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Title: The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb - Miscellaneous Prose
Author: Lamb, Mary, 1764-1847, Lamb, Charles, 1775-1834
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb - Miscellaneous Prose" ***
THE WORKS OF
CHARLES AND MARY LAMB
I. MISCELLANEOUS PROSE (1798-1834)
BY THE SAME EDITOR
The Life of Charles Lamb
Mr. Ingleside
Over Bemerton's
Listener's Lure
One Day and Another
Fireside and Sunshine
Character and Comedy
Old Lamps for New
The Hambledon Men
The Open Road
The Friendly Town
Her Infinite Variety
Good Company
The Gentlest Art
The Second Post
A Swan and Her Friends
A Wanderer in London
A Wanderer in Holland
A Wanderer in Paris
Highways and Byways in Sussex
Anne's Terrible Good Nature
The Slowcoach
Sir Pulteney
and
The Pocket Edition of the Works of Charles Lamb: I. Miscellaneous Prose;
II. Elia; III. Children's Books; IV. Poems and Plays; V. and VI.
Letters.
[Illustration: _Charles Lamb (aged 30)_
_In the dress of a Venetian Senator._
_From a painting by William Hazlitt._]
MISCELLANEOUS PROSE
BY
CHARLES AND MARY LAMB
EDITED BY
E. V. LUCAS
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in this form (Fcap. 8vo) in 1912_
_This Work was first Published in Seven Volumes (Demy 8vo) in 1903-5_
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
This edition is the same as that in seven large volumes published
between 1903 and 1905, except that it has been revised and amended and
arranged in more companionable shape. Some new matter is included; some
doubtful matter has been removed; and the notes, although occasionally
enriched, have been reduced in number and often condensed. For completer
annotation as well as for portraits and accessory illustrations the old
edition must be consulted.
The present volume contains all Lamb's prose, with the exception of his
work for children, his full notes in the Dramatic Specimens and Garrick
Extracts, his prose plays and the Elia essays. The contents have been
arranged in their order of publication, the earliest dating from 1798,
when Lamb was twenty-three, and the latest belonging to 1834, the year
of his death--thus covering the whole of his literary life.
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
TEXT NOTE
PAGE PAGE
Rosamund Gray 1 438
Curious fragments, extracted from a commonplace-book
which belonged to Robert Burton, the famous Author
of _The Anatomy of Melancholy_ 35 440
Early Journalism 41 442
I. G. F. Cooke in "Richard the Third" 41 442
II. Grand State Bed 44 442
III. Fable for Twelfth Day 44 444
IV. The Londoner 46 444
Characters of Dramatic Writers, Contemporary with
Shakspeare 48 445
On the Inconveniences Resulting from Being Hanged 65 445
On the Danger of Confounding Moral with Personal Deformity:
with a Hint to those who have the Framing
of Advertisements for Apprehending Offenders 74 448
On the Ambiguities Arising from Proper Names 80 448
On the Genius and Character of Hogarth; with some
Remarks on a Passage in the Writings of the Late
Mr. Barry 81 448
On the Custom of Hissing at the Theatres, with some
Account of a Club of Damned Authors 101 449
On Burial Societies; and the Character of an
Undertaker 107 451
On the Tragedies of Shakspeare, Considered with Reference
to their Fitness for Stage Representation 112 451
Specimens from the Writings of Fuller, the Church
Historian 130 453
Edax on Appetite 138 454
_Hospita_ on the Immoderate Indulgence of the Pleasures of
the Palate 145 454
The Good Clerk, a Character; with some Account of "The
Complete English Tradesman" 148 455
Memoir of Robert Lloyd 153 455
Confessions of a Drunkard 154 456
Recollections of Christ's Hospital 162 460
Table-Talk in _The Examiner_ 174 464
I. Reynolds and Leonardo Da Vinci 174 464
II. The New Acting 176 465
III. Books with one Idea in them 178 466
IV. A Sylvan Surprise 179 467
V. Street Conversation 179 467
VI. A Town Residence 180 467
VII. Gray's _Bard_ 181 468
VIII. An American War for Helen 182 468
IX. Dryden and Collier 183 468
X. Play-house Memoranda 184 468
Review of _The Excursion_ 187 469
On the Melancholy of Tailors 200 473
On Needle-work 204 477
On the Poetical Works of George Wither 210 477
Five Dramatic Criticisms 215 484
I. Mrs. Gould (Miss Burrell) in "Don Giovanni" 215 484
II. Miss Kelly at Bath 217 485
III. Richard Brome's "Jovial Crew" 219 486
IV. Isaac Bickerstaff's "Hypocrite" 221 489
V. New Pieces at the Lyceum 222 490
Four Reviews 225 491
I. _Falstaff's Letters_ 225 491
II. Charles Lloyd's Poems 229 493
III. Barron Field's Poems 232 493
IV. Keats' "Lamia" 235 494
Sir Thomas More 239 495
The Confessions of H. F. V. H. Delamore, Esq. 246 496
The Gentle Giantess 248 497
Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education has been
Neglected 251 497
Ritson _versus_ John Scott the Quaker 257 498
Letter of Elia to Robert Southey 265 498
Guy Faux 278 509
Nugæ Criticæ: On a Passage in "The Tempest" 285 511
Original Letter of James Thomson 288 512
Biographical Memoir of Mr. Liston 292 512
A Vision of Horns 299 513
The Illustrious Defunct 304 514
Unitarian Protests 310 514
Autobiography of Mr. Munden 314 515
The "Lepus" Papers 317 515
I. Many Friends 317 516
II. Readers against the Grain 319 516
III. Mortifications of an Author 322 516
IV. Tom Pry 324 516
V. Tom Pry's Wife 326 517
VI. A Character 327 517
Reflections in the Pillory 329 518
The Last Peach 333 519
"Odes and Addresses to Great People" 335 519
The Religion of Actors 337 521
A Popular Fallacy 340 523
Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq., of Birmingham 342 523
Contributions to Hone's _Every-Day Book_ and _Table Book_ 349 523
I. Remarkable Correspondent 349 527
II. Captain Starkey 351 528
III. Twelfth of August 354 528
IV. The Ass 356 529
V. _In re_ Squirrels 359 530
VI. An Appearance of the Season 360 531
VII. The Months 361 531
VIII. Reminiscence of Sir Jeffery Dunstan 366 532
IX. Mrs. Gilpin Riding to Edmonton 368 533
X. The Defeat of Time 369 534
An Autobiographical Sketch 375 535
Shakspeare's Improvers 376 535
Saturday Night 379 537
Estimate of De Foe's Secondary Novels 381 537
Clarence Songs 383 539
Recollections of a Late Royal Academician 385 540
The Latin Poems of Vincent Bourne 391 544
The Death of Munden 397 545
Thoughts on Presents of Game, &c. 398 546
Table-Talk by the Late Elia 400 547
The Death of Coleridge 406 549
Cupid's Revenge 407 550
APPENDIX
ESSAYS AND NOTES NOT CERTAIN TO BE LAMB'S, BUT PROBABLY HIS
Scraps of Criticism 425 551
The Miscellany 427 552
Review of Dibdin's _Comic Tales_ 429 552
Dog Days 430 553
The Progress of Cant 431 554
Mr. Ephraim Wagstaff 432 554
Review of Moxon's Sonnets 435 554
NOTES 437
FRONTISPIECE
CHARLES LAMB (AGED 30) IN THE DRESS OF A VENETIAN SENATOR
From A Painting By William Hazlitt Now in the National Portrait
Gallery
ROSAMUND GRAY
(WRITTEN 1797-1798. FIRST EDITION 1798. TEXT OF 1818)
CHAPTER I
It was noontide. The sun was very hot. An old gentlewoman sat spinning
in a little arbour at the door of her cottage. She was blind; and her
grandaughter was reading the Bible to her. The old lady had just left
her work, to attend to the story of Ruth.
"Orpah kissed her mother-in-law; but Ruth clave unto her." It was a
passage she could not let pass without a _comment_. The moral she drew
from it was not very _new_, to be sure. The girl had heard it a hundred
times before--and a hundred times more she could have heard it, without
suspecting it to be tedious. Rosamund loved her grandmother.
The old lady loved Rosamund too; and she had reason for so doing.
Rosamund was to her at once a child and a servant. She had only _her_
left in the world. They two lived together.
They had once known better days. The story of Rosamund's parents, their
failure, their folly, and distresses, may be told another time. Our tale
hath grief enough in it.
It was now about a year and a half since old Margaret Gray had sold off
all her effects, to pay the debts of Rosamund's father--just after the
mother had died of a broken heart; for her husband had fled his country
to hide his shame in a foreign land. At that period the old lady retired
to a small cottage, in the village of Widford, in Hertfordshire.
Rosamund, in her thirteenth year, was left destitute, without fortune or
friends: she went with her grandmother. In all this time she had served
her faithfully and lovingly.
Old Margaret Gray, when she first came into these parts, had eyes, and
could see. The neighbours said, they had been dimmed by weeping: be that
as it may, she was latterly grown quite blind. "God is very good to us,
child; I can _feel_ you yet." This she would sometimes say; and we need
not wonder to hear, that Rosamund clave unto her grandmother.
Margaret retained a spirit unbroken by calamity. There was a principle
_within_, which it seemed as if no outward circumstances could reach. It
was a _religious_ principle, and she had taught it to Rosamund; for the
girl had mostly resided with her grandmother from her earliest years.
Indeed she had taught her all that she knew herself; and the old lady's
knowledge did not extend a vast way.
Margaret had drawn her maxims from observation; and a pretty long
experience in life had contributed to make her, at times, a little
_positive_: but Rosamund never argued with her grandmother.
Their library consisted chiefly in a large family Bible, with notes and
expositions by various learned expositors from Bishop Jewell downwards.
This might never be suffered to lie about like other books--but was kept
constantly wrapt up in a handsome case of green velvet, with gold
tassels--the only relick of departed grandeur they had brought with them
to the cottage--every thing else of value had been sold off for the
purpose above mentioned.
This Bible Rosamund, when a child, had never dared to open without
permission; and even yet, from habit, continued the custom. Margaret had
parted with none of her _authority_; indeed it was never exerted with
much harshness; and happy was Rosamund, though a girl grown, when she
could obtain leave to read her Bible. It was a treasure too valuable for
an indiscriminate use; and Margaret still pointed out to her
grandaughter _where to read_.
Besides this, they had the "Complete Angler, or Contemplative Man's
Recreation," with cuts--"Pilgrim's Progress," the first part--a Cookery
Book, with a few dry sprigs of rosemary and lavender stuck here and
there between the leaves, (I suppose, to point to some of the old lady's
most favorite receipts,) and there was "Wither's Emblems," an old book,
and quaint. The old fashioned pictures in this last book were among the
first exciters of the infant Rosamund's curiosity. Her contemplation
had fed upon them in rather older years.
Rosamund had not read many books besides these; or if any, they had been
only occasional companions: these were to Rosamund as old friends, that
she had long known. I know not whether the peculiar cast of her mind
might not be traced, in part, to a tincture she had received, early in
life, from Walton, and Wither, from John Bunyan, and her Bible.
Rosamund's mind was pensive and reflective, rather than what passes
usually for _clever_ or _acute_. From a child she was remarkably shy and
thoughtful--this was taken for stupidity and want of feeling; and the
child has been sometimes whipt for being a _stubborn thing_, when her
little heart was almost bursting with affection.
Even now her grandmother would often reprove her, when she found her too
grave or melancholy; give her sprightly lectures about good humour and
rational mirth; and not unfrequently fall a crying herself, to the great
discredit of her lecture. Those tears endeared her the more to Rosamund.
Margaret would say, "Child, I love you to cry, when I think you are only
remembering your poor dear father and mother--I would have you think
about them sometimes--it would be strange if you did not--but I fear,
Rosamund; I fear, girl, you sometimes think too deeply about your own
situation and poor prospects in life. When you do so, you do
wrong--remember the naughty rich man in the parable. He never had any
good thoughts about God, and his religion: and that might have been your
case."
Rosamund, at these times, could not reply to her; she was not in the
habit of _arguing_ with her grandmother; so she was quite silent on
these occasions--or else the girl knew well enough herself, that she had
only been sad to think of the desolate condition of her best friend, to
see her, in her old age, so infirm and blind. But she had never been
used to make excuses, when the old lady said she was doing wrong.
The neighbours were all very kind to them. The veriest rustics never
passed them without a bow, or a pulling off of the hat--some shew of
courtesy, aukward indeed, but affectionate--with a "good morrow, madam,"
or "young madam," as it might happen.
Rude and savage natures, who seem born with a propensity to express
contempt for any thing that looks like prosperity, yet felt respect for
its declining lustre.
The farmers, and better sort of people, (as they are called,) all
promised to provide for Rosamund, when her grandmother should die.
Margaret trusted in God, and believed them.
She used to say, "I have lived many years in the world, and have never
known people, _good people_, to be left without some friend; a relation,
a benefactor, a _something_. God knows our wants--that it is not good
for man or woman to be alone; and he always sends us a helpmate, a
leaning-place, a _somewhat_." Upon this sure ground of experience, did
Margaret build her trust in Providence.
CHAPTER II
Rosamund had just made an end of her story, (as I was about to relate,)
and was listening to the application of the moral, (which said
application she was old enough to have made herself, but her grandmother
still continued to treat her, in many respects, as a child, and Rosamund
was in no haste to lay claim to the title of womanhood,) when a young
gentleman made his appearance, and interrupted them.
It was young Allan Clare, who had brought a present of peaches, and some
roses, for Rosamund.
He laid his little basket down on a seat of the arbour; and in a
respectful tone of voice, as though he were addressing a parent,
enquired of Margaret "how she did."
The old lady seemed pleased with his attentions--answered his enquiries
by saying, that "her cough was less troublesome a-nights, but she had
not yet got rid of it, and probably she never might; but she did not
like to teaze young people with an account of her infirmities."
A few kind words passed on either side, when young Clare, glancing a
tender look at the girl, who had all this time been silent, took leave
of them with saying "I shall bring _Elinor_ to see you in the evening."
When he was gone, the old lady began to prattle.
"That is a sweet dispositioned youth, and I _do_ love him dearly, I must
say it--there is such a modesty in all he says or does--he should not
come here so often, to be sure, but I don't know how to help it; there
is so much goodness in him, I can't find in my heart to forbid him. But,
Rosamund, girl, I must tell you beforehand; when you grow older, Mr.
Clare must be no companion for _you_--while you were both so young, it
was all very well--but the time is coming, when folks will think harm of
it, if a rich young gentleman, like Mr. Clare, comes so often to our
poor cottage.--Dost hear, girl? why don't you answer? come, I did not
mean to say any thing to hurt you--speak to me, Rosamund--nay, I must
not have you be sullen--I don't love people that are sullen."
And in this manner was this poor soul running on, unheard and unheeded,
when it occurred to her, that possibly the girl might not be _within
hearing_.
And true it was, that Rosamund had slunk away at the first mention of
Mr. Clare's good qualities: and when she returned, which was not till a
few minutes after Margaret had made an end of her fine harangue, it is
certain her cheeks _did_ look very _rosy_. That might have been from the
heat of the day or from exercise, for she had been walking in the
garden.
Margaret, we know, was blind; and, in this case, it was lucky for
Rosamund that she was so, or she might have made some not unlikely
surmises.
I must not have my reader infer from this, that I at all think it
likely, a young maid of fourteen would fall in love without asking her
grandmother's leave--the thing itself is not to be conceived.
To obviate all suspicions, I am disposed to communicate a little
anecdote of Rosamund.
A month or two back her grandmother had been giving her the strictest
prohibitions, in her walks, not to go near a certain spot, which was
dangerous from the circumstance of a huge overgrown oak tree spreading
its prodigious arms across a deep chalk-pit, which they partly
concealed.
To this fatal place Rosamund came one day--female curiosity, we know, is
older than the flood--let us not think hardly of the girl, if she
partook of the sexual failing.
Rosamund ventured further and further--climbed along one of the
branches--approached the forbidden chasm--her foot slipped--she was not
killed--but it was by a mercy she escaped--other branches intercepted
her fall--and with a palpitating heart she made her way back to the
cottage.
It happened that evening, that her grandmother was in one of her best
humours, caressed Rosamund, talked of old times, and what a blessing it
was they two found a shelter in their little cottage, and in conclusion
told Rosamund, "she was a good girl, and God would one day reward her
for her kindness to her old blind grandmother."
This was more than Rosamund could bear. Her morning's disobedience came
fresh into her mind, she felt she did not deserve all this from
Margaret, and at last burst into a fit of crying, and made confession of
her fault. The old gentlewoman kissed and forgave her.
Rosamund never went near that naughty chasm again.
Margaret would never have heard of this, if Rosamund had not told of it
herself. But this young maid had a delicate moral sense, which would not
suffer her to take advantage of her grandmother, to deceive her, or
conceal any thing from her, though Margaret was old, and blind, and easy
to be imposed upon.
Another virtuous _trait_ I recollect of Rosamund, and, now I am in the
vein, will tell it.
Some, I know, will think these things trifles--and they are so--but if
these _minutiæ_ my reader better acquainted with Rosamund, I am content
to abide the imputation.
These promises of character, hints, and early indications of a _sweet
nature_, are to me more dear, and choice in the selection, than any of
those pretty wild flowers, which this young maid, this virtuous
Rosamund, has ever gathered in a fine May morning, to make a posy to
place in the bosom of her old blind friend.
Rosamund had a very just notion of drawing, and would often employ her
talent in making sketches of the surrounding scenery.
On a landscape, a larger piece than she had ever yet attempted, she had
now been working for three or four months. She had taken great pains
with it, given much time to it, and it was nearly finished. For _whose_
particular inspection it was designed, I will not venture to conjecture.
We know it could not have been for her grandmother's.
One day she went out on a short errand, and left her landscape on the
table. When she returned she found it _gone_.
Rosamund from the first suspected some mischief, but held her tongue. At
length she made the fatal discovery. Margaret, in her absence, had laid
violent hands on it; not knowing what it was, but taking it for some
waste paper, had torn it in half, and with one half of this elaborate
composition had twisted herself up--a thread-paper!
Rosamund spread out her hands at sight of the disaster, gave her
grandmother a roguish smile, but said not a word. She knew the poor soul
would only fret, if she told her of it,--and when once Margaret was set
a fretting for other people's misfortunes, the fit held her pretty long.
So Rosamund that very afternoon began another piece of the same size and
subject; and Margaret, to her dying day, never dreamed of the mischief
she had unconsciously done.
CHAPTER III
Rosamund Gray was the most beautiful young creature that eyes ever
beheld. Her face had the sweetest expression in it--a gentleness--a
modesty--a timidity--a certain charm--a grace without a name.
There was a sort of melancholy mingled in her smile. It was not the
thoughtless levity of a girl--it was not the restrained simper of
premature womanhood--it was something which the poet Young might have
remembered, when he composed that perfect line,
"Soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair."
She was a mild-eyed maid, and every body loved her. Young Allan Clare,
when but a boy, sighed for her.
Her yellow hair fell in bright and curling clusters, like
"those hanging locks
Of young Apollo."
Her voice was trembling and musical. A graceful diffidence pleaded for
her whenever she spake--and, if she said but little, that little found
its way to the heart.
Young, and artless, and innocent, meaning no harm, and thinking none;
affectionate as a smiling infant--playful, yet inobtrusive, as a weaned
lamb--every body loved her. Young Allan Clare, when but a boy, sighed
for her.
* * * * *
The moon is shining in so brightly at my window, where I write, that I
feel it a crime not to suspend my employment awhile to gaze at her.
See how she glideth, in maiden honor, through the clouds, who divide on
either side to do her homage.
Beautiful vision!--as I contemplate thee, an internal harmony is
communicated to my mind, a moral brightness, a tacit analogy of mental
purity; a calm like _that_ we ascribe in fancy to the favored
inhabitants of thy fairy regions, "argent fields."
I marvel not, O moon, that heathen people, in the "olden times," did
worship thy deity--Cynthia, Diana, Hecate. Christian Europe invokes thee
not by these names now--her idolatry is of a blacker stain: Belial is
her God--she worships Mammon.
False things are told concerning thee, fair planet--for I will ne'er
believe, that thou canst take a perverse pleasure in distorting the
brains of us poor mortals. Lunatics! moonstruck! Calumny invented, and
folly took up, these names. I would hope better things from thy mild
aspect and benign influences.
Lady of Heaven, thou lendest thy pure lamp to light the way to the
virgin mourner, when she goes to seek the tomb where her warrior lover
lies.
Friend of the distressed, thou speakest only _peace_ to the lonely
sufferer, who walks forth in the placid evening, beneath thy gentle
light, to chide at fortune, or to complain of changed friends, or
unhappy loves.
Do I dream, or doth not even now a heavenly calm descend from thee into
my bosom, as I meditate on the chaste loves of Rosamund and her Clare?
CHAPTER IV
Allan Clare was just two years elder than Rosamund. He was a boy of
fourteen, when he first became acquainted with her--it was soon after
she had come to reside with her grandmother at Widford.
He met her by chance one day, carrying a pitcher in her hand, which she
had been filling from a neighbouring well--the pitcher was heavy, and
she seemed to be bending with its weight.
Allan insisted on carrying it for her--for he thought it a sin, that a
delicate young maid, like her, should be so employed, and he stand idle
by.
Allan had a propensity to do little kind offices for every body--but at
the sight of Rosamund Gray his first fire was kindled--his young mind
seemed to have found an object, and his enthusiasm was from that time
forth awakened. His visits, from that day, were pretty frequent at the
cottage.
He was never happier than when he could get Rosamund to walk out with
him. He would make her admire the scenes he admired--fancy the wild
flowers he fancied--watch the clouds he was watching--and not
unfrequently repeat to her poetry, which he loved, and make her love it.
On their return, the old lady, who considered them yet as but children,
would bid Rosamund fetch Mr. Clare a glass of her currant wine, a bowl
of new milk, or some cheap dainty, which was more welcome to Allan than
the costliest delicacies of a prince's court.
The boy and girl, for they were no more at that age, grew fond of each
other--more fond than either of them suspected.
"They would sit, and sigh,
And look upon each other, and conceive
Not what they ail'd; yet something they did ail,
And yet were well--and yet they were not well;
And what was their disease, they could not tell.
And thus,
In this first garden of their simpleness
They spent their childhood."
A circumstance had lately happened, which in some sort altered the
nature of their attachment.
Rosamund was one day reading the tale of "Julia de Roubigné"--a book
which young Clare had lent her.
Allan was standing by, looking over her, with one hand thrown round her
neck, and a finger of the other pointing to a passage in Julia's third
letter.
"Maria! in my hours of visionary indulgence, I have sometimes painted to
myself a _husband_--no matter whom--comforting me amidst the distresses,
which fortune had laid upon us. I have smiled upon him through my tears;
tears, not of anguish, but of tenderness;--our children were playing
around us, unconscious of misfortune; we had taught them to be humble,
and to be happy; our little shed was reserved to us, and their smiles to
cheer it.--I have imagined the luxury of such a scene, and affliction
became a part of my dream of happiness."
The girl blushed as she read, and trembled--she had a sort of confused
sensation, that Allan was noticing her--yet she durst not lift her eyes
from the book, but continued reading, scarce knowing what she read.
Allan guessed the cause of her confusion. Allan trembled too--his colour
came and went--his feeling became impetuous--and, flinging both arms
round her neck, he kissed his young favourite.
Rosamund was vexed and pleased, soothed and frightened, all in a
moment--a fit of tears came to her relief.
Allan had indulged before in these little freedoms, and Rosamund had
thought no harm of them--but from this time the girl grew timid and
reserved--distant in her manner, and careful of her behaviour, in
Allan's presence--not seeking his society as before, but rather shunning
it--delighting more to feed upon his idea in absence.
Allan too, from this day, seemed changed: his manner became, though not
less tender, yet more respectful and diffident--his bosom felt a throb
it had till now not known, in the society of Rosamund--and, if he was
less familiar with her than in former times, that charm of delicacy had
superadded a grace to Rosamund, which, while he feared, he loved.
There is a _mysterious character_, heightened indeed by fancy and
passion, but not without foundation in reality and observation, which
true lovers have ever imputed to the object of their affections. This
character Rosamund had now acquired with Allan--something _angelic,
perfect, exceeding nature_.
Young Clare dwelt very near to the cottage. He had lost his parents, who
were rather wealthy, early in life; and was left to the care of a
sister, some ten years older than himself.
Elinor Clare was an excellent young lady--discreet, intelligent, and
affectionate. Allan revered her as a parent, while he loved her as his
own familiar friend. He told all the little secrets of his heart to
her--but there was _one_, which he had hitherto unaccountably concealed
from her--namely, the extent of his regard for Rosamund.
Elinor knew of his visits to the cottage, and was no stranger to the
persons of Margaret and her grandaughter. She had several times met
them, when she had been walking with her brother--a civility usually
passed on either side--but Elinor avoided troubling her brother with any
unseasonable questions.
Allan's heart often beat, and he has been going to tell his sister
_all_--but something like shame (false or true, I shall not stay to
enquire) had hitherto kept him back--still the secret, unrevealed, hung
upon his conscience like a crime--for his temper had a sweet and noble
frankness in it, which bespake him yet a virgin from the world.
There was a fine openness in his countenance--the character of it
somewhat resembled Rosamund's--except that more fire and enthusiasm were
discernible in Allan's--his eyes were of a darker blue than
Rosamund's--his hair was of a chesnut colour--his cheeks ruddy, and
tinged with brown. There was a cordial sweetness in Allan's smile, the
like to which I never saw in any other face.
Elinor had hitherto connived at her brother's attachment to Rosamund.
Elinor, I believe, was something of a physiognomist, and thought she
could trace in the countenance and manner of Rosamund qualities, which
no brother of her's need be ashamed to love.
The time was now come, when Elinor was desirous of knowing her brother's
favorite more intimately--an opportunity offered of breaking the matter
to Allan.
The morning of the day, in which he carried his present of fruit and
flowers to Rosamund, his sister had observed him more than usually busy
in the garden, culling fruit with a nicety of choice not common to him.
She came up to him, unobserved, and, taking him by the arm, enquired,
with a questioning smile--"What are you doing, Allan? and who are those
peaches designed for?"
"For Rosamund Gray"--he replied--and his heart seemed relieved of a
burthen, which had long oppressed it.
"I have a mind to become acquainted with your handsome friend--will you
introduce me, Allan? I think I should like to go and see her this
afternoon."
"Do go, do go, Elinor--you don't know what a good creature she is--and
old blind Margaret, you will like _her_ very much."
His sister promised to accompany him after dinner; and they parted.
Allan gathered no more peaches, but hastily cropping a few roses to
fling into his basket, went away with it half filled, being impatient to
announce to Rosamund the coming of her promised visitor.
CHAPTER V
When Allan returned home, he found an invitation had been left for him,
in his absence, to spend that evening with a young friend, who had just
quitted a public school in London, and was come to pass one night in his
father's house at Widford, previous to his departure the next morning
for Edinburgh University.
It was Allan's bosom friend--they had not met for some months--and it
was probable, a much longer time must intervene, before they should meet
again.
Yet Allan could not help looking a little blank, when he first heard of
the invitation. This was to have been an important evening. But Elinor
soon relieved her brother, by expressing her readiness to go alone to
the cottage.
"I will not lose the pleasure I promised myself, whatever you may
determine upon, Allan--I will go by myself rather than be disappointed."
"Will you, will you, Elinor?"
Elinor promised to go--and I believe, Allan, on a second thought, was
not very sorry to be spared the aukwardness of introducing two persons
to each other, both so dear to him, but either of whom might happen not
much to fancy the other.
At times, indeed, he was confident that Elinor _must_ love Rosamund, and
Rosamund _must_ love Elinor--but there were also times in which he felt
misgivings--it was an event he could scarce hope for very joy!
Allan's _real presence_ that evening was more at the cottage than at the
house, where his _bodily semblance_ was visiting--his friend could not
help complaining of a certain absence of mind, a _coldness_ he called
it.
It might have been expected, and in the course of things predicted, that
Allan would have asked his friend some questions of what had happened
since their last meeting, what his feelings were on leaving school, the
probable time when they should meet again, and a hundred natural
questions which friendship is most lavish of at such times; but nothing
of all this ever occurred to Allan--they did not even settle the method
of their future correspondence.
The consequence was, as might have been expected, Allan's friend thought
him much altered, and, after his departure, sat down to compose a
doleful sonnet about a "faithless friend."--I do not find that he ever
finished it--indignation, or a dearth of rhymes, causing him to break
off in the middle.
CHAPTER VI
In my catalogue of the little library at the cottage, I forgot to
mention a book of Common Prayer. My reader's fancy might easily have
supplied the omission--old ladies of Margaret's stamp (God bless them)
may as well be without their spectacles, or their elbow chair, as their
prayer book--I love them for it.
Margaret's was a handsome octavo, printed by Baskerville, the binding
red, and fortified with silver at the edges. Out of this book it was
their custom every afternoon to read the proper psalms appointed for the
day.
The way they managed was this: they took verse by verse--Rosamund _read_
her little portion, and Margaret repeated hers, in turn, from
memory--for Margaret could say all the Psalter by heart, and a good part
of the Bible besides. She would not unfrequently put the girl right when
she stumbled or skipped. This Margaret imputed to giddiness--a quality
which Rosamund was by no means remarkable for--but old ladies, like
Margaret, are not in all instances alike discriminative.
They had been employed in this manner just before Miss Clare arrived at
the cottage. The psalm they had been reading was the hundred and
fourth--Margaret was naturally led by it into a discussion of the works
of creation.
There had been _thunder_ in the course of the day--an occasion of
instruction which the old lady never let pass--she began--
"Thunder has a very awful sound--some say, God Almighty is angry
whenever it thunders--that it is the voice of God speaking to us--for my
part, I am not afraid of it"--
And in this manner the old lady was going on to particularise, as usual,
its beneficial effects, in clearing the air, destroying of vermin, &c.
when the entrance of Miss Clare put an end to her discourse.
Rosamund received her with respectful tenderness--and, taking her
grandmother by the hand, said, with great sweetness, "Miss Clare is come
to see you, grandmother."
"I beg pardon, lady--I cannot _see_ you--but you are heartily
welcome--is your brother with you, Miss Clare? I don't hear him."--
"He could not come, madam, but he sends his love by me."
"You have an excellent brother, Miss Clare--but pray do us the honor to
take some refreshment--Rosamund"----
And the old lady was going to give directions for a bottle of her
currant wine--when Elinor, smiling, said "she was come to take a cup of
tea with her, and expected to find no ceremony."
"After tea, I promise myself a walk with _you_, Rosamund, if your
grandmother can spare you."--Rosamund looked at her grandmother.
"O, for that matter, I should be sorry to debar the girl from any
pleasure--I am sure it's lonesome enough for her to be with _me_
always--and if Miss Clare will take you out, child, I shall do very well
by myself till you return--it will not be the first time, you know, that
I have been left here alone--some of the neighbours will be dropping in
bye and bye--or, if _not_, I shall take no harm."
Rosamund had all the simple manners of a child--she kissed her
grandmother, and looked happy.
All tea-time the old lady's discourse was little more than a panegyric
on young Clare's good qualities. Elinor looked at her young friend, and
smiled. Rosamund was beginning to look grave--but there was a cordial
sunshine in the face of Elinor, before which any clouds of reserve, that
had been gathering on Rosamund's soon brake away.
"Does your grandmother ever go out, Rosamund?"
Margaret prevented the girl's reply, by saying--"my dear young lady, I
am an old woman, and very infirm--Rosamund takes me a few paces beyond
the door sometimes--but I walk very badly--I love best to sit in our
little arbour, when the sun shines--I can yet feel it warm and
cheerful--and, if I lose the beauties of the season, I shall be very
happy if you and Rosamund can take delight in this fine summer evening."
"I shall want to rob you of Rosamund's company now and then, if we like
one another. I had hoped to have seen _you_, madam, at our house. I
don't know whether we could not make room for you to come and live with
us--what say you to it?--Allan would be proud to tend you, I am sure;
and Rosamund and I should be nice company."
Margaret was all unused to such kindnesses, and wept--Margaret had a
great spirit--yet she was not above accepting an obligation from a
worthy person--there was a delicacy in Miss Clare's manner--she could
have no interest, but pure goodness, to induce her to make the offer--at
length the old lady spake from a full heart.
"Miss Clare, this little cottage received us in our distress--it gave us
shelter when we had _no home_--we have praised God in it--and, while
life remains, I think I shall never part from it--Rosamund does every
thing for me--"
"And will do, grandmother, as long as I live;"--and then Rosamund fell a
crying.
"You are a good girl, Rosamund, and if you do but find friends when I am
dead and gone, I shall want no better accommodation while I live--but,
God bless you, lady, a thousand times, for your kind offer."
Elinor was moved to tears, and, affecting a sprightliness, bade Rosamund
prepare for her walk. The girl put on her white silk bonnet; and Elinor
thought she had never beheld so lovely a creature.
They took leave of Margaret, and walked out together--they rambled over
all Rosamund's favourite haunts--through many a sunny field--by secret
glade or woodwalk, where the girl had wandered so often with her beloved
Clare.
Who now so happy as Rosamund? She had oft-times heard Allan speak with
great tenderness of his sister--she was now rambling, arm in arm, with
that very sister, the "vaunted sister" of her friend, her beloved Clare.
Not a tree, not a bush, scarce a wild flower in their path, but revived
in Rosamund some tender recollection, a conversation perhaps, or some
chaste endearment. Life, and a new scene of things, were now opening
before her--she was got into a fairy land of uncertain existence.
Rosamund was too happy to talk much--but Elinor was delighted with her
when she _did_ talk:--the girl's remarks were suggested, most of them,
by the passing scene--and they betrayed, all of them, the liveliness of
present impulse:--her conversation did not consist in a comparison of
vapid feeling, an interchange of sentiment lip-deep--it had all the
freshness of young sensation in it.
Sometimes they talked of Allan.
"Allan is very good," said Rosamund, "very good _indeed_ to my
grandmother--he will sit with her, and hear her stories, and read to
her, and try to divert her a hundred ways. I wonder sometimes he is not
tired. She talks him to death!"
"Then you confess, Rosamund, that the old lady _does_ tire _you_
sometimes."
"Oh no, I did not mean _that_--it's very different--I am used to all her
ways, and I can humour her, and please her, and I ought to do it, for
she is the only friend I ever had in the world."
The new friends did not conclude their walk till it was late, and
Rosamund began to be apprehensive about the old lady, who had been all
this time alone.
On their return to the cottage, they found that Margaret had been
somewhat impatient--old ladies, _good old ladies_, will be so at
times--age is timorous and suspicious of danger, where no danger is.
Besides, it was Margaret's bed-time, for she kept very good
hours--indeed, in the distribution of her meals, and sundry other
particulars, she resembled the livers in the antique world, more than
might well beseem a creature of this.
So the new friends parted for that night--Elinor having made Margaret
promise to give Rosamund leave to come and see her the next day.
CHAPTER VII
Miss Clare, we may be sure, made her brother very happy, when she told
him of the engagement she had made for the morrow, and how delighted she
had been with his handsome friend.
Allan, I believe, got little sleep that night. I know not, whether joy
be not a more troublesome bed-fellow than grief--hope keeps a body very
wakeful, I know.
Elinor Clare was the best good creature--the least selfish human being I
ever knew--always at work for other people's good, planning other
people's happiness--continually forgetful to consult for her own
personal gratifications, except indirectly, in the welfare of
another--while her parents lived, the most attentive of daughters--since
they died, the kindest of sisters--I never knew but _one_ like her.
It happens that I have some of this young lady's _letters_ in my
possession--I shall present my reader with one of them. It was written
a short time after the death of her mother, and addressed to a cousin, a
dear friend of Elinor's, who was then on the point of being married to
Mr. Beaumont, of Staffordshire, and had invited Elinor to assist at her
nuptials. I will transcribe it with minute fidelity.
* * * * *
_Elinor Clare to Maria Leslie_
Widford, July the --, 17--.
Health, Innocence, and Beauty, shall be thy bridemaids, my sweet cousin.
I have no heart to undertake the office. Alas! what have I to do in the
house of feasting?
Maria! I fear lest my griefs should prove obtrusive. Yet bear with me a
little--I have recovered already a share of my former spirits.
I fear more for Allan than myself. The loss of two such parents, with so
short an interval, bears very heavy on him. The boy _hangs_ about me
from morning till night. He is perpetually forcing a smile into his poor
pale cheeks--you know the sweetness of his smile, Maria.
To-day, after dinner, when he took his glass of wine in his hand, he
burst into tears, and would not, or could not then, tell me the
reason--afterwards he told me--"he had been used to drink Mamma's health
after dinner, and _that_ came in his head and made him cry." I feel the
claims the boy has upon me--I perceive that I am living to _some
end_--and the thought supports me.
Already I have attained to a state of complacent feelings--my mother's
lessons were not thrown away upon her Elinor.
In the visions of last night her spirit seemed to stand at my
bed-side--a light, as of noon day, shone upon the room--she opened my
curtains--she smiled upon me with the same placid smile as in her
life-time. I felt no fear. "Elinor," she said, "for my sake take care of
young Allan,"--and I awoke with calm feelings.
Maria! shall not the meeting of blessed spirits, think you, be something
like this?--I think, I could even now behold my mother without dread--I
would ask pardon of her for all my past omissions of duty, for all the
little asperities in my temper, which have so often grieved her gentle
spirit when living. Maria! I think she would not turn away from me.
Oftentimes a feeling, more vivid than memory, brings her before me--I
see her sit in her old elbow chair--her arms folded upon her lap--a tear
upon her cheek, that seems to upbraid her unkind daughter for some
inattention--I wipe it away and kiss her honored lips.
Maria! when I have been fancying all this, Allan will come in, with his
poor eyes red with weeping, and taking me by the hand, destroy the
vision in a moment.
I am prating to you, my sweet cousin, but it is the prattle of the
heart, which Maria loves. Besides, whom have I to talk to of these
things but you--you have been my counsellor in times past, my companion,
and sweet familiar friend. Bear with me a little--I mourn the
"cherishers of my infancy."
I sometimes count it a blessing, that my father did not prove the
_survivor_. You know something of his story. You know there was a foul
tale current--it was the busy malice of that bad man, S----, which
helped to spread it abroad--you will recollect the active good nature of
our friends W---- and T----; what pains they took to undeceive
people--with the better sort their kind labours prevailed; but there was
still a party who shut their ears. You know the issue of it. My father's
great spirit bore up against it for some time--my father never was a
_bad_ man--but that spirit was broken at the last--and the
greatly-injured man was forced to leave his old paternal dwelling in
Staffordshire--for the neighbours had begun to point at him.--Maria! I
have _seen_ them _point_ at him, and have been ready to drop.
In this part of the country, where the slander had not reached, he
sought a retreat--and he found a still more grateful asylum in the daily
solicitudes of the best of wives.
"An enemy hath done this," I have heard him say--and at such times my
mother would speak to him so soothingly of forgiveness, and
long-suffering, and the bearing of injuries with patience; would heal
all his wounds with so gentle a touch;--I have seen the old man weep
like a child.
The gloom that beset his mind, at times betrayed him into scepticism--he
has doubted if there be a Providence! I have heard him say, "GOD has
built a brave world, but methinks he has left his creatures to bustle in
it _how they may_."
At such times he could not endure to hear my mother talk in a religious
strain. He would say, "Woman, have done--you confound, you perplex me,
when you talk of these matters, and for one day at least unfit me for
the business of life."
I have seen her look at him--O GOD, Maria! such a _look_! it plainly
spake that she was willing to have shared her precious hope with the
partner of her earthly cares--but she found a repulse--
Deprived of such a wife, think you, the old man could have long endured
his existence? or what consolation would his wretched daughter have had
to offer him, but silent and imbecile tears?
My sweet cousin, you will think me tedious--and I am so--but it does me
good to talk these matters over. And do not you be alarmed for me--my
sorrows are subsiding into a deep and sweet resignation. I shall soon be
sufficiently composed, I know it, to participate in my friend's
happiness.
Let me call her, while yet I may, my own Maria Leslie! Methinks, I shall
not like you by any other name. Beaumont! Maria Beaumont! it hath a
strange sound with it--I shall never be reconciled to this name--but do
not you fear--Maria Leslie shall plead with me for Maria Beaumont.
And now, my sweet Friend,
God love you, and your
ELINOR CLARE.
* * * * *
I find in my collection several letters, written soon after the date of
the preceding, and addressed all of them to Maria Beaumont.--I am
tempted to make some short extracts from these--my tale will suffer
interruption by them--but I was willing to preserve whatever memorials I
could of Elinor Clare.
* * * * *
_From Elinor Clare to Maria Beaumont_
(AN EXTRACT)
----"I have been strolling out for half an hour in the fields; and my
mind has been occupied by thoughts, which Maria has a right to
participate. I have been bringing my _mother_ to my recollection. My
heart ached with the remembrance of infirmities, that made her closing
years of life so sore a trial to her.
I was concerned to think, that our family differences have been one
source of disquiet to her. I am sensible that _this last_ we are apt to
exaggerate after a person's death--and surely, in the main, there was
considerable harmony among the members of our little family--still I was
concerned to think, that we ever gave her gentle spirit disquiet.
I thought on years back--on all my parents' friends--the H----s, the
F----s, on D---- S----, and on many a merry evening, in the fire-side
circle, in that comfortable back parlour--it is never used now.--
O ye _Matravises_[1] of the age, ye know not what ye lose, in despising
these petty topics of endeared remembrance, associated circumstances of
past times;--ye know not the throbbings of the heart, tender yet
affectionately familiar, which accompany the dear and honored names of
_father_ or of _mother_.
Maria! I thought on all these things; my heart ached at the review of
them--it yet aches, while I write this--but I am never so satisfied with
my train of thoughts, as when they run upon these subjects--the tears,
they draw from us, meliorate and soften the heart, and keep fresh within
us that memory of dear friends dead, which alone can fit us for a
re-admission to their society hereafter."
* * * * *
(_From another Letter_)
----"I had a bad dream this morning--that Allan was dead--and who, of
all persons in the world, do you think, put on mourning for him? Why,
_Matravis_.--This alone might cure me of superstitious thoughts, if I
were inclined to them; for why should Matravis _mourn_ for us, or our
family?--_Still_ it was pleasant to awake, and find it but a
dream.--Methinks something like an awaking from an ill dream shall the
Resurrection from the Dead be.--Materially different from our accustomed
scenes, and ways of life, the _World to come_ may possibly not be--still
it is represented to us under the notion of a _Rest_, a _Sabbath_, a
state of bliss."
* * * * *
[1] This name will be explained presently.
(_From another Letter_)
----"Methinks, you and I should have been born under the same roof,
sucked the same milk, conned the same hornbook, thumbed the same
Testament, together:--for we have been more than sisters, Maria!
Something will still be whispering to me, that I shall one day be inmate
of the same dwelling with my cousin, partaker with her in all the
delights, which spring from mutual good offices, kind words, attentions
in sickness and in health,--conversation, sometimes innocently trivial,
and at others profitably serious;--books read and commented on,
together; meals ate, and walks taken, together,--and conferences, how we
may best do good to this poor person or that, and wean our spirits from
the world's _cares_, without divesting ourselves of its _charities_.
What a picture I have drawn, Maria!--and none of all these things may
ever come to pass."
* * * * *
(_From another Letter_)
----"Continue to write to me, my sweet cousin. Many good thoughts,
resolutions, and proper views of things, pass through the mind in the
course of the day, but are lost for want of committing them to paper.
Seize them, Maria, as they pass, these Birds of Paradise, that show
themselves and are gone,--and make a grateful present of the precious
fugitives to your friend.
To use a homely illustration, just rising in my fancy,--shall the good
housewife take such pains in pickling and preserving her worthless
fruits, her walnuts, her apricots, and quinces--and is there not much
_spiritual housewifery_ in treasuring up our mind's best fruits,--our
heart's meditations in its most favored moments?
This said simile is much in the fashion of the old Moralizers, such as I
conceive honest Baxter to have been, such as Quarles and Wither were,
with their curious, serio-comic, quaint emblems. But they sometimes
reach the heart, when a more elegant simile rests in the fancy.
Not low and mean, like these, but beautifully familiarized to our
conceptions, and condescending to human thoughts and notions, are all
the discourses of our LORD--conveyed in parable, or similitude, what
easy access do they win to the heart, through the medium of the
delighted imagination! speaking of heavenly things in fable, or in
simile, drawn from earth, from objects _common, accustomed_.
Life's business, with such delicious little interruptions as our
correspondence affords, how pleasant it is!--why can we not paint on the
dull paper our whole feelings, exquisite as they rise up?"
* * * * *
(_From another Letter_)
----"I had meant to have left off at this place; but, looking back, I am
sorry to find too gloomy a cast tincturing my last page--a
representation of life false and unthankful. Life is _not_ all vanity
and disappointment--it hath much of evil in it, no doubt; but to those
who do not misuse it, it affords comfort, _temporary_ comfort,
much--much that endears us to it, and dignifies it--many true and good
feelings, I trust, of which we need not be ashamed--hours of
tranquillity and hope.--But the morning was dull and overcast, and my
spirits were under a cloud. I feel my error.
Is it no blessing, that we two love one another so dearly--that Allan is
left me--that you are settled in life--that worldly affairs go smooth
with us both--above all, that our lot hath fallen to us in a Christian
country? Maria! these things are not little. I will consider life as a
long feast, and not forget to say grace."
* * * * *
(_From another Letter_)
----"Allan has written to me--you know, he is on a visit at his old
tutor's in Gloucestershire--he is to return home on Thursday--Allan is a
dear boy--he concludes his letter, which is very affectionate
throughout, in this manner--
'Elinor, I charge you to learn the following stanza by heart--
The monarch may forget his crown,
That on his head an hour hath been;
The bridegroom may forget his bride
Was made his wedded wife yestreen;
The mother may forget her child,
That smiles so sweetly on her knee:
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,
And all that thou hast done for me.
'The lines are in Burns--you know, we read him for the first time
together at Margate--and I have been used to refer them to you, and to
call you, in my mind, _Glencairn_--for you were always very, very good
to me. I had a thousand failings, but you would love me in spite of them
all. I am going to drink your health.'"
* * * * *
I shall detain my reader no longer from the narrative.
CHAPTER VIII
They had but four rooms in the cottage. Margaret slept in the biggest
room up stairs, and her grandaughter in a kind of closet adjoining,
where she could be within hearing, if her grandmother should call her in
the night.
The girl was often disturbed in that manner--two or three times in a
night she has been forced to leave her bed, to fetch her grandmother's
cordials, or do some little service for her--but she knew that
Margaret's ailings were _real_ and pressing, and Rosamund never
complained--never suspected, that her grandmother's requisitions had any
thing unreasonable in them.
The night she parted with Miss Clare, she had helped Margaret to bed, as
usual--and, after saying her prayers, as the custom was, kneeling by the
old lady's bed-side, kissed her grandmother, and wished her a good
night--Margaret blessed her, and charged her to go to bed directly. It
was her customary injunction, and Rosamund had never dreamed of
disobeying.
So she retired to her little room. The night was warm and clear--the
moon very bright--her window commanded a view of _scenes_ she had been
tracing in the day-time with Miss Clare.
All the events of the day past, the occurrences of their walk, arose in
her mind. She fancied she should like to retrace those scenes--but it
was now nine o'clock, a late hour in the village.
Still she fancied it would be very charming--and then her grandmother's
injunction came powerfully to her recollection--she sighed, and turned
from the window--and walked up and down her little room.
Ever, when she looked at the window, the wish returned. It was not so
_very late_. The neighbours were yet about, passing under the window to
their homes--she thought, and thought again, till her sensations became
vivid, even to painfulness--her bosom was aching to give them vent.
The village clock struck ten!--the neighbours ceased to pass under the
window. Rosamund, stealing down stairs, fastened the latch behind her,
and left the cottage.
One, that knew her, met her, and observed her with some surprize.
Another recollects having wished her a good night. Rosamund never
returned to the cottage!
An old man, that lay sick in a small house adjoining to Margaret's,
testified the next morning, that he had plainly heard the old creature
calling for her grandaughter. All the night long she made her moan, and
ceased not to call upon the name of Rosamund. But no Rosamund was
there--the voice died away, but not till near day-break.
When the neighbours came to search in the morning, Margaret was missing!
She had _straggled_ out of bed, and made her way into Rosamund's
room--worn out with fatigue and fright, when she found the girl not
there, she had laid herself down to die--and, it is thought, she died
_praying_--for she was discovered in a kneeling posture, her arms and
face extended on the pillow, where Rosamund had slept the night
before--a smile was on her face in death.
CHAPTER IX
Fain would I draw a veil over the transactions of that night--but I
cannot--grief, and burning shame, forbid me to be silent--black deeds
are about to be made public, which reflect a stain upon our common
nature.
Rosamund, enthusiastic and improvident, wandered unprotected to a
distance from her guardian doors--through lonely glens, and wood walks,
where she had rambled many a _day_ in safety--till she arrived at a
shady copse, out of the hearing of any human habitation.
_Matravis_ met her.--"Flown with insolence and wine," returning home
late at night, he passed that way!
Matravis was a very ugly man. Sallow-complexioned! and, if hearts can
wear that colour, his heart was sallow-complexioned also.
A young man with _gray_ deliberation! cold and systematic in all his
plans; and all his plans were evil. His very lust was systematic.
He would brood over his bad purposes for such a dreary length of time,
that it might have been expected, some solitary check of conscience must
have intervened to save him from commission. But that _Light from
Heaven_ was extinct in his dark bosom.
Nothing that is great, nothing that is amiable, existed for this unhappy
man. He feared, he envied, he suspected; but he never loved. The sublime
and beautiful in nature, the excellent and becoming in morals, were
things placed beyond the capacity of his sensations. He loved not
poetry--nor ever took a lonely walk to meditate--never beheld virtue,
which he did not try to disbelieve, or female beauty and innocence,
which he did not lust to contaminate.
A sneer was perpetually upon his face, and malice _grinning_ at his
heart. He would say the most ill-natured things, with the least remorse,
of any man I ever knew. This gained him the reputation of a wit--other
_traits_ got him the reputation of a villain.
And this man formerly paid his court to Elinor Clare!--with what success
I leave my readers to determine.--It was not in Elinor's nature to
despise any living thing--but in the estimation of this man, to be
rejected was to be _despised_--and Matravis _never forgave_.
He had long turned his eyes upon Rosamund Gray. To steal from the bosom
of her friends the jewel they prized so much, the little ewe lamb they
held so dear, was a scheme of delicate revenge, and Matravis had a
two-fold motive for accomplishing this young maid's ruin.
Often had he met her in her favorite solitudes, but found her ever cold
and inaccessible. Of late the girl had avoided straying far from her own
home, in the fear of meeting him--but she had never told her fears to
Allan.
Matravis had, till now, been content to be a villain within the limits
of the law--but, on the present occasion, hot fumes of wine,
co-operating with his deep desire of revenge, and the insolence of an
unhoped for meeting, overcame his customary prudence, and Matravis rose,
at once, to an audacity of glorious mischief.
Late at night he met her, a lonely, unprotected virgin--no friend at
hand--no place near of refuge.
Rosamund Gray, my soul is exceeding sorrowful for thee--I loath to tell
the hateful circumstances of thy wrongs. Night and silence were the only
witnesses of this young maid's disgrace--Matravis fled.
Rosamund, polluted and disgraced, wandered, an abandoned thing, about
the fields and meadows till day-break. Not caring to return to the
cottage, she sat herself down before the gate of Miss Clare's house--in
a stupor of grief.
Elinor was just rising, and had opened the windows of her chamber, when
she perceived her desolate young friend.--She ran to embrace her--she
brought her into the house--she took her to her bosom--she kissed
her--she spake to her; but Rosamund could not speak.
Tidings came from the cottage. Margaret's death was an event, which
could not be kept concealed from Rosamund. When the sweet maid heard of
it, she languished, and fell sick--she never held up her head after that
time.
If Rosamund had been a _sister_, she could not have been kindlier
treated, than by her two friends.
Allan had prospects in life--might, in time, have married into any of
the first families in Hertfordshire--but Rosamund Gray, humbled though
she was, and put to shame, had yet a charm for _him_--and he would have
been content to share his fortunes with her yet, if Rosamund would have
lived to be his companion.
But this was not to be--and the girl soon after died. She expired in the
arms of Elinor--quiet, gentle, as she lived--thankful, that she died not
among strangers--and expressing by signs, rather than words, a gratitude
for the most trifling services, the common offices of humanity. She died
uncomplaining; and this young maid, this untaught Rosamund, might have
given a lesson to the grave philosopher in death.
CHAPTER X
I was but a boy when these events took place. All the village remember
the story, and tell of Rosamund Gray, and old blind Margaret.
I parted from Allan Clare on that disastrous night, and set out for
Edinburgh the next morning, before the facts were commonly known--I
heard not of them--and it was four months before I received a letter
from Allan.
"His heart" he told me "was gone from him--for his sister had died of a
phrensy fever!"--not a word of Rosamund in the letter--I was left to
collect her story from sources which may one day be explained.
I soon after quitted Scotland, on the death of my father, and returned
to my native village. Allan had left the place, and I could gain no
information, whether he were dead or living.
I passed the _cottage_. I did not dare to look that way, or to enquire
_who_ lived there.--A little dog, that had been Rosamund's, was yelping
in my path. I laughed aloud like one mad, whose mind had suddenly gone
from him--I stared vacantly around me, like one alienated from common
perceptions.
But I was young at that time, and the impression became gradually
weakened, as I mingled in the business of life. It is now _ten years_
since these events took place, and I sometimes think of them as unreal.
Allan Clare was a dear friend to me--but there are times, when Allan and
his sister, Margaret and her grandaughter, appear like personages of a
dream--an idle dream.
CHAPTER XI
Strange things have happened unto me--I seem scarce awake--but I will
recollect my thoughts, and try to give an account of what has befallen
me in the few last weeks.
Since my father's death our family have resided in London. I am in
practice as a surgeon there. My mother died two years after we left
Widford.
A month or two ago I had been busying myself in drawing up the above
narrative, intending to make it public. The employment had forced my
mind to dwell upon _facts_, which had begun to fade from it--the memory
of old times became vivid, and more vivid--I felt a strong desire to
revisit the scenes of my native village--of the young loves of Rosamund
and her Clare.
A kind of dread had hitherto kept me back; but I was restless now, till
I had accomplished my wish. I set out one morning to walk--I reached
Widford about eleven in the forenoon--after a slight breakfast at my
inn--where I was mortified to perceive, the old landlord did not know me
again--(old Thomas Billet--he has often made angle rods for me when a
child)--I rambled over all my accustomed haunts.
Our old house was vacant, and to be sold. I entered, unmolested, into
the room that had been my bed-chamber. I kneeled down on the spot where
my little bed had stood--I felt like a child--I prayed like one--it
seemed as though old times were to return again--I looked round
involuntarily, expecting to see some face I knew--but all was naked and
mute. The bed was gone. My little pane of painted window, through which
I loved to look at the sun, when I awoke in a fine summer's morning, was
taken out, and had been replaced by one of common glass.
I visited, by turns, every chamber--they were all desolate and
unfurnished, one excepted, in which the owner had left a harpsichord,
probably to be sold--I touched the keys--I played some old Scottish
tunes, which had delighted me when a child. Past associations revived
with the music-blended with a sense of _unreality_, which at last became
too powerful--I rushed out of the room to give vent to my feelings.
I wandered, scarce knowing where, into an old wood, that stands at the
back of the house--we called it the _Wilderness_. A well-known _form_
was missing, that used to meet me in this place--it was thine, Ben
Moxam--the kindest, gentlest, politest, of human beings, yet was he
nothing higher than a gardener in the family. Honest creature, thou
didst never pass me in my childish rambles, without a soft speech, and a
smile. I remember thy good-natured face. But there is one thing, for
which I can never forgive thee, Ben Moxam--that thou didst join with an
old maiden aunt of mine in a cruel plot, to lop away the hanging
branches of the old fir trees.--I remember them sweeping to the ground.
I have often left my childish sports to ramble in this place--its glooms
and its solitude had a mysterious charm for my young mind, nurturing
within me that love of quietness and lonely thinking, which have
accompanied me to maturer years.
In this _Wilderness_ I found myself after a ten years' absence. Its
stately fir trees were yet standing, with all their luxuriant company of
underwood--the squirrel was there, and the melancholy cooings of the
wood-pigeon--all was as I had left it--my heart softened at the
sight--it seemed, as though my character had been suffering a _change_,
since I forsook these shades.
My parents were both dead--I had no counsellor left, no experience of
age to direct me, no sweet voice of reproof. The LORD had taken away my
_friends_, and I knew not where he had laid them. I paced round the
wilderness, seeking a comforter. I prayed, that I might be restored to
that _state of innocence_, in which I had wandered in those shades.
Methought, my request was heard--for it seemed as though the stains of
manhood were passing from me, and I were relapsing into the purity and
simplicity of childhood. I was content to have been moulded into a
perfect child. I stood still, as in a trance. I dreamed that I was
enjoying a personal intercourse with my heavenly Father--and,
extravagantly, put off the shoes from my feet--for the place where I
stood, I thought, was holy ground.
This state of mind could not last long--and I returned, with languid
feelings to my Inn. I ordered my dinner--green peas and a sweetbread--it
had been a favorite dish with me in my childhood--I was allowed to have
it on my birth days. I was impatient to see it come upon table--but,
when it came, I could scarce eat a mouthful--my tears choaked me. I
called for wine--I drank a pint and a half of red wine--and not till
then had I dared to visit the church-yard, where my parents were
interred.
The _cottage_ lay in my way--Margaret had chosen it for that very
reason, to be near the church--for the old lady was regular in her
attendance on public worship--I passed on--and in a moment found myself
among the tombs.
I had been present at my father's burial, and knew the spot again--my
mother's funeral I was prevented by illness from attending--a plain
stone was placed over the grave, with their initials carved upon it--for
they both occupied one grave.
I prostrated myself before the spot--I kissed the earth that covered
them--I contemplated, with gloomy delight, the time when I should mingle
my dust with their's--and kneeled, with my arms incumbent on the
grave-stone, in a kind of mental prayer--for I could not speak.
Having performed these duties, I arose with quieter feelings, and felt
leisure to attend to indifferent objects.--Still I continued in the
church-yard, reading the various inscriptions, and moralizing on them
with that kind of levity, which will not unfrequently spring up in the
mind, in the midst of deep melancholy.
I read of nothing but careful parents, loving husbands, and dutiful
children. I said jestingly, where be all the _bad_ people buried? Bad
parents, bad husbands, bad children--what cemeteries are appointed for
these? do they not sleep in consecrated ground? or is it but a pious
fiction, a generous oversight, in the survivors, which thus tricks out
men's epitaphs when dead, who, in their life-time, discharged the
offices of life, perhaps, but lamely?--Their failings, with their
reproaches, now sleep with them in the grave. _Man wars not with the
dead._ It is a _trait_ of human nature, for which I love it.
I had not observed, till now, a little group assembled at the other end
of the church-yard; it was a company of children, who were gathered
round a young man, dressed in black, sitting on a grave-stone.
He seemed to be asking them questions--probably, about their
learning--and one little dirty ragged-headed fellow was clambering up
his knees to kiss him.--The children had been eating black cherries--for
some of the stones were scattered about, and their mouths were smeared
with them.
As I drew near them, I thought I discerned in the stranger a mild
benignity of countenance, which I had somewhere seen before--I gazed at
him more attentively--
It was Allan Clare! sitting on the grave of his sister.
I threw my arms about his neck. I exclaimed "Allan"--he turned his eyes
upon me--he knew me--we both wept aloud--it seemed, as though the
interval, since we parted, had been as nothing--I cried out, "come, and
tell me about these things."
I drew him away from his little friends--he parted with a show of
reluctance from the church-yard--Margaret and her grandaughter lay
buried there, as well as his sister--I took him to my Inn--secured a
room, where we might be private--ordered fresh wine--scarce knowing what
I did, I danced for joy.
Allan was quite overcome, and taking me by the hand he said, "this
repays me for all."
It was a proud day for me--I had found the friend I thought dead--earth
seemed to me no longer valuable, than as it contained _him_; and
existence a blessing no longer than while I should live to be his
comforter.
I began, at leisure, to survey him with more attention. Time and grief
had left few traces of that fine _enthusiasm_, which once burned in his
countenance--his eyes had lost their original fire, but they retained an
uncommon sweetness and, whenever they were turned upon me, their smile
pierced to my heart.
"Allan, I fear you have been a sufferer." He replied not, and I could
not press him further. I could not call the dead to life again.
So we drank, and told old stories--and repeated old poetry--and sang old
songs--as if nothing had happened.--We sat till very late--I forgot that
I had purposed returning to town that evening--to Allan all places were
alike--I grew noisy, he grew cheerful--Allan's old manners, old
enthusiasm, were returning upon him--we laughed, we wept, we mingled our
tears, and talked extravagantly.
Allan was my chamber-fellow that night--and lay awake, planning schemes
of living together under the same roof, entering upon similar
pursuits;--and praising GOD, that we had met.
I was obliged to return to town the next morning, and Allan proposed to
accompany me.--"Since the death of his sister," he told me, "he had been
a wanderer."
In the course of our walk he unbosomed himself without reserve--told me
many particulars of his way of life for the last nine or ten years,
which I do not feel myself at liberty to divulge.
Once, on my attempting to cheer him, when I perceived him over
thoughtful, he replied to me in these words:--
"Do not regard me as unhappy, when you catch me in these moods. I am
never more happy than at times, when, by the cast of my countenance, men
judge me most miserable.
"My friend, the events, which have left this sadness behind them, are of
no recent date. The melancholy, which comes over me with the
recollection of them, is not hurtful, but only tends to soften and
tranquillize my mind, to detach me from the restlessness of human
pursuits.
"The stronger I feel this detachment, the more I find myself drawn
heavenward to the contemplation of spiritual objects.
"I love to keep old friendships alive and warm within me, because I
expect a renewal of them in the _World of Spirits_.
"I am a wandering and unconnected thing on the earth. I have made no new
friendships, that can compensate me for the loss of the old--and the
more I know mankind, the more does it become necessary for me to supply
their loss by little images, recollections, and circumstances, of past
pleasures.
"I am sensible that I am surrounded by a multitude of very worthy
people, plain-hearted souls, sincere, and kind.--But they have hitherto
eluded my pursuit, and will continue to bless the little circle of their
families and friends, while I must remain a stranger to them.
"Kept at a distance by mankind, I have not ceased to love them--and
could I find the cruel persecutor, the malignant instrument of GOD'S
judgments on me and mine, I think I would forgive, and try to love him
too.
"I have been a quiet sufferer. From the beginning of my calamities it
was given to me, not to see the hand of man in them. I perceived a
mighty arm, which none but myself could see, extended over me. I gave my
heart to the Purifier, and my will to the Sovereign Will of the
Universe. The irresistible wheels of destiny passed on in their
everlasting rotation,--and I suffered myself to be carried along with
them without complaining."
CHAPTER XII
Allan told me, that for some years past, feeling himself disengaged from
every personal tye, but not alienated from human sympathies, it had been
his taste, his _humour_ he called it, to spend a great portion of his
time in _hospitals_ and _lazar houses_.
He had found a _wayward pleasure_, he refused to name it a virtue, in
tending a description of people, who had long ceased to expect kindness
or friendliness from mankind, but were content to accept the reluctant
services, which the often-times unfeeling instruments and servants of
these well-meant institutions deal out to the poor sick people under
their care.
It is not medicine, it is not broths and coarse meats, served up at a
stated hour with all the hard formalities of a prison,--it is not the
scanty dole of a bed to die on--which dying man requires from his
species.
Looks, attentions, consolations,--in a word, _sympathies_, are what a
man most needs in this awful close of mortal sufferings. A kind look, a
smile, a drop of cold water to the parched lip--for these things a man
shall bless you in death.
And these better things than cordials did Allan love to administer--to
stay by a bed-side the whole day, when something disgusting in a
patient's distemper has kept the very nurses at a distance--to sit by,
while the poor wretch got a little sleep--and be there to smile upon him
when he awoke--to slip a guinea, now and then, into the hands of a nurse
or attendant--these things have been to Allan as _privileges_, for which
he was content to live, choice marks, and circumstances, of his Maker's
goodness to him.
And I do not know whether occupations of this kind be not a spring of
purer and nobler delight (certainly instances of a more disinterested
virtue) than arises from what are called Friendships of Sentiment.
Between two persons of liberal education, like opinions, and common
feelings, oftentimes subsists a Vanity of Sentiment, which disposes each
to look upon the other as the only being in the universe worthy of
friendship, or capable of understanding it,--themselves they consider as
the solitary receptacles of all that is delicate in feeling, or stable
in attachment:--when the odds are, that under every green hill, and in
every crowded street, people of equal worth are to be found, who do more
good in their generation, and make less noise in the doing of it.
It was in consequence of these benevolent propensities, I have been
describing, that Allan oftentimes discovered considerable inclinations
in favor of my way of life, which I have before mentioned as being that
of a surgeon. He would frequently attend me on my visits to patients;
and I began to think, that he had serious intentions of making my
profession his study.
He was present with me at a scene--a _death-bed scene_--I shudder when I
do but think of it.
CHAPTER XIII
I was sent for the other morning to the assistance of a gentleman, who
had been wounded in a duel,--and his wounds by unskilful treatment had
been brought to a dangerous crisis.
The uncommonness of the name, which was _Matravis_ suggested to me,
that this might possibly be no other than Allan's old enemy. Under this
apprehension, I did what I could to dissuade Allan from accompanying
me--but he seemed bent upon going, and even pleased himself with the
notion, that it might lie within his ability to do the unhappy man some
service. So he went with me.
When we came to the house, which was in Soho-Square, we discovered that
it was indeed the man--the identical Matravis, who had done all that
mischief in times past--but not in a condition to excite any other
sensation than pity in a heart more hard than Allan's.
Intense pain had brought on a delirium--we perceived this on first
entering the room--for the wretched man was raving to himself--talking
idly in mad unconnected sentences,--that yet seemed, at times, to have a
reference to _past facts_.
One while he told us his dream. "He had lost his way on a great heath,
to which there seemed no end--it was cold, cold, cold--and dark, very
dark--an old woman in leading-strings, _blind_, was groping about for a
guide"--and then he frightened me,--for he seemed disposed to be
_jocular_, and sang a song about "an old woman clothed in grey," and
said "he did not believe in a devil."
Presently he bid us "not tell Allan Clare"--Allan was hanging over him
at that very moment, sobbing.--I could not resist the impulse, but cried
out, "_this_ is Allan Clare--Allan Clare is come to see you, my dear
Sir."--The wretched man did not hear me, I believe, for he turned his
head away, and began talking of _charnel houses_, and _dead men_, and
"whether they knew anything that passed in their coffins."
Matravis died that night.
* * * * *
CURIOUS FRAGMENTS,
_Extracted from a common-place book, which belonged to Robert Burton,
the famous Author of The Anatomy of Melancholy_
(1800. FIRST PUBLISHED 1802. TEXT OF 1818)
EXTRACT I
I Democritus Junior have put my finishing pen to a tractate _De
Melancholia_, this day December 5, 1620. First, I blesse the Trinity,
which hath given me health to prosecute my worthlesse studies thus far,
and make supplication, with a _Laus Deo_, if in any case these my poor
labours may be found instrumental to weede out black melancholy, carking
cares, harte-grief, from the mind of man. _Sed hoc magis volo quam
expecto._
I turn now to my book, _i nunc liber, goe forth, my brave Anatomy, child
of my brain-sweat_, and yee, _candidi lectores_, lo! here I give him up
to you, even do with him what you please, my masters. Some, I suppose
will applaud, commend, cry him up (these are my friends) hee is a _flos
rarus_, forsooth, a none-such, a Phœnix, (concerning whom see _Plinius_
and _Mandeuille_, though _Fienus de monstris_ doubteth at large of such
a bird, whom Montaltus confuting argueth to have been a man _malæ
scrupulositatis_, of a weak and cowardlie faith: _Christopherus a Vega_
is with him in this.) Others again will blame, hiss, reprehende in many
things, cry down altogether, my collections, for crude, inept, putid,
_post cœnam scripta, Coryate could write better upon a full meal_,
verbose, inerudite, and not sufficiently abounding in authorities,
_dogmata_, sentences of learneder writers which have been before me,
when as that first named sort clean otherwise judge of my labours to bee
nothing else but a _messe of opinions_, a vortex attracting
indiscriminate, gold, pearls, hay, straw, wood, excrement, an exchange,
tavern, marte, for foreigners to congregate, Danes, Swedes, Hollanders,
Lombards, so many strange faces, dresses, salutations, languages, all
which _Wolfius_ behelde with great content upon the Venetian Rialto, as
he describes diffusedly in his book the world's Epitome, which
_Sannazar_ so bepraiseth, _e contra_ our Polydore can see nothing in
it; they call me singular, a pedant, fantastic, words of reproach in
this age, which is all too neoteric and light for my humour.
One cometh to me sighing, complaining. He expected universal remedies in
my Anatomy; so many cures as there are distemperatures among men. I have
not put his affection in my cases. Hear you his case. My fine Sir is a
lover, an _inamorato_, Pyramus, a Romeo; he walks seven years
disconsolate, moping, because he cannot enjoy his miss, _insanus amor_
is his melancholy, the man is mad; _delirat_, he dotes; all this while
his Glycera is rude, spiteful, not to be entreated, churlish, spits at
him, yet exceeding fair, gentle eyes, (which is a beauty,) hair lustrous
and _smiling_, the trope is none of mine, _Æneas Sylvius_ hath _crines
ridentes_--in conclusion she is wedded to his rival, a boore, a
_Corydon_, a rustic, _omnino ignarus, he can scarce construe Corderius_,
yet haughty, fantastic, _opiniatre_. The lover travels, goes into
foreign parts, peregrinates, _amoris ergo_, sees manners, customs, not
English, converses with pilgrims, lying travellers, monks, hermits,
those cattle, pedlars, travelling gentry, _Egyptians_, natural wonders,
unicorns (though _Aldobrandus_ will have them to be figments) satyrs,
semi-viri, apes, monkeys, baboons, curiosities artificial, _pyramides_,
Virgilius his tombe, relicks, bones, which are nothing but ivory as
_Melancthon_ judges, though _Cornutus_ leaneth to think them bones of
dogs, cats, (why not men?) which subtill priests vouch to have been
saints, martyrs, _heu Pietas_! By that time he has ended his course,
_fugit hora_, seven other years are expired, gone by, time is he should
return, he taketh ship for Britaine, much desired of his friends,
_favebant venti, Neptune is curteis_, after some weekes at sea he
landeth, rides post to town, greets his family, kinsmen, _compotores,
those jokers his friends that were wont to tipple with him at
alehouses_; these wonder now to see the change, _quantum mutatus, the
man is quite another thing_, he is disenthralled, manumitted, he wonders
what so bewitched him, he can now both see, hear, smell, handle,
converse with his mistress, single by reason of the death of his rival,
a widow having children, grown willing, prompt, amorous, shewing no such
great dislike to second nuptials, he might have her for asking, no such
thing, his mind is changed, he loathes his former meat, had liever eat
ratsbane, aconite, his humour is to die a bachelour; marke the
conclusion. In this humour of celibate seven other years are consumed
in idleness, sloth, world's pleasures, which fatigate, satiate, induce
wearinesse, vapours, _tædium vitæ_: When upon a day, behold a wonder,
_redit Amor_, the man is as sick as ever, he is commenced lover upon the
old stock, walks with his hand thrust in his bosom for negligence,
moping he leans his head, face yellow, beard flowing and incomposite,
eyes sunken, _anhelus, breath wheezy and asthmatical, by reason of
overmuch sighing_: society he abhors, solitude is but a hell, what shall
he doe? all this while his mistresse is forward, coming, _amantissima,
ready to jump at once into his mouth_, her he hateth, feels disgust when
she is but mentioned, thinks her ugly, old, a painted Jesabeel, Alecto,
Megara, and Tisiphone all at once, a Corinthian Lais, a strumpet, only
not handsome; that which he affecteth so much, that which drives him
mad, distracted, phrenetic, beside himself, is no beauty which lives,
nothing in _rerum naturâ_, (so he might entertain a hope of a cure) but
something which is not, can never be, a certain _fantastic opinion_ or
_notional image_ of his mistresse, _that which she was_, and that which
hee thought her to be, in former times, how beautiful! torments him,
frets him, follows him, makes him that he wishes to die.
This Caprichio, _Sir Humourous_, hee cometh to me to be cured. I counsel
marriage with his mistresse, according to Hippocrates his method,
together with milk diet, herbs, aloes, and wild parsley, good in such
cases, though Avicenna preferreth some sorts of wild fowl, teals,
widgeons, becca ficos, which men in Sussex eat. He flies out in a
passion, ho! ho; and falls to calling me names, dizzard, ass, lunatic,
moper, Bedlamite, Pseudo-Democritus. I smile in his face, bidding him be
patient, tranquil, to no purpose, he still rages, I think this man must
fetch his remedies from Utopia, Fairy Land, Islands in the Moone, &c.
EXTRACT II
* * * * * Much disputacyons of fierce wits amongst themselves, in
logomachies, subtile controversies, many dry blows given on either
side, contentions of learned men, or such as would be so thought, as
_Bodinus de Periodis_ saith of such an one, _arrident amici ridet
mundus_, in English, this man his cronies they cocker him up, they
flatter him, he would fayne appear somebody, meanwile the world thinks
him no better than a dizzard, a ninny, a sophist. * * * * * Philosophy
running mad, madness philosophizing, much idle-learned enquiries, what
truth is? and no issue, fruit, of all these noises, only huge books are
written, and who is the wiser? * * * * * Men sitting in the Doctor's
chair, we marvel how they got there, being _homines intellectûs
pulverulenti_, as _Trincauellius_ notes; they care not so they may raise
a dust to smother the eyes of their oppugners; _homines parvulissimi_ as
_Lemnius_, whom _Alcuin_ herein taxeth of a crude Latinism; dwarfs,
minims, the least little men, these spend their time, and it is odds but
they lose their time and wits too into the bargain, chacing of nimble
and retiring Truth: Her they prosecute, her still they worship,
_libant_, they make libations, spilling the wine, as those old Romans in
their sacrificials, _Cerealia, May-games_: Truth is the game all these
hunt after, to the extreme perturbacyon and drying up of the moistures,
_humidum radicale exsiccant_, as _Galen_, in his counsels to one oft
these wear-wits, brain-moppers, spunges, saith. * * * * and for all this
_nunquam metam attingunt_, and how should they? they bowle awry,
shooting beside the marke; whereas it should appear, that _Truth
absolute_ on this planet of ours is scarcely to be found, but in her
stede _Queene Opinion_ predominates, governs, whose shifting and ever
mutable _Lampas_, me seemeth, is man's destinie to follow, she
præcurseth, she guideth him, before his uncapable eyes she frisketh her
tender lights, which entertayne the child-man, untill what time his
sight be strong to endure the vision of _Very Truth_, which is in the
heavens, the vision beatifical, as _Anianus_ expounds in his argument
against certain mad wits which helde God to be corporeous; these were
dizzards, fools, _gothamites_. * * * * but and if _Very Truth_ be extant
indeede on earth, as some hold she it is which actuates men's deeds,
purposes, ye may in vaine look for her in the learned universities,
halls, colleges. Truth is no Doctoresse, she takes no degrees at Paris
or Oxford, amongst great clerks, disputants, subtile Aristotles, men
_nodosi ingenii, able to take Lully by the chin_, but oftentimes to
such an one as myself, an _Idiota_ or common person, _no great things_,
melancholizing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers,
fountains, whereas the silly man expecting no such matter, thinketh
only how best to delectate and refresh his mynde continually with
_Natura_ her pleasaunt scenes, woods, water-falls, or _Art_ her
statelie gardens, parks, terraces, _Belvideres_, on a sudden the
goddesse herself _Truth_ has appeared, with a shyning lyghte, and a
sparklyng countenance, so as yee may not be able lightly to resist her
* * * * *
EXTRACT III
This morning, May 2, 1662, having first broken my fast upon eggs and
cooling salades, mellows, water-cresses, those herbes, according to
_Villanovus_ his prescription, who disallows the use of meat in a
morning as gross, fat, hebetant, _feral_, altogether fitter for wild
beasts than men, _e contra_ commendeth this herb-diete for gentle,
humane, active, conducing to contemplation in most men, I betook myselfe
to the nearest fields. (Being in London I commonly dwell in the
_suburbes_, as airiest, quietest, _loci musis propriores_, free from
noises of caroches, waggons, mechanick, and base workes, workshoppes,
also sights, pageants, spectacles of outlandlish birds, fishes,
crocodiles, _Indians_, mermaids, adde quarrels, fightings, wranglings of
the common sort, _plebs_, the rabble, duelloes with fists, _proper to
this island_, at which the stiletto'd and secrete _Italian_ laughs.)
Withdrawing myselfe from these buzzing and illiterate vanities, with a
_bezo las manos_ to the city, I begin to inhale, draw in, snuff up, as
horses _dilatis naribus_ snort the fresh aires, with exceeding great
delight, when suddenly there crosses me a procession sad, heavy,
dolourous, tristfull, melancholick, able to change mirth into dolour,
and overcast a clearer atmosphere than possibly the neighbourhoods of so
great a citty can afford. An old man, a poore man, deceased, is borne on
men's shoulders to a poore buriall, without solemnities of hearse,
mourners, plumes, _mutæ personæ, those personate actors that will weep
if yee skew them a piece of silver_; none of those customed civilities
of children, kinsfolk, _dependants_, following the coffin; he died a
poore man, his friends _assessores opum, those cronies of his that stuck
by him so long as he had a penny_, now leave him, forsake him, shun him,
desert him; they think it much to follow his putrid and stinking carcase
to the grave; his children, if he had any, for commonly the case stands
thus, this poore man his son dies before him, he survives, poore,
indigent, base, dejected, miserable, &c. or if he have any which survive
him, _sua negotia agunt_, they mind their own business, forsooth,
cannot, will not, find time, leisure, _inclination, extremum munus
perficere_, to follow to the pit their old indulgent father, which loved
them, stroked them, caressed them, cockering them up, _quantum potuit_,
as farre as his means extended, while they were babes, chits, _minims_,
hee may rot in his grave, lie stinking in the sun _for them_, have no
buriall at all, they care not. _O nefas!_ Chiefly I noted the coffin to
have been _without a pall_, nothing but a few planks, of cheapest wood
that could be had, _naked_, having none of the ordinary _symptomata_ of
a funerall, those _locularii_ which bare the body having on diversely
coloured coats, _and none black_: (one of these reported the deceased to
have been an almsman seven yeares, a pauper, harboured and fed in the
workhouse of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, to whose proper burying-ground he
was now going for interment). All which when I behelde, hardly I
refrained from weeping, and incontinently I fell to musing: "If this man
had been rich, a _Crœsus_, a _Crassus, or as rich as Whittington_, what
pompe, charge, lavish cost, expenditure, of rich buriall,
_ceremoniall-obsequies, obsequious ceremonies_, had been thought too
good for such an one; what store of panegyricks, elogies, funeral
orations, &c. some beggarly poetaster, worthy to be beaten for his ill
rimes, crying him up, hee was rich, generous, bountiful, polite,
learned, _a Mæcenas_, while as in very deede he was nothing lesse: what
weeping, sighing, sorrowing, honing, complaining, kinsmen, friends,
relatives, fortieth cousins, poor relatives, lamenting for the deceased;
hypocriticall heirs, sobbing, striking their breasts, (they care not if
he had died a year ago); so many clients, dependants, flatterers,
_parasites, cunning Gnathoes_, tramping on foot after the hearse, all
their care is, who shall stand fairest with the successour; he mean time
(like enough) spurns them from him, spits at them, treads them under his
foot, will have nought to do with any such cattle. I think him in the
right: _Hæc sunt majora gravitate Heracliti. The follies are enough to
give crying Heraclitus a fit of the spleene._
* * * * *
EARLY JOURNALISM
I.--G. F. COOKE IN "RICHARD THE THIRD"
(1802)
Some few of us remember to have _seen_, and all of us have heard our
fathers tell of Quin, and Garrick, and Barry, and some faint traditional
notices are left us of their manner in particular scenes, and their
stile of delivering certain emphatic sentences. Hence our curiosity is
excited, when a _new Hamlet_ or a _new Richard_ makes his appearance, in
the first place, to inquire, how he acted in the _Closet scene_, in the
_Tent scene_; how he looked, and how he started, when the _Ghost_ came
on, and how he cried
Off with his head. So much for Buckingham.
We do not reprehend this minute spirit of comparison. On the contrary,
we consider it as a delightful artifice, by which we connect the
recreations of the past with those of the present generation, what
pleased our fathers with what pleases us. We love to witness the
obstinate attachments, the unconquerable prejudices (as they seem to
us), of the old men, our seniors, the whimsical gratification they
appear to derive from the very refusal to be gratified; to hear them
talk of the good _old_ actors, whose race is for ever extinct.
With these impressions, we attended the first appearance of Mr. Cooke,
in the character of _Richard the Third_, last winter. We thought that he
"bustled" through the scenes with at least as much spirit and effect as
any of his predecessors whom we remember in the part, and was not
deficient in the delivery of any of those rememberable speeches and
exclamations, which old prescription hath set up as _criteria_ of
comparison. Now that the grace of freshness is worn off, and Mr. Cooke
is no longer a novitiate candidate for public favour, we propose to
enter into the question--whether that popular actor is right or wrong in
his conception of the great outlines of the character; those strong
essential differences which separate _Richard_ from all the other
creations of Shakespeare. We say _of Shakespeare_; for though the Play,
which passes for _his_ upon the _Stage_, materially differs from _that_
which _he_ wrote under the same title, being in fact little better than
a compilation or a cento of passages extracted from other of his Plays,
and applied with gross violations of propriety (as we are ready at any
time to point out), besides some miserable additions, which _he_ never
could have written; all together producing an inevitable inconsistency
of character, sufficient to puzzle and confound the _best Actor; yet_,
in this chaos and perplexity, we are of opinion, that it becomes an
Actor to shew his taste, by adhering, as much as possible, to the spirit
and intention of the original Author, and to consult his _safety_ in
_steering_ by the _Light_, which Shakespeare holds out to him, as by a
great _Leading Star_. Upon these principles, we presume to censure Mr.
Cooke, while we are ready to acknowledge, that this Actor presents us
with a very original and very forcible portrait (if not of the _man
Richard_, whom Shakespeare drew, yet) of the _monster Richard_, as he
exists in the _popular idea_, in _his own exaggerated_ and _witty
self-abuse_, in the overstrained representations of the parties who were
_sufferers_ by his _ambition_; and, above all, in the impertinent and
wretched _scenes_, so absurdly foisted in by some, who have thought
themselves capable of adding to what _Shakespeare wrote_.
But of Mr. Cooke's _Richard_:
1st. _His predominant and masterly simulation._
He has a tongue can wheedle with the DEVIL.
It has been the policy of that antient and grey simulator, in all ages,
to hide his _horns_ and _claws_. The _Richard_ of Mr. Cooke perpetually
obtrudes _his_. We see the effect of his deceit uniformly _successful_,
but we do not comprehend _how_ it _succeeds_. We can put ourselves, by a
very common fiction, into the place of the individuals upon whom it
acts, and say, that, in the like case, we should not have been alike
credulous. The hypocrisy is too glaring and visible. It resembles more
the shallow cunning of a mind which is its own dupe, than the profound
and practised art of so powerful an intellect as _Richard's_. It is too
obstreperous and loud, breaking out into _triumphs_ and _plaudits_ at
its own success, like an unexercised _noviciate_ in _tricks_. It has
none of the silent confidence, and steady self-command of the
_experienced politician_; it possesses none of that _fine address_,
which was necessary to have betrayed the heart of _Lady Anne_, or even
to have imposed upon the duller wits of the _Lord Mayor_ and _Citizens_.
2dly. _His habitual jocularity_, the effect of buoyant spirits, and an
elastic mind, rejoicing in its own powers, and in the success of its
machinations. This quality of unstrained mirth accompanies _Richard_,
and is a prime feature in his character. It never leaves him; in plots,
in stratagems, and in the midst of his bloody devices, it is perpetually
driving him upon wit, and jests, and personal satire, fanciful
allusions, and quaint felicities of phrase. It is one of the chief
artifices by which the consummate master of dramatic effect has
contrived to soften the horrors of the scene, and to make us contemplate
a bloody and vicious character with delight. No where, in any of his
plays, is to be found so much of sprightly colloquial dialogue, and
soliloquies of genuine humour, as in _Richard_. This character of
unlaboured mirth Mr. Cooke seems entirely to pass over, and substitutes
in its stead the coarse, taunting humour, and clumsy merriment, of a
low-minded assassin.
3dly. _His personal deformity._--When the _Richard_ of Mr. Cooke makes
allusions to his own _form_, they seem accompanied with _unmixed
distaste_ and _pain_, like some obtrusive and _haunting_ idea--But
surely the _Richard_ of Shakespeare mingles in these allusions a
perpetual reference to his own powers and capacities, by which he is
enabled to surmount these petty objections; and the joy of a defect
_conquered_, or _turned_ into an advantage, is one cause of these very
allusions, and of the satisfaction, with which his mind recurs to them.
These allusions themselves are made in an ironical and good humoured
spirit of exaggeration--the most bitter of them are to be found in his
self-congratulating soliloquy spoken in the very moment and crisis of
joyful exultation on the success of his unheard of courtship.--No
_partial excellence_ can satisfy for this absence of a _just general
conception_--otherwise we are inclined to admit, that, in the delivery
of _single sentences_, in a _new_ and often _felicitous_ light thrown
upon _old_ and _hitherto misconstrued_ passages, no actor that we have
seen has gone beyond Mr. Cooke. He is always _alive_ to the scene before
him; and by the _fire_ and _novelty_ of his manner, he seems likely to
infuse some _warm blood_ into the _frozen declamatory stile_, into
which our theatres have for some time past been degenerating.
II.--GRAND STATE BED
Ever since an account of the Marquis of Exeter's Grand State Bed
appeared in the fashionable world, grandeur in this article of furniture
has become quite the rage. Among others the Lord Mayor feeling for the
dignity of the city of London, has petitioned the Corporation for one of
great splendour to be placed in the Mansion-house, _at the City's
expence_.
We have been favoured with a description of this magnificent state bed,
the choice of his Lordship. The body is formed by the callipee, or under
shell of a large turtle, carved in mahogany, and sufficiently capacious
to receive two well-fed people. The callipash, or upper shell, forms the
canopy. The posts are four gigantic figures richly gilt: two of them
accurate copies of Gog and Magog; the other two represent Sir William
Walworth and the last man in armour. Cupids with custards are the
supporters. The curtains are of mazarine purple, and curiously wrought
with the series of the idle and industrious apprentice from Hogarth, in
gold embroidery: but the vallens exceed description; _there_, the
various incidents in the life of Whittington are painted. The mice in
one of the compartments are done so much to the life, that his
Lordship's cat, who is an accurate judge of mice, was deceived. The
quilt is of fashionable patchwork figures, the description of which we
shall not anticipate, as, we understand, Mr. Birch has obtained a sketch
of it for his large Twelfth Cake. The whole is worthy of the taste of
the first Magistrate of the first City in the world.
III.--FABLE FOR TWELFTH DAY
Once upon a high and solemn occasion all the great _fasts_ and
_festivals_ in the year presented themselves before the throne of
_Apollo, God of Days_.--Each brought an offering in his hand, as is the
custom all over the _East_, that no man shall appear before the presence
of the King empty-handed. _Shrove-Tuesday_ was there with his
_pan-cakes_, and _Ash-Wednesday_ with his oblation of _fish_.
_Good-Friday_ brought the mystical _bun_. _Christmas-Day_ came bending
underneath an intolerable load of _turkeys_ and _mince-pies_, his
snow-white temples shaded with _holly_ and the sacred _misletoe_, and
_singing_ a _carol_ as he advanced. Next came the _Thirtieth_ of
_January_, bearing a _calf's-head_ in a charger; but _Apollo_ no sooner
understood the emblematical meaning of the offering, than the stomach of
the _God_ turned sick, and with visible indignation and abhorrence he
ordered the unfortunate _Day_ out of his presence--the contrite _Day_
returned in a little time, bearing in his hands a _Whig_ (a sort of cake
well-tempered and delicious)--the _God_ with smiles accepted the
atonement, and the happy _Day_ understood that his peace was made, he
promising never to bring such a dish into the presence of a _God_ again.
Then came the august _Fourth_ of _June_, crowned with such a crown as
British Monarchs commonly wear, leading into the presence the venerable
_Nineteenth_ of _May_--_Apollo_ welcomed the royal pair, and placed them
nearest to himself, and welcomed their noble progeny, their eldest-born
and heir, the accomplished _Twelfth_ of _August_, with all his brave
brothers and handsome sisters. Only the merry _First_ of _April_ who is
retained in the Court of _Apollo_ as _King's Jester_, made some mirth by
his reverent inquiries after the health of the _Eighteenth_ of
_January_, who, being a _kept_ mistress, had not been deemed a proper
personage to be introduced into such an assembly. _Apollo_, laughing,
rebuked the petulance of his wit; so all was mirth and good humour in
the palace--only the sorrowful _Epiphany_ stood silent and abashed--he
was _poor_, and had come before the King without an oblation. The _God_
of _Days_ perceived his confusion, and turning to the _Muses_ (who are
_nine_), and to the _Graces_, his hand-maids (who are _three_ in
number), he beckoned to them, and gave to them in charge to prepare a
_Cake_ of the richest and preciousest ingredients: they obeyed,
tempering with their fine and delicate fingers the spices of the _East_,
the bread-flour of the _West_, with the fruits of the _South_, pouring
over all the _Ices_ of the _North_. The God himself crowned the whole
with _talismanic figures_, which contained this wondrous virtue--that
whosoever ate of the _Cake_ should forthwith become _Kings_ and
_Queens_. Lastly, by his heralds, he invested the trembling and thankful
_Epiphany_ with the privilege of presenting this Cake before the King
upon an annual festival for ever. Now this Cake is called _Twelfth
Cake_ upon earth, after the _number_ of the virgins who fashioned the
same, being nine and three.
IV.--THE LONDONER
(1802. TEXT OF 1818)
_To the Editor of the Reflector_
Mr. Reflector,--I was born under the shadow of St. Dunstan's steeple,
just where the conflux of the eastern and western inhabitants of this
twofold city meet and justle in friendly opposition at Temple-bar. The
same day which gave me to the world, saw London happy in the celebration
of her great annual feast. This I cannot help looking upon as a lively
omen of the future great good will which I was destined to bear toward
the city, resembling in kind that solicitude which every Chief
Magistrate is supposed to feel for whatever concerns her interests and
well being. Indeed I consider myself in some sort a speculative Lord
Mayor of London: for though circumstances unhappily preclude me from the
hope of ever arriving at the dignity of a gold chain and Spital Sermon,
yet thus much will I say of myself in truth, that Whittington with his
Cat (just emblem of vigilance and a furred gown) never went beyond me in
affection, which I bear to the citizens.
I was born, as you have heard, in a crowd. This has begot in me an
entire affection for that way of life, amounting to an almost
insurmountable aversion from solitude and rural scenes. This aversion
was never interrupted or suspended, except for a few years in the
younger part of my life, during a period in which I had set my
affections upon a charming young woman. Every man while the passion is
upon him, is for a time at least addicted to groves and meadows and
purling streams. During this short period of my existence, I contracted
just familiarity enough with rural objects to understand tolerably well
ever after the _poets_, when they declaim in such passionate terms in
favor of a country life.
For my own part, now the fit is past, I have no hesitation in declaring,
that a mob of happy faces crowding up at the pit door of Drury-lane
Theatre, just at the hour of six, gives me ten thousand sincerer
pleasures, than I could ever receive from all the flocks of silly sheep
that ever whitened the plains of Arcadia or Epsom Downs.
This passion for crowds is no where feasted so full as in London. The
man must have a rare _recipe_ for melancholy, who can be dull in
Fleet-street. I am naturally inclined to hypochondria, but in London it
vanishes, like all other ills. Often, when I have felt a weariness or
distaste at home, have I rushed out into her crowded Strand, and fed my
humour, till tears have wetted my cheek for unutterable sympathies with
the multitudinous moving picture, which she never fails to present at
all hours, like the scenes of a shifting pantomime.
The very deformities of London, which give distaste to others, from
habit do not displease me. The endless succession of shops where _Fancy
miscalled Folly_ is supplied with perpetual gauds and toys, excite in me
no puritanical aversion. I gladly behold every appetite supplied with
its proper food. The obliging customer, and the obliged
tradesman--things which live by bowing, and things which exist but for
homage--do not affect me with disgust; from habit I perceive nothing but
urbanity, where other men, more refined, discover meaness: I love the
very smoke of London, because it has been the medium most familiar to my
vision. I see grand principles of honor at work in the dirty ring which
encompasses two combatants with fists, and principles of no less eternal
justice in the detection of a pickpocket. The salutary astonishment with
which an execution is surveyed, convinces me more forcibly than a
hundred volumes of abstract polity, that the universal instinct of man
in all ages has leaned to order and good government.
Thus an art of extracting morality from the commonest incidents of a
town life, is attained by the same well-natured alchymy, with which the
Foresters of Arden, in a beautiful country,
Found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
Where has spleen her food but in London? Humour, Interest, Curiosity,
suck at her measureless breasts without a possibility of being satiated.
Nursed amid her noise, her crowds, her beloved smoke, what have I been
doing all my life, if I have not lent out my heart with usury to such
scenes!
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
A LONDONER.
* * * * *
CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS, CONTEMPORARY WITH SHAKSPEARE.
(1808. TEXT OF 1818)
When I selected for publication, in 1808, Specimens of English Dramatic
Poets who lived about the time of Shakspeare, the kind of extracts which
I was anxious to give were, not so much passages of wit and humour,
though the old plays are rich in such, as scenes of passion, sometimes
of the deepest quality, interesting situations, serious descriptions,
that which is more nearly allied to poetry than to wit, and to tragic
rather than to comic poetry. The plays which I made choice of were, with
few exceptions, such as treat of human life and manners, rather than
masques and Arcadian pastorals, with their train of abstractions,
unimpassioned deities, passionate mortals--Claius, and Medorus, and
Amintas, and Amarillis. My leading design was, to illustrate what may be
called the moral sense of our ancestors. To shew in what manner they
felt, when they placed themselves by the power of imagination in trying
circumstances, in the conflicts of duty and passion, or the strife of
contending duties; what sort of loves and enmities theirs were; how
their griefs were tempered, and their full-swoln joys abated: how much
of Shakspeare shines in the great men his contemporaries, and how far in
his divine mind and manners he surpassed them and all mankind. I was
also desirous to bring together some of the most admired scenes of
Fletcher and Massinger, in the estimation of the world the only dramatic
poets of that age entitled to be considered after Shakspeare, and, by
exhibiting them in the same volume with the more impressive scenes of
old Marlowe, Heywood, Tourneur, Webster, Ford, and others, to shew what
we had slighted, while beyond all proportion we had been crying up one
or two favourite names. From the desultory criticisms which accompanied
that publication, I have selected a few which I thought would best stand
by themselves, as requiring least immediate reference to the play or
passage by which they were suggested.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
_Lust's Dominion, or the Lascivious Queen._--This tragedy is in King
Cambyses' vein; rape, and murder, and superlatives; "huffing braggart
puft lines," such as the play-writers anterior to Shakspeare are full
of, and Pistol but coldly imitates.
_Tamburlaine the Great, or the Scythian Shepherd._--The lunes of
Tamburlaine are perfect midsummer madness. Nebuchadnazar's are mere
modest pretensions compared with the thundering vaunts of this Scythian
Shepherd. He comes in, drawn by conquered kings, and reproaches these
_pampered jades of Asia_ that they can _draw but twenty miles a day_.
Till I saw this passage with my own eyes, I never believed that it was
any thing more than a pleasant burlesque of mine ancient's. But I can
assure my readers that it is soberly set down in a play, which their
ancestors took to be serious.
_Edward the Second._--In a very different style from mighty Tamburlaine
is the tragedy of Edward the Second. The reluctant pangs of abdicating
royalty in Edward furnished hints, which Shakspeare scarcely improved in
his Richard the Second; and the death-scene of Marlowe's king moves pity
and terror beyond any scene antient or modern with which I am
acquainted.
_The Rich Jew of Malta._--Marlowe's Jew does not approach so near to
Shakspeare's, as his Edward the Second does to Richard the Second.
Barabas is a mere monster brought in with a large painted nose to please
the rabble. He kills in sport, poisons whole nunneries, invents infernal
machines. He is just such an exhibition as a century or two earlier
might have been played before the Londoners "by the royal command," when
a general pillage and massacre of the Hebrews had been previously
resolved on in the cabinet. It is curious to see a superstition wearing
out. The idea of a Jew, which our pious ancestors contemplated with so
much horror, has nothing in it now revolting. We have tamed the claws of
the beast, and pared its nails, and now we take it to our arms, fondle
it, write plays to flatter it; it is visited by princes, affects a
taste, patronizes the arts, and is the only liberal and gentlemanlike
thing in Christendom.
_Doctor Faustus._--The growing horrors of Faustus's last scene are
awfully marked by the hours and half hours as they expire, and bring him
nearer and nearer to the exactment of his dire compact. It is indeed an
agony and a fearful colluctation. Marlowe is said to have been tainted
with atheistical positions, to have denied God and the Trinity. To such
a genius the history of Faustus must have been delectable food: to
wander in fields where curiosity is forbidden to go, to approach the
dark gulf near enough to look in, to be busied in speculations which are
the rottenest part of the core of the fruit that fell from the tree of
knowledge.[2] Barabas the Jew, and Faustus the conjurer, are offsprings
of a mind which at least delighted to dally with interdicted subjects.
They both talk a language which a believer would have been tender of
putting into the mouth of a character though but in fiction. But the
holiest minds have sometimes not thought it reprehensible to counterfeit
impiety in the person of another, to bring Vice upon the stage speaking
her own dialect; and, themselves being armed with an unction of
self-confident impunity, have not scrupled to handle and touch that
familiarly, which would be death to others. Milton in the person of
Satan has started speculations hardier than any which the feeble armoury
of the atheist ever furnished; and the precise, strait-laced Richardson
has strengthened Vice, from the mouth of Lovelace, with entangling
sophistries and abstruse pleas against her adversary Virtue, which
Sedley, Villiers, and Rochester, wanted depth of libertinism enough to
have invented.
[2] Error, entering into the world with Sin among us poor Adamites
may be said to spring from the tree of knowledge itself, and from
the rotten kernels of that fatal apple.--_Howell's Letters._
THOMAS DECKER
_Old Fortunatus._--The humour of a frantic lover, in the scene where
Orleans to his friend Galloway defends the passion with which himself,
being a prisoner in the English king's court, is enamoured to frenzy of
the king's daughter Agripyna, is done to the life. Orleans is as
passionate an inamorato as any which Shakspeare ever drew. He is just
such another adept in Love's reasons. The sober people of the world are
with him
----A swarm of fools
Crowding together to be counted wise.
He talks "pure Biron and Romeo," he is almost as poetical as they, quite
as philosophical, only a little madder. After all, Love's sectaries are
a reason unto themselves. We have gone retrograde to the noble heresy,
since the days when Sidney proselyted our nation to this mixed health
and disease; the kindliest symptom, yet the most alarming crisis in the
ticklish state of youth; the nourisher and the destroyer of hopeful
wits; the mother of twin births, wisdom and folly, valour and weakness;
the servitude above freedom; the gentle mind's religion; the liberal
superstition.
_The Honest Whore._--There is in the second part of this play, where
Bellafront, a reclaimed harlot, recounts some of the miseries of her
profession, a simple picture of honour and shame, contrasted without
violence, and expressed without immodesty, which is worth all the
_strong lines_ against the harlot's profession, with which both parts of
this play are offensively crowded. A satirist is always to be suspected,
who, to make vice odious, dwells upon all its acts and minutest
circumstances with a sort of relish and retrospective fondness. But so
near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out
sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The
same high-seasoned descriptions, which in his unregenerate state served
but to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will
serve him, a little turned, to expose the enormity of those appetites in
other men. When Cervantes with such proficiency of fondness dwells upon
the Don's library, who sees not that he has been a great reader of books
of knight-errantry--perhaps was at some time of his life in danger of
falling into those very extravagancies which he ridiculed so happily in
his hero?
JOHN MARSTON
_Antonio and Mellida._--The situation of Andrugio and Lucio, in the
first part of this tragedy, where Andrugio Duke of Genoa banished his
country, with the loss of a son supposed drowned, is cast upon the
territory of his mortal enemy the Duke of Venice, with no attendants but
Lucio an old nobleman, and a page--resembles that of Lear and Kent in
that king's distresses. Andrugio, like Lear, manifests a kinglike
impatience, a turbulent greatness, an affected resignation. The enemies
which he enters lists to combat, "Despair and mighty Grief and sharp
Impatience," and the forces which he brings to vanquish them, "cornets
of horse," &c. are in the boldest style of allegory. They are such a
"race of mourners" as the "infection of sorrows loud" in the intellect
might beget on some "pregnant cloud" in the imagination. The prologue
to the second part, for its passionate earnestness, and for the tragic
note of preparation which it sounds, might have preceded one of those
old tales of Thebes or Pelops' line, which Milton has so highly
commended, as free from the common error of the poets in his day, of
"intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, brought in
without discretion corruptly to gratify the people." It is as solemn a
preparative as the "warning voice which he who saw the Apocalypse heard
cry."
_What you Will.--O I shall ne'er forget how he went cloath'd._ Act I.
Scene 1.--To judge of the liberality of these notions of dress, we must
advert to the days of Gresham, and the consternation which a phenomenon
habited like the merchant here described would have excited among the
flat round caps and cloth stockings upon 'Change, when those "original
arguments or tokens of a citizen's vocation were in fashion, not more
for thrift and usefulness than for distinction and grace." The blank
uniformity to which all professional distinctions in apparel have been
long hastening, is one instance of the decay of symbols among us, which,
whether it has contributed or not to make us a more intellectual, has
certainly made us a less imaginative people. Shakspeare knew the force
of signs: a "malignant and a turban'd Turk." This "meal-cap miller,"
says the author of God's Revenge against Murder, to express his
indignation at an atrocious outrage committed by the miller Pierot upon
the person of the fair Marieta.
AUTHOR UNKNOWN
_The Merry Devil of Edmonton._--The scene in this delightful comedy, in
which Jerningham, "with the true feeling of a zealous friend," touches
the griefs of Mounchensey, seems written to make the reader happy. Few
of our dramatists or novelists have attended enough to this. They
torture and wound us abundantly. They are economists only in delight.
Nothing can be finer, more gentlemanlike, and nobler, than the
conversation and compliments of these young men. How delicious is
Raymond Mounchensey's forgetting, in his fears, that Jerningham has a
"Saint in Essex;" and how sweetly his friend reminds him! I wish it
could be ascertained, which there is some grounds for believing, that
Michael Drayton was the author of this piece. It would add a worthy
appendage to the renown of that Panegyrist of my native Earth; who has
gone over her soil, in his Polyolbion, with the fidelity of a herald,
and the painful love of a son; who has not left a rivulet, so narrow
that it may be stept over, without honorable mention; and has animated
hills and streams with life and passion beyond the dreams of old
mythology.
THOMAS HEYWOOD
_A Woman Killed with Kindness._--Heywood is a sort of _prose_
Shakspeare. His scenes are to the full as natural and affecting. But we
miss _the poet_, that which in Shakspeare always appears out and above
the surface of _the nature_. Heywood's characters in this play, for
instance, his country gentlemen, &c. are exactly what we see, but of the
best kind of what we see, in life. Shakspeare makes us believe, while we
are among his lovely creations, that they are nothing but what we are
familiar with, as in dreams new things seem old; but we awake, and sigh
for the difference.
_The English Traveller._--Heywood's preface to this play is interesting,
as it shews the heroic indifference about the opinion of posterity,
which some of these great writers seem to have felt. There is
magnanimity in authorship as in every thing else. His ambition seems to
have been confined to the pleasure of hearing the players speak his
lines while he lived. It does not appear that he ever contemplated the
possibility of being read by after ages. What a slender pittance of fame
was motive sufficient to the production of such plays as the English
Traveller, the Challenge for Beauty, and the Woman Killed with Kindness!
Posterity is bound to take care that a writer loses nothing by such a
noble modesty.
THOMAS MIDDLETON AND WILLIAM ROWLEY
_A Fair Quarrel._--The insipid levelling morality to which the modern
stage is tied down, would not admit of such admirable passions as these
scenes are filled with. A puritanical obtuseness of sentiment, a stupid
infantile goodness, is creeping among us, instead of the vigorous
passions, and virtues clad in flesh and blood, with which the old
dramatists present us. Those noble and liberal casuists could discern in
the differences, the quarrels, the animosities of men, a beauty and
truth of moral feeling, no less than in the everlastingly inculcated
duties of forgiveness and atonement. With us, all is hypocritical
meekness. A reconciliation-scene, be the occasion never so absurd, never
fails of applause. Our audiences come to the theatre to be complimented
on their goodness. They compare notes with the amiable characters in the
play, and find a wonderful sympathy of disposition between them. We have
a common stock of dramatic morality, out of which a writer may be
supplied without the trouble of copying it from originals within his own
breast. To know the boundaries of honour, to be judiciously valiant, to
have a temperance which shall beget a smoothness in the angry swellings
of youth, to esteem life as nothing when the sacred reputation of a
parent is to be defended, yet to shake and tremble under a pious
cowardice when that ark of an honest confidence is found to be frail and
tottering, to feel the true blows of a real disgrace blunting that sword
which the imaginary strokes of a supposed false imputation had put so
keen an edge upon but lately: to do, or to imagine this done in a
feigned story, asks something more of a moral sense, somewhat a greater
delicacy of perception in questions of right and wrong, than goes to the
writing of two or three hackneyed sentences about the laws of honour as
opposed to the laws of the land, or a common-place against duelling. Yet
such things would stand a writer now-a-days in far better stead than
Captain Agar and his conscientious honour; and he would be considered as
a far better teacher of morality than old Rowley or Middleton, if they
were living.
WILLIAM ROWLEY
_A New Wonder; a Woman Never Vext._--The old play-writers are
distinguished by an honest boldness of exhibition, they shew every thing
without being ashamed. If a reverse in fortune is to be exhibited, they
fairly bring us to the prison-grate and the almsbasket. A poor man on
our stage is always a gentleman, he may be known by a peculiar neatness
of apparel, and by wearing black. Our delicacy in fact forbids the
dramatizing of distress at all. It is never shewn in its essential
properties; it appears but as the adjunct of some virtue, as something
which is to be relieved, from the approbation of which relief the
spectators are to derive a certain soothing of self-referred
satisfaction. We turn away from the real essences of things to hunt
after their relative shadows, moral duties; whereas, if the truth of
things were fairly represented, the relative duties might be safely
trusted to themselves, and moral philosophy lose the name of a science.
THOMAS MIDDLETON
_The Witch._--Though some resemblance may be traced between the charms
in Macbeth, and the incantations in this play, which is supposed to have
preceded it, this coincidence will not detract much from the originality
of Shakspeare. His witches are distinguished from the witches of
Middleton by essential differences. These are creatures to whom man or
woman, plotting some dire mischief, might resort for occasional
consultation. Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses to
men. From the moment that their eyes first meet with Macbeth's, he is
spell-bound. That meeting sways his destiny. He can never break the
fascination. These witches can hurt the body, those have power over the
soul. Hecate in Middleton has a son, a low buffoon: the hags of
Shakspeare have neither child of their own, nor seem to be descended
from any parent. They are foul anomalies, of whom we know not whence
they are sprung, nor whether they have beginning or ending. As they are
without human passions, so they seem to be without human relations. They
come with thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all
we know of them. Except Hecate, they have no _names_; which heightens
their mysteriousness. The names, and some of the properties, which the
other author has given to his hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are
serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist with mirth. But, in a
lesser degree, the witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power
too is, in some measure, over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies,
strifes, "like a thick scurf" over life.
WILLIAM ROWLEY,--THOMAS DECKER,--JOHN FORD, &c.
_The Witch of Edmonton._--Mother Sawyer, in this wild play, differs from
the hags of both Middleton and Shakspeare. She is the plain traditional
old woman witch of our ancestors; poor, deformed, and ignorant; the
terror of villages, herself amenable to a justice. That should be a
hardy sheriff, with the power of the county at his heels, that would
lay hands upon the Weird Sisters. They are of another jurisdiction. But
upon the common and received opinion, the author (or authors) have
engrafted strong fancy. There is something frightfully earnest in her
invocations to the Familiar.
CYRIL TOURNEUR
_The Revenger's Tragedy._--The reality and life of the dialogue, in
which Vindici and Hippolito first tempt their mother, and then threaten
her with death for consenting to the dishonour of their sister, passes
any scenical illusion I ever felt. I never read it but my ears tingle,
and I feel a hot blush overspread my cheeks, as if I were presently
about to proclaim such malefactions of myself as the brothers here
rebuke in their unnatural parent, in words more keen and dagger-like
than those which Hamlet speaks to his mother. Such power has the passion
of shame truly personated, not only to strike guilty creatures unto the
soul, but to "appal" even those that are "free."
JOHN WEBSTER
_The Duchess of Malfy._--All the several parts of the dreadful apparatus
with which the death of the Duchess is ushered in, the waxen images
which counterfeit death, the wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, the
bellman, the living person's dirge, the mortification by degrees,--are
not more remote from the conceptions of ordinary vengeance, than the
strange character of suffering which they seem to bring upon their
victim is out of the imagination of ordinary poets. As they are not like
inflictions of this life, so her language seems not of this world. She
has lived among horrors till she is become "native and endowed [indued]
unto that element." She speaks the dialect of despair; her tongue has a
smatch of Tartarus and the souls in bale. To move a horror skilfully, to
touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to
wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with
mortal instruments to take its last forfeit: this only a Webster can do.
Inferior geniuses may "upon horror's head horrors accumulate," but they
cannot do this. They mistake quantity for quality; they terrify babes
with painted devils; but they know not how a soul is to be moved. Their
terrors want dignity, their affrightments are without decorum.
_The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona._--This White Devil of Italy
sets off a bad cause so speciously, and pleads with such an
innocence-resembling boldness, that we seem to see that matchless beauty
of her face which inspires such gay confidence into her, and are ready
to expect, when she has done her pleadings, that her very judges, her
accusers, the grave ambassadors who sit as spectators, and all the
court, will rise and make proffer to defend her in spite of the utmost
conviction of her guilt; as the Shepherds in Don Quixote make proffer to
follow the beautiful Shepherdess Marcela, "without making any profit of
her manifest resolution made there in their hearing."
So sweet and lovely does she make the shame,
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Does spot the beauty of her budding name!
I never saw any thing like the funeral dirge in this play, for the death
of Marcello, except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned
father in the Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of
the earth, earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, which seems to
resolve itself into the element which it contemplates.
In a note on the Spanish Tragedy in the Specimens, I have said that
there is nothing in the undoubted plays of Jonson which would authorize
us to suppose that he could have supplied the additions to Hieronymo. I
suspected the agency of some more potent spirit. I thought that Webster
might have furnished them. They seemed full of that wild, solemn,
preternatural cast of grief which bewilders us in the Duchess of Malfy.
On second consideration, I think this a hasty criticism. They are more
like the overflowing griefs and talking distraction of Titus Andronicus.
The sorrows of the Duchess set inward; if she talks, it is little more
than soliloquy imitating conversation in a kind of bravery.
JOHN FORD
_The Broken Heart._--I do not know where to find, in any play, a
catastrophe so grand, so solemn, and so surprising as in this. This is
indeed, according to Milton, to describe high passions and high actions.
The fortitude of the Spartan boy, who let a beast gnaw out his bowels
till he died without expressing a groan, is a faint bodily image of this
dilaceration of the spirit, and exenteration of the inmost mind, which
Calantha, with a holy violence against her nature, keeps closely
covered, till the last duties of a wife and a queen are fulfilled.
Stories of martyrdom are but of chains and the stake; a little bodily
suffering. These torments
On the purest spirits prey,
As on entrails, joints, and limbs,
With answerable pains, but more intense.
What a noble thing is the soul in its strengths and in its weaknesses!
Who would be less weak than Calantha? Who can be so strong? The
expression of this transcendent scene almost bears us in imagination to
Calvary and the Cross; and we seem to perceive some analogy between the
scenical sufferings which we are here contemplating, and the real
agonies of that final completion to which we dare no more than hint a
reference. Ford was of the first order of poets. He sought for
sublimity, not by parcels, in metaphors or visible images, but directly
where she has her full residence in the heart of man; in the actions and
sufferings of the greatest minds. There is a grandeur of the soul above
mountains, seas, and the elements. Even in the poor perverted reason of
Giovanni and Annabella, in the play[3] which stands at the head of the
modern collection of the works of this author, we discern traces of that
fiery particle, which, in the irregular starting from out the road of
beaten action, discovers something of a right line even in obliquity,
and shews hints of an improveable greatness in the lowest descents and
degradations of our nature.
[3] 'Tis Pity she is a Whore.
FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE
_Alaham, Mustapha._--The two tragedies of Lord Brooke, printed among his
poems, might with more propriety have been termed political treatises
than plays. Their author has strangely contrived to make passion,
character, and interest, of the highest order, subservient to the
expression of state dogmas and mysteries. He is nine parts Machiavel and
Tacitus, for one part Sophocles or Seneca. In this writer's estimate of
the powers of the mind, the understanding must have held a most
tyrannical pre-eminence. Whether we look into his plays, or his most
passionate love-poems, we shall find all frozen and made rigid with
intellect. The finest movements of the human heart, the utmost grandeur
of which the soul is capable, are essentially comprised in the actions
and speeches of Cælica and Camena. Shakspeare, who seems to have had a
peculiar delight in contemplating womanly perfection, whom for his many
sweet images of female excellence all women are in an especial manner
bound to love, has not raised the ideal of the female character higher
than Lord Brooke, in these two women, has done. But it requires a study
equivalent to the learning of a new language to understand their meaning
when they speak. It is indeed hard to hit:
Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day
Or seven though one should musing sit.
It is as if a being of pure intellect should take upon him to express
the emotions of our sensitive natures. There would be all knowledge, but
sympathetic expressions would be wanting.
BEN JONSON
_The Case is Altered._--The passion for wealth has worn out much of its
grossness in tract of time. Our ancestors certainly conceived of money
as able to confer a distinct gratification in itself, not considered
simply as a symbol of wealth. The old poets, when they introduce a
miser, make him address his gold as his mistress; as something to be
seen, felt, and hugged; as capable of satisfying two of the senses at
least. The substitution of a thin, unsatisfying medium in the place of
the good old tangible metal, has made avarice quite a Platonic affection
in comparison with the seeing, touching, and handling-pleasures of the
old Chrysophilites. A bank-note can no more satisfy the touch of a true
sensualist in this passion, than Creusa could return her husband's
embrace in the shades. See the Cave of Mammon in Spenser; Barabas's
contemplation of his wealth in the Rich Jew of Malta; Luke's raptures in
the City Madam; the idolatry and absolute gold-worship of the miser
Jaques in this early comic production of Ben Jonson's. Above all hear
Guzman, in that excellent old translation of the Spanish Rogue,
expatiate on the "ruddy cheeks of your golden ruddocks, your Spanish
pistolets, your plump and full-faced Portuguese, and your clear-skinned
pieces of eight of Castile," which he and his fellows the beggars kept
secret to themselves, and did privately enjoy in a plentiful manner.
"For to have them, to pay them away, is not to enjoy them; to enjoy
them, is to have them lying by us; having no other need of them than to
use them for the clearing of the eye-sight, and the comforting of our
senses. These we did carry about with us, sewing them in some patches of
our doublets near unto the heart, and as close to the skin as we could
handsomely quilt them in, holding them to be restorative."
_Poetaster._--This Roman play seems written to confute those enemies of
Ben in his own days and ours, who have said that he made a pedantical
use of his learning. He has here revived the whole Court of Augustus, by
a learned spell. We are admitted to the society of the illustrious dead.
Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus, converse in our own tongue more finely
and poetically than they were used to express themselves in their native
Latin. Nothing can be imagined more elegant, refined, and court-like,
than the scenes between this Louis the Fourteenth of antiquity and his
literati. The whole essence and secret of that kind of intercourse is
contained therein. The economical liberality by which greatness, seeming
to waive some part of its prerogative, takes care to lose none of the
essentials; the prudential liberties of an inferior, which flatter by
commanded boldness and soothe with complimentary sincerity. These, and a
thousand beautiful passages from his New Inn, his Cynthia's Revels, and
from those numerous court-masques and entertainments which he was in the
daily habit of furnishing, might be adduced to shew the poetical fancy
and elegance of mind of the supposed rugged old bard.
_Alchemist._--The judgment is perfectly overwhelmed by the torrent of
images, words, and book-knowledge, with which Epicure Mammon (Act 2,
Scene 2) confounds and stuns his incredulous hearer. They come pouring
out like the successive falls of Nilus. They "doubly redouble strokes
upon the foe." Description outstrides proof. We are made to believe
effects before we have testimony for their causes. If there is no one
image which attains the height of the sublime, yet the confluence and
assemblage of them all produces a result equal to the grandest poetry.
The huge Zerxean army countervails against single Achilles. Epicure
Mammon is the most determined offspring of its author. It has the whole
"matter and copy of the father--eye, nose, lip, the trick of his frown."
It is just such a swaggerer as contemporaries have described old Ben to
be. Meercraft, Bobadil, the Host of the New Inn, have all his image and
superscription. But Mammon is arrogant pretension personified. Sir
Samson Legend, in Love for Love, is such another lying, overbearing
character, but he does not come up to Epicure Mammon. What a "towering
bravery" there is in his sensuality! he affects no pleasure under a
Sultan. It is as if "Egypt with Assyria strove in luxury."
GEORGE CHAPMAN
_Bussy D'Ambois, Byron's Conspiracy, Byron's Tragedy, &c. &c._--Webster
has happily characterised the "full and heightened style" of Chapman,
who, of all the English play-writers, perhaps approaches nearest to
Shakspeare in the descriptive and didactic, in passages which are less
purely dramatic. He could not go out of himself, as Shakspeare could
shift at pleasure, to inform and animate other existences, but in
himself he had an eye to perceive and a soul to embrace all forms and
modes of being. He would have made a great epic poet, if indeed he has
not abundantly shewn himself to be one; for his Homer is not so properly
a translation as the stories of Achilles and Ulysses re-written. The
earnestness and passion which he has put into every part of these poems,
would be incredible to a reader of mere modern translations. His almost
Greek zeal for the glory of his heroes can only be paralleled by that
fierce spirit of Hebrew bigotry, with which Milton, as if personating
one of the zealots of the old law, clothed himself when he sat down to
paint the acts of Samson against the uncircumcised. The great obstacle
to Chapman's translations being read, is their unconquerable quaintness.
He pours out in the same breath the most just and natural, and the most
violent and crude expressions. He seems to grasp at whatever words come
first to hand while the enthusiasm is upon him, as if all other must be
inadequate to the divine meaning. But passion (the all in all in
poetry) is every where present, raising the low, dignifying the mean,
and putting sense into the absurd. He makes his readers glow, weep,
tremble, take any affection which he pleases, be moved by words, or in
spite of them, be disgusted and overcome their disgust.
FRANCIS BEAUMONT.--JOHN FLETCHER
_Maid's Tragedy._-One characteristic of the excellent old poets is,
their being able to bestow grace upon subjects which naturally do not
seem susceptible of any. I will mention two instances. Zelmane in the
Arcadia of Sidney, and Helena in the All's Well that Ends Well of
Shakspeare. What can be more unpromising at first sight, than the idea
of a young man disguising himself in woman's attire, and passing himself
off for a woman among women; and that for a long space of time? Yet Sir
Philip has preserved so matchless a decorum, that neither does Pryocles'
manhood suffer any stain for the effeminacy of Zelmane, nor is the
respect due to the princesses at all diminished when the deception comes
to be known. In the sweetly constituted mind of Sir Philip Sidney, it
seems as if no ugly thought or unhandsome meditation could find a
harbour. He turned all that he touched into images of honour and virtue.
Helena in Shakspeare is a young woman seeking a man in marriage. The
ordinary rules of courtship are reversed, the habitual feelings are
crossed. Yet with such exquisite address this dangerous subject is
handled, that Helena's forwardness loses her no honour; delicacy
dispenses with its laws in her favour, and nature, in her single case,
seems content to suffer a sweet violation. Aspatia, in the Maid's
Tragedy, is a character equally difficult, with Helena, of being managed
with grace. She too is a slighted woman, refused by the man who had once
engaged to marry her. Yet it is artfully contrived, that while we pity
we respect her, and she descends without degradation. Such wonders true
poetry and passion can do, to confer dignity upon subjects which do not
seem capable of it. But Aspatia must not be compared at all points with
Helena; she does not so absolutely predominate over her situation but
she suffers some diminution, some abatement of the full lustre of the
female character, which Helena never does. Her character has many
degrees of sweetness, some of delicacy; but it has weakness, which, if
we do not despise, we are sorry for. After all, Beaumont and Fletcher
were but an inferior sort of Shakspeares and Sidneys.
_Philaster._--The character of Bellario must have been extremely popular
in its day. For many years after the date of Philaster's first
exhibition on the stage, scarce a play can be found without one of these
women pages in it, following in the train of some pre-engaged lover,
calling on the gods to bless her happy rival (his mistress), whom no
doubt she secretly curses in her heart, giving rise to many pretty
_equivoques_ by the way on the confusion of sex, and either made happy
at last by some surprising turn of fate, or dismissed with the joint
pity of the lovers and the audience. Donne has a copy of verses to his
mistress, dissuading her from a resolution which she seems to have taken
up from some of these scenical representations, of following him abroad
as a page. It is so earnest, so weighty, so rich in poetry, in sense, in
wit, and pathos, that it deserves to be read as a solemn close in future
to all such sickly fancies as he there deprecates.
JOHN FLETCHER
_Thierry and Theodoret._--The scene where Ordella offers her life a
sacrifice, that the king of France may not be childless, I have always
considered as the finest in all Fletcher, and Ordella to be the most
perfect notion of the female heroic character, next to Calantha in the
Broken Heart. She is a piece of sainted nature. Yet noble as the whole
passage is, it must be confessed that the manner of it, compared with
Shakspeare's finest scenes, is faint and languid. Its motion is
circular, not progressive. Each line revolves on itself in a sort of
separate orbid. They do not join into one another like a running-hand.
Fletcher's ideas moved slow; his versification, though sweet, is
tedious, it stops at every turn; he lays line upon line, making up one
after the other, adding image to image so deliberately, that we see
their junctures. Shakspeare mingles every thing, runs line into line,
embarrasses sentences and metaphors; before one idea has burst its
shell, another is hatched and clamorous for disclosure. Another striking
difference between Fletcher and Shakspeare, is the fondness of the
former for unnatural and violent situations. He seems to have thought
that nothing great could be produced in an ordinary way. The chief
incidents in some of his most admired tragedies shew this.[4] Shakspeare
had nothing of this contortion in his mind, none of that craving after
violent situations, and flights of strained and improbable virtue, which
I think always betrays an imperfect moral sensibility. The wit of
Fletcher is excellent[5] like his serious scenes, but there is something
strained and far-fetched in both. He is too mistrustful of Nature, he
always goes a little on one side of her. Shakspeare chose her without a
reserve: and had riches, power, understanding, and length of days, with
her, for a dowry.
[4] Wife for a Month, Cupid's Revenge, Double Marriage, &c.
[5] Wit without Money, and his comedies generally.
_Faithful Shepherdess._--If all the parts of this delightful pastoral
had been in unison with its many innocent scenes and sweet lyric
intermixtures, it had been a poem fit to vie with Comus or the Arcadia,
to have been put into the hands of boys and virgins, to have made matter
for young dreams, like the loves of Hermia and Lysander. But a spot is
on the face of this Diana. Nothing short of infatuation could have
driven Fletcher upon mixing with this "blessedness" such an ugly
deformity as Cloe, the wanton shepherdess! If Cloe was meant to set off
Clorin by contrast, Fletcher should have known that such weeds by
juxta-position do not set off, but kill sweet flowers.
PHILIP MASSINGER.--THOMAS DECKER
_The Virgin Martyr._--This play has some beauties of so very high an
order, that with all my respect for Massinger, I do not think he had
poetical enthusiasm capable of rising up to them. His associate Decker,
who wrote Old Fortunatus, had poetry enough for any thing. The very
impurities which obtrude themselves among the sweet pieties of this
play, like Satan among the Sons of Heaven, have a strength of contrast,
a raciness, and a glow, in them, which are beyond Massinger. They are to
the religion of the rest what Caliban is to Miranda.
PHILIP MASSINGER.--THOMAS MIDDLETON.--WILLIAM ROWLEY
_Old Law._--There is an exquisiteness of moral sensibility, making one's
eyes to gush out tears of delight, and a poetical strangeness in the
circumstances of this sweet tragi-comedy, which are unlike any thing in
the dramas which Massinger wrote alone. The pathos is of a subtler edge.
Middleton and Rowley, who assisted in it, had both of them finer
geniuses than their associate.
JAMES SHIRLEY
Claims a place amongst the worthies of this period, not so much for any
transcendant talent in himself, as that he was the last of a great race,
all of whom spoke nearly the same language, and had a set of moral
feelings and notions in common. A new language, and quite a new turn of
tragic and comic interest, came in with the Restoration.
ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED
(1810. TEXT OF 1818)
_To the Editor of the Reflector_
Sir,--I am one of those unhappy persons whose misfortunes, it seems, do
not entitle them to the benefit of pure pity. All that is bestowed upon
me of that kindest alleviator of human miseries, comes dashed with a
double portion of contempt. My griefs have nothing in them that is felt
as sacred by the bystanders. Yet is my affliction in truth of the
deepest grain. The heaviest task that was ever given to mortal patience
to sustain. Time, that wears out all other sorrows, can never modify or
soften mine. Here they must continue to gnaw, as long as that fatal
mark----
Why was I ever born? Why was innocence in my person suffered to be
branded with a stain which was appointed only for the blackest guilt?
What had I done, or my parents, that a disgrace of mine should involve a
whole posterity in infamy? I am almost tempted to believe, that, in some
pre-existent state, crimes to which this sublunary life of mine hath
been as much a stranger as the babe that is newly born into it, have
drawn down upon me this vengeance, so disproportionate to my actions on
this globe.
My brain sickens, and my bosom labours to be delivered of the weight
that presses upon it, yet my conscious pen shrinks from the avowal. But
out it must----
O, Mr. Reflector! guess at the wretch's misery who now writes this to
you, when, with tears and burning blushes, he is obliged to confess,
that he has been---- HANGED----
Methinks I hear an involuntary exclamation burst from you, as your
imagination presents to you fearful images of your correspondent
unknown,--_hanged!_
Fear not, Mr. Editor. No disembodied spirit has the honour of addressing
you. I am flesh and blood, an unfortunate system of bones, muscles,
sinews, arteries, like yourself.
_Then, I presume, you mean to be pleasant--That expression of yours, Mr.
Correspondent, must be taken somehow in a metaphorical sense----_
In the plainest sense, without trope or figure--Yes, Mr. Editor! this
neck of mine has felt the fatal noose,--these hands have tremblingly
held up the corroborative prayer-book,--these lips have sucked the
moisture of the last consolatory orange,--this tongue has chaunted the
doleful cantata which no performer was ever called upon to repeat,--this
face has had the veiling nightcap drawn over it----
But for no crime of mine.--Far be it from me to arraign the justice of
my country, which, though tardy, did at length recognise my innocence.
It is not for me to reflect upon judge or jury, now that eleven years
have elapsed since the erroneous sentence was pronounced. Men will
always be fallible, and perhaps circumstances did appear at the time a
little strong----
Suffice it to say, that after hanging four minutes, (as the spectators
were pleased to compute it,--a man that is being strangled, I know from
experience, has altogether a different measure of time from his friends
who are breathing leisurely about him,--I suppose the minutes lengthen
as time approaches eternity, in the same manner as the miles get longer
as you travel northward--), after hanging four minutes, according to the
best calculation of the bystanders, a reprieve came, and I was cut
DOWN----
Really I am ashamed of deforming your pages with these technical
phrases--if I knew how to express my meaning shorter----
But to proceed.--My first care after I had been brought to myself by the
usual methods, (those methods that are so interesting to the operator
and his assistants, who are pretty numerous on such occasions,--but
which no patient was ever desirous of undergoing a second time for the
benefit of science), my first care was to provide myself with an
enormous stock or cravat to hide the place--you understand me;--my next
care was to procure a residence as distant as possible from that part of
the country where I had suffered. For that reason I chose the
metropolis, as the place where wounded honour (I had been told) could
lurk with the least danger of exciting enquiry, and stigmatised
innocence had the best chance of hiding her disgrace in a crowd. I
sought out a new circle of acquaintance, and my circumstances happily
enabling me to pursue my fancy in that respect, I endeavoured, by
mingling in all the pleasures which the town affords, to efface the
memory of what I had undergone.
But alas! such is the portentous and all-pervading chain of connection
which links together the head and members of this great community, my
scheme of lying perdu was defeated almost at the outset. A countryman of
mine, whom a foolish law-suit had brought to town, by chance met me, and
the secret was soon blazoned about.
In a short time, I found myself deserted by most of those who had been
my intimate friends. Not that any guilt was supposed to attach to my
character. My officious countryman, to do him justice, had been candid
enough to explain my perfect innocence. But, somehow or other, there is
a want of strong virtue in mankind. We have plenty of the softer
instincts, but the heroic character is gone. How else can I account for
it, that of all my numerous acquaintance, among whom I had the honour of
ranking sundry persons of education, talents, and worth, scarcely here
and there one or two could be found, who had the courage to associate
with a man that had been hanged.
Those few who did not desert me altogether, were persons of strong but
coarse minds; and from the absence of all delicacy in them I suffered
almost as much as from the superabundance of a false species of it in
the others. Those who stuck by me were the jokers, who thought
themselves entitled by the fidelity which they had shewn towards me to
use me with what familiarity they pleased. Many and unfeeling are the
jests that I have suffered from these rude (because faithful) Achateses.
As they past me in the streets, one would nod significantly to his
companion and say, pointing to me, smoke his cravat, and ask me if I had
got a wen, that I was so solicitous to cover my neck. Another would
enquire, What news from * * * Assizes? (which you may guess, Mr. Editor,
was the scene of my shame), and whether the sessions was like to prove a
maiden one? A third would offer to ensure me from drowning. A fourth
would teaze me with enquiries how I felt when I was swinging, whether I
had not something like a blue flame dancing before my eyes? A fifth took
a fancy never to call me anything but _Lazarus_. And an eminent
bookseller and publisher,--who, in his zeal to present the public with
new facts, had he lived in those days, I am confident, would not have
scrupled waiting upon the person himself last mentioned, at the most
critical period of his existence, to solicit a _few facts relative to
resuscitation_,--had the modesty to offer me ---- guineas per sheet, if
I would write, in his Magazine, a physiological account of my feelings
upon coming to myself.
But these were evils which a moderate fortitude might have enabled me to
struggle with. Alas! Mr. Editor, the women,--whose good graces I had
always most assiduously cultivated, from whose softer minds I had hoped
a more delicate and generous sympathy than I found in the men,--the
women begun to shun me--this was the unkindest blow of all.
But is it to be wondered at? How couldst thou imagine, wretchedest of
beings, that that tender creature Seraphina would fling her pretty arms
about that neck which previous circumstances had rendered infamous? That
she would put up with the refuse of the rope, the leavings of the cord?
Or that any analogy could subsist between the knot which binds true
lovers, and the knot which ties malefactors?
I can forgive that pert baggage Flirtilla, who, when I complimented her
one day on the execution which her eyes had done, replied, that, to be
sure, Mr. * * was a judge of those things. But from thy more exalted
mind, Celestina, I expected a more unprejudiced decision.
The person whose true name I conceal under this appellation, of all the
women that I was ever acquainted with, had the most manly turn of mind,
which she had improved by reading and the best conversation. Her
understanding was not more masculine than her manners and whole
disposition were delicately and truly feminine. She was the daughter of
an officer who had fallen in the service of his country, leaving his
widow and Celestina, an only child, with a fortune sufficient to set
them above want, but not to enable them to live in splendour. I had the
mother's permission to pay my addresses to the young lady, and Celestina
seemed to approve of my suit.
Often and often have I poured out my overcharged soul in the presence of
Celestina, complaining of the hard and unfeeling prejudices of the
world, and the sweet maid has again and again declared, that no
irrational prejudice should hinder her from esteeming every man
according to his intrinsic worth. Often has she repeated the consolatory
assurance, that she could never consider as essentially ignominious an
_accident_, which was indeed to be deprecated, but which might have
happened to the most innocent of mankind. Then would she set forth some
illustrious example, which her reading easily furnished, of a Phocion or
a Socrates unjustly condemned; of a Raleigh or a Sir Thomas More, to
whom late posterity had done justice; and by soothing my fancy with some
such agreeable parallel, she would make me almost to triumph in my
disgrace, and convert my shame into glory.
In such entertaining and instructive conversations the time passed on,
till I importunately urged the mistress of my affections to name a day
for our union. To this she obligingly consented, and I thought myself
the happiest of mankind. But how was I surprised one morning on the
receipt of the following billet from my charmer:--
Sir,--You must not impute it to levity, or to a worse failing,
ingratitude, if, with anguish of heart, I feel myself compelled by
irresistible arguments to recall a vow which I fear I made with too
little consideration. I never can be yours. The reasons of my decision,
which is final, are in my own breast, and you must everlastingly remain
a stranger to them. Assure yourself that I can never cease to esteem you
as I ought.
CELESTINA.
At the sight of this paper, I ran in frantic haste to Celestina's
lodgings, where I learned, to my infinite mortification, that the mother
and daughter were set off on a journey to a distant part of the country,
to visit a relation, and were not expected to return in less than four
months.
Stunned by this blow, which left me without the courage to solicit an
explanation by letter, even if I had known where they were, (for the
particular address was industriously concealed from me), I waited with
impatience the termination of the period, in the vain hope that I might
be permitted to have a chance of softening the harsh decision by a
personal interview with Celestina after her return. But before three
months were at an end, I learned from the newspapers, that my beloved
had--given her hand to another!
Heart-broken as I was, I was totally at a loss to account for the
strange step which she had taken; and it was not till some years after
that I learned the true reason from a female relation of hers, to whom
it seems Celestina had confessed in confidence, that it was no demerit
of mine that had caused her to break off the match so abruptly, nor any
preference which she might feel for any other person, for she preferred
me (she was pleased to say) to all mankind; but when she came to lay the
matter closer to her heart, she found that she never should be able to
bear the sight (I give you her very words as they were detailed to me by
her relation) the sight of a man in a nightcap, who had appeared on a
public platform, it would lead to such a disagreeable association of
ideas! And to this punctilio I was sacrificed.
To pass over an infinite series of minor mortifications, to which this
last and heaviest might well render me callous, behold me here, Mr.
Editor! in the thirty-seventh year of my existence, (the twelfth,
reckoning from my re-animation), cut off from all respectable
connections, rejected by the fairer half of the community,--who in my
case alone seem to have laid aside the characteristic pity of their sex;
punished because I was once punished unjustly; suffering for no other
reason than because I once had the misfortune to suffer without any
cause at all. In no other country, I think, but this, could a man have
been subject to such a life-long persecution, when once his innocence
had been clearly established.
Had I crawled forth a rescued victim from the rack in the horrible
dungeons of the Inquisition,--had I heaved myself up from a half
bastinado in China, or been torn from the just-entering, ghastly
impaling stake in Barbary,--had I dropt alive from the knout in
Russia, or come off with a gashed neck from the half-mortal,
scarce-in-time-retracted scymeter of an executioneering slave in
Turkey,--I might have borne about the remnant of this frame (the mangled
trophy of reprieved innocence) with credit to myself, in any of those
barbarous countries. No scorn, at least, would have mingled with the
pity (small as it might be) with which what was left of me would have
been surveyed.
The singularity of my case has often led me to enquire into the reasons
of the general levity with which the subject of hanging is treated as a
topic in this country. I say as a topic: for let the very persons who
speak so lightly of the thing at a distance be brought to view the real
scene,--let the platform be bona fide exhibited, and the trembling
culprit brought forth,--the case is changed; but as a topic of
conversation, I appeal to the vulgar jokes which pass current in every
street. But why mention them, when the politest authors have agreed in
making use of this subject as a source of the ridiculous? Swift, and
Pope, and Prior, are fond of recurring to it. Gay has built an entire
drama upon this single foundation. The whole interest of the _Beggar's
Opera_ may be said to hang upon it. To such writers as Fielding and
Smollet it is a perfect _bon[ne]bouche_.--Hear the facetious Tom Brown,
in his _Comical View of London and Westminster_, describe the _Order of
the Show at one of the Tyburn Executions_ in his time:--"Mr. Ordinary
visits his melancholy flock in Newgate by eight. Doleful procession up
Holborn-hill about eleven. Men handsome and proper that were never
thought so before, which is some comfort however. Arrive at the fatal
place by twelve. Burnt brandy, women, and sabbath-breaking, repented of.
Some few penitential drops fall under the gallows. Sheriffs men, parson,
pickpockets, criminals, all very busy. The last concluding peremptory
psalm struck up. Show over by one."--In this sportive strain does this
misguided wit think proper to play with a subject so serious, which yet
he would hardly have done, if he had not known that there existed a
predisposition in the habits of his unaccountable countrymen to consider
the subject as a jest. But what shall we say to Shakspeare, who, (not
to mention the solution which the _Gravedigger_ in _Hamlet_ gives of his
fellow workman's problem), in that scene in _Measure for Measure_, where
the _Clown_ calls upon _Master Barnardine_ to get up and be hanged,
which he declines on the score of being sleepy, has actually gone out of
his way to gratify this amiable propensity in his countrymen; for it is
plain, from the use that was to be made of his head, and from
_Abhorson's_ asking, "is the axe upon the block, sirrah?" that
beheading, and not hanging, was the punishment to which _Barnardine_ was
destined. But Shakspeare knew that the axe and block were pregnant with
no ludicrous images, and therefore falsified the historic truth of his
own drama (if I may so speak) rather than he would leave out such
excellent matter for a jest as the suspending of a fellow-creature in
mid air has been ever esteemed to be by Englishmen.
One reason why the ludicrous never fails to intrude itself into our
contemplations upon this mode of death, I suppose to be, the absurd
posture into which a man is thrown who is condemned to dance, as the
vulgar delight to express it, upon nothing. To see him whisking and
wavering in the air,
As the wind you know will wave a man;[6]
[6] Hieronimo in the Spanish tragedy.
to behold the vacant carcase, from which the life is newly dislodged,
shifting between earth and heaven, the sport of every gust; like a
weather-cock, serving to shew from which point the wind blows; like a
maukin, fit only to scare away birds; like a nest left to swing upon a
bough when the bird is flown: these are uses to which we cannot without
a mixture of spleen and contempt behold the human carcase reduced. We
string up dogs, foxes, bats, moles, weasels. Man surely deserves a
steadier death.
Another reason why the ludicrous associates more forcibly with this than
with any other mode of punishment, I cannot help thinking to be, the
senseless costume with which old prescription has thought fit to clothe
the exit of malefactors in this country. Let a man do what he will to
abstract from his imagination all idea of the whimsical, something of it
will come across him when he contemplates the figure of a
fellow-creature in the day-time (in however distressing a situation) in
a night cap. Whether it be that this nocturnal addition has something
discordant with day-light, or that it is the dress which we are seen in
at those times when we are "seen," as the Angel in Milton expresses it,
"least wise;" this I am afraid will always be the case; unless indeed,
as in my instance, some strong personal feeling overpower the ludicrous
altogether. To me, when I reflect upon the train of misfortunes which
have pursued me through life, owing to that accursed drapery, the cap
presents as purely frightful an object as the sleeveless yellow coat and
devil-painted mitre of the San Benitos.--An ancestor of mine, who
suffered for his loyalty in the time of the civil wars, was so sensible
of the truth of what I am here advancing, that on the morning of
execution, no intreaties could prevail upon him to submit to the odious
dishabille, as he called it, but he insisted upon wearing, and actually
suffered in, the identical flowing periwig which he is painted in, in
the gallery belonging to my uncle's seat in ----shire.
Suffer me, Mr. Editor, before I quit the subject, to say a word or two
respecting the minister of justice in this country; in plain words, I
mean the hangman. It has always appeared to me that, in the mode of
inflicting capital punishments with us, there is too much of the
ministry of the human hand. The guillotine, as performing its functions
more of itself and sparing human agency, though a cruel and disgusting
exhibition, in my mind, has many ways the advantage over _our way_. In
beheading, indeed, as it was formerly practised in England, and in
whipping to death, as is sometimes practised now, the hand of man is no
doubt sufficiently busy; but there is something less repugnant in these
downright blows than in the officious barber-like ministerings of _the
other_. To have a fellow with his hangman's hands fumbling about your
collar, adjusting the thing as your valet would regulate your cravat,
valuing himself on his menial dexterity----
I never shall forget meeting my rascal,--I mean the fellow who
officiated for me,--in London last winter. I think I see him now,--in a
waistcoat that had been mine,--smirking along as if he knew me----
In some parts of Germany, that fellow's office is by law declared
infamous, and his posterity incapable of being ennobled. They have
hereditary hangmen, or had at least, in the same manner as they had
hereditary other great officers of state; and the hangmen's families of
two adjoining parishes intermarried with each other, to keep the breed
entire. I wish something of the same kind were established in England.
But it is time to quit a subject which teems with disagreeable images--
Permit me to subscribe myself, Mr. Editor,
Your unfortunate friend,
PENSILIS.
ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL DEFORMITY; WITH A HINT
TO THOSE WHO HAVE THE FRAMING OF ADVERTISEMENTS FOR APPREHENDING
OFFENDERS
(1810. TEXT OF 1818)
_To the Editor of the Reflector_
Mr. Reflector,--There is no science in their pretensions to which
mankind are more apt to commit grievous mistakes, than in the supposed
very obvious one of physiognomy. I quarrel not with the principles of
this science, as they are laid down by learned professors; much less am
I disposed, with some people, to deny its existence altogether as any
inlet of knowledge that can be depended upon. I believe that there is,
or may be, an art to "read the mind's construction in the face." But,
then, in every species of _reading_, so much depends upon the eyes of
the reader; if they are blear, or apt to dazzle, or inattentive, or
strained with too much attention, the optic power will infallibly bring
home false reports of what it reads. How often do we say, upon a cursory
glance at a stranger, what a fine open countenance he has, who, upon
second inspection, proves to have the exact features of a knave. Nay, in
much more intimate acquaintances, how a delusion of this kind shall
continue for months, years, and then break up all at once.
Ask the married man, who has been so but for a short space of time, if
those blue eyes where, during so many years of anxious courtship, truth,
sweetness, serenity, seemed to be written in characters which could not
be misunderstood--ask him if the characters which they now convey be
exactly the same?--if for truth he does not _read_ a dull virtue (the
mimic of constancy) which changes not, only because it wants the
judgment to make a preference?--if for sweetness he does not _read_ a
stupid habit of looking pleased at every thing;--if for serenity he does
not _read_ animal tranquillity, the dead pool of the heart, which no
breeze of passion can stir into health? Alas! what is this book of the
countenance good for, which when we have read so long, and thought that
we understood its contents, there comes a countless list of
heart-breaking errata at the end!
But these are the pitiable mistakes to which love alone is subject. I
have inadvertently wandered from my purpose, which was to expose quite
an opposite blunder, into which we are no less apt to fall, through
hate. How ugly a person looks upon whose reputation some awkward
aspersion hangs, and how suddenly his countenance clears up with his
character. I remember being persuaded of a man whom I had conceived an
ill opinion of, that he had a very bad set of teeth; which, since I have
had better opportunities of being acquainted with his face and facts, I
find to have been the very reverse of the truth. _That crooked old
woman_, I once said, speaking of an ancient gentlewoman, whose actions
did not square altogether with my notions of the rule of right. The
unanimous surprise of the company before whom I uttered these words,
soon convinced me that I had confounded mental with bodily obliquity,
and that there was nothing tortuous about the old lady but her deeds.
This humour of mankind to deny personal comeliness to those with whose
moral attributes they are dissatisfied, is very strongly shewn in those
advertisements, which stare us in the face from the walls of every
street, and, with the tempting bait which they hang forth, stimulate at
once cupidity and an abstract love of justice in the breast of every
passing peruser; I mean, the advertisements offering rewards for the
apprehension of absconded culprits, strayed apprentices, bankrupts who
have conveyed away their effects, debtors that have run away from their
bail. I observe, that in exact proportion to the indignity with which
the prosecutor, who is commonly the framer of the advertisement,
conceives he has been treated, the personal pretensions of the fugitive
are denied, and his defects exaggerated.
A fellow, whose misdeeds have been directed against the public in
general, and in whose delinquency no individual shall feel himself
particularly interested, generally meets with fair usage. A coiner or a
smuggler shall get off tolerably well. His beauty, if he has any, is not
much underrated, his deformities are not much magnified. A run-away
apprentice, who excites perhaps the next least degree of spleen in his
prosecutor, generally escapes with a pair of bandy legs; if he has taken
any thing with him in his flight, a hitch in his gait is generally
superadded. A bankrupt, who has been guilty of withdrawing his effects,
if his case be not very atrocious, commonly meets with mild usage. But a
debtor who has left his bail in jeopardy, is sure to be described in
characters of unmingled deformity. Here the personal feelings of the
bail, which may be allowed to be somewhat poignant, are admitted to
interfere; and, as wrath and revenge commonly strike in the dark, the
colours are laid on with a grossness which I am convinced must often
defeat its own purpose. The fish that casts an inky cloud about him that
his enemies may not find him, cannot more obscure himself by that device
than the blackening representations of these angry advertisers must
inevitably serve to cloak and screen the persons of those who have
injured them from detection. I have before me at this moment one of
these bills, which runs thus:--
"FIFTY POUNDS REWARD.
"Run away from his bail, John Tomkins, formerly resident in
Princes-street, Soho, but lately of Clerkenwell. Whoever shall
apprehend, or cause to be apprehended and lodged in one of his
Majesty's jails, the said John Tomkins, shall receive the above
reward. He is a thickset, sturdy man, about five foot six inches
high, halts in his left leg, with a stoop in his gait, with coarse
red hair, nose short and cocked up, with little grey eyes, one of
them bears the effect of a blow which he has lately received, with
a pot belly, speaks with a thick and disagreeable voice, goes
shabbily drest, had on when he went away a greasy shag great coat
with rusty yellow buttons."
Now, although it is not out of the compass of possibility that John
Tomkins aforesaid may comprehend in his agreeable person all the
above-mentioned aggregate of charms; yet, from my observation of the
manner in which these advertisements are usually drawn up, though I have
not the pleasure of knowing the gentleman, yet would I lay a wager, that
an advertisement to the following effect would have a much better chance
of apprehending and laying by the heels this John Tomkins than the above
description, although penned by one who, from the good services which he
appears to have done for him, has not improbably been blessed with some
years of previous intercourse with the said John. Taking, then, the
above advertisement to be true, or nearly so, down to the words "left
leg" inclusive (though I have some doubt if the blemish there implied
amount to a positive lameness, or be perceivable by any but the nearest
friends of John) I would proceed thus:--
--"Leans a little forward in his walk, his hair thick and inclining to
auburn, his nose of the middle size, a little turned up at the end,
lively hazel eyes (the contusion, as its effects are probably gone off
by this time, I judge better omitted) inclines to be corpulent, his
voice thick but pleasing, especially when he sings, had on a decent shag
great coat with yellow buttons."
Now, I would stake a considerable wager (though by no means a positive
man) that some such mitigated description would lead the beagles of the
law into a much surer track for finding this ungracious varlet, than to
set them upon a false scent after fictitious ugliness and fictitious
shabbiness; though, to do those gentlemen justice, I have no doubt their
experience has taught them in all such cases to abate a great deal of
the deformity which they are instructed to expect; and has discovered to
them, that the Devil's agents upon this earth, like their master, are
far less ugly in reality than they are painted.
I am afraid, Mr. Reflector, that I shall be thought to have gone wide of
my subject, which was to detect the practical errors of physiognomy,
properly so called; whereas I have introduced physical defects, such as
lameness, the effects of accidents upon a man's person, his wearing
apparel, &c. as circumstances on which the eye of dislike, looking
ascance, may report erroneous conclusions to the understanding. But if
we are liable, through a kind, or an unkind passion, to mistake so
grossly concerning things so exterior and palpable, how much more are
we likely to err respecting those nicer and less perceptible hints of
character in a face, whose detection constitutes the triumph of the
physiognomist.
To revert to those bestowers of unmerited deformity, the framers of
advertisements for the apprehension of delinquents, a sincere desire of
promoting the ends of public justice induces me to address a word to
them on the best means of attaining those ends. I will endeavour to lay
down a few practical, or rather negative, rules for their use, for my
ambition extends no further than to arm them with cautions against the
self-defeating of their own purposes:--
1. Imprimis, then, Mr. Advertiser! If the culprit whom you are willing
to recover be one to whom in times past you have shewn kindness, and
been disposed to think kindly of him yourself, but he has deceived your
trust, and has run away, and left you with a load of debt to answer for
him,--sit down calmly, and endeavour to behold him through the
spectacles of memory rather than of present conceit. Image to yourself,
before you pen a tittle of his description, the same plausible,
good-looking man who took you in; and try to put away from your mind
every intrusion of that deceitful spectre which perpetually obtrudes
itself in the room of your former friend's known visage. It will do you
more credit to have been deceived by such a one; and depend upon it, the
traitor will convey to the eyes of the world in general much more of
that first idea which you formed (perhaps in part erroneous) of his
physiognomy, than of that frightful substitute which you have suffered
to creep in upon your mind and usurp upon it; a creature which has no
archetype except in your own brain.
2. If you be a master that have to advertise a runaway apprentice,
though the young dog's faults are known only to you, and no doubt his
conduct has been aggravating enough, do not presently set him down as
having crooked ancles. He may have a good pair of legs, and run away
notwithstanding. Indeed, the latter does rather seem to imply the
former.
3. If the unhappy person against whom your laudable vengeance is
directed be a thief, think that a thief may have a good nose, good eyes,
good ears. It is indispensable to his profession that he be possessed of
sagacity, foresight, vigilance; it is more than probable, then, that he
is endued with the bodily types or instruments of these qualities to
some tolerable degree of perfectness.
4. If petty larceny be his offence, I exhort you, do not confound
meanness of crime with diminutiveness of stature. These things have no
connection. I have known a tall man stoop to the basest action, a short
man aspire to the height of crime, a fair man be guilty of the foulest
actions, &c.
5. Perhaps the offender has been guilty of some atrocious and aggravated
murder. Here is the most difficult case of all. It is above all
requisite, that such a daring violator of the peace and safety of
society should meet with his reward, a violent and ignominious death.
But how shall we get at him? Who is there among us, that has known him
before he committed the offence, that shall take upon him to say he can
sit down coolly and pen a dispassionate description of a murderer? The
tales of our nursery,--the reading of our youth,--the ill-looking man
that was hired by the Uncle to dispatch the Children in the Wood,--the
grim ruffians who smothered the babes in the Tower,--the black and
beetle-browed assassin of Mrs. Ratcliffe,--the shag-haired villain of
Mr. Monk Lewis,--the Tarquin tread, and mill-stone dropping eyes, of
Murder in Shakspeare,--the exaggerations of picture and of poetry,--what
we have read and what we have dreamed of,--rise up and crowd in upon us
such eye-scaring portraits of the man of blood, that our pen is
absolutely forestalled; we commence poets when we should play the part
of strictest historians, and the very blackness of horror which the deed
calls up, serves as a cloud to screen the doer. The fiction is
blameless, it is accordant with those wise prejudices with which nature
has guarded our innocence, as with impassable barriers, against the
commission of such appalling crimes; but meantime, the criminal escapes;
or if,--owing to that wise abatement in their expectation of deformity,
which, as I hinted at before, the officers of pursuit never fail to
make, and no doubt in cases of this sort they make a more than ordinary
allowance,--if, owing to this or any accident, the offender is caught
and brought to his trial, who that has been led out of curiosity to
witness such a scene, has not with astonishment reflected on the
difference between a real committer of a murder, and the idea of one
which he has been collecting and heightening all his life out of books,
dreams, &c. The fellow, perhaps, is a sleek, smug-looking man, with
light hair and eye-brows,--the latter by no means jutting out or like a
crag,--and with none of those marks which our fancy had pre-bestowed
upon him.
I find I am getting unawares too serious; the best way on such occasions
is, to leave off, which I shall do by generally recommending to all
prosecuting advertisers not to confound crimes with ugliness; or rather,
to distinguish between that physiognomical deformity, which I am willing
to grant always accompanies crime, and mere _physical ugliness_,--which
signifies nothing, is the exponent of nothing, and may exist in a good
or bad person indifferently.
CRITO.
ON THE AMBIGUITIES ARISING FROM PROPER NAMES
(1811)
Mr. Reflector,--How oddly it happens that the same sound shall suggest
to the minds of two persons hearing it ideas the most opposite! I was
conversing a few years since with a young friend upon the subject of
poetry, and particularly that species of it which is known by the name
of the Epithalamium. I ventured to assert, that the most perfect
specimen of it in our language was the Epithalamium of Spenser upon his
own marriage.
My young gentleman, who has a smattering of taste, and would not
willingly be thought ignorant of any thing remotely connected with the
belles lettres, expressed a degree of surprise, mixed with
mortification, that he should never have heard of this poem, Spenser
being an author with whose writings he thought himself peculiarly
conversant.
I offered to show him the poem in the fine folio copy of the poet's
works, which I have at home. He seemed pleased with the offer, though
the mention of the folio seemed again to puzzle him. But presently
after, assuming a grave look, he compassionately muttered to himself
"poor Spencer."
There was something in the tone with which he spoke these words that
struck me not a little. It was more like the accent with which a man
bemoans some recent calamity that has happened to a friend, than that
tone of sober grief with which we lament the sorrows of a person,
however excellent, and however grievous his afflictions may have been,
who has been dead more than two centuries. I had the curiosity to
enquire into the reasons of so uncommon an ejaculation. My young
gentleman, with a more solemn tone of pathos than before, repeated "poor
Spencer," and added, "he has lost his wife."
My astonishment at this assertion rose to such a height, that I began to
think the brain of my young friend must be cracked, or some
unaccountable reverie had gotten possession of it. But upon further
explanation it appeared that the word "Spenser,"--which to you or me,
Reader, in a conversation upon poetry too, would naturally have called
up the idea of an old poet in a ruff, one Edmund Spenser, that
flourished in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and wrote a poem called the
_Fairy Queen_, with the _Shepherd's Calender_, and many more verses
besides,--did in the mind of my young friend excite a very different and
quite modern idea, namely, that of the Honourable William Spencer, one
of the living ornaments, if I am not misinformed, of this present
poetical era, A.D. 1811.
X. Y. Z.
ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH; WITH SOME REMARKS ON A PASSAGE
IN THE WRITINGS OF THE LATE MR. BARRY
(1811. TEXT OF 1818)
One of the earliest and noblest enjoyments I had when a boy was in the
contemplation of those capital prints by Hogarth, the _Harlot's_ and
_Rake's Progresses_, which, along with some others, hung upon the walls
of a great hall in an old-fashioned house in ----shire, and seemed the
solitary tenants (with myself) of that antiquated and life-deserted
apartment.
Recollection of the manner in which those prints used to affect me, has
often made me wonder, when I have heard Hogarth described as a mere
comic painter, as one whose chief ambition was to _raise a laugh_. To
deny that there are throughout the prints which I have mentioned
circumstances introduced of a laughable tendency, would be to run
counter to the common notions of mankind; but to suppose that in their
_ruling character_ they appeal chiefly to the risible faculty, and not
first and foremost to the very heart of man, its best and most serious
feelings, would be to mistake no less grossly their aim and purpose. A
set of severer Satires (for they are not so much Comedies, which they
have been likened to, as they are strong and masculine Satires) less
mingled with any thing of mere fun, were never written upon paper, or
graven upon copper. They resemble Juvenal, or the satiric touches in
Timon of Athens.
I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who being asked which book
he esteemed most in his library, answered,--"Shakspeare:" being asked
which he esteemed next best, replied,--"Hogarth." His graphic
representations are indeed books: they have the teeming, fruitful,
suggestive meaning of _words_. Other pictures we look at,--his prints we
read.
In pursuance of this parallel, I have sometimes entertained myself with
comparing the _Timon of Athens_ of Shakspeare (which I have just
mentioned) and Hogarth's _Rake's Progress_ together. The story, the
moral, in both is nearly the same. The wild course of riot and
extravagance, ending in the one with driving the Prodigal from the
society of men into the solitude of the deserts, and in the other with
conducting the Rake through his several stages of dissipation into the
still more complete desolations of the mad-house, in the play and in the
picture are described with almost equal force and nature. The levee of
the Rake, which forms the subject of the second plate in the series, is
almost a transcript of Timon's levee in the opening scene of that play.
We find a dedicating poet, and other similar characters, in both.
The concluding scene in the _Rake's Progress_ is perhaps superior to the
last scenes of _Timon_. If we seek for something of kindred excellence
in poetry, it must be in the scenes of Lear's beginning madness, where
the King and the Fool and the Tom-o'-Bedlam conspire to produce such a
medley of mirth checked by misery, and misery rebuked by mirth; where
the society of those "strange bed-fellows" which misfortunes have
brought Lear acquainted with, so finely sets forth the destitute state
of the monarch, while the lunatic bans of the one, and the disjointed
sayings and wild but pregnant allusions of the other, so wonderfully
sympathize with that confusion, which they seem to assist in the
production of, in the senses of that "child-changed father."
In the scene in Bedlam, which terminates the _Rake's Progress_, we find
the same assortment of the ludicrous with the terrible. Here is
desperate madness, the overturning of originally strong thinking
faculties, at which we shudder, as we contemplate the duration and
pressure of affliction which it must have asked to destroy such a
building;--and here is the gradual hurtless lapse into idiocy, of
faculties, which at their best of times never having been strong, we
look upon the consummation of their decay with no more of pity than is
consistent with a smile. The mad taylor, the poor driveller that has
gone out of his wits (and truly he appears to have had no great journey
to go to get past their confines) for the love of _Charming Betty
Careless_,--these half-laughable, scarce-pitiable objects take off from
the horror which the principal figure would of itself raise, at the same
time that they assist the feeling of the scene by contributing to the
general notion of its subject:--
Madness, thou chaos of the brain,
What art, that pleasure giv'st, and pain?
Tyranny of Fancy's reign!
Mechanic Fancy, that can build
Vast labyrinths and mazes wild,
With rule disjointed, shapeless measure,
Fill'd with horror, fill'd with pleasure!
Shapes of horror, that would even
Cast doubts of mercy upon heaven.
Shapes of pleasure, that, but seen,
Would split the shaking sides of spleen.[7]
[7] Lines inscribed under the plate.
Is it carrying the spirit of comparison to excess to remark, that in the
poor kneeling weeping female, who accompanies her seducer in his sad
decay, there is something analogous to Kent, or Caius, as he delights
rather to be called, in _Lear_,--the noblest pattern of virtue which
even Shakspeare has conceived,--who follows his royal master in
banishment, that had pronounced _his_ banishment, and forgetful at once
of his wrongs and dignities, taking on himself the disguise of a menial,
retains his fidelity to the figure, his loyalty to the carcass, the
shadow, the shell and empty husk of Lear?
In the perusal of a book, or of a picture, much of the impression which
we receive depends upon the habit of mind which we bring with us to such
perusal. The same circumstance may make one person laugh, which shall
render another very serious; or in the same person the first impression
may be corrected by after-thought. The misemployed incongruous
characters at the _Harlot's Funeral_, on a superficial inspection,
provoke to laughter; but when we have sacrificed the first emotion to
levity, a very different frame of mind succeeds, or the painter has lost
half his purpose. I never look at that wonderful assemblage of depraved
beings, who, without a grain of reverence or pity in their perverted
minds, are performing the sacred exteriors of duty to the relics of
their departed partner in folly, but I am as much moved to sympathy from
the very want of it in them, as I should be by the finest representation
of a virtuous death-bed surrounded by real mourners, pious children,
weeping friends,--perhaps more by the very contrast. What reflexions
does it not awake, of the dreadful heartless state in which the creature
(a female too) must have lived, who in death wants the accompaniment of
one genuine tear. That wretch who is removing the lid of the coffin to
gaze upon the corpse with a face which indicates a perfect negation of
all goodness or womanhood--the hypocrite parson and his demure
partner--all the fiendish group--to a thoughtful mind present a moral
emblem more affecting than if the poor friendless carcass had been
depicted as thrown out to the woods, where wolves had assisted at its
obsequies, itself furnishing forth its own funeral banquet.
It is easy to laugh at such incongruities as are met together in this
picture,--incongruous objects being of the very essence of
laughter,--but surely the laugh is far different in its kind from that
thoughtless species to which we are moved by mere farce and grotesque.
We laugh when Ferdinand Count Fathom, at the first sight of the white
cliffs of Britain, feels his heart yearn with filial fondness towards
the land of his progenitors, which he is coming to fleece and
plunder,--we smile at the exquisite irony of the passage,--but if we are
not led on by such passages to some more salutary feeling than laughter,
we are very negligent perusers of them in book or picture.
It is the fashion with those who cry up the great Historical School in
this country, at the head of which Sir Joshua Reynolds is placed, to
exclude Hogarth from that school, as an artist of an inferior and vulgar
class. Those persons seem to me to confound the painting of subjects in
common or vulgar life with the being a vulgar artist. The quantity of
thought which Hogarth crowds into every picture, would alone
_unvulgarize_ every subject which he might choose. Let us take the
lowest of his subjects, the print called _Gin Lane_. Here is plenty of
poverty and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial view; and
accordingly, a cold spectator feels himself immediately disgusted and
repelled. I have seen many turn away from it, not being able to bear it.
The same persons would perhaps have looked with great complacency upon
Poussin's celebrated picture of the _Plague of Athens_.[8] Disease and
Death and bewildering Terror in _Athenian garments_ are endurable, and
come, as the delicate critics express it, within the "limits of
pleasurable sensation." But the scenes of their own St. Giles's,
delineated by their own countryman, are too shocking to think of. Yet if
we could abstract our minds from the fascinating colours of the picture,
and forget the coarse execution (in some respects) of the print,
intended as it was to be a cheap plate, accessible to the poorer sort of
people, for whose instruction it was done, I think we could have no
hesitation in conferring the palm of superior genius upon Hogarth,
comparing this work of his with Poussin's picture. There is more of
imagination in it--that power which draws all things to one,--which
makes things animate and inanimate, beings with their attributes,
subjects and their accessories, take one colour, and serve to one
effect. Every thing in the print, to use a vulgar expression, _tells_.
Every part is full of "strange images of death." It is perfectly amazing
and astounding to look at. Not only the two prominent figures, the woman
and the half-dead man, which are as terrible as any thing which Michael
Angelo ever drew, but every thing else in the print contributes to
bewilder and stupefy,--the very houses, as I heard a friend of mine
express it, tumbling all about in various directions, seem drunk--seem
absolutely reeling from the effect of that diabolical spirit of phrenzy
which goes forth over the whole composition.--To shew the poetical and
almost prophetical conception in the artist, one little circumstance may
serve. Not content with the dying and dead figures, which he has strewed
in profusion over the proper scene of the action, he shews you what (of
a kindred nature) is passing beyond it. Close by the shell, in which, by
direction of the parish beadle, a man is depositing his wife, is an old
wall, which, partaking of the universal decay around it, is tumbling to
pieces. Through a gap in this wall are seen three figures, which appear
to make a part in some funeral procession which is passing by on the
other side of the wall, out of the sphere of the composition. This
extending of the interest beyond the bounds of the subject could only
have been conceived by a great genius. Shakspeare, in his description of
the painting of the Trojan War, in his _Tarquin and Lucrece_, has
introduced a similar device, where the painter made a part stand for the
whole:--
For much imaginary work was there,
Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,
That for Achilles' image stood his spear,
Grip'd in an armed hand; himself behind
Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind;
A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,
Stood for the whole to be imagined.
[8] At the late Mr. Hope's, in Cavendish-square.
This he well calls _imaginary work_, where the spectator must meet the
artist in his conceptions half way; and it is peculiar to the confidence
of high genius alone to trust so much to spectators or readers. Lesser
artists shew every thing distinct and full, as they require an object to
be made out to themselves before they can comprehend it.
When I think of the power displayed in this (I will not hesitate to say)
sublime print, it seems to me the extreme narrowness of system alone,
and of that rage for classification, by which, in matters of taste at
least, we are perpetually perplexing instead of arranging our ideas,
that would make us concede to the work of Poussin above-mentioned, and
deny to this of Hogarth, the name of a grand serious composition.
We are for ever deceiving ourselves with names and theories. We call one
man a great historical painter, because he has taken for his subjects
kings or great men, or transactions over which time has thrown a
grandeur. We term another the painter of common life, and set him down
in our minds for an artist of an inferior class, without reflecting
whether the quantity of thought shewn by the latter may not much more
than level the distinction which their mere choice of subjects may seem
to place between them; or whether, in fact, from that very common life a
great artist may not extract as deep an interest as another man from
that which we are pleased to call history.
I entertain the highest respect for the talents and virtues of Reynolds,
but I do not like that his reputation should overshadow and stifle the
merits of such a man as Hogarth, nor that to mere names and
classifications we should be content to sacrifice one of the greatest
ornaments of England.
I would ask the most enthusiastic admirer of Reynolds, whether in the
countenances of his _Staring_ and _Grinning Despair_, which he has given
us for the faces of Ugolino and dying Beaufort, there be any thing
comparable to the expression which Hogarth has put into the face of his
broken-down rake in the last plate but one of the _Rake's Progress_,[9]
where a letter from the manager is brought to him to say that his play
"will not do?" Here all is easy, natural, undistorted, but withal what a
mass of woe is here accumulated!--the long history of a mis-spent life
is compressed into the countenance as plainly as the series of plates
before had told it; here is no attempt at Gorgonian looks which are to
freeze the beholder, no grinning at the antique bedposts, no
face-making, or consciousness of the presence of spectators in or out of
the picture, but grief kept to a man's self, a face retiring from notice
with the shame which great anguish sometimes brings with it,--a final
leave taken of hope,--the coming on of vacancy and stupefaction,--a
beginning alienation of mind looking like tranquillity. Here is matter
for the mind of the beholder to feed on for the hour together,--matter
to feed and fertilize the mind. It is too real to admit one thought
about the power of the artist who did it.--When we compare the
expression in subjects which so fairly admit of comparison, and find the
superiority so clearly to remain with Hogarth, shall the mere
contemptible difference of the scene of it being laid in the one case in
our Fleet or King's Bench Prison, and in the other in the State Prison
of Pisa, or the bed-room of a cardinal,--or that the subject of the one
has never been authenticated, and the other is matter of history,--so
weigh down the real points of the comparison, as to induce us to rank
the artist who has chosen the one scene or subject (though confessedly
inferior in that which constitutes the soul of his art) in a class from
which we exclude the better genius (who has happened to make choice of
the other) with something like disgrace?[10]
[9] The first perhaps in all Hogarth for serious expression. That
which comes next to it, I think, is the jaded morning countenance of
the debauchee in the second plate of the _Marriage Alamode_, which
lectures on the vanity of pleasure as audibly as any thing in
Ecclesiastes.
[10] Sir Joshua Reynolds, somewhere in his lectures, speaks of the
_presumption_ of Hogarth in attempting the grand style in painting,
by which he means his choice of certain Scripture subjects.
Hogarth's excursions into Holy Land were not very numerous, but what
he has left us in this kind have at least this merit, that they have
expression of _some sort or other_ in them,--the _Child Moses before
Pharaoh's Daughter_, for instance: which is more than can be said of
Sir Joshua Reynolds's _Repose in Egypt_, painted for Macklin's
Bible, where for a Madona he has substituted a sleepy, insensible,
unmotherly girl, one so little worthy to have been selected as the
Mother of the Saviour, that she seems to have neither heart nor
feeling to entitle her to become a mother at all. But indeed the
race of Virgin Mary painters seems to have been cut up, root and
branch, at the Reformation. Our artists are too good Protestants to
give life to that admirable commixture of maternal tenderness with
reverential awe and wonder approaching to worship, with which the
Virgin Mothers of L. da Vinci and Raphael (themselves by their
divine countenances inviting men to worship) contemplate the union
of the two natures in the person of their Heaven-born Infant.
The _Boys under Demoniacal Possession_ of Raphael and Dominichino, by
what law of classification are we bound to assign them to belong to the
great style in painting, and to degrade into an inferior class the Rake
of Hogarth when he is the Madman in the Bedlam scene? I am sure he is
far more impressive than either. It is a face which no one that has seen
can easily forget. There is the stretch of human suffering to the utmost
endurance, severe bodily pain brought on by strong mental agony, the
frightful obstinate laugh of madness,--yet all so unforced and natural,
that those who never were witness to madness in real life, think they
see nothing but what is familiar to them in this face. Here are no
tricks of distortion, nothing but the natural face of agony. This is
high tragic painting, and we might as well deny to Shakspeare the
honours of a great tragedian, because he has interwoven scenes of mirth
with the serious business of his plays, as refuse to Hogarth the same
praise for the two concluding scenes of the _Rake's Progress_, because
of the Comic Lunatics[11] which he has thrown into the one, or the
Alchymist that he has introduced in the other, who is paddling in the
coals of his furnace, keeping alive the flames of vain hope within the
very walls of the prison to which the vanity has conducted him, which
have taught the darker lesson of extinguished hope to the desponding
figure who is the principal person of the scene.
[11]
There are of madmen, as there are of tame,
All humour'd not alike. We have here some
So apish and fantastic, play with a feather;
And though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image
So blemish'd and defac'd, yet do they act
Such antick and such pretty lunacies,
That, spite of sorrow, they will make you smile.
Others again we have, like angry lions,
Fierce as wild bulls, untameable as flies.
"Honest Whore."
It is the force of these kindly admixtures, which assimilates the scenes
of Hogarth and of Shakspeare to the drama of real life, where no such
thing as pure tragedy is to be found; but merriment and infelicity,
ponderous crime and feather-light vanity, like twiformed births,
disagreeing complexions of one intertexture, perpetually unite to shew
forth motley spectacles to the world. Then it is that the poet or
painter shews his art, when in the selection of these comic adjuncts he
chooses such circumstances as shall relieve, contrast with, or fall
into, without forming a violent opposition to, his principal object. Who
sees not that the Grave-digger in _Hamlet_, the Fool in _Lear_, have a
kind of correspondency to, and fall in with, the subjects which they
seem to interrupt, while the comic stuff in _Venice Preserved_, and the
doggrel nonsense of the Cook and his poisoning associates in the _Rollo_
of Beaumont and Fletcher, are pure, irrelevant, impertinent
discords,--as bad as the quarrelling dog and cat under the table of the
_Lord and the Disciples at Emmaus_ of Titian?
Not to tire the reader with perpetual reference to prints which he may
not be fortunate enough to possess, it may be sufficient to remark, that
the same tragic cast of expression and incident, blended in some
instances with a greater alloy of comedy, characterizes his other great
work, the _Marriage Alamode_, as well as those less elaborate exertions
of his genius, the prints called _Industry and Idleness_, the _Distrest
Poet_, &c. forming, with the _Harlot's_ and _Rake's Progresses_, the
most considerable if not the largest class of his productions,--enough
surely to rescue Hogarth from the imputation of being a mere buffoon, or
one whose general aim was only to _shake the sides_.
There remains a very numerous class of his performances, the object of
which must be confessed to be principally comic. But in all of them will
be found something to distinguish them from the droll productions of
Bunbury and others. They have this difference, that we do not merely
laugh at, we are led into long trains of reflection by them. In this
respect they resemble the characters of Chaucer's _Pilgrims_, which have
strokes of humour in them enough to designate them for the most part as
comic, but our strongest feeling still is wonder at the
comprehensiveness of genius which could crowd, as poet and painter have
done, into one small canvas so many diverse yet co-operating materials.
The faces of Hogarth have not a mere momentary interest, as in
caricatures, or those grotesque physiognomies which we sometimes catch a
glance of in the street, and, struck with their whimsicality, wish for a
pencil and the power to sketch them down; and forget them again as
rapidly,--but they are permanent abiding ideas. Not the sports of
nature, but her necessary eternal classes. We feel that we cannot part
with any of them, lest a link should be broken.
It is worthy of observation, that he has seldom drawn a mean or
insignificant countenance.[12] Hogarth's mind was eminently reflective;
and, as it has been well observed of Shakspeare, that he has transfused
his own poetical character into the persons of his drama (they are all
more or less _poets_) Hogarth has impressed a _thinking character_ upon
the persons of his canvas. This remark must not be taken universally.
The exquisite idiotism of the little gentleman in the bag and sword
beating his drum in the print of the _Enraged Musician_, would of itself
rise up against so sweeping an assertion. But I think it will be found
to be true of the generality of his countenances. The knife-grinder and
Jew flute-player in the plate just mentioned may serve as instances
instead of a thousand. They have intense thinking faces, though the
purpose to which they are subservient by no means required it; but
indeed it seems as if it was painful to Hogarth to contemplate mere
vacancy or insignificance.
[12] If there are any of that description, they are in his
_Strolling Players_, a print which has been cried up by Lord Orford
as the richest of his productions, and it may be, for what I know,
in the mere lumber, the properties, and dead furniture of the scene,
but in living character and expression it is (for Hogarth)
lamentably poor and wanting; it is perhaps the only one of his
performances at which we have a right to feel disgusted.
This reflection of the artist's own intellect from the faces of his
characters, is one reason why the works of Hogarth, so much more than
those of any other artist are objects of meditation. Our intellectual
natures love the mirror which gives them back their own likenesses. The
mental eye will not bend long with delight upon vacancy.
Another line of eternal separation between Hogarth and the common
painters of droll or burlesque subjects, with whom he is often
confounded, is the sense of beauty, which in the most unpromising
subjects seems never wholly to have deserted him. "Hogarth himself,"
says Mr. Coleridge,[13] from whom I have borrowed this observation,
speaking of a scene which took place at Ratzeburg, "never drew a more
ludicrous distortion, both of attitude and physiognomy, than this effect
occasioned: nor was there wanting beside it one of those beautiful
female faces which the same Hogarth, _in whom the satirist never
extinguished that love of beauty which belonged to him as a poet_, so
often and so gladly introduces as the central figure in a crowd of
humorous deformities, which figure (such is the power of true genius)
neither acts nor is meant to act as a contrast; but diffuses through
all, and over each of the group, a spirit of reconciliation and human
kindness; and even when the attention is no longer consciously directed
to the cause of this feeling, still blends its tenderness with our
laughter: and _thus prevents the instructive merriment at the whims of
nature, or the foibles or humours of our fellow-men, from degenerating
into the heart-poison of contempt or hatred_." To the beautiful females
in Hogarth, which Mr. C. has pointed out, might be added, the frequent
introduction of children (which Hogarth seems to have taken a
particular delight in) into his pieces. They have a singular effect in
giving tranquillity and a portion of their own innocence to the subject.
The baby riding in its mother's lap in the _March to Finchley_, (its
careless innocent face placed directly behind the intriguing
time-furrowed countenance of the treason-plotting French priest)
perfectly sobers the whole of that tumultuous scene. The boy mourner
winding up his top with so much unpretended insensibility in the plate
of the _Harlot's Funeral_, (the only thing in that assembly that is not
a hypocrite) quiets and soothes the mind that has been disturbed at the
sight of so much depraved man and woman kind.
[13] _The Friend_, No. XVI.
I had written thus far, when I met with a passage in the writings of the
late Mr. Barry, which, as it falls in with the _vulgar notion_
respecting Hogarth, which this Essay has been employed in combating, I
shall take the liberty to transcribe, with such remarks as may suggest
themselves to me in the transcription; referring the reader for a full
answer to that which has gone before.
"Notwithstanding Hogarth's merit does undoubtedly entitle him to an
honourable place amongst the artists, and that his little compositions
considered as so many dramatic representations, abounding with humour,
character, and extensive observations on the various incidents of low,
faulty, and vicious life, are very ingeniously brought together, and
frequently tell their own story with more facility than is often found
in many of the elevated and more noble inventions of Raffael, and other
great men; yet it must be honestly confessed, that in what is called
knowledge of the figure, foreigners have justly observed, that Hogarth
is often so raw, and uninformed, as hardly to deserve the name of an
artist. But this capital defect is not often perceivable, as examples of
the naked and of elevated nature but rarely occur in his subjects, which
are for the most part filled with characters, that in their nature tend
to deformity; besides, his figures are small, and the junctures, and
other difficulties of drawing that might occur in their limbs, are
artfully concealed with their cloaths, rags, &c. But what would atone
for all his defects, even if they were twice told, is his admirable fund
of invention, ever inexhaustible in its resources; and his satire, which
is always sharp and pertinent, and often highly moral, was (except in a
few instances, where he weakly and meanly suffered his integrity to
give way to his envy) seldom or never employed in a dishonest or unmanly
way.
Hogarth has been often imitated in his satirical vein, sometimes in his
humorous; but very few have attempted to rival him in his moral walk.
The line of art pursued by my very ingenious predecessor and brother
academician, Mr. Penny, is quite distinct from that of Hogarth, and is
of a much more delicate and superior relish; he attempts the heart, and
reaches it, whilst Hogarth's general aim is only to shake the sides: in
other respects no comparison can be thought of, as Mr. Penny has all
that knowledge of the figure and academical skill which the other
wanted. As to Mr. Bunbury, who had so happily succeeded in the vein of
humour and caricatura, he has for some time past altogether relinquished
it, for the more amiable pursuit of beautiful nature: this indeed is not
to be wondered at, when we recollect that he has, in Mrs. Bunbury, so
admirable an exemplar of the most finished grace and beauty, continually
at his elbow. But (to say all that occurs to me on this subject) perhaps
it may be reasonably doubted, whether the being much conversant with
Hogarth's method of exposing meanness, deformity, and vice, in many of
his works, is not rather a dangerous, or, at least, a worthless pursuit;
which, if it does not find a false relish, and a love of, and search
after satire and buffoonery in the spectator, is at least not unlikely
to give him one. Life is short, and the little leisure of it is much
better laid out upon that species of art, which is employed upon the
amiable and the admirable, as it is more likely to be attended with
better and nobler consequences to ourselves. These two pursuits in art,
may be compared with two sets of people with whom we might associate; if
we give ourselves up to the Footes, the Kenricks, &c. we shall be
continually busied, and paddling in whatever is ridiculous, faulty, and
vicious in life; whereas there are those to be found, with whom we
should be in the constant pursuit and study of all that gives a value
and a dignity to human nature." [Account of a Series of Pictures in the
Great Room of the Society of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, at the
Adelphi, by James Barry, R.A., Professor of Painting to the Royal
Academy; reprinted in the last quarto edition of his works.]
"----it must be honestly confessed, that in what is called knowledge of
the figure, foreigners have justly observed," &c.
It is a secret well known to the professors of the art and mystery of
criticism, to insist upon what they do not find in a man's works, and to
pass over in silence what they do. That Hogarth did not draw the naked
figure so well as Michael Angelo might be allowed, especially as
"examples of the naked," as Mr. Barry acknowledges, "rarely (he might
almost have said never) occur in his subjects;" and that his figures
under their draperies do not discover all the fine graces of an Antinous
or an Apollo, may be conceded likewise; perhaps it was more suitable to
his purpose to represent the average forms of mankind in the mediocrity
(as Mr. Burke expresses it) of the age in which he lived: but that his
figures in general, and in his best subjects, are so glaringly incorrect
as is here insinuated, I dare trust my own eye so far as positively to
deny the fact. And there is one part of the figure in which Hogarth is
allowed to have excelled, which these foreigners seem to have
overlooked, or perhaps calculating from its proportion to the whole (a
seventh or an eighth, I forget which) deemed it of trifling importance;
I mean the human face; a small part, reckoning by geographical inches,
in the map of man's body, but here it is that the painter of expression
must condense the wonders of his skill, even at the expense of
neglecting the "jonctures and other difficulties of drawing in the
limbs," which it must be a cold eye that in the interest so strongly
demanded by Hogarth's countenances has leisure to survey and censure.
"The line of art pursued by my very ingenious predecessor and brother
academician, Mr. Penny."
The first impression caused in me by reading this passage, was an eager
desire to know who this Mr. Penny was. This great surpasser of Hogarth
in the "delicacy of his relish," and the "line which he pursued," where
is he, what are his works, what has he to shew? In vain I tried to
recollect, till by happily putting the question to a friend who is more
conversant in the works of the illustrious obscure than myself, I
learned that he was the painter of a _Death of Wolfe_ which missed the
prize the year that the celebrated picture of West on the same subject
obtained it; that he also made a picture of the _Marquis of Granby
relieving a Sick Soldier_; moreover, that he was the inventor of two
pictures of _Suspended and Restored Animation_, which I now remember to
have seen in the Exhibition some years since, and the prints from which
are still extant in good men's houses. This then I suppose is the line
of subjects in which Mr. Penny was so much superior to Hogarth. I
confess I am not of that opinion. The relieving of poverty by the purse,
and the restoring a young man to his parents by using the methods
prescribed by the Humane Society, are doubtless very amiable subjects,
pretty things to teach the first rudiments of humanity; they amount to
about as much instruction as the stories of good boys that give away
their custards to poor beggar-boys in children's books. But, good God!
is this _milk for babes_ to be set up in opposition to Hogarth's moral
scenes, his _strong meat for men_? As well might we prefer the fulsome
verses upon their own goodness, to which the gentlemen of the Literary
Fund annually sit still with such shameless patience to listen, to the
satires of Juvenal and Persius; because the former are full of tender
images of Worth relieved by Charity, and Charity stretching out her hand
to rescue sinking Genius, and the theme of the latter is men's crimes
and follies with their black consequences--forgetful meanwhile of those
strains of moral pathos, those sublime heart-touches, which these poets
(in _them_ chiefly shewing themselves poets) are perpetually darting
across the otherwise appalling gloom of their subject--consolatory
remembrancers, when their pictures of guilty mankind have made us even
to despair for our species, that there is such a thing as virtue and
moral dignity in the world, that her unquenchable spark is not utterly
out--refreshing admonitions, to which we turn for shelter from the too
great heat and asperity of the general satire.
And is there nothing analogous to this in Hogarth? nothing which
"attempts and reaches the heart?"--no aim beyond that of "shaking the
sides?"--if the kneeling ministering female in the last scene of the
_Rake's Progress_, the Bedlam scene, of which I have spoken before, and
have dared almost to parallel it with the most absolute idea of Virtue
which Shakspeare has left us, be not enough to disprove the assertion;
if the sad endings of the Harlot and the Rake, the passionate
heart-bleeding entreaties for forgiveness which the adulterous wife is
pouring forth to her assassinated and dying lord in the last scene but
one of the _Marriage Alamode_,--if these be not things to touch the
heart, and dispose the mind to a meditative tenderness: is there nothing
sweetly conciliatory in the mild, patient face and gesture with which
the wife seems to allay and ventilate the feverish irritated feelings of
her poor poverty-distracted mate (the true copy of the _genus
irritabile_) in the print of the _Distrest Poet_? or if an image of
maternal love be required, where shall we find a sublimer view of it
than in that aged woman in _Industry and Idleness_ (plate v.) who is
clinging with the fondness of hope not quite extinguished to her brutal
vice-hardened child, whom she is accompanying to the ship which is to
bear him away from his native soil, of which he has been adjudged
unworthy: in whose shocking face every trace of the human countenance
seems obliterated, and a brute beast's to be left instead, shocking and
repulsive to all but her who watched over it in its cradle before it was
so sadly altered, and feels it must belong to her while a pulse by the
vindictive laws of his country shall be suffered to continue to beat in
it. Compared with such things, what is Mr. Penny's "knowledge of the
figure and academical skill which Hogarth wanted?"
With respect to what follows concerning another gentleman, with the
congratulations to him on his escape out of the regions of "humour and
caricatura," in which it appears he was in danger of travelling side by
side with Hogarth, I can only congratulate my country, that Mrs. Hogarth
knew _her_ province better than by disturbing her husband at his pallet
to divert him from that universality of subject, which has stamped him
perhaps, next to Shakspeare, the most inventive genius which this island
has produced, into the "amiable pursuit of beautiful nature," _i.e._
copying ad infinitum the individual charms and graces of Mrs. H----.
"Hogarth's method of exposing meanness, deformity, and vice, paddling in
whatever is ridiculous, faulty, and vicious."
A person unacquainted with the works thus stigmatised, would be apt to
imagine, that in Hogarth there was nothing else to be found but subjects
of the coarsest and most repulsive nature. That his imagination was
naturally unsweet, and that he delighted in raking into every species of
moral filth. That he preyed upon sore places only, and took a pleasure
in exposing the unsound and rotten parts of human nature;--whereas, with
the exception of some of the plates of the _Harlot's Progress_, which
are harder in their character than any of the rest of his productions,
(the _Stages of Cruelty_ I omit as mere worthless caricaturas, foreign
to his general habits, the offspring of his fancy in some wayward
humour), there is scarce one of his pieces where vice is most strongly
satirised, in which some figure is not introduced upon which the moral
eye may rest satisfied; a face that indicates goodness, or perhaps mere
good humouredness and carelessness of mind (negation of evil) only, yet
enough to give a relaxation to the frowning brow of satire, and keep the
general air from tainting. Take the mild, supplicating posture of
patient Poverty in the poor woman that is persuading the pawnbroker to
accept her clothes in pledge, in the plate of _Gin Lane_, for an
instance. A little does it, a little of the _good_ nature overpowers a
world of _bad_. One cordial honest laugh of a Tom Jones absolutely
clears the atmosphere that was reeking with the black putrifying
breathings of a hypocrite Blifil. One homely expostulating shrug from
Strap, warms the whole air which the suggestions of a gentlemanly
ingratitude from his friend Random had begun to freeze. One "Lord bless
us!" of Parson Adams upon the wickedness of the times, exorcises and
purges off the mass of iniquity which the world-knowledge of even a
Fielding could cull out and rake together. But of the severer class of
Hogarth's performances, enough, I trust, has been said to shew that they
do not merely shock and repulse; that there is in them the "scorn of
vice" and the "pity" too; something to touch the heart, and keep alive
the sense of moral beauty; the "lacrymæ rerum," and the sorrowing by
which the heart is made better. If they be bad things, then is satire
and tragedy a bad thing; let us proclaim at once an age of gold, and
sink the existence of vice and misery in our speculations; let us
----wink, and shut our apprehensions up
From common sense of what men were and are:
let us _make believe_ with the children that every body is good and
happy; and, with Dr. Swift, write panegyrics upon the world.
But that larger half of Hogarth's works which were painted more for
entertainment than instruction (though such was the suggestiveness of
his mind, that there is always something to be learnt from them) his
humourous scenes,--are they such as merely to disgust and set us against
our species?
The confident assertions of such a man as I consider the late Mr. Barry
to have been, have that weight of authority in them which staggers, at
first hearing, even a long preconceived opinion. When I read his
pathetic admonition concerning the shortness of life, and how much
better the little leisure of it were laid out upon "that species of art
which is employed about the amiable and the admirable;" and Hogarth's
"method" proscribed as a "dangerous or worthless pursuit," I began to
think there was something in it; that I might have been indulging all my
life a passion for the works of this artist, to the utter prejudice of
my taste and moral sense; but my first convictions gradually returned, a
world of good-natured English faces came up one by one to my
recollection, and a glance at the matchless _Election Entertainment_,
which I have the happiness to have hanging up in my parlour, subverted
Mr. Barry's whole theory in an instant.
In that inimitable print, (which in my judgment as far exceeds the more
known and celebrated _March to Finchley_, as the best comedy exceeds the
best farce that ever was written,) let a person look till he be
saturated, and when he has done wondering at the inventiveness of genius
which could bring so many characters (more than thirty distinct classes
of face) into a room, and set them down at table together, or otherwise
dispose them about, in so natural a manner, engage them in so many easy
sets and occupations, yet all partaking of the spirit of the occasion
which brought them together, so that we feel that nothing but an
election time could have assembled them; having no central figure or
principal group, (for the hero of the piece, the Candidate, is properly
set aside in the levelling indistinction of the day, one must look for
him to find him) nothing to detain the eye from passing from part to
part, where every part is alike instinct with life,--for here are no
furniture-faces, no figures brought in to fill up the scene like stage
choruses, but all dramatis personæ: when he shall have done wondering at
all these faces so strongly charactered, yet finished with the accuracy
of the finest miniature; when he shall have done admiring the numberless
appendages of the scene, those gratuitous doles which rich genius flings
into the heap when it has already done enough, the over-measure which it
delights in giving, as if its stores were exhaustless; the dumb rhetoric
of the scenery--for tables, and chairs, and joint-stools in Hogarth,
are living and significant things; the witticisms that are expressed by
words, (all artists but Hogarth have failed when they have endeavoured
to combine two mediums of expression, and have introduced words into
their pictures), and the unwritten numberless little allusive
pleasantries that are scattered about; the work that is going on in the
scene, and beyond it, as is made visible to the "eye of mind," by the
mob which choaks up the door-way, and the sword that has forced an
entrance before its master: when he shall have sufficiently admired this
wealth of genius, let him fairly say what is the _result_ left on his
mind. Is it an impression of the vileness and worthlessness of his
species? or is not the general feeling which remains, after the
individual faces have ceased to act sensibly on his mind, a _kindly one
in favour of his species_? was not the general air of the whole scene
wholesome? did it do the heart hurt to be among it? Something of a
riotous spirit to be sure is there, some worldly-mindedness in some of
the faces, a Doddingtonian smoothness which does not promise any
superfluous degree of sincerity in the fine gentleman who has been the
occasion of calling so much good company together: but is not the
general cast of expression in the faces, of the good sort? do they not
seem cut out of the _good old rock_, substantial English honesty? would
one fear treachery among characters of their expression? or shall we
call their honest mirth and seldom-returning relaxation by the hard
names of vice and profligacy? That poor country fellow, that is grasping
his staff (which, from that difficulty of feeling themselves at home
which poor men experience at a feast, he has never parted with since he
came into the room), and is enjoying with a relish that seems to fit all
the capacities of his soul the slender joke, which that facetious wag
his neighbour is practising upon the gouty gentleman, whose eyes the
effort to suppress pain has made as round as rings--does it shock the
"dignity of human nature" to look at that man, and to sympathise with
him in the seldom-heard joke which has unbent his care-worn hard-working
visage, and drawn iron smiles from it? or with that full-hearted cobbler
who is honouring with the grasp of an honest fist the unused palm of
that annoyed patrician, whom the license of the time has seated next
him?
I can see nothing "dangerous" in the contemplation of such scenes as
this, or the _Enraged Musician_, or the _Southwark Fair_, or twenty
other pleasant prints which come crowding in upon my recollection, in
which the restless activities, the diversified bents and humours, the
blameless peculiarities of men, as they deserve to be called, rather
than their "vices and follies," are held up in a laughable point of
view. All laughter is not of a dangerous or soul-hardening tendency.
There is the petrifying sneer of a demon which excludes and kills Love,
and there is the cordial laughter of a man which implies and cherishes
it. What heart was ever made the worse by joining in a hearty laugh at
the simplicities of Sir Hugh Evans or Parson Adams, where a sense of the
ridiculous mutually kindles and is kindled by a perception of the
amiable? That tumultuous harmony of singers that are roaring out the
words, "The world shall bow to the Assyrian throne," from the opera of
_Judith_, in the third plate of the series, called the _Four Groups of
Heads_; which the quick eye of Hogarth must have struck off in the very
infancy of the rage for sacred oratorios in this country, while "Music
yet was young;" when we have done smiling at the deafening distortions,
which these tearers of devotion to rags and tatters, these takers of
Heaven by storm, in their boisterous mimicry of the occupation of
angels, are making,--what unkindly impression is left behind, or what
more of harsh or contemptuous feeling, than when we quietly leave Uncle
Toby and Mr. Shandy riding their hobby-horses about the room? The
conceited, long-backed Sign-painter, that with all the self-applause of
a Raphael or Correggio (the twist of body which his conceit has thrown
him into has something of the Correggiesque in it) is contemplating the
picture of a bottle which he is drawing from an actual bottle that hangs
beside him, in the print of _Beer Street_,--while we smile at the
enormity of the self delusion, can we help loving the good humour and
self-complacency of the fellow? would we willingly wake him from his
dream?
I say not that all the ridiculous subjects of Hogarth have necessarily
something in them to make us like them; some are indifferent to us, some
in their natures repulsive, and only made interesting by the wonderful
skill and truth to nature in the painter; but I contend that there is in
most of them that sprinkling of the better nature, which, like holy
water, chases away and disperses the contagion of the bad. They have
this in them besides, that they bring us acquainted with the every-day
human face,--they give us skill to detect those gradations of sense and
virtue (which escape the careless or fastidious observer) in the
countenances of the world about us; and prevent that disgust at common
life, that _tædium quotidianarum formarum_, which an unrestricted
passion for ideal forms and beauties is in danger of producing. In this,
as in many other things, they are analogous to the best novels of
Smollett or Fielding.
ON THE CUSTOM OF HISSING AT THE THEATRES, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF A CLUB OF
DAMNED AUTHORS
(1811)
Mr. Reflector, I am one of those persons whom the world has thought
proper to designate by the title of Damned Authors. In that memorable
season of dramatic failures, 1806-7, in which no fewer, I think, than
two tragedies, four comedies, one opera, and three farces, suffered at
Drury-lane theatre, I was found guilty of constructing an afterpiece,
and was _damned_.
Against the decision of the public in such instances there can be no
appeal. The Clerk of Chatham might as well have protested against the
decision of Cade and his followers, who were then _the public_. Like him
I was condemned, because I could write.
Not but it did appear to some of us, that the measures of the popular
tribunal at that period savoured a little of harshness and of the
_summum jus_. The public mouth was early in the season fleshed upon the
_Vindictive Man_, and some pieces of that nature, and it retained
through the remainder of it a relish of blood. As Dr. Johnson would have
said; sir, there was a habit of sibilation in the house.
Still less am I disposed to inquire into the reason of the comparative
lenity, on the other hand, with which some pieces were treated, which,
to indifferent judges, seemed at least as much deserving of
condemnation as some of those which met with it. I am willing to put a
favourable construction upon the votes that were given against us; I
believe that there was no bribery or designed partiality in the
case;--only "our nonsense did not happen to suit their nonsense;" that
was all.
But against the _manner_ in which the public on these occasions think
fit to deliver their disapprobation, I must and ever will protest.
Sir, imagine----but you have been present at the damning of a
piece----those who never had that felicity, I beg them to imagine--a
vast theatre, like that which Drury-lane was, before it was a heap of
dust and ashes (I insult not over its fallen greatness, let it recover
itself when it can for me, let it lift up its towering head once more,
and take in poor authors to write for it, hic cœstus artemque repono)--a
theatre like that, filled with all sorts of disgusting sounds,--shrieks,
groans, hisses, but chiefly the last, like the noise of many waters, or
that which Don Quixote heard from the fulling mills, or that wilder
combination of devilish sounds which St. Anthony listened to in the
wilderness.
O, Mr. Reflector, is it not a pity, that the sweet human voice, which
was given man to speak with, to sing with, to whisper tones of love in,
to express compliance, to convey a favour, or to grant a suit--that
voice, which in a Siddons, or a Braham, rouses us, in a Syren Catalani
charms and captivates us,--that the musical, expressive human voice
should be converted into a rival of the noises of silly geese, and
irrational venomous snakes!
I shall never forget the sounds on _my night_; I never before that time
fully felt the reception which the Author of All Ill in the Paradise
Lost meets with from the critics in the _pit_, at the final close of his
Tragedy upon the Human Race--though that, alas! met with too much
success--
----from innumerable tongues,
A dismal universal _hiss_, the sound
Of public scorn.--Dreadful was the din
Of _hissing_ through the hall, thick swarming now
With complicated monsters, head and tail,
Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbœna dire,
Cerastes horn'd, Hydrus, and Elops drear,
And Dipsas.
For hall substitute theatre, and you have the very image of what takes
place at what is called the _damnation_ of a piece,--and properly so
called; for here you see its origin plainly, whence the custom was
derived, and what the first piece was that so suffered. After this none
can doubt the propriety of the appellation.
But, sir, as to the justice of bestowing such appalling, heart-withering
denunciations of the popular obloquy, upon the venial mistake of a poor
author, who thought to please us in the act of filling his pockets,--for
the sum of his demerits amounts to no more than that,--it does, I own,
seem to me a species of retributive justice, far too severe for the
offence. A culprit in the pillory (bate the eggs) meets with no severer
exprobation.
Indeed, I have often wondered that some modest critic has not proposed,
that there should be a wooden machine to that effect erected in some
convenient part of the proscenium, which an unsuccessful author should
be required to mount, and stand his hour, exposed to the apples and
oranges of the pit;--this amende honorable would well suit with the
meanness of some authors, who in their prologues fairly prostrate their
sculls to the Audience, and seem to invite a pelting.
Or why should they not have their pens publicly broke over their heads,
as the swords of recreant knights in old times were, and an oath
administered to them that they should never write again.
Seriously, _Messieurs the Public_, this outrageous way which you have
got of expressing your displeasures, is too much for the occasion. When
I was deafening under the effects of it, I could not help asking, what
crime of great moral turpitude I had committed: for every man about me
seemed to feel the offence as personal to himself, as something which
public interest and private feelings alike called upon him in the
strongest possible manner to stigmatise with infamy.
The Romans, it is well known to you, Mr. Reflector, took a gentler
method of marking their disapprobation of an author's work. They were a
humane and equitable nation.--They left the furca and the patibulum, the
axe and the rods, to great offenders: for these minor, and (if I may so
term them) extra-moral offences, the _bent thumb_ was considered as a
sufficient sign of disapprobation, _vertere pollicem_; as the _pressed
thumb_, _premere pollicem_, was a mark of approving.
And really there seems to have been a sort of fitness in this method, a
correspondency of sign in the punishment to the offence; for as the
action of _writing_ is performed by bending the thumb forward, the
retroversion, or bending back of that joint, did not unaptly point to
the _opposite of that action_, implying, that it was the will of the
audience that the author should _write no more_. A much more
significant, as well as more humane, way of expressing that desire, than
our custom of hissing, which is altogether senseless and indefensible.
Nor do we find that the Roman audiences deprived themselves, by this
lenity, of any tittle of that supremacy which audiences in all ages have
thought themselves bound to maintain over such as have been candidates
for their applause. On the contrary, by this method they seem to have
had the author, as we should express it, completely _under finger and
thumb_.
The provocations to which a dramatic genius is exposed from the public
are so much the more vexatious, as they are removed from any possibility
of retaliation, the hope of which sweetens most other injuries:--for the
public _never writes itself_.--Not but something very like it took place
at the time of the O.P. differences. The placards which were nightly
exhibited, were, properly speaking, the composition of the public.--The
public wrote them, the public applauded them, and precious morceaus of
wit and eloquence they were; except some few, of a better quality, which
it is well known were furnished by professed dramatic writers. After
this specimen of what the public can do for itself, it should be a
little slow in condemning what others do for it.
As the degrees of malignancy vary in people according as they have more
or less of the Old Serpent (the father of hisses) in their composition,
I have sometimes amused myself with analyzing this many-headed hydra,
which calls itself the public, into the component parts of which it is
"complicated, head and tail," and seeing how many varieties of the snake
kind it can afford.
First, there is the Common English Snake.--This is that part of the
auditory who are always the majority at damnations, but who, having no
critical venom in themselves to sting them on, stay till they hear
others hiss, and then join in for company.
The Blind Worm is a species very nearly allied to the foregoing. Some
naturalists have doubted whether they are not the same.
The Rattle Snake.--These are your obstreperous talking critics,--the
impertinent guides of the pit,--who will not give a plain man leave to
enjoy an evening's entertainment, but with their frothy jargon, and
incessant finding of faults, either drown his pleasure quite, or force
him in his own defence to join in their clamorous censure. The hiss
always originates with these. When this creature springs his _rattle_,
you would think, from the noise it makes, there was something in it; but
you have only to examine the instrument from which the noise proceeds,
and you will find it typical of a critic's tongue,--a shallow membrane,
empty, voluble, and seated in the most contemptible part of the
creature's body.
The Whip Snake.--This is he that lashes the poor author the next day in
the newspapers.
The Deaf Adder, or Surda Echidna of Linnæus.--Under this head may be
classed all that portion of the spectators (for audience they properly
are not) who not finding the first act of a piece answer to their
preconceived notions of what a first act should be, like _Obstinate_ in
_John Bunyan_, positively thrust their fingers in their ears, that they
may not hear a word of what is coming, though perhaps the very next act
may be composed in a style as different as possible, and be written
quite to their own tastes. These Adders refuse to hear the voice of the
charmer, because the tuning of his instrument gave them offence.
I should weary you and myself too, if I were to go through all the
classes of the serpent kind. Two qualities are common to them all. They
are creatures of remarkably cold digestions, and chiefly haunt _pits_
and low grounds.
I proceed with more pleasure to give you an account of a Club to which I
have the honour to belong. There are fourteen of us, who are all authors
that have been once in our lives what is called _damned_. We meet on the
anniversaries of our respective nights, and make ourselves merry at the
expence of the public. The chief tenets which distinguish our society,
and which every man among us is bound to hold for gospel, are,--
That the public, or mob, in all ages, have been a set of blind, deaf,
obstinate, senseless, illiterate savages. That no man of genius in his
senses would be ambitious of pleasing such a capricious, ungrateful
rabble. That the only legitimate end of writing for them is to pick
their pockets, and, _that failing_, we are at full liberty to vilify and
abuse them as much as ever we think fit.
That authors, by their affected pretences to humility, which they make
use of as a cloak to insinuate their writings into the callous senses of
the multitude, obtuse to every thing but the grossest flattery, have by
degrees made that great beast their master; as we may act submission to
children till we are obliged to practise it in earnest. That authors are
and ought to be considered the masters and preceptors of the public, and
not _vice versa_. That it was so in the days of Orpheus, Linus, and
Musæus, and would be so again, if it were not that writers prove
traitors to themselves. That in particular, in the days of the first of
those three great authors just mentioned, audiences appear to have been
perfect models of what audiences should be; for though along with the
trees and the rocks and the wild creatures, which he drew after him to
listen to his strains, some serpents doubtless came to hear his music,
it does not appear that any one among them ever lifted up a _dissentient
voice_. They knew what was due to authors in those days. Now every stock
and stone turns into a serpent, and has a voice.
That the terms "Courteous Reader" and "Candid Auditors," as having given
rise to a false notion in those to whom they were applied, as if they
conferred upon them some right, _which they cannot have_, of exercising
their judgments, ought to be utterly banished and exploded.
These are our distinguishing tenets. To keep up the memory of the cause
in which we suffered, as the ancients sacrificed a goat, a supposed
unhealthy animal, to Æsculapius, on our feast-nights we cut up a goose,
an animal typical of the _popular voice_, to the deities of Candour and
Patient Hearing. A zealous member of the society once proposed that we
should revive the obsolete luxury of viper-broth; but the stomachs of
some of the company rising at the proposition, we lost the benefit of
that highly salutary and _antidotal dish_.
The privilege of admission to our club is strictly limited to such as
have been fairly _damned_. A piece that has met with ever so little
applause, that has but languished its night or two, and then gone out,
will never entitle its author to a seat among us. An exception to our
usual readiness in conferring this privilege is, in the case of a
writer, who having been once condemned, writes again, and becomes
candidate for a second martyrdom. Simple damnation we hold to be a
merit, but to be twice-damned we adjudge infamous. Such a one we utterly
reject, and black-ball without a hearing:--
_The common damn'd shun his society._
Hoping that your publication of our Regulations may be a means of
inviting some more members into our society, I conclude this long
letter. I am, Sir, yours,
SEMEL-DAMNATUS.
ON BURIAL SOCIETIES; AND THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER
(1811. TEXT OF 1818)
_To the Editor of the Reflector_
Mr. Reflector,--I was amused the other day with having the following
notice thrust into my hand by a man who gives out bills at the corner of
Fleet-market. Whether he saw any prognostics about me, that made him
judge such notice seasonable, I cannot say; I might perhaps carry in a
countenance (naturally not very florid) traces of a fever which had not
long left me. Those fellows have a good instinctive way of guessing at
the sort of people that are likeliest to pay attention to their papers.
"BURIAL SOCIETY
"A favourable opportunity now offers to any person, of either sex,
who would wish to be buried in a genteel manner, by paying one
shilling entrance, and two-pence per week for the benefit of the
stock. Members to be free in six months. The money to be paid at Mr.
Middleton's, at the sign of the _First_ and the _Last_,
Stonecutter's street, Fleet-market. The deceased to be furnished as
follows:--A strong elm coffin, covered with superfine black, and
finished with two rows, all round, close drove, best japanned nails,
and adorned with ornamental drops, a handsome plate of inscription,
Angel above, and Flower beneath, and four pair of handsome handles,
with wrought grips; the coffin to be well pitched, lined, and
ruffled with fine crape; a handsome crape shroud, cap, and pillow.
For use, a handsome velvet pall, three gentlemen's cloaks, three
crape hatbands, three hoods and scarfs, and six pair of gloves; two
porters equipped to attend the funeral, a man to attend the same
with band and gloves; also, the burial fees paid, if not exceeding
one guinea."
"Man," says Sir Thomas Browne, "is a noble animal, splendid in ashes,
and pompous in the grave." Whoever drew up this little advertisement,
certainly understood this appetite in the species, and has made abundant
provision for it. It really almost induces a _tædium vitæ_ upon one to
read it. Methinks I could be willing to die, in death to be so attended.
The two rows all round close-drove best black japanned nails,--how
feelingly do they invite and almost irresistibly persuade us to come and
be fastened down! what aching head can resist the temptation to repose,
which the crape shroud, the cap, and the pillow present; what sting is
there in death, which the handles with wrought gripes are not calculated
to pluck away? what victory in the grave, which the drops and the velvet
pall do not render at least extremely disputable; but above all, the
pretty emblematic plate with the Angel above and the Flower beneath,
takes me mightily.
The notice goes on to inform us, that though the society has been
established but a very few years, upwards of eleven hundred persons have
put down their names. It is really an affecting consideration to think
of so many poor people, of the industrious and hard working class (for
none but such would be possessed of such a generous forethought)
clubbing their twopences to save the reproach of a parish funeral. Many
a poor fellow, I dare swear, has that Angel and Flower kept from the
_Angel_ and _Punchbowl_, while, to provide himself a bier, he has
curtailed himself of _beer_. Many a savory morsel has the living body
been deprived of, that the lifeless one might be served up in a richer
state to the worms. And sure, if the body could understand the actions
of the soul, and entertain generous notions of things, it would thank
its provident partner, that she had been more solicitous to defend it
from dishonours at its dissolution, than careful to pamper it with good
things in the time of its union. If Cæsar were chiefly anxious at his
death how he might die most decently, every Burial Society may be
considered as a Club of Cæsars.
Nothing tends to keep up, in the imaginations of the poorer sort of
people, a generous horror of the workhouse more than the manner in which
pauper funerals are conducted in this metropolis. The coffin nothing but
a few naked planks, coarsely put together,--the want of a pall (that
decent and well-imagined veil, which, hiding the coffin that hides the
body, keeps that which would shock us at two removes from us), the
coloured coats of the men that are hired, at cheap rates, to carry the
body,--altogether, give the notion of the deceased having been some
person of an ill-life and conversation, some one who may not claim the
entire rites of Christian burial,--one by whom some parts of the sacred
ceremony would be desecrated if they should be bestowed upon him. I meet
these meagre processions sometimes in the street. They are sure to make
me out of humour and melancholy all the day after. They have a harsh and
ominous aspect.
If there is anything in the prospectus issued from Mr. Middleton's,
Stonecutter's-street, which pleases me less than the rest, it is to
find, that the six pair of gloves are to be returned, that they are only
lent, or, as the bill expresses it, for use, on the occasion. The hood,
scarfs, and hatbands, may properly enough be given up after the
solemnity: the cloaks no gentleman would think of keeping; but a pair of
gloves, once fitted on, ought not in courtesy to be re-demanded. The
wearer should certainly have the fee-simple of them. The cost would be
but trifling, and they would be a proper memorial of the day. This part
of the Proposal wants reconsidering. It is not conceived in the same
liberal way of thinking as the rest. I am also a little doubtful whether
the limit, within which the burial-fee is made payable, should not be
extended to thirty shillings.
Some provision too ought undoubtedly to be made in favour of those
well-intentioned persons and well-wishers to the fund, who, having all
along paid their subscriptions regularly, are so unfortunate as to die
before the six months, which would entitle them to their freedom, are
quite completed. One can hardly imagine a more distressing case than
that of a poor fellow lingering on in a consumption till the period of
his freedom is almost in sight, and then finding himself going with a
velocity which makes it doubtful whether he shall be entitled to his
funeral honours: his quota to which he nevertheless squeezes out, to the
diminution of the comforts which sickness demands. I think, in such
cases, some of the contribution-money ought to revert. With some such
modifications, which might easily be introduced, I see nothing in these
Proposals of Mr. Middleton which is not strictly fair and genteel; and
heartily recommend them to all persons of moderate incomes, in either
sex, who are willing that this perishable part of them should quit the
scene of its mortal activities, with as handsome circumstances as
possible.
Before I quit the subject, I must guard my readers against a scandal,
which they may be apt to take at the place whence these Proposals
purport to be issued. From the sign of the _First_ and the _Last_, they
may conclude that Mr. Middleton is some publican, who, in assembling a
club of this description at his house, may have a sinister end of his
own, altogether foreign to the solemn purpose for which the club is
pretended to be instituted. I must set them right by informing them that
the issuer of these Proposals is no publican, though he hangs out a
sign, but an honest superintendent of funerals, who, by the device of a
Cradle and a Coffin, connecting both ends of human existence together,
has most ingeniously contrived to insinuate, that the framers of these
_first_ and _last_ receptacles of mankind divide this our life betwixt
them, and that all that passes from the midwife to the undertaker may,
in strict propriety, _go for nothing_: an awful and instructive lesson
to human vanity.
Looking over some papers lately that fell into my hands by chance, and
appear to have been written about the beginning of the last century, I
stumbled, among the rest, upon the following short Essay, which the
writer calls "_The character of an Undertaker_." It is written with some
stiffness and peculiarities of style, but some parts of it, I think, not
unaptly characterise the profession to which Mr. Middleton has the
honour to belong. The writer doubtless had in his mind the entertaining
character of _Sable_, in Steele's excellent comedy of the _Funeral_.
CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER
"He is master of the ceremonies at burials and mourning assemblies,
grand marshal at funeral processions, the only true yeoman of the body,
over which he exercises a dictatorial authority from the moment that the
breath has taken leave to that of its final commitment to the earth. His
ministry begins where the physician's, the lawyer's, and the divine's,
end. Or if some part of the functions of the latter run parallel with
his, it is only _in ordine ad spiritualia_. His temporalities remain
unquestioned. He is arbitrator of all questions of honour which may
concern the defunct; and upon slight inspection will pronounce how long
he may remain in this upper world with credit to himself, and when it
will be prudent for his reputation that he should retire. His
determination in these points is peremptory and without appeal. Yet,
with a modesty peculiar to his profession, he meddles not out of his own
sphere. With the good or bad actions of the deceased in his life-time he
has nothing to do. He leaves the friends of the dead man to form their
own conjectures as to the place to which the departed spirit is gone.
His care is only about the exuviæ. He concerns not himself even about
the body, as it is a structure of parts internal, and a wonderful
microcosm. He leaves such curious speculations to the anatomy professor.
Or, if any thing, he is averse to such wanton enquiries, as delighting
rather that the parts which he has care of should be returned to their
kindred dust in as handsome and unmutilated condition as possible; that
the grave should have its full and unimpaired tribute,--a complete and
just carcass. Nor is he only careful to provide for the body's
entireness, but for its accommodation and ornament. He orders the
fashion of its clothes, and designs the symmetry of its dwelling. Its
vanity has an innocent survival in him. He is bed-maker to the dead. The
pillows which he lays never rumple. The day of interment is the theatre
in which he displays the mysteries of his art. It is hard to describe
what he is, or rather to tell what he is not, on that day: for, being
neither kinsman, servant, nor friend, he is all in turns; a
transcendent, running through all those relations. His office is to
supply the place of self-agency in the family, who are presumed
incapable of it through grief. He is eyes, and ears, and hands, to the
whole household. A draught of wine cannot go round to the mourners, but
he must minister it. A chair may hardly be restored to its place by a
less solemn hand than his. He takes upon himself all functions, and is a
sort of ephemeral major-domo! He distributes his attentions among the
company assembled according to the degree of affliction, which he
calculates from the degree of kin to the deceased; and marshals them
accordingly in the procession. He himself is of a sad and tristful
countenance; yet such as (if well examined) is not without some show of
patience and resignation at bottom: prefiguring, as it were, to the
friends of the deceased, what their grief shall be when the hand of Time
shall have softened and taken down the bitterness of their first
anguish; so handsomely can he fore-shape and anticipate the work of
Time. Lastly, with his wand, as with another divining rod, he calculates
the depth of earth at which the bones of the dead man may rest, which he
ordinarily contrives may be at such a distance from the surface of this
earth, as may frustrate the profane attempts of such as would violate
his repose, yet sufficiently on this side the centre to give his friends
hopes of an easy and practicable resurrection. And here we leave him,
casting in dust to dust, which is the last friendly office that he
_undertakes_ to do."
Begging your pardon for detaining you so long among "graves, and worms,
and epitaphs,"
I am, Sir,
Your humble servant,
MORITORUS.
ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE, CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR
FITNESS FOR STAGE REPRESENTATION
(1811. TEXT OF 1818)
Taking a turn the other day in the Abbey, I was struck with the affected
attitude of a figure, which I do not remember to have seen before, and
which upon examination proved to be a whole-length of the celebrated Mr.
Garrick. Though I would not go so far with some good catholics abroad as
to shut players altogether out of consecrated ground, yet I own I was
not a little scandalized at the introduction of theatrical airs and
gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities.
Going nearer, I found inscribed under this harlequin figure the
following lines:--
To paint fair Nature, by divine command,
Her magic pencil in his glowing hand,
A Shakspeare rose: then to expand his fame
Wide o'er this breathing world, a Garrick came.
Though sunk in death the forms the Poet drew,
The Actor's genius bade them breathe anew;
Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay,
Immortal Garrick call'd them back to day:
And till ETERNITY with power sublime,
Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary TIME,
SHAKSPEARE and GARRICK like twin stars shall shine,
And earth irradiate with a beam divine.
It would be an insult to my readers' understandings to attempt any thing
like a criticism on this farrago of false thoughts and nonsense. But the
reflection it led me into was a kind of wonder, how, from the days of
the actor here celebrated to our own, it should have been the fashion to
compliment every performer in his turn, that has had the luck to please
the town in any of the great characters of Shakspeare, with the notion
of possessing a _mind congenial with the poet's_: how people should come
thus unaccountably to confound the power of originating poetical images
and conceptions with the faculty of being able to read or recite the
same when put into words;[14] or what connection that absolute mastery
over the heart and soul of man, which a great dramatic poet possesses,
has with those low tricks upon the eye and ear, which a player by
observing a few general effects, which some common passion, as grief,
anger, &c. usually has upon the gestures and exterior, can so easily
compass. To know the internal workings and movements of a great mind, of
an Othello or a Hamlet for instance, the _when_ and the _why_ and the
_how far_ they should be moved; to what pitch a passion is becoming; to
give the reins and to pull in the curb exactly at the moment when the
drawing in or the slackening is most graceful; seems to demand a reach
of intellect of a vastly different extent from that which is employed
upon the bare imitation of the signs of these passions in the
countenance or gesture, which signs are usually observed to be most
lively and emphatic in the weaker sort of minds, and which signs can
after all but indicate some passion, as I said before, anger, or grief,
generally; but of the motives and grounds of the passion, wherein it
differs from the same passion in low and vulgar natures, of these the
actor can give no more idea by his face or gesture than the eye (without
a metaphor) can speak, or the muscles utter intelligible sounds. But
such is the instantaneous nature of the impressions which we take in at
the eye and ear at a playhouse, compared with the slow apprehension
oftentimes of the understanding in reading, that we are apt not only to
sink the play-writer in the consideration which we pay to the actor, but
even to identify in our minds in a perverse manner, the actor with the
character which he represents. It is difficult for a frequent playgoer
to disembarrass the idea of Hamlet from the person and voice of Mr. K.
We speak of Lady Macbeth, while we are in reality thinking of Mrs. S.
Nor is this confusion incidental alone to unlettered persons, who, not
possessing the advantage of reading, are necessarily dependent upon the
stage-player for all the pleasure which they can receive from the drama,
and to whom the very idea of _what an author is_ cannot be made
comprehensible without some pain and perplexity of mind: the error is
one from which persons otherwise not meanly lettered, find it almost
impossible to extricate themselves.
[14] It is observable that we fall into this confusion only in
_dramatic_ recitations. We never dream that the gentleman who reads
Lucretius in public with great applause, is therefore a great poet
and philosopher; nor do we find that Tom Davies, the bookseller, who
is recorded to have recited the Paradise Lost better than any man in
England in his day (though I cannot help thinking there must be some
mistake in this tradition) was therefore, by his intimate friends,
set upon a level with Milton.
Never let me be so ungrateful as to forget the very high degree of
satisfaction which I received some years back from seeing for the first
time a tragedy of Shakspeare performed, in which these two great
performers sustained the principal parts. It seemed to embody and
realize conceptions which had hitherto assumed no distinct shape. But
dearly do we pay all our life after for this juvenile pleasure, this
sense of distinctness. When the novelty is past, we find to our cost
that instead of realizing an idea, we have only materialized and brought
down a fine vision to the standard of flesh and blood. We have let go a
dream, in quest of an unattainable substance.
How cruelly this operates upon the mind, to have its free conceptions
thus crampt and pressed down to the measure of a strait-lacing
actuality, may be judged from that delightful sensation of freshness,
with which we turn to those plays of Shakspeare which have escaped being
performed, and to those passages in the acting plays of the same writer
which have happily been left out in performance. How far the very custom
of hearing any thing _spouted_, withers and blows upon a fine passage,
may be seen in those speeches from Henry the Fifth, &c. which are
current in the mouths of school-boys from their being to be found in
_Enfield Speakers_, and such kind of books. I confess myself utterly
unable to appreciate that celebrated soliloquy in Hamlet, beginning "To
be or not to be," or to tell whether it be good, bad, or indifferent, it
has been so handled and pawed about by declamatory boys and men, and
torn so inhumanly from its living place and principle of continuity in
the play, till it is become to me a perfect dead member.
It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help being of opinion that the plays
of Shakspeare are less calculated for performance on a stage, than those
of almost any other dramatist whatever. Their distinguished excellence
is a reason that they should be so. There is so much in them, which
comes not under the province of acting, with which eye, and tone, and
gesture, have nothing to do.
The glory of the scenic art is to personate passion, and the turns of
passion; and the more coarse and palpable the passion is, the more hold
upon the eyes and ears of the spectators the performer obviously
possesses. For this reason, scolding scenes, scenes where two persons
talk themselves into a fit of fury, and then in a surprising manner talk
themselves out of it again, have always been the most popular upon our
stage. And the reason is plain, because the spectators are here most
palpably appealed to, they are the proper judges in this war of words,
they are the legitimate ring that should be formed round such
"intellectual prize-fighters." Talking is the direct object of the
imitation here. But in all the best dramas, and in Shakspeare above all,
how obvious it is, that the form of _speaking_, whether it be in
soliloquy or dialogue, is only a medium, and often a highly artificial
one, for putting the reader or spectator into possession of that
knowledge of the inner structure and workings of mind in a character,
which he could otherwise never have arrived at _in that form of
composition_ by any gift short of intuition. We do here as we do with
novels written in the _epistolary form_. How many improprieties, perfect
solecisms in letter-writing, do we put up with in Clarissa and other
books, for the sake of the delight which that form upon the whole gives
us.
But the practice of stage representation reduces every thing to a
controversy of elocution. Every character, from the boisterous
blasphemings of Bajazet to the shrinking timidity of womanhood, must
play the orator. The love-dialogues of Romeo and Juliet, those
silver-sweet sounds of lovers' tongues by night; the more intimate and
sacred sweetness of nuptial colloquy between an Othello or a Posthumus
with their married wives, all those delicacies which are so delightful
in the reading, as when we read of those youthful dalliances in
Paradise--
As beseem'd
Fair couple link'd in happy nuptial league,
Alone:
by the inherent fault of stage representation, how are these things
sullied and turned from their very nature by being exposed to a large
assembly; when such speeches as Imogen addresses to her lord, come
drawling out of the mouth of a hired actress, whose courtship, though
nominally addressed to the personated Posthumus, is manifestly aimed at
the spectators, who are to judge of her endearments and her returns of
love.
The character of Hamlet is perhaps that by which, since the days of
Betterton, a succession of popular performers have had the greatest
ambition to distinguish themselves. The length of the part may be one of
their reasons. But for the character itself, we find it in a play, and
therefore we judge it a fit subject of dramatic representation. The play
itself abounds in maxims and reflexions beyond any other, and therefore
we consider it as a proper vehicle for conveying moral instruction. But
Hamlet himself--what does he suffer meanwhile by being dragged forth as
a public schoolmaster, to give lectures to the crowd! Why, nine parts in
ten of what Hamlet does, are transactions between himself and his moral
sense, they are the effusions of his solitary musings, which he retires
to holes and corners and the most sequestered parts of the palace to
pour forth; or rather, they are the silent meditations with which his
bosom is bursting, reduced to _words_ for the sake of the reader, who
must else remain ignorant of what is passing there. These profound
sorrows, these light-and-noise-abhorring ruminations, which the tongue
scarce dares utter to deaf walls and chambers, how can they be
represented by a gesticulating actor, who comes and mouths them out
before an audience, making four hundred people his confidants at once? I
say not that it is the fault of the actors so to do; he must pronounce
them _ore rotundo_, he must accompany them with his eye, he must
insinuate them into his auditory by some trick of eye, tone, or gesture,
or he fails. _He must be thinking all the while of his appearance,
because he knows that all the while the spectators are judging of it._
And this is the way to represent the shy, negligent, retiring Hamlet.
It is true that there is no other mode of conveying a vast quantity of
thought and feeling to a great portion of the audience, who otherwise
would never earn it for themselves by reading, and the intellectual
acquisition gained this way may, for aught I know, be inestimable; but I
am not arguing that Hamlet should not be acted, but how much Hamlet is
made another thing by being acted. I have heard much of the wonders
which Garrick performed in this part; but as I never saw him, I must
have leave to doubt whether the representation of such a character came
within the province of his art. Those who tell me of him, speak of his
eye, of the magic of his eye, and of his commanding voice: physical
properties, vastly desirable in an actor, and without which he can never
insinuate meaning into an auditory,--but what have they to do with
Hamlet? what have they to do with intellect? In fact, the things aimed
at in theatrical representation, are to arrest the spectator's eye upon
the form and the gesture, and so to gain a more favourable hearing to
what is spoken: it is not what the character is, but how he looks; not
what he says, but how he speaks it. I see no reason to think that if the
play of Hamlet were written over again by some such writer as Banks or
Lillo, retaining the process of the story, but totally omitting all the
poetry of it, all the divine features of Shakspeare, his stupendous
intellect; and only taking care to give us enough of passionate
dialogue, which Banks or Lillo were never at a loss to furnish; I see
not how the effect could be much different upon an audience, nor how the
actor has it in his power to represent Shakspeare to us differently from
his representation of Banks or Lillo. Hamlet would still be a youthful
accomplished prince, and must be gracefully personated; he might be
puzzled in his mind, wavering in his conduct, seemingly-cruel to
Ophelia, he might see a ghost, and start at it, and address it kindly
when he found it to be his father; all this in the poorest and most
homely language of the servilest creeper after nature that ever
consulted the palate of an audience; without troubling Shakspeare for
the matter: and I see not but there would be room for all the power
which an actor has, to display itself. All the passions and changes of
passion might remain: for those are much less difficult to write or act
than is thought, it is a trick easy to be attained, it is but rising or
falling a note or two in the voice, a whisper with a significant
foreboding look to announce its approach, and so contagious the
counterfeit appearance of any emotion is, that let the words be what
they will, the look and tone shall carry it off and make it pass for
deep skill in the passions.
It is common for people to talk of Shakspeare's plays being _so
natural_; that every body can understand him. They are natural indeed,
they are grounded deep in nature, so deep that the depth of them lies
out of the reach of most of us. You shall hear the same persons say that
George Barnwell is very natural, and Othello is very natural, that they
are both very deep; and to them they are the same kind of thing. At the
one they sit and shed tears, because a good sort of young man is tempted
by a naughty woman to commit a _trifling peccadillo_, the murder of an
uncle or so,[15] that is all, and so comes to an untimely end, which is
_so moving_; and at the other, because a blackamoor in a fit of jealousy
kills his innocent white wife: and the odds are that ninety-nine out of
a hundred would willingly behold the same catastrophe happen to both the
heroes, and have thought the rope more due to Othello than to Barnwell.
For of the texture of Othello's mind, the inward construction
marvellously laid open with all its strengths and weaknesses, its heroic
confidences and its human misgivings, its agonies of hate springing from
the depths of love, they see no more than the spectators at a cheaper
rate, who pay their pennies a-piece to look through the man's telescope
in Leicester-fields, see into the inward plot and topography of the
moon. Some dim thing or other they see, they see an actor personating a
passion, of grief, or anger, for instance, and they recognize it as a
copy of the usual external effects of such passions; or at least as
being true to _that symbol of the emotion which passes current at the
theatre for it_, for it is often no more than that: but of the grounds
of the passion, its correspondence to a great or heroic nature, which is
the only worthy object of tragedy,--that common auditors know any thing
of this, or can have any such notions dinned into them by the mere
strength of an actor's lungs,--that apprehensions foreign to them should
be thus infused into them by storm, I can neither believe, nor
understand how it can be possible.
[15] If this note could hope to meet the eye of any of the Managers,
I would entreat and beg of them, in the name of both the Galleries,
that this insult upon the morality of the common people of London
should cease to be eternally repeated in the holiday weeks. Why are
the 'Prentices of this famous and well-governed city, instead of an
amusement, to be treated over and over again with the nauseous
sermon of George Barnwell? Why _at the end of their vistoes_
[_vistas_] are we to place the _gallows_? Were I an uncle, I should
not much like a nephew of mine to have such an example placed before
his eyes. It is really making uncle-murder too trivial to exhibit it
as done upon such slight motives;--it is attributing too much to
such characters as Millwood;--it is putting things into the heads of
good young men, which they would never otherwise have dreamed of.
Uncles that think any thing of their lives, should fairly petition
the Chamberlain against it.
We talk of Shakspeare's admirable observation of life, when we should
feel, that not from a petty inquisition into those cheap and every-day
characters which surrounded him, as they surround us, but from his own
mind, which was, to borrow a phrase of Ben Jonson's, the very "sphere of
humanity," he fetched those images of virtue and of knowledge, of which
every one of us recognizing a part, think we comprehend in our natures
the whole; and oftentimes mistake the powers which he positively creates
in us, for nothing more than indigenous faculties of our own minds,
which only waited the application of corresponding virtues in him to
return a full and clear echo of the same.
To return to Hamlet.--Among the distinguishing features of that
wonderful character, one of the most interesting (yet painful) is that
soreness of mind which makes him treat the intrusions of Polonius with
harshness, and that asperity which he puts on in his interviews with
Ophelia. These tokens of an unhinged mind (if they be not mixed in the
latter case with a profound artifice of love, to alienate Ophelia by
affected discourtesies, so to prepare her mind for the breaking off of
that loving intercourse, which can no longer find a place amidst
business so serious as that which he has to do) are parts of his
character, which to reconcile with our admiration of Hamlet, the most
patient consideration of his situation is no more than necessary; they
are what we _forgive afterwards_, and explain by the whole of his
character, but _at the time_ they are harsh and unpleasant. Yet such is
the actor's necessity of giving strong blows to the audience, that I
have never seen a player in this character, who did not exaggerate and
strain to the utmost these ambiguous features,--these temporary
deformities in the character. They make him express a vulgar scorn at
Polonius which utterly degrades his gentility, and which no explanation
can render palateable; they make him shew contempt, and curl up the nose
at Ophelia's father,--contempt in its very grossest and most hateful
form; but they get applause by it: it is natural, people say; that is,
the words are scornful, and the actor expresses scorn, and that they can
judge of: but why so much scorn, and of that sort, they never think of
asking.
So to Ophelia.--All the Hamlets that I have ever seen, rant and rave at
her as if she had committed some great crime, and the audience are
highly pleased, because the words of the part are satirical, and they
are enforced by the strongest expression of satirical indignation of
which the face and voice are capable. But then, whether Hamlet is likely
to have put on such brutal appearances to a lady whom he loved so
dearly, is never thought on. The truth is, that in all such deep
affections as had subsisted between Hamlet and Ophelia, there is a stock
of _supererogatory love_, (if I may venture to use the expression) which
in any great grief of heart, especially where that which preys upon the
mind cannot be communicated, confers a kind of indulgence upon the
grieved party to express itself, even to its heart's dearest object, in
the language of a temporary alienation; but it is not alienation, it is
a distraction purely, and so it always makes itself to be felt by that
object: it is not anger, but grief assuming the appearance of
anger,--love awkwardly counterfeiting hate, as sweet countenances when
they try to frown: but such sternness and fierce disgust as Hamlet is
made to shew, is no counterfeit, but the real face of absolute
aversion,--of irreconcileable alienation. It may be said he puts on the
madman; but then he should only so far put on this counterfeit lunacy as
his own real distraction will give him leave; that is, incompletely,
imperfectly; not in that confirmed, practised way, like a master of his
art, or, as Dame Quickly would say, "like one of those harlotry
players."
I mean no disrespect to any actor, but the sort of pleasure which
Shakspeare's plays give in the acting seems to me not at all to differ
from that which the audience receive from those of other writers; and,
_they being in themselves essentially so different from all others_, I
must conclude that there is something in the nature of acting which
levels all distinctions. And in fact, who does not speak indifferently
of the Gamester and of Macbeth as fine stage performances, and praise
the Mrs. Beverley in the same way as the Lady Macbeth of Mrs. S.?
Belvidera, and Calista, and Isabella, and Euphrasia, are they less liked
than Imogen, or than Juliet, or than Desdemona? Are they not spoken of
and remembered in the same way? Is not the female performer as great (as
they call it) in one as in the other? Did not Garrick shine, and was he
not ambitious of shining in every drawling tragedy that his wretched day
produced,--the productions of the Hills and the Murphys and the
Browns,--and shall he have that honour to dwell in our minds for ever as
an inseparable concomitant with Shakspeare? A kindred mind! O who can
read that affecting sonnet of Shakspeare which alludes to his profession
as a player:--
Oh for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public custom [manners] breeds--
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand;
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand--
Or that other confession:--
Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motly to thy view,
Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear--
Who can read these instances of jealous self-watchfulness in our sweet
Shakspeare, and dream of any congeniality between him and one that, by
every tradition of him, appears to have been as mere a player as ever
existed; to have had his mind tainted with the lowest players'
vices,--envy and jealousy, and miserable cravings after applause; one
who in the exercise of his profession was jealous even of the
women-performers that stood in his way; a manager full of managerial
tricks and stratagems and finesse: that any resemblance should be
dreamed of between him and Shakspeare,--Shakspeare who, in the plenitude
and consciousness of his own powers, could with that noble modesty,
which we can neither imitate nor appreciate, express himself thus of his
own sense of his own defects:--
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possest;
Desiring _this man's art, and that man's scope_.
I am almost disposed to deny to Garrick the merit of being an admirer of
Shakspeare. A true lover of his excellencies he certainly was not; for
would any true lover of them have admitted into his matchless scenes
such ribald trash as Tate and Cibber, and the rest of them, that
With their darkness durst affront his light,
have foisted into the acting plays of Shakspeare? I believe it
impossible that he could have had a proper reverence for Shakspeare, and
have condescended to go through that interpolated scene in Richard the
Third, in which Richard tries to break his wife's heart by telling her
he loves another woman, and says, "if she survives this she is
immortal." Yet I doubt not he delivered this vulgar stuff with as much
anxiety of emphasis as any of the genuine parts; and for acting, it is
as well calculated as any. But we have seen the part of Richard lately
produce great fame to an actor by his manner of playing it, and it lets
us into the secret of acting, and of popular judgments of Shakspeare
derived from acting. Not one of the spectators who have witnessed Mr.
C.'s exertions in that part, but has come away with a proper conviction
that Richard is a very wicked man, and kills little children in their
beds, with something like the pleasure which the giants and ogres in
children's books are represented to have taken in that practice;
moreover, that he is very close and shrewd and devilish cunning, for you
could see that by his eye.
But is in fact this the impression we have in reading the Richard of
Shakspeare? Do we feel any thing like disgust, as we do at that
butcher-like representation of him that passes for him on the stage? A
horror at his crimes blends with the effect which we feel, but how is it
qualified, how is it carried off, by the rich intellect which he
displays, his resources, his wit, his buoyant spirits, his vast
knowledge and insight into characters, the poetry of his part,--not an
atom of all which is made perceivable in Mr. C.'s way of acting it.
Nothing but his crimes, his actions, is visible; they are prominent and
staring; the murderer stands out, but where is the lofty genius, the man
of vast capacity,--the profound, the witty, accomplished Richard?
The truth is, the Characters of Shakspeare are so much the objects of
meditation rather than of interest or curiosity as to their
actions, that while we are reading any of his great criminal
characters,--Macbeth, Richard, even Iago,--we think not so much of the
crimes which they commit, as of the ambition, the aspiring spirit, the
intellectual activity, which prompts them to overleap those moral
fences. Barnwell is a wretched murderer; there is a certain fitness
between his neck and the rope; he is the legitimate heir to the gallows;
nobody who thinks at all can think of any alleviating circumstances in
his case to make him a fit object of mercy. Or to take an instance from
the higher tragedy, what else but a mere assassin is Glenalvon! Do we
think of any thing but of the crime which he commits, and the rack which
he deserves? That is all which we really think about him. Whereas in
corresponding characters in Shakspeare so little do the actions
comparatively affect us, that while the impulses, the inner mind in all
its perverted greatness, solely seems real and is exclusively attended
to, the crime is comparatively nothing. But when we see these things
represented, the acts which they do are comparatively every thing, their
impulses nothing. The state of sublime emotion into which we are
elevated by those images of night and horror which Macbeth is made to
utter, that solemn prelude with which he entertains the time till the
bell shall strike which is to call him to murder Duncan,--when we no
longer read it in a book, when we have given up that vantage-ground of
abstraction which reading possesses over seeing, and come to see a man
in his bodily shape before our eyes actually preparing to commit a
murder, if the acting be true and impressive, as I have witnessed it in
Mr. K.'s performance of that part, the painful anxiety about the act,
the natural longing to prevent it while it yet seems unperpetrated, the
too close pressing semblance of reality, give a pain and an uneasiness
which totally destroy all the delight which the words in the book
convey, where the deed doing never presses upon us with the painful
sense of presence: it rather seems to belong to history,--to something
past and inevitable, if it has any thing to do with time at all. The
sublime images, the poetry alone, is that which is present to our minds
in the reading.
So to see Lear acted,--to see an old man tottering about the stage with
a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy night,
has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting. We want to take
him into shelter and relieve him. That is all the feeling which the
acting of Lear ever produced in me. But the Lear of Shakspeare cannot be
acted. The contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm which he
goes out in, is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real
elements, than any actor can be to represent Lear: they might more
easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or one of
Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The greatness of Lear is not in
corporal dimension, but in intellectual: the explosions of his passion
are terrible as a volcano: they are storms turning up and disclosing to
the bottom that sea, his mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind
which is laid bare. This case of flesh and blood seems too insignificant
to be thought on; even as he himself neglects it. On the stage we see
nothing but corporal infirmities and weakness, the impotence of rage;
while we read it, we see not Lear, but we are Lear,--we are in his mind,
we are sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and
storms; in the aberrations of his reason, we discover a mighty irregular
power of reasoning, immethodized from the ordinary purposes of life, but
exerting its powers, as the wind blows where it listeth, at will upon
the corruptions and abuses of mankind. What have looks, or tones, to do
with that sublime identification of his age with that of the _heavens
themselves_, when in his reproaches to them for conniving at the
injustice of his children, he reminds them that "they themselves are
old." What gesture shall we appropriate to this? What has the voice or
the eye to do with such things? But the play is beyond all art, as the
tamperings with it shew: it is too hard and stony; it must have
love-scenes, and a happy ending. It is not enough that Cordelia is a
daughter, she must shine as a lover too. Tate has put his hook in the
nostrils of this Leviathan, for Garrick and his followers, the showmen
of the scene, to draw the mighty beast about more easily. A happy
ending!--as if the living martyrdom that Lear had gone through,--the
flaying of his feelings alive, did not make a fair dismissal from the
stage of life the only decorous thing for him. If he is to live and be
happy after, if he could sustain this world's burden after, why all this
pudder and preparation,--why torment us with all this unnecessary
sympathy? As if the childish pleasure of getting his gilt robes and
sceptre again could tempt him to act over again his misused station,--as
if at his years, and with his experience, any thing was left but to die.
Lear is essentially impossible to be represented on a stage. But how
many dramatic personages are there in Shakspeare, which though more
tractable and feasible (if I may so speak) than Lear, yet from some
circumstance, some adjunct to their character, are improper to be shewn
to our bodily eye. Othello for instance. Nothing can be more soothing,
more flattering to the nobler parts of our natures, than to read of a
young Venetian lady of highest extraction, through the force of love and
from a sense of merit in him whom she loved, laying aside every
consideration of kindred, and country, and colour, and wedding with a
_coal-black Moor_--(for such he is represented, in the imperfect state
of knowledge respecting foreign countries in those days, compared with
our own, or in compliance with popular notions, though the Moors are now
well enough known to be by many shades less unworthy of a white woman's
fancy)--it is the perfect triumph of virtue over accidents, of the
imagination over the senses. She sees Othello's colour in his mind. But
upon the stage, when the imagination is no longer the ruling faculty,
but we are left to our poor unassisted senses, I appeal to every one
that has seen Othello played, whether he did not, on the contrary, sink
Othello's mind in his colour; whether he did not find something
extremely revolting in the courtship and wedded caresses of Othello and
Desdemona; and whether the actual sight of the thing did not over-weigh
all that beautiful compromise which we make in reading;--and the reason
it should do so is obvious, because there is just so much reality
presented to our senses as to give a perception of disagreement, with
not enough of belief in the internal motives,--all that which is
unseen,--to overpower and reconcile the first and obvious
prejudices.[16] What we see upon a stage is body and bodily action; what
we are conscious of in reading is almost exclusively the mind, and its
movements: and this I think may sufficiently account for the very
different sort of delight with which the same play so often affects us
in the reading and the seeing.
[16] The error of supposing that because Othello's colour does not
offend us in the reading, it should also not offend us in the
seeing, is just such a fallacy as supposing that an Adam and Eve in
a picture shall affect us just as they do in the poem. But in the
poem we for a while have Paradisaical senses given us, which vanish
when we see a man and his wife without clothes in the picture. The
painters themselves feel this, as is apparent by the aukward shifts
they have recourse to, to make them look not quite naked; by a sort
of prophetic anachronism, antedating the invention of fig-leaves. So
in the reading of the play, we see with Desdemona's eyes; in the
seeing of it, we are forced to look with our own.
It requires little reflection to perceive, that if those characters in
Shakspeare which are within the precincts of nature, have yet something
in them which appeals too exclusively to the imagination, to admit of
their being made objects to the senses without suffering a change and a
diminution,--that still stronger the objection must lie against
representing another line of characters, which Shakspeare has introduced
to give a wildness and a supernatural elevation to his scenes, as if to
remove them still farther from that assimilation to common life in which
their excellence is vulgarly supposed to consist. When we read the
incantations of those terrible beings the Witches in Macbeth, though
some of the ingredients of their hellish composition savour of the
grotesque, yet is the effect upon us other than the most serious and
appalling that can be imagined? Do we not feel spell-bound as Macbeth
was? Can any mirth accompany a sense of their presence? We might as well
laugh under a consciousness of the principle of Evil himself being truly
and really present with us. But attempt to bring these beings on to a
stage, and you turn them instantly into so many old women, that men and
children are to laugh at. Contrary to the old saying, that "seeing is
believing," the sight actually destroys the faith; and the mirth in
which we indulge at their expense, when we see these creatures upon a
stage, seems to be a sort of indemnification which we make to ourselves
for the terror which they put us in when reading made them an object of
belief,--when we surrendered up our reason to the poet, as children to
their nurses and their elders; and we laugh at our fears, as children
who thought they saw something in the dark, triumph when the bringing in
of a candle discovers the vanity of their fears. For this exposure of
supernatural agents upon a stage is truly bringing in a candle to expose
their own delusiveness. It is the solitary taper and the book that
generates a faith in these terrors: a ghost by chandelier light, and in
good company, deceives no spectators,--a ghost that can be measured by
the eye, and his human dimensions made out at leisure. The sight of a
well-lighted house, and a well-dressed audience, shall arm the most
nervous child against any apprehensions: as Tom Brown says of the
impenetrable skin of Achilles with his impenetrable armour over it,
"Bully Dawson would have fought the devil with such advantages."
Much has been said, and deservedly, in reprobation of the vile mixture
which Dryden has thrown into the Tempest: doubtless without some such
vicious alloy, the impure ears of that age would never have sate out to
hear so much innocence of love as is contained in the sweet courtship of
Ferdinand and Miranda. But is the Tempest of Shakspeare at all a subject
for stage representation? It is one thing to read of an enchanter, and
to believe the wondrous tale while we are reading it; but to have a
conjuror brought before us in his conjuring-gown, with his spirits about
him, which none but himself and some hundred of favoured spectators
before the curtain are supposed to see, involves such a quantity of the
_hateful incredible_, that all our reverence for the author cannot
hinder us from perceiving such gross attempts upon the senses to be in
the highest degree childish and inefficient. Spirits and fairies cannot
be represented, they cannot even be painted,--they can only be believed.
But the elaborate and anxious provision of scenery, which the luxury of
the age demands, in these cases works a quite contrary effect to what is
intended. That which in comedy, or plays of familiar life, adds so much
to the life of the imitation, in plays which appeal to the higher
faculties, positively destroys the illusion which it is introduced to
aid. A parlour or a drawing-room,--a library opening into a garden,--a
garden with an alcove in it,--a street, or the piazza of Covent-garden,
does well enough in a scene; we are content to give as much credit to it
as it demands; or rather, we think little about it,--it is little more
than reading at the top of a page, "Scene, a Garden;" we do not imagine
ourselves there, but we readily admit the imitation of familiar objects.
But to think by the help of painted trees and caverns, which we know to
be painted, to transport our minds to Prospero, and his island and his
lonely cell[17]; or by the aid of a fiddle dexterously thrown in, in an
interval of speaking, to make us believe that we hear those supernatural
noises of which the isle was full:--the Orrery Lecturer at the Haymarket
might as well hope, by his musical glasses cleverly stationed out of
sight behind his apparatus, to make us believe that we do indeed hear
the chrystal spheres ring out that chime, which if it were to inwrap our
fancy long, Milton thinks,
Time would run back and fetch the age of gold,
And speckled vanity
Would sicken soon and die,
And leprous Sin would melt from earthly mould;
Yea Hell itself would pass away,
And leave its dolorous mansions to the peering day.
[17] It will be said these things are done in pictures. But pictures
and scenes are very different things. Painting is a world of itself,
but in scene-painting there is the attempt to deceive; and there is
the discordancy, never to be got over, between painted scenes and
real people.
The Garden of Eden, with our first parents in it, is not more impossible
to be shewn on a stage, than the Enchanted Isle, with its no less
interesting and innocent first settlers.
The subject of Scenery is closely connected with that of the Dresses,
which are so anxiously attended to on our stage. I remember the last
time I saw Macbeth played, the discrepancy I felt at the changes of
garment which he varied,--the shiftings and re-shiftings, like a Romish
priest at mass. The luxury of stage-improvements, and the importunity of
the public eye, require this. The coronation robe of the Scottish
monarch was fairly a counterpart to that which our King wears when he
goes to the Parliament-house,--just so full and cumbersome, and set out
with ermine and pearls. And if things must be represented, I see not
what to find fault with in this. But in reading, what robe are we
conscious of? Some dim images of royalty--a crown and sceptre, may
float before our eyes, but who shall describe the fashion of it? Do we
see in our mind's eye that Webb or any other robe-maker could pattern?
This is the inevitable consequence of imitating every thing, to make all
things natural. Whereas the reading of a tragedy is a fine abstraction.
It presents to the fancy just so much of external appearances as to make
us feel that we are among flesh and blood, while by far the greater and
better part of our imagination is employed upon the thoughts and
internal machinery of the character. But in acting, scenery, dress, the
most contemptible things, call upon us to judge of their naturalness.
Perhaps it would be no bad similitude, to liken the pleasure which we
take in seeing one of these fine plays acted, compared with that quiet
delight which we find in the reading of it, to the different feelings
with which a reviewer, and a man that is not a reviewer, reads a fine
poem. The accursed critical habit,--the being called upon to judge and
pronounce, must make it quite a different thing to the former. In seeing
these plays acted, we are affected just as judges. When Hamlet compares
the two pictures of Gertrude's first and second husband, who wants to
see the pictures? But in the acting, a miniature must be lugged out;
which we know not to be the picture, but only to shew how finely a
miniature may be represented. This shewing of every thing, levels all
things: it makes tricks, bows, and curtesies, of importance. Mrs. S.
never got more fame by any thing than by the manner in which she
dismisses the guests in the banquet-scene in Macbeth: it is as much
remembered as any of her thrilling tones or impressive looks. But does
such a trifle as this enter into the imaginations of the readers of that
wild and wonderful scene? Does not the mind dismiss the feasters as
rapidly as it can? Does it care about the gracefulness of the doing it?
But by acting, and judging of acting, all these non-essentials are
raised into an importance, injurious to the main interest of the play.
I have confined my observations to the tragic parts of Shakspeare. It
would be no very difficult task to extend the enquiry to his comedies;
and to shew why Falstaff, Shallow, Sir Hugh Evans, and the rest, are
equally incompatible with stage representation. The length to which
this Essay has run, will make it, I am afraid, sufficiently distasteful
to the Amateurs of the Theatre, without going any deeper into the
subject at present.
SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER, THE CHURCH HISTORIAN
(1811. TEXT OF 1818)
The writings of Fuller are usually designated by the title of quaint,
and with sufficient reason; for such was his natural bias to conceits,
that I doubt not upon most occasions it would have been going out of his
way to have expressed himself out of them. But his wit is not always a
_lumen siccum_, a dry faculty of surprising; on the contrary, his
conceits are oftentimes deeply steeped in human feeling and passion.
Above all, his way of telling a story, for its eager liveliness, and the
perpetual running commentary of the narrator happily blended with the
narration, is perhaps unequalled.
As his works are now scarcely perused but by antiquaries, I thought it
might not be unacceptable to my readers to present them with some
specimens of his manner, in single thoughts and phrases; and in some few
passages of greater length, chiefly of a narrative description. I shall
arrange them as I casually find them in my book of extracts, without
being solicitous to specify the particular work from which they are
taken.
_Pyramids._--"The Pyramids themselves, doting with age, have forgotten
the names of their founders."
_Virtue in a short person._--"His soul had but a short diocese to visit,
and therefore might the better attend the effectual informing thereof."
_Intellect in a very tall one._--"Oft times such who are built four
stories high, are observed to have little in their cock-loft."
_Naturals._--"Their heads sometimes so little, that there is no room for
wit; sometimes so long, that there is no wit for so much room."
_Negroes._--"The image of God cut in ebony."
_School-divinity._--"At the first it will be as welcome to thee as a
prison, and their very solutions will seem knots unto thee."
_Mr. Perkins, the Divine._--"He had a capacious head, with angles
winding and roomy enough to lodge all controversial intricacies."
_The same._--"He would pronounce the word _Damn_ with such an emphasis
as left a doleful echo in his auditors' ears a good while after."
_Judges in capital cases._--"O let him take heed how he strikes, that
hath a dead hand."
_Memory._--"Philosophers place it in the rear of the head, and it seems
the mine of memory lies there, because there men naturally dig for it,
scratching it when they are at a loss."
_Fancy._--"It is the most boundless and restless faculty of the soul;
for while the Understanding and the Will are kept, as it were, _in
libera custodia_ to their objects of _verum et bonum_, the Fancy is free
from all engagements: it digs without spade, sails without ship, flies
without wings, builds without charges, fights without bloodshed; in a
moment striding from the centre to the circumference of the world; by a
kind of omnipotency creating and annihilating things in an instant; and
things divorced in Nature are married in Fancy as in a lawless place."
_Infants._--"Some, admiring what motives to mirth infants meet with in
their silent and solitary smiles, have resolved, how truly I know not,
that then they converse with angels; as indeed such cannot among mortals
find any fitter companions."
_Music._--"Such is the sociableness of music, it conforms itself to all
companies both in mirth and mourning; complying to improve that passion
with which it finds the auditors most affected. In a word, it is an
invention which might have beseemed a son of Seth to have been the
father thereof: though better it was that Cain's great grandchild should
have the credit first to find it, than the world the unhappiness longer
to have wanted it."
_St. Monica._--"Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as
harbingers to heaven, and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through
the chinks of her sickness-broken body."[18]
[18]
The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
Lets in new lights through chinks which time has made.--WALLER.
_Mortality._--"To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the
body, no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul."
_Virgin._--"No lordling husband shall at the same time command her
presence and distance; to be always near in constant attendance, and
always to stand aloof in awful observance."
_Elder Brother._--"Is one who made haste to come into the world to bring
his parents the first news of male posterity, and is well rewarded for
his tidings."
_Bishop Fletcher._--"His pride was rather on him than in him, as only
gait and gesture deep, not sinking to his heart, though causelessly
condemned for a proud man, as who was a _good hypocrite_, and far more
humble than he appeared."
_Masters of Colleges._--"A little alloy of dulness in a Master of a
College makes him fitter to manage secular affairs."
_The Good Yeoman._--"Is a gentleman in ore, whom the next age may see
refined."
_Good Parent._--"For his love, therein, like a well drawn picture, he
eyes all his children alike."
_Deformity in Children._--"This partiality is tyranny, when parents
despise those that are deformed; _enough to break those whom God had
bowed before_."
_Good Master._--"In correcting his servant he becomes not a slave to his
own passion. Not cruelly making new _indentures_ of the flesh of his
apprentice. He is tender of his servant in sickness and age. If crippled
in his service, his house is his hospital. Yet how many throw away those
dry bones, out of the which themselves have sucked the marrow!"
_Good Widow._--"If she can speak but little good of him [her dead
husband] she speaks but little of him. So handsomely folding up her
discourse, that his virtues are shewn outwards, and his vices wrapped up
in silence; as counting it barbarism to throw dirt on his memory who
hath moulds cast on his body."
_Horses._--"These are men's wings, wherewith they make such speed. A
generous creature a horse is, sensible in some sort of honour; and made
most handsome by that which deforms men most--pride."
_Martyrdom._--"Heart of oak hath sometime warped a little in the
scorching heat of persecution. Their want of true courage herein cannot
be excused. Yet many censure them for surrendering up their forts after
a long siege, who would have yielded up their own at the first summons.
Oh! there is more required to make one valiant, than to call Cranmer or
Jewel coward; as if the fire in Smithfield had been no hotter than what
is painted in the Book of Martyrs."
_Text of St. Paul._--"St. Paul saith, let not the sun go down on your
wrath, to carry news to the antipodes in another world of thy revengeful
nature. Yet let us take the Apostle's meaning rather than his words,
with all possible speed to depose our passion; not understanding him so
literally, that we may take leave to be angry till sunset: then might
our wrath lengthen with the days; and men in Greenland, where the day
lasts above a quarter of a year, have plentiful scope for revenge."[19]
[19] This whimsical prevention of a consequence which no one would
have thought of deducing,--setting up an absurdum on purpose to hunt
it down,--placing guards as it were at the very outposts of
possibility,--gravely giving out laws to insanity and prescribing
moral fences to distempered intellects, could never have entered
into a head less entertainingly constructed than that of Fuller, or
Sir Thomas Browne, the very air of whose style the conclusion of
this passage most aptly imitates.
_Bishop Brownrig._--"He carried learning enough _in numerato_ about him
in his pockets for any discourse, and had much more at home in his
chests for any serious dispute."
_Modest Want._--"Those that with diligence fight against poverty, though
neither conquer till death makes it a drawn battle; expect not but
prevent their craving of thee: for God forbid the heavens should never
rain, till the earth first opens her mouth; seeing _some grounds will
sooner burn than chap_."
_Death-bed Temptations._--"The devil is most busy on the last day of his
term; and a tenant to be outed cares not what mischief he doth."
_Conversation._--"Seeing we are civilized Englishmen, let us not be
naked savages in our talk."
_Wounded Soldier._--"Halting is the stateliest march of a soldier; and
'tis a brave sight to see the flesh of an ancient as torn as his
colours."
_Wat Tyler._--"A _misogrammatist_; if a good Greek word may be given to
so barbarous a rebel."
_Heralds._--"Heralds new mould men's names,--taking from them, adding
to them, melting out all the liquid letters, torturing mutes to make
them speak, and making vowels dumb,--to bring it to a fallacious
_homonomy_ at the last, that their names may be the same with those
noble houses they pretend to."
_Antiquarian Diligence._--"It is most worthy observation, with what
diligence he [Camden] enquired after ancient places, making hue and cry
after many a city which was run away, and by certain marks and tokens
pursuing to find it; as by the situation on the Roman highways, by just
distance from other ancient cities, by some affinity of name, by
tradition of the inhabitants, by Roman coins digged up, and by some
appearance of ruins. A broken urn is a whole evidence; or an old gate
still surviving, out of which the city is run out. Besides, commonly
some new spruce town not far off is grown out of the ashes thereof,
which yet hath so much natural affection as dutifully to own those
reverend ruins for her mother."
_Henry de Essex._--"He is too well known in our English Chronicles,
being Baron of Raleigh, in Essex, and Hereditary Standard Bearer of
England. It happened in the reign of this king [Henry II.] there was a
fierce battle fought in Flintshire, at Coleshall, between the English
and Welsh, wherein this Henry de Essex _animum et signum simul abjecit_,
betwixt traitor and coward, cast away both his courage and banner
together, occasioning a great overthrow of English. But he that had the
baseness to do, had the boldness to deny the doing of so foul a fact;
until he was challenged in combat by Robert de Momford, a knight,
eye-witness thereof, and by him overcome in a duel. Whereupon his large
inheritance was confiscated to the king, and he himself, _partly thrust,
partly going into a convent, hid his head in a cowl, under which,
betwixt shame and sanctity, he blushed out the remainder of his
life_."[20]--_Worthies. Article, Bedfordshire._
[20] The fine imagination of Fuller has done what might have been
pronounced impossible: it has given an interest, and a holy
character, to coward infamy. Nothing can be more beautiful than the
concluding account of the last days, and expiatory retirement, of
poor Henry de Essex. The address with which the whole of this little
story is told is most consummate: the charm of it seems to consist
in a perpetual balance of antitheses not too violently opposed, and
the consequent activity of mind in which the reader is
kept:--"Betwixt traitor and coward"--"baseness to do, boldness to
deny"--"partly thrust, partly going, into a convent"--"betwixt shame
and sanctity." The reader by this artifice is taken into a kind of
partnership with the writer,--his judgment is exercised in settling
the preponderance,--he feels as if he were consulted as to the
issue. But the modern historian flings at once the dead weight of
his own judgment into the scale, and settles the matter.
_Sir Edward Harwood, Knt._--"I have read of a bird, which hath a face
like, and yet will prey upon, a man; who coming to the water to drink,
and finding there by reflection, that he had killed one like himself,
pineth away by degrees, and never afterwards enjoyeth itself.[21] Such
is in some sort the condition of Sir Edward. This accident, that he had
killed one in a private quarrel, put a period to his carnal mirth, and
was a covering to his eyes all the days of his life. No possible
provocations could afterwards tempt him to a duel; and no wonder that
one's conscience loathed that whereof he had surfeited. He refused all
challenges with more honour than others accepted them; it being well
known, that he would set his foot as far in the face of his enemy as any
man alive."--_Worthies. Art. Lincolnshire._
[21] I do not know where Fuller read of this bird; but a more awful
and affecting story, and moralizing of a story, in Natural History,
or rather in that Fabulous Natural History, where poets and
mythologists found the Phœnix and the Unicorn, and "other strange
fowl," is no where extant. It is a fable which Sir Thomas Browne, if
he had heard of it, would have exploded among his Vulgar Errors; but
the delight which he would have taken in the discussing of its
probabilities, would have shewn that the _truth of the fact_, though
the avowed object of his search, was not so much the motive which
put him upon the investigation, as those hidden affinities and
poetical analogies,--those _essential verities_ in the application
of strange fable, which made him linger with such reluctant delay
among the last fading lights of popular tradition; and not seldom to
conjure up a superstition, that had been long extinct, from its
dusty grave, to inter it himself with greater ceremonies and
solemnities of burial.
_Decayed Gentry._--"It happened in the reign of King James, when Henry
Earl of Huntingdon was Lieutenant of Leicestershire, that a labourer's
son in that county was pressed into the wars; as I take it, to go over
with Count Mansfield. The old man at Leicester requested his son might
be discharged, as being the only staff of his age, who by his industry
maintained him and his mother. The Earl demanded his name, which the man
for a long time was loth to tell (as suspecting it a fault for so poor a
man to confess the truth), at last he told his name was Hastings.
'Cousin Hastings,' said the Earl, 'we cannot all be top branches of the
tree, though we all spring from the same root; your son, my kinsman,
shall not be pressed.' So good was the meeting of modesty in a poor,
with courtesy in an honourable person, and gentry I believe in both. And
I have reason to believe, that some who justly own the surnames and
blood of Bohuns, Mortimers, and Plantagenets (though ignorant of their
own extractions), are hid in the heap of common people, where they find
that under a thatched cottage, which some of their ancestors
could not enjoy in a leaded castle,--contentment, with quiet and
security."--_Worthies. Art. Of Shire-Reeves or Shiriffes._
_Tenderness of Conscience in a Tradesman._--"Thomas Curson, born in
Allhallows, Lombard-street, armourer, dwelt without Bishopsgate. It
happened that a stage-player borrowed a rusty musket, which had lain
long leger in his shop: now though his part were comical, he therewith
acted an unexpected tragedy, killing one of the standers by, the gun
casually going off on the stage, which he suspected not to be charged. O
the difference of divers men in the tenderness of their consciences;
some are scarce touched with a wound, whilst others are wounded with a
touch therein. This poor armourer was highly afflicted therewith, though
done against his will, yea without his knowledge, in his absence, by
another, out of mere chance. Hereupon he resolved to give all his estate
to pious uses: no sooner had he gotten a round sum, but presently he
posted with it in his apron to the Court of Aldermen, and was in pain
till by their direction he had settled it for the relief of poor in his
own and other parishes, and disposed of some hundreds of pounds
accordingly, as I am credibly informed by the then churchwardens of the
said parish. Thus as he conceived himself casually (though at a great
distance) to have occasioned the death of one, he was the immediate and
direct cause of giving a comfortable living to many."
_Burning of Wickliffe's Body by Order of the Council of
Constance._--"Hitherto [A.D. 1428] the corpse of John Wickliffe had
quietly slept in his grave about forty-one years after his death, till
his body was reduced to bones, and his bones almost to dust. For though
the earth in the chancel of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, where he was
interred, hath not so quick a digestion with the earth of Aceldama, to
consume flesh in twenty-four hours, yet such the appetite thereof, and
all other English graves, to leave small reversions of a body after so
many years. But now such the spleen of the Council of Constance, as
they not only cursed his memory as dying an obstinate heretic, but
ordered that his bones (with this charitable caution,--if it may be
discerned from the bodies of other faithful people) to be taken out of
the ground, and thrown far off from any Christian burial. In obedience
hereunto, Rich. Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, Diocesan of Lutterworth,
sent his officers (vultures with a quick sight, scent, at a dead
carcase) to ungrave him. Accordingly to Lutterworth they come, Sumner,
Commissary, Official, Chancellor, Proctors, Doctors, and their servants
(so that the remnant of the body would not hold out a bone amongst so
many hands), take what was left out of the grave, and burnt them to
ashes, and cast them into Swift, a neighbouring brook, running hard by.
_Thus this brook has conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn,
Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the
ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is
dispersed all the world over._"[22]--Church History.
[22] The concluding period of this most lively narrative I will not
call a conceit: it is one of the grandest conceptions I ever met
with. One feels the ashes of Wickliffe gliding away out of the reach
of the Sumners, Commissaries, Officials, Proctors, Doctors, and all
the puddering rout of executioners of the impotent rage of the
baffled Council: from Swift into Avon, from Avon into Severn, from
Severn into the narrow seas, from the narrow seas into the main
ocean, where they become the emblem of his doctrine, "dispersed all
the world over." Hamlet's tracing the body of Cæsar to the clay that
stops a beer-barrel, is a no less curious pursuit of "ruined
mortality;" but it is in an inverse ratio to this: it degrades and
saddens us, for one part of our nature at least; but this expands
the whole of our nature, and gives to the body a sort of
ubiquity,--a diffusion, as far as the actions of its partner can
have reach or influence.
I have seen this passage smiled at, and set down as a quaint conceit
of old Fuller. But what is not a conceit to those who read it in a
temper different from that in which the writer composed it? The most
pathetic parts of poetry to cold tempers seem and are nonsense, as
divinity was to the Greeks foolishness. When Richard II., meditating
on his own utter annihilation as to royalty, cries out,
"O that I were a mockery king of snow,
To melt before the sun of Bolingbroke,"
if we have been going on pace for pace with the passion before, this
sudden conversion of a strong-felt metaphor into something to be
actually realized in nature, like that of Jeremiah, "Oh! that my
head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears," is strictly
and strikingly natural; but come unprepared upon it, and it is a
conceit; and so is a "head" turned into "waters."
EDAX ON APPETITE
(1811. TEXT OF 1818)
_To the Editor of the Reflector_
Mr. Reflector,--I am going to lay before you a case of the most
iniquitous persecution that ever poor devil suffered.
You must know, then, that I have been visited with a calamity ever since
my birth. How shall I mention it without offending delicacy? Yet out it
must. My sufferings then have all arisen from a most inordinate
appetite----
Not for wealth, not for vast possessions,--then might I have hoped to
find a cure in some of those precepts of philosophers or poets,--those
verba et voces which Horace speaks of:
"quibus hunc lenire dolorem
Possis, et magnam morbi deponere partem;"
not for glory, not for fame, not for applause,--for against this
disease, too, he tells us there are certain piacula, or, as Pope has
chosen to render it,
"rhymes, which fresh and fresh applied,
Will cure the arrant'st puppy of his pride;"
nor yet for pleasure, properly so called: the strict and virtuous
lessons which I received in early life from the best of parents,--a
pious clergyman of the Church of England, now no more,--I trust have
rendered me sufficiently secure on that side:----
No, Sir, for none of these things; but an appetite, in its coarsest and
least metaphorical sense,--an appetite for _food_.
The exorbitances of my arrow-root and pap-dish days I cannot go back far
enough to remember, only I have been told, that my mother's constitution
not admitting of my being nursed at home, the woman who had the care of
me for that purpose used to make most extravagant demands for my
pretended excesses in that kind; which my parents, rather than believe
any thing unpleasant of me, chose to impute to the known covetousness
and mercenary disposition of that sort of people. This blindness
continued on their part after I was sent for home, up to the period
when it was thought proper, on account of my advanced age, that I should
mix with other boys more unreservedly than I had hitherto done. I was
accordingly sent to boarding-school.
Here the melancholy truth became too apparent to be disguised. The
prying republic of which a great school consists, soon found me out:
there was no shifting the blame any longer upon other people's
shoulders,--no good-natured maid to take upon herself the enormities of
which I stood accused in the article of bread and butter, besides the
crying sin of stolen ends of puddings, and cold pies strangely missing.
The truth was but too manifest in my looks,--in the evident signs of
inanition which I exhibited after the fullest meals, in spite of the
double allowance which my master was privately instructed by my kind
parents to give me. The sense of the ridiculous, which is but too much
alive in grown persons, is tenfold more active and alert in boys. Once
detected, I was the constant butt of their arrows,--the mark against
which every puny leveller directed his little shaft of scorn. The very
Graduses and Thesauruses were raked for phrases to pelt me with by the
tiny pedants. Ventri natus,--Ventri deditus,--Vesana gula,--Escarum
gurges,--Dapibus indulgens,--Non dans frœna gulæ,--Sectans lautæ fercula
mensæ, resounded wheresoever I past. I lead a weary life, suffering the
penalties of guilt for that which was no crime, but only following the
blameless dictates of nature. The remembrance of those childish
reproaches haunts me yet oftentimes in my dreams. My school-days come
again, and the horror I used to feel, when in some silent corner retired
from the notice of my unfeeling playfellows, I have sat to mumble the
solitary slice of gingerbread allotted me by the bounty of considerate
friends, and have ached at heart because I could not spare a portion of
it, as I saw other boys do, to some favourite boy;--for if I know my own
heart, I was never selfish,--never possessed a luxury which I did not
hasten to communicate to others; but my food, alas! was none; it was an
indispensable necessary; I could as soon have spared the blood in my
veins, as have parted that with my companions.
Well, no one stage of suffering lasts for ever: we should grow
reconciled to it at length, I suppose, if it did. The miseries of my
school-days had their end; I was once more restored to the paternal
dwelling. The affectionate solicitude of my parents was directed to the
good-natured purpose of concealing even from myself the infirmity which
haunted me. I was continually told that I was growing, and the appetite
I displayed was humanely represented as being nothing more than a
symptom and an effect of that. I used even to be complimented upon it.
But this temporary fiction could not endure above a year or two. I
ceased to grow, but alas! I did not cease my demands for alimentary
sustenance.
Those times are long since past, and with them have ceased to exist the
fond concealment,--the indulgent blindness,--the delicate
over-looking,--the compassionate fiction. I and my infirmity are left
exposed and bare to the broad, unwinking eye of the world, which nothing
can elude. My meals are scanned, my mouthfuls weighed in a balance: that
which appetite demands, is set down to the account of gluttony,--a sin
which my whole soul abhors, nay, which Nature herself has put it out of
my power to commit. I am constitutionally disenabled from that vice; for
how can he be guilty of excess, who never can get enough? Let them
cease, then, to watch my plate; and leave off their ungracious
comparisons of it to the seven baskets of fragments, and the
supernaturally-replenished cup of old Baucis; and be thankful that their
more phlegmatic stomachs, not their virtue, have saved them from the
like reproaches. I do not see that any of them desist from eating till
the holy rage of hunger, as some one calls it, is supplied. Alas! I am
doomed to stop short of that continence.
What am I to do? I am by disposition inclined to conviviality, and the
social meal. I am no gourmand: I require no dainties: I should despise
the board of Heliogabalus, except for its long sitting. Those vivacious,
long-continued meals of the latter Romans, indeed I justly envy; but the
kind of fare which the Curii and Dentati put up with, I could be content
with. Dentatus I have been called, among other unsavory jests.
Double-meal is another name which my acquaintance have palmed upon me,
for an innocent piece of policy which I put in practice for some time
without being found out; which was,--going the round of my friends,
beginning with the most primitive feeders among them, who take their
dinner about one o'clock, and so successively dropping in upon the next
and the next, till by the time I got among my more fashionable
intimates, whose hour was six or seven, I have nearly made up the body
of a just and complete meal (as I reckon it), without taking more than
one dinner (as they account of dinners) at one person's house. Since I
have been found out, I endeavour to make up by a damper, as I call it,
at home, before I go out. But alas! with me, increase of appetite truly
grows by what it feeds on. What is peculiarly offensive to me at those
dinner-parties is, the senseless custom of cheese, and the dessert
afterwards. I have a rational antipathy to the former; and for fruit,
and those other vain vegetable substitutes for meat (meat, the only
legitimate aliment for human creatures since the flood, as I take it to
be deduced from that permission, or ordinance rather, given to Noah and
his descendants), I hold them in perfect contempt. Hay for horses. I
remember a pretty apologue, which Mandeville tells very much to this
purpose in his Fable of the Bees:--He brings in a Lion arguing with a
Merchant, who had ventured to expostulate with this king of beasts upon
his violent methods of feeding. The Lion thus retorts:--"Savage I am,
but no Creature can be called Cruel but what either by Malice or
Insensibility extinguishes his natural Pity: The Lion was born without
Compassion; we follow the instinct of our Nature; the Gods have
appointed us to live upon the waste and spoil of other Animals, and as
long as we can meet with dead ones, we never hunt after the Living. 'Tis
only Man, mischievous Man, that can make Death a sport. Nature taught
your stomach to crave nothing but Vegetables."--(Under favour of the
Lion, if he meant to assert this universally of mankind, it is not true.
However, what he says presently is very sensible.)--"Your violent
fondness to change, and greater eagerness after Novelties, have prompted
you to the destruction of Animals without Justice or Necessity.... The
Lion has a ferment within him, that consumes the toughest Skin and
hardest Bones, as well as the Flesh of all Animals without exception:
Your squeamish Stomach, in which the Digestive Heat is weak and
inconsiderable, won't so much as admit of the most tender Parts of them,
unless above half the Concoction has been performed by artificial Fire
beforehand; and yet what Animal have you spared, to satisfy the Caprices
of a languid Appetite? Languid I say; for what is Man's Hunger if
compared to the Lion's? Yours, when it is at the worst, makes you
Faint; mine makes me Mad: Oft have I tried with Roots and Herbs to allay
the violence of it, but in vain; nothing but large quantities of Flesh
can any ways appease it."--Allowing for the Lion not having a prophetic
instinct to take in every lusus naturæ that was possible of the human
appetite, he was, generally speaking, in the right; and the Merchant was
so impressed with his argument that, we are told, he replied not, but
fainted away. O, Mr. Reflector, that I were not obliged to add, that the
creature who thus argues was but a type of me! Miserable man! _I am that
Lion._ "Oft have I tried with roots and herbs to allay that violence,
but in vain; nothing but----."
Those tales which are renewed as often as the editors of papers want to
fill up a space in their unfeeling columns, of great eaters,--people
that devour whole geese and legs of mutton _for wagers_, are sometimes
attempted to be drawn to a parallel with my case. This wilful
confounding of motives and circumstances, which make all the difference
of moral or immoral in actions, just suits the sort of talent which some
of my acquaintance pride themselves upon. _Wagers!_--I thank heaven, I
was never mercenary, nor could consent to prostitute a gift (though but
a left-handed one) of nature, to the enlarging of my worldly substance;
prudent as the necessities, which that fatal gift have involved me in,
might have made such a prostitution to appear in the eyes of an
indelicate world.
Rather let me say, that to the satisfaction of that talent which was
given me, I have been content to sacrifice no common expectations; for
such I had from an old lady, a near relation of our family, in whose
good graces I had the fortune to stand, till one fatal evening----. You
have seen, Mr. Reflector, if you have ever passed your time much in
country towns, the kind of suppers which elderly ladies in those places
have lying in petto in an adjoining parlour, next to that where they are
entertaining their periodically-invited coevals with cards and muffins.
The cloth is usually spread some half-hour before the final rubber is
decided, whence they adjourn to sup upon what may emphatically be called
_nothing_. A sliver of ham, purposely contrived to be transparent to
shew the china-dish through it, neighbouring a slip of invisible brawn,
which abuts upon something they call a tartlet, as that is bravely
supported by an atom of marmalade, flanked in its turn by a grain of
potted beef, with a power of such dishlings, _minims of hospitality_,
spread in defiance of human nature, or rather with an utter ignorance of
what it demands. Being engaged at one of these card-parties, I was
obliged to go a little before _supper-time_ (as they facetiously call
the point of time in which they are taking these shadowy refections),
and the old lady, with a sort of fear shining through the smile of
courteous hospitality that beamed in her countenance, begged me to step
into the next room and take something before I went out in the cold,--a
proposal which lay not in my nature to deny. Indignant at the airy
prospect I saw before me, I set to, and in a trice dispatched the whole
meal intended for eleven persons,--fish, flesh, fowl, pastry,--to the
sprigs of garnishing parsley, and the last fearful custard that quaked
upon the board. I need not describe the consternation, when in due time
the dowagers adjourned from their cards. Where was the supper?--and the
servants' answer, Mr. ---- had eat it all.--That freak, however, jested
me out of a good three hundred pounds a year, which I afterwards was
informed for a certainty the old lady meant to leave me. I mention it
not in illustration of the unhappy faculty which I am possessed of; for
any unlucky wag of a school-boy, with a tolerable appetite, could have
done as much without feeling any hurt after it,--only that you may judge
whether I am a man likely to set my talent to sale, or to require the
pitiful stimulus of a wager.
I have read in Pliny, or in some author of that stamp, of a reptile in
Africa, whose venom is of that hot, destructive quality, that
wheresoever it fastens its tooth, the whole substance of the animal that
has been bitten in a few seconds is reduced to dust, crumbles away, and
absolutely disappears: it is called from this quality, the Annihilator.
Why am I forced to seek, in all the most prodigious and portentous facts
of Natural History, for creatures typical of myself? _I am that Snake,
that Annihilator_: "wherever I fasten, in a few seconds----."
O happy sick men, that are groaning under the want of that very thing,
the excess of which is my torment! O fortunate, too fortunate, if you
knew your happiness, invalids! What would I not give to exchange this
fierce concoctive and digestive heat,--this rabid fury which vexes me,
which tears and torments me,--for your quiet, mortified, hermit-like,
subdued, and sanctified stomachs,--your cool, chastened inclinations,
and coy desires for food!
To what unhappy figuration of the parts intestine I owe this unnatural
craving, I must leave to the anatomists and the physicians to determine:
they, like the rest of the world, have doubtless their eye upon me; and
as I have been cut up alive by the sarcasms of my friends, so I shudder
when I contemplate the probability that this animal frame, when its
restless appetites shall have ceased their importunity, may be cut up
also (horrible suggestion!) to determine in what system of solids or
fluids this original sin of my constitution lay lurking. What work will
they make with their acids and alkalines, their serums and coagulums,
effervescences, viscous matter, bile, chyle, and acrimonious juices, to
explain that cause which Nature, who willed the effect to punish me for
my sins, may no less have determined to keep in the dark from them, to
punish them for their presumption.
You may ask, Mr. Reflector, to what purpose is my appeal to you: what
can you do for me? Alas! I know too well that my case is out of the
reach of advice,--out of the reach of consolation. But it is some relief
to the wounded heart to impart its tale of misery; and some of my
acquaintance, who may read my case in your pages under a borrowed name,
may be induced to give it a more humane consideration than I could ever
yet obtain from them under my own. Make them, if possible, to _reflect_,
that an original peculiarity of constitution is no crime; that not that
which goes into the mouth desecrates a man, but that which comes out of
it,--such as sarcasm, bitter jests, mocks and taunts, and ill-natured
observations; and let them consider, if there be such things (which we
have all heard of) as Pious Treachery, Innocent Adultery, &c. whether
there may not be also such a thing as Innocent Gluttony.
I shall only subscribe myself,
Your afflicted servant,
EDAX.
_HOSPITA_ ON THE IMMODERATE INDULGENCE OF THE PLEASURES OF THE PALATE
(1811. TEXT OF 1818)
_To the Editor of the Reflector_
Mr. Reflector,--My husband and I are fond of company, and being in easy
circumstances, we are seldom without a party to dinner two or three days
in a week. The utmost cordiality has hitherto prevailed at our meetings;
but there is a young gentleman, a near relation of my husband's, that
has lately come among us, whose preposterous behaviour bids fair, if not
timely checked, to disturb our tranquillity. He is too great a favourite
with my husband in other respects, for me to remonstrate with him in any
other than this distant way. A letter printed in your publication may
catch his eye; for he is a great reader, and makes a point of seeing all
the new things that come out. Indeed, he is by no means deficient in
understanding. My husband says that he has a good deal of wit; but for
my part I cannot say I am any judge of that, having seldom observed him
open his mouth except for purposes very foreign to conversation. In
short, Sir, this young gentleman's failing is, an immoderate indulgence
of his palate. The first time he dined with us, he thought it necessary
to extenuate the length of time he kept the dinner on the table, by
declaring that he had taken a very long walk in the morning, and came in
fasting; but as that excuse could not serve above once or twice at most,
he has latterly dropped the mask altogether, and chosen to appear in his
own proper colours without reserve or apology.
You cannot imagine how unpleasant his conduct has become. His way of
staring at the dishes as they are brought in, has absolutely something
immodest in it: it is like the stare of an impudent man of fashion at a
fine woman, when she first comes into a room. I am positively in pain
for the dishes, and cannot help thinking they have consciousness, and
will be put out of countenance, he treats them so like what they are
not.
Then again he makes no scruple of keeping a joint of meat on the table,
after the cheese and fruit are brought in, till he has what he calls
_done with it_. Now how awkward this looks, where there are ladies, you
may judge, Mr. Reflector,--how it disturbs the order and comfort of a
meal. And yet I always make a point of helping him first, contrary to
all good manners,--before any of my female friends are helped,--that he
may avoid this very error. I wish he would eat before he comes out.
What makes his proceedings more particularly offensive at our house is,
that my husband, though out of common politeness he is obliged to set
dishes of animal food before his visitors, yet himself and his whole
family (myself included) feed entirely on vegetables. We have a theory,
that animal food is neither wholesome nor natural to man; and even
vegetables we refuse to eat until they have undergone the operation of
fire, in consideration of those numberless little living creatures which
the glass helps us to detect in every fibre of the plant or root before
it be dressed. On the same theory we boil our water, which is our only
drink, before we suffer it to come to table. Our children are perfect
little Pythagoreans: it would do you good to see them in their nursery,
stuffing their dried fruits, figs, raisins, and _milk_, which is the
only approach to animal food which is allowed. They have no notion how
the substance of a creature that ever had life can become food for
another creature. A beef-steak is an absurdity to them; a mutton-chop, a
solecism in terms; a cutlet, a word absolutely without any meaning; a
butcher is nonsense, except so far as it is taken for a man who delights
in blood, or a hero. In this happy state of innocence we have kept their
minds, not allowing them to go into the kitchen, or to hear of any
preparations for the dressing of animal food, or even to know that such
things are practised. But as a state of ignorance is incompatible with a
certain age; and as my eldest girl, who is ten years old next Midsummer,
must shortly be introduced into the world and sit at table with us,
where she will see some things which will shock all her received
notions, I have been endeavouring by little and little to break her
mind, and prepare it for the disagreeable impressions which must be
forced upon it. The first hint I gave her upon the subject, I could see
her recoil from it with the same horror with which we listen to a tale
of Anthropophagism; but she has gradually grown more reconciled to it in
some measure, from my telling her that it was the custom of the
world,--to which, however senseless, we must submit so far as we could
do it with innocence, not to give offence; and she has shewn so much
strength of mind on other occasions, which I have no doubt is owing to
the calmness and serenity superinduced by her diet, that I am in good
hopes, when the proper season for her _debut_ arrives, she may be
brought to endure the sight of a roasted chicken or a dish of
sweatbreads, for the first time, without fainting. Such being the nature
of our little household, you may guess what inroads into the economy of
it,--what revolutions and turnings of things upside down, the example of
such a feeder as Mr. ---- is calculated to produce.
I wonder at a time like the present, when the scarcity of every kind of
food is so painfully acknowledged, that _shame_ has no effect upon him.
Can he have read Mr. Malthus's Thoughts on the Ratio of Food to
Population? Can he think it reasonable that one man should consume the
sustenance of many?
The young gentleman has an agreeable air and person, such as are not
unlikely to recommend him on the score of matrimony. But his fortune is
not over large; and what prudent young woman would think of embarking
hers with a man who would bring three or four mouths (or what is
equivalent to them) into a family? She might as reasonably choose a
widower in the same circumstances with three or four children.
I cannot think who he takes after. His father and mother, by all
accounts, were very moderate eaters; only I have heard that the latter
swallowed her victuals very fast, and the former had a tedious custom of
sitting long at his meals. Perhaps he takes after both.
I wish you would turn this in your thoughts, Mr. Reflector, and give us
your ideas on the subject of excessive eating; and, particularly, of
animal food.
HOSPITA.
THE GOOD CLERK, A CHARACTER; WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF "THE COMPLETE ENGLISH
TRADESMAN"
(1811)
The Good Clerk.--He writeth a fair and swift hand, and is competently
versed in the Four First Rules of Arithmetic, in the Rule of Three
(which is sometimes called the Golden Rule) and in Practice. We mention
these things, that we may leave no room for cavillers to say, that any
thing essential hath been omitted in our definition; else, to speak the
truth, these are but ordinary accomplishments, and such as every
understrapper at a desk is commonly furnished with. The character we
treat of soareth higher.
He is clean and neat in his person; not from a vain-glorious desire of
setting himself forth to advantage in the eyes of the other sex (with
which vanity too many of our young Sparks now-a-days are infected) but
to do credit (as we say) to the office. For this reason he evermore
taketh care that his desk or his books receive no soil; the which things
he is commonly as solicitous to have fair and unblemished, as the owner
of a fine horse is to have him appear in good keep.
He riseth early in the morning; not because early rising conduceth to
health (though he doth not altogether despise that consideration) but
chiefly to the intent that he may be first at the desk. There is his
post, there he delighteth to be, unless when his meals, or necessity,
calleth him away; which time he alway esteemeth as lost, and maketh as
short as possible.
He is temperate in eating and drinking, that he may preserve a clear
head and steady hand for his master's service. He is also partly induced
to this observation of the rules of temperance by his respect for
religion and the laws of his country; which things (it may once for all
be noted) do add special assistances to his actions, but do not and
cannot furnish the main spring or motive thereto. His first ambition (as
appeareth all along) is to be a good Clerk, his next a good Christian, a
good Patriot, &c.
Correspondent to this, he keepeth himself honest, not for fear of the
laws, but because he hath observed how unseemly an article it maketh in
the Day Book, or Ledger, when a sum is set down lost or missing; it
being his pride to make these books to agree, and to tally, the one side
with the other, with a sort of architectural symmetry and
correspondence.
He marrieth, or marrieth not, as best suiteth with his employer's views.
Some merchants do the rather desire to have married men in their
Counting Houses, because they think the married state a pledge for their
servants' integrity, and an incitement to them to be industrious; and it
was an observation of a late Lord Mayor of London, that the sons of
Clerks do generally prove Clerks themselves, and that Merchants
encouraging persons in their employ to marry, and to have families, was
the best method of securing a breed of sober industrious young men
attached to the mercantile interest. Be this as it may, such a character
as we have been describing, will wait till the pleasure of his employer
is known on this point; and regulateth his desires by the custom of the
house or firm to which he belongeth.
He avoideth profane oaths and jesting, as so much time lost from his
employ; what spare time he hath for conversation, which in a Counting
House such as we have been supposing can be but small, he spendeth in
putting seasonable questions to such of his fellows (and sometimes
_respectfully_ to the master himself) who can give him information
respecting the price and quality of goods, the state of exchange, or the
latest improvements in book-keeping; thus making the motion of his lips,
as well as of his fingers, subservient to his master's interest. Not
that he refuseth a brisk saying, or a cheerful sally of wit, when it
comes unforced, is free of offence, and hath a convenient brevity. For
this reason he hath commonly some such phrase as this in his mouth:--
It's a slovenly look
To blot your book.
Or,
Red ink for ornament, black for use,
The best of things are open to abuse.
So upon the eve of any great holyday, of which he keepeth one or two at
least every year, he will merrily say in the hearing of a confidential
friend, but to none other:--
All work and no play
Makes Jack a dull boy.
Or,
A bow always bent must crack at last.
But then this must always be understood to be spoken confidentially,
and, as we say, _under the rose_.
Lastly, his dress is plain without singularity; with no other ornament
than the quill, which is the badge of his function, stuck under the
dexter ear, and this rather for convenience of having it at hand, when
he hath been called away from his desk, and expecteth to resume his seat
there again shortly, than from any delight which he taketh in foppery or
ostentation. The colour of his clothes is generally noted to be black
rather than brown, brown rather than blue or green. His whole deportment
is staid, modest, and civil. His motto is Regularity.----
This Character was sketched, in an interval of business, to divert some
of the melancholy hours of a Counting House. It is so little a creature
of fancy, that it is scarce any thing more than a recollection of some
of those frugal and economical maxims which, about the beginning of the
last century, (England's meanest period), were endeavoured to be
inculcated and instilled into the breasts of the London Apprentices,[23]
by a class of instructors who might not inaptly be termed _The Masters
of mean Morals_. The astonishing narrowness and illiberality of the
lessons contained in some of those books is inconceivable by those whose
studies have not led them that way, and would almost induce one to
subscribe to the hard censure which Drayton has passed upon the
mercantile spirit:--
_The gripple merchant, born to be the curse
Of this brave Isle._
[23] This term designated a larger class of young men than that to
which it is now confined; it took in the articled Clerks of
Merchants and Bankers, the George Barnwells of the day.
I have now lying before me that curious book by Daniel Defoe, "The
Complete English Tradesman." The pompous detail, the studied analysis of
every little mean art, every sneaking address, every trick and
subterfuge (short of larceny) that is necessary to the tradesman's
occupation, with the hundreds of anecdotes, dialogues (in Defoe's
liveliest manner) interspersed, all tending to the same amiable
purpose, namely, the sacrificing of every honest emotion of the soul to
what he calls the main chance,--if you read it in an _ironical sense_,
and as a piece of _covered satire_, make it one of the most amusing
books which Defoe ever writ, as much so as any of his best novels. It is
difficult to say what his intention was in writing it. It is almost
impossible to suppose him in earnest. Yet such is the bent of the book
to narrow and to degrade the heart, that if such maxims were as catching
and infectious as those of a licentious cast, which happily is not the
case, had I been living at that time, I certainly should have
recommended to the Grand Jury of Middlesex, who presented the Fable of
the Bees, to have presented this book of Defoe's in preference, as of a
far more vile and debasing tendency. I will give one specimen of his
advice to the young Tradesman on the _Government of his Temper_. "The
retail tradesman in especial, and even every tradesman in his station,
must furnish himself with a competent stock of patience; I mean that
sort of patience which is needful to bear with all sorts of
impertinence, and the most provoking curiosity that it is impossible to
imagine the buyers, even the worst of them, are or can be guilty of. _A
tradesman behind his counter must have no flesh and blood about him, no
passions, no resentment_; he must never be angry, no not so much as seem
to be so, if a customer tumbles him five hundred pounds worth of goods,
and scarce bids money for any thing; nay, though they really come to his
shop with no intent to buy, as many do, only to see what is to be sold,
and though he knows they cannot be better pleased, than they are, at
some other shop where they intend to buy, 'tis all one, the tradesman
must take it, he must place it to the account of his calling, that _'tis
his business to be ill used and resent nothing_; and so must answer as
obligingly to those that give him an hour or two's trouble and buy
nothing, as he does to those who in half the time lay out ten or twenty
pounds. The case is plain, and if some do give him trouble and do not
buy, others make amends and do buy; and as for the trouble, 'tis the
business of the shop." Here follows a most admirable story of a mercer
who, by his indefatigable meanness and more than Socratic patience under
affronts, overcame and reconciled a lady, who upon the report of another
lady that he had behaved saucily to some third lady, had determined to
shun his shop, but by the over-persuasions of a fourth lady was induced
to go to it; which she does, declaring before hand that she will buy
nothing, but give him all the trouble she can. Her attack and his
defence, her insolence and his persevering patience, are described in
colours worthy of a Mandeville; but it is too long to recite. "The short
inference from this long discourse (says he) is this, that here you see,
and I could give you many examples like this, how and in what manner a
shop-keeper is to behave himself in the way of his business; what
impertinences, what taunts, flouts, and ridiculous things, he must bear
in his trade, and must not shew the least return, or the least signal of
disgust: he must have no passions, no fire in his temper; he must be all
soft and smooth; nay, if his real temper be naturally fiery and hot, he
must shew none of it in his shop; he must be a perfect _complete
hypocrite_ if he will be a _complete tradesman_.[24] It is true, natural
tempers are not to be always counterfeited; the man cannot easily be a
lamb in his shop, and a lion in himself; but let it be easy or hard, it
must be done, and is done: there are men who have by custom and usage
brought themselves to it, that nothing could be meeker and milder than
they, when behind the counter, and yet nothing be more furious and
raging in every other part of life; nay the provocations they have met
with in their shops have so irritated their rage, that they would go up
stairs from their shop, and fall into frenzies, and a kind of madness,
and beat their heads against the wall, and perhaps mischief themselves,
if not prevented, till the violence of it had gotten vent, and the
passions abate and cool. I heard once of a shop-keeper that behaved
himself thus to such an extreme, that when he was provoked by the
impertinence of the customers, beyond what his temper could bear, he
would go up stairs and beat his wife, kick his children about like dogs,
and be as furious for two or three minutes, as a man chained down in
Bedlam; and again, when that heat was over, would sit down and cry
faster than the children he had abused; and after the fit, he would go
down into the shop again, and be as humble, courteous, and as calm as
any man whatever; so absolute a government of his passions had he in the
shop and so little out of it: in the shop, a soul-less animal that
would resent nothing; and in the family a madman: in the shop, meek like
a lamb; but in the family, outrageous like a Libyan lion. The sum of the
matter is, it is necessary for a tradesman to subject himself by all the
ways possible to his business; _his customers are to be his idols: so
far as he may worship idols by allowance, he is to bow down to them, and
worship them_; at least he is not in any way to displease them, or shew
any disgust or distaste whatsoever they may say or do; the bottom of all
is, that he is intending to get money by them, and it is not for him
that gets money to offer the least inconvenience to them by whom he gets
it; he is to consider that, as Solomon says, the borrower is servant to
the lender, so the seller is servant to the buyer."--What he says on the
head of _Pleasures and Recreations_ is not less amusing:--"The
tradesman's pleasure should be in his business, his companions should be
his books, (he means his Ledger, Waste-book, &c.) and if he has a
family, he makes _his excursions up stairs and no further_:--none of my
cautions aim at restraining a tradesman from diverting himself, as we
call it, with his fireside, or keeping company with his wife and
children."--Liberal allowance; nay, almost licentious and criminal
indulgence!--but it is time to dismiss this _Philosopher of Meanness_.
More of this stuff would illiberalize the pages of the _Reflector_. Was
the man in earnest, when he could bring such powers of description, and
all the charms of natural eloquence, in commendation of the meanest,
vilest, wretchedest degradations of the human character?--Or did he not
rather laugh in his sleeve at the doctrines which he inculcated, and
retorting upon the grave Citizens of London their own arts, palm upon
them a sample of disguised Satire under the name of wholesome
Instruction?
L. B.
[24] As no qualification accompanies this maxim, it must be
understood as the genuine sentiment of the Author!
MÉMOIR OF ROBERT LLOYD
(1811)
----Also, in October, in his 33d year, Mr. Robert Lloyd, third son of
Charles Lloyd. To dilate in many words upon his character, would be to
violate the modest regard due to his memory, who in his lifetime shrunk
so anxiously from every species of notice. His constitutional misfortune
was an excess of nervous sensibility, which in the purest of hearts
produced rather too great a spirit of self-abasement, a perpetual
apprehension of not doing what was right. Yet, beyond this tenderness,
he seemed absolutely to have no self-regards at all. His eye was single,
and ever fixed upon that form of goodness, which he venerated wherever
he found it, except in himself. What he was to his parents, and in his
family, the newness of their sorrow may make it unseasonable to touch
at; his loss, alas! was but one in a complication of domestic
afflictions which have fallen so heavy of late upon a very worthy house.
But as a friend, the writer of this memorial can witness, that what he
once esteemed and loved, it was an unalterable law of his mind to
continue to esteem and love. Absences of years, the discontinuance of
correspondence, from whatever cause, for ever so great a length of time,
made no difference. It seemed as if the affectionate part of his nature
could suffer no abatement. The display of what the world calls shining
talents, would have been incompatible with a character like his; but he
oftentimes let fall, in his familiar talk, and in his letters, bright
and original illustrations of feeling, which might have been mistaken
for genius, if his own watchful modest spirit had not constantly
interposed to recall and substitute for them some of the ordinary forms
of observation, which lay less out of that circle of common sympathy,
within which his kind nature delighted to move.
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD
(1813. TEXT OF 1822)
Dehortations from the use of strong liquors have been the favourite
topic of sober declaimers in all ages, and have been received with
abundance of applause by water-drinking critics. But with the patient
himself, the man that is to be cured, unfortunately their sound has
seldom prevailed. Yet the evil is acknowledged, the remedy simple.
Abstain. No force can oblige a man to raise the glass to his head
against his will. 'Tis as easy as not to steal, not to tell lies.
Alas! the hand to pilfer, and the tongue to bear false witness, have no
constitutional tendency. These are actions indifferent to them. At the
first instance of the reformed will, they can be brought off without a
murmur. The itching finger is but a figure in speech, and the tongue of
the liar can with the same natural delight give forth useful truths,
with which it has been accustomed to scatter their pernicious
contraries. But when a man has commenced sot----
O pause, thou sturdy moralist, thou person of stout nerves and a strong
head, whose liver is happily untouched, and ere thy gorge riseth at the
_name_ which I have written, first learn what the _thing_ is; how much
of compassion, how much of human allowance, thou may'st virtuously
mingle with thy disapprobation. Trample not on the ruins of a man. Exact
not, under so terrible a penalty as infamy, a resuscitation from a state
of death almost as real as that from which Lazarus rose not but by a
miracle.
Begin a reformation, and custom will make it easy. But what if the
beginning be dreadful, the first steps not like climbing a mountain but
going through fire? what if the whole system must undergo a change
violent as that which we conceive of the mutation of form in some
insects? what if a process comparable to flaying alive be to be gone
through? is the weakness that sinks under such struggles to be
confounded with the pertinacity which clings to other vices, which have
induced no constitutional necessity, no engagement of the whole victim,
body and soul?
I have known one in that state, when he has tried to abstain but for one
evening,--though the poisonous potion had long ceased to bring back its
first enchantments, though he was sure it would rather deepen his gloom
than brighten it,--in the violence of the struggle, and the necessity he
has felt of getting rid of the present sensation at any rate, I have
known him to scream out, to cry aloud, for the anguish and pain of the
strife within him.
Why should I hesitate to declare, that the man of whom I speak is
myself? I have no puling apology to make to mankind. I see them all in
one way or another deviating from the pure reason. It is to my own
nature alone I am accountable for the woe that I have brought upon it.
I believe that there are constitutions, robust heads and iron insides,
whom scarce any excesses can hurt; whom brandy (I have seen them drink
it like wine), at all events whom wine, taken in ever so plentiful
measure, can do no worse injury to than just to muddle their faculties,
perhaps never very pellucid. On them this discourse is wasted. They
would but laugh at a weak brother, who, trying his strength with them,
and coming off foiled from the contest, would fain persuade them that
such agonistic exercises are dangerous. It is to a very different
description of persons I speak. It is to the weak, the nervous; to those
who feel the want of some artificial aid to raise their spirits in
society to what is no more than the ordinary pitch of all around them
without it. This is the secret of our drinking. Such must fly the
convivial board in the first instance, if they do not mean to sell
themselves for term of life.
Twelve years ago I had completed my six and twentieth year. I had lived
from the period of leaving school to that time pretty much in solitude.
My companions were chiefly books, or at most one or two living ones of
my own book-loving and sober stamp. I rose early, went to bed betimes,
and the faculties which God had given me, I have reason to think, did
not rust in me unused.
About that time I fell in with some companions of a different order.
They were men of boisterous spirits, sitters up a-nights, disputants,
drunken; yet seemed to have something noble about them. We dealt about
the wit, or what passes for it after midnight, jovially. Of the quality
called fancy I certainly possessed a larger share than my companions.
Encouraged by their applause, I set up for a profest joker! I, who of
all men am least fitted for such an occupation, having, in addition to
the greatest difficulty which I experience at all times of finding words
to express my meaning, a natural nervous impediment in my speech!
Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire to any character
but that of a wit. When you find a tickling relish upon your tongue
disposing you to that sort of conversation, especially if you find a
preternatural flow of ideas setting in upon you at the sight of a bottle
and fresh glasses, avoid giving way to it as you would fly your greatest
destruction. If you cannot crush the power of fancy, or that within you
which you mistake for such, divert it, give it some other play. Write an
essay, pen a character or description,--but not as I do now, with tears
trickling down your cheeks.
To be an object of compassion to friends, of derision to foes; to be
suspected by strangers, stared at by fools; to be esteemed dull when you
cannot be witty, to be applauded for witty when you know that you have
been dull; to be called upon for the extemporaneous exercise of that
faculty which no premeditation can give; to be spurred on to efforts
which end in contempt; to be set on to provoke mirth which procures the
procurer hatred; to give pleasure and be paid with squinting malice; to
swallow draughts of life-destroying wine which are to be distilled into
airy breath to tickle vain auditors; to mortgage miserable morrows for
nights of madness; to waste whole seas of time upon those who pay it
back in little inconsiderable drops of grudging applause,--are the wages
of buffoonery and death.
Time, which has a sure stroke at dissolving all connexions which have no
solider fastening than this liquid cement, more kind to me than my own
taste or penetration, at length opened my eyes to the supposed qualities
of my first friends. No trace of them is left but in the vices which
they introduced, and the habits they infixed. In them my friends survive
still, and exercise ample retribution for any supposed infidelity that I
may have been guilty of towards them.
My next more immediate companions were and are persons of such intrinsic
and felt worth, that though accidentally their acquaintance has proved
pernicious to me, I do not know that if the thing were to do over again,
I should have the courage to eschew the mischief at the price of
forfeiting the benefit. I came to them reeking from the steams of my
late over-heated notions of companionship; and the slightest fuel which
they unconsciously afforded, was sufficient to feed my old fires into a
propensity.
They were no drinkers, but, one from professional habits, and another
from a custom derived from his father, smoked tobacco. The devil could
not have devised a more subtle trap to re-take a backsliding penitent.
The transition, from gulping down draughts of liquid fire to puffing out
innocuous blasts of dry smoke, was so like cheating him. But he is too
hard for us when we hope to commute. He beats us at barter; and when we
think to set off a new failing against an old infirmity, 'tis odds but
he puts the trick upon us of two for one. That (comparatively) white
devil of tobacco brought with him in the end seven worse than himself.
It were impertinent to carry the reader through all the processes by
which, from smoking at first with malt liquor, I took my degrees through
thin wines, through stronger wine and water, through small punch, to
those juggling compositions, which, under the name of mixed liquors,
slur a great deal of brandy or other poison under less and less water
continually, until they come next to none, and so to none at all. But it
is hateful to disclose the secrets of my Tartarus.
I should repel my readers, from a mere incapacity of believing me, were
I to tell them what tobacco has been to me, the drudging service which I
have paid, the slavery which I have vowed to it. How, when I have
resolved to quit it, a feeling as of ingratitude has started up; how it
has put on personal claims and made the demands of a friend upon me. How
the reading of it casually in a book, as where Adams takes his whiff in
the chimney-corner of some inn in Joseph Andrews, or Piscator in the
Complete Angler breaks his fast upon a morning pipe in that delicate
room _Piscatoribus Sacrum_, has in a moment broken down the resistance
of weeks. How a pipe was ever in my midnight path before me, till the
vision forced me to realize it,--how then its ascending vapours curled,
its fragrance lulled, and the thousand delicious ministerings conversant
about it, employing every faculty, extracted the sense of pain. How from
illuminating it came to darken, from a quick solace it turned to a
negative relief, thence to a restlessness and dissatisfaction, thence to
a positive misery. How, even now, when the whole secret stands confessed
in all its dreadful truth before me, I feel myself linked to it beyond
the power of revocation. Bone of my bone----
Persons not accustomed to examine the motives of their actions, to
reckon up the countless nails that rivet the chains of habit, or perhaps
being bound by none so obdurate as those I have confessed to, may recoil
from this as from an overcharged picture. But what short of such a
bondage is it, which in spite of protesting friends, a weeping wife,
and a reprobating world, chains down many a poor fellow, of no original
indisposition to goodness, to his pipe and his pot?
I have seen a print after Correggio, in which three female figures are
ministering to a man who sits fast bound at the root of a tree.
Sensuality is soothing him, Evil Habit is nailing him to a branch, and
Repugnance at the same instant of time is applying a snake to his side.
In his face is feeble delight, the recollection of past rather than
perception of present pleasures, languid enjoyment of evil with utter
imbecility to good, a Sybaritic effeminacy, a submission to bondage, the
springs of the will gone down like a broken clock, the sin and the
suffering co-instantaneous, or the latter forerunning the former,
remorse preceding action--all this represented in one point of
time.--When I saw this, I admired the wonderful skill of the painter.
But when I went away, I wept, because I thought of my own condition.
Of _that_ there is no hope that it should ever change. The waters have
gone over me. But out of the black depths, could I be heard, I would cry
out to all those who have but set a foot in the perilous flood. Could
the youth, to whom the flavor of his first wine is delicious as the
opening scenes of life, or the entering upon some newly discovered
paradise, look into my desolation, and be made to understand what a
dreary thing it is when a man shall feel himself going down a precipice
with open eyes and a passive will,--to see his destruction, and have no
power to stop it, and yet to feel it all the way emanating from himself;
to perceive all goodness emptied out of him, and yet not to be able to
forget a time when it was otherwise; to bear about the piteous spectacle
of his own self-ruins:--could he see my fevered eye, feverish with last
night's drinking, and feverishly looking for this night's repetition of
the folly; could he feel the body of the death out of which I cry hourly
with feebler and feebler outcry to be delivered,--it were enough to make
him dash the sparkling beverage to the earth in all the pride of its
mantling temptation; to make him clasp his teeth,
and not undo 'em
To suffer WET DAMNATION to run through 'em.
Yea, but (methinks I hear somebody object) if sobriety be that fine
thing you would have us to understand, if the comforts of a cool brain
are to be perferred to that state of heated excitement which you
describe and deplore, what hinders in your own instance that you do not
return to those habits from which you would induce others never to
swerve? if the blessing be worth preserving, is it not worth recovering?
_Recovering!_--O if a wish could transport me back to those days of
youth, when a draught from the next clear spring could slake any heats
which summer suns and youthful exercise had power to stir up in the
blood, how gladly would I return to thee, pure element, the drink of
children, and of child-like holy hermit. In my dreams I can sometimes
fancy thy cool refreshment purling over my burning tongue. But my waking
stomach rejects it. That which refreshes innocence, only makes me sick
and faint.
But is there no middle way betwixt total abstinence and the excess which
kills you?--For your sake, reader, and that you may never attain to my
experience, with pain I must utter the dreadful truth, that there is
none, none that I can find. In my stage of habit (I speak not of habits
less confirmed--for some of them I believe the advice to be most
prudential) in the stage which I have reached, to stop short of that
measure which is sufficient to draw on torpor and sleep, the benumbing
apoplectic sleep of the drunkard, is to have taken none at all. The pain
of the self-denial is all one. And what that is, I had rather the reader
should believe on my credit, than know from his own trial. He will come
to know it, whenever he shall arrive at that state, in which,
paradoxical as it may appear, _reason shall only visit him through
intoxication_: for it is a fearful truth, that the intellectual
faculties by repeated acts of intemperance may be driven from their
orderly sphere of action, their clear day-light ministeries, until they
shall be brought at last to depend, for the faint manifestation of their
departing energies, upon the returning periods of the fatal madness to
which they owe their devastation. The drinking man is never less himself
than during his sober intervals. Evil is so far his good.[25]
[25] When poor M---- painted his last picture, with a pencil in one
trembling hand, and a glass of brandy and water in the other, his
fingers owed the comparative steadiness, with which they were
enabled to go through their task in an imperfect manner, to a
temporary firmness derived from a repetition of practices, the
general effect of which had shaken both them and him so terribly.
Behold me then, in the robust period of life, reduced to imbecility and
decay. Hear me count my gains, and the profits which I have derived from
the midnight cup.
Twelve years ago I was possessed of a healthy frame of mind and body. I
was never strong, but I think my constitution (for a weak one) was as
happily exempt from the tendency to any malady as it was possible to be.
I scarce knew what it was to ail any thing. Now, except when I am losing
myself in a sea of drink, I am never free from those uneasy sensations
in head and stomach, which are so much worse to bear than any definite
pains or aches.
At that time I was seldom in bed after six in the morning, summer and
winter. I awoke refreshed, and seldom without some merry thoughts in my
head, or some piece of a song to welcome the new-born day. Now, the
first feeling which besets me, after stretching out the hours of
recumbence to their last possible extent, is a forecast of the wearisome
day that lies before me, with a secret wish that I could have lain on
still, or never awaked.
Life itself, my waking life, has much of the confusion, the trouble, and
obscure perplexity, of an ill dream. In the daytime I stumble upon dark
mountains.
Business, which, though never particularly adapted to my nature, yet as
something of necessity to be gone through, and therefore best undertaken
with cheerfulness, I used to enter upon with some degree of alacrity,
now wearies, affrights, perplexes me. I fancy all sorts of
discouragements, and am ready to give up an occupation which gives me
bread, from a harassing conceit of incapacity. The slightest commission
given me by a friend, or any small duty which I have to perform for
myself, as giving orders to a tradesman, &c. haunts me as a labour
impossible to be got through. So much the springs of action are broken.
The same cowardice attends me in all my intercourse with mankind. I dare
not promise that a friend's honour, or his cause, would be safe in my
keeping, if I were put to the expense of any manly resolution in
defending it. So much the springs of moral action are deadened within
me.
My favourite occupations in times past, now cease to entertain. I can
do nothing readily. Application for ever so short a time kills me. This
poor abstract of my condition was penned at long intervals, with
scarcely any attempt at connexion of thought, which is now difficult to
me.
The noble passages which formerly delighted me in history or poetic
fiction, now only draw a few weak tears, allied to dotage. My broken and
dispirited nature seems to sink before any thing great and admirable.
I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any cause, or none. It is
inexpressible how much this infirmity adds to a sense of shame, and a
general feeling of deterioration.
These are some of the instances, concerning which I can say with truth,
that it was not always so with me.
Shall I lift up the veil of my weakness any further? or is this
disclosure sufficient?
I am a poor nameless egotist, who have no vanity to consult by these
Confessions. I know not whether I shall be laughed at, or heard
seriously. Such as they are, I commend them to the reader's attention,
if he finds his own case any way touched. I have told him what I am come
to. Let him stop in time.
ELIA.
RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL
(1813. TEXT OF 1818)
To comfort the desponding parent with the thought that, without
diminishing the stock which is imperiously demanded to furnish the more
pressing and homely wants of our nature, he has disposed of one or more
perhaps out of a numerous offspring, under the shelter of a care scarce
less tender than the paternal, where not only their bodily cravings
shall be supplied, but that mental _pabulum_ is also dispensed, which HE
hath declared to be no less necessary to our sustenance, who said, that
"not by bread alone man can live;" for this Christ's Hospital unfolds
her bounty. Here neither, on the one hand, are the youth lifted up above
their family, which we must suppose liberal though reduced; nor, on the
other hand, are they liable to be depressed below its level by the mean
habits and sentiments which a common charity-school generates. It is, in
a word, an Institution to keep those who have yet held up their heads in
the world from sinking; to keep alive the spirit of a decent household,
when poverty was in danger of crushing it; to assist those who are the
most willing, but not always the most able, to assist themselves; to
separate a child from his family for a season, in order to render him
back hereafter, with feelings and habits more congenial to it, than he
could even have attained by remaining at home in the bosom of it. It is
a preserving and renovating principle, an antidote for the _res angusta
domi_, when it presses, as it always does, most heavily upon the most
ingenuous natures.
This is Christ's Hospital; and whether its character would be improved
by confining its advantages to the very lowest of the people, let those
judge who have witnessed the looks, the gestures, the behaviour, the
manner of their play with one another, their deportment towards
strangers, the whole aspect and physiognomy of that vast assemblage of
boys on the London foundation, who freshen and make alive again with
their sports the else mouldering cloisters of the old Grey Friars--which
strangers who have never witnessed, if they pass through Newgate-street,
or by Smithfield, would do well to go a little out of their way to see.
For the Christ's Hospital boy feels that he is no charity-boy; he feels
it in the antiquity and regality of the foundation to which he belongs;
in the usage which he meets with at school, and the treatment he is
accustomed to out of its bounds; in the respect, and even kindness,
which his well known garb never fails to procure him in the streets of
the metropolis; he feels it in his education, in that measure of
classical attainments, which every individual at that school, though not
destined to a learned profession, has it in his power to procure,
attainments which it would be worse than folly to put it in the reach of
the labouring classes to acquire: he feels it in the numberless
comforts, and even magnificences, which surround him; in his old and
awful cloisters, with their traditions; in his spacious school-rooms,
and in the well-ordered, airy, and lofty rooms where he sleeps; in his
stately dining-hall, hung round with pictures by Verrio, Lely, and
others, one of them surpassing in size and grandeur almost any other in
the kingdom;[26] above all, in the very extent and magnitude of the body
to which he belongs, and the consequent spirit, the intelligence, and
public conscience, which is the result of so many various yet
wonderfully combining members. Compared with this last-named advantage,
what is the stock of information, (I do not here speak of book-learning,
but of that knowledge which boy receives from boy,) the mass of
collected opinions, the intelligence in common, among the few and narrow
members of an ordinary boarding-school?
[26] By Verrio, representing James the Second on his throne,
surrounded by his courtiers, (all curious portraits,) receiving the
mathematical pupils at their annual presentation, a custom still
kept up on New-year's-day at Court.
The Christ's Hospital or Blue-coat boy, has a distinctive character of
his own, as far removed from the abject qualities of a common
charity-boy as it is from the disgusting forwardness of a lad brought up
at some other of the public schools. There is _pride_ in it, accumulated
from the circumstances which I have described as differencing him from
the former; and there is a _restraining modesty_, from a sense of
obligation and dependence, which must ever keep his deportment from
assimilating to that of the latter. His very garb, as it is antique and
venerable, feeds his self-respect; as it is a badge of dependence, it
restrains the natural petulance of that age from breaking out into
overt-acts of insolence. This produces silence and a reserve before
strangers, yet not that cowardly shyness which boys mewed up at home
will feel; he will speak up when spoken to, but the stranger must begin
the conversation with him. Within his bounds he is all fire and play;
but in the streets he steals along with all the self-concentration of a
young monk. He is never known to mix with other boys, they are a sort of
laity to him. All this proceeds, I have no doubt, from the continual
consciousness which he carries about him of the difference of his dress
from that of the rest of the world; with a modest jealousy over himself,
lest, by over-hastily mixing with common and secular playfellows, he
should commit the dignity of his cloth. Nor let any one laugh at this;
for, considering the propensity of the multitude, and especially of the
small multitude, to ridicule any thing unusual in dress--above all,
where such peculiarity may be construed by malice into a mark of
disparagement--this reserve will appear to be nothing more than a wise
instinct in the Blue-coat boy. That it is neither pride nor rusticity,
at least that it has none of the offensive qualities of either, a
stranger may soon satisfy himself by putting a question to any of these
boys: he may be sure of an answer couched in terms of plain civility,
neither loquacious nor embarrassed. Let him put the same question to a
parish-boy, or to one of the trencher-caps in the ---- cloisters, and
the impudent reply of the one shall not fail to exasperate any more than
the certain servility, and mercenary eye to reward, which he will meet
with in the other, can fail to depress and sadden him.
The Christ's Hospital boy is a religious character. His school is
eminently a religious foundation; it has its peculiar prayers, its
services at set times, its graces, hymns, and anthems, following each
other in an almost monastic closeness of succession. This religious
character in him is not always untinged with superstition. That is not
wonderful, when we consider the thousand tales and traditions which must
circulate, with undisturbed credulity, amongst so many boys, that have
so few checks to their belief from any intercourse with the world at
large; upon whom their equals in age must work so much, their elders so
little. With this leaning towards an over-belief in matters of religion,
which will soon correct itself when he comes out into society, may be
classed a turn for romance above most other boys. This is to be traced
in the same manner to their excess of society with each other, and
defect of mingling with the world. Hence the peculiar avidity with which
such books as the Arabian Nights Entertainments, and others of a still
wilder cast, are, or at least were in my time, sought for by the boys. I
remember when some half-dozen of them set off from school, without map,
card, or compass, on a serious expedition to find out _Philip Quarll's
Island_.
The Christ's Hospital boy's sense of right and wrong is peculiarly
tender and apprehensive. It is even apt to run out into ceremonial
observances, and to impose a yoke upon itself beyond the strict
obligations of the moral law. Those who were contemporaries with me at
that School thirty years ago, will remember with what more than Judaic
rigour the eating of the fat of certain boiled meats[27] was
interdicted. A boy would have blushed, as at the exposure of some
heinous immorality, to have been detected eating that forbidden portion
of his allowance of animal food, the whole of which, while he was in
health, was little more than sufficient to allay his hunger. The same,
or even greater, refinement was shewn in the rejection of certain kinds
of sweet-cake. What gave rise to these supererogatory penances, these
self-denying ordinances, I could never learn;[28] they certainly argue
no defect of the conscientious principle. A little excess in that
article is not undesirable in youth, to make allowance for the
inevitable waste which comes in maturer years. But in the less ambiguous
line of duty, in those directions of the moral feelings which cannot be
mistaken or depreciated, I will relate what took place in the year 1785,
when Mr. Perry, the steward, died. I must be pardoned for taking my
instances from my own times. Indeed, the vividness of my recollections,
while I am upon this subject, almost brings back those times; they are
present to me still. But I believe that in the years which have elapsed
since the period which I speak of, the character of the Christ's
Hospital boy is very little changed. Their situation in point of many
comforts is improved; but that which I ventured before to term the
_public conscience_ of the school, the pervading moral sense, of which
every mind partakes, and to which so many individual minds contribute,
remains, I believe, pretty much the same as when I left it. I have seen
within this twelvemonth almost the change which has been produced upon a
boy of eight or nine years of age, upon being admitted into that school;
how, from a pert young coxcomb, who thought that all knowledge was
comprehended within his shallow brains, because a smattering of two or
three languages and one or two sciences were stuffed into him by
injudicious treatment at home, by a mixture with the wholesome society
of so many schoolfellows, in less time than I have spoken of, he has
sunk to his own level, and is contented to be carried on in the quiet
orb of modest self-knowledge in which the common mass of that
unpresumptuous assemblage of boys seem to move: from being a little
unfeeling mortal, he has got to feel and reflect. Nor would it be a
difficult matter to shew how, at a school like this, where the boy is
neither entirely separated from home, nor yet exclusively under its
influence, the best feelings, the filial for instance, are brought to a
maturity which they could not have attained under a completely domestic
education; how the relation of parent is rendered less tender by
unremitted association, and the very awfulness of age is best
apprehended by some sojourning amidst the comparative levity of youth;
how absence, not drawn out by too great extension into alienation or
forgetfulness, puts an edge upon the relish of occasional intercourse,
and the boy is made the better _child_ by that which keeps the force of
that relation from being felt as perpetually pressing on him; how the
substituted paternity, into the care of which he is adopted, while in
everything substantial it makes up for the natural, in the necessary
omission of individual fondnesses and partialities, directs the mind
only the more strongly to appreciate that natural and first tie, in
which such weaknesses are the bond of strength, and the appetite which
craves after them betrays no perverse palate. But these speculations
rather belong to the question of the comparative advantages of a public
over a private education in general. I must get back to my favourite
school; and to that which took place when our old and good steward died.
[27] Under the denomination of _gags_.
[28] I am told that the late steward,[A] who evinced on many
occasions a most praiseworthy anxiety to promote the comfort of the
boys, had occasion for all his address and perseverance to eradicate
the first of these unfortunate prejudices, in which he at length
happily succeeded, and thereby restored to one-half of the animal
nutrition of the school those honors which painful superstition and
blind zeal had so long conspired to withhold from it.
[A] Mr. Hathaway.
And I will say, that when I think of the frequent instances which I have
met with in children, of a hard-heartedness, a callousness, and
insensibility to the loss of relations, even of those who have begot and
nourished them, I cannot but consider it as a proof of something in the
peculiar conformation of that school, favourable to the expansion of the
best feelings of our nature, that, at the period which I am noticing,
out of five hundred boys there was not a dry eye to be found among them,
nor a heart that did not beat with genuine emotion. Every impulse to
play, until the funeral day was past, seemed suspended throughout the
school; and the boys, lately so mirthful and sprightly, were seen pacing
their cloisters alone, or in sad groupes standing about, few of them
without some token, such as their slender means could provide, a black
ribband, or something to denote respect and a sense of their loss. The
time itself was a time of anarchy, a time in which all authority (out of
school-hours) was abandoned. The ordinary restraints were for those days
superseded; and the gates, which at other times kept us in, were left
without watchers. Yet, with the exception of one or two graceless boys
at most, who took advantage of that suspension of authority to _skulk
out_, as it was called, the whole body of that great school kept
rigorously within their bounds, by a voluntary self-imprisonment; and
they who broke bounds, though they escaped punishment from any master,
fell into a general disrepute among us, and, for that which at any other
time would have been applauded and admired as a mark of spirit, were
consigned to infamy and reprobation: so much _natural government_ have
gratitude and the principles of reverence and love, and so much did a
respect to their dead friend prevail with these Christ's Hospital boys
above any fear which his presence among them when living could ever
produce. And if the impressions which were made on my mind so long ago
are to be trusted, very richly did their steward deserve this tribute.
It is a pleasure to me even now to call to mind his portly form, the
regal awe which he always contrived to inspire, in spite of a tenderness
and even weakness of nature that would have enfeebled the reins of
discipline in any other master; a yearning of tenderness towards those
under his protection, which could make five hundred boys at once feel
towards him each as to their individual father. He had faults, with
which we had nothing to do; but, with all his faults, indeed, Mr. Perry
was a most extraordinary creature. Contemporary with him, and still
living, though he has long since resigned his occupation, will it be
impertinent to mention the name of our excellent upper grammar-master,
the Rev. James Boyer? He was a disciplinarian, indeed, of a different
stamp from him whom I have just described; but, now the terrors of the
rod, and of a temper a little too hasty to leave the more nervous of us
quite at our ease to do justice to his merits in those days, are long
since over, ungrateful were we if we should refuse our testimony to that
unwearied assiduity with which he attended to the particular improvement
of each of us. Had we been the offspring of the first gentry in the
land, he could not have been instigated by the strongest views of
recompense and reward to have made himself a greater slave to the most
laborious of all occupations than he did for us sons of charity, from
whom, or from our parents, he could expect nothing. He has had his
reward in the satisfaction of having discharged his duty, in the
pleasurable consciousness of having advanced the respectability of that
institution to which, both man and boy, he was attached; in the honours
to which so many of his pupils have successfully aspired at both our
Universities; and in the staff with which the Governors of the Hospital
at the close of his hard labours, with the highest expressions of the
obligations the school lay under to him unanimously voted to present
him.
I have often considered it among the felicities of the constitution of
this school, that the offices of steward and schoolmaster are kept
distinct; the strict business of education alone devolving upon the
latter, while the former has the charge of all things out of school, the
controul of the provisions, the regulation of meals, of dress, of play,
and the ordinary intercourse of the boys. By this division of
management, a superior respectability must attach to the teacher while
his office is unmixed with any of these lower concerns. A still greater
advantage over the construction of common boarding-schools is to be
found in the settled salaries of the masters, rendering them totally
free of obligation to any individual pupil or his parents. This never
fails to have its effect at schools where each boy can reckon up to a
hair what profit the master derives from him, where he views him every
day in the light of a caterer, a provider for the family, who is to get
so much by him in each of his meals. Boys will see and consider these
things; and how much must the sacred character of preceptor suffer in
their minds by these degrading associations! The very bill which the
pupil carries home with him at Christmas, eked out, perhaps, with
elaborate though necessary minuteness, instructs him that his teachers
have other ends than the mere love to learning in the lessons which they
give him; and though they put into his hands the fine sayings of Seneca
or Epictetus, yet they themselves are none of those disinterested
pedagogues to teach philosophy _gratis_. The master, too, is sensible
that he is seen in this light; and how much this must lessen that
affectionate regard to the learners which alone can sweeten the bitter
labour of instruction, and convert the whole business into unwelcome
and uninteresting taskwork, many preceptors that I have conversed with
on the subject are ready, with a sad heart, to acknowledge. From this
inconvenience the settled salaries of the masters of this school in
great measure exempt them; while the happy custom of chusing masters
(indeed every officer of the establishment) from those who have received
their education there, gives them an interest in advancing the character
of the school, and binds them to observe a tenderness and a respect to
the children, in which a stranger, feeling that independence which I
have spoken of, might well be expected to fail.
In affectionate recollections of the place where he was bred up, in
hearty recognitions of old school-fellows met with again after the lapse
of years, or in foreign countries, the Christ's Hospital boy yields to
none; I might almost say, he goes beyond most other boys. The very
compass and magnitude of the school, its thousand bearings, the space it
takes up in the imagination beyond the ordinary schools, impresses a
remembrance, accompanied with an elevation of mind, that attends him
through life. It is too big, too affecting an object, to pass away
quickly from his mind. The Christ's Hospital boy's friends at school are
commonly his intimates through life. For me, I do not know whether a
constitutional imbecility does not incline me too obstinately to cling
to the remembrances of childhood; in an inverted ratio to the usual
sentiments of mankind, nothing that I have been engaged in since seems
of any value or importance, compared to the colours which imagination
gave to everything then. I belong to no _body corporate_ such as I then
made a part of.--And here, before I close, taking leave of the general
reader, and addressing myself solely to my old school fellows, that were
contemporaries with me from the year 1782 to 1789, let me have leave to
remember some of those circumstances of our school, which they will not
be unwilling to have brought back to their minds.
And first, let us remember, as first in importance in our childish eyes,
the young men (as they almost were) who, under the denomination of
_Grecians_, were waiting the expiration of the period when they should
be sent, at the charges of the Hospital, to one or other of our
Universities, but more frequently to Cambridge. These youths, from their
superior acquirements, their superior age and stature, and the fewness
of their numbers, (for seldom above two or three at a time were
inaugurated into that high order,) drew the eyes of all, and especially
of the younger boys, into a reverent observance and admiration. How tall
they used to seem to us!--how stately would they pace along the
cloisters!--while the play of the lesser boys was absolutely suspended,
or its boisterousness at least allayed, at their presence! Not that they
ever beat or struck the boys--that would have been to have demeaned
themselves--the dignity of their persons alone insured them all respect.
The task of blows, of corporal chastisement, they left to the common
monitors, or heads of wards, who, it must be confessed, in our time had
rather too much licence allowed them to oppress and misuse their
inferiors; and the interference of the Grecian, who may be considered as
the spiritual power, was not unfrequently called for, to mitigate by its
mediation the heavy unrelenting arm of this temporal power, or monitor.
In fine, the Grecians were the solemn Muftis of the school. Æras were
computed from their time;--it used to be said, such or such a thing was
done when S---- or T---- was Grecian.
As I ventured to call the Grecians the Muftis of the school, the king's
boys,[29] as their character then was, may well pass for the Janisaries.
They were the terror of all the other boys; bred up under that hardy
sailor, as well as excellent mathematician, and co-navigator with
Captain Cook, William Wales. All his systems were adapted to fit them
for the rough element which they were destined to encounter. Frequent
and severe punishments, which were expected to be borne with more than
Spartan fortitude, came to be considered less as inflictions of disgrace
than as trials of obstinate endurance. To make his boys hardy, and to
give them early sailor-habits, seemed to be his only aim; to this every
thing was subordinate. Moral obliquities, indeed, were sure of receiving
their full recompense, for no occasion of laying on the lash was ever
let slip; but the effects expected to be produced from it were something
very different from contrition or mortification. There was in William
Wales a perpetual fund of humour, a constant glee about him, which,
heightened by an inveterate provincialism of North country-dialect,
absolutely took away the sting from his severities. His punishments were
a game at patience, in which the master was not always worst contented
when he found himself at times overcome by his pupil. What success this
discipline had, or how the effects of it operated upon the after-lives
of these king's boys, I cannot say: but I am sure that, for the time,
they were absolute nuisances to the rest of the school. Hardy, brutal,
and often wicked, they were the most graceless lump in the whole mass;
older and bigger than the other boys, (for, by the system of their
education they were kept longer at school by two or three years than any
of the rest, except the Grecians,) they were a constant terror to the
younger part of the school; and some who may read this, I doubt not,
will remember the consternation into which the juvenile fry of us were
thrown, when the cry was raised in the cloisters, that _the First Order
was coming_--for so they termed the first form or class of those boys.
Still these sea-boys answered some good purposes in the school. They
were the military class among the boys, foremost in athletic exercises,
who extended the fame of the prowess of the school far and near; and the
apprentices in the vicinage, and sometimes the butchers' boys in the
neighbouring market, had sad occasion to attest their valour.
[29] The mathematical pupils, bred up to the sea, on the foundation
of Charles the Second.
The time would fail me if I were to attempt to enumerate all those
circumstances, some pleasant, some attended with some pain, which, seen
through the mist of distance, come sweetly softened to the memory. But I
must crave leave to remember our transcending superiority in those
invigorating sports, leap-frog, and basting the bear; our delightful
excursions in the summer holidays to the New River, near Newington,
where, like otters, we would live the long day in the water, never
caring for dressing ourselves when we had once stripped; our savoury
meals afterwards, when we came home almost famished with staying out all
day without our dinners; our visits at other times to the Tower, where,
by antient privilege, we had free access to all the curiosities; our
solemn processions through the City at Easter, with the Lord Mayor's
largess of buns, wine, and a shilling, with the festive questions and
civic pleasantries of the dispensing Aldermen, which were more to us
than all the rest of the banquet; our stately suppings in public, where
the well-lighted hall, and the confluence of well-dressed company who
came to see us, made the whole look more like a concert or assembly,
than a scene of a plain bread and cheese collation; the annual orations
upon St. Matthew's day, in which the senior scholar, before he had done,
seldom failed to reckon up, among those who had done honour to our
school by being educated in it, the names of those accomplished critics
and Greek scholars, Joshua Barnes and Jeremiah Markland (I marvel they
left out Camden while they were about it). Let me have leave to remember
our hymns and anthems, and well-toned organ; the doleful tune of the
burial anthem chanted in the solemn cloisters, upon the seldom-occurring
funeral of some school-fellow; the festivities at Christmas, when the
richest of us would club our stock to have a gaudy day, sitting round
the fire, replenished to the height with logs, and the penniless, and he
that could contribute nothing, partook in all the mirth, and in some of
the substantialities of the feasting; the carol sung by night at that
time of the year, which, when a young boy, I have so often lain awake to
hear from seven (the hour of going to bed) till ten, when it was sung by
the older boys and monitors, and have listened to it, in their rude
chanting, till I have been transported in fancy to the fields of
Bethlehem, and the song which was sung at that season by angels' voices
to the shepherds.
Nor would I willingly forget any of those things which administered to
our vanity. The hem-stitched bands, and town-made shirts, which some of
the most fashionable among us wore; the town-girdles, with buckles of
silver, or shining stone; the badges of the sea-boys; the cots, or
superior shoe-strings of the monitors; the medals of the markers, (those
who were appointed to hear the Bible read in the wards on Sunday morning
and evening,) which bore on their obverse in silver, as certain parts of
our garments carried in meaner metal, the countenance of our Founder,
that godly and royal child, King Edward the Sixth, the flower of the
Tudor name--the young flower that was untimely cropt as it began to fill
our land with its early odours--the boy patron of boys--the serious and
holy child who walked with Cranmer and Ridley--fit associate, in those
tender years, for the bishops and future martyrs of our Church, to
receive, or (as occasion sometimes proved,) to give instruction.
"But, ah! what means the silent tear?
Why, e'en mid joy, my bosom heave?
Ye long-lost scenes, enchantments dear!
Lo! now I linger o'er your grave.
----Fly, then, ye hours of rosy hue,
And bear away the bloom of years!
And quick succeed, ye sickly crew
Of doubts and sorrows, pains and fears!
Still will I ponder Fate's unalter'd plan,
Nor, tracing back the child, forget that I am man."[30]
[30] Lines meditated in the cloisters of Christ's Hospital, in the
"Poetics" of Mr. George Dyer.
TABLE-TALK IN _THE EXAMINER_
I.--REYNOLDS AND LEONARDO DA VINCI
(1813)
The Reynolds Gallery has upon the whole disappointed me. Some of the
portraits are interesting. They are faces of characters whom we
(middle-aged gentlemen) were born a little too late to remember, but
about whom we have heard our fathers tell stories, till we almost fancy
to have seen them. There is a charm in the portrait of a Rodney, or a
Keppel, which even a picture of Nelson must want for me. I should turn
away after a slight inspection from the best likeness that could be made
of Mrs. Anne Clark; but Kitty Fisher is a considerable personage. Then
the dresses of some of the women so exactly remind us of modes which we
can just recall; of the forms under which the venerable relationships of
aunt or mother first presented themselves to our young eyes; the aprons,
the coifs, the lappets, the hoods. Mercy on us, what a load of
head-ornaments seem to have conspired to bury a pretty face in the
picture of Mrs. Long, _yet could not_! Beauty must have some "charmed
life" to have been able to surmount the conspiracy of fashion in those
days to destroy it. The portraits which least pleased me were those of
boys as infant Bacchuses, Jupiters, &c. But the Artist is not to be
blamed for the disguise. No doubt the parents wished to see their
children deified in their life-time. It was but putting a thunderbolt
(instead of a squib) into young master's hands, and a whey-faced chit
was transformed into the infant Ruler of Olympus, him who was afterwards
to shake heaven and earth with his black brow. Another good boy pleased
his grandmama with saying his prayers so well, and the blameless dotage
of the good old woman imagined in him an adequate representative of the
infancy of the awful prophet Samuel. _But the great historical
compositions, where the Artist was at liberty to paint from his own
idea--the Beaufort and the Ugolino_;--why then, I must confess, pleading
the liberty of Table-Talk for my presumption, that they have not left
any very elevating impressions upon my mind. Pardon a ludicrous
comparison. I know, Madam, you admire them both; but placed opposite to
each other as they are at the Gallery, as if to set the one work in
competition with the other, they did remind me of the famous contention
for the prize of deformity, mentioned in the 173d number of the
_Spectator_. The one stares and the other grins; but is their common
dignity in their countenances? Does any thing of the history of their
life gone by peep through the ruins of the mind in the face, like the
unconquerable grandeur that surmounts the distortions of the
Laocoon?--The figures which stand by the bed of Beaufort are indeed
happy representations of the plain unmannered old Nobility of the
English Historical Plays of Shakspeare; but for any thing else,--give me
leave to recommend these Macaroons.
After leaving the Reynolds Gallery, where, upon the whole, I received a
good deal of pleasure, not feeling that I had quite had my fill of
paintings, I stumbled upon a picture in Piccadilly (No. 22, I think),
which purports to be a portrait of Francis the First by Leonardo da
Vinci. Heavens, what a difference! It is but a portrait as most of those
I had been seeing; but placed by them it would kill them, swallow them
up as Moses's rod the other rods. Where did those old painters get their
models? I see no such figures, not in my dreams, as this Francis, in the
character, or rather with the attributes of John the Baptist. A more
than mortal majesty in the brow and upon the eyelid--an arm muscular,
beautifully formed--the long graceful massy fingers compressing, yet so
as not to hurt, a lamb more lovely, more sweetly shrinking, than we can
conceive that milk-white one which followed Una. The picture altogether
looking as if it were eternal--combining the truth of flesh with a
promise of permanence like marble.
Leonardo, from the one or two specimens we have of him in England, must
have been a stupendous genius. I scarce can think he has had his full
fame--he who could paint that wonderful personification of the Logos or
third person of the Trinity, grasping a globe, late in the possession of
Mr. Troward of Pall-Mall, where the hand was by the boldest licence
twice as big as the truth of drawing warranted, yet the effect to every
one that saw it, by some magic of genius, was confessed to be not
_monstrous_, but _miraculous_ and _silencing_. It could not be gainsaid.
II.--[THE NEW ACTING]
(1813)
The difference of the present race of actors from those I remember,
seems to be, that less study is found necessary for the profession than
was formerly judged to be requisite. Parsons and Dodd must have
_thought_ a good deal before they could have matured such exhibitions as
their _Foresight_ and _Aguecheek_. We do not want capable actors, but
their end is answered with less pains. The way is to get a kind of
familiarity with the audience, to strike up a kind of personal
friendship, to be "hail fellow, well met," with them: those excellent
comedians, Bannister and Dowton, who had least need of these arts, have
not disdained to use them. You see a reciprocity of greeting and
goodwill between them and the house at first entrance. It is amazing how
much carelessness of acting slips in by this intercourse. After all, it
is a good-natured fault, and a great many kindly feelings are generated
in the galleries by this process, feelings which are better than
criticism.--Russell's _Jerry Sneak_ appears to me to be a piece of the
richest colouring we have on the present stage in the comic line, if,
indeed, it be entirely comic, for its effect on me, in some passages, is
even pathetic. The innocent, good-natured tones with which _Sneak_ makes
his ineffectual appeals to the sympathy of the hard-hearted and
contemptuous betrayer of his honour, the _Major_; the slight dash of
idiotism which the Actor contrives to throw into the part, (which Foote,
I will venture to say, never dreamt of), but yet which has the happiest
effect in turning what would be _contempt_, an ill-natured and
heart-injuring passion, into _pity_ and _compassion_; are some of the
nicest effects of observation, and tend to unvulgarize the part, if I
may be allowed the expression.--For a piece of pure drollery, Liston's
_Lord Grizzle_ has no competitor. Comedy it is not, nor farce. It is
neither nature, nor exaggerated nature. It is a creation of the actor's
own. _Grizzle_ seems a being of another world, such an one as _Nicolaus
Klimius_ might have seen at the fantastic courts of his _World under the
Ground_. It is an abstract idea of court qualities,--an apotheosis of
apathy. Ben Jonson's abstractions of courtiers in his _Cynthia's Revels_
and _Every Man out of his Humour_, what a treat it would be to see them
on the stage done in the same manner!--What I most despair of is, seeing
again a succession of such actresses as Mrs. Mattocks, Miss Pope, and
Mrs. Jordan. This coquetting between the performer and the public is
carried to a shocking excess by some of the Ladies who play the first
characters in what is called genteel comedy. Instead of playing their
pretty airs upon their lover on the stage, as Mrs. Abingdon or Mrs.
Cibber were [was] content to do, or Mrs. Oldfield before them, their
whole artillery of charms is now directed to ensnare--whom?--why, the
whole audience--a thousand gentlemen, perhaps--for this many-headed
beast they furl and unfurl their fan, and teach their lips to curl in
smiles, and their bosoms exhibit such pretty instructive heavings. These
personal applications, which used to be a sort of sauce-piquant for the
pert epilogue, now give the standing relish to the whole play. I am
afraid an actress who should omit them would not find her account in it.
I am sure that the very absence of this fault in Miss Kelly, and her
judicious attention to her part, with little or no reference to the
spectators, is one cause why her varied excellencies, though they are
beginning to be perceived, have yet found their way more slowly to the
approbation of the public, than they have deserved. Two or three more
such instances would reform the stage, and drive off the Glovers, the
Johnstons, and the St. Legers. O! when shall we see a female part acted
in the quiet, unappealing manner of Miss Pope's _Miss Candour_? When
shall we get rid of the Dalilahs of the stage?
III.--[BOOKS WITH ONE IDEA IN THEM]
(1813)
Dull poetry is to me far more oppressive than the same quantity of
dullness in prose. The act of attending to the metre is perfectly
painful where there is nothing to repay one in the thought. Of heavy
prose I can swallow a good dose. I do not know that I was ever deterred
from reading through a book which I had begun, supposing the subject to
be to my mind, except Patrick's Pilgrim. The freezing, appalling,
petrifying dullness of that book is quite astounding. Yet is there one
lively image in the preface, which an author in the present day might
comfort himself by applying to his reviewers: "If the writer of these
pages shall chance to meet with any that shall only study to cavil and
pick a quarrel with him, he is prepared beforehand to take no notice of
it, nor to be more troubled at their incivility, than a devout hermit is
at the ugly faces which the creatures who something resemble men make at
him as he is walking through the deserts." An amusing catalogue might be
made of books which contain but one good passage. They would be a sort
of single-speech Hamiltons; if Balaam's palfry might not be thought a
more apt counterpart to them. Killigrew's play of the Parson's Wedding,
which in length of massy dullness exceeds many books, is remarkable for
one little spark of liveliness. The languishing fine lady of the piece
exclaims most characteristically, upon coming in tired with walking: "I
am glad I am come home, for I am e'en as weary with this walking. For
God's sake, whereabouts does the pleasure of walking lie? I swear I have
often sought it till I was weary, and yet I could ne'er find
it."--Charron on Wisdom, a cumbrous piece of formality, which Pope's
eulogium lately betrayed me into the perusal of, has one splendid
passage; page 138, (I think) English translation. It contrasts the open
honours with which we invest the sword, as the means of putting man out
of the world, with the concealing and retiring circumstances that
accompany his introduction into it. It is a piece of gorgeous and happy
eloquence.--What could Pope mean by that line,--"sage Montaigne, or
more sage Charron?" Montaigne is an immense treasure-house of
observation, anticipating all the discoveries of succeeding essayists.
You cannot dip in him without being struck with the aphorism, that there
is nothing new under the sun. All the writers on common life since him
have done nothing but echo him. You cannot open him without detecting a
Spectator, or starting a Rambler; besides that his own character
pervades the whole, and binds it sweetly together. Charron is a mere
piece of formality, scholastic dry bones, without sinew or living flesh.
IV.--[A SYLVAN SURPRISE]
(1813)
Time and place give every thing its propriety. Strolling one day in the
Twickenham meadows, I was struck with the appearance of something dusky
upon the grass, which my eye could not immediately reduce into a shape.
Going nearer, I discovered the cause of the phenomenon. In the midst of
the most rural scene in the world, the day glorious over head, the wave
of Father Thames rippling deliciously by him, lay outstretched at his
ease upon Nature's verdant carpet--a chimney-sweeper--
----a spot like which
Astronomer in the sun's lucent orb
Through his glaz'd optic tube yet never saw.
There is no reason in nature why a chimney-sweeper should not indulge a
taste for rural objects, but somehow the ideas were discordant. It
struck upon me like an inartificial discord in music. It was a
combination of _urbs in rure_, which my experience had not prepared me
to anticipate.
V.--[STREET CONVERSATION]
(1813)
It should seem almost impossible for a person to have arrived at the age
of manhood, and never once to have heard or suspected that there have
been people born before our times. Yet this fact I am obliged to
conclude from the fragment of a conversation which I overheard between
two of the lower order of Irish, who passed me in Holborn the other
day. One of them, it seems, had appealed in defence of his argument to
the opinions or practice of their forefathers, for I heard the other
exclaim "the ancients! who were they?"--"What!" retorted his companion,
with an air of insolent superiority, "did you never hear of the
ancients? did you never read of them?" They had got too far from me to
hear the conclusion of their extraordinary discourse; but I have often
thought that it would be amusing to register the sentences, and scraps
of sentences, which one catches up in a day's walk about the town; I
mean in the way of fair and honest listening, without way-laying one's
neighbour for more than he would be willing to communicate. From these
flying words, with the help of a little imagination, one might often
piece out a long conversation foregone.
VI.--[A TOWN RESIDENCE]
(1813)
Where would a man of taste chuse his town residence, setting convenience
out of the question? Palace-yard,--for its contiguity to the Abbey, the
Courts of Justice, the Sittings of Parliament, Whitehall, the Parks,
&c.,--I hold of all places in these two great cities of London and
Westminster to be the most classical and eligible. Next in classicality,
I should name the four Inns of Court: they breathe a learned and
collegiate air; and of them chiefly,
----those bricky towers
The which on Thames' broad aged back doth ride,
Where now the studious Lawyers have their bowers;
There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide,
Till they decay'd through pride--
as Spenser describes evidently with a relish. I think he had Garden
Court in his eye. The noble hall which stands there must have been built
about that time. Next to the Inns of Court, Covent-Garden, for its _rus
in urbe_, its wholesome scents of early fruits and vegetables, its
tasteful church and arcades,--above all, the neighbouring theatres,
cannot but be approved of. I do not know a fourth station comparable to
or worthy to be named after these. To an antiquarian, every spot in
London, or even Southwark, teems with historical associations, local
interest. He could not chuse amiss. But to me, who have no such
qualifying knowledge, the Surrey side of the water is peculiarly
distasteful. It is impossible to connect any thing interesting with it.
I never knew a man of taste to live, what they term, _over the bridge_.
Observe, in this place I speak solely of _chosen and voluntary_
residence.
VII.--[GRAY'S _BARD_]
(1813)
The beard of Gray's Bard, "streaming like a meteor," had always struck
me as an injudicious imitation of the Satanic ensign in the _Paradise
Lost_, which
----full high advanced,
Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind:
till the other day I met with a passage in Heywood's old play, _The Four
Prentices of London_, which it is difficult to imagine not to be the
origin of the similitude in both poets. The line in Italics Gray has
almost verbatim adopted--
In Sion towers hangs his victorious flag.
Blowing defiance this way; and its shews
_Like a red meteor in the troubled air_,
Or like a blazing comet that foretells
The fall of princes.
All here is noble, and as it should be. The comparison enlarges the
thing compared without stretching it upon a violent rack, till it bursts
with ridiculous explosion. The application of such gorgeous imagery to
an old man's beard is of a piece with the Bardolfian bombast: "see you
these meteors, these exhalations?" or the raptures of an Oriental lover,
who should compare his mistress's nose to a watchtower or a steeple. The
presageful nature of the meteor, which makes so fine an adjunct of the
simile in Heywood, Milton has judiciously omitted, as less proper to his
purpose; but he seems not to have overlooked the beauty of it, by his
introducing the superstition in a succeeding book--
----like a comet burn'd,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In th' artic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war.
VIII.--[AN AMERICAN WAR FOR HELEN]
(1813)
I have in my possession a curious volume of Latin verses, which I
believe to be unique. It is entitled _Alexandri Fultoni Scoti
Epigrammatorum libri quinque_. It purports to be printed at Perth, and
bears date 1679. By the appellation which the author gives himself in
the preface, _hypodidasculus_, I suppose him to have been usher at some
school. It is no uncommon thing now a days for persons concerned in
academies to affect a literary reputation in the way of their trade. The
"master of a seminary for a limited number of pupils at Islington,"
lately put forth an edition of that scarce tract, the _Elegy in a
Country Churchyard_ (to use his own words), with notes and
head-lines!--But to our author. These epigrams of Alexander Fulton,
Scotchman, have little remarkable in them besides extreme dulness and
insipidity; but there is one, which, by its being marshalled in the
front of the volume, seems to have been the darling of its parent, and
for its exquisite flatness, and the surprising stroke of anachronism
with which it is pointed, deserves to be rescued from oblivion. It is
addressed, like many of the others, to a fair one:--
AD MARIULAM SUAM AUTOR
Moverunt bella olim Helenæ decor atque venustas
Europen inter frugiferamque Asiam.
Tam bona, quam tu, tam prudens, sin illa fuisset,
Ad lites issent Africa et America!
Which, in humble imitation of mine author's peculiar poverty of stile, I
have ventured thus to render into English:--
THE AUTHOR TO HIS MOGGY
For love's illustrious cause, and Helen's charms,
All Europe and all Asia rush'd to arms.
Had she with these thy polish'd sense combin'd,
All Afric and America had join'd!
The happy idea of an American war undertaken in the cause of beauty
ought certainly to recommend the author's memory to the countrymen of
Madison and Jefferson; and the bold anticipation of the discovery of
that Continent in the time of the Trojan War is a flight beyond the
Sibyll's books.
IX.--[DRYDEN AND COLLIER]
(1813)
The different way in which the same story may be told by different
persons was never more strikingly illustrated than by the manner in
which the celebrated Jeremy Collier has described the effects of
Timotheus's music upon Alexander, in the Second Part of his Essays. We
all know how Dryden has treated the subject. Let us now hear his great
contemporary and antagonist:--"_Timotheus_, a _Grecian_," says Collier,
"was so great a _Master_, that he could make a Man storm and swagger
like a Tempest. And then, by altering the _Notes_ and the _Time_, he
would take him down again, and sweeten his Humour in a trice. One Time,
when _Alexander_ was at Dinner, this Man play'd him a _Phrygian_ Air:
The Prince immediately rises, snatches up his Lance, and puts himself
into a Posture of Fighting. And the Retreat was no sooner sounded by the
Change of the Harmony, but his Arms were grounded, and his Fire extinct;
and he sat down as orderly as if he had come from one of _Aristotle's
Lectures_. I warrant you _Demosthenes_ would have been flourishing about
such a Business a long Hour, and may be not have done it neither. But
_Timotheus_ had a nearer Cut to the Soul: He could neck a Passion at a
Stroke, and lay it Asleep. _Pythagoras_ once met with a Parcel of
drunken Fellows, who were likely to be troublesome enough. He presently
orders the _Musick_ to play Grave, and chop into a _Dorian_: Upon this,
they all threw away their _Garlands_, and were as sober and as
shame-faced as one would wish."--It is evident that Dryden, in his
inspired Ode, and Collier in all this pudder of prose, meant the same
thing. But what a work does the latter make with his "necking a passion
at his stroke," "making a man storm and swagger like a tempest," and
then "taking him down and sweetening his humour in a trice." What in
Dryden is "Softly sweet in Lydian measures," Collier calls "chopping
into a Dorian."--This Collier was the same who, in his Biographical
Dictionary, says of Shakespeare, that "though his genius generally was
jocular, and inclining to festivity, yet _he could when he pleased be as
serious as any body_."
X.--PLAY-HOUSE MEMORANDA
(1813)
I once sat in the Pit of Drury-lane Theatre next to a blind man, who, I
afterwards learned, was a street musician, well known about London. The
play was _Richard the Third_, and it was curious to observe the interest
which he took in every successive scene, so far more lively than could
be perceived in any of the company around him. At those pathetic
interviews between the _Queen_ and _Duchess of York_, after the murder
of the children, his eyes (or rather the places where eyes should have
been) gushed out tears in torrents, and he sat intranced in attention,
while every one about him was tittering, partly at him, and partly at
the grotesque figures and wretched action of the women, who had been
selected by managerial taste to personate those royal mourners. Having
no drawback of sight to impair his sensibilities, he simply attended to
the scene, and received its unsophisticated impression. _So much the
rather her celestial light shone inward._ I was pleased with an
observation which he made, when I asked him how he liked Kemble, who
played _Richard_. I should have thought (said he) that that man had been
reading something out of a book, if I had not known that I was in a
play-house.
I was once amused in a different way by a knot of country people who had
come to see a play at that same Theatre. They seemed perfectly
inattentive to all the best performers for the first act or two, though
the piece was admirably played, but kept poring in the play-bill, and
were evidently watching for the appearance of one, who was to be the
source of supreme delight to them that night. At length the expected
actor arrived, who happened to be in possession of a very insignificant
part, not much above a mule [? mute]. I saw their faint attempt at
raising a clap on his appearance, and their disappointment at not being
seconded by the audience in general. I saw them try to admire and to
find out something very wonderful in him, and wondering all the while at
the moderate sensation he produced. I saw their pleasure and their
interest subside at last into flat mortification, when the riddle was at
once unfolded by my recollecting that this performer bore the same name
with an actor, then in the acme of his celebrity, at Covent-Garden, but
who lately finished his theatrical and mortal career on the other side
the Atlantic. They had come to see Mr. C----, but had come to the wrong
house.
Is it a stale remark to say, that I have constantly found the interest
excited at a play-house to bear an exact inverse proportion to the price
paid for admission. Formerly, when my sight and hearing were more
perfect, and my purse a little less so, I was a frequenter of the upper
gallery in the old Theatres. The eager attention, the breathless
listening, the anxiety not to lose a word, the quick anticipation of the
significance of the scene (every sense kept as it were upon a sharp look
out), which are exhibited by the occupiers of those higher and now
almost out-of-sight regions (who, going seldom to a play, cannot afford
to lose any thing by inattention), suffer some little diminution, as you
descend to the lower or two-shilling ranks; but still the joy is lively
and unallayed, save [that] by some little _incursion_ of _manners_, the
expression of it is expected to abate somewhat of its natural
liveliness. The oaken plaudits of the trunkmaker would _here_ be
considered as going a little beyond the line.--In the pit first begins
that accursed critical faculty, which, making a man the judge of his own
pleasures, too often constitutes him the executioner of his own and
others! You may see the _jealousy of being unduly pleased_, the
_suspicion of being taken in to admire_; in short, the vile critical
spirit, creeping and diffusing itself, and spreading from the wrinkled
brows and cloudy eyes of the front row sages and newspaper reporters
(its proper residence), till it infects and clouds over the thoughtless,
vacant countenance, of John Bull tradesmen, and clerks of
counting-houses, who, but for that approximation, would have been
contented to have grinned without rule, and to have been pleased without
asking why. The sitting next a critic is contagious. Still now and then,
a _genuine spectator_ is to be found among them, a shopkeeper and his
family, whose honest titillations of mirth, and generous chucklings of
applause, cannot wait or be at leisure to take the cue from the sour
judging faces about them. Haply they never dreamed that there were such
animals in nature as critics or reviewers; even the idea of an author
may be a speculation they never entered into; but they take the mirth
they find as a pure effusion of the actor-folks, set there on purpose to
make them fun. I love the unenquiring gratitude of such spectators. As
for the Boxes, I never can understand what brings the people there. I
see such frigid indifference, such unconcerned spectatorship, such
impenetrability to pleasure or its contrary, such being _in the house_
and yet not _of it_, certainly they come far nearer the nature of _the
Gods_, upon the system of Lucretius at least, than those honest, hearty,
well-pleased, unindifferent mortals above, who, from time immemorial,
have had that name, upon no other ground than situation, assigned them.
Take the play-house altogether, there is a less sum of enjoyment than
used to be. Formerly you might see something like the effect of a
novelty upon a citizen, his wife and daughters, in the Pit; their
curiosity upon every new face that entered upon the stage. The talk of
how they got in at the door, and how they were crowded upon some former
occasion, made a topic till the curtain drew up. People go too often
now-a-days to make their ingress or egress of consequence. Children of
seven years of age will talk as familiarly of the performers, aye and as
knowingly (according to the received opinion) as grown persons; more
than the grown persons in my time. Oh when shall I forget first seeing a
play, at the age of five or six? It was _Artaxerxes_. Who played, or who
sang in it, I know not. Such low ideas as actors' names, or actors'
merits, never entered my head. The mystery of delight was not cut open
and dissipated for me by those who took me there. It was _Artaxerxes_
and _Arbaces_ and _Mandane_ that I saw, not Mr. Beard, or Mr. Leoni, or
Mrs. Kennedy. It was all enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure has
since visited me but in dreams. I was in Persia for the time, and the
burning idol of their devotion in the Temple almost converted me into a
worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed those significations to be
something more than elemental fires. I was, with Uriel, in the body of
the sun.--What should I have gained by knowing (as I should have done,
had I been born thirty years later) that that solar representation was a
mere painted scene, that had neither fire nor light in itself, and that
the royal phantoms, which passed in review before me, were but such
common mortals as I could see every day out of my father's window? We
crush the faculty of delight and wonder in children, by explaining every
thing. We take them to the source of the Nile, and shew them the scanty
runnings, instead of letting the beginnings of that seven fold stream
remain in impenetrable darkness, a mysterious question of wonderment and
delight to ages.
REVIEW OF _THE EXCURSION; A POEM_
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. LONDON. 4to. pp. 447
(1814)
The volume before us, as we learn from the Preface, is "a detached
portion of an unfinished poem, containing views of man, nature, and
society;" to be called the Recluse, as having for its principal subject
the "sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement;" and to be
preceded by a "record in verse of the origin and progress of the
author's own powers, with reference to the fitness which they may be
supposed to have conferred for the task." To the completion of this plan
we look forward with a confidence which the execution of the finished
part is well calculated to inspire.--Meanwhile, in what is before us
there is ample matter for entertainment: for the "Excursion" is not a
branch (as might have been suspected) prematurely plucked from the
parent tree to gratify an overhasty appetite for applause; but is, in
itself, a complete and legitimate production.
It opens with the meeting of the poet with an aged man whom he had known
from his school days; in plain words, a Scottish pedlar; a man who,
though of low origin, had received good learning and impressions of the
strictest piety from his stepfather, a minister and village
schoolmaster. Among the hills of Athol, the child is described to have
become familiar with the appearances of nature in his occupation as a
feeder of sheep; and from her silent influences to have derived a
character, meditative, tender, and poetical. With an imagination and
feelings thus nourished--his intellect not unaided by books, but those,
few, and chiefly of a religious cast--the necessity of seeking a
maintenance in riper years, had induced him to make choice of a
profession, the _appellation_ for which has been gradually declining
into contempt, but which formerly designated a class of men, who,
journeying in country places, when roads presented less facilities for
travelling, and the intercourse between towns and villages was
unfrequent and hazardous, became a sort of link of neighbourhood to
distant habitations; resembling, in some small measure, in the effects
of their periodical returns, the caravan which Thomson so feelingly
describes as blessing the cheerless Siberian in its annual visitation,
with "news of human kind."
In the solitude incident to this rambling life, power had been given him
to keep alive that devotedness to nature which he had imbibed in his
childhood, together with the opportunity of gaining such notices of
persons and things from his intercourse with society, as qualified him
to become a "teacher of moral wisdom." With this man, then, in a hale
old age, released from the burthen of his occupation, yet retaining much
of its active habits, the poet meets, and is by him introduced to a
second character--a sceptic--one who had been partially roused from an
overwhelming desolation, brought upon him by the loss of wife and
children, by the powerful incitement of hope which the French Revolution
in its commencement put forth, but who, disgusted with the failure of
all its promises, had fallen back into a laxity of faith and conduct
which induced at length a total despondence as to the dignity and final
destination of his species. In the language of the poet, he
----broke faith with those whom he had laid
In earth's dark chambers,
Yet he describes himself as subject to compunctious visitations from
that silent quarter.
----Feebly must They have felt,
Who, in old time, attired with snakes and whips
The vengeful Furies. _Beautiful_ regards
Were turned on me--the face of her I loved;
The Wife and Mother; pitifully fixing
Tender reproaches, insupportable!--p. 133.
The conversations with this person, in which the Wanderer asserts the
consolatory side of the question against the darker views of human life
maintained by his friend, and finally calls to his assistance the
experience of a village priest, the third, or rather fourth
interlocutor, (for the poet himself is one,) form the groundwork of the
"Excursion."
It will be seen by this sketch that the poem is of a didactic nature,
and not a fable or story; yet it is not wanting in stories of the most
interesting kind,--such as the lovers of Cowper and Goldsmith will
recognise as something familiar and congenial to them. We might instance
the Ruined Cottage, and the Solitary's own story, in the first half of
the work; and the second half, as being almost a continued cluster of
narration. But the prevailing charm of the poem is, perhaps, that,
conversational as it is in its plan, the dialogue throughout is carried
on in the very heart of the most romantic scenery which the poet's
native hills could supply; and which, by the perpetual references made
to it either in the way of illustration or for variety and pleasurable
description's sake, is brought before us as we read. We breathe in the
fresh air, as we do while reading Walton's Complete Angler; only the
country about us is as much bolder than Walton's, as the thoughts and
speculations, which form the matter of the poem, exceed the trifling
pastime and low-pitched conversation of his humble fishermen. We give
the description of the "two huge peaks," which from some other vale
peered into that in which the Solitary is entertaining the poet and
companion. "Those," says their host,
----if here you dwelt, would be
Your prized Companions.--Many are the notes
Which in his tuneful course the wind draws forth
From rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and dashing shores;
And well those lofty Brethren bear their part
In the wild concert--chiefly when the storm
Rides high; then all the upper air they fill
With roaring sound, that ceases not to flow,
Like smoke, along the level of the blast
In mighty current; theirs, too, is the song
Of stream and headlong flood that seldom fails;
And in the grim and breathless hour of noon,
Methinks that I have heard them echo back
The thunder's greeting:--nor have Nature's laws
Left them ungifted with a power to yield
Music of finer frame; a harmony,
So do I call it, though it be the hand
Of silence, though there be no voice;--the clouds,
The mist, the shadows, light of golden suns,
Motions of moonlight, all come thither--touch,
And have an answer--thither come, and shape
A language not unwelcome to sick hearts
And idle spirits:--there the sun himself
At the calm close of summer's longest day
Rests his substantial Orb;--between those heights
And on the top of either pinnacle,
More keenly than elsewhere in night's blue vault,
Sparkle the Stars as of their station proud.
Thoughts are not busier in the mind of man
Than the mute agent stirring there:--alone
Here do I sit and watch.--p. 84.
To a mind constituted like that of Mr. Wordsworth, the stream, the
torrent, and the stirring leaf--seem not merely to suggest associations
of deity, but to be a kind of speaking communication with it. He walks
through every forest, as through some Dodona; and every bird that flits
among the leaves, like that miraculous one[31] in Tasso, but in language
more intelligent, reveals to him far higher lovelays. In his poetry
nothing in Nature is dead. Motion is synonymous with life. "Beside yon
spring," says the Wanderer, speaking of a deserted well, from which, in
former times, a poor woman, who died heart-broken, had been used to
dispense refreshment to the thirsty traveller,
----beside yon Spring I stood,
And eyed its waters till we seem'd to feel
One sadness, they and I. For them a bond
Of brotherhood is broken: time has been
When, every day, the touch of human hand
Dislodged the natural sleep that binds them up
In mortal stillness;--p. 27.
[31]
With partie coloured plumes and purple bill,
A woondrous bird among the rest there flew,
That in plaine speech sung love laies loud and shrill,
Her leden was like humaine language trew,
So much she talkt, and with such wit and skill,
That strange it seemed how much good she knew.
_Fairefax's Translation_ [Book 16, Stanza 13].
To such a mind, we say--call it strength or weakness--if weakness,
assuredly a fortunate one--the visible and audible things of creation
present, not dim symbols, or curious emblems, which they have done at
all times to those who have been gifted with the poetical faculty; but
revelations and quick insights into the life within us, the pledge of
immortality:--
----the whispering Air
Sends inspiration from the shadowy heights,
And blind recesses of the caverned rocks;
The little Rills, and Waters numberless,
Inaudible by day-light,
"I have seen," the poet says, and the illustration is an happy one:
----I have seen
A curious Child [who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground], applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipp'd Shell;
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely, and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy; for murmurings from within
Were heard,--sonorous cadences! whereby,
To his belief, the Monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native Sea.
Even such a Shell the Universe itself
Is to the ear of Faith; and [there are times,
I doubt not, when to you it] doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things;
Of ebb and flow, and ever during power;
And central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation.--p. 191.
Sometimes this harmony is imaged to us by an echo; and in one instance,
it is with such transcendant beauty set forth by a shadow and its
corresponding substance, that it would be a sin to cheat our readers at
once of so happy an illustration of the poet's system, and so fair a
proof of his descriptive powers.
Thus having reached a bridge, that overarched
The hasty rivulet where it lay becalmed
In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw
A two-fold Image; on a grassy bank
A snow-white Ram, and in the crystal flood
Another and the same! Most beautiful,
On the green turf, with his imperial front
Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb,
The breathing Creature stood; as beautiful,
Beneath him, shewed his shadowy Counterpart.
Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky,
And each seemed centre of his own fair world:
Antipodes unconscious of each other,
Yet, in partition, with their several spheres,
Blended in perfect stillness, to our sight!--p. 407.
Combinations, it is confessed, "like those reflected in that quiet
pool," cannot be lasting: it is enough for the purpose of the poet, if
they are felt.--They are at least his system; and his readers, if they
reject them for their creed, may receive them merely as poetry. In him,
_faith_, in friendly alliance and conjunction with the religion of his
country, appears to have grown up, fostered by meditation and lonely
communions with Nature--an internal principle of lofty consciousness,
which stamps upon his opinions and sentiments (we were almost going to
say) the character of an expanded and generous Quakerism.
From such a creed we should expect unusual results; and, when applied to
the purposes of consolation, more touching considerations than from the
mouth of common teachers. The finest speculation of this sort perhaps in
the poem before us, is the notion of the thoughts which may sustain the
spirit, while they crush the frame of the sufferer, who from loss of
objects of love by death, is commonly supposed to pine away under a
broken heart.
----If there be whose tender frames have drooped
Even to the dust; apparently, through weight
Of anguish unrelieved, and lack of power
An agonizing spirit to transmute,
Infer not hence a hope from those withheld
When wanted most; a confidence impaired
So pitiably, that, having ceased to see
With bodily eyes, they are borne down by love
Of what is lost, and perish through regret.
Oh! no, full oft the innocent Sufferer sees
Too clearly; feels too vividly; and longs
To realize the Vision with intense
And overconstant yearning--there--there lies
The excess, by which the balance is destroyed.
Too, too contracted are these walls of flesh,
This vital warmth too cold, these visual orbs,
Though inconceivably endowed, too dim
For any passion of the soul that leads
To extacy; and, all the crooked paths
Of time and change disdaining, takes its course
Along the line of limitless desires.--p. 148.
With the same modifying and incorporating power, he tells us,--
Within the soul a Faculty abides,
That with interpositions, which would hide
And darken, so can deal, that they become
Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt
Her native brightness. As the ample Moon,
In the deep stillness of a summer even
Rising behind a thick and lofty Grove,
Burns like an unconsuming fire of light,
In the green tree; and, kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
Into a substance glorious as her own,
Yea with her own incorporated, by power
Capacious and serene. Like power abides
In Man's celestial Spirit; Virtue thus
Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds
A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire,
From the incumbrances of mortal life,
From error, disappointment,--nay from guilt;
And sometimes, so relenting Justice wills,
From palpable oppressions of Despair.--p. 188.
This is high poetry; though (as we have ventured to lay the basis of the
author's sentiments in a sort of liberal Quakerism) from some parts of
it, others may, with more plausibility, object to the appearance of a
kind of Natural Methodism: we could have wished therefore that the tale
of Margaret had been postponed, till the reader had been strengthened by
some previous acquaintance with the author's theory, and not placed in
the front of the poem, with a kind of ominous aspect, beautifully tender
as it is. It is a tale of a cottage, and its female tenant, gradually
decaying together, while she expected the return of one whom poverty and
not unkindness had driven from her arms. We trust ourselves only with
the conclusion--
Nine tedious years;
From their first separation, nine long years,
She lingered in unquiet widowhood,
A Wife and Widow. [Needs must it have been
A sore heart-wasting!] I have heard, my Friend,
That in yon arbour oftentimes she sate
Alone, through half the vacant Sabbath-day;
And if a dog passed by she still would quit
The shade, and look abroad. On this old Bench
For hours she sate; and evermore her eye
Was busy in the distance, shaping things
That made her heart beat quick. You see that path,
[Now faint,--the grass has crept o'er its grey line;]
There, to and fro, she paced through many a day
Of the warm summer, from a belt of hemp
That girt her waist, spinning the long drawn thread
With backward steps. Yet ever as there pass'd
A man whose garments shew'd the Soldier's[32] red,
[Or crippled Mendicant in Sailor's garb],
The little Child who sate to turn the wheel
Ceas'd from his task; and she with faultering voice
Made many a fond enquiry; and when they,
Whose presence gave no comfort, were gone by,
Her heart was still more sad. And by yon gate,
That bars the Traveller's road, she often stood,
And when a stranger Horseman came the latch
Would lift, and in his face look wistfully;
Most happy, if, from aught discovered there
Of tender feeling, she might dare repeat
The same sad question. Meanwhile her poor hut
Sank to decay: for he was gone--whose hand,
At the first nipping of October frost,
Closed up each chink, and with fresh bands of straw
Checquered the green-grown thatch. And so she lived
Through the long winter, reckless and alone;
Until her house by frost, and thaw, and rain,
Was sapped; and while she slept the nightly damps
Did chill her breast; and in the stormy day
Her tattered clothes were ruffled by the wind;
Even at the side of her own fire. Yet still
She loved this wretched spot, nor would for worlds
Have parted hence: and still that length of road,
And this rude bench, one torturing hope endeared,
Fast rooted at her heart: and here, my Friend,
In sickness she remains; and here she died,
Last human Tenant of these ruined Walls.--p. 44.
[32] Her husband had enlisted for a soldier.
The fourth book, entitled "Despondency Corrected," we consider as the
most valuable portion of the poem. For moral grandeur; for wide scope of
thought and a long train of lofty imagery; for tender personal appeals;
and a _versification_ which we feel we ought to notice, but feel it also
so involved in the poetry, that we can hardly mention it as a distinct
excellence; it stands without competition among our didactic and
descriptive verse. The general tendency of the argument (which we might
almost affirm to be the leading moral of the poem) is to abate the pride
of the calculating _understanding_, and to reinstate the _imagination_
and the _affections_ in those seats from which modern philosophy has
laboured but too successfully to expel them.
"Life's autumn past," says the grey-haired Wanderer,
----I stand on Winter's verge,
And daily lose what I desire to keep:
Yet rather would I instantly decline
To the traditionary sympathies
Of a most rustic ignorance, and take
A fearful apprehension from the owl
Or death-watch,--and as readily rejoice,
If two auspicious magpies crossed my way;
This rather would I do than see and hear
The repetitions wearisome of sense,
Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place;--p. 168.
In the same spirit, those illusions of the imaginative faculty to which
the peasantry in solitary districts are peculiarly subject, are
represented as the kindly ministers of _conscience_:
----with whose service charged
They come and go, appear and disappear;
Diverting evil purposes, remorse
Awakening, chastening an intemperate grief,
Or pride of heart abating:
Reverting to more distant ages of the world, the operation of that same
faculty in producing the several fictions of Chaldean, Persian, and
Grecian idolatry, is described with such seductive power, that the
Solitary, in good earnest, seems alarmed at the tendency of his own
argument.--Notwithstanding his fears, however, there is one thought so
uncommonly fine, relative to the spirituality which lay hid beneath the
gross material forms of Greek worship, in metal or stone, that we cannot
resist the allurement of transcribing it--
----triumphant o'er this pompous show
Of Art, this palpable array of Sense,
On every side encountered; in despite
Of the gross fictions, chaunted in the streets
By wandering Rhapsodists; and in contempt
Of doubt and bold denials hourly urged
Amid the wrangling Schools--a SPIRIT hung,
Beautiful Region! o'er thy Towns and Farms,
Statues and Temples, and memorial Tombs;
And emanations were perceived; and acts
Of immortality, in Nature's course,
Exemplified by mysteries, that were felt
As bonds, on grave Philosopher imposed
And armed Warrior; and in every grove
A gay or pensive tenderness prevailed
When piety more awful had relaxed.
"Take, running River, take these Locks of mine"--
Thus would the Votary say--"this severed hair,
My Vow fulfilling, do I here present,
Thankful for my beloved Child's return.
Thy banks, Cephissus, he again hath trod,
Thy murmurs heard; and drunk the chrystal lymph
With which thou dost refresh the thirsty lip,
And moisten all day long these flowery fields."
And doubtless, sometimes, when the hair was shed
Upon the flowing stream, a thought arose
Of Life continuous, Being unimpaired;
That hath been, is, and where it was and is
There shall be,--seen, and heard, and felt, and known,
And recognized,--existence unexposed
To the blind walk of mortal accident;
From diminution safe and weakening age;
While Man grows old, and dwindles, and decays;
And countless generations of Mankind
Depart; and leave no vestige where they trod.--p. 173.
In discourse like this the first day passes away.--The second (for this
almost dramatic poem takes up the action of two summer days) is varied
by the introduction of the village priest; to whom the Wanderer resigns
the office of chief speaker, which had been yielded to his age and
experience on the first. The conference is begun at the gate of the
church-yard; and after some natural speculations concerning death and
immortality--and the custom of funereal and sepulchral observances, as
deduced from a feeling of immortality--certain doubts are proposed
respecting the quantity of moral worth existing in the world, and in
that mountainous district in particular. In the resolution of these
doubts, the priest enters upon a most affecting and singular strain of
narration, derived from the graves around him. Pointing to hillock after
hillock, he gives short histories of their tenants, disclosing their
humble virtues, and touching with tender hand upon their frailties.
Nothing can be conceived finer than the manner of introducing these
tales. With heaven above his head, and the mouldering turf at his
feet--standing betwixt life and death--he seems to maintain that
spiritual relation which he bore to his living flock, in its
undiminished strength, even with their ashes; and to be in his proper
cure, or diocese, among the dead.
We might extract powerful instances of pathos from these tales--the
story of Ellen in particular--but their force is in combination, and in
the circumstances under which they are introduced. The traditionary
anecdote of the Jacobite and Hanoverian, as less liable to suffer by
transplanting, and as affording an instance of that finer species of
humour, that thoughtful playfulness in which the author more nearly
perhaps than in any other quality resembles Cowper, we shall lay (at
least a part of it) before our readers. It is the story of a whig who,
having wasted a large estate in election contests, retired "beneath a
borrowed name" to a small town among these northern mountains, where a
Caledonian laird, a follower of the house of Stuart, who had fled his
country after the overthrow at Culloden, returning with the return of
lenient times, had also fixed his residence.
----Here, then, they met,
Two doughty Champions; flaming Jacobite
And sullen Hanoverian! you might think
That losses and vexations, less severe
Than those which they had severally sustained,
Would have inclined each to abate his zeal
For his ungrateful cause; no,--I have heard
My reverend Father tell that, mid the calm
Of that small Town encountering thus, they filled
Daily its Bowling-green with harmless strife;
Plagued with uncharitable thoughts the Church;
And vexed the Market-place. But in the breasts
Of these Opponents gradually was wrought,
With little change of general sentiment,
Such change towards each other, that their days
By choice were spent in constant fellowship;
And if, at times, they fretted with the yoke,
Those very bickerings made them love it more.
A favourite boundary to their lengthened walks
This Church-yard was. And, whether they had come
Treading their path in sympathy and linked
In social converse, or by some short space
Discreetly parted to preserve the peace,
One Spirit seldom failed to extend its sway
Over both minds, when they awhile had marked
The visible quiet of this holy ground
And breathed its soothing air;----
[_Seven lines omitted_].
--There live who yet remember to have seen
Their courtly Figures,--seated on a stump
Of an old Yew, their favourite resting-place.
But, as the Remnant of the long-lived Tree
Was disappearing by a swift decay,
They, with joint care, determined to erect,
Upon its site, a Dial, which should stand
For public use; and also might survive
As their own private monument; for this
Was the particular spot, in which they wished
(And Heaven was pleased to accomplish their desire)
That, undivided their Remains should lie.
So, where the mouldered Tree had stood, was raised
Yon Structure, framing, with the ascent of steps
That to the decorated Pillar lead,
A work of art, more sumptuous, as might seem,
Than suits this Place; yet built in no proud scorn
Of rustic homeliness; they only aimed
To ensure for it respectful guardianship.
Around the margin of the Plate, whereon
The Shadow falls, to note the stealthy hours,
Winds an inscriptive Legend,----At these words
Thither we turned; and gathered, as we read,
The appropriate sense, in Latin numbers couched.
"Time flies; it is his melancholy task
To bring, and bear away, delusive hopes,
And re-produce the troubles he destroys.
But, while his blindness thus is occupied.
Discerning Mortal! do thou serve the will
Of Time's eternal Master, and that peace,
Which the World wants, shall be for Thee confirmed."--pp. 270-3.
The causes which have prevented the poetry of Mr. Wordsworth from
attaining its full share of popularity are to be found in the boldness
and originality of his genius. The times are past when a poet could
securely follow the direction of his own mind into whatever tracts it
might lead. A writer, who would be popular, must timidly coast the shore
of prescribed sentiment and sympathy. He must have just as much more of
the imaginative faculty than his readers, as will serve to keep their
apprehensions from stagnating, but not so much as to alarm their
jealousy. He must not think or feel too deeply.
If he has had the fortune to be bred in the midst of the most
magnificent objects of creation, he must not have given away his heart
to them; or if he have, he must conceal his love, or not carry his
expressions of it beyond that point of rapture, which the occasional
tourist thinks it not overstepping decorum to betray, or the limit which
that gentlemanly spy upon Nature, the picturesque traveller, has
vouchsafed to countenance. He must do this, or be content to be thought
an enthusiast.
If from living among simple mountaineers, from a daily intercourse with
them, not upon the footing of a patron, but in the character of an
equal, he has detected, or imagines that he has detected, through the
cloudy medium of their unlettered discourse, thoughts and apprehensions
not vulgar; traits of patience and constancy, love unwearied, and heroic
endurance, not unfit (as he may judge) to be made the subject of verse,
he will be deemed a man of perverted genius by the philanthropist who,
conceiving of the peasantry of his country only as objects of a
pecuniary sympathy, starts at finding them elevated to a level of
humanity with himself, having their own loves, enmities, cravings,
aspirations, &c., as much beyond his faculty to believe, as his
beneficence to supply.
If from a familiar observation of the ways of children, and much more
from a retrospect of his own mind when a child, he has gathered more
reverential notions of that state than fall to the lot of ordinary
observers, and, escaping from the dissonant wranglings of men, has tuned
his lyre, though but for occasional harmonies, to the milder utterance
of that soft age,--his verses shall be censured as infantile by critics
who confound poetry "having children for its subject" with poetry that
is "childish," and who, having themselves perhaps never been _children_,
never having possessed the tenderness and docility of that age, know not
what the soul of a child is--how apprehensive! how imaginative! how
religious!
We have touched upon some of the causes which we conceive to have been
unfriendly to the author's former poems. We think they do not apply in
the same force to the one before us. There is in it more of uniform
elevation, a wider scope of subject, less of manner, and it contains
none of those starts and imperfect shapings which in some of this
author's smaller pieces offended the weak, and gave scandal to the
perverse. It must indeed be approached with seriousness. It has in it
much of that quality which "draws the devout, deterring the profane."
Those who hate the Paradise Lost will not love this poem. The steps of
the great master are discernible in it; not in direct imitation or
injurious parody, but in the following of the spirit, in free homage and
generous subjection.
One objection it is impossible not to foresee. It will be asked, why put
such eloquent discourse in the mouth of a pedlar? It might be answered
that Mr. Wordsworth's plan required a character in humble life to be the
organ of his philosophy. It was in harmony with the system and scenery
of his poem. We read Piers Plowman's Creed, and the lowness of the
teacher seems to add a simple dignity to the doctrine. Besides, the poet
has bestowed an unusual share of education upon him. Is it too much to
suppose that the author, at some early period of his life, may himself
have known such a person, a man endowed with sentiments above his
situation, another Burns; and that the dignified strains which he has
attributed to the Wanderer may be no more than recollections of his
conversation, heightened only by the amplification natural to poetry, or
the lustre which imagination flings back upon the objects and companions
of our youth? After all, if there should be found readers willing to
admire the poem, who yet feel scandalized at a _name_, we would advise
them, wherever it occurs, to substitute silently the word _Palmer_, or
_Pilgrim_, or any less offensive designation, which shall connect the
notion of sobriety in heart and manners with the experience and
privileges which a wayfaring life confers.
ON THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS
(1814. TEXT OF 1818)
Sedet, æternumque sedebit,
Infelix Theseus. VIRGIL.
That there is a professional melancholy, if I may so express myself,
incident to the occupation of a tailor, is a fact which I think very few
will venture to dispute. I may safely appeal to my readers, whether they
ever knew one of that faculty that was not of a temperament, to say the
least, far removed from mercurial or jovial.
Observe the suspicious gravity of their gait. The peacock is not more
tender, from a consciousness of his peculiar infirmity, than a gentleman
of this profession is of being known by the same infallible testimonies
of his occupation. "Walk, that I may know thee."
Do you ever see him go whistling along the foot-path like a carman, or
brush through a crowd like a baker, or go smiling to himself like a
lover? Is he forward to thrust into mobs, or to make one at the
ballad-singer's audiences? Does he not rather slink by assemblies and
meetings of the people, as one that wisely declines popular observation?
How extremely rare is a noisy tailor! a mirthful and obstreperous
tailor!
"At my nativity," says Sir Thomas Browne, "my ascendant was the earthly
sign of Scorpius; I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I
think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me." One would think that
he were anatomizing a tailor! save that to the latter's occupation,
methinks, a woollen planet would seem more consonant, and that he should
be born when the sun was in Aries.--He goes on. "I am no way facetious,
nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company." How true a type
of the whole trade! Eminently economical of his words, you shall seldom
hear a jest come from one of them. He sometimes furnishes subject for a
repartee, but rarely (I think) contributes one _ore proprio_.
Drink itself does not seem to elevate him, or at least to call out of
him any of the external indications of vanity. I cannot say that it
never causes his pride to swell, but it never breaks out. I am even
fearful that it may swell and rankle to an alarming degree inwardly. For
pride is near of kin to melancholy;--a hurtful obstruction from the
ordinary outlets of vanity being shut. It is this stoppage which
engenders proud humours. Therefore a tailor may be proud. I think he is
never vain. The display of his gaudy patterns in that book of his which
emulates the rainbow, never raises any inflations of that emotion in
him, corresponding to what the wigmaker (for instance) evinces, when he
expatiates on a curl or a bit of hair. He spreads them forth with a
sullen incapacity for pleasure, a real or affected indifference to
grandeur. Cloth of gold neither seems to elate, nor cloth of frize to
depress him--according to the beautiful motto which formed the modest
impresse of the shield worn by Charles Brandon at his marriage with the
King's sister. Nay, I doubt whether he would discover any vain-glorious
complacence in his colours, though "Iris" herself "dipt the woof."
In further corroboration of this argument--who ever saw the wedding of a
tailor announced in the newspapers, or the birth of his eldest son?
When was a tailor known to give a dance, or to be himself a good dancer,
or to perform exquisitely on the tight rope, or to shine in any such
light and airy pastimes? to sing, or play on the violin?
Do they much care for public rejoicings, lightings up, ringing of bells,
firing of cannons, &c.?
Valiant I know they can be; but I appeal to those who were witnesses to
the exploits of Eliot's famous troop, whether in their fiercest charges
they betrayed any thing of that thoughtless oblivion of death with which
a Frenchman jigs into battle, or whether they did not shew more of the
melancholy valour of the Spaniard, upon whom they charged; that
deliberate courage which contemplation and sedentary habits breathe?
Are they often great newsmongers?--I have known some few among them
arrive at the dignity of speculative politicians; but that light and
cheerful every-day interest in the affairs and goings-on of the world,
which makes the barber[33] such delightful company, I think is rarely
observable in them.
[33] Having incidentally mentioned the barber, in a comparison of
professional temperaments, I hope no other trade will take offence,
or look upon it as an incivility done to them, if I say, that in
courtesy, humanity, and all the conversational and social graces
which "gladden life," I esteem no profession comparable to his.
Indeed so great is the goodwill which I bear to this useful and
agreeable body of men, that, residing in one of the Inns of Court
(where the best specimens of them are to be found, except perhaps at
the universities) there are seven of them to whom I am personally
known, and who never pass me without the compliment of the hat on
either side. My truly polite and urbane friend, Mr. A----m, of
Flower-de-luce-court, in Fleet-street, will forgive my mention of
him in particular. I can truly say, that I never spent a quarter of
an hour under his hands without deriving some profit from the
agreeable discussions, which are always going on there.
This characteristic pensiveness in them being so notorious, I wonder
none of those writers, who have expressly treated of melancholy, should
have mentioned it. Burton, whose book is an excellent abstract of all
the authors in that kind who preceded him, and who treats of every
species of this malady, from the _hypochondriacal_ or _windy_ to the
_heroical_ or _love melancholy_, has strangely omitted it. Shakspeare
himself has overlooked it. "I have neither the scholar's melancholy
(saith Jaques) which is emulation; nor the courtier's, which is proud;
nor the soldier's, which is politick; nor the lover's, which is all
these:"--and then, when you might expect him to have brought in, "nor
the tailor's, which is so and so"--he comes to an end of his
enumeration, and falls to a defining of his own melancholy.
Milton likewise has omitted it, where he had so fair an opportunity of
bringing it in, in his _Penseroso_.
But the partial omissions of historians proving nothing against the
existence of any well-attested fact, I shall proceed and endeavour to
ascertain the causes why this pensive turn should be so predominant in
people of this profession above all others.
And first, may it not be, that the custom of wearing apparel being
derived to us from the fall, and one of the most mortifying products of
that unhappy event, a certain _seriousness_ (to say no more of it) may
in the order of things have been intended to be impressed upon the minds
of that race of men to whom in all ages the care of contriving the human
apparel has been entrusted,--to keep up the memory of the first
institution of clothes, and serve as a standing remonstrance against
those vanities, which the absurd conversion of a memorial of our shame
into an ornament of our persons was destined to produce? Correspondent
in some sort to this, it may be remarked, that the tailor sitting over a
cave or hollow place, in the cabbalistic language of his order, is said
to have _certain melancholy regions_ always open under his feet.--But
waving further enquiry into final causes, where the best of us can only
wander in the dark, let us try to discover the efficient causes of this
melancholy.
I think, then, that they may be reduced to two, omitting some
subordinate ones, viz.,
The sedentary habits of the tailor.--
Something peculiar in his diet.--
First, his _sedentary habits_.--In Dr. Norris's famous narrative of the
frenzy of Mr. John Dennis, the patient, being questioned as to the
occasion of the swelling in his legs, replies that it came "by
criticism;" to which the learned doctor seeming to demur, as to a
distemper which he had never read of, Dennis (who appears not to have
been mad upon all subjects) rejoins with some warmth, that it was no
distemper, but a noble art! that he had sat fourteen hours a day at it:
and that the other was a pretty doctor not to know that there was a
communication between the brain and the legs.
When we consider that this sitting for fourteen hours continuously,
which the critic probably practised only while he was writing his
"remarks," is no more than what the tailor, in the ordinary pursuance of
his art, submits to daily (Sundays excepted) throughout the year, shall
we wonder to find the brain affected, and in a manner over-clouded, from
that indissoluble sympathy between the noble and less noble parts of the
body, which Dennis hints at? The unnatural and painful manner of his
sitting must also greatly aggravate the evil, insomuch that I have
sometimes ventured to liken tailors at their boards to so many envious
Junos, _sitting cross-legged to hinder the birth of their own felicity_.
The legs transversed thus X cross-wise, or decussated, was among the
ancients the posture of malediction. The Turks, who practise it at this
day, are noted to be a melancholy people.
Secondly, his _diet_.--To which purpose I find a most remarkable passage
in Burton, in his chapter entitled "Bad diet a cause of melancholy."
"Amongst herbs to be eaten (he says) I find gourds, cucumbers, melons,
disallowed; but especially CABBAGE. It causeth troublesome dreams, and
sends up black vapours to the brain. Galen, _loc. affect._ lib. 3, cap.
6, of all herbs condemns CABBAGE. And Isaack, lib. 2, cap. 1, _animæ
gravitatem facit_, it brings heaviness to the soul." I could not omit so
flattering a testimony from an author, who, having no theory of his own
to serve, has so unconsciously contributed to the confirmation of mine.
It is well known that this last-named vegetable has, from the earliest
periods which we can discover, constituted almost the sole food of this
extraordinary race of people.
BURTON, _Junior_.
ON NEEDLE-WORK
(BY MARY LAMB)
(1815)
_To the Editor of The British Lady's Magazine_
MR. EDITOR,--In early life I passed eleven years in the exercise of my
needle for a livelihood. Will you allow me to address your readers,
among whom might perhaps be found some of the kind patronesses of my
former humble labours, on a subject widely connected with female
life--the state of needlework in this country.
To lighten the heavy burthen which many ladies impose upon themselves is
one object which I have in view: but, I confess, my strongest motive is
to excite attention towards the industrious sisterhood to which I once
belonged.
From books I have been informed of the fact, upon which "The British
Lady's Magazine" chiefly founds its pretensions, namely, that women have
of late been rapidly advancing in intellectual improvement. Much may
have been gained in this way, indirectly, for that class of females for
whom I wish to plead. Needlework and intellectual improvement are
naturally in a state of warfare. But I am afraid the root of the evil
has not as yet been struck at. Workwomen of every description were never
in so much distress for want of employment.
Among the present circle of my acquaintance I am proud to rank many that
may truly be called respectable; nor do the female part of them, in
their mental attainments, at all disprove the prevailing opinion of that
intellectual progression which you have taken as the basis of your work;
yet I affirm that I know not a single family where there is not some
essential drawback to its comfort which may be traced to needle-work
_done at home_, as the phrase is for all needle-work performed in a
family by some of its own members, and for which no remuneration in
money is received or expected.
In money alone, did I say? I would appeal to all the fair votaries of
voluntary housewifery, whether, in the matter of conscience, any one of
them ever thought she had done as much needle-work as she ought to have
done. Even fancy work, the fairest of the tribe!--how delightful the
arrangement of her materials! the fixing upon her happiest pattern, how
pleasing an anxiety! how cheerful the commencement of the labour she
enjoins! But that lady must be a true lover of the art, and so
industrious a pursuer of a predetermined purpose, that it were pity her
energy should not have been directed to some wiser end, who can affirm
she neither feels weariness during the execution of a fancy piece, nor
takes more time than she had calculated for the performance.
Is it too bold an attempt to persuade your readers that it would prove
an incalculable addition to general happiness, and the domestic comfort
of both sexes, if needle-work were never practised but for a
remuneration in money? As nearly, however, as this desirable thing can
be effected, so much more nearly will women be upon an equality with
men, as far as respects the mere enjoyment of life. As far as that
goes, I believe it is every woman's opinion that the condition of men is
far superior to her own.
"They can do what they like," we say. Do not these words generally mean,
they have time to seek out whatever amusements suit their tastes? We
dare not tell them we have no time to do this; for, if they should ask
in what manner we dispose of our time, we should blush to enter upon a
detail of the minutiæ which compose the sum of a woman's daily
employment. Nay, many a lady who allows not herself one quarter of an
hour's positive leisure during her waking hours, considers her own
husband as the most industrious of men, if he steadily pursue his
occupation till the hour of dinner, and will be perpetually lamenting
her own idleness.
_Real business_ and _real leisure_ make up the portions of men's
time--two sources of happiness which we certainly partake of in a very
inferior degree. To the execution of employment, in which the faculties
of the body or mind are called into busy action, there must be a
consoling importance attached, which feminine duties (that generic term
for all our business) cannot aspire to.
In the most meritorious discharges of those duties, the highest praise
we can aim at is to be accounted the helpmates of _man_; who, in return
for all he does for us, expects, and justly expects, us to do all in our
power to soften and sweeten life.
In how many ways is a good woman employed, in thought or action, through
the day, in order that her _good man_ may be enabled to feel his leisure
hours _real substantial holyday_, and perfect respite from the cares of
business! Not the least part to be done to accomplish this end is to fit
herself self to become a conversational companion; that is to say, she
has to study and understand the subjects on which he loves to talk. This
part of our duty, if strictly performed, will be found by far our
hardest part. The disadvantages we labour under from an education
differing from a manly one make the hours in which we _sit and do
nothing_ in men's company too often any thing but a relaxation;
although, as to pleasure and instruction, time so passed may be esteemed
more or less delightful.
To make a man's home so desirable a place as to preclude his having a
wish to pass his leisure hours at any fireside in preference to his
own, I should humbly take to be the sum and substance of woman's
domestic ambition. I would appeal to our _British ladies_, who are
generally allowed to be the most zealous and successful of all women in
the pursuit of this object,--I would appeal to them who have been most
successful in the performance of this laudable service, in behalf of
father, son, husband, or brother, whether an anxious desire to perform
this duty well is not attended with enough of _mental_ exertion, at
least, to incline them to the opinion that women may be more properly
ranked among the contributors to, than the partakers of, the undisturbed
relaxation of man.
If a family be so well ordered that the master is never called in to its
direction, and yet he perceives comfort and economy well attended to,
the mistress of that family (especially if children form a part of it)
has, I apprehend, as large a share of womanly employment as ought to
satisfy her own sense of duty; even though the needle-book and
thread-case were quite laid aside, and she cheerfully contributed her
part to the slender gains of the corset-maker, the milliner, the
dress-maker, the plain-worker, the embroidress, and all the numerous
classifications of females supporting themselves by _needle-work_, that
great staple commodity which is alone appropriated to the
self-supporting part of our sex.
Much has been said and written on the subject of men engrossing to
themselves every occupation and calling. After many years of observation
and reflection, I am obliged to acquiesce in the notion that it cannot
well be ordered otherwise.
If at the birth of girls it were possible to foresee in what cases it
would be their fortune to pass a single life, we should soon find trades
wrested from their present occupiers, and transferred to the exclusive
possession of our sex. The whole mechanical business of copying writings
in the law department, for instance, might very soon be transferred with
advantage to the poorer sort of women, who with very little teaching
would soon beat their rivals of the other sex in facility and neatness.
The parents of female children, who were known to be destined from their
birth to maintain themselves through, the whole course of their lives
with like certainty as their sons are, would feel it a duty incumbent
on themselves to strengthen the minds, and even the bodily
constitutions, of their girls, so circumstanced, by an education which,
without affronting the preconceived habits of society, might enable them
to follow some occupation now considered above the capacity or too
robust for the constitution of our sex. Plenty of resources would then
lie open for single women to obtain an independent livelihood, when
every parent would be upon the alert to encroach upon some employment,
now engrossed by men, for such of their daughters as would then be
exactly in the same predicament as their sons now are. Who, for
instance, would lay by money to set up his sons in trade; give premiums,
and in part maintain them through a long apprenticeship; or, which men
of moderate incomes frequently do, strain every nerve in order to bring
them up to a learned profession; if it were in a very high degree
probable that, by the time they were twenty years of age, they would be
taken from this trade or profession, and maintained during the remainder
of their lives by the _person whom they should marry_. Yet this is
precisely the situation in which every parent, whose income does not
very much exceed the moderate, is placed with respect to his daughters.
Even where boys have gone through a laborious education, superinducing
habits of steady attention, accompanied with the entire conviction that
the business which they learn is to be the source of their future
distinction, may it not be affirmed that the persevering industry
required to accomplish this desirable end causes many a hard struggle in
the minds of young men, even of the most hopeful disposition? What then
must be the disadvantages under which a very young woman is placed who
is required to learn a trade, from which she can never expect to reap
any profit, but at the expence of losing that place in society, to the
possession of which she may reasonably look forward, inasmuch as it is
by far the most _common lot_, namely, the condition of a _happy_ English
wife?
As I desire to offer nothing to the consideration of your readers but
what, at least as far as my own observation goes, I consider as truths
confirmed by experience, I will only say that, were I to follow the bent
of my own speculative opinion, I should be inclined to persuade every
female over whom I hoped to have any influence to contribute all the
assistance in her power to those of her own sex who may need it, in the
employments they at present occupy, rather than to force them into
situations now filled wholly by men. With the mere exception of the
profits which they have a right to derive from their needle, I would
take nothing from the industry of man which he already possesses.
"A penny saved is a penny earned," is a maxim not true, unless the penny
be saved in the same time in which it might have been earned. I, who
have known what it is to work for _money earned_, have since had much
experience in working for _money saved_; and I consider, from the
closest calculation I can make, that a _penny saved_ in that way bears
about a true proportion to a _farthing earned_. I am no advocate for
women, who do not depend on themselves for a subsistence, proposing to
themselves to _earn money_. My reasons for thinking it not advisable are
too numerous to state--reasons deduced from authentic facts, and strict
observations on domestic life in its various shades of comfort. But, if
the females of a family, _nominally_ supported by the other sex, find it
necessary to add something to the common stock, why not endeavour to do
something by which they may produce money _in its true shape_?
It would be an excellent plan, attended with very little trouble, to
calculate every evening how much money has been saved by needle-work
_done in the family_, and compare the result with the daily portion of
the yearly income. Nor would it be amiss to make a memorandum of the
time passed in this way, adding also a guess as to what share it has
taken up in the thoughts and conversation. This would be an easy mode of
forming a true notion, and getting at the exact worth of this species of
_home_ industry, and perhaps might place it in a different light from
any in which it has hitherto been the fashion to consider it.
Needle-work, taken up as an amusement, may not be altogether unamusing.
We are all pretty good judges of what entertains ourselves, but it is
not so easy to pronounce upon what may contribute to the entertainment
of others. At all events, let us not confuse the motives of economy with
those of simple pastime. If _saving_ be no object, and long habit have
rendered needle-work so delightful an avocation that we cannot think of
relinquishing it, there are the good old contrivances in which our
grand-dames were used to beguile and lose their time--knitting,
knotting, netting, carpet working, and the like ingenious
pursuits--those so-often-praised but tedious works, which are so long in
the operation, that purchasing the labour has seldom been thought good
economy, yet, by a certain fascination, they have been found to chain
down the great to a self-imposed slavery, from which they considerately,
or haughtily, excuse the needy. These may be esteemed lawful and
lady-like amusements. But, if those works, more usually denominated
useful, yield greater satisfaction, it might be a laudable scruple of
conscience, and no bad test to herself of her own motive, if a lady, who
had no absolute need, were to give the money so saved to poor
needle-women belonging to those branches of employment from which she
has borrowed these shares of pleasurable labour.
SEMPRONIA.
ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER
(? 1815. TEXT OF 1818)
The poems of G. Wither are distinguished by a hearty homeliness of
manner, and a plain moral speaking. He seems to have passed his life in
one continued act of an innocent self-pleasing. That which he calls his
_Motto_ is a continued self-eulogy of two thousand lines, yet we read it
to the end without any feeling of distaste, almost without a
consciousness that we have been listening all the while to a man
praising himself. There are none of the cold particles in it, the
hardness and self-ends which render vanity and egotism hateful. He seems
to be praising another person, under the mask of self; or rather we feel
that it was indifferent to him where he found the virtue which he
celebrates; whether another's bosom, or his own, were its chosen
receptacle. His poems are full, and this in particular is one downright
confession, of a generous self-seeking. But by self he sometimes means
a great deal,--his friends, his principles, his country, the human race.
Whoever expects to find in the satirical pieces of this writer any of
those peculiarities which pleased him in the satires of Dryden or Pope,
will be grievously disappointed. Here are no high-finished characters,
no nice traits of individual nature, few or no personalities. The game
run down is coarse general vice, or folly as it appears in classes. A
liar, a drunkard, a coxcomb, is _stript and whipt_; no Shaftesbury, no
Villiers, or Wharton, is curiously anatomized, and read upon. But to a
well-natured mind there is a charm of moral sensibility running through
them which amply compensates the want of those luxuries. Wither seems
every where bursting with a love of goodness and a hatred of all low and
base actions.--At this day it is hard to discover what parts in the poem
here particularly alluded to, _Abuses Stript and Whipt_, could have
occasioned the imprisonment of the author. Was Vice in High Places more
suspicious than now? had she more power; or more leisure to listen after
ill reports? That a man should be convicted of a libel when he named no
names but Hate, and Envy, and Lust, and Avarice, is like one of the
indictments in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, where Faithful is arraigned for
having "railed on our noble Prince Beelzebub, and spoken contemptibly of
his honourable friends, the Lord Old Man, the Lord Carnal Delight, and
the Lord Luxurious." What unlucky jealousy could have tempted the great
men of those days to appropriate such innocent abstractions to
themselves!
Wither seems to have contemplated to a degree of idolatry his own
possible virtue. He is for ever anticipating persecution and martyrdom;
fingering, as it were, the flames, to try how he can bear them. Perhaps
his premature defiance sometimes made him obnoxious to censures, which
he would otherwise have slipped by.
The homely versification of these Satires is not likely to attract in
the present day. It is certainly not such as we should expect from a
poet "soaring in the high region of his fancies with his garland and his
singing robes about him;"[34] nor is it such as he has shown in his
_Philarete_, and in some parts in his _Shepherds Hunting_. He seems to
have adopted this dress with voluntary humility, as fittest for a moral
teacher, as our divines chuse sober grey or black; but in their
humility consists their sweetness. The deepest tone of moral feeling in
them, (though all throughout is weighty, earnest and passionate) is in
those pathetic injunctions against shedding of blood in quarrels, in the
chapter entitled _Revenge_. The story of his own forbearance, which
follows, is highly interesting. While the Christian sings his own
victory over Anger, the Man of Courage cannot help peeping out to let
you know, that it was some higher principle than _fear_ which counselled
his forbearance.
[34] Milton.
Whether encaged, or roaming at liberty, Wither never seems to have
abated a jot of that free spirit, which sets its mark upon his writings,
as much as a predominant feature of independence impresses every page of
our late glorious Burns; but the elder poet wraps his proof-armour
closer about him, the other wears his too much outwards; he is thinking
too much of annoying the foe, to be quite easy within; the spiritual
defences of Wither are a perpetual source of inward sunshine, the
magnanimity of the modern is not without its alloy of soreness, and a
sense of injustice, which seems perpetually to gall and irritate. Wither
was better skilled in the "sweet uses of adversity," he knew how to
extract the "precious jewel" from the head of the "toad," without
drawing any of the "ugly venom" along with it.--The prison notes of
Wither are finer than the wood notes of most of his poetical brethren.
The description in the Fourth Eglogue of his _Shepherds Hunting_ (which
was composed during his imprisonment in the Marshalsea) of the power of
the Muse to extract pleasure from common objects, has been oftener
quoted, and is more known, than any part of his writings. Indeed the
whole Eglogue is in a strain so much above not only what himself, but
almost what any other poet has written, that he himself could not help
noticing it; he remarks, that his spirits had been raised higher than
they were wont "through the love of poesy."--The praises of Poetry have
been often sung in ancient and in modern times; strange powers have been
ascribed to it of influence over animate and inanimate auditors; its
force over fascinated crowds has been acknowledged; but, before Wither,
no one ever celebrated its power _at home_, the wealth and the strength
which this divine gift confers upon its possessor. Fame, and that too
after death, was all which hitherto the poets had promised themselves
from their art. It seems to have been left to Wither to discover, that
poetry was a present possession, as well as a rich reversion; and that
the Muse had promise of both lives, of this, and of that which was to
come.
The _Mistress of Philarete_ is in substance a panegyric protracted
through several thousand lines in the mouth of a single speaker, but
diversified, so as to produce an almost dramatic effect, by the artful
introduction of some ladies, who are rather auditors than interlocutors
in the scene; and of a boy, whose singing furnishes pretence for an
occasional change of metre: though the seven syllable line, in which the
main part of it is written, is that in which Wither has shown himself so
great a master, that I do not know that I am always thankful to him for
the exchange.
Wither has chosen to bestow upon the lady whom he commends, the name of
Arete, or Virtue; and, assuming to himself the character of Philarete,
or Lover of Virtue, there is a sort of propriety in that heaped measure
of perfections, which he attributes to this partly real, partly
allegorical, personage. Drayton before him had shadowed his mistress
under the name of Idea, or Perfect Pattern, and some of the old Italian
love-strains are couched in such religious terms as to make it doubtful,
whether it be a mistress, or Divine Grace, which the poet is addressing.
In this poem (full of beauties) there are two passages of pre-eminent
merit. The first is where the lover, after a flight of rapturous
commendation, expresses his wonder why all men that are about his
mistress, even to her very servants, do not view her with the same eyes
that he does.
Sometime I do admire,
All men burn not with desire;
Nay I muse her servants are not
Pleading love; but O! they dare not.
And I therefore wonder, why
They do not grow sick and die.
Sure they would do so, but that,
By the ordinance of fate,
There is some concealed thing
So each gazer limiting,
He can see no more of merit
Than beseems his worth and spirit,
For in her a grace there shines,
That o'er-daring thoughts confines;
Making worthless men despair
To be lov'd of one so fair.
Yea the destinies agree,
Some _good judgments_ blind should be,
And not gain the power of knowing
Those rare beauties in her growing.
Reason doth as much imply:
For if every judging eye,
Which beholdeth her, should there
Find what excellencies are;
All, o'ercome by those perfections,
Would be captive to affections.
So in happiness unblest,
She for lovers should not rest.
The other is, where he has been comparing her beauties to gold, and
stars, and the most excellent things in nature; and, fearing to be
accused of hyperbole, the common charge against poets, vindicates
himself by boldly taking upon him, that these comparisons are no
hyperboles; but that the best things in nature do, in a lover's eye,
fall short of those excellencies which he adores in her.
What pearls, what rubies can
Seem so lovely fair to man,
As her lips whom he doth love,
When in sweet discourse they move,
Or her lovelier teeth, the while
She doth bless him with a smile?
Stars indeed fair creatures be;
Yet amongst us where is he
Joys not more the whilst he lies
Sunning in his mistress' eyes.
Than in all the glimmering light
Of a starry winter's night?
Note the beauty of an eye--
And if aught you praise it by
Leave such passion in your mind,
Let my reason's eye be blind.
Mark if ever red or white
Any where gave such delight,
As when they have taken place
In a worthy woman's face.
* * * * *
I must praise her as I may,
Which I do mine own rude way;
Sometime setting forth her glories
By unheard of allegories--&c.
To the measure in which these lines are written, the wits of Queen
Anne's days contemptuously gave the name of Namby Pamby, in ridicule of
Ambrose Philips, who has used it in some instances, as in the lines on
Cuzzoni, to my feeling at least, very deliciously; but Wither, whose
darling measure it seems to have been, may shew, that in skilful hands
it is capable of expressing the subtilest movements of passion. So true
it is, which Drayton seems to have felt, that it is the poet who
modifies the metre, not the metre the poet; in his own words, that
It's possible to climb;
To kindle, or to slake;
Altho' in Skelton's rhime.[35]
[35] "A long line is a line we are long repeating. In the _Shepherds
Hunting_ take the following--
"If thy verse doth bravely tower,
_As she makes wing, she gets power_;
Yet the higher she doth soar,
She's affronted still the more,
'Till she to the high'st hath past,
Then she rests with fame at last.
what longer measure can go beyond the majesty of this! what
Alexandrine is half so long in pronouncing or expresses _labor
slowly but strongly surmounting difficulty_ with the life with which
it is done in the second of these lines? or what metre could go
beyond these, from _Philarete_--
"Her true beauty leaves behind
Apprehensions in my mind
Of more sweetness, than all art
Or inventions can impart.
_Thoughts too deep to be express'd,
And too strong to be suppress'd._"
FIVE DRAMATIC CRITICISMS
I.--MRS. GOULD (MISS BURRELL) IN "DON GIOVANNI IN LONDON"
OLYMPIC THEATRE
(1818)
This Theatre, fitted up with new and tasteful decorations, opened on
Monday with a burletta founded upon a pleasant extravagance recorded of
Wilmot the "mad Lord" of Rochester. The house, in its renovated
condition, is just what play-houses should be, and once were, from its
size admirably adapted for seeing and hearing, and only perhaps rather
too well lit up. Light is a good thing, but to preserve the eyes is
still better. Elliston and Mrs. Edwin personated a reigning wit and
beauty of the Court of Charles the Second to the life. But the charm of
the evening to us, we confess, was the acting of Mrs. T. Gould (late
Miss Burrell) in the burlesque _Don Giovanni_ which followed. This
admirable piece of foolery takes up our hero just where the legitimate
drama leaves him, on the "burning marl." We are presented with a fair
map of Tartarus, the triple-headed cur, the Furies, the Tormentors, and
the Don, prostrate, thunder-smitten. But there is an elasticity in the
original make of this _strange man_, as Richardson would have called
him. He is not one of those who change with the change of climate. He
brings with him to his new habitation _ardours_ as glowing and constant
as any which he finds there. No sooner is he recovered from his first
surprise, than he falls to his old trade, is caught "ogling
_Proserpine_," and coquets with two she devils at once, till he makes
the house _too hot to hold him_; and _Pluto_ (in whom a wise jealousy
seems to produce the effects of kindness) turns him neck and heels out
of his dominions,--much to the satisfaction of _Giovanni_, who stealing
a boat from Charon, and a pair of light heels from _Mercury_, or (as he
familiarly terms him) _Murky_, sets off with flying colours, conveying
to the world above the souls of three damsels, just eloped from Styx, to
comfort his tender and new-born spiritualities on the journey. Arrived
upon earth (with a new body, we are to suppose, but his old habits) he
lights a-propos upon a tavern in London, at the door of which three
merry weavers, widowers, are trouling a catch in triumph over their
deceased spouses--
They lie in yonder church-yard
At rest--and so are we.
Their departed partners prove to be the identical lady ghosts who have
accompanied the Don in his flight, whom he now delivers up in perfect
health and good plight, not a jot the worse for their journey, to the
infinite surprise, and consternation ill-dissembled, of their ill-fated,
twice-yoked mates. The gallantries of the Don in his second state of
probation, his meeting with _Leporello_, with _Donna Anna_, and a
countless host of injured virgins besides, doing penance in the humble
occupation of apple-women, fishwives and sausage-fryers, in the purlieus
of Billinsgate and Covent-garden, down to the period of his complete
reformation, and being made an honest man of, by marrying into a sober
English citizen's family, although infinitely pleasant in the
exhibition, would be somewhat tedious in the recital: but something must
be said of his representative.
We have seen Mrs. Jordan in male characters, and more ladies beside than
we would wish to recollect--but never any that so completely answered
the purpose for which they were so transmuted, as the Lady who enacts
the mock _Giovanni_. This part, as it is played at the Great House in
the Haymarket (Shade of Mozart, and ye living admirers of Ambrogetti,
pardon the barbarity) had always something repulsive and distasteful to
us.--We cannot sympathize with _Leporello's_ brutal display of the
_list_, and were shocked (no strait-laced moralists either) with the
applauses, with the _endurance_ we ought rather to say, which fashion
and beauty bestowed upon that disgustful insult to feminine unhappiness.
The _Leporello_ of the Olympic Theatre is not one of the most refined
order, but we can bear with an English blackguard better than with the
hard Italian. But _Giovanni_--free, fine, frank-spirited,
single-hearted creature, turning all the mischief into fun as harmless
as toys, or children's _make-believe_, what praise can we repay to you,
adequate to the pleasure which you have given us? We had better be
silent, for you have no name, and our mention will but be thought
fantastical. You have taken out the sting from the evil thing, by what
magic we know not, for there are actresses of greater mark and attribute
than you. With you and your _Giovanni_ our spirits will hold communion,
whenever sorrow or suffering shall be our lot. We have seen you triumph
over the infernal powers; and pain, and Erebus, and the powers of
darkness, are henceforth "shapes of a dream."
II.--MISS KELLY AT BATH
(1819)
Dear G.---- I was thinking yesterday of our old play-going days, of your
and my partiality to Mrs. Jordan; of our disputes as to the relative
merits of Dodd and Parsons; and whether Smith or Jack Palmer, were the
most of a Gentleman. The occasion of my falling into this train of
thinking was my learning from the newspapers that Miss Kelly is paying
the Bath Theatre a visit. (Your own Theatre, I am sorry to find, is shut
up, either from parsimonious feelings, or through the influence of ----
principles.[36]) This lady has long ranked among the most considerable
of our London performers. If there are one or two of greater name, I
must impute it to the circumstance, that she has never burst upon the
town at once in the maturity of her power; which is a great advantage to
debutantes, who have passed their probationary years in Provincial
Theatres. We do not hear them tuning their instruments. But she has been
winning her patient way from the humblest gradations to the eminence
which she has now attained, on the self same boards which supported her
first in the slender pretensions of chorus-singer. I very much wish that
you would go and see her. You will not see Mrs. Jordan, but something
else; something on the whole very little, if at all, inferior to that
lady, in her best days. I cannot hope that you will think so; I do not
even wish that you should. Our longest remembrances are the most sacred;
and I shall revere the prejudice, that shall prevent you from thinking
quite so favorably of her as I do.--I do not well know how to draw a
parallel between their distinct manners of acting. I seem to recognize
the same pleasantness and nature in both: but Mrs. Jordan's was the
carelessness of a child; her child-like spirit shook off the load of
years from her spectators; she seemed one whom care could not come near;
a privileged being, sent to teach mankind what it most wants,
joyousness. Hence, if we had more unmixed pleasure from her
performances, we had, perhaps, less sympathy with them than with those
of her successor. This latter lady's is the joy of a freed spirit,
escaping from care, as a bird that had been limed; her smiles, if I may
use the expression, seemed saved out of the fire, relics which a good
and innocent heart had snatched up as most portable; her contents are
visitors, not inmates: she can lay them by altogether; and when she does
so, I am not sure that she is not greatest. She is, in truth, no
ordinary tragedian. Her Yarico is the most intense piece of acting which
I ever witnessed, the most heart-rending spectacle. To see her leaning
upon that wretched reed, her lover--the very exhibition of whose
character would be a moral offence, but for her clinging and noble
credulity--to see her lean upon that flint, and by the strong workings
of passion imagine it a god--is one of the most afflicting lessons of
the yearnings of the human heart and its sad mistakes, that ever was
read upon a stage. The whole performance is every where _African_,
fervid, glowing. Nor is this any thing more than the wonderful force of
imagination in this performer; for turn but the scene, and you shall
have her come forward in some kindly home-drawn character of an English
rustic, a Phœbe, or a Dinah Cropley, where you would swear that her
thoughts had never strayed beyond the precincts of the dairy, or the
farm; or her mind known less tranquil passions than she might have
learned among the flock, her out-of-door companions. See her again in
parts of pure fun, such as the House-maid in the Merry Mourners, where
the suspension of the broom in her hand, which she had been delightfully
twirling, on unexpectedly encountering her sweetheart in the character
of a fellow-servant, is quite equal to Mrs. Jordan's cordial inebriation
in Nell.--I do not know whether I am not speaking it to her honor, that
she does not succeed in what are called fine lady parts. Our friend C.
once observed, that no man of genius ever figured as a gentleman.
Neither did any woman, gifted with Mrs. Jordan's or Miss Kelly's
sensibilities, ever take upon herself to shine as a fine lady, the very
essence of this character consisting in the entire repression of all
genius and all feeling. To sustain a part of this kind to the life, a
performer must be haunted by a perpetual self-reference: she must be
always thinking of herself, and how she looks, and how she deports
herself in the eyes of the spectators; whereas the delight of actresses
of true feeling, and their chief power, is to elude the personal notice
of an audience, to escape into their parts, and hide themselves under
the hood of their assumed character. Their most graceful self-possession
is in fact a self-forgetfulness; an oblivion alike of self and of
spectators. For this reason your most approved epilogue-speakers have
been always ladies who have possessed least of this self-forgetting
quality; and I think I have seen the amiable actress in question
suffering some embarrassment, when she has had an address of this sort
to deliver; when she found the modest veil of personation, which had
half hid her from the audience, suddenly withdrawn, and herself brought
without any such qualifying intervention before the public.
[36] The word here omitted by the Bristol Editor, we suppose, is
_methodistical_ (Leigh Hunt in _The Examiner_).
I should apologise for the length of this letter, if I did not remember
the lively interest you used to take in theatrical performances.--I am,
&c. &c.,
* * * *.
III.--RICHARD BROME'S "JOVIAL CREW"
(1819)
The _Jovial Crew_ or the _Merry Beggars_ has been revived here [the
English Opera] after an interval, as the bills tell us, of seven years.
Can it be so long (it seems but yesterday) since we saw poor LOVEGROVE
in _Justice Clack_? his childish treble still pipes in our ears: "Whip
'em, whip 'em, whip 'em." DOWTON was the representative of the Justice
the other night, and shook our ribs most incontinently. He was in
"excellent foolery," and our lungs crowed chanticleer. Yet it appears to
us, that there was a still higher strain of fatuity in his
predecessor--that his eyes distilled a richer dotage. Perhaps after all
it was an error of the memory. Defunct merit comes out upon us
strangely.
Easy natural WRENCH was the _Springlove_; too comfortable a personage
perhaps to personify _Springlove_, in whom the voice of the bird awakens
a restless instinct of roaming that had slept during the winter. Miss
STEVENSON certainly leaves us nothing to regret for the absence of the
Lady, however agreeable, who formerly performed the part of _Meriel_.
Miss STEVENSON is a fine open-countenanced lass, with glorious girlish
manners. But the _Princess of Mumpers_, and _Lady Paramount_, of
beggarly counterfeit accents, was _she_ that played _Rachel_. Her
gabbling lachrymose petitions; her tones, such as we have heard by the
side of old woods, when an irresistible face has come peeping on one on
a sudden; with her full black locks, and a _voice_--how shall we
describe it?--a voice that was by nature meant to convey nothing but
truth and goodness, but warped by circumstance into an assurance that
she is telling us a lie--that catching twitch of the thievish
irreproveable finger--those ballad-singers' notes, so vulgar, yet so
unvulgar--that assurance, so like impudence, and yet so many countless
leagues removed from it--her jeers, which we had rather stand, than be
caressed with other ladies' compliments, a summer's day long--her face,
with a wild out-of-door's grace upon it--
Altogether, a brace of more romantic she-beggars it was never our
fortune to meet in this supplicatory world. The youngest might have sate
for "pretty Bessy," whose father was an Earl, and whose legend still
adorns the front of mine Hostess's doors at Bethnal-Green; and the other
could be no less than the "Beggar Maid" whom "King Cophetua wooed."
"What a lass that were," said a stranger who sate beside us, speaking of
Miss KELLY in _Rachel_, "to go a gipseying through the world with." We
confess we longed to drop a tester in her lap, she begged so masterly.
By the way, this is the true _Beggar's Opera_. The other should have
been called the _Mirror for Highwaymen_. We wonder the Societies for the
Suppression of Mendicity (and other good things) do not club for the
putting down of this infamous protest in favour of air, and clear
liberty, and honest license, and blameless assertion of man's original
blest charter of blue skies, and vagrancy, and nothing-to-do.
* * * *.
IV.--ISAAC BICKERSTAFF'S "HYPOCRITE"
(1819)
By one of those strange perversities which actuate poor mortals in the
place of motives (to persuade us into the notion that we are free
agents, we presume), we had never till the other evening seen DOWTON in
_Doctor Cantwell_. By a pious fraud of Mr. ARNOLD'S, who, by a process
as simple as some of those by which MATHEWS metamorphoses his person,
has converted the play into an opera,--a conversion, by the way, for
which we are highly indebted to him,--we have been favoured with this
rich novelty at our favourite theatre. It seems a little unreasonable to
come lagging in with a posthumous testimony to the merits of a
performance of which the town has long rung, but we cannot help
remarking in Mr. DOWTON'S acting, the subtil _gradations_ of the
hypocrisy; the length to which it runs in proportion as the recipient is
capable of taking it in; the gross palpable way in which he adminsters
the dose in wholesale to old _Lady Lambert_, that rich fanatic; the
somewhat more guarded manner in which he retails it out, only so much at
a time as he can bear, to the somewhat less bitten fool her son; and the
almost absence of it, before the younger members of the family, when
nobody else is by: how the cloven foot peeps out a little and a little
more, till the diabolical nature is stung out at last into full
manifestation of its horrid self. What a grand insolence in the tone
which he assumes, when he commands _Sir John_ to quit _his_ house! and
then the tortures and agonies when he is finally baffled! It is in these
last perhaps that he is greatest, and we should be doing injustice not
to compare this part of the performance with, and in some respects to
give it the preference above, the acting of Mr. KEAN in a situation
nearly analogous, at the conclusion of the _City Madam_. _Cantwell_
reveals his pangs with quite as much force, and without the assistance
of those contortions which transform the detected _Luke_ into the
similitude of a mad tiger, or a foaming demon. DOWTON plays it neither
like beast nor demon, but simply as it should be, a bold bad man pushed
to extremity. Humanity is never once overstepped. Has it ever been
noticed, the exquisite modulation with which he drawls out the word
CHARLES, when he calls his secretary, so humble, so seraphic, so
resigned. The most diabolical of her sex that we ever knew accented all
her honey devil words in just such a hymn-like smoothness. The spirit of
WHITFIELD seems hovering in the air, to suck in the blessed tones, so
much like his own upon earth: Lady HUNTINGDON claps her neat white
wings, and gives it out again in heaven to the sainted ones, in
approbation.
Miss KELLY is not quite at home in _Charlotte_; she is too good for such
parts. Her cue is to be natural; she cannot put on the modes of
artificial life, and play the coquet as it is expected to be played.
There is a frankness in her tones which defeats her purposes: we could
not help wondering why her lover (Mr. PEARMAN) looked so rueful; we
forgot that she was acting airs and graces, as she seemed to forget it
herself, turning them into a playfulness which could breed no doubt for
a moment which way her inclinations ran. She is in truth not framed to
tease or torment even in jest, but to utter a hearty _Yes_ or _No_; to
yield or refuse assent with a noble sincerity. We have not the pleasure
of being acquainted with her, but we have been told that she carries the
same cordial manners into private life. We have heard, too, of some
virtues which she is in the practice of; but they are of a description
which repay themselves, and with them neither we nor the public have any
thing to do.
One word about WRENCH, who played the Colonel:--Was this man never
unhappy? It seems as if care never came near him, as if the black ox
could never tread upon his foot; we want something calamitous to befal
him, to bring him down to us. It is a shame he should be suffered to go
about with his well-looking happy face and tones, insulting us thin race
of irritable and irritable-making critics.
* * * *.
V.--NEW PIECES AT THE LYCEUM
(1819)
A plot has broke out at this theatre. Some quarrel has been breeding
between the male and female performers, and the women have determined to
set up for themselves. Seven of them, _Belles without Beaux_ they call
themselves, have undertaken to get up a piece without any assistance
from the men, and in our opinion have established their point most
successfully. There is Miss CAREW with her silvery tones, and Miss
STEVENSON with her delicious mixture of the school-girl and the
waiting-maid, and Miss KELLY sure to be first in any mischief, and Mrs.
CHATTERLY with some of the best acting we have ever witnessed, and Miss
LOVE, worthy of the _name_, and Mrs. GROVE that rhymes to her, and Mrs.
RICHARDSON who might in charity have been allowed somewhat a larger
portion of the dialogue. The effect was enchanting. We mean, for once.
We do not want to encourage these Amazonian vanities. Once or twice we
longed to have WRENCH bustling among them. A lady who sate near us was
observed to gape for want of variety. To us it was delicate
quintessence, an apple-pye made all of quinces. We remember poor
HOLCROFT'S last Comedy, which positively died from the opposite excess;
it was choked up with men, and perished from a redundancy of male
population. It had nine principal men characters in it, and but one
woman, and she of no very ambiguous character. Mrs. HARLOW, to do the
part justice, chose to play it in scarlet.
We did not know Mrs. CHATTERLY'S merits before; she plays, with
downright sterling good acting, a prude who is to be convinced out of
her prudery by Miss KELLY'S (we did not catch her stage-name) assumption
of the dress and character of a brother of seventeen, who makes the
prettiest unalarming Platonic approaches; and in the shyest mask of
moral battery, no one step of which you can detect, or say _this_ is
decidedly going too far, vanquishes at last the ice of her scruples,
brings her into an infinite scrape, and then with her own infinite good
humour sets all to right, and brings her safe out of it again with an
explanation. Mrs. CHATTERLY'S embarrassments were masterly. Miss
STEVENSON her maid's start, at surprising a youth in her mistress's
closet at midnight, was quite as good. Miss KELLY we do not care to say
any thing about, because we have been accused of flattering her. The
truth is, this lady puts so much intelligence and good sense into every
part which she plays, that there is no expressing an honest sense of her
merits, without incurring a suspicion of that sort. But what have we to
gain by praising Miss KELLY?
Altogether this little feminine republic, this provoking experiment,
went off most smoothly. What a nice world it would be, we sometimes
think, _all women!_ but then we are afraid we slip in a fallacy unawares
into the hypothesis; we somehow edge in the idea of ourselves as
spectators or something among them.
We saw WILKINSON after it in _Walk for a Wager_. What a picture of
Forlorn Hope! of abject orphan destitution! he seems to have no friends
in the world but his legs, and he plies them accordingly. He goes
walking on like a perpetual motion. His continual ambulatory presence
performs the part of a Greek chorus. He is the walking Gentleman of the
piece; a Peripatetic that would make a Stoic laugh. He made us cry. His
_Muffincap_ in _Amateurs and Actors_ is just such another piece of
acting. We have seen charity boys, both of St. Clement's and Farringdon
without, looking just as old, ground down out of all semblance of youth,
by abject and hopeless neglect--you cannot guess their age between
fifteen and fifty. If Mr. PEAK is the author of these pieces, he has no
reason to be piqued at their reception.
We must apologize for an oversight in our last week's article. The
allusion made to Mr. KEAN'S acting of _Luke_ in the _City Madam_ was
totally inapplicable to the part and to the play. We were thinking of
his performance of the concluding scenes of the _New Way to Pay Old
Debts_. We confounded one of MASSINGER'S strange heroes with the other.
It was _Sir Giles Overreach_ we meant; nor are we sure that our remark
was just, even with this explanation. When we consider the intense tone,
in which Mr. KEAN thinks it proper (and he is quite as likely to be in
the right as his blundering critic) to pitch the temperament of that
monstrous character from the beginning, it follows but logically and
naturally, that where the wild uncontrollable man comes to be baffled of
his purpose, his passions should assume a frenzied manner, which it was
altogether absurd to expect should be the same with the manner of the
cautious and self-restraining _Cantwell_, even when he breaks loose from
all bonds in the agony of his final exposure. We never felt more
strongly the good sense of the saying,--Comparisons are odious. They
betray us not seldom into bitter errors of judgment; and sometimes, as
in the present instance, into absolute matter of fact blunders. But we
have recanted.
* * * *.
FOUR REVIEWS
(1819-1820)
I.--_FALSTAFF'S LETTERS_
(1819)
_Original Letters, &c., of Sir John Falstaff and his Friends; now first
made public by a Gentleman, a descendant of Dame Quickly, from genuine
MSS. which have been in the possession of the Quickly Family near four
hundred years_. London: Robinsons, 1796
A copy of this work sold at the Roxburgh sale for five guineas. We have
both before and since that time picked it up at stalls for eighteen
pence. Reader, if you shall ever light upon a copy in the same way, we
counsel you to buy it. We are deceived if there be not in it much of the
true Shakspearian stuff. We present you with a few of the Letters, which
may speak for themselves:--
FALSTAFF TO THE PRINCE
"I pr'ythee, Hal, lend me thy 'kerchief. An thy unkindness have not
started more salt gouts down my poor old cheek, than my good rapier hath
of blood from foemen's gashes in five and thirty years' service, then am
I a very senseless mummy. I squander away in drinkings monies belonging
to the soldiery! I do deny it--they have had part--the surplus is gone
in charity--accuse the parish officers--make them restore--the whoreson
wardens do now put on the cloak of supplication at the church doors,
intercepting gentlemen for charity, forsooth!--'Tis a robbery, a
villainous robbery! to come upon a gentleman reeking with piety, God's
book in his hand, brimfull of the sacrament! Thou knowest, Hal, as I am
but man, I dare in some sort leer at the plate and pass, but as I have
the body and blood of Christ within me, could I do it? An I did not make
an oblation of a matter of ten pound after the battle of Shrewsbury, in
humble gratitude for thy safety, Hal, then am I the veriest
transgressor denounced in God's code. But I'll see them damned ere I'll
be charitable again. Let 'em coin the plate--let them coin the holy
chalice...."
THE SAME TO THE SAME
"Ha! ha! ha! And dost thou think I would not offer up ten pound for
thee? yea, a hundred--more--but take heed of displeasing in thy
sacrifice. Cain did bring a kid, yea, a firstling upon the altar, and
the blaze ascended not. Abel did gather simple herbs, penny-royal, Hal,
and mustard, a fourpenny matter, and the odour was grateful. I had ten
pound for the holy offertory--mine ancient Pistol doth know it--but the
angel did arrest my hand. Could I go beyond the word?--the angel which
did stretch forth his finger, lest the good patriarch should slay his
son.--That Ned Poins hath more colours than a jay, more abuse than a
taught pie, and for wit--the cuckow's dam may be Fool of the Court to
him. I lie down at Shrewsbury out of base fear! I melt into roods, and
acres, and poles! I tell thee what, Hal, there's not a subject in the
land hath half my temperance of valour.--Did I not see thee combating
the man-queller, Hotspur; yea, in peril of subduement? Was it for me to
lose my sweet Hal without a thrust, having my rapier, my habergion, my
good self about me? I did lie down in the hope of sherking him in the
rib--four drummers and a fifer did help me to the ground:--didst thou
not mark how I did leer upon thee from beneath my buckler? That Poins
hath more scurrility than is in a whole flock of disquieted geese.
"For the rebels I did conceal, thou should'st give me laud. I did think
thou wert already encompassed with more enemies than the resources of
men could prevent overwhelming thee: yea, that thou wert the dove on the
waters of Ararat, and didst lack a resting-place. Was it for me to heap
to thy manifold disquiets? Was it for me to fret thee with the advice of
more enemies than thou didst already know of? I could not take their
lives, and therefore did I take their monies. I did fine them, lest they
should scape, Hal, thou dost understand me, without chastisement; yea, I
fined them for a punishment. They did make oath on the point of my sword
to be true men:--an the rogues forswore themselves, and joined the
Welchman, let them look to it--'tis no 'peachment of my virtue...."
AGAIN
"Oh! I am setting on a nest of the most unfledged cuckows that ever
brooded under the wing of hawk. Thou must know, Hal, I had note of a
good hale recruit or two in this neighbourhood. In other shape came I
not; look to it, Master Shallow, that in other shape I depart not. But I
know thou art ever all desire to be admitted a Fellow Commoner in a
jest. Robert Shallow, Esq. judgeth the hamlet of Cotswold. Doth not the
name of judge horribly chill thee? With Aaron's rod in his hand, he hath
the white beard of Moses on his chin. In good sooth his perpetual
countenance is not unlike what thou wouldst conceit of the momentary one
of the lunatic Jew, when he tumbled God's tables from the mount. He hath
a quick busy gait--more of this upright Judge (perpendicular as a
pikeman's weapon, Hal,) anon. I would dispatch with these Bardolph; but
the knave's hands--(I cry thee mercy) his mouth is full in preventing
desertion among my recruits. An every liver among them haven't stood me
in three and forty shilling, then am I a naughty escheator.--I tell thee
what, Hal, I'd fight against my conscience for never a Prince in
Christendom but thee.--Oh! this is a most damnable cause, and the rogues
know it--they'll drink nothing but sack of three and twopence a gallon;
and I enlist me none but tall puissant fellows that would quaff me up
Fleet-ditch, were it filled with sack--picked men, Hal--such as will
shake my Lord of York's mitre. I pray thee, sweet lad, make speed--thou
shalt see glorious deeds."
* * * * *
How say you, reader, do not these inventions smack of Eastcheap? Are
they not nimble, forgetive, evasive? Is not the humour of them
elaborate, cogitabund, fanciful? Carry they not the true image and
superscription of the father which begat them? Are they not steeped all
over in character--subtle, profound, unctuous? Is not here the very
effigies of the Knight? Could a counterfeit _Jack Falstaff_ come by
these conceits? Or are you, reader, one who delights to drench his
mirth in tears? You are, or, peradventure, have been a lover; a
"dismissed bachelor," perchance, one that is "lass-lorn." Come, then,
and weep over the dying bed of such a one as thyself. Weep with us the
death of poor _Abraham Slender_.
DAVY TO SHALLOW
"Master Abram is dead, gone, your Worship, dead! Master Abram! Oh! good,
your Worship, a's gone. A' never throve, since a' came from
Windsor--'twas his death. I called him rebel, your Worship--but a' was
all subject--a' was subject to any babe, as much as a king--a' turned,
_like as it were the latter end of a lover's lute_--a' was all peace and
resignment--a' took delight in nothing but his Book of Songs and
Sonnets--a' would go to the Stroud side under the large beech tree, and
sing, 'till 'twas quite pity of our lives to mark him; for his chin grew
as long as a muscle.--Oh! a' sung his soul and body quite away--a' was
lank as any greyhound, and had such a scent! I hid his love-songs among
your Worship's law-books; for I thought, if a' could not get at them, it
might be to his quiet; but a' snuffed them out in a moment. Good, your
Worship, have the wise woman of Brentford secured--Master Abram may have
been conjured--Peter Simple says, a' never looked up after a' sent for
the wise woman.--Marry, a' was always given to look down afore his
elders; a' might do it, a' was given to it--your Worship knows it; but
then 'twas peak and pert with him, marry, in the turn of his heel.--A'
died, your Worship, just about one, at the crow of the cock.--I thought
how it was with him; for a' talked as quick, ay, marry, as glib as your
Worship; and a' smiled, and looked at his own nose, and called 'Sweet
Ann Page.' I asked him if a' would eat--so a' bad us commend him to his
cousin Robert (a' never called your Worship so before) and bad us get
hot meat, for a' would not say 'nay' to Ann again.[37] But a' never
lived to touch it--a' began all in a moment to sing 'Lovers all, a
Madrigall.' 'Twas the only song Master Abram ever learnt out of book,
and clean by heart, your Worship--and so a' sung, and smiled, and looked
askew at his own nose, and sung, and sung on, till his breath waxed
shorter, and shorter, and shorter, and a' fell into a struggle and
died. Alice Shortcake craves, she may make his shroud...."
[37] Vide, _Merry Wives of Windsor_, latter part of 1st scene, 1st
act.
* * * * *
Should these specimens fail to rouse your curiosity to see the whole, it
may be to your loss, gentle reader, but it will give small pain to the
spirit of him that wrote this little book; my fine-tempered friend, J.
W.--for not in authorship, or the spirit of authorship, but from the
fullness of a young soul, newly kindling at the Shakspearian flame, and
bursting to be delivered of a rich exuberance of conceits,--I had almost
said _kindred with those of the full Shakspearian genius itself_,--were
these letters dictated. We remember when the inspiration came upon him;
when the plays of Henry the Fourth were first put into his hands. We
think at our recommendation he read them, rather late in life, though
still he was but a youth. He may have forgotten, but we cannot, the
pleasant evenings which ensued at the Boar's Head (as we called our
tavern, though in reality the sign was not that, nor the street
Eastcheap, for that honoured place of resort has long since passed away)
when over our pottle of Sherris he would talk you nothing but pure
_Falstaff_ the long evenings through. Like his, the wit of J. W. was
deep, recondite, imaginative, full of goodly figures and fancies. Those
evenings have long since passed away, and nothing comparable to them has
come in their stead, or can come. "We have heard the chimes at
midnight."
* * * *.
II.--CHARLES LLOYD'S POEMS
(1819)
NUGÆ CANORÆ. POEMS BY CHARLES LLOYD
The reader who shall take up these poems in the mere expectation of
deriving amusement for an idle hour, will have been grievously misled by
the title. _Nugæ_ they certainly are not, but full of weight; earnest,
passionate communings of the spirit with itself. He that reads them must
come to them in a serious mood; he should be one that has descended into
his own bosom; that has probed his own nature even to shivering; that
has indulged the deepest yearnings of affection, and has had them
strangely flung back upon him; that has built to himself a fortress out
of conscious weakness; that has cleaved to the rock of his early
religion, and through hope in it hath walked upon the uneasy waters.
We should be sorry to convey a false notion. Mr. Lloyd's religion has
little of pretence or sanctimoniousness about it; it is worn as an
armour of self-defence, not as a weapon of outward annoyance: the
believing may be drawn by it, and the unbelieving need not be deterred.
The Religionist of Nature may find some things to venerate in its mild
Christianity, when he shall discover in a volume, generally hostile to
new experiments in philosophy and morals, some of its tenderest pages
dedicated to the virtues of _Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin_.
Mr. Lloyd's poetry has not much in it that is narrative or dramatic. It
is richer in natural description; but the _imagery_ is for the most part
embodied with, and made subservient to, the _sentiment_, as in many of
the sonnets, &c. His genius is metaphysical and profound; his verses are
made up of deep feeling, accompanied with the perpetual running
commentary of his own deeper self-reflection. His affections seem to run
kindliest in domestic channels; and there some strains, commemorative of
a dead relative, which, while they do honour to the heart of the writer,
are of too sacred a nature, we think, almost to have been committed to
print at all; much less would they bear exposal among the miscellaneous
matter indispensable to a public journal. We prefer therefore giving an
extract from the fine blank verse poem, entitled _Christmas_. It is
richly embued with the meditative, introspective cast of mind, so
peculiar to this author:--
There is a time
When first sensation paints the burning cheek,
Fills the moist eye, and quickens the keen pulse,
That mystic meanings half conceiv'd invest
The simplest forms, and all doth speak, all lives
To the eager heart! At such a time to me
Thou cam'st, dear holiday! Thy twilight glooms
Mysterious thoughts awaken'd, and I mus'd
As if possest, yea felt as I had known
The dawn of inspiration. Then the days
Were sanctified by feeling, all around
Of an indwelling presence darkly spake.
Silence had borrow'd sounds to cheat the soul!
And, to the toys of life, the teeming brain,
Impregning them with its own character,
Gave preternatural import; the dull face
Was eloquent, and e'en the idle air
Most potent shapes, varying and yet the same,
Substantially express'd.
But soon my heart,
Unsatisfied with blissful shadows, felt
Achings of vacancy, and own'd the throb
Of undefin'd desire, while lays of love
Firstling and wild stole to my trem'lous tongue.
To me thy rites were mock'ry then, thy glee
Of little worth. More pleas'd I trod the waste
Sear'd with the sleety wind, and drank its blast;
Deeming thy dreary shapes most strangely sweet,
Mist-shrouded winter! in mute loneliness
I wore away the day which others hail'd
So cheerily, still usher'd in with chaunt
Of carol, and the merry ringers' peal,
Most musical to the good man that wakes
And praises God in gladness.
But soon fled
The dreams of love fantastic! Still the Friend,
The Friend, the wild roam o'er the drifted snows
Remain unsung! then when the wintry view
Objectless, mist-hidden, or in uncouth forms
Prank'd by the arrowy flake might aptly yield
New stores to shaping fantasy, I rov'd
With him my lov'd companion! Oh, 'twas sweet;
Ye who have known the swell that heaves the breast
Pregnant with loftiest poesy, declare
Is aught more soothing to the charmed soul
Than friendship's glow, the independent dream
Gathering when all the frivolous shews are fled
Of artificial life; when the wild step
Boundeth on wide existence, unbeheld,
Uncheck'd, and the heart fashioneth its hope
In Nature's school, while Nature bursts around,
Nor Man her spoiler meddles in the scene!
Farewell, dear day, much hath it sooth'd my heart
To chaunt thy frail memorial.
Now advance
The darkening years, and I do sojourn, home!
From thee afar. Where the broad-bosom'd hills,
Swept by perpetual clouds, of Scotland, rise,
Me fate compels to tarry.
Ditty quaint or custom'd carol, there my vacant ear
Ne'er blest! I thought of home and happier days!
And as I thought, my vexed spirit blam'd
That austere race, who, mindless of the glee
Of good old festival, coldly forbade
Th' observance which of mortal life relieves
The languid sameness, seeming too to bring
Sanction from hoar antiquity and years
Long past!
* * * *.
III.--BARRON FIELD'S POEMS
(1820)
"FIRST FRUITS OF AUSTRALIAN POETRY"
Sydney, New South Wales. Printed for Private Distribution
I first adventure; follow me who list;
And be the second Austral Harmonist.
Whoever thou art that hast transplanted the British wood-notes to the
far-off forest which the Kangaroo haunts--whether thou art some
involuntary exile that solaces his sad estrangement with recurrence to
his native notes, with more wisdom than those captive Hebrews of old
refused to sing their Sion songs in a strange land--or whether, as we
rather suspect, thou art that valued friend of ours, who, in thy young
time of life, together with thy faithful bride, thy newly "wedded
flower," didst, in obedience to the stern voice of duty, quit thy
friends, thy family, thy pleasing avocations, the Muses with which thou
wert as deeply smitten as any, we believe, in our age and country, to go
and administer tedious justice in inauspicious unliterary
THIEFLAND[38]--we reclaim thee for our own, and gladly would transport
thee back to thy native "fields," and studies congenial to thy habits.
[38] An elegant periphrasis for _the Bay_. Mr. Coleridge led us the
way--"CLOUDLAND, gorgeous land."
We know a merry Captain, and co-navigator with Cook, who prides himself
upon having planted the first pun in Otaheite. It was in their own
language, and the islanders first looked at him, then stared at one
another, and all at once burst out into a genial laugh. It was a
stranger, and as a stranger they gave it welcome. Many a quibble of
their own growth, we doubt not, has since sprung from that well-timed
exotic. Where puns flourish, there must be no inconsiderable advance in
civilization. The same good results we are willing to augur from this
dawn of refinement at Sydney. They were beginning to have something like
a theatrical establishment there, which we are sorry to hear has been
suppressed; for we are of opinion with those who think that a taste for
such kind of entertainments is one remove at least from profligacy, and
that Shakspeare and Gay may be as safe teachers of morality as the
ordinary treatises which assume to instil that science. We have seen one
of their play bills (while the thing was permitted to last) and were
affected by it in no ordinary degree; particularly in the omission of
the titles of honour, which in this country are condescendingly conceded
to the players. In their Dramatis Personæ _Jobson_ was played by Smith;
_Lady Loverule_, Jones; _Nell_, Wilkinson: Gentlemen and Lady Performers
alike curtailed of their fair proportions. With a little patronage, we
prophesy, that in a very few years the histrionic establishment of
Sydney would have risen in respectability; and the humble performers
would, by tacit leave, or open permission, have been allowed to use the
same encouraging affixes to their names, which dignify their prouder
brethren and sisters in the mother country. What a moral advancement,
what a lift in the scale, to a Braham or a Stephens of New South Wales,
to write themselves _Mr._ and _Miss_! The King here has it not in his
power to do so much for a Commoner, no, not though he dub him a Duke.
"The First Fruits" consist of two poems. The first celebrates the plant
_epacris grandiflora_; but we are no botanists, and perhaps there is too
much matter mixed up in it from the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, to please
some readers. The thefts are indeed so open and palpable, that we almost
recur to our first surmise, that the author must be some unfortunate
wight, sent on his travels for plagiarisms of a more serious complexion.
But the old matter and the new blend kindly together; and must, we hope,
have proved right acceptable to more than one
----Among the Fair
Of that young land of Shakspeare's tongue.
We select for our readers the second poem; and are mistaken, if it does
not relish of the graceful hyperboles of our elder writers. We can
conceive it to have been written by Andrew Marvel, supposing him to have
been banished to Botany Bay, as he did, we believe, once meditate a
voluntary exile to Bermuda. See his fine poem, "Where the remote
Bermudas ride."
* * * *.
"THE KANGAROO"
"----mixtumque genus, prolesque biformis."--VIRG., _Æn._, vi.
Kangaroo, Kangaroo!
Thou spirit of Australia,
That redeems from utter failure,
From perfect desolation,
And warrants the creation
Of this fifth part of the earth,
Which would seem an after-birth,
Not conceiv'd in the beginning
(For God bless'd his work at first,
And saw that it was good),
But emerg'd at the first sinning,
When the ground was therefore curst;--
And hence this barren wood!
Kangaroo, Kangaroo!
Tho' at first sight we should say,
In thy nature that there may
Contradiction be involv'd,
Yet, like discord well resolv'd,
It is quickly harmoniz'd.
Sphynx or mermaid realiz'd,
Or centaur unfabulous,
Would scarce be more prodigious,
[Or labyrinthine minotaur
With which great Theseus did war,]
Or Pegasus poetical,
Or hippogriff--chimeras all!
But, what Nature would compile,
Nature knows to reconcile;
And Wisdom, ever at her side,
Of all her children's justified.
She had made the squirrel fragile;
She had made the bounding hart;
But a third so strong and agile
Was beyond ev'n Nature's art.
So she join'd the former two
In thee, Kangaroo!
To describe thee, it is hard:
Converse of the camélopard,
Which beginneth camel-wise,
But endeth of the panther size,
Thy fore half, it would appear,
Had belong'd to "some small deer,"
Such as liveth in a tree;
By thy hinder, thou should'st be
A large animal of chase,
Bounding o'er the forest's space;--
Join'd by some divine mistake,
None but Nature's hand can make--
Nature, in her wisdom's play,
On Creation's holiday.
For howso'er anomalous,
Thou yet art not incongruous,
Repugnant or preposterous.
Better-proportion'd animal,
More graceful or ethereal,
Was never follow'd by the hound,
With fifty steps to thy one bound.
Thou canst not be amended: no;
Be as thou art; thou best art so.
When sooty swans are once more rare,
And duck-moles[39] the museum's care,
Be still the glory of this land,
Happiest work of finest hand!
[39] The _cygnus niger_ of Juvenal is no _rara avis_ in Australia;
and time has here given ample proof of the _ornithorynchus
paradoxus_. [Barron Field's note.]
IV.--KEATS' "LAMIA"
(1820)
LAMIA, ISABELLA, THE EVE OF SAINT AGNES, AND OTHER POEMS. BY JOHN KEATS.
AUTHOR OF _ENDYMION_
A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,
All garlanded with carven imag'ries
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
As are the tiger-moth's deep damask'd wings;
And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,
And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,
A shield'd scutcheon blush'd with blood of Queens and Kings.
Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,
As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon;
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
And on her hair a glory, like a saint:
She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven [:--Porphyro grew faint,
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint
Anon his heart revives:] her vespers done,
Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:
Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,
Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,
In fancy, fair Saint Agnes in her bed,
But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.
Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest,
In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex'd she lay,
Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress'd
Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away;
Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day;
Blissfully haven'd both from joy and pain;
Clasp'd like a missal where swart Paynims pray;
Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.
Such is the description which Mr. Keats has given us, with a delicacy
worthy of Christabel, of a high-born damsel, in one of the apartments of
a baronial castle, laying herself down devoutly to dream, on the charmed
Eve of St. Agnes; and like the radiance, which comes from those old
windows upon the limbs and garments of the damsel, is the almost
Chaucer-like painting, with which this poet illumes every subject he
touches. We have scarcely any thing like it in modern description. It
brings us back to ancient days, and
_Beauty making-beautiful old rhymes._
The finest thing in the volume is the paraphrase of Boccaccio's story of
the Pot of Basil. Two Florentines, merchants, discovering that their
sister Isabella has placed her affections upon Lorenzo, a young factor
in their employ, when they had hopes of procuring for her a noble match,
decoy Lorenzo, under pretence of a ride, into a wood, where they
suddenly stab and bury him. The anticipation of the assassination is
wonderfully conceived in one epithet, in the narration of the ride--
So the two brothers, and their _murder'd_ man,
Rode past fair Florence, to where Arno's stream
Gurgles----
Returning to their sister, they delude her with a story of their having
sent Lorenzo abroad to look after their merchandises; but the spirit of
her lover appears to Isabella in a dream, and discovers how and where he
was stabbed, and the spot where they have buried him. To ascertain the
truth of the vision, she sets out to the place, accompanied by her old
nurse, ignorant as yet of her wild purpose. Her arrival at it, and
digging for the body, is described in the following stanzas, than which
there is nothing more awfully simple in diction, more nakedly grand and
moving in sentiment, in Dante, in Chaucer, or in Spenser:--
She gaz'd into the fresh-thrown mould, as though
One glance did fully all its secrets tell;
Clearly she saw, as other eyes would know
Pale limbs at bottom of a crystal well;
Upon the murderous spot she seem'd to grow
Like to a native lily of the dell:
Then with her knife, all sudden, she began
To dig more fervently than misers can.
Soon she turn'd up a soiled glove, whereon
Her silk had play'd in purple fantasies,
She kiss'd it with a lip more chill than stone,
And put it in her bosom, where it dries
And freezes utterly unto the bone
Those dainties made to still an infant's cries:
Then 'gan she work again; nor stay'd her care,
But to throw back at times her veiling hair.
That old nurse stood beside her wondering,
Until her heart felt pity to the core
At sight of such a dismal labouring,
And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar,
And put her lean hands to the horrid thing:
Three hours they labour'd at this travail sore;
At last they felt the kernel of the grave,
And Isabella did not stamp and rave.
To pursue the story in prose:--They find the body, and with their joint
strengths sever from it the head, which Isabella takes home, and
wrapping it in a silken scarf, entombs it in a garden-pot, covers it
with mould, and over it she plants sweet basil, which, watered with her
tears, thrives so that no other basil tufts in all Florence throve like
her basil. How her brothers, suspecting something mysterious in this
herb, which she watched day and night, at length discover the head, and
secretly convey the basil from her; and how from the day that she loses
her basil she pines away, and at last dies [--for this], we must refer
our readers to the poem, or to the divine germ of it in Boccaccio. It is
a great while ago since we read the original; and in this affecting
revival of it we do but
_Weep again a long-forgotten woe._
More exuberantly rich in imagery and painting is the story of the Lamia.
It is of as gorgeous stuff as ever romance was composed of. Her first
appearance in serpentine form--
----a beauteous wreath with melancholy eyes--
her dialogue with Hermes, the _Star of Lethe_, as he is called by one of
these prodigal phrases which Mr. Keats abounds in, which are each a poem
in a word, and which in this instance lays open to us at once, like a
picture, all the dim regions and their inhabitants, and the sudden
coming of a celestial among them; the charming of her into woman's shape
again by the God; her marriage with the beautiful Lycius; her magic
palace, which those who knew the street, and remembered it complete from
childhood, never remembered to have seen before; the few Persian mutes,
her attendants,
----who that same year
Were seen about the markets: none knew where
They could inhabit;----
the high-wrought splendours of the nuptial bower, with the fading of the
whole pageantry, Lamia, and all, away, before the glance of
Apollonius,--are all that fairy land can do for us. They are for younger
impressibilities. To _us_ an ounce of feeling is worth a pound of fancy;
and therefore we recur again, with a warmer gratitude, to the story of
Isabella and the pot of basil, and those never-cloying stanzas which we
have cited, and which we think should disarm criticism, if it be not in
its nature cruel; if it would not deny to honey its sweetness, nor to
roses redness, nor light to the stars in Heaven; if it would not bay the
moon out of the skies, rather than acknowledge she is fair.
SIR THOMAS MORE
(1820)
Of the writings of this distinguished character little is remembered at
present beyond his _Utopia_, and some Epigrams. But there is extant a
massive folio of his Theological Works in English, partly Practical
Divinity, but for the greater part Polemic, against the grand Lutheran
Heresy, just then beginning to flower. From these I many years ago made
some extracts, rejecting only the antiquated orthography, (they being
intended only for my own amusement) except in some instances of proper
names, &c. I send them you as I find them, thinking that some of your
readers may consider them as curious. The first is from a Tract against
Tyndale, called the _Confutation of Tyndale's Answer_.[40] The author of
_Religio Medici_ somewhere says, "his conscience would give him the lye,
if she should say that he absolutely detested or hated any essence _but
the Devil_." Whether Browne was not out in his metaphysics, when he
supposed himself capable of hating, that is, _entertaining a personal
aversion to_, a being so abstracted, or such a Concrete of all
irreconcileable abstractions rather, as usually passes for the meaning
of that name, I contend not; but that the same hatred in kind, which he
professed against our great spiritual enemy, was in downright earnest
cultivated and defended by More against that portentous phenomenon in
those times, a _Heretic_, from his speeches against Luther and Tyndale
cannot for a moment be doubted. His account of poor Hytton which follows
(a reformado priest of the day) is penned with a wit and malice
hyper-satanic. It is infinitely diverting in the midst of its diabolism,
if it be not rather, what Coleridge calls,
Too wicked for a smile, too foolish for a tear.
[40] To some foregone Tract of More's, of which I have lost the
title.
----"now to the intent that ye may somewhat see what good Christian
faith Sir Thomas Hytton was of, this new saint of Tindale's
canonization, in whose burning Tindale so gaily glorieth, and which
hath his holiday so now appointed to him, that St. Polycarpus must
give him place in the Calendar, I shall somewhat show you what
wholesome heresies this holy martyr held. First ye shall understand,
that he was a priest, and falling to Luther's sect, and after that
to the sect of Friar Huskin and Zwinglius, cast off matins and mass,
and all divine service, and so became an apostle, sent to and fro,
between our English heretics beyond the sea, and such as were here
at home. Now happed it so, that after he had visited here his holy
congregations in divers corners and luskes lanes, and comforted them
in the Lord to stand stiff with the devil in their errors and
heresies, as he was going back again at Gravesend, _God considering
the great labour that he had taken already, and determining to bring
his business to his well-deserved end, gave him suddenly such a
favour and so great a grace in the visage, that every man that
beheld him took him for a thief_. For whereas there had been certain
linen clothes pilfered away that were hanging on an hedge, and Sir
Thomas Hytton was walking not far off _suspiciously in the
meditation of his heresies_: the people doubting that the beggarly
knave had stolen the clouts, fell in question with him and searched
him, and so found they certain letters secretly conveyed in his
coat, written from evangelical brethren here unto the evangelical
heretics beyond the sea. And upon those letters founden, he was with
his letters brought before the most Rev. Father in God the
Archbishop of Canterbury, and afterward as well by his Lordship as
by the Rev. Father the Bishop of Rochester examined, and after for
his abominable heresies delivered to the secular hands and burned."
What follows (from the same Tract) is _mildened_ a little by the
introduction of the name of Erasmus, More's intimate friend; though by
the sting in the rear of it, it is easy to see, that it was to a little
temporising only, and to some thin politic partitions from these
Reformers, that Erasmus owed his exemption from the bitter anathemas
More had in store for them. The _love_ almost make the _hate_ more
shocking by the contrast!
----"Then he (Tyndale) asketh me why I have not contended with
Erasmus, whom he calleth my darling, of all this long while, for
translating of this word _ecclesia_ into this word _congregatio_.
And then he cometh forth with his feat proper taunt, that I favour
him of likelihood for making of his Book of MORIA in my house. There
had he hit me, lo! save for lack of a little salt. I have not
contended with Erasmus my darling, because I found no such malicious
intent with Erasmus my darling, as I find with Tyndale. For had I
found with Erasmus my darling the shrewd intent and purpose, that I
find in Tyndale, Erasmus my darling should be no more my darling.
But I find in Erasmus my darling, that he detesteth and abhorreth
the errors and heresies, that Tyndale plainly teacheth and abideth
by, and therefore Erasmus my darling shall be my dear darling still.
And surely if Tyndale had either never taught them, or yet had the
grace to revoke them, then should Tyndale be my dear darling too.
But while he holdeth such heresies still, I cannot take for my
darling him that the devil taketh for his darling."
The next extract is from a "Dialogue concerning Heresies," and has
always struck me as a master-piece of eloquent logic, and something in
the manner of Burke, when he is stripping a sophism _sophistically_; as
he treats Paine, and others _passim_.
----"And not to be of the foolish mind that Luther is, which wished
in a sermon of his, that he had in his hand all the pieces of the
holy cross, and saith that, if he so had, he would throw them there
as never sun should shine on them. And for what worshipful reason
would the wretch do such villainy to the cross of Christ? because,
as he saith, that there is so much gold now bestowed about the
garnishing of the pieces of the cross, that there is none left for
poor folk. Is not this an high reason? as though all the gold, that
is now bestowed about the pieces of the holy cross, would not have
failed to have been given to poor men, if they had not been bestowed
about the garnishing of the cross. And as though there were nothing
lost, but that is bestowed about Christ's cross. Take all the gold,
that is spent about all the pieces of Christ's cross through
Christendom (albeit many a good Christen prince, and other goodly
people, hath honourably garnished many pieces thereof), yet, if all
the gold were gathered together, it would appear a poor portion, in
comparison of the gold that is bestowed upon cups. What speak we of
cups? in which the gold, albeit that it be not given to poor men,
yet is it saved, and may be given in alms when men will, _which they
never will_; how small a portion, ween we, were the gold about all
the pieces of Christ's cross, if it were compared with the gold that
is _quite cast away_ about the gilting of knives, swords, spurs,
arras, and painted clothes: and (as though these things could not
consume gold fast enough) the gilting of posts, and whole roofs, not
only in palaces of princes and great prelates, but also many right
mean men's houses. And yet, among all these things, could Luther spy
no gold that _grievously glittered in his bleared eyes_, but only
about the cross of Christ.--For that gold, if it were thence, the
wise man weeneth, it would be straight given to poor men, and that
where he daily see'th, that such as have their purse full of gold,
give to the poor not one piece thereof; but, if they give ought,
they ransack the bottom among all the gold, to seek out here an
halfpenny, or _in his country_ a brass penny whereof four make a
farthing: _such goodly causes find they, that pretend holiness for
the colour of their cloaked heresies_." [Book I., Chapter 2.]
I subjoin from the same "Dialogue" More's cunning defence of Miracles
done at Saints' shrines, on Pilgrimages, &c. all which he defends, as he
was bound by holy church to do, most stoutly. The _manner_ of it is arch
and surprising, and the narration infinitely naive; the _matter_ is the
old fallacy of confounding miracles (things happening out of nature)
with natural things, the grounds of which we cannot explain. In this
sense every thing is a miracle, and nothing is.
----"And first if men should tell you, that they saw before an image
of the crucifix a dead man raised to life, ye would much marvel
thereof, and so might ye well; yet could I tell you somewhat that I
have seen myself, that methinketh as great marvel, but I have no
lust to tell you, because that ye be so circumspect and ware in
belief of any miracles, that ye would not believe it for me, but
mistrust me for it.
"Nay, Sir (quod he), in good faith, if a thing seemed to me never so
far unlikely, yet if ye would earnestly say that yourself have seen
it, I neither would nor could mistrust it.
"Well (quod I), then ye may make me the bolder to tell ye. And yet
will I tell you nothing, but that I would, if need were, find you
good witness to prove it.
"It shall not need, Sir (quod he), but I beseech you let me hear it.
"Forsooth (quod I), because we speak of a man raised from death to
life. There was in the parish of St. Stephen's in Walbrook, in
London, where I dwelled before I come to Chelsith, a man and a
woman, which are yet quick and quething, and young were they both.
The eldest I am sure passeth not twenty-four. It happed them, as
doth among folk, the one to cast the mind to the other. And after
many lets, for the maiden's mother was much against it, at last they
came together, and were married in St. Stephen's church, which is
not greatly famous for any miracles, but yet yearly on St. Stephen's
day it is somewhat sought unto and visited with folk's devotion. But
now short tale to make, this young woman (as manner is in brides ye
wot well) was at night brought to bed with honest women. And then
after that went the bridegroom to bed, and every body went their
ways, and left them twain there alone. And the same night, yet abide
let me not lie, now in faith to say the truth I am not very sure of
the time, but surely as it appeared afterward, it was of likelihood
the same night, or some other time soon after, except it happened a
little before.
"No force for the time (quod he).
"Truth (quod I), and as for the matter, all the parish will testify
for truth, the woman was known for so honest. But for the
conclusion, the seed of them twain turned in the woman's body, first
into blood, and after into shape of man-child. And then waxed quick,
and she great therewith. And was within the year delivered of a fair
boy, and forsooth it was not then (for I saw it myself) passing the
length of a foot. And I am sure he has grown now an inch longer than
I.
"How long is it ago? (quod he).
"By my faith (quod I) about twenty-one years.
"Tush! (quod he), this is a worthy miracle!
"In good faith (quod I), never wist I that any man could tell that
he had any other beginning. And methinketh that this is as great a
miracle as the raising of a dead man." [Book I., Chapter 10.]
Diabolical Possession was a rag of the old abomination, which this
Contunder of Heresies thought himself obliged no less to wrap tightly
about the loins of his faith, than any of the _splendiores panni_ of the
old red Harlot. But (read with allowance for the belief of the times)
the narrative will be found affecting, particularly in what relates to
the parents of the damsel, "rich, and sore abashed."
----"Amongst which (_true miracles_) I durst boldly tell you for
one, the wonderful work of God, that was within these few years
wrought, in the house of a right worshipful knight, Sir Roger
Wentworth, upon divers of his children, and specially one of his
daughters, a very fair young gentlewoman of twelve years of age, in
marvellous manner vexed and tormented by our ghostly enemy the
devil, her mind alienated and raving with despising and blasphemy of
God, and hatred of all hallowed things, with knowledge and
perceiving of the hallowed from the unhallowed, all were she nothing
warned thereof. And after that moved in her own mind, and monished
by the will of God, to go to our Lady of Ippiswitche. In the way of
which pilgrimage, she prophesied and told many things done and said
at the same time in other places, which were proved true, and many
things said, lying in her trance, of such wisdom and learning, that
right cunning men highly marvelled to hear of so young an unlearned
maiden, when herself wist not what she said, such things uttered and
spoken, as well learned men might have missed with a long study, and
finally being brought and laid before the Image of our Blessed Lady,
was there in the sight of many worshipful people so grievously
tormented, and in face, eyen, look and countenance, so griesly
changed, and her mouth drawn aside, and her eyen laid out upon her
cheeks, that it was a terrible sight to behold. And after many
marvellous things at the same time shewed upon divers persons by the
devil through God's sufferance, as well all the remnant as the
maiden herself, in the presence of all the company, restored to
their good state perfectly cured and suddenly. And in this matter no
pretext of begging, no suspicion of feigning? no possibility of
counterfeiting, no simpleness in the seers, her father and mother
right honourable and rich, _sore abashed to see such chances in
their children_, the witnesses great number, and many of great
worship, wisdom and good experience, the maid herself too young to
feign [and the fashion itself too strange for any man to feign],
and the end of the matter virtuous, the virgin so moved in her mind
with the miracle, that she forthwith for aught her father could do,
forsook the world, and professed religion in a very good and godly
company at the Mynoresse, where she hath lived well and graciously
ever since." [Book I., Chapter 16.]
I shall trouble you with one Excerpt more, from a "Dialogue of Comfort
against Tribulation;" because the style of it is solemn and weighty; and
because it was written by More in his last imprisonment in the Tower,
preparatory to his sentence. After witnessing his treatment of Sir John
Hytton, and his brethren, we shall be inclined to mitigate some of our
remorse, that More should have suffered death himself _for conscience
sake_. The reader will not do this passage justice, if he do not read it
as part of a sermon; and as putting himself into the feelings of an
auditory of More's Creed and Times.
----"But some men now when this calling of God [any tribulation]
causeth them to be sad, they be loth to leave their sinful lusts
that hang in their hearts, and specially if they have any such kind
of living, as they must needs leave off, or fall deeper in sin: or
if they have done so many great wrongs, that they have many 'mends
to make, that must (if they follow God) 'minish much their money,
then are these folks (alas) woefully bewrapped, for God pricketh
upon them of his great goodness still, and the grief of this great
pang pincheth them at the heart, and of wickedness they wry away,
and fro this tribulation they turn to their flesh for help, and
labour to shake off this thought, and then they mend their pillow,
and lay their head softer, and assay to sleep; and when that will
not be, then they find a talk awhile with them that lie by them. If
that cannot be neither, then they lie and long for day, and then get
them forth about their worldly wretchedness, the matter of their
prosperity, the self-same sinful things with which they displease
God most, and at length with many times using this manner, God
utterly casteth them off. And then they set nought neither by God
nor Devil. * * * But alas! when death cometh, then cometh again
their sorrow, then will no soft bed serve, nor no company make him
merry, then must he leave his outward worship and comfort of his
glory, and lie panting in his bed as if he were on a pine-bank, then
cometh his fear of his evil life and his dreadful death. Then cometh
the torment, his cumbered conscience and fear of his heavy judgment.
Then the devil draweth him to despair with imagination of hell, and
suffereth him not then to take it for a fable. And yet if he do,
then findeth it the wretch no fable. * * * Some have I seen even in
their last sickness set up in their death-bed underpropped with
pillows take their play-fellows to them, and comfort themselves with
cards, and this they said did ease them well to put fantasies out of
their heads; and what fantasies trow you? such as I told you right
now of, their own lewd life and peril of their soul, of heaven and
of hell that irked them to think of, and therefore cast it out with
cards' play as long as ever thy might, till the pure pangs of death
pulled their heart fro their play, and put them in the case they
could not reckon their game. And then left them their gameners, and
slily slunk away, and long was it not ere they galped up the ghost.
And what game they came then to, that God knoweth and not I. I pray
God it were good, but I fear it very sore."
* * * *.
THE CONFESSIONS OF H. F. V. H. DELAMORE, ESQ.
(1821)
SACKVILLE-STREET, _25th March, 1821_.
Mr. Editor,--A correspondent in your last number,[41] blesses his stars,
that he was never yet in the pillory; and, with a confidence which the
uncertainty of mortal accidents but weakly justifies, goes on to predict
that he never shall be. Twelve years ago, had a Sibyl prophesied to me,
that I should live to be set in a worse place, I should have struck her
for a lying beldam. There are degradations below that which he speaks
of.
[41] Elia:--Chapter on Ears.
I come of a good stock, Mr. Editor. The Delamores are a race singularly
tenacious of their honour; men who, in the language of Edmund Burke,
feel a stain like a wound. My grand uncle died of a fit of the sullens
for the disgrace of a public whipping at Westminster. He had not then
attained his fourteenth year. Would I had died young!
For more than five centuries, the current of our blood hath flowed
unimpeachably. And must it stagnate now?
Can a family be tainted backwards?--can posterity purchase disgrace for
their progenitors?--or doth it derogate from the great Walter of our
name, who received the sword of knighthood in Cressy field, that one of
his descendants once sate * * * * * * * * * * *?
Can an honour, fairly achieved in _quinto Edwardi Tertii_, be reversed
by a slip _in quinquagesimo Georgii Tertii_?--how stands the law?--what
_dictum_ doth the college deliver?--O Clarencieux! O Norroy!
Can a reputation, gained by hard watchings on the cold ground, in a suit
of mail, be impeached by hard watchings on the cold ground in other
circumstances--was the endurance equal?--why is the guerdon so
disproportionate?
A priest mediated the ransom of the too valorous Reginald, of our house,
captived in Lord Talbot's battles. It was a clergyman, who by his
intercession abridged the period of my durance.
Have you touched at my wrongs yet, Mr. Editor?--or must I be explicit as
to my grievance?
Hush, my heedless tongue.
Something bids me--"Delamore, be ingenuous."
Once then, and only once----
Star of my nativity, hide beneath a cloud, while I reveal it!
Ancestors of Delamore, lie low in your wormy beds, that no posthumous
hearing catch a sound!
Let no eye look over thee, while thou shalt peruse it, reader!
Once----
these legs, with Kent in the play, though for far less ennobling
considerations, did wear "cruel garters."
Yet I protest it was but for a thing of nought--a fault of youth, and
warmer blood--a calendary inadvertence I may call it--or rather a
temporary obliviousness of the day of the week--timing my Saturnalia
amiss.----
Streets of Barnet, infamous for civil broils, ye saw my shame!--did not
your Red Rose rise again to dye my burning cheek?
It was but for a pair of minutes, or so--yet I feel, I feel, that the
gentry of the Delamores is extinguished for ever.----
Try to forget it, reader.----
(Signed) HENRY FRANCIS VERE HARRINGTON
DELAMORE.
THE GENTLE GIANTESS
(1822)
The widow Blacket, of Oxford, is the largest female I ever had the
pleasure of beholding. There may be her parallel upon the earth, but
surely I never saw it. I take her to be lineally descended from the
maid's aunt of Brainford, who caused Master Ford such uneasiness. She
hath Atlantean shoulders; and, as she stoopeth in her gait--with as few
offences to answer for in her own particular as any of Eve's
daughters--her back seems broad enough to bear the blame of all the
peccadillos that have been committed since Adam. She girdeth her
waist--or what she is pleased to esteem as such--nearly up to her
shoulders, from beneath which, that huge dorsal expanse, in mountainous
declivity, emergeth. Respect for her alone preventeth the idle boys, who
follow her about in shoals, whenever she cometh abroad, from getting up
and riding.--But her presence infallibly commands a reverence. She is
indeed, as the Americans would express it, something awful. Her person
is a burthen to herself, no less than to the ground which bears her. To
her mighty bone, she hath a pinguitude withal, which makes the depth of
winter to her the most desirable season. Her distress in the warmer
solstice is pitiable. During the months of July and August, she usually
renteth a cool cellar, where ices are kept, whereinto she descendeth
when Sirius rageth. She dates from a hot Thursday--some twenty-five
years ago. Her apartment in summer is pervious to the four winds. Two
doors, in north and south direction, and two windows, fronting the
rising and the setting sun, never closed, from every cardinal point,
catch the contributory breezes. She loves to enjoy what she calls a
quadruple draught. That must be a shrewd zephyr, that can escape her. I
owe a painful face-ach, which oppresses me at this moment, to a cold
caught, sitting by her, one day in last July, at this receipt of
coolness. Her fan in ordinary resembleth a banner spread, which she
keepeth continually on the alert to detect the least breeze. She
possesseth an active and gadding mind, totally incommensurate with her
person. No one delighteth more than herself in country exercises and
pastimes. I have passed many an agreeable holiday with her in her
favourite park at Woodstock. She performs her part in these delightful
ambulatory excursions by the aid of a portable garden chair. She setteth
out with you at a fair foot gallop, which she keepeth up till you are
both well breathed, and then she reposeth for a few seconds. Then she is
up again, for a hundred paces or so, and again resteth--her movement, on
these sprightly occasions, being something between walking and flying.
Her great weight seemeth to propel her forward, ostrich-fashion. In this
kind of relieved marching I have traversed with her many scores of acres
on these well-wooded and well-watered domains. Her delight at Oxford is
in the public walks and gardens, where, when the weather is not too
oppressive, she passeth much of her valuable time. There is a bench at
Maudlin, or rather, situated between the frontiers of that and
* * * * * *'s college--some litigation latterly, about repairs, has
vested the property of it finally in * * * * * *'s--where at the hour of
noon she is ordinarily to be found sitting--so she calls it by
courtesy--but in fact, pressing and breaking of it down with her
enormous settlement; as both those Foundations, who, however, are
good-natured enough to wink at it, have found, I believe, to their cost.
Here she taketh the fresh air, principally at vacation times, when the
walks are freest from interruption of the younger fry of students. Here
she passeth her idle hours, not idly, but generally accompanied with a
book--blest if she can but intercept some resident Fellow (as usually
there are some of that brood left behind at these periods); or stray
Master of Arts (to most of them she is better known than their dinner
bell); with whom she may confer upon any curious topic of literature. I
have seen these shy gownsmen, who truly set but a very slight value upon
female conversation, cast a hawk's eye upon her from the length of
Maudlin grove, and warily glide off into another walk--true monks as
they are, and ungently neglecting the delicacies of her polished
converse, for their own perverse and uncommunicating solitariness!
Within doors her principal diversion is music, vocal and instrumental,
in both which she is no mean professor. Her voice is wonderfully fine;
but till I got used to it, I confess it staggered me. It is for all the
world like that of a piping bulfinch, while from her size and stature
you would expect notes to drown the deep organ. The shake, which most
fine singers reserve for the close or cadence, by some unaccountable
flexibility, or tremulousness of pipe, she carrieth quite through the
composition; so that her time, to a common air or ballad, keeps double
motion, like the earth--running the primary circuit of the tune, and
still revolving upon its own axis. The effect, as I said before, when
you are used to it, is as agreeable as it is altogether new and
surprising. The spacious apartment of her outward frame lodgeth a soul
in all respects disproportionate. Of more than mortal make, she evinceth
withal a trembling sensibility, a yielding infirmity of purpose, a quick
susceptibility to reproach, and all the train of diffident and blushing
virtues, which for their habitation usually seek out a feeble frame, an
attenuated and meagre constitution. With more than man's bulk, her
humours and occupations are eminently feminine. She sighs--being six
foot high. She languisheth--being two feet wide. She worketh slender
sprigs upon the delicate muslin--her fingers being capable of moulding a
Colossus. She sippeth her wine out of her glass daintily--her capacity
being that of a tun of Heidelburg. She goeth mincingly with those feet
of hers--whose solidity need not fear the black ox's pressure. Softest,
and largest of thy sex, adieu! by what parting attribute may I salute
thee--last and best of the Titanesses--Ogress, fed with milk instead of
blood--not least, or least handsome, among Oxford's stately
structures--Oxford, who, in its deadest time of vacation, can never
properly be said to be empty, having thee to fill it.
ELIA.
LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED
_To the Editor of the London Magazine_
(1823)
Dear Sir,--I send you a bantering Epistle to an Old Gentleman whose
Education is supposed to have been Neglected. Of course, it was
_suggested_ by some Letters of your admirable Opium-Eater; the
discontinuance of which has caused so much regret to myself in common
with most of your readers. You will do me injustice by supposing, that
in the remotest degree it was my intention to ridicule those Papers. The
fact is, the most serious things may give rise to an innocent burlesque;
and the more serious they are, the fitter they become for that purpose.
It is not to be supposed, that Charles Cotton did not entertain a very
high regard for Virgil, notwithstanding he travestied that Poet.
Yourself can testify the deep respect I have always held for the
profound learning and penetrating genius of our friend. Nothing upon
earth would give me greater pleasure than to find that he has not lost
sight of his entertaining and instructive purpose.
I am, dear Sir, yours and _his_ sincerely,
ELIA.
MY DEAR SIR,--The question which you have done me the honour to propose
to me, through the medium of our common friend Mr. Grierson, I shall
endeavour to answer with as much exactness as a limited observation and
experience can warrant.
You ask--or rather, Mr. Grierson in his own interesting language asks
for you--"Whether a person at the age of sixty-three, with no more
proficiency than a tolerable knowledge of most of the characters of the
English alphabet at first sight amounts to, by dint of persevering
application, and good masters,--a docile and ingenuous disposition on
the part of the pupil always pre-supposed--may hope to arrive, within a
presumable number of years, at that degree of attainments, which shall
entitle the possessor to the character, which you are on so many
accounts justly desirous of acquiring, of a _learned man_."
This is fairly and candidly stated,--only I could wish that on one point
you had been a little more explicit. In the mean time, I will take it
for granted, that by a "knowledge of the alphabetic characters," you
confine your meaning to the single powers only, as you are silent on the
subject of the diphthongs, and harder combinations.
Why truly, Sir, when I consider the vast circle of sciences--it is not
here worth while to trouble you with the distinction between learning
and science--which a man must be understood to have made the tour of in
these days, before the world will be willing to concede to him the title
which you aspire to, I am almost disposed to reply to your inquiry by a
direct answer in the negative.
However, where all cannot be compassed, a great deal that is truly
valuable may be accomplished. I am unwilling to throw out any remarks
that should have a tendency to damp a hopeful genius; but I must not in
fairness conceal from you, that you have much to do. The consciousness
of difficulty is sometimes a spur to exertion. Rome--or rather, my dear
Sir, to borrow an illustration from a place, as yet more familiar to
you--Rumford--Rumford--was not built in a day.
Your mind as yet, give me leave to tell you, is in the state of a sheet
of white paper. We must not blot or blur it over too hastily. Or, to use
an opposite simile, it is like a piece of parchment all be-scrawled and
be-scribbled over with characters of no sense or import, which we must
carefully erase and remove, before we can make way for the authentic
characters or impresses, which are to be substituted in their stead by
the corrective hand of science.
Your mind, my dear Sir, again resembles that same parchment, which we
will suppose a little hardened by time and disuse. We may apply the
characters, but are we sure that the ink will sink?
You are in the condition of a traveller, that has all his journey to
begin. And again, you are worse off than the traveller which I have
supposed--for you have already lost your way.
You have much to learn, which you have never been taught; and more, I
fear, to unlearn, which you have been taught erroneously. You have
hitherto, I dare say, imagined, that the sun moves round the earth. When
you shall have mastered the true solar system, you will have quite a
different theory upon that point, I assure you. I mention but this
instance. Your own experience, as knowledge advances, will furnish you
with many parallels.
I can scarcely approve of the intention, which Mr. Grierson informs me
you had contemplated, of entering yourself at a common seminary, and
working your way up from the lower to the higher forms with the
children. I see more to admire in the modesty, than in the expediency,
of such a resolution. I own I cannot reconcile myself to the spectacle
of a gentleman at your time of life seated, as must be your case at
first, below a Tyro of four or five--for at that early age the rudiments
of education usually commence in this country. I doubt whether more
might not be lost in the point of fitness, than would be gained in the
advantages which you propose to yourself by this scheme.
You say, you stand in need of emulation; that this incitement is no
where to be had but at a public school; that you should be more sensible
of your progress by comparing it with the daily progress of those around
you. But have you considered the nature of emulation; and how it is
sustained at those tender years, which you would have to come in
competition with? I am afraid you are dreaming of academic prizes and
distinctions. Alas! in the university, for which you are preparing, the
highest medal would be a silver penny, and you must graduate in nuts and
oranges.
I know that Peter, the Great Czar--or Emperor--of Muscovy, submitted
himself to the discipline of a dock-yard at Deptford, that he might
learn, and convey to his countrymen, the noble art of shipbuilding. You
are old enough to remember him, or at least to talk about him. I call to
mind also other great princes, who, to instruct themselves in the
theory and practice of war, and set an example of subordination to their
subjects, have condescended to enrol themselves as private soldiers;
and, passing through the successive ranks of corporal, quarter-master,
and the rest, have served their way up to the station, at which most
princes are willing enough to set out--of General and Commander-in-Chief
over their own forces. But--besides that there is oftentimes great sham
and pretence in their show of mock humility--the competition which they
stooped to was with their co-evals, however inferior to them in birth.
Between ages so very disparate, as those which you contemplate, I fear
there can no salutary emulation subsist.
Again, in the other alternative, could you submit to the ordinary
reproofs and discipline of a day-school? Could you bear to be corrected
for your faults? Or how would it look to see you put to stand, as must
be the case sometimes, in a corner?
I am afraid the idea of a public school in your circumstances must be
given up.
But is it impossible, by dear Sir, to find some person of your own
age--if of the other sex, the more agreeable perhaps--whose information,
like your own, has rather lagged behind their years, who should be
willing to set out from the same point with yourself, to undergo the
same tasks--thus at once inciting and sweetening each other's labours in
a sort of friendly rivalry. Such a one, I think, it would not be
difficult to find in some of the western parts of this island--about
Dartmoor for instance.
Or what if, from your own estate--that estate which, unexpectedly
acquired so late in life, has inspired into you this generous thirst
after knowledge, you were to select some elderly peasant, that might
best be spared from the land; to come and begin his education with you,
that you might till, as it were, your minds together--one, whose heavier
progress might invite, without a fear of discouraging, your emulation?
We might then see--starting from an equal post--the difference of the
clownish and the gentle blood.
A private education then, or such a one as I have been describing, being
determined on, we must in the next place look out for a preceptor:--for
it will be some time before either of you, left to yourselves, will be
able to assist the other to any great purpose in his studies.
And now, my dear Sir, if in describing such a tutor as I have imagined
for you, I use a style a little above the familiar one in which I have
hitherto chosen to address you, the nature of the subject must be my
apology. _Difficile est de scientiis inscienter loqui_, which is as much
as to say that "in treating of scientific matters it is difficult to
avoid the use of scientific terms." But I shall endeavour to be as plain
as possible. I am not going to present you with the _ideal_ of a
pedagogue, as it may exist in my fancy, or has possibly been realized in
the persons of Buchanan and Busby. Something less than perfection will
serve our turn. The scheme which I propose in this first or introductory
letter has reference to the first four or five years of your education
only; and in enumerating the qualifications of him that should undertake
the direction of your studies, I shall rather point out the _minimum_,
or _least_, that I shall require of him, than trouble you in the search
of attainments neither common nor necessary to our immediate purpose.
He should be a man of deep and extensive knowledge. So much at least is
indispensable. Something older than yourself, I could wish him, because
years add reverence.
To his age and great learning, he should be blest with a temper and a
patience, willing to accommodate itself to the imperfections of the
slowest and meanest capacities. Such a one in former days Mr. Hartlib
appears to have been, and such in our days I take Mr. Grierson to be;
but our friend, you know, unhappily has other engagements. I do not
demand a consummate grammarian; but he must be a thorough master of
vernacular orthography, with an insight into the accentualities and
punctualities of modern Saxon, or English. He must be competently
instructed (or how shall he instruct you?) in the tetralogy, or first
four rules, upon which not only arithmetic, but geometry, and the pure
mathematics themselves, are grounded. I do not require that he should
have measured the globe with Cook, or Ortelius, but it is desirable that
he should have a general knowledge (I do not mean a very nice or
pedantic one) of the great division of the earth into four parts, so as
to teach you readily to name the quarters. He must have a genius capable
in some degree of soaring to the upper element, to deduce from thence
the not much dissimilar computation of the cardinal points, or hinges,
upon which those invisible phenomena, which naturalists agree to term
_winds_, do perpetually shift and turn. He must instruct you, in
imitation of the old Orphic fragments (the mention of which has possibly
escaped you), in numeric and harmonious responses, to deliver the number
of solar revolutions, within which each of the twelve periods, into
which the _Annus Vulgaris_, or common year, is divided, doth usually
complete and terminate itself. The intercalaries, and other subtle
problems, he will do well to omit, till riper years, and course of
study, shall have rendered you more capable thereof. He must be capable
of embracing all history, so as from the countless myriads of individual
men, who have peopled this globe of earth--_for it is a globe_--by
comparison of their respective births, lives, deaths, fortunes, conduct,
prowess, &c. to pronounce, and teach you to pronounce, dogmatically and
catechetically, who was the richest, who was the strongest, who was the
wisest, who was the meekest man, that ever lived; to the facilitation of
which solution, you will readily conceive, a smattering of biography
would in no inconsiderable degree conduce. Leaving the dialects of men
(in one of which I shall take leave to suppose you by this time at least
superficially instituted), you will learn to ascend with him to the
contemplation of that unarticulated language, which was before the
written tongue; and, with the aid of the elder Phrygian or Æsopic key,
to interpret the sounds by which the animal tribes communicate their
minds--evolving moral instruction with delight from the dialogue of
cocks, dogs, and foxes. Or marrying theology with verse, from whose
mixture a beautiful and healthy offspring may be expected, in your own
native accents (but purified) you will keep time together to the
profound harpings of the more modern or Wattsian hymnics.
Thus far I have ventured to conduct you to a "hill-side, whence you may
discern the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious
indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of
goodly prospects and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of
Orpheus was not more charming."[42]
With my best respects to Mr. Grierson, when you see him,
I remain, dear Sir, your obedient servant,
ELIA.
_April 1, 1823._
[42] Milton's Tractate on Education, addressed to Mr. Hartlib.
RITSON _VERSUS_ JOHN SCOTT THE QUAKER
(1823)
Critics I read on other men,
And Hypers upon them again.--_Prior._
I have in my possession Scott's "Critical Essays on some of the Poems of
several English Poets,"--a handsome octavo, bought at the sale of
Ritson's books; and enriched (or deformed, as some would think it) with
MS. annotations in the handwriting of that redoubted Censor. I shall
transcribe a few, which seem most characteristic of both the
writers--Scott, feeble, but amiable--Ritson, coarse, caustic, clever;
and, I am to suppose, not amiable. But they have proved some amusement
to me; and, I hope, will produce some to the reader, this rainy season,
which really damps a gentleman's wings for any original flight, and
obliges him to ransack his shelves, and miscellaneous reading, to
furnish an occasional or make-shift paper. If the sky clears up, and the
sun dances this Easter (as they say he is wont to do), the town may be
troubled with something more in his own way the ensuing month from its
poor servant to command.
ELIA.
DYER'S RUINS OF ROME
----The pilgrim oft
At dead of night 'mid his oraison hears
Aghast the voice of time disparting towers,
Tumbling all precipitate down-dashed,
Rattling around, loud-thund'ring to the moon;
While murmurs sooth each awful interval
Of ever-falling waters.
_Scott_
There is a very bold transposition in this passage. A superficial
reader, not attending to the sense of the epithet _ever_, might be ready
to suppose that the _intervals_ intended were those between the _falling
of the waters_, instead of those between the _falling of the towers_.
_Ritson_
A beauty, as in Thomson's Winter--
----Cheerless towns, far distant, never blest,
Save when its annual course the caravan
Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay,
With news of human kind.[43]
----Where the broad-bosom'd hills,
Swept with perpetual clouds, of Scotland rise,
Me fate compels to tarry.
A superficial person--Mr. Scott, for instance, would be apt to connect
the last clause in this period with the line foregoing--"bends to the
coast of Cathay with news," &c. But has a reader nothing to do but to
sit passive, while the connexion is to glide into his ears like oil?
[43] May I have leave to notice an instance of the same agreeable
discontinuity in my friend Lloyd's admirable poem on Christmas?
DENHAM'S COOPER'S HILL
The stream is so transparent, pure, and clear,
That, had the self-enamour'd youth gaz'd here,
So fatally deceived he had not been,
While he the bottom, not his face had seen.
_Scott_
The last two lines have more music than Denham's can possibly boast.
_Ritson_
May I have leave to conjecture, that in the very last line of all, the
word "the" has erroneously crept in? I am persuaded that the poet wrote
"his." To my mind, at least, this reading, in a surprising degree,
heightens the idea of the extreme clearness and transparency of the
stream, where a man might see _more than his face_ (as it were) in it.
COLLINS'S ORIENTAL ECLOGUES
_Scott_
The second of these little pieces, called Hassan, or the Camel Driver,
is of superior character. This poem contradicts history in one principal
instance; the merchants of the east travel in numerous caravans, but
Hassan is introduced travelling alone in the desart. But this
circumstance detracts little from our author's merit; adherence to
historical fact is _seldom_ required in poetry.
_Ritson_
It is _always_, where the poet unnecessarily transports you to the ends
of the world. If he must plague you with exotic scenery, you have a
right to exact strict local imagery and costume. Why must I learn
Arabic, to read nothing after all but Gay's Fables in another language?
_Scott_
Abra is introduced in a grove, wreathing a flowery chaplet for her hair.
Shakspeare himself could not have devised a more natural and pleasing
incident, than that of the monarch's attention being attracted by her
song:
Great Abbas chanced that fated morn to stray,
By love conducted from the chace away.
Among the vocal vales he heard her song----
_Ritson_
Ch--t?
* * * * *
O stay thee, Agib, for my feet deny,
No longer friendly to my life, to fly----
_Scott_
From the pen of Cowley, such an observation as Secander's, "that his
feet were no longer friendly to his life," might have been expected; but
Collins rarely committed such violations of simplicity.
_Ritson_
Pen of Cowley! impudent goose-quill, how darest thou guess what Cowley
would have written?
GRAY'S CHURCH-YARD ELEGY
Save where the beetle wheels----
_Scott_
The beetle was introduced in poetry by Shakspeare * * *. Shakspeare has
made the most of his description; indeed, far too much, considering the
occasion:
----to black Hecate's summons
The shard-born beetle with his drowsy hum
Hath rung night's yawning peal.----
The imagination must be indeed fertile, which could produce this
ill-placed exuberance of imagery. The poet, when composing this passage,
must have had in his mind all the remote ideas of Hecate, a heathen
Goddess, of a beetle, of night, of a peal of bells, and of that action
of the muscles, commonly called a gape or yawn.
_Ritson_
Numbscull! that would limit an infinite head by the square contents of
thy own numbscull.
_Scott_
The great merit of a poet is not, like Cowley, Donne, and Denham, to say
what no man but himself has thought, but what every man besides himself
has thought; but no man expressed, or, at least, expressed so well.
_Ritson_
In other words, all _that_ is poetry, which Mr. Scott has thought, as
well as the poet; but _that_ cannot be poetry, which was not obvious to
Mr. Scott, as well as to Cowley, Donne, and Denham.
_Scott_
Mr. Mason observes of the language in this part [the Epitaph], that it
has a Doric delicacy. It has, indeed, what I should rather term a _happy
rusticity_.
_Ritson_
Come, see
Rural felicity.
GOLDSMITH'S DESERTED VILLAGE
No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
But all the bloomy flush of life is fled--
All but yon widow'd solitary thing,
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring;
She, wretched matron, forced, in age, for bread,
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,
_Scott_
Our author's language, in this place, is very defective in correctness.
After mentioning the general privation of the "bloomy flush of life,"
the exceptionary "all but" includes, as part of that "bloomy flush," an
aged decrepit matron; that is to say, in plain prose, "the bloomy flush
of life is all fled but one old woman."
_Ritson_
Yet Milton could write:
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the cricket on the hearth,
Or the bell-man's drowsy charm--
and I dare say he was right. O never let a quaker, or a woman, try their
hand at being witty, any more than a Tom Brown affect to speak by the
spirit!
_Scott_
----Aaron Hill, who, although, in general, a bombastic writer, produced
some pieces of merit, particularly the Caveat, an allegorical satire on
Pope.
_Ritson_
Say rather his verses on John Dennis, beginning "Adieu, unsocial
excellence!" which are implicitly a finer satire on Pope than twenty
Caveats. All that Pope could or did say against Dennis, is there
condensed; and what he should have said, and did not, for him, is there
too.[44]
[44]
ON THE DEATH OF MR. DENNIS
Adieu, unsocial excellence! at last
Thy foes are vanquish'd, and thy fears are past:
Want, the grim recompense of truth like thine,
Shall now no longer dim thy destined shrine.
The impatient envy, the disdainful air,
The front malignant, and the captious stare,
The furious petulance, the jealous start,
The mist of frailties that obscured thy heart--
Veil'd in thy grave shall unremember'd lie;
For these were parts of Dennis born to die.
But there's a nobler deity behind;
His reason dies not, and has friends to find:
THOMSON'S SEASONS
_Address to the Angler to spare the young fish_
If yet too young, and easily deceived,
A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod,
Him, piteous of his youth, and the short space
He has enjoy'd the vital light of heaven,
Soft disengage, and back into the stream
The speckled infant throw.----
_Scott_
The praise bestowed on a preceding passage, cannot be justly given to
this. There is in it an attempt at dignity above the occasion. Pathos
seems to have been intended, but affectation only is produced.
_Ritson_
It is not affectation, but it is the mock heroic of pathos, introduced
purposely and wisely to attract the reader to a proposal, which from the
unimportance of the subject--a poor little fish--might else have escaped
his attention--as children learn, or may learn, humanity to animals from
the mock romantic "Perambulations of a Mouse."
HAYMAKING
----Infant hands
Trail the long rake; or, with the fragrant load
O'er-charged, amid the kind oppression roll.
_Scott_
"Kind oppression" is a phrase of that sort, which one scarcely knows
whether to blame or praise: it consists of two words, directly opposite
in their signification; and yet, perhaps, no phrase whatever could have
better conveyed the idea of an easy uninjurious weight--
_Ritson_
--and yet he does not know whether to blame or praise it!
Though here revenge and pride withheld his praise,
No wrongs shall reach him through his future days;
The rising ages shall redeem his name,
And nations read him into lasting fame.
In his defects untaught, his labour'd page
Shall the slow gratitude of Time engage.
Perhaps some story of his pitied woe,
Mix'd in faint shades, may with his memory go,
To touch fraternity with generous shame,
And backward cast an unavailing blame
On times too cold to taste his strength of art,
Yet warm contemners of too weak a heart.
Rest in thy dust, contented with thy lot,
Thy good remember'd, and thy bad forgot.
* * * * * * *
SHEEP-SHEARING
----By many a dog
Compell'd----
* * * * *
The clamour much of men, and boys, and dogs----
* * * * *
_Scott_
The mention of _dogs_ twice was superfluous; it might have been easily
avoided.
_Ritson_
Very true--by mentioning them only once.
_Scott_
Nature is rich in a variety of minute but striking circumstances; some
of which engage the attention of one observer, and some that of another.
_Ritson_
This lover of truth never uttered a truer speech. Give me a lie wth a
spirit in it.
* * * * *
Air, earth, and ocean, smile immense.----
_Scott_
The bombastic "immense smile of air, &c.," better omitted.
_Ritson_
Qute Miltonic--"enormous bliss"--and both, I presume, alike _caviare_ to
the Quaker.
* * * * *
He comes! he comes! in every breeze the power
Of philosophic melancholy comes!
His near approach, the sudden-starting tear,
The glowing cheek, the mild dejected air,
The soften'd feature, and the beating heart,
Pierced deep with many a virtuous pang, declare.
_Scott_
This fine picture is greatly injured by a few words. The power should
have been said to come "upon the breeze;" not "in every breeze;" an
expression which indicates a multiplicity of approaches. If he came "in
every breeze," he must have been always coming--
_Ritson_
--and so he was.
* * * * *
----The branching Oronoque
Rolls a brown deluge, and the native drives
To dwell aloft on life-sufficing trees,
At once his dome, his robe, his food, and arms.
Swell'd by a thousand streams, impetuous hurl'd
From all the roaring Andes, huge descends
The mighty Orellana. _Scarce the Muse
Dares stretch her wing_ o'er this enormous mass
Of rushing water: _scarce she dares attempt_
The sea-like Plata; to whose dread expanse,
Continuous depth, and wond'rous length of course,
Our floods are rills. With unabated force
In silent dignity they sweep along,
And traverse realms unknown, and blooming wilds,
And fruitful desarts, worlds of solitude,
Where the sun smiles, and seasons teem, in vain,
Unseen and unenjoy'd. Forsaking these,
O'er peopled plains they fair-diffusive flow,
And many a nation feed, and circle safe
In their fair bosom many a happy isle,
The seat of blameless Pan, yet undisturb'd
By Christian crimes, and Europe's cruel sons.
Thus pouring on, they proudly seek the deep,
Whose vanquish'd tide, recoiling from the shock,
Yields to this liquid weight of half the globe,
And Ocean trembles for his green domain.
_Scott_
Poets not unfrequently aim at aggrandising their subject, by avowing
their inability to describe it. This is a puerile and inadequate
expedient. Thomson has here, perhaps inadvertently, descended to this
feeble art of exaggeration.
_Ritson_
A magnificent passage, in spite of Duns Scotus! The poet says not a word
about his "inability to describe," nor seems to be thinking about his
readers at all. He is confessing his own feelings, awe-struck with the
contemplation of such o'erwhelming objects; in the same spirit with
which he designates the den of the "green serpent" in another place--
--Which ev'n imagination fears to tread----
* * * * *
----A dazzling deluge reigns, and all
From pole to pole is undistinguish'd blaze.----
_Scott_
From pole to pole, strictly speaking, is improper. _The poet_ meant,
"from one part of the horizon to the other."
_Ritson_
From _his_ pole to _thy_ pole was a more downward declension than "from
the centre thrice," &c.
_Ohe! jam satis_.
LETTER OF ELIA TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
(1823)
Sir,--You have done me an unfriendly office, without perhaps much
considering what you were doing. You have given an ill name to my poor
Lucubrations. In a recent Paper on Infidelity, you usher in a
conditional commendation of them with an exception; which, preceding the
encomium, and taking up nearly the same space with it, must impress your
readers with the notion, that the objectionable parts in them are at
least equal in quantity to the pardonable. The censure is in fact the
criticism; the praise--a concession merely. Exceptions usually follow,
to qualify praise or blame. But there stands your reproof, in the very
front of your notice, in ugly characters, like some bugbear, to frighten
all good Christians from purchasing. Through you I am become an object
of suspicion to preceptors of youth, and fathers of families. "_A book,
which wants only a sounder religious feeling to be as delightful as it
is original._" With no further explanation, what must your readers
conjecture, but that my little volume is some vehicle for heresy or
infidelity? The quotation, which you honour me by subjoining, oddly
enough, is of a character, which bespeaks a temperament in the writer
the very reverse of _that_ your reproof goes to insinuate. Had you been
taxing me with superstition, the passage would have been pertinent to
the censure. Was it worth your while to go so far out of your way to
affront the feelings of an old friend, and commit yourself by an
irrelevant quotation, for the pleasure of reflecting upon a poor child,
an exile at Genoa?
I am at a loss what particular Essay you had in view (if my poor
ramblings amount to that appellation) when you were in such a hurry to
thrust in your objection, like bad news, foremost.--Perhaps the Paper on
"Saying Graces" was the obnoxious feature. I have endeavoured there to
rescue a voluntary duty--good in place, but never, as I remember,
literally commanded--from the charge of an undecent formality. 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.
Or was it _that_ on the "New Year"--in which I have described the
feelings of the merely natural man, on a consideration of the amazing
change, which is supposable to take place on our removal from this
fleshly scene?--If men would honestly confess their misgivings (which
few men will) there are times when the strongest Christians of us, I
believe, have reeled under questionings of such staggering obscurity. I
do not accuse you of this weakness. There are some who tremblingly reach
out shaking hands to the guidance of Faith--Others who stoutly venture
into the dark (their Human Confidence their leader, whom they mistake
for Faith); and, investing themselves beforehand with Cherubic wings, as
they fancy, find their new robes as familiar, and fitting to their
supposed growth and stature in godliness, as the coat they left off
yesterday--Some whose hope totters upon crutches--Others who stalk into
futurity upon stilts.
The contemplation of a Spiritual World,--which, without the addition of
a misgiving conscience, is enough to shake some natures to their
foundation--is smoothly got over by others, who shall float over the
black billows, in their little boat of No-Distrust, as unconcernedly as
over a summer sea. The difference is chiefly constitutional.
One man shall love his friends and his friends' faces; and, under the
uncertainty of conversing with them again, in the same manner and
familiar circumstances of sight, speech, &c., as upon earth--in a moment
of no irreverent weakness--for a dream-while--no more--would be almost
content, for a reward of a life of virtue (if he could ascribe such
acceptance to his lame performances), to take up his portion with those
he loved, and was made to love, in this good world, which he
knows--which was created so lovely, beyond his deservings. Another,
embracing a more exalted vision--so that he might receive indefinite
additaments of power, knowledge, beauty, glory, &c.--is ready to forego
the recognition of humbler individualities of earth, and the old
familiar faces. The shapings of our heavens are the modifications of our
constitution; and Mr. Feeble Mind, or Mr. Great Heart, is born in every
one of us.
Some (and such have been accounted the safest divines) have shrunk from
pronouncing upon the final state of any man; nor dare they pronounce the
case of Judas to be desperate. Others (with stronger optics), as plainly
as with the eye of flesh, shall behold a _given king_ in bliss, and a
_given chamberlain_ in torment; even to the eternising of a cast of the
eye in the latter, his own self-mocked and good-humouredly-borne
deformity on earth, but supposed to aggravate the uncouth and hideous
expression of his pangs in the other place. That one man can presume so
far, and that another would with shuddering disclaim such confidences,
is, I believe, an effect of the nerves purely.
If in either of these Papers, or elsewhere, I have been betrayed into
some levities--not affronting the sanctuary, but glancing perhaps at
some of the out-skirts and extreme edges, the debateable land between
the holy and the profane regions--(for the admixture of man's
inventions, twisting themselves with the name of religion itself, has
artfully made it difficult to touch even the alloy, without, in some
men's estimation, soiling the fine gold)--If I have sported within the
purlieus of serious matter--it was, I dare say, a humour--be not
startled, Sir--which I have unwittingly derived from yourself. You have
all your life been making a jest of the Devil. Not of the scriptural
meaning of that dark essence--personal or allegorical; for the nature is
no where plainly delivered. I acquit you of intentional irreverence. But
indeed you have made wonderfully free with, and been mighty pleasant
upon, the popular idea and attributes of him. A noble Lord, your brother
Visionary, has scarcely taken greater liberties with the material keys,
and merely Catholic notion of St. Peter.--You have flattered him in
prose: you have chanted him in goodly odes. You have been his Jester;
Volunteer Laureat, and self-elected Court Poet to Beëlzebub.
You have never ridiculed, I believe, what you thought to be religion,
but you are always girding at what some pious, but perhaps mistaken
folks, think to be so. For this reason I am sorry to hear, that you are
engaged upon a life of George Fox. I know you will fall into the error
of intermixing some comic stuff with your seriousness. The Quakers
tremble at the subject in your hands. The Methodists are shy of you,
upon account of _their_ founder. But, above all, our Popish brethren are
most in your debt. The errors of that church have proved a fruitful
source to your scoffing vein. Their Legend has been a Golden one to you.
And here, your friends, Sir, have noticed a notable inconsistency. To
the imposing rites, the solemn penances, devout austerities of that
communion; the affecting though erring piety of their hermits; the
silence and solitude of the Chartreux--their crossings, their holy
waters--their Virgin, and their saints--to these, they say, you have
been indebted for the best feelings, and the richest imagery, of your
Epic poetry. You have drawn copious drafts upon Loretto. We thought at
one time you were going post to Rome--but that in the facetious
commentaries, which it is your custom to append so plentifully, and
(some say) injudiciously, to your loftiest performances in this kind,
you spurn the uplifted toe, which you but just now seemed to court;
leave his holiness in the lurch; and show him a fair pair of Protestant
heels under your Romish vestment. When we think you already at the
wicket, suddenly a violent cross wind blows you transverse--
ten thousand leagues awry.
Then might we see
Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost
And flutter'd into rags; then reliques, beads,
Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,
The sport of winds.
You pick up pence by showing the hallowed bones, shrine, and crucifix;
and you take money a second time by exposing the trick of them
afterwards. You carry your verse to Castle Angelo for sale in a morning;
and, swifter than a pedlar can transmute his pack, you are at Canterbury
with your prose ware before night.
Sir, is it that I dislike you in this merry vein? The very reverse. No
countenance becomes an intelligent jest better than your own. It is your
grave aspect, when you look awful upon your poor friends, which I would
deprecate.
In more than one place, if I mistake not, you have been pleased to
compliment me at the expence of my companions. I cannot accept your
compliment at such a price. The upbraiding a man's poverty naturally
makes him look about him, to see whether he be so poor indeed as he is
presumed to be. You have put me upon counting my riches. Really, Sir, I
did not know I was so wealthy in the article of friendships. There
is----, and----, whom you never heard of, but exemplary characters both,
and excellent church-goers; and N., mine and my father's friend for
nearly half a century; and the enthusiast for Wordsworth's poetry, T. N.
T., a little tainted with Socinianism, it is to be feared, but constant
in his attachments, and a capital critic; and----, a sturdy old
Athanasian, so that sets all to rights again; and W., the light, and
warm-as-light hearted, Janus of the London; and the translator of Dante,
still a curate, modest and amiable C.; and Allan C., the large-hearted
Scot; and P----r, candid and affectionate as his own poetry; and A----p,
Coleridge's friend; and G----n, his more than friend; and Coleridge
himself, the same to me still, as in those old evenings, when we used to
sit and speculate (do you remember them, Sir?) at our old Salutation
tavern, upon Pantisocracy and golden days to come on earth; and W----th,
(why, Sir, I might drop my rent-roll here; such goodly farms and manors
have I reckoned up already. In what possessions has not this last name
alone estated me!--but I will go on)--and M., the noble-minded kinsman,
by wedlock, of W----th; and H. C. R., unwearied in the offices of a
friend; and Clarkson, almost above the narrowness of that relation, yet
condescending not seldom heretofore from the labours of his
world-embracing charity to bless my humble roof; and the gall-less and
single-minded Dyer; and the high-minded associate of Cook, the veteran
Colonel, with his lusty heart still sending cartels of defiance to old
Time; and, not least, W. A., the last and steadiest left to me of that
little knot of whist-players, that used to assemble weekly, for so many
years, at the Queen's Gate (you remember them, Sir?) and called Admiral
Burney friend.
I will come to the point at once. I believe you will not make many
exceptions to my associates so far. But I have purposely omitted some
intimacies, which I do not yet repent of having contracted, with two
gentlemen, diametrically opposed to yourself in principles. You will
understand me to allude to the authors of Rimini and of the Table Talk.
And first, of the former.----
It is an error more particularly incident to persons of the correctest
principles and habits, to seclude themselves from the rest of mankind,
as from another species; and form into knots and clubs. The best people,
herding thus exclusively, are in danger of contracting a narrowness.
Heat and cold, dryness and moisture, in the natural world, do not fly
asunder, to split the globe into sectarian parts and separations; but
mingling, as they best may, correct the malignity of any single
predominance. The analogy holds, I suppose, in the moral world. If all
the good people were to ship themselves off to Terra Incognitas, what,
in humanity's name, is to become of the refuse? If the persons, whom I
have chiefly in view, have not pushed matters to this extremity yet,
they carry them as far as they can go. Instead of mixing with the
infidel and the freethinker--in the room of opening a negociation, to
try at least to find out at which gate the error entered--they huddle
close together, in a weak fear of infection, like that pusillanimous
underling in Spenser--
This is the wandering wood, this Error's den;
A monster vile, whom God and man does hate:
Therefore, I reed, beware. Fly, fly, quoth then
The fearful Dwarf,
and, if they be writers in orthodox journals--addressing themselves
only to the irritable passions of the unbeliever--they proceed in a safe
system of strengthening the strong hands, and confirming the valiant
knees; of converting the already converted, and proselyting their own
party. I am the more convinced of this from a passage in the very
Treatise which occasioned this letter. It is where, having recommended
to the doubter the writings of Michaelis and Lardner, you ride
triumphant over the necks of all infidels, sceptics, and dissenters,
from this time to the world's end, upon the wheels of two unanswerable
deductions. I do not hold it meet to set down, in a Miscellaneous
Compilation like this, such religious words as you have thought fit to
introduce into the pages of a petulant Literary Journal. I therefore beg
leave to substitute _numerals_, and refer to the Quarterly Review (for
July) for filling of them up. "Here," say you, "as in the history of 7,
if these books are authentic, the events which they relate must be true;
if they were written by 8, 9 is 10 and 11." Your first deduction, if it
means honestly, rests upon two identical propositions; though I suspect
an unfairness in one of the terms, which this would not be quite the
proper place for explicating. At all events _you_ have no cause to
triumph; you have not been proving the premises, but refer for
satisfaction therein to very long and laborious works, which may well
employ the sceptic a twelvemonth or two to digest, before he can
possibly be ripe for your conclusion. When he has satisfied himself
about the premises, he will concede to you the inference, I dare say,
most readily.--But your latter deduction, _viz_. that because 8 has
written a book concerning 9, therefore 10 and 11 was certainly his
meaning, is one of the most extraordinary conclusions _per saltum_ that
I have had the good fortune to meet with. As far as 10 is verbally
asserted in the writings, all sects must agree with you; but you cannot
be ignorant of the many various ways in which the doctrine of the
* * * * * * * * * has been understood, from a low figurative expression
(with the Unitarians) up to the most mysterious actuality; in which
highest sense alone you and your church take it. And for 11, that there
is _no other possible conclusion_--to hazard this in the face of so many
thousands of Arians and Socinians, &c., who have drawn so opposite a
one, is such a piece of theological hardihood, as, I think, warrants me
in concluding that, when you sit down to pen theology, you do not at all
consider your opponents; but have in your eye, merely and exclusively,
readers of the same way of thinking with yourself, and therefore have no
occasion to trouble yourself with the quality of the logic, to which you
treat them.
Neither can I think, if you had had the welfare of the poor child--over
whose hopeless condition you whine so lamentably and (I must think)
unseasonably--seriously at heart, that you could have taken the step of
sticking him up by name--T. H. is as good as _naming_ him--to perpetuate
an outrage upon the parental feelings, as long as the Quarterly Review
shall last.--Was it necessary to specify an individual case, and give to
Christian compassion the appearance of personal attack? Is this the way
to conciliate unbelievers, or not rather to widen the breach
irreparably?
I own I could never think so considerably of myself as to decline the
society of an agreeable or worthy man upon difference of opinion only.
The impediments and the facilitations to a sound belief are various and
inscrutable as the heart of man. Some believe upon weak principles.
Others cannot feel the efficacy of the strongest. One of the most
candid, most upright, and single-meaning men, I ever knew, was the late
Thomas Holcroft. I believe he never said one thing and meant another, in
his life; and, as near as I can guess, he never acted otherwise than
with the most scrupulous attention to conscience. Ought we to wish the
character false, for the sake of a hollow compliment to Christianity?
Accident introduced me to the acquaintance of Mr. L. H.--and the
experience of his many friendly qualities confirmed a friendship between
us. You, who have been misrepresented yourself, I should hope, have not
lent an idle ear to the calumnies which have been spread abroad
respecting this gentleman. I was admitted to his household for some
years, and do most solemnly aver that I believe him to be in his
domestic relations as correct as any man. He chose an ill-judged subject
for a poem; the peccant humours of which have been visited on him
tenfold by the artful use, which his adversaries have made, of an
_equivocal term_. The subject itself was started by Dante, but better
because brieflier treated of. But the crime of the Lovers, in the
Italian and the English poet, with its aggravated enormity of
circumstance, is not of a kind (as the critics of the latter well knew)
with those conjunctions, for which Nature herself has provided no
excuse, because no temptation.--It has nothing in common with the black
horrors, sung by Ford and Massinger. The familiarising of it in tale or
fable may be for that reason incidentally more contagious. In spite of
Rimini, I must look upon its author as a man of taste, and a poet. He is
better than so, he is one of the most cordial-minded men I ever knew,
and matchless as a fire-side companion. I mean not to affront or wound
your feelings when I say that, in his more genial moods, he has often
reminded me of you. There is the same air of mild dogmatism--the same
condescending to a boyish sportiveness--in both your conversations. His
hand-writing is so much the same with your own, that I have opened more
than one letter of his, hoping, nay, not doubting, but it was from you,
and have been disappointed (he will bear with my saying so) at the
discovery of my error. L. H. is unfortunate in holding some loose and
not very definite speculations (for at times I think he hardly knows
whither his premises would carry him) on marriage--the tenets, I
conceive, of the Political Justice, carried a little further. For any
thing I could discover in his practice, they have reference, like those,
to some future possible condition of society, and not to the present
times. But neither for these obliquities of thinking (upon which my own
conclusions are as distant as the poles asunder)--nor for his political
asperities and petulancies, which are wearing out with the heats and
vanities of youth--did I select him for a friend; but for qualities
which fitted him for that relation. I do not know whether I flatter
myself with being the occasion, but certain it is, that, touched with
some misgivings for sundry harsh things which he had written aforetime
against our friend C.,--before he left this country he sought a
reconciliation with that gentleman (himself being his own introducer),
and found it.
L. H. is now in Italy; on his departure to which land with much regret I
took my leave of him and of his little family--seven of them, Sir, with
their mother--and as kind a set of little people (T. H. and all), as
affectionate children, as ever blessed a parent. Had you seen them, Sir,
I think you could not have looked upon them as so many little
Jonases--but rather as pledges of the vessel's safety, that was to bear
such a freight of love.
I wish you would read Mr. H.'s lines to that same T. H., "six years old,
during a sickness:"
Sleep breaks [breathes] at last from out thee,
My little patient boy--
(they are to be found on the 47th page of "Foliage")--and ask yourself
how far they are out of the spirit of Christianity. I have a letter from
Italy, received but the other day, into which L. H. has put as much
heart, and as many friendly yearnings after old associates, and native
country, as, I think, paper can well hold. It would do you no hurt to
give that the perusal also.
From the _other gentleman_ I neither expect nor desire (as he is well
assured) any such concessions as L. H. made to C. What hath soured him,
and made him to suspect his friends of infidelity towards him, when
there was no such matter, I know not. I stood well with him for fifteen
years (the proudest of my life), and have ever spoke my full mind of him
to some, to whom his panegyric must naturally be least tasteful. I never
in thought swerved from him, I never betrayed him, I never slackened in
my admiration of him, I was the same to him (neither better nor worse)
though he could not see it, as in the days when he thought fit to trust
me. At this instant, he may be preparing for me some compliment, above
my deserts, as he has sprinkled many such among his admirable books, for
which I rest his debtor; or, for any thing I know, or can guess to the
contrary, he may be about to read a lecture on my weaknesses. He is
welcome to them (as he was to my humble hearth), if they can divert a
spleen, or ventilate a fit of sullenness. I wish he would not quarrel
with the world at the rate he does; but the reconciliation must be
effected by himself, and I despair of living to see that day. But,
protesting against much that he has written, and some things which he
chooses to do; judging him by his conversation, which I enjoyed so long,
and relished so deeply; or by his books, in those places where no
clouding passion intervenes--I should belie my own conscience, if I said
less, than that I think W. H. to be, in his natural and healthy state,
one of the wisest and finest spirits breathing. So far from being
ashamed of that intimacy, which was betwixt us, it is my boast that I
was able for so many years to have preserved it entire; and I think I
shall go to my grave without finding, or expecting to find, such another
companion. But I forget my manners--you will pardon me, Sir--I return to
the correspondence.----
Sir, you were pleased (you know where) to invite me to a compliance with
the wholesome forms and doctrines of the Church of England. I take your
advice with as much kindness, as it was meant. But I must think the
invitation rather more kind than seasonable. I am a Dissenter. The last
sect, with which you can remember me to have made common profession,
were the Unitarians. You would think it not very pertinent, if (fearing
that all was not well with you), I were gravely to invite you (for a
remedy) to attend with me a course of Mr. Belsham's Lectures at Hackney.
Perhaps I have scruples to some of your forms and doctrines. But if I
come, am I secure of civil treatment?--The last time I was in any of
your places of worship was on Easter Sunday last. I had the satisfaction
of listening to a very sensible sermon of an argumentative turn,
delivered with great propriety, by one of your bishops. The place was
Westminster Abbey. As such religion, as I have, has always acted on me
more by way of sentiment than argumentative process, I was not
unwilling, after sermon ended, by no unbecoming transition, to pass over
to some serious feelings, impossible to be disconnected from the sight
of those old tombs, &c. But, by whose order I know not, I was debarred
that privilege even for so short a space as a few minutes; and turned,
like a dog or some profane person, out into the common street; with
feelings, which I could not help, but not very genial to the day or the
discourse. I do not know that I shall ever venture myself again into one
of your Churches.
You had your education at Westminster; 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
[from] 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 fabrick. 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. Show the poor, that you can sometimes think
of them in some other light than as mutineers and mal-contents.
Conciliate them by such kind methods to their superiors, civil and
ecclesiastical. Stop the mouths of the railers; and suffer your old
friends, upon the old terms, again to honour and admire you. Stifle not
the suggestions of your better nature with the stale evasion, 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? Did 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 Fabrick, 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 school-boy, 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?--can you help us in this
emergency to find the nose?--or can you give Chantry a notion (from
memory) of its pristine life and vigour? I am willing for peace' sake to
subscribe my guinea towards a restoration of the lamented feature.
I am, Sir,
Your humble servant,
ELIA.
GUY FAUX
(1811 and 1823)
A very ingenious and subtle writer, whom there is good reason for
suspecting to be an Ex-Jesuit, not unknown at Douay some five-and-twenty
years since (he will not obtrude himself at M----th again in a hurry),
about a twelvemonth back, set himself to prove the character of the
Powder Plot conspirators to have been that of heroic self-devotedness
and true Christian martyrdom. Under the mask of Protestant candour, he
actually gained admission for his treatise into a London weekly paper,
not particularly distinguished for its zeal towards either religion.
But, admitting Catholic principles, his arguments are shrewd and
incontrovertible. He says--
Guy Faux was a fanatic, but he was no hypocrite. He ranks among
_good haters_. He was cruel, bloody-minded, reckless of all
considerations but those of an infuriated and bigoted faith; but he
was a true son of the Catholic Church, a martyr and a confessor,
for all that. He who can prevail upon himself to devote his life
for a cause, however we may condemn his opinions or abhor his
actions, vouches at least for the honesty of his principles and the
disinterestedness of his motives. He may be guilty of the worst
practices, but he is capable of the greatest. He is no longer a
slave, but free. The contempt of death is the beginning of virtue.
The hero of the Gunpowder-Plot was, if you will, a fool, a madman,
an assassin; call him what names you please: still he was neither
knave nor coward. He did not propose to blow up the Parliament and
come off scot-free, himself; he showed that he valued his own life
no more than theirs in such a cause--where the integrity of the
Catholic faith and the salvation of perhaps millions of souls was
at stake. He did not call it a murder, but a sacrifice which he was
about to achieve: he was armed with the Holy Spirit and with fire:
he was the Church's chosen servant and her blessed martyr. He
comforted himself as "the best of cut-throats." How many wretches
are there who would have undertaken to do what he intended for a
sum of money, if they could have got off with impunity! How few are
there who would have put themselves in Guy Faux's situation to save
the universe! Yet in the latter case we affect to be thrown into
greater consternation than at the most unredeemed acts of villany,
as if the absolute disinterestedness of the motive doubled the
horror of the deed! The cowardice and selfishness of mankind are in
fact shocked at the consequences to themselves (if such examples
are held up for imitation,) and they make a fearful outcry against
the violation of every principle of morality, lest they too should
be called on for any such tremendous sacrifices--lest they in their
turn should have to go on the forlorn hope of extra-official duty.
_Charity begins at home_, is a maxim that prevails as well in the
courts of conscience as in those of prudence. We would be thought
to shudder at the consequences of crime to others, while we tremble
for them to ourselves. We talk of the dark and cowardly assassin;
and this is well, when an individual shrinks from the face of an
enemy, and purchases his own safety by striking a blow in the dark:
but how the charge of cowardly can be applied to the public
assassin, who, in the very act of destroying another, lays down his
life as the pledge and forfeit of his sincerity and boldness, I am
at a loss to devise. There may be barbarous prejudice, rooted
hatred, unprincipled treachery, in such an act; but he who resolves
to take all the danger and odium upon himself, can no more be
branded with cowardice, than Regulus devoting himself for his
country, or Codrus leaping into the fiery gulf. A wily Father
Inquisitor, coolly and with plenary authority condemning hundreds
of helpless, unoffending victims, to the flames or to the horrors
of a living tomb, while he himself would not suffer a hair of his
head to be hurt, is to me a character without any qualifying trait
in it. Again; the Spanish conqueror and hero, the favourite of his
monarch, who enticed thirty thousand poor Mexicans into a large
open building, under promise of strict faith and cordial good-will,
and then set fire to it, making sport of the cries and agonies of
these deluded creatures, is an instance of uniting the most
hardened cruelty with the most heartless selfishness. His plea was
keeping no faith with heretics: this was Guy Faux's too; but I am
sure at least that the latter kept faith with himself: he was in
earnest in his professions. _His_ was not gay, wanton, unfeeling
depravity; he did not murder in sport; it was serious work that he
had taken in hand. To see this arch-bigot, this heart-whole
traitor, this pale miner in the infernal regions, skulking in his
retreat with his cloak and dark lanthorn, moving cautiously about
among his barrels of gunpowder loaded with death, but not yet ripe
for destruction, regardless of the lives of others, and more than
indifferent to his own, presents a picture of the strange
infatuation of the human understanding, but not of the depravity of
the human will, without an equal. There were thousands of pious
Papists privy to and ready to applaud the deed when done:--there
was no one but our old fifth-of-November friend, who still flutters
in rags and straw on the occasion, that had the courage to attempt
it. In him stern duty and unshaken faith prevailed over natural
frailty.
It is impossible, upon Catholic principles, not to admit the force of
this reasoning; we can only not help smiling (with the writer) at the
simplicity of the gulled editor, swallowing the dregs of Loyola for the
very quintessence of sublimated reason in England at the commencement of
the nineteenth century. We will just, as a contrast, show what we
Protestants (who are a party concerned) thought upon the same subject,
at a period rather nearer to the heroic project in question.
The Gunpowder Treason was the subject which called forth the earliest
specimen which is left us of the pulpit eloquence of Jeremy Taylor. When
he preached the Sermon on that anniversary, which is printed at the end
of the folio edition of his Sermons, he was a young man just commencing
his ministry, under the auspices of Archbishop Laud. From the learning,
and maturest oratory, which it manifests, one should rather have
conjectured it to have proceeded from the same person after he was
ripened by time into a Bishop and Father of the Church.--"And, really,
these _Romano-barbari_ could never pretend to any precedent for an act
so barbarous as theirs. Adramelech, indeed, killed a king, but he spared
the people; Haman would have killed the people, but spared the king; but
that both king and people, princes and judges, branch and rush and root,
should die at once (as if Caligula's wish were actuated, and all England
upon one head), was never known till now, that all the malice of the
world met in this as in a centre. The Sicilian even-song, the matins of
St. Bartholomew, known for the pitiless and damned massacres, were but
[Greek: kapnou skias onar], the dream of the shadow of smoke, if
compared with this great fire. _In tam occupato sæculo fabulas vulgares
nequitia non invenit._ This was a busy age; Herostratus must have
invented a more sublimed malice than the burning of one temple, or not
have been so much as spoke of since the discovery of the powder treason.
But I must make more haste, I shall not else climb the sublimity of this
impiety. Nero was sometimes the _populare odium_, was popularly hated,
and deserved it too, for he slew his master, and his wife, and all his
family, once or twice over,--opened his mother's womb,--fired the city,
laughed at it, slandered the Christians for it; but yet all these were
but _principia malorum_, the very first rudiments of evil. Add, then, to
these, Herod's master-piece at Ramah, as it was deciphered by the tears
and sad threnes of the matrons in an universal mourning for the loss of
their pretty infants; yet this of Herod will prove but an infant
wickedness, and that of Nero the evil but of one city. I would willingly
have found out an example, but see I cannot; should I put into the scale
the extract of all the old tyrants famous in antique stories,--
Bistonii stabulum regis, Busiridis aras,
Antiphatæ mensas, et Taurica regna Thoantis;--
should I take for true story the highest cruelty as it was fancied by
the most hieroglyphical Egyptian, this alone would weigh them down, as
if the Alps were put in a scale against the dust of a balance. For had
this accursed treason prospered, we should have had the whole kingdom
mourn for the inestimable loss of its chiefest glory, its life, its
present joy, and all its very hopes for the future. For such was their
destined malice, that they would not only have inflicted so cruel a
blow, but have made it incurable, by cutting off our supplies of joy,
the whole succession of the Line Royal. Not only the vine itself, but
all the _gemmulæ_, and the tender olive branches, should either have
been bent to their intentions, and made to grow crooked, or else been
broken.
"And now, after such a sublimity of malice, I will not instance in the
sacrilegious ruin of the neighbouring temples, which needs must have
perished in the flame,--nor in the disturbing the ashes of our intombed
kings, devouring their dead ruins like sepulchral dogs,--these are but
minutes, in respect of the ruin prepared for the living temples:--
Stragem sed istam non tulit
Christus cadentum Principum
Impune, ne forsan sui
Patris periret fabrica.
Ergo quæ poterit lingua retexere
Laudes, Christe, tuas, qui domitum struis
Infidum populum cum Duce perfido!"
In such strains of eloquent indignation did Jeremy Taylor's young
oratory inveigh against that stupendous attempt, which he truly says had
no parallel in ancient or modern times. A century and a half of European
crimes has elapsed since he made the assertion, and his position remains
in its strength. He wrote near the time in which the nefarious project
had like to have been completed. Men's minds still were shuddering from
the recentness of the escape. It must have been within his memory, or
have been sounded in his ears so young by his parents, that he would
seem, in his maturer years, to have remembered it. No wonder then that
he describes it in words that burn. But to us, to whom the tradition has
come slowly down, and has had time to cool, the story of Guido Vaux
sounds rather like a tale, a fable, and an invention, than true history.
It supposes such gigantic audacity of daring, combined with such more
than infantile stupidity in the motive,--such a combination of the fiend
and the monkey,--that credulity is almost swallowed up in contemplating
the singularity of the attempt. It has accordingly, in some degree,
shared the fate of fiction. It is familiarized to us in a kind of
serio-ludicrous way, like the story of _Guy of Warwick_, or _Valentine
and Orson_. The way which we take to perpetuate the memory of this
deliverance is well adapted to keep up this fabular notion. Boys go
about the streets annually with a beggarly scarecrow dressed up, which
is to be burnt, indeed, at night, with holy zeal; but, meantime, they
beg a penny for _poor Guy_: this periodical petition, which we have
heard from our infancy,--combined with the dress and appearance of the
effigy, so well calculated to move compassion,--has the effect of quite
removing from our fancy the horrid circumstances of the story which is
thus commemorated; and in _poor Guy_ vainly should we try to recognize
any of the features of that tremendous madman in iniquity, Guido Vaux,
with his horrid crew of accomplices, that sought to emulate earthquakes
and bursting volcanoes in their more than mortal mischief.
Indeed, the whole ceremony of burning Guy Faux, or _the Pope_, as he is
indifferently called, is a sort of _Treason Travestie_, and admirably
adapted to lower our feelings upon this memorable subject. The printers
of the little duodecimo _Prayer Book_, printed by T. Baskett,[45] in
1749, which has the effigy of his sacred Majesty George II. piously
prefixed, have illustrated the service (a very fine one in itself) which
is appointed for the Anniversary of this Day, with a print, which it is
not very easy to describe, but the contents appear to be these:--The
scene is a room, I conjecture, in the king's palace. Two persons,--one
of whom I take to be James himself, from his wearing his hat while the
other stands bareheaded,--are intently surveying a sort of speculum, or
magic mirror, which stands upon a pedestal in the midst of the room, in
which a little figure of Guy Faux with his dark lantern approaching the
door of the Parliament House is made discernible by the light proceeding
from a _great eye_ which shines in from the topmost corner of the
apartment, by which eye the pious artist no doubt meant to designate
Providence. On the other side of the mirror, is a figure doing
something, which puzzled me when a child, and continues to puzzle me
now. The best I can make of it is, that it is a conspirator busy laying
the train,--but then, why is he represented in the king's
chamber?--Conjecture upon so fantastical a design is vain, and I only
notice the print as being one of the earliest graphic representations
which woke my childhood into wonder, and doubtless combined with the
mummery before-mentioned, to take off the edge of that horror which the
naked historical mention of Guido's conspiracy could not have failed of
exciting.
[45] The same, I presume, upon whom the clergyman in the song of the
_Vicar and Moses_, not without judgment, passes this memorable
censure--
Here, Moses, the King:--
'Tis a scandalous thing
That this Baskett should print for the Crown.
Now that so many years are past since that abominable machination was
happily frustrated, it will not, I hope, be considered a profane
sporting with the subject, if we take no very serious survey of the
consequences that would have flowed from this plot if it had had a
successful issue. The first thing that strikes us, in a selfish point of
view, is the material change which it must have produced in the course
of the nobility. All the ancient peerage being extinguished, as it was
intended, at one blow, the _Red-Book_ must have been closed for ever, or
a new race of peers must have been created to supply the deficiency; as
the first part of this dilemma is a deal too shocking to think of, what
a fund of mouth-watering reflections does this give rise to in the
breast of us plebeians of A.D. 1823. Why you or I, reader, might have
been Duke of ---- or Earl of ----: I particularize no titles, to avoid
the least suspicion of intention to usurp the dignities of the two
noblemen whom I have in my eye:--but a feeling more dignified than envy
sometimes excites a sigh, when I think how the posterity of Guido's
Legion of Honour (among whom you or I might have been) might have rolled
down "dulcified," as Burke expresses it, "by an exposure to the
influence of heaven in a long flow of generations, from the hard,
acidulous, metallic tincture of the spring."[46] What new orders of
merit, think you, this English Napoleon would have chosen? Knights of
the Barrel, or Lords of the Tub, Grand Almoners of the Cellar, or
Ministers of Explosion. We should have given the Train _couchant_, and
the Fire _rampant_ in our arms; we should have quartered the dozen white
matches in our coats;--the Shallows would have been nothing to us.
[46] Letter to a Noble Lord.
Turning away from these mortifying reflections, let us contemplate its
effects upon the _other house_, for they were all to have gone
together,--King, Lords, Commons.----
To assist our imagination, let us take leave to suppose,--and we do it
in the harmless wantonness of fancy,--to suppose that the tremendous
explosion had taken place in our days;--we better know what a House of
Commons is in our days, and can better estimate our loss;--let us
imagine, then, to ourselves, the United Members sitting in full conclave
above--Faux just ready with his train and matches below; in his hand a
"reed tipt with fire"--he applies the fatal engine----
To assist our notions still further, let us suppose some lucky dog of a
reporter, who had escaped by miracle upon some plank of St. Stephen's
benches, and came plump upon the roof of the adjacent Abbey, from whence
descending, at some neighbouring coffee-house, first wiping his clothes
and calling for a glass of lemonade, he sits down and reports what he
had heard and seen (quorum pars magna fuit) for the _Morning Post_ or
the _Courier_,--we can scarcely imagine him describing the event in any
other words but some such as these:--
"A _Motion_ was put and carried, That this House do _adjourn_: That the
Speaker do _quit the Chair_. The House ROSE amid clamours for Order."
In some such way the event might most technically have been conveyed to
the public. But a poetical mind, not content with this dry method of
narration, cannot help pursuing the effects of this tremendous blowing
up, this adjournment in the air _sine die_. It sees the benches
mount,--the Chair first, and then the benches, and first the Treasury
Bench, hurried up in this nitrous explosion; the Members, as it were,
pairing off; Whigs and Tories taking their friendly apotheosis together,
(as they did their sandwiches below in Bellamy's room). Fancy, in her
flight, keeps pace with the aspiring legislators, she sees the awful
seat of order mounting till it becomes finally fixed a constellation,
next to Cassiopeia's chair,--the wig of him that sat in it taking its
place near Berenice's curls. St. Peter, at Heaven's wicket,--no, not St.
Peter,--St. Stephen, with open arms, receives his own.----
While Fancy beholds these celestial appropriations, Reason, no less
pleased, discerns the mighty benefit which so complete a renovation must
produce below. Let the most determined foe to corruption, the most
thorough-paced redresser of abuses, try to conceive a more absolute
purification of the House than this was calculated to produce;--why,
Pride's Purge was nothing to it;--the whole borough-mongering system
would have been got rid of, fairly _exploded_;--with it, the senseless
distinctions of party must have disappeared; faction must have vanished;
corruption have expired in air. From Hundred, Tything, and Wapentake,
some new Alfred would have convened, in all its purity, the primitive
Wittenagemot,--fixed upon a basis of property or population, permanent
as the poles----
From this dream of universal restitution, Reason and Fancy with
difficulty awake to view the real state of things. But, blessed be
Heaven, St. Stephen's walls are yet standing, all her seats firmly
secured; nay, some have doubted (since the Septennial Act) whether
gunpowder itself, or any thing short of a _Committee above stairs_,
would be able to shake any one member from his seat;--that great and
final improvement to the Abbey, which is all that seems wanting,--the
removing Westminster-hall and its appendages, and letting in the view of
the Thames,--must not be expected in our days. Dismissing, therefore,
all such speculations as mere tales of a tub, it is the duty of every
honest Englishman to endeavour, by means less wholesale than Guido's, to
ameliorate, without extinguishing, Parliaments; to hold the _lantern_ to
the dark places of corruption; to apply the _match_ to the rotten parts
of the system only; and to wrap himself up, not in the muffling mantle
of conspiracy, but in the warm, honest _cloak_ of integrity and
patriotic intention.
ELIA.
NUGÆ CRITICÆ
ON A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST"
(1823)
As long as I can remember the play of the Tempest, one passage in it has
always set me upon wondering. It has puzzled me beyond measure. In vain
I strove to find the meaning of it. I seemed doomed to cherish infinite
hopeless curiosity.
It is where Prospero, relating the banishment of Sycorax from Argier,
adds--
--For one thing that she did
They would not take her life--
how have I pondered over this, when a boy! how have I longed for some
authentic memoir of the witch to clear up the obscurity!--Was the story
extant in the Chronicles of Algiers? Could I get at it by some fortunate
introduction to the Algerine ambassador? Was a voyage thither
practicable? The Spectator (I knew) went to Grand Cairo, only to measure
a pyramid. Was not the object of my quest of at least as much
importance?--The blue-eyed hag--could _she_ have done any thing good or
meritorious? might that Succubus relent? then might there be hope for
the devil. I have often admired since, that none of the commentators
have boggled at this passage--how they could swallow this camel--such a
tantalising piece of obscurity, such an abortion of an anecdote.
At length I think I have lighted upon a clue, which may lead to show
what was passing in the mind of Shakspeare when he dropped this
imperfect rumour. In the "accurate description of Africa, by John Ogilby
(Folio), 1670," page 230, I find written, as follows. The marginal title
to the narrative is--
_Charles the Fifth besieges Algier_
In the last place, we will briefly give an Account of the Emperour
_Charles_ the Fifth, when he besieg'd this City; and of the great
Loss he suffer'd therein.
This Prince in the Year One thousand five hundred forty one, having
Embarqued upon the Sea an Army of Twenty two thousand Men aboard
Eighteen Gallies, and an hundred tall Ships, not counting the
Barques and Shallops, and other small Boats, in which he had
engaged the principal of the _Spanish_ and _Italian_ Nobility, with
a good number of the Knights of _Maltha_; he was to Land on the
Coast of _Barbary_, at a Cape call'd _Matifou_. From this place
unto the City of _Algier_ a flat Shore or Strand extends it self
for about four Leagues, the which is exceeding favourable to
Gallies. There he put ashore with his Army, and in a few days
caused a Fortress to be built, which unto this day is call'd _The
Castle of the Emperor_.
In the meantime the City of _Algier_ took the Alarm, having in it
at that time but Eight hundred _Turks_, and Six thousand _Moors_,
poorspirited men, and unexercised in Martial affairs; besides it
was at that time Fortifi'd onely with Walls, and had no Out-works:
Insomuch that by reason of its weakness, and the great Forces of
the Emperour, it could not in appearance escape taking. In fine, it
was Attaqued with such Order, that the Army came up to the very
Gates, where _the Chevalier de Sauignac_, a _Frenchman_ by Nation,
made himself remarkable above all the rest, by the miracles of his
Valour. For having repulsed the _Turks_, who having made a Sally at
the Gate call'd _Babason_, and there desiring to enter along with
them, when he saw that they shut the Gate upon him, he ran his
Ponyard into the same, and left it sticking deep therein. They next
fell to Battering the City by the Force of Cannon; which the
Assailants so weakened, that in that great extremity the Defendants
lost their Courage, and resolved to surrender.
But as they were thus intending, there was a Witch of the Town,
whom the History doth not name, which went to seek out _Assam Aga_,
that Commanded within, and pray'd him to make it good yet nine Days
longer, with assurance, that within that time he should infallibly
see _Algier_ delivered from that Siege, and the whole Army of the
Enemy dispersed, so that _Christians_ should be as cheap as Birds.
In a word, the thing did happen in the manner as foretold; for upon
the Twenty first day of _October_ in the same Year, there fell a
continual Rain upon the Land, and so furious a Storm at Sea, that
one might have seen Ships hoisted into the Clouds, and in one
instant again precipitated into the bottom of the Water: insomuch
that that same dreadful Tempest was followed with the loss of
fifteen Gallies, and above an hundred other Vessels; which was the
cause why the Emperour, seeing his Army wasted by the bad Weather,
pursued by Famine, occasioned by wrack of his Ships, in which was
the greatest part of his Victuals and Ammunition, he was
constrain'd to raise the Siege, and set Sail for _Sicily_, whither
he Retreated with the miserable Reliques of his Fleet.
In the mean time that Witch being acknowledged the Deliverer of
_Algier_, was richly remunerated, and the Credit of her Charms
authorized. So that ever since Witchcraft hath been very freely
tolerated; of which the Chief of the Town, and even those who are
esteem'd to be of greatest Sanctity among them, such as are the
Marabou's, a Religious Order of their Sect, do for the most part
make Profession of it, under a goodly Pretext of certain
Revelations which they say they have had from their Prophet
_Mahomet_.
And hereupon those of _Algier_, to palliate the shame and the
reproaches that are thrown upon them for making use of a Witch in
the danger of this Siege, do say, that the loss of the Forces of
_Charles_ V., was caused by a Prayer of one of their _Marabou's_,
named _Cidy Utica_, which was at that time in great Credit, not
under the notion of a _Magitian_, but for a person of a holy life.
Afterwards in remembrance of their success, they have erected unto
him a small mosque without the _Babason_ Gate, where he is buried,
and in which they keep sundry Lamps burning in honour of him: nay
they sometimes repair thither to make their _Sala_, for a testimony
of greater Veneration.
Can it be doubted for a moment, that the dramatist had come fresh from
reading some _older narrative_ of this deliverance of Algier by a witch,
and transferred the merit of the deed to his Sycorax, exchanging only
the "rich remuneration," which did not suit his purpose, to the simple
pardon of her life? Ogilby wrote in 1670; but the authorities to which
he refers for his Account of Barbary are--Johannes de Leo, or
Africanus--Louis Marmol--Diego de Haedo--Johannes Gramaye--Bræves--Cel.
Curio--and Diego de Torres--names totally unknown to me--and to which I
beg leave to refer the curious reader for his fuller satisfaction.
L.
ORIGINAL LETTER OF JAMES THOMSON
(1824)
The following very interesting letter has been recovered from oblivion,
or at least from neglect, by our friend Elia, and the public will no
doubt thank him for the deed. It is without date or superscription in
the manuscript, which (as our contributor declares) was in so
"fragmentitious" a state as to perplex his transcribing faculties in the
extreme. The poet's love of nature is quite evident from one part of it;
and the "poetical posture of his affairs" from another. Whether regarded
as elucidating the former or the latter, it is a document not a little
calculated to excite the attention of the curious as well as the
critical. We could ourselves write an essayful of conjectures from the
grounds it affords both with respect to the author's poems and his
pride. But we must take another opportunity, or leave it to his next
biographer.
DEAR SIR,
I would chide you for the slackness of your correspondence; but having
blamed you wrongeously[47] last time, I shall say nothing till I hear
from you, which I hope will be soon.
[47] _Sic in MS._
There's a little business I would communicate to you before I come to
the more entertaining part of our correspondence.
I'm going (hard task) to complain, and beg your assistance. When I came
up here I brought very little money along with me; expecting some more
upon the selling of Widehope, which was to have been sold that day my
mother was buried. Now it is unsold yet, but will be disposed of as soon
as can be conveniently done; though indeed it is perplexed with some
difficulties. I was a long time living here at my own charges, and you
know how expensive that is; this, together with the furnishing of myself
with clothes, linen, one thing and another, to fit me for any business
of this nature here, necessarily obliged me to contract some debts.
Being a stranger, it is a wonder how I got any credit; but I cannot
expect it will be long sustained, unless I immediately clear it. Even
now, I believe it is at a crisis--my friends have no money to send me,
till the land is sold; and my creditors will not wait till then. You
know what the consequence would be. Now the assistance I would beg of
you, and which I know, if in your power, you will not refuse me, is a
letter of credit on some merchant, banker, or such like person in
London, for the matter of twelve pounds; till I get money upon the
selling of the land, which I am at last certain of, if you could either
give it me yourself, or procure it: though you owe it not to my merit,
yet you owe it to your own nature, which I know so well as to say no
more upon the subject: only allow me to add, that when I first fell upon
such a project, (the only thing I have for it in my present
circumstances,) knowing the selfish inhumane temper of the generality of
the world, you were the first person that offered to my thoughts, as one
to whom I had the confidence to make such an address.
* * * * *
Now I imagine you are seized with a fine romantic kind of melancholy on
the fading of the year--now I figure you wandering, philosophical and
pensive, amidst brown withered groves; whilst the leaves rustle under
your feet, the sun gives a farewell parting gleam, and the birds--
Stir the faint note, and but attempt to sing.
Then again, when the heavens wear a more gloomy aspect, the winds
whistle and the waters spout, I see you in the well-known cleugh,
beneath the solemn arch of tall, thick, embowering trees, listening to
the amusing lull of the many steep, moss-grown cascades; while deep,
divine contemplation, the genius of the place, prompts each swelling,
awful thought. I am sure you would not resign your place in that scene
at an easy rate:--None ever enjoyed it to the height you do, and you are
worthy of it. There I walk in spirit, and disport in its beloved gloom.
This country I am in is not very entertaining; no variety but that of
woods, and them we have in abundance. But where is the living stream?
the airy mountain? or the hanging rock? with twenty other things that
elegantly please the lover of Nature. Nature delights me in every form.
I am just now painting her in her most luxurious dress; for my own
amusement, describing winter as it presents itself. After my first
proposal of the subject--
I sing of winter, and his gelid reign;
Nor let a ryming insect of the spring
Deem it a barren theme, to me 'tis full
Of manly charms: to me, who court the shade,
Whom the gay seasons suit not, and who shun
The glare of summer. Welcome, kindred glooms!
Drear awful wintry horrors, welcome all! &c.
After this introduction, I say, which insists for a few lines further, I
prosecute the purport of the following ones:--
Nor can I, O departing Summer! choose
But consecrate one pitying line to you:
Sing your last temper'd days and sunny balms,
That cheer the spirits and serene the soul.
Then terrible floods, and high winds, that usually happen about this
time of the year, and have already happened here (I wish you have not
felt them too dreadfully); the first produced the enclosed lines; the
last are not completed. Mr. Rickleton's poem on Winter, which I still
have, first put the design into my head--in it are some masterly strokes
that awakened me--being only a present amusement, it is ten to one but I
drop it whenever another fancy comes across. I believe it had been much
more for your entertainment, if in this letter I had cited other people
instead of myself; but I must refer that till another time. If you have
not seen it already, I have just now in my hands an original of Sir
Alexander Brands (the crazed Scots knight of the woeful countenance),
you would relish. I believe it might make Mis[48] John catch hold of his
knees, which I take in him to be a degree of mirth, only inferior, to
fall back again with an elastic spring. It is very [here a word is
waggishly obliterated] printed in the Evening Post: so, perhaps you have
seen these panegyrics of our declining bard; one on the Princess's
birth-day; the other on his Majesty's, in [obliterated] cantos, they are
written in the spirit of a complicated craziness. I was lately in London
a night, and in the old play-house saw a comedy acted, called Love makes
a Man, or the Fop's Fortune, where I beheld Miller and Cibber shine to
my infinite entertainment. In and about London this month of September,
near a hundred people have died by accident and suicide. There was one
blacksmith tired of the hammer, who hung himself, and left written
behind him this concise epitaph:--
I, Joe Pope,
Lived without hope
And died by a rope.
Or else some epigrammatic Muse has belied him.
Mr. Muir has ample fund for politics in the present posture of affairs,
as you will find by the public news. I should be glad to know that great
minister's frame just now. Keep it to yourself--you may whisper it too
in Mis John's ear. Far otherwise is his lately mysterious brother, Mr.
Tait, employed. Started a superannuated fortune, and just now upon the
full scent. It is comical enough to see him amongst the rubbish of his
controversial divinity and politics, furbishing up his antient rusty
gallantry.
Yours, sincerely, J. T.
Remember me to all friends, Mr. Rickle, Mis John, Br. John, &c.
[48] _Mas?_
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON
(1825)
The subject of our Memoir is lineally descended from Johan De L'Estonne
(see Doomesday Book, where he is so written) who came in with the
Conqueror, and had lands awarded him at Lupton Magna, in Kent. His
particular merits or services, Fabian, whose authority I chiefly follow,
has forgotten, or perhaps thought it immaterial, to specify. Fuller
thinks that he was standard-bearer to Hugo De Agmondesham, a powerful
Norman Baron, who was slain by the hand of Harold himself at the fatal
battle of Hastings. Be this as it may, we find a family of that name
flourishing some centuries later in that county. John Delliston, Knight,
was high sheriff for Kent, according to Fabian, _quinto Henrici Sexti_;
and we trace the lineal branch flourishing downwards--the orthography
varying, according to the unsettled usage of the times, from Delleston
to Leston, or Liston, between which it seems to have alternated, till,
in the latter end of the reign of James I, it finally settled into the
determinate and pleasing dissyllabic arrangement which it still retains.
Aminadab Liston, the eldest male representative of the family of that
day, was of the strictest order of Puritans. Mr. Foss, of Pall Mall, has
obligingly communicated to me an undoubted tract of his, which bears the
initials only, A. L. and is entitled, "the Grinning Glass: or Actor's
Mirrour, wherein the vituperative Visnomy of vicious Players for the
Scene is as virtuously reflected back upon their mimetic Monstrosities
as it has viciously (hitherto) vitiated with its vile Vanities her
Votarists." A strange title, but bearing the impress of those
absurdities with which the title pages of that pamphlet-spawning age
abounded. The work bears date 1617. It preceded the Histriomastix by
fifteen years; and as it went before it in time, so it comes not far
short of it in virulence. It is amusing to find an ancestor of Liston's
thus bespattering the players at the commencement of the seventeenth
century. "Thinketh He (the actor), with his costive countenances, to wry
a sorrowing soul out of her anguish, or by defacing the divine
denotement of destinate dignity (daignely described in the face humane
and no other) to reinstamp the Paradice-plotted similitude with a novel
and naughty approximation (not in the first intention) to those abhorred
and ugly God-forbidden correspondences, with flouting Apes' jeering
gibberings, and Babion babbling-like, to hoot out of countenance all
modest measure, as if our sins were not sufficing to stoop our backs
without He wresting and crooking his members to mistimed mirth (rather
malice) in deformed fashion, leering when he should learn, prating for
praying, goggling his eyes (better upturned for grace), whereas in
Paradice (if we can go thus high for His profession) that devilish
Serpent appeareth his undoubted Predecessor, first induing a mask like
some roguish roistering Roscius (I spit at them all) to beguile with
Stage shows the gaping Woman, whose Sex hath still chiefly upheld these
Mysteries, and are voiced to be the chief Stage-haunters, where, as I am
told, the custom is commonly to mumble (between acts) apples, not
ambiguously derived from that pernicious Pippin (worse in effect than
the Apples of Discord) whereas sometimes the hissing sounds of
displeasure, as I hear, do lively reintonate that snake-taking-leave,
and diabolical goings off, in Paradice."
The puritanic effervescence of the early Presbyterians appears to have
abated with time, and the opinions of the more immediate ancestors of
our subject to have subsided at length into a strain of moderate
Calvinism. Still a tincture of the old leaven was to be expected among
the posterity of A. L.
Our hero was an only son of Habakuk Liston, settled as an Anabaptist
minister upon the patrimonial soil of his ancestors. A regular
certificate appears, thus entered in the church book at Lupton Magna.
"_Johannes, filius Habakuk et Rebeccæ Liston, Dissentientium, natus
quinto Decembri, 1780, baptizatus sexto Februarii sequentis; Sponsoribus
J. et W. Woollaston, unâ cum Maria Merryweather._" The singularity of an
Anabaptist minister conforming to the child rites of the church, would
have tempted me to doubt the authenticity of this entry, had I not been
obliged with the actual sight of it, by the favour of Mr. Minns, the
intelligent and worthy parish clerk of Lupton. Possibly some expectation
in point of worldly advantages from some of the sponsors, might have
induced this unseemly deviation, as it must have appeared, from the
practice and principles of that generally rigid sect. The term
_Dissentientium_ was possibly intended by the orthodox clergyman as a
slur upon the supposed inconsistency. What, or of what nature, the
expectations we have hinted at, may have been, we have now no means of
ascertaining. Of the Wollastons no trace is now discoverable in the
village. The name of Merryweather occurs over the front of a grocer's
shop at the western extremity of Lupton.
Of the infant Liston we find no events recorded before his fourth year,
in which a severe attack of the measles bid fair to have robbed the
rising generation of a fund of innocent entertainment. He had it of the
confluent kind, as it is called, and the child's life was for a week or
two despaired of. His recovery he always attributes (under Heaven) to
the humane interference of one Doctor Wilhelm Richter, a German empiric,
who, in this extremity, prescribed a copious diet of _Saur Kraut_, which
the child was observed to reach at with avidity, when other food
repelled him; and from this change of diet his restoration was rapid and
complete. We have often heard him name the circumstance with gratitude;
and it is not altogether surprising, that a relish for this kind of
aliment, so abhorrent and harsh to common English palates, has
accompanied him through life. When any of Mr. Liston's intimates invite
him to supper, he never fails of finding, nearest to his knife and fork,
a dish of _Saur Kraut_.
At the age of nine we find our subject under the tuition of the Rev. Mr.
Goodenough (his father's health not permitting him probably to instruct
him himself), by whom he was inducted into a competent portion of Latin
and Greek, with some mathematics, till the death of Mr. Goodenough, in
his own seventieth, and Master Liston's eleventh year, put a stop for
the present to his classical progress.
We have heard our hero with emotions, which do his heart honour,
describe the awful circumstances attending the decease of this worthy
old gentleman. It seems they had been walking out together, master and
pupil, in a fine sunset, to the distance of three quarters of a mile
west of Lupton, when a sudden curiosity took Mr. Goodenough to look down
upon a chasm, where a shaft had been lately sunk in a mining speculation
(then projecting, but abandoned soon after, as not answering the
promised success, by Sir Ralph Shepperton, Knight, and member for the
county). The old clergyman leaning over, either with incaution, or
sudden giddiness (probably a mixture of both), suddenly lost his
footing, and, to use Mr. Liston's phrase, disappeared; and was
doubtless broken into a thousand pieces. The sound of his head, &c.
dashing successively upon the projecting masses of the chasm, had such
an effect upon the child, that a serious sickness ensued, and even for
many years after his recovery he was not once seen so much as to smile.
The joint death[s] of both his parents, which happened not many months
after this disastrous accident, and were probably (one or both of them)
accelerated by it, threw our youth upon the protection of his maternal
great aunt, Mrs. Sittingbourn. Of this aunt we have never heard him
speak but with expressions amounting almost to reverence. To the
influence of her early counsels and manners, he has always attributed
the firmness with which, in maturer years, thrown upon a way of life,
commonly not the best adapted to gravity and self-retirement, he has
been able to maintain a serious character, untinctured with the levities
incident to his profession. Ann Sittingbourn (we have seen her portrait
by Hudson) was stately, stiff, tall, with a cast of features strikingly
resembling the subject of this memoir. Her estate in Kent was spacious
and well-wooded; the house, one of those venerable old mansions which
are so impressive in childhood, and so hardly forgotten in succeeding
years. In the venerable solitudes of Charnwood, among thick shades of
the oak and beech (this last his favourite tree), the young Liston
cultivated those contemplative habits which have never entirely deserted
him in after years. Here he was commonly in the summer months to be met
with, with a book in his hand--not a play-book--meditating. Boyle's
Reflections was at one time the darling volume, which in its turn was
superseded by Young's Night Thoughts, which has continued its hold upon
him through life. He carries it always about him; and it is no uncommon
thing for him to be seen, in the refreshing intervals of his occupation,
leaning against a side scene, in a sort of Herbert of Cherbury posture,
turning over a pocket edition of his favourite author.
But the solitudes of Charnwood were not destined always to obscure the
path of our young hero. The premature death of Mrs. Sittingbourn, at the
age of 70, occasioned by incautious burning of a pot of charcoal in her
sleeping chamber, left him in his 19th year nearly without resources.
That the stage at all should have presented itself as an eligible scope
for his talents, and, in particular, that he should have chosen a line
so foreign to what appears to have been his turn of mind, may require
some explanation.
At Charnwood then we behold him thoughtful, grave, ascetic. From his
cradle averse to flesh meats, and strong drink; abstemious even beyond
the genius of the place; and almost in spite of the remonstrances of his
great aunt, who, though strict, was not rigid; water was his habitual
drink, and his food little beyond the mast, and beech nuts, of his
favourite groves. It is a medical fact, that this kind of diet, however
favourable to the contemplative powers of the primitive hermits, &c., is
but ill adapted to the less robust minds and bodies of a later
generation. Hypochondria almost constantly ensues. It was so in the case
of the young Liston. He was subject to sights, and had visions. Those
arid beech nuts, distilled by a complexion naturally adust, mounted into
an occiput, already prepared to kindle by long seclusion, and the
fervour of strict Calvinistic notions. In the glooms of Charnwood he was
assailed by illusions, similar in kind to those which are related of the
famous Anthony of Padua. Wild antic faces would ever and anon protrude
themselves upon his _sensorium_. Whether he shut his eyes, or kept them
open, the same illusions operated. The darker and more profound were his
cogitations, the droller and more whimsical became the apparitions. They
buzzed about him thick as flies, flapping at him, flouting him, hooting
in his ear, yet with such comic appendages, that what at first was his
bane, became at length his solace; and he desired no better society than
that of his merry phantasmata. We shall presently find in what way this
remarkable phenomenon influenced his future destiny.
On the death of Mrs. Sittingbourn, we find him received into the family
of Mr. Willoughby, an eminent Turkey merchant, resident in Birchin-lane,
London. We lose a little while here the chain of his history; by what
inducements this gentleman was determined to make him an inmate of his
house. Probably he had had some personal kindness for Mrs. Sittingbourn
formerly; but however it was, the young man was here treated more like a
son than a clerk, though he was nominally but the latter. Different
avocations, the change of scene, with that alternation of business and
recreation, which in its greatest perfection is to be had only in
London, appear to have weaned him in a short time from the
hypochondriacal affections which had beset him at Charnwood. In the
three years which followed his removal to Birchin-lane, we find him
making more than one voyage to the Levant, as chief factor for Mr.
Willoughby, at the Porte. We could easily fill our biography with the
pleasant passages which we have heard him relate as having happened to
him at Constantinople, such as his having been taken up on suspicion of
a design of penetrating the seraglio, &c.; but, with the deepest
convincement of this gentleman's own veracity, we think that some of the
stories are of that whimsical, and others of that romantic nature,
which, however diverting, would be out of place in a narrative of this
kind, which aims not only at strict truth, but at avoiding the very
appearance of the contrary.
We will now bring him over the seas again, and suppose him in the
counting-house in Birchin-lane, his protector satisfied with the returns
of his factorage, and all going on so smoothly that we may expect to
find Mr. Liston at last an opulent merchant upon 'Change, as it is
called. But see the turns of destiny! Upon a summer's excursion into
Norfolk, in the year 1801, the accidental sight of pretty Sally Parker,
as she was called (then in the Norwich company), diverted his
inclinations at once from commerce; and he became, in the language of
common-place biography, stage-struck. Happy for the lovers of mirth was
it, that our hero took this turn; he might else have been to this hour
that unentertaining character, a plodding London merchant.
We accordingly find him shortly after making his _debut_, as it is
called, upon the Norwich boards, in the season of that year, being then
in the 22d year of his age. Having a natural bent to tragedy, he chose
the part of Pyrrhus in the Distressed Mother, to Sally Parker's
Hermione. We find him afterwards as Barnwell, Altamont, Chamont, &c.;
but, as if nature had destined him to the sock, an unavoidable infirmity
absolutely discapacitated him for tragedy. His person at this latter
period, of which I have been speaking, was graceful, and even
commanding; his countenance set to gravity; he had the power of
arresting the attention of an audience at first sight almost beyond any
other tragic actor. But he could not hold it. To understand this
obstacle we must go back a few years to those appalling reveries at
Charnwood. Those illusions, which had vanished before the dissipation
of a less recluse life, and more free society, now in his solitary
tragic studies, and amid the intense calls upon feeling incident to
tragic acting, came back upon him with tenfold vividness. In the midst
of some most pathetic passage, the parting of Jaffier with his dying
friend, for instance, he would suddenly be surprised with a fit of
violent horse laughter. While the spectators were all sobbing before him
with emotion, suddenly one of those grotesque faces would peep out upon
him, and he could not resist the impulse. A timely excuse once or twice
served his purpose, but no audiences could be expected to bear
repeatedly this violation of the continuity of feeling. He describes
them (the illusions) as so many demons haunting him, and paralysing
every effect. Even now, I am told, he cannot recite the famous soliloquy
in Hamlet, even in private, without immoderate bursts of laughter.
However, what he had not force of reason sufficient to overcome, he had
good sense enough to turn into emolument, and determined to make a
commodity of his distemper. He prudently exchanged the buskin for the
sock, and the illusions instantly ceased; or, if they occurred for a
short season, by their very co-operation added a zest to his comic vein;
some of his most catching faces being (as he expresses it) little more
than transcripts and copies of those extraordinary phantasmata.
We have now drawn out our hero's existence to the period when he was
about to meet for the first time the sympathies of a London audience.
The particulars of his success since have been too much before our eyes
to render a circumstantial detail of them expedient. I shall only
mention that Mr. Willoughby, his resentments having had time to subside,
is at present one of the fastest friends of his old renegado factor; and
that Mr. Liston's hopes of Miss Parker vanishing along with his
unsuccessful suit to Melpomene, in the autumn of 1811 he married his
present lady, by whom he has been blest with one son, Philip; and two
daughters, Ann, and Angustina [ ? Augustina].
A VISION OF HORNS
(1825)
My thoughts had been engaged last evening in solving the problem, why in
all times and places the _horn_ has been agreed upon as the symbol, or
honourable badge, of married men. Moses' horn, the horn of Ammon, of
Amalthea, and a cornucopia of legends besides, came to my recollection,
but afforded no satisfactory solution, or rather involved the question
in deeper obscurity. Tired with the fruitless chase of inexplicant
analogies, I fell asleep, and dreamed in this fashion.
Methought certain scales or films fell from my eyes, which had hitherto
hindered these little tokens from being visible. I was somewhere in the
Cornhill (as it might be termed) of some Utopia. Busy citizens jostled
each other, as they may do in our streets, with care (the care of making
a penny) written upon their foreheads; and _something else_, which is
rather imagined, than distinctly imaged, upon the brows of my own
friends and fellow-townsmen.
In my first surprise I supposed myself gotten into some forest--Arden,
to be sure, or Sherwood; but the dresses and deportment, all civic,
forbade me to continue in that delusion. Then a scriptural thought
crossed me (especially as there were nearly as many Jews as Christians
among them), whether it might not be the children of Israel going up to
besiege Jericho. I was undeceived of both errors by the sight of many
faces which were familiar to me. I found myself strangely (as it will
happen in dreams) at one and the same time in an unknown country, with
known companions. I met old friends, not with new faces, but with their
old faces oddly adorned in front, with each man a certain corneous
excrescence. Dick Mitis, the little cheesemonger in St. * * * *'s
Passage, was the first that saluted me, with his hat off--you know
Dick's way to a customer--and, I not being aware of him, he thrust a
strange beam into my left eye, which pained and grieved me exceedingly;
but, instead of apology, he only grinned and fleered in my face, as much
as to say, "it is the custom of the country," and passed on.
I had scarce time to send a civil message to his lady, whom I have
always admired as a pattern of a wife,--and do indeed take Dick and her
to be a model of conjugal agreement and harmony,--when I felt an ugly
smart in my neck, as if something had gored it behind, and turning
round, it was my old friend and neighbour, Dulcet, the confectioner,
who, meaning to be pleasant, had thrust his protuberance right into my
nape, and seemed proud of his power of offending.
Now I was assailed right and left, till in my own defence I was obliged
to walk sideling and wary, and look about me, as you guard your eyes in
London streets; for the horns thickened, and came at me like the ends of
umbrellas poking in one's face.
I soon found that these towns-folk were the civillest best-mannered
people in the world, and that if they had offended at all, it was
entirely owing to their blindness. They do not know what dangerous
weapons they protrude in front, and will stick their best friends in the
eye with provoking complacency. Yet the best of it is, they can see the
beams on their neighbours' foreheads, if they are as small as motes, but
their own beams they can in no wise discern.
There was little Mitis, that I told you I just encountered--he has
simply (I speak of him at home in his own shop) the smoothest forehead
in his own conceit--he will stand you a quarter of an hour together
contemplating the serenity of it in the glass, before he begins to shave
himself in a morning--yet you saw what a desperate gash he gave me.
Desiring to be better informed of the ways of this extraordinary people,
I applied myself to a fellow of some assurance, who (it appeared) acted
as a sort of interpreter to strangers--he was dressed in a military
uniform, and strongly resembled Colonel----, of the guards;--and "pray,
Sir," said I, "have all the inhabitants of your city these troublesome
excrescences? I beg pardon, I see you have none. You perhaps are
single." "Truly, Sir," he replied with a smile, "for the most part we
have, but not all alike. There are some, like Dick, that sport but one
tumescence. Their ladies have been tolerably faithful--have confined
themselves to a single aberration or so--these we call Unicorns. Dick,
you must know, is my Unicorn. [He spoke this with an air of invincible
assurance.] Then we have Bicorns, Tricorns, and so on up to Millecorns.
[Here me-thought I crossed and blessed myself in my dream.] Some again
we have--there goes one--you see how happy the rogue looks--how he walks
smiling, and perking up his face, as if he thought himself the only man.
He is not married yet, but on Monday next he leads to the altar the
accomplished widow Dacres, relict of our late sheriff."
"I see, Sir," said I, "and observe that he is happily free from the
national _goitre_ (let me call it), which distinguishes most of your
countrymen."
"Look a little more narrowly," said my conductor.
I put on my spectacles, and observing the man a little more diligently,
above his forehead I could mark a thousand little twinkling shadows
dancing the horn-pipe, little hornlets and rudiments of horn, of a soft
and pappy consistence (for I handled some of them), but which, like
coral out of water, my guide informed me would infallibly stiffen and
grow rigid within a week or two from the expiration of his bachelorhood.
Then I saw some horns strangely growing out behind, and my interpreter
explained these to be married men, whose wives had conducted themselves
with infinite propriety since the period of their marriage, but were
thought to have antedated their good men's titles, by certain liberties
they had indulged themselves in, prior to the ceremony. This kind of
gentry wore their horns backwards, as has been said, in the fashion of
the old pig-tails; and as there was nothing obtrusive or ostentatious in
them, nobody took any notice of it.
Some had pretty little budding antlers, like the first essays of a young
faun. These, he told me, had wives, whose affairs were in a hopeful way,
but not quite brought to a conclusion.
Others had nothing to show, only by certain red angry marks and
swellings in the foreheads, which itched the more they kept rubbing and
chafing them; it was to be hoped that something was brewing.
I took notice that every one jeered at the rest, only none took notice
of the sea-captains; yet these were as well provided with their tokens
as the best among them. This kind of people, it seems, taking their
wives upon so contingent tenures, their lot was considered as nothing
but natural,--so they wore their marks without impeachment, as they
might carry their cockades, and nobody respected them a whit the less
for it.
I observed, that the more sprouts grew out of a man's head, the less
weight they seemed to carry with them; whereas, a single token would now
and then appear to give the wearer some uneasiness. This shows that use
is a great thing.
Some had their adornings gilt, which needs no explanation; while others,
like musicians, went sounding theirs before them--a sort of music which
I thought might very well have been spared.
It was pleasant to see some of the citizens encounter between
themselves; how they smiled in their sleeves at the shock they received
from their neighbour, and none seemed conscious of the shock which their
neighbour experienced in return.
Some had great corneous stumps, seemingly torn off and bleeding. These,
the interpreter warned me, were husbands who had retaliated upon their
wives, and the badge was in equity divided between them.
While I stood discerning these things, a slight tweak on my cheek
unawares, which brought tears into my eyes, introduced to me my friend
Placid, between whose lady and a certain male cousin, some idle
flirtations I remember to have heard talked of; but that was all. He saw
he had somehow hurt me, and asked my pardon with that round unconscious
face of his, and looked so tristful and contrite for his no-offence,
that I was ashamed for the man's penitence. Yet I protest it was but a
scratch. It was the least little hornet of a horn that could be framed.
"Shame on the man," I secretly exclaimed, "who could thrust so much as
the value of a hair into a brow so unsuspecting and inoffensive. What
then must they have to answer for, who plant great, monstrous,
timber-like, projecting antlers upon the heads of those whom they call
their friends, when a puncture of this atomical tenuity made my eyes to
water at this rate. All the pincers at Surgeons' Hall cannot pull out
for Placid that little hair."
I was curious to know what became of these frontal excrescences, when
the husbands died; and my guide informed me that the chemists in their
country made a considerable profit by them, extracting from them certain
subtle essences:--and then I remembered, that nothing was so efficacious
in my own for restoring swooning matrons, and wives troubled with the
vapours, as a strong sniff or two at the composition, appropriately
called hartshorn--far beyond _sal volatile_.
Then also I began to understand, why a man, who is the jest of the
company, is said to be the butt--as much as to say, such a one butteth
with the horn.
I inquired if by no operation these wens were ever extracted; and was
told, that there was indeed an order of dentists, whom they call
canonists in their language, who undertook to restore the forehead to
its pristine smoothness; but that ordinarily it was not done without
much cost and trouble; and when they succeeded in plucking out the
offending part, it left a painful void, which could not be filled up;
and that many patients who had submitted to the excision, were eager to
marry again, to supply with a good second antler the baldness and
deformed gap left by the extraction of the former, as men losing their
natural hair substitute for it a less becoming periwig.
Some horns I observed beautifully taper, smooth, and (as it were)
flowering. These I understand were the portions brought by handsome
women to their spouses; and I pitied the rough, homely, unsightly
deformities on the brows of others, who had been deceived by plain and
ordinary partners. Yet the latter I observed to be by far the most
common--the solution of which I leave to the natural philosopher.
One tribute of married men I particularly admired at, who, instead of
horns, wore, engrafted on their forehead, a sort of hornbook. "This,"
quoth my guide, "is the greatest mystery in our country, and well worth
an explanation. You must know that all infidelity is not of the senses.
We have as well intellectual, as material, wittols. These, whom you see
decorated with the Order of the Book--are triflers, who encourage about
their wives' presence the society of your men of genius (their good
friends, as they call them)--literary disputants, who ten to one
out-talk the poor husband, and commit upon the understanding of the
woman a violence and estrangement in the end, little less painful than
the coarser sort of alienation. Whip me these knaves--[my conductor here
expressed himself with a becoming warmth]--whip me them, I say, who with
no excuse from the passions, in cold blood seduce the minds, rather than
the persons, of their friends' wives; who, for the tickling pleasure of
hearing themselves prate, dehonestate the intellects of married women,
dishonouring the husband in what should be his most sensible part. If I
must be ---- [here he used a plain word] let it be by some honest sinner
like myself, and not by one of these gad-flies, these debauchers of the
understanding, these flattery-buzzers." He was going on in this manner,
and I was getting insensibly pleased with my friend's manner (I had been
a little shy of him at first), when the dream suddenly left me,
vanishing--as Virgil speaks--through the gate of Horn.
ELIA.
THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT[49]
(1825)
Nought but a blank remains, a dead void space,
A step of life that promised such a race.--DRYDEN.
Napoleon has now sent us back from the grave sufficient echoes of his
living renown: the twilight of posthumous fame has lingered long enough
over the spot where the sun of his glory set, and his name must at
length repose in the silence, if not in the darkness of night. In this
busy and evanescent scene, other spirits of the age are rapidly snatched
away, claiming our undivided sympathies and regrets, until in turn they
yield to some newer and more absorbing grief. Another name is now added
to the list of the mighty departed, a name whose influence upon the
hopes and fears, the fates and fortunes of our countrymen, has rivalled,
and perhaps eclipsed that of the defunct "child and champion of
Jacobinism," while it is associated with all the sanctions of legitimate
government, all the sacred authorities of social order and our most holy
religion. We speak of one, indeed, under whose warrant heavy and
incessant contributions were imposed upon our fellow-citizens, but who
exacted nothing without the signet and the sign manual of most devout
Chancellors of the Exchequer. Not to dally longer with the sympathies of
our readers, we think it right to premonish them that we are composing
an epicedium upon no less distinguished a personage than the Lottery,
whose last breath, after many penultimate puffs, has been sobbed forth
by sorrowing contractors, as if the world itself were about to be
converted into a blank. There is a fashion of eulogy, as well as of
vituperation; and though the Lottery stood for some time in the latter
predicament, we hesitate not to assert that "_multis ille bonis flebilis
occidit_." Never have we joined in the senseless clamour which condemned
the only tax whereto we became voluntary contributors, the only resource
which gave the stimulus without the danger or infatuation of gambling,
the only alembic which in these plodding days sublimised our
imaginations, and filled them with more delicious dreams than ever
flitted athwart the sensorium of Alnaschar.
[49] Since writing this article, we have been informed that the
object of our funeral-oration is not definitively dead, but only
moribund. So much the better; we shall have an opportunity of
granting the request made to Walter by one of the children in the
wood, and "kill him two times." The Abbé de Vertot having a siege to
write, and not receiving the materials in time, composed the whole
from his invention: shortly after its completion, the expected
documents arrived, when he threw them aside, exclaiming--"You are of
no use to me now; I have carried the town."
Never can the writer forget when, as a child, he was hoisted upon a
servant's shoulder in Guildhall, and looked down upon the installed and
solemn pomp of the then drawing Lottery. The two awful cabinets of iron,
upon whose massy and mysterious portals, the royal initials were
gorgeously emblazoned, as if after having deposited the unfulfilled
prophecies within, the King himself had turned the lock and still
retained the key in his pocket;--the blue-coat boy, with his naked arm,
first converting the invisible wheel, and then diving into the dark
recess for a ticket;--the grave and reverend faces of the commissioners
eyeing the announced number;--the scribes below calmly committing it to
their huge books;--the anxious countenances of the surrounding populace,
while the giant figures of Gog and Magog, like presiding deities, looked
down with a grim silence upon the whole proceeding,--constituted
altogether a scene, which combined with the sudden wealth supposed to be
lavished from those inscrutable wheels, was well calculated to impress
the imagination of a boy with reverence and amazement. Jupiter, seated
between the two fatal urns of good and evil, the blind Goddess with her
cornucopia, the Parcæ wielding the distaff, the thread of life, and the
abhorred shears, seemed but dim and shadowy abstractions of mythology,
when I had gazed upon an assemblage exercising, as I dreamt, a not less
eventful power, and all presented to me in palpable and living
operation. Reason and experience, ever at their old spiteful work of
catching and destroying the bubbles which youth delighted to follow,
have indeed dissipated much of this illusion, but my mind so far
retained the influence of that early impression, that I have ever since
continued to deposit my humble offerings at its shrine whenever the
ministers of the Lottery went forth with type and trumpet to announce
its periodical dispensations; and though nothing has been doled out to
me from its undiscerning coffers but blanks, or those more vexatious
tantalizers of the spirit, denominated small prizes, yet do I hold
myself largely indebted to this most generous diffuser of universal
happiness. Ingrates that we are! are we to be thankful for no benefits
that are not palpable to sense, to recognise no favours that are not of
marketable value, to acknowledge no wealth unless it can be counted with
the five fingers? If we admit the mind to be the sole depositary of
genuine joy, where is the bosom that has not been elevated into a
temporary elysium by the magic of the Lottery? Which of us has not
converted his ticket, or even his sixteenth share of one, into a
nest-egg of Hope, upon which he has sate brooding in the secret
roosting-places of his heart, and hatched it into a thousand fantastical
apparitions?
What a startling revelation of the passions if all the aspirations
engendered by the Lottery could be made manifest! Many an impecuniary
epicure has gloated over his locked-up warrant for future wealth, as a
means of realising the dream of his namesake in the Alchemist,--
"My meat shall all come in in Indian shells,
Dishes of agate set in gold, and studded
With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths and rubies;
The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels' heels
Boil'd i' the spirit of Sol, and dissolved in pearl,
(Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsy;)
And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber,
Headed with diamant and carbuncle.----
My footboy shall eat pheasants, calvered salmons,
Knots, godwits, lampreys; I myself will have
The beards of barbels served:--instead of salads
Oil'd mushrooms, and the swelling unctuous paps
Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off,
Dress'd with an exquisite and poignant sauce,
For which I'll say unto my cook-'There's gold,
Go forth, and be a knight!'"
Many a doating lover has kissed the scrap of paper whose promissory
shower of gold was to give up to him his otherwise unattainable Danaë:
Nimrods have transformed the same narrow symbol into a saddle, by which
they have been enabled to bestride the backs of peerless hunters; while
nymphs have metamorphosed its Protean form into
"Rings, gaudes, conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats,"
and all the braveries of dress, to say nothing of the obsequious
husband, the two-footman'd carriage, and the opera-box. By the simple
charm of this numbered and printed rag, gamesters have, for a time at
least, recovered their losses, spendthrifts have cleared off mortgages
from their estates, the imprisoned debtor has leapt over his lofty
boundary of circumscription and restraint, and revelled in all the joys
of liberty and fortune; the cottage-walls have swelled out into more
goodly proportion than those of Baucis and Philemon; poverty has tasted
the luxuries of competence, labour has lolled at ease in a perpetual
arm-chair of idleness, sickness has been bribed into banishment, life
has been invested with new charms, and death deprived of its former
terrors. Nor have the affections been less gratified than the wants,
appetites, and ambitions of mankind. By the conjurations of the same
potent spell, kindred have lavished anticipated benefits upon one
another, and charity upon all. Let it be termed a delusion; a fool's
paradise is better than the wise man's Tartarus: be it branded as an
Ignis fatuus, it was at least a benevolent one, which instead of
beguiling its followers into swamps, caverns, and pitfalls, allured them
on with all the blandishments of enchantment to a garden of Eden, an
ever-blooming elysium of delight. True, the pleasures it bestowed were
evanescent, but which of our joys are permanent? and who so
inexperienced as not to know that anticipation is always of higher
relish than reality, which strikes a balance both in our sufferings and
enjoyments. "The fear of ill exceeds the ill we fear," and fruition, in
the same proportion, invariably falls short of hope. "Men are but
children of a larger growth," who may amuse themselves for a long time
in gazing at the reflection of the moon in the water, but, if they jump
in to grasp it, they may grope for ever, and only get the farther from
their object. He is the wisest who keeps feeding upon the future, and
refrains as long as possible from undeceiving himself, by converting
his pleasant speculations into disagreeable certainties.
The true mental epicure always purchased his ticket early, and postponed
enquiry into its fate to the last possible moment, during the whole of
which intervening period he had an imaginary twenty thousand locked up
in his desk,--and was not this well worth all the money? Who would
scruple to give twenty pounds interest for even the ideal enjoyment of
as many thousands during two or three months? "_Crede quod habes, et
habes_," and the usufruct of such a capital is surely not dear at such a
price. Some years ago, a gentleman in passing along Cheapside saw the
figures 1069, of which number he was the sole proprietor, flaming on the
window of a lottery-office as a capital prize. Somewhat flurried by this
discovery, not less welcome than unexpected, he resolved to walk round
St. Paul's that he might consider in what way to communicate the happy
tidings to his wife and family; but upon repassing the shop, he observed
that the number was altered to 10,069, and upon enquiry, had the
mortification to learn that his ticket was a blank, and had only been
stuck up in the window by a mistake of the clerk. This effectually
calmed his agitation, but he always speaks of himself as having once
possessed twenty thousand pounds, and maintains that his ten minutes'
walk round St. Paul's was worth ten times the purchase-money of the
ticket. A prize thus obtained has moreover this special advantage;--it
is beyond the reach of fate, it cannot be squandered, bankruptcy cannot
lay siege to it, friends cannot pull it down, nor enemies blow it up; it
bears a charmed life, and none of woman born can break its integrity,
even by the dissipation of a single fraction. Show me the property in
these perilous times that is equally compact and impregnable. We can no
longer become enriched for a quarter of an hour; we can no longer
succeed in such splendid failures; all our chances of making such a miss
have vanished with the last of the Lotteries.
Life will now become a flat, prosaic routine of matter-of-fact, and
sleep itself, erst so prolific of numerical configurations and
mysterious stimulants to lottery adventure, will be disfurnished of its
figures and figments. People will cease to harp upon the one lucky
number suggested in a dream, and which forms the exception, while they
are scrupulously silent upon the ten thousand falsified dreams which
constitute the rule. Morpheus will stifle Cocker with a handful of
poppies, and our pillows will be no longer haunted by the book of
numbers.
And who, too, shall maintain the art and mystery of puffing in all its
pristine glory when the lottery professors shall have abandoned its
cultivation? They were the first, as they will assuredly be the last,
who fully developed the resources of that ingenious art; who cajoled and
decoyed the most suspicious and wary reader into a perusal of their
advertisements by devices of endless variety and cunning: who baited
their lurking schemes with midnight murders, ghost stories, crim-cons,
bon-mots, balloons, dreadful catastrophes, and every diversity of joy
and sorrow to catch newspaper-gudgeons. Ought not such talents to be
encouraged? Verily the abolitionists have much to answer for!
And now, having established the felicity of all those who gained
imaginary prizes, let us proceed to show that the equally numerous class
who were presented with real blanks, have not less reason to consider
themselves happy. Most of us have cause to be thankful for that which is
bestowed, but we have all, probably, reason to be still more grateful
for that which is withheld, and more especially for our being denied the
sudden possession of riches. In the Litany indeed, we call upon the Lord
to deliver us "in all time of our wealth;" but how few of us are sincere
in deprecating such a calamity! Massinger's Luke, and Ben Jonson's Sir
Epicure Mammon, and Pope's Sir Balaam, and our own daily observation,
might convince us that the devil "now tempts by making rich, not making
poor." We may read in the Guardian a circumstantial account of a man who
was utterly ruined by gaining a capital prize:--we may recollect what
Dr. Johnson said to Garrick, when the latter was making a display of his
wealth at Hampton Court,--"Ah, David! David! these are the things that
make a death-bed terrible;"--we may recall the Scripture declaration, as
to the difficulty a rich man finds in entering into the Kingdom of
Heaven, and combining all these denunciations against opulence, let us
heartily congratulate one another upon our lucky escape from the
calamity of a twenty or thirty thousand pound prize! The fox in the
fable, who accused the unattainable grapes of sourness, was more of a
philosopher than we are generally willing to allow. He was an adept in
that species of moral alchemy, which turns every thing to gold, and
converts disappointment itself into a ground of resignation and
content. Such we have shown to be the great lesson inculcated by the
Lottery when rightly contemplated; and if we might parody M. de
Chateaubriand's jingling expression,--"_le Roi est mort, vive le Roi_,"
we should be tempted to exclaim, "The Lottery is no more--long live the
Lottery!"
UNITARIAN PROTESTS
IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND OF THAT PERSUASION NEWLY MARRIED
(1825)
Dear M----, Though none of your acquaintance can with greater sincerity
congratulate you upon this happy conjuncture than myself, one of the
oldest of them, it was with pain I found you, after the ceremony,
depositing in the vestry-room what is called a Protest. I thought you
superior to this little sophistry. What, after submitting to the service
of the Church of England--after consenting to receive a boon from her,
in the person of your amiable consort--was it consistent with sense, or
common good manners, to turn round upon her, and flatly taunt her with
false worship? This language is a little of the strongest in your books
and from your pulpits, though there it may well enough be excused from
religious zeal and the native warmth of nonconformity. But at the
altar--the Church of England altar--adopting her forms and complying
with her requisitions to the letter--to be consistent, together with the
practice, I fear, you must drop the language of dissent. You are no
longer sturdy Non Cons; you are there Occasional Conformists. You submit
to accept the privileges communicated by a form of words, exceptionable,
and perhaps justly, in your view; but, so submitting, you have no right
to quarrel with the ritual which you have just condescended to owe an
obligation to. They do not force you into their churches. You come
voluntarily, knowing the terms. You marry in the name of the Trinity.
There is no evading this by pretending that you take the formula with
your own interpretation, (and so long as you can do this, where is the
necessity of Protesting?): for the meaning of a vow is to be settled by
the sense of the imposer, not by any forced construction of the taker:
else might all vows, and oaths too, be eluded with impunity. You marry
then essentially as Trinitarians; and the altar no sooner satisfied
than, hey presto, with the celerity of a juggler, you shift habits, and
proceed pure Unitarians again in the vestry. You cheat the Church out of
a wife, and go home smiling in your sleeves that you have so cunningly
despoiled the Egyptians. In plain English, the Church has married you in
the name of so and so, assuming that you took the words in her sense,
but you outwitted her; you assented to them in your sense only, and took
from her what, upon a right understanding, she would have declined to
give you.
This is the fair construction to be put upon all Unitarian marriages as
at present contracted; and as long as you Unitarians could salve your
consciences with the equivoque, I do not see why the Established Church
should have troubled herself at all about the matter. But the Protesters
necessarily see further. They have some glimmerings of the deception;
they apprehend a flaw somewhere; they would fain be honest, and yet they
must marry notwithstanding; for honesty's sake, they are fain to
dishonestate themselves a little. Let me try the very words of your own
Protest, to see what confessions we can pick out of them.
"As Unitarians therefore we (you and your newly espoused bride) most
solemnly protest against the service (which yourselves have just
demanded) because we are thereby called upon, not only tacitly to
acquiesce, but to profess a belief in a doctrine which is a dogma, as we
believe, totally unfounded." But do you profess that belief during the
ceremony; or are you only called upon for the profession but do not make
it? If the latter, then you fall in with the rest of your more
consistent brethren, who waive the Protest; if the former, then, I fear,
your Protest cannot save you.
Hard and grievous it is, that in any case an institution so broad and
general as the union of man and wife should be so cramped and straitened
by the hands of an imposing hierarchy, that to plight troth to a lovely
woman a man must be necessitated to compromise his truth and faith to
Heaven; but so it must be, so long as you chuse to marry by the forms
of the Church over which that hierarchy presides.
Therefore, say you, we Protest. O poor and much fallen word Protest! It
was not so that the first heroic reformers protested. They departed out
of Babylon once for good and all; they came not back for an occasional
contact with her altars; a dallying, and then a protesting against
dalliance; they stood not shuffling in the porch, with a Popish foot
within, and its lame Lutheran fellow without, halting betwixt. These
were the true Protestants. You are--Protesters.
Besides the inconsistency of this proceeding, I must think it a piece of
impertinence--unseasonable at least, and out of place, to obtrude these
papers upon the officiating clergyman--to offer to a public functionary
an instrument which by the tenor of his function he is not obliged to
accept, but, rather, he is called upon to reject. Is it done in his
clerical capacity? he has no power of redressing the grievance. It is to
take the benefit of his ministry and then insult him. If in his capacity
of fellow Christian only, what are your scruples to him, so long as you
yourselves are able to get over them, and do get over them by the very
fact of coming to require his services? The thing you call a Protest
might with just as good a reason be presented to the churchwarden for
the time being, to the parish clerk, or the pew opener.
The Parliament alone can redress your grievance, if any. Yet I see not
how with any grace your people can petition for relief, so long as, by
the very fact of your coming to Church to be married, they do _bonâ
fide_ and strictly relieve themselves. The Upper House, in particular,
is not unused to these same things called Protests, among themselves.
But how would this honorable body stare to find a noble Lord conceding a
measure, and in the next breath, by a solemn Protest disowning it. A
Protest there is a reason given for non-compliance, not a subterfuge for
an equivocal occasional compliance. It was reasonable in the primitive
Christians to avert from their persons, by whatever lawful means, the
compulsory eating of meats which had been offered unto idols. I dare say
the Roman Prefects and Exarchats had plenty of petitioning in their
days. But what would a Festus, or Agrippa, have replied to a petition to
that effect, presented to him by some evasive Laodicean, with the very
meat between his teeth, which he had been chewing voluntarily rather
than abide the penalty? Relief for tender consciences means nothing,
where the conscience has previously relieved itself; that is, has
complied with the injunctions which it seeks preposterously to be rid
of. Relief for conscience there is properly none, but what by better
information makes an act appear innocent and lawful, with which the
previous conscience was not satisfied to comply. All else is but relief
from penalties, from scandal incurred by a complying practice, where the
conscience itself is not fully satisfied.
But, say you, we have hard measure; the Quakers are indulged with the
liberty denied to us. They have [? are]; and dearly they have earned it.
You have come in (as a sect at least) in the cool of the evening; at the
eleventh hour. The Quaker character was hardened in the fires of
persecution in the seventeenth century; not quite to the stake and
faggot, but little short of that; they grew up and thrived against
noisome prisons, cruel beatings, whippings, stockings. They have since
endured a century or two of scoffs, contempts; they have been a
bye-word, and a nay-word; they have stood unmoved: and the consequence
of long conscientious resistance on one part is invariably, in the end,
remission on the other. The legislature, that denied you the tolerance,
which I do not know that at that time you even asked, gave them the
liberty which, without granting, they would have assumed. No penalties
could have driven them into the Churches. This is the consequence of
entire measures. Had the early Quakers consented to take oaths, leaving
a Protest with the clerk of the court against them in the same breath
with which they had taken them, do you in your conscience think that
they would have been indulged at this day in their exclusive privilege
of Affirming? Let your people go on for a century or so, marrying in
your own fashion, and I will warrant them before the end of it the
legislature will be willing to concede to them more than they at present
demand.
Either the institution of marriage depends not for its validity upon
hypocritical compliances with the ritual of an alien Church; and then I
do not see why you cannot marry among yourselves, as the Quakers,
without their indulgence, would have been doing to this day; or it does
depend upon such ritual compliance, and then in your Protests you offend
against a divine ordinance. I have read in the Essex-street Liturgy a
form for the celebration of marriage. Why is this become a dead letter?
O! it has never been legalised; that is to say, in the law's eye it is
no marriage. But do you take upon you to say, in the view of the gospel
it would be none? Would your own people at least look upon a couple so
paired, to be none? But the case of dowries, alimonies, inheritances,
&c. which depend for their validity upon the ceremonial of the Church by
law established--are these nothing? That our children are not legally
_Filii Nullius_--is this nothing? I answer, nothing; to the preservation
of a good conscience, nothing; to a consistent Christianity, less than
nothing. Sad worldly thorns they are indeed, and stumbling blocks, well
worthy to be set out of the way by a legislature calling itself
Christian; but not likely to be removed in a hurry by any shrewd
legislators, who perceive that the petitioning complainants have not so
much as bruised a shin in the resistance; but, prudently declining the
briars and the prickles, nestle quietly down in the smooth two-sided
velvet of a Protesting Occasional Conformity.--I am, dear sir,
With much respect, yours, &c.
ELIA.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN
_In a letter to the Editor_
(1825)
Hark'ee, Mr. Editor. A word in your ear. They tell me you are going to
put me in print--in print, Sir. To publish my life. What is my life to
you, Sir? What is it to you whether I ever lived at all? My life is a
very good life, Sir. I am insured at the Pelican, Sir. I am threescore
years and six--six; mark me, Sir: but I can play Polonius, which, I
believe, few of your corre--correspondents can do, Sir. I suspect
tricks, Sir: I smell a rat; I do, I do. You would cog the die upon us;
you would, you would, Sir. But I will forestall you, Sir. You would be
deriving me from William the Conqueror, with a murrain to you. It is no
such thing, Sir. The town shall know better, Sir. They begin to smoke
your flams, Sir. Mr. Liston may be born where he pleases, Sir; but I
will not be born at Lup--Lupton Magna, for any body's pleasure, Sir. My
son and I have looked over the great map of Kent together, and we can
find no such place as you would palm upon us, Sir; palm upon us, I say.
Neither Magna nor Parva, as my son says, and he knows Latin, Sir; Latin.
If you write my life true, Sir, you must set down, that I, Joseph
Munden, comedian, came into the world upon Allhallows' day, Anno Domini,
1759--1759; no sooner nor later, Sir: and I saw the first light--the
first light, remember, Sir, at Stoke Pogis--Stoke Pogis, comitatu Bucks,
and not at Lup--Lup[ton] Magna, which I believe to be no better than
moonshine--moonshine; do you mark me, Sir? I wonder you can put such
flim flams upon us, Sir; I do, I do. It does not become you, Sir; I say
it--I say it. And my father was an honest tradesman, Sir: he dealt in
malt and hops, Sir, and was a Corporation man, Sir, and of the Church of
England, Sir, and no Presbyterian; nor Ana--Anabaptist, Sir, however you
may be disposed to make honest people believe to the contrary, Sir. Your
bams are found out, Sir. The town will be your stale puts no longer,
Sir; and you must not send us jolly fellows, Sir--we that are comedians,
Sir,--you must not send us into groves and Char--Charnwoods, a moping,
Sir. Neither Charns, nor charnel houses, Sir. It is not our
constitutions, Sir. I tell it you--I tell it you. I was a droll dog from
my cradle. I came into the world tittering, and the midwife tittered,
and the gossips spilt their caudle with tittering. And when I was
brought to the font, the parson could not christen me for tittering. So
I was never more than half baptized. And when I was little Joey, I made
'em all titter; there was not a melancholy face to be seen in Pogis.
Pure nature, Sir. I was born a comedian. Old Screwup, the undertaker,
could tell you, Sir, if he were living. Why, I was obliged to be locked
up every time there was to be a funeral at Pogis. I was--I was, Sir. I
used to _grimace_, at the mutes, as he called it, and put 'em out with
my mops and my mows, till they couldn't stand at a door for me. And when
I was locked up, with nothing but a cat in my company, I followed my
bent with trying to make her laugh, and sometimes she would, and
sometimes she would not. And my schoolmaster could make nothing of me:
I had only to thrust my tongue in my cheek--in my cheek, Sir--and the
rod dropped from his finger: and so my education was limited, Sir. And I
grew up a young fellow, and it was thought convenient to enter me upon
some course of life that should make me serious; but it wouldn't do,
Sir. And I was articled to a drysalter. My father gave forty pounds
premium with me, Sir. I can show the indent--dent--dentures, Sir. But I
was born to be a comedian, Sir: so I ran away, and listed with the
players, Sir; and I topt my parts at Amersham and Gerrard's Cross, and
played my own father to his face, in his own town of Pogis, in the part
of Gripe, when I was not full seventeen years of age, and he did not
know me again, but he knew me afterwards; and then he laughed, and I
laughed, and, what is better, the drysalter laughed, and gave me up my
articles for the joke's sake: so that I came into court afterwards with
clean hands--with clean hands--do you see, Sir?
[Here the manuscript becomes illegible for two or three sheets onwards,
which we presume to be occasioned by the absence of Mr. Munden, jun. who
clearly transcribed it for the press thus far. The rest (with the
exception of the concluding paragraph, which seemingly is resumed in the
first hand writing) appears to contain a confused account of some
lawsuit, in which the elder Munden was engaged; with a circumstantial
history of the proceedings on a case of Breach of Promise of Marriage,
made to or by (we cannot pick out which) Jemima Munden, spinster,
probably the comedian's cousin, for it does not appear he had any
sister; with a few dates, rather better preserved, of this great actor's
engagements--as "Cheltenham (spelt Cheltnam) 1776;" "Bath, 1779;"
"London, 1789;" together with stage anecdotes of Messrs. Edwin, Wilson,
Lee Lewis, &c. over which we have strained our eyes to no purpose, in
the hope of presenting something amusing to the public. Towards the end
the manuscript brightens up a little, as we have said, and concludes in
the following manner.]
----stood before them for six and thirty years, [we suspect that Mr.
Munden is here speaking of his final leave-taking of the stage] and to
be dismissed at last. But I was heart-whole, heart-whole to the last,
Sir. What though a few drops did course themselves down the old
veteran's cheeks; who could help it, Sir? I was a giant that night,
Sir; and could have played fifty parts, each as arduous as Dozy. My
faculties were never better, Sir. But I was to be laid upon the shelf.
It did not suit the public to laugh with their old servant any longer,
Sir. [Here some moisture has blotted a sentence or two.] But I can play
Polonius still, Sir; I can, I can.
Your servant, Sir,
JOSEPH MUNDEN.
THE "LEPUS" PAPERS
(1825)
I.--MANY FRIENDS
Unfortunate is the lot of that man, who can look round about the wide
world, and exclaim with truth, _I have no friend_! Do you know any such
lonely sufferer? For mercy sake send him to me. I can afford him plenty.
He shall have them good, cheap. I have enough and to spare. Truly
society is the balm of human life. But you may take a surfeit from
sweetest odours administered to satiety. Hear my case, dear VARIORUM,
and pity me. I am an elderly gentleman--not old--a sort of
middle-aged-gentleman-and-a-half--with a tolerable larder, cellar, &c.;
and a most unfortunately easy temper for the callous front of
impertinence to try conclusions on. My day times are entirely engrossed
by the business of a public office, where I am any thing but alone from
nine till five. I have forty fellow-clerks about me during those hours;
and, though the human face be divine, I protest that so many human faces
seen every day do very much diminish the homage I am willing to pay to
that divinity. It fares with these divine resemblances as with a
Polytheism. Multiply the object and you infallibly enfeeble the
adoration. "What a piece of work is Man! how excellent in faculty," &c.
But a great many men together--a hot huddle of rational
creatures--Hamlet himself would have lowered his contemplation a peg or
two in my situation. _Tædet me harum quotidianarum formarum._ I go home
every day to my late dinner, absolutely famished and face-sick. I am
sometimes fortunate enough to go off unaccompanied. The relief is
restorative like sleep; but far oftener, alas! some one of my fellows,
who lives _my way_ (as they call it) does me the sociality of walking
with me. He sees me to the door; and now I figure to myself a snug
fire-side--comfortable meal--a respiration from the burthen of
society--and the blessedness of a single knife and fork. I sit down to
my solitary mutton, happy as Adam when a bachelor. I have not swallowed
a mouthful, before a startling ring announces the visit of a _friend_.
O! for an everlasting muffle upon that appalling instrument of torture!
A knock makes me nervous; but a ring is a positive fillip to all the
sour passions of my nature:--and yet such is my effeminacy of
temperament, I neither tie up the one nor dumbfound the other. But these
accursed friends, or fiends, that torture me thus! They come in with a
full consciousness of their being unwelcome--with a sort of grin of
triumph over your weakness. My soul sickens within when they enter. I
can scarcely articulate a "how d'ye." My digestive powers fail. I have
enough to do to maintain them in any healthiness when alone. Eating is a
solitary function; you may drink in company. Accordingly the bottle soon
succeeds; and such is my infirmity, that the reluctance soon subsides
before it. The visitor becomes agreeable. I find a great deal that is
good in him; wonder I should have felt such aversion on his first
entrance; we get chatty, conversible; insensibly comes midnight; and I
am dismissed to the cold bed of celibacy (the only place, alas! where I
am suffered to be alone) with the reflection that another day has gone
over my head without the possibility of enjoying my own free thoughts in
solitude even for a solitary moment. O for a Lodge in some vast
wilderness! the den of those Seven Sleepers (conditionally the other six
were away)--a _Crusoe_ solitude!
What most disturbs me is, that my chief annoyers are mostly young men.
Young men, let them think as they please, are no company _singly_ for a
gentleman of my years. They do mighty well in a mixed society, and where
there are females to take them off, as it were. But to have the load of
one of them to one's own self for successive hours conversation is
unendurable.
There was my old friend Captain Beacham--he died some six years since,
bequeathing to my friendship three stout young men, his sons, and seven
girls, the tallest in the land. Pleasant, excellent young women they
were, and for their sakes I did, and could endure much. But they were
too tall. I am superstitious in that respect, and think that to a just
friendship, something like proportion in stature as well as mind is
desirable. Now I am five feet and a trifle more. Each of these young
women rose to six, and one exceeded by two inches. The brothers are
proportionably taller. I have sometimes taken the altitude of this
friendship; and on a modest computation I may be said to have known at
one time a whole furlong of Beachams. But the young women are married
off, and dispersed among the provinces. The brothers are left. Nothing
is more distasteful than these relics and parings of past
friendships--unmeaning records of agreeable hours flown. There are three
of them. If they hunted in triples, or even couples, it were something;
but by a refinement of persecution, they contrive to come singly; and so
spread themselves out into three evenings molestation in a week. Nothing
is so distasteful as the sight of their long legs, couched for
continuance upon my fender. They have been mates of Indiamen; and one of
them in particular has a story of a shark swallowing a boy in the bay of
Calcutta. I wish the shark had swallowed _him_. Nothing can be more
useless than their conversation to me, unless it is mine to them. We
have no ideas (save of eating and drinking) in common. The shark story
has been told till it cannot elicit a spark of attention; but it goes on
just as usual. When I try to introduce a point of literature, or common
life, the mates gape at me. When I fill a glass, they fill one too. Here
is sympathy. And for this poor correspondency of having a gift of
swallowing and retaining liquor in common with my fellow-creatures, I am
to be tied up to an ungenial intimacy, abhorrent from every sentiment,
and every sympathy besides. But I cannot break the bond. They are sons
of my old friend.
LEPUS
II.--READERS AGAINST THE GRAIN
No one can pass through the streets, alleys, and blindest thoroughfares
of this Metropolis, without surprise at the number of shops opened
everywhere for the sale of cheap publications--not blasphemy and
sedition--nor altogether flimsy periodicals, though the latter abound to
a surfeit--but I mean fair re-prints of good old books. Fielding,
Smollett, the Poets, Historians, are daily becoming accessible to the
purses of poor people. I cannot behold this result from the enlargement
of the reading public without congratulations to my country. But as
every blessing has its wrong side, it is with aversion I behold
springing up with this phenomenon a race of _Readers against the grain_.
Young men who thirty years ago would have been play-goers,
punch-drinkers, cricketers, &c. with one accord are now--Readers!--a
change in some respects, perhaps, salutary; but I liked the old way
best. Then people read because they liked reading. He must have been
indigent indeed, and, as times went then, probably unable to enjoy a
book, who from one little circulating library or another (those
slandered benefactions to the public) could not pick out an odd volume
to satisfy the intervals of the workshop and the desk. Then if a man
told you that he "loved reading mightily, but had no books," you might
be sure that in the first assertion at least he was mistaken. Neither
had he, perhaps, the materials that should enliven a punch-bowl in his
own cellar; but if the rogue loved his liquor, he would quickly find out
where the arrack, the lemons, and the sugar dwelt--he would speedily
find out the circulating shop for them. I will illustrate this from my
own observation. It may detract a little from the gentility of your
columns when I tell your Readers that I am--what I hinted at in my
last--a Bank Clerk. Three and thirty years ago, when I took my first
station at the desk, out of as many fellows in office one or two there
were that had read a little. One could give a pretty good account of the
_Spectator_. A second knew _Tom Jones_. A third recommended
_Telemachus_. One went so far as to quote _Hudibras_, and was looked on
as a phenomenon. But the far greater number neither cared for books, nor
affected to care. They were, as I said, in their leisure hours,
cricketers, punch-drinkers, play-goers, and the rest. Times are altered
now. We are all readers; our young men are split up into so many
book-clubs, knots of literati; we criticise; we read the _Quarterly_ and
_Edinburgh_, I assure you; and instead of the old, honest, unpretending
illiterature so becoming to our profession--we read and _judge_ of
every thing. I have something to do in these book-clubs, and know the
trick and mystery of it. Every new publication that is likely to make a
noise, must be had at any rate. By some they are devoured with avidity.
These would have been readers in the old time I speak of. The only loss
is, that for the good old reading of Addison or Fielding's days is
substituted that never-ending flow of thin novelties which are kept up
like a ball, leaving no possible time for better things, and threatening
in the issue to bury or sweep away from the earth the memory of their
nobler predecessors. We read to say that we have read. No reading can
keep pace with the writing of this age, but we pant and toil after it as
fast as we can. I smile to see an honest lad, who ought to be at
trap-ball, laboring up hill against this giant load, taking his toil for
a pleasure, and with that utter incapacity for reading which _betrays
itself by a certain silent movement of the lips when the reader reads to
himself_, undertaking the infinite contents of fugitive poetry, or
travels, what not--to see them with their snail pace undertaking so vast
a journey as might make faint a giant's speed; keeping a volume, which a
real reader would get through in an hour, three, four, five, six days,
and returning it with the last leaf but one folded down. These are your
readers against the grain, who yet _must_ read or be thought nothing
of--who, crawling through a book with tortoise-pace, go creeping to the
next Review to learn what they shall say of it. Upon my soul, I pity the
honest fellows mightily. The self-denials of virtue are nothing to the
patience of these self tormentors. If I hate one day before another, it
is the accursed first day of the month, when a load of periodicals is
ushered in and distributed to feed the reluctant monster. How it gapes
and takes in its prescribed diet, as little savoury as that which Daniel
ministered to that Apocryphal dragon, and not more wholesome! Is there
no stopping the eternal wheels of the Press for a half century or two,
till the nation recover its senses? Must we _magazine_ it and _review_
[it] at this sickening rate for ever? Shall we never again read to be
_amused_? but to judge, to criticise, to talk about it and about it?
Farewel, old honest delight taken in books not quite contemporary,
before this plague-token of modern endless novelties broke out upon
us--farewel to reading for its own sake!
Rather than follow in the train of this insatiable monster of modern
reading, I would forswear my spectacles, play at put, mend pens, kill
fleas, stand on one leg, shell peas, or do whatsoever ignoble diversion
you shall put me to. Alas! I am hurried on in the vortex. I die of new
books, or the everlasting talk about them. I faint of Longman's. I
sicken of the Constables. Blackwood and Cadell have me by the throat.
I will go and relieve myself with a page of honest John Bunyan, or Tom
Brown. Tom anybody will do, so long as they are not of this whiffling
century.
Your Old-fashioned Correspondent,
LEPUS.
III.--MORTIFICATIONS OF AN AUTHOR
If you have a son or daughter inclinable to the folly of Authorship,
pray warn them by my example of the mortifications which are the
constant attendants upon it. I do not advert to the trite instances of
unfair and malignant reviewing, though that is not nothing--but to the
mortifications they may expect from their friends and common
acquaintance. I have been a dabler this way, and cannot resist flinging
out my thoughts occasionally in periodical publications. I was the chief
support of the * * * * * * * * * Magazine while it lasted, under the
signature of OLINDO. All my friends guessed, or rather knew, who OLINDO
was; but I never knew one who did not take a pleasure in affecting to be
ignorant of it. One would ask me, whether I had read that clever article
in the * * * * * * * * * Magazine of this month (and here I began to
prick up my ears) signed "ZEKIEL HOMESPUN."--(Then my ears would flap
down again.)--Another would praise the verses of "X. Y. Z.;" a third
stood up for the "Gipsy Stranger;" a long rambling tale in prose, with
all the lengthiness, and none of the fine-heartedness and gush of soul
of A----n C----m to recommend it. But never in a single instance was
Olindo ever hinted at. I have sifted, I have pumped them (as the vulgar
phrase is) till my heart ached, to extort a pittance of acknowledgment.
I have descended to arts below any animal but _an Author_, who is
veritably the meanest of Heaven's creatures, and my vanity has returned
upon myself ungratified, to choke me. When I could bear their silence
no longer and have ventured to ask them how they liked "such a Paper;" a
cold, "O! was that yours?" is the utmost I ever obtained from them. A
fellow sits at my desk this morning, spelling _The New Times_ over from
head to tail, and I know that he will purposely skip over this article,
because he suspects me to be LEPUS. So confident am I of this, and of
his deliberate purpose to torment me, that I have a great mind to give
you his character--knowing that he will not read it--but I forbear him
at present. They have two ways of doing it. "The * * * * * * * * *
Magazine is very sprightly this month, Anticlericus has some good hits,
the Old Baker is capital," and so forth. Or the same Magazine is
"unusually dull this month," especially when Olindo happens to have an
article better or longer than usual. I publish a book now and then. In
the very nick of its novelty, the honey moon, as it were--when with
pride I have placed my bantling on my own shelves in company with its
betters, a friend will drop in, and ask me if I have anything new; then,
carefully eluding mine, he will take down _The Angel of the World_, or
_Barry Cornwall_, and beg me to lend it him. "He is particularly careful
of new books." But he never borrows _me_. To one Lady I lent a little
Novel of mine, a thing of about two hours' reading at most, and she
returned it after five weeks' keeping, with an apology that she had "so
small time for reading." I found it doubled down at the last leaf but
one--just at the crisis of what I conceived to be a very affecting
catastrophe. O if you _write_, dear Reader, keep the secret inviolable
from your most familiar friends. Do not let your own father, brother, or
your uncle, know it: not even your wife. I know a Lady who prides
herself upon "not reading any of her husband's publications," though she
swallows all the trash she can pick up besides; and yet her husband in
the world's eye is a very respectable author, and has written some
Novels in particular that are in high estimation. Write--and all your
friends will hate you--all will suspect you. Are you happy in drawing a
character? Shew it not for yours. Not one of your acquaintance but will
surmise that you meant him or her--no matter how discordant from their
own. Let it be diametrically different, their fancy will extract from it
some lines of a likeness. I lost a friend--a most valuable one, by
shewing him a whimsical draught of a miser. He himself is remarkable for
generosity, even to carelessness in money matters; but there was an
expression in it, out of Juvenal, about an attic--a place where pigeons
are fed; and my friend kept pigeons. All the waters in the Danube cannot
wash it out of his pate to this day, but that in my miser I was making
reflections upon _him_. To conclude, no creature is so craving after
applause, and so starved and famished for it, as an author: none so
pitiful, and so little pitied. He sets himself up _prima facie_ as
something different from his brethren, and they never forgive him. 'Tis
the fable of the little birds hooting at the bird of Pallas.
LEPUS.
IV.--TOM PRY
My friend TOM PRY is a kind, warm-hearted fellow, with no one failing in
the world but an excess of the passion of _Curiosity_. He knows every
body's name, face, and domestic affairs. He scents out a match three
months before the parties themselves are quite agreed about it. Like the
man in the play, _homo est_ and no human interest escapes him. I have
sometime wondered how he gets all his information. Mere inquisitiveness
would not do his business. Certainly the bodily make has much to do with
the character. The auricular organs in my friend Tom do not lie flapping
against his head as with common mortals, but they perk up like those of
a hare at form. The lowest sound cannot elude him. Every parlour and
drawing-room is to him a whispering gallery. His own name, pronounced in
the utmost compression of susurration, they say, he catches at a quarter
furlong interval. I suspect sometimes that the faculty of hearing with
him is analogous to the scent in some animals. He seems hung round with
ears, like the pagan emblem of Fame, and to imbibe sounds at every pore.
You cannot take a walk of business or pleasure, but you are taxed with
it by him next morning, with some shrewd guess at the purpose of it. You
dread him as you would an inquisitor, or the ubiquitarian power of the
old Secret Tribunal. He is the bird of the air, who sees the matter. He
has lodgings at a corner house, which looks out four ways; and though
you go a round about way to evade his investigation, you are somehow
seen notwithstanding. He sees at multiplied angles. He is a sort of
second memory to all his friends, an excellent refresher to a dull or
obvious conscience; for he can repeat to you at any given time all that
ever you have done in your life. He should have been a death-bed
confessor. His appetite for information is omnivorous. To get at the
_name_ only of a stranger whom he passes in the street, he counts a
God-send; what further he can pick up is a luxury. His friends joke with
him about his innocent propensity, but the bent of nature is too deeply
burned in to be removed with such forks. _Usque recurrit_. I myself in
particular had been rallying him pretty sharply one day upon the foible,
and it seemed to impress him a little. He asked no more questions that
morning. But walking with him in St. James's Park in the evening, we met
an old Gentleman unknown to him, who bowed to me. I could see that Tom
kept his passion within with great struggles. Silence was observed for
ten minutes, and I was congratulating myself on my friend's mastery over
this inordinate appetite of knowing every thing, when we had not past
the Queen's gate a pace or two, but the fire burnt within him, and he
said, as if with indifference, "By the way, who was that friend of yours
who bowed to you just now?" He has a place in the Post-office, which I
think he chose for the pleasure of reading superscriptions. He is too
honorable a man, I am sure, to get clandestinely at the contents of a
letter not addressed to him, but the outside he cannot resist. It
tickles him. He plays about the flame, as it were; contents himself with
a superficial caress, when he can get at nothing more substantial. He
has a handsome seal, which he keeps to proffer to such of his friends as
have not one in readiness, when they would fold up an epistle; nay, he
will seal it for you, and pays himself by discovering the direction. As
I have no directionary secrets, I generally humour him with pretending
to have left my seal at home (though I carry a rich gold one, which was
my grandfather's, always about me), to gratify his harmless inclination.
He is the cleverest of sealing a letter of any man I ever knew, and
turns out the cleanest impressions. It is a neat but slow operation with
him--he has so much more time to drink in the direction. With all this
curiosity, he is the finest tempered fellow in the world. You may banter
him from morning to night, but never ruffle his temper. We sometimes
raise reports to mislead him, as that such a one is going to be married
next month, &c.; but he has an instinct, as I called it before, which
prevents his yielding to the imposition. He distinguishes _at hearing_
between giddy rumour and steady report. He listens with dignity, and his
prying is without credulity.
LEPUS.
V.--TOM PRY'S WIFE
You say you were diverted with my description of the "Curious Man." Tom
is in some respects an amusing character enough, but then it is by no
means uncommon. But what power of words can paint Tom's wife? My pencil
faulters while I attempt it. But I am ambitious that the portraits
should hang side by side: they may set off one another. Tom's passion
for knowledge in the _pursuit_ is intense and restless, but when
satisfied it sits down and seeks no further. He must know all about
every thing, but his desires terminate in mere science. Now as far as
the _pure mathematics_, as they are called, transcend the _practical_,
so far does Tom's curiosity, to my mind, in elegance and
disinterestedness, soar above the craving, gnawing, _mercenary_ (if I
may so call it) inquisitiveness of his wife.
Mrs. Priscilla Pry must not only know all about your private concerns,
but be as deeply concerned herself for them: she will pluck at the very
heart of your mystery. She must anatomise and skin you, absolutely lay
your feelings bare. Her passions are reducible to two, but those are
stronger in her than in any human creature--_pity_ and _envy_. I will
try to illustrate it. She has intimacy with two families--the Grimstones
and the Gubbins's. The former are sadly pinched to live, the latter are
in splendid circumstances: the former tenant an obscure third floor in
Devereux Court, the latter occupy a stately mansion in May-fair. I have
accompanied her to both these domiciles. She will burst into the
incommodious lodging of poor Grimstone and his wife at some unseasonable
hour, when they are at their meagre dinner, with a "Bless me! what a
dark passage you have! I could hardly find my way up stairs! Isn't there
a drain somewhere? Well, I like to see you at your _little_ bit of
mutton!" But her treat is to catch them at a meal of solitary potatoes.
Then does her sympathy burgeon, and bud out into a thousand flowers of
rhetorical pity and wonder; and it is trumpeted out afterwards to all
her acquaintance, that the poor Grimstones were "making a dinner
without flesh yesterday." The word _poor_ is her favorite; the word (on
my conscience) is endeared to her beyond any monosyllable in the
language. Poverty, in the tone of her compassion, is somehow doubled; it
is emphatically what a dramatist, with some licence, has called _poor
poverty_. It is stark-naked _indigence_, and never in her mind connected
with any mitigating circumstances of self-respect and independence in
the owner, which give to poverty a dignity. It is an object of pure
pity, and nothing else. This is her first way. Change we the scene to
May-fair and the Gubbins's. Suppose it a morning call:--
"Bless me!--(for she equally blesses herself against want and
abundance)--what a style you _do_ live in! what elegant curtains! You
must have a great income to afford all these things. I wonder you can
ever visit such poor folks as we!"--with more to the same purpose, which
I must cut short, not to be tedious. She pumps all her friends to know
the exact income of all her friends. Such a one must have a great
salary. Do you think he has as much as eight hundred a year--seven
hundred and fifty perhaps? A wag once told her I had fourteen
hundred--(Heaven knows we Bank Clerks, though with no reason to
complain, in few cases realise that luxury)--and the fury of her wonder,
till I undeceived her, nearly worked her spirits to a fever. Now Pry is
equally glad to get at his friends' circumstances; but his curiosity is
disinterested, as I said, and passionless. No emotions are consequent
upon the satisfaction of it. He is a philosopher who loves knowledge for
its own sake; she is not content with a _lumen siccum_ (dry knowledge,
says Bacon, is best); the success of her researches is nothing, but as
it feeds the two main springs between which her soul is kept in
perpetual conflict--Pity, and Envy.
LEPUS.
VI.--A CHARACTER
A desk at the Bank of England is _prima facie_ not the point in the
world that seems best adapted for an insight into the characters of men;
yet something may be gleaned from the barrenest soil. There is EGOMET,
for instance. By the way, how pleasant it is to string up one's
acquaintance thus, in the grumbler's corner of some newspaper, and for
them to know nothing at all about it; nay, for them to read their own
characters and suspect nothing of the matter. Blessings on the writer
who first made use of Roman names. It is only calling Tomkins--Caius;
and Jenkins--Titus; or whipping Hopkins upon the back of Scævola, and
you have the pleasure of executing sentence with no pain to the
offender. This hanging in effigy is delightful; it evaporates the spleen
without souring the blood, and is altogether the most gentlemanly piece
of Jack-Ketchery imaginable.
EGOMET, then, has been my desk-fellow for thirty years. He is a
remarkable species of selfishness. I do not mean that he is attentive to
his own gain; I acquit him of that common-place manifestation of the
foible. I shoot no such small deer. But his sin is a total absorption of
mind in things relating to himself--_his_ house--_his_ horse--_his_
stable--_his_ gardener, &c. Nothing that concerns himself can he imagine
to be indifferent to you.--He does my sympathy too much honour. The
worst is, he takes no sort of interest whatever in _your_ horse, house,
stable, gardener, &c. If you begin a discourse about your own household
economy and small matters, he treats it with the most mortifying
indifference. He has discarded all pronouns for the first-personal. His
inattention, or rather aversion, to hear, is no more than what is a
proper return to a self-important babbler of his own little concerns;
but then, if he will not give, why should he expect to receive, a
hearing? "There is no reciprocity in this."
There is an egotism of vanity; but his is not that species either. He is
not vain of any talent, or indeed properly of any thing he possesses;
but his doings and sayings, his little pieces of good or ill luck, the
sickness of his maid, the health of his pony, the question whether he
shall ride or walk home to-day to Clapham, the shape of his hat or make
of his boot; his poultry, and how many eggs they lay daily--are the
never-*ending topics of his talk. _Your_ goose might lay golden eggs
without exciting in him a single curiosity to hear about it.
He is alike throughout; his large desk, which abuts on mine--_nimium
vicini_, alas! is a vast lumber chest composed of every scrap of most
insignificant paper, even to dinner invitation cards, every fragment
that has been addressed to him, or in any way has concerned himself. My
elbow aches with being perpetually in the way of his sudden jerking it
up, which he does incessantly to hunt for some worthless scrap of the
least possible self-reference; this he does without notice, and without
ceremony. I should like to make a bonfire of the ungainful mass--but I
should not like it either; with it would fall down at once all the
structure of his pride--his fane of Diana, his treasure, his calling,
the business he came into the world to do.
I said before, he is not avaricious--not egotistical in the vain sense
of the word either; herefore the term selfishness, or egotism, is
improperly applied to his distemper; it is the sin of self-fullness.
Neither is himself, properly speaking, an object of his contemplation at
all; it is the things, which belong or refer to himself. His
conversation is one entire soliloquy; or it may be said to resemble
Robinson Crusoe's self-colloquies in his island: you are the parrot
sitting by. Begin a story, however modest, of your own concerns
(something of real interest perhaps), and the little fellow contracts
and curls up into his little self immediately, and, with shut ears, sits
unmoved, self-centred, as remote from your joys or sorrows as a Pagod or
a Lucretian Jupiter.
LEPUS.
REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY
(1825)
[About the year 18--, one R----d, a respectable London merchant (since
dead), stood in the pillory for some alleged fraud upon the Revenue.
Among his papers were found the following "Reflections," which we have
obtained by favour of our friend Elia, who knew him well, and had heard
him describe the train of his feelings upon that trying occasion almost
in the words of the MS. Elia speaks of him as a man (with the exception
of the peccadillo aforesaid) of singular integrity in all his private
dealings, possessing great suavity of manner, with a certain turn for
humour. As our object is to present human nature under every possible
circumstance, we do not think that we shall sully our pages by inserting
it.--_Editor_.]
_Scene, opposite the Royal Exchange_
_Time, Twelve to One, Noon_
Ketch, my good fellow, you have a neat hand. Prithee, adjust this new
collar to my neck, gingerly. I am not used to these wooden cravats.
There, softly, softly. That seems the exact point between ornament and
strangulation. A thought looser on this side. Now it will do. And have a
care in turning me, that I present my aspect due vertically. I now face
the orient. In a quarter of an hour I shift southward--do you mind?--and
so on till I face the east again, travelling with the sun. No
half-points, I beseech you; N.N. by W. or any such elaborate niceties.
They become the shipman's card, but not this mystery. Now leave me a
little to my own reflections.
Bless us, what a company is assembled in honour of me! How grand I stand
here! I never felt so sensibly before the effect of solitude in a crowd.
I muse in solemn silence upon that vast miscellaneous rabble in the pit
there. From my private box I contemplate with mingled pity and wonder
the gaping curiosity of those underlings. There are my Whitechapel
supporters. Rosemary Lane has emptied herself of the very flower of her
citizens to grace my show. Duke's place sits desolate. What is there in
my face, that strangers should come so far from the east to gaze upon
it? [_Here an egg narrowly misses him._] That offering was well meant,
but not so cleanly executed. By the tricklings, it should not be either
myrrh or frankincence. Spare your presents, my friends; I am no-ways
mercenary. I desire no missive tokens of your approbation. I am past
those valentines. Bestow these coffins of untimely chickens upon mouths
that water for them. Comfort your addle spouses with them at home, and
stop the mouths of your brawling brats with such Olla Podridas; they
have need of them. [_A brick is let fly._] Discase not, I pray you, nor
dismantle your rent and ragged tenements, to furnish me with
architectural decorations, which I can excuse. This fragment might have
stopped a flaw against snow comes. [_A coal flies._] Cinders are dear,
gentlemen. This nubbling might have helped the pot boil, when your dirty
cuttings from the shambles at three ha'-pence a pound shall stand at a
cold simmer. Now, south about, Ketch. I would enjoy australian
popularity.
What my friends from over the water! Old benchers--flies of a
day--ephemeral Romans--welcome! Doth the sight of me draw souls from
limbo? Can it dispeople purgatory--ha!
What am I, or what was my father's house, that I should thus be set up a
spectacle to gentlemen and others? Why are all faces, like Persians at
the sun-rise, bent singly on mine alone? It was wont to be esteemed an
ordinary visnomy, a quotidian merely. Doubtless, these assembled myriads
discern some traits of nobleness, gentility, breeding, which hitherto
have escaped the common observation--some intimations, as it were, of
wisdom, valour, piety, and so forth. My sight dazzles; and, if I am not
deceived by the too familiar pressure of this strange neckcloth that
envelopes it, my countenance gives out lambent glories. For some painter
now to take me in the lucky point of expression!--the posture so
convenient--the head never shifting, but standing quiescent in a sort of
natural frame. But these artizans require a westerly aspect. Ketch, turn
me.
Something of St. James's air in these my new friends. How my prospects
shift, and brighten! Now if Sir Thomas Lawrence be any where in that
group, his fortune is made for ever. I think I see some one taking out a
crayon. I will compose my whole face to a smile, which yet shall not so
predominate, but that gravity and gaiety shall contend as it were--you
understand me? I will work up my thoughts to some mild rapture--a gentle
enthusiasmus--which the artist may transfer in a manner warm to the
canvass. I will inwardly apostrophize my tabernacle.
Delectable mansion, hail! House, not made of every wood! Lodging, that
pays no rent; airy and commodious; which, owing no window tax, art yet
all casement, out of which men have such pleasure in peering and
overlooking, that they will sometimes stand an hour together to enjoy
thy prospects! Cell, recluse from the vulgar! Quiet retirement from the
great Babel, yet affording sufficient glimpses into it! Pulpit, that
instructs without note or sermon-book, into which the preacher is
inducted without tenth or first fruit! Throne, unshared and single, that
disdainest a Brentford competitor! Honour without co-rival! Or hearest
thou rather, magnificent theatre in which the spectator comes to see and
to be seen? From thy giddy heights I look down upon the common herd,
who stand with eyes upturned as if a winged messenger hovered over them;
and mouths open, as if they expected manna. I feel, I feel, the true
Episcopal yearnings. Behold in me, my flock, your true overseer! What
though I cannot lay hands, because my own are laid, yet I can mutter
benedictions. True _otium cum dignitate_! Proud Pisgah eminence!
Pinnacle sublime! O Pillory, 'tis thee I sing! Thou younger brother to
the gallows, without his rough and Esau palms; that with ineffable
contempt surveyest beneath thee the grovelling stocks, which claims
presumptuously to be of thy great race. Let that low wood know, that
thou art far higher born! Let that domicile for groundling rogues and
base earth-kissing varlets envy thy preferment, not seldom fated to be
the wanton baiting-house, the temporary retreat, of poet and of patriot.
Shades of Bastwick and of Prynne hover over thee--Defoe is there, and
more greatly daring Shebbeare--from their (little more elevated)
stations they look down with recognitions. Ketch, turn me.
I now veer to the north. Open your widest gates, thou proud Exchange of
London, that I may look in as proudly! Gresham's wonder, hail! I stand
upon a level with all your kings. They, and I, from equal heights, with
equal superciliousness, o'er-look the plodding, money-hunting tribe
below; who, busied in their sordid speculations, scarce elevate their
eyes to notice your ancient, or my recent, grandeur. The second Charles
smiles on me from three pedestals?[50] He closed the Exchequer: I
cheated the Excise. Equal our darings, equal be our lot.
[50] A statue of Charles II. by the elder Cibber, adorns the front
of the Exchange. He stands also on high, in the train of his crowned
ancestors, in his proper order, _within_ that building. But the
merchants of London, in a superfœtation of loyalty, have, within a
few years, caused to be erected another effigy of him on the ground
in the centre of the interior. We do not hear that a fourth is in
contemplation.--_Editor_.
Are those the quarters? 'tis their fatal chime. That the ever-winged
hours would but stand still! but I must descend, descend from this dream
of greatness. Stay, stay, a little while, importunate hour hand! A
moment or two, and I shall walk on foot with the undistinguished many.
The clock speaks one. I return to common life. Ketch, let me out.
THE LAST PEACH
(1825)
I am the miserablest man living. Give me counsel, dear Editor. I was
bred up in the strictest principles of honesty, and have passed my life
in punctual adherence to them. Integrity might be said to be ingrained
in our family. Yet I live in constant fear of one day coming to the
gallows.
Till the latter end of last autumn I never experienced these feelings of
self-mistrust which ever since have embittered my existence. From the
apprehension of that unfortunate man whose story began to make so great
an impression upon the public about that time, I date my horrors. I
never can get it out of my head that I shall some time or other commit a
forgery, or do some equally vile thing. To make matters worse I am in a
banking-house. I sit surrounded with a cluster of bank-notes. These were
formerly no more to me than meat to a butcher's dog. They are now as
toads and aspics. I feel all day like one situated amidst gins and
pit-falls. Sovereigns, which I once took such pleasure in counting out,
and scraping up with my little thin tin shovel (at which I was the most
expert in the banking-house), now scald my hands. When I go to sign my
name I set down that of another person, or write my own in a counterfeit
character. I am beset with temptations without motive. I want no more
wealth than I possess. A more contented being than myself, as to money
matters, exists not. What should I fear?
When a child I was once let loose, by favour of a Nobleman's gardener,
into his Lordship's magnificent fruit garden, with free leave to pull
the currants and the gooseberries; only I was interdicted from touching
the wall fruit. Indeed, at that season (it was the end of Autumn) there
was little left. Only on the South wall (can I forget the hot feel of
the brickwork?) lingered the one last peach. Now peaches are a fruit I
always had, and still have, an almost utter aversion to. There is
something to my palate singularly harsh and repulsive in the flavour of
them. I know not by what demon of contradiction inspired, but I was
haunted by an irresistible desire to pluck it. Tear myself as often as I
would from the spot, I found myself still recurring to it, till,
maddening with desire (desire I cannot call it), with wilfulness
rather--without appetite--against appetite, I may call it--in an evil
hour I reached out my hand, and plucked it. Some few rain drops just
then fell; the sky (from a bright day) became overcast; and I was a type
of our first parents, after the eating of that fatal fruit. I felt
myself naked and ashamed; stripped of my virtue, spiritless. The downy
fruit, whose sight rather than savour had tempted me, dropt from my
hand, never to be tasted. All the commentators in the world cannot
persuade me but that the Hebrew word in the second chapter of Genesis,
translated apple, should be rendered peach. Only this way can I
reconcile that mysterious story.
Just such a child at thirty am I among the cash and valuables, longing
to pluck, without an idea of enjoyment further. I cannot reason myself
out of these fears: I dare not laugh at them. I was tenderly and
lovingly brought up. What then? Who that in life's entrance had seen the
babe F----, from the lap stretching out his little fond mouth to catch
the maternal kiss, could have predicted, or as much as imagined, that
life's very different exit? The sight of my own fingers torments me;
they seem so admirably constructed for ---- pilfering. Then that jugular
vein, which I have in common----; in an emphatic sense may I say with
David, I am "fearfully made." All my mirth is poisoned by these unhappy
suggestions. If, to dissipate reflection, I hum a tune, it changes to
the "Lamentations of a Sinner." My very dreams are tainted. I awake with
a shocking feeling of my hand in some pocket.
Advise with me, dear Editor, on this painful heart-malady. Tell me, do
you feel any thing allied to it in yourself? do you never feel an
itching, as it were--a _dactylomania_--or am I alone? You have my honest
confession. My next may appear from Bow-street.
SUSPENSURUS.
"ODES AND ADDRESSES TO GREAT PEOPLE"
(1825)
The Odes and Addresses are Thirteen in number. The metre is happily
varied from the familiar epistolary verse to the Eton College stanza,
and loftier parodies of Gray, &c. Among the Great People addressed
are--Graham the Aeronaut, Mr. McAdam, Mrs. Fry, Martin of Galway, R. W.
Elliston, Esq., &c. &c. from which the reader may gather that the
Addresses are not mere unqualified or fulsome dedications. They have, in
fact, a fund of fun. They remind us of Peter Pindar, and sometimes of
Colman; they have almost as much humour, and they have rather more wit.
A too great aim at brilliancy is their excess. We do not think that in
any work there can be too much brilliancy _of the same kind_. We are not
of opinion with those critics who condemn Cowley for excess of wit. We
could have borne with a double portion of it, and have never cried
"Hold." What we allude to is a mixture of _incompatible_ kinds; the
perpetual recurrence of _puns_ in these little effusions of humour; puns
uncalled for, and perfectly gratuitous, a sort of make-weight; puns,
which, if _missed_, leave the sense and the drollery full and perfect
without them. You may read any one of the addresses, and not catch a
quibble in it, and it shall be just as good, nay better; for the
addition of said quibble only serves to puzzle with an unnecessary
double meaning. A pun is good when it can rely on its single self; but,
called in as an accessory, it weakens--unless it _makes_ the humour, it
_enfeebles_ it. All this critical prosing is not quite a fair
introduction to the pleasant specimen we subjoin, from the pleasantest
_morceau_ in the volume, which we throw upon the taste of our
pantomime-going readers, with a hearty confidence in their sympathies.
The subject is no less a one than their and our Joe--the immortal
Grimaldi.
Joseph! they say thou'st left the stage.
To toddle down the hill of life,
And taste the flannell'd ease of age,
Apart from pantomimic strife--
* * * * *
Ah, where is now thy rolling head!
Thy winking, reeling, _drunken_ eyes,
(As old Catullus would have said,)
Thy oven-mouth, that swallow'd pies--
Enormous hunger--monstrous drowth!--
Thy pockets greedy as thy mouth!
Ah, where thy ears, so often cuff'd!--
Thy funny, flapping, filching hands!--
Thy partridge body, always stuff'd
With waifs, and strays, and contrabands!--
Thy _foot_--like Berkeley's _Foote_--for why?
'Twas often made to _wipe an eye_! =X=
Ah, where thy legs--that witty pair!
For "great wits jump"--and so did they!
Lord! how they leap'd in lamp-light air!
Caper'd--and bounc'd--and strode away!--
That years should tame the legs--alack!
I've seen spring thro' an Almanack!
But bounds will have their bound =X=--the shocks
Of Time will cramp the nimblest toes:
And those that frisk'd in silken clocks
May look to limp in fleecy hose--
* * * * *
And gout, that owns no odds between
The toe of Czar and toe of Clown,
Will visit--but I did not mean
To moralize, though I am grown
Thus sad.--Thy going seem'd to beat
A muffled drum for Fun's retreat!
* * * * *
Oh, how will thy departure cloud
The lamp-light of the little breast!
The Christmas child will grieve aloud
To miss his broadest friend and best,--
* * * * *
For who like thee could ever stride!
Some dozen paces to the mile!--
The motley, medley _coach_ provide--
Or like Joe Frankenstein compile
The _vegetable man_ complete!--
A proper _Covent Garden_ feat!
Or, who like thee could ever drink,
Or eat,--swill, swallow--bolt--and choke!
Nod, weep, and hiccup--sneeze and wink?--
Thy very yawn was quite a joke!
Tho' Joseph, Junior, acts not ill,
"There's no Fool like the old Fool" still!
All that is descriptive here is excellent. It seems to us next in merit
to some of Cibber's dramatic comic portraitures, Joe, the absolute Joe,
lives again in every line. We have just set our mark X against two puns
to exemplify our foregoing remarks. The first of them is a positive stop
to the current of our joyous feelings. What possible analogy, or
contrast even, can there be between a comic gesture of Grimaldi, and the
serious misfortunes of the lady, except in verbal sound purely? The
sound is good, because the humour lies in the pun, and moreover has
reference to Milton's
----at one bound
High over leaps all bounds.
A pun is a humble companion to wit, but disdains to be a train-bearer
merely. But these poems are rich in fancies, which, in truth, needed not
such aid.
THE RELIGION OF ACTORS
(1826)
The world has hitherto so little troubled its head with the points of
doctrine held by a community, which contributes in other ways so largely
to its amusement, that, before the late mischance of a celebrated tragic
actor, it scarce condescended to look into the practice of any
individual player, much less to inquire into the hidden and abscondite
springs of his actions. Indeed it is with some violence to the
imagination that we conceive of an actor as belonging to the relations
of private life, so closely do we identify these persons in our mind
with the characters which they assume upon the stage. How oddly does it
sound, when we are told that the late Miss Pope, for instance--that is
to say, in our notion of her, _Mrs. Candour_--was a good daughter, an
affectionate sister, and exemplary in all the parts of domestic life!
With still greater difficulty can we carry our notions to church, and
conceive of Liston, kneeling upon a hassock; or Munden uttering a pious
ejaculation, "making mouths at the invisible event." But the times are
fast improving; and, if the process of sanctity begun under the happy
auspices of the present licenser go on to its completion, it will be as
necessary for a comedian to give an account of his faith, as of his
conduct. Fawcett must study the five points; and Dicky Suett, if he were
alive, would have to rub up his catechism. Already the effects of it
begin to appear. A celebrated performer has thought fit to oblige the
world with a confession of his faith; or, BR----'S RELIGIO DRAMATICI.
This gentleman, in his laudable attempt to shift from his person the
obloquy of Judaism, with the forwardness of a new convert, in trying to
prove too much, has, in the opinion of many, proved too little. A simple
declaration of his Christianity was sufficient; but, strange to say, his
apology has not a word about it. We are left to gather it from some
expressions which imply that he is a Protestant; but we did not wish to
inquire into the niceties of his orthodoxy. To his friends of the _old
persuasion_ the distinction was impertinent; for what cares Rabbi Ben
Kimchi for the differences which have split our novelty? To the great
body of Christians that hold the Pope's supremacy--that is to say, to
the major part of the Christian world--his religion will appear as much
to seek as ever. But perhaps he conceived that all Christians are
Protestants, as children and the common people call all that are not
animals, Christians. The mistake was not very considerable in so young a
proselyte; or he might think the general (as logicians speak) involved
in the particular. All Protestants are Christians; but I am a
Protestant; _ergo_, &c. as if a marmoset, contending to be a man,
overleaping that term as too generic and vulgar, should at once roundly
proclaim himself to be a gentleman. The argument would be, as we say,
_ex abundanti_. From whichever cause this _excessus in terminis_
proceeded, we can do no less than congratulate the general state of
Christendom upon the accession of so extraordinary a convert. Who was
the happy instrument of the conversion, we are yet to learn: it comes
nearest to the attempt of the late pious Doctor Watts to christianize
the Psalms of the Old Testament. Something of the old Hebrew raciness is
lost in the transfusion; but much of its asperity is softened and pared
down in the adaptation. The appearance of so singular a treatise at this
conjuncture has set us upon an inquiry into the present state of
religion upon the stage generally. By the favour of the churchwardens of
Saint Martin's in the Fields, and Saint Paul's Covent-Garden, who have
very readily, and with great kindness, assisted our pursuit, we are
enabled to lay before the public the following particulars.--Strictly
speaking, neither of the two great bodies is collectively a religious
institution. We had expected to have found a chaplain among them, as at
Saint Stephen's, and other court establishments; and were the more
surprised at the omission, as the last [? late] Mr. Bengough, at the one
house, and Mr. Powell at the other, from a gravity of speech and
demeanour, and the habit of wearing black at their first appearances in
the beginning of _fifth_, or the conclusion of _fourth acts_, so
eminently pointed out their qualifications for such office. These
corporations then being not properly congregational, we must seek the
solution of our question in the tastes, attainments, accidental
breeding, and education of the individual members of them. As we were
prepared to expect, a majority at both houses adhere to the religion of
the church established, only that at one of them a pretty strong leaven
of Catholicism is suspected: which, considering the notorious education
of the manager at a foreign seminary, is not so much to be wondered at.
Some have gone so far as to report that Mr. T----y, in particular,
belongs to an order lately restored on the Continent. We can contradict
this: that gentleman is a member of the Kirk of Scotland; and his name
is to be found, much to his honour, in the list of Seceders from the
congregation of Mr. Fletcher. While the generality, as we have said, are
content to jog on in the safe trammels of national orthodoxy, symptoms
of a sectarian spirit have broken out in quarters where we should least
have looked for it. Some of the ladies at both houses are deep in
controverted points. Miss F----e, we are credibly informed, is a _sub_,
and Madame V---- a _supra_-lapsarian.
Mr. Pope is the last of the exploded sect of the Ranters. Mr. Sinclair
has joined the Shakers. Mr. Grimaldi, Senior, after being long a Jumper,
has lately fallen into some whimsical theories respecting the Fall of
Man; which he understands, not of an allegorical, but a _real tumble_,
by which the whole body of humanity became, as it were, lame to the
performance of good works. Pride he will have to be--nothing but a
stiff-neck; irresolution--the nerves shaken; an inclination to sinister
paths--crookedness of the joints; spiritual deadness--a paralysis; want
of charity--a contraction in the fingers; despising of government--a
broken head; the plaister--a sermon; the lint to bind it up--the text;
the probers--the preachers; a pair of crutches--the old and new law; a
bandage--religious obligation: a fanciful mode of illustration derived
from the accidents and habits of his past calling _spiritualised_,
rather than from any accurate acquaintance with the Hebrew text, in
which report speaks him but a raw scholar.--Mr. Elliston, from all that
we can learn, has his religion yet to choose; though some think him a
Mu[g]gletonian.
A POPULAR FALLACY
(1826)
_That a deformed person is a lord_.--After a careful perusal of the most
approved works that treat of nobility, and of its origin, in these
realms in particular, we are left very much in the dark as to the
original patent, in which this branch of it is recognised. Neither
Camden in his "Etymologie and Original of Barons," nor Dugdale in his
"Baronage of England," nor Selden (a more exact and laborious enquirer
than either) in his "Titles of Honour," afford[s] a glimpse of
satisfaction upon the subject. There is an heraldic term, indeed, which
seems to imply gentility, and the right to coat armour, (but nothing
further) in persons thus qualified. But the _sinister bend_ is more
probably interpreted, by the best writers on this science, of some
irregularity of birth, than of bodily conformation. Nobility is either
hereditary, or by creation, commonly called patent. Of the former kind,
the title in question cannot be, seeing that the notion of it is limited
to a personal distinction, which does not necessarily follow in the
blood. Honours of this nature, as Mr. Anstey very well observes, descend
moreover in a _right line_. It must be by patent then, if any thing. But
who can show it? How comes it to be dormant? Under what king's reign is
it pretended? Among the grounds of nobility cited by the learned Mr.
Ashmole, after "Services in the Field or in the Council Chamber," he
judiciously sets down "Honours conferred by the sovereign out of mere
benevolence, or as favouring one subject rather than another, for some
likeness or conformity observed (or but supposed) in him to the royal
nature;" and instances the graces showered upon Charles Brandon, who "in
his goodly person being thought not a little to favour the port and
bearing of the king's own majesty, was by that sovereign, King Henry the
Eighth, for some or one of these respects, highly promoted and
preferred." Here, if any where, we thought we had discovered a clue to
our researches. But after a painful investigation of the rolls and
records under the reign of Richard the Third, or Richard Crouchback, as
he is more usually designated in the chronicles, from a traditionary
stoop, or gibbosity in that part,--we do not find that that monarch
conferred any such lordships, as are here pretended, upon any subject,
or subjects, on a simple plea of "conformity" in that respect to the
"royal nature." The posture of affairs in those tumultuous times,
preceding the battle of Bosworth, possibly left him at no leisure to
attend to such niceties. Further than his reign we have not extended our
enquiries; the kings of England who preceded, or followed him, being
generally described by historians to have been of straight and clean
limbs, the "natural derivative (says Daniel[51]) of high blood, if not
its primitive recommendation to such ennoblement, as denoting strength
and martial prowess--the qualities set most by in that fighting age."
Another motive, which inclines us to scruple the validity of this claim,
is the remarkable fact, that none of the persons, in whom the right is
supposed to be vested, do ever insist upon it themselves. There is no
instance of any of them "sueing his patent," as the law-books call it;
much less of his having actually stepped up into his proper seat, as, so
qualified, we might expect that some of them would have had the spirit
to do, in the House of Lords. On the contrary, it seems to be a
distinction thrust upon them. "Their title of Lord (says one of their
own body, speaking of the common people) I never much valued, and now I
entirely despise: and yet they will force it upon me as an honour which
they have a right to bestow, and which I have none to refuse."[52] Upon
a dispassionate review of the subject, we are disposed to believe that
there is no right to the peerage incident to mere bodily configuration;
that the title in dispute is merely honorary, and depending upon the
breath of the common people; which in these realms is so far from the
power of conferring nobility, that the ablest constitutionalists have
agreed in nothing more unanimously, than in the maxim that the King is
the sole fountain of honour.
[51] History of England, "Temporibus Edwardi Primi et sequentibus."
[52] Hay on Deformity.
REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS, ESQ., OF BIRMINGHAM
(1826)
I am the only son of a considerable brazier in Birmingham, who dying in
1803, left me successor to the business, with no other incumbrance than
a sort of rent-charge, which I am enjoined to pay out of it,
ninety-three pounds sterling _per annum_ to his widow, my mother; and
which the improving state of the concern, I bless God, has hitherto
enabled me to discharge with punctuality. (I say, I am enjoined to pay
the said sum, but not strictly obligated; that is to say, as the will is
worded, I believe the law would relieve me from the payment of it; but
the wishes of a dying parent should in some sort have the effect of
law.) So that though the annual profits of my business, on an average of
the last three or four years, would appear to an indifferent observer,
who should inspect my shop-books, to amount to the sum of one thousand
three hundred and three pounds, odd shillings, the real proceeds in that
time have fallen short of that sum to the amount of the aforesaid
payment of ninety-three pounds sterling annually.
I was always my father's favourite. He took a delight to the very last
in recounting the little sagacious tricks, and innocent artifices, of my
childhood. One manifestation thereof I never heard him repeat without
tears of joy trickling down his cheeks. It seems that when I quitted the
parental roof (August 27th, 1788,) being then six years and not quite a
month old, to proceed to the Free School at Warwick, where my father was
a sort of trustee, my mother--as mothers are usually provident on these
occasions--had stuffed the pockets of the coach, which was to convey me
and six more children of my own growth, that were going to be entered
along with me at the same seminary, with a prodigious quantity of
gingerbread, which I remember my father said was more than was needed;
and so indeed it was, for if I had been to eat it all myself, it would
have got stale and mouldy before it had been half spent. The
consideration whereof set me upon my contrivances how I might secure to
myself as much of the gingerbread as would keep good for the next two or
three days, and yet none of the rest in a manner be wasted. I had a
little pair of pocket compasses which I usually carried about me for the
purpose of making draughts and measurements, at which I was always very
ingenious, of the various engines and mechanical inventions, in which
such a town as Birmingham abounded. By the means of these, and a small
penknife, which my father had given me, I cut out the one half of the
cake, calculating that the remainder would reasonably serve my turn, and
subdividing it into many little slices, which were curious to see for
the neatness and niceness of their proportion, I sold it out in so many
pennyworths to my young companions, as served us all the way to Warwick,
which is a distance of some twenty miles from this town; and very merry,
I assure you, we made ourselves with it, feasting all the way. By this
honest stratagem I put double the prime cost of the gingerbread into my
purse, and secured as much as I thought would keep good and moist for my
next two or three days eating. When I told this to my parents on their
first visit to me at Warwick, my father (good man) patted me on the
cheek, and stroked my head, and seemed as if he could never make enough
of me; but my mother unaccountably burst into tears, and said "it was a
very niggardly action," or some such expression, and that "she would
rather it would please God to take me,"--meaning, God help me, that I
should die--"than that she should live to see me grow up a _mean
man_"--which shows the difference of parent from parent, and how some
mothers are more harsh and intolerant to their children than some
fathers; when we might expect quite the contrary. My father, however,
loaded me with presents from that time, which made me the envy of my
schoolfellows. As I felt this growing disposition in them, I naturally
sought to avert it by all the means in my power; and from that time I
used to eat my little packages of fruit, and other nice things, in a
corner so privately, that I was never found out. Once, I remember, I had
a huge apple sent me, of that sort which they call _cats' heads_. I
concealed this all day under my pillow; and at night, but not before I
had ascertained that my bedfellow was sound asleep, which I did by
pinching him rather smartly two or three times, which he seemed to
perceive no more than a dead person, though once or twice he made a
motion as if he would turn, which frightened me--I say, when I had made
all sure, I fell to work upon my apple; and though it was as big as an
ordinary man's two fists, I made shift to get through it before it was
time to get up; and a more delicious feast I never made,--thinking all
night what a good parent I had (I mean my father) to send me so many
nice things, when the poor lad that lay by me had no parent or friend in
the world to send him any thing nice; and thinking of his desolate
condition, I munched and munched as silently as I could, that I might
not set him a longing if he overheard me: and yet for all this
considerateness, and attention to other people's feelings, I was never
much a favourite with my school-fellows, which I have often wondered at,
seeing that I never defrauded any one of them of the value of a
halfpenny, or told stories of them to their master, as some little lying
boys would do, but was ready to do any of them all the services in my
power, that were consistent with my own well doing. I think nobody can
be expected to go further than that. But I am detaining my reader too
long in the recording of my juvenile days. It is time that I should go
forward to a season when it became natural that I should have some
thoughts of marrying, and, as they say, settling in the world.
Nevertheless my reflections on what I may call the boyish period of my
life may have their use to some readers. It is pleasant to trace the man
in the boy; to observe shoots of generosity in those young years, and to
watch the progress of liberal sentiments, and what I may call a genteel
way of thinking, which is discernible in some children at a very early
age, and usually lays the foundation of all that is praiseworthy in the
manly character afterwards.
With the warmest inclinations towards that way of life, and a serious
conviction of its superior advantages over a single one, it has been the
strange infelicity of my lot, never to have entered into the respectable
estate of matrimony. Yet I was once very near it. I courted a young
woman in my twenty-seventh year--for so early I began to feel symptoms
of the tender passion! She was well to do in the world, as they call it;
but yet not such a fortune as, all things considered, perhaps I might
have pretended to. It was not my own choice altogether; but my mother
very strongly pressed me to it. She was always putting it to me, that "I
had comings in sufficient, that I need not stand upon a portion." Though
the young woman, to do her justice, had considerable expectations, which
yet did not quite come up to my mark, as I told you before. She had this
saying always in her mouth, that "I had money enough, that it was time I
enlarged my housekeeping, and to show a spirit befitting my
circumstances." In short, what with her importunities, and my own
desires _in part_ co-operating--for, as I said, I was not yet quite
twenty-seven--a time when the youthful feelings may be pardoned, if they
show a little impetuosity--I resolved, I say, upon all these
considerations, to set about the business of courting in right earnest.
I was a young man then; and having a spice of romance in my character
(as the reader has doubtless observed long ago), such as that sex is apt
to be taken with, I had reason in no long time to think my addresses
were any thing but disagreeable.
Certainly the happiest part of a young man's life is the time when he is
going a courting. All the generous impulses are then awake, and he feels
a double existence in participating his hopes and wishes with another
being. Return yet again for a brief moment, ye visionary
views--transient enchantments! ye moonlight rambles with Cleora in the
Silent Walk at Vauxhall--(N.B. about a mile from Birmingham, and
resembling the gardens of that name near London, only that the price of
admission is lower)--when the nightingale has suspended her notes in
June to listen to our loving discourses, while the moon was overhead
(for we generally used to take our tea at Cleora's mother's before we
set out, not so much to save expenses, as to avoid the publicity of a
repast in the gardens, coming in much about the time of half-price, as
they call it)--ye soft intercommunions of soul, when exchanging mutual
vows we prattled of coming felicities! The loving disputes we have had
under those trees, when this house (planning our future settlement) was
rejected, because though cheap it was dull; and the other house was
given up, because though agreeably situated it was too high-rented--one
was too much in the heart of the town, another was too far from
business. These minutiæ will seem impertinent to the aged and the
prudent. I write them only to the young. Young lovers, and passionate as
being young (such were Cleora and I then) alone can understand me. After
some weeks wasted, as I may now call it, in this sort of amorous
colloquy, we at length fixed upon the house in the High-street, No. 203,
just vacated by the death of Mr. Hutton of this town, for our future
residence. I had till that time lived in lodgings (only renting a shop
for business) to be near to my mother; near I say, not in the same house
with her, for that would have been to introduce confusion into our
housekeepings, which it was desirable to keep separate. O, the loving
wrangles, the endearing differences, I had with Cleora, before we could
quite make up our minds to the house that was to receive us--I
pretending for argument sake that the rent was too high, and she
insisting that the taxes were moderate in proportion; and love at last
reconciling us in the same choice. I think at that time, moderately
speaking, she might have had any thing out of me for asking. I do not,
nor shall ever regret that my character at that time was marked with a
tinge of prodigality. Age comes fast enough upon us, and in its good
time will prune away all that is inconvenient in these excesses. Perhaps
it is right that it should do so. Matters, as I said, were ripening to a
conclusion between us, only the house was yet not absolutely taken--some
necessary arrangements, which the ardour of my youthful impetuosity
could hardly brook at that time (love and youth will be
precipitate)--some preliminary arrangements, I say, with the landlord
respecting fixtures--very necessary things to be considered in a young
man about to settle in the world, though not very accordant with the
impatient state of my then passions--some obstacles about the valuation
of the fixtures, had hitherto precluded (and I shall always think
providentially) my final closes with his offer, when one of those
accidents, which, unimportant in themselves, often arise to give a turn
to the most serious intentions of our life, intervened, and put an end
at once to my projects of wiving and of housekeeping. I was never much
given to theatrical entertainments; that is, at no time of my life was I
ever what they call a regular play-goer; but on some occasion of a
benefit-night, which was expected to be very productive, and indeed
turned out so, Cleora expressing a desire to be present, I could do no
less than offer, as I did very willingly, to 'squire her and her mother
to the pit. At that time it was not customary in our town for
tradesfolk, except some of the very topping ones, to sit as they now do
in the boxes. At the time appointed I waited upon the ladies, who had
brought with them a young man, a distant relation, whom it seems they
had invited to be of the party. This a little disconcerted me, as I had
about me barely silver enough to pay for our three selves at the door,
and did not at first know that their relation had proposed paying for
himself. However, to do the young man justice, he not only paid for
himself, but for the old lady besides, leaving me only to pay for two,
as it were. In our passage to the theatre, the notice of Cleora was
attracted to some orange wenches that stood about the doors vending
their commodities. She was leaning on my arm, and I could feel her every
now and then giving me a nudge, as it is called, which I afterwards
discovered were hints that I should buy some oranges. It seems it is a
custom at Birmingham, and perhaps in other places, when a gentleman
treats ladies to the play,--especially when a full night is expected,
and that the house will be inconveniently warm, to provide them with
this kind of fruit, oranges being esteemed for their cooling property.
But how could I guess at that, never having treated ladies to a play
before, and being, as I said, quite a novice at these kind of
entertainments? At last she spoke plain out, and begged that I would buy
some of "those oranges," pointing to a particular barrow. But when I
came to examine the fruit, I did not think that the quality of it was
answerable to the price. In this way I handled several baskets of them,
but something in them all displeased me. Some had thin rinds, and some
were plainly over ripe, which is as great a fault as not being ripe
enough, and I could not (what they call) make a bargain. While I stood
haggling with the women, secretly determining to put off my purchase
till I should get within the theatre, where I expected we should have
better choice, the young man, the cousin, who it seems had left us
without my missing him, came running to us with his pockets stuffed out
with oranges, inside and out, as they say. It seems, not liking the look
of the barrow fruit, any more than myself, he had slipped away to an
eminent fruiterer's about three doors distant, which I never had the
sense to think of, and had laid out a matter of two shillings in some of
the best St. Michael's, I think, I ever tasted. What a little hinge, as
I said before, the most important affairs in life may turn upon! The
mere inadvertence to the fact that there was an eminent fruiterer's
within three doors of us, though we had just passed it without the
thought once occurring to me, which he had taken advantage of, lost me
the affections of my Cleora. From that time she visibly cooled towards
me, and her partiality was as visibly transferred to this cousin. I was
long unable to account for this change in her behaviour, when one day
accidentally discoursing of oranges to my mother alone, she let drop a
sort of reproach to me, as if I had offended Cleora by my _nearness_, as
she called it, that evening. Even now, when Cleora has been wedded some
years to that same officious relation, as I may call him, I can hardly
be persuaded that such a trifle could have been the motive to her
inconstancy; for could she suppose that I would sacrifice my dearest
hopes in her to the paltry sum of two shillings, when I was going to
treat her to the play, and her mother too (an expense of more than four
times that amount), if the young man had not interfered to pay for the
latter, as I mentioned? But the caprices of the sex are past finding
out; and I begin to think my mother was in the right; for doubtless
women know women better than we can pretend to know them.
ELIA.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO HONE'S _EVERY-DAY BOOK_ AND _TABLE BOOK_
(1825-1827)
I.--REMARKABLE CORRESPONDENT
(1825)
_To the Editor of the Every-Day Book_
Sir,--I am the youngest of Three hundred and sixty-six brethren--there
are no fewer of us--who have the honour, in the words of the good old
Song, to call the Sun our Dad. You have done the rest of our family the
favour of bestowing an especial compliment upon each member of it
individually--I mean, as far as you have gone; for it will take you some
time before you can make your bow all round--and I have no reason to
think that it is your intention to neglect any of us but poor Me. Some
you have hung round with flowers; others you have made fine with
martyrs' palms and saintly garlands. The most insignificant of us you
have sent away pleased with some fitting apologue, or pertinent story.
What have I done, that you dismiss me without mark or attribute? What
though I make my public appearance seldomer than the rest of my
brethren? I thought that angels' visits had been accounted the more
precious for their very rarity. Reserve was always looked upon as
dignified. I am seen but once, for four times that my brethren obtrude
themselves; making their presence cheap and contemptible, in comparison
with the state which I keep.
Am I not a Day (when I do come) to all purposes as much as any of them.
Decompose me, anatomise me; you will find that I am constituted like the
rest. Divide me into twenty-four, and you shall find that I cut up into
as many goodly hours (or main limbs) as the rest. I too have my arteries
and pulses, which are the minutes and the seconds.
It is hard to be dis-familied thus, like Cinderella in her rags and
ashes, while her sisters flaunted it about in cherry-coloured ribbons
and favors. My brethren forsooth are to be dubbed; one, _Saint_ Day;
another, _Pope_ Day; a third, _Bishop_ Day; the least of them is
_Squire_ Day, or _Mr._ Day, while I am--plain Day. Our house, Sir, is a
very ancient one, and the least of us is too proud to put up with an
indignity. What though I am but a younger brother in some sense--for the
youngest of my brethren is by some thousand years my senior--yet I bid
fair to inherit as long as any of them, while I have the Calendar to
show; which, you must understand, is our Title Deeds.
Not content with slurring me over with a bare and naked acknowledgement
of my occasional visitation in prose, you have done your best to deprive
me of my verse-honours. In column 310 of your Book, you quote an antique
scroll, leaving out the last couplet, as if on purpose to affront me.
"Thirty days hath September"--so you transcribe very faithfully for four
lines, and most invidiously suppress the exceptive clause:--
Except in Leap Year, that's the time
When February's days hath twenty and--
I need not set down the rhyme which should follow; I dare say you know
it very well, though you were pleased to leave it out. These indignities
demand reparation. While you have time, it will be well for you to make
the _amende honorable_. Ransack your stores, learned Sir, I pray of you,
for some attribute, biographical, anecdotical, or floral, to invest me
with. Did nobody die, or nobody flourish--was nobody born--upon any of
my periodical visits to this globe? does the world stand still as often
as I vouchsafe to appear? Am I a blank in the Almanac? alms for
oblivion? If you do not find a flower at least to grace me with (a
Forget Me Not would cheer me in my present obscurity), I shall prove the
worst Day to you you ever saw in your life; and your Work, instead of
the Title it now vaunts, must be content (every fourth year at least) to
go by the lame appellation of
The Every-Day--but--one--Book.
Yours, as you treat me,
TWENTY NINTH OF FEBRUARY.
II.--CAPTAIN STARKEY
(1825)
_To the Editor of the Every-Day Book_
DEAR SIR,
I read your account of this unfortunate Being, and his forlorn piece of
self-history, with that smile of half-interest which the Annals of
Insignificance excite, till I came to where he says "I was bound
apprentice to Mr. William Bird, an eminent writer and Teacher of
languages and Mathematics," &c.--when I started as one does on the
recognition of an old acquaintance in a supposed stranger. This then was
that Starkey of whom I have heard my Sister relate so many pleasant
anecdotes; and whom, never having seen, I yet seem almost to remember.
For nearly fifty years she had lost all sight of him--and behold the
gentle Usher of her youth, grown into an aged Beggar, dubbed with an
opprobrious title, to which he had no pretensions; an object, and a May
game! To what base purposes may we not return! What may not have been
the meek creature's sufferings--what his wanderings--before he finally
settled down in the comparative comfort of an old Hospitaller of the
Almonry of Newcastle? And is poor Starkey dead?----
I was a scholar of that "eminent writer" that he speaks of; but Starkey
had quitted the school about a year before I came to it. Still the odour
of his merits had left a fragrancy upon the recollection of the elder
pupils. The school-room stands where it did, looking into a discoloured
dingy garden in the passage leading from Fetter Lane into Bartlett's
Buildings. It is still a School, though the main prop, alas! has fallen
so ingloriously; and bears a Latin inscription over the entrance in the
Lane, which was unknown in our humbler times. Heaven knows what
"languages" were taught in it then; I am sure that neither my Sister nor
myself brought any out of it, but a little of our native English. By
"mathematics," reader, must be understood "cyphering." It was in fact a
humble day-school, at which reading and writing were taught to us boys
in the morning, and the same slender erudition was communicated to the
girls, our sisters, &c. in the evening. Now Starkey presided, under
Bird, over both establishments. In my time, Mr. Cook, now or lately a
respectable Singer and Performer at Drury-lane Theatre, and Nephew to
Mr. Bird, had succeeded to him. I well remember Bird. He was a squat,
corpulent, middle-sized man, with something of the gentleman about him,
and that peculiar mild tone--especially while he was inflicting
punishment--which is so much more terrible to children, than the
angriest looks and gestures. Whippings were not frequent; but when they
took place, the correction was performed in a private room adjoining,
whence we could only hear the plaints, but saw nothing. This heightened
the decorum and the solemnity. But the ordinary public chastisement was
the bastinado, a stroke or two on the palm with that almost obsolete
weapon now--the ferule. A ferule was a sort of flat ruler, widened at
the inflicting end into a shape resembling a pear,--but nothing like so
sweet--with a delectable hole in the middle, to raise blisters, like a
cupping-glass. I have an intense recollection of that disused instrument
of torture--and the malignancy, in proportion to the apparent mildness,
with which its strokes were applied. The idea of a rod is accompanied
with something ludicrous; but by no process can I look back upon this
blister-raiser with any thing but unmingled horror.--To make him look
more formidable--if a pedagogue had need of these heightenings--Bird
wore one of those flowered Indian gowns, formerly in use with
schoolmasters; the strange figures upon which we used to interpret into
hieroglyphics of pain and suffering. But boyish fears apart--Bird I
believe was in the main a humane and judicious master.
O, how I remember our legs wedged in to those uncomfortable sloping
desks, where we sat elbowing each other--and the injunctions to attain a
free hand, unattainable in that position; the first copy I wrote after,
with its moral lesson "Art improves Nature;" the still earlier pothooks
and the hangers some traces of which I fear may yet be apparent in this
manuscript; the truant looks side-long to the garden, which seemed a
mockery of our imprisonment; the prize for best spelling, which had
almost turned my head, and which to this day I cannot reflect upon
without a vanity, which I ought to be ashamed of--our little leaden
inkstands, not separately subsisting, but sunk into the desks; the
bright, punctually-washed morning fingers, darkening gradually with
another and another ink-spot: what a world of little associated
circumstances, pains and pleasures mingling their quotas of pleasure,
arise at the reading of those few simple words--"Mr. William Bird, an
eminent Writer and Teacher of languages and mathematics in Fetter Lane,
Holborn!"
Poor Starkey, when young, had that peculiar stamp of old-fashionedness
in his face, which makes it impossible for a beholder to predicate any
particular age in the object. You can scarce make a guess between
seventeen and seven and thirty. This antique cast always seems to
promise ill-luck and penury. Yet it seems, he was not always the abject
thing he came to. My Sister, who well remembers him, can hardly forgive
Mr. Thomas Ranson for making an etching so unlike her idea of him, when
he was a youthful teacher at Mr. Bird's school. Old age and poverty--a
life-long poverty she thinks, could at no time have so effaced the marks
of native gentility, which were once so visible in a face, otherwise
strikingly ugly, thin, and care-worn. From her recollections of him, she
thinks that he would have wanted bread, before he would have begged or
borrowed a halfpenny. If any of the girls (she says) who were my
school-fellows should be reading, through their aged spectacles, tidings
from the dead of their youthful friend Starkey, they will feel a pang,
as I do, at ever having teased his gentle spirit. They were big girls,
it seems, too old to attend his instructions with the silence necessary;
and however old age, and a long state of beggary, seem to have reduced
his writing faculties to a state of imbecility, in those days, his
language occasionally rose to the bold and figurative, for when he was
in despair to stop their chattering, his ordinary phrase was, "Ladies,
if you will not hold your peace, not all the powers in heaven can make
you." Once he was missing for a day or two; he had run away. A little
old unhappy-looking man brought him back--it was his father--and he did
no business in the school that day, but sate moping in a corner, with
his hands before his face; and the girls, his tormentors, in pity for
his case, for the rest of that day forbore to annoy him. I had been
there but a few months (adds she) when Starkey, who was the chief
instructor of us girls, communicated to us as a profound secret, that
the tragedy of "Cato" was shortly to be acted by the elder boys, and
that we were to be invited to the representation. That Starkey lent a
helping hand in fashioning the actors, she remembers; and but for his
unfortunate person, he might have had some distinguished part in the
scene to enact; as it was, he had the arduous task of prompter assigned
to him, and his feeble voice was heard clear and distinct, repeating the
text during the whole performance. She describes her recollection of the
cast of characters even now with a relish. Martia, by the handsome Edgar
Hickman, who afterwards went to Africa, and of whom she never afterwards
heard tidings,--Lucia, by Master Walker, whose sister was her particular
friend; Cato, by John Hunter, a masterly declaimer, but a plain boy, and
shorter by the head than his two sons in the scene, &c. In conclusion,
Starkey appears to have been one of those mild spirits, which, not
originally deficient in understanding, are crushed by penury into
dejection and feebleness. He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not
an ornament to Society, if Fortune had taken him into a very little
fostering, but wanting that, he became a Captain--a by-word--and lived,
and died, a broken bulrush.
C. L.
III.--TWELFTH OF AUGUST
(1825)
_To the Editor of the Every-Day Book_
THE HUMBLE PETITION OF AN UNFORTUNATE DAY
Sir,
I am a wronged _Day_. I appeal to you as the general patron of the
family of the _Days_. The candour with which you attended to the
expostulations of a poor relative of ours--a sort of cousin thrice
removed[53]--encourages me to hope that you will listen to the complaint
of a _Day_ of rather more consequence. I am the _Day_, Sir, upon which
it pleased the course of nature that your gracious Sovereign should be
born. As such, before his Accession, I was always observed and honoured.
But since that happy event, in which naturally none had a greater
interest than myself, a flaw has been discovered in my title. My lustre
has been eclipsed, and--to use the words of one of your own poets,--
I fade into the light of common _day_.
[53] Twenty-ninth _day_ of February [see page 349].
It seems, that about that time, an Impostor crept into Court, who has
the effrontery to usurp my honours, and to style herself the
_King's-birth-Day_, upon some shallow pretence that, being _St.
George's-Day_, she must needs be _King-George's-Day_ also.
_All-Saints-Day_ we have heard of, and _All-Souls-Day_ we are willing to
admit; but does it follow that this foolish _Twenty-third of April_ must
be _All-George's-Day_, and enjoy a monopoly of the whole name from
George of Cappadocia to George of Leyden, and from George-a-Green down
to George Dyer?
It looks a little oddly that I was discarded not long after the
dismission of a set of men and measures, with whom I have nothing in
common. I hope no whisperer has insinuated into the ears of Royalty, as
if I were any thing Whiggishly inclined, when, in my heart, I abhor all
these kind of Revolutions, by which I am sure to be the greatest
sufferer.
I wonder my shameless Rival can have the face to let the Tower and Park
Guns proclaim so many big thundering fibs as they do, upon her
Anniversary--making your Sovereign too to be older than he is, by an
hundred and odd _days_, which is no great compliment one would think.
Consider if this precedent for ante-dating of Births should become
general, what confusion it must make in Parish Registers; what crowds of
young heirs we should have coming of age before they are one-and-twenty,
with numberless similar grievances. If these chops and changes are
suffered, we shall have _Lord-Mayor's-Day_ eating her custard
unauthentically in May, and _Guy Faux_ preposterously blazing twice over
in the Dog-_days_.
I humbly submit, that it is not within the prerogatives of Royalty
itself, to be born twice over. We have read of the supposititious births
of Princes, but where are the evidences of this first Birth? why are not
the nurses in attendance, the midwife, &c. produced?--the silly story
has not so much as a Warming Pan to support it.
My legal advisers, to comfort me, tell me that I have the right on my
side; that I am the true Birth-_Day_, and the other _Day_ is only kept.
But what consolation is this to me, as long as this naughty-_kept
creature_ keeps me out of my dues and privileges?
Pray take my unfortunate case into your consideration, and see that I am
restored to my lawful Rejoicings, Firings, Bon-Firings, Illuminations,
&c.
And your Petitioner shall ever pray,
_Twelfth Day of August_.
IV.--THE ASS
(1825)
_For Hone's Every-Day Book_
Mr. Collier, in his "Poetical Decameron" (Third Conversation) notices a
Tract, printed in 1595, with the author's initials only, A. B., entitled
"The Noblenesse of the Asse: a work rare, learned, and excellent." He
has selected the following pretty passage from it. "He (the Ass)
refuseth no burthen, he goes whither he is sent without any
contradiction. He lifts not his foote against any one; he bytes not; he
is no fugitive, nor malicious affected. He doth all things in good sort,
and to his liking that hath cause to employ him. If strokes be given
him, he cares not for them; and, as our modern poet singeth,
'Thou wouldst (perhaps) he should become thy foe,
And to that end dost beat him many times;
He cares not for himselfe, much lesse thy blow.'"[54]
[54] Who this modern poet was, says Mr. C., is a secret worth
discovering.--The wood-cut on the title of the Pamphlet is--an Ass
with a wreath of laurel round his neck.
Certainly Nature, foreseeing the cruel usage which this useful servant
to man should receive at man's hand, did prudently in furnishing him
with a tegument impervious to ordinary stripes. The malice of a child,
or a weak hand, can make feeble impressions on him. His back offers no
mark to a puny foeman. To a common whip or switch his hide presents an
absolute insensibility. You might as well pretend to scourge a
school-boy with a tough pair of leather breeches on. His jerkin is well
fortified. And therefore the Costermongers "between the years 1790 and
1800" did more politicly than piously in lifting up a part of his upper
garment. I well remember that beastly and bloody custom. I have often
longed to see one of those refiners in discipline himself at the cart's
tail, with just such a convenient spot laid bare to the tender mercies
of the whipster. But since Nature has resumed her rights, it is to be
hoped, that this patient creature does not suffer to extremities; and
that to the savages who still belabour his poor carcase with their blows
(considering the sort of anvil they are laid upon) he might in some
sort, if he could speak, exclaim with the philosopher, "Lay on: you beat
but upon the case of Anaxarchus."
Contemplating this natural safeguard, this fortified exterior, it is
with pain I view the sleek, foppish, combed and curried, person of this
animal, as he is transmuted and disnaturalized at Watering Places, &c.
where they affect to make a palfrey of him. Fie on all such
sophistications!--It will never do, Master Groom. Something of his
honest shaggy exterior will still peep up in spite of you--his good,
rough, native, pineapple coating. You cannot "refine a scorpion into a
fish, though you rince it and scour it with ever so cleanly
cookery."[55]
[55] Milton: _from memory_.
The modern poet, quoted by A. B., proceeds to celebrate a virtue, for
which no one to this day had been aware that the Ass was remarkable.
One other gift this beast hath as his owne,
Wherewith the rest could not be furnished;
On man himselfe the same was not bestowne,
To wit--on him is ne'er engendered
The hatefull vermine that doth teare the skin
And to the bode [body] doth make his passage in.
And truly when one thinks on the suit of impenetrable armour with which
Nature (like Vulcan to another Achilles) has provided him, these subtle
enemies to _our_ repose, would have shown some dexterity in getting into
_his_ quarters. As the bogs of Ireland by tradition expel toads and
reptiles, he may well defy these small deer in his fastnesses. It seems
the latter had not arrived at the exquisite policy adopted by the human
vermin "between 1790 and 1800."
But the most singular and delightful gift of the Ass, according to the
writer of this pamphlet, is his _voice_; the "goodly, sweet, and
continual brayings" of which, "whereof they forme a melodious and
proportionable kinde of musicke," seem to have affected him with no
ordinary pleasure. "Nor thinke I," he adds, "that any of our immoderne
musitians can deny, but that their song is full of exceeding pleasure to
be heard; because therein is to be discerned both concord, discord,
singing in the meane, the beginning to sing in large compasse, then
following on to rise and fall, the halfe note, whole note, musicke of
five voices, firme singing by four voices, three together or one voice
and a halfe. Then their variable contrarieties amongst them, when one
delivers forth a long tenor, or a short, the pausing for time, breathing
in measure, breaking the minim or very least moment of time. Last of all
to heare the musicke of five or six voices chaunged to so many of Asses,
is amongst them to heare a song of world without end."
There is no accounting for ears; or for that laudable enthusiasm with
which an Author is tempted to invest a favourite subject with the most
incompatible perfections. I should otherwise, for my own taste, have
been inclined rather to have given a place to these extraordinary
musicians at that banquet of nothing-less-than-sweet-sounds, imagined by
old Jeremy Collier (Essays, 1698; Part. 2.--On Music.) where, after
describing the inspirating effects of martial music in a battle, he
hazards an ingenious conjecture, whether a sort of _Anti-music_ might
not be invented, which should have quite the contrary effect of "sinking
the spirits, shaking the nerves, curdling the blood, and inspiring
despair, and cowardice and consternation." "Tis probable" he says, "the
roaring of lions, the warbling of cats and screech-owls, together with a
mixture of the howling of dogs, judiciously imitated and compounded,
might go a great way in this invention." The dose, we confess, is pretty
potent, and skilfully enough prepared. But what shall we say to the Ass
of Silenus (quoted by TIMS), who, if we may trust to classic lore, by
his own proper sounds, without thanks to cat or screech-owl, dismaid and
put to rout a whole army of giants? Here was _Anti-music_ with a
vengeance; a whole _Pan-Dis-Harmonicon_ in a single lungs of leather!
But I keep you trifling too long on this Asinine subject. I have already
past the _Pons Asinorum_, and will desist, remembering the old pedantic
pun of Jem Boyer, my schoolmaster:--
Ass _in præsenti_ seldom makes a WISE MAN _in futuro_.
C. L.
V.--IN RE SQUIRRELS
(1825)
_For the Every-Day Book_
What is gone with the Cages with the climbing Squirrel and bells to
them, which were formerly the indispensable appendage to the outside of
a Tinman's shop, and were in fact the only Live Signs? One, we believe,
still hangs out on Holborn; but they are fast vanishing with the good
old modes of our ancestors. They seem to have been superseded by that
still more ingenious refinement of modern humanity--the Tread-mill; in
which _human_ Squirrels still perform a similar round of ceaseless,
improgressive clambering; which must be nuts to them.
We almost doubt the fact of the teeth of this creature being so purely
orange-coloured, as Mr. Urban's correspondent gives out. One of our old
poets--and they were pretty sharp observers of nature--describes them as
brown. But perhaps the naturalist referred to meant "of the colour of
the Maltese orange,"[56] which is rather more obfuscated than your fruit
of Seville, or Saint Michael's; and may help to reconcile the
difference. We cannot speak from observation, but we remember at school
getting our fingers into the orangery of one of these little gentry (not
having a due caution of the traps set there), and the result proved
sourer than lemons. The Author of the Task somewhere speaks of their
anger as being "insignificantly fierce," but we found the demonstration
of it on this occasion quite as significant as we desired; and have not
been disposed since to look any of these "gift horses" in the mouth.
Maiden aunts keep these "small deer" as they do parrots, to bite
people's fingers, on purpose to give them good advice "not to venture so
near the cage another time." As for their "six quavers divided into
three quavers and a dotted crotchet," I suppose, they may go into Jeremy
Bentham's next budget of Fallacies, along with the "melodious and
proportionable kinde of musicke," recorded in your last number of
another highly gifted animal [see page 358].
C. L.
[56] Fletcher in the "Faithful Shepherdess."--The Satyr offers to
Clorin,
--grapes whose lusty blood
Is the learned Poet's good,
Sweeter yet did never crown
The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown
Than the _squirrels' teeth_ that crack them.----
VI.--AN APPEARANCE OF THE SEASON
(1826)
Apology will scarcely be required for introducing a character, who at
this season of the year comes forth in renovated honours, and may aptly
be termed one of its _ever-blues_--not a peculiar of either Farringdons,
nor him of Cripplegate, or St. Giles in the Fields, or of any ward or
precinct within the bills: not this or that "good man"--but the
_universal parish beadle_. "How Christmas and consolatory he looks! how
redolent of good cheer is he! He is a cornucopia--an abundance. What
pudding sleeves!--what a collar, red, and like a beef steak, is his! He
is a walking refreshment! He looks like a whole parish, full,
important--but untaxed. The children of charity gaze at him with a
modest smile. The straggling boys look on him with confidence. They do
not pocket their marbles. They do not fly from their familiar gutter.
This is a red letter day; and the cane is reserved for to-morrow."
For the pleasant verbal description we are indebted to an agreeable
writer in the "London Magazine;"[57] his corporal lineaments are
"borrowed" (with permission) from a new caricature,[58] if it may be
given so low a name, wherein this figure stands out, the very gem and
jewel, in a grouping of characters of all sorts and denominations
assembled with "infinite fancy" and "fun," to illustrate the designer's
views of the age. It is a graphic satire of character rather than
caricatura; mostly of class-characters, not persons; wherein the
ridicule bears heavily, but is broad and comprehensive enough to shift
from one neighbour to another.
[57] For Dec., 1822.
[58] The Progress of Cant; designed and etched by one of the authors
of "Odes and Addresses to Great People;" and published by T.
Maclean, Haymarket, L. Relfe, Cornhill; and Dickenson, New
Bond-Street.
VII.--THE MONTHS
(1826)
_For the Every-Day Book_
Rummaging over the contents of an old stall at a half _book_, half _old
iron shop_, in an alley leading from Wardour-street to Soho-square
yesterday, I lit upon a ragged duodecimo, which had been the strange
delight of my infancy, and which I had lost sight of for more than forty
years:--the "QUEEN-LIKE CLOSET, or RICH CABINET:" written by Hannah
Woolly, and printed for R. C. & T. S. 1681; being an abstract of
receipts in cookery, confectionary, cosmetics, needlework, morality, and
all such branches of what were then considered as female
accomplishments. The price demanded was sixpence, which the owner (a
little squab duodecimo of a character himself) enforced with the
assurance that his "own mother should not have it for a farthing less."
On my demurring at this extraordinary assertion, the dirty little vendor
reinforced his assertion with a sort of oath, which seemed more than the
occasion demanded: "and now (said he) I have put my soul to it." Pressed
by so solemn an asseveration, I could no longer resist a demand which
seemed to set me, however unworthy, upon a level with his dearest
relations; and depositing a tester, I bore away the tattered prize in
triumph. I remembered a gorgeous description of the twelve months of the
year, which I thought would be a fine substitute for those poetical
descriptions of them which your _Every-Day Book_ had nearly exhausted
out of Spenser. This will be a treat, thought I, for friend HONE. To
memory they seemed no less fantastic and splendid than the other. But,
what are the mistakes of childhood!--on reviewing them, they turned out
to be only a set of common-place receipts for working the seasons,
months, heathen gods and goddesses, &c. in _samplars_! Yet as an
instance of the homely occupations of our great-grandmothers, they may
be amusing to some readers: "I have seen," says the notable Hannah
Woolly, "such Ridiculous things done in work, as it is an abomination to
any Artist to behold. As for Example: You may find in some Pieces,
_Abraham_ and _Sarah_, and many other Persons of Old time, Cloathed, as
they go now a-daies, and truly sometimes worse; for they most resemble
the Pictures on Ballads. Let all Ingenious Women have regard, that when
they work any Image, to represent it aright. First, let it be Drawn
well, and then observe the Directions which are given by Knowing Men. I
do assure you, I never durst work any Scripture-Story without informing
my self from the Ground of it: nor any other Story, or single Person,
without informing my self both of the Visage and Habit; As followeth.
"If you work _Jupiter, the Imperial feigned god_, He must have long
Black-Curled-hair, a Purple Garment trimmed with Gold, and sitting upon
a Golden Throne, with bright yellow Clouds about him."
The Twelve Months of the Year
_March:_
Is drawn in Tawny, with a fierce aspect, a Helmet upon his head, and
leaning on a Spade, and a Basket of Garden Seeds in his Left hand, and
in his Right hand the Sign of _Aries_; And Winged.
_April._
A Young Man in Green, with a Garland of Mirtle, and Hawthorn-Buds;
Winged; in one hand Primroses and Violets, in the other the Sign
_Taurus_.
_May._
With a sweet and lovely Countenance, clad in a Robe of White and Green,
embroidered with several Flowers, upon his Head a garland of all manner
of Roses; on the one hand a Nightingale, in the other a Lute. His Sign
must be _Gemini_.
_June._
In a Mantle of dark Grass-green, upon his Head a garland of Bents,
Kings-Cups, and Maiden-hair; in his Left hand an Angle, with a box of
Cantharides, in his Right, the Sign _Cancer_, and upon his arms a Basket
of seasonable Fruits.
_July._
In a Jacket of light Yellow, eating Cherries; with his Face and Bosom
Sun-burnt; on his Head a wreath of Centaury and wild Tyme; a Seith on
his shoulder, and a Bottle at his girdle: carrying the Sign _Leo_.
_August._
A Young Man of fierce and Cholerick aspect, in a Flame-coloured Garment;
upon his Head a garland of Wheat and Rye, upon his Arm a Basket of all
manner of ripe Fruits, at his Belt a Sickle. His Sign _Virgo_.
_September._
A merry and cheerful Countenance, in a Purple Robe, upon his Head a
Wreath of red and white Grapes, in his Left hand a handful of Oats,
withal carrying a Horn of Plenty, full of all manner of ripe-Fruits, in
his Right hand the Sign _Libra_.
_October._
In a Garment of Yellow and Carnation, upon his head a garland of
Oak-leaves with Akorns, in his Right hand the Sign _Scorpio_, in his
Left hand a Basket of Medlars, Services, and Chesnuts; and any other
Fruits then in Season.
_November._
In a Garment of Changeable Green and Black upon his Head, a garland of
Olives with the Fruit in his Left hand, Bunches of Parsnips and Turnips
in his Right. His Sign _Sagittarius_.
_December._
A horrid and fearful aspect, clad in Irish-Rags, or coarse Freez girt
unto him, upon his Head three or four Night-Caps, and over them a
Turkish Turbant; his Nose red, his Mouth and Beard clog'd with Isicles,
at his back a bundle of Holly, Ivy or Misletoe, holding in fur'd Mittens
the Sign of _Capricornus_.
_January._
Clad all in White, as the Earth looks with the Snow, blowing his Nails;
in his Left Arm a Billet, the Sign _Aquarius_ standing by his side.
_February._
Cloathed in a dark Skie-colour, carrying in his Right hand the Sign
_Pisces_.
The following receipt, "_To dress up a Chimney very fine for the Summer
time, as I have done many, and they have been liked very well_" may not
be unprofitable to the house-wives of this century.
"First, take a pack-thred, and fasten it even to the inner part of the
Chimney, so high as that you can see no higher as you walk up and down
the House; you must drive in several Nails to hold up all your work;
then get good store of old green Moss from Trees, and melt an equal
proportion of Bees-wax and Rosin together, and while it is hot, dip the
wrong ends of the Moss in it, and presently clap it upon your
pack-thred, and press it down hard with your hand; you must make hast,
else it will cool before you can fasten it, and then it will fall down;
do so all round where the pack-thred goes, and the next row you must
joyn to that so that it may seem all in one; thus do till you have
finished it down to the bottom: then take some other kind of Moss, of a
whitish-colour and stiff, and of several sorts or kinds, and place that
upon the other, here and there carelessly, and in some places put a good
deal, and some a little; then any kind of fine Snail-shells, in which
the Snails are dead, and little Toad stools, which are very old, and
look like Velvet, or _any other thing that is old and pretty_; place it
here and there as your fancy serves, and fasten all with Wax and Rosin.
Then for the Hearth of your Chimney, you may lay some Orpan-Sprigs in
order all over, and it will grow as it lies; and according to the
Season, get what flowers you can, and stick in as if they grew, and a
few sprigs of Sweet-Bryer: the Flowers you must renew every Week; but
the Moss will last all the Summer, till it will be time to make a fire;
and the Orpan will last near two Months. A Chimney thus done doth grace
a Room exceedingly."
One phrase in the above should particularly recommend it to such of your
female readers, as, in the nice language of the day, have done growing
some time: "little toad stools, &c. and any thing that is _old and
pretty_." Was ever antiquity so smoothed over? The culinary recipes have
nothing remarkable in them, besides the costliness of them. Every thing
(to the meanest meats) is sopped in claret, steeped in claret, basted
with claret, as if claret were as cheap as ditch water. I remember Bacon
recommends opening a turf or two in your garden-walks, and pouring into
each a bottle of claret, to recreate the sense of smelling, being no
less grateful than beneficial. We hope the chancellor of the exchequer
will attend to this in his next reduction of French wines, that we may
once more water our gardens with right Bordeaux. The medical recipes are
as whimsical as they are cruel. Our ancestors were not at all effeminate
on this head. Modern sentimentalists would shrink at a cock plucked and
bruised in a mortar alive, to make a cullis; or a live mole baked in an
oven (_be sure it be alive_) to make a powder for consumption.--But the
whimsicalest of all are the directions to servants--(for this little
book is a compendium of all duties,)--the footman is seriously
admonished not to stand lolling against his master's chair, while he
waits at table; for "to lean on a Chair when they wait, is a particular
favour shown to any superior Servant, as the Chief Gentleman, or the
Waiting Woman when she rises from the Table." Also he must not "hold the
Plates before his mouth to be defiled with his Breath, nor touch them on
the right (inner) side." Surely Swift must have seen this little
treatise.
C. L.
Hannah concludes with the following address, by which the self-estimate
which she formed of her usefulness, may be calculated:--
_Ladies_, I hope you're pleas'd, and so shall I,
If what I've Writ, you may be gainers by:
If not; it is your fault, it is not mine,
Your benefit in this I do design.
Much labour and much time it hath me cost,
Therefore I beg, let none of it be lost.
The Mony you shall pay for this my Book,
You'l not repent of, when in it you look.
No more at present to you I shall say,
But wish you all the happiness I may.
H. W.
VIII.--REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN
(1826)
_To the Editor of the Every-Day Book_
To your account of sir Jeffery Dunstan in columns 829-30 (where, by an
unfortunate Erratum the effigies of _two Sir Jefferys_ appear, when the
uppermost figure is clearly meant for sir Harry Dimsdale) you may add,
that the writer of this has frequently met him in his latter days, about
1790 or 1791, returning in an evening, after his long day's itinerancy,
to his domicile--a wretched shed in the most beggarly purlieu of Bethnal
Green, a little on this side the Mile-end Turnpike. The lower figure in
that leaf most correctly describes his then appearance, except that no
graphic art can convey an idea of the general squalor of it, and of his
bag (his constant concomitant) in particular. Whether it contained "old
wigs" at that time I know not, but it seemed a fitter repository for
bones snatched out of kennels, than for any part of a Gentleman's dress
even at second hand.
The Ex-member for Garrat was a melancholy instance of a great man whose
popularity is worn out. He still carried his sack, but it seemed a part
of his identity rather than an implement of his profession; a badge of
past grandeur; could any thing have divested him of _that_, he would
have shown a "poor forked animal" indeed. My life upon it, it contained
no curls at the time I speak of. The most decayed and spiritless
remnants of what was once a peruke would have scorned the filthy case;
would absolutely have "burst its cearments." No, it was empty, or
brought home bones, or a few cinders possibly. A strong odour of burnt
bones, I remember, blended with the scent of horse-flesh seething into
dog's meat, and only relieved a little by the breathings of a few brick
kilns, made up the atmosphere of the delicate suburban spot, which this
great man had chosen for the last scene of his earthly vanities. The cry
of "old wigs" had ceased with the possession of any such fripperies; his
sack might have contained not unaptly a little mould to scatter upon
that grave, to which he was now advancing; but it told of vacancy and
desolation. His quips were silent too, and his brain was empty as his
sack; he slank along, and seemed to decline popular observation. If a
few boys followed him, it seemed rather from habit, than any expectation
of fun.
Alas! how changed from _him_,
The life of humour, and the soul of whim,
Gallant and gay on Garrat's hustings proud.
But it is thus that the world rewards its favourites in decay. What
faults he had, I know not. I have heard something of a peccadillo or so.
But some little deviation from the precise line of rectitude, might have
been winked at in so tortuous and stigmatic a frame. Poor Sir Jeffery!
it were well if some M.P.'s in earnest had passed their parliamentary
existence with no more offences against integrity, than could be laid to
thy charge! A fair dismissal was thy due, not so unkind a degradation;
some little snug retreat, with a bit of green before thine eyes, and not
a burial alive in the fetid beggaries of Bethnal. Thou wouldst have
ended thy days in a manner more appropriate to thy pristine dignity,
installed in munificent mockery (as in mock honours you had lived)--a
Poor Knight of Windsor!
Every distinct place of public speaking demands an oratory peculiar to
itself. The forensic fails within the walls of St. Stephen. Sir Jeffery
was a living instance of this, for in the flower of his popularity an
attempt was made to bring him out upon the stage (at which of the winter
theatres I forget, but I well remember the anecdote) in the part of
_Doctor Last_. The announcement drew a crowded house; but
notwithstanding infinite tutoring--by Foote, or Garrick, I forget
which--when the curtain drew up, the heart of Sir Jeffery failed, and he
faultered on, and made nothing of his part, till the hisses of the house
at last in very kindness dismissed him from the boards. Great as his
parliamentary eloquence had shown itself; brilliantly as his off-hand
sallies had sparkled on a hustings; they here totally failed him.
Perhaps he had an aversion to borrowed wit; and, like my Lord
Foppington, disdained to entertain himself (or others) with the forced
products of another man's brain. Your man of quality is more diverted
with the natural sprouts of his own.
C. L.
IX--MRS. GILPIN RIDING TO EDMONTON
(1827)
Then Mrs. Gilpin sweetly said
Unto her children three,
"I'll clamber o'er this style so high,
And you climb after me."
But having climb'd unto the top,
She could no further go,
But sate, to every passer by
A spectacle and show.
Who said "Your spouse and you this day
Both show your horsemanship,
And if you stay till he comes back,
Your horse will need no whip."
[Illustration]
The sketch, here engraved, (probably from the poet's friend Romney,) was
found with the above three stanzas in the hand-writing of Cowper, among
the papers of the late Mrs. Unwin. It is to be regretted that no more
was found of this little _Episode_, as it evidently was intended to be,
to the "Diverting History of Johnny Gilpin." It is to be supposed that
Mrs. Gilpin, in the interval between dinner and tea, finding the time to
hang upon her hands, during her husband's involuntary excursion, rambled
out with the children into the fields at the back of the Bell, (as what
could be more natural?) and at one of those high aukward styles, for
which Edmonton is so proverbially famed, the embarrassment represented,
so mortifying to a substantial City Madam, might have happened; a
predicament, which leaves her in a state, which is the very Antipodes to
that of her too loco-motive husband; in fact she rides a restive
horse.--Now I talk of Edmonton styles, I must speak a little about those
of Enfield, its next neighbour, which are so ingeniously
contrived--every rising bar to the top becoming more protuberant than
the one under it--that it is impossible for any Christian climber to get
over, without bruising his (or her) shins as many times as there are
bars. These inhospitable invitations to a flayed skin, are planted so
thickly too, and are so troublesomely importunate at every little
paddock here, that this, with more propriety than Thebes of old, might
be entitled Hecatompolis: the Town of the Hundred Gates, or _styles_.
A SOJOURNER AT ENFIELD.
July 16, 1827.
X.--THE DEFEAT OF TIME;
OR, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES
(1827)
Titania, and her moonlight Elves, were assembled under the canopy of a
huge oak, that served to shelter them from the moon's radiance, which,
being now at her full noon, shot forth intolerable rays--intolerable, I
mean, to the subtil texture of their little shadowy bodies--but
dispensing an agreeable coolness to us grosser mortals. An air of
discomfort sate upon the Queen, and upon her Courtiers. Their tiny
friskings and gambols were forgot; and even Robin Goodfellow, for the
first time in his little airy life, looked grave. For the Queen had had
melancholy forebodings of late, founded upon an ancient Prophecy, laid
up in the records of Fairy Land, that the date of Fairy existence
should be _then_ extinct, when men should cease to believe in them. And
she knew how that the race of the Nymphs, which were her predecessors,
and had been the Guardians of the sacred floods, and of the silver
fountains, and of the consecrated hills and woods, had utterly
disappeared before the chilling touch of man's incredulity; and she
sighed bitterly at the approaching fate of herself and of her subjects,
which was dependent upon so fickle a lease, as the capricious and ever
mutable faith of man. When, as if to realise her fears, a melancholy
shape came gliding in, and _that_ was--TIME, who with his intolerable
scythe mows down Kings and Kingdoms; at whose dread approach the Fays
huddled together, as a flock of timorous sheep, and the most courageous
among them crept into acorn cups, not enduring the sight of that
ancientest of Monarchs. Titania's first impulse was to wish the presence
of her false Lord, King Oberon, who was far away, in the pursuit of a
strange Beauty, a Fay of Indian Land--that with his good lance and
sword, like a faithful knight and husband, he might defend her against
TIME. But she soon checked that thought as vain, for what could the
prowess of the mighty Oberon himself, albeit the stoutest Champion in
Fairy Land, have availed against so huge a Giant, whose bald top touched
the skies. So in the mildest tone she besought the Spectre, that in his
mercy he would overlook, and pass by, her small subjects, as too
diminutive and powerless to add any worthy trophy to his renown. As she
besought him to employ his resistless strength against the ambitious
Children of Men, and to lay waste their aspiring works, to tumble down
their towers and turrets, and the Babels of their pride, fit objects of
his devouring Scythe, but to spare her and her harmless race, who had no
existence beyond a dream; frail objects of a creed; that lived but in
the faith of the believer. And with her little arms, as well as she
could, she grasped the stern knees of TIME, and waxing speechless with
fear, she beckoned to her chief attendants, and Maids of Honour, to come
forth from their hiding places, and to plead the Plea of the Fairies.
And one of those small delicate creatures came forth at her bidding,
clad all in white like a Chorister, and in a low melodious tone, not
louder than the hum of a pretty bee--when it seems to be demurring
whether it shall settle upon this sweet flower or that, before it
settles--set forth her humble Petition. "We Fairies," she said, "are the
most inoffensive race that live, and least deserving to perish. It is
we that have the care of all sweet melodies, that no discords may offend
the Sun, who is the great Soul of Music. We rouse the lark at morn; and
the pretty Echos, which respond to all the twittering quire, are of our
making. Wherefore, great King of Years, as ever you have loved the music
which is raining from a morning cloud, sent from the messenger of day,
the Lark, as he mounts to Heaven's gate, beyond the ken of mortals; or
if ever you have listened with a charmed ear to the Night Bird, that
in the flowery spring,
Amidst the leaves set, makes the thickets ring
Of her sour sorrows, sweeten'd with her song:
spare our tender tribes; and we will muffle up the sheep-bell for thee,
that thy pleasure take no interruption, whenever thou shall listen unto
Philomel."
And TIME answered, that "he had heard that song too long; and he was
even wearied with that ancient strain, that recorded the wrongs of
Tereus. But if she would know in what music TIME delighted, it was, when
sleep and darkness lay upon crowded cities, to hark to the midnight
chime, which is tolling from a hundred clocks, like the last knell over
the soul of a dead world; or to the crush of the fall of some age-worn
edifice, which is as the voice of himself when he disparteth kingdoms."
A second female Fay took up the Plea, and said, "We be the handmaids of
the Spring, and tend upon the birth of all sweet buds; and the pastoral
cowslips are our friends, and the pansies; and the violets, like nuns;
and the quaking hare-bell is in our wardship; and the Hyacinth, once a
fair youth, and dear to Phœbus."
Then TIME made answer, in his wrath striking the harmless ground with
his hurtful scythe, that "they must not think that he was one that cared
for flowers, except to see them wither, and to take her beauty from the
rose."
And a third Fairy took up the Plea, and said, "We are kindly Things; and
it is we that sit at evening, and shake rich odours from sweet bowers
upon discoursing lovers, that seem to each other to be their own sighs;
and we keep off the bat, and the owl, from their privacy, and the
ill-boding whistler; and we flit in sweet dreams across the brains of
infancy, and conjure up a smile upon its soft lips to beguile the
careful mother, while its little soul is fled for a brief minute or two
to sport with our youngest Fairies."
Then SATURN (which is TIME) made answer, that "they should not think
that he delighted in tender Babes, that had devoured his own, till
foolish Rhea cheated him with a Stone, which he swallowed, thinking it
to be the infant Jupiter." And thereat in token he disclosed to view his
enormous tooth, in which appeared monstrous dints, left by that
unnatural meal; and his great throat, that seemed capable of devouring
up the earth and all its inhabitants at one meal. "And for Lovers," he
continued, "my delight is, with a hurrying hand to snatch them away from
their love-meetings by stealth at nights, and to ravish away hours from
them like minutes whilst they are together, and in absence to stand like
a motionless statue, or their leaden Planet of mishap (whence I had my
name), till I make their minutes seem ages."
Next stood up a male fairy, clad all in green, like a forester, or one
of Robin Hood's mates, and doffing his tiny cap, said, "We are small
foresters, that live in woods, training the young boughs in graceful
intricacies, with blue snatches of the sky between; we frame all shady
roofs and arches rude; and sometimes, when we are plying our tender
hatches, men say, that the tapping wood-pecker is nigh: and it is we
that scoop the hollow cell of the squirrel; and carve quaint letters
upon the rinds of trees, which in sylvan solitudes sweetly recall to the
mind of the heat-oppressed swain, ere he lies down to slumber, the name
of his Fair One, Dainty Aminta, Gentle Rosalind, or Chastest Laura, as
it may happen."
SATURN, nothing moved with this courteous address, bade him be gone, or
"if he would be a woodman, to go forth, and fell oak for the Fairies'
coffins, which would forthwith be wanting. For himself, he took no
delight in haunting the woods, till their golden plumage (the yellow
leaves) were beginning to fall, and leave the brown black limbs bare,
like Nature in her skeleton dress."
Then stood up one of those gentle Fairies, that are good to Man, and
blushed red as any rose, while he told a modest story of one of his own
good deeds. "It chanced upon a time," he said, "that while we were
looking cowslips in the meads, while yet the dew was hanging on the
buds, like beads, we found a babe left in its swathing clothes--a
little sorrowful deserted Thing; begot of Love, but begetting no love
in others; guiltless of shame, but doomed to shame for its parents'
offence in bringing it by indirect courses into the world. It was pity
to see the abandoned little orphan, left to the world's care by an
unnatural mother, how the cold dew kept wetting its childish coats; and
its little hair, how it was bedabbled, that was like gossamer. Its
pouting mouth, unknowing how to speak, lay half opened like a rose-lipt
shell, and its cheek was softer than any peach, upon which the tears,
for very roundness, could not long dwell, but fell off, in clearness
like pearls, some on the grass, and some on his little hand, and some
haply wandered to the little dimpled well under his mouth, which Love
himself seemed to have planned out, but less for tears than for
smilings. Pity it was, too, to see how the burning sun scorched its
helpless limbs, for it lay without shade, or shelter, or mother's
breast, for foul weather or fair. So having compassion on its sad
plight, my fellows and I turned ourselves into grasshoppers, and swarmed
about the babe, making such shrill cries, as that pretty little chirping
creature makes in its mirth, till with our noise we attracted the
attention of a passing rustic, a tender-hearted hind, who wondering at
our small but loud concert, strayed aside curiously, and found the babe,
where it lay on the remote grass, and taking it up, lapt it in his
russet coat, and bore it to his cottage, where his wife kindly nurtured
it, till it grew up a goodly personage. How this Babe prospered
afterwards, let proud London tell. This was that famous Sir Thomas
Gresham, who was the chiefest of her Merchants, the richest, the wisest.
Witness his many goodly vessels on the Thames, freighted with costly
merchandise, jewels from Ind, and pearls for courtly dames, and silks of
Samarcand. And witness more than all, that stately Bourse (or Exchange)
which he caused to be built, a mart for merchants from East and West,
whose graceful summit still bears, in token of the Fairies' favours, his
chosen crest, the Grasshopper. And, like the Grasshopper, may it please
you, great King, to suffer us also to live, partakers of the green
earth!"
The Fairy had scarce ended his Plea, when a shrill cry, not unlike the
Grasshopper's, was heard. Poor Puck--or Robin Goodfellow, as he is
sometimes called--had recovered a little from his first fright, and in
one of his mad freaks had perched upon the beard of old TIME, which was
flowing, ample, and majestic, and was amusing himself with plucking at a
hair, which was indeed so massy, that it seemed to him that he was
removing some huge beam of timber rather than a hair; which TIME by some
ill chance perceiving, snatched up the Impish Mischief with his great
hand, and asked "What it was?"
"Alas!" quoth Puck, "A little random Elf am I, born in one of Nature's
sports, a very weed, created for the simple sweet enjoyment of myself,
but for no other purpose, worth, or need, that ever I could learn. 'Tis
I, that bob the Angler's idle cork, till the patient man is ready to
breathe a curse. I steal the morsel from the Gossip's fork, or stop the
sneezing Chanter in mid Psalm; and when an infant has been born with
hard or homely features, mothers say, that I changed the child at nurse;
but to fulfil any graver purpose I have not wit enough, and hardly the
will. I am a pinch of lively dust to frisk upon the wind, a tear would
make a puddle of me, and so I tickle myself with the lightest straw, and
shun all griefs that might make me stagnant. This is my small
philosophy."
Then TIME, dropping him on the ground, as a thing too inconsiderable for
his vengeance, grasped fast his mighty Scythe; and now not Puck alone,
but the whole State of Fairies had gone to inevitable wreck and
destruction, had not a timely Apparition interposed, at whose boldness
TIME was astounded, for he came not with the habit, or the forces, of a
Deity, who alone might cope with TIME, but as a simple Mortal, clad as
you might see a Forester, that hunts after wild coneys by the cold
moonshine; or a Stalker of stray deer, stealthy and bold. But by the
golden lustre in his eye, and the passionate wanness in his cheek, and
by the fair and ample space of his forehood [forehead], which seemed a
palace framed for the habitation of all glorious thoughts, he knew that
this was his great Rival, who had power given him to rescue whatsoever
victims Time should clutch, and to cause them to live for ever in his
immortal verse. And muttering the name of SHAKSPEARE, TIME spread his
Roc-like wings, and fled the controuling presence. And the liberated
Court of the Fairies, with Titania at their head, flocked around the
gentle Ghost, giving him thanks, nodding to him, and doing him
curtesies, who had crowned them henceforth with a permanent existence,
to live in the minds of men, while verse shall have power to charm, or
Midsummer moons shall brighten.
* * * * *
What particular endearments passed between the Fairies and their Poet,
passes my pencil to delineate; but if you are curious to be informed, I
must refer you, gentle reader, to the "Plea of the [Midsummer] Fairies,"
a most agreeable Poem, lately put forth by my friend, Thomas Hood: of
the first half of which the above is nothing but a meagre, and a harsh,
prose-abstract. Farewell.
ELIA.
_The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo._
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
(1827)
Charles Lamb born in the Inner Temple 10 Feb. 1775 educated in Christ's
Hospital afterwards a clerk in the Accountants office East India House
pensioned off from that service 1825 after 33 years service, is now a
Gentleman at large, can remember few specialities in his life worth
noting except that he once caught a swallow flying (_teste suâ manu_);
below the middle stature, cast of face slightly Jewish, with no Judaic
tinge in his complexional religion; stammers abominably and is therefore
more apt to discharge his occasional conversation in a quaint aphorism
or a poor quibble than in set and edifying speeches; has consequently
been libelled as a person always aiming at wit, which, as he told a dull
fellow that charged him with it, is at least as good as aiming at
dulness; a small eater but not drinker; confesses a partiality for the
production of the juniper berry, was a fierce smoker of Tobacco, but may
be resembled to a volcano burnt out, emitting only now and then a casual
puff. Has been guilty of obtruding upon the Public a Tale in Prose,
called Rosamund Gray, a Dramatic Sketch named John Woodvil, a Farewell
Ode to Tobacco, with sundry other Poems and light prose matter,
collected in Two slight crown Octavos and pompously christened his
Works, tho' in fact they were his Recreations and his true works may be
found on the shelves of Leadenhall Street, filling some hundred Folios.
He is also the true Elia whose Essays are extant in a little volume
published a year or two since; and rather better known from that name
without a meaning, than from anything he has done or can hope to do in
his own. He also was the first to draw the Public attention to the old
English Dramatists in a work called "Specimens of English Dramatic
Writers who lived about the time of Shakspeare," published about 15
years since. In short all his merits and demerits to set forth would
take to the end of Mr. Upcott's book and then not be told truly. He
died[59] 18---- much lamented.
Witness his hand, CHARLES LAMB.
10th Apr 1827.
[59] To any Body--Please to fill up these blanks.
SHAKSPEARE'S IMPROVERS
(1828)
_To the Editor of The Spectator_
Sir,--Partaking in your indignation at the sickly stuff interpolated by
Tate in the genuine play of _King Lear_, I beg to lay before you certain
kindred enormities that you may be less aware of, which that co-dilutor
of Sternhold and Hopkins,[60] with his compeers, were suffered--nay,
encouraged--by an English public of a century and a half ago, to
perpetrate upon the dramas of Shakspeare. I speak from imperfect
recollection of one of these _new versions_ which I have seen, namely,
_Coriolanus_--by the same hand which touched up _King Lear_; in which
he, the said Nahum, not deeming his author's catastrophe enough
striking, makes _Aufidius_ (if my memory fail me not) violate the
person of the wife, and mangle the body of the little son, of his Roman
rival! Shadwell, another improver, in _his_ version of _Timon of
Athens_, a copy of which (167-7/8) is lying before me, omits the
character of _Flavius_, the kind-hearted Steward--that fine exception to
the air of general perfidy in the play, which would else be too
oppressive to reader or spectator; and substitutes for it a _kind
female_, who is supposed to be attached to _Timon_ to the last: thus
making the moral of the piece to consist in showing--not the hollowness
of friendships conciliated by a mere undistinguishing prodigality,
but--the superiority of woman's love to the friendships of men.
_Evandra_ too has a rival in the affections of the noble Athenian. So
impossible did these blockheads imagine it to be, to interest the
feelings of an audience without an _intrigue_, that the misanthrope
_Timon_ must whine, and the daughterly _Cordelia_ must whimper, their
love affections, before they could hope to touch the gentle hearts in
the boxes! Had one of these gentry taken in hand to improve the fine
Scriptural story of Joseph and his Brethren, we should have had a love
passion introduced, to make the mere _fraternal interest_ of the piece
go down--an episode of the amours of Reuben, or Issachar, with the fair
Mizraim of Egypt.--Thus _Evandra_ closes the eyes of Shadwell's dying
_Timon_; who, it seems, has poisoned himself.
[60] New Version of the Singing Psalms, by Nahum Tate, and Nicholas
Brady.
_Evan._ Oh my dear Lord! why do you stoop and bend
Like flowers o'ercharged with dew, whose yielding stalks
Cannot support them?
_Timon._ So now my weary pilgrimage on earth
Is almost finish'd! Now, my best Evandra,
I charge thee by our loves, our mutual loves,
Live, and live happy after me; and if
A thought of Timon comes into thy mind,
And brings a tear from thee--
(_What then? why then_)
--let some diversion
Banish it.--
And so, after some more drivel of the same stamp, the noble _Timon_
dies. And was not this a dainty dish to set before an audience of the
Duke's Theatre in the year 167-7/8? Yet Betterton then acted _Timon_,
and his wife _Evandra_.
I now come to the London acting edition of _Macbeth_ of the same date,
1678 (played, if I remember, by the same players, at the same house);
from which I made a few rough extracts, when I visited the British
Museum for the sake of selecting from the "Garrick Plays." As I can
scarcely expect to be believed upon my own word, as to what our
ancestors at that time were willing to accept for Shakspeare, I refer
the reader to that collection to verify my report. Who the improver was
in this instance, we are left to guess, for the title-page leaves us to
conjecture. Possibly the players, each one separately, contributed his
new reading, which was silently adopted. Flesh and blood could not at
this time of day submit to a thorough perusal of the thing; but, from a
glance or two of casual inspection, I am enabled to lay before the
reader a few flowers. In one of the lyric parts, _Hecate_ is made to
say--
----on a corner of the moon
A drop my _spectacles_ have found.
I'll catch it.
_Hecate_, the solemn president of classic enchantments, thence adopted
into the romantic--the tri-form Hecate--wearing spectacles to assist old
sight!--(No. 4 or No. 5, as the opticians class them, is not said)--one
may as well fancy Cerberus in a bran new collar, or the "dreaded name of
Demogorgon" in jack-boots. Among the "ingredients of the caldron," is
enumerated, not a tiger's, but--what reader?--
----a _Dutchman's_ chawdron!
We were about that time engaged in a war with Holland.--Again, _Macduff_
being about to journey across the heath--the "blasted heath"--answers
his lady, who courteously demands of him, "Are you a-foot?"--
Knowing the way to be both short and easy,
And that the _chariot_ did attend me here,
I have adventured----
From which we may infer, that the Thane of Fife lived as a nobleman
ought to do, and--kept a carriage. Again, the same nobleman, on the
morning after _Duncan's_ murder, says:--"Rising this morning early, I
went to look out of my window. I could scarce see further than my
breath." And indeed the original author informs us, that it had been a
"rough night;" so that the improver does not wander far from his text.
The exquisite familiarity of this prose patch was doubtlessly intended
by the improver to break the tiresome monotony of Shakspeare's blank
verse. In conclusion, _Lady Macbeth_ is brought in _repentant_, and
counselling her husband to give up the crown for conscience
sake!--_Item_, she sees a ghost, which is all the time invisible to him.
Such was the _Macbeth_ which Betterton acted, and a contemporary
audience took on trust for Shakspeare's.
C. L.
SATURDAY NIGHT
(1829)
There is a Saturday Night--I speak not to the admirers of
Burns--erotically or theologically considered; HIS of the "Cotter's" may
be a very charming picture, granting it to be but half true. Nor speak I
now of the Saturday Night at Sea, which Dibdin hath dressed up with a
gusto more poignant to the mere nautical palate of un-Calvanized South
Britons. Nor that it is marketing night with the pretty tripping
Servant-maids all over London, who, with judicious and economic eye,
select the white and well-blown fillet, that the blue-aproned contunder
of the calf can safely recommend as "prime veal," and which they are to
be sure not to over-brown on the morrow. Nor speak I of the hard-handed
Artisan, who on this night receives the pittance which is to furnish the
neat Sabbatical dinner--not always reserved with Judaical rigor for that
laudable purpose, but broken in upon, perchance, by inviting pot of ale,
satisfactory to the present orifice. These are alleviatory,
care-consoling. But the Hebdomadal Finale which I contemplate hath
neither comfort nor alleviation in it; I pronounce it, from memory,
altogether punitive, and to be abhorred. It is--Saturday Night to the
School-boy!
Cleanliness, saith some sage man, is next to Godliness. It may be; but
how it came to sit so very near, is the marvel. Methinks some of the
more human virtues might have put in for a place before it.
Justice--Humanity--Temperance--are positive qualities; the courtesies
and little civil offices of life, had I been Master of the Ceremonies to
that Court, should have sate above the salt in preference to a mere
negation. I confess there is something wonderfully refreshing, in warm
countries, in the act of ablution. Those Mahometan washings--how cool to
the imagination! but in all these superstitions, the action itself, if
not the duty, is voluntary. But to be washed perforce; to have a
detestable flannel rag soaked in hot water, and redolent of the very
coarsest coarse soap, ingrained with hard beads for torment, thrust into
your mouth, eyes, nostrils--positively Burking you, under pretence of
cleansing--substituting soap for dirt, the worst dirt of the two--making
your poor red eyes smart all night, that they might look out brighter on
the Sabbath morn, for their clearness was the effect of pain more than
cleanliness.--Could this be true religion?
The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. I am always disposed to add,
so are those of Grandmothers. _Mine_--the Print has made her look rather
too young--had never-failing pretexts of tormenting children for their
good. I was a chit then; and I well remember when a fly had got into a
corner of my eye, and I was complaining of it to her, the old Lady
deliberately pounded two ounces or more of the finest loaf sugar that
could be got, and making me hold open the eye as wide as I could--all
innocent of her purpose--she blew from delicate white paper, with a full
breath, the whole saccharine contents into the part afflicted, saying,
"There, now the fly is out." 'Twas most true--a legion of blue-bottles,
with the prince of flies at their head, must have dislodged with the
torrent and deluge of tears which followed. I kept my own counsel, and
my fly in my eye when I had got one, in future, without troubling her
dulcet applications for the remedy. Then her medicine-case was a perfect
magazine of tortures for infants. She seemed to have no notion of the
comparatively tender drenches which young internals require--her potions
were any thing but milk for babes. Then her sewing up of a cut
finger--pricking a whitloe before it was ripe, because she could not see
well,--with the aggravation of the pitying tone she did it in.
But of all her nostrums--rest her soul--nothing came up to the Saturday
Night's flannel--that rude fragment of a Witney blanket--Wales spins
none so coarse--thrust into the corners of a weak child's eye with soap
that might have absterged an Ethiop, whitened the hands of Duncan's
She-murderer, and scowered away Original Sin itself. A faint image of
my penance you see in the Print--but the Artist has sunk the
flannel--the Age, I suppose, is too nice to bear it: and he has faintly
shadowed the expostulatory suspension of the razor-strap in the hand of
my Grandfather, when my pains and clamours had waxed intolerable. Peace
to the Shades of them both! and if their well-meaning souls had need of
cleansing when they quitted earth, may the process of it have been
milder than that of my old Purgatorial Saturday Night's path to the
Sabbatical rest of the morrow!
NEPOS.
ESTIMATE OF DE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS
(1829)
It has happened not seldom that one work of some author has so
transcendantly surpassed in execution the rest of his compositions, that
the world has agreed to pass a sentence of dismissal upon the latter,
and to consign them to total neglect and oblivion. It has done wisely in
this, not to suffer the contemplation of excellencies of a lower
standard to abate, or stand in the way of the pleasure it has agreed to
receive from the master-piece.
Again it has happened, that from no inferior merit of execution in the
rest, but from superior good fortune in the choice of its subject, some
single work shall have been suffered to eclipse, and cast into shade the
deserts of its less fortunate brethren. This has been done with more or
less injustice in the case of the popular allegory of Bunyan, in which
the beautiful and scriptural image of a pilgrim or wayfarer (we are all
such upon earth), addressing itself intelligibly and feelingly to the
bosoms of all, has silenced, and made almost to be forgotten, the more
awful and scarcely less tender beauties of the "Holy War made by Shaddai
upon Diabolus," of the same author; a romance less happy in its subject,
but surely well worthy of a secondary immortality. But in no instance
has this excluding partiality been exerted with more unfairness than
against what may be termed the secondary novels or romances of De Foe.
While all ages and descriptions of people hang delighted over the
"Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," and shall continue to do so we trust
while the world lasts, how few comparatively will bear to be told, that
there exist other fictitious narratives by the same writer--four of them
at least of no inferior interest, except what results from a less
felicitous choice of situation. Roxana--Singleton--Moll
Flanders--Colonel Jack--are all genuine offspring of the same father.
They bear the veritable impress of De Foe. An unpractised midwife that
would not swear to the nose, lip, forehead, and eye, of every one of
them! They are in their way as full of incident, and some of them every
bit as romantic; only they want the uninhabited Island, and the charm
that has bewitched the world, of the striking solitary situation.
But are there no solitudes out of the cave and the desert? or cannot the
heart in the midst of crowds feel frightfully alone? Singleton, on the
world of waters, prowling about with pirates less merciful than the
creatures of any howling wilderness; is he not alone, with the faces of
men about him, but without a guide that can conduct him through the
mists of educational and habitual ignorance; or a fellow-heart that can
interpret to him the new-born yearnings and aspirations of unpractised
penitence? Or when the boy Colonel Jack, in the loneliness of the heart
(the worst solitude), goes to hide his ill-purchased treasure in the
hollow tree by night, and miraculously loses, and miraculously finds it
again--whom hath he there to sympathise with him? or of what sort are
his associates?
The narrative manner of De Foe has a naturalness about it, beyond that
of any other novel or romance writer. His fictions have all the air of
true stories. It is impossible to believe, while you are reading them,
that a real person is not narrating to you every where nothing but what
really happened to himself. To this, the extreme _homeliness_ of their
style mainly contributes. We use the word in its best and heartiest
sense--that which comes _home_ to the reader. The narrators everywhere
are chosen from low life, or have had their origin in it; therefore they
tell their own tales, (Mr. Coleridge has anticipated us in this remark,)
as persons in their degree are observed to do, with infinite repetition,
and an overacted exactness, lest the hearer should not have minded, or
have forgotten, some things that had been told before. Hence the
emphatic sentences marked in the good old (but deserted) Italic type;
and hence, too, the frequent interposition of the reminding old
colloquial parenthesis, "I say"--"mind"--and the like, when the
story-teller repeats what, to a practised reader, might appear to have
been sufficiently insisted upon before: which made an ingenious critic
observe, that his works, in this kind, were excellent reading for the
kitchen. And, in truth, the heroes and heroines of De Foe, can never
again hope to be popular with a much higher class of readers, than that
of the servant-maid or the sailor. Crusoe keeps its rank only by tough
prescription; Singleton, the pirate--Colonel Jack, the thief--Moll
Flanders, both thief and harlot--Roxana, harlot and something
worse--would be startling ingredients in the bill of fare of modern
literary delicacies. But, then, what pirates, what thieves, and what
harlots is _the thief_, _the harlot_, and _the pirate_ of De Foe? We
would not hesitate to say, that in no other book of fiction, where the
lives of such characters are described, is guilt and delinquency made
less seductive, or the suffering made more closely to follow the
commission, or the penitence more earnest or more bleeding, or the
intervening flashes of religious visitation, upon the rude and
uninstructed soul, more meltingly and fearfully painted. They, in this,
come near to the tenderness of Bunyan; while the livelier pictures and
incidents in them, as in Hogarth or in Fielding, tend to diminish that
"fastidiousness to the concerns and pursuits of common life, which an
unrestrained passion for the ideal and the sentimental is in danger of
producing."
CLARENCE SONGS
(1830)
_To the Editor of The Spectator_
Sir,--You have a question in your paper, what songs, and whether any of
any value, were written upon Prince WILLIAM, our present Sovereign. Can
it have escaped you, that the very popular song and tune of "Sweet lass
of Richmond Hill" had reference to a supposed partiality of that Prince
for a lass of Richmond? I have heard who she was, but now forget. I
think it was a damsel of quality. I remember, when I was a schoolboy at
Christ's Hospital, about eight-and-forty years since, having had my
hearing stunned with the burthen (which alone I retain) of some ballad
in praise and augury of the Princely Midshipman:--
"He's royal, he's noble, he's chosen by _me_,[61]
Britain's Isle to protect, and reign Lord of the Sea!"
and my old ears yet ring with it.
[61] It is Neptune who predicts this.
Allusions to the same personage were at that time rife in innumerable
ballads, under the notion of a _sweet William_; but the ballads are
obliterated. The song of "Sweet William Taylor, walking with his lady
gay"--from the identity of names, I suppose--usually followed the
Neptunian song. The late TOM SHERIDAN bears away the credit of this. But
was it possible he could have been the author of it in 1782 or 1783?
Perhaps he made it his own by communicating a deeper tinge of vulgarity
to it, exchanging "William" for "Billy." I think the rogue snugged it in
as his own, hoping it was a forgotten ditty.
C. L.
CLARENCE SONGS.--No. II
Sir,--A friend has just reminded me of a ballad made on occasion of some
shipboard scrape into which our Royal Midshipman had fallen; in which,
with a _romantic licence_, the rank of the young sailor is supposed to
have been unknown, and a corporal infliction about to have been put into
execution. This is all he can recover of it. He was
----"order'd to undress, Sir!
But very soon they did espy
The star upon his breast, Sir:
And on their knees they soon did fall,
And all for mercy soon did call."
The burden was "Long live Duke William," or something to that effect. So
you see, his Majesty has enjoyed his laureats by anticipation.
C. L.
I know the town swarmed with these Clarence songs in the heyday of his
young popularity. Where are they?
RECOLLECTIONS OF A LATE ROYAL ACADEMICIAN
(1831)
What Apelles was to the _Grecian Alexander_, the same to the _Russian_
was the late G---- D----. None but Apelles might attempt the lineaments
of the world's conqueror; none but our Academician could have done
justice to the lines of the Czar, and his Courtiers. There they hang,
the labour of ten plodding years, in an endless gallery, erected for the
nonce, in the heart of Imperial Petersburgh--eternal monuments of
barbarian taste submitting to half-civilized cunning--four hundred
fierce Half-Lengths, all male, and all military; like the pit in a
French theatre, or the characters in Timon as it was last acted, with
never a woman among them. Chaste sitters to Vandyke, models of grace and
womanhood; and thou Dame Venetia Digby, fairest among thy fair compeers
at Windsor, hide your pure pale cheeks, and cool English beauties,
before this suffocating horde of Scythian riflers, this male chaos! Your
cold oaken frames shall wane before the gorgeous buildings,
With Tartar faces thronged, and horrent uniforms.
One emperor contended for the monopoly of the _ancient_; two were
competitors at once for the pencil of the _modern Apelles_. The Russian
carried it against the Haytian by a single length. And if fate, as it
was at one time nearly arranged, had wafted D. to the shores of
Hayti--with the same complacency in his art, with which he persisted in
daubing in, day after day, his frozen Muscovites, he would have sate
down for life to smutch in upon canvass the faces of blubber-lipped
sultanas, or the whole male retinue of the dingy court of Christophe.
For in truth a choice of subjects was the least of D.'s care. A Goddess
from Cnidus, or from the Caffre coast, was equal to him; Lot, or Lot's
wife; the charming widow H., or her late husband.
My acquaintance with D. was in the outset of his art, when the graving
tools, rather than the pencil, administered to his humble wants. Those
implements, as is well known, are not the most favourable to the
cultivation of that virtue, which is esteemed next to godliness. He
might "wash his hands in innocency," and so metaphorically "approach an
altar;" but his material puds were any thing but fit to be carried to
church. By an ingrained economy in soap--if it was not for pictorial
effect rather--he would wash (on Sundays) the inner oval, or portrait,
as it may be termed, of his countenance, leaving the unwashed temples to
form a natural black frame round a picture, in which a dead white was
the predominant colour. This, with the addition of green spectacles,
made necessary by the impairment, which his graving labours by day and
night (for he was ordinarily at them for sixteen hours out of the
twenty-four) had brought upon his visual faculties, gave him a singular
appearance, when he took the air abroad; in so much, that I have seen a
crowd of young men and boys following him along Oxford-street with
admiration, not without shouts; even as the Youth of Rome, we read in
Vasari, followed the steps of Raphael with acclamations for his genius,
and for his beauty, when he proceeded from his work-shop to chat with
Cardinals and Popes at the Vatican.
The family of D. were not at this time in affluent circumstances. His
father, a clever artist, had outlived the style of art, in which he
excelled most of his contemporaries. He, with the father of the
celebrated Morland, worked for the shop of Carrington and Bowles, which
exists still for the poorer sort of caricatures, on the North side of
St. Paul's Church Yard. They did clever things in colours. At an inn in
Reading a screen is still preserved, full of their labours; but the
separate portions of either artist are now undistinguishable. I remember
a Mother teaching her Child to read (B. Barton has a copy of it); a
Laundress washing; a young Quaker, a beautiful subject. But the flower
of their forgotten productions hangs still at a public house on the left
hand, as thou arrivest, Reader, from the now Highgate archway, at the
foot of the descent where Crouch End begins, on thy road to green
Hornsey. Turn in, and look at it, for the sight is well worth a cup of
excusatory cyder. In the parlour to the right you will find it--an
antiquated subject--a Damsel sitting at her breakfast table in a gown of
the flowered chintz of our grandmothers, with a tea-service before her
of the _same pattern_. The effect is most delicate. Why have these
harmonies--these _agrémens_--no place in the works of modern art?
With such niceties in his calling D. did not much trouble his head, but,
after an ineffectual experiment to reconcile his eye-sight with his
occupation, boldly quitted it, and dashed into the beaten road of
common-place portraiture in oil. The Hopners, and the Lawrences, were
his Vandykes, and his Velasquezes; and if he could make any thing like
them, he insured himself immortality. With such guides he struggled on
through laborious nights and days, till he reached the eminence he aimed
at--of mediocrity. Having gained that summit, he sate down contented. If
the features were but cognoscible, no matter whether the flesh resembled
flesh, or oilskin. For the thousand tints--the grains--which in life
diversify the nose, the chin, the cheek--which a Reynolds can but
coarsely counterfeit--he cared nothing at all about them. He left such
scrupulosities to opticians and anatomists. If the features were but
there, the character of course could not be far off. A lucky hit which
he made in painting the _dress_ of a very dressy lady--Mrs. W--e--,
whose handsome countenance also, and tall elegance of shape, were too
palpable entirely to escape under any masque of oil, with which even D.
could overlay them--brought to him at once, an influx of sitters, which
almost rivalled the importunate calls upon Sir Thomas. A portrait, he
_did_ soon after, of the Princess Charlotte, clenched his fame. He
proceeded Academician. At that memorable conjuncture of time it pleased
the Allied Sovereigns to visit England.
I called upon D. to congratulate him upon a crisis so doubly eventful.
His pleasant housekeeper seemed embarrassed; owned that her master was
alone. But could he be spoken with? With some importunity I prevailed
upon her to usher me up into his painting-room. It was in Newman-street.
At his easel stood D., with an immense spread of canvas before him, and
by his side a--live Goose. I enquired into this extraordinary
combination. Under the rose he informed me, that he had undertaken to
paint a transparency for Vauxhall, against an expected visit of the
Allied Sovereigns to that place. I smiled at an engagement so
derogatory to his new-born honours; but a contempt of small gains was
never one of D.'s foibles. My eyes beheld crude forms of warriors,
kings, rising under his brush upon this interminable stretch of cloth.
The Wolga, the Don, and the Nieper, were there, or their representative
River Gods; and Father Thames clubbed urns with the Vistula. Glory with
her dazzling Eagle was not absent, nor Fame, nor Victory. The shade of
Rubens might have evoked the mighty allegories. But what was the Goose?
He was evidently _sitting_ for a something.
D. at last informed me, that having fixed upon a group of rivers, he
could not introduce the Royal Thames without his _swans_. That he had
enquired the price of a live swan, and it being more than he was
prepared to give for it, he had bargained with the poulterer for the
_next thing to it_; adding significantly, that it would do to roast,
after it had served its turn to paint swans by. _Reader, this is a true
story._
So entirely devoid of imagination, or any feeling for his high art, was
this _Painter_, that for the few historical pictures he attempted, any
sitter might sit for any character. He took once for a subject _The
Infant Hercules_. Did he chuse for a model some robust antique? No. He
did not even pilfer from Sir Joshua, who was nearer to his own size. But
from a _show_ he hired to sit to him a child in years indeed, (though no
Infant,) but in fact a precocious _Man_, or human portent, that was
disgustingly exhibiting at that period; a thing to be strangled. From
this he formed _his_ Infant Hercules. In a scriptural flight he next
attempted a Sampson in the lap of Dalilah. A Dalilah of some sort was
procureable for love or money, but who should stand for the Jewish
Hercules? He hired a tolerably stout porter, with a thickish head of
hair, curling in yellowish locks, but lithe--much like a wig. And these
were the robust strengths of Sampson.
I once was a witness to a _family scene_ in his painting closet, which I
had entered rather abruptly, and but for his encouragement, should as
hastily have retreated. He stood with displeased looks eyeing a female
relative--whom I had known under happier auspices--that was kneeling at
his feet with a baby in her arms, with her eyes uplifted and suppliant.
Though I could have previously sworn to the virtue of Miss ----, yet
casual slips have been known. There are such things as families
disgraced, where least you would have expected it. The child _might_ be
----; I had heard of no wedding--I was the last person to pry into
family secrets--when D. relieved my uneasy cogitations by explaining,
that the innocent, good-humoured creature before me (such as she ever
was, and is now that she is married) with a baby borrowed from the
public house, was acting Andromache to _his_ Ulysses, for the purpose of
transferring upon canvas a tender situation from the Troades of Seneca.
On a subsequent occasion I knocked at D.'s door. I had chanced to have
been in a dreamy humour previously. I am not one that often poetises,
but I had been musing--coxcombically enough in the heart of
Newman-street, Oxford Road--upon Pindus, and the Aonian Maids. The Lover
of Daphne was in my mind--when, answering to my summons, the door
opened, and there stood before me, laurel-crowned, the God himself,
unshorn Apollo. I was beginning to mutter apologies to the Celestial
Presence--when on the thumb of the right hand of the Delian (his left
held the harp) I spied a pallet, such as painters carry, which
immediately reconciled me to the whimsical transformation of my old
acquaintance--with his own face, certainly any other than
Grecianesque--into a temporary image of the oracle-giver of Delphos. To
have impersonated the Ithacan was little; he had been just sitting for a
God.--It would be no incurious enquiry to ascertain what the _minimum_
of the faculty of imagination, ever supposed essential to painters along
with poets, is, that, in these days of complaints of want of patronage
towards the fine arts, suffices to dub a man a R----l A----n.
Not only had D. no imagination to guide him in the treatment of such
subjects, but he had no relish for high art in the productions of the
great masters. He turned away from them as from something foreign and
irrelative to him, and his calling. He knew he had neither part nor
portion in them. Cozen him into the Stafford or the Angerstein Gallery,
he involuntarily turned away from the Baths of Diana--the Four Ages of
Guercino--the Lazarus of Piombo--to some petty piece of _modern art_
that had been inconsistently thrust into the collection through favour.
On that he would dwell and pore, blind as the dead to the delicacies
that surrounded him. There he might learn something. There he might
pilfer a little. There was no grappling with Titian, or Angelo.
The narrowness of his domestic habits to the very last, was the
consequence of his hard bringing up, and unexpected emergence into
opulence. While rolling up to the ears in Russian rubles, a penny was
still in his eyes the same important thing, which it had with some
reason seemed to be, when a few shillings were his daily earnings. When
he visited England a short time before his death, he reminded an artist
of a commission, which he had executed for him in Russia, the package of
which was "still unpaid." At this time he was not unreasonably supposed
to have realized a sum little short of half a million sterling. What
became of it was never known; what gulf, or what Arctic _vorago_, sucked
it in, his acquaintance in those parts have better means of guessing,
than his countrymen. It is certain that few of the latter were any thing
the better for it.
It was before he expatriated himself, but subsequently to his
acquisition of pictorial honours in this country, that he brought home
two of his brother Academicians to dine with him. He had given no orders
extraordinary to his housekeeper. He trusted, as he always did, to her
providing. She was a shrewd lass, and knew, as we say, a bit of her
master's mind.
It had happened that on the day before, D. passing near Clare Market by
one of those open shambles, where tripe and cow-heel are exposed for
sale, his eye was arrested by the sight of some tempting flesh _rolled
up_. It is a part of the intestines of some animal, which my olfactory
sensibilities never permitted me to stay long enough to enquire the name
of. D. marked the curious involutions of the unacquainted luxury; the
harmony of its colours--a _sable vert_--pleased his eye; and, warmed
with the prospect of a new flavour, for a few farthings he bore it off
in triumph to his housekeeper. It so happened that his day's dinner was
provided, so the cooking of the novelty was for that time necessarily
suspended.
Next day came. The hour of dinner approached. His visitors, with no very
romantic anticipations, expected a plain meal at least; they were
prepared for no new dainties; when, to the astonishment of them, and
almost of D. himself, the purchase of the preceding day was served up
piping hot--the cook declaring, that she did not know well what it was,
for "her master always marketed." His guests were not so happy in their
ignorance. They kept dogs.
I will do D. the justice to say, that on such occasions he took what
happened in the best humour possible. He had no _false modesty_--though
I have generally observed, that persons, who are quite deficient in that
_mauvais[e] honte_, are seldom over-troubled with the quality itself, of
which it is the counterfeit.
By what arts, with _his_ pretensions, D. contrived to wriggle himself
into a seat in the Academy, I am not acquainted enough with the
intrigues of that body (more involved than those of an Italian conclave)
to pronounce. It is certain, that neither for love to him, nor out of
any respect to his talents, did they elect him. Individually he was
obnoxious to them all. I have heard that, in his passion for attaining
this object, he went so far as to go down upon his knees to some of the
members, whom he thought least favourable, and beg their suffrage with
many tears.
But _death_, which extends the measure of a man's stature to appearance;
and _wealth_, which men worship in life and death, which makes giants of
punies, and embalms insignificance; called around the exequies of this
pigmy Painter the rank, the riches, the fashion of the world. By
Academic hands his pall was borne; by the carriages of nobles of the
land, and of ambassadors from foreign powers, his bier was followed; and
St. Paul's (O worthy casket for the shrine of such a Zeuxis) now
holds--ALL THAT WAS MORTAL OF G. D.
THE LATIN POEMS OF VINCENT BOURNE
(1831)
A complete translation of these poems is a desideratum in our
literature. Cowper has done _one_ at least, out of the four which he has
given us, with a felicity almost unapproachable. Few of our readers can
be ignorant of the delightful lines beginning with:--
"There is bird, which by its coat----"
A recent writer has lately added nine more to the number; we wish he
would proceed with the remainder, for of all modern Latinity, that of
Vincent Bourne is the most to our taste. He is "so Latin," and yet "so
English" all the while. In diction worthy of the Augustan age, he
presents us with no images that are not familiar to his countrymen. His
topics are even closelier drawn; they are not so properly English, as
_Londonish_. From the streets, and from the alleys, of his beloved
metropolis he culled his objects, which he has invested with an
Hogarthian richness of colouring. No town picture by that artist can go
beyond his BALLAD-SINGERS; Gay's TRIVIA alone, in verse, comes up to the
life and humour of it.
Quæ septem vicos conterminat una columna,
Consistunt nymphæ Sirenum ex agmine binæ;
Stramineum capiti tegimen, collumque per omne
Ingentes electri orbes: utrique pependit
Crustato vestis cœno, limoque rigescens
Crure usque a medio calcem defluxit ad imum.
Exiguam secum pendentem ex ubere natam
Altera; venales dextrâ tulit altera chartas.
His vix dispositis, pueri innuptæque puellæ
Accurrunt: sutor primus, cui lorea vitta
Impediit crines, humili, quæ proxima stabat,
Proruit è cellâ, chartas, si forte placerent,
Empturus; namque ille etiam se carmine multo
Oblectat, longos solus quo rite labores
Diminuit, fallitque hybernæ tædia noctis.
Collecti murmur sensim increbrescere vulgi
Auditi, et excurrit nudis ancilla lacertis.
Incudem follesque et opus fabrile relinquens,
Se densæ immiscet plebi niger ora Pyracmon.
It juxta, depressum ingens cui mantica tergum
Incurvat, tardo passu; simul ille coronam
Aspectat vulgi, spe carminis arrigit aures;
Statque moræ patiens, humeris nec pondera sentit.
Sic ubi Tartareum Regem Rhodopeïus Orpheus
Threiciis studuit fidibus mulcere, laboris
Immemor, Æolides stupuit modulamina plectri,
Nec sensit funesti onera incumbentia saxi.
Sæbe interventus rhedæ crepitantis, ab illo
Vicorum, ant illo, stipantem hinc inde catervam
Dividit; at rursus coëunt, ubi transiit illa,
Ut coëunt rursus, puppis quas dividit, undæ.
Canticulæ interea narraverat argumentum
Altera Sirenum, infidi perjuria nautæ,
Deceptamque dolo nympham; tum flebile carmen
Flebilibus movit numeris, quos altera versu
Alterno excepit: patulis stant rictibus omnes:
Dextram ille acclinat, lævam ille attentius aurem,
Promissum carmen captare paratus hiatu.
Longa referre mora est, animum quâ vicerit arte
Virgineum juvenis. Jam poscunt undique chartas
Protensæ emptorum dextræ, quas illa vel illa
Distribuit, cantatque simul: neque ferreus iste
Est usquam auditor, dulcis cui lene camæna
Non adhibet tormentum, et furtivum elicit assem.
Stat medios inter baculoque innititur Irus;
Nec tamen hic loculo parcit, sed prodigus æris
Emptor adest, solvit pretium, carmenque requirit.
Fors juxta adstabat vetula iracundior æquo;
Quæ loculo ex imo invitum, longumque latentem
Depromens vix tandem obolum, Cedo, fœmina, chartam,
Inquit; ut æternum monumentum in pariete figam,
Cum laribus mansurum ipsis, quam credula nymphis
Pectora sint; fraudis quam plena, et perfida nautis.
* * * * *
Where seven fair Streets to one tall Column[62] draw,
Two Nymphs have ta'en their stand, in hats of straw;
Their yellower necks huge beads of amber grace,
And by their trade they're of the Sirens' race.
With cloak loose-pinn'd on each, that has been red,
But long with dust and dirt discoloured
Belies its hue; in mud behind, before,
From heel to middle leg becrusted o'er.
One a small infant at the breast does bear;
And one in her right hand her tuneful ware,
Which she would vend. Their station scarce is taken,
When youths and maids flock round. His stall forsaken,
Forth comes a Son of Crispin, leathern-capt,
Prepared to buy a ballad, if one apt
To move his fancy offers. Crispin's sons
Have, from uncounted time, with ale and buns
Cherish'd the gift of _Song_, which sorrow quells;
And, working single in their low-rooft cells,
Oft at the tedium of a winter's night
With anthems warbled in the Muses' spight.
Who now hath caught the alarm? The Servant Maid
Hath heard a buzz at distance; and, afraid
To miss a note, with elbows red comes out.
Leaving his forge to cool, Pyracmon stout
Thrusts in his unwash'd visage. _He_ stands by,
Who the hard trade of Porterage does ply
With stooping shoulders. What cares he? he sees
The assembled ring, nor heeds his tottering knees,
But pricks his ears up with the hopes of song.
So, while the Bard of Rhodope his wrong
Bewail'd to Proserpine on Thracian strings,
The tasks of gloomy Orcus lost their stings,
And stone-vext Sysiphus forgets his load.
Hither and thither from the sevenfold road
Some cart or wagon crosses, which divides
The close-wedged audience; but, as when the tides
To ploughing ships give way, the ship being past,
They re-unite, so these unite as fast.
The older Songstress hitherto has spent
Her elocution in the argument
Of their great Song in prose; to wit, the woes
Which Maiden true to faithless Sailor owes--
Ah "_Wandering He!_"--which now in loftier verse
Pathetic they alternately rehearse.
All gaping wait the event. This Critic opes
His right ear to the strain. The other hopes
To catch it better with his left. Long trade
It were to tell, how the deluded Maid
A victim fell. And now right greedily
All hands are stretching forth the songs to buy,
That are so tragical; which She, and She,
Deals out, and _sings the while_; nor can there be
A breast so obdurate here, that will hold back
His contribution from the gentle rack
Of Music's pleasing torture. Irus' self,
The staff-propt Beggar, his thin-gotten pelf
Brings out from pouch, where squalid farthings rest,
And boldly claims his ballad with the rest.
An old Dame only lingers. To her purse
The penny sticks. At length, with harmless curse,
"Give me," she cries--"I'll paste it on my wall,
While the wall lasts, to show what ills befal
Fond hearts, seduced from Innocency's way;
How Maidens fall, and Mariners betray."
[62] Seven Dials.
In the same style of familiar painting, and replete with the same
images of town life, picturesque as it was comparatively in the
days of Gay, and of Hogarth, are the various Poematia--to the
"Bellman"--"Billinsgate"--the "Law Courts"--the "Licensed
Victualler"--the "Quack"--the "Quaker's Meeting" _cum multis aliis_--of
this most classical of Cockney Poets. In a different strain is the
following piece of tenderness:--
IN STATUAM SEPULCHRALEM INFANTIS DORMIENTIS
Infans venuste, qui sacros dulces agens
In hoc sopores marmore,
Placidissimâ quiete compôstus jaces,
Et inscius culpæ et metûs,
Somno fruaris, docta quem dedit manus
Sculptoris; et somno simul,
Quem nescit artifex vel Ars effingere
Fruaris Innocentiæ.
* * * * *
Beautiful Infant, who dost keep
Thy posture here, and sleep'st a marble sleep,
May the repose unbroken be,
Which the fine Artist's hand hath lent to thee!
While thou enjoy'st along with it
That which no Art or Craft could ever hit,
Or counterfeit to moral sense,
The Heav'n-infused sleep of Innocence.
We have selected these two versions from a little volume lately
published by Mr. Lamb, to which he has strangely given the misnomer of
"Album Verses."
ALBUM VERSES! why, in the whole collection there are not twenty pages
out of one hundred and fifty (and cast the acrostics in, to swell the
amount) that have the smallest title to come under this denomination.
There is a Tragic Drama, filling up more than a third of the book. The
rest is composed of--Translations from V. Bourne, nine in number--just
so many Verses, and no more, expressly written for Albums--and the rest
might have been written any where. But Mr. L. will be wiser another
time, than to stand Godfather to his own poetry. A sensible Publisher is
always the best names-man on these occasions.
But if to write in Albums be a sin, Lord help
Wordsworth--Coleridge--Southey--Sir Walter himself--who have not been
always able to resist the solicitations of the fair owners of these
modern nuisances. Southey has owned to some score, and Mr. L.'s offences
in this kind, we have said, do not exceed the number of the Muses. This
may be said even of them, that they are not vague verses--to the Moon,
or to the Nightingale--that will fit any place--but strictly appropriate
to the person that they were intended to gratify; or to the species of
chronicle which they were destined to be recorded in. The Verses to a
"Clergyman's Lady"--to the "Wife of a learned Serjeant"--to a "Young
Quaker"--could have appeared only in an Album, and only in that
particular person's Album they were composed for.
We are no friend to Albums. We early set our face against them in a
short copy of verses, which we publish only for our own justification.
To the question:--
WHAT IS AN ALBUM?
'Tis a Book kept by modern young Ladies for show,
Of which their plain Grandmothers nothing did know;
A Medley of Scraps, half verse, and half prose,
And some things not very like either, God knows;
Where wise folk and simple alike do combine,
And you write _your_ nonsense, that I may write _mine_.
Throw in a fine Landscape, to make it complete--
A Flower-piece--a Foreground--all tinted so neat,
As Nature herself, could she see it, would strike
With envy to think that she ne'er did the like.
Next forget not to stuff it with Autographs plenty,
All writ in a style so genteel, and so dainty,
They no more resemble folk's ord'nary writing,
Than lines, penn'd with pains, do extemp'ral enditing;
Or our every day countenance (pardon the stricture)
The faces we make when we sit for our picture.
Thus you have, dearest--, an Album complete--
We forget the rest--but seriously we deprecate with all our powers the
unfeminine practice of this novel species of importunity. We have known
Young Ladies--ay, and of those who have been modest and retiring enough
upon other occasions--in quest of these delicacies, to besiege, and
storm by violence, the closets and privatest retirements of a literary
man, to whom they have had an imperfect, or, perhaps, no introduction at
all. But the disease has gone forth. Like the daughters of the
horseleech in the Proverbs, the requisition of every female now is,
_Contribute, Contribute_. "From the Land's End to the Farthest Thule the
cry has gone out, and who shall resist it? Assuming then, that Album
Verses _will_ be written, where was the harm, if Mr. L. first taught us
how they might be best, and most characteristically written?"
Amid the vague, dreamy, wordy, _matterless_ Poetry of this empty age,
the verses of such a writer as Bourne (who was a Latin _Prior_) are
invaluable. They fix upon _something_; they ally themselves to common
life and objects; their good nature is a Catholicon, sanative of
coxcombry, of heartlessness, and of fastidiousness. _Vale, Lepidissimum
Caput._ [63]
[63] Of this writer we only know, that he was an usher some seventy
years since at Westminster School; and that Dr. Johnson (who knew
him) speaks of him always affectionately as "poor Vinny Bourne."
THE DEATH OF MUNDEN
(1832)
_To the Editor of The Athenæum_
Dear Sir,--Your communication to me of the death of Munden made me weep.
Now, Sir, I am not of the melting mood. But, in these serious times, the
loss of half the world's fun is no trivial deprivation. It was my loss
(or _gain_ shall I call it?) in the early time of my play-going, to have
missed all Munden's acting. There was only he, and Lewis at Covent
Garden, while Drury Lane was exuberant with Parsons, Dodd, &c., such a
comic company as, I suppose, the stage never showed. Thence, in the
evening of my life, I had Munden all to myself, more mellowed, richer
perhaps than ever. I cannot say what his change of faces produced in me.
It was not acting. He was not one of my "old actors." It might be [he
was] better. His power was extravagant. I saw him one evening in three
drunken characters. Three Farces were played. One part was _Dosey_--I
forget the rest:--but they were so discriminated, that a stranger might
have seen them all, and not have dreamed that he was seeing the same
actor. I am jealous for the actors who pleased my youth. He was not a
Parsons or a Dodd, but he was more wonderful. He seemed as if he could
_do_ anything. He was not an actor, but something _better_, if you
please. Shall I instance _Old Foresight_, in "Love for Love," in which
Parsons was at once the old man, the astrologer, &c. Munden dropped the
old man, the doater--which makes the character--but he substituted for
it a moon-struck character, a perfect abstraction from this earth, that
looked as if he had newly come down from the planets. Now, _that_ is not
what I call _acting_. It might be better. He was imaginative; he could
impress upon an audience an _idea_--the low one perhaps of a leg of
mutton and turnips; but such was the grandeur and singleness of his
expressions, that that single expression would convey to all his
auditory a notion of all the pleasures they had all received from all
the legs of mutton _and turnips_ they had ever eaten in their lives.
Now, this is not _acting_, nor do I set down Munden amongst my old
actors. He was only a wonderful man, exerting his vivid impressions
through the agency of the stage. In one only thing did I see him
_act_--that is, support a character; it was in a wretched farce, called
"Johnny Gilpin," for Dowton's benefit, in which he did a cockney; the
thing ran but one night; but when I say that Liston's _Lubin Log_ was
nothing to it, I say little; it was transcendant. And here, let me say
of actors--_envious_ actors--that of _Munden_, Liston was used to speak,
almost with the enthusiasm due to the dead, in terms of such allowed
superiority to every actor on the stage, and this at a time when Munden
was gone by in the world's estimation, that it convinced me that
_artists_ (in which term I include poets, painters, &c.), are not so
envious as the world think. I have little time, and therefore enclose a
criticism on Munden's _Old Dosey_ and his general acting, by a
gentleman, who attends less to these things than formerly, but whose
criticism I think masterly.
C. LAMB.
THOUGHTS ON PRESENTS OF GAME, &c.
(1833)
"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."--LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA.
Elia presents his acknowledgments to his "Correspondent unknown," for a
basket of prodigiously fine game. He takes for granted that so amiable a
character must be a reader of the _Athenæum_. Else he had meditated a
notice in _The Times_. Now if this friend had consulted the Delphic
oracle for a present suited to the palate of Elia, he could not have hit
upon a morsel so acceptable. The birds he is barely thankful for;
pheasants are poor _fowls_ disguised in fine feathers. But a hare
roasted hard and brown--with gravy and melted butter!--old Mr.
Chambers, the sensible clergyman in Warwickshire, whose son's
acquaintance has made many hours happy in the life of Elia, used to
allow a pound of Epping to every hare. Perhaps that was over-doing it.
But, in spite of the note of Philomel, who, like some fine poets, that
think no scorn to adopt plagiarisms from a humble brother, reiterates
every spring her cuckoo cry of "Jug, Jug, Jug," Elia pronounces that a
hare, to be truly palated, must be roasted. Jugging sophisticates her.
In _our_ way it eats so "crips," as Mrs. Minikin says. Time was, when
Elia was not arrived at his taste, that he preferred to all luxuries a
roasted Pig. But he disclaims all such green-sickness appetites in
future, though he hath to acknowledge the receipt of many a delicacy in
that kind from correspondents--good, but mistaken men--in consequence of
their erroneous supposition, that he had carried up into mature life the
prepossessions of childhood. From the worthy Vicar of Enfield he
acknowledges a tithe contribution of extraordinary sapor. The ancients
must have loved hares. Else why adopt the word _lepores_ (obviously from
_lepus_) but for some subtle analogy between the delicate flavour of the
latter, and the finer relishes of wit in what we most poorly translate
_pleasantries_. The fine madnesses of the poet are the very decoction of
his diet. Thence is he hare-brained. Harum-scarum is a libellous
unfounded phrase of modern usage. 'Tis true the hare is the most
circumspect of animals, sleeping with her eye open. Her ears, ever
erect, keep them in that wholesome exercise, which conduces them to form
the very tit-bit of the admirers of this noble animal. Noble will I call
her, in spite of her detractors, who from occasional demonstrations of
the principle of self-preservation (common to all animals) infer in her
a defect of heroism. Half a hundred horsemen with thrice the number of
dogs, scour the country in pursuit of puss across three countries; and
because the well-flavoured beast, weighing the odds, is willing to evade
the hue and cry, with her delicate ears shrinking perchance from
discord--comes the grave Naturalist, Linnæus perchance or Buffon, and
gravely sets down the Hare as a--timid animal. Why, Achilles or Bully
Dawson, would have declined the preposterous combat.
In fact, how light of digestion we feel after a hare! How tender its
processes after swallowing! What chyle it promotes! How etherial! as if
its living celerity were a type of its nimble coursing through the
animal juices. The notice might be longer. It is intended less as a
Natural History of the Hare, than a cursory thanks to the country "good
Unknown." The hare has many friends, but none sincerer than
ELIA.
TABLE-TALK BY THE LATE ELIA
(1833 and 1834)
The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to
have it found out by accident.
'Tis unpleasant to meet a beggar. It is painful to deny him; and, if you
relieve him, it is so much out of your pocket.
Men marry for fortune, and sometimes to please their fancy; but, much
oftener than is suspected, they consider what the world will say of it;
how such a woman in their friends' eyes will look at the head of a
table. Hence, we see so many insipid beauties made wives of, that could
not have struck the particular fancy of any man, that had any fancy at
all. These I call _furniture wives_; as men buy _furniture pictures_,
because they suit this or that niche in their dining parlours.
Your universally cried-up beauties are the very last choice which a man
of taste would make. What pleases all, cannot have that individual
charm, which makes this or that countenance engaging to you, and to you
only perhaps, you know not why. What gained the fair Gunnings titled
husbands, who, after all, turned out very sorry wives? Popular repute.
It is a sore trial when a daughter shall marry against her father's
approbation. A little hard-heartedness, and aversion to a reconcilement,
is almost pardonable. After all, Will Dockwray's way is perhaps the
wisest. His best-loved daughter made a most imprudent match; in fact,
eloped with the last man in the world that her father would have wished
her to marry. All the world said that he would never speak to her
again. For months she durst not write to him, much less come near him.
But, in a casual rencounter, he met her in the streets of Ware;--Ware,
that will long remember the mild virtues of William Dockwray, Esq. What
said the parent to his disobedient child, whose knees faltered under her
at the sight of him? "Ha! Sukey, is it you?" with that benevolent
aspect, with which he paced the streets of Ware, venerated as an angel,
"come and dine with us on Sunday;" then turning away, and again turning
back, as if he had forgotten something, he added, "and Sukey, do you
hear, bring your husband with you." This was all the reproof she ever
heard from him. Need it be added, that the match turned out better for
Susan than the world expected?
"We read the Paradise Lost as a task," says Dr. Johnson. Nay, rather as
a celestial recreation, of which the dullard mind is not at all hours
alike recipient. "Nobody ever wished it longer;"--nor the moon rounder,
he might have added. Why, 'tis the perfectness and completeness of it,
which makes us imagine that not a line could be added to it, or
diminished from it, with advantage. Would we have a cubit added to the
stature of the Medicean Venus? Do we wish her taller?
_Lear._ Who are you?
Mine eyes are not o' the best: I'll tell you straight
... Are you not Kent?
_Kent._ The same;
Your servant Kent. Where is your servant Caius?
_Lear._ He's a good fellow, I can tell you that;
He'll strike, and quickly too: he's dead and rotten.
_Kent._ No, my good Lord; I am the very man----
_Lear._ I'll see that straight----
_Kent._ That from your first of difference and decay,
Have follow'd your sad steps.
_Lear._ You are welcome hither ...
_Albany._ He knows not what he says; and vain it is
That we present us to him.
_Edgar._ Look up, my Lord.
_Kent._ Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass! He hates him much.
That would upon the rack of this rough world
Stretch him out longer.
So ends 'King Lear,' the most stupendous of the Shakspearian dramas; and
Kent, the noblest feature of the conceptions of his divine mind. This
is the magnanimity of authorship, when a writer, having a topic
presented to him, fruitful of beauties for common minds, waives his
privilege, and trusts to the judicious few for understanding the reason
of his abstinence. What a pudder would a common dramatist have raised
here of a reconciliation scene, a perfect recognition, between the
assumed Caius and his master!--to the suffusing of many fair eyes, and
the moistening of cambric handkerchiefs. The old dying king partially
catching at the truth, and immediately lapsing into obliviousness, with
the high-minded carelessness of the other to have his services
appreciated, as one that
----served not for gain,
Or follow'd out of form,
are among the most judicious, not to say heart-touching, strokes in
Shakspeare.
Allied to this magnanimity it is, where the pith and point of an
argument, the amplification of which might compromise the modesty of the
speaker, is delivered briefly, and, as it were, _parenthetically_; as in
those few but pregnant words, in which the man in the old 'Nut-brown
Maid' rather intimates than reveals his unsuspected high birth to the
woman:--
Now understand, to Westmorland,
_Which is my heritage_,
I will you bring, and with a ring,
By way of marriage,
I will you take, and Lady make.
Turn we to the version of it, ten times diluted, of dear Mat. Prior--in
his own way unequalled, and a poet now-a-days too much neglected--"In
me," quoth Henry, addressing the astounded Emma--with a flourish and an
attitude, as we may conceive:--
In me behold the potent Edgar's heir,
Illustrious Earl! him terrible in war,
Let Loire confess.
And with a deal of skimble-skamble stuff, as Hotspur would term it,
more, presents the Lady with a full and true enumeration of his Papa's
rent-roll in the fat soil by Deva.
But of all parentheses, (not to quit the topic too suddenly,) commend me
to that most significant one, at the commencement of the old popular
ballad of Fair Rosamund:--
When good King Henry ruled this land,
The second of that name,
Now mark--
(Besides the Queen) he dearly loved
A fair and comely dame.
There is great virtue in this _besides_.
* * * * *
Amidst the complaints of the wide spread of infidelity among us, it is
consolatory that a sect is sprung up in the heart of the metropolis, and
is daily on the increase, of teachers of that healing doctrine, which
Pope upheld, and against which Voltaire directed his envenomed wit. We
mean those practical preachers of optimism, or the belief that _Whatever
is is best_--the Cads of Omnibuses; who, from their little back
pulpits--not once in three or four hours, as those proclaimers of "God
and his prophet" in Mussulman countries; but every minute, at the entry
or exit of a brief passenger, are heard, in an almost prophetic tone, to
exclaim--(Wisdom crying out, as it were, in the streets,)--ALL'S RIGHT.
* * * * *
Advice is not so commonly thrown away as is imagined. We seek it in
difficulties. But, in common speech, we are apt to confound with it
_admonition_; as when a friend reminds one that drink is prejudicial to
the health, &c. We do not care to be told of that which we know better
than the good man that admonishes. M---- sent to his friend L----, who
is no water-drinker, a twopenny tract 'Against the Use of Fermented
Liquors.' L---- acknowledged the obligation, as far as to _twopence_.
Penotier's advice was the safest after all:
"I advised him----"
But I must tell you. The dear, good-meaning, no-thinking creature, had
been dumb-founding a company of us with a detail of inextricable
difficulties, in which the circumstances of an acquaintance of his were
involved. No clue of light offered itself. He grew more and more misty
as he proceeded. We pitied his friend, and thought,
God help the man so wrapt in error's endless maze:
when, suddenly brightening up his placid countenance, like one that had
found out a riddle, and looked to have the solution admired, "At last,"
said he, "I advised him----"
Here he paused, and here we were again interminably thrown back. By no
possible guess could any of us aim at the drift of the meaning he was
about to be delivered of. "I advised him," he repeated, "to have some
_advice_ upon the subject." A general approbation followed; and it was
unanimously agreed, that, under all the circumstances of the case, no
sounder or more judicious counsel could have been given.
A laxity pervades the popular use of words. Parson W---- is not quite so
continent as Diana, yet prettily dissembleth his frailty. Is Parson
W---- therefore a _hypocrite_? I think _not_. Where the concealment of a
vice is less pernicious than the bare-faced publication of it would be,
no additional delinquency is incurred in the secrecy. Parson W---- is
simply an immoral clergyman. But if Parson W---- were to be for ever
haranguing on the opposite virtue,--choosing for his perpetual text, in
preference to all other pulpit topics, the remarkable resistance
recorded in the 39th of Exodus--dwelling, moreover, and dilating upon
it--then Parson W---- might be reasonably suspected of hypocrisy. But
Parson W---- rarely diverteth into such line of argument, or toucheth it
briefly. His ordinary topics are fetched from "obedience to the powers
that are"--"submission to the civil magistrate in all commands that are
not absolutely unlawful;" on which he can delight to expatiate with
equal fervour and sincerity. Again, to _despise_ a person is properly to
_look down_ upon him with none, or the least possible emotion. But when
Clementina, who has lately lost her lover, with bosom heaving, eyes
flashing, and her whole frame in agitation, pronounces, with a peculiar
emphasis, that she "_despises_ the fellow," depend upon it that he is
not quite so despicable in her eyes as she would have us imagine.--One
more instance:--If we must naturalize that portentous phrase, _a
truism_, it were well that we limited the use of it. Every commonplace
or trite observation is not a truism. For example: A good name helps a
man on in the world. This is nothing but a simple truth, however
hackneyed. It has a distinct subject and predicate. But when the thing
predicated is involved in the term of the subject, and so necessarily
involved that by no possible conception they can be separated, then it
becomes a truism, as to say, A good name is a proof of a man's
estimation in the world. We seem to be saying something when we say
nothing. I was describing to F---- some knavish tricks of a mutual
friend of ours. "If he did so and so," was the reply, "he cannot be an
honest man." Here was a genuine truism--truth upon truth--inference and
proposition identical; or rather a dictionary definition usurping the
place of an inference.
* * * * *
The vices of some men are magnificent. Compare the amours of Henry the
Eighth and Charles the Second. The Stuart had mistresses--the Tudor
_kept_ wives.
We are ashamed at sight of a monkey--somehow as we are shy of poor
relations.
C---- imagined a Caledonian compartment in Hades, where there should be
fire without sulphur.
Absurd images are sometimes irresistible. I will mention two. An
elephant in a coach-office gravely coming to have his trunk booked;--a
mermaid over a fish-kettle cooking her own tail.
It is the praise of Shakspeare, with reference to the play-writers, his
contemporaries, that he has so few revolting characters. Yet he has one
that is singularly mean and disagreeable--the King in Hamlet. Neither
has he characters of insignificance, unless the phantom that stalks over
the stage as Julius Cæsar, in the play of that name, may be accounted
one. Neither has he envious characters, excepting the short part of Don
John, in Much Ado about Nothing. Neither has he unentertaining
characters, if we except Parolles, and the little that there is of the
Clown, in All's Well that Ends Well.
It would settle the dispute, as to whether Shakspeare intended Othello
for a jealous character, to consider how differently we are affected
towards him, and for Leontes in the Winter's Tale. Leontes _is_ that
character. Othello's fault was simply credulity.
Is it possible that Shakspeare should never have read Homer, in
Chapman's version at least? If he had read it, could he mean to
_travesty_ it in the parts of those big boobies, Ajax and Achilles?
Ulysses, Nestor, and Agamemnon, are true to their parts in the Iliad:
they are gentlemen at least. Thersites, though unamusing, is fairly
deducible from it. Troilus and Cressida are a fine graft upon it. But
those two big bulks----
It is a desideratum in works that treat _de re culinariâ_, that we have
no rationale of sauces, or theory of mixed flavours; as to show why
cabbage is reprehensible with roast beef, laudable with bacon; why the
haunch of mutton seeks the alliance of currant jelly, the shoulder
civilly declineth it; why loin of veal (a pretty problem), being itself
unctuous, seeketh the adventitious lubricity of melted butter; and why
the same part in pork, not more oleaginous, abhorreth from it; why the
French bean sympathizes with the flesh of deer; why salt fish points to
parsnip, brawn makes a dead set at mustard; why cats prefer valerian to
hearts-ease, old ladies _vice versâ_--though this is rather travelling
out of the road of the dietetics, and may be thought a question more
curious than relevant;--why salmon (a strong sapor _per se_,) fortifieth
its condition with the mighty lobster sauce, whose embraces are fatal to
the delicater relish of the turbot; why oysters in death rise up against
the contamination of brown sugar, while they are posthumously amorous of
vinegar; why the sour mango and the sweet jam [? yam] by turns court,
and are accepted by, the compliable mutton hash--she not yet decidedly
declaring for either. We are as yet but in the empirical stage of
cookery. We feed ignorantly, and want to be able to give a reason of the
relish that is in us; so that if Nature should furnish us with a new
meat, or be prodigally pleased to restore the phœnix, upon a _given_
flavour, we might be able to pronounce instantly, on philosophical
principles, what the sauce to it should be--what the curious adjuncts.
THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE
IN THE ALBUM OF MR. KEYMER
(1834)
When I heard of the death of Coleridge, it was without grief. It seemed
to me that he long had been on the confines of the next world,--that he
had a hunger for eternity. I grieved then that I could not grieve. But
since, I feel how great a part he was of me. His great and dear spirit
haunts me. I cannot think a thought, I cannot make a criticism on men or
books, without an ineffectual turning and reference to him. He was the
proof and touchstone of all my cogitations. He was a Grecian (or in the
first form) at Christ's Hospital, where I was deputy Grecian; and the
same subordination and deference to him I have preserved through a
life-long acquaintance. Great in his writings, he was greatest in his
conversation. In him was disproved that old maxim, that we should allow
every one his share of talk. He would talk from morn to dewy eve, nor
cease till far midnight, yet who ever would interrupt him,--who would
obstruct that continuous flow of converse, fetched from Helicon or Zion?
He had the tact of making the unintelligible seem plain. Many who read
the abstruser parts of his "Friend" would complain that his works did
not answer to his spoken wisdom. They were identical. But he had a tone
in oral delivery, which seemed to convey sense to those who were
otherwise imperfect recipients. He was my fifty years old friend without
a dissension. Never saw I his likeness, nor probably the world can see
again. I seem to love the house he died at more passionately than when
he lived. I love the faithful Gilmans more than while they exercised
their virtues towards him living. What was his mansion is consecrated to
me a chapel.
CHS. LAMB.
EDMONTON, _November 21, 1834_.
CUPID'S REVENGE
(_Date unknown_)
Leontius, Duke of Lycia, who in times past had borne the character of a
wise and just governor, and was endeared to all ranks of his subjects,
in his latter days fell into a sort of dotage, which manifested itself
in an extravagant fondness for his daughter Hidaspes. This young maiden,
with the Prince Leucippus, her brother, were the only remembrances left
to him of a deceased and beloved consort. For _her_ nothing was thought
too precious. Existence was of no value to him but as it afforded
opportunities of gratifying her wishes. To be instrumental in relieving
her from the least little pain, or grief, he would have lavished his
treasures to the giving away of the one half of his dukedom.
All this deference on the part of the parent had yet no power upon the
mind of the daughter to move her at any time to solicit any unbecoming
suit, or to disturb the even tenor of her thoughts. The humility and
dutifulness of her carriage seemed to keep pace with his apparent
willingness to release her from the obligations of either. She might
have satisfied her wildest humors and caprices; but in truth no such
troublesome guests found harbor in the bosom of the quiet and unaspiring
maiden.
Thus far the prudence of the Princess served to counteract any ill
effects which this ungovernable partiality in a parent was calculated to
produce in a less virtuous nature than Hidaspes's; and this foible of
the duke's, so long as no evil resulted from it, was passed over by the
courtiers as a piece of harmless frenzy.
But upon a solemn day--a sad one as it proved for Lycia--when the
returning anniversary of the Princess's birth was kept with
extraordinary rejoicings, the infatuated father set no bounds to his
folly, but would have his subjects to do homage to her for that day, as
to their natural sovereign; as if he, indeed, had been dead, and she, to
the exclusion of the male succession, was become the rightful ruler of
Lycia. He saluted her by the style of Duchess; and with a terrible oath,
in the presence of his nobles, he confirmed to her the grant of all
things whatsoever that she should demand on that day, and for the six
next following; and if she should ask any thing the execution of which
must be deferred until after his death, he pronounced a dreadful curse
upon his son and successor, if he failed to see to the performance of
it.
Thus encouraged, the Princess stepped forth with a modest boldness, and,
as if assured of no denial, spake as follows:
But before we acquaint you with the purport of her speech, we must
premise, that in the land of Lycia, which was at that time pagan, above
all their other gods the inhabitants did in an especial manner adore the
deity who was supposed to have influence in the disposing of people's
affections in _love_. Him, by the name of God Cupid, they feigned to be
a _beautiful boy_, and _winged_, as indeed, between young persons these
frantic passions are usually least under constraint; while the wings
might signify the haste with which these ill-judged attachments are
commonly dissolved, and do indeed go away as lightly as they come,
flying away in an instant to light upon some newer fancy. They painted
him _blindfolded_, because these silly affections of lovers make them
blind to the defects of the beloved object, which every one is
quick-sighted enough to discover but themselves; or because love is for
the most part led blindly, rather than directed by the open eye of the
judgment, in the hasty choice of a mate. Yet, with that inconsistency of
attributes with which the heathen people commonly over-complimented
their deities, this blind love, this Cupid, they figured with a bow and
arrows; and, being sightless, they yet feigned him to be a notable
archer and an unerring marksman. No heart was supposed to be proof
against the point of his inevitable dart. By such incredible fictions
did these poor pagans make a shift to excuse their vanities, and to give
a sanction to their irregular affections, under the notion that love was
irresistible; whereas, in a well-regulated mind, these amorous conceits
either find no place at all, or, having gained a footing, are easily
stifled in the beginning by a wise and manly resolution.
This frenzy in the people had long been a source of disquiet to the
discreet Princess, and many were the conferences she had held with the
virtuous Prince, her brother, as to the best mode of taking off the
minds of the Lycians from this vain superstition. An occasion, furnished
by the blind grant of the old Duke, their father, seemed now to present
itself.
The courtiers, then, being assembled to hear the demand which the
Princess should make, began to conjecture, each one according to the
bent of his own disposition, what the thing would be that she should ask
for. One said, "Now surely she will ask to have the disposal of the
revenues of some wealthy province, to lay them out--as was the manner of
Eastern princesses--in costly dresses and jewels becoming a lady of so
great expectancies." Another thought that she would seek an extension of
power, as women naturally love rule and dominion. But the most part were
in hope that she was about to beg the hand of some neighbor prince in
marriage, who, by the wealth and contiguity of his dominions, might add
strength and safety to the realm of Lycia. But in none of these things
was the expectation of these crafty and worldly-minded courtiers
gratified. For Hidaspes, first making lowly obeisance to her father, and
thanking him on bended knees for so great grace conferred upon
her--according to a plan preconcerted with Leucippus--made suit as
follows:
"Your loving care of me, O princely father, by which in my tenderest age
you made up to me for the loss of a mother at those years when I was
scarcely able to comprehend the misfortune, and your bounties to me ever
since, have left me nothing to ask for myself, as wanting and desiring
nothing. But for the people whom you govern I beg and desire a boon. It
is known to all nations that the men of Lycia are noted for a vain and
fruitless superstition--the more hateful as it bears a show of true
religion, but is indeed nothing more than a self-pleasing and bold
wantonness. Many ages before this, when every man had taken to himself a
trade, as hating idleness far worse than death, some one that gave
himself to sloth and wine, finding himself by his neighbours rebuked for
his unprofitable life, framed to himself a God whom he pretended to obey
in his dishonesty; and, for a name, he called him Cupid. This God of
merely man's creating--as the nature of man is ever credulous of any
vice which takes part with his dissolute conditions--quickly found
followers enough. They multiplied in every age, especially among your
Lycians, who to this day remain adorers of this drowsy Deity, who
certainly was first invented in drink, as sloth and luxury are commonly
the first movers in these idle love-passions. This _winged Boy_--for so
they fancy him--has his sacrifices, his loose Images set up in the land
through all the villages--nay, your own sacred palace is not exempt from
them--to the scandal of sound devotion and dishonour of the true
Deities, which are only they who give good gifts to man--as Ceres, who
gives us corn; the planter of the olive, Pallas; Neptune, who directs
the track of ships over the great ocean, and binds distant lands
together in friendly commerce; the inventor of medicine and music,
Apollo; and the cloud-compelling Thunderer of Olympus. Whereas the gifts
of this idle Deity--if, indeed, he have a being at all out of the brain
of his frantic worshipers, usually prove destructive and pernicious. My
suit, then, is, that this unseemly Idol throughout the land be plucked
down and cast into the fire; and that the adoring of the same may be
prohibited on pain of death to any of your subjects henceforth found so
offending."
Leontius, startled at this unexpected demand from the Princess, with
tears besought her to ask some wiser thing, and not to bring down upon
herself and him the indignation of so great a God.
"There is no such God as you dream of," said then Leucippus, boldly, who
had hitherto forborne to second the petition of the Princess; "but a
vain opinion of him has filled the land with love and wantonness. Every
young man and maiden that feel the least desire to one another, dare in
no case to suppress it, for they think it to be Cupid's motion, and that
he is a God!"
Thus pressed by the solicitations of both his children, and fearing the
oath which he had taken, in an evil hour the misgiving father consented;
and a proclamation was sent throughout all the provinces for the putting
down of the Idol, and the suppression of the established Cupid-worship.
Notable, you may be sure, was the stir made in all places among the
priests, and among the artificers in gold, in silver, or in marble; who
made a gainful trade, either in serving at the altar or in the
manufacture of the images no longer to be tolerated. The cry was
clamorous as _that_ at Ephesus, when a kindred Idol was in danger; for
"great had been Cupid of the Lycians." Nevertheless the power of the
Duke, backed by the power of his more popular children, prevailed; and
the destruction of every vestige of the old religion was but as the work
of one day throughout the country.
And now, as the Pagan chronicles of Lycia inform us, the displeasure of
Cupid went out--the displeasure of a great God--flying through all the
dukedom, and sowing evils. But upon the first movers of the profanation
his angry hand lay heaviest, and there was imposed upon them a strange
misery, that all might know that Cupid's revenge was mighty. With his
arrows hotter than plagues, or than his own anger, did he fiercely right
himself; nor could the prayers of a few concealed worshipers, nor the
smoke arising from an altar here and there which had escaped the general
overthrow, avert his wrath, or make him cease from vengeance, until he
had made of the once flourishing country of Lycia a most wretched land.
He sent no famines--he let loose no cruel wild beasts among
them--inflictions, with one or other of which the rest of the Olympian
deities are fabled to have visited the nations under their
displeasure--but took a nearer course of his own, and his invisible
arrows went to the _moral heart_ of Lycia, infecting and filling court
and country with desires of unlawful marriages, unheard-of and monstrous
affections, prodigious and misbecoming unions.
The symptoms were first visible in the changed bosom of Hidaspes. This
exemplary maiden--whose cold modesty, almost to a failing, had
discouraged the addresses of so many princely suitors that had sought
her hand in marriage--by the venom of this inward pestilence came on a
sudden to cast eyes of affection upon a mean and deformed creature,
Zoilus by name, who was a dwarf, and lived about the palace, the common
jest of the courtiers. In her besotted eyes he was grown a goodly
gentleman. And to her maidens, when any of them reproached him with the
defect of his shape in her hearing, she would reply that, "to them,
indeed, he might appear defective, and unlike a man, as, indeed, no man
was like unto him, for in form and complexion he was beyond painting. He
is like," she said, "to nothing that we have seen; yet he doth resemble
Apollo, as I have fancied him, when, rising in the east, he bestirs
himself, and shakes day-light from his hair." And, overcome with a
passion which was heavier than she could bear, she confessed herself a
wretched creature, and implored forgiveness of God Cupid, whom she had
provoked, and, if possible, that he would grant it to her, that she
might enjoy her love. Nay, she would court this piece of deformity to
his face; and when the wretch, supposing it to be done in mockery, has
said that he could wish himself more ill-shaped than he was, so it could
contribute to make her Grace merry, she would reply, "Oh, think not that
I jest! unless it be a jest not to esteem my life in comparison with
thine--to hang a thousand kisses in an hour upon those lips--unless it
be a jest to vow that I am willing to become your wife, and to take
obedience upon me." And by his "own white hand," taking it in hers--so
strong was the delusion--she besought him to swear to marry her.
The term had not yet expired of the seven days within which the doting
Duke had sworn to fulfil her will, when, in pursuance of this frenzy,
she presented herself before her father, leading in the dwarf by the
hand, and, in the face of all the courtiers, solemnly demanding his hand
in marriage. And when the apish creature made show of blushing at the
unmerited honour, she, to comfort him, bade him not to be ashamed, for
"in her eyes he was worth a kingdom."
And now, too late, did the fond father repent him of his dotage. But
when by no importunity he could prevail upon her to desist from her
suit, for his oath's sake he must needs consent to the marriage. But the
ceremony was no sooner, to the derision of all present, performed, than,
with the just feelings of an outraged parent, he commanded the head of
the presumptuous bridegroom to be stricken off, and committed the
distracted princess close prisoner to her chamber, where, after many
deadly swoonings, with intermingled outcries upon the cruelty of her
father, she, in no long time after, died, making ineffectual appeals, to
the last, to the mercy of the offended Power--the Power that had laid
its heavy hand upon her, to the bereavement of her good judgment first,
and, finally, to the extinction of a life that might have proved a
blessing to Lycia.
Leontius had scarcely time to be sensible of her danger before a fresh
cause for mourning overtook him. His son Leucippus, who had hitherto
been a pattern of strict life and modesty, was stricken with a second
arrow from the Deity, offended for his overturned altars, in which the
prince had been a chief instrument. The God caused his heart to fall
away, and his crazed fancy to be smitten with the excelling beauty of a
wicked widow, by name Bacha. This woman, in the first days of her
mourning for her husband, by her dissembling tears and affected coyness
had drawn Leucippus so cunningly into her snares, that, before she would
grant him a return of love, she extorted from the easy-hearted prince a
contract of marriage, to be fulfilled in the event of his father's
death. This guilty intercourse, which they covered with the name of
marriage, was not carried with such secrecy but that a rumor of it ran
about the palace; and by some officious courtier was brought to the ears
of the old Duke, who, to satisfy himself of the truth, came hastily to
the house of Bacha, where he found his son courting. Taking the Prince
to task roundly, he sternly asked who that creature was that had
bewitched him out of his honor thus. Then Bacha, pretending ignorance of
the Duke's person, haughtily demanded of Leucippus what saucy old man
that was, that without leave had burst into the house of an afflicted
widow to hinder her paying her tears (as she pretended) to the dead.
Then the Duke declaring himself, and threatening her for having
corrupted his son, giving her the reproachful terms of witch and
sorceress, Leucippus mildly answered that he "did her wrong." The bad
woman, imagining that the Prince for very fear would not betray their
secret, now conceived a project of monstrous wickedness, which was no
less than to insnare the father with the same arts which had subdued the
son; that she might no longer be a concealed wife, nor a princess only
under cover, but by a union with the old man become at once the true and
acknowledged Duchess of Lycia. In a posture of humility she confessed
her ignorance of the Duke's quality, but, now she knew it, she besought
his pardon for her wild speeches, which proceeded, she said, from a
distempered head, which the loss of her dear husband had affected. He
might command her life, she told him, which was now of small value to
her. The tears which had accompanied her words, and her mourning weeds
(which, for a blind to the world, she had not yet cast off) heightening
her beauty, gave a credence to her protestations of her innocence. But
the duke continuing to assail her with reproaches, with a matchless
confidence, assuming the air of injured virtue, in a somewhat lofty tone
she replied, that, though he were her sovereign, to whom in any lawful
cause she was bound to submit, yet, if he sought to take away her honor,
she stood up to defy him. _That_, she said, was a jewel dearer than any
he could give her, which so long as she should keep she should esteem
herself richer than all the Princes of the earth that were without it.
If the Prince, his son, knew any thing to her dishonor, let him tell it.
And here she challenged Leucippus before his father to speak the worst
of her. If he would, however, sacrifice a woman's character to please an
unjust humor of the Duke's, she saw no remedy, she said, now _he_ was
dead (meaning her late husband) that with his life would have defended
her reputation.
Thus appealed to, Leucippus, who had stood a while astonished at her
confident falsehoods, though ignorant of the full drift of them,
considering that not the reputation only, but probably the life of a
woman whom he had so loved, and who had made such sacrifices to him of
love and beauty, depended upon his absolute concealment of their
contract, framed his mouth to a compassionate untruth, and with solemn
asseverations confirmed to his father her assurances of her innocence.
He denied not that with rich gifts he had assailed her virtue, but had
found her relentless to his solicitations; that gold nor greatness had
any power over her. Nay, so far he went on to give force to the
protestations of this artful woman, that he confessed to having offered
marriage to her, which she, who scorned to listen to any second wedlock,
had rejected.
All this while Leucippus secretly prayed to Heaven to forgive him while
he uttered these bold untruths, since it was for the prevention of a
greater mischief only, and had no malice in it.
But, warned by the sad sequel which ensued, be thou careful, young
reader, how in any case you tell a lie. Lie not, if any man but ask you,
"How you do?" or "What o'clock it is?" Be sure you make no false excuse
to screen a friend that is most dear to you. Never let the most
well-intended falsehood escape your lips. For Heaven, which is entirely
Truth, will make the seed which you have sown of Untruth to yield
miseries a thousand-fold upon yours, as it did upon the head of the
ill-fated and mistaken Leucippus.
Leontius, finding the assurances of Bacha so confidently seconded by his
son, could no longer withhold his belief, and, only forbidding their
meeting for the future, took a courteous leave of the lady, presenting
her at the same time with a valuable ring, in recompense, as he said, of
the injustice which he had done her in his false surmises of her
guiltiness. In truth, the surpassing beauty of the lady, with her
appearing modesty, had made no less impression upon the heart of the
fond old Duke than they had awakened in the bosom of his more pardonable
son. His first design was to make her his mistress; to the better
accomplishing of which Leucippus was dismissed from the court, under the
pretext of some honorable employment abroad. In his absence, Leontius
spared no offers to induce her to comply with his purpose. Continually
he solicited her with rich offers, with messages, and by personal
visits. It was a ridiculous sight if it were not rather a sad one, to
behold this second and worse dotage, which by Cupid's wrath had fallen
upon this fantastical _old new lover_. All his occupation now was in
dressing and pranking himself up in youthful attire to please the eyes
of his new mistress. His mornings were employed in the devising of trim
fashions, in the company of tailors, embroiderers, and feather-dressers.
So infatuated was he with these vanities, that when a servant came and
told him that his daughter was dead--even she, whom he had but lately so
highly prized--the words seemed spoken to a deaf person. He either could
not or would not understand them; but, like one senseless, fell to
babbling about the shape of a new hose and doublet. His crutch, the
faithful prop of long aged years, was discarded; and he resumed the
youthful fashion of a sword by his side, when his years wanted strength
to have drawn it. In this condition of folly it was no difficult task
for the widow, by affected pretenses of honour and arts of amorous
denial, to draw in this doting Duke to that which she had all along
aimed at, the offer of his crown in marriage. She was now Duchess of
Lycia! In her new elevation the mask was quickly thrown aside, and the
impious Bacha appeared in her true qualities. She had never loved the
Duke her husband, but had used him as the instrument of her greatness.
Taking advantage of his amorous folly, which seemed to gain growth the
nearer he approached to his grave, she took upon her the whole rule of
Lycia; placing and displacing at her will all the great officers of
state; and filling the court with creatures of her own, the agents of
her guilty pleasures, she removed from the Duke's person the oldest and
trustiest of his dependents.
Leucippus, who at this juncture was returned from his foreign mission,
was met at once with the news of his sister's death and the strange
wedlock of the old Duke. To the memory of Hidaspes he gave some tears.
But these were swiftly swallowed up in his horror and detestation of the
conduct of Bacha. In his first fury he resolved upon a full disclosure
of all that had passed between him and his wicked step-mother. Again he
thought, by killing Bacha, to rid the world of a monster. But tenderness
for his father recalled him to milder counsels. The fatal secret,
nevertheless, sat upon him like lead, while he was determined to confide
it to no other. It took his sleep away, and his desire of food; and if a
thought of mirth at any time crossed him the dreadful truth would recur
to check it, as if a messenger should have come to whisper to him of
some friend's death! With difficulty he was brought to wish their
Highnesses faint joy of their marriage; and, at the first sight of
Bacha, a friend was fain to hold his wrist hard to prevent him from
fainting. In an interview which after, at her request, he had with her
alone, the bad woman shamed not to take up the subject lightly; to treat
as a trifle the marriage vow that had passed between them; and seeing
him sad and silent, to threaten him with the displeasure of the Duke,
his father, if by words or looks he gave any suspicion to the world of
their dangerous secret. "What had happened," she said, "was by no fault
of hers. People would have thought her mad if she had refused the Duke's
offer. She had used no arts to entrap his father. It was Leucippus's own
resolute denial of any such thing as a contract having passed between
them which had led to the proposal."
The Prince, unable to extenuate his share of blame in the calamity,
humbly besought her, that "since by his own great fault things had been
brought to their present pass, she would only live honest for the
future; and not abuse the credulous age of the old Duke, as he well knew
she had the power to do. For himself, seeing that life was no longer
desirable to him, if his death was judged by her to be indispensable to
her security, she was welcome to lay what trains she pleased to compass
it, so long as she would only suffer his father to go to his grave in
peace, since _he_ had never wronged her."
This temperate appeal was lost upon the heart of Bacha, who from that
moment was secretly bent upon effecting the destruction of Leucippus.
Her project was, by feeding the ears of the Duke with exaggerated
praises of his son, to awaken a jealousy in the old man that she
secretly preferred Leucippus. Next, by wilfully insinuating the great
popularity of the Prince (which was no more indeed than the truth) among
the Lycians, to instill subtle fears into the Duke that his son had laid
plots for circumventing his life and throne. By these arts, she was
working upon the weak mind of the Duke almost to distraction, when, at a
meeting, concocted by herself between the Prince and his father, the
latter taking Leucippus soundly to task for these alleged treasons, the
Prince replied only by humbly drawing his sword, with the intention of
laying it at his father's feet, and begging him, since he suspected him,
to sheathe it in his own bosom, for of his life he had been long weary.
Bacha entered at the crisis, and ere Leucippus could finish his
submission, with loud outcries alarmed the courtiers, who, rushing into
the presence, found the Prince, with sword in hand indeed, but with far
other intentions than this bad woman imputed to him, plainly accusing
him of having drawn it upon his father! Leucippus was quickly disarmed;
and the old Duke, trembling between fear and age, committed him to close
prison, from which, by Bacha's aims, he never should have come out alive
but for the interference of the common people, who, loving their Prince,
and equally detesting Bacha, in a simultaneous mutiny, arose and rescued
him from the hands of the officers.
The court was now no longer a place of living for Leucippus, and,
hastily thanking his countrymen for his deliverance, which in his heart
he rather deprecated than welcomed, as one that wished for death, he
took leave of all court hopes, and, abandoning the palace, betook
himself to a life of penitence in solitudes.
Not so secretly did he select his place of penance, in a cave among
lonely woods and fastnesses, but that his retreat was traced by Bacha;
who, baffled in her purpose, raging like some she-wolf, dispatched an
emissary of her own to destroy him privately.
There was residing at the court of Lycia at this time a young maiden,
the daughter of Bacha by her first husband, who had hitherto been
brought up in the obscurity of a poor country abode with an uncle, but
whom Bacha now publicly owned, and had prevailed upon the easy Duke to
adopt as successor to the throne in wrong of the true heir, his
suspected son Leucippus.
This young creature, Urania by name, was as artless and harmless as her
mother was crafty and wicked. To the unnatural Bacha she had been an
object of neglect and aversion; and for the project of supplanting
Leucippus only had she fetched her out of retirement. The bringing-up of
Urania had been among country hinds and lasses; to tend her flocks or
superintend her neat dairy had been the extent of her breeding. From her
calling she had contracted a pretty rusticity of dialect, which, among
the fine folks of the court, passed for simplicity and folly. She was
the unfittest instrument for an ambitious design that could be chosen,
for her manners in a palace had a tinge still of her old occupation, and
to her mind the lowly shepherdess's life was best.
Simplicity is oft a match for prudence; and Urania was not so simple but
she understood that she had been sent for to court only in the Prince's
wrong, and in her heart she was determined to defeat any designs that
might be contriving against her brother-in-law. The melancholy bearing
of Leucippus had touched her with pity. This wrought in her a kind of
love, which, for its object, had no further end than the well-being of
the beloved. She looked for no return of it, nor did the possibility of
such a blessing in the remotest way occur to her--so vast a distance she
had imaged between her lowly bringing up and the courtly breeding and
graces of Leucippus. Hers was no raging flame, such as had burned
destructive in the bosom of poor Hidaspes. Either the vindictive God in
mercy had spared this young maiden, or the wrath of the confounding
_Cupid_ was restrained by a Higher Power from discharging the most
malignant of his arrows against the peace of so much innocence. Of the
extent of her mother's malice she was too guileless to have entertained
conjecture; but from hints and whispers, and, above all, from that
tender watchfulness with which a true affection, like Urania's, tends
the safety of its object--fearing even where no cause for fear
subsists--she gathered that some danger was impending over the Prince,
and with simple heroism resolved to countermine the treason.
It chanced upon a day that Leucippus had been indulging his sad
meditations, in forests far from human converse, when he was struck with
the appearance of a human being, so unusual in that solitude. There
stood before him a seeming _youth_, of delicate appearance, clad in
coarse and peasantly attire. "He was come," he said, "to seek out the
Prince, and to be his poor boy and servant, if he would let him." "Alas!
poor youth," replied Leucippus, "why do you follow me, who am as poor as
you are?" "In good faith," was his pretty answer, "I shall be well and
rich enough if you will but love me." And saying so, he wept. The
Prince, admiring this strange attachment in a boy, was moved with
compassion; and seeing him exhausted, as if with long travel and hunger,
invited him into his poor habitation, setting such refreshments before
him as that barren spot afforded. But by no entreaties could he be
prevailed upon to take any sustenance; and all that day, and for the two
following, he seemed supported only by some gentle flame of love that
was within him. He fed only upon the sweet looks and courteous
entertainment which he received from Leucippus. Seemingly he wished to
die under the loving eyes of his master. "I can not eat," he prettily
said, "but I shall eat to-morrow." "You will be dead by that time," said
Leucippus. "I shall be well then," said he, "since you will not love
me." Then the prince asked him why he sighed so: "To think," was his
innocent reply, "that such a fine man as you should die, and no gay lady
love him." "But you will love me," said Leucippus. "Yes, sure," said he,
"till I die; and when I am in heaven I shall wish for you."--"This is a
love," thought the other, "that I never yet heard tell of: but come,
thou art sleepy, child; go in, and I will sit with thee." Then, from
some words which the poor youth dropped, Leucippus, suspecting that his
wits were beginning to ramble, said, "What portends this?"--"I am not
sleepy," said the youth, "but you are sad. I would that I could do
anything to make you merry. Shall I sing?" But soon, as if recovering
strength, "There is one approaching," he wildly cried out. "Master, look
to yourself--"
His words were true; for now entered, with provided weapon, the wicked
emissary of Bacha that we told of; and, directing a mortal thrust at the
Prince, the supposed boy, with a last effort, interposing his weak body,
received it in his bosom, thanking the Heavens in death that he had
saved "so good a master."
Leucippus, having slain the villain, was at leisure to discover, in the
features of his poor servant, the countenance of his devoted
sister-in-law! Through solitary and dangerous ways she had sought him in
that disguise; and, finding him, seems to have resolved upon a voluntary
death by fasting: partly, that she might die in the presence of her
beloved; and partly, that she might make known to him in death the love
which she wanted boldness to disclose to him while living; but chiefly,
because she knew that by her demise all obstacles would be removed that
stood between her Prince and his succession to the throne of Lycia.
Leucippus had hardly time to comprehend the strength of love in his
Urania when a trampling of horses resounded through his solitude. It was
a party of Lycian horsemen, that had come to seek him, dragging the
detested Bacha in their train, who was now to receive the full penalty
of her misdeeds. Amidst her frantic fury upon the missing of her
daughter the old Duke had suddenly died, not without suspicion of her
having administered poison to him. Her punishment was submitted to
Leucippus, who was now, with joyful acclaims, saluted as the rightful
Duke of Lycia. He, as no way moved with his great wrongs, but
considering her simply as the parent of Urania, saluting her only by the
title of "Wicked Mother," bade her to live. "That Reverend title," he
said, and pointed to the bleeding remains of her child, "must be her
pardon. He would use no extremity against her, but leave her to Heaven."
The hardened mother, not at all relenting at the sad spectacle that lay
before her, but making show of dutiful submission to the young Duke, and
with bended knees, approaching him, suddenly, with a dagger, inflicted a
mortal stab upon him; and, with a second stroke stabbing herself, ended
both their wretched lives.
Now was the tragedy of Cupid's wrath awfully completed; and, the race of
Leontius failing in the deaths of both his children, the chronicle
relates that, under their new Duke, Ismenus, the offense to the angry
Power was expiated; his statues and altars were, with more magnificence
than ever, re-edified; and he ceased thenceforth from plaguing the land.
Thus far the Pagan historians relate erring. But from this vain Idol
story a not unprofitable moral may be gathered against the abuse of the
natural, but dangerous, _passion of love_. In the story of Hidaspes we
see the preposterous linking of beauty with deformity; of princely
expectancies with mean and low conditions, in the case of the Prince,
her brother; and of decrepit age with youth in the ill end of their
doting father, Leontius. By their examples we are warned to decline all
_unequal and ill-assorted unions_.
APPENDIX
ESSAYS AND NOTES NOT CERTAIN TO BE LAMB'S, BUT PROBABLY HIS
SCRAPS OF CRITICISM
(1822)
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or waked to ecstacy the living lyre.
_Gray's Elegy_.
There has always appeared to me a vicious mixture of the figurative with
the real in this admired passage. The first two lines may barely pass,
as not bad. But the _hands_ laid in the earth, must mean the identical
five-finger'd organs of the body; and how does this consist with their
occupation of _swaying rods_, unless their owner had been a
schoolmaster; or _waking lyres_, unless he were literally a harper by
profession? Hands that "might have held the plough," would have some
sense, for that work is strictly manual; the others only emblematically
or pictorially so. Kings now-a-days sway no rods, _alias_ sceptres,
except on their coronation day; and poets do not necessarily strum upon
the harp or fiddle, as poets. When we think upon dead cold fingers, we
may remember the honest squeeze of friendship which they returned
heretofore; we cannot but with violence connect their living idea, as
opposed to death, with uses to which they must become metaphorical (i.e.
less real than dead things themselves) before we can so with any
propriety apply them.
* * * * *
He saw, but, blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.
_Gray's Bard_.
Nothing was ever more violently distorted, than this material fact of
Milton's blindness having been occasioned by his intemperate studies,
and late hours, during his prosecution of the defence against
Salmasius--applied to the dazzling effects of too much mental vision.
His corporal sight was blasted with corporal occupation; his inward
sight was not impaired, but rather strengthened, by his task. If his
course of studies had turned his brain, there would have been some
fitness in the expression.
* * * * *
And since I cannot, I will prove a _villain_,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
_Soliloquy in Richard III_.
The performers, whom I have seen in this part, seem to mistake the
import of the word which I have marked with italics. Richard does not
mean, that because he is by shape and temper unfitted for a _courtier_,
he is therefore determined to prove, in our sense of the word, a _wicked
man_. The word in Shakspeare's time had not passed entirely into the
modern sense; it was in its passage certainly, and indifferently used as
such; the beauty of a world of words in that age was in their being less
definite than they are now, fixed, and petrified. _Villain_ is here
undoubtedly used for a _churl_, or _clown_, opposed to a _courtier_; and
the incipient deterioration of the meaning gave the use of it in this
place great spirit and beauty. A _wicked man_ does not necessarily hate
_courtly pleasures_; a _clown_ is naturally opposed to them. The mistake
of this meaning has, I think, led the players into that hard literal
conception with which they deliver this passage, quite foreign, in my
understanding, to the bold gay-faced irony of the soliloquy. Richard,
upon the stage, looks round, as if he were literally apprehensive of
some dog snapping at him; and announces his determination of procuring a
looking-glass, and employing a tailor, as if he were prepared to put
both in practice before he should get home--I apprehend "a world of
figures here."
* * * * *
_Howell's Letters_. "The Treaty of the Match 'twixt our Prince
[afterwards Charles I.] and the Lady Infanta, is now strongly afoot; she
is a very comely Lady, _rather of a Flemish complexion than Spanish,
fair hair'd_, and carrieth a most pure mixture of red and white in her
Face. She is full and _big-lipp'd, which is held a Beauty rather than a
Blemish or any Excess in the Austrian Family, it being a thing incident
to most of that Race_; she goes now upon 16, and is of a tallness
agreeable to those years." This letter bears date, 5th Jan. 1622. Turn
we now to a letter dated 16th May, 1626. The wind was now changed about,
the Spanish match broken off, and Charles had become the husband of
Henrietta. "I thank you for your late Letter, and the several good
Tidings sent me from Wales. In requital I can send you gallant news, for
we have now a most Noble new Queen of England, who in true Beauty is
beyond the Long-woo'd Infanta; for she was of a _fading Flaxen-hair,
Big-lipp'd_, and somewhat Heavy-eyed; but this Daughter of France, this
youngest Branch of Bourbon (being but in her Cradle when the Great
Henry her Father was put out of the World) is of a more _lovely and
lasting Complexion_, a dark brown; she hath Eyes that sparkle like
Stars; and for her Physiognomy, she may be said to be a Mirror of
Perfection." He hath a rich account, in another letter, of Prince
Charles courting this same Infanta. "There are Comedians once a week
come to the Palace [at Madrid], where under a great Canopy, the Queen
and the Infanta sit in the middle, our Prince and Don Carlos on the
Queen's right hand, the king and the little Cardinal on the Infanta's
left hand. I have seen the Prince have his eyes immovably fixed upon the
Infanta half an hour together in a thoughtful speculative posture,
_which sure would needs be tedious, unless affection did sweeten it_."
Again, of the Prince's final departure from that court. "The king and
his two Brothers accompanied his Highness to the Escurial some twenty
miles off, and would have brought him to the Sea-side, but that the
Queen is big, and hath not many days to go. When the King and he parted,
there past wonderful great Endearments and Embraces _in divers postures_
between them a long time; and in that place there is a Pillar to be
erected as a monument to Posterity." This scene of royal congées
assuredly gave rise to the popular, or reformed sign (as Ben Jonson
calls it), of _The Salutation_. In the days of Popery, this sign had a
more solemn import.
THE MISCELLANY
(1822)
THE CHOICE OF A GRAVE
In Fontenelle's Dialogues of the Dead, Mary Stuart meets Rizzio, and by
way of reconciling him to the violence he had suffered, says to him, "I
have honoured thy memory so far as to place thee in the tomb of the
Kings of Scotland." "How," says the musician, "my body entombed among
the Scottish Kings?" "Nothing more true," replies the queen. "And I,"
says Rizzio, "I have been so little sensible of that good fortune, that,
believe me, this is the first notice I ever had of it."
I have no sympathy with that feeling, which is now-a-days so much in
fashion, for picking out snug spots to be buried in. What is the meaning
of such fancies? No man thinks or says, that it will be agreeable to his
dead body to be resolved into dust under a willow, or with flowers above
it. No--it is, that while alive he has pleasure in such anticipations
for his coxcomical clay. I do not understand it--there is no _quid pro
quo_ in the business to my apprehension. It will not do to reason upon
of course; but I can't feel about it. I am to blame, I dare say--but I
can only laugh at such under-ground whims. "A good place" in the
church-yard!--the boxes!--a front row! but why? No, I cannot understand
it: I cannot feel _particular_ on such a subject: any part for me, as a
plain man says of a partridge.
* * * * *
WILKS
It is very pleasing to discover redeeming points in characters that have
been held up to our detestation. The merest trifles are enough, if they
taste but of common humanity. I have never thought very ill of Wilks
since I discovered that he was exceedingly fond of South-Down mutton.
But better than this: "My cherries," he says, "are the prey of the
blackbirds--and they are most welcome." This is a little trait of
character, which, in my mind, covers a multitude of sins.
* * * * *
MILTON
Milton takes his rank in English literature, according to the station
which has been determined on by the critics. But he is not read like
Lord Byron, or Mr. Thomas Moore. He is not _popular_; nor perhaps will
he ever be. He is known as the Author of "Paradise Lost;" but his
"Paradise Regained," "severe and beautiful," is little known. Who knows
his Arcades? or Samson Agonistes? or half his minor poems? We are
persuaded that, however they may be spoken of with respect, few persons
take the trouble to read them. Even Comus, the child of his youth, his
"florid son, young" Comus--is not well known; and for the little renown
he may possess, he is indebted to the stage. The following lines
(_excepting only the first four_) are not printed in the common editions
of Milton; nor are they generally known to belong to that divine
"Masque;" yet they are in the poet's highest style. We are happy to
bring them before such of our readers as are not possessed of Mr. Todd's
expensive edition of Milton.
_The Spirit Enters._
Before the starry threshold of Jove's court
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aërial spirits live insphered
In regions mild of calm and serene air,
_Amidst th' Hesperian gardens, on whose banks_
_Bedew'd with nectar and celestial songs,_
_Eternal roses grow, and hyacinth,
And fruits of golden rind, on whose fair tree_
_The scaly harness'd dragon ever keeps_
_His unenchanted eye: around the verge_
_And sacred limits of this blissful isle,_
_The jealous ocean, that old river, winds_
_His far-extended arms, till with steep fall_
_Half his waste flood the wild Atlantic fills,_
_And half the slow unfathom'd Stygian pool._
_But soft, I was not sent to court your wonder_
_With distant worlds, and strange removed climes._
_Yet thence I come, and oft from thence behold, &c._
Our readers will forgive us for having modernized the spelling. It is
the only liberty that we have taken with our great author's magnificent
passage.
* * * * *
A CHECK TO HUMAN PRIDE
It is rather an unpleasant fact, that the ugliest and awkwardest of
brute animals have the greatest resemblance to man: the monkey and the
bear. The monkey is ugly too, (so we think,) because he is like man--as
the bear is awkward, because the cumbrous action of its huge paws seems
to be a preposterous imitation of the motions of the human hands. Men
and apes are the only animals that have hairs on the under eye-lid. Let
kings know this.
COMIC TALES, ETC.,
BY C. DIBDIN THE YOUNGER
(1825)
In this age of hyper-poetic plights, and talent in a frenzy aping
genius, it is consolatory to see a little volume of verse in the good
old sober manner of Queen Ann's days, when verse walked high, rather
than flew, and sought its nutriment upon this diurnal sphere, not rapt
above the moon. To a lover of Chess, who at the same time can relish the
Rape of the Lock, the poem which forms the distinguishing feature of
this volume cannot fail to impart pleasure. It is a mock heroic of
course, descriptive of the Game; and the Homeric parodies are adroit and
numerous. The names of the mortal combatants, Blanc, Blanche,
Croesieroi, Reinelawne, Sir Garderoi, Sir Gardereene, etc. on one side,
with Niger, Nigra, Mitrex, Mitre regina, Sir Rexensor, Sir Reginalde,
etc. on the other, are happily conceived, and the strife thickens to the
conclusion. The Gods and Goddesses are the Games of Chance, or Mixed
Chance, Faro, Whist, Loo, etc. in all their attributes, with old Hazard
for their Jupiter, a fine gruff, grumbling Dice-compeller, whose
dice-box is to him what the awful Homeric chain was to his Prototype.
The soft blandishments of _Joan_, the gentle _Pope_--
Intriguing Hebe to the God of Game--
wrings from his austere Deity his slow permission for the interference
of the Olympeans in the fight below, and accordingly they range on
either side, as in the Iliad; and by their infusion of passions,
coprices, impulses, peculiar to the nature of their own warfare,
confound and embroil the pure contest of skill through five Cantos very
entertainingly. We confess we are more at home in Hoyle than in
Phillidor; but by the help of the notes, we played the game through
ourselves very tolerably. We subjoin an exquisite simile, with which the
third Canto commences--a description of the Morning, redolent of Swift
and Gay:--
Now Morning, yawning, rais'd her from her bed,
Slipp'd on her wrapper blue and 'kerchief red,
And took from Night the key of Sleep's abode--
For Night within that mansion had bestow'd
The Hours of Day; now, turn and turn about,
Morn takes the key, and lets the Day Hours out;
Laughing they issue from the ebon gate,
And Night walks in. As when, in drowsy state,
Some _watchman_, wed to _one who chars all day_,
Takes to his lodgings door his creeping way;
His Rib, arising, lets him in to sleep,
While she emerges to scrub, dust, and sweep.
DOG DAYS
"Now Sirius rages"
_To the Editor of the Every-Day Book_
(1825)
Sir,--I am one of those unfortunate creatures, who, at this season of
the year, are exposed to the effects of an illiberal prejudice. Warrants
are issued out in form, and whole scores of us are taken up and executed
annually, under an obsolete statute, on what is called suspicion of
lunacy. It is very hard that a sober sensible dog, cannot go quietly
through a village about his business, without having his motions
watched, or some impertinent fellow observing that there is an "odd look
about his eyes." My pulse, for instance, at this present writing, is as
temperate as yours, Mr. Editor, and my head as little rambling, but I
hardly dare to show my face out of doors for fear of these scrutinizers.
If I look up in a stranger's face, he thinks I am going to bite him. If
I go with my eyes fixed upon the ground, they say I have got the mopes,
which is but a short stage from the disorder. If I wag my tail, I am too
lively; if I do not wag it, I am sulky--either of which appearances
passes alike for a prognostic. If I pass a dirty puddle without
drinking, sentence is infallibly pronounced upon me. I am perfectly
swilled with the quantity of ditch-water I am forced to swallow in a
day, to clear me from imputations--a worse cruelty than the water ordeal
of your old Saxon ancestors. If I snap at a bone, I am furious; if I
refuse it, I have got the sullens, and that is a bad symptom. I dare not
bark outright, for fear of being adjudged to rave. It was but yesterday,
that I indulged in a little innocent _yelp_ only, on occasion of a
cart-wheel going over my leg, and the populace was up in arms, as if I
had betrayed some marks of flightiness in my conversation.
Really our case is one which calls for the interference of the
chancellor. He should see, as in cases of other lunatics, that
commissions are only issued out against proper objects; and not [let] a
whole race be proscribed, because some dreaming Chaldean, two thousand
years ago, fancied a canine resemblance in some star or other, that was
supposed to predominate over addle brains, with as little justice as
Mercury was held to be influential over rogues and swindlers; no
compliment I am sure to either star or planet. Pray attend to my
complaint, Mr. Editor, and speak a good word for us this hot weather.
Your faithful, though sad dog,
POMPEY.
THE PROGRESS OF CANT
(A REVIEW OF HOOD'S ETCHING)
(1826)
A wicked wag has produced a caricature under this title, in which he
marshalleth all the projected improvements of the age, and maketh them
take their fantastic progress before the eyes of the scorner. It is a
spirited etching, almost as abundant in meaning as in figures, and hath
a reprobate eye to a corner--an Hogarthian vivification of post and
placard. Priests, anti-priests, architects, politicians, reformers,
flaming loyalty-men, high and low, rich and poor, one with another, all
go on "progressing," as the Americans say. Life goes on, at any rate;
and there is so much merriment on all sides, that for our parts,
inclined to improvements as we are, we should be willing enough to join
in the laugh throughout, if the world were as merry as the artist. The
houses are as much to the purpose as the pedestrians. There is the
office of the Peruvian Mining Company, in dismal, dilapidated condition;
a barber's shop, with "Nobody to be shaved during divine service," the
_h_ worn out; two boarding-schools for young ladies and gentlemen, very
neighbourly; and the public-house, called the Angel and Punch-Bowl, by
T. Moore. Among the crowd is a jolly, but vehement, reverend person
holding a flag, inscribed, "The Church in Anger," the _D_ for danger
being hidden by another flag, inscribed, "Converted Jews." Then there is
the Caledonian Chap (_el_ being obstructed in the same way), who holds a
pennon, crying out, "No Theatre!" Purity of Election, with a bludgeon,
very drunk; and, above all, a petty fellow called the Great Unknown,
with his hat over his eyes, and a constable's staff peeping out of his
pocket. Some of the faces and figures are very clever, particularly the
Barber; the Saving-banks man; the Jew Boy picking the pocket; the
Charity Boy and the Beadle. The Beadle is rich from head to foot.
Nathless, we like not to see Mrs. Fry so roasted: we are at a loss to
know why the Blacks deserve to be made Black Devils; and are not aware
that the proposal of an University in London has occasioned, or is
likely to occasion, any sort of cant. However, there is no harm done
where a cause can afford a joke; and where it cannot, the more it is
joked at, the better.
MR. EPHRAIM WAGSTAFF, HIS WIFE, AND PIPE
About the middle of Shoemaker-row, near to Broadway, Blackfriars, there
resided for many years a substantial hardware-man, named Ephraim
Wagstaff. He was short in stature, tolerably well favoured in
countenance, and singularly neat and clean in his attire. Everybody in
the neighbourhood looked upon him as a "warm" old man; and when he died,
the property he left behind him did not bely the preconceived opinion.
It was all personal, amounted to about nineteen thousand pounds; and, as
he was childless, it went to distant relations, with the exception of a
few hundred pounds bequeathed to public charities.
The family of Ephraim Wagstaff, both on the male and female sides, was
respectable, though not opulent. His maternal grandfather, he used to
say, formed part of the executive government in the reign of George I.,
whom he served as petty constable in one of the manufacturing districts
during a long period. The love of office seems not to have been
hereditary in the family; or perhaps the opportunities of gratifying it
did not continue; for, with that single exception, none of his ancestors
could boast of official honours. The origin of the name is doubtful. On
a first view, it seems evidently the conjunction of two names brought
together by marriage or fortune. In the "Tatler" we read about the
_staff_ in a variety of combinations, under one of which the popular
author of that work chose to designate himself, and thereby conferred
immortality on the name of Bickerstaff. Our friend Ephraim was no great
wit, but he loved a joke, particularly if he made it himself; and he
used to say, whenever he heard any one endeavouring to account for his
name, that he believed it originated in the marriage of a Miss Staff to
some Wag who lived near her; and who, willing to show his gallantry, and
at the same time his knowledge of French customs, adopted the fashion of
that sprightly people, by adding her family name to his own. The
conjecture is at least probable, and so we must leave it.
At the age of fifty-two it pleased heaven to deprive Mr. Wagstaff of his
beloved spouse Barbara. The bereavement formed an era in his history.
Mrs. Wagstaff was an active, strong woman, about ten years older than
himself, and one sure to be missed in any circle wherein she had once
moved. She was indeed no cipher. Her person was tall and bony, her face,
in hue, something between brown and red, had the appearance of having
been scorched. Altogether her qualities were truly commanding. She loved
her own way exceedingly; was continually on the alert to have it; and,
in truth, generally succeeded. Yet such was her love of justice, that
she has been heard to aver repeatedly, that she never (she spoke the
word _never_ emphatically) opposed her husband, but when he was
decidedly in the wrong. Of these occasions, it must also be mentioned,
she generously took upon herself the trouble and responsibility of being
the sole judge. There was one point, however, on which it would seem
that Mr. Wagstaff had contrived to please himself exclusively; although,
how he had managed to resist so effectually the remonstrances and
opposition which, from the structure of his wife's mind he must
necessarily have been doomed to encounter, must ever remain a secret.
The fact was this: Ephraim had a peculiarly strong attachment to a pipe;
his affection for his amiable partner scarcely exceeding that which he
entertained for that lively emblem of so many sage contrivances and
florid speeches, ending like it--in smoke. In the times of his former
wives (for twice before had he been yoked in matrimony) he had indulged
himself with it unmolested. Not so with Mrs. Wagstaff the third. Pipes
and smoking she held in unmitigated abhorrence: but having, by whatever
means, been obliged to submit to their introduction, she wisely avoided
all direct attempts to abate what she called among her friends "the
nuisance;" and, like a skilful general, who has failed of securing
victory, she had recourse to such stratagems as might render it as
little productive as possible to the enemy. Ephraim, aware how matters
stood, neglected no precaution to guard against his wife's
manœuvres--meeting, of course, with various success. Many a time did her
ingenuity contrive an accident, by which his pipe and peace of mind were
at once demolished; and, although there never could be any difficulty in
replacing the former by simply sending out for that purpose, yet he has
confessed, that when he contemplated the possibility of offering too
strong an excitement to the shrill tones of his beloved's voice, (the
only pipe she willingly tolerated,) he waved that proceeding, and
submitted to the sacrifice as much the lesser evil. At length Mrs.
Wagstaff was taken ill, an inflammation on her lungs was found to be her
malady, and that crisis appeared to be fast approaching, when
The doctor leaves the house with sorrow,
Despairing of his fee to-morrow.
The foreboding soon proved correct; and, every thing considered, perhaps
it ought not to excite much surprise, that when Ephraim heard from the
physician that there was little or no chance of her recovery, he
betrayed no symptoms of excessive emotion, but mumbling something
unintelligibly, in which the doctor thought he caught the sound of the
words "Christian duty of resignation," he quietly filled an additional
pipe that evening. The next day Mrs. Wagstaff expired, and in due time
her interment took place in the churchyard of St. Ann, Blackfriars,
every thing connected therewith being conducted with the decorum
becoming so melancholy an event, and which might be expected from a man
of Mr. Wagstaff's gravity and experience. The funeral was a walking one
from the near vicinity to the ground; and but for an untimely slanting
shower of rain, no particular inconvenience would have been felt by
those who were assembled on that occasion; that casualty, however,
caused them to be thoroughly drenched; and, in reference to their
appearance, it was feelingly observed by some of the by-standers, that
they had seldom seen so many tears on the faces of mourners.--
_To be continued_--(perhaps).
NEMO.
REVIEW OF MOXON'S SONNETS
[SONNETS. BY EDWARD MOXON. (Printed for private circulation only.)]
(1833)
A copy of this unassuming work has fallen in our way. We are critics on
_publications_ only. It is like criticising a domestic conversation, or
a friendly letter, to notice a little book, professedly not meant for
the public eye. But we are pleased, and pleasure will speak out when
discretion whispers it to be still. The author has professional reasons
to be private. With them we have nothing to do, but to say, that if
unabating industry, integrity above his avocation, unparalleled success
for the short time he has entered upon it, are any auguries of success,
this notice of ours will not hinder his calling. We have no parallel for
this mixed character--qualities united seemingly at farthest
variance--except in fine old Humphrey Mosely, the _stationer_ (so were
booksellers termed in the good old times), who, for love only, not for
lucre, ushered into the world the first poems of Waller, the Juvenilia
of Milton, besides a lesser galaxy of the poets of his day, with
_Prefaces_, of his own honest composing, worthy of the strains they
preluded to. Turn, reader, to his introduction to the Minor Poems of
Milton, and say, if that soul, which inspirits it, worked for gain. H.
M. (bibliomanists will gladlier recognise him by his initials) was, in
his day, what we hope E. M. will prove in his, the fosterer of poetry,
not merely the sordid trader in it. We must steal a sonnet or two from
this sealed book, to justify our expectations. The first shall be 'To
the Nightingale:' the originality of the concluding thought, and general
sweetness of the versification, make us, reluctantly almost, give it the
preference.
Lone midnight-soothing melancholy bird,
That send'st such music to my sleepless soul,
Chaining her faculties in fast controul,
Few listen to thy song; yet I have heard,
When Man and Nature slept, nor aspen stirr'd,
Thy mournful voice, sweet vigil of the sleeping--
And liken'd thee to some angelic mind,
That sits and mourns for erring mortals weeping.
The genius, not of groves, but of mankind,
Watch at this solemn hour o'er millions keeping.
In Eden's bowers, as mighty poets tell,
Did'st thou repeat, as now, that wailing call--
Those sorrowing notes might seem, sad Philomel,
Prophetic to have mourn'd of _man_ the _fall_.
One more, and we have done. We mistake, if a Petrarch-like delicacy is
not to be found in the following:--
Methought my Love was dead. O, 'twas a night
Of dreary weeping, and of bitter woe!
Methought I saw her lovely spirit go
With lingering looks into yon star so bright,
Which then assumed such a beauteous light,
That all the fires in heaven compared with this
Were scarce perceptible to my weak sight.
There seem'd henceforth the haven of my bliss;
To that I turn'd with fervency of soul,
And pray'd that morn might never break again,
But o'er me that pure planet still remain.
Alas! o'er it my vows had no controul.
The lone star set: I woke full glad, I deem,
To find my sorrow but a lover's dream!
NOTES
The prose of Lamb's _Works_, 1818, was dedicated to Martin Burney in the
following sonnet:--
TO MARTIN CHARLES BURNEY, ESQ.
Forgive me, BURNEY, if to thee these late
And hasty products of a critic pen,
Thyself no common judge of books and men,
In feeling of thy worth I dedicate.
My _verse_ was offered to an older friend;
The humbler _prose_ has fallen to thy share:
Nor could I miss the occasion to declare,
What spoken in thy presence must offend--
That, set aside some few caprices wild,
Those humorous clouds that flit o'er brightest days,
In all my threadings of this worldly maze,
(And I have watched thee almost from a child),
Free from self-seeking, envy, low design,
I have not found a whiter soul than thine.
Martin Burney was the son of Rear-Admiral Burney, who had sailed with
Cook, and was the nephew of Madame D'Arblay. He was a barrister and very
nearly Lamb's contemporary. Both Charles Lamb and his sister had for him
a deep affection, although they made fun of his oddities, many of which
are recorded in the correspondence. Burney lived to attend, and weep
distressingly at, Mary Lamb's funeral in 1847.
Lamb seems to have meditated a collected edition of his works as early
as 1816, for we find him telling Wordsworth (Sept. 23, 1816), that he
had offered the book to Murray through Barron Field, but that Gifford
had opposed the project successfully.
Page 1. ROSAMUND GRAY.
First printed, 1798. Reprinted in the _Works_, 1818.
_Rosamund Gray_ was published in 1798 by Lee & Hurst under the title _A
Tale of Rosamund Gray and old Blind Margaret_, by Charles Lamb. It then
had this dedication:--
THIS TALE
IS
INSCRIBED IN FRIENDSHIP
TO
MARMADUKE THOMPSON,
OF
PEMBROKE HALL,
CAMBRIDGE.
Thompson was at Christ's Hospital with Lamb. In the essay on that school
in _Elia_, written in 1820, he is called "mildest of Missionaries" and
the writer's good friend still, but there is no evidence that the
intimacy was actively continued after the early days.
At the time that _Rosamund Gray_ was written Lamb was twenty-two to
twenty-three. It was his first prose of which we know anything.
Lamb reprinted the story without the dedication, under the title
_Rosamund Gray, a Tale_, in his _Works_, 1818, the text of which is
followed here. The differences of punctuation are numerous, but the text
is mainly the same. In Chapter VI. (page 14, line 9) the phrase "take a
cup of tea with her," ran, twenty years earlier, "drink a dish"; page
14, line 8 from foot, after "beauties of the season" old Margaret
originally said, "I can still remember them with pleasure, and rejoice
that younger eyes than mine can see and enjoy them. I shall be," etc.;
and at the end of the same chapter (page 16), in the 1798 edition, came
the quaintly particular passage which I have thrown into italics:--
"Besides, it was Margaret's bed-time, for she kept very good
hours--indeed, in the distribution of her meals, and sundry other
particulars, she resembled the livers in the antique world, more than
might well beseem a creature of this--_none but Rosamund could get her
mess of broth ready, or put her night caps on--(she wore seven, the
undermost was of flannel)--_
"_'You know, love, I can do nothing to help myself--here I must stay till
you return.'_
"So the new friends parted for that night--Elinor having made Margaret
promise to give Rosamund leave to come and see her the next day."
Shelley's praise of _Rosamund Gray_ has often been quoted: writing to
Leigh Hunt, in 1819, he said, "What a lovely thing is _Rosamund Gray_!
How much knowledge of the sweetest and deepest parts of our nature is in
it!" Lamb mentions _Julia de Roubigné_ in the text, and there is little
doubt that he was influenced by Mackenzie's story. The epistolary form
into which _Rosamund Gray_ lapses is maintained throughout in _Julia de
Roubigné_ (1777), and there is a similar intensity of emotion and
suggestion of fatality in both correspondences. There is, however, in
_Julia de Roubigné_ nothing of the sweet simplicity and limpid clarity
of Lamb's earlier chapters; which may be described as his (perhaps
unconscious) contribution to the revolt against convention that
Coleridge and Wordsworth were leading in the same year in the _Lyrical
Ballads_.
How far Lamb was recording fact in this story we do not know; but the
letters seem to reflect his own frame of mind at that time--following
upon his mother's death and his abandonment of his daydreams with the
fair-haired maid of his sonnets. In this case we have the unusual
spectacle of a masculine writer conveying his feelings through a
feminine medium. But on pages 17-18 Lamb seems to be writing both as
himself and his sister. Compare the passage at the foot of page 17 with
Lamb's letter to Coleridge of October 17, 1796, where he quotes his
sister as saying, "The spirit of my mother seems to descend and smile
upon me," and the last paragraph on page 17 is paraphrased in Lamb's
lines (composed at the same time that he was working on _Rosamund Gray_)
"Written soon after the Preceding Poem," October, 1797. Again, the
second paragraph on page 21 must exactly represent Lamb's hopes and
wishes in connection with his sister at that date.
Rosamund Gray and her grandmother (if they had any real existence) are
said to have lived in one of the group of cottages called Blenheims,
between Blakesware and Ware, in the days when Lamb visited his
grandmother at Blakesware house. These cottages were pulled down in
1895. But then Lamb's Anna--of the love sonnets--is also said to have
lived at Blenheims; and they cannot possibly be identical. Old Margaret
and Mrs. Field, Lamb's grandmother, may have had some traits in common,
and the description of Blakesware, where Mrs. Field was housekeeper, is
recognisable; but these researches cannot be pursued to any real
purpose. According to a letter to Southey in October, 1798, "nothing but
the first words" of the ballad--
An old woman clothed in gray,
Whose daughter was charming and young,
And she was deluded away
By Roger's false flattering tongue--
put Lamb "upon scribbling ... _Rosamund_." This is quite conceivably the
case. Whether we are to suppose that Lamb took not only the motive of
his story, but also the word Gray, from this stanza, cannot be said; but
it is generally thought that he found the name Rosamund Gray in a song
thus entitled in his friend Charles Lloyd's _Poems on Various
Occasions_, 1795. There is a suggestion that Lloyd may have had
particular interest in the book in the circumstance that copies exist
bearing the imprint of Pearson, a bookseller at Birmingham, where Lloyd
lived. The Birmingham edition indeed is considered to be the first.
Writing to Southey in May, 1799, Lamb says that _Rosamund_ sells well in
London.
Old Thomas Billet (page 28) was not the true name of the Widford
innkeeper. It was Clemitson (see the poem "Going or Gone"). Lamb again
used the name Billet, for his father's old Lincoln friend, in "Poor
Relations." Nor was Ben Moxam the name of the Blakesware gardener, but
Ben Carter. The Wilderness was actually the name given to the wood at
the back of Blakesware house.
On the passage concerning the epitaphs, on pages 29-30, Talfourd wrote:
"The reflections he [Lamb] makes on the eulogistic character of all the
inscriptions are drawn from his own childhood; for when a very little
boy, walking with his sister in a churchyard, he suddenly asked her,
'Mary, where do the naughty people lie?'"
Southey has a poem, "The Ruined Cottage," among his _English Eclogues_,
which is practically a poetical paraphase of _Rosamund Gray_. I do not
know whether Southey's version was taken from an independent source or
whether it was a compliment to Lamb. Lamb's tale had, however, come
first.
Finally, it may be remarked that in Barry Cornwall's _Poems_, Galignani,
1829, is a poem entitled "Rosamund Gray," which from the evidence of its
few opening lines was to have been a blank verse adaptation of Lamb's
theme.
* * * * *
Page 35. CURIOUS FRAGMENTS.
_John Woodvil_, 1802, and _Works_, 1818.
Lamb engaged upon these experiments in the manner of Burton, always a
favourite author with him, at the suggestion of Coleridge. We find him
writing to Manning (March 17, 1800): "He [Coleridge] has lugged me to
the brink of engaging to a newspaper, and has suggested to me, for a
first plan, the forgery of a supposed manuscript of Burton, the
anatomist of melancholy." Writing again to Manning a little later,
probably in April, 1800, Lamb mentions having submitted two imitations
of Burton to Stuart, the editor of the _Morning Post_, and states also
that he has written the lines entitled "Conceipt of Diabolic
Possession"--originally, in the _John Woodvil_ volume, a part of these
"Fragments," but afterwards, in the _Works_, separated from them. In
August, 1800, Lamb tells Coleridge he has written the ballad in the
manner of the "Old and Young Courtier," also originally part of these
"Fragments," and mentions further that Stuart had rejected the proposed
contribution.
Of Lamb's imitations the first two are most akin to the original in
spirit, but the whole performance is curiously happy and a perfect
illustration of his fellowship with the Elizabethans. Our language
probably contains no more successful impersonation of any author: for
the time being Lamb's mind approximated to that of Burton, while
reserving enough individuality to make a new thing as well as a very
subtle and exact echo. The Burton extracts and the _Letters of Sir John
Falstaff_, written four or five years earlier (in which Lamb certainly
had a hand: see pp. 225 and 491), represent in prose the same devotion
to the Elizabethans that _John Woodvil_ represents in verse. With 1800,
when Lamb was twenty-five, this immediately derivative impulse ceased;
but it is certain that without such interesting exercises in the manner
of his favourite period his ripest work would have been far less rich.
The differences in text between the 1802 and 1818 editions are very
slight. They are merely changes of punctuation and spelling--some
twenty-four in all--with the exception that on page 39, line 18 "common
sort" was originally "mobbe." Concerning this change Mr. Thomas
Hutchinson, in _The Athenæum_, December 28, 1901, has an interesting
note. Lamb, he says, made it "for the best of good reasons, because in
the meantime he had recollected that to attribute the word _mob_ to the
pen of Robert Burton was to commit a linguistic anachronism. The
earliest known examples of _mob_ occur in Shadwell (1688) and Dryden
(1690), whereas Burton died in January, 1640." I might add that "jokers"
was another anachronism; since, according to the _New English
Dictionary_, its first use is in the works of T. Cooke, 1729.
"Inerudite" and "incomposite" seem to have been Lamb's coinage, but they
are very Burtonian. The _New English Dictionary_ gives Lamb's reference
alone to the word "hebetant," meaning making dull.
Lamb's affection for Burton was profound. His own copy was a quarto of
1621, which is now, I believe, in America. The following passage from
John Payne Collier's _An Old Man's Diary_ (for 1832) is interesting in
this connection:--
This led him [Lamb] to ask me, whether I remembered two or three
passages in his book of books, Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_,
illustrating Shakespeare's notions regarding Witches and Fairies. I
replied that if I had seen them, I did not then recollect them. I
took down the book, the contents of which he knew so well that he
opened upon the place almost immediately: the first passage was
this, respecting Macbeth and Banquo and their meeting with the
three Witches: "And Hector Boethius [relates] of Macbeth and Banco,
two Scottish Lords, that, as they were wandering in woods, had
their fortunes told them by three strange women." I said that I
remembered to have seen that passage quoted, or referred to by more
than one editor of Shakespeare. "Have you seen this quoted," he
inquired, "which relates to fairies? 'Some put our fairies into
this rank, which have been in former times adored with much
superstition, with sweeping their houses and setting of a pail of
clean water, good victuals and the like; and then they should not
be pinched, but find money in their shoes and be fortunate in their
enterprises ... and, Olaus Magnus adds, leave that green circle
which we commonly find in plain fields.' Farther on Burton gives
them the very name assigned to one of them by Shakespeare, for he
adds, 'These have several names in several places: we commonly call
them _Pucks_' (part i., sect. 2), which Ben Jonson degrades to
_Pug_."
* * * * *
Page 41. EARLY JOURNALISM. I.--G. F. COOKE'S "RICHARD THE THIRD."
_Morning Post_, January 4, 1802. Not reprinted by Lamb.
This paper was printed by the late Mr. Dykes Campbell in _The Athenæum_,
August 4, 1888, and was identified by him by means of a then unpublished
letter of Lamb to John Rickman, January 9, 1802. Early in January, 1802,
says Mr. Campbell, "Lamb ceased to contribute dramatic criticism to the
_Morning Post_; the editor wanted the paragraphs to be written on the
night of the performance for next day's paper; and this Lamb could not
manage. He had tried it on one occasion [see below], but found he could
not 'write against time.'"
Writing to Robert Lloyd at about the same time as this criticism, Lamb
took up the subject again:--
"Cooke in 'Richard the Third' is a perfect caricature. He gives you
the _monster_ Richard, but not the _man_ Richard. Shakespear's
bloody character impresses you with awe and deep admiration of his
witty parts, his consummate hypocrisy, and indefatigable
prosecution of purpose. You despise, detest, and loathe the
cunning, vulgar, low and fierce Richard, which Cooke substitutes in
his place. He gives you no other idea than of a vulgar villain,
rejoycing in his being able to over reach, and not possessing that
joy in _silent_ consciousness, but betraying it, like a _poor_
villain, in sneers and distortions of the face, like a droll at a
country fair: not to add that cunning so self-betraying and manner
so vulgar could never have deceived the politic Buckingham nor the
soft Lady Anne: _both_ bred in courts, would have turned with
disgust from such a fellow. Not but Cooke has _powers_; but not of
discrimination. His manner is strong, coarse, and vigorous, and
well adapted to some characters. But the lofty imagery and high
sentiments and high passions of _Poetry_ come black and
prose-smoked from his prose Lips.... I am possessed with an
admiration of the genuine Richard, his genius, and his mounting
spirit, which no consideration of his cruelties can depress.
Shakespear has not made Richard so black a Monster as is supposed.
Where-ever he is monstrous, it was to conform to vulgar opinion.
But he is generally a Man. Read his most exquisite address to the
Widowed Queen to court her daughter for him--the topics of maternal
feeling, of a deep knowledge of the heart, are such as no monster
could have supplied [see Act IV., Scene 4]. Richard must have
_felt_ before he could feign so well; tho' ambition choked the good
seed. I think it the most finished piece of Eloquence in the
world; of _persuasive_ oratory far above Demosthenes, Burke, or any
man, far exceeding the courtship of Lady Anne."
George Frederick Cooke who produced "Richard III." at Covent Garden on
October 31, 1801, with great success, lived from 1756-1811.
I imagine that the following article on another performance of Cooke's,
printed in the _Morning Post_ for January 9, 1802, is also Lamb's,
probably written on the "one occasion" referred to above and the last
that he wrote. No other bears so many signs of his authorship:--
"THEATRE
"COVENT GARDEN
"Mr. Cooke performed _Lear_ in the celebrated Tragedy of that name
at this Theatre last night. It is a character little suited to his
talents. In the expression of strong and turbulent passions, he
will always find his forte; but he wants gentleness and softness
for melting and melancholy scenes. Whatever, therefore, may be his
excellence in the ambitious and heroic _Richard_, those who have
duly weighed his peculiar powers could not expect much from his
representation of the broken-hearted _Lear_. No principle can be
more clear, than that cruelty and ingratitude are black in
proportion to the weakness and helplessness of the object on which
they are exercised. The great master of the human heart accordingly
makes this good old King represent himself as a man standing upon
the last verge of life--a man 'eighty years old and upwards.' It is
from turning such a man as this out of doors, and by his ungrateful
children, too, to 'bide the pelting of the pityless storm,' that
the interest principally arises. In this line, so clearly marked by
the poet, Mr. Cooke showed a total want of discrimination. His step
was almost uniformly firm, and his whole deportment too vigorous
for his years. The heart, therefore, could not feel that pity which
the sight of a deserving object, physically unable to contend with
unmerited hardships, never fails to produce. His enunciation also,
which was clear and strong, had none of the tremulousness of feeble
old age, and his voice seldom succeeded in the modulation of tones
sufficiently plaintive and delicate to express the agonies of a
broken heart. The scene where he imprecates a curse upon the
undutiful _Goneril_ was given with energy, but without that anguish
which must wring a parent's bosom in such a situation. The mad
scene with _Edgar_ was also a very imperfect piece of acting, and
few of the beautiful passages with which the piece abounds,
received that excellent colouring and embellishment with which Mr.
Kemble in the same character calls down such plaudits in the other
House. Mr. Cooke having so evidently placed himself in the way of
comparison, this allusion cannot be deemed invidious.--This new
essay should, however, make him slow to venture beyond his depth,
and justifies our apprehension that he does not possess an
elasticity of mind, a pliancy of powers, to enable him to pursue
his rival through all the variety of his characters with the same
success that he encounters him on Bosworth field.
"Mr. H. Siddons was an excellent _Edgar_; his mad scenes displayed
much chaste and natural acting, and several passages were marked
with beauties peculiarly his own. His representation of the
character would be still more interesting, were he to infuse into
his manner more fondness for his mistress, _Cordelia_, and his
unfortunate father, the _Earl of Gloucester_. Miss Murray, whose
excellence in characters of simple pathos is so well known, was a
most interesting portrait of _Cordelia_. She played the part with
great delicacy and feeling, sweetness and simplicity.
"Mr. Hull, in _Glo'ster_, was natural and impressive; and Mr.
Waddy, though a little coarse as _Earl of Kent_, was a good picture
of blunt honesty in his humble disguise as _Caius_. The other
characters did not possess much merit, or deserve much notice."
Page 44. II.--GRAND STATE BED.
Writing to Rickman about his _Morning Post_ work, in January, 1802, Lamb
says that in addition to certain other things it was he who made the
Lord Mayor's bed. The reference is undoubtedly to this little article on
January 4, 1802.
Page 44. III.--FABLE FOR TWELFTH DAY.
On January 6 (Twelfth Night), 1802, this fable was printed in the
_Morning Post_. That Lamb was the author no one need have any doubt
after reading the _Elia_ essay, "Rejoicings on the New Year's Coming of
Age."
Page 46. IV.--THE LONDONER.
_Morning Post_. February 1, 1802. _Works_, 1818.
This paper, although it is included in the _Works_ among "Letters under
assumed signatures, published in _The Reflector_," and although it is
nominally addressed to the editor of that paper, did not, however,
appear in it. It was first printed in the _Morning Post_ for February 1,
1802, during Lamb's brief connection with that paper, the story of which
is told in the note to the essay on "Newspapers" in _Elia_.
"The Londoner" in the _Morning Post_ differed from the version
subsequently reprinted. See notes to vol. I. of my large edition.
John Forster, in his memoir of Lamb in the _New Monthly Magazine_ in
1835, has the following passage, which, applying to Lamb's later life
(Forster was only twenty-two when Lamb died), rounds off, with certain
ecstatic passages in the letters, the present London eulogium. The lines
quoted by Forster are from "The Old Familiar Faces":--
"We recollect being once sent by her [Mary Lamb] to seek 'Charles,'
who had rambled away from her. We found him in the Temple, looking
up, near Crown-office-row, at the house where he was born. Such was
his ever-touching habit of seeking alliance with the scenes of old
times. They were the dearer to him that distance had withdrawn
them. He wished to pass his life among things gone by yet not
forgotten; we shall never forget the affectionate 'Yes, boy,' with
which he returned our repeating his own striking lines:--
"'Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood,
Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse.'"
Page 46, line 11. _Great annual feast_. In stating that he was born on
Lord Mayor's Day, Lamb stretched a point. His birthday was February 10.
* * * * *
Page 48. CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS CONTEMPORARY WITH SHAKSPEARE.
_Specimens_, 1808, and _Works_, 1818.
These notes are abridgments of the notes to Lamb's _Specimens of English
Dramatic Poets_, 1808. The whole work is reproduced in my large edition,
where such annotation as seems desirable may be found. The abridgment is
printed here in order that the text of Lamb's own edition of his
_Works_, 1818, may be preserved.
* * * * *
Page 65. ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED.
To the circumstance that Leigh Hunt edited _The Reflector_, which was
founded by his brother in 1810 as a literary and political quarterly,
may be attributed in a large measure the beginning of Lamb's career as
an essayist. Leigh Hunt, himself a Christ's Hospitaller, sought his
contributors among old scholars of that school; from whom, as he
remarked in the little note prefixed to the two-volume edition of the
periodical, came "the largest and most entertaining part." Among these
contributors were Lamb, George Dyer, Thomas Barnes, afterwards editor of
_The Times_, Thomes Mitchell, classical scholar, James Scholefield,
afterwards Greek Professor at Cambridge, Hunt himself, and Barron Field,
who, though not actually a Christ's Hospitaller, was through his father,
Henry Field, apothecary to the school, connected with it.
Until Lamb received Hunt's invitation to let his fancy play to what
extent he would in _The Reflector's_ pages, he had received little or no
encouragement as a writer; and he was naturally so diffident that
without some external impulse he rarely brought himself to do his own
work at all. Between _John Woodvil_ (1802) and the first _Reflector_
papers (1810) he had written "Mr. H.," performed his share in the
children's books, and compiled the _Dramatic Specimens_: a tale of work
which, considering that it was also a social period, and a busy period
at the India House, is not trifling. But between the last _Reflector_
paper (1811 or 1812) and the first _Elia_ essay (1820) Lamb seems to
have written nothing save the essays on Christ's Hospital, the
"Confessions of a Drunkard," a few brief notes, reviews and dramatic
criticisms, mainly at the instigation of Leigh Hunt, and some scraps of
verse chiefly for _The Champion_. The world owes a great debt to Leigh
Hunt for discerning Lamb's gifts and allowing him free rein. The comic
letters to _The Reflector_ may not be Lamb at his best, though they are
excellent stepping-stones to that state; but upon the essays on
Shakespeare's tragedies and Hogarth's genius it is doubtful if Lamb
could have improved at any period.
The _Reflector_ ran only to four numbers, which were very irregularly
issued, and it then ceased. It ran nominally from October 1810 to
December 1811. Crabb Robinson mentions reading No. I. on May 15, 1811.
Lamb, it may be remarked here, was destined to contribute to yet another
_Reflector_. In 1832 Moxon started a weekly paper of that name in which
part of Lamb's _Elia_ essay on the "Defect of Imagination in Modern
Paintings" was printed. The venture, however, quickly failed, and all
trace of it seems to have vanished.
Lamb's first _Reflector_ paper was entitled "ON THE INCONVENIENCES
RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED."
It appeared in No. II., 1811, and was reprinted in the _Works_, 1818.
He made yet another use of the central idea of this essay. The farce,
"The Pawnbroker's Daughter," written in 1825, turns upon the
resuscitation of a hanged man, Jack Pendulous.
Page 68, line 6. _Smoke his cravat_. To smoke was old slang for to see,
to notice. East-enders to-day would say "Pipe his necktie!"
Page 72, line 1. _The solution ... in "Hamlet."_
_First Clown._ What is he that builds stronger than either the
mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?
_Second Clown._ The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a
thousand tenants.
Act V., Scene I, lines 46-50.
Page 72. _Footnote. "The Spanish Tragedy."_ A play by Thomas Kyd
(1557?-1595?), from which Lamb quoted largely in his _Specimens_, 1808.
This line is in Act III., in Hieronimo's instructions to the painter:
"And then at last, sir, starting, behold a man hanging, and tott'ring,
and tott'ring, as you know the wind will wave a man...."
Page 72, line 3. _That scene in "Measure for Measure."_
_Pompey._ Master Barnardine! you must rise and be hanged, Master
Barnardine!
_Abhorson._ What, ho, Barnardine!
_Bar._ [_Within._] A pox o' your throats! Who makes that noise
there? What are you?
_Pom._ Your friends, sir; the hangman. You must be so good, sir, to
rise and be put to death.
_Bar._ [_Within._] Away, you rogue, away! I am sleepy.
_Abhor._ Tell him he must awake, and that quickly too.
_Pom._ Pray, Master Barnardine, awake till you are executed, and
sleep afterwards.
_Abhor._ Go in to him, and fetch him out.
_Pom._ He is coming, sir, he is coming; I hear his straw rustle.
_Abhor._ Is the axe upon the block, sirrah?
_Pom._ Very ready, sir.
Act IV., Scene 3, lines 23-40.
Page 73, line 3. _The Angel in Milton._
Made so adorn for they delight the more,
So awful, that with honour thou may'st love
Thy mate, who sees when thou art seen least wise.
_Paradise Lost_, VIII., 576-578.
Page 73, line 10. _An ancestor_. This punctilious hero may have been an
ancestor of the Plumers, of Blakesware. See the _Elia_ essay on
"Blakesmoor, in H----shire."
Page 73, line 7 from foot. _A waistcoat that had been mine_. The clothes
of his clients became the hangman's perquisites. In Lamb's letter to
Bernard Barton concerning Thurtell (January 9, 1824) this subject is
again played with.
The present essay led to some amusing speculation in the next number of
_The Reflector_, signed M., as to the origin of Jack Ketch. Some of the
questions propounded to Pensilis are almost in Lamb's own manner:--
Supposing the race of Ketches to be extinct, what _cross_ does
Pensilis think necessary to re-produce the breed? I have a very
pretty knack myself at guessing what mixtures of different bloods
will generate the ordinary professions of life; as a judge, an
alderman, a bishop, &c., &c. but shall be happy to defer to his
superior knowledge in this particular experiment of the art. Your
correspondent, no doubt, is aware, how many generations it will
frequently take a family, who value themselves upon their exterior,
to wear out any little deformity; as, for instance, a snub nose, or
a long chin. I could mention one noble family, whom it has cost a
dozen intermarriages with the yeomanry, to introduce a stouter pair
of legs among them; and another, which has been obliged to go
through a course of milk-maids, to throw a little colour into their
cheeks. Has your correspondent ever considered in what term of
years a spirit of Ketchicism may be introduced into a family; and
conversely, in how many generations the milk of human kindness may
be instilled into, what Burke would call, a pure, unsophisticated
dephlegmated, defecated _Ketch_?
Page 74. ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL DEFORMITY.
_The Reflector_, No. II. Reprinted in the _Works_, 1818.
Page 79, line 16. _The tales of our nursery_. In his _Elia_ essay "Dream
Children" Lamb recalls his grandmother's narration of the old story of
the "Children in the Wood."
Page 79, lines 20-21. _Mrs. Radcliffe ... Mr. Monk Lewis._ The
popularity of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), whose _Mysteries of
Udolpho_ appeared in 1794, and of Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818),
whose rival exercise in grisly romance, _The Monk_, was published in
1795, was then (1811) still considerable, although on the wane.
* * * * *
Page 80. ON THE AMBIGUITIES ARISING FROM PROPER NAMES.
_The Reflector_, No. II., 1811. Not reprinted by Lamb.
This paper is known to be Lamb's because he tells the story, in much the
same words, in a letter to Wordsworth dated February 1, 1806. The young
man who made the mistake of confusing Spencer and Spenser was a brother
of Coleridge's Mary Evans. The Hon. William Robert Spencer (1769-1834),
the second son of the third Duke of Marlborough, was a Society poet well
enough known in his day--the first decade of the last century. His only
poem that has survived is "Beth Gelert," a ballad often included in
children's poetry books.
In Lamb's _Letters_ the poet Spenser is usually spelt Spencer.
* * * * *
Page 81. ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH.
_The Reflector_, No. III., 1811. The title there ran: "On the Genius and
Character of Hogarth; with some Remarks on a Passage in the Writings of
the late Mr. Barry." The article was signed L. It was reprinted in the
_Works_, 1818.
Many of Hogarth's pictures, framed in black, hung round Lamb's
sitting-room in his various homes. In 1817 Mary Lamb, writing to Dorothy
Wordsworth, says that the Hogarths have been taken down from the walls
and pasted into a book, but there is proof that some at any rate were
framed both at Islington and Enfield.
Hazlitt in his _Sketches of the Principal Picture-galleries in England_,
1824, wrote, "Of the pictures in the _Rake's Progress_ we shall not here
say anything ... because they have already been criticised by a writer,
to whom we could add nothing, in a paper which ought to be read by every
lover of Hogarth and of English genius." The reference was to Lamb's
essay.
Page 82, line 1. _Old-fashioned house in ----shire_. Lamb refers again
to Blakesware, in Hertfordshire. In a letter to Southey, Oct. 31, 1799,
Lamb mentions the Blakesware Hogarths. This would suggest that Hogarth
was the first artist that he knew, so many of his recollections dating
from the old Hertfordshire days.
Page 84, line 1. _Kent, or Caius_. See "Table Talk," pages 401-2 of the
present volume, for an amplification of this passage many years later.
Lamb's version of "Lear" in _Tales from Shakespear_, 1807, has similar
praise of Kent.
Page 84, last line. _Ferdinand Count Fathom_. See Chapter XXVII. of
Smollett's _Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom_, 1754:--
When he beheld the white cliffs of Albion, his heart throbbed with
all the joy of a beloved son, who, after a tedious and fatiguing
voyage, reviews the chimnies of his father's house: he surveyed the
neighbouring coast of England with fond and longing eyes, like
another Moses reconnoitring the land of Canaan from the top of
mount Pisgah; and to such a degree of impatience was he inflamed by
the sight, that instead of proceeding to Calais, he resolved to
take his passage directly from Boulogne, even if he should hire a
vessel for the purpose.
Page 88. _Footnote_. _Somewhere in his [Reynolds'] lectures_. The
passage is in the fourteenth of the _Discourses on Painting_--on
Gainsborough:--
After this admirable artist [Hogarth] had spent the greater part of
his life in an active, busy, and, we may add, successful attention
to the ridicule of life; after he had invented a new species of
dramatic painting, in which probably he will never be equalled, and
had stored his mind with infinite materials to explain and
illustrate the domestic and familiar scenes of common life, which
were generally, and ought to have been always, the subject of his
pencil; he very imprudently, or rather presumptuously, attempted
the great historical style, for which his previous habits had by no
means prepared him: he was indeed so entirely unacquainted with the
principles of this style, that he was not even aware that any
artificial preparation was at all necessary. It is to be regretted,
that any part of the life of such a genius should be fruitlessly
employed. Let his failure teach us not to indulge ourselves in the
vain imagination, that by a momentary resolution we can give either
dexterity to the hand, or a new habit to the mind.
Page 95, line 10. _Children's books_. _The Reflector_ version added, "or
the tale of Carlo the Dog."
Page 97, line 8 from foot. _With Dr. Swift_. The page opposite the title
of the _Tale of a Tub_ contains a (fictitious) list of "Treatises writ
by the same author." The fifth of these is "A Panegyric upon the World."
It is probable that Lamb had this in mind.
* * * * *
Page 101. ON THE CUSTOM OF HISSING AT THE THEATRES.
_The Reflector_, No. III., 1811. Not reprinted by Lamb.
Lamb omits to say that he joined in the hissing of his farce, "Mr. H.,"
on the unhappy night of December 10, 1806. In its ill fortune he seems
always to have taken a kind of humorous sympathetic pride. When he
printed the play at the end of his _Works_, 1818, he prefixed a
quotation from Hazlitt's essay on "Great and Little Things," of which
this is a portion:--
Mr. H.---- thou wert DAMNED. Bright shone the morning on the
play-bills that announced thy appearance, and the streets were
filled with the buzz of persons asking one another if they would go
to see Mr. H.----, and answering that they would certainly; but
before night the gaiety, not of the author, but of his friends, and
the town, was eclipsed, for thou wert DAMNED!
Writing to Manning concerning the play's failure, Lamb said:--"Damn 'em,
how they hissed! It was not a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic
yell, like a congregation of mad geese, with roaring sometimes, like
bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes snakes, that hiss'd me into
madness. 'Twas like St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us, that God
should give his favourite children, men, mouths to speak with, to
discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to
encourage warmly, to counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with, and to
kiss with, and that they should turn them into mouths of adders, bears,
wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit breath through them
like distillations of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the innocent
labours of their fellow-creatures who are desirous to please them!"
Page 101, line 3 of essay. _That memorable season_, 1806-1807. Lamb here
exaggerates. It is true that ten new pieces were tried at Drury Lane in
the season mentioned; but five were successful, and Monk Lewis's
"Adelgitha," the only tragedy, could hardly be called a failure. Of the
remaining four plays which failed, Holcroft's "Vindictive Man" was the
most notable.
Page 101, line 9 of essay. _The Clerk of Chatham_.
_Cade._ Dost thou use to write thy name? or hast thou a mark to
thyself, like an honest plain-dealing man?
_Clerk of Chatham._ Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought
up that I can write my name.
_All._ He hath confessed: away with him! he's a villain and a
traitor.
_Cade._ Away with him, I say! hang him with his pen and ink-horn
about his neck.
"II. Henry VI.," Act IV., Scene 2, lines 109-117.
Page 101, line 7 from foot. "_The Vindictive Man_." This was the comedy
by Thomas Holcroft, Lamb's friend, the failure of which occurred a few
nights before that of "Mr. H." Lamb describes the luckless performance
in a letter to Manning dated December 5, 1806.
Page 102, line 5. "_Our nonsense did not ... suit their nonsense_." From
Burnet's _History of His Own Times_, Vol. II.: "He [Charles II.] told me
he had a chaplain that was a very honest man, but a very great
blockhead, to whom he had given a living in Suffolk, that was full of
that sort of people: he had gone about among them from house to house,
though he could not imagine what he could say to them, for, he said, he
was a very silly fellow, but that he believed his nonsense suited their
nonsense; yet he had brought them all to church: and, in reward of his
diligence, he had given him a bishopric in Ireland." (A note by Swift
states the cleric to be Bishop Woolly of Clonfert.)
Page 102, line 25. _A Syren Catalani._ Angelica Catalani (1779-1849),
one of the most beautiful of all singers.
Page 104, line 19. _The O.P. differences._ The O.P.--Old Prices--Riots
raged in 1809. On September 18 of that year the new Covent Garden
Theatre was opened under the management of John Philip Kemble and
Charles Kemble, with a revised price list. The opposition to this
revision was so determined that "Macbeth," with John Philip Kemble as
Macbeth, and Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, was played practically in
dumb show, and in the end the theatre was closed again for a while. The
battle was waged not only by fists but by pamphlets. After two months'
fighting a compromise was effected.
Page 105, line 17. _Obstinate, in John Bunyan._ At the beginning of the
_Pilgrim's Progress_. It was not Obstinate, however, but Christian who
put his fingers in his ears. Obstinate pursued and caught him. Lamb made
the same mistake again in some verses to Bernard Barton.
A club of hissed authors existed in Paris in the 1870's. Flaubert,
Daudet and Zola were members.
* * * * *
Page 107. ON BURIAL SOCIETIES; AND THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER.
_Reflector_, No. III., 1811. The letter there begins "Sir." Printed
again in part, in _The Yellow Dwarf_, January 17, 1818. Reprinted in the
_Works_, 1818.
Page 110. _The following short Essay._ "The Character of an Undertaker"
is, of course, Lamb's own. Sable is the undertaker in Sir Richard
Steele's "Funeral; or, Grief à la Mode," 1702. Two of his remarks run
thus: "There is often nothing more ... deeply Joyful than a Young Widow
in her Weeds and Black Train," and "The poor Dead are deliver'd to my
Custody ... not to do them Honour, but to satisfy the Vanity or Interest
of their Survivors."
* * * * *
Page 112. ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE.
Printed in _The Reflector_, No. IV. (1811), under the title "Theatralia,
No. I. On Garrick, and Acting; and the Plays of Shakespeare, considered
with reference to their fitness for Stage-Representation." Reprinted in
the _Works_, 1818.
At the close of the _Reflector_ article Lamb wrote: "I have hitherto
confined my observation to the Tragic parts of Shakespeare; in some
future Number I propose to extend this inquiry to the Comedies." _The
Reflector_ ending with the fourth number, the project was not carried
out. From time to time, however, throughout his life, Lamb returned
incidentally to Shakespearian criticism, as in several essays in the
present volume, and the _Elia_ essay "The Old Actors," with its masterly
analysis of the character of Malvolio. David Garrick died in 1779, just
before Lamb's fourth birthday. Lamb's father often talked of him.
Page 113, line 6. _"To paint fair Nature," etc._ These lines on
Garrick's monument, which have been corrected from the stone, were by
Samuel Jackson Pratt (1749-1814), the same author whose _Gleanings_ Lamb
described in a letter to Southey in 1798 as "a contemptible book, a
wretched assortment of vapid feelings." Pratt's lines on Garrick were
chosen in place of a prose epitaph written by Edmund Burke.
Page 114, line 23. _Mr. K._ John Philip Kemble (1757-1823), who first
appeared as Hamlet in London at Drury Lane, September 30, 1783.
Page 114, line 24. _Mrs. S._ Mrs. Siddons, John Philip Kemble's sister
(1755-1831). Her regular stage career ended on June 29, 1812, when she
played Lady Macbeth. Her first part in London was Portia on December 29,
1775. Lamb admired her greatly. As early as 1794 he wrote, with
Coleridge's collaboration, a sonnet on the impression which Mrs. Siddons
made upon him.
Page 118, line 4. _Banks and Lillo._ John Banks, a very inferior
Restoration melodramatist. George Lillo (1693-1739), the author among
other plays of "George Barnwell--The London Merchant; or The History of
George Barnwell," 1731 (mentioned a little later), which held the stage
for a century. The story, the original of which is to be found in the
_Percy Reliques_, tells how George, an apprentice, robs his master and
kills his uncle at the instigation of Millwood, an adventuress. Lamb's
footnote (page 118) refers to the custom, which was of long endurance,
of playing "George Barnwell" in the Christmas and Easter holidays as an
object-lesson to apprentices.
Page 121, line 25. _The Hills and the Murphys and the Browns._ Dr. John
Hill (1716?-1775), the herbalist, controversialist, and miscellaneous
writer, who quarrelled with Garrick. In _The Reflector_ Lamb had written
the Hooles. It was changed to Hills afterwards. Hoole would be John
Hoole (1727-1803), translator of Tasso and the author of some turgid
tragedies, who had been in his time an India House clerk. Arthur Murphy
(1727-1805), actor and author, who wrote, in addition to many plays and
books, a _Life of Garrick_ (1801). The Rev. John Brown (1715-1766), the
author of "Barbarossa" and "Athelstane," in both of which Garrick acted.
Page 122, line 8 from foot. _Mr. C._ G. F. Cooke. See above.
Page 123, line 25. _Glenalvon._ In Home's "Douglas." Lamb wrote an early
poem on this tragedy, which seems to have so dominated his youthful
imagination that when in 1795-1796 he was for a while in confinement he
believed himself at times to be young Norval.
Page 127, line 12. _A ghost by chandelier light_ ... It should perhaps
be borne in mind that in 1811, and for many years after, the stage was
still lighted by candles, so that the regulation of light, which can be
effected with such nicety on the modern stage, was then impossible. This
is especially to be remembered with regard to such details as the
presentation of the Witches in "Macbeth." It would be simple enough,
with our electric switchboard, to frighten a nervous child in that scene
to-day.
Page 129, line 3. _Webb._ Webb was a theatrical robemaker at 98 Chancery
Lane.
* * * * *
Page 130. SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER.
_The Reflector_, No. IV., 1812. _Works_, 1818. In _The Reflector_ the
signature Y was appended to the introductory paragraphs.
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), the divine and historian. The passages
selected by Lamb are identified in the notes to my large edition, the
references being to _The Holy State_, 1642; _The History of the Worthies
of England_, 1662; _A Pisgah-sight of Palestine and the Confines
thereof, with the Histories of the Old and New Testaments acted
thereon_, 1650; and _The Church History of Britain from the Birth of
Jesus Christ until the year MDCXLVIII._, 1655. Lamb's transcriptions
are, of course, not exact.
Page 135. _Footnote. Fuller's bird._ Lamb's friend Procter (Barry
Cornwall) was also greatly impressed by this legend. His _English
Songs_, 1832, contains a poem on the subject.
Page 137. _Footnote. Wickliffe's ashes._ Landor has a passage on this
subject in his poem "On Swift joining Avon near Rugby." Wordsworth's
fine sonnet, in the _Ecclesiastical Sketches_, Part II., may have been
suggested by this very quotation in Lamb's essay:--
WICLIFFE
Once more the Church is seized with sudden fear,
And at her call is Wicliffe disinhumed;
Yea, his dry bones to ashes are consumed,
And flung into the brook that travels near;
Forthwith that ancient Voice which streams can hear,
Thus speaks (that Voice which walks upon the wind,
Though seldom heard by busy human kind)--
"As thou these ashes, little Brook! wilt bear
Into the Avon, Avon to the tide
Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas,
Into main Ocean they, this deed accurst
An emblem yields to friends and enemies
How the bold Teacher's Doctrine, sanctified
By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed."
When printed in _The Reflector_, in 1812, Lamb's footnote continued
thus:--
"We are too apt to indemnify ourselves for some characteristic
excellence we are kind enough to concede to a great author, by
denying him every thing else. Thus Donne and Cowley, by happening
to possess more wit and faculty of illustration than other men, are
supposed to have been incapable of nature or feeling; they are
usually opposed to such writers as Shenstone and Parnel; whereas in
the very thickest of their conceits,--in the bewildering maze of
their tropes and figures, a warmth of soul and generous feeling
shines through, the 'sum' of which 'forty thousand' of those
natural poets, as they are called, 'with all their quantity, could
not make up.'--Without any intention of setting Fuller on a level
with Donne or Cowley, I think the injustice which has been done him
in the denial that he possesses any other qualities than those of a
quaint and conceited writer, is of the same kind as that with which
those two great Poets have been treated."
* * * * *
Page 138. EDAX ON APPETITE.
_The Reflector_, No. IV., 1811. _Works_, 1818.
Page 138, line 14 from foot. _The best of parents_. Lamb, of course, is
not here autobiographical. His father was no clergyman.
Page 139, line 21. _Ventri natus_, _etc_. These nicknames may be roughly
translated: _Ventri natus_, glutton-born; _ventri deditus_,
gluttony-dedicated; _vesana gula_, greedy gullet; _escarum gurges_, sink
of eatables; _dapibus indulgens_, feast-lover; _non dans fræna gulæ_,
not curbing the gullet; _sectans lautæ fercula mensæ_, dainty-hunting.
Page 141, line 15. _Mandeville_. Bernard Mandeville (1670?-1733), whose
_Fable of the Bees_, 1714, was one of Lamb's favourite books.
* * * * *
Page 145. _Hospita on the Immoderate Indulgence of the Palate_.
_The Reflector_, No. IV., 1811. _Works_, 1818. In _The Reflector_ this
letter followed immediately upon that of Edax (see page 138). In his
_Works_ Lamb reversed this order. In _The Reflector_ the following
footnote was appended, signed _Ref._:--
To all appearance, the obnoxious visitor of HOSPITA can be no other
than my inordinate friend EDAX, whose misfortunes are detailed, ore
rotundo, in the preceding article. He will of course see the
complaint that is made against him; but it can hardly be any
benefit either to himself or his entertainers. The man's appetite
is not a bad habit but a disease; and if he had not thought proper
to relate his own story, I do not know whether it would have been
altogether justifiable to be so amusing upon such a subject.
Page 147, second paragraph. _Mr. Malthus_. Thomas Robert Malthus
(1766-1834), author of the _Essay on Population_, 1798. He wrote _On the
High Price of Provisions_ in 1800.
* * * * *
Page 148. THE GOOD CLERK, A CHARACTER.
_The Reflector_, No. IV., 1811. Signed L. B., possibly as the first and
last letters of Lamb. Not reprinted by Lamb.
Page 153, line 12. _As Solomon says_. Defoe seems to be remembering
Proverbs XXII. 7, and possibly Isaiah XXIV. 2.
Sixteen years later, in 1827, William Hone reprinted "The Good Clerk" in
his _Table Book_, I., columns 562-567. The first half was given under
its own title; the second half under this title, "Defoeana, No. I., The
Tradesman;" followed by a kindred passage from _The Fable of the Bees_,
to which the following note was appended, signed L.:--
"We have copied the above from Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_,
Edition 1725. How far, and in what way, the practice between the
same parties differs at this day, we respectfully leave to our fair
shopping friends, of this present year 1827, to determine."
* * * * *
Page 153. MEMOIR OF ROBERT LLOYD.
_Gentleman's Magazine_, November, 1811. Not reprinted by Lamb.
Robert Lloyd (1778-1811) was a younger brother of Charles Lloyd, for a
while Coleridge's pupil and Lamb's friend of the later nineties, with
whom he collaborated in _Blank Verse,_ 1798. They were sons of Charles
Lloyd, of Birmingham (1748-1828), the Quaker banker, philanthropist,
and, in a quiet private way, a writer of verse (see _Charles Lamb and
the Lloyds_).
Robert Lloyd first met Lamb in 1797; he was then nineteen years old, an
apprentice at Saffron Walden. He was inclined to morbidness, though not
to the same extent as his brother Charles, and Lamb did what he could to
get more health and contentment into him. In 1799 Robert Lloyd seems to
have left his father's roof in a state of revolt, and to have settled
with Lamb for a while. He returned home, however, and met Manning (who
was then teaching Charles Lloyd mathematics at Cambridge), and, after
drawing from Lamb several fine letters--notably upon Jeremy Taylor, and
that upon Cooke from which I have quoted in the notes above--he passed
out of his life until 1809, when, paying a short visit to London, he saw
the Lambs again several times.
The autumn of 1811 was a sad one for the Lloyd family. Thomas Lloyd died
on September 12, Caroline on October 15, and Robert on October 26. The
_Gentleman's Magazine_ obituary just mentions Thomas and Caroline, and
passes on to Robert. We know the article to be Lamb's from a letter from
Charles Lloyd to Robert's widow, enclosing the memoir (which Lamb had
sent to him), and adding, "If I loved him for nothing else, I should now
love [Charles Lamb] for the affecting interest that he has taken in the
memory of my dearest Brother and Friend."
* * * * *
Page 154. CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD.
_The Philanthropist_, No. IX., 1813. _Some Enquiries into the Effects of
Fermented Liquors_, 1814; second edition, 1818. _London Magazine_,
August, 1822. _Last Essays of Elia_, second edition, 1835.
The first appearance of this paper was in a quarterly magazine entitled
_The Philanthropist_; or, _Repository for Hints and Suggestions
calculated to promote the Comfort and Happiness of Man_. Vol. III., No.
IX., 1813. It was there unsigned and addressed "To the Editor of _The
Philanthropist_." The editor of this magazine was William Allen
(1770-1843), the Quaker, and his chief associate was James Mill, the
Father of John Stuart Mill. Lamb's friend, Basil Montagu (1770-1851),
was among the contributors; and another prominent name was that of
Benjamin Meggot Forster (1764-1829), who, like Montagu, opposed capital
punishment, and was zealous in the cause of chimney-sweepers.
In its original _Philanthropist_ form the essay differs from its later
appearances. Concerning the differences I should like to quote from an
interesting article by Mr. Thomas Hutchinson in _The Athenæum_ of August
16, 1902:--
The text of the "Confessions," as it stands in _The
Philanthropist_, bears evident traces of Mill's editorial hand; the
verbal changes smack of those precise and literal modes of thought
and expression which Lamb found so uncongenial in the Scotsman.
"They seemed to have something noble _about_ them," writes Lamb of
the friends of 1801. "But moral qualities are not external to us,
they are resident _in_ us," objects Mill; and so "about" is struck
out and "in" substituted. "Avoid the bottle as you would fly your
greatest destruction," says Lamb. "But," interposes the precisian,
"the idea of _destruction_ does not admit of _more_ or _less_;
besides, 'to fly' is properly a verb intransitive"--and thus the
sentence is rewritten: "... fly _from certain_ destruction." "The
pain of the self-denial is _all one_"--"is _equal_," substitutes
the Scot. "I scarce knew what it was to _ail anything_"--"to have
an ailment," corrects the lover of plain words; and so on. Of the
sixth paragraph of the essay only the opening sentence ("Why should
I hesitate," etc.) is suffered to stand. The rest is
cancelled--doubtless as at variance with Utilitarian views. Again
the close of the fourteenth paragraph ("But he is too hard for us,"
etc., onwards) is struck out--either by Mill, as too broadly
implying the existence of the "muckle deil," or by Allen, as too
flippant an allusion to that fearsome personage. Lastly, the second
paragraph is wanting and the third reduced by half, the conclusion
(from "Trample not," etc., on), in which the miracle of the raising
of Lazarus is referred to, being omitted.
I cannot, however, quite accept Mr. Hutchinson's theory that Lamb wrote
the "Confessions" as a joke at the expense of the seriousness of the
Quaker editor and his Benthamite assistant. Mr. Hutchinson writes: "We
can fancy with what glee the sly humorist, who found the world as it was
so lovable and good to live in, prepared to hoax the fussy John
Amend-All of Plough Court and his fiery lieutenant, James Mill," and he
adds later, "An amusing feature of the 'Confessions' is the
introduction, twice over, of the sacred Benthamite catchword, 'Springs
of Action,' and, once, of its equivalent, the 'Springs of the Will,' a
plausible device to bribe the judgment of the editors." But Lamb's jokes
were always jokes, and it is difficult, sitting down to these
"Confessions" with what anticipation we will of humour or whimsicality,
to rise from them in anything but sadness. They are too real for a
"flam." Of this, however, more below.
The "Confessions" made their second appearance in Basil Montagu's
collection of arguments in favour of teetotalism--_Some Enquiries into
the Effects of Fermented Liquors_. By a Water Drinker. 1814; and second
edition, 1818. This volume was divided into sections, Lamb's
contribution being ranged under the question, "Do Fermented Liquors
Contribute to Moral Excellence?" Montagu's book was reprinted in 1841,
when Lamb's contribution was acknowledged as from the _Essays of Elia_
by Charles Lamb (more properly the _Last Essays_). Lamb's "Confessions"
were also reprinted separately in a series of tracts called "Beacon
Lights," in 1854, as being a true statement of their unhappy author's
case, under the title, "Charles Lamb's Confessions." This
misrepresentation led to some correspondence in the press, and the tract
was withdrawn, a new edition being substituted in 1856 with the
harrowing story of poor Hartley Coleridge in the place of Lamb's essay.
The "Confessions" were reprinted in the _London Magazine_, August, 1822,
under the following circumstances. In the summer of 1822 Lamb and his
sister visited the Kenneys at Versailles--an absence which interrupted
the regular course of the _Elia_ essays. The Editor therefore reprinted
one or two of Lamb's old papers, the first being these "Confessions,"
advising his readers of his action in a note in which Lamb's own hand is
plainly apparent. This is the note:--
"_Reprints of_ ELIA.--Many are the sayings of _Elia_, painful and
frequent his lucubrations, set forth for the most part (such his
modesty!) without a name, scattered about in obscure periodicals
and forgotten miscellanies. From the dust of some of these, it is
our intention, occasionally, to revive a Tract or two, that shall
seem worthy of a better fate; especially, at a time like the
present, when the pen of our industrious Contributor, engaged in a
laborious digest of his recent Continental Tour, may haply want the
leisure to expatiate in more miscellaneous speculations. We have
been induced, in the first instance, to re-print a Thing, which he
put forth in a friend's volume some years since, entitled the
Confessions of a Drunkard, seeing that Messieurs the Quarterly
Reviewers have chosen to embellish their last dry pages with
fruitful quotations therefrom; adding, from their peculiar brains,
the gratuitous affirmation, that they have reason to believe that
the describer (in his delineations of a drunkard forsooth!) partly
sate for his own picture. The truth is, that our friend had been
reading among the Essays of a contemporary, who has perversely been
confounded with him, a paper in which _Edax_ (or the _Great Eater_)
humorously complaineth of an inordinate appetite; and it struck
him, that a better paper--of deeper interest, and wider
usefulness--might be made out of the imagined experiences of a
_Great Drinker_. Accordingly he set to work, and with that mock
fervor, and counterfeit earnestness, with which he is too apt to
over-realise his descriptions, has given us--a frightful picture
indeed--but no more resembling the man _Elia_, than the fictitious
_Edax_ may be supposed to identify itself with Mr. L., its author.
It is indeed a compound extracted out of his long observations of
the effects of drinking upon all the world about him; and this
accumulated mass of misery he hath centered (as the custom is with
judicious essayists) in a single figure. We deny not that a portion
of his own experiences may have passed into the picture, (as who,
that is not a washy fellow, but must at some times have felt the
after-operation of a too generous cup?)--but then how heightened!
how exaggerated!--how little within the sense of the Review, where
a part, in their slanderous usage, must be understood to stand for
the whole!--but it is useless to expostulate with this Quarterly
slime, brood of Nilus, watery heads with hearts of jelly, spawned
under the sign of Aquarius, incapable of Bacchus, and therefore
cold, washy, spiteful, bloodless.----Elia shall string them up one
day, and show their colours--or rather how colourless and vapid the
whole fry--when he putteth forth his long promised, but
unaccountably hitherto delayed, Confessions of a Water-drinker."
The remarks in the _Quarterly Review_, to which Lamb very naturally
objected, and which are believed to have been written by Dr. Robert
Gooch (1784-1830), a friend of Southey, had occurred in an article, in
the number for April, 1822, on Reid's _Essays on Hypochondriasis and
other Nervous Affections_. There, in a passage introducing quotations
from Lamb's "Confessions of a Drunkard," the reviewer says:--
In a collection of tracts "On the Effects of Spirituous Liquors,"
by an eminent living barrister, there is a paper entitled the
"Confessions of a Drunkard," which affords a fearful picture of the
consequences of intemperance, and which we have reason to know is a
true tale.
It was, we may suppose, as a kind of challenge to this statement that
Lamb authorised the republication of his "Confessions." It cannot be
denied, however, that the circumstantiality of the story gave a handle
to the _Quarterly's_ theory. For example, twelve years before 1813 (when
the essay was probably first written), Lamb had completed his
twenty-sixth year. He was known to have an impediment in his speech. He
was known also to have been in bondage to tobacco. The two sets of
friends (see pp. 156 and 157) correspond to Fenwick, Fell & Co., and the
Burney whist players.
If a portion of the "Confessions" was true, it was more likely to be
true in 1812-1813 than at any time in Lamb's life. He was then between
thirty-seven and thirty-nine, a critical age. He had apparently
abandoned most of his literary ambition and was beginning the least
productive period of his life; if a man is at all given to seeking
alcoholic stimulant he resorts to it more when his ambition sleeps than
when it is lively. In 1812-1813 Lamb was hard worked at the East India
House; and with the failure of _The Reflector_, to which he was an
important contributor, immediately behind him, the failure of _John
Woodvil_ (in which he had believed) more remotely behind him, his
children's book vein dry, and little but office routine and
disappointment to look forward to, he may conceivably have indulged now
and then, after a festive night with his friends, in some such gloomy
thoughts as are expressed in this essay. Crabb Robinson, indeed, who saw
much of Lamb at this season, records in his unpublished Diary that the
"Confessions" seemed to him sadly true. Robinson, however, was disposed
to be rather a severe judge of any weakness, and we may perhaps discount
such an impression; but the fact remains that among Lamb's friends there
was one who, wishing him all happiness, looked on the "Confessions" in
this way.
Yet whatever proportion of truth may have been in the "Confessions" when
they were written (possibly when Mary Lamb was ill and hope was with
Lamb at its lowest) Lamb soon recovered. We may feel confident of that.
He remained to the end conscious of the stimulating effect of wine and
spirits and too easily influenced by them, as are so many persons of
sensitive habit and quick imagination: that is all. As Talfourd wrote:--
Drinking with him [Lamb], except so far as it cooled a feverish
thirst, was not a sensual but an intellectual pleasure; it lighted
up his fading fancy, enriched his humour, and impelled the
struggling thought or beautiful image into day.
One of the best proofs of the untruth of the "Confessions" is urged by
Charles Robert Leslie, the painter, and it becomes particularly cogent
when we remember the case of Tommy Bye, described by Lamb in two of his
letters, who was reduced to a paltry income at the East India House as a
punishment for insobriety. Leslie wrote in his _Autobiographical
Recollections_, 1860:--
I have noticed that Lamb sometimes did himself injustice by his odd
sayings and actions, and he now and then did the same by his
writings. His "Confessions of a Drunkard" greatly exaggerate any
habits of excess he may ever have indulged. The regularity of his
attendance at the India House, and the liberal manner in which he
was rewarded for that attendance, proved that he never could have
been a drunkard. Well, indeed, would it be for the world if such
extraordinary virtues as he possessed were often found in company
with so very few faults.
In all modern editions of Lamb the "Confessions of a Drunkard" are
included with the _Last Essays of Elia_. But Lamb did not himself
originally place them there. Apparently his intention was not to reprint
them after their appearance in the _London Magazine_ in 1822. When,
however, the _Last Essays of Elia_ was published, in 1833, the paper
called "A Death-Bed" was objected to by Mrs. Randal Norris, as bearing
too publicly upon her poverty. When, therefore, the next edition was
preparing, "A Death-Bed" was taken out, and the "Confessions" put in its
place, but whether Lamb made the substitution, or whether it was decided
upon after his death, I do not know.
Page 160. _Footnote. Poor M----._ Probably George Morland, who died a
drunkard in 1804. In _The Life of George Morland_, by George Dawe
(Lamb's "Royal Academician"), we read: "When he [Morland] arose in the
morning his hand trembled so as to render him incapable of guiding the
pencil, until he had recruited his spirits with his fatal remedy."
* * * * *
Page 162. RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.
This article was first printed in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for June,
1813, and in the supplement for that year, under the title "On Christ's
Hospital and the Character of the Christ's Hospital Boys." In that place
it had the following opening, which, having lost its timeliness, was
discarded when in 1818 the essay was printed in the _Works_:--
"A great deal has been said about the Governors of this Hospital
abusing their right of presentation, by presenting the children of
opulent parents to the Institution. This may have been the case in
an instance or two; and what wonder, in an establishment
consisting, in town and country, of upwards of a thousand boys! But
I believe there is no great danger of an abuse of this sort ever
becoming very general. There is an old quality in human nature,
which will perpetually present an adequate preventive to this evil.
While the coarse blue coat and the yellow hose shall continue to be
the costume of the school, (and never may modern refinement
innovate upon the venerable fashion!) the sons of the Aristocracy
of this country, cleric or laic, will not often be obtruded upon
this seminary.
"I own, I wish there was more room for such complaints. I cannot
but think that a sprinkling of the sons of respectable parents
among them has an admirable tendency to liberalize the whole mass;
and that to the great proportion of Clergymen's children in
particular which are to be found among them it is owing, that the
foundation has not long since degenerated into a mere
Charity-school, as it must do, upon the plan so hotly recommended
by some reformists, of recruiting its ranks from the offspring of
none but the very lowest of the people.
"I am not learned enough in the history of the Hospital to say by
what steps it may have departed from the letter of its original
charter; but believing it, as it is at present constituted, to be a
great practical benefit, I am not anxious to revert to first
principles, to overturn a positive good, under pretence of
restoring something which existed in the days of Edward the Sixth,
when the face of every thing around us was as different as can be
from the present. Since that time the opportunities of instruction
to the very lowest classes (of as much instruction as may be
beneficial and not pernicious to them) have multiplied beyond what
the prophetic spirit of the first suggester of this charity[64]
could have predicted, or the wishes of that holy man have even
aspired to. There are parochial schools, and Bell's and
Lancaster's, with their arms open to receive every son of
ignorance, and disperse the last fog of uninstructed darkness which
dwells upon the land. What harm, then, if in the heart of this
noble City there should be left one receptacle, where parents of
rather more liberal views, but whose time-straitened circumstances
do not admit of affording their children that better sort of
education which they themselves, not without cost to their parents,
have received, may without cost send their sons? For such Christ's
Hospital unfolds her bounty.
"To comfort, &c."
[64] "Bishop Ridley, in a Sermon preached before King Edward the
Sixth."
Concerning this original opening a few words are necessary. Lamb had
found the impetus to write his article in the public charges of
favouritism and the undue distribution of influence, that were made by
Robert Waithman (1764-1833), the reformer, against the governors of
Christ's Hospital, in an open letter to those gentlemen in 1808. The
newspapers naturally had much to say on the question, which was for some
time a prominent one. _The Examiner_, for example, edited by Leigh
Hunt--himself an old Christ's Hospitaller--spoke thus strongly (December
25, 1808): "That hundreds of unfortunate objects have applied in vain
for admission is sufficiently notorious; and that many persons with
abundant means of educating and providing for their children and
relatives have obtained their admission into the School is also equally
well known." The son of the Vicar of Edmonton, Mr. Dawson Warren, and a
boy named Carysfoot Proby, whose father had two livings as well as his
own and his wife's fortune, were the chief scapegoats.
Coleridge also wrote an article on the subject, which appeared in _The
Courier_--a vigorous denial of Waithman's contention that the Hospital
was intended for the poorest children, and the expression of a wish that
the governors would permit no influence to change its aforetime policy.
At the same time Coleridge expressed disapproval of the admission of
boys whose fathers were in easy circumstances.
The _Gentleman's Magazine_ version of Lamb's essay had one other
difference from that of 1818. The second paragraph of the essay as it
now stands did not then end at the words "would do well to go a little
out of their way to see" (page 163). At the word "see" was a colon, and
then came this passage:--
"let those judge, I say, who have compared this scene with the
abject countenances, the squalid mirth, the broken-down spirit, and
crouching, or else fierce and brutal deportment to strangers, of
the very different sets of little beings who range round the
precincts of common orphan schools and places of charity."
Lamb's essay was also printed in a quaint little book entitled _A Brief
History of Christ's Hospital from its Foundation by King Edward the
Sixth to the Present Time_, by J. I. W[ilson], published in 1820. It is
there credited to Mr. Charles Lambe. In 1835, it was reissued as a
pamphlet by some of Lamb's schoolfellows and friends "in testimony of
their respect for the author, and of their regard for the Institution."
Christ's Hospital was founded in 1552 by Edward VI. in response to a
sermon on charity by Ridley; his charge to Ridley being:--
To take out of the streets all the fatherless children and other
poor men's children that were not able to keep them, and to bring
them to the late dissolved house of the Greyfriars, which they
devised to be a Hospital for them, where they should have meat,
drink, and clothes, lodging and learning, and officers to attend
upon them.
Later, this intention was somewhat modified, with the purpose of
benefiting rather the reduced or embarrassed parents than the very poor.
The London history of the school is now ended. The boys have gone to
Sussex, where, near Horsham, the new buildings have been erected, and
the old Newgate Street structure has been demolished to make room for
offices, warehouses, and an extension of St. Bartholomew's Hospital.
John Lamb's appeal for his son Charles to be received into Christ's
Hospital is dated March 30, 1781, and it states that the petitioner has
"a Wife and three Children, and he finds it difficult to maintain and
educate his Family without some Assistance." One of the children, John
Lamb jr., then aged nearly eighteen, should, however, have been
practically self-supporting. The presentation was made by Timothy Yeats,
a friend of Samuel Salt, who himself signed the necessary bond for £100
and made himself responsible for the boy's discharge. Lamb was admitted
July 17, 1782, and clothed October 9, 1782; he remained until November
23, 1789.
The notes that follow apply solely to the few points in the text that
call for remark. More exhaustive comments on Lamb and Christ's Hospital
will be found in the notes to the _Elia_ essay on the same subject.
Page 163, line 23. _The old Grey Friars._ This monastery had been
suppressed by Henry VIII. It was reinhabited by the Christ's Hospital
boys; but was in great part destroyed in the Fire of London, the
cloisters alone remaining. The other old part of Christ's Hospital, as
this generation knows it, dates from after the Fire.
Page 165, line 9 from foot. _Philip Quarll's Island_. One of the
imitations of _Robinson Crusoe_. The full title ran: _The Hermit: or the
unparalleled sufferings and surprising adventures of Mr. Philip Quarll,
an Englishman, who was lately discovered by Mr. Dorrington, a Bristol
Merchant, upon an uninhabited island in the South Seas; where he has
lived above Fifty Years, without any human assistance, still continues
to reside, and will not come away, 1727._ Lamb refers again to these
excursions in his _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers."
Page 168, line 8 from foot. _The Rev. James Boyer._ Lamb writes more
fully of his old schoolmaster in the _Elia_ essay. Boyer was elected
1776, and retired in 1799, when the governors presented him with a
staff. He died in 1814.
Page 170, line 4 from foot. _Grecians._ Lamb writes more fully of the
Grecians in his _Elia_ essay. He was himself never more than
Deputy-Grecian.
Page 171, line 4 from foot. _William Wales._ William Wales was appointed
1776, and died 1798. The King's Boys are now called "Mathemats," i.e.,
Members of the Royal Mathematical Foundation for Sea Service. Leigh Hunt
says of William Wales in his _Autobiography_: "He was a good man, of
plain, simple manners, with a heavy large person and a benign
countenance. When he was at Otaheite, the natives played him a trick
while bathing, and stole his small-clothes; which we used to think a
liberty scarcely credible."
Page 172, line 5 from foot. _Processions ... at Easter._ The boys when
in London visited the Lord Mayor on Easter Tuesday.
Page 173, line 4. _St. Matthew's day._ September 21. Speech Day is now
at the end of the Summer Term.
Page 173, line 8. _Barnes ... Markland ... Camden._ Joshua Barnes
(1654-1712), Greek scholar and antiquary; Jeremiah Markland (1693-1776),
Greek scholar; and William Camden (1551-1623), the antiquary--all
Christ's Hospital boys.
Page 173, line 18. _The carol._ I cannot give the words of this
particular carol. Mr. E. H. Pearce, the latest historian of Christ's
Hospital, tells me that it was probably not a school carol peculiar to
Christ's Hospital, like the Easter anthems (which were composed
annually), but an ordinary Christmas hymn. "An old Crug," _i.e._, Old
Christ's Hospitaller, wrote to _Notes and Queries_, December 22, 1855,
asking if any reader could supply the missing stanzas of a Christmas
carol which the Blue Coat boys used to sing fifty years before. This was
one stanza (from memory):--
The wise men of the Eastern globe did spy
A blazing star in the bright glittering sky;
And well they knew it fully did portend,
Christ came to the earth for some great end.
* * * * *
Page 174. TABLE-TALK IN "THE EXAMINER."
In 1813 Leigh Hunt added to his paper, _The Examiner_, a more or less
regular collection of notes under the heading "Table-Talk." At first
they were unsigned, but on May 30 he announced that each contributor
would in future have his own mark. From unmistakable evidence--for
example, the similarity between the "Playhouse Memoranda" on page 184,
and the _Elia_ essay "My First Play"--we may confidently consider Lamb
to be the author of all those pieces signed, like that, ‡, seven of
which are here included. The first contribution thus signed was the note
on "Reynolds and Leonardo da Vinci," on page 174, usually printed in
editions of Lamb's works as "The Reynolds Gallery."
Lamb had other signatures in _The Examiner_. The Dramatic Criticisms and
Reviews of Books, pages 217 to 234, were signed with four stars; the
notice of "Don Giovanni in London" (see page 215) was signed †, and
"Valentine's Day" (in _Elia_) was signed * * *.
Page 174. I.--REYNOLDS AND LEONARDO DA VINCI.
_The Examiner_, June 6, 1813.
Lamb had very little admiration for Sir Joshua Reynolds. See also his
remarks in the essay on "Hogarth," page 88 for example.
Page 174, line 1 of essay. _The Reynolds' Gallery._ The exhibition of
142 of Sir Joshua Reynolds' works, held in 1813 at the Shakespeare
Gallery in Pall Mall, afterwards the British Institution. The
Marlborough Club now stands on its site. Reynolds had died in 1792.
Page 174, line 9 of essay. _Mrs. Anne Clark._ The notorious Mary Anne
Clarke (1776-1852), the mistress of Frederick, Duke of York. After
keeping London society in a state of ferment for some years, by reason
of her disclosures and claims, she was, in 1813, condemned to nine
months' imprisonment for libel. Lamb has a very humorous passage about
this lady in a letter to Manning on March 28, 1809. Reynolds, it need
hardly be said, did not paint her, since, when he died, she was but
sixteen and a nobody.--Kitty Fisher was Catherine Maria Fisher, who died
in 1767, and was painted by Sir Joshua several times. A very notorious
person in her early days; afterwards she married an M.P.
Page 174, line 7 from foot. _Mrs. Long._ Mrs. Long was Amelia Long,
wife of Charles Long, afterwards first Baron Farnborough.--Reynolds
painted a number of Infant Jupiters and Bacchuses. His "Infant Samuel"
is well known. Few pictures of that time have been more often
reproduced.
Page 176. II.--[THE NEW ACTING.]
_The Examiner_, July 18, 1813.
This note adds still another to Lamb's many remarks on the stage, and
stands as a kind of trial sketch for the papers on "The Old Actors,"
which Lamb contributed to the _London Magazine_ nine years later. "The
New Acting" is also noteworthy in containing Lamb's earliest praises of
Miss Kelly, the favourite actress of his later years, of whom he always
wrote so finely.
Page 176, line 4 of essay. _Parsons and Dodd._ William Parsons
(1736-1795), the comedian. Foresight in Congreve's "Love for Love" was
one of his best parts. James William Dodd (1740?-1796), famous for his
Aguecheek, in "Twelfth Night," which Lamb extols in "The Old Actors."
Page 176, line 10 of essay. _Bannister and Dowton._ Two actors of a
later generation. John Bannister (1760-1836), whom Lamb admired as
Walter in Morton's "Children in the Wood," left the stage in 1815;
William Dowton (1764-1851), famous as Falstaff, left the stage in 1836.
Page 176, line 6 from foot. _Russell's Jerry Sneak._ Samuel Thomas
Russell (1769?-1845), celebrated for his Jerry Sneak in Foote's "Mayor
of Garratt." Russell left the stage in 1842.
Page 177, line 8. _Liston's Lord Grizzle._ John Liston (1776?-1846), the
comedian, whose bogus biography by Lamb will be found at page 292 of
this volume. Lord Grizzle is a character in Fielding's "Tom Thumb."
Page 177, line 12. _Nicolaus Klimius._ Baron Holberg's _Nicolai Klimii
Iter Subterraneum_ was translated into English under the title _A
Journey to the World Underground_, 1742. It describes the surprising
subterranean adventures of a Norwegian divinity student.
Page 177, line 19. _Mrs. Mattocks, Miss Pope and Mrs. Jordan._ Isabella
Mattocks (1746-1826), comedienne, took leave of the stage in 1808; Jane
Pope (1742-1818), famous as Audrey in "As You Like It," retired in the
same year; and Dorothea Jordan (1762-1816), the greatest comedienne of
her time, left the London stage in 1814.
Page 177, line 24. _Mrs. Abingdon ... Mrs. Cibber, etc._ Frances
Abington (1737-1815) left the stage in 1799. Mrs. Susannah Maria Cibber
(1714-1766) and Anne (or Nance) Oldfield (1683-1730) were, of course,
before Lamb's time.
Page 177, line 25. _Whole artillery of charms._ Lamb is here recalling
Colley Cibber's account of Mrs. Bountiful's Melantha in _Marriage a la
Mode_ in his _Apology_.
Page 177, line 34. _Miss Kelly._ Lamb's friend, Frances Maria Kelly
(1790-1882), of whom he wrote so much (see pages 217 to 223 of the
present volume, and "Barbara S----" in _Elia_ essays. See also note to
"Miss Kelly at Bath," page 486).
Page 177, at foot. _The Glovers ... Johnstons ... St. Legers_. Mrs.
Julia Glover (1779-1850), the original Alhadra in Coleridge's "Remorse"
in 1813. Mrs. Johnstone, a well-known Elvira in "Pizarro." She made her
London début in 1797. Mrs. Saint Ledger (_née_ Williams) made her London
début in 1799, and began well, but declined into pantomime.
Page 178, line 1. _Miss Candour_. Probably a misprint for Mrs. Candour
in "The School for Scandal," a part created by Miss Pope.
Page 178. III.--[BOOKS WITH ONE IDEA IN THEM.]
_The Examiner_, July 18, 1813. Reprinted by Leigh Hunt in _The
Indicator_, December 13, 1820, under the title of Table Talk, together
with the notes on "Gray's _Bard_" and "Playhouse Memoranda," on pages
181 and 184 of the present volume. Leigh Hunt thus introduced these
reprints:--
It has been a great relief to us during our illness (from which, we
trust, we are now recovering) to find that the re-publication of
some former pieces from other periodical works has not been
disapproved. Being still compelled to make up our numbers in this
way, we have the pleasure of supplying the greater part of the
present one with some Table-Talk, with which a friend entertained
us on a similar occasion a few years ago in _The Examiner_. To the
reader who happens not to be acquainted with them they will be
acceptable for very obvious reasons: those who remember them, will
be glad to read them again; and as for ourselves, besides the other
reasons for being gratified, we feel particular satisfaction in
recalling to the author's memory as well as our own, some genuine
morsels of writing which he appears to have forgotten.
Page 178, line 11., _Patrick's "Pilgrim." The Parable of the Pilgrim_,
1664, by Simon Patrick, Bishop of Ely (1626-1707), which bears a curious
accidental likeness to Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_. Writing to
Wordsworth, in 1815, Lamb says: "Did you ever read Charron on _Wisdom_
or Patrick's _Pilgrim_? If neither, you have two great pleasures to
come." The particular passage quoted from Patrick is in one of Lamb's
Commonplace Books.
Page 178, line 22. _Single-Speech Hamiltons_. William Gerard Hamilton
(1729-1796). He entered Parliament in 1754, and made his famous maiden
speech in 1755. It was not, however, by any means his only speech,
although his nickname still prevails.
Page 178, line 24. _Killigrew's play_. "The Parson's Wedding," a comedy,
by Thomas Killigrew (1612-1683). Lamb included this speech of the Fine
Lady under the heading Facetiæ in his extracts from the Garrick plays in
Hone's _Table Book_, 1827.
Page 178, line 32. _Charron on "Wisdom_." Two translations of the Sieur
de Charron, _De la Sagesse_, might have been read by Lamb: Dean
Stanhope's (1697) and Samson Lennard's (1612). Probably it was
Lennard's, since the passage may be found on page 129 of his 1670
edition, a quarto, and page 145 in the 1640 edition, whereas in Stanhope
it is page 371. Lennard's translation runs thus (Book I., Chap. 39):--
The action of planting and making man is shameful, and all the
parts thereof; the congredients, the preparations, the instruments,
and whatsoever serves thereunto is called and accounted shameful;
and there is nothing more unclean, in the whole Nature of man. The
action of destroying and killing him [is] honorable, and that which
serves thereunto glorious: we guild it, we enrich it, we adorn
ourselves with it, we carry it by our sides, in our hands, upon our
shoulders. We disdain to go to the birth of man; every man runs to
see him die, whether it be in his bed, or in some public place, or
in the field. When we go about to make a man, we hide ourselves, we
put out the candle, we do it by stealth. It is a glory and pomp to
unmake a man, to kill himself; we light the candles to see him die,
we execute him at high noon, we sound a trumpet, we enter the
combat, and we slaughter him when the sun is at highest. There is
but one way to beget, to make a man, a thousand and a thousand
means, inventions, arts to destroy him. There is no reward, honour
or recompense assigned to those that know how to encrease, to
preserve human nature; all honour, greatness, riches, dignities,
empires, triumphs, trophies are appointed for those that know how
to afflict, trouble, destroy it.
Page 178, last line. _What could Pope mean?_
What made (say Montaigne, or more sage Charron)
Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon?
Pope's _Moral Essays_, Ep. I., 87-88.
It has been held that Pope called Charron more sage because he somewhat
mitigated the excessive fatalism (Pyrrhonism) of Montaigne.
Page 179. IV.--[A SYLVAN SURPRISE.]
_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Reprinted in _The Indicator_,
January 3, 1821. We know it to be Lamb's by the signature ‡; also from a
sentence in Leigh Hunt's essay on the "Suburbs of Genoa," in _The
Literary Examiner_, August 23, 1823, where, speaking of an expected
sight, he says: "C. L. could not have been more startled when he saw the
chimney-sweeper reclining in Richmond meadows."
Page 179. V.--[STREET CONVERSATION.]
_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡.
Page 180. VI.--[A TOWN RESIDENCE.]
_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡.
This note is another contribution to Lamb's many remarks on London.
Allsop, in his reminiscences of Lamb in his _Letters, Conversations and
Recollections of S. T. Coleridge_, 1836, remarks:--
Somerset House, Whitehall Chapel (the old Banqueting Hall), the
church at Limehouse and the new church at Chelsea, with the Bell
house at Chelsea College, which always reminded him of Trinity
College, Cambridge, were the objects most interesting to him [Lamb]
in London.
Page 181. VII.--[GRAY'S "BARD."]
_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡. Reprinted by Leigh Hunt
under the above title in _The Indicator_, December 13, 1820. In the
Appendix (pages 425-6) will be found other critical comments upon Gray,
which I conjecture to be Lamb's.
Page 181, line 1 of essay. _The beard of Gray's bard._
Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Stream'd like a meteor, to the troubled air.
_The Bard._
Gray himself noted the Miltonic anticipation of this line (see Gosse's
edition, 1884). The lines Lamb quotes are from _Paradise Lost_, I.,
lines 536-537.
Page 181, line 6 of essay. _Heywood's old play._ "The Four 'Prentices of
London," by Thomas Heywood. The speech is that of Turnus respecting the
Persian Sophy. It is copied in one of Lamb's Commonplace Books.
Page 182. VIII.--[AN AMERICAN WAR FOR HELEN.]
_The Examiner_, September 26, 1813. Signed ‡. Reprinted under the above
title by Leigh Hunt in _The Indicator_, January 3, 1821.
Page 182, line 1 of essay. _A curious volume._ Hazlitt's _Handbook to
the Popular, Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain_, 1867,
gives the title as _Alexandri Fultoni Scoti Epigrammatum Libri Quimque_.
Perth, 1679. 8vo.
Page 182, line 9. "_The master of a seminary ... at Islington._" This
was the Rev. John Evans, a Baptist minister, whose school was in
Pullin's Row, Islington. Gray's _Elegy_ was published as Lamb indicates
in 1806. The headline covering the first three stanzas is "Interesting
Silence."
Page 183. IX.--[DRYDEN AND COLLIER.]
_The Examiner_, September 26, 1813. Signed ‡.
Page 183, line 3. _Jeremy Collier._ Jeremy Collier (1650-1726), the
nonjuror and controversialist. His _Essays upon Several Moral Subjects_,
Part II., were published in 1697. The passage quoted is from that "On
Musick," the second essay in Part II. I have restored his italics and
capitals.
Page 183, at foot. "_His genius...._" Collier's words are: "His genius
was jocular, but when disposed he could be very serious."
Page 184. X.--[PLAYHOUSE MEMORANDA.]
_The Examiner_, December 19, 1813. Signed ‡. Leigh Hunt reprinted it in
_The Indicator_, December 13, 1820.
The paper, towards the end, becomes a first sketch for the _Elia_ essay
"My First Play," 1821. As a whole it is hardly less charming than that
essay, while its analysis of the Theatre audience gives it an
independent interest and value.
Page 185, line 3. _They had come to see Mr. C----._ It was George
Frederick Cooke, of whom Lamb writes in the criticism on page 41, that
they had come to see. Possibly the Cooke they saw was T. P. Cooke
(1786-1864), afterwards famous for his sailor parts; but more probably
an obscure Cooke who never rose to fame. A Mr. Cook played a small part
in Lamb's "Mr. H." in 1806.
Page 186, line 6. _The system of Lucretius._ Lucretius, in _De Rerum
Natura_, imagined the gods to be above passion or emotion, heedless of
this world's concerns, figures of absolute peace.
Page 186, line 22. _It was "Artaxerxes."_ An opera by Thomas Augustine
Arne, produced in 1762, founded upon Metastasio's "Artaserse." From the
other particulars of Lamb's early play-going, given in the _Elia_ essay
"My First Play," we know the date of this performance to be December 1,
1780, that being the only occasion in that or the next season when
"Artaxerxes" was followed by "Harlequin's Invasion." But none of the
singers named by Lamb were in the caste on that occasion. "Who played,
or who sang in it, I know not," he says; merely setting down likely and
well-known names at random. As a matter of fact Artaxerxes was played by
Mrs. Baddeley, Arbaces by Miss Pruden, and Mandane by "a young lady."
Mr. Beard was John Beard (1716?-1791), the tenor. Leoni was the
discoverer and instructor of Braham. He made his début in "Artaxerxes"
in 1775. Mrs. Kennedy, formerly Mrs. Farrell, was a contralto. She died
in 1793.
Page 186, line 10 from foot. _I was, with Uriel._
Th' archangel Uriel, one of the sev'n
Who in God's presence, nearest to his throne,
Stand ready at command.
_Paradise Lost_, III., lines 648-650.
Uriel's station was the sun. See also _Paradise Lost_, III. 160, IV. 577
and 589, and IX. 60.
* * * * *
Page 187. WORDSWORTH'S "EXCURSION."
The _Quarterly Review_, October, 1814. Not reprinted by Lamb.
Wordsworth's _Excursion_ was published in 1814; and it seems to have
been upon his own suggestion, made, probably, to Southey, who was a
power in the _Quarterly_ office, that Lamb should review it. In his
letter to Wordsworth of August 29, 1814, Lamb expressed a not too ready
willingness. Writing again a little later, when the review was done, he
spoke of "the circumstances of haste and peculiar bad spirits" under
which it was written, viewing it without much confidence; and adding,
"But it must speak for itself, if Gifford and his crew do not put words
in its mouth, which I expect." As Lamb expected, so it happened. Lamb's
next letter, after the publication of the October _Quarterly_ (which
does not seem to have come out until very late in the year), ran thus:--
"DEAR WORDSWORTH,--I told you my Review was a very imperfect one. But
what you will see in the Quarterly is a spurious one which Mr. Baviad
Gifford has palm'd upon it for mine. I never felt more vexd in my life
than when I read it. I cannot give you an idea of what he has done to it
out of spite at me because he once sufferd me to be called a lunatic in
his Thing. The _language_ he has alterd throughout. Whatever
inadequateness it had to its subject, it was in point of composition the
prettiest piece of prose I ever writ, and so my sister (to whom alone I
read the MS.) said. That charm if it had any is all gone: more than a
third of the substance is cut away and that not all from one place, but
_passim_, so as to make utter nonsense. Every warm expression is changed
for a nasty cold one. I have not the cursed alteration by me, I shall
never look at it again, but for a specimen I remember--I had said the
Poet of the Excurs^n 'walks thro' common forests as thro' some Dodona or
enchanted wood and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like
that miraculous one in Tasso, but in language more piercing than any
articulate sounds, reveals to him far higher lovelays.' It is now
(besides half a dozen alterations in the same half dozen lines) 'but in
language more _intelligent_ reveals to him'--that is one I remember. But
that would have been little, putting his damnd Shoemaker phraseology
(for he was a shoemaker) in stead of mine which has been tinctured with
better authors than his ignorance can comprehend--for I reckon myself a
dab at _Prose_--verse I leave to my betters--God help them, if they are
to be so reviewed by friend and foe as you have been this quarter. I
have read 'It won't do.'[65] But worse than altering words, he has kept
a few members only of the part I had done best which was to explain all
I could of your 'scheme of harmonies' as I had ventured to call it
between the external universe and what within us answers to it. To do
this I had accumulated a good many short passages, rising in length to
the end, weaving in the Extracts as if they came in as a part of the
text, naturally, not obtruding them as specimens. Of this part a little
is left, but so as without conjuration no man could tell what I was
driving it [? at]. A proof of it you may see (tho' not judge of the
whole of the injustice) by these words--I had spoken something about
'natural methodism--' and after follows 'and therefore the tale of
Margaret sh^d have been postponed' (I forget my words, or his words):
now the reasons for postponing it are as deducible from what goes
before, as they are from the 104th psalm. The passage whence I deduced
it, has vanished, but clapping a colon before a _therefore_ is always
reason enough for Mr. Baviad Gifford to allow to a reviewer that is not
himself. I assure you my complaints are founded. I know how sore a word
alterd makes one, but indeed of this Review the whole complexion is
gone. I regret only that I did not keep a copy. I am sure you would have
been pleased with it, because I have been feeding my fancy for some
months with the notion of pleasing you. Its imperfection or
inadequateness in size and method I knew, but for the _writing part_ of
it, I was fully satisfied. I hoped it would make more than atonement.
Ten or twelve distinct passages come to my mind which are gone, and what
is left is of course the worse for their having been there, the eyes are
pulld out and the bleeding sockets are left. I read it at Arch's shop
with my face burning with vexation secretly, with just such a feeling as
if it had been a review written against myself, making false quotations
from me. But I am ashamd to say so much about a short piece. How are
_you_ served! and the labors of years turn'd into contempt by
scoundrels.
"But I could not but protest against your taking that thing as mine.
Every _pretty_ expression, (I know there were many) every warm
expression, there was nothing else, is vulgarised and frozen--but if
they catch me in their camps again let them spitchcock me. They had a
right to do it, as no name appears to it, and Mr. Shoemaker Gifford I
suppose never waved a right he had since he commencd author. God
confound him and all caitiffs.
"C. L."
[65] "This will never do"--the beginning of the review in the
_Edinburgh_.--ED.
The word "lunatic" refers to the _Quarterly's_ review in December, 1811,
of _The Dramatic Works of John Ford_, by Henry William Weber, Sir Walter
Scott's assistant, where, alluding to the comments on Ford in Lamb's
_Specimens_, quoted by Weber, the reviewer described them as "the
blasphemies of a maniac." See page 57 of this volume for Lamb's actual
remarks on Ford. Southey wrote Gifford a letter of remonstrance, and
Gifford explained that he had used the words without knowledge of Lamb's
history--knowing of him nothing but his name--and adding that he would
have lost his right arm sooner than have written what he did had he
known the circumstances. The late Mr. Dykes Campbell, whose opinion in
such matters was of the weightiest, declined to let Gifford escape with
this apology. Reviewing in _The Athenæum_ for August 25, 1894, a new
edition of Lamb's _Dramatic Specimens_, Mr. Campbell wrote thus:--
Had Gifford merely called Lamb a "fool" or a "madman," the epithet
would have been mere "common form" as addressed by the _Quarterly_
of those days to a wretch who was a friend of other wretches such
as Hunt and Hazlitt; but he went far beyond such common form and
used language of the utmost precision. Weber, wrote Gifford, "has
polluted his pages with the blasphemies of a poor maniac, who it
seems once published some detached scenes from the 'Broken Heart.'
For this unfortunate creature every feeling mind will find an
apology in his calamitous situation." This passage has no meaning
at all if it is not to be taken as a positive statement that Lamb
suffered from chronic mental derangement; yet Gifford when
challenged confessed that when he wrote it he had known absolutely
nothing of Lamb, except his name! It seems to have struck neither
Gifford nor Southey that this was no excuse at all, and something a
good deal worse than no excuse--that even as an explanation it was
not such as an honourable man would have cared to offer. Gifford
added a strongly-worded expression of his feeling of remorse on
learning that his blows had fallen with cruel effect on a sore
place. Both feeling and expression may have been sincere, for,
under the circumstances, only a fiend would be incapable of
remorse. But the excuse or explanation is open to much suspicion,
owing to the fact (revealed in the Murray "Memoirs") that Lamb's
friend Barron Field had been Gifford's collaborator in the
preparation of the article in which the offending passage occurs.
Field was well acquainted with Lamb's personal and family history,
and while the article was in progress the collaborators could
hardly have avoided some exchange of ideas on a subject which
stirred one of them so deeply. Gifford may have said honestly
enough, according to his lights, that only a maniac could have
written the note quoted by Weber, a remark which would naturally
draw from Field some confidences regarding Lamb's history. This is,
of course, pure assumption, but it is vastly more reasonable and
much more likely to be in substantial accordance with the facts
than Gifford's statement that when he called Lamb a poor maniac,
whose calamitous situation offered a sufficient apology for his
blasphemies, he was imaginatively describing a man of whom he knew
absolutely nothing, except that he was "a thoughtless scribbler."
If, as seems only too possible, Gifford deliberately poisoned his
darts, it is also probable that he did not realize what he was
doing. It would be unfair to accept Hazlitt's picture of him as a
true portrait; but Lamb's apology for Hazlitt himself applies with
at least equal force to the first editor of the _Quarterly_. "He
does bad actions without being a bad man." Perhaps it is too
lenient, for though Gifford's attack on Lamb was undoubtedly one of
the bad actions of his life, it was, after all, a matter of
conduct. The apology, whether truthful or the opposite, reveals
deep-seated corruption of principle if not of character.
Lamb's phrase, "Mr. Shoemaker Gifford," had reason for its existence.
William Gifford (1756-1826) was apprenticed to a shoemaker in 1772. Lamb
later repaid some of his debt in the sonnet "St. Crispin to Mr.
Gifford," which appeared in _The Examiner_, October 3, 1819, and was
reprinted in _The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion"_ in 1822.
Gifford, who was editor of the _Quarterly_ on its establishment in 1809,
held the post until his death, in 1826.
The original copy of Lamb's review of Wordsworth, Mr. John Murray
informs me, no longer exists. I have collated the extracts with the
first edition of the _Excursion_ and have also corrected the Tasso.
Page 187, line 3 of essay. _To be called the Recluse._ Wordsworth never
completed this scheme. A fragment called _The Recluse_, Book I., was
published in 1888.
Page 188, line 7. _Which Thomson so feelingly describes._ This is the
passage, from Thomson's _Seasons_, "Winter," 799-809:--
There, through the prison of unbounded wilds,
Barr'd by the hand of Nature from escape,
Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around
Strikes his sad eye, but deserts lost in snow;
And heavy-loaded groves; and solid floods,
That stretch'd, athwart the solitary vast,
Their icy horrors to the frozen main;
And cheerless towns far-distant, never bless'd,
Save when its annual course the caravan
Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay,
With news of human-kind.
* * * * *
Page 200. ON THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS.
_The Champion_, December 4, 1814. _Works_, 1818.
The editor of _The Champion_ was then John Scott, afterwards editor of
the _London Magazine_, which printed Lamb's best work. From a letter
written by Lamb to Scott in 1814 (in the late Dr. Birkbeck Hill's _Talks
about Autographs_, 1896) it seems that he was to contribute more or less
regularly to _The Champion_. Lamb wrote:--
"SIR,--Your explanation is perfectly pleasant to me, and I accede
to your proposal most willingly.
"As I began with the beginning of this month, I will if you please
call upon you for _your part of the engagement_ (supposing I shall
have performed mine) on the 1st of March next, and thence forward
if it suit you quarterly--you will occasionally wink at BRISKETS
and VEINY PIECES.
"Your Obt. Svt.,
"C. LAMB."
This essay on "Tailors" is, however, the only piece by Lamb that can be
identified, although probably many of the passages from old authors
quoted in _The Champion_ in Scott's time were contributed by Lamb. These
might be the briskets and veiny pieces he refers to. On January 23,
1814, is "A Challenge" of the Learned Dog at Drury Lane which he might
have written; but it is not interesting now. Later, after John Thelwall
took over _The Champion_ in 1818, Lamb contributed various epigrams,
which will be found in Vol. IV. of the present edition.
Lamb seems to have sent the present essay to Wordsworth, whose reply we
may imagine took the form of an account of certain tailors within his
own experience that did not comply with Lamb's scription; since Lamb's
answer to that letter is the one dated beginning, "Your experience
about tailors seems to be in point blank opposition to Burton [Lamb's
essay is signed 'Burton, Junior']" and so forth.
When preparing this essay for the _Works_, 1818, Lamb omitted certain
portions. The footnote on page 202 originally continued thus:--
"But commend me above all to a shop opposite Middle Row, in
Holborn, where, by the ingenious contrivance of the master taking
in three partners, there is a physical impossibility of the
conversation ever flagging, while 'the four' alternately toss it
from one to the other, and at whatever time you drop in, you are
sure of a discussion: an expedient which Mr. A----m would do well
to think on, for with all the alacrity with which he and his
excellent family are so dexterous to furnish their successive
contributions, I have sometimes known the continuity of the
dialogue broken into, and silence for a few seconds to intervene."
In connection with Mr. A----m there is a passage in a letter from Mary
Lamb to Miss Hutchinson in 1818, wherein she says that when the Lambs,
finding London insupportable after a long visit to Calne, in Wiltshire
(at the Morgans'), had taken lodgings in Dalston, Charles was so much
the creature of habit, or the slave of his barber, that he went to the
Temple every morning to be shaved, on a roundabout way to the India
House. This would very likely be Mr. A----m, Flower de Luce Court being
just opposite the Temple, off Fetter Lane. The London directories in
those days ignored barbers; hence his name must remain in disguise.
In _The Champion_, also, the paragraph on page 203, beginning, "I
think," etc., ran thus:--
"I think, then, that they [the causes of tailors' melancholy] may
be reduced to three, omitting some subordinate ones; viz.
"The sedentary habits of the tailor.--
Something peculiar in his diet.--
Mental perturbation from a sense of reproach, &c.--"
And at the end of the article, as it now stands, came the following
exposition of the third theory:--
"Thirdly, and lastly, _mental perturbation, arising from a sense of
shame_; in other words, _that painful consciousness which he always
carries about with him, of lying under a sort of disrepute in
popular estimation_. It is easy to talk of despising public
opinion, of its being unworthy the attention of a wise man &c. The
theory is excellent; but, somehow, in practice
"still the world prevails and its dread laugh.
"Tailors are men (it is well if so much be allowed them,) and as
such, it is not in human nature not to feel sore at being
misprized, undervalued, and made a word of scorn.[66] I have often
racked my brains to discover the grounds of this unaccountable
prejudice, which is known to exist against a useful and industrious
body of men. I confess I can discover none, except in the sedentary
posture, before touched upon, which from long experience has been
found by these artists to be the one most convenient for the
exercise of their vocation. But I would beg the more stirring and
locomotive part of the community, to whom the quiescent state of
the tailor furnishes a perpetual fund of rudeness, to consider,
that in the mere action of _sitting_ (which they make so merry
with) there is nothing necessarily ridiculous. That, in particular,
it is the posture best suited to contemplation. That it is that, in
which the hen (a creature of all others best fitted to be a pattern
of careful provision for a family) performs the most beautiful part
of her maternal office. That it is that, in which judges
deliberate, and senators take counsel. That a Speaker of the House
of Commons at a debate, or a Lord Chancellor over a suit, will
oftentimes _sit_ as long as many tailors. Lastly, let these
scoffers take heed, lest themselves, while they mock at others, be
found 'sitting in the seat of the scornful.'"
[66] "It is notorious that to call a man a _tailor_, is to heap the
utmost contempt upon him which the language of the streets can
convey. _Barber's clerk_ is an appellative less galling than this.
But there is a word, which, though apparently divested of all ill
meaning, has for some people a far deeper sting than either. It is
the insulting appellation of _governor_, with which a black-guard,
not in anger, but in perfect good will, salutes your second-rate
gentry, persons a little above his own cut. He rarely bestows it
upon the topping gentry of all, but reserves it for those of a rank
or two above his own, or whose garb is rather below their rank. It
is a word of approximation. A friend of mine will be melancholy a
great while after, from being saluted with it. I confess I have not
altogether been unhonoured with it myself."
It is told of Lamb that he once said he would sit with anything but a
hen or a tailor.
Page 200. _Motto._ From Virgil's _Æneid_, Book VI., lines 617, 618.
"There luckless Theseus sits, and shall sit for ever."
Page 201, line 25. _Beautiful motto._ Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk,
who married Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII., appeared at a tournament
with a saddle-cloth made half of frieze and half of cloth of gold. Each
side had a symbolical motto. One ran:--
Cloth of frize, be not too bold,
Though thou art match'd with cloth of gold.
The other:--
Cloth of gold do not despise,
Though thou art match'd with cloth of frize.
Page 201, line 3 from foot. _Eliot's famous troop._ General George
Augustus Eliott (afterwards Lord Heathfield), the defender of Gibraltar
and the founder of the 15th or King's Own Royal Light Dragoons, now the
15th Hussars, whose first action was at Emsdorf. At the time that
regiment was being collected, there was a strike of tailors, many of
whom joined it. Eliott, one version of the incident says, wished to get
men who never having ridden had not to unlearn any bad methods of
riding. Later they were engaged against the Spaniards in Cuba in
1762-1763.
Page 202, line 6. _Speculative politicians._ Lamb was probably referring
to Francis Place (1771-1854), the tailor-reformer, among whose friends
were certain of Lamb's own--William Frend, for example.
Page 202. _Footnote._ "_Gladden life._" From Johnson's _Life of Edmund
Smith_--"one who has gladdened life"; or possibly from Coombe's "Peasant
of Auburn":--
And whilst thy breast matures each patriot plan
That gladdens life and man endears to man.
Page 203, line 22. _Dr. Norris's famous narrative._ _The Narrative of
Dr. Robert Norris concerning the strange and deplorable Frenzy of Mr.
John Dennis_ was a satirical squib by Pope against the critic John
Dennis (1657-1734). The passage referred to by Lamb runs:--
_Doct._ Pray, Sir, how did you contract the Swelling?
_Denn._ By a Criticism.
_Doct._ A Criticism! that's a Distemper I never read of in _Galen_.
_Denn._ S' Death, Sir, a Distemper! It is no Distemper, but a Noble
Art. I have sat fourteen Hours a Day at it; and are you a Doctor,
and don't know there's a Communication between the Legs and the
Brain?
_Doct._ What made you sit so many Hours, Sir?
_Denn._ _Cato_, Sir.
_Doct._ Sir, I speak of your Distemper, what gave you this Tumour?
_Denn._ _Cato, Cato, Cato._
Page 204, line 2. _Envious Junos._ Lucina, at Juno's bidding, sat
cross-legged before Alcmena to prolong her travail. Sir Thomas Browne in
his _Pseudodoxia Epidemica; or, Enquiry into Vulgar Errors_, Book V.,
speaks of the posture as "veneficious," and cites Juno's case.
Page 204, at the end. _Well known that this last-named vegetable._ This
is the old joke about tailors "cabbaging," that is to say, stealing
cloth. The term is thus explained in Phillips' _History of Cultivated
Vegetables_:--
The word cabbage ... means the firm head or ball that is formed by
the leaves turning close over each other.... From thence arose the
cant word applied to tailors, who formerly worked at the private
houses of their customers, where they were often accused of
cabbaging: which means the rolling up of pieces of cloth instead of
the list and shreds, which they claim as their due.
Lamb returned to this jest against tailors in his verses "Satan in
Search of a Wife," in 1831.
In _The Champion_ for December 11, 1814, was printed a letter defending
tailors against Lamb.
* * * * *
Page 204. ON NEEDLE-WORK.
_The British Lady's Magazine and Monthly Miscellany_, April 1, 1815. By
Mary Lamb.
The authority for attributing this paper to Mary Lamb is Crabb Robinson.
In his Diary for December 11, 1814, he writes: "I called on Miss Lamb,
and chatted with her. She was not unwell, but she had undergone great
fatigue from writing an article about needle-work for the new _Ladies'
British Magazine_. She spoke of writing as a most painful occupation,
which only necessity could make her attempt."
We know that Mary Lamb's needle was required to help keep the Lamb
family, not only after Samuel Salt's death in 1792, when they had to
move from the Temple, but very likely while they were there also. In one
of the newspaper accounts of the tragedy of September, 1796, she is
described as "a mantua-maker." Possibly she continued to sew for a while
after she joined her brother, in 1799, but she would hardly call that
"early life," being thirty-five in that year.
* * * * *
Page 210. ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER.
This is the one prose article that, to the best of our knowledge, made
its first and only appearance in the _Works_ (1818). It was inspired by
John Mathew Gutch (1776-1861), Lamb's schoolfellow at Christ's Hospital,
with whom he shared rooms in Southampton Buildings in 1800. Later, when
Gutch had become proprietor, at Bristol, of _Felix Farley's Bristol
Journal_ (in which many of Chatterton's poems had appeared), he took
advantage of his press to set up a private edition of selections from
Wither, a poet then little known and not easily accessible, an
interleaved copy of which, in two volumes, was sent to Lamb in 1809 or
1810. Gutch told the story in an Appendix to his _Lytell Geste of Robin
Hoode_ (1847), wherein he printed a letter from Lamb dated April 9,
1810, concerning the edition, in the course of which Lamb remarks: "I
never saw _Philarete_ before--judge of my pleasure. I could not forbear
scribbling certain critiques in pencil on the blank leaves.... Perhaps I
could digest the few critiques prefixed to the 'Satires,' 'Shepherd's
Hunting,' etc., into a short abstract of Wither's character and
works...."
Lamb returned the book with this letter; and Gutch seems to have then
sent it to Dr. John Nott (1751-1825), of the Hot Wells, Bristol, a
medical man with literary tastes, and the author of a number of
translations, medical treatises, and subsequently of an edition of
Herrick; who added comments of his own both upon Wither and upon Lamb.
Lamb, Gutch tells us, subsequently asked for the book again, with the
intention of preparing from it the present essay on Wither, and coming
then upon Nott's criticisms of himself, superimposed sarcastic
criticisms of Nott. Thus the volumes contain first Wither, then Gutch
and Lamb on Wither, then Nott on Wither and Lamb, and then Lamb on Nott
again and incidentally on Wither again, too, for some of his earlier
opinions were slightly modified.
Lamb gave the volume to his friend John Brook Pulham of the East India
House, and the treasure passed to the fitting possession of the late Mr.
Swinburne, who described it in a paper in the _Nineteenth Century_ for
January, 1885, afterwards republished in his _Miscellanies_, 1886. Mr.
Swinburne permitted me to quote from his very entertaining analysis:--
The second fly-leaf of the first volume bears the inscription, "Jas
Pulham Esqr. from Charles Lamb." A proof impression of the
well-known profile sketch of Lamb by Pulham has been inserted
between this and the preceding fly-leaf. The same place is occupied
in the second volume by the original pencil drawing, to which is
attached an engraving of it "Scratched on Copper by his Friend
Brook Pulham;" and on the fly-leaf following is a second
inscription--"James Pulham Esq. from his friend Chas Lamb." On the
reverse of the leaf inscribed with these names in the first volume
begins the commentary afterwards republished, with slight
alterations and transpositions, as an essay "on the poetical works
of George Wither...."
After the quotation from Drayton, with which the printed essay
concludes, the manuscript proceeds thus:--
"The whole poem, for the delicacy of the thoughts, and height of
the passion, is equal to the best of Spenser's, Daniel's or
Drayton's love verses; with the advantage of comprising in a whole
all the fine things which lie scatter'd in their works, in sonnets,
and smaller addresses--The happy chearful spirit of the author goes
with it all the way; that _sanguine temperament_, which gives to
all Wither's lines (in his most loved metre especially, where
chiefly he is a Poet) an elasticity, like a dancing measure; it
[is] as full of joy, and confidence, and high and happy thoughts,
as if it were his own Epithalamium which, like Spenser, he were
singing, and not a piece of perambulary, probationary
flattery...."[67]
[67] Lamb subsequently altered the conclusion of this paragraph to:
"as if, like Spenser, he were singing his own Epithalamium, and not
a strain of probationary courtship."
On page 70 Lamb has proposed a new reading which speaks for
itself--"Jove's endeared Ganimed," for the meaningless "endured" of
the text before him. Against a couplet now made famous by his
enthusiastic citation of it--
"Thoughts too deep to be expressed
And too strong to be suppressed--"
he has written--"Two eminently beautiful lines." Opposite the
couplet in which Wither mentions the poets
"whose verse set forth
Rosalind and Stella's worth"
Gutch (as I suppose) has written the names of Lodge and Sidney;
under which Lamb has pencilled the words "Qu. Spenser and Sidney;"
perhaps the more plausible conjecture, as the date of Lodge's
popularity was out, or nearly so, before Wither began to write.
The next verses [_The Shepherd's Hunting_] are worth transcription
on their own account no less than on account of Lamb's annotation.
"It is known what thou canst do,
For it is not long ago
When that Cuddy, thou, and I,
Each the other's skill to try,
At St. Dunstan's charmèd well,
(As some present there can tell)
Sang upon a sudden theme,
Sitting by the crimson stream;
Where if thou didst well or no
Yet remains the song to show."
To the fifth of these verses the following note is appended:--
"The Devil Tavern, Fleet Street, where Child's Place now stands,
and where a sign hung in my memory within 18" (substituted for 16)
"years, of the Devil and St. Dunstan--Ben Jonson made this a famous
place of resort for poets by drawing up a set of Leges Convivales
which were engraven in marble on the chimney piece in the room
called Apollo. One of Drayton's poems is called The Sacrifice to
Apollo; it is addrest to the priests or Wits of Apollo, and is a
kind of poetical paraphrase upon the Leges Convivales--This tavern
to the very last kept up a room with that name. C. L."--who might
have added point and freshness to this brief account by citing the
splendid description of a revel held there under the jovial old
Master's auspices, given by Careless to Aurelia [Carlesse to
Æmilia] in Shakerley Marmion's admirable comedy, _A Fine
Companion_. But it is remarkable that Lamb--if I mistake not--has
never quoted or mentioned that brilliant young dramatist and poet
who divided with Randolph the best part of Jonson's mantle....
At the close of Wither's high-spirited and manly postscript to the
poem on which, as he tells us, his publisher had bestowed the name
of _The Shepherd's Hunting_, a passage occurs which has provoked
one of the most characteristic outbreaks of wrath and mirth to be
found among all Lamb's notes on Nott's notes on Lamb's notes on the
text of Wither. "Neither am I so _cynical_ but that I think a
modest expression of such amorous conceits as suit with reason,
will yet very well become my years; in which not to have feeling of
the power of _love_, were as great an argument of much stupidity,
as an over-sottish affection were of extreme folly." In
illustration of this simple and dignified sentence Lamb cites the
following most apt and admirable parallel.
"'Nor blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves
such a reward, as the noblest dispositions above other things in
this life have sometimes preferred; whereof not to be sensible,
when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and
shallow judgment, and withall an ungentle and swainish breast.'
"_Milton_--Apology for Smectymn[u]us."
"Why is this quoted?" demands the too inquisitive Nott; "I see
little similarity." "It was quoted for those who _can_ see,"
rejoins Lamb, with three thick strokes of his contemptuous pencil
under the luckless Doctor's poor personal pronoun; on which this
special note of indignation is added beneath.
"I. I. I. I. I. in Capitals!--
for shame, write _your_ Ego thus
little i with a dot
stupid Nott!"
At the opening of the second we find the notes on _Abuses stript
and whipt_ which in their revised condition as part of the essay on
Wither are familiar to all lovers of English letters. They begin
with the second paragraph of that essay, in which sundry slight and
delicate touches of improvement have fortified or simplified the
original form of expression. After the sentence which describes the
vehemence of Wither's love for goodness and hatred of baseness, the
manuscript proceeds thus: "His moral feeling is work'd up into a
sort of passion, something as Milton describes himself at a like
early age, that night and day he laboured to attain to a certain
idea which he had of perfection." Another cancelled passage is one
which originally followed on the reflection that "perhaps his
premature defiance often exposed him" (altered in the published
essay to "sometimes made him obnoxious") "to censures, which he
would otherwise have slipped by." The manuscript continues: "But in
this he is as faulty as some of the primitive Christians are
described to have been, who were ever ready to outrun the
executioner...."
This not immoderate satire on clerical ambition seems to have
ruffled the spiritual plumage of Dr. Nott, who brands it as a "very
dull essay indeed." To whom, in place of exculpation or apology,
Lamb returns this question by way of answer:--"Why double-dull it
with thy dull commentary? have you nothing to cry out but 'very
dull,' 'a little better,' 'this has some spirit,' 'this is
prosaic,' foh!
"If the sun of Wither withdraw a while, Clamour not for joy, Owl,
it will out again, and blear thy envious Eyes!..."
The commentary on 'Wither's Motto' will be remembered by all
students of the most exquisite critical essays in any language.
They will not be surprised to learn that neither the style nor the
matter of it found any favour in the judicial eye of Nott. "There
is some tautology in this, and some of the sentences are
harsh--These repetitions are very awkward; but the whole sentence
is obscure and far-fetched in sentiment;" such is the fashion in
which this unlucky particle of a pedant has bescribbled the margin
of Lamb's beautiful manuscript. But those for whom alone I write
will share my pleasure in reading the original paragraph as it came
fresh from the spontaneous hand of the writer, not as yet adapted
or accommodated by any process of revision to the eye of the
general reader.
"Wither's Motto.
"The poem which Wither calls his _Motto_ is a continued
self-eulogy" (originally written "self-eulogium") "of two thousand
lines: yet one reads it to the end without feeling any distaste, or
being hardly conscious of having listen'd so long to a man praising
himself. There are none of the cold particles of vanity in it; no
hardness or self-ends" (altered to "no want of feeling, no
selfishness;" but restored in the published text), "which are the
qualities that make Egotism hateful--The writer's mind was
continually glowing with images of virtue, and a noble scorn of
vice: what it felt, it honestly believed it possessed, and as
honestly avowed it; yet so little is this consciousness mixed up
with any alloy of selfishness, that the writer seems to be praising
qualities in another person rather than in himself; or, to speak
more properly, we feel that it was indifferent to him, where he
found the virtues; but that being best acquainted with himself, he
chose to celebrate himself as their best known receptacle. We feel
that he would give to goodness its praise, wherever found; that it
is not a quality which he loves for his own low self which
possesses it; but himself that he respects for the qualities which
he imagines he finds in himself. With these feelings, and without
them, it is impossible to read it, it is as beautiful a piece of
_self_-confession as the _Religio Medici_ of Browne.
"It will lose nothing also if we contrast it" (or, as previously
written, "It may be worth while also to contrast it") "with the
Confessions of Rousseau." ("How is Rousseau analogous?" queries the
interrogatory Nott: on whom Lamb retorts--"analogous?!! why, this
note was written to show the _difference_ not the _analogy_ between
them. C. L.") "In every page of the latter we are disgusted with
the vanity, which brings forth faults, and begs us to take them (or
at least the acknowledgment of them) for virtue. But in Wither we
listen to a downright confession of unambiguous virtues; and love
the heart which has the confidence to pour itself out." Here, at a
later period, Lamb has written--"C. L. thus far." On the phrase
"confession of unambiguous virtues" Dr. Nott has obliged us with
the remark--"this seems an odd association:" and has received this
answer:--"It was _meant_ to be an odd one, to puzzle a certain sort
of people. C. L."--whose words should be borne in mind by every
reader of his essays or letters who may chance to take exception to
some passing turn of speech intended, or at least not wholly
undesigned, to give occasion for that same "certain sort of people"
to stumble or to trip.
So far Mr. Swinburne. After his death the Wither was sold to America by
Mr. Watts-Dunton and is now in the library of Mr. John A. Spoor of
Chicago. Mr. Swinburne's description was supplemented by the American
bibliophile Mr. Luther S. Livingston in the _New York Evening Post_,
April 30, 1910.
Gutch, it seems, was sufficiently interested in Wither to undertake a
really representative edition, the editorship of which was entrusted to
Nott. The work was issued in 1820, without either date or publisher's
name. There is a copy in the British Museum which is in four volumes,
the fourth incomplete. On the fly-leaf is written: "This selection of
the Poems of Wither was printed by Gutch, of Bristol, about twenty years
since, and was edited by Dr. Nott. The work remained unfinished, and was
sold for waste-paper; a few copies only were preserved. 1839."
Mr. Livingston says that there is another copy of this work, in New
York. "It is in four volumes, with the title, 'Selections from the
Juvenilia and Other Poems of George Wither, with a prefatory Essay by
John Matthew Gutch, F.S.A., and His Life, by Robert Aris Wilmott, Esq.,
Vol. I. [etc.] Typ. Felix Farley: Bristol.' In addition, the first
volume has another title-page, 'Poems by George Wither, in four volumes.
Vol. I. London: 1839.' On the verso of this is the following Preface:--
"These Poems were many years ago edited and printed at Bristol by
Mr. Gutch: Proof sheets being submitted to Dr. Nott, and the
celebrated Charles Lamb, who wrote some very pithy comments on the
Notes of the Doctor, which have not been printed. The work was
never completed, and the whole impression was consigned to the
'Tomb of the Capulets' and supposed to be effectually destroyed.
Now, however, by the resuscitating powers of sundry Bristol Book
Chapmen, 'Monsieur Tonson's come again!' etc.
Signed 'J. R. S.' and dated 'London, 1839'."
Gutch himself prepared a life of Wither, but it was not printed in this
edition and is still unpublished. The amusing feature of the edition is
that Nott, sometimes with slight and deteriorating changes, and
sometimes without alteration, uses, in addition to his own comments,
many of Lamb's notes also as his own; which, if 1820 is really the date,
is the more curious, since a comparison with Lamb's essay in the
_Works_, 1818, would expose the conveyance. Probably the edition was in
type some time before it was issued. We know at any rate that it was
prepared before 1818, because Lamb had his notes back again in time to
use them in writing his essay published early in that year, and finished
probably some time earlier. If Lamb ever saw Nott's edition--which is
more than probable--it is a pity that in his correspondence is preserved
no letter containing his opinion on the matter.
Nott, for example, lifted the whole of the passage in praise of "Fair
Virtue or the Mistress of Philarete," beginning "There is a singular
beauty," and ending with "probationary courtship," as described above by
Mr. Swinburne, and signed it "Editor." He also annexed the reminiscence
of the Devil Tavern, making it "within the memory of the Editor," and
adapted the criticisms beginning "Wither's prison notes" (fifth
paragraph of the present essay) and "Wither's motto" (first paragraph)
to his own uses. As a specimen of Nott's treatment of his predecessor's
notes we may take that on long lines, which stands as a note at the end
of the essay. This is Nott's version:--
_If thy verse do bravely tower._ A _long_ line is a line _we are
long in repeating_. Mark the time which it takes to repeat these
lines properly! What slow movements could Alexandrines express more
than these? "_As she makes wing, she gets power._" One makes a foot
of every syllable. Wither was certainly a perfect master of this
species of verse.
There is, however, enough genuine un-negatived Lamb (as he would say)
remaining to make this edition of Wither a very desirable possession of
all collectors of Lamb.
What is even more surprising than Lamb's silence on the subject--which
may easily be accounted for by the incomplete state of his
correspondence--is the silence of Gutch himself. In 1847, when he told
the story of Wither, he made no reference whatever to any use of Lamb's
notes beyond Lamb's own, nor even mentioned the fact that a fuller
edition of Wither was published by himself, although he refers his
readers to two other editions, one earlier and one later, and remarks on
the poet's growing popularity. He quotes, however, a long passage from
Lamb's 1818 essay, remarking that it was based upon the notes made in
the original copy of Wither.
Gutch was wrong in stating that it was through him that Lamb became
acquainted with Wither. It was only to _Philarete_ that Gutch introduced
him. Lamb was first drawn to Wither by Coleridge, as he admits in the
letter of July 1, 1796. In 1798 he wrote to Southey on the subject:
"Quarles is a wittier writer, but Wither lays more hold of the heart....
I always love Wither ... the extract from _Shepherd's Hunting_ places
him in a starry height far above Quarles."
This note is already so long that I hesitate to add to it by quoting
from Wither the passages referred to by Lamb. They are, moreover, easily
identifiable.
George Wither, or Withers, was born in 1588. His _Abuses Stript and
Whipt_ was published in 1613; his _Shepherd's Hunting_, written in part
while its author was in the Marshalsea prison for his plain speaking in
_Abuses_, was published in 1615; Wither's _Motto_ in 1621, and _Fair
Virtue, the Mistress of Philarete_, in 1622, but it may have been
composed long before. Wither died in 1667. His light remained under a
bushel for many years. The _Percy Reliques_, 1765, began the revival of
Wither's fame; George Ellis's _Specimens_, 1805, continued it; and then
came Lamb, and Gutch, and Southey, and it was assured.
Page 211, line 10. _No Shaftesbury, no Villiers, no Wharton._ Referring
to the victims of Dryden and Pope's satires--the first Earl of
Shaftesbury in Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel," "Albion and Albanius"
and "The Medal;" Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, in "Absalom and
Achitophel" and in Pope's third "Moral Essay;" Philip, Duke of Wharton
in Pope's "Epistle to Sir Richard Temple."
Page 211, line 23. _Where Faithful is arraigned._ Faithful was accused
of railing also upon Lord Desire of Vain Glory, my old Lord Lechery and
Sir Having Greedy.
* * * * *
Page 215. FIVE DRAMATIC CRITICISMS.
None of these were reprinted by Lamb.
During the year 1819 Leigh Hunt's _Examiner_ gave Lamb his first
encouragement to indulge in those raptures upon comedians which no one
has expressed so well as he. The notices that follow preceded his _Elia_
essays on the "Old Actors" by some three years, although, as is pointed
out in the notes to that work, the essay on the "Acting of Munden" first
saw the light in _The Examiner_ of November 7 and 8, 1819, as one of the
present series. The central figure, however, of the five pieces here
collected together is Miss Kelly, Lamb's friend and favourite actress of
his middle and later life, whom he began to praise in 1813 (see "The New
Acting," page 177), and in praising whom he never tired.
Lamb's sweet allusion to Miss Kelly's "divine plain face" is well known.
It may be interesting, to add Oxberry's description: "Her face is round
and pleasing, though not handsome; her eyes are light blue; her forehead
is peculiarly low ... her smile is peculiarly beautiful and may be said
to completely _sun_ her countenance."
In _The Examiner_ for December 20, 1818, after Leigh Hunt's criticism of
Kenney's comedy "A Word for the Ladies" is the following paragraph.
Leigh Hunt's criticism is signed: this is not, nor is it joined to the
article. There is, I think, good reason to believe it to be Lamb's:--
"It was not without a feeling of pain, that we observed Miss KELLY among
the _spectators_ on the first night of the new comedy. What does she do
before the curtain? She should have been on the stage. With such youth,
such talents,--
Those powers of pleasing, with that will to please,
it is too much that she should be forgotten, discarded, laid aside like
an old fashion. It really is not yet the season for her 'among the
wastes of time to go.' Is it Mr. STEPHEN KEMBLE, or the Sub-Committee;
or what _heavy body_ is it, which interposes itself between us and this
light of the stage?"
With these Eulogies of Miss Kelly is associated one of the most
interesting days in Lamb's life, as the note on page 487 tells.
Page 215. I.--MRS. GOULD (MISS BURRELL) IN "DON GIOVANNI IN LONDON."
_The Examiner_, November 22, 1818. Signed †.
This criticism we know to be Lamb's upon Talfourd's testimony. He
writes:--
Miss Burrell, a lady of more limited powers, but with a frank and
noble style, was discovered by Lamb on one of the visits which he
paid, on the invitation of his old friend Elliston, to the Olympic,
where the lady performed the hero of that happy parody of
Moncrieff's, "Giovanni in London." To her Lamb devoted a little
article, which he sent to _The Examiner_ [a portion of the article
is quoted]. Miss Burrell soon married a person named Gold, and
disappeared from the stage.
Lamb pasted the article in his Album or Commonplace Book accompanied by
a portrait of the actress. Writing to Mrs. Wordsworth in February, 1818,
he speaks of his power, during business, of reserving "in some corner of
my mind 'some darling thoughts, all my own,'--faint memory of some
passage in a book, or the tone of an absent friend's voice--a snatch of
Miss Burrell's singing, or a gleam of Fanny Kelly's divine plain face."
Page 215, line 2 of essay. _A burletta founded, etc._ This was
"Rochester; or, King Charles the Second's Merry Days," by William Thomas
Moncrieff (1794-1857).
Page 215, line 8 of essay. _Elliston and Mrs. Edwin._ Robert William
Elliston (1774-1831), a famous comedian, and the lessee of the Olympic
at that date, of whom Lamb wrote with enthusiasm in his _Elia_ essays,
"To the Shade of Elliston," and "Ellistoniana." Elizabeth Rebecca Edwin
(1771?-1854) was the wife of John Edwin the younger, a favourite actress
in Mrs. Jordan's parts.
Page 215, line 11 of essay. "_Don Giovanni._" "Giovanni in London; or,
The Libertine Reclaimed," 1817, also by Moncrieff--the play in which
Madame Vestris made so great a hit a year or so later.
Page 216, line 14 from foot. _We have seen Mrs. Jordan._ Mrs. Jordan had
left the London stage in 1815.
Page 216, line 10 from foot. _Great house in the Haymarket._ This was
the King's Theatre (afterwards His Majesty's) where Mozart's "Don
Giovanni" was produced in 1817, with Ambrogetti, the buffo, in the
caste. Lamb's friend, William Ayrton, was the moving spirit in this
representation.
* * * * *
Page 217. II.--MISS KELLY AT BATH.
_Felix Farley's Bristol Journal_, January 30, 1819. The present article
has been set up from that paper. Usually, however, it has been set up
from Leigh Hunt's copy in _The Examiner_, February 7 and 8, 1819, where
it was quoted with the following introduction:--
The Reader, we are sure, will thank us for extracting the following
observations on a favourite Actress, from a Provincial Paper, the
_Bristol Journal_. We should have guessed the masterly and cordial
hand that wrote them had we met with it in the East Indies. There
is but one praise belonging to Miss KELLY which it has omitted, and
which it could not supply;--and that is, that she has had finer
criticism written upon her, than any performer that ever trod the
stage.
The letter was written to John Mathew Gutch (see notes to Lamb's essay
on "George Wither"), who in 1803 became proprietor of _Felix Farley's
Bristol Journal_. Miss Kelly was at Bath in 1819 at the end of January
and first half of February.
Page 217, first line of essay. _Our old play-going days._ The Lambs
lodged with Gutch, who was then a law-stationer, at 34 Southampton
Buildings, in 1800. Lamb was there alone for some time, during his
sister's illness, and it is probably to this period that he refers.
Page 217, second line. _Mrs. Jordan._ See note above. Miss Kelly played
many of Mrs. Jordan's parts.
Page 217, third line. _Dodd and Parsons._ See note to "The New Acting,"
page 465.
Page 217, fourth line. _Smith or Jack Palmer._ William Smith
(1730?-1819), known as Gentleman Smith. Lamb perhaps saw him on the
night of May 18, 1798, his sole appearance for ten years; otherwise his
knowledge of his acting could be but small. On that occasion Smith
played Charles Surface in "The School for Scandal," Joseph Surface being
Jack Palmer's great part (see the _Elia_ essay on "The Artificial
Comedy," for an analysis of Palmer's acting).
Page 217, sixth line. _Miss Kelly._ See note to "The New Acting," page
466. Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882) made her début at the age of seven
in "Bluebeard" (the music by her uncle, Michael Kelly), at Drury Lane,
in 1798. She was enrolled as a chorister of Drury Lane in 1799. She made
her farewell appearance at Drury Lane in 1835.
Page 218, line 20. _Yarico._ In "Inkle and Yarico," 1787, by George
Colman the younger (1762-1836).
Page 218, line 11 from foot. _A Phœbe or a Dinah Cropley._ Phœbe, in
"Rosina," by Mrs. Frances Brooke (1724-1789). I do not find a Dinah
Cropley among Miss Kelly's parts. She played Dinah Primrose in
O'Keeffe's "Young Quaker"--Lamb may have been thinking of that.
Page 218, line 5 from foot. "_The Merry Mourners._" "Modern Antiques;
or, The Merry Mourners," 1791, by John O'Keeffe. It was while playing in
this farce on February 17, 1816, that Miss Kelly was fired at by a
lunatic in the pit. Some of the shot is said to have fallen into the lap
of Mary Lamb, who was present with her brother.
Page 218, foot. _Inebriation in Nell._ Nell, in "The Devil to Pay,"
1731, originally by Charles Coffey (d. 1745), but much adapted. Nell was
one of Mrs. Jordan's great parts.
Page 219, line 2. _Our friend C._ Coleridge, who was also at Christ's
Hospital with Gutch. He says, in _Biographia Literaria_: "Men of Letters
and literary genius are too often what is styled in trivial irony 'fine
gentlemen spoilt in the making.' They care not for show and grandeur in
what surrounds them, having enough within ... but they are fine
gentlemen in all that concerns ease and pleasurable, or at least
comfortable, sensation." In one of his lectures on "Poetry, the Drama
and Shakespeare" in 1818, Coleridge says: "As it must not, so genius can
not, be lawless;" which is the reverse of Lamb's recollection.
Page 219. III.--RICHARD BROME'S "JOVIAL CREW."
_Examiner_, July 4 and 5, 1819. Signed ****. Richard Brome's "Jovial
Crew; or, The Merry Beggars," was first acted in 1641, and continually
revived since then, although it is now no longer seen. Indeed our
opportunities are few to-day of seeing most of the plays that Lamb
praised. The revival criticised by Lamb began at the English Opera House
(the Lyceum) on June 29, 1819.
Page 219, line 7 from foot. _Lovegrove._ William Lovegrove (1778-1816),
a famous character actor. He ceased to be seen at except rare intervals
after 1814.
Page 219, line 5 from foot. _Dowton._ See note to "The New Acting," page
465.
Page 220, line 3. _Wrench._ Benjamin Wrench (1778-1843), a comedian of
the school of Elliston.
Page 220, line 6. _Miss Stevenson._ This actress afterwards became Mrs.
Wiepperts.
Page 220, line 12. _She that played Rachel._ Miss Kelly. Lamb returned
to his praise of this piece and of Miss Kelly in it in a note to the
"Garrick Plays," but he there credited her with playing Meriel.
Page 220, line 15 from foot. "_Pretty Bessy._" In the old ballad "The
Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green," Bessie was the daughter of Henry,
son of Simon de Montfort.
Page 220, line 6 from foot. _Society for the Suppression of Mendicity._
Lamb returned to the attack upon this body in his _Elia_ essay "On the
Decay of Beggars," in 1822.
It has recently come to light that Charles Lamb proposed marriage to
Miss Kelly on July 20, 1819, and was refused; and this proposal is so
intimately associated with two of the _Examiner_ articles that I place
the story of it here.
On July 4th appeared Lamb's article on "The Jovial Crew" with Miss Kelly
as Rachel. To read this article in ignorance of the critic's innermost
feelings for the actress is to experience no more than the customary
intellectual titillation that is imparted by a piece of rich
appreciation from such a pen; but to read it knowing what was in his
mind at the time is a totally different thing. What before was mere
inspired dramatic criticism becomes a revelation charged with human
interest. Read again the passage from "But the _Princess of Mumpers_,
and _Lady Paramount_, of beggarly counterfeit accents, was _she_ that
played _Rachel_," down to "'What a lass that were,' said a stranger who
sate beside us, speaking of Miss Kelly in _Rachel_, 'to go a gypseying
through the world with.'" Knowing what we do of Charles Lamb's little
ways, we can be in no doubt as to the identity of the stranger who was
fabled to have sate beside him.
Miss Kelly would of course read the criticism, and being a woman, and a
woman of genius, would probably be not wholly unaware of the
significance of a portion of it; and therefore perhaps she was not
wholly unprepared for Lamb's letter of proposal, which he wrote a
fortnight later.
"20 July, 1819.
"DEAR MISS KELLY,--We had the pleasure, _pain_ I might better call
it, of seeing you last night in the new Play. It was a most
consummate piece of Acting, but what a task for you to undergo! at
a time when your heart is sore from real sorrow! it has given rise
to a train of thinking, which I cannot suppress.
"Would to God you were released from this way of life; that you
could bring your mind to consent to take your lot with us, and
throw off for ever the whole burden of your Profession. I neither
expect or wish you to take notice of this which I am writing, in
your present over occupied & hurried state.--But to think of it at
your leisure. I have quite income enough, if that were all, to
justify for me making such a proposal, with what I may call even a
handsome provision for my survivor. What you possess of your own
would naturally be appropriated to those, for whose sakes chiefly
you have made so many hard sacrifices. I am not so foolish as not
to know that I am a most unworthy match for such a one as you, but
you have for years been a principal object in my mind. In many a
sweet assumed character I have learned to love you, but simply as
F. M. Kelly I love you better than them all. Can you quit these
shadows of existence, & come & be a reality to us? can you leave
off harrassing yourself to please a thankless multitude, who know
nothing of you, & begin at last to live to yourself & your friends?
"As plainly & frankly as I have seen you give or refuse assent in
some feigned scene, so frankly do me the justice to answer me. It
is impossible I should feel injured or aggrieved by your telling me
at once, that the proposal does not suit you. It is impossible that
I should ever think of molesting you with idle importunity and
persecution after your mind once firmly spoken--but happier, far
happier, could I have leave to hope a time might come, when our
friends might be your friends; our interests yours; our
book-knowledge, if in that inconsiderable particular we have any
little advantage, might impart something to you, which you would
every day have it in your power ten thousand fold to repay by the
added cheerfulness and joy which you could not fail to bring as a
dowry into whatever family should have the honor and happiness of
receiving _you_, the most welcome accession that could be made to
it.
"In haste, but with entire respect & deepest affection, I subscribe
myself
C. LAMB."
This was Miss Kelly's reply to Lamb's letter, returned by hand--the way,
I imagine, in which his proposal had reached her:--
"Henrietta Street, July 20th, 1819.
"An early & deeply rooted attachment has fixed my heart on one from
whom no worldly prospect can well induce me to withdraw it, but
while I thus _frankly_ & decidedly decline your proposal, believe
me, I am not insensible to the high honour which the preference of
such a mind as yours confers upon me--let me, however, hope that
all thought upon this subject will end with this letter, & that you
will henceforth encourage no other sentiment towards me than esteem
in my private character and a continuance of that approbation of my
humble talents which you have already expressed so much & so often
to my advantage and gratification.
"Believe me I feel proud to acknowledge myself
"Your obliged friend
"F. M. KELLY."
Lamb also replied at once, and his little romance was over, July 20th,
1819, seeing the whole drama played.
"July 20th, 1819.
"DEAR MISS KELLY,--_Your injunctions shall be obeyed to a tittle._
I feel myself in a lackadaisacal no-how-ish kind of a humour. I
believe it is the rain, or something. I had thought to have written
seriously, but I fancy I succeed best in epistles of mere fun; puns
& _that_ nonsense. You will be good friends with us, will you not?
let what has past 'break no bones' between us. You will not refuse
us them next time we send for them?[68]
"Yours very truly,
"C. L.
"Do you observe the delicacy of not signing my full name? N.B. Do
not paste that last letter of mine into your Book."
[68] By "bones" Lamb here means also the little ivory discs which
were given by the management to friends, entitling them to free
admission to the theatre.
I have said that the drama was played to the end on July 20th; but it
had a little epilogue. In _The Examiner_ for August 1st Lamb wrote of
the Lyceum again. The play was "The Hypocrite," and this is how he spoke
of Miss Kelly: "She is in truth not framed to tease or torment even in
jest, but to utter a hearty _Yes_ or _No_; to yield or refuse assent
with a noble sincerity. We have not the pleasure of being acquainted
with her, but we have been told that she carries the same cordial
manners into private life."
That Lamb's wishes with regard to the old footing were realised we may
feel sure, for she continued to visit her friends, both in London and at
Enfield, and in later years was taught Latin by Mary Lamb. Miss Kelly
died unmarried at the age of ninety-two; Charles Lamb died unmarried at
the age of fifty-nine.
Page 221. IV.--ISAAC BICKERSTAFF'S "HYPOCRITE."
_Examiner_, August 1 and 2, 1819. Signed ****. This play was produced,
in its operatic form, at the English Opera House on July 27, 1819. It
was announced as from "Tartuffe," by Molière, with alterations by
Cibber, Bickerstaff and others. The music was arranged by Mr. Jolly.
Miss Kelly played Charlotte.
Page 221, line 4. _Dowton in Dr. Cantwell._ For Dowton see note to "The
New Acting," page 465. Dr. Cantwell was the chief character in "The
Hypocrite."
Page 221, line 5. _Mr. Arnold._ Samuel James Arnold (1774-1852),
dramatist and manager of the Lyceum. Lamb's friend, William Ayrton,
married Arnold's sister.
Page 221, line 6. _Mathews._ The great Charles Mathews (1776-1835), whom
Lamb afterwards came to know personally, whose special gift was the
rapid impersonation of differing types.
Page 221, line 9. _Our favourite theatre._ The English Opera House--the
Lyceum--rebuilt 1816.
Page 221, line 10 from foot. _Mr. Kean._ Edmund Kean (1787-1833).
Page 221, line 9 from foot. "_The City Madam._" A play by Philip
Massinger, licensed 1632, in which Luke Frugal is the leading character.
Page 222, lines 3-5. _Whitfield ... Lady Huntingdon._ George Whitefield
(1714-1770), the great Methodist preacher, and chaplain to the Countess
of Huntingdon. Whitefield was actually put on the stage, in "The
Mirror," by Foote, in 1760, as Dr. Squintum.
Page 222, line 13. _Mr. Pearman._ William Pearman, the tenor, a popular
singer, second only to Braham in sea songs.
* * * * *
Page 222. V.--NEW PIECES AT THE LYCEUM.
_Examiner_, August 8 and 9, 1819. Signed ****. This criticism was
introduced by the following note by Leigh Hunt:--
We must make the public acquainted with a hard case of ours.--Here
had we been writing a long elaborate, critical, and analytical
account of the new pieces at the Lyceum, poring over the desk for
two hours in the morning after a late night, and melting away what
little had been left of our brains and nerves from the usual
distillation of the week, when an impudent rogue of a friend, whose
most daring tricks and pretences carry as good a countenance with
them as virtues in any other man, and who has the face, above all,
to be a better critic than ourselves, sends us the following
remarks of his own on those two very pieces. What do we do? The
self-love of your inferior critic must vent itself somehow; and so
we take this opportunity of showing our virtue at the expense of
our talents, and fairly making way for the interloper.
Dear, nine closely-written octavo pages! you were very good after
all, between you and me; and should have given way to nobody else.
If there is room left, a piece of you shall be got in at the end;
for virtue is undoubtedly its own reward, but not quite.
Page 222, foot. "_Belles without Beaux._" This was probably, says
Genest, another version of the French piece from which "Ladies at Home;
or, Gentlemen, we can do without You" (by J. G. Millingen, and produced
also in 1819) was taken. The date of production was August 6, 1819.
Page 223, lines 2-7. _There is Miss Carew, etc._ The seven ladies in the
play were: Miss Kelly, who played Mrs. Dashington; Mrs. W. S. Chatterly,
_née_ Louisa Simeon (b. 1797), wife of William Simmonds Chatterly, the
actor (1787-1822): she was said to be the best representative of a
Frenchwoman on the English stage; Miss Carew (b. 1799), a comic opera
prima donna, at first the understudy of Miss Stephens, and a special
favourite with Barry Cornwall, who says in his _Sicilian Story_, "Give
me (but p'r'aps I'm partial) Miss Carew;" Mrs. Grove, probably the wife
of Grove, an excellent impersonator of whimsical old men and scheming
servants; Miss Love (b. 1801), excellent in chambermaids, to whom
Colonel Berkeley turned (see note on page 521) after leaving Miss Foote;
Miss Stevenson (see note above); and Mrs. Richardson, who was probably
the wife of Richardson, a member of the Covent Garden Company.
Page 223, line 15. _Holcroft's last Comedy._ "The Vindictive Man" (see
note "On the Custom of Hissing," page 450).
Page 223, line 19. _Mrs. Harlow._ Sarah Harlowe (1765-1852), a
low-comedy actress, who played many of Mrs. Jordan's parts. She left the
stage in 1826.
Page 224, line 5. _Wilkinson ... in a "Walk for a Wager."_ In "Walk for
a Wager; or, A Bailiff's Bet," a musical farce, the hero, Hookey Walker,
was impersonated by John Penbury Wilkinson, and Miss Kelly played Emma.
Page 224, line 12. _"Amateurs and Actors" ... Mr. Peak._ A musical
farce, by Richard Brinsley Peake (1792-1847), produced in 1818.
Page 224, last paragraph. _Last week's article._ That on "The
Hypocrite," preceding this (see notes above). "A New Way to Pay Old
Debts," published 1632, is a comedy by Massinger, in which Sir Giles
Overreach is the leading character.
* * * * *
Page 225. FOUR REVIEWS.
These four reviews, together with that of Wordsworth's _Excursion_,
written five years earlier (see page 187), and that of Hood and
Reynolds' _Odes and Addresses_ (see page 335), make up the total number
of reviews that Lamb is known positively to have written. We know from
his _Letters_ that in 1803 he was trying to review Godwin's _Chaucer_,
and again in 1821 he writes to Taylor that he is busy on a review for a
friend; but neither of these articles has come to light. The fact is
that Lamb always reviewed with difficulty, and after his bitter
experience with Gifford (see note on page 470) he was more than ever
disinclined to attempt that form of writing.
Page 225. I.--"FALSTAFF'S LETTERS."
_Examiner_, September 5 and 6, 1819. Signed ****. Reprinted in _The
Indicator_, January 24, 1821. Not reprinted by Lamb.
James White, born in the same year as Lamb, was nominally the author of
this book, but there is strong reason to believe that Lamb had a big
share in it. Jem White, who is now known solely by the pleasant figure
that he cuts in the _Elia_ essay "The Praise of Chimney Sweepers," was
at school with Lamb at Christ's Hospital, receiving his nomination from
Thomas Coventry, Samuel Salt's friend and fellow Bencher. Lamb saw much
of White for a few years after leaving school, finding him, on the merry
side, as congenial a companion as he could wish.
It was Lamb who, probably in 1795, when they both were only twenty,
induced White to study Shakespeare; and it is impossible to believe that
a friend of Lamb's, whom he saw nearly every night, could have been
composing a full-blooded Shakespearian joke, and Lamb have no hand in
it. Southey, indeed, in a letter to Edward Moxon after Lamb's death,
states the fact that Lamb and White were joint authors of _Falstaff's
Letters_, as if there were no doubt about it.
My own impression is that Lamb's fingers certainly held the pen when the
Dedication to Master Samuel Irelaunde was written.
And very characteristically Elian is the following explanation, in the
preface, of certain gaps in the _Letters_:--
"Reader, whenever as journeying onward in thy epistolary progress, a
chasm should occur to interrupt the chain of events, I beseech thee
blame not me, but curse the rump of roast pig. This maiden-sister,
conceive with what pathos I relate it, absolutely made use of several,
no doubt invaluable letters, to shade the jutting protuberances of that
animal from disproportionate excoriation in its circuitous approaches to
the fire."
Either Lamb wrote that, or to James White's influence we owe some of the
most cherished mannerisms of _Elia_. Be that as it may, it is probably
true that White's zest in the making of this book helped towards Lamb's
Elizabethanising.
Lamb admired _Falstaff's Letters_ more than it is possible quite to
understand except on the supposition that he had a share in it; or, at
any rate, that it brought back to him the memory of so many pleasant
nights. He never, says Talfourd, omitted to buy a copy when he saw one
in the sixpenny box of a bookstall, in order to give it with superlative
recommendations to a friend. For example, after sending it to Manning,
he asks: "I hope by this time you are prepared to say the _Falstaff
Letters_ are a bundle of the sharpest, queerest, profoundest humours of
any these juice-drained latter times have spawned?" The little volume is
now very rare. A second edition was published in 1797 and reprints in
1877 and 1905. The full title runs: _Original Letters, &c., of Sir John
Falstaff and his friends; now first made public by a gentleman, a
descendant of Dame Quickly, from genuine manuscripts which have been in
the possession of the Quickly Family near four hundred years_. 1796.
"White," said J. M. Gutch, another schoolfellow, "was known as Sir John
among his friends." See the footnote to the _Elia_ essay on "The Old
Actors".
Page 225, first line of essay. _The Roxburgh sale._ The library of the
third Duke of Roxburgh was sold, in a forty-five days' sale, between May
18 and July 8, 1812.
Page 229. II.--CHARLES LLOYD'S POEMS.
_Examiner_, October 24 and 25, 1819. Signed ****. Not reprinted by Lamb.
Lamb and Lloyd had been intimate friends in 1797 and 1798, when they
produced together _Blank Verse_, and when for a while Lloyd shared rooms
with James White. But serious differences arose which need not be
inquired into here, and after 1800 they drifted apart and were never
really friendly again. Lloyd settled among the Lakes, where at frequent
intervals for many years he became the prey of religious mania. In 1818,
however, the clouds effectually dispersed for a while, and, returning to
London, he resumed the poetical activity of his early life. The new
pieces in _Nugæ Canoræ_, 1819, were the first-fruit of this period,
which lasted until 1823. He then relapsed into his old state and died,
lost to the world, in 1839. Writing to Lloyd concerning his later poetry
Lamb said: "Your lines are not to be understood reading on one leg."
In Lloyd's poem, "Desultory Thoughts in London," 1821, are portraits of
both Coleridge and Lamb. One stanza on Lamb has these lines:--
It is a dainty banquet, known to few,
To thy mind's inner shrine to have access;
While choicest stores of intellect endue
That sanctuary, in marvellous excess.
Those lambent glories ever bright and new,
Those, privileged to be its inmates, bless!
This shows that Lloyd retained his old affection and admiration for
Lamb, just as Lamb's willingness to review Lloyd shows that he had
forgotten the past. The quotations have been corrected from Lloyd's
pages.
Page 230, line 15. _Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin._ Mary Wollstonecraft
Godwin (1759-1797), the first wife of William Godwin, and the advocate
of women's independence. Charles Lloyd had known her in his early London
days.
Page 232. III.--BARRON FIELD'S POEMS.
_Examiner_, January 16 and 17, 1820. Signed ****. Not reprinted by Lamb.
Barron Field (1786-1846), son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ's
Hospital, was long one of Lamb's friends, possibly through his brother,
a fellow clerk of Lamb's in the India House. See the _Elia_ essays on
"Distant Correspondents" and "Mackery End," and notes. Field was in
Australia from 1817 to 1824 as Judge of the Supreme Court of New South
Wales. His _First-Fruits of Australian Poetry_ was printed privately in
1819 and afterwards added as an appendix to _Geographical Memoirs on
New South Wales_, 1825.
Page 232. _Motto. "I first adventure...."_ An adaptation of the couplet
in Hall's satires:--
I first adventure. Follow me who list,
And be the second English satirist.
This couplet was placed by Field on the threshold of the poems in the
_Geographical Memoirs_, borrowed, I imagine, from Lamb's review.
Page 232, line 11 from foot. _Thiefland._ Compare the _Elia_ essay
"Distant Correspondents."
Page 232, line 8 from foot. _A merry Captain._ Captain (afterwards
Rear-Admiral) James Burney (1750-1821), Lamb's friend, who sailed with
Cook on two voyages. Lamb told Mrs. Shelley of the Captain's pun in much
the same words; but the pun itself we do not know.
Page 233, line 16. _Jobson, etc._ These characters are in "The Devil to
Pay," by Charles Coffey, 1731.
Page 233, line 26. _Braham or Stephens._ John Braham, the tenor; Miss
Stephens made her first appearance at Drury Lane, as Polly in "The
Beggar's Opera," in 1798.
Page 233, line 12 from foot. _The first...._ The first poem was entitled
"Botany Bay Flowers."
Page 234. "_The Kangaroo._" Writing to Barron Field in 1820 Lamb says:
"We received your 'Australian First-Fruits,' of which I shall say
nothing here, but refer you to **** of 'The Examiner,' who speaks our
mind on all public subjects. I can only assure you that both Coleridge
and Wordsworth ... were hugely taken with your Kangaroo." The poem is
here corrected from the author's text.
Page 235. IV.--KEATS' "LAMIA."
_The New Times_, July 19, 1820. This is the article referred to by
Cowden Clarke in his _Recollections of Writers_, 1878: "Upon the
publication of the last volume of poems [_Lamia_, etc.] Charles Lamb
wrote one of his finely appreciative and cordial critiques in the
_Morning Chronicle_." By a slip of memory Clarke gave the wrong paper.
Lamb wrote in the _Morning Chronicle_ occasionally (his sonnet to Sarah
Burney appeared in it as near to the date in question as July 13, 1820),
but it was in _The New Times_ that he reviewed Keats. _The New Times_
was founded by John (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart (1773-1856), Lamb and
Coleridge's friend, and the brother-in-law of Hazlitt.
Two days after the appearance of Lamb's review--on July 21, 1820--_The
New Times_ printed some further extracts from the book, which presumably
had been crowded out of the article.
There is so little doubt in my own mind that this is Lamb's review that
I have placed it in the body of this book and not in the Appendix. The
internal evidence is very strong, particularly at the end, and in the
use of such phrases as "joint strengths" and "younger impressibilities."
But there is external evidence too. Leigh Hunt, writing of Keats, in his
_Lord Byron and his Contemporaries_, 1828, says:--
I remember Charles Lamb's delight and admiration on reading this
work [_Lamia_]; how pleased he was with the designation of Mercury
as the "star of Lethe" (rising, as it were, and glittering, as he
came upon that pale region); with the fine daring anticipation in
that passage of the second poem,--
"So the two brothers and their _murdered man_,
Rode past fair Florence;"
and with the description, at once delicate and gorgeous, of Agnes
[_i.e._, Madeline], praying beneath the painted window.
Lamb did not know Keats well. He had met him only a few times, the
historic occasion being the dinner at Haydon's, in December, 1817, when
the Comptroller of Stamps was present. But he admired his work (he told
Crabb Robinson he considered it next to Wordsworth's), and he hated the
treatment that Keats received from certain critics. Keats, by the way,
mentions meeting Lamb at Novello's and having to endure some wretched
puns.
* * * * *
Page 239. SIR THOMAS MORE.
_The Indicator_, December 20, 1820. Signed ****. Leigh Hunt introduced
the article in these words:--
The author of the _Table-Talk_ in our last [see note on p. 466] has
obliged us with the following pungent morsels of Sir Thomas
More,--devils, we may call them. Brantome, noticing the oaths of
some eminent Christian manslayers, and informing us that "the good
man, Monsieur de la Roche du Maine, swore by 'God's head full of
relics,'" adds in a parenthesis,--"Where the devil did he get
that?"--"Ou diable avoit-il trouvè celuy-la?" We may apply this
vivacious mode of questioning, with a more critical propriety, to
those eminent Christian opposers of reformation, past, present, and
to come, and ask them, where the devil they get a notion that they
are on the side of charity? It is possible to hate for the sake of
a loving theory; but it is a dangerous piece of self-flattery, and
more likely to spring up in hating than loving minds. If it
partakes of the reverent privileges of sorrow in those who are
unsuccessful or oppressed, it is odious in those who are
flourishing, and we are afraid is nothing but sheer dogmatism and
tyranny even in men as great as Sir Thomas More.
Further proof of Lamb's authorship is contained in the circumstance that
the passages here quoted are copied in one of his Commonplace Books.
* * * * *
Page 246. THE CONFESSIONS OF H. F. V. H. DELAMORE, ESQ.
_London Magazine_, April, 1821. First reprinted in Mr. Dobell's
_Sidelights on Charles Lamb_, 1903.
Lamb's "Chapter on Ears" had appeared in the March number, containing
the sentence, "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." The main confession aroused by this statement, although it
is hedged about by a host of inventions, seems to be perfectly true:
Lamb did on one occasion sit in the stocks. Our evidence, which,
fortified by this little article (a discovery of Mr. Bertram Dobell's),
is very strong, is to be found on the fly-leaf of the annotated copy of
Wither described above. On this fly-leaf Pulham has recorded that during
a country walk on a certain Sunday Lamb was set in the stocks for
brawling while service was in progress. According to Mr. Delamore, the
indignity was suffered at Barnet, and it was probably, if what he says
about the short duration of the punishment be true, nearly as much a
joke on the part of the authorities as on the part of Lamb. I cannot
find any record of the incident in the Barnet archives, but the stocks
are still standing, on the outskirts of Barnet, on Hadley Green.
Additional proof that Lamb wrote these "Confessions" is to be found in
the little note inserted in the following (May) number of the _London
Magazine_, under the "Lion's Head":--
"_Spes_ may be assured, that the fact related in the paper in our last
Number, signed 'Delamore,' and dated 'Sackville Street,' is genuine,
with the exception of the name and date. It is the writer's own story.
"----quæque ipse mìserrima vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui.
"* * * *."
Four stars was, of course, one of Lamb's commonest non-_Elia_ signatures
(see note on page 464). The quotation is from _Aeneid_, II., 5. "The
most unhappy scenes which I beheld, and in which I played a leading
part."
Page 247, line 15. * * * * * * * * * * *. In the stocks.
Page 247, line 19. _O Clarencieux! O Norroy!_ The two provincial
kings-at-arms, Clarencieux, after the Duke of Clarence, son of Edward
III., whose office is south of the Trent, and Norroy (North-roy), whose
office is north of the Trent.
Page 248, line 4. _Barnet ... Red Rose._ Referring to the battle of
Barnet on April 14, 1471, when Edward IV. defeated and slew the Earl of
Warwick, and practically destroyed the Lancastrian, or Red Rose, cause,
finally doing so at the battle of Tewkesbury a little later.
* * * * *
Page 248. THE GENTLE GIANTESS.
_London Magazine_, December, 1822. Not reprinted by Lamb.
We find the germ of this essay in a letter from Lamb to Dorothy
Wordsworth, in 1821, when she was staying with her uncle, Christopher
Wordsworth, the Master of Trinity:--
"Ask any body you meet, who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, and I'll
hold you a wager they'll say Mrs. Smith. She broke down two benches in
Trinity Gardens, one on the confines of St. John's, which occasioned a
litigation between the societies as to repairing it. In warm weather she
retires into an ice-cellar (literally!), and dates the returns of the
years from a hot Thursday some 20 years back. She sits in a room with
opposite doors and windows, to let in a thorough draft, which gives her
slenderer friends toothaches. She is to be seen in the market every
morning, at 10 cheapening fowls, which I observe the Cambridge
Poulterers are not sufficiently careful to stump."
It was characteristic of Lamb that finding the widow at Cambridge he
should have set her in the essay at Oxford. He did the same thing in his
Elia essay "On Oxford in the Vacation," which he conceived at the sister
university.
Page 248, line 4 of essay. _The maid's aunt of Brainford._ The maid's
aunt of Brentford; otherwise Sir John Falstaff in petticoats (see "The
Merry Wives of Windsor," Act IV., Scene 2).
* * * * *
Page 251. LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED.
_London Magazine_, January, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.
De Quincey's "Letters to a Young Man whose Education has been Neglected"
began in the _London Magazine_ in January, 1823. There were five
altogether, ending in July of the same year. From the date at the end of
Lamb's "Letter," and from a passage in a Letter to Barton of March 5,
1823, we may suppose him to have meant his parody to appear at the same
time. "Your poem," he says, "found me engaged about a humorous Paper for
the _London_, which I had called 'A Letter to an _Old Gentleman_ whose
Education had been Neglected'--and when it was done Taylor & Hessey
would not print it, and it discouraged me from doing anything else."
The problem of De Quincey's "Young Man" was contained in this sentence
in the first letter: "To your first question,--whether to you, with your
purposes and at your age of thirty-two, a residence at either of our
English universities--or at any foreign university, can be of much
service."--Writing to Miss Hutchinson in January, 1825, Lamb says: "De
Quincey's Parody was submitted to him before printed, and had his
Probatum."
I have not been able to discover whether or no any special significance
attaches to the name of Grierson; or whether Lamb took the name at
random.
Page 255, line 25. _Mr. Hartlib._ Milton's friend, Samuel Hartlib (died
about 1670), to whom the _Tractate on Education_, which Lamb slyly plays
upon in this paragraph, was addressed by Milton in 1644. Hartlib is said
to have brought himself to poverty by his generosity to poor scholars.
* * * * *
Page 257. RITSON _VERSUS_ JOHN SCOTT THE QUAKER.
_London Magazine_, April, 1823. Not reprinted by Lamb.
This was a hoax, as Lamb explained in a letter to Bernard Barton (March
5, 1823): "I took up Scott, where I had scribbled some petulant remarks,
and for a make-shift father'd them on Ritson." Scott was John Scott, the
Quaker, better known as Scott of Amwell (1730-1783), whose _Critical
Essays_, 1785, do actually contain the passages quoted by Lamb, with
slight errors of transcription. Joseph Ritson (1752-1803), antiquary and
critic, might easily have commented as Lamb has done, but with more
savagery. Ritson's library was sold in December, 1803.
* * * * *
Page 265. LETTER OF ELIA TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
_London Magazine_, October, 1823. Not reprinted by Lamb, except in part.
See below.
It was Lamb's fate to be misunderstood by the _Quarterly Review_; and in
that misunderstanding lay the real origin of the "Letter to Southey." On
at least four occasions Lamb was unfairly treated by this powerful
organ: in December, 1811, when, in a review of Weber's edition of Ford's
works, Lamb was called a poor maniac (see note on page 471); in October,
1814, when his review of Wordsworth's _Excursion_ was hacked to pieces
(see same note); in April, 1822, when a reviewer of Reid's
_Hypochondriasis_ (believed to be Dr. Robert Gooch, a friend of Southey)
stated that he knew for a fact that Lamb's "Confessions of a Drunkard"
were autobiographical (see note on page 458); and lastly, in January,
1823, when Southey, in an article on "Theo-philanthropism in France and
the Spread of Infidelity," remarked, incidentally and quite needlessly,
of _Elia_, then just published, that it wanted a sounder religious
feeling, and went on to rebuke Lamb's friend, Leigh Hunt, for his lack
of Christian faith. It was this accumulation of affront that stirred
Lamb to his remonstrance, far more than anger with Southey--although
anger he naturally had. Lamb's real opponent was Gifford; as in a
private letter to Southey, after the publication of the article and
after Southey had written to him on the matter, he admitted (see below).
Lamb's own remark concerning the "Letter to Southey," there
expressed--"My guardian angel was absent at that time"--is perhaps
right, although the passage in the article in defence of his friends
could be ill spared. As for Southey, while one can see his point of view
and respect his honesty, one is glad that so poor a piece of literary
criticism and so unlovely a display of self-righteousness should be
chastised; without, however, too greatly admiring the chastisement.
Lamb's first idea was to let the review pass without notice, as we see
from the following remark to Bernard Barton in July, 1823:--
"Southey has attacked 'Elia' on the score of infidelity in the
_Quarterly_ article, 'Progress of Infidelity.' I had not, nor have
seen the _Monthly_. He might have spared an old friend such a
construction of a few careless flights, that meant no harm to
religion. If all his unguarded expressions were to be collected--!
But I love and respect Southey, and will not retort. I hate his
review, and his being a reviewer. The hint he has dropped will knock
the sale of the book on the head, which was almost at a stop before.
Let it stop, there is corn in Egypt, while there is cash at
Leadenhall. You and I are something besides being writers, thank
God!"
But Lamb thought better, or worse, of his first intention, and wrote the
"Letter."
It appeared in October, 1823, and caused some talk among literary
people. Southey had many enemies who were glad to see him trounced. _The
Times_, for example, of October 2, said:--
The number just published of the _London Magazine_ contains a
curious letter from Elia (Charles Lamb) to Mr. Southey. It treats
the laureat with that contempt which his always uncandid and
frequently malignant spirit deserves. When it is considered that
Mr. Lamb has been the fast friend of Southey, and is besides of a
particularly kind and peaceable nature, it is evident that nothing
but gross provocation could have roused him to this public
declaration of his disgust.
On the other hand, Christopher North (John Wilson), of _Blackwood_, made
the letter the text of a homily to literary men, in _Blackwood_, for
October, 1823, under the heading of "A Manifesto." After some general
remarks on the tendency of authors to take themselves, or at any rate
their position in the public eye, too seriously, he continued:--
Our dearly-beloved friend, Charles Lamb, (we would fain call him
ELIA; but that, as he himself says, "would be as good as naming
him,") what is this you are doing? Mr. Southey, having read your
Essays, wished to pay you a compliment, and called them, in the
"Quarterly," "a book which wants only a sounder religious feeling,
to be as delightful as it is original!" And with this eulogy you
are not only dissatisfied, but so irate at the Laureate, that
nothing will relieve your bile, but a Letter to the Doctor of seven
good pages in "The London." Prodigious! Nothing would content your
highness (not serene) of the India-House, but such a sentence as
would sell your lucubrations as a puff; and because Taylor and
Hessey cannot send this to the newspapers, you wax sour, sulky, and
vituperative of your old crony, and twit him with his "old familiar
faces." This is, our dear Charles, most unreasonable--most unworthy
of you; and we know not how to punish you with sufficient severity,
now that Hodge of Tortola[69] is no more; but the inflexible
Higgins of Nevis still survives, and we must import him to flog you
in the market-place.
[69] See note to "Christ's Hospital" essay, in Vol. II.--ED.
Are you, or are you not, a friend to the liberty of the press? of
human thought? feeling? opinion? Is it, Charles, enormous
wickedness in Southey thus to characterize your Essays? If so, what
do you think of the invasion of Spain, the murder of the Franks
family, Pygmalion's amour with the tailor's daughter, the military
execution of the Duc d'Enghien, Palm's death, the massacre at Scio,
Z.'s Letters on the Cockney-School, Don Juan, John Knox, Calvin,
Cock-fighting, the French Revolution, the Reduction of the Five Per
Cents Navy, Godwin's Political Justice, the Tread-Mill, the
Crusades, Gas fighting booty, D'Israeli's Quarrels of Authors,
Byron's conduct to the Hunts, and the doctrine of the universal
depravity of the human race?
Is there a sound religious feeling in your Essays, or is there not?
And what is a sound religious feeling? You declare yourself a
Unitarian; but, as a set-off to that heterodoxy, you vaunt your
bosom-friendship with T. N. T., "a little tainted with
Socinianism," and "----, a sturdy old Athanasian." With this
vaunting anomaly you make the Laureate blush, till his face tinges
Derwent-water with a ruddy lustre as of the setting sun. O Charles,
Charles----if we could but "see ourselves as others see us!" Would
that we ourselves could do so! But how would that benefit you? You
are too amiable to wish to see Christopher North humiliated in his
own estimation, and startled at the sight of _Public Derision_,
like yourself! Yes----even Cockneys blush for you; and the many
clerks of the India-House hang down their heads and are ashamed.
You present THE PUBLIC with a list of your friends. "W., the light,
and warm--as light-hearted Janus of the London!" Who the devil is
he? Let him cover both his faces with a handkerchief. "H. C. R.,
unwearied in the offices of a friend;" the correspondent and
caricaturist of Wordsworth, the very identical "W----th," who
"estated" you in so many "possessions," and made you proud of your
"rent-roll." "W. A., the last and steadiest of that little knot of
whist-players." Ah! lack-a-day, Charles, what are trumps? And "M.,
the noble-minded kinsman by wedlock" of the same eternal "W----th."
Pray, what is his wife's name? and were the banns published in St.
Pancras Church?----All this is very vain and very virulent; and you
indeed give us portraits of your friends, each in the
clare-obscure.
We were in the number of your earliest, sincerest, best, and most
powerful friends, Charles; and yet, alas! for the ingratitude of
the human heart, you have never so much as fortified yourself with
the initials of our formidable name----"C. N. the Editor of
Blackwood." Oh, that would have been worth P----r, A---- P----,
G----n, and "the rest," all in a lump; better than the
"Four-and-twenty Fiddlers all in a row." Or had you had the
courage and the conscience to print, at full length, "CHRISTOPHER
NORTH," why, these sixteen magical letters would have opened every
door for you, like Sesame in the Arabian Tales. These four magical
syllables, triumphant over the Laureate's "ugly characters,
standing in the very front of his notice, like some bug-bear, to
frighten all good Christians from purchasing," would have been a
passport for Elia throughout all the kingdoms of Christianity, and
billetted you, a true soldier of the Faith, in any serious family
you chose, with morning and evening prayers; a hot, heavy supper
every night; a pan of hot-coals ere you were sheeted; and a good
motherly body, with six unmarried daughters, to tap at your
bed-room door at day-light, and summon you down stairs from a state
of "_otium cum dignitate_" to one of "gaiety and innocence," among
damsels with scriptural names, short petticoats, and a zealous
attachment to religious establishments.
We may set off against this the comment of Crabb Robinson:--
Nothing that Lamb has ever written has impressed me more strongly
with the sweetness of his disposition and the strength of his
affections.
Coleridge and Hazlitt also both commended the "Letter." Southey
displayed a fine temper. He wrote to Lamb on November 19, 1823:--
MY DEAR LAMB--On Monday I saw your letter in the _London Magazine_,
which I had not before had an opportunity of seeing, and I now take
the first interval of leisure for replying to it.
Nothing could be further from my mind than any intention or
apprehension of any way offending or injuring a man concerning whom
I have never spoken, thought, or felt otherwise than with
affection, esteem, and admiration.
If you had let me know in any private or friendly manner that you
felt wounded by a sentence in which nothing but kindness was
intended--or that you found it might injure the sale of your
book--I would most readily and gladly have inserted a note in the
next Review to qualify and explain what had hurt you.
You have made this impossible, and I am sorry for it. But I will
not engage in controversy with you to make sport for the
Philistines.
The provocation must be strong indeed that can rouse me to do this,
even with an enemy. And if you can forgive an unintended offence as
heartily as I do the way in which you have resented it, there will
be nothing to prevent our meeting as we have heretofore done, and
feeling towards each other as we have always been wont to do.
Only signify a correspondent willingness on your part, and send me
your address, and my first business next week shall be to reach
your door, and shake hands with you and your sister. Remember me to
her most kindly and believe me--Yours, with unabated esteem and
regards,
ROBERT SOUTHEY.
Lamb replied at once--November 21, 1823:--
DEAR SOUTHEY--The kindness of your note has melted away the mist
which was upon me. I have been fighting against a shadow. That
accursed Q. R. had vexed me by a gratuitous speaking, of its own
knowledge, that the _Confessions of a D----d_ was a genuine
description of the state of the writer. Little things, that are not
ill meant, may produce much ill. _That_ might have injured me alive
and dead. I am in a public office, and my life is insured. I was
prepared for anger, and I thought I saw, in a few obnoxious words,
a hard case of repetition directed against me. I wished both
magazine and review at the bottom of the sea. I shall be ashamed to
see you, and my sister (though innocent) will be still more so; for
the folly was done without her knowledge, and has made her uneasy
ever since. My guardian angel was absent at that time.
I will muster up courage to see you, however, any day next week
(Wednesday excepted). We shall hope that you will bring Edith with
you. That will be a second mortification. She will hate to see us;
but come and heap embers. We deserve it; I for what I've done, and
she for being my sister.
Do come early in the day, by sun-light, that you may see my
_Milton_.
I am at Colebrook Cottage, Colebrook Row, Islington: a detached
whitish house, close to the New River end of Colebrook Terrace,
left hand from Sadler's Wells.
Will you let me know the day before?
Your penitent,
C. LAMB.
_P.S._--I do not think your handwriting at all like ****'s. I do
not think many things I did think.
There the matter ended. Seven years later, however, when _The Literary
Gazette_ fell upon Lamb's _Album Verses_, in a paltry attack, Southey
sent to _The Times_ a poem in defence and praise of his friend,
beginning:--
Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear,
For rarest genius, and for sterling worth,
Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere,
And wit that never gave an ill thought birth ...
Page 265, line 4 of essay. _A recent paper on "Infidelity."_ The passage
relating to Lamb and Thornton Hunt ran as follows:--
Unbelievers have not always been honest enough thus to express
their real feelings; but this we know concerning them, that when
they have renounced their birthright of hope, they have not been
able to divest themselves of fear. From the nature of the human
mind this might be presumed, and in fact it is so. They may deaden
the heart and stupify the conscience, but they cannot destroy the
imaginative faculty. There is a remarkable proof of this in Elia's
Essays, a book which wants only a sounder religious feeling, to be
as delightful as it is original. In that upon "Witches and other
Night Fears," he says: "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 hear
or read 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." This poor child, instead of being
trained up in the way which he should go, had been bred in the ways
of modern philosophy; he had systematically been prevented from
knowing any thing 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.
Page 267, line 14 from foot. _"Given king" in bliss and a "given
chamberlain" in torment._ A reference to Southey's "Vision of Judgment,"
1820, wherein George III. is received into heaven, among those coming
from hell to arraign him being Wilkes, thus described:--
Beholding the foremost,
Him by the cast of his eye oblique, I knew as the firebrand
Whom the unthinking populace held for their idol and hero,
Lord of Misrule in his day.
Page 268, line 5. _A jest of the Devil._ Southey's early "Ballads and
Metrical Tales" are rich in legends of the Devil, somewhat in the vein
of Ingoldsby, though lacking Barham's rollicking fun.
Page 268, line 10. _A noble Lord._ Lord Byron, whose "Vision of
Judgment," written in 1821 in ridicule of Southey's, begins:--
Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate:
His keys were rusty, and the lock was dull.
Page 268, line 19. _A life of George Fox._ Southey was collecting for
some years materials for a life of George Fox, the first Quaker, but he
did not carry out the project.
Page 268, line 22. _The Methodists are shy._ Southey's _Life of Wesley_
was published in 1820. It was greatly admired by Coleridge.
Page 268, line 24. _The errors of that Church._ See Southey's "Ballads
and Metrical Tales" again, for comic versions of legends of saints.
Page 269, line 26. _And N._ Randal Norris, Sub-Treasurer of the Inner
Temple, who died in 1827.
Page 269, line 27. _T. N. T._ Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854), the
advocate, author of "Ion" who was to become Lamb's executor and
biographer. He wrote an enthusiastic and discriminating essay on
Wordsworth's genius in the _New Monthly Magazine_.
Page 269, line 31. _And W._ Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794-1852),
essayist, painter and criminal, who contributed gay and whimsical
articles to the _London Magazine_ over the signature "Janus
Weathercock." Subsequently Wainewright was convicted of forgery, and he
became also a poisoner; but he seems to have shown Lamb only his most
charming side.
Page 269, line 32. _The translator of Dante._ Henry Francis Cary
(1772-1844), whose _Inferno_ appeared in 1805, the whole poem being
completed in 1812. He contributed to the _London Magazine_. Later in
life Cary, then assistant keeper of the printed books in the British
Museum, became one of Lamb's closer friends. He wrote the epitaph on his
grave.
Page 269, line 33. _And Allan C._ Allan Cunningham (1784-1842), the
Scotch ballad writer and author, and a regular contributor to the
_London Magazine_ over the signature "Nalla."
Page 269, line 34. _And P----r._ Bryan Walter Procter (1787-1874),
better known as Barry Cornwall, another contributor to the _London
Magazine_. He afterwards, 1866-1868, wrote a Memoir of Lamb.
Page 269, line 35. _A----p._ Thomas Allsop (1795-1880), a stock-broker,
whose sympathies were with advanced social movements. He has been called
the favourite disciple of Coleridge. In 1836 he issued a volume entitled
_Letters, Conversations and Recollections of Coleridge_, which contains
many interesting references to Lamb.
Page 269, line 35. _G----n._ James Gillman, a doctor, residing at the
Grove, Highgate, who received Coleridge into his house, in 1816, as a
patient, and kept him there to the end as a friend. He afterwards began
a Life of him, which was not, however, completed. Coleridge at this
time, 1823, was nearly fifty-one.
Page 269, line 38. _Salutation tavern._ The Salutation and Cat, the
tavern at 17 Newgate Street, opposite Christ's Hospital, where Lamb and
Coleridge most resorted in the '90's. Now a new building.
Page 269, line 39. _Pantisocracy._ The chief Pantisocrats--Coleridge,
Southey and Robert Lovell--who all married sisters, a Miss Fricker
falling to each--were, with a few others--George Burnett among them and
Favell--to establish a new and ideal communism in America on the banks
of the Susquehanna. Two hours' work a day was to suffice them for
subsistence, the remaining time being spent in the cultivation of the
intellect. This was in 1794. Southey, however, went to Portugal, Lovell
died, Coleridge was Coleridge, and Pantisocracy disappeared.
Page 269, line 40. _W----th._ William Wordsworth, the poet.
Page 270, line 1. _And M._ Thomas Monkhouse, who died in 1825, a cousin
of Mary Hutchinson, William Wordsworth's wife, and of Sarah Hutchinson,
her sister, and Lamb's correspondent.
Page 270, line 2. _H. C. R._ Henry Crabb Robinson (1775-1867), the
diarist and the friend of the Lambs until their death. In Crabb
Robinson's reminiscences of Lamb is this passage:--
I felt flattered by the being mingled with the other of Lamb's
friends under the initials of my name. I mention it as an anecdote
which shows that Lamb's reputation was spread even among lawyers,
that a 4 guinea brief was brought to me by an Attorney an entire
stranger, at the following Assizes, by direction of another
Attorney also a stranger, who knew nothing more of me than that I
was Elia's H. C. R.
Page 270, line 3. _Clarkson._ Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), the great
opponent of slavery, whom Lamb met in the Lakes in 1802.
Page 270, line 6. _Dyer._ George Dyer (1755-1841), whom we meet so often
in Lamb's writings.
Page 270, line 7. _The veteran Colonel._ Colonel Phillips, Admiral
Burney's brother-in-law. He married Susanna Burney, who died in 1800.
Phillips, once an officer in the Marines, had sailed with Cook, and was
a witness of his death. He had known Dr. Johnson, and a letter on the
great man from his pen is printed in J. T. Smith's _Book for a Rainy
Day_.
Page 270, line 9. _W. A._ William Ayrton (1777-1858), the musical
critic; in Hazlitt's praise, "the Will Honeycomb of our set."
Page 270, line 12. _Admiral Burney._ Rear-Admiral Burney (1750-1821),
brother of Fanny Burney, Madame D'Arblay. The Admiral lived in Little
James Street, Pimlico. For a further account of this circle of friends
see Hazlitt's essay "On the Conversation of Authors" (_The Plain
Speaker_). Hazlitt's own share in the gathering ceased after an
unfortunate discussion of Fanny Burney's _Wanderer_, which Hazlitt
condemned in terms that her brother, the Admiral, could not forgive.
Hence, perhaps, to some extent, Hazlitt's description of the old seaman
as one who "had you at an advantage by never understanding you." Later,
in his essay "On the Pleasures of Hating," also in _The Plain Speaker_,
Hazlitt wrote:--
What is become of "that set of whist-players," celebrated by ELIA
in his notable _Epistle to Robert Southey, Esq._ (and now I think
of it--that I myself have celebrated in this very volume), "that
for so many years called Admiral Burney friend?" They are
scattered, like last year's snow. Some of them are dead, or gone to
live at a distance, or pass one another in the street like
strangers, or if they stop to speak, do it as coolly and try to
_cut_ one another as soon as possible. Some of us have grown rich,
others poor. Some have got places under Government, others a
_niche_ in the _Quarterly Review_. Some of us have dearly earned a
name in the world; whilst others remain in their original privacy.
We despise the one, and envy and are glad to mortify the other.
On the next page Hazlitt added:--
I think I must be friends with Lamb again, since he has written
that magnanimous Letter to Southey, and told him a piece of his
mind!
It was very soon after that Hazlitt began to visit the Lambs once more;
and they never were on bad terms again.
Page 270, line 18. _Authors of "Rimini" and "Table Talk."_ Leigh Hunt
(1784-1859), whose _Story of Rimini_ was published in 1816; and William
Hazlitt (1778-1830), whose _Table Talk_, first series, which appeared in
the _London Magazine_, was published in 1821-1822; other series coming
later.
Page 271, line 15. _"Here," say you ..._ This is the passage in
Southey's article to which Lamb refers:--
But if the sincere inquirer would see the authenticity of the
Gospels proved by a chain of testimony, step by step, through all
ages, from the days of the Apostles, he is referred to the exact
and diligent Lardner. Even then, perhaps, it may surprize him to be
told that more critical labour, and that too of a severer kind, has
been bestowed upon the New Testament, than upon all other books of
all ages and countries; that there is not a difficult text, a
disputed meaning, or doubtful word, which has not been
investigated, not only through every accessible manuscript, but
through every ancient version; and that the most profound and
laborious scholars whom the world ever produced, generation after
generation, have devoted themselves to these researches, and past
in them their patient, meritorious, and honourable lives. Let him
read Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament, and he will be
satisfied that there is no exaggeration in this statement. The
unwearied diligence, the profound sagacity, and the comprehensive
erudition with which the New Testament has been scrutinized, and
its authenticity ascertained, cannot be estimated too highly; and
we will boldly assert, cannot possibly have been conceived by any
person unacquainted with biblical studies. But here, as in the
history of the Mosaic dispensation, if the books are authentic, the
events which they relate must be true; if they were written by the
evangelists, Christ is our Redeemer and our God:--there is no other
possible conclusion.
Page 272, line 5. _The poor child._ Thornton Leigh Hunt, who afterwards
became a journalist, dying in 1873, was born in 1810. Lamb was very fond
of this little boy, whom he first saw when he visited Leigh Hunt in
prison (1813-1815). He addressed a poem to him, ending:--
Thornton Hunt, my favourite child.
Page 272, line 22. _Thomas Holcroft._ Thomas Holcroft (1745-1809), the
playwright and miscellaneous author, one of Lamb's friends, was a
republican and a freethinker.
Page 272, line 27. _Accident introduced me ..._ The first literary
connection between Lamb and Leigh Hunt was set up by _The Reflector_
(see note on page 445). Leigh Hunt, however, tells us in his
_Autobiography_ that he had as a schoolboy at Christ's Hospital seen
Lamb--then an old boy: he was by nine and a half years Hunt's senior.
Probably Lamb's first real intimacy with Leigh Hunt began with Lamb's
visits to him in prison, 1813-1815.
Page 272, line 6 from foot. _An equivocal term._ Hunt's _Story of
Rimini_ was reviewed, with Maga's deepest scorn, in _Blackwood_ for
November, 1817, under the heading, "The Cockney School of Poetry."
Precisely what was the equivocal term referred to by Lamb I do not
discover; but unfair emphasis was laid by the reviewer on the poem's
alleged incestuous character.
Page 273, line 11. _His handwriting._ In the postscript to his private
letter (of apology) to Southey (see above), Lamb took this back.
Page 273, line 18. The "_Political Justice._" Godwin's _Enquiry into
Political Justice_, 1793, wherein the marriage ceremony meets with
little respect.
Page 273, line 28. _Sundry harsh things ... against our friend C._
Perhaps a reference to _The Examiner's_ criticism of _Remorse_, in 1813.
Coleridge, writing to Southey about it, says:--
They were forced to affect admiration of the Tragedy, but yet abuse
me they must, and so comes the old infamous _crambe bis millies
cocta_ of the "sentimentalities, puerilities, whinings, and
meannesses, both of style and thought" in my former writings....
Page 274, line 3. "_Foliage._" Leigh Hunt published _Foliage_ in 1818.
It contains, among other familiar epistles, one to Charles Lamb,
reprinted, as was the poem on his son, from _The Examiner_. This is one
stanza to Thornton Hunt:--
Ah, first-born of thy mother,
When life and hope were new,
Kind playmate of thy brother,
Thy sister, father too;
My light, where'er I go,
My bird, when prison bound,
My hand in hand companion,--no,
My prayers shall hold thee round.
Page 274, line 10. _The other gentleman._ William Hazlitt. Lamb first
met Hazlitt about 1805, and they were intimate, with occasional
differences, until Hazlitt's death in 1830. Lamb was with him at the
end.
Page 275, line 1. _You were pleased (you know where)._ Lamb had been a
Unitarian, as had Coleridge and many others of his friends. Later,
indeed, he claimed communion with no sect; while Coleridge became as
much against Unitarianism as he had once been for it. Southey was
himself converted to Unitarianism by Coleridge, in 1794. Later, however,
the Church of England had few stouter supporters. What Lamb means by
"You know where" I have not been able to discover--a memory possessed
possibly only by Lamb and Southey.
Page 275, line 12. _The last time._ The only portion of this "Letter"
which Lamb preserved began at this point. He rewrote this particular
paragraph and included the remainder in _Last Essays of Elia_, in 1833,
under the title, "The Tombs in the Abbey."
Page 276, line 25. _Two shillings._ The fees cannot have been reduced
for at least ten years, for in 1833 Lamb reprinted this passage as it
stood in 1823. The Abbey is not yet wholly free on every day of the
week; but there is no charge except to view the chapels, and that has
been reduced to sixpence. The first reduction after Lamb's protest was
made by Dean Ireland, whose term of office lasted from 1816 to 1842. It
was he also who appointed official guides. Lamb was not alone in this
protest against the fees. One of Hood and Reynolds' _Odes and
Addresses_, 1825, took up the point again.
Page 277, line 20. _Major André._ John André (1751-1780), a major in the
British army in America in the War of Independence. In his capacity as
Clinton's Adjutant-General he corresponded with one Arnold, who was
plotting to deliver West Point to the British. In the course of his
negotiations with Arnold, he crossed into the American lines and was
compelled by circumstances to adopt civilian clothes. Being caught in
this costume, he was charged as a spy, and, though every effort was made
to save him, was, by the necessities of war, shot as such by Washington
on October 2, 1780. He died like a hero. The British army donned
mourning for his death, and a monument to his memory was erected in
Westminster Abbey. Lamb alludes to the mutilation of this monument by
the fracture of a nose, but as a matter of fact the whole head of
Washington had to be renewed more than once. According to Mrs. Gordon's
_Life of Dean Buckland_, two heads taken from the monument were returned
from America to the Dean many years ago, with the request that they
might be replaced. They had been appropriated as relics. Lamb's
reference to Transatlantic Freedom was another hit at Southey's
Pantisocratic tendencies (see note above) and his _Joan of Arc_ rebel
days.
In the _London Magazine_ for December, 1823, under "The Lion's Head," is
the following:--
We have to thank an unknown correspondent for the following
SONNET
Occasioned by reading in ELIA'S LETTER to Dr. Southey, that the
admirable translator of Dante, the modest and amiable C----, still
remained a curate--or, as a waggish friend observed,--after such a
_Translation_ should still be without _Preferment_.[70]
O Thou! who enteredst the tangled wood,
By that same spirit trusting to be led,
That on the first discoverer's footsteps shed
The light with which another world was view'd;
Thou hast well scann'd the path, and firmly stood
With measured niceness in his holy tread,
Till, mounting up thy star-illumined head,
Thou lookedst in upon the perfect good!
What treasures does thy golden key unfold!
Riches immense, the pearl beyond all price,
And saintly truths to gross ears vainly told!
Say, gilds thy earthly path some Beatrice?--
If bread thou want'st, they will but give thee stones,
And when thou'rt gone, will quarrel for thy bones!
--AN UNWORTHY RECTOR.
[70] We suspect, by the way, this is not strictly the case, though
we believe it is very nearly so.
* * * * *
Page 278. GUY FAUX.
_London Magazine_, November, 1823. Not reprinted by Lamb.
This essay is a blend of new and old. The first portion is new; but at
the words (page 279, line 3 from foot) "The Gunpowder Treason was the
subject," begins a reprint, with very slight modifications, of an
article contributed by Lamb to _The Reflector_, No. II., in 1811, under
the title "On the Probable Effects of the Gunpowder Treason in this
country if the Conspirators had accomplished their Object." _The
Reflector_ essay was signed "Speculator."
Page 278, line 1. _Ingenious and subtle writer._ This was Hazlitt, whose
article on "Guy Faux," from which Lamb quotes, appeared in _The
Examiner_ of November 11, 18 and 25, 1821, signed "Z." Lamb seems to
have suggested to Hazlitt this whitewashing of Guido. See Hazlitt's
essay on "Persons one would wish to have seen" (1826), reprinted in
_Winterslow_, the report of a conversation "twenty years ago," where,
after stating that it was Lamb's wish that Guy Faux should be defended,
Hazlitt remarks that he supposes he will have to undertake the task
himself. Later in the same essay Hazlitt quotes Lamb as mentioning Guy
Faux and Judas Iscariot as two persons he would wish to see; adding, of
the conspirator:--
I cannot but think that Guy Faux, that poor, fluttering, annual
scarecrow of straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give
something to see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his
matches and his barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the moment that
was to transport him to Paradise for his heroic self-devotion.
Again, in the article on "Lamb" in the _Spirit of the Age_ (1825)
Hazlitt wrote:--
Whittington and his Cat are a fine hallucination for Mr. Lamb's
historic Muse, and we believe he never heartily forgave a certain
writer who took the subject of Guy Faux out of his hands.
A few years afterwards Lamb told Carlyle he regretted that the Faux
conspiracy had failed--there would have been such a magnificent
_explosion_. Carlyle cites this remark in his diary in evidence of
Lamb's imbecility, but I fancy that Lamb had merely taken the measure of
his visitor.
Lamb's reference to Hazlitt as an ex-Jesuit with the mention of Douay
and M----th (Maynooth, the Irish Roman Catholic College), is, of course,
chaff, resulting from Hazlitt's defence of this arch-Romanist.
After "Father of the Church" (page 280, line 7) Lamb had written in _The
Reflector_:--
"The conclusion of his discourse is so pertinent to my subject, that
I must beg your patience while I transcribe it. He has been drawing
a parallel between the fire which Vaux and his accomplices
meditated, and that which James and John were willing to have called
down from heaven upon the heads of the Samaritans who would not
receive our Saviour into their houses. 'Lastly,' he says, 'it (the
powder treason) was a fire so strange that it had no example. The
apostles, indeed, pleaded a mistaken precedent for the
reasonableness of their demand, they desired leave to do but _even
as Elias did_. The Greeks only retain this clause, it is not in the
Bibles of the Church of Rome. And, really," etc.
I have collated the passage quoted by Lamb with the original edition of
the sermon. Of the Latin phrases which Taylor does not translate, the
first is from Sidonius Apollinaris, _Carm._, XXII.: "The stall of the
Thracian King, the altars of Busiris, the feasts of Antiphates, and the
Tauric sovereignty of Thoas." _Rex Bistonius_ was Diomed, King of the
Bistones, in Thrace, who fed his horses with human flesh, and was
himself thrown to be their food by Hercules. Busiris, King of Egypt,
seized and sacrificed all foreigners who visited this country, and he
also was slain by Hercules. Antiphates was King of the Læstrygonians in
Sicily, man-eating giants, who destroyed eleven of the ships of Ulysses.
Thoas was King of Lemnos, and when the Lemnian women killed all the men
in the island, his daughter, Hypsipylé, then elected queen, saved him,
and he fled to Taurus where he became a king. This is the only legend of
cruelty associated with the name of Thoas, and of course he is not the
prepetrator; the crime is that of the women.
Concerning Taylor's second quotation, I am informed that the words
"_ergo quæ ... tuas qui_" occur (virtually) in Prudentius,
_Cathemerinon_, V., 81. The Latin is monkish, but means evidently: "But
that massacre of princes who fell unavenged, Christ brooked not, lest
perchance the house that His Father had built should be overthrown. And
so what tongue can unfold Thy praise, O Christ, who dost abase the
disloyal people and its treacherous ruler?"
Page 284, line 11 from foot. _Bellamy's room._ The old refreshment room
of the House. There is a description of it in _Sketches by Boz_--"A
Parliamentary Sketch."
Page 284, line 6 from foot. _Berenice's curl._ After these words came,
in _The Reflector_ version of the essay, this passage:--
"--all, in their degrees, glittering somewhere. Sussex misses her
member[71] on earth, but is consoled to view him, on a starry night,
siding the Great Bear. Cambridge beholds hers[72] next Scorpio. The
gentle Castlereagh curdles in the Milky Way."
[71] "J---- F----, Esq."
[72] "Sir V---- G----."
The member for Sussex at the time this essay was written (1811) was John
Fuller, or Jack Fuller, of Rosehill, Sussex, and Devonshire Place, a
bluff, eccentric character about town in those days, of huge stature and
great wealth, whose house was famous for its musical soirées. Lamb calls
him Ursa Major; his friend Jekyll, the wit, and one of Lamb's Old
Benchers, called him the Hippopotamus. He once was forcibly removed from
the House for refusing to give way and calling the Speaker "the
insignificant little person in a wig." Fuller did not sit after 1812. He
died in 1834. The member for Cambridge University was Sir Vicary Gibbs,
then Attorney General, who in that capacity was a fierce opponent of the
press, amongst those prosecuted by him being John and Leigh Hunt. From
his caustic tongue he was known as Vinegar Gibbs--hence the reference to
Scorpio. Castlereagh was, in 1823, no more; he had committed suicide in
1821.
* * * * *
Page 285. ON A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST."
_London Magazine_, November 1823. Not reprinted by Lamb.
In the _Magazine_ it was entitled "Nugæ Criticæ. By the author of
_Elia_. II. On a Passage in 'The Tempest,'" the first contribution under
this general title being the essay on Sir Philip Sidney's sonnets in the
_London Magazine_, September, 1823, reprinted in the _Last Essays of
Elia_. Lamb did not continue the series. The present paper was signed
"L."
An ingenious commentary upon Lamb's theory was contributed by "Lælius"
to the December _London Magazine_. After detailing his objections to
Ogilby's narrative as a final solution, he put forward a theory of his
own which is interesting enough to be reprinted here. Lælius wrote:--
The sense which I always attributed to the passage is this: _uno
verbo_, the Witch Sycorax was _pregnant_;--and that humanity which
teaches us to spare the guilty mother for the sake of her embryo
innocent, was imputed by Shakespeare to the Algerines on this
occasion.... The "one thing she did" is evidently what Shakespeare
in his "Merchant of Venice" with great delicacy calls "the deed of
kind;" and this sense, though by no means obvious, is justly
inferrible from the context. Why then should it not be preferred? I
have not been able to discover any thing in the rest of the piece
inconsistent with the meaning here attributed to these lines; you,
perhaps, may be more successful. A friend objected to me, that the
law is,--to spare the mother _only_ till the birth of her child,
and therefore that the Witch, instead of being exiled at once,
would have been kept till she was delivered, and then punished
with death for her "manifold mischiefs." But poets are not
expected to dispense justice with such nice and legal
discrimination,--not to speak of what might have been the immediate
necessity of expelling Sycorax from the Algerine community, either
by death or banishment; the former of which was forbidden by the
existing circumstances of her situation.
In connection with this theory it may be remarked that it was an old
belief that during pregnancy a woman's eyes became blue. Webster, in the
"Duchess of Malfi," makes Bosola say of the Duchess:--
The fins of her eyelids look most teeming blue.
I do not know of any editor of Shakespeare who has adopted Lamb's
suggestion.
* * * * *
Page 288. ORIGINAL LETTER OF JAMES THOMSON.
_London Magazine_, November, 1824. Not reprinted by Lamb.
This letter of James Thomson is printed in this edition, because Lamb
was sufficiently interested in it to copy it out; but it is believed to
be a genuine work of the author of the _Seasons_, and not, as has been
stated, a hoax of Lamb's. In the memoir of Thomson by Sir Harris Nicolas
(revised by Peter Cunningham), prefixed to the Aldine edition of
Thomson's poems, the letter will be found in its right place. It is
addressed to Dr. Cramston, September, 1725.
* * * * *
Page 292. BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.
_London Magazine_, January, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.
This article was not signed, but we know it to be Lamb's from a
reference in a letter to Miss Hutchinson, of January 20, 1825:--
"But did you read the 'Memoir of Liston'? and did you guess whose it
was? Of all the Lies I ever put off, I value this most. It is from
top to toe, every paragraph, Pure Invention; and has passed for
Gospel, has been republished in newspapers, and in the penny
play-bills of the Night, as an authentic Account. I shall certainly
go to the Naughty Man some day for my Fibbings."
Writing to Barton on February 10, 1825, Lamb alludes to it again,
remarking, "A life more improbable for him [Liston] to have lived would
not be easily invented."
To come from Lamb to facts--according to the best accounts that we have,
the father of John Liston (1776?-1846) was either a watchmaker, or a
subordinate official in the Custom House. He went to Soho School,
afterwards became an usher at Dr. Burney's school at Gosport, and in
1799 was a master at the Grammar School of St. Martin's in Castle
Street, Leicester Square. His first appearance on the stage proper was
at Weymouth, where he failed utterly. Later he joined a touring company
in the north of England as a serious actor, and again failed. At last,
however, a manager induced him to take up comic old men's and bumpkins'
parts, and his real talents were at once discovered. Thereafter he
succeeded steadily, until his salary was larger than that paid to any
other comedian of his time. His greatest part was Paul Pry in John
Poole's play of that name, which was produced in September in the year
of Lamb's essay. Liston left the stage in 1837. He married a Miss Tyrer,
a favourite actress in burlesque. Liston's own tendency to punning and
practical jokes must have led him to look upon this spurious biography
with much favour.
Mrs. Cowden Clarke in her autobiography, _My Long Life_, says that she
often met Mr. and Mrs. Liston in the Lambs' rooms in Great Russell
Street.
It is interesting, in connection with Lamb's joke, to know that Liston's
library contained a number of works of biblical criticism.
* * * * *
Page 299. A VISION OF HORNS.
_London Magazine_, January, 1825. Signed "Elia." Not reprinted by Lamb.
I had some little doubt as to whether or no to include in the present
edition this fantasia on a theme no longer acceptable, since Lamb
himself says he did not care to be associated with it. "The Horns is in
poor taste [he wrote to Miss Hutchinson], resembling the most laboured
papers in the Spectator. I had sign'd it 'Jack Horner:' but Taylor and
Hessey said, it would be thought an offensive article, unless I put my
known signature to it; and wrung from me my slow consent." And again, to
Barton: "I am vexed that ugly paper should have offended. I kept it as
clear from objectionable phrases as possible, and it was Hessey's fault,
and my weakness, that it did not appear anonymous. No more of it, for
God's sake."
Lamb's objections being, however, lodged rather against the publicity of
the essay's paternity than the essay itself, and the aim of the present
edition being to be as complete as possible, the essay stands. Moreover
it has a peculiar interest as being to a large extent an experiment in
what we might call Congrevism: forming a whimsical appendix to the
_Elia_ essay on the "Artificial Comedy," wherein Lamb urges upon the
readers of the old licentious plays the value of dissociating them in
their minds altogether from real life; looking upon them purely as
fanciful dramas of an impossible society; and thus being able to enjoy
their wit and high spirits without shock to the moral sensibilities. In
his "Vision of Horns" Lamb seems to me to be himself dramatising this
genial and reasonable view. He has carried out Congreve's method to a
still higher power, and imagined a land peopled wholly by cuckolds--a
_reductio ad absurdum_ of the old English and modern French comedy
theory of society. Rightly the essay should follow that on the
"Artificial Comedy" as an ironical postscript.
* * * * *
Page 304. THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.
_New Monthly Magazine_, January, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.
The footnote with which the article properly begins refers to the last
effort, then in preparation, which was made to add to the life of the
State Lottery. Actually, the last State Lottery in England was held on
October 18, 1826.
Page 305, line 4. _Devout Chancellors of the Exchequer_. The lottery
produced between £250,000 and £300,000 per annum. Its death was decreed
by a Parliamentary Committee which had inquired into its merits and
demerits as a means of replenishing the national coffers.
Page 305, line 9. _Sorrowing contractors_. It was customary to apportion
the sale of lottery tickets among speculators, who sold them again, if
possible at a profit. The most prominent of these at the last was T.
Bish (see below).
Page 305, line 28. _The Blue-coat Boy_. It was the habit, which began
about 1694, for a dozen boys from Christ's Hospital to be requisitioned
by the lottery controllers, from whom two were selected to draw the
tickets from the wheels in Coopers' Hall. An old print, given in the
Rev. E. H. Pearce's _Annals of Christ's Hospital_, 1901, shows them at
their work.
Page 309, line 3. _The art and mystery of puffing_. An interesting
collection of lottery puffs will be found in Hone's _Every-Day Book_,
Vol. II., November 15. The arch-professor of puffery in the lottery's
later days was T. Bish, of Cornhill and Charing Cross, whose
blandishments to the public were often presented in ingenious verse. We
know from one of Mary Lamb's letters that Lamb (in addition to
speculating in lottery tickets) had himself written lottery puffs twenty
years earlier than this essay; but I have not been able confidently to
trace any to his hand.
* * * * *
Page 310. UNITARIAN PROTESTS.
_London Magazine_, February, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.
The marriages of Unitarian and other Dissenters had to be solemnised in
English established churches until the end of 1836. Lord Hardwicke's Act
of 1753, in force, with certain modifications, at the time of Lamb's
essay, provided that all marriages not performed in church, with due
publication of banns and licence duly granted, were null and void. It
was customary, after the ceremony in an established church, to lodge a
protest against the terms of the service. Hence Lamb's scathing
strictures. Lamb was himself nominally a Unitarian, as were many of his
friends. In 1796, as he told Coleridge, he adored Priestley almost to
the point of sin. But in later life Lamb dropped away from all sects,
although he says, in a late letter, that he is as old a "one-goddite" as
George Dyer himself. Hood, who knew Lamb well, and wrote of him as
lovingly as any one, remarked in his "Literary Reminiscences" in _Hood's
Own_, probably with truth:--
As regards his Unitarianism, it strikes me as more probable that he
was what the unco' guid people call "Nothing at all," which means
that he was every thing but a Bigot. As he was in spirit an Old
Author, so was he in faith an Ancient Christian, too ancient to
belong to any of the modern sub-hubbub divisions of--Ists,--Arians,
and--Inians.
And it is told of Lamb that he once complained that the Unitarians had
robbed him of two-thirds of his God.
I do not identify M----, the friend to whom this letter was written.
* * * * *
Page 314. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN.
_London Magazine_, February, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.
This skit followed "The Biography of Mr. Liston" (page 292) which was
printed in the preceding month's issue. Leigh Hunt, referring in his own
_Autobiography_ to this exercise of invention, says: "Munden he [Lamb]
made born at 'Stoke Pogis;' the very sound of which was like the actor
speaking and digging his words."
To come to fact, Joseph Shepherd Munden (b. 1758) was the son of a
poulterer in Leather Lane, Holborn, where he was born. At the age of
twelve he was errand boy to an apothecary and afterwards was apprenticed
to a law stationer. More than once--incited by admiration of Garrick--he
ran away to join strolling companies, and at last he took to the stage
altogether. Of his powers as an actor Lamb's other descriptions of him
(see page 397 of this volume and the famous Elia essay) say enough.
Munden's last appearance was on May 31, 1824. He died in 1832. His son
was Thomas Shepherd Munden, who died, aged fifty, in 1850. He wrote his
father's life.
In Raymond's _Memoirs of Elliston_ is an account of an excursion which
Lamb once made with Elliston and Munden. I quote it in the notes in Vol.
II.
* * * * *
Page 317. THE "LEPUS" PAPERS.
These papers appeared in _The New Times_ at various dates in 1825. We
know them to be Lamb's from internal evidence and from the following
allusion in Crabb Robinson's MS. Diary preserved at Dr. Williams'
Library:--
"January 7, 1825. Called on Lamb and chatted. He has written in _The New
Times_ an article against visitors. He means to express his feelings
towards young Godwin, for it is chiefly against the children of old
friends that he humorously vents his spleen." The article in question,
No. I. of the series, is No. X. of a series called Variorum. Lamb's
signature, Lepus (a hare), is appended to all that are here included.
The Variorum series lasted flaggingly until April, one of the last
articles in it being Lamb's review of the _Odes and Addresses_ (see page
335), which, however, was not signed Lepus. It then died. In August a
new series, entitled "Sketches Original and Select," was begun, with an
article--"A Character"--by Lepus, but this also soon flagged. Lamb does
not seem to have contributed to it again.
Page 317. I.--MANY FRIENDS.
_The New Times_, January 8, 1825. Signed "Lepus."
Another proof of Lamb's authorship of this essay will be found in a
letter from him to Walter Savage Landor on October 9, 1832, where he
writes:--
"Next, I forgot to tell you I knew all your Welsh annoyancers, the
measureless B.'s. I knew a quarter of a mile of them. Seventeen brothers
and sixteen sisters, as they appear to me in memory. There was one of
them that used to fix his long legs on my fender, and tell a tale of a
shark every night, endless, immortal. How have I grudged the salt-sea
ravener not having had his gorge of him! The shortest of the daughters
measured five foot eleven without her shoes. Well, some day we may
confer about them. But they were tall. Truly, I have discover'd the
longitude."
Lamb also returned to the charge a little later in the Popular Fallacy
"That Home is Home." The first idea for both this essay and the Fallacy
we find in the letter to Mrs. Wordsworth dated February 18, 1818. Lamb
also utilised a portion of this essay in his Popular Fallacy "That You
must Love Me, and Love My Dog," published in February, 1826.
Page 318, last line. _Captain Beacham._ From the letter to Landor we
know this name to have disguised that of a brother of the Lambs' friend,
Matilda Betham, the author of _The Lay of Marie_.
Page 319. II.--READERS AGAINST THE GRAIN.
_The New Times_, January 13, 1825. Signed "Lepus."
Page 322. III.--MORTIFICATIONS OF AN AUTHOR.
_The New Times_, January 31, 1825. Signed "Lepus."
Page 322, line 7 from foot. _A----n C----m_. Allan Cunningham.
Page 324. IV.--TOM PRY.
_The New Times_, February 8, 1825. Signed "Lepus."
The original of this character sketch was probably Thomas Hill, the
drysalter, whom Lamb knew well. S. C. Hall's _Book of Memories_, p. 157,
says: "His peculiar faculty was to find out what everybody did, from a
minister of state to a stable-boy," etc. etc. John Poole's famous play
"Paul Pry," in which Liston played so admirably, was not produced until
September of this year, 1825. Lamb and Poole had a slight acquaintance
through the _London Magazine_, to which Poole contributed dramatic
burlesques. Lamb had given to the landlord in "Mr. H.," in 1806, the
name and character of Pry.
Page 324, line 5 of essay. _Like the man in the play._ Chremes, in the
opening scene of the _Heauton Timoroumenos_ by Terence (line 77), says:
"Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto". I am a man and to nothing
that concerns mankind am I indifferent.
Page 325, line 8. "_Usque recurrit._" Horace's _Epist._, L, x., lines
24-25:--
Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret,
Et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.
(You may drive Nature out with a pitchfork, yet she will persistently
return, and will stealthily break through depraved fancies, and be
winner.)
Page 326. V.--TOM PRY'S WIFE.
_The New Times_, February 28, 1825. Signed "Lepus."
In a letter from Lamb to the Kenneys, of which the date is uncertain, we
get an inkling as to the identity of Mrs. Pry:--
"I suppose you know we've left the Temple pro tempore. By the way,
this conduct has caused many strange surmises in a good lady of our
acquaintance. She lately sent for a young gentleman of the India
House, who lives opposite her at Monroe's the flute shop in Skinner
Street, Snowhill,--I mention no names. You shall never get out of me
what lady I mean,--on purpose to ask all he knew about us. I had
previously introduced him to her whist table. Her inquiries embraced
every possible thing that could be known of me--how I stood in the
India House, what was the amount of my salary, what it was likely to
be hereafter, whether I was thought clever in business, why I had
taken country lodgings, why at Kingsland in particular, had I
friends in that road, was anybody expected to visit me, did I wish
for visitors, would an unexpected call be gratifying or not, would
it be better that she sent beforehand, did any body come to see me,
was not there a gentleman of the name of Morgan, did he know him,
didn't he come to see me, did he know how Mr. Morgan lived, she
could never make out how they were maintained, was it true he lived
out of the profits of a linen draper's shop in Bishopsgate Street?"
Mrs. Godwin's address was 41 Skinner Street.
Again, Mary Lamb tells Sarah Hazlitt on November 7, 1809: "Charles told
Mrs. Godwin Hazlitt had found a well in his garden which, water being
scarce in your country, would bring him in two hundred a year; and she
came in great haste the next morning to ask me if it were true."
Page 327. VI.--A CHARACTER.
_The New Times_, August 25, 1825. Signed "Lepus."
This differed from the five papers that have preceded it in inaugurating
a new series entitled "Sketches Original and Select." Lepus, however,
contributed no more. I have no idea who the original Egomet was,
possibly an India House clerk. Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, the Janus
Weathercock of the _London Magazine_, had occasionally used the
pseudonym Egomet Bonmot, and Lamb may have borrowed it.
Page 328, line 26. "_There is no reciprocity._" Lamb may have been
remembering a story in Joe Miller about the reciprocity being "all on
one side."
Page 328, line 6 from foot. "_Nimium vicini._" In allusion to Virgil's
(_Ecl._, IX., 28) "Mantua væ miseræ nimium vicina Cremonæ"--"Mantua
alas, too near ill-starred Cremona" (for it shared the fate of Cremona,
which had rebelled against Augustus and suffered confiscation). Lamb
comments in his "Popular Fallacies" upon Swift's punning use of the
phrase.
* * * * *
Page 329. REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY.
_London Magazine_, March, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.
The editor's note is undoubtedly Lamb's, as is, of course, the whole
imaginary story. It must have been about this time that Lamb was writing
his "Ode to the Treadmill" which appeared in _The New Times_ in October,
1825.
The pillory, which has not been used in this country since 1837, was
latterly kept principally for seditious and libellous offenders. In May,
1812, for instance, Eaton, the publisher of Tom Paine's _Age of Reason_,
stood in the pillory. The time was usually one hour, as in the case of
Lamb's hero, the victim being a quarter turned at each fifteen minutes,
in order that every member of the crowd might witness the disgrace. The
offender's neck and wrists were fixed in holes cut for the purpose in a
plank fastened crosswise to an upright pole. The London pillories were
erected in different spots--at Charing Cross, in the Haymarket, in St.
Martin's Lane, opposite the Royal Exchange, and elsewhere.
Page 331, line 1. _My friends from over the water_. Referring to the
prisoners in the King's Bench Prison at Southwark, who would be allowed
out during the day--hence "ephemeral Romans," or freemen, and "flies of
a day": being obliged to return at night. (Shakespeare uses flies in
this sense. "The slaves of chance and flies of every wind that blows,"
he says in "The Winter's Tale.") Lamb's friend, William Hone, was
imprisoned in the King's Bench for a while from 1826, editing in
confinement the end of his _Every-Day Book_ and the whole of the _Table
Book_.
Page 332, lines 16 and 17. _Bastwick ... Prynne ... Defoe ...
Shebbeare._ John Bastwick (1593-1654) was condemned to lose his ears in
the pillory for writing the _Letanie of Dr. John Bastwicke_, an attack
on the bishops.--William Prynne (1600-1669) was pilloried twice, the
first time for his _Histrio-Mastix_ (referred to by Lamb in the
biography of Liston on page 292), and the second time for his support of
Bastwick against the bishops, particularly Laud. He also lost his
ears.--John Shebbeare (1709-1788) was pilloried for satirising the House
of Hanover. An Irishman held an umbrella over his head the
while.--Concerning Defoe and the pillory see Lamb's "Ode to the
Treadmill" and note in the volume devoted to his poems and plays.
Page 332, line 28. _Charles closed the Exchequer._ This was in 1671. In
Green's _Short History of the English People_ we read: "So great was the
national opposition to his schemes that Charles was driven to plunge
hastily into hostilities. The attack on a Dutch convoy was at once
followed by a declaration of war, and fresh supplies were obtained for
the coming struggle by closing the Exchequer, and suspending under
Clifford's advice the payment of either principal or interest on loans
advanced to the public Treasury." The present Royal Exchange was begun
in 1842.
* * * * *
Page 333. THE LAST PEACH.
_London Magazine_, April, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.
Lamb's letter to Bernard Barton of December 1, 1824, warning him against
peculation, probably suggested this essay, which contains yet another
glimpse of Blakesware house and Lamb's boyhood there.
Page 333, line 8. _That unfortunate man_. Henry Fauntleroy (1785-1824)
was partner in the bank of Marsh, Sibbald & Co., of Berners Street. In
1815 he began a series of forgeries of trustees' signatures--as he
affirmed, entirely in the interests of the credit of the house, and in
no way for his own gratification--which culminated in the failure of the
bank in 1824. His trial caused intense excitement in the country. On
November 2, 1824, sentence of death was passed, and on the 30th
Fauntleroy was hanged. Many attempts were made to obtain a reprieve, and
an Italian twice offered to suffer death in his place. The story was
long current that Fauntleroy had secreted a silver tube in his windpipe,
had thereby escaped strangulation, and was living abroad. This would
appeal peculiarly to Lamb, since his essay on "The Inconveniences of
Being Hanged" and his farce "The Pawnbroker's Daughter," alike bear on
that subject.
* * * * *
Page 335. "ODES AND ADDRESSES TO GREAT PEOPLE."
_The New Times_, April 12, 1825. Now reprinted for the first time.
We know this review to be by Lamb from the evidence of a letter to
Coleridge on July 2, 1825, in reply to one in which Coleridge taxed Lamb
with the authorship of the book. Coleridge wrote:--
But my dear Charles, it was certainly written by you, or under you,
or _una cum_ you. I know none of your frequent visitors capacious
and assimilative enough of your converse to have reproduced you so
honestly, supposing you had left yourself in pledge in his lockup
house.... [Added later] No! Charles, it is _you_. I have read them
over again, and I understand why you have an'on'd the book. The
puns are nine in ten good, many excellent, the Newgatory
transcendent!... Then moreover and besides, to speak with becoming
modesty, excepting my own self, who is there but you who could
write the musical lines and stanzas that are intermixed [with the
personalities and puns]?
(The "Newgatory" pun was in the Friendly Epistle to Mrs. Elizabeth
Fry:--
I like your carriage, and your silken grey,
Your dove-like habits, and your silent teaching,
But I don't like your Newgatory preaching.)
Lamb replied:--
"The Odes are four-fifths done by Hood, a silentish young man you
met at Islington one day, an invalid. The rest are Reynolds's, whose
sister H. has recently married. I have not had a broken finger in
them. They are hearty, good-natured things, and I would put my name
to 'em cheerfully, if I could as honestly. I complimented 'em in a
newspaper, with an abatement for those puns you laud so. They are
generally an excess. A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be
thrown in as a make-weight. You shall read one of the 'Addresses'
over and miss the puns, and it shall be quite as good, and better,
than when you discover 'em. A Pun is a noble thing _per se_: O never
lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object for Reflection
(_vide my_ 'Aids' to that recessment from a savage state)--it is
entire, it fills the mind; it is perfect as a sonnet, better. It
limps ashamed in the train and retinue of Humour: it knows it should
have an establishment of its own. The one, for instance, I made the
other day,----I forget what it was.
"Hood will be gratified, as much as I am, by your mistake. I liked
'Grimaldi' the best; it is true painting of abstract clowning, and
that precious concrete of a clown: and the rich succession of
images, and words almost such, in the first half of the 'Magnum
Ignotum.'"
Other evidence is supplied by the Forster collection at South
Kensington, which contains a copy of the review with a message for Lamb
scribbled on it.
Thomas Hood (1799-1845), whom Lamb first met in connection with the
_London Magazine_, of which Hood acted as sub-editor, married Jane
Reynolds in 1824. John Hamilton Reynolds (1796-1852), her brother, wrote
for the _London Magazine_ over the signature "Edward Herbert." The _Odes
and Addresses_ appeared anonymously in the spring of 1825. Coleridge's
attribution of the work to Lamb was not very happy; its amazing agility
was quite out of his power. But Coleridge occasionally nodded in these
matters, or he would not have been equally positive a few years earlier
that Lamb was the author of Reynolds' _Peter Bell_.
In at least two of the odes and addresses the authors followed in Lamb's
own footsteps and adapted to their own use some of his thunder. In the
address to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster the argument for free
admission, as expressed in Lamb's "Letter to Southey" in 1823 (see pages
275-277), is extended, with additional levity; and again in the ode to
Mr. Bodkin, the Hon. Secretary to the Society for the Suppression of
Mendicity, Lamb's _Elia_ essay on "The Decay of Beggars" is emphasised.
According to a copy of the book marked by Hood, now in the possession of
Mr. Buxton Forman, Reynolds wrote only the odes to M'Adam, Dymoke,
Sylvanus Urban, Elliston and the Dean and Chapter.
Compare Lamb's other remarks on punning in "Popular Fallacies" and
"Distant Correspondents."
Page 335, line 9. _Peter Pindar ... Colman_. Peter Pindar was the name
assumed by Dr. John Wolcot (1738-1819) when he lashed and satirised his
contemporaries in his very numerous odes. Colman was George Colman the
younger (1762-1836), the dramatist, and author of _Broad Grins_, 1802, a
collection of free and easy comic verse.
Page 335, foot. _The immortal Grimaldi_. Joseph Grimaldi (1779-1837),
the clown. He did not actually leave the stage until 1828, but his
appearances had been only occasional for several years.
Page 336, second stanza. "_Berkeley's Foote_." This was Maria Foote
(1797?-1867), the actress, afterwards Countess of Harrington, who was
abandoned by Colonel Berkeley after the birth of two children, and whose
woes were made public through a breach-of-promise action brought by her
against "Pea Green" Hayes a little later.
* * * * *
Page 337. THE RELIGION OF ACTORS.
_New Monthly Magazine_, April, 1826. Not reprinted by Lamb; but known to
be his by a sentence in a letter to Bernard Barton. This paper is of
course as nonsensical as that on Liston.
Page 337, line 4 of essay. _A celebrated tragic actor_. Referring to the
action for criminal conversation brought by Alderman Cox against Edmund
Kean, in 1824, in which Kean was cast in £800 damages, and which led
during the following seasons to hostile demonstrations against him both
in England and America. For many performances he played only to men.
Page 337, line 11 of essay. _Miss Pope_. See note on page 465.
Page 338, line 1. _The present licenser_. George Colman the younger,
whose pedantic severity was out of all proportion to the freedom which
in his earlier play-writing and verse-writing days he had allowed
himself. In his evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, in
an inquiry into the state of the drama in 1832, he admitted having
refused to pass the term "angel," addressed by a lover to his lady, on
the ground that "an angel was a heavenly body."
Page 338, line 3. _Fawcett._ This would be John Fawcett (1768-1837),
famous in bluff parts. He was treasurer and trustee of the Covent Garden
Theatrical Fund for many years.
Page 338, line 3. _The five points._ The Five Points of Doctrine,
maintained by the Calvinists, were Original Sin, Predestination,
Irresistible Grace, Particular Redemption and the Final Perseverance of
the Saints.
Page 338, line 4. _Dicky Suett._ Richard Suett (1755-1805), the comedian
of whom Lamb wrote so enthusiastically in "The Old Actors."
Page 338, line 7. _Br----'s "Religio Dramatici."_ I imagine that John
Braham, the tenor (1774?-1856), _né_ Abraham, had put forth a manifesto
stating that he had embraced the Christian faith; but I can get no
information on the subject. See Lamb's other references to Braham in the
_Elia_ essay "Imperfect Sympathies."
Page 338, line 8 from foot. _Dr. Watts._ Dr. Isaac Watts' version of the
Psalms, 1719, takes great liberties with the originals, evangelising
them, omitting much, and even substituting "Britain" for "Israel."
Page 338, foot. _St. Martin's ... St. Paul's, Covent Garden._ The two
parishes in which the chief theatres were situated.
Page 339, line 3. _Two great bodies._ The Covent Garden Company and the
Drury Lane Company.
Page 339, line 7. _Mr. Bengough ... Mr. Powell._ Two useful actors in
their day.
Page 339, line 18. _Notorious education of the manager._ Charles Kemble
(1775-1854), then manager of Covent Garden, had been educated at the
English Jesuit College at Douay, where his brother, John Philip Kemble,
had preceded him.
Page 339, line 20. _Mr. T----y._ This would probably be Daniel Terry
(1780-1829), then manager, with Yates, of the Adelphi. The allusion to
him as a member of the Kirk of Scotland probably refers to his
well-known adoration and imitation of Sir Walter Scott, whom he closely
resembled.
Page 339, line 25. _Mr. Fletcher._ The Rev. Alexander Fletcher, minister
of the Albion Chapel in Moorfields, who was suspended by the Synod of
the Presbyterian Church in 1824 for his share in a breach-of-promise
case.
Page 339, lines 29 and 30. _Miss F----e and Madame V----s._ Miss F----e
would probably be Miss Foote (see note on page 521). Madame Vestris
(1797-1856), the comedienne and wife of Charles James Mathews. It might
not be out of place to state that Sublapsarians consider the election
of grace as a remedy for an existing evil, and Supralapsarians view it
as a part of God's original purpose in regard to men.
Page 339, lines 32 and 33. _Mr. Pope_ ... _Mr. Sinclair_. Alexander Pope
(1752-1835), the comedian. John Sinclair (1791-1857), the singer.
Page 339, line 33. _Mr. Grimaldi_. See the note on page 521. Grimaldi's
son Joseph S. Grimaldi made his début as Man Friday in 1814 and died in
1832. The Jumpers were a Welsh sect of Calvinist Methodists.
Page 340, line 7. _Mr. Elliston_. Robert William Elliston (1774-1831),
the comedian, who had been manager of Drury Lane, 1821-1826. Lamb's
_Elia_ essays on this character lend point to his suggestion that
Elliston leaned towards the Muggletonians, a sect which by that time was
almost extinct, after two centuries' existence.
* * * * *
Page 340. A POPULAR FALLACY.
_New Monthly Magazine_, June, 1826, where it formed part of the series
of "Popular Fallacies," of which all the others were reprinted in the
_Last Essays of Elia_. Lamb did not reprint it.
The unnamed works referred to are _The Register of the Most Noble Order
of the Garter_, 1724, by John Anstis (not Anstey), Garter King-at-Arms,
and Elias Ashmole's _Institutions, Laws and Ceremonies of the Order of
the Garter_, 1672. In the passage quoted from William Hay's _Deformity,
an Essay_, 1754, the author is speaking of his experiences when in a
mob.
* * * * *
Page 342. REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS, ESQ.
_New Monthly Magazine_, June, 1826. Signed "Elia." Not reprinted by
Lamb.
Lamb seems to have intended to write a story of some length, for the
promise "To be continued" was appended to the first instalment. But he
did not return to it.
* * * * *
Page 349. CONTRIBUTIONS TO HONE'S "EVERY-DAY BOOK" AND "TABLE BOOK."
I have arranged together all Lamb's prose contributions (except "A
Death-Bed" and the Garrick Extracts) to William Hone's volumes--the
_Every-Day Book_, both series, and the _Table Book_--in order to give
them unity. It seemed better to do this than to interrupt the series for
the sake of a chronological order which at this period of Lamb's life
(1825-1827) was of very little importance. Three not absolutely certain
pieces will be found in the Appendix.
William Hone (1780-1842) was a man of independent mind and chequered
career. He started life in an attorney's office, but in 1800 exchanged
the law for book-and-print selling, and began to exercise his thoughts
upon public questions, always siding with the unpopular minority. He
examined into what he considered public scandals with curiosity and
persistence, undiscouraged by such private calamities as bankruptcy, and
in many ways showed himself an "Enemy of the People." Some squibs
against the Government, in the form of parodies of the Litany, the
Church Catechism and the Athanasian Creed, led to a famous trial on
December 17-19, 1817, in which, after a prolonged sitting--Hone's speech
in his own defence lasting seven hours--he was acquitted, in spite of
the adverse summing up of Lord Ellenborough. The verdict is said to have
hastened Ellenborough's death. A public subscription for Hone realised
upwards of £3,000, and he thereupon entered upon a more materially
successful period of his career. He became more of a publisher and
author, and less of a firebrand. He issued a number of cheap but worthy
books, and in 1823 his own first important work, _Ancient Mysteries_.
Hone's title to fame, however, rests upon his discovery of George
Cruikshank's genius and his _Every-Day Book_ (Vol. I. running through
1825 and published in 1826; Vol. II. running through 1826 and published
in 1827), his _Table Talk_, 1827, and his _Year Book_, 1831. These are
admirable collections of old English lore, legends and curiosities,
brought together by a kind-hearted, simple-minded man, to whom thousands
of readers and hundreds of makers of books are indebted.
William Hone and financial complexity were unhappily never strangers,
and in 1826 he was in prison for debt; indeed he finished the _Every-Day
Book_ and edited the _Table Book_ there. A few years later, largely by
Lamb's instrumentality, he was placed by his friends in a
coffee-house--the Grasshopper, in Gracechurch Street--but he did not
make it succeed. He died in 1842.
Lamb and Hone first met probably in 1823. In May of that year Lamb
acknowledges Hone's gift of a copy of _Ancient Mysteries_ and asks him
to call. In 1825 Lamb is contributing to the _Every-Day Book_, and in
July he lends Hone his house at Islington, while Mary and himself are at
Enfield. The _Every-Day Book_, July 14, 1825, has a humorous letter from
Hone to Lamb, written from Islington, entitled "A Hot Letter," which
Lamb acknowledges in a reply to Hone on the 25th. This letter was
addressed to Captain Lion--Hone's joke upon Lamb's name. In the answers
to correspondents on the wrapper of one of the periodical parts of the
_Every-Day Book_ Mr. Bertram Dobell has found quoted one of Lion's good
things: "'J. M.' is a wag. His 'derivation' reminds the Editor of an
observation the other day by his witty friend Mr. LION. Being pressed to
take some rhubarb pie, Mr. L. declined because it was physic; to the
reply that it was pleasant and innocent, he rejoined, 'So is a daisy,
but I don't therefore like daisy pie.' 'Daisy pie! who ever heard of
daisy pies?' 'My authority is Shakespeare; he expressly mentions daisies
pied.'"
It was in the number of the _London Magazine_ for July, 1825, that
Lamb's signed verses to the editor of the _Every-Day Book_ appeared,
beginning:--
I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone,
(still too often printed "ingenious"); a testimonial which must have
meant much to Hone at that time. Hone copied them into the _Every-Day
Book_ for July 9, 1825, with a rhymed reply.
Hone had for Lamb's genius and character an intense enthusiasm. The
_Every-Day Book_ is enriched by many quotations from Lamb's writings,
with occasional bursts of eulogy. For example, on December 31, of Vol.
I., when quoting from "New Year's Eve," he remarks:--
among the other delightful essays of his volume entitled "ELIA"--a
little book, whereof to say that it is of more gracious feeling and
truer beauty than any of our century is poor praise ...
And on September 23, of Vol. II., when quoting "My First Play":--
After the robbery of "ELIA," my conscience forces me to declare
that I wish every reader would save me from the shame of further
temptation to transgress, by ordering "ELIA" into his collection.
There is no volume in our language so full of beauty, truth and
feeling, as the volume of "ELIA." I am convinced that every person
who has not seen it, and may take the hint, will thank me for
acquainting him with a work which we cannot look into without
pleasure, nor lay down without regret. It is a delicious book.
The _Every-Day Book_ appeared periodically through 1825 and 1826. The
first volume was published as a book in May, 1826, with the following
dedication:--
TO
CHARLES LAMB, ESQ.
DEAR L----
Your letter to me, within the first two months from the
commencement of the present work, approving my notice of St. Chad's
Well, and your afterwards daring to publish me your "friend," with
your "proper name" annexed, I shall never forget. Nor can I forget
your and Miss Lamb's sympathy and kindness when glooms outmastered
me; and that your pen spontaneously sparkled in the book, when my
mind was in clouds and darkness. These "trifles," as each of you
would call them, are benefits scored upon my heart; and
I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME,
TO YOU AND MISS LAMB,
WITH AFFECTIONATE RESPECT,
W. HONE.
_May 5, 1826._
It has been held that the inference that Mary Lamb also contributed to
Vol. I. of the _Every-Day Book_ is a fair one to draw from these words.
But beyond her recollections in the paper on "Starkey" nothing from her
pen has been identified. Her brother's certain contributions to Vol. I.
are, the "Remarkable Correspondent," "Captain Starkey," the "Twelfth of
August," "The Ass," and "Squirrels." To Vol. II. he sent "An Appearance
of the Season," "The Months," and "Reminiscences of Jeffery Dunstan."
My impression is that Lamb's hand is to be seen far oftener than this:
but we have no definite proof. I feel convinced that many of Hone's
quotations from old plays and old books were supplied to him by his more
leisured friend.
In column 857 of _The Table Book_, 1827, Vol. II., for example, is the
following letter to Hone, which is very likely to be from Lamb's pen.
Waltham Abbey was a favourite objective of his in his long Essex and
Hertfordshire rambles:--
WALTHAM, ESSEX
_To the Editor_
SIR,--The following epitaph is upon a plain gravestone in the
churchyard of Waltham Abbey. Having some point, it may perhaps be
acceptable for the _Table Book_. I was told that the memory of the
worthy curate is still held in great esteem by the inhabitants of
that place.
REV. ISAAC COLNETT,
Fifteen years curate of this Parish,
Died March 1, 1801--Aged 43 years.
Shall pride a heap of sculptured marble raise,
Some worthless, unmourn'd, titled fool to praise,
And shall we not by one poor gravestone show
Where pious, worthy Colnett sleeps below?
Surely common decency, if they are deficient in antiquarian
feeling, should induce the inhabitants of Waltham Cross to take
some measures, if not to restore, at least to preserve from further
decay and dilapidation the remains of that beautiful monument of
conjugal affection, the cross erected by Edward I. It is now in a
sad disgraceful state.
I am, &c.,
Z.
Lamb's first contribution to the _Table Book_, always excepting his
regular supply of Garrick Play extracts was "A Death-Bed," an account of
the last moments of his friend, Randal Norris, which he included in the
_Last Essays of Elia_. His other original prose was the letter about
Mrs. Gilpin at Edmonton, and "The Defeat of Time." A few pages after "A
Death-Bed," there is an extract from an article from _Blackwood's
Magazine_ for April, 1827, entitled "Le Revenant"--the story of a man
who survived hanging. Lamb suggested to Hone that he should print
this.--"There is in _Blackwood_ this month [he wrote in a private
letter] an article MOST AFFECTING indeed, called _Le Revenant_, and
would do more towards abolishing capital punishment, than 40,000
Romillies or Montagues. I beg you to read it and see if you can extract
any of it--the trial scene in particular." This is another instance of
the fascination that resuscitation after hanging exerted upon Lamb.
We know also, as is stated in the note to "The Good Clerk" (page 455),
that Lamb supplied Hone with the extracts from Defoe and Mandeville in
columns 567-569 and 626-628 of the _Table Book_, Vol. I. He probably
sent many others.
In columns 773-774 of the _Table Book_, Vol. I., are Lamb's verses
"Going or Gone."
In column 55 of the _Table Book_, Vol. II., is Lamb's sonnet to Miss
Kelly, and in column 68 his explanation that Moxon probably sent it.
To Hone's _Year Book_, 1831, Lamb contributed no original prose that is
identifiable. On April 30, however, was printed Sir T. Overbury's
character of a "Free and Happy Milkmaid," of which we know Lamb to have
been fond--he copied it into one of his Extract Books--together with two
passages from Jeremy Taylor, all probably sent to Hone by Lamb. It was
on this day that FitzGerald's "Meadows in Spring" was printed in the
_Year Book_, and afterwards copied in _The Athenæum_, where it was
attributed by suggestion to Lamb.
* * * * *
Page 349. I.--REMARKABLE CORRESPONDENT.
Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. I., May 1, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.
Hone's _Every-Day Book_, which purported to take account of every day in
the year, had passed without a word from February 28 to March 1. Hence
this protest.
Page 350, line 13. _An antique scroll_. On February 28 Hone printed
these lines:--
FOR THE MEMORY
_Old Memorandum of the Months_
Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,
All the rest have thirty and one,
Except February, which hath twenty-eight alone.
The omitted couplet runs:--
Except in Leap Year, at which time
February's days are twenty-nine.
To Lamb's protests Hone replied as follows, on May 1:--
To this correspondent it may be demurred and given in proof, that
neither in February, nor at any other time in the year 1825, had
he, or could he, have had existence; and that whenever he is seen,
he is only an impertinence and an interpolation upon his betters.
To his "floral honours" he is welcome; in the year 992, he slew St.
Oswald, archbishop of York, in the midst of his monks, to whom the
greater periwinkle, _Vinca Major_, is dedicated. For this honour
our correspondent should have waited till his turn arrived for
distinction. His ignorant impatience of notoriety is a mark of
weakness, and indeed it is only in compassion to his infirmity that
he has been condescended to; his brothers have seen more of the
world, and he should have been satisfied by having been allowed to
be in their company at stated times, and like all little ones, he
ought to have kept respectful silence. Besides, he forgets his
origin; he is illegitimate; and as a burthen to "the family," and
an upstart, it has been long in contemplation to disown him, and
then what will become of him? If he has done any good in the world
he may have some claim upon it, but whenever he appears, he seems
to throw things into confusion. His desire to alter the title of
this work excites a smile--however, when he calls upon the editor
he shall have justice, and be compelled to own that it is calumny
to call this the _Every-Day--but--one--Book_.
In Vol. II. of the _Every-Day Book_ February 29 was again omitted. He
did not come to his own until the _Year Book_ in 1831.
Page 351. II.--CAPTAIN STARKEY.
Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. I., July 21, 1825. Signed "C. L." Not
reprinted by Lamb.
On July 9 Hone gave extracts from a small pamphlet entitled _Memoirs of
the Life of Benj. Starkey, late of London, but now an inmate of the
Freemen's Hospital, in Newcastle. Written by himself. With a portrait of
the Author and a Facsimile of his handwriting_. William Hall, Newcastle,
1818. This pamphlet is not interesting, except in calling forth Lamb's
reminiscences.
Page 351, line 9. _My sister._ Mary Lamb, who was born in 1764, would
probably have been at Bird's school at the time of her brother's birth.
Her period there may have been 1774-1778.
Page 351, line 25. _Fetter Lane._ In a directory for 1773 I find William
Bird, Academy, 3 Bond Stables, Fetter Lane. Bond Stables have now
disappeared, although there is still the passage joining Fetter Lane and
Bartlett's Buildings.
Page 354. III.--TWELFTH OF AUGUST.
Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. I., August 12, 1825. Not reprinted by
Lamb.
While George IV., who was born on August 12, 1762, was Prince of Wales,
a very long period, his birthday was kept on its true date. But after
his accession to the throne in 1820 his birthday was kept on April 23,
St. George's Day. Hence Lamb's protest. This is probably the only kind
reference to George IV. in all Lamb's writings.
Lamb already (_Morning Post_, 1802, see page 44, and _London Magazine_,
1823) had rehearsed the theme both of this letter and of that on the
"Twenty-ninth of February." In his "Rejoicings upon the New Year's
Coming of Age" the forlorn condition of February 29 is more than once
mentioned, while the grievance of August 12 against April 23 is thus
described:--
"The King's health being called for after this, a notable dispute
arose between the _Twelfth of August_ (a jealous 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."
Page 354, line 4 of letter. _Poor relative of ours._ February 29 (see
page 349).
Page 355, line 11. _George of Cappadocia, etc._ George of Cappadocia was
a Bishop of Alexandria in the fourth century, murdered by the populace.
There was once a tendency to confuse him with St. George of England.
George of Leyden was probably a slip of the pen for John of Leyden, the
Anabaptist of Münster. George-a-Green, the hero of the _History of
George-a-Green, the Pindar of Wakefield_, the stoutest opponent that
Robin Hood ever met. The story was dramatised in a play attributed to
Robert Green. George Dyer was Lamb's friend.
Page 355, line 15. _Dismission of a set of men._ Referring to the King's
overthrow of the Whigs in the Caroline of Brunswick ferment.
To Lamb's letter Hone printed a clever reply.
Page 356. IV.--THE ASS.
Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. I., October 5, 1825. Signed "C. L." Not
reprinted by Lamb.
The germ of this paper is found in a letter from Lamb to John Payne
Collier in 1821 thanking him for the gift of his _Poetical Decameron_.
After quoting the three lines also quoted in this essay, Lamb remarks,
in the letter, "Cervantes, Sterne, and Coleridge, have said positively
nothing for asses compared with this."
The immediate cause of the communication to the _Every-Day Book_ was a
previous article in praise of asses. Hone prefixed to Lamb's paper the
following remarks: "The cantering of TIM TIMS [who had written of asses
on September 19] startles him who told of his 'youthful days,' at the
school wherein poor 'Starkey' cyphered part of his little life. C. L.,
'getting well, but weak' from painful and severe indisposition, is 'off
and away' for a short discursion. Better health to him, and good be to
him all his life. Here he is."
Lamb wrote to Hone in humorous protest against the implication of the
phrase "Here he is," immediately above the title "The Ass." "My friends
are fairly surprised [he said] that you should set me down so
unequivocally for an ass.... Call you that friendship?"
Page 356, foot. "_Between the years 1790 and 1800._" This passage refers
to an article in a previous issue of the _Every-Day Book_ (see Vol. I.,
September 19) on cruelty to animals, where we read:--
Legislative discussion and interference have raised a feeling of
kindness towards the brute creation which slumbered and slept in
our forefathers. Formerly, the costermonger was accustomed to make
wounds for the express purpose of producing torture. He prepared to
drive an ass, that had not been driven, with his knife. On each
side of the back bone, at the lower end, just above the tail, he
made an incision of two or three inches in length through the skin,
and beat into these incisions with his stick till they became open
wounds, and so remained, while the ass lived to be driven to and
from market, or through the streets of the metropolis. A
costermonger, now, would shrink from this, which was a common
practice between the years 1790 and 1800.
Page 357, line 9. "_Lay on," etc._ Anaxarchus, the philosopher, having
offended Alexander the Great, was pounded in a stone mortar. During the
process he exclaimed: "Pound the body of Anaxarchus; thou dost not pound
the soul." Lamb proposed to use the phrase "You beat but on the case of
Elia" in the preface to the _Essays of Elia_ as a monition to adverse
critics, but he changed his mind.
Page 358, foot. _Jem Boyer._ See the Elia essay on "Christ's Hospital"
in Vol. II. (page 22), and notes to same. "_As_ in præsenti perfectum
format in _avi_"--"as in the present tense makes _avi_ in the
perfect"--was the first of the mnemonic rules for the formation of verbs
in the old Latin primer (see the old Eton _Latin Grammar_). Lamb himself
makes the pun in a letter to Mrs. Shelley in 1827.
Page 359. V.--IN RE SQUIRRELS.
Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. I., October 18, 1825. Signed "C. L." Not
reprinted by Lamb.
On October 7 Hone had reprinted a letter on squirrels from the
_Gentleman's Magazine_. Lamb's postscript to that letter, as this little
communication may be called, was thus introduced:--
"_Be it remembered_, that C. L. comes here and represents his
relations, that is to say, on behalf of the recollections, being the
next of kin, of him, the said C. L., and of sundry persons who are
'aye treading' in the manner of squirrels aforesaid; and thus he
saith:--"
Page 359, line 12. _Mr. Urban's correspondent._ Mr. Urban--Sylvanus
Urban--the dynastic name of the editor of the _Gentleman's Magazine_.
"I know not," says the correspondent, "whether any naturalist has
observed that their [squirrels'] teeth are of a deep orange colour."
Page 359, line 22. _The author of the "Task" somewhere ..._
The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play,
He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird,
Ascends the neighb'ring beech; there whisks his brush,
And perks his ears, and stamps and scolds aloud,
With all the prettiness of feigned alarm,
And anger insignificantly fierce.
Cowper, _The Task_, Book VI., "The Winter's Walk at
Noon," lines 315-320.
Page 359, foot. _As for their "six quavers," etc._ The writer in the
_Gentleman's Magazine_ describes his squirrels as dancing in their cages
to exact time.
Page 359, foot. _Along with the "melodious," etc._ Referring to the
preceding essay, "The Ass."
Page 360. VI.--AN APPEARANCE OF THE SEASON.
_Every-Day Book_, Vol. II., January 28, 1826. Not reprinted by Lamb.
We know this to be Lamb's because the original copy was preserved at
Rowfant, together with that of many other of Lamb's contributions to
Hone's books.
The article in the _London Magazine_ for December, 1822, to which Lamb
refers, is entitled "A Few Words about Christmas." It is one of the best
of the imitations of Lamb, of which there are many in that periodical,
and was possibly from Hood's pen. A full description of Hood's "Progress
of Cant" follows Lamb's little paper in the _Every-Day Book_, probably
written by Hone. See page 431.
The motto under the Beadle's picture is from "Lear," Act IV., Scene 6,
line 162.
Page 360, line 6 of essay. _Within the bills._ Within the bills of
mortality. Geographically speaking, the phrase "within the bills" was
the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth century counterpart of
our phrase "within the radius." But the associations of the two terms
are very different. The bills were the Bills of Mortality, or lists of
deaths (also births) drawn up by the Parish Clerks of London and
published by them on Thursdays. Devised as a means of publishing the
increase or decrease of the ever-recurrent Plague, the bills were begun
in 1592, were resumed during a visitation in 1603, and from that year,
except for some interruption at the time of the Great Fire, they
appeared week by week, until the middle of the nineteenth century.
Page 361. VII.--THE MONTHS.
Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. II., April 16, 1826. Signed "C. L." Not
reprinted by Lamb. I have collated the extracts with Lamb's edition of
_The Queene-like Closet_.
Hone's prefixed note runs: "C. L., whose papers under these initials on
'Captain Starkey,' 'The Ass, No. 2,' and 'Squirrels,' besides other
communications, are in the first volume, drops the following pleasant
article 'in an hour of need.'"
Mrs. Hannah Woolley, afterwards Mrs. Challinor, was born about 1623. The
first edition of _The Queene-like Closet_ was 1672; she wrote also, or
is supposed to have written, _The Ladies' Directory, or Choice
Experiments of Preserving and Candying_, 1661; _The Cook's Guide_, 1664;
_The Ladies' Delight_, 1672; _The Gentlewoman's Companion_, 1675.
Page 365, line 3. _I remember Bacon ..._ This possibly is the passage
referred to:--
Neither let us be thought to sacrifice to our mother the earth,
though we advise, that in digging or ploughing the earth for
health, a quantity of claret wine be poured thereon (_History of
Life and Death_, Operation 5, No. 33).
Page 365, last line of essay. _Surely Swift must have seen ..._ Swift's
_Directions to Servants_ was published in 1745, after the author's
death.
Page 366. VIII.--REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN.
Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. II., June 22, 1826. Signed "C. L." Not
reprinted by Lamb.
The following account of the Garrat election was given in Sir Richard
Phillips' _A Morning's Walk from London to Kew_, 1817, quoted by Hone:--
Southward of Wandsworth, a road extends nearly two miles to the
village of Lower Tooting, and nearly midway are a few houses, or
hamlet, by the side of a small common, called _Garrat_, from which
the road itself is called _Garrat Lane_. Various encroachments on
this common led to an association of the neighbours about
three-score years since, when they chose a president, or _mayor_,
to protect their rights; and the time of their first election being
the period of a new parliament, it was agreed that the mayor should
be re-chosen after every general election. Some facetious members
of the club gave, in a few years, local notoriety to this election;
and, when party spirit ran high in the days of _Wilkes and
Liberty_, it was easy to create an appetite for a burlesque
election among the lower orders of the Metropolis. The publicans at
Wandsworth, Tooting, Battersea, Clapham, and Vauxhall, made a purse
to give it character; and Mr. Foote rendered its interest
universal, by calling one of his inimitable farces "The Mayor of
Garrat."
In 1826, the year of Hone's literary outburst on the subject, which
should be referred to by any one curious in the matter, an attempt was
made to revive the Garrat humours; but it was too late for success; the
joke was dead.
Dunstan was a stunted, quick-witted and quick-tongued dealer in old
wigs--a well-known street and tavern figure in his day. He contested
Garrat in 1781 against "Sir" John Harper ("who made an oath against work
in his youth and was never known to break it"). Sir John then won.
Dunstan's speech is quoted in full by Hone from an old broadside.
"Gentlemen," he said, "as I am not an orator or personable man, be
assured I am an honest member." When Harper died in 1785 Sir Jeffery was
returned, as many as 50,000 people attending the election. Dunstan used
to recite his speeches in public-houses, where collections were made for
him; but this means of livelihood was impaired by the loss of his teeth,
which he sold one night for ten shillings and a sufficiency of liquor to
some merry London Hospital students. He died in 1797 when Lamb was
twenty-two.
Page 366, line 5 of essay. _About 1790 or 1791._ Lamb was at the
South-Sea House.
Page 367, line 27. _Dr. Last._ In Samuel Foote's play, "The Devil on Two
Sticks," 1778.
Page 367, foot. _My Lord Foppington._ Lord Foppington in "The Relapse,"
by Congreve. Foppington remarks: "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." Lamb uses the same speech for the motto of
his "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading."
Page 368. IX.--MRS. GILPIN RIDING TO EDMONTON.
Hone's _Table Book_, Vol. II., columns 79-81, 1827. Not reprinted by
Lamb.
We know Lamb to have written this, from the evidence of an unpublished
letter and the original "copy" and picture, once preserved at Rowfant.
Lamb's letter to Hone, enclosing Hood's drawing, runs thus:--
[No date: early July, 1827.]
"DEAR H.,
"This is Hood's, done from the life, of Mary getting over a style
here. Mary, out of a pleasant revenge, wants you to get it
_engrav'd_ in Table Book to surprise H., who I know will be amus'd
with you so doing.
"Append some observations about the awkwardness of country styles
about Edmonton, and the difficulty of elderly Ladies getting over
'em.----
"That is to say, if you think the sketch good enough.
"I take on myself the warranty.
"Can you slip down here some day and go a Green-dragoning?
"C. L.
"Enfield (Mrs. Leishman's, Chase).
"If you do, send Hood the number, No. 2 Robert St., Adelphi, and
keep the sketch for me."
Lamb subsequently appended the observations himself. The text of his
little article, changing Mary Lamb into Mrs. Gilpin, followed in Mr.
Locker-Lampson's album. The postmark is July 17, 1827.
Lamb was fond of jokes about styles. Writing to Dodwell, of the India
House, from Calne, in the summer of 1816, he said, after dating his
letter old style: "No new style here, all the styles are old, and some
of the gates too for that matter."
Page 369. X.--THE DEFEAT OF TIME.
Hone's _Table Book_, Vol. II., columns 335-340, 1827. Not reprinted by
Lamb.
In 1827 was published Thomas Hood's poem, _The Plea of the Midsummer
Fairies_, with the following dedication to Lamb:--
TO CHARLES LAMB
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I thank my literary fortune that I am not reduced, like many better
wits, to barter dedications, for the hope or promise of patronage,
with some nominally great man; but that where true affection
points, and honest respect, I am free to gratify my head and heart
by a sincere inscription. An intimacy and dearness, worthy of a
much earlier date than our acquaintance can refer to, direct me at
once to your name: and with this acknowledgment of your ever kind
feeling towards me, I desire to record a respect and admiration for
you as a writer, which no one acquainted with our literature, save
Elia himself, will think disproportionate or misplaced. If I had
not these better reasons to govern me, I should be guided to the
same selection by your intense yet critical relish for the works of
our great Dramatist, and for that favourite play in particular
which has furnished the subject of my verses.
It is my design, in the following Poem, to celebrate an allegory,
that immortality which Shakespeare has conferred on the Fairy
mythology by his Midsummer Night's Dream. But for him, those pretty
children of our childhood would leave barely their names to our
maturer years; they belong, as the mites upon the plum, to the
bloom of fancy, a thing generally too frail and beautiful to
withstand the rude handling of Time: but the Poet has made this
most perishable part of the mind's creation equal to the most
enduring; he has so intertwined the Elfins with human sympathies,
and linked them by so many delightful associations with the
productions of nature, that they are as real to the mind's eye, as
their green magical circles to the outer sense.
It would have been a pity for such a race to go extinct, even
though they were but as the butterflies that hover about the leaves
and blossoms of the visible world.
I am,
My dear Friend,
Yours most truly,
T. HOOD.
Lamb's "Defeat of Time" is a paraphrase of the first part of Hood's
poem.
Page 371, line 10. _"In the flowery spring," etc._ From Chapman's
Translation of Homer's "Hymn to Pan," 31-33.
Page 373, line 15 from foot. _Sir Thomas Gresham._ It is told of Sir
Thomas Gresham (1519?-1579), the founder of the Royal Exchange, that as
a baby his life was saved by the chirping of a grasshopper, as related
here. But cold veracity says not. The legend seems to have had its
origin in the grasshopper crest of the Greshams, but it has been found
that this crest was worn by an ancestor of Sir Thomas's who lived a
hundred years earlier.
* * * * *
Page 375. AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
Lamb wrote this little sketch for William Upcott (1779-1845), the
autograph collector and assistant librarian of the London Institution.
Upcott permitted John Forster to quote it in the _New Monthly Magazine_
for April, 1835, shortly after Lamb's death. It is here printed from the
original MS. in the possession of Mr. B. B. MacGeorge, of Glasgow,
contained in a MS. volume entitled "Reliques of my Contemporaries.
William Upcott." Whether or no Lamb ever caught a swallow flying is not
known; but everything else in the autobiography is true. The reference
to Mr. Upcott's book may be to the album in which this sketch was
written, or to a new edition of the _Biographical Dictionary of Living
Authors_, published in 1816, in which Upcott is supposed to have had a
hand. I cannot discover whether a second edition of this work was
published. There is none at the British Museum, nor at the London
Institution, of which Upcott was librarian. In the first edition, _A
Biographical Dictionary of the Living Authors of Great Britain and
Ireland ..._ 1816, Lamb figures thus:--
"LAMB, CHARLES, was born in London, in 1775, and educated at Christ's
Hospital. He is at present a clerk in the India House, and has published
[a list of six books follows] ..."
"LAMB, MISS, sister of the preceding, has published _Mrs. Leicester's
School_, 12mo, 1808; _Poetry for Children_, 2 vs., 12mo, 1809."
Upcott is not considered to have done more than to collect some of the
materials for the _Dictionary_, which was the work of John Watkins and
Frederick Shoberl.
Lamb's sense of time was never good: the _Elia_ essays were published in
1823 and the _Specimens_ in 1808, fully four years and nineteen years
before the date of this autobiography. The joke about the _Works_ will
be found also in the original version of the "Character of the Late
Elia."
* * * * *
Page 376. SHAKESPEARE'S IMPROVERS.
_The Spectator_, November 22, 1828. Not reprinted by Lamb.
This letter was drawn forth by some remarks on the spurious version of
"King Lear," which was then being played; or, as _The Spectator_
phrased it, "Shakespeare murdered by Nahum Tate--Covent Garden aiding
and abetting." See page 383 for another letter to the same paper. See
also the essay on "Shakespeare's Tragedies," 1810, for a first idea of
the indictment now more fully drawn up.
Page 376, line 2 of letter. _Tate's "King Lear."_ Nahum Tate
(1652-1715), Poet Laureate, was the author, with Nicholas Brady
(1659-1726), of the rhymed version of the Psalms which bears their
names, 1696, a rival of the version of 1549 by Thomas Sternhold and John
Hopkins. He also wrote verses and plays, original and doctored. His
version of "King Lear"--"The History of King Lear"--was produced in
1681. Therein Cordelia and Edgar are at the outset shown to be in love.
After the usual frustrations they are united at the close, and Lear, who
does not die, pronounces his blessing over them. Cordelia thus addresses
Edgar in the first act:--
When, Edgar, I permitted your addresses,
I was the darling daughter of a king,
Nor can I now forget my royal birth,
And live dependent on my lover's fortune.
I cannot to so low a fate submit,
And therefore study to forget your passions,
And trouble me upon this theme no more.
Tate also rewrote "Richard II." and Webster's "White Devil."
Page 376, foot. "_Coriolanus._" Lamb refers to Tate's play, "The
Ingratitude of a Commonwealth," produced in 1682. Aufidius threatens to
violate only Virgilia:--
For soon as I've secur'd my rival's life,
All stain'd i' th' husband's blood, I'll force the wife.--
She stabs herself rather than be dishonoured; and it is Nigridius who
mangles, gashes, racks and distorts the little son of Coriolanus.
Page 377, line 3. _Shadwell._ The version of "Timon of Athens," by
Thomas Shadwell (1642?-1692), Poet Laureate, is "The History of Timon of
Athens, the Man Hater," produced at the Dorset Garden Theatre in 1678.
Timon's last words are:--
_Timon._ I charge thee live, Evandra.
Thou lov'st me not if thou wilt not obey me;
Thou only! Dearest! Kind! Constant thing on earth,
Farewell.
_Dies._
_Evandra._ He's gone! he's gone! would all the world were so.
I must make haste, or I shall not o'ertake
Him in his flight. Timon, I come, stay for me,
Farewell, base world.
_Stabs herself. Dies._
Evandra was played not only by Mrs. Betterton, but also by Mrs.
Bracegirdle.
Page 377, foot. "_Macbeth._" The new version of "Macbeth" was probably
by Sir William Davenant (1606-1668). There is an edition as early as
1673.
Macduff's chariot is greatly insisted upon. His servant remarks in the
same scene:--
This is the entrance o' th' Heath; and here
He order'd me to attend him with the chariot,
and a little later, to Macduff's question, "Where are our children?"
Lady Macduff replies:--
They are securely sleeping in the chariot.
Lady Macbeth's final repentance leads her to address her husband thus:--
You may in peace resign the ill-gain'd crown.
Why should you labour still to be unjust?
There has been too much blood already spilt.
Make not the subjects victims to your guilt.
* * * * *
resign your kingdom now,
And with your crown put off your guilt.
* * * * *
Page 379. SATURDAY NIGHT.
_The Gem_, 1830. Signed "Nepos." Not reprinted by Lamb.
This little essay was written to accompany an engraving of Wilkie's
picture with the same title. Whether Lamb's grandmother was as he has
recorded we cannot know; his reminiscences of her in "Dream Children"
and "The Grandam" are very different. That was Mrs. Field; Lamb, I
think, never knew a paternal grandmother. The recollection of the fly in
the eye seems to have an authentic air.
Page 380, line 9. _Burking._ After Burke and Hare, who suffocated their
victims and sold them to the hospitals for dissection. Burke was
executed in January, 1829.
* * * * *
Page 381. ESTIMATE OF DE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS.
This criticism was written for Wilson's _Memoirs of the Life and Times
of Daniel de Foe_, 1830. It will be found on page 636 of the third of
Wilson's volumes. Lamb never reprinted it.
Walter Wilson (1781-1847) had been a bookseller, and a fellow-clerk of
Lamb's at the India House. Later he entered at the Inner Temple. In
addition to his work on De Foe, he wrote _The History and Antiquities of
Dissenting Churches in London, Westminster and Southwark, including the
Lives of their Ministers_, a work in four volumes. Lamb, as his
_Letters_ tell us, helped Wilson with advice concerning De Foe. He also
seems to have wished the "Ode to the Treadmill" to be included; but it
was not.
This criticism of the Secondary Novels is usually preceded in the
editions of Lamb's works by the following remarks contained in Lamb's
letter to Wilson of December 16, 1822, which Wilson printed as page 428
of Vol. III., but they do not rightly form part of the article, which
Lamb wrote seven years later, in 1829. I quote from the original MS. in
the Bodleian:--
"In the appearance of _truth_, in all the incidents and conversations
that occur in them, they exceed any works of fiction I am acquainted
with. It is perfect illusion. The _Author_ never appears in these
self-narratives (for so they ought to be called, or rather
Autobiographies) but the _Narrator_ chains us down to an implicit belief
in every thing he says. There is all the minute detail of a log-book in
it. Dates are painfully pressed upon the memory. Facts are repeated over
and over in varying phrases, till you cannot chuse but believe them. It
is like reading Evidence given in a Court of Justice. So anxious the
storyteller seems that the truth should be clearly comprehended, that
when he has told us a matter of fact, or a motive, in a line or two
farther down he _repeats_ it, with his favourite figure of speech, 'I
say,' so and so--though he had made it abundantly plain before. This is
in imitation of the common people's way of speaking, or rather of the
way in which they are addressed by a master or mistress, who wishes to
impress something upon their memories, and has a wonderful effect upon
matter-of-fact readers. Indeed it is to such principally that he writes.
His style is elsewhere beautiful, but plain and _homely_. Robinson
Crusoe is delightful to all ranks and classes, but it is easy to see
that it is written in phraseology peculiarly adapted to the lower
conditions of readers; hence it is an especial favourite with sea-faring
men, poor boys, servant-maids, &c. His novels are capital
kitchen-reading, while they are worthy from their deep interest to find
a shelf in the Libraries of the wealthiest, and the most learned. His
passion for _matter-of-fact narrative_, sometimes betrayed him into a
long relation of common incidents which might happen to any man, and
have no interest but the intense appearance of truth in them, to
recommend them. The whole latter half, or two thirds, of Colonel Jack is
of this description. The beginning of Colonel Jack is the most affecting
natural picture of a young thief that was ever drawn. His losing the
stolen money in the hollow of a tree, and finding it again when in
despair, and then being in equal distress at not knowing how to dispose
of it, and several similar touches in the early history of the Colonel,
evince a deep knowledge of human nature; and, putting out of question
the superior _romantic_ interest of the latter, in my mind very much
exceed Crusoe. Roxana (1st edition) is the next in Interest, though he
left out the best part of it [in] subsequent Editions, from a foolish
hyper criticism of his friend Southerne. But Moll Flanders, the account
of the Plague, &c. &c. are all of one family, and have the same stamp of
character."
One point in this 1822 criticism requires notice--that touching the
first edition of _Roxana_. According to a letter from Lamb to Wilson,
Lamb considered the curiosity of Roxana's daughter to be the best part
of _Roxana_. But the episode of the daughter does not come into the
first edition of the book (1724) at all, and is thought by some critics
not to be De Foe's. Mr. Aitken, De Foe's latest editor, doubts the
Southerne story altogether. In any case, Lamb was wrong in recommending
the first edition for its completeness, for the later ones are fuller.
It was upon the episode of Susannah that Godwin based his play,
"Faulkener," for which Lamb wrote a prologue in praise of De Foe.
Godwin's preface stated that the only edition of _Roxana_ then
available--in 1807--in which to find the full story of Roxana's
daughter, was that of 1745. Godwin turned the avenging daughter into a
son.
Writing to Wilson on the publication of his _Memoirs of De Foe_, Lamb
says: "The two papers of mine will puzzle the reader, being so akin.
Odd, that never keeping a scrap of my own letters, with some fifteen
years' interval I should have nearly said the same things." (According
to the dating of the letters the interval was not fifteen years, but
seven.) Lamb also remarks, "De Foe was always my darling."
For a further criticism of De Foe see "The Good Clerk," page 148 of the
present volume, and the notes to the same.
In introducing the criticism of the Secondary Novels, Wilson wrote:--
It may call for some surprise that De Foe should be so little known
as a novelist, beyond the range of "Robinson Crusoe." To recall the
attention of the public to his other fictions, the present writer
is happy to enrich his work with some original remarks upon his
secondary novels by his early friend, Charles Lamb, whose
competency to form an accurate judgment upon the subject, no one
will doubt who is acquainted with his genius.
Page 382, foot. _Mr. Coleridge has anticipated us...._ Referring to
Coleridge's remarks, see the _Biographia Literaria_, Vol. II., chapter
iv.
Page 383, line 8. _An ingenious critic._ Lamb himself, in the 1822
criticism quoted above.
* * * * *
Page 383. CLARENCE SONGS.
_The Spectator_, July 24, 1830.
Concerning Lamb's theory that "Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill" was written
upon Prince William, the editor of _The Spectator_ remarks that it had
reference to George IV.--a monarch upon whom Lamb himself had done his
share of rhyming. Lamb was at Christ's Hospital from 1782-1789. Prince
William, who was born in 1765, became a midshipman in 1779. His
promotion to lieutenant came in 1785, and to captain in the following
year. The ballad to which Lamb refers is called "Duke William's
Frolic." It relates how Duke William and a nobleman, dressing themselves
like sailors, repaired to an inn to drink. While there the Press gang
came; the Duke was said to have been impudent to the lieutenant and was
condemned to be flogged. The ballad (as given in Mr. John Ashton's
_Modern Street Ballads_, 1888) ends:--
Then instantly the boatswain's mate began for to undress him,
But, presently, he did espy the star upon his breast, sir;
Then on their knees they straight did fall, and for mercy soon did
call,
He replied, You're base villains, thus using us poor sailors.
No wonder that my royal father cannot man his shipping,
'Tis by using them so barbarously, and always them a-whipping.
But for the future, sailors all, shall have good usage, great and
small,
To hear the news, together all cried, May God bless Duke William.
He ordered them fresh officers that stood in need of wealth,
And with the crew he left some gold, that they might drink his
health,
And when that they did go away, the sailors loud huzzaèd,
Crying, Blessed be that happy day whereon was born Duke William.
Tom Sheridan, the dramatist's son, was born in 1775, and died in 1817,
so that in 1783 he was only eight years old.
* * * * *
Page 385. RECOLLECTIONS OF A LATE ROYAL ACADEMICIAN.
_The Englishman's Magazine_, September, 1831. Not reprinted by Lamb.
In the magazine the title ran:--
"PETER'S NET
"'_All is fish that comes to my net_'
"_No. 1.--Recollections of a Late Royal Academician_"
Moxon had taken over _The Englishman's Magazine_, started in April,
1831, in time to control the August number, in which had appeared a
notice stating, of Elia, that "in succeeding months he promiseth to
grace" the pages of the magazine "with a series of essays, under the
quaint appellation of 'PETER'S NET.'" The magazine, however, lived only
until the October number. Writing to Moxon at the time that he sent the
MS. of this essay, Lamb remarked:--
"The R. A. here memorised was George Dawe, whom I knew well, and heard
many anecdotes of, from Daniels and Westall, at H. Rogers's; to each of
them it will be well to send a magazine in my name. It will fly like
wildfire among the Royal Academicians and artists.... The 'Peter's Net'
does not intend funny things only. All is fish. And leave out the
sickening 'Elia' at the end. Then it may comprise letters and characters
addressed to Peter; but a signature forces it to be all characteristic
of the one man, Elia, or the one man, Peter, which cramped me formerly."
George Dawe was born in 1781, the son of Philip Dawe, a mezzotint
engraver. At first he engraved too, but after a course of study in the
Royal Academy schools he took to portrait-painting, among his early
sitters being William Godwin. Throughout his career he painted
portraits, varied at first with figure subjects of the kind described by
Lamb. He was made an Associate in 1809 and an R.A. in 1814. His
introduction to royal circles came with the marriage of the Princess
Charlotte and Prince Leopold in 1816. After her death he went to
Brussels in the suite of the Duke of Kent, and painted the Duke of
Wellington. It was in 1819 that he visited St. Petersburg, remaining
nine years, and painting nearly four hundred portraits, first of the
officers who fought against Napoleon, and afterwards of other
personages. He left in 1828, but returned in 1829 after a visit to
England, and a short but profitable sojourn in Berlin. He died in 1829,
and was buried in the crypt of St. Paul's. A passage in his will shows
Dawe to have been a rather more interesting character than Lamb
suggests, and his _Life of George Morland_, 1807, has considerable
merit.
Coleridge also knew Dawe well. Dawe painted a picture on a subject in
"Love," drew Coleridge's portrait and took a cast of his face; and in
1812 Coleridge thus recommends him to Mrs. Coleridge's hospitality:--
He is a very modest man, his manners not over polished, and his
worst point is that he is (at least, I have found him so) a fearful
questionist, whenever he thinks he can pick up any information, or
ideas, poetical, historical, topographical, or artistical, that he
can make bear on his own profession. But he is sincere, friendly,
strictly _moral_ in every respect, I firmly believe even to
_innocence_, and in point of cheerful indefatigableness of
industry, in regularity, and temperance--in short, in a glad, yet
quiet, devotion of his whole being to the art he has made choice
of, he is the only man I ever knew who goes near to rival
Southey--gentlemanly address, person, physiognomy, knowledge,
learning and genius being of course wholly excluded from the
comparison.
Many years later, however, Coleridge endorsed Dawe's funeral card in the
following terms, "The Grub" being the nickname by which Dawe was
known:--
I really would have attended the Grub's Canonization in St. Paul's,
under the impression that it would gratify his sister, Mrs. Wright;
but Mr. G. interposed a conditional but sufficiently decorous
negative. "No! Unless you wish to follow his Grubship still further
_down_." So I pleaded ill health. But the very Thursday morning I
went to Town to see my daughter, for the first time, as _Mrs. Henry
Coleridge_, in Gower Street, and, odd enough, the stage was stopped
by the Pompous Funeral of the unchangeable and predestinated Grub,
and I extemporised:--
"As Grub Dawe pass'd beneath the Hearse's Lid,
On which a large RESURGAM met the eye,
_Col_, who well knew the Grub, cried, Lord forbid!
I trust, he's only telling us a lie!"
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Page 385, line 2 of essay. _To the Russian._ Among Dawe's court
paintings was an equestrian portrait of Alexander I., twenty feet high.
His collection of portraits painted during his residence in Russia was
lodged in a gallery built for it in the Winter Palace.
Page 385, line 11 of essay. _"Timon" as it was last acted._ Referring to
the performance of "Timon of Athens," given exactly as in Shakespeare's
day, with no women in the cast, at Drury Lane on October 28, 1816.
Page 385, line 9 from foot. _The Haytian._ I can find no authority for
Lamb's suggestion that Dawe might have gone to Hayti to paint the court
of Christophe. Probably Lamb based the theory, as a joke, upon a story
of Dawe which Sir Anthony Carlisle, the surgeon, and a friend of Lamb's,
used to tell. The story is told in _The Library of the Fine Arts_, 1831,
in the following terms:--
In a conversation with Sir A. Carlisle, that eminent surgeon told
Dawe that he had lately sent to Bartholemew's Hospital a negro of
prodigious power and fine form, such as he had never before seen,
and the sight of whom had given him better conceptions of the
beauty of Grecian sculpture than he had previously possessed.
Struck with this account Dawe went to the Hospital where he found
the man had been discharged. Any other person would here have given
up the pursuit, but Dawe was not to be baffled in a favourite
object; he accordingly commenced a strict search through all those
parts of the town where such a person was likely to be found; and
at length, after much inquiry, found him on board a ship about to
sail for the West Indies. Dawe, though his means at that time were
not so great as they afterwards became, induced the man to go home
with him, where he maintained him some time; and the Negro having
among other instances of his strength, told him of his once seizing
a buffalo by the nostrils and bearing it down to the ground, Dawe
was so struck by the fact as suited for the composition of a
powerful picture, that he placed the man in the posture he
described, and drew him in that attitude. When the picture was sent
for the premium of the British Institution, several of the
governors objected to it as being a portrait and not an historical
picture; notwithstanding this, however, the better judgment of the
majority awarded it the prize.
Page 386, line 2. _Widow H._ This was probably Mrs. Hope, wife of Thomas
Hope, the famous virtuoso and patron, who had just died--in February,
1831. Dawe was one of his less capable protégés. It was Mr. and Mrs.
Hope whom Dubost, the French painter, out of pique, caricatured as
"Beauty and the Beast." On the exhibition of the picture in public, the
incident caused some notoriety, and George Dyer's friend Jekyll was
engaged in the subsequent law-suit.
Page 386, line 16 from foot. _His father._ Philip Dawe, mezzotint
engraver, who flourished 1760-1780, the friend of George Morland and the
pupil of that painter's father, Henry Robert Morland (1730?-1797), and
engraver of many of his pictures. George Dawe wrote George Morland's
life.
Page 386, line 13 from foot. _Carrington and Bowles._ Properly,
Carington Bowles, of 69 St. Paul's Churchyard. The laundress washing was
probably Lamb's recollection of one of the well-known pair, "Lady's-Maid
Ironing" and "Lady's-Maid Soaping Linen," by Henry Morland, the
originals of which are in the National Gallery. I cannot identify among
the hundreds of Carington Bowles' publications in the British Museum the
picture that Lamb so much admired in the Hornsey Road. But the inn would
probably be that which is now The King's Head (or Yard of Pork), at the
corner of Crouch End Hill (a continuation of Hornsey Lane), Crouch Hill,
Coleridge Road and Broadway. The picture has gone.
Page 387, line 14 from foot. _He proceeded Academician._ Lamb wrote to
Manning in 1810, "Mr. Dawe is made associate of the Royal Academy. By
what law of association, I can't guess."
Page 388, line 15 from foot. _Sampson ... Dalilah._ The letters contain
an earlier account of the picture. Writing to Hazlitt in 1805 Lamb says:
"I have seen no pictures of note since, except Mr. Dawe's gallery. It is
curious to see how differently two great men treat the same subject, yet
both excellent in their way: for instance, Milton and Mr. Dawe. Mr. Dawe
has chosen to illustrate the story of Sampson exactly in the point of
view in which Milton has been most happy: the interview between the
Jewish Hero, blind and captive, and Dalilah. Milton has imagined his
Locks grown again, strong as horse-hair or porcupine's bristles;
doubtless shaggy and black, as being hairs 'which of a nation armed
contained the strength.' I don't remember, he _says_ black: but could
Milton imagine them to be yellow? Do you? Mr. Dawe with striking
originality of conception has crowned him with a thin yellow wig, in
colour precisely like Dyson's, in curl and quantity resembling Mrs.
Professor's,[73] his Limbs rather stout, about such a man as my Brother
or Rickman--but no Atlas nor Hercules, nor yet so bony as Dubois, the
Clown of Sadler's Wells. This was judicious, taking the spirit of the
story rather than the fact: for doubtless God could communicate national
salvation to the trust of flax and tow as well as hemp and cordage, and
could draw down a Temple with a golden tress as soon as with all the
cables of the British navy."
[73] Mrs. Godwin.--ED.
Page 390, line 11. _Half a million._ Probably nearer £100,000. Dawe,
however, lost much of this by money-lending, and died worth only
£25,000.
* * * * *
Page 391. THE LATIN POEMS OF VINCENT BOURNE.
_The Englishman's Magazine_, September, 1831.
This article was unsigned, but it is known to be by Lamb from internal
evidence and from the following letter to Moxon, the publisher of the
magazine:--
"DEAR M.,--I have ingeniously contrived to review myself.
"Tell me if this will do. Mind, for such things as these--half
quotations--I do not charge _Elia_ price. Let me hear of, if not see
you.
"PETER."
Lamb's _Album Verses_, the book reviewed, had been published by Moxon a
year earlier. It contained nine translations from Vincent Bourne.
Further particulars of Vincent Bourne (1695-1747), a master at
Westminster, are given in the notes to Lamb's translations in the
poetical volume. His _Poemata_ appeared in 1734, the best edition being
that of the Rev. John Mitford, Bernard Barton's friend, published in
1840. Lamb first read Bourne as late as 1815. Writing to Wordsworth in
April of that year he says of Bourne: "What a heart that man had, all
laid out upon town scenes, a proper counterpoise to _some people's_
rural extravagances." And again in the same letter: "What a sweet,
unpretending, pretty-mannered, _matter-ful_ creature, sucking from every
flower, making a flower of every thing--his diction all Latin, and his
thoughts all English." And in the _Elia_ essay "On the Decay of Beggars"
Bourne is called "most classical, and at the same time, most English, of
the Latinists!"
Page 391, foot. _Cowper ... out of the four._ Cowper, who was Bourne's
pupil at Westminster, translated twenty-three of the poems, but there
were only four in early editions of his works. Lamb and Cowper did not
clash in their translations, except in the case of the lines on the
sleeping infant quoted later in this essay. Cowper's version ran thus:--
Sweet babe, whose image here expressed,
Does thy peaceful slumbers show,
Guilt or fear, to break thy rest,
Never did thy spirit know.
Softly slumber, soft repose,
Such as mock the painter's skill,
Such as innocence bestows,
Harmless infant, lull thee still!
The line quoted by Lamb from Cowper is the first of "The Jackdaw."
Cowper's praise of Bourne resembles Lamb's. He writes: "I love the
memory of Vinny Bourne. I think him a better Latin poet than Tibullus,
Propertius, Ausonius, or any of the writers in _his_ way, except Ovid,
and not at all inferior to _him_."
Page 392, line 4. _A recent writer._ Lamb himself.
Page 395, line 19. _There is a tragic Drama._ "The Wife's Trial" (see
Vol. IV.). More properly a comic drama.
Page 395, line 27. _But if to write in Albums be a sin._ A reference
probably to the attack on Lamb's book made a year earlier in the
_Literary Gazette_, which occasioned Southey's spirited lines to _The
Times_ in defence of his friend.
Page 396, middle. _But the disease has gone forth._ Four years before,
in 1827, Lamb had protested to Bernard Barton against the Album
exactions:--
"If I go to ---- thou art there also, O all pervading Album! All over
the Leeward Islands, in Newfoundland, and the Back Settlements, I
understand there is no other reading. They haunt me. I die of
Albophobia!"
* * * * *
Page 397. THE DEATH OF MUNDEN.
_The Athenæum_, February 11, 1832, under the title, "Munden, the
Comedian." Signed "C. Lamb." Not reprinted by Lamb.
The article was preceded by this editorial note:--
A brief Memoir in a paper like the _Athenæum_, is due to departed
genius, and would certainly have been paid to Munden, whose fame is
so interwoven with all our early and pleasant recollections, even
though we had nothing to add to the poor detail of dates and facts
already registered in the daily papers. The memory of a player, it
has been said, is limited to one generation; he
"--struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more!"
But this cannot be true, seeing that many whose fame will soon be
counted by centuries, yet live to delight us in Cibber; and that
others of our latter days, have been enbalmed, in all their vital
spirit, by Elia himself; in whose unrivalled volume _Cockletop_ is
preserved as in amber, and where Munden will live for aye, making
mouths at Time and Oblivion. We were thus apologizing to ourselves
for the unworthy epithet we were about to scratch on perishable
paper to this inimitable actor, when we received the following
letter, which our readers will agree with us is worth a whole
volume of bald biographies.
This preamble was probably written by Charles Wentworth Dilke
(1789-1864), who became supreme editor of _The Athenæum_ in 1830. Joseph
Shepherd Munden died on February 6, 1832. He had first made his mark in
1780, when Lamb was five. His Covent Garden career lasted, with
occasional migrations, from 1790 to 1811. Munden's first appearance at
Drury Lane was in 1813. It was in 1815 that he created the part of Old
Dozy, in T. Dibdin's "Past Ten O'clock and a Rainy Night." His farewell
of the stage was taken in 1824.
Page 397, line 7. _Lewis._ "Gentleman" Lewis (1748?-1811), the original
Faulkland in "The Rivals." It was he who said that Lamb's farce, "Mr.
H.," might easily have been turned into a success by a practical
dramatist. Hazlitt called him "the greatest comic mannerist perhaps that
ever lived." His full name is William Thomas Lewis.
Page 397, line 8. _Parsons, Dodd, etc._ See note on page 465. Parsons
was at Drury Lane practically from 1762 to 1795 and Dodd from 1766 to
1796.
Page 398, line 4. "_Johnny Gilpin._" This benefit, for William Dowton
(1764-1851), was held on April 28, 1817. The first piece was "The
Rivals," with Dowton as Mrs. Malaprop. In "Johnny Gilpin" (Genest gives
no author's name) Munden played Anthony Brittle.
Page 398, line 6. _Liston's Lubin Log._ This was one of Listen's great
parts--in "Love, Law and Physic," by Lamb's friend, James Kenney
(1780-1849), produced in 1812.
Page 398, at the end. _A gentleman ... whose criticism I think
masterly._ This was Talfourd, who several years before had been dramatic
critic to _The Champion_. I quote the first portion of his article: "Mr.
Munden appears to us to be the most _classical_ of actors. He is that in
high farce, which Kemble was in high tragedy. The lines of these great
artists are, it must be admitted, sufficiently distinct; but the same
elements are in both,--the same directness of purpose, the same
singleness of aim, the same concentration of power, the same iron-casing
of inflexible manner, the same statue-like precision of gesture,
movement and attitude. The hero of farce is as little affected with
impulses from without, as the retired Prince of Tragedians. There is
something solid, sterling, almost adamantine, in the building up of his
most grotesque characters. When he fixes his wonder-working face in any
of its most amazing varieties, it looks as if the picture were carved
out from a rock by Nature in a sportive vein, and might last for ever.
It is like what we can imagine a mask of the old Grecian Comedy to have
been, only that it lives, and breathes, and changes. His most
fantastical gestures are the grand ideal of farce. He seems as though he
belonged to the earliest and the stateliest age of Comedy, when instead
of superficial foibles and the airy varieties of fashion, she had the
grand asperities of man to work on, when her grotesque images had
something romantic about them, and when humour and parody were
themselves heroic."
* * * * *
Page 398. THOUGHTS ON PRESENTS OF GAME, &C.
_The Athenæum_, November 30, 1833. Signed "Elia." Not reprinted by Lamb.
The quoted passage at the head of this little essay is from Lamb's
"Popular Fallacy," XV., "That we must not look a gift-horse in the
mouth." It was probably placed there by the editor of _The Athenæum_.
The present essay may be taken as a postscript to the "Dissertation on
Roast Pig." The late Mr. Charles Kent, in his Centenary edition of Lamb,
printed it next that essay, under the heading "A Recantation."
Page 399, line 1. _Old Mr. Chambers._ The Rev. Thomas Chambers, Vicar of
Radway-Edgehill, in Warwickshire, and father of Charles and John
Chambers, who were at Christ's Hospital, but after Lamb's day. John was
a fellow clerk of Lamb's at the India House. A letter from Lamb to
Charles Chambers is in existence (see Hazlitt's _The Lambs_, page 138),
in which Lamb makes other ecstatic remarks on delicate feeding.
Incidentally he says that bullock's heart is a substitute for hare. Mr.
Hazlitt says that the Warwickshire vicar left a diary in which he
recorded little beyond the dinners he used to give or eat.
Page 399, line 10. _Mrs. Minikin._ Writing to his friend Dodwell in
October, 1827, concerning the gift of a little pig (which suggests that
the "Recantation" was of more recent date than the reader is asked to
suppose), Lamb uses "crips" again. "'And do it nice and _crips_.'
(That's the Cook's word.) You'll excuse me, I have been only speaking to
Becky about the dinner to-morrow." This seems to establish the fact that
Mrs. Minikin was Becky's name when she was exalted into print. Becky
however had left long before 1833.
* * * * *
Page 400. TABLE-TALK BY THE LATE ELIA.
_The Athæneum_, January 4, May 31, June 7, July 19, 1834. Not reprinted
by Lamb.
The phrase, "the late Elia," has reference to the preface to the _Last
Essays of Elia_, published in 1833, in which his death is spoken of.
Page 400, line 3 of essay. _'Tis unpleasant to meet a beggar._ A
different note is struck in the Elia essay "On the Decay of Beggars":
"Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, imposition,
imposture--_give, and ask no questions_."
Page 400, line 4 from foot. _Will Dockwray._ I have not been able to
find anything about this Will Dockwray. Such Ware records as I have
consulted are silent concerning him. There was a Joseph Dockwray, a rich
Quaker maltster, at Ware in the eighteenth century. In the poem "Going
or Gone," which mentions many of Lamb's acquaintances in his early
Widford days (Widford is only three miles from Ware), there is mentioned
a Tom Dockwra, who also eludes research.
Page 401, line 15. "_We read the 'Paradise Lost' as a task._" Johnson,
in his "Life of Milton," in the _Lives of the Poets_, says: "'Paradise
Lost' is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and
forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its
perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure." For other remarks on Milton
see page 428.
Page 401, foot. _So ends "King Lear."_ Lamb means that the tragedy is
virtually done. There are of course some dozen lines more, after the
last of those quoted in Lamb's piecemeal; which I have corrected by the
Globe Edition. Lear's praise of Caius--"he's a good fellow ... and will
strike"--was applied by Lamb to his father in the character sketch of
him in the Elia essay "On the Old Benchers" (see also the essay on the
"Genius of Hogarth," for earlier remarks, 1810, on this subject).
Page 402, first quotation. "_Served not for gain...._" From the Fool's
song in "Lear," Act II., Scene 4:--
That, sir, which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack when it begins to rain,
And leave thee in the storm.
Page 402, second and third quotations. "_The Nut-Brown Maid._" This poem
is given in the _Percy Reliques_. The oldest form of it is in Arnolde's
_Chronicle_, 1502. Lamb quotes from the penultimate stanza. Matthew
Prior (1664-1721), who wrote a version under the title "Henry and Emma,"
was a favourite with Lamb. In Miss Isola's Extract Book he copied
Prior's "Female Phaeton." In this connection a passage from the obituary
notice of Lamb, written by Barren Field in the _Annual Biography and
Obituary_, 1836, has peculiar interest. The doctrine referred to is
"suppression in writing":--
We remember, at the very last supper we ate with him (Mr. Serjeant
Talfourd will recollect it too), he quoted a passage from Prior's
"Henry and Emma," in illustration of this doctrine and discipline;
and yet he said he loved Prior as much as any man, but that his
"Henry and Emma" was a vapid paraphrase of the old poem of "The
Nutbrowne Mayde." For example, at the _dénouement_ of the ballad,
Prior made Henry rant out to his devoted Emma:--
"In me behold the potent Edgar's heir,
Illustrious earl; him terrible in war
Let Loire confess, for she has felt his sword,
And trembling fled before the British Lord,"
and so on for a dozen couplets, heroic, as they are called. And
then Mr. Lamb made us mark the modest simplicity with which the
noble youth disclosed himself to his mistress in the old poem:--
"Now understand,
To Westmoreland,
_Which is my heritage_,
(in a parenthesis, as it were,)
I will you bring;
And with a ring,
By way of marriage,
I will you take
And lady make
As shortly as I can:
Thus have ye won
_An earle's son_
And not a banish'd man."
Page 403, line 14 from foot. _M---- sent to his friend L----._ M----
probably stands for Basil Montagu, Lamb's friend, and the editor of the
volume in which "Confessions of a Drunkard" appeared. L---- was probably
Lamb himself.
Page 403, line 11 from foot. _Penotier._ The friend disguised under this
name has not been identified. Nor has Parson W---- or F---- in a later
paragraph. Mr. B. B. MacGeorge tells me that he has a copy of _John
Woodvil_ inscribed in Lamb's hand to the Rev. J. Walton (or Watson).
Page 404, line 19. _39th of Exodus._ Lamb meant 39th of Genesis--the
story of Joseph.
Page 405, line 12. _C----._ See Allsop's _Letters and Conversations of
S. T. Coleridge_, 1836, Vol. I., page 206, or where Allsop quotes Lamb
as saying, "I made that joke first (the _Scotch_ corner in hell, _fire
without brimstone_), though Coleridge somewhat licked it into shape."
Page 405, line 7 from foot. _Chapman's Homer._ It would have been quite
possible for Shakespeare to have read part of Chapman's Homer before he
wrote "Troilus and Cressida." That play was probably written in 1603,
and seven books of Chapman's _Iliad_ came out in 1598, and the whole
edition somewhere about 1609. Mr. Lee thinks that Shakespeare had read
Chapman. The whole of the _Odyssey_ was published in 1614. It was from
this version that Lamb prepared his _Adventures of Ulysses_, 1808.
* * * * *
Page 406. THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE.
Not printed by Lamb. These reflections were copied from the album of Mr.
Keymer by John Forster, and quoted in the memorial article upon Lamb
written by him in the _New Monthly Magazine_ for February, 1835, which
he then edited. "Lamb never fairly recovered from the death of
Coleridge," said Forster.
He thought of little else (his sister was but another portion of
himself) until his own great spirit joined his friend. He had a
habit of venting his melancholy in a sort of mirth. He would, with
nothing graver than a pun, "cleanse his bosom of the perilous stuff
that weighed" upon it. In a jest, or a few light phrases, he would
lay open the last recesses of his heart. So in respect of the death
of Coleridge. Some old friends of his saw him two or three weeks
ago, and remarked the constant turning and reference of his mind.
He interrupted himself and them almost every instant with some play
of affected wonder, or astonishment, or humorous melancholy, on the
words, "_Coleridge is dead._" Nothing could divert him from that,
for the thought of it never left him.
It was then that Forster asked Lamb to inscribe something in Mr.
Keymer's album: the passage on Coleridge was the result. Keymer was a
London bookseller--the same to whom Bernard Barton, after Lamb's death,
sent a character sketch of Lamb (see _Bernard Barton and His Friends_,
page 113). Lamb, I might add, was much offended, as he told Mr. Fuller
Russell, by a request from _The Athenæum_, immediately after Coleridge's
death, for an article upon him.
Coleridge died in the house of James Gillman, in the Grove, Highgate,
July 25, 1834, five months before Lamb's death. On his deathbed
Coleridge had written, in pencil, in a copy of his _Poetical Works_,
against the poem "This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison," the words: "_Ch. and
Mary Lamb--dear to my heart, yea, as it were, my heart. S. T. C. Aet.
63, 1834. 1797-1834--37 years!_"
Coleridge's will contained this clause:--
And further, as a relief to my own feelings by the opportunity of
mentioning their names, that I request of my executor, that a small
plain gold mourning ring, with my hair, may be presented to the
following persons, namely: To my close friend and ever-beloved
schoolfellow, Charles Lamb--and in the deep and almost life-long
affection of which this is the slender record; his equally-beloved
sister, Mary Lamb, will know herself to be included ...
The names of five other friends followed.
* * * * *
Page 407. CUPID'S REVENGE.
This paraphrase of Beaumont and Fletcher's play of the same name is
placed here on account of the mystery of its date. Probably it belongs
to a stage in Lamb's career some years earlier. It was printed first in
_Harper's Magazine_, December, 1858, with the following prefatory
note:--
The autograph MS. of this unpublished Tale by Charles Lamb came
into our hands in the following manner: Thomas Allsop, Esq., who
came to this country a few months since in consequence of his
alleged complicity in the attempt made upon the life of Louis
Napoleon by Orsini, was for many years an intimate friend and
correspondent of Coleridge and Lamb. He is known as the author of
the _Recollections, etc., of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, published
nearly a quarter of a century ago. He brought with him in his
flight to America a number of manuscripts of his friends. Among
these were a volume of "Marginalia" by Coleridge; a series of notes
by Lamb, nearly a hundred in all, many of them highly
characteristic of the writer; and the tale of "Cupid's Revenge"
which appears to have remained unpublished in consequence of the
cessation of the magazine for which it was written. These MSS. have
all been placed in our hands. In an early number we propose to
publish a selection from the letters of Lamb, and the "Marginalia"
of Coleridge.
(_Editors of Harper's Magazine._)
A large number of the notes from Lamb to Allsop were published, as
promised, under the editorship of George William Curtis. Allsop died in
1880.
APPENDIX
Page 425. SCRAPS OF CRITICISM.
_London Magazine_, December, 1822. Not signed.
In December, 1822, the editor of the _London Magazine_ inaugurated a new
department to be called "The Miscellany"--a place of refuge for small
ingenious productions. To ask Lamb's assistance would be the most
natural thing in the world, and though no signature is attached, there
is, I think, enough internal evidence for us to consider his the
contribution to the first instalment which has the sub-title, "Scraps of
Criticism."
The first two notes, on Gray, may be taken as companions to that in _The
Examiner_ Table-Talk (page 181), on the beard of Gray's Bard. The note
on Richard III. is of a part with Lamb's Shakespearian criticisms, and
it comes here as a kind of postscript to his examination of Cooke's
impersonation (see page 41 and note to the same).
Page 425, second quotation. This passage describing Milton is in Gray's
_Progress of Poesy_, III., 2, and not, as Lamb inadvertently says, in
_The Bard_.
Page 425, foot. _Salmasius._ Salmasius, Claude de Saumaise (1588-1653),
a professor at Leyden who wrote a defence of Charles I. in Latin, 1649,
to which Milton replied, 1650, also in Latin. It was while engaged in
this work that Milton lost his sight.
Page 426, second paragraph. _Howell's Letters. Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ:
Familiar Letters, Domestic and Foreign, divided into Sundry Sections,
partly Historical, Political and Philosophical, 1645-1655._ By James
Howell (1594?-1666). It was James Russell Lowell's theory (shared by
other critics) that Lamb borrowed the name Elia from _Ho-Elianæ_. But
this was not the case. The letter referred to in line 22 is to Captain
Thomas Porter, July 10, 1623; and the fourth letter from which Lamb
quotes is to Sir James Crofts, August 21, 1623. I have restored Howell's
capitals. The italics are Lamb's.
Page 427, at the end. _The Salutation._ Lamb was probably wrong in this
theory. According to Larwood and Hotten's _History of Signboards_, 1867,
the sign originally represented an angel saluting the Virgin Mary. In
the time of the Commonwealth this was changed to a soldier saluting a
civilian; and later it became the salutation of two citizens: the form
of the old sign of the Salutation in Newgate Street, where Coleridge
lived a while, and where Lamb and he talked into the night over egg-hot.
Ben Jonson's Salutation, referred to in "Bartholomew Fair," was in
Billingsgate. Salutation and Cat was a blend of two signs.
* * * * *
Page 427. THE CHOICE OF A GRAVE. _London Magazine_, January, 1823. Not
signed.
There is a passage in the _Elia_ essay on "Distant Correspondents,"
concerning Lord Camelford's fantastic instructions concerning the burial
of his body, which bears upon this same subject.
Page 428. WILKS. _London Magazine_, January, 1823. Not signed.
John Wilkes (1727-1797) of _The North Briton_. Barry Cornwall writes in
his Memoir of Lamb: "I remember that, at one of the monthly magazine
dinners, when John Wilkes was too roughly handled, Lamb quoted the story
(not generally known) of his replying, when the blackbirds were reported
to have stolen all his cherries, 'Poor birds, they are welcome.' He said
that those impulsive words showed the inner nature of the man more truly
that all his political speeches."
Page 428. MILTON. _London Magazine_, February, 1823. Not signed.
Page 428, foot. _Mr. Todd._ Henry John Todd (1763-1845), whose edition
of Milton in six volumes, for long the standard, was first published in
1801. The lines in question are crossed out in the original manuscript
of _Comus_, now preserved at Trinity College, Cambridge, and are not
printed in ordinary editions of Milton. Todd was the first to print
them, in his edition of _Comus_, 1798.
Page 429. A CHECK TO HUMAN PRIDE. _London Magazine_, February, 1823. Not
signed.
* * * * *
Page 429. REVIEW OF DIBDIN'S "COMIC TALES."
_The New Times_, January 27, 1825.
I have no doubt that Lamb wrote this review, both from internal evidence
and from what we know, through the medium of his _Letters_, of his
feelings towards the book and its author; and it has been retained in
the appendix instead of taking its place in the text proper through an
oversight. In a letter to John Bates Dibdin, the author's son, dated
January 11, 1825, Lamb writes:
"Pray return my best thanks to your father for his little volume. It is
like all of his I have seen, spirited, good humoured, and redolent of
the wit and humour of a century ago. He should have lived with Gay and
his set. The Chessiad is so clever that I relish'd it in spite of my
total ignorance of the game. I have it not before me, but I remember a
capital simile of the Charwoman letting in her Watchman husband, which
is better than Butler's Lobster turned to Red. Hazard is a grand
Character Jove in his Chair."
Butler's simile, in _Hudibras_, runs:--
The sun had long since in the lap
Of Thetis taken out his nap,
And, like a lobster boiled, the morn
From black to red began to turn.
Charles Dibdin the younger (1768-1853) was the author of a number of
plays and songs and also of a _History of the London Theatres_, 1826.
The full title of the _Comic Tales_ was _Comic Tales and Lyrical
Fancies; including The Chessiad, a mock-heroic, in five cantos; and The
Wreath of Love, in four cantos_, 1825.
The adaptation from Milton in the first sentence is very Elian. See
_Paradise Lost_, VII., 21-23.
Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound
Within the visible diurnal spheare,
Standing on earth, not rapt above the Pole.
Page 430, line 13. _Hoyle ... Phillidor._ Meaning more at home in whist
than in chess. From Edmond Hoyle (1672-1769), author of _A Short
Treatise on the Game of Whist_, 1742, and François André Philidor
(1726-1795), the composer and an authority upon chess. Lamb was, of
course, a great whist player.
Page 430, line 16. _Swift and Gay._ Swift wrote a short but admirably
observant city poem, "A Description of the Morning." Gay's _Trivia; or,
the Art of Walking the Streets of London_, would be the work in Lamb's
mind.
* * * * *
Page 430. DOG DAYS.
_Every-Day Book_, July 14, 1825.
This humane letter is considered by Mr. J. A. Rutter, a profound student
of Lamb, to be probably Lamb's work, a protest against Hone's remark in
the _Every-Day Book_ that dogs would have to be exterminated. There
certainly is no difficulty in conceiving it to be from Lamb's pen,
although there is no overwhelming internal evidence. Writing to Hone on
July 25, 1825, Lamb offers further hints as to the "Dog Days" for the
_Every-Day Book_.
Lamb's interest in dogs became more personal after Hood gave him Dash
for a companion. In the letter to P. G. Patmore, dated from Enfield,
September, 1827, he speaks of mad dogs:--
"All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the overseers; but I
protest they seem to me very rational and collected. But nothing is so
deceitful as mad people, to those who are not used to them. Try him
[Dash] with hot water: if he won't lick it up it is a sign he does not
like it. Does his tail wag horizontally, or perpendicularly? That has
decided the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general deportment
cheerful? I mean when he is pleased--for otherwise there is no judging.
You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has,
have them shot, and keep _him_ for curiosity, to see if it was the
hydrophobia. They say all our army in India had it at one time; but that
was in Hyder-Ally's time."
* * * * *
Page 431. HOOD'S "PROGRESS OF CANT."
There can be, I think, very little doubt that Lamb was the author of
this criticism of Hood's picture "The Progress of Cant" in the _New
Monthly Magazine_ for February, 1826. Lamb, we know, praised the detail
of the Beadle, reproduced in Hone's _Every-Day Book_, under the title
"An Appearance of the Season" (see page 360).
* * * * *
Page 432. MR. EPHRAIM WAGSTAFF.
In _The Table Book_, 1827, beginning on column 185, Vol. II., is this
humorous story which there is some reason to believe is by Lamb. The
late Mr. Dykes Campbell had no doubt whatever, the proof residing not
only in internal evidence but in the rhymed story of "Dick Strype,"
which we may safely assume Lamb to have written. The subject of the two
stories, prose and verse, is the same, and the style of Ephraim Wagstaff
is not unlike that of Juke Judkins. "Dick Strype" is printed in Vol. IV.
of this edition.
* * * * *
Page 435. REVIEW OF MOXON'S SONNETS.
_The Athenæum_, April 13, 1833. Not signed.
Edward Moxon (1801-1858), the publisher, and Lamb's protégé and adopted
son-in-law, was himself a poet in a modest way. His first book, _The
Prospect_, 1826, he dedicated to Samuel Rogers, another patron;
_Christmas_ followed in 1829, dedicated to Lamb; and in 1830 his first
collection of Sonnets was issued. In the second series, 1835, are some
touching lines on Lamb.
I have no proof that _The Athenæum_ review is by Lamb, but I believe it
to be so. Attention was first drawn to it by Mr. J. A. Rutter in _Notes
and Queries_, December 22, 1900, who remarked upon the phrase "integrity
above his avocation" as being perhaps the only instance that exists of
unconscious humour on the part of Charles Lamb.
Page 435, line 12. _Humphrey Mosely._ Humphrey Moseley (d. 1661), the
bookseller of St. Paul's Churchyard and publisher of the first collected
edition of Milton, 1645, and also of Waller, Crashaw, Donne, Vaughan. He
prefixed to the Milton the words: "It is the love I have to our own
language that hath made me diligent to collect and set forth such
pieces, both in prose and verse, as may renew the wonted honour and
esteem of our English tongue."
Page 435, line 20. _What we hope E. M. will be in his._ Moxon nobly
fulfilled the wish. He published Tennyson's first book in 1833 and all
that followed during his lifetime; he became Wordsworth's publisher in
1835; he published Browning's _Sordello_ and _Bells and Pomegranates_;
and he commissioned fine editions of the old dramatists.
INDEX
A
Abbey, Westminster, the charge for admittance, 276, 508.
ACTING, THE NEW, 176, 465.
ACTORS, THE RELIGION OF, 337, 521.
-- contrasted with dramatists, 113.
Actresses, their scarcity in 1813, 177.
Advertisements for apprehending offenders, 74.
"Alaham," by Lord Brooke, 58.
_Album Verses_, Lamb's review of, 391, 544.
"Alchemist, The," by Ben Jonson, 60, 306.
Allan Clare. _See_ ROSAMUND GRAY.
"All's Well that Ends Well," by Shakespeare, 62.
Allsop, Thomas, 269, 504, 550.
AMERICAN WAR FOR HELEN, AN, 182, 468.
_Anatomy of Melancholy, The_, 35, 440.
Anaxarchus, the death of, 530.
André, Major John, 277, 508.
Anstey on nobility, 340.
"Antonio and Mellida," by Marston, 51.
Apparel, Lamb on distinctions in, 52.
APPEARANCE OF THE SEASON, AN, 360, 531.
APPETITE, EDAX ON, 138, 454.
_Arcadia, The_, by Sir Philip Sidney, 62.
"Artaxerxes," by Arne, Lamb's first play, 186, 469.
Articles conjecturally attributed to Lamb, 425, 427, 429, 430, 431,
432, 435, 443.
"Artificial Comedy," Lamb's essay supplemented, 513.
Ashmole, Elias, on nobility, 340.
ASS, THE, 356, 529.
_Athenæum, The_, Lamb's contributions to, 397, 398, 400, 435.
Audiences in Lamb's time, 57, 185.
August 12th, its petition, 354, 528.
Authorship, its mortifications, 322.
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, AN, 375, 535.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN, 314, 515.
Ayrton, William, 270, 505.
B
Bacon, Lord, on the care of turf, 365.
Barbers, their loquacity, 202, 474.
_Bard, The_, by Thomas Gray, 181, 468.
"Barnwell, George," by Lillo, 118.
BARRON FIELD'S POEMS, 232, 493.
Barry, James, on Hogarth, 92.
Baskett Prayer Book, a plate from, 282.
Beadle, Lamb on the, 360, 531.
Beaumont, Francis, 62.
-- and Fletcher, paraphrased by Lamb, 407.
_Bees, The Fable of the_, 141, 455.
"Belles without Beaux," by Peake, 222, 490.
Bethams, the length and tediousness of them, 318, 516.
Bickerstaff, Isaac, his "Hypocrite," 221, 489.
Bills of Mortality, 531.
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON, 292, 512.
Bird, Mr. William, the Lambs' schoolmaster, 351.
Blackett, The Widow, "The Gentle Giantess," 248, 497.
Blakesware and Lamb, 28, 439, 440.
Blind man at the play, a, 184.
BOOKS WITH ONE IDEA IN THEM, 178, 466.
Bourne, Vincent, Lamb's praise of, 391, 544.
Bowles, Carrington, 386, 543.
Boyer, James, his joke, 530.
Braham, his renunciation of Judaism, 338, 522.
Brandon, Charles, his motto, 201, 475.
_British Lady's Magazine_, Mary Lamb contributes to, 204.
"Broken Heart, The," by Ford, 57.
Brome, Richard, his "Jovial Crew," 219, 486.
Brooke, Lord (Fulke Greville), 58.
Browne, Sir Thomas, 200, 476.
Bunyan, unjust neglect of his secondary works, 381.
Burial societies, Lamb's essay on, 107.
Burnet's _History of His Own Times_ quoted, 450.
Burney, Admiral, his card boys, 270, 505.
-- Martin, Lamb's sonnet to, 437.
-- -- the Lambs' affection for, 437.
Burns, Robert, quoted, 22.
Burrell, Miss Lamb's article upon, 215, 484.
Burton, Robert, and Lamb, 35, 204, 440.
"Bussy d'Ambois," by Chapman, 61.
"Byron's Conspiracy," by Chapman, 61.
"Byron's Tragedy," by Chapman, 61.
C
"Cabbage," a slang term applied to tailors, 476.
Campbell, J. Dykes, quoted, 471.
Capital punishment, Lamb on, 527.
CAPTAIN STARKEY, 351, 528.
Carlyle, Thomas, and Lamb, 509.
Cary, Henry Francis, Lamb's friend, 269, 504.
"Case is Altered, The," by Ben Jonson, 59.
"Cato," as performed by Mary Lamb's schoolfellows, 353.
Chambers family, Lamb's friends, 547.
_Champion, The_, Lamb's contribution to, 200, 473.
Chapman, George, 61.
CHARACTER, A, 327, 517.
CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS CONTEMPORARY WITH
SHAKESPEARE, 48, 445.
Charles II. and the Exchequer, 332, 519.
Charnwood, its sombre influence on Liston, 295.
Charron, Pierre, his _De la Sagesse_, quoted, 178, 466.
"Chessiad, The," by Dibdin, 429, 552.
Chimney-sweep, the, in the fields, 179, 467.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, RECOLLECTIONS OF, 162, 460.
-- -- its purpose, 162.
-- -- scandals, 461.
-- -- carols, 463.
Civilisation in New South Wales, 233.
Clare, Allan. _See_ ROSAMUND GRAY.
-- Elinor. _See_ ROSAMUND GRAY.
CLARENCE SONGS, 383, 539.
Clarkson, Thomas, Lamb's friend, 270, 505.
CLERK, THE GOOD, 148, 455.
COLERIDGE, THE DEATH OF, 406, 549.
Coleridge, S. T., on Hogarth, 91.
-- -- Lamb's friend, 269, 504.
-- -- and Leigh Hunt, 273.
Coleridge, S. T., on men of genius, 486.
-- -- on _Odes and Addresses_, 519.
-- -- on George Dawe, 541.
-- -- his bequest to Lamb, 550.
Collier, Jeremy, on music, 183.
-- -- on Shakespeare, 183, 468.
-- -- on anti-music, 358.
-- John Payne, his _Poetical Decameron_, 356, 529.
-- -- -- his _Old Man's Diary_ quoted, 441.
Collins, William, his _Oriental Eclogues_, 258.
Colman, George, licenser of plays, 521.
Colnett, Isaac, his epitaph in Waltham Abbey churchyard, 526.
Comedians, Lamb's favourite, 176, 465.
_Comic Tales_ by Dibdin, reviewed, 429.
_Complete English Tradesman, The_, by Defoe, 150, 455.
_Comus_, Lamb on a suppressed passage in, 428.
CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD, 154, 456.
-- -- H. F. V. H. DELAMORE, ESQ., 246, 496.
COOKE, G. F., IN "RICHARD III.," 41, 442.
-- -- as Lear, 443.
"Cooper's Hill," by Denham, 258.
Cornwall, Barry (B. W. Procter), his _Rosamund Gray_, 440.
Correggio, his "Vice," 159.
Cowper, William, his "John Gilpin," continued by Lamb, 368, 533.
-- -- on squirrels, 359, 531.
-- -- on Vincent Bourne, 544.
Cruelty to animals, 356.
-- -- donkeys, 530.
Cuckoldry, a fantasy upon, 299.
Cunningham, Allan, 269, 504.
CUPID'S REVENGE, 407, 550.
Curiosity, a study of, 324, 326.
CURIOUS FRAGMENTS FROM BURTON, 35, 440.
D
Damned authors, a club of, 451.
Daniel, Samuel, his "Hymen's Triumph" quoted, 9.
-- -- on nobility, 341.
Davenant, William, his improved "Macbeth," 377, 536.
Da Vinci, Leonardo, his portrait of Francis, 175.
Dawe, George, Lamb's recollections of, 385, 540.
-- -- his life, 541.
-- -- and the negro, 542.
DEFEAT OF TIME, THE, 369, 534.
DE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS, 381, 537.
De Foe, Daniel, his _Complete English Tradesman_, 150.
-- -- Lamb's letter upon, 538.
Deformity, Moral and Personal, essay on, 74, 448.
-- not a sign of nobility, 340.
DEFUNCT, THE ILLUSTRIOUS, 304, 514.
Dekker, Thomas, 50, 55, 64.
DELAMORE, H. F. V. H., CONFESSIONS OF, 246, 496.
Denham, John, his "Cooper's Hill," 258.
Dennis, John, and Pope, 203, 476.
-- -- his character by Aaron Hill, 261.
De Quincey parodied by Lamb, 251, 497.
"Deserted Village, The," by Goldsmith, 259.
Devils, Leigh Hunt upon, 495.
Dibdin, Charles, jr., reviewed by Lamb, 429, 552.
Dilke, C. W., on Lamb as critic, 545.
"Distressed Poet," by Hogarth, 96.
"Doctor Faustus," by Marlowe, 49.
DOG DAYS, 430, 553.
"Don Giovanni in London," 215.
DRAMATIC CRITICISMS, FIVE, 215, 484.
Drayton, Michael, 53.
Drink, its dangers, 154.
DRUNKARD, A, CONFESSIONS OF, 154, 456.
DRYDEN AND COLLIER, 183, 468.
"Duchess of Malfi, The," by Webster, 56.
DUNSTAN, SIR JEFFREY, REMINISCENCE OF, 366, 532.
Dyer, George, quoted from, 174.
-- -- Lamb's friend, 270, 505.
-- John, his "Ruins of Rome," 257.
E
EARLY JOURNALISM, 41, 442.
EDAX ON APPETITE, 138, 454.
"Edmonton, The Merry Devil of," 52.
Education, suitable for an old gentleman, 251.
"Edward II.," by Marlowe, 49.
Egotism, a study of, 327.
"Election Entertainment," by Hogarth, 98.
"Elegy on a Country Churchyard," by Gray, 259.
ELIA, HIS LETTER TO SOUTHEY, 265, 498.
-- -- essay on "New Year's Eve," 266.
-- -- -- "Saying Grace," 266.
Elinor Clare. _See_ ROSAMUND GRAY.
Eliott, General (Lord Heathfield), his famous troop, 201, 475.
"English Traveller," by Heywood, 53.
_Englishman's Magazine_, Lamb's contributions to, 385, 391.
Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, 240.
"Eve of St. Agnes, The," by Keats, 235, 494.
_Examiner, The_, Lamb's contributions to, 174, 176, 178, 179, 180,
181, 182, 183, 184, 215, 219, 221, 222, 225, 229, 232.
"EXCURSION, THE," LAMB'S REVIEW OF, 187, 469.
F
_Fable of the Bees, The_, by Mandeville, 141, 455.
"Fair Quarrel, A," by Middleton and Rowley, 53.
Fairies, Lamb's prose poem, 369.
"Faithful Shepherdess," by Fletcher, 64.
FALLACY, A POPULAR, 340, 523.
FALSTAFF'S LETTERS, 225, 491.
Fauntleroy, Henry, the forger, 333, 519.
"Faustus, Doctor," by Marlowe, 49.
FAUX, GUY, 278, 509.
-- -- Hazlitt upon, 278, 509.
-- -- Jeremy Taylor upon, 279.
February 29th, the plea of, 349, 527.
_Felix Farley's Bristol Journal_, Lamb's contribution to, 217.
FIELD, BARRON, HIS POEMS, 232, 493.
Fielding and Hogarth, 97, 101.
Fire places, how to decorate, in summer, 364.
_First-Fruits of Australian Poetry_, 232, 493.
FIVE DRAMATIC CRITICISMS, 215, 484.
Fletcher, John, 62, 63.
Foote, Marie, and Col. Berkeley, 521.
Foppington, Lord, on books, 367, 533.
Ford, John, 55, 57.
Forster, John, on Lamb, 444, 549.
"Fortunatus, Old," by Dekker, 50.
"Four Groups of Heads," by Hogarth, 100.
FOUR REVIEWS, 225, 491.
Friends who invade the home, 317, 516.
Fuller, John, M.P., 511.
FULLER, SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF, 130, 453.
Fulton, Alexander, his epigrams, 182, 468.
G
GAME, THOUGHTS ON PRESENTS OF, 398, 546.
Garrat election, the, 366, 532.
Garrick, David, lines on his tomb, 113, 452.
-- -- and Dr. Johnson, 309.
_Gem, The_, Lamb's contribution to, 379.
GENTLE GIANTESS, THE, 248, 497.
GENTLEMAN, LETTER TO AN OLD, 251, 497.
_Gentleman's Magazine_, Lamb's contributions to, 153, 162.
"George Barnwell," by Lillo, 118, 452.
George IV., his true and State birthdays, 354, 528.
GIANTESS, THE GENTLE, 248, 497.
Gibbs, Sir Vicary, 511.
Gifford, William, his treatment of Lamb, 470, 471.
Gilman, James, 269, 504.
GILPIN, MRS., RIDING TO EDMONTON, 368, 533.
"Gin Lane," by Hogarth, 85.
Gluttony analysed, 138, 145.
Godwin, Mrs., as Mrs. Pry, 517.
-- William, jr., an unwelcome guest, 515.
Goldsmith, Oliver, "The Deserted Village," 259.
GOOD CLERK, THE, A CHARACTER, 148, 455.
Goodenough, Rev. Mr., his awful death, 294.
GOULD, MRS. (MISS BURRELL) IN "DON GIOVANNI IN LONDON," 215, 484.
"Governor," Lamb's objection to the word, 475.
GRAND STATE BED, 44, 444.
GRAVE, THE CHOICE OF A, 427, 552.
GRAY, ROSAMUND, 1, 438.
-- -- First Edition, 438.
GRAY'S "BARD," 181, 468.
Gray, Thomas, Lamb's criticisms upon, 181, 259, 425, 551.
-- -- "The Elegy," 259.
Gresham, Sir Thomas, legend of, 535.
Greville, Fulke (Lord Brooke), 58.
Grimaldi, Joseph, Hood's ode to, 335.
-- -- his religious symbolism, 339.
Gunpowder Treason. _See_ GUY FAUX.
Gutch, John Matthew, and Miss Kelly, 217, 485.
-- -- -- and Wither, 477.
GUY FAUX, 278, 509.
-- -- and Carlyle, 509.
H
Hamlet, the character of, 116.
HANGED, ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING, 65, 445.
Hares, their merits in life and death, 399.
"Harlot's Progress, The," by Hogarth, 84.
_Harper's Magazine_, Lamb's contribution to, 407.
Hay, William, on deformity, 341, 523.
Hazlitt, William, Lamb's friend, 274, 507.
-- -- on Guy Faux, 278, 509.
-- -- on Hogarth and Lamb, 448.
-- -- on "Mr. H.," 450.
-- -- and the Burneys, 505.
-- -- on Lamb's letter to Southey, 505.
Heathfield, Lord, his famous troop, 201, 475.
Helen of Troy and America, 182, 468.
Heywood, Thomas, 53.
Hill, Aaron, his character of Dennis, 261.
-- Thomas, the original of "Tom Pry," 516.
Hissing at theatres, essay on, 101, 449.
_Histriomastix_, a mock forerunner of, 292.
HOOD'S "PROGRESS OF CANT," 431, 554.
HOGARTH, THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF, 81, 448.
-- and Reynolds compared, 88.
Hogarth analogous to Smollett and Fielding, 97, 100, 101.
Holcroft, Thomas, Lamb's friend, 272, 506.
Hone's _Every-Day Book_ and _Table Book_, Lamb's contributions to,
349, 351, 354, 356, 359, 360, 361, 366, 368, 369, 430, 526, 554.
Hone, William, his career, 523.
-- -- his eulogies of Lamb, 525.
-- -- -- dedication to Lamb, 525.
-- -- Lamb's letters to, 526, 533.
"Honest Whore, The," by Dekker, 51, 89.
Hood, Thomas, his _Odes and Addresses_, 335, 519.
-- -- his drawing of Mary Lamb, 368, 533.
-- -- -- "Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," paraphrased, 369.
-- -- on Lamb's religion, 515.
-- -- and Coleridge, 520.
-- -- his dedication to Lamb, 534.
HORNS, A VISION OF, 299, 513.
HOSPITA ON THE IMMODERATE INDULGENCE OF THE PLEASURES OF THE PALATE,
145, 454.
HOWELL'S "LETTERS," 426, 551.
Hunt, Leigh, Lamb's friend, 272, 445, 506.
-- -- his poem to his son, 274, 507.
-- -- on Lamb's _Table Talk_, 466.
-- -- -- Lamb as dramatic critic, 490.
-- -- -- -- and Keats, 495.
-- -- -- devils, 495.
-- Thornton, his training, 272, 502.
-- -- Leigh Hunt's poem to, 274, 507.
-- -- Lamb's poem to, 506.
Hutchinson, Mr. Thomas, quoted, 441, 456.
"Hymen's Triumph," quoted, 9.
"Hypocrite, The," by Bickerstaff, 221.
I
ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT, THE, 304, 514.
_Indicator, The_, Lamb's contribution to, 239.
"Industry and Idleness," by Hogarth, 96.
IN RE SQUIRRELS, 359, 530.
"Isabella and the Pot of Basil," by Keats, 235.
J
Jew, Lamb on the modern, 49.
Jews, their Christianity, 338.
Johnson, Dr., and David Garrick, 309.
Jonson, Ben, 59.
-- -- quoted from, 306.
Jordan, Mrs., compared with Miss Kelly, 217.
JOURNALISM, EARLY, 41, 442.
"JOVIAL CREW," RICHARD BROME'S, 219, 486.
JUDKINS, JUKE, REMINISCENCES OF, 342, 523.
K
"Kangaroo, The," by Field, 234.
KEATS' "LAMIA," 235, 494.
Keats, John, and Lamb, 495.
KELLY, MISS, AT BATH, 217, 485.
-- -- Lamb's praises of, 217, 218, 219, 220, 222, 223, 484, 485.
-- -- compared with Mrs. Jordan, 217.
-- -- in various parts, 217, 218, 219, 220, 222, 223.
-- -- Lamb proposes marriage to, 487, 488.
-- -- her reply to Lamb, 488.
-- -- Lamb's reply to, 489.
Kemble, J. P., in Macbeth, 124.
Kenneys, Lamb's letter to, 517.
Ketch, Jack, his origin, 447.
L
"Lælius," his reply to Lamb, 511.
Lamb, Charles, his story of "Rosamund Gray," 1, 438.
Lamb, Charles, his imitations of Burton, 35, 440.
-- -- on Cooke's acting, 41, 442.
-- -- on Richard III., 41, 122, 426, 442.
-- -- on the joys of London, 46, 180, 444, 467.
-- -- on Shakespeare's contemporaries, 48, 445.
-- -- on modern Jews, 49.
-- -- on love's sectaries, 50.
-- -- on distinctions in apparel, 52.
-- -- on the humours of hanging, 65, 445.
-- -- on moral and personal deformity, 74, 448.
-- -- on proper names, 80, 448.
-- -- on the genius of Hogarth, 81, 448.
-- -- on Mr. Barry, R.A., 92.
-- -- on hissing in theatres, 101, 449.
-- -- on burial societies, 107, 451.
-- -- on the character of an undertaker, 110.
-- -- on the tragedies of Shakespeare, 112, 451.
-- -- on Garrick's tomb, 112.
-- -- on the character of Hamlet, 116.
-- -- on Macbeth, 123, 126.
-- -- on King Lear, 124, 376, 401.
-- -- on stage accessories, 127.
-- -- on Thomas Fuller, 130, 453.
-- -- on inordinate appetite, 138, 454.
-- -- on the good clerk, 148, 455.
-- -- on Defoe's _Complete Tradesman_, 150.
-- -- on the character of Robert Lloyd, 153, 455.
-- -- on a drunkard's fate, 154, 456.
-- -- on Christ's Hospital, 162, 460.
-- -- on Reynolds and Da Vinci, 174, 464.
-- -- on acting in 1813, 176, 465.
-- -- on books with one idea in them, 178, 466.
-- -- his recollections of a chimney-sweeper, 179, 467.
-- -- on street conversation, 179, 467.
-- -- on a town residence, 180, 467.
-- -- on Gray's poems, 181, 425, 468, 551.
-- -- on Fulton's epigrams, 182, 468.
-- -- on Dryden and Collier, 183, 468.
-- -- on his first play, 184, 468.
-- -- on theatre audiences, 184.
-- -- on Wordsworth's _Excursion_, 187, 469.
-- -- on the character of tailors, 200, 473.
-- -- on the loquacity of barbers, 202, 474.
-- -- on Wither's poetry, 210, 477.
-- -- on long lines in poetry, 214.
-- -- on Miss Burrell's acting, 215, 484.
-- -- on Mrs. Jordan and Miss Kelly, 217, 485.
-- -- in praise of Miss Kelly, 217, 218, 219, 220, 222, 223, 485.
-- -- on Brome's "Jovial Crew," 219, 486.
-- -- on Bickerstaff's "Hypocrite," 221, 487.
-- -- on the acting of Dowton, 221.
-- -- on the acting of Pearman, 222.
-- -- on Wilkinson in "A Walk for a Wager," 224.
-- -- on _Falstaff's Letters_, 225, 491.
-- -- on Charles Lloyd's "Nugæ Canoræ," 229, 493.
-- -- on Barron Field's poems, 232, 493.
-- -- on Australia, 232.
-- -- on John Keats, 235, 494.
-- -- on Sir Thomas More, 239, 495.
-- -- on being put in the stocks, 246, 496.
-- -- on a Cambridge giantess, 248, 497.
-- -- on the education of an old gentleman, 251, 497.
-- -- and De Quincey, 251, 497.
-- -- on Scott of Amwell's criticisms, 257, 498.
-- -- on the character of Ritson, 258.
-- -- on Southey's intolerance, 265, 498.
-- -- on personal religion, 266.
-- -- on his friends, 269, 503.
-- -- on the charges at Westminster Abbey, 275, 508.
-- -- on the Gunpowder Treason, 279, 509.
-- -- on Sycorax in "The Tempest," 286, 511.
-- -- his invented life of Liston, 292, 512.
-- -- on cuckoldry, 299, 513.
-- -- on lotteries, 304, 514.
-- -- is taken to the Guildhall to see the lottery drawn, 305.
-- -- on the marriage of Nonconformists, 310, 514.
-- -- his invented autobiography of Munden, 314, 515.
-- -- his essay signed "Lepus," 317, 515.
-- -- on thoughtless visitors, 317, 516.
-- -- on spurious book lovers, 320.
-- -- on the mortifications of authorship, 322.
-- -- and the last peach, 333, 519.
-- -- on the temptation to pilfer, 333.
-- -- on _Odes and Addresses_, 335, 519.
-- -- on punning, 335, 520.
-- -- on the religion of actors, 337, 521.
-- -- on the conversion of a Jew, 338.
-- -- on deformity and nobility, 340.
-- -- on a stingy man, 342.
-- -- on February 29, 349.
-- -- on his earliest school-days, 351.
-- -- on George IV.'s birthday, 354, 528.
-- -- on the character of the ass, 356, 529.
-- -- on cruelty to animals, 356, 530.
-- -- on squirrels, 359, 530.
-- -- on beadles, 360, 531.
-- -- and the bookseller, 361.
-- -- on the _Queenlike Closet_, 361, 532.
-- -- on Sir Jeffrey Dunstan, 366, 532.
-- -- his continuation of "John Gilpin," 368, 533.
-- -- on Enfield stiles, 369, 533.
-- -- his paraphrase of Hood, 369. 534.
-- -- his autobiography, 375, 535.
-- -- on Shakespeare's "improvers," 376, 535.
-- -- on cleanliness and godliness, 379.
-- -- on the tender mercies of grandmothers, 380, 537.
-- -- on Defoe, 381, 537.
-- -- on Clarence songs, 383, 539.
-- -- on George Dawe, 385, 540.
-- -- on Vincent Bourne, 391, 544.
-- -- on his own _Album Verses_, 395, 544.
-- -- on the death of Munden, 397, 545.
-- -- on presents of game, 398, 546.
-- -- on beggars, 400, 547.
-- -- on marriage, 400.
-- -- on beautiful wives, 400.
-- -- on elopements, 400.
-- -- his story on Will Dockwray, 401.
-- -- on Milton, 401, 428.
-- -- on parenthesis, 402, 548.
-- -- on advice, 403.
-- -- on laxity in words, 404.
-- -- on absurd images, 405.
-- -- on Shakespeare's character, 405.
-- -- on sauces, 406.
-- -- on the death of Coleridge, 406, 549.
-- -- on the choice of a grave, 427, 552.
-- -- on a passage in _Comus_, 428.
-- -- on John Wilkes, 428, 552.
-- -- on pride, 429.
-- -- on Dibdin's _Comic Tales_, 429, 552.
-- -- on mad dogs, 430, 553.
-- -- on Moxon's _Sonnets_, 435, 554.
-- -- his _Works_, 437.
-- -- his sonnet to Martin Burney, 437.
-- -- and the _Morning Post_, 440.
-- -- on Shakespeare and Burton, 441.
-- -- and his sister in London late in life, 444.
-- -- his hallucination, 453.
-- -- on Donne and Cowley, 454.
-- -- and stimulants, 456.
-- -- on his "Confessions of a Drunkard," 456.
-- -- his signatures in _The Examiner_, 464.
-- -- and the chimney-sweeper, 467.
-- -- letter to Wordsworth, 470.
-- -- letter to John Scott, 473.
-- -- on Dr. Nott, 478.
-- -- proposes marriage to Miss Kelly, 487, 488.
-- -- refused by Miss Kelly, 488.
-- -- his reply to Miss Kelly, 489.
-- -- his private letters to Southey, 501.
-- -- as Captain and Mr. Lion, 524.
-- -- his letter to Hone on Colnett's epitaph, 526.
-- -- on reticence in writing, 548.
-- -- articles conjecturally attributed to him, 425, 427, 429, 430,
431, 432, 435, 443, 484, 492, 544.
-- Mary, on needlework, 204, 477.
-- -- on the duty of wives, 208.
-- -- her reminiscences of school days, 353.
"Lamia," by Keats, reviewed by Lamb, 235, 494.
LAST PEACH, THE, 333, 519.
LATIN POEMS OF VINCENT BOURNE, 391, 544.
"Lear, King," unsuitable for the stage, 124.
-- -- improved by Tate, 376, 535.
-- -- the final scene, 401, 548.
"LEPUS," PAPERS, THE, 317, 319, 322, 324, 326, 327, 515.
Leslie, C. R., on Lamb, 459.
-- Maria. _See_ ROSAMUND GRAY.
LETTER OF ELIA TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, 265, 498.
LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED, 251, 497.
Lewis, "Gentleman," and "Mr. H.," 545.
Lillo's "George Barnwell," 118.
Lion, Mr., his joke, 524.
LISTON, MR., BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR, 292, 512.
-- John, as Lord Grizzel, 177.
-- -- his real life, 512.
_Literary Gazette_ and Lamb, 502.
Livingstone, L. S., and Wither, 481, 482.
LLOYD, CHARLES, HIS "NUGÆ CANORÆ," 229, 493.
-- -- on Lamb, 493.
-- ROBERT, MEMOIR OF, 153, 455.
-- -- Lamb's letter to, 442.
London home, Lamb's choice of a, 180.
_London Magazine_, Lamb's contributions to, 246, 248, 251, 257, 265,
278, 285, 288, 292, 299, 310, 314, 329, 333, 425, 427, 457.
LONDONER, THE, 46, 444.
Lotteries, a lament for, 304.
"Lust's Dominion," by Marlowe, 48.
M
"Macbeth" and the witches, 55.
-- his murder of Duncan, 123.
-- unsuitable for the stage, 126.
-- improved by Davenant, 377, 536.
"Maid's Tragedy, The," by Beaumont and Fletcher, 62.
Mandeville, Bernard, his _Fable of the Bees_, 141, 454, 455.
MANY FRIENDS, 317, 516.
"March to Finchley," by Hogarth, 92.
Margaret, Old. _See_ ROSAMUND GRAY.
Maria Leslie. _See_ ROSAMUND GRAY.
Marlowe, Christopher, 48.
"Marriage à la Mode," by Hogarth, 95.
-- law for Nonconformists, 310.
Marston, John, 51.
Massinger, Philip, 64.
Matravis. _See_ ROSAMUND GRAY.
Meanness personified in Juke Judkins, 342.
"Measure for Measure," by Shakespeare, 72, 446.
_Melancholy, Anatomy of_, 35, 440.
MEMOIR OF ROBERT LLOYD, 153, 455.
"Merry Devil of Edmonton, The," 52.
Middleton, Thomas, 53, 55, 64.
Milton's description of hissing, 102.
Milton, his _Tractate on Education_, 256.
-- Lamb and Johnson on _Paradise Lost_, 401.
-- a suppressed passage in _Comus_, 428, 552.
Minikin, Mrs., Lamb's cook, 547.
MISCELLANY, THE, 427, 552.
Monkhouse, Thomas, Lamb's friend, 270, 504.
MONTHS, THE, 361, 531.
More, Sir Thomas, 239, 495.
-- on Sir Thomas Hytton, 239.
-- and Erasmus, 240.
-- on relics of the cross, 241.
-- on the miracle of conception, 243.
Morland, George, his dependence on stimulants, 160, 460.
_Morning Post_, Lamb's contributions to, 41, 44, 46, 440, 444.
MORTIFICATIONS OF AN AUTHOR, 322, 516.
Moseley, Humphrey, the bookseller, 435, 554.
Moxon, Edward, reviewed by Lamb, 435, 554.
-- -- his _Sonnets_, 435.
-- -- his career, 554.
MR. EPHRAIM WAGSTAFF, HIS WIFE AND PIPE, 432, 554.
"Mr. H.," Lamb's farce, its fate, 449.
MRS. GILPIN RIDING TO EDMONTON, 368, 533.
MUNDEN, MR., THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF, 314, 515.
-- THE DEATH OF, 397, 545.
Munden, Joseph, his genius, 397.
-- -- his true life, 515.
Murderers, difficulty of describing, 79.
Music, its reverse, 358.
"Mustapha," by Lord Brooke, 58.
N
NEEDLEWORK, ON, 204, 477.
NEW ACTING, THE, 176, 465.
_New Monthly Magazine_, Lamb's contributions to, 304, 337, 340, 342,
375, 406, 554.
NEW PIECES AT THE LYCEUM, 222, 490.
New South Wales, Lamb's hopes for it, 233.
_New Times, The_, Lamb's contributions to, 235, 317, 319, 322, 324,
326, 327, 335, 429.
"New Wonder, A," by Rowley, 54.
Nobility and deformity, 340.
Norris, Randal, 269, 503.
North, Christopher (John Wilson), on Lamb and Southey, 499.
Nott, Dr. John, on Lamb and Wither, 478.
Novel, fragment of, by Lamb, 342.
"Nugæ Canoræ," by Charles Lloyd, reviewed, 229, 493.
NUGÆ CRITICÆ ON A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST," 285, 511.
O
"O. P." Riots, 451.
"ODES AND ADDRESSES TO GREAT PEOPLE," 335, 519.
Ogilby, John, on Algiers, 286.
"Old Fortunatus," by Dekker, 50
OLD GENTLEMAN, LETTER TO, 251, 497.
"Old Law," by Massinger, Middleton and Rowley, 64.
ON THE AMBIGUITIES ARISING FROM PROPER NAMES, 80, 448.
-- BURIAL SOCIETIES AND THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER, 107, 451.
-- THE CUSTOM OF HISSING AT THEATRES, 101, 449.
-- -- DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL DEFORMITY, 74, 448.
-- -- GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH, 81, 448.
-- -- INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED, 65, 445.
-- -- MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS, 200, 473.
-- NEEDLEWORK, 204, 477.
-- THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER, 210, 477.
-- -- TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE, CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR
FITNESS FOR STAGE REPRESENTATION, 112, 451.
_Oriental Eclogues_, by Collins, 258.
ORIGINAL LETTER OF JAMES THOMSON, 288, 512.
"Othello," unsuitable for the stage, 125.
P
Parliament under explosion, 284, 510.
Passion, debased, in modern theatre, 56.
Patmore, P. G., Lamb's letter to, 553.
PEACH, THE LAST, 333, 519.
Penny, Mr., and Hogarth, 93.
"Philaster," by Beaumont and Fletcher, 63.
Phillips, Colonel, Lamb's friend, 270, 505.
Pig superseded by hare as a delicacy, 399.
_Pilgrim, The_, by Bishop Patrick, 178, 466.
PILLORY: REFLECTIONS IN THE, 329, 518.
-- 518.
PLAY-HOUSE MEMORANDA, 184, 468.
"Poetaster, The," by Jonson, 60.
_Poetical Decameron_, by J. P. Collier, 356, 529.
Poetry, Lamb on length of lines in, 214.
Pope, Alexander, his satire against Dennis, 203, 476.
POPULAR FALLACY, A, 340, 523.
PRIDE, A CHECK TO, 429, 552.
Prior, Matthew, his "Henry and Emma," 548.
Procter, B. W. (Barry Cornwall), 269, 504.
"PROGRESS OF CANT, THE," 431, 554.
"Progress of Poesy," by Gray, quoted, 425, 551.
Proper names, essay on, 80, 448.
PRY, TOM, 324, 516.
-- -- HIS WIFE, 326, 517.
Prynne parodied by anticipation, 292.
Pulham, John Brook, and Lamb, 496.
Punning, the theory of, 335.
Puns and civilisation, 233.
Q
_Quarterly Review_, its attitude to Lamb, 458, 471, 498.
-- -- Lamb on _The Excursion_, 187, 469.
-- -- Southey's review of _Elia_, 265, 498.
_Queenlike Closet_, The, by Hannah Woolley, 361, 532.
R
"Rake's Progress, The," by Hogarth, 82, 87, 95.
READERS AGAINST THE GRAIN, 319, 516.
READING AS A FASHION, 321.
RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, 162, 460.
-- -- A LATE R.A., 385, 540.
REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY, 329, 518.
_Reflector, The_, Lamb's contributions to, 65, 74, 80, 81, 101, 107,
112, 130, 138, 145, 148, 162, 210, 278, 445.
"Relapse, The," quoted from, 367, 533.
RELIGION OF ACTORS, THE, 337, 521.
REMARKABLE CORRESPONDENT, 349, 527.
REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFREY DUNSTAN, 366, 532.
REMINISCENCES OF JUDE JUDKINS, 342, 523.
REPRINTS OF "ELIA," 457.
"Revenger's Tragedy, The," by Tourneur, 56.
REVIEW OF DIBDIN'S "COMIC TALES," 429, 552.
-- -- "THE EXCURSION," 187, 469.
-- -- HOOD'S "ODES AND ADDRESSES," 335, 519.
-- -- KEATS' "LAMIA," 235, 494.
-- -- LLOYD'S POEMS, 229, 493.
-- -- MOXON'S "SONNETS," 435, 554.
-- -- WHITE'S "FALSTAFF'S LETTERS," 225, 491.
Reynolds, J. H., his _Odes and Addresses_, 335, 519.
-- AND LEONARDO DA VINCI, 174, 464.
-- Sir Joshua, 85, 87, 174, 449, 464.
"Rich Jew of Malta, The," by Marlowe, 49.
Richard III., his character, 41, 122, 426.
Richard III., his deformity no precedent of nobility, 341.
Richardson, Samuel, against virtue, 50.
"Rimini, The Story of," by Leigh Hunt, 272, 506.
RITSON VERSUS JOHN SCOTT THE QUAKER, 257, 498.
Robinson, H. Crabb, 270, 459, 504.
ROSAMUND GRAY, 1, 438.
Rowley, William, 53, 54, 55, 64.
_Roxana_, by Defoe, 539.
"Ruins of Rome," by Dyer, 257.
Rutter, Mr. J. A., 553.
S
Salutation, The, in Newgate Street, 551.
Samson and Delilah, painted by Dawe, 388, 543.
SATURDAY NIGHT, 379, 537.
Sauces, Lamb on, 406.
Scott, John, of Amwell, and Ritson, 257, 498.
SCRAPS OF CRITICISM, 425, 551.
_Seasons, The_, by Thomson, 262.
Shadwell, Thomas, his improved "Timon," 377, 536.
SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES, 112, 451.
Shakespeare: character of Richard III., 41, 122, 426.
-- his poetical contemporaries, 48.
-- "All's Well that Ends Well," 62.
-- his richness, 63.
-- "Measure for Measure" quoted, 72.
-- "Timon of Athens," 82, 377, 536.
-- "Tarquin and Lucrece," 86.
-- his tragedies unfitted for stage, 112.
-- "Lear," 124, 376, 401, 536, 548.
-- "Tempest," 127, 285, 511.
-- and Jeremy Collier, 183, 468.
-- his characters, 405.
Shirley, James, 65.
SIR THOMAS MORE, 239, 495.
Sittingbourne, Mrs. Liston's supposed aunt, 295.
Smith, Mrs., the biggest woman in Cambridge, 497.
Smollett, Tobias, his _Ferdinand Count Fathom_ quoted, 449.
-- -- and Hogarth, 97, 100, 101.
Snakes typifying stage critics, 104, 105.
Sonnet occasioned by reading Elia's Letter to Dr. Southey, 508.
SOUTHEY, ROBERT, ELIA'S LETTER TO, 265, 498.
-- -- his ecclesiastical levities, 267.
-- -- on infidelity, 270.
-- -- and "Rosamund Gray," 439, 440.
-- -- his letter to Lamb, 501.
-- -- his verses on Lamb, 502.
-- -- on Thornton Hunt, 502.
-- -- on scepticism, 506.
SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER, THE CHURCH HISTORIAN, 130, 453.
_Spectator, The_, Lamb's contribution to, 376, 383.
Spencer, Robert William, 80, 448.
Spenser, Edmund, and his namesake, 80, 448.
SQUIRRELS, IN RE, 359, 530.
Stage lighting in Lamb's time, 453.
"Stages of Cruelty," by Hogarth, 96.
STARKEY, CAPTAIN, 351, 528.
STATE BED, GRAND, 44, 444.
Steele, Sir Richard, his "Funeral," 451.
Stocks, Lamb in the, 247.
STREET CONVERSATION, 179, 467.
"Strolling Players," by Hogarth, 90.
SURPRISE, A SYLVAN, 179, 467.
Swinburne, Mr. A. C., quoted, 478.
Sycorax, the witch, in "The Tempest," 286, 511.
SYLVAN SURPRISE, A, 179, 467.
T
TABLE FOR TWELFTH DAY, 44, 444.
TABLE TALK IN "THE EXAMINER," 174, 464.
-- -- BY THE LATE ELIA, 400, 547.
TAILORS, ON THE MELANCHOLY OF, 200, 473.
Talfourd, T. N., 269, 503.
-- -- -- his criticism of Munden, 546.
"Tamburlaine the Great," by Marlowe, 49.
"Tarquin and Lucrece," by Shakespeare, 86.
Tate, Nahum, his improved "King Lear," 376.
Taylor, Jeremy, on the Gunpowder Treason, 279, 510.
"Tempest, The," as altered by Dryden, 127.
-- -- ON A PASSAGE IN, 285, 511.
-- -- criticism by "Lælius," 511.
Theatre, Lamb's delight in, 185.
"Thierry and Theodoret," by Fletcher, 63.
Thompson, Marmaduke, Lamb's dedication to, 438.
THOMSON, JAMES, ORIGINAL LETTER OF, 288, 512.
-- -- _The Seasons_, 262, 473.
THOUGHTS ON PRESENTS OF GAME, 398, 546.
TIME, THE DEFEAT OF, 369, 534.
_Times, The_, on Lamb and Southey, 499.
"Timon of Athens" and "The Rake's Progress," 82.
-- -- improved by Shadwell, 377, 536.
Tobacco, the perils of, 157.
TOM PRY, 324, 516.
-- PRY'S WIFE, 326, 517.
Tourneur, Cyril, 56, 159.
TOWN RESIDENCE, A, 180, 467.
Tudors and Stuarts contrasted, 405.
TWELFTH DAY, TABLE FOR, 44, 444.
TWELFTH OF AUGUST, 354, 528.
U
Undertaker, the character of an, 110.
Undertaking, its humours, 107.
UNITARIAN PROTESTS, 310, 514.
Unitarianism and Lamb, 507, 515.
Upcott, William, 535.
V
Vertot, the Abbé de, as historian, 304.
"Vicar and Moses," the song, 282.
"Virgin Martyr, The," by Massinger and Dekker, 64.
VISION OF HORNS, A, 299, 513.
"Vittoria Corombona" ("The White Devil"), 57.
W
WAGSTAFF, MR. EPHRAIM, 432, 554.
Wainewright, Thomas Griffiths, 269, 503, 518.
Waiting at table, rules for, 365.
Wales, William, master at Christ's Hospital, 171, 463.
Wealth for ten minutes, 308.
Webster, John, 56.
Westminster Abbey, charge for admittance, 275, 508.
"What you Will," by Marston, 52.
White, James, his _Falstaff's Letters_, 225, 491, 492.
"White Devil, The," by Webster, 57.
"Whore, The Honest," by Dekker, 51, 89.
Wicliffe, his ashes, 137, 453.
Widford in Hertfordshire, 27, 440.
Wilkes, John, and the blackbirds, 428, 552.
-- -- in Southey's "Vision of Judgment," 503.
Wilkinson, T. P., in "A Walk for a Wager," 224, 491.
William IV., songs referring to, 383, 539.
Wilson, John. _See_ Christopher North.
-- Walter, Lamb's friend, 537.
-- -- on Charles Lamb, 539.
"Witch, The," by Middleton, 55.
"Witch of Edmonton, The," by Rowley, Dekker and Ford, 55.
WITHER, GEORGE, HIS POETICAL WORKS, 210, 477.
-- -- his life, 483.
"Woman Killed with Kindness," by Heywood, 53.
Woolley, Hannah, her _Queenlike Closet_, 361, 532.
Wordsworth, William, 269, 504.
-- -- Lamb's review of his _Excursion_, 187, 469.
-- -- his sonnet on "Wicliffe," 453.
_Works_, by Charles Lamb, 437.
Wrench, B., in "The Hypocrite," 222.
ABERDEEN: THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Transcriber's Notes
Page 147
'dish of sweatbreads' may be 'dish of sweetbreads'. Unchanged.
Page 160
'to be perferred' may be 'to be preferred'. Unchanged.
Page 165
'Philip Quarll's Island' spelled as in original.
Page 221
'adminsters the dose' may be 'administers the dose'. Unchanged.
Page 227
'--an the rogues forswore themselves,' may be '--and the rogues
forswore themselves,'. Unchanged.
Page 235
'On Creation's hoilday.' changed to 'On Creation's holiday.'.
Page 263
'Give me a lie wth a spirit in it.' may be 'Give me a lie with a spirit
in it.'. Unchanged.
Page 263
'Qute Miltonic--' Unchanged from original.
Page 298
'fit of violent horse' may be 'fit of violent hoarse'. Unchanged.
Page 430
'passions, coprices, impulses,' may be 'passions, caprices, impulses,'.
Unchanged.
Page 469 and 485
'were in the caste' may be 'were in the cast'. Unchanged.
Page 473
'scription; since Lamb's' is likely 'description; since Lamb's'.
Unchanged.
Page 510
'he is not the prepetrator;' is likely 'he is not the perpetrator;'.
Unchanged.
Page 564
'on absurb images, 405.' is likely 'on absurd images, 405.'. Changed.
These words are used in hyphenated and non-hyphenated forms in this
book.
a-foot
ante-dating
bed-fellow
be-scribbled
birth-day
black-guard
bug-bear
by-standers
church-yard
co-evals
co-exist
common-place
cross-wise
day-time
death-bed
eye-lid
fire-side
good-will
grave-digger
grave-stone
hand-maids
hand-writing
law-suit
life-time
loco-motive
moon-struck
needle-work
often-times
out-skirts
over-looking
pit-falls
play-fellows
play-goer
play-house
Queen-like
re-print
re-publication
re-written
robe-maker
run-away
school-boy
school-fellow
shop-keeper
story-teller
three-score
tread-mill
two-fold
two-pence
work-shop
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb - Miscellaneous Prose" ***
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