself with that of Dodd. Upon
close inspection I was not mistaken. But could this sad thoughtful
countenance be the same vacant face of folly which I had hailed so
often under circumstances of gaiety; which I had never seen without
a smile, or recognised but as the usher of mirth; that looked out
so formally flat in Foppington, so frothily pert in Tattle, so
impotently busy in Backbite; so blankly divested of all meaning, or
resolutely expressive of none, in Acres, in Fribble, and a thousand
agreeable impertinences? Was this the face--full of thought and
carefulness--that had so often divested itself at will of every trace
of either to give me diversion, to clear my cloudy face for two or
three hours at least of its furrows? Was this the face--manly, sober,
intelligent,--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
particularly--subjected to and suffering the common lot--their
fortunes, 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 divesting himself of many scenic
and some real vanities--weaning himself from the frivolities of the
lesser and the greater theatre--doing gentle penance for a life of no
very reprehensible fooleries,--taking off by degrees the buffoon mask
which he might feel he had worn too long--and rehearsing for a more
solemn cast of part. Dying he "put on the weeds of Dominic."[2]
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 "commerce with the skies"--I could
never rightly learn; but we find him, after the probation of a
twelvemonth or so, reverting to a secular condition, and become one
of us.
I think he was not altogether of that timber, out of which cathedral
seats and sounding boards are hewed. But if a glad heart--kind and
therefore glad--be any part of sanctity, then might the robe of
Motley, with which he invested himself with so much humility after
his deprivation, and which he wore so long with so much blameless
satisfaction to himself and to the public, be accepted for a
surplice--his white stole, and _albe_.
The first fruits of his secularization was an engagement upon the
boards of Old Drury, at which theatre he commenced, as I have been
told, with adopting the manner of Parsons in old men's characters. At
the period in which most of us knew him, he was no more an imitator
than he was in any true sense himself imitable.
He was the Robin Good-Fellow 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!_ of Dicky Suett, brought back to their remembrance by
the faithful transcript of his friend Mathews's mimicry. The "force of
nature could no further go." He drolled upon the stock of these two
syllables richer than the cuckoo.
Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his composition.
Had he had but two grains (nay, half a grain) of it, he could never
have supported himself upon those two spider's strings, which served
him (in the latter part of his unmixed existence) as legs. A doubt
or a scruple must have made him totter, a sigh have puffed him down;
the weight of a frown had staggered him, a wrinkle made him lose his
balance. But on he went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of his,
with Robin Good-Fellow, "thorough brake, thorough briar," reckless of
a scratched face or a torn doublet.
Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed his fools and jesters. They
have all the true Suett stamp, a loose and shambling gait, a slippery
tongue, this last the ready midwife to a without-pain-delivered jest;
in words, light as air, venting truths deep as the centre; with idlest
rhymes tagging conceit when busiest, singing with Lear in the tempest,
or Sir Toby at the buttery-hatch.
Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of personal
favourites with the town than any actors before or after. The
difference, I take it, was this:--Jack was more _beloved_ for his
sweet, good-natured, moral pretensions. Dicky was more _liked_ for
his sweet, good-natured, no pretensions at all. Your whole conscience
stirred with Bannister's performance of Walter in the Children in the
Wood--but Dicky seemed like a thing, as Shakspeare says of Love, too
young to know what conscience is. He put us into Vesta's days. Evil
fled before him--not as from Jack, as from an antagonist,--but because
it could not touch him, any more than a cannon-ball a fly. He was
delivered from the burthen of that death; and, when Death came
himself, not in metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it is recorded of him by
Robert Palmer, who kindly watched his exit, that he received the
last stroke, neither varying his accustomed tranquillity, nor tune,
with the simple exclamation, worthy to have been recorded in his
epitaph--_O La! O La! Bobby!_
The elder Palmer (of stage-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 of _the footman_.
His brother Bob (of recenter memory) who was his shadow in every thing
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,[3] you said, what a pity such a pretty fellow was only
a servant. When you saw Jack figuring in Captain Absolute, you thought
you could trace his promotion to some lady of quality who fancied
the handsome fellow in his topknot, and had bought him a commission.
Therefore Jack in Dick Amlet was insuperable.
Jack had two voices,--both plausible, hypocritical, and insinuating;
but his secondary or supplemental voice still more decisively
histrionic than his common one. It was reserved for the spectator; and
the dramatis personas were supposed to know nothing at all about it.
The _lies_ of young Wilding, and the _sentiments_ in Joseph Surface,
were thus marked out in a sort of italics to the audience. This secret
correspondence with the company before the curtain (which is the
bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely happy effect in some
kinds of comedy, in the more highly artificial comedy of Congreve
or of Sheridan especially, where the absolute sense of reality (so
indispensable to scenes of interest) is not required, or would rather
interfere to diminish your pleasure. The fact is, you do not 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, an that be all.--Well, father,
and how do all at home? how does brother Dick, and brother Val?
_Sir Sampson._ Dick! body o' me, Dick has been dead these two years. I
writ you word when you were at Leghorn.
_Ben._ Mess, that's true; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's dead, as you
say--Well, and how?--I have a many questions to ask you--
Here is an instance of 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 combinations
rather than strict _metaphrases_ of nature should be taken, or when
you saw Bannister play it, it neither did, nor does wound the moral
sense at all. For what is Ben--the pleasant sailor which Bannister
gives us--but a piece of satire--a creation of Congreve's fancy--a
dreamy 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 it 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 creature dear to half-belief--which
Bannister exhibited--displays before our eyes a downright concretion
of a Wapping sailor--a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar--and nothing
else--when instead of investing it with a delicious confusedness of
the head, and a veering undirected goodness of purpose--he gives to it
a downright daylight understanding, and a full consciousness of its
actions; thrusting forward the sensibilities of the character with a
pretence as if it stood upon nothing else, and was to be judged by
them alone--we feel the discord of the thing; the scene is disturbed;
a real man has got in among the dramatis personæ, 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.
[Footnote 1:_Clown_. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild
fowl?
_Mal_. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.
_Clown_. What thinkest thou of his opinion?
_Mal_. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his opinion.]
[Footnote 2: Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice
collection of old English literature. I should judge him to have been
a man of wit. I know one instance of an impromptu which no length of
study could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had seen him
one evening in Aguecheek, and recognising Dodd the next day in Fleet
Street, was irresistibly impelled to take off his hat and salute him
as the identical Knight of the preceding evening with a "Save you,
_Sir Andrew_." Dodd, not at all disconcerted at this unusual address
from a stranger, with a courteous half-rebuking wave of the hand, put
him off with an "Away, _Fool_."]
[Footnote 3: High Life Below Stairs.]
ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY
The artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is quite extinct on our
stage. Congreve and Farquhar show their heads once in seven years
only, to be exploded and put down instantly. The times cannot bear
them. Is it for a few wild speeches, an occasional license of
dialogue? I think not altogether. The business of their dramatic
characters will not stand the moral test. We screw every thing up to
that. Idle gallantry in a fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of
an evening, startles us in the same way as the alarming indications
of profligacy in a son or ward in real life should startle a parent
or guardian. We have no such middle emotions as dramatic interests
left. We see a stage libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours'
duration, and of no after consequence, with the severe eyes which
inspect real vices with their bearings upon two worlds. We are
spectators to a plot or intrigue (not reducible in life to the point
of strict morality) and take it all for truth. We substitute a real
for a dramatic person, and judge him accordingly. We try him in our
courts, from which there is no appeal to the _dramatis personæ_, his
peers. We have been spoiled with--not sentimental comedy--but a tyrant
far more pernicious to our pleasures which has succeeded to it, the
exclusive and all devouring drama of common life; where the moral
point is every thing; where, instead of the fictitious half-believed
personages of the stage (the phantoms of old comedy) we recognise
ourselves, our brothers, aunts, kinsfolk, allies, patrons,
enemies,--the same as in life,--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 modification is made
to affect us in any other manner than the same events or characters
would do in our relationships of life. We carry our fire-side concerns
to the theatre with us. We do not go thither, like our ancestors,
to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our
experience of it; to make assurance double, and take a bond of fate.
We must live our toilsome lives twice over, as it was the mournful
privilege of Ulysses to descend twice to the shades. All that neutral
ground of character, which stood between vice and virtue; or which in
fact was indifferent to neither, where neither properly was called in
question; that happy breathing-place from the burthen of a perpetual
moral questioning--the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted
casuistry--is broken up and disfranchised, as injurious to the
interests of society. The privileges of the place are taken away
by law. We dare not dally with images, or names, of wrong. We bark
like foolish dogs at shadows. We dread infection from the scenic
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 sunshine.
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 world of themselves almost as much
as fairy-land. Take one of their characters, male or female (with
few exceptions they are alike), and place it in a modern play, and
my virtuous indignation shall rise against the profligate wretch as
warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire; because in a modern play
I am to judge of the right and the wrong. The standard of _police_
is the measure of _political justice_. The atmosphere will blight
it, it cannot live here. It has got into a moral world, where it has
no business, from which it must needs fall headlong; as dizzy, and
incapable of making a stand, as a 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 Mirabels, the Dorimants and the Lady Touchwoods, in
their own sphere, do not offend my moral sense; in fact they do not
appeal to it at all. They seem engaged in their proper element. They
break through no laws, or conscientious restraints. They know of none.
They have got out of Christendom into the land--what shall I call
it?--of cuckoldry--the Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is duty,
and the manners perfect freedom. It is altogether a speculative scene
of things, which has no reference whatever to the world that is. No
good person can be justly offended as a spectator, because no good
person suffers on the stage. Judged morally, every character in
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 any thing like a faultless character, but any
pretensions to goodness or good feelings whatsoever. Whether he did
this designedly, or instinctively, the effect is as happy, as the
design (if design) 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 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 friend
Wycherley's dramas, are profligates and strumpets,--the business of
their brief existence, the undivided pursuit of lawless gallantry. No
other spring of action, or possible motive of conduct, is recognised;
principles which, universally acted upon, must reduce this frame of
things to a chaos. But we do them wrong in so translating them. No
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
Dapperwit, steal away Miss Martha; or who is the father of Lord
Froth's, or Sir Paul Pliant's children.
The whole is a passing pageant, where we should sit as unconcerned at
the issues, for life or death, as at 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 allays of
the sentimental comedy which followed theirs. It is impossible that it
should be now _acted_, though it continues, at long intervals, to be
announced in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer played it at least, was
Joseph Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful solemn
plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice--to express it
in a word--the downright _acted_ villany of the part, so different
from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness,--the hypocritical
assumption of hypocrisy,--which made Jack so deservedly a favourite
in that character, I must needs conclude the present generation of
play-goers more virtuous than myself, or more dense. I freely confess
that he divided the palm with me with his better brother; that, in
fact, I 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 forced upon by the
attempt to join the artificial with the sentimental comedy, either
of which must destroy the other--but over these obstructions Jack's
manner floated him so lightly, that a refusal from him no more shocked
you, than the easy compliance of Charles gave you in reality any
pleasure; you got over the paltry question as quickly as you could, to
get back into the regions of pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns.
The highly artificial manner of Palmer in this character counteracted
every disagreeable impression which you might have received from the
contrast, supposing them real, between the two brothers. You did not
believe in Joseph with the same faith with which you believed in
Charles. The latter was a pleasant reality, the former a no less
pleasant poetical foil to it. The comedy, I have said, is incongruous;
a mixture of Congreve with sentimental incompatibilities: the gaiety
upon the whole is buoyant; but it required the consummate art of
Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements.
A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now, would not dare to do
the part in the same manner. He would instinctively avoid every
turn which might tend to unrealise, and so to make the character
fascinating. He must take his cue from his spectators, who would
expect a bad man and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other as
the death-beds of those geniuses are contrasted in the prints, which
I am sorry to say have disappeared from the windows of my old friend
Carrington Bowles, of St. Paul's Church-yard memory--(an exhibition
as venerable as the adjacent cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad
and good man at the hour of death; where the ghastly apprehensions
of the former,--and truly the grim phantom with his reality of a
toasting fork is not to be despised,--so finely contrast with the
meek complacent kissing of the rod,--taking it in 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-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all of it.
What was it to you if that half-reality, the husband, was over-reached
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 past from the stage
in good time, that he did not live to this our age of seriousness.
The pleasant old Teazle _King_, too, is gone in good time. His
manner would scarce have past current in our day. We must love or
hate--acquit or condemn--censure or pity--exert our detestable
coxcombry of moral judgment upon every thing. Joseph Surface, to go
down now, must be a downright revolting villain--no compromise--his
first appearance must shock and give horror--his specious
plausibilities, which the pleasurable faculties of our fathers
welcomed with such hearty greetings, knowing that no harm (dramatic
harm even) could come, or was meant to come of them, must inspire a
cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real canting person of the
scene--for the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends,
but his brother's professions of a good heart centre in downright
self-satisfaction) must be _loved_ and Joseph _hated_. To balance one
disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer
the comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings
(while King acted it) were evidently as much played off at you, as
they were meant to concern any body 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
villanous seducer Joseph. To realise him more, his sufferings under
his unfortunate match must have the downright pungency of life--must
(or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same
predicament would move you in a neighbour or old friend. The delicious
scenes which give the play its name and zest, must affect you in
the same serious manner as if you heard the reputation of a dear
female friend attacked in your real presence. Crabtree, and Sir
Benjamin--those poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of your
mirth--must be rippened by this hot-bed process of realization
into asps or amphisbænas; and Mrs. Candour--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 natural 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
Saturnalia of two or three brief hours, well won from the world--to
sit instead at one of our modern plays--to have his coward conscience
(that forsooth must not be left for a moment) stimulated with
perpetual appeals--dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without
repose must be--and his moral vanity pampered with images of notional
justice, notional 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. Abingdon
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 declamation. He had no sins of Hamlet or of
Richard to atone for. His failure in these parts was a passport to
success in one of so opposite a tendency. But, as far as I could
judge, the weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal
incapacity than he had to answer for. His harshest tones in this part
came steeped and dulcified in good humour. He made his defects a
grace. His exact declamatory manner, as he managed it, only served
to convey the points of his dialogue with more precision. It seemed
to head the shafts to carry them deeper. 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 particularly 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-places of
his tragedy-politic savings, and fetches of the breath--husbandry of
the lungs, where nature pointed him to be an economist--rather, I
think, than errors of the judgment. They were, at worst, less painful
than the eternal tormenting unappeasable vigilance, the "lidless
dragon eyes," of present fashionable tragedy.
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN
Not many nights ago I had come home from seeing this extraordinary
performer in Cockletop; and when I retired to my pillow, his whimsical
image still stuck by me, in a manner as to threaten sleep. In vain
I tried to divest myself of it, by conjuring up the most opposite
associations. I resolved to be serious. I raised up the gravest topics
of life; private misery, public calamity. All would not do.
--There the antic sate
Mocking our state--
his queer visnomy--his bewildering costume--all the strange things
which he had raked together--his serpentine rod, swagging about in his
pocket--Cleopatra's tear, and the rest of his relics--O'Keefe's wild
farce, and _his_ wilder commentary--till the passion of laughter, like
grief in 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 forgotten Edwin. O for the power of the pencil
to have fixed them when I awoke! A season or two since there was
exhibited a Hogarth gallery. I do not see why there should not be a
Munden gallery. In richness and variety the latter would not fall far
short of the former.
There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one (but what a one
it is!) of Liston; but Munden has none that you can properly pin down,
and call _his_. When you think he has exhausted his battery of looks,
in unaccountable warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an
entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He is not one, but legion.
Not so much a comedian, as a company. If his name could be multiplied
like his countenance, it might fill a play-bill. He, and he alone,
literally _makes faces_: applied to any other person, the phrase is a
mere figure, denoting certain modifications of the human countenance.
Out of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his friend
Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as easily. I should not be
surprised to see him some day put out the head of a river horse; or
come forth a pewitt, or lapwing, some feathered metamorphosis.
I have seen this gifted actor, in Sir Christopher Curry--in Old
Dornton--diffuse a glow of sentiment which has made the pulse of a
crowded theatre beat like that of one man; when he has come in aid of
the pulpit, doing good to the moral heart of a people. I have seen
some faint approaches to this sort of excellence in other players.
But in the grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands out as single and
unaccompanied as Hogarth. Hogarth, strange to tell, had no followers.
The school of Munden began, and must end with himself.
Can any man _wonder_, like him? can any man _see ghosts_, like
him? or _fight 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 before 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 it were mounted into the firmament. A beggar
in the hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, rose the Patriarch of
Poverty. So the gusto of Munden antiquates and ennobles what it
touches. His pots and his ladles are as grand and primal as the
seething-pots and hooks seen in old prophetic vision. A tub of butter,
contemplated by him, amounts to a Platonic idea. He understands a leg
of mutton in its quiddity. He stands wondering, amid the common-place
materials of life, like primæval man with the sun and stars about him.
THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA
(_From the 1st Edition_, 1833)
PREFACE
BY A FRIEND OF THE LATE ELIA
This poor gentleman, who for some months past had been in a declining
way, hath at length paid his final tribute to nature.
To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humour of the thing, if
there was ever much in it, was pretty well exhausted; and a two years'
and a half existence has been a tolerable duration for a phantom.
I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have heard objected
to my late friend's writings was well-founded. Crude they are, I grant
you--a sort of unlicked, incondite things--villainously pranked in an
affected array of antique modes and phrases. They had not been _his_,
if they had been other than such; and better it is, that a writer
should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect a
naturalness (so called) that should be strange to him. Egotistical
they have been 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 favourite figure) he shadows forth the forlorn estate
of a country-boy placed at a London school, far from his friends and
connections--in direct opposition to his own early history. If it
be egotism to imply and twine with his own identity the griefs and
affections of another--making himself many, or reducing many unto
himself--then is the skilful novelist, who all along brings in his
hero, or heroine, speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of all;
who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that narrowness. And how
shall the intenser dramatist escape being faulty, who doubtless, under
cover of passion uttered by another, oftentimes gives blameless vent
to his most inward feelings, and expresses his own story modestly?
My late friend was in many respects a singular character. Those who
did not like him, hated him; and some, who once liked him, afterwards
became his bitterest haters. The truth is, he gave himself too little
concern what he uttered, and in whose presence. He observed neither
time nor place, and would e'en out with what came uppermost. With the
severe religionist he would pass for a free-thinker; while the other
faction set him down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he
belied his sentiments. Few understood him; and I am not certain that
at all times he quite understood himself. He too much affected that
dangerous figure--irony. He sowed doubtful speeches, and reaped
plain, unequivocal hatred.--He would interrupt the gravest discussion
with some light jest; and yet, perhaps, not quite irrelevant in ears
that could understand it. Your long and much talkers hated him. The
informal habit of his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of
speech, forbade him to be an orator; and he seemed determined that,
no one else should play that part when he was present. He was _petit_
and ordinary in his person and appearance. I have seen him sometimes
in what is called good company, but where he has been a stranger, sit
silent, and be suspected for an odd fellow; till some unlucky occasion
provoking it, he would stutter out some senseless pun (not altogether
senseless perhaps, if rightly taken), which has stamped his character
for the evening. It was hit or miss with him; but nine times out of
ten, he contrived by this device to send away a whole company his
enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance, and his
happiest _impromptus_ had the appearance of effort. He has been
accused of trying to be witty, when in truth he was but struggling
to give his poor thoughts articulation. He chose his 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
colour, or something else, in the weed pleased him. The burrs stuck
to him--but they were gbod and loving burrs for all that. He never
greatly cared for the society of what are called good people. If any
of these were scandalised (and offences were sure to arise), he could
not help it. When he has been remonstrated with for not making more
concessions to the feelings of good people, he would retort by asking,
what one point did these good people ever concede to him? He was
temperate in his meals and diversions, but always kept a little on
this side of abstemiousness. Only in the use of the Indian weed he
might be thought a little excessive. He took it, he would say, as
a solvent of speech. Marry--as the friendly vapour ascended, how
his prattle would curl up sometimes with it! the ligaments, which
tongue-tied him, were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded a statist!
I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice that my old friend
is departed. His jests were beginning to grow obsolete, and his
stories to be found out. He felt the approaches of age; and while he
pretended to cling to life, you saw how slender were the ties left to
bind him. Discoursing with him latterly on this subject, he expressed
himself with a pettishness, which I thought unworthy of him. In our
walks about his suburban retreat (as he called it) at Shacklewell,
some children belonging to a school of industry had met us, and bowed
and curtseyed, as he thought, in an especial manner to _him_. "They
take me for a visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. He had
a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like anything
important and parochial. He thought that he approached nearer to that
stamp daily.. He had a general aversion from being treated like a
grave or respectable character, and kept a wary eye upon the advances
of age that should so entitle him. He herded always, while it was
possible, with people younger than himself. He did not 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.
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 feeling, 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 auditory--or a trait of affectation, or worse,
vain-glory, on that of the preacher--puts us by our best thoughts,
disharmonising the place and the occasion. But would'st thou know the
beauty of holiness?--go alone on some week-day, borrowing the keys of
good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some country church:
think of the piety that has kneeled there--the congregations, old
and young, that have found consolation there--the meek pastor--the
docile parishioner. With no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting
comparisons, drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thyself
become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and
weep around thee.
Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going some few miles
out of my road to look upon the remains of an old great house with
which I had been impressed in this way in infancy. I was apprised that
the owner of it had lately pulled it down; still I had a vague notion
that it 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 antiquity.
I was astonished at the indistinction of everything. Where had stood
the great gates? What bounded the court-yard? Whereabout did the
out-houses commence? a few bricks only lay as representatives of that
which was so stately and so spacious.
Death does not shrink up his human victim at this rate. The burnt
ashes of a man weigh more in their proportion.
Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their process of
destruction, at the plucking of every pannel 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-plat before, and the hum
and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it about
me--it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns; or a pannel of
the yellow room.
Why, every plank and pannel of 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 colours vivider than his descriptions. Actæon in mid sprout,
with the unappeasable prudery of Diana; and the still more provoking,
and almost culinary coolness of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately
divesting of Marsyas.
Then, that haunted room--in which old Mrs. Battle died--whereinto I
have crept, but always in the day-time, with a passion of fear; and
a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold communication with the
past.--_How shall they build it up again?_
It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted but that
traces of the splendour of past inmates were everywhere apparent.
Its furniture was still standing--even to the tarnished gilt leather
battledores, and crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks in the nursery,
which told that children had once played there. But I was a lonely
child, and had the range at will of every apartment, knew every nook
and corner, wondered and worshipped everywhere.
The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of thought, as
it is the feeder of love, 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 mansion--half hid
by trees, what I judged some romantic lake, such was the spell which
bound me to the house, and such my carefulness not to pass its strict
and proper precincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored for me; and
not till late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder devotion, 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, O brambles, chain me too,
And, courteous briars, nail me through!
I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug firesides--the low-built
roof--parlours ten feet by ten--frugal boards, and all the homeliness
of home--these were the condition of my birth--the wholesome soil
which I was planted in. Yet, without impeachment to their tenderest
lessons, I am not sorry to have had glances of something beyond;
and to have taken, if but a peep, in childhood, at the contrasting
accidents of a great fortune.
To have the feeling of gentility, it is not necessary to have been
born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be had 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 those who do inherit them. The claims
of birth are ideal merely, and what herald shall go about to strip me
of an idea? Is it trenchant to their swords? can it be hacked off as a
spur can? or torn away like a 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, BLAKESMOOR! have
I in childhood so oft stood poring upon thy mystic characters--thy
emblematic supporters, with their prophetic "Resurgam"--till, every
dreg of peasantry purging off, I received into myself Very Gentility?
Thou wert first in my morning eyes; and of nights, hast detained my
steps from bedward, till it was but a step from gazing at thee to
dreaming on thee.
This is the only true gentry by adoption; the veritable change of
blood, and not, as empirics have fabled, by transfusion.
Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid trophy, I know not,
I inquired not; but its fading rags, and colours cobweb-stained, told
that its subject was of two centuries back.
And what if my ancestor at that date was some Damoetas--feeding
flocks, not his own, upon the hills of Lincoln--did I in less
earnest vindicate to myself the family trappings of this once proud
Ægon?--repaying by a backward triumph the insults he might possibly
have heaped in his life-time upon my poor pastoral progenitor.
If it were presumption so to speculate, the present owners of the
mansion had least reason to complain. They had long forsaken the
old house of their fathers for a newer trifle; and I was left to
appropriate to myself what images I could pick up, to raise my fancy,
or to soothe my vanity.
I was the true descendant of those old W----s; and not the present
family of that name, who had fled the old waste places.
Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, which as I have
gone over, giving them in fancy my own family name, one--and then
another--would seem to smile, reaching forward from the canvas, to
recognise 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 yellow H----shire hair, and
eye of watchet hue--so like my Alice!--I am persuaded she was a true
Elia--Mildred Elia, I take it.
Mine too, BLAKESMOOR, was thy noble Marble Hall, with its mosaic
pavements, and its Twelve Cæsars--stately busts in marble--ranged
round: of whose countenances, young reader of faces as I was, the
frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my wonder; but the
mild Galba had my love. There they stood in the coldness of death, yet
freshness of immortality.
Mine too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of authority,
high-backed and wickered, once the terror of luckless poacher, or
self-forgetful maiden--so common since, that bats have roosted in it.
Mine too--whose else?--thy costly fruit-garden, with its sun-baked
southern wall; the ampler pleasure-garden, rising backwards from the
house in triple terraces, with flower-pots now of palest lead, save
that a speck here and there, saved from the elements, bespeak their
pristine state to have been gilt and glittering; the verdant quarters
backwarder still; and, stretching still beyond, in old formality,
thy firry wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel, and the day-long
murmuring woodpigeon, with that antique image in the centre, God or
Goddess I wist not; but child of Athens or old Rome paid never a
sincerer worship to Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, than I
to that fragmental mystery.
Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too fervently in your
idol worship, walks and 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
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 noontide of
your 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 banquet,--Agathocles' pot,--a
Mordecai in your gate,--a Lazarus at your door,--a lion in your
path,--a frog in your chamber,--a fly in your ointment,--a mote in
your eye,--a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends,--the
one thing not needful,--the hail in harvest,--the ounce of sour in a
pound of sweet.
He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you "That is Mr.
----." A rap, between familiarity and respect; that demands, and,
at the same time, seems to despair of, entertainment. He entereth
smiling, and--embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake,
and--draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about dinner
time--when the table is full. He offereth to go away, 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 professeth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one.
He declareth against fish, the turbot being small--yet suffereth
himself to be importuned into a slice against his first resolution.
He sticketh by the port--yet will be prevailed upon to empty the
remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is
a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too 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 diffidence. With half the
familiarity he might pass for a casual dependent; with more boldness
he would be in no danger of being taken for what he is. He is too
humble for a friend, yet taketh on him more state than befits a
client. He is a worse guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he
bringeth up no rent--yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanour, that
your guests take him for one. He is asked to make one at the whist
table; refuseth on the score of poverty, and--resents being left
out. When the company break up, he proffereth to go for a coach--and
lets the servant go. He recollects your grandfather; and will thrust
in some mean, and quite unimportant anecdote of--the family. He
knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as "he is blest in
seeing it now." He reviveth past situations, to institute what
he calleth--favourable comparisons. With a reflecting sort of
congratulation, he will inquire the price of your furniture; and
insults you with a special commendation of your window-curtains. He
is of opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape, but, after all,
there was something more comfortable about the old tea-kettle--which
you must remember. He dare say you must find a great convenience in
having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not
so. 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 into a corner, as precipitately as possible, and feel fairly
rid of two nuisances.
There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is--a female Poor
Relation. You may do something with the other; you may pass him off
tolerably well; but your indigent she-relative is hopeless. "He is
an old humourist," you may say, "and affects to go threadbare. His
circumstances are better than folks would take them to be. You are
fond of having a Character at your table, and truly he is one." But
in the indications of female poverty there can be no disguise. No
woman dresses below herself from caprice. The truth must out without
shuffling. "She is plainly related to the L----s; or what does she at
their house?" She is, in all probability, your wife's cousin. Nine
times out of ten, at least, this is the case. Her garb is something
between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former evidently
predominates. She is most provokingly humble, and ostentatiously
sensible to her inferiority. He may require to be repressed
sometimes--_aliquando sufflaminandus erat_--but there is no raising
her. You send her soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped--after the
gentlemen. Mr. ---- requests the honour of taking wine with her; she
hesitates between Port and Madeira, and chooses the former--because
he does. She calls the servant _Sir_; and insists on not troubling
him to hold her plate. The housekeeper patronizes her. The children's
governess takes upon her to correct her, when she has mistaken the
piano for a harpsichord.
Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance of the
disadvantages, to which this chimerical notion of _affinity
constituting a claim to acquaintance_, may subject the spirit of a
gentleman. A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and
a lady of great estate. His stars are perpetually crossed by the
malignant maternity of an old woman, who persists in calling him
"her son Dick." But she has wherewithal in the end to recompense his
indignities, and float him again upon the brilliant surface, under
which it had been her seeming business and pleasure all along to sink
him. All men, besides, are not of Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet
in real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor W----
was of my own standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and a youth of
promise. If he had a blemish, it was too much pride; but its quality
was inoffensive; it was not of that sort which hardens the heart, and
serves to keep inferiors at a distance; it only sought to ward off
derogation from itself. It was the principle of self-respect carried
as far as it could go, without infringing upon that respect, which he
would have every one else equally maintain for himself. He would have
you to think alike with him on this topic. Many a quarrel have I had
with him, when we were rather older boys, and our tallness made us
more obnoxious to observation in the blue clothes, because I would not
thread the alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude notice,
when we have been out together on a holiday in the streets of this
sneering and prying metropolis. W---- went, sore with these notions,
to Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life,
meeting with the alloy of a humble introduction, wrought in him a
passionate devotion to the place, with a profound aversion from the
society. The servitor's gown (worse than his school array) clung to
him with Nessian venom. He thought himself ridiculous in a garb, under
which Latimer must have walked erect; and in which Hooker, in his
young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no discommendable vanity.
In the depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor
student shrunk from observation. He found shelter among books, which
insult not; and studies, that ask no questions of a youth's finances.
He was lord of his library, and seldom cared for looking out beyond
his domains. The healing influence of studious pursuits was upon him,
to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a healthy man; when the
waywardness of his fate broke out against him with a second and worse
malignity. The father of W---- had hitherto exercised the humble
profession of house-painter at N----, near Oxford. A supposed interest
with some of the heads of the 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
any-thing that wore the semblance of a gown--insensible to the winks
and opener remonstrances of the young man, to whose chamber-fellow, or
equal in standing, perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously
ducking. Such a state of things could not last. W---- must change
the air of Oxford or be 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 beginning to
flourish, had caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over his
really handsome shop, either as a token of prosperity, or badge of
gratitude to his saint. W---- 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.
I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with treating half
seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital so eminently painful;
but this theme of poor relationship is replete with so much matter for
tragic as well as comic associations, that it is difficult to keep
the account distinct without blending. The earliest impressions which
I received on this matter, are certainly not attended with anything
painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At my father's table
(no very splendid one) was to be found, every Saturday, the mysterious
figure of an aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet
comely appearance. His deportment was of the essence of gravity; his
words few or none; and I was not to make a noise in his presence. I
had little inclination to have done so--for my cue was to admire in
silence. A particular elbow chair was appropriated to him, which was
in no case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which
appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the days of his coming.
I used to think him a prodigiously rich man. All I could make out of
him was, that he and my father had been schoolfellows a world ago at
Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place
where all the money was coined--and I thought he was the owner of
all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves about his
presence. He seemed above human infirmities and passions. A sort
of melancholy grandeur invested him. From some inexplicable doom I
fancied him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mourning; a
captive--a stately being, let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often
have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in spite of an
habitual general respect which we all in common manifested towards
him, would venture now and then to stand up against him in some
argument, touching their youthful days. The houses of the ancient
city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my readers know) between the
dwellers on the hill, and in the valley. This marked distinction
formed an obvious division between the boys who lived above (however
brought together in a common school) and the boys whose paternal
residence was on the plain; a sufficient cause of hostility in
the code of these young Grotiuses. My father had been a leading
Mountaineer; and would still maintain the general superiority, in
skill and hardihood, of the _Above Boys_ (his own faction) over the
_Below Boys_ (so were they called), of which party his 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 advantages, generally contrived to turn the conversation
upon some adroit by-commendation of the old Minster; in the general
preference of which, before all other cathedrals in the island, the
dweller on the hill, and the plain-born, could meet on a conciliating
level, and lay down their less important 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 rigour--when my aunt,
an old Lincolnian, but who had something of this, in common with
my cousin Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility out of
season--uttered the following memorable application--"Do take another
slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding every day." The old
gentleman said nothing at the time--but he took occasion in the course
of the 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 discreetly substituted in the
place of that which had occasioned the offence. He died at the Mint
(Anno 1781) where he had long held, what he accounted, a comfortable
independence; and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny,
which were found in his 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.
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 presence of spectators.
In tragedy--in all which is to affect the feelings--this undivided
attention to his stage business, seems indispensable. Yet it is, in
fact, dispensed with every day by our cleverest tragedians; and while
these references to an audience, in the shape of rant or sentiment,
are not too frequent or palpable, a sufficient quantity of illusion
for the purposes of dramatic interest may be said to be produced in
spite of them. But, tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether, in
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 absolutely appealing to an audience, he keeps up a tacit
understanding with them; and makes them, unconsciously to themselves,
a party in the scene. The utmost nicety is required in the mode of
doing this; but we speak only of the great artists in the profession.
The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in ourselves,
or to contemplate in another, is, perhaps, cowardice. To see a coward
_done to the life_ upon a stage would produce anything but mirth.
Yet we most of us remember Jack Bannister's cowards. Could any thing
be more agreeable, more pleasant? We loved the rogues. How was
this effected but by the exquisite art of the actor in a perpetual
sub-insinuation to us, the spectators, even in the extremity of the
shaking fit, that he was not half such a coward as we took him for? We
saw all the common symptoms of the malady upon him; the quivering lip,
the cowering knees, the teeth chattering; and could have sworn "that
man was frightened." But we forgot all the while--or kept it almost a
secret to ourselves--that he never once lost his self-possession; that
he let out by a thousand droll looks and gestures--meant at _us_, and
not at all supposed to be visible to his fellows in the scene, that
his confidence in his own resources had never once deserted him. Was
this a genuine picture of a coward? or not rather a likeness, which
the clever artist contrived to palm upon us instead of an original;
while we secretly connived at the delusion for the purpose of greater
pleasure, than a more genuine counterfeiting of the imbecility,
helplessness, and utter self-desertion, which we know to be
concomitants of cowardice in real life, could have given us?
Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so endurable on the stage,
but because the skilful actor, by a sort of sub-reference, rather than
direct appeal to us, disarms the character of a great deal of its
odiousness, by seeming to engage _our_ compassion for the insecure
tenure by which he 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 _being acted_ before us;
that a likeness only is going on, and not the thing itself. They
please by being done under the life, or beside it; not _to the life_.
When Gatty acts an old man, is he angry indeed? or only a pleasant
counterfeit, just enough of a likeness to recognise, without pressing
upon us the uneasy sense of reality?
Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too natural. It was the
case with a late actor. Nothing could be more earnest or true than the
manner of Mr. Emery; this told excellently in his Tyke, and characters
of a tragic cast. But when he carried the same rigid exclusiveness of
attention to the stage business, and wilful blindness and 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 _Personæ
Dramatis_. There was as little link between him and them as betwixt
himself and the audience. He was a third estate, dry, repulsive, and
unsocial to all. Individually considered, his execution was masterly.
But comedy is not this unbending thing; for this reason, that the same
degree of credibility is not required of it as to serious scenes. The
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 altogether. Our tears refuse to flow at a
suspected imposition. But the teller of a mirthful tale has latitude
allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth. 'Tis the
same with dramatic illusion. We confess we love in comedy to see an
audience naturalised behind the scenes, taken in into the interest
of the drama, welcomed as by-standers however. There is something
ungracious in a comic actor holding himself aloof from all
participation or concern with those who are come to be diverted by
him. Macbeth must see the dagger, and no ear but his own be told of
it; but an old fool in farce may think he _sees something_, and by
conscious words and looks express it, as plainly as he can speak, to
pit, box, and gallery. When an impertinent in tragedy, an Osric, for
instance, breaks in upon the serious passions of the scene, we approve
of the contempt with which he is treated. But when the pleasant
impertinent of comedy, in a piece purely meant to give delight, and
raise mirth out of whimsical perplexities, worries the studious man
with taking up his leisure, or making his house his home, the same
sort of contempt expressed (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
dissatisfaction and peevishness as is consistent with the pleasure of
comedy. In other words, his perplexity must seem half put on. If he
repel the intruder with the sober set face of a man in earnest, and
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 antagonist comicality
on the part of the character opposed to it), and convert what was
meant for mirth, rather than belief, into a downright piece of
impertinence indeed, which would raise no diversion in us, but rather
stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest upon any 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 performer that strict
abstraction from all reference to an audience, which is exacted of
it; but that in some cases a sort of compromise 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
Joyousest of once embodied spirits, whither at length hast thou flown?
to what genial region are we permitted to conjecture that thou has
flitted.
Art thou sowing thy WILD OATS yet (the harvest time was still to come
with thee) upon casual sands of Avernus? or art thou enacting ROVER
(as we would gladlier think) by wandering Elysian streams?
This mortal frame, while thou didst play thy brief antics amongst us,
was in truth any thing 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.
Thou knewest better than to be in a hurry to cast off those gyves; and
had notice to quit, I fear, before thou wert quite ready to abandon
this fleshly 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 aërial house-warming?
Tartarus we know, and we have read of the Blessed Shades; now cannot I
intelligibly fancy thee in either.
Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as the school-men
admitted a receptacle apart for Patriarchs and un-chrisom Babes) there
may exist--not far perchance from that storehouse of all vanities,
which Milton saw in visions--a LIMBO somewhere for PLAYERS? and that
Up thither like aërial vapours fly
Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things
Built their fond hopes of glory, or lasting fame?
All the unaccomplish'd works of Authors' hands,
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mix'd,
Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither--
Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery--
There, by the neighbouring moon (by some not improperly supposed
thy Regent Planet upon earth) mayst thou not still be acting thy
managerial pranks, great disembodied Lessee? but Lessee still, and
still a Manager.
In Green Rooms, impervious to mortal eye, the muse beholds thee
wielding posthumous empire.
Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) circle thee in
endlessly, and still their song is _Fye on sinful Phantasy_.
Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe of earth, ROBERT WILLIAM
ELLISTON! for as yet we know not thy new name in heaven.
It irks me to think, that, stript of thy regalities, thou shouldst
ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Stygian wherry. Methinks I
hear the old boatman, paddling by the weedy wharf, with raucid voice,
bawling "SCULLS, SCULLS:" to which, with waving hand, and majestic
action, thou deignest no reply, other than in two curt monosyllables,
"No: OARS."
But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference between king,
and cobbler; manager, and call-boy; and, if haply your dates of life
were conterminant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by
cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) with the shade of some recently
departed candle-snuffer.
But mercy! what strippings, what tearing off of histrionic robes,
and private vanities! what denudations to the bone, before the surly
Ferryman will admit you to set a foot within his battered lighter!
Crowns, sceptres; shield, sword, and truncheon; thy own coronation
robes (for thou hast brought the whole property man's wardrobe with
thee, enough to sink a navy); the judge's ermine; the coxcomb's wig;
the snuff-box _à la Foppington_--all must overboard, he positively
swears--and that ancient mariner brooks no denial; for, since the
tiresome monodrame of the old Thracian Harper, Charon, it is to be
believed, hath shown small taste for theatricals.
Aye, now 'tis done. You are just boat weight; _pura et puta anima_.
But bless me, how _little_ you look!
So shall we all look--kings, and keysars--stript for the last voyage.
But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu, pleasant, and thrice pleasant
shade! with my parting thanks for many a heavy hour of life lightened
by thy harmless extravaganzas, public or domestic.
Rhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes below, leaving to his
two brethren the heavy calendars--honest Rhadamanth, always partial
to players, weighing their parti-coloured existence here upon
earth,--making account of the few foibles, that may have shaded thy
_real life_ as we call it, (though, substantially, scarcely less a
vapour than thy idlest vagaries upon the boards of Drury,) as but of
so many echoes, natural repercussions, and results to be expected from
the assumed extravagancies of thy _secondary_ or _mock life_, nightly
upon a stage--after a lenient castigation, with rods lighter than
of those Medusean ringlets, but just enough to "whip the offending
Adam out of thee"--shall courteously dismiss thee at the right
hand gate--the O.P. side of Hades--that conducts to masques, and
merry-makings, in the Theatre Royal of Proserpine.
PLAUDITO, ET VALETO
ELLISTONIANA
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
of the Leamington Spa Library, then newly entered upon by a branch
of his family. E., whom nothing misbecame--to auspicate, I suppose,
the filial concern, and set it a going with a lustre--was serving in
person two damsels fair, who had come into the shop ostensibly to
inquire for some new publication, but in reality to have a sight of
the illustrious shopman, hoping some conference. With what an air did
he reach down the volume, dispassionately giving his opinion upon the
worth of the work in question, and launching out into a dissertation
on its 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 occupation he had
so generously submitted to; and from that hour I judged him, with no
after repentance, to be a person, with whom it would be a felicity to
be more acquainted.
To descant upon his merits as a Comedian would be superfluous. With
his blended private and professional habits alone I have to do;
that harmonious fusion of the manners of the player into those of
every day life, which brought the stage boards into streets, and
dining-parlours, and kept up the play when the play was ended.--"I
like Wrench," a friend was saying to him one day, "because he is the
same natural, easy creature, _on_ the stage, that he is _off_." "My
case exactly," retorted Elliston--with a charming forgetfulness,
that the converse of a proposition does not always lead to the same
conclusion--"I am the same person _off_ the stage that I am _on_." The
inference, at first sight, seems identical; but examine it a little,
and it confesses only, that the one performer was never, and the other
always, _acting_.
And in truth this was the charm of Elliston's private deportment.
You had a 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 honours by his sleeping in it,
becomes _ipso facto_ for that time a palace; so where-ever Elliston
walked, sate, or stood still, there was the theatre. He carried about
with him his pit, boxes, and galleries, and set up his portable
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_ painted--in thought. So G.D. _always_ poetises.
I hate a lukewarm artist. I have known actors--and some of them of
Elliston's own stamp--who shall have agreeably been amusing you in
the part of a rake or a coxcomb, through the two or three hours of
their dramatic existence; but no sooner does the curtain fall with
its leaden clatter, but a spirit of lead seems to seize on all their
faculties. They emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable to their
families, servants, &c. Another shall have been 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 realise your laudable intentions. At length the final
bell rings, and this cordial representative of all that is amiable
in human breasts steps forth--a miser. Elliston was more of a piece.
Did he _play_ 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, or coxcomb, on the
stage, and give ourselves airs of aversion for the identical character
presented to us in actual life? or what would the performer have
gained by divesting himself of the impersonation? Could the man
Elliston have been essentially different from his part, even if he
had avoided to reflect to us studiously, in private circles, the
airy briskness, the forwardness, 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 cannot, 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_. Cibber 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 _honours_.
But I have, and do reverence him for the _greatness_, that was only
proper to himself; in that he seemed to me ever one of the _greatest_
men, that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that
heaven would give him strength; for _greatness_ he could not want."
The quality here commended was scarcely less conspicuous in the
subject of these idle reminiscences, than in my Lord Verulam. Those
who have imagined that an unexpected elevation to the direction of a
great London Theatre, affected the consequence of Elliston, or at all
changed his nature, knew not the essential _greatness_ of the man whom
they disparage. It was my fortune to encounter him near St. Dunstan's
Church (which, with its punctual giants, is now no more than dust
and a shadow), on the morning of his election to that high office.
Grasping my hand with a look of 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. 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, _his Elba?_ He still played nightly upon the boards
of Drury, but in parts alas! allotted to him, not magnificently
distributed by him. Waiving his great loss as nothing, and
magnificently sinking the sense of fallen _material_ grandeur in
the more liberal resentment of depreciations done to his more
lofty _intellectual_ pretensions, "Have you heard" (his customary
exordium)--"have you heard," said he, "how they treat me? they put me
in _comedy_." Thought I--but his finger on his lips forbade any verbal
interruption--"where could 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.
O, it was a rich scene,--but Sir A---- C----, the best of
story-tellers and surgeons, who mends a lame narrative almost as
well as he sets a fracture, alone could do justice to it--that I was
witness to, in the tarnished room (that had once been green) of that
same little Olympic. There, after his deposition from Imperial Drury,
he substituted a throne. That Olympic Hill was his "highest heaven;"
himself "Jove in his chair." There he sat in state, while 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" audience, 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, and disarmed
that beautiful Rebel herself of her professional caprices--I verily
believe, he thought _her_ standing before him--"how dare you, Madam,
withdraw yourself, without a notice, from your theatrical duties?" "I
was hissed, Sir." "And you have the presumption to decide upon the
taste of the town?" "I don't know that, Sir, but I will never stand
to be hissed," was the subjoinder of young Confidence--when gathering
up his features into one significant mass of wonder, pity, and
expostulatory indignation--in a lesson never to have been lost upon a
creature less forward than she who stood before him--his words were
these: "They have hissed _me_."
'Twas the identical argument _a fortiori_, which the son of Peleus
uses to Lycaon trembling under his lance, to persuade him to take his
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 took his roast mutton with us in the Temple, to which
I had superadded a preliminary haddock. After a rather plentiful
partaking of the meagre banquet, not unrefreshed with the humbler sort
of liquors, I made a sort of apology for the humility of the fare,
observing that for my own part I never ate but of one dish at dinner.
"I too never eat but one thing at dinner"--was his reply--then after
a pause--"reckoning fish as nothing." The manner was all. It was as
if by one peremptory sentence he had decreed the annihilation of all
the savory esculents, which the pleasant and nutritious-food-giving
Ocean pours forth upon poor humans from her watery bosom. This was
_greatness_, tempered with considerate _tenderness_ to the feelings of
his scanty but welcoming entertainer.
_Great_ wert thou in thy life, Robert William Elliston! and _not
lessened_ in thy death, if report speak truly, which says that
thou didst direct that thy mortal remains should repose under no
inscription but one of pure _Latinity_. Classical was thy bringing
up! and beautiful was the feeling on thy last bed, which, connecting
the man with the boy, took thee back in thy latest exercise
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.
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 Foppington 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 altogether,
to the great improvement of his originality. At the hazard of
losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no
inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream
away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other
men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and
think. Books think for me.
I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor
Jonathan Wild too low. I can read any thing which I call a _book_.
There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such.
In this catalogue of _books which are no books--biblia a-biblia_--I
reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards
bound and lettered at the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks,
Statutes at Large; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie,
Soame Jenyns, and, generally, all those volumes which "no gentleman's
library should be without:" the Histories of Flavins Josephus (that
learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I
can read almost any thing. 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
occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and
hope it is some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what "seem its
leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a
Steele, or a Farquhar, and find--Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged
assortment of blockheaded Encyclopædias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas)
set out in an array of Russia, or Morocco, when a tithe of that
good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios; would
renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old 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 indiscriminately. I would not dress
a set of Magazines, for instance, in full suit. The dishabille, or
half-binding (with Russia backs ever) is _our_ costume. A Shakespeare,
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
odour (beyond Russia), if we would not forget kind feelings in
fastidiousness, of an old "Circulating Library" Tom Jones, or Vicar
of Wakefield! How they speak of the thousand thumbs, that have turned
over their pages with delight!--of the lone sempstress, whom they may
have cheered (milliner, or harder-working mantua-maker) after her long
day's needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an
hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean
cup, in spelling out their enchanting 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, Smollet, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually
self-reproductive volumes--Great Nature's Stereotypes--we see them
individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies
of them to be "eterne." But where a book is at once both good and
rare--where the individual is almost the species, and when _that_
perishes,
We know not where is that Promethean torch
That can its light relumine--
such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, by
his Duchess--no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable,
to honour and keep safe such a jewel.
Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem hopeless ever to
be reprinted; but old editions of writers, such as Sir Philip Sydney,
Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose-works, Fuller--of whom we _have_
reprints, yet the books themselves, though they go about, and are
talked of here and there, we know, have not endenizened themselves
(nor possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as to 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 much read as the current
editions of the other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the
older one. I do not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of
the Anatomy of Melancholy. What need was there of unearthing the bones
of that fantastic 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
white-wash the painted effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood there,
in rude but lively fashion depicted, to the very colour of the cheek,
the eye, the eye-brow, hair, the very dress he used to wear--the only
authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts
and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of white paint.
By ----, if I had been a justice of peace for Warwickshire, I would
have clapt both commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair
of meddling sacrilegious varlets.
I think I see them at their work--these sapient trouble-tombs.
Shall I be thought fantastical, if I confess, that the names of some
of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear--to
mine, at least--than that of Milton or of Shakspeare? It may be, that
the latter are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. The
sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are, Kit
Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley.
Much depends upon _when_ and _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 extreme
irksomeness.
A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of the Bank offices
it is the custom (to save so much individual time) for one of the
clerks--who is the best scholar--to commence upon the Times, or the
Chronicle, and recite its entire contents aloud _pro bono publico_.
With every advantage of lungs and elocution, the effect is singularly
vapid. In barbers' shops and public-houses a fellow will get up,
and spell out a paragraph, which he communicates as some discovery.
Another follows with _his_ selection. So the entire journal transpires
at length by piece-meal. Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, 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
_tête-à-tête_ 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 skimming over with his
own eye a magazine, or a light pamphlet.
I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of some
cathedral alone, and reading _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 property of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. From me you
shall never get the secret.
I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot settle my
spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who was generally to be
seen upon Snow-hill (as yet Skinner's-street _was not_), between the
hours of ten and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner.
I own this to have been a strain of abstraction beyond my reach. I
used to admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of secular contacts.
An illiterate encounter with a porter's knot, or a bread basket, would
have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and have
left me worse than indifferent to the five points.
There is a class of street-readers, whom I can never contemplate
without affection--the poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy
or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls--the owner,
with his hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, and
thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after
page, expecting every moment when he shall interpose his interdict,
and yet unable to deny themselves the gratification, they "snatch
a fearful joy." Martin B----, in this way, by daily fragments,
got through two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped
his laudable ambition, by asking him (it was in his younger days)
whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares, that under no
circumstances of 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 moralised upon this subject in two very touching but
homely stanzas.
I saw a boy with eager eye
Open a book upon a stall,
And read, as he'd devour it all;
Which when the stall-man did espy,
Soon to the boy I heard him call,
"You, Sir, you never buy a book,
Therefore in one you shall not look."
The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh
He wish'd he never 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 perceiv'd another boy,
Who look'd as if he'd not had any
Food, for that day at least--enjoy
The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder.
This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder,
Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny,
Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat:
No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat.
THE OLD MARGATE HOY
I am fond of passing my vacations (I believe I have said so before) at
one or other of the Universities. Next to these my choice would fix
me at some woody spot, such as the neighbourhood of Henley affords in
abundance, upon 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
penance at--Hastings!--and all because we were happy many years ago
for a brief week at--Margate. That was our first sea-side experiment,
and many circumstances combined to make it the most agreeable holyday
of my life. We had neither of us seen the sea, and we had never been
from home so long together in company.
Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy weather-beaten,
sun-burnt captain, and his rough accommodations--ill exchanged for the
foppery and fresh-water niceness of the modern steam-packet? To the
winds and waves thou committedst thy goodly freightage, and didst
ask no aid of magic fumes, and spells, and boiling cauldrons. With
the gales of heaven thou wentest swimmingly; or, when it was their
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-chimæra,
chimneying and furnacing the deep; or liker to that fire-god parching
up Scamander.
Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their coy reluctant
responses (yet to the suppression of anything like contempt, to the
raw questions, which we of the great city would be ever and anon
putting to them, as to the uses of this or that strange naval
implement?) 'Specially can I forget thee, thou happy medium, thou shade
of refuge between us and them, conciliating interpreter of their skill
to our simplicity, comfortable ambassador between sea and land!--whose
sailor-trowsers did not more convincingly assure thee to be an adopted
denizen of the former, than thy white cap, and whiter apron over them,
with thy neat-fingered practice in thy culinary vocation, bespoke thee
to have been of inland nurture heretofore--a master cook of Eastcheap?
How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation, cook, mariner,
attendant, chamberlain; here, there, like another Ariel, flaming at
once about all parts of the deck, yet with kindlier ministrations--not
to assist the tempest, but, as if touched with a kindred sense of our
infirmities, to soothe the qualms which that untried motion might
haply raise in our crude land-fancies. And when the o'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 savoury, nor very inviting, little
cabin!
With these additaments to boot, we had on board a fellow-passenger,
whose discourse in verity might have beguiled a longer voyage than we
meditated, and have made mirth and wonder abound as far as the Azores.
He was a dark, Spanish complexioned young man, remarkably handsome,
with an officer-like assurance, and an insuppressible volubility of
assertion. He was, in fact, the greatest liar I had met with then,
or since. He was none of your hesitating, half story-tellers (a most
painful 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, daylight depredations upon his neighbour's faith. He did
not stand shivering upon the brink, but was a hearty thoroughpaced
liar, and plunged at once into the depths of your credulity. I partly
believe, he made pretty sure of his company. Not many rich, not
many wise, or learned, composed at that time the common stowage
of a Margate packet. We were, I am afraid, a set of as unseasoned
Londoners (let our enemies give it a worse name) as Aldermanbury, or
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 favoured 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 obliterated from my memory much of his wild fablings; and the
rest would appear but dull, as written, and to be read on shore. He
had been Aid-de-camp (among other rare accidents and fortunes) 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
honour among themselves in private. I cannot call to mind half his
pleasant wonders; but I perfectly remember, that in the course of his
travels he had seen a phoenix; and he obligingly undeceived us of
the vulgar error, that there is but one of that species at a time,
assuring us that they were not uncommon in some parts of Upper Egypt.
Hitherto he had found the most implicit listeners. His dreaming
fancies had transported us beyond the "ignorant present." But when
(still hardying more and more in his triumphs over our simplicity) he
went on to 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 justice to the good sense and intrepidity of one of our
party, a youth, that had hitherto been one of his most deferential
auditors, who, from his recent reading, made bold to assure the
gentleman, that there must be some mistake, as "the Colossus in
question had been destroyed long since;" to whose opinion, delivered
with all modesty, our hero was obliging enough to concede thus much,
that "the figure was indeed a little damaged." This was the only
opposition he met with, and it did not at all seem to stagger him, for
he proceeded with his fables, which the same youth appeared to swallow
with still more complacency than ever,--confirmed, as it were, by the
extreme candour of that concession. With these prodigies he wheedled
us on till we came in sight of the Reculvers, which one of our own
company (having been the vogage before) immediately recognising, 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
vessels then were oftentimes obliged to prolong their voyage Upon a
nearer acquaintance with him, which he seemed neither to court nor
decline, we learned that he was going to Margate, with the hope of
being admitted into the Infirmary there for sea-bathing. His disease
was a scrofula, which appeared to have eaten all over him. He
expressed great hopes of a cure; and when we asked him, whether he had
any friends where he was going, he replied, "he _had_ no friends."
These pleasant, and some mournful passages, with the first sight
of the sea, co-operating with youth, and a sense of holydays, and
out-of-door adventure, to me that had been pent up in populous cities
for many months before,--have left upon my mind the fragrance as of
summer days gone by, bequeathing nothing but their remembrance for
cold and wintry hours to chew upon.
Will it be thought a digression (it may spare some unwelcome
comparisons), if I endeavour to account for the _dissatisfaction_
which I have heard so many persons confess to have felt (as I did
myself feel in part on this occasion), _at the sight of the sea for
the first time?_ I think the reason usually given--referring to the
incapacity of actual objects for satisfying our preconceptions of
them--scarcely goes deep enough into the question. Let the same person
see a lion, an elephant, a mountain, for the first time in his life,
and he shall perhaps feel himself a little mortified. The things do
not fill up that space, which the idea of them seemed to take up in
his mind. But they have still a 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 not say we, tell
ourselves so much, but the craving of the mind is to be satisfied with
nothing less. I will suppose the case of a young person of fifteen
(as I then was) knowing nothing of the sea, but from description. He
comes to it for the first time--all that he has been reading of it all
his life, and _that_ the most enthusiastic part of life,--all he has
gathered from narratives of wandering seamen; what he has gained from
true voyages, and what he cherishes as credulously from romance and
poetry; crowding their images, and exacting strange tributes from
expectation.--He thinks of the great deep, and of those who go down
unto it; of its thousand isles, and of the vast continents it washes;
of its receiving the mighty Plata, or Orellana, into its bosom,
without disturbance, or sense of augmentation; of Biscay swells, and
the mariner
For many a day, and many a dreadful night,
Incessant labouring round the stormy Cape;
of fatal rocks, and the "still-vexed Bermoothes;" of great whirlpools,
and the water-spout; of sunken ships, and sumless treasures swallowed
up in the unrestoring depths: of fishes and quaint monsters, to which
all that is terrible on earth--
Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal,
Compared with the creatures in the sea's entral;
of naked savages, and Juan Fernandez; of pearls, and shells; of coral
beds, and of enchanted isles; of mermaids' grots--
I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects to be shown all these
wonders at once, but he is under the tyranny of a mighty faculty,
which haunts him with 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 without dread or amazement?--Who, in similar
circumstances, has not been tempted to exclaim with Charoba, in the
poem of Gebir,--
Is this the mighty ocean?--is this _all_?
I love town, or country; but this detestable Cinque Port is neither. I
hate these scrubbed shoots, thrusting out their starved foliage from
between the horrid fissures of dusty innutritious rocks; which the
amateur calls "verdure to the edge of the sea." I require woods, and
they show me stunted coppices. I cry out for the water-brooks, and
pant for fresh streams, and inland murmurs. I cannot stand all day on
the naked beach, watching the capricious hues of the sea, shifting
like the colours of a dying mullet. I am tired of looking out at the
windows of this island-prison. I would fain retire into the interior
of my cage. While I gaze upon the sea, I want to be on it, over it,
across it. It binds me in with chains, as of iron. My thoughts are
abroad. I should not so feel in Staffordshire. There is no home for me
here. There is no sense of home at Hastings. It is a place of fugitive
resort, an heterogeneous assemblage of sea-mews and stock-brokers,
Amphitrites of the town, and misses that coquet with the Ocean. If
it were what it was in its primitive shape, and what it ought to
have remained, a fair honest fishing town, and no more, it were
something--with a few straggling fishermen's huts scattered about,
artless as its cliffs, and with their materials filched from them, it
were something. I could abide to dwell with Meschek; to assort with
fisher-swains, and smugglers. There are, or I dream there are, many
of this latter occupation here. Their faces become the place. I like
a smuggler. He is the only honest thief. He robs nothing but the
revenue,--an abstraction I never greatly cared about. I could go out
with them in their mackarel boats, or about their less ostensible
business, with some satisfaction. I can even tolerate those poor
victims to monotony, who from day to day pace along the beach,
in endless progress and recurrence, to watch their illicit
countrymen--townsfolk or brethren perchance--whistling to the
sheathing and unsheathing of their cutlasses (their only solace), who
under the mild name of preventive service, keep up a legitimated civil
warfare in the deplorable absence of a foreign one, to show their
detestation of run hollands, and zeal for old England. But it is the
visitants from town, that come here to _say_ that they have been here,
with no more relish of the sea than a pond perch, or a dace might be
supposed to have, that are my aversion. I feel like a foolish dace
in these regions, and have as little toleration for myself here, as
for them. What can they want here? if they had a true relish of the
ocean, why have they brought all this land luggage with them? or why
pitch their civilised tents in the desert? What mean these scanty
book-rooms--marine libraries as they entitle them--if the sea were, as
they would have us believe, a book "to read strange matter in?" what
are their foolish concert-rooms, if they come, as they would fain be
thought to do, to listen to the music of the waves? All is false and
hollow pretention. They come, because it is the fashion, and to
spoil the nature of the place. They are mostly, as I have said,
stockbrokers; but I have watched the better sort of them--now and
then, an honest citizen (of the old stamp), in the simplicity of his
heart, shall bring down his wife and daughters, to taste the sea
breezes. I always know the date of their arrival. It is easy to see it
in their countenance. A day or two they go wandering on the shingles,
picking up cockleshells, 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 swallow for ever about the banks of
Thamesis.
THE CONVALESCENT
A pretty severe fit of indisposition which, under the name of a
nervous fever, has made a prisoner of me for some weeks past, and is
but slowly leaving me, has reduced me to an incapacity of reflecting
upon any topic foreign to itself. Expect no healthy conclusions from
me this month, reader; I can offer you only sick men's dreams.
And truly the whole state of sickness is such; for what else is it
but a magnificent dream for a man to lie a-bed, and draw day-light
curtains about him; and, shutting out the sun, to induce a total
oblivion of all the works which are going on under it? To become
insensible to all the operations of life, except the beatings of one
feeble pulse?
If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick bed. How the patient lords
it there! what caprices he acts without controul! how kinglike 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 himself! he
is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon
him as his only duty. 'Tis the Two Tables of the Law to him. He has
nothing to think of but how to get well. What passes out of doors, or
within them, so he hear not the jarring of them, affects him not.
A little while ago he was greatly concerned in the event of a
law-suit, which was to be the making or the marring of his dearest
friend. He was to be seen trudging about upon this man's errand to
fifty quarters of the town at once, jogging this witness, refreshing
that solicitor. The cause was to come on yesterday. He is absolutely
as indifferent to the decision, as if it were a question to be tried
at Pekin. Peradventure from some whispering, going on about the
house, not intended for his hearing, he picks up enough to make him
understand, that things went cross-grained in the Court yesterday,
and his friend is ruined. But the word "friend," and the word "ruin,"
disturb him no more than so much jargon. He is not to think of any
thing but how to get better.
What a world of foreign cares are merged in that absorbing
consideration!
He has put on the strong armour of sickness, he is wrapped in the
callous hide of suffering; he keeps his sympathy, like some curious
vintage, under trusty lock and key, for his own use only.
He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to himself; he yearneth
over himself; his bowels are even melted within him, to think what he
suffers; he is not ashamed to weep over himself.
He is for ever plotting how to do some good to himself; studying
little stratagems and artificial alleviations.
He makes the most of himself; dividing himself, by an allowable
fiction, into as many distinct individuals, as 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 palpable substance
of pain, not to be removed without opening the very scull, 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 sympathiser; and instinctively feels that none can so
well perform that office for him. He cares for few spectators to his
tragedy. Only that punctual face of the old nurse pleases him, that
announces his broths, and his cordials. He likes it because it is
so unmoved, and because he can pour forth his feverish ejaculations
before it as unreservedly as to his bed-post.
To the world's business he is dead. He understands not what the
callings and occupations of mortals are; only he has a glimmering
conceit of some such thing, when the doctor makes his daily call:
and even in the lines of 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 same phenomenon at the same
hour to-morrow.
Household rumours touch him not. Some faint murmur, indicative of life
going on within the house, soothes him, while he knows not distinctly
what it is. He is not to know any thing, not to think of any thing.
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
stillness, and awful hush of the house, he lies in state, and feels
his sovereignty.
To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives. Compare the silent
tread, and quiet ministry, almost by the eye only, with which he is
served--with the careless demeanour, the unceremonious goings in
and out (slapping of doors, or leaving them open) of the very same
attendants, when he is getting a little better--and you will confess,
that from the bed of sickness (throne let me rather call it) to the
elbow chair of convalescence, is a fall from dignity, amounting to a
deposition.
How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine stature! where
is now the space, which he occupied so lately, in his own, in the
family's eye? The scene of his regalities, his sick room, which was
his presence chamber, where he lay and acted his despotic fancies--how
is it reduced to a common bedroom! The trimness of the very bed has
something petty and unmeaning about it. It is _made_ every day.
How unlike to that wavy, many-furrowed, oceanic surface, which it
presented so short a time since, when to _make_ it was a service not
to be thought of at oftener than three or four day revolutions, when
the patient was with pain and grief to be lifted for a little while
out of it, to submit to the encroachments of unwelcome neatness, and
decencies which his shaken frame deprecated; then to be lifted into it
again, for another three or four days' respite, to flounder it out of
shape again, while every fresh furrow was a 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 every thing but physic--can this be he,
who so lately came between the patient and his cruel enemy, as on some
solemn embassy from Nature, erecting herself into a high mediating
party? Pshaw!'tis some old woman.
Farewell with him all that made sickness pompous--the spell that
hushed the household--the desart-like stillness, felt throughout
its inmost chambers--the mute attendance--the inquiry by looks--the
still softer delicacies of self-attention--the sole and single eye of
distemper alonely fixed upon itself--world-thoughts excluded--the man
a world unto himself--his own theatre--
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--an article. In Articulo Mortis,
thought I; but it is something hard--and the quibble, wretched as it
was, relieved me. The summons, unseasonable as it appeared, seemed to
link me on again to the petty businesses of life, which I had lost
sight of; a gentle call to activity, however trivial; a wholesome
weaning from that preposterous dream of self-absorption--the puffy
state of sickness--in which I confess to have lain so long, insensible
to the magazines and monarchies, of the world alike; to its laws, and
to its literature. The hypochondriac flatus is 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 once again in my
natural pretensions--the lean and meagre figure of your insignificant
Essayist.
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 disproportionate straining or excess
of any one of them. "So strong a wit," says Cowley, speaking of a
poetical friend,
"--did Nature to him frame,
As all things but his judgment overcame,
His judgment like the heavenly moon did show,
Tempering that mighty sea below."
The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding in the raptures of
the higher poetry a condition of exaltation, to which they have no
parallel in their own experience, besides the spurious resemblance of
it in dreams and fevers, impute a state of 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
familiar as in his native paths. He ascends the empyrean heaven, and
is not intoxicated. He treads the burning marl without dismay; he wins
his flight without self-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 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 Flavius
recommending kindlier resolutions. Where he seems most to recede from
humanity, he will be found the truest to it. From beyond the scope of
Nature if he summon possible existences, he subjugates them to the
law of her consistency. He is beautifully loyal to that sovereign
directress, even when he appears most to betray and desert her. His
ideal tribes submit to policy; his very monsters are tamed to his
hand, even as that wild sea-brood, shepherded by Proteus. He tames,
and he clothes them with attributes of flesh and blood, till they
wonder at themselves, like Indian Islanders forced to submit to
European vesture. Caliban, the Witches, are as true to the laws of
their own nature (ours with a difference), as Othello, Hamlet, and
Macbeth. Herein the great and the little wits are differenced; that if
the latter wander ever so little from nature or actual existence, they
lose themselves, and their readers. Their phantoms are lawless; their
visions nightmares. They do not create, which implies shaping and
consistency. Their imaginations are not active--for to be active is to
call something into act and form--but passive, as men in sick dreams.
For the super-natural, or something super-added to what we know of
nature, they give you the plainly non-natural. And if this were all,
and that these mental hallucinations were discoverable only in the
treatment of subjects out of nature, or transcending it, the judgment
might with some plea be pardoned if it ran riot, and a little
wantonized: but even in the describing of real and every day life,
that which is before their eyes, one of these lesser wits shall more
deviate from nature--show more of that inconsequence, which has a
natural alliance with frenzy,--than a great genius in his "maddest
fits," as 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 intellectual viands of the
whole female reading public, till a happier genius arose, and expelled
for ever the innutritious phantoms,--whether he has not found his
brain more "betossed," his memory more puzzled, his sense of when and
where more confounded, among the improbable events, the incoherent
incidents, the inconsistent characters, or no-characters, of some
third-rate love intrigue--where the persons shall be a Lord Glendamour
and a Miss Rivers, and the scene only alternate between Bath and
Bond-street--a more bewildering dreaminess induced upon him, than
he has felt wandering over all the fairy grounds of Spenser. In the
productions we refer to, nothing but names and places is familiar; the
persons are neither of this world nor of any other conceivable one; an
endless 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 subtile art of tracing the mental processes it is effected, we
are not philosophers enough to explain, but in that wonderful episode
of the cave of Mammon, in which the Money God appears first in the
lowest form of a miser, is then a worker of metals, and becomes the
god of all the treasures of the world; and has a daughter, Ambition,
before whom all the world kneels for favours--with the 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 which still guides the poet
in his widest seeming-aberrations.
It is not enough to say that the whole episode is a copy of the mind's
conceptions in sleep; it is, in some sort--but what a copy! Let the
most romantic of us, that has been entertained all night with the
spectacle of some wild and magnificent vision, recombine it in the
morning, and try it by his waking judgment. That which appeared so
shifting, and yet so coherent, while that faculty was passive, when
it comes under cool examination, shall appear so reasonless and so
unlinked, that we are ashamed to have been so deluded; and to have
taken, though but in sleep, a monster for a god. But the transitions
in this episode are every whit as violent as in the most extravagant
dream, and yet the waking judgment ratifies them.
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 Westbourn Green. Alack, how good men, and the good turns
they do us, slide out of memory, and are recalled but by the surprise
of some such sad memento as that which now lies before us!
He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, with a wife and two
grown-up daughters, whom he maintained with the port and notions of
gentlewomen upon that slender professional allowance. Comely girls
they were too.
And was I in danger of forgetting this man?--his cheerful suppers--the
noble tone of hospitality, when first you set your foot in the
_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 sufficient to send
a mendicant from the door contented. But in the copious will--the
revelling imagination of your host--the "mind, the mind, Master
Shallow," whole beeves were spread before you--hecatombs--no end
appeared to the profusion.
It was the widow's cruse--the loaves and fishes; carving could not
lessen nor helping diminish it--the stamina were left--the elemental
bone still flourished, divested of its accidents.
"Let us live while we can," methinks I hear the open-handed creature
exclaim; "while we have, let us not want," "here is plenty left;"
"want for nothing"--with many more such hospitable sayings, the
spurs of appetite, and old concomitants of smoaking boards, and
feast-oppressed chargers. Then sliding a slender ratio of Single
Gloucester upon his wife's plate, or the daughter's, he would convey
the remanent rind into his own, with a merry quirk of "the nearer the
bone," &c., and declaring that he universally preferred the outside.
For we had our table distinctions, you are to know, and some of us in
a manner sate above the salt. None but his guest or guests dreamed of
tasting flesh luxuries at night, the fragments were _verè hospilibus
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 he 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 foaming in the centre, with beams of
generous Port or Madeira radiating to it from each of the table
corners. You got flustered, without knowing whence; tipsy upon
words; and reeled under the potency of his unperforming Bacchanalian
encouragements.
We had our songs--"Why, Soldiers, Why"--and the "British
Grenadiers"--in which last we were all obliged to bear chorus. Both
the daughters sang. Their proficiency was a nightly theme--the masters
he had given them--the "no-expence" which he spared to accomplish them
in a science "so necessary to young women." But then--they could not
sing "without the instrument."
Sacred, and by me, never-to-be violated, Secrets of Poverty! Should
I disclose your honest aims at grandeur, your make-shift efforts
of magnificence? Sleep, sleep, with all thy broken keys, if one of
the bunch be extant; thrummed by a thousand ancestral thumbs; dear,
cracked spinnet of dearer Louisa! Without mention of mine, be dumb,
thou thin accompanier of her thinner warble! A veil be spread over
the dear delighted face of the well-deluded father, who now haply
listening to 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 extend far,
but as far as it went, it was good. It was bottomed well; had good
grounds to go upon. In _the cottage_ was a room, which tradition
authenticated to have been the same in which Glover, in his occasional
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 to 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 hospitality; it was
going over his grounds; he was lord for the time of showing them, and
you the implicit lookers-up to his magnificence.
He was a juggler, who threw mists before your eyes--you had no time
to detect his fallacies. He would say "hand me the _silver_ sugar
tongs;" and, before you could discover it was a single spoon, and
that _plated_, he would disturb and captivate 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 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 preponderating 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 temperament. His riotous imagination
conjured up handsome settlements before their eyes, which kept them
up in the eye of the world too, and seem at last to have realised
themselves; for they both have married since, I am told, more than
respectably.
It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some subjects, or I
should wish to convey some notion of the manner in which the pleasant
creature described the circumstances of his own wedding-day. I faintly
remember something of a chaise and four, in which he made his entry
into Glasgow on that morning 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 velve,
And I myself in cramasie.
I suppose it was the only occasion, upon which his own actual
splendour at all corresponded with the world's notions on that
subject. In homely cart, or travelling caravan, by whatever humble
vehicle they chanced to be transported in less prosperous days, the
ride through Glasgow came back upon his fancy, not as a humiliating
contrast, but as a fair occasion for reverting to that one day's
state. It seemed an "equipage etern" from which no power of fate or
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 be not 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 Bobadil at home; and,
steeped in poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all the while
chin-deep in riches, is a strain of constitutional philosophy, and a
mastery over fortune, which was reserved for my old friend Captain
Jackson.
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN
Sera tamen respexit
Libertas.
VIRGIL.
A Clerk I was in London gay.
O'KEEFE.
If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years
of thy life--thy shining youth--in the irksome confinement of an
office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to
decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to
have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to
remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; 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 play-time, and the frequently-intervening vacations of school
days, to the eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours' a-day attendance
at a counting-house. But time partially reconciles us to anything.
I gradually became content--doggedly contented, as wild animals in
cages.
It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sundays, admirable 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 and endless succession of knacks and gewgaws,
and ostentatiously displayed wares of tradesmen, which make a
week-day saunter through the less busy parts of the metropolis so
delightful--are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle over--No
busy faces to recreate the idle man who contemplates them ever passing
by--the very face of business a charm by contrast to his temporary
relaxation from it. Nothing to be seen but unhappy countenances--or
half-happy at best--of emancipated 'prentices and little trades-folks,
with here and there a servant maid that has got leave to go out, who,
slaving all the week, with the habit has lost almost the capacity of
enjoying a free hour; and livelily expressing the hollowness of a
day's pleasuring. The very strollers in the fields on that day look
anything but comfortable.
But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day at Christmas,
with 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 of the distance keep touch with me? or rather
was it not a series of seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit
of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the most
of them? Where was the quiet, where the promised rest? Before I had a
taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the desk again, counting upon
the fifty-one tedious weeks that must intervene before such another
snatch would come. Still the prospect of its coming threw something of
an illumination upon the darker side of my captivity. Without it, as I
have said, I could scarcely have sustained my thraldom.
Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever been haunted
with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for business.
This, during my latter years, had increased to such a degree, that it
was visible in all the lines of my countenance. My health and my good
spirits flagged. I had perpetually a dread of some crisis, to which I
should be found unequal. Besides my daylight servitude, I served over
again all night in my sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary
false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like. I was fifty years
of age, 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 labouring under the impression that I had acted imprudently
in my disclosure; that I had foolishly given a handle against myself,
and had been anticipating my own dismissal. A week passed in this
manner, the most anxious one, I verily believe, in my whole life, when
on the evening of the 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 parlour. I thought, now my time is surely come, I
have done for myself, I am going to be told that they have no longer
occasion for me. L----, I could see, smiled at the terror I was in,
which was a little relief to me,--when to my utter astonishment B----,
the eldest partner, began a formal harangue to me on the length of
my services, my very meritorious conduct during the whole of the time
(the deuce, thought I, how did he find out that? I protest I never
had the confidence to think as much). He went on to descant on the
expediency of retiring at a 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 offer! I
do not know what I answered between surprise and gratitude, but it was
understood that I accepted their proposal, and I was told that I was
free from that hour to leave their service. I stammered out a bow,
and at just ten minutes after eight I went home--for ever. This noble
benefit--gratitude forbids me to conceal their names--I owe to the
kindness of the most munificent firm in the world--the house of
Boldero, Merryweather, Bosanquet, and Lacy.
_Esto perpetua!_
For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I could only
apprehend my felicity; I was too confused to taste it sincerely. I
wandered about, thinking 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 violent measure, with which, having no
Time my own but candlelight 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 desart.
"Years," you will say! "what is this superannuated simpleton
calculating upon? He has already told us, he is past fifty."
I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the
hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you
will find me still a young fellow. For _that_ is the only true Time,
which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to
himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is
other people's time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or
short, is at least multiplied for me three-fold. 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 commencement of my
freedom, and of which all traces are not yet gone, one was, that a
vast tract of time had intervened since I quitted the 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----l
take me, if I did not feel some remorse--beast, if I had not,--at
quitting my old compeers, the faithful partners of my toils for six
and thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and conundrums
the ruggedness of my professional road. Had it been so rugged then
after all? or was I a coward simply? Well, it is too late to repent;
and I also know, that these suggestions are a common fallacy of the
mind on such occasions. But my heart smote me. I had violently broken
the bands betwixt us. It was at least not courteous. I shall be some
time before I get quite reconciled to the separation. Farewell, old
cronies, yet not for long, for again and again I will come among
ye, if I shall have your leave. Farewell Ch----, dry, sarcastic,
and friendly! Do----, mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly! Pl----,
officious to do, and to volunteer, good services!--and thou, thou
dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a Whittington of old,
stately House of Merchants; with thy labyrinthine passages, and
light-excluding, pent-up offices, where candles for one half the year
supplied the place of the sun's light; unhealthy contributor to my
weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell! In thee remain, and not
in the obscure collection of some wandering bookseller, my "works!"
There let them rest, as I do from my labours, piled on thy massy
shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left, and full as
useful! My mantle I bequeath among ye.
A fortnight has passed since the date of my first communication. At
that period I was approaching to tranquillity, but had not reached it.
I boasted of a calm indeed, but it was comparative only. Something of
the first flutter was left; an unsettling sense of novelty; the dazzle
to weak eyes of 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 picture
in a morning. Was it ever otherwise? What is become of Fish-street
Hill? Where is Fenchurch-street? Stones of old Mincing-lane, which I
have worn with my daily pilgrimage for six and thirty years, to the
footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are your everlasting flints now
vocal? I indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is Change time, and
I am strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was no hyperbole when I
ventured to compare the change in my condition to 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 nights'
sensations. The genius of each day was upon me distinctly during the
whole of it, affecting my appetite, spirits, &c. The phantom of the
next day, with the dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor
Sabbath recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop white? What
is gone of Black Monday? All days are the same. Sunday itself--that
unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my
sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity
of pleasure out of it--is melted down into a week day. I can spare
to go to church now, without grudging the huge cantle which it used
to seem to cut out of the holyday. I have Time for everything. I
can visit a sick friend. I can interrupt the man of much occupation
when he is busiest. I can insult over him with an invitation to take
a day's pleasure with me to Windsor this fine May-morning. It is
Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind
in the world, carking and caring; like horses in a mill, drudging on
in the same eternal round--and what is it all for? A man can never
have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little
son, I would christen him NOTHING-TO-DO; he should do nothing. Man, I
verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am
altogether for the life contemplative. Will no kindly earthquake come
and swallow up those accursed cotton mills? Take me that lumber of a
desk there, and bowl it down
As low as to the fiends.
I am no longer ******, clerk to the Firm of &c. I am Retired Leisure.
I am to be met with in trim gardens. I am already come to be known by
my vacant face and careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace,
nor with any settled purpose. I walk about; not to and from. They tell
me, a certain _cum dignitate_ air, that has been buried so long with
my other good parts, has begun to shoot forth in my person. I grow
into gentility perceptibly. When I take up a newspaper, it is to read
the state of the opera. _Opus operatum est_. I have done all that I
came into this world to do. I have worked task work, and have the rest
of the day to myself.
THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING
It is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord Shaftesbury, and Sir William
Temple, are models of the genteel style in writing. We should prefer
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 undress.--What can be more pleasant than the way in
which the retired statesman peeps out in the 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 or 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 vigour they recovered with that remove. "Whether
such an effect (Temple beautifully adds) might grow from the air, or
the fruits of that climate, or by approaching nearer the sun, which
is the fountain of light and heat, when their natural heat was so
far decayed: or whether the piecing out of an old man's life were
worth the pains; I cannot tell: perhaps the play is not worth the
candle."--Monsieur Pompone, "French Ambassador in his (Sir William's)
time at the Hague," certifies him, that in his life he had never
heard of any man in France that arrived at a hundred years of age; a
limitation of life which the old gentleman imputes to the excellence
of their climate, giving them such a liveliness of temper and humour,
as disposes them to more pleasures of all kinds than in other
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 (Herefordshire) should live
to that age, as that they should be in vigour and in humour to travel
and to dance." Monsieur Zulichem, one of his "colleagues at the
Hague," informs him of a cure for the gout; which is confirmed by
another "Envoy," Monsieur Serinchamps, in that town, who had tried
it.--Old Prince 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 before 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 foreigners to his
fruit-trees. For the taste and perfection of what we esteem the best,
he can truly say, that the French, who have eaten his peaches and
grapes at Shene in no very ill year, have generally concluded that
the last are as good as any they have eaten in France on this side
Fontainebleau; and the first as good as any they have eat in Gascony.
Italians have agreed his white figs to be as good as any of that sort
in Italy, which is the earlier kind of white fig there; for in the
later kind and the blue, we cannot come near the warm climates, no
more than in the Frontignac or Muscat grape. His orange-trees too, are
as large as any he saw when he was young in France, except those of
Fontainebleau, or what he has seen since in the Low Countries; except
some very old ones of the Prince of Orange's. Of grapes he had the
honour of bringing over four sorts into England, which he enumerates,
and supposes that they are all by this time pretty common among some
gardeners in his neighbourhood, as well as several persons of quality;
for he ever thought all things of this kind "the commoner they are
made the better." The garden pedantry with which he asserts that 'tis
to little purpose to plant any of the best fruits, as peaches or
grapes, hardly, he doubts, beyond Northamptonshire at the furthest
northwards; and praises the "Bishop of Munster at Cosevelt," for
attempting nothing beyond cherries in that cold climate; is equally
pleasant and in character. "I may perhaps" (he thus ends his sweet
Garden Essay with a passage worthy of Cowley) "be allowed to know
something of this trade, since I have so long allowed myself to be
good for nothing else, which few men will do, or enjoy their gardens,
without often looking abroad to see how other matters play, what
motions in the state, and what invitations they may hope for into
other scenes. For my own part, as the country life, and this part of
it more particularly, were the 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 endeavoured to escape from them, into
the ease and freedom of a private scene, where a man may go his own
way and his own pace, in the common paths and circles of life. The
measure of choosing well is whether a man likes what he has chosen,
which 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 satisfaction of this retreat, where,
since my resolution taken of never entering again into any public
employments, I have passed five years without ever once going to town,
though I am almost in sight of it, and have a house there always ready
to receive me. Nor has this been any sort of affectation, as some have
thought it, but a mere want of desire or humour to make so small a
remove; for when I am in this corner, I can truly say with Horace, _Me
quoties reficit, &c._
"Me, when the cold Digentian stream revives,
What does my friend believe I think or ask?
Let me yet less possess, so I may live,
Whate'er of life remains, unto myself.
May I have books enough; and one year's store,
Not to depend upon each doubtful hour:
This is enough of mighty Jove to pray,
Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away."
The writings of Temple are, in general, after this easy copy. On one
occasion, indeed, his wit, which was mostly subordinate to nature and
tenderness, has seduced him into a string of felicitous antitheses;
which, it is obvious to remark, have been a model to Addison and
succeeding essayists. "Who would not be covetous, and with reason,"
he says, "if health could be purchased with gold? who not ambitious,
if it were at the command of power, or restored by honour? but, alas!
a white staff will not help gouty feet to walk better than a common
cane; nor a blue riband bind up a wound so well as a fillet. The
glitter of gold, or of 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
accordant with his own humour 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 left him little leisure to look into modern
productions, while his retirement gave him occasion to look back upon
the classic studies of his youth--decided in favour of the latter.
"Certain it is," he says, "that, whether the fierceness of the Gothic
humours, or noise of their perpetual wars, frighted it away, or that
the unequal mixture of the modern languages 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 sweetest,
the most general and most innocent amusements of common time and life.
They still find room in the courts of princes, and the cottages of
shepherds. They serve to revive and animate the dead calm of poor
and idle lives, and to allay or divert the violent passions and
perturbations of the greatest and the busiest men. And both these
effects are of equal use to human life; for the mind of man is like
the sea, which is neither agreeable to the beholder nor the voyager,
in a calm or in a storm, but is so to both when a little agitated by
gentle gales; and so the mind, when moved by soft and easy passions or
affections. I know very well that many who pretend to be wise by the
forms of being grave, are apt to despise both poetry and music, as
toys and trifles too light for the use or entertainment of serious
men. But whoever find themselves wholly insensible to their charms,
would, I think, do well to keep their own counsel, for fear of
reproaching their own temper, and bringing the 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 no trouble
the world or other men, because they cannot be quiet themselves,
though nobody hurts them." "When all is done (he concludes), human
life is at the greatest and the best but like a froward child, that
must be played with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet, till it
falls asleep, and then the care is over."
BARBARA S----
On the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, I forget which it was,
just as the clock had struck one, Barbara S----, with her accustomed
punctuality ascended the long rambling staircase, with awkward
interposed landing-places, which led to the office, or rather a sort
of box with a desk in it, whereat sat the then Treasurer of (what few
of our readers may remember) the Old Bath Theatre. All over the island
it was the custom, and remains so I believe to this day, for the
players to receive their weekly stipend on the Saturday. It was not
much that Barbara had to claim.
This little maid had just entered her eleventh year; but her important
station at the theatre, as it seemed to her, with the benefits which
she felt to accrue from her pious application of her small earnings,
had given an air of womanhood to her steps and to her behaviour. You
would have taken her to have been at least five years older.
Till latterly she had merely been employed in choruses, or where
children were wanted to fill up the scene. But the manager, observing
a diligence and adroitness in her above her age, had for some few
months 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 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 _book_--with
fine clasps, gilt-splashed, &c. She had conscientiously kept them
as they had been delivered to her; not a blot had been effaced
or tampered with. They were precious to her for their affecting
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 connected with
that interesting time.
Not long before she died I had been discoursing with her on the
quantity of real present emotion which a great tragic performer
experiences during acting. I ventured to think, that though in the
first instance such players must have possessed the feelings which
they so powerfully called up in others, yet by frequent repetition
those feelings must become deadened in great measure, and the
performer trust to the memory of past emotion, rather than express a
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, avoiding to instance in her
_self_-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 so sure that it was Mrs. Porter; but it was some great
actress of that day. The name is indifferent; but the fact of the
scalding tears I most distinctly remember.
I was always fond of the society of players, and am not sure that an
impediment in my speech (which certainly kept me out of the pulpit)
even more than certain personal disqualifications, which are often got
over in that profession, did not prevent me at one time of life from
adopting it. I have had the honour (I must ever call it) once to
have been admitted to the tea-table of Miss Kelly. I have played at
serious whist with Mr. Listen. I have chatted with ever good-humoured
Mrs. Charles Kemble. I have conversed as friend to friend with her
accomplished husband. I have been indulged with a classical conference
with Macready; and with a sight of the Player-picture gallery, at Mr.
Matthews's, when the kind owner, to remunerate me for my love of the
old actors (whom he loves so much) went over it with me, supplying
to his capital collection, what alone the artist could not give
them--voice; and their living motion. Old tones, half-faded, of Dodd
and Parsons, and Baddeley, have lived again for me at his bidding.
Only Edwin he could not restore to me. I have supped with ----; but I
am growing a coxcomb.
As I was about to say--at the desk of the then treasurer of the old
Bath theatre--not Diamond's--presented herself the little Barbara
S----.
The parents of Barbara had been in reputable circumstances. The father
had practised, I believe, as an apothecary in the town. But his
practice from causes which I feel my own infirmity too 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 Sunday's (generally their
only) meal of meat.
One thing I will only mention, that in some child's part, where in
her theatrical character she was to sup off a roast fowl (O joy to
Barbara!) some comic actor, who was for the night caterer for this
dainty--in the misguided humour of his part, threw over the dish
such a quantity of salt (O grief and pain of heart to Barbara!) that
when he 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 comprehend, 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 people besides
herself say, of all men least calculated for a treasurer. He had no
head for accounts, paid away at random, kept scarce any books, and
summing up at the week's end, if he found himself a pound or so
deficient, blest 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
landing-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 application to herself. She
thought of it as something which concerned grown-up people--men
and women. She had never known temptation, or thought of preparing
resistance against it.
Her first impulse was to go back to the old treasurer, and explain
to him his blunder. He was already so confused with age, besides a
natural want of punctuality, that she would have had some difficulty
in making him understand it. She saw _that_ in an instant. And then
it was such a bit of money! and then the image of a larger allowance
of butcher's meat on their table next day came across her, till
her little eyes glistened, and her mouth moistened. But then Mr.
Ravenscroft had always been so good-natured, had stood her friend
behind the scenes, and even recommended her 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 straining
and pinching from the family stock, and thought how glad she should
be to cover their poor feet with the same--and how then they could
accompany her to rehearsals, which they had hitherto been precluded
from doing, by reason of their unfashionable attire--in these thoughts
she reached the second landing-place--the second, I mean from the
top--for there was still another left to traverse.
Now virtue support Barbara!
And that never-failing friend did step in--for at that moment a
strength not her own, I have heard her say, was revealed to her--a
reason above 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) insensible to the lapse of minutes,
which to her were anxious ages; and from that moment a deep peace fell
upon her heart, and she knew the quality of honesty.
A year or two's unrepining application to her profession brightened
up the feet, and the prospects, of her little sisters, set the whole
family upon their legs again, and released her from the difficulty of
discussing moral dogmas upon a landing-place.
I have heard her say, that it was a surprise, not much short of
mortification to her, to see the coolness with which the old man
pocketed the difference, which had caused her such mortal throes.
This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, from the mouth of
the late Mrs. Crawford,[1] 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.
[Footnote 1: The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she
changed, by successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, and
Crawford. She was Mrs. Crawford, and a third time a widow, when I
knew her.]
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 _historified_, yet may the ill time never come to me,
when with a chilled heart, or a portion of irreverent sentiment, 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 feelings not very congenial to
the place, or to the solemn service which I had been listening to. It
was a jar after that music.
You had your education at Westminster; and 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 establishment, which is daily lessened and called
in question through these practices--to speak aloud your sense of
them; never to desist raising your voice against them, till they be
totally done away with and abolished; till the doors of Westminster
Abbey be no longer closed against the decent, though low-in-purse,
enthusiast, or blameless devotee, who must commit an injury against
his family economy, if he would be indulged with a bare admission
within its walls. You owe it to the decencies, which you wish to see
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 remember 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 had
been weighing anxiously prudence against sentiment) as when the gates
stood open, as those of the adjacent Park; when we could walk in at
any time, as the mood brought us, for a shorter or longer time, as
that lasted? Is the being shown over a place the same as silently for
ourselves detecting the genius of it? In no part of our beloved Abbey
now can a person find entrance (out of service time) under the sum of
_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 admission to Saint
Paul's. At the same time a decently clothed man, with as decent a
wife, and child, were bargaining for the same indulgence. The price
was only two-pence each person. The poor but decent man hesitated,
desirous to go in; but there were three of them, and he turned away
reluctantly. Perhaps he wished to have seen the tomb of Nelson.
Perhaps the Interior of the Cathedral was his object. But in the state
of his finances, even sixpence might reasonably seem too much. Tell
the Aristocracy of the country (no man can do it more impressively);
instruct them of what value these 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 admission would expose
the Tombs to violation. Remember your boy-days. Did you ever see,
or hear, of a mob in the Abbey, while it was free to all? Do the
rabble come there, or trouble their heads about such speculations?
It is all that you can do to drive them into your churches; they do
not voluntarily offer themselves. They have, alas! no passion for
antiquities; for tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. If they had,
they would be no longer the rabble.
For forty years that I have known the Fabric, the only well-attested
charge of violation adduced, has been--a ridiculous dismemberment
committed upon the effigy of that amiable spy, Major André. And is it
for this--the wanton mischief of some schoolboy, fired perhaps with
raw notions of Transatlantic Freedom--or the remote possibility
of such a mischief occurring again, so easily to be prevented
by stationing a constable within the walls, if the vergers are
incompetent to the duty--is it upon such wretched 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 Cathedral? The mischief was done about the time that
you were a scholar there. Do you know any thing about the unfortunate
relic?--
AMICUS REDIVIVUS
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Clos'd 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 morning
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, deliberately 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 remember nothing but the
silvery apparition of a good white head emerging; nigh which a staff
(the hand unseen that wielded it) pointed upwards, as feeling for the
skies. In a moment (if time was in that time) he was on my shoulders,
and I--freighted with a load more precious than his who bore Anchises.
And here I cannot but do justice to the officious zeal of sundry
passers by, who, albeit arriving a little too late to participate in
the honours of the rescue, in philanthropic shoals came thronging to
communicate their advice as to the recovery; prescribing variously
the application, or non-application, of salt, &c., to the person of
the patient. Life meantime was ebbing fast away, amidst the stifle of
conflicting judgments, when one, more sagacious than the rest, by a
bright thought, proposed sending for the Doctor. Trite as the counsel
was, and impossible, as one should think, to be missed on,--shall I
confess?--in this 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 _Cannabis_ 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 Middleton'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 passeth by the name of
Doctor, and is remarkable for wanting his left eye. His remedy--after
a sufficient application of warm blankets, friction, &c., is a simple
tumbler, or more, of the purest Cognac, with water, made as hot as
the convalescent can bear it. Where he findeth, as in the case of my
friend, a squeamish subject, he condescendeth to be the taster; and
showeth, by his own example, the innocuous nature of the prescription.
Nothing can be more kind or encouraging than this procedure. It addeth
confidence to the patient, to see his medical adviser go hand in
hand with himself in the remedy. When the doctor swalloweth his own
draught, what peevish invalid can refuse to pledge him in the potion?
In fine, MONOCULUS is a humane, sensible man, who, for a slender
pittance, scarce enough to sustain life, is content to wear it out
in the endeavour to save the lives of others--his pretensions so
moderate, that with difficulty I 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 upon
the nerves of the dear absentee. It seemed to have given a shake
to memory, calling up notice after notice, of all the providential
deliverances he had experienced in the course of his long and innocent
life. Sitting up in my couch--my couch which, naked and void of
furniture hitherto, for the salutary repose which it administered,
shall be honoured with costly valance, at some price, and henceforth
be a state-bed at Colebrooke,--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 chaunting--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
near 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, and sluggish aqueducts. Was
it for this, that, smit in boyhood with the explorations of that
Abyssinian traveller, I paced the vales of Amwell to explore your
tributary springs, to trace your salutary waters sparkling through
green Hertfordshire, and cultured Enfield parks?--Ye have no swans--no
Naiads--no river God--or did the benevolent hoary aspect of my friend
tempt ye to suck him in, that ye also might have the tutelary genius
of your waters?
Had he been drowned in Cam there would have been some consonancy
in it; but what willows had ye to wave and rustle over his moist
sepulture?--or, having no _name_, besides that unmeaning 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 favour of
sprinkling only!
I have nothing but water in my head o' nights since this frightful
accident. Sometimes I am with Clarence in his dream. At others, I
behold Christian beginning to sink, and crying out to his 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 pendant from locks of watchet
hue-constrained Lazari--Pluto's half-subjects--stolen fees from the
grave-bilking Charon of his fare. At their head Arion--or is it
G.D.?--in his singing garments marcheth singly, with harp in hand,
and votive garland, which Machaon (or Dr. Hawes) snatcheth straight,
intending to suspend it to the stern God of Sea. Then follow dismal
streams of Lethe, in which the half-drenched on earth are constrained
to drown downright, by wharfs where Ophelia twice acts her muddy
death.
And, doubtless, there is some notice in that invisible world, when one
of us approacheth (as my friend did so lately) to their inexorable
precincts. When a soul knocks once, twice, at death's door, the
sensation aroused within the palace must be considerable; and the grim
Feature, by modern science so often dispossessed of his prey, must
have learned by this time to pity Tantalus.
A pulse assuredly was felt along the line of the Elysian shades, when
the near arrival of G.D. was announced by no equivocal indications.
From their seats of Asphodel arose the gentler and the graver
ghosts-poet, or historian--of Grecian or of Roman lore--to crown with
unfading chaplets the half-finished love-labours 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[1], with newest airs prepared to greet ----; and, patron of
the gentle Christ's boy,--who should have been his patron through
life--the mild Askew, with longing aspirations, leaned foremost from
his venerable Æsculapian chair, to welcome into that happy company the
matured virtues of the man, whose tender scions in the boy he himself
upon earth had so prophetically fed and watered.
[Footnote 1: Graium _tantum vidit_.]
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 amatorious" enough, yet the
things in their kind (as he confesses to be true of the romance) may
be "full of worth and wit." They savour of the Courtier, it must be
allowed, and not of the Commonwealthsman. But Milton was a Courtier
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 oftenest call to mind of Milton were the
compositions of his maturest years. Those of Sydney, which I am about
to produce, were written in the very hey-day of his blood. They are
stuck full of amorous fancies--far-fetched conceits, befitting his
occupation; for True Love thinks no labour to send out Thoughts
upon the vast, and more than Indian voyages, to bring home rich
pearls, outlandish wealth, gums, jewels, spicery, to sacrifice in
self-depreciating similitudes, as shadows of true amiabilities in the
Beloved. We must be Lovers--or at least the cooling touch of time,
the _circum præcordia 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 Author of the Schoolmistress; for passions that
creep and whine in Elegies and Pastoral Ballads. I am sure Milton
never loved at this rate. I am afraid some of his 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:--
Angelus unicuique suus (sic credite gentes)
Obtigit ætheriis ales ab ordinibus.
Quid mirum, Leonora, tibi si gloria major,
Nam tua præsentem vox sonat ipsa Deum?
Aut Deus, aut vacui certè mens tertia coeli,
Per tua secretò guttura serpit agens;
Serpit agens, facilisque docet mortalia corda
Sensim immortali assuescere posse sono.
QUOD SI CUNCTA QUIDEM DEUS EST, PER CUNCTAQUE FUSUS,
IN TE UNÂ LOQUITUR, CÆTERA MUTUS HABET.
This is loving in a strange fashion; and it requires some candour of
construction (besides the slight darkening of a dead language) to cast
a veil over the ugly appearance of something very like blasphemy in
the last two verses. I think the Lover would have been staggered, if
he had gone about to express the same thought in English. I am sure,
Sydney has no nights 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.
I
With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies;
How silently; and with how wan a face!
What! may it be, that even in heavenly place
That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;
I read it in thy looks; thy languish! grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess?
Do they call _virtue_ there--_ungratefulness_!
The last line of this poem is a little obscured by transposition. He
means, Do they call ungratefulness there a virtue?
II
Come, Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease[1]
Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw;
O make in me those civil wars to cease:
I 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.
III
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 captiv'd in golden cage.
O fools, or over-wise! alas, the race
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start,
But only STELLA'S eyes, and STELLA'S heart.
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 rumour flies,
That poison foul of bubbling _Pride_ doth lie
So in my swelling breast, that only I
Fawn on myself, and others do despise;
Yet _Pride_, I think, doth not my Soul possess,
Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass:
But one worse fault--_Ambition_--I confess,
That makes me oft my best friends 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 look'd 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 fill'd my veins with pride--
When Cupid, having me (his slave) descried
In Mars's livery, prancing in the press,
"What now, Sir Fool!" said he; "I would no less:
Look here, I say." I look'd, and STELLA spied,
Who hard by made a window send forth light.
My heart then quak'd, 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.
VII
No more, my dear, no more these counsels try;
O give my passions leave to run their race;
Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace;
Let folk o'er-charged with brain against me cry;
Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye;
Let me no steps, but of lost labour, trace;
Let all the earth with scorn recount my case--
But do not will me from my love to fly.
I do not envy Aristotle's wit,
Nor do aspire to Cæsar'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?
O heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face
Anger invests with such a lovely grace,
That anger's self I needs must kiss again.
IX
I never drank of Aganippe well,
Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit,
And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell;
Poor lay-man I, for sacred rites unfit.
Some do I bear of Poets' fury tell,
But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it;
And this I swear by blackest brook of hell,
I am no pick-purse of another's wit.
How falls it then, that with so smooth an ease
My thoughts I speak, and what I speak doth flow
In verse, and that my verse best wits doth please?
Guess me the cause--what is it thus?--fye, no.
Or so?--much less. How then? sure thus it is,
My lips are sweet, inspired with STELLA'S kiss.
X
Of all the kings that ever here did reign,
Edward, named Fourth, as first in praise I name,
Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain--
Although less gifts imp feathers oft on Fame.
Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame
His sire's revenge, join'd with a kingdom's gain;
And, gain'd by Mars could yet mad Mars so tame,
That Balance weigh'd what Sword did late obtain.
Nor that he made the Floure-de-luce so 'fraid,
Though strongly hedged of bloody Lions' paws
That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid.
Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause--
But only, for this worthy knight durst prove
To lose his crown rather than fail his love.
XI
O happy Thames, that didst my STELLA bear,
I saw thyself, with many a smiling line
Upon thy cheerful face, Joy's livery wear,
While those fair planets on thy streams did shine;
The boat for joy could not to dance forbear,
While wanton winds, with beauty so divine
Ravish'd, stay'd not, till in her golden hair
They did themselves (O sweetest prison) twine.
And fain those Æol's youth there would their stay
Have made; but, forced by nature still to fly,
First did with puffing kiss those locks display.
She, so dishevell'd, blush'd; from window I
With sight thereof cried out, O fair disgrace,
Let honour's self to thee grant highest place!
XII
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, honour'd by public heed,
By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot;
Nor blam'd for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed.
And that you know, I envy you no lot
Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss,
Hundreds of years you STELLA'S feet may kiss.
[Footnote 1: Press.]
Of the foregoing, the first, the second, and the last sonnet, are
my favourites. But the general beauty of them all is, that they
are so perfectly characteristical. The spirit of "learning and of
chivalry,"--of which union, Spenser has entitled Sydney to have been
the "president,"--shines through them. I confess I can see nothing
of the "jejune" or "frigid" in them; much less of the "stiff" and
"cumbrous"--which I have sometimes heard objected to the Arcadia. The
verse runs off swiftly and gallantly. It might have been tuned to the
trumpet; or tempered (as himself expresses it) to "trampling horses'
feet." They abound in felicitous phrases--
O 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.
_2nd Sonnet._
--That sweet enemy,--France--
_5th Sonnet._
But they are not rich in words only, in vague and unlocalised
feelings--the failing too much of some poetry of the present day--they
are full, material, and circumstantiated. Time and place appropriates
every one of them. It is not a fever of passion wasting itself upon a
thin diet of dainty words, but a transcendent passion pervading and
illuminating action, pursuits, studies, feats of arms, the opinions
of contemporaries and his judgment of them. An historical thread runs
through them, which almost affixes a date to them; marks the _when_
and _where_ they were written.
I have dwelt the longer upon what I conceive the merit of these poems,
because I have been hurt by the wantonness (I wish I could treat it
by a gentler name) with which W.H. takes every occasion of insulting
the memory of Sir Philip Sydney. But the decisions of the Author of
Table Talk, &c., (most profound and subtle where they are, as for the
most part, just) are more safely to be relied upon, on subjects and
authors he has a partiality for, than on such as he has conceived
an accidental prejudice against. Milton wrote Sonnets, and was a
king-hater; and it was congenial perhaps to sacrifice a courtier to
a patriot. But I was unwilling to lose a _fine idea_ from my mind.
The noble images, passions, sentiments, and poetical delicacies of
character, scattered all over the Arcadia (spite of some stiffness and
encumberment), justify to 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 repose 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 chearful 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,
That love and honour might agree,
And that pure love will do no wrong.
Sweet saints, it is no sin or blame
To love a man of virtuous name.
Did never Love so sweetly breathe
In any mortal breast before:
Did never Muse inspire beneath
A Poet's brain with finer store.
He wrote of Love with high conceit,
And beauty rear'd above her height.
Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief running into rage) in
the Poem,--the last in the collection accompanying the above,--which
from internal testimony I believe to be Lord Brooke's,--beginning with
"Silence augmenteth grief,"--and then seriously ask himself, whether
the subject of such absorbing and confounding regrets could have been
_that thing_ which Lord Oxford termed him.
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO
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. We sometimes wish, that we had observed the same
abstinence with Daniel.
A word or two of D.S. He ever appeared to us one of the finest
tempered of Editors. Perry, of the Morning Chronicle, was equally
pleasant, with a dash, no slight one either, of the courtier. S. was
frank, plain, and English all over. We have worked for both these
gentlemen.
It is soothing to contemplate the head of the Ganges; to trace the
first little bubblings of a mighty river;
With holy reverence to approach the rocks,
Whence glide the streams renowned in ancient song.
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 holyday (a "whole day's leave" we called it at Christ's
Hospital) sallying forth at rise of sun, not very well provisioned
either for such an undertaking, to trace the current of the New
River--Middletonian stream!--to its scaturient source, as we had read,
in meadows by fair Amwell. Gallantly did we commence our solitary
quest--for it was essential to the dignity of a DISCOVERY, that no eye
of schoolboy, save our own, should beam on the detection. By flowery
spots, and verdant lanes, skirting Hornsey, Hope trained us on in many
a baffling turn; endless, hopeless meanders, as it seemed; or as if
the jealous waters had _dodged_ us, reluctant to have the humble spot
of their nativity revealed; till spent, and nigh famished, before set
of the same sun, we sate down somewhere by Bowes Farm, near Tottenham,
with a tithe of our proposed labours only yet accomplished; sorely
convinced in spirit, that that Brucian enterprise was as yet too
arduous for our young shoulders.
Not more refreshing to the thirsty curiosity of the traveller is the
tracing of some mighty waters up to their shallow fontlet, than it is
to a pleased and candid reader to go back to the inexperienced essays,
the first callow flights in authorship, of some established name in
literature; from the Gnat which preluded to the Æneid, to the Duck
which Samuel Johnson trod on.
In those days every Morning Paper, as an essential retainer to its
establishment, kept an author, who was bound to furnish daily a
quantum of witty paragraphs. Sixpence a joke--and it was thought
pretty high too--was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in these cases.
The chat of the day, scandle, but, above all, _dress_, furnished
the material. The length of no paragraph was to exceed seven lines.
Shorter they might be, but they must be poignant.
A fashion of _flesh_, or rather _pink_-coloured 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 reputation in
that line. We were pronounced a "capital hand." O the conceits which
we varied upon _red_ in all its prismatic differences! from the trite
and obvious flower of Cytherea, to the flaming costume of the lady
that has her sitting upon "many waters." Then there was the collateral
topic of ancles. What an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like
ourself, of touching that nice brink, and yet never tumbling over it,
of a seemingly ever approximating something "not quite proper;" while,
like a skilful posture-master, balancing betwixt decorums and their
opposites, he keeps the line, from which a hair's-breadth deviation is
destruction; hovering in the confines of light and darkness, or where
"both seem either;" a hazy uncertain delicacy; Autolycus-like in the
Play, still putting 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 Astræa--_ultima Calestûm terras reliquit_--we
pronounced--in reference to the stockings still--that MODESTY TAKING
HER FINAL LEAVE OF MORTALS, HER LAST BLUSH WAS VISIBLE IN HER ASCENT
TO THE HEAVENS BY 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 favoured us. The ancles of our fair
friends in a few weeks began to reassume their whiteness, and left us
scarce a leg to stand upon. Other female whims followed, but none,
methought, so pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd conceits, and more
than single meanings.
Somebody has said, that to swallow six cross-buns daily consecutively
for a fortnight would surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to have to
furnish as many jokes daily, and that not for a fortnight, but for a
long twelvemonth, as we were constrained to do, was a little harder
execution. "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 any thing rather than business, it follows, that the only time
we could spare for this manufactory of jokes--our supplementary
livelihood, that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and
cheese--was exactly that part of the day which (as we have heard of No
Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time; that is, no time
in which a man ought to be up, and awake, in. To speak more plainly,
it is that time, of an hour, or an hour and a half's duration, in
which a man, whose occasions call him up so preposterously, has to
wait for his breakfast.
O those headaches at dawn of day, when at five, or half-past-five in
summer, and not much later in the dark seasons, we were compelled to
rise, having been perhaps not above four hours in bed--(for we were no
go-to-beds with the lamb, though we anticipated the lark ofttimes in
her rising--we liked 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 "labour," there the "work."
No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to that, our
slavery. No fractious operants ever turned out for half the tyranny,
which this 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 feature, upon which
no smile could play; some flint, from which no process of ingenuity
could procure a distillation. There they lay; there your appointed
tale of brick-making was set before you, which you must finish,
with or without straw, as it happened. The craving Dragon--_the
Public_--like him in Bel's temple--must be fed; it expected its daily
rations; and Daniel, and ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we
could on this side bursting him.
While we were wringing our coy sprightlinesses for the Post, and
writhing under the toil of what is called "easy writing," Bob Allen,
our quondam schoolfellow, was tapping his impracticable brains in a
like service for the "Oracle." Not that Robert troubled himself much
about wit. If his paragraphs had a sprightly air about them, it was
sufficient. He carried this nonchalance so far at last, that a matter
of intelligence, and that no very important one, was not seldom palmed
upon his employers for a good jest; for example sake--"_Walking
yesterday morning casually down Snow Hill, who should we meet but Mr.
Deputy Humphreys! we rejoice to add, that the worthy Deputy appeared
to enjoy a good state of health. We do not remember ever to have seen
him look better._" This gentleman, so surprisingly met upon Snow Hill,
from some peculiarities in gait or gesture, was a 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 Holborn shortly after this extraordinary rencounter, which he
told with tears of satisfaction in his eyes, and chuckling at the
anticipated effects of its announcement next day in the paper. We did
not quite comprehend where the wit of it lay at 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 any thing that morning than a
Common Council Man. His services were shortly after dispensed with,
on the plea that his paragraphs of late had been deficient in point.
The one in question, it must be owned, had an air, in the opening
especially, proper to awaken curiosity; and the sentiment, or moral,
wears the aspect of humanity, and good neighbourly feeling. But
somehow the conclusion was not judged altogether to answer to the
magnificent promise of the premises. We traced our friend's pen
afterwards in the "True Briton," the "Star," the "Traveller,"--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 Lombardy. The Lombards
were the first money-brokers in Europe._" Bob has done more to set
the public right on this important point of blazonry, than the whole
College of Heralds.
The appointment of a regular wit has long ceased to be a part of the
economy of a Morning Paper. Editors find their own jokes, or do as
well without them. Parson Este, and Topham, brought up the 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
difficult 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 present writer--the curt "Astræan allusion"--would be thought
pedantic, and out of date, in these days.
From the office of the Morning Post (for we may as well exhaust our
Newspaper Reminiscences at once) by change of property in the paper,
we were transferred, mortifying exchange! to the office of the
Albion Newspaper, late Rackstrow's Museum, in Fleet-street. What a
transition--from a handsome apartment, from rose-wood desks, and
silver-inkstands, to an office--no office, but a _den_ rather, but
just redeemed from the occupation of dead monsters, of which it
seemed redolent--from the centre of loyalty and fashion, to a focus
of vulgarity and sedition! Here in murky closet, inadequate from its
square contents to the receipt of the two bodies of Editor, and humble
paragraph-maker, together at one time, sat in the discharge of his new
Editorial functions (the "Bigod" of Elia) the redoubted John Fenwick.
F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left not many in the
pockets of his friends whom he might command, had purchased (on tick
doubtless) the whole and sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the
rights and titles (such as they were worth) of the Albion, from one
Lovell; of whom we know nothing, save that he had stood in the pillory
for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless concern--for
it had been sinking ever since its commencement, and could now reckon
upon not more than a hundred subscribers--F. resolutely determined
upon pulling down the Government in the first instance, and making
both our fortunes by way of corollary. For seven weeks and mote did
this infatuated Democrat go about borrowing seven shilling pieces,
and lesser coin, to meet the daily demands of the Stamp Office, which
allowed no credit to publications of that side in politics. An outcast
from politer bread, we attached our small talents to the forlorn
fortunes of our friend. Our occupation now was to write treason.
Recollections of feelings--which were all that now 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 cunning a periphrasis--as Mr. Bayes says, never
naming the _thing_ directly--that the keen eye of an Attorney General
was insufficient to detect the lurking snake among them. There were
times, indeed, when we sighed for our more gentleman-like occupation
under Stuart. But with change of masters it is ever change of service.
Already one paragraph, and another, as we learned afterwards from a
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 apostacy, as F. pronounced it, (it is hardly
worth particularising), happening to offend the nice sense of Lord,
or, as he then delighted to be called, Citizen Stanhope, deprived F.
at once of the last hopes of a guinea from the last patron that had
stuck by us; and breaking up our establishment, left us to the safe,
but somewhat mortifying, neglect of the Crown Lawyers.--It was about
this time, or a little earlier, that Dan. Stuart made that curious
confession to us, that he had "never deliberately walked into an
Exhibition at Somerset House in his life."
BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART
Hogarth excepted, can we produce any one painter within the last fifty
years, or since the humour 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 arranged by
him? Any upon whom its leading or collateral points have impressed
themselves so tyrannically, that he dared not treat it otherwise,
lest he should falsify a revelation? Any that has imparted to his
compositions, not merely so much truth as is enough to convey a story
with clearness, but that individualising 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
modern art--we will not demand that it should be equal--but in any
way analogous to what Titian has effected, in that wonderful bringing
together of two times in the "Ariadne," in the National Gallery?
Precipitous, with his reeling Satyr rout about him, re-peopling and
re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond
the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings himself at the
Cretan. This is the time present. With this telling of the story an
artist, and no ordinary one, might remain richly proud. Guido, in
his harmonious version of it, saw no 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 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 undistracted from Theseus--Ariadne is still pacing
the solitary shore, in as much heart-silence, and in almost the same
local solitude, with which she awoke at day-break to catch the forlorn
last glances of the sail that bore away the Athenian.
Here are two points miraculously co-uniting; fierce society, with
the feeling of solitude still absolute; noon-day revelations, with
the accidents of the dull grey dawn unquenched and lingering; the
_present_ Bacchus, with the _past_ 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 previous? 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 Raphael in
the Vatican. It is the Presentation of the newborn Eve to Adam by the
Almighty. A fairer mother of mankind we might imagine, and a goodlier
sire perhaps of men since born. But these are matters subordinate to
the conception of the _situation_, displayed in this extraordinary
production. A 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 blest it with the bauble. This is the obvious, the
first-sight view, the superficial. An artist of a higher grade,
considering the awful presence they were in, would have taken care
to subtract something from the expression of the more human passion,
and to heighten the more spiritual one. This would be as much as an
exhibition-goer, from the opening of Somerset House to last year's
show, has been encouraged to look for. It is obvious to hint at a
lower expression, yet in a picture, that for respects of drawing
and colouring, might be deemed not wholly inadmissible within these
art-fostering walls, in which the raptures should be as ninety-nine,
the gratitude as one, or perhaps Zero! By neither the one passion nor
the other has Raphael expounded the situation of Adam. Singly upon his
brow sits the absorbing sense of wonder at the created miracle. The
_moment_ is seized by the intuitive artist, perhaps not self-conscious
of his art, in which neither of the 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 antiquity--the gardens of the Hesperides. To do Mr. ----
justice, he had painted a laudable orchard, with fitting seclusion,
and a veritable dragon (of which a Polypheme by Poussin is somehow a
fac-simile for the situation), looking over into the world shut out
backwards, so that none but a "still-climbing Hercules" could hope to
catch a peep at the admired Ternary of Recluses. No conventual porter
could keep his keys better than this custos with the "lidless eyes."
He not only sees that none _do_ intrude into that privacy, but, as
clear as daylight, that none but _Hercules aut Diabolus_ by any manner
of means _can_. So far all is well. We have absolute solitude here
or nowhere. _Ab extra_ the damsels are snug enough. But here the
artist's courage seems to have failed him. He began to pity his pretty
charge, and, to comfort the irksomeness, has peopled their solitude
with a bevy of fair attendants, maids of honour, or ladies of the
bed-chamber, according to the approved etiquette at a court of the
nineteenth century; giving to the whole scene the air of a _fête
champêtre_, if we will but excuse the absence of the gentlemen.
This is well, and Watteauish. But what is become of the solitary
mystery--the
Daughters three,
That sing around the golden tree?
This is not the way in which Poussin would have treated this subject.
The paintings, or rather the stupendous architectural designs, of a
modern artist, have been urged as objections to the theory of our
motto. They are of a character, we confess, to stagger it. His towered
structures are of the highest order of the material sublime. Whether
they were dreams, or transcripts of some elder workmanship--Assyrian
ruins old--restored by this mighty artist, they satisfy our most
stretched and craving conceptions of the glories of the antique
world. It is a pity that they were ever peopled. On that side, the
imagination of the artist halts, and appears defective. Let us examine
the point of the story in the "Belshazzar's Feast." We will introduce
it by an apposite 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 proceeding with the grace, when, at a signal given, the
lights were suddenly overcast, and a huge transparency was discovered,
in which glittered in golden letters--
"BRIGHTON-EARTHQUAKE-SWALLOW-UP-ALIVE!"
Imagine the confusion of the guests; the Georges and garters, jewels,
bracelets, moulted upon the occasion! The fans dropt, and picked up
the next morning by the sly court pages! Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name
fainting, and the Countess of **** holding the smelling bottle,
till the good-humoured Prince caused harmony to be restored by calling
in fresh candles, and declaring that the whole was nothing but a
pantomime _hoax_, got up by the ingenious Mr. Farley, of Covent
Garden, from hints which his Royal Highness himself had furnished!
Then imagine the infinite applause that followed, the mutual
rallyings, the declarations that "they were not much frightened," of
the assembled galaxy.
The point of time in the picture exactly answers to the appearance of
the transparency in the 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 that we may conceive to have taken
place in a mob of Brighton courtiers, sympathising with the well-acted
surprise of their sovereign; all this, and no more, is exhibited by
the well-dressed lords and ladies in the Hall of Belus. Just this sort
of consternation we have seen among a flock of disquieted wild geese
at the report only of a gun having gone off!
But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal anxiety for the
preservation of their persons,--such as we have witnessed at a
theatre, when a slight alarm of fire has been given--an adequate
exponent of a supernatural terror? the way in which the finger of God,
writing judgments, would have been met by the withered conscience?
There is a human fear, and a divine fear. The one is disturbed,
restless, and bent upon escape. The other is 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 golden and silver vessels are gorgeously enumerated, with the
princes, the king's concubines, and his wives. Then follows--
"In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over
against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's
palace; and the _king_ saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the
_king's_ countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so
that the joints of his loins were loosened, and his knees smote one
against 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 Belshazzar,
that his single brain was troubled. Not a word is spoken of its being
seen by any else there present, not even by the queen herself, who
merely undertakes for the interpretation of the phenomenon, as related
to her, doubtless, by her husband. The lords are simply said to be
astonished; _i.e._ at the trouble and the change of countenance in
their sovereign. Even the prophet does not appear to have seen the
scroll, which the king saw. He 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 miracle? this
message to a 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, 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 colour of the wedding garments, the ring glittering upon the
bride's fingers, the metal and fashion of the wine pots; for at such
seasons there is leisure and luxury to be curious. But in a "day of
judgment," or in a "day of lesser horrors, yet divine," as at the
impious feast of Belshazzar, the eye should see, as the actual eye of
an agent or patient in the immediate scene would see, only in masses
and indistinction. Not only the female attire and jewelry exposed
to the critical eye of the fashion, as minutely as the dresses in
a lady's magazine, in the criticised picture,--but perhaps the
curiosities of anatomical science, and studied diversities of posture
in the falling angels and sinners of Michael Angelo,--have no business
in their great subjects. There was no leisure of 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 indifferent eye, but
only what the eye might be supposed to see in the doing or suffering
of some portentous action. Suppose the moment of the swallowing up of
Pompeii. There they were to be seen--houses, columns, architectural
proportions, differences of public and private buildings, men and
women at their standing occupations, the diversified thousand
postures, attitudes, dresses, in some confusion truly, but physically
they were visible. But what eye saw them at that eclipsing moment,
which reduces confusion to a kind of unity, and when the senses
are upturned from their proprieties, when sight and hearing are a
feeling only? A thousand years have passed, and we are at leisure to
contemplate the weaver fixed standing at his shuttle, the baker at his
oven, and to turn over with antiquarian coolness the pots and pans of
Pompeii.
"Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeah, and thou, Moon, in the valley of
Ajalon." Who, in reading this magnificent Hebraism, in his conception,
sees aught but the heroic son of Nun, with the out-stretched arm,
and the greater and lesser light 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 synchronic miracle? Yet in the picture of this
subject by the artist of the "Belshazzar's Feast"--no ignoble work
either--the marshalling and landscape of the war is 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 modern art
alone, but ancient, where only it is to be found if anywhere, can be
detected erring, from defect of this imaginative faculty. The world
has nothing to show of the preternatural in painting, transcending the
figure of Lazarus bursting his grave-clothes, in the great picture at
Angerstein's. It seems a thing between two beings. A ghastly horror
at itself struggles with newly-apprehending gratitude at second life
bestowed. It cannot forget that it was a ghost. It has hardly felt
that it is a body. It has to tell of the world of spirits.--Was it
from a feeling, that the crowd of half-impassioned by-standers, and
the still more irrelevant 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 and hue--for it is a glorified
work--do not respond adequately to the action--that the single figure
of the Lazarus has been attributed to Michael Angelo, and the mighty
Sebastian unfairly robbed of the fame of the greater half of the
interest? Now that there were not indifferent passers-by within actual
scope of the eyes of those present at the miracle, to whom the sound
of it had but faintly, or not at all, reached, it would be hardihood
to deny; but would they see them? or can the mind in the conception of
it admit of such unconcerning objects? can it think of them at all? or
what associating league to the imagination can there be between the
seers, and the seers not, of a presential miracle?
Were an artist to paint upon demand a picture of a Dryad, we will ask
whether, in the present low state of expectation, the patron would
not, or ought not to be fully satisfied with a beautiful naked figure
recumbent under wide-stretched oaks? Disseat those woods, and place
the same figure among fountains, and falls of pellucid water, and
you have a--Naiad! Not so in a rough print we have seen after Julio
Romano, we think--for it is long since--_there_, by no process, with
mere change of scene, could the figure have reciprocated characters.
Long, grotesque, fantastic, yet with a grace of her own, beautiful in
convolution and distortion, linked to her connatural tree, co-twisting
with its limbs her own, till both seemed either--these, animated
branches; those, disanimated members--yet the animal and vegetable
lives sufficiently kept distinct--_his_ Dryad lay--an approximation of
two natures, which to conceive, it must be seen; analogous to, not the
same with, the delicacies of Ovidian 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-builder, in _his_
"Building of the Ark?" It is in that scriptural series, to which we
have referred, and which, judging from some fine rough old graphic
sketches of them which 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 Frenchmen, of whom Coleridge's friend made the prophetic guess
at Rome, from the beard and horns of the Moses of Michael Angelo
collected no inferences beyond that of a He Goat and a Cornuto; so
from this subject, of mere mechanic promise, it would instinctively
turn away, as from one incapable of investiture with any grandeur. The
dock-yards at Woolwich would object derogatory associations. The depôt
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 action, he keeps ever out of
sight the meanness of the operation. There is the Patriarch, in calm
forethought, and with holy prescience, 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
everything, the unseen qualities as nothing. Othello's colour--the
infirmities and corpulence of a Sir John Falstaff--do they haunt us
perpetually in the reading? or are they 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 _always_ a Blackamoor; and the other only Plump
Jack. Deeply corporealised, and enchained hopelessly 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 that he is every season held up at our Exhibitions)
in the shallow hope of exciting mirth, would have joined the rabble
at the heels of his starved steed. We wish not to see _that_
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
threshold to gaze upon his forlorn habiliments, and the "strange
bed-fellows which misery brings a man acquainted with?" Shade of
Cervantes! who in thy Second Part could put into the mouth of thy
Quixote those high aspirations of a super-chivalrous gallantry, where
he replies to one of the shepherdesses, apprehensive that he would
spoil their pretty networks, and inviting him to be a guest with them,
in accents like these: "Truly, fairest Lady, Actæon was not more
astonished when he saw Diana bathing herself at the fountain, than
I have been in beholding your beauty: I commend the manner of your
pastime, and thank you for your kind offers; and, if I may serve
you, so I may be sure you will be obeyed, you may command me: for my
profession is this, To shew 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 promiseth you
this, is Don Quixote de la Mancha, if haply this name hath come to
your hearing." Illustrious Romancer! were the "fine frenzies," which
possessed the brain of thy own Quixote, a fit subject, as in this
Second Part, to be exposed to the jeers of Duennas and Serving Men? to
be monstered, and shown up at the heartless banquets of great men? Was
that pitiable infirmity, which in thy First Part misleads him, _always
from within_, into half-ludicrous, but more than half-compassionable
and admirable errors, not infliction enough from heaven, that men by
studied artifices must devise and practise upon the humour, to 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 his fled wits, which thou
hast made thy Quixote suffer in Duchesses' halls, and at the hands of
that unworthy nobleman.[1]
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 received the fooleries of
the man, more to their palates than the generosities of the master, in
the sequel let his pen run riot, lost the 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
competitor 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.
[Footnote 1: Yet from this Second Part, our cried-up pictures are
mostly selected; the waiting-women with beards, &c.]
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 _Days_ in the year
were invited. The _Festivals_, whom he deputed as his stewards, were
mightily taken with the notion. They had been engaged time out of
mind, they said, in providing mirth and good cheer for mortals below;
and it was time they should have a taste of their own bounty. It was
stiffly debated among them, whether the _Fasts_ should be admitted.
Some said, the appearance of such lean, starved guests, with their
mortified faces, would pervert the ends of the meeting. But the
objection was over-ruled by _Christmas Day_, who had a design upon
_Ash Wednesday_ (as you shall hear), and a mighty desire to see how
the old Domine would behave himself in his cups. Only the _Vigils_
were requested to come with their lanterns, to light the gentlefolks
home at night.
All the _Days_ came to their day. Covers were provided for three
hundred and sixty-five guests at the principal table: with an
occasional knife and fork at the side-board for the _Twenty-Ninth of
February_.
I should have told you, that cards of invitation had been issued. The
carriers were the _Hours_; twelve little, merry, whirligig foot-pages,
as you should desire to see, that went all round, and found out the
persons invited well enough, with the exception of _Easter Day_,
_Shrove Tuesday_, and a few such _Moveables_, who had lately shifted
their quarters.
Well, they all met at last, foul _Days_, fine _Days_, all sorts of
_Days_, and a rare din they made of it. There was nothing but, Hail!
fellow _Day_,--well met--brother _Day_--sister _Day_,--only _Lady Day_
kept a little on the aloof, and seemed somewhat scornful. Yet some
said, _Twelfth Day_ cut her out and out, for she came in a tiffany
suit, white and gold, like a queen on a frost-cake, all royal,
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 concerted) betwixt _Christmas_
and _Lord Mayor's Days_. Lord! how he laid about him! Nothing but
barons of beef and turkeys would go down with him--to the great
greasing and detriment of his new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still
_Christmas Day_ was at his elbow, plying him the wassail-bowl, till
he roared, and hiccup'd, and protested there was no faith in dried
ling, but commended it to the devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious,
censorious, hy-po-crit-crit-cri-tical mess, and no dish for a
gentleman. Then he dipt his fist into the middle of the great custard
that stood before his _left-hand neighbour_, and daubed his hungry
beard all over with it, till you would have taken him for the _Last
Day in December_, it so hung in icicles.
At another part of the table, _Shrove Tuesday_ was helping the _Second
of September_ to some cock broth,--which 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 spunging upon _Shrovetide's_
pancakes; which _April Fool_ perceiving, told him he did well, for
pancakes were proper to a _good fry-day_.
In another part, a hubbub arose about the _Thirtieth of January_, who,
it seems, being a sour puritanic character, that thought nobody's meat
good or sanctified enough for him, had smuggled into the room a calf's
head, which he had had cooked at home for that purpose, thinking
to feast thereon incontinently; but as it lay in the dish, _March
manyweathers_, who is a very fine lady, and subject to the megrims,
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[1] being called for after this, a notable
dispute arose between the _Twelfth of August_ (a zealous old Whig
gentlewoman,) and the _Twenty Third of April_ (a new-fangled lady of
the Tory stamp,) as to which of them should have the honour to propose
it. _August_ grew hot upon the matter, affirming time out of mind the
prescriptive right to have lain with her, till her rival had basely
supplanted her; whom she represented as little better than a _kept_
mistress, who went about in _fine 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 possessor. 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 garlands. This being done,
the lordly _New Year_ from the upper end of the table, in a cordial
but somewhat lofty tone, returned thanks. He felt proud on an occasion
of meeting so many of his worthy father's late tenants, promised to
improve their farms, and at the same time to abate (if any thing 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 farther end of the table
(who was discovered to be no other than the _Fifth of November_,)
muttered out, distinctly enough to be heard by the whole company,
words to this effect, that, "when the old one is gone, he is a fool
that looks for a better." Which rudeness of his, the guests resenting,
unanimously voted his expulsion; and the male-content was thrust out
neck and heels into the cellar, as the properest place for such a
_boutefeu_ and firebrand as he had shown himself to be.
Order being restored--the young lord (who to say truth, had been a
little ruffled, and put beside his oratory) in as few, and yet as
obliging words as possible, assured them of entire welcome; and, with
a graceful turn, singling out poor _Twenty Ninth of February_, that
had sate all this while mumchance at the side-board, begged to couple
his health with that of the good company before him--which he drank
accordingly; observing, that he had not seen his honest face any time
these four years, with a number of endearing expressions besides. At
the same time, removing the solitary _Day_ from the forlorn seat which
had been assigned him, he stationed him at his own board, somewhere
between the _Greek Calends_ and _Latter Lammas_.
_Ash Wednesday_, being now called upon for a song, with his eyes fast
stuck in his head, and as well as the Canary he had swallowed would
give him leave, struck up a Carol, which _Christmas Day_ had taught
him for the nonce; and was followed by the latter, who gave "Miserere"
in fine style, hitting off the mumping notes and lengthened drawl of
_Old Mortification_ with infinite humour. _April Fool_ swore they had
exchanged conditions: but _Good Friday_ was observed to look extremely
grave; and _Sunday_ held her fan before her face, that she might not
be seen to smile.
_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 favour of the _Forty Days before Easter_; because the debtors in
all cases outnumbered the creditors, and they kept _lent_ all the
year.
All this while, _Valentine's Day_ kept courting pretty _May_, who sate
next him, slipping amorous _billets-doux_ under the table, till the
_Dog Days_ (who are naturally of a warm 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 _Rogation Day_ in particular, who was for
ever putting the _question_ to her; but she kept him at a distance, as
the chronicle would tell--by which I apprehend she meant the Almanack.
Then she rambled on to the _Days that were gone_, the _good old Days_,
and so to the _Days before the Flood_--which plainly showed her old
head to be little better than crazed and doited.
Day being ended, the _Days_ called for their cloaks and great coats,
and took their leaves. _Lord Mayor's Day_ went off in a Mist, as
usual; _Shortest Day_ in 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 stout, sturdy patrole, called
the _Eve of St. Christopher_--seeing _Ash Wednesday_ in a condition
little better than he should be--e'en whipt him over his shoulders,
pick-a-back fashion, and _Old Mortification_ went floating home,
singing--
On the bat's back 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.
[Footnote 1: The late King.]
THE WEDDING
I do not know when I have been better pleased than at being invited
last week to be present at the wedding of a friend's daughter. 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-humour for a week or two after, and
enjoy a reflected honey-moon. Being without a family, I am flattered
with these temporary adoptions into a friend's family; I feel a
sort of cousinhood, or uncleship, for the season; I am inducted
into degrees of affinity; and, in the participated socialities of
the little community, I lay down for a brief while my solitary
bachelorship. I carry this humour so far, that I take it unkindly to
be left out, even when a funeral is going on in the house of a dear
friend. But to my subject.--
The union itself had been long settled, but its celebration had been
hitherto deferred, to an almost unreasonable state of suspense in the
lovers, by some invincible prejudices which the bride's father 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 ardours, might at last be lingered
on, till passion had time to cool, and love go out in the experiment.
But a little wheedling on the part of his wife, who was by no means
a party to these overstrained notions, joined to some serious
expostulations on that of his friends, who, from the growing
infirmities of the old gentleman, could not promise ourselves many
years' enjoyment of his company, and were anxious to bring matters to
a conclusion during his life-time, 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
indignation 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 prudence may be held out to
cover it. The hard-heartedness of fathers is a fine theme for romance
writers, a sure and moving topic; but is there not something untender,
to say no more of it, in the hurry which a beloved child is sometimes
in to tear herself from the parental stock, and commit herself to
strange graftings? The case is heightened where the lady, as in the
present instance, happens to be an only child. I do not understand
these matters experimentally, but I can make a shrewd guess at
the wounded pride of a parent upon these occasions. It is no new
observation, I believe, that a lover in most cases has no rival so
much to be feared as the father. Certainly there is a jealousy in
_unparallel subjects_, which is little less heart-rending than the
passion which we more strictly christen by that name. Mothers'
scruples are more easily got over; for this reason, I suppose, that
the 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 (impossible to be
conceived in the same degree by the other parent) of a life of forlorn
celibacy, which the refusal of a tolerable match may entail upon
their child. Mothers' instinct is a surer guide here, than the cold
reasonings of a father on such a topic. To this instinct may be
imputed, and by it alone may be excused, the unbeseeming artifices, by
which some wives push on the matrimonial projects of their daughters,
which the husband, however approving, shall entertain with comparative
indifference. A little shamelessness on this head is pardonable.
With this explanation, forwardness becomes a grace, and maternal
importunity receives the name of a virtue.--But the parson stays,
while I preposterously assume his office; I am preaching, while the
bride is on the threshold.
Nor let any of my female readers suppose that the sage reflections
which have just escaped me have the obliquest tendency of application
to the young lady, who, it will be seen, is about to venture upon a
change in her condition, at a _mature and competent age_, and not
without the fullest approbation of all parties. I only deprecate _very
hasty marriages_.
It had been fixed that the ceremony should be gone through at an early
hour, to give time for a little _déjeuné_ afterwards, to which a
select party of friends had been invited. We were in church a little
before the clock struck eight.
Nothing could be more judicious or graceful than the dress of the
bride-maids--the three charming Miss Foresters--on this morning. To
give the bride an opportunity of shining singly, they had come habited
all in green. I am ill at describing female apparel; but, while _she_
stood at the altar in vestments white and candid as her thoughts, a
sacrificial whiteness, _they_ assisted in robes, such as might become
Diana's nymphs--Foresters indeed--as such who had not yet come to the
resolution of putting off cold virginity. These young maids, not being
so blest as to have a mother living, I am told, keep single for their
father's sake, and live altogether so happy with their remaining
parent, that the hearts of their lovers are ever broken with the
prospect (so inauspicious to their hopes) of such uninterrupted
and provoking home-comfort. Gallant girls! each a victim worthy of
Iphigenia!
I do not know what business I have to be present in solemn places. I
cannot divest me of an unseasonable 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 this occasion, and _give
away the bride._ Something ludicrous occurred to me at this most
serious of all moments--a sense of my unfitness to have the disposal,
even in imagination, of the sweet young creature beside me. I fear I
was betrayed to some lightness, for the awful eye of the parson--and
the rector's eye of Saint Mildred's in the Poultry is no trifle of a
rebuke--was upon me in an instant, souring my incipient jest to the
tristful severities of a funeral.
This was the only misbehaviour which I can plead to upon this solemn
occasion, unless what was objected to me after the ceremony by one of
the handsome Miss T----s, be accounted a solecism. She was pleased to
say that she had never seen a gentleman before me give away a bride in
black. Now black has been my ordinary apparel so long--indeed I take
it to be the proper costume of an author--the stage sanctions it--that
to have appeared in some lighter colour would have raised more mirth
at my expense, than the anomaly had created censure. But I could
perceive that the bride's mother, and some elderly ladies present (God
bless them!) would have been well content, if I had come in any other
colour than that. But I got over the omen by a lucky apologue, which
I remembered out of Pilpay, or some Indian author, of all the birds
being invited to the linnets' wedding, at which, when all the rest
came in their gayest feathers, the raven alone apologised for his
cloak because "he had no other." This tolerably reconciled the elders.
But with the young people all was merriment, and shakings of hands,
and congratulations, and kissing away the bride's tears, and kissings
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 occasion--a
striking contrast to his usual neglect of personal appearance. He did
not once shove up his borrowed locks (his custom ever at his morning
studies) to betray the few grey stragglers of his own beneath them.
He wore an aspect of thoughtful satisfaction. I trembled for the
hour, which at length approached, when after a protracted _breakfast_
of three hours--if stores of cold fowls, tongues, hams, botargoes,
dried fruits, wines, cordials, &c., can deserve so meagre an
appellation--the coach was announced, which was come to carry off the
bride and bridegroom for a season, as custom has sensibly ordained,
into the country; upon which design, wishing them a felicitous
journey, let us return to the assembled guests.
As 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 sipt 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 emergency, of thinking and giving vent to all manner
of strange nonsense. In this awkward dilemma I found it sovereign. I
rattled off some of my most excellent absurdities. All were willing
to be relieved, at any expense of reason, from the pressure of the
intolerable vacuum which had succeeded to the morning bustle. By this
means I was fortunate in keeping together the better part of the
company to a late hour: and a rubber of whist (the Admiral's favourite
game) with some rare strokes of chance as well as skill, which came
opportunely on his side--lengthened out till midnight--dismissed the
old gentleman at last to his bed with comparatively easy spirits.
I have been at my old friend's various times since. I do not know a
visiting place where every guest is so perfectly at his ease; nowhere,
where harmony is so strangely the result of confusion. Every body is
at cross purposes, yet the effect is so much better than uniformity.
Contradictory orders; servants pulling one way; master and mistress
driving some other, yet both diverse; visitors huddled up in corners;
chairs unsymmetrised; candles disposed by chance; meals at odd hours,
tea and supper at once, or the latter preceding the former; the host
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 perfect _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 instrument
stands where it stood, but she is gone, whose delicate touch could
sometimes for a short minute appease the warring elements. He has
learnt, as Marvel expresses it, to "make his destiny his choice." He
bears bravely up, but he does not come out with his flashes of wild
wit so thick as formerly. His sea songs seldomer escape him. His wife,
too, looks as if she wanted some younger body to scold and set to
rights. 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 interest in her, so long as she is not absolutely
disposed of. The youthfulness of the house is flown. Emily is married.
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 pillow, 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 fairyland
heaven, about which a poor human fancy may have leave to sport and air
itself, I will hope, without presumption.
Methought--what wild things dreams are!--I was present--at what would
you imagine?--at an angel's gossiping.
Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, or whether it came
purely of its own head, neither you nor I know--but there lay, sure
enough, wrapped 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, dims the expanding
eye-lids of mortal infants, but as if to explore its path in those
its unhereditary palaces--what an inextinguishable titter that time
spared not celestial visages! Nor wanted there to my seeming--O the
inexplicable simpleness of dreams!--bowls of that cheering nectar,
--which mortals _caudle_ call below--
Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants,--stricken in years,
as it might seem,--so dexterous were those heavenly attendants to
counterfeit kindly similitudes of earth, to greet, with terrestrial
child-rites the young _present_, which earth had made to heaven.
Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full symphony as those by
which the spheres are tutored; but, as loudest instruments on earth
speak oftentimes, muffled; so to accommodate their sound the better
to the weak ears of the imperfect-born. And, with the noise of those
subdued soundings, the Angelet sprang forth, fluttering its rudiments
of pinions--but forthwith flagged and was recovered into the arms of
those full-winged angels. And a wonder it was to see how, as years
went round in heaven--a year in dreams is as a day--continually its
white shoulders put forth buds of wings, but, wanting the perfect
angelic 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
vigour 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 went with a lame gait; but in its
goings it exceeded all mortal children in grace and swiftness. Then
pity first sprang up in angelic bosoms; and yearnings (like the human)
touched them at the sight of the immortal lame one.
And with pain did then first those Intuitive Essences, with pain
and strife to their natures (not grief), put back their bright
intelligences, and reduce their ethereal minds, schooling them to
degrees and slower processes, so to adapt their lessons to the gradual
illumination (as must needs be) of the half-earth-born; and what
intuitive notices they could not repel (by reason that their nature
is, to know all things at once), the half-heavenly novice, by the
better part of its nature, aspired to receive into its understanding;
so that Humility and 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 nothing), and
still it kept, and is to keep, perpetual childhood, and is the Tutelar
Genius of Childhood upon earth, and still goes lame and lovely.
By the banks of the river Pison is seen, lone-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 as a shadow or emblem of that which stains
the beauty of the terrestrial. And this correspondency is not to be
understood but by dreams.
And in the archives of heaven I had grace to read, how that once
the angel Nadir, being exiled from his place for mortal passion,
upspringing on the wings of parental love (such power had parental
love for a moment to suspend the else-irrevocable law) appeared for
a brief instant in his station; and, depositing a wondrous Birth,
straightway 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.
A DEATH-BED
IN A LETTER TO R.H. ESQ. OF B----
I called upon you this morning, and found that you were gone to visit
a dying friend. I had been upon a like errand. Poor N.R. has lain
dying now for almost a week; such is the penalty we pay for having
enjoyed through life a strong constitution. Whether he knew me or not,
I know not, or whether he saw me through his poor glazed eyes; but the
group I saw about him I shall not forget. Upon the bed, or about it,
were assembled his Wife, their two Daughters, and poor deaf Robert,
looking doubly stupified. There they were, and seemed to have been
sitting all the week. I could only reach out a hand to Mrs. R.
Speaking was impossible in that mute chamber. By this time it must be
all over with him. In him I have a loss the world cannot make up. He
was my friend, and my father's friend, for all the life that I can
remember. I seem to have made foolish friendships since. Those are the
friendships, which outlast a second generation. Old as I am getting,
in his eyes I was still the child he knew me. To the last he called
me Jemmy. I have none to call me Jemmy now. He was the last link that
bound me to B----. You are but of yesterday. In him I seem to have
lost the old plainness of manners and singleness of heart. Lettered
he was not; his reading scarcely exceeded the Obituary of the old
Gentleman's Magazine, to which he has never failed of having recourse
for these last fifty years. Yet there was the pride of literature
about him from that slender perusal; and moreover from his office of
archive-keeper to your ancient city, in which he must needs pick up
some equivocal Latin; which, among his less literary friends, assumed
the air of a very pleasant pedantry. Can I forget the erudite look
with which, having tried to puzzle out the text of a Black lettered
Chaucer in your Corporation Library, to which he was a sort of
Librarian, he gave it up with this consolatory reflection--"Jemmy,"
said he, "I do not know what you find in these very old books, but I
observe, there is a deal of very indifferent spelling in them." His
jokes (for he had some) are ended; but they were old Perennials,
staple, and always as good as new. He had one Song, that spake of the
"flat bottoms of our foes coming over in darkness," and alluded to a
threatened Invasion, many years since blown over; this he reserved to
be sung on Christmas Night, which we always passed with him, and he
sung it with the freshness of an impending event. How his eyes would
sparkle when he came to the passage:
We'll still make 'em run, and we'll still make 'em sweat,
In spite of the devil and Brussels' Gazette!
What is the Brussels' Gazette now? I cry, while I endite these
trifles. His poor girls who are, I believe, compact of solid goodness,
will have to receive their afflicted mother at an unsuccessful home
in a petty village in ----shire, where for years they have been
struggling to raise a Girls' School with no effect. Poor deaf Robert
(and the less hopeful for being so) is thrown upon a deaf world,
without the comfort to his father on his death-bed of knowing him
provided for. They are left almost provisionless. Some life assurance
there is; but, I fear, not exceeding ----. Their hopes must be from
your Corporation, which their father has served for fifty years. Who
or what are your Leading Members now, I know not. Is there any, to
whom without impertinence, you can represent the true circumstances of
the family? You cannot say good enough of poor R., and his poor wife.
Oblige me and the dead, if you can.
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 acquired 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 firma_
still--for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue,
which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, has made to spring up
beneath their sandals.
I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if possible, with
still more womanish expressions.
Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a
salver--two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect!
And here the same lady, or another--for likeness is identity on
tea-cups--is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither
side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a
right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly
land her in the midst of a flowery mead--a furlong off on the other
side of the same strange stream!
Farther on--if far or near can be predicated of their world--see
horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays.
Here--a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-extensive--so objects show,
seen through 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 extraordinary old blue
china (a recent purchase) which we were now for the first time using;
and could not help remarking, how favourable circumstances had been
to us of late years, that we could afford to please the eye sometimes
with trifles of this sort--when a passing sentiment seemed to
over-shade the brows of my companion. I am quick at detecting these
summer clouds in Bridget.
"I wish the good old times would come again," she said, "when we were
not quite so rich. I do not mean, that I want to be poor; but there
was a middle state;"--so she was pleased to ramble on,--"in which I am
sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now
that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a
triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, O! how much ado I had to
get you to 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 buying then, when we felt
the money that we paid for it.
"Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till
all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so thread-bare--and all
because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home
late at night from Barker's in Covent-garden? Do you remember how we
eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase,
and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of
the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you
should be too late--and when the old bookseller with some grumbling
opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting
bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures--and when
you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome--and when you
presented it to me--and when we were exploring the perfectness of it
(_collating_ you called it)--and while I was repairing some of the
loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be
left till day-break--was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or can
those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to
keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give you half
the honest vanity, with which you flaunted it about in that over-worn
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 come home with twenty apologies for laying out a less number
of shillings upon that print after Lionardo, which we christened the
'Lady Blanch;' when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the
money--and thought of the money, and looked again at the picture--was
there no pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do but
to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do
you?
"Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, and Potter's
Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holyday--holydays, and all other fun,
are gone, now we are rich--and the little hand-basket, in which I used
to deposit our day's fare of 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 of
dinners, never debating the expense--which, after all, never has half
the relish of those chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy of
uncertain usage, and a precarious welcome.
"You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the pit. Do
you remember where it was we used to sit, when we saw the battle of
Hexham, and the surrender of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland
in the Children in the Wood--when we squeezed out our shillings
a-piece to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling
gallery--where you felt all the time that you ought not to have
brought me--and more strongly I felt obligation to you for having
brought me--and the pleasure was the better for a little shame--and
when the curtain drew up, what 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 women recognised 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, as we have
done, now and then indulge themselves 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 impossible we should spend so much next year--and
still we found our slender capital decreasing--but then, betwixt ways,
and projects, and compromises of one sort or another, and talk of
curtailing this charge, and doing without that for the future--and the
hope that youth brings, and laughing spirits (in which you were never
poor till now,) we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with
'lusty brimmers' (as you used to quote it out of _hearty cheerful Mr.
Cotton_, as you called him), we used to welcome in the 'coming guest.'
Now we have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year--no
flattering 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 happier when we were poorer, but
we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the
excess, for if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we should
not much mend ourselves. That we had much to struggle with, as we grew
up together, we have reason to be most thankful. It strengthened, and
knit our compact closer. We could never have been what we have been
to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency which you now
complain of. The resisting power--those natural 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 shilling
gallery days return--they are dreams, my cousin, now--but could
you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by our
well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa--be once
more struggling up those inconvenient 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 whole cheerful
theatre down beneath us--I know not the fathom line that ever touched
a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than
Croesus had, or the great Jew R---- is supposed to have, to purchase
it. And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding
an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that
pretty insipid half-Madona-ish chit of a lady in that very blue
summer-house."
POPULAR FALLACIES
I.--THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD
This axiom contains a principle of compensation, which disposes us to
admit the truth of it. But there is no safe trusting to dictionaries
and definitions. We should more willingly fall in with this popular
language, if we did not find _brutality_ sometimes awkwardly coupled
with _valour_ in the same 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 wonderfully diverting. Some people's
share of animal spirits is notoriously low and defective. It has not
strength to raise a vapour, or furnish out the wind of a tolerable
bluster. These love to be told that huffing is no part of valour.
The truest courage with them is that which is the least noisy and
obtrusive. But confront one of these silent heroes with the swaggerer
of real life, and his confidence in the theory quickly vanishes.
Pretensions do not uniformly bespeak non-performance. A modest
inoffensive deportment does not necessarily imply valour; neither does
the absence of it justify us in denying that quality. Hickman wanted
modesty--we do not mean _him_ of Clarissa--but who ever doubted his
courage? Even the poets--upon whom this equitable distribution of
qualities should be most binding--have thought it agreeable to nature
to depart from the rule upon occasion. Harapha, in the "Agonistes," is
indeed a bully upon the received notions. Milton has made him at once
a blusterer, a giant, and a dastard. But Almanzor, in Dryden, talks
of driving armies singly before him--and does it. Tom Brown had a
shrewder insight into this kind of character than either of his
predecessors. He divides the palm more equably, and allows his hero
a sort of 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, insensibly to melt away, as the poets will have
it; or that all gold glides, like thawing snow, from the thief's hand
that grasps it. Church land, alienated to lay uses, was formerly
denounced to have this slippery quality. But some portions of it
somehow always stuck so fast, that the denunciators have been vain 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 treat
without partaking of it; to sit esurient at his own table, and commend
the flavour of his venison upon the absurd strength of his never
touching it himself. On the 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 naturally the first to
be tickled with it; and any suppression of such complacence we hold to
be churlish and insulting. What does it seem to imply, but that your
company is weak or foolish enough to be moved by an image or a fancy,
that shall stir you not at all, or but faintly? This is exactly the
humour of the 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 poorer 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 their 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 antagonist 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 honour
equally to belong? All this while they do not see how the wealthier
man stands by and laughs in his sleeve at both.
V.--THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF THE RICH
A smooth text to the latter; 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 apprehension of setting
ill patterns to the lower, we beg leave to discharge them from
all squeamishness on that score: they may even take their fill of
pleasures, where they can find them. The Genius of Poverty, hampered
and straitened as it is, is not so barren of invention but it can
trade upon the staple of its own vice, without drawing upon their
capital. The poor are not quite such 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
notwithstanding.
"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, which she knew well enough,
that the wench was one of the greatest liars upon the earth without
teaching; so much so, that her mistress possibly never heard two words
of consecutive truth from her in her life. But nature must go for
nothing: example must be every thing. 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 sinful--a
fiction, too, not at all in her own way, or one that she could be
suspected of adopting, for few servant-wenches care to be denied to
visitors.
This word _example_ reminds us of another fine word which is in use
upon these occasions--_encouragement_. "People in our sphere must
not be thought to give encouragement to such proceedings." 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 _éclat_ to--suicide. A
domestic in the family of a county member lately deceased, for 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 promise for him, than the like should never
happen again. His master was inclinable to keep him, but his mistress
thought otherwise; and John in the end was dismissed, her ladyship
declaring that she "could not think of encouraging any such doings in
the county."
VI.--THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST
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 disappointed of a regale.
It is a vile cold-scrag-of-mutton sophism; a lie palmed upon the
palate, which knows better things. If nothing else could be said for
a feast, this is sufficient, that from the superflux there is usually
something left for the next day. Morally interpreted, it belongs to
a class of proverbs, which have a tendency to make us undervalue
_money_. Of this cast are those notable observations, that money is
not health; riches cannot purchase every thing: 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 neighbour, which he could only hope to carry by force of
these verbal jugglings. Translate any one of these sayings out of the
artful metonyme which envelops it, and the trick is apparent. Goodly
legs and shoulders of mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures,
the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, independence, heart's
ease, a man's own time to himself, are not _muck_--however we may be
pleased to scandalise 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 confidence in a
man's own side in a dispute. Nothing is more insulting sometimes than
the appearance of this philosophic temper. There is little Titubus,
the stammering law-stationer in Lincoln's Inn--we have seldom known
this shrewd little fellow engaged in an argument where we were not
convinced he had the best of it, if his tongue would but fairly have
seconded him. When he has been spluttering excellent broken sense
for an hour together, writhing and labouring to be delivered of the
point of dispute--the very gist of the controversy knocking at his
teeth, which like some obstinate iron-grating still obstructed its
deliverance--his puny frame convulsed, and face reddening all over at
an unfairness 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 convinced 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 dispassionate 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 custom is
sometimes as difficult to explain to a foreigner as a pun. What would
become of a great part of the wit of the last age, if it were tried by
this test? How would certain topics, as aldermanity, cuckoldry, have
sounded to a Terentian auditory, though Terence himself had been alive
to translate them? _Senator urbanus_, with _Curruca_ to boot for a
synonime, would but faintly have done the business. Words, involving
notions, are hard enough to render; it is too much to expect us to
translate a sound, and give an elegant version to a jingle. The
Virgilian harmony is not translatable, but by substituting harmonious
sounds in another language for it. To Latinise a pun, we must seek
a pun in Latin, that will answer to it; as, to give an idea of the
double endings in Hudibras, we must have 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 far-fetched and startling, we agree
to it. A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a
pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect. It
is an antic which does not stand upon manners, but comes bounding into
the presence, and does not show the less comic for being dragged in
sometimes by the head and shoulders. What though it limp a little, or
prove defective in one leg--all the better. A pun may easily be too
curious and artificial. Who has not at one time or other been at a
party of professors (himself perhaps 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 of
similar sounds; after squeezing, and hauling, and tugging at it, till
the very milk of it will not yield a drop further,--suddenly some
obscure, unthought-of fellow in a corner, who was never 'prentice
to the trade, whom the company for very pity passed over, as we
do by a known poor man when a money-subscription is going round,
no one calling upon him for his quota--has all at once come out
with something so whimsical, yet so pertinent; so brazen in its
pretensions, yet so impossible to be denied; so exquisitely good,
and so deplorably bad, at the same time,--that it has proved a Robin
Hood's shot; any thing ulterior to that is despaired of; and the party
breaks up, unanimously voting it to be the very worst (that is, best)
pun of the 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 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 pronunciation, 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 looks 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 favourable
to frivolous investigations; the affrontive quality of the primitive
inquiry (the common question) 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: Hogarth
could have made it intelligible on canvass.
Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this a very bad pun,
because of the defectiveness in the concluding member, which is its
very beauty, and constitutes the surprise. The same persons shall
cry up for admirable the cold quibble from Virgil about the broken
Cremona;[1] 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 pronounce it a monument
of curious felicity. But as some stories are said to be too good to be
true, it may with equal truth be asserted of this bi-verbal allusion,
that it is too good to be natural. One cannot help suspecting that the
incident was invented to fit the line. It would have been better had
it been less perfect. Like some Virgilian hemistichs, it has suffered
by filling up. The _nimium Vicina_ was enough in conscience; the
_Cremonæ_ afterwards loads it. It is in fact a double pun; and we
have always observed that a superfoetation in this sort of wit is
dangerous. When a man has said a good thing, it is seldom politic to
follow it up. We do not care to be cheated a second time; or, perhaps,
the mind of man (with reverence be it spoken) is not capacious enough
to lodge two puns at a time. The impression, to be forcible, must be
simultaneous and undivided.
[Footnote 1: Swift.]
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 celestial
beauty. As she partakes more or less of this heavenly light, she
informs, with corresponding characters, the fleshly tenement which she
chooses, and frames to herself a suitable mansion.
All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. Conrady, in her
pre-existent state, was no great judge of architecture.
To the same effect, in a Hymn in honour of Beauty, divine Spenser,
_platonizing_, sings:--
--"Every spirit as it is more pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerful 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 perform'd with some foul imperfection."
From which it would follow, that Spenser had seen somebody like Mrs.
Conrady.
The spirit of this good lady--her previous _anima_--must have stumbled
upon one of these untoward tabernacles which he speaks of. A more
rebellious commodity of clay for 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 particularising. It is too complete--too consistent, as we may
say--to admit of these invidious reservations. It is not as if some
Apelles had picked out here a lip--and there a chin--out of the
collected ugliness of Greece, to frame a model by. It is a symmetrical
whole. We challenge the minutest connoisseur to cavil at any part or
parcel of the countenance in question; to say that this, or that, is
improperly placed. We are convinced that true ugliness, no less than
is affirmed of true beauty, is the result of harmony. Like that too
it reigns without a competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. Conrady, without
pronouncing her to be the plainest woman that he ever met with in the
course of his life. The first time that you are indulged with a sight
of her face, is an era in your existence ever after. You are glad to
have seen it--like 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 another. Nobody can say of her, "I think I have seen that face
somewhere, but I cannot call to mind where." You must remember that in
such a parlour it first struck you--like a bust. You wondered where
the owner of the house had picked it up. You wondered more when it
began to move its lips--so mildly too! No one ever thought of asking
her to sit for her picture. Lockets are for remembrance; and it would
be clearly superfluous to hang an image at your heart, which, once
seen, can never be out of it. It is not a mean face either; its entire
originality precludes that. Neither is it of that order of plain faces
which improve upon 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 at first
sight promised nothing less. We detect gentleness, which had escaped
us, lurking about an under lip. But when Mrs. Conrady has done you a
service, her face remains the same; when she has done you a thousand,
and you know that she is ready to double the number, still it is that
individual face. Neither can you say of it, that it would be a good
face if it was not marked by the small pox--a compliment which is
always more admissive than excusatory--for either Mrs. Conrady never
had the small pox; or, as we say, took it kindly. No, it stands upon
its own merits fairly. There it is. It is her mark, her token; that
which she is known by.
XI.--THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT-HORSE IN THE MOUTH
Nor a lady's age in the parish register. We hope we have more delicacy
than to do either: but some faces spare us the trouble of these
_dental_ inquiries. And what if the beast, which my friend would force
upon my acceptance, prove, upon the face of it, a sorry Rozinante, a
lean, ill-favoured jade, whom no gentleman could think of setting up
in his stables? Must I, rather than not be obliged to my friend, make
her a companion to Eclipse or Lightfoot? A horse-giver, no more than
a horse-seller, has a right to palm his spavined article upon us for
good ware. An equivalent is expected in either case; and, with my own
good will, I 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 humour of never refusing a
present, to the very point of absurdity--if it were possible to couple
the ridiculous with so much mistaken delicacy, and real good-nature.
Not an apartment in his fine house (and he has a true taste in
household decorations), but is stuffed up with some preposterous print
or mirror--the worst adapted to his pannels that may be--the presents
of his friends that know his weakness; while his noble Vandykes are
displaced, to make room for a set of daubs, the work of some wretched
artist of his acquaintance, who, having had them returned upon his
hands for bad likenesses, finds his account in bestowing them here
gratis. The good creature has not the heart to mortify the painter
at the expense of an honest refusal. It is pleasant (if it did not
vex one at the same time) to see him sitting in his dining parlour,
surrounded with obscure aunts and cousins to God knows whom, while
the true Lady Marys and Lady Bettys of his own honourable family, in
favour to these adopted frights, are consigned to the staircase and
the lumber-room. In like manner his goodly shelves are one by one
stript of his favourite old authors, to give place to a collection
of presentation copies--the flower and bran of modern poetry. A
presentation copy, reader--if haply you are yet innocent of such
favours--is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the
author, with his foolish autograph at the 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 tolerable assortment of these
gift-horses. Not to ride a metaphor to death--we are willing to
acknowledge, that in some gifts there is sense. A duplicate out of a
friend's library (where he has more than one copy of a rare author) is
intelligible. There are favours, short of the pecuniary--a thing not
fit to be hinted at among gentlemen--which confer as much grace upon
the acceptor as the offerer: the kind, we confess, which is most to
our palate, is of those little conciliatory missives, which for their
vehicle generally choose a hamper--little odd presents of game, fruit,
perhaps wine--though it is essential to the delicacy of the latter
that it be home-made. We love to have our friend in the country
sitting thus at our table by proxy; to apprehend his presence (though
a hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, whose goodly aspect
reflects to us his "plump corpusculum;" to taste him in grouse or
woodcock; to feel him gliding down in the toast peculiar to the
latter; to concorporate him in a slice of Canterbury brawn. This is
indeed to have him within ourselves; to know him intimately: such
participation is methinks unitive, as the old theologians phrase it.
For these considerations we should be sorry if certain restrictive
regulations, which are thought to bear hard upon the peasantry of this
country, were entirely done away with. A hare, as the law now stands,
makes many friends. Caius conciliates Titius (knowing his _goût_) with
a leash of partridges. Titius (suspecting his partiality for them)
passes them to Lucius; who in his turn, preferring his friend's relish
to his own, makes them over to Marcius; till in their ever widening
progress, and round of unconscious circum-migration, they distribute
the seeds of harmony over half a parish. We are well disposed to
this kind of sensible remembrances; and are the less apt to be taken
by those little airy tokens--inpalpable to the palate--which, under
the names of rings, lockets, keep-sakes, amuse some people's fancy
mightily. We could never away with these indigestible trifles. They
are the very kickshaws and foppery of friendship.
XII.--THAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS NEVER SO HOMELY
Homes there are, we are sure, that are no homes: the home of the very
poor man, and another which we shall speak to presently. Crowded
places of cheap entertainment, and the benches of 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 depth of winter always a
blazing hearth, and a hob to warm his pittance of beer by. Instead
of the clamours of a wife, made gaunt by famishing, he meets with
a cheerful attendance beyond the merits of the trifle which he can
afford to spend. He has companions which his home denies him, for the
very poor man has no visiters. 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
consideration of food to be obtained for the family. Beyond the price
of bread, news is senseless and impertinent. At home there is no
larder. Here there is at least a show of plenty; and while he cooks
his lean scrap of butcher's meat before the common bars, or munches
his humbler cold viands, his relishing bread and cheese with an onion,
in a corner, where no one reflects upon his poverty, he has sight of
the substantial joint providing for the landlord and his family. He
takes an interest in the dressing of it; and while he assists in
removing the trivet from the fire, he feels that there is such a thing
as beef and cabbage, which he was beginning to forget at home. All
this while he deserts his wife and children. But what wife, and what
children? Prosperous men, who object to this desertion, image to
themselves some clean contented family like that which they go home
to. But look at the countenance of the poor wives who follow and
persecute their good man to the door of the public house, which he
is about to enter, when something like shame would restrain him, if
stronger misery did not induce him to pass the threshold. That face,
ground by want, in which every cheerful, every conversable lineament
has been long effaced by misery,--is that a face to stay at home with?
is it more a woman, or a wild cat? 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 burthens can it lighten? Oh, 'tis a fine
thing to talk of the humble meal shared together! But what if there be
no bread in the cupboard? The innocent 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 humour it. There is none to kiss away its tears. If it cries,
it can only be beaten. It has been prettily said that "a babe is fed
with milk and praise." But the aliment of this poor babe was thin,
unnourishing; the return to its little baby-tricks, and efforts to
engage attention, bitter ceaseless objurgation. It never had a toy,
or knew what a coral meant. It grew up without the lullaby of nurses,
it was a stranger to the patient fondle, the hushing caress, the
attracting novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper off-hand
contrivance to divert the child; the prattled 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
passion of young wonder. It was never sung to--no one ever told to
it a tale of the nursery. It was dragged up, to live or to die as
it happened. It had no young dreams. It broke at once into the iron
realities of life. A child exists not for the very poor as any object
of dalliance; it is only another mouth to be fed, a pair of little
hands to be betimes inured to labour. It is the rival, till it can be
the co-operator, for food with the parent. It is never his mirth, his
diversion, his solace; it never makes him young again, with recalling
his young times. The children of the very poor have no young times.
It makes the very heart to bleed to overhear the casual street-talk
between a poor woman and her little girl, a woman of the better sort
of poor, in a condition rather above the squalid beings which we have
been contemplating. It is not of 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 haggles, it envies, it murmurs; it is knowing, acute,
sharpened; it never prattles. Had we not reason to say, that the home
of the very poor is no home?
There is yet another home, which we are 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 visiters.
May we be branded for the veriest churl, if we deny our heart to the
many noble-hearted friends that at times exchange their dwelling for
our poor roof! It is not of guests that we complain, but of endless,
purposeless visitants; droppers in, as they are called. We sometimes
wonder from what sky they fall. It is the very error of the position
of our lodging; its horoscopy was ill calculated, being just situate
in a medium--a plaguy suburban mid-space--fitted to catch idlers from
town or country. We are older than we were, and age is easily put out
of its way. We have fewer sands in our glass to reckon upon, and we
cannot brook to see them drop in endlessly succeeding impertinences.
At our time of life, to be alone sometimes is as needful as sleep. It
is the refreshing sleep of the day. The growing infirmities of age
manifest themselves in nothing more strongly, than in an inveterate
dislike of interruption. The thing which we are doing, we wish to be
permitted to do. We have neither much knowledge nor devices; but there
are fewer in the place to which we hasten. We are not willingly put
out of our way, even at a game of nine-pins. While youth was, we had
vast reversions in time future; we are reduced to a present pittance,
and obliged to economise in that article. We bleed away our moments
now as hardly as our ducats. We cannot bear to have our thin wardrobe
eaten and fretted into by moths. We are willing to barter our good
time with a friend, who gives us in exchange his own. Herein is the
distinction between the genuine guest and the visitant. This latter
takes your good time, and gives you his bad in exchange. The guest
is domestic to you as your good cat, or household bird; the visitant
is your fly, that flaps in at your window, and out again, leaving
nothing but a sense of disturbance, and victuals spoiled. The inferior
functions of life begin to move heavily. We cannot concoct our food
with interruptions. Our chief meal, to be nutritive, must be solitary.
With difficulty we can eat before a guest; and never understood
what the relish of public feasting meant. Meats have no sapor, nor
digestion fair play, in a crowd. The unexpected coming in of a
visitant stops the machine. There is a punctual generation who time
their calls to the precise 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 compassionating 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 appearance leave an orifice that closes
not hastily. "It is a prostitution of the bravery of friendship," says
worthy Bishop Taylor, "to spend it upon impertinent people, who are,
it may be, loads to their families, but can never ease my loads." This
is the secret of their gaddings, their visits, and morning calls. They
too have homes, which are--no homes.
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 long have 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 humour suits
us exactly. We have been long looking for such a friend. Quick--let
us disburthen our troubles into each other's bosom--let us make our
single joys shine 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_--the touchstone by which I 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 offer
of your friendship. We do not like dogs."
"Mighty well, sir--you know the conditions--you may have worse offers.
Come along, Test."
The above dialogue is not so imaginary, but that, in the intercourse
of life, we have had frequent occasions of breaking off an agreeable
intimacy by reason of these canine appendages. They do not always
come in the shape of dogs; they sometimes wear the more plausible and
human character of kinsfolk, near acquaintances, my friend's friend,
his partner, his wife, or his children. We could never yet form a
friendship--not to speak of more delicate correspondences--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 schoolboy'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 shoulders 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
apartment, appears the haunting shadow of the cousin, over-peering his
modest kinsman, and sure to over-lay the expected good talk with his
insufferable procerity of stature, and uncorresponding dwarfishness of
observation. Misfortunes seldom come alone. 'Tis hard when a blessing
comes accompanied. Cannot we like Sempronia, without sitting down to
chess with her eternal brother? or know Sulpicia, without knowing all
the round of her card-playing relations? must my friend's brethren
of necessity be mine also? must we be hand and glove with Dick Selby
the parson, or Jack Selby the calico printer, because 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 between boy and manhood--too 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
canicular probations. Few young ladies but in this sense keep a dog.
But when Rutilia hounds at you her tiger aunt; or Ruspina expects you
to cherish and fondle her viper sister, whom she has preposterously
taken into her bosom, to try stinging conclusions upon your constancy;
they must not complain if the house be rather thin of suitors. Scylla
must have broken off many 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 Della 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 this flower. Only for
appearance' sake, and for due honour to the bride's relations, she
craved that she might have the attendance of her friends and kindred
at the approaching solemnity. The request was too amiable not to be
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 ballet--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 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 honour!--the thought of so
extraordinary a paternity quite overcame him; and slipping away under
some pretence from the bride and her motley adherents, poor Merry
took horse from the back yard to the nearest sea-coast, from which,
shipping himself to America, he shortly after consoled himself with a
more congenial match in the person of Miss Brunton; relieved from his
intended clown father, and a bevy of painted Buffas for bridemaids.
XIV.--THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK
At what precise minute that little airy musician doffs his night
gear, and prepares to tune up his unseasonable matins, we are not
naturalists enough to determine. But for a mere human gentleman--that
has no orchestra business to call him from his warm bed to such
preposterous exercises--We take ten, or half after ten (eleven, of
course, during this Christmas solstice), to be the very earliest hour,
at which he can begin to think of abandoning his pillow. To think of
it, we say; for to do it in earnest, requires another half hour's good
consideration. Not but there are pretty sun-risings, as we are told,
and such like gawds, abroad in the world, in summer time especially,
some hours before what we have assigned; which a gentleman may see,
as they say, only for getting up. But, having been tempted once or
twice, in earlier life, to assist at those ceremonies, we confess
our curiosity abated. We are no longer 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 headachs;
Nature herself sufficiently declaring her sense of our presumption,
in aspiring to regulate our frail waking courses by the measures of
that celestial and sleepless traveller. We deny not that there is
something sprightly and vigorous, at the outset especially, in these
break-of-day 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 chose to linger a-bed, and digest our
dreams. It is the very time to recombine the wandering images, which
night in a confused mass presented; to snatch them from forgetfulness;
to shape, and mould them. Some people have no good of their dreams.
Like fast feeders, they gulp them too grossly, to taste them
curiously. We love to chew the cud of a foregone vision: to collect
the scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over again, with
firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies; to drag into day-light
a struggling and half-vanishing night-mare; to handle and examine
the terrors, or the airy solaces. We have too much respect for these
spiritual communications, to let them go so 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 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 awkward at our first coming among them. We willingly
call a phantom our fellow, as knowing we shall soon be of their dark
companionship. Therefore, we cherish dreams. 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 of half-way
approach to incorporeal 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 WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB
We could never quite understand the philosophy of this arrangement,
or the wisdom of our ancestors in sending us for instruction to
these woolly bedfellows. A sheep, when it is dark, has nothing to do
but to shut his silly 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 their
radiant deputy, mild viceroy of the moon!--We love to read, talk, sit
silent, eat, drink, sleep, by candle-light. They are every body'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 unillumined fastnesses! They must have lain about and
grumbled at one another in the dark. What repartees could have passed,
when you must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbour's
cheek to be sure that he 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 of it!--here one had got a leg of a goat, when he wanted
a horse's shoulder--there another had dipt 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
civilised times, has never experienced this, when at some economic
table he has commenced dining after dusk, and waited for the
flavour till the lights came? The senses absolutely give and take
reciprocally. Can you tell pork from veal in the dark? or distinguish
Sherris from pure Malaga? Take away the candle from the smoking
man; by the glimmering of the left ashes, he knows that he is still
smoking, but he knows it only by an inference; till the restored
light, coming in aid of the olfactories, reveals to both senses the
full aroma. Then how he redoubles his puffs! how he burnishes!--There
is absolutely no such thing as reading, but by a candle. We have
tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, and in sultry
arbours; but it was labour thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam
come about you, hovering and teazing, like so many coquets, that will
have you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By
the midnight taper, the writer digests his meditations. By the same
light, we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch the flame,
the odour. It is a mockery, all that is reported of the influential
Phoebus. No true poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. They are
abstracted works--
"Things that were born, when none but the still night,
And his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes."
Marry, daylight--daylight might furnish the images, the crude
material; but for the fine shapings, the true turning and filing (as
mine author hath it), they must be content to hold their inspiration
of the candle. The mild internal light, that reveals them, like fires
on the domestic hearth, goes out in the sunshine. Night and silence
call out the starry fancies, Milton's Morning Hymn on Paradise, we
would hold a good wager, was penned at midnight; and Taylor's richer
description of a sun-rise smells decidedly of the taper. Even ourself,
in these our humbler lucubrations, tune our best measured cadences
(Prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier
watchman, "blessing the doors;" or the wild sweep of winds at
midnight. Even now a loftier speculation than we have yet attempted,
courts our endeavours. We would indite something about the Solar
System.--_Betty, bring the candles_.
XVI.--THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE
We grant that it is, and a very serious one--to a man's friends, and
to all that have to do with him; but whether the condition of the man
himself is so much to be deplored, may admit of a question. We can
speak a little to it, being 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 humour. But the humour
itself was too self-pleasing, while it lasted--we know how bare we
lay ourself in the confession--to be abandoned all at once with the
grounds of it. We still brood over wrongs which we know to have been
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 aggrandise a man in his own conceit, is to conceive 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
superficial seek it not, of discontent. Were we to recite one half of
this mystery, which we were let into by our late dissatisfaction, all
the world would be in love with 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 difficult, there is balm and honey
to be extracted. Your friend passed you on such or such a day,--having
in his company one that you conceived worse than ambiguously disposed
towards you,--passed you in the street without notice. To be sure he
is something shortsighted; and it was in your power to have accosted
_him_. But facts and sane inferences are trifles to a true adept in
the science of dissatisfaction. He must have seen you; and S----,
who was with him, must have been the cause of the contempt. It galls
you, and well it may. But have patience. Go home, and make the worst
of it, and you are a made man from this time. Shut yourself up,
and--rejecting, as an enemy to your peace, every whispering suggestion
that but insinuates there may be a mistake--reflect seriously upon the
many lesser instances which you had begun to perceive, in proof of
your friend's disaffection towards you. None of them singly was much
to the purpose, but the aggregate weight is positive; and you have
this last affront to clench them. Thus far the process is any thing
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 defended him in this
or that place; and his good name--his literary reputation, and so
forth, was always dearer to you than your own! Your heart, spite of
itself, yearns towards him. You could weep tears of blood but for a
restraining pride. How say you? do you not yet begin to apprehend a
comfort? some allay of sweetness in the bitter waters? Stop not here,
nor penuriously cheat yourself of your reversions. You are on vantage
ground. Enlarge your speculations, and take in the rest of your
friends, as a spark kindles more sparks. Was there one among them, who
has not to you proved hollow, false, slippery as water? Begin to think
that the relation itself is inconsistent with mortality. That the very
idea of friendship, with its component parts, as honour, fidelity,
steadiness, exists but in your single bosom. Image yourself to
yourself, as the only possible friend in a world incapable of that
communion. Now the gloom thickens. The little star of self-love
twinkles, that is to encourage you through deeper glooms than this.
You are not yet at the half point of your elevation. You are not yet,
believe me, half sulky enough. Adverting to the world in general, (as
these circles in the mind will spread to infinity) reflect with what
strange injustice you have been treated in quarters where, (setting
gratitude and the expectation of friendly returns aside as chimeras,)
you pretended no claim beyond justice, the naked due of all men. Think
the very idea of right and fit fled from the earth, or your breast
the solitary receptacle of it, till 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
point of your mystery--these the true 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 meditation of general injustice--when a knock at the door was
followed by the entrance of the very friend, whose not seeing of us in
the morning, (for we will now confess the case our own), an accidental
oversight, had given rise to so much agreeable generalization!
To mortify us still more, and take down the whole flattering
superstructure which pride had piled upon neglect, he had brought in
his hand the identical S----, in whose favour we had suspected him of
the contumacy. Asseverations were needless, where the frank manner of
them both was convictive of the injurious nature of the suspicion. We
fancied that they perceived our embarrassment; but were too proud, or
something else, to confess to the secret of it. We had been but too
lately in the condition of the noble patient in Argos:
Qui se credebat miros audire tragoedos.
In vacuo lætus sessor plausorque theatro--
and could have exclaimed with equal reason against the friendly hands
that cured us--
Pol me occidistis, amici,
Non servâstis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.
APPENDIX
LAMB'S ESSAYS ON "THE OLD ACTORS" AS ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN THE _LONDON
MAGAZINE_. (SEE NOTE ON PAGE 444.)
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS
(_London Magazine_, Feb., 1822)
Of all the actors who flourished in my time--a melancholy phrase
if taken aright, reader--Bensley had most of the swell of soul,
was greatest in the delivery of heroic conceptions, the emotions
consequent upon the presentment of a great idea to the fancy. He had
the true poetical enthusiasm--the rarest faculty among players. None
that I remember possessed even a portion of that fine madness which
he threw out in Hotspur's famous rant about glory, or the transports
of the Venetian incendiary at the vision of the fired city.[1] 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 thorough-bred gentleman was uppermost in
every movement. He seized the moment of passion with the 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 Iago was the only
endurable one which I remember to have seen. No spectator from his
action could divine more of his artifice than Othello was supposed to
do. His confessions in soliloquy alone put you in possession of the
mystery. There were no bye-intimations to make the audience fancy
their own discernment so much greater than that of the Moor--who
commonly stands like a great helpless mark set up for mine Ancient,
and a quantity of barren spectators, to shoot their bolts at. The Iago
of Bensley did not go to work so grossly. There was a triumphant tone
about the character, 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--which is common with
your small villains, and green probationers in mischief. It did not
clap or crow before its time. It was not a man setting his wits at a
child, and winking all the while at other children who are mightily
pleased at being let into the secret; but a consummate villain
entrapping a noble nature into toils, against which no discernment was
available, where the manner was as fathomless as the purpose seemed
dark, and without motive. The part of Malvolio, in the Twelfth Night,
was performed by Bensley, with a richness and a dignity of which (to
judge from some recent castings of that character) the very 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 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 honour 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 Illyria. He is
opposed to the proper _levities_ of the piece, and falls in the
unequal contest. Still his pride, or his gravity, (call it which you
will) is inherent, and native to the man, not mock or affected, which
latter only are the fit objects to excite laughter. His quality is at
the best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor contemptible. His bearing
is lofty, a little above his station, but probably not much above
his deserts. We see no reason why he should not have been brave,
honourable, accomplished. His careless committal of the ring to the
ground (which he was commissioned to restore to Cesario), bespeaks a
generosity of birth and feeling.[2] His dialect on all occasions is
that of a gentleman, and a man of education. We must not confound him
with the eternal 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.[3] Olivia, at the first
indication of his supposed madness, declares that she "would not
have him miscarry for half of her dowry." Does this look as if
the character was meant to appear little or insignificant? Once,
indeed, she accuses him to his face--of what?--of being "sick of
self-love,"--but with a gentleness and considerateness which could
not have been, if she had not thought that this particular infirmity
shaded some virtues. His rebuke to the knight, and his sottish
revellers, is sensible and spirited; and when we take into
consideration the unprotected condition of his mistress, and the
strict regard with which her state of real or dissembled mourning
would draw the eyes of the world upon her house-affairs, Malvolio
might feel the honour of the family in some sort in his keeping, as
it appears not that Olivia had any more brothers, or kinsmen, to look
to it--for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice respects at the buttery
hatch. That Malvolio was meant to be represented as possessing some
estimable qualities, the expression of the Duke in his anxiety to
have him reconciled, almost infers: "Pursue him, and intreat 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,[4] and philosophizes gallantly upon his straw.
There must have been some shadow of worth about the man; he must have
been something more than a mere vapour--a thing of straw, or Jack in
office--before Fabian and Maria could 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. There was "example for it," said Malvolio; "the lady
of the Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe." Possibly too he
might remember--for it must have happened about his time--an instance
of a Duchess of Malfy (a countrywoman of Olivia's, and her equal at
least) descending from her state to court her steward--
The misery of them that are born great!
They are forced to woo, because none dare woo them.
To be sure the lady was not very tenderly handled for it by her
brothers in the sequel, but their vengeance appears to have been
whetted rather by her presumption in re-marrying at all, (when they
had meditated the keeping of her fortune in their family) than by her
choice of an inferior, of Antonio's noble merits especially, for her
husband; and, besides, Olivia's brother was just dead. Malvolio was a
man of reading, and possibly reflected upon these lines, or something
like them in his own country poetry--
--Ceremony has made many fools.
It is as easy way unto a duchess
As to a hatted dame, if her love answer:
But that by timorous honours, pale respects,
Idle degrees of fear, men make their ways
Hard of themselves.
"'Tis but fortune, all is fortune. Maria once told me, she did affect
me; and I have heard herself come thus near, that, should she fancy,
it should be one of my complexion." If here was no encouragement, the
devil is in it. I wish we could get at the private history of all
this. Between the Countess herself, serious or dissembling--for one
hardly knows how to apprehend this fantastical great lady--and the
practices of that delicious little piece of mischief, Maria--
The lime twigs laid
By Machiavel the waiting maid--
the man might well be rapt into a fool's paradise.
Bensley 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 magnificent from the outset; but when the decent
sobrieties of the character began to give way, and the poison of
self-love in his conceit of the Countess's affection gradually to
work, you would have thought that the hero of La Mancha in person
stood before you. How he went smiling to himself! with what ineffable
carelessness would he twirl his gold chain! what a dream it was! you
were infected with the illusion, and did not wish that it should be
removed! you had no room for laughter! if an unseasonable reflection
of morality obtruded itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable
infirmity of man's nature, that can lay him open to such frenzies--but
in truth you rather 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 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 whirligig of time,"
as the true clown hath it, "brings in his revenges." I confess that I
never saw the catastrophe of this character while Bensley played it
without a kind of tragic interest. There was good foolery too. Few now
remember Dodd. What an Aguecheek the stage lost in him! Lovegrove,
who came nearest to the old actors, revived the character some few
seasons ago, and made it sufficiently grotesque; but Dodd was _it_,
as it came out of nature's hands. It might be said to remain _in
puris 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 painful process, till it cleared up at last to the fulness of a
twilight conception--its highest meridian. He seemed to keep back
his intellect, as some have had the power to retard their pulsation.
The balloon takes less time in filling, than it took to cover
the expansion of his broad moony face over all its quarters with
expression. A glimmer of understanding would appear in a corner of his
eye, and for lack of fuel go out again. A part of his forehead would
catch a little intelligence, and be a long time in communicating it to
the remainder.
I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than five and twenty
years ago that walking in the gardens of Gray's Inn--they were then
far finer than they are now--the accursed Verulam Buildings had not
encroached upon 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 gaping and relationless as if
it remembered its brother--they are still the best gardens of any
of the Inns of Court, my beloved Temple not forgotten--have the
gravest character, their aspect being altogether reverend and
law-breathing--Bacon has left the impress of his foot upon their
gravel walks--taking my afternoon solace on a summer day upon the
aforesaid terrace, a comely sad personage came towards me, whom from
his grave air and deportment I judged to be one of the old Benchers
of the Inn. He had a serious thoughtful forehead, and seemed to be
in meditations of mortality. As I have an instinctive awe of old
Benchers, I was passing 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 motion of the body to that effect--a species of humility and
will-worship which I observe nine times out of ten rather puzzles
than pleases the person it is offered to--when the face turning full
upon me strangely identified itself with that of Dodd. Upon close
inspection I was not mistaken. But could this sad thoughtful
countenance be the same vacant face of folly which I had hailed so
often under circumstances of gaiety; which I had never seen without
a smile, or recognized but as the usher of mirth; that looked out
so formally flat in Foppington, so frothily pert in Tattle, so
impotently busy in Backbite; so blankly divested of all meaning, or
resolutely expressive of none, in Acres, in Fribble, and a thousand
agreeable impertinences? Was this the face--full of thought and
carefulness--that had so often divested itself at will of every trace
of either to give me diversion, to clear my cloudy face for two or
three hours at least of its furrows? Was this the face--manly, sober,
intelligent,--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
particularly--subjected to and suffering the common lot--their
fortunes, 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 divesting himself of many scenic
and some real vanities--weaning himself from the frivolities of the
lesser and the greater theatre--doing gentle penance for a life of no
very reprehensible fooleries,--taking off by degrees the buffoon mask
which he might feel he had worn too long--and rehearsing for a more
solemn cast of part. Dying he "put on the weeds of Dominic."[5]
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 of _the footman_.
His brother Bob (of recenter memory) who was his shadow in every thing
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,[6] you said, what a pity such a pretty fellow was only
a servant. When you saw Jack figuring in Captain Absolute, you thought
you could trace his promotion to some lady of quality who fancied the
handsome fellow in his top-knot, and had bought him a commission.
Therefore Jack in Dick Amlet was insuperable.
Jack had two voices,--both plausible, hypocritical, and insinuating;
but his secondary or supplemental voice still more decisively
histrionic than his common one. It was reserved for the spectator; and
the dramatis personæ were supposed to know nothing at all about it.
The _lies_ of young Wilding, and the _sentiments_ in Joseph Surface,
were thus marked out in a sort of italics to the audience. This secret
correspondence with the company before the curtain (which is the
bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely happy effect in some
kinds of comedy, in the more highly artificial comedy of Congreve
or of Sheridan especially, where the absolute sense of reality (so
indispensable to scenes of interest) is not required, or would rather
interfere to diminish your pleasure. The fact is, you do not 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, an that be all--Well father, and
how do all at home? how does brother Dick, and brother Val?
_Sir Sampson_. Dick! body o' me, Dick has been dead these two years. I
writ you word when you were at Leghorn.
_Ben_. Mess, that's true; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's dead, as you
say--Well, and how?--I have a many questions to ask you--
Here is an instance of 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 combinations
rather than strict _metaphrases_ of nature should be taken, or when
you saw Bannister play it, it neither did, nor does wound the moral
sense at all. For what is Ben--the pleasant sailor which Bannister
gave us--but a piece of a 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 it 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 creature dear to half-belief--which
Bannister exhibited--displays before our eyes a downright concretion
of a Wapping sailor--a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar--and nothing
else--when instead of investing it with a delicious confusedness of
the head, and a veering undirected goodness of purpose--he gives to
it a downright daylight understanding, and a full consciousness of its
actions; thrusting forward the sensibilities of the character with a
pretence as if it stood upon nothing else, and was to be judged by
them alone--we feel the discord of the thing; the scene is disturbed;
a real man has got in among the dramatis personæ, 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.
(_To be resumed occasionally_.)
ELIA.
[Footnote 1:
How lovelily the Adriatic whore
Dress'd in her flames will shine--devouring flames--
Such as will burn her to her wat'ry bottom,
And hiss in her foundation.
_Pierre, in Venice Preserved._]
[Footnote 2: _Viola_. She took the ring from me; I'll none of it.
_Mal_. Come, Sir, you peevishly threw it to her; and her will is, it
should be so returned. If it be worth stooping for, there it lies in
your eye; if not, be it his that finds it.]
[Footnote 3: Mrs. Inchbald seems to have fallen into the common
mistake of the character in some sensible observations, otherwise,
upon this Comedy. "It might be asked," she says, "whether this
credulous steward was much deceived in imputing a degraded taste, in
the sentiments of love, to his fair lady Olivia, as she actually did
fall in love with a domestic; and one, who from his extreme youth,
was perhaps a greater reproach to her discretion, than had she cast a
tender regard upon her old and faithful servant." But where does she
gather the fact of his age? Neither Maria nor Fabian ever cast that
reproach upon him.]
[Footnote 4: _Clown._ What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning
wild fowl?
_Mal._ That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.
_Clown._ What thinkest thou of his opinion?
_Mal._ I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his opinion.]
[Footnote 5: Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice
collection of old English literature. I should judge him to have been
a man of wit. I know one instance of an impromptu which no length of
study could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had seen him
one evening in Aguecheek, and recognizing Dodd the next day in Fleet
Street, was irresistibly impelled to take off his hat and salute him
as the identical Knight of the preceding evening with a "Save you,
_Sir Andrew_." Dodd, not at all disconcerted at this unusual address
from a stranger, with a courteous half-rebuking wave of the hand, put
him off with an "Away, _Fool_."]
[Footnote 6: High Life Below Stairs.]
THE OLD ACTORS
(_London Magazine_, April, 1822)
The artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is quite extinct on our
stage. Congreve and Farquhar show their heads once in seven years only
to be exploded and put down instantly. The times cannot bear them. Is
it for a few wild speeches, an occasional licence of dialogue? I think
not altogether. The business of their dramatic characters will not
stand the moral test. We screw every thing up to that. Idle gallantry
in a fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of an evening, startles us
in the same way as the alarming indications of profligacy in a son or
ward in real life should startle a parent or guardian. We have no such
middle emotions as dramatic interests left. We see a stage libertine
playing his loose pranks of two hours' duration, and of no after
consequence, with the severe eyes which inspect real vices with their
bearings upon two worlds. We are spectators to a plot or intrigue (not
reducible in life to the point of strict morality) and take it all
for truth. We substitute a real for a dramatic person, and judge him
accordingly. We try him in our courts, from which there is no appeal
to the _dramatis personæ_, his peers. We have been spoiled with--not
sentimental comedy--but a tyrant far more pernicious to our pleasures
which has succeeded to it, the exclusive and all-devouring 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 recognise ourselves, our brothers, aunts, kinsfolk,
allies, patrons, enemies,--the same as in life,--with an interest in
what is going on so hearty and substantial, that we cannot afford our
moral judgment, in its deepest and most vital results, to compromise
or slumber for a moment. What is _there_ transacting, by no
modification is made to affect us in any other manner than the same
events or characters would do in our relationships of life. We carry
our fire-side concerns to the theatre with us. We do not go thither,
like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as
to confirm our experience of it; to make assurance double, and take a
bond of fate. We must live our toilsome lives twice over, as it was
the mournful privilege of Ulysses to descend twice to the shades. All
that neutral ground of character which stood between vice and virtue;
or which, in fact, was indifferent to neither, where neither properly
was called in question--that happy breathing-place from the burden
of a perpetual moral questioning--the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia
of hunted casuistry--is broken up and disfranchised as injurious to
the interests of society. The privileges of the place are taken away
by law. We dare not dally with images or names of wrong. We bark
like foolish dogs at shadows. We dread infection from the scenic
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 sunshine.
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 world of themselves almost as much
as a fairyland. 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
warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire; because in a modern play
I am to judge of right and wrong, and the standard of _police_ is
the measure of _poetical justice_. The atmosphere will blight it.
It cannot thrive here. It is got into a moral world where it has
no business; from which it must needs fall head-long; as dizzy and
incapable of keeping its stand, as a Swedenborgian bad spirit that has
wandered unawares within the sphere of one of his good men or angels.
But in its own world do we feel the creature is so very bad?
The Fainalls and the Mirabels, the Dorimants, and Lady Touchwoods, in
their own sphere do not offend my moral sense--or, in fact, appeal
to it at all. They seem engaged in their proper element. They break
through no laws, or conscientious restraints. They know of none. They
have got out of Christendom into the land--what shall I call it?--of
cuckoldry--the Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is duty, and the
manners perfect freedom. It is altogether a speculative scene of
things, which has no reference whatever to the world that is. No good
person can be justly offended as a spectator, because no good person
suffers on the stage. Judged morally, every character in these
plays--the few exceptions only are _mistakes_--is alike essentially
vain and worthless. The great art of Congreve is especially shown in
this, that he has entirely excluded from his scenes,--some little
generosities in the part of Angelica perhaps excepted,--not only any
thing like a faultless character, but any pretensions to goodness
or good feelings whatsoever. Whether he did this designedly, or
instinctively, the effect is as happy, as the design (if design) 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 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 friend
Wycherley's dramas, are profligates and strumpets,--the business of
their brief existence, the undivided pursuit of lawless gallantry. No
other spring of action, or possible motive of conduct, is recognised;
principles which universally acted upon must reduce this frame of
things to a chaos. But we do them wrong in so translating them. No
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
Dapperwit, steal away Miss Martha; or who is the father of Lord
Froth's, or Sir Paul Pliant's children?
The whole is a passing pageant, where we should sit as unconcerned at
the issues, for life or death, as at 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 allays of
the sentimental comedy which followed theirs. It is impossible that
it should be now acted, though it continues, at long intervals, to be
announced in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer played it at least, was
Joseph Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful solemn
plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice--to express it
in a word--the downright _acted_ villany of the part, so different
from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness,--the hypocritical
assumption of hypocrisy,--which made Jack so deservedly a favourite
in that character, I must needs conclude the present generation of
playgoers more virtuous than myself, or more dense. I freely confess
that he divided the palm with me with his better brother; that, in
fact, I 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 forced upon by the
attempt to join the artificial with the sentimental comedy, either
of which must destroy the other--but over these obstructions Jack's
manner floated him so lightly, that a refusal from him no more shocked
you, than the easy compliance of Charles gave you in reality any
pleasure; you got over the paltry question as quickly as you could, to
get back into the regions of pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns.
The highly artificial manner of Palmer in this character counteracted
every disagreeable impression which you might have received from the
contrast, supposing them real, between the two brothers. You did
not believe in Joseph with the same faith with which you believed
in Charles. The latter was a pleasant reality, the former a no less
pleasant poetical foil to it. The comedy, I have said, is incongruous;
a mixture of Congreve with sentimental incompatibilities; the gaity
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 his cue from his spectators, who would
expect a bad man and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other, as
the death-beds of those geniuses are contrasted in the prints, which
I am sorry to see have disappeared from the windows of my old friend
Carrington Bowles, of St. Paul's Churchyard memory--(an exhibition as
venerable as the adjacent cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad
and good man at the hour of death; where the ghastly apprehensions
of the former,--and truly the grim phantom with his reality of a
toasting fork is not to be despised,--so finely contrast with the
meek complacent kissing of the rod,--taking it in 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-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all of it.
What was it to you if that half-reality, the husband, was over-reached
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 fidgety pleasant old Teazle _King_ too is gone in
good time. His manner would scarce have passed current in our day.
We must love or hate--acquit or condemn--censure or pity--exert our
detestable coxcombry of moral judgment upon every thing. Joseph
Surface, to go down now, must be a downright revolting villain--no
compromise--his first appearance must shock and give horror--his
specious plausibilities, which the pleasurable faculties of our
fathers welcomed with such hearty greetings, knowing that no harm
(dramatic harm even) could come, or was meant to come of them, must
inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real canting person
of the scene--for the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate
ends, but his brother's professions of a good heart centre in
down-right self-satisfaction) must 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 teazings (while King acted it) were evidently as much played off
at you, as they were meant to concern any body on the stage,--he must
be a real person, capable in law of sustaining an injury--a person
towards whom duties are to be acknowledged--the genuine crim-con
antagonist of the villainous seducer, 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
neighbour or old friend. The delicious scenes which give the play its
name and zest, must affect you in the same serious manner as if you
heard the reputation of a dear female friend attacked in your real
presence. Crabtree, and Sir Benjamin--those poor snakes that lived
but in the sunshine of your mirth--must be ripened by this hot-bed
process of realization into asps or amphisbænas; and Mrs. Candour--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 natural 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
Saturnalia of two or three brief hours, well won from the world--to
sit instead at one of our modern plays--to have his coward conscience
(that forsooth must not be left for a moment) stimulated with
perpetual appeals--dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without
repose must be--and his moral vanity pampered with images of notional
justice, notional 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. Abingdon
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 declamation. He had no sins of Hamlet or of
Richard to atone for. His failure in these parts was a passport to
success in one of so opposite a tendency. But as far as I could judge,
the weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal incapacity than
he had to answer for. His harshest tones in this part came steeped
and dulcified in good humour. He made his defects a grace. His exact
declamatory manner, as he managed it, only served to convey the points
of his dialogue with more precision. It seemed to head the shafts to
carry them deeper. 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 particularly 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. Tragedy is become a uniform dead weight. They have fastened lead
to her buskins. She never pulls them off for the ease of a moment.
To invert a commonplace from Niobe, she never forgets herself to
liquefaction. John had his sluggish moods, his torpors--but they were
the halting stones and resting places of his tragedy--politic savings,
and fetches of the breath--husbandry of the lungs, where nature
pointed him to be an economist--rather, I think, than errors of
the judgment. They were, at worst, less painful than the eternal
tormenting unappeasable vigilance, the "lidless dragon eyes," of
present fashionable tragedy. The story of his swallowing opium pills
to keep him lively upon the first night of a certain tragedy, we may
presume to be a piece of retaliatory pleasantry on the part of the
suffering author. But, indeed, John had the art of diffusing a
complacent equable dulness (which you knew not where to quarrel with)
over a piece which he did not like, beyond any of his contemporaries.
John Kemble had made up his mind early, that all the good tragedies,
which could be written, had been written; and he resented any new
attempt. His shelves were full. The old standards were scope enough
for his ambition. He ranged in them absolute--and "fair in Otway, full
in Shakspeare shone." He succeeded to the old lawful thrones, and did
not care to adventure bottomry with a Sir Edward Mortimer, or any
casual speculator that offered. I remember, too acutely for my peace,
the deadly extinguisher which he put upon my friend G.'s "Antonio."
G., satiate with visions of political justice (possibly not to be
realized in our time), or willing to let the sceptical worldlings see,
that his anticipations of the future did not preclude a warm sympathy
for men as they are and have been--wrote a tragedy. He chose a
story, affecting, romantic, Spanish--the plot simple, without being
naked--the incidents uncommon, without being overstrained. Antonio,
who gives the name to the piece, is a sensitive young Castilian, who,
in a fit of his country honour, immolates his sister--
But I must not anticipate the catastrophe--the play, reader, is
extant in choice English--and you will employ a spare half crown not
injudiciously in the quest of it.
The conception was bold, and the dénouement--the time and place in
which the hero of it existed, considered--not much out of keeping; yet
it must be confessed, that it required a delicacy of handling both
from the author and the performer, so as not much to shock the
prejudices of a modern English audience. G., in my opinion, had done
his part.
John, who was in familiar habits with the philosopher, had undertaken
to play Antonio. Great expectations were formed. A philosopher's first
play was a new era. The night arrived. I was favoured with a seat in
an advantageous box, between the author and his friend M----. G. sate
cheerful and confident. In his friend M.'s looks, who had perused the
manuscript, I read some terror. Antonio in the person of John Philip
Kemble at length appeared, starched out in a ruff which no one could
dispute, and in most irreproachable mustachios. John always dressed
most provokingly correct on these occasions. The first act swept
by, solemn and silent. It went off, as G. assured M., exactly as
the opening act of a piece--the protasis--should do. The cue of
the spectators was to be mute. The characters were but in their
introduction. The passions and the incidents would be developed
hereafter. Applause hitherto would be impertinent. Silent attention
was the effect all-desirable. Poor M. acquiesced--but in his honest
friendly face I could discern a working which told how much more
acceptable the plaudit of a single hand (however misplaced) would
have been than all this reasoning. The second act (as in duty bound)
rose a little in interest; but still John kept his forces under--in
policy, as G. would have it--and the audience were most complacently
attentive. The protasis, in fact, was scarcely unfolded. The
interest would warm in the next act, against which a special
incident was provided. M. wiped his cheek, flushed with a friendly
perspiration--'tis M.'s way of showing his zeal--"from every pore of
him a perfume falls--." I honour it above Alexander's. He had once or
twice during this act joined his palms in a feeble endeavour to elicit
a sound--they emitted a solitary noise without an echo--there was no
deep to answer to his deep. G. repeatedly begged him to be quiet.
The third act at length brought on the scene which was to warm the
piece progressively to the final flaming forth of the catastrophe. A
philosophic calm settled upon the clear brow of G. as it approached.
The lips of M. quivered. A challenge was held forth upon the stage,
and there was promise of a fight. The pit roused themselves on this
extraordinary occasion, and, as their manner is, seemed disposed to
make a ring,--when suddenly Antonio, who was the challenged, turning
the tables upon the hot challenger, Don Gusman (who by the way should
have had his sister) baulks his humour, and the pit's reasonable
expectation at the same time, with some speeches out of the
new philosophy against duelling. The audience were here fairly
caught--their courage was up, and on the alert--a few blows, _ding
dong_, as R----s the dramatist afterwards expressed it to me, might
have done the business--when their most exquisite moral sense was
suddenly called in to assist in the mortifying negation of their own
pleasure. They could not applaud, for disappointment; they would
not condemn, for morality's sake. The interest stood stone still;
and John's manner was not at all calculated to unpetrify it. It
was Christmas time, and the atmosphere furnished some pretext for
asthmatic affections. One began to cough--his neighbour sympathised
with him--till a cough became epidemical. But when, from being
half-artificial in the pit, the cough got frightfully naturalised
among the fictitious persons of the drama; and Antonio himself (albeit
it was not set down in the stage directions) seemed more intent
upon relieving his own lungs than the distresses of the author and
his friends,--then G. "first knew fear;" and mildly turning to M.,
intimated that he had not been aware that Mr. K. laboured under a
cold; and that the performance might possibly have been postponed
with advantage for some nights further--still keeping the same serene
countenance, while M. sweat like a bull. It would be invidious to
pursue the fates of this ill-starred evening. In vain did the plot
thicken in the scenes that followed, in vain the dialogue wax more
passionate and stirring, and the progress of the sentiment point more
and more clearly to the arduous developement which impended. In vain
the action was accelerated, while the acting stood still. From the
beginning, John had taken his stand; had wound himself up to an even
tenor of stately declamation, from which no exigence of dialogue or
person could make him swerve for an instant. To dream of his rising
with the scene (the common trick of tragedians) was preposterous;
for from the onset he had planted himself, as upon a terrace, on an
eminence vastly above the audience, and he kept that sublime level
to the end. He looked from his throne of elevated sentiment upon the
under-world of spectators with a most sovran and becoming contempt.
There was excellent pathos delivered out to them: an they would
receive it, so; an they would not receive it, so. There was no offence
against decorum in all this; nothing to condemn, to damn. Not an
irreverent symptom of a sound was to be heard. The procession of
verbiage stalked on through four and five acts, no one venturing to
predict what would come of it, when towards the winding up of the
latter, Antonio, with an irrelevancy that seemed to stagger Elvira
herself--for she had been coolly arguing the point of honour with
him--suddenly whips out a poniard, and stabs his sister to the heart.
The effect was, as if a murder had been committed in cold blood. The
whole house rose up in clamorous indignation demanding justice. The
feeling rose far above hisses. I believe at that instant, if they
could have got him, they would have torn the unfortunate author to
pieces. Not that the act itself was so exorbitant, or of a complexion
different from what they themselves would have applauded upon another
occasion in a Brutus, or an Appius--but for want of attending to
Antonio's _words_, which palpably led to the expectation of no less
dire an event, instead of being seduced by his _manner_, which
seemed to promise a sleep of a less alarming nature than it was his
cue to inflict upon Elvira, they found themselves betrayed into an
accompliceship of murder, a perfect misprision of parricide, while
they dreamed of nothing less. M., I believe, was the only person
who suffered acutely from the failure; for G. thenceforward, with
a serenity unattainable but by the true philosophy, abandoning a
precarious popularity, retired into his fast hold of speculation,--the
drama in which the world was to be his tiring room, and remote
posterity his applauding spectators at once, and actors.
ELIA.
THE OLD ACTORS
(_London Magazine_, October, 1822)
I do not know a more mortifying thing than to be conscious of a
foregone delight, with a total oblivion of the person and manner
which conveyed it. In dreams I often stretch and strain after the
countenance of Edwin, whom I once saw in Peeping Tom. I cannot catch a
feature of him. He is no more to me than Nokes or Pinkethman. Parsons,
and still more Dodd, were near being lost to me, till I was refreshed
with their portraits (fine treat) the other day at Mr. Mathews's
gallery at Highgate; which, with the exception of the Hogarth
pictures, a few years since exhibited in Pall Mall, was the most
delightful collection I ever gained admission to. There hang the
players, in their single persons, and in grouped scenes, from the
Restoration--Bettertons, Booths, Garricks, justifying the prejudices
which we entertain for them--the Bracegirdles, the Mountforts, and the
Oldfields, fresh as Cibber has described them--the Woffington (a true
Hogarth) upon a couch, dallying and dangerous--the Screen Scene in
Brinsley's famous comedy, with Smith and Mrs. Abingdon, whom I have
not seen, and the rest, whom having seen, I see still there. There is
Henderson, unrivalled in Comus, whom I saw at second hand in the elder
Harley--Harley, the rival of Holman, in Horatio--Holman, with the
bright glittering teeth in Lothario, and the deep paviour's sighs in
Romeo--the jolliest person ("our son is fat") of any Hamlet I have
yet seen, with the most laudable attempts (for a personable man) at
looking melancholy--and Pope, the abdicated monarch of tragedy and
comedy, in Harry the Eighth and Lord Townley. There hang the two
Aickins, brethren in mediocrity--Wroughton, who in Kitely seemed to
have forgotten that in prouder days he had personated Alexander--the
specious form of John Palmer, with the special effrontery of
Bobby--Bensley, with the trumpet-tongue, and little Quick (the retired
Dioclesian of Islington) with his squeak like a Bart'lemew fiddle.
There are fixed, cold as in life, the immovable features of Moody,
who, afraid of o'erstepping nature, sometimes stopped short of
her--and the restless fidgetiness of Lewis, who, with no such fears,
not seldom leaped o' the other side. There hang Farren and Whitfield,
and Burton and Phillimore, names of small account in those times, but
which, remembered now, or casually recalled by the sight of an old
play-bill, with their associated recordations, can "drown an eye
unused to flow." There too hangs (not far removed from them in death)
the graceful plainness of the first Mrs. Pope, with a voice unstrung
by age, but which, in her better days, must have competed with the
silver tones of Barry himself, so enchanting in decay do I remember
it--of all her lady parts exceeding herself in the Lady Quakeress
(there earth touched heaven!) of O'Keefe, when she played it to
the "merry cousin" of Lewis--and Mrs. Mattocks, the sensiblest
of viragos--and Miss Pope, a gentlewoman ever, to the verge of
ungentility, with Churchill's compliment still burnishing upon her gay
Honeycomb lips. There are the two Bannisters, and Sedgwick, and Kelly,
and Dignum (Diggy), and the bygone features of Mrs. Ward, matchless in
Lady Loverule; and the collective majesty of the whole Kemble family,
and (Shakspeare's woman) Dora Jordan; and, by her, _two Antics_, who
in former and in latter days have chiefly beguiled us of our griefs;
whose portraits we shall strive to recall, for the sympathy of those
who may not have had the benefit of viewing the matchless Highgate
Collection.
MR. SUETT
O for a "slip-shod muse," to celebrate in numbers, loose and shambling
as himself, the merits and the person of Mr. Richard Suett, comedian!
Richard, or rather Dicky Suett--for so in his lifetime he was best
pleased 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 set apart and 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 "commerce with the skies"--I
could never rightly learn; but we find him, after the probation of a
twelvemonth or so, reverting to a secular condition, and become one of
us.
I think he was not altogether of that timber, out of which cathedral
seats and sounding boards are hewed. But if a glad heart--kind and
therefore glad--be any part of sanctity, then might the robe of
Motley, with which he invested himself with so much humility after
his deprivation, and which he wore so long with so much blameless
satisfaction to himself and to the public, be accepted for a
surplice--his white stole, and _albe_.
The first fruits of his secularization was an engagement upon the
boards of Old Drury, at which theatre he commenced, as I have been
told, with adopting the manner of Parsons in old men's characters. At
the period in which most of us knew him, he was no more an imitator
than he was in any true sense himself imitable.
He was the Robin Good-Fellow 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!_ of Dicky Suett, brought back to their remembrance by
the faithful transcript of his friend Mathews's mimicry. The "force of
nature could no further go." He drolled upon the stock of these two
syllables richer than the cuckoo.
Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his composition.
Had he had but two grains (nay, half a grain) of it, he could never
have supported himself upon those two spider's strings, which served
him (in the latter part of his unmixed existence) as legs. A doubt or
a scruple must have made him totter, a sigh have puffed him down;
the weight of a frown had staggered him, a wrinkle made him lose his
balance. But on he went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of his,
with Robin Good-Fellow, "thorough brake, thorough briar," reckless of
a scratched face or a torn doublet.
Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed his fools and jesters. They
have all the true Suett stamp, a loose gait, a slippery tongue, this
last the ready midwife to a without-pain-delivered jest; in words
light as air, venting truths deep as the centre; with idlest rhymes
tagging conceit when busiest, singing with Lear in the tempest, or Sir
Toby at the buttery hatch.
Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of personal
favourites with the town than any actors before or after. The
difference, I take it, was this:--Jack was more _beloved_ for his
sweet, good-natured, moral, pretensions. Dicky was more _liked_ for
his sweet, good-natured, no pretensions at all. Your whole conscience
stirred with Bannister's performance of Walter in the Children in the
Wood--how dearly beautiful it was!--but Dicky seemed like a thing, as
Shakspeare says of Love, too young to know what conscience is. He put
us into Vesta's days. Evil fled before him--not as from Jack, as from
an antagonist,--but because it could not touch him, any more than a
cannon-ball a fly. He was delivered from the burthen of that death;
and, when Death came himself, not in metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it is
recorded of him by Robert Palmer, who kindly watched his exit, that he
received the last stroke, neither varying his accustomed tranquillity,
nor tune, with the simple exclamation, worthy to have been recorded in
his epitaph--_O La!--O La! Bobby!_
MR. MUNDEN
Not many nights ago we had come home from seeing this extraordinary
performer in Cockletop; and when we retired to our pillow, his
whimsical image still stuck by us, in a manner as to threaten sleep.
In vain we tried to divest ourselves of it by conjuring up the most
opposite associations. We resolved to be serious. We raised up the
gravest topics of life; private misery, public calamity. All would not
do.
--There the antic sate
Mocking our state--
his queer visnomy--his bewildering costume--all the strange things
which he had raked together--his serpentine rod swagging about in his
pocket--Cleopatra's tear, and the rest of his relics--O'Keefe's wild
farce, and _his_ wilder commentary--till the passion of laughter, like
grief in excess, relieved itself by its own weight, inviting the sleep
which in the first instance it had driven away.
But we were not to escape so easily. No sooner did we fall into
slumbers, than the same image, only more perplexing, assailed us in
the shape of dreams. Not one Munden, but five hundred, were dancing
before us, 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 forgotten Edwin. O for the power
of the pencil to have fixed them when we awoke! A season or two since
there was exhibited a Hogarth gallery. We do not see why there should
not be a Munden gallery. In richness and variety the latter would not
fall far short of the former.
There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one face (but what a
one it is!) of Liston; but Munden has none that you can properly pin
down, and call _his_. When you think he has exhausted his battery of
looks, in unaccountable warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts
out an entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He is not one, but
legion. Not so much a comedian, as a company. If his name could be
multiplied like his countenance, it might fill a play-bill. He, and
he alone, literally _makes faces_: applied to any other person, the
phrase is a mere figure, denoting certain modifications of the human
countenance. Out of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his
friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as easily. We should
not be surprised to see him some day put out the head of a
river horse; or come forth a pewit, or lapwing, some feathered
metamorphosis.
We 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. We have seen
some faint approaches to this sort of excellence in other players.
But in what has been truly denominated "the sublime of farce," Munden
stands out as single and unaccompanied as Hogarth. Hogarth, strange to
tell, had no followers. The school of Munden began, and must end, with
himself.
Can any man _wonder_, like him? can any man _see ghosts_, like
him? or _fight with his own shadow_--sessa--as he does in that
strangely-neglected thing, the Cobler of Preston--where his
alternations from the Cobler to the Magnifico, and from the Magnifico
to the Cobler, keep the brain of the spectator in as wild a ferment,
as if some Arabian Night were being acted before him, or as if Thalaba
were no tale! Who like him can throw, or ever attempted to throw, a
supernatural 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 it were mounted into
the firmament. A beggar in the hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli,
rose the Patriarch of Poverty. So the gusto of Munden antiquates and
ennobles what it touches. His pots and his ladles are as grand and
primal as the seething-pots and hooks seen in old prophetic vision.
A tub of butter, contemplated by him, amounts to a Platonic idea. He
understands a leg of mutton in its quiddity. He stands wondering, amid
the commonplace materials of life, like primæval man, with the sun and
stars about him.
ELIA.
NOTES
ELIA
Lamb took the name of Elia, which should, he said, be pronounced
Ellia, from an old clerk, an Italian, at the South-Sea House in Lamb's
time: that is, in 1791-1792. Writing to John Taylor in July, 1821,
just after he had taken over the magazine (see below), Lamb says,
referring to the South-Sea House essay, "having a brother now there,
and doubting how he might relish certain descriptions in it, I clapt
down the name of Elia to it, which passed off pretty well, for Elia
himself added the function of an author to that of a scrivener, like
myself. I went the other day (not having seen him [Elia] for a year)
to laugh over with him at my usurpation of his name, and found him,
alas! no more than a name, for he died of consumption eleven months
ago, and I knew not of it. So the name has fairly devolved to me, I
think; and 'tis all he has left me."
In the library at Welbeck is a copy of a pamphlet, in French, entitled
_Considérations sur l'état actuel de la France au mois de Juin 1815,
par un Anglais_, which was presented to the Duke of Portland by the
author, F.A. Elia. This was probably Lamb's Elia. The pamphlet is
reprinted, together with other interesting matter remotely connected
with Lamb, in _Letters from the Originals at Welbeck Abbey_, privately
printed, 1909.
_Elia. Essays which have appeared under that signature in the London
Magazine_, was published early in 1823. Lamb's original intention was
to furnish the book with a whimsical preface, as we learn from the
following letter to John Taylor, dated December 7, 1822:--
"DEAR SIR,--I should like the enclosed Dedication to be printed,
unless you dislike it. I like it. It is in the olden style. But if
you object to it, put forth the book as it is; only pray don't let
the printer mistake the word _curt_ for _curst_.
"C.L.
"DEDICATION.
"TO THE FRIENDLY AND JUDICIOUS READER,
who will take these Papers, as they were meant; not understanding
every thing perversely in its absolute and literal sense, but
giving fair construction, as to an after-dinner conversation;
allowing for the rashness and necessary incompleteness of first
thoughts; and not remembering, for the purpose of an after taunt,
words spoken peradventure after the fourth glass, the Author
wishes (what he would will for himself) plenty of good friends to
stand by him, good books to solace him, prosperous events to all
his honest undertakings, and a candid interpretation to his most
hasty words and actions. The other sort (and he hopes many of them
will purchase his book too) he greets with the curt invitation of
Timon, 'Uncover, dogs, and lap:' or he dismisses them with the
confident security of the philosopher,--'you beat but on the case
of Elia.'
"On better consideration, pray omit that Dedication. The Essays
want no Preface: they are _all Preface_. A Preface is nothing but
a talk with the reader; and they do nothing else. Pray omit it.
"There will be a sort of Preface in the next Magazine, which may
act as an advertisement, but not proper for the volume.
"Let ELIA come forth bare as he was born.
"C.L.
"N.B.--_No_ Preface."
The "sort of Preface in the next number" was the character sketch of
the late Elia on page 171.
_Elia_ did not reach a second edition in Lamb's lifetime--that is to
say, during a period of twelve years--although the editions into which
it has passed between his death and the present day are legion. Why,
considering the popularity of the essays as they appeared in the
_London Magazine_, the book should have found so few purchasers is a
problem difficult of solution. Lamb himself seems to have attributed
some of the cause to Southey's objection, in the _Quarterly Review_,
that _Elia_ "wanted a sounder religious feeling;" but more probably
the book was too dear: it was published at 9s. 6d.
Ordinary reviewers do not seem to have perceived at all that a rare
humorist, humanist and master of prose had arisen, although among the
finer intellects who had any inclination to search for excellence for
excellence's sake Lamb made his way. William Hazlitt, for example,
drew attention to the rich quality of _Elia_; as also did Leigh Hunt;
and William Hone, who cannot, however, as a critic be mentioned with
these, was tireless in advocating the book. Among strangers to Lamb
who from the first extolled his genius was Miss Mitford. But _Elia_
did not sell.
Ten years passed before Lamb collected his essays again, and then
in 1833 was published _The Last Essays of Elia_, with Edward
Moxon's imprint. The mass of minor essays in the _London Magazine_
and elsewhere, which Lamb disregarded when he compiled his two
collections, will be found in Vol. I. of the present edition. _The
Last Essays of Elia_ had little, if any, better reception than the
first; and Lamb had the mortification of being asked by the Norris
family to suppress the exquisite and kindly little memoir of Randal
Norris, entitled "A Death-Bed" (see page 279), which was held to be
too personal. When, in 1835, after Lamb's death, a new edition of
_Elia_ and _The Last Essays of Elia_ was issued, the "Confessions of
a Drunkard" took its place (see Vol. I.).
Meanwhile a Philadelphian firm had been beforehand with Lamb, and
had issued in 1828 a second series of _Elia_. The American edition
of _Elia_ had been the same as the English except for a slightly
different arrangement of the essays. But when in 1828 the American
second series was issued, it was found to contain three pieces not
by Lamb at all. A trick of writing superficially like Lamb had been
growing in the _London Magazine_ ever since the beginning; hence the
confusion of the American editor. The three articles not by Lamb, as
he pointed out to N.P. Willis (see _Pencillings by the Way_), are
"Twelfth Night," "The Nuns and Ale of Caverswell," and "Valentine's
Day." Of these Allan Cunningham wrote the second, and B.W. Procter
(Barry Cornwall) the other two. The volume contained only eleven
essays which Lamb himself selected for _The Last Essays of Elia_: it
was eked out with the three spurious pieces above referred to, with
several pieces never collected by Lamb, and with four of the humorous
articles in the _Works_, 1818. Bernard Barton's sonnet "To Elia" stood
as introduction. Altogether it was a very interesting book, as books
lacking authority often are.
In the notes that follow reference is often made to Lamb's Key. This
is a paper explaining certain initials and blanks in _Elia_, which
Lamb drew up for R.B. Pitman, a fellow clerk at the East India House.
I give it here in full, merely remarking that the first numerals refer
to the pages of the original edition of _Elia_ and those in brackets
to the present volume:--
M. . . . Page 13 [7] Maynard, hang'd himself.
G.D. . . " 21 [11] George Dyer, Poet.
H. . . . " 32 [16] Hodges.
W. . . . " 45 [23]
Dr. T----e . " 46 [24] Dr. Trollope.
Th. . . " 47 [24] Thornton.
S. . . " 47 [24] Scott, died in Bedlam.
M. . . " 47 [24] Maunde, dismiss'd school.
C.V. le G. . " 48 [25] Chs. Valentine le Grice.
F. . . . " 49 [25] Favell; left Camb'rg because he was
asham'd of his father, who was a
house-painter there.
Fr. . . " 50 [26] Franklin, Gramr. Mast., Hertford.
T. . . " 50 [26] Marmaduke Thompson.
K. . . " 59 [30] Kenney, Dramatist. Author of
_Raising Wind_, &c.
S.T.C. . . " 60 [31] Samuel Taylor Coleridge. [Not in
Lamb's autograph.]
Alice W----n . " 63 [32] Feigned (Winterton).
*** . . " 64 [32] No Meaning.
**** . . " 64 [32] No Meaning.
*** . . " 64 [32] No Meaning.
Mrs. S. . . " 87 [44] Mrs. Spinkes.
R. . . . " 98 [50] Ramsay, London Library, Ludg. St.;
now extinct.
Granville S. . " 98 [50] Granville Sharp. [Not in Lamb's
autograph.]
E.B. . . " 130 [65] Edward Burney, half-brother of Miss
Burney.
B. . . . " 141 [71] Braham, now a Xtian.
*********** . " 170 [85] Distrest Sailors.
J----ll. . " 195 [97] Jekyll.
Susan P. . " 198 [99] Susan Peirson.
R.N. . . " 206 [103] Randal Norris, Subtreasr, Inner Temple.
C. . . . " 216 [108] Coleridge.
F. . . . " 222 [111] Field.
B.F. . . " 238 [118] Baron Field, brother of Frank.
Lord C. . " 243 [121] Lord Camelford.
Sally W----r . " 248 [123] Sally Winter.
J.W. . . " 248 [123] Jas. White, author of _Falstaff's
Letters_.
St. L. . . " 268 [133] No meaning.
B., Rector of ---- " 268 [133] No meaning.
The _London Magazine_, with John Scott (1783-1821) as its editor was
founded in 1820 by Baldwin, Cradock & Joy. Its first number was dated
January, 1820, and Lamb's first contribution was in the number for
August, 1820. Lamb had known Scott as editor of _The Champion_ in
1814, but, according to Talfourd, it was Hazlitt who introduced Lamb
to the _London Magazine_.
John Scott, who was the author of two interesting books of travel,
_A Visit to Paris in 1814_ and _Paris Re-visited_ in 1815, was an
admirable editor, and all was going exceedingly well until he plunged
into a feud with _Blackwood's Magazine_ in general, and John Gibson
Lockhart in particular, the story of which in full may be read in
Mr. Lang's _Life and Letters of Lockhart_, 1896. In the duel which
resulted Scott was shot above the hip. The wound was at first thought
lightly of, but Scott died on February 27, 1821--an able man much
regretted.
The magazine did not at first show signs of Scott's loss; it continued
to bear the imprint of its original publishers and its quality
remained very high. With Lamb and Hazlitt writing regularly this
could hardly be otherwise. But four months after the death of Scott
and eighteen months after its establishment the _London Magazine_
passed into the hands of the publishers Taylor & Hessey, the first
number with their imprint being dated August, 1821. Although for a
while no diminution of merit was perceptible and rather an access
of gaiety--for Taylor brought Hood with him and John Hamilton
Reynolds--yet the high editorial standards of Scott ceased to be
applied. Thenceforward the decline of the magazine was steady.
John Taylor (1781-1864), senior partner in the firm of Taylor &
Hessey, was known as the identifier of Sir Philip Francis with the
author of "Junius," on which subject he had issued three books.
Although unfitted for the post, he acted as editor of the _London
Magazine_ until it was again sold in 1825.
With the beginning of 1825 Taylor made a change in the magazine. He
started a new series, and increased the size and the price. But the
experiment did not answer; the spirit had evaporated; and in the
autumn he sold it to Henry Southern (1799-1853), who had founded
the _Retrospective Review_ in 1820. The last number of the _London
Magazine_ to bear Taylor & Hessey's name, and (in my opinion) to
contain anything by Lamb, was August, 1825. We have no definite
information on the matter, but there is every indication in Lamb's
_Letters_ that Taylor was penurious and not clever in his relations
with contributors. Scott Lamb seems to have admired and liked; but
even in Scott's day payment does not seem to have been prompt. Lamb
was paid, according to Barry Cornwall, two or three times the amount
of other writers, who received for prose a pound a page. But Lamb
himself says that the rate for him was twenty guineas a sheet, a sheet
being sixteen pages; and he told Moore that he had received £170 for
two years' Elia. In a letter to Barton in January, 1823, Lamb remarks:
"B---- [Baldwin] who first engaged me as 'Elia' has not paid me up yet
(nor any of us without repeated mortifying appeals)."
The following references to the _London_ in Lamb's letters to Barton
tell the story of its decadence quite clearly enough. In May,
1823:--"I cannot but think _the London_ drags heavily. I miss Janus
[Wainewright]. And O how it misses Hazlitt--Procter, too, is affronted
(as Janus has been) with their abominable curtailment of his things."
Again, a little later, in September:--"The 'London' I fear falls
off.--I linger among its creaking rafters, like the last rat. It will
topple down, if they don't get some Buttresses. They have pulled down
three, W. Hazlitt, Procter, and their best stay, kind light-hearted
Wainwright, their Janus."
In January, 1824, at the beginning of his eight months' silence:--"The
London must do without me for a time, a time, and half a time, for I
have lost all interest about it."
Again, in December, 1824:--"Taylor & Hessey finding their magazine
goes off very heavily at 2s. 6d., are prudently going to raise their
price another shilling; and having already more authors than they
want, intend to increase the number of them. If they set up against
the New Monthly, they must change their present hands. It is not tying
the dead carcase of a Review to a half-dead Magazine will do their
business."
In January, 1825 (to Sarah Hutchinson):--"You ask about the editor of
the Lond. I know of none. This first specimen [of a new series] is
flat and pert enough to justify subscribers, who grudge at t'other
shilling."
Next month Lamb writes, again to Barton:--"Our second Number [of the
new series] is all trash. What are T. & H. about? It is whip syllabub,
'thin sown with aught of profit or delight'. Thin sown! not a germ of
fruit or corn. Why did poor Scott die! There was comfort in writing
with such associates as were his little band of scribblers, some gone
away, some affronted away, and I am left as the solitary widow [in one
of Barton's poems] looking for watercresses."
Finally, in August, 1825:--"Taylor has dropt the 'London'. It was
indeed a dead weight. It was Job in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle
off my part of the pack, and stand like Christian with light and merry
shoulders."
In addition to Lamb and Hazlitt the _London Magazine_ had more or
less regular contributions, in its best days, from De Quincey, Allan
Cunningham (Nalla), T.G. Wainewright, afterwards the poisoner, but
in those days an amusing weaver of gay artificial prose, John Clare,
Bernard Barton, H.F. Cary, Richard Ayton, George Darley, Thomas Hood,
John Hamilton Reynolds, Sir John Bowring, John Poole, B.W. Procter;
while among occasional writers for it were Thomas Carlyle, Landor and
Julius Hare.
The essay, "Stage Illusion," in the number for August, 1825, was,
I believe, the last that Lamb contributed. (In this connection see
Mr. Bertram Dobell's _Sidelights on Charles Lamb_, 1903.) Lamb then
passed over to Colburn's _New Monthly Magazine_, where the "Popular
Fallacies" appeared, together with certain other of his later essays.
His last contribution to that magazine was dated September, 1826. In
1827 he was chiefly occupied in selecting Garrick play extracts for
Hone's _Table Book_, at the British Museum, and for a while after that
he seems to have been more interested in writing acrostics and album
verses than prose. In 1831, however, Moxon's _Englishman's Magazine_
offered harbourage for anything Lamb cared to give it, and a brief
revival of Elia (under the name of Peter) resulted. With its death in
October, 1831, Lamb's writing career practically ceased.
* * * * *
Page 1. THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.
_London Magazine_, August, 1820.
Although the "Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married
People," "Valentine's Day," and "On the Acting of Munden," were all
written before this essay, it is none the less the first of the
essays of Elia. I have remarked, in the notes to a small edition of
_Elia_, that it is probably unique in literature for an author to
find himself, as Lamb did, in his forty-fourth year, by recording
impressions gathered in his seventeenth; but I think now that Lamb
probably visited his brother at the South-Sea House from time to time
in later years, and gathered other impressions then. I am led to this
conclusion partly by the fact that Thomas Tame was not appointed
Deputy-Accountant until four or five years after Lamb had left.
We do not know exactly what Lamb's duties were at the South-Sea
House or how long he was there: probably only for the twenty-three
weeks--from September, 1791--mentioned in the receipt below,
discovered by Mr. J.A. Rutter in a little exhibition of documents
illustrative of the South Sea Bubble in the Albert Museum at Exeter:--
Rec'd 8th feby 1792 of the Honble South Sea Company by the hands
of their Secretary Twelve pounds 1s. 6d. for 23 weeks attendance
in the Examiners Office.
£12 1 6. CHAS. LAMB.
This shows that Lamb's salary was half a guinea weekly, paid
half-yearly. His brother John was already in the service of the
Company, where he remained till his death, rising to Accountant. It
has been conjectured that it was through his influence that Charles
was admitted, with the view of picking up book-keeping; but the real
patron and introducer was Joseph Pake, one of the directors, whom we
meet on page 92. Whether Lamb had ideas of remaining, or whether he
merely filled a temporary gap in the Examiners' Office, we cannot
tell. He passed to the East India House in the spring of 1792.
The South Sea Company was incorporated in 1710. The year of the Bubble
was 1720. The South-Sea House, remodelled, is now a congeries of
offices.
Page 2, line 11. _Forty years ago_. To be accurate, twenty-eight to
thirty.
Page 3, line 1. _Accounts ... puzzle me_. Here Elia begins his
"matter-of-lie" career. Lamb was at this time in the Accountants'
Office of the India House, living among figures all day.
Page 3, line 7 from foot. _Evans_. William Evans. The Directories of
those days printed lists of the chief officials in some of the public
offices, and it is possible to trace the careers of the clerks whom
Lamb names. All are genuine. Evans, whose name is given one year as
Evan Evans, was appointed cashier (or deputy-cashier) in 1792.
Page 4, line 4. _Ready to imagine himself one_. Lamb was fond of this
conceit. See his little essay "The Last Peach" (Vol. I.), and the
mischievous letter to Bernard Barton, after Fauntleroy's trial,
warning him against peculation.
Page 4, line 7. _Anderton's_. Either the coffee-shop in Fleet Street,
now Anderton's Hotel, or a city offshoot of it. The portrait, if it
ever was in existence, is no longer known there.
Page 5, line 17. _John Tipp_. John Lamb succeeded Tipp as Accountant
somewhen about 1806.
Page 5, line 27. _I know not, etc._ This parenthesis was not in the
_London Magazine_, but the following footnote was appended to the
sentence:--
"I have since been informed, that the present tenant of them is
a Mr. Lamb, a gentleman who is happy in the possession of some
choice pictures, and among them a rare portrait of Milton, which
I mean to do myself the pleasure of going to see, and at the same
time to refresh my memory with the sight of old scenes. Mr.
Lamb has the character of a right courteous and communicative
collector."
Mr. Lamb was, of course, John Lamb, or James Elia (see the essay "My
Relations"), then (in 1820) Accountant of the South-Sea House. He left
the Milton to his brother. It is now in America.
Page 6, line 5 from foot. _Henry Man_. This was Henry Man (1747-1790),
deputy-secretary of the South-Sea House from 1776, and an author
of light trifles in the papers, and of one or two books. The
_Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose of the late Henry Man_ was
published in 1802, among the subscribers being three of the officials
named in this essay--John Evans, R. Plumer, and Mr. Tipp, and also
Thomas Maynard, who, though assigned to the Stock Exchange, is
probably the "childlike, pastoral M----" of a later paragraph. Small
politics are for the most part kept out of Man's volumes, which are
high-spirited rather than witty, but this punning epigram (of which
Lamb was an admirer) on Lord Spencer and Lord Sandwich may be
quoted:--
Two Lords whose names if I should quote,
Some folks might call me sinner:
The one invented _half a coat_,
The other _half a dinner_.
Such lords as these are useful men,
Heaven sends them to console one;
Because there's now not one in ten,
That can procure a _whole one_.
Page 7, line 13. _Plumer_. Richard Plumer (spelled Plomer in the
directories), deputy-secretary after Man. Lamb was peculiarly
interested in the Plumers from the fact that his grandmother, Mrs.
Field, had been housekeeper of their mansion at Blakesware, near Ware
(see notes to "Dream-Children" and "Blakesmoor in H----shire"). The
fine old Whig was William Plumer, who had been her employer, and was
now living at Gilston. He died in 1821.
The following passage from the memoir of Edward Cave (1691-1754),
which Dr. Johnson wrote for the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (which Cave
established) in 1754, shows that Lamb was mistaken about Plumer:--
He [Cave] was afterwards raised to the office of clerk of the
franks, in which he acted with great spirit and firmness; and
often stopped franks which were given by members of parliament to
their friends; because he thought such extension of a peculiar
right illegal. This raised many complaints, and having stopped,
among others, a frank given to the old dutchess of _Marlborough_
by Mr. _Walter Plummer_, he was cited before the house, as for
breach of privilege, and accused, I suppose very unjustly,
of opening letters to detect them. He was treated with great
harshness and severity, but declining their questions by pleading
his oath of secrecy, was at last dismissed. And it must be
recorded to his honour, that when he was ejected from his office,
he did not think himself discharged from his trust, but continued
to refuse to his nearest friends any information about the
management of the office.
I borrow from Canon Ainger an interesting note on Walter Plumer,
written in the eighteen-eighties, showing that Lamb was mistaken on
other matters too:--
The present Mr. Plumer, of Allerton, Totness, a grandson of
Richard Plumer of the South-Sea House, by no means acquiesces in
the tradition here recorded as to his grandfather's origin. He
believes that though the links are missing, Richard Plumer was
descended in regular line from the Baronet, Sir Walter Plumer,
who died at the end of the seventeenth century. Lamb's memory
has failed him here in one respect. The "Bachelor Uncle," Walter
Plumer, uncle of William Plumer of Blakesware, was most certainly
not a bachelor (see the pedigree of the family in Cussans'
_Hertfordshire_).
Page 7, line 10 from foot. M----. According to the Key to the initials
and blanks in some of the essays, which Lamb filled in for a curious
correspondent, M---- stood for one Maynard. "Maynard, hang'd himself"
is Lamb's entry. He was chief clerk in the Old Annuities and Three Per
Cents, 1788-1793.
* * * * *
Page 8. OXFORD IN THE VACATION.
_London Magazine_, October, 1820, where it is dated at the end,
"August 5, 1820. From my rooms facing the Bodleian." My own belief
is that Lamb wrote the essay at Cambridge, under the influence of
Cambridge, where he spent a few weeks in the summers of 1819 and 1820,
and transferred the scene to Oxford by way of mystification. He knew
Oxford, of course, but he had not been there for some years, and it
was at Cambridge that he met Dyer and saw the Milton MSS.
Concerning a visit to Oxford (in 1810), Hazlitt had written, in his
_Table Talk_ essay "On the Conversation of Authors," in the preceding
(the September) number of the _London Magazine_:--
L---- [that is, Lamb] once came down into the country to see us.
He was "like the most capricious poet Ovid among the Goths." The
country people thought him an oddity, and did not understand his
jokes. It would be strange if they had; for he did not make any
while he staid. But when we crossed the country to Oxford, then he
spoke a little. He and the old colleges were hail-fellow well-met;
and in the quadrangles, he "walked gowned."
The quotation is a reference to Lamb's sonnet, "I was not Trained in
Academic Bowers," written at Cambridge in 1819:--
Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers,
Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap;
My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap,
And I walk _gownèd_.
Page 8, line 6 from foot. _Agnize_. Lamb was fond of this word. I
have seen it stated ingeniously that it was of his own coinage--from
_agnus_, a lamb--but the derivation is _ad gnoscere_, to acknowledge,
to recognise, and the word is to be found in other places--in
"Othello," for example (Act I., Scene 3, line 232):--
I do agnise
A natural and prompt alacrity.
Page 9, middle. _Red-letter days_. See note on page 351. The holidays
at the India House, which are given in the London directories of
Lamb's early time there, make a considerable list. But in 1820 the
Accountants' Office, where Lamb was, kept only five days in the year.
Page 10, line 11. _I can here ... enact the student._ Lamb had
distilled the matter of this paragraph into his sonnet, "I was not
Trained in Academic Bowers," written at Cambridge in August of the
preceding year (see above and Vol. IV.).
Page 11, line 12 from foot. _Unsettle my faith._ At this point, in the
_London Magazine_, Lamb appended the footnote:--
"There is something to me repugnant, at any time, in written hand.
The text never seems determinate. Print settles it. I had thought
of the Lycidas as of a full-grown beauty--as springing up with all
its parts absolute--till, in evil hour, I was shown the original
written copy of it, together with the other minor poems of its
author, in the Library of Trinity, kept like some treasure to be
proud of. I wish they had thrown them in the Cam, or sent them,
after the latter cantos of Spenser, into the Irish Channel. How
it staggered me to see the fine things in their ore! interlined,
corrected! as if their words were mortal, alterable, displaceable
at pleasure! as if they might have been otherwise, and just
as good! as if inspirations were made up of parts, and those
fluctuating, successive, indifferent! I will never go into the
work-shop of any great artist again, nor desire a sight of his
picture, till it is fairly off the easel; no, not if Raphael were
to be alive again, and painting another Galatea."
In the Appendix to Vol. I., page 428, I have printed a passage from
the original MS. of _Comus_, which there is reason to believe was
contributed to the _London Magazine_ by Lamb.
Page 11, line 9 from foot. _G.D._ George Dyer (1755-1841), Lamb's
friend for many years. This is the first mention of him in the essays;
but we shall meet him again, particularly in "Amicus Redivivus."
George Dyer was educated at Christ's Hospital long before Lamb's
time there, and, becoming a Grecian, had entered Emmanuel College,
Cambridge. He became at first an usher in Essex, then a private tutor
to the children of Robert Robinson, the Unitarian, whose life he
afterwards excellently wrote, then an usher again, at Northampton, one
of his colleagues being John Clarke, father of Lamb's friend, Charles
Cowden Clarke. In 1792 he settled in Clifford's Inn as a hack; wrote
poems, made indexes, examined libraries for a great bibliographical
work (never published), and contributed "all that was original" to
Valpy's classics in 141 volumes. Under this work his sight gave way;
and he once showed Hazlitt two fingers the use of which he had lost
in copying out MSS. of Procrus and Plotinus in a fine Greek hand.
Fortunately a good woman took him under her wing; they were married in
1825; and Dyer's last days were happy. His best books were his _Life
of Robert Robinson_ and his _History of the University and Colleges
of Cambridge_. Lamb and his friends laughed at him and loved him. In
addition to the stories told by Lamb in his letters and essays, there
are amusing characteristics of Dyer in Crabb Robinson's diary, in
Leigh Hunt, in Hazlitt, in Talfourd, and in other places. All bear
upon his gentleness, his untidiness and his want of humour. One of
the most famous stories tells of Dyer's criticism of Williams, the
terrible Ratcliffe Highway murderer. Dyer, who would never say an ill
word of any one, was asked his opinion of this cold-blooded assassin
of two families. "He must," he replied after due thought, "be rather
an eccentric character."
Page 12, line 10. _Injustice to him._ In the _London Magazine_ the
following footnote came here, almost certainly by Lamb:--
"Violence or injustice certainly none, Mr. Elia. But you will
acknowledge that the charming unsuspectingness of our friend has
sometimes laid him open to attacks, which, though savouring (we
hope) more of waggery than malice--such is our unfeigned respect
for G.D.--might, we think, much better have been omitted. Such was
that silly joke of L[amb], who, at the time the question of the
Scotch Novels was first agitated, gravely assured our friend--who
as gravely went about repeating it in all companies--that Lord
Castlereagh had acknowledged himself to be the author of Waverly!
_Note--not by Elia."_
Page 12, line 11. _"Strike an abstract idea."_ I do not find this
quotation--if it be one; but when John Lamb once knocked Hazlitt down,
during an argument on pigments, Hazlitt refrained from striking back,
remarking that he was a metaphysician and dealt not in blows but in
ideas. Lamb may be slyly remembering this.
Page 12, line 15. C----. Cambridge. Dyer added a work on _Privileges
of the University if Cambridge_ to his _History_.
Page 12, line 8 from foot. _Our friend M.'s._ Basil Montagu, Q.C.
(1770-1851), legal writer, philanthropist, editor of Bacon, and the
friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The Mrs. M. here referred to was
Montagu's third wife, a Mrs. Skepper. It was she who was called by
Edward Irving "the noble lady," and to whom Carlyle addressed some
early letters. A.S. was Anne Skepper, afterwards Mrs. Bryan Waller
Procter, a fascinating lady who lived to a great age and died as
recently as 1888. The Montagus then lived at 25 Bedford Square.
Page 13, line 17. _Starts like a thing surprised._ Here we have an
interesting example of Lamb's gift of fused quotation. Wordsworth's
line in the "Ode on Intimations of Immortality,"
Tremble like a guilty thing surprised,
and Shakespeare's phrase in "Hamlet" (Act I., Scene 1, line 148),
Started like a guilty thing,
were probably both in his mind as he wrote.
Page 13, line 24. _Obtruded personal presence._ In the _London
Magazine_ the following passage came here:--
"D. commenced life, after a course of hard study in the 'House of
pure Emanuel,' as usher to a knavish fanatic schoolmaster at ***,
at a salary of eight pounds per annum, with board and lodging.
Of this poor stipend, he never received above half in all the
laborious years he served this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote,
that when poverty, staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes
compelled him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint at
arrears, Dr. *** would take no immediate notice, but, after
supper, when the school was called together to even-song, he would
never fail to introduce some instructive homily against riches,
and the corruption of the heart occasioned through the desire
of them--ending with 'Lord, keep thy servants, above all things
from the heinous sin of avarice. Having food and raiment,
us therewithal be content. Give me Agar's wish,'--and the
like;--which to the little auditory, sounded like a doctrine
full of Christian prudence and simplicity,--but to poor D. was a
receipt in full for that quarter's demands at least.
"And D. has been under-working for himself ever since;--drudging
at low rates for unappreciating booksellers,--wasting his fine
erudition in silent corrections of the classics, and in those
unostentatious but solid services to learning, which commonly fall
to the lot of laborious scholars, who have not the art to sell
themselves to the best advantage. He has published poems, which
do not sell, because their character is inobtrusive like his
own,--and because he has been too much absorbed in ancient
literature, to know what the popular mark in poetry is, even if he
could have hit it. And, therefore, his verses are properly, what
he terms them, _crotchets;_ voluntaries; odes to Liberty, and
Spring; effusions; little tributes, and offerings, left behind
him, upon tables and window-seats, at parting from friends'
houses; and from all the inns of hospitality, where he has been
courteously (or but tolerably) received in his pilgrimage. If his
muse of kindness halt a little behind the strong lines, in fashion
in this excitement-craving age, his prose is the best of the
sort in the world, and exhibits a faithful transcript of his own
healthy natural mind, and cheerful innocent tone of conversation."
The foregoing passage called forth a protest from one W.K.
necessitating the following reply from Lamb, which was printed in the
_London Magazine_, under the "Lion's Head," for December, 1820:--
"Elia requests the Editor to inform W.K. that in his article on
Oxford, under the initials G.D., it is his ambition to make more
familiar to the public, a character, which, for integrity and
single-heartedness, he has long been accustomed to rank among the
best patterns of his species. That, if he has failed in the end
which he proposed, it was an error of judgment merely. That, if
in pursuance of his purpose, he has drawn forth some personal
peculiarities of his friend into notice, it was only from the
conviction that the public, in living subjects especially, do not
endure pure panegyric. That the anecdotes, which he produced,
were no more than he conceived necessary to awaken attention to
character, and were meant solely to illustrate it. That it is an
entire mistake to suppose, that he undertook the character to
set off his own wit or ingenuity. That, he conceives, a candid
interpreter might find something intended, beyond a heartless
jest. That G.D., however, having thought it necessary to disclaim
the anecdote respecting Dr. ----, it becomes him, who never for
a moment can doubt the veracity of his friend, to account for
it from an imperfect remembrance of some story he heard long
ago, and which, happening to tally with his argument, he set
too hastily to the account of G.D. That, from G.D.'s strong
affirmations and proofs to the contrary, he is bound to believe
it belongs to no part of G.D.'s biography. That the transaction,
supposing it true, must have taken place more than forty years
ago. That, in consequence, it is not likely to 'meet the eye of
many who might be justly offended.'
"Finally, that what he has said of the Booksellers, referred to a
period of many years, in which he has had the happiness of G.D.'s
acquaintance; and can have nothing to do with any present or
prospective engagements of G.D., with those gentlemen, to the
nature of which he professes himself an entire stranger."
The result of the protest was that Lamb omitted the passage objected
to when he collected _Elia_ in 1823. It might well be restored now;
but I have preferred to print everything in the body of this edition
as Lamb arranged it for press.
* * * * *
Page 14. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO.
_London Magazine_, November, 1820.
This essay, which is based upon the "Recollections of Christ's
Hospital" in Vol. I., is a curious blend of Lamb's own experiences at
school with those of Coleridge. Both boys entered at the same time--on
July 17, 1782: Coleridge was then nearly ten, Lamb was seven and a
half. Coleridge was "clothed" on July 18 and went to Hertford for
a while; Lamb was clothed on October 9. Lamb left the school in
November, 1789, Coleridge in September, 1791.
The school which Lamb knew is now no more. The boys are now all in new
buildings in the midst of green fields near Horsham, many miles from
Lamb's city and its roar.
Page 14, line 15. _The worthy sub-treasurer._ Randal Norris (see note
to "A Death-Bed"). I have not been able to discover the cause of his
influence.
Page 14, lines 18, 19. _Crug ... piggins._ Crug is still current
slang. In the school museum one of these piggins is preserved.
Page 14, line 25. _Three banyan days._ Three vegetarian days.
Coleridge complains (in a letter to Poole) that he was never
sufficiently fed except on Wednesdays. He gives the following table of
food:--
Our diet was very scanty. Every morning a bit of dry bread and
some bad small beer. Every evening a larger piece of bread, and
cheese or butter, whichever we liked. For dinner,--on Sunday,
boiled beef and broth; Monday, bread and butter, and milk and
water; Tuesday, roast mutton; Wednesday, bread and butter, and
rice milk; Thursday, boiled beef and broth; Friday, boiled mutton
and broth; Saturday, bread and butter, and pease-porridge. Our
food was portioned; and, excepting on Wednesdays, I never had a
bellyfull. Our appetites were damped, never satisfied; and we had
no vegetables.
Page 14, line 8 from foot. _Caro equina._ Horseflesh. Mr. Pearce's
chapter on food at the school in his excellent _Annals of Christ's
Hospital_ is very interesting, and records great changes.
Rotten-roasted or rare, _i.e._, over-roasted or under-done.
Page 15, line 3. _The good old relative._ Aunt Hetty, or more
properly, Sarah Lamb. Compare the "Lines written on the Day of my
Aunt's Funeral," Vol. IV.:--
I have not forgot
How thou didst love thy Charles, when he was yet
A prating schoolboy: I have not forgot
The busy joy on that important day,
When, childlike, the poor wanderer was content
To leave the bosom of parental love,
His childhood's play-place, and his early home,
For the rude fosterings of a stranger's hand,
Hard, uncouth tasks, and schoolboys' scanty fare.
How did thine eyes peruse him round and round
And hardly knew him in his yellow coats,
Red leathern belt, and gown of russet blue.
Page 15, line 13. _I was a poor friendless boy._ Here Lamb speaks as
Coleridge, who came all the way from Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire
(not Calne, in Wiltshire), and had no London friends. In _John
Woodvil_ Lamb borrowed St. Mary Ottery again (see Vol. IV.). Coleridge
has recorded how unhappy he was in his early days at school.
Page 15, line 12 from foot. _Whole-day-leaves._ In this connection
the following passage from Trollope's _History of Christ's Hospital_,
1834, is interesting:--
Those days, on which _leave_ is given to be absent from the Hospital
during the whole day, are called _whole-day leaves_.... A _ticket_ is
a small oval medal attached to the button-hole, without which, except
on leaves, no boy is allowed to pass the gates. Subjoined is a list of
the holidays, which have been hitherto kept at Christ's Hospital; but
it is in contemplation to abridge them materially. Of the policy of
such a measure great doubts may fairly be entertained, inasmuch as the
vacations are so short as to give sufficient respite neither to master
nor scholar; and these occasional breaks, in the arduous duties of the
former more especially, enable him to repair the exhausted energies of
body and mind by necessary relaxation. If those days, which are marked
with an asterisk, fall on a Sunday, they are kept on the Monday
following; and likewise the state holidays.
HOLIDAYS KEPT AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL
Jan. 25. St. Paul's conversion.
*30. King Charles's martyrdom.
Feb. 2. Candlemas Day.
24. St. Matthias.
Shrove Tuesday.
Ash Wednesday.
March 25. Lady Day.
April 23. St. George.
25. St. Mark.
May 1. St. Philip and St. James.
*29. Restoration of King
Charles II.
Ascension Day.
Whit Monday.
Whit Tuesday.
June 11. St. Barnabas.
24. St. John Baptist.
29. St. Peter.
July 25. St. James.
Thursday after St.
James. (Nurses' Holiday.)
Aug. 24. St. Bartholomew.
Sept. *2. London burnt.
*21. St. Matthew.
29. St. Michael.
Oct. 18. St. Luke.
*23. King Edward VI. born.
28. St. Simon and St. Jude.
Nov. 1. All Saints.
*5. Gunpowder Plot.
*9. Lord Mayor's Day.
*17. Queen Elizabeth's birthday.
30. St. Andrew.
Dec. 21. St. Thomas.
Also the birthdays of the King and Queen, and the Prince and Princess
of Wales: and the King's accession, proclamation, and coronation.
In addition to the generous allowance of holidays above given the boys
had every alternate Wednesday for a whole day; eleven days at Easter,
four weeks in the summer, and fifteen days at Christmas. In 1837 the
holiday system was remodelled. Compare Lamb's other remarks on his
whole-day rambles in "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" (Vol. I.)
and in the essays in the present volume entitled "Amicus Redivivus"
and "Newspapers."
Page 16, line 14. _The Tower_. Blue-coat boys still have this right
of free entrance to the Tower; but the lions are no more. They were
transferred to the Zoological Gardens in 1831.
Page 16, line 16. _L.'s governor_. Meaning Samuel Salt, M.P.; but it
was actually his friend Mr. Timothy Yeats who signed Lamb's paper.
More accurately, Lamb's father lived under Salt's roof.
Page 16, line 7 from foot. _H----_. According to Lamb's Key this was
Hodges; but in the British Museum copy of _Elia_, first edition, some
one has written Huggins. It is immaterial. Nevis and St. Kitt's (St.
Christopher's) are islands in the British West Indies. Tobin would
be James Webbe Tobin, of Nevis, who died in 1814, the brother of the
playwright John Tobin, author of "The Honeymoon."
Page 17, line 2. _A young ass_. The general opinion at Christ's
Hospital is that Lamb invented this incident; and yet it has the air
of being true.
Page 17, line 18. _L.'s admired Perry_. John Perry, steward from 1761
to 1785, mentioned in Lamb's earlier essay.
Page 17, foot. _Gags_. Still current slang.
Page 17, foot. ----. No name in the Key. The quotation is an
adaptation of:--
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh
Which some did die to look on.
"Antony and Cleopatra," Act I., Scene 4, lines 67-68.
It is perhaps worth remarking that in _David Copperfield_ Dickens has
a school incident of a similar character.
Page 18, line 14 from foot. _Mr. Hathaway_. Matthias Hathaway, steward
from 1790 to 1813.
Page 19, line 8. _I was a hypochondriac lad_. Here Lamb drops the
Coleridge mask and speaks as himself.
Page 20, line 15. _Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert_. Bamber
Gascoigne, M.P. (1725-1791), of Bifrons, in Essex. Of Peter Aubert
I can find nothing, except that the assistant secretary of the East
India Company at the time Lamb wrote this essay was Peter Auber,
afterwards full secretary. His name here may be a joke.
Page 20, line 6 from foot. _Matthew Field_. The Rev. Matthew Feilde,
also vicar of Ugley and curate of Berden. For the Rev. James Boyer see
below.
Page 21, line 18. _"Peter Wilkins," etc. The Adventures of Peter
Wilkins_, by Robert Paltock, 1751, is still read; but _The Voyages and
Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle_, 1736, has had its day. It was a
blend of unconvincing travel and some rather free narrative: a piece
of sheer hackwork to meet a certain market. See Lamb's sonnet to
Stothard, Vol. IV. _The Fortunate Blue-Coat Boy_ I have not seen.
Canon Ainger describes it as a rather foolish romance, showing how a
Blue-coat boy marries a rich lady of rank. The sub-title is "Memoirs
of the Life and Happy Adventures of Mr. Benjamin Templeman; formerly a
Scholar in Christ's Hospital. By an Orphanotropian," 1770.
Page 22, footnote. I have not discovered a copy of Matthew Feilde's
play.
Page 23, line 17 from foot. _Squinting W----_. Not identifiable.
Page 23, line 7 from foot. _Coleridge, in his literary life_.
Coleridge speaks in the _Biographia Literaria_ of having had the
"inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time a
very severe master, the Reverend James Bowyer [Boyer]," and goes on to
attribute to that master's discrimination and thoroughness much of his
own classical knowledge and early interest in poetry and criticism.
Coleridge gives this example of Boyer's impatient humour:--
In our own English compositions (at least for the last three years
of our school education), he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor,
or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense
might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer
words. _Lute, harp_ and _lyre, Muse, Muses_ and _inspirations,
Pegasus, Parnassus_ and _Hippocrene_, were all an abomination to
him. In fancy I can almost hear him now exclaiming, "Harp? Harp?
Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, muse? Your nurse's
daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh, aye! the cloister pump, I
suppose!"
Touching Boyer's cruelty, Coleridge adds that his "severities, even
now, not seldom furnish the dreams by which the blind fancy would fain
interpret to the mind the painful sensations of distempered sleep."
In _Table Talk_ Coleridge tells another story of Boyer. "The
discipline at Christ's Hospital in my time," he says, "was
ultra-Spartan; all domestic ties were to be put aside. 'Boy!' I
remember Bowyer saying to me once when I was crying the first day of
my return after the holidays, 'Boy! the school is your father! Boy!
the school is your mother! Boy! the school is your brother! the school
is your sister! the school is your first cousin, and your second
cousin, and all the rest of your relations! Let's have no more
crying!'"
Leigh Hunt in his autobiography also has reminiscences of Boyer and
Feilde.
James Boyer or Bowyer was born in 1736, was admitted to the school in
1744, and passed to Balliol. He resigned his Upper Grammar Mastership
in 1799, and probably retired to the rectory of Gainscolne to which
he had been appointed by the school committee six years earlier. They
also gave him £500 and a staff.
Page 23, line 6 from foot. _Author of the Country Spectator_. Thomas
Fanshaw Middleton (1769-1822), afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, who was
at school with Lamb and Coleridge. In the little statuette group which
is called the Coleridge Memorial, subscribed for in 1872, on the
centenary of Coleridge's birth, and held in rotation by the ward in
which most prizes have been gained in the year, Middleton is the
tallest figure. It is reproduced in my large edition. The story which
it celebrates is to the effect that Middleton found Coleridge reading
Virgil in the playground and asked him if he were learning a lesson.
Coleridge replied that he was "reading for pleasure," an answer which
Middleton reported to Boyer, and which led to Boyer taking special
notice of him. The _Country Spectator_ was a magazine conducted by
Middleton in 1792-1793.
Page 23, line 3 from foot. _C----_. Coleridge again.
Page 24, line 4. _Lancelot Pepys Stevens_. Rightly spelled Stephens,
afterwards Under Grammar Master at the school.
Page 24, line 6. _Dr. T----e_. Arthur William Trollope (1768-1827),
who succeeded Boyer as Upper Grammar Master. He resigned in 1826.
Page 24, line 21. _Th----_. Sir Edward Thornton (1766-1852),
diplomatist, who was sent as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary to Lower Saxony, to Sweden, to Denmark and other
courts, afterwards becoming minister to Portugal.
Page 24, line 23. _Middleton_. See note above. The treatise was _The
Doctrine of the Greek Article as applied to the Criticism and the
Illustration of the New Testament_, 1808. It was directed chiefly
against Granville Sharpe. Middleton was the first Bishop of Calcutta.
Page 24, line 8 from foot. _Richards_. This was George Richards
(1767-1837). His poem on "Aboriginal Britons," which won a prize
given in 1791 by Earl Harcourt, is mentioned favourably in Byron's
_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. Richards became vicar of St.
Martin's-in-the-Fields and a Governor of Christ's Hospital. He founded
a gold medal for Latin hexameters.
Page 24, foot. _S---- ... M----_. According to the Key "Scott, died in
Bedlam," and "Maunde, dismiss'd school."
Page 24, foot. "_Finding some of Edward's race._" From Prior's Carmen
Seculare for 1700:--
Finding some of Stuart's race
Unhappy, pass their annals by.
Lamb alters Stuart to Edward because Edward VI. founded Christ's
Hospital.
Page 25, line 12. _C.V. Le G----_. Charles Valentine Le Grice
(1773-1858), whom we meet also in the essay on "Grace Before Meat."
Le Grice, in his description of Lamb as a schoolboy in Talfourd's
_Memorials_, remarked: "I never heard his name mentioned without
the addition of Charles, although, as there was no other boy of the
name of Lamb, the addition was unnecessary; but there was an implied
kindness in it, and it was a proof that his gentle manners excited
that kindness."
Page 25, line 20. _Allen_. Robert Allen, whom we meet again in the
essay on "Newspapers." After a varied and not fortunate career he died
of apoplexy in 1805.
Page 25, line 8 from foot. _The junior Le G----_. Samuel Le Grice
became a soldier and died in the West Indies. Lamb wrote of him to
Coleridge in 1796, after the tragedy at his home, at a time when
friends were badly needed, "Sam Le Grice who was then in town was with
me the first 3 or 4 days, and was as a brother to me, gave up every
hour of his time to the very hurting of his health and spirits, in
constant attendance and humouring my poor father."
Page 25, line 8 from foot. _F----_. Joseph Favell, afterwards Captain,
who had a commission from the Duke of York--as had Sam Le Grice--and
was killed in the Peninsula, at Salamanca, 1812. Lamb states in the
essay on "Poor Relations," where Favell figures as "W.," that he met
his death at St. Sebastian. Both Sam Le Grice and Favell were to have
accompanied Coleridge and Southey to the Susquehanna as Pantisocrats.
Page 26, line 1. _Fr----_. Frederick William Franklin, master of the
Hertford branch of the school from 1801 to 1827. He died in 1836.
Page 26, line 2. _Marmaduke T----_. Marmaduke Thompson, to whom Lamb
dedicated _Rosamund Gray_ in 1798.
Page 26, line 3. _Catalogue of Grecians_. Lamb was at Christ's
Hospital from 1782 to 1789, and his list is not quite complete.
He himself never was a Grecian; that is to say, one of the picked
scholars on the grammar side of the school, two of whom were sent
up to Cambridge with a hospital exhibition every year, on the
understanding that they should take orders. Lamb was one of the
Deputy-Grecians from whom the Grecians were chosen, but his stammer
standing in his way and a Church career being out of the question, he
never became a full Grecian. Writing to George Dyer, who had been a
Grecian, in 1831, Lamb says: "I don't know how it is, but I keep my
rank in fancy still since school days. I can never forget I was a
deputy Grecian!... Alas! what am I now? What is a Leadenhall clerk, or
India pensioner, to a deputy Grecian? How art thou fallen, O Lucifer!"
Lamb's memory is preserved at Christ's Hospital by a medal which is
given for the best English essays. It was first struck in 1875, the
centenary of his birth.
* * * * *
Page 26. THE TWO RACES OF MEN.
_London Magazine_, December, 1820.
Writing to Wordsworth in April of 1816, Lamb says:--"I have not bound
the poems yet. I wait till people have done borrowing them. I think
I shall get a chain and chain them to my shelves, _more Bodleiano_,
and people may come and read them at chain's length. For of those who
borrow, some read slow; some mean to read but don't read; and some
neither read nor meant to read, but borrow to leave you an opinion of
their sagacity. I must do my money-borrowing friends the justice to
say that there is nothing of this caprice or wantonness of alienation
in them. When they borrow my money they never fail to make use of it."
Probably the germ of the essay is to be found in this passage, as Lamb
never forgot his thoughts.
Page 26, line 17 of essay. _Brinsley_. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the
dramatist and a great spendthrift. He died in 1816. Lamb knew him
slightly.
Page 26, line 9 from foot. _Beyond Tooke_. That is, beyond the
philological theories of _The Diversions of Purley_ by John Home Tooke
(1736-1812).
Page 27, line 22. _Ralph Bigod_. John Fenwick, an unlucky friend of
the Lambs, an anticipatory Micawber, of whom we know too little,
and seem likely to find out little more. Lamb mentions him again in
the essay on "Chimney Sweepers," and in that on "Newspapers," in
his capacity as editor of _The Albion_, for which Lamb wrote its
extinguishing epigram in the summer of 1801. There are references to
the Fenwicks in Mary Lamb's letters to Sarah Stoddart and in Lamb's
letters; but nothing very informing. After financial embarrassments in
England they emigrated to America.
Page 29, line 12. _Comberbatch_. Coleridge, who had enlisted as a
young man in the 15th Light Dragoons as Silas Titus Comberback.
Page 29, line 16. _Bloomsbury_. Lamb was then in rooms at 20 Great
Russell Street (now Russell Street), Covent Garden, which is not in
Bloomsbury.
Page 29, line 27. _Should he go on acting_. The _Letters_ contain
references to this habit of Coleridge's. Writing to him in 1809 Lamb
says, referring among other loans to the volume of Dodsley with
Vittoria Corombona ("The White Devil," by John Webster) in it:--"While
I think on it, Coleridge, I fetch'd away my books which you had at the
_Courier_ Office, and found all but a third volume of the old plays,
containing the 'White Devil, 'Green's 'Tu Quoque,' and the 'Honest
Whore,' perhaps the most valuable volume of them all--_that_ I could
not find. Pray, if you can, remember what you did with it, or where
you took it out with you a walking perhaps; send me word, for, to use
the old plea, it spoils a set. I found two other volumes (you had
three), the _Arcadia_ and _Daniel_, enriched with manuscript notes. I
wish every book I have were so noted. They have thoroughly converted
me to relish _Daniel_, or to say I relish him, for after all, I
believe I did relish him."
And several years later (probably in 1820) we find him addressing
Coleridge with reference to Luther's _Table Talk:_--"Why will you make
your visits, which should give pleasure, matter of regret to your
friends? You never come but you take away some folio, that is part of
my existence. With a great deal of difficulty I was made to comprehend
the extent of my loss. My maid, Becky, brought me a dirty bit of
paper, which contained her description of some book which Mr.
Coleridge had taken away. It was _Luster's Tables_, which, for some
time, I could not make out. 'What! has he carried away any of the
_tables_, Becky?' 'No, it wasn't any tables, but it was a book that he
called _Luster's Tables_.' I was obliged to search personally among my
shelves, and a huge fissure suddenly disclosed to me the true nature
of the damage I had sustained."
Allsop tells us that Lamb once said of Coleridge: "He sets his mark
upon whatever he reads; it is henceforth sacred. His spirit seems to
have breathed upon it; and, if not for its author, yet for his sake,
we admire it."
Page 30, line 1. _John Buncle_. Most of Lamb's books are in America;
Lamb's copy of _John Buncle_, with an introductory note written in by
Coleridge, was sold, with other books from his library, in New York
in 1848. _The Life of John Buncle, Esq_., a book highly praised by
Hazlitt, was by Thomas Amory (1691?-1788), published, Part I. in 1756
and Part II. in 1766. A condensed reprint was issued in 1823 entitled
_The Spirit of Buncle_, in which, Mr. W.C. Hazlitt suggests, Lamb may
have had a hand with William Hazlitt.
Page 30, line 19. _Spiteful K._ James Kenney (1780-1849), the
dramatist, then resident at Versailles, where Lamb and his sister
visited him in 1822. He married Louisa Mercier, daughter of Louis
Sebastian Mercier, the French critic, and widow of Lamb's earlier
friend, Thomas Holcroft. One of their two sons was named Charles Lamb
Kenney (1821-1881). Lamb recovered Margaret of Newcastle's _Letters_
(folio, 1664), which is among the books in America, as is also the
Fulke Greville (small folio, 1633).
Page 31, line 4. _S.T.C.... annotations_. Lamb's copy of Daniel's
_Poetical Works_, two volumes, 1718, and of Browne's _Enquiries
into Vulgar and Common Errors_, folio, 1658, both with marginalia
by himself and Coleridge, are in existence, but I cannot say where:
probably in America. Lamb's copy of Beaumont and Fletcher, with
Coleridge's notes (see "Old China"), is, however, safe in the British
Museum. His Fulke Greville, as I have said, is in America, but I
fancy it has nothing of Coleridge in it, nor has his Burton--quarto,
1621--which still exists.
Coleridge's notes in the Beaumont and Fletcher folio are not numerous,
but usually ample and seriously critical. At the foot of a page of the
"Siege of Corinth," on which he had written two notes (one, "O flat!
flat! flat! Sole! Flounder! Place! all stinking! stinkingly flat!"),
he added:--
_N.B._--I shall not be long here, Charles!--I gone, you will not
mind my having spoiled a book in order to leave a Relic.
S.T.C.
Octr. 1811.
Underneath the initials S.T.C. are the initials W.W. which suggest
that Wordsworth was present.
The Museum also has Lamb's Milton, with annotations by himself and
Coleridge.
In the _Descriptive Catalogue of the Library of Charles Lamb_,
privately issued by the New York Dibdin Club in 1897, is a list
of five of Lamb's books now in America containing valuable and
unpublished marginalia by Coleridge: _The Life of John Buncle_,
Donne's _Poems_ ("I shall die soon, my dear Charles Lamb, and then you
will not be vexed that I have scribbled your book. S.T.C., 2d May,
1811"), Reynolds' _God's Revenge against ... Murder_, 1651 ("O what
a beautiful _concordia discordantium_ is an unthinking good man's
soul!"), _The History of Philip de Commines_ in English, and Petwin's
_Letters Concerning the Mind_.
* * * * *
Page 31. NEW YEAR'S EVE.
_London Magazine_, January, 1821.
The melancholy pessimism of this essay led to some remonstrance from
robuster readers of the _London Magazine_. In addition to the letter
from "A Father" referred to below, the essay produced, seven months
later, in the August number of the _London Magazine_, a long poetical
"Epistle to Elia," signed "Olen," in which very simply and touchingly
Lamb was reminded that the grave is not the end, was asked to consider
the promises of the Christian faith, and finally was offered a glimpse
of some of the friends he would meet in heaven--among them Ulysses,
Shakespeare and Alice W----n. Taylor, the publisher and editor of the
magazine, sent Lamb a copy. He replied, acknowledging the kindness of
the author, and adding:--"Poor Elia ... does not pretend to so very
clear revelations of a future state of being as 'Olen' seems gifted
with. He stumbles about dark mountains at best; but he knows at least
how to be thankful for this life, and is too thankful, indeed, for
certain relationships lent him here, not to tremble for a possible
resumption of the gift. He is too apt to express himself lightly, and
cannot be sorry for the present occasion, as it has called forth a
reproof so Christian-like."
Lamb thought the poet to be James Montgomery, but it was in reality
Charles Abraham Elton. The poem was reprinted in a volume entitled
_Boyhood and other Poems_, in 1835.
It is conceivable that Lamb was reasoned with privately upon the
sentiments expressed in this essay; and perhaps we may take the
following sonnet which he contributed over his own name to, the
_London Magazine_ for April, 1821, as a kind of defiant postscript
thereto, a further challenge to those who reproached him for his
remarks concerning death, and who suggested that he did not really
mean them:--
They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke,
That like a millstone on man's mind doth press,
Which only works and business can redress:
Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke,
Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke.
But might I, fed with silent meditation,
Assoiled live from that fiend Occupation--
_Improbus labor_, which my spirits hath broke--
I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit--
Fling in more days than went to make the gem
That crowned the white top of Methusalem--
Yea on my weak neck take, and never forfeit,
Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky,
The heaven-sweet burthen of eternity.
It was also probably the present essay which led to Lamb's difference
with Southey and the famous letter of remonstrance. Southey accused
_Elia_ of wanting "a sounder religious feeling," and Lamb suggests in
his reply that "New Year's Eve" was the chief offender. See Vol. I.
for Lamb's amplification of one of its passages.
It may be interesting here to quote Coleridge's description of Lamb
as "one hovering between heaven and earth, neither hoping much nor
fearing anything."
Page 31, line 10 from foot. _Bells_. The music of bells seems always
to have exerted fascination over Lamb. See the reference in the story
of the "First Going to Church," in _Mrs. Leicester's School_, Vol.
III.; in his poem "Sabbath Bells," Vol. IV.; and his "John Woodvil,"
Vol. IV.
Page 31, foot. "_I saw the skirts of the departing Year_." From
Coleridge's "Ode to the Departing Year," as printed in 1796 and
1797. Lamb was greatly taken by this line. He wrote to Coleridge on
January 2, 1797, in a letter of which only a small portion has been
printed:--"The opening [of the Ode] is in the spirit of the sublimest
allegory. The idea of the 'skirts of the departing year, seen far
onwards, waving in the wind,' is one of those noble Hints at which
the Reader's imagination is apt to kindle into grand conceptions."
Afterwards Coleridge altered "skirts" to "train."
Page 32, line 21. _Seven.... years_. See note to "Dream-Children."
Alice W--n is identified with Ann Simmons, who lived near Blakesware
when Lamb was a youth, and of whom he wrote his love sonnets.
According to the Key the name is "feigned."
Page 32, line 25. _Old Dorrell_. See the poem "Going or Gone,"
Vol. IV. There seems really to have been such an enemy of the Lamb
fortunes. He was one of the witnesses to the will of John Lamb, the
father--William Dorrell.
Page 33, line 5. _Small-pox at five_. There is no other evidence than
this casual mention that Lamb ever suffered from this complaint.
Possibly he did not. He went to Christ's Hospital at the age of seven.
Page 33, line 13. _From what have I not fallen_. Lamb had had this
idea many years before. In 1796 he wrote this sonnet (text of 1818):--
We were two pretty babes, the youngest she,
The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween,
And Innocence her name. The time has been
We two did love each other's company;
Time was, we two had wept to have been apart:
But when by show of seeming good beguil'd,
I left the garb and manners of a child,
And my first love for man's society,
Defiling with the world my virgin heart--
My loved companion dropp'd a tear, and fled,
And hid in deepest shades her awful head.
Beloved, who shall tell me where thou art--
In what delicious Eden to be found--
That I may seek thee the wide world around?
Page 33, line 27. _Phantom cloud of Elia_. The speculations in the
paragraph that ends with these words were fantastical at any rate to
one reader, who, under the signature "A Father," contributed to the
March number of the _London Magazine_ a eulogy of paternity, in which
Elia was reasoned with and rebuked. "Ah! Elia! hadst thou possessed
'offspring of thine own to dally with,' thou wouldst never have made
the melancholy avowal that thou hast 'almost ceased to hope!'" Lamb
did not reply.
Page 33, line 7 from foot. _Not childhood alone ..._ The passage
between these words and "freezing days of December" was taken by
Charles Lloyd, Lamb's early friend, as the motto of a poem, in his
_Poems_, 1823, entitled "Stanzas on the Difficulty with which, in
Youth, we Bring Home to our Habitual Consciousness the Idea of Death."
Page 34, line 15 from foot. _Midnight darlings_. Leigh Hunt
records, in his essay "My Books," that he once saw Lamb kiss an old
folio--Chapman's _Homer_.
Page 34, line 8 from foot. "_Sweet assurance of a look_." A favourite
quotation of Lamb's (here adapted) from Matthew Roydon's elegy on Sir
Philip Sidney:--
A sweet attractive kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks.
A portion of the poem is quoted in the Elia essay on "Some Sonnets of
Sir Philip Sidney."
* * * * *
Page 37. MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST.
_London Magazine_, February, 1821.
Mrs. Battle was probably, in real life, to a large extent Sarah
Burney, the wife of Rear-Admiral James Burney, Lamb's friend, and the
centre of the whist-playing set to which he belonged. The theory that
Lamb's grandmother, Mrs. Field, was the original Mrs. Battle, does
not, I think, commend itself, although that lady may have lent a trait
or two. It has possibly arisen from the relation of the passage in the
essay on Blakesware, where Mrs. Battle is said to have died in the
haunted room, to that in "Dream-Children," where Lamb says that Mrs.
Field occupied this room.
The fact that Mrs. Battle and Mrs. Burney were both Sarahs is a small
piece of evidence towards their fusion, but there is something more
conclusive in the correspondence. Writing in March, 1830, concerning
the old whist days, to William Ayrton, one of the old whist-playing
company, and the neighbour of the Burneys in Little James Street,
Pimlico, Lamb makes use of an elision which, I think, may be taken as
more than support of the theory that Mrs. Battle and Mrs. Burney were
largely the same--practically proof. "Your letter, which was only
not so pleasant as your appearance would have been, has revived some
old images; Phillips (not the Colonel), with his few hairs bristling
up at the charge of a revoke, which he declares impossible; the old
Captain's significant nod over the right shoulder (was it not?);
Mrs. B----'s determined questioning of the score, after the game was
absolutely gone to the d----l." Lamb, I think, would have written out
Mrs. Burney in full had he not wished to suggest Mrs. Battle too.
This conjecture is borne out by the testimony of the late Mrs.
Lefroy, in her youth a friend of the Burneys and the Lambs, who
told Canon Ainger that though Mrs. Battle had many differing points
she was undoubtedly Mrs. Burney. But of course there are the usual
cross-trails--the reference to the pictures at Sandham; to Walter
Plumer; to the legacy to Lamb; and so forth. Perhaps among the
Blakesware portraits was one which Lamb chose as Mrs. Battle's
presentment; perhaps Mrs. Field had told him of an ancient dame who
had certain of Mrs. Battle's characteristics, and he superimposed Mrs.
Burney upon this foundation.
For further particulars concerning the Burney whist parties see the
notes to the "Letter to Southey," Vol. I.
Admiral Burney (1750-1821), a son of Dr. Burney, the historian of
music, and friend of Johnson and Reynolds, was the brother of Fanny
Burney, afterwards Madame d'Arblay. See also "The Wedding," page 275
of this volume, for another glimpse of Lamb's old friend. Admiral
Burney wrote _An Essay on the Game of Whist_, which was published in
1821. As he lived until November, 1821, he probably read the present
essay. Writing to Wordsworth, March 20, 1822, Lamb says: "There's
Capt. Burney gone!--what fun has whist now; what matters it what you
lead, if you can no longer fancy him looking over you?"
Page 37, line 1 of essay. "_A clean hearth_." To this, in the _London
Magazine_, Lamb put the footnote:--
"This was before the introduction of rugs, reader. You must remember
the intolerable crash of the unswept cinder, betwixt your foot and the
marble."
Page 37, line 8 of essay. _Win one game, and lose another_. To this,
in the _London Magazine_, Lamb put the note:--
"As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one day,
and lose him the next."
Page 38, line 26. _Mr. Bowles_. The Rev. William Lisle Bowles
(1762-1850), whose sonnets had so influenced Coleridge's early
poetical career. His edition of Pope was published in 1806. I have
tried in vain to discover if Mr. Bowles' MS. and notes for this
edition are still in existence. If so, they might contain Lamb's
contribution. But it is rather more likely, I fear, that Lamb invented
the story. The game of ombre is in Canto III. of _The Rape of the
Lock_.
The only writing on cards which we know Lamb to have done, apart from
this essay, is the elementary rules of whist which he made out for
Mrs. Badams quite late in his life as a kind of introduction to the
reading of Admiral Burney's treatise. This letter is in America and
has never been printed except privately; nor, if its owner can help
it, will it.
Page 40, line 26. _Old Walter Plumer_. See the essay on "The South-Sea
House."
Page 42, line 18 from foot. _Bad passions_. Here came in the _London
Magazine_, in parenthesis, "(dropping for a while the speaking mask of
old Sarah Battle)."
Page 43, line 2. _Bridget Elia_. This is Lamb's first reference in
the essays to Mary Lamb under this name. See "Mackery End" and "Old
China."
A little essay on card playing in the _Every-Day Book_, the authorship
of which is unknown, but which may be Hone's, ends with the following
pleasant passage:--
Cousin Bridget and the gentle Elia seem beings of that age wherein
lived Pamela, whom, with "old Sarah Battle," we may imagine
entering their room, and sitting down with them to a _square_
game. Yet Bridget and Elia live in our own times: she, full of
kindness to all, and of soothings to Elia especially;--he, no less
kind and consoling to Bridget, in all simplicity holding converse
with the world, and, ever and anon, giving us scenes that Metzu
and De Foe would admire, and portraits that Deuner and Hogarth
would rise from their graves to paint.
* * * * *
Page 43. A CHAPTER ON EARS.
_London Magazine_, March, 1821.
Lamb was not so utterly without ear as he states. Crabb Robinson in
his diary records more than once that Lamb hummed tunes, and Barron
Field, in the memoir of Lamb contributed by him to the _Annual
Biography and Obituary_ for 1836, mentions his love for certain
beautiful airs, among them Kent's "O that I had wings like a dove"
(mentioned in this essay), and Handel's "From mighty kings." Lamb says
that it was Braham who awakened a love of music in him. Compare Lamb's
lines to Clara Novello, Vol. IV., page 101, and also Mary Lamb's
postscript to his "Free Thoughts on Eminent Composers," same volume.
Page 43, foot. _I was never ... in the pillory_. This sentence led
to an amusing article in the _London Magazine_ for the next month,
April, 1821, entitled "The Confessions of H.F.V.H. Delamore, Esq.,"
unmistakably, I think, by Lamb, which will be found in Vol. I. of this
edition, wherein Lamb confesses to a brief sojourn in the stocks at
Barnet for brawling on Sunday, an incident for the broad truth of
which we have the testimony of his friend Brook Pulham.
Page 44, lines 6 and 7. "_Water parted from the sea_," "_In Infancy_."
Songs by Arne in "Artaxerxes," Lamb's "First Play" (see page 113).
Page 44, line 11. _Mrs. S----_. The Key gives "Mrs. Spinkes." We meet
a Will Weatherall in "Distant Correspondents," page 120; but I have
not been able to discover more concerning either.
Page 44, line 17. _Alice W----n_. See note to "Dream Children."
Page 44, line 26. _My friend A._ Probably William Ayrton (1777-1818),
the musical critic, one of the Burneys' whist-playing set, and a
friend and correspondent of Lamb's. See the musical rhyming letter to
him from Lamb, May 17, 1817.
Page 47, line 5. _My friend, Nov----_. Vincent Novello (1781-1861),
the organist, the father of Mrs. Cowden Clarke, and a great friend of
Lamb.
Page 47, footnote. Another friend of Vincent Novello's uses the same
couplet (from Watt's _Divine Songs for Children_, Song XXVIII.,
"For the Lord's Day, Evening") in the description of glees by the
old cricketers at the Bat and Ball on Broad Halfpenny Down, near
Hambledon--I refer to John Nyren, author of _The Young Cricketer's
Tutor_, 1833. There is no evidence that Lamb and Nyren ever met, but
one feels that they ought to have done so, in Novello's hospitable
rooms.
Page 48, line 3. _Lutheran beer_. Edmund Ollier, the son of Charles
Ollier, the publisher of Lamb's _Works_, 1818, in his reminiscences of
Lamb, prefixed to one edition of _Elia_, tells this story: "Once at a
musical party at Leigh Hunt's, being oppressed with what to him was
nothing but a prolonged noise ... he said--'If one only had a pot of
porter, one might get through this.' It was procured for him and he
weathered the Mozartian storm."
In the _London Magazine_ this essay had the following postscript:--
"P.S.--A writer, whose real name, it seems, is _Boldero_, but who
has been entertaining the town for the last twelve months, with
some very pleasant lucubrations, under the assumed signature of
_Leigh Hunt_[1], in his Indicator, of the 31st January last, has
thought fit to insinuate, that I _Elia_ do not write the little
sketches which bear my signature, in this Magazine; but that the
true author of them is a Mr. L----b. Observe the critical period
at which he has chosen to impute the calumny!--on the very
eve of the publication of our last number--affording no scope
for explanation for a full month--during which time, I must
needs lie writhing and tossing, under the cruel imputation of
nonentity.--Good heavens! that a plain man must not be allowed
_to be_--
"They call this an age of personality: but surely this spirit of
anti-personality (if I may so express it) is something worse.
"Take away my moral reputation: I may live to discredit that
calumny.
"Injure my literary fame,--I may write that up again--
"But when a gentleman is robbed of his identity, where is he?
"Other murderers stab but at our existence, a frail and perishing
trifle at the best. But here is an assassin who aims at our very
essence; who not only forbids us _to be_ any longer, but _to have
been_ at all. Let our ancestors look to it--
"Is the parish register nothing? Is the house in Princes-street,
Cavendish-square, where we saw the light six-and-forty years
ago, nothing? Were our progenitors from stately Genoa, where we
flourished four centuries back, before the barbarous name of
Boldero[2] was known to a European mouth, nothing? Was the goodly
scion of our name, transplanted into England, in the reign of the
seventh Henry, nothing? Are the archives of the steel yard, in
succeeding reigns (if haply they survive the fury of our envious
enemies) showing that we flourished in prime repute, as merchants,
down to the period of the commonwealth, nothing?
"Why then the world, and all that's in't is nothing--
The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia is nothing.--
"I am ashamed that this trifling writer should have power to move
me so."
Leigh Hunt, in _The Indicator_, January 31 and February 7, 1821, had
reprinted from _The Examiner_ a review of Lamb's _Works_, with a few
prefatory remarks in which it was stated: "We believe we are taking no
greater liberty with him [Charles Lamb] than our motives will warrant,
when we add that he sometimes writes in the _London Magazine_ under
the signature of Elia."
In _The Indicator_ of March 7, 1821, Leigh Hunt replied to Elia. Leigh
Hunt was no match for Lamb in this kind of raillery, and the first
portion of the reply is rather cumbersome. At the end, however, he
says: "There _was_, by the bye, a family of the name of Elia who came
from Italy,--Jews; which may account for this boast about Genoa. See
also in his last article in the London Magazine [the essay on "Ears"]
some remarkable fancies of conscience in reference to the Papal
religion. They further corroborate what we have heard; _viz._ that the
family were obliged to fly from Genoa for saying that the Pope was
the author of Rabelais; and that Elia is not an anagram, as some have
thought it, but the Judaico-Christian name of the writer before us,
whose surname, we find, is not Lamb, but Lomb;--Elia Lomb! What a
name! He told a friend of ours so in company, and would have palmed
himself upon him for a Scotchman, but that his countenance betrayed
him."
It is amusing to note that Maginn, writing the text to accompany the
Maclise portrait of Lamb in _Fraser's Magazine_ in 1835, gravely
states that Lamb's name was really Lomb, and that he was of Jewish
extraction.
The subject of Lamb's birth reopened a little while later. In
the "Lion's Head," which was the title of the pages given to
correspondence in the _London Magazine_, in the number for November,
1821, was the following short article from Lamb's pen:--
"ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS.--A Correspondent, who writes himself
Peter Ball, or Bell,--for his hand-writing is as ragged as his
manners--admonishes me of the old saying, that some people (under
a courteous periphrasis I slur his less ceremonious epithet) had
need have good memories. In my 'Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,'
I have delivered myself, and truly, a Templar born. Bell clamours
upon this, and thinketh that he hath caught a fox. It seems that
in a former paper, retorting upon a weekly scribbler who had
called my good identity in question, (see P.S. to my 'Chapter on
Ears,') I profess myself a native of some spot near Cavendish
Square, deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But who does not
see, except this tinkling cymbal, that in that idle fiction
of Genoese ancestry I was answering a fool according to his
folly--that Elia there expresseth himself ironically, as to an
approved slanderer, who hath no right to the truth, and can be
no fit recipient of it? Such a one it is usual to leave to his
delusions; or, leading him from error still to contradictory
error, to plunge him (as we say) deeper in the mire, and give
him line till he suspend himself. No understanding reader could
be imposed upon by such obvious rhodomontade to suspect me
for an alien, or believe me other than English.--To a second
Correspondent, who signs himself 'a Wiltshire man,' and claims me
for a countryman upon the strength of an equivocal phrase in my
'Christ's Hospital,' a more mannerly reply is due. Passing over
the Genoese fable, which Bell makes such a ring about, he nicely
detects a more subtle discrepancy, which Bell was too obtuse to
strike upon. Referring to the passage (in page 484 of our second
volume[3]), I must confess, that the term 'native town,' applied
to Calne, _primâ facie_ seems to bear out the construction which
my friendly Correspondent is willing to put upon it. The context
too, I am afraid, a little favours it. But where the words of
an author, taken literally, compared with some other passage
in his writings, admitted to be authentic, involve a palpable
contradiction, it hath been the custom of the ingenuous
commentator to smooth the difficulty by the supposition, that
in the one case an allegorical or tropical sense was chiefly
intended. So by the word 'native,' I may be supposed to mean a
town where I might have been born; or where it might be desirable
that I should have been born, as being situate in wholesome air,
upon a dry chalky soil, in which I delight; or a town, with the
inhabitants of which I passed some weeks, a summer or two ago,
so agreeably, that they and it became in a manner native to me.
Without some such latitude of interpretation in the present case,
I see not how we can avoid falling into a gross error in physics,
as to conceive that a gentleman may be born in two places, from
which all modern and ancient testimony is alike abhorrent. Bacchus
cometh the nearest to it, whom I remember Ovid to have honoured
with the epithet 'Twice born.'[4] But not to mention that he is so
called (we conceive) in reference to the places _whence_ rather
than the places _where_ he was delivered,--for by either birth
he may probably be challenged for a Theban--in a strict way of
speaking, he was a _filius femoris_ by no means in the same sense
as he had been before a _filius alvi_, for that latter was but
a secondary and tralatitious way of being born, and he but a
denizen of the second house of his geniture. Thus much by way of
explanation was thought due to the courteous 'Wiltshire man.'--To
'Indagator,' 'Investigator,' 'Incertus,' and the rest of the pack,
that are so importunate about the true localities of his birth--as
if, forsooth, Elia were presently about to be passed to his
parish--to all such churchwarden critics he answereth, that, any
explanation here given notwithstanding, he hath not so fixed his
nativity (like a rusty vane) to one dull spot, but that, if he
seeth occasion, or the argument shall demand it, he will be born
again, in future papers, in whatever place, and at whatever
period, shall seem good unto him.
"Modò me Thebis--modò Athenis.
"ELIA."
[Footnote 1: "Clearly a fictitious appellation; for if we admit the
latter of these names to be in a manner English, what is _Leigh_?
Christian nomenclature knows no such."]
[Footnote 2: "It is clearly of transatlantic origin."]
[Footnote 3: See page 15 of this volume.]
[Footnote 4:
"Imperfectus adhuc infans genetricis ab alvo
Eripitur, patrioque tener (si credere dignum est)
Insuitur femori--
Tutaque bis geniti sunt incunabula Bacchi.
"_Metamorph._ lib. iii., 310."]
* * * * *
Page 48. ALL FOOLS' DAY.
_London Magazine_, April, 1821.
Page 49, line 1. _Empedocles_. Lamb appended this footnote in the
_London Magazine_:--
He who, to be deem'd
A god, leap'd fondly into Etna's flames.
_Paradise Lost_, III., lines 470-471 [should be 469-470].
Page 49, line 5. _Cleombrotus_. Lamb's _London Magazine_ footnote:--
He who, to enjoy
Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the sea.
_Paradise Lost_, III., lines 471-472.
Page 49, line 8. _Plasterers at Babel_. Lamb's _London Magazine_
note:--
The builders next of Babel on the plain
Of Sennaar.
_Paradise Lost_, III., lines 466-467.
Page 49, line 10. _My right hand_. Lamb, it is probably unnecessary to
remind the reader, stammered too.
Page 49, line 13 from foot. _Duns_, Duns Scotus (1265?-1308?),
metaphysician, author of _De modis significandi sive Grammatica
Speculativa_ and other philosophic works. Known as Doctor Subtilis.
There was nothing of Duns in the _London Magazine_; the sentence ran:
"Mr. Hazlitt, I cannot indulge you in your definitions." This was at a
time when Lamb and Hazlitt were not on good terms.
Page 49, last line. _Honest R----_. Lamb's Key gives "Ramsay, London
Library, Ludgate Street; now extinct." I have tried in vain to find
out more about Ramsay. The London Library was established at 5 Ludgate
Street in 1785. Later, the books were lodged at Charles Taylor's house
in Hatton Garden, and were finally removed to the present London
Institute in Finsbury Circus.
Page 50, line 6. _Good Granville S----_. Lamb's Key gives Granville
Sharp. This was the eccentric Granville Sharp, the Quaker abolitionist
(1735-1813).
* * * * *
Page 51. A QUAKER'S MEETING.
_London Magazine_, April, 1821.
Lamb's connection with Quakers was somewhat intimate throughout
his life. In early days he was friendly with the Birmingham
Lloyds--Charles, Robert and Priscilla, of the younger generation,
and their father, Charles Lloyd, the banker and translator of Horace
and Homer (see _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_, 1898); and later with
Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet of Woodbridge. Also he had loved from
afar Hester Savory, the subject of his poem "Hester" (see Vol. IV.). A
passage from a letter written in February, 1797, to Coleridge, bears
upon this essay:--"Tell Lloyd I have had thoughts of turning Quaker,
and have been reading, or am rather just beginning to read, a most
capital book, good thoughts in good language, William Penn's 'No
Cross, No Crown,' I like it immensely. Unluckily I went to one of his
meetings, tell him, in St. John Street [Clerkenwell] yesterday, and
saw a man under all the agitations and workings of a fanatic, who
believed himself under the influence of some 'inevitable presence.'
This cured me of Quakerism; I love it in the books of Penn and
Woolman, but I detest the vanity of a man thinking he speaks by the
Spirit...."
Both Forster and Hood tell us that Lamb in outward appearance
resembled a Quaker.
Page 52, line 13. _The uncommunicating muteness of fishes_. Lamb had
in mind this thought on the silence of fishes when he was at work on
_John Woodvil_. Simon remarks, in the exquisite passage (Vol. IV.) in
reply to the question, "What is it you love?"
The fish in th' other element
That knows no touch of eloquence.
Page 53, second quotation. "_How reverend ..._" An adaptation of
Congreve's description of York Minster in "The Mourning Bride" (Mary
Lamb's "first play"), Act I., Scene 1:--
How reverend is the face of this tall pile ...
Looking tranquillity!
Page 53, middle. _Fox and Dewesbury_. George Fox (1624-1691) founded
the Society of Friends. William Dewesbury was one of Fox's first
colleagues, and a famous preacher. William Penn (1644-1718), the
founder of Pennsylvania, was the most illustrious of the early
converts to Quakerism. Lamb refers to him again, before his judges, in
the essay on "Imperfect Sympathies," page 73. George Fox's _Journal_
was lent to Lamb by a friend of Bernard Barton's in 1823. On returning
it, Lamb remarked (February 17, 1823):--"I have quoted G.F. in my
'Quaker's Meeting' as having said he was 'lifted up in spirit' (which
I felt at the time to be not a Quaker phrase),' and the Judge and Jury
were as dead men under his feet.' I find no such words in his Journal,
and I did not get them from Sewell, and the latter sentence I am sure
I did not mean to invent. I must have put some other Quaker's words
into his mouth."
Sewel was a Dutchman--William Sewel (1654-1720). His title runs:
_History of the Rise, Increase and Progress of the Christian People
called Quakers, written originally in Low Dutch by W. Sewel, and by
himself translated into English_, 1722. James Naylor (1617-1660) was
one of the early Quaker martyrs--"my favourite" Lamb calls him in a
letter. John Woolman (1720-1772) was an American Friend. His principal
writings are to be found in _A Journal of the Life, Gospel Labours,
and Christian Experiences of that faithful minister of Jesus Christ,
John Woolman, late of Mount Holly in the Province of Jersey, North
America_, 1795. Modern editions are obtainable.
* * * * *
Page 56. THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.
_London Magazine_, May, 1821.
Page 56, line 9. _Ortelius ... Arrowsmith_. Abraham Ortellius
(1527-1598), the Dutch geographer and the author of _Theatrum
Orbis Terræ_, 1570. Aaron Arrowsmith (1750-1823) was a well-known
cartographer at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Lamb would
perhaps have known something of his _Atlas of Southern India_, a very
useful work at the East India House.
Page 56, line 13. _A very dear friend_. Barren Field (see the essay on
"Distant Correspondents").
Page 56, line 10 from foot. _My friend M_. Thomas Manning (1772-1840),
the mathematician and traveller, and Lamb's correspondent.
Page 56, last line. "_On Devon's leafy shores_." From Wordsworth's
_Excursion_, III.
Page 57, line 16. _Daily jaunts_. Though Lamb was then (1821) living
at 20 Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, he rented rooms at 14
Kingsland Row, Dalston, in which to take holidays and do his literary
work undisturbed. At that time Dalston, which adjoins Shackleton, was
the country and Kingsland Green an open space opposite Lamb's lodging.
Page 58, line 23. _The North Pole Expedition_. This would probably
be Sir John Franklin's expedition which set out in 1819 and ended in
disaster, the subject of Franklin's book, _Narrative of a Journey to
the Shores of the Polar Sea in the years 1819, 20, 21, 22_ (1823). Sir
John Ross made an expedition in 1818, and Sir William Edward Parry in
1819, and again in 1821-1823 with Lyon. The panorama was possibly
at Burford's Panorama in the Strand, afterwards moved to Leicester
Square.
Page 60, line 17. _Tractate on Education_. Milton's _Tractate on
Education_, addressed to his friend, Samuel Hartlib, was published in
1644. The quotation above is from that work. This paragraph of Lamb's
essay was afterwards humorously expanded in his "Letter to an Old
Gentleman whose Education has been Neglected" (see Vol. I.).
Page 60, last line. _Mr. Bartley's Orrery._ George Bartley
(1782?-1858), the comedian, lectured on astronomy and poetry at the
Lyceum during Lent at this time. An orrery is a working model of the
solar system. The Panopticon was, I assume, a forerunner of the famous
Panopticon in Leicester Square.
Page 61, line 8. "_Plaything for an hour_." A quotation, from Charles
and Mary Lamb's _Poetry for Children_--"Parental Recollections":--
A child's a plaything for an hour.
Page 63, end of essay. "_Can I reproach her for it_." After these
words, in the _London Magazine_, came:--
"These kind of complaints are not often drawn from me. I am aware
that I am a fortunate, I mean a prosperous man. My feelings
prevent me from transcribing any further."
* * * * *
Page 63. VALENTINE'S DAY.
This essay first appeared in _The Examiner_, February 14 and 15, 1819,
and again in _The Indicator_, February 14, 1821. Signed ***
Page 64, line 18. _Twopenny postman._ Hone computed, in his _Every-Day
Book_, Vol. I., 1825, that "two hundred thousand letters beyond the
usual daily average annually pass through the two-penny post-office in
London on Valentine's Day." The Bishop's vogue is now (1911) almost
over.
Page 65, line 15 from foot. E.B. Lamb's Key gives "Edward Burney, half
brother of Miss Burney." This was Edward Francis Burney (1760-1848),
who illustrated many old authors, among them Richardson.
* * * * *
Page 66. IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.
_London Magazine_, August, 1821, where the title ran: "Jews, Quakers,
Scotchmen, and other Imperfect Sympathies."
Page 69, line 18 from foot. _A print ... after Leonardo._ The Virgin
of the Rocks. See Vol. IV. for Lamb's and his sister's verses on this
picture. Crabb Robinson's MS. diary tells us that the Scotchman was
one Smith, a friend of Godwin. His exact reply to Lamb's remark about
"my beauty" was: "Why, sir, from all I have heard of you, as well
as from what I have myself seen, I certainly entertain a very high
opinion of your abilities, but I confess that I have not formed any
opinion concerning your personal pretensions."
Page 70, line 10. _The poetry of Burns._ "Burns was the god of my
idolatry," Lamb wrote to Coleridge in 1796. Coleridge's lines on
Burns, "To a Friend who had declared his intention of writing no more
poetry," were addressed to Lamb. Barry Cornwall records seeing Lamb
kiss his copy of the poet.
Page 70, line 17. _You can admire him_. In the _London Magazine_ Lamb
added:--
"I have a great mind to give up Burns. There is certainly
a bragging spirit of generosity, a swaggering assertion of
independence, and _all that_, in his writings."
Page 70, line 18. _Smollett_. Tobias George Smollett (1721-1771), the
novelist, came of a Dumbartonshire family. Rory was Roderick Random's
schoolboy name. His companion was Strap. See _Roderick Random_,
Chapter XIII., for the passage in question. Smollett continued the
_History of England_ of David Hume (1711-1776), also a Scotchman, and
one of the authors whom Lamb could not read (see "Detached Thoughts on
Books and Reading," page 196).
Lamb's criticism of Scotchmen did not pass without comment. The
pleasantest remark made upon it was that of Christopher North
(John Wilson) some dozen years later (after he had met Lamb), in a
_Blackwood_ paper entitled "Twaddle on Tweedside" (May, 1833), wherein
he wrote:--
Charles Lamb ought really not to abuse Scotland in the pleasant
way he so often does in the sylvan shades of Enfield; for Scotland
loves Charles Lamb; but he is wayward and wilful in his wisdom,
and conceits that many a Cockney is a better man even than
Christopher North. But what will not Christopher forgive to Genius
and Goodness? Even Lamb bleating libels on his native land. Nay,
he learns lessons of humanity, even from the mild malice of Elia,
and breathes a blessing on him and his household in their Bower of
Rest.
Coleridge was much pleased by this little reference to his friend. He
described it as "very sweet indeed" (see his _Table Talk_, May 14,
1833).
Page 70, line 14 from foot. _Hugh of Lincoln_. Hugh was a small
Lincoln boy who, tradition states, was tortured to death by the Jews.
His dead body being touched by a blind woman, she received sight.
Many years earlier Lamb had spoken of the Jew in English society with
equal frankness (see his note to the "Jew of Malta" in the _Dramatic
Specimens_).
Page 71, line 18. _B----_. John Braham, _née_ Abraham (1774?-1856),
the great tenor. Writing to Manning in 1808, Lamb says:--"Do you like
Braham's singing? The little Jew has bewitched me. I follow him like
as the boys followed Tom the Piper. He cures me of melancholy as
David cured Saul.... I was insensible to music till he gave me a new
sense.... Braham's singing, when it is impassioned, is finer than Mrs.
Siddons's or Mr. Kemble's acting! and when it is not impassioned it is
as good as hearing a person of fine sense talking. The brave little
Jew!"
Two years later Lamb tells Manning of Braham's absence from London,
adding: "He was a rare composition of the Jew, the gentleman, and the
angel; yet all these elements mixed up so kindly in him that you could
not tell which preponderated." In this essay Lamb refers to Braham's
singing in Handel's oratorio "Israel in Egypt." Concerning Braham's
abandonment of the Jewish faith see Lamb's sarcastic essay "The
Religion of Actors," Vol. I., page 338.
Page 73, line 17 from foot. _I was travelling_. Lamb did not really
take part in this story. It was told him by Sir Anthony Carlisle
(1768-1840), the surgeon, as he confessed to his Quaker friend,
Bernard Barton (March 11, 1823), who seemed to miss its point. Lamb
described Carlisle as "the best story-teller I ever heard."
* * * * *
Page 74. WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS.
_London Magazine_, October, 1821.
Compare with this essay Maria Howe's story of "The Witch Aunt," in
_Mrs. Leicester's School_ (see Vol. III.), which Lamb had written
thirteen years earlier.
Page 75, line 12 from foot. _History of the Bible, by Stackhouse_.
Thomas Stackhouse (1677-1752) was rector of Boldon, in Durham; his
_New History of the Holy Bible from the Beginning of the World to the
Establishment of Christianity_--the work in question--was published in
1737.
Page 75, line 6 from foot. _The Witch raising up Samuel_. This
paragraph was the third place in which Lamb recorded his terror of
this picture of the Witch of Endor in Stackhouse's _Bible_, but the
first occasion in which he took it to himself. In one draft of _John
Woodvil_ (see Vol. IV.), the hero says:--
I can remember when a child the maids
Would place me on their lap, as they undrest me,
As silly women use, and tell me stories
Of Witches--make me read "Glanvil on Witchcraft,"
And in conclusion show me in the Bible,
The old Family Bible, with the pictures in it,
The 'graving of the Witch raising up Samuel,
Which so possest my fancy, being a child,
That nightly in my dreams an old Hag came
And sat upon my pillow.
Then again, in _Mrs. Leicester's School_, in the story of Maria Howe,
called "The Witch Aunt," one of the three stories in that book which
Lamb wrote, Stackhouse's _Bible_ is found once more. In my large
edition I give a reproduction of the terrible picture. Page 77, foot.
_Dear little T.H._ This was the unlucky passage which gave Southey his
chief text in his criticism of _Elia_ as a book wanting "a sounder
religious feeling," and which led to Lamb's expostulatory "Letter"
(see Vol. I.). Southey commented thus:--
This poor child, instead of being trained up in the way in which
he should go, had been bred in the ways of modern philosophy; he
had systematically been prevented from knowing anything of that
Saviour who said, "Suffer little children to come unto Me, and
forbid them not; for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven;" care had
been taken that he should not pray to God, nor lie down at night
in reliance upon His good Providence!
T.H. was Thornton Hunt, Leigh Hunt's eldest son and Lamb's "favourite
child" (see verses to him in Vol. IV.).
Page 79, line 18 from foot. _Barry Cornwall_. Bryan Waller Procter
(1787-1874), Lamb's friend. The reference is to "A Dream," a poem in
Barry Cornwall's _Dramatic Scenes_, 1819, which Lamb greatly admired.
See his sonnet to the poet in Vol. IV., where it is mentioned again.
Page 80, last paragraph of essay. In the original MS. of this essay
(now in the Dyce and Forster collection at South Kensington) the last
paragraph ran thus:--
"When I awoke I came to a determination to write prose all the
rest of my life; and with submission to some of our young writers,
who are yet diffident of their powers, and balancing perhaps
between verse and prose, they might not do unwisely to decide the
preference by the texture of their natural dreams. If these are
prosaic, they may depend upon it they have not much to expect in
a creative way from their artificial ones. What dreams must not
Spenser have had!"
* * * * *
Page 80. MY RELATIONS.
_London Magazine_, June, 1821.
Page 80, beginning. _At that point of life_. Lamb was forty-six on
February 10, 1821.
Page 80, line 12 of essay. _I had an aunt_. Aunt Hetty, who died in
1797 (see the essay on "Christ's Hospital").
Page 81, line 6. _The chapel in Essex-street_. The headquarters of
"that heresy," Unitarianism. Lamb was at first a Unitarian, but
afterwards dropped away from all sects.
Page 81, line 23. _Brother, or sister, I never had any--to know them_.
Lamb is writing strictly as the imagined Elia, Elia being Lamb in mind
rather than Lamb in fact. It amused him to present his brother John
and his sister Mary as his cousins James and Bridget Elia. We have
here an excellent example of his whimsical blending of truth and
invention: brothers and sisters he denies, yet admits one sister,
Elizabeth, who died in both their infancies. Lamb had in reality two
sisters named Elizabeth, the former of whom he never knew. She was
born in 1762. The second Elizabeth, his parents' fifth child, was born
in 1768, seven years before Charles. Altogether the Lambs had seven
children, of whom only John (born 1763), Mary Anne (born 1764) and
Charles (born 1775) grew up. Again Lamb confesses to several cousins
in Hertfordshire, and to two others. The two others were fictitious,
but it was true that he had Hertfordshire relations (see the essay
"Mackery End, in Hertfordshire").
John Lamb's character is perhaps sufficiently described in this essay
and in "Dream-Children." He was a well-to-do official in the South-Sea
House, succeeding John Tipp as accountant. Crabb Robinson found him
too bluff and noisy to be bearable; and he once knocked Hazlitt down
in a dispute about painting. He died on October 26, 1821, to his
brother's great grief, leaving Charles everything. He married late in
life a Mrs. Dowden. Probably she had her own money and needed none of
her second husband's. Hence the peculiarity of the will. Mrs. John
Lamb died in 1826.
John Lamb's sympathy with animals led him to write in 1810 a pamphlet
entitled _A Letter to the Right Hon. William Windham, on his
opposition to Lord Erskine's Bill for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals_--Mr. Windham having expressed it as his opinion that the
subject was not one for legislation. Lamb sent the pamphlet to Crabb
Robinson on February 7, 1810, saying:--"My Brother whom you have met
at my rooms (a plump good looking man of seven and forty!) has written
a book about humanity, which I transmit to you herewith. Wilson the
Publisher has put it in his head that you can get it Reviewed for him.
I dare say it is not in the scope of your Review--but if you could
put it into any likely train, he would rejoyce. For alas! our boasted
Humanity partakes of Vanity. As it is, he teazes me to death with
chusing to suppose that I could get it into all the Reviews at a
moment's notice.--I!! who have been set up as a mark for them to throw
at and would willingly consign them all to Hell flames and Megæra's
snaky locks.
"But here's the Book--and don't shew it Mrs. Collier, for I remember
she makes excellent Eel soup, and the leading points of the Book are
directed against that very process."
This is the passage--one red-hot sentence--concerning eels:--
"If an eel had the wisdom of Solomon, he could not help himself in
the ill-usage that befalls him; but if he had, and were told, that
it was necessary for our subsistence that he should be eaten, that
he must be skinned first, and then broiled; if ignorant of man's
usual practice, he would conclude that the cook would so far use
her reason as to cut off his head first, which is not fit for
food, as then he might be skinned and broiled without harm; for
however the other parts of his body might be convulsed during the
culinary operations, there could be no feeling of consciousness
therein, the communication with the brain being cut off; but if
the woman were immediately to stick a fork into his eye, skin
him alive, coil him up in a skewer, head and all, so that in the
extremest agony he could not move, and forthwith broil him to
death: then were the same Almighty Power that formed man from the
dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, to call
the eel into a new existence, with a knowledge of the treatment he
had undergone, and he found that the instinctive disposition which
man has in common with other carnivorous animals, which inclines
him to cruelty, was not the sole cause of his torments; but that
men did not attend to consider whether the sufferings of such
insignificant creatures could be lessened: that eels were not the
only sufferers; that lobsters and other shell fish were put into
cold water and boiled to death by slow degrees in many parts of
the sea coast; that these, and many other such wanton atrocities,
were the consequence of carelessness occasioned by the pride of
mankind despising their low estate, and of the general opinion
that there is no punishable sin in the ill-treatment of animals
designed for our use; that, therefore, the woman did not bestow
so much thought on him as to cut his head off first, and that
she would have laughed at any considerate person who should have
desired such a thing; with what fearful indignation might he
inveigh against the unfeeling metaphysician that, like a cruel
spirit alarmed at the appearance of a dawning of mercy upon
animals, could not rest satisfied with opposing the Cruelty
Prevention Bill by the plea of possible inconvenience to mankind,
highly magnified and emblazoned, but had set forth to the vulgar
and unthinking of all ranks, in the jargon of proud learning, that
man's obligations of morality towards the creatures subjected to
his use are imperfect obligations!"
The poem "The Beggar-Man," in _Poetry for Children_, 1809 (see Vol.
III.), was also from John Lamb's pen.
Page 85, asterisks. _Society for the Relief of_--Distrest Sailors,
says Lamb's Key.
Page 86, last line of essay. "_Through the green plains of pleasant
Hertfordshire_." This line occurs in a sonnet of Lamb's written many
years before the essay (see Vol. IV.). Probably, however, Lamb did
not invent it, for (the late W.J. Craig pointed out) in Leland's
_Itinerary_, which Lamb must have known, if only on account of the
antiquary's remarks on Hertfordshire, is quoted a poem by William
Vallans (_fl._ 1578-1590), "The Tale of the Two Swans," containing
the line--
The fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire--
which one can easily understand would have lingered in Lamb's mind
very graciously.
In the _London Magazine_ the essay ended with the words, "Till then,
Farewell."
* * * * *
Page 86. MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.
_London Magazine_, July, 1821. Reprinted in _Elia_, 1823, as written,
save for the omission of italics from many passages.
Bridget Elia, who is met also in "Mrs. Battle," in "My Relations," and
in "Old China," was, of course, Mary Lamb.
Page 86, line 11 from foot. _She must have a story_. Thomas Westwood,
in his reminiscences of the Lambs in later years, printed in _Notes
and Queries_, speaks of Mary Lamb's passion for novel-reading in the
Enfield days, when he was a boy.
Page 87, line 6. _Margaret Newcastle_. Lamb's devotion to this lady is
expressed again in the essay on "The Two Races of Men," in the essay
on Beggars, and in "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading."
Page 87, line 8. _Free-thinkers_ ... William Godwin, perhaps alone
among Lamb's friends, quite answers to the description of leader
of novel philosophies and systems; but there had been also Thomas
Holcroft and John Thelwall among the Lambs' acquaintance. And Hazlitt
and Leigh Hunt would come within this description.
Page 87, foot. _Good old English reading_. The reference is to Samuel
Salt's library in the Temple (see note to "The Old Benchers of the
Inner Temple").
Page 88, line 14. _Mackery End_. The farmhouse still stands, although
new front rooms have been added. At the end of the present hall, one
passes through what was in Lamb's time the front door, and thereafter
the house is exactly as it used to be save that its south windows have
been filled in. By kind invitation of Mr. Dolphin Smith, the farmer,
who had been there over forty years, I spent in 1902 some time in the
same parlour in which the Lambs had been entertained. Harpenden, on
the north-west, has grown immensely since Lamb's day, and the houses
at the Folly, between Wheathampstead and the Cherry Trees, are new;
but Mackery End, or Mackrye End as the farmer's waggons have it,
remains unencroached upon. Near by is the fine old mansion which is
Mackery End house proper; Lamb's Mackery End was the farm.
Lamb's first visit there must have been when he was a very little
boy--somewhere about 1780. Probably we may see recollections of it in
Mary Lamb's story "The Farmhouse" in _Mrs. Leicester's School_ (see
Vol. III. of this edition).
Page 88, line 18. _A great-aunt_. Mary Field, Lamb's grandmother, was
Mary Bruton, whose sister married, as he says, a Gladman, and was the
great-aunt mentioned. The present occupier of the farm is neither
Gladman nor Bruton; but both names are still to be found in the
county. A Miss Sarah Bruton, a direct descendant of Lamb's great-aunt,
was living at Wheathampstead in 1902. She had on her walls two
charming oval portraits of ancestresses, possibly--for she was
uncertain as to their identity--two of the handsome sisters whom Lamb
extols.
Writing to Manning, May 28, 1819, Lamb says:--"How are my cousins,
the Gladmans of Wheathampstead, and farmer Bruton? Mrs. Bruton is a
glorious woman.
"Hail, Mackery End!
"This is a fragment of a blank verse poem which I once meditated, but
got no further."
Page 89, verse. "_But thou, that didst appear so fair ..._" From
Wordsworth's "Yarrow Visited," Stanza 6. Writing to Wordsworth in
1815, Lamb said of this stanza that he thought "no lovelier" could be
found in "the wide world of poetry." From a letter to Taylor, of the
_London Magazine_, belonging to the summer of 1821, we gather that the
proof-reader had altered the last word of the third line to "air" to
make it rhyme to "fair." Lamb says: "_Day_ is the right reading, and
_I implore you to restore it_."
Page 90, line 4. _B.F._ Barron Field (see note to "Distant
Correspondents"), then living in Sydney, where he composed, and had
printed for private circulation in 1819, a volume of poems reviewed by
Lamb (see Vol. I.), in 1819, one of which was entitled "The Kangaroo."
It was the first book printed in Australia. Field edited Heywood for
the old Shakespeare Society. Although a Field, he was no kinsman of
Lamb's.
* * * * *
Page 90. MODERN GALLANTRY.
_London Magazine_, November, 1822.
De Quincey writes in "London Reminiscences" concerning the present
essay:--
Among the prominent characteristics of Lamb, I know not how it is
that I have omitted to notice the peculiar emphasis and depth of
his courtesy. This quality was in him a really chivalrous feeling,
springing from his heart, and cherished with the sanctity of a
duty. He says somewhere in speaking of himself[?] under the mask
of a third person, whose character he is describing, that, in
passing a servant girl, even at a street-crossing, he used to take
off his hat. Now, the _spirit_ of Lamb's gallantry would have
prompted some such expression of homage, though the customs of
the country would not allow it to be _literally_ fulfilled, for
the very reason that would prompt it--_viz_., in order to pay
respect--since the girl would, in such a case, suppose a man
laughing at her. But the instinct of his heart was to think
highly of female nature, and to pay a real homage (not the hollow
demonstration of outward honour which a Frenchman calls his
"homage," and which is really a mask for contempt) to the sacred
_idea_ of pure and virtuous womanhood.
Barry Cornwall has the following story in his Memoir of Lamb:--
Lamb, one day, encountered a small urchin loaded with a too heavy
package of grocery. It caused him to tremble and stop. Charles
inquired where he was going, took (although weak) the load upon
his own shoulder, and managed to carry it to Islington, the place
of destination. Finding that the purchaser of the grocery was a
female, he went with the urchin before her, and expressed a hope
that she would intercede with the poor boy's master, in order to
prevent his being over-weighted in future. "Sir," said the dame,
after the manner of Tisiphone, frowning upon him, "I buy my sugar
and have nothing to do with the man's manner of sending it." Lamb
at once perceived the character of the purchaser, and taking off
his hat, said, humbly, "Then I hope, ma'am, you'll give me a drink
of small beer." This was of course refused. He afterwards called
upon the grocer, on the boy's behalf. With what effect I do not
know.
Page 90, line 2 of essay. _Upon the point of gallantry_. Here, in the
_London Magazine_, came the words:--
"as upon a thing altogether unknown to the old classic ages.
This has been defined to consist in a certain obsequiousness, or
deferential respect, paid to females, as females."
Page 92, line 3. _Joseph Paice_. Joseph Paice was, as Lamb pointed out
to Barton in a letter in January, 1830, a real person, and all that
Lamb records. According to Miss Anne Manning's _Family Pictures_,
1860, Joseph Paice, who was a friend of Thomas Coventry, took Lamb
into his office at 27 Bread Street Hill somewhere in 1789 or 1790
to learn book-keeping and business habits. He passed thence to the
South-Sea House and thence to the East India House. Miss Manning (who
was the author of _Flemish Interiors_) helps to fill out Lamb's sketch
into a full-length portrait. She tells us that Mr. Paice's life was
one long series of gentle altruisms and the truest Christianities.
Charles Lamb speaks of his holding an umbrella over a
market-woman's fruit-basket, lest her store should be spoilt by a
sudden shower; and his uncovering his head to a servant-girl who
was requesting him to direct her on her way. These traits are
quite in keeping with many that can still be authenticated:--his
carrying presents of game _himself_, for instance, to humble
friends, who might ill have spared a shilling to a servant; and
his offering a seat in his hackney-coach to some poor, forlorn,
draggled beings, who were picking their way along on a rainy
day. Sometimes these chance guests have proved such uncongenial
companions, that the kind old man has himself faced the bad
weather rather than prolong the acquaintance, paying the
hackney-coachman for setting down the stranger at the end of his
fare. At lottery times, he used to be troubled with begging visits
from certain improvident hangers-on, who had risked their all in
buying shares of an unlucky number. About the time the numbers
were being drawn, there would be a ring at the gate-bell, perhaps
at dinner time. His spectacles would be elevated, an anxious
expression would steal over his face, as he half raised himself
from his seat, to obtain a glance at the intruder--"Ah, I thought
so, I expected as much," he would gently say. "I expected I should
soon have a visit from poor Mrs. ---- or Mrs. ----. Will you
excuse me, my dear madam," (to my grandmother) "for a moment,
while I just tell her it is quite out of my power to help her?"
counting silver into his hand all the time. Then, a parley would
ensue at the hall-door--complainant telling her tale in a doleful
voice: "My good woman, I really cannot," etc.; and at last the
hall-door would be shut. "Well, sir," my grandmother used to say,
as Mr. Paice returned to his seat, "I do not think you have sent
Mrs. ---- away quite penniless." "Merely enough for a joint of
meat, my good madam--just a trifle to buy her a joint of meat."
_Family Pictures_ should be consulted by any one who would know more
of this gentleman and of Susan Winstanly.
Page 92, line 5. _Edwards_. Thomas Edwards (1699-1757), author of
_Canons of Criticism_, 1748. The sonnet in question, which was
modelled on that addressed by Milton to Cyriack Skinner, was addressed
to Paice, as the author's nephew, bidding him carry on the family
line. Paice, however, as Lamb tells us, did not marry.
* * * * *
Page 94. THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
_London Magazine_, September, 1821.
Lamb's connection with the Temple was fairly continuous until 1817,
when he was thirty-eight. He was born at No. 2 Crown Office Row in
1775, and he did not leave it, except for visits to Hertfordshire,
until 1782, when he entered Christ's Hospital. There he remained, save
for holidays, until 1789, returning then to Crown Office Row for the
brief period between leaving school and the death of Samuel Salt,
under whose roof the Lambs dwelt, in February, 1792. The 7 Little
Queen Street, the 45 and 36 Chapel Street, Pentonville, and the first
34 Southampton Buildings (with Gutch) periods, followed; but in 1801
Lamb and his sister were back in the Temple again, at 16 Mitre Court
Buildings, since rebuilt. They moved from there, after a brief return
to 34 Southampton Buildings, to 4 Inner Temple Lane (since rebuilt and
now called Johnson's Buildings) in 1809, where they remained until the
move to 20 Great Russell Street in 1817. With each change after that
(except for another and briefer sojourn in Southampton Buildings
in 1830), Lamb's home became less urban. His last link with the
Temple may be said to have snapped with the death of Randal Morris,
sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple, in 1827 (see "A Death-Bed"),
although now and then he slept at Crabb Robinson's chambers.
The Worshipful Masters of the Bench of the Hon. Society of the Inner
Temple--to give the Benchers their full title--have the government of
the Inner Temple in their hands.
Page 97, line 12 from foot, _J----ll_. Joseph Jekyll, great-nephew of
Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, well known as a wit and diner-out.
He became a Bencher in 1795, and was made a Master in Chancery in
1815, through the influence of the Prince Regent. Under his direction
the hall of the Inner Temple and the Temple Church were restored, and
he compiled a little book entitled _Facts and Observations relating to
the Temple Church and the Monuments contained in it_, 1811. He became
a K.C. in 1805, and died in 1837, aged eighty-five. Jekyll was a
friend of George Dyer, and was interested in Lamb's other friends, the
Norrises. & letter from him, thanking Lamb for a copy of the _Last
Essays of Elia_, is printed in Mr. W.C. Hazlitt's _The Lambs_. He had
another link of a kind with Lamb in being M.P. for "sweet Calne in
Wiltshire." Jekyll's chambers were at 6 King's Bench Walk. On the same
staircase lived for a while George Colman the Younger.
Page 97, line 9 from foot. _Thomas Coventry_. Thomas Coventry became a
Bencher in 1766. He was the nephew of William, fifth Earl of Coventry,
and resided at North Cray Place, near Bexley, in Kent, and in
Serjeant's Inn, where he died in 1797, in his eighty-fifth year. He
is buried in the Temple Church. Coventry was a sub-governor of the
South-Sea House, and it was he who presented Lamb's friend, James
White, to Christ's Hospital. He was M.P. for Bridport from 1754 to
1780. As an illustration of Coventry's larger benefactions it may
be remarked that he presented £10,000 worth of South Sea stock to
Christ's Hospital in 1782.
Page 98, line 9. _Samuel Salt_. Samuel Salt was the son of the Rev.
John Salt, of Audley, in Staffordshire; and he married a daughter of
Lord Coventry, thus being connected with Thomas Coventry by marriage.
He was M.P. for Liskeard for some years, and a governor of the
South-Sea House. Samuel Salt, who became a Bencher in 1782, rented
at No. 2 Crown Office Row two sets of chambers, in one of which the
Lamb family dwelt. John Lamb, Lamb's father, who is described as a
scrivener in Charles's Christ's Hospital application form, was Salt's
right-hand man, not only in business, but privately, while Mrs. Lamb
acted as housekeeper and possibly as cook. Samuel Salt played the part
of tutelary genius to John Lamb's two sons. It was he who arranged
for Charles to be nominated for Christ's Hospital (by Timothy Yeats);
probably he was instrumental also in getting him into the East India
House; and in all likelihood it was he who paved the way for the
younger John Lamb's position in the South-Sea House. It was also
Samuel Salt who gave to Charles and Mary the freedom of his library
(see the reference in the essay on "Mackery End"): a privilege which,
to ourselves, is the most important of all. Salt died in February,
1792, and is buried in the vault of the Temple Church. He left to John
Lamb £500 in South Sea stock and a small annual sum, and to Elizabeth
Lamb £200 in money; but with his death the prosperity of the family
ceased.
Page 98, line 21. _Lovel_. See below.
Page 98, line 9 from foot. _Miss Blandy_. Mary Blandy was the daughter
of Francis Blandy, a lawyer at Henley-on-Thames. The statement that
she was to inherit £10,000 induced an officer in the marines, named
Cranstoun, a son of Lord Cranstoun, to woo her, although he already
had a wife living. Her father proving hostile, Cranstoun supplied her
with arsenic to bring about his removal. Mr. Blandy died on August
14, 1751. Mary Blandy was arrested, and hanged on April 6 in the next
year, after a trial which caused immense excitement. The defence was
that Miss Blandy was ignorant of the nature of the powder, and thought
it a means of persuading her father to her point of view. In this
belief the father, who knew he was being tampered with, also shared.
Cranstoun avoided the law, but died in the same year. Lamb had made
use of Salt's _faux pas_, many years earlier, in "Mr. H." (see Vol.
IV.).
Page 99, line 13. _His eye lacked lustre_. At these words, in the
_London Magazine_, came this passage:--
"Lady Mary Wortley Montague was an exception to her sex: she says,
in one of her letters, 'I wonder what the women see in S. I do not
think him by any means handsome. To me he appears an extraordinary
dull fellow, and to want common sense. Yet the fools are all
sighing for him.'"
I have not found the passage.
Page 99, line 14. _Susan P----_. This is Susannah Peirson, sister of
the Peter Peirson to whom we shall come directly. Samuel Salt left her
a choice of books in his library, together with a money legacy and a
silver inkstand, hoping that reading and reflection would make her
life "more comfortable." B----d Row would be Bedford Row.
Page 99, line 12 from foot, _F., the counsel_. I cannot be sure who
this was. The Law Directory of that day does not help.
Page 99, foot. _Elwes_. John Elwes, the miser (1714-1789), whose
_Life_ was published in 1790 after running through _The World_--the
work of Topham, that paper's editor, who is mentioned in Lamb's essay
on "Newspapers."
Page 100, line 15. _Lovel_. Lovel was the name by which Lamb refers to
his father, John Lamb. We know nothing of him in his prime beyond what
is told in this essay, but after the great tragedy, there are in the
_Letters_ glimpses of him as a broken, querulous old man. He died in
1799. Of John Lamb's early days all our information is contained in
this essay, in his own _Poetical Pieces_, where he describes his life
as a footman, and in the essay on "Poor Relations," where his boyish
memories of Lincoln are mentioned. Of his verses it was perhaps too
much (though prettily filial) to say they were "next to Swift and
Prior;" but they have much good humour and spirit. John Lamb's poems
were printed in a thin quarto under the title _Poetical Pieces on
Several Occasions_. The dedication was to "The Forty-Nine Members of
the Friendly Society for the Benefit of their Widows, of whom I have
the honour of making the Number Fifty," and in the dedicatory epistle
it is stated that the Society was in some degree the cause of Number
Fifty's commencing author, on account of its approving and printing
certain lines which were spoken by him at an annual meeting it the
Devil Tavern. The first two poetical pieces are apologues on marriage
and the happiness that it should bring, the characters being drawn
from bird life. Then follow verses written for the meetings of the
Society, and miscellaneous compositions. Of these the description
of a lady's footman's daily life, from within, has a good deal of
sprightliness, and displays quite a little mastery of the mock-heroic
couplet. The last poem is a long rhymed version of the story of
Joseph. With this exception, for which Lamb's character-sketch does
not quite prepare us, it is very natural to think of the author as
Lovel. One of the pieces, a familiar letter to a doctor, begins
thus:--
My good friend,
For favours to my son and wife,
I shall love you whilst I've life,
Your clysters, potions, help'd to save,
Our infant lambkin from the grave.
The infant lambkin was probably John Lamb, but of course it might have
been Charles. The expression, however, proves that punning ran in the
family. Lamb's library contained his father's copy of _Hudibras_.
Lamb's phrase, descriptive of his father's decline, is taken with a
variation from his own poems--from the "Lines written on the Day of my
Aunt's Funeral" (_Blank Verse_, 1798):--
One parent yet is left,--a wretched thing,
A sad survivor of his buried wife
A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man,
A semblance most forlorn of what he was--
A merry cheerful man.
Page 100, line 17. "_Flapper_." This is probably an allusion to the
flappers in _Gulliver's Travels_--the servants who, in Laputa, carried
bladders with which every now and then they flapped the mouths and
ears of their employers, to recall them to themselves and disperse
their meditations.
Page 100, line 9 from foot. _Better was not concerned_. At these
words, in the _London Magazine_, came:--
"He pleaded the cause of a delinquent in the treasury of the Temple so
effectually with S. the then treasurer--that the man was allowed
to keep his place. L. had the offer to succeed him. It had been a
lucrative promotion. But L. chose to forego the advantage, because the
man had a wife and family."
Page 101, line 10. _Bayes_. Mr. Bayes is the author and stage manager
in Buckingham's "Rehearsal." This phrase is not in the play and must
have been John Lamb's own, in reference to Garrick.
Page 101, line 23. _Peter Pierson_. Peter Peirson (as his name was
rightly spelled) was the son of Peter Peirson of the parish of St.
Andrew's, Holborn, who lived probably in Bedford Row. He became a
Bencher in 1800, died in 1808, and is buried in the Temple Church.
When Charles Lamb entered the East India House in April, 1792, Peter
Peirson and his brother, John Lamb, were his sureties.
Page 101, line 11 from foot. _Our great philanthropist_. Probably John
Howard, whom, as we have seen in the essay on "Christ's Hospital,"
Lamb did not love. He was of singular sallowness.
Page 101, line 9 from foot. _Daines Barrington_. Daines Barrington
(1727-1800), the correspondent of Gilbert White, many of whose letters
in _The Natural History of Selborne_ are addressed to him. Indeed it
was Barrington who inspired that work:--a circumstance which must
atone for his exterminatory raid on the Temple sparrows. His Chambers
were at 5 King's Bench Walk. Barrington became a Bencher in 1777 and
died in 1800. He is buried in the Temple Church. His Episcopal brother
was Shute Barrington (1734-1826), Bishop successively of Llandaff,
Salisbury and Durham.
Page 102, line 1. _Old Barton_. Thomas Barton, who became a Bencher in
1775 and died in 1791. His chambers were in King's Bench Walk. He is
buried in the vault of the Temple Church.
Page 102, line 6. _Read_. John Reade, who became a Bencher in 1792 and
died in 1804. His rooms were in Mitre Court Buildings.
Page 102, line 6. _Twopenny_. Richard, Twopenny was not a Bencher, but
merely a resident in the Temple. He was strikingly thin. Twopenny was
stockbroker to the Bank of England, and died in 1809.
Page 102, line 8. _Wharry_. John Wharry, who became a Bencher in 1801,
died in 1812, and was buried in the Temple Church.
Page 102, line 22. _Jackson_. This was Richard Jackson, some time M.P.
for New Romney, to whom Johnson, Boswell tells us, refused the epithet
"Omniscient" as blasphemous, changing it to "all knowing." He was made
a Bencher in 1770 and died in 1787.
Page 102, foot. _Mingay_. James Mingay, who was made a Bencher in
1785, died in 1812. He was M.P. for Thetford and senior King's
Counsel. He was also Recorder of Aldborough, Crabbe's town. He lived
at 4 King's Bench Walk.
Page 103, line 1. _Baron Maseres_. This was Francis Maseres
(1731-1824), mathematician, reformer and Cursiter Baron of the
Exchequer. He lived at 5 King's Bench Walk, and at Reigate, and wore a
three-cornered hat and ruffles to the end. In April, 1801, Lamb wrote
to Manning:--"I live at No. 16 Mitre-court Buildings, a pistol-shot
off Baron Maseres'. You must introduce me to the Baron. I think we
should suit one another mainly. He Jives on the ground floor, for
convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He
keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress,
not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the
higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the
belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a
harmony. You must bring the Baron and me together."
Baron Maseres, who was made a Bencher in 1774, died in 1824.
Page 104, line 13. _Hookers and Seldens_. Richard Hooker (1554?-1600),
the "judicious," was Master of the Temple. John Selden (1584-1654),
the jurist, who lived in Paper Buildings and practised law in the
Temple, was buried in the Temple Church with much pomp.
* * * * *
Page 104. GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
_London Magazine_, November, 1821.
This was the essay, Lamb suggested, which Southey may have had in mind
when in an article in the _Quarterly Review_ he condemned _Elia_ as
wanting "a sounder religious feeling." In his "Letter to Southey"
(Vol. I.), which contained Lamb's protest against Southey's
strictures, he wrote:--"I am at a loss what particular essay you had
in view (if my poor ramblings amount to that appellation) when you
were in such a hurry to thrust in your objection, like bad news,
foremost.--Perhaps the Paper on 'Saying Graces' was the obnoxious
feature. I have endeavoured there to rescue a voluntary duty--good in
place, but never, as I remember, literally commanded--from the charge
of an undecent formality. Rightly taken, sir, that paper was not
against graces, but want of grace; not against the ceremony, but the
carelessness and slovenliness so often observed in the performance of
it."
Page 108, line 12 from foot. _C----_. Coleridge; but Lamb may really
have said it.
Page 108, foot. _The author of the Rambler_. Veal pie with prunes in
it was perhaps Dr. Johnson's favourite dish.
Page 109, line 10. _Dagon_. The fish god worshipped by the
Philistines. See Judges xvi. 23 and I Samuel v. for the full
significance of Lamb's reference.
Page 110, line 16. _C.V.L._ Charles Valentine le Grice. Later in life,
in 1798, Le Grice himself became a clergyman.
Page 110, line 19. _Our old form at school_. The Christ's Hospital
graces in Lamb's day were worded thus:--
GRACE BEFORE MEAT
Give us thankful hearts, O Lord God, for the Table which thou hast
spread for us. Bless thy good Creatures to our use, and us to thy
service, for Jesus Christ his sake. _Amen_.
GRACE AFTER MEAT
Blessed Lord, we yield thee hearty praise and thanksgiving for our
Founders and Benefactors, by whose Charitable Benevolence thou
hast refreshed our Bodies at this time. So season and refresh our
Souls with thy Heavenly Spirit, that we may live to thy Honour and
Glory. Protect thy Church, the King, and all the Royal Family. And
preserve us in peace and truth through Christ our Saviour. _Amen_.
* * * * *
Page 110. MY FIRST PLAY.
_London Magazine_, December, 1821.
Lamb had already sketched out this essay in the "Table Talk" in Leigh
Hunt's _Examiner_, December 9, 1813, under the title "Playhouse
Memoranda" (see Vol. I.). Leigh Hunt reprinted it in _The Indicator_,
December 13, 1820.
Page 111, line 1. _Garrick's Drury_. Garrick's Drury Lane was
condemned in 1791, and superseded in 1794 by the new theatre, the
burning of which in 1809 led to the _Rejected Addresses_. It has
recently come to light that Lamb was among the competitors who sent in
to the management the real addresses. The present Drury Lane Theatre
dates from 1812.
Page 111, line 11. _My godfather F._ Lamb's godfather was Francis
Fielde. _The British Directory_ for 1793 gives him as Francis
Field, oilman, 62 High Holborn. Whether or no he played the part in
Sheridan's matrimonial comedy that is attributed to him, I do not know
(Moore makes the friend a Mr. Ewart); but it does not sound like an
invented story. Richard Brinsley Sheridan carried Miss Linley, the
oratorio singer, from Bath and the persecutions of Major Mathews,
in March, 1772, and placed her in France. They were married near
Calais, and married again in England in April, 1773. Sheridan became
manager of Drury Lane, in succession to Garrick, in 1776, the first
performance under his control being on September 21. Lamb is supposed
to have had some personal acquaintance with Sheridan. Mary Lamb speaks
of him as helping the Sheridans, father and son, with a pantomime;
but of the work we know nothing definite. I do not consider the play
printed in part in the late Charles Kent's edition of Lamb, on the
authority of P.G. Patmore, either to be by Lamb or to correspond to
Mary Lamb's description.
Page 118, line 8. _His testamentary beneficence_. Lamb was not joking.
Writing to _The Athenæum_, January 5, 1901, Mr. Thomas Greg says:--
Three-quarters of a century after it passed out of Lamb's
possession I am happy to tell the world--or that small portion of
it to whom any fact about his life is precious--exactly where and
what this landed property is. By indentures of lease and release
dated March 23 and 24, 1779, George Merchant and Thomas Wyman, two
yeomen of Braughing in the county of Hertford, conveyed to Francis
Fielde, of the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn, in the county
of Middlesex, oilman, for the consideration of £20., all that
messuage or tenement, with the orchard, gardens, yards, barns,
edifices, and buildings, and all and singular the appurtenances
therewithal used or occupied, situate, lying, and being at West
Mill Green in the parish of Buntingford West Mill in the said
county of Hertford, etc. On March 5, 1804, Francis Fielde, of New
Cavendish Street, Esq., made his will, and, with the exception of
two, annuities to female relatives, left all his residuary estate,
real and personal, to his wife Sarah Fielde.
This will was proved on November 5, 1809. By indentures of lease
and release dated August 20 and 21, 1812, Sarah Fielde conveyed
the said property to Charles Lamb, of Inner Temple Lane,
gentleman. By an indenture of feoffment dated February 15, 1815,
made between the said Charles Lamb of the first part, the said
Sarah Fielde of the second part, and Thomas Greg the younger,
of Broad Street Buildings, London, Esq., the said property was
conveyed to the said Thomas Greg the younger for £50.
The said Thomas Greg the younger died in 1839, and left the said
property to his nephew, Robert Philips Greg, now of Coles Park, West
Mill, in the same county; and the said Robert Philips Greg in 1884
conveyed it to his nephew, Thomas Tylston Greg, of 15 Clifford's
Inn, London, in whose possession it now is in substantially the same
condition as it was in 1815.
The evidence that the Charles Lamb who conveyed the property in 1815
is Elia himself is overwhelming.
1. The essay itself gives the locality correctly: it is about two and
a half miles from Puckeridge.
2. The plot of land contains as near as possible three-quarters of an
acre, with an old thatched cottage and small barn standing upon it.
The barn, specially mentioned in all the deeds, is a most unusual
adjunct of so small a cottage. The property, the deeds of which go
back to 1708, appears to have been isolated and held by small men, and
consists of a long narrow tongue of land jutting into the property now
of the Savile family (Earls of Mexborough), but formerly of the Earls
of Hardwicke.
3. The witness to Charles Lamb's signature on the deed of 1815 is
William Hazlitt, of 19, York Street, Westminster.
4. Lamb was living in Inner Temple Lane in 1815, and did not leave the
Temple till 1817.
5. The essay was printed in the _London Magazine_ for December, 1821,
six years after "the estate has passed into more prudent hands."
6. And lastly, the following letter in Charles Lamb's own handwriting,
found with the deeds which are in my possession, clinches the
matter:--
"MR. SARGUS,--This is to give you notice that I have parted with
the Cottage to Mr. Grig Junr. to whom you will pay rent from
Michaelmas last. The rent that was due at Michaelmas I do not
wish you to pay me. I forgive it you as you may have been at some
expences in repairs.
"Yours
"CH. LAMB.
"Inner Temple Lane, London,
"_23 Feb., 1815._"
It is certainly not the fact that Lamb acquired the property, as he
states, by the will of his godfather, for it was conveyed to him
some three years after the latter's death by Mrs. Fielde. But strict
accuracy of fact in Lamb's '_Essays_' we neither look for nor desire.
In all probability Mrs. Fielde conveyed him the property in accordance
with an expressed wish of her husband in his lifetime. Reading also
between the lines of the essay, it is interesting to notice that
Francis Fielde, the Holborn oilman of 1779, in 1809 has become Francis
Fielde, Esq., of New Cavendish Street. In the letter quoted above
Lamb speaks of his purchaser as "Mr. Grig Junr.," more, I am inclined
to think, from his desire to have his little joke than from mere
inaccuracy, for he must have known the correct name of his purchaser.
But Mr. Greg, Jun., was only just twenty-one when he bought the
property, and the expression "as merry as a grig" running in Lamb's
mind might have proved irresistible to him. Lastly, the property is
now called, and has been so far back as I can trace, "Button Snap." No
such name is found in any of the title-deeds, and it was impossible
before to understand whence it arose. Now it is not: Lamb must have so
christened his little property in jest, and the name has stuck.
THOMAS GREG.
Page 113, line 1. _The maternal lap_. With the exception of a brief
mention on page 33--"the gentle posture of maternal tenderness"--this
is Lamb's only reference to his mother in all the essays--probably
from the wish not to wound his sister, who would naturally read all he
wrote; although we are told by Talfourd that she spoke of her mother
with composure. But it is possible to be more sensitive for others
than they are for themselves.
Page 113, line 3. _The play was Artaxerxes_. The opera, by Thomas
Augustine Arne (1710-1778), produced in 1762, founded on Metastasio's
"Artaserse." The date of the performance was in all probability
December 1, 1780, although Lamb suggests that it was later; for that
was the only occasion in 1780-81-82 on which "Artaxerxes" was followed
by "Harlequin's Invasion," a pantomime dating from 1759, the work of
Garrick. It shows Harlequin invading the territory of Shakespeare;
Harlequin is defeated and Shakespeare restored.
Page 113, line 20. _The Lady of the Manor_. Here Lamb's memory, I
fancy, betrayed him. This play (a comic opera by William Kenrick) was
not performed at Drury Lane or Covent Garden in the period mentioned.
Lamb's pen probably meant to write "The Lord of the Manor," General
Burgoyne's opera, with music by William Jackson, of Exeter, which was
produced in 1780. It was frequently followed in the bill by "Robinson
Crusoe," but never by "Lun's Ghost," whereas Wycherley's "Way of the
World" was followed by "Lun's Ghost" at Drury Lane on January 9, 1782.
We may therefore assume that Lamb's second visit to the theatre was to
see "The Lord of the Manor," followed by "Robinson Crusoe," some time
in 1781, and his third to see "The Way of the World," followed by
"Lun's Ghost" on January 9, 1782. "Lun's Ghost" was produced on
January 3, 1782. Lun was the name under which John Rich (1682?-1761),
the pantomimist and theatrical manager, had played in pantomime.
Page 113, last line. _Round Church ... of the Templars_. This allusion
to the Temple Church and its Gothic heads was used before by Lamb in
his story "First Going to Church" in _Mrs. Leicester's School_ (see
Vol. III.). In that volume Mary Lamb had told the story of what we
may take to be her first play (see "Visit to the Cousins"), the piece
being Congreve's "Mourning Bride."
Page 114, line 1. _The season 1781-2_. Lamb was six on February 10,
1781. He says, in his "Play-house Memoranda," of the same occasion,
"Oh when shall I forget first seeing a play, at the age of five or
six?"
Page 114, line 3. _At school_. Lamb was at Christ's Hospital from 1782
to 1789.
Page 114, end. _Mrs. Siddons in "Isabella."_ Mrs. Siddons first played
this part at Drury Lane on October 10, 1782. The play was "Isabella,"
a version by Garrick of Southerne's "Fatal Marriage." Mrs. Siddons
also appeared frequently as Isabella in "Measure for Measure;" but
Lamb clearly says "in" Isabella, meaning the play. Lamb's sonnet,
in which he collaborated with Coleridge, on Mrs. Siddons, which was
printed in the _Morning Chronicle_ in December, 1794 (see Vol. IV.),
was written when he was nineteen. It runs (text of 1797):--
As when a child on some long winter's night
Affrighted clinging to its Grandam's knees
With eager wond'ring and perturb'd delight
Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees
Mutter'd to wretch by necromantic spell;
Or of those hags, who at the witching time
Of murky midnight ride the air sublime,
And mingle foul embrace with fiends of Hell:
Cold Horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear
More gentle starts, to hear the Beldame tell
Of pretty babes, that lov'd each other dear,
Murder'd by cruel Uncle's mandate fell:
Ev'n such the shiv'ring joys thy tones impart,
Ev'n so thou, SIDDONS! meltest my sad heart!
* * * * *
Page 115. DREAM-CHILDREN.
_London Magazine_, January, 1822.
John Lamb died on October 26, 1821, leaving all his property to his
brother. Charles was greatly upset by his loss. Writing to Wordsworth
in March, 1822, he said: "We are pretty well save colds and
rheumatics, and a certain deadness to every thing, which I think I may
date from poor John's Loss.... Deaths over-set one, and put one out
long after the recent grief." (His friend Captain Burney died in the
same month.) Lamb probably began "Dream-Children,"--in some ways,
I think, his most perfect prose work--almost immediately upon his
brother's death. The essay "My Relations" may be taken in connection
with this as completing the picture of John Lamb. His lameness was
caused by the fall of a stone in 1796, but I doubt if the leg were
really amputated.
The description in this essay of Blakesware, the seat of the Plumers,
is supplemented by the essay entitled "Blakesmoor in H----shire."
Except that Lamb substitutes Norfolk for the nearer county, the
description is accurate; it is even true that there is a legend in the
Plumer family concerning the mysterious death of two children and the
loss of the baronetcy thereby--Sir Walter Plumer, who died in the
seventeenth century, being the last to hold the title. In his poem
"The Grandame" (see Vol. IV.), Lamb refers to Mrs. Field's garrulous
tongue and her joy in recounting the oft-told tale; and it may be to
his early associations with the old story that his great affection
for Morton's play, "The Children in the Wood," which he so often
commended--particularly with Miss Kelly in the caste--was due. The
actual legend of the children in the wood belongs, however, to
Norfolk.
William Plumer's newer and more fashionable mansion was at Gilston,
which is not in the adjoining county, but also in Hertfordshire, near
Harlow, only a few miles distant from Blakesware. Mrs. Field died
of cancer in the breast in August, 1792, and was buried in Widford
churchyard, hard by Blakesware.
According to Lamb's Key the name Alice W----n was "feigned." If by
Alice W----n Lamb, as has been suggested, means Ann Simmons, of
Blenheims, near Blakesware, he was romancing when he said that he had
courted her for seven long years, although the same statement is made
in the essay on "New Year's Eve." We know that in 1796 he abandoned
all ideas of marriage. Writing to Coleridge in November of that year,
in reference to his love sonnets, he says: "It is a passion of which I
retain nothing.... Thank God, the folly has left me for ever. Not even
a review of my love verses renews one wayward wish in me." This was
1796. Therefore, as he was born in 1775, he must have begun the wooing
of Alice W----n when he was fourteen in order to complete the seven
long years of courtship. My own feeling, as I have stated in the notes
to the love sonnets in Vol. IV., is that Lamb was never a very serious
wooer, and that Alice W----n was more an abstraction around which now
and then to group tender imaginings of what might have been than any
tangible figure.
A proof that Ann Simmons and Alice W----n are one has been found
in the circumstance that Miss Simmons did marry a Mr. Bartrum, or
Bartram, mentioned by Lamb in this essay as being the father of
Alice's real children. Bartrum was a pawnbroker in Princes Street,
Coventry Street. Mr. W.C. Hazlitt says that Hazlitt had seen Lamb
wandering up and down before the shop trying to get a glimpse of his
old friend.
* * * * *
Page 118. DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS.
_London Magazine_, March, 1822.
The germ of this essay will be found in a letter to Barron Field, to
whom the essay is addressed, of August 31, 1817. Barron Field was a
son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ's Hospital. His brother,
Francis John Field, through whom Lamb probably came to know Barron,
was a clerk in the India House.
Barron Field was associated with Lamb on Leigh Hunt's _Reflector_ in
1810-1812. He also was dramatic critic for _The Times_ for a while. In
1816 he was appointed judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales,
where he remained until 1824. For other information see the note, in
Vol. I., to his _First-Fruits of Australian Poetry_, reviewed by Lamb.
In the same number of the _London Magazine_ which included the present
essay was Field's account of his outward voyage to New South Wales.
Page 119, line 24. _Our mutual friend P._ Not identifiable: probably
no one in particular. The Bench would be the King's Bench Prison. A
little later one of Lamb's friends, William Hone, was confined there
for three years.
Page 121, line 8. _The late Lord C._ This was Thomas Pitt, second
Baron Camelford (1775-1804), who after a quarrelsome life, first in
the navy and afterwards as a man about town, was killed in a duel at
Kensington, just where Melbury Road now is. The spot chosen by him
for his grave was on the borders of the Lake of Lampierre, near three
trees; but there is a doubt if his body ever rested there, for it lay
for years in the crypt of St. Anne's, Soho. Its ultimate fate was the
subject of a story by Charles Reade.
Page 123, line 11. _Bleach_. Illegitimacy, according to some old
authors, wears out in the third generation, enabling a natural son's
descendant to resume the ancient coat-of-arms. Lamb refers to this
sanction.
Page 123, line 20. _Hare-court_. The Lambs lived at 4 Inner Temple
Lane (now rebuilt as Johnson's Buildings) from 1809 to 1817. Writing
to Coleridge in June, 1809, Lamb says:--"The rooms are delicious, and
the best look backwards into Hare Court, where there is a pump always
going. Hare Court trees come in at the window, so that it's like
living in a garden."
Barron Field was entered on the books of the Inner Temple in 1809 and
was called to the Bar in 1814.
Page 123, last paragraph. _Sally W----r_. Lamb's Key gives "Sally
Winter;" but as to who she was we have no knowledge.
Page 123, end. _J.W._ James White. See next essay.
* * * * *
Page 124. THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.
_London Magazine_, May, 1822, where it has a sub-title, "A May-Day
Effusion."
This was not Lamb's only literary association with chimney-sweepers.
In Vol. I. of this edition will be found the description of a sweep
in the country which there is good reason to believe is Lamb's work.
Again, in 1824, James Montgomery, the poet, edited a book--_The
Chimney-Sweepers' Friend and Climbing Boys' Album_--with the
benevolent purpose of interesting people in the hardships of the
climbing boys' life and producing legislation to alleviate it. The
first half of the book is practical: reports of committees, and so
forth; the second is sentimental; verses by Bernard Barton, William
Lisle Bowles, and many others; short stories of kidnapped children
forced to the horrid business; and kindred themes. Among the
"favourite poets of the day" to whom Montgomery applied were Scott,
Wordsworth, Rogers, Moore, Joanna Baillie and Lamb. Lamb replied
by copying out (with the alteration of Toddy for Dacre) "The
Chimney-Sweeper" from Blake's _Songs of Innocence_, described by
Montgomery as "a very rare and curious little work." In that poem it
will be remembered the little sweep cries "weep, weep, weep." Lamb
compares the cry more prettily to the "peep, peep" of the sparrow.
Page 125, line 6. _Shop ..._ Mr. Thomas Read's Saloop Coffee House was
at No. 102 Fleet Street. The following lines were painted on a board
in Read's establishment:--
Come, all degrees now passing by,
My charming liquor taste and try;
To Lockyer come, and drink your fill;
Mount Pleasant has no kind of ill.
The fumes of wine, punch, drams and beer,
It will expell; your spirits cheer;
From drowsiness your spirits free.
Sweet as a rose your breath will be,
Come taste and try, and speak your mind;
Such rare ingredients here are joined,
Mount Pleasant pleases all mankind.
Page 127, line 12 from foot. _The young Montagu_. Edward Wortley
Montagu (1713-1776), the traveller, ran away from Westminster School
more than once, becoming, among other things, a chimney-sweeper.
Page 127, line 9 from foot. _Arundel Castle_. The Sussex seat of the
Dukes of Norfolk. The "late duke" was Charles Howard, eleventh duke,
who died in 1815, and who spent enormous sums of money on curiosities.
I can find no record of the story of the sweep. Perhaps Lamb invented
it, or applied it to Arundel.
Page 128, line 14 from foot. _Jem White_. James White (1775-1820),
who was at Christ's Hospital with Lamb, and who wrote _Falstaff's
Letters_, 1796, in his company (see Vol. I.). "There never was his
like," Lamb told another old schoolfellow, Valentine Le Grice, in
1833; "we shall never see such days as those in which he flourished."
See the essay "On Some of the Old Actors," for an anecdote of White.
Page 128, line 8 from foot. _The fair of St. Bartholomew_. Held
on September 3 at Smithfield, until 1855. George Daniel, in his
recollections of Lamb, records a visit they paid together to the Fair.
Lamb took Wordsworth through its noisy mazes in 1802.
Page 129, line 14. _Bigod_. John Fenwick (see note to "The Two Races
of Men").
Leigh Hunt, in _The Examiner_ for May 5, 1822, quoted some of the best
sentences of this essay. On May 12 a correspondent (L.E.) wrote a very
agreeable letter supporting Lamb's plea for generosity to sweeps and
remarking thus upon Lamb himself:--
I read the modicum on "Chimney-Sweepers," which your last paper
contained, with pleasure. It appears to be the production of that
sort of mind which you justly denominate "gifted;" but which is
greatly undervalued by the majority of men, because they have no
sympathies in common with it. Many who might partially appreciate
such a spirit, do nevertheless object to it, from the snap-dragon
nature of its coruscations, which shine themselves, but shew every
thing around them to disadvantage. Your deep philosophers also,
and all the laborious professors of the art of sinking, may
elevate their nasal projections, and demand "cui bono"? For my
part I prefer a little enjoyment to a great deal of philosophy. It
is these gifted minds that enliven our habitations, and contribute
so largely to those _every-day_ delights, which constitute, after
all, the chief part of mortal happiness. Such minds are ever
active--their light, like the vestal lamp, is ever burning--and in
my opinion the man who refines the common intercourse of life, and
wreaths the altars of our household gods with flowers, is more
deserving of respect and gratitude than all the sages who waste
their lives in elaborate speculations, which tend to nothing, and
which _we_ cannot comprehend--nor they neither.
On June 2, however, "J.C.H." intervened to correct what he considered
the "dangerous spirit" of Lamb's essay, which said so little of the
hardships of the sweeps, but rather suggested that they were a happy
class. J.C.H. then put the case of the unhappy sweep with some
eloquence, urging upon all householders the claims of the mechanical
sweeping machine.
* * * * *
Page 130. A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS.
_London Magazine_, June, 1822.
The origin of this essay was the activity at that time of the Society
for the Suppression of Mendicity, founded in 1818, of which a Mr. W.H.
Bodkin was the Hon. Secretary. The Society's motto was "Benefacta male
collocata, malefacta existima;" and it attempted much the same work
now performed by the Charity Organisation Society. Perhaps the delight
expressed in its annual reports in the exposure of impostors was a
shade too hearty--at any rate one can see therein cause sufficient for
Lamb's counter-blast. Lamb was not the only critic of Mr. Bodkin's
zeal. Hood, in the _Odes and Addresses_, published in 1825, included a
remonstrance to Mr. Bodkin.
The Society's activity led to a special commission of the House
of Commons in 1821 to inquire into the laws relating to vagrants,
concerning which Lamb speaks, the clergyman alluded to being Dr.
Henry Butts Owen, of Highgate. The result of the commission was an
additional stringency, brought about by Mr. George Chetwynd's bill.
It was this essay, says Hood, which led to his acquaintance with
Charles Lamb. After its appearance in the _London Magazine_, of which
Hood was then sub-editor, he wrote Lamb a letter on coarse paper
purporting to come from a grateful beggar; Lamb did not admit the
discovery of the perpetrator of the joke, but soon afterwards Lamb
called on Hood when he was ill, and a friendship followed to which we
owe Hood's charming recollections of Lamb--among the best that were
written of him by any one.
Page 131, line 14. _The Blind Beggar_. The reference is to the ballad
of "The Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green." The version in the _Percy
Reliques_ relates the adventures of Henry, Earl of Leicester, the son
of Simon de Montfort, who was blinded at the battle of Evesham and
left for dead, and thereafter begged his way with his pretty Bessee.
In the _London Magazine_ Lamb had written "Earl of Flanders," which
he altered to "Earl of Cornwall" in _Elia_. The ballad says Earl of
Leicester.
Page 131, line 28. _Dear Margaret Newcastle_. One of Lamb's recurring
themes of praise (see "The Two Races of Men," "Mackery End in
Hertfordshire," and "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading").
"Romancical," according to the _New English Dictionary_, is Lamb's own
word. This is the only reference given for it.
Page 133, line 7. _Spital sermons_. On Monday of Easter week it was
the custom for the Christ's Hospital boys to walk in procession to the
Royal Exchange, and on Tuesday to the Mansion House; on each occasion
returning with the Lord Mayor to hear a special sermon--a spital
sermon, as it was called--and an anthem. The sermon is now preached
only on Easter Tuesday.
Page 133, line 24. _Overseers of St. L----_. Lamb's Key states that
both the overseers and the mild rector were inventions. In the _London
Magazine_ the rector's parish is "P----."
Page 133, line 27. _Vincent Bourne_. See Lamb's essay on Vincent
Bourne, Vol. I. This poem was translated by Lamb himself, and was
first published in _The Indicator_ for May 3, 1820. See Vol. IV. for
Lamb's other translations from Bourne.
Page 135, line 2. _A well-known figure_. This beggar I take to be
Samuel Horsey. He is stated to have been known as the King of the
Beggars, and a very prominent figure in London. His mutilation is
ascribed to the falling of a piece of timber in Bow Lane, Cheapside,
some nineteen years before; but it may have been, as Lamb says, in the
Gordon Riots of 1780.
There is the figure of Horsey on his little carriage, with several
other of the more notable beggars of the day plying their calling,
in an etching of old houses at the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet
Street, made by J.T. Smith in 1789 for his _Ancient Topography of
London_, 1815. I give it in my large edition.
Page 137, end of essay. _Feigned or not._ In the _London Magazine_ the
essay did not end here. It continued thus:--
"'Pray God your honour relieve me,' said a poor beadswoman to my
friend L---- one day; 'I have seen better days.' 'So have I, my
good woman,' retorted he, looking up at the welkin which was just
then threatening a storm--and the jest (he will have it) was as
good to the beggar as a tester.
"It was at all events kinder than consigning her to the stocks, or
the parish beadle--
"But L. has a way of viewing things in rather a paradoxical light
on some occasions.
"ELIA.
"P.S.--My friend Hume (not MP.) has a curious manuscript in his
possession, the original draught of the celebrated 'Beggar's
Petition' (who cannot say by heart the 'Beggar's Petition?') as it
was written by some school usher (as I remember) with corrections
interlined from the pen of Oliver Goldsmith. As a specimen of the
doctor's improvement, I recollect one most judicious alteration--
"_A pamper'd menial drove me from the door._
"It stood originally--
"_A livery servant drove me, &c._
"Here is an instance of poetical or artificial language properly
substituted for the phrase of common conversation; against
Wordsworth.
"I think I must get H. to send it to the LONDON, as a corollary to
the foregoing."
The foregoing passage needs some commentary. Lamb's friend L---- was
Lamb himself. He tells the story to Manning in the letter of January
2,1810.--Lamb's friend Hume was Joseph Hume of the victualling office,
Somerset House, to whom letters from Lamb will be found in Mr. W.C.
Hazlitt's _Lamb and Hazlitt_, 1900. Hume translated _The Inferno_ of
Dante into blank verse, 1812.--The "Beggar's Petition," a stock piece
for infant recitation a hundred years ago, was a poem beginning
thus:--
Pity the sorrows of a poor old man
Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span;
Oh give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.
In the reference to Wordsworth Lamb pokes fun at the statement, in his
friend's preface to the second edition of _Lyrical Ballads_, that
the purpose of that book was to relate or describe incidents and
situations from common life as far as possible in a selection of
language really used by men.
Lamb's _P.S._ concerning the "Beggar's Petition" was followed in the
_London Magazine_ by this _N.B._:--
"N.B. I am glad to see JANUS veering about to the old quarter. I
feared he had been rust-bound.
"C. being asked why he did not like Gold's 'London' as well as
ours--it was in poor S.'s time--replied--
"_--Because there is no WEATHERCOCK
And that's the reason why._"
The explanation of this note is that "Janus Weathercock"--one of the
pseudonyms of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright--after a long absence from
its pages, had sent to the previous month's _London Magazine_, May,
1822, an amusing letter of criticism of that periodical, commenting on
some of its regular contributors. Therein he said: "Clap Elia on the
back for such a series of good behaviour."--Who C. is cannot be said;
possibly Lamb, as a joke, intends Coleridge to be indicated; but poor
S. would be John Scott, the first editor of the _London Magazine_,
who was killed in a duel. C.'s reply consisted of the last lines
of Wordsworth's "Anecdote for Fathers; or, Falsehood Corrected."
Accurately they run:--
At Kelve there was no weather-cock
And that's the reason why.
The hero of this poem was a son of Lamb's friend Basil Montagu.
Gold's _London Magazine_ was a contemporary of the better known London
magazine of the same name. In Vol. III. appeared an article entitled
"The Literary Ovation," describing an imaginary dinner-party given by
Messrs. Baldwin, Cradock & Joy in February, 1821, at which Lamb was
supposed to be present and to sing a song by Webster, one of his old
dramatists. Mr. Bertram Dobell conjectures that Wainewright may have
written this squib.
* * * * *
Page 137. A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.
_London Magazine_, September, 1822.
There has been some discussion as to the origin of the central idea of
this essay. A resemblance is found in a passage in _The Turkish Spy_,
where, after describing the annual burnt-offering of a bull by the
Athenians, _The Spy_ continues:--
In process of time a certain priest, in the midst of his bloody
sacrifice, taking up a piece of the broiled flesh which had fallen
from the altar on the ground, and burning his fingers therewith,
suddenly clapt them to his mouth to mitigate the pain. But, when
he had once tasted the sweetness of the fat, not only longed for
more of it, but gave a piece to his assistant; and he to others;
who, all pleased with the new-found dainties, fell to eating of
flesh greedily. And hence this species of gluttony was taught to
other mortals.
"Este," a contributor to _Notes and Queries_, June 21, 1884, wrote:--
A quarto volume of forty-six pages, once in "Charles Lamb's
library" (according to a pencilled note in the volume) is before
me, entitled: _Gli Elogi del Porco, Capitoli Berneschi di Tigrinto
Bistonio P.A., E. Accademico Ducale de' Dissonanti di Modena.
In Modena per gli Eredi di Bartolmeo Soliani Stampatori Ducali
MDCCLXI. Con Licenza de' Superiori_, [wherein] some former owner
of the volume has copied out Lamb's prose with many exact verbal
resemblances from the poem.
It has also been suggested that Porphyry's tract on _Abstinence from
Animal Food_, translated by William Taylor, bears a likeness to the
passage. Taylor's translation, however, was not published till 1823,
some time after Lamb's essay.
These parallels merely go to show that the idea was a commonplace; at
the same time it is not Lamb, but Manning, who told him the story,
that must declare its origin. Not only in the essay, but in a letter
to Barton in March, 1823, does Lamb express his indebtedness to his
traveller friend. Allsop, indeed, in his _Letters of Coleridge_,
claims to give the Chinese story which Manning lent to Lamb and which
produced the "Dissertation." It runs thus:--
A child, in the early ages, was left alone by its mother in a
house in which was a pig. A fire took place; the child escaped,
the pig was burned. The child scratched and pottered among the
ashes for its pig, which at last it found. All the provisions
being burnt, the child was very hungry, and not yet having any
artificial aids, such as golden ewers and damask napkins, began to
lick or suck its fingers to free them from the ashes. A piece of
fat adhered to one of his thumbs, which, being very savoury alike
in taste and odour, he rightly judged to belong to the pig. Liking
it much, he took it to his mother, just then appearing, who also
tasted it, and both agreed that it was better than fruit or
vegetables.
They rebuilt the house, and the woman, after the fashion of good
wives, who, says the chronicle, are now very scarce, put a pig
into it, and was about to set it on fire, when an old man, one
whom observation and reflection had made a philosopher, suggested
that a pile of wood would do as well. (This must have been the
father of economists.) The next pig was killed before it was
roasted, and thus
"From low beginnings,
We date our winnings."
Manning, by the way, contributed articles on Chinese jests to the _New
Monthly Magazine_ in 1826.
A preliminary sketch of the second portion of this essay will be found
in the letter to Coleridge dated March 9, 1822. See also the letters
to Mr. and Mrs. Bruton, January 6, 1823, to Mrs. Collier, November 2,
1824, and to H. Dodwell, October 7, 1827, all in acknowledgment of
pigs sent to Lamb probably from an impulse found in this essay.
Later, Lamb abandoned the extreme position here taken. In the little
essay entitled "Thoughts on Presents of Game," 1833 (see Vol. I.), he
says: "Time was, when Elia ... preferred to all a roasted pig. But he
disclaims all such green-sickness appetites in future."
Page 141, verse. "Ere sin could blight ..." From Coleridge's "Epitaph
on an Infant."
Page 142, line 7 from foot. _My good old aunt_. Probably Aunt Hetty.
See the essay on "Christ's Hospital," for another story of her. The
phrase, "Over London Bridge," unless an invention, suggests that
before this aunt went to live with the Lambs--probably not until they
left the Temple in 1792--she was living on the Surrey side. But it was
possibly an Elian mystification. Lamb had another aunt, but of her we
know nothing.
Page 143, line 11 from foot. _St. Omer's_. The French Jesuit College.
Lamb, it is unnecessary to say, was never there.
* * * * *
Page 144. A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE.
This is, by many years, the earliest of these essays. It was printed
first in _The Reflector_, No. IV., in 1811 or 1812. When Lamb brought
his _Works_ together, in 1818, he omitted it. In September, 1822, it
appeared in the _London Magazine_ as one of the reprints of Lamb's
earlier writings, of which the "Confessions of a Drunkard" (see Vol.
I.)was the first. In that number also appeared the "Dissertation upon
Roast Pig," thereby offering the reader an opportunity of comparing
Lamb's style in 1811 with his riper and richer style of 1822. The
germ of the essay must have been long in Lamb's mind, for we find him
writing to Hazlitt in 1805 concerning Mrs. Rickman: "A good-natured
woman though, which is as much as you can expect from a friend's wife,
whom you got acquainted with as a bachelor."
Page 147, line 6. "_Love me, love my dog_." See "Popular Fallacies,"
page 302, for an expansion of this paragraph.
* * * * *
Page 150. ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.
In February, 1822, Lamb began a series of three articles in the
_London Magazine_ on "The Old Actors." The second was printed in April
and the third in October of the same year. Afterwards, in reprinting
them in _Elia_, he rearranged them into the essays, "On Some of the
Old Actors," "On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," and "On
the Acting of Munden," omitting a considerable portion altogether. The
essay in its original tripart form will be found in the Appendix to
this volume.
In one of his theatrical notices in _The Examiner_ (see Vol. I.) Lamb
remarks, "Defunct merit comes out upon us strangely," and certain
critics believe that he praised some of the old actors beyond their
deserts. But no one can regret any such excesses.
Page 150, beginning. _Twelfth Night_. When recalling early playgoing
days in "Old China," Lamb refers again to this play--Viola in Illyria.
Page 150, foot. _Whitfield, Packer, Benson, Burton, Phillimore_ and
_Barrymore_. Whitfield, who made his London début as Trueman in
"George Barnwell" about 1776, was a useful man at Covent Garden and
Drury Lane.--John Hayman Packer (1730-1806), known in Lamb's time for
his old men. He acted at Drury Lane until 1805.--Benson, who married a
sister of Mrs. Stephen Kemble, wrote one or two plays, and was a good
substitute in emergencies. He committed suicide during brain fever
in 1796.--Burton was a creditable utility actor at Covent Garden and
Drury Lane.--Phillimore filled small parts at Drury Lane.--Barrymore
was of higher quality, a favourite character actor both at Drury Lane
and the Haymarket.
Page 151, line 6. _Mrs. Jordan_. Mrs. Jordan, born in 1762, ceased to
act in England in 1814 and died in 1816. Nell was her famous part, in
Coffey's "The Devil to Pay." Miss Hoyden is in Vanbrugh's "Relapse."
Lamb is referring to Viola in Act I., Scene 5, and Act II., Scene 4,
of "Twelfth Night."
Page 151, line 8 from foot. _Mrs. Powel_. Mrs. Powel, previously known
as Mrs. Farmer, and afterwards Mrs. Renaud, was at Drury Lane from
1788 to 1811. She ended her London career in 1816 and died in 1829.
Page 152, line 8. _Of all the actors_. The _London Magazine_ article
began at this point. Robert Bensley (1738?-1817?) was at Drury
Lane from 1775 to 1796, when he retired (alternating it with the
Haymarket). G.H. Boaden and George Colman both bear out Lamb's eulogy
of Bensley as Malvolio; but otherwise he is not the subject of much
praise.
Page 152, line 15. _Venetian incendiary_. Pierre in Otway's "Venice
Preserved." Lamb appended the passage in a footnote in the _London
Magazine_.
Page 153, line 12. _Baddeley ... Parsons ... John Kemble_. Robert
Baddeley (1733-1794), the husband of Mrs. Baddeley, and the original
Moses in the "School for Scandal." William Parsons (1736-1795), the
original Crabtree in the "School for Scandal," and a favourite actor
of Lamb's. John Philip Kemble (1757-1823), who managed Drury Lane from
1788 to 1801.
Page 153, line 11 from foot. _Of birth and feeling_. In the _London
Magazine_ a footnote came here (see page 316).
Page 153, line 6 from foot. _Length of service_. In the _London
Magazine_ a footnote came here (see page 316).
Page 154, line 24. _House of misrule_. A long passage came here in the
_London Magazine_ (see page 317).
Page 154, line 8 from foot. _Hero of La Mancha_. Compare a similar
analysis of Don Quixote's character on page 264.
Page 155, line 23. _Dodd_. James William Dodd (1740?-1796).
Page 155, line 24. _Lovegrove_. William Lovegrove (1778-1816), famous
in old comedy parts and as Peter Fidget in "The Boarding House."
Page 155, foot. _The gardens of Gray's Inn._ These gardens are said to
have been laid out under the supervision of Bacon, who retained his
chambers in the Inn until his death. As Dodd died in 1796 and Lamb
wrote in 1822, it would be fully twenty-six years and perhaps more
since Lamb met him.
Page 156, lines 26-29. _Foppington, etc._ Foppington in Vanbrugh's
"Relapse," Tattle in Congreve's "Love for Love," Backbite in
Sheridan's "School for Scandal," Acres in "The Rivals" by the same
author, and Fribble in Garrick's "Miss in her Teens."
Page 157, line 13. _If few can remember._ The praise of Suett that
follows is interpolated here from the third part of Lamb's original
essay (see page 332). Richard Suett, who had been a Westminster
chorister (not St. Paul's), left the stage in June, 1805, and died in
July.
Page 157, footnote, _Jem White_. See note above.
Page 158, line 22. _His friend Mathews._ Charles Mathews (1776-1835),
whom Lamb knew.
Page 159, line 1. _Jack Bannister._ John Bannister retired from the
stage in 1815. He died in 1836.
Page 159, line 7. _Children in the Wood._ Morton's play, of which Lamb
was so fond. It is mentioned again in "Barbara S----" and "Old China."
Page 159, line 19. _The elder Palmer._ The first part of the essay is
here resumed again. The elder Palmer was John Palmer, who died on the
stage, in 1798, when playing in "The Stranger." Lamb's remarks tend
to confuse him with Gentleman Palmer, who died before Lamb was born.
Robert Palmer, John's brother, died about 1805.
Page 159, line 22. _Moody_. John Moody (1727?-1812), famous as Teague
in "The Committee."
Page 159, lines 31 to 36. _The Duke's Servant, etc._ The Duke's
servant in Garrick's "High Life below Stairs," Captain Absolute in
Sheridan's "Rivals," Dick Amlet in Vanbrugh's "Confederacy."
Page 160, line 1. _Young Wilding ... Joseph Surface._ In Foote's
"Liar" and Sheridan's "School for Scandal."
* * * * *
Page 161. ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY.
See note to the essay "On Some of the Old Actors."
See also "A Vision of Horns" (Vol. I.) for, as it seems to me, a
whimsical extension to the point of absurdity of the theory expressed
in this essay--a theory which Lord Macaulay, in his review of Leigh
Hunt's edition of the Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, etc., in
1840, opposed with characteristic vigour.
Hartley Coleridge, in a letter to Edward Moxon concerning Leigh Hunt's
edition of Wycherley and Congreve, happily remarked: "Nothing more or
better can be said in defence of these writers than what Lamb has said
in his delightful essay ... which is, after all, rather an apology for
the audiences who applauded and himself who delighted in their plays,
than for the plays themselves.... But Lamb always took things by the
better handle."
Page 163, line 16. _The Fainalls, etc_. Fainall in Congreve's "Way
of the World," Mirabel in Farquhar's "Inconstant," Dorimant in
Etheredge's "Man of Mode," and Lady Touchstone in Congreve's "Double
Dealer."
Page 163, line 12 from foot. _Angelica_. In "Love for Love."
Page 164, line 26, etc. _Sir Simon, etc_. All these characters are in
Wycherley's "Love in a Wood."
Page 166, line 21. _King_. Thomas King (1730-1805), at one time
manager of Drury Lane, the original Sir Peter Teazle, on May 8, 1777,
the first night of the "School for Scandal," and the most famous actor
in the part until he retired in 1802.
Page 167, line 14. _Miss Pope_. Jane Pope (1742-1818), the original
Mrs. Candour, left the stage in 1808.
Page 167, line 15 from foot. _Manager's comedy_. Sheridan was manager
of Drury Lane when the "School for Scandal" was produced.
Page 167, same line. _Miss Farren ... Mrs. Abingdon_. Elizabeth
Farren, afterwards Countess of Derby, played Lady Teazle for the last
time in 1797. Mrs. Abingdon had retired from Drury Lane in 1782.
Page 167, line 10 from foot. _Smith_. "Gentleman" Smith took his
farewell of the stage, as Charles Surface, in 1788.
Page 168, end of essay. _Fashionable tragedy_. See page 328, line 21,
for the continuation of this essay in the _London Magazine_.
* * * * *
Page 168. ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN.
See note to the essay "On Some of the Old Actors" above. Lamb lifted
this essay into the _London Magazine_ from _The Examiner_, where it
had appeared on November 7 and 8, 1819, with slight changes.
Page 168, title. _Munden_. Joseph Shepherd Munden (1758-1832) acted at
Covent Garden practically continuously from 1790 to 1811. He moved
to Drury Lane in 1813, and remained there till the end. His farewell
performance was on May 31, 1824. We know Lamb to have met Munden from
Raymond's _Memoirs of Elliston_.
Page 168, line 2 of essay. _Cockletop_. In O'Keeffe's farce "Modern
Antiques." This farce is no longer played, although a skilful hand
might, I think, make it attractive to our audiences. Barry Cornwall in
his memoir of Lamb has a passage concerning Munden as Cockletop, which
helps to support Lamb's praise. Support is not necessary, but useful;
it is one of the misfortunes of the actor's calling that he can live
only in the praise of his critics.
In the Drama of "Modern Antiques," especially, space was allowed
him for his movements. The words were nothing. The prosperity of
the piece depended exclusively on the genius of the actor.
Munden enacted the part of an old man credulous beyond ordinary
credulity; and when he came upon the stage there was in him an
almost sublime look of wonder, passing over the scene and people
around him, and settling apparently somewhere beyond the moon.
What he believed in, improbable as it was to mere terrestrial
visions, you at once conceived to be quite possible,--to be true.
The sceptical idiots of the play pretend to give him a phial
nearly full of water. He is assured that this contains Cleopatra's
tear. Well; who can disprove it? Munden evidently recognised it.
"What a large tear!" he exclaimed. Then they place in his hands
a druidical harp, which to vulgar eyes might resemble a modern
gridiron. He touches the chords gently: "pipes to the spirit
ditties of no tone;" and you imagine Æolian strains. At last,
William Tell's cap is produced. The people who affect to cheat
him, apparently cut the rim from a modern hat, and place the
scull-cap in his hands; and then begins the almost finest piece of
acting that I ever witnessed. Munden accepts the accredited cap
of Tell, with confusion and reverence. He places it slowly and
solemnly on his head, growing taller in the act of crowning
himself. Soon he swells into the heroic size; a great archer; and
enters upon his dreadful task. He weighs the arrow carefully; he
tries the tension of the bow, the elasticity of the string; and
finally, after a most deliberate aim, he permits the arrow to fly,
and looks forward at the same time with intense anxiety. You hear
the twang, you see the hero's knitted forehead, his eagerness; you
tremble;--at last you mark his calmer brow, his relaxing smile,
and are satisfied that the son is saved!--It is difficult to paint
in words this extraordinary performance, which I have several
times seen; but you feel that it is transcendent. You think of
Sagittarius, in the broad circle of the Zodiac; you recollect that
archery is as old as Genesis; you are reminded that Ishmael, the
son of Hagar, wandered about the Judæan deserts and became an
archer.
Page 169, line 16. _Edwin_. This would probably be John Edwin the
Elder (1749-1790). But John Edwin the Younger (1768-1805) might have
been meant. He was well known in Nipperkin, one of Munden's parts.
Page 169, line 21. _Farley...Knight...Liston_. Charles Farley
(1771-1859), mainly known as the deviser of Covent Garden pantomimes;
Edward Knight (1774-1826), an eccentric little comedian; John Listen
(1776?-1846), whose mock biography Lamb wrote (see Vol. I.).
Page 169, line 7 from foot. _Sir Christopher Curry...Old Dornton_. Sir
Christopher in "Inkle and Yarico," by the younger Colman; Old Dornton
in Holcroft's "Road to Ruin."
Page 170, line 6. _The Cobbler of Preston_. A play, founded on "The
Taming of the Shrew," by Charles Johnson, written in 1716.
THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA
Page 171. PREFACE.
_London Magazine_, January, 1823, where it was entitled "A Character
of the late Elia. By a Friend." Signed Phil-Elia. Lamb did not reprint
it for ten years, and then with certain omissions.
In the _London Magazine_ the "Character" began thus:--
"A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA
"BY A FRIEND
"This gentleman, who for some months past had been in a declining
way, hath at length paid his final tribute to nature. He just
lived long enough (it was what he wished) to see his papers
collected into a volume. The pages of the LONDON MAGAZINE will
henceforth know him no more.
"Exactly at twelve last night his queer spirit departed, and
the bells of Saint Bride's rang him out with the old year. The
mournful vibrations were caught in the dining-room of his friends
T. and H.; and the company, assembled there to welcome in another
First of January, checked their carousals in mid-mirth and were
silent. Janus wept. The gentle P----r, in a whisper, signified his
intention of devoting an Elegy; and Allan C----, nobly forgetful
of his countrymen's wrongs, vowed a Memoir to his _manes_, full
and friendly as a Tale of Lyddal-cross."
_Elia_ had just been published when this paper appeared, and it was
probably Lamb's serious intention to stop the series. He was, however,
prevailed to continue. T. and H. were Taylor & Hessey, the owners of
the _London Magazine_. Janus was Janus Weathercock, Thomas Griffiths
Wainewright; P----r was Bryan Waller Procter, or Barry Cornwall, who
afterwards wrote Lamb's life, and Allan C---- was Allan Cunningham,
who called himself "Nalla" in the _London Magazine_. "The Twelve Tales
of Lyddal Cross" ran serially in the magazine in 1822.
Page 171, line 9 from foot. _A former Essay_. In the _London Magazine_
"his third essay," referring to "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty
Years Ago."
Page 172, line 7. _My late friend_. The opening sentences of this
paragraph seem to have been deliberately modelled, as indeed is the
whole essay, upon Sterne's character of Yorick in _Tristram Shandy_,
Vol. I., Chapter XI.
Page 172, line 12 from foot. _It was hit or miss with him_. Canon
Ainger has pointed out that Lamb's description of himself in
company is corroborated by Hazlitt in his essay "On Coffee-House
Politicians":--
I will, however, admit that the said Elia is the worst company in
the world in bad company, if it be granted me that in good company
he is nearly the best that can be. He is one of those of whom
it may be said, _Tell me your company, and I'll tell you your
manners_. He is the creature of sympathy, and makes good whatever
opinion you seem to entertain of him. He cannot outgo the
apprehensions of the circle; and invariably acts up or down to
the point of refinement or vulgarity at which they pitch him. He
appears to take a pleasure in exaggerating the prejudices of
strangers against him; a pride in confirming the prepossessions
of friends. In whatever scale of intellect he is placed, he is as
lively or as stupid as the rest can be for their lives. If you
think him odd and ridiculous, he becomes more and more so every
minute, _à la folie_, till he is a wonder gazed at by all--set him
against a good wit and a ready apprehension, and he brightens more
and more ...
P.G. Patmore's testimony is also corroborative:--
To those who did not know him, or, knowing, did not or could
not appreciate him, Lamb often passed for something between an
imbecile, a brute, and a buffoon; and the first impression he made
on ordinary people was always unfavourable--sometimes to a violent
and repulsive degree.
Page 174, line 3. _Some of his writings_. In the _London Magazine_ the
essay did not end here. It continued:--
"He left property behind him. Of course, the little that is left
(chiefly in India bonds) devolves upon his cousin Bridget. A few
critical dissertations were found in his escritoire, which have
been handed over to the Editor of this Magazine, in which it is
to be hoped they will shortly appear, retaining his accustomed
signature.
"He has himself not obscurely hinted that his employment lay in a
public office. The gentlemen in the Export department of the East
India House will forgive me, if I acknowledge the readiness with
which they assisted me in the retrieval of his few manuscripts.
They pointed out in a most obliging manner the desk at which he
had been planted for forty years; showed me ponderous tomes of
figures, in his own remarkably neat hand, which, more properly
than his few printed tracts, might be called his 'Works.' They
seemed affectionate to his memory, and universally commended his
expertness in book-keeping. It seems he was the inventor of some
ledger, which should combine the precision and certainty of the
Italian double entry (I think they called it) with the brevity
and facility of some newer German system--but I am not able to
appreciate the worth of the discovery. I have often heard him
express a warm regard for his associates in office, and how
fortunate he considered himself in having his lot thrown
in amongst them. There is more sense, more discourse, more
shrewdness, and even talent, among these clerks (he would say)
than in twice the number of authors by profession that I have
conversed with. He would brighten up sometimes upon the 'old
days of the India House,' when he consorted with Woodroffe, and
Wissett, and Peter Corbet (a descendant and worthy representative,
bating the point of sanctity, of old facetious Bishop Corbet), and
Hoole who translated Tasso, and Bartlemy Brown whose father (God
assoil him therefore) modernised Walton--and sly warm-hearted old
Jack Cole (King Cole they called him in those days), and Campe,
and Fombelle--and a world of choice spirits, more than I can
remember to name, who associated in those days with Jack Burrell
(the _bon vivant_ of the South Sea House), and little Eyton (said
to be a _facsimile_ of Pope--he was a miniature of a gentleman)
that was cashier under him, and Dan Voight of the Custom House
that left the famous library.
"Well, Elia is gone--for aught I know, to be reunited with
them--and these poor traces of his pen are all we have to show for
it. How little survives of the wordiest authors! Of all they said
or did in their lifetime, a few glittering words only! His Essays
found some favourers, as they appeared separately; they shuffled
their way in the crowd well enough singly; how they will _read_,
now they are brought together, is a question for the publishers,
who have thus ventured to draw out into one piece his 'weaved-up
follies.'
"PHIL-ELIA."
This passage calls for some remark. Cousin Bridget was, of course,
Mary Lamb.--Lamb repeated the joke about his _Works_ in his
"Autobiography" (see Vol. I.) and in "The Superannuated Man."--Some
record of certain of the old clerks mentioned by Lamb still remains;
but I can find nothing of the others. Whether or not Peter Corbet
really derived from the Bishop we do not know, but the facetious
Bishop Corbet was Richard Corbet (1582-1635), Bishop of Oxford and
Norwich, whose conviviality was famous and who wrote the "Fairies'
Farewell." John Hoole (1727-1803), who translated Tasso and wrote the
life of Scott of Amwell and a number of other works, was principal
auditor at the end of his time at the India House. He retired about
1785, when Lamb was ten years old. Writing to Coleridge on January 5,
1797, Lamb speaks of Hoole as "the great boast and ornament of the
India House," and says that he found Tasso, in Hoole's translation,
"more vapid than smallest small beer sun-vinegared." The moderniser
of Walton would be Moses Browne (1704-1787), whose edition of _The
Complete Angler_, 1750, was undertaken at the suggestion of Dr.
Johnson.
* * * * *
Page 174. BLAKESMOOR IN H----SHIRE
_London Magazine_, September, 1824.
With this essay Lamb made his reappearance in the magazine, after
eight months' absence.
By Blakesmoor Lamb meant Blakesware, the manor-house near Widford, in
Hertfordshire, where his grandmother, Mary Field, had been housekeeper
for many years. Compare the essay "Dream-Children."
Blakesware, which was built by Sir Francis Leventhorpe about 1640,
became the property of the Plumers in 1683, being then purchased by
John Plumer, of New Windsor, who died in 1718. It descended to William
Plumer, M.P. for Yarmouth, in the Isle of Wight, and afterwards for
Hertfordshire, who died in 1767, and was presumably Mrs. Field's first
employer. His widow and the younger children remained at Blakesware
until Mrs. Plumer's death in 1778, but the eldest son, William Plumer,
moved at once to Gilston, a few miles east of Blakesware, a mansion
which for a long time was confused with Blakesware by commentators on
Lamb. This William Plumer, who was M.P. for Lewes, for Hertfordshire,
and finally for Higham Ferrers, and a governor of Christ's Hospital,
kept up Blakesware after his mother's death in 1778 (when Lamb was
three) exactly as before, but it remained empty save for Mrs. Field
and the servants under her. Mrs. Field became thus practically
mistress of it, as Lamb says in "Dream-Children." Hence the increased
happiness of her grandchildren when they visited her. Mrs. Field died
in 1792, when Lamb was seventeen. William Plumer died in 1822, aged
eighty-six, having apparently arranged with his widow, who continued
at Gilston, that Blakesware should be pulled down--a work of
demolition which at once was begun. This lady, _née_ Jane Hamilton,
afterwards married a Mr. Lewin, and then, in 1828, Robert Ward
(1765-1846), author of _Tremaine_ and other novels, who took the name
of Plumer-Ward, and may be read of, together with curious details of
Gilston House, in P.G. Patmore's _My Friends and Acquaintances_.
Nothing now remains but a few mounds, beneath which are bricks and
rubble. The present house is a quarter of a mile behind the old
one, high on the hill. In Lamb's day this hillside was known as the
Wilderness, and where now is turf were formal walks with clipped yew
hedges and here and there a statue. The stream of which he speaks is
the Ashe, running close by the walls of the old house. Standing there
now, among the trees which mark its site, it is easy to reconstruct
the past as described in the essay.
The Twelve Cæsars, the tapestry and other more notable possessions of
Blakesware, although moved to Gilston on the demolition of Blakesware,
are there no longer, and their present destination is a mystery.
Gilston was pulled down in 1853, following upon a sale by auction,
when all its treasures were dispersed. Some, I have discovered,
were bought by the enterprising tenant of the old Rye House Inn
at Broxbourne, but absolute identification of anything now seems
impossible.
Blakesware is again described in _Mrs. Leicester's School_, in Mary
Lamb's story of "The Young Mahometan." There the Twelve Cæsars are
spoken of as hanging on the wall, as if they were medallions; but Mr.
E.S. Bowlby tells me that he perfectly remembers the Twelve Cæsars at
Gilston, about 1850, as busts, just as Lamb says. In "Rosamund Gray"
(see Vol. I.) Lamb describes the Blakesware wilderness. See also notes
to "The Last Peach," Vol. I., to "Dream-Children" in this volume, and
to "Going or Gone," Vol. IV.
Lamb has other references to Blakesware and the irrevocability of his
happiness there as a child, in his letters. Writing to Southey on
October 31, 1799, he says:--"Dear Southey,--I have but just got
your letter, being returned from Herts, where I have passed a few
red-letter days with much pleasure. I would describe the county to
you, as you have done by Devonshire; but alas! I am a poor pen at that
same. I could tell you of an old house with a tapestry bedroom, the
'Judgment of Solomon' composing one pannel, and 'Actæon spying Diana
naked' the other. I could tell of an old marble hall, with Hogarth's
prints, and the Roman Cæsars in marble hung round. I could tell of
a _wilderness_, and of a village church, and where the bones of my
honoured grandam lie; but there are feelings which refuse to be
translated, sulky aborigines, which will not be naturalised in another
soil. Of this nature are old family faces, and scenes of infancy."
And again, to Bernard Barton, in August, 1827:--"You have well
described your old-fashioned grand paternall Hall. Is it not odd that
every one's earliest recollections are of some such place. I had my
Blakesware (Blakesmoor in the 'London'). Nothing fills a child's mind
like a large old Mansion ... better if un- or partially-occupied;
peopled with the spirits of deceased members of the County and
Justices of the Quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled solitude of
one, with my feelings at 7 years old!
"Those marble busts of the Emperors, they seem'd as if they were to
stand for ever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, in
that old Marble Hall, and I to partake of their permanency; Eternity
was, while I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are
toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old Dwelling and
its princely gardens. I feel like a grasshopper that chirping about
the grounds escaped his scythe only by my littleness. Ev'n now he is
whetting one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps.
Well!"
Writing to Barton in August, 1824, concerning the present essay, Lamb
describes it as a "futile effort ... 'wrung from me with slow pain'."
Page 175, line 15 from foot. _Mrs. Battle_. There was a haunted room
at Blakesware, but the suggestion that the famous Mrs. Battle died
in it was probably due to a sudden whimsical impulse. Lamb states in
"Dream-Children" that Mrs. Field occupied this room.
Page 177, line 22. _The hills of Lincoln_. See Lamb's sonnet "On the
Family Name," Vol. IV. Lamb's father came from Lincoln.
Page 177, line 11 from foot. _Those old W----s_. Lamb thus disguised
the name of Plumer. He could not have meant Wards, for Robert Ward did
not marry William Plumer's widow till four years after this essay was
printed.
Page 178, line 2. _My Alice_. See notes to "Dream-Children."
Page 178, line 2. _Mildred Elia, I take it_. Alter these words, in the
_London Magazine_, came this passage:--
"From her, and from my passion for her--for I first learned love
from a picture--Bridget took the hint of those pretty whimsical
lines, which thou mayst see, if haply thou hast never seen them,
Reader, in the margin.[1] But my Mildred grew not old, like the
imaginery Helen."
This ballad, written in gentle ridicule of Lamb's affection for the
Blakesware portrait, and Mary Lamb's first known poem, was printed in
the _John Woodvil_ volume, 1802, and in the _Works_, 1818.
[Footnote 1:
"High-born Helen, round your dwelling,
These twenty years I've paced in vain:
Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty
Hath been to glory in his pain.
"High-born Helen, proudly telling
Stories of thy cold disdain;
I starve, I die, now you comply,
And I no longer can complain.
"These twenty years I've lived on tears,
Dwelling for ever on a frown;
On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread;
I perish now you kind are grown.
"Can I, who loved ray beloved
But for the scorn 'was in her eye,'
Can I be moved for my beloved,
When she returns me sigh for sigh?
"In stately pride, by my bedside,
High-born Helen's portrait hung;
Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays
Are nightly to the portrait sung.
"To that I weep, nor ever sleep,
Complaining all night long to her.--
Helen, grown old, no longer cold,
Said--'you to all men I prefer.'"]
* * * * *
Page 178. POOR RELATIONS.
_London Magazine_, May, 1823.
Page 179, line 10. _A pound of sweet._ After these words, in the
_London Magazine_, came one more descriptive clause--"the bore _par
excellence_."
Page 181, line 4, _Richard Amlet, Esq._ In "The Confederacy" by Sir
John Vanbrugh--a favourite part of John Palmer's (see the essay "On
Some of the Old Actors").
Page 181, line 16. _Poor W----_. In the Key Lamb identifies W---- with
Favell, who "left Cambridge because he was asham'd of his father, who
was a house-painter there." Favell has already been mentioned in the
essay on "Christ's Hospital."
Page 183, line 22. _At Lincoln._ The Lambs, as we have seen, came from
Lincolnshire. The old feud between the Above and Below Boys seems now
to have abated, but a social gulf between the two divisions of the
city remains.
Page 184, line 11 from foot. _John Billet_. Probably not the real
name. Lamb gives the innkeeper at Widford, in "Rosamund Gray," the
name of Billet, when it was really Clemitson.
* * * * *
Page 185. STAGE ILLUSION.
_London Magazine_, August, 1825, where it was entitled "Imperfect
Dramatic Illusion."
This was, I think, Lamb's last contribution to the _London_, which had
been growing steadily heavier and less hospitable to gaiety. Some one,
however, contributed to it from time to time papers more or less in
the Elian manner. There had been one in July, 1825, on the Widow
Fairlop, a lady akin to "The Gentle Giantess." In September, 1825, was
an essay entitled "The Sorrows of ** ***" (an ass), which might,
both from style and sympathy, be almost Lamb's; but was, I think, by
another hand. And in January, 1826, there was an article on whist,
with quotations from Mrs. Battle, deliberately derived from her
creator. These and other essays are printed in Mr. Bertram Dobell's
_Sidelights on Charles Lamb_, 1903, with interesting comments.
The present essay to some extent continues the subject treated of in
"The Artificial Comedy," but it may be taken also as containing some
of the matter of the promised continuation of the essay "On the
Tragedies of Shakspeare," which was to deal with the comic characters
of that dramatist (see Vol. I.).
Page 185, line 15 from foot. _Jack Bannister_. See notes to the essay
on "The Old Actors." His greatest parts were not those of cowards; but
his Bob Acres was justly famous. Sir Anthony Absolute and Tony Lumpkin
were perhaps his chief triumphs. He left the stage in 1815.
Page 186, line 24. _Gatty_. Henry Gattie (1774-1844), famous for
old-man parts, notably Monsieur Morbleu in Moncrieffs "Monsieur
Tonson." He was also the best Dr. Caius, in "The Merry Wives of
Windsor," of his time. He left the stage in 1833, and settled down as
a tobacconist and raconteur at Oxford.
Page 186, line 30. _Mr. Emery._ John Emery (1777-1822), the best
impersonator of countrymen in his day. Zekiel Homespun in Colman's
"Heir at Law" was one of his great parts. Tyke was in Morton's "School
of Reform," produced in 1805, and no one has ever played it so well.
He also played Caliban with success.
Page 187, line 4 from foot. _A very judicious actor._ This actor
I have not identified. Benjamin Wrench (1778-1843) was a dashing
comedian, a Wyndham of his day. In "Free and Easy" he played Sir John
Freeman.
* * * * *
Page 188. To THE SHADE OF ELLISTON.
_Englishman's Magazine_, August, 1831, where it formed, with the
following essay, one article, under the title "Reminiscences of
Elliston."
Robert William Elliston (1774-1831), actor and manager, famous for his
stage lovers, both in comedy and tragedy. His Charles Surface was said
to be unequalled, and both in Hotspur and Hamlet he was great. His
last performance was in June, 1831, a very short time before his
death.
Page 189, line 7. _Thin ghosts._ In the _London Magazine_ the passage
ran:--
"Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) admire, while
with uplifted toe retributive you inflict vengeance incorporeal
upon the shadowy rear of obnoxious author, just arrived:--
"'what _seem'd_ his tail
The likeness of a kingly kick had on.
* * * * *
"'Yet soon he heals: for spirits, that live throughout
Vital in every part, not as frail man
In entrails, head, or heart, liver or veins,
Can in the liquid texture mortal wound
Receive no more, than can the liquid air,
All heart they live, all head, all eye.'"
Page 189, line 11 from foot. _À la Foppington_. In Vanbrugh's
"Relapse."
In the _Englishman's Magazine_ the article ended, after "Plaudito, et
Valeto," with: "Thy friend upon Earth, though thou did'st connive at
his d----n."
The article was signed Mr. H., the point being that Elliston had
played Mr. H. at Drury Lane in Lamb's unlucky farce of that name in
1806.
* * * * *
Page 190. ELLISTONIANA.
See note at the head of "To the Shade of Elliston," above.
Page 190, line 3 of essay. _My first introduction._ This paragraph was
a footnote in the _Englishman's Magazine_. Elliston, according to
the _Memoirs_ of him by George Raymond, which have Lamb's phrase,
"Joyousest of once embodied spirits," for motto, opened a circulating
library at Leamington in the name of his sons William and Henry, and
served there himself at times.
Possibly Lamb was visiting Charles Chambers at Leamington when he saw
Elliston. That he did see him there we know from Raymond's book, where
an amusing occurrence is described, illustrating Munden's frugality.
It seems that Lamb, Elliston and Munden drove together to Warwick
Castle. On returning Munden stopped the carriage just outside
Leamington, on the pretext that he had to make a call on an old
friend--a regular device, as Elliston explained, to avoid being
present at the inn when the hire of the carriage was paid.
Page 191, line 11. _Wrench_. See notes to "The Old Actors." Wrench
succeeded Elliston at Bath, and played in the same parts, and with
something of the same manner.
Page 191, line 11 from foot. _Appelles ... G.D._ Apelles, painter to
Alexander the Great, was said to let no day pass without experimenting
with his pencil. G.D. was George Dyer, whom we first met in "Oxford in
the Vacation."
Page 192, line 6. _Ranger_. In Hoadley's "Suspicious Husband," one of
Elliston's great parts.
Page 192, line 17 from foot. _Cibber_. Colley Cibber (1671-1757), the
actor, who was a very vain man, created the part of Foppington in
1697--his first great success.
Page 192, last line. _St. Dunstan's ... punctual giants._ Old St.
Dunstan Church, in Fleet Street, had huge figures which struck the
hours, and which disappeared with the church, pulled down to make room
for the present one some time before 1831. They are mentioned in Emily
Barton's story in _Mrs. Leicester's School_ (see Vol. III.). Moxon
records that Lamb shed tears when the figures were taken away.
Page 193, line 6. _Drury Lane_. Drury Lane opened, under Elliston's
management, on October 4, 1819, with "Wild Oats," in which he played
Rover. He left the theatre, a bankrupt, in 1826.
Page 193, line 19. _The ... Olympic._ Lamb is wrong in his dates.
Elliston's tenancy of the Olympic preceded his reign at Drury Lane.
It was to the Surrey that he retired after the Drury Lane period,
producing there Jerrold's "Black-Eyed Susan" in 1829.
Page 193, line 12 from foot. _Sir A---- C----_. Sir Anthony Carlisle
(see note to "A Quakers' Meeting").
Page 194, line 7. _A Vestris_. Madame Vestris (1797-1856), the great
comédienne, who was one of Elliston's stars at Drury Lane.
Page 195, line 6. _Latinity_. Elliston was buried in St. John's
Church, Waterloo Road, and a marble slab with a Latin inscription
by Nicholas Torre, his son-in-law, is on the wall. Elliston was the
nephew of Dr. Elliston, Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge,
who sent him to St. Paul's School--not, however, that founded by
Colet--but to St. Paul's School, Covent Garden. He was intended for
the Church.
* * * * *
Page 195. DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING.
_London Magazine_, July, 1822, where, at the end, were the words, "To
be continued;" but Lamb did not return to the topic.
For some curious reason Lamb passed over this essay when collecting
_Elia_ for the press. It was not republished till 1833, in the _Last
Essays_.
Page 195, motto. _The Relapse_. The comedy by Sir John Vanbrugh.
Lamb liked this quotation. He uses it in his letter about William
Wordsworth, junior, to Dorothy Wordsworth, November 25, 1819; and
again in his "Reminiscence of Sir Jeffery Dunstan" (see Vol. I.).
Page 195, foot. _I can read any thing which I call a book_. Writing to
Wordsworth in August, 1815, Lamb says: "What any man can write, surely
I may read."
Page 195, last line. _Pocket Books_. In the _London Magazine_ Lamb
added in parenthesis "the literary excepted," the reference being to
the _Literary Pocket Book_ which Leigh Hunt brought out annually from
1819 to 1822.
Page 196, line 2. _Hume ... Jenyns_. Hume would be David Hume
(1711-1776), the philosopher and historian of England; Edward Gibbon
(1737-1794), historian of Rome; William Robertson, D.D. (1721-1793),
historian of America, Charles V., Scotland and India; James Beattie
(1735-1803), author of "The Minstrel" and a number of essays, who
had, however, one recommendation to Lamb, of which Lamb may have been
unaware--he loved Vincent Bourne's poems and was one of the first
to praise them; and Soame Jenyns (1704-1787), author of _The Art
of Dancing_, and the _Inquiry into Evil_ which Johnson reviewed so
mercilessly. It is stated in Moore's _Diary_, according to Procter,
that Lamb "excluded from his library Robertson, Gibbon and Hume,
and made instead a collection of the works of the heroes of _The
Dunciad_."
Page 196, line 14. _Population Essay_. That was the day of population
essays. Malthus's _Essay on Population_, 1798, had led to a number of
replies.
Page 196, line 22. _My ragged veterans_. Crabb Robinson recorded in
his diary that Lamb had the "finest collection of shabby books" he
ever saw; "such a number of first-rate works in very bad condition is,
I think, nowhere to be found." Leigh Hunt stated in his essay on "My
Books" in _The Literary Examiner_, July 5, 1823, that Lamb's library
had
an handsome contempt for appearance. It looks like what it is, a
selection made at precious intervals from the book-stalls;--now
a Chaucer at nine and twopence; now a Montaigne or a Sir Thomas
Browne at two shillings; now a Jeremy Taylor, a Spinoza; an old
English Dramatist, Prior, and Sir Philip Sidney; and the books are
"neat as imported." The very perusal of the backs is a "discipline
of humanity." There Mr. Southey takes his place again with an old
Radical friend: there Jeremy Collier is at peace with Dryden:
there the lion, Martin Luther, lies down with the Quaker lamb,
Sewel: there Guzman d'Alfarache thinks himself fit company for Sir
Charles Grandison, and has his claims admitted. Even the "high
fantastical" Duchess of Newcastle, with her laurel on her head,
is received with grave honours, and not the less for declining to
trouble herself with the constitutions of her maids.
It is in the same essay that Leigh Hunt mentions that he once saw
Lamb kiss an old folio--Chapman's Homer--the work he paraphrased for
children under the title _The Adventures of Ulysses_.
Page 197, line 15. _Life of the Duke of Newcastle_. Lamb's copy, a
folio containing also the "Philosophical Letters," is in America.
Page 197, line 20. _Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton_... I cannot say
where are Lamb's copies of Sidney and Fuller; but the British Museum
has his Milton, rich in MS. notes, a two-volume edition, 1751. The
Taylor, which Lamb acquired in 1798, is the 1678 folio _Sermons_. I
cannot say where it now is.
Page 197, line 26. _Shakspeare_. Lamb's Shakespeare was not sold at
the sale of his library; only a copy of the _Poems_, 12mo, 1714.
His annotated copy of the _Poems_, 1640, is in America. There is a
reference to one of Rowe's plates in the essay "My First Play." The
Shakespeare gallery engravings were the costly series of illustrations
to Shakespeare commissioned by John Boydell (1719-1804), Lord Mayor of
London in 1790. The pictures were exhibited in the Shakespeare Gallery
in Pall Mall, and the engravings were published in 1802.
After the word "Shakespeare," in the _London Magazine_, came the
sentence: "You cannot make a _pet_ book of an author whom everybody
reads."
In a letter to Wordsworth, February 1, 1806, Lamb says: "Shakespear is
one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just
before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book." In the same letter
he says of binding: "The Law Robe I have ever thought as comely and
gentlemanly a garb as a Book would wish to wear."
Page 197, line 7 from foot. _Beaumont and Fletcher._ See note to "The
Two Races of Men" for an account of Lamb's copy, now in the British
Museum.
Page 197, line 5 from foot. _No sympathy with them._ After these
words, in the _London Magazine_, came, "nor with Mr. Gifford's Ben
Jonson." This edition by Lamb's old enemy, William Gifford, editor of
the _Quarterly_, was published in 1816. Lamb's copy of Ben Jonson was
dated 1692, folio. It is now in America, I believe.
Page 197, foot. _The reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy_. This
reprint was, I think, published in 1800, in two volumes, marked ninth
edition. Lamb's copy was dated 1621, quarto. I do not know where it
now is.
Page 198, line 4. _Malone_. This was Edmund Malone (1741-1812), the
critic and editor of Shakespeare, who in 1793 persuaded the Vicar of
Stratford-on-Avon to whitewash the coloured bust of the poet in the
chancel. A _Gentleman's Magazine_ epigrammatist, sharing Lamb's view,
wrote:--
Stranger, to whom this monument is shown,
Invoke the poet's curse upon Malone;
Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays,
And daubs his tombstone, as he mars his plays.
Lamb has been less than fair to Malone. To defend his action in the
matter of the bust of Shakespeare is impossible, except by saying that
he acted in good faith and according to the fashion of his time. But
he did great service to the fame of Shakespeare and thus to English
literature, and was fearless and shrewd in his denunciation of the
impostor Ireland.
Page 198, line 26. _The Fairy Queen_. Lamb's copy was a folio, 1617,
12, 17, 13. Against Canto XI., Stanza 32, he has written: "Dear Venom,
this is the stave I wot of. I will maintain it against any in the
book."
Page 199, line 14. _Nando's_. A coffee-house in Fleet Street, at the
east corner of Inner Temple Lane, and thus at one time close to Lamb's
rooms.
Page 199, line 16. "_The Chronicle is in hand, Sir._" In the _London
Magazine_ the following paragraph was here inserted:--
"As in these little Diurnals I generally skip the Foreign News,
the Debates--and the Politics--I find the Morning Herald by far
the most entertaining of them. It is an agreeable miscellany,
rather than a newspaper."
The _Morning Herald_, under Alexander Chalmers, had given more
attention to social gossip than to affairs of State; but under Thomas
Wright it suddenly, about the time of Lamb's essay, became politically
serious and left aristocratic matters to the _Morning Post_.
Page 199, line 20. _Town and Country Magazine_. This magazine
flourished between 1769 and 1792.
Page 199, line 26. _Poor Tobin_. Possibly John Tobin (1770-1804), the
playwright, though I think not. More probably the Tobin mentioned in
Lamb's letter to Wordsworth about "Mr. H." in June, 1806 (two years
after John Tobin's death), to whom Lamb read the manager's letter
concerning the farce. This would be James, John Tobin's brother.
Page 200, line 13. _The five points_. After these words came, in the
_London Magazine_, the following paragraph:--
"I was once amused--there is a pleasure in _affecting_
affectation--at the indignation of a crowd that was justling in
with me at the pit-door of Covent Garden theatre, to have a sight
of Master Betty--then at once in his dawn and his meridian--in
Hamlet. I had been invited quite unexpectedly to join a party,
whom I met near the door of the playhouse, and I happened to have
in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steevens's Shakspeare,
which, the time not admitting of my carrying it home, of course
went with me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pressure
of the doors opening--the _rush_, as they term it--I deliberately
held the volume over my head, open at the scene in which the young
Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly read by the lamplight.
The clamour became universal. 'The affectation of the fellow,'
cried one. 'Look at that gentleman _reading_, papa,' squeaked a
young lady, who in her admiration of the novelty almost forgot her
fears. I read on. 'He ought to have his book knocked out of his
hand,' exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms were too fast pinioned to
his side to suffer him to execute his kind intention. Still I read
on--and, till the time came to pay my money, kept as unmoved,
as Saint Antony at his Holy Offices, with the satyrs, apes, and
hobgoblins, mopping, and making mouths at him, in the picture,
while the good man sits undisturbed at the sight, as if he were
sole tenant of the desart.--The individual rabble (I recognised
more than one of their ugly faces) had damned a slight piece of
mine but a few nights before, and I was determined the culprits
should not a second time put me out of countenance."
Master Betty was William Henry West Betty (1791-1874), known as the
"Young Roscius," whose Hamlet and Douglas sent playgoers wild in
1804-5-6. Pitt, indeed, once adjourned the House in order that his
Hamlet might be witnessed. His most cried-up scenes in "Hamlet" were
the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, and the fencing scene before the
king and his mother. The piece of Lamb's own which had been hissed
was, of course, "Mr. H.," produced on December 10, 1806; but very
likely he added this reference as a symmetrical afterthought, for he
would probably have visited Master Betty much earlier in his career,
that phenomenon's first appearance at Covent Garden being two years
before the advent of the ill-fated Hogsflesh.
Page 200, line 22. _Martin B----_. Martin Charles Burney, son of
Admiral Burney, and a lifelong friend of the Lambs--to whom Lamb
dedicated the prose part of his _Works_ in 1818 (see Vol. IV.).
Page 200, line 28. _A quaint poetess_. Mary Lamb. The poem is in
_Poetry for Children_, 1809 (see Vol. III. of this edition). In line
17 the word "then" has been inserted by Lamb. The punctuation also
differs from that of the _Poetry for Children_.
* * * * *
Page 201. THE OLD _MARGATE HOY_.
_London Magazine_, July, 1823. This, like others of Lamb's essays, was
translated into French and published in the _Revue Britannique_ in
1833. It was prefaced by the remark: "L'auteur de cette délicieuse
esquisse est Charles Lamb, connu sous le nom d'Eliah."
Page 201, beginning. _I have said so before._ See "Oxford in the
Vacation."
Page 201, line 5 of essay. _My beloved Thames._ Lamb describes a
riparian holiday at and about Richmond in a letter to Robert Lloyd in
1804.
Page 201, line 8 of essay. _Worthing_... There is no record of the
Lambs' sojourn at Worthing or Eastbourne. They were at Brighton in
1817, and Mary Lamb at any rate enjoyed walking on the Downs there; in
a letter to Miss Wordsworth of November 21, 1817, she described them
as little mountains, _almost as good as_ Westmoreland scenery. They
were at Hastings--at 13 Standgate Street--in 1823 (see Lamb's letters
to Bernard Barton, July 10, 1823, to Hood, August 10, 1824, and to
Dibdin, June, 1826). The only evidence that we have of Lamb knowing
Worthing is his "Mr. H.". That play turns upon the name Hogsflesh,
afterwards changed to Bacon. The two chief innkeepers at Worthing at
the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of its prosperity
were named Hogsflesh and Bacon, and there was a rhyme concerning them
which was well known (see notes to "Mr. H." in Vol. IV.).
Page 201, line 11 of essay. _Many years ago_. A little later Lamb says
he was then fifteen. This would make the year 1790. It was probably on
this visit to Margate that Lamb conceived the idea of his sonnet, "O,
I could laugh," which Coleridge admired so much (see Vol. IV.).
Page 201, line 17 of essay. _Thou old Margate Hoy_. This old
sailing-boat gave way to a steam-boat, the _Thames_, some time after
1815. The _Thames_, launched in 1815, was the first true steam-boat
the river had seen. The old hoy, or lighter, was probably sloop
rigged.
Page 202, foot. _Our enemies_. Lamb refers here to the attacks of
_Blackwood's Magazine_ on the Cockneys, among whom he himself had been
included. In the _London Magazine_ he had written "unfledged" for
"unseasoned."
Page 206, line 14. _Gebir_. _Gebir_, by Walter Savage Landor
(1775-1864), who was a fortnight older than Lamb, and who afterwards
came to know him personally, was published in 1798.
Page 206, line 16. _This detestable Cinque Port_. A letter from Mary
Lamb to Randal Norris, concerning this, or another, visit to Hastings,
says: "We eat turbot, and we drink smuggled Hollands, and we walk
up hill and down hill all day long." Lamb, in a letter to Barton,
admitted a benefit: "I abused Hastings, but learned its value."
Page 208, line 5. _Lothbury_. Probably in recollection of Wordsworth's
"Reverie of Poor Susan," which Lamb greatly liked.
* * * * *
Page 208. THE CONVALESCENT.
_London Magazine_, July, 1825.
We learn from the _Letters_ that Lamb had a severe nervous breakdown
in the early summer of 1825 after liberation from the India House.
Indeed, his health was never sound for long together after he became a
free man.
* * * * *
Page 212. SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS.
_New Monthly Magazine_, May, 1826, where it appeared as one of the
Popular Fallacies under the title, "That great Wit is allied to
Madness;" beginning: "So far from this being true, the greatest wits
will ever be found to be the sanest writers..." and so forth. Compare
the essay "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare," Vol. I. Lamb's thesis is
borrowed from Dryden's couplet (in _Absalom and Achitophel_, Part I.,
lines 163, 164):--
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
Page 213, line 14. _Kent ... Flavius_. Lamb was always greatly
impressed by the character of Kent (see his essay on "Hogarth," Vol.
I.; his "Table Talk," Vol. I.; and his versions, in the _Tales from
Shakespear_, of "King Lear" and "Timon," Vol. III.).
* * * * *
Page 215. CAPTAIN JACKSON.
_London Magazine_, November, 1824.
No one has yet been able to identify Captain Jackson. The suggestion
has been made that Randal Norris sat for the picture; but the
circumstance that Lamb, in the first edition of the _Last Essays_,
included "A Death-Bed," with a differing portrait of Randal Norris
therein, is, I think, good evidence against this theory. Perhaps the
captain was one of the imaginary characters which Lamb sent out every
now and then, as he told Bernard Barton (in the letter of March 20,
1826), "to exercise the ingenuity of his friends;" although his
reality seems overpowering.
Apart from his own interest, the captain is noteworthy in
constituting, with Ralph Bigod (see page 27), a sketch (possibly
unknown to Dickens) for Wilkins Micawber.
Page 217, line 22. _Glover ... Leonidas_. Richard Glover (1712-1785),
the poet, author of _Leonidas_, 1737. I cannot find that he ever lived
at Westbourne Green.
Page 218, foot. _The old ballad_. The old ballad "Waly, Waly." This
was among the poems copied by Lamb into Miss Isola's Extract Book.
Page 219, line 8. _Tibbs, and Bobadil_. Beau Tibbs in Goldsmith's
"Citizen of the World," and Bobadil in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His
Humour."
* * * * *
Page 219. THE SUPERANNUATED MAN.
_London Magazine_, May, 1825.
Except that Lamb has disguised his real employment, this essay is
practically a record of fact. After thirty-three years of service at
the East India House he went home "for ever" on Tuesday, March 29,
1825, with a pension of £441, or two-thirds of his regular salary,
less a small annual deduction as a provision for his sister. At
a Court of Directors held on that day this minute was drawn up:
"Resolved that the resignation of Mr. Charles Lamb, of the Accountant
General's office, on account of certified ill health, be accepted, and
it appearing that he has served the Company faithfully for 33 years,
and is now in receipt of an income of £730 per annum, he be allowed
a pension of £450 ... to commence from this day." Lamb's letters to
Wordsworth, April 6, 1825, to Barton, the same date, and to Miss
Hutchinson, a little later, all tell the story. This is how Lamb put
it to Barton:--
"DEAR B.B.--My spirits are so tumultuary with the novelty of my
recent emancipation, that I have scarce steadiness of hand, much
more mind, to compose a letter.
"I am free, B.B.--free as air.
"The little bird that wings the sky
Knows no such Liberty!
"I was set free on Tuesday in last week at 4 o'clock.
"I came home for ever!...
"I went and sat among 'em all at my old 33 years desk yester
morning; and deuce take me if I had not yearnings at leaving all
my old pen-and-ink fellows, merry sociable lads, at leaving them
in the Lurch, fag, fag, fag.
"I would not serve another 7 years for seven hundred thousand
pound."
To Miss Hutchinson Lamb said; "I would not go back to my prison for
seven years longer for £10000 a year."
In the _London Magazine_ the essay was divided into two parts, with
the two quotations now at the head apportioned each to one part.
Part II. began at "A fortnight has passed," on page 224. The essay
was signed "J.D.," whose address was given as "Beaufort-terrace,
Regent-street; late of Ironmonger-court, Fenchurch-street."
Page 220, line 3. _Recreation_. At "recreation," in the _London
Magazine_, came the footnote:--
"Our ancestors, the noble old Puritans of Cromwell's day,
could distinguish between a day of religious rest and a day of
recreation; and while they exacted a rigorous abstinence from all
amusements (even to the walking out of nursery maids with their
little charges in the fields) upon the Sabbath; in the lieu of the
superstitious observance of the Saints days, which they abrogated,
they humanely gave to the apprentices, and poorer sort of people,
every alternate Thursday for a day of entire sport and recreation.
A strain of piety and policy to be commended above the profane
mockery of the Stuarts and their Book of Sports."
Lamb had said the same thing to Barton in a letter in the spring,
1824, referring there to "Southey's book" as his authority--this being
_The Book of the Church_, 1824.
Page 220, line 25. _Native ... Hertfordshire_. This was a slight
exaggeration. Lamb was London born and bred. But Hertfordshire was his
mother and grandmother's county, and all his love of the open air was
centred there (see the essay on "Mackery End").
Page 221, line 1. _My health_. Lamb had really been seriously unwell
for some time, as the _Letters_ tell us.
Page 221, line 6. _I was fifty_. Lamb was fifty on February 10, 1825.
Page 231, line 7. _I had grown to my desk_. In his first letter to
Barton (September 11, 1822) Lamb wrote: "I am like you a prisoner to
the desk. I have been chained to that galley thirty years, a long
shot. I have almost grown to the wood." Again, to Wordsworth: "I sit
like Philomel all day (but not singing) with my breast against this
thorn of a Desk."
Page 222, line 7. _Boldero, Merryweather ..._ Feigned names of course.
It was Boldero that Lamb once pretended was Leigh Hunt's true name.
And in his fictitious biography of Liston (Vol. I.) Liston's mother
was said to have been a Miss Merryweather. In Lamb's early city days
there was a banking firm in Cornhill, called Boldero, Adey, Lushington
& Boldero.
Page 222, line 12 from foot. _I could walk it away_. Writing to
Wordsworth in March, 1822, concerning the possibility of being
pensioned off, Lamb had said:--"I had thought in a green old age (O
green thought!) to have retired to Ponder's End--emblematic name--how
beautiful! in the Ware road, there to have made up my accounts with
heaven and the Company, toddling about between it and Cheshunt, anon
stretching on some fine Izaac Walton morning, to Hoddsdon or Amwell,
careless as a Beggar, but walking walking ever till I fairly walkd
myself off my legs, dying walking."
And again, writing to Southey after the emancipation, he says (August,
1825): "Mary walks her twelve miles a day some days, and I twenty on
others. 'Tis all holiday with me now, you know."
Page 224, line 9. _Ch----_. John Chambers, son of the Rev. Thomas
Chambers, Vicar of Radway-Edgehill, Warwickshire, and an old Christ's
Hospitaller, to whom Lamb wrote the famous letter on India House
society, printed in the _Letters_, Canon Ainger's edition, under
December, 1818. John Chambers lived until 1872, and had many stories
of Lamb.
Page 224, line 9. _Do----_. Probably Henry Dodwell, to whom Lamb wrote
the letters of July, 1816, from Calne, and that of October 7, 1827,
thanking him for a gift of a sucking pig. But there seems (see the
letter to Chambers above referred to) to have been also a clerk named
Dowley. It was Dodwell who annoyed Lamb by reading _The Times_ till
twelve o'clock every morning.
Page 224, line 10. _Pl----_. According to the late H.G. Bohn's notes
on Chambers' letter, this was W.D. Plumley.
Page 224, line 18. My "_works_." See note to the preface to the _Last
Essays of Elia_. The old India House ledgers of Lamb's day are no
longer in existence, but a copy of Booth's _Tables of Interest_ is
preserved, with some mock notices from the press on the fly-leaves in
Lamb's hand. Lamb's portrait by Meyer was bought for the India Office
in 1902.
Page 224, line 12 from foot. _My own master_. As a matter of fact Lamb
found the time rather heavy on his hands now and then; and he took to
searching for beauties in the Garrick plays in the British Museum as a
refuge. The Elgin marbles were moved there in 1816.
Page 225, line 16 from foot. _And what is it all for_? At these words,
in the _London Magazine_, came the passage:--
"I recite those verses of Cowley, which so mightily agree with my
constitution.
"Business! the frivolous pretence
Of human lusts to shake off innocence:
Business! the grave impertinence:
Business! the thing which I of all things hate:
Business! the contradiction of my fate.
"Or I repeat my own lines, written in my Clerk state:--
"Who first invented work--and bound the free
And holyday-rejoicing spirit down
To the ever-haunting importunity
Of business, in the green fields, and the town--
To plough, loom, anvil, spade--and oh! most sad,
To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood?
Who but the Being unblest, alien from good,
Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad
Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings,
That round and round incalculably reel--
For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel--
In that red realm from whence are no returnings;
Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye
He, and his thoughts, keep pensive worky-day!
"O this divine Leisure!--Reader, if thou art furnished with the
Old Series of the London, turn incontinently to the third volume
(page 367), and you will see my present condition there touched in
a 'Wish' by a daintier pen than I can pretend to. I subscribe to
that Sonnet _toto corde_."
The sonnet referred to, beginning--
They talk of time and of time's galling yoke,
will be found quoted above, in the notes to "New Year's Eve." It was,
of course, by Lamb himself. To the other sonnet he gave the title
"Work" (see Vol. IV.). Cowley's lines are from "The Complaint."
Page 225, line 14 from foot. _NOTHING-TO-DO_. Lamb wrote to Barton in
1827: "Positively, the best thing a man can have to do, is nothing,
and next to that perhaps--good works."
* * * * *
Page 226. THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING.
_New Monthly Magazine_, March, 1826, where it was one of the Popular
Fallacies, under the title, "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," &c.
Page 226, beginning. _My Lord Shaftesbury_, Anthony Ashley Cooper,
third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), the grandson of the great
statesman, and the author of the _Characteristicks of Men, Manners,
Opinions and Times_, 1711, and other less known works. In the essay
"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading" Lamb says, "Shaftesbury is
not too genteel for me."
Page 226, beginning. _Sir William Temple._ Sir William Temple
(1628-1699), diplomatist and man of letters, the patron of Swift,
and the husband of the letter-writing Dorothy Osborne. His first
diplomatic mission was in 1665, to Christopher Bernard von Glialen,
the prince-bishop of Munster, who grew the northern cherries (see page
228). Afterwards he was accredited to Brussels and the Hague, and
subsequently became English Ambassador at the Hague. He was recalled
in 1670, and spent the time between then and 1674, when he returned,
in adding to his garden at Sheen, near Richmond, and in literary
pursuits. He re-entered active political life in 1674, but retired
again in 1680, and moved to an estate near Farnham; which he named
Moor Park, laid out in the Dutch style, and made famous for its wall
fruit. Hither Swift came, as amanuensis, in 1689, and he was there,
with intervals of absence, in 1699, when Temple died, "and with him,"
Swift wrote in his _Diary_, "all that was good and amiable among men."
He was buried in Westminster Abbey, but his heart, by his special
wish, was placed in a silver casket under the sun-dial at Moor Park,
near his favourite window seat.
Temple's essays, under the title of _Miscellanea_, were published in
1680 and 1692; his works, in several volumes, between 1700 and 1709.
The best-known essay is that on "Ancient and Modern Learning," but
Lamb refers also to those "On Health and Long Life," "Of the Cure of
the Gout," "Of Gardening." The quotation on page 228 does not exactly
end Temple's garden essay, as Lamb says. Lamb has slightly altered
Temple's punctuation.
* * * * *
Page 230. BARBARA S----.
_London Magazine_, April, 1825.
This little story exhibits, perhaps better than anything that Lamb
wrote, his curious gift of blending fact and fancy, of building upon
a foundation of reality a structure of whimsicality and invention.
In the late Charles Kent's edition of Lamb's works is printed a
letter from Miss Kelly, the actress, and a friend of the Lambs,
in which the true story is told; for it was she, as indeed Lamb
admitted to Wordsworth in a letter in 1825, who told him the
incident--"beautifully," he says elsewhere.
Miss Kelly wrote, in 1875:--
I perfectly remember relating an incident of my childhood to
Charles Lamb and his dear sister, and I have not the least doubt
that the intense interest he seemed to take in the recital,
induced him to adopt it as the principal feature in his beautiful
story of "Barbara S----." Much, however, as I venerate the
wonderful powers of Charles Lamb as a writer--grateful as I ever
must feel to have enjoyed for so many years the friendship of
himself and his dear sister, and proudly honoured as I am by the
two exquisite sonnets he has given to the world as tributary to my
humble talent, I have never been able thoroughly to appreciate the
extraordinary skill with which he has, in the construction of his
story, desired and contrived so to mystify and characterize
the events, as to keep me out of sight, and render it utterly
impossible for any one to guess at me as the original heroine....
In the year 1799, Miss Jackson, one of my mother's daughters, by
her first husband, was placed under the special care of dear old
Tate Wilkinson, proprietor of the York Theatre, there to practice,
as in due progression, what she had learned of Dramatic Art, while
a Chorus Singer at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, coming back, as
she did after a few years, as the wife of the late celebrated,
inimitable Charles Mathews, to the Haymarket Theatre. In 1799,
through the influence of my uncle, Michael Kelly, the celebrated
singer and composer of that day, I was allowed to become a
miniature chorister in her place....
One Saturday, during the limited season of nine months in the
year, Mr. Peake (dear, good old gentleman!) looking, as I remember
he always did--anxiously perplexed--doubtless as to how he could
best dole out the too frequently insufficient amount provided for
the ill-paid company, silently looked me in the face, while he
carefully folded a very _dirty, ragged_ bank note--put it into my
hand, patted my cheek, and with a slight pressure on my shoulder,
hinting there was no time for our usual gossip--as good as said,
"go, my dear," and I hurried down the long gallery, lined down
each side with performers of all degrees, more than one of whom
whispered as I passed--"Is it full pay, dear?" I nodded "Yes," and
proceeded to my seat on the window of the landing-place.
It was a great comfort in those days, to have a bank-note to
look at; but not always easy to open one. Mine had been cut and
repaired with a line of gum paper, about twenty times as thick as
the note itself, threatening the total destruction of the thin
part.
Now observe in what small matters Fanny and Barbara were in a
marked degree different characters. Barbara, at 11 years of age,
was some time before she felt the different size of a guinea to a
half guinea, _held tight in her hand_. I, at nine years old, was
not so untaught, or innocent. I was a woman of the world. I took
_nothing_ for granted. I had a deep respect for Mr. Peake, but the
join might have disfigured the note--destroyed its currency; and
it was my business to see all safe. So, I carefully opened it. A
two pound-note instead of one! The blood rushed into my face, the
tears into my eyes, and for a moment, something like an ecstasy
of joy passed through my mind. "Oh! what a blessing to my dear
mother!"--"To whom?"--in an instant said my violently beating
heart,--"My mother?" Why she would spurn me for the wish. How
shall I ever own to her my guilty thought? I trembled violently--I
staggered back on my way to the Treasury, but no one would let me
pass, until I said, "But Mr. Peake has given me too much." "Too
much, has he?" said one, and was followed by a coarse, cold,
derisive, general laugh. Oh! how it went to my heart; but on I
went.
"If you please, Mr. Peake, you have given me a two--"
"A what?"
"A two, Sir!"
"A two!--God bless my soul!--tut-tut-tut-tut--dear, dear,
dear!--God bless my soul! There, dear," and without another word,
he, in exchange, laid a one pound note on the desk; a new one,
quite clean,--a bright, honest looking note,--mine, the one I had
a right to,--my own,--within the limit of my poor deservings.
Thus, my dear sir, I give (as you say you wish to have the _facts_
as accurately stated as possible) the simple, absolute truth.
As a matter of fact Miss Kelly did afterwards play in Morton's
"Children in the Wood," to Lamb's great satisfaction. The incident of
the roast fowl is in that play.
In Vol. I. will be found more than one eulogy of Miss Kelly's acting.
Page 231, last line. _Real hot tears_. In Crabb Robinson's diary Miss
Kelly relates that when, as Constance, in "King John," Mrs. Siddons
(not Mrs. Porter) wept over her, her collar was wet with Mrs. Siddons'
tears. Miss Kelly, of course, was playing Arthur.
Page 232, line 7. _Impediment ... pulpit_. This is more true than
the casual reader may suppose. Had Lamb not had an impediment in his
speech, he would have become, at Christ's Hospital, a Grecian, and
have gone to one of the universities; and the ordinary fate of a
Grecian was to take orders.
Page 232, line 13. _Mr. Liston_. Mrs. Cowden Clarke says that Liston
the comedian and his wife were among the visitors to the Lambs' rooms
at Great Russell Street.
Page 232, line 14. _Mrs. Charles Kemble_, _née_ Maria Theresa De Camp,
mother of Fanny Kemble.
Page 232, line 16. _Macready_. The only record of any conference
between Macready and Lamb is Macready's remark in his _Diary_ that he
met Lamb at Talfourd's, and Lamb said that he wished to draw his last
breath through a pipe, and exhale it in a pun. But this was long after
the present essay was written.
Page 232, line 17. _Picture Gallery ... Mr. Matthews_. See note below.
Page 232, line 26. _Not Diamond's_. Dimond was the proprietor of the
old Bath Theatre.
Page 235, first line. _Mrs. Crawford_. Anne Crawford (1734-1801),
_née_ Street, who was born at Bath, married successively a Mr. Dancer,
Spranger Barry the actor, and a Mr. Crawford. Her great part was Lady
Randolph in Home's "Douglas."
* * * * *
Page 235. THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY.
_London Magazine_, October, 1823, where, with slight differences,
it formed the concluding portion of the "Letter of Elia to Robert
Southey, Esquire," which will be found in Vol. I. The notes in that
volume should be consulted; but a little may be said here. This, the
less personal portion of the "Letter to Southey," seems to have been
all that Lamb cared to retain. He admitted afterwards, when his
anger against Southey had cooled, that his "guardian angel" had been
"absent" at the time he wrote it.
The Dean of Westminster at the time was Ireland, the friend of
Gifford--dean from 1815 to 1842. Lamb's protest against the
two-shilling fee was supported a year or so later than its first
appearance by Reynolds, in _Odes and Addresses_, 1825, in a sarcastic
appeal to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster to reduce that sum. The
passage in Lamb's essay being reprinted in 1833, suggests that the
reform still tarried. The evidence, however, of J.T. Smith, in his
_Book for a Rainy Day_, is that it was possible in 1822 to enter
Poets' Corner for sixpence. Dean Stanley, in his _Historical Memorials
of Westminster Abbey_, writes: "Free admission was given to the larger
part of the Abbey under Dean Ireland. Authorised guides were first
appointed in 1826, and the nave and transepts opened, and the fees
lowered in 1841...."
Lamb's reference to Southey and to André's monument is
characteristically mischievous. He is reminding Southey of his early
sympathy with rebels--his "Wat Tyler" and pantisocratic days. Major
John André, Sir Henry Clinton's adjutant-general, was caught returning
from an interview with an American traitor--a perfectly honourable
proceeding in warfare--and was hanged by Washington as a spy in 1780.
No blame attached either to judge or victim. André's remains were
reburied in the Abbey in 1821. Lamb speaks of injury to André's figure
in the monument, but the usual thing was for the figure of Washington
to be attacked. Its head has had to be renewed more than once. Minor
thefts have also been committed. According to Mrs. Gordon's _Life of
Dean Buckland_, one piece of vandalism at any rate was the work of an
American, who returned to the dean two heads which he had appropriated
as relics.
In _The Examiner_ for April 8, 1821, is quoted from _The Traveller_
the following epigram, which may not improbably be Lamb's, and which
shows at any rate that his protest against entrance fees for churches
was in the air.
ON A VISIT TO ST. PAUL'S
What can be hop'd from Priests who, 'gainst the Poor,
For lack of two-pence, shut the church's door;
Who, true successors of the ancient leaven,
Erect a turnpike on the road to Heaven?
"Knock, and it shall be open'd," saith our LORD;
"Knock, and pay two-pence," say the Chapter Board:
The Showman of the booth the fee receives,
And God's house is again a "den of thieves."
* * * * *
Page 237. AMICUS REDIVIVUS.
_London Magazine_, December, 1823.
A preliminary sketch of the first portion of this essay will be
found in the letter from Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt, written probably in
November, 1823. In Barry Cornwall's _Memoir_ of Lamb, Chapter VI.,
there is also an account of the accident to Dyer--Procter (Barry
Cornwall) having chanced to visit the Lambs just after the event. For
an account of George Dyer see notes to the essay on "Oxford in the
Vacation". In 1823 he was sixty-eight; later he became quite blind.
We have another glimpse of G.D. on that fatal day, in the
reminiscences of Mr. Ogilvie, an India House clerk with Lamb,
as communicated to the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell (see _Scribner's
Magazine_, March, 1876):--
At the time George Dyer was fished out of New River in front of
Lamb's house at Islington, after he was resuscitated, Mary brought
him a suit of Charles's clothes to put on while his own were
drying. Inasmuch as he was a giant of a man, and Lamb undersized;
inasmuch, moreover, as Lamb's wardrobe afforded only knee breeches
for the nether limbs (Dyer's were colossal), the spectacle he
presented when the clothes were on--or as much on as they could
be--was vastly ludicrous.
Allsop, in a letter to Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, remarked, of Dyer's
immersion, that Lamb had said to him: "If he had been drowned it would
have made me famous. Think of having a Crowner's quest, and all the
questions and dark suspicions of murder. People would haunt the spot
and say, 'Here died the poet of Grongar Hill.'" The poet of "Grongar
Hill" was, of course, John Dyer--another of Lamb's instances of the
ambiguities arising from proper names.
Page 238, line 19. _The rescue_. At these words, in the _London
Magazine_, Lamb put this footnote:--
"The topography of my cottage, and its relation to the river,
will explain this; as I have been at some cost to have the whole
engraved (in time, I hope, for our next number), as well for
the satisfaction of the reader, as to commemorate so signal a
deliverance."
The cottage at Colebrooke Row, it should be said, stands to this day
(1911); but the New River has been covered in. There is, however, no
difficulty in reproducing the situation. One descends from the front
door by a curved flight of steps, a little path from which, parallel
with the New River, takes one out into Colebrooke Row (or rather
Duncan Terrace, as this part of the Row is now called). Under the
front door-steps is another door from which Dyer may possibly have
emerged; if so it would be the simplest thing for him to walk straight
ahead, and find himself in the river.
Page 240, line 22. _That Abyssinian traveller_. James Bruce
(1730-1794), the explorer of the sources of the Nile, was famous many
years before his _Travels_ appeared, in 1790, the year after which
Lamb left school. The New River, made in 1609-1613, has its source
in the Chadwell and Amwell springs. It was peculiarly Lamb's river:
Amwell is close to Blakesware and Widford; Lamb explored it as a boy;
at Islington he lived opposite it, and rescued George Dyer from its
depths; and he retained its company both at Enfield and Edmonton.
In the essay on "Newspapers" is a passage very similar to this.
Page 240, line 32. _Eternal novity_. Writing to Hood in 1824 Lamb
speaks of the New River as "rather elderly by this time." Dyer, it
should be remembered, was of Emmanuel College, and the historian of
Cambridge University.
Page 241, last paragraph. George Dyer contributed "all that was
original" to Valpy's edition of the classics--141 volumes. He also
wrote the _History of The University and Colleges of Cambridge,
including notices relating to the Founders and Eminent Men_. Among
the eminent men of Cambridge are Jeremiah Markland (1693-1776), of
Christ's Hospital and St. Peter's, the classical commentator; and
Thomas Gray, the poet, the sweet lyrist of Peterhouse, who died
in 1771, when Dyer was sixteen. Tyrwhitt would probably be Thomas
Tyrwhitt (1730-1786), of Queen's College, Oxford, the editor of
Chaucer; but Robert Tyrwhitt (1735-1817), his brother, the Unitarian,
might be expected to take interest in Dyer also, for G.D. was, in
Lamb's phrase, a "One-Goddite" too. The mild Askew was Anthony Askew
(1722-1772), doctor and classical scholar, who, being physician to
Christ's Hospital when Dyer was there, lent the boy books, and was
very kind to him.
* * * * *
Page 242. SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.
_London Magazine_, September, 1823, where it was entitled "Nugæ
Criticæ. By the Author of Elia. No. 1. Defence of the Sonnets of Sir
Philip Sidney." Signed "L." The second and last of the "Nugæ Criticæ"
series was the note on "The Tempest" (see Vol. I.).
It may be interesting here to relate that Henry Francis Gary, the
translator of Dante, and Lamb's friend, had, says his son in his
memoir, lent Lamb Edward Phillips's _Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum_,
which was returned after Lamb's death by Edward Moxon, with the leaf
folded down at the account of Sir Philip Sidney. Mr. Gary thereupon
wrote his "Lines to the memory of Charles Lamb," which begin:--
So should it be, my gentle friend;
Thy leaf last closed at Sidney's end.
Thou, too, like Sidney, wouldst have given
The water, thirsting and near heaven.
Lamb has some interesting references to Sidney in the note to Beaumont
and Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedy" in the _Dramatic Specimens_.
Page 243, line 5. _Tibullus, or the ... Author of the Schoolmistress_.
In the _London Magazine_ Lamb wrote "Catullus." Tibullus was one of
the tenderest of Latin poets. William Shenstone (1714-1763) wrote "The
Schoolmistress," a favourite poem with Lamb. The "prettiest of poems"
he called it in a letter to John Clare.
Page 243, line 9. _Ad Leonoram_. The following translation of Milton's
sonnet was made by Leigh Hunt:--
TO LEONORA SINGING AT ROME
To every one (so have ye faith) is given
A winged guardian from the ranks of heaven.
A greater, Leonora, visits thee:
Thy voice proclaims the present deity.
Either the present deity we hear,
Or he of the third heaven hath left his sphere,
And through the bosom's pure and warbling wells,
Breathes tenderly his smoothed oracles;
Breathes tenderly, and so with easy rounds
Teaches our mortal hearts to bear immortal sounds.
If God is all, and in all nature dwells,
In thee alone he speaks, mute ruler in all else.
The Latin in Masson's edition of Milton differs here and there from
Lamb's version.
Page 243. _Sonnet I_. Lamb cites the sonnets from _Astrophel and
Stella_, in his own order. That which he calls I. is XXXI.; II.,
XXXIX.; III., XXIII.; IV., XXVII.; V., XLI.; VI., LIII.; VII., LXIV.;
VIII., LXXIII.; IX., LXXIV.; X., LXXV.; XI., CIII.; XII., LXXXIV.
I have left the sonnets as Lamb copied them, but there are certain
differences noted in my large edition.
Page 247, middle. _Which I have ... heard objected_. A criticism of
Hazlitt's, in his sixth lecture on Elizabethan literature, delivered
in 1820 at the Surrey Institution, is here criticised. Hazlitt's
remarks on Sidney were uniformly slighting. "His sonnets inlaid in the
Arcadia are jejune, far-fetch'd and frigid.... [The _Arcadia_] is to
me one of the greatest monuments of the abuse of intellectual power
upon record.... [Sidney is] a complete intellectual coxcomb, or nearly
so;" and so forth. The lectures were published in 1821. Elsewhere,
however, Hazlitt found in Sidney much to praise.
Page 248, line 3. _Thin diet of dainty words_. To this sentence, in
the _London Magazine_, Lamb put the following footnote:--
"A profusion of verbal dainties, with a disproportionate lack of
matter and circumstance, is I think one reason of the coldness
with which the public has received the poetry of a nobleman now
living; which, upon the score of exquisite diction alone, is
entitled to something better than neglect. I will venture to copy
one of his Sonnets in this place, which for quiet sweetness, and
unaffected morality, has scarcely its parallel in our language.
"TO A BIRD THAT HAUNTED THE WATERS OF LACKEN IN THE WINTER
"_By Lord Thurlow_
"O melancholy Bird, a winter's day,
Thou standest by the margin of the pool,
And, taught by God, dost thy whole being school
To Patience, which all evil can allay.
God has appointed thee the Fish thy prey;
And given thyself a lesson to the Fool
Unthrifty, to submit to moral rule,
And his unthinking course by thee to weigh.
There need not schools, nor the Professor's chair,
Though these be good, true wisdom to impart.
He who has not enough, for these, to spare
Of time, or gold, may yet amend his heart,
And teach his soul, by brooks, and rivers fair:
Nature is always wise in every part."
This sonnet, by Edward Hovell-Thurlow, second Baron Thurlow
(1781-1829), an intense devotee of Sir Philip Sidney's muse, was a
special favourite with Lamb. He copied it into his Commonplace Book,
and De Quincey has described, in his "London Reminiscences," how Lamb
used to read it aloud.
Page 248, line 27. _Epitaph made on him_. After these words, in the
_London Magazine_, came "by Lord Brooke." Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke,
wrote Sidney's _Life_, published in 1652. After Sidney's death
appeared many elegies upon him, eight of which were printed at the end
of Spenser's _Colin Clout's Come Home Again_, in 1595. That which Lamb
quotes is by Matthew Roydon, Stanzas 15 to 18 and 26 and 27. The poem
beginning "Silence augmenteth grief" is attributed to Brooke, chiefly
on Lamb's authority, in Ward's _English Poets_. This is one stanza:--
He was (woe worth that word!) to each well-thinking mind
A spotless friend, a matchless man, whose virtue ever shined,
Declaring in his thoughts, his life and that he writ,
Highest conceits, longest foresights, and deepest works of wit.
Sidney was only thirty-two at his death.
* * * * *
Page 249. NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.
_Englishman's Magazine_, October, 1831, being the second paper under
the heading "Peter's Net," of which "Recollections of a Late Royal
Academician" was the first (see note, Vol. I.).
The title ran thus:--
PETER'S NET
BY THE AUTHOR OF "ELIA"
_No. II.--On the Total Defect of the faculty of Imagination
observable in the works of modern British Artists._
For explanation of this title see note to the essay that follows. When
reprinting the essay in the _Last Essays of Elia_, 1833, Lamb altered
the title to the one it now bears: the period referred to thus seeming
to be about 1798, but really 1801-1803.
Page 249, first line of essay. _Dan Stuart_. See below.
Page 249, line 2 of essay. _The Exhibition at Somerset House._ Between
the years 1780 and 1838 the Royal Academy held its exhibitions at
Somerset House. It then moved, first to Trafalgar Square, in a portion
of the National Gallery, and then to Burlington House, its present
quarters, in 1869. The _Morning Post_ office is still almost opposite
Somerset House, at the corner of Wellington Street.
Page 250, line 5. _A word or two of D.S._ Daniel Stuart (1766-1846),
one of the Perthshire Stuarts, whose father was out in the '45, and
his grandfather in the '15, began, with his brother, to print the
_Morning Post_ in 1788. In 1795 they bought it for £600, Daniel
assumed the editorship, and in two years' time the circulation had
risen from 350 to 1,000. Mackintosh (afterwards Sir James), Stuart's
brother-in-law, was on the staff; and in 1797 Coleridge began to
contribute. Coleridge's "Devil's Walk" was the most popular thing
printed in Stuart's time; his political articles also helped
enormously to give the paper prestige. Stuart sold the _Morning Post_
in 1803 for £25,000, and then turned his attention to the development
of _The Courier_, an evening paper, in which he also had occasional
assistance from Coleridge and more regular help from Mackintosh.
Lamb's memory served him badly in the essay. So far as I can discover,
his connection with the _Morning Post_, instead of ending when Stuart
sold the paper, can hardly be said to have existed until after that
event. The paper changed hands in September, 1803 (two years after the
failure of The _Albion_), and Lamb's hand almost immediately begins to
be apparent. He had, we know, made earlier efforts to get a footing
there, but had been only moderately successful. The first specimens
prepared for Stuart, in 1800, were not accepted. In the late summer of
1801 he was writing for the _Morning Chronicle_--a few comic letters,
as I imagine--under James Perry; but that lasted only a short time. At
the end of 1801 Lamb tried the _Post_ again. In January and February,
1802, Stuart printed some epigrams by him on public characters, two
criticisms of G.F. Cooke, in Richard III. and Lear, and the essay "The
Londoner" (see Vol. I.). Probably there were also some paragraphs. In
a letter to Rickman in January, 1802, Lamb says that he is leaving
the _Post_, partly on account of his difficulty in writing dramatic
criticisms on the same night as the performance.
We know nothing of Lamb's journalistic adventures between February,
1802, and October, 1803, when the fashion of pink stockings came in,
and when he was certainly back on the _Post_ (Stuart having sold it to
establish _The Courier_), and had become more of a journalist than he
had ever been. I quote a number of the paragraphs which I take to be
his on this rich topic; but the specimen given in the essay is not
discoverable:--
"_Oct_. 8.--The fugitive and mercurial matter, of which a _Lady's
blush_ is made, after coursing from its natural position, the
_cheek_, to the _tip_ of the _elbow_, and thence diverging for a
time to the _knee_, has finally settled in the _legs_, where, in
the form of a pair of _red hose_, it combines with the posture and
situation of _the times_, to put on a most _warlike_ and _martial
appearance_."
"_Nov_. 2.--Bartram, who, as a _traveller_, was possessed of a
very _lively fancy_, describes vast plains in the interior of
America, where his _horse's fetlocks_ for miles were dyed a
perfect _blood colour_, in the juice of the _wild strawberries_.
A less ardent fancy than BARTRAM'S may apply this beautiful
phenomenon of summer, to solve the present _strawberry appearance_
of the _female leg_ this autumn in England."
"_Nov_. 3.--The _roseate tint_, so agreeably diffused through the
silk stockings of our females, induces the belief that the _dye is
cast_ for their lovers."
"_Nov_. 8.--A popular superstition in the North of Germany is said
to be the true original of the well-known sign of Mother REDCAP.
Who knows but that _late posterity_, when, what is regarded by
us now as _fashion_, shall have long been classed among the
superstitious observances of an age gone by, may dignify their
signs with the antiquated personification of a Mother RED LEGS?"
"_Nov_. 9.--Curiosity is on tip-toe for the arrival of ELPHY
BEY'S fair _Circassian_ Ladies. The attraction of their
_naturally-placed, fine, proverbial bloom_, is only wanting to
reduce the wandering colour in the 'elbows' and 'ancles' of our
_belles_, back to its native _metropolis_ and _palace_, the
'cheek.'"
"_Nov_. 22.--_Pink stockings_ beneath _dark pelices_ are emblems
of _Sincerity_ and _Discretion_; signifying a _warm heart_ beneath
a _cool exterior_."
"_Nov_. 29.--The decline of red stockings is as fatal to the wits,
as the going out of a fashion to an overstocked jeweller: some
of these gentry have literally for some months past _fed_ on
_roses_."
"_Dec_. 21.--The fashion of red stockings, so much cried down,
dispraised, and followed, is on the eve of departing, to be
consigned to the family tomb of 'all the fashions,' where sleep
in peace the _ruffs_ and _hoops_, and _fardingales_ of past
centuries; and
"All its beauty, all its pomp, decays
Like _Courts removing_, or like _ending plays_."
On February 7, 1804, was printed Lamb's "Epitaph on a young Lady who
Lived Neglected and Died Obscure" (see Vol. IV.), and now and then we
find a paragraph likely to be his; but, as we know from a letter from
Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart, he had left the _Post_ in the early
spring, 1804. I think this was the end of his journalism, until he
began to write a little for _The Examiner_ in 1812.
In 1838 Stuart was drawn into a correspondence with Henry Coleridge
in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (May, June, July and August) concerning
some statements about Coleridge's connection with the _Morning Post_
and _The Courier_ which were made in Gillman's _Life_, Stuart, in the
course of straightening out his relations with Coleridge, referred
thus to Lamb:--
But as for good Charles Lamb, I never could make anything out of
his writings. Coleridge often and repeatedly pressed me to settle
him on a salary, and often and repeatedly did I try; but it would
not do. Of politics he knew nothing; they were out of his line of
reading and thought; and his drollery was vapid, when given in
short paragraphs fit for a newspaper; yet he has produced some
agreeable books, possessing a tone of humour and kind feeling,
in a quaint style, which it is amusing to read, and cheering to
remember.
For further remarks concerning Lamb's journalism see below when we
come to _The Albion_ and his connection with it.
Page 250, line 6. _Perry, of the Morning Chronicle._ James Perry
(1756-1821) the editor of the _Morning Chronicle_--the leading Whig
paper, for many years--from about 1789. Perry was a noted talker and
the friend of many brilliant men, among them Porson. Southey's letters
inform us that Lamb was contributing to the _Chronicle_ in the summer
of 1801, and I fancy I see his hand now and then; but his identifiable
contributions to the paper came much later than the period under
notice. Coleridge contributed to it a series of sonnets to eminent
persons in 1794, in one of which, addressed to Mrs. Siddons, he
collaborated with Lamb (see Vol. IV.).
Page 250, line 14. _The Abyssinian Pilgrim_. For notes to this passage
about the New River see the essay "Amicus Redivivus."
Page 250, foot. _In those days ..._ This paragraph began, in the
_Englishman's Magazine_, with the following sentence:--
"We ourself--PETER--in whose inevitable NET already Managers and
R.A.s lie caught and floundering--and more peradventure shall
flounder--were, in the humble times to which we have been
recurring, small Fishermen indeed, essaying upon minnows; angling
for quirks, not _men_."
The phrase "Managers and R.A.s" refers to the papers on Elliston and
George Dawe which had preceded this essay, although the Elliston essay
had not been ranged under the heading "Peter's Net." The George Dawe
paper is in Vol. I. of this edition.
Page 252, line 25. _Basilian water-sponges._ The Basilian order of
monks were pledged to austerity; but probably Lamb intended merely a
joke upon his friend Basil Montagu's teetotalism (see note in Vol.
I. to "Confessions of a Drunkard," a paper quoted in Montagu's _Some
Enquiries into the Effects of Fermented Liquors_). In John Forster's
copy of the _Last Essays of Elia_, in the South Kensington Museum,
a legacy from Elia, there is written "Basil Montagu!" against
this passage. Moreover the context runs, "we were right toping
Capulets"--as opposed to the (Basil) Montagus.
Page 253, line 23. _Bob Allen._ See the essay on "Christ's Hospital"
and note.
Page 253, line 24. _The "Oracle."_ This daily paper was started in the
1780's by Peter Stuart, Daniel Stuart's brother, as a rival to _The
World_ (see below).
Page 253, line 31. _Mr. Deputy Humphreys._ I am disappointed to have
been able to find nothing more about this Common Council butt.
Page 254, lines 11 and 12. _The "True Briton_," _the "Star_," _the
"Traveller_." _The True Briton_, a government organ in the 1790's,
which afterwards assimilated Cobbett's Porcupine. _The Star_ was
founded by Peter Stuart, Daniel Stuart's brother, in 1788. It was
the first London evening paper to appear regularly. _The Traveller_,
founded about 1803, still flourishes under the better-known title of
_The Globe_.
Page 254, lines 24-26. _Este ... Topham ... Boaden_. Edward Topham
(1751-1820), author of the _Life of John Elwes_, the miser, founded
_The World_, a daily paper, in 1787. Parson Este, the Rev. Charles
Este, was one of his helpers. James Boaden (1762-1839), dramatist,
biographer and journalist, and editor of _The Oracle_ for some years,
wrote the _Life of Mrs. Siddons_, 1827.
Page 254, foot. _The Albion_. Lamb's memory of his connection with
_The Albion_ was at fault. His statement is that he joined it on the
sale of the _Morning Post_ by Stuart, which occurred in 1803; but as a
matter of fact his association with it was in 1801. This we know from
his letters to Manning in August of that year, quoting the epigram on
Mackintosh (see below) and announcing the paper's death. Mackintosh,
says Lamb, was on the eve of departing to India to reap the fruits of
his apostasy--referring to his acceptance of the post of Recordership
of Bombay offered to him by Addington. But this was a slip of memory.
Mackintosh's name had been mentioned in connection with at least
two posts before this--a judgeship in Trinidad and the office of
Advocate-General in Bengal, and Lamb's epigram may have had reference
to one or the other. In the absence of a file of _The Albion_, which I
have been unable to find, it is impossible to give exact dates or to
reproduce any of Lamb's other contributions.
Page 255, line 6. _John Fenwick_. See the essay "The Two Races of
Men," and note. Writing to Manning on September 24, 1802, Lamb
describes Fenwick as a ruined man hiding from his creditors. In
January, 1806, he tells Stoddart that Fenwick is "coming to town on
Monday (if no kind angel intervene) to surrender himself to prison."
And we meet him again as late as 1817, in a letter to Barron Field, on
August 31, where his editorship of The Statesman is mentioned. In
Mary Lamb's letters to Sarah Stoddart there are indications that Mrs.
Fenwick and family were mindful of the Lambs' charitable impulses.
After "Fenwick," in the _Englishman's Magazine_, Lamb wrote: "Of him,
under favour of the public, something may be told hereafter." It is
sad that the sudden discontinuance of the magazine with this number
for ever deprived us of further news of this man.
Page 255, line 11. _Lovell_. Daniel Lovell, subsequently owner and
editor of _The Statesman_, which was founded by John Hunt, Leigh
Hunt's brother, in 1806. He had a stormy career, much chequered by
imprisonment and other punishment for freedom of speech. He died in
1818.
Page 255, line 20. _Daily demands of the Stamp Office._ The newspaper
stamp in those days was threepence-halfpenny, raised in 1815 to
fourpence. In 1836 it was reduced to a penny, and in 1855 abolished.
Page 255, line 28. _Accounted very good men now._ A hit, I imagine,
particularly at Southey (see note to "The Tombs in the Abbey"). Also
at Wordsworth and Mackintosh himself.
Page 256, line 3. _Sir J----s M----h_. Sir James Mackintosh
(1765-1832), the philosopher, whose apostasy consisted in his public
recantation of the opinions in favour of the French Revolution
expressed in his _Vindiciæ Gallicæ_, published in 1791. In 1803 he
accepted the offer of the Recordership of Bombay. Lamb's epigram,
which, as has been stated above, cannot have had reference to this
particular appointment, runs thus in the version quoted in the letter
to Manning of August, 1801:--
Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black,
In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack:
When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf,
He went away, and wisely hang'd himself:
This thou may'st do at last; yet much I doubt,
If thou hash any bowels to gush out.
Page 256, line 6. _Lord ... Stanhope_. This was Charles, third earl
(1753-1816), whose sympathies were with the French Revolution. His
motion in the House of Lords against interfering with France's
internal affairs was supported by himself alone, which led to a medal
being struck in his honour with the motto, "The Minority of One,
1795;" and he was thenceforward named "Minority," or "Citizen,"
Stanhope. George Dyer, who had acted as tutor to his children, was one
of Stanhope's residuary legatees.
Page 256, line 10. _It was about this time ..._ With this sentence
Lamb brought back his essay to its original title, and paved the way
for the second part--now printed under that heading.
At the end of this paper, in the _Englishman's Magazine_, were the
words, "To be continued." For the further history of the essay see the
notes that follow.
* * * * *
Page 256. BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE PRODUCTIONS OF
MODERN ART.
_Athenæum_, January 12, 19, 26, and February 2, 1833, where it was
thus entitled: "On the Total Defects of the Quality of Imagination,
observable in the Works of Modern British Artists." By the Author of
the Essays signed "Elia."
The following editorial note was prefixed to the first
instalment:--"This Series of Papers was intended for a new periodical,
which has been suddenly discontinued. The distinguished writer having
kindly offered them to the ATHENÆUM, we think it advisable to perfect
the Series by this reprint; and, from the limited sale of the work in
which it originally appeared, it is not likely to have been read by
one in a thousand of our subscribers."
The explanation of this passage has been made simple by the researches
of the late Mr. Dykes Campbell. Lamb intended the essay originally for
the _Englishman's Magazine_, November number, to follow the excursus
on newspapers. But that magazine came to an end with the October
number. In the letter from Lamb to Moxon dated October 24, 1831, Lamb
says, referring to Moxon's announcement that the periodical would
cease:--"Will it please, or plague, you, to say that when your Parcel
came I damned it, for my pen was warming in my hand at a ludicrous
description of a Landscape of an R.A., which I calculated upon sending
you to morrow, the last day you gave me."
That was the present essay. Subsequently--at the end of 1832--Moxon
started a weekly paper entitled _The Reflector_, edited by John
Forster, in which the printing of Lamb's essay was begun. It lasted
only a short time, and on its cessation Lamb sent the ill-fated
manuscript to _The Athenæum_, where it at last saw publication
completed. Of _The Reflector_ all trace seems to have vanished, and
with it possibly other writings of Lamb's.
In _The Athenæum_ of December 22, 1832, the current _Reflector_ (No.
2) is advertised as containing "An Essay on Painters and Painting by
Elia."
Page 256, line 1 of essay. _Hogarth_. Compare Lamb's criticism of
Hogarth, Vol. I.
Page 256, foot. _Titian's "Ariadne."_ This picture is now No. 35
in the National Gallery. Writing to Wordsworth in May, 1833, it is
amusing to note, Lamb says: "Inter nos the Ariadne is not a darling
with me, several incongruous things are in it, but in the composition
it served me as illustrative." The legend of Ariadne tells that after
being abandoned by Theseus, whom she loved with intense passion, she
was wooed by Bacchus.
Page 258, line 2. _Somerset House._ See note above to the essay on
"Newspapers."
Page 258, line 14. _Neoteric ... Mr. ----_. Probably J.M.W. Turner and
his "Garden of the Hesperides," now in the National Gallery. It is
true it was painted in 1806, but Lamb does not describe it as a
picture of the year and Turner was certainly the most notable
neoteric, or innovator, of that time.
Page 259, line 1. _Of a modern artist._ In _The Athenæum_ this
had been printed "of M----," meaning John Martin (1789-1854). His
"Belshazzar's Feast," which Lamb analyses below, was painted in 1821,
and made him famous. It was awarded a £200 premium, and was copied on
glass and exhibited with great success as an illuminated transparency
in the Strand. Lord Lytton said of Martin that "he was more original,
more self-dependent, than Raphael or Michael Angelo." Lamb had
previously expressed his opinion of Martin, in a letter to Bernard
Barton, dated June 11, 1827, in a passage which contains the germ
of this essay:--"Martin's Belshazzar (the picture) I have seen.
Its architectural effect is stupendous; but the human figures,
the squalling, contorted little antics that are playing at being
frightened, like children at a sham ghost who half know it to be a
mask, are detestable. Then the _letters_ are nothing more than a
transparency lighted up, such as a Lord might order to be lit up on a
sudden at a Christmas Gambol, to scare the ladies. The _type_ is
as plain as Baskervil--they should have been dim, full of mystery,
letters to the mind rather than the eye."
Page 259, line 13. _The late King_. George IV., who built, when Prince
of Wales, the Brighton Pavilion. As I cannot find this incident in any
memoirs of the Regency, I assume Lamb to have invented it, after his
wont, when in need of a good parallel. "Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name"
stands of course for Mrs. Fitzherbert.
Page 259, line 33. _The ingenious Mr. Farley_. Charles Farley
(1771-1859), who controlled the pantomimes at Covent Garden from 1806
to 1834, and invented a number of mechanical devices for them. He also
acted, and had been the instructor of the great Grimaldi. Lamb alludes
to him in the essay on "The Acting of Munden."
Page 262, line 10. "_Sun, stand thou still ..._" See Joshua x. 12.
Martin's picture of "Joshua commanding the Sun to stand still" was
painted in 1816. Writing to Barton, in the letter quoted from above,
Lamb says: "Just such a confus'd piece is his Joshua, fritter'd into
1000 fragments, little armies here, little armies there--you should
see only the _Sun_ and _Joshua_ ... for Joshua, I was ten minutes
finding him out."
Page 262, line 29. _The great picture at Angerstein's_. This picture
is "The Resurrection of Lazarus," by Fra Sebastiano del Piombo, with
the assistance, it is conjectured, of Michael Angelo. The picture is
now No. 1 in the National Gallery, the nucleus of which collection was
once the property of John Julius Angerstein (1735-1823). Angerstein's
art treasures were to be seen until his death in his house in Pall
Mall, where the Reform Club now stands.
Page 263, line 35. _The Frenchmen, of whom Coleridge's friend_. See
the _Biographia Literaria_, 1847 ed., Vol. II., pp. 126-127.
Page 265, line 5. "_Truly, fairest Lady ..._" The passage quoted by
Lamb is from Skeltoa's translation of _Don Quixote_, Part II., Chapter
LVIII. The first sentence runs: "Truly, fairest Lady, Actæon was not
more astonished or in suspense when on the sodaine he saw Diana," and
so forth.
Page 266, line 9. "_Guzman de Alfarache_." The Picaresque romance by
Mateo Aleman--_Vida y Lechos del picaro Guzman de Alfarache_, Part I.,
1599; Part II., 1605. It was translated into English by James Mabbe in
1622 as _The Rogue; or, The Life of Guzman de Alfarache_. Lamb had a
copy, which is now in my possession, with Mary Lamb's name in it.
* * * * *
Page 266. REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE.
_London Magazine_, January, 1823.
This paper, being printed in the same number as that which announced
Elia's death, was signed "Elia's Ghost."
Lamb returned to this vein of fancy two years or so later when (in
1825) he contributed to his friend William Hone's _Every-Day Book_
the petition of the Twenty-Ninth of February, a day of which Hone had
taken no account, and of the Twelfth of August, which from being kept
as the birthday of King George IV. during the time that he was Prince
of Wales, was, on his accession to the throne, disregarded in favour
of April 23, St. George's Day. For these letters see Vol. I. of this
edition.
Page 271, line 15. "_On the bat's back ..._" From Ariel's song in
"The Tempest." Lamb confesses, in at least two of his letters, to a
precisely similar plight.
* * * * *
Page 271. THE WEDDING.
_London Magazine_, June, 1825.
The wedding was that of Sarah Burney, daughter of Lamb's old friends,
Rear-Admiral James Burney and his wife Sarah Burney, to her cousin,
John Payne, of Pall Mall, at St. Margaret's, Westminster, in April,
1821. The clergyman was the Rev. C.P. Burney, who was not, however,
vicar of St. Mildred's in the Poultry, but of St. Paul's, Deptford, in
Kent. Admiral Burney lived only six months longer, dying in November.
Canon Ainger pointed out that when Lamb was revising this essay for
its appearance in the _Last Essays of Elia_, he was, like the admiral,
about to lose by marriage Emma Isola, who was to him and his sister
what Miss Burney had been to her parents. She married Edward Moxon in
July, 1833.
Page 274, line 8. _An unseasonable disposition to levity_. Writing to
P.G. Patmore in 1827 Lamb says: "I have been to a funeral, where I
made a pun, to the consternation of the rest of the mourners." Again,
writing to Southey: "I am going to stand godfather; I don't like the
business; I cannot muster up decorum for these occasions; I shall
certainly disgrace the font; I was at Hazlitt's marriage and was like
to have been turned out several times during the ceremony. Anything
awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral."
Page 274, line 24. _Miss T----s_. In the _London Magazine_ "Miss
Turner's."
Page 274, line 27. _Black ... the costume of an author_. See note
below.
Page 274, line 29. _Lighter colour_. Here the _London Magazine_ had:
"a pea-green coat, for instance, like the bridegroom."
Page 274, line 34. _A lucky apologue_. I do not find this fable; but
Lamb's father, in his volume of poems, described in a note on page
381, has something in the same manner in his ballad "The Sparrow's
Wedding":--
The chatt'ring Magpye undertook
Their wedding breakfast for to cook,
He being properly bedight
In a cook's cloathing, black and white.
Page 275, foot. _The Admiral's favourite game_. Admiral Burney wrote a
treatise on whist (see notes to "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist").
* * * * *
Page 276. THE CHILD ANGEL.
_London Magazine_, June, 1823.
Thomas Moore's _Loves of the Angels_ was published in 1823. Lamb used
it twice for his own literary purposes: on the present occasion, with
tenderness, and again, eight years later, with some ridicule, for
his comic ballad, "Satan in Search of a Wife," 1831, was ironically
dedicated to the admirers of Moore's poem (see Vol. IV.).
* * * * *
Page 279. A DEATH-BED.
Hone's _Table Book_, Vol. I., cols. 425-426, 1827. Signed "L.," and
dated London, February 10, 1827. The essay is very slightly altered
from a letter written by Lamb to Crabb Robinson, January 20, 1827,
describing the death of Randal Morris. It was printed in the first
edition only of the _Last Essays of Elia_; its place being taken
afterwards by the "Confessions of a Drunkard," an odd exchange. The
essay was omitted, in deference, it is believed, to the objection of
Mrs. Norris to her reduced circumstances being made public. As the
present edition adheres to the text of the first edition, "The
Death-Bed" is included in its original place as decided by the author.
The "Confessions of a Drunkard" will be found in Vol. I.
Randal Norris was for many years sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple
(see postscript to the essay on the "Old Benchers"). Writing to
Wordsworth in 1830 Lamb spoke of him as "sixty years ours and our
father's friend." An attempt has been made to identify him with the
Mr. Norris of Christ's Hospital who was so kind to the Lambs after the
tragedy of September, 1796. I cannot find any trace of Randal Norris
having been connected with anything but the law and the Inner Temple;
but possibly the Mr. Norris of the school was a relative.
Mrs. Randal Norris was connected with Widford, the village adjoining
Blakesware, where she had known Mary Field, Lamb's grandmother. It was
thither that she and her son retired after Randal Norris's death, to
join her daughters, Miss Betsy and Miss Jane, who had a school for
girls known as Goddard House School. Lamb kept up his friendship with
them to the end, and they corresponded with Mary Lamb after his death.
Mrs. Norris died in 1843, aged seventy-eight, and was buried at
Widford. The grave of Richard Norris, the son, is also there. He died
in 1836. One of the daughters, Elizabeth, married Charles Tween, of
Widford, and lived until 1894. The other daughter, Jane, married
Arthur Tween, his brother, and lived until 1891.
Mary Lamb was a bridesmaid at the Norris's wedding and after the
ceremony accompanied the bride and bridegroom to Richmond for the day.
So one of their daughters told Canon Ainger.
Crabb Robinson seems to have exerted himself for the family, as Lamb
wished. Mr. W.C. Hazlitt says that an annuity of £80 was settled upon
Mrs. Norris.
Page 279, last line. _To the last he called me Jemmy_. In the letter
to Crabb Robinson--"To the last he called me Charley. I have none to
call me Charley now."
Page 280, line 2. _That bound me to B----_. In the letter to Crabb
Robinson--"that bound me to the Temple."
Page 280, line 14. _Your Corporation Library_. In the letter--"The
Temple Library."
Page 280, line 19. _He had one Song_. Garrick's "Hearts of Oak."
* * * * *
Page 281. OLD CHINA.
_London Magazine_, March, 1823.
This essay forms a pendant, or complement, to "Mackery End in
Hertfordshire," completing the portrait of Mary Lamb begun there.
It was, with "The Wedding," Wordsworth's favourite among the _Last
Essays_.
Page 282, line 23. _The brown suit_. P.G. Patmore, in his
recollections of Lamb in the _Court Journal_, 1835, afterwards
reprinted, with some alterations, in his _My Friends and
Acquaintances_, stated that Lamb laid aside his snuff-coloured suit
in favour of black, after twenty years of the India House; and he
suggests that Wordsworth's stanzas in "A Poet's Epitaph" was the
cause:--
But who is he, with modest looks,
And clad in homely russet brown?
He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own.
He is retired as noontide dew,
Or fountain in a noon-day grove;
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.
Whatever Patmore's theory may be worth, it is certain that Lamb
adhered to black after the change.
Page 282, line 25. _Beaumont and Fletcher_. See note to "Books and
Reading."
Page 282, line 27. _Barker's_. Barker's old book-shop was at No. 20
Great Russell Street, over which the Lambs went to live in 1817. It
had then, however, become Mr. Owen's, a brazier's (Wheatley's _London
Past and Present_ gives Barker's as 19, but a contemporary directory
says 20). Great Russell Street is now Russell Street.
Page 282, line 30. _From Islington_. This would be when Lamb and his
sister lived at 36 Chapel Street, Pentonville, a stone's throw from
the Islington boundary, in 1799-1800, after the death of their father.
Page 283, line 11. _The "Lady Blanch._" See Mary Lamb's poem on this
picture, Vol. IV. and note.
Page 283, line 15. _Colnaghi's_. Colnaghi, the printseller, then in
Cockspur Street, now Pall Mall East. After this word came in the
_London Magazine_ "(as W---- calls it)." The reference, Mr. Rogers
Rees tells me, is to Wainewright's article "C. van Vinkbooms, his
Dogmas for Dilletanti," in the same magazine for December, 1821, where
he wrote: "I advise Colnaghi and Molteno to import a few impressions
immediately of those beautiful plates from Da Vinci. The ... and Miss
Lamb's favourite, 'Lady Blanche and the Abbess,' commonly called
'Vanitas et Modestia' (Campanella, los. ed.), for I foresee that this
Dogma will occasion a considerable call for them--let them, therefore,
be ready."
Page 283, line 5 from foot. _To see a play_. "The Battle of Hexham"
and "The Surrender of Calais" were by George Colman the Younger; "The
Children in the Wood," a favourite play of Lamb's, especially with
Miss Kelly in it, was by Thomas Morton. Mrs. Bland was Maria Theresa
Bland, _née_ Romanzini, 1769-1838, who married Mrs. Jordan's brother.
Jack Bannister we have met, in "The Old Actors."
Page 286, line 12. _The Great yew R----_. This would be Nathan Meyer
Rothschild (1777-1836), the founder of the English branch of the
family and the greatest financier of modern times.
* * * * *
Page 286. POPULAR FALLACIES.
This series of little essays was printed in the _New Monthly Magazine_
in 1826, beginning in January. The order of publication there was not
the same as that in the _Last Essays of Elia_; one of the papers,
"That a Deformed Person is a Lord," was not reprinted by Lamb at all
(it will be found in Vol. I. of this edition); and two others were
converted into separate essays (see "The Sanity of True Genius" and
"The Genteel Style in Writing").
After Lamb's death a new series of Popular Fallacies was contributed
to the _New Monthly Magazine_ by L.B. (Laman Blanchard) in 1835,
preceded by an invocation to the spirit of Charles Lamb.
Page 286. I.--THAT A BULLY is ALWAYS A COWARD.
_New Monthly Magazine_, January, 1826.
Page 287, line 1. _Hickman_. This would be Tom Hickman, the pugilist.
In Hazlitt's fine account of "The Fight," Hickman or the Gas-Man,
"vapoured and swaggered too much, as if he wanted to grin and bully
his adversary out of the fight." And again, "'This is the _grave
digger_' (would Tom Hickman exclaim in the moments of intoxication
from gin and success, showing his tremendous right hand); 'this will
send many of them to their long homes; I haven't done with them yet.'"
But he went under to Neale, of Bristol, on the great day that Hazlitt
describes.
Page 287, line 2. _Him of Clarissa_. Mr. Hickman, in Richardson's
novel _Clarissa_, the lover of Miss Bayes.
Page 287. II.--THAT ILL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS.
_New Monthly Magazine_, January, 1826.
Page 287. III.--THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS OWN JEST.
_New Monthly Magazine_, January, 1826.
Page 288, line 12. _In Mandeville_. In Bernard Mandeville's Fable of
the Bees, a favourite book of Lamb's. See Vol. I., note to "The Good
Clerk."
Page 288. IV.--THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING, ETC.
_New Monthly Magazine_, January, 1826.
Page 288. V.--THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF THE RICH.
_New Monthly Magazine_, January, 1826.
Page 290. VI.--THAT ENOUGH is AS GOOD AS A FEAST.
_New Monthly Magazine_, January, 1826.
Page 291. VII.--OF TWO DISPUTANTS, THE WARMEST IS GENERALLY IN THE
WRONG.
_New Monthly Magazine_, January, 1826.
Page 291, line 4 from foot. _Little Titubus_. I do not know who this
was, if any more than an abstraction; but it should be remembered that
Lamb himself stammered.
Page 292. VIII.--THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, ETC.
_New Monthly Magazine_, January, 1826.
Page 292. IX.--THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST.
_New Monthly Magazine_, January, 1826.
Compare the reflections on puns in the essay on "Distant
Correspondents." Compare also the review of Hood's _Odes and
Addresses_ (Vol. I.). Cary's account of a punning contest after Lamb's
own heart makes the company vie with each in puns on the names
of herbs. After anise, mint and other words had been ingeniously
perverted Lamb's own turn, the last, was reached, and it seemed
impossible that anything was left for him. He hesitated. "Now then,
let us have it," cried the others, all expectant. "Patience," he
replied; "it's c-c-cumin."
Page 293, line 18. _One of Swift's Miscellanies_. This joke, often
attributed to Lamb himself, will be found in _Ars Punica, sine flos
Linguarum, The Art of Punning; or, The Flower of Languages_, by Dr.
Sheridan and Swift, which will be found in Vol. XIII. of Scott's
edition of Swift. Among the directions to the punster is this:--
Rule 3. The Brazen Rule. He must have better assurance, like Brigadier
C----, who said, "That, as he was passing through a street, he made to
a country fellow who had a hare swinging on a stick over his shoulder,
and, giving it a shake, asked him whether it was his own _hair_ or a
periwig!" Whereas it is a notorious Oxford jest.
Page 294, line 8. _Virgil ... broken Cremona_. Swift (as Lamb
explained in the original essay in the _New Monthly Magazine_), seeing
a lady's mantua overturning a violin (possibly a Cremona), quoted
Virgil's line: "Mantua væ miseræ nimium vicina Cremonæ!" (_Eclogues_,
IX., 28), "Mantua, alas! too near unhappy Cremona."
Page 294. X.--THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES.
_New Monthly Magazine_, March, 1826.
Whether a Mrs. Conrady existed, or was invented or adapted by Lamb to
prove his point, I have not been able to discover. But the evidence of
Lamb's "reverence for the sex," to use Procter's phrase, is against
her existence. _The Athenæum_ reviewer on February 16, 1833, says,
however, quoting the fallacy: "Here is a portrait of Mrs. Conrady. We
agree with the writer that 'no one that has looked on her can pretend
to forget the lady.'" The point ought to be cleared up.
Page 296. XI.--THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT-HORSE IN THE MOUTH.
_New Monthly Magazine_, April, 1826.
Page 297, line 13. _Our friend Mitis_. I do not identify Mitis among
Lamb's many friends.
Page 297, line 11 from foot. _Presentation copies_. The late Mr.
Thomas Westwood, the son of the Westwoods with whom the Lambs lived
at Edmonton, writing to Notes and Queries some thirty-five years ago,
gave an amusing account of Lamb pitching presentation copies out of
the window into the garden--a Barry Cornwall, a Bernard Barton, a
Leigh Hunt, and so forth. Page 298, line 6. _Odd presents of game_.
Compare the little essay on "Presents of Game," Vol. I.
Page 298. XII.--THAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS NEVER SO HOMELY.
_New Monthly Magazine_, March, 1826. In that place the first sentence
began with the word "Two;" the second ended with "of our assertions;"
and (fourteenth line of essay) it was said of the very poor man
that he "can ask" no visitors. Lamb, in a letter, wished Wordsworth
particularly to like this fallacy and that on rising with the lark.
Page 300, line 9. _It has been prettily said_. By Lamb himself, or
more probably by his sister, in _Poetry for Children_, 1809. See "The
First Tooth," Vol. III., which ends upon the line
A child is fed with milk and praise.
Page 301, line 3. _There is yet another home_. Writing to Mrs.
Wordsworth on February 18, 1818, Lamb gives a painful account, very
similar in part to this essay, of the homeless home to which he was
reduced by visitors. But by the time he wrote the essay, when all his
day was his own, the trouble was not acute. He tells Bernard Barton
on March 20, 1826, "My tirade against visitors was not meant
_particularly_ at you or A.K. I scarce know what I meant, for I do not
just now feel the grievance. I wanted to make an _article_." Compare
the first of the "Lepus" papers in Vol. I.
Page 301, line 20. _It is the refreshing sleep of the day_. After this
sentence, in the magazine, came this passage:--
"O the comfort of sitting down heartily to an old folio, and
thinking surely that the next hour or two will be your own--and
the misery of being defeated by the useless call of somebody, who
is come to tell you, that he is just come from hearing Mr. Irving!
What is that to you? Let him go home, and digest what the good man
said to him. You are at your chapel, in your oratory."
Mr. Irving was the Rev. Edward Irving (1792-1834), whom Lamb knew
slightly and came greatly to admire.
Page 302. XIII.--THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME, AND LOVE MY DOG.
_New Monthly Magazine_, February, 1826.
Compare "A Bachelor's Complaint." I cannot identify the particular
friend whom Lamb has hidden under asterisks; although his cousin would
seem to have some likeness to one of the Bethams mentioned in the
essay "Many Friends" (Vol. I.), and in the letter to Landor of
October, 1832 (usually dated April), after his visit to the Lambs.
Page 304, line 15. _Honorius dismiss his vapid wife_. Writing to
Bernard Barton on March 20, 1826, Lamb says:--"In another thing I
talkd of somebody's _insipid wife_, without a correspondent object in
my head: and a good lady, a friend's wife, whom I really _love_ (don't
startle, I mean in a licit way) has looked shyly on me ever since. The
blunders of personal application are numerous. I send out a character
every now and then, on purpose to exercise the ingenuity of my
friends."
Page 304, line 11 from foot. _Merry, of Delia Cruscan memory_. Robert
Merry (1755-1798), an affected versifier who settled in Florence as a
young man, and contributed to the _Florence Miscellany_. He became
a member of the Delia Cruscan Academy, and on returning to England
signed his verses, in _The World_, "Delia Crusca." A reply to his
first effusion, "Adieu and Recall to Love," was written by Mrs. Hannah
Cowley, author of _The Belle's Stratagem_, and signed "Anna Matilda;"
this correspondence continued; a fashion of sentiment was thus
started; and for a while Delia Cruscan poetry was the rage. The
principal Delia Cruscan poems were published in the _British Album_
in 1789, and the collection was popular until Gifford's _Baviad_
(followed by his _Mæviad_) appeared in 1791, and satirised its
conceits so mercilessly that the school collapsed. A meeting with Anna
Matilda in the flesh and the discovery that she was twelve years his
senior had, however, put an end to Merry's enthusiasm long before
Gifford's attack. Merry afterwards threw in his lot with the French
Revolution, and died in America. He married, as Lamb says, Elizabeth
Brunton, an excellent tragic actress, in 1791. But that was in
England. The journey to America came later.
The story of Merry's avoidance of the lady of his first choice is
probably true. Carlo Antonio Delpini was a famous pantomimist in his
day at Drury Lane, Covent Garden and the Haymarket. He also was
stage manager at the Opera for a while, and occasionally arranged
entertainments for George IV. at Brighton. He died in 1828.
Page 305. XIV.--THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK.
_New Monthly Magazine_, February, 1826.
Compare "The Superannuated Man," to which this little essay, which,
with that following, is one of Lamb's most characteristic and perfect
works, serves as a kind of postscript.
Page 308. XV.--THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB.
_New Monthly Magazine_, February, 1826.
Page 309. XVI.--THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE.
_New Monthly Magazine_, September, 1826.
This was the last of the series and Lamb's last contribution to the
_New Monthly Magazine_.
APPENDIX
Page 315. ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS, ETC.
See notes to the essays "On Some of the Old Actors," "The Artificial
Comedy" and "The Acting of Munden." Two portions of these essays, not
reprinted by Lamb, call for comment: the story of the first night of
"Antonio," and the account of Charles Mathews' collection of pictures.
Page 328, line 14 from foot. _My friend G.'s "Antonio."_ William
Godwin's tragedy, produced on December 13, 1800, at Drury Lane. Lamb
had written the epilogue (see Vol. IV.). Compare the letter to Manning
of December 16, 1800.
Page 329, line 28. _M. wiped his cheek_. Writing to Godwin after the
failure Lamb says: "The breast of Hecuba, where she did suckle Hector,
looked not to be more lovely than Marshal's forehead when it spit
forth sweat, at Critic-swords contending. I remember two honest lines
by Marvel ...
"'Where every Mower's wholesome heat
Smells like an Alexander's sweat.'"
And again, to Manning: "His [Marshal's] face was lengthened, and all
over perspiration; I never saw such a care-fraught visage; I could
have hugged him, I loved him so intensely. 'From every pore of him a
perfume fell.'"
Page 329, foot. _R----s the dramatist_. I imagine this to be Frederic
Reynolds (1764-1841), author of "The Dramatist" and many other plays.
We know Lamb to have known him later, from a mention in a letter to
J.B. Dibdin.
Page 330, foot, _Brutus ... Appius_. Brutus in "Julius Cæsar," or
possibly in the play called "Brutus," by John Howard Payne, Lamb's
friend (produced December 3, 1818), in which Brutus kills his son--a
closer parallel. Appius was probably a slip of the pen for Virginius,
who in Sheridan Knowles' drama that bears his name kills his daughter
to protect her from Appius.
Page 331, line 7. _G. thenceforward_. Godwin did, however, write
another play, "Faulkener," for which Lamb wrote the prologue. It was
moderately successful.
Page 331, 1st line of essay. _I do not know, etc_. The paragraph
beginning with these words is often printed by editors of Lamb as
a separate article entitled "The Old Actors." Charles Mathews'
collection of theatrical portraits is now in the Garrick Club. In
his lifetime it occupied the gallery at Ivy Lodge, Highgate (or more
properly Kentish Town). A year or so before Mathews' death in 1835,
his pictures were exhibited at the Queen's Bazaar in Oxford Street,
Lamb's remarks being printed in the catalogue _raisonné_.
INDEX
A
Accountants, Lamb on, 3.
Actors and acting, Lamb's essays on, 150, 161, 168, 185, 188, 190, 230,
315, 322, 331.
Actors among Lamb's friends, 232.
Adams, Parson, 49.
Agar's wish, 348.
Aguecheek, Lamb on, 155.
Ainger, Canon, his notes on Lamb, 345, 353, 361, 403, 436, 438.
_Albion, The_, and Lamb, 254, 429, 432.
Alice W----n, 32, 44, 116, 117, 339, 363, 389.
ALL FOOLS' DAY, 48, 367.
Allen, Bob, 25, 253, 355, 431.
Allsop, Thomas, quoting Lamb, 357.
---- and "Roast Pig," 396.
---- quotes Lamb on G.H., 425.
Almsgiving, Lamb on, 137.
Alsatia, the debtors' sanctuary, 162.
America, Lamb relics in, 344, 357, 358, 362, 412.
AMICUS REDIVIVUS, 237, 424.
Anatomy and love, 64.
_Anatomy of Melancholy_ quoted, 46.
André, Major, 237, 424.
Anna Matilda, 443.
Antiquity, Lamb on, 11.
"Antonio," by Godwin, 328, 444.
_Arcadia, The_, by Sidney, 242.
Arrowsmith, Aaron, 369.
"Artaxerxes," 113, 387.
Artificial comedy, Lamb's essay on, 161, 399.
Artists, their want of imagination, 256.
Arundel Castle and the chimney-sweep legend, 127.
_As when a child on some long winter's night_, 388.
_Athenæum, The_, Lamb's contribution to, 433.
_Athenian Oracle, The_, 303.
Australia, Lamb on, 122.
Ayrton, William, 361, 363.
B
BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE, 144, 397.
Badams, Mrs., 362.
Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, 340.
Bannister, Jack, 159, 185, 399, 408.
BARBARA S----, 230, 421.
Barker's book-shop, 282, 439.
BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART,
256, 433.
Barrington, Daines, 101, 383.
Bartholomew Fair, 128, 391.
Barton, Bernard, Lamb's letters to, 341, 406, 417, 420, 435, 442.
-- Thomas, 102, 383.
Baskett prayer-book, 9.
Battle, Mrs., 37, 175, 406.
---- on whist, 37.
---- her identity, 361.
Beaumont and Fletcher, Lamb's copy, 357.
Beauty, Lamb on, 295.
"Beggar's Petition," 394.
Begging, Lamb's essay on, 130, 392.
Belisarius, 131.
"Belshazzars Feast," Martin's picture of, 259, 434.
Benchers, The Old, Lamb's essay on, 94.
Bensley, Robert, 152, 318, 398.
Betty, Master, 414.
Bigod, Ralph, Lamb's name for Fenwick, 27, 356.
Billet, John, 184.
Binding, Lamb on, 412.
_Blackwood's Magazine_ and Scott, 340.
Blake, William, and Lamb, 391.
BLAKESMOOR IN H----SHIRE, 174, 405.
Blakesware near Widford, 115, 174, 388, 405.
Bland, Mrs., 283, 439.
Blandy, Miss, the poisoner, 98, 380.
Bodkin, W.H., 392.
_Book of Sports, The_, 418.
Books, Lamb on, 34, 360.
-- that are not books, 195, 411.
Booth's _Tables of Interest_ and Lamb, 419.
Borrowing, Lamb on, 26.
Bourne, Vincent, 133, 393.
Bowles, William Lisle, 38, 362.
Boyer, James, 23, 353.
Braham, John, 71, 371.
Breeding, Lamb on, 288.
Bridget, Elia. _See_ Elia.
Brighton and the Lambs, 415.
-- Lamb's imaginery scene there, 259.
British Museum, a careful vandal, 357.
Browne, Moses, 404.
-- Sir Thomas, 58, 66, 80.
Bruce, James, 240, 425.
Bruton, Miss Sarah, 376.
Brutons, Lamb's relations, 88, 89.
Buckland, Dean, and the American vandal, 424.
Bullies, Lamb on, 286, 440.
_Buncle, The Life of_, 30, 357.
Burney, Edward, 65, 370.
-- James, 361.
Burney, Martin, 200, 414.
-- Mrs., and Mrs. Battle, 361.
-- Sarah, her wedding, 271, 436.
Burns, Robert, and Lamb, 70, 370.
Burton, Robert, quoted, 46, 77.
_Business! the frivolous pretence_, 419.
Button Snap, Lamb's cottage, 385, 386, 387.
_But who is he, with modest looks_, 438.
C
Cambridge, Lamb at, 345.
Camelford, Lord, 121, 390.
Candle-light, Lamb on, 308.
CAPTAIN JACKSON, 215, 416.
Card playing, essay on, in _Every-Day Book_, 362.
Carlisle, Sir Anthony, 193, 372, 410.
Cary, H.F., his verses on Lamb, 426.
-- on Lamb's puns, 441.
Cave, Edward, 344.
Chambers, John, 224, 419.
Chapman's _Homer_ kissed by Lamb, 412.
CHAPTER ON EARS, A, 43, 363.
CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA, A, 171, 402.
Chess and Mrs. Battle, 42.
CHILD ANGEL, THE, 276, 437.
Children and the dark, 77.
Chimney-sweepers, Lamb's essay on, 124, 390.
CHINA, OLD, 281, 438.
-- its first roast pork, 138.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO, 14, 350.
---- prayer-book, 9.
---- food in Lamb's day, 14, 350.
---- holidays in Lamb's day, 15, 351.
---- the dungeon, 19.
---- flogging, 23.
---- Grecians, 26, 355.
---- its graces, 110, 384.
---- the Coleridge memorial, 354.
---- the Lamb medal, 355.
Clapdishes, 131.
"Cobbler of Preston," by Johnson, 170, 401.
Cockletop, in "Modern Antiques," 168, 400.
Colebrooke cottage, 425.
Coleridge, Hartley, on Lamb, 400.
-- S.T., at Christ's Hospital, 15, 350, 351.
-- his wit combats, 25.
-- his treatment of books, 29, 356.
-- his "Ode on the Departing Year," 31, 359.
-- on apple-dumplings, 108, 384.
-- his "Epitaph on an Infant," 141, 397.
-- on Boyer, 353.
-- and the Christ's Hospital memorial, 354.
-- his military name, 356.
-- Lamb's letters to, 356, 368, 396.
-- his marginalia, 358.
-- his notes in Beaumont and Fletcher, 357.
------ in Donne, 358.
-- on Lamb, 359.
-- Lamb's letter to, concerning Quakers, 368.
-- and Christopher North, 371.
-- his sonnets with Lamb, 388.
-- and the _Morning Post_, 429, 430.
Colet, Dean, his _Accidence_, 59.
Colnaghi's print shop, 283, 439.
Comberback, Coleridge's military name, 29, 356.
_Come, all degrees now passing by_, 391.
Comedy and its licence, 161.
COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS, 130, 392.
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD, 437.
Congreve, Lamb on, 160, 162.
Conrady, Mrs., 294, 441.
CONVALESCENT, THE, 208, 416.
Corbet, Peter, 404.
Coventry, Thomas, 97, 380.
Cowards and bullies, 286.
Cowley, on business, 419.
Crawford, Anne, 423.
Cresseid, 131.
Curry, Sir Christopher, in "Inkle and Yarico," 169, 401.
D
Da Vinci, Leonardo, and Lamb's beauty, 69, 370.
Dawson, Bully, 287.
Days, Lamb's fantasy upon, 266.
DEATH-BED, A, 279, 437.
Delia Cruscan poetry, 443.
Delpini, 305, 443.
Dennis, John, 292.
De Quincey on Lamb, 377.
DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING, 195, 411.
Dickens anticipated by Lamb, 356, 417.
Disputes, Lamb on, 291.
DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG, 137, 395.
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS, 118, 389.
Dobell, Mr. Bertram, his notes on Lamb, 342, 395, 408.
Doctor, the, at Islington, 238.
Dodd, James William, 155.
Dodwell, Henry, 224, 419.
Dornton in "The Road to Ruin," 169, 401.
Dorrell, William, the Lambs' enemy, 32, 360.
DREAM-CHILDREN, 115, 388.
Dreams, Lamb on, 79.
Drowning in dreams, 241.
Drury Lane Theatre, 111, 385.
Dyer, George, 11, 237, 241, 347, 348, 349, 424, 425, 433.
---- and the New River, 237, 424.
E
Early rising, Lamb on, 305.
East India House, Lamb at, 219.
------ Lamb's superannuation, 219, 417.
------ Lamb's fellow clerks, 223, 224, 403, 404.
Edwards, Thomas, 92, 379.
Eel-soup, 374.
Elgin marbles, 225, 419.
ELIA, 1823, suggested dedication, 337.
-- its poor reception, 338.
-- second series. American edition, 339.
Elia, F.A., 337.
-- Lamb on, 8.
-- his death, 171.
-- Lamb's character of, 171, 402.
-- origin of name, 337.
-- his birthplace, 365.
-- Bridget (Mary Lamb), 43, 362.
---- her taste in reading, 86.
---- her regrets for poverty, 282.
ELLISTON, TO THE SHADE OF, 188, 409.
ELLISTONIANA, 190, 410.
Elliston, R.W., Lamb's essays on, 188, 190, 409, 410.
---- at Leamington, 190.
---- his grave, 411.
---- Lamb and Munden on an excursion, 410.
Elton, Sir C.A., his poem to Lamb, 358.
Emery, John, 186, 409.
Endor, the Witch of, 75, 372.
_Englishman's Magazine_, 342.
---- Lamb's contributions to, 188, 190, 249.
Evans, William, 3, 343.
Evelyn, John, quoted, 72.
_Every-Day Book_, essay on card-playing, 362.
_Examiner, The_, and Lamb's "Chimney-Sweepers," 392.
---- Lamb's contributions to, 63, 168.
---- "On a visit to St. Paul's," 424.
Example, Lamb on, 288.
Excursions, the Lambs', 283.
F
_Faerie Queene_, Lamb's copy, 413.
FALLACIES, POPULAR. _See_ POPULAR FALLACIES.
_Family Pictures_, by Anne Manning, 378.
Farley, Charles, 169, 259, 401, 435.
"Father, A," his remonstrance with Lamb, 360.
Favell, Joseph, 25, 181, 355, 408.
Feasting, Lamb on, 290.
Fenwick, John, 27, 129, 255, 356, 432.
Field, Barron, 90, 118, 363, 377, 389.
-- Mary, 361, 405.
-- Matthew, 20, 352.
Fielde, Francis, Lamb's godfather, 111, 385.
Flecknoe, quoted, 51.
Flogging, Lamb on, 23.
Fools, Lamb's essay on, 48, 367.
Fountains, Lamb on, 96.
Fox, George, 53, 368.
French translation of Lamb, 415.
Fuller, Thomas, quoted, 71.
Funerals and Lamb, 274, 436.
G
Gallantry, Lamb on, 90, 377.
"Garden, The," by Marvell, 96.
Gattie, Henry, 186, 408.
Gebir and the Tower of Babel, 49.
_Gebir_, by Landor, 206, 415.
GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING, THE, 226, 420.
Gentility, Lamb on, 176.
George IV., 259, 268, 435, 436.
Gladmans, Lamb's relations, 88, 89, 90.
_Gli Elogi del Porco_, 396.
Gluttony and grace, Lamb on, 105.
Godwin, William, his play "Antonio," 328, 444.
-- Lamb's friend, 376.
-- Lamb's letter to, 444.
Gold's _London Magazine_, 395.
GRACE BEFORE MEAT, 104, 384.
Graces at Christ's Hospital, 110, 384.
Gray's Inn Gardens, 155, 399.
Grecians at Christ's Hospital, 26, 355.
Greg, Mr. Thomas, and Lamb's property, 385.
Guildhall giants, 29.
_Gulliver's Travels_, 382.
H
Hare Court, Lamb's rooms in, 390.
"Harlequin's Invasion," 113, 387.
Hastings and the Lambs, 206, 416.
Hawes, Dr., 241.
Hazlitt, William, on Sidney, 247, 427.
---- on Lamb in the country, 345.
---- knocked down by John Lamb, 347.
---- his interest in John Buncle, 357.
---- as Duns Scotus, 367.
---- Lamb's letter to, 397.
---- on Lamb, 403.
---- his wedding, 436.
-- W.C., his notes on Lamb, 357, 438.
Helicon and Hippocrene confused, 37.
Hertfordshire hair, 178.
-- and Lamb, 220, 418.
-- Lamb's praise of, 375.
_He was (woe worth that word!) to each well-thinking mind_, 428.
Heywood, Thomas, quoted, 67.
Hickman, Tom, the prize fighter, 287, 440.
_High-born Helen, round your dwelling_, 407.
Hodges (or Huggins), 352.
Hogarth, his chimney-sweeper, 126.
Hogsflesh and Bacon, 415.
Hogs Norton and the pigs, 109.
Holcroft, Thomas, 376.
Hone's _Table Book_, Lamb's contribution to, 279.
Hood, Thomas, his friendship with Lamb, 393.
---- on beggars, 393.
Hooker, Richard, 104, 384.
Hoole, John, 404.
Horsey, Samuel, 135, 393.
Huggins (or Hodges), 352.
Hugh of Lincoln, 70, 371.
Hume, David, 70, 371.
-- Joseph, Lamb's friend, 394.
Humphreys, Mr. Deputy, 253.
Hunt, Leigh, and Lamb, 360.
---- chaffed by Lamb, 364.
Hunt, Leigh, replies to Lamb, 365.
---- and Lamb's "Chimney Sweepers," 392.
---- on Lamb's books, 412.
---- his translation of Milton, 426.
-- Thornton, 77, 372.
Hutchinson, Sarah, Lamb's letter to, 417.
I
_I can remember when a child the maids_, 372.
_I have not forgot how thou didst love thy Charles_, 350.
Illusion on the stage, 185.
Imagination, its lack in the artists of Lamb's day, 256.
Imitators of Lamb, 339.
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES, 66, 370.
Ino Leucothea, 79.
Ireland, Dean, 423.
Irving, Edward, and Lamb, 442.
Isola, Emma, 436.
J
JACKSON, CAPTAIN, 215, 416.
-- "Omniscient," 102, 383.
"Janus Weathercock." _See_ Wainewright.
Jekyll, Joseph, 97, 379.
_John Woodvil_ quoted, 368, 372.
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 250, 344, 383.
Jokes to order, Lamb on, 252.
Jonson, Ben, quoted, 89.
Jordan, Mrs., 151, 398.
Joshua, Martin's picture of, 262, 435.
Journalism and Lamb, 251.
K
Kelly, Fanny, and BARBARA S----, 421.
---- and Mrs. Siddons, 422.
Kemble, John Philip, 153, 168, 327, 398.
Kenney, James, 30, 357.
Kent, Charles, his edition of Lamb, 421.
King, Thomas, 166, 400.
L
"Lady of the Manor," 113, 387.
Lamb, Charles, on the South-Sea House, 1.
---- on accountants, 3.
---- on Elia, 8.
---- on Oxford, 10.
---- on antiquity, 11.
---- on old libraries, 11.
---- on George Dyer, 11.
---- on his school-days, 14.
---- on Coleridge's school-days, 14.
---- on Matthew Fielde, 21.
---- on James Boyer, 22.
---- on borrowers and borrowing, 26.
---- on John Fenwick, 27.
---- on Coleridge as a book borrower, 29.
---- on the Duchess of Newcastle, 30.
---- on the New Year, 31.
---- on bells, 31.
---- on his childhood, 32, 75.
---- on the joy of life, 33.
---- on death, 34.
---- on Mrs. Battle and whist, 37,
---- his want of ear, 43.
---- his piano playing, 44.
---- on oratorios, 45.
---- on Novello's evenings, 47.
---- on fools, 48.
---- on Quakers, 51, 55, 72.
---- on silence, 51.
---- on Sewel's _History_, 53.
---- on John Woolman, 54.
---- and the Quaker "wit," 55.
---- his reading, 56.
---- on schoolmasters, 59.
---- on Valentine's Day, 63.
---- on anatomy and love, 64.
---- on door knocks, 64.
---- on Edward Burney's valentine, 65.
---- on imperfect sympathies, 66.
---- on Scotchmen, 67.
---- on Jews, 70.
---- on Braham, 71.
---- on negroes, 71.
---- on Quakers, 72.
---- on witches, 74.
---- on his childhood, 75.
---- on children and the dark, 77.
---- on Thornton Hunt's bringing up, 77.
---- on dreams, 79.
---- on his relations, 80.
---- on Sarah Lamb, 80.
---- on John Lamb, jr., 81, 117.
---- on his sister Mary, 86.
---- his dislike of stories, 86.
---- on the Duchess of Newcastle again, 87.
---- on Mackery End, 88.
---- his Hertfordshire relations, 88.
---- on the comely Brutons, 89.
---- on gallantry, 90.
---- on Joseph Paice, 92.
---- on the Temple, 94.
---- on sun-dials, 95.
---- on fountains, 96.
---- on the old Benchers, 97.
---- on Joseph Jekyll, 97.
---- on Samuel Salt, 98, 103.
---- on Thomas Coventry, 99.
---- on his father, 99.
---- on Daines Barrington, 101.
---- on James Mingay, 102.
---- on Baron Maseres, 103.
---- on saying grace, 104.
---- on Milton, 107.
---- his godfather Field, 111.
---- as a landed proprietor, 112.
---- his first play, 112.
---- and his imaginary children, 115.
---- his grandmother, 115.
---- on Blakesware, 116.
---- on distant correspondents, 118.
---- on Lord Camelford's whim, 121.
---- on puns, 122.
---- on Australia, 122.
---- on chimney-sweepers, 124.
---- on Saloop, 125.
---- and fine teeth, 127.
---- and James White, 128.
---- on beggars, 130.
---- his translation from Bourne, 133.
Lamb, Charles, on Samuel Horsey, 135.
---- on almsgiving, 137.
---- on the origin of roast pig, 137.
---- on roast pig, 140.
---- and his plum cake, 142.
---- on married people, 144.
---- on "Twelfth Night," 150.
---- on Mrs. Jordan, 151.
---- on Mrs. Powel, 151.
---- on Bensley's Malvolio, 152.
---- on Dodd's Aguecheek, 155.
---- on Dicky Suett, 157.
---- on Jack Bannister, 159.
---- on Jack Palmer, 159, 165.
---- on the artificial comedy, 161.
---- on Wycherley and Congreve, 162.
---- on the "School for Scandal," 164.
---- on J.P. Kemble, 168.
---- on Munden's faces, 169.
---- on Elia's death, 172.
---- on family mansions, 174.
---- on Blakesware, 175.
---- on the feeling of gentility, 176.
---- on poor relations, 178.
---- on Favell's sensitiveness, 181.
---- on John Billet, 183.
---- on stage illusion, 185.
---- on Gattie's old men, 186.
---- on Emery as Tyke, 186.
---- on Elliston, 188, 190.
---- entertains Elliston, 194.
---- on reading, 195.
---- on books that are not books, 195.
---- on binding, 196.
---- on editions of the great authors, 197.
---- on the names of poets, 198.
---- on Shakespeare, 198.
---- his adventure on Primrose Hill, 199.
---- on watering-places, 201.
---- on the voyage to Margate, 21.
---- on a good liar, 202.
---- on the ocean, 205.
---- on Hastings, 206.
---- on smuggling, 207.
---- on convalescence, 208.
---- on the sanity of genius, 212.
---- on Captain Jackson, 215.
---- on his clerk-state, 219.
---- his superannuation, 221.
---- on leisure, 222.
---- on the genteel style in writing, 226.
---- on Sir William Temple, 226.
---- on Miss Kelly's reminiscence. 230.
---- on his friends among actors, 232.
---- on Westminster Abbey fees, 235.
---- on Andrews monument, 237.
---- on George Dyer's immersion, 237.
---- on the Islington doctor, 238,
---- on the New River, 240.
---- on drowning in dreams, 241.
---- on Sidney's sonnets, 242.
---- on Milton's Latin sonnet, 243.
---- on Hazlitt s opinion of Sidney, 248.
---- on James Bruce, 250.
---- on Dan Stuart, 250.
---- on the _Morning Post_ days, 250.
---- on joking to order, 252.
---- on Bob Allen, 253.
---- on _The Albion_, 254.
---- and Sir James Mackintosh, 256.
---- on modern painters, 256.
---- on Titian's "Ariadne," 256.
---- on Raphael, 257.
---- on J.M.W. Turner, 258.
---- his imaginary scene at Brighton, 259.
---- on John Martin, 260.
---- on Don Quixote, 264.
---- his fantasy on the Days, 266.
---- on Miss Burney's wedding, 271.
---- on mothers and daughters, 273.
---- on his behaviour on solemn occasions, 274.
Lamb, Charles, on Admiral Burney, 275.
---- his fantasy on the child angel, 276.
---- on Randal Norris's death, 279.
---- on old china, 281.
---- his sister's regrets for poverty, 282.
---- and the folio Beaumont and Fletcher, 282.
---- and his sister's excursions, 283.
---- and his sister's playgoing, 283.
---- on bullies and cowards, 286.
---- on ill-gotten gains, 287.
---- on jokes and laughter, 287.
---- on breeding, 288.
---- on the poor and the rich, 288.
---- on sayings concerning money, 290.
---- on disputants, 291.
---- on puns, 292.
---- on Mrs. Conrady, 294.
---- on beauty, 295.
---- on presents, 296.
---- on home, 298.
---- on friendship, 302.
---- on Merry's wedding day, 304.
---- on early rising, 305.
---- on superannuation, 307.
---- on going to bed late, 308.
---- on candle-light, 308.
---- on sulky tempers, 309.
---- on Kemble in Godwin's "Antonio," 329.
---- on Mathews' collection of portraits, 331.
---- on the name Elia, 337.
---- his dedication to _Elia_, 337,
---- his imitators, 339.
---- his Key to _Elia_, 339.
---- and the _London Magazine_, 340.
---- on Taylor's editing, 341.
---- his _post London Magazine_ days, 342.
---- at the South-Sea House, 342.
---- in the country, 345.
---- at Oxford, 346.
---- his sonnet on Cambridge, 346.
---- on Milton's MSS., 346.
---- his jokes with George Dyer, 347.
---- on George Dyer's career, 348, 349.
---- his lines to his aunt, 350.
---- his popularity at school, 355.
---- on Grecians and Deputy-Grecians, 355.
---- on reading and borrowing, 356.
---- and Luther's _Table Talk_, 357.
---- Coleridge as a reader, 357.
---- his copy of Beaumont and Fletcher, 357.
---- his copy of Donne, 358.
---- his books in America, 358.
---- his reply to "Olen," 358.
---- his sonnet "Leisure," 359.
---- Coleridge's description of him, 359.
---- on Coleridge's "Ode," 359.
---- his sonnet on Innocence, 360.
---- rebuked by "A Father," 360.
---- and the Burneys, 361.
---- elementary rules of whist, 362.
---- his ear for music, 363.
---- weathering a Mozartian storm, 364.
---- his chaff of Hunt, 364.
---- on Elia's ancestors, 364.
---- chaffed by Hunt, 365.
---- Maginn thinks him a Jew, 365.
---- on birthplaces, 365.
---- on turning Quaker, 368.
---- kisses a copy of Burns, 371.
---- his threat concerning Burns, 371.
---- rebuked by Christopher North, 371.
---- his admiration of Braham, 371.
---- on Sir Anthony Carlisle, 372.
---- his sisters, 373.
---- on John Lamb's pamphlet, 374.
Lamb, Charles, his cousins, 376.
---- his blank verse fragment, 377.
---- on Wordsworth's "Yarrow Visited," 377.
---- De Quincey's description of him, 377.
---- his chivalry, 377.
---- Barry Cornwall's anecdote of him, 377.
---- his birthplace, 379.
---- his patron, 380.
---- his father, 381.
---- and Baron Maseres, 383.
---- and Southey's criticism of _Elia_, 384.
---- as a landowner, 385.
---- his letter to his tenant, 386.
---- and his mother, 387.
---- his sonnet to Mrs. Siddons, 388.
---- and Alice W----, 389.
---- his love period, 389.
---- and chimney-sweepers, 390.
---- at Bartholomew Fair, 391.
---- his acquaintance with Hood, 393.
---- his joke to a beggar, 394.
---- on the "Beggar's Petition," 394.
---- his joke on Wainewright, 395.
---- the origin of his "Roast Pig," 395.
---- his recantation, 397.
---- his aunts, 397.
---- on Mrs. John Rickman, 397.
---- criticised by Macaulay, 399.
---- praised by Hartley Coleridge, 400.
---- on Elia's character, 402.
---- on the East India House clerks, 404.
---- letter to Southey about Blakesware, 406.
---- letter to Barton on same subject, 406.
---- his excursion with Elliston and Munden, 410.
---- his books described by Leigh Hunt, 412.
---- his affectation of affectation, 414.
---- and watering-places, 415.
---- at Hastings, 416.
---- leaves the India House, 417.
---- letter to Barton on his liberty, 417.
---- on the Puritans, 418.
---- his love of walking, 419.
---- his sonnet on "Work," 419.
---- his remark to Macready, 423.
---- his remark to Allsop about Dyer, 425.
---- the last book he read, 426.
---- on Lord's Thurlow's poems, 427.
---- his paragraphs for the _Morning Post_, 429.
---- as he appeared to Dan Stuart, 430.
---- his epigrams on Mackintosh, 433.
---- his real opinion of Titian's "Ariadne," 434.
---- letter to Barton on John Martin, 435.
---- at Hazlitt's wedding, 436.
---- his clothes, 438.
---- his pun at Cary's, 441.
---- his treatment of presentation copies, 441.
-- Elizabeth, Lamb's mother, 387.
-- John (Lovel), 100, 381.
---- his boyhood, 183, 408.
---- quoted, 437.
---- jr., his character, 81.
---- his childhood, 117.
---- at the South-Sea House, 344.
---- and Hazlitt, 347.
---- his _Letter ... on Cruelty to Animals_, 374.
---- his death, 388.
-- Mary (Bridget Elia), Lamb's sister, 43, 86, 362, 376.
---- her account of a schoolmaster, 62.
---- a quaint poetess, 200, 414.
---- her first play, 387.
---- her poem "Helen," 407.
-- Sarah (Lamb's aunt), 15, 142, 350, 397.
---- her character, 80.
Lamb, Sarah, her sarcasm, 184.
-- family, 81, 373.
"LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA," 339.
Laughter, Lamb on, 287.
"Lazarus, The Raising of," by Piombo, 262, 435.
Le Grice, Charles Valentine, 25, 110, 354, 384.
---- Samuel, 25, 355.
Leisure, Lamb on, 420.
Letter-writing, Lamb on, 118.
Liar, a good, 202.
Libraries, Lamb on, 11.
_Life of John Buncle_, by Amory, 30, 357.
Lincoln, John Lamb's boyhood, 183, 408.
Liston, John, 169, 401, 423.
Lloyd, Charles, 360.
Lombardy and the pawnbrokers, 254.
London, Lamb's homes in, 379.
_London Magazine_, history of, 340.
---- Lamb's contributions to, 1-56, 66-185, 195-208, 215, 219, 230,
235, 237, 242, 271, 276, 281, 315, 322, 331.
---- Lamb's last contribution to, 408.
Love and anatomy, 64.
"Love for Love," by Congreve, 160.
Lovel. _See_ John Lamb.
Lovell, Daniel, 255, 432.
Lully, Raymond, 49, 196.
"Lun's Ghost," 113, 387.
Luther's _Table Talk_ and Coleridge, 357.
"Lycidas" in its original form, 346.
M
Macaulay, Lord, 399.
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE, 86, 375.
Mackintosh, Sir James, 433.
Macready, W.C., and Lamb, 423.
Maginn, William, 365.
Make-believe, an artist in, 215.
Malone, Edmund, 198, 413.
Malvolio, the character of, 316.
Man, Henry, 6, 344.
Manning, Miss Anne, quoted, 378.
-- Thomas, 56, 369.
---- and "Roast Pig," 137, 396.
---- Lamb's letter to, 376, 444.
---- and Baron Maseres, 383.
Margate, Lamb at, 415.
Hoy, Lamb's essay on, 201, 415.
Marriage, Lamb on, 144.
Married people, Lamb's essay on, 144, 397.
Marshal, Godwin's friend, 329, 444.
Martin, John, 259, 434.
Marvell, Andrew, quoted, 96, 176.
Maseres, Baron, 103, 383.
Mathews, Charles, his pictures, 331, 445.
Mendicity, Society for Suppression of, 130, 392.
Merry, Robert, 304, 443.
Micawber, Wilkins, anticipated, 356, 417.
Middleton, Thomas Fanshaw, 23, 24, 354.
Milton, John, on education, 60, 369.
---- Lamb on, 107.
---- adapted by Lamb, 188.
---- on the _Arcadia_, 242.
---- and the civil war, 242.
---- his Latin sonnet, "Ad Leonoram," 243, 426.
---- Lamb's copy of, 412.
Mingay, James, 102, 383.
MODERN GALLANTRY, 90, 377.
Money, sayings concerning, 290.
Montagu, Basil, 12, 252, 348, 431.
Lady Mary Wortley, 381.
Montgomery, James, and Lamb, 390.
Moore, Thomas, his _Loves of the Angels_, 276, 437.
Moore's _Diary_ quoted, 411.
_Morning Chronicle_ and Lamb, 429, 431.
-- _Herald_, 413.
-- _Post_ and Lamb, 249, 429.
Mothers and daughters, Lamb on, 273.
"Mourning Bride," Mary Lamb's first play, 387.
Moxon, Lamb's letter to, 434.
Mozart, Lamb copes with, successfully, 364.
"Mr. H." and Elliston, 409.
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST, 37, 361.
Munden, Joseph Shepherd, 168, 400.
Music, Lamb's difficulty with, 44, 363.
MY FIRST PLAY, 110, 385.
_My good friend, for favours to my son and wife_, 382.
MY RELATIONS, 80, 373.
N
Names of poets, Lamb on, 198.
Negroes, Lamb on, 71.
_New Monthly Magazine_, 342.
------ Lamb's contributions to, 212, 226, 286-309.
New River, the, and G.D., 237, 424.
NEW YEAR'S EVE, 31, 358.
Newcastle, Margaret, Duchess of, 30, 87, 131, 197, 357, 393, 412.
NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, 249, 428.
Newspaper stamps, 433.
Night-fears, Lamb on, 77.
_Nobleman, The Unfortunate Young_, 81.
Norris, Randal, 279, 416, 437.
North, Christopher (John Wilson), 371.
Novello, Vincent, 47, 363.
Nyren, John, 363.
O
_Odes and Addresses_ quoted, 392.
OF TWO DISPUTANTS, THE WARMEST IS GENERALLY IN THE WRONG, 291, 440.
Ogilvie, his memories of G.D., 424.
OLD ACTORS, THE, 322, 444.
-- BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE, THE, 94, 379.
-- CHINA, 281, 438.
-- MARGATE HOY, THE, 201, 415.
OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER, THE, 56, 369.
"Olen," Sir C.A. Elton's pseudonym, 358.
_O melancholy Bird, a winter's day_, 427.
_One parent vet is left,--a wretched thing_, 382.
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS, 150, 397. _See_ also APPENDIX.
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN, 168, 400. _See_ also APPENDIX.
ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY, 161, 399. _See_ also
APPENDIX.
Orrery lectures, 60, 370.
OXFORD IN THE VACATION, 8, 345.
Oxford, Lamb at, 8, 345.
P
Paice, Joseph, 92, 343, 378.
Palmer, John, 159, 399.
Paltock's _Peter Wilkins_, 21, 122, 353.
Paracelsus, Lamb on, 196.
_Paradise Regained_, 107.
Patmore, P.G., on Lamb, 403.
---- Lamb's letter to, 436.
---- on Lamb's dress, 438.
Peirson, Peter, 101, 382.
Susannah, 99, 381.
Penn, William, and the judges, 73.
Perry, James, 250, 431.
_Peter Wilkins_, 21, 122, 353.
"Peter's Net," 428, 431.
Pianoforte, Lamb's solo, 44.
Pig, Lamb's essay upon, 137, 395.
Piombo, his "Raising of Lazarus," 262, 435.
Piquet and Mrs. Battle, 41.
_Pity the sorrows of a poor old man_, 394.
Playgoing, the Lambs, 283.
Plumer, Richard, 7, 344.
-- Walter, 7, 40, 345, 362.
-- William, 344, 389, 405.
_Poetical Pieces on Several Occasions_ by John Lamb, 381.
Polar expeditions, 58, 369.
Poor, Lamb on the, 288, 298.
POOR RELATIONS, 178, 408.
Pope, Alexander, _The Rape of the Lock_, 38.
-- Miss, 167, 400.
POPULAR FALLACIES, 212, 226, 286, 287, 288, 290, 291, 292, 294, 296, 298,
302, 305, 308, 309, 439 _et seq_.
Pork, Lamb's essay on, 137.
Porphyry on _Abstinence from Animal Food_, 396.
Poverty and pleasure, 282.
Powell, Mrs., 151.
PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS, THE, 124, 390.
Presentation copies, Lamb on, 297, 441.
Presents, Lamb on, 296.
Procter, B.W. (Barry Cornwall), his dream, 79, 373.
---- quoted, 371, 377.
---- on Munden, 400.
Puckeridge and Lamb's property, 112.
Pulham, Brook, 363.
Punning, Lamb on, 122, 292, 441.
Puritans and Sunday, 418.
Q
Quadrille and Mrs. Battle, 38.
Quakerism and Lamb, 368.
QUAKER'S MEETING, A, 51, 367.
Quarrels, Lamb on, 309.
Quick, John, 332.
Quixote, Don, 154, 265, 398, 435.
R
Ramsay, London Librarian, 49, 367.
Raphael, his "Bible," 257.
Raymond, George, his _Memoirs of Elliston_, 410.
Reade, John, 102, 383.
Reading, Lamb's essay upon, 195, 411.
Red stockings, and Lamb's jokes, 251, 429.
_Reflector, The_, Lamb's contribution to, 144.
---- Moxon's paper, 434.
REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE, 266, 436.
Relations, poor, Lamb s essay on, 178, 408.
Restoration comedy, Lamb on, 160, 161.
Rickman, Mrs. John, Lamb's opinion of, 397.
Robinson, Crabb, quoted, 370.
---- Lamb's letters to, 374, 437.
---- on Lamb's books, 411.
Romano, Julio, 263.
Rover, in "Wild Oats," 188.
Roydon, Matthew, his elegy upon Sidney, 248, 428.
Rutter, Mr. J.A., his notes on Lamb, 343.
S
St. Dunstan's giants, 192, 410.
Saloop, Lamb on, 125.
Salt, Samuel, 98, 352, 380.
Samuel and the Witch of Endor, 75, 372.
Sandwich, Lord, epigram on, 344.
SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS, 212, 416.
Sargus, Mr. Lamb's tenant, 386.
"School for Scandal," Lamb on, 164.
School-days, Lamb on his, 14.
Schoolmasters, Lamb's essay on, 56, 369.
Scotchmen, Lamb on, 67, 371.
Scott, John, editor of the _London_, 340.
Sea, the, Lamb on, 204.
Sedition, Lamb's exercises in, 255.
Selden, John, 104, 384.
Sensitiveness, Lamb on, 181.
Sewel, William, historian of Quakers, 369.
Shaftesbury, Lord, 226, 420.
Shakespeare, Lamb on, 197, 412.
-- his bust at Stratford-on-Avon, 198, 413.
Sharp, Granville, 50, 367.
Shenstone, William, 243, 426.
Sheridan, R.B., 26, 111, 167, 356, 385, 400.
Siddons, Mrs., in "Isabella," 114, 388.
Sidney, Sir Philip, his sonnets, 242, 426.
Sitting up late, Lamb on, 308.
Smith, the Scotchman, 69, 370.
John Thomas, 394.
Smollett, Tobias George, 70, 371.
Smuggling, Lamb on, 207.
SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, 242, 426.
_So should it be, my gentle friend_, 426.
South Downs, Lamb on, 415.
SOUTH-SEA HOUSE, THE, 1, 342.
Southey at Westminster School, 235.
-- Robert, his criticism of _Elia_, 359.
-- Lamb's letters to, 384, 406, 419, 423, 436.
Spencer, Lord, epigram on, 344.
Spenser, Lamb's copy of the _Faerie Queene_, 413.
Stackhouse's _History of the Bible_, 75, 372.
STAGE ILLUSION, 185, 408.
Stanhope, Lord, 433.
Stocks, Lamb in the, 363.
_Stranger, to whom this monument is shown_, 413.
Stuart, Daniel, 250, 429. 430.
Suett, Dicky, 157, 399.
Sulkiness, its pleasures, 309.
Sun-dials in the Temple, 95.
SUPERANNUATED MAN, THE, 219, 417.
Superannuation, Lamb on, 219, 307.
Surface, Joseph and Charles, 166.
Swift's _Ars Punica_, 293, 441.
T
Taylor, Bishop, on the sunrise, 309.
-- John, 337, 341, 358.
Teeth, Lamb's admiration of, 127.
Temple, The, and Lamb, 94, 113, 379, 387.
-- the winged horse, 97.
-- Sir William, 226, 420,
THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD, 286, 440.
-- A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS OWN JEST, 287, 440.
-- A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE, 309, 443.
-- ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST, 290, 440.
-- HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES, 294, 441.
-- HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS NEVER SO HOMELY, 298, 442.
-- ILL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS, 287, 440.
-- SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING, ETC., 288, 440.
-- THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF THE RICH, 288, 440.
-- THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST, 292, 440.
-- VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, ETC., 292, 440.
-- WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT-HORSE IN THE MOUTH. 296, 441.
-- WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAME, 308, 443.
-- WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK, 305, 443.
-- YOU MUST LOVE ME, AND LOVE MY DOG, 302, 442.
_The chatt'ring Magpye undertook_, 437.
Thelwall, John, 376.
_They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke_, 359.
Thomson, James, 70.
_Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black_, 433.
Thurlow, Lord, his sonnet, 427.
Tipp, John, 5, 343.
Titian, his "Ariadne," 256, 434.
_To every one (so have ye faith) is given_, 426.
TO THE SHADE OK ELLISTON, 188, 409.
Tobin, James Webbe, 16, 352.
-- John, 199, 413.
TOMBS IN THE ABBEY, THE, 235, 423.
_Tristram Shandy_, a parallel to Lamb, 403.
Trollope, A.W., quoted, 351.
_Turkish Spy_ and Lamb's roast-pig essay, 395.
Turner, J.M.W., 258, 434.
"Twelfth Night," Lamb's remarks on, 150, 153, 284, 316.
Twelve Cæsars, 405, 406.
_Two Lords whose names if I should quote_, 344.
TWO RACES OF MEN, THE, 26, 355.
Twopenny, Richard, 102, 383.
-- post in 1825, 370.
U
Ugliness, Lamb on, 295.
Unitarianism, 81, 373.
V
VALENTINE'S DAY, 63, 370.
Vallans, his "Tale of Two Swans," 375.
Virgil, his Latin pun, 294, 441.
Visitors, Lamb on, 301, 442.
W
Wainewright, T.G., 395, 439.
Ward, Robert, afterwards Plumer-Ward, 405.
Watering-places, Lamb on, 201, 415.
Weathercock, Janus. _See_ Wainewright.
WEDDING, THE, 271, 436.
-- an interrupted, 305.
Westminster Abbey, the price for admission, 235, 423.
Westwood, Thomas, on Lamb, 441.
_We were two pretty babes, the youngest she_, 360.
Wharry, John, 102, 383.
_What can be hop'd from Priests who, 'gainst the Poor_, 424.
_What seem'd his tail the likeness of a kingly kick had on_, 409.
Whist, 37, 275, 361, 362, 437.
White, James, 123, 157, 390, 391.
---- and the chimney-sweepers, 128.
---- and Dodd, 157.
"Wild Oats," 188.
_Who first invented work--and bound the free_, 419.
Wilson, John. _See_ Christopher North.
Winstanley, Susan, and Joseph Paice, 92.
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS, 74, 372.
Woolman, John, 54, 369.
Wordsworth, Mrs., Lamb's letter to, 442.
-- William, his "Yarrow Visited," 89, 377.
---- Lamb's letters to, 356, 388, 412, 417, 418, 434.
---- his theory of language, 394.
---- his "Anecdote for Fathers," 395.
---- his "Poet's Epitaph," 438.
"Work," Lamb's sonnet on, 419.
Worthing and the Lambs, 415.
Wrench, Benjamin, 191, 410.
Wycherley, Lamb on, 162.
Y
_Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers_, 346.
***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB,
VOLUME 2***
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