''^ A^ d-^ ■-'■ <^^ Y^ ^ <-. ..# .?;^% '^ ■^^ ;v^ ,G^- -' < ^ ■ 'j^ ' ■^^ v .^- . -^ C^. X ^>' -^l -^, ^c<^^" <^'^ %/''''^'^\n^sS--.> V C ■.^ -^ ^ ^ ^:^ ^^ .^-^ -^t ^^ -r ^^^ K; --^^ '^^^^^l v^^ , _ "^. \' s^ V ''^ ^ THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. BY CHARLES LAMB, FJB82 SERIES. New York: THE P. M. LUPTON PUBLISHING COMPANY, Nos. 73-76 Walker Street. p ■^ '^ PR 4?6 I 4 « 65 5 5 AUG 1 2 1942 CONTENTS. The South-Sea House Oxford in the Vacation . Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years AOfO The Two Races of Men . . Xevv-Year's-Eve Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist A Chapter on Ears . All-Fools'-Day . . . A Quakers' Meeting . The Old and the New Schoolmaster Valentine's-Day . . . Imperfect Sympathies Witches, and other Night-Fears My Rflations Mackery End, in Hertfordshire Modern him for his enthusi- asm for the cloisters, T think he has contrived to bring together whatever cau be said in praise of them, drop- ping all the other side Df the argument most ingeniously. * " Eecollectio.AS of Christ's Hospital." CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 23 I remember L. at school ; and can well recollect that he had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town, and were near at hand ; and he had the privilege of go- ing to see them, almost as often as he wished, through some invidious distinction, which was denied to us. The present worthy sub-treasurer to the Inner Temple can explain how that happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in a morning, while we were battening upon our quarter-of-a-penny loaf — our crug — moistened with at- tenuated small beer, in wooden piggings, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured from. Our Mon- day's milk-porridge, blue and tasteless, and the pease- soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for him with a slice of "extraordinary bread and butter," from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant — we had three ban- yan to four meat days in the week — was endeared to his palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger (to make it go down the more glibly) or the fra- grant cinnamon. In lieu of our Tialf-picUed Sundays, or quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as caro equina), with detestable marigolds floating in the pail to poison the broth — our scanty mutton scrags on Fridays — and rather more savory, but grudging, portions of the sarne flesh, rotten-roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited our appetites and disappointed our stomachs in almost equal proportion) — he had his hot plate of roast- veal, or the more tempting griskin (exotics unknown to our palates), cooked in the paternal kitchen (a great thing), and brought him daily by his maid or aunt! I remember the good old relative (in whom love forbade pride) squatted down upon some odd stone in a by-nook 24 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. of the cloisters, disclosing the viands (of higher regale than those cates which the ravens ministered to the Tish- bite) ; and the contending passions of L. at tlie unfold- ing. There vi^as love for the hringer; shame for the thing brought, and the manner of its bringing ; sympa- thy for those who were too many to share in it ; and, at to[) of all, hunger (eldest, strongest of the passions!) predominant, breaking down the stony fences of shame, M'vl awkwardness, and a troubling over-consciousness. I was a poor, friendless boy. My parents, and those who should care for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances of theirs, which they could reckon upon being kind to me in the great city, after a little forced notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to recur too often, though I thought them few enough ; and, one after another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred play- mates. Oh, the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early homestead ! The yearnings which I used to have toward it in those unfledged years! How, in my dreams, would my native town (far in the west) come back, with its church, and trees, and faces ! How I would wake weep- ing, and in the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet Oalne in Wiltshire ! To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by the recollection of those friendless holidays. The long, warm days of summer never return but they oring with them a gloom from the haunting memory of those whole-day leaves, when, by some strange arrangement, we were turned out for the live-long day upon our own hands, whether we had friends to go to, or none. I CHRIST;* ./^P.TAL. 25 femember those batliiiig «r icursions to the New-River, which L. recalls with such relish, better, I think, than he can — for he was a home-seeking lad, and did not much care for snch water pastimes: — How merrily wo would sally forth into the fields ; and strip under the first warmth of the sun ; and wanton like young dace in the streams; getting us appetites for noon, which those of us that were penniless (our scanty morning crust long since exhausted) had not the means of allaying— while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes, were at feed about us and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings— the very beauty of the day, and the exercise of the pas- time, and the sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon them !— How, faint and languid, finally, we would return, toward nightfall, to our desired morsel, half -rejoicing, half-reluctant, that the hours of our uneasy liberty had expired ! It was worse, in the days of winter, to go prowling about the streets objectless— shivering at cold windows of print-shops to extract a little amusement ; or haply, as a last resort in hopes of a little novelty, to pay a fifty- times repeated visit (where our individual faces should be as well known to the warden as those of his own charges) to the lions in the Tower— to whose levee, by courtesy, immemorial, we had a prescriptive title to ad- mission. L.'s governor (so we called the patron who presented us to the foundation) lived in a manner under his pater- nal roof. Any complaint which he had to make was sure of being attended to. This was understood at Christ's, and was an effectual screen to him against the severity of masters, or worse tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions of these young brutes are heart-sickening 26 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. to call to recollection. I have been called out of my bed^ and walced for the purpose^ in the coldest winter nights — and this not once, but night after night — in my shirt, to receive the discipline of a leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, because it pleased my callow overseer, when there has been any talking heard after we were gone to bed, to make the six last beds in the dormitory, where the youngest children of us slept, answerable for an offense they neither dared to commit, nor had the power to hinder. The same execrable tyranny drove the younger part of us from the fires, when our feet were perishing with snow ; and, under the cruelest pen- -*lties, forbade the indulgence of a drink of water, when we lay in sleepless summer nights, fevered with the sea- son and the day's sports. There was one H , who, I learned in after-days, was seen expiating some maturer offense in the hulks. (Do I flatter myself in fancying that this might be the planter of that name, who suffered — at ITevis, I think, or St. Kitts — some few years since? My friend Tobin was the benevolent instrument of bringing him to the gal- lows.) This petty Nero actually branded a boy who had offended him, with a red-hot iron ; and nearly starved forty of us with exacting contributions, to the one-half of our bread, to pamper a young ass, which, incredible aa it may seem, with the connivance of the nurse's daughter (a young flame of his), he had contrived to smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of i\iQ'ward^ as they called our dormitories. This game went on for better than a week, till the foolish beast, not able to fare well but he must cry roast-meat — happier than Caligula's minion, could he have kept his own counsel — but, foolisher, alas! than any of his spGoi«s in the fables— waxing fat, and kicking, CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 27 in tlie fullness of bread, one unlucky minute would needs proclaim his good fortune to the world below; and, lay- ing out his simple throat, blew such a ram's-horn blast, as (toppling down the walls of his own Jericho) set con- cealment any longer at defiance. The client was dis- missed, with certain attentions, to Smithfield ; but I nev- er understood that the patron underwent any censure on the occasion. This was in the stewardship of L.'s ad- mired Perry. Under the same facile administration can L. have forgotten the cool impunity with which the nurses used to carry away openly, in open platters, for their own ta- bles, one out of two of every hot joint, which the care- ful matron had been seeing scrupulously weighed out for our dinners ? These things were daily practised in that magnificent apartment, which L. (grown connoisseur since, we presume) praises so highly for the grand paint- ings "by Verrio and others," with which it is "hung round and adorned." But the sight of sleek, well-fed, blue-coat boys in the pictures was, at that time, I be- lieve, little consolatory to him, or us, the living ones, who saw the better part of our provisions carried away before our faces by harpies ; and ourselves reduced (with the Trojan in the hall of Dido) "To feed our mind with idle portraiture." L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags^ or the f:it of fresh beef boiled ; and sets it down to some superstition. But these unctuous morsels are never grateful to young palates (children are universally fat- haters), and in strong, coarse, boiled meats, unsalted^ are detestable. A gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a 28 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, goule^ and held in equal detestation — suffered under the imputation — — " 'T was said He ate strange flesh." He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up the remnants left at his table (not many, nor very choice fragments, you may credit me)— and, in an especial manner, these disreputable morsels, which he would convey away, and secretly stow in the settle that stood at his bedside. None saw when he ate them. It was rumored that he privately devoured them in the night. He was watched, but no traces of such midnight practices were discover- able. Some reported ..;, on leave-days, he had been seen to carry. out of the bounds a large blue check hand- kerchief full of something. This, then, must be the ac- cursed thing. Conjecture next was at work to imagine how he could dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the beggars. This belief generally prevailed. He went about moping. None spake to him. No one would play with him. He was excommunicated ; put out of the pale of the school. He was too powerful a boy to be beaten, but he underwent every mode of that negative punish- ment which is more grievous than many stripes. Still he persevered. At length he was observed by two of his school-fellows, who were determined to get at the secret, and had traced him one leave-day for that pur- pose, to enter a large, worn-out building, such as there exist specimens of in Chancery Lane, which are let out to various scales of pauperism, with open door and a com- mon staircase. After him they silently slunk in, and followed by stealth up four flights, and saw him tap at a poor wicket, which was opened by an aged woman, meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened into certainty. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 29 The informers had secured their victim. They had him in their toils. Accusation was formally preferred, and retribution most signal was looked for. Mr. Hatliaway, the then steward (for this happened a little after my time), with that patient sagacity which tempered all his conduct, determined to investigate the matter before he proceeded to sentence. The result was that the supposed mendicants, the receivers or purchasers of the mysteri- ous scraps, turned out to be the parents of , an hon- est couple come to decay — whom this seasonable supply had, in all probability, saved from mendicancy ; and this young stork, at the expense of his own good name, had all this while been only feeding the old birds! — The gov- ernors on this occasion, much to their honor, voted a present relief to the family of , and presented him with a silver medal. The lesson which the steward read upon EASH JUDGMENT, ou the occasiou of publicly deliver- ing the medal to , I believe would not be lost upon his auditory. — I had left school then, but I well remem- ber . He was a tall, shambling you^, with a cast in his eye, not at all calculated to conciliate hostile preju- dices. I have since seen him carrying a baker's basket. I think I heard he did not do quite so well by himself, as he had done by the old folks. I was an hypochondriac lad ; and the sight of a boy in fetters, upon the day of my first putting on the blue clothes, was not exactly fitted to assuage the natural ter- rors of initiation. I was of tender years, barely turned of seven ; and had only read of such things in book, or seen them but in dreams. I was told he had run awa/y. This was the punishment for the first offense. As a novice I was soon after taken to see the dungeons. These were little, square Bedlam cells, where a boy could just lie at 30 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA. his length upon straw, and a blanket — a mattress, I think, was afterward substituted — with a peep of light, let in askance, from a prison orifice at top, barelj enough to read by. Here the poor boy was locked iu by himself all day, without sight of any but the porter who brought him his bread and water — who might not spealc to him ; — or of the beadle, who came twice a week to call him out to receive his periodical chastisement, which was al- most welcome, because it separated him for a brief inter- val from solitude : and here he was shut up by himself of nights out of the reach of any sound, to suffer what- «ever horrors the weak nerves, and superstition incident to his time of life, might subject him to.* This was the penalty for the second offense. Wouldst thou like, reader, to see what became of him in the next degree? The culprit, who had been a third time an offender, and whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversi- ble, was brought forth, as at some solemn auto-da-fe, ar- rayed in uncouth and most appalling attire — all trace of his late " watchet weeds " carefully effaced, he was ex- posed in a jacket resembling those which London lamp- lighters formerly delighted in, with a cap of the same. The effect of this divestiture was such as the ingenious devisers of it could have anticipated. With his pale and frighted features, it was as if some of those disfigure- ments in Dante had seized upon hiiD, In this disguise- Ment he was brought into the hall (Z.'s fawrite stette- * One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accord- ingly, at length convinced the governors of the impohcy of this part of the sentence, and the midnight torture to the sph'its "waa dispensed with. — This fancy of dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard's brain; for which (saving the rsverence due to Holy Paul), methinks, I could willingly spit vpon his statue. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 3l room), where awaited him the whole number of his school-fellows, whose joint lessons and sports he was thenceforth to share no more ; the awful presence of the steward, to be seen for the last time ; of the executioner beadle, clad in his state-robe for the occasion ; and of two faces more, of direr import, because never but in these extremities visible. These were governors : two of whom bj choice, or charter, were always accustomed to officiate at these Ultima Supplicia; not to mitigate (so at least we understood it), but to enforce the utter- most stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert, I remember, were colleagues on one occasion, when the beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was ordered to prepare him for the mysteries. The scourging ^'■as, after the old Roman fashion, long and stately. The lictor accompanied the criminal quite round the hall. We were generally too faint with attending to the previous disgust- ing circumstances, to make accurate report with our eyes of the degree of corporal suffering inflicted. Report, of course, gave out the back knotty and livid. After scourg- ing, he was made over, in his San Benito, to his friends, if he had any (but commonly such poor runagates were friendless), or to his parish officer, who, to enhance the effect of the scene, had his station allotted to him on the outside of the hall-gate. These solemn pageantries were not played off so often as to spoil the general mirth of the community. We had plenty of exercise and recreation after school-hours ; and, for myself, I must confess, that I was never happier than in them. The Upper and the Lower Grammar-Schools were held in the same room ; and an imaginary line only divided their bounds. Their character was as different as that of the inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyro- 33 7/ ESSAYS OF ELIA. nees. The Eev mes Boyer was the Upper Master ; but the Rev. Mattpr Field presided over that portion of the apartment of »■ .ich I had the good fortune to he a mem- ber. We Im ' a life as careless as birds. We talked and did just wh?t tve pleased, and nobody molested us« We carried an r ccidence, or a grammar, for form ; but, for any trouhjc it gave us, we might take two years in get fcing thro'i^h the verbs deponent, and another two in for- geting eV. that we had learned about them. There was now anfi then the formality of saying a lesson, but if you had ixrt learned it, a brush across the shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was the sole remonstrance. Field never used the rod; and in truth he wielded the cane with no great good- will — holding it " like a dancer." It looked in his hands rather like an emblem than an instrument of authority; and an emblem, too, he was ashamed of. He was a good, easy man, that did not care to ruffle his own peace, nor perhaps set any great con- sideration upon the value of juvenile time. He came among us, now and then, but often staid away whole days from us ; and when he came it made no difference to us — he had his private room to retire to, the short time he staid, to be out of the sound of our noise. Our mirth and uproar went on. We had classics of our own, without being beholden to "insolent Greece or haughty Eome," that passed current among us — Peter Wilkins— the Adventures of the Hon. Captain Robert Boyle — the Fortunate Blue-Ooat Boy — and the like. Or we culti- vated a turn for mechanic and scientific operations ; mak- ing little sun-dials of paper ; or weaving those ingenious parentheses called cat-cradles; or making dry peas to dance upon the end of a tin pipe; or studying the art military over that laudable game " French and English," CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 33 and a hundred other such devices to pass away the time —mixing the useful with the agreeable — as would have made the souls of Rousseau and John Locke chuc]4e to have seen us. Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest di- vines who affect to mix in equal proportion the gentle- man^ the scholar, and the Christian ; but, I know not how, the first ingredient is generally found to be the predominating dose in the composition. Pie was en- gaged in gay parties, or with his courtly bow at some episcopal levee, when he should have been attending upon us. He had for many years the classical charge of a hundred children, during the four or five first years of their education; and his very highest form seldom proceeded further than two or three of the introductory fables of Pheedrus. How things were suffered to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was the proper per- son to have remedied these abuses, always affected, per- haps felt, a delicacy in interfering in a province not strictly his own. I havo not been without my suspicions that he was not altogether displeased at the contrast we presented to his end of the school. We were a sort of Helots to his young Spartans. He would sometimes, with ironic deference, send to borrow a rod of the Under Master, and then, with Sardonic grin, observe to one of his upper boys "how neat and fresh the twigs looked." While his pale students were battering their brains over Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep as that en- joined by the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves at our ease in our little Goshen. We saw a little into the se- crets of his disciphne, and the prospect did but the more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders rolled innocuou? for us; his storms came near, but never touched «»•» 34 THE ESSAYS OF ELlA. contrary to Gideon's miracle, while all around were drenched, our fleece was dry,* His hoys turned out the het^r scholars; we, I suspect, have tlie advantage In temper. His pupils cannot speak of him without some- thing of terror allaying their gratitude ; the reinem- hrance of Field comes back with all the soothing images of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work like play, and innocent idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and life itself a "playing holiday." Though suflBciently removed from the jurisdiction of Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to under- stand a little of his system. We occasionally heard sounds of the Ululanfes, and caught glances of Tartarus. B. was a rabid pedant. His English style was cramped to barbarism. His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged him to those periodical flights) were grating as scrannel pipes.f He would laugh, ay, and heartily, but then it must be at Elaccus's quibble about Hex — or at the tristis severitas in vultu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence — thin jests, which at their first broaching could hardly have had vis enough to move a Eoman muscle. He had two wigs, both pedantic, but of different omen. The one serene, smiling, fresh-powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old, discolored, unkempt, angry * Cowley. ■[ In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadju- tor. While the former was digging his brains for crude anthems, worth a pig-nut, F. would be recreating his gentlemanly faacy in the more flowery walks of the Muses. A little dramatic effu- sion of his, under the name of Vertumnus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the chroniclers of that sort of literature. It was accepted by G-arrick, but the town did not give it their sanc- tion. B. used to say of it, in a way of half compliment, half iTony, that it was too classical /or representation. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 35 caxon, denoting frequent and bloody execution. Woe to the scliool when he made his morning appearance in his passy^ or passionate wig! No comet expounded surer. J. B. had a heavy hand. I have known him double his knotty fist at a poor, trembling child (the ma- ternal milk hardly dry upon its lips), with a " Sirrah, do you presume to set your wits at me ? " Nothing was more common than to see him make a headlong entry into the school-room, from his inner recess or library, and, with turbulent eye, singling out a lad, roar out, *'Od's my life, sirrah" (his favorite adjuration), "I have a great mind to whip you; " then, with as sudden a re- tracting impulse, fling back into his lair, and, after a cooling lapse of some minutes (during which all but the culprit had totally forgotten the context) drive headlong out again, piecing out his imperfect sense, as if it had been some Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell — ^'' and I WILL, too.'''' In his gentler moods, when the rabidzcs furor was assuaged, he had resort to an ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to himself, of whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, at the sam ) time ; a paragraph, and a lash between ; which in those times, when parliamentary oratory was most at a height and flourishing in these realms, was not calculated to impress the patient with a veneration for the diffuser graces of rhetoric. Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to fall ineffectual from his hand — when droll, squinting W., having been caught putting the inside of the master's desk to a use for which the architect had clearly not designed it, to justify himself, wdth great simplicity averred that lie did not hiow that the thing had leen forewarned. This exquisite irrecognition of any law 36 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. antecedent to the oral or declaratory^ struck so irresisti- bly upon the fancy of all who heard it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) that remission was unavoidable. L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instruc- tor. Coleridge, in his literary life, has pronounced a more intelligible and ample encomium on them. The author of the Country Spectator doubts not to compare him with the ablest teachers of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss him better than with the pious ejacula- tion of C, when he heard that his old master was on his death-bed : " Poor J. B. ! may all bis faults be for- given ; and may he be wafted to bliss by little cherub- boys all head and wings, witb no lottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities." Under him were many good and sound scholars bred. First Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, kindest of boys and men, since Oo-grammar-master (and inseparable companion) with Dr. T e. What an edi- fying spectacle did this brace of friends present to those who remembered the anti-socialities of their predeces- sors! You never met the one by chance in the street without a wonder, which was quickly dissipated by the almost immediate sub-appearance of the other. Gener- ally arm-in-arm, these kindly coadjutors lightened for each other the toilsome duties of their profession, and when, in advanced age, one found it convenient to re- tire, the other was not long in discovering that it suited him to lay down the fasces also. Oh, it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same arm linked in yours at forty, which at thirteen helped it t^^ turn over the Cicm^o de Amicitid, or some tale of Antique Friendship, which the young heart even then was bu/ning to anticipate ! Co-Grecian with S. was Th , who has since executed CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 37 with, ability various diplomatic functions at the Northern courts. Th was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, spar- ing of speech, with raven locks. Thomas Fanshaw Mid- dleton followed liim (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gentleman in his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent critic ; and is author (besides the Country Spectator) of a Treatise on the Greek Article, against Sharpe. M. is said to bear his mitre high in India, where the regni novitas (I dare say) sufficiently justifies the bearing. A humility quite as primitive as that of Jewel or Hooker might not be exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo- Asiatic diocesans with a rev- erence for home institutions, and the Church which those fathers watered. The manners of M. at school, though firm, were mild and unassuming. Next to M. (if not senior to him) was Richards, author of the Aboriginal Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems ; a pale, studious Grecian. Then followed poor S , ill-fated M ! of these the Muse is silent. " Finding some of Edward's race Unhappy, pass their annals by." Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day-spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee— the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor Coleridge— Logician, Metaphysician, Bard!— How have I seen the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration (while he weighed the dis- proportion between the speech and the gard of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus or Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philo- sophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or 38 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. Pindar — while the walls of the old Grey Friars reechoed to the accents of tlie insjnred charity -hoy f — Many were the " wit-combats " (to dally awhile with the words of old Fuller) between him and C. V. Le G , "which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war ; Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his per- formances. C V. L., with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take* advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten, Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, with which thou wert wont to make the old Cloisters shake, in tliy cognition of some poignant jest of theirs ; or the anticipation of some more material, and, peradventure, practical one, of thine own. Extinct are those smiles, with that beautiful countenance, with which (for thou wert the Nireus formosus of the school), in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town damsel, who, incensed by provoking pinch, turning tigress-like round, suddenly converted by thy angel-look, exchanged the half-formed terrible " hi — ," for a gentler greeting — " Mess thy Jiand- some Jucef'' Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the fi'iends of Elia — the junior Le G and F , who, impelled, the former by a roving temper, the latter by too quick a sense of neglect, ill capable of enduring the slights poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in our seats of learning, exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp ; perishing, one by climate, and one on the plains of Sal- amanca : Le G , sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured ; THE TWO RxiCES OF MEN. 39 F , dogged, faithful, anticipative of insult, warm- hearted, with something of the old Eoman height about him. Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master of Hertford, with Marmaduke T , mildest of Mission- aries — and both my good friends still — close the cata- ogue of Grecians in my time. THE TWO EAOES OF MEN". The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who torrow^ and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, " Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate as the great race^ is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born degraded. " He shall serve his brethren." There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious ; contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of the other. Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all ages — Alcibiades, Falstaff, Sir Richard Steele, our late incomparable Brinsley — what a family likeness in all four ! What a careless, even deportment hath your borrow- er ! what rosy gills ! what a beautiful reliance on Provi- 40 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. deuce doth lie manifest, taking no more thought than liUes ! What contempt for money, accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better than dross ! What a lib- eral confounding of those pedantic distinctions of m,eum and tuuml or rather, what a noble simplification of lan- guage (beyond Tooke), resolving these supposed oppo- sites into one clear, intelligible pronoun adjective ! — What near approaches doth he make to the primitive community^ to the extent of one-half of the principle at least ! He is the true taxer who " calleth all the world up to be taxed; " and the distance is as vast between him and one of U8^ as subsisted between the Augustan Majesty and the poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusalem ! — His exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary air! So far removed from your sour paro- chial or state-gatherers, those ink-horn varlets, who carry their want of welcome in their faces ! He com- eth to you with a smile, and troubleth you with no re- ceipt; confining himself to no set season. Every day is his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy Michael. He ap- plieth the lene tormentum of a pleasant look to your p^irse — which to that gentle warmth expands her silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveler, for which gun and wind contended ! He is the true Propontic which never ebbeth! The sea which taketh handsomely at each man's hand. In vain the victim, whom he de- lighteth to honor, struggles with destiny ; he is in the net. Lend therefore cheerfully, man ordained to lend —that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the reversion promised. Combine not preposterously in thine own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives! but when thou seest the proper authority coifiing, meet TUE TWO RACES OF MEN. 41 it smilingly, as it were half-way. Come, a handsome sacrifice! See how light he makes of it! Strain not courtesies with a noble enemy. I Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon my mind by the death of my old friend Ralph Bigod, Esq., who parted this life, on Wednesday evening, dying, as he had lived, without much trouble. He boasted him- self a descendant from mighty ancestors of that name, who heretofore held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions and sentiments he belied not the stock to which he pretended. Early in life he found himself in- vested with ample revenues ; which, with that noble dis- interestedness which I have noticed as inherent in men of the great race^ he took almost immediate measures entirely to dissipate and bring to nothing : for there is something revolting in the idea of a king holding a pri- vate purse, and the thoughts of Bigod were all regal. Thus furnished by the very act of disfurnishment ; get- ting rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt (as one sings) " To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise," he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enter- prise, "borrowing and to borrow I " In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout this island, it has been calculated that he laid a tithe part of the inhabitants under contribution, I reject this estimate as greatly exaggerated : but having had the honor of accompanying ray friend divers times, in his perambulations about this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at first with the prodigious number of faces we met, who claimed a sort of respectful acquaintance with 42 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. us. He was one day so obliging as to explain the pke- nomenon. It seems, these were his tributaries; feeders of his exchequer ; gentlemen, his good friends (as he was pleased to express himself), to whom he had occa- sionally been beholden for a loan. Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He rather took a pride in num- bering them; and, with Coraus, seemed pleased to be "stocked with so fair a herd." With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived to keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force of an aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that "money kept longer than three days stinks." So he made use of it while it was fresh. A good part he drank away (for he was an excellent toss-pot) ; some he gave away, the rest he threw away, literally tossing and hurl- ing it violently from him — as boys do burs, or as if it had been infectious — into ponds, or ditches, or deep holes, inscrutable cavities of the earth ; or he would bury it (where he would never seek it again) by a river^s side under some bank, which (he would facetiously ob- serve) paid no interest — but out way from him it must go peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into the wilder- ness, while it was sweet. He never missed it. The streams were perennial which fed his fisc. Wlien new supplies became necessary, the first person that had the felicity to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure to contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an unde- niable way with him. He had a cheerful, open exterior, a quick, jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched with gray {eana Jides). He anticipated no excuse, and found naae. And, waiving for a while my theory as to the gremt race, I would put it to the most untheorizing read- er, who may at times have disposable coin in his pocket, THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 43 whether it is not more repugnant to tfie kindliness of ^is nature to refuse such a one as I am describing, than tu say no to a poor petitionary rogue (your bastard bor- rower), who, by his mumping visnomy, tells you that he expects nothing better; and, therefore, whose precon- ceived notions and expectations you do in reality so much less shock in the refusal. When I think of this man; his fiery glow of heart; his swell of feeling ; how magnificent, how ideal he was ; how great at the midnight hour ; and when I compare with him the companions with whom I have associated since, I grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, and think that I am fallen into the soeiety of lenders and little men. To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more formidable than that which I have touched upon ; I mean your borrowers of 'boohs — those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Comber- batch, matoliless in his depredations ! That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth knocked out — (you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader !) — with th« huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing), once held the tallest of my folios. Opera Bonaventura, choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre — Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas) showed but as dwarfs — itself an Ascapart! — that Oomberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that " the title 44 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. to property in a book (my Bonaventura, for instance) is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating the same." Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe? The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — two shelves from the ceiling— scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser — was whilom the commodious rest- ing-place of Brown on Urn Burial. 0. will hardly al- lege that be knows more about that treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, and was, indeed, the first (of the moderns) to discover its beauties — but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the pres- ence <)f a rival more qualified to carry her off than him- self. Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth vol- ume, where Vittoria Oorombona is! The remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons, when the Fates 'borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. There loitered the Complete Angler ; quiet as in life, by some stream-side. In yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower - volume, with " eyes closed," mourns his ravished mate. One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another time, aea-like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. I have a small under-collection of this nature (my friend's gatherings in his various calls), picked up, he has forgot- ten at what odd places, and deposited with as little mem- ory at mine. I take in these orphans, the twice deserted. These proselytes of the gate are welcome as the true He- brews. There they stand in conjunction ; natives and naturalized. The latter seem as little disposed to inquire out their true lineage as I am, — I charge no warehouse- room for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 45 the ungentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of them to pay expenses. To lose a volume to 0. carries some sense and mean- ing in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty meal on your viands, if he can give no account of the platter after it. But what moved thee, wayward, spite- fal K., to he so importunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble Mar- garet Newcastle? — knowing at the time, and knowing that I knew, also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio — what but the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love of getting the better of thy friend ? — Then, worst cut of all ! to transport it with thee to the Galilean land — • " Unworthy land to harbor such a sweetness, A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, Pare thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder!" — 'hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keepest all companies with thy quips and mirthful tales? Child of the green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, better-part English- woman! — that she could fix upon no other treatise to bear away, in kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook — of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a tittle I — Was there not Zimmermann on Solitude ? Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collection, be shy of showing it ; or if thy heart over- flow eth to lend them, lend thy books; but let it be to 46 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. such a one as S. T. 0. — ^he will return them (generally anticipating tlie time appointed) with usury; enriched with annotations tripling their value. I have had expe- rience. Many of these precious MSS. of his — (in matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfrequently, vying with the originals) in no very clerkly hand — legi- ble in my Daniel ; in old Burton ; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas! wandering in Pagan lands. — I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against S. T. 0. NEW-YEAR'S-EVE. Every man hath two birthdays; two days, at least, in every year, which set him upon i-evolving the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal duration. The one is that which in an especial manner he termeth Ms. In the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom of solemnizing our proper birthday hath nearly passed away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond cai^} and orange. But the birtli of a New Year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted by king or cobblei. No one ever regarded the first of January with indiifer- ence. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our com- mon Adam. Of all sound of all bells — bells, the music nighest bordering upon heaven — most solemn and touching Is the peal which rings out the Old Year. I never lieard it without a gathering-up of my mind to a concentration NEW-YEAE'S^^EVE. 47 of all the images that have been diffused over the past twelvemonth ; all I have done or suffered, performed or ne^glected, in that regretted time. I begin to know its worth, as when a person dies. It takes a personal color; nor was it a poetical flight in a contemporary when he exclaimed — " I saw the skirts of the departing year." It is no more than what, in sober sadness, every one of us seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave-taking. I am sure I felt it, and all felt it with me, last night; though some of my companions affected rather to mani- fest an exhilaration at the birth of the coming year, than any very tender regrets for the decease of its prede- cessor. But I am none of those wlio — " Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest." I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties: new books, new faces, new years — from some mental twist which makes it difficult in me to face the prospective. I have almost ceased to hope ; and am sanguine only in the prospects of other (former) years. I plunge into foregone visions and conclusions. I encounter pell-mell with past disappointments. I am armor-proof against old discouragements. I forgive, or overcome in fancy, old adversaries. I play over again /or lo'ce^ as the game- sters phrase it, games for which I once paid so dear. I would scarce now have any of those untoward accidents and events of mj life reversed. I would no more alter them than the incidents of some well-contrived novel. Methinks it is better that I should have pined away sev- en of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair hair and fairer eyes of Alice W — n, than that so passion- 48 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. ate a love-adventure should be lost. It was better that our family should have missed that legacy which old Dorrell cheated us of, than that I should have at this moment two thousand pounds in danco, and be without, the idea of that specious old rogue. In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look back upon those early days. Do I advance a para- dox when I say that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a man may have leave to love himself, with- out the imputation of self-love ? If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is in- trospective — and mine is painfully so — can have a lesF respect for his present identity than I have for the man Elia. I know him to be light and vain and humorsome ; a notorious ; addicted to ; averse from coun- sel, neither taking it nor offering it ; besides ; a fltaramering buffoon — what you will, lay it on and spare not : I subscribe to it all, and much more than thou canst be willing to lay at his door ; but for the child Elia, that "other me" there in the background, I must take- leave to cherish the remembrance of that young master, with as little reference, I protest, to this stupid changeling of five-and-forty as if it had been a child of some other house and not of my parents. I can cry over its patient small-pox at five and rougher mendieaments. I can lay its poor fevered head upon the sick-pillow at Christ's, and wake with it in surprise at the gentle post- ure of maternal tenderness hanging over it, that un- known had watched its sleep. I know how it shrank from any the least color of falsehood. God help thee, Elia, how art thou changed! Thou art sophisticated. I know how honest, how courageous (for a weakling), it was — how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful" NEW-YEAK'S-EYE. 49 From what have I not fallen, if the child I rememher was indeed myself — and not some dissembling guardian presenting a false identity to give the rule to my un- practised steps and regulate the tone of my moral being! That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sym- pathy, in such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or, is it owing to another cause : simply that, being without wife or family, I have not learned to project myself enough out of myself; and, having no offspring of my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory, and adopt my own early idea as my heir and favorite ? If these speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader (a busy man, perchance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and am singular- ly conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, un- der the phantom-cloud of Elia. The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of any old institution : and the ringing out of the old year was kept by them with circumstances of peculiar cere- many. — In those days the sound of those midnight chimes, though it seemed to raise hilarity in all around me, never failed to bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived what it meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned me. Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it, indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life ; but he brings it not home to him- S3lf, any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December. But now — shall I confess a truth? — I feel these audits but too powerfully- I begin to count the probabilities of 4 ^ THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. mj auration, and to grudge at the expenditure of mo- ments and shortest periods, like misers' farthings. In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away "like a weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors solace me not, nor sw^eeten the unpal- atable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bsars human life to eter- nity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in iove with this green earth, the face of town and country, the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up ray tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to Avhich I am ar- rived, I and my friends, to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age, or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave. — Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodg- ing, puzzles and discomposes me. My household gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up with- out blood. They do not w^illingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state of being staggers li.e. Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary w^alks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and th« cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversa- tions, and innocent vanities and jests, and irony itself — do these things go out with life ? Can a ghost laugh or shake his gaunt sides, when you are pleasant with him ? And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! must I part with the intense delight of having you (huge arm- fujs) in my embraces ? Must Isnowledge eome to me, if NEW-YEAR'S-EYE. 51 Tt come at all, by some awkward experiment of in' tuition, and no longer by this familiar process of read- ing? Shaii I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indications which point me to them here — tlie recogniza- ble face— the "sweet assurance of a look" — ? In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying — to give it its mildest name — does more especially haunt and beset me. In a genial August noon, beneath a swelter- ing sky, death is almost problematic. At those times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy an immortality. Thea we expand and burgeon. Then we are as strong again, as valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The blast tliat nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts of death. All things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that master-feeling; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity; moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral appear- ances — that cold ghost of the sun, or Phcebus's sickly sister, like that innutritions one denounced in the Canti- cles — I am none of her minions — I hold with the Per- sian. Whatever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings death into ray mind. All partial evils, like humors, run into that capital plague-sore. — I have heard some profess an indifference to life. Such hail the end of their exist- ence as a port of refuge ; and speak of the grave as of some soft arms, in which they rnay slumber as on a pil= low. Some have Vv^ooed death — but out upon thee, I say, thou foul, ugly phantom ! I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar John) give thee to sixscore thousand devils, as in no instance to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as a universal viper; to be branded, proscribed, and spoken evil of I In no way can I be brought to digest 52 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. thee, thou thin, melancholy Privation, or more frightfui and confounding Positive ! Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, are altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself. For what satisfaction hath a man, that he shall "lie down with kings and emperors in death," who in his lifetime never greatly coveted the society of such bedfellows ? — or, forsooth, that "so shall the fairest face appear?" — why, to comfort me, must Alice W — n be a goblin? More than all, I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordi- nary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon him- self to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that " Such as he now is I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the mean time I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters ! Thy IsTew-Years'-days are past. I survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup of wine — and while that turncoat bell, that just now mournfully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to its peal the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton : " THE NEW TEAE. ** Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star Tells us, the day himself's not far ; A.nd see where, breaking from the night, He gilds the western hills with light. With him old Janus doth appear, Peeping into the future year, With such a look as seems to say, The prospect is not good that way. Thus do we rise ill sights to see, And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy ; NEW-YEAR'S-EVE. 53 When the prophetic fear of things A more tormenting mischief brings, More full of soul-tormenting gall Than direst mischiefs can befall. But stay ! but stay ! methinks my sight. Better informed by clearer light, Discerns sereneness in that brow, That all contracted seemed but now. His reversed face may show distaste. And frown upon the ills are past ; But that which this way looks is clear, And smiles upon the New-born Year, He looks too from a place so high, The Year lies open to his eye ; And all the moments open are To the exact discoverer. Yet more and more he smiles upon The happy revolution. Why should we then suspect or fear The influences of a year ? So. smiles upon us the first morn. And speaks us good so soon as born ; Plague on't ! the last was ill enough, This cannot but make better proof ; Or, at the worst, as we brushed through The last, why so we may this too ; And then the next in reason should Be superexcellently good : For the worst ills (we daily see) Have no more perpetuity Than the best fortunes that do fall 5 Which also bring us wherewithal Longer their being to support. Than those do of the other sort : 5^ THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. And who has one good year in three, And yet repines at destiny, Appears ungrateful in the case, And merits not the good he has. Then let us welcome the New Guest With lusty brimmers of the best : Mirth always should Good Fortune meet, And renders e'en Disaster sweet : And though the Princess turn her back, Let us but line ourselves with sack. We better shall by far hold out. Till the next Year she face about." How say you, reader — do Dot these verses smack of the rough magnanimity of the old English vein? Do they not fortify like a cordial ; enlarging the heart, and productive of sweet blood, and generous spirits, iD the concoction? Where be those puling fears of death, just now expressed or affected? — Passed like a cloud — ab- sorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry — clean washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondries. — And now another cup of the generous! and a merry New Year, and many of them, to you all, my masters ! MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. " A CLEAE fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the game." This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle (now with God), who, next to her devotions, loved a good game of whist. She was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your half-and-half players, who have no ob- MRS. i3at.'l::s opriioN.; o^^ umist. 55 jection to tako a hand, if you want one to make up a rubber; who affirm that thej have no pleasure in win- ning; that thej like to win one game and lose another; that they can while away an hour very agreeably at a card-table, but are indiflferent whether they play or no; and will desire an adversary, who has slipped a wrong card, to take it up and play another. These insufferable triflers are the curse of a table. One of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may be said that they do not play at cards, but only play at playing at them. Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested them, as I do, from her heart and soul, and would not, save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself at the same table with them. She loved a thorough -paced partner, a determined enemy. She took and gave no concessions. She hated favors. She never made a re- voke, nor ever passed it over in her adversary without exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought a good fight : cut and thrust. She held not her good sword (her cards) "like a dancer." She sat bolt upright, and neither showed you her cards nor desired to see yourg. All people have their blind side— their superstitions; and I have heard her declare, under the rose, that hearts was ber favorite suit. I never in my life— and I knew Sarah Battle many of the best years of it— saw her take out her snuff-box when it was her turn to play ; or snuff a candle in the middle of a game; or ring for a servant till it was fairly over. She never introduced, or connived at, miscellane- ous conversation during its process. As she einpliati- cally observed, cards were cards; and if I ever saw un- mingled d'staste in her fine last-century countenance, it was at tiie airs of a young gentleman of a literary turn, §6 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA, who had been with difficulty persuaded to take a hand ; and who, in his excess of candor, declared that he thought there was no harm in unbending the mind now and then, after serious studies, in recreations of that kind ! She could not bear to have her noble occupation, to which she wound up her faculties, considered in that light. It was her business, her duty, the thing she came into the world to do — and she did it. She unbent her mind afterward, over a book. Pope was her favorite author; his "Eape of the Lock " her favorite work. She once did me the favor to play over with me (with the cards) his celebrated game of ombre in that poem ; and to explain to me how far it agreed with, and in what points it would be found to differ from, tradrille. Her illustrations were apposite and poignant; and I had the pleasure of sending the substance of them to Mr. Bowles; but I suppose they came too late to be inserted among his ingenious notes upon that author. Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love ; mt whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The for- mer, she said, was showy and specious, and likely to allure young persons. The uncertainty and quick shift- ing of partners — a thing which the constancy of whist abhors; the dazzling supremacy and regal investiture of spadille — absurd, as she justly observed, in the pure aris- tocracy of whist, where his crown and garter give him no proper power above his brother nobility of the aces ; the giddy vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, of play- ing alone ; above all, the overpowering attractions of a Sans Prendre Vole — to the triumph of which there is certainly nothing parallel or npproaching in the contin- gencies of whist — all these, she would say, make qua(l- MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 57 rille a game of captivation to the young and enthusiastic. But whist was the soUder game — that was her word. It was a long meal ; not, like quadrille, a feast of snatches. Oje or two rubbers might coextend in duration with an evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships, to cultivate steady enmities. She despised the chance- started, capricious, and ever-fluctuating alliances of the other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, re- minded her of the petty, ephemeral embroilments of the little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel : perpetually changing postures and connections ; bitter foes to-day, sugired darlings to-morrow; kissing and scratching in a br.^ath ; but the wars of whist were comparable to the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the great French and English nations. A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in her favorite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous. No flushes — that most irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being can set up ! — that any one should claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same mark and color, without ref- erence to the playing of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions of the cards themselves! She held this to be a solecism ; as pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She despised superfici- ality, and looked deeper than the colors of things. Suits were soldiers, she would say, and must have a uniform- ity of ray to distinguish them ; but what should we say to a foolish squire, who should claim a merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets, that never were to be marshaled — never to take the field ? She even wished that whist were more simple than it is ; and, in my mind, would have stripped it of some appendages, jS the essays of elia. which, in the state of human frailty, may be venially, and even commendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not one suit always trumps? Why cw<5 colors, when ihe mark of the suits would have sufficiently dis- tinguished tnem witliout it? "But the eye, my dear madam, is agreeably re- freshed with the variety, Man is not a creature of pure reason — he must have his senses delightfully dp- pealed to. We see it in Koman Catholic countries, where the music and the paintings draw in many to worship, whom your Quaker spirit of unsensualizing would have kept out. You yourself have a pretty col- lection of paintings — but confess to me, whether walk- ing in your gallery at Sandham, among those clear Van- dykes, or among the Paul Potters in the anteroom, you ever felt your bosom glow with an elegant delight, at all comparable to that you have it in your power to expe- rience most evenings over a well-arranged assortment of the court-cards? — the pretty antic habits, like heralds in a procession — the gay, triumph-assuring scarlets — the contrasting, deadly-killing sables — the ' hoary majesty of spades ' — Pam in all his glory ! "All these might be dispensed with; and with their naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the game might go on very well, pictureless. But the deauty of cards would be extinguished forever. Stripped of all that io imaginative in them, they must degenerate into mere gambling. Imagine a dull, deal board, or drum-head, to spread them on, instead of that nice verdant carpet (next to Nature's), fittest arena for those courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts and tourneys in ! Exchange those delicately- turned ivory markers — (work of Chinese MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 59 artist, unconscious of their symbol, or as profanely slighting their true application as the arrantest Ephesian Journeyman that turned out those little shrines for the goddess) — exchange them for little bits of leather (our ancestors' money), or chalk and a slate ! " The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of my logic ; and to her approbation of my arguments on her favorite topic that evening, I have always fancied myself indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage- board, made of the finest Sienna marble, which her ma- ternal uncle (old Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated) brought with him from Florence : this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds, came to me at her death. The former bequest (which I do not least value) I have kept with religious care; though she herself, to confess the truth, was never greatly taken with crib- bage. It was an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her say — disputing with her uncle, who was very par- tial to it. She could never heartily bring her mouth to pronounce " Qo^^'' or " Thafs a go^ She called it an ungrammatical game. The pegging teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five-dollar stake), be- cause she would not take advantage of the turn-up knave which would have given it her, but which she must have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring " two fer his heeUy There is something extremely genteel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentlewoman born. Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the terms — such as pique — ^repique — the capot — they savored (she thought) of affectation. But games for two, or even three, she never greatly cared for. She loved the quad- 60 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. rate, br square. She would argue thus : Cards are war- fare ; the ends are gain, with glory. But cards are war, in disguise of a sport: when single adversaries encoun- ter, the ends proposed are too palpable. By themselves it is too close a fight ; with spectators it is not much bet- tered. No looker-on can be interested, except for a bet, and then it is a mere affair of money; he cares not for your luck sympatJietically^ or for your play. — Three are still worse; a mere naked war of every man against every man, as in cribbage, without league or alliance ; or a rotation of petty and contradictory interests, a suc- cession of heartless leagues, and not much more hearty infractions of them, as in tradrille. — But in square games {she meant whist)^ all that is possible to be attained in card-playing is accomplished. There are the incentives of profit with honor, common to every species — though the latter can be but very imperfectly enjoyed in those other games, where the spectator is only feebly a partici- pator. But the parties in whist are spectators and prin- cipals too. They are a theatre to themselves, and a looker-on is not wanted. He is rather worse than noth- ing, and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or interests beyond its sphere. You glory in some surpris- ing stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold — or even an interested — by-stander witnesses it, but because jour partner sympathizes in the contingency. You win for two. You triumph for two. Two are exalted. Two again are mortified ; which divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking off the invidiousness) your glories. Two losing to two are better reconciled than one to one in that close butchery. The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying the channels. War becomes a civil game. — By such reasonings as these the MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. gj old ladj was accustomed to defend her favorite pas- time. 1^0 induGQrasnt could ever prevail upon her to plaj at anygimc, w'lsre chance entered into the composition, for nothing. Ohance, she would argue — and here again a imire the subtlety of her conclusion — chance is nothing, but where something else depends upon it. It is obvious that cannot be glory. What rational cause of exultation could it give to a man to turn up size ace a hundred times together by himself? or before spectators, where no stake is depending? — Make a lottery of a hundred thou- sand tickets with but one fortunate number — and what possible principle of our nature, except stupid wonder- ment, could it gratify to gain that number as many times successively, without a prize? Therefore, she disliked the mixture of chance in backgammon, where it was not played for money. She called it foolish, and those peo- ple idiots, who were taken with a lucky hit under such circumstances. Games of pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere system of overreaching. Played for glory, they were a mere set- ting of one man's wit — ^his memory, or combination- faculty rather — against another's; like a mock-engage- ment at a review, bloodless and profitless. She could not conceive a game wanting the spritely infusion of chance, the handsome excuses of good fortune. Two people playing at chess in a corner of a room, while whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut simili- tudes of Castles, and Knights, the imagery of the board, she would argue (and I think in this case Justly), were entirely misplaced and senseless. Those hard head-con- tests can in no instance ally with the fancy. They re- 62 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. ject form and color. A pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper arena for such combatants. To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the bad passions, she would retort that man is a gaming animal. He must be always trying to get the better in something or other ; that this passion can scarcely be more safely expended than upon a game at cards ; that cards are a temporary illusion ; in truth, a mere drama ; for we do but play at being mightily concerned, where a few idle shillings are at stake; yet, during the illusion, we are as mightily concerned as those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream-fight- ing; much ado; great battling, and little bloodshed; mighty means for disproportioned ends ; quite as divert- ing, and a great deal more innoxious, than many of those more serious games of life, which men play, without es- teeming them to be such. With great deference to the old lady's judgment in these matters, I think I have experienced some moments in my life, when playing at cards for nothing has even been agreeable. When I am in sickness, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes call for the cards, and play a game at piquet /"or love with my cousin Bridget — Bridget EHa. I grant there is something sneaking in it ; but with a toothache, or a sprained ankle — when you are subdued and humble — you are glad to put up with an inferior spring of action. There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, as ficlc whist. I grant it is not the highest style of man — I deprecate the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, alas ! to whom I should apologize. A CHAPTER 01^ EARS. 63 At siicli times, those terms which my old friend ob- jscted to, come in as something admissible. — I love to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean nothing. I am subdued to an inferior interest. Those shadows of winning amuse me. That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capot- tejd her) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish I am?) — I wished it might have lasted forever, though we gained nothing, and lost nothing, though it was a mere shade of play : I would be content to go*on in that idle folly forever. The pipkin should be ever boiling, that was to prepare the gentle lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was doomed to apply after the game was over: and, as I do not much relish appliances, there it should ever bubble. Bridget and I should be ever playing. A CHAPTER ON EARS. I HAVE no ear. — Mistake me not, reader — nor imagine that I am b> ttature destitute of those exterior twin appendages, hang- ing ornaments, and (architecturally speaking) handsome volutes to the human capital. Better my mother had never borne me. — I am, I think, rather delicately than copiously provided with those conduits ; and I feel no disposition to envy the mule for his plenty, or the mole for her exactness, in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets — those indispensable side-intelligencers. Neither have I incurred, or done anything to incur, with Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which constrained him to draw upon assurance — to feel " quite unabaslied," 64 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, and at ease upon that article. 1 %Yas never, I thank my stars, in the piliorj; nor, if I read them aright, is it within the compass of my destiny that T ever should be. When, therefore, I say that I have no ear, you will understand me to mean— for music. To say that this heart never melted at the concord of sweet sounds, would be a foul self -libel. " Wate?' jmrted from the sea'''' never fails to move it strangely. So does " Tn infancy.'''' But they were used to be sung at her harpsichord (the old- fashioned instrument in vogue' in those days) by a gentle- woman — the gentlest, sure, that ever merited the appel- lation — the sweetest — why sh6uld I hesitate to name Mrs. S , once the blooming Fanny Weatheral of the Temple — who had power to thrill the soul of Elia, small imp as he was, even in his long coats, and to make him glow, tremble, and biush with a passion, that not faintly indicated the day-spring of that absorbing sentiment which was afterward destined to overwhelm and subdue his nature quite for Alice "W n. I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to har- mony. But organically I am incapable of a tune. I have been practising " God save tJie King'''' all my life; whistling and liumming it over to myself in solitary cor- ners ; and am not yet arrived, they tell me, within many quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty of Elia never been impeached. I am not without suspicion, that I have an undevel- oped faculty of music within me. For thrumming, in my mild way, on my friend A.'s piano, the other morn- ing, while he was engaged in an adjoining parlor — on his return he was pleased to say, "-Jie thought it could not he the maid ! " On his first surprise at hearing the keys touched in somewhat an airy and masterful way, A CHAPTER ON ^Atlg. 65 not dreaming of me, his suspicions had lighted on Jenny, •But a grace, snatched from a superior refinement, sooi\ convinced him that some being — technically perhaps de- ficient, but higher informed from a principle common to all the fine arts — had swayed the keys to a mood which Jenny, with all her (less cultivated) enthusiasm, could never have elicited from them. I mention this as a proof of my friend's penetration, and not with any view of disparaging Jenny. Scientitically I could never be made to understand (yet have I taken some pains) what a note in music is ; or how one note should differ from another. Much less in voices can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes the thorough-bass I contrive to guess at, from its being supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I trem- ble, however, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that which I disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, I scarce know what to &ay I am ignorant of. I hate, perhaps, by misnomers. Sostenuto and adagio stand in the like relation of obscurity to me ; and 8ol^ Fa^ Mi, Ee, is as conjuring as Baralipton. It is hard to stand alone in an age like this — (consti- tuted to the quick and critical perception of all harmoni- ous combinations, I verily believe, beyond all preceding ages, since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut) — to remain, as it were, singly unimpressible to the magic influences of an art which is said to have such an especial stroke at soothing, elevating, and refining the passions. — Yet, rather tlian break the candid current of my confessions, I must avow to you that I have received a great deal more pain than pleasure from this so cried up faculty. I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A car- penter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me 5 60 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. into more than midsummer madness. But those uncon- nected, unset sounds are nothing to the measured malice of music. The ear is p&ssive to those single strokes; ■willingly enduring- stripes while it hath no task to con. To music it catmot bo passive. It will strive— mine alf least will — 'spite of its inaptitude, to thrid the maze; like an unskilled eye painfully poring upon hieroglyphics. I have sat through an Italian Opera, till, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded streets, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow, and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention ! I take refuge in the unpretending assemblage of honest common-life sounds ; and the purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes my paradise. I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the pur- poses of the cheerful playhouse) watching the faces of the auditory in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's Laughing Audience !), immovable, or affecting some faint emotion, till (as some have said, that our occupa- tions in the next world will be but a shadow of what delighted us in this) I have imagined myself in soma cold Theatre in Hades, where some of the forms of the earthly one should be kept up, with none of the enjoy- ment ; or like that — " Party in a parlor All silent and all damned." Above all, these insufferable concertos, and pieces oi music, as they are called, do plague and embitter my ap- prehension. Words are something ; but to be exposed to an endless battery of mere sounds ; to be long a-dy- ing, to lie stretched upon a rack of roses ; to keep up Ian- A CHAPTER ON EARS. 67 guor bj unintermitted effort; to pile honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable, tedious sweet- ness ; to fill up sound with feeling, and strain ideas to keep pace with it ; to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to make the pictures for yourself; to read a book, all stops, and be obliged to supply the verbal matter ; to invent extempore tragedies to answer to the vague gest- ures of an inexplicable, rambling mime — these are faint shadows of what I have undergone from a series of the ablest-executed pieces of this empty instrumental music. I deny not that, in the opening of a concert, I have experienced something vastly lulling and agreeable ; afterward folio weth the languor and the oppression. Like that disappointing book in Patvnos; or, like the comings on of melancholy, described by Burton, doth Music make her first insinuating approaches : " Most pleasant it is to such as are melancholy given to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by some brook-side, and to meditate upon some delight- some and pleasant subject, which shall affe^^t him most, am'-hilis insania, and mentis gratissimus error- A most incomparnble delight to build castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they suppose, and strongly imagine, thej) act, or that they see done. So delightsome these toys at first, they could spend whole days and nights without sleep, even whole years in such contemplations and fantastical meditations, w?iich are like so many dreams, and will hardly be drawn from them — winding and unwinding themselves as so many clocks, and still pleasing their humors until at Inst the scene turns upon a sudden, and they being now habitated to such meditations and soli- tary places, can endure no company, can think of nothing 68 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. but harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspi' cion, subrusticus pudor^ discontent, cares, and weariness of life, surprise them on a sudden, and they can think of nothing else; continually suspecting, no sooner are their eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth on them and terrifies their souls, representing some dismal object to their minds ; which now, by no means, no labor, no persuasions, they can avoid, they cannot be rid of, they cannot resist." Something like this " scene tuejSTIng- " I have experi- enced at the evening-parties at the house of my good Catholic friend Nov , who, by the aid of a capital organ, himself the most finished of players, converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his week-days into Sun- days, and these latter into minor heaven.* When my friend commences upon one of these sol- emn anthems, which peradventure struck upon my heed- less ear, rambhng in the side aisles of the dim Abbey, some five-and -thirty years since, waking a new sense, and putting a soul of old religion into my young appre- hension — (whether it be tliat^ in which the Psalmist, weary of the persecutions of bad men, wisheth to him- self dove's wings; or that other^ which, with a like "measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth by what means the young m^an shall best cleanse his mind) — a holy calm pervadeth me. I am for the time — " rapt above earth, And possess joys not promised at my birth." But when this master of the spoil, not content to have laid a soul prostrate, goes on, in his povver, to in- * " I have been there, and still would go ; 'Tis like a little heaven below." — ^Db. Watts. ALL-FOOLS'-DAY. g^ flict more bliss than lies in her capacity to receive, im- patient to overcome her " earthly " with his " heavenly " —still pouring in, for protracted hours, fresh waves and fresh from the sea of sound, or from that inexhausted German ocean, above VN^hich, in triumphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride those Arions Haydn, and Mozai% with their attendant Tritons, BacJi, Beetlioven, and a eountless tribe, whom to attempt to reckon up would but plunge me again in the deeps— I stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling to and fro at my wits' end; clouds, as of frankincense, oppress me— priests, altars, censers, dazzle before me— the genius of Us religion hath me in her toils — a shadowy triple tiara invests the brow of my friend, late so naked, so ingenuous— he is Pope, and by him sits, like as in the anomaly of dreams, a she-Pope, too, tri-coroneted like himself ! — I am con- verted, and yet a Protestant ; at once malleus heretico- rum, and myself grand heresiarch : or three heresies centre in my person : I am Marcion, Ebion, and Oerin- thus— Gog and Magog— what not?— till the coming in of the friendly supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a draught of true Lutheran beer (in which chiefly my friend shows himself no bigot) at once reconciles me to the rationalities of a purer faith, and restores to me the genuine, unterrifying aspects of my pleasant - counte- nanced host and hostess. ALL-FOOLS'-DAY. The compliments of the season to my worthy masters, and a merry first of April to us all! Many happy returns of this day to you — and you— J'O THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, and you^ Sir — nay, never frown, man, nor put along face upon the matter. Do not we know one another? wha': need of ceremony among friends ? we have all a touch ci that same — you understand me — a speck of the motley. Beshrew the man who on such a day as this, the general festival^ should affect to stand aloof. I am none of those .sneakers. I am free of the corporation, and care not who knows it. He that meets me in the forest to-day, shali meet with no wiseacre, I can tell him. Stultus sum. Translate me that, and take the meaning of it to yourself for your pains. What ! man, we have four quarters of the globe on our side, at the least computation. Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry — we will drink no wise, melancholy, pplitic port on this day — and let us troll the catch of Amiens — due ad me — due ad me — how goes it ? — " Here shall he see Gross fools as be." Now would I give a trifle to know historically and authentically who was the greatest fool that ever lived. I would certainly give him a bumper. Marry, of the present breed, I think I could without much difficulty name you the party. Eemove your cap a little farther, if you please : it hides my bauble. And now each man bestride his hob- by, and dust away his bells to what tune he pleases. I will give you, for my part, — " The crazy old church-clock, And the bewildered chimes." Good Master Empedocles, you are welcome. It is long since you went a salamander-gathering down Etna. Worse than samphire-picking by some odds. 'Tis a mer- cy your worship did not singe your mustacbios. ALL-FOOLS'-DAY. 71 Ha ! Cleombrotus ! and what salads in faith did you light upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean? You were founder, I take it, of the disinterested sect of the Calenturists. Gebir, my old freemason, and prince of plasterers at Babel, bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand! You have claim to a seat here at my right hand, as patron of the stammerers. You left your work, if I remember Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred million toises, or thereabout, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what a long bell yoa must have pulled, to call your top work- men to their nuncheon on the low grounds of Shinar! Or, did you send up your garlic and onions by a rocket? I am a rogue if I am not ashamed to show you our Mon- ument on Fish Street Hill, after your altitudes. Yet we think it somewhat. What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears? — cry baby, put its finger in its eye, it shall have another globe, round as an orange, pretty moppet! Mister Adams 'odso, I honor your coat — pray do us the favor to read to us that sermon, which you lent to Mistress Slipslop — the twenty-and-sescond in your port- manteau there — on Female Incontinence — the same — it will come in most irrelevantly and impertinently season- able to the time of the day. Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. Pray correct that error. — Duns, spare your definitions. I nm-t fine you a bump., er, or a paradox. We will have nothing said or done syllogistically this day. Remove those logical forms, waiter, that no gentleman break the tender shins of his apprehension stumbling across them. Master Stephen, you are late. — Ha! Cokes, is it you? 72 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, — Aguecheek, my dear kniglit, let me pay my devoir to you. — Master Shallow, your worship's poor servant to command. — Master Silence, I will use few words with you. — Slender, it shall go hard if I edge not you in some- where. — You six will engross all the poor wit of the com- pany to-day. — I know it, I know it. Ha! honest R , my fine old Librarian of Ludgate, time out of mind, art thou here again? Bless my doub- let, it is not over-new ; threadbare as thy stories — what dost thou flitting about the world at this rate? — Thy cus- tomers are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, have ceased to read long ago. — Thou goest still among them, seeing if, per- adventure, thou canst liawk a volume or two. — Good Granville S— — , thy last patron, is flown. " King Pandion, he is dead, All thy friends are lapt in lead." — ^Nevertheless, noble R , come in, and take your ,seat here, between Armado and Quisada; for in true courtesy, in gravity, in fantastic smiling to thyself, in courteous smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature of well-appareled speech, and the commendation of wise sen- tences, thou art nothing inferior to those accomplished Dons of Spain, The spirit of chivalry forsake me for- ever, when I forget thy singing the song of Macheath, which declares that he might be Jiapjty with either^ situ- ated between those two ancient spinsters — when I for- get the inimitable formal love which thou didst make, turning now to the one, and now to the other, with that Malvolian smile — as if Cervantes, not Gay, had written, it for his hero; and as if thousands of periods must re- volve, before the mirror of courtesy could have given his invidious prefereDce between a pair of so goodly-proper- tied and meritorious-equal damsels. . . . ALL-FOOLS'-DAY. 73 To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract our Fools' Banquet beyond its appropriate day — for I fear the Second of April is not many hours distant — in sober verity I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I love a Fool — as naturally, as if I were of kith and kin to him. When a child, with childlike apprehensions, that dived not below the surface of the matter, I read those Po-r^- hle3 — not guessing at the involved wisdom — I had more yearnings toward that simple architect, that built his house upon the sand, than I entertained for his more cautious neighbor : I grudged at the hard censure pro- nounced upon the quiet soul that kept his talent ; and — prizing their simplicity beyond the more provident, and, to my apprehension, somewhat unfeminine wariness of their competitors — I felt a kindliness, that almost amount- ed to a tendre, for those five thoughtless virgins. — I have never made an acquaintance since, that lasted : or a friend- ship, that answered ; with any that had not some tinct- ure of the absurd in their characters. I venerate an honest obliquity of understanding. The more laughable blunders a man shall commit in your company, the niore tests he giveth you, that he will not betray or overreach you. I love the safety, which a palpable hallucination "warrants ; the security, which a word out of season rati- fies. And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse mat- ter in his composition. It is observed, that "the fool- isher the fowl or fish — woodcocks — dotterels — cods'- heads, etc.— the finer the flesh thereof," and what are eommonly the world's received fools, but such whereof the world is not worthy? and what have been some of the kindliest patterns of our species, but so many darlings 74 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. of absurdity, minions of the goddess, and her white boys? — Reader, if yoa wrest my words beyond their fair con- struction, it is you and not I, that are the April Fool. A QUAKERS' MEEimG, " Still-born Silence ! thou that art Flood-gate of the deeper heart ! Offspring of a heavenly kind ! Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind ! Secrecy's confidant, and He Who makes religion mystery ! Admiration's speaking'st tongue ! Leave, thy desert shades among, Reverend hermits' hallowed cells, Where retired Devotion dwells I With thy entiiusiasms come, Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb."* Readee, wouldst thou know what true peace and quiet mean; wouldst thou find a refuge from the noises and clamors of the multitude; wouldst thou enjoy at once solitude and society; wouldst thou possess the depth of thine own spirit in stillness, without being shut out from the consolatory faces of thy species; wouldst thou be alone, and yet accompanied; solitary, yet not desolate; singular, yet not without some to keep thee in countenance; a unit in aggregate; a simple in c-jui* posite : come with me into a Quakers' meeting. Dost thou love silence deep ms that '' before the winds were made?" go not out into the wilderness; descend * From " Poems of all Sorts," by Eichard Fleckuo, 1653. A QUxiORS' MEETING. 75 not into the profundities of the earth ; shut not up thy casements, nor pour wax into the little cells of thy ears, with little-faithed, self-mistrusting Ulysses. — Eetire with me into a Quakers' meeting. For a man to refrain even from good words, and co hold his peace, it is commendable ; but for a multitudeij it is great mastery. What is the stillness of the desert compared with this place? what the uncommunicating muteness of fishes? — here the goddess reigns and revels. — "Boreas, and Oesias, and Argestes loud," do not with their inter- confounding uproars more augment the brawl— nor the waves of the blown Baltic with their clubbed sounds — than their opposite (Silence her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered more intense by numbers, and by sympa- thy. She, too, hath her deeps that call unto deeps. Nega- tion itself hath a positive more and less ; and closed eyes would seem to obscure the great obscurity of midnight. There are wounds which an imperfect solitude cannot heal. By imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth by himself. The perfect is that which he can sometimes attain in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely as in a Quakers' meeting.— Those first hermits did certainly un- derstand this principle when they retired into Egyptian solitudes, not singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another's want of conversation. The Carthusian is bound to hi§ brethren by this agreeing spirit of incommunicative- ness. In secular occasions, what so pleasant as to be reading a book through a long, winter evening, with a friend sitting by— say a wife— he, or she, too (if that be probable), reading another, without interruption or oral communicaton ? — can there be no sympathy without the gabble '"f words ? — away with this innumau, -shy, single, 76 THE l:SSAYS OV ELIA. shade-and-cavem-haimting solitariness. Give me, Master Zimraermann, a sympathetic solitude. To pace along in the cloisters or Bide-aisles of some cathedral, time-stricken — " Or under hanging mountains, Or by the fall of fountains "— is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which those enjoy who come together for the purposes of more com- plete, abstracted solitude. This is the loneliness "to be felt." — The Abbey church of "Westminster hath nothing so solemn, so spirit-soothing, as the naked walls and benches of a Quakers' meeting. Here are no tombs, no inscriptions, — " Sands, ignoble things. Dropped from the ruined sides of kings "^ but here is something which throws Antiquity herself into the foreground — Silence — eldest of things — lan- guage of old Night — primitive Discourser — to which the insolent decays of mouldering grandeur have but arrived by a violent, and, as we may say, unnatural progression. " How reverend is the view of these hushed heads, Looking tranquillity ! " Nothing - plotting, naught - caballing, unmischievous synod! convocation without intrigue! parliament with= out debate! what a lesson dost thou read to council, and to consistory! — if my pen treat of you lightly — as haply it will wander — yet my spirit hath gravely felt the wis- dom of your custom, when sitting among you in deepest peace, which some out-wel]ing tears would rather confirm than disturb, I have reverted to the times of your begin- nings, and the sowings of the seed by Fox and Dewesburj, A QUAKERS' MEETING. 7'/ I have witnessed that which brought before my eyes your heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the rude jests and serious violences of the insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to molest you — for ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecutions, the outcast and offscouring of church and Dresbytery. — I have seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered into your receptacle with the avowed inten«^ tion of disturbing your quiet, from the very spirit of the place receive in a moment a new heart, and presently sit among ye as a lamb among lambs. And I remember Penn before his accusers, and Fox in the bail- dock, where he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells us, and " the judge and the jury became as dead men under his feet." Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would recommend to you, above all church-narratives, to read Sewel's History of the Quakers. It is in folio, and is the abstract of the Journals of Fox and the primitive Friends. It is far more edifying and affecting than any- thing you will read of Wesley and his colleagues. Here is nothing to stagger you, nothing to make you mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the worldly or ambitious spirit. You will here read the true story of that much-injured, ridiculed man (who, perhaps, hath been a by-word in your mouth) — James ISTaylor : what d"readful sufferings, with what patience, he endured, even to the boring through of his tongue with red-hot irons, without a murmur; and with what strength of mind, when the delusion he had fallen into, which they stigmatized for blasphemy, had given way to clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error, in a strain of the beautif ullest humility, yet keep his first grounds, and be a Quaker still ! — so different from the practice of your commor converts from enthusiasm, who, when the/ 78 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. apostatize, apostatize all, and think they can never get far enough from the sooietj of their former errors, even to the renunciation of some saving truths, with which they had been mingled, not implicated. Get the V/ritings of John Woolman by heart ; and !ove the early Quakers. How far the followers of these good men in cur days have kept to the primitive spirit, or in what propor- tion they have substituted formality for it, the Judge of Spirits can alone determine. I have seen faces in their assemblies, upon which the dove sate visibly brooding. Others again I have watched, when my thoughts should have been better engaged, in which I could possibly de- tect nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet was in ail, and the disposition to unanimity, and the absence of the fierce controversial workings. If the spiritual preten- sions of the Quakers have abated, at least they make few pretenses. Hypocrites they certainly are not, in their preaching. It is seldom, indeed, that you shall see one get up among them to hold forth. Only now and then a trembling female, generally ancient, voice is heard — you cannot guess from what part of the meeting it proceeds — with a low, buzzing, musical sound, laying out a few words which "she thought might suit the condition of some present," with a quaking diffidence, which leaves no possibility of supposing that anything of female van- ity was mixed up, where the tones were so full of ten- darness, and a restraining modesty. The men, for what I have observed, speak seldomer. Once only, and it was some years ago, I witnessed a sample of the old Foxian orgasm. It was a man of giant stature, who, as Wordsworth phrases it, might have danced " from head to foot equipt in iron mail." His A QTJAKEHS' MEETING. 79 frame was of iron, too. But he was malleable. I saw him shake all over with the spirit — I dare not say of de- hision. The strivings of the outer man were unuttera- ble — he seemed not to speak, but to be spoken from. I saw the strong man bowed down, and his knees to fail- Ms joints all seemed loosening — it was a figure to set oS against Paul Preaching — the words he uttered were few. and sound— he was evidently resisting his will — keeping- down his own word-wisclom with more mighty effort, than the world's orators strain for theirs. " He had been a WIT in his youth," he told us, with expressions of a so- ber remorse. And it was not till long after the impres- sion had begun to wear away, that I was enabled, with something like a smile, to recall the striking incongruity of the confession — understanding the term in its worldly acceptation — with the frame and physiognomy of the person before me. His brow would have scared away the Levities — the Jocos Risus-que — faster than the Loves fled the face of Dis at Enna. By irdt, even in his youth, I will be sworn he understood something far within th© limits of an allowable liberty. More frequently the meeting is broken up without a word having been spoken. But the mind has been fed. You go away with a sermon not made with hands. You have been in the milder caverns of Trophonius ; or as in some den, where that fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures, the Tongue, that unruly member, has strange- J^y lain tied up and captive. You have bathed with still- ness. Oh, when the spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness of the janghngs, the nonsense-noises of the world, what a balm and a solace it is, to go and seat yourself, for a quiet half-hour, upon some undisputed corner of a bench, among the gentle Quakers ! go THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. Their garb and stillness conjoined, present a uniform ity, tranquil and herd-like — as im the pasture — "forty feeding like one." — The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of re- ceiving a soil ; and cleanliness in them to be something more than the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress Is a lily; and when they come up in bands to their Whitsun-conferences, whitening the easterly streets of the metropolis, from all parts of the United Kingdom, tliey show like troops of the Shining Ones. THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. My reading has been lamentably desultory and im- methodical. Odd, out-of-the-way, old English plays, and treatises, have supplied me with most of my notions, and ways of feeling. In everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world. I should have scarcely cut a figure among the franklins, or country gentlemen, in King John's days. I know less geography than a schoolboy of six weeks' standing. To me a map of old Ortelins is as authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not know whereabout Africa merges into Asia; whether Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great divis- ions; nor can form the remotest conjecture of the posi- tion of New South Wales, or Yan Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a correspondence with a very dear friend in the first-named of these two Terrse IncognitfB. I have no astronomy. I do not know where to look for the Bear, or Charles's Wain; the place of any star; or the name of any of them at sight. I guess at Yenus only by THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 81 her brightness — and if the sun on some portentous morn were to make his first appearance in the West, I verily believe, that, while all the world were gasping in appre- hension about me, I alone should stand unterrified, from sheer incuriosity and want of observation. Of history and chronology I possess some vague points, such as one cannot help picking up in the course of miscellaneous study ; but I never deliberately sat down to a chronicle, even of my own country. I have most dim apprehen- sions of the four great monarchies ; and sometimes the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats as first^ in my fancy. I make the widest conjectures concerning Egypt, and her shepherd kings. My friend if., with great pains- taking, got me to think I understood the first proposition in Euclid, but gave me over in despair at the second. I am entirely unacquainted with the modern languages; and, like a better man than myself, have "small Latin and less Greek." I am a stranger to the shapes and texture of the commonest trees, herbs, flowers — not from the circumstance of my being town-born — for I should have brought the same inobservant spirit into the world with me, had I first seen it " on Devon's leafy shores " — and am no less at a loss among purely town-objecta, tools, engines, mechanic processes. Not that I affect ignorance — but my head has not many mansions, nor spacious ; and I have been obliged to fill it with such cabinet curiosities as it can hold without aching. I sometimes wonder how I have passed my probation with so little discredit in the world, as I have done, upon so meagre a stock. But the fact is, a man may do very well with a very little knowledge, and scarce be found out, in mixed company; everybody is so much more ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of 6 H3 I'HE ESSAYS OF ELIA. your acquisitions. But in a tete-d~tete there is no shuf- fling. The truth will out. There is nothing which I dread so much as the being left alone for a quarter of an hour with a sensible, vv^ ell-informed man, that does not know me. I lately got into a dilemma of this sort. In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate and Shacklewell, the coach stopped to take up a staid-looking gentleman, about the wrong side of thirty, who was giving his parting directions (while the steps were ad- iusting), in a tone of mild authority, to a tall youth, who seemed to be neither his clerk, his son, nor his servant, but something partaking of all three. The youth was dismissed, and we drove on. As we were the sole pas- sengers, he naturally enough addi-essed his conversation to me; and we discussed the merits of the fare, the ci- vility and punctuality of the driver ; the circumstance of an opposition coach having been lately set up, with the probabilities of its success — to all which I was enabled to return pretty satisfactory answers, having been drilled into this kind of etiquette by some years' daily practice of riding to and fro in the stage aforesaid — when he sud- denly alarmed me by a startling question, whether I had seen the show of prize cattle that morning in Smithfield? Kow, as I had not seen it, and do not greatly care for such sort of exhibitions, I was obliged to return a cold negative. He seemed a little mortified, as well as aston- ished, at my declaration, as (it appeared) he was just come fresh from the sight, and doubtless had hoped to com- pare notes on the subject. However, he assured me that I had lost a fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of last year. We were now approaching Norton Folgate, when the sight of some shop-goods ticlceted freshened him up into a dissertation upon the cheapness of cottons this THE OLD AND THE NEW SCPIOOLMASTER. 83 spring. I was now a little in heart, as the nature of my morning avocations had brought me into some sort of familiarity with the raw material-, and I was surprised to find how eloquent I was becoming on the state of the India market — when, presently, he dashed my incipient vanity to the earth at once, by inquiring whether I had ever made any calculation as to the value of the rental of all the retidl shops in London. Had he asked of me, what song the Siren sang, or what name Achilles as- sumed when he hid himself among women, I might, with Sir Thomas Browne, have hazarded a " wide solution." * My companion saw my embarrassment, and, the alms- houses beyond Shoreditch just coming in view^, with great good-nature and dexterity, shifted his conversation to the subject of public charities; which led to the com- parative merits of provision for the poor in past and present times, with observations on the old monastic institutions, and charitable orders; but, finding me rather dimly impressed with some glimmering notions from old poetic associations, than strongly fortified with any speculations reducible to calculation pn the subject, he gave the matter up ; and, the country beginning to open more and more upon us, as we approached the turnpike at Kingsland (the destined termination of hie journey), he put a home-thrust upon me, in the most unfortunate position he could have chosen, by advancing some queries relative to the ISTorth-Pole Expedition. While I was muttering out something about the pano- rama of those strange regions (which I had actually seen), by way of parrying the question, the coach stopping re- lieved me from any further apprehensions. My com- panion getting out, left me in the comfortable possessioj * Urn Burial. 84 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. of my ignorance ; and T heard him, as he went off, put= ting questions to an outside passenger, who had alighted with him, regarding an epidemic disorder, that had been rife about Dalston, and which my friend assured him had gone through five or six schools in that neighborhood. The truth now flashed upon me, that my companion was a schoolmaster ; and that the youth, whom he had parted from at our first acquaintance, must have been one of the bigger boys, or the usher. He was evidently a kind- hearted man, who did not seem so much desirous of pro- voking discussion by the questions which he put, as of obtaining information at any rate. It did not appear that he took any interest, either, in such kind of inqui- ries, for their own sake ; but that he was in some way bound to seek for knowledge. A greenish-colored coat, which he had on, forbade me to surmise that he was a clergyman. The adventure gave birth to some reflections on the difference between persons of his profession in past and present times. Rest to the souls of those fine old pedagogues ; the breed, long since extinct, of the Lilys and the Linacres. who, believing that all learning was contained in the languages which they taught, and despising every other acquirement as superficial and useless, came to their task as to a sport ! Passing from infancy to age, they dreamed away all their days as in a grammar-school. Revolving in a perpetual cycle of declensions, conjuga- tions, syntaxes, and prosodies ; renewing constantly the occupations which had charmed their studious child- hood ; rehearsing continually the part of the past ; life must have slipped from them at last like one day. They were always in their first garden, reaping harvests of their golden time, among their Flori and their Spici^ THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 85 legia; in Arcadia still, but kings! the ferule of their sway not much harsher, but of like dignity with that mild sceptre attributed to King Basileus; the Greek and Latin, their stately Pamela and their Philoclea ; with the occasional duncery of some untoward tyro, serving for a refreshing interlude of a Mopsa or a clown Daraoetas \ With what a savor doth the Preface to Oolet's, or (as it is sometimes called) Paul's Accidence, set forth ! " To exhort every man to the learning of grammar, that intendeth to attain the understanding of the tongues, wherein is contained a great treasury of wisdom and knowledge, it would seem but vain and lost labor; for so much as it is known, that nothing can surely be ended whose beginning is either feeble or faulty ; and no build- ing be perfect whereas the foundation and groundwork is ready to fall, and unable to hold the burden of the frame." How well doth this stately preamble (compara- ble to those which Milton coramendeth as "having been the usage to prefix to some solemn law, then first promul- gated by Solon or Lycurgus ") correspond with and illus- trate that pious zeal for conformity, expressed in a suc- ceeding clause, which would fence about grammar-rules with the severity of faith articles ! — " as for the diversity of grammars, it is well profitably taken away by the Kings Majesties wisdom, who foreseeing the inconveni- ence, and favourably providing the remedie, caused one kind of grammar by sundry learned men to be diligently drawn, and so to be set out, only everywhere to be taught, for the use of learners, and for the hurt in changing of schoolmaisters." What a gusto in that which follows : " wherein it is profitable that he [the pu- pil] can orderly decline his noun, and his verb." His noun ! The fine dream is fading away fast; and the least ^e THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. concern of a teacher in the present day is to inculcate crammar-rules. The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a little of everything, because his pupil is required not to be en- tirely ignorant of anything. He must be superficially, if I may so say, omniscient. He is to know something «f pneumatics ; of chemistry; of whatever is curious, or proper to excite the attention of the youthful mind ; an insight into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of sta- tistics; the quality of soils, etc., botany, the constitution of his country, cum multis aliis. You may get a notion of some part of his expected duties by consulting the famous Tractate on Education addressed to Mr. Hartlib. All these things — these, or the desire of them — he is expected to instill, not by set lessons from professors, which he may cliarge in the bill, but at school intervals, as he walks the streets, or saunters through green fields (those natural instructors), with his pupils. The least part of what is expected from him, is to be done in school-hours. He must insinuate knowledge at the mollia tempora fandi. He must seize every occasion — the season of the year ; the time of tiie day ; a passing cloud; a rainbow; a wagon of hay; a regiment of sol- diers going by — to inculcate something useful. He can receive no pleasure from a casual glimpse of Nature, but must catch at it as an object of instruction. He must interpret beauty into the picturesque. He cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gypsy, for thinking of the suitable improvement. Nothing comes to him, not spoiled by the sophisticating medium of moral uses. The Universe — that Great Book, as it has been called — is to him in- deed, to all intents and purposes, a book out of which he is doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER gy schoolboys. Vacations themselves are none to him, he is onlj rather worse off than before ; for commonly he has some intrusive upper boy fastened upon him at such times; some cadet of a great family; some neglected lump of nobility, or gentry ; that he must drag after him to the play, to the Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrery, to the Panopticon, or into the country, to a friend's house, or his favorite watering-place. Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow attends him. A boy is at his board, and in his path, and in all his movements. He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy. Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates ;Cbut they are unwholesome companions for grown people^/ The restraint is felt no less on the one side than on the other. Even a child, that " plaything for an hour," tires always. The noises of children, playing their own fancies — as I now hearken to them by fits, sporting on the green before my window, while I am engaged in these grave speculations at my neat suburban retreat at Shackle well — by distance made more sweet — inexpressibly take from the labor of my task. It is like writing to music. They seem to modulate my periods. They ought at least to do so — for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind of poetry, far unlike the harsh prose accents of man's conversation. I should but spoil their sport, and diminish my own sympathy for them, by mingling in their pastime. I would not be domesticated all my days with a per- son of very superior capacity to my own — not, if I know myself at all, from any considerations of jealousy or self- comparison, for the occasional communion with such minds has constituted the fortune and felicity of my life — but the habit of too constant intercourse with spirits 88 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, above you, instead of raising yon, keeps you down. Too frequent doses of original thinking from others re- strain what lesser portion of that faculty you may pos- ? sess of your own. You get entangled in another man's i mind, even as you lose yourself in another man's grounds. Y"ou are walking with a tall varlet, whose strides out- pace yours to lassitude. The constant operation of such potent agency would reduce me, I am convinced, to im- becility. You may derive thoughts from others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own. Intellect may be imparted, but not each man's intellectual frame. — As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged upward, as little (or, rather, still less) is it desirable to be stunted downward by your associates. The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility. Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence of a schoolmaster ? Because we are conscious that he is not quite at his ease in ours. Tie is awkward and out of place in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulli- ver from among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours. He cannot meet you on the square. He wants a point given him, like an indifferent whist-player. He is so used to teaching that he wants to be teaching you. One of these professors, Tipon my complaining that these little sketches of mine were anything but methodical, and that 1 was unable to make them otherwise, kindly offered to instruct me in the method by which young gentlemen in Ms seminary were taught to compose English themes. — The jests of a schoolmaster are coarse or thin. They do not tell out of school. He is under the restraint of a formal or di- THE OLD AND TBE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 89 dactive hypocrisy in company, as a clergyman is under a moral one. He can no more let his intellect loose in so- ciety than the other can his inclinations. He is forlorn among his coevals ; his juniors cannot be his friends. " 1 take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this profession, writing to a friend respecting a youth who had quitted his school abruptly, " that your nephew was not more attached to me. But persons in my situation are more to be pitied than can well be imagined. We are surrounded by young and, consequently, ardently affectionate hearts, but we can never hope to share an atom of their affections. The relation of master and scholar forbids this. ' How pleasing this must 5e to you, lioio I envy your feelings 1 ' my friends will sometimes say to me, when they see young men whom I have educated return, after some years' absence from school, their eyes shining with pleasure while they shake hands with their old master, bringing a present of game to me or a toy to mj wife, and thanking me in the warmest terms for my care of their education. A holiday is begged for the boys ; the house is a scene ^f happiness ; I, only, am sad at heart. — This fine-opirited and warm-hearted youth, who fancies he repays his master with gratitude for the care of his boyish years — this young man, in the eight long years I watched over him with a parent's anx- iety, never could repay rae with one look of genuine feeling. He was proud when I praised ; he was submis- sive when I reproved him ; but he did never love me ; and what he now mistakes for gratitude and kindness for me is but the pleasant sensation which all persons feel at revisiting the scenes of their boyish hopecs and fears ; and the seeing on equal terms the man they were accustomed to look up to with reverence. My wife, 90 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. too," this interesting correspondent goes on to 8ay, "my once darling Anna, is the wife of a schoolmaster. — When I married her — knowing that the wife of a schoolmaster ought to he a husy, notable creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna would ill supply the loss of my dear, bustling mother, just then dead, who never sat still, was in every part of the house in a moment, and whom I was obliged sometimes to threaten to fasten down in a chair to save her from fatiguing herself to death — I ex- pressed my fears that I was bringing her into a way o£ life unsuitable to her ; and she, who loved me tenderly, promised for my sake to exert herself to perform the duties of her new situation. She promised, and she has kept her word. What wonders will not woman's lovp perform ? My house is managed with a propriety and decorum unknown in other schools ; my boys are well fed, look healthy, and have every proper accommoda- tion; and all this performed with a careful economy that never descends to meanness. But I have lost my gentle, lielpless Anna I When we sit down to enjoy an hour of repose after the fatigue of the day, I am com- pelled to listen to what have been her useful (and they are really useful) employments through the day, and what she proposes for her to-morrow's task. Her heart and her features are changed by the duties of her situa- tion. To the boys, she never appears other than the masterh wife^ and she looks up to me as the l)oy''s master^ to whom all show of love and affection would be highly improper, and unbecoming the dignity of her situation and mine. Yet this my gratitude forbids m to hint to her. For my sake she submitted to be this altered creat- ure, and can I reproach her for it ? " — For the communi- catior. of this letter, I am indebted to my cousin Bridget, VALENTINE'S-DAY. 91 VALENTINE'S-DAY. Hail to tliy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine! Great is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable arch- flamen of Hymen ! Immortal go - between ! who and what manner of person art thou? Art thou but a name^ iypifying the restless principle which impels poor hu- mans to seek perfection in union ? or wert thou, indeed, a mortal prelate, with thy tippet and thy rochet, thy apron on, and decent lawn sleeves? Mysterious person- age! like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other mitred father in the calendar; not Jerome, nor Ambrose, nor Cyril, nor the consigner of undipped infants to eternal toiTnents, Austin, whom all mothers hate ; nor he who hated ail motTiers, Origen ; nor Bishop Bull, nor Arch- bishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou comest attended with thousands and ten thousands of little loves, and the air is " Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings." Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors ; and instead of the crosier, the mystical arrow is borno before thee. In other words, this is the day on which those charm- ing little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and inter- cross each other at every street and turning. The weary and all forspent twopenny-postman sinks beneath a load of delicate embarrassments not his ov.'n. It is scarcely credible to what an extent this ephemeral courtship is carried on in this loving town, to the great enrichment of porters, and detriment of knockers and bell- wires. In these little visual interpretations, no emblem is so ccinmon as the heart — that little, three-cornered expo- 92 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. nent of our hopes and fears — the bestuck and bleeding heart. It is twisted and tortured into more allegories and affectations than an opera-hat. What authority we have in history or mythology for placing the headquar- ters and metropolis of God Cupid in this anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not very clear ; but we have got it, and it will serve as well as any other. Else we might easily imagine — upon some other system which might have prevailed for anything which our pathology knows to the contrary — a lover addressing his mistress, in perfect simplicity of feeling, " Madam, my liver and fortune are entirely at your disposal ; " or putting a deli- cate question, "Amanda, have you a midriff to be- stow ? " But custom has settled these things, and avvard- ed the seat of sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate neighbors wait at animal and anatomi- es distance. Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a Icnock at the door. It "gives a very echo to the throne where Hope is seat- ed." But its issues seldom answer to this oracle within. It is so seldom that just the person we want to see comes. But of all the clamorous visitations the welcomest in ex- pectation is the sound that ushers in, or seems to usher in, a Valentine. As the raven him.self was hoarse that announced the fatal entrance of Duncan, so the knock of the postman on this day is light, airy, confident, and be- fitting one that briugeth good tidings. It is less mechan- ical than on other days. You will say, " That is not the post I am sure." Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymens ! — delightful eternal commonplaces, which, " having been, will always be; " which no schoolboy nor schoolman can write away ; having your irreversible throne in the fan' VALENTINE'S-DAY. 93 cy and affections — what are your transports, when the liappv maiden, opening with careful finger, careful not to break the emblematic seal, bursts upon the sight of some well-designed allegory, some type, some youthful fancy, not withoxit verses — " Lovers all, A madrigal," or some such device, not over abundant in sense — ^young Love disr-laims it — and not quite silly — something be- tween wind and water, a chorus where the sheep might almost join the shepherd, as they did, or as I apprehend they did, in Arcadia. All Valentines are not foolish ; and I shall not easily forget thine, my kind friend — if I may have leave to call you so — ^E. B. E, B, lived opposite a young maiden, whom he had often seen, unseen, from his parlor-win- dow in — e Street. She was all joyousness and inno- cence, and just of an age to enjoy receiving a Valentine, and just of a temper to bear the disappointment of miss- ing one with good-humor. E. B. is an artist of no com- mon powers — in the fancy parts of designing, perhaps, inferior to none. His name is known at the bottom of many a well-executed vignette in the way of his profes- sion, but no further — for E. B. is modest, and the world meets nobody half-way. E. B. meditated how he could repay this young maiden for many a favor which she had done him unknown ; for when a kindly face greets us, though \but passing by, and never knows us again, nor we it, we should feel it as an obligation ; and E. B. did. This good artist set himself at work to please the dam- sel. It was just before Valentine's-day three years since. He wrought, unseen and unsuspected, a wondrous work. 94 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. We need not say it was on the finest gilt paper with i)ot% ders — full, not of common hearts and heartless allegory, but all the prettiest stories of love from Ovid, and older poets than Ovid (lor E. B. is a scholar). There was Py- ramus and Thisbe, and be sure Dido was not forgot, nor Hero and Leander, and swans more than sang in Cayster, with mottoes and fanciful devices, such as beseemed — a work in short of magic. Iris dipped the woof. This on Valentine's-eve he commended to the all-swallowing, in- discriminate orifice — O ignoble trust ! — of the common post ; but the humble medium did its duty, and from his watchful stand the next morning he saw the cheerful messenger knock, and by-and-by the precious charge de- livered. He saw, unseen, the happy girl unfold the Val- entine, dance about, clap her hands, as one after one the pretty emblems unfolded themselves. She danced about, not with light love, or foolish expectations, for she had no lover ; or, if she had, none she knew that could have created those bright images which delighted her. It was more like some fairy present; a God-send, as our famil- iarly pious ancestors termed a benefit received where the benefactor was unknown. It would do her no harm. It would do her good forever after. It is good to love the unknown. I only give this as a specimen of E. B. and his modest way of doing a concealed kindness. Good-morrow to my Valentine, sings poor Ophelia ; and no better wish, but v/ith better auspices, we wish to all faithful lovers, who are not too wise to despise old legends, but are content to rank thsmselves humble dio- cesans of old Bishop Valentine and his true church. • IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 95 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sym- pathizeth with all things ; I liave no antipathy, or rather idi- osyncrasy in anything. Those natural repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — Religio Medici. That the author of the Eeligio Medici, mounted up- on the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about notion^ al and conjectural essences ; in whose categories of Be^ ing the possible took the upper hand of the actual; should have overlooked the impertinent individualities of such poor concretions as mankind, is not much to be admired. It is rather to be wondered at, that in the genus of animals he should have condescended to distin- guish that species at all. For myself — earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my activities — " Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky," I confess that I do feel tlie differences of mankind, na- tional or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no indifferent eye upon things or persons. What- ever is, is to me a matter of taste or distaste; or when once it becomes indifferent, it begins to be disrelishingo I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices — made up of likings and dislikings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, antipathies. In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me that I am a lover of my species. I can feel for all indifferently, but I cannot feel toward all equally. The more purely-English word that expresses sympathy, will better explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a 96 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. worthy man, who upon another account cannot be my nmte or felloic. I cannot UTce all people alike.* I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They cannot like mo — and in truth, I never knew one of that nation who attempted to do it. There is something more plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceeding. We know one another at first sight. There is an order of imperfect intellects (under which mine must be con- tent to rank) which in its constitution is essentially anti- Caledonian, The owners of the sort of faculties I allude to, have minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. They have no pretenses to much clearness or precision * I would be understood as confining myself to the suhject of imperfect sympatlnes. To nations or classes of men there can be no direct antipathy. There may be individuals born and con- stellated so opposite to another individual nature that the same sphere cannot hold them. I have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons meeting (who never saw one another before in their lives) and instantly fighting. " — "We by proof find there should be 'Twixt man and man sucla an antipathy, That though he can show no just reason why For any former wrong or injury, Can neither find a blemish in his fame. Nor aught in face or feature justly blame. Can challenge or accuse him of no evil. Yet, notwithstanding, hates him as a devil." The lines are from old Hey wood's " Hierarchic of Angels," and he subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who at- tempted to assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack could give no other reason for tlie deed but an invet- erate antipathy which he had taken to the first sight of the King, " — The cause which to that act compelled him Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him.'* IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 97 \ \ in their ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. \ Their intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They are content with fragments and scattered pieces of Truth. She presents no full front to them — a feature or side-face at the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and crude essaj^s at a system, is the ut- most they pretend to. They beat up a little game per- adventure — and leave it to knottier heads, more robust constitutions, to run it down. The light that lights them is not steady and polar, but mutable and shifting: wax- ing, and again waning. Their conversation is according- ly. They will throw out a random word in or out of season, and be content to let it pass for what it is worth. They cannot speak always as if they were upon their oath — but must be understood, speaking or writing, with some abatement. They seldom wait to mature a proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the green ear. They de- light to impart their defective discoveries as they arise, without waiting for their development. They are no systematizers, and would but err more by attempting it. iheir minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. The brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is con- stituted upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is born in panoply. Yon are never admitted to see his ideas in thsir growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put together upon principles of clock-work. You never catch his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests anything, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order and completeness. He brings his total wealth into com- pany, and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always about him. He never stoops to catch a glittering some- thing in your prer^ence to share it with you, before he tjuite knows whether it be true touch or not. You can^ 7 98 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA. not cry halves to anything that he finds. He does not find, but brings. You never witness his first apprehen- sion of a thing. His understanding is always at its me- ridian — you never see the first dawn, the early streaks. — He has no falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half-intaitions, semi-consciousnesscs- partial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, have no place in his brain, or vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he orthodox — he has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he has none either. Be- tween the affirmative and the negative there is no border- land with him. Y^ou cannot hover with him upon the confines of truth, or wander in the maze of a probable argument. He always keeps the path. You cannot make excursions with him — for he sets you right. His taste never fluctuates. His morality never abates. He cannot compromise, or understand middle actions. There can be but a right and a wrong. His conversation is as a book. His affirmations have the sanctity of an oath. You must speak upon the square with him. He stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's country. " A healthy book! " — said one of his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give that appellation to John Bun- cle. — " Did I catch rightly what you said ? I have heard of a man in health, and of a healthy state of body, but I do not see how that epithet can be properly applied to a book." Above all, you must beware of indirect expres- sions before a Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath. I have a print of a graceful female after Leonardo da Vinci, which I was showing off to Mr. . After he had examined it mi- nutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked my beauty IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 99 (a foolish name it goes by among mj friends)— when he A very gravely assured me that " he had considerable re- spect for my character and talents" (so he was pleased to say), " but had not given himself much thought about the degree of my personal pretensions." The miscon- ception staggered me, but did not seem much to discon- cert him. Persons of this nation are particularly fond 'of affirming a truth— which nobody doubts. They do not so properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do, in- deed, appear to have such a love of truth (as if, like vir- tue, it were valuable for itself) that all truth becomes equally vi*luable, whether the proposition that contains it be new or old, disputed, or such as is impossible to be- come a subject of disputation. I was present not long sinbe at a party of North Britons, where a son of Burns was expected; and happened to drop a silly expression (in my South British way), that I wished it were the father instead of the son — when four of them started up at once to inform me that "that was impossible, be- cause he was dead." An impracticable wish, it seems, was more than they could conceive. Swift has hit off this part of their character, namely, their love of truth, in his biting way, but with an illiberality that necessa- rily confines the passage to the margin.* The tedious- * There are some people who think they suf&ciently acquit themselves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no consequence, not at all out of the road of such common inci- desits as happen every day ; and this I have observed more fre- quently among the Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the minutest circumstances of time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and gesture pecul- iar to that country, would be hardly tolerahlQ.— Bints toward an Essay on Conversation. 100 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. ness of these people is certainly provoking. I wonder if they ever tu*e one another? In my early life I liad a passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns. I have sometimes foolishly hoped to ingratiate myself with his countrymen by expressing it. But I have always found Uiat a true Scot resents your admiration of his compat- riot, even more than he would your contempt of him. The latter he imputes to your *' imperfect acquaintance with many of the words which he uses ; " and the same objection makes it a presumption in you to suppose that you can admire him. Thomson they seem to have for- gotten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor for- given, for his delineation of Eory and his companion, upon their first introduction to our metropolis. Speak of Smollett as a great genius, and they will retort upon you Hume's History compared with Ms Continuation of it. What if the historian had continued Humphrey Clinker ? I have, in the abstract, "no disrespect for Jews. They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond the pyra- mids. But I should not care to be in habits of familiar intercourse with any of that nation. I confess that I have not the nerves to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices cling about me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh of Lincoln. Centuries of injury, contempt, and hate, on the one side — of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on the other, between our and their fathers, must and ought to affect the blood of the children. I cannot believe it can run clear and kindly yet ; or that a few fine words, such as candor, liberality, the light of a nineteenth century, can close up the breaches of so dead- ly a disunion. A Hebrew is nowhere congenial to me. He is least distasteful on 'Change — for the mercantile IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 101 spirit levels all distinctions, as all are beauties in the dark. I boldly confess that I do not relish the approxi- mation of Jew and Christian, which has become so fash- ionable. The reciprocal endearments have, to me, some- ^ thing hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do not like to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and congeeing in awkward postures of an affected civility. If they are converted, v/hy do they not cornQ over to us altogether? Why keep up a form of separation when the life of it is fled? If they can sit vv^ith us at table, why do they keck at our cookery ? I do not understand these half convert- ites. Jews Christianizing — Christians Judaizing — puzzle me. I like fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more confounding piece of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue is essentially separative. B would have been more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of his forefathers. 'There is a fine scorn in his "^ace, which IsTature meant to be of Christians. / The Hebrew spirit is strong in him, in spite of his prbsely- tism. He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How it breaks out when he sings, " The Children of Israel passed through the Eed Sea!" The auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he rides over our necks in tri- umph. There is no mistaking him. B has a strong expression of sense in his countenance, and it is confirmed by his singing. ^The foundation of his vocal excellence is sense, ^ He sings with understanding, as Kemble de- livered dialogue. He would sing the Commandments, and give an appropriate character to each prohibition. His nation, in general, have not over-sensible counte- nances. How should thev? — but you seldom see a silly expression among them, i Gain, and the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's visage. \ I never heard of an idiot be 102 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. ing born among them. Some admire the Jewish female physiognomy. I admire it — but with treanbling. Jael had those full, dark, inscrutable eyes. In the negro countenance you will often meet with ,.---s«trong traits of bejoignity. I have felt yearnings of ten- derness toward some of these faces — or rather masks — that have looked out kindly upon one in casual encoun- ters in the streets and highways. I love what Fuller beautifully calls — these "images of God cut in ebony." But I should not like to associate with them, to share my meal^^and my good nights with them — because they are black. I love Quaker ways and Quaker worship, I venerate the Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the day when I meet any of their people in my path. "When I am ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, or quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and taking off a load from the bosom. But I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say) " to live with them." I am all over sophisticated — with humors, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, Jokes, am- biguities, and a thousand whimwhams, which their sim- pler taste can do without. I should starve at their primitive banquet. My appetites are too high for the salads which (according to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel, my gusto too excited " To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse." The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to return to a question put to them, may be explained, I think, without the vulgar assumption that they are more given to evasion and equivocating than other peo- IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 103 pie. They naturally look to their words more carefully, and are more cautious of committing themselves. They have a peculiar character to keep up on this head. They stand in a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted from taking an oath. The custom of resorting to an oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all religious antiquity, is apt (it must be confessed) to introduce into the laxer sort of minds the notion of two kinds of truth — the one applicable to the solemn affairs of justice, and the other to the common proceed- ings of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the con- science by an oath can be but truth, so in the common affirmations of the shop and the market-place a latitude is expected, and conceded upon questions wanting this solemn covenant. Something less than truth satisfies. It is common to hear a person say, " You do not expect me to speak as if I were upon my oath." Hence a great deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short of false- hood, creeps into ordinary conversation ; and a kind of secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth — oath-truth, by the nature of the circumstances, is not required. A Quaker knows none of this distinction. His simple affirmation being received, upon the most sacred occasions, without any further test, stamps a value upon the words which he is to use upon the most indifferent topics of life. He looks to them, naturally, with more severity. Yon can have of him no more than his word. He knows, if he is caught tripping in a casual expression, lie forfeits, for himself at least, his claim to the invidious exemption. He knows that his syllables are weighed — and how far a consciousness of this particular watchfulness, exerted against a person, has a tendency to produce indirect answers, and a di- 104 TEE ESSAYS OF ELTA. verting of the question by honest means, might be il- lustrated, and the practice justified, by a more sacred example than is proper to be adduced upon this occa- sion. The admirable presence of mind, which is noto- rious in Quakers upon ail contingencies, might be traced to this imposed self- watchfulness — If it did not seem rather an humble and secular scion of that old stock of religious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave way to the winds of persecu- tion, to the violence of judge or accuser, under trials and racking examinations. " You will never be the wiser, if I sit here answering your questions till midnight," said one of those upright Justicers to Penn, who had been putting law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. " Thereafter as the answers may be," retorted the Quaker. The as- tonishing composure of this people is sometimes ludi- crously displayed in lighter instances. I was traveling in a stage-coach with three male Quakers, buttoned up in the straitest nonconformity of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea-apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. My friends confined themselves to the tea-table. I in my way took supper. "When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my companions discovered that she had charged for both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clam- orous and positive. Some mild arguments were used on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The guard came in with his usual peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out their money and formally tendered it — so much for tea — I, in humble imitation, tendering mine — ibr the supper which I had taken. She would not relax in her demand. So they all three quietly put up their WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 105 silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do hetter than follow the example of such grave and warrantable personages. "We got in. The steps went up. The coach drove oif. The murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambig- uously pronounced, became after a time inaudible — and now my conscience, which the whimsical scene had foi a while suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope that some justification would be oftered by these serious persons for the seeming injustice of their conduct. To my great surprise not a syllable was dropped on the subject. They sat as mute as at a meeting. At length the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next neighbor, " Hast thee heard how indigos go at the India House ? " and the question operated as a soporific on my moral feeling as far as Exeter. WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS, We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the gross for fools, for the monstrous mconsistencies (as they seem to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the relations of this visible world v/e find them to have been as rational, and shrewd to detect an historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when once the invisible world was supposed to be opened, and the lawless agen- cy of bad spirits assumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of fitness, or proportion — of that whicii dis- tinguishes the likely from the palpable absurd — could they have to guide them in the rejection or admission of 106 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. any particular testimony? Tliat maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen images consumed be- fore a fire — that corn was lodged, and cattle lamed — that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the oaks of the forest- or that spits and kettles only danced a fearful-in- nocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen when no wind was stirring — were all equally probable where no law of agency was understood. That the prince of the powers of darkness, passing by the flower and pomp of the earth, should lay preposterous siege to tlie weak fantasy of in- digent eld, has neither likelihood nor unlikehood a priori to us, who have no measure to guess at his policy, or standard to estimate what rate those anile souls may fetch in the devil's market. Nor, when the wicked are expressly symbolized by a goat, was it to be wondered at so much that he should come sometimes in that body, and assert his metaphor. That the intercourse was opened at all between both worlds was, perhaps, a mis- take ; but that once assumed, I see no reason for disbe- lieving one attested story of this nature more than an- other on the score of absurdity. There is no law to judge of the lavvlesF, or canon by which a dream may be criticised. I have sometimes thought that I could not have exist- ed in the days of received witchcraft ; that I could not have slept in a village where one of those reputed hags dwelt. Our ancestors were bolder or more obtuse. Amid the universal belief that these wretches were in league with the author of all evil, holding hell tributary to their muttering, no simple justice of the peace seems to have scrupled issuing, or silly head-borough serving, a warrant upon them — as if they should subpoena Satan ! Prosper© in his boat, with his books and wand about him, suffers WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 107 L..ti^^!^t io be conveyed away at the mercy of his ene- n.ies to HTL unknown island. He might have raised a storm or two, we think, on the passage. His acquies- cence is in exact analogy to the non-resistance of witches to the coLh,tituted powers. "What stops the fiend in Spenser from tearing Guy on to pieces — or who had made it a condition of his p^'ey, that Guyon must take assay of the glorious bait? — we have no guess. We do not know the laws of that country. From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive about witches and witch-stories. My maid, and more legenda- ry aunt, supplied me with good store. But I shall men- tion the accident which directed my curiosity originally into this channel. In my father's book-closet, the " His- tory of the Bible," by Stackhouse, occupied a distin- guished station. The pictures with which it abounds — one of the ark, in particular, and another of Solomon's temple, delineated with all the fidelity of ocular admeas- urement, as if the artist had been upon the spot — attract- ed my childish attention. There was a picture, too, of the Witch raising up Samuel, which I wish that I had never seen. We shall come to that hereafter. Stack- house is in two hage tomes — and there was a pleasure in removing folios of i5'nat magnitude, which, with infinite straining, was as much as I could manage, from the situa- tion which they occupied upon an upper shelf. I have not met with the work from that time to this, but I remember it consisted of Old Testament stories, orderly set down, with the objection appended to each story, and the solution of the objection regularly tacked ^o that. The objection was a summary of whatever diilicultie3 had been opposed to the probability of the hibtory, by the shrewdness of ancient or modern infidelity, drawn dp with an almost 108 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. complimentary excess of candor. The solution was brief, modest, and satisfactory. The bane and antidote were both before you. To doubts so put, and so quashed, there seemed to be an end forever. The dragon lay dead, for the foot of the veriest babe to trample on. But — like as was rather feared than realized from that slain monster in Spenser — from the womb of those cruslied errors young dragonets would creep, exceeding the prow- ess of so tender a Saint George as myself to vanquish. The habit of expecting objections to every passage, set me upon starting more objections, for the glory of find- ing a solution of my own for them. I became stag- gered and perplexed, a skeptic in long-coats. The pretty Bible-stories which I had read, or heard read in church, lost their purity and sincerity of impression, and v/ere turned into so many historic or chronologic theses to be defended against whatever impugners. I was not to dis- believe them, but — the next thing to that — I was to be quite sure that some one or other would or had disbe- lieved them. Kext to making a child an infidel, is the let- ting him know that there are infidels at all. Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength. Oh, how ugly sound scriptural doubts from the mouth of a babe and a suckling-! I should have lost myself in these mazes, and have pined away, I think, with such unfit sustenance as these husks afl;orded, but for a fortunate piece of ill- fortune, which about this time befell me. Turning over the picture of the ark with too much haste, I unhappily made a breach in its ingenious fabric ; driving my incon- Biderate fingers right through the two larger quadrupeds — the elephant and the camel — that stare (as well they might) out of the last two windows next the steerage in that unique piece of naval architecture. Stackhouse was WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 109 henceforth looked up, aad became an interdicted treas- ure. With the book, the objections and solutions gradu- ally cleared out of my head, and have seldom returned since in any force to trouble me. But there was one im- pression which I had imbibed with Stackhouse, which ao look or bar could shut out, and which was destined to ^ry my childish nerves rather more seriously. — That de- testable picture. I was dreadfully alive co nervous terrors. The night- finiQ, solitude, and the dark, were my hell. The suffer- ings I endured in this nature would justify the expres- sion. I never laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, from the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of my life — so far as memory serves in things so long ago — without an assurance, which realized its own prophecy, of seeing soma frightful spectre. Be old Stackhouse then acquitted in part, if I say that to his picture of the witch raising up Samuel — (O that old man covered with a mantle !) — I owe, not my midnight terrors, the hell of my infancy, but the shape and manner of their visitation. It was he who dressed up for me a hag that nightly sate upon my pillow — a sure bedfellow, when my aunt or my maid was far from me. All day long, while the book was per- mitted me, I dreamed waking over his delineation, and at night (if I may use so bold an expression) awoke into sleep, and found the vision true. I durst not, even in the daylight, once enter the chamber where I slept, without my face turned to the window, aversely from the bed where my witch-ridden pillow was. Parents do not know what they do when they leave tender babes alone to go to sleep in the dark. The feeling about for a friendly arm — the hoping for a familiar voice, when they awake screaming, and find none to soothe them, 110 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. what a terrible shaking it is to their poor nerves! The keeping them up till midnight, through candle-light and the unwholesome hours, as they are called, would, I am satisfied, in a medical point of view, prove the better caution. That detestable picture, as I have said, gave the fashion to my dreams, if dreams they were, for the scene of them was invariably the room in which I lay. Had I never met with the picture, the fears would have come self-pictured in some shape or other — " Headless bear, black man, or ape " — but, as it was, my imaginations took tlmt form. It is not book, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants, which create these terrors in children. They can at most but give them a direction. Dear little T. H., who of all children has been brought up with the most scru- pulous exclusion of every taint of superstition, who was never allowed to hear of goblin or apparition, or scarce- ly to be told of bad men, or to read or hear of any dis- tressing story, finds all this world of fear, from which he has been so rigidly excluded db extra^ in his own " thick-coming fancies ; " and from his little midnight pillow, this nurse-child of optimism will start at shapes, unborrowed of tradition, in sweats to which the reveries of the cell-damned murderer are tranquillity. Gorgons, and Hj^dras, and Chiniicras dire — stories of Celssno and the Harpies — may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition — but they were there before. They are transcripts, types — the archetypes are in us, and eternal. How else should the recital of that, which we know in a waking sense to be false, come to affect us at all ? or — " Names, whose sense we see not, Fray us with things that be not ? " WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. HI Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? Oh, least of all! These terrors, are of older standing. They date beyond body, or, without the body, they would have been the same. All the cruel, tormenting, defined devils in Dante, tearing, mangling, choking, stifling, scorching demons— are they one-half so fearful to the spirit of a man, as the simple idea of a spirit unembodied following him — " Like one that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round, walks on And turns no more his head ; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread." * That the kind of fear here treated of is purely spirit- ual — that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless upon earth— that it predominates in the period of sinless in- fancy — are difficulties, the solution of which might afford some probable insight into our antemundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadow-land of preexistence. My night-fancies have long ceased to be afflictive. I confess an occasional nightmare; but I do not, as in early youth, keep a stud of them. Fiendish faces, with the extinguished taper, will come and look at me ; but I know them for mockeries, even while I cannot elude their presence, and I fight and grapple with them. For the credit of my imagination, I am almost ashamed to say how tame and prosaic my dreams are grown. They are never romantic, seldom even rural. They are of ar- chitecture and of buildings— cities abroad, which I have * Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, 11^ THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. never seen and har(?Iy have hoped to see. I have trav- ersed, for the seeming length of a natural day, Eome, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon — their churches, palaces, squares, market-places, shops, suburbs, ruins, with an Inexpressible ser^se of delight — a map-like distinctness of trace — and a davliglit vividness of vision, that was all but being awake. I have formerly traveled among the Westmoreland fells — my highest Alps — but they are ob- jects too mighty for the grasp of my dreaming recogni- tion; and I have again and again awoke with ineffectual struggles of the inner eye, to make out a shape, in any way whatever, of Helvellyn. Methought I was in that country, but the mountains were gone. The poverty of my dreams mortifies me. There is Coleridge, at his will can conjure up icy domes, and pleasure-houses for Kubla Khan, and Abyssinian maids, and songs of Abara, and caverns — " Where Alph, the sacred river, runs " — to solace his night solitudes — when I cannot muster a fiddle. Barry Cornwall has his tritons and his nereids gamboling before him in nocturnal visions, and proclaim- ing sons born to Neptune — when my stretch of imagina- tive activity can hardly, in the night-season, raise up the ghost of a fish-wife. To set my failures in somewhat a mortifying light — it was after reading the noble Dream of this poet, that my fancy ran strong upon these marine spectra; and the poor plastic power, such as it is, within me set to work, to humor my folly in a sort of dream that very night. Methought I was upon the ocean-bil- lows at some sea-nuptials, riding and mounted high, with the customary train sounding their conchs before me (I myself, you may be sure, the leading god)^ and jollily w© MY RELATIONS. 113 went careering over the main, till Just where Ino Leuco- thea should have greeted me (I think it was Ino) with a white embrace, the billows gradually subsiding, fell from a sea-roughness to a sea-calm, and thence to a river-mo- tion, and that river (as happens in the familiarization of dreams) was no other than the gentle Thames, whicln landed me in the wafture of a placid wave or two, alone, safe and inglorious, somewhere at the foot of Lambeth Palace. The degree of the souPs creativeness in sleep might furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poeti- cal faculty resident in the same soul waking. An old gentleman, a friend of mine, and a humorist, used to carry this notion so far that, when he saw any stripling of his acquaintance ambitious of becoming a poet, his first question would be, "Young man, what sort of dreams have you?" I have so much faith in my old friend's theory that, when I feel that idle vein returning upon me, I presently subside into my proper element of prose, remembering those eluding nereids, and that in- auspicious inland landing. MY EELATIONS. I AM arrived at that point of life at which a man may account it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he have either of his parents surviving. I have not that felicity — and sometimes think feelingly of a passage in Browne's Christian Morals, where he speaks of a man that hath lived sixty or seventy years in the world. "In such a compass of time," he says, "a man may have a close ap- 8 114 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. prehension what it is to be forgotten, when he hath lived .o h'Aii iione u iio coaid remember his father, or scarcely the friends of his youth, and may sensibly see with what a face in no long time Obliyios^ will look r.pon himself." I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was one whom single blessedness had soured to the world. She often used to say that I was the only thing in it which she loved; and, when she thought I was quitting it, she grieved over me witli mother's tears. A partiality quite so exclusive my reason cannot altogether approve. She was from morning till night poring over good books, and devotional exercises. Her favorite volumes were Thomas a Kempis, in Stanhope's translation ; and a Roman Cath- olic Prayer Book, with the matins and complines regular- ly set down — terms which I was that time too young to understand. She persisted in reading them, although admonished daily concerning their Papistical tendency ; and went to church every Sabbath as a good Protestant should do. These were the only books she studied ; though I think, at one period of her life, she told me, she had read with great satisfaction the Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Xobleman. Einding the door of the chapel in Essex Street open one day — it was in the infan- cy or that heresy — she went in, liked the sermon, and the manner of worship, and frequented it at intervals for some time after. She came not for doctrinal points, and never missed them. "With some little asperities in her constitution, which I have above hinted at, she was a steadfast, friendly being, and a fine old Christian. She was a woman of strong sense, and a shrewd mind — ex- traordinary at arepartie; one of the few occasions of her tireaking silence — else she did not much value wit. The only secular employment I remember to have seen MY RELATIONa ll5 her engaged in, was, the splitting of French beans, and dropping them into a china basin of fair water. The odor of those tender vegetables to this day comes back npon my senses, redolent of soothing recollections. Cer- tainly it is the most delicate of culinary operations. Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none — to remember. By the uncle's side I may be said to have been born an orphan. Brother, or sister, I never had any — to know them. A sister, I think, that should have been Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. What a com- fort, or what a care, may I not have missed in her ? — But I have cousins sprinkled about in Hertfordshire — besidfe? two, with whom I have been all my life in habits of the closest intimacy, and whom I may term cousins par ex- cellence. These are James and Bridget Elia. Thej are older than myself by twelve, and ten, years ; and neither of them seems disposed, in matters of advice and guid- ance, to waive any of the prerogatives which primogeni- ture confers. May they continue still in the same mind ; and when they shall be seventy-five, and seventy-three, years old (I cannot spare them sooner), persist in treat- ing me in my grand climacteric precisely as a stripling or younger brother ! James is an inexplicable cousin. Kature hath her unities, which not every critic can penetrate ; or, if we feel, we cannot explain them. The pen of Yorick, and of none since his, could have drawn J. E. entire — those fine Shandean lights and shades, which make up his story. I must limp after in my poor antithetical manner, as the fates have given me grace and talent. J. E. then — to the eye of a common observer at least — seemeth made up of contradictory principles. The genuine child of impulse, the frigid philosopher of prudence — the phlegm of my 116 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA, cousin's doctrine is invariably at war with his tempera- ment, which is high sanguine. With always some fire- new project in his brain, J. E. is the systematic opponent of innovation, and crier down of everything that has not stood the test of age and experiment. With a hundred fine notions chasing one another hourly in his fancy, he is startled at the least approach to the romantic in others ; and, determined by his own sense in everything, com- mends you to the guidance of common-sense on all occa- sioDs. — With a touch of the eccentric in all which he does, or says, he is only anxious that you should not com- mit yourself by doing anything absurd or singular. On my once letting slip at the table, that I was not fond of a certain popular dish, he begged me at any rate not to say so — for the world would think me mad. He disguises a passionate fondness for works of high art (whereof he hath amassed a choice collection), under the pretext of buying only to sell again — that his enthusiasm may give no encouragement to yours. Yet, if it were so, why does that piece of tender, pastoral Domenichino hang still by his wall? — is the ball of his sight much more dear to him ? — or what picture-dealer can talk like him ? Whereas mankind, in general, are observed to warp their speculative conclusions to the bent of their individ- ual humors, Ms theories are sure to be in diametrical op- piDsition to his constitution. He is courageous as Charles of Sweden, upon instinct ; chary of his person upon prin- ciple, as a tra-'^'eUng Quaker. — He has been preaching up to me, all my hfe, the doctrine of bov/ing to the great — the necessity of ^brms, and manner, to a man's getting on in the world. Qe himself never aims at either, that I can discover — and h'^s a spirit that would stand upright. in the presence 0/ 'Ae Cham of Tartary. It is pleasant to MY EELATIONa II7 hear him discourse of patience— extolling it as the ti-ae^t wisdom — and to see him during the last seven minutes that his diiiDer is getting ready, N'ature never ran up in her haste a more restless piece of workmanship than \vhen she moulded this impetuous cousin — and Art never turned out a more elaborate orator than he can display himself to be, upon this favorite topic of the advantages of quiet and contentedness in the state, whatever it be, chat we are placed in. He is triumphant on this theme, when he has jou safe in one of those short stages that ply for the western road, in a very obstructing manner, at the foot of John Murray's Street — where you get in when it is empty, and are expected to wait till the vehi- cle hath completed her just freight— a trying three-quar- ters of an hour to some people. He wonders at your fidgetiness—" where could we be better than we are, thus sitting, thm consulting f "— " prefers, for his part, a state of rest to locomotion" — with an eye all the while upon the coachman — till at length, waxing out of all patience, at your want of it, he breaks out into a pathetic remon- strance at the fellow for detaining us so long over the time which he had professed, and declares peremptorily, that "the gentleman in the coach is determined to get out, if lie does not drive on that instant." Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting a sophistry, he is incapable of attending you in any chain of arguing. Indeed, he makes wild work with logic : and seams to jump at most admirable conclusions by some pro- cess, not at all akin to it. Consonantly enough to this, he hath been heard to deny, upon certain occasions, that there exists such a faculty at all in man as reason; and wondoreth how man came first to have a conceit of it-^ enforcing his negation with ail the might of reasoning he 118 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. is master of. He has some speculative notions against laughter, and will maintain that laughing is not natural to Jdm — when peradventure the next moment his lungs shall crow like Chanticleer. He says some of the best things in the world — and declareth that wit is his aver- sion. It was he who said, upon seeing the Eton hoys at play in their grounds — What a pity to tkinlc that tJiese fine ingenuous lads in a few years will all de cJiafiged into frivolous Meiiibers of Parliament ! His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous — and in age he disco vereth no symptom of cooling. This is that which I admire in him. I hate people who meet Time half-way. I am for no compromise with that inevitable spoiler. While he lives, J. E. will take his swing. It does me good, as I walk toward the street of my daily av- ocation, on some fine May morning, to meet him march- ing in a quite opposite direction, with a Jolly, handsome presence, and shining, sanguine face, that indicates some purchase in his eye — a Claude — or a Hobbima — for much of his enviable leisure is consumed at Christie's and Phil- lips's — or where not, to pick up pictures, and such gauda. On these occasions he mostly stopped me, to read a short lecture on the advantage a person like me possesses above himself, in having his time occupied with business which he must do — assureth me that he often feels it hang heavy on his hands — wishes he had fewer holidays — and goes off — Westward Ho ! — chanting a tune, to Pull Mall — per- fectly convinced that he has convinced me — while I pro- ceed in my opposite direction tuneless. It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indiffer- ence doing the honors of his new purchase, when he has fairly housed it. You must view it in every light, till he has found the best — placing it at this distance, and MY RELATIONS. HQ at that, but always suiting tho focus of your sight to his own. You must spy at it through your fingers, to catch the aerial perspective — though you assure him that to you the hiudscape shows much more agreeable without that artifice. Woe be to the luckless wight, who does not only not respond to his rapture, but who should drop an unseasonable intimation of preferring one of his an- terior bargains to the present! — The last is always his best hit — his " Cynthia of the minute." — Alas ! how many a mild Madonna have I known to come in — a Ra- phael ! — keep its ascendency for a few brief moons— then, after certain intermedial degradations, from the front drawing-room to the back gallery, thence to the dark parlor — adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly break- ing its fall — consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti!— - which things when I beheld— musing upon the chances and mutabilities of fate below, hath made me to reflect upon the altered condition of great personages, or that wofal Queen of Richard IL — " — set forth in pomp, She came adorned hither like sweet May, Sent back like Hallowmas, or short'st of day." With great love for you J. E. hath but a limited sympa- thy with what you feel or do. He lives in a world of his own, and makes slender guesses at what passes in your mind. He never pierces the marrow of your habits. He will tell an old-established play-goer that Mr. Sufih-a-one, of So-and-so (naming one of the thea- tres), is a very lively comedian — a'^ a piece of news? He advertised me but the other day of some pleas- ant green lanes which he had found out for me, 120 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. Tcnowing me to he a great walker^ in ray own immediate vicinity, who have haunted the identical spot any time these twenty years ! He has not much respect for that class of feelings which goes by the name of sentimental. He applies the definition of real evil to bodily suflferings exclusively, and rejecteth all others as imaginary. He is affected by the sight or the bare supposition of a creature in pain to a degree which I have never wit- nessed out of womankindo A constitutional acuteness to this class of sufferings may in part account for this. The animal tribe in particular he taketh under his espe- cial protection. A broken-winded or spur-galled horse is sure to find an advocate in him. An overloaded ass is his client forever. He is the apostle to the brute kind — the never-failing friend of those who have none to care for them. The contemplation of a lobster boiled or eels skinned alim will wring him so that "all for pity he could die." It will take the savor from his palate and the rest from his pillow for days and nights. With the in- tense feeling of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness of pursuit and unity of purpose of that " true yoke-fellow with Time " to have effected as much for the Animal as lie hath done for the Negro Creation. But my uncontrollable cousin is but imperfectly formed for purposes which demand cooperation. He cannot wait. His am-elioration-plans must be ripened in a day„ For this reason he has cut but an equivocal figure in benevolent societies and combinations for the alleviation of human sufferings. His zeal constantly makes him to outrun and put out his coadjutors. Yiq thinks of reliev- ing, while they think of debatina:. He was blackballed out of a society for the Relief of because the fervor of his humanity toiled beyond the formal apprehension MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 121 and creeping processes of his associates. I shall always consider this distinction as a patent of nobility in the Elia family ! Do I mention thess seeming inconsistencies to smile at or upbraid my unique cousin? Marry, heaven, and all good manners, and the understanding that should be between kinsfolk, forbid ! With all the strangenesses of this strangest of the Elias^ I would not have him ia one jot or tittle other than he is; neither would I barter or exchange my wild kinsman for the most exact, regular, and every way consistent kinsman breathing. In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some ac- count of my cousin Bridget — if you are not already sur- feited with cousins — and take you by the hand, if you are willing to go with us, on an excursion which wo made a summer or two since, in search of more cousins — ' " Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire." MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. Beidget Elia has been my housekeeper for many a long year. I have obligations fo Bridget extending be- yond the period of memory. \We house together, old ' bachelor and maid, in a sort of^ double singleness^with such tolerable comfort, upon the whole7fKat I, iror one, find in myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy. We agree pretty well in pur tastes and habits —yet so, as " with a difference." / We are generally in harmony, with occasional bickerings — as it shouldbe among near relations. }Our sympathies are rather un- 132 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. derstood than expressed; and once, upon my dissem- bling a tone in my voice more kind than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and complained that I was al- tered. We are both great readers in different directions. While I am hanging over (for the thousandth time) some passage in old Burton, or one of his strange contempo- raries, she is abstracted in some modern tale or advent- ure, whereof our common reading-table is daily fed with assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative teases me. I have little concern in the progress of events. She must have a story— well, ill, or indifferently told, so there be life stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. The fluctuations of fortune in fiction, and almost in real life, have ceased to interest, or operate but dully upon me. Out-of-the-way humors and opinions — heads with some diverting twist in them — the oddities of authorship please me most. My cousin has a native disrelish of anything that sounds odd or 'bizarre. Nothing goes down with her that is quaint, irregular, or out of the road of common sympathy. She " holds Nature more clever." I can pardon her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the Eeligio Medici; but she must apolo- gize to me for certain disrespectful insinuations which ahe has been pleased to throw out latterly touching the intellectuals of a dear favorite of mine, of the last cen- tury but one — the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, but again somewhat fantastical, and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle. It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine freethinkers — leaders and disciples of novel philosophies and systems; but she neither wrangles with nor accepts their opinions. That which was good and MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE, 1^8 venerable to her when a child retains its authority over her mind still. She never juggles or plays tricks with her understanding. We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive, and I have observed the result of our disputes to be almost uniformly this — that in matters of fact, dates, and cir- cumstances, it turns out that I was in the right, and my cousin in the wrong. But where we have differed upon moral points ; upon something proper to be done or let alone; whatever heat of opposition or steadiness of con- viction 1 set out with, I am sure always, in the long-run^ to be brought over to her way of thinking. I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her faults. She hath an awkward trick (to say no worse of it) of reading in company ; at which times she will an- swer yes or no to a question, without fully understanding its purport — which is provoking, and derogatory in the highest degree to the dignity of the putter of the said question. Her presence of mind is equal to the most pressing trials of life, but will sometimes desert her upon trifling occasions. When the purpose requires it, and is a thing of moment, she can speak to it greatly; but in matters which are not stuff of the conscience, she hath been known sometimes to let slip a word less seasonably. Her education in youth was not much attended to ; and she happily missed all that train of female garniture, which passeth by the name of accomplishments. She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much selec- tion or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they should be brought up exactly in this fashion. I know 124 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. not whether their chance in wedlock might not be di- minished by it ; but I can answer for it, that it makes (if the worst comes to the worst) most incomparable old maids. In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter ; but in the teasing accidents, and minor perplexities, which do not call out the will to meet them, slie some- times raaketh matters worse by an excess of participa- tion. If she does not always divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter occasions of life she is sure always to treble your satisfaction. She is excellent to be at a play with, or upon a visit; but best, when she goes a journey with you. We made an excursion together a few summei-s since, into Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our less-known relations in that fine corn-country. The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End ; or Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire; a farmhouse — delight- fully situated within a gentle walk from Wlieath amp- stead. I can just remember having been there, on a yisit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of Bridget ; who, as I have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish that I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences ; that we might share them in equal division. But that is impossible. TJie house was at that time in the occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married my grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. My grandmother was a Bruton, married to a Field. The Gladmans and the Brutons are still flourishing in that part of tlie country, but the Fields are almost extinct. More ttian forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak of; and, for the greater portion of MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 125 that period, we had lost sight of the other two hranches also. Who or what sort of persons inherited Mackerj End — kindred or strange folk — we were afraid almost to conjecture, but determined some day to explore. Bj somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park at Luton in our way from Saint Albans, we arrived at the spot of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old farmhouse, though every trace of it was effaced from my recollection, affected me with a pleasure which I had not experienced for many a year. For though I had forgotten it, we had never forgotten being there together, and we had been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till memory on my part became mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought I knew the aspect of a place which, when present, O how unlike it was to that which I had conjured up so many times instead of it! Still the air breathed balmily about it ; the season was in the " heart of June," and I could say with the poet — " But thou, that didst appear so fair To fond imagination, Dost rival in the light of day Her delicate creation ! " Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she easily remembered her old acquaintance again — som« altered features, of course, a little grudged at. At first, indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy ; but the scene soon reconfirmed itself in her affections — and she fj^aversed every outpost of the old mansi&n, to the wood- bouse, the orchard, the place where the pigeon-house bad stood (house and birds had alike flown) — with a breathless impatience of recognition, which was more 126 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. pardonable perhaps than decorous at the age of fifty-odd. But Bridget in some things is behind her years. The only thing left was to get into the house — and that was a difiiculty which to me singly would have been insurmountable ; for I am terribly shy in making myself known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in with- eut me ; but she soon returned with a creature that might have sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of the Gladmans; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had become mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood are the Brutons. Six of them, females, were noted as the handsomest young women in the county. But this adopted Bruton, in my mind, was bet- ter than they all — more comely. She was born too late to have remembered me. She just recollected in early life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed out to her, climbing a stile. But the name of kindred, and of cousinship, was enough. Those slender ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of a me- tropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire. In live minutes we were as thor- oughly acquainted as if we had been born and bred up together ; were familiar, even to the calling each other by our Christian names. So Christians should call one another. To have seen Bridget, and her — it was like the meeting of the two scriptural cousins ! There was a grace and dignity, an amplitude of form and stature, an- swering to her mind, in this farm.er's wife, which would have shined in a palace — or so we thought it. We were made welcome by husband and wife equally — we, and our friend that was with us. I had almost forgotten him —but B. F. will D''^ so soon forget that meeting, if per- MODERN GALLANTRY. 1^7 adventure he shall read this on the far-distant shores where the kangaroo liaunts. The fatted calf was made ready, or rather was already so, as if in anticipation of our coming ; and, after an appropriate glass of native wine, never let me forget with whaC honest pride this hospitable cousin made us proceed to Wheathampstead, to introduce us (as some new-found rarity) to her mother and sister Gladmans, who did indeed know something more of us, at a time when she almost knew nothing. With what corresponding kindness we were received by them also — how Bridget's memory, exalted by the occa- sion, warmed into a thousand half-obliterated recollec- tions of things and persons to my utter astonishment, and her own — and to the astoundment of B. F.,'who sat by, almost the only thing that was not a cousin there — old effaced images of more than half -forgotten names and circumstances still crowding back upon her, as words written in lemon come out upon exposure to a friendly warmth — when I forget all this, then may my country cousins forget me ; and Bridget no more remember, that '1 the days of weakling infancy I was her tender charge — as I have been her care in foolish manhood since — in those pretty pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery End, in Hertfordshire. MODERN" GALLANTRY. In comparing modern with ancient manners, we are pleased to compliment ourselves upon the point of gal- lantry ; a certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect, which we are supposed to pay to females, as females. I shall believe that this principle actuates our con- 128 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. duct, when I can forget that, in the nineteenth centni-j of the era from which we date our civility, we are but just beginning to leave off the very frequent practice of ^whipping females in publit, in common with the coarsest male offenders. I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut my eyes to the fact that in England women are still oc- > casionally — hanged. I shall believe in it, when actresses are no longer subject to be hissed off a stage by gentlemen. I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a fish-wife across the kennel ; or assists the apple-woman to pick up her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has just dissipated. I shall believe in it, when the Doriraants in humbler life, who would be thought in their way notable adepts in this refinement, shall act upon it in places where they ^are not known, or think themselves not observed — when I shall see the traveler for some rich tradesman part with his admired box-coat, to spread it over the defenseless shoulders of the poor woman, who is passing to her parish on the roof of the same stage-coach with him, drenched in the rain — when I shall no longer see a woman standing up in the pit of a London theatre, till she is sick and faint with the exertion, with men about her, seated at their ease, and jeering at her distress; till one, that seems to have more manners or conscience than the rest, significantly declares "she should be wel- come to his seat, if she were a little younger and hand- somer." Place this dapper warehouseman, or that rider, in a circle of their own female acquaintance, and you shall confess you have not seen a politer-bred man in Lothbury. MODERN GALLANTRY. 129 I Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some j such principle influencing our conduct, when more than ' one-half of the drudgery and coarse servitude of the ^ world shall cease to be performed by women. Until that day comes, I shall never believe this boasted point to be anything more than a conventional fiction; a pageant got up between the sexes, in a certain rank, and at a certain time of life, in which both find their account equally. / I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salu- \ tary fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall see the same attentions paid to age as to youth, to homely feat- ures as to handsome, to coarse complexions as to clear — ^to the woman, as she is a woman, not as she is a beauty, a fortune, or a title. I shall believe it to be something more than a name, when a well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed com- pany can advert to the topic of female old age without exciting, and intending to excite, a sneer — when the phrases " antiquated virginity," and such a one has " overstood her market," pronounced in good company, shall raise immediate offense in man, or woman, that shall hear them spoken. Joseph Paice, of Bread Street Hill, merchant, and one of the Directors of the South-Sea Company— the same to whom Edwards, the Shakespeare commentator, uas addressed a fine sonnet— was the only pattern of consistent gallantry I have met with. He took me tmder his shelter at an early age, and bestowed some ^ains upon me. I owe to his precepts and example extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling, in the heart of childhood, there will, forever, spring up a well of innocent or wholesome superstition — the seeds of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital — ■ from e very-day forms educing the unknown and the un- common, la that little Goshen there will be light, when the grown world flounders about in the darkness of sense and materiality. While childhood, and while dreams, re- ducing childhood, shall be left, Imagination shall not have spread her holy wings totally to fly the earth. P. S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect mem- ory, and the erring notices of childhood ! Yet I protest I always thought that he had been a bachelor! This gentleman, R. IT. informs me, married young, and losing his lady in childbed, within the first year of their union, fell into a deep melancholy, from the effects of which, probably, he never thoroughly recovered. In what a new light does this place his rejection (oh, call it by a gentler name!) of mild Susan P , unraveling into beauty certain peculiarities of this very shy and retiring character I Henceforth let no one receive the narratives 10 146 THE ESSAYS OF ELlA. of Elia for true records ! They are, in truth, but shadows of fact — verisimilitudes, not verities— or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts of liistory. He is no such honest chronicler as R. N., and would have done better, perhaps, to have consulted that gentleman, before he sent these incondite reminiscences to press. But th© worthy sub-treasurer — who respects his old and his new masters — would but have been puzzled at the indecorous liberties of Elia. The good laan wots not, peradventure, of the license which Magazines have arrived at in this plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams of their existence beyond the GentlemarCs — his furthest monthly excur- sions in this nature having been long confined to the holy ground of honest Urlaii's obituary. May it be long be- fore his own name shall help to swell those columns of unenvied flattery ! — Meantime, O ye New Benchers of the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is himself the kindliest of human creatures. Should infirmities overtake him — he is yet in green and vigorous senility — make allowances for them, remembering that " ye your- selves are old." So may the Winged Horse, your an- cient badge and cognizance, still flourish ! so may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your church and cham- bers! so may the sparrows, in default of more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop about your walks ! so may the fresh-colored and cleanly nursery-maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsy as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion ! so may the younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your stately terrace, with the same superstitious veneration, with which the child Elia gazed ou the Old Worthies that solemnized the parade before ye 1 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 147 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. The ciistom of saying graoe at meals had, probably, it!5 origin in the early times of the world, and the hunter- state of man, when dinners were precarious things, and a fnll meal was something more than a common blessing! when a bellyful was a windfall, and looked like a spe- cial providence. In the shouts of triumphant songs with which, after a season of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of the modern grace. It is not otherwise easy to be understood, why the blessing of food — the act of eating — should have had a particular expression of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from that implied and silent gratitude with which we are ex- pected to enter upon the enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good things of existence. I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my din- ner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts — a grace before Milton — a grace before Shakespeare — a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading the " Fairy Queen ? " — but the received ritual having.prescribed these forms to the solitary cere- mony of manducation, I shall confine my observations to the experience which I have had of the grace, properly so called ; commending my new scheme for extension to a niche in the grand philosophical, poetical, and per- chance in part heretical, liturgy, now compiling by my friend Homo Humanus, for the use of a certain snug con- 118 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. gregation of Utopian Rabelaisian Christians, no matt^ where assembled. The form, then, of the benediction before eating has its beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and un- provocative repast of children. It is here that the grace becomes exceedingly graceful. The indigent man, who hardly knows whether he shall have a meal the next day or not, sits down to his fare with a present sense of the blessing, which can be but feebly acted by the rich, into whose mind the conception of wanting a dinner could never, but by some extreme theory, have entered. The proper end of food — the animal sustenance — is barely contemplated by them. The poor man's bread is his daily bread, literally his bread for the day. Their courses are perennial. Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be pre- ceded by the grace. That which is least stimulative to appetite, leaves the mind mos. free for foreign considera- tions. A man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and institution of eating; when he shall confess a perturbation of mind, incon- sistent with the purposes of the grace, at the presence of venison or turtle. When I have sate (a rarus Jiospes) at rich men's tables, with the savory soup and messes steaming up the nostrils, and moistening the lips of the guests with desire and a distracted choice, I have felt the introduction of that ceremony to be unseasonable. With the ravenous orgasm upon you, it seems imper- tinent to interpose a religious sentiment. It is a confu- sion of purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth that waters. The heats of epicurism put out the gentle flame of dovotion. The incense which rises round is pa^?aa, GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 14& and the belly -god intercepts it for Ms own. The very excess of the provision beyond the needs, takes away all sense of proportion between the end and means. The giver is veiled by his gifts. You are startled at the in- justice of returning thanks — for what ? — for having too much, while so many starve. It is to praise the gods amiss. I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce con- sciously, perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. I have seen it in clergymen and others — a sort of shame — a sense of the co-presence of circumstances which un- hallow the blessing. After a devotional tone put on for a few seconds, how rapidly the speaker will fall into his common voice! helping himself or his neighbor, as if to get rid of some uneasy sensation of hypocrisy. Not that the good man was a hypocrite, or was not most consci- entious in the discharge of the duty ; but he felt in his inmost mind the incompatibility of the scene and the viands before him, with the exercise of a calm and ration- al gratitude. I hear somebody exclaim — Would you have Chris- tians sit down at table, like hogs to their troughs, with- out remembering the Giver? — ^no— I would have them sit down as Christians, remembering the Giver, and less like hogs. Or if their appetites must run riot, and they must pamper themselves with delicacies for which East and West are ransacked, I would have them postpone their benediction to a fitter season, when appetite is laid ; when the still, small voice can be heard, and the reason of the grace returns — with temperate diet and restricted dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he kicked, Yirgil knew the harpy-nature better, 150 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. when he put into the mouth of Celseno anything but a blessing. We may be gratefully sensible of the delicious- ness of some kinds of food beyond others, though that is a meaner and inferior gratitude : but the proper object of the grace is sustenance, not relishes ; daily bread, not delicacies ; tlie means of life, and not the means of pam- pering the carcass. With what frame or composure, I wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his benediction at some great Hall-feast, when he knows that his last con- cluding pious word — and that in all probability, the sa- cred name which he preaches — is but the signal for so many impatient harpies to commence their foul orgies, with as little sense of true thankfulness (which is tem- periince) as those Yirgilian fowl ! It is well if the good man himself does not feel his devotions a little clouded, those foggy, sensuous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar- sacrifice. The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is the banquet which Satan, in the "Paradise Eegained," pro- vides for a temptation in the wilderness : " A table richly spread in regal mode With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort And savor ; beasts of chase, or f ov/l of game, In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, Gris-amber-steamed ; all fish from sea or shore, Freshet or purling brook, for Vt'hich Avas di'ained Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast." The tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates would go down without the recommendatory preface of a benediction. They are like to be short graces where the devil plays the host. — I am afraid the poet Avants his usual decorum in this place. Was he thinking of the GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 151 old Roman luxury, or of a gaudj day at Cambridge? fills was a temptation fitter for a Heliogabalus. The xihole banquet is too civic and culinary, and the accom- paniments altogether a profanation of that deep, ab- stracted, holy scene. The mighty artillery of sauces, which the cook-fiend conjures up, is out of proportion to the simple wants and plain hunger of the guest. He that disturbed him in his dreams, from his dreams might have been taught better. To the temperate fantasies of the famished Son of God, what sort of feasts presented themselves? — He dreamed, indeed — " — As appetite is wont to dream, Of meats and drinks, Nature's refreshment sweet." But what meats? — " Ilim thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood, And saw the ravens with their horny beaks Food to Elijah bringing even and morn ; Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought; He saw the prophet also how he fled Into the desert and how there he slept Under a juniper ; then how awaked He found his supper on the coals prepared, And by the angel was bid rise and eat, And ate the second time after repose. The strength whereof sufficed him forty days ; Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook. Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse." J^^othing in Milton is finelier fancied than these temperate dreams of the divine Hungerer. To which of these two visionary banquets, think you, would the introduction of what is called the grace have been the most fitting and pertinent? 152 THE ESSAYS OF ELTA. Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; but practi- cally I own that (before meat especially) they seem to involve something awkward and unseasonable. Our ap- petites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set about tlie great ends of preserving and continuing the species., They are fit blessings to be contemplated at a distance with a becoming gratitude ; but the moment of appetite (the judicious reader will apprehend me) is, perhaps, the least fit season for that exercise. The Quakers, who go about their business of every description with more calmness than we, have more title to the use of these benedictory prefaces. I have alv/ ays admired their silent grace, and the more because I have observed their appli- cations to the meat and drink following to be less pas- siojiate and sensual than ours. They are neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. They eat, as a horse bolts his chopped hay, with indifference, calmness, and cleanly circumstances. They neither grease nor slop themselves. When I see a citizen in his bib and tucker, I cannot im- agine it a surplice. I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not in- different to the kinds of it. Those unctuouo morsels of deer's flesh were not made to be received with dispas- sionate services. I hate a man who swallows it, aff'ect- ing not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters. I shrink instinctively frcim one who professes to like minced veal. There is a physiognomi- cal character in the tastes for food. C holds that a man cannot have a pure mind who refuses & pple-dump- lings. I am not certain but he is right. Will, the decay of my first innocence, I confess a less and less relish daily for those innocuous oates. The whoU vegetable GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 153 tribe have lost their gust with me. Only I stick to as- paragus, which .^till seems to inspire gentle thoughts. I am impatient and querulous under culinary disappoint- ments, as to come home at the dinner-hour, for instance, expecting some savory mess, and to find one quite taste- less and sapidless. Butter ill melted — that commonest of kitchen failures — puts me beside my tenor. — The author of the Rambler used to make inarticulate animal noises over a favorite food. Was this the music quite proper to be preceded by the grace? or would the pious man have done better to postpone his devotions to a season when the blessing might be contemplated with less per- turbation ? I quarrel with no man's tastes, nor would set my thin face against those excellent things, in their way, jollity and feasting. But as these exercises, however laudable, have little in them of grace or gracefulness, a man should be sure, before he ventures so to grace them, that while he is pretending his devotions otherwhere, he is not secretly kissing his hand to some great fish — his Dagon — with a special consecration of no ark but the fat tureen before him. Graces are the sweet preluding strains to the banquets of angels and children ; to the roots and severer repasts of the Chartreuse ; to the slender, but not slenderly acknowledged, refection of the poor and humble man ; but at the heaped-up boards of the pampered and the luxurious they become of dissonant mood, less timed and tuned to the occasion, methinks, than the noise of those better befitting organs would be which children hear tales of, at Hog's Norton. We sit too long at our meals, or are too curious in the study of them, or too disordered in our application to them, or engross too great a portion of those good things (which should be common) to our share, to be able with any 154 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. grace to say grace. To be thankful for what we grasp exceeding our proportion, is to add hypocrisy to injus- tice. A lurking sense of this truth is what makes the performance of this duty so cold and spiritless a service at most tables. In houses where the grace is as indis- pensable as the napkin, who has not seen that never-set- tled question arise, as to who shall say it? while the good man of the house and the visitor clergyman, or some other guest, belike of next authority, from years of gravity, shall be bandying about the office between tliem as a matter of compliment, each of them not un- willing to shift the awkward burden of equivocal duty _from his own shoulders. I once drank tea in company with two Methodist di- vines of different persuasions, whom it was my fortune to introduce to each other for the first time that evening. Before the first cup was handed round, one of these rev- erend gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solem- nity, whether he chose to say anything. It seems it is the custom with some sectaries to put up a short prayer before this meal also. His reverend brother did not at first apprehend him, but, upon an explanation, with little less importance he made answer tha'j it was not a cus- tom known in his church : in whicli courteous evasion the other acquiescing for good manners' sake, or in com- pliance with a weak brother, tue supplementary or tea- grace was waived altogether. With what spirit might not Lucian have painted two priests of his religion play- ing into each other's hands the compliment of performing or omitting a sacrifice — the hungry god meantime, doubt- ful of his incense, with expectant nostrils hovering over the two flamens, and (as between two stools) going away in the end without his supper I MY FIRST PLAY. 155 A short form upon these occasions is felt to want reverence; a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape the charge of impertinence. I do not quite approve of the epigrammatic concisenesi5 with which that equivocal wag (but my pleasant school-fellow) 0. Y. L , when impor- tu.ned for a grace, used to inquire, first slyly leering down the table, " Is there no clergyman here? " — signifi- cantly adding, "Thank G— I " ITor do I think our old iorm at school quite pertinent, where we used to preface our bald bread-and-cheese suppers with a preamble, con- necting with that humble blessing a recognition of ben- efits the most awful and overwhelming to the imagina- tion which religion has to offer. JSfon tunc illu erat locus, I remember we were put to it to reconcile the phrase " good creatures," upon which the blessing rested, with the fare set before us, willfully understanding that ex- pression in alow and animal sense — till some one recalled a legend, which told how, in the golden days of Christ's, tlie young Hospitallers were wont to have smoking joints of roast-meat upon their nightly boards, till som^ pious benefactor, commiserating the decencies, ratha^" than the palates, of the children, commuted our flesh fo^ garments, and gave us- -horresco r^ereTVi—troxiBevs in- stead of mutton. MY FIRST PLAY. At the north end of Cross Court there yet stands a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-oflice. This old doorway, if you are young, reader, you may not know was the identical pit-entrance 156 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. to old Drury — Garrick's Drury — all of it that is left. 1 never pass it without shaldng some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed through it to see my first play. The afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going (the elder folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease. "With what a beating heart did I watch fiom the window the pud- dles, from the stillness of which I was taught to prog- nosticate the desired cessation! I seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to an- nounce it. We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sem; us. He kept the oil-shop (now Davies's) at the cor- ner of Featherstone Buildings, in Holborn. F. was a tall^ grave person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions abo 7Q his rank. He associated in those days with John Palmer, the comedian, whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy; if John (which is quite as likely) did not rather bor>row somewhat of his manner from my godfather. He was also known to, and visited by, Sheridan. It was to liis house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought hia first wife on her elopement with him from a boarding- school at Bath — the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents were present (over a quadrille table) when he arrived in the evening with his harmonious charge. From either of these connections, it may be inferred that my god- father could command an order for the then Drury Lane Theatre at pleasure — and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue of those cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard him say was the sole remuneration which he had received for many years' nightly illumination of the orchestra and various avenues of that theatre — and he was content it should be so. The honor of Sheridan's MY FIRST PLAY. 167 familiarity — or supposed familiarity — was better to my godfather than money. F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen; grandilo- quent, yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had two Latin words almost constantly in his mouth (how odd sounds Latin from an oilman's lips!), which my better knowl- edge since has enabled me to correct. In strict pronun- ciation they should have been sounded mce versa — but in those young years they impressed me with more awe than they would now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro — in his own peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabic ally elaborated, or Anglicized into something like 'cerse verse. By an imposing manner, and the help of these distoi'ted syllables, he climbed (but that was little) to the higliest parochial honors which St. Andrew has to bestow. He is dead — and thus much I thought due to his memory, both for my first orders (little wondrous talis- mans ! — slight keys, and insignificant to outward sight, but opening to me more than Arabian paradises!) and, moreover, that by his testamentary beneficence I came into possession of the only landed property which I could ever call my own — situate near the roadway village of pleasant Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire. When I jour- neyed down to take possession, and planted foot on my own ground, the stately habits of the donor descended upon me, and I strode (shall I confess the vanity?) with larger paces over my allotment of three-quarters of an acre, with its commodious mansion in the midst, with the feeling of an English freeholder that all betwixt sky and centre was my own. The estate has passed into more prudent hands, and nothing but an agrarian can restore it. 158 '^^^' ESSAYS OP ELIA. In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncom- fortable manager who abolished them ! — with one of these we went. I remember the waiting at the door — not that which is left — but between that and an inner door in shelter — when shall I be such an expectant again! — with the cry of nonpareils, an indispensable playhouse accompaniment in those days. As near as 1 can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation of the theat- rical fruiteressses then was, " Chase some oranges, chase some num_parels, chase a bill of the play " — chase 'pro chuse. But when we got in, and I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagination, which was soon to be disclosed — the breathless anticipations ? endured ! I had seen something like it in the plate pre- fixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe's Shakespeare — tho tent scene with Diomede — and a sight of that plate can always bring back in a measure the feeling of that ev«n' ing. The boxes at that time, full of well-dressed women of quality, projected over the pit; and the pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling — a homely fancy — but I judged it to be sugar-candy — yet, to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy ! The orchestra lights at length arose, those " fair Auroras! " Once the bell sounded. It was to ring out yet once again — and, incapable of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes ick a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It rang th^ second time. The curtain drevv^ up. I was not past six years old, and the play was Artaxerxes! I had dabbled a little in the Universal History— the ancient part of it — and here was the court of Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the past. I took no MY FIRST PLAY. .^9 proper interest in the action going on, for I understood not its import — b'it I heard the word Darins, and I was in the midst of DanieL All feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, passed before me. I knew not players. I was in Per- sepolis for the time, and the burning idol of their devo- tion almost converted me into a worshiper. I was awe- struck, and believed those signitications to be something more than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream. I^o such pleasure has since visited me but in dreams — Harlequin's invasion followed ; where, I re- member, the transformation of the magistrates into rev- erend beldams seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a verity as the legend of St. Denys. The next play to which I was taken was the Lady of the Manor, of which, with the exception of some scenery, very faint traces are left in my memory. It was followed by a pantomime, called Lun's Ghost — a satiric touch, I apprehend, upon Eich, not long since dead — but to my apprehension ^too sincere for satire), Lun was as remote a piece of antiquity as Lud — the father of a line of Har- lequins — transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through countless ages. I saw the primeval Motley come from his silent tomb in a ghastly vest of white patchwork, like the apparition of a dead rainbow. So Harlequins (thought I) look when they are dead. My third play followed in quick succession. It was the Way of the World. I think I must have sat at it as grave as a judge; for, I remember, the hysteric affec- tations of good Lady Wishfort affected me like some solemn tragic passion. Robinson Crusoe followed; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and the parrot, were as 160 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. good and authentic as in the story. The clownery and pantaloonery of these pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I believe I no more laughed at them, than at the same age I should have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque Gothic heads (seeming to me then replete with devout meaning) that gape, and grin, in stone around the inside of the old Round Church (my church) of the Templars. I saw these plays in the season 1781-^82, when I was from six to seven years old. After the intervention of six or seven other years (for at school all play-going was inhibited) I again entered the doors of a theatre. That old Artaxerxes evening had never done ringing in my fancy. I expected the same feelings to come again with the same occasion. But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than the latter does from six. In that interval what had I not lost ! At the first period I knew nothing, understood nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all — " Was nourished, I could not tell how — " I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a ra- tionalist. The same things were there materially; but the emblem, the refei-ence, was gone ! The green cur- tain was no longer a veil, drawn between two worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring back past ages to present a " royal ghost" — but a certain quantity of green baize, which was to separate the audience for a given time from certain of their fellow-men who were to come Mi forward and pretend those parts. The lights — the or- ~ chestra-lights^— came up a clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now hut a trick of the prompter's bell — which had been, like the note of the jl BREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE. IgJ eackoo, a phantom of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at which ministered to its warning. The actors were roen and women painted. I thought the fault was in them ; but it was in myself, and the alteration which those many centuries — of six short twelvemonths — had wrought in me. Perhaps it was fortunate for me that the play of the evening was but an indifferent comedy, as it gave me time to crop some unreasonable expecta- tions, which might have interfered with the genuine emotions with which I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first appearance to m« of Mrs. Siddons in Isa- bella. Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene ; and the theatre be- came to me, upon a new stock, the most delightful ** ' recreations. DREAM-OHILDRElSr: A REVERIE. Childeen love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle or gran- dame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Forfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in which they and pana lived) which had been the scene — so at least it was generally believed in that part of the country — of the tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the chil- dren and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great hallj 11 16S THE ESSAYS OF ELlA. the' whole story down to the Eobin Redbreasts! till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set np a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story npon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too ten- der to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how religious and how good their great- grandmother Field was, how beloved and respected by everybody, though she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased some- where in the adjoining county ; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, which afterward came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried av/ay to the owner's other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady O.'s tawdry gilt drawing- room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, " That would be foolish indeed." And then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neighbor- hood for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory, because she had been such a good and religious woman, so good, indeed, that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament besideso Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great grandmother Field once was ; and how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer — here Alice's little right foot played an DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE. 163 myolantarj movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain ; but it could never bend her good spir- its, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, be- cause she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house, and how she believed that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great staircase near where she slept, but she said " Those innocents would do her no harm ; " and how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or religious as she — and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her grandchildren, having us to the great house in the holi- days, where I in particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the twelve OsBsars, that had been the Emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned into marble with them ; how I never could be tired with roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, flutter^ ing tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out — sometimes in the spacious old-fash- ioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless when aow and then a solitary gar(^mng-man would cross me — and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then — and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old, melancholy-looking yew-trees, or the firs, and 164 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. picking up the red berries, and the fir-apples, whicli were good for nothing hut to look at — or in lying about upon the fresh grass with all the fine garden smells around me — or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy mj^seif ripening, too, along with the oranges and the limes in that grateful warmth — or in watching the dace tiiat darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hang- ing midway down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings — I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than in all the sweet flavors of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such- like common baits of children. Here John slyly depos- ited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in somewhat a more height- ened tone, I told how, though their great-grandmother Field loved all her grandchildren, yet in an especial manner she might be said to love their Uncle John L , because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us ; and, instead of moping about in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make it carry him half over the county in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out — and yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries — and how their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome, to the admiration of everybody, but of their great-grandmother Field most especially; and how he used to carry me upon his back when I was a lame-foot- DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE. 165 ea boy — for lie was a good bit older than me — many a mile when I could not walk for pain — and how in after- life he became lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough for him when he was im- patient, and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how con- siderate he had been to me when I was lame-footed ; and how, when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and death : and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, but afterward it haunted and haunted me ; and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his cross- ness, and wished him to be alive again, to be quarreling with him (for we quarreled sometimes), rather than not have him again, and was as uneasy without him, as he their poor uncle must have been when the doctor took off his limb. — Here the children fell a-crying, and asked if their little mourning which they had on was not for Uncle John, and they looked up and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W — n ; and, as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and difficulty, and denial, meant in maid- ens — when suddenly turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the childi-en gradually 166 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at last but too mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech : "We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum father. "We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name " — and immediately awaking, I found myself qui- etly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side- but John L. (or James Elia) was gone forever. DISTANT COKRESPONDENTS. IN A LETTER TO B. F., ESQ., AT SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES. My deae F. : When I think how welcome the sight •of a letter from the world where you were born must be to you in that strange one to which you have been trans- planted, I feel some compunctious visitings at my long silence. But, indeed, it is no easy effort to set about a correspondence at our distance. The weary world of waters between us oppresses the imagination. It is diffi- cult to conceive how a scrawl of mine should ever stretch across it. It is a sort of presumption to expect that one's thoughts should live so far. It is like writing for posterity ; and reminds me of one of Mrs. RoM'e's super- scriptions, " Alcander to Strephon in the shades." Cow- DISTANT CORRBSFONDENTa 167 ley's Post- Angel is no more than would be expedient in such an intercourse. One drops a packet at Lombard Street, and in twenty-four hours a friend in Cumberland gets it as fresh as if it came in ice. It is only like whis- pering through a long trumpet. But suppose a tube let down from the moon, with yourself at one end, and the man at the other ; it \70uld be some balk to the spirit of conversation, if you knew that the dialogue exchanged with that interesting theosophist would take two or three revolutions of a higher luminary in its passage. Yet, for aught I know, you may be some parasangs nigher that primitive idea — Plato's man — than we in England here have the honor to reckon ourselves. Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics : news, sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include all non-serious subjects ; or subjects serious in themselves, but, treated after my fashion, non-seriously. And first, for news. In them the most desirable circumstance, I suppose, is that they shall be true. But what security can I hav^e that what I now send you for truth shall not, before you get it, unaccountably turn into a lie ? For instance, our mutual friend P. is at this present writing — my JSFoic — in good health, and enjoys a fair share of worldly reputation. You are glad to hear it. This is natural and friendly. But at this present reading — your Now — he may possibly be in the Bench, or going to be hanged, which in reason ought to abate something of your transport (i. e., at hearing he was well, etc.), or at least considerably to modify it. I am going to the play this evening to have a laugh with Mimden. You have no theatre, I think you told me, in your land of d d realities. You naturally lick your lips, and envy me my felicity. Think but a moment, and you will correct the 168 TFIE ESSAYS OF ELIA. hateful emotion. Why is it Sunday morning witL you, and 1823 ? This confusion of tenses, this grand sole- cism of two presents^ is in a degree common to all post- age. But if I sent you word to Bath or Devizes, that I was expecting the aforesaid treat this evening, though at the moment you received the intelligence, my full feast of fun would he over, yet there would he for a day or two after, as you would well know, a smack, a relish left upon my mental palate, which would give rational encouragement for you to foster a portion at least of the disagreeahle passion which it was in part my intention to produce. But, ten months hence, your envy or your sympathy would he as useless as a passion spent upon the dead. Not only does truth, in these long intervals, un- essence herself, but (what is harder) one cannot vent- ure a crude fiction, for the fear that it may ripen into a truth upon the voyage. What a wild, improbable banter I put upon you some three years since — of "Will Weath- erall having married a servant-maid ! I remember grave- ly consulting you how we were to receive her — for WilFs wife was in no case to be rejected ; and your no less se- rious replication in the matter ; how tenderly you ad- vised an abstemious introduction of literary topics before the lady, with a caution not to be too forward in bring- ing on the carpet matters more within the sphere of her intelligence; your deliberate judgment, or rather wise suspension of sentence, how far jacks, and spits, and mops, could with propriety be introduced as subjects ; whether the conscious avoiding of all such matters in discourse would not have a worse look than the taking of them casually in our way ; in what manner we should carry ourselves to our maid Becky, Mrs. William Weath- erall being by; whether we should show jnore delicacy, DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 169 and a truer sense of respect for Will's wife, "by treating Becky with our customary chiding before her, or by an unusual deferential civility paid to Becky as to a person of great worth, but thrown by the caprice of fate into a humble station. There were difficulties, I remember, on both sides, which you did me the favor to state with the preeision of a lawyer, united to the tenderness of a friend. I laughed ia my sleeve at your solemn pleadings, when lo ! w^hile I was valuing myself upon this flam put upon you in New South Wales, the devil in England, jealous pos- sibly of any lie-children not his own or working after my copy, has actually instigated our friend (not three days since) to the commission of a matrimony, which I had only conjured up for your diversion. William Weatherall has married Mrs. Cotterel's maid. But to take it in its truest sense, you will see, my dear F., that news from me must become history to you ; which I neither profess to write, nor indeed care much for read- ing. No person, under a diviner, can with any prospect of veracity conduct a correspondence at such an arm's length. Two prophets, indeed, might thus interchange intelligence with effect ; the epoch of the writer (Ha- bakkuk) falling in with the true present time of the re- ceiver (Daniel) ; but, then, we are no prophets. Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with that. This kind of dish, above all, requires to be served up hot; or sent off in water- plates, that your friend may have it almost as warm as yourself. If it have time to cool, it is the most tasteless of all cold meats. I have often smiled at a conceit of the late Lord 0. It seems that, traveling somewhere about Geneva, he came -,0 some pretty green spot, or nook where a willow, ur something hung so fantastically and invitingly over a 170 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. stream—was it? — or a rock ? — no matter — "but the still- ness and the repose, after a weary journey, 'tis likely, in a languid moment of his Lordship's hot restless life, so took his fancy that he could imagine no place so proper, in the event of his death, to lay his hones in. This was all very natural and excusable as a sentiment, and shows his character in a very pleasing light. But when from a passing sentiment it came to he an act ; and when, by a positive testamentary disposal, his remains were actu- ally carried all that way from England ; who was there, some desperate sentimentalists excepted, that did not ask the question. Why could not his Lordship have found a spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree as green and pendent, with a stream as emblematic to his pur- pose, in Surrey, in Dorset, or in Devon ? Conceive the sentiment boarded up, freighted, entered at the Custom- House (startling the tide-waiters with the novelty), hoisted into a ship. Conceive it pawed about and han- dled between the rude jests of tarpaulin ruflSans — a thing of its delicate texture — the salt bilge wetting it till it became as vapid as a damaged lustring. Suppose it in material danger (mariners have some superstition about sentiments) of being tossed over in a fresh gale to some propitiatory shark (spirit of Saint Gothard, save us from a quietus so foreign to the deviser's purpose !) ; but it has happily evaded a fishy consummation. Trace it then to its lucky landing — at Lyons shall we say ? — I have not the map before me — jostled upon four men's shoulders — baiting at this town — stopping to refresh at t'other vil- lage — waiting a passport here, a license there ; the sanc- tion of the magistracy in this district, the concurrence of the ecclesiastics in that canton ; till at length it ar- rives at its destination, tired out and jaded, from a brisk DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. I71 sentiment, into a feature of silly pride, or tawdry sense- less affectation. How few sentiments, my dear F., I am afraid we can set down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite sea-worthy ! Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though contemptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which should irradiate a right friendly epistle — your puns and small jests are, I apprehend, extremely circumsoribed in their sphere of action. They are so far from a capacity of being packed up and sent beyond sea, they will scarce endure to be transported by hand from this room to the next. Their vigor is as the instant of their birth. Their nutriment for their brief existence is the intel- lectual atmosphere of the by-standers: or this last is the fine slime of Nilus — the melior lutus — whose maternal recipiency is as necessary as the sol pater to their equiv- ocal generation. A pun hath a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack with it : you can no more transmit it in its pristine flavor, than you can send a kiss. — Have you not tried in some instances to palm off a yesterday's pun upon a gentleman, and has it answered ? Not but it was new to bis hearing, but it did not seem to come new from you. It did not hitch in. It was like picking up at a village ale-house a two-days'-old newspaper. You have not seen it before, but you resent the stale thing as an affront. This sort of merchandise above all requires a quick return. A pun, and its recognitory laugh, must be co-instantaneous. The one is the brisk lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A moment's interval, and the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from a friend's face as from a miiTor. Who would consult his sweet visnomy, if the polished surface were two or three minutes (not to speak of twelve months, my dear F.) in giving back its copy ? 172 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. I cannot image to myself whereabout you are. When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's island comes across me. Sometimes you seem to be in theSades of Thieves. I see Diogenes prjdng among you with his perpetual fruitless lantern. What must you be willing by this time to give for the sight of an honest man ! You must al- most have forgotten how we look. And tell me, what your Sydneyites do ? are they th**v*ng all day long ? Merciful heaven ! what property can stand against such a depredation! The kangaroos — your Aborigines — do they keep their primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short fore-puds, looking like a lesson framed by Nature to the pick-pocket ! Marry, for div- iHg into fobs they are rather lamely provided, a priori; but if the hue-and-cry were once up, they would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest loco-motor in the colony. — We hear the most improbable tales at this distance. Pray is it true that the young Spartans among you are born with six fingers, which spoils their scan- ning ? — It must look very odd ; but use reconciles. For their scansion, it is less to be regretted, for if they take it into their heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn out, the greater part of them, vile plagiarists. — Is there much difference to see, too, between the son of a th**f, and the grandson ? or where does the taint stop ? Do you bleach in three or in four generations ? — I have many questions to put, but ten Delphic voyages can be made in a shorter time than it will take to satisfy my scruples. — Do you grow your own hemp ? — What is your staple trade, — exclusive of the national profession, I mean? Your locksmiths, I take it, are some of your great capitalists. I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as when we used to exchange good-morrows out of our old con- €-' THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. I73 tiguous windows, in pump-famed Hare Court in the Tem- ple. Why did jou ever leave that quiet corner ? — Why did I? — with its complement of four poor elms, from whose smoke-dyed barks, the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first lady-birds ! My heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves in a thirsty August, when I re- vert to the space that is between us ; a length of passage enough to render obsolete the phrases of our English letters before they can reach you. But while I talk, I think you hear me — thoughts dallying with vain sur- mise — " Aye me ! while thee the seas and sounding shores Hold far away." Come back, before I am grown into a very old man, so / \as you shall hardly know me. Come, before Bridget walks on crutches. Girls whom you left children have become sage matrons while you are tarrying there. The bloom- ing Miss W — r (you remember Sally W — r) called upon us yesterday, an aged crone. Folks, whom you knew, die off every year. Formerly, I thought that death was wearing out— I stood ramparted about with so many healthy friends. The departure of J. W., two springs back, corrected my delusion. Since then the old divorcer has been busy. If you do not make haste to return, there will be little left to greet you, of me, or mine. THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. I LIKE to meet a sweep — understand me — not a grown sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no means attractive — but one of those tender novices, blooming 174 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA. through their first nigritude, the maternal washings not quite effaced from the cheek — such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little profes- sional notes sounding like the 'peejp peep of a young spar- row; or liker to the matin lark should I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the sunrise? I have a kindly yearning toward these dim specks — poor blots — innocent blacknesses — I reverence these young Africans of our own growth — these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth with- out assumption; and from their little pulpits (the tops of chimneys), in the nipping air of a December morning, preach a lesson of patience to mankind. When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to witness their operation ! to see a chit no bigger than one's self, enter, one knew not by what process, into what seemed the fauces Averni — to pursue him in ima- gination, as he went sounding on through so many dark, stifling caverns, horrid shades! — to shudder with the idea that "now, surely, he must be lost forever ! " — to revive at hearing his feeble shout of discovered daylight ^— and then (O fullness of delight!) running out-of-doors, to come just in time to see the sable phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished weapon of his art victorious like some flag waved over a conquered citadel ! I seem to remember having been told that a bad sweep was once left in a stack with his brush, to indicate which way the wind blew. It was an awful spectacle certainly ; not much unlike the old stage direction in "Macbeth," where the " Apparition of a child crowned, with a tree in his hand, rises." Eeader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry Id THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 175 thy early rambles, it is good to give Mm a penny. It is better to give him twopence. If it be starving weather, and to the proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair of kibed heels (no nniisnal accompaniment) be super- added, the demand on thy humanity will surely rise to a tester. There is a composition, the groundwork of which I have understood to be the sweet wood 'yclept sassafras, This wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered, with an infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some tastew a delicacy beyond the China luxury. I know noi how thy palate may relish it ; for myself, with every defer- ence to the judicious Mr. Kead, who hath time out of mind kept open a shop (the only one he avers in London) for the vending of this " wholesome and pleasant bever- age," on the south side of Fleet Street, as thou approach- est Bridge Street — the only Salopian house — I have never yet ventured to dip my own particular lip in a basin of his commended ingredients — a cautious premo- nition to the olfactos-ies constantly whispering to me, that my stomach must infallibly, with all due courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, otherwise not uninstructed In dietetical elegancies, sup it up with avidity. I know kiot by what particular conformation of the organ It happens, but I have always found that this composition is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a yuung chimney-sweeper — whether the oily particles (sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous concretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged practitioners ; or whether IsTature, sensi- ble that she had mingled too much of bitter wood in the l'J'6 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. lot of these raw victims, caused to grow out of the earth her sassafras for a sweet lenitive— but so it is, that no possible taste or odor to the senses of a young chim- ney-sweeper can convey a delicate excitement compar- able to this mixture. Being penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over the ascending steam, to gratify one sense if possible, seemingly no less pleased than those domestic animals — cats — when they purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is something more in these sympathies than philosophy can incul- cate. Now, albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, that his is the only Salopian house ; yet be it known to thee, reader — if thou art one who keepest what are called good hours, thou art haply ignorant of the fact — • he hath a race of industrious imitators, who from stalls, and under open sky, dispense the same savory mess to humbler customers, at that dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the rake, reeling home from his mid- night cups, and the hard-handed artisan leaviug his bed to resume the premature labors of the day, jostle, not unfrequently to the manifest disconcerting of the former, for the honors of the pavement. It is the time when, in summer, between the expired and the not yet relu- mined kitchen-fires, the kennels of our fair metropolis give forth their least satisfactory odors. The rake, who wisheth to dissipate his o'ernight vapors in more grate- ful coffee, curses the ungenial fume, as he passeth ; but the artisan stops to taste, and blesses the fragrant br'Bak- fast. This is saloop — the precocious herb-woman's darling — the delight of the early gardener, who transports his smoking cabbages by break of day from Hammersmith THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 177 to Oovent Garden's famed piazzas — the delight, and oh ! I fear, too often the envj, of the unpennied sweep. Him shouldst thou haply encounter, with his dim visage pendent over the grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin (it will cost thee but tliree-halfpennies) and a slice of delicate bread-and-butter (an added half- penny) — so may thy culinary fires, eased of the o'er- charged secretions from thy worse-placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter volume to the welkin — so may th@ descending soot never taint thy costly, well-ingredienced soups — nor the odious cry, quick-reaching from street to street, of the fired chimney^ invite the rattling engines from ten adjacent parishes, to disturb for a casual scin- tillation thy peace and pocket ! I am by nature extremely susceptible of street af- fronts; the jeers and taunts of the populace; the low- bred triumph they display over the casual trip, or splashed stocking of a gentleman. Yet can I endure the joculari- ty of a young sweep with something more than forgive- ness. — In the last winter but one, pacing along Cheapside with my accustomed precipitation when I walk west- ward, a treacherous slide brought me upon my back in an instant. I scrambled up with pain and shame enough — yet outwardly trying to face it down, as if nothing had happened — when the roguish grin of one of these young wits encountered me. There he stood, pointing me out with his dusky finger to the mob, and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in particular, till the tears, for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he thought it), worked them- selves out at the corners of his poor, red eyes, red from many a previous weeping, and soot-inflamed, yet twin- kling through all with such a joy, snatched out of deso- lation, that Hogarth but Hogarth has go^ him already 1^ 178 fHE ESSAYS OF ELTA. (how could he miss him ?) in the Marcli to Finchlej, grinning at the pie-man— there lie stood, as he stands in the picture, irremovable, as if tlie jest were to last for- ever — with such a maximum of glee, and minimum of mischief, in his mirth — for the grin of a genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice in it — that I could have been content, if tlie honor of a gentleman might endure it, to have remained his butt and his mockery till midnight. I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what are called a line set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips (the ladies must pardon me) is a casket presumably hold- ing such jewels ; but, methinks, they should take leave to " air " them as frugally as possible. The fine lady, or fine gentleman, who show me their teeth, show me bones. Yet must I confess that, from the mouth of a true sweep a display (even to ostentation) of those white and shining ossifications, strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in man- ners, and an allowable piece of foppery. It is, as when " A sable cloud Turns forth her silver Tming on the night." It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct ; a badge of better days ; a hint of nobility — and doubtlese, under the obscuring darkness and double night of their forlorn disguisement, oftentimes lurketh good blood, and gentle conditions, derived from lost ancestry, and a lapsed pedigree. The premature apprenticements of these tender victims give but too much encouragement, I fear, to clandestine and almost infantile abductions; the seeds of civility and true courtesy, so often dt^^cerni- ble in these young grafts (not otherwise to be accounted for) plainly hint at some forced adoptions ; many noble Rachels mourning for their children, even in our days, • THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 179 countenance the fact; the tales of fairy-sphiting may shadow a lamentable verity, and the recovery of the young Montagu be but a solitary instance of good for- tune out of many irreparable and hopeless defiUations. In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few years since— under a ducal canopy — (that seat of the Howards is an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, in which the late duke was especially a con- noisseur) — encircled with curtains of delicatest crimson, with starry coronets interwoven — folded between a pair of sheets whiter and softer than the lap where Yenus lulled Ascanius — was discovered by chance, after all meth- ods of search had failed, at noonday, fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The little creature, having somehow confounded his passage among the intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by some unknown aperture had alighted upon this magnificent chamber; and, tired with his tedi- ous explorations, was unable to resist the delicious in- viteraent to repose which he there saw exhibited ; so, creeping between the sheets very quietly, laid his black head upon the pillow, and slept like a young Howard. Such is the account given to the visitors at the Castle. — But I cannot help seeming to perceive a confirmation of what I have just hinted at in this story. A high in- stinct was at work in the case, or I am mistaken. Is it probable that a poor child of that description, with what- ever weariness he might be visited, would have ventured, under such a penalty as ho would be taught to expect, to uncov^er the sheets of a duke's bed, and deliberately to lay himself down between them, when the rug, or the carpet, presented an obvious couch, still far abov« his pretensions — is this probable, T would ask, if the great power of Nature, which I contend for, had not been 180 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. manifested within him, prompting to the adventure'^ Doubtless this young nobleman (for such my mind mis- gives me that he must be) was allured by some memory, not amounting to full consciousness, of his condition in infancy, when he was used to be lapped by his mother, or his nurse, in Just such sheets as he there found, into which he was now but creeping back as into his proper incunabula, and resting-place. — By no other theory than by this sentiment of a preexistent state (as I may call it), can I explain a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon any other system so indecorous, in this tender, but unseason- able, sleeper. My present friend, Jem White, was so impressed with a belief of metamorphoses like this frequently taking place, that in some sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in these poor changelings, he instituted an annual feast of chimney-sweepers, at which it was his pleasure to officiate as host and waiter. It was a solemn supper, held in Smithfield, upon the yearly return of the fair of St. Bartholomew. Cards were issued a week before to the master-sweeps in and about the metropolis, con- fining the invitation to their younger fry. Now and then an elderly stripling would get in among us, and be good-naturedly winked at; but our main body were infantry. One unfortunate wight, indeed, who, relying upon his dusky suit, had intruded himself into our party, but, by tokens, was providentially discovered in time to be no chimney-sweeper (all is not soot which looks so), was quoited out of the presence with uni- versal indignation, as not having on the wedding-gar- ment; but in general the greatest harmony prevailed. The place chosen was a convenient spot among the pens, at the north side of the fair, not so far distant as to be THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 18] impervious to the agreeable hubbub of that vanity ; but remote enough not to be obvious to the interruption of every gaping spectator in it. The guests assemble^ about seven. In those little temporary parlors three tables were spread with napery, not so fine as substan- tial, and at every board a comely hostess presided with her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils of the young- rogues dilated at the savor. James White, as head- waiter, had charge of the first table ; and myself, with our trusty companion Bigod, ordinarily ministered to the other two. There was clambering and jostling, you may be sure, who should get at the first table — for Roch- ester, in his maddest days, could not have done the hu- mors of the scene with more spirit than my friend. After some general expression of thanks for the honor the company had done him, his inaugural ceremony was to clasp the greasy waist of old Dame Ursula (the fattest of the three), that stood frying and fretting, half-blessing, half-cursing " the gentleman," and imprint upon her chaste lips a tender salute, whereat the universal host would set up a shout that tore the concave, while hun- dreds of grinning teeth startled the night with their brightness. Oh, it was a pleasure to see the sable youn- kers lick in the unctuous meat, with Ms more unctuous sayings — how he would fit the tit-bits to the puny mouths, reserving the lengthier links for the seniors — how he would intercept a morsel even in the jaws of some young desperado, declaring it "must to the pan again to be browned, for it was not fit for a gentleman's eating" — how he would recommend this slice of white bread, or that piece of kissing-crust, to a tender juvenile, advising them all to have a care of cracking their teeth, which were their best patrimony — how genteelly he 182 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. would deal about the small ale, as if it were wine, nam- ing the brewer, and protesting, if it were not good, he should lose their custom ; with a special recommenda- tion to wipe the lip before drinking. Then we had our toasts—" The King "— " The Cloth "—which, whether they understood or not, was equally diverting and flat- tering; and, for a crowning sentiment, which never failed, "May the Brush supersede the Laurel!" All these, and fifty other fancies, which were rather felt than comprehended by his guests, would he utter, stand- ing upon tables, and prefacing every sentiment with a '" Gentlemen, give me leave to propose so and so," which was a prodigious comfort to those young orphans ; erery now and then stuffing into his mouth (for it did not do to be squeamish on these occasions) indiscriminate pieces of those reeking sausages, which pleased them mightily, and was the savoriest part, you may believe, of the en- tertainment. " Golden lads and lasses must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust." — James White is extinct, and with him these suppers have long ceased. He carried away with him half the fun of the world when he died — of my world at least. His old clients look for him among the pens ; and, missing him, reproach the altered feast of St. Bartholomew, and the glory of Smithfield departed forever. COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 183 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGG^AES IN THE METEOPOLIS. The all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation — your only modern Alcides's club to rid the time of its abuses— is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity from the metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags — staves, dogs, and crutches — the whole mendicant fraternity, with all their baggage, are fast posting out of the purlieus of this eleventh persecution. From the crowded crossing, from the corners of streets and turnings of alleys, the parting Genius of Beggary is " with sighing sent." I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this impertinent crusado, or Tjellum ad exterminationem, proclaimed against a species. Much good might be sucked from these beggars. They were the oldest and the honorablest form of pauperism. Their appeals w^ere to our common nature; less revolting to an ingenious mind than to be a suppliant to the particular humors or caprice of any fellow-creat- ure, or set of fellow-creatures, parochial or societarian. Theirs were the only rates uninvidious in the levy, un- grudged in the assessment. There was a dignity springing from the very depth of their desolation ; as to be naked is to be so much nearer to the being a man, than to go in livery. The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses ; and when Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, do we feel anything toward him but contempt? Could Vandyck have made a picture of him swaying a ferula for a sceptre which would have affected our minds with 184 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. the same heroic pity, the same compassionaie admitn- tion, with which we regard his Belisarius Degging for an oholumf Would the moral have heen more graceful, more pathetic ? The Blind Beggar in the legend — the fattier of pretty- Bessy — whose story doggerel rhymes and aienouse signs Gannot so degrade or attenuate, but that some sparks of a lustrous spirit will sliine through the disguisements — this noble Earl of Cornwall (as indeed he was), and mem- orable sport of fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence of his liege lord, stripped of all, and seated on the flower- ing green of Bethnal, with his more fresli and springing daughter by his side, illumining his rags and his beg- gary—would the child and parent have cut a better figure, doing the honors of a counter, or expiating their fallen condition upon the three-foot eminence of some sempstering shop-board ? In tale or history, your beggar is ever the just an- tipode to your king.' The poets and romancical writers (as dear Margaret Newcastle would call them), when they would most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse of fortune, never stop till they have brought down their hero in good earnest to rags and the wallet. The depth of the descent illustrates the height he falls from. There is no medium which can be pre- sented to the imagination without offense. There is no breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from his palace, must divest him of his garments, till he answer "mere nature ; " and Oresseid, fallen from a prince's love, must extend her pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of beauty, supplicating lazar alms with bell and clap-dish. The Lucian wits knew this very well; and, with a converse policy, when they would express scorn of great- COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. l85 ness without the pitj, they show us an Alexander in the / shades cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting up foul ' linen. How would it sound in song, that a great monarch had declined his affections upon the daughter of a baker ! yet do we feel the imagination at all violated when we read the "true ballad," where King Cophetua woos the beggar-maid? Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity, but pity alloyed with contempt. No one properly con-^- temns a beggar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and each degree of it is mocked by its "neighbor grice." Its poor-rents and comings-in are soon summed up and told. Its pretenses to property are almost ludicrous. Its piti- ful attempts to save excite a smile. Every scornful com- panion can weigh his trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor man reproaches poor man in the streets with impolitic mention of his condition, his own being a shade better, while the rich pass by and jeer at both. No rascally ""l comparative insults a Beggar, or thinks of weighing | purses with him. He is not in the scale of comparison. ^ He is not under the measure of property. He confess- edly hath none, any more than a dog or a sheep. No one twitteth him with ostentation above his means. No one accuses him of pride, or upbraideth him with mock hu- mility. None jostle with him for the wall, or pick quar- rels for precedency. No wealthy neighbor seeketh to eject him from his tenement. No man sues him. No man goes to law with him. If I were not the independent gentleman that I am, rather than I would be a retainer to the great, a led captain, or a poor relation, I would chaose, out of the delicacy and true greatness of my mind, to be a Beggar. 186 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. Kags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the Beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, / his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expect- ed to show himself in public. He is never out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not re- quired to put on court mourning. He weareth all colors, fearing none. His costume hath undergone less change than the Quaker's. He is the only man in the universe ^^X^nvho is not obliged to study appearances. The ups and .jX*"^ downs of the world concern him no longer. He alone continueth in one stay. The price of stock or land af- fecteth him not. The fluctuations of agricultural or com- mercial prosperity touch him not, or at worst but change his customers. He is not expected to become bail or sure- ty for any one. !N"o man troubleth him with questioning his religion or politics. He is the only free man in the universe. The Mendicants of this great city were so many of her sights, her lions. I can no more spare them than I could the Cries of London. No corner of a street is complete without them. They are as indispensable as the Ballad-Singer ; and in their picturesque attire as or- namental as the signs of old London. They were the standing morals, emblems, mementoes, dial-mottos, the epital sermons, the books for children, the salutary .check and pauses to the high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry— —"Look Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there." Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall of Lincoln's-Inn Garden, before modern fastidious- ness had expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 18? catch a raj of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful Dog Guide at their feet— whither are they fled J or into what corners, blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of the wholesome air and sun-warmth? im- mersed between four walls, in what withering poor house do they endure the penalty of double darkness, where the chink of the dropped half-penny no more con- soles their forlorn bereavement, far from the sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring tread of the passenger ? Where hang their useless staves? and who will farm their dogs? — Have the overseers of St. L — caused them to be shot? or were they tied up in sacks, and dropped into the Thames, at the suggestion of B— , the mild rec- tor of B ? Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, most classical, and, at the same time, most English of the Latinists! — who has treated of this human and quadru- pedal alliance, this dog and man friendship, in the sweet- est of his poems, the Epitaphium in Canem, or Dog''s Epitaph. Keader, peruse it ; and say, if customary sights, which would call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a nature to do more harm or good to the moral sense of the passengers through the daily thoroughfares of a vaat and busy metropolis : " Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectse, Dux cseco fidus : nee, me ducente, solebat, Prsetenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per iniqua locoruia Incertam explorare viam ; sed fila secutus, Quae dubios regerent, passus, vestigia tuta Fixit inoffenso gressu ; gelidumque sedile In nudo nactus saxo, qu4 praetereuntium Unda frequens cenfluxit, ibi raiserisque tenebras 188 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam, Ploravit nee frustra ; obolura dedit alter et alter, Queis cord-a et mentem indiderat natura benignam . Ad latus interea Jacui sopitus herile, ^^, Vel mediis vigil in soranis j ad herilia jussa Auresque atque animum arrectus, seu frustula am>^ Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei Taedia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat, Hi mores, haec vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, Dum neque languebain morbis, nee inerte senectS. ; Quae tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite csecum Orbavit doninum ; prisci sed gratia f aeti Ne tota intereat, longos delecta per annos, Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit, Etsi inQpis, non ingratse, munuscula dextrse; Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemqur Quod memoret, fidumque canem dominumque benif^^un, '*Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, His guide and guard : nor, while my service lasted Had he occasion for that staff, with which He new goes picking out his path in fear Over the highways and crossings ; but would plant- Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, A firm foot forward still, till he had reached His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide Of passers-by in thickest confluence flowed : To whom with loud and passionate laments From morn to eve his dark estate he wailed. Nor wailed to all in vain : some here and there- The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave- ., I meantime, at his feet obsequious slept ; ( Not all-asleep m sleep,) but heart and ear Pricked up at his least motion ; to receive COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 189 At his kind hand my customary crumbs, And common portion in his feast of scraps ; Or when night warned us homeward, tired and spent With our long day and tedious beggary. These were my manners, this my way of life, Till age and slow disease me overtook. And severed from my sightless master's side. But lest the grace of so good deeds should die, ^..^ Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost, •— - - This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared, Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, In long and lasting union to attest, The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog." These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months past a well-known figure, or part of the figure of a man, who used to glide his comely upper half (»ver the pavements of London, wheeling along with most in- genious celerity upon a machine of wood ; a spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to children. He was of a ro- bust m*4ke, with a florid, sailor-like complexion, and hia head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a prodi- gy to the simple. The infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his own level. The common crip- ple would despise his own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty heart, of this half-limbed gi- ant. Few but must have noticed him ; for the accident, which brought him low, took place during the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long. He seemed earth-born, an Antaeus, and to suck in fresh vigor from the soil which he neighbored. He was a grand frag- ment ; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature, which 190 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was not lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering and growling, as before an earthquake, and casting down my ejes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had started at his portentous appearance. He seemed to want but his just stature to have rent the offending quad- ruped in shivers. He was as the man-part of a centaur, from which the horse-half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan controversy. H 3 moved on, as if he could have made shift with yet half of the body portion which was left him. The os sublime was not wanting ; and he threw out yet a jolly countenance upon the heavens. For- ty-and-two years had he driven this out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no way impaired, because he is not content to exchange his free air and exercise for the restraints of a poor-house, he is expiating his contumacy in one of thos.e houses (ironically christened) of Correction. Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nui- sance, which called for legal interference to remove? or not rather a salutary and a touching object, to the pass- ers-by in a great city? Among her shows, her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping curiosity (and what else but an accumulation of sights — endless sights — is a great city; or for what else is it desirable?) was there not room for one Lusus (not NaturcB^ indeed, but) Acciden- tium? "What if, in forty-and-two years' going about, the man had scraped together enough to give a portion to his child (as the rumor ran), of a few hundreds — whom had he injured ? — whom had he imposed upon? The contributors had enjoyed their sight for their pennies. What if after being exposed all day to the heats, the rains, COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGAHS. 191 and the frosts of heaven — shuffling his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion — he was ena- bled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club of his fellow-cripples over a dish of hot meat and vegetables, as the charge was gravely brought against him by a cler- gyman deposing before a House of Commons' Commit= tee — was tMs^ or was his truly paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whip- ping-post, and is inconsistent at least with the exaggera- tion of nocturnal orgies which he has been slandered with — a reason that he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay edifying, way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy vagabond ? — There was a Yorick once, whom it would not havo shamed to have sate down at the cripples' feast, and to have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite, too, for a companionable symbol. " Age, thou bast lost thy breed." — Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. One was much talked of in the public papers some time since, and the usual charitable inferences deduced. A clerk in the Bank was surprised with the announcement of a five-hundred-pound legacy left him by a person whose name he was a stranger to. It seems that in his daily morning walks from Peckham (or some villag© thereabouts), where he lived, to his ofiice, it had been hia practice for the last twenty years to drop his halfpenny duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus, that sate beg- ging alms by the wayside in the Borough. The good old beggar recognized his daily benefactor by the voice only; and, when he died, left all the amassings of hia alms (that had been half a century, perhaps, in the. accu- 10^ THE ESSAYS OF ELlA. mulating) to his old Bank friend. Was this a story to purse up people's hearts, and pennies, against giving an alms to the blind? — or not rather a beautiful moral of ■well-directed charity on the one part, and noble grati- tude upon the other. I sometimes wish I had been that Bank-clerk. I seem to remember a poor, old, grateful kind of creature, blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the sun — Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against him? Perhaps I had no small change. Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, im- ;";c8ition, imposture — give^ and ash no questions. Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have, unawares (like this Bank-clerk), entertained angels. Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted dis- tress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creat- ure (outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay to inquire whether the " seven small children," in whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veri- table existence, j Rake not into the bowels of unwel- come truth, to sjive a halfpenny.^ It is good to believe him. If he be not all that he^'^pretendeth, give,, and under a personate father of a family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit looks, and mump- ing tones, think them players. You pay j'our money to Bee a comedian feign these things, which, concerning these poor people, thou canst not certainly teU whether they are feigned or not. A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST-PIG. 193 A DISSEETATION UPON ROAST-PIG, Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the sec- ond chapter of his " Mundane Mutations," where he des- ignates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, lit- erally the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner following : The swineherd, Tlo-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the c-are of his eldest son, Bo-bo, a great, lubberly boy, who, being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which, kindling quickly, spread the conflagra- tion over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry, antediluvian, makeshift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new- farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished, China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labor of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking 13 194 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. wliat lie should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it pro- ceed from ? — not from the burned cottage — he had smelt that smell before — indeed, this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burned his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life, indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted — crackling ! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious ; and surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, vrhen his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and inding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, as thick as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any incon- veniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST-PIG. 195 father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something like, the following dialogue ensued : " You graceless whelp, what have jou got there de- vouring? Is it not enough that you have burned me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you ! but you must be eating fire, and I know not what — what have you got there, I say? " " O father, the pig, the pig! do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats ! " The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig. Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste — Lord ! " — with such-like bar- barous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke. Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying the same remedy to them, he in hi£ turn tasted some of its flavor, which, make what sour mouths he would for pretense, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript; here is a little tedious) both father and son fairly set down to the mess, and never left oif till they had dis- patched all that remained of the litter. Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret es- 196^ THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. cape, for the neighbors would certainly have stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improving upon the good meat which God had sent them. l»I"evertheless, strange stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti"'s cottage was burnt down now more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break out in broad day, others in the night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they were watched, the terri- rible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take their trial at Peking, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the box. He handled it, and they all han- dled it ; and burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and Nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever given — to the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all present — without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty. The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision : and when the court was dismissed, went privily, and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a few days his Lordship's town-house was observed to be on fire. The tiling took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST-PIG. 197 "but fire in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enor- mously dear all over the district. The insurance-oflaces one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very sci- ence of architecture would, in no long time, be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like out- Locke, who made a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed, of any other animal, might be cooked Q)urnt^ as they called it) without the necessity of con- suming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridh'on. Roasting by the string or spit came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the most obvious arts, make their way among mankind. — Without placing too implicit faith in the account above given, it must be agreed that, if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in favor of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in eoast-pig. Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis^ I will maintain it to be the most ^QlicoXQ—princeps olso- niorum. I speak not of your grown porkers — things between pig and pork — those hobbydehoys — but a young and ten- der suckling — under a moon old — guiltless, as yet, of the sty — with no original speck of the amor immunditicB, the hereditary faihng of the first parent, yet manifest — his voice, as yet, not broken, but something between a childish treble and. a grumble — the mild forerunner, or prceludium of a grunt. 198 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. He must he roasted. I am not ignorant that onr an- cestors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a sacrifice of the exterior tegument ! There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawnj, well-watched, not over-roasted, cracMing, as it is well called — the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in over- coming the coy, brittle resistance — vvith the adhesiv his A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST-PIG. 199 stomach half rejeoteth, the rank bacon — no coal-heaver bolteth him in reeking sausages — he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure— and for such a tomb might he content to die. He is the best of sapors. Pineapple is great. She is, indeed, almost too transcendent — a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to sinning that really a tender-conscienced person would do well to pause — too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her — like lovers' kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bor- dering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish — but she stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth not v.'ith the appetite — and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton-chop. Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provocative of the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices. Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to bo unraveled without hazard, he is— good throughout. No part of him is better or worse than another. He helpeth, as far as his little means extend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbors* fare. I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly im- part a share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my friend's pleas- ures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. "Presents," I often say, "endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame villatic fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, 200 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them, I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop must he put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, " give everything." I make my stand Bpon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavors, to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what), a blessing so particularly adapted, predes- tined, I may say, to my individual palate. It argues an insensibility. I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one eveniDg with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was over London bridge) a gray- headed old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt, at this time of day, that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, schoolboy-like, I made him a present of — tbe whole cake! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction ; but before I had got to the end of the bridge, my better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been tc Bay good aunt, to go and give her good gift away to r. stranger that I had never seen before, and who might be a bad man for aught I knew ; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I — I myself, and not another — would eat her nice cake — and what should I say to her the next time I saw her — how naughty I was to part with her pretty present ! — and the »dor of th^^t spicy cake came back upon my recollectiotii. A DISSERTATION UPON ROAgT-flG. ^01 and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her joy when she had sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last — and I blamed my impertinent spirit of alms-giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness ; and above all I wished never to see the face again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old gray impostor. Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipped to death with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obso- iete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it svould be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what effect this process might have toward in- fcenerating and dulcifying a substance naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like re- fining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gustoi I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, " Whether, supposing that the flavor of a pig who obtained his death by whipping (^'per flaggellationein extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we cau conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the animal to death ? " I forget the decision. His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few bread-crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I be- seech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out 202 "^HE ESSAYS OF ELU. with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you can- not poison them, or make them stronger than they are — but consider, he is a weakling — a flower. A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAV- IOR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my timd in noting down the infirmities of "Married People, to con- sole myself for those superior pleasures which they tell me I have lost by remaining as I am, I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their wives ever made any great impression upon me, or had much tendency to strengthen me in those anti-social resolutions which I took up long ago upon more substantial consid- erations. What oftenest offends me at the houses of married persons where I visit, is an error of quite a dif- ferent description — it is that they are too loving. Not too loving neither: that does not explain my meaning. Besides, why should that offend me? The very act of separating themselves from the rest of the world, to have the fuller enjoyment of each other's so- ciety, implies that they prefer one another to all the world. But what I complain of is, that they carry this pref- erence so undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces of us single people so shamelessly, you cannot be in their company a moment without being made to feel, by some indirect hint, or open avowal, that you are not the ob- ject of this preference. Now there are some things which give no offence, while implied or taken for granted A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT. 20B mere!/; hat expressed, there is much offense in them. If a man were to accost the first homelj-featured or plain-dressed young w^oman of his acquaintance, and tell her bluntly that she was not handsome or rich enough for him, and he could not marry her, he would deserve to be kicked for his ill manners ; yet no less is implied in the fact that, having access and opportunity of putting the question to her, he has never yet thought fit to do it. The young woman understands this as clearly as if it were put into words; but no reasonable young woman would think of making this the ground of a quarrel. Just as little right have a married couple to tell me by speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain than speech- es, that I am not the happy man — the lady's choice. It is enough that I know I am not; I do not want this perpetual reminding. The display of superior knowledge or riches may be made sufficiently mortifying ; but these admit of a pal- liative. The knowledge which is brought out to insult me, may accidentally improve me ; and in the rich man's houses and pictures— his parks and gardens, I have a tem- porary usufruct at least. But the display of married happiness'has none of these palliatives; it is throughout pure, unrecompensed, unqualified insult. Marriage, by its best title, is a monopoly, and not of the least invidious sort. It is the cunning of most pos- sessors of any exclusive privilege to keep their advan- tage as much out of sight as possible, that their less favored neighbors, seeing little of the benefit, may the less be disposed to question the right. But these mar- ried monopolists thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent into our faces. Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire 204 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. complacency and satisfaction which beam in the counte- nances of a new-married couple — in that of the ladj, particularly : it tells you that her lot is disposed of in this world; that you can have no hopes of her. It ia true, I have none ; nor wishes either, perhaps ; but this is one of those truths which ought, as I said before, to b© taken for granted, not expressed. The excessive airs which those people give themselves, founded on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would be more offensive if they were less irrational. We will allow them to understand the mysteries belonging to their own craft better than we, who have not had the happiness to be made free of the company ; but their arrogance is not content within these limits. If a single person presume to offer his opinion in their presence, though upon the most indifferent subject, he is immedi- ately silenced as an incompetent person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaintance, who, the best of the jest was, had not changed her condition above a fortnight before, in a question on which I had the misfortune to differ from her, respecting the properest mode of breed- ing oysters for the London market, had the assurance to ask, with a sneer, how such an old Bachelor as I could pretend to know anything about such matters! But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the airs which these creatures give themselves when they come, as they generally do, to have children. When I consider how little of a rarity children are — that every street and blind-alley swarms with them — that the poor- est people commonly have them in most abundance — that there are few marriages thot are not blessed with af least one of these bargains — how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT. 205 vicious courses, whicla end in poverty, disgrace, the gal- lows, etc. — I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them. If they were young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but one in a year, there might be a pretext. But when they are so common — I do not advert to the insolent merit which they as- sume with their husbands on these occasions. Let them look to that. But why we^ who are not their natural- born subjects, should be expected to bring our spices^ myrrh, and incense — our tribute and homage of admira- tion — I do not see. "Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant even so are the young children; " so says the excellent office la our Prayer-book appointed for the churching of women. " Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them ; " so say I ; but then don't let him discharge his quiver upon us that are weaponless — let them be arrows, but not to gall and stick us. I have generally observed that these arrows are double-headed ; they have two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the otlier. As, for instance, where you come into a house which is full of children, if you happen to take no notice of them (you are think- ing of something else, perhaps, and turn a deaf ear tc their innocent caresses), you are set down as untractable, morose, a hater of children. On the other hand, if you find them more than usually engaging — if you are taken with their pretty manners, and set about in earnest to romp and play with them, some pretext or other is sure to be found for sending them out of the room : they are too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does not like chil- dren. With one or other of these forks the arrow is sure to hit you. '^06 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense witli toy- ing witli their brats, if it gives them any pain ; but I think it unreasonable to be called upon to love them, where I see no occasion — to love a whole family, per- haps, eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately — to love all the pretty dears, because children are so engaging ! I know there is a proverb, " Love me, love my dog; '• that is not always so very practicable, particularly if the dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport. But a dog, or a lesser thing — any inanimate substance, as a keepsake, a watch, or a ring, a tree, or the place where we last parted when my friend went away upon a long absence, I can make shift to love, because I love him, and anything that reminds me of him ; provided it be in its nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. But children have a real character, and an essential being of themselves ; they are amiable or unamiable per se ; I must love or hate them as I see cause for either in their qualities. A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being, and to be loved or hated accordingly ; they stand with me upon their own stock, as much as men and women do. Oh ! but you will say, sure it is an attractive age — there is something in the tender age of infancy that of itself charms us ! That is the very reason why I am more nice about them. I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in Nature^ not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them ; but the prettier the kind of thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not much from another in glory; but a vio- let should look and smell the daintiest. — I was always rather ^squeamish in my women and children. A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT. 207 But this is not the worst : one must be admitted into their familiarity at least, before they can complain of inattention. It implies visits, and some kind of inter- course. But if the husband be a man with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage — if you dii not come in on the wife's side — if you did not sneak into the house in her train, but were an old friend in fast habits of intimacy before their courtship was so much as thought on — look about you — your tenure is precarious — before a twelvemonth shall roll over your head, you shall find your old friend gradually grow cool and altered toward you, and at last seek opportunities of breaking with you. I have scarce a married friend of my acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I can rely, whose friendship did not commence after the 'period of Ms marriage. With some limitations, they can endure that ; but that the good man should have dared to enter into a solemn league of friendship in which they were not consulted, though it happened before they knew him — before they that are now man and wife ever met — this is intolerable to thsm. Every long friendship, every old authentic intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new stamped with their currency, as a sovereign prince calls in the good old money that was coined in some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will let it pass current in the world. You may guess what luck generally befalls such a rusty piece of metal as T am in these new min tings. Innumerable are the ways which they take to in- sult and worm you out of their husband's confidence. Laughing at all you say with a kind of wonder, as if you were a queer kind of fellow that said good things, lut 208 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. an oddity^ is one of the ways — they have a particular kind of stare for the purpose — till at last the husband, who used to defer to your judgment, and would pass over some excrescences of understanding and manner for the sake of a general vein of observation (not quite vulgar) which he perceived in you, begins to suspect whether you are not altogether a humorist — a fellow well enough to have consorted with in his bachelor days, but not quite so proper to be introduced to ladies. This may be called the staring way ; and is that which has oftenest been put in practice against me. Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of irony ; that is, where they find you an object of especial regard with their husband, who is not so easily to be shaken from the lasting attachment founded on esteem which he has conceived toward you, by never-qualified exaggerations to cry up all that you say or do, till the good man, who understands well enough that it is all done in compliment to him, grows weary of the debt of gratitude which is due to so much candor, and by relax- ing a little on his part, and taking down a peg or two in his enthusiasm, sinks at length to the kindly level of moderate esteem — that " decent affection and compla- cent kindness" toward you, where she herself can join in sympathy with him without much stretch and vio- lence to her sincerity. Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of innocent simplicity, continually to mistake what it was which first made their husband fond of you. If an es- teem for something excellent in your moral character was that which riveted the chain which she is to break upon any imaginary discovery of a want of poignancy A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT. ^09 in your conversation, she will cry, " I thought, my dear, you described your friend, Mr. , as a great wit ? " If, on the other hand, it was for some supposed charm in your conversation that he first grew to like you, and was content for this to overlook some trifling irregular- ities in your moral deportment, upon the first notice of any of these she as readily exclaims, " This, my dear, la your good Mr. ! " One good lady whom I took the liberty of expostulating with for not showing me quite so much respect as I thought due to her husband's old friend, had the candor to confess to me that she had often heard Mr. speak of me before marriage, and that she had conceived a great desire to be acquainted with me, hut that the sight of me had very much disap- pointed her expectations ; for from her husband's repre- sentations of me. she had formed a notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officer-like-looking man (I use her very words), the very reverse of which proved to be the truth. This was candid ; and I had the civility not to ask her in return, how she came to pitch upon a stand- ard of personal accomplishments for her husband's friends which diff'ered so much from his own : for my friend's dimensions as near as possible approximate to mine ; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in which I have the advantage of him by about half an inch ; and he no more than myself exhibiting any indications of a martial character in his air or countenance. These are some of the mortifications which I have encountered in ths absurd attempt to visit at their houses. To enumerate tkem all would be a vain endeav- or ; I shall therefore just glance at the very common impropriety of which married ladies are guilty — of treating us as if we were their husbands, and vice verm. u ^10 THE ESSAYS OF EL I A. I mean, when they use us with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony. Testacea^ for instance, kept me the other night two or three hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was fretting be- cause Mr. did not come home till the oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of the impoliteness of touching on^ in his absence. This was reversing the point of good manners ; for ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we de- rive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other per- son is. It endeavors to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it Is forced to deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept the oysters back for me, and withstood her husband's im- portunities to go to supper, she would have acted accord- ing to the strict rules of propriety. I know no cere- mony that ladies are bound to observe to their husbands, beyond the point of a modest behavior and decorum i therefore I must protest against the vicarious gluttony of Gerasia^ who at her own table sent away a dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great good-wilL to her husband at the other end of the table, and recom- mended a plate of less extraordinary gooseberries to ray unwedded palate in their stead. Neither can I excuse the wanton affront of — But I am weary of stringing up all my married ac- quaintance by Roman denominations. Let them amend and change their manners, or I promise to record the full-length English of their names, to the terror of all Buch desperate offenders in future. ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. ^H ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. The casual sight of an old play-bill, whicli I picked up the other day — I know not by what chance it was preserved so long — tempts me to call to mind a few of the players who make the principal figure in it. It presents the cast of parts in the Twelfth Night, at the eld Drury Lane Theatre two-and-thirty years ago. There is something very touching in these old remembrances. Tliey make us think how we once used to read a play- bill — not, as now, peradventure, singling out a favorite performer, and casting a negligent eye over the rest ; but spelling out every name, down to the very mutes and servants of the scene — when it was a matter of no small moment to us whether Whitfield or Packer took the part of Fabian ; when Benson, and Burton, and Phillimore — names of small account — had an importance beyond what we can be content to attribute now to the time's best actors. " Orsino, by Mr. Barrymore." — What a full Shakespearean sound it carries ! how fresh to memory arise the image and the manner of the gentle actor ! Those who have only seen Mrs. Jordan within the last ten or fifteen years can have no adequate notion of her performances of such parts as Ophelia ; Helena, in All's Well that Ends Well ; and Viola in this play. Her voice had latterly acquired a coarseness which suited well enough with her Nells and Hoydens, but in those days it sank, with her steady, melting eye, into the heart. Her joyous parts — in which her memory now chiefly lives — in her youth were outdone by her plaintive ones. There i§ no giving an account how she delivered 212 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. the disguised story of her love for Orsino. It •wa? no set speech, that she had foreseen, so as to weave it into an harmonious period, line necessarily following line, to make up the music — yet I have heard it so spoken, or rather read, not without its grace and heauty — hut, when she had declared her sister's history to oe a "blank," and that she " never told her love," there was a pause, as if the story had ended — and then the image of the "worm in the hud" came up as a new sugges- tion — and the heightened image of " Patience " still fol- lowed after that, as by some growing (and not mechani- cal) process, thought springing up after thought, I would almost say, as they were watered by her tears. So in those fine lines — " Write loyal cantos of contemned love — . Hollow your name to the reverberate hills " — there was no preparation made in the foregoing image for that wliich was to follow. She used no rhetoric in her passion ; or it was ]!!Tature's own rhetoric, most legitimate then, when it seemed altogether without rule or law. Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Eenard), then in the pride of her beauty, made an admirable Olivia. She was particularly excellent in her unbending scenes in conversation with the clown. I have seen some Olivias — and those very sensible actresses too — who in these interlocutions have seemed to set their wits at the jester, and to vie conceits with him in downright emulation. But she used him for her sport, like what he was, to tri- fle a leisure sentence or two with, and then to be dis- missed, and she to be the great lady still. She touched the imperious, fantastic humor of the charactei with nicety. Her fine, spacious person filled the scene. ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 213 The part of Malvolio has, in my judgment, been so often misunderstood, and the general merits of the actor who then played it so unduly appreciated, that I shall hope for pardon if I am a little prolix upon these points. Of all the actors who flourished in my time — a mel- ancholy phrase if taken aright, reader — Bensley had most of the SAvell of soul, was greatest in the delivery of heroic conceptions, the emotions consequent upon the presentment of a great idea to the fancy. He had the true poetical enthusiasm — the rarest faculty among play- ers. None that I remember possessed even a portion of that fine madness which he threw out in Hotspur's fa- mous rant about glory, or the transports of the Venetian incendiary at the vision of the fired city. His voice had the dissonance, and at times the inspiriting effect, of the trumpet. His gait was uncouth and stiff, but no way embarrassed by affectation ; and the thor- ough-bred gentleman was uppermost in every move- ment. He seized the moment of passion with greatest truth ; like a faithful clock, never striking before the time ; never anticipating or leading you to anticipate. He was totally destitute of trick and artifice. He seemed come upon the stage to do the poet's message iimply, and he did it with as genuine fidelity as the nun- cios in Homer deliver the errands of the gods. He let the passion or the sentiment do its own work without prop or bolstering. He would have scorned to mounte- bank it ; and betrayed none of that cleverness which is the bane of serious acting. For this reason, his lago was the only endurable one which I remember to have seen. No spectator from his action could divine more of his artifice than Othello was supposed to do. His confessions in solilo These were weak- nesses ; but such as they were, they are a key to explicate some of his writings. OnNTEKTS. WAGM Blaemismore in H ^«aiBE . • . 11 Poor Relations . , . , ; • . 18 Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading » 27 Imperfect Dramatic Iliusion . . • .36 To THE Shade op Ellis'*on .... 40 Ellistoniana .0 • • .44 The Old Margate Hoy • • . • 60 The Convalescent. • • • . .60 Captain Jackson . , . . ,66 The Superannitated Man , • , • .72 Barbara S . . . , . . 81 The Tombs in the Abbey . • • • .88 Amicus Rediyiyus . . • • . 91 NUGiE CRITIC-ffl , , . , • .97 Newspapers Thirty-five Years ago. . . 109 Barrenness op th3 Imaginative Faculty in the Pro- 9UGTI9IIS op MODEJIN AUT • , ,11$ le CONTENTS. The Wedding . . . . , .132 Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age <. 139 Old China. ..... c 146 The Child Angel: a Bream . • • • 158 Confessions of a Srukkard . i • c 15*7 Popular Fallacibs • • • « « 168 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIAo BLAKESMOOR m H SHIRE. I DO not know a pleasure more affecting than to range at will over the deserted apartments of some fine old family mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a better passion than envy ; and contemplations on the great and good, whom we fancy in succession to have been its inhabitants, weave for us illusions incom- patible with the bustle of modern occupancy and vani> ties of foolish present aristocracy. The same difference of feeling, I thmk, attends us between entering an empty and a crowded church. In the latter it is chance but some present human frailty — an act of inattention on the part of some of the auditory, or a trait of affecta- tion, or worse, vainglory on that of the preacher— puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and the occasion. But wouldst thou know the beauty of holi- ness ? — go alone on some week-day, borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some country church — think of the piety that has kneeled there — the congregations, old and young, that have found consolation there — the meek pastor — the docile parishioner — with no disturbing emotions^ no cross 12 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELU. conflicting comparisons — drink in the tranquillity of tlie place, till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee. Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going some few miles out of my road to look upon the remains of an old great house with which I had been impressed in this way in infancy. I was apprised that the owner of it had lately pulled it down ; still, I had a vague notion that it could not all have perished, that so much solidity with magnificence could not have been crushed all at once into the mere dust and rubbish which I found it. The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced It to — an antiquity. I was astonished at the indistinction of everything. Where had stood the great gates ? What bounded the 50urtyard ? Whereabout did the out-houses commence ? A few bricks only lay as representatives of that which was so stately and so spacious. Death does not shrink up his human victim at this rate. The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their proportion. Had I seen these brick- and -mortar knaves at their process of destruction, at the plucking of every panel I should have felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to them to spare a plank at least out of the cheerful storeroom, in whose hot window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plot before, and the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it about me — it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns — or a panel of the yellow-room. Whyj every plank and panel of that house for me BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 13 bad magic in it. The tapestried bedrooms — tapestry so much better than painting — not adorning merely, but peopling the wainscots — at which childhood ever and anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as quickly) to exercise its tender courage in a momen- tary eye-encounter with those stern, bright visages star- ing reciprocally — all Ovid on the walls, in colors vivider than his descriptions. Acteeon in mid sprout, with the unappeasable prudery of Diana ; and the still more pro- voking and almost culinary coolness of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately divesting of Marsyas. Then, that haunted room in which old Mrs. Battle died — whereinto I have crept, but always in the day- time, with a passion of fear, and a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold communication with the past. — How shall they huild it up again ? It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted but that traces of the splendor of past inmates were everywhere apparent. Its furniture was still standing — even to the tarnished gilt leather battledoors, and crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks in the nursery, which told that children had once played there. But I was a lonely child, and had the range at will of every apart- ment, knew every nook and corner, wondered and wor- shiped everywhere. The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of thought as it is the feeder of love, and silence, and admiration. So strange a passion for the place possessed ine in those years, that, though there lay — I shame to say how few roods distant from the mansion — half hid by trees, what I judged some romantic lake, such was the spell which bound me to the house, and such my carefulness not to pass its strict and proper precincts, 14 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. that tlie idle waters lay unexplored for me ; and not till late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder devotion, I xound, to my astonishment, a pretty brawling brook had Deen the Lacus Incognitus of my infancy. Variegated views, extensive prospects — ana those at no great dis- tance from the house — I was told of such — what were they to me, being out of the boundarisr of my Eden ? So far from a wish to roam, I would have drawn, me- thought, still closer the fences of my chosen prison, and have been hemmed in by a yet securer cincture of those excluding garden walls. I could have exclaimed with that garden-loving poet — Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines ; Curl me about, ye gadding vines ; And oh, so close your circles lace, That I may never leave this place ; But, lest your fetters prove too weak, Ere I your silken bondage break, Do you, brambles, chain me too, And, courteous briers, nail me through.* I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug firesides —the low -built roof — parlors ten feet by ten — frugal boards, and all the homeliness of home — these were the condition of my birth — the wholesome soil which I was planted in. Yet, without impeachment to their tend cr- est lessons, I am not sorry to have had glances of some- thing beyond ; and to have taken, if but a peep, in child' hood, at the contrasting accidents of a great fortune. To have the feelings of gentility, it is not necessary to have been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be had on cheaper terms than to be obliged to an impor- * Marvell, on Appleton House, to the Lord Fairfax. BLAKESMOOR IN H — -SHIRE. 15 fcunate race of ancestors ; and the coatless antiquary in his unemblazoned cell, revolving the long line of a Mow- bray's or De Clifford's pedigree, at those sounding names may warm himself into as gay a vanity as these who do inherit them. The claims of birth are ideal merely, and what herald shall go about to strip me of an idea? Is it trenchant to their swords ? can it be hacked off as a spur can ? or torn away like a tarnished garter ? What else were the families of the great to us? what pleasure should we take in their tedious genealogies, or their capitulatory hrass monuments? What to us the uninterrupted current of their bloods, if our own did not answer within us to a cognate and correspondent elevation? Or wherefore else, O tattered and diminished 'Scutch- eon, that hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely stairs, Blakesmooe ! have I in childhood so oft stood poring upon thy mystic characters — thy emblematic sup- porters, with their prophetic " Resurgam " — till, every dreg of peasantry purging off, I received into myself Very Gentility ? Thou wert first in my morning eyes ; and of nights hast detained my steps from bedward, till it was but a step from gazing at thee to dreaming on thee. This is the only true gentry by adoption ; the veri- table change of blood, and not, as empirics have fabled, by transfusion. Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid trophy, I know not, I inquired not ; but its fading rags and colors cobweb-stained told that its subject was of two centuries back. And what if my ancestor at that date was some Damoe- tas, feeding flocks, not his own, upon the hills of Lincoln 16 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. ■ — did 1 m less earnest vindicate to myself the family trap- pings of this once proad ^gon ? repaying by a back- ward triumph the insults he might possibly have heaped in his lifetime upon my poor pastoral progenitor. If it were presumption so to speculate, the present owners of the mansion had least reason to complain^ They had long forsaken the old house of their fathers for a newer trifle ; and I was left to appropriate to myself what images I could pick up, to raise my fancy, or to soothe my vanity. I was the true descendant of those old W s, and not the present family of that name, who had fled the old waste places. Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, which as I have gone over, giving them in fancy my own family name, one — and then another — would seem to smile, reaching forward from the canvas, to recognize the new relationship ; while the rest looked grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy in their dwelling, and thoughts of fled posterity. That beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and a lamb, that hung next the great bay-window — with the bright yellow H shire hair, and eye of watchet hue, so like my Alice ! — I am persuaded that she was a true Elia — Mildred Elia, I take it. From her, and from my passion for her — for I first learned love from a picture - — Bridget took the hint of those pretty whimsical lines, which thou mayest see, if haply thou hast never seen them, reader, in the margin. But my Mildred grew not old, like the imaginary Helen. High-born Helen, round your dwelling These twenty years I've paced in vain; BLAKESMOOli IN H SHIRE. It Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty Hath been to glory in his pain. High-born Helen, proudly telling Stories of thy cold disdain ; I starve, I die, now you comply, And I no longer can complain. These twenty years I've lived on tears, Dwelling for ever on a frown ; On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread 5 I perish now you kind are grown. Can I, who loved my beloved But for the scorn " was in her eye,'* Can I be moved for my beloved When she returns me sigh for sigh ? In stately pride, by my bedside, High-born Helen's portrait hung ; Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays Are nightly to the portrait sung. To that I weep, nor ever sleep, Complaining all night long to her ; Helen, grown old, no longer cold, Said, " You to all men I prefer." Mine, too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble Marble Hall, with its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Csesars— - stately busts in marble — ranged round, of whose coun- tenances, young reader of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my wonder ; but the mild Galba had my love. There they stood in the coldness of death, yet freshness of immortality. Mine, too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror 2 18 i?fiE LAST ESSAYS OF IJLlA. of luckless poacher or selt'-l'orgetful maiden, so com- mon since that bats have roosted in it. Mine, too— whose els'?? — thy costly fruit-garden, with its sun-baked southern wall ; the ampler pleasure-garden, rising backward from the house in triple terraces, witl flower-pots now of palest lead, save that a speck here and there, saved f^om the elements, bespake their pris tine state to have been gilt and glittering ; the verdant quarters backwarder still; and, stretching still beyond, in old formality, thy fiery wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel and the day-long murmuring wood-pigeon, with that antique image in the center, God or Goddess, I wist not; but child of Athens or old Rome paid never a sin- cerer worship to Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves than I to that fragmental mystery. Was it for this that I kissed my childish hands too fervently in your idol-worship, walks and windings of BL"-kesmoor ! for this, or what sin of mine, has the plow passed over your pleasant places? I sometimes tliink that as men. when they die, do not die all, so of their extinguished habitations there may be a hope — a germ to be revivified. POOR RELATIONS. / / A rooE RELATION is the most irrelevant thing m naturri — a piece of iaipertinent correspondency — an odious approximation — a haunting conscience — a pre- poHterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of our prosperity — an unwelcome remembrancer-!- a perpetu- >ally recurring mortific"atK)DV« drain on your purse — a POOR RELATIONS. 19 more intolerable dun upon your pride — a drawback upon success — a rebuke to your rising — a stain in your blood — a blot on your 'scutcheon — arent in your garmeiat — a death's head at your banquet — Agathocles's pot^a Mor- deoai in your gate, a Lazarus at your door — a lion in your path — a frog in your chamber — a fly in your oint- ment — a mote in your eye — a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends — the one thing not needful— the hail in harvest — the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet. He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you, "That is Mr. ." A rap between familiarity and respect, that demands, and at the same time seems to despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling and — embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and— draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about dinner-time, when the table is full. He offereth to go away, seeing you have company, but is induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your visitor's two children are accommodated at a side table. He never cometh upon open days, when your wife says, with some com- placency, " My dear, perhaps Mr. will drop in to- day." He remembereth birth-days, and professeth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He declareth against fish, the turbot being small, yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice, against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port, yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obsequious or not civil enough to him. The guests think " they have seen him before." Every one speculateth upon his condition ; and the most part take him to be — a tide-waiter. He calleth you by 20 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. your Cliristian name, to imply that his other is the same as your own. He is too familiar by half, yet you wish he had less dittidence. With half the familiarity, he might pass for a casual dependent ; with more boldness, he would be in no danger of being taken for what he is. He is too humble for a friend, yet taketh on him more state than befits a client. He is a worse guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent ; yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanor, that your guests take him for one. He is asked to make one at the whist-table; refuseth on the score of poverty, and — resents being left out. "When the company break up, he proffereth to go for a coach — and lets the servant go. He recollects your grandfather, and will thrust in some mean and quite unimportant anecdote of the family. He knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as " he is blest in seeing it now." He reviveth past situations, to institute what he calleth favorable comparisons. With a reflecting sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price of your furniture ; and insults you with a special commendation of your window-curtains. He is of opin- ion that the urn is the more elegant shape, but, after all, there was something more comfortable about the old teakettle — which you must remember. He dare say you must find a great convenience in having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. In- quireth if you have had your arms done on vellum yet ; and did not know till lately that such-and-such had been the crest of the family. His memory is unseasonable;- his compliments perverse; his talk a trouble; his stay pertinacious ; and when he goeth away you dismiss his chair into a corner, as precipitately as possible, and feel fairly rif^ if two nuisances. POOR RELATIONS. 21 There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is — a female poor relation. You may do something with the other, you may pass him off tolerably well ; but your indigent she-relative is hopeless. " He is an old humor- ist," you may say, "and affects to go threadbare. His circumstances are better than folks would take them to be. You are fond of having a character at your table, and truly he is one." But in the ip^lications of female i poverty there can be no disguise, t No woman dresses I below herself from caprice. The truth must out with- ^out shuffling^ "She is plainly related to the L s; •r what does she at their house ? " She is, in all proba- bihty, your wife's cousin. Mne times out of ten, at least, this is the case. Her garb is something between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former evidently predominates. She is most provokingly humble, and ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He may re- quire to be repressed sometimes — aliquando sujffiaminanr dus erat — but there is no raising her. You send her soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped after the gen- tlemen. Mr. requests the honor of taking wine with her. She hesitates between port and madeira, and chooses the former — because he does. She calls the ser- vant Sir^ and insists on not troubling him to hold her plate. The housekeeper patronizes her. The children's governess takes upon her to correct her, when she has mistaken the piano for harpsichord. Eichard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance of the disadvantages to which this chimerical notion of affinity constituting a claim to acquaintance)piay subject the spirit of a gentleman. A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a lady with a great estate. His stars are perpetually crossed by the malignant maternity 22 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. of an old woman, who persists in calling him " her son Dick." But she has wherewithal in the end to recom- pense his indignities, and float him again upon the hril- liant surface, under which it had been her seeming busi- ness and pleasure all along to sink him. All men, besides, are not of Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet in real life who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor W was of my own standing at Christ's, a line classic, and a youth of promise. If he had a blemish, it was too much pride ; but its quality was inoffensive ; it was not of that sort which hardens the heart, and serves to keep inferiors at a distance ; it only sought to ward off derogation from itself. It was the principle of self- respect, carried as far as it could go, without infringing upon that respect which he would have every one else equally maintain for himself. He would have you to think alike with him on this topic. Many a quarrel have I had with him when we were rather older boys, and our tallness made us more obnoxious to observation in the blue clothes, because I would not thread the alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude notice, when we have been out together on a holiday in the streets of this sneering and prying metropolis. W went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life, meeting with the alloy of a humble introduction, wrought in him a passionate devotion to the place, with a profound aver- sion from the society. The servitor's gown (worse than his school array) clung to him with Nessian venom. He thought himself ridiculous in a garb under which Latimer must have walked erect, and in which Ifooker, in his young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no dis- commendable vanity. In the depth of coUege shades, or in Ms lonely chamber, tlie poor student sirti*nl from observation. He found shelter among books which in- sult not, and studies that ask no questions of a youtli's finances. He was lord of his library, and seldom cared for looking out beyond his domains. The healing influ- ence of studious pursuits was upon him, to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a healthy man, when the waywardness of his faith broke out against him with a second and worse malignity. The father of W had hitherto exercised the humble profession of house-painter at N , near Oxford. A supposed interest with some of the heads of colleges had now induced him to take up his abode in that city, with the hope of being employed upon some public works which were talked of. From that moment I read in the countenance of the young man the determination which at length tore him from academical pursuits for ever. To a person unacquainted with our universities, the distance between the gowns- men and the townsmen, as they are called — the trading part of the latter especially — is carried to an excess that would appear harsh and incredible. The temperament of W 's father was diametrically the reverse of his own. Old W was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, who, with his son upon his arm, would stand bowing and scraping, cap in hand, to anything that wore the semblance of a gown — insensible to the winks and opener remonstrances of the young man, to whose chamber- fellow, or equal in standing, perhaps, he was thus ob- sequiously and gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things could not last. W must change the air of Oxford or be suffocated. He chose the former ; and let the sturdy moralist, who strains the point of the filiai duties as high as they can bear, censure the dereliction ; 24 THE LAST ESSAYS Of ELIA. he can not estimate the struggle. I stood with "W — — , the last afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading from the High Street to the back of College, where W kept his rooms. He seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. I ventured to rally him — finding him in a better mood — upon a representation of the Artist Evangelist, which the old man, whose affairs were be- ginning to flourish, had caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over his reallj handsome shop, either as a token of prosperity or badge of gratitude to his saint. W looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, " knew his mounted sign — and fled." A letter on his father's table the next morning announced that he had accepted a commission in a regiment about to embark for Portugal. He was among the first who perished before the walls of St. Sebastian. I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital so eminently painful ; but this theme of poor re- lationship is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic associations, that it is difficult to keep the account distinct without blending. The earliest impres- sions which I received on this matter are certainly not attended with anything painful or very humiliating in the recalling. At my father's table (no very splendid one) was to be found every Saturday the mysterious fig- ure of an aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet comely appearance. His deportment was of the essence of gravity, his words few or none ; and I was not to make a noise in his presence. I had little inclina- tion to do so, for my cue was to admire in silence. A particular elbow-chair was appropriated to him, which POOR RELATIONS. 25 was in no case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which appeared on no other occasion, distin- guished the days of his coming. I used to think him a prodigiously rich man. All I could, make out of him was, that he and my father had been schoolfellows a world ago at Tjincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place where all the money wai? coined— and I thought he was the owner of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves about his presence. He seemed above human infirmi- ties and pessions. A sort of melancholy grandeur in- vested him. From some inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mourning. A captive — a stately being, let out of the Tower on Sat- urdays. Often have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in spite of an habitual general respect which we all in common manifested toward him, would ven- ture now and then to stand up against him in some argu- ment touching their youthful days. The houses of the ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my read- ers know) between the dwellers on the hill and in the valley. This marked distinction formed an obvious divi- sion between the boys who lived above (however brought together in a common school) and the boys whose pater- nal residence was on the plain; a sufficient cause of hos tility in the code of these young Grotiuses. My father had been a leading Mountaineer ; and would still main- tain the general superiority in skill and hardihood of the Above Boys (his own faction) over the Below Boy» (so were they called), of which party his contemporary had been a chieftain Many and hot were the skirmishes on this topic — the only one upon which the old gentle- man was ever brought out — and bad blood bred ; even /6 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. sometimes almost to the recommencement (so I expected) of actual hostilities. But my father, who scorned to insist upon advantages, generally contrived to turn the conversation upon some adroit by-comniendation of the old minster ; in the general preference of which, before all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller on the hill and the plain-born could meet on a conciliating i©yel, ^>and lay down their less important differences. Once only I saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and I re- membered with anguish the thought that came over me : " Perhaps he will never come here again." He had been pressed to take another plate of the viand which I have already mentioned as the indispensable concomitaBit of his visits. He had refused w ith a resistance amounting to rigor, when my aunt — an old Lincolnian, but who had something of this, in common with my cousin Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility out of season — uttered the following memorable application : " Do take another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pud- ding every day." The old gentleman said nothing at the time ; but he took occasion in the course of the evening, when some argument had intervened between them, to utter, with an emphasis which chilled the com- pany, and which chills me now as I write it — " Woman, you are superannuated ! " John Billet did not survive long after the digesting of this affront ; but he survived long enough to assure me that peace was actuallj^^ re- stored ! and, if I remember aright, another pudding was discreetly substituted in the place of that which had occasioned the offense. He died at the Mint (anno IV'SI), where he had long held what he accounted a comfort- able independence ; and, with five pormds fourteen shil- lings and a penny, which were found in his escritoire DETACHED THOUGHTS. 27 after his decease, left the world, blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was — a Poor Relation. DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READ- ING. To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now, I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own. — Lord Foppington, in the Relapse. An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with this bright sally of his lordship, that he has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsider- able portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walk- ing I am reading. I can not sit and think : books think for me. I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not.too gen- teel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything which I call a hooJc. There are things in that shape which I can not allow for such. In this catalogue of doolcs which are no looTcs — liblia a-UUia—l reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket- Books (the Literary excepted), Draught-Boards bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Alma^acs, 28 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. ^ Statutes at Large ; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robert- son, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally all those vol- umes which " no gentleman's library should be with- out " ; the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's " Moral Philosophy." With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars )>for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. I confess that it moves my spleen to see these thingc in tooTcs' clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what -' seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Es- say. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find — Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of block- headed Encyclopssdias (Anglicanas or Metropoli tanas) set out in an array of Russia or Morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably reclothe my shivering folios; would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund LuUy — I have them both, reader — to look like himself again in the world. I never sec ^ these impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils. To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desidera- tum of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it can be afiTorded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of mag- azines, for instance, in full suit. The dishabille or half- binding (with Russia backs ever) is our costume. A Shakespeare or a Milton (unless tlie first editions), it were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The possession of them confers no distinction. The exterior fiE'fACItED TfiOtJGHTB. ^0 of then, (the things themselves being so common), strange to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the owner. Thomson's " Seasons," again, looks beet (I maintain it) a little torn and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sul- lied leaves and worn-out appearance, nay, the very odor (beyond Russia), if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old Circulating Library " Tom Jones " or •' Vicar of Wakefield " ! How they speak of the thousand thumbs that have turned over their pages with delight ! — of the lone sempstress, whom they may have cheered (milliner, or harder- working mantua-maker) after her long day's needle-toil, running far into mid- night, when she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchanting contents ! Who would have them a whit less soiled ? What better condition could we desire to see them in ? ^ In some respects, the better a book is the less it demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes — Great Nature's Stereotypes — we see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them to be '' eterne." But where a book is at once both good and rare — where the individual is almost the spe- cies, and when that perishes, We know not where is that Promethean torch That can its light relumine — such a book, for instance, as the " Life of the Duke of Newcastle," by his Duchess — no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honor and keep safe such a jewel. go I'HE LAST ^SSAtS OP ELIA. Not only rare volumes of this description, wLich seem hopeless ever to be reprinted, but old editions of writers, such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Mil- ton in his prose works. Fuller — of whom we have re- prints, yet the books themselves, though they go ahout and are talked of here and there, we know, have not endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as to become stock books — it is good to possess these in durable, costly covers. I do not care for a First Folio of Shakespeare. You can not make a pet book of an author whom everybody reads. I rather prefer the common editions of Rowe and Tonson, with- out notes, and with plates, which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps or modest remembrancers to the text, and, without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are so much better than the Shakespeare Gal- lery engravings, which did. I have a community of feel- ing with my countrymen about his plays, and I like those editions of him best which have been oftenest tumbled about and handled. On the contrary, I can not read Beaumont and Fletcher but in Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I have no sympathy with them, nor with Mr. Gifford's Ben Jonson. If they were as much read as the current editions of the other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the older one. I do not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the " Anatomy of Melancholy." What need was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a .winding-sheet of the latest edition to modern censure ? What hapless station- er could dream of Burton ever becoming popular ? The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church to let him whitewash the DETACHED THOUGHTS. 31 painted effigy of old Shakespeare, which stood there, ir rude but lively fashion, depicted to the very color of th^ cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to wear — the only authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of white paint. By , if I had been a justice of peace for Warwickshire I would have clapt both commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling, sacrilegious varlets. I think I see them at their work — these sapient trouble- tombs. Shall I be thought fantastical if I confess that the names of some of our poets sound sweeter and have a finer relish to the ear — to mine, at least — than that of Milton or of Shakespeare ? It may be that the latter are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Haw- thornden, and Cowley. Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the " Fairy Queen" for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andre wes's sermons ? Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music — to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears. Winter evenings — the world shut out — with less of ceremony the gentle Shakespeare enters. At such a sea- son, the "Tempest," or his own " Winter's Tale." These two poets you can not avoid reading aloud — to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listen- 33 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. ing. More than one — and it degenerates into an aU" dience. Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are for the eye to glide over solely. It will not do t© read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness. A newspaper read out is intolerable. In some of the bank offices it is the custom (to save so much individual time) for one of the clerks — who is the best scholar— to commence upon the " Times " or the " Chronicle," and recite its entire contents aloud, ^ro l)ono publico. With every advantage of lungs and elocution, the effect is sin- gularly vapid. In barbers' shops and public houses a fellow will get up and spell out a paragraph, which he comnmnicates as some discovery. Another follows with his selection. So the entire journal transpires at length by piecemeal. Seldom readers are slow readers, and, without this expedient, no one in the company would probably ever travel through the contents of a whole paper. Newspapers always excite curiosity. ISo one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment. What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at NanJo's, keeps the paper ! I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling out incessantly, " The ' Chronicle ' is in hand, sir." As in these little diurnals I generally skip the For- eign News, the Debates, and the Politics I find the' " Morning Herald " by far the most entertaining of them. It is an agreeable miscellany rather than a newspaper. Coming into an inn at night — having ordered your supper — what can be more delightful than to find lying in the window-seat, left there time out of mind by the DETACHED THOUGHTS. 3^ carelessness of some former guest, two or tliree numbers of the old "Town and Country Magazine," with its amus- ing tete-d-tete pictures — " The Eoyal Lover and Lady G ," " The Melting Platonic and the old Beau," and such like antiquated scandal ? Would you exchange it — at that time and in that place — for a better book ? Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so much for the weightier kinds of reading — the " Para- dise Lost " or " Comus " he could have read to him — but he missed the pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a magazine or a light pamphlet. I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of some cathedral alone, and reading " Gandide " I I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having been once detected, by a familiar damsel, reclined at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Oythe- ra), reading "Pamela." There was nothing in the boot to make a man seriously ashamed at the exposure ; out as she seated herself down by me, and seemed determined to read in company, I could have wished it had been — any other book. We read on very sociably for a few pages ; and, not finding the author much to her taste, she got up and went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture whether the blush (for there was one between us) was the property of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never get the secret, I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I can not settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow Hill (as yet Skinner's Street was not) between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of abstrac- tion beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled 3 B4 1?HE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate encounter with a porter's knot, or a bread-basket, would have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and have left me worse than indifferent to the five points. I was once amused — there is a pleasure in affecting affectation — at the indignation of a crowd that was jos- tling in with me at the pit-door of Covent Garden Thea- tre, to have a sight of Master Betty — then at once in hia dawn and his meridian — in " Hamlet." I had been in- vited quite unexpectedly to join a party, whom I met near the door of the play-house, and I happened to have in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steevens's Shakespeare, which, the time not admitting of my car- rying it home, of cours-e went with me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pressure of the doors opening — the rush^ as they term it — I deliberately held the vol- ume over my head, open at the scene in which the young Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly read by the lamp-light. The clamor became universal. " The affectation of the fellow I " cried one. " Look at that gentleman reading^ papa," squeaked a young lady, who in her admiration of the novelty almost forgot her fears. I read on. " He ought to have his book knocked out of his hand," exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms were toe fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to execute his kind intention. Still I read on, and, till the time came to pay my mcmey, kept as unmoved as St. Anthony at his Holy Offices, with satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins mopping and making mouths at him in the picture, while the good man sits undisturbed at the sight as if he were sole ten- ant of the desert. The individual rabble (I recognized VHOYQ than one of their ugly faces) had damned a slight DETACHED THOUGHTS. 35 piece of mine but a few nights before, and I was deter- mined the culprits should not a second time put me out of countenance. There is a class of street-readers whom I can never contemplate without affection — the poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls — the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, and thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting every moment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratification, they " snatch a fearful joy." Martin B , in this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition by asking him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares that under no circumstance in his life did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy snatches. A quaint poet- ess of our day has moralized upon this subject in two very touching but homely stanzas : THE TWO BOYS. I saw a boy with eager eye Open a book upon a stall, And read as he'd devour it all ; Which when the stall-man did espy, Soon to the boy I heard him call, " You, sir, you never buy a book. Therefore in one you shall noc look." The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh He wish'd he never had been taught to read ; Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need. 36 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. Of suiferings the poor have many, Which never can the rich annoy, I soon perceived another boy, Who looked as if he had not any Food — for that day at least — enjoy The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder, Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny, Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat : No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat. IMPERFECT DRAMATIC ILLUSION. A PLAT is said to be well or ill acted, in proportion to the scenical illusion produced. Whether such illusion can in any case be perfect, is not the question. The nearest approach to it, we are told, is when the actor appears wholly unconscious of the presence of specta- tors. In tragedy — in all which is to affect the feelings — this undivided attention to his stage business seemed indispensable. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed with every day by our cleverest tragedians ; and while these refer- ences to an audience, in the shape of rant or sentiment, ire not too frequent or palpable, a sufficient quantity of illusion for the purposes of dramatic interest may be said to be produced in spite of them. But, tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether, in certain characters in comedy, especially those which are a little extrava- gant, or which involve some notion repugnant to the moral sense, it is not a proof of the highest skill in the comedian when, without absolutely appealing to an IMPERFECT DRAMATIC ILLDSION. 37 audience, he keeps up a tacit understanding with then, and makes them, unconsciously to themselves, a party m he scene. The utmost nicety is required in the mode of doing this; but we speak only'of the grea artists m the profession. ^ feel m ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is, per- haps, cowardice. To see a coward done to tke if n^ a stage would produce anything but mirth. Yet we most ■ of us remember Jack Banister's cowards. Could any. ot the actor ,n a perpetual sub-insinuation to us the spectators, even in the extremity of the shaking fit, tha. he was not half such a coward as we took him for? We saw all the common symptoms of the malady upon hnn the quivering lip, the cowering knees, the teeth chattering; and coald have sworn "thtt man'wasfriS a sec. c. to ourselves-that he never once lost his self- possessmn ; that he let out by a thousand drol looks SlTTn""'.^' ""' ""•' "»' ^' ''" «"PP«-<' ot V ible to his fellows in the scene-that his confidence in his own resources had never once deserted him. Wa^ ne'sl 'T71 "'?" "' ' ""^""'^ ' <"• "<" -*•>- a like- .nsteairf „ ' <:'^.^^7'-«^* "-'"^d to paJm upon us nstead of an original; while we secretly connived at ttiedetaonforthe purpose of greater plLure than a more genuine counterfeiting of the imbecility, helpless- omlt^ts nf ^'''"^-'^'-' -"-h we know to beTot comitants of cowardice in real life, could have given us? Why are misers so hateful in the world and so endni- ahl. on the stage, but because the skillful actor, by a son 38 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. of sub-reference rather than direct appeal to us, dis- arms the character of a great deal of its odiousness, hj seeming to engage our compassion for the insecure tenure by which he holds his money-bags and parchments? By l;his subtle vent half of the hatefulness of the character — the self-closeness with which in real life it coils itself up from the sympathies of men — evaporates. The miser becomes sympathetic — i. e., is no genuine miser. Here, again, a diverting likeness is substituted for a very disa- greeable reality. Spleen, irritability, the pitiable infirmities of old men, which produce only pain to behold in the realities, coun- terfeited upon a stage, divert not altogether for the comic appendages to them, but in part from an inner conviction that they are ieing acted before us ; that a likeness only is going on, and not the thing itself. They please by being done under the life, or beside it, not to the life. When Gattie acts an old man, is he angry indeed ? or ■only a pleasant counterfeit, just enough of a likeness to recognize, without pressing upon us the uneasy sense of a reality ? • Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too natural. It was the case with a late actor. Nothing could be more earnest or trne than the manner of Mr. fimery. This told excellently in his Tyke, and charac- ters of a tragic cast ; but when he carried the same rigid exclusiveness of attention to the stage business, and will- ful blindness and oblivion of everything before the cur- tain, into his comedy, it produced a harsh and dissonant effect. He was out of keeping with the rest of the per- soncB dramatis. There was as little link between him and them as betwixt himself and the audience. He was a third estate, dry^ repulsive, and unsocial to all. Individ- 1MPERFI3CT DMMATIC illusion. Sfl ually considered, his execution was masterly. But com- edy is not this unbending thing ; for this reason, that the same degree of credibility is not required of it as of serious scenes. The degrees of credibility demanded of the two things may be illustrated by the different sort of truth which we expect when a man tells us a mourn- ful or a merry story. If we suspect the former of false- hood in any one tittle, we reject it altogether. Our tears refuse to flow at a suspected imposition. But the teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are con- tent with less than absolute truth. 'Tis the same with dramatic illusion. We confess we love in comedy to see an audience naturalized behind the scenes, taken into the interest of the drama, welcomed as bystanders, however. There is something ungracious in a comic actor holding himself aloof from all participation or concern with those who are come to be diverted by him. Macbeth must see the dagger, and no ear but his own be told of it ; but an old fool in farce may think he sees something, and by conscious words and looks express it, as plainly as he can speak, to pit, box, and gallery. When an imperti- nent in tragedy, an Osric, for instance, breaks in upon the serious passions of the scene, we approve of the con- tempt with which he is treated. But when the pleasant impertinent of comedy, in a piece purely meant to give delight and raise mirth out of whimsical perplexities, wor- ries the studious man with taking up his leisure, or mak- ing his house his home, the same sort of contempt ex- pressed (however natural) would destroy the balance of delight in the spectators. To make the intrusion comic, the actor who plays the annoyed man must a little de- sert nature ; he must, in short, be thinking of the audi- ence, and express only so much dissatisfaction and peev- 40 THE LAST ESSAYS Ol' fiLIA. ishness as is consistent with the pleasure of comedy. In other words, his perplexity must seem half put on. If he repel the intruder with the sober set face of a man in earnest, and more especially if he deliver his expostula- tions in a tone which in the world must necessarily pro- voke a duel, his real-life manner will destroy the whim- sical and purely dramatic existence of the other character (which, to render it comic, demands an antagonist comi- cality on the part of the character opposed to it), and convert what was meant for mirth, rather than belief, into a downright piece of impertinence indeed, which would raise no diversion in us, but rather stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest upon any unworthy person. A very judicious actor (in most of his parts) seems to have fallen into an error of this sort in his playing with Mr. Wrench in the farce of " Free and Easy." Many instances would be tedious ; these may suffice to show that comic acting at least does not always d.emand from the performer that strict abstraction from all reference to an audience which is exacted of it ; but that in some cases a sort of compromise may take place, and all the purposes of dramatic delight be attained by a judicious understanding, not too openly announced, between the ladies and gentlemen on both sides of the curtain. TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTO:^". JoYOUSEST of once embodied spirits, whither at length hast thou flown? to what genial region are we permitted to conjecture that thou hast flitted ? TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 41 Art thou sowing thj wild oats yet (the harvest- time was still to come with thee) upon casual sands of Aver- nus ? or art thou enacting Eovee (as we would gladlier think) hy wandering Elysian streams ? This mortal frame, while thou didst play thy brief antics among us, was in truth anything but a prison to thee, as the vain Platonist dreams of this l)ody to be no better than a county Jail, forsooth, or some house of durance vile, whereof the five senses are the fetters. Thou knewest better than to be in a hurry to cast off those gyves, and hadst notice to quit, I fear, before thou wert quite ready to abandon this fleshy tenement. It was thy Pleasure-House, thy Palace of Dainty Devicea ; thy Louvre, or thy Whitehall. What new mysterious lodgings dost thou tenant now ? or when may we expect thy aerial house-warming ? Tartarus we know, and we have read of the Blessed Shades : now can not 1 intelligibly fancy thee in either. Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as the schoolmen admitted a receptacle apart for Patriarch? and unchrisom babes) there may exist — not far perchance from that storehouse of all vanities, which Milton saw iB vision — a Limbo somewhere for Platees ? and that Up thither like aerial vapors fly Both all Stage things, and all that m Stage things Built their fond hopes of glory or lasting fame ? All the unaccomplished works of Authors' hands, Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed, Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither — Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery. There, by the neighboring moon (by some not im- properly supposed thy Kegent Planet upon earth), mayst 42 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. thou not still be acting thy managerial pranks, great disembodied Lessee, but Lessee still, and still a manager? In green-rooms, impervious to mortal eye, the muse beholds thee wielding posthumous empire. Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) circle thee in endlessly, and still their song is '•''Fie on sinful Phantasy ! " Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe of earth, Robeet William Elliston ! for as yet we know not thy new name in heaven. It irks me to think that, stripped of thy regalities, thou shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Stygian wherry. Methinks I hear the old boatman, paddling by the weedy wharf, with raucid voice, bawl- ing "Sculls, Sculls" ; to which, with waving hand and majestic action, thou deignest not to reply, other than in two curt monosyllables, "No; Oars." But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small differ- ence between king and cobbler, manager and call-boy ; and, if haply your dates of life were conterminent, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (O igno- ble leveling of Death !) with the shade of some recently departed candle- snuffer. But mercy ! what strippings, what tearing off of his- trionic robes and private vanities, what denudations to the bone, before the surly Ferryman will admit you to set a foot within his battered lighter ! Crowns, scepters; shield, sword, and truncheon; thy own coronation robes (for thou hast brought the whole property-man's wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a navy) ; the judge's ermine ; the coxcomb's wig ; the snuff-box d la Foppington — all must overboard, he positively swears ; and th^t Ancient Mariner brooks no TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 43 deniar , ror, since the tiresome monodrame of the old Thracian Harper, Charon, it is to be believed, hath shown small taste for theatricals. Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat-weight: pura et puta anima. But, bless me, how little you look ! So shall we all look — kings and kaisers — stripped for the last voyage. But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu, pleasant, and thrice pleasant shade ! with my parting thanks for many an hour of life lightened by thy harmless extrava> ganzas, public or domestic. Rhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes bsir ,.-, leaving to his two brethren the heavy calendars — honest Rhadamanth, always partial to players, weighing their party-colored existence here upon earth- r^aking account of the few foibles that may have sho.ded thy real life^ as we call it (though, substantially, cf arcely ..ess a vapor than thy idlest vagaries roon ohe ooards or Orury), as but of so many echoes, natural repercussions, and results to be expected from the assuii'ed extravagancies of thy secondary or moch life^ nightly upon a stage — after a lenient castigation, with rods lighter than of those Me- duseac ringlets, but just enough w " whip the offending Adam out of thee," shall courteously dismiss thee at the right-hand gate— the O. P. side of Hades— that conducts to masques and merrymakings in the Theatre xioyal of Proserpine. . PLAUDITO, ET VALETO. 44 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. ELLISTONIANA. My acquaintance with the pleasant creature, wuoee loss we all deplore, was but slight. My first introduction to E., which afterward ripened into an acquaintance a little on this side of intimacy, was over a counter in the Leamington Spa Library, then newly entered upon by a branch of his family. iG., whom nothing misbecame — to auspicate, I suppose, the filial concern, and set it agoing with a luster — was serving in person two damsels fair, who had come into the shop ostensibly to inquire for some new publication, but in reality to have a sight of the illustrious shopman, noping some conference. With what an air did he reach down the volume, dispassionately giving his opinion of the worth of the work in question, and launching out into a dissertation on its comparative merits witn those of certain publications of a similar stamp, its rivals ! his enchanted customers fairly hanging on his lips, subdued to their authoritative sentence. So have I seen a gen- tleman in comedy acting the shopman. So Lovelace sold his gloves in King Street. I admired the histrionic art by which he contrived to carry clean away every notion of disgrace from the occupation he had so generously submitted to ; and from that hour I judged him, with no after repentance, to be a person with whom it would be a felicity to be more acquainted. To descant upon his merits as a Comedian would be superfluous. "With his blended private and professional habits alone I have to do ; that harmonious fusion of the planners of the player into those of every-day life, whicli ELLISTONIANA. 45 brought the stage-boards into streets and dining-parlors, and kept up the play when the play was ended. "I like Wrench," a friend was saying to him one day, " because he is the same natural, easy creature on the stage that he is off.'''' " My case exactly," retorted Elliston — with a charming forgetfulness that the con- verse of a proposition does not always lead to the same conclusion — "I am the same person o^the stage that I am ony The inference, at first sight, seems identical ; but examine it a little, and it confesses only that the one performer was never, and the other always, acting. And in truth this was the charm of Elliston's private deportment. You had spirited performance always going on before your eyes, with nothing to pay. As where a monarch takes up his casual abode for a night, the poor- est hovel which he honors by his sleeping in it becomes ipso facto for that time a palace ; so wherever Elliston walked, sat, or stood still, there was the theatre. He carried about with him his pit, boxes, and galleries, and set up his portable playhouse at corners of streets and in the market-places. Upon flintiest pavements he trod the boards still ; and if his theme chanced to be passion- ate, the green-baize carpet of tragedy spontaneously rose beneath his feet. Now this was hearty, and showed a love for his art. So Apelles always painted — in thought. So Gr. D. alioays poetizes. I hate a lukewarm artist. I have known actors — and some of them of Elliston's own stamp ,/lio shall have agreeably been amusing you in the part of a rake or a coxcomb through the two or three hours of their dramatic existence ; but no sooner does the curtain fall with its le;iden clatter, but a spirit of lead seems to seize on all their faculties. They emerge .:our, morose persons, intolerable to their families, ser- 46 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELll. vants, etc. Another shall have been expanding your heart with generous deeds and sentiments, till it even beat with yearnings of universal sympathy ; you abso- lutely long to go home and do some good action. The play seems tedious, till you can get fairly out of the house aud realize your laudable intentions. At length the final bell rings, and this cordial representative of all that is amiable in human breasts steps forth — a miser. EUiston was more of a piece. Did he play Ranger, and did Eanger fill the general bosom of the town with satis- faction ? ^'hy should he not be Ranger, and diffuse the same cordial satisfaction among his private circles ? with his temperament, his animal spirits, his good nature, his follies perchance, could he do better than identify him- self with his impersonation ? Are we to like a pleasant rake or coxcomb on the stage, and give ourselves airs of aversion for the identical character presented to us in actual life? or what would the performer have gained by divesting himself of the impersonation ? Could the man Elliston have been essentially different from his part, even if he had avoided to reflect to us studiously, in private circles, the airy briskness, the forwardness, and scapegoat trickeries of his prototype ? "But there is something not natural in this everlast- ing acting ; we want the real man." Are you quite sure that it is not the man himself, whom you can not or will not see, under some adventi- tious trappings, which, nevertheless, sit not at all incon- sistently upon him? What if it is the nature of some men to be highly artificial ? The fault is least reprehen- sible in players. Gibber was his own Foppington, with almost as much wit as Vanbrugh could add to it. " My conceit of his person " — it is Ben Jonson speak- ELLISTONIANA. 47 ing of Lord Bacon — " was never increased toward him by his place or honors. But I have, and do reverence him for the greatness that was only proper to himself; in that he seemed to me ever one of the greatest men that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that Heaven would give him strength ; for great- ness he could not want." The quality here commended was scarcely less con- spicuous in the subject of these idle reminiscences than in my Lord Verularn. Those who have imagined that an unexpected elevation to the direction of a great Lon- don theatre affected the consequence of Elliston, or at all changed his nature, knew not the essential greatness of the man whom they disparage. It was my fortuno to encounter him near St. Dunstan's Church (which, with its punctual giants, is now no more than dust and a shadow) on the morning of his election to that high office. Grasping my hand with a look of significance, he only uttered, " Have you heard the news ? " — then, with another look following up the blow, he subjoined, *' I am the future Manager of Drury Lane Theatre." Breathless as he saw me, he stayed not for congratula- tion or reply, but mutely stalked away, leaving me to chew upon his new-blown dignities at leisure. In fact, nothing could be said to it. Expressive silence alone could muse his praise. This was in his great style. But was he less great (be witness, O ye Powers of Equanimity, that supported in the ruins of Carthage the consular exile, and more recently transmuted, for a more illustrious exile, the barren constableship of Elba into an image of Imperial France) when, in melancholy after- years, again, much jiear the same spot, I met him, when that scepter had been wrested from his hand, and his i 48 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA„ dominion was curtailed to the petty managership and part proprietorship of the small Olympic, Ms Elba? He still played nightly upon the boards of Drury, but in parts, alas ! allotted to him, not magniticently distrib- uted by him. Waiving his great loss as nothing, and magnificently sinking the sense of fallen material gran- deur in the more liberal resentment of depreciations done to his more lofty intellectual pretensions — " Have you heard" (his customary exordium) — "have you heard," said he, " how they treat me? they put me in comedy.'''* Thought I — but his finger on his lips forbade any verbal interruption — " Where could they have put you better ? " Then, after a pause — " Where I formerly played Romeo, I now play Mercutio." And so again he stalked away, neither staying nor caring for responses. Oh, it was a rich scene — but Sir A C , the best of story-tellers and surgeons, who mends a lame narrative almost as well as he sets a fracture, alone could do Justice to it — that I was a witness to in the tarnislied room (that had once been green) of that same little Olym- pic. There, after his deposition from Imperial Drury, he substituted a throne. That Olympic Hill was his " highest heaven " ; himself " Jove in his chair." There he sat in state, while before him, on complaint of prompt- er, was brought for judgment — how shall I describe her • ■ — one of those little tawdry things that flirt at the tails of choruses — a probationer for the town, in either of its senses — the pertest little drab — a dirty fringe and ap- pendage of the lamp's smoke — who, it seems, on some disapprobation expressed by a " highly respectable " audience, had precipitately quitted her station on the boards, and withdrawn her small talents in disgust. " And how dare you," said her manager, assuming a ELLISTOKIANA. 49 censorial severity, which would have crushed the confi- dence of a Vestris, and disarmed that beautiful Kebel herself of her professional caprices — I verily believe he thought her standing before him — " how dare you, madam, withdraw yourself, without a notice, from your theatrical duties?" " I was hissed, sir." "And you have the presumption to decide upon the taste of the town? " " I don't know that, sir, but I will never stand to be hissed," was the sub joinder of young Confidence — when, gathering up bis features into one significant mass of wonder, pity, and expostulatory iudignation — in a les- son never to have been lost upon a creature less forward than she who stood before him — liis words were these : " They have hissed we." 'Twas the identical argument a fortiori^ which the son of Peleus uses to Lycaon trembling under his lance, to persuade him to take his destiny with a good grace : *' I, too, am mortal." And it is to be believed that in both cases the rhetoric missed of its application, for want of a proper understanding with the faculties of the re- spective recipients. " Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he was cour- teously conducting me over the benches of his Surrey Theatre, the last retreat, and recess, of his every-day waning grandeur. Those who knew Elliston will know the manner in which he pronounced the latter sentence of the few iivords I am about to record. One i)roud day to me he iook his roast mutton with us in the Temple, to which 1 had superadded a preliminary haddock. After a rather plentiful partaking of the meager banquet, not unrc" freshed with the humbler sort of liquors, I made a sort of apology for the humility of the fare, observing that 4 50 'J'HE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. for my own part I never ate but one dish at dinner. " I, too, never eat but one thing at dinner,". was his reply — then, after a pause — " reckoning fish as nothing." The manner was all. It was as if by one peremptory sen- tence he had decreed the annihilation of all the savory esculents which the pleasant and nutritious food-giving Ocean pours forth upon poor humans from her v^^atery bosom. This was greatness^ tempered with considerat* tenderness to the feelings of his scanty but welcoming entertainer. Great wert thou in thy life, Eobert William Elliston, and not lessened in thy death, if report speaks truly, which says that thou didst direct that thy mortal remains should repose under no inscription but one of pure La- tinity. Classical was thy bringing up ; and beautiful was the feeling on thy last bed, which, connecting the man with the boy, took thee back, in thy latest exercise of imagination, to the days when, undreaming of Thea- tres and Managerships, thou wert a scholar, and an early ripe one, under the roofs builded by the munificent atid pious Colet. For thee the Pauline Muses weep. In ele- gies that shall silence this crude prose they shall celebrate thy praise. THE OLD MARGATE HOY. I AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe I have said so 'jefore) at one or other of the Universities. Next to these my choice would fix me at some woody spot, such as the neighborhood of Henley affords in abun- dance, on the banks of my beloved Thames. Biit some* THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 51 how or other my cousin contrive& to wheedle me, once in three or four seasons, to a watering-place. Old at- tachments cling to her in spite of experience. We have been dull at Worthing one summer, duller at Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourne a third, and are at this moment doing dreary penance at — Hastings! — and all be- cause we were happy many years ago for a brief week at — ■ Margate. That was our first seaside experiment, and many circumstances combined to make it the most agreeable hol- iday of my life. We had neither of us seen the sea, and we had never been from home so long together in company. Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy weather-beaten, sun-burnt captain, and his rough accom- modations — ill exchanged for the foppery and fresh- water niceness of the modern steam-packet? To the winds and waves thou committedst thy goodly freight- age, and didst ask no aid of magic fumes and spells and boiling caldrons. With the gales of heaven thou went- est swimmingly ; or, when it was their pleasure, stoodest still with sailor-like patience. Thy course was natural, not forced, as in a hot-bed ; nor didst thou go poisoning the breath of ocean with sulphurous smoke — a great sea chimera, chimneying and furnacing the deep ; or liker to that fire-god parching up Scamander. Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their coy reluctant responses (yet to the suppression of any- thing like contempt) to the raw questions which we of the great city would be ever and anon putting to them, as to the uses of this or that strange naval implement ? Specially can I forget thee, thou happy medium, thou shade of refuge between ns and them, conciliating in- terpreter of their skill to our simplicity, comfortable ambassador between sea and land I — whose sailor-trou- q2 the last essays of ELlA. sers did not more convincingly assure thee to be an adopted denizen of the former than thy white cap and whiter apron over them, with thy neat-fingered practice in thy culinary vocation, bespoke thee to have been of inland nurture heretofore — a master cook of Eastcheap ? How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation, cook, mariner, attendant, chamberlain : here, there, like another Ariel, flaming at once about all parts of the deck, yet with kindlier ministrations — not to assist the tem- pest, but, as if touched with a kindred sense of our in- firmities, to soothe tlie qualms which that untried motion might haply raise in our crude land-fancies. And when the o'er- washing billows drove us below deck (for it was far gone in October, and we had stiff and blowing weath- er), how did thy officious ministerings, still catering for our comfort, with cards, and cordials, and thy more cor- dial conversation, alleviate the closeness and the confine- ment of thy else (truth to say) not very savory nor very inviting little cabin ? With these additaments to boot, we had on board a fellow passenger, whose discourse in verity might have beguiled a longer voyage than we meditated, and have made mirth and wonder abound as far as from Thames to the Azores. He was a dark, Spanish- coniplexioned young man, remarkably handsome, with an officer like assurance, and an insuppressible volubility of assertion. He was, in fact, the greatest liar I had met with then or since. He was none of your hesitating, half story-tell- ers (a most painful description of mortals), who go on sounding your belief, and only giving you as much as they see you can swallow at a time — the nibbling pick- pockets of your patience — but one who committed down- right daylight depredations upon his neighbor's faith. THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 53 He did not stand shivering upon the hrink, hut was a hearty, thorough-paced liar, and plunged at once into the depths of your credulity. I partly believe he made pretty sure of his company. Not many rich, not many wise, or learned, composed, at that time the common stowage of a Margate packet. We were, I am afraid, a set of as unseasoned Londoners (let our enemies give it a worse name) as Thames or Tooley Street at that time of day could have supplied. There might be an exception or two among us, but I scorn to make any invidious distinctions among such a jolly, companionable ship's company as those were whom I sailed with. Something, too, must be conceded to the Genius Loci. Had the confident fellow told us half the legends on land which he favored us with on the other element, I flatter myself the good sense of most of us would have revolted. But we were in a new world, with everything unfamiliar about us, and the time and place disposed us to the re- ception of any prodigious marvel whatsoever. Time has obliterated from my memory much of his wild fablings ; and the rest would appear but dull, as written, and to be read on shore. He had been Aide-de-camp (among other rare accidents and fortunes) to a Persian Prince, and at one blow had stricken off the head of the King of Oara- mania on horseback. He, of course, married the Prince's daughter. I forget what unlucky turn in the politics of that court, combining with the loss of his consort, was the reason of his quitting Persia; but, with the rapidity of a magician, he transported himself, along with his hear- ers, back to England, where we still found him in the confidence of great ladies. There was some story of a Princess— Elizabeth, if I remember— having intrusted to his care an extraordinary casket of jew^Js. upon sonw* 54 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. extraordinary occasion ; but, as I am not certain of the name or circumstance at this distance of time, I must leave it to the Eoyal daughters of England to settle the honor among themselves in private. I can not call to mind half his pleasant wonders ; but I perfectly remem- ber that in the course of his travels he had seen a phoe- nix ; and he obligingly undeceived us of the vulgar error that there is but one of that species at a time, assuring us that they were not uncommon in some parts of Upper Egypt. Hitherto he had found the most implicit listen- ers. His dreaming fancies had transported us beyond the " ignorant present." But when (still hardying more and more in his triumphs over our simplicity) La went on to affirm that he had actually sailed through the legs of the Colossus at Rhodes, it really became necessary to make a stand. And here I must do justice to the good sense and intrepidity of one of our party, a youth that had hitherto been one of his most deferential auditors, who, from his recent reading, made bold to assure the gentleman that there must be some mistake, as " the Colossus in question had been destroyed long since " ; to whose opinion, delivered with all modesty, our hero was obliging enough to concede thus much, that " the figure was indeed a little damaged." This was the only oppo- sition he met with, and it did not at all seem to stagger him, for he proceeded with his fables, which the same youth appeared to swallow with still more complacency than ever — confirmed, as it were, by the extreme candor of that concessioi^. With these prodigies he wheedled as on till we came in sight of the Reculvers, which one of our own company (having been the voyage before) immediately recognizing, and pointing out to us, was oonsidered by us as no ordinary seaman. ^HE OLd MAHGATE hoy. 55 All this time sat upon the edge of the deck quite a different character. It was a lad, apparently very poor, very infirm, and very patient. His eye was ever on the sea, with a smile ; and, if he caught now and then some snatches of these wild legends, it was by accident, and they seemed not to concern him. The waves to him whispered more pleasant stories. He was as one, being with us, but not of us. He heard the bell of dinner ring without stirring; and when some of us pulled out our private stores— our cold meat and our salads— he pro- duced none, and seemed to want none. Only a solitary biscuit he had laid in— provision for the one or two days and nights to which these vessels then were oftentimes obliged to prolong their voyage. Upon a nearer ac- quaintance with him, which he seemed neither to court Qor decline, we learned that he was going to Margate with the hope of being admitted into the Infirmary there for sea-bathing. His disease was a scrofula, which ap- peared to have eaten all over him. He expressed great hopes of a cure ; and when we asked him whether he had any friends where he was going, he replied " he had no friends." These pleasant and some mournful passages, with the first sight of the sea, cooperating with youth, and a sense of holidays and out-of-door adventure, to me that had been pent up in populous cities for many months before —have left upon my mind the fragrance as of summer days gone by, bequeathing nothing but their remem- brance for cold and wintry hours to chew upon. Will it be thought a digression (it may spare some anwelcome comparisons), if I endeavor to account fo- the dissatisfaction which I have heard so many persons confess to have felt (as I did myself feel in part on this 66 THfi LAST ESSAYS OF fiLIA. occasion) at the sight of the sea for the first time? I think the reason usually given — referring to the incapa- city of actual objects for satisfying our preconceptions of them — scarcely goes deep enough into the question. Let the same person see a lion, an elephant, a mountain, for the first time in his life, and he shall perhaps feel himself a little mortified. The things do not fill up that space which the idea of them seemed to take up in his mind. But they have still a correspondency to his first notion, and in time grow up to it, so as to produce a very similar impression ; enlarging themselves (if I may say so) upon familiarity. But the sea remains a disap- pointment. Is it not, that in the latter we had ex- pected to behold (absurdly, I grant, but I am afraid, by the law of imagination, unavoidably) not a definite ob- ject, as those wild beasts, or that mountain compassable by the eye, but all the sea at once, the oommensueate ANTAGONIST OF THE EAETH ? I do not Say we tell our- selves so much, but the craving of the mind is to be sat- isfied with nothing less. I will suppose the case of a young person of fifteen (as I then was), knowing nothing of the sea but from description. He comes to it for the first time — all that he has been reading of it all his life, and that the most enthusiastic part of life, all he has gathered from narratives of wandering seamen, what he has gained from true voyages, and what he cherishes as credulously from romance and poetry, crowding their images, and exacting strange tributes from ex3)ectation. He thinks of the great deep, and of those w^ho go down unto it ; of its thousand isles, and of the vast continents it washes; of its receiving the mighty Plate or Orellana into its bosom, without disturbance or sense of augmen- tation ; of Biscfty swells and the mariner THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 57 For many a day, and many a dreadful night, Incessant laboring round the stormy Cape ; of fatal rocks, and the " still-vexed Bermootlies " ; of great whirlpools, and the water-spout ; of sunken ships, and the sunless treasures swallowed up in the unrestor- ing depths ; of fishes and quaint monsters, to which all ttiat is terrible upon earth Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal, Compared with the creatures in the sea's entral ; of Ea^ied savages, and Juan Fernandez ; of pearls, and shells ; of coral beds, and of enchanted isles ; of mer- maids' grots — I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects to be shown all these wonders at once, but he is under the tyranny of a mighty faculty, which haunts him witli confused hints and shadows of all these ; and when the actual object opens first upon him, seen (in tame weather, too, most likely) from our unromantic coasts — a speck, a slip of sea-water, as it shows to him — what can it prove but a very unsatisfying and even diminutive en- tertainment ? Or if he has come to it from the mouth of a river, was it much more than the river widening ? *nd, even out of the sight of land, what had he but a flat, watery horizon about him, nothing comparable to the vast o'ercurtaining sky, his familiar object, seen daily without dread and amazement? Who, in similar cir- cumstances, has not been tempted to exclaim with Cha- td\Mj in the poem of Gebir — Is this the mighty ocean ? is this all ! I love tpwo or coimtry ; hut this detestable Cinq^ue 58 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. Port is neither. I hate these scrubbed shoots, thrusting out their starved foliage from between the horrid fissures of dustj, innutritions rocks, whicli the amateur calls " verdure to the edge of the sea." I require woods, and they show me stunted coppices. I cry out for the water- brooks, and pant for fresh streams and inland murmurs. I can not stand all day on the naked beach, watching the ©apricious hues of the sea, shifting like the colors of a dying mullet. I am tired of looking out at the windows* of this island prison. I would fain retire into the inte- rior of my cage. While I gaze upon the sea, I want to be on it, over it, across it. It binds me in with chains, as of iron. My thoughts are abroad. I should not so feel in Staffordshire. There is no home for me here. Thi&re is no sense of home at Hastings. It is a place of fugitive resort, a heterogeneous assemblage of sea-mew? and stock-brokers, Amphitrites of the town, and misses' that coquet with the Ocean. If it were what it was in its primitive shape, and what it ought to have remained. a fair, honest, fishing town, and no more, it were some- thing : with a few straggling fishermen's huts scattered about, artless as its cliffs, and with their materials filched from them, it were something. I could abide to dwell with Meshech, to assort with fisher-swains and smug- glers. There are, or I dream there are, many of thi>» latter occupation here. Their faces become the placcc I like a smuggler. He is the only honest thief. He robs nothing but the revenue — an abstraction I never greatly cared about. I could go out with them in their mack- erel boats, or about their less ostensible business, with some satisfaction. I can even tolerate those poor vic- tims to monotony, who from day to day pace along the l;)^^chj in endless pro|^ress e^d recurrence, to watch their THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 59 illicit countrjmf^n — townsfolk or brethren perchance — • whistling to the sheathing and unsheathing of their cut- lasses (their only solace), who, under the mild name of preventive service, keep up a legitimated civil warfare in the deplorable absence of a foreign one, to show their detestation of run hollands, and zeal for Old England. But it is the visitants from town that come here to say that they have been here, with no more relish of the sea than a pond-perch or a dace might be supposed to have, that are my aversion. I feel like a foolish dace in these regions, and have as little toleration for myself here as for them. What can they want here? If they had a true relish of the ocean, why have they brought all this land luggage with them ? or why pitch their civilized tents in the desert? What mean these scanty book- rooms — marine libraries as they entitle them — if the sea were, as they would have us believe, a book " to read strange matter in " ? What are their foolish concert- rooms, if they come, as they would fain be thought to do, to listen to the music of the waves ? All is false and hollow pretension. They come because it is the fashion, and to spoil the nature of the place. They are, mostly, as I have said, stock-brokers ; but I have watched the better sort of them. Now and then an honest citizen (of the old stamp), in the si'Tiplicity of his heart, shall bring down his wife and daughters to taste the sea breezes. I always know the date of their arrival. It is easy to see it in their countenance. A day or two they go wander- ing on the shingles, picking up cockle-shells, and think- ing them great things ; but, in a poor week, imagination slackens : they begin to discover that cockles produce no pearls, and then — O then ! — if I could interpret for the pretty creatures (I know they have not the courage to 60 "i'HE 1.AST ESSAYS OF ELIA. confess it themselves), how gladly would they exchange their seaside rambles for a Sunday walk on the green* sward of their accustomed Twickenham meadows 1 I would ask of one of these sea-charmed eniigrantSj who think tliey truly love the sea, with its wild usageSj what would their feelings be if some of the unsophisti- cated aborigines of this place, encouraged by their cour- teous questionings here, should venture, on the faith ol such assured sympathy between them, to return the visit, and come up to see — London. I must imagine them with their lishing-tackle on their back, as we carry our town necessaries. What a sensation would it cause in Lothbury. What vehement laughter would it not excite among The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard Street. I am sure that no town-bred or inland-born subjects can feel their true and natural nourishment at these sea- piaces. Nature, where she does not mean us for mariners and vagabonds, bids us stay at home. The salt foam seems to nourish a spleen. I am not half so good-natured as by the milder waters of my natural river. I would exchange these sea-gulls for swans, and scud a swallovi for ever about the banks of Tamesis. TEE CONYALESOENT. A PRETTY severe fit of indisposition which, under the name of a nervous fever, has made a prisoner of me for some weeks past, and is but slowly leaving me, has re- tHE CONVALfiSCENt tfl duced me to an incapacity of reflecting upon any topic foreign to itself. Expect no healthy conclusions from me this month, reader ; I can offer you only sick men's dreams. And truly the whole state of sickness is such; for what else is it but a magnificent dream for a man to lie abed, and draw daylight curtains about him, and, shut- ting out the sun, to induce a total oblivion of all the works which are going on under it ? — to be3ome insen- sible to all the operations of life, except the beatings of one feeble pulse ? If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. How the patient lords it there ! what caprices he acts without control ! how king-like he sways his pillow — tumbling, and tossing, and shifting, and raising, and lowering, and thumping, and flattening, and molding it, to the ever- varying requisitions of his throbbing temples ! He changes sides oftener than a politician. Now he lies full length, then half length, obliquely, transversely, head and feet quite across the bed ; and none accuses him of tergiversation. Within the four curtains he is abso- lute. They are his Mare Olausum. How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself ! he is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty. 'Tis the Two Tables of the Law to him. He has nothing to think of but how to get well. What passes out of doors, or within them, so he hear not the jarring of them, affects him not. A little while ago he was greatly concerned in the event of a lawsuit, which was to be the making or the marring of his dearest friend. He was to be seen trudge ing about upon this man's errand to fifty quarters of the 62 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELlA. town at once, Jogging this witness, refreshing that soli- citor. The cause was to come ou yesterday. He is absolutely as indifferent to the decision as if it were a question to be tried at Pekin. Perad venture from some whispering, going on about the house, not intended for his hearing, he picks up enough to make him under^ stand that things went cross-grained in the Court yester- day, and his friend is ruined. But the word " friend " and the word " ruin " disturb him no more than so much jargon. He is not to think of anything but how to get better. What a world of foreign cares are merged in that absorbing consideration ! He has put on the strong armor of sickness, he is wrapped in the callous hide of suffering ; he keeps his sympathy, like some curious vintage, under trusty lock and key, for his own use only. He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to him- self ; he yearneth over himself ; his bowels are even melted within him, to think what he suffers ; he is not ashamed to weep over himself. He is for ever plotting how to do some good to himself; studying little stratagems and artiticial alle- viations. He makes the most of himself ; dividing himself, by an allowable fiction, into as many distinct individuals as he hath sore and sorrowing members. Sometimes he meditates— as of a thing apart from him — upon his poor aching head, and that dull pain which, dozing or waking, lay in it all the past night like a log, or palpable sub- stance of pain, not to be removed without opening the very skull, as it seemed, to take it thence. Or he pitie» his long, clammy, attenuated fingers. He compassion- tHE OOiVVALESCENT. 63 atb(3 tiimseif ail over ; and his bed is a verj discipline of hutnanity ana tender neari. He IS nis own sympathizer, and instinctively feels that none can so well perform that office for him. He cares for tew spectators to his tragedy. Only that punc- tual face of the old nurse pleaser? bim, that announces his broths and his cordials. He iikes it because it is so unmoved, and because he can pour lorth his feverish ejaculations before it as unreservedly as to his bedpost. To the world's business he is dead. He understands not what the callings and occupations of mortals are ; onlj he has a glimmering conceit of some sucJti tning, whet the doctor makes his daily call ; and even in tfie lines oi that busy face he reads no multiplicity of patients, but solely conceives of himself as the sicTc man. I'o what other uneasy couch the good man is hastening when he slips out of his chamber, folding up his thin douceur so carefully, for fear of rustling, is no speculation which he can at present entertain. He thinks only of the regular return of the same phenomenon at the saire hour to- morrow. Household rumors touch him not. Some faint mur- mur, indicative of life going on within the house, soother him, while he knows not distinctly what it is. He is not to know anything, not to think of anything. Servants gliding up or down the distant staircase, treading as upon velvet, gently keep his ear awake, so long as he troubles not himself further than with some feeble guess at their errands. Exacter knowledge would be a burden to him ; he can just endure the pressure of conjecture. He opens his eye faintly at the dull stroke of the muffled knocker, and closes it again without asking " Wlio was it 2 " He is flattered b.y a general notion that inquiries 64 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA„ are making after him, bnt he cares not to know the name of the inquirer. In the general stillness and awful hush of the house, he lies in state, and feels his sovereignty. To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives. Com- pare the silent tread, and quiet ministry almost by the eye only, with which he is served, with the careless de- meanor, the unceremonious goings in and out (slapping^ of doors, or leaving them open) of the very same atten- dants when he is getting a little better ; and you will confess that from the bed of sickness (throne let me rather call it) to the elbow-chair of convalescence is a fall from dignity amounting to a deposition. How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pris- tine stature ! Where is now the space which he occu- pied so lately in his own, in the family's eye ? The scene of hia regalities, his sick-room, which was his presence- chamber, where he lay and acted his despotic fancies — • how is it reduced to a common bedroom ! The trimness of the very bed has something petty and unmeaning about it. It is made every day. How unlike to that wavy, many-furrowed, oceanic surface, which it pre- sented so short a time since, when to mahe it was a ser- vice not to be thought of at ofteuer than three- or four- day revolutions, when the patient was with pain and grief to be lifted for a little while out of it, to submit to the encroachments of unwelcome neatness, and decen- cies which his shaken frame deprecated ; then to be lifted into it again, for another three or four days' res- pite, to flounder it out of shape again, w^hile every fresh farrow was an historical record of some shifting posture, some uneasy turning, some seeking for a little ease ; and che shrunken skin scarce told a truer story than the crumpled coverlid. ffiE CONVALESCENT. ^§ Hushed are those mysterious sighs — those groans so much more awful, while we knew not from what caverns of vast hidden suffering they proceeded. The Lernean pangs are quenched. The riddle of sickness is solved : and Philoctetes is become an ordinary personage. Perhaps some relic of the sick man's dream of greats ness survives in the still lingering visitations of the med= ical attendant. But how is he, too, changed with every« thing else I Can this be he— this man of news, of chat, of anecdote, of everything but physic— can this be he, who so lately came between the patient and his cruel enemy, as on some solemn embassy from Nature, erect- ing herself into a high mediating party ? Pshaw I 'tis some old woman. Farewell with him all that made sickness pompous— the spell that hushed the household— the desert-like stillness, felt throughout its inmost chambers— the mute attendance— the inquiry by looks— the still softer deli- cacies of self-attention— the sole and single eye of dis- temper alonely fixed upon itself— world-thoughts excluded — the man a world unto himself— his own theatre — What a speck is he dwindled into I In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by the ebb of sickness, yet far enough from the terra firma of estab- lished health, your note, dear Editor, reached me, re- questing—an article. In Articulo Mortis, thought I ; but it is something hard— and the quibble, wretched as it was, relieved me. The summons, unseasonable as it appeared, seemed to link me on again to the petty busi- nesses of life, which I had lost sight of; a gentle call to activity, however trivial; a wholesome weaning from that preposterous dream of self-absorption— the pufl^ 5 66 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. state of sickness — in which I confess to have lain so long, insensible to the magazines and monarchies of the world alike ; to its laws, and to its literature. The hypochondriac flatus is subsiding ; the acres which in imagination I had spread over — for the sick man swells in the sole contemplation of his single sufferings, till he becomes a Tityus to himself — are wasting to a span ; and for the giant of self-importance which I was so lately, you have me once again in my natural pretensions — the lean and meager figure of your insignificant Monthly Contributor. CAPTAIN" JACKSON. Among the deaths in our obituary for this month, 1 observe with concern " At his cottage on the Bath road. Captain Jackson." The name and attribution are com- mon enough ; but a feeling like reproach persuades me that this could have been no other in fact than my dear old friend, who some five and twenty years ago rented a tenement, which he was pleased to dignify with the appellation here used, about a mile from Westbourne Green. Alack, how good men, and the good turns they do us, slide out of memory, and are recalled but by the surprise of some such sad memento as that which now lies before me ! He whom I mean was a retired half -pay officer, with a wife and two grown-up daughters, whom he main- tained with the port and notions of gentlewomen upon that slender professional allowance. Comely girls they were, too. CAPTAIN JACKSON. 67 And was I in danger of forgetting this man? — his cheerful suppers — the noble tone of hospitality, when first you set your foot in the cottage — the anxious minis- terings about you, where little or nothing (God knows) was to be ministered — Amalthea's horn in a poor plat- ter — the power of self-enchantment, by which, in his magnificent wishes to entertain you, he multiplied his means to bounties. You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed a bare scrag — cold savings from the foregone meal — remnant hardly sufficient to send a mendicant from the door contented. But in the copious will, the reveling imagination of your host — the " mind, the mind. Master Shallow" — whole beeves were spread before you — heca- tombs — no end appeared to the profusion. It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and fishes; carving could not lessen, nor helping diminish it ; the stamina were left ; the elemental bone still flourished, divested of its accidents. " Let us live while we can," methinks I hear the open-handed creature exclaim ; " While we have, let us not want"; "Here is plenty left"; "Want for nothing" — with many more such hospitable sayings, the spurs of appetite, and old concomitants of smoking boards and feast-oppressed chargers. Then, sliding a slender ratio of Single Gloucester upon his wife's plate or the daugh- ters', he would convey the remnant rind into his own, with a merry quirk of "nearer the bone," etc., and de- claring that he universally preferred the outside. For we liad our table distinctions, you are to know, and some of us in a manner sat above the salt. None but his guest or guests dreamed of tasting flesh luxuries at night ; the fragments were vere Tiotq'Hihus sacra. But of 6s THE LAST ESSAYS Off ELIA. one filing or another tliere wa3 always enougli, and leav- ings ; only he would sometimes finish the remainder crust, to show that he wished no savings. Wine we had none, nor, except on very rare occa- sions, spirits ; but the sensation of wine was there. Some i,hin kind of ale I remember — "British beverage," he would say ! " Push about, my boys " ; " Drink to your sweethearts, girls." At every meager draught a toast must ensue, or a song. All the forms of good liquor were there, with none of the effects wanting. Shut your eyes, and you would swear a capacious bowl of punch was fcaming in the^ center, with beams of gener- ous f*ort or Madeira radiating to it from each of the table corneis. You got flustered, without knowing whence ;* tipsy upon words; and reeled under the po- tency or nis unperforming Bacchanalian encouragements. We nad our songs — " Why, Soldiers, why," and the "British Grenadiers" — in which last we were all obliged to bear chorus. Both the daughters sang. Their pro- ficiency was a nightly theme — the masters he had given them — tne " no-expense " which he spared to accom- plish them in a science "so necessary to young women." But then — they could not sing " without the instru- ment." Sacred, and by me never-to-be-violated. Secrets of Poverty! Should I disclose your honest aims at gran- deur, your makeshit^ efforts of magnificence ? Sleep, sleep, wirh all thy broken keys, if one of the bunch be extant ; tlirummed by a thousand ancestral thumbs ; dear, cracked spinet of dearer Louisa I Without men- tion of mine, be dumb, thou thin accompanier of her thinner warble! A veil be spread over the dear de- lighted face of the well-deluded father, who now, haplj CAPTAIN JACKSON, 69 listening to cherubic notes, scarce feels sincerer v»asure than when she awakened thy time-shaken cnords re- sponsive of the twitterings of thjit slender image of a voice. We were not without oar literary talk either. It did* not extend far, but as far as it went, it was good. It was bottomed well ; had good grounds to go upon. In the cottage was a room, which tradition authenticated to have been the same in which Glover, in his occasional retirements, had penned the greater part of his " Leoni- das." This circumstance was nightly quoted, though none of the present inmates, that I could discover, ap- peared ever to have met with the poem in question. But that was no matter. Glover had written there, and the anecdote was pressed into the account of the family importance. It diffused a learned air through the apart- ment, the little side casement of which (the poet's study window), opening upon a superb view as far as the pretty spire of Harrow, over domains and patrimonial acres, not a rood nor square yard whereof our host could call his own, yet gave occasion to an immoderate ex- pansion of — vanity shall I call it ? — in his bosom, as he showed them in a glowing summer evening. It was all his, he took it all in, and communicated rich portions of it to his guests. It was a part of his largess, his hospi- tality ; it was going over his grounds ; he was lord for the time of showing them, and you the implicit lookers- up to his magnificence. He was a juggler, who threw mists before your eyes ; you had no time to detect his fallacies. He would say, "Hand me the silver sugar tongs" ; and before you could discover it was a single spoon, and that plated, he would disturb and captivate your imagination by a mis' 70 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. nomer of " the urn " for a teakettle, or bj calling a homely bench a sofa. Eich men direct you to their fur- niture, poor ones divert you from it ; he neither did one nor the other, but by simply assuming that everything was handsome about him, you were positively at a de- mur what you did or did not see at the cottage. With nothing to live on, he seemed to live on everything. He v/had a stock of wealth in his mind ; not that which is / properly termed Content^ for in truth he was not to be contained at all, but overflowed all bounds by the force of a magnificent self-delusion. Enthusiasm is catching ; and even his wife, a sober native of North Britain, who generally saw things more as they were, was not proof against the continual colli- sion of his credulity. Her daughters were rational and discreet young women ; in the main, perhaps, not insen- sible to their true circumstances. I have seen them as- sume a thoughtful air at times. But such was the pre- ponderating opulence of his fancy, that I am persuaded, not for any half hour together did they ever look their own prospects fairly in the face. There was no resisting the vortex of his temperament. His riotous imagination conjured up handsome settlements before their eyes, which kept them up in the eye of the world too, and seem at last to have realized themselves ; for they both have married since, I am told, more than respect- ably. It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some subjects, or I should wish to convey some notion of the manner in which the pleasant creature described the cir- cumstances of his own wedding-day. I faintly remem- ber something of a chaise and four, in which he made ' is entry into Glasgow on that morning to fetch the CAPTAIN JACKSON. 71 bride tome, or carry her thither, I forget which. It so completely made out the stanza of the old ballad— When we came down through Glasgow town, We were a comely sight to see ; My love was clad in black velvet, And I myself in cramasie. I suppose it was the only occasion upon which his f^n actual splendor at all corresponded with the world's notions on that subject. In homely cart or traveling caravan, by whatever humble vehicle they chanced to be transported in less prosperous days, the ride through Glasgow came back upon his fancy, not as a humiliating contrast, but as a fair occasion for reverting to that one day's state. It seemed an "equipage etern" from which no power of fate or fortune, once mounted, had power thereafter to dislodge him. There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon indigent circumstances. To bully and swagger away the sense of them before strangers may not be always discommendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, even when de- tected, have more of our admiration than contempt. But for a man to put the cheat upon himself — to play the Bobadil at home, and, steeped in poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all the while chin-deep in riches- is a strain ot constitutional philosophy, and a mastery over fortune, vhich was reserved for my old friend Oajr- tain Jackson. 7^ THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELlA. THE SUPEEANNUATED MAN". Sera tamen respexit Libertas. Virgil. A clerk I was in London gay. O'Keefe, If peradventure, reader, it haa been thj lot to waste the golden years of thy life — thy shining youth — in the irksome confinement of an office ; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to decrepi- tude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived to forget that there are such things as holi- days, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood ; then, and then only, will you be able to ap- preciate my deliverance. It is now six-and- thirty years since I took my seat at the desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy was the tran- sition at fourteen from the abundant playtime, and the frequently intervening vacations of schooldays, to the eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours a day attendanc^e at the counting-house. But time partially reconciles us to anything. 1 gradually became content — doggedly con- ' tented, as wild animals in cages. It is true I had my Sundays to myself ; but Sundays, admirable as the institution of them is for purposes of worship, are for that very reason the very worst adapted for days of unbending and recreation. In particular, there is a gloom for me attendant upon a City Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss the cheerful cries of London, the music and the ballad-singers — the buzz and stirring murmur of the streets. ,,^Those eternal bells depress me. THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 73 The closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all the glit- tering and endless succession of knacks and gewgaws, and ostentatiously displayed wares of tradesmen, which make a week-daj saunter through the less busy parts of the metropolis so delightful, are shut out. No bookstalls deliciously to idle over ; ]io busy faces to recreate the idle man who contemplates them ever passing by ; the yery place of business a charm by contrast to his tem- porary relaxation from it. { Nothing to be seen but un- happy countenances-}or half-happy at best— of emanci- pated 'prentices and little tradesfolks, with here and there a servant-maid that has got leave to go out, who, slaving all the week, with the habit has lost almost ther capacity of enjoying a free hour, and livelily expressing the hollgwness of a day's pleasuring. The very stroll- /, ers in the fiells onlHat day look anything but comfort- ' able. But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day at Christinas, witli a full week in the summer to go and air myself in my native fields of Hertfordshirer This last was a great indulgence, and the prospect of its recur- rence, I believe, alone kept me up through the year, and made my durance tolerable. But when the week came round, did the glittering phantom of the distance keep 1 touch with me? or rather, was it not a series of seven i uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, and a ' wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the most of I them ? Where was the quiet, where the promised rest ? 1 Before I had a taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the desk again, counting upon the fifty-one tedious weeks tthat must intervene before such another snatch would £ come. Still the prospect of its coming threw something 4 of an illumination upon the darker side of my captivity. 74 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. vV^ithout it, as I have said, I could scarcely have sustained my thralldom. Independently of the rigors of attendance, I have Dver been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for business. This, daring my latter years, had increased to such a degree that it was visible in all the lines of my countenance. My health and my good spirits flagged. I had perpetually a dread of some crisis, io which I should be found unequal. Besides my day- light servitude, I served over again all night in my sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like. I was fifty years of age, and no prospect of emancipation presented itself. I had grown to my desk, as it were ; and the wood had entered into my soul. My fellows in the ofiBce would sometimes rally me upon the trouble legible in my countenance ; but I did not know that it had raised the suspicions of any of my employers, when, on the 5th of last month, a day ever to be remembered by me, L , the junior partner in the firm, calling me on one side, directly taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly inquired the cause of them. So taxed, I honestly made confession of my infirmity, and added that I was afraid I should eventually be obliged to resign his service. He spoke some words of course to hearten me, and there the matter rested. A whole week I remained laboring under the impression that I had acted imprudently in my disclosure ; that I had foolishly given a handle against myself, and had been anticipating my own dismissal. A week passed in this manner, the most anxious one, I verily believe, in my whole life, when, on the evening of the 12th of April, just as I was ^bout quitting my desk to go home QS might be about THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 75 eagian o'clock), I received an awful summons to attend the presence of the whole assembled firm in the formi- dable Dack parlor. I thought, NTovv my time is surelj" come ; I have done for myseK ; I am going to be told that tney have no longer occasion for me. L , I could see, smiled at the terror I was in, which v/as &, little relief to me, when to my utter astonishment B -, the eldest partner, began a formal harangue to me on the length of my services, my very meritorious conduct dur- ing the whole of the time. (The deuce, thought I, how did he find out that ? I profess I never had the confi- dence to think as much.) He went on to descant on the expediency of retiring at a certain time of life (how my heart panted !), and, asking me a few questions as to the amount of my own property, of which I have a I'ttlo. ended with a proposal, to which his three partners nodded a j^rave assent, that I should accept from the house, which I had served so well, a pension for life to the amount of two thirds of my accustomed salary™ a magnificent offer ! I do not know what I answered be- tween surprise and gratitude, but it was understood that I accepted their proposal, and I was told that 1 was free from that hour to leave their service. I stammered out a bow, and at just ten minutes after eight I went tome ■—for ever. This noble benefit — gratitude forbids me to conceal their names — I owe to the kindness of the most munificent firm in the world — the house of Boldero, Merryweather, Bosanquet & Lacy. Esto perpetua I For the first day or two 1 felt stunned, overwhelmed. I could only apprehend my felicity ; I was too confused to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was ye THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. happy; and knowing that I was not. I was in the coik dition of a prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself with myself. It was like passing out of Time into Eternity — for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have his Time all to himself. It seemed to me that I had more time on my hands than I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue ; I could see no end of my posses- sions ; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me. And here let me caution persons grown old in active business, not lightly, nor without weighing their own resources, to forego their customary employment aU at once, for there may be danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know tliat my resources are sufficient; and now that those first giddy raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling ot the blessedness of my condition. I am in no hurry. Having all holidays, I am as though I had none. If Time hung heavy upon me, I could walk it away ; but I do not walk all day long, as I used to do in those old transient holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the most, of them. If Time were troublesome, I could read it away ; but I do Twt read in that violent measure with which, having no Time my own but candlelight Time, I used to weary out my head and eyesight in bygone win- ters. I walk, read, or scribble (as now), just when the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure : I let it come to mco I am like the man . „ . . that's bom, and has his years come to him In some green desert. " Years I " you will say ; " what is this superan- THE SUPEKANNUATED MAN, ft nnated simpleton calculating upon ? He has already told us he is past fifty." I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other peo- ple, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is the only true Time which a man can Iproperly call his own, that which he has all to himself; /the rest, though in so]ne sense he may he said to live it, is other people's Time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me three- fold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will he as long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair rule-of- three sum. Among the strange phantasies which beset me at the commencement of my freedom, and of which all traces are not yet gone, one was that a vast tract of Time had intervened since I quitted tlie Oounting-House. I could not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. The part- ners, and the clerks with whom I had for so many years, and for so many hours in each day of the year, been closely associated — being suddenly removed from them — they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine passage, which may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard, speaking of a friend's death : .... 'Twas but just now^he went away; I have not since had time to shed a tear ; And yet the distance does the same appear As if he had been a thousand years from me. Time takes no measure in Eternity. To dissipate this awkward feeling I have been fain to go among them once or twice since ; to visit my old desk-fellov/s — my co-brethren of the quill — that I had left below in the state militant. 'Not all the kindness 78 ■ f HS LAST ESSAYS OF ELiA. ' with Tv^hich tliej received me could quite restore to me that pleasant familiarity which I had heretofore enjoyed among them. We cracked some of onr old jokes, but methought they went off but faintly. My old desk, the peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated to another. I knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. D — 1 take me if I did not feel some remorse — beast if I had not — at quitting my old compeers, the faithful partners of my toils for six-and-thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and conundrums the ruggedness of my professional road. Had it been so rugged, then, after all ? or was I a coward simply ? Well, it is too late to repent ; and I also know that these suggestions are a common fallacy of the mind on such occasions. But my heart smote me. I had violently broken the bands be- twixt us. It was at least not courteous. I shall be some time before I get quite reconciled to the separation. Farewell, old cronies ; yet not for long, for again and again I will come among ye, if I shall have your leave. Farewell, Ch , dry, sarcastic, and friendly ! Do -, mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly ! PI , officious to do, and to volunteer, good services I And thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a Whittington of old, stately house of Merchants ; with thy labyrinthine passages, and light-excluding, pent-up offices, where can- dles for one half the year supplied the place of the sun's light ; unhealthy contributor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell ! In thee remain, and not in the obscure collection of some wandering bookseller, my *' works " ! There let them rest, as I do from my labors, piled on thy massive shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left, and full as useful I My mantle I be- queath among ye. THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 79 A fortnight has passed since the date of my first communication. At that period I was approaching to tranquillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of a calm indeed, but it was comparative only. Something of the first flutter was left ; an unsettling sense of novelty ; the dazzle to weak eyes of unaccustomed light. I missed ^•my old chains, forsooth, as if they had been some neces= 3ary part of my apparel. I was a poor Carthusian, from strict cellular discipline suddenly by some revolution re- turned upon the world. I am now as if I had never been other than my own master. It is natural for nie to go where 1 pleasf:, to do what I please. I find myselr at eleven o'clock in the day in Bond Street, and it seems to me that I have been sauntering there at that very hour for years past. I digress into Soho, to explore a bookstall. Methinks I have been thirty years a collector. There is nothing strange nor new in it. I find myself before a fine picture in the morning. Was it ever other- wise ? What is become of Fish Street Hill ? Where is Fenchurch Street ? Stones of old Mincing Lane, which I have worn with my daily pilgrimage for six-and-thirty years, to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are your everlasting flints now vocal ? I indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change time, and I am strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was no hyperbole when I ven- tured to cofiipare the change in my condition to a pass- ing into another world. Time stands still in a manner to me. I have lost all distinction of season. I do not know the day of the week or of the month. Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the foreign post-days ; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday night's sensations. The genius of each day 80 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. was upon me distinctly during tlie whole of it, affecting my appetite, spirits, etc. The phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to follow, sat as a load upon my poor Sabbath recreations. What charm has washed that ^Ethiop white? What is gone of Black Monday? All days are the same. Sunday itself — that unfortunate fail- ure of a holiday, as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it —is melted down into a week-day. I can spare to go to church now, without grudging the huge cantle which it used to seem to cut out of the holiday. I have Time for everything. I can visit a sick friend. I can interrupt the man of much occupation when he is busiest. I can insult over him with an invitation to take a day's pleasure with me to Windsor this fine May morning. It is Lucretian pleasure! to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind iu the world, carking and caring; like horses in a mill, ^^ drudging on in the same eternal round. And what is it all for ? A man can never have too much Time to him- self, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him Nothing-to-do ; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative. Will no kindly earthquake come and swallow up those accursed cotton mills ? Take me that lumber of a desk there, and bowl it down As low as to the fiends. I am no longer . . . ., clerk to the Firm of, etc. I am Eetired Leisure. T am to be met with in trim gar- dens. I am already come to be known by my vacant t face and careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace. BARBARA g— o 8:1 Bor with any settled purpose. I walk about, not to and from. They tell me a certain cum dignitate air, that has been buried so long with my other good parts, has begun to shoot forth in my person. I grow into gentility per- ceptibly. When I take up a newspaper, it is to read the state of the opera. Opus operatum est. I have done ail that I came into this world to do. I liave worked task" work, and have the rest of the day to myself. BARBARA S— . On the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or '4, I forget which it was, just as the clook had struck one, Barbara S , with her accustomed punctuality, as- cended the long rambling staircase, w.th awkward inter- posed landing-places, which led to the office, or rather a sort of box with a desk in it, whereat sat the then Trea- surer of (what few of our readers may remember) the old Bath Theatre. All over the island it was the custom, and remains so I believe to this day, for the players to receive their weekly stipend on the Saturday. It was not much that Barbara had to claim. This little maid had just entered her eleventh year ; bat her important station at the theatre, as it seemed to her, with the benefits which she felt to accrue from her pious application of her small earnings, had given an air of womanhood to her steps and to her behavior. You would have taken her to have been at le9.st five years older. Till latterly she had rflerely been employed in cho- a 82 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. ruses, or where children were wanted to fill np the scene. But the manager, observing a diligence and adroitness in her above her age, had for some few months past intrnsted to her the performance of whole parts. You may guess the self-consequence of the promotec Barbara. She had already drawn tears in young Ar- thur ; had rallied Eichard with infantine petulance in the Duke of York ; and in her turn had rebuked tnat petulance when she was Prince of "Wales. She would have done the elder child in Morton's pathetic afterpiece to the life ; but as yet " The Children in the Woods " was not. Long after this little girl was grown an aged woman, I have seen some of these small parts, each making two or three pages at most, copied out in the rudest hand of the then prompter, who doubtless transcribed a little more carefully and fairly for the grown-up tragedy ladies of the establishment. But such as they were, blotted and scrawled, as for a child's use, she kept them all ; and in the zenith of her after reputation it was a delightful sight to behold them bound up in costliest morocco, each single, each small part making a 'booTc — with fine clasps, gilt-splashed, etc. She had conscientiously kept them as: they had been delivered to her ; not a blot had been effaced or tampered with. They were precious to her for their affecting remembrancings. They were her principia, her rudiments ; the elementary atoms ; the lit- tle steps by which she pressed forward to perfection. " What," she would say, " could India-rubber, or a pum- ice-stone, have done for these darlings?" I am in no hurry to begin my story — indeed, I have little or none to tell — so I will just mention an observa- tion of hers connected with that interesting time. Bakbaka S- — .. 83 Not long before she died I had been discoursing with her on the quantity of real present emotion which a great tragic performer experiences during acting. 1 ventured to think that, though in the first instance such phiyers must have possessed the feelings which they so power- fully called up in others, yet by frequent repetition those feelings must become deadened in great measure, and the performer trust to the memory of past emotion, rather than express a present one. She indignantly re- pelled the notion that, with a truly great tragedian, the operation by which such effects were produced upon an audience could ever degrade itself into what was purely mechanical. With much delicacy, avoiding to instance in her s^Z/'-experience, she told me that so long ago as when she used to play the part of the Little Son to Mrs. Porter's Isabella (I think it was), when that impressive actress had been bending over her in some heart-rending colloquy, she had felt real hot tears come trickling from her, which (to use her powerful expression) have per- fectly scalded her back. I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter, but it was some great actress of that day. The name is indif- ferent ; but the fact of the scalding tears I most distinct- ly remember. I was always fond of the society of players, and am not sure that an impediment in my speech (which cer- tainly kept me out of the pulpit), even more than certain personal disqualifications which are often got over in that professiun, did not prevent me at one time of life from adopting it. I have had the honor (I must ever call it) once to have been admitted to the tea-table of Miss Kelly. I have played at serious whist with Mr. Liston. I have chatted with ever good-humored Mrs- 34 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELlA, Charles Kenible. I "have conversed as friend to fnend with her accomplished husband. I have been indulged with a classical conference with Macready ; and with a sight of the Player-picture gallery at Mr. Mathews's, Yv'hen the kind owner, to remunerate me for my love of the old actors (whom he loves so much), went over it with me, supplying to his capittd collection what alone the artist could not give them — voice, and their living mo- tion. Old tones, half faded, of Dodd, and Parsons, and Baddeley, have lived again for- me at his bidding. Only Edwdn he could not restore to me. I have supped with — but I am growing a coxcomb. As I was about to say — at the desk of the then trea- surer of the old Bath Theatre (not Diamond's) presented herself the little Barbara S . The parents of Barbara had been in reputable cir- cumstances. The father had practiced, I believe, as an apQthecary in the town. But his practice, from causes which I feel my own infirmity too sensibly that way to arraign — or perhaps from tliat pure infelicity which ac- companies some paople in their walk through hfe, and which it is impossible to lay at the door of imprudence — was now reduced to nothing. They were, in fact, in the very teeth of starvation, when the manager, who knew and respected them in better days, took the little Barbara into his company. At the period I commenced with, her slender earn- ings were the sole support of the family, including two younger sisters. I must throw a veil over some morti- fying circumstances. Enough to say that her Saturday's pittance was the only cliance of a Sunday's (generally their only) meal of meat. One thing I will only mention, that in some child's BARBARA S—- .. 85 part, where in her theatrical character she was to sup off a roast fow> (O jov to Barbara !), some comic aotor.^ who was for the night caterer for this stage daintj, in the misguided humor of his part, threw over the dish such a quantity of salt (O grief and pain of iieart to Bar- bara !) that when she crammed a portion of it into her mouth she was obliged sputteringly to reject it ; and what with shame of her ill acted part, and pain of real appetite at missing such a daintj^, her little heart sobbed almost to breaking, till a flood of tears, Avhich the well- fed spectators were totally unable to comprehend, mer- cifully relieved her. This was the little starved, meritorious maid, who stood before old Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for her Sat- urday's payment. Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old theat rical people besides herself say, of all men least calcu- lated for a treasurer. He had no head for accounts, paid away at random, kept scarce any books, and, sum- ming up at the week's end, if he found himself a pound or so deficient, blest himself that it was no worse. Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare half guinea. By mistake he popped into her hand a whole one. Barbara tripped away. She was entirely unconscious at first of the mis- take ; God knows, Ravenscroft would never have dis- covered it. But when she had got down to the first of those un- couth landing-places, she became sensible of an unusual weight of metal pressing her little hand. Now mark the dilemma. She was by nature a good child., From her parents and those about her she had imbibed no contrary infli. 86 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. ence. Bat then they had taught her nothing. Poor men's smoky cabins are not always porMcoes of moral philosophy. This little maid liad no instinct to evil, hut then slie might be said to have no fixed principle. She had heard honesty commended, but never dreamed of its application to herself. She thought of it as some- thing which concerned grown-up people — men and wo- nen. She had never known temptation, or thought of preparing resistance against it. Her first impulse was to go hack to the old treasurer^ and explain to him his blunder. He was already so con- fused with age, besides a natural want of punctuality, that she would have had some difiiculty in makiag him understand it. She saw that in an instant. And then it was such a bit of money! and then the image of a larger allowance of butcher's meat on their table next day came across her, till her little eyes glistened, and her mouth moistened. But then Mr. Kavenscroft had always been so good-natured, had stood her friend behind the scenes, and even recommended her ])romotion to some of her little parts. But again the old man was reputed to be worth a world of money. He was supposed to have fifty pounds a year clear of the theatre. And then came staring upon her the figures of her little stockingless and shoeless sisters. And then she looked at her own neat white cotton stockings, which her situation at the thea- tre had made it indispensable for her mother to provide for her, with hard straining and pinching from the fami- ly stock, and thought how glad she should be to cover their poor feet with the same, and how then they could accompany her to rehearsals, which they had hitherto been precluded from doing by reason of their unfashion- able attire. In these thoughts she reached the second BARBARA S . 87 lasiding-place — the second, I roean, from the top—for there was still another left to traverse. Now virtue support Barbara ! And that never-failing friend did step in ; for at that moment a strength not her own, I have heard her say, was revealed to her — a reason above reasoning — and without her own agency, as it seemed (for she never felt her feet to move), she found herself transported back to the individual desk she had just quitted, and her hand in the old hand of Eavenscroft, who in silence took back the refunded treasure, and who had been sitting (good man) insensible to the lapse of minutes, which to her were anxious ages, and from that moment a deep peace fell upon her heart, and she knew the quality of hon- esty. A year or two's unrepining application to her profes- sion brightened up the feet and the prospects of her lit- tle sisters, set the whole family upon their legs again, and released her from the difficulty of discussing moral dogmas upon a landing-place. I have heard her say that it was a surprise, not much ;5hort of mortification to her, to see the coolness with which the old man pocketed the difference, which had caused hbf such mortal throes. This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, from the mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,* then sixty-seven years of age (she died soon after) ; and to her struggles upon this childish occasion I have sometimes ventured to think her indebted for that power of rending the * The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she changed by successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, and Crawford. She was Mrs. Crawfordj a third time a widow, when I knew her. 88 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. heart in the representation of conflicting emotions, for which in after-years she was considered as little inferior (if at ail so in the part of Lady Eandolph) even to Mrs. Siddonso THE TOMBS m THE ABBEY. IN A LETTEE TO R 8 , ESQ. Though in some points of doctrine, and perhaps of discipline, I am diffident of lending a perfect assent to that church which you have so worthily Mstorijied^ yet may the ill time never come to me, when with a chilled heart or a portion of irreverent sentiment I shall enter her beautiful and time-hallowed edifices. Judge then of my mortification when, after attending the choral anthems of last Wednesday at Westminster, and being desirous of renewing my acquaintance, after lapsed years, with the tombs and antiquities there, I found myself excluded — turned out like a dog, or some profane person, into the common street, with feelings not very conge- nial to the place, or to the solemn service which I had been listening to. It was ajar after that music. You had your education at Westminster ; and doubt- less 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 mor- tality. You owe it to the place of your education, you owe it to your learned fondness for the architecture of THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 89 yonr ancestors, yoii owe it to the venerableness of your ecclesiastical establishment, which is daily lessened and called in question through these practices, to speak aloud your sense of them ; never to desist raising your voice against them till they be totally done away with and abolished ; till the doors of Westminster Abbey be no longer closed against the decent, though low-in-purse, enthusiast, or blameless devotee, who must commit an injury against his family economy if he would be indulged with a bare admission within its walls. You owe it to the decencies which you wish to see maintained in its impressive services, that our Cathedral be no longer an object of inspection to the poor at those times only in which they must rob from tlieir attendance on the wor- ship every minute which they can bestow upon the fabric. In vain the public prints have taken up this subject ; in vain such poor nameless writers as myself express tlieir indignation. A word from you, sir — a hint in your Journal — would be sufficient to fling open the doors of the Beautiful Temple again, as we can re- member them when we were boys. At that time c 1 life, what would the imaginative 'acuity (such as it is) in both of us have suffered, if the entrance to so much reflection had been obstructed by the demand of so much silver ! If we had scraped it up to gain an occasional admission (as we certainly should have done), would the sight of those old tombs have been as impressive to us (while we have been weighing anxiously prudence against sentiment) as when the gates stood open as those of the adjacent Park ; when we could walk in at any time, as the mood brought us, for a shorter or longer time, as that lasted ? Is the being shown over a place the same as silently for ourselves detectmg the genius of it ? 90 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. In no part of our beloved Abbey now can a pers^ , find entrance (out of service time) under the sum aJ two shiUirogs. Tlie rich and tlie great will smile at the anti-climax presumed to lie in these two short words. But you can cell them, sir, how much quiet worth, how much capjicicy 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, durins: his late visit to the metropolis, presented himself for admission to St. Paul's. At the same time a decently clothed man, with as decent a wife and child, were bargainmg for the same indulgence. The price was only twopence each person. The poor but decent man hesitated, desirous to go in ; but there were three of them, and he turned away reluctantly. Perhjips he wished to see the tomb of Nelson. Perhaps the Inte- rior of the Cathedral was his object. But in the state of his finances, even sixpence might reasonably seem too much. Tell the A ristocracy of the country (no man can do it more impressively) ; instruct them of what value hese insignificant pieces of money, these minims to their sight, may be to their humbler brethren. Shame these Sellers out of the Temple. Stifle not the suggestions of your better nature with the pretext that an indiscrimi- nate admission would expose the Tombs to violation. Remember your boy-days. Did you ever see or hear of a mob in the Abbey while it was free to all? Do the rabble come there, or trouble their heads about such speculations ? It is all that yon can do to drive them into your churches ; they do not voluntarily offer them- selves. 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. AMICUS REDIVIVUS. ^ 9i For forty years that I have known the fabric, the only well-attested charge of violation adduced has been a ridiculous dismemberment committed upon the effig.v of that amiable spy, Major Andre. And is it for this — the wanton mischief of some schoolboy, fired perhap.'^ with raw notions of Transatlantic Freedom — or the re- mote possibility of such a mischief occurring again, sg easily to be prevented by stationing a constable withip the walls, if the vergers ere incompetent for the duty — is it upon such wretched pretenses that the people of England are made to pay a new Peter's Pence so long abrogated, or must content themselves with contemplat- ing the ragged exterior of their Cathedral? The mis- chief was done about the time that you were a scholar there. Do you know anything about the unfortunate relic ? AMICUS REDIVIVUS. Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? I DO not know when I have experienced a vstranger •ensation than on seeing my old friend G. D., who had. been paying me a morning visit a few Sundays back, at my cottage at Islington, upon taking leave, instead of turning down the right-hand path by which he had en= tered, with staff in liand, and at noonday, deliberately march right forward into the midst of the stream that runs by us, and totally disappear, A spectacle like this at dusk would have been appaU- ing enough ; but in the broad open daylight, to witneisss 92 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. such an unreserved motion toward self-destruction in a valued friend, took from me all power of speculation. How I found my feet I know not. Consciousness was quite gone. Some spirit, not my own, whirled me to the spot. I remember nothing but the silvery appa- rition of a good white head emerging; nigh which a staff (the hand unseen that wielded it) pointed upward, as feeling for the skies. In a moment (if time was in that time) he was on my shoulders, and I — freighted with a load more precious than his who bore Anchises. And here I can not but do justice to the officious zeal of sundry passers-by, who, albeit arriving a little too late to participate in the honors of the rescue, in phil- anthropic shoals came thronging to communicate their advice as to the recovery ; prescribing variously the ap- plication, or non-appUcation, of salt, etc., to the person of the patient. Life meantime was ebbing fast away, amidst the stifle of conflicting judgments, when one, more saga- cious than the rest, by a bright thought, proposed send- ing for the Doctor. Trite as the counsel was, and impos- sible, as one should think, to be missed on — shall I con- fess ? — in this emergency it was to me as if an Angel had spoken. Great previous exertions — and mine had not been inconsiderable— are commonly followed by a debility of purpose. This was a moment of irresolution. MoNOOULTjs — for so, in default of catching his true name, I choose to designate the medical gentleman who now appeared — is a grave, middle-aged person, who, without having studied at the college, or truckled to the pedantry of a diploma, hath employed a great portion of his valuable time in experimental processes upon the bodies of unfortunate fellow-creatures, in whom the vital spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would seem extinct and AMictrs REDIVlVtTS. 93 lost for ever. He omitted no occasion of obtruding his services, from a case of common surfeit suffocation to the ignobler obstructions sometimes induced by a too willful application of the plant Cannabis outwardly. But though he declineth not altogether these drier extinc- tions, his occupation tendeth, for the most part, to water^ practice ; for the convenience of which he hath judi- ciously fixed his quarters near the grand repository of the stream mentioned, where day and night, from his little watch-tcwer, at the Middleton's Head, he listeneth to detect the wrecks of drowned mortality — partly, as he saith, to be upon the spot, and partly because the liquids which he useth to prescribe to himself, and his patients, on these distressing occasions, are ordinarily more con- veniently to be found at these common hostelries than in the shops and phials of the apothecaries. His ear hath arrived to such finesse by practice, that it is reported he can distinguish a plunge at a half furlong distance, and can tell if it be casual or deliberate. He weareth a medal, suspended over a suit originally of a sad brown, but which, by time and frequency of nightly divings, has been dinged into a true professional sable. He passeth by the name of Doctor, and is remarkable for wanting his left eye. His remedy — after a sufficient application of warm blankets, friction, etc. — is a simple tumbler or more of the purest Cognac, with water, made as hot as the convalescent can bear it. Where he findeth, as in the case of my friend, a squeamish subject, he conde- scendeth to be the taster; and showeth, by his own example, the innocuous nature of the prescription. No- thing can be more kind or encouraging than this proce- dure. It addeth confidence to the patient to see his med- ical adviser go hand in hand with himself in the remedy. 04 f HE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. When the doctor swalloweth his own draught, wlia^ peevish invalid can refuse to pledge him in the potion ? In fine, Monooulfs is a humane, sensible man, who, foi slender pittance, scarce enough to sustain life, is content to wear it out in the endeavor to save the lives of others — his pretensions so moderate, that with difficulty 1 could press a crown upon him, for the price of restoring the existence of such an invaluable creature to society afi G. D. It was pleasant to observe the effect of the subsiding alarm upon the nerves of the dear absentee. It seemed to have given a shake to memory, calling up notice after notice of all the providential deliverances he had expe- rienced in the course of his long and innocent life. Sit- ting up in my couch — my couch which, naked and void of furniture hitherto, for the salutary repose which it administered shall be honored with costly valance, at some price, and henceforth to be a state-bed at Cole- brook — ^lie discoursed of marvelous escapes — by careless- ness of nurses — by pails of gelid and kettles of the boil- ing element, in infancy — by orchard pranks, and snap- ping twigs in schoolboy frolics — by descent of tiles at Trumpington, and of heavier tomes at Pembroke — by studious watchings, inducing frightful vigilance — by want and the fear of want, and all the sore throbbings of the learned. Anon he would burst out into little fragments of chanting — of songs long ago — ends of deliverance hymns, not remembered before since childhood, but coming up now, when his heart was made tender as a child's ; for the tremor cordis^ in the retrospect of a recent deliverance, as in a case of impending danger, acting upon an innocent heart, will produce a self-ten- Ae^uess. which we should do ill to christen cowardice j AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 95 and Shakespeare, in the latter crisis, has made his good Sir Hugh to remember the sitting by Babylou, and to mutter of shallow rivers. Waters of bn- Hugh Myddelton, what a spark you were like to have extinguished for ever! Your salu- brious streams to this City, for now near two centuries, would hardly have atoned for what you were in a mo= ment washing away. Mockery of a river— liquid arti= fice, wretched conduit ! henceforth rank with canals and sluggish aqueducts. Was it for this that, smit in boy^ hood with the explorations of that Abyssinian traveler, I paced the vales of Am well to explore your tributary springs, to trace your salutary waters sparkling through green Hertfordshire, and cultured Enfield parks? Ye have no swans, no Naiads, no Eiver God ; or did the benevolent hoary aspect of my friend tempt ye to suck him in, that ye also might have the tutelary genius of your waters ? Had he been drowned in Cam there would have been some consonancy in it ; but what wiUows had ye to wave and rustle over his moist sepulture ? or, having no name, besides that unmeaning assumption of eternal novity, did ye think to get one by the noble prize, and henceforth to be termed the Stream Dyerian ? And couM such spacious virtue find a grave Beneath the imposthumed bubble of a wave ? I protest, George, you shall not venture out again— no, not by daylight— without a sufficient pair of specta- cles—in your musing moods especially. Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it. You shall not go wandering into Euripus with Aristotle if wa can heln it. Fia. man. 96 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. t© turn dipper at your years, after your many tracts id favor of spriDkling only ! I have nothing but water in my head o' nights since this frightful accident. Sometimes I am with Clarence in his dream. At others, I behold Christian beginning to sink, and crying out to his good brother Hopeful (that is, to me), " I sink in deep waters ; the billows go over my head, all the waves go over me. Selah." Tlien I have before me Palinurus, just letting go the steerage, I cry out too late to save. Next follow — a mournful procession — suicidal faces^ saved against their will from drowning ; dolefully trailing a length of reluctant grate- fulness, with ropy weeds pendent from locks of watchet hue — constrained Lazari — Pluto's half-subjects — stolen fees from the grave — bilking Charon of his fare. At their head Arion — or is it G. D. ? — in his singing gar- ments march eth singly, with harp in hand, and votive garland, which Machaon (or Dr. Hawes) snatcheth straight, intending to suspend it to the stern God of Sea. Then follow dismal streams of Lethe, in which the half-drenched on earth are constrained to drown down- right, by wharfs where Ophelia twice acts her muddy death. And, doubtless, there is some notice in that invisible world, when one of us ap{)roacheth Ois my friend did so lately) to their inexorable precincts. When a soul knocks once, twice, at death's door, the sensation aroused Avith- in the place must be considerable ; ai;d the grim Feature, by modern science so often disposse^-sed of his prey, must have learned by this time to pity Tantalus. A pulse assuredly was felt alo^o- the line of the Ely- elan shades, when thenear arjiv*^' of G. D. was announced by no equivocal indications. '*' m their seats of Aspho NUGJ3 CRITIC^. O-J del arose the gentler and the graver ghosts — poet, or historian — of Grecian or of Roman lore — to crown with unfading chaplets the half-finished love-labors of their unwearied scholiast. Him Markland expected ; him Tyr- whitt hoped to encounter ; him the sweet lyrist of Petar House, whom he had barely seen iipon earth,* with new- est airs prepared to greet; and, patron of the gentle Christ's boy — who should have been his patron through life — the mild Askew, with longing aspirations, leaned foremost from his venerable j3])sculapian chair, to wel- come into that happy country the matured virtues of the man, whose tender scions in the boy he himself upon the earth had so prophetically fed and watered. nugtE critics. DEFENSE OF THE SONNETS OF SIB PHILIP SYDNEY. Sydney's Sonnets — I speak of the best of them — are among the very best of their sort. They fall below the plain moral dignity, the sanctity, and high yet modest spirit of self-approval, of Milton, in his compositions of a similar structure. They are in truth what Milton, cen- suring the " Arcadia," says of that work (to which they are a sort of after-tune or application), " vain and ama- torious enough, yet the things in their kind (as he con- fesses to be true of the romance) may be full of worth and wit." They savor of the Courtier, it must be al- lowed, and not of the Commonwealthsman. But Milton was a Courtier when he wrote the " Masque " at Ludlow * Graium tantum vidit. 7 98 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. Castle, and still more a Courtier when he composed th© "Arcades." When tlie national struggle was to begin, he becomingly cast these vanities behind him ; and if the order of time had thrown Sir Philip upon the crisis which preceded the Kevolution, there is no reason why- he should not have acted the same part in that emergency whi^ has glorified the name of a later Sydney. He did not want for plainness or boldness of spirit. His letter on the French match may testify he could speak his mind freely to Princes. The times did not call him to the scaffold. The sonnets which we oftenest call to mind of Mil- ton were the compositions of his maturest years. Those of Sydney, which I am about to produce, were written in the very heyday of his blood. They are stuck full of amorous fancies — far-fetched conceits, befitting Ms occupation ; for True Love thinks no labor to send out Thoughts upon vast, and more than Indian voyages, to bring home rich pearls, outlandish wealth, gums, jewels. spicery, to sacrifice in self-depreciating similitudes, as shadows of true amiabilities in the Beloved. We must be Lovers — or at least the cooling touch of time, the circum prcecordia frigus^ must not have so damped our faculties as to take away our recollection that we were once so — before we can duly appreciate the glorious vanities and graceful hyperboles of the passion. The images which lie before our feet (though by some ac- counted the only natural) are least natural for the high Sydnean love to express its fancies by. They may serve for the loves of Catullus, or the dear Author of the *' Schoolmistress " ; for passions that creep and whine in Elegies and Pastoral Ballads. I am sure Milton never loved at this rate. I am afraid some of his addresses NITG^ CRITICJS. 99 {etd Leonoram I mean) have rather erred on the farther side ; and that the poet came not much short of a reli- gious indecorum, when he could thus apostrophize a singing-girl : Angelus unicuique suns {sic crediie gentes) Ohtigit cetTiereis ales ah ordinihus. Quid mirum, Leonora, iibi si gloria major^ Nam tua prcesentem vox sonat ipsa Deum ? Aut Deus, aut vacui certe mens tertia coeli, Per tua secretd gutlura serpit agens ; Serpit agens, facilisque docet m.ortalia corda Sensim immortali assuescere posse sono. Quod si cuncta quidem Deus est, per cunctaque fusus, In te una loquitur, cetera mutus habet. This is loving in a strange fashion ; and it requires some candor of construction (besides the slight darken- ing of a dead language) to cast a veil over the ugly ap- pearance of something very like blasphemy in the last two verses. I think the Lover would have been stag- gered if he had gone about to express the same thought in English. I am sure Sydney has no flights like this. His extravaganzas do not strike at the sky, though he takes leave to adopt the pale Dian into a fellowship with his mortal passions. With how sad step3, Moon, thou climb'st the skies ; How silently, and with how wan a face ! What ! may it be, that even in heavenly place That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries ? Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case ; I read it in thy looks ; thy languisht grace 100 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. To mc, lliat feel the like, tli}- state descries. Then, even of lellovvship, Moon, tell me, Is constant love deemed there but Tvant of wit ? Are beauties there as proud as here they be ? Do they above love to be loved, and yet Those lovers scorn v^^hom that love doth possess f Do they call virtue there — ungratefulness ? The last line of this poem is a little obsciirc-d by trans- position. He means, Do they call ungratefulness there a virtue ? IL Come, Sleep, Sleep, the certain knot of peace, i The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, I The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, iThe indifferent judge between the high and low ; ; With shield of proof shield me from out the presise* Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw ; make in me those civil wars to cease ; 1 will good tribute pay, if thou do so. Take thou of me sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; A rosy garland, and a weary head. And if these things, as being thine by right, Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see. III. The curious wits, seeing dull pensivenefls Bewray itself in my long-settled eyes. Whence those same fumes of meloneholy ri8e, With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess. Some, that know how my spring I did addresii, * Press. NUGJE CRITICS. 101 Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies ; Others, because the Prince my service tries, Think that I thinlc state errors to redress ; But harder judges judge, ambition's rage, Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place, Holds my young brain captived in golden cage, foois, or otherwise ! alas, the race Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start, But only Stella's eyes, and Stella's heart. XV. Because I oft in dark abstracted guise Seem most alone in greatest company. With dearth of words or answers quite awry To them that would make speech of speech arise ; They deem, and of their doom the rumor flies, That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie So in my swelling breast, that only I Fawn on myself, and others do despise. Yet Fride, I think, doth not my soul possess. Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass ; But one worse fault — Ambition — I confess. That makes me oft my best friends overpass. Unseen, unheard — while Thought to highest plac* Bends all his powers, even unto Stella's grace, V. Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance, Guided so well that I obtained the prize. Both by the judgment of the English eyes. And of some sent from that sweet enemy , France; Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance ; Townsfolk my strength ; a daintier judge applies Eis praise to sleight, which from good use dotb ri^e\ 102 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. Some lucky wits impute it but to chance ; Others, because of both sides I do take My blood from them, who did excel in this, Think Nature me a man of arms did make. How far they shot awry ! the true cause is, Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race. VI. In martial sports I had my cunning tried, And yet to break more staves did me address, While with the people's shouts (I must confess) Youth, luck, and praise even filled my veins with pride — When Cupid having me (his slave) descried In Mars's livery, prancing in the press, " What now, Sir Fool ! " said he : "I would no less. Look here, I say." I look'd, and Stella spied, Who, hard by, made a window send forth light. My heart then quak'd, then dazzled were mine eyes ; One hand forgat to rule, th' other to fight ; Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries. My foe came on, and beat the air for me. Till that her blush made me my shame to see. VII. No more, my dear, no more these counsels try, give my passions leave to run their race ; Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace ; Let folk o'ercharged with brain against me cry ; Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye ; Let me no steps, but of lost labor, trace ; Let all the earth with scorn recount my case. But do not will me from my love to fly. 1 do not envy Aristotle's wit, NUG^ CRITICS. lOS NTor do aspire to Caesar's bleeding fame ; N^or aught do care, though some above me sit| tfor hope, nor wish, another course to frame, But that which once may win thy cruel heart. Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art. VIII. Love still a boy, and oft a wanton, is, SchooFd only by his mother's tender eye. What wonder, then, if he his lesson miss. When for so soft a rod dear play he try ? And yet my Star, because a sugar'd kiss In sport I suck'd, while she asleep did lie, Doth lour, nay, chide, nay, threat, for only this. Sweet, it was saucy Love, not humble L But no 'scuse serves ; she makes her wrath appear In beauty's throne : see, now, who dares come near Those scarlet judges, threat'ning bloody pain '? heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face Anger invests with such a lovely grace, That Anger's self I needs must kiss again. IX. 1 never drank of Aganippe well, Nor ever did in shade of Tempo sit, And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell s Poor lay-man I, for sacred rites unfit. Some do I hear of Poet's fury tell, But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it j And this I swear by blackest brook of hell, I am no pick-purse of another's wit. How falls it then, that with so smooth an ease My thoughts I speak, and what I speak doth flow In verse, and that my verse best wits doth please f 1()4 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. Guess me the cause. What, is it thus ? Fie, no. Or so ? Much less. How then ? Sure thus it ia; My lips are sweet, inspired with Stella's kiss. X. Of all the kings that ever here did reign, Edward, named Fourth, as first in praise I name. Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain — Although less gifts imp feathers oft on Fame ; Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame His sire's revenge, joined with a kingdom's gain, And, gained by Mars, could yet mad Mars so tam^ That Balance weigh'd what Sword did late obtain ; Nor that he made the Floure-de-luce so 'fraid, Though strongly hedged of bloody Lions' paws, That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid ; Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause- But only, fur this worthy knight durst prove To lose his crown rather than fail his love. XI. happy Thames, that didst my Stella bear, 1 saw thyself, with many a smiling line Upon thy cheerful face, Joy's livery wear, While those fair planets on thy streams did shine; The boat for joy could not to dance forbear, While wanton winds, with beauty so divine Ravish'd, stay'd not, till in her golden hair They did themselves (0 sweetest prison) twine. And fain those ^ol's youth there would their stay Have made ; but, forced by nature still to fly. First did with pufFmg kiss those locks display. She, so dishevel'd, blush'd ; from window I With sight thereof cried out, fair disgrace, Let honor's self to thee grant highest place ! NUG.ZE CRITICS. XII. Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be, And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet^ Tempers her words to tramjDling horses' feet, More soft than to a chamber melody — Now blessed You bear onward blessed Me To Her, where I my heart safe left shall meet. My Muse and I must you of duty greet With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully, Be you still fair, honor'd by pubhc heed, By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot ; Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed ; And that you know I envy you no lot Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss, Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss. Of the foregoing, the first, the second, and the last sonnet are my favorites. But the general beauty of them all is, that they are so perfectly characteristical. The spirit of " learning and of chivalry " — of which union Spenser has entitled Sydney to have been the " president "—shines through them. I confess I can see nothing of the " jejune " or " frigid " in them—much less of the "stiff" and " cumbrous " — which I have sometimes heard objected to the " Arcadia." The verse runs off swiftly and gallantly. It might have been tuned to the trumpet, or tempered (as himself expresses it) to ■''trampling horses' feet." They abound in felicitous phrases : heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-wortby face— Eighth Sonnet. .... sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; A rosy garland, and a weary head„ Second .Sonnetf n 106 THE LAST E^vSAYS OF ELIA, . , . that sweet enemy, France— Fifth Sonmje, But tbey are not rich in words only of vagup and uclocalized feelings — the failing too mucli of some poe- try of the present day ; they are full, material, and cir- cumstantiated. Time and place appropriate every one of them. It is not a fever of passion wasting itseif upon a thin diet of dainty words,* but a transcendent passion pervading and illuminating action, pursuits, studies, feats of arras, the opinions of contemporaries and his judg- ment of them. An historical thread runs through them which almost affixes a date to them — marks the when and where they were written. * A profusion of verbal dainties, with a disproportionate lack ot matter and circumstances, is, I think, one reason of the. cold- ness with which the public has received the poetry of a noble- man now living, which, upon the score of exquisite diction alone, is entitled to something better than neglect. I venture to copy one of his sonnets in this place, which, for quiet sweetness and unafi'ected morality, has scarcely its parallel in our language. Tg A Bird that Haunted the Watees of Lacken in thf Winter. By Lord Thurlmo. me/ancholy bird, a winter's day Thou standest by the margin of the pool, And, taught by &od, dost thy whole being school To patience, which all evil can allay. God has appointed thee the fish thy prey, And given thyself a lesson to the fool Unthrifty, to "submit to moral rule, And his unthinking course by thee to weigh. There need not schools, nor a professor's chair, Though these be good, true wisdom to impart. He who has not enough, for these, to spare Of time or gold, may yet amend his heart, And teach his soul, by brooks and rivers fair; Nature is always wise in every part. NUGyE CRITICS. 107 I bave dwelt the longer upon what I conceive tne merit of these poems, because I have been hurt by the wantonness (I wish I could treat it by a gentler name) with which a favorite critic of our day tal^es every occa- sion of insulting the memory of Sir Philip Sydney. But the decisions of the author of " Table Talk," etc. (most profoimd and subtle where they are, as for the most part^ Just), are more safely to be relied upon, on subjects and authors he has a partiality for, than on such as he has conceived an accidental prejudice against. Milton wrote sonnets, and was a king-hater ; and it was congenial perhaps to sacrifice a courtier to a patrioto But I was unwilling to lose a fine idea from my mind. The noble images, passions, sentiments, and poetical delicacies of character, scattered all over the " Arcadia " (spite of S')me stiftness and encumberment), justify to me the character which his contemporaries have left us of the writer. I can not think, with Mr. Hazlitt, that Sir Philip Sydney was that opprobrious thing which a foolish noble- man in his insolent hostility chose to term him. I call to mind the epitaph made on him by Lord Brooke, to guide me to juster thoughts of him ; and I repose upon the beautiful lines in the " Friend's Passion for his As- trophel," printed with the Elegies of Spenser and others: You knew — who knew not Astrophel ? (That I should live to say I knew, And have not in possession still !) — Things known permit me to renew. Of him, you know his merit such, I can not say — you hear — too muck. Within these woods of Arcady He chief delight and pleasure took | 108 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. And on the mountain Partheny, Upon the crystal liquid brook, The Muses met him every day, That taught him sing, to write, and a%f^ When he descended down the mount, His personage seemed most divine : A thousand graces one might count Upon his lovely, cheerful eyne. To hear him speak, and sweetly smil4^ You were in paradise the while. A sweet attractive kind of grace ; A full assurance given by looks ; Continual comfort in a face. The lineaments of Gospel hooks— I trow that count'nance can not lie, Whose thoughts are legible in the eye, Above all others, this is he Which erst approved in his song That love and honor might agree, And that pure love will do no wrong. Sweet saints, it is no sin or blame To love a man of virtuous name. Did never love so sweetly breathe In any mortal breast before : Did never muse inspire beneath A poet's brain with finer store. He wrote of love with high conceit, And Beauty rear'd above her height. Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief running into rage) in the poem — the last in the collection accom- panying the above — which from internal testimony I believe to be Lord Brooke's — beginning with " Silence NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. every want beyond mere bread and cheese — was exact^ ly that part of the day which (as we have heard of Nr Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time ; that is, no time in which a man ought to be up and awake in. To speak more plainly, it is that time, of an hour or an hour and a half's duration, in which a man, whose occasions call him up so preposterously, has to wait for his breakfast. Oh, those headaches at dawn of day, when at five or half-past five in summer, and not much later in the dark seasons, we were compelled to rise, having been perhaps not above four hours in bed (for we were no go-to-beds with tfie lamb, though we anticipated the lark ofttiraes in her rising ; we like a parting cup at midnight, as all young men did before these efEemiaate times, and to NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 113 have our friends about us; we were not constellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and therefore inca- pable of Bacchus, cold, washj, bloodless ; we were none of your Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken our de- grees at Mount Ague ; we were right toping capulets, jolly companions, we and they) ; but to have to get up, as we said before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting] with only a dim vista of refreshing bohea in the dis^ tance ; to be necessitated to rouse ourselves at the de- testable rap of an old hag of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in her announcement that it was "time to rise," and whose chappy knuckles we have often yearned to amputate, and string tliem up at our chamber door, to be a terror to all such unseasonable rest-breakers in future — "Facil" and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the "descending" of the over-night balmy, the first sinking of the heavy head upon the pillow ; but to get up, as he goes on to say — .... revocare gradus^ superasque evadere ad auras— and to get up, moreover, to make jokes with malice pre- pended, there was the "labor," there the '' work." No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like - to that, our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned out for half the tyranny which this necessity exercised upon us. Half a dozen jests in a day (bating Sundays, too)— why, it seems nothmg I We make twice the num- ber every day in our lives as a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical exemptions. But then they come into our head. But when the liead has to go out to them, when the mountain must go to Mahomet - Reader, try it foi once, only for one short twelve mouth. 8 114 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELlA. It was not every week that a fashion of pink stock- ings came up ; but mostlj, instead of it, some rugged, untractable subject ; some topic impossible to be con- torted into the risible; some feature upon which no smile could play ; some flint from which no process of ingenuity could procure a scintillation. There they lay ; there your appointed tale of brickmaking was set before you, which you must finish, with or without straw, as it 'mppened. The craving Dragon — the Public — like him in BeFs temple, must be fed ; it expected its daily ra- tions; and Daniel, and ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we could on this side bursting him. While we were wringing out coy sprightlinesses for the " Post," and writhing imder the toil of what is called " easy writing," Bob Allen, our quondam school- fellow, was tapping his impracticable brains in a like service for the " Oracle." Not that Robert troubled himself much about wit. If his paragraphs had a spright- ly air about them, it was sufficient. He carried this non- chalance so far at last, that a matter of intelligence, and that no very important one, was not seldom palmed upon his employers for a good jest; for example's sake: " WalHng yesterday morning casually down Snow Hill^ 'whom should we meet hut Mr. Deputy Humphreys! We rejoice to add, that the worthy Deputy appeared to enjoy a good state of health. We do not ever remember to have seen him looh better.'''' This gentleman, so surprisingly met upon Snow Hill, from some peculiarities in gait or gesture, was a constant butt for mirth to the small para- graph-mongers of tlie day ; and our friend thought that he might have his fling at him with the rest. We met A. in Holborn shortly after this extraordinary rencounter, rhich he told with tears of satisfaction in his eyes, and NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 115 chuckling at the anticipated effects of its announcement next day in the paper. We did not quite comprehend where the wit of it lay at the time ; nor was it easy to be detected when the thing came out advantaged by type and letter-press. He had better have met anything that morning than a Common Councilman. His services were shortly after dispensed with, on the plea that his para- graphs of late had been deficient in point. The one in question, it must be owned, had an air, in the opening especially, proper to awaken curiosity ; and the senti- ment, or moral, wears the aspect of humanity and good- neighborly feeling. But somehow the conclusion was not judged altogether to answer to the magnificent prom- ise of the premises. We traced our friend's pen after- ward in the "True Briton," the "Star," the "Traveler," from all which he was successively dismissed, the pro- prietors having " no further occasion for his services." Nothing was easier than to detect him. When wit failed, or topics ran low, there constantly appeared the follow- ing : " It is not generally known that the three Blue Balls at the Pawnbrokers' shops are the ancient arms of Lom- lardy. The Lombards were the first money brokers in Europe.'''' Bob has done more to set the public right on this important point of blazonry than the whole College of Heralds. The appointment of a regular wit has long ceased to be a part of the economy of a morning paper. Editors find their own jokes, or do as well without them. Par- son Este, and Topham, brought up the set custom of " witty paragraphs " first in the " World." Boaden was a reigning paragraphist in his day, and succeeded poor Allen in the " Oracle." But, as we said, the fashion of ]okes passes away; and it would be diflficult to discover ^i6 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. iu the biographer of Mrs. Siddons any traces of that vi- vacity and fancy which charmed the whole town at the commencement of the present century. Even the pre- lusive delicacies of the present writer — the curt " Astrsaan allusion " — would be thought pedantic and out of date in ihese days. From the office of the " Morning Post " (for we may as well exhaust our Newspaper Eeminiscences at once), by change of property in the paper, we were transferred, mortifying exchange! to the office of the "Albion" newspajjcr, late Rackstrow's Museum, in Fleet Street. What a transition — from a handsome apartment, from rosewood desks and silver inkstands, to an office — ^no office, but a den rather, but just redeemed from the occu- pation of dead monsters, of which it soemed redolent — from the center of loyalty and fashion to a focus of vul- garity and sedition. Here in murky closet, inadequate from its square contents to the receipt of the two bodies of editor and humble paragraph maker, together at one time, sat in the discharge Oi" his new editorial functions .the " Bigod " of Elia) the redoubted John Fenwick. Fo, without a guinea in his pocket, and having left not many in the pockets of his friends whom he might command, had purchased (on tick, doubtless) the whole and sole editorship, proprietorship, with all the rights and titles (such as they were worth), of the " AlMon"'' from one Lovell ; of whom we know nothing, eave that he had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless concern, for it had been sink- ing ever since its commencement, and could now reckon apon not more than a hundred subscribers, F. resolutely determined upon pulling down the government J" the first instance, and making both our fortunes by w^j 9^ NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. li'^ eorollary. For seven weeks and more did this infatuated democrat go about borrowing seven-shilling pieces, and lesser coin, to meet the daily demands from the Stamp Office, which allowed no credit to publications of that side in politics. An outcast from politer bread, we at- tached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation now was to write treason. Eecollections of feelings which were all that now re- mained from our first boyish heats kindled by the French Revolution, when, if we were misled, we erred in the company of some who are accounted very good men now — rather than any tendency at this time to republican doctrines — assisted us in assuming a style of writing, while the paper lasted, consonant in no very under tone to the right earnest fanaticism of F. Our cue was now to insinuate, rather than recommend, possible abdica- tions. Blocks, axes, Whitehall tribunals, were covered with flowers cf so cunning a periphrasis — as Mr. Bayes says, never naming the thing directly — that the keen eye of an Attorney-General was insufficient to detect the lurk- ing snake among them. There were times, indeed, when we sighed for our more gentlemanlike occupation under Stuart. But with change of masters it is ever change of service. Already one paragraph, and another, as we learned afterward from a gentleman at the Treasury, had begun to be marked at that office, with a view of its being submitted at least to the attention of the proper Law Officers — when an unlucky epigram from our pen, aimed at Sir J s M h, who was on the eve of departing for India to reap the fruits of his apostasy, as F. pro- nounced it (it is hardly worth particularizing), happen- ing to offend the nice sense of Lord, or, as he then delighted to be called, Citiaen Stanhope, deprived F. at 118 THE LAST ESSAYS OF EUA. once of the last hopes of a guinea from tlie last patron that had stuck oj us ; and breaking up our establishment, left us to the safe, but somewhat mortifying, neglect of the Crown liawyers. It was about this time, or a little earlier, that Dan Stuart made that curious confession to uo, that he had " never deliberately walked into an Ex= hibition at Somerset House in his life." BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. HoGAETH excepted, can we produce any one painter within the last fifty years, or since the humor of exhibit- ing began, that has treated a story imaginatively ? By this we mean upon whom his subject has so acted, that it has seemed to direct Tiim — not to be arranged by him ? Any upon whom its leading or collateral points have impressed themselves so tyrannically, that he dared not treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a revelation? Any that has imparted to his compositions, not merely so much truth as is enough to convey a story with clear- neess, but that individualizing property which should keep the subject so treated distinct in feature from every other subject, however similar, and to common apprehen- sions almost identical ; so as that we might say, this and this part could have found an appropriate place in no other picture in the world but tliis? Is there anything in modern art — we will not demand that it should be equal — but in any way analogous to what Titian has effected, in that wonderful bringing together of two times I ON THE PRODUCTIONS Ol* MODERN ART. 119 in the " Ariadne," in tlie National Gallery ? Precipitous^ with his reeling satyr rout about him, repeopling and re- illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, firelike flings himself at the Cretan. This is the time present. With this telling of the story, an artist, and no ordinary one, might remain richly proud. Guido, in his harmoni- ous version of it, saw no further. But from the depths of the imaginative spirit Titian has recalled past time, and laid it contributory with the present to one simul- taneous effect. With the desert all ringing with the mad cymbals of his followers, made lucid with the presence and new offers of a god, as if unconscious of Bacchus, or but idly casting her eyes as upon some unconcerning pageant — her soul undistracted from Theseus — Ariadne is still pacing the solitary shore in as much heart silence, and in almost the same local solitude, with which she awoke at daybreak to catch the forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away the Athenian. Here are two points miraculously co-uniting: fierce society with the feeling of solitude still absolute ; noon- day revelations, with the accidents of the dull gray dawn unquenched and lingering; the present Bacchus, with the past Ariadne ; two stories, with double Time ; sepa- rate, and harmonizing. Had the artist made the woman one shade less indifferent to the god — still more, had she expressed a rapture at his advent — where would have been the story of the mighty desolation of the heart pre- vious? Merged in the insipid accident of a flattering offer met with a welcome acceptance. The broken heart for Theseus was not lightly to be pieced up by a god. We have before us a fine rough print, from a picture 1^0 fHE LAST ESSAYS OP ELlA. by Eaphael in tlie Yatican. It is the Presentation of the new-born Eve to Adam by the Almighty. A fairer mother of mankind we might imagine, and a goodher sire, perhaps, of men since born. But these are matters subordinate to the conception of the situation displayed in this extraordinary production. A tolerably modern artist would have been satisfied with tempering certain raptures of connubial anticipation with a suitable ac knowledgment to the Giver of the blessing, in the coun- tenance of the first bridegroom; something like the divided attention of the child (Adam was here a child- man) between the given toy and the mother who had just blest it with the bawble. This is the obvious, the first-sight view, the superficial. An artist of a higher grade, considering the awful presence they were in, would have taken care to subtract something from the expression of the more human passion, and to height- en the more spiritual one. This would be as much as an exhibition-goer, from the opening of Somerset House to last year's show, has been encouraged to look for. It is obvious to hint at a lower expression yet, in a picture that, for respects of drawing and coloring, might be deemed not wholly inadmissible within these art -foster- ing walls, in which the raptures should be as ninety-nine; the gratitude as one, or perhaps zero I By neither the one passion nor the other has Kaphael expounded the situation of Adam. Singly upon his bi-ow sits the ab- sorbing sense of wonder at the created miracle. The moment is seized by the intuitive artist, ])erhaps not self- conscious of his art, in which ncltlier of the conflicting emotions — a moment how abstracted— 'uis had time to bpring up, or to battle for inds(!orons mastery. We have seen a landscape of a justly admired neoteric, in which ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 121 he aimed at delineating a fiction, one of the most severely beautiful in antiquity — the gardens of the Hesperides. To do Mr. justice, he had painted a laudable or- chard, with fitting seclusion, and a veritable dragon (of which a Polypheme, by Poussin, is somehow a facsimile for the situation), looking over into the world s!iut out backward, so that none but a " still-climbing Hercules '' could hope to catch a peep at the admired Ternary ©f Recluses. No conventual porter could keep his eyes better than this custos with the " lidless eyes." He not only sees that none do intrude into that privacy, but, as clear as daylight, that none but Hercules aut Diabolus by any manner of means can. So far all is well. We have absolute solitude here or nowhere. Ab extra the damsels are snug enough. But here the artist's courage seems to have failed him. He began to pity his pretty charge, and, to comfort the irksomeness, has peopled their solitude with a bevy of fair attendants, maids of honor or ladies of the bedchamber, according to the ap- proved etiquette at a court of the nineteenth century ; giving to the whole scene the air of Q.fete champitre^ if we will but excuse the absence of the gentlemen. This is well, and Watteauish, But what is become of the solitary mystery — the Daughters three, That sing around the golden tree ? This is not the way in which Poussin would have treated this subject. The paintings — or rather the stupendous architectural designs — of a modern artist have been urged as objec- tions to the theory of our motto. They are of a charac- ter, we confess, to stagger it. His towered structures 122 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA, are of the highest order of the material sublime. Wheth- er they were dreams, or transcripts of some elder work- manship — Assyrian ruins old — restored by this mighty artist, they satisfy our most stretched and craving con- ceptions of the glories of the antique world. It is a pity that they were ever peopled. On that side, the imagina- tion of the artist halts, and appears defective. Let us examine the point of the story in the " Belshazzar's Feast," We will introduce it by an apposite anecdote. The court historians of the day record that at the first dinner given by the late King (then Prince Kegent) at the Pavilion, the following characteristic frolic was played off. The gaests were select and admiring ; the banquet profuse and admirable ; the lights lustrous and oriental ; the eye was perfectly dazzled with the display of plate, among which the great gold salt-cellar, brought from the regalia in the Tower for this especial purpose — itself a tower I — stood conspicuous for its magnitudCo And now the Rev. . . ., the then admired court Chap- lain, was proceeding with the grace, when, at a signal given, the lights were suddenly overcast, and a huge transparency was discovered, in which glittered in gold letters— " Brighton— Earthquake — Swallow-up- alive I " Imagine the confusion of the guests — the Georges and garters, jewels, bracelets, molted upon the occasion ! the fans dropped, and picked up the next morning by the sly court pages! Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name fainting, and the Countess of . . . holding the smelling-bottle, till the good-humored Prince caused harmony to be restored by calling in fresh candles, and declaring that the whole was nothing but a pantomime hoax, got up by the ingeni^ ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 123 ous Mr. Farley, of Oovent Garden, from hints which his Eoyal Highness himself had furnished! Then imagine the infinite applause that followed, the mutual rallyings, the declarations that " they were not much frightened," of the assembled galaxy. The point of time in the picture exactly answers to the appearance of the transparency in the anecdote. The huddle, the flutter, the bustle, the escape, the alarms, and the mock alarm ; the prettiness heightened by con- sternation ; the courtier's fear which was flattery ; and the lady's which was affectation ; all that we may con- ceive to have taken place in a mob of Brighton courtiers, sympathizing with the well-acted surprise of the sover- eign — all this and no more, is exhibited by the well- dressed lords and ladies in the Hall of Belus. Just this sort of consternation we have seen among a flock of dis- quieted wild geese at the report only of a gun having gone ofi^! But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal anxiety for the preservation of their persons — such as we have wit- nessed at a theatre, when a slight alarm of fire has been given — an adequate exponent of a supernatural terror ? the way in which the finger of God, writing judgments, would have been met by the withered conscience? There is a human fear, and a divine fear. The one is disturbed, restless, and bent upon escape. The other is bowed down, eftbrtless, passive. When the spirit ap- peared before. Eliphaz in the visions of the night, and the hair of his flesh stood up, was it in the thoughts of the Temanite to ring the bell of his chamber, or to call up the servants? But let us see in the text what there is to justify all this huddle of vulgar consternation. From the works of Daniel it aooears Belshazzar had 124 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. made a great feast to a thousand of bis lords, and drank wine before the thousand. The golden and silver ves- sels are gorgeously enumerated, with the princes, the kihg's concubines, and his wives. Then follows : " In the same hour came forth fingers of a man^s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace; and the Mn(; saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the Icing's countenance was changed and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosened, and his knees smote one against another." This is the plain text. Bj no hint can it be otherwise inferred, but that the appearance was solely confined to the fancy of Belshazzar, that his single brain was troubled. Not a word is spoken of its being seen by any else there present, not even by the queen herself, who merely un- dertakes for the interpretation of the phenomenon, as related to her, doubtless, by her husband. The lords are simply said to be astonished; i. e., at the trouble and the change of countenance in their sovereign. Even the prophet does not appear to have seen the scroll, which the king saw. He recalls it only, as Joseph did the Dream to the King of Egypt. " Then was the part of the hand sent from him [the Lord], and this writing was written." He speaks of the phantasm as past. Then what becomes of this needless multiplication of the miracle ? this message to a royal conscience, singly expressed — ^for it was said, "Thy kingdom is divided " — simultaneously impressed upon the fancies of a thousand courtiers, who were implied in it neither directly nor grammatically ? But admitting the artist's own version of the story, and that the sight was seen also by the thousand cour- ON THE PRODUCTIONS OP MODERN ART. 1^^ tiers — let it have been visible to all Babylon — as the knees of Belshazzar were shaken, and his conntenance troubled, even so would the knees of every man in Bab- ylon, and their countenances, as of an individual man, have been troubled ; bowed, bent down, so would they have remained, stupor-fixed, with no thought of strug- gling with that inevitable judgment. Not all that is optically possible to be seen u to be shown in every picture. The eye delightedly dwells upon the brilliant individualities in a "Marriage at Oana," by Veronese or Titian, to the very texture and color of the wedding-garments, the ring glittering upon the bride's finger, the metal and fashion of the wine-pots ; for at such seasons there is leisure and luxury to be curiouS' But in a " day of judgment," or in a " day of lesser hor- rors, yet divine," as at the impious feast of Belshazzar the eye should see, as the actual eye of an agent orpatieni^ in the immediate scene would see, only in masses amd indistinction. Not only the female attire and jewelry exposed to the critical eye of fashion, as minutely as the dresses in a Lady's Magazine, in the criticised picture, but perhaps the curiosities of anatomical science, and studied diversities of posture, in the falling angels anc' sinners of Michael Angelo, have no business in their great subjects. There was no leisure for them. By a wise falsification, the great masters of pjainting got at their true conclusions; by not showing the actual appearances, that is, all was to be^ seen at any given mo- ment by an indifferent eye, but only what the eye might be supposed to see in the doing or sufiering of some por- tentous action. Suppose tlie moment of the swallowing up of Pompeii. There they were to be seen — houses, columns, architectural proportions, diiferences of public 126 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. and private buildings, men and women at their standing occupations, the diversified thousand postures, attitudes, dresses — in some confusion truly, but physically they were visible. But what eye saw them at that eclipsing moment, which reduces confusion to a kind of unity, and when the senses are upturned from their proprieties, when sight and hearing are a feeling only ? A thousand years have passed, and we are at leisure to contemplate the weaver fixed standing at his shuttle, the baker at his oven, and to turn over with antiquarian coolness the pots and pans of Pompeii. " Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon." Who, in reading this magnifi- cent Hebraism, in his conception, sees aught but tbe heroic son of Nun, with the outstretched arm, and the greater and lesser light obsequious? Doubtless there were to be seen hill and dale, and chariots and horsemen on open plain, or winding by secret defiles, and aU the circumstances and stratagems of war. But whose eyes would have been conscious of this array at the interposi- tion of the synchronic miracle ? Yet in the picture of this subject by the artist of the " Belshazzar's Feast " — no ignoble work either — the marshaling and landscape of tlie war is everything, the miracle sinks into an anecdote of the day ; and the eye may " dart through rank and file traverse" for some minutes, before it shall discover, among his armed followers, wMch is Joshua! Not mod- ern art alone, but ancient, where only it is to be found if anywhere, can be detected erring from defect of this imaginative faculty. The world has nothing to show of the preternatural in painting, transcending the figure of Lazarus bursting his grave-clothes, in the great picture at Angerstein's. It seems a thing between two beings. ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 127 A ghastly horror at itself struggles with newly appre- hending gratitude at second life bestowed. It can not forget that it was a ghost. It has hardly felt that it is a body. It has to tell of the world of spirits. Was it from a feeling that the crowd of half-impassioned bystanders, and the still more irrelevant herd of passers-by at a dis- tance, who have not heard or but faintly have been told of the passing miracle, admirable as they are in design and hue — for it is a glorified work — do not respond ade- quately to the action, that the single figure of the La- zarus has been attributed to Michael Angelo, and the mighty Sebastian unfairly robbed of the fame of the greater half of the interest ? Now that there were not indifferent passers-by within actual scope of the eyes of those present at the miracle, to whom the sound of it had but faintly, or not at all, reached, it would be hardi- hood to assert; but would they see them? or can the mind in the conception of it admit of such unconcerning objects — can it think of them at all? or what associating league to the imagination can there be between the seers and the seers not of a presential miracle ? Were an artist to paint upon demand a picture of a Dryad, we will ask whether, in the present low state of expectation, the patron would not or ought not to be fully satisfied with a beautiful naked figure recumbent under wide-stretched oaks? Disseat those woods, and place the same figure among fountains and fall of pellucid water, and you have a — ISTaiad ! Not so in a rough print we have seen after Julio Eomano, we think — for it is long since. There^ by no process, with mere change of scene, could the figure have reciprocated characters. Long, grotesque, fantastic, yet with a grace of her own, beautiful in convolution and distortion, linked to her 128 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. connatural tree, cotwisting with its limbs her own, tilJ both seemed either — these, animated brunches ; those, disaniraated members — yet the animal and vegetable lives suflfioientlj kept distinct — his Dryad lay — an approxima- tion of two natures, wiiich to conceive it must be seen ; analogous to, not the same with, the delicacies of Ovidian transform ations. To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial compre- hension, the most barren, the Great Masters gave lofti- ness and fruitfulness. The large eye of genius saw in the meanness of present objects their capabiHties of treatment from their relations to some grand Past or Future. How has Rapliael — we must still linger about the Vatican — treated the humble craft of the ship-builder, in Ms " Build- ing of the Ark " ? It is in that scriptural series to which we have referred, and which, judging from some fine rough old graphic sketches of them which we possess, seem to be of a higher and more poetic grade than even the Car- toons. The dim of sight are the timid and the shrinking. There is a cowardice in modern art. As the FrencJiman, of whom Coleridge's friend made the prophetic guess at Rome, from the beard and horns of the Moses of Michael Angelo, collected no inferences beyond that of a He Goat and a Cornuto ; so from tliis subject, of mere mechanic promise, it would instinctively turn away, as from one incapable of investitude with any grandeur. The dock- yards at Woolwich would object derogatory associations. The depot at Chatham would be the mote and the beam in its intellectual eye. But not to the nautical prepara- tions in the ship -yards of Civita Yecchia did Raphael look for instructions, when he imagined the Building of the Vessel that was to be conservatory of the wrecks of the species pf drqwned manVdnd. li\ the iiiteijsity of the ON THE I»RODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 129 action, he keeps ever out of sight the meanness of the operation. There is the Patriarch, in calm forethought, and -with holy prescience, giving directions. And there are his agents — the solitary but sufficient Three — hew- ing, sawing, every one with the might and earnestness of a Demiurgus ; under some instinctive rather than techni- cal guidance ! giant-muscled ; every one a Hercules, or liker to those Yulcanian Three, that in sounding caverns under Mongibello wrought in fire — Brontes, and black Steropes, and Pyracmon. So work the workmen thai should repair a world ! Artists again err in the confounding of poetic with pictorial subjects. In the latter, the exterior accidents are nearly everything, the unseen qualities as nothing. Othello's color — the infirmities and corpulence of a Sir John Falstaff — do they haunt us perpetually in the read- ing? or are they obtruded upon our conceptions one time for ninety-nine that we are lost in admiration at the respective moral or intellectual attributes of the charac- ter? But in a picture Othello is always a Blackamoor, and the other only Plump Jack. Deeply corporealiz\3d, and enchained hopelessly in the groveling fetters of ex- ternality, must be the mind to which, in its better mo- ments, the image of the high-souled, high-intelligenced Quixote — the errant Star of Knighthood, made more tender by eclipse — has never presented itself, divested from the unhallowed accompaniment of a Sancho, or a rabblement at the heels of Rosinante. That man has read his book by halves ; he has laughed, mistaking his author's purport, which was — tears. The artist that pictures Quixote (and it is in this degrading point that he 5s every season held up at our Exhibitions) in the shal- low hope of exciting mirth would have joined the rabble 9 130 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. at the heels of his starved steed. We wish not to seo that counterfeited which we would not have wished to see in the reality. Conscious of the heroic inside of the noble Quixote, who on liearing that his withered person was passing, would have stepped over his tlireshold to gaze upon his forlorn habiliments, and the " strange bed- fellows which misery brings a man acquainted with ? " Shade of Cervantes ! who in thy Second Part could put into the mouth of thy Quixote those high aspirations of a super-chivalrous gallantry, where he replies to one of the shepherdesses, apprehensive that he would spoil their pretty networks, and inviting him to be a guest with them in accents like these : " Truly, fairest Lady, Actseon was not more astonished when he saw Diana bathing her- self at the fountain, than I have been in beholding your beauty. I commend the manner of your pastime, and thank you for your kind offers ; and, if I may serve you, so I may be sure you will be obeyed, you may command me: for my profession is this. To show myself thankful and a doer of good to all sorts of people, especially of the rank that your person shows you to be ; and if those nets, as they take up but a little piece of ground, should take up the whole world, I should seek out new worlds to pass through, rather than break them : and (he adds) that you may give credit to this my exaggeration, be- hold at least he that promiseth you this is Don Quixote de la Mancha, if haply this name hath come to your hearing." Illustrious Romancer ! were the " fine fren- zies" which possessed the brain of thy own Quixote a fit subject, as in this Second Part, to be exposed to the jeers of Duennas and Serving Men ? to be monstered, and shown up at the heartless banquets of great men? Was that pitiable infirmity, which in thy First Part misleads ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART, 131 Mm, always from within^ into lialf-ludicrous, but more than half-compassionable and admirable errors, not infliction enough from heaven, that men by studied artifices must devise and practice upon the humor, to inflame where they should soothe it ! Why, Goneril would have blushed to practice upon the abdicated king at this rate, and the she wolf Regan not have endured to play the pranks upon his fled wits, which thou hast made thy Quixote sulfer in Duchesses' halls, and at the hand of that un- worthy nobleman.* In the first adventures, even, it needed all the art of the most consummate artist in the book way that the world hath yet seen, to keep up in the mind of the read- er the heroic attributes of the character without relaxing, so as absolutely that they shall suffer no alloy from the debasing fellowship of the clown. If it ever obtrudes itself as a disharmony, are we inclined to laugh ; or not, rather, to indulge a contrary emotion ? Cervantes, stung, perchance, by the relish with which his reading public had received the fooleries of the man, more to their pal- ates tlian the generosities of the master, in the sequel let his pen run riot, lost the harmony and the balance, and sacrificed a great idea to the taste of his contemporaries. "We know that in the present day the Knight has fewer admirers than the Squire. Anticipating what did actually happen to him — as afterward it did to his scarce inferior follower, the author of "Guzman de Alfarache" — that some less knowing hand would prevent him by a spurious Second Part; and judging that it would be easier for his competitor to outbid him in the comicalities than in the romance of his work, he abandoned his Knight, and has * Yet from this Second Part our cried-up pictures are mostly selected — the waiting-women with beurde, etc. 132 THE LAST ESSAYS OP ELIA. fairly set up the Squire for his Hero. For what else has he unsealed the eyes of Sancho? and instead of that twi- light state of semi-insanity — the madness at second hand — the contagion caught from a stronger mind infected — that war between native cunning and hereditary defer- ence, with which he has hitherto accoihpanied his master — two for a pair almost — does he substitute a downright Knave, with open eyes, for his own ends only following a confessed Madman ; and offering at one time to lay, if not actually laying, hands upon him ! From the moment that Sancho loses his reverence, Don Quixote is become a treatable lunatic. Our artists handle him accordingly. THE WEDDING. I DO not know when I have been better pleased than at being invited last week to be present at the wedding of a friend's daughter. I like to make one at these cere- monies, which to us old people give back our youth in a manner, and restore our gayest season, in the remem- brance of our own success, or the regrets, scarcely less tender, of our own youthful disappointments, in this point of a settlement. On these occasions I am sure to be in good humor for a week or two after, and enjoy a reflected honeymoon. Being without a family, I am flat- tered with these temporary adoptions into a friend's family ; I feel a sort of cousinhood, or uncleship, for the season ; I am inducted into degrees of aflanity ; and, in the participated socialities of the little community, I lay down for a brief while my solitary bachelorship. I car- I THE WEDDING. 133 ry this humor so far, that I take it unkindly to he left out, even when a funeral is going on in the house of a dear friend. But to my subject. The union itself had been long settled, but its celebra- tion had been hitlierto deferred, to an almost unreason- able state of i^uspense in the lovers, by some invincible prejudices which the bride's father had unhappily con- tracted upon the subject of the too early marriages of females. He has been lecturing anytime these live years — for to that length the courtship has been protracted — upon the propriety of putting off the solemnity till the lady should have completed her five-and-twentieth year. We all began to be afraid that a suit, which as yet had abated of none of its ardors, might at last be lingered on till passion had time to cool, and love go out in the ex- periment. But a little wheedling on the part of his wife, w^ho was by no means a party to these overstrained no- tions, joined to some serious expostulations on that of his friends, who, from the growing infirmities of the old gentleman, could not promise ourselves many years' en- joyment of his company, and were anxious to bring mat- ters to a conclusion during his lifetime, at length pre- vailed ; and on Monday last the daughter of my old friend, Admiral , having attained the womanly age of nine- teen, was conducted to the church by her pleasant cousin J , who told some few years older. Before the youthful part of my female readers ex- press their indignation at the abominable loss of time occasioned to the lovers by the preposterous notions of my ohl friend, they will do well to consider the reluc- tance which a fond parent naturally feels at partmg with his child. To this unwillingness, I believe, in most cases may be traced the difference of opinion on this point be- 134 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. tween child and parent, whatever pretences of interest or prudence may be held ont to cover it. The hardhearted- ness of fathers is a fine theme for romance writers, a sure and moving topic ; but is there not something untender, to say no more of it, in the hurry which a beloved child is sometimes in to tear herself from the paternal stock, and commit herself to strange graftings? The case is heightened where the lady, as in the present instance, happens to be an only child. I do not understand these matters experimentally, but I can make a shrewd guess at the wounded pride of a parent upon these occasions. It is no new observation, I believe, that a lover in most cases has no rival so much to be feared as the lather. Cer- tainly there is a jealousy in unparallel subjects^ which is little less heart-rending than the passion which we more strictly christen by that name. Mothers' scruples are more easily got over ; for this reason, I suppose, that the protection transferred to a husband is less a derogation and a loss to their authority than to the paternal. Moth- ers, besides, have a trembling foresight, which paints the inconveniences (impossible to be conceived in the same degree by the other parent) of a life of forlorn celibacy which a refusal of a tolerable match may entail upon their child. Mothers' instinct is a surer guide here than the cold reasonings of a father on such a topic. To this instinct maybe imputed, and by it alone maybe excused, the unbeseeming artifices by which some wives push on the matrimonial projects of their daughters, which the husband, however approving, shall entertain with com- parative indifference. A little shamelessness on this head is pardonable. With this explanation, forwardness becomes a grace, and maternal importunity receives the name of a virtue. But the parson stays, while I prepos- THE WEDDING. 135 terously assume his oflSce ; I am preaching, while th« bride is on the threshold. Nor let anj of my female readers suppose that the sage reflections which have just escaped me have the obliquest tendency of application to the young lady, who, it will be seen, is about to venture upon a change in her condition at a mature and competent age, and not without the fullest approbation of all parties. I only deprecate 'Very hasty marriages. It had been fixed that the ceremony should be gone through at an early hour, to give time for a little dejeuner afterward, to which a select party of friends had been invited. We were in church a little before the clock struck eight. Nothing could be more judicious or graceful than the dress of the bridemaids — the three charming Miss For- esters — on this morning. To give the bride an oppor- tunity of shining singly, they had come habited all in green. I am ill at describing female apparel ; but while she stood at the altar in vestments white and candid as her thoughts, a sacrificial whiteness, they assisted in robes such as might become Diana's nymphs — Foresters indeed — as such who had not yet come to the resolution of putting off .cold virginity. These young maids, not being so blest as to have a mother living, I am told, keep single for tlieir father's sake, and live all together so happy with their remaining parent, that the hearts of their lovers are ever broken with the prospect (so inau- spicious to their hopes) of such uninterrupted and pro- voking home-comfort. Gallant girls ! each a victim wor- thy of Iphigenia ! I do not know what business I have to be present in solemn places. I can not divest me of an unseasonable Ige THE LAST ESSAtS OF tUA. disposition to levity upon the most awful occasions. 1 was never cut out for a public functionary. Ceremony and I have long shaken hands ; but I could not resist the importunities of the young lady's father, whose gout unhappily confined him at home, to act as parent on this occasion, and give away the hride. Something ludicrous occurred to me at this most serious of all moments — a sense of my unfitness to have the disposal, even in im- agination, of the sweet young creature beside me. I fear I was betrayed to some lightness, for the awful eye of the parson — and the rector's eye of St. Mildred's in the Poultry is no trifle of a rebuke — was upon me in an in- stant, souring my incipient jest to the tristful severities of a funeral. This was the only misbehavior which I can plead to upon this solemn occasion, unless what was objected to me after the ceremony, by one of the handsome Miss T s, be accounted a solecism. She was pleased to say that she had never seen a gentleman uefore me give away a bride in black. Now black has been my ordinary apparel so long — indeed, I take it to be the proper cos- *«*^tume of an author — the stage sanctions it — that to have appeared in some lighter color (a pe^ -green coat, for instance, like the bridegroom's) would have raised more mirth at my expense than the anomaly h.Hd created cen- sure. But I could perceive that the bride's mother and some elderly ladies present (God bless them!) would have been well content, if I had come in any other color than that. But I got over the omen by a lucky apologue, which I remembered out of Pilpay, or some Indian au- thor, of all the birds being invited to the linnet's wed- ding, at which, when all the rest came in their g^vest feathers, the raven alone apologized for his doak h^ THE WEDDING. £37 cause " he had no other." This tolerably reconciled the elders. But with the young people all was merriment, and shaking of hands, and congratulations, and kissing away the bride's tears, and kissing from her in return, till a young lady, who assumed some experience in these matters, having worn the nuptial bands some four or five weeks longer than her friend, rescued her, archly observ- ing, with half an eye upon the bridegroom, that at this rate she would have " none left." My friend the Admiral was in fine wig and buckle on this occasion — a striking contrast to his usual neglect of personal appearance. He did not once shove np his borrowed locks (his custom ever at his morning studies) to betray the few gray stragglers of his own beneath them. He wore an aspect of thoughtful satisfaction. I trembled for the hour, which at length approached, when after a protracted 'brealcfast of three hours — if stores of cold fowls, tongues, hams, botargoes, dried fruits, wines, cordials, etc., can deserve so meager an appellation — the coach was announced, which was come to carry off the bride and bridegroom for a season, as custom has sensibly ordained, into the country; upon which design, wishing them a felicitous journey, let us return to the assembled guests. As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage, The eyes of men Are idly bent on him that enters next — so idly did we bend our eyes upon one another when the chief performers in the morning's pageant had vanished. Kone told his tale. None sipped her glass. The poor Admiral made an effort — it was not much. I had anti- ipated so far. ijven the infinity of full satisfaction, th^t i 138 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. had betrj /ed itself through the prim looks and quiet de- portment of his lady, began to wane into something of misgiving, No one knew whether to take their leaves or stay. We seemed assembled upon a silly occasion. In this crisis, betwixt tarrying and departure, I must do justice to a foolish talent of mine, which had otherwise !ike to have brought me into disgrace in the forepart of the day ; I mean a power, in any emergency, of thinking and giving vent to all manner of strange nonsense. In this awkward dUemma I found it sovereign. I rattled off some of my most excellent absurdities. All were willing to be relieved, at any expense of reason, from the pressure of the intolerable vacuum which had suc- ceeded to the morning bustle. By this means I was for- tunate in keeping together the better part of the com- pany to a late hour ; and a rubber of whist (the Admir- al's favorite game), with some rare strokes of chance as well as skill, which came opportunely on his side — length- ened out till midnight — dismissed the old gentleman at last to his bed with comparatively easy spirits. I have been at my old friend's various times since. I do not know a visiting place where every guest is so perfectly at ease ; nowhere, where harmony is so strange- ly the result of confusion. Everybody is at cross pur^ poses, yet the effect is so much better than uniformity. Contradictory orders ; servants pulling one way, master and mistress driving some other, yet both diverse ; visi- tors huddled up in corners ; chairs unsymmetrized ; can- dles disposed by chance ; meals at odd hours, tea and supper at once, or the latter preceding the former; the host and the guest conferring, yet each upon a different topic, each understanding himself, neither trying to un- derstand or hear the other ; draughts and politics, chess NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 139 and political economy, cards and conversation on nauti- cal matters, going on at once, without the hope, or indeed the wish, of distinguishing them, make it altogether the most perfect concordia discors you shall meet with. Yet somehow the old house is not quite what it should be. The Admiral still enjoys his pipe, but he has no Miss Emily to fill it for him. The instrument stands where it stood, but she is gone whose delicate touch could some- times for a short minute appease the warring elements. He has learnt, as Marvel expresses it, to "make his des- tiny his choice." He bears bravely up, but he does not come out with his flashes of wild wit so thick as form- erly. His sea-songs seldomer escape him. His wife, too, looks as if she wanted some younger body to scold and set to rights. We all miss a junior presence. It is won- derful how one young maiden freshens up, and Iceeps green, the paternal roof. Old and young seem to have an interest in her, so long as she is not absolutely dis- posed of. The youthfulness of the bouse is flown. Em- ily is married. REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE.* The Old Year being dead, and the N'ew Yea?' coming of age, which he does, by Calendar Law, as soon as the breath is out of the old gentleman's body, nothing would serve the young spark but he must give a dinner upon the occasion, to which all the Bays in the year were in- vited. The Festivals, whom he deputed as his stewards, * This signed Ella's Ghost. 140 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. were mightily taken with the notion. They had been engaged time out of mind, they said, in providing mirth and good cheer for mortals below ; and it was time they should have a taste of their own bounty. It was stiflQy debated among them whether the Fasts should be ad- mitted. Some said the appearance of such lean, starved guests, with their mortified faces, would pervert the ends of the meeting. But the objection was overruled by Christmas Day^ who had a design upon Ash Wednesday (as you shall hear), and a naughty desire to see how the old Dominie would behave himself in his cups. Only the Vigils were requested to come with their lanterns, to light the gentlefolks home at night. All the Bays came to their day. Covers were pro- vided for three hundred and sixty-five guests at the prin- cipal table ; with an occasional knife and fork at the sideboard for the Tioenty- Ninth of February, I should have told you that cards of invitation had been issued. The carriers were the Hours ; twelve little merry, whirligig foot-pages as you should desire to see, that went all round, and found out the persons invited well enough, with the exception of Easter Day^ Shrove Tuesday^ and a few such Movables^ who had lately shifted their quarters. Well, they all met at last, foul Days, fine Days, all sorts of Days^ and a rare din they made of it. Ther© was nothing but, Hail ! fellow Day — well met, brother Day — sister Day. Only Lady Day kept a little on the aloof, and seemed somewhat scornful. Yet some said Twelfth Day cut her out and out, for she came in a tif- fany suit, white and gold, like a queen on a frost- cake, all royal, glittering, and Epiphanous. The rest came, gpRi© in green, some iji wWte ; but old X^mt and hu NfiW YEAR'S COMING OF AGfe. 141 family were not yet out of mourning. Eainy Days came in, dripping; and sunshiny Days helped them to change their stockings. Wedding Day was there in his marriage finery, a little the worse for wear. Pay Day came late, as he always does; and Doomsday sent word — he might be expepted. April Fool (as my young lord's jester) took upon himself to marshal the guests, and wild work he made with it. It would have posed old Erra Pater to have found out any given Day in the year, to erect a scheme upon — good Days^ bad Days were so shuffled together, to the confounding of all sober horoscopy. He had stuck the Twenty-First of June next to the Twenty -Second of December^ and the former looked like a Maypole siding a marrow-bone. Asli Wednesday got wedged in (as was concerted) betwixt Christmas and Lord Mayor'' s Days. Lord! how he laid about him! Nothing but barons of beef and turkeys would go down with him — to the great greasing and detriment of his new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas Day was at his elbow, plying him with the wassail-bowl, till he roared, and hiccup'd, and protested there was no faith in dried ling, but commended it to the devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious, hy-po-crit-crit-critical mess, and no dish for a gentleman. Then he dipt his fist into the middle of the great custard that stood before his left-hand neighbor, and daubed his hungry beard all over with it, till you would have taken him for the Last J)ay in December^ it so hung in icicles- At another part of the table. Shrove Tuesday was helping the Second of September to some cock broth — which courtesy the latter returned with the delicate thigh of a hen pheasant ; so there was no love lost for that 142 *rHE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. matter. The Last of Lent was sponging upon Shrove tide's pancakes ; which April Fool perceiving, told him he did well, for pancakes were proper to a good fry- day. In another part, a hubbub arose about the Thirtieth of January^ who, it seems, being a sour puritanic char- acter, that thought nobody's meat good or sanctified enough for him, had smuggled into the room a calf's head, which he had cooked at home for that purpose, thinking to feast thereon incontinently ; but as it lay in the dish March Many -weathers^ who is a very fine lady, and subject to the meagrims, screamed out there was a "human head in the platter," and raved about Herodias's daughter to that degree, that the obnoxious viand was obliged to be removed; nor did she recover her stomach till she had gulped down a Restorati'De^ confected of OaTc Apple^ which the merry Twenty-Ninth of May always carries about with him for that purpose. The King's health being called for after this, a not- able dispute arose between the Twelfth of August (a zealous old Whig gentlewoman), and the Twenty-Third of April (a new fangled lady of the Tory stamp), as to which of them should have the honor to propose it. Au gust grew hot upon the matter, affirming time out oi mind the prescriptive right to have lain with her, till hei rival had basely supplanted her ; whom she represented as little better than a Tcept mistress, who went about in ■fine clothes^ while she (the legitimate Biethday) had scarcely a rag, etc. April Fool^ being made mediator, confirmed the right in the strongest form of words to the appellant, but de- cided for peace' sake that the exercise of it should re- main with the present possessor. At the same time, he NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 143 slyly rounded the first lady in the ear, that an action might lie against the Crown for U-geny. It beginning to grow a little duskish, Candlemas lus- tily bawled out for lights, which was opposed by all the Days, who protested against burning daylight. Then fair water was handed round iii silver ewers, and the 3ame lady wi*s observed to take an unusual time in Washing her?,<3lf. May Daj, with that sweetness which is peculiar to her, in a ne.it speech proposing the health of the founder, crowned hv.r goblet (and by her example the rest of the company) with garlands. This being done, the lordly New Yea? from the upper end of the table, in a cordial but some\/hat lofty tone, returned thanks. He felt proud on an occasion of meeting so many of his worthy father's late tenaiits, promised to improve their farms, and at the same time to abate (if anything was found unreasonable) in their rents. At the mention of this, the four Quarter Days invol- tarily looked at each other, and smiled; April Fool whistled to an old tune of " New Brooms " ; and a surly old rebel at the further end of the table (who was dis- covered to be no other than the Fifth of November) mut- tered out, distinctly enough to be heard by the whole company, words to this effect, that "when the old one i? gone, he is a fool that looks for a better." Which rude- ness of his, the guests resenting, unanimously voted his expulsion ; and the malcontent was thrust out neck and heels into the cellar, as the properest place for such a houtefeu and firebrand as he had shown himself to be. Order being restored, the young lord (who, to say the truth, had been a little ruffled, and put aside his oratory) in as f§w, and yet as obliging words as possible, assured 144 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. them of entire welcome ; and, witli a graceful turn sing- ing out poor Twenty-Ninth of February that sat all this while mumchance at the sideboard, begged to couple his health with that of the good company before him — which he drank accordingly ; observing that he had not seen his honest face any time these four years — with a num- ber of endearing expressions besides. At the same time, removing the solitary Bay from the forlorn seat which had been assigned him, he stationed him at his own board, somewhere between the Oreek Calends and Latter Lammas. Ash Wednesday^ being now called upon for a song, with his eyes stuck fast in his head, and as well as the Canary he had swallowed would give him leave, struck up a carol, which Christmas Day had taught him for th^ nonce; and was followed by the latter, who gave "Mis- erere " in fine style, hitting off the mumping tones and lengthened drawl of Old Mortification with infinite hu- mor. April Fool swore they had exchanged conditions; but Good Friduy was observed to look extremely grave ; and Sunday held her fan before her face, that she might not be seen to smile. Shrovetide, Lord Mayor's Day, and April Fooly next joined in a glee — Which is the properest day to drink ? in which all the Days, chiming in, made a merry burden. They next fell tcf quibbles and conundrums. The question being proposed, who had the greatest number of followers, the Quarter Days said there could be no question as to that; for they had all the creditors in the world dogging their heels. But April Fool gave it in fa- vor of the Forty Days he/ore Easter; because the NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. I45 debtors in all cases outnumbered the creditors, and they kept lent all the year. All this while Valentine^s Day kept courting pretty May^ who sat next him, slipping amorous hilUtSrdoux under the table, till the Dog Days (who are 'ine ; and all was in a fer- ment, till old Madam Septuag^ lima (who boasts herself the Mother of the Days) wise^ diverted the conversation with a tedious tale of the \c /ers which she could reckon when she was young ; an') of one Master Rogation Day in particular, who, was *br ever putting the question to her; but she kept h/in at a distance, as the chronicle would tell — by wYvM I apprehended she meant the Al- manac. Then sho rambled on to tlie Days that icere gone^ the good old Diys^ and so to the Days before the Flood— which plaiuly showed her old head to be little better *han crazod and doited. Day being ended, the days called for their cloaks and fi-ep.t coats, and took their leaves. Lord Mayor'^s Day ^QVit off in a Mist, as usual ; Shortest Day in a deep black Fog, that wrapt the little gentleman all round like a hedgehog. Two Vigils — so watchmen are called in heaven — saw Christmas Day safe home ; they had been used to the business before. Another Vigil— 3. stout, sturdy patrol, called the Ece of St. Christopher — seeing Ash Wednesday in a condition little better than he should be, e'en whipt him over his shoulders, pick-a-back fash- 10 143 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. ion, and Old Mortification went floating home singing On the bat's back do I fly and a number of old snatches besides, between drunlr and sober; but very few Aves or Penitentiaries (you may believe me) were among them. Longest Day set ofi westward in beautiful crimson and gold — the rest, some in one fashion, some in another ; but Valentine and pretty May took their departure together in one of tlie prettiest silvery twiliglits a Lover's Day could wish to set iu. OLD CHINA. I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the china- closet, and next for the picture-gallery. I can not de- fend the order of preference, but by saying that we have all some taste or other of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one„ I can call to mind the first play and the first exhibition that I was taken to ; but I am not conscious of a time when china Jars and saucers were introduced into my imagination. 1 had no repugnance then — why should I now have \ =— to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that, under the notion of men and women, float about, uncir- cumscribed by any element, in that world before perspec- tive — a china teacup. I like to see my old friends — whom distance can not diminish —figuring up in the air (so they appear tc 5ld china. l4t our optics), yet on terra firma still ; for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring up beneath their sandals. I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if possible, with still more womanish expressions. Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a salver — two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect ! And here the same lady, or an- other — for likeness is identity on teacups — is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead^ a furlong off, on the other side of the same strange stream ! Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of their world — see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays. Here, a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-extensive — so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay. I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our Hyson (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink un= mixed still of an afternoon), some of these speciosa mir- ucula upon a set of extraordinary old blue china (a recent purchase) which we were now^ for the first time using ; and could not help remarking how favorable circum- stances had been to us of late years, that we could afford to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort — when a passing sentiment seemed to overshade the brows of my companion. I am quick at detecting these sum- mer clouds in Bridget. " I wish the good old times would come again,'' she 148 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. said, '*wlien we were not quite so rich. I do not mean that I want to be poor; but there was a middle state '' • — so she was pleased to ramble on — " in which 1 am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we ooveted a cheap luxury (and oh! how much ado 1 had to get you to consent in those times ! ), we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against^ and think what we might spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money that we paid for it. " Do you remember the brown suit which you made to hang upon you till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so threadbare — and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Oovent Garden? Do you remem- ber how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to deter- mination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Is ington, fearing you should be too late — and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedward) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures — and when you lugged it home, wish- ing it were twice as cumbersome — and when you pre- sented it to me — and when we were exploring the per- fectness of it {collating you called it) — and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak- was there no pleasure in being a poor man ? Or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so OLD CHINA. X49 careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity with which you flaunted it about in that overworn suit — your old corbeau —for four or five weeks longer than you should have done to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen—or sixteen shillings was it ?— a great affair we thought it then — which you had lavished on the old folio ? Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchase now. " When you came home with twenty apologies for laying out a less number of shillings upon that print after Leonardo, which we christened the 'Lady Blanch ; ' when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the money — and thought of the money, and looked again at the picture — was there no pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into Ool- naghi's, as W calls it, and buy a wilderness of Leonardos. Yet do you ? " Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to En- field, and Potter's Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holiday — holidays, and all other fun, are gone now we are rich — and the little hand-basket in which I used to deposit our day's fare of savory cold lamb and salad— and how you would pry about at noon-tide for some decent house, where we might go in and produce our store, only paying for the ale that you must call for, and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a table-cloth — and wish for such an- other honest hostess, as Izaak Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a-fishing — and sometimes they would prove oblig- -mg enough, and sometimes they would look grudgingly 150 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELU. upon US— but we Lad cheerful loots still for one another, and would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall ? Now, when we go out a day's pleasuring, which is seldom moreover, we ride part of the way, and go into a fine inn, and order the best of dinners, never debating the expense — which, after all, never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage and a precarious welcome. " You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the pit or boxes. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, when we saw the 'Battle of Hexham,' and the ' Surrender of Calais,' and Bannister and Mrs. Eland in the ' Children in the Wood ' — when we squeezed out our shillings apiece to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery — where you felt all the time that you ought not to have brought me, and more strong- ly T felt obligation to you for having brought me — and the pleasure was the better for a little shame — and when the curtain drew up, what cared we for our place in the house, or what mattered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts were with Eosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria? You used to say that the gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially ; that the relish of such exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of going; that the company we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was going on, on the stage — because a word lost would have been a chasm, which it was impossible for them to fill up. With such reflections we consoled our pride then ; and I ap- peal to you whether, as a woman, I met generally with less attention and acQOCunod&tion than I have done since OLD CHIKA. 151 k mot-e expensive situations in the house ? The getting in tnaeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient stair- cawes, was bad enough ; but there was still a law of civility to woman recognized to quite as great an extent as we ever found in the other passages ; and how a little ditfi= culty overcome heightened the snug seat and the play afterward ! Now we can only pay our money and walk in. You can not see, you say, in the galleries now. I am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then ; but sight and all, I think, is gone with our poverty. "There was pleasure in eating strawberries before they became quite common — in the first dish of peas, while they were yet dear — to have them for a nice sup- per, a treat. What treat can we have now ? If we were to treat ourselves now — that is, to have dainties a little above our means — it would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little more that we allow ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat — when two people living together, as we have done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like, while each apologizes, and is willing to take both halves of the blame to his single share. I see no harm in people making much of themselves, in that sense of the word ; it may give them a hint how to make much of others. But now — what I mean by the word — we never do make much of ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we were, just above poverty. "I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet; and much ado we used to have every Thirty-first night ot December to account for our exceedings ; many a long face did you make over yoar puzzled accounts, and in 152 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. contriving to make it out how we had spent so much— or that we had not spent so much — or that it was im- possible we should spend, so much next' year; and stUl we found our slender capital decreasing. But then, be- twixt ways, and projects, and compromises of one sort DY another, and talk of curtailing this charge, and doing without that for the future, and the hope that youth brings, and laughing spirits (in which you were never poor till now), we pocketed up our loss, and in con- clusion, with ' lusty brimmers ' (as you used to quote it out of hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called him)^ we used to welcome in the ' coming guest.' Now we have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year — no flattering promises about the new year doing better .for us." Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had conjured up out of a clear income of poor hundred pounds a year. "It is true we were happier when we were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were "> shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much j[iend ourselves. That we had so much to struggle with as we grew up together, we have reason to be most thankful. It strengthened and knit our compact closer. We could never have been what we have been to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency wliich you now complain of. The resisting power — those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances can not straiten — with us are long since passed away. Com- petence to age is supplementary youth — a sorry supple THE CHILD ANGEL: A DKEAM. I53 ment indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride where we formerly walked ; live better and lie softer— and shall be wise to do so— than we had means to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet could those days return— could you and I once more walk our thirty miles a~day— could Bannister and Mrs, Bland again be young, and you and T be young to see them — could the good old one-shilling gallery days re- turn — they are dreams, my cousin, now — but could you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument by our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa, be once more struggling up those inconvenient staircases, pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers— could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours, and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, which always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us— I know not the fathom line tliat ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R is supposed to have, to pur- chase it. " And now do just look at that merry Chinese little waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half Madonna-isb chit of a lady in that very blue summer-house." THE CHILD ANGEL: A DREAM. I CHANGED upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical thing of a dream the other night, that you shall hear of. I bad been reading the "Loves of the Angels,"and went 154 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIAc to bed with my head full of speculations suggested by that extraordinary legend. It had given birth to innu- merable conjectures ; and I remember the last waking thought, which I gave expression to on my pillow, was a sort of wonder " what could come of it." I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could scarcely make out — but to some celestial region. It was not the real heavens neither — not the downright Bible-heaven- -but a kind of fairyland heaven, about which a poor human fancy may have leave to sport and air itself, I will hope, without presumption. Methought — what wild things dreams are! — I was present — at what would you imagine? — at an angel's gossiping. Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, or whether it came purely of its own head, neither you nor I know ; but there lay, sure enough, wrapt in its lit- tle cloudy swaddling-bands — a Child Angel. Sun-threads — filmy beams — ran through the celestial napery of what seemed its princely cradle. All the winged orders hovered round, watching when the new- born should open its yet closed eyes; which, when it did, first one, and then the other — with a solicitude and apprehension, yet not such as, stained with fear, dims the expanding eyelids of mortal infants, but as if to ex- plore its path in those its unhereditary palaces — what an inextinguishable titter that time spared not celestial Tisages ! Nor wanted there to my seeming — oh the in- explicable simpleness of dreams ! — bowls of that cheering nectar .... which mortals caudle call below. N"or were wanting laces of female ministrants, stricken in years, as it might seem, so dexterous were those heav* THE CHILD ANGEL: A DREAM. 155 enly attendants to counterfeit kindly similitudes of earth, to greet with terrestrial child-rites the young Present which earth had made to heaven. Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full, sym- phony as those by which the spheres are tutored, but as loudest instruments on earth speak oftentimes, muffled, 80 to accommodate their sound the better to the weak eare of the imperfect-born. And, with the noise of tnose subdued soundings, the Angelet sprang forth, fluttering its rudiments of pinions — but forthwith flagged and was recovered into the arms of those full-winged angels. And a wonder it was to see how, as years went round in heaven — a year in dreams is as a day — continually its white shoulders put forth buds of wings, but, wanting the perfect angelic nutriment, anon was shorn of its as- piring, and fell fluttering — still caught by angel hards — for -ever to put forth shoots, and to fall fluttering, be- cause its birth was not of the unmixed vigor of heaven. And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and it was to be called Ge-Urania, because its production was of earth and heaven. And it could not taste of death, by reason of its adoption into immortal palaces ; but it was to know weakness, and reliance, and the shadow of human imbe- cility ; and it went with a lame gait ; but in its goings it exceeded all mortal children in grace and swiftness. Then pity first sprang up in angelic bosoms, and yearn- ings (like the human) touched them at the sight of the immortal lame one. And with pain did then first those Intuitive Essences, with pain and strife, to their natures (not grief), put back their bright intelligences, and reduce their ethereal winds, schooling them to degrees and slower processes, 156 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 80 to adapt their lessons to the gradual illumination (as must needs be) of the half-earth-born ; and what intui- tive notices they could not repeal (by reason that their nature is to know all things at once), the half-heavenly novice, by the better part of its nature, aspired to receive into its understanding ; so that Humility and Aspiration went on even-paced in the instruction of glorious Am phibium. But, by reason that Mature Humanity is too gross to breathe the air of that super-subtile region, its portion was, and is, to be a child for ever. And because the human part of it might not pres« into the heart and inwards of the palace of its adoption, those full-natured angels tended it by turns in the pu^-' lieus of the palace, where were shady groves and rivu- lets, like this green earth from which it came : so Love^ with Voluntary Humility, waited upon the entertain ment of the new adopted. And myriads of years rolled round (in dreams Time is nothing), and still it kept, and is to keep, perpetual childhood, and is the Tutelar Genius of Childhood upon earth, and still goes lame and lovely. By the banks of the river Pison is seen, lone sitting by the grave of the terrestrial Mirzah, whom the angel Nadir loved, a Child ; but not the same which I saw in heaven. A pensive hue overcasts its lineaments; never- theless, a correspondency is between the child by the grave and that celestial orphan whom I saw above ; and the dimness of the grief upon the heavenly is a shadow or emblem of that which stains the beauty of the terres- trial. And this correspondency is not to be understood but by dreams. And in the archives of heaven I had grace to re^-d CONFESStONS OP A JRCrNKAIti). 151 how that once the angel !N'adir, being exiled from his place for mortal passion, upspringing on the wings ot parental love (such pov^er had parental love for a mo- ment to suspend the else irrevocable law), appeared for a brief instant in his station, and, depositing a wondrous Birth, straightway disappeared, and the palaces knew Mm no more. And this charge wa& the self-same Babe who goeth lame and lovely ; but Miraa\ sleepeth by the river Pison. OOl^FESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. \ Dehoetations from the use of strong liquors have \ been the favorite topic of sober declaimers in .•■'1 ages, and have been received with abundance of appi jse by water-drinking critics. But with the patient liimself, 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 mur- mur. 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 accus- tomed to scatter their pernicious contraries. But when a man has commenced sot — O pause, thou sturdy moralist, thou pei'son of stout 158 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. nerves and a strong head, whose liver is happily un- touched, and ere thy gorge riseth at the name which 1 have written, first learn what the thing is ; how much of compassion, how much of human allowance, thou mayest virtuously mingle with thy disapprobation, Trample not on the ruins of a man. Exact not, undeJ 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 <^Dne through? Is the weakness that sinks under such '-ruggles to be confounded with the pertinacity which clings to other vices, which have induced no con- stitutional 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 po- tion 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 sensa- tion at any rate, I hsve 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 THE CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. isg alcffie I am accountable for the woe tliat I have brought upon it. I believe that there are constitutions, robust heads and iron insides, whom scarce any excesses can hurt^ whom brandy (1 have seen them drink it like wine), at all events, whom wine, taken in ever so plentiful a mea- sure, 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 brothel', who, trying his strength with them, and coming off foiled from the contest, would fain persuade %em 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-twen- tieth 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. O! the quality called fancy I certainly possessed a larger share than my companions. Encouraged by their ap 160 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. plause, I set up for a professed joker ! — I, who of all men am least fitted for such an occupation, having, in addition to the greatest difiiculty which I experience at ail times of finding words to express my meaning, a nat- ural nervous impediment in my speech ! Reader, if yoa are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire bo any character but that of &. wit. When you find a tick=. ling 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 can not 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 can not be witty, to be ap- plauded for witty when you know 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 drudging applause, are the wages of buffoonery and death. Time, which has a sure stroke at dissolving all con- nections which have no solider fastening than this liquid THE CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 161 cement, more kind to me than my own taste or pene- tration, at length opened mj eyes to the supposed quali- ties of my first friends. No trace of them is left but in the vices which they introduced, and the habits they in- fixed. In them my friends survive still, and exercise ample retribution for any supposed infidelity that I may have been guilty of toward them. My next more immediate companions were and are persons of such intrinsic and felt worth that, though ac- cidentally 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 overheated notions of companionship ; and the slightest fuel which they un- consciously afforded was suflScient 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 de- vised a more subtle trap to retake 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 I (comparatively) white devil of tobacco brought with him i 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, T took m}' degrees through thin wines, through stronger wine and water, through small punch, to those 11 ) 163 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELiii. juggling compositions which, nnder the name of mixed liquors, slur a great deal of hrandy or other poison under less and less water continually, until thej 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 tohacco has heen to me, the drudging service which I have paid, the slav- ery which I have vowed to it. How, when I have re- solved to quit it, a feeling as of ingratitude has started up ; how it has put on personal claims and made the de- mands of a friend upon me. How the reading of it casu- ally 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 the morning pipe in that delicate room Piscatoribus Sac- rum, has in a moment broken down the resistance of weeks. How a pipe was ever in my midnight path be- fore me, till the vision forced me to realize it ; how then its ascending vapors curled, its fragrance lulled, and the thousand delicious rainisterings conversant about it, em- ploying 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 be- yond 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 THE CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 168 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 good- ness, 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 naihng him to a branch, and Repugnance at the same instant of time is applying a snake to his «ide. 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 Syba- ritic 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 represenced 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 dehcious 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 em- anating 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 | 1 164 fHE LAST Assays of m^ik. 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 hi£ teeth, .... and not undo 'em To suffer wet damnation to run thro' 'em. Yea, but (methinks I hear somebody object) if so- briety be that fine thing you would have us to under- stand, if the comforts of a cool brain are to be preferred to that state of heated excitement which you describe and deplore, what hinders in your instance that you do not return to those habits from which you would induce others never to swerve? If the blessing be worth pre- serving, is it not worth recovering? Recovering f Oh, 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 sun^ and youthful exercise kad 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 purl- ing over my burning tongue. But my waking stomach yejects 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— TEE CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 1^< none that I can find. In my stage of habit (I speak no^ 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 suflScient 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 in that state in which, paradoxi- cal as it may appear, reason shall only visit Mm through tntoxication ; for it is a fearful truth that the intellectual farulties, by repeated acts of intemperance, may be dri\- eu from their orderly sphere of action, their clear day- light ministries, until they shall be brought at last to depend for the faint manifestation of their departing en- ergies upon the returning periods of the fatal madness to which they owe their devastation. The drinking man is < never less himself than during his sober intervals. Evil is so far his good.* Behold me then, in the robust period of life, reduced to imbecility and decay. Hear me count my gains, and the profits whicli 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 * When poor M painted his iast 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 ter^ fibly. 166 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. the tendency to any malady as it was possible to be. 1 scarce knew what it was to ail anything. Now, except when I am losing myself in a sea of drink, I am nev^er 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 very particularly adapted to my nature, yet as something of necessity to be gone through, and therefore best undertaken with cheerfulness, I used to enter upon with some degree of alacrity, now wearies, affrights, perplexes me. I fancy all sorts of discouragements, and am ready to give up an occupation which gives me bread, from a harassing con- ceit of incapacity. The slightest commission given me by a friend, or any small duty which I have to perform lor myself, as giving orders to a tradesman, etc., haunts ne as a labor impossible to be got through. So much ^he springs of action are broken. The same cowardice attends me in all my intercourse with mankind. I dare not promise that a friend's honor or Ms causa would be safe in my keeping, if I were put T'^iE CONFESSIONS Oi^ A f)RUNKAftD. l6t to the expense of any manly resolution in defending it. ^(So much the springs of moral action are deadened within me. My favorite occupations in times past now cease to entertain. I can do nothing readily. Application for ever so short a time kills me. This poor abstract of my coadition was penned at long intervals, with scarcely any attempt at connection of thought, which is now diffi- cult to me. The noble passages which formerly delighted me in history or poetic fiction, now only draw a few weak tears, allied to dotage. My broken and dispirited nature seems to sink before anything great and admirable. I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any cause or none. It is inexpressible how much this infirmity adds to a sense of shame and a general feeling of deteriora- tion. 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 Confessions. I know not whether I shall be laughed at, or heard seriously. Such as they are, I com- mend them to the reader's attention, if he find his own case any way touched. I have told him what I am come to. Let him stop in time. 168 T'HE LAST ESSAYS OP ELIA. POPULAE FALLACIES. That a 'bully is always a coward. — Thisj ax'iom con- tains a principle of compensation, which disposes us to admit tlie truth of it. But there is no safe trusting to dictionaries and definitions. We should more willingly fall in with this popular language, if we did not find brutality sometimes awkwardly coupled with 'valor in the same vocabulary. The comic writers, with their poetical justice, have contributed not a little to mislead us upon this point. To see a hectoring fellow exposed and beaten upon the stage, has something in it wonder- fully diverting. Some people's share of animal spirits is notoriously low and defective. It has not strength to raise a vapor, or furnish out the wind of a tolerable bluster. These love to be told that huffing is no part of valor. The truest courage with them is that which is the least noisy and obtrusive. But confront one of these silent heroes with the swagger of real life, and his confi- dence in the theory quickly vanishes. Pretensions do not uniformly bespeak non-performance. A modest, in- offensive deportment does not necessarily imply valor ; neither does the absence of it justify us in denying that quality. Hickman wanted modesty — we do not mean him of Clarissa — but who ever doubted his courage? Even the poets — upon whom this equitable distribution of qualities should be most binding — have thought it agreeable to nature to depart from the rule upon occa- sion. Harapha, in the " Agonistes," is indeed a bully upon the received notions. Milton has made him at once a blusterer, a giant, and a dastard. But Almanzor, In Dryden, talks of driving armies singly before him— POPULAR FALLACIES. 16& an them, and doing an affront POPULAR FALLACIES. I7I to the order vo which they have the honor equally to belong ? All rhis while they do not see how the wealth- ier man stands by and laughs in his sleeve at both. That the poor copy the vices of the rich. — A smooth text tQ the letter ; and preached from the pulpit, is sure of a fiocile audience from the pews lined with satin. Ife is twice sitting upon velvet to a foolish squire to be told that he — and not perverse nature^ as the homilies would make us imagine — is the true cause of all the irregularis ties in his parish. This is striking at the root of free will indeed, and denying the originality of sin in any sense. But men are not such implicit sheep as this comes to. If the abstinence from evil on the part of the upper classes is to derive itself from no higher principle than the apprehension of setting ill patterns to the lower, we beg leave to discharge them from all squeamishness on that score : they may even take their fill of pleasures where they can find them. The Genius of Poverty, hampered and straitened as it is, is not so barren of in- vention, but it can trade upon the staple of its own vice, without drawing upon their capital. The poor are not quite such servile imitators as thoy take them for. Some of thein are very clever artists in their way. Here and there we find an original. Who taught the poor to steal, tD pilfer? They do not go to the great for schoolmasters in these faculties, surely. It is well if in some vices they allow us to be — no copyists. In no other sense is it true that the poor copy them, than as servants may be said to tahe after their masters and mistresses, when they succeed to their reversionary cold meats. If the master, from indisposition or some other cause, neglect his food, the servant dines notwithstanding. 172 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. "Oh, but (some will say) the force of ex»mr.«iOPlTLAR FALLACIES. \enser, platonizinfff sings: " Every spirit as it is more pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight With cheerful grace and amiable sight. For of the soul the body form doth take : For soul is form and doth the body make." But Spenser, it is clear, never saw Mrs. Conrady. These poets, we find, are no safe guides in philoso- phy ; for here, in his very next stanza but one, is a sav- ing clause, which throws us all out again, and leaves us as much to seek as ever : '' Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd, Either by chance, against the course of kind, Or through unaptness in the substance found, Which it assumed of some stubborn ground, That will not yield unto her form's direction. But is perform'd with some foul imperfection." From which it would follow that Spenser had seen somebody like Mrs. Conrady. The spirit of this good lady — ^her previous anima — ■ must have stumbled upon one of these untoward taber- nacles which he speaks of. A more rebellious commod- 180 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. ity of clay for a ground, as tlie poet calls it, no gentle mind — and sure hers is one of the gentlest — ever had to deal with. Pondering upon her inexplicable visage — inexplicable, we mean, but by this modification of the theory — we have come to a conclusion that, if one must be plain, it is better to be plain all over, than, amidst a tolerable residue of features, to hang out one that shall be excep- tionable. No one can say of Mrs. Oonrady's counte- nance that it would be better if she had but a nose. It is impossible to pull her to pieces in this manner. We have seen tlie most malicious beauties of her own sex baffled in the attempt at a selection. The tout- ensemble defies particularizing. It is too complete — too consis- tent, as we may say— to admit of these invidious reserva- tions. It is not as if some Apelles had picked out here a lip and there a chin, out of the collected ugliness of Greece, to frame a model by. It is a symmetrical whole. Wq» challenge the minutest connoisseur to cavil at any part or parcel of the countenance m question ; to say that this or that is improperly placed. "We are con- vinced that true ugliness, no less than is affirmed of true beauty, is the result of harmony. Like that, too, it reigns without a competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. Oonrady without pronouncing her to be the plainest woman that he ever met with in the course of his life. The first time that you are indulged with a sight of her face is an era in your existence ever after. You are glad to have seen it — like Stonehenge. No one can ])retend to forget it. No one ever apologized to her for meet- ing her in the street on such a day and not knowing her : the pretext would be too bare. Nobody can mis- take her for another. Nobody can say of her, " I think POPULAR FALLACIES. 181 I have seen that face somewhere, but I can not call to mind where." You must remember that in such a par- lor it first struck you — like a bust. You wondered where the owner of the house picked it up. You won- dered more when it began to move its lips — so mildly, too ! No one ever thought of asking her to sit for her picture. Lockets are for remembrance ; and it w^ould be clearly superfluous to hang an image at your heart, which, once seen, can never be out of it. It is not a mean face either ; its entire originality precludes that. Neither is it of that order of plain faces which improve upon acquaintance. Some very good but ordinary peo- ple, by an unwearied perseverance in good offices, put a cheat upon our eyes, juggle our senses of their natural impressions, and set us upon discovering good indica- tions in a countenance which at first sight promised no- thing less. "We detect gentleness, which had escaped us, lurking about an under lip. But when Mrs. Conrady has done you a service, her face remains the same; when she has done you a thousand, and you know that she is ready to double the number, still it is that indi- vidual face. Neither can you say of it that it would be a good face if it were not marked by the small-pox, a compliment which is always more admissive than excu- satory; for either Mrs. Oonrady never had the small- pox, or, as we say, took it kindly. No, it stands upon its own merits fairly. There it is. It is her mark, her token ; that which she is known by. That my Lord Shaftesbury and Sir William Temple are models of the genteel style of writing. — We should prefer saying, of the lordly and the gentlemanly. No- thing can be more unlike than the inflated finical rhap- sodies of Shaftesbury, and the plain natural chit-chat of 182 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. Temple. The man of rank is discernible in both writers; but in the one it is only insinuated gracefully, in the other it stands out offensively. The peer seems to have writ- ten with his coronet on, and his Earl's mantle before him ; the commoner in his elbow-chair and undress. What can be more pleasant than the way in which the retired statesman peeps out in his essays, penned by the latter in his delightful retreat at Shene? They scent of Nimeguen and the Hague. Scarce an authority is quoted under an ambassador. Don Francisco de Melo, a "" Portugal Envoy in England," tells him it was fre- quent in his country for men spent with age and other decays, so as they could not hope for above a year or two of life, to ship themselves away in a Brazil fleet, and after their arrival there to go on a great length, sometimes of twenty or thirty years or more, by the force of that vigor they recovered with that remove. " Whether such an effect " (Temple beautifully adds) " might grow from the air or the fruits of that climate, or by approaching nearer the sun, which is the fountain of light and heat, when their natural heat was so far decayed, or whether the piecing out of an old man's life were worth the pains^ I can not tell : perhaps the play is not worth the can- dle." Monsieur Pompone, " French Ambassador in his (Sir William's) time at the Hague," certifies him that in his life he had never heard of any man in France that arrived at a hundred years of age; a limitation of life which the old gentleman imputes to the excellence of their climate, giving them such a liveliness of temper and humor as disposes them to more pleasures of all kinds than in any other countries ; and moralizes upon the matter very sensibly. The " late Eobert, Earl of Leicester," furnishes him with a story of a Countess of POPULAli FALLACIElS. 1^J3 Desmond, married out of England in Edward lY.'stime, and who lived far in King James's reign. The " same noble person " gives him an account how such a year, in the same reign, there went about the country a set of morrice-dancers, composed of ten men who danced, a Maid Marian, and a tabor and pipe; and how these twelve, one with another, made up twelve hundred years. " It was not so much " (says Temple) " that so many in one small county (Hertfordshire) should live to that age, as that they should be in vigor and in humor to travel and to dance." Monsieur Zulichem, one of his " col- leagues at the Hague," informs him of a cure for the gout, which is confirmed by another "Envoy," Monsieur Ser- inchamps, in that town, who had tried it. Old Prince Maurice of Nassau recommends to him the use of ham- mocks in that complaint ; having been allured to sleep, while suffering under it himself, by the " constant motion or swinging of those airy beds." Count Egmont, and the Rhinegrave, who " was killed last summer before Maestricht," impart to him their experiences. But the rank of the writer is never more innocently disclosed than where he takes for granted the compli- ments paid by foreigners to his fruit-trees. For the taste and perfection of what we esteem the best, he can trulj say that the French, who have eaten his peaches and grapes at Shene in no very ill year, have generally C( n- cluded that the last are as good as any they have eaten in France on this side Fontainebleau, and the first as good as any they have eaten in Gascony. Italians have agreed his white figs to be as good as any of that sort in Italy, which is the earlier kind of white fig there ; for "in the later kind and the blue, we can not come near the warm climates, jio more than in the Frontignac or Muscat 184 fflE LAST ASSAYS 0^ ELIA, grape." His orange trees, too, are as large as anj he saw when he was young in France, except those of Fon- tainebleau ; or what he has seen since in the Low Coun- tries, except some very old ones of the Priuce of Orange's. Of grapes he had the honor of bringing over four sorts into England, which he enumerates, and supposes that they are all by this time pretty common among some gardeners in his neighborhood, as well as several persons of quality ; for he ever thought all things of this kind "the commoner they are made the better." The garden pedantry with which he asserts that 'tis to little purpose to plant any of the best fruits, as peaches or grapes, hardly, he doubts, beyond Northamptonshire at the fur- thest northwards, and praises the " Bishop of Munster at Oosevelt," for attempting nothing beyond cherries in that cold climate, is equally pleasant and in character. '' I may, perhaps " (lie thus ends his sweet Garden Essay with a passage worthy of Cowley), " be allowed to know something of this trade, since I have so long allowed my- self to be good for nothing else, which few men will do, or enjoy their gardens, without often looking abroad to see how other matters play, what motions in the state, and what invitations they may hope for into other scenes. For my own part, as the country life, and this part of it more particularly, were the inclination of my youth it- self, so they are the pleasure of my age ; and I can truly say that, among many great employments that have fall- en to my share, I have never asked or sought for any of them, but have often endeavored to escape from them into the ease and freedom of a private scene, where a man may go his own way and his own pace, in the com- mon paths and circles of life. The measure of choosing well is whether a man likes what lie has chosen, which, POPULAR FALLACIES. 185 I thank God, has befallen me ; and though, among the follies of my life, building and planting have not been the least, and have cost me more than I have the confi- dence to own, yet they have been fully recompensed by the sweetness and satisfaction of this retreat, where, since my resolution taken of never entering again into any public employments, I have passed five years with- out ever once going to town, though I am almost in sight of it, and have a liouse there always ready to receive me. Nor has this been any sort of affectation, as some have thought it, but a mere want of desire or humor to make so small a remove ; for when I am in this corner, I can truly say with Horace, Me quoties rejicit^ etc. * Me when the cold Digentian stream revives, What does my friend believe I think or ask ? Let me yet less possess, so I may live, Whate'er of life remains, unto myself. May I have books enough, and one year's store, Not to depend upon each doubtful hour ; This is enough of mighty Jove to pray, Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away.' " The writings of Temple are, in general, after this easy copy. On one occasion, indeed, his wit, which was mostly subordinate to nature and tenderness, has seduced him into a string of felicitous antitheses — which, it is obvious to remark, have been a model to Addison and succeeding essayists. " Who would not be covetous, and with rea- son," he says, "if health could be purchased with gold? Who not ambitious, if it were at the command of power, or restored by honor? But, alas ! a white staft' will not help gouty feet to walk better than a common cane ; nor •% blu^ riband bind up a wound so well as a fillet, ^he 186 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. glitter of gold, or of diamonds, will but hurt sore eyes instead of curing tliem ; and an aching head will be no more eased by wearing a crown than a common night- cap." In a far better style, and more accordant with his own humor of plainness, are the concluding sentences of hiK "Discourse upon Poetry." Temple took a part in the controversy about the ancient and the modern learn- ing ; and, with that partiality so natural and so graceful in an old man, whose state engagements had left him little leisure to look into modern productions, while his retirement gave him occasion to look back upon the clas- sic studies of his youth, decided in favor of the latter^ "Certain it is," he says, "that, whether the fierceness of the Gothic humors or noise of their perpetual wars frightened it away, or that the unequal mixture of the modern languages would not bear it — the great heights and excellency both of poetry and music fell with the Roman learning and empire, and have never since recov- ered the admiration and applauses that before attended them. Yet, such as they are amongst us, they must be confessed to be the softest and the sweetest^ the most general and most innocent amusements of common time and life. They still find room in the courts of princes and the cottages of shepherds. They serve to revive and animate the dead calm of poor and idle lives, and to allay or divert the violent passions and perturbations of the greatest and the busiest men. And both these effects are of equal use to human life ; for the mind of man is like the sea, which is neither agreeable to the beholder nor the voyager in a calm or in a storm, but is so to both when a little agitated by gentle gales ; and so the mind, when moved by soft and easy passions or affections. I POPULAR }i'ALLACIES. 187 know verj well that many who pretend to be wise by the force of being grave, are apt to despise both poetry and music, as toys and trifles too light for the use or en- tertainment of serious men. But whoever find them- selves wholly insensible to their charms would, I think, do well to keep their own counsel, for fear of reproach- ing their own temper, and bringing the goodness of their natures, if not of their understandings, into question, "While this world lasts, I doubt not but the pleasure and request of these two entertainments will do so too ; and happy those that content themselves with these, or any other so easy and so innocent, and do not trouble the world or other men because they can not be quiet them- selves, though nobody hurts them." " When all is done " (he concludes), " human life is at the greatest and the best but like a f roward child, that must be played with, and liumored a little, to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over." Tliat home is home though it is never so homely. — Two homes there are, we are sure, that are no homes : the home of the very poor man, and another which we shall speak to presently. Crowded places of cheap entertainment, and the benches of alehouses, if they could speak, might bear ' mournful testimony to the first of our assertions. To them the very poor man resorts for an image of the horae which he can not find at home. Eor a starved grate, and a scanty firing, that is not enough to keep alive the nat- ural heat in the fingers of so many shivering children with their mother, he finds in the depth of winter always a blazing hearth, and a hob to warm his pittance of beer by. Instead of the clamors of a wife, made gaunt by famishing, he meets with a cheerful attendance beyond 188 THE LAST ESSAIS OF ELlA. the merits of the trifle which he can afford to spend. He has companions, which his home denies him, for the very poor man has no visitors. He can look into the goings on of the world, and speak a little to politics. At home there are no politics stirring, but the domestic. All interests, real or imaginary, all topics that should expand the mind of man, and connect him to a sympathy witt general existence, are crushed in the absorbing consider- ation of food to be obtained for the family. Beyond the price of bread, news is senseless and impertinent. At home there is no larder. Here there is at least a show of plenty ; and while he cooks his lean scrap of butcher's meat before the common bars, or munches his humbler cold viands, his relishing bread and cheese with an onion, m a corner, where no one reflects upon his poverty, he has a sight of the substantial joint providing for the landlord and his family. He takes an interest in the dressing of it ; and while he assists in removing the trivet from the fire, he feels that there is such a thing as beef and cabbage, which he was beginning to forget at home. All this while he deserts his wife and children. But what wife and what children? Prosperous men, who object to this desertion, image to themselves some clean contented family like that which they go home to. But look at the countenance of the poor wife who fol- lows and persecutes her goodman to the door of the pub- lic house, which he is about to enter, when something like shame would restrain him if stronger misery did not induce him to pass the threshold. That face, ground by want, in whicii every cheerful, every conversable linea- ment has been long effaced by misery—is that a face to stay at home with ? Is it more a woman, or a wild cat? Alas ! it is the face of the wife of his youth that onc« POPULAR FALLACIES. 189 smiled upon him. It can smile no longer. What com- forts can it share ? what burdens can it lighten ? Oh, 'tis a fine thing to talk of the humble meal shared together ! But what if there be no bread in the cupboard? The in- nocent prattle of his children takes out the sting of a man's poverty. But the children of the very poor do not prattle. It is none of the least frightful features in that condition, that there is no childishness in its dwell- ings. Poor people, said a sensible nurse to us once, do not bring up their children ; they drag them up. The little careless darling of the wealthier nursery, in their hovel is transformed betimes into a premature reflect- ing person. No one has time to dandle it, no one thinks it worth while to coax it, to soothe it, to toss it up and down, to humor it. There is none to kiss away its tears. If it cries, it can only be beaten. It has been prettily said that "a babe is fed with milk and praise." But the aliment of this poor babe was thin, unnourishing ; the return to its little baby -tricks, and efforts to engage attention, bitter ceaseless objur- gation. It never had a toy, or knew what a coral meant. It grew up without the lullaby of nurses ; it was a stran- ger to the patient fondle, the hushing caress, the attracting novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper off-hand contrivance to divert the child ; the prattled nonsense (best sense to it), the wise impertinences, the wholesome lies, the apt story interposed, that puts a stop to present sufferings, and awakens the passion of young wonder. It was never sung to ; no one ever told to it a tale of the nursery. It was dragged up, to live or to die as it hap- pened. It had no young dreams. It broke at once into the iron realities of hfe. A child exists not for the very poor as any ooject of dalliance ; it is only another mouth 190 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. to be fed, a pair of little hands to be betimes inured to la- bor. It is the rival, till it can be the cooperator, for food with the parent. It is never his mirth, his diver« sion, his solace ; it never makes him young again, with recalling his young times. The children of the very poor lave no young times. It makes the very heart bleed to overhear the casual street-talk between a poor woman and her little girl, a woman of the better sort of poor in a condition rather above the squalid beings which wo have been contemplating. It is not of toys, of nursery books, of summer holidays (fitting that age); of the promised sight or play ; of praised sufficiency at school. It is of mangling and clear-starching, of the price of coals, or of potatoes. The questions of the child, that should be the very outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are marked with forecast and melancholy providence. It has come to be a woman, before it was a child. It has learned to go to market ; it chaffers, it haggles, it envies, It murmurs; it is knowing, acute, sharpened; it nev- er prattles. Had we not reason to say that the home of the very poor is no home ? There is yet another home, which we are constrained to deny to be one. It has a larder, which the home of she poor man wants ; its fireside conveniences, of which the poor dream not. But with all this, it is no home. it is the house of a man that is infested with many vis- itors. May we be branded for the veriest churl, if we deny our heart to the many noble-hearted friends that at times exchange their dwelling for our poor roof! It is not of guests that we complain, bat of endless, purpose* less visitants; droppers in, as they are called. We some- times wonder from what sky they fall. It is the very error of the position of our lodging ; its horoscopy wa^ POPULAR FALLACIES. 191 iii caicuJated, being Just situate in a medium—a plaguy suburban mid-space — fitted to catch idlers from town or country. We are older than we were, and age is easily put out of its way. We have fewer sands in our glass to reckon upon, and we can not brook to see them drop in endlessly succeeding impertinences. At our time of life, to be alone sometimes is as needful as sleep. It is the refreshing sleep of the day. Oh, the comfort of sitting down heartily to an old foho, and thinking surely that th3 next hour or two will be your own — and the misery of being defeated by the useless call of somebody, who is come to tell you that he is just come from hearing Mr. Irving! What is that to you ? Let him go home and digest what the good man said to him. You are at your chapel in your oratory. The growing infirmities of age manifest themselves in nothing more strongly than in an inveterate dislike of interruption. The thing which we are doing, we wish to be permitted to do. We h^ve neither much knowledge nor devices ; but there are fewer in the place to which we hasten. We are not willingly put out of our way, even at a game of nine-pins. While youth was, we had vast reversions in time fxiture ; we are reduced to a present pittance, and obliged to economize in that articlt. We bleed away our moments now as hardly as our ducatg. We can not bear to have our thin wardrobe eaten and fretted into by moths. We are willing to barter our good time with a friend, who gives us in exchange his own. Herein is the distinction between the genuine guest and the visitant. This latter takes your good time, and gives you his bad in exchange. The guest is domestic to yon as your good cat or household bird ; the visitant is your fly, that flaps in at your window, and out again, leaving nothing but a sense of disturbance, and victuals spoiled 192 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA, The inferior functions of life begin to move heavily. We can not concoct our food with interruptions. Our chief meal, to be nutritive, must be solitary. With ditiiculty we can eat before a guest, and never understood what the rel- ish of public feasting meant. Meats have no sapor, nor digestion fair play, in a crowd. The unexpected coming in of a visitant stops the machine. There is a punctual generation who time their calls to the precise commence- ment of your dining hour — not to eat, but to see you eat. Our knife and fork drop instinctively, and we feel that we have swallowed our latest morsel. Others again show their genius, as we have said, in knocking the moment you have just sat down to a book. They have a peculiar compassionate sneer, with which they " hope that they do not interrupt your studies." Though they flutter off the next moment, to carry their impertinences to the nearest student that they can call their friend, the tone of the book is spoiled ; we shut the leaves, and, with Dante's lovers, read no more that day. It were well if the effect of intrusion were simply coextensive with its presence, but it mars all the good hours afterward. These scratches in appearance leave an orifice that closes not hastily. "It is a prostitution of the bravery of friend- ship," says worthy Bishop Taylor, "to spend it upon impertinent people, who are, it may be, loads to their families, but can never ease my loads." This is the se- cret of their gad dings, their visits, and morning calls : they too have homes, which are no homes. That we must not look a gift horse in the mouth — nor a lady's age in the parish register. "We hope we have more delicacy than to do either ; but some faces spare us the trouble of these dental inquiries. And what if the f>OPtfLAE FALLACIES, 19^ beast, which my friend would force upon my acceptance^ prove upon the face of it a sorry Rosinante, a lean, ill- favored jade, whom no gentleman could think of setting up in his stables ? Must I, rather than not be obliged tC' my friend, make her a companion to Eclipse or Light- voot ? A horse-giver, no more than a horse-seller, has a ight to palm his spavined article upon us for good ware. An equivalent is expected in either case ; and, with mj own good will, I would no more be cheated out of mj thanks than out of my money. Some people have s knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to en- gage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing. Our friend Mitis carries this humor of never refusing a present to the very point of absurdity — if it were possible to couple the ridiculous with so much mis- taken delicacy and real good nature. Not an apartment in his fine house (and he has a true taste in household decorations), but is stuffed up with some preposterous print or rau-ror— the worst adapted to his panels that may be—the presents of his friends that know his weak- ness ; while his noble Vandykes are displaced, to make x'oom for a set of daubs, the work of some wretched ar- tist of his acquaintance, who, having had them returned upon his hands for bad likenesses, finds his account m bestowing them here gratis. The good creature has not the heart to mortify the painter at the expense of an honest refusal. It is pleasant (if it did not vex one at the same time) to see him sitting in his dining-parlor, surrounded with obscure aunts and cousins to God knows whom, while the true Lady Marys and Lady Bettys of his own honorable family, in favor to these adopted frights, are consigned to the staircase and the lumber- room. In like manner his goodly shelves are one by one 13 194 TfHE LAST ISSaAYS Oh' ELK Etripped of his favorite eld authors, fco give place to a collection of presentation copies— the flour and bran of modern poetry. A presentation copy, reader — if haply you are yet innocent of such favors — is a copy of a book wj&ich does not sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it ; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship; if a brother author, he expects from you a book of yours, which does sell, in return. We can speak to experience, having hj us a tolerable assortment of these gift-horses. Not to ride a metaphor to death, we are willing to acknowledge that in some gifts there is sense. A duplicate out of a friend's library (where he has more than one copy of a rare author) is intelligible. There are favors short of the pecuniary — a thing not fit to be hinted at among gentle- men — which confer as much grace upon the acceptor as the offerer. The kind, we confess, which is most to our palate, is of those little conciliatory missives, which for their vehicle generally choose a hamper— little odd pres- ents of game, fruit, perhaps wine — though it is essential to the delicacy of the latter, that it be home-made. We iov9 to have our friend in the country sitting thus at our tabic by proxy; to apprehend his presence (though a hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, v/hose goodly aspect reflects tons his "plump corpusculum " ; to taste him in grouse or woodcock; to feel him gliding down in the toast peculiar to the latter ; to concorporat© him in a slice of Canterbury brawn. This is indeed t» have him within ourselves, to know him intimately ; such participation is methinks unitive. ac the old theologians phrase it. For these considerations we should be sorry if certain restrictive regulations, which are thought to bear hard upon the peasantry ot this country, were en- POPULAR FALLACIES. 195 cirely done away with. A hare, as the law now stands, makes many friends. Caius conciliates Titius (knowing his goiot) with a leash of partridges, litius (suspecting his partiality for them) passes them to Lucius ; who in his turn, preferring his friend's relish to his own, makes them over to Marcius ; till in their ever- widening pro- gress, and round of unconscious circum-migration, they distribute the seeds of harmony over half a parish. We are well disposed to this kind of sensible remembrances* and are the less apt to be taken by those little airy tokens — impalpable to the palate — which, under the names of rings, lockets, keepsakes, amuse some people's fancy mightily. We could never away with these indigestible trifles. They are the very kickshaws and foppery of friendship. That you must love me and love my dog. " Good sir, or madam — as it maybe — we most willingly embrace the offer of your friendship. We have long known your ex- cellent qualities. We have wished to have you nearer to us ; to hold you within the very innermost fold of our heart. We can have no reserve toward a person of your open and noble nature. The frankness of your humor suits us exactly. We have been long looking for such a friend. Quick — let us disburthen our troubles into each other's bosom — let us make our single joys shine by re- duplication — But yap^ yojpt y(^p / what is this confounded cur? he has fastened his tooth, which is none of the bluntest, just in the fleshy part of my leg." " It is my dog, sir. You must love him for my sake. Here, Test— Test— Test ! " " But he has bitten me„" "Ay, that he is apt to Cic ::!'. jqu are better ac- 196 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. quainted with him. I have had him three years. He never bites me." Yap, yap, yap! — "He is at it again." " Oh, sir, you must not kick him. He does not hke to be kicked. I expect my dog to be treated with all the respect due to myself." "But do you always take him out with you, when you go a friendship-hunting? " "Invariably. 'Tis the sweetest, prettiest, best-con- ditioned animal. I call him my te^t — the touch-stone by which to try a friend. No one can properly be said to love me who does not love him." " Excuse us, dear sir — or madam, aforesaid — if upon further consideration we are obliged to decline the other- wise invaluable offer of your friendship. We do not like dogs." "Mighty well, sir. You know the conditions — you may have worse offers. Come along, Test." The above dialogue is not so imaginary but that, in the intercourse of life, we have had frequent occasions of breaking off an agreeable intimacy by reason of these canine appendages. They do not always come in the shape of dogs ; they sometimes wear the more plausible and human character of kinsfolk, near acquaintances, my friend's friend, his partner, his wife, or his childreai. We could never yet form a friendship — not to speak of more delicate correspondence — however much to our taste, without the intervention of some third anomaly, some impertinent clog affixed to the relation — the un- derstood dog in the proverb. The good tilings of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mix- ture ; like a schoolboy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it. What a delightful companion is . . . ., if POPULAR FALLACIES. 197 he did not always bring his tall cousin with him ! H« seems to grow with him; like some of those double births which we remember to have read of with such wonder and delight in the old " Athenian Oracle," where Swift commenced author by writing Pindaric Odes (what a beginning for him !) upon Sir William Temple. There ifl the picture ®f the brother, with the little brother peeping out at Ids shoulder; a species of fraternity which we have no name of kin close enough to compre- hend. When .... comes, poking in his head and shoulder into your room, as if to feel his entry, you think, surely you have now got him to yourself — what a three hours' chat we shall have! But ever in the haunch of him, and before his diffident body is well dis- closed in your apartment, appears the haunting shadow of the cousin, overpeering his modest kinsman, and sure to overlay the expected good talk with his insufferable procerity of stature, and uncorresponding dwarfishness of observation. Misfortunes seldom come alone. 'Tis hard when a blessing comes accompanied. Can not we like Sempronia, without sitting down to chess with her eternal brother? or know Sulpicia, without knowing all the round of her card-playing relations ? Must my friend's brethren of necessity be mino also ? Must we be hand and glove with Dick Selby the parson, or Jack Sel- by the calico-printer, because W. S., who is neither, but a ripe wit and a critic, has the misfortune to claim a eommon parentage with them ? Let him lay down his brothers, and 'tis odds but we will cast him in a pair of ®urs (we have a superflux) to balance the concession. Let F. H. lay down his garrulous uncle ; and Honorius dismiss his vapid wife and superfluous establishment of six boys — things between boy and manhood, too ripe for 198 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. play, too raw for conversation — that come in, impudent^ ly staring their father's old friend out of countenance ; and will neither aid, nor let alone, the conference : that we may once more meet upon equal terms, as we were wont to do in the disengaged state of bachelorhood. It is well if your friend, or mistress, be content with these canicular probations. Few young ladies but in this sense keep a dog. But when Eutilia hounds at you her tiger aunt ; or Ruspina expects you to cherish and fondle her viper sister, whom she has preposterously taken into her bosom, to try stinging conclusions upon your con- stancy ; they must not complain if the house be rather thin of suitors. Scylla must have broken off many excellent matches in her time, if she insisted upon all that loved her loving her dogs also. An excellent story to this moral is told of Merry, of Delia Cruscan memory. In tender youth he loved and courted a modest appendage to the Opera — in truth, a dancer — who had won him by the artless contrast be- tween her manners and situation. She seemed to him a native violet, that had been transplanted by some rude accident into that exotic and artificial hotbed. Nor, in truth, was she less genuine and sincere than she ap- peared to him. He wooed and won this flower. Only for appearance' sake, and for due honor to the bride's rela- tions, she craved that she might have the attendance of her friends and kindred at the approaching solemnity. The request was too amiable not to be conceded; and in this solicitude for conciliating the good will of mere rela- tions, he found a presage of her superior attentions to him- self when the golden shaft should have "killed the flock of all affections else." The morning came ; and at the Star and Garter, Richmond — the place appointed for the ^OI^IJLAR FALtiACIKS. 1^9 friv ikfasting — accompanied with one English friend, he ii\L^^ ^Uieutly awaited what reenforcement the bride should hn.jg to grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had m^. Je. They came in six coaches— the whole corps de baU let- ^French, Italian, men, and women. Monsieur de B.., the mmous pirouetter of the day, led his fair spouse, but cra^y, from the banks of the Seine. The Prima Donna had sent her excuse, but the first and second Buffa were ihei^; and Signor Sc— , and Signora Oh—, and Madam© V"^, with a countless cavalcade besides of chorusers, figm antes! at the sight of whom. Merry afterward de^ clarcd, " then for the first time it struck him seriously that ne was about to marry — a dancer." But there wap no hwlp for it. Besides, it was her day ; these were, w fact, iier friends and kinsfolk. The assemblage, though whimsical, was all very natural. But when the bride, handing out of the last coach a still more extraordinary figure than the rest, presented to him as her father— the gentleman that was to give her away— no less a person than toignor Delpini himself— Avith a sort of pride, &9 much as to say, See what I have brought to do us hon- or !— 't;he thought of so extraordinary a paternity quite overcame him ; and slipping away under some pretense from the bride and her motley adherents, poor Merry took horse from the back yard to the nearest seacoast, from which, shipping himself to America, he shortly after consoled himself with a more congenial match in the person of Miss Brunton ; relieved from his intended clown father, and a bevy of painted buffas for bridee maids. That we should rise with the larJc. — At what precise minute that little airy musician doffs his night gear, aud ^00 ffiE liAST ESSAY'S OF EtlA. prepares to tune up his unseasonable matins, we are not naturalists enough to determine. But for a mere human gentleman — that has no orchestra business to call him from his warm bed to such preposterous exercise -we take ten, or half after ten (eleven, of course, during this Christmas solstice), to be the very earliest hour at which he can begin to think of abandoning his pillow. To think of it, we say ; for to do it in earnest requires another half hour's good consideration. N"ot but there are pretty sunrisings, as we are told, and such like gawds, abroad in the world, in summer-time especially, some hours be- for ewhat we have assigned, which a gentleman may see, as they say, only for getting up. But having been tempted once or twice, in earlier life, to assist at those ceremonies, we confess our curiosity abated. We are no longer ambitious of being the sun's courtiers, to at- tend at his morning levees. We hold the good hours of the dawn too sacred to waste them upon such observ- ances ; which have in them, besides, something Pagan and Persic. To say truth, we never anticipated our usual hour, or got up with the sun (as 'tis called), to go a journey, or upon a foolish whole day's pleasuring, but we suffered for it all the long hours after in listlessness and headaches ; Nature herself sufficiently declaring her sense of our presumption in aspiring to regulate our frail waking courses by the measures of that celestial and sleepless traveler. We deny not that there is something sprightly and vigorous, at the outset especially, in these break-of-day excursions. It is flattering to get the start of a lazy world, to conquer death by proxy in his image. But the seeds of sleep and mortality are in us ; and we pay usually, in strange qualms before night falls, the penalty of the unnatural inversion. Therefore, while POPULAR FALLACIES. 201 the busy part of mankind are fast huddling on their clothes, or are already up and about their occupations, content to have swallowed their sleep by wholesale, we choo?e to linger abed, and digest our dreams. It is the very time to recombine the wandering images which night in a confused mass preseoted ; to snatch them from forgetfulness ; to shape and mould them. Some people have no good of their dreams. Like fast feeders, they gulp them too grossly to taste them curiously. We love to chew the cud of a foregone vision ; to collect the scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over again, with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies ; to drag into daylight a struggling and half-vanishing night- mare; to handle and examine the terrors or the airy iolaces. We have too much respect for these spiritual communications to let them go so lightly. We are not 80 stupid or so careless as that imperial forgetter of his dreams, that we should need a seer to remind us of the form of them. They seem to us to have as much signifi- cance as our waking concerns ; or rather to import us more nearly, as more nearly we approach by years to the shadowy world whither we are hastening. We have shaken hands with the world's business; we have done with it ; we have discharged ourself of it. Why sliould we get up ? We have neither suit to solicit, nor affairs to manage. The drama has shut in upon us at the fourth act. We have nothing here to expect but in a short time a sick-bed and a dismissal. We delight to anticipate death by such shadows as night affords. We are already half acquainted with ghosts. We were never much in the world. Disappointment early struck a dark veil be- tween us and its dazzling illusions. Our spirits showed gray before our hairs. The mighty changes of the world 202 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. already appear as but tlie vain stuff out of whicli dramas are composed. We have asked no more of life than what the mimic images in playhouses present us with. Even those types have waxed fainter. Our clock appears to have struck. "We are supeeanntjated. In this dearth of mundane satisfaction, we contract politic alliances witli shadows. It is good to have friends at court. The ab- stracted media of dreams seem no ill introduction to that spiritual presence, upon which, in no long time, we ex- pect to be thrown. "We are trying to know a little of the usages of that colony; to learn the language, and the faces we shall meet with there, that we may be the less awkward at our first coming among them. "We wil- lingly call a phantom our fellow, as knowing we shall soon be of their dark companionship. Therefore we cherish dreams. We try to spell in them the alphabet of tlie invisible world, and think we know already how it shall be wHh us. Those uncouth shapes, which, while we clung to flesh and blood, affrighted us, have become familiar. We feel attenuated into their meager essences, and have given the hand of half-way approach to incor- poreal being. We once thought life to be something, but it has unaccountably fallen from us before its time. Therefore we choose to dally with visions. The sun has no purposes of ours to light us to. Why should we get up? That we should lie down with the lawl). — We could never quite understand the philosophy of this arrange- ,ment, or tlie wisdom of our ancestors in sending us for instruction to those woolly bedfelloAvs. A sheep, when it is dark, has nothing to do but to shut his silly eyes, and sleep if he can. Man found out long sixes. Hail, :PO?ULAR FALLACIES. 2(J3 candleligM! without disparagement to sun or moon, the kindliest luminary of the three — if we may not rather style thee their radiant deputy, mild viceroy of the moon ! We love to read, talk, sit silent, eat, drink, sleep, by candlelight. They are everybody's sun and moon. This is our peculiar and household planet. Wanting it, what isavage unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, wintering in caves and unillumined fastnesses! They must have lain about and grumbled at one another in th« dark. What repartees could have passed, when you must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbor's cheek to be sure that he understood it ? This accounts for the seriousness of the elder poetry. It has a somber cast (try Hesiod or Ossian), derived from the tradition of those unlanterned nights. Jokes came in with can- dles. We wonder how they saw to pick up a pin, if they had any. How did they sup ? Wliat a melange of chance carving they must have made of it! Here one had got a leg of a goat, when he wanted a horse's shoulder ; there another had dipped his scooped palm in a kid-skin of wild honey, when he meditated right mare's milk. — There is neither good eating nor drinking in fresco. Who, even in these civilized times, has never experienced this, when at some economic table he has commenced dining after dusk, and waited for the flavor till the lights came? The senses absolutely give and take reciprocally. Can you tell pork from veal in the dark ? or distinguish Sher- ris from pure Malaga? Take away the candle from the smoking man : by the glimmering of the left ashes, he knows that he is still smoking, but he know^s it only by an inference ; till the restored light, coming in aid of the olfactories, reveals to both senses the full aroma. Then bow he redoubles his puffs 1 how he burnishes I — There 204 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. is absolutely no sucli thing as reading but by a candle* We have tried the affectation of a book at noonday in gardens, and in sultry arbors ; but it was labor thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teasing, like so many coquettes, that will have you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstrac tions. By the midnight taper the writer digests his meditations. By the same light we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odor. It is a mockery, all that is reported of the influential Phoe- bus, No true poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. They are abstracted works — Things that were born when none but the still night And his dumb candle saw his pinching throes. Marry, daylight — daylight might furnish the images, the crude material ; but for the fine shapings, the true turning and filing (as mine author hath it), they must be content to hold their inspiration of the candle. The mild internal light, that reveals them, like fires on the domestic hearth, goes out in the sunshine. Night and silence call out the starry fancies. Milton's " Morning Hymn in Paradise," we would hold a good wager, was penned at midnight ; and Taylor's rich description of a sunrise * smells decidedly of the taper. Even ourself, in these our humbler lucubrations, tune our best-measured cadences (Prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier watchman, "blessing the doors," or the wild sweep of winds at midnight. Even now a loftier speculation than we have yet attempted courts our endeavors. We would indite something about the Solar System. — Betty ^ 'bring the candles. *"HoJyDyinff.'» POPttLAR FALLACIES. tiOb Thai great wit is allied to madness.— So far from tills being true, the greatest wits will ever be found to he the sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shakespeare. The greatness of wit, by which, the poetic talent is here chiefly to be under- stood, manifests itself in the admirable balance of all the faculties. Madness is the disproportionate straining or excess of any one of them. "So strong a wit," says Cowley, speaking of a poetical friend, "... did Nature to him frame, As all things but his judgment overcame ; His judgment like the heavenly moon did show, Tempering that mighty sea below." The ground of the fallacy is, that men, finding in the raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation to which they have no parallel in their own experience, besides the spurious resemblance of it In dreams and favers, impute a state of dreaminess and fever to the poet. But the true poet dreams being awake. He is not possessed by his subject, but has dominion over it. In the groves of Eden he walks familiar as in his native paths. He ascends the empyrean heaven, and is not in° fcoxicated ; he treads the burning marl without dismay ; he wings his flight without self-loss through realms of ^' chaos and old night." Or if, abandoning himself to iiiat severer chaos of a " human mind untuned," he is content awhile to be mad with Lear, or to hate mankind (a sort of madness) with Timon, neither is that madnewi nor this misanthropy so unchecked but that — never letting the reins of reason wholly go, while most he seems to do so — he has his better genms still whispering at his ear, with the good servant Kent suggesting saner counsels, or with the honest steward Flavius recommend- ing kindlier resolutions. "Where he seems most to recede from humanity, he will be found the truest to it. From bejond the scope of Nature if he summon possible ex- istences, he subjugates them to the law of her consis- tency. He is beautifully loyal to that sovereign direct- ress, even when he appears most to betray and desert her. His ideal tribes submit to policy ; his very mon- sters are tamed to his hand, even as the wild sea-brood shepherded by Proteus. He tames, and he clothes them with attributes of flesh and blood, till they wonder at themselves, like Indian Islanders forced to submit to European vesture. Caliban', the Witches, are as true to the laws of their own nature (ours with a difference) as Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Herein the great and the little wits are differenced ; that if the latter wander ever so little from nature or actual existence, they lose themselves and their readers. Their phantoms are law- less, their visions night-mares. They do not create, which implies shaping and consistency. Their imagina- tions are not active— for to be active is to call something into act and form — but passive, as men in sick dreams. For the supernatural, or something superadded to what we know of nature, they give you the plainly non-natu- ral. And if this were all, and that these mental hallucina- tions were discoverable only in the treatment of sub^^ects out of nature, or transcending it, the judgment might with some plea be pardoned if it ran riot, and a lUtle wantonized ; but even in the describing of real and every- day life, that which is before their eyes, one of t? tese lesser wits shall more deviate from nature — show r ore of that inconsequence which has a natural alliance " ith frenzy — ^than a great genius in his " maddest fits as POPULAR FALLACIES. 207 ^ /chers somewiiere cails them. We appeal to anj one ibhat is acquainted with the common run of Lane's novels m they existed some twenty or thirty years back— those scanty intellectual viands of the whole female reading public, till a happier genius arose and expelled for ever the innutritious phantoms— whether he has not found tis brain more " betossed," his memory more puzzled ^iis sense of when and where more confounded, among the improbable events, the incoherent incidents, the in- iwnsistent characters or no-charaoters of some third-rate iove-intrigue— where the persons shall be a Lord Glen- damour and a Miss Rivers, and the scene only alternate between Bath and Bond Street— a more bewildering dreaminess induced upon him than he has felt wander- ing over all the fairy grounds of Spenser. In the pro- ductions we refer to, nothing but names and places is familiar ; the persons are neither of this world nor of any other conceivable one; an endless string of activities without purpose, of purposes destitute of motive : we meet phantoms in known walks— fantasques, only christ- ened. In the poet we have names which announce fic- tion; and we have absolutely no place at all, for the things and persons of the "Fairy Queen" prate not of their "whereabout." But in their inner nature, and the law of their speech and actions, we are at home and upon acquainted ground. The one turns life into a dream ; the other to the wildest dreams gives the sobrie- ties of every-day occurrences. By what subtle art of tracing the mental processes it is effected, we are not philosophers enough to explain; but in that wonderful episode of the cave of Mammon, in which the Money God appears first in the lowest form of a raiser, is then a worker of metals, and becomes the god of all the trea- 208 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. sures of the world, and has a daughter, Amhition, before whom all the world kneels for favors — with the Hespe- rian fruit, the waters of Tantalus, with Pilate washing kis hands vainlj, but not impertinently, in the same stream — ^that wo should be at one moment in the cave of an old hoarder of treasures, at the next at the forge of the Cyclops, in a palace and yet in hell, all at once, with the shifting mutatioBS of the most rambling dream, and our judgment yet all the time awake, and neither able nor willing to detect the fallacy — is a proof of that hid- den sanity which still guides the poet in the wildest seem- ing aberrations. It is not enough to say that the whole episode i8 a copy of the mind's conceptions in sleep ; it is, in some sort — but what a copy ! Let the most romantic of us, that has been entertained all night with the spectacle of »ome wild and magnificent vision, recombine it in the morning, and try it by his waking judgment. That which appeared so shifting, and yet so coherent, while that faculty was passive, when it comes under cool ex- amination shall appear so reasonless and so unlinked, that we are ashamed to have been so deluded, and to have taken, though but in sleep, a monster for a gode But the transitions in this episode are every whit as vio- lent as in the most extravagant dream, and yet the wak- ing judgment ratifies them. That a sulky temper is a misfortune. — We grant that it is, and a very serious one — to a man's friends, and to all that have to do with him ; but whether the condition of the man himself is so much to be deplored may admit of a question. We can speak a little to it, being ourself but lately recovered — we whi»p«r it in confidence, read- J?OPULAR FALLACIES. 209 er — out of a long and desperate fit of the sullens. Wa8 the cure a blessing ? The conviction which wrought it came too clearly to leave a scruple of the fanciful injuries —for thej were mere fancies — which had provoked the humor. But the humor itself was too self-pleasing whil* it lasted — we know how bare we lay ourself in the coii« fession — to be abandoned all at once with the grounds ol it. We still brood over wrongs which we know to have been imaginary; and for our old acquaintance ]!T y whom we find to have been a truer friend than we took him for, we substitute some phantom — a Oaius or a Titius — as like him as we dare to form it, to wreak our yet unsatisfied resentments on. It is mortifying to fall at once from the pinnacle of neglect ; to forego the idea of having been ill-used and contumaciously treated by an old friend. The first thing to aggrandize a man in his own conceit is to conceive of himself as neglected. There let him fix if he can. To undeceive him is to de- prive him of the most tickling morsel within the range of self-complacency. 'No flattery can come near it. Happy is he who suspects his friend of an injustice ; but supremely blest, who thinks all his friends in a conspiracy to depress and undervalue him. There is a pleasure (we sing not to the profane) far beyond the reach of all that the world counts joy — a deep, enduring satisfaction in the depths, where the superficial seek it not, of discon- tent. Were we to recite one half of this mystery, which we were let into by our late dissatisfaction, all the world would be in love with disrespect; we should wear a slight for a bracelet, and neglects and contumacies would be the only matter for courtship. Unlike to that mys- terious book in the Apocalypse, the study of this mystery is unpalatable only in the commencement. The first 210 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. sting of a suspicion is grievous ; but wait — out of that wound, which to flesh and blood seemed so difficult, there is balm and honey to be extracted. Your triend passed you on such or such a day, having in his company one that you conceived worse than ambiguously disposed toward you — passed you in the street without notice. To be sure he is something short-sighted, and it M^as in your power to have accosted him. But facts and sane inferences are trifles to a true adept in the science of dis- satisfaction. He must have seen you ; and S— — , who was with him, must have been the cause of the contempt. It galls you, and well it may. But have patience. Go home, and make the worst of it, and you are a made man for this time. Shut yourself up, and — rejecting, as an enemy to your peace, every whispering suggestion that but insinuates there may be a mistake — reflect seri- ously upon the many lesser instances which you had be- gun to perceive, in proof of your friend's disaffection toward you. None of them singly was much to the pur- pose, but the aggregate weight is positive; and you have this last affront to clench them. Thus far the process is anj^thing but agreeable. But now to your relief comes in the comparative faculty. You conjure up all the kind feelings you have had for your friend ; what you have been to him, and what you would have been to him if lie would have suffered you ; how you defended him in this or that place ; and his good name, his literary repu- tation, and so forth, was always dearer to you than your own! Your heart, spite of itself, yearns toward him. You could weep tears of blood but for a restraining pride. Hew say you ! do you not yet begin to apprehend a com- fort? some allay of sweetness in the bitter waters? Stop not here, nor penuriously cheat yourself of your re- POPULAR FALLACIES. glj Tersions. You are on vantage-ground. Enlarge your speculations, and take in the rest of your friends, as a spark kindles more sparks. Was there one among them who has not to you proved hollow, false, slippery as water ? Begin to think that the relation itself is incon° sistent with mortality — that the very idea of friendship^ with its component parts, as honor, fidelity, steadinesSj exists but in your single bosom. Image yourself to your» self, as the only possible friend in a world incapable of that communion. Now the gloom thickens. The little star of self-love twinkles, that is to encourage you through deeper glooms than this. You are not yet at the half-point of your elevation. You are not yet, believe me, half sulky enough. Adverting to the world in general (as these circles in the mind will spread to Infinity), reflect with what strange injustice you have ueen treated in quarters where (setting gratitude and the expectation of friendly returns aside as chimeras) you pretended no claim beyond justice, the naked due of all men. Think the very idea of right and fit ried from the earth, or your breast the solitary receptacle of it, till you have swelled yourself into at least one hemisphere ; the other being the vast Arabia Stony of your friends and the world aforesaid. To grow bigger every mo- ment in your own conceit, and the world to lessen ; to deify yourself at the expense of your species ; to judge the world -this is the acme and supreme point of your mystery— these the true Pleasuees of Sulkinesf. We profess no more of this grand secret than what ourself experimented on one rainy afternoon in the last week, sulking in om- study. We had proceeded to the penul- timate point, at which the true adept seldom stops, where the oonsideration of benefit forgot is about to merge in gl2 THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELU. the meditation of general injustice— when a knock ^. the door was folio v^ed bj the entrance of the very friend whose not seeing of us in the morning (for we will now confess the case our own), an accidental oversight, had given rise to so much agreeable generalization ! To mor- tify us still more, and take down the whole flattering superstructure which pride had piled upon neglect, he had brought in his hand the identical S- , in whose favor we had suspected him of the contumacy. Assev- erations were needless, where the frank manner of them both was convictive of the injurious nature of the sus- picion. We fancied that they perceived our embarrass- ment, but were too proud, or something else, to confess to the secret of it. We had been but too lately in the condition of the noble patient in Horace — Qui se credebat miros audire tragoedos, In vacuo laDtus sessor plausorque theatro— and could have exclaimed with equal reason against tfei friendly hands that cured us— Pol, me occidlstis, amfci, Non servastis, ait ; cui sic extorta voluptai, Bl demptus per vim mentis gratissimus esf^ 607 M *. -\-^' .- „,/r?^ ^^^ V ^^ v^ ^^ 4- 'O .^^ "<^./-^>^ £>' .c,^-^ ,-S^ V oo <^. ^'1.....-.-' ^ ^ -^ c:^. i' . .. .^ ,# .^' ...,/-V^"° v^ V * ->,': ^.# :iMJh% '^'^ ^" 0^ ■■-•*x N r; <^ -^/V. S^ ^'\ Ci- .^ "P* y -7^; ' i/ .^^ "^r^ ^^s^^- ^^ s *> " " ' vs**:"?*;-' A, . # Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 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