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The Lake English Classics
General Editor: LINDSAY TODD DAMON, A. B., Professor
of English Literature and Rhetoric in Brown University
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SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY
^,^„ EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK CHICAGO
EDITED BY
LINDSAY TODD DAMON, A.B.
Professor of English Literature and Rhetoric in
Brown University
tTbe Xafte lenslisb Claasice
ELIA
CHARLES LAMB
EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE
GEORGE W. BENEDICT, Ph.D.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
BROWN UNIVERSITY
CHICAGO NEW YORK
SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY
SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY
©C1.-A283230
PREFACE.
The text of this edition follows that of Mr. E. V. Lucas's
admirable edition of The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb,
which reproduces the text of the original collected edition
of 1823; but I have arranged the essays in the order in which
they were published in The London Magazine. This is not
strictly the order of their first appearance, as will be seen from
the dates given in the Table of Contents, p. 7. For much
of the information in Parts I. and II. of the Introduction I am
under obligation not only to Mr. Lucas's edition, but also to
his Life of Charles Lamb. I have drawn largely from Mr.
Lucas's notes, which are too valuable not to be used; but
I haA'^e added a good deal that seems to me likely to be of
ser^dce in a school edition. In order that a glance may show
the frequency and the character of the literary echoes in
Lamb's style, references to the sources of many of his quo-
tations are printed at the foot of the page ; also his own few
notes, marked (L). The other notes, of all sorts — on proper
names, unusual words and phrases, Latin quotations, and
so forth — are put at the back of the book. My hearty thanks
are due to my colleague, Mr. W. T. Hastings, for help in
sifting and arranging them, and for general criticism.
Much of the matter in the notes could have been spared
if pupils could only be trusted to clear up difficulties and
obscurities for themselves by the use of good dictionaries
and other books of reference. Yet these are not always so
easily accessible as they should be. Furthermore, I would
rather give too much than too little, for one misses a great
5
6 PREFACE
part of the flavor unless one realizes Lamb's inveterate allu-
siveness and understands pretty clearly what the allusions
signify. It is not necessary, however, that students should
look up all the quotations whose sources I have noted, nor
that they should burden their memories with unimportant
facts about the many places and persons and things that Lamb
mentions. The notes on such allusions will, I hope, satisfy
reasonable curiosity and show the picturesqueness of Lamb's
mental background ; but the notes are not to be learned by
heart : they are intended as helps to the understanding of the
text, not as examination-material.
I beg to suggest, further, that though the bulk of these
essays is small, it might be well if they were read with school
classes not in a lump but intermittently, if practicable.
Lamb's essays are so different from what most pupils have
read and are reading, that too much of them at one time
may easily prove cloying. And, although Lamb did collect
his essays, we should remember that they were written to be
read periodically, and that the intervals in their publication
served to whet the appetite of the readers of The London
Magazine and send them to a new paper by Elia with in-
creased zest. Nor is it necessary, of course, to read the
whole series, in order to understand Lamb and appreciate
him. Teachers will doubtless find some of the essays less
interesting to their pupils than others, and less suitable for
classroom use. The paper on The Artificial Comedy, for
instance, though important in itself and also because of
Macaulay's demurrer to Lamb's views, raises a delicate
point of criticism on a subject always difficult to manage
with mixed classes. In short, I should hope that sensible
teachers might choose the essays and the methods that they
think will make the reading; of Elia most enjoyable.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface ~ . 5
Introduction , '
Lamb's Life and Works , . . . « „ • 9
Table of Chief Dates '. 39
Bibliographical Note . . . . . . 41
Elia
The South-Sea House ' . 45
London Magazine, August, 1820.
Oxford in the Vacation ..... 55
London Magazine, October, 1820.
Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years x\go . . 64
London Magazine, November, 1820.
The Two Races of Men . ... 80
London Magazine, December, 1823.
New Year's Eve 87
London Magazine, January, 1821.
Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist ... 96
London Magazine, February, 1821.
Valentine's Day 104
Examiner, Feb. 14, 1819; Indicator, Feb 14, 1821.
A Chapter on Ears 108
London Magazine, March, 1821.
All Fools' Day 116
London Magazine, Apr^l, 1821.
A Quakers' Meeting* 121
London Magazine, April, 1821.
The Old and the New Schoolmaster . . . 127
- London Magazine, May, 1821.
My Relations ... .... 138
London Magazine, June, 1821.
Mackery End, in Hertfordshire . . , ' . 146
~^^ London Magazine, July, 1821.
Imperfect Sympathies ..... 152
London Magazine, August, 1821.
CONTENTS— Continued
PAGE
The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple . . . 163
London Magazine, September, 1821.
Witches and Other Night-Fears ... 177
London Magazine, October, 1821.
Grace Before Meat 185
London Magazine, November, 1821.
My First Play 194
London Magazine, December, 1821.
Dream-Children: A Reverie . . . . . 199 ^i
jondon Magazine, January, 1822.
On^Some of the Old Actors . . . 204
London Magazine, February, 1822
Distant Correspondents . . ... 219
London Magazine, March, 1822
On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century 226
London Magazine, April, 1822,
The Praise of Chimney-S weepers . . . . 241
London Magazine, May, 1822.
A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis 250
London Magazine, June, 1822, ^
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig . . . . 261
London Magazine, September, 1822.
\ A Bachelor's Complaint ..... 270
^'"^- .Reflector, 1812; London Magazine, September, 1822.
On the Acting of Munden 279
Examiner, 1819; London Magazine, October, 1822.
Modern Gallantry 281*
London Magazine, November, 1822.
Notes 287
LAMB'S LIFE AND WORKS.
I.
Charles Lamb was born February 10, 1775, in London,
in the Inner Temple, a famous old nest of lawyers' lodg-
ings and offices. His father, John Lamb, was clerk,
body-servant, and factotum to Samuel Salt, one of the **old
benchers"; and his mother was Salt's housekeeper. Charles
was the youngest of seven children. Of these only a brother,
John, and a sister, Mary Anne, respectively about twelve and
ten years older than Charles, lived to adult age : they are the
James and Bridget Elia of the essay My Relations. Lamb
described his father in the essay on The Old Benchers of the
Inner Temple^ under the name of Lovel, in such vivid terms
that it is easy to see that his own lovable nature was a patri-
mony. It was nearly all that he inherited : his father's station
in life was a humble one.
Charles had his first lessons from the daughter of a former
resident in the Tern. pie; and in her declining years he gave
her in return a generous pension. At about the age of six
he went for a year to a day-school in Fetter Lane, near by
He was a delicate boy, and had had smallpox at five years
old; and he stuttered.
Fortunately, through the interest of Salt, Lamb was ad-
mitted to Christ's Hospital — the famous Blue Coat School, —
and with some unusual privileges, if we may trust the essay
on Christ's Hospital in Elia. An earlier essay. Recollections
of Christ's Hospital, gives an affectionate and enthusiastic
account of the character of the school and of the Blue Coat
9
10 INTRODUCTION
boys. Here he remained from his entrance in 1782 until 1789,
during which time Coleridge, the poet, and Middleton, the
first bishop of Calcutta were among his schoolfellows and
intimates. A bronze statuette group of the three is now a
trophy of the school, "held in rotation by the ward in which
most prizes have been gained in the year." ^^^ There is
also a school medal bearing a likeness of Lamb, given as an
English Essay Prize. ^^^
A schoolmate ^^^ writes of him thus: "His step was planti-
grade, which made his walk slow and peculiar, adding to
the staid appearance of his figure. I never heard his name
mentioned without the addition of Charles, although, as there
was no other boy of the name of Lamb, the addition was un-
necessary; but there was an implied kindness in it. . . .
His delicate frame and his difficulty of utterance, which was
increased by agitation, unfitted him for joining in any boister-
ous sport." He was not one of the Grecians, or high-scholar-
ship boys being prepared for the University; but his school
years gave a scholarly turn to a love of reading that was born
in him and had doubtless been fed upon the books in Samuel
Salt's library — that "spacious closet of good old English
reading" which he speaks of in Mackery End. Wordsworth
tells us^*^ that "Lamb was a good Latin scholar, and prob-
ably would have gone to college upon one of the school
foundations but for the impediment in his speech." He
was, however, a "Deputy Grecian," i. e., a member of the
next to the highest class.
Soon after leaving the school, at the age of fourteen, he
seems to have been taken into the office of Joseph Paice (de-
^1) See the cut in Lucas's edition, Vol. II., p. 320.
(2) lb. p. 324.
(3) Valentine Le Grice, quoted in Lucas's Life, Vol. I., p. 84.
(4) Note to the poem Written After the Death of Charles Lamb.
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA U
scribed in Modern Gallaniry), where he probably learned
bookkeeping. Through this friend's influence he soon got
work in the Examiner's office of the South Sea Company,
in whose employ his brother John was, at half a guinea per
week. In the spring of 1792, again by the influence of
Paice, he was given a post in the East India House as a
bookkeeper in the Accountant-General's department; and
here he stayed for thirty-three years, until he was pen-
sioned by the Company knd retired.
DeQuincey ^^^ has given us a vivid picture of Lamb at his
work, w^hich has so much of character in it that it deserves to
be quoted at length:
*'It was either late in 1804 or early in 1805 that I had ob-
tained from a literary friend a letter of introduction to Mr.
Lamb. . . . Let me describe my brief introductory call
upon him at the India House. ... I was shown into
a small room, or else a small section of a large one . . .
in which was a very lofty writing-desk, separated by a still
higher railing from that part of the floor in which the pro-
fane — the laity, like myself — were allowed to approach the
clerus, or clerkly rulers of the room. Within the railing sat,
to the best of my remembrance, six quill-driving gentlemen (2)
, . . [who] were all too profoundly immersed in their
oriental studies to have any sense of my presence. . . .
I walked, therefore, into one of the two open doorways of
the railing, and stood close by the high stool of him who
occupied the first place within the little aisle. I touched
his arm, by way of recalling him from his lofty Leaden-
hall speculations to this sublunary world ; and, presenting my
letter, asked if that gentleman (pointing to the address)
(1) Works, Masson's edition, Vol. III., p. 38flf: Recollections of Charles
Lamb.
(2) Lamb's Mend, Henry Crabb Robinson, has recorded in iiis Diary one
of Lamb's puns at the expense of his fellow-sufferers: "The large room
at the accountant's office at the East India House is divided into boxes or
compartments, in each of which sit six clerks, Charles Lamb himself in one.
They are called Compounds. The meaning of the word was asked one day,
and Lamb said it was 'a collection of simples.' "
12 INTRODUCTION
were really a citizen of the present room; for I had been
repeatedly misled, by the directions given me, into wrong
rooms. The gentleman smiled; it was a smile not to
be forgotten. This was Lamb. . . . The seat upon
which he sat was a very high one; so absurdly high, by the
way, that I can imagine no possible use or sense in such an
altitude unless it were to restrain the occupant from playing
truant at the fire by opposing Alpine difficulties to his
descent. . . .
"He began to dismount instantly; and, as it happened that
the very first round of his descent obliged him to turn his back
upon me as if for a sudden purpose of flight, he had an excuse
for laughing; which he did heartily — saying at the same time
something to this effect: that I must not judge from first ap-
pearances; that he should revolve upon me; that he was not
going to fly; and other facetiae, which challenged a general
laugh from the clerical brotherhood. . . .
"The letter of introduction, containing (I imagine) no
matters of business, was speedily run through; and I instantly
received an invitation to spend the evening with him. . . .
He was, with his limited income — and I say it deliberately —
positively the most hospitable man I have known in this
world."
Lamb received no salary at the India House until after
three years of probation. In 1795 his pay began at £40 a
year, increasing gradually, but somewhat irregularly, to £730
in 1825. In addition to his salary there were certain regular
gratuities and some payments for work over time. The
hours were not what we should call severe — from ten in the
morning until four in the afternoon ; and (if not at first, cer-
tainly later) he had a vacation of a month in each year, besides
certain regular hoHdays.
But the drudgery of auditing accounts, calculating interest,
making out warrants, and recording entries of sales and the
like, galled him extremely as time went on. His disHke of
the work finds its way often into his letters. In 1815 he writes
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 13
to Wordsworth: "My business and office business in general
has increased so. I don't mean I am there every night, but
I must expect a great deal of it. . . . Do not keep a hoU-
day now once in ten times, where I used to keep all red-letter
days, and some fine days besides, which I used to dub nature's
holidays. I have had my day ... of the little that is
left of my life I may reckon two-thirds as dead, for Time that
a man may call his own is his Life." Later in the same year,
to Wordsworth again : "I have a glimmering aspect, a chink-
light of liberty before me. . . . If I can but begin my
own day at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, I shall think myself to
have Eden days of peace and liberty to what I have had."
His letter to Wordsworth upon his release in 1825 is well
known: "I came home forever on Tuesday in last week.
The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelm'd
me. It was like passing from life into Eternity. Every year
to be as long as three, i. e., to have three times as much time
that is my own, in it! . . . Freedom and life co-
existent."
The cloud that business threw over him must have been the
darker because of a streak of morbid melancholy, a tendency
to insanity, inherent in the blood. In his twenty-first year he
had a brief attack of melancholia, of which he writes with a
brave show of humor to Coleridge: "I know not what suffer-
ing scenes you have gone through at Bristol — my life has been
somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks that finished
last year and began this year your very humble servant spent
very agreeably in a madhouse at Hoxton — I am got somewhat
rational now, and don't bite anyone. But mad I was. . . .
It may convince you of my regard for you when I tell you
my head ran on you in my madness, as much almost as on
another person, who I am inclined to think was the more im-
14 INTRODUCTION
mediate cause of my temporary frenzy." This last allusion
must be to Ann Simmons, of whom later.
Yet it was not his own but his sister's insanity that threw
the deepest shadow upon his life. Mary had given signs of the
malady before September, 1796. In that month, after symp-
toms that alarmed her brother and sent him — most unfor-
tunately in vain — after their physician, she fell into a violent
paroxysm such as sometimes accompanies the depression of
melancholia. Snatching a knife from the table in their rooms
in the Temple, she tried to kill her little dressmaker apprentice,
actually wounded her aged father, and stabbed her mother
to death. Charles was permitted to take her to a private
asylum instead of having to put her in a public hospital for
the insane. The next year ''her removal was then allowed
by the authorities on [Lamb's] giving *his solemn engagement
that he would take her under his care for life.' Charles
Lamb when he made this promise was just twenty-two." ^^^
Thenceforth she was the object of his constant care and
solicitude; and though for considerable intervals she was
herself, hardly a year passed without a m.ore or less severe
recurrence of her malady. Until her father's death in 1799, it
was deemed unwise for her to live at home, and during her
attacks after that she was usually in a private asylum.
Never were brother and sister closer in all their sympathies,
desires, and interests. Mary understood her brother, stimu-
lated his endeavors, shared his disappointments and suc-
cesses perfectly. Only their drudgeries were separate —
Charles bending over his ledgers at the India House, Mary
plying her needle as a professional "mantua-maker" at home.
Their hours of freedom they lived together. Lamb's letters
are full of his sister. During one of her attacks he wrote
(1) Lubas, Life, Vol. I., p. 131.
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 15
to Dorothy Wordsworth (the poet's sister) thus: "Meantime
she is dead to me and I miss a prop. All my strength is
gone, and I am like a fool, bereft of her cooperation. I dare
not think, lest I should think wrong; so used am I to look up
to her in the least and the biggest perplexity." Indeed, it is
pleasant to think that the intimacy between the Words-
worths and the Lambs was the readier and closer because
of the perfect sympathy between brother and sister on
either side.
Except for the tragedy of 1796 and Charles's retirement
from the India House in 1825 there is little to mark stages
in his life. His literary labors, at first somewhat varied,
were after 1810 pretty much of one sort. For the rest,
Lamb's life was diversified only by his vacation excursions
(with Mary, when she was able) and his frequent shifts of
domicile. He visited Somersetshire and the Lake Country,
the Isle of Wight, Oxford and Cambridge, Mackery End and
Blakesware in Hertfordshire, "sweet Calne in Wiltshire,"^
Birmingham, and Paris, and has left us charming reminis-
cences of some of them in his essays.
But he was of the city by his nature as well as by the com-
pulsion of his employment, and it was only in London that
he felt himself thoroughly comfortable. His home, until
Samuel Salt's death, in 1792, was in the Temple; after eight
years in small lodgings in Holborn and Pentonville, he and
Mary came back to lodgings in the Temple again, in Mitre
Court Buildings. Here began the famous weekly gatherings
of his friends,^^^ with whist, puns, punch, talk of plays and
pictures and books. The Lambs moved in 1809 to Inner
Temple Lane, "where," wrote Charles, "I mean to live and
(1) Among the records of these gatherings is Hazlitt's spirited account
In his Conversation of Authors.
16 INTRODUCTION
die: for I have such a horror of moving" — this was the
seventh move already — "that I would not take a benefice
from the King if I were not indulged with non-residences."
But they moved out of the Temple in 1817 to lodgings in
Russell Street, Co vent Garden. Lamb wrote to Dorothy
Wordsworth: "I thought we never could have been torn up
from the Temple. . . . We can never strike root so deep
in any other ground."
In 1823 they took a house, the first they had ever had to
themselves, by the bank of the New River in the suburb of
Islington; in 1827 another at Enfield, further out from the
city, where with some interruptions they stayed till 1833.
From "dull Enfield," as he calls it, Lamb wrote a long letter
to Wordsworth — of all people I — protesting against the borC'
dom of life in the country. "Yearnings of life, not quite
kill'd, rise, prompting me that there was a London, and that I
was of that old Jerusalem. In dreams I am in Fleetmarket,
but I wake and try to sleep again. . . . O, let no native
Londoner imagine that health, and rest, and innocent occupa-
tion, interchange of converse sweet and recreative study, can
make the country anything better than altogether odious and
detestable. A garden was the primitive prison till man with
promethean felicity and boldness luckily sinned himself out
of it. Thence followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London,
haberdashers, goldsmiths, taverns, playhouses, satires, epi-
grams, puns — these all came in on the town part, and the
thither side of innocence. Man found out inventions. From
my den I return you condolence for your decaying sight, not
for anything there is to see in the country, but for the miss of
the pleasure of reading a London newspaper. ... I
would live in London shirtless, bookless." From Enfield
they moved to Edmonton, "three or four miles nearer the Great
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 17
City," as Lamb writes, again to Wordsworth: "... I
have few friends left there, one or two tho' most beloved. But
London streets and faces cheer me inexpressibly."
Lamb had absolutely a genius for friendship, and hardly
anything in his life is more significant than the number and
quality of his friends and acquaintances. Some came to him
from his early acquired and long continued interest in the
theatre- of these the closest was the charming and accom-
plished actress, Miss Fanny Kelly, to whom, by the way,
Mary Lamb taught Latin. Others were Liston, Charles
Kemble, Macready, Elliston, and Munden, the actors; and
Holcrof t, James Kenney, and James Sheridan Knowles, the
playwrights. Most of his distinguished friends, however, were
men of letters more or less closely connected with the Ro-
mantic Movement in literature, in which Lamb himself played
a part. The chief of these have already been mentioned —
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Some of
the others were Robert Southey, the poet-laureate ; Thomas
DeQuincey, the ^'English opium-eater"; William Hazlitt, the
critic and essayist; Leigh Hunt, the editor, essayist, and
poet; Henry Cary, the translator of Dante; Walter Savage
Landor, the poet and essayist; William Godwin, the political
philosopher; Thomas Hood, the humorist; and Henry Crabb
Robinson, the author of the famous Diary which gives
us so much of the literary gossip of the day. Among his
acquaintances Were John Keats, Thomas Moore, Sir Walter
Scott, Samuel Rogers, Thomas Love Peacock, Mrs. Shelley,
Stothard the artist, John Payne Collier the Shakespearean
scholar, Thomas Carlyle (who has left us an ill-natured and
ill-judged estimate of Lamb), and Christopher North
(Professor Wilson). From some of his friends there were
temporary estrangements, but there is universal testimony
18 INTRODUCTION
to the kindliness, sincerity, warmth, and lovableness of
his nature.
He had one love affair, in his youth, and once later con-
templated marriage. Upon some visit to his grandmother
Field in Hertfordshire, he doubtless met Ann Simmons, who
is identified with the "Alice W — " of the essays and who is
apparently the subject of some early love sonnets. His
heart must have been ''seriously engaged," in the old-
fashioned phrase, but nothing came of it. His grandmother,
it is said, opposed the match because of the insanity in his
family. If he had not ceased to think seriously of Ann Sim-
mons by the time of his mother's death, he certainly did then.
Writing to Coleridge, he says: "Mention nothing of poetry.
I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of that kind."
Two months later he writes to Coleridge again: "I have
burned all my own verses. ... I burned a little journal
of my foolish passion which I had a long time kept"; and
about a year later still, "it is a passion of which I retain
nothing, 'twas a weakness." The stern seriousness of his
responsibility toward his sister would seem to have killed,
for the time, all thoughts of authorship as well as of marriage.
In 1819, when he was forty-four, he proposed marriage
to Miss Kelly, the actress. His letter, written when Miss
Kelly was suffering from some grief, begins thus: "Dear
Miss Kelly — We had the pleasure, pain I might better call
it, of seeing you last night in the new Play. It was a most
consummate piece of acting, but what a task for you to under-
go 1 at a time when your heart is sore from real sorrow I it has
given rise to a train of thinking which I cannot suppress."
The whole letter is tender, considerate, manly; but one cannot
wonder that Miss Kelly declined the offer. From the fre-
quent occurrence in it of *'we", "us", "our", it is clear that
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 19
even at such a moment Miss Kelly's image shared with his
sister Mary's the possession of his thoughts : one might almost
say he was proposing marriage on Mary's behalf as well as
his own. Only a year and a half later Lamb wrote Dream
Children, which Mr. Lucas suggests should be read in the
light of his recent proposal. Lamb's thoughts of marriage,
though prompted more by a generous and tender regard for
Miss Kelly's comfort than by real love, perhaps had stirred
his memory and rekindled a gleam of his early passion.
Having no child of his own, Lamb found one in Emma
Isola, the motherless daughter of a shy, unworldly don of
Cambridge University. Charles and Mary had seen her in
Cambridge in 1820, and she had visited them the following
Christmas. Perhaps they already thought of having her
live with them, and may have made their journey to France
in 1821 to the end of helping her with French. On her
father's death in 1823 they adopted her. They taught her
Latin, and Robinson tells us that Lamb taught her Italian
"without knowing the language himself." She became a
governess in a friend's family, and in 1833 married Edward
Moxon, the publisher.
Though cordially approving the marriage. Lamb missed
his niece, as he called her. Mary Lamb's illness had
grown much upon her, and bore hard upon her brother.
Coleridge, his friend of forty years, died in July, 1834, and
Lamb felt his loss greatly. He had no routine of employ-
ment to uphold him. His health was enfeebled — it must be
confessed, by his intemperance. December 22, 1834, during
a morning's walk in Edmonton, he stumbled and fell. The
illness which followed was fatal. He died December 27,
and was buried in Edmonton. Thirteen years later Mary
Lamb died in London, and was buried beside her brother.
II.
Charles Lamb belongs to the class of miscellaneous writers.
The range of kinds in his writing is large, but as his product
in these various kinds is by no means of uniform merit, he
lives by a rather small part of his whole work, — by the Tales
from Shakespear, the Specimens of English Dramatic Poets,
and a few essays, chiefly those collected under the titles
Elia and Last Essays of Elia.
His first serious efforts were in poetry, consisting of a few
sonnets, some blank verse fragments, and a handful of other
bits, composed between 1794 and 1798. Some are senti-
mental, some sad, some religious, showing the graVe view of
the world engendered in him by the failure of his first hopes
in love and by his sister's insanity. Four of the sonnets were
published with Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects (1796)
and repubHshed, with additions, in the second edition (1797),
which contained also contributions from Coleridge's other
literary protege, Charles Lloyd. In 1798 Lloyd and Lamb
pubHshed a volume of poems under the unassuming title
Blank Verse, in which seven short pieces were Lamb's.
Lamb printed a few other poems in periodicals during these
years, among them Living Without God in the World, which
is on the whole the best thing in his early verse. There can
be little doubt that all these early poems were written under
the influence of the new ideas about poetry which Coleridge
thought he had received from reading Bowles's sonnets, and
which he of course preached to his friends, Lloyd and Lamb,
20
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 21
as well as to Wordsworth/^^ Lamb's verses are simple,
sweet, and tender, but his poetic style lacks, for the most
part, melody and power, and it is safe to say that were it
not for the interest in his other work and in Coleridge's ger-
minative influence, his poetry would be forgotten now.
Much the same may be said of his next work, Rosamund
Gray (1798), a curiously condensed story in thirteen chapters
averaging a little over two pages in length. By its manner,
particularly at the outset, one might think it intended for
children, but its pathos is evidently aimed at adult readers.
It is not at all a story of what happens — the interest is wholly
in the emotions which the events awaken in the actors and in
the author; that is, it is of the sentimental class. Some
critics, however, find its sentiment so simple and pure that it
makes a deep impression upon them.
Lamb's next venture was more ambitious. It was a
tragedy, John Woodvil (completed 1799), in mixed prose
and irregular blank verse, full of echoes of Elizabethan
dramatists. It is, in fact, an attempt to write a play in the
Elizabethan style, an attempt for which Lamb's intimate
knowledge of the old drama and his sensitiveness to effects
of style qualified him probably better than any other man of
his day. But as a play it can hardly be called successful.
The feelings of love, filial piety, loyalty, and ambition are its
springs of action, its temper is noble, the conception is in-
tense; yet the plot is bare, the characters are not real, and
(1) Bowles was doubtless only the spark to the powder. In brief, Cole-
ridge's poetical creed involved the superiority of the sonnet and blank verse
and free lyric measures over the conventional ten-syllable couplet of the
school of Pope; the love of natural beauty; and the reliance on imagination
and emotion rather than on reason and polished technique, for the produc-
tion of poetical pleasure. The idea that true poetry should be the out-
pouring of the heart Coleridge emphasized by calling thirty-six of the
pieces in his first volume of poems by the affected and clmnsy title of
"Effusions." Lamb remonstrated, and begged him to call them "Sonnets,
for heaven's sake, not 'Effusions.' "
22 INTRODUCTION
the poetry, except for-a few short passages, is not truly affect-
ing. It was submitted, under its original title of Pride's Cure,
to Kemble, the great actor, who declined it, and it was never
produced on the stage in Lamb's lifetime. Lamb published
it in 1802, together with some Curious Fragments capitally
imitating Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, of which he was
very fond. The book was not well received.
In 1800 Lamb wrote the epilogue for Godwin's unsuccessful
tragedy, Antonio. In his second paper on the Old Actors
(London Magazine, April, 1822), he gives a most amusing
account of the one, damning performance of this play.^^^ For
the next two years his published work was small and unim-
portant, consisting of lampoons on the government in The
Albion (a short-hved affair), squibs and jokes in The Morning
Chronicle and The Morning Post, some dramatic criticism,
and one piece, The Londoner, that shows for the first time in
print his love of the city, and gives promise of the later Elia.
Another attempt in drama, the farce Mr. H — , was pro-
duced at Drury Lane Theatre in 1806. It was a failure, and
was withdrawn at Lamb's request. The plot turns upon
the grotesqueness of the name Hogsflesh, which its owner
attempts to conceal, but inadvertently reveals, to the dis-
gust and consternation of his friends, particularly his lady-
love. He gets it changed to Bacon, and thus come3 off
triumphant. The play was produced with some success
in Philadelphia in 1812, and printed there, without Lamb's
name, in 1813. Lamb pubHshed it for the first time author-
itatively in Vol. II. of his collected Works (1818).
The next year (1807) saw the publication of the earliest of
Lamb's lasting works. This was the Tales from Shakespear,
(1) This passage was omitted when Lamb revised the essay for the col-
lected edition of Elia.
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 23
long a deservedly popular book with the young readers for
whom it was intended. It was put forth by "The Juvenile
Library," i. e., Mrs. William Godwin, whom Lamb cordially
detested but whose enterprise every child that has made ac-
quaintance with Shakespeare through the Tales has reason to
be grateful for. Though it bore the name of Charles Lamb
alone as author, it was more Mary Lamb's work than her
brother's, for out of the twenty tales in the book, she wrote all
but those of Lear, Macbeth, Timon, Romeo, Hamlet, and
Othello. The preface explained that the writers had kept as
much of Shakespeare's language as was practicable, and that
"what these tales shall have been to the young readers, that
and much more it is the writers' wish that the true Plays of
Shakespear may prove to them in older years — enrichers of
fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish
and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honorable
thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, generosity;
humanity; for of examples teaching these virtues his pages
are full."
The connection thus formed with The Juvenile Library
lasted for some years and produced several other books for
children. In The Adventures of Ulysses (1808) Lamb retold
in charming style — better even than that of the Tales — the
story of the Odyssey, taking it from Chapman's Homer.
Mrs. Leicester's School (1808; the first edition, however, bears
the date 1809), is a collection of stories supposed to be told
in turn by ten young ladies of a boarding-school concerning
their childhood experiences. It came out anonymously, but
was chiefly Mary Lamb's work. The stories vary consider-
ably in interest, but all are better executed than Rosamund
Gray; and they have an added interest from the many auto-
biographical hints they contain. In 1809 appeared Poetry
24 INTRODUCTION
for Children f hy the Author of ''Mrs. Leicester's School."
This also was chiefly by Mary Lamb. The last book issued
by The Juvenile Library in which the Lambs were concerned
seems to have been Charles's Prince Dorus (1811), a humorous
verse-tale of the prince with the long nose.^^^
Lamb now turned his attention to the old drama with a
more serious critical purpose. He had been at work for
some time upon a collection of extracts, and published it in
1808 under the title Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who
Lived about the Time of Shakspeare: With Notes by Charles
Lamb. It was published by Longman, apparently as a sort
of companion to Ellis's Specimens of the Early English Poets
(1790), Ellis's Specimens of English Metrical Romances
(1805), and Burnett's Specimens of English Prose Writers
(1807). The importance of the undertaking itself and its
significant position in the history of the appreciation of the
Elizabethan drama justify the following quotation from
Lamb's Preface:
"The kind of extracts which I have sought after have been,
not so much passages of wit and humour, though the old
plays are rich in such, as scenes of passion, sometimes of
the deepest quality, interesting situations, serious descrip-
tions, that which is more nearly allied to poetry than to wit,
and to tragic rather than to comic poetry. The plays
which I have made choice of have been, with few excep-
tions, those which treat of human life and manners, rather
than masques, and arcadian pastorals. . . . My leading
design has been, to illustrate what may be called the moral
sense of our ancestors, to show in what manner they felt,
when they placed themselves by the power of imagination in
trying situations in the conflicts of duty and passion, or the
(1) The verses in The King and Queen of Hearts (undated) are ascribed
to Lamb with all but entire certainty. This was an apparently early
publication of The Juvenile Library, consisting of amusing copper-plate
pictures after the manner of playing-cards, with a running verse com-
mentary.
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 25
V .
strife of contending duties; what sort of loves and enmities
theirs were; how their griefs were tempered, and their full-
swoln joys abated; how much of Shakespeare shines in the
great men his contemporaries, and how far in his divine mind
and manners he surpassed them and all mankind.
"Another object which I had in making these selections
was, to bring together the most admired scenes in Fletcher
and Massinger, in the estimation of the world the only dramatic
poets of that age who are entitled to be considered after Shake-
speare, and to exhibit them in the same volume with the more
impressive scenes of old Marlowe, Heywood, Tourneur, Web-
ster, Ford, and others; to show what we have slighted, while
beyond all proportions we have cried up one or two favorite
names."
It will be seen from these words that Lamb's purpose
was not scientific or historical, but literary, in a somewhat
narrow sense. He was not studying dramatic technique or
the development of the drama as a type ; he was culling and
arranging and exhibiting those things that a reader of taste
should be expected to enjoy. His interest is in emotions and
in the imaginative realization and expression of those emo-
tions. Ideas there are, of course, in the dramatists: but
Lamb is always less concerned to formulate and expound
ideas than to capture the feelings that spring from ideas and
situations, and to observe how those feelings find expression
in a particular man's actions and words. The testimony
to the acuteness of his insight and the fineness of his taste is
universal. Professor Herford's comment is excellent^^^ : for
this task, he says, "no living Englishman had comparable
qualifications ... he had to choose out the decisive
poetry from several hundred plays of some thirty authors.
Even Scott is not more one in spirit with his ballads than
(1) The Age of Wordawbrth, pp. 62-63.
26 INTRODUCTION
Lamb is with his plays. His brief critical notes are
the inmost breath and genius of the poetry itself captured and
made palpable in words."
The Specimens may well be considered the prelude, as it
were, to the second period of Lamb's literary labors. In his
first period he seems to be trying his powers, but in his second
he finds his feet as an essayist and proceeds master of criticism.
The opportunity for this more serious achievement came to
him, as it happened, through Leigh Hunt, himself a Christ's
Hospital boy. Hunt and his brother, who had started a
weekly paper called The Examiner in 1808, undertook also
a quarterly. The Reflector, in 1810, which was to be largely
the work of old Blue Coat boys. To it Lamb contributed
some of his keenest and best sustaineci critical essays, espe-
cially the papers on The Genius and Character of Hogarth,
and On the Tragedies of Shakespeare Considered with Ref-
erence to their Fitness for Stage Representation. Some
of his other Reflector contributions, such as On the In-
convenience of Being Hanged, Edax on Appetite, and The
Good Clerk, show the characteristic vein of humor of the Elia
essays. In The Examiner, in 1812, he published some squibs
in verse against the Prince Regent, the most amusing and
caustic of which is The Prince of Whales. In 1813 he began
to write characteristic short scraps of articles for the "Table
Talk" in The Examiner; he contributed also dramatic
criticisms and some short reviews of books, among them one
on a burlesque entitled Falstaff's Letters (in which he himself
certainly had had a hand), and an appreciative one on
Keats's poems. To this period belongs some good work in
other periodicals, especially Recollections of Chrisfs Hospital,
in The Englishman's Magazine, 1813, and a review of
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 27
Wordsworth's Excursion in The Quarterly Review,^^^
1814. His last piece in The Examiner seems to have been
in 1820, in which year he wrote also a few things for Hunt's
Indicator.
But before he ceased to write for Hunt's papers, he had
made a collection of such early work as he wished to preserve,
and, adding to it from his more recent writing, published the
whole in two volumes in 1818 under the title The Works of
Charles Lamb. The first volume contained reprinted poems,
John Woodvil, the dramatic fragment The Witch, the Curious
Fragments, Rosamund Gray, and Recollections of Christ's
Hospital. The second was made up of critical and other
essays and Mr. H — .
To the opportunity offered him by Hunt's columns and
to the consequent feeling of freedom and encouragement, he
owed much, as has been said. A still more favorable op-
portunity opened in 1820, the year which marks the begin-
ning of his best and most productive period. This chance
was the foundation of The London Magazine — a new venture,
with an old name — by John Scott, who had edited The
Champion, for which Lamb had written in 1814. Very
likely Scott invited him to write for the London; but one of
his biographers ^^^ says that "Lamb's association with Hazlitt
in the year 1820 introduced him to that of The London
Magazine, which supplied the finest stimulus his intellect
(1) Lamb'srelations with the Quarterly, edited by the high-handed Glflford,
were always uncomfortable. Giflford had called Lamb's comment on
Ford, in the Dramatic Specimens, "the blasphemies of a maniac," a judg-
ment, which, as Robinson says in his Diary, "in brutality surpasses any-
thing, even in the Edinburgh Review." The Quarterly garbled Lamb's review
of the Excursion, which he said to Wordsworth was ' the prettiest piece of
prose 1 ever writ" ; it printed Southey's article on "The Progress of In-
fidelity" that called out Lamb's defence of Hazlitt, Hunt, and himself; and
it professed to think Lamb's Confessions of a Drunkard an autobiographical
document.
(2) T. N. Talfourd, Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, Chap. VII.
28 INTRODUCTION
had ever received, and induced the compositions fondly
and familiarly known under the fantastic title of Elia."
This pseudonym was the real name of an old Italian
clerk in the South Sea House in Lamb's day there /i^ "Elia
himself added the function of an author to that of a
scrivener like myself," writes Lamb. He tells us that the
proper pronunciation is "EUia," but it must have been
variously pronounced in his own day. Mr. Lucas says that
Lamb's friend Hone rhymed it with "desire" — I suppose
because of the similarity to "Elias" ; and, oddly, the Maclise
portrait of Lamb bears the name in Greek letters in two
forms, viz: EAIA and rjjXta, which by the practice of that time
would indicate respectively "Ellia" and **Eelia." This last is
certainly the common pronunciation now; but it must be
given up.
Under cover of this pseudonym Lamb published almost all
of his contributions to The London Magazine. His first was
in August, 1820. Scott, the first editor, died from a wound
received in a duel, in February, 1821, and the control passed
into the hands of John Taylor, of the publishing firm of Taylor
and Hessey, which bought the magazine after Scott's death;
Lamb, however, continued to write for it — occasionally, it
would seem, anonymously. His last contribution, according
to Mr. Lucas, was in August, 1825, with which number
Taylor and Hessey also ended their connection with the
magazine. After that Lamb used the signature "EHa" for
a few pieces in other periodicals (The New Monthly Magazine,
The Englishman's Magazine, Hone's Table Book, and The
AthencBum). Some of these were reprinted in the Last
Essays of Elia. He also used the signature perhaps a dozen
times in his private correspondence, the last time, just before
(1) Lucas, Works, Vol. II., p. 299.
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 29
his death, writing **Ch. Lamb, alias Elia." Even in print
it was a perfectly transparent disguise to anybody who knew
him or his earlier articles.
The first collected edition of Elia, comprising the essays
contained in the present book, was published in 1823, by
Taylor and Hessey, the owners of The London Magazine.
Aside from the continued Elia articles mentioned above,
and a few short bits signed Lepus in The New Times, Lamb's
latest work was once more largely dramatic and in verse. In
1825 he wrote The Pawnbroker's Daughter, a farce turning
on the inconvenient situation of a lover who has been hanged
and cut down. It was never played, though Lamb had hopes
of it, but was printed in Blackwood's Magazine in 1830. In
1827 he wrote the dramatic poem, The Wife's Trial, in which
he strove again for a Shakespearean flavor, but which is more
modern than John Woodvil. It was offered to Charles Kemble
for production at Co vent Garden Theatre. As Mr. Lucas
says, Lamb neverseemsto haveconvinced himself that hecould
not write successfully for the stage. He himself said that he
had trouble with the "damned plot," but thought he could
"find wit, passion, sentiment, character, and the like trifles."
As a matter of fact, however, though he has abundance of
feeling of his own, and a very sensitive and sympathetic
appreciation of character, he lacks the dramatist's power to
get inside a character and make it act and speak with life-
likeness. The Wife's Trial was printed in Blackwood's,
1828.
In 1830 appeared, as the first fruits of Moxon's newly
established publishing business, Album Verses, containing
occasional pieces written for ladies' albums, some sonnets,
some translations of the Latin poems of Vincent Bourne (an
English scholar of the eighteenth century), and a Pindaric
30 INTRODUCTION
Ode to the Treadmill. Lamb did not regard this collection
very seriously, but some of the reviewers took it in all seri-
ousness and fell foul of it. It contained the sonnet The
Gipsy's Malison, previously printed in Blackwood's, 1829,
after having been declined by The Gem; apropos of which
exhibition of taste, Lamb got off one of his best witticisms:
"The editors declined it, on the plea that it would shock all
mothers. ... I am born out of time. I have no con-
jecture about what the present world calls delicacy. I
thought Rosamund Gray a pretty modest thing. Hessey
assures me that the world would not bear it. I have lived to
grow into an indecent character. When my sonnet was
rejected, I exclaimed, *Hang the age. I will write for
Antiquity !' "
In 1831 Moxon published an anonymous burlesque ballad,
Satan in Search of a Wife, with grotesque illustrations by
the famous Cruickshank. In 1833, after some difficulty and
a lawsuit with Taylor, the former editor of The London
Magazine, who claimed proprietary rights in the essays,
Moxon pubhshed the Last Essays of Elia, containing the
greater part of Lamb's prose written since the collected Elia
of 1823, It was Lamb's last book.
III.
The Elia essays show Lamb at his best in his humor and
fancy, his tenderness, his intimate personalness. If their
serious criticism is not quite so incisive and luminous as that
of the essays on Hogarth and Shakespeare, pubHshed in
The Reflector J it is still admirably keen and delicate. Out of
them we can — and we do — construct the real Charles Lamb
himself , toiling in the prison-house of the Eastlndia Company,
living his boyhood over again in imagination, cherishing his
friends, smiling at us sometimes very wistfully, solacing him-
self with his old authors, or bursting into mirth and puns —
all this with that dark shadow of insanity and grief hanging
over him. It was a brave soul; and he wins our affection the
more strongly — "the best loved of English writers," he has
been called — because, with all his self-revelation, he never
thinks to let us see the heroic in him.
It may not be amiss to point out in some detail the mani-
festations of his chief traits. We recognize at once the per-
vasiveness of his humor no less than the brilliancy of a par-
ticular pun or an odd metaphor ingeniously spun out and
varied. This humor is, as it were, a saturated solution
so rich in intellectual constituents that it is ever on the point
of crystallizing into wit; on the other hand, the substance of
thought is so compounded with feeling that it is constantly
on the point of turning into pathos. Though conspicuous
and pervasive, it is quite indescribable in a single word or
phrase. It is quick, yet not racy; lively, yet not boisterous
31
32 INTRODUCTION
nor ever side-splitting^, at least in his writing (though his
jokes in company were sometimes Uttle better than tom-
foolery); extravagant, rare, elaborate, and minute, yet
without that labored quality which we call far-fetched;
delicate, yet saved from thinness by its ingenuity; bookish,
delighting in verbal subtleties, yet richly appreciative of
human comedy. It is a pity that the Dissertation Upon Roast
Pig, easily the best known and probably the best enjoyed of
the essays, is so generally accepted as the classical example
of Lamb's humor. His fine sense for character, as in The Two
Races of Men, is a finer thing than his gusto for pig, perfect
as that is ; and the felicities of Distant Correspondents or The
Praise of Chimney-Sweepers are superior, because involving
a richer range of associations.
His sympathetic nature, also, is evident. He is full of
regard for the unfortunate and the helpless. Weakness
moves his pity, not his scorn. His pity was active, finding
its outlet in many an act of kindly help, not in theoretical
humanitarianism. He would put his hand into his pocket
for a beggar, raise a subscription, write an epilogue for a
friend's play, revise a young poet's verses, find work for his
servant's relatives. He is charitable in his judgments of
men. Unless, perhaps, of a stiif-necked prig^*^: such a one
"wolde he snibben sharply for the nones," like Chaucer's
Parson. But benevolence and intellectual charity are by
no means all of true sympathy. He was singularly sensitive
to the appeal of widely different natures, and quick to
understand and appreciate their strength or weakness, to
catch and relish their peculiar quality, their flavor o^f
sweetness, richness, or pungency. Of this power of his,
(1) See his indignant protest (.Letter to Southey) against the illiberal cen-
sure of his own and Leigh Hunt's and Hazlitt's moral views.
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 33
such essays as The Old Benchers and Imjierfect Sympathies
are good examples.
He is always intensely personal. This means first that
his interests are in the manners and thoughts and feelings of
concrete men and women. He loved a "humor" in a man.
He cared nothing about science or metaphysics. He wanted
his abstract ideas mixed with flesh and blood. In politics
he took a very small interest, and was a partisan, if at all,
for his friends' sake, or because he could not bear in silence
the personal affronts which the conduct of the Prince Regent
gave not only to the Princess but to every decent subject as
well. He refused, to the exasperation of some of his friends,
to manifest any enthusiasm over Waterloo ; but rather strange-
ly does not seem to have felt any deep pity for Napoleon's
fate. He had few or none of what are called "views," even
in literature or art, though he had strong preferences
among writers and painters. He esteemed Coleridge and
Wordsworth and liked their poetry; but he had no part
in their declaration of literary independence. Serious judg-
ments couched in general terms are hardly to be found in his
essays; his mental idiom, so to speak, is particular and
specific.
He is personal, in the second place, in that his view of every-
body and everything takes its color from his own nature.
It is a common enough trait, but Lamb has it in marked de-
gree. As has well been said of him, "all that he knows or
observes in the world of books or men becomes absorbed in
the single life of his own mind, and is reproduced as part
and parcel of Charles Lamb." That is, the reader feels that
Lamb's sense of a fact is constantly interposed between him
and the fact itself. This does not necessarily imply a sacrifice
of accuracy or truth any more than when we look at the sun
34 INTRODUCTION
through a smoked glass. But I do not mean that Lamb is
at all a dark or turbid medium. If Lamb's essays were
paintings, we should say that they have a great deal of
"atmosphere."
This personal habit of mind explains the large amount of
reminiscence in his work. His fondness for things as they
had been is unmistakable — for the old benchers, the old
actors, the old writers, old china, the old landmarks of the
city. They were what he was used to. He had made his
discoveries once for all in his boyhood of the oddities in the
Temple walks, of the theatre, of old books in Samuel Salt's
library, of London. It was not the greatness of the city, not
its growth, but the unchanging famiHarity of its aspect that
delighted him. ''The disappearance of the old clock from
St. Dunstan's church drew tears from him; nor could he
ever pass without emotion the place where Exeter Change once
stood. "^^' If he had been born and bred in the country, as
Wordsworth was, he too would have loved its mountains,
lakes, and wild flowers; but not in Wordsworth's way.
For Wordsworth had a power of abstract thought, of
imaginative vision, that saw behind all the separate facts
of nature and the diverse operations of natural forces a
unifying, universal Presence, "whose dwelling is the light of
setting suns," and "in the heart of man," as well. That is
a philosophical conception as well as a poetic one. Similarly
there is a unifying, abstractly imaginative conception under-
lying Wordsworth's Westminster Bridge sonnet on London :
he felt the city to be a great organism, could imagine its
"mighty heart." Such poetic abstractions, equally with
scientific ones, were foreign to Lamb. Possibly he failed to
appreciate the country not only because he had not known
(1) Moxon, quoted in Lucas, Life, Vol. II., p. 352.
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 35
it well as a boy, but also because he felt it to be impersonal,
fortuitous, somehow the result of vague, intangible force, not
of sentient design and feeling. He was not interested in the
city as a sociological fact: it was not for him the neces-
sary result of general social pressure, which is abstract,
intangible, impersonal. The city to him was the expression
of separate, individual men's activity, the place where this
man and this and this lived and talked and worked, the
scene of the life of such people as he had early learned to
know. Over it and all its doings was the glamor of his boy-
hood's recollection.
Again, this personal habit is the essence of his literary
preferences. His criticism is not ^'scientific." He would
have been the last man to write a history of literature, to dis-
cuss origins, to trace tendencies, to deal with poetry as the ex-
pression of the composite mental and spiritual life of an age.
The scientific temper is impersonal: its results are valid
precisely in the degree in which it purges itself of in-
dividuaUty. But Lamb's temper, if not scientific, is some-
thing at least as fruitful. He is finely aesthetic. He does
not apply principles or dogmas; he consults his taste.
He is a connoisseur. He is like a wine-taster who knows
little of vine-growing or the chemistry of wine-making but
recognizes the rare bouquet of the precious vintage when
he tastes it. There is no denying that Lamb was of those
whom Hazlitt^^^ rather contemptuously calls the Occult
School of critics: ''They discern no beauties but what are
concealed from superficial eyes, and overlook all that are
obvious to the vulgar part of mankind. . . . This is
not envy or affectation, but a natural proneness to singularity,
a love of what is odd and out of the way." But we may
(1) On Criticism. Hazlitt had Lamb in mind.
36 INTRODUCTION
apply to Lamb what he himself said of Hazlitt: his "decisions
(most profound and subtle where they are 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." He differs from Hazlitt,
however, in seldom obtruding his dislikes and hostilities
upon our notice.
The writers whom he loved best^^^ were naturally, there-
fore, those of marked individuaUty, such as Sir Thomas
Browne, Robert Burton, Izaak Walton, and Jeremy Taylor.
He said that there were many whom he would have wished
to see before Sir Isaac Newton and Locke, the author of
the Essay on the Human Understanding, though he inad-
vertently acknowledged that they bore the greatest names in
English letters. " 'Yes, the greatest names,' he stammered
out hastily, 'but they were not persons — not persons. . . .
Not characters, you know. . . . Beyond their contents
there is nothing personally interesting in the men.' "^^^ He
loved style and manner in writing, almost for its own sake;
Hazhtt tells us in another place that he waded through great
tomes of school divinity, not for the substance of theology
that they contained, but for the pleasure he got out of their
intricacy of style. And this feeling for the garb of thought
seems to be a considerable element in his adoration of
the Elizabethan dramatists: it was not only that the joy of
(1) Lamb's disregard of the physical well-being of his books was positively
shocking. His Enfleld neighbor, Westwood, tells how they had been
patched and botched by the cobbler Lamb got to repair them. He would
throw presentation copies of his friends' books through the branches of an
apple tree, or roll them down the stairs. He was even vandal enough,
when he wanted to furnish some forgotten garret in his Temple lodgings,
to cut out the plates from his own books to cover the walls with; and he
and Mary nearly wept when they found that a particularly fine set of plates
to Ariosto could not be cut out because parts of the text were printed on
the other side!
(2) Hazlitt, On Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen. The essay is
a most interesting account of one of Lamb's evenings.
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 37
his first play was an imperishable thing; not only that in
the drama he found that concrete human embodiment of
thought already spoken of; not only that as a whole the
earlier drama was conceived in grandeur and grandly
executed; not only that the dramatists had each his own
distinguishing character; but also that the very language
in which the old plays were written, now consciously ornate
and elaborate, now swift and simple beyond the reach of
modern poetical phrase, now tortuous, ingenious, and compact
to the point of undeniable obscurity, and always in idiom and
vocabulary far enough remote from modern speech to pre-
serve a tang of strangeness and wonder, seemed to bear a
charmed life of its own, an existence, as it were, independent
of its content.
It may seem strange to speak of Lamb's nature, brimming
over with ready sympathy and glowing with humor, as in
any way rigid. His very style — the cast of his sentences, the
variety of his diction — is mobility itself. Yet there is a lack
of breadth and of solidity in him which, with his delicacy,
produces an impression of fragility. Sustained effort is
impossible for him — perhaps the India House absorbed all
he had of that. He does everything by flashes. His one
story, Rosamund Gray, is slender. His criticism is keen and
penetrating, but never thorough or systematic. His work on
the old dramatists was by excerpts and brief notes. His
essay on The Artificial Comedy of the Last Century, pretty
nearly his only bit of critical generalizing in Elia, soon
turns away to consider particular actors. He seldom reasons
anything through. He has often no plan or outline in his
composition. "The Essays," he writes to his publisher,
"want no Preface ; they are all Preface. A Preface is nothing
but a talk with the reader; and they do nothing else." The
38 INTRODUCTION
subjects are varied, but the manner is the same, or nearly so.
The Dissertation Upon Roast Pig is exceptional in that it
contains a story; but it soon breaks off into personal apprecia-
tion of pig as pork- It has unmistakably the essential
quality of the intimate essay as a type, in that it springs from
personal experience, feeling, and taste. Everywhere Lamb is
the same tender-hearted, humorous, fanciful, odd fellow
talking to us in brief monologue. And it is not so much what
he talks of as his way of conceiving it and setting it off, that
claims our attention and affection.
He gives us little new or positive information — except about
himself. He writes not for our profit, but for our pleasure,
because for his own pleasure. He explains little or nothing;
he has no bones to pick with us over theories; he does not
preach to us or lecture to us. I will not say that he does
not make us wiser, for a man is sometimes the wiser for a
laugh over an odd character or a tear over a pathetic
reminiscence. We feel with him the humor or the sadness
or the beauty of the things that stirred him. His feeling is
sometimes so whimsical as to be unconvincing; sometimes
so fine drawn as to strike ordinary, normal sensibilities as
perverse; usually so fresh, uncopied, unstudied that it
altogether captivates and possesses us.
CHIEF DATES IN LAMB'S LIFE.
1775. Born February 10, in Crown Office Row Inner
Temple.
1782. Entered Christ's Hospital.
1789. Left school.
1791. Entered the service of the South Sea Company.
1792. Entered the service of the East India Company.
1796. Mary Lamb killed her mother.
1796. Four sonnets published in Coleridge's Poems on
Various Subjects; further contributions to the
second edition (1797).
1798. Blank Verse by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb.
Rosamund Grar
1802. John Woodvil.
1806. Mr. H — produced at Drury Lane Theatre.
1807. Tales from Shakes fear.
1808. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets.
The Adventures of Ulysses.
Mrs. Leicester's School (dated 1809).
1809. Poetry for Children.
1810. Began to write for Leigh Hunt's Reflector.
1811. Prince Dorus.
1818. The Works of Charles Lamb (collected edition, 2
vols.).
1820. Began to write for The London Magazine.
1823. Elia published in collected form. ^
Charles and Mary adopted Emma Isola.
39 ^
40 INTRODUCTION
1825. Retired from the East India House with a pension.
1830. Album Verses.
1831 . Satan in Search of a Wife.
1833. The Last Essays ofElia in collected form.
1834. Died, at Edmonton, December 27, aged 59 years,
10 months.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTF
[ Reprints of single works by Lamb (chiefly, of course, the
ITales from Shakespear and the two series of Elia essays) are
jlegion; and collected editions of the works and letters are
imany. Three good modern collected editions, each contain-
ing some matter necessarily omitted from the other two, are
easily accessible, viz:
The Eversley Edition, edited with Notes and Introduction
by the Reverend Canon Alfred Ainger, London, 1878-88.
(Works, 4 vols.; Letters, 2 vols.; Life, 1 vol.).
The Works of Charles Lamb, edited by WilUam Macdonald,
London and New York, 1903.
(Works, 10 vols.; Letters, 2 vols. Vol. 1 has a Preface
on "Editions Past and Present" ; vol. 2 a short Memoir.
Portraits, and spirited pen-and-ink illustrations by C.
E. Brock.)
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, edited by E. V.
Lucas, London and New York, 1903-5.
(Works, 5 vols.; Letters, 2 vols. Many portraits, fac-
similes, maps, pictures, etc. Very fully annotated.)
For Lamb's life see the articles in the Encyclopedia Britan-
nica, 9th edition, and the Dictionary of National Biog-
raphy, both by Canon Ainger; also his volume on Lamb
in "The English Men of Letters" series, of which latter the
Life included in the Eversley Edition is an enlargement.
But the most complete account is The Life of Charles Lamb,
by E. V. Lucas (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London,
1905), in two volumes.
41
42 INTRODUCTION
Of his contemporaries who have left us their legacies of
record and reminiscence the most important are William
Hazlitt (in Table Talk and the Spirit of the Age), Leigh
Hunt (in Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries and
Autobiography), Henry Crabb Robinson (in his Diary),
Thomas DeQuincey {Recollections of Charles Lamb, Masson's
collected ed., vol. 3. and Charles Lamb, same ed., vol. 5.),
Thomas Noon Talfourd (Works of Charles Lamb, 1838, and
Final Memorials of Charles Lamb), Bryan W.Procter (Charles
Lamb, a Memoir, by Barry Cornwall), and P. G. Patmore
{My Friends and Acquaintances).
In the Footprints of Charles Lamb, by Benjamin E. Martin,
New York, 1890, contains a number of pictures of places
associated with Lamb's memory, and an elaborate bibliog-
raphy (not perfectly accurate) down to 1888, by E. D. North.
Of the mass of critical essays on Lamb see A. Birrell
{Obiter Dicta, 2nd Series), Walter Pater {Appreciations),
A. C. Swinburne {Miscellanies), Paul E. More {Shelburne
Essays),
ELIA
CHARLES LAMB
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.
Reader, in thy passage from the Bank — where thou hast
been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art
a lean annuitant like myself) — to the Flower Pot, to secure
a place for Dais ton, or Shackle w^ell, or some other thy
1 6 suburban retreat northerly, — didst thou never observe a
melancholy-looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, to
the left — where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishops-
gate? I daresay thou hast often admired its magnificent
portals ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave
10 court, with cloisters, and pillars, with few or no traces of
goers-in or comers-out — a desolation something like
Balclutha's.^
This was once a house of trade, — a centre of busy
interests. The throng of merchants was here — the quick
15 pulse of gain — and here some forms of business are still
kept up, though the soul be long since fled. Here are still
to be seen stately porticoes; imposing staircases; offices
roomy as the state apartments in palaces — deserted, or
thinly peopled with a -few straggling clerks ; the still more
20 sacred interiors of court and committee-rooms, with vener-
able faces of beadles, door-keepers — directors seated in
form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend), at long
worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany, with tar-
1 "I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate." —
OSSIAN. (L.)
46 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
nished gilt-leather coverings, supporting massy silver ink-
stands long since dry; — the oaken wainscots hung with
pictures of deceased governors and sub-governors, of Queen
Anne, and the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty;
— huge charts, which subsequent discoveries have anti_
quated; — dusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams, — and
soundings of the Bay of Panama ! — The long passages hung
with buckets, appended, in idle row, to walls, whose sub-
stance might defy any, short of the last conflagration: —
with vast ranges of cellarage under all, where dollars and
pieces of eight once lay, an ''unsunned heap,"^ for Mammon
to have solaced his solitary heart withal, — long since dis-
sipated, or scattered into air at the blast of the breaking of
that famous Bubble.
Such is the South-Sea House. At least, such it was
forty years ago, when I knew it, — a magnificent relic!
What alterations may have been made in it since, I have
had no opportunities of verifying. Time, I take for granted,
has not freshened it. No wind has resuscitated the face of
the sleeping waters. A thicker crust by this time stagnates
upon it. The moths, that were then battening upon its
obsolete ledgers and day-books, have rested from their
depredations, but other light generations have succeeded,
making fine fretwork among their single and double entries.
Layers of dust have accumulated (a superf cetation of dirt !)
upon the old layers, that seldom used to be disturbed, save
by some curious finger, now and then, inquisitive to explore
the mode of book-keeping in Queen Anne's reign; or, with
less hallowed curiosity, seeking to unveil some of the
mysteries of that tremendous hoax, whose extent the petty
peculators of our day look back upon with the same
1 CoMus, 1. 398.
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 47
expression of incredulous admiration, and hopeless am-
bition of rivalry, as would become the puny face of modem
conspiracy contemplating the Titan size of Vaux's super-
human plot.
5 Peace to the manes of the Bubble! Silence and destitu-
tion are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial!
Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring and
living commerce, — amid the fret and fever of speculation —
with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India House
above thee, in the hey-day of present prosperity, with
their important faces, as it were, insulting thee, their poor
neighbor out of business — to the idle and merely contem-
plative, — to such as me, old house! there is a charm in
thy quiet: — a cessation — a coolness from business — an
5 indolence almost cloistral — which is delightful ! With what
reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at
eventide! They spoke of the past:— the shade of some
dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by me,
stiff as in life. Living accounts of accountants puzzle me.
I have no skill in figuring. But thy great dead tomes,
which scarce three degenerate clerks of the present day
could lift from their enshrining shelves — with their old
fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric interlacings —
their sums in triple column iations, set down with formal
5 superfluity of ciphers — ^with pious sentences at the begin-
ning, without which our religious ancestors never ventured
to open a book of business, or bill of lading — the costly
vellum covers of some of them almost persuading us that we
are got into some better library^ — are very agreeable and
edifying spectacles. I can look upon these defunct dragons
with complacency. Thy heavy odd-shaped ivory-handled
penknives (our ancestors had everything on a larger scale
48 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
than we have hearts for) are as good as anything from
Herculaneum. The pounce-boxes of our days have gone
retrograde.
The very clerks which I remember in the South-Sea
House — I speak of forty years back — had an air very ^
different from those in the public offices that I have had
to do with since. They partook of the genius of the
place !
There were mostly (for the establishment did not admit
of superfluous salaries) bachelors. Generally (for they had lo
not much to do) persons of a curious and speculative turn
of mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason mentioned before.
Humorists, for they were of all descriptions; and, not
having been brought together in early life (which has a
tendency to assimilate the members of corporate bodies to 15
each other), but, for the most part, placed in this house in
ripe or middle age, they necessarily carried into it their
separate habits and oddities, unqualified, if I may so speak,
as into a common stock. Hence they formed a sort of
Noah's ark. Odd fishes. A lay-monastery. Domestic re- 20
tainers in a great house, kept more for show than use. Yet
pleasant fellows, full of chat— and not a few among them
had arrived at considerable proficiency on the German flute.
The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cambro-
Briton. He had something of the choleric complexion of 25
his countrymen stamped on his visage, but was a worthy
sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, to the last,
powdered and frizzed out, in the fashion which I remember
to have seen in caricatures of what were termed, in my
young days, Maccaronies. He was the last of that race of so
beaux. Melancholy as a gib-cat^ over his counter all the
1 I. Henky IV., I. 2.83.
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 49
forenoon, I think I see him making up his cash (as they
call it) with tremulous fingers, as if he feared every one
about him was a defaulter; in his hypochondry ready to
imagine himself one; haunted, at least, with the idea of
5 the possibility of his becoming one : his tristful visage clear-
ing up a little over his roast neck of veal at Anderton's at
two (where his picture still hangs, taken a little before his
death by desire of the master of the coffee-house, which he
had frequented for the last five-and-twenty years), but not
10 attaining the meridian of its animation till evening brought
on the hour of tea and visiting. The simultaneous sound of
his well-known rap at the door with the stroke of the clock
announcing six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in the
families which this dear old bachelor gladdened with his
15 presence. Then was his forte, his glorified hour! How
would he chirp, and expand over a muffin ! How would
he dilate into secret history! His countryman Pennant
himself, in particular, could not be more eloquent than he
in relation to old and new London — the site of old theatres,
20 churches, streets gone to decay — where Rosamond's pond
stood— the Mulberry Gardens— and the Conduit in Cheap
— with many a pleasant anecdote, derived from paternal
tradition, of those grotesque figures which Hogarth has
immortalised in his picture of Noon,— the worthy descend-
25 ants of those heroic confessors, who, flying to this country,
from the wrath of Louis the Fourteenth and his dragoons,
kept alive the flame of pure religion in the sheltering
obscurities of Hog Lane, and the vicinity of the Seven
Dials!
30 Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had the
air and stoop of a nobleman. You would have taken him
for one, had yoirmet him'in one of the passages leading to
50 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
Westminster Hall. By stoop I mean that gentle bending
of the body forwards, which, in great men, must be sup-
posed to be the effect of an habitual condescending attention
to the applications of their inferiors. While he held you in
converse, you felt strained to the height in the colloquy.
The conference over, you were at leisure to smile at the
comparative insignificance of the pretensions which had just
awed you. His intellect was of the shallowest order. It
did not reach to a saw or a proverb. His mind was in its
original state of white paper. A sucking babe might have lo
posed him. What was it then? Was he rich? Alas, no!
Thomas Tame was very poor. Both he and his wife looked
outwardly gentlefolks, when I fear all was not well at all
times within. She had a neat meagre person, which it was
evident she had not sinned in over-pampering; but in is
its veins was noble blood. She traced her descent, by
some labyrinth of relationship, which I never thoroughly
understood, — much less can explain with any heraldic
certainty at this time of day, — to the illustrious, but unfor-
tunate house of Derwentwater. This was the secret of 20
Thomas's stoop. This was the thought — the sentiment —
the bright solitary star of your lives, — ye mild and happy
pair, — which cheered you in the night of intellect, and in
the obscurity of your station ! This was to you instead of
riches, instead of rank, instead of glittering attainments: 25
and it was worth them all together. You insulted none
with it; but, while you wore it as a piece of defensive
armor only, no insult likewise could reach you through it.
Decus et solamen}
Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, John so
Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, nor in good
1 Virgil, Aeneid, X., 858.
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 51
truth cared one fig about the matter. He "thought an
accountant the greatest character in the world, and himself
the greatest accountant in it."^ Yet John was not without
his hobby. The fiddle relieved his vacant hours. He sang,
certainly with other notes than to the Orphean lyre.^ He
did indeed -scream and scrape most abominably. His
fine suite of official rooms in Threadneedle Street, which,
without anything very substantial appended to them, were
enough to enlarge a man's notions of himself that lived in
10 them — (I know not who is the occupier of them now) —
resounded fortnightly to the notes of a concert of "sweet
breasts," as our ancestors would have called them, culled
from club-rooms and orchestras — chorus singers — first and
second violoncellos — double basses — and clarionets — who
15 ate his cold mutton, and drank his punch, and praised his
ear. He sate like Lord Midas among them. But at the
desk Tipp was quite another sort of creature. Thence all
ideas, that were purely ornamental, were banished. You
could not speak of anything romantic without rebuke.
20 Politics were excluded. A newspaper was thought too re-
fined and abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in
writing off dividend warrants. The striking of the annual
balance in the company's books (which, perhaps, differed
from the balance of last year in the sum of £25, Is. 6d.)
25 occupied his days and nights for a month previous. Not
that Tipp was blind to the deadness of things (as they call
them in the city) in his beloved house, or did not sigh for a
return of the old stirring days when South-Sea hopes were
young — (he was indeed equal to the wielding of any the
30 most intricate accounts of the most flourishing company in
1 Fielding, Joseph Andrews, Bk. III., Ch. 5 (adapted),
2 Paradise Lost, III., 17.
52 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
these or those days) : — but to a genuine accountant the dif-
ference of proceeds is as nothing. The fractional farthing is
as dear to his heart as the thousands which stand before it.
He is the true actor, who, whether his part be a prince or a
peasant, must act it with like intensity. With Tipp form 5
was everything. His life was formal. His actions seemed
ruled with a ruler. His pen was not less erring than his
heart. He made the best executor in the world: he was
plagued with incessant executorships accordingly, which ex-
cited his spleen and soothed his vanity in equal ratios. 10
He would swear (for Tipp swore) at the little orphans,
whose rights he would guard with a tenacity like the grasp
of the dying hand that commended their interests to his pro-
tection. With all this there was about him a sort of timidity
— (his few enemies used to give it a worse name) — a some- 15
thing which, in reverence to the dead, we will place, if you
please, a little on this side of the heroic. Nature certainly
had been pleased to endow John Tipp with a sufficient
measure of the principle of self-preservation. There is a
cowardice which we do not despise, because it has nothing 20
base or treacherous in its elements; it betrays itself, not you:
it is mere temperament; the absence of the romantic and the
enterprising; it sees a lion in the way, and will not, with
Fortinbras, "greatly find quarrel in a straw,"^ when some-
supposed honor is at stake. Tipp never mounted the box 25
of a stage-coach in his life ; or leaned against the rails of
a balcony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or looked
down a precipice; or let off a gun; or went upon a water-
party; or would willingly let you go if he could have helped
it: neither was it recorded of him, that for lucre, or for 3©)
intimidation, he ever forsook friend or principle.
1 Hamlet, IV., iv., 55.
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 53
Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead, in
whom common qualities become uncommon? Can I
forget thee, Henry Man, the wit, the polished man of
letters, the author, of the South-Sea House? who never
5 enteredst thy office in a morning or quittedst it in mid-
day — (what didst thou in an office?) — without some quirk
that left a sting! Thy gibes and thy jokes are now extinct,
or survive but in two forgotten volumes, which I had the
good fortune to rescue from a stall in Barbican, not three
10 days ago, and found thee terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as
alive. Thy wit is a little gone by in these fastidious days — :
thy topics are staled by the "new-born gauds"^ of the time:
— ^but great thou used to be in Public Ledgers, and in
Chronicles, upon Chatham and Shelburne, and Rocking-
15 ham, and Howe, and Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the war
which ended in the tearing from Great Britain her rebellious
colonies — and Keppel, and Wilkes, and Sawbridge, and
Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond, — and such
small Dolitics.
A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstreperous,
was fine rattling, rattleheaded Plumer. He was descended
— not in a right line, reader (for his lineal pretensions, like
his personal, favored a little of the sinister bend) — from the
Plumers of Hertfordshire. So tradition gave him out; and
?5 certain family features not a little sanctioned the opinion.
Certainly old Walter Plumer (his reputed author) had been
a rake in his days, and visited much in Italy, and had seen
the world. He was uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine old
Whig still living, who has represented the county in so
30 many successive parliaments, and has a fine old mansion
near Ware. Walter flourished in George the Second's days,
1 Troilus and Cressida, III.,iii., 176.
54 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
and was the same who was summoned before the House of
Commons about a business of franks, with the old Duchess
of Marlborough. You may read of it in Johnson's Life of
Cave. Cave came off cleverly in that business. It is certain
our Plumer did nothing to discountenance the rumor. 5
He rather seemed pleased whenever it was, with all
gentleness, insinuated. But, besides his family pretensions,
Plumer was an engaging fellow, and sang gloriously.
Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild
child-like, pastoral M ; a flute's breathing less divinely 10
whispering than thy Arcadian melodies, when in tones
w^orthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song sung by
Amiens to the banished Duke, which proclaims the winter
wind more lenient than for a man to be ungrateful.^ Thy
sire was old surly M , the unapproachable church- 15
warden of Bishopsgate. He knew not what he did, when
he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring of blustering
winter: — only unfortunate in thy ending, which should have
been, mild, conciliatory, swan-like.
Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up, 20
but they must be mine in private: — already I have fooled
the reader to the top of his bent;^ — else could I omit that
strange creature Woollett, who existed in trying the ques-
tion, and bought litigations f—smd still stranger, inimitable,
solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton might 25
have deduced the law of gravitation. How profoundly
would he nib a pen — with what deliberation would he wet
a wafer!— —
But it is time to close— night's wheels are rattling fast
over me — it is proper to have done with this solemn
mockery.
1 As You Like It, II., vii.
2 Hamlet. III., ii., 401.
OXFORD IN THE VACATION 55
Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this
while — peradventure the very names ^ which I have sum-
moned up before thee, are fantastic, insubstantial — like
Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece }
5 Be satisfied that something answering to them has had a
being. -Their importance is from the past.
OXFORD IN THE VACATION.
Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this article,
as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye (which,
while it reads, seems as though it read not), never fails to
10 consult the quis sculpsit in the corner, before he pronounces
some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a WooUett methinks
I hear you exclaim, reader. Who is Eliaf
Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half-
forgotten humors of some old clerks defunct, in an old
15 house of business, long since gone to decay, doubtless you
have already set me down in your mind as one of the self-
same college — a votary of the desk — a notched and cropt
scrivener — one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick
people are said to do, through a quill.
Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I confess that
it is my humor, my fancy — in the forepart of the day, when
the mind of your man of letters requires some relaxation —
(and none better than such as at first sight seems most
abhorrent from his beloved studies) — to while away some
25 good hours of my time in the contemplation of indigoes,
cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In
the first place . . . and then it sends you home
with such increased appetite to your books
1 The Taming of the Shrew, Induction, II., 96.
56 . THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste wrappers of
foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly and naturally,
the impression of sonnets, epigrams, essays — so that the
very parings of a counting-house are, in some sort, the set-
tings up of an author. The enfranchised quill, that has
plodded all the morning among the cart-rucks of figures
and cyphers, frisks and curvets so at its ease over the flowery
carpet-ground of a midnight dissertation. It feels its pro-
motion. ... So that you see, upon the whole, the
literary dignity of Elia is very little, if at all, compromised
in the condescension.
Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities
incidental to the life of a public office, I would be thought
blind to certain flaws, which a cunning carper might be able
to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I must have leave,
in the fullness of my soul, to regret the abolition, and doing-
away with altogether, of those consolatory interstices, and
sprinklings of freedom, through the four seasons, — the red-
letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-
letter days. There was Paul, and Stephen, and Barnabas —
Andrew and John, men famous in old times; ^
we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back as
I was at school at Christ's. I remember their effigies, by
the same token, in the old Baskett Prayer-book. There
hung Peter in his uneasy posture — holy Bartlemy in the
troublesome act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by
Spagnoletti. — I honored them all, and could almost have
wept the defalcation of Iscariot — so much did we love to
keep holy memories sacred: — only me thought I a little
grudged at the coalition of the better Jude with Simon—
1 Pakadise Regained, II.
OXFORD IN THE VACATION 57
clubbing (as it were) their sanctities together, to make
up one poor gaudy-day between them — as an economy
unworthy of the dispensation.
These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's
5 life — "far off their coming shone. "^ — I was as good as an
almanac in those days. I could have told you such a
saint's-day falls out next week, or the week after. Perad-
venture the Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity, would,
once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little
10 better than one of the profane.^ Let me not be thought to
arraign the wisdom of my civil superiors, who have judged
the further observation of these holy tides to be papistical,
superstitious. Only in a custom of such long standing,
methinks, if their Holinesses the Bishops had, in decency,
15 been first sounded — but I am wading out of my depths. I
am not the man to decide the limits of civil and ecclesiastical
authority — I am plain Elia — no Selden, nor Archbishop
Usher — though at present in the thick of their books, here
in the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty
20 Bodley.
I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To
such a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his young
years of the sweet food of academic institution, nowhere is so
pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks at, as one or other
25 of the Universities. Their vacation, too, at this time of the
year, falls in so pat with ours. Here I can take my walks
unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree or standing I
please. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past
opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that
^^ it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a
1 Paradise Lost, VI., 768.
2 I. Henry IV.. I., ii., 105.
58 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Grentleman
Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts.
Indeed I do not think I am much unKke that respectable
character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-
makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsey, as I pass, s
wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about
in black, which favors the notion. Only in Christ Church
reverend quadrangle, I can be content to pass for nothing
short of a Seraphic Doctor.
The walks at these times are so much one's own, — the lo
tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen 1 The halls
deserted, and with open doors, inviting one to slip in unper-
ceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble or royal
Benefactress (that should have been ours) whose portrait
seems to smile upon their over-looked beadsman, and to is
adopt me for their own. Then, to take a peep in by the
way at the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of antique
hospitality: the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen fire-
places, cordial recesses; ovens whose first pies were baked
four centuries ago; and spits which have cooked for 20
Chaucer! Not the meanest minister among the dishes but
is hallowed to me through his imagination, and the Cook
goes forth a Manciple.
Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that,
being nothing, art everything! When thou wert, thou wert 25
not antiquity — then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter
antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind
veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune,
modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what
half Januses^ are we, that cannot look forward with the so
same idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty
1 Januses of one face. — Sia Thomas Browne. (L.)
OXFORD IN THE VACATION 59
future is as nothing, being everything! the past is every-
thing, being nothing!
What were thy dark ages? Surely the sun rose as brightly
then as now, and man got him to his work in the morning.
6 Why is it that we can never hear mention of them without
an accompanying feeling, as though a palpable obscure had
dimmed the face of things, and that our ancestors wandered
to and fro groping!
Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most arride
10 and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering learning,
thy shelves
What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as
though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed
their labors to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in
15 some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle,
to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon
dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid
their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented
coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential
20 apples which grew amid the happy orchard.
Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of
MSS. Those varice lectioneSy so tempting to the more
erudite palates, do but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am
no Herculanean raker. The credit of the three witnesses
25 might have slept unimpeached for me. I leave these
curiosities to Porson, and to G. D. — whom, by the way, I
found busy as a moth over some rotten archive, rummaged
out of some seldom-explored press, in a nook at Oriel.
With long poring, he is grown almost into a book. He
30 stood as passive as one by the side of the old shelves. I
longed to new-coat him in Russia, and assign him his place.
He might have mustered for a tall Scapula.
60 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning.
No inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortune, I appre-
hend, is consumed in journeys between them and Clifford's
Inn — ^where, like a dove on the asp's nest, he has long
taken up his unconscious abode, amid an incongruous 5
assembly of attorneys' clerks, apparitors, promoters, vermin
of the law, among whom he sits, "in calm and sinless
peace."* The fangs of the law pierce him not — the winds
of litigation blow over his humble chambers — the hard
sheriff's officer moves his hat as he passes — ^legal nor illegal 10
discourtesy touches him — ^none thinks of offering violence or
injustice to him — ^you would as soon "strike an abstract
idea."
D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course of
laborious years, in an investigation into all curious matter 15
connected with the two Universities; and has lately lit
upon a MS. collection of charters, relative to C , by
which he hopes to settle some disputed points — particularly
that long controversy between them as to priority of foun-
dation. The ardor with which he engages in these liberal 20
pursuits, I am afraid, has not met with all the encourage-
ment it deserved, either here, or at C . Your caputs,
and heads of Colleges, care less than anybody else about
these questions. — Contented to suck the milky fountains of
their Alma Maters, without inquiring into the venerable 25
gentlewomen's years, they rather hold such curiosities to
be impertinent — unreverend. They have their good glebe
lands in manu, and care not much to rake into the title-
deeds. I gather at least so much from other sources, for
D. is not a man to complain. 30
D. started like an unbroke heifer, when I interrupted
1 Paradise Regained, IV., 425.
OXFORD IN THE VACATION 61
him. A priori it was not very probable that we should
have met in Oriel. But D. would have done the same, had
I accosted him on the sudden in his own walks in Clifford's
Inn, or in the Temple. In addition to a provoking short-
sightedness (the effect of late studies and watchings at the
midnight oil), D. is the most absent of men. He made a
call the other morning at our friend M.'s in Bedford Square ;
and finding nobody at home, was ushered into the hall,
where asking for pen and ink, with great exactitude of
10 purpose he enters me his name in the book — which ordi-
narily lies , about in such places, to record the failures
of the untimely or unfortunate visitor — and takes his leave
with many ceremonies, and professions of regret. Some
two or three hours after, his walking destinies returned him
15 into the same neighborhood again, and again the quiet
image of the fireside circle at M.'s — Mrs. M. presiding at it
like a Queen Lar, with pretty A. S. at her side — striking
irresistibly on his fancy, he makes another call (forgetting
that they were "certainly not to return from the country
20 before that day week") and disappointed a second time,
inquires for pen and paper as before: again the book is
brought, and in the line just above that in which he is
about to print his second name (his re-script) — his first
name (scarce dry) looks out upon him another Sosia, or as
b if a man should suddenly encounter his own duplicate!
The effect may be conceived. D. made many a good
resolution against any such lapses in future. I hope he will
not keep them too rigorously.
For with G. D. — to be absent from the body, is some-
io times (not to speak it profanely) to be present with the
Lord.^ At the very time when, personally encountering
1 II. Corinthians, v., 8.
62 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
thee, he passes on with no recognition — or, being stopped,
starts like a thing surprised — at that moment, reader, he is
on Mount Tabor — or Parnassus — or co-sphered with Plato
— or, with Harrington, framing "immortal commonwealths"
— devising some plan of amelioration to thy country, or thy 5
species — peradventure meditating some individual kindness
of courtesy, to be done to thee thyself, the returning con-
sciousness of which made him start so guiltily at thy
obtruded personal presence.
[D. commenced life after a course of hard study in the lo
"House of pure Emanuel," as usher to a knavish fanatic
schoolmaster at ,at a salary of eight pounds per annum,
with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend he never
received above half in all the laborious years he served this
man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when poverty, is
staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes compelled
him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears,
Dr. would take no immediate notice, but after supper,
when the school was called together to even-song, he would
never fail to introduce some instructive homily against 20
riches, and the corruption of the heart occasioned through
the desire of them — ending with "Lord, keep thy servants,
above all things, from the heinous sin of avarice. Having,
food and raiment, let us therewithal be content. Give me
Agar's wish" — and the like — which, to the little auditory, 25
sounded like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and
simplicity, but to poor D. was a receipt in full for that
quarter's demand at least.
And D. has been under-working for himself ever since; —
drudging at low rates for unappreciating booksellers, — 30
wasting his fine erudition in silent corrections of the classics,
and in those unostentatious but solid services to learning
OXFORD IN THE VACATION 63
which commonly fall to the lot of laborious scholars, who
have not the heart to sell themselves to the best advantage.
He has published poems, which do not sell, because their
character is unobtrusive, like his own, and because he has
been too much absorbed in ancient literature to know what
the popular mark in poetry is, even if he could have hit it.
And, therefore, his verses are properly, what he terms them,
crotchets; voluntaries; odes to liberty and spring; effusions;
little tributes and offerings, left behind him upon tables and
window-seats at parting from friends' houses ; and from all
the inns of hospitality, where he has been courteously (or
but tolerably) received in his pilgrimage. If his muse of
kindness halt a little behind the strong lines in fashion in
this excitement-loving age, his prose is the best of the sort
in the world, and exhibits a faithful transcript of his own
healthy, natural mind, and cheerful, innocent tone of con-
versation.]*
D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best in such
places as these. He cares not much for Bath. He is out
of his element at Buxton, at Scarborough, or Harrogate.
The- Cam and the Isis are to him "better than all the
waters of Damascus."^ On the Muses' hill he is happy,
and good, as one of the Shepherds on the Delectable
Mountains f' and when he goes about with you to show you
the halls and colleges, you think you have with you the
Interpreter of the House Beautiful.^
♦These bracketed paragraphs were omitted from the collected edition.
1 II. Kings, v., 12.
2 The Pilgkim's Progress,
64 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY
YEARS AGO.
In Mr. Lamb's "Works," published a year or two since, I
find a magnificent eulogy on my old school,^ such as it was,
or now appears to him to have been between the years 1/82
and 1789. It happens, very oddly, that my own standing
at Christ's was nearly corresponding with his ; and, with all
gratitude to him for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, I think
he has contrived to bring together whatever can be said in
praise of them, dropping all the other side of the argument
most ingeniously.
I remember L. at school; and can well recollect that he
had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his
school-fellows had not. His friends lived in town, and were
near at hand; and he had the privilege of going to see
them, almost as often as he wished, through some invidious
distinction, which was denied to us. The present worthy
sub-treasurer to the Inner Temple can explain how that
happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in the morning,
while we were battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf —
our crug — moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden
piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured 20
from. Our Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and
the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were en-
riched for him with a slice of "extraordinary bread and but- j
ter," from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's
mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant — (we had three 25
banyan to four meat days in the week) — was endeared to his
palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger
(to make it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinna-
___^ — — — . -I
1 "Recollections of Christ's Hospital." (L.) I
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 65
mon. In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh
boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as cam equina), with de-
testable marigolds floating in the pail to poison the broth —
our scanty mutton crags on Friday — and rather more savory
s but grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted or
rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited our ap-
petites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal pro-
portion) — he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more
tempting griskin (exotics unknown to our palates), cooked
10 in the paternal kitchen (a great thing), and brought him
daily by his maid or aunt! I remember the good old relative
(in whom love forbade pride) squatting down upon some
odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the viands
(of higher regale than those cates which the ravens minis-
is tered to the Tishbite) ; and the contending passions of L. at
the unfolding. There was love for the bringer; shame for
the thing brought, and the manner of its bringing; sympathy
for those who were too many to share in it; and, at top of
all, hunger (eldest, strongest of the passions !) predominant,
20 breaking down the stony fences of shame, and awkwardness
and a troubling over-consciousness.
I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and those who
should care for me, were far away. Those few acquaint-
ances of theirs, which they could reckon upon being kind to
25 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
80 among six hundred playmates.
O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early
homestead! The yearnings which I used to have towards
66 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
it in those unfledged years ! How, in my dreams, would mj^
native ,town (far in the west j come back, with its Church,
and trees, and faces ! How I would wake weeping, and in
the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet Calne in
Wiltshire ! • 5
To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by
the recollection of those friendless holidays. The long
warm days of summer never return but they bring with them
a gloom from the haunting memory of those whole-day-
leaves, when, by some strange arrangement, we were turned 10
out, for the livelong day, upon our own hands, whether we
had friends to go to, or none. I remember those bathing-
excursions to the New-River, which L. recalls with such
relish, better, I think, than he can — for he was a home-
seeking lad, and did not much care for such water-pastimes : 15
— How merrily we would sally forth into the fields; and
strip under the first warmth of the sun; and wanton like
young dace in the streams; getting us appetites for noon,
which those of us that were penniless (our scanty morning
crust long since exhausted) had not the means of allaying — 20
while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes, were at feed
about us, and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings — the
very beauty of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and
the sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon them! —
How faint and languid, finally, we would return, towards 25
night-fall, to our desired morsel, half-rejoicing, half-reluc-
tant, 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 so
resort, in the hope of a little novelty, to pay a fifty-times
repeated visit (where our individual faces should be as well
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 07
known to the warden as those of his own charges) to the
Lions in the Tower — to whose levee, by courtesy imme-
morial, we had a prescriptive title to admission.
L.'s governor (so we called the patron who presented us
to the foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal
roof. Any complaint which he had to make was sure of
being attended to. This was understood at Christ's, and
was an effectual screen to him against the severity of
masters, or worse tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions
of these young brutes are heart-sickening to call to recollec-
tion. I have been called out of my bed, and waked for the
purpose, in the coldest winter nights — and this not once, but
night after night — in my shirt, to receive the discipline of a
leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, because it
pleased my callow overseer, when there has been any talking
heard after we were gone to bed, to make the six last beds in
the dormitory, where the youngest children of us slept, an-
swerable for an offence they neither dared to commit, nor
had the power to hinder. The same execrable tyranny
drove the younger part of us from the fires, when our feet
were perishing with snow; and, under the crudest penalties,
forbade the indulgence of a drink of water, when we lay in
sleepless summer nights, fevered with the season, and the
day's sports.
There was one H , who, I learned, in after-days, was
seen expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. (Do I
flatter myself in fancying that this might be the planter of
that name, who suffered at Nevis, I think, or St. Kits,
. some few years since? My friend Tobin was the
benevolent instrument of bringing him to the gallows.)
This petty Nero actually branded a boy, who had offended
him, with a red-hot iron; and nearly starved forty of us.
68 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
with exacting contributions, to the one half of our bread, to
pamper a young ass, which, incredible as it may seem, with
the connivance of the nurse's daughter (a young flame of
his) he had contrived to smuggle in, and keep upon the
leads of the ward, as they called our dormitories. This
game went on for better than a week, till the foolish beast,
not able to fare well but he must cry roast meat — happier
than Caligula's minion, could he have kept his own counsel
— but, foolisher, alas ! than any of his species in the fables
— waxing fat, and kicking,^ in the fulness of bread, one
unlucky minute would needs proclaim his good fo^rtune to
the world below; and, laying out his simple throat, blew
such a ram's horn blast, as (toppling down the walls of his
own Jericho)^ set concealment any longer at defiance. The
client was dismissed, with certain attentions, to Smithfield; is
but I never understood that the patron underwent any
censure on the occasion. This was in the stewardship of
L.'s admired Perry.
Under the same facile administration, can L. have for-
gotten the cool impunity with which the nurses used to 2(
carry away openly, in open platters, for their oWn tables,
one out of two of every hot joint, which the careful matron
had been seeing scrupulously weighed out for our dinners?
These things were daily practised in that magnificent apart-
ment, which L. (grown connoisseur since, we presume) 29^
praises so highly for the grand paintings "by Verrio, and
others," with which it is "hung round and adorned." But
the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat boys in pictures was,
at that time, I believe, little consolatory to him, or us, the
living ones, who saw the better part of our provisions carried
1 Deuteronomy, xxxii., 15.
2 Joshua, vi., 5.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 69
away before our faces by harpies; and ourselves reduced
(with the Trojan in the hall of Dido)
To feed our mind with idle portraiture.*
L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags, or
the fat of fresh beef boiled; and sets it down to some
superstition. But these unctuous morsels are never grateful
to young palates (children are universally fat-haters), and in
strong, coarse, boiled meats, unsalted, are detestable. A
gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a ghoul, and held in
equal detestation. suffered under the imputation:
'Twas said,
He ate strange flesh. =^
He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up the
remnants left at his table (not many, nor very choice frag-
ments, 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 discoverable.
Some reported, that, on leave-days, he had been seen to
carry out of the bounds a large blue check handkerchief,
full of something. This then must be the accursed thing.^
Conjecture next was at work to imagine how he could
dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the beggars. This
belief generally prevailed. He went about moping. None
spake to him. No one would play with him. He was ex-
communicated ; put out of the pale of the school. He was
1 Dryden's Aeneid, I.
2 Antony and Cleopatra, I., IV., 67.
3 Joshua, vi., 18.
70 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
too powerful a boy to be beaten, but he underwent every
mode of that negative punishment, which is more grievous
than many stripes. Still he persevered. At length he was
observed by two of his school-fellows, who were determined
to get at the secret, and had traced him one leave-day for
that purpose, to enter a large worn-out building, such as
there exist specimens of in Chancery Lane, which are let
out to various scales of pauperism with open door, and a
common staircase. After him they silently slunk in, and
followed by stealth up four flights, and saw him tap at a
poor wicket, which was opened by an aged woman, meanly
clad. Suspicion was now ripened into certainty. The
informers had secured their victim. They had him in their
toils. Accusation was formally preferred, and retribution
most signal was looked for. Mr. Hathaway, the then is
steward, for this happened a little after my time, with that
patient sagacity which tempered all his conduct, deter-
mined to investigate the matter, before he proceeded to sen-
tence. The result was, that the supposed mendicants, the
receivers or purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned out
to be the parents of , an honest couple come to decay, —
whom this seasonable supply had, in all probability, saved
from mendicancy; and that this young stork, at the expense
of his own good name, had all this while been only feeding
the old birds ! The governors on this occasion, much to their 25
honor, voted a present relief to the family of , and
presented him with a silver medal. The lesson which the
steward read upon rash judgment, on the occasion of
publicly delivering the medal to , I believe would not
be lost upon his auditory. I had left school then, but I
well remember . He was a tall, shambling youth, with
a cast in his eye, not at all calculated to conciliate hostile
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 71
prejudices. I have since seen him carrying a baker's basket.
I think I heard he did not do quite so well by himself, as he
had done by the old folks.
I was a hypochrondriac lad ; and a sight of a boy in fetters,
upon the day of my first putting on the blue clothes, was
not exactly fitted to assuage the natural terrors of initiation.
I was of tender years, barely turned of seven; and had only
read of such things in books, or seen them but in dreams.
I was told he had run away. This was the punishment for
the first offence. As a novice I was soon after taken to see
.A
the dungeons. These were little, square, Bedlani cells,
where a boy could just lie at his length upon straw and a
blanket — a mattress, I think, was afterwards substituted —
with a peep of light, let in askance, from a prison -orifice at
15 top, barely enough to read by. Here the poor boy was
locked in by himself all day, without sight of any but the
porter who brought him his bread and water — ^who might
not speak to him; or of the beadle, who came twice a week to
call him out to receive his periodical chastisement, which
was almost welcome, because it separated him for a brief
interval from solitude : — and here he was shut up by himself
of nights, out of the reach of any sound, to suffer whatever
horrors the weak nerves, and superstition incident to his
time of life, might subject him to.^ This was the penalty
25 for the second offence. Wouldst thou like, reader, to see
what became of him in the next degree?
The culprit, who had been a third time an offender, and
whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible, was
1 One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accordingly,
at length convinced the governors of the impolicy of this part of the
sentence, and the midnight torture to the spirits was dispensed with.
This fancy of dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard's brain;
for which (saving the reverence due to Holy Paul), methinks, I could
willingly spit upon his statue. ( L . )
72 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
brought forth, as at some solemn auto da fe, arrayed in
uncouth and most appalling attire — all trace of his late
"watchet weeds''^ carefully effaced, he was exposed in a
jacket, resembling those which London lamplighters for-
merly delighted in, with a cap of the same. The effect of t
this divestiture was such as the ingenious devisers of it
could have anticipated. With his pale and frighted fea-
tures, it was as if some of those disfigurements in Dante had
seized upon him. In this disguisement he was brought
into the hall {L.'s favorite state-room) where awaited him k
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 is
in these extremities visible. These were governors; two
of whom, by choice, or charter, were always accustomed
to officiate at these Ultima Supplicia; not to mitigate
(so at least we understood it), but to enforce the uttermost
stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert, I 21
remember, were colleagues on one occasion, when the
beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was ordered
to prepare him for the mysteries. The scourging was, after
the old Roman fashion, long and stately. The lictor
accompanied the criminal quite round the hall. We were 25
generally too faint with attending to the previous disgusting
circumstances to make accurate report with our eyes of
the degree of corporal suffering inflicted. Report, of course,
gave out the back knotty and livid. After scourging, he
was made over, in his San Benito, to his friends, if he. had 30
any (but commonly such poor runagates were friendless),
1 CoUins's Ode on the Manners: Drayton, Polyolbion, Song v., 13.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 73
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 a5
that of the inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyrenees.
The Rev. James Boyer was the Upper Master; but the
Rev. Matthew Field presided over that portion of the
apartment of which I had the good fortune to be a member.
We lived a life as careless as birds. We talked and did just
what we pleased, and nobody molested us. We carried an
accidence, or a grammar, for form; but, for any trouble it
gave us, we might take two years in getting through the
verbs deponent, and another 'two in forgetting all that
we had learned about them. There was now and then the
formality of saying a lesson, but if you had not learned it, a
brush-across the shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was
the sole remonstrance. Field never used the rod; and in
truth he wielded the cane with no great good-will — holding
it "like a dancer."^ It looked in his hands rather like an
emblem, than an instrument of authority; and an emblem,
too, he was ashamed of. He was a good, easy man, that
did not care to ruffle his own peace, nor perhaps set any
great consideration upon the value of juvenile time. He
came among us, now and then, but often stayed away
whole days from us; and when he came, it made no dif-
1 Antony and Cleopatra, III., xi., 36.
74 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
ference to us — ^he had his private room to retire to, the
short time he stayed, to be out of the sound of our noise.
Our mirth and uproar went on. We had classics of our
own, without being beholden to "insolent Greece or
haughty Rome/'^ that passed current among us — Peter
Wilkins — the Adventures of the Hon. Capt. Robert Boyle
— the Fortunate Blue Coat Boy — and the like. Or we
cultivated a turn for mechanic or scientific operations;
making little sun-dials of paper; or weaving those ingenious
parentheses, called caUcradles; or making dry peas to dance
upon the end of a tin pipe; or studying the art military
over that laudable . game "French and English," and a
hundred other such devices to pass away the time — ^mix-
ing the useful with the agreeable — as would have made the
souls of Rousseau and John Locke chuckle to have seen us.
Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest divines
who affect to mix in equal proportion the gentleman, the
scholar, and the Christian; but, I know not how, the first
ingredient is generally found to be the predominating dose
in the composition. He was engaged in gay parties, or with
his courtly bow at some episcopal levee, when he should
have been attending upon us. He had for many years the
classical charge of a hundred children, during the four or
five first years of their education; and his very highest
form seldom proceeded further than two or three of the
introductory fables of Phsedrus. How things were suffered
to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was the proper
person to have remedied these abuses, always affected,
perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering in a province not
strictly his own. I have not been without my suspicions,
1 Ben Jonson, Lines to the Memory of William Shakespeare's
Works.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 75
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,
5 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, wdth a silence as deep as that enjoined by the
Samite, we were enjoying ourselves at our ease in our little
Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets of his discipline,
and the prospect did but the more reconcile us to our lot.
His thunders rolled innocuous for us; his storms came
near, but never touched us ; contrary to Gideon's miracle,^
while all around were drenched, our fleece was dry.^ His
15 boys turned out the better scholars; we, I suspect, have
the advantage in temper. His pupils cannot speak of him
without something of terror allaying their gratitude; the
remembrance of Field comes back with all the soothing
images of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work like
50 play, and innocent idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and
life itself, a "playing holiday."^
Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of
Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to understand
a little of his system. We occasionally heard sounds of the
Ululantes, and caught glances of Tartarus. B. was a
rabid pedant. His English style was cramped to barbarism.
His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged him to those
periodical flights) were grating as scrannel pipes. ^ He
1 Judges, vi., 36-40.
2 Cowley. (L.)
3 I. Henry IV., I. ii., 227.
4 In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadjutor.
While the former was digging his brains for crude anthems, worth a
76 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
would laugh, ay, and heartily, but then it must be at
Flaccus's quibble about Rex or at the tristis severitas
in vultu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence — thin jests,
which at their first broaching could hardly have had vis
enough to move a Roman muscle. He had two wigs, both 5
pedantic, but of different omen. The one serene, smiling,
fresh powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old
discolored, unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent and
bloody execution. Woe to the school, when he made his
morning appearance in his passy, or passionate wig. No 10
comet expounded surer. J. B. had a heavy hand. I have
known him double his knotty fist at a poor trembling
child (the maternal milk hardly dry upon its lips) with a
"Sirrah, do you presume to set your wits at me ?" Nothing
was more common than to see him make a headlong entry 15
into the school-room, from his inner recess, or library, and,
with turbulent eyes, 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 retracting impulse,
fling back into his lair — and after a cooling lapse of some 20
minutes (during which all but the culprit had totally for-
gotten 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 rahidus furor was assuaged, he had resort 25
to an ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to
himself, of whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, at
the same time ; a paragraph, and a lash between ; which in
pig-nut, F. would be recreating his gentlemanly fancy in the more
flowery walks of the Muses. A little dramatic effusion of his, under the
name of Vertmnnus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the chroniclers
of that sort of literature. It was accepted by Garrick, but the town
did not give it their sanction. B. used to say of it, in a way of half-
compliment, half-irony, that it was too classical for representation. (L.)
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 77
those times, when parhamentary 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.
5 Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to fall
(ineffectual from his hand — ^when droll squinting W ,
having been caught putting the inside of the master's desk
to a use for which the architect had clearly not designed
it, to justify himself, with great simplicity averred, that he
JO did not know that the thing had been forewarned. This
exquisite irrecognition of any law antecedent to the oral or
ft . declaratory, struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who
■ heard it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) that remis-
/ sion was unavoidable.
15 L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructor.
Coleridge, in his literary life, has pronounced a more
intelligible and ample encomium on them. The author of
the Country Spectator doubts not to compare him with the
ablest teachers of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss
20 him better than with the pious ejaculation of C when he
heard that his old master was on his death-bed — "Poor
J. B. — may all his faults be forgiven; and may he be wafted
to bliss by little cherub boys, all head and wings, with no
bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities."
25 Under him were many good and sound scholars bred.
First Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens,
kindest of boys and men, since Co-grammar-master (and
inseparable companion) with Dr. T — e. What an edify-
ing spectacle did this brace of friends present to those who
30 remembered the anti-socialities of their predecessors ! You
* never met the one by chance in the street without a wonder,
■ which was quickly dissipated by the almost immediate sub-
78 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
appearance of the other. Generally arm in arm, these
kmdly coadjutors lightened for each other the toilsome
duties of their profession, and when, in advanced age, one :
found it convenient to retire, the other was not long in
discovering that it suited him to lay down the fasces also. 5
Oh, it is pleasant, as.it is rare, to find the same arm linked
in yours at forty, which at thirteen helped it to turn over
the Cicero De Amicitia, or some tale of Antique Friendship,
which the young heart even then was burning to anticipate !
Co-Grecian with S. was Th — , who has since executed with 10
ability various diplomatic functions at the Northern courts.
Th — was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of speech,
with raven locks. Thomas Fanshaw Middleton followed
him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gentle-
man in his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent 15
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 20
exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo-Asiatic
diocesans with a reverence for home institutions, and the
church which those fathers watered.^ The manners of M.
♦at school, though firm, were mild, and unassuming. Next
to M. (if not senior to him) was Richards, author of the 25
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.^ so
1 I. Corinthians, iii., 6-8.
2 Prior's Carmen Seculare, 1700, adapted.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 79
Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day-
spring of thy fancies, with hope Uke a fiery column before
thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor
Coleridge — Logician, Metaphysician, Bard! — How have I
5 seen the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still,
entranced with admiration (while he weighed the dispro-
portion between the speech and the garh of the young
Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet
intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for
10 even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philo-
sophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar,
while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the
accents of the inspired charity-boy! — Many were the "wit-
combats" (to dally awhile with the words of old Fuller)
15 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 performances. C. V. L.,
with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in
20 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,
25 with which thou wert wont to make the old Cloisters shake,,
in thy cognition of some poignant jest of theirs; or, the
anticipation of some more material, and, peradventure,
practical one, of thine own. Extinct are those smiles, with
that beautiful countenance, with which (for thou wert the
30 Nireus formosus of the school), in the days of thy maturer
waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town-
1 Fuller's Worthies, adapted.
80 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
damsel, who, incensed by provoking pinch, turning tigress-
like round, suddenly converted by thy angel-look, exchanged
the half-formed terrible "bl ," for a gentler greeting —
"bless thy handsome face!"
Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the
friends of Elia — the junior Le G and F- ; who
impelled, the former by a roving temper, the latter by too
quick a sense of neglect — ill capable of enduring the slights
poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in our seats of learning
— exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp; perishing one lo
by climate, and one on the plains of Salamanca: — Le
G , sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured; F , dogged,
faithful, anticipative of insult, warm-hearted, with' some-
thing of the old Roman height about him.
Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master of Hert- 15
ford, with Marmaduke T , mildest of Missionaries —
and both my good friends still — close the catalogue of
Grecians in my time.
THE TWO RACES OF MEN.
The human species, according to the best theory I can
form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who 21
borrow, and the men who lend. To these two original
diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifi-
cations 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 21
in with one or other of these primary distinctions. The
infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to desig-
nate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and
a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are bom
1 I. Acts, ii., 9.
THE TWO RACES OF MEN 81
degraded. "He shall serve his brethren."^ There is some-
thing in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious;
contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of
the other.
5 Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all
ages — ^Alcibiades — Falstaff — Sir Richard Steele — our late
incomparable Brinsley — what a family likeness in all four !
What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower!
what rosy gills I what a beautiful reliance on Providence
10 doth he manifest, — taking no more thought than lilies P
What contempt for money, — accounting it (yours and mine
especially) no better than dross ! What a liberal confound-
ing of those pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum! or
rather, what a noble simplification of language (beyond
15 Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites into one clear,
intelligible pronoun adjective ! — ^What near approaches doth
he make to the primitive community, — to the extent of one-
half of the principle at least! —
He is the true taxer "who calleth all the world up to be
20 taxed ;"^ and the distance is as vast between him and one of
us J as subsisted betwixt the Augustan Majesty and the
poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusa-
lem! — His exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary
air! So far removed from your sour parochial or state-
gatherers, — those ink-horn varlets, who carry their want of
welcome in their faces ! He cometh to you with a smile and
trouble th you with no receipt; confining himself to no set
season. Every day is his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy
Michael. He applieth the lene tormentum of a pleasant
look to your purse, — ^which to that gentle warmth expands
1 Genesis, ix., 25.
2 Matthew, vi., 28.
3 Luke, ii., 1.
82 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
her silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveller,
for which sun and wind contended! He is the true Pro-
pontic which never ebbeth!^ The sea which taketh hand-
somely at each man's hand. In vain the victim, whom he
delighteth to honor,^ struggles with destiny; he is in the
net. Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordained to lend —
that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the
reversion promised.^ Combine not preposterously in thire
own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives !"* — but,
when thou seest the proper authority coming, meet it smil-
ingly, as it were half-way. Come, a handsome sacrifice!
See how light he makes of it! Strain not courtesies with a
noble enemy.
Reflections like the foregoing, were forced upon my mind
by the death of my old friend, Ralph Bigod, Esq., w^ho is
departed this life on Wednesday evening; dying, as he had
lived, without much trouble. He boasted himself a de-
scendant from mighty ancestors of that name, who hereto-
fore held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions ard
sentiments he belied not the stock to which he pretended.
Early in life he found himself invested with ample revenues ;
which with that noble disinterestedness which I have
noticed as inherent in men of the great race, he took almost
immediate measures entirely to dissipate and bring to
nothing: for there is something revolting in the idea of a ^^
king holding a private purse; and the thoughts of Bigod
were all regal. Thus furnished by the very act of dis-
fumishment; getting rid of the cumbersome luggage of
riches, more apt (as one sings)
1 Othello, III., iii., 453 (misquoted).
2 Esther, vi., 6. *
3 Proverbs, xix., 17.
4 Luke, xvi., 19fl.
THE TWO RACES OF MEN 83
To slacken yirtue, and abate her edge,
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise/
he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enterprise,
"borrowing and to borrow. "^
In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout this
island, it has been calculated that he laid a tythe part of the
inhabitants under contribution. I reject this estimate as
greatly exaggerated; but having had the honor of accom-
panying my friend, divers times, in his perambulations
about this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at first with
the prodigious number of faces we met, who claimed a sort
of respectful acquaintance with us. He was one day so
obliging as to explain the phenomenon. It seems, these
were his tributaries; feeders of his exchequer; gentlemen,
5 his good friends (as he was pleased to express himself),
to whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan.
Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He rather
took a Dride in numbering them; and, with Comus, seemed
pleased to be "stocked with so fair a herd."^
With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived to
keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force of an
aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that "money
kept longer than three days stinks." So he made use of
it while it was fresh. A good part he drank away (for he
was an excellent toss-pot), some he gave away, the rest he
threw away, literally tossing and hurling it violently from
him — as boys do burrs, or as if it had been infectious, —
into ponds, or ditches, or deep holes, — inscrutable cavities
of the earth: — or he would bury it (where he would never
seek it again) by a river's side under some bank, which (he
1 Paradise Regained, II., 455.
2 Revelation, vi., 2, adapted.
3 Comus, 1. 151.
84 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
would facetiously observe) paid no interest — but out away
from him it must go peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into
the wilderness/ while it was sweet. He never missed it.
The streams were perennial which fed his fisc. When new
supplies became necessary, the first person that had the
felicity to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure to
contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an undeniable
way with him. He had a cheerful, open exterior, a quick
jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched with grey (eana
fides). He anticipated no excuse, and found none. And,
waving for a while my theory as to the great race^ I would
put it to the most untheorizing reader, who may at times
have disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is not more
repugnant to the kindliness of his nature to refuse such
a one as I am describing, than to say no to a poor petitionary
rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his mumping vis-
nomy, tells you, that he expects nothing better; and there-
fore, whose preconceived notions and expectations you do
in reality so much less shock in the refusal.
When I think of this man; his fiery glow of heart; his 2(|
swell of feeling; how magnificent, how ideal he was; how
great at the midnight hour; and when I compare with him
the ct>mpanions with whom I have associated since, I
grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, and think that I am
fallen into the society of lenders, and little men.
To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in
leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of
alienators more formidable than that which I have touched
upon; I mean your borrowers of books — those mutilators
of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and 3(|
1 Genesis, xid.
THE TWO RACES OF MEN 85
creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless
in his depredations! '
That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great
eye-tooth knocked out — (you are now with me in my little
5 back study in Bloomsbury, reader!) ^with the huge
Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants,
in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing) once held
the tallest of my folios, Opera Bonaventurce, choice and
massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity
10 also, but of a lesser calibre, — Bellarmine,and Holy Thomas)
showed but as dwarfs, itself an Ascapart! — that Comber-
batch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which
is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute,
namely, that "the title to property in a book" (my Bona-
15 venture, 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
20 from the ceiling — scarcely distinguishable but by the quick
eye of a loser ^was whilom the commodious resting-place
of Browne on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he
knows more about that treatise than I do, who introduced it
to him, and was indeed the first (of the modems) to discover
25 its beauties — but so have I knoTAn a foolish lover to praise
his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry
her off than himself. — Just below, Dodsley's dramas want
their fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is! The
remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons,
30 where the fates borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy
of Melancholy, in sober state. — There loitered the Com-
plete Angler; quiet as in life, by some stream side. — In
86 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA ^
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, sea-
like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. I 5
have a small under-collection of this nature (my friend's
gatherings in his various calls), picked up, he has forgotten
at what odd places, and deposited with as little memory as
mine. I take in these orphans, the twice-deserted. These
proselytes of the gate are welcome as the true Hebrews, lo
There they stand in conjunction; natives, and naturalised.
The latter seem as little disposed to inquire out their true
lineage as I am. — I jcharge no warehouse-room for these
deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the ungentlemanly
trouble of advertising a sale of them to pay expenses. 15
To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning
in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty meal on
your viands, if he can give no account of the platter after it.
But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., to be j-o im-
portunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and ad- 20
jurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely
woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle? — knowing at
the time, and knowing that I knew also, thou most assuredly
wouldst never turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio : —
what but the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love 25
of getting the better of thy friend? — ^Then, worst cut of all!
to transport it with thee to the Gallican land-^
Unworthy land to harbor such a sweetness,
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt,
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's 30
wonder!
— ■ — hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and
NEW YEAR'S EVE 87
fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keep-
est all companies with thy quips and mirthful tales? — Child
of the Green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy
wife, too, that part-French, better part Englishwoman!^ —
5 that she could fix upon no other treatise to bear away, in
kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke
Greville, Lord Brook — of which no Frenchman, nor woman
of France, Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted
to comprehend a tittle! Was there not Zimmerman on
10 Solitude?
Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collec-
tion, be shy of showing it; or if thy heart overfloweth to
lend them, lend thy books; but let it be to such a one as
S. T. C. — he will return them (generally anticipating the
15 time appointed) with usury; enriched with annotations,
tripling their value. I have had experience. Many are
these precious MSS. of his — (in matter oftentimes, and
almost in quantity not unfrequently, vying with the originals)
— in no very clerkly hand — legible in my Daniel; in old
20 Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser
cogitations of the Greville, now alas! wandering in Pagan
lands. 1 counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy
library, against S. T. C.
NEW YEAR'S EVE.
Every man hath two birthdays : two days, at least, in every
25 year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it
affects his mortal duration. The one is that which in an
especial manner he termeth his. In the gradual desuetude
of old observances, this custom of solemnising our proper
birthday hath nearly passed away, or is left to children,
88 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand
anything in it beyond cake and orange. But the birth of
a New Year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted
by king or cobbler. No one ever regarded the First of
January with indifference. It is that from which all date
their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity
of our common Adam.
Of all sound of all bells— (bells, the music nighest border-
ing upon heaven) — most solemn and touching is the peal
which rings out the Old Year. I never hear it without a
gathering-up of my mind to a concentration of all the
images that have been diffused over the past twelvemonth;
all I have done or suffered, performed or neglected — in that
regretted time. I begin to know its worth, as when a
person dies. It takes a personal 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 20
of my companions affected rather to manifest an exhilara-
tion at the birth of the coming year, than any very tender
regrets for the decease of its predecessor. But I am lione
of those who
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. ^
I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties ; new books,
new faces, new years, — from some mental twist which makes
it difficult in me to face the prospective. I have almost
ceased to hope; and am sanguine only in the prospects of
1 Coleridge's Depakting Year.
2 Pope's Odyssey, XV., 89.
/ NEW YEAR'S EVE 89
other (former) years. I plunge into foregone visions and
conclusions. I encounter pell-mell with past disappoint-
ments. I am armor-proof against old discouragements.
I forgive, or overcome in fancy, old adversaries. I play over
5 again for love, as the gamesters phrase it, games, for which
I once paid so dear. I would scarce now have any of those
untoward accidents and events of my life reversed. I would
no more alter them than the incidents of some well-con-
trived novel. Me thinks, it is better that I should have pined
10 away seven of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the
fair hair, and fairer eyes, of Alice W — n, than that so
passionate a love-adventure should be lost. It was better
that our family should have missed that legacy, which old
Dorrell cheated us of, than that I should have at this
15 moment two thousand pounds in banco, and be without
the idea of that specious old rogue.
In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look
back upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox, when
I say that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a
20 man may have leave to love himself, without the imputation
of self-love?
If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is intro-
spective — and mine is painfully so — can have a less respect
for his present identity, than I have for the man Elia. I
25 know him to be light, and vain, and humorsome ; a notori-
ous . . .; addicted to . . .; averse from counsel,
neither taking it, nor offering it; — . . besides ; a stam-
mering buffoon; what you will; lay it on, and spare not; I
subscribe to it all, and much more, than thou canst be
30 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
90 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
little reference, I protest, to this stupid changeling of five-
and-forty, as if it had been a child of some other house, and
not of my parents. I can cry over its patient small-pox at
five, and rougher medicaments. I can lay its poor fevered
head upon the sick pillow at Christ's, and wake with it in
surprise at the gentle posture of maternal tenderness hang-
ing over it, that unknown had watched its sleep. I know
how it shrank from any the least color of falsehood. — God
help thee, Elia, how thou art changed! Thou art sophis-
ticated.^ — I know how honest, how courageous (for a weak-
ling) it was — how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful I
From what have I not fallen, if the child I remember was
indeed myself, — and not some dissembling guardian, pre-
senting a false identity, to give the rule to my unpractised
steps, and regulate the tone of my moral being!
That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy,
in such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly
idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another cause ; simply, that
being without wife or family, I have not learned to project
myself enough out of myself; and having no offspring of 20
my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory and adopt
my own early idea, as my heir and favorite? If these
speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader — (a busy man,
perchance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and
am singularly conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to 25
ridicule, under the phantom cloud of Elia.
The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a
character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of any
old institution; and the ringing out of the Old Year was
kept by them with circumstances of peculiar ceremony. — In so
those days the sound of those midnight chimes, though it
1 Midsummer Night's Dream, III., i., 121.
NEW YEAR'S EVE 9l
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
5 the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is
mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could
preach a homily on the fragility of life ; but he brings it not
home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can
appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of Decem-
10 ber. But now, shall I confess a truth? — I feel these audits
but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of
my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments
and shortest periods, like miser's farthings. In proportion
as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count
15 upon their periods and would fain lay my ineffectual finger
upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to
pass away "like a weaver's shuttle."^ Those metaphors
solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of
mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that
20 smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the
inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green
earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural
solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up
my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age
25 to which I am arrived ; I, and my friends : to be no younger,
no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned
by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the
grave. — ^Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or
in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My household
30 gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up with-
1 Job, vii., G.
92 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
out blood. They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores.
A new state of being staggers me.
Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer
holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious
juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful 5
glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversations, and
innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself — do these things
go out with life?
Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are
pleasant with him? 10
And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! must I part
with the intense delight of having you (huge armfuls) in my
embraces? Must knowledge come to me, if it come at all,
by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by
this familiar process of reading? 15
Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indi-
cations which point me to them here, — the recognisable
face — the "sweet assurance of a look?"^ —
In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying — to give .
it its mildest name — does more especially haunt and beset 20
me. In a genial August noon, beneath a sweltering sky,
death is almost problematic. At those times do such poor
snakes as myself enjoy an immortality. Then we expand
and burgeon. Then are we as strong again, as valiant
again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The blast that 25
nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts of death. All
things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that master
feeling; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity; moonlight
itself, with its shadowy and spectral appearances,— that cold
ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that in- 30
1 Roydon's Elegy on Sir Philip Sidney.
NEW YEARNS EVE 93
nutritious one denounced in the Canticles: — I am none
of her minions — I hold with the Persian.
Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings
death into my mind. All partial evils, like humors, run
6 into that capital plague-sore. — I have heard some profess
an indifference to life. Such hail the end of their existence
as a port of refuge : and speak of the grave as of some soft
arms, in which they may slumber as on a pillow. Some
have wooed death but out upon thee, I say, thou foul,
10 ugly phantom! I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar
John) give thee to six-score thousand devils, as in no
instance to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as a
universal viper; to be branded, proscribed, and spoken evil
of! In no way can I be brought to digest thee, thou thin,
15 melancholy Privation, or more frightful and confounding
Positive!
Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, are
altogethier frigid and insulting, like thyself. For what satis-
faction hath a man, that he shall "lie down with kings and
20 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 dis-
gust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities,
25 inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead
man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his
odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must shortly be.'*
Not so shortly, friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the
meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty
30 of thee. Know thy betters! Thy New Years' Days are
past. I survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup
1 William AND Margaret, by David Mailet (Lucas).
94 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
of wine — and while that turn -coat bell, that just now mourn-
fully 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. 5
THE NEW YEAR.
Hark! the cock crows, and yon bright star
Tells us the day himself s not far;
And see where, breaking from the night,
He gilds the western hills with light.
Vv^ith him old Janus doth appear, , lo
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; is
' When the prophetic fear of things
A more tormenting mischief brings,
More full of soul-tormenting gall.
Than direct mischiefs can befall.
But stay! but stay! methinks my sight, 20
: Better informed by clearer sight,
Discerns sereneness in that brow.
That all contracted seem'd but now.
His revers'd face may show distaste.
And frown upon the ills are past; 25
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 30
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, 35
NEW YEAR'S EVE 95
So smiles upon us the first morn,
And speaks us good so soon as born?
Plague on't! the last was ill enough,
This cannot but make better proof;
" Or, at the worst, as we brush 'd through
The last, why so we may this too:
And then the next in reason should
Be superexcellently good:
For the worst ills (we daily see)
10 Have no more perpetuity,
Than the best fortunes that do fall;
Whic'h also bring us wherewithal
Longer their being to support,
Than those do of the other sort:
16 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 welcorne the New Guest
20 With lusty brimmers of the best;
Mirth always should Good Fortune meet,
And render e'en Disaster sweet:
And though the Princess turn her back,
Let us but line ourselves with sack,
26 We better shall by far hold out,
Till the next Year she face about.
How say you, reader — do not these verses smack of the
rough magnanimity of the old English vein? Do they not
fortify like a cordial; enlarging the heart, and productive
30 of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the concoction?
Where be those puling fears of death, just now expressed
or affected? — Passed like a cloud — absorbed in the purging
sunlight of clear poetry — clean washed away by a wave of
genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondries —
o5 And now another cup of the generous ! and a merry New
Year, and many of them, to you all, my masters !
96 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST.
"A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth/ and the rigor of the game.'
This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle (now with
God), who, next to her devotions, loved a good game at
whist. She was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your
half and half players, who have no objection to +ake a hand, §
if you want one to make up a rubber; who affirm that they
have no pleasure in winning; that they like to win one
game and lose another;^ that they can while away an hour
very agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent whether
they play or no; and will desire an adversary, who has lo
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 with them.
Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested them, 15
as I do, from her heart and soul; and would not, save
upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself at the same
table with them. She loved a thorough-paced partner, a
determined enemy. She took, and gave no concessions.
She hated favors. She never made a revoke, nor ever 20
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 yours. Air people have their blind side — 25
their superstitions; and I have heard her declare, under
the rose, that Hearts was her favorite suit.
1 [This was before the introduction of rugs, reader. You must
remember the intolerable crash of the unswept cinder, betwixt your
foot and the marble.] (L.)
2 [As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one day,
and lose him the next.] (L.)
3 See p. 73.
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 97
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 snuif a candle in the middle of a game;
or ring for a servant, till it was fairly over. She never intro-
5 duced, or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during
its process. As she emphatically observed, cards were
cards; and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her fine last-
century countenance, it was at the airs of a young gentle-
man of a literary turn, who had been with difficulty per-
10 suaded 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 occupa-
tion, to which she wound up her faculties, considered in that
15 light. It was her business, her duty, the thing she came
into the world to do, — and she did it. She unbent her mind
afterwards — over a book.
Pope was her favorite author; his Rape of the Lock her
favorite work. She once did me the favor to play over
20 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
25 to Mr. Bowles; but I suppose they came too late to be
inserted among his ingenious notes upon that author.
Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love; but
whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The former, she
said, was showy and specious, and likely to allure young
30 persons. The uncertainty and quick shifting of partners —
a thing which the constancy of whist abhors ; — the dazzling
supremacy and regal investiture of Spadille — absurd, as she
98 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where his
crown and garter give him no proper power above his
brother-nobility of the Aces ; — the giddy vanity, so taking to
the inexperienced, of playing alone; — above all, the over-
powering attractions of a Sans Prendre Vole, — to the 5
triumph of which there is certainly nothing parallel or
approaching, in the contingencies of whist; — all chese, she
would say, made quadrille a game of captivation to the
young and enthusiastic. But whist was the solider game :
that was her word. It was a long meal; not, like quadrille, lo
a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might co-extend in
duration with an evening. They gave time to form rooted
friendships, to cultivate steady enmities. She despised the
chance-started, capricious, and ever fluctuating alliances of
the other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, 15
reminded her of' the petty ephemeral embroilments of the
little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel; perpetually
changing postures and connections; bitter foes to-day,
sugared darlings to-morrow; kissing and scratching in a
breath; — but the wars of whist were comparable to the 20
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 25
irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being can set up : —
that any one should claim four by virtue of holding cards of
the same mark and color, without reference to the playing
of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions of the
cards themselves! She held this to be a solecism; as 30
pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship.
She despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the
MRS. BATTLE'S OPmiONS ON WHIST 99
colors of things. — Suits were soldiers, she would say, and
must have a uniforraity of array to distinguish them: but
what should we say to a foolish squire, who should claim a
merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets that
never were to be 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, which
in the state of human frailty, may be venially, and even
commendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the
deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not
one suit always trumps? — Why two colors, when the mark
of the suits would have sufficiently distinguished them
without it? —
"But the eye, my dear madam, is agreeably refreshed
with the variety. Man is not a creature of pure reason — he
must have his senses delightfully appealed to. We see
it in Roman Catholic countries, where the music and the
paintings draw in many to worship, whom your quaker
spirit of unsensualising would have kept out. — You, your-
self, have a pretty collection of paintings — but confess to
me, whether, walking in your gallery at Sandham, among
those clear Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters in the
ante-room, you ever felt your bosom glow with an elegant
delight, at all comparable to that you have it in your power
to experience most evenings over a well-arranged assortment
of the court cards? — the pretty antic habits, like heralds in
a procession — the gay triumph-assuring scarlets — the con-
trasting 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
1 Pope's Rape of the Lock, iii., 56.
100 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
on very well, pictureless. But the beauty of cards would be
extinguished for ever. Stripped of all that is imaginative in
them, they must degenerate into mere gambling. — Imagine
a dull deal-b >rd, or drum head, to spread them on, instead
of that nice verdant carpet (next to nature's), fittest arena
for those courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts
and turneys in! — Exchange those delicately-turned ivory
markers — (work of Chinese artist, unconscious of their
symbol, — or as profanely slighting their true application as
the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that turned out those
little shrines for the goddess)^ — exchange them for little bits
of leather (our ancestors' money) or chalk and a slate!" —
The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of
my logic; and to her approbation of my arguments on her
favorite topic that evening, I have always fancied myself
indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage-board, made
of the finest Sienna marble, which her maternal uncle (old
Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated) brought
with him from Florence : — this, and a trifle of five hundred
pounds, came to me at her death.
The former bequest (which I do not least value) I have
kept with religious care; though she herself, to confess a
truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. It was an
essentially vulgar game, I have heard her say, — disputing
with her uncle, who was very partial to it. She could never
heartily bring her mouth to pronounce "go" — 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), because she would not take advantage of the
tumed-up knave, which would have given it her, but which n lie
she must have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declarr
1 Acts, xix., 24.
MRS. BATTLERS OPINIONS ON WHIST 101
ing 'Hwo for his heels.'' There is something extremely
genteel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a
gentlewoman bom.
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 quadrate,
or square. She would argue thus : — Cards are warfare : the
ends are gain, with 'glory. But cards are war in disguise of
a sport: when single adversaries encounter, the ends pro-
posed are too palpable. By themselves, it is too close a
fight; with spectators, it is not much bettered. No looker-
on can be interested, except for a bet, and then it is a mere
affair of money; he cares not for your luck sympathetically,
or for your play. — Three are still worse; a mere naked war
of every man against every man, as in cribbage, without
league or alliance ; or a rotation of petty and contradictory
interests, a succession of heartless leagues, and not much
more hearty infractions of them, as in tradrille. — But in
square games {she meant whist) all that is possible to be
attained in card-playing is accomplished. There are the
incentives of profit with honor, common to every species —
though the latter can be but very imperfectly enjoyed in
those other games, where the spectator is only feebly a
participator. But the parties in whist are spectators and
principals too. They are a theatre to themselves, and a
looker-on is not wanted. He is rather worse than nothing,
and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or interests
beyond its sphere. You glory in some surprising stroke of
skill or fortune, not because a cold — or even an interested —
bystander witnesses it, but because your 'partner sympathises
102 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
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 glory. Two losing to two are
better reconciled, than one to one in that close butchery.
The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying the channels.
War becomes a civil game. — By such reasonings as these
the old lady was accustomed to defend her favorite pastime.
No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at
any game, where chance entered into the composition, for
nothing. Chance, she would argue — and here again, ad-
mire 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 to-
gether by himself? or before spectators, where no stake
was depending; — Make a lottery of a hundred thousand
tickets with but one fortunate number — and what possible
principle of our nature, except stupid wonderment, could it
gratify to gain that number as many times successively,
without a prize? — Therefore she disliked the mixture of
chance in backgammon, where it was not played for money.
She called it foolish, and those people idiots, who were
taken with a lucky hit under such circumstances. Games
of pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played for a stake,
they were a mere system of over-reaching. Played for
glory, they were a mere setting of one man's wit — his
memory, or combination-faculty rather — against another's;
like a mock-engagement at a review, bloodless and profit-
less. — She could not conceive a game wanting the sprightly
infusion of chance, — the handsome excuses of good fortune.
Two people playing at chess in a comer of a room, whilst
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST lOo
whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with
insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut similitudes
of Castles and Knights, the imagery of the board, she would
argue (and 1 think in this case justly), were entirely mis-
5 placed and senseless. Those hard head-contests can in no
instance ally with the fancy. They reject form and colour.
A pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper
arena for such combatants.
To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the
10 bad passions, she would retort that man is a gaming animal.
He must be always trying to g<d^i 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
15 flay at being mightily concerned, where a few idle shillings
are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we are as mightily con-
cerned as those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. They
are a sort of dream-fighting; much ado; great battling and
little bloodshed; mighty means for disproportioned ends;
so quite as diverting, and a great deal more innoxious, than
many of those more serious games of life, which men play,
without esteeming them to be such.
With great deference to the old lady's judgment on these
matters, I think I have experienced some moments in my
!5 life, when playing at cards for nothing has even been agree-
able. When I am in sickness, or not in the best spirits, I
sometimes call for the cards, and play a game at piquet for
love with my cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia.
I grant there is something sneaking in it; but with a
toothache, or a sprained ankle, — ^when you are subdued and
humble, — ^you are glad to put up with an inferior spring of
action.
104 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, as sick
whist. —
I grant it is not the highest style of man — I deprecate
the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, alas I to whom I
should apologise. — 5
At such times, those terms which my old friend objected
to, come in as something admissible. — I love to get a tierce
or a quatorze, though they mean nothing. I am subdued
to an inferior interest. Those shadows of winning amuse
me. . 10
That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capotted
her) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish I am?) — I wished it
might have lasted for ever, though we gained nothing, and
lost nothing, though it was a mere shade of play: I would
be content to go on in that idle folly for ever. The pipkin 15
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. 20
VALENTINE'S DAY.
Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine 1 Great
is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable Arch-flamen of
Hymen ! Immortal Go-between I who and what manner of
person art thou? Art thou but a iiame, typifying the restless
principle which impels poor humans to seek perfection in 25
union? or wert thou indeed a mortal prelate, with thy tippet
and thy rochet, thy apron on, and decent lawn sleeves?
Mysterious personage! like unto thee, assuredly, there is
VALENTINE'S DAY 105
no other mitred father in the calendar; not Jerome, nor
Ambrose, nor Cyril; nor the consigner of midipped infants
to eternal torments, Austin, whom all mothers hate; nor he
who hated all mothers, Origen ; nor Bishop Bull, nor Arch-
5 bishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou comest attended with
thousands and tens of thousands of little Loves, and the
air is
Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings.^
Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors ; and
10 instead of the crozier, the mystical arrow is borne before
thee.
In other words, this is the day on which those charming
little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and intercross each
other at every street and turning. The weary and all fore-
is spent twopenny postman sinks beneath a load of delicate
embarrassments, not his own. It is scarcely credible to
what an extent this ephemeral courtship is carried on in
this loving town, to the great enrichment of porters, and
detriment of knockers and bell-wires. In these little visual
20 interpretations, no emblem is so common as the heart, —
that little three-cornered exponent of all our hopes and
fears, — the bestuck and bleeding heart; it is twisted and
tortured into more allegories and affectations than an opera
hat. What authority we have in history or mythology for
25 placing the headquarters and metropolis of God Cupid in
this anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not very
clear; but we have got it, and it will serve as well as any
other. Else we might easily imagine, upon some other
system which might have prevailed for anything which our
30 pathology knows to the contrary, a lover addressing his
1 Paradise Lost, I., 768.
106 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA
mistress, in perfect simplicity of feeling, "Madam, my liver
and fortune are entirely at your disposal;" or putting a
delicate question, "Amanda, have you a midriff to bestow?'*
But custom has settled these things, and awarded the seat
of sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate s
neighbors wait at animal and anatomical distance.
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all
rural sound, exceed in interest a knock at the door. It
"gives a very echo to the throne where hope is seated/'^
But its issues seldom answer to this oracle within. It is lo
so seldom that just the person we want to see comes. But
of all the clamorous visitations the welcomest in expecta-
tion is the sound that ushers in, or seems to usher in, a
Valentine. As the raven himself was hoarse that announced
the fatal entrance of Duncan,^ so the knock of the postman is
on this day is light, airy, confident, and befitting one that
bringeth good tidings. It is less mechanical than on other
days; you will say, "that is not the post, I am sure."
Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymen ! — delightful eternal
commonplaces, "having been will always be;"^ which no 20
school-boy nor school-man can write away; having your
irreversible throne in the fancy and affections — what are
your transports, when the happy maiden, opening with
careful fingers, careful not to break the emblematic seal,
bursts upon the sight of some well-designed allegory, some 25
type, some youthful fancy, not without verses —
Lovers all,
A madrigal,
or some such device, not over-abundant in sense — ^young
Love disclaims it, — and not quite silly — something between 30
1 Twelfth Night.II., iv„ 21.
2 Macbeth, I., v., 39.
3 Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality,
VALENTINE'S DAY 107
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
5 forget thine, my kind friend (if I may have leave to call
you so) E. B. — E. B. lived opposite a young maiden, whom
ke had often seen, unseen, from his parlor window, in
C e Street. She was all joyousness and innocence, and
just of an age to enjoy receiving a Valentine, and just of a
10 temper to bear the disappointment of missing one with
good humor. E. B. is an artist of no common powers;
in the fancy parts of designing, perhaps inferior to none;
his name is known at the bottom of many a well-executed
vignette in the way of his profession, but no further; for
15 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 has 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
20 obligation; and E. B. did. This good artist set himself at
work to please the damsel. It was just before Valentine's
day three years since. He wrought, unseen, and unsus-
pected, a wondrous work. We need not say it was on the
finest gilt paper, with borders — full, not of common hearts
25 and heartless allegory, but all the prettiest stories of love
from Ovid and older poets than Ovid (for E. B. is a
scholar). There was Pyramus and Thisbe, and be sure
Dido was not forgot, nor Hero and Leander, and swans
more than sang in Cayster, with mottoes and fanciful
30 devices, such as beseemed — a work in short of magic.
Iris dipt the woof .^ This on Valentine's eve he commended
1 Paradise Lost, xi., 244.
108 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
to the all-swallowing indiscriminate orifice — (O ignoble
trust!) — of the common post; but the humble medium did
its duty, and from his watchful stand, the next morning, he
saw the cheerful messenger knock, and by-and-by the
precious charge delivered. He saw, unseen, the happy girl 5
unfold the Valentine, dance about, clap her hands, as one
after one the pretty emblems unfolded themselves. She
danced about, not with light love or foolish expectations,
for she had no lover; or, if she had, none she knew that
could have created those bright images which delighted 10
her. It was more like some fairy present; a God-send, as
our familiarly pious ancestors termed a benefit received,
where the benefactor was unknown. It would do her
no harm. It would do her good for ever after. It is
good to love the unknown. I only give this as a speci- 15
men of E. B. and his modest way of doing a concealed
kindness.
"Good-morrow to my Valentine,"^ sings poor Ophelia;
and no better wish, but with better auspices, we wish to all
faithful lovers, who are not too wise to despise old legends, 20
but are content to rank themselves humble diocesans of old
Bishop Valentine, and his true church.
A CHAPTER ON EARS.
I HAVE no ear. —
Mistake me not, reader, — ^nor imagine that I am by
nature destitute of those exterior twin appendages, hanging 25
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 pro-
1 Hamlet, IV., v., 48 (misquoted). .
A CHAPTER ON EARS 109
vided 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.
5 Neither have I incurred or done anything to incur, with
Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which constrained him
to draw upon assurance — to feel "quite unabashed,"^ and
at ease upon that article. I was never, I thank my stars, in
the pillory; nor, if I read them aright, is it within the
10 compass of my destiny that I ever should be.
When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will under-
stand me to mean — for music. — To say that this heart never
melted at the concourse of sweet sounds, would be a foul
self-libel. — ''Water 'parted from the sea" never fails to move
15 it strangely. So does ''In infancy." But they were used
to be sung at her harpsichord (the old-fashioned instrument
in vogue in those days) by a gentlewoman — the gentlest,
sure, that ever merited the appellation — the sweetest — why
should I hesitate to name Mrs. S , once the blooming
20 Fanny Weatherall of the Temple — ^who had power to thrill
the soul of Elia, small imp as he was, even in his long coats ;
and to make him glow, tremble, and blush with a passion,
that not faintly indicated the day-spring of that absorbing
sentiment, which was afterwards destined to overwhelm and
25 subdue his nature quite, for Alice W — n.
I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to harmony.
But organically I am incapable of a tune. I have been
practising "God save the King" all my life; whistling and
humming it over to myself in solitary comers ; and am not
30 yet arrived, they tell me, within many quavers of it. Yet
hath the loyalty of Elia never been impeached.
1 "Earless on high stood, unabashed, Defoe."— Dunciad. (L.)
110 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
I am not without suspicion that I have an undeveloped
faculty of music within me. For, thrumming, in my wild
way, on my friend A/s piano, the other morning, while he
was engaged in an adjoining parlor, — on his return he was
pleased to say, ''lie thought it could not he the maid!" On s
his first surprise at hearing the keys touched in somewhat
an airy and masterful way, not dreaming of me, his suspi-
cions had lighted on Jenny. But a grace snatched from a
superior refinement, soon convinced him that some being, —
technically perhaps deficient, but higher informed from a lo
principle common to all the fine arts, — had swayed the keys
to a mood which Jenny, with all her (less -cultivated) en-
thusiasm, could never have elicited from them. I mention
this as a proof of my friend's penetration, and not with any
view of disparaging Jenny. 15
Scientifically I could never be made to understand (yet
have I taken some pains) what a note in music is; or how
one note should differ from another. Much less in voices
can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes
the thorough bass I contrive to guess at, from its being 20
supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, how-
ever, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that
which I disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, I scarce
know what to say I am ignorant of. I hate, perhaps, by
misnomers. Sostenuto and adagio stand in the like relation 25
of obscurity to me ; and Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as conjuring as
Barali'pton.
It is hard to stand alone — in an age like this, — (consti-
tuted to the quick and critical perception of all harmonious
combinations, I verily believe, beyond all preceding ages, ^o
since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut)^ — to remain as it
1 Genesis, IV., 21.
A CHAPTER ON EARS 111
were singly unimpressible to the magic influences of an art
which is said to have such an especial stroke at soothing,
elevating, and refining the passions. — Yet rather than break
the candid current of my confessions, I must avow to you,
that I have received a great deal more pain than pleasure
from this so cried-up faculty.
I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A carpen-
ter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me into
more than midsummer madness.^ But those unconnected,
10 unset sounds are nothing to the measured malice of music.
The ear is passive to those single strokes ; willingly enduring
stripes, while it hath no task to con. To music it cannot
be passive. It will strive — mine at least will — ^^spite of its
inaptitude, to thrid the maze ; like an unskilled eye painfully
15 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,
20 fruitless, barren attention ! I take refuge in the unpretend-
ing 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
25 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 occupations in the next
world will be but a shadow of what delighted us in this) I
have imagined myself in some cold Theatre in Hades, where
30 some of the forms of the earthly one should be kept up, with
none of the enjoyment; or like that —
1 Twelfth Night, III., iv., 61.
112 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
-Party in a parlor,
All silent, and all damned 1 *
Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of
music, as they are called, do plague and embitter my appre-
hension. — ^Words are something; but to be exposed to an
endless battery of mere sounds; to be long a-dying, to lie
stretched upon a rack of roses; to keep up languor by
unintermitted effort; to pile honey upon sugar, and sugar
upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness; to fill
up sound with feeling, and strain ideas to keep pace with it;
to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to make the pictures
for yourself; to read a book all stops, and be obliged to
supply the verbal matter; to invent extempore tragedies to
answer to the vague gestures of an inexplicable rambling
mime — these are faint shadows of what I have undergone 15
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 : — after-
wards folio we th the languor, and the oppression. Like that
disappointing book in Patmos;^ or, like the comings on of
melancholy, described by Burton, doth music make her first
insinuating approaches: — "Most pleasant it is to such as
are melancholy given, to walk alone in some solitary grove,
betwixt wood and water, by some brook side, and to 25
meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject,
which shall affect him most, amabilis insania, and mentis
gratissimus error. A most incomparable delight to build
castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an
infinite variety of parts, which they suppose, and strongly
1 Wordsworth, Peter Bell.
2 Revelation, x., 10.
A CHAPTER ON EARS 113
imagine, they act, or that they see done. — So delightsome
these toys at first, they could spend whole days and nights
without sleep, even whole years in such contemplations,
and fantastical meditations, which are like so many dreams,
5 and will hardly be drawn from them — winding and unwind-
ing themselves as so many clocks, and still pleasing their
humors, until at last the scene turns upon a sudden,
and they being now habitated to such meditations and
solitary places, can endure no company, can think of
nothing but harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow,
suspicion, suhrusticus pudor, discontent, cares, and weari-
ness 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
5 upon them, and terrifies their souls, representing some
dismal object to their minds; which now, by no means, no
labor, no persuasions, they can avoid, they cannot be rid
of, they cannot resist."
Something like this "scene-turning" I have experienced
so at the evening parties, at the house of my good Catholic
friend Nov ; who, by the aid of a capital organ, himself
the most finished of players, converts his drawing-room into
a chapel, his week-days into Sundays, and these latter into
minor heavens.^
When my friend commences upon one of those solemn
anthems, which perad venture struck upon my heedless ear,
rambling in the side aisles of the dim Abbey, some five-and-
thirty years since, waking a new sense, and putting a soul of
old religion into my young apprehension — (whether it be
30 that,'^ in which the psalmist, weary of the persecutions of
1 I have been there, and still would go;
'Tis like a little heaven below. — Dr. Watts. (L.)
2 Psalm 55:6,
114 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
bad men, wisheth to himself dove's wings, or that otlier,^
which with a like measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth
by what means the young man shall best cleanse his mind)
— a holy calm pervade th me. — I am for the time
rapt above earth,
And possess joys not promised at my birth.^
But when this master of the spell, not content to have
laid a soul prostrate, goes on, in his power, to inflict more
bliss than lies in her capacity to receive, — impatient to
overcome her "earthly" with his "heavenly,"^ — still pouring
in, for protracted hours, fresh waves and fresh from the sea
of sound, or from that inexhausted German ocean, above
which, in triumphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride those
Arions Haydn and Mozart, with their attendant tritons
Bach, Beethoven, and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to is
reckon up would but plunge me again in the deeps, — I
stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling to and fro at
my wit's end; — clouds, as of frankincense, oppress me —
priests, altars, censers, dazzle before me — the genius of his
religion hath me in her toils — a shadowy triple tiara invests 20
the brow of my friend, late so naked, so ingenuous — he is '
Pope, — and by him sits, like as in the anomaly of dreams, a
she-Pope too, — tri-coroneted like himself ! — I am converted, 1
and yet a Protestant; — at once malleus hereticorum, and '
myself grand heresiarch: or three heresies centre in my 25
person: I am Marcion, Ebion, arid Cerinthus — Gog and
Magog^ — what not? — till the coming in of the friendly
supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a draught of true
1 Psalm 119:9.
2 Walton's Complete Angler, I., Ch. 4, adapted.
3 I. Corinthians, xv., 48.
4 Revelation, xx., 8.
A CHAPTER ON EARS 115
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 un terrifying aspects
of my pleasant-countenanced host and hostess.
5 [P.S. — A writer, whose real name it seems is Boldero, but
who has been entertaining the town for the last twelve
months with some very pleasant lucubrations under the
assumed signature of Leigh Hunt,^ in his "Indicator" of
the 31st January last has thought fit to insinuate that I,
10 Elia, do not write the little sketches which bear my signa-
ture in this magazine, but that the true author of them is a
Mr. L — b. Observe the critical period at which he has
chosen to impute the calumny, — on the very eve of the
publication of our last number, — affording no scope for
15 explanation for a full month; during which time I must lie
writhing and tossing under the cruel imputation of nonen-
tity. Good Heavens ! that a plain man must not be allowed
to he
They call this an age of personality ; but surely this spirit
20 of anti-personality (if I may so express it) is something
worse.
Take away my moral reputation, — I may live to discredit
that calumny; injure my literary fame — I fiaay write that up
again; but, when a gentleman is robbed of his identity,
25 where is he?
Other murderers stab but at our existence, a frail and
perishing trifle at the best; but here is an assassin who aims
at our very essence; who not only forbids us to he any
longer, but to have heen at all. Let our ancestors look to it.
1 Clearly a fictitious appellation; for, if we admit the latter of these
names to be in a manner English, what is Leigh? Christian nomen-
clature knows no such. (L )
116 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
Is the parish register nothing? Is the house in Princes
Street, Cavendish Square, where we saw the light six-and-
forty years ago, nothing? Were our progenitors from
stately Genoa, where we flourished four centuries back,
before the barbarous name of Boldero^ was known to a s
European mouth, nothing? Was the goodly scion of our
name, transplanted into England in the reign of the seventh
Henry, nothing? Are the archives of the steelyard, in
succeeding reigns (if haply they survive the fury of our
envious enemies), showing that we flourished in prime lo
repute, as merchants, down to the period of the Common-
wealth, nothing?
Why, then the world, and all that's in't, is nothing;
The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing.^
I am ashamed that this trifling writer should have power is
to move me so.]
ALL FOOLS' DAY.
The compliments of the season to my worthy masters, and
a merry first of April to us all !
Many happy returns of this day to you — and you — and
you, sir, — ^nay, never frown, man, nor put a long face upon 20
the matter. Do not we know one another? what need of
ceremony among friends? we have all a touch of that same
— ^you understand me — a speck of the motley. Beshrew
the man who on such a day as this, the general festival,
should affect to stand aloof. I am none of those sneakers. 25
I am free of the corporation, and care not who knows it.
He that meets me in the forest to-day,^ shall meet with no
1 Itisclearly of transatlantic origin. (L.)
2 Winter's Tale, I., ii., 293.
3 As You Like It, II., vii., 22, and V., iv., 42. t
ALL FOOLS' DAY 117
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, politic port on this day — and let us
troll the catch of Amiens — due ad me — du£ ad me — how
goes it?
Here shall he see,
Gross fools as he/
Now would I give a trifle to know historically and authen-
tically, 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.
Remove your cap a little farther if you please; it hides
my bauble. And now each man bestride his hobby, and
dust away his bells to what tune he pleases. I will give
you, for my part,
the crazy old church clock,
And the bewilder'd chimes. ^
Good master Empedocles,^ you are welcome. It is long
since you went a salamander-gathering down iEtna. Worse
than samphire-picking^ by some odds. 'Tis a mercy your
worship did not singe your mustachios.
Ha! Cleombrotus !^ and what salads in faith did you
light upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean? You
1 As You Like It, II., v., 56, 57.
2 Wordsworth, The Fountain.
3 He who, to be deem'd
A god, leap'd fondly into Etha flames [Par. Lost, III, 470]. (L.)
4 King Lear, IV., vi., 15.
5 He who, to enjoy
Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the sea [Par. Lost, III, 471-2].
(L.) ^
118 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
were founder, I take it, of the disinterested sect of the
Calenturists.
Gebir, my old freemason, and prince of plaisterers at
Babel,^ bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand! You
have claim to a seat here at my right hand, as patron of s
the stammerers. You left your work, if I remember
Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred million toises, or
thereabout, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what a
long bell you must have pulled to call your top workmen
to their nuncheon on the low grounds of Senaar. Or did lo
you send up your garlic and onions by a rocket? I am a
rogue if I am not ashamed to show you our Monument on
Fish Street Hill, after your altitudes . Yet we think it some-
what.
What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears? — cry, baby, is
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 second in your portman- 20
teau there — on Female Incontinence — the same — it will
come in most irrelevantly and impertinently seasonable to
the time of the day.
Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. Pray
correct that error. 25
Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you a bumper,
or a paradox. We will have nothing said or done syllo-
gistically this day. Remove those logical forms, waiter,
that no gentleman break the tender shins of his appre-
hension stumbling across them. ^o
1 The builders next of Babel on the plain
Of Senaar.— [Par. Lost, III., 466]. (L.)
ALL FOOL'S DAY 119
Master Stephen, you are late. — Ha! Cokes, is it you? —
Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay my devoir to you. —
Master Shallow, your worship's poor servant to command.
• — Master Silence, I will use few words with you. — Slender,
5 it shall go hard if I edge not you in somewhere. — You six
will engross all the poor wit of the company to-day. — I
know it, I know it.
Hal honest R , my fine old Librarian of Ludgate,
time out of mind, art thou here again? Bless thy doublet,
10 it is not over-new, threadbare as thy stories: — what dost
thou flitting about the world at this rate? — Thy customers
are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, have ceased to read long ago.
— Thou goest still among them, seeing if, peradventure,
thou canst hawk a volume or two. — Good Granville S ,
15 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,
20 in gravity, in fantastic smiling to thyself, in courteous
smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature of well-appar-
elled speech, and the commendation of wise sentences, thou
art nothing inferior to those accomplished Dons of Spain.
The spirit of chivalry forsake me for ever, when I forget
25 thy singing the song of Macheath, which declares that he
might be happy with either,^ situated between those two
ancient spinsters — ^when I forget the inimitable formal love
which thou didst make, turning now to the one, and now to
the other, with that Malvolian smile^ as if Cervantes, not
1 R. Bamfleld, As It Fell Upon a Day.
2 Gay, Beggar's Opera.
3 Twelfth Night, II., v., and III., iv.
120 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
Gay, had written it for his hero; and as if thousands of
periods must revolve, before the mirror of courtesy could
have given his invidious preference between a pair of so
goodly-propertied and meritorious-equal damsels. . . .
To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract our
Fool's Banquet beyond its appropriate day, — for I fear the
second of April is not many hours distant — in sober verity
I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I love a Fool —
as naturally, as if I were of kith and kin to h^im. When
a child, with childlike apprehensions, that dived not below
the surface of the matter, I read those Parables^ — ^not guess-
mg at their involved wisdom — I had more yearnings
towards that simple architect, that built his house upon the
sand, than I entertained for his more cautious neighbor;
I grudged at the hard censure pronounced upon the quiet 15
soul that kept his talent; and — prizing their simplicity
beyond the more provident, and, to my apprehension, some-
what unfeminine wariness, of their competitors — I felt a
kindliness, that almost amounted to a tendre, for those five
thoughtless virgins, — I have never made an acquaintance
since, that lasted, or a friendship, that answered, with any
that had not some tincture of the absurd in their char-
acters. I venerate an honest obliquity of understanding.
The more laughable blunders a man shall commit in your
company, the more tests he giveth you, that he will not 25
betray or overreach you. . I love the safety, which a palpa-
able hallucination warrants; the security, which a word out
of season ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and
say a fool told it you, if you please, that he who hath not
a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse
matter in his composition. It is observed, that "the
1 Matthew, vii., 24; xxv., 1-30.
A QUAKERS' MEETING 121
foolisher the fowl or fish — woodcocks, — dotterels, — cod's-
heads, etc., the finer the flesh thereof,"^ and what are
commonly the world's received fools, but such whereof the
world is not worthy? and what have been some of the
5 kindliest patterns of our species, but so many darlings of
absurdity, minions of the goddess, and her white boys? —
Reader, if you wrest my words beyond their fair construc-
tion, it is you, and not I, that are the April Fool.
A QUAKERS' MEETING.
Still-born Silence! thou that art
[0 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!
^5 Admiration's speaking'st tongue!
Leave, thy desert shades among,
Reverend hermits' hallow'd cells,
Where retired devotion dwells!
With thy enthusiasms come,
;q Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb!^
Reader, 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
25 thy 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 composite: — come with me into a
^0 Quakers' Meeting.
1 Sir Thomas Browne (Craig).
2 From Poems of All Sorts, by Richard Fleckno, 1653. (L.)
122 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
Dost thou love silence as deep as that "before the winds
were made?" go not out into the wilderness, descend not
into the profundities of the earth; shut not up thy case-
ments; nor pour wax into the little cells of thy ears, with
little-faithed self-mis trusting Ulysses, — Retire with me into s
a Quakers' Meeting.
For a man to refrain even from good words, and to hold
his peace, it is commendable; but for a multitude, it is
great mastery.
What is the stillness of the desert, compared with this lo
place? what the un communicating muteness of fishes?— -
here the goddess reigns and revels. — "Boreas, and Cesias,
and Argestes loud,"^ do not with their inter-confounding
uproars more augment the brawl — nor the waves of the
blown Baltic with their clubbed sounds — than their opposite is
(Silence her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered more
intense by numbers and by sympathy. She too hath her
deeps, that call unto deeps .^ Negation itself hath a positive
more and less; and closed eyes would seem to obscure the
great obscurity of midnight. 20
There are wounds, which an imperfect solitude cannot
heal. By imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth by
himself. The perfect is that which he can sometimes attain
in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely as in a Quakers'
Meeting. — Those first hermits did certainly understand this 25
principle, when they retired into Egyptian solitudes, not
singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another's want of con-
versation. The Carthusian is bound to his brethren by
this agreeing spirit of incommunicativeness. In secular
occasions, what so pleasant as to be reading a book through so
1 Paradise Lost, X., 699.
2 Psalms, xlii., 7.
A QUAKERS' MEETING 123
a long winter evening, with a friend sitting by — ^say, a wife
— ^he, or she, too (if that be probable), reading another,
without interruption, or oral communication? — can there be
no sympathy without the gabble of words ? — away with this
inhuman, shy, single, shade-and-cavem-haunting solitari-
ness. Give me. Master Zimmerman, a sympathetic solitude.
To pace alone in the cloisters, or side aisles of some
cathedral, time-stricken :
Or under hanging mountains,
Or by the fall of fountains/
is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which those
enjoy, who come together for the purposes of more 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,
Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings — ^
but here is something, which throws Antiquity herself into
the foreground — Silence — eldest of things — language of
old Night — primitive Discourser — to which the insolent
decays of mouldering grandeur have but arrived by a
violent, and, as we may say, unnatural progression.
How reverend is the view of these hush'd heads
Looking tranquillity!^
Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmischie vous synod !
convocation without intrigue! parliament without debate!
what a lesson dost thou read to council, and to consistory!
1 Pope, St. Cecelia's Day.
2 Beaumont, To the Tombs in the Abbey.
3 Congreve, The Mourning Bride, adapted.
124 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
— if my pen treat of you lightly — as haply it will wander —
yet my spirit hath gravely felt the wisdom of your custom,
when sitting among you in deepest peace, which some out-
welling tears would rather confirm than disturb, I have
reverted to the times of your beginnings, and the sowings
of the seed by Fox and Dewesbury. — I have witnessed that,
which brought before " my eyes your heroic tranquillity,
inflexible to the rude jests and serious violences of the
insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to molest you
— for ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecutions, the out-
cast and off -scouring of church and presbytery, — I have seen
the reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered into your recep-
tacle, with the avowed intention of disturbing your quiet,
from the very spirit of the place receive in a moment a new
heart, and presently sit among ye as a lamb amidst lambs.
And I remembered Penn before his accusers, and Fox in
the bail-dock, where he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells
us, and "the Judge and the Jury became as dead men
under his feet."
Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would recom-
mend 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 anything you will read
of Wesley and his colleagues. Here is nothing to stagger
you, nothing to make you mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no
drop or dreg of the worldly or ambitious spirit. You will
here read the true story of that much-injured, ridiculed
man (who perhaps hath been a by-word in your mouth), —
James Naylor: what dreadful sufferings, with what patience
he endured, even to the boring through of his tongue with
red-hot irons without a murmur; and with what strength of
A QUAKERS' MEETING 125
mind, when the delusion he had fallen into, which they
stigmatised for blasphemy, had given way to clearer
thoughts, he could renounce his error, in a strain of the
beautifullest humility, yet keep his first grounds, and be a
Quaker still!— so different from the practice of your com-
mon converts from enthusiasm, who, when they apostatise,
apostatise all, and think they can never get far enough from
the society of their former errors, even to the renunciation
of some saving truths, with which they had been mingled,
not implicated.
Get the writings of John Woolman by heart; and love
the early Quakers.
How far the followers of these good men in our days have
kept to the primitive spirit, or in what proportion they have
15 substituted formality for it, the Judge of Spirits can alone
determine. I have seen faces in their assemblies, upon
which the dove sate visibly brooding. Others again I have
watched, when my thoughts should have been better
engaged, in which I could possibly detect nothing but a
20 blank inanity. But quiet was in all, and the disposition to
unanimity, and the absence of the fierce controversial work-
ings. — If the spiritual pretensions of the Quakers have
abated, at least they make few pretences. Hypocrites they
' certainly are not, in their preaching. It is seldom indeed
25 that you shall see one get up amongst them to hold forth.
Only now and then a trembling female, generally ancient,
voice is heard — you cannot guess from what part of the
meeting it proceeds — with a low, buzzing, musical sound,
laying out a few words which "she thought might suit the
30 condition of some present," with a quaking diffidence which
leaves no possibility of supposing that anything of female
vanity was mixed up, where the tones were so full of ten-
126 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
demess, and a restraining modesty. — The men, from 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 s
"from head to foot equipt in iron mail."^ His frame was of
iron too. But he was malleable. I saw him shake all over
with the spirit — I dare not say, of delusion. The strivings
of the outer man were unutterable — he seemed not to speak,
but to be spoken from. I saw the strong man bowed lo
down, and his knees to fail — his joints all seemed loosening
— it was a figure to set off against Paul preaching — the
words he uttered were few, and sound — he was evidently
resisting his will — keeping down his own word-wisdom with
more mighty effort, than the world's orators strain for theirs, is
"He had been a Wit in his youth," he told us, with ex-
pressions of a sober remorse. And it was not till lorg
after the impression had begun to wear away, that I was
enabled, with something like a smile, to recall the striking
incongruity of the confession — understanding the term in 20
its worldly acceptation — with the frame and physiognomy
of the person before me. His brow would have scared away
the Levities — the Jocos Risus-que — faster than the Loves
fled the face of Dis at Enna. — By wit, even in his youth, I
will be sworn he understood something far within the limits 25
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 so
1 Wordsworth, 'Tis Said that Some Have Died for Love.
2 II. Corinthians, v., 1.
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 127
den, where that fiercest and sayagest of all wild creatures,
the Tongue, that unruly member,^ has strangely lain tied
up and captive. You have bathed with stillness. — O when
the spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness of the jang-
5 lings, and nonsense-noises of the w^orld, what a balm and a
solace it is, to go and seat yourself, for a quiet half-hour,
upon some undisputed comer of a bench, among the gentle
Quakers !
Their garb and stillness conjoined, present an uniform-
10 ity, tranquil and herdlike — as in the pasture — "forty
feeding like one." — ^
The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of
receiving a soil; and cleanliness in them to be something
more than the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is
15 a lily; and when they come up in bands to their Whitsun-
conferences, whitening the easterly streets of the metropolis,
from all parts of the United Kingdom, they show like troops
of the Shining Ones.^
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.
My reading has been lamentably desultory and immethod-
20 ical. Odd, out-of-the-way, old English plays and treatises,
have supplied me with most of my notions and ways of feel-
ing. 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 gentle-
25 men, in King John's days. I know less geography than a
schoolboy of six weeks' standing. To me a map of old
Ortelius is as authentic as Arrow^smith. I do not know
1 James, iii., 5.
2 "Wordsworth, Lines Written in March.
3 The Pilgrim's Progress. Pt. I., xx.
128 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
whereabout Africa merges into Asia; whether Ethiopia He
in one or other of those great divisions; nor can form the
remotest conjecture of the position of New South Wales,
or Van Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a correspondence
with a very dear friend in the first-named of these two 5
Terrse Incognitae. I have no astronomy. I do not know
where to look for the Bear, or Charles's Wain; the place
of any star; or the name of any of them at sight. I guess
at Venus only by her brightness — and if the sun on some
portentous mom were to make his first appearance in the 10
West, I verily believe that, while all the world were gasp-
ing in apprehension about me, I alone should stand un-
terrified, 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 miscel- 15
laneous study; but I never deliberately sat down to a
chronicle, even of my own country. I have most dim
apprehensions of the four great monarchies; and some-
times the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats as first in
my fancy. I make the widest conjectures concerning Egypt 20
and her shepherd kings. My friend M., 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 modem languages ; and,
like a better man than myself, have ''small Latin and less 25
Greek. "^ I am a stranger to the shapes and texture of the
commonest trees, herbs, flowers — not from the circum-
stance 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 30
1 Ben Jonson, Shakespeare.
2 Wordsworth, Excursion, III.
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 129
a loss among purely town-objects, tools, engines, mechanic
processes. — Not that I affect ignorance — but my head has
not many mansions, nor spacious ; and I have been obliged
to fill it with such cabinet curiosities as it can hold without
aching. I sometimes wonder, how I have passed my
probation with so little discredit in the world, as I have
done, upon so meagre a stock. But the fact is, a man may
do very well with a very little knowledge, and scarce be
found out, in mixed company; everybody is so much more
ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of your
acquisitions. But in a tete-a-tete there is no shuffling. The
truth will out. There is nothing which I dread so much, as
the being left alone for a quarter of an hour with a sensible,
well-informed man, that does not know me. I lately got
into a dilemma of this sort. —
In one of my daily jaimts between Bishopsgate and
Shacklewell, the coach stopped to take up a staid-looking
gentleman, about the wrong side of thirty, who was giving
his parting directions (while the steps were adjusting), in a
!o tone of mild authority, to a tall youth, who seemed to be
neither his clerk, his son, nor his servant, but something
partaking of all three. The youth was dismissed, and we
drove on. As we were the sole passengers, he naturally
enough addressed his conversation to me ; and we discussed
the merits of the fare, the civility and punctuality of the
driver; the circumstance of an opposition coach having been
lately set up, with the probabilities of its success — to all
which I was enabled to return pretty satisfactory answers,
having been drilled into this kind of etiquette by some years'
JO daily practice of riding to and fro in the stage aforesaid —
when he suddenly alarmed me by a startling question,
whether I had seen the show of prize cattle that morning in
130 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
Smithfield? Now as I had not seen it, and do not greatly
care for such sort of exhibitions, I was obliged to return a
cold negative. He seemed a little mortified, as well as
astonished, at my declaration, as (it appeared) he was just
come fresh from the sight, and doubtless had hoped to 5
compare notes on the subject. However he assured me
that I had lost a fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of
last year. We were now approaching Norton Folgate,
when the sight of some shop-goods ticketed freshened him up
into a dissertation upon the cheapness of cottons this spring. 10
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 15
earth at once, by inquiring whether I had ever made any
calculation as to the value of the rental of all the retail
shops in London. Had he asked of me, what song the
Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid
himself among women, I might, with Sir Thomas Browne, 20
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 comparative merits of provision for the 25 .
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 poetical associations, than strongly fortified with
any speculations reducible to calculation on the subject, he
gave the matter up; and, the country beginning to open
1 Ukn-Burial [Chap. V.] (L.)
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 131
more and more upon us, as we approached the turnpike at
Kingsland (the destined termination of his journey), he put
a home-thrust upon me, in the most unfortunate position
he could have chosen, by advancing some queries relative
5 to the North Pole Expedition. While I was muttering out
something about the Panorama of those strange regions
(which I had actually seen), by way of parrying the ques-
tion, the coach stopping relieved me from any further
apprehensions. My companion getting out, left me in the
10 comfortable possession of my ignorance; and I heard him,
as he went off, putting questions to an outside passenger,
who had alighted with him, regarding an epidemic disorder
that had been rife about Dalston, and which, my friend
assured him, had gone through five or six schools in that
15 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 evi-
dently a kind-hearted man, who did not seem so much
20 desirous of provoking discussion by the questions which he
put, as of obtaining information at any rate. It did not
appear that he took any interest, either, in such kind of
inquiries, for their own sake; but that he was in some way
bound to seek for knowledge. A greenish-colored coat,
25 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,
30 long since extinct, of the Lilys, and the Linacres : who be-
lieving that all learning was contained in the languages
which they taught, and despising every other acquirement
132 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
as superficial and useless, came to their task as to a sport!
Passing from infancy to age, they dreamed away all their
days as in a grammar-school. Revolving in a perpetual
cycle of declensions, conjugations, syntaxes, and prosodies ;
renewing constantly the occupations which had charmed 5
their studious childhood; rehearsing continually the part
of the past; life must have slipped from them at the last
like one day. They were always in their first garden,
reaping harvests of their golden time, among their Flori
and their Spici-legia; in Arcadia still, but kings; the ferule 10
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 Damsetas I 15
With what a savor doth the Preface to Colet's, or (as
it is sometimes called) Paul's Accidence, set forth! "To
exhort every man to the learning of grammar, that intendeth
to attain the understanding of the tongues, wherein it con-
tained a great treasury of wisdom and knowledge, it would 20
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 building be perfect, whereas the
foundation and ground-work is ready to fall, and unable to
uphold the burden of the frame." How well doth this 25
stately preamble (comparable to those which Milton com-
mendeth as "having been the usage to prefix to some
solemn law, then first promulgated by Solon, or Lycurgus")
correspond with and illustrate that pious zeal for conform-
ity, expressed in a succeeding clause, which would fence 30
about grammar-rules with the severity of faith-articles! —
"as for the diversity of grammars, it is well profitably taken
1
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 133
away by the king majesties wisdom, who foreseeing the
inconvenience, and favorably providing the remedie,
caused one kind of grammar by sundry learned men to be
diligently drawn, and so to be set put, only everywhere to
5 be taught for the use of learners, and for the hurt in
changing of schoolmaisters." What a gusto in that which
follows : "wherein it is profitable that he can orderly decline
his noun, and his verb." His noun!
The fine dream is fading away fast ; and the least concern
10 of a teacher in the present day is to inculcate grammar-rules.
The modem schoolmaster is expected to know a little of
everything, because his pupil is required not to be entirely
ignorant of anything. He must be superficially, if I may
so say, omniscient. He is to know something of pneu-
15 matics; of chemistry; of whatever is curious, or proper to
excite the attention of the youthful mind; an insight into
mechanics is desirable, with a touch of statistics; the
quality of soils, etc. ; botany; the constitution of his country,
cum multis aliis. You may g<et a notion of some part of
20 his expected duties by consulting the famous Tractate on
Education addressed to Mr. Hartlib.
All these things — these, or the desire of them — he is
expected to instil, not by set lessons from professors, which
he may charge in the bill, but at school-intervals, as he walks
25 the streets, or saunters through green fields (those natural
instructors) with his pupils. The least part of what is ex-
pected 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
so time of the day — a passing cloud — a rainbow — a waggon
of hay — a regiment of soldiers going by — to inculcate
something useful. He can receive no pleasure from a
134 . THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
casual glimpse of nature, but must catch at it as an object
of instruction. He must interpret beauty into the pictur-
esque. He cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for
thinking of the suitable improvement. Nothing comes to
him, not spoiled by the sophisticating medium of moral uses . 5
The Universe — that Great Book, as it has been called — is
to him indeed, to all intents and purposes, a book, out of
which he is doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting
schoolboys. — Vacations themselves are none to him, he is
only rather worse off than before; for commonly he has 10
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 Panopti-
con, or into the country, to a friend's house, or his favorite 15
watering-place. Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow
attends him. A boy is at his board, and in his path, and
in all his movements. He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy.
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their
mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown 20
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 25
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 30
of poetry, far unlike the harsh prose-accents of man's con-
1 Charles and Mary Lamb, Poetey for Children.
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 135
versation. — I should but spoil their sport, and diminish my
o\\Ti sympathy for them, by mingling in their pastime.
I would not be domesticated all my days with a person
of very superior capacity to my own — ^not, if I know myself
5 at all, from any considerations of jealousy, or self -compari-
son, for the occasional communion with such minds has
constituted the fortune and felicity of my life — but the
habit of too constant intercourse with spirits above you,
instead of raising you, keeps you down. Too frequent
10 doses of original thinking from others, restrain what lesser
portion of that faculty you may possess of your own. You
get entangled in another man's mind, even as you lose your-
self in another man's grounds. You are walking with a
tall varlet, whose strides out-pace yours to lassitude. The
15 constant operation of such potent agency would reduce
me, I am convinced, to imbecility. You may derive
thoughts from others ; your way of thinking, the mould in
which your thoughts are cast, must be your own. Intellect
may be imparted, but not each man's intellectual frame.
30 As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged
upwards, as little (or rather still less) is it desirable to be
stunted downwards by your associates. The trumpet does
not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases
you by its provoking inaudibility.
25 Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence of a
schoolmaster? — because we are conscious that he is not
quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place,
in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from
among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his
30 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.
136 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
One of these professors, upon my complaining that these
little sketches of mine were anything but methodical, and
that I was unable to make them otherwise, kindly offered
to instruct me in the method by which young gentlemen in
his seminary were taught to compose English themes. —
The jests of a schoolmaster are coarse, or thin. They
do not tell out of school. He is under the restraint of a
formal and didactive hypocrisy in company, as a clergyman
is under a moral one. He can no more let his intellect
loose in society, than the other can his inclinations. — He lo
is forlorn among his coevals; his juniors cannot be his
friends.
"I take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this
profession, writing to a friend respecting a youth who had
quitted his school abruptly, "that your nephew was not is
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 affec-
tionate hearts, but we can never hope to share an atom of
their affections. The relation of master and scholar forbids 20
this. How 'pleasing this must he to you, how I envy your
feelings, my friends will sometimes say to me, when they see
young men, whom I have educated, return after some years'
absence from school, their eyes shining with pleasure, while
they shake hands with their old master, bringing a present 25
of game to me, or a toy to my wife, and thanking me in the
warmest terms for my care of their education. A holiday
is begged for the boys; the house is a scene of happiness;
1, only, am sad at heart. — This fine-spirited and warm-
hearted youth, who fancies he repays his master with grati- 30
tude for the care of his boyish years — this young man — in
the eight long years I watched over him with a parent's
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 137
anxiety, never could repay me with one look of genuine
feeling. He was proud, when I praised ; he was submissive,
when I reproved him; but he did never love me — and what
he now mistakes for gratitude and kindness for me, is but a
5 pleasant sensation, which all persons feel at revisiting the
scene of their boyish hopes and fears; and the seeing on
equal terms the man they were accustomed to look up
to with reverence. My wife, too," this interesting corre-
spondent goes on to say, "my once darling Anna, is the
10 wife of a schoolmaster. — When I married her — knowing
that the wife of a schoolmaster ought to be a busy notable
creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna would ill supply
the loss of my dear bustling mother, just then dead, who
never sat still, was in every part of the house in a moment,
15 and whom I was obliged sometimes to threaten to fasten
down in a chair, to save her from fatiguing herself to death
— I expressed my fears, that I was bringing her into a way
of life unsuitable to her; and she, who loved me tenderly,
promised for my sake to exert herself to perform the duties
2 of her new situation. She promised, and she has kept her
word. What wonders will not a woman's love perform? —
My house is managed with a propriety and decorum,
unknown in other schools; my boys are well-fed, look
healthy, and have every proper accommodation; and all
25 this performed with a careful economy, that never descends
to meanness. But I have lost my gentle, helpless Anna! —
When we sit down to enjoy an hour of repose after the
fatigue of the day, I am compelled to listen to what have
been her useful (and they are really useful) employments
30 through the day, and what she proposes for her to-morrow's
task. Her heart and her features are changed by the duties
of her situation. To the boys, she never appears other
138 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
than the master's wife, and she looks up to me as the hoys'
master; to whom all show of love and affection would be
highly improper, and unbecoming the dignity of her situa-
tion and mine. Yet this my gratitude forbids me to hint to
her. For my sake she submitted to be this altered creature,
and can I reproach her for it?" — For the communication
of this letter, I am indebted to my cousin Bridget.
MY RELATIONS.
I AM arrived at that point of life, at which a man may
account it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he have either
of his parents surviving. I have not that felicity — and
sometimes think feelingly of a passage in Browne's Chris-
tian 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 mS,n may have a close apprehension
what it is to be forgotten, when he hath lived to find none
who could remember his father, or scarcely the friends of
his youth, and may sensibly see with what a face in no long
time Oblivion will look upon himself."
I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was one whom
single blessedness had soured to the world. She often
used to say, that I was the only thing in it which she loved ;
and, when she thought I was quitting it, she grieved over
me with mother's tears. A partiality quite so exclusive my
reason cannot altogether approve. She was from morning
till night poring over good books, and devotional exercises.
Her favorite, volumes were Thomas a Kempis, in Stan-
hope's Translation; and a Roman Catholic Prayer-Book,
with the matins and complines regularly set down, — terms
which I was at that time too young to understand. She
MY RELATIONS 139
persisted in reading them, although admonished daily con-
cerning 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
5 her life, she told me she had read with great satisfaction the
"Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman." Find-
ing the door of the chapel in Essex Street open one day —
it was in the infancy of that heresy — she went in, liked the
sermon, and the manner of worship, and frequented it at
.10 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-
15 traordinary at a repartee; one of the few occasions of her
breaking silence — else she did not much value wit. The
only secular employment I remember to have seen her
engaged in, was, the splitting of French beans, and dropping
them into a China basin of fair water. The odor of those
20 tender vegetables to this day comes back upon my sense,
redolent of soothing recollections. Certainly it is the most
delicate of culinary operations.
Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none — to
remember. By the uncle's side I may be said to have been
25 bom an orphan. Brother, or sister, I never had any — to
know them. A sister, I think, that should have been
Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. What a comfort, or
what a care, may I not have missed in her! — But I have
cousins, sprinkled about in Hertfordshire — besides two,
30 with whom I have been all my life in habits of the closest
intimacy, and whom I may term cousins par excellence.
These are James and Bridget Elia. They are older than
140 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
myself by twelve, and ten, years ; and neither of them seems
disposed, in matters of advice and guidance, to waive any
of the prerogatives which primogeniture confers. May
they continue still in the same mind; and when they shall
be seventy-five, and seventy- three, years old (I cannot spare
them sooner), persist in treating me in my grand climacteric
precisely as a stripling, or younger brother!
James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath her unities,
which not every critic can penetrate; or, if we feel, we can-
not explain them. The pen of Yorick, and 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 prin- i.'
ciples. — The genuine child of impulse, the frigid philos-
opher of prudence — the phlegm of my cousin's doctrine
is invariably at war with his temperament, which is high '
sanguine. With always some fire-new project in his brain, ;
J. E. is the systematic opponent of innovation, and crier- 21
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 ap-
proach to the romantic in others; and, determined by his
own sense in everything, commends you to the guidance of 25
common-sense on all occasions. — With a touch of the
eccentric in all which he does, or says, he is only anxious
that you should not commit yourself by doing anything
absurd or singular. On my once letting slip at table, that
I was not fond of a certain popular dish, he begged me at 3c
any rate not to say so — for the world would think me mad.
He disguises a passionate fondness for works of high art
MY RELATIONS 141
(whereof he hath amassed a choice collection), under the
pretext of buying only to sell again^ — that his enthusiasm
may give no encouragement to yours. Yet, if it were so,
why does that piece of tender pastoral Dominichino hang
5 still by his wall? — is the ball of his sight much more dear
to him? — or what picture-dealer can talk like him?
Whereas mankind in general are observed to warp their
speculative conclusions to the bent of their individual
humors, his theories are sure to be in diametrical opposi-
jio tion to his constitution. He is courageous as Charles of
Sweden, upon instinct; chary of his person, upon principle,
as a travelling Quaker. — He has been preaching up to me,
all my life, the doctrine of bowing to the great — the neces-
sity of forms, and manner, to a man's getting on in the
15 world. He himself never aims at either, that I can dis-
cover, — and has a spirit, that would stand upright in the
presence of the Cham of Tartary. It is pleasant to hear
him discourse of patience — extolling it as the truest wisdom
— and to see him during the last seven minutes that his
20 dinner is getting ready. Nature never ran up in her haste
a more restless piece of workmanship than when she
moulded this impetuous cousin — and Art never turned out
a more elaborate orator than he can display himself to be,
upon his favorite topic of the advantages of quiet, and
25 contentedness in the state, whatever it be, that we are placed
in. He is triumphant on this theme, when he has you safe
in one of those short stages that ply for the western road,
in a very obstructing manner, at the foot of John Murray's
Street — where you get in when it is empty, and are expected
30 to wait till the vehicle hath completed her just freight —
a trying three-quarters of an hour to some people. He
wonders at your fidgetiness — "where could we be better
142 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
than we are, thus sitting, thus consulting?" — "prefers, for
his part, a state of rest to locomotion," — with an eye all the
while upon the coachman — till at length, waxing out of all
patience, at your want of it, he breaks out into a pathetic
remonstrance at the fellow for detaining us so long over the
time which he had professed, and declares peremptorily,
that "the gentleman in the coach is determined to get out
if he does not drive on that instant."
Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting a
sophistry, he is incapable of attending you in any chain of
arguing. Indeed he makes wild work with logic; and
seems to jump at most admirable conclusions by some
process, not at all akin to it. Consonantly enough to this,
he hath been heard to deny, upon certain occasions, that
there exists such a faculty at all in man as reason; and is
wondereth how man came first to have a conceit of it —
enforcing his negation with all the might of rectsoning he
is master of. He has some speculative notions against
laughter, and will maintain that laughing is not natural to
him — when peradventure the next moment his lungs shall
crow like Chanticleer.^ He says some of the best things in
the world — and declare th that wit is his aversion. It was
he who said, upon seeing the Eton boys at play in their
grounds — What a pity to think, that these fine ingenuous lads
in a few years will all be changed into frivolous Members of
Parliament!
His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous — and in age
he discovered 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,
1 As You Like It, II., vii., 30.
«
I
MY RELATIONS 143
as I walk towards the street of my daily avocation, on some
fine May morning, to meet him marching in a quite opposite
direction, with a jolly handsome presence, and shining
sanguine face, that indicates some purchase in his eye — a
5 Claude — or a Hobbima — for much of his enviable leisure is
consumed at Christie's, and Phillips's — or where not, to
pick up pictures, and such gauds. On these occasions he
mostly stoppeth me, to read a short lecture on the advantage
a person like me possesses above himself, in having his time
10 occupied with business which he must do — assure th me that
he often feels it hang heavy on his hands — wishes he had
fewer holidays — and goes off — Westward Ho ! — chanting a
tune to Pall Mall — perfectly convinced that he has con-
vinced me — while I. proceed in my opposite direction
15 tuneless.
It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indifference
doing the honors of his new purchase, when he has fairly
housed it. You must view it in every light, till he has found
the best — placing it at this distance, and at that, but always
20 suiting the focus of your sight to his own. You must spy at
it through your fingers; to catch the aerial perspective —
though you assure him that to you the landscape shows
much more agreeable without that artifice. Woe be to the
luckless wight, who does not only not respond to his rapture,
25 but who should drop an unseasonable intimation of pre-
ferring one of his anterior bargains to the present! — The
last is always his best hit — his ''Cynthia of the minute."^ —
Alas ! how many a mild Madonna have I kno^^n to come in
— a Raphael ! — keep its ascendency for a few brief moons —
30 then, after certain intermedial degradations, from the front
drawing-room to the back gallery, thence to the dark parlor,
1 Pope, Moral Essays, III., 20.
144 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
— adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive
lowering ascriptions of fiHation, mildly breaking its fall —
consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a
Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti! — which things
when I beheld — musing upon the chances and mutabilities
of fate below — ^hath made me to reflect upon the altered
condition of great personages, or that woful queen of
Richard the Second —
set forth in pomp,
She came adorned hither like sweet May,
Sent back like Hallowmas or shortest day.^
With great love for you, J. E. hath but a limited sympathy
with what you feel or do. He lives in a world of his o^vn,
and makes slender guesses at what passes in your mind.
He never pierces the marrow of your habits. He will tell
an old-established playgoer, that Mr.Such-a-one,of So-and-
so (naming one of the theatres), is a very lively comedian —
as a piece of news ! He advertised me but the other day
of some pleasant green lanes which he had found out for
me, knowing me to he a great walker, in my own immediate 20
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 suffering
exclusively — and rejecteth all others as imaginary. He is
affected by the sight or the bare supposition of a creature in
pain, to a degree which I have never witnessed out of
womankind. A constitutional acuteness to this class of
sufferings, may in part account for this. The animal tribe
in particular he taketh under his especial protection. A
1. Richard II., V., i., 79fif.
MY RELATIONS 145
broken-winded or spur-galled horse is sure to find an
advocate in him. An over-loaded ass is his client for ever.
He is the apostle to the brute kind — the never-failing friend
of those who have none to care for them. The contempla-
tion of a lobster boiled, or eels skinned alive, will wring him
so, that "all for pity he could die."^ It will take the
savor from his palate, and the rest from his pillow, for
days and nights. With the intense feeling of Thomas
Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness of pursuit, and
10 unity of purpose, of that ''true yoke-fellow with Time,"^ to
have effected as much for the Animal, as he hath done for
the Negro Creation. But my uncontrollable cousin is but
imperfectly formed for purposes which demand co-opera-
tion. He cannot w^ait. His amelioration -plans must be
15 ripened in a day. For this reason he has cut but an equivo-
cal figure in benevolent societies, and combinations for the
alleviation of human sufferings. His zeal constantly makes
him to outrun, and put out, his coadjutors. He thinks of
relieving, — ^while they think of debating. He was black-
20 balled out of a society for the Relief of . . . because
the fervor of his humanity toiled beyond -the formal appre-
hension, and creeping processes, of his associates. I shall
always consider this distinction as a patent of nobility of
the Elia family!
25 Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile at,
or upbraid, my unique cousin? Marry, heaven, and all
good manners, and the understanding that should be be-
tween kinsfolk, forbid! — With all the strangeness of this
strangest of the Elias — I would not have him in one jot or
3x) tittle other than he is ; neither would I barter or exchange
1 Spenser, Faerie Queene, I., iii., 1.
2 Wordsworth, Sonnet to Clarkson.
146 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
my wild kinsman for the most exact, regular, and every-
way consistent kinsman breathing.
In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some account
of my cousin Bridget— if you are not already surfeited with
cousins — and take you by the hand, if you are willing to go 5
with us, on an excursion which we made a summer or two
since, in search of moi^e cousins —
Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire.^
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.
Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many a long
year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending beyond the 10
period of memory. We house together,, old bachelor
and maid, in a sort of double singleness; with such tolerable
comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find myself in
no sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with
the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy. We agree 15
pretty well in our tastes and habits — ^yet so, as "with a
difference."^ We are generally in harmony, with occasional
bickerings — as it 'should be among near relations. Our
sympathies are rather understood, than expressed; and
once, upon my dissembling a tone in my voice more kind 20
than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and complained
that I was altered. We are both great readers in different
directions. While I am hanging over (for the thousandth
time) some passage in old Burton, or one of his strange
contemporaries, she is abstracted in some modem tale, or 25
adventure, whereof our common reading-table is daily fed
with assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative teases me. I
1 Charles Lamb, Sonnet, 1795.
2 Hamlet, IV., v., 183.
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 147
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
I me most. My cousin has a native disrelish of anything
that sounds odd or bizarre. Nothing goes down with her
10 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 pf the Religio
Medici; but she must apologise to me for certain dis-
respectful insinuations, which she has been pleased to
15 throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear
favorite of mine, of the last century but one — the thrice
noble, chaste, and virtuous, — but again somewhat fantas-
tical and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle.
It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I
20 could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine,
free-thinkers — leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies
and systems; but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts,
their opinions. That which was good and venerable to
her, when she was a child, retains its authority over her
25 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 circum-
30 stances, it turns out, that I was in the right, and my cousin
in the wrong. But where we have differed upon moral
1 Gay, Epitaph of Byewords.
148 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
points; upon something proper to be done, or let alone;
whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of conviction, I
set out with, I am sure always in the long run, to be brought
over to her way of thinking.
I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a 5
gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her
faults. She hath an awkward trick (to say no worse of it)
of reading in company: at which times she will answer yes
or no to a question, without fully understanding its purport
— which is provoking, and derogatory in the highest degree 10
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 15
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 20
early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good
old English reading, without much selection or prohibition,
and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pastur-
age. Had I twenty girls they should be brought up exactly
in this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wed- 25
lock might not be diminished by it; but I can answer for it,
that it makes (if the worst come to the worst) most incom-
parable old maids.
In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter; but
in the teasing accidents, and minor perplexities, which do 30
not call out the will to meet them, she sometimes maketh
1 Othello, I., ii., 2.
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 149
matters worse by an excess of participation. If she does
not always divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter oc-
casions of life she is sure always to treble your satisfaction.
She is excellent to be at play with, or upon a visit; but best,
6 when she goes a journey with you.
We made an excursion together a few summers since, into
Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our less-
known relations in that fine com country.
The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End; or
10 Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some
old maps of Hertfordshire; a farm-house, — delightfully
situated within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I
can just remember having been there, on a visit to a great-
aunt, when I was a child under the care of Bridget; who, as
15 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.
I But that is impossible. The house was at that time in the
occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married my
20 grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. My grand-
mother was a Bruton, married to a Field. The Gladmans
and the Brutons are still flourishing in that part of the
county, but the Fields are almost extinct. More than forty
years have elapsed since the visit I speak of; and, for the
25 greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of the
other two branches also. Who or what sort of persons
inherited Mackery End — kindred or strange folk — we were
afraid almost to conjecture, but determined some day to
explore.
30 By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park at
Luton in our way from Saint Alban's, we arrived at the spot
of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old
150 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
farm-house, though every trace of it was effaced from my
recollection, affected me with a pleasure which I had not
experienced for many a year. For though I had forgotten
it, we had never forgotten being there together, and we
had been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till s
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 lo
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 1^ 15
Bridget's was more a waking bliss^ than mine, for she
easily remembered her old acquaintance again — some
altered features, of course, a little grudged at. At first,
indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy; but the scene
soon reconfirmed itself in her affections — and she traversed 20
every outpost of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the
orchard, the place where the pigeon-house had stood (house
and birds were alike flown) — with a breathless impatience
of recognition, which was more pardonable perhaps than
decorous at the age of fifty odd. But Bridget in some 25
things is behind her years.
The only thing left was to get into the house — and that
was a difficulty which to me singly would have been in-
surmountable: for I am terribly shy in making myself
knoMTi to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, ■'«o
1 Ben Jonson, Epithalamion.
2 Wordsworth. [Yarrow Visited]. (L.)
3 CoMUS, 263.
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 151
stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in without me; but
she soon returned with a creature that might have sat to a
sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of
the Gladmans; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had be-
5 come mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood are the
Brutons. Six of them, females, were noted as the hand-
somest young women in the county. But this adopted
Bruton, in my mind, was better than they^ll — more comely.
She was bom too late to have remembered me. She just.
10 recollected in early life to have had her cousin Bridget once
pointed out to her, climbing a stile. But the name of
kindred, and of cousinship, was enough. Those slender
ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmos-
phere of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty,
15 homely, loving Hertfordshire. In five minutes we were as
thoroughly acquainted as if we had been born and bred up
together; were familiar, even to the calling each other by
our Christian names. So Christians should call one another.
To have seen Bridget, and her — it was like the meeting of
20 the two scriptural cousins!^ There was a grace and dig-
nity, an amplitude of form and stature, answering to her
mind, in this farmer s wife, which would have shined in a
palace — or so we thought it. We were made welcome by
husband and wife equally — we, and our friend that was
25 with us. — I had almost forgotten him — but B. F. will not
so soon forget that meeting, if peradventure he shall read
this on the far-distant shores where the Kangaroo haunts.
The fatted calf was made ready, or rather was already so,
as if in anticipation of our coming; and, after an appro-
30 priate glass of native wine, never let me forget with what
honest pride this hospitable cousin made us proceed to
1 Luke, i., 40.
152 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
Wheathampstead, to introduce us (as some new-found
rarity) to her mother and sister Gladmans, who did indeed
know something more of us, at a time when she almost knew
nothing. — With what corresponding kindness we were re-
ceived by them also — ^how Bridget's memory, exalted by the &
occasion, warmed into a thousand half-obliterated recol-
lections 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 cir- lo
cumstances still crowding back upon her, as words written
in lemon come out upon exposure to a friendly warmth, —
when I forget all this, then may my country cousins forget
me; and Bridget no more remember, that in the days of
weakling infancy I was her tender charge — as I have been is
her care in foolish manhood since — in those pretty pastoral
walks, long ago, about Mackery End, in Hertfordshire.
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.
I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sym-
pathiseth with all things; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyn-
crasy, in anything. Those national repugnances do not touch 20
me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard
or Dutch. — Religio Medici.
That the author of the Religio Medici, mounted upon the
airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about notional and
conjectural essences; in whose categories of Being the 25
possible took the upper hand of the actual; should have
overlooked the impertinent individualities of such poor
concretions as mankind, is not much to be admired. It is
rather to be wondered at, that in the genus of animals he
should have condescended to distinguish that species at all. so
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 153
For myself — earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my
activities, —
Standing on earth, not rapt above the skj,^
I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national
5 or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no
indifferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is to
me a matter of taste or distaste ; or when once it becomes
indifferent, it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer
words, a bundle of prejudices — made up of likings and
10 dislikings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, antip-
athies. 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 indiffer-
ently, but I cannot feel towards all equally. The more
purely-English word that expresses sympathy will better
15 explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy man^
who upon another account cannot be my mate or fellow.
I cannot like all people alike .^
1 Paradise Lost, VII., 23.
2 I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of imper-
fect sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no direct
antipathy. There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite
to another individual nature that the same sphere cannot hold them.
I have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two
persons meeting (who never saw one another before in their lives) and
^ instantly fighting.
We by proof find there should be
'Twixt man and man such an antipathy,
That though he can show no just reason why
For any former wrong or injury,
Can neither find a blemish in his fame,
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame.
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil,
Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil.
The lines are from old Heywood's "Hierarchie of Angels," and he
subjoins a curious story in confirmation of a Spaniard who attempted
to assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack
could give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy
which he had taken to the first sight of the King.
The cause to which that act compell'd him
Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. (L.) *
154 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
1
I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am
obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They
cannot like me — and in truth, I never knew one of that
nation who attempted to do it. There is something more
plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceeding. We
know one another at first sight. There is an order of
imperfect intellects (under which mine must be content to
rank) which in its constitution is essentially anti-Caledonian.
The owners of the sort of faculties I allude to, have minds
rather suggestive than comprehensive. They have no
pretences to much clearness or precision in their ideas, or
in their manner of expressing them. Their intellectual
wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it.
They are content with fragments and scattered pieces of
Truth. She presents no full front to them — a feature or is
side-face at the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and crude
essays at a system, is the utmost they pretend to. They
beat up a little game peradventure — and leave it to knottier
heads, more robust constitutions, to run it down. The light
that lights them is not steady and polar, but mutable and 20
shifting: waxing, and again waning. Their conversation is
accordingly. They will throw out a random word in or out
of season, and be content to let it pass for what it is worth. ^
They cannot speak always as if they were upon their oath —
but must be understood, speaking or writing, with some 25
abatement. They seldom wait to mature a proposition,
but e'en bring it to market in the green ear. They delight to
impart their defective discoveries, as they arise , without
waiting for their full development. They are no system-
atisers, and would but err more by attempting it. Their so
minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. The brain
of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is constituted
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 155
upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is bom in pan-
oply. You are never admitted to see his ideas in their
growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put
together upon principles of clock-work. You never catch
5 his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests any-
thing, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order and
completeness. He brings his total wealth into company,
and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always about him.
He never stoops to catch a glittering something in your
10 presence, to share it with you, before he quite knows
whether it be true touch or not. You cannot cry halves
to anything that he finds. He does not find, but bring. You
never witness his first apprehension of a thing. His under-
standing is always at its meridian — ^you never see the first
15 dawn, the early streaks. — He has no falterings of self-sus-
picion . Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half -in tuitions, semi-
consciousness, 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 —
20 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. You cannot hover with him upon the con-
fines of truth, or wander in the maze of a probable argu-
ment. He always keeps the path. You cannot make excur-
25 sions with him — for he sets you right. His taste never fluc-
tuates . His morality never abates . He cannot compromise ,
or understand middle actions. There can be but a right and
a wrong. His conversation is as a book. His affirmations
have the sanctity of an oath. You must speak upon the
30 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 !?-ive
156 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
that appellation to John Buncle,— ''did I catch rightly what
you said? I have heard of a man in health, and of a
healthy state of body, but I do not see how that epithet can
be properly applied to a book." Above all, you must beware
of indirect expressions before a Caledonian. Clap an
extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unh9,ppily blest
with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath. I
have a print of a graceful female after Leonardo da Vinci,
which I was showing off to Mr. . After he had
examined it minutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked
MY BEAUTY (a fooHsh name it goes by among my friends) —
when he very gravely assured me, that *'he had consider-
able respect for my character and talents" (so he was
pleased to say), *'but had not given himself much thought
about the degree of my personal pretensions." The mis-
conception staggered me, but did not seem much to dis-
concert him. — Persons of this nation are particularly fond
of affirming a truth — ^which nobody doubts. They do not
so properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do indeed
appear to have such a love of truth (as if, like virtue, it
were valuable for itself) that all truth becomes equally
valuable, whether the proposition that contains it be new or
old, disputed, or such as is impossible to become a subject
of disputation. I was present not long since at a party of
North Britons^ where a son of Burns was expected; and
happened to drop a silly expression (in my South British
way), that I wished it were the father instead of the son —
when four of them started up at once to inform me, that
"that was impossible, because he was dead." An im-
practicable wish, it seems, was more than they could con-
ceive. Swift has hit off this part of their character, namely,
their love of truth, in his biting way, but with an illiberality
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 157
that necessarily confines the passage to the margin.^ The
tediousness of these people is certainly provoking. I won-
der if they ever tire one another! — In my early life I had a
passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns. I liave some-
5 times foolishly hop^^d to ingratiate myself with his country-
men by expressing it. But I have always found that a true
Scot resents your admiration of his compatriot, even more
than he would your contempt of him. The latter he im-
putes to your "imperfect acquaintance with many of the
10 words which he uses;" and the same objection makes k a
presumption in you to suppose that you can admire him. —
Thomson they seem to have forgotten. Smollett they have
neither forgotten nor forgiven for his delineation of Rory
and his companion, upon their first introduction to our
15 metropolis. — Speak of Smollett as a great genius, and they
will retort upon you Hume's History compared with his
Continuation of it. What if the historian had continued
Humphrey Clinker?
I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. They are
20 a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which
Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond the
pyramids. But I should not care to be in habits of familiar
intercourse with any of that nation. I confess that I have
not the nerves to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices
25 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
1 "There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit them-
selves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no con-
sequence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as h-^ppen
everyday ; and this I have observed more frequently among the Scots
■ than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the minutest
circumstances of time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not
a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and
gesture peculiar to that country, would be hardly tolerable." — Hints
toward an Essay on Conversation. (L.)
158 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
the other, between our and their fathers, must, and ought,
to affect the blood of the children. I cannot believe it can
run clearly and kindly yet; or that a few fine words, such as
candor, liberality, the light of a nineteenth century, can
close up the breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew 5
is nowhere congenial to ine. He is least distasteful on
'Change — for the mercantile spirit levels all distinctions, as
are all beauties in the dark. I boldly confess I do not
relish the approximation of Jew and Christian, which has
become so fashionable. The reciprocal endearments have, 10
to me, something hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do
not like to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and con-
geeing in awkward postures of an affected civility. If they
are converted, why do they not come over to us altogether?
Why keep up a form of separation, when the life of it has 15
fled? If they can sit with us at table, why do they keck at
our cookery? I do not understand these half convertites.
Jews christianizing — Christians judaizing — ^puzzle me. I
like fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more confounding
piece of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spirit of the 20
synagogue is essentially separative. B would have
been more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of his
forefathers. There is a fine scorn in his face, which nature
meant to be of Christians. The Hebrew spirit is strong
in him, in spite of his proselytism. He cannot conquer the 25
Shibboleth.^ How it breaks out, when he sings, *'The
Children of Israel passed through the Red Sea!"^ The
auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he
rides over our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking
him. B has a strong expression of sense in his coun- 30
1 Judges, xii., 4-6.
2 Handel's Oratorio Israel in Egypt.
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 159
tenance, and it is confirmed by his singing. The founda-
tion of his vocal excellence is sense. He sings with under-
standing, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing the
Commandments, and give an appropriate character to each
5 prohibition. His nation, in general, have not over-sensible
countenances. How should they? — but you seldom see
a silly expression among them. Gain, and the pursuit
of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never heard of an
idiot being born among them. — Some admire the Jewish
10 female physiognomy. I admire it — but with trembling.
JaeP had those full dark inscrutable eyes.
In the Negro countenance you will often meet with
strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tender-
ness towards some of these faces — or rather masks — that
15 have looked out kindly upon one in casual encounters in
the streets and highways. I love what Fuller beautifully
calls — these "images of God cut in ebony."^ But I should
not like to associate with them, to share my meals and my
good-nights with them — because they are black.
20 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,
25 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, ambigui-
1 Judges, iv.
2 Fuller, Holy State, II., xx.
3 Othello, I., iii., 249.
160 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
ties, and a thousand whim-whams, which their simpler
taste can do without. I should starve at their primitive
banquet. My appetites are too high for the salads which
(according to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel, my gusto
too excited
To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. ^
The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to
return to a question put to them may be explained, I think,
without the vulgar assumption, that they are more given to
evasion and equivocating than other people. They natu- i<l
rally look to their words more carefully, and are more cau-
tious of committing themselves. They have a peculiar char-
acter 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 pro-
ceedings of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the
conscience by an oath can be but truth, so in the common
affirmations of the shop and the market-place a latitude is
expected and conceded upon questions wanting this solemn
covenant. ' Something less than truth satisfies. It is com-
mon to hear a person say, *'You do not expect me to speak 25
as if I were upon my oath." Hence a great deal of incor-
rectness and inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps into
ordinary conversation; and a kind of secondary or laic-
truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth — oath-truth, by the i
nature of the circumstances, is not required. A Quaker sol
1 Paradise Regained, II., 278.
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 161
knows none of this distinction. His simple affirmation
being receivedj upon the most sacred occasions, without
any further test, stamps a vahie upon the words which he is
to use upon the most indifferent topics of Hfe. He looks
5 to them, naturally, with more severity. You can have of
him no more than his word. He knows, if he is caught
tripping in a casual expression, he forfeits, for himself, at
least, his claim to the invidious exemption. He knows
that his syllables are weighed — and how far a consciousness
. 10 of this particular watchfulness, exerted against a person,
has a tendency to produce indirect answers, and a diverting
of the question by honest means, might be illustrated, and
the practice justified, by a more sacred example^ than is
proper to be adduced upon this occasion. The admirable
15 presence of mind, which is notorious in Quakers upon all
contingencies, might be traced to this imposed self-watch-
fulness — 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
20 the winds of persecution, to the violence of judge or
accuser, under trials and racking examinations. "You
will never be the wiser, if I sit here answering your ques-
tions till midnight," said one of those upright Justicers to
Penn, who had been putting law-cases with a puzzling
25 subtlety. "Thereafter as the answers may be,"^ retorted the
Quaker. The astonishing composure of this people is
: sometimes ludicrously displayed in lighter instances. — 1
was traveling in a stage-coach with three male Quakers.
; buttoned up in the straightest non-conformity of their sect.
; 30 We stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea
1 Mark, xii., 13-17; Luke, xx., 1-8. '
2 Cf. II. Henry IV., iii., 2. 56.
162 . THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. My friends
confined themselves to the tea-table. I in my way took
supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest
of my companions discovered that she had charged for
both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very
clamorous and positive. Some mild arguments were used
on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of
the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The
guard came in with his usual peremptory notice. The
Quakers pulled out their money, and formally tendered it
— so much for tea, — I in humble imitation, tendering mine
— for the supper which I had taken. She would not relax
in her demand. So they all three quietly put up their
silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the
eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the
rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the
example of such grave and warrantable personages. We
got in. The steps went up. The coach drove off. The
murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambigu-
ously pronounced, became after a time inaudible — and now
my conscience, which the whimsical scene had for a while
suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in
the hope that some justification would be offered by these
serious people for the seeming injustice of their conduct.
To my great surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the
subject. They sate as mute as at a meeting. At length
the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next
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,
BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 163
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
I WAS born, and passed the first seven years oj^ my life in
the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountain,
its river, I had almost said — for in those young years, what
was this king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our
pleasant places? these are of my oldest recollections. I
repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more frequently, or
with kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser, where he
speaks of this spot.
There when they came, whereas those bricky towers,
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide,
Till they decayed through pride. ^
Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis.
15 What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the
first time— the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet"
Street, by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent ample
squares, its classic green recesses ! What a cheerful, liberal
look hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, over-
looks the greater garden : that goodly pile
Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight,^
confronting, with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more
fantastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the
cheerful Crown-office Row (place of my kindly engendure),
25 right opposite the stately stream, which washes the garden-
foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems
but just weaned from her Twickenham Naiades ! a man
would give something to have been bom in such places.
1 Prothalamion, St. 8..
2 See note.
164 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall,
where the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and
fall, how ftiany times! to the astoundment of the young
urchins, my contemporaries, who, not being able to guess
at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the
wondrous work as magic! What an antique air had the
now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions,
seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and
to take their revelations of its flight immediately from
heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light!
How would the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched
by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement,
never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first
arrests of sleep!
Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived!^
What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous em-
bowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of
communication, compared with the simple altar-like
structure, and silent heart-language of the old dial! It
stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it
almost everywhere vanished? If its business-use be
superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses,
its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It
spoke of moderate labors, of pleasures not protracted
after sunset, of temperance, and good hours. It was the
primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam
could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the
measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to spring
by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for
flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd
1 Shakespeare, Sonnet, 104.
BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 165
"carved it out quaintly in the sun ;"^ and, turning philos-
opher by the very occupation, provided it with mottoes
more touching than tombstones. It was a pretty device of
the gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the days of
artificial gardening, made a dial out of herbs and flowers.
I must quote his verses a little higher up, for they are full,
as all his serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy. They will
not come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains and
sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet garden scenes:
What wondrous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head.
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine.
The nectarine, and curious peach,
^ Into my hands themselves do reach.
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass,
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness.
The mind, that ocean, where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
How well the skilful gardner drew,
1 III. Henky, VI., II., V. 24.
166 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
Of flowers and herbs, this dial new I
Where, from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers?^ ,
The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like
manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up, or
bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that little green lo
nook behind the South-Sea House, what a freshness it gives
to the dreary pile ! Four little winged marble boys used to
play their virgin fancies, spouting out ever fresh streams
from their innocent wanton lips, in the square of Lincoln's
Inn, when I was no bigger than they were figured. They is
are gone, and the spring choked up. The fashion, they tell
me, is gone by, and these things are esteemed childish. Why
not then gratify children, by letting them stand? Lawyers,
I suppose, were children once. They are awakening
images to them at least. Why must everything smack of 20
man, and mannish? Is the world all grown up? Is child-
hood dead? Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and
the best some of the child's heart left, to respond to its ear-
liest enchantments? The figures were grotesque. Are the
stiff -wigged living figures, that still flitter and chatter about
that area, less Gothic in appearance? or is the splutter
of their hot rhetoric one half so refreshing and innocent
as the little cool playful streams those exploded cherubs
uttered?
They have lately gothicised the entrance to the Inner
Temple-hall, and the library front, to assimilate them, I
suppose, to the body of the hall, which they do not at all
1 Fromacopyof verses entitled The Garden. (L.)
i
30
BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 167
resemble. What is become of the winged horse that stood
over the former? a stately arms! and who has removed
those frescoes of the Virtues, which Italianised the end of
the Paper-buildings? — my first hint of allegory! They
5 must account to me for these things, which I miss so
greatly.
The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call the
parade; but the traces are passed away of the footsteps
which made its pavement awful! It is become common
10 and profane. The old benchers had it almost sacred to
themselves, in the fore part of the day at least. They
might not be sided or jostled. Their air and dress asserted
the parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you, when you
passed them. We walk on even terms with their successors.
15 The roguish eye of J 11, ever ready to be delivered of a
jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee with it. But
what insolent familiar durst have mated Thomas Coventry?
— whose person was a quadrate, his step massy and elephan-
tine, his face square as the lion's, his gait peremptory and
20 path-keeping, indivertible from his way as a moving column,
the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow-beater of equals and
superiors, who made a solitude of children wherever he
came, for they fled his insufferable presence, as they would
have shunned an Elisha bear.^ His growl was as thunder in
25 their ears, whether he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke,
his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the most repulsive
and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating the natural
terrors of his speech, broke from each majestic nostril,
darkening the air. He took it, not by pinches, but a palm-
30 ful at once, diving for it under the mighty flaps of his
old-fashioned waistcoat pocket; his waistcoat red and
1 TI. Kings, ii., 24.
168 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
angry, his coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original, and
by adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete gold. And so he
paced the terrace.
By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen ; the
pensive gentility of Samuel' Salt. They were coevals, and
had nothing but that and their benchership in common.
In politics Salt was a Whig, and Coventry a staunch Tory.
Many a sarcastic growl did the latter cast out — for Coventry
had a rough spinous humor — at the political confederates
of his associate, which rebounded from the gentle bosom
of the latter like cannon-balls from wool. You could not
ruffle Samuel Salt.
S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and of
excellent discernment in the chamber practice of the law.
I suspect his knowledge did not amount to much. When
a case of difficult disposition of money, testamentary or
otherwise, came before him, he ordinarily handed it over
with a few instructions to his man Lovel, who was a quick
little fellow, and would despatch it out of hand by the light
of natural understanding, of which he had an uncommon
share« It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed
by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man ; a child
might pose him in a minute — indolent and procrastinating
to the last degree. Yet men would give him credit for vast
application in spite of himself. He was not to be trusted
with himself with impunity. He never dressed for a dinner-
party but he forgot his sword — they wore swords then — or
some other necessary part of his equipage. Lovel had his
eye upon him on all these occasions, and ordinarily gave
him his cue. If there was anything which he could speak so
unseasonably, he was sure to do it. — He was to dine at a
relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of her
BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 169
execution ; and L., who had a wary foresight of his probable
halhicinations, before he set out, schooled him with great
anxiety not in any possible manner to allude to her story
that day. S. promised faithfully to observe the injunction.
5 He had not been seated in the parlor, where the company
was expecting the dinner summons, four minutes, when, a
pause in the conversation ensuing, he got up, looked out of
the window, and pulling down his ruffles — an ordinary
motion with him — observed, "it was a gloomy day," and
10 added, "Miss Blandy must be hanged by this time, I
suppose." Instances of this sort were perpetual. Yet S.
w^as thought by some of the greatest men of his time a fit
person to be consulted, not alone in matters pertaining to
the law, but in the ordinary niceties and embarrassments of
15 conduct — from force of manner entirely. He never laughed.
He had the same good fortune among the female world, —
was a known toast with the ladies, and one or two are said
to have died for love of him — I suppose, because he never
trifled or talked gallantry with them, or paid them, indeed,
20 hardly common attentions. He had a fine face and person,
but wanted, methought, the spirit that should have shown
them ofl? with advantage to the women. His eye lacked
lustre. — Not so, thought Susan P ; who, at the ad-
vanced age of sixty, was seen, in the cold evening time, un-
25 accompanied, wetting the pavement of B d Row, with
tears that fell in drops which might be heard, because her
friend had died that day — he, whom she had pursued with
a hopeless passion for the last forty years — a passion, which
years could not extinguish or abate ; nor the long resolved,
30 yet gently enforced, puttings off of unrelenting bachelor-
hood dissuade from its cherished purpose. Mild Susan
P , thou hast now thy friend in heaven !
170 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A
Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family of that
name. He passed his youth in contracted circumstances,
which gave him early those parsimonious habits which in
after-life never forsook him; so that, with one windfall or
another, about the time I knew him he was master of four 5
or five hundred thousand pounds ; nor did he look, or walk,
worth a moidore less. He lived in a gloomy house opposite
the pump in Serjeants' Inn, Fleet Street. J., the counsel,
is doing self-imposed penance in it, for what reason 1 divine
not, at this day. C. had an agreeable seat at North Cray, 10
where he seldom spent above a day or two at a time in the
summer; but preferred, during the hot months, standing at
his window in this damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch,
as he said, ''the maids drawing water all day long." I
suspect he had his within-door reasons for the preference. 15
Hie currus et arma fuere} He might think his treasures
more safe. His house had the aspect of a strong box. C.
was a close hunks — a hoarder rather than a miser — or, if a
miser, none of the mad Elwes breed, who have brought
discredit upon a character, which cannot exist without 20
certain admirable points of steadiness and unity of purpose.
One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so easily
despise him. By taking care of the pence, he is often
enabled to part with the pounds, upon a scale that leaves
us careless generous fellows halting at an immeasurable 25
distance behind. C. gave away thirty thousand pounds at
once in his lifetime to a blind charity. His housekeeping
was severely looked after, but he kept the table of a gentle-
man. He would know who came in and who went out of
his house, but his kitchen chimney was never suffered to
freeze.
1 Virgil, Aeneid, I., 17. (Misquoted )
BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 171
Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never knew what
he was^ worth in the world; and having but a competency
for his rank, which his indolent habits were little calculated
to improve, might have suffered severely if he had not had
5 honest people about him. Lovel took care of everything.
He was at once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his
friend, his * 'flapper," his guide, stop watch, auditor, treas-
urer. He did nothing without consulting Lovel, or failed
in anything without expecting and fearing his admonish-
10 ing. He put himself almost too much in his hands, had
they not been the purest in the world. He resigned his
title almost to respect as a master, if L. could ever have
forgotten for a moment that he was a servant.
I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible and
15 losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and "would strike."^
In the cause of the oppressed he never considered inequali-
ties, or calculated the number of his opponents. He once
wrested a sword out of the hand of a man of quality that
had drawn upon him; and pommelled him severely with
20 the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered insult to a
female — an occasion Upon which no odds against him
could have prevented the interference of Lovel. He would
stand next day bare-headed to the same person, modestly
to excuse his interference — for L. never forgot rank, where
25 something better was not concerned. L. was the liveliest
little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as Garrick's, whom
he was said greatly to resemble (I have a portrait of him
which confirms it), possessed a fine turn for humorous
poetry — next to Swift and Prior — moulded heads in clay or
30 plaster of Paris to admiration, by the dint of natural genius
merely; turned cribbage-boards, and such small cabinet
1 King Lear, V., iii., 283.
172 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
toys, to perfection; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with
equal facility; made punch better than any man of his
degree in England; had the merriest quips and conceits,
and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and inventions as
you could desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover, 5
and just such a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak
Walton would have chbsen to go a-fishing with. I saw him
in his old age and the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten,
in the last sad stage of human weakness — "a remnant most
forlorn of what he was," — yet even then his eye would light 10
up upon the mention of his favorite Garrick. He was
greatest, he would say, in Bayes — "was upon the stage
nearly throughout the whole performance, and as busy as a
bee." At intervals, too, he would speak of his former life,
and how he came up a little boy from Lincoln to go to 15
service, and how his mother cried at parting with him, and
how he returned, after some few years' absence, in his
smart new livery to see her, and she blessed herself at the
change, and could hardly be brought to believe that it was
''her own bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he 20
would weep, till I have wished that sad second-childhood
might have a mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But
the common mother of us all in no long time after received
him gently into hers.
With Coventry, and with Salt, in their walks upon the 25
terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson would join, to make
up a third. They did not walk linked arm in arm in those
days — "as now our stout triumvirs sweep the streets," — but
generally with both hands folded behind them for state, or
with one at least behind, the other carrying a cane. P. was 30
a benevolent, but not a prepossessing man. He had that
in his face which you could not term unhappiness ; it rather
BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 173
implied an incapacity of being happy. His cheeks were
colorless, even to whiteness. His look was uninviting,
resembling (but without his sourness) that of our great
philanthropist. I know that he did good acts, but I could
5 never make out what he was. Contemporary with these,
but subordinate, was Daines Barrington — another oddity —
he walked burly and square — in imitation, I think, of
Coventry — howbeit he attained not to the dignity of his
prototype. Nevertheless, he did pretty well, upon the
10 strength of being a tolerable antiquarian, and having a
brother a bishop. When the account of his year's treasurer-
ship came to be audited, the following singular charge was
unanimously disallowed by the bench: ''Item, disbursed
Mr. Allen, the gardener, twenty shillings, for stuff to poison
15 the sparrows, by my orders." Next to him was old Barton
— a jolly negation, who took upon him the ordering of the
bills of fare for the parliament chamber, where the benchers
dine — answering to the combination rooms at college —
much to the easement of his less epicurean brethren. I
20 know nothing more of him. — Then Read, and Twopenny —
Read, good-humored and personable — Twopenny, good-
humored, but thin, and felicitous in jests upon his own
figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was attenuated and fleet-
ing. Many must remember him (for he was rather of later
25 date) and his singular gait, which was performed by three
steps and a jump regularly succeeding. The steps were little
efforts, like that of a child beginning to walk; the jump com-
paratively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. Where he learned
this figure, or what occasioned it, I could never discover.
30 It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed to answer the
purpose any better than common walking. The extreme
tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a
174 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
trial of poising. Twopenny would often rally him upon his
leanness, and hail him as Brother Lusty; but W. had no
relish of a joke. His features were spiteful. I have heard
that he would pinch his cat's ears extremely, when anything
had offended him. Jackson — the omniscient Jackson he 5
was called — ^was of this period. He had the reputation
of possessing more multifarious knowledge than any man
of his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the less literate
portion of the Temple. I remember a pleasant passage, of
the cook applying to him, with much formality of apology, 10
for instructions how to write down edge bone of beef in his
bill of commons. He was supposed to know, if any man in
the world did. He decided the orthography to be — as I
have given it — fortifying his authority with such anatomical
reasons as dismissed the manciple (for the time) learned 15
and happy. Some do spell it yet perversely, aitch bone,
from a fanciful resemblance between its shape, and that
of the aspirate so denominated. I had almost forgotten
Mingay with the iron hand — but he was somewhat later.
He had lost his right hand by some accident, and supplied 20
it with a grappling hook, which he wielded with a tolerable
adroitness. I detected the substitute, before I was old
enough to reason whether it were artificial or not. I re-
member the astonishment it raised in me. He was a blus-
tering, loud-talking person; and I reconciled the phenome- 25
non to my ideas as an emblem of power — somewhat like
the horns in the forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses.
Baron Maseres, who walks (or did till very lately) in the
costume of the reign of George the Second, closes my imper-
fect recollections of the old benchers of the Inner Temple, so
Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled? Or, if the like of
you exist, why exist they no more for me? Ye inexplicable.
BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE . 175
half-understood appearances, why comes in reason to tear
away the preternatural mist, bright or gloomy, that en-
shrouded you? Why make ye so sorry a figure in my
relation, who made up to me — to my childish eyes — the
6 mythology of the Temple? In those days I saw Gods, as
"old men covered with a mantle," walking upon the earth. ^
Let the dreams of classic idolatry perish, — extinct be the
fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling, — in the
heart of childhood, there will, for ever, spring up a well
10 of innocent or wholesome superstition — the seeds of exag-
geration will be busy there, and vital — from everyday
forms educing the unknown and the uncommon. In ♦that
little Goshen there will be light, when the grown world
flounders about in the darkness of sense and materiality.
15 While childhood, and while dreams, reducing childhood,
shall be left, imagination shall not have spread her holy
wings totally to fly the earth.
P.S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of Samuel
Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect memory, and the
20 erring notices of childhood ! Yet I protest I always thought
that he had been a bachelor! This gentleman, R. N.
informs me, married young, and losing his lady in child-
bed, within the first year of their union, fell into a deep
melancholy, from the effects of which, probably, he never
25 thoroughly recovered. In what a new light does this place
his rejection (O call it by a gentler name!) of mild Susan
P , unravelling into beauty certain peculiarities of this
very shy and retiring character! — Henceforth let no one
receive the narratives of Elia for true records! They
30 are, in truth, but shadows of fact — verisimilitudes, not
1 I. Samuel, xxviii., 13-14.
176 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
verities — or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts
of history. He is no such honest chronicler as R. N., and
would have done better perhaps to have consulted that
gentleman, before he sent these incondite reminiscences to
press. But the worthy sub-treasurer-— who respects his old
and his new masters — ^would but have been puzzled at the
indecorous liberties of Elia. The good man wots not,
peradventure, of the licence which Magazines have arrived
at in this plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams of their
existence beyond the Gentleman's — his furthest monthly
excursions in this nature having been long confined to
the tioly ground of honest Urban' s obituary. May it be
long before his own name shall help to swell those columns
of unenvied flattery! — Meantime, O ye New Benchers of
the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is himself the is;
kindliest of human creatures. Should infirmities overtake
him — he is yet in green and vigorous senility — make allow-
ances for them, remembering that "ye yourselves are old."
So may the Winged Horse, your ancient badge and cog-
nizance, still flourish! so may future Hookers and Seldens
illustrate your church and chambers ! so may the sparrows,
in default of more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop
about your walks! so may the fresh-colored and cleanly
nursery-maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in your
stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsey as ye 25
pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion! so may the
younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your stately
terrace, with the same superstitious veneration, with which
the child Elia gazed on the Old Worthies that solemnised
the parade before ye!
WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 177
WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS.
We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the
gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they
seem to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the
relations of this visible world we find them to have been as
5 rational, and shrewd to detect an historic anomaly, as
ourselves. But when once the invisible world was sup-
posed to be opened, and the lawless agency of bad spirits
assumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of fit-
ness, or proportion — of that which distinguishes the likely
10 from the palpable absurd — could they have to guide them
in the rejection or admission of any particular testimony? —
That maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen
images consumed before a fire — that corn was lodged,^ and
cattle lamed — that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the
15 oaks of the forest — or that spits and kettles only danced a
fearful-innocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen whenno
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,
20 should lay preposterous siege to the weak fantasy of indi-.
gent eld — has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood 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 sym-
25 bolized by a goat, was it to be wondered at so much, that he
should come sometimes in that body, and assert his meta-
phor! — That the intercourse was opened at all between both
worlds was perhaps the mistake — but that once assumed, I
see no reason for disbelieving one attested story of this
1 Macbeth, IV., i., 53.
178 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A
nature more than another on the score of absurdity. There
is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by which a dream
may be criticised.
I have sometimes thought that I could not have existed
in the days of received witchcraft; that I could not have
slept in a village where one of those reputed hags dwelt.
Our ancestors were bolder or more obtuse. Amidst the
universal belief that these v/retches were in league with the
author of all evil, holding hell tributary to their muttering,
no simple Justice of the Peace seems to have scrupled
issuing, or silly Headborough serving, a warrant upon them
—as if they should subpoena Satan !— Prospero in his boat,^
with his books and wand about him, suffers himself to be
conveyed away at the mercy of his enemies to an unknown
island. He might have raised a storm or two, we think, on is
the passage. His acquiescence is an exact analogy to the
non-resistance of witches to the constituted powers. — What
stops the Fiend in Spenser from tearing Guyon to pieces^—
or who had made it a condition of his prey, that Guyon
must take assay of the glorious bait — ^we have no guess.
We do not know the laws of that country.
From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive about
witches and witch-stories. My maid, and more legendary
aunt, supplied me with good store. But I shall mention
the accident which directed my curiosity originally into this
channel. In my father's book-closet, the History of the
Bible, by Stackhouse, occupied a distinguished station.
The pictures with which it abounds— one of the ark, in
particular, and another of Solomon's temple, delineated
with all the fidelity of ocular admeasurement, as if the
1 The Tempest, I., ii., 144.
2 Faerie Queene, II., vii., 64.
WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 179
artist had been upon the spot — attracted my childish atten-
tion. There was a picture, too, of the Witch raising up
Samuel,^ which I wish that I had never seen. We shall
come to that hereafter, Stackhouse is in two huge tomes —
and there was a pleasure in removing folios of that magni-
tude, which, with infinite straining, was as much as I could
manage from the situation which they occupied upon an
upper shelf. I have not met with the work from that time
to this, but I remember it consisted of Old Testament
stories, orderly set down, with the objection appended to
each story, and the solution of the objection regularly tacked
to that. The objection was a summary of whatever dif-
ficulj;ies had been opposed to the credibility of the history,
by the shrewdness of ancient or modern infidelity, drawn
up with an almost complimentary excess of candor. The
solution was brief, modest, and satisfactory. The bane and
antidote were both before you. To doubts so put, and so
quashed, there seemed to be an end for ever. The dragon
lay dead, for the foot of the veriest babe to trample on.
But — like as was rather feared than realised from that slain
monster in Spenser^ — from the womb of those crushed
errors young dragonets would creep, exceeding the prowess
of so tender a Saint George as myself to vanquish. The
habit of expecting objections to every passage, set me upon
starting more objections, for the glory of finding a solution
of my own for them. I became staggered and perplexed,
a sceptic iij long-coats. The pretty Bible stories which I
had read, or heard read in church, lost their purity and
sincerity of impression, and were turned into so many
historic or chronologic theses to be defended against what-
1 I. Samuel, xxviii., 7-20.
2 Faerie Queene, I., xii.
180 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
ever impugners. I was not to disbelieve them, but— the
next thing to that — I v^as to be quite sure that some one
or other would or had disbelieved them. Next to making
a child an infidel, is the letting him know that there are
infidels at all. Credulity is the man's weakness, but the
child's strength. O, how ugly sound scriptural doubts
from the mouth of a babe and a suckling !^ — I should have
lost myself in these mazes, and have pined away, I think,
with such unfit sustenance as these husks afforded, but for
a fortunate piece of ill-fortune, which about this time befell
me. Turning over the picture of the ark with too much
haste, I unhappily made a breach in its ingenious fabric —
driving my inconsiderate fingers right through the. two
larger quadrupeds — the elephant and the camel — that stare
(as well they might) out of the two last windows next the
steerage in that unique piece of naval architecture. Stack-
house was henceforth locked up, and became an interdicted
treasure. With the book, the objections and solutions
gradually cleared out of my head, and have seldom returned
since in any force to trouble me. — But there was one im-
pression which I had imbibed from Stackhouse, which no
lock or bar could shut out, and which was destined to try
my childish nerves rather more seriously. — That detestable
picture !
I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The night-
time solitude, and the dark, were my hell. The sufferings I
endured in this nature would justify the expression. I
never laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, from the
fourth to the seventh or eighth year of my life — so far as
memory serves in things so long ago — ^without an assurance,
which realised its own prophecy, of seeing some frightful
1 Psalms, viii., 2.
WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 181
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) I owe — not my midnight
terrors, the hell of my infancy — but the shape and manner
5 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 permitted me, I dreamed waking over his
delineation, and at night (if I may use so bold an expression)
10 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 w^as. — Parents do not
know what they do when they leave tender babes alone to
15 go to sleep in the dark. The feeling about for a friendly
arm — the hoping for a familiar voice — when they wake
screaming — and find none to soothe them — what a terrible
shaking it is to their poor nerves I The keeping them up
till midnight, through candle-light and the unwholesome
20 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
25 the picture, the fears would have come self -pictured in some
shape or other —
Headless bear, black man, or ape,^
but, as it was, my imaginations took that form. — It is not
book, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants, which
30 create these terrors in children. They can at most but give
1 Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy.
182 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
them a direction. Dear little T. H., who of all children has
been brought up with the most scrupulous exclusion of
every taint of superstition — who was never allowed to hear
of goblin or apparition, or scarcely to be told of bad men, or
to read or hear of any distressing story — finds all this world s
of fear, from which he has been so rigidly excluded ab extra,
in his own "thick-coming fancies;"^ and from his little
midnight pillow, this nurse-child of optimism will start at
shapes, unborrowed of tradition, in sweats to which the
reveries of the cell-damned murderer are tranquillity. lo
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimseras dire^^stories of
Celseno 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 eter-
nal. How else should the recital of that, which we know ^^
in a waking sense to be false, come to affect us at all? — or ♦
Names, whose sense we see not,
Fray us with things that be not?*
Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such subjects,
considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us 20
bodily injury? — O, least of all! These terrors are of older
standing. They date beyond body — or, without the body,
they would have been the same. All the cruel, tormenting,
defined devils in Dante — tearing, mangling, choking, sti-
fling, scorching demons — are they one-half so fearful to the ^s
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,
1 Macbeth, V., iii., 38.
2 Paradise Lost, II., 628.
3 Virgil, Aeneid, III.
4 Spenser, Epithalamium.
WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 183
And having once turn'd round, walks on
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread. ^
5 That the kind of fear here treated is of purely spiritual —
that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless upon earth
— that it predominates in the period of sinless infancy — are
difficulties, the solution of which might afford some prob-
able insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep
10 at least into the shadow-land of pre-existence.
My night fancies have long ceased to be afflictive. I
confess an occasional nightmare; but I do not, as in early
youth, keep a stud of them. Fiendish faces, with the
extinguished taper, will come and look at me; but I know
15 them for mockeries, even while I cannot elude their pres-
ence, and I fight and grapple with them. For the credit of
my imagination, I am almost ashamed to say how tame and
prosaic my dreams are grown. They are never romantic,
seldom even rural. They are of architecture and of build-
20 ings — cities abroad, which I have never seen, and hardly
have hope to see. I have traversed, for the seeming length
of a natural day, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon — their
churches, palaces, squares, market-places, shops, suburbs,
ruins, with an inexpressible sense of delight — a map-like
25 distinctness of trace — and a daylight vividness of vision,
that was all but being awake. — I have formerly travelled
among the Westmoreland fells — my highest Alps, — but
they are objects too mighty for the grasp of my dreaming
recognition; and I have again and again awoke with in-
30 effectual struggles of the inner eye, to make out a shape,
in any way whatever, of Helvellyn. Me thought I was in
1 Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. (L.)
184 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
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 — ^w^hen I cannot muster a fiddle.
Barry Cornwall has his tritons and his nereids gambolling
before him in nocturnal visions, and proclaiming sons born
to Neptune — when my stretch of imaginative activity can
hardly, in the night season, raise up the ghost of a fish-wife.
To set my failures in somewhat a mortifying light — it was
after reading the noble Dream of this poet, that my fancy
ran strong upon these marine spectra ; and the poor plastic
power, such as it is, within me set to work, to humor my u
folly in a sort of dream that very night. Methought I was
upon the ocean billows at some sea nuptials, riding and
mounted high, with the customary train sounding their
conchs before me (I myself, you may be sure, the leading
god), and jollily we went careering over the main, till just
where Ino Leucothea should have greeted me (I think it
was Ino) with a white embrace, the billows gradually sub-
siding, fell from a sea-roughness to a sea-calm, and thence
to a river-motion, and that river (as happens in the familiar-
isation of dreams) was no other than the gentle Thames, 25
which landed me, in the wafture of a placid wave or two,
alone, safe and inglorious, somewhere at the foot of
Lambeth Palace.
The degree of the soul's creativeness in sleep might
furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poetical 30
1 Coleridge, Kubla Khan.
GRACE BEFORE MEAT 185
faculty resident in the same soul waking. An old gentle-
man, a friend of mine, and a humorist, used to carry this
notion so far, that when he saw any stripling of his ac-
quaintance ambitious of becoming a poet, his first question
5 would be, — "Young man, what sort of dreams have you?"
I have so much faith in my old friend's theory, that when I
feel that idle vein returning upon me, I presently subside
into my proper element of prose, remembering those
eluding nereids, and that inauspicious inland landing.
GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
10 The custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, its
origin in the early times of the world, and the hunter-state
of man, when dinners were precarious things, and a full
meal was something more than a common blessing ; when a
bellyful was a windfall, and looked like a special providence.
15 In the shouts and triumphal songs with which, after a sea-
son 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 otherw^ise easy to
be understood, why the blessing of food — the act of eating
20 — should have had a particular expression of thanksgiving
annexed to it, distinct from that implied and silent gratitude
with which we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment of
the many other various gifts and good things of existence.
I own that I am disposed to siiy grace upon twenty other
25 occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I
want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a
moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved
problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual
repasts — a grace beforei Milton — a grace before Shak-
186 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
speare — a devotional exercise proper to be said before read-
ing the Faery Queene? — but, the received ritual having pre-
scribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of manduca-
tion, I shall confine my observations to the experience which
I have had of the grace, properly so called ; commending my s
new scheme for extension to a niche jn the grand philo-
sophical, poetical, and perchance, in part heretical, liturgy,
now compiling by my friend Homo Humanus, for the use
of a certain snug congregation of Utopian Rabelsesian
Christians, no matter where assembled. lo
The form then of the benediction before eating has its
beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and un-
pro vocative 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 15
or not, sits down to his fare with a present sense of the
blessing, which can be but feebly acted by the rich, into
whose minds the conception of wanting a dinner could
never, but by some extreme theory, have entered. The
proper end of food — the animal sustenance — is barely 20
contemplated by them. The poor man's bread is his daily
bread, literally his bread for the day. Their courses are
perennial.
Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be preceded
by the grace. That which is least stimulative to appetite, 25
leaves the mind most free for foreign considerations. A
man may feel thankful, heartily thapkful, over a dish of
plain mutton with turnips, and having leisure to reflect
upon the ordinance and institution of eating ; when he shall
confess a perturbation of mind, inconsistent with the pur- 30
poses of the grace, at the presence of venison or turtle.
When I have sate (a rams hospes) at rich men'g^ tables, with
GRACE BEFORE MEAT 187
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
5 seems impertinent to interpose a religious sentiment. It is
a confusion of purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth
that waters. The heats of epicurism put out the gentle
flame of devotion. The incense which rises round is pagan,
and the belly-god intercepts it for his own. The very
10 excess of the provision beyond the needs, takes away all
sense of proportion between the end and means. The
giver is veiled by his gifts. You are startled at the injustice
of returning thanks — for what? — for having too much,
while so many starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss. ^
15 I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce consciously
perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. I have
seen it in clergymen and others — a sort of shame — a sense
of the co-presence of circumstances which unhallow the
blessing. After a devotional tone put on for a few seconds,
20 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 conscientious in the dis-
charge of the duty; but he felt in his inmost mind the in-
25 compatibility of the scen6 and the viands before him with
the exercise of a calm and rational gratitude.
I hear somebody exclaim, — Would you have Christians
sit down at table, like hogs to their troughs, without remem-
bering the Giver? — no — I would have them sit down as
30 Christians, remembering the Giver, and less like hogs. Or
if their appetites must run riot, and they must pamper
1 CoMUS, 177.
188 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
themselves with delicacies for which east and west are
ransacked, I would have them postpone their benediction
to a fitter season, when appetite is laid ; when the still small
voice* can be heard, and the reason of the grace returns —
with temperate diet and restricted dishes. Gluttony and
surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving. When
Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he kicked.^ Virgil knew
the harpy-nature better, when he put into the mouth of
Celseno anything but a blessing. We may be gratefully
sensible of the deliciousness of some kinds of food beyond lo
others, though that is a meaner and inferior gratitude; but
the proper object of the grace is sustenance, not relishes;
daily bread, not delicacies; the means of life, and not the
means of pampering the carcass. With what frame or com-
posure, I wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his bene- 15
diction at some great Hall feast, when he knows that his last
concluding pious word — and that in all probability, the
sacred name which he preaches — is but the signal for so
many impatient harpies to commence their foul orgies, with
as little sense of true thankfulness (which is temperance) as 20
those Virgilian fowl! It is well if the good man himself
does not feel his devotions a little clouded, those foggy
sensuous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar
sacrifice.
The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is the
banquet which Satan, in the Paradise Regained, provides
for a temptation in the wilderness :
A table richly spread in regal mode,
With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort
And savor; beasts of chase, or fowl of game,
1 I. Kings, xix., 12.
2 Detjtekonomy, xxxii., 15.
GRACE BEFORE MEAT 189
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boil'd,
Gris-amber-steam'd; all fish from sea or shore,
Freshet or purling brook, for which was drain'd
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. ^
5 The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates would
go down without the recommendatory preface of a benedic-
tion. They are like to be short graces where the devil plays
the host. — I am afraid the poet wants his usual decorum in
this place. Was he thinking of the old Roman luxury, or of
10 a gaudy day at Cambridge? This was a temptation fitter
for a Heliogabalus. The whole banquet is too civic and
culinary, and the accompaniments altogether a profana-
tion of that deep, abstracted, holy scene. The mighty
artillery of sauces, which the cook-fiend conjures up, is out
15 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,
20 As appetite is wont to dream,
I
Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet.
But what meats?
Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood,
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
25 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
30 He found his supper on the coals prepared,
And by the angel was bid rise and eat;
1 Paradise Regained, II., 340ff.
190 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
And ate the second time after repose,
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days:.
Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook,
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse. ^
Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than these temperate
dreams of the divine Hungerer. To which of these two
visionary banquets, think you, would the introduction of
what is called the grace have been most fitting and per-
tinent?
Theoretically I am no enemy to graces; but practically
I own that (before meat especially) they seem to involve
something awkward and unseasonable. Our appetites, of
one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason,
which might otherwise but feebly set about the great ends
of preserving and continuing the species. They are fit
blessings to be contemplated at a distance with a becoming
gratitude ; but the moment of appetite (the judicious reader
will apprehend me) is, perhaps, the least fit season for that
exercise. The Quakers who go about their business, of
every description, with more calmness than we, have more 20
' title to the use of these benedictory prefaces. I have always
admired their silent grace, and the more because I have
observed their applications to the meat and drink following
to be less passionate and sensual than ours. They are
neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. They eat, 25
as a horse bolts his chopped hay, with indifference, calm-
ness, and cleanly circumstances. They neither grease nor
slop themselves. When I see a citizen in his bib and
tucker, I cannot imagine it a surplice.
I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not indif- 30
ferent to the kinds of it. Those unctuous morsels of deer's
1 Paradise Regained, II., 264flf.
GRACE BEFORE MEAT 191
flesh were not made to be received with dispassionate serv-
ices. I hate a man who swallows it, affecting not to know
what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters. I
shrink instinctively from one who professes to like minced
5 veal. There is a physiognomical character in the tastes for
food. C holds that a man cannot have a pure mind
who refuses apple-dumplings. I am not certain but he is
right. With the decay of my first innocence, I confess a
less and less relish daily for those innocuous cates. The
10 whole vegetable tribe have lost their gust with me. Only
I stick to asparagus, which still seems to inspire gentle
thoughts. I am impatient and querulous under culinary
disappointments, as to come home at the dinner-hour, for
instance, expecting some savory mess, and to find one
15 quite tasteless and sapidless. Butter ill melted — that com-
monest of kitchen failures — puts me beside my tenour. —
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
20 pious man have done better to postpone his devotions to a
season when the blessing might be contemplated with less
perturbation? I quarrel with no man's tastes, nor would
set my thin face against those excellent things, in their
way, jollity and feasting. But as these exercises, however
25 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
30 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
192 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
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 be-
fitting 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 appli-
cation to them, or engross too great a portion of those good
things (which should be common) to our share, to be able
with any grace to say grace. To be thankful for what we io(
grasp exceeding our proportion is to add hypocrisy to in-
justice. A lurking sense of this truth is what makes the
performance of this duty so cold and spiritless a service at
most tables. In houses where the grace is as indispensable
as the napkin, who has not seen that never-settled question is
arise, as to who shall say it; while the good man of the house
and the visitor clergyman, or some other guest belike of next
authority from years or gravity, shall be bandying about
the office between them as a matter of compliment, each
of them not unwilling to shift the awkward burthen of an 20
equivocal duty from his own shoulders?
I once drank tea in company with two Methodist divines
of different persuasions, whom it was my fortune to intro-
duce to each other for the first time that evening. Before
the first cup was handed round, one of these reverend ^
gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solemnity,
whether he chose to say anything. It seems it is the cus-
tom with some sectaries to put up a short prayer before
this meal also. His reverend brother did not at first quite
apprehend him, but upon an explanation, with little less so
importance he made answ^er, that it was not a custom known
in his church: in which courteous evasion the other acqui-
GRACE BEFORE MEAT 193
escing for good manners' sake, or in compliance with a
weak brother, the supplementary or tea-grace was waived
altogether. With what spirit might not Lucian have
painted two priests, of his religion, playing into each other's
5 hands the compliment of performing or omitting a sacrifice,
— the hungry God meantime, doubtful of his incense, with
expectant nostrils hovering over the two flamens, and (as be-
tween two stools) going away in the end without his supper.
A short form upon these occasions is felt to want rever-
ie ence; a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape the charge of
impertinence. I do not quite approve of the epigrammatic
conciseness with which that equivocal wag (but my pleas-
ant school-fellow) C. V. L., when importuned for a grace,
used to inquire, first slyly leering down the table, '"Is
15 there no clergyman here?" — significantly adding, "Thank
God — ." Nor do I think our old form at school quite
pertinent, where we were used to preface our bald bread
and cheese suppers with a preamble connecting with that
humble blessing a recognition of benefits the most awful
^0 and overwhelming to the imagination which religion has
to offer. Non tunc illis erat locus} I remember we were
put to it to reconcile the phrase "good creatures," upon
which the blessing rested, with the fare set before us, wil-
fully understanding that expression in a low and animal
25 sense, — till some one recalled a legend, which told how in
the golden days of Christ's, the young Hospitallers were
wont to have smoking joints of roast meat upon their
nightly boards, till some pious benefactor, commiserating
the decencies, rather than the palates, of the children,
30 commuted our flesh for garments, and gave us — horresco
re f evens — trowsers instead of mutton.
1 Horace, Ars Poetica, 19.
194 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
MY FIRST PLAY.
At the north end of Cross Court there yet stands a portal,
of some architectural pretensions though reduced to humble
use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office.
This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you may not
know was the identical pit entrance to Old Drury — Gar-
rick's Drury — all of it that is left. I never pass it without
shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring
to the evening when I passed through it to see my -first play.
The afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going
(the elder folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease, lo
With what a beating heart did I watch from the window the
puddles, 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 announce it.
We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent us.
He kept the oil shop (now Da vies 's) at the corner of Feather-
stone Buildings, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave person,
lofty in speech, and had pretensions above his rank. He
associated in those days with John Palmer, the comedian,
whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy; if -John (which 20
is quite as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat of his
manner, from my godfather. He was also known to, and
visited, by Sheridan. It was to his house in Holborn that
young Brinsley brought his first wife on her elopement with
him from a boarding-school at Bath — the beautiful Maria 25
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 godfather could command an order for the then Drury-
lane theatre at pleasure — and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue 30
MY FIRST PLAY 195
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 orches-
tra and various avenues of that theatre — and he was content
it should be so. The honor of Sheridan's familiarity — or
supposed familiarity — was better to my godfather than
money.
F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen; grandiloquent,
yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest matters of
10 fact was Ciceronian. He had two Latin words almost con-
stantly in his mouth (how odd sounds Latin from an oil-
man's lips!), which my better knowledge since has enabled
me to correct. In strict pronunciation they should have
been sounded vice versa — but in those young years they
15 impressed me with more awe than they would now do,
read aright from Seneca or Varro — in his own peculiar
pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, or Anglicised,
into something like verse verse. By an imposing manner,
and the help of these distorted syllables, he climbed (but
20 that was little) to the highest parochial honors which St.
Andrew's has to bestow.
He is dead — and thus much I thought due to his memory,
both for my first orders (little wondrous talismans ! — slight
keys, and insignificant to outward sight, but opening to me
more than Arabian paradises!) and moreover, that by his
testamentary beneficence I came into possession of the only
landed property which I could ever call my own — situate
near the roadway village of pleasant Puckeridge, in Hert-
fordshire. When I journeyed down to take possession, and
30 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-
196» THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
quarters of an acre, with its commodious mansion in the
midst, with the feeling of an EngUsh freeholder that all
betwixt sky and centre was my own. The estate has passed
into more prudent hands, and nothing but an agrarian can
restore it.
In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncomfort-
able manager who abolished them ! — with one of these we
went. I remember the waiting at the door — not that which
is left — but between that and an inner door in shelter — O
when shall I be such an expectant again ! — ^with the cry of
nonpareils, an indispensable play-house accompaniment in
those days. As near as I can recollect, the fashionable
pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses then was,
"Chase some oranges, chase some numparels, chase a bill
of the play;" — chase jpro chuse. But when we got in, and is
I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my
imagination, which was soon to be disclosed the breath-
less anticipations I endured! I had seen something like
it in the plate prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe's
Shakspeare — the tent scene with Diomede — and a sight of 20
that plate can always bring back in a measure the feeling
of that evening. — The boxes at that time, full of well-
dressed women of quality, projected over the pit; and the
pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistening sub-
stance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), re-
sembling — a homely fancy — but I judged it to be sugar-
candy — yet, to my raised imagination, divested of its
homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy! — The
orchestra lights at length arose, those "fair Auroras!"
Once the bell sounded. It was to ring out yet once again —
and, incapable of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes
in a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It rang the
MY FIRST PLAY 197
second time. The curtain drew up — I was not past six
years old — and the play was Artaxerxes !
I had dabbled a little in the Universal History — the
ancient part of it — and here was the court of Persia. It
5 was being admitted to a sight of the past. I took no proper
interest in the action going on, for I understood not its im-
port — but I heard the word Darius, and I was in the midst
of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous
vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, passed before me. I
10 knew not players. I was in Persepolis for the time; and
the burning idol of their devotion almost converted me
into a worshipper. I was awestruck, and believed those
significations to be something more than elemental fires.
It was all enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure
15 has since visited me but in dreams. — Harlequin's Invasion
followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the
magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me a
piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying
his own head to be as sober a verity as the legend of
20 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 appre-
25 hend, upon Rich, not long since dead — ^but to my appre-
hension (too sincere for satire), Lun was as remote a piece
of antiquity as Lud — the father of a line of Harlequins —
transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through
countless ages. I saw the primeval Motley come from his
30 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.
198 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
My third play followed in quick succession. It was the
Way of the World. I think I must have sat at it as grave
as a judge: for, I remember, the hysteric affectations of
good Lady Wishfort affected me like some solemn tragic
passion. Robinson Crusoe followed; in which Crusoe, s
man Friday, and the parrot, were as good and authentic as
in the story. — ^The clownery and pantaloonery of these
pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I believe,
I no more laughed at them, than at the same age I should
have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque Gothic heads lo
(seeming to me then replete with devout meaning) that
gape, and grin, in stone around the inside of the old Round
Church (my church) of the Templars.
I saw these plays in the season 1781-2, when I was from
six to seven years old. After the intervention of six or 15
seven other years (for at school all playgoing 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 20
the latter tioes 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 — ^ 25
I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a ration*
alist. The same things were there materially; but the
emblem, the reference, was gone ! — -The green curtain was
no longer a veil, drawn between two worlds, the unfolding
of which was to bring back past ages, to present "a royal 30
1 Walton, Complete Angler.
DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE 199
ghost," — but a certain quantity of green baize, which was
to separate the audience for a given time from certain of
their fellow-men who were to come forward and pretend
those parts. The lights — the orchestra lights — came up a
5 clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring,
was now but a trick of the prompter's bell — ^which had been
like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice,* no hand
seen or guessed at which ministered to its warning. The
actors were men and women painted. I thought the fault
10 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 unfortunate for me that
the play of the evening was but an indifferent comedy, as it
gave me time to crop some unreasonable expectations,
15 which might have interfered with the genuine emotions with
which I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first ap-
pearance to me of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison
and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of
the scene ; and the theatre became to me, upon a new stock,
20 the most delightful of recreations.
DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE.
Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when
they were children : to stretch their imagination to the con-
ception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom
they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones
25 crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-
grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk
(a hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa
lived) which had been the scene — so at least it was generally
1 Wordsworth, To the Cuckoo.
200 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA |
believed in that part of the country — of the tragic incidents
which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad
of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole
story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen
fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the 5
great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts,
till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble
one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon it.
Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too ten-
der to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how 10
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 its owner, is
who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable
mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoin-
ing county; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had
been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in
a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, 20
and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments
stripped and carried away to the owner's other house,
where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some
one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately
at the Abbey, and stick them up iti Lady C.'s tawdry gilt 25
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 con-
course of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the
neighborhood for many miles round, to show their respect 30
for her memory, because she had been such a good and
religious woman; so good indeed that she knew all the
DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE 201
Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament
besides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told
what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grand-
mother Field once was: and how in her youth she was
5 esteemed the best dancer — here little Alice's little right foot
played an involuntary movement, till upon my looking
grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, in the
county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and
bowed her down with pain ; but it could never bend her good
10 spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, be-
cause she was so good and religious. Then I told how she
used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone
house ; and how she believed that an apparition of two in-
fants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the
15 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 ex-
20 panded 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 hoHdays, where I in
particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing
upon the old busts of the twelve Caesars, that had been
25 Emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to
live again, or I to be turned into marble with them; how I
could never be tired with roaming about that huge mansion,
with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings,
fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with the gild-
so ing almost rubbed out — sometimes in the spacious old-
fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless
when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross
202 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
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 melan-
choly-looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the red
berries, and the fir apples, which were good for nothing but
to look at — or in lying about upon the fresh grass, with all
the fine garden smells around me — or basking in the
orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too
along with the oranges and the limes in that grateful lo
warmth — or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in
the fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here and
there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the water
in silent state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings,
— I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than
in all the sweet flavors of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and
•such like common baits of children. Here John slyly de-
posited 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 20
as irrelevant. Then in somewhat a more heightened tone,
I told how, though their great-grandmother Field loved all
her grandchildren, yet in an especial manner she might be
said to love their uncle, John L , because he was so
handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us ; 25
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 30!
great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to be
always pent up within their boundaries — and how their
DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE 203
uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome,
to the admiration of everybody, but of their great-grand-
mother Field most especially; and how he used to carry
me upon his back when I was a lame-footed boy — ^for he
5 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 allowance
enough for him when he was impatient, and in pain, nor
remember sufficiently how considerate he had been to me
10 when I was lame-footed ; and how when he died, though he
had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a
great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and
death ; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at
first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me; and
15 though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as
I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him
all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved
him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness,
and wished him to be alive again, to be quarrelling with him
20 (for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him
again, and was as uneasy without him, as he, their poor
uncle, must have been when the doctor took off his limb.
Here the children fell a-crying, and asked if their little
mourning which they had on was not for uncle John, and
25 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
30 could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and
difficulty, and denial meant in maidens — when suddenly,
turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at
204 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I
became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or
whose that bright hair was ; and while I stood gazing, both
the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding,
and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful 5
features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, with-
out 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 10
only what might have been, and must wait upon the
tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages, before we have
existence, and a name" and immediately awaking, I
found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair,
where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget un- 15
changed by my side — but John L. (or James Elia) was
gone for ever.
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.
The casual sight of an old Play Bill, which I picked up the
other day — I know not by what chance it was preserved so
long — tempts me to call to mind a few of the Players, who 20
make the principal figure in it. It presents the cast of
parts in the Twelfth Night at the old Drury Lane Theatre
two-and-thirty years ago. There is something very touch-
ing in these old remembrances. They make us think how
we once used to read a Play Bill — not, as now peradventure, 25
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 30
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 205
and Phillimore — names of small account — had an im-
portance beyond what we can be content to attribute
now to the time's best actors. — "Orsino, by Mr. Barry-
more." — What a full Shakspearean sound it carries! how
5 fresh to memory arise the image, and the manner, of the
gentle actor!
Those who have only seen Mrs. Jordan within the last
ten or fifteen years, can have no adequate notion of her
performance of such parts as Ophelia ; Helena, in All's Well
10 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
15 outdone by her plaintive ones. There is no giving an
account how she delivered the disguised story of her love^
for Orsino. It was no set speech, that she had foreseen, so
as to weave it into an harmonious period, line necessarily
following line, to make up the music — ^yet I have heard it so
20 spoken, or rather read, not without its grace and beauty —
but, when she had declared her sister's history to be a
"blank," and that she "never told her love," there was a
pause, as if the story had ended — and then the image of the
"worm in the bud" came up as a new suggestion — and the
25 heightened image of "Patience" still followed after that,
as by some growing (and not mechanical) process, thought
springing up after thought, I would almost say, as they were
watered by her tears. So in those fine lines —
Write loyal cantos of contemned love —
30 Halloo your name to the reverberate hills — ^
1 Twelfth Night, II., iv., end.
2 Twelfth Night, I., v., 289.
206 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
there was no preparation made in the foregoing image for
that which was to follow. She used no rhetoric in her
passion; or it was nature's own rhetoric, most legitimate
then, when it seemed altogether without rule or law.
Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Renard), then in the pride of her
beauty, made an admirable Olivia. She was particularly
excellent in her unbending scenes in conversation with the \
Clown. I have seen some Olivias — and those very sensible
actresses too — who in these interlocutions have seemed to
set their wits at the jester, and to vie conceits with him in lo
downright emulation. But she used him for her sport, like
what he was, to trifle a leisure sentence or two with, and
then to be dismissed, and she to be the Great Lady still.
She touched the imperious fantastic humor of the character
with nicety. Her fine spacious person filled the scene. is
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 melan- 20
choly phrase if taken aright, reader — Bensley had most of
the swell of soul, was greatest in the delivery of heroic con-
ceptions, the emotions consequent upon the presentment
of a great idea to the fancy. He had the true poetical
enthusiasm — the rarest faculty among players. None that 25
I remember possessed even a portion of that fine madness
which he threw out in Hotspur's famous rant about glory,^
or the transports of the Venetian incendiary at the vision
of the fired city. His voice had the dissonance, and at
times the inspiriting effect of the trumpet. His gait was 30
uncouth and stiff, but no way embarrassed by affectation ;
1 I. Henry IV., I., iii., 201.
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 207
and the thorough-bred gentleman was uppermost in every
movement. He seized the moment of passion with the
greatest truth; like a faithful clock, never striking before the
time; never anticipating or leading you to anticipate. He
5 was totally destitute of trick and artifice. He seemed come
upon the stage to do the poet's message simply, and he did
it with as genuine fidelity as the nuncios in Homer deliver
the errands of the gods. He let the passion or the senti-
ment do its own work without prop or bolstering. He
10 would have scorned to mountebank it; and betrayed none
of that cleverness which is the bane of serious acting. For
this reason, his lago was the only endurable one which I
remember to have seen. No spectator from his action
could divine more of his artifice than Othello was supposed
15 to do. His confessions in soliloquy alone put you in pos-
session of the mystery. There were no by-intimations to
make the audience fancy their own discernment so much
greater than that of the Moor — ^who commonly stands like
a great helpless mark set up for mine Ancient, and a
20 quantity of barren spectators,^ to shoot their bolts at. The
lago of Bensley did not go to work so grossly. There was
a triumphant tone about the character, natural to a general
consciousness of power; but none of that petty vanity
which chuckles and cannot contain itself upon any little
25 successful stroke of its knavery — as is common with your
small villains, and green probationers in mischief. It did
not clap or crow before its time. It was not a man setting
his wits at a child, and w^inking all the while at other
children who are mightily pleased at being let into the
30 secret; but a consummate villain entrapping a noble nature
into toils, against which no discernment was available,
1 Hamlet, III., ii., 45.
208 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
where the manner was as fathomless as the purpose seemed
dark, and without motive. The part of Malvolio, in the
Twelfth Night, was performed by Bensley with a richness
and a dignity of which (to judge from some recent castings
of that character) the very tradition must be worn out from
the stage. No manager in those days would have dreamed
of giving it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. Parsons : when Bensley
was occasionally absent from the theatre, John Kemble
thought it no derogation to succeed to the part. Malvolio
is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes comic but by lo
accident. He is cold, austere, repelling; but dignified,
consistent, and, for what appears, rather of an over-
stretched morality. Maria describes him as a sort of Puri-
tan; and he might have worn his gold chain with honor in
one of our old round-head families, in the service of a Lam- 15
bert, or a Lady Fairfax. But his morality and his manners
are misplaced in lUyria. He is opposed to the proper
levities of the piece, and falls in the unequal contest. Still
his pride, or his gravity (call it which you will), is inherent,
and native to the man, not mock or affected, which latter 20
only are the fit objects to excite laughter. His quality is
at the best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor contemptible.
His bearing is lofty, a little above his station, but probably
not much above his deserts. We see no reason why he
should not have been brave, honorable, accomplished. His
careless committal of the ring to the ground (which he was
commissioned to restore to Cesario), bespeaks a generosity
of birth and feeling. His dialect on all occasions is that of
a gentleman and a man of education. We must not con-
found him with the eternal old, low steward of comedy.
He is master of the household to a great Princess ; a dignity
probably conferred upon him for other respects than age
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 209
or length of service. Olivia, at the first indication of his
supposed madness, declares that she "would not have him
miscarry for half of her dowry." Does this look as if the
character was meant to appear little or insignificant? Once,
indeed, she accuses him to his face — of what? — of being
"sick of self-love," — but with a gentleness and considerate-
ness which could not have been, if she had not thought that
this particular infirmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke
to the knight, and his sottish revellers, is sensible and
10 spirited; and when we take into consideration the unpro-
tected condition of his mistress, and the strict regard with
which her state of real or dissembled mourning would draw
the eyes of the world upon her house-affairs, Malvolio
might feel the honor of the family in some sort in his keep-
15 ing ; as it appears not that Olivia had any more brothers, or
kinsmen, to look to it — for Sir Toby had dropped all such
nice respects at the buttery hatch. That Malvolio was
meant to be represented as possessing estimable qualities,
the expression of the Duke in his anxiety to have him
20 reconciled, almost infers: "Pursue him, and entreat him
to a peace." Even in his abused state of chains and dark-
ness, a sort of greatness seems never to desert him. He
argues highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas,^ and
philosophises gallantly upon his straw. There must have
25 been some shadow of worth about the man; he must have
been something more than a mere vapor — a thing of straw,
or Jack in oflSce — before Fabian and Maria could have
ventured sending him upon a courting-errand to Olivia.
1 Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl ?
Mai. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.
Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion?
Mai. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his opinion.
Twelfth Night, IV., Sc. ii. (L.)
210 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
There was some consonancy^ (as he would say) in th^e un-
dertaking, or the jest would have been too bold even for
that house of misrule.
Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part an air of Span-
ish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like an old
Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opinionated; but his
superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon a sense of
worth. There was something in it beyond the coxcomb.
It was big and swelling, but you could not be sure that it
was hollow. You might wish to see it taken down, but
you felt that it was upon an elevation. He was magnificent
from the outset; but when the decent sobrieties of the char-
acter began to give way, and the poison of self-love, in his
conceit of the Countess's affection, gradually to work, you
would have thought that the hero of La Mancha in person is
stood before you. How he went smiling to himself! with
what ineffable carelessness would he twirl his gold chain!
what a dream it was ! you were infected with the illusion,
and did not wish that it should be removed ! you had no
room for laughter! if an unseasonable reflection of morality 20
obtruded itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable infirmity
of man's nature, that can lay him open to such frenzies —
but in truth you rather admired than pitied the lunacy
while it lasted — you felt that an hour of such mistake was
worth an age with the eyes open. Who would not wish 25
to live but for a day in the conceit of such a lady's love as
Olivia? Why, the Duke would have given his principality
but for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or waking, to have
been so deluded. The man seemed to tread upon air, to
taste manna, to walk with his head in the clouds, to mate so
Hyperion. O! shake not the castles of his pride — endure
1 Twelfth Nigth, II., v., 141.
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 211
yet for a season, bright moments of confidence — "stand
still, ye watches of the element,"^ that Malvolio may be
still in fancy fair Olivia's lord — but fate and retribution
say no — I hear the mischievous titter of Maria— the witty
5 taunts of Sir Toby — the still more insupportable triumph
of the foolish knight — the counterfeit Sir Topas is un-
masked — and "thus the whirligig of time,^ as the true
clown hath it, "brings in his revenges."^ I confess that I
never saw the catastrophe of this character, while Bensley
10 played it, without a kind of tragic interest. There was
good foolery too. Few now remember Dodd. What an
Aguecheek the stage lost in him! Lovegrove, who came
nearest to the old actors, revived the character some few
seasons ago, and made it sufficiently grotesque ; but Dodd
15 was it, as it came out of nature's hands. It might be said
to remain in puris naturalihus. In expressing slowness of
apprehension this actor surpassed all others. You could
see the first dawn of an idea stealing slowly over his coun-
tenance, climbing up by little and little, with a painful proc-
20 ess, till it cleared up at last to the fulness of a twilight con-
ception — its highest meridian. He seemed to keep back
his intellect, as some have had the power to retard their
pulsation. The balloon takes less time in filling, than it
took to cover the expansion of his broad moony face over
25 all its quarters with expression. A glimmer of under-
standing would appear in a corner of his eye, and for lack
of fuel go out again. A part of his forehead would catch
a little intelligence, and be a long time in communicating
it to the remainder.
30 I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than five-
1 Marlowe, Edward II., V., i., 66.
2 Twelfth Night, V., i., 385.
212 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
and-twenty years ago, that walking in the gardens of Gray's
Inn they were then far finer than they are now — the
accursed Verulam Buildings had not encroached upon all
the east side of them, cutting out delicate green crankles,
and shouldering away one or two of the stately alcoves of 5
the terrace — the survivor stands gaping and relationless as
if it remembered its brother — they are still the best gardens
of any of the Inns of Court, my beloved Temple not for-
gotten — ^have the gravest character, their aspect being
altogether reverend and law-breathing — Bacon has left the 10
impress of his foot upon their gravel walks taking my ,
afternoon solace on a summer day upon the aforesaid
terrace, a comely sad personage came towards me, whom,
from his grave air and deportment, I judged to be one of
the old Benchers of the Inn. He had a serious thoughtful 15
forehead, and seemed to be in meditations of mortality.
As I have an instinctive awe of old Benchers, I was passing
him with that sort of subindicative token of respect which
one is apt to demonstrate towards a venerable stranger, and
which rather denotes an inclination to greet him, than any 20
positive motion of the body to that effect — a species of
humility and will-worshp which I observe, nine times out
of ten, rather puzzles than pleases the person it is offered to
— when the face turning full upon me strangely identified .
itself with that of Dodd. Upon close inspection I was not 25
mistaken. But could this sad thoughtful countenance be
the same vacant face of folly which I had hailed so often
under circumstances of gaiety; which I had never seen
without a smile, or recognized but as the usher of mirth; ;
that looked out so formally fiat in Foppington, so frothily 30
pert in Tattle, so impotently busy in Backbite ; so blankly
divested of all meaning, or resolutely expressive of none, in
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 213
Acres, in Fribble, and a thousand agreeable impertinences?
Was this the face — full of thought and carefulness — that
had so often divested itself at will of every trace of either to
give me diversion, to clear my cloudy face for two or three
5 hours at least of its furrows? Was this the face — manly,
sober, intelligent — ^which I had so often despised, made
mocks at, made merry with? The remembrance of the
freedoms which I had taken with it came upon me with a
reproach of insult. I could have asked it pardon. I
10 thought it looked upon me with a sense of injury. There
is something strange as well as sad in seeing actors — ^your
pleasant fellows particularly — subjected to and suffering
the common lot — their fortunes, their casualties, the deaths,
seem to belong to the scene, their actions to be amenable to
15 poetic justice only. We can hardly connect them with more
I awful responsibilities. The death of this fine actor took
f place shortly after this meeting. He had quitted the stage
some months ; and as I learned afterwards, had been in the
habit of resorting daily to these gardens almost to the day of
20 his decease. In these serious walks probably he was divest-
ing himself of many scenic and some real vanities — wean-
ing himself from the frivolities of the lesser and the greater
theatre — doing gentle penance for a life of no very repre-
hensible fooleries,— taking off by degrees the buffoon mask
25 which he might feel he had worn too long — and rehearsing
for a more solemn cast of part. Dying, he "put on the
weeds of Dominic."^
If few can remember Dodd,^ many yet living will not
1 Paradise Lost, III., 479.
2 Dodd. was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice collection
of old English literature. I should judge him to have been a man of
wit. I know one instance of an impromptu which no length of study
could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had seen him one
evening in Aguecheek, and, recognising Dodd the next day in Fleet
214 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
easily forget the pleasant creature, who in those days
enacted the part of the Clown to Dodd's Sir Andrew. —
Richard, or rather Dicky Suett — ^for so in his lifetime he
delighted to be called, and time hath ratified the appella-
tion — lieth buried on the north side of the cemetery of 5
Holy Paul, to whose service his nonage and tender years
were dedicated. There are who do yet remember him at
that period — his pipe clear and harmonious. He would
often speak of his chorister days, when he was "cherub
Dicky." 10
What clipped his wings, or made it expedient that he
should exchange the holy for the profane state ; whether he
had lost his good voice (his best recommendation to that
office), like Sir John, "with hallooing and singing of
anthems;"^ or whether he was adjudged to lack something, 15
even in those early years, of the gravity indispensable to an
occupation which professeth to "commerce with the skies"^
— I could never rightly learn; but we find him, after the
probation of a tw^elvemonth or so, reverting to a secular
condition, and become one of jus. 20
I think he was not altogether of that timber out of which
cathedral seats and sounding-boards are hewed. But if a
glad heart — kind and therefore glad — be any part of sanc-
tity, then might the robe of Motley, with which he invested
himself with so much humility after his deprivation, and 25
which he wore so long with so much blameless satisfaction
to himself and to the public, be accepted for a surplice — his
white stole, and albe.
Street, was irresistibly impelled to take off his hat and salute him as
the identical Knight of the preceding evening with a "Save you, Sir
Andrew. ' ' Dodd, not at all disconcerted at this unusual address from
a stranger, with a courteous half-rebuking wave of the hand, put him
off with an "Away, jPooZ." (L.)
1 II. Henry IV., I., ii., 213.
2 II, Penseroso, 1. 39.
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 215
The first fruits of his secularization was an engagement
upon the boards of Old Drury, at which theatre he com-
menced, as I have been told, with adopting the manner of
Parsons in old men's characters. At the period in which
5 most of us knew him, he was no more an imitator than he
was in any true sense himself inimitable.
He was the Robin Good -Fellow of the stage. He came
in to trouble all things with a welcome perplexity, himself
no whit troubled for the matter. He was known, like Puck,
10 by his note — Ha! Ha! Ha! — sometimes deepening to
Ho! Ho! Ho! with an irresistible accession derived per-
haps remotely from his ecclesiastical education, foreign to
his prototype, of — O La! Thousands of hearts yet respond
' to the chuckling La! of Dicky Suett, brought back to
15 their remembrance by the faithful transcript of his friend
Mathews's mimicry. The "force of nature could no farther
go."^ He drolled upon the stock of these two syllables
richer than the cuckoo.
Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his
20 composition. Had he had but two grains (nay, half a
grain) of it, he could never have supported himself upon
those two spider's strings, which served him (in the latter
part of his unmjixed existence) as legs. A doubt or a
scruple must have made him totter, a sigh have puffed him
25 down ; the weight of a frown had staggered him, a wrinkle
made him lose his balance. But on he went, scrambling
upon those airy stilts of his, with Robin Good-Fellow,
'^thorough brake, thorough briar, "^ reckless of a scratched
face or a torn doublet.
30 Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed his fools and
1 Dryden, Under Mr. Milton's Picture.
• 2 Midsummer Night's Dream, II., i., 3.
216 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
jesters. They have all the true Suett stamp, a loose and
shambling gait, a slippery tongue, this last the ready mid-
wife to a without-pain-delivered jest; in words, light as
air, venting truths deep as the centre; with idlest rhymes
tagging conceit when busiest, singing with Lear in the &
tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery-hatch.
Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of
personal favorites with the town than any actors before or
after. The difference, I take it, was this : — Jack was more
beloved for his sweet, good-natured, moral pretensions, lo
Dicky was more liked for his sweet, good-natured, no
pretensions at all. Your whole conscience stirred with
Bannister's performance of Walter in the Children in the
Wood — but Dicky seemed like a thing, as Shakspeare says
of Love, too young to know what conscience is. He put is
us into Vesta's days. Evil fled before him — not as from
Jack, as from an antagonist, — but because it could not
touch him, any more than a cannon-ball a fly. He was
delivered from the burthen of that death ;^ and when Death
came himself, not in metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it is recorded 20
of him by Robert Palmer, who kindly watched his exit, that
he received the last stroke, neither varying his accustomed
tranquillity, nor tune, with the simple exclamation, worthy
to have been recorded in his epitaph — La! O La!
Bobby! 25
The elder Palmer (of stage-treading celebrity) commonly
played Sir Toby in those days; but there is a solidity of
wit in the jests of that half-Falstaff which he did not quite
fill out. He was as much too showy, as Moody (who some-
times took the part) was dry and sottish. In sock or buskin 30
there was an air of swaggering gentility about Jack Palmer.
1 KoMANS, vii., 24.
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 217
He was a gentleman with a slight infusion of the footman.
His brother Bob (of recenter memory), who was his shadow
in everything while he lived, and dwindled into less than a
shadow afterwards — was a gentleman wdth a little stronger
infusion of the latter ingredient; that was all. It is
amazing how a little of the more or less makes a difference
in these things. When you saw Bobby in the Duke's
Servant,^ you said, what a pity such a pretty fellow was
only a servant. When you saw Jack figuring in -Captain
Absolute, you thought you could trace his promotion to
some lady of quality who fancied the handsome fellow in
his top-knot, and had bought him a commission. There-
fore Jack in Dick Amlet was insuperable.
Jack had two voices, — both plausible, hypocritical, and
insinuating; but his secondary or supplemental voice still
more decisively histrionic than his common one. It was
reserved for the spectator; and the dramatis personse w^ere
supposed to know nothing at all about it. The lies of
young Wilding, and the sentiments in Joseph Surface, were
thus marked out in a sort of italics to the audience. This
secret correspondence with the company before th@ curtain
(which is the bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely
happy effect in some kinds of comedy, in the more highly
artificial comedy of Congreve or of Sheridan especially,
where the absolute sense of reality (so indispensable to
scenes of interest) is not required, or would rather interfere
to diminish your pleasure. The fact is, you do not believe
in such characters as Surface — the villain of artificial
comedy — even while you read or see them. If you did,
they would shock and not divert you. When Ben, in
Love for Love, returns from sea, the following exquisite
1 High Life Below Stairs, Garrick. (L.)
218 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
dialogue occurs at his first meeting with his father: —
Sir Sampson. Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben,
since I saw thee.
Ben. Ey, ey, been! Been far enough, an that be all. — Well,
father, and how do all at home? how does brother Dick, and
brother Val?
Sir Sampson. Dick! body o' me, Dick has been dead these
two years. I writ you word when you were at Leghorn.
Ben. Mess, that's true; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's dead,
as you say — Well, and how?— I have a many questions to ask lo
you—
Here is an instance of insensibility which in real life
would be revolting, or rather in real life could not have
co-existed with the warm-hearted temperament of the char-
acter. But when you read it in the spirit with which such 15
playful selections and specious combinations rather than
strict metaphrases of nature should be taken, or when you
saw Bannister play it, it neither did, nor does, wound the
moral sense at all. For what is Ben — the pleasant sailor
which Bannister gives us — but a piece of satire — a creation 20
of Congreve's fancy — a dreamy combination of all the
accidents of a sailor's character — his contempt of money —
his credulity to women — with that necessary estrangement
from home which it is just within the verge of credibility to
suppose might produce such an hallucination as is here 25
described. We never think the worse of Ben for it, or feel
it as a stain upon his character. But when an actor comes,
and instead of the delightful phantom — the creature dear
to half-belief — ^which Bannister exhibited — displays before
our eyes a downright concretion of a Wapping sailor — a 30
jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar — and nothing else — when
instead of investing it with a delicious confusedness of the
head, and a veering undirected goodness of purpose — ^he
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 219
gives to it a downright daylight understanding, and a full
consciousness of its actions; thrusting forward the sensi-
bilities of the character with a pretense as if it stood upon
nothing else, and was to be judged by them alone — ^we feel
the discord of the thing ; the scene is disturbed ; a real man
has got in among the dramatis personae, and puts them out.
We want the sailor turned out. We feel that his true place
is not behind the curtain but in the first or second gallery.
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS.
IN A LETTER TO B. F. ESQ., AT SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES.
My DEAR F. — ^When I think how welcome the sight of a
10 letter from the world where you were born must be to you
in that strange one to which you have been transplanted, I
feel some compunctious visitings at my long silence. But,
indeed, it is no easy effort to set about a correspondence
at our distance. The weary world of waters between us
15 oppresses the imagination. It is difficult to conceive how a
scrawl of mine should ever stretch across it. It is a sort of
presumption to expect that one's thoughts should live so far.
It is like writing for posterity; and reminds me of one of
Mrs. Rowe's superscriptions, ''Alcander to Strephon, in the
20 Shades." Cowley's Post-Angel is no more than would be
expedient in such an intercourse. One drops a packet at
Lombard Street, and in twenty-four hours a friend in
Cumberland gets it as fresh as if it came in ice. It is only
like whispering through a long trumpet. But suppose a
25 tube let down from the moon, with yourself at one end,
and the man at the other; it would be some balk to the
spirit of conversation, if you knew that the dialogue ex-
changed with that interesting thepsophist would take two
220 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
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 comprise th 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 sup-
pose, is that they shall be true. But what security can it
I have that what I now send you for truth shall not before
you get it unaccountably turn into a lie? For instance,
our mutual friend P. is at this present writing — my Now —
in good health, and enjoys a fair share of worldly reputa-
tion. 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 trans-
port (i. e., at hearing he was well, etc.), or at least con-
siderably to modify it. I am going to the play this even-
ing, to have a laugh with Munden. You have no theatre,
I think you told me, in your land of d d realities. You
naturally lick your lips, and envy me my felicity. Think
but a moment, and you will correct the hateful emotion.
Why, it is Sunday morning with you, and 1823. This con-
fusion of tenses, this grand solecism of two presents, is in a
degree common to all postage. But if I sent you word to
Bath or the Devizes, that I was expecting the aforesaid
treat this evening, though at the moment you received the
intelligence my full feast of fun would be over, yet there 30
would be for a day or two after, as you would well know,
a smack, a relish left upon my mental palate, which would
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 221
give rational encouragement for you to foster a portion at
least of the disagreeable passion, which it was in part my
intention to produce. But ten months hence, your envy
or your sympathy would be as useless as a passion spent
[5 upon the dead. Not only does truth, in these long inter-
vals, unessence herself, but (what is harder) one cannot
venture a crude fiction for the fear that it may ripen into a
truth upon the voyage. What a wild improbable banter I
put upon you some three years since of Will Weatherall
10 having married a servant-maid ! I remember gravely con-
sulting you how we were to receive her — for Will's wife was
in no case to be rejected ; and your no less serious replica-
tion in the matter: how tenderly you advised an abstemious
introduction of literary topics before the lady, with a cau-
15 tion not to be too forward in bringing on the carpet matters
more within the sphere of her intelligence ; your deliberate
judgment, or rather wise suspension of sentence, how far
jacks, and spits, and mops could with propriety be intro-
duced as subjects; whether the conscious avoiding of all
20 such matters in discourse would not have a worse look than
the taking of them casually in our way ; in what manner we
should carry ourselves to our maid Becky, Mrs. William
Weatherall being by; whether we should show more
delicacy, and a truer sense of respect for Will's wife, by
25 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 remem-
ber, on both sides, which you did me the favor to state with
30 the precision of a lawyer, united to the tenderness of a
friend. I laughed in my sleeve at your solemn pleadings,
when lo! while I was valuing myself upon this flam put
222 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
upon you in New South Wales, the devil in England,
jealous possibly of any lie-children not his own, or working
after my copy, has actually instigated our friend (not three
days since) to the commission of a matrimony, which I had
only conjured up for your diversion. William Weatherall
has married Mrs. Cotterel's maid. But to take it in its
truest sense, you will see, my dear F., that news from me
must become history to you; which I neither profess to
write, nor indeed care much for reading. No person,
under a diviner, can with any prospect of veracity, conduct
a correspondence at such an arm's length. Two prophets,
indeed, might thus interchange intelligence with effect; the
epoch of the writer (Habakkuk) falling in with the true
present time of the deceiver (Daniel) ; but then we are no
prophets.
Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with that.
This kind of dish, above all, requires to be served up hot:
or sent off in water-plates, that your friend may have it
almost as warm as yourself. If it have time to cool, it is
the most tasteless of all cold meats. I have often smiled at
a conceit of the late Lord C. It seems that travelling some-
where about Geneva, he came to some pretty green spot, or
nook, where a willow, or something, hung so fantastically
and invitingly over a stream — was it? — or a rock? — no
matter — but the stillness and the repose, after a weary 25
journey 'tis likely, in a languid moment of his lordship's hot
restless life, so took his fancy, that he could imagine no
place so proper, in the event of his death, to lay his bones
in. This was all very natural and excusable as a senti-
ment, and shows his character in a very pleasing light. But aoi
when from a passing sentiment it came to be an act; and
when, by a positive testamentary disposal, his remains
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 22^
were actually carried all that way from England ; who was
there, some desperate sentimentalists excepted, that did not
ask the question. Why could not his lordship have found a
spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree as green and
5 pendant, with a stream as emblematic to his purpose, in
Surrey, in Dorset, or in Devon? Conceive the sentiment
boarded up, freighted, entered at the Custom House (start-
ling the tide-waiters with the novelty), hoisted into a ship.
Conceive it pawed about and handled between the rude
10 jests of tarpaulin ruffians — a thing of its delicate texture —
the salt bilge wetting it till it became as vapid as a damaged
lustring. Suppose it in material danger (mariners have
some superstition about sentiments) of being tossed over
in a fresh gale to some propitiatory shark (spirit of St.
15 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
20 t'other village — ^waiting a passport here, a license there; the
sanction of the magistracy in this district, the concurrence
of the ecclesiastics in that canton; till at length it arrives
at its destination, tired out and jaded, from a brisk senti-
ment, into a feature of silly pride or tawdry, senseless
25 affectation. How few sentiments, my dear F., I am afraid
we can set down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite seaworthy.
Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though con-
temptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which
should irradiate a right friendly epistle — ^your puns and
30 small jests are, I apprehend, extremely circumscribed in
their sphere of action. They are so far from a capacity of
being packed up and sent beyond sea, they will scarce
224 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
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 intellectual atmos-
phere of the bystanders: or this last, is the fine slime of
js^ilus — the melior lutus, — whose maternal recipiency is as
necessary as the sol pater to their equivocal generation.^ A
pun hath a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack with
it; you can no more transmit it in its pristine 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 lo
answered? Not but it was new to his hearing, but it did
not seem to come new from you. It did not hitch in. It
was like picking up at a village ale-house a two days old
newspaper. You have not seen it before, but you resent
the stale thing as an affront. This sort of merchandise is
above all requires a quick return. A pun, and its recog-
nitory laugh, must be co-instantaneous. The one is the
brisk lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A moment's
interval, and the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from
a friend's face as from a mirror. Who would consult his 20
sweet visnomy, if the polished surface were two or three
minutes (not to speak of twelve months, my dear F.) in
giving back its copy?
I cannot imagine to myself whereabout you are. When
I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's island comes across me. 25
Sometimes you seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. I see
Diogenes prying among you with his perpetual fruitless
lantern. What must you be willing by this time to give for
the sight of an honest man! You must almost have for-
gotten how we look. And tell me, what your Sydneyites 30
do? are they th**v*ng all day long? Merciful heaven!
1 Antony and Cleopatra, I., iii., 69; II,, vii., 29.
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 225
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-
5 pocket ! Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely
provided a 'priori; but if the hue and cry were once up,
they would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the ex-
pertest loco-motor in the colony. — We hear the most im-
probable tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that the
10 young Spartans among you are born with six fingers, which
spoils their scanning? — It must look very odd; but use
reconciles. For their scansion, it is less to be regretted, for
if they take it into their heads to be poets, it is odds but they
turn out, the greater part of them, vile plagiarists. — Is there
15 much difference to see to between the son of a th**f, and
the grandson? or where does the taint stop? Do you
bleach in three or in four generations? — I have many ques-
tions to put, but ten Delphic voyages can be made in a
shorter time than it will take to satisfy my scruples. — Do
20 you grow your own hemp ! — What is your staple trade, ex-
clusive of, the national profession, I mean? Your lock-
smiths, I take it, are some of your great capitalists.
I am insensibly chattering to you as familiarly as when
we used to exchange good-morrows out of our old contigu-
25 ous windows, in pump-famed Hare-court in the Temple.
Why did you ever leave that quiet corner? — Why did I? —
with its complement of four poor elms, from whose smoke-
dried barks, the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first
lady-birds ! , My heart is as dry as that spring sometimes
30 proves in a thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is
between us ; a length of passage enough to render obsolete
the phrases of our English letters before they can reach you.
226 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
But while I talk, I think you hear me, — thoughts dallying
with vain surmise —
Aye me! while thee the seas and sounding shores
Hold far away.^
Come back, before I am grown into a very old man, so
as you shall hardly know me. Come, before Bridget walks
on crutches. Girls whom you left children have become
sage matrons, while you are tarrying there. The blooming
Miss W r (you remember Sally W r) called upon us
yesterday, an aged crone. Folks, whom you knew, die off lo
every year. Formerly, I thought that death was wearing
out, — I stood ramparted about with so many healthy
friends. The departure of J. W., two springs back, cor-
rected my delusion. Since then the old divorcer has been
busy. If you do not make haste to return, there will be is
little left to greet you, of me, or mine.
ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST
CENTURY.
The artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is quite
extinct on our stage. Congreve and Farquhar show their
heads once in seven years only, to be exploded and put
down instantly. The times cannot bear them. Is it for a 20
few wild speeches, an occasional license of dialogue? I
think not altogether. The business of their dramatic
characters will not stand the moral test. We screw every-
thing up to that. Idle gallantry in a fiction, a dream, the
passing pageant of an evening, startles us in the same way 25
as the alarming indications of profligacy in a son or ward
in real life should startle a parent or guardian. We have
1 Lycidas, 153-155.
ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY 227
no such middle emotions as dramatic interests left. We
see a stage libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours'
duration, and of no after consequence, with the severe eyes
which inspect real vices with their bearings upon two
6 worlds. We are spectators to a plot or intrigue (not reduci-
ble in life to the point of strict morality) and take it all for
truth. We substitute a real for a dramatic person, and
judge him accordingly. We try him in our courts, from
which there is no appeal to the dramatis personoe, his peers.
10 We have been spoiled with — not sentimental comedy — but
a tyrant far more pernicious to our pleasures which has suc-
ceeded to it, the exclusive and all-devouring drama of com-
mon life; where the moral point is everything; where, in-
stead of the fictitious half-believed personages of the stage
15 (the phantoms of old comedy) we recognise ourselves, our
brothers, aunts, kinsfolks, allies, patrons, enemies,— the
same as in life, — with an interest in what is going on so
hearty and substantial, that we cannot afford our moral
judgment, in its deepest and most vital results, to compro-
20 mise or slumber for a moment. What is there transacting,
by no modification is made to affect us in any other manner
than the same events or characters would do in our relation-
ships of life. We carry our fireside concerns to the theatre
with us. We do not go thither, like our ancestors, to escape
25 from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our ex-
perience of it; to make assurance double, and take a bond
of fate.^ We must live our toilsome lives twice over, as it
was the mournful privilege of Ulysses to descend twice to
the shades. All that neutral ground of character, which
JO stood between vice and virtue; or which in fact was in-
different to neither, where neither properly was called im
1 Macbeth, IV., i., 83.
228 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
question; that happy breathing-place from the brethren of
a perpetual moral questioning — the sanctuary and quiet
Alsatia of hunted casuistry — is broken up and disfranchised
as injurious to the interests of society. The privileges of
the place are taken away by law. We dare not dally with
images, or names, of wrong. We bark like foolish dogs at
shadows. We dread infection from the scenic representa-
tion of disorder; and fear a painted pustule. In our
anxiety that our morality should not take cold, we wrap it
up in a great blanket surtout of precaution against the lo
breeze and sunshine.
I confess for myself that (with no great delinquencies to
answer for) I am glad for a season to take an airing beyond
the diocese of the strict conscience,— not to live always in
the precincts of the law courts,— but now and then, for a is
dream-while or so, to imagine a world with no meddling
restrictions — to get into recesses, whither the hunter cannot
follow me —
Secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove — ^
I come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher and
more healthy for it. I wear my shackles more contentedly
for having respired the breath of an imaginary freedom. I
do not know how it is with others, but I feel the better 25
always for the perusal of one of Congreve's— nay, why
should I not add even of Wycherley's— comedies. I am
the gayer at least for it; and I could never connect those
sports of a witty fancy in any shape with any result to be
drawn from them to imitation in real life. They are a sc
world of themselves almost as much as fairyland. Take
1 II Penseroso, 28fl.
ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY 229
one of their characters, male or female (with few exceptions
they are alike), and place it in a modem play, and my
virtuous indignation shall rise against the profligate wretch
as warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire; because in
5 a modern play I am to judge of the right and the wrong.
The standard of 'police is the measure of political justice.
The atmosphere will blight it, it cannot live here. It has
got into a moral world, where it has no business, from
which it must needs fall headlong; as dizzy and incapable
10 of making a stand, as a Swedenborgian bad spirit that has
wandered unawares into the sphere of one of his Good
Men, or Angels. But in its own world do we feel the
creature is so very bad? — ^The Fainalls and the Mirabels,
the Dorimants and the Lady Touchwoods, in their own
15 sphere, do not offend my moral sense; in fact, they do not
appeal to it at all. They seem engaged in their proper
element. They break through no laws, or conscientious
restraints. They know of none. They have got out of
Christendom into the land — what shall I call it? — of
20 cuckoldry — the Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is
duty, and the manners perfect freedom. It is altogether a
speculative scene of things, which has no reference whatever
to the world that is. No good person can be justly offended
as a spectator, because no good person suffers on the stage.
25 Judged morally, every character in these plays — the few
exceptions only are mistakes — is alike essentially vain and
worthless. The great art of Congreve is especially shown
in this, that he has entirely excluded from the scenes,—
some little generosities in the part of Angelica perhaps
30 excepted, — not only anything like a faultless character, but
any pretensions to goodness or good feelings whatsoever.
Whether he did this designedly, or instinctively, the effect
230 . THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
is as happy, as the design (if design) was bold. I used to
wonder at the strange power which his Way of the World
in particular possesses of interesting you all along in the
pursuits of characters, for whom you absolutely care nothing
— for you neither hate nor love his personages — and I think 5
it is owing to this very indifference for any, that you endure
the whole. He has spread a privation of moral light, I will
call it, rather than by the ugly name of palpable darkness,
over his creations ; and his shadows flit before you without
distinction or preference. Had he introduced a good 10
character, a single gush of moral feeling, a revulsion of the
judgment to actual life and actual duties, the impertinent
Goshen would have only lighted to the discovery of de-
formities, which now are none, because we think them none.
Translated into real life, the characters of his, and his 15
friend Wycherley's dramas, are profligates and strumpets, —
the business of their brief existence, the undivided pursuit
of lawless gallantry. No other spring of action, or possible
motive of conduct, is recognised ; principles which, univer-
sally acted upon, must reduce this frame of things to a 20
chaos. But we do them wrong in so translating them.
No such effects are produced in their world. When we are
among them, we are amongst a chaotic people. We are not
to judge them by our usages. No reverend institutions are
insulted by their proceedings, — for they have none among 2s
them. No peace of families is violated, — for no family ties
exist among them. No purity of the marriage bed is
stained, — for none is supposed to have a being. No deep
affections are disquieted, — no holy wedlock bands are
snapped asunder, — for affection's depth and wedded faith 30
are not of the growth of that soil. There is neither right
nor wrong, — ^gratitude or its opposite, — claim or duty, —
ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY 231
paternity or sonship. Of what consequence is it to virtue,
or how is she at all concerned about it, whether Sir Simon,
or Dapperwit, steal away Miss Martha ; or who is the father
of Lord Froth's, or Sir Paul Pliant's children?
5 The whole is a passing pageant, where we should sit as
unconcerned at the issues, for life or death, as at a battle of
the frogs and mice. But like Don Quixote, we take part
against the puppets, and quite as impertinently. We dare
not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme, out of which our
10 coxcombical moral sense is for a little transitory ease ex-
cluded. We have not the courage to imagine a state of
things for which there is neither reward nor punishmento
We cling to the painful necessities of shame and blame.
We would indict our very dreams.
15 Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant upon
growing old, it is something to have seen the School for
Scandal in its glory. This comedy grew out of Congreve
and Wycherley, but gathered some allays of the sentimental
comedy which followed theirs. It is impossible that it
20 should be now acted, though it continues, at long intervals,
to be announced in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer
played it at least, was Joseph Surface. When I remember
the gay boldness, the graceful solemn plausibility, the
measured step, the insinuating voice — to express it in a
25 word — the downright acted villany of the part, so different
from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness, — the
hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy, — which made Jack so
deservedly a favorite in that character, I must needs con-
clude the present generation of playgoers more virtuous
30 than myself, or more dense. I freely confess that he
divided the palm with me with his better brother; that, in
fact, I liked him quite as well. Not but there are passages,
232 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
— like that, for instance, where Joseph is made to refuse a
pittance to a poor relation, — incongruities which Sheridan
was forced upon by the attempt to join the artificial with
the sentimental comedy, either of which must destroy the
other — but over these obstructions Jack's manner floated 5
him so lightly, that a refusal from him no more shocked
you, than the easy compliance of Charles gave you in reality
any pleasure; you got over the paltry question as quickly
as you could, to get back into the regions of pure comedy,
where no cold moral reigns. The highly artificial manner 10
of Palmer in this character counteracted every disagreeable
impression which you might have received from the con-
trast, supposing them real, between the two brothers. You
did not believe in Joseph with the same faith with which
you believed in Charles. The latter was a pleasant reality, is
the former a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The
comedy, I have said, is incongruous; a mixture of Con-
greve with sentimental incompatibilities: the gaiety upon
the whole is buoyant; but it required the consummate art
of Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements. 20
A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now, would
not dare to do the part in the same manner. He would
instinctively avoid every turn which might tend to un-
realise, and so to make the character fascinating. He must
take his cue from his spectators, who would expect a bad 25
man and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other as
the death-beds of those geniuses are contrasted in the
prints, which I am sorry to say have disappeared from the
windows of my old friend Carrington Bowles, of St. Paul's
Churchyard memory — (an exhibition as venerable as the 30
adjacent cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad and good
man at the hour of death ; where the ghastly apprehensions
ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY 233
of the former, — and truly the grim phantom with his reality
of a toasting-fork is not to be despised, — so finely contrast
with the meek complacent kissing of the rod, — taking it in
like honey and butter, — ^with which the latter submits to
the scythe of the gentle bleeder. Time, who wields his
lancet with the apprehensive finger of a popular young
ladies' surgeon. What flesh, like loving grass,^ would not
covet to meet half-way the stroke of such a delicate mower?
— John Palmer was twice an actor in this exquisite part.
He was playing to you all the while that he was playing
upon Sir Peter and his lady. You had the first intimation
of a sentiment before it was on his lips. His altered voice
was meant to you, and you were to suppose that his fic-
titious co-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all
of it. What was it to you if that half-reality, the husband,
wias over-reached by the puppetry — or the thin thing (Lady
Teazle's reputation) was persuaded it was dying of a
plethory? The fortunes of Othello and Desdemona was
not concerned in it. Poor Jack has passed from the stage
in good time, that he did not live to this our age of serious-
ness. The pleasant old Teazle King, too, is gone in good
time. His manner would scarce have past current in our
day. We must love or hate — acquit or condemn — censure
or pity — exert our detestable coxcombry of moral judgment
upon everything. Joseph Surface, to go down now, must
be a downright revolting villain — no compromise — ^his first
appearance must shock and give horror — his specious
plausibilities, which the pleasurable faculties of our fathers
welcomed with such hearty greetings, knowing that no
, harm (dramatic harm even) could come, or was meant to
come of them, must inspire a cold and killing aversion.
1 Isaiah, xl., 6-8.
234 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
Charles (the real canting person of the scene — for the
hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but
his brother's professions of a good heart centre in down-
right self-satisfaction) must be loved, and Joseph hated.
To balance one disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter 5
Teazle must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old
bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings (while King acted it)
were evidently as much played off at you, as they were
meant to concern anybody on the stage, — he must be a real
person, capable in law of sustaining an injury — a person 10
towards whom duties are to be acknowledged — the genuine
crim-con. antagonist of the villanous seducer Joseph. To
realise him more, his sufferings under his unfortunate
match must have the downright pungency of life — must
(or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just 15
as the same predicament would move you in a neighbor or
old friend. The delicious scenes which give the play its
name and zest, must affect you in the same serious manner
as if you heard the reputation of a dear female friend at-
tacked in your real presence. Crabtree, and Sir Benjamin 20
— those poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of your
mirth — must be ripened by this hot-bed process of realisa-
tion into asps or amphisbsenas ;^ and Mrs. -Candour — O!
frightful! become a hooded serpent. Oh, who that re- h
members Parsons and Dodd — the wasp and butterfly of the 25
School for Scandal — in those two characters ; and charming
natural IMiss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman as distin-
guished from the fine lady of comedy, in this latter part —
would forego the true scenic delight — the escape from life —
the oblivion of consequences — the holiday barring out of 30
the pedant Reflection — those Saturnalia of two or three
1 Paradise Lost, X., 524.
ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY 235
brief hours, well won from the world — to sit instead at one
of our modern plays — to have his coward conscience (that
forsooth must not be left for a moment) stimulated with
perpetual appeals — dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty
) without repose must be — and his moral vanity pampered
with images of notional justice, notional beneficence, lives
saved without the spectators' risk, and fortunes given away
that cost the author nothing?
No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in all its
10 parts as this manager's comedy.* Miss Farren had suc-
ceeded to Mrs. Abingdon in Lady Teazle; and Smith, the
original Charles, had retired, when I first saw it. The rest
of the characters, with very slight exceptions, remained. I
remember it was then the fashion to cry down John Kemble
15 who took the part of Charles after Smith; but, I thought,
very unjustly. Smith, I fancy, was more airy, and took the
eye with a certain gaiety of person. He brought with him
no sombre recollections of tragedy. He had not to expiate
the fault of having pleased beforehand in lofty declamation.
io He had no sins of Hamlet or of Richard to atone for.
His failure in these parts was a passport to success in one
of so opposite a tendency. But, as far as I could judge,
the weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal
incapacity than he had to answer for. His harshest tones
J5 in this part came steeped and dulcified in good humor. He
made his defects a grace. His exact declamatory manner,
as he managed it, only served to convey the points of his
dialogue with more precision. It seemed to head the shafts
to carry them deeper. Not one of his sparkling sentences
30 was lost. I remember minutely how he delivered each in
succession, and cannot by any effort imagine how any of
them could be altered for the better. No man could
236 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
deliver brilliant dialogue — the dialogue of Congreve or of
Wycherley — because none understood it — ^half so well as
John Kemble. His Valentine, in Love for Love, was to
my recollection, faultless. He flagged sometimes in the
intervals of tragic passion. He would slumber over the
level parts of an heroic character. His Macbeth has been
known to nod. But he always seemed to ine to be par-
ticularly alive to p5inted and witty dialogue. The relaxing
levities of tragedy have not been touched by any since him
— the playful court-bred spirit in which he condescended to
the players in Hamlet — the sportive relief which he threw
into the darker shades of Richard — disappeared with him.
John had his sluggish moods, his torpors — but they were
the halting-stones and resting-place of his tragedy — politic
savings, and fetches of the breath — ^husbandry of the lungs,
where nature pointed him to be an economist — rather, I
think, than errors of the judgment. They were, at worst,
less painful than the eternal tormenting unappeasable
vigilance, — the ^'lidless dragon eyes,"^ of present fashion-
able tragedy.*
[The story of his swallowing opium pills to keep him
lively on the first night of a certain tragedy, we may presume
to be a piece of retaliatory pleasantry on the part of the
suffering author; but, indeed, John had the art of diffusing
a complacent equable dulness (which you knew not where
to quarrel with), over a piece which he did not like, beyond
any of his contemporaries. John Kemble had made up
his mind early, that all the good tragedies which could be
written, had been written; and he resented any new attempt.
His shelves were full. The old standards were scope
1 Coleridge, Ode to the Departing Year.
♦What follows was omitted from the essay in the collected edition.
ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY 237
enough for his ambition. He ranged in them absolutely
— and fair *'in Otway, full in Shakspeare shone."^ He
succeeded to the old lawful thrones, and did not care to
adventure bottomry with a Sir Edward Mortimer or any
5 casual speculator that offered. I remember, too actually
for my peace, the deadly extinguisher which he put upon
my friend G.'s "Antonio." G., satiate with visions of
political justice (possibly not to be realised in our time),
or willing to let the sceptical worldlings see that his antici-
10 pations of the future did not preclude a warm sympathy for
men as they are and have been — ^wrote a tragedy. He
chose a story, affecting, romantic, Spanish — the plot simple,
without being naked — the incidents uncommon, without
being overstrained. Antonio, who gives the name to the
15 piece, is a sensitive young Castilian, who, in a fit of hig
country honor, immolates his sister —
But I must not anticipate the catastrophe — the play,
reader, is extant in choice English — and you will employ a
spare half-crown not injudiciously in the quest of it.
20 The conception was bold, and the denouement — the time
and place in which the hero of it existed, considered — not
much out of keeping; yet it must be confessed, that it
required a delicacy of handling both from the author and
the performer, so as not much to shock the prejudices of a
25 modern English audience. G., in my opinion, had done
his part.
John, who was in familiar habits with the philosopher,
had undertaken to play Antonio. Great expectations were
formed. A philosopher's first play was a new era. The
30 night arrived. I was favored with a seat in an advan-
tageous box, between the author and his friend M .
1 Pope's Imitations of Horace.
238 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
G. sat cheerful and confident. In his friend M.'s looks,
who had perused the manuscript, I read some terror.
Antonio, in the person of John Philip Kemble, at length
appeared, starched out in a ruff which no one could dis-
pute, and in most irreproachable mustachios. John always i
dressed most provokingly correct on these occasions. The
first act swept by, solemn and silent. It went off, as G. as-
sured M., exactly as the opening act of a piece — the protasis
— should do. The cue of the spectators was, to be mute.
The characters were but in their introduction. The pas- ic
sions and the incidents would be developed hereafter.
Applause hitherto would be impertinent. Silent attention
was the effect all-desirable. Poor M. acquiesced — but in
his honest, friendly face I could discern a working which
told how much more acceptable the plaudit of a single is
hand (however misplaced) would have been than all this
reasoning. The second act (as in duty bound) rose a little
in interest, but still John kept his forces under — in policy,
as G. would have it — and the audience were most com-
placently attentive. The protasis, in fact, was scarcely 20
unfolded. The interest would warm in the next act,
against which a special incident was provided. M. wiped
his cheek, flushed with a friendly perspiration — 'tis M.'s
way of showing his zeal — *'from every pore of him a per-
fume falls.''^— I honor it above Alexander's.^ He had once 25
or twice during this act joined his palms, in a feeble, en-
deavor to elicit a sound — they emitted a solitary noise,
without an echo — there was no deep to answer to his deep.^
G. repeatedly begged him to be quiet. The third act at
length brought him on the scene which was to warm the 30
1 Lee, The Rival Queens.
2 See note.
3 Psalms, xlii., 7.
ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY 239
piece, progressively, to the final flaming forth of the catas-
trophe. A philosophic calm settled upon the clear brow of
G., as it approached. The lips of M. quivered. A chal-
lenge was held forth upon the stage, and there was a
5 promise of a fight. The pit roused themselves on this
extraordinary occasion, and, as their manner is, seemed
disposed to make a ring, — ^when suddenly, Antonio, who
was the challenged, turning the tables upon the hot chal-
lenger, Don Gusman (who, by the way, should have had his
10 sister) baulks his humor, and the pit's reasonable expec-
tation at the same time, with some speeches out of the new
philosophy against duelling. The audience were here
fairly caught— ::their courage was up, and on the alert — a
few blows, ding-dong, as R s, the dramatist, afterwards
: 15 expressed it to me, might have done the business, when their
most exquisite moral sense was suddenly called in to assist
in the mortifying negation of their own pleasure. They
could not applaud for disappointment; they would not
condemn for morality's sake. The interest stood stone
20 still; and John's manner was not calculated to unpetrify it.
It was Christmas time, and the atmosphere furnished some
pretext for asthmatic affections. One began to cough— ^
his neighbor sympathised with him — till a cough became
epidemical. But when, from being half artificial in the
25 pit, the cough got frightfully naturalised among the fic-
titious persons of the drama, and Antonio himself (albeit
it was not set down in the stage directions) seemed more
intent upon relieving his own lungs than the distresses of
the author and his friends, then G. "first knew fear;"^ and,
30 mildly turning to M., intimated that he had not been aware
that Mr. K. labored under a cold ; and that the performance
1 Paradise Lost, VL, 327.
240 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
might possibly have been postponed with advantage for
some nights farther — still keeping the same serene counte-
nance, vrhile M. sweat like a bull. It would be invidious
to pursue the fates of this ill-starred evening. In vain did
the plot thicken in the scenes that followed ; in vain did the
dialogue wax more passionate and stirring, and the prog-
ress of the sentiment point more and more clearly to the
arduous development which impended. In vain the
action was accelerated, while the acting stood still. From
the beginning John had taken his stand ; had wound him-
self up to an even tenor of stately declamation, from which
no exigence of dialogue or person could make him swerve
for an instant. To dream of his rising "v^^ith the scene (the
common trick of tragedians) was preposterous; for, from
the onset, he had planted himself, as upon a terrace, on
an eminence vastly above the audience, and he kept that
sublime level to the end. He looked from his throne of
elevated sentiment upon the under-world of spectators with
a most sovereign and becoming contempt. There was
excellent pathos delivered out to them: an they would
receive it, so; an they would not receive it, so; there was
no offence against decorum in all this ; nothing to condemn,
to damn. Not an irreverent symptom of a sound was to
be heard. The procession of verbiage stalked on through
four and five acts, no one venturing to predict what would 25
come of it, when towards the winding up of the latter,
Antonio, with an irrelevancy that seemed to stagger Elvira
herself — for she had been coolly arguing the point of
honor with him — suddenly whips out a poniard, and stabs
his sister to the heart. The effect was as if a murder had
been committed in cold blood. The whole house rose up
in clamorous indignation, demanding justice. The feel-
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 241
ing rose far above hisses. I believe at that instant, if they
could have got him, they would have torn the unfortunate
author to pieces. Not that the act itself was so exorbitant,
or of a complexion different from what they themselves
1 6 would have applauded upon another occasion, in a Brutus
or an Appius, but for want of attending to Antonio's words,
which palpably led to the expectation of no less dire an
event, instead of being seduced by his manner, which
seemed to promise a sleep of less alarming nature than it
10 was his cue to inflict upon Elvira; they found themselves
betrayed into an accompliceship of murder, a perfect mis-
prision of parricide, while they dreamed of nothing less.
M., I believe, was the only person who suffered acutely
from the failure ; for G. thenceforward, with a serenity un-
15 attainable but by the true philosophy, abandoning a pre-
carious popularity, retired into his fasthold of speculation,
— the drama in which the world was to be his tiring-room,
and remote posterity his applauding spectators, at once,
and actors.]
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.
20 I LIKE to meet a sweep — understand me — not a grown
sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no means attractive
— but one of those tender novices, blooming through their
first nigritude, the maternal washings not quite effaced from
the cheek — such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat
25 earlier, with their little professional notes sounding like the
peep peep of a young sparrow; or liker to the matin lark
should I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom
anticipating the sun-rise?
I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks — poor
30 blots — innocent blacknesses —
242 ' THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
I reverence these young Africans of our own growth —
these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without
assumption ; and from their little pulpits (the tops of chim-
neys), 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 wit-
ness their operation ! to see a chit no bigger than one's self
enter, one knew not by what process, into what seemed the
fauces Averni — to pursue him in imagination, as he went
sounding on through so many dark stifling caverns, horrid
shades! — to shudder with the idea that "now, surely, he
must be lost for ever!" — to revive at hearing his feeble
shout of discovered daylight — and then (O fulness of de-
light) running out of doors, to come just in time to see the
sable phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished
weapon of his art victorious like some flag waved over a
conquered citadel! I seem to remember having been told,
that a bad sweep was once left in a stack with his brush, to
indicate which way the wind blew. It was an awful spec-
tacle certainly; not much unlike the old stage direction in
Macbeth, where the "Apparition of child crowned with a
tree in his hand rises. "^
Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in thy
early rambles, it is good to give him a penny. It is better
to give him twopence. If it be starving weather, and to the 25
proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair of kibed heels
(no unusual accompaniment) be superadded, the demand
on thy humanity will surely rise to a tester.
There is a composition, the groundwork of which I have
understood to be the sweet wood yclept sassafras. This ac
wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an
1 Macbeth, IV., i.
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 243
infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some tastes a delicacy
beyond the China luxury. I know not how thy palate may
relish it; for myself, with every deference to the judicious
Mr. Read, who hath time out of mind kept open a shop
5 (the only one he avers in London) for the vending of this
"wholesome and pleasant beverage," on the south side of
Fleet Street, as thou approachest Bridge Street — the only
Salopian house, — I have never yet adventured to dip my
own particular lip in a basin of his commended ingredients
10 — cautious premonition to the olfactories constantly whis-
pering to me, that my stomach must infallibly, with all due
courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, otherwise not
uninstructed in dietetical elegances, sup it up with avidity.
I know not by what particular confirmation of the organ
15 it happens, but I have always found that this composition
is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young chimney-
sweeper — ^whether the oily particles (sassafras is slightly
oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous con-
cretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) to
20 adhere to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged prac-
titioners ; or whether Nature, sensible that she had mingled
too much of bitter wood in the lot of these raw victims^
caused to grow out of the earth her sassafras for a sweet
lenitive — but so it is, that no possible taste or odor to the
25 senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a delicate
excitement comparable to this mixture. Being penniless,
they will yet hang their black heads over the ascending
steam, to gratify one sense, if possible, seemingly no less
pleased than those domestic animals — cats--when they
30 purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is some-
thing more in these sympathies than philosophy can incul-
cate.
244 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
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 is called good
hours, thou art happily 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 the dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the
rake, reeling home from his midnight cups, and the hard-
handed artisan leaving his bed to resume the premature
labors of the day, jostle, not unfrequently to the manifest lo
disconcerting of the former, for the honors of the pave-
ment. It is the time when, in summer, between the ex-
pired 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'er night vapors in
more grateful coffee, curses the ungenial fume, as he
passeth; but the artisan stops to taste, and blesses the
fragrant breakfast.
This is Saloop — the precocious herb-woman's darling —
the delight of the early gardener, who transports his smok-
ing cabbages by break of day from Hammersmith to
Covent Garden's famed piazzas — the delight, and, oh I
fear, too often the envy, of the unpennied sweep. Him,
shouldst thou haply encounter, with his dim visage pendent
over the grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin
(it will cost thee but three halfpennies) and a slice of deli-
cate bread and butter (an added halfpenny) so may thy
culinary fires, eased of the o'ercharged secretions from thy
worse-placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter volume to the
welkin — so may the descending soot never taint thy costly
well-ingredienced soups — nor the odious cry, quick-reach-
ing from street to street, of the fired chimney, invite the
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 245
rattling engines from ten adjacent parishes, to disturb for a
casual scintillation thy peace and pocket !
I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts ;
the jeers and taunts of the populace; the low-bred triumph
5 they display over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a
gentleman. Yet can I endure the jocularity of a young
sweep with something, more than forgiveness. In the last
winter but one, pacing along Cheapside with my accus-
tomed precipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous
10 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,
15 and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in particular,
till the tears for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he thought
it) worked themselves out at the corners of his poor red
eyes, red from many a previous weeping, and soot-inflamed,
yet twinkling through all with such a joy, snatched out of
20 desolation, that Hogarth but Hogarth has got him
already (how could he miss him?) in the March to Finchley,
grinning at the pie-man there he stood, as he stands in
the picture, irremovable, as if the jest was to last for ever —
with such a maximum of glee, and minimum of mischief,
25 in his mirth — for the grin of a genuine sweep hath abso-
lutely no malice in it — that I could have been content, if
the 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
30 called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips (the
ladies must pardon me) is a casket presumably holding
246 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
such jewels;^ but, methinks, thfey 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 5
ossifications, strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in man-
ners, and an allowable piece of foppery. It is, as when
A sable cloud
Turns forth her silver lining on the night. ^
It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct; a badge 10
of better days; a hint of nobility: — and, doubtless, under
the obscuring darkness and double night of their forlorn
disguisement, oftentimes lurketh good blood, and gentle
conditions, derived from lost ancestry, and a lapsed pedi-
gree. The premature apprenticements of these tender i5
victims give but too much encouragement, I fear, to clan-
destine, and almost infantile abductions; the seeds of
civility and true courtesy, so often discernible in these
young grafts (not otherwise to be accounted for) plainly
hint at some forced adoptions; many noble Rachels mourn- 20
ing for their children,^ even in our days, countenance the
fact; the tales of fairy-spiriting may shadow a lamentable
verity, and the recovery of the young Montagu be but a
solitary instance of good fortune, out of many irreparable
and hopeless defiliations. 25
In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few years
since — under a ducal canopy — (that seat of the Howards is
an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, in
which the late Duke was especially a connoisseur) — encircled
with curtains of delicatest crimson, with starry coronets 30
1 CyMBELINE, II., iv., 96.
2 CoMus, 221.
3 Jeremiah, xxxi., 15.
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 247
inwoven — folded between a pair of sheets whiter and softer
than the lap where Venus lulled Ascanius^ — was discovered
by chance, after all methods of search had failed, at noon-
day, fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The little crea-
5 ture, having somehow confounded his passage among the
intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by some unknown
aperture had alighted upon this magnificent chamber; and,
tired with his tedious explorations, was unable to resist
the delicious invitement to repose, which he there saw
10 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
15 what I have just hinted at in this story. A high instinct
was at work in the case, or I am mistaken. Is it probable
that a poor child of that description, with whatever weari-
ness he might be visited, would have ventured, under such
a penalty as he would be taught to expect, to uncover the
20 sheets of a Duke's bed, and deliberately to lay himself down
between them, when the rug, or the carpet, presented an
obvious couch, still far above his pretensions — is this
probable, I would ask, if the great power of nature, which
I contend for, had not been manifested within him, prompt-
25 ing to the adventure? Doubtless this young nobleman (for
such my mind misgives me that he must be) was allured by
some memory, not amounting to hi^ consciousness, of his
condition in infancy, when he was used to be lapt by his
mother, or his nurse, in just such sheets as he there found,
30 into which he was now but creeping back as into his proper
incunabula, and resting place. By no other theory, than by
1 Virgil, Aeneid, I., 696.
248 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
this sentiment of a pre-existent state (as I may call it), can
I explain a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon any other
system, so indecorous, in this tender, but unseasonable, ,
sleeper.
My pleasant friend Jem White was so impressed with a ^
belief of metamorphoses like this frequently taking place,
that in some sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in these
poor changelings, he instituted an annual feast of chimney-
sweepers, at which it was his pleasure to officiate as host
and waiter. It was a solemn supper held in Smithfield, ^^
upon the yearly return of the fair of St. Bartholomew.
Cards were issued a week before to the master-sweeps in
and about the metropolis, confining the invitation to their
younger fry. Now and then an elderly stripling would get
in among us, and be good-naturedly winked at; but our ^^
main body were infantry. One unfortunate wight, indeed,
who, relying upon his dusky suit, had intruded himself into
our party, but by tokens was providentially discovered in
time to be no chimney-sweeper (all is not soot which looks
so), was quoited out of the presence with universal indigna- ^o
tion, as not having on the wedding garment;^ but in general
the greatest harmony prevailed. The place chosen was
a convenient spot among the pens, at the north side of the
fair, not so far distant as to be impervious to the agreeable
hubbub of that vanity; but remote enough not to be ^5
obvious to the interruption of every gaping spectator in it.
The guests assembled flbout seven. In those little tempo-
rary parlors three tables were spread with napery, no*t so
fine as substantial, and at every board a comely hostess
presided with her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils of ^^
the young rogues dilated at the savor. James White, as
1 Matthew, xxii., 11-14.
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 249
head waiter, had charge of the first table; and myself, with
our trusty companion Bigod, ordinarily ministered to the
other two. There was clamoring and jostling, you may
be sure, who should get at the first table — for Rochester in
5 his maddest days could not have done the humors of the
scene with more spirit than my friend. After some general
expression of thanks for the honor the company had done
him, his inaugural ceremony was to clasp the greasy waist
of old dame Ursula (the fattest of the three), that stood
10 frying and fretting, half-blessing, half-cursing, "the gentle-
man," and imprint upon her chaste lips a tender salute,
whereat the universal host would set up a shout that tore
the concave, while hundreds of grinning teeth startled the
night with their brightness. O it was a pleasure to see the
15 sable younkers lick in the unctuous meat, with his more
unctuous sayings — ^how he would fit the tit-bits to the puny
mouths, reserving the lengthier links for the seniors — how
he would intercept a morsel even in the jaws of some
young desperado, declaring it "must to the pan again to be
20 browned, for it was not fit for a gentleman's eating" — how
he would recommend this slice of white bread, or that piece
of kissing-crust, to a tender juvenile, advising them all to
have a care of cracking their teeth, which were their best
patrimony, — how genteelly he would deal about the small
25 ale, as if it were wine, naming the brewer, and protesting, if
it were not good, he should lose their custom; with a special
recommendation to wipe the lip before drinking. Then
we had our toasts— "The King,"— the "Cloth,"— which,
whether they understood or not, was equally diverting and
30 flattering; — and for a crowning sentiment, which never
failed, "May the Brush supersede the Laurel." All these,
and fifty other fancies, which were rather felt than com-
250 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
prehended by his guests, would he utter, standing upon
tables, and prefacing every sentiment with a ^'Gentlemen,
give me leave to propose so and so," which was a prodigious
comfort to those young orphans; and every now and then
stuffing into his mouth (for it did not do to be squeamish 5
on these occasions) indiscriminate pieces of those reeking
sausages, which pleased them mightily, and was the
savoriest part, you may believe, of the entertainment.
Golden lads and lasses must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.^ 10
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 15
glory of Smithfield departed for ever.
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS
IN THE METROPOLIS.
The all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation — ^your
only modern Alcides' club to rid the time of its abuses — is
uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last flutter-
ing tatters of the bugbear Mendicity from the metropolis. 20
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 25
sighing sent."
1 Cymbeline IV., ii., 262.
DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS 251
I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this
impertinent crusado, or helium ad exterminationem, pro-
claimed against a species. Much good might be sucked
from these Beggars.
6 They were the oldest and the honorablest form of
pauperism. Their appeals were to our common nature;
less revolting to an ingenuous mind than to be a suppliant
to the particular humors or caprice of any fellow-creature,
or set of fellow-creatures, parochial or societarian. Theirs
10 were the only rates uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in
the assessment.
There was a dignity springing from the very depth of
their desolation; as to be naked is to be so much nearer
to the being a man, than to go in livery.
15 The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses; and
when Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, do we feel
anything towards him but contempt? Could Vandyke
have made a picture of him, swaying a ferula for a sceptre,
which would have affected our minds with the same heroic
20 pity, the same compassionate admiration, with which we
regard his Belisarius begging for an obolusf Would the
moral have been more graceful, more pathetic?
The Blind Beggar in the legend — the father of pretty
Bessy^ — whose story doggerel rhymes and ale-house signs
25 cannot so degrade or attenuate, but that some sparks of a
lustrous spirit will shine through the disguisements — this
noble earl of Cornwall (as indeed he was) and memorable
sport of fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence of his
liege lord, stript of all, and seated on the flowering green
30 at Bethnal, with his more fresh and springing daughter by
his side, illumining his rags and his beggary — ^would the
1 Ballad of The Bund Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green.
252 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
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 shopboard?
In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just antipode
to your King. The poets and romancical writers (as dear ^
Margaret Newcastle would call them) when they would
most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse of fortune, never
stop till they have brought down their hero in good earnest
to rags and the wallet. The depth of the descent illustrates
the height he falls from. There is no medium which can lo
be presented to the imagination without offence. There is
no breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from his palace, must
divest him of his garments, till he answer "mere nature" 5
and Cresseid, fallen from a prince's love, must extend her
pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of beauty, suppli- is
eating lazar alms with bell and clap-dish.
The Lucian wits knew this very well; and, with a con-
verse policy, when they would express scorn of greatness
without the pity, they show us an Alexander in the shades
cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting up foul linen. ^o
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? 2'
Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity,
but pity alloyed with contempt. No one properly contemns
a beggar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and each degree
of it is mocked by its ''neighbor grice."^ Its poor rents
and comings-in^ are soon summed up and told. Its pre- 30
1 Ballad of King Cophetua and the Beqgak Maid.
2 Timon of Athens, [IV., iii., 16]. (L.)
3 Henry V., IV., i., 260.
DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS 253
tences to property are almost ludicrous. Its pitiful at-
tempts to save excite a smile. Every scornful companion
can weigh his trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor man re-
proaches poor man in the streets with impolitic mention of
5 his condition, his own being a shade better, while the rich
pass by and jeer at both. No rascally comparative^ insults
a Beggar, or thinks of weighing purses with him. He is
not in the scale of comparison. He is not under the meas-
ure of property. He confessedly hath none, any more than
10 a dog or a sheep. No one twitteth him with ostentation
above his means. No one accuses him of pride, or up-
braideth him with mock humility. None jostle with him
for the wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No wealthy
neighbor seeketh to eject him from his tenement. No
15 man sues him. No man goes to law with him. If I were
not the independent gentleman that I am, rather than I
would be a retainer to the great, a led captain, or a poor
relation, I would choose, out of the delicacy and the great-
ness of my mind, to be a beggar.
20 Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the Beggar's
robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure,
his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show
himself in public. He is never out of the fashion, or
limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not required to put
25 on court mourning. He weareth all colors, fearing none.
His costume hath undergone less change than the Quaker's.
He is the only man in the universe who is not obliged to
study appearances. The ups and downs of the world con-
cern him no longer. He alone continueth in one stay.^
30 The price of stock or land affecteth him not. The fluc-
1 I. Henry IV., III., ii.. 67. ~
2 Faerie Queene, VII., vii., 47.
254 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
tuations of agricultural or commercial prosperity touch him
not, or at worst but change his customers. He is not
expected to become bail or surety for any one. No man
troubleth him with questioning his religion or politics. He
is the only free man in the imiverse.
The Mendicants of this great city were so many of her
sights, her lions. I can no more spare them than I could
the Cries of London. No corner of a street is complete
without them. They are as indispensable as the Ballad
Singer; and in their picturesque attire as ornamental as
the Signs of Old London. They were the standing morals,
emblems, mementoes, dial-mottoes, the spital sermons, the
books for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the
high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry —
Look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there. ^
Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall
of Lincoln's Inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had
expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray
of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful dog- 20
guide at their feet, — whither are they fled? or into what
corners, blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of
the wholesome air and sun warmth? immured between four
walls, in what withering poor-house do they endure the
penalty of double darkness, where the chink of the dropt 25
halfpenny no more consoles their forlorn bereavement, far
from the sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring tread of
the passenger? Where hang their useless staves? and who
will farm their dogs? — Have the overseers of St. L
caused them to be shot? or were they tied up in sacks, and 30
1 As You Like It, II., i., 56-7.
DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS 255
dropt into the Thames, at the suggestion of B , the mild
Rector of ?
Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, most
classical, and at the same time, most English, of the
5 Latinists! — ^who has treated of this human and quad-
rupedal alliance, this dog and the man friendship, in the
sweetest of his poems, the Epitaphium in Canem, or. Dog's
Epitaph. Reader, peruse it; and say, if customary sights,
which could call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a
10 nature to do more harm or good to the moral sense of the
passengers through the daily thoroughfares of a vast and
busy metropolis.
Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis,
Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectae,
15 Dux caeco fidus : liec, me ducente, solebat,
Praetenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per iniqua locorum
Incertam explorare viam; sed fila secutus,
Quae dubios regerent passus, vestigia tuta
Fixit inoffenso gressu; gelidumque sedile
20 In nudo nactus saxo, qu§, praetereuntium
Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras
Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravlt obortam.
Flora vit nee frustra; obolum dedit alter et alter,
Quels corda et mentem indiderat natura benignam,
25 Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile,
Vel mediis vigil in somnis; ad herilia jussa
Auresque atque animum arrectus, seu frustula amice
Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei
Taedia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat. '
3C Hi mores, haec vita fuit, dum fata sinebant,
Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inerte senect^;
Quae tandem obrepsit, veterique satelite caecum
Orbavit dominum: prisci sed gratia faeti
Ne tota intereat, longos deleta per annos,
35 Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit,
256 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
Etsi inopis, non ingratae, munuscula dextrae;
Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemque
Quod memoret, fidumque canem dominumque benignum.
Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie,
! That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, 5
I His guide and guard; nor, while my service lasted,
i Had he occasion for that staff, with which
He now goes picking out his path in fear
j Over the highways and crossings, but would plant
; Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, lo
I A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd
'; His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide
i Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd:
To whom with loud and passionate laments
From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. 15
' Nor wail'd to all in vain: some here and there,
i The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave.
I meantime at his feet obsequious slept;
Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear
Prick'd up at his least motion, to receive 20
I At his kind hand my customary crums,
, And common portion in his feast of scraps;
i Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent
With our long day, and tedious beggary.
These were my manners, this my way of life, 25
Till age and slow disease me overtook.
And sever'd from my sightless master's side.
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die.
Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost.
This slender tomb of turf hath Irus rear'd, 30
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 35
past a well-known figure, or part of the figure, of a man,
who used to glide his comely upper half over the pavements
DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS 257
of London, wheeling along with most ingenious celerity
upon a machine of wood; a spectacle to natives, to foreign-
ers, and to children. He was of a robust make, with a
florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare to the
5 storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a
speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The
infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his
own level. The common cripple would despise his own
pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty heart,
10 of this half -limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him ;
for the accident, which brought him low, took place during
the riots of 1780, and he had been a groundling so long.
He seemed earth-born, an Antseus, and to suck in fresh
vigor from the soil which he neighbored. He was a grand
15 fragment; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature which
should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was not
lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half
a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering and
growling, as before an earthquake, and casting down my
20 eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had started
at his portentous appearance. He seemed to want but his
just stature to have rent the offending quadruped in shivers.
He was as the man-part of a Centaur, from which the horse-
half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan controversy.
25 He moved on as if he could have made shift with yet half
of the body-portion which was left him. The os sublime
was not wanting; and he threw out yet a jolly countenance
upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this
out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in the
so 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
258 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
one of those houses (ironically christened) of Correction.
Was a daily spectacle like this" to be deemed a nuisance,
which called for legal interference to remove? or not rather
a salutary and a touching object, to the passers-by in a
great city? Among her shows, her museums, and supplies
for ever-gaping curiosity (and what else but an accumula-
tion of sights — endless sights — is a great city; or for what
else is it desirable?) was there not room for one Lusus (not
Naturcp, indeed, but) Accidentiumf What if in forty-and-
two years' going about, the man had scraped together
enough to give a portion to his child (as the rumor ran) of a
few hundreds — ^whom had he injured ? — whom had he im-
posed upon? The contributors had enjoyed their sight for
their pennies. What if after being exposed all day to the
heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven — shuffling his
ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion —
he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club
of his fellow-cripples over a dish of hot meat and vegetables,
as the charge was gravely brought against him by a clergy-
man deposing before a House of Commons' Committee —
was this J or was his truly paternal consideration, which (if a
fact) deserved a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is
inconsistent at least with the exaggeration of nocturnal
orgies which he has been slandered with — a reason that he
should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay edifying,
way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy
vagabond ? —
There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have
shamed to have sate down at the cripples' feast, and to have
thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite too, for a com-
panionable symbol. "Age, thou hast lost thy breed!" — ^
1 Julius Caesar, I., ii., 151.
DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS 259
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
5 the Bank was surprised with the announcement of a five
hundred pound legacy left him by a person whose name he
was a stranger to. It seems that In his daily morning walks
from Peckham (or some village thereabouts) where he lived,
to his office, it had been his practice for the last twenty
10 years to drop his halfpenny duly Into the hat of some blind
Bartimeus, that sate begging alms by the wayside in the
Borough. The good old beggar recognised his daily bene-
factor by the voice only; and, when he died, left all the
amassings of his alms (that had been half a century per-
is ha|)s in the accumulating) to his old Bank friend. Was
this a story to purse up people's hearts, and pennies, against
giving an alms to the blind? — or not rather a beautiful
moral of well-directed charity on the one part, and noble
gratitude upon the other?
20 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.
25 Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, imposi-
tion, imposture — give, and ask no questions. Cast thy bread
upon the waters.^ Some have unawares (like this Bank
clerk) entertained angels.^
Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted dis-
30 tress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature
1 ECCLESIASTES, xi., i.
2 Hebrews, xiii., 2.
260 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
(outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay
to inquire whether the "seven small children," in whose
name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence.
Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a
halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If he be not all that
he pretendeth, give, and under a personate father of a
family, think (if thou pleaseth) that thou hast relieved ah
indigent bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit
looks, and mumping tones, think them players. You pay
your money to see a comedian feign these things, which, lo
concerning these poor people, thou canst not certainly tell
whether they are feigned or not.*
["Pray God, your honor, relieve me," said a poor beads-
woman to my friend L — — one day: "I have seen better
days." "So have I, my good woman," retorted he, looking is
up at the welkin, which was just then threatening a storm —
and the jest (he will have) was as good to the beggar as a
tester. It was, at all events, kinder than consigning her to
the stocks, or the parish beadle. —
But L. has a way of viewing things in rather a paradox- 20
ical light on some occasions.
P. S. — My friend Hume (not M. P.) has a curious manu-
script in his possession, the original draft of the celebrated
"Beggar's Petition" (who cannot say by heart the "Beg-
gar's Petition" ?), as it was written by some school usher (as 25
I remember), with corrections interlined from the pen of
Oliver Goldsmith. As a specimen of the Doctor's im-
provement, I recollect one most judicious alteration —
A pamper'd menial drove me from the door.
It stood originally — ^^
♦What follows was omitted from the collected edition.
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 261
A livery servant drove me, etc.
Here is an instance of poetical or artificial language
properly substituted for the phrase of common conversa-
tion; against Wordsworth. I think I must get H. to send
5 it to the London, as a corollary to the foregoing.]
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.
Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M.
was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first
seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting
it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to
10 this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by theit
great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane
Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by
the term Cho-fang, literally the Cook's holiday. The
manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather
15 broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was acci-
dentally discovered in the manner following. The swine-
herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning,
as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his
cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly
20 boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his
age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle
of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the conflagration
over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to
ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian
25 make-shift of a building, you may think it), what was of
much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs,
no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have
been esteemed a luxury all over the East from the remotest
periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost con-
262 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
sternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the
tenement, which his father and he could easily build up
again with a few dry branches, and the labor of an hour or
two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was
thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his 5
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 proceed
from? — not from the burnt cottage — ^he had smelt that smell
before — indeed this was by no means the first accident of lo
the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this
unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it resemble that
of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory
moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He
knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel is
the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his
fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby
fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched
skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time
in his life (in the world's life indeed, for before him no man 20
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, 25
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, when his sire entered amid the smoking
rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how 30
affairs stood^ began to rain blows upon the young rogue's
shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 263
any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleas-
ure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had ren-
dered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might
feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on,
but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly
made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of
his situation, something like the following dialogue ensued :
"You graceless whelp, what have you got there devour-
ing? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three
houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you, but
you must be eating fire, and I know not what — what have
you got there, I say?"
"O father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how^ nice
the burnt pig eats."
The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his
son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son
that should eat burnt pig.
Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since
morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it
asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of
Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig,
father, only taste, — O Lord," — with such-like barbarous
ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.
Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the abom-
inable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to
death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling
scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying
the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of
its flavor, which, make what sour mouths he would for
a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In
conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious) both
father and son fairly sat down to the mess, and never
264 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A
left off till they had despatched all that remained of the
litter.
Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape,
for the neighbors would certainly have stoned them for a
couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improv- 5
ing upon the good meat which God had sent them. Never-
theless, 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. 10
As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of
Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti himself, which was the
more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to
grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they were
watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father and 15
son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an incon-
siderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious
food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pro-
nounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of
the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be 20
handed into the box. He handled it, and they all handled
it, and burnt 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 clear-
est charge which judge had ever given, — to the surprise of 25
the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all
present — ^without leaving the box, or any manner of con-
sultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict
of Not Guilty.
The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the mani- 30
fest iniquity of ^Le decision; and, when the court was dis-
missed, went privily, and bought up all the pigs that could
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 265
be had for love or money. In a few days his Lordship's
town house was observed to be on fire. The thing took
wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in
every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all
5 over the districts. The insurance offices one and all shut
up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until
it was feared that the very science of architecture would in
no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of
firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my
10 manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a dis-
covery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other
animal, might be cooked (burnt, as they called it) without
the riecessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then
first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the
15 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
2 given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy pretext for so
dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (espe-
cially in these days) could be assigned in favor of any
culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in
ROAST PIG.
25 Of all the delicacies in -the whole mundus edihilis,
I will maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps
obsoniorum.
I speak not of your grown porkers — things between pig
and pork — ^those hobbledehoys — but a young and tender
30 suckling — under a moon old — guiltless as yet of the sty—
with no original speck of the amor immunditias, the heredi-
tary failing of the first parent, yet manifest — his voice as yet
2m THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
not broken, but something between a childish treble, and
a grumble — the mild forerunner, or 'prceludium, of a grunt.
He must he roasted. I am not ignorant that our ances-
tors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a sacrifice of the
exterior tegument! s
There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that of
the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, crackling,
as it is well called — the very teeth are invited to their share
of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy,
brittle resistance — with the adhesive oleaginous — O call it lo
not fat — but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it — the
tender blossoming of fat — ^fat cropped in the bud — taken in
the shoot — in the first innocence — the cream and quintes-
sence of the child-pig's yet pure food — the lean, no lean, but
a kind of animal manna, — or, rather, fat and lean (if it is
must be so) so blended and running into each other, that
both together make but one ambrosian result, or common
substance.
Behold him, while he is "doing" — it seemeth rather a
refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so ^o
passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string! —
Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of
that tender age, he hath wept out his pretty eyes — radiant
jellies — shooting stars —
See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he 25
lieth! — ^wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to
the grossness and indocility which too often accompany
maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved
a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal —
wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation^ — from these 30
sins he is happily snatched away —
1 II. Peter, ii., 7.
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 267
Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely care — ^
his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, while his
stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coalheaver
5 bolteth him in reeking sausages — he hath a fair sepulchre
in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure — ^and for
such a tomb might be content to die.
He is the best of Sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is
indeed almost too transcendent — a delight, if not sinful, yet
10 so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person
would do well to pause — too ravishing for mortal taste, she
woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her — like
lovers' kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on
pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish — but she
15 stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth not with the appetite
— and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently
for a mutton chop.
Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provocative of
the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the
20 censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him,
and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices.
Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of
virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be
unravelled without hazard, he is — ^good throughout. No
25 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 impart a
share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot
30 (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take
as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his reHshes,
1 Coleridge, Epitaph on an Infant.
268 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. "Presents/' I
often say, "endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, part-
ridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame villatic
fowl")*, capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dis-
pense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, 5
as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop
must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear,
"give everything." I make my stand upon pig. Methinks
it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good favors, to extra-
domiciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly (under 10
pretext of friendship, or I know not what), a blessing so
particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my indi-
vidual 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 15
a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing
into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a
smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to
school (it was over London Bridge) a grey headed old
beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day that 20
he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him
with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very cox-
combry of charity, school-boy like, I made him a present of
— the whole cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one
is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfac- 25
tion ; but before I had got to the end of the bridge, my better
feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how un-
grateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her
good gift away to a stranger, that I had never seen before,
and who might be a bad man for aught I knew ; and then 30
I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be taking in
1 Samson Agonistes, 1695.
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 269
thinking that I — I myself, and not another — would eat her
nice cake — and what should I say to her the next time I
saw her — how naughty I was to part with her pretty present
— and the odor of that spicy cake came back upon my
5 recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken
in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it to the
oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had
never had a bit of it in my mouth at last — and I blamed
my impertinent spirt of alms-giving, and out-of-place
10 hypocrisy of goodness, and above all I wished never to see
the face again of that insidious^ good-for-nothing, old grey
imposter.
Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing
these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with
15 something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete
custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be
curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what
effect this process might have towards intenerating and
dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the
20 flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet
we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity,
how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might
impart a gusto —
I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young
25 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 flagellationem extremam) superadded a
pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any
30 possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man
justified in using that method of putting the animal to
death?" I forget the decision.
270 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
I
His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few
bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a
dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech
you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to
your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with s
plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot
poison them, or make them stronger than they are — but
consider, he is a weakling — a flower.
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT
OF THE BEHAVIOR OF MARRIED PEOPLE.
As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my time in
noting down the infirmities of Married People, to console lo
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, is
which I took up long ago upon more substantial considera-
tions. What oftenest offends me at the houses of married
persons where I visit, is an error of quite a different descrip-
tion; — it is that they are too loving.
Not too loving neither: that does not explain my mean- 20
ing. Besides, why should that offend me? The very act
of separating themselves from the rest of the world, to have
the fuller enjoyment of each other's society, implies that
they prefer one another to all the world.
But what I complain of is, that they carry this preference 25
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
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT 271
or open avowal, that you are not the object of this prefer-
ence. Now there are some things which give no offence,
while implied or taken for granted merely; but expressed,
there is much offence in them. If a man were to accost
5 the first homely-featured or plain-dressed young woman of
his acquaintance, and tell her bluntly, that she was not
handsome or rich enough for him, and he could not marry
>^_„jaer, he would deserve to be kicked for his ill manners ; yet
no less is implied in the fact, that having access and oppor-
10 tunity 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
15 me by speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain than
speeches, that I am not the happy man, — the lady's choice.
It is enough that I know I am not; I do not want this
perpetual reminding.
The display of superior knowledge or riches may be made
20 sufficiently mortifying; but these admit of a palliative.
The knowledge which is brought out to insult me, may
accidentally improve me; and in the rich man's houses
and pictures, — his parks and gardens, I have a temporary
usufruct at least. But the display of married happiness has
25 none of these palliatives; it is throughout pure, unrecom-
pensed, unqualified insult.
Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the
least invidious sort. It is the cunning of most possessors of
any exclusive privilege to keep their advantage as much out
30 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 married monopolists
272 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent into our
faces.
Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire com-
placency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances
of a new-married couple, — in that of the lady particularly : 5
it tells you, that her lot is disposed of in this world ; that you
can have no hopes of her. It is true, I have none; nor
Welshes either, perhaps : but this is one of those truths which
ought, as I said before, to be taken for granted, not ex-
pressed. 10
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 15
made free of the company : but their arrogance is not con-
tent within these limits. If a single person presume to offer
his opinion in their presence, though upon the most in-
different subject, he is immediately silenced as an incom-
petent person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaint- 20
ance, 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 prop-
erest mode of breeding oysters for the London market,
had the assurance to ask, with a sneer, how such an old 25
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 30
little of a rarity children are, — that every street and blind
alley swarms w^ith them, — that the poorest people com-
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT 273
monly have them in most abundance, — that there are few
marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bar-
gains, — how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes
of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in pov-
5 erty, disgrace, the gallows, etc. — I cannot for my life tell
what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them.
If they were young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but
one in a year, there might be a pretext. But when they are
so common —
10 I do not advert to the insolent merit which they assume
with their husbands on these occasions. Let them look to
that. But why we, who are not their natural-born sub-
jects, should be expected to bring our spices, myrrh, and
incense,^ — our tribute and homage of admiration, — I do
15 not see.
"Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are
the young children:" so says the excellent office in our
Prayer-book appointed for the churching of women.
"Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them:" so
20 say I; but then don't let him discharge his quiver upon us
that are weaponless; — let them be arrows, but not to gall
and stick us. I have generally observed that these arrows
are double-headed : they have two forks, to be sure to hit
with one or the other. As for instance, where you come
25 into a house which is full of children, if you happen to take
no notice of them (you are thinking of something else,
perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their innocent caresses),
you are set down as untractable, morose, a hater of children.
On the other hand, if you find them more than usually en-
30 gaging, — if you are taken with their pretty manners, and
set about in earnest to romp and play with them, some pre-
1 Matthew, ii., 11.
274 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
text or other is sure to be found for sending them out of the
room: they are too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does
not Hke children. With one or other of these forks the
arrow is sure to hit you.
I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with toying
with their brats, if it gives them pain; but I think it un-
reasonable to be called upon to love them, where I see
no occasion, — to love a whole family, perhaps, eight, nine,
or ten, indiscriminately,^ — to love all the pretty dears,
because children are so engaging.
I know there is a proverb, "Love me, love my dog;"
that is not always so very practicable, particularly if the dog
be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport. But
a dog, or a lesser thing, — any inanimate substance, as a
keepsake, a watch or a ring, a tree, or the place where we
last parted when my friend went away upon a long absence,
I can make shift to love, because I love him, and any-
thing that reminds me of him; provided it be in its nature
indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue fancy can give
it. But children have a real character and essential being
of themselves : they are amiable or unamiable fer 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 25 1
own stock, as much as men and women do. O I but you
will say, sure it is an attractive age, — there is something
in the tender years of infancy that of itself charms us.
That is the very reason why I am more nice about them.
I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, 30
not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them;
but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT . 275
is that it should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs
not much from another in glory '} but a violet should look
and smell the daintiest. — I was always rather squeamish in
my women and children.
5 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 did not
10 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
15 old friend gradually grow cool and altered towards you,
and at last seek opportunities of breaking with you. I have
scarce a married friend of my acquaintance, upon whose
firm faith I can rely, whose friendship did not commence
after the period of his marriage. With some limitations
20 they can endure that: but that the good man should have
dared to enter into a solemn league of friendship in which
they were not consulted, though it happened before they
knew him, — before they that are now man and wife ever
met, — this is intolerable to them. Every long friendship,
25 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
30 let it pass current in the world. You may guess what luck
1 I. Corinthians, xv., 41, adapted.
276 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
generally befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in these
new minting s.
Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult and
worm you out of their husband's confidence. Laughing at
all you say with a kind of wonder, as if you were a queer
kind of fellow that said good things, hut an oddity, is one
of the ways; — they have a particular kind of stare for the
purpose; — till at last the husband, who used to defer to
your judgment, and would pass over some excrescences of
understanding and manner for the sake of a general vein
of observation (not quite vulgar) which he perceived in you,
begins to suspect whether you are not altogether a huniorist,
— a fellow well enough to have consorted with in his bache-
lor days, but not quite so proper to be introduced to ladies.
This may be called the staring way; and is that which has 15
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 20
conceived towards you ; by never-qualified exaggerations to
cry up all that you say or do, till the good man, who under-
stands well enough that it is all done in compliment to him,
grows weary of the debt of gratitude which is due to so
much candor, and by relaxing a little on his part, and 25
taking down a peg or two in his enthusiasm, sinks at length
to that kindly level of moderate esteem, — that "decent
affection and complacent kindness"^ towards you where
she herself can join in sympathy with him without much
stretch and violence to her sincerity. 30
Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so
1 Home, Douglas, I., i.
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT 277
desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of innocent
simplicity, continually to mistake what it was which first
made their husband fond of you. If an esteem for some-
thing excellent in your moral character was that which
; riveted the chain which she is to break, upon any imaginary
discovery of a want of poignancy in your conversation, she
will cry, *'I thought, my dear, you described your friend,
Mr. , as a great wit." If, on the other hand, it was for
some supposed charm in your conversation that he first
10 grew to like you, and was content for this to overlook some
trifling irregularities in your moral deportment, upon the
first notice of any of these she as readily exclaims, "This,
my dear, is your good Mr. ." One good lady whom I
took the liberty of expostulating with for not showing me
L5 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, but
that the sight of me had very much disappointed her expec-
jo tations; for from her husband's representations of me, she
had formed a notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officer-
like looking man (I use her very words) ; the very reverse of
which proved to be the truth. This was candid ; and I had
the civility not to ask her in return, how she came to pitch
15 upon a standard of personal accomplishments for her
husband's friends which differed so much from his own;
for my friend's dimensions as near as possibly 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
JO 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 en-
278 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
countered in the absurd attempt to visit at their houses.
To enumerate them all would be a vain endeavor: I shall
therefore just glance at the very common impropriety of
vs^hich married ladies are guilty, — of treating us as if v^e
were their husbands, and vice versd, I mean, when they 5
use us with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony.
Testacea, for instance, kept me the other* night two or three
hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was
fretting because Mr. did not come home till the
oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of ic
the impoliteness of touching one in his absence. This was
reversing the point of good manners: for ceremony is an
invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive
from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and
esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It la
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 importunities to go to
supper, she would have acted according to the strict rules 2c
of propriety. I know no ceremony that ladies are bound to
observe to their husbands, beyond the point of a modest
behavior and decorum: therefore I must protest against
the vicarious gluttony of Cerasia, who at her own table sent
away a dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great 35
good-will, to her husband at the other end of the table, and
recommended a plate of less extraordinary gooseberries to
my un wedded palate in their stead. Neither can I excuse
the wanton affront of .
But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaint- 30^
ance by Roman denominations. Let them amend and
change their manners, or I promise to record the full-
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 279
length English of their names to the terror of all such
desperate offenders in future.
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN.
Not many nights ago I had come home from seeing this
extraordinary performer in Cockletop; and when I retired
5 to my pillow, his whimsical image still stuck by me, in a
manner as to threaten sleep. In vain I tried to divest
myself of it, by conjuring up the most opposite associations.
I resolved to be serious. I raised up the gravest topics of
life; private misery, public calamity. All would not do.
10 There the antic sate
Mocking our state — ^
his queer visnomy — his bewildering costume — all the
strange things which he had raked together — his serpentine
rodjswagging about in his pocket — Cleopatra's tear, and the
15 rest of his relics — O'Keefe's wild farce, and his wilder com-
mentary — till the passion of laughter, like grief in excess,
relieved itself by its own weight, inviting the sleep which in
the first instance it had driven away.
But I was not to escape so easily. No sooner did I fall
20 into slumbers, than the same image, only more perplexing,
assailed me in the shape of dreams. Not one Munden, but
five hundred, were dancing before me, like the faces which,
whether you will or no, come when you have been taking
opium — all the strange combinations, which this strangest
25 of all strange mortals ever shot his proper countenance into,
from the day he came commissioned to dry up the tears of
the town for the loss of the now almost forgotten Edwin.
O for the power of the pencil to have fixed them when I
awoke! A season or two since there was exhibited a
1 Richard II., III., ii., 162.
280 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
Hogarth gallery. I do not see why there should not be a
Munden gallery. In richness and variety the latter would
not fall far short of the former.
There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one (but
what a one it is!) of Liston; but Munden has none that
you can properly pin down, and call his. When you think
he has exhausted his battery of looks, in unaccountable
warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an
entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He is not one,
but legion. Not so much a comedian, as a company. If
his name could be multiplied like his countenance, it might
fill a play-bill. He, and he alone, literally makes faces;
applied to any other person, the phrase is a mere figure,
denoting certain modifications of the human countenance.
Out of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his
friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as easily.
I should not be surprised to see him some day put out the
head of a river-horse; or come forth a pewitt, or lapwing,
some feathered metamorphosis.
I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry — 20
in Old Dornton — diffuse a glow of sentiment which has
made the pulse of a crowded theatre beat like that of one
man ; when he has come in aid of the pulpit, doing good to
the moral heart of the people. I have seen some faint ap-
proaches to this sort of excellence in other players. But
in the grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands out as
single and unaccompanied as Hogarth. Hogarth, strange
to tell, had no followers. The school of Munden began,
and must end with himself.
Can any man wonder, like him? can any man see gliosis,
like him? or jight with his own shadow^ — "sessa"— as
1 King Lear, III., iv,, 58.
MODERN GALLANTRY 281
he does in that strangely-neglected thing, the Cobbler of
Preston — ^where his alterations from the Cobbler to the
Magnifico, and from the Magnifico to the Cobbler, keep
the brain of the spectator in as wild a ferment, as if some
5 Arabian Night were being acted before him. Who like
him can throw, or ever attempted to throw, a preternatural
interest over the commonest daily-life objects? A table, or
a joint stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity equiva-
lent to Cassiopeia's chair. It is invested with constellatory
10 importance. You could not speak of it with more defer-
ence, if it were mounted into the firmament. A beggar in
the hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, rose the Patriarch
of Poverty. So the gusto of Munden antiquates and en-
nobles what it touches. His pots and his ladles are as grand
15 and primal as the seething-pots^ and hooks^ seen in old
prophetic vision. A tub of butter, contemplated by him,
amounts to a Platonic idea. He understands a leg of
mutton in its quiddity. He stands wondering, amid the
commonplace materials of life, like primeval man with the
20 sun and stars about him.
MODERN GALLANTRY.
In comparing modem with ancient manners, we are pleased
to compliment ourselves upon the point of gallantry; a
certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect, which we are
supposed to pay to females, as females.
25 I shall believe that this principle actuates our conduct,
when I can forget, that in the nineteenth century of the era
from which we date our civility, we are but just beginning
1 Jeremiah, i., 13.
2 EZBKIEL, XI., 43.
282 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
to leave off the very frequent practice of whipping females
in public, in common with the coarsest male offenders.
I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut my
eyes to the fact, that in England women are still occasion-
ally — hanged. 5
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 10
dissipated.
I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants in humbler life,
who would be thought in their way notable adepts in this
refinement, shall act upon it in places where they are not
known, or think themselves not observed — ^when I shall see 15
the traveller for some rich tradesman part with his admired
box-coat, to spread it over the defenceless shoulders of the
poor woman, who is passing to her parish on the roof of the
same stage-coach with him, drenched in the rain — when I
shall no longer see a woman standing up in the pit of a 20
London theatre, till she is sick and faint with the exertion,
with men about her, seated at their ease, and jeering at her
distress; till one, that seems to have more manners or
conscience than the rest, significantly declares "she should
be welcome to his seat, if she were a little younger and hand- 25
somer." Place this dapper warehouseman, or that rider,
in a circle of their own female acquaintance, and you «hall
confess you have not seen a politer-bred man in Lothbury.
Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some such
principle influencing our conduct, when more than one-half 30
of the drudgery and coarse servitude of the world shall
cease to be performed by women.
MODERN GALLANTRY 283
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
o equally.
I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salutary
fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall see the same
attentions paid to age as to youth, to homely features as
to handsome, to coarse complexions as to clear — to the
10 woman, as she is a woman, not as she is a beauty, a fortune,
or a title.
I shall believe it to be something more than a name,
when a well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed company
can advert to the topic of female old age without exciting,
15 and intending to excite, a sneer: — ^when the phrases "anti-
quated virginity," and such a one has "overstood her
market," pronounced in good company, shall raise imme-
diate offence in man, or woman, that shall hear them
spoken.
20 Joseph Paice, of Bread Street Hill, merchant, and one of
the Directors of the South-Sea Company — the same to
whom Edwards, the Shakspeare commentator, has ad-
dressed a fine sonnet — ^was the only pattern of consistent
gallantry I have met with. He took me under his shelter
25 at an early age, and bestowed some pains upon me. I owe
to his precepts and example, whatever there is of the man of
business (and that is not much) in my composition. It
was not his fault that I did not profit more. Though bred
a Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, he was the
30 finest gentleman of his time. He had not one system of
attention to females in the drawing-room, and another in the
shop, or at the stall. I do not mean that he made no dis-
284 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
tinction. But he never lost sight of sex, or overlooked it in
the 'casualties of a disadvantageous situation. I have seen
him stand bare-headed — smile if you please — to a poor
servant girl, while she has been inquiring of him the v^ay to
some street — in such a posture of enforced civility, as 5
neither to embarrass her in the acceptance, nor himself in
the offer, of it. He was no dangler, in the common
acceptation of the word, after women: but he reverenced
and upheld, in every form in which it came before him,
womanhood. I have seen him — nay, smile not — tenderly lo
escorting a market-woman, whom he had encountered in a
shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit,
that it might receive no damage, with as much carefulness
as if she had been a countess. To the reverend form of
Female Eld he would yield the wall (though it were to an 15
ancient beggar-woman) with more ceremony than we could
afford to show our grandams. He was the Preux Chevalier
of Age; the Sir Calidore, or Sir Tristan, to those who have
no Calidores or Tristans to defend them. The roses, that
had long faded thence, still bloomed for him in those 20
withered and yellow cheeks.
He was never married, but in his youth he paid his
addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanley — old Win-
stanley's daughter of Clapton — ^who, dying in the early days
of their courtship, confirmed him in the resolution of 25
perpetual bachelorship. It was during their short court-
ship, he told me, that he had been one day treating his mis-
tress with a profusion of civil speeches — the common gal-
lantries — to which kind of thing she had hitherto mani-
fested no repugnance — but in this instance with no effect. 30
He could not obtain from her a decent acknowledgment in
return. She rather seemed to resent his compliments. He
r
MODERN GALLANTRY 285
could not set it down to caprice, for the lady had always
shown herself above that littleness. When he ventured on
the following day, finding her a little better humored, to
expostulate with her on her coldness of yesterday, she con-
5 fessed, with her usual frankness, that she had no sort of
dislike to his attentions; that she could even endure some
high-flown compliments ; that a young woman placed in her
situation had a right to expect all sort of civil things said to
her; that she hoped she could digest a dose of adulation,
10 short of insincerity, with as little injury to her humility as
most young women : but that — a little before he had com-
menced his compliments — she had overheard him by
accident, in rather rough language, rating a young woman,
who had not brought home his cravats quite to the op-
15 pointed time, and she thought to herself, "As I am Miss
Susan Winstanley, and a young lady — a reputed beauty,
and known to be a fortune, — I can have' my choice of the
finest speeches from the mouth of this very fine gentleman
who is courting me — but if I had been poor Mary Such-a-
"io one (naming the milliner), — and had failed of bringing
home the cravats to the appointed hour — though perhaps I
had sat up half the night to forward them — what sort of com-
pliments should I have received then? — And my woman^'s
pride came to my assistance; and I thought, that if it were
25 only to do me honor, a female, like myself, might have
received handsomer usage; and I was determined not to
accept any fine speeches, to the compromise of that sex,
the belonging to which was after all my strongest claim and
title to them."
30 I think the lady discovered both generosity, and a just
way of thinking, in this rebuke, which she gave her lover;
and I have sometimes imagined, that the uncommon strain
286 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
of courtesy, which through life regulated the actions and
behavior of my friend towards all of womankind indis-
criminately, owed its happy origin to this seasonable lesson
from the lips of his lamented mistress.
I wish the whole female world would entertain the same s
notion of these things that Miss Winstanley showed. Then
we should see something of the spirit of consistent gallantry;
and no longer witness the anomaly of the same man — a
pattern of true politeness to a wife — of cold contempt, or
rudeness, to a sister — the idolater of his female mistress — lo
the disparager and despiser of his no less female aunt, or
unfortunate — still female — maiden cousin. Just so much
respect as a woman derogates from her own sex, in what-
ever condition placed — her handmaid, or dependent — she
deserves to have diminished from herself on that score; is
and probably will' feel the diminution, when youth, and
beauty, and advaritages^not inseparable from sex, shall lose
of their attraction, p^hat a woman should demand of a
man in courtship, or after it, is first — respect for her as she
is a woman; — and next to that — to be respected by him 20
above all other women. But let her stand upon her female
character as upon a foundation; and let the attentions,
incident to individual preference, be so many pretty addita-
ments and ornaments — as many and as fanciful, as you
please — to that main structureTJ Let her first lesson be — 25
with sweet Susan Winstanley — to reverence her sex.
NOTES
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE
Page 45 line 1. Bank: The Bank of England, occupying the block
bounded by Threadneedle St., Prince's St., Lothbiu-y, and Bartholomew
Lane. It is an irregular and isolated building, covering about four acres,
one story in height, without exterior windows. The Bank was long
known popularly as "The Old Lady in Threadneedle Street"; but Hare
( Walks in London) says that the name is now almost forgotten.
3. Annuitant: Lamb was not yet an "annuitant" when he wrote tMs,
being still in the East India House. The Flower Pot: An inn in Bishops-
gate Street, the starting-point and booking-oflBce for coaches rimning
to the northern suburbs of London. Dalston and Shacklewell were formerly
suburbs of London, but are now outlying districts of the city itself. The
Lambs took a lodging in Dalston in 1802.
7. Bishopsgate: A street in London, divided into "Bishopsgate within"
and "Bishopsgate without" at the point where stood the old Bishopsgate,
the principal entrance through the northern wall of old London. The gate
was destroyed in the reign of George II. The comer (Threadneedle St.
and Bishopsgate) where the South-Sea House stood is but two blocks from
the site of the East India House in Leadenhall St.
12 and footnote. Baldutha: i. e., the city of the Clyde. The quota-
tion is from Carthon, one of the prose poems published in 1760-63 by
James Macpherson under the title Ossian, falsely purporting to be trans-
lations from the ancient Gaelic bard Oisin. The true reading is, "I have
seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate."
46:3. Queen Anne: Reigned 1702-1714. Two first monarchs: George I.
(1714-1727) and George II. (1727-1760).
10. Dollars, etc.: Dollar was the English name of various continental
coins, among them the Spanish dollar, "also called pillar dollar (from
its figure of the Pillar of Hercules) and piece of eight (as containing 8
reals)." {Cent. Diet.)
11. Mammon: The deity of avarice. See Faerie Queene, II. vii, 3-20^
and Paradise Lost, Bk. I, 1.678flf.
14. Bubble: The South Sea Bubble, a tremendous financial scheme
organized by the South Sea Company to borrow money and issue stock
on the strength of a hoped-for monopoly of trade with South America.
"The refusal of Spain to enter into commercial relations with England made
the privileges of the company worthless; but by means of a series of
288 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
speculating operations and the infatuation of the people, its shares were
inflated from £100 to £1050." {Cent. Diet.) Its collapse (in 1720)
spread great distress throughout England. Its London office was the
South-Sea House.
126. Super foetation: A figurative use of the word, which was apparently
a favorite of Lamb's, meaning 'an excrescent growth.'
47:3. Fa«a; (Fawkes), Guy (1570-1606): One of the conspirators in
the "Gunpowder Plot." He was arrested as he was entering the cellar
under the Parliament House (which had been filled with barrels of powder)
on the night of Nov. 4-5, 1605, and after trial executed. November 5,
Guy Fawkes Day, is celebrated with fireworks and crackers, and
Fawkes is often hanged and burned in efflgy. Lamb printed an essay
on Guy Vaux {London Mag. 1823).
5. Manes: The shades of the dead, considered by the Romans to be
tutelary divinities.
9. 'Change: The Royal Exchange, opposite the Bank. The present
Exchange was built in 1842-44, taking the place of the first building,
erected 1564-70.
9. India House: The office of the English East India Company (In-
corporated 1600 under the title "The Governor and Company of Merchants
of London Trading with the East Indies"), at the corner of Leadenhall
and Lime Streets; destroyed shortly after the dissolution of the Company
about 1860.
19. Living accounts: Mr. Lucas points out that "here Elia begins his
'matter-of-lie' career." In the Accountant's office of the India House,
he was living among figures all day.
23. Rubric interlacings: The flourish after a signature (in old docu-
ments often imitating grill-work) is called a rubric, from being done in red
ink.
32. Penknives: The qualifying word in this compound had a real
significance when Lamb wrote.
48:2. Herculaneum: Destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius, A. D. 79,
by streams of mud and lava. Systematic explorations were carried on
there tmder French authority, 1806-1815. Pounce-boxes: The predeces-
sors of blotting-paper were receptacles with perforated tops for shaking
pounce (a sort of powder) or black sand on wet writing to dry the ink.
13. Humorists: i. e., eccentric persons.
24. Cambro- Briton: A Welshman.
25. Choleric complexion: i. e., irritable nature.
30. Maccaronies: The use of the word in "Yankee Doodle" is
on its sense of 'dandy,' as here.
31. Gib-cat: A tom-cat.
49:6. Anderton's: A real coffee-house in London.
NOTES 289
17. Pennant, Thomas: A Welsh antiquary, author of an account of
London (1790).
20. Rosamond's Pond: "A sheet of water formerly lying in the n(n1>h-
west corner of St. James's Park in London ... It was filled up in
1770." {Cent. Diet.)
21. Mulberry Gardens: "A place of refreshment in London, muchfre-
Quented by persons of quality in the 17th century." (Cent. Diet.)
49:21. Cheap: Cheapside, the central east and west thoroughfare of
the City of London; one of the busiest streets in the world; formerly a
large open common where markets (whence the name) and assembUes
were held. There were formerly two conduits, the Great at the east end
and the Little at the north, water being brought thither from Paddington.
23. Hogarth, William (1697-1764): A celebrated English painter, best
known by his satirical pictures, such as "The Rake's Progress," "Mar-
riage h la Mode," etc.
25. Heroic confessors: Huguenot refugees. Some of them settled
in the parish of St. Giles's, London, after the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes by Louis XIV. in 1685. A church, still standing in that part of
Charing Cross Road which was formerly known as Hog Lane, was used by
French Protestant refugees till 1822. Seven Dials is a locality east of
Charing Cross Road long known as a center of poverty and crime.
50:1. Westminster Hall: Part of the ancient Palace of Westminster,
now a vestibule to the Houses of Parliament. It has been the scene of
many important events in English history.
20. Derwentwater, James Radclifle, Earl of (1689-1716): An English
Catholic nobleman, beheaded for his part in the rebellion of 1715.
29. Decus et solamen: "His aid in arms, his ornament in peace."
Dry den's translation.
61:5. Orphean lyre: In Greek legend, Orpheus, Apollo's son, had power
to charm all animate and inanimate things with his lyre.
11. "Sweet breasts": i. e., musical voices; an Elizabethan phrase.
16. Midas: In Greek legend, a King of Phrygia to whom was granted
the wish that everything he touched might be turned to gold. Apollo
gave him a pair of ass's ears for saying that Pan played better than Apollo ;
Lamb of com*se takes him as the type of bad taste in music.
52:28. Water-party: i. e., a picnic.
53:3. Henry Man (1747-1799): Author of essays and letters, and from
1776 deputy secretary of the South Sea Company.
9. Barbican: A locality in Cripplegate, London, so-called from a former
watch-tower. Milton Hved here (1646-47) and his name has been given
to a street near by (formerly Grub Street, of unsavory note as the abode
of small authors).
13. Public Ledgers and Chronicles: "Man contributed a series of letters
on education to Woodfall's Morning Chronicle. He also wrote for the
London Gazette." (Lucas.)
290 , THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
14. Chatham, etc.: Chatham (William Pitt) was premier, and Shelburne
was secretary of state under him, 1766-68. Rockingham preceded Chat-
ham as premier, Chatham and Richmond opposed England's policy toward
the colonies.
15. Howe, Burgoyne, Clinton, Keppel: EngUsh generals and admirals
in the war with the colonies.
17. Wilkes, Sawbridge, Bull: Lord Mayors of London. Dunning de-
fended Wilkes, who had been expelled from Parliament, in his trial before
Pratt, the Lord Chancellor.
54:3. Marlborough, Cave, etc.: Cave (1691-1754) was a noted pub-
lisher, the founder of the Gentleman's Magazine, and a friend of Dr. Samuel
Johnson, who for a time had a place in the postoflQce as clerk of the franks.
He "often stopped franks which were given by members of parliament
to their friends because he thought such extension of a peculiar right
illegal . . . Having stopped, among others, a frank given to the old
Duchess of Marlborough by Mr. Walter Plummer, he was cited before the
House as for a breach of privilege . . . and was at last dismissed."
(Johnson's Life of Cave.) A frank is the privilege of sending letters free
of postage. The Duchess, a favorite of Queen Anne's, was the wife of the
first Duke of Marlborough, the great EngUsh general.
10. Pastoral M — .• Lamb wrote out for a fellow-clerk in the India
House a Key to the blanks and concealed names in Elia. His entry for
this blank was, "Maynard, hang'd himself."
19. Swan-like: The swan was fabled togingmost sweetly at the approach
of death.
24. Trying the question: Probably he was constantly involved in law-
suits and bought property with clouded titles; but perhaps Lamb means
that he found his chief pleasure in studying and discussing law-cases and
actually spent good money for such trash as reports of legal proceedings.
OXFORD IN THE VACATION
66: tHle. Oxford: Mr. Lucas believes that Lamb wrote this paper in
Cambridge, "where he spent a few weeks in the summer of 1820, and trans-
ferred the scene to Oxford by way of mystification."
"10. Quis sculpsit: i. e., the engraver's name (Uterally,"who engraved it").
11. Vivares, Woollett: English engravers. WooUett is said to have
"carried landscape engraving to a perfection unknown before his time."
{Cent. Diet.)
17. College: i. e., company. Notched: i. e., closely-cut, shaven, an
epithet applied by the Cavaliers to the Puritans, or Roimd-heads.
18. A scrivener was a public writer, notary, copyist.
20. Agnize: A pet word of Lamb's, meaning acknowledge, confess.
56:6. Cart-rucks: Ruts, parallel . lines.
12. Commodities: Conveniences, agreeable things.
NOTES 291
16. Joseph's vest: i. e., a piece Of (literary) patchwork. See Genesis,
XXX vii, 3, marginal reading.
18. Red-letter days: i. e., holidays (see Cent. Did.). 'In 1820 the
accountants' oflBce of the India House observed only five holidays in the
year. (Lucas.)
23. Christ's: i. e., Christ's Hospital, the Blue Coat School.
24. Baskett Prayer-book: John Baskett (died 1742), King's printer,
published his first prayer-book 1741; other editions 1746-1757. The royal
patent bestowed the privilege of printing and selling bibles. One of
Baskett's bibles, the "Vinegar Bible" of 1716-17 (so-called from a mis-
print for Vineyard in the heading of Luke, xx), was so carelessly printed
that it was at once named "a Baskett-full of printers' errors."
26. Bartlemy: St. Bartholomew, who according to the tradition was
flayed aUve.
26. Marsyas: In Greek mythology a satyr who challenged ApoUo to
a musical contest. Apollo defeated him and then flayed him alive for his^
presumptioipi.
27. Spagnoletti: Jusepe Ribera, called Spagnoletto, a Spanish painter,
noted for his harsh and realistic manner.
30. Better Jude: Judas the brother of Simon, also called Thaddeus.
See Matthew, x, 3; Luke, vi, 16. St. Simon and St. Jude's Day is the 28th
of October.
67:2. Oaudy-day: i. e., a holiday, especially an English university
festival.
8. Epiphany: The Christian festival, also called Twelfth-day, cele-
brated on the 6th of January. It closes the Christmas observances, and
especially commemorates the visit of the Magi, or Wise Men, to Christ.
17. Selden, John (1584-1654): A learned English jurist, antiquary,
and orientalist.
18. Usher, James (1580-1656): A British prelate, theologian, and
scholar; proposed a scheme of bibhcal chronology — that commonly printed
in the standard versions of the English Bible — which was imiversally
accepted imtil recently.
20. Bodley, Sir Thomas (1545-1613): An English diplomatist and
scholar, founder of the great Bodleian Library of Oxford University.
23. Institution: i. e., instruction, a rare and obsolete use.
28. Ad eundem: i. e., to the same (degree), a phrase used when a mem-
ber of one xmiversity is admitted without examination to the corresponding
degree or standing in another university.
30. Sizar: A sizar was an undergraduate at Cambridge who received
an allowance of food, or size, as it is called (see the interesting quotation
in Cent. Diet, imder size, def. 2).
58:1. Servitor: Servitors were formerly students at Oxford of much the
same grade as the Cambridge sizars. Their name comes from their duty
292 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
of waiting on the table of the fellows and gentlemen commoners. Gentle-
man Commoner: The gentlemen commoners are the highest sort of com-
moners at Oxford — students who do not receive allowances from the fimds
of the college, but pay their own way and eat at the common table. The
Oxford commoner corresponds to the Cambridge pensioner.
2. Proceed: In English university parlance, to take the degree of.
4. Vergers: Pew-openers.
7. Christ Church: One of the largest colleges of Oxford, with a great
quadrangle ("Tom Quad") and tower. Properly speaking. Lamb should
not have referred to it as Christ's, as he does in 1. 11. Christ's College is
one of the colleges of Cambridge. See note to p. 55, title.
9. Seraphic Doctor: It was not uncommon in the Middle Ages to nick-
name the great doctors of theology: thus Aquinas was called "Doctor
Angelicus," Bonaventura, "Doctor Seraphicus." Lamb's use of the title
does not imply that he must be thinking of some particular celebrity.
"And Doctors: teachers grave, and with great names.
Seraphic, Subtile, or Irrefragable,
By their admiring scholars dignified."
— Southey, Joan of Arc, Book III.
11. Magdalen: A college of Oxford, famous for its beautiful tower.
(Usually pronounced Maudlin.)
13. Pay a devoir: i. e., pay one's respects.
15. Beadsman: In England inmates of almshouses are called beads-
men and beadswomen.
21. Chaucer, Cook, Manciple: An excellent instance of Lamb's neatness
in allusion, though there is no evidence that Chaucer was ever at either
university. Manciple means a purveyor, especially of an English college
or inn of court. Chaucer describes a cook and a manciple in the Prologue
to The Canterbury Tales.
24. Antiquity: In the rhetoric of this passage, as tvell as in the allusion
to half-Januses, Lamb seems to owe a debt to Sir Thomas Browne. There
is a superb paragraph of DeQuincey's ( Works, Masson's ed., vol. I, p. 48)
on Solitude that reads like a magnified reverberation of this of Lamb's.
30. Half-Januses: Janus was a primitive deity of the Romans, regarded
as the doorkeeper of Heaven and the patron of beginnings and endings;
hence the first month of the year was named for him. His temple in Rome
was closed only in times of universal peace. He was the protector of doors
and gateways and the god of the sun's rising and setting; and hence was
represented with two faces, one to the east and one to the west.
59:9. Oxenford: An older form of Oxford. See Chaucer, Prol. 285.
Arride: To please (obsolete and rare) .
19. Sciential apples: The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, in the Garden
of Eden.
22. VaricB lectiones: Variant readings.
NOTES 293
24. Three witnesses: See I. John, v. 7, Authorized Version. This verse
is omitted from the Revised Version, having been shown by Porson to be
spurious.
26. Porson, Richard (1759-1808): A famous EngUsh classical scholar,
professor of Greek at Cambridge. G. D.: "George Dyer, poet," in Lamb's
Key. He was a scholar and antiquarian. His chief works are History of
the University and College of Cambridge and Privileges of the Urv^versity of
Cambridge.
28. Oriel: A college of Oxford.
32. Tall Scapula: A tall (t. e., untrimmed) copy of Scapula's Greek
Lexicon.
60:3. Clifford's Inn: One of the Inns of Chancery, in Chancery Lane,
London. Originally a sort of law school preparatory for the Inns of Court
(see note on The Temple, p. 163, 1. 2), the Inns of Chancery now serve
chiefly as quarters for attorneys, solicitors, and other persons connected
with the legal profession. Clifford's Inn was subsidiary to the Inner
Temple.
6. Apparitors: Court servants, process-servers, etc. Promoters: In-
formers.
17. C : Cambridge University.
22. Caputs: An abbreviation of the phrase caput senatus (literally,
head of the senate), a council or ruUng body in the University of
Cambridge.
27. Glehe lands: Lands belonging to parish churches or ecclesiastical
benefices. In manu: i. e., in actual occupancy.
61:4. Temple: See note on p. 163,1.2.
7. Our friend M.: Basil Montague (1770-1851), a lawyer and miscel-
laneous writer.
17. Queen Lar: The Lares were tutelary household divinities of the
Romans.
24. Another Sosia: In Plautus's comedy Amphitryon there are two
Sosias, a true and a false.
62:3. Mount Tabor: A wooded moimtain in Palestine, according to
tradition the scene of the Transfiguration. Parnassus: A mountain ridge
in Greece, celebrated as the Mount of Apollo and the Muses; hence a symbol
of poetry. Plato: The famous Greek ideal philosopher.
4. Harrington, James (1611-1677): An English political writer. His
chief work was a treatise on civil government. The Commonwealth of Oceana.
These names Lamb uses as symbols of an exalted idealism.
11. "House of pure Emanuel": Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
19. Even-song: Evening service.
25. Agar's wish: By mistake for Agur, a Hebrew prophet whose wish
was "Give me neither poverty nor riches." Proverbs, xxx. 8.
294 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
29. Under-working: The Cent. Did. gives the noun underwork, "subor-
dinate work, petty affairs," from Addison*
63:13. Strong lines in fashion: This is probably an aUusion to Byron,
whose romances and Manfred had been published and whose Don Juan
was coming out when this was written.
19. Bath, Buxton, Scarborough, Harrogate (Harrowgate) : English watering
places.
21. Cam: A river which gives its name to the city of Cambridge, situate
on its banks; also called the Granta. Isis: A name sometimes given to
the Thames in its upper course, especially near Oxford.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO
64: title. Christ's Hospital: The Blue Coat School, in Newgate Street. —
"A school for 1200 boys and 100 girls, founded by Edward VI. ... It
occupies the site of an ancient monastery of the Grey Friars (see note, p. 79,
1.12). . . . The general government of the school is in the hands of a
large 'Court of Governors,' but the internal and real management is con-
ducted by the President, Treasurer, and 'Committee of Almoners.' The
original costume of the boys is still retained, consisting of long blue gowns,
yellow stockings, and knee-breeches. No head-covering is worn even in
winter. The pupils — admitted between the ages of 8 and 10 — must be the
children of parents whose income is insuflQcient for their proper education
and maintenance. They are first sent to the preparatory school at Hert-
ford, whence they are transferred according to their progress to the city
establishment. Their education — partly of a commercial nature — is com-
pleted at the age of 16. A few of the more talented pupils are, however,
prepared for a university career and form the two highest classes of the
school, known as Grecians and Deputy-Grecians. There are also 40 King's
Boys, forming the paathematical school founded by Charles II. in 1672,
The school possessed many ancient privileges, some of which it still retains.
On New Year's Day the King's Boys used to appear at Court; and on
Easter Tuesday the entire school is presented to the Lord Mayor at the
Mansion House, when each boy receives the gift of a coin fresh from the mint.
A line in the swimming bath marks the junction of three parishes. . . .
Among the pictures are 'Founding of the Hospital by Edward VI.' ascribed
to Holbein; 'Presentation of the King's Boys at the Court of James II.,' a
very large work by Verrio." (Baedeker's London.)
"The London history of the school is now ended. The boys have gone
to Sussex, where, near Horsham, the new buildings have been erected,
and the old Newgate Street haven is being demolished as I write (February,
1903) to make room for ofiBces, warehouses, and an extension of St. Bar-
:tholomew's Hospital." (Lucas.)
1. In Mr. Lamb's "Works": This essay is transparent enough in its
pretense of not being Lamb's work.
16. Sub-treasurer: Randal Norris, for many years sub-treasurer of the
Inner Temple; an old friend of Lamb's father. Mary Lamb was a brides-
NOTES 295
maid at his wedding. Lamb's essay A Deathbed, published in the first
edition of the Last Essays of Elia, but afterwards withdrawn, described his
death.
19. Crug: Mr. Lucas says that crug is still current slang.
26. Banyan: "Banian days, originally two days in the week . . .
on which sailors in the British navy had no flesh meat served up to them."
{Cent. Diet.) Banian means a Hindu trader, belonging to a caste of
strict vegetarian practice.
27. Double-refined: Sugar of good quality.
65:2. Caro equina: Horseflesh.
4. Crags: Necks. See scrag in Cent. Diet.
9. Griskin: Certain small bones of pork — a previncial word.
14. Regale: Evidently used in the sense of delight, savor, relish.
Cates: Delicacies; an archaic word, now only in poetic or consciously
Uterary use.
15. The Tishbite: Elijah. See I. Kings, xvii. 6.
22. I was a poor friendless boy: Here Lamb speaks, it is sometimes said,
"in the person of Coleridge." Coleridge was a poor, friendless, homesick
boy, who had come up to London from a town "far in the west" — Ottery
St. Mary in Devonshire; but Lamb doubtless knew other homesick, friend-
less boys than Coleridge.
66:13. Excursions . . . relish: "Our delightful excursions hi the
summer holidays to the New River, near Newington, where, like others, we
would live the long day in the water, never caring for dressing ourselves
when we had once stripped; our savoury meals afterwards, when we came
home almost famished with staying out all day without our dinners; our
visits at other times to the Tower, where by ancient privilege we had free
access to all the curiosities." (Lamb, Recollections of Christ's Hospital.)
The New River is an artiflcial stream that brings water for the supply of
the City of London. See Chambers' Book of Days.
67:2. Tower: The Tower of London, once a palace, later famous as a
state prison, and now a historical museum. It is perhaps the most in-
teresting historical monument in England. "Blue-coat boys still have
this right of free entrance to the Tower; but the Uons are no more. They
were transferred to the Zoological Gardens in 1831." (Lucas.)
4. L.'s governor: Samuel Salt (see note p. 168,1.5), in whose rooms in
the Temple the Lamb family lived.
28. Nevis, St. Kitts: Islands in the British "West Indies.
68:5. Leads: The roof, from the use of sheets or plates of lead for roofing
purposes.
7. Cry roast meat: A proverbial phrase meaning to publish one's good
fortune. Cf. Fielding's Tom Jones, Bk. IV. Ch. v, and see Cent. Diet, imder
roast.
8. Caligula's minion: The horse that the Roman Emperor Caligula
made a Roman consul. Minion here means favorite. See p. 121, 1. 6.
296 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
15. Client was dismissed, etc.: The ass was driven to Smithfield, long
famous for its cattle-market.
18. L.'s admired Perry: In the Recollections of Christ's Hospital Lamb
had written of Perry in an enthusiastic strain. Perry was appointed
steward of the school in 1761 and died in harness 1785 (Lucas). Lamb
speaks of the deep effect his death had on the boys.
19. Facile: Compliant, easy-going, now a rather rare use, echoing
exactly a transferred sense of the Latin facilis.
26. "By Verrio," etc.: Lamb had mentioned the "stately dining-hall
hung round with pictures by Verrio, Lely, and others, one of them sur-
passing in size and grandeur almost any other in the Eangdom." Verrio
was an Italian painter, employed in the decorations of Windsor Palace and
Hampton Court. Sir Peter Lely was famous for his portraits of the
beauties of the court of Charles II.
69:2. The Trojan, etc.: When Aeneas came to Carthage he saw pictures
of the Trojan war in the Temple of Juno which Dido, the Carthaginian queen,
was building. Lamb has Dryden's line in mind, but misquotes; it really is,
"And with an empty picture fed his mind."
70:7. Chancery Lane: Leads off Fleet Street, on the other side from the
Temple. Here were Clifford's Inn, and other abodes of those connected
with the courts. Lamb and his sister lived in Southampton Buildings,
Chancery Lane, in 1800 and again in 1809.
15. Hathaway, Matthias: Steward of Christ's Hospital 1790-1813.
(Lucas.)
23. Young stork: The fidelity and amiability of storks are traditional.
71:11. Bedlam: The hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem (whence
"Bedlam") in London, afterwards a lunatic asylum; as a common noun,
any madhouse.
72:1. Auto da fe: Literally, act of faith (Portuguese); the execution
of judgment upon persons condemned by the Inquisition.
3. "Watchet weeds'': i. e., his blue coat. Watchet was a favorite
word of Lamb's.
8. Disfigurements in Dante: In the Inferno Dante tells how sowers
of discord, heretics, and the like were punished by mutilation and disease.
18. Ultima Supplicia: Last, or extreme, punishment.
30. San Benito: The yellow garment worn by the victims of the
Inquisition at their execution.
31. Runagates: Deserters (a corruption of renegade).
73:12. James Boyer: "Bom in 1736, was admitted to the school in
1744, and passed to Balliol [Oxford]. He resigned his Upper Grammar
Mastership in 1799." (Lucas.) He was still living when Lamb wrote
Recollections of Christ's Hospital (1813). See p. 77, 1. 16, where he is
spoken of with respect.
13. Matthew Field: "The Rev. Matthew Feilde, also vicar of Ugley and
curate of Berden." (Lucas.)
NOTES 297
17. Accidence: A book containing the rudiments of grammar; strictly
that part of grammar that deals with the inflections of words.
74:5. Peter Wilkins, The Life and Adventures of: A story by Robert
Pollock, published 1751, relating the adventures of a sailor shipwrecked
near the South Pole. He found a winged race of Glums and Gawress, and
married one of the latter. The two other books mentioned are said to be
trashy romances.
10. Parentheses: Lamb seems to have in mind the literal meaning of
the Greek word, "a putting in beside."
12. "French and English": A little boys' slate game, less complicated
even than tit-tat-to. See Cassell's Book of Indoor Amusements.
15. BoMsseaM, Jean Jacques: A Swiss-French social philosopher (171 2-
1778). His ideas helped to prepare the way for the French Revolution.
Lamb alludes to Rousseau's Emile, ou de V Education (1762), a work that
caused its author's exile from France "and laid the foundation of modern
pedagogy." John Locke, (1632-1704): A celebrated English philosopher,
author of the Essay on the Human Understanding (1690), Some Thoughts
Concerning Education (1693), and other works.
26. Pha»drus: Wrote fables in verse, formerly used as a stock text-book
for classes in elementary Latin.
75:3. Helots: Serfs among the ancient Spartans.
7. Xenophon: A Greek historian, whose Anabasis is still a standard
text-book for beginners in Greek. Plato's Dialogues are used as text-books
for more advanced students.
9. The Samite: "Pythagoras of Samos, who forbade his pupils to speak
imtil they had listened through five years of his lectures." (Lucas.)
10. Goshen: That part of Egypt where Jacob and his sons settled when
they fled from the famine in Canaan. It was not visited by the plagues
that smote Pharaoh and his land (see Genesis, Iv-lvii; Exodus, viii). Hence,
Lamb uses Goshen to mean a sort of earthly paradise, an unreal world,
apart from the concerns and business of real Ufe. See pp. 175, 230.
20. Elysian, Tartarus: In classical mythology the under world was
divided into two regions: Elysium, or the Elysian Fields, the abode of the
blessed dead; and Tartarus, the place of punishment of the wicked.
25. Ululantes: Howling sufferers.
28. Scrannel: Harsh, squeaking, grating. See Milton, Lycidas, 1. 124.
76: footnote. Garrick, David (1717-1779): Celebrated English actor
and dramatist.
76:2. Flaccus's quibble: "In [Horace's] Satires, Bk. I, viii, 34, where
Rex has the double meaning of King, a private surname, and King, a
monarch. The thin jests in Terence are in Andrea — tristis sever itas in vultu
— 'puritanic rigour in his countenance,' says one of the comic characters
of a palpable liar; and in the Adelphi, where, after a father has counselled
his son to look into the lives of men as in a mirror, the slave coimsels the
scullions to look into the stewpans" [inspicere in patinas]. (Lucas.)
298 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
4. Vis: Force, vitality.
8. Caxon: An old cant term for a wig.
10. Passy: Perhaps slang of the school.
11. Comet: Comets were anciently regarded as omens of approaching
disaster.
23. DeviVs Litany: "Litany" is evidently suggested by the division
of the angry master's sentence into two distinct utterances; cf. devil's mass,
devil's matins, devil's paternoster, etc.
26. Rabidus furor: Furious rage.
27. The Debates: The published record of the speeches in Parliament.
77:16. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834): English philosopher,
poet, and literary critic. In his Biographia Literaria he praises Boyer
(he calls him Bowyer, incorrectly) for his sound taste in classic literature^
his good sense in making the boys study Shakespeare and Milton, his insight
into the nature of poetry, and his severe and sane criticisms of the boys'
English compositions; — "a man whose severities, even now, not seldom
furnish the dreams by which the blind fancy would fain interpret to the
mind the painful sensations of distempered sleep; but neither lessen nor
dim the deep sense of my moral and intellectual obligations. He sent
us to the University excellent Latin and Greek scholars, and tolerable
Hebraists. Yet our classical knowledge was the least of the good gifts
we derived from his zealous and conscientious tutorage." See also Coler-
idge's Table Talk, Aug. 16, 1832.
18. The Country Spectator: See note, p. 78, 1,13.
28. Dr. T e: Arthur William TroUope, who succeeded Beyer as
Upper Grammar Master. (Lucas.)
78:6. Fasces: The bundle of rods which the Roman lictors carried
before the magistrates as the symbol of authority. Here, of course, it is
used figuratively of the schoolmaster's birch.
8. Cicero de Amicitia: Cicero's essay on Friendship is one of his best
known works.
10. Th ; Sir Edward Thornton, an eminent diplomat. (Lucas.)
13. Thomas Fanshaw Middleton (1769-1822): Conducted The Country
Spectator, 1792-3; published a treatise on The Doctrine of the Greek Article,
1808; was appointed the first Bishop of Calcutta, 1814. See Introd., p.lO.
17. Sharpe, Granville (1735-1813) : English philanthropist, pamphleteer,
and scholar. He made an important contribution to New Testament
scholarship in his canon of the use of the definite article.
18. Regni novitas: i. e., the recent establishment of British rule.
20. Jewel, John (1522-1571): Bishop of Salisbury, 1560; author of
Apologia pro Ecclesia Anglicana. Hooker, Richard (1553-^600): Cele-
brated English divine and theologian, author of Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity. His biographer, Izaak Walton, calls him a "most learned, most
humble, most holy man."
NOTES 299
26. Richards, George: Became a governor of Christ's Hospital and
founded a gold medal for 'Latin hexameters. (Lucas.)
28. Poor S , ill-fated M /; "Scott, died in Bedlam; Maunde,
dismissed school." Lamb's Key (see note, p. 54, 1.10).
79:3. Dark pillar: In the Old Testament account of the pillar Of fire
and of cloud that led the children of Israel there is nothing to suggest
Lamb's use of the cloudy column as the symbol of melancholy or hopeless-
ness. See Exodus, xiii, 21; Numbers, ix, 15-23. Coleridge was known
also in his later years as a wonderful talker. See Carlyle's account of his
conversation, in The Life of Sterling.
8. Mirandula, Giovanni Pico, Count of: "An Italian humanist and
philosopher, one of the leading scholars of the ItaUan Renaissance."
9. Jamhlicus, Plotinus: Greek neo-platonic philosophers of the third
century, A. D.
11. Pindar: "The greatest of Greek lyric poets."
12. Grey Friars: The buildings set apart for the purposes of Christ's
Hospital had belonged to the Grey Friars (also called Minorites and Fran-
ciscans), whose monastery, founded in 1225, was one of the most important
religious houses in London. At the Dissolution, Henry VIII. gave the
property to the City of London. The Chm-ch was not destroyed at the
Great Fire of 1666, but "nothing remains of the monastery except some
low brick arches of the western cloister." Some of the school buildings
are modem; the courts handsome and spacious; 685 boys are lodged and
boarded in the surroimding buildings. (Hare, Walks in London.)
15. C. V. Le G : Charles Valentine Le Grice, one of the Grecians
of Lamb's day.
26. Cognition: A characteristically Elian use of the word.
30. Nireusf0rmosusr~l^^i3swa,s the handsomest man among the
Greeks at Tiw; formosus means cdm^ly.
80:3^ "Bl — — ": Perhaps "blast — r\or "blackguard!"
fn. Junior Le G ; "Samuel Le Grice became a soldier and died in
the West Indies." F ; Joseph Favell, killed in the Peninsular War at
Salamanca in 1812. Fr ; F. W. Franklin, "master of the Hertford
branch of the school from 1801 to 1827." Marmaduke T ; . "Marma-
duke Thompson, to whom Lamb dedicated Rosamund Gray in 1798."
(Lucas.)
THE TWO RACES OF MEN
81:6. Alcibiades: A brilliant but dissolute Athenian politician and
general. Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) was the friend of Addison, the
founder of The Tatler and contributor to The Spectator, moralist, loose liver,
warm-hearted and generous spendthrift.
7. Brinsley: Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), noted dramatist,
theatrical manager, orator, and politician. His best-known works are The
Rivals and The School for Scandal. He, too, was a great spendthrift.
300 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
13. Pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum.': Fielding has a very similar
passage: "An absolute contempt of those ridiculous distinctions of meum
and tuum which would cause endless disputes did not the law happily de-
cide them by converting both into suum." {Jonathan Wild, Bk. III.,ch.l4.)
Meum, mine; tuum, thine; suum, his. Lamb wrote a Latin epigram
(1830) Suum Cuique, on the same idea, for a schoolboy friend. See Lucas's
edition, vol. V., p. 339.
14. Nohle simplification of language: Lowell has made effective use of
the same idea in his caustic review of The Library of Old Authors: "We
find Actus Secundus, Scena Primus and exit ambo, and we are interested to
know that in a London printing-house, two centuries and a half ago, there
was a philanthropist who wished to simplify the study of the Latin lan-
guage by reducing all the nouns to one gender and all the verbs to one
number."
16. Tooke, Home (173G-1812): An English philologist; his chief
work, Epea Pteroenta, or The Diversions of Purley, though unscientific,
had much influence on Englishmen's ideas of etymology a century ago.
22. Oholary: "Reduced to the possession of only the smallest coins,
hence, impecunious, poor" {Cent. Diet.). See p. 251, 1. 21.
^"28. Candlemas, Holy Michael: Candlemas was one of the Scotch
quarter-days. Michaelmas is an English quarter-day. In Great Britaii^
quarter-days (i. e., days that begin quarters of the year) are the usual
terms, or landlords' and tenants' days for entering or ending leases and for
paying rent.
29. Lena tormentum: Literally, gentle torture. (Horace, Odes III.
xxi, 13.)
82:1. Cloak of the traveller: In iEsop's fable the North Wind and the
Sun try their strength to see which can first strip a wayfaring man of his
clothes. The Sun succeeds — Moral: Persuasion is better than force.
15. Ralph Bigod: The name under which Lamb speaks of John Fen-
wick, with whom he was associated on The Albion, which came to an end
in 1801 by reason, it is thought, of a lampoon of Lamb's upon the Prince
of Wales.
83:3. Alexander: Called "the Great"; who when he had subdued all
the world,, sighed because there were no more worlds to conquer.
6. Tythe: Tithe as an adjective is obsolete. "Every tithe soul,"
Troilus and Cressida II., ii, 19.
84:4. Fisc: Treasury, usually used of a state or a prince.
7. Undeniable: A play on words, of course.
9. Cana fides: Literally, hoary honesty.
16. Mum,ping visnomy: Whining face.
86:1. Comberbatch: Silas Tomkyn Comberbach [Sic] was the name
Samuel Taylor Coleridge assumed when he enUsted in the dragoons, after
running away from college. The name is sometimes written Comberback,
€. g., Lucas, Elia, p. 825; but Lamb's spelling indicates the pronunciation
NOTES 301
sufficiently; and, anyway, punning was not muchi in Coleridge's line. We
may be sure that Lamb would have made the pirn, if he had had half a
chance.
6. Bloomahury: When Lamb wrote this he was living in Great Russell
Street over a shop which had once been Will's Coffee House, famous in
Dryden's day.
6. Switzer-like: Like Swiss Guards — a company of Swiss mercenaries
in the French service, noted for their stature and their courage. The
Guildhall giants: Two wooden figures, known as Gog and Magog, used
formerly in city pageants, and now set up, high against the wall, in the
Guildhall in London. There is a picture of them in Chambers' Book
of Days, vol. II., p. 562.
9. School divinity: Mediaeval scholastic theology, which was versed
in nice disputations. St. Bonaventura and St. Thomas Aquinas were
famous scholastic philosophers and theologians of the thirteenth century;
^ee note on p. 58, 1. 9. Bellarmino was an Italian cardinal and Jesuit theo-
logian (1542-1621).
11. Ascapart: A famous giant in the old romance of Bevis of Hampton.
22. Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682): English physician and author.
He wrote Religio Medici (1643), Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Inquiry into
Vulgar Errors (1646), Hydrotaphia, or Urn Burial (1658), The Garden of
Cyrus, or the Quincuncial Lozenge (1658), and Christian Morals (published
posthumously 1716). Lamb was fond of his odd ideas and elaborately
curious style, as was DeQuincey also.
27. Dodsley, Robert: English bookseller and author; best known for
his "Select Collection of Old Plays" (12 vols., 1744).
28. Vittoria Corombona, or the White Devil: A play by John Webster,
29. Priam's refuse sons: After the death of Hector, nine of Priam's
fifty sons were still living. Iliad, Bk. XXIV.
30. Anatomy of Melancholy: By Robert Burton (1621); a curious book
abounding in quotations from authors of all ages and countries, which
treats of the causes, nature, and cure of melancholy. Lamb was fond of
it and published some imitations of it (see Introd., p. 22).
31. Complete Angler: By Izaak Walton (1653), author also of lives of
some English worthies.
86:1. John Bunde, The Life of: By Thomas Amory (1691?-1788).
Its hero marries seven wives — "is a prodigious hand at matrimony, divinityj^
a song, and a peck." Lamb says " 'Tis very interesting, and an extra^
ordinary compound of all manner of subjects, from the depth of the ludicrous
to the heights of sublime religious truth." (Letter to Coleridge, June 24,
1797.) On this whole passage see the excellent appendix on Lamb's Library
in Lucas's Life, vol. II.
10. Proselytes of the gate: i. e., those converts to Judaism who were
not compelled to submit to the regulations of the Mosaic law.
302 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
14. Deodands: Lamb uses the word here in the sense of forfeit,
pledge, or, as it were, hostage; but properly the word means property
forfeit to the crown for having been by chance the cause of death.
19. K .- James Kenney, the dramatist. Lamb got his book back.
See Descriptive Catalogue of the Library of Charles Lamb, privately printed
for the Dibdin Club, New York.
22. Margaret Newcastle: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle
(16247-1674), author of poems, plays, letters and discourses on natural
philosophy, an autobiography, and the biography of her royalist husband.
Pepys says, "The whole story of this lady is a romance, and all she does
is romantic." Lamb speaks thus: "The Life of the Duke of Newcastle
by his Duchess — no casket is rich enough, no casing suflQciently durable, to
honour and keep safe such a jewel." {Detached Thoughts on Books and
Reading, in the Last Essays.)
87:6. Fulke Greville, Lord Brook[e]: English poet and statesman, a
favorite of Queen Elizabeth, and intimate friend and biographer of Sir Philip
Sidney. Lamb esteemed his tragedies highly. See Hazlitt's essay On
Persons One Would Wish to Have Known.
9. Zimmerman[n], J. G. von: A Swiss physician and philosophical
writer. He wrote On Solitude (1755), On National Pride (1758).
19. Daniel, Samuel (1562-1619): An English poet and historian.
NEW YEAR'S EVE
87: title. New Yearns Eve: This essay was the probable cause of a
brief falling-out with Southey, who objected (in a review) to Lamb's want
of a soimder religious feeling. (See Introd., p. 32.)
27. Desuetude: Disuse.
88:3. Pretermitted: Omitted, disregarded.
89:11. Alice W — n: Lamb's Key says merely "feigned (Winterton)";
but we must imderstand Ann Simmons (see Introd., p. 18).
13. Old Dorrell: In his poem Going or Gone (1827) Lamb writes:
"And wicked old Dorrell,
'Gainst whom I've a quarrel"
and goes on to mention "a poor Fortune, that should have been ours."
Mr. Lucas thinks there is no doubt that he is the Dorrell who witnessed
Lamb's father's will. ,
25. A notorious . . . : The blanks are in the original text.
90:22. Idea: In the Platonic sense of archetype or essence.
25. Singularly conceited: Perhaps unusually self -complacent, but more
likely Lamb would use the phrase to mean oddly whimsical, peculiar.
91:10. Audits: Periodical reckonings.
20. Reluct: To struggle against; a rare word.
92:1. Lavinian shores: A reference to Aeneas's migration to Italy after
the sack of Troy.
NOTES 303
12. Huge armfuls: Leigh Hunt recalls seeing Lamb kiss an old folio of
Chapman's Homer.
22. Problematic: Not puzzling, but questionable, doubtful. Poor
snakes: "Poor worms," "worms of the dust," etc., are more familiar
expressions of extravagant humility or contempt; but snake, serpent,
is an obsolete sense of the word worm.
24. Burgeon: To bud; Lamb was fond of this old word.
93:1. Innutritious one: See the Song of Solomon, viii, 8.
2. The Persian: The Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, was a form of
sxm-worship.
4. Humours: The thin bodily fluids; a term of antique medicine.
10. Friar John: "In Rabelais. Friar John when fighting would give
his fallen foe 'to all the devils in hell!' " (Lucas.)
15. Privation, positive: Terms of logic. Privation means negation or
negative.
19. "Lie down with Kings," etc.: Mr. Lucas, following Hallward and
Hill, suggests that this is perhaps a compound quotation from Job, iii,
13, and Sir Thomas Browne's Urn- Burial; but the echo, if such it is, is not
close.
27. "aSwc^ as Ae, etc.: "A common sentiment on tombstones." (Lucas.)
94:5. Mr. Cotton: Charles Cotton, poet, translator of Montaigne's
Essays, and author of a Second Part (on fly-fishing) to Walton's Complete
Angler.
10. Janus: See note on p. 58, 1.30.
95:23. The Princess: i. e.. Fortune.
34. Helicon: Really a mountain in Greece, celebrated in Greek mythol-
ogy as the abode of the Muses; but here used of the foimtain of Hippocrene,
sacred to the muses, on the moimtain. The confusion is an old one: Chaucer
speaks of "Elicon, the clere welle." Spa: A watering-place with medicinal
springs, in Belgium.
MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST
96: title. Mrs. Battle: Probably more or less a portrait of Mrs.
Sarah Burney, wife of Lamb's friend Rear- Admiral James Burney and so
sister-in-law of Fanny Burney, the novelist. Lamb himself was devoted
to whist. The footnotes (p. 96) from the original version in the London
Magazine were not reprinted in the version of 1818.
26. Under the rose: i. e., in confidence, sub rosa.
97:18. Pope, Alexander (1688-1744): The chief English poet of the
early 18th century. The third canto of The Rape of the Lock describes a
game of Ombre played by the heroine, Belinda, against two gentlemen.
20. Ombre: A game borrowed from Spain, usually played by three
persons, as is tradrille (more commonly tredille).
304 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
26. Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850): Poet, antiquary, and clergy-
man. His sonnets first fired Coleridge's poetical enthusiasm (see Bio-
graphia Liter aria)', his edition of Pope appeared 1806.
27. Quadrille: "A modem game, bears great analogy to Ombre, with
the addition of a fourth player." (Strutt's Book of Sports and Pastimes.)
32. Spadille: The ace of spades. "Spadillio first, unconquerable lord!"
Rape of the Lock, iii, 49.
98:5. Sans Prendre Vole: Taking every card when playing single-
handed.
17. Machiavel, or Machiavelli, Niccolo (1469-1527): An Italian states-
man and author. He wrote The Prince, a history of Florence, and
The Art of War.
24. Nob: i. e., head. "One for his nob" is a point counted in cribbage
for holding the knave of trumps.
30. Solecism: A blunder, incongruity, inconsistency.
31. Alliteration: Lamb knew perfectly well that his style was full of
alliterations, as here, for example.
99:22. Vandyke, Sir Anthony (1599-1641): A famous Flemish painter,
best known for his portraits; knighted by Charles I. of England (1632),
and made court painter. Potter, Paul (1625-1654): Noted Dutch painter
of animals and portraits.
26. Antic: i. e., fantastic.
29. Pam: The knave of clubs in the game of loo. In Lamb's children's
book, The King and Queen of Hearts, the knave is named Pambo.
100:4. Deal-board: A thick plank, usually of fir or pine
6. Verdant carpet: The green baize top of the card-table.
28. Five dollar stake: i. e., a five-crown stake.
31. Tenure: An English law term meaning the conditions upon which
property is held.
101:4. Piquet: In this game points are scored for carte blanche, or a
hand of only plain cards; for point, or a hand with the strongest suit; for
pique, or winning thirty points before one's opponent scores at all; for
repique, or winning thirty points by the combination of cards in one's hand,
before play begins; for capot, or taking all the tricks; and for combinations
such as sequence, quatorze, trio.
102:15. Size ace: Six and one. See a happy use of the language of
dicing quoted from Lowell imder Amhes-ace in Cent. Diet.
103:28. Bridget: See the essay My Relations.
104:4. Manes: See note, p. 47, 1. 5.
7. Tierce, quatorze: A tierce is a sequence of three cards; a quatorze
is four aces, kings, queens, knaves, or tens, so called because it counts 14.
16. Lenitive: A soothing application; here doubtless a poultice for his
gout.
18. Appliances: i. e., applications.
NOTES 305 \
VALENTINE'S DAY
21. Bishop Valentine: Properly speaking, St. Valentine was not a
bishop; but Elia had good literary precedent for speaking of him thus:
Drayton and Donne in their poems call him bishop. On the origin of
the observances of Valentine's Day see Chambers' Book of Days.
22. Arch'flamen of Hymen: High priest of the God of Marriage.
105:1. Jerome, Ambrose, Cyril, Austin, Origen: Early church fathers.
4. Bull, Parker, Whitgift: English prelates of the 16th and 17th cen-
turies.
9. Choristers: Choir-boys. Precentors: Choir-leaders in cathedrals and
monastic churches.
10. Crozier: The staff borne before a bishop on solemn occasions,
symbolical of his oflSce.
13. Ydeped: i. e., called.
106:22. Irreversible: A somewhat rare word — one of Jeremy Taylor's —
meaning not to be set aside or annulled.
26. Type: i. e., emblem or symbol.
107:3. Arcadia: A region of Greece, proverbial for its rural simplicity:
in modem literature an ideal land of piping shepherds and coy shepherd-
esses; a symbol for peacefulness, content, and simplicity.
6. E. B.: Edward Francis Bumey, half brother of the Admiral. See
note on p. 96, title.
26. Ovid: One of the chief Latin poets of the Augustan age; author of
The Art of Love.
27. Pyramus and Thisbe, Dido, Hero and Leander: Stock classical
examples of constant love. The more hackneyed the allusion, the more
suitable for the banter of this passage, of course.
29. Cayster: A river in Lydia mentioned in the Iliad (II., 461) as abound-
ing in cranes, geese, and swans.
31. Iris: The goddess of the rainbow.
A CHAPTER ON EARS
109:6. Defoe, Daniel: The author of Robinson Crusoe, who was pilloried
for his tract The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, but did not lose his ears.
16. "Water parted from the sea," "In Infancy": Songs by Ame in
Artaxerxes, Lamb's "First Play." (Lucas.) See note, p. 197, 1. 2.
19. Mrs. S ; "Mrs. Spinkes" in the Key (see note, p. 54, 1. 10).
21. In his long coats: i. e., in baby-clothes, or perhaps Lamb means
the Blue Coat of the school dress.
25. Alice W n: See note, p. 89, 1. 11.
30. Quavers: i. e., eighth-notes.
306 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
110:3. My friend A.: "Probably William Ayrton, the musical critic.'''
(Lucas.)
20. Thorough bass, sostenuto, adagio: Lamb exaggerates his ignorance
of music and musical terms.
27. Baralipton: The scholastic philosophers devised a whole set of
artificial words or names to denote the various forms of the syllogism in
logic, of which Baralipton was one. In themselves they are perfectly
meaningless.
31. Gamut: The musical scale. •
111:1. Magic influences: Cf. the opening lines of Congreve's Mourning
Bride, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast," etc.
22. Enraged Musician: "A reference to Hogarth's picture with that
title, where street noises are driving the performer mad." (Lucas.)
112:1. "Party in a parlour," etc.: From Wordsworth's Peter Bell (first
edition) afterwards expunged. "The lines . ... seem to have clung
to Lamb's memory, for there is the story of his shouting the words at a
solemn evening gathering seen through a window in passing . . . shaking
the railings the while." (Lucas, Life, II., 14.)
8. To pile honey: An adaptation of the classical proverb, "to pile Pelion
on Ossa."
12. All stops: i. e., all punctuation marks.
22. Burton: See note on p. 85, 1. 30. The quotation is from Part I, Section
2, of the Anatomy of Melancholy, "not quite correctly copied." (Lucas.)
27. Amabilis insania, mentis gratissimus error: Sweet rapture; most
delightful wandering of the mind.
113:2. Toys: In the older sense of trivial pleasures, mental playthings
16. Subrusticus pudor: i. e., a sort of countrified embarrassment.
26. Nov ; Vincent Novello, the organist, composer, and musical
publisher.
27. Abbey: Westminster Abbey. . '
114:14. Arions: Arion was fabled to have charmed the creatures of
the sea by his playing. Haydn, Joseph (1732-1809); Mozart, Wolfgang
Amadeus (1756-1791); Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750); Beethoven,
Ludwig van (1770-1827): Famous German composers. Modem critical
taste ranks the latter two the more highly.
20. Triple tiara: The insignium of the Pope.
24. Malleus hereticorum: Hammer of the heretics, a title given to
St. Bernard, the preacher of the second crusade, and also to Johann Faber,
the opponent of Luther.
25. Heresiarch: Chief heretic.
26. Marcion, Ebion, Cerinthus: Early unorthodox Christians.
115:6. P. S.: This postscript was omitted from the collected edition.
^ Leigh Hunt: See Introd., p. 2 6. The Indicator article referred to
NOTES 307
was a reiiew of Lamb's Works (collected ed., 1818) in which Hxint said:
"We believe we are taking no greater liberty with him than our motives
will warrant, when we add that he sometimes writes in the London Magazine
under the signature of Elia."
116:8. Steelyard: The place in London where, imtil expelled in 1595,
the merchants of the Hanseatic League had their headquarters. They
had an organization like a gild and controlled most of the foreign trade of
England.
ALL FOOLS' DAY
23. A speck of the motley: A streak of folly. Motley {i. e., parti-colored
garb) was the conventional dress of court-fools.
26. Free of the corporation: Invested with the full rights and immunities
of the company (of fools).
117:1. Stultus sum: I am a fool.
5. Sparkling gooseberry: Short for gooseberry wine, the apposite-
ness of which is obvious in the connection. Mr. Lucas piles Pelion
on Ossa by thinking that Lamb meant to call the notion of gooseberry
fool (a kind of conserve) to his readers' minds.
7, Troll the catch of Amiens: Sing Amiens's song. It is snng not by
Amiens but by Jacques. The burden, or chorus, of it is properly ducdame,
which the hearers in the play do not understand — or the editors either,
for some editions (one of which Lamb follows) make it over into due ad me,
i. e., lead to me.
16. Bauble, etc.: The court-fool often carried a bauble, or mock-sceptre,
which generally bore a fool's head, with parti-colored hood, asses' ears, and
little bells. Hobby: A hobby-horse.
22. A salamander-gathering: The salamander was supposed to live in
the fire.
118:1. Disinterested sect of the Calenturists: A calenture is a feverish
delirium supposed to be caused by hot weather, especially on shipboard.
Elia calls the victims a disinterested sect because they obligingly throw
themselves overboard, out of the way of their shipmates.
3. Gebir: An 8th century Arab, the father of mediaeval chemistry,
or alchemy. Lamb seems to have evolved the connection of Gebir with
Babel from Landor's poem Gebir, in which the hero "tries to build
a city, but finds his labours destroyed 'not by mortal hand' " (Hall-
ward and Hill, quoted by Lucas). Among the many traditions of the
origin of Masonry (which is probably an outgrowth of the mediaeval gilds)
is one that the fraternity originated at the building of the Tower of Babel.
6. Right hand . . . stammerers: A double allusion to Lamb's own
impediment and the confusion of tongues at Babel.
7. Herodotus: "Lamb invented this reference" (Lucas). Toises:
The toise was an old French measure of about C feet.
10. Nuncheon: Midday limcheon.
308 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
17. Moppet: A rag-doll, a humorous or afiCectionate term of address
to a child.
18. Mister Adams, etc.: In Fielding's novel Joseph Andrews, Adams
is a simple, absent-minded clergyman and Mrs. Slipslop a vulgar waiting-
woman. Odso: A modified form of an old oath.
24. Raymund Lully (1235-1315): A Spanish philosopher, poet, and
missionary to the Mohammedans. The appositeness of Lamb's mention
may lie in the fact that "to the end of his life, and after his death, his
ignorance of Latinity was used as a reproach against him;" or it may rest
on Lully 's idea that he had invented "a universal and infalUble intellectual
method," in which he "essentially kept all the fundamental notions of the
schoolmen, but made confusion worse confoimded by his juggling methods."
(A. R. Marsh, in Johnson's Cyclopedia.)
26. Duns Scotus, surnamed Doctor SubtiUs: A famous scholastic
philosopher and logician of the 13th century. "His name ... came
to be used as a common appellative, 'a very learned man,' and being ap-
plied satirically ... gave rise to dunce in its present sense." {Cent.
Diet.)
119:1. Stephen, etc.: FooUsh characters in Ben Jonson and Shakespeare.
8. R : "Ramsay, London Library, Ludgate Street; now extinct."
Lamb's Key.
14. Granville S .• See note, p. 78, 1. 17.
19. Armado: A fantastic braggart in Lovers Labour's Lost. Quisada:
The fantastic, chivalric knight, Don Quixote, in Cervantes' famous novel
of that name.
120:19. Tendre: An affectionate regard. The English noim tender
has the same meaning in Shakespeare.
21. That answered: May mean "that was satisfactory," or "that was
reciprocal."
121:1. Dotterels: The dotterel is a foolish bird; "to dorr the dotterel"
is an old phrase meaning "to fool a simpleton."
S. Darlings, minions, white hoys: All of equivalent meaning.
A QUAKERS' MEETING
121: title. A Quakers' Meeting: "Lamb's connection with Quakers
was somewhat intimate throughout his life." (Lucas.) His friends, the
Lloyds and Bernard Barton (the poet), were Quakers. See also the essay
on Imperfect Sympathies.
122:4. Ulysses stuffed his comrades' ears with wax, and had himself
tied to the mast, so that the Sirens' enchanting song should be of no
effect.
27. Carthusian: One of the rules of the Carthusian monks is to keep
perpetual silence.
123:5. Zimmerman: See note, p. 87, 1. 9.
• NOTES 309
26. Nought-caballing: To cabal is to plot.
29. Council, consistory: Solemn meetings of ecclesiastical authorities
in the Roman Catholic and other churches.
124:6. Fox, George (1624-1691) : The founder of the Society of Friends;
frequently imprisoned for breaking the laws against conventicles {i. e.,
unauthorized religious gatherings). Dewesbury was "one of Fox's first
colleagues, and a famous preacher." (Lucas.)
11. Church and presbytery: The established church and the dissenters.
Receptacle: Gathering-place, a rare use of the word.
16. Penn: In a letter to Coleridge (Dec, 1797), Lamb says: "I am
just beginning to read a most capital book, good thoughts in good
language, William Penn's 'No Cross, No Crown.' ... I love it
[Quakerism] in the books of Penn and Woolman, but I detest the vanity
of a man thinking he speaks by the Spirit. ..."
17. The bail dock: A small room in the comer of the Court in the Old
Bailey. Lamb later, in a letter, says that he finds no such words in Fox's
journal and "must have put some other Quaker's words into his mouth."
21. Sewel, "William: His chief work is The History of the Rise, Increase,
and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers, originally published
in Dutch, 1717; English translation, 1722.
25. Wesley, John (1703-1791): The founder of Methodism,
30. James Naylor (1618-1660): A fanatical English Puritan; rode
into Bristol naked, in imitation of Christ's entry into Jerusalem; was
convicted of blasphemy and recanted.
125:11. John Woolman (1720-1772): American Quaker preacher.
He wrote on slavery, but is best known by his Journal, published 1774.
17. The dove: The symbol of the Holy Spirit.
126:4. Orgasm: i. e., ecstasy.
7. Malleable: i. e., capable of being changed or worked; a good instance
of Lamb's aptness in phrase.
23. Jocos Risus-que: Jests and laughter, i. e., the Levities. Loves:
Proserpine was gathering flowers with Cupid at Enna when she was carried
oflf to Hades by Dis (Pluto).
30. Trophonius: A legendary Greek hero, who was consulted at his
oracle in a cave in Boeotia.
127:15. Whitsun-conferences: Yearly meetings.
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER
27. Ortelius: Abraham Ortelius, a Flemish geographer who published
an atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum in 1570. Arrowsmith, Aaron: English
geographer and mapmaker (1750-1823).
128:5. Dear friend: Barron Field (1786-1846), son of the apothecary
to Christ's Hospital; judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales
1816-1824. He published several volumes, among them First Fruits of
310 THE ESSAYS OF'ELIA
Australian Poetry (reviewed by Lamb in Leigh Hunt's Examiner, Jan.
16, 1820), containing two poems, "Botany Bay Flowers" and "The Kan-
garoo." See the essay on Distant Correspondents.
6. TerrcB Incognitcs: Unknown lands.
7. Bear, Charles's Wain: The principal stars of the Great Bear com-
pose the figure of Charles's Wain, or the Dipper.
18. Four great monarchies: Chaldaea, Assyria, Egypt, Persia.
21. Shepherd Kings: A name given to the Hyksos dynasty of foreign
kingsof Egypt about 2000 B. C. My friend M.: Thomas Manning (1772-
1840), an English mathematician and traveler. He was the first English-
man to enter the sacred city of Lhassa in Thibet.
129:11. Shuffling: Dodging the issue.
16. Bishopsgate, Shacklewell: See notes, p. 45, II. 3,7.
130:1. Smithfield: See note, p. 68, 1. 15.
8. Norton Folgate: A district in London, about IJ miles northeast of
St. Paul's.
11. Morning avocations: i. e., his occupation in the India House.
19. Sirens: See note on p. 122, I. 4. What name Achilles assumed:
According to one story, Achilles was taken as a youth by his mother, Thetis,
to the court of King Lycomedes, where he lived disguised as a maiden among
the King's daughters, in order that he might escape being summoned to join
the expedition against Troy. Ulysses, who had gone to seek him, discovered
him by a trick. Disguised as a pedlar, he spread out his wares and some
weapons before t^he women, and then caused the signal for battle to be
blown on the trumpets. Achilles seized the weapons and so betrayed his
sex.
22. Shoreditch: A northerly continuation of Bishopsgate Street With-
out; also the name of a borough of London.
131:2. Kingsland: Formerly a suburb, now an outlying district of
London, about four miles north of the Thames.
5. North Pole Expedition: Probably Sir John Franklin's disastrous
one of 1819.
13. Dalston: See note, p. 45, I. 3.
30. The Lilys and the Linacres: William Lily (ca. 1468-1522), an Eng-
lish grammarian, the friend of Colet, Erasmus, and More; one of the first
teachers of Greek in England; hieadmaster of Colet 's school in St. Paul's
Churchyard and author of a La^tin grammar which in a revised form was
long a national text-book. Thomas Linacre (ca. 1460-1524), a noted
English classicist and physician; projector and a founder of the College
of Physicians in London; taught Greek to Erasmus and Sir Thomas More;
published grammatical works.
132:9. Flori: Florilegia, anthologies; literally, cullings of flowers.
10. Spicilegia: Gleanings of grain. Arcadia: See note, p. 107, 1. 3.
NOTES 311
12. Basileus, etc.: Pamela and Philoclea are the daughters of King
Basileus in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia; Mopsa and Damoetas are comic
characters in the same.
17. Paul's Accidence: A Latin grammar so called because John Colet
(1467-1519), the famous humanist, who wrote it, was the founder of St.
Paul's School.
28. Solon (about 640-560 B. C): An Athenian reformer and lawgiver.
Lycurgus (probably 9th century, B. C): The traditional author of the
laws and institutions of Sparta.
133:7. He: i. e., the pupil.
19. Cum multis aliis: With many other things.
20. Tractate on Education: Milton's Tractate on Education, 1644.
21. Hartlib, Samuel: A friend of Milton, and pamphleteer on education
and husbandry.
28. Mollia tempora fandi: Favorable occasions for speaking of the
matter.
134:14. Orrery: A mechanical representation of the solar system;
see cut in Cent. Diet. Panopticon: A museum or exhibition room for
novelties.
\
MY RELATIONS t
138:11. Browne's Christian Morals: See note, p. 85, 1. 22.
19. Aunt: Sarah Lamb, sister of Elia's father; she was known to the
children as "Aunt Hetty." See p. 65. One of Lamb's poems in Blank
Verse (see Introd., p. 20) was written in memory of her. She died in 1797.
26. Thomas h Kempis: properly, Thomas Hammerken (1379?-1471),
a German mystic and ascetic, generally thought to be the author of De
Imitatione Christi.
28. Matins, complines: The offices, or services, for the first and the
last, respectively, of the seven "canonical hours" into which the day is
divided by Roman Catholic ecclesiastical practice.
139:6. ''Adventures," etc.: The book is a real one. "The history tells
how the imfortunate Mons. du F . . . married against his father's
will, and suffered in consequence many privations, including imprisonment
in a convent, from which he escaped by a jmnp of fifty feet." (Lucas.)
7. Chapel on Essex Street: A Unitarian chapel (perhaps the one still
standing in Milford Lane) close by the Temple, where the Lambs lived.
Of course Elia does not mean that Unitarianism actually began in Essex
Street and in Aunt Hetty's lifetime. It is a very ancient "heresy,"
and in England Unitarian opinions took root at an early period of the
Reformation. The philosophical writings of the 18th century tended
to the strengthening of the doctrine. Very likely the chapel in Essex
Street had not long been opened.
11. Never missed them: i. e., never cared if she did not get them, as is
312 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
shown plainly enough in the sharing of her attentions between the Roman
Catholic prayer-book and the Essex Street chapel.
25. Brother or sister I never had any: Lamb's parents had seven
children, of whom John and Mary ("James" and "Bridget") were the only
ones Charles knew. The others all died young. A daughter, Elizabeth,
was bom in 1768, six years and more before Charles.
29. Cousins in Hertfordshire: By the name of Bruton, his maternal
grandmother's family. See p. 149.
140:6. Grand climacteric: Climacteric years, or critical periods of change
in the bodily organism, were held by some ancient philosophers to recur
every seven years, by others every nine years. The "grand climacteric"
was the 63rd year, the multiple of 7 and 9.
10. Yorick: A clergyman in Sterne's Tristram Shandy, in whose guise
Sterne gives us his own picture; hence the name is often applied to Sterne
himself.
17. Phlegm . . . sanguine: Old-fashioned medicine distinguished
various complexions, temperaments, etc , named (according as one
or another of the humors had predominance in the body), phlegmatic,
melancholic, choleric, sanguine.
141:4. Dominichino, Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641): An Italian
painter. His most famous picture is "The Communion of St. Jerome,"
in the Vatican. The proper form is Domenichino.
10. Charles of Sweden: Charles XII. (1682-1718), a celebrated military
leader.
17. Cham: An old form of Khan, i. e., sovereign. The Grand Khan
of Tartary, described by the celebrated Venetian traveler, Marco Polo
(1254-1324), in his Travels, was Kublai Khan (the "Kubla Khan" of
Coleridge's poem), the foimder of the Mongol dynasty of China.
28. John Murray's Street: John Murray, the great publisher and friend
of literary men (especially Byron, who has immortalized him), had his
oflace in Albemarle Street.
143:5. Claude, Lorrain (1600-1682): Celebrated French landscape
painter. Hobbima, Meyndert (1638-1709): Dutch landscape painter.
Properly Hobbema.
6. Christie's: A well-known auction-room in Pall Mall, London, estab-
Ushed by James Christie (1730-1808), the friend of Garrick, Gainsborough,
and Reynolds; continued by his son, James Christie (1773-1831), known
also as an antiquary and art critic; now Christie, Manson & Woods. "In
Christie's sale catalogues may be traced the history of fine-art taste in
England for over a century."
7. Gauds: Playthings, toys, trifles.
13. Pall Mall: Formerly a fashionable suburban promenade, now a
handsome street in the West End, the center of London club life.
29. TEapAaeZ, Sanzio (1483-1520): A celebrated Italian painter. Among
NOTES 313
his works are the well-known "Sistine Madonna" and "The Madonna of
the Chair,"
144:1. Carracci, Annibale (15G0-1609): An Italian painter, pupil of
his cousin, Ludovico.
4. Giordano, Lucca (1632-1705): An Italian painter, celebrated for
his swiftness of execution. Maratti, Carlo (1625-1713) : An Italian painter,
chiefly of rehgious subjects.
146:3. Apostle to the brute hind, etc.: John Lamb pubUshed a pamphlet
(1810) on the prevention of cruelty to animals, containing a huge sentence
on the manner of cooking eels, A propos. Lamb wrote in a letter, "Don't
show it [the pamphlet] to Mrs. Collier, for I remember she makes excellent
eel soup."
9. Clarkson, Thomas (1760-1846): English aboUtionist and pam-
phleteer. He wrote a History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1808).
MACKEEY END IN HERTFOKDSHIRE
146: title. Mackery End: "Lamb's first visit there must have been
when he was only a Uttle boy, somewhere about 1780." (Lucas.) The
house is still standing.
15. Rash king's offspring: Jephthah's daughter; see Judges, xi, 37, 38-
147:12. Religio Medici: See note, p. 85, 1. 22.
18. Margaret Newcastle: See note, p. 86, 1. 22.
21. Freethinkers, etc.: Among them Coleridge, HazUtt, Leigh Hunt,
WiUiam Godwin.
149:7. Less known relations: Lamb's maternal grandmother, Mary
Field (bom Bruton), was in charge of Blakesware House, the Plumers'
Hertfordshire place, from 1778 till her death in 1792.
8. Corn country: i. e., grain-growing coimtry.
20. My grandmother: See Dream Children, p. 201.
31. St. Albans: A city in Hertfordshire, twenty miles northwest of
London.
151:6. Females: See note, p. 281, 1. 24.
152:8. B. F.: See note, p. 128, 1. 5.
11. Words written in lemon: Salts of lemon are used in preparing cer-
tain of the so-called 'sympathetic' inks.
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES
152: title. Imperfect sympathies: In the London Magazine the title
was Jews, Quakers, Scotchmen, and Other Imperfect Sympathies.
24. Notional and conjectural essences: Abstract qualities of things
conceived as having ideal existence. Concretions: The embodiments of
these ideal essences in material form.
314 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
153:10. Apathies: "In the London Magazine Lamb had written
'dispathies.' " (Lucas.)
155:1. His Minerva is born in panoply: i. e., his thoughts are brought
forth fully developed and equipped. Minerva, the goddess of learning, was
said to have sprung in full armor from the head of Jove.
11. True touch: i. e., genuine gold; the touch is the stamp applied by
the Goldsmith's Company to a piece of plate testifying to its fineness.
{Cent. Diet.)
156:1. John Buncle: See note, p. 86, 1. 1.
8. Leonardo da Vinci: Famous Italian painter, architect, sculptor,
scientist, mechanician, and musician (1452-1519). Among his best known
pictures are "The Last Supper," "The Virgin of the Rocks," "St. .John
the Baptist," "Mona Lisa."
25. Burns: In a letter Lamb calls Burns "a favorite Bardie."
31. 5m/«, Jonathan (1667-1745): Celebrated satirist and pamphleteer,
author of Gulliver's Travels.
157:12. Thomson, James (1700-1748): English poet (of Scotch birth) ,
author of The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence. Smollett, Tobias George
(1721-1771): Of Scotch birth, a satirist, historian, and humorous novelist.
Among his novels are Roderick Random (1748), Peregrine Pickle (1751),
Humphrey Clinker ( 1771) . He translated Don Quixote and continued David
Hume's History of England. In Roderick Random he exhibits Rory (i. e.,
Roderick) and Strap, his companion, as the greenest of Scotch greenhorns,
when they first arrive in London.
21. Stonehenge: The wonderful ruins of what is supposed to have been
a Druid temple, on Salisbury Plain. Sir Norman Lockyer, the English
astronomer, has recently made a computation, based on the orientation
of the altar, and declares that the ruins must have been erected more than
six thousand years before Christ. Nonage: Time of life before a person
comes of age.
25. The story of Hugh of Lincoln: A mediaeval legend of the murder
of a Httle boy by the Jews in Lincoln. There is an old ballad on the sub-
ject, and Chaucer has told a similar story in The Prioress's Tale. "The
Jew's House" is still shown at Lincoln.
158:7. On 'Change: i. <?., in business (literally, on the stock exchange).
12. Congeeing: Bowing ceremoniously.
16. Keck: To be nauseated.
19. I like fish or flesh: Probably Lamb had in mind the proverbial
" 'Tis neither flesh, fish, fowl, nor good red herring."
21. B .• "Braham, now a Xtian," Lamb's Key. John Braham
(1774-1856), an English tenor singer (of Jewish birth), and composer of
popular songs.
159:3. As Kemble delivered dialogue: See p. 235.
1
NOTES 315
16. Fuller, Thpmas (1608-1661): An eminent English divine and wjfiter,
author of The History of the Holy War (1639), The Holy State and the
Profane State (1B42), The History of the Worthies of England (1662), and
other works.
160:4. Evelyn, John (1620-1706): Author of a celebrated diary and
of discourses on political subjects and horticulture.
28. Laic-truth: i. e., lay-truth; ordinary or common truth.
161:28. / was travelling, etc.: Lamb confessed to his Quaker friend,
Bernard Barton, that this was a second-hand story.
30. To bait: To feed our horses. Andover: A town in Hampshire. '
162:29. Soporific: Strictly a sleeping-potion.
30. Exeter: A city in Devonshire, a hundred miles or so west of Andover.
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE
163:2. The Temple: This great and ancient institution, comprising
both the Inner and the Middle Temple, is one of the four great Inns of
Court. The network of lanes, courts, gardens, chambers, buildings, and
terraces that compose its visible habitation, lies between Fleet Street and
the Thames. Here many lawyers have their lodgings and offices. "These
Inns are colleges for the study of law, and possess the privilege of calling to
the Bar. Each is governed by its older members, who are termed Benchers.
. . . The Temple, formerly a lodge of the Knights Templar
became Crown property on the dissolution of the order in 1313 [and later]
came into the possession of the Knights of St. John, who, in 1346, leased it
to the students of common law. From that time . . . the group of
buildings . . . has continued to be a school of law. . . . In 1609
it was declared by royal decree the free hereditary property of the Corpora-
tions of the Inner and Middle Temple. . . . The Inner Temple is so
called from its position within the precincts of 'the City' ; the Middle Temple
. . . fromitssituationbetweenthelnner and the Outer Temple [the last
no longer exists]. The Inner and the Middle Temple possess in common the
Temple Church, St. Mary's. . . . The fine Gothic hall of the Middle
Temple was built in 1572. . . . Shakespeare's TzDeZ/</i iVig^« was acted
in this hall during the dramatist's lifetime. . . . The new Inner
Temple Hall was opened in 1870. . . . OUver Goldsmith lived and
died on the second floor of 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple Lane; Blackstone,
the famous commentator on the law of England, lived in the rooms below
him; and Dr. Samuel Johnson occupied apartments in Inner Temple Lane."
(Baedeker's London.)
21. Albeit of Paper hight: i. e., although called Paper. At one side of the
Temple Gardens stand the Paper Buildings. Mr. Lucas thinks that Lamb
manufactured the quotation. Across the Gardens stand Harcourt Build-
ings (probably named after Simon Harcourt, lord-chancellor in 1713),
and between Paper Buildings and Harcourt Buildings is Crown Office
Row, forming the northern side of the enclosure.
316 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
24. Kindly engendure: i. e., birth; the word should properly be en-
gendrure; kindly may have its old meaning of natural.
27. Just weaned from her Twickenham Naiades: The Naiads were
water-nymphs. Twickenham, where the poet Pope lived, is a suburban
village up stream from London, about 11^ miles southwest of the city.
The great docks and basins of London are a little down stream from the
Temple, the Port of London extending from London Bridge to a point 6i
miles down the river,
164:13. Nice: Delicate.
27. Horologe: Literally, hour-teller.
165:4. Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678): English poet. Lamb often
quotes him. Lincoln's Inn: One of the four Inns of Court (see note on
p. 163, 1. 2) in Chancery Lane, a little north of the Temple.
166:14. They are awakening images to them at least: This ambiguous
sentence may mean that the sculptures on the fountains at any rate awaken
the imagination of children.
26. Gothic: Formerly very frequent in the transferred sense of rude,
grotesque, barbarous. Gothicised, three lines below, must be a play
on the two senses of Gothic.
167:1. Winged horse: "Concerning the winged horse, the badge of the
Inner Temple, Mrs. E. T. Cook, in her Highways and Byways of London,
1902, has this interesting passage: 'This winged horse has a curious
history, for, when the horse was originally chosen as an emblem, he had no
wings, but was ridden by two men at once^ to indicate the self-chosen
poverty of the brotherhood [of the Templars] ;*in lapse of years the figures
of the men became worn and abraded, and when restored were mistaken
for wings. " (Lucas.)
167:12. Sided: Pushed aside.
15. J II: Joseph Jekyll, a friend of Lamb's, known as a wit.
17. Thomas Coventry (1713-1797): Became a Bencher in 1766, died
in Serjeants' Inn, and was buried in the Temple Church. He was a sub-
governor of the South- Sea House, and in 1782 gave £10,000 of South Sea
stock to Christ's Hospital. (Lucas.;
168:1. Dark rappee: i. e., the color of rappee snuflf.
5. Samuel Salt: Became Bencher in 1782, lived at 2 Crown Office Row,
died 1792, and was buried in the Temple Church. He was connected by
marriage with Thomas Coventry, and was a governor of the South-Sea
House. Lamb's father was Salt's confidential clerk and personal servant.
Mrs. Lamb was his housekeeper. Salt got Lamb into Christ's Hospital
and probably arranged John Lamb's appointment to the South-Sea House.
(Lucas.)
18. Lovel: Under this name Lamb describes his father, John Lamb the
elder.
32. Miss Blandy: Hanged April 6, 1752, for having poisoned her father.
NOTES 317
23. Susan P ; Lamb's Key gives Susan Peirson [sic], sister of Peter
Pierson, spoken of on p. 172. B d Row: Probably Bedford Row,
Holbom, near Gray's Inn.
170:1. Cadet: i. e., younger son.
7. Moidore: An obsolete Portuguese gold coin.
8. Serjeants' Inn: There are two Serjeants' Inns, one in Fleet Street,
one in Chancery Lane. They were once set apart for the lodgings and
chambers of the Serjeants at law, i. e., lawyers of high rank. No Serjeants
have been created since 1868.
16. Hie currus, etc.: Here were his chariot and his arms.
19. Elwes, John (1714-1789): Noted English miser, well-educated,
but with extraordinary vagaries.
171:7. "Flapper": In Swift's Gulliver's Travels the wise men of Laputa
were attended by servants called flappers, whose business it was to awake
their masters from their meditations and revery.
26. Garrick: See note, p. 76, footnote.
29. Prior, Matthew (1664-1721): English poet and diplomatist
renowned for light verse.
172:5. Brother of the angle: Fisherman.
6. Izaak Walton: See note, p. 85, 1. 31.
12. Bayes: A character in Buckingham's farce The Rehearsal, intended
to ridicule Dryden.
15. Little hoy from Lincoln: Lamb speaks again, in Poor Relations
{Last Essays), of his father's memories of Lincoln.
26. Peter Pierson: Became Bencher in 1800, died 1808, and was buried
in the Temple Church. He and John Lamb, Jimior, were sureties for
Lamb when he entered the East India House. (Lucas.)
173:3. Our great philanthropist: Mr. Lucas says probably John Howard.
Howard was celebrated for his exertions in behalf of prison reform.
6. Daines Barrington: Bencher 1777, buried in the Temple Church.
He inspired Gilbert White's Natural History of Selhorne (1789), many
of the letters in which are addressed to him. (Lucas.)
15. Barton, Thomas: Bencher 1775, died 1791. (Lucas.) Negation:
Nonentity.
29. Figure: As of a dance.
174:5. Jackson, Richard: Bencher 1770, died 1787. Dr. Johnson said
it was blasphemous to call him "omniscient." (Lucas.)
8. Friar Bacon: Roger Bacon (ca. 1214-1294), celebrated English
philosopher, renowned for his learning ; he was invited by Pope Clement
IV. to write a general treatise on the sciences (the Opus Majus). A popu-
lar legend which grew up about him in the Middle Ages represented him
as a magician and formed the basis of Greene's play Friar Bacon and
Friar Bungay.
318 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
11. Edge bone: The spelling aitch bone is the more usual; see aitch bone
in Cent. Diet.
27. Michael Angela (1475-1564): A famous Italian sculptor, painter,!
architect, and poet. His great horned "Moses" is in the church of Sanj
Pietro in Vincoli in Kome.
28. Baron Maseres: Francis Maseres (1731-1824). An English mathe-
matician, historian, and reformer; attorney-general of Quebec, 1766-69;
Bencher, 1774; cursitor baron of the exchequer, 1773-1824. He wore a
three-cornered hat and ruffles till his death.
175:13, Goshen: See note, p. 75,1. 10.
21. R. N.: Randal Norris. See note, p. 64, 1. 16.
176:4. Incondite: Crude, a favorite word of Lamb's.
10. Gentleman's: In the essay A Deathbed printed in the first edition
of the Last Essays of Elia, which describes Norris's death. Lamb wrote:
"In him I seera to have lost the old plainness of manners and singleness
of heart. Lettered he was not; his reading scarcely exceeded the obituary
of the old Gentleman's Magazine, to which he has never failed of having
recourse for these last -fifty years. Yet there was the pride of literature
about him from that slender perusal."
12. Urban: Sylvanus Urban was the hereditary pseudonym of the
editor of The Gentleman' s Magazine.
20. Hooker: See note, p. 78, 1. 20. Selden: See note, p. 57, 1. 17.
22. Quiristers: Same as choristers.
26. Reductive of juvenescent emotions: i. e., bringing back emotions
of youth, or emotions that make one yoimg again. The phrase is a good
example of the brevity and delicate humor that Lamb often gains by the
use of Latin words.
WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS
177:8. Decency: Appropriateness, decorum.
12. Wasting inwardly: It was a popular superstition that one could
bring harm to one's enemies by incantations performed over wax figures
representing them. Lamb speaks of the same thing and of the blasting of
com in his story of The Witch Aunt in Mrs. Leicester' s School. Corn was
lodged: Standing grain was beaten flat.
15. Spits and kettles only: i. e., of their own accord; of themselves.
22. Indigent eld: Needy old age.
24. Anile: Belonging to old women. /
178:11. Hcadborough: Chief of the district,
18. Guyon: Sir Guyon, the personification of Temperance in Spenser's
Faerie Queene, is taken by the fiend Mammon to the lower regions and
tempted by the offer of golden fruit, which he refuses. Assay: A taste,
from the old use of the word meaning the tasting, or trying "of food intended
for another, as a King, before presenting it." (^Cent. Did.)
NOTES 319
26. History of the Bible: Thomas Stackhouse's New History of
the Holy Bible from the Beginning of the World to the Establishment of Chris-
tianity (1737).
179:16. Bane: Not common in the sense of poison except in com-
pounds such as henbane, ratsbane.
27. Long-coats: Baby-clothes.
182:1. Little T. H.: Leigh Hunt's son, Thornton Hunt. Southey, a
strict churchman and pietist, in his article on The Progress of Infidelity,
(see Introd., p. 27) took occasion to object to Elia's "wanting a sounder
religious feeling," this passage being his chief text. He must have been
desirous of finding fault with Lamb and Leigh Hunt, to have made so
innocent a remark bear the construction which, with the help of his knowl-
edge of Hunt's liberal views, he put upon it.
6. Ab extra: From without.
11. Gorgons, Hydras, Chimoeras: Monsters of Greek mythology.
The Gorgon's head is represented with snakes for hair; the Hydra had nine
heads; the Chimaera was a fire-breathing monster part lion, part goat,
part dragon.
12. Celceno: One of the Harpies, ravenous and filthy winged creatures
having bodies like a woman, wings and claws of a bird of prey, and
faces pale with hunger. See p. 188, 1. 9.
24. Devils in Dante: In the first part, Hell (Inferno), of Dante Alighieri's
great poem. The Divine Comedy.
183:9. Ante-mundane condition: State of being before coming into this
world.
27. Fells: HiUs.
31. Helvellyn: A mountain in the Lake District, in Cumberland.
184:4. Kubla Khan: See note, p. 141, 1. 17.
7. Barry Cornwall: Pseudonym of Bryan Waller Procter (1787-1874),
English poet and author. He wrote a memoir of Lamb (1866). Tritons:
Subordinate sea-deities. Nereids: Sea-nymphs.
14. Spectra: i. e., spectres, phantoms. Conchs: Horns made of conch
shells.
21. Ino Leucothea: A Greek sea-nymph.
28. Lambeth Palace: The London residence of the Archbishops of Can-
terbury, on the right (or Surrey) bank of the Thames about a mile above
the Temple. From Lambeth Palace Lambeth Road runs east past the
Bethlehem Lunatic Asylum ("Bedlam") near by. (See note, p. 71, 1. 11.)
Lamb suggests that after such a dream he was in a good way to become a
lunatic.
30. Quantum: Quantity.
GRACE BEFORE MEAT
185: title. Grace before meat: In his Lett^ to Southey protesting
against Southey's criticisms of his essays (see note, p. 182, 1. 1.), Lamb
'320 THE ESSAYS' OF ELIA
suggests that Southey may have had this essay in mind. He says, "Rightly
taken, sir, that paper was not against graces, but want of grace; not
against the ceremony, but the carelessness and slovenliness so often ob-
served in the performance of it."
186:3. Manducation: Eating.
8. Liturgy now compiling . . . Christians: In plain prose, Lamb
means that as religious tiiinking grows wiser and more tolerant, some form
of worship (liturgy) may be developed by mankind {Homo Humanus,
literally, human man) that will recognize the spiritual value of things
not yet generally regarded as religious, such as philosophy and poetry.
Creature comforts and material enjoyments would be no more frowned
upon by such religion than they were in the Abbey of Th61eme, founded
by Gargantua, the hero of Rabelais's story (Book I., chap. 52-57), where
everything was arranged to make life as pleasant as possible.
12. Unprovocative: Not tending to stimulate appetite.
32. Rarus hospes: An infrequent guest.
187:4. Orgasm: Ecstasy.
188:7. Virgil knew: In the Aeneid (Bk. III.) when Aeneas and his
companions come to the Harpies' islands, they kill the flocks for a feast,
but the Harpies snatch the food from before their faces. At length they
beat off the Harpies, whose queen, Celaeno, curses them and prophesies
famine for them.
189:2. Gris-amher: Ambergris, a precious fragrant substance, got from
the sperm whale.
S. Gates: See note p. 65, 1. 14.
10. Gaudy day: See note p. 57, 1. 2.
11. Heliogabalus: An emperor of Rome, a type of debauchery and
luxury.
16. He that disturbed him: i. e., the Tempter.
190:31. Unctuous morsels: Lamb writes 'in a letter to Charles Cham-
bers: "I like you for liking hare. I esteem you for disrelishing minced
veal. Liking is too cold a word. I love you for your noble attachment
to the fat unctuous pieces of deer's flesh and the green unspeakable of
turtle." In the same letter occurs the word sapor, which appears in the
Dissertation upon Roast Pig (see p. 267) . (Compare sapidless, p. 191, 1. 15.)
191:16. Beside my tenour: Out of my humor.
17. Author of the Rambler: Dr. Samuel Johnson.
28. Dagon: A deity mentioned in the Old Testament as the national
god of the Philistines, thought to have been represented as half man and
half fish. See I. Samuel, v, 4, marginal reading.
32. Chartreuse, La Grande: A Carthusian monastery near Grenoble in
France.
192:6. Hog's Norton: "An old proverb runs: 'I think thou wast bom
NOTES 321
at Hogg's Norton, where piggs play upon the organs.' " (Lucas.) See the
quotation under organ def. 2 in Cent. Diet., also organy, origan.
28. Sectaries: Adherents of a religious sect, hence dissenters.
153:3. Lucian, of Samosata (ca. 120-200 A. D.): Celebrated Greek
satirist and humorist. "He was a free-thinker, attacking with pungent
satire the reUgious beliefs of his time."
7. Flamens: Priests.
13. C. V. L.: Charles Valentine Le Grice. See p. 79.
16. Our old form at school: Mr. Lucas gives the grace said before raeat
at Christ's Hospital in Lamb's day: "Give us thankful hearts, O Lord God,
for the table thou hast spread for us. Bless thy good creatures to our use
and us to thy ser\ace, for Jesus Christ his sake. Amen." Creature in old
usage means any created thing, as here. Cf. I. Timothy, iv, 4; and
Romans, viii, 39.
21. Nan tunc illis erat locus: Those tilings were out of place.
30. Horresco refer ens: I shudder to think of it.
MY FIRST PLAY
l94:l. Cross Court: Does not now appear, on the map of London.
5. Old Drury: Drury Lane Theatre, one of the principal theatres of
London. It was opened 1663; rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren 10 74.
This, "Garrick's Drury," was superseded by a new building (1794), which
burned 1809 and was replaced by the present theatre, built 1812.
15. My Godfather F .• "The British Directory for 1793 gives him as
Francis Field, oilman, 62 High Holborn." (Lucas.) Lamb's Key gives
"Field," but the proper spelling seems to be "Fielde."
17. Holborn: A district and street in the central part of London.
19. John Palmer: See pp. 216-7.
23. Sheridan: See note, p. 81, 1. 7.
25. Maria Linley: Eliza Ann Linley, English soprano singer in oratorio,
of Bath, whence she eloped to France with Sheridan, 1772.
195:10. Ciceronian: Distinguished by elaborate polish of diction.
16. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (4 B. C.-65 A. D.): A celebrated Roman
Stoic philosopher and tragic dramatist. Varro, Marcus Terentius (116-27
B. C): Celebrated as the most learned of Roman scholars.
20. St. Andrew's: One of the 108 parishes of the City of London proper.
27. Landed property: A plot of land, with a thatched cottage (now called
"Button Snap") and a barn, conveyed to Lamb, not strictly by "testa-
mentary beneficence" from Francis Fielde, but from his widow, in 1812.
In 1815 Lamb conveyed the property (by a deed witnessed by William
Hazlitt) to Thomas Greg, Jr. (Lucas.)
196:3. Centre: According to ancient astronomy, the fixed middle point
of the universe, supposed to be the central point of the earth.
322 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
4. Agrarian: An agrarian law, i. e., a measure aflfecting the legal tenure
of land, especially one designed to effect the equal or uniform ov,fnership
of land. (Rare as a noun.)
6. Pit orders: Passes.
11. Nonpareils: "A kind of apple" (Johnson's Dictionary). In Lamb's
mock biography of John Liston, the actor, published in 1825, he pretends
to quote a passage from a Puritan pamphlet against the stage: "Where, as
I am told, the custom is commonly to mumble (between the acts) apples,
not ambiguously derived from that pernicious Pippin" — i. e.. Eve's apple.
19. Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718): An English dramatist, appointed poet
laureate 1714. His edition of Shakespeare was published 1709.
29. "Fair Auroras'': The phrase occurs in the first song of Artaxerxes.
(Lucas.)
197:2. Artaxerxes: An opera by Thomas Ame, produced first in 17G2.
The historical Artaxerxes was a King of Persia, 465-425 B. C. See Ezra
iv, vi, vii, and Daniel vi. Persepolis was one of the capitals of the Persian
empire.
15. Harlequin's Invasion: A pantomime by Garrick. Mr. Lucas says
the only time in 1780-2 that this was given with Artaxerxes was Dec. 1,
1780, the probable date of Lamb's first visit to the theatre. Harlequin is
a stock figure in pantomime, a glutton, clown, and trickster, usually
clothed in variegated colors and armed with a sword of lath. His part
frequently needs to be acted by an acrobat.
17. Beldams: Old women.
20. St. Denys: The apostle to the Gauls and the patron saint of France;
the legend says that when he was beheaded (Paris, 272 A. D.) he got up
and carried away his head in his hands.
21. Lady of the Manor: In this and the next paragraph Lamb's memory
probably deceived him, as Mr. Lucas points out. His second play was
probably The Lord of the Manor, by Gen. Burgoyne, followed bj^ Robinson
Crusoe, and his third. The Way of the World, by Wycherley, followed by
Lun's Ghost.
25. Rich, John (1692-1721): An English pantomimist, called "the
Father of Harlequins." He played under the name of Lun.
27. Lud: A mythical king of Britain, a sort of Celtic Zeus, associated
by tradition with London (cf. the name Ludgate Hill).
29. Motley: See note, p. 116, 1. 23.
198:7. Pantaloonery: Buffoonery. Pantaloon is a conventional clown-
type in pantomime, like Harlequin.
12. Round Church: One of the parts of St. Mary's Church, in the Temple,
completed in 1185. The other part, the choir, was added in 1240. "The
lawyers used formerly to receive their clients in the Round Church, each
occupying his particular post like merchants 'on change.' The incumbent
of the Temple Church is called the Master of the Temple." (Baedeker's
NOTES 323
London.) Canon Ainger, the biographer and editor of Lamb, was Master
from 1894 till his death.
199:17. Mrs. Siddons: Sarah (Kemble) Siddons (1755-1831), a cele-
brated English tragic actress, sister of John and Charles Kemble. "In
1782 she appeared at Drury Lane with extraordinary success as Isabella
in Southerne's Fatal Marriage.'' {Cent. Diet.) Her greatest part was
Lady Macbeth. One of Lamb's sonnets, published with Coleridge's Poems
(see Introd., p. 20), was addressed to her.
DREAM -CHILDREN: A REVERIE
24. My little ones: The names of the Dream-Children, John and Alice,
were endeared to Lamb by affectionate remembrance. His brother John
died in October, 1821; AUce was the name under which he recalled Ann
Simmons, the love of his boyhood days in Hertfordshire.
25. Great-grandmother Field: See p. 149.
26. Norfolk: The real place was Blakesware, in Hertfordshire, of which
Lamb wrote a further description in his essay Blakesmoor in H shire.
(Last Essa,ys.)' In that paper he speaks of "the bright yellow H-^ shire
hair, and eye of watchet hue — so like my Alice!"
200:24. Old Tombs: In the Last Essays is one on the Tombs in the Abbey.
Psaltery: unusual in the sense of Psalter, i. e., the Psalms as set forth
in the Prayer Book.
201:24. The tioelve Caesars: "Mine, too, Blakesmoor. was thy noble
Marble Hall, with its mosaic pavements and its Twelve Caesars — stately
busts in marble — ranged round: of whose countenances, young reader of
faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my
wonder; but the mild Galba had my love." (Blakesmoor in H shire, in
the Last Essays.)
202:24. John L ; See My Relations, p. 140flP. Lamb published
Dream-Children in January, 1822; John Lamb had died Oct. 26, 1821,
leaving all he possessed to his brother Charles.
203:6. He became lame-footed, too: In a letter to Coleridge (1796) Lamb
says: "We have just learned that my poor brother has had a sad accident;
a large stone . . . has bruised his leg in a most shocking manner."
22. Took off his limb: Mr. Lucas doubts "if the leg were really am-
putated."
29. Alice W n: See note, p. 89, 1. 11;
204:9. Bartrum: It is a fact that Ann Simmons married a man named
Bartrum or Bartram. (Lucas.)
12. Lethe: In Greek mj^thology, the river of oblivion in Hades, the
underworld,
ON SOME OP THE OLD ACTORS
204: Title. The Old Actors: "In February, 1822, Lamb began a series
of three articles in The London Magazine on 'The Old Actors.' The second
324 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
was printed in April and the third in October. ... In reprinting them
. . . he rearranged them into the essays 'On Some of the Old Actors,'
'On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century,' and 'On the Acting of
Munden.' " (Lucas.) The first four paragraphs of this essay were added
in the collected ecUtion; a few omissions were made; and the paragraphs
from "If few can remember Dodd" (p. 213), down to "O La! O La!
Bobby!" (p. 216) were taken from the third paper.
22. Drury Lane Theatre: See note, p. 194, L 5.
29. Whitfield, etc.: Mr. Lucas says that Whitfield, Packer, Benson (who
was also a playwright). Burton, and Phillimore were actors of small parts
and utility men at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. "Barrymore was of
higher quality."
205:7. Mrs. Jordan was the stage name of Dorothy Bland, an Irish
actress excelling in comedy.
12. Nells and Hoydens: Lamb may likely enough have had particular
plays in mind, but uses the names to mean boisterous parts generally.
13. Melting eye: Melting, in the sense of tender, soft, is often applied
in Shakespeare to eyes and tears. In the eighteenth century it was in
vogue in the sense of affecting, moving.
206:5. Mrs. Powel [Powell]: An actress pre\nously known as Mrs.
Farmer, subsequently as Mrs. Renaud, long connected with Drury Lane
and Covent Garden Theatres. "Her forte lay in the in tenser roles of
tragedy."
10. Conceits: Ingenious, witty, or fantastic thoughts or fancies.
20, Of all the actors: Here began the original London Magazine essay.
21. Bensley, Robert: Retired from Drury Lane in 1796. Others con-
firm Lamb's judgment of his Malvolio; "but otherwise he is not the subject
of much praise." (Lucas.)
207:7. Nuncios: Messengers; but there is a special aptness in the use
of the word from its dignified use as the title of the Papal diplomatic agents.
24. Mine Ancient: lago is Othello's ancient, i. e., ensign, or flag-
lieutenant.
208:7. Baddeley, Robert: "In his will he left the . . . interest of
£100 to provide wine and cake for the actors of Drury Lane Theatre on
Twelfth Night. This is still done." {Cent. Diet.) Parsons, William:
A successful actor; noted for his roles of old men.
15. Lambert, John (1619-1683): An English general of the Parlia-
mentary armies in the Civil War, of great civil and military influence.
16. Lady Fairfax: Both the second and the third Baron Fairfax were
Parliamentary leaders in the Civil War. The sixth Baron Fairfax emigrated
to Virginia and became a friend of Washington.
209:17. At the buttery hatch: At the pantry door.
210:15. Hero of La Mancha: Don Quixote.
30. To taste manna: A familiar metaphor for any delicious entertain-
NOTES 325
ment of body or mind. To mate Hyperion: To equal or emulate Hyperion,
the sun-god; i. e., to scale the very heaven Itself.
211:11. Dodd, James WiUiam: A member of Garrick's company,
especially successful as Aguecheek (Tweljth Night) and Drugger {The
Alchemist) .
12. Lovegrove, William (1778-1816): An English comedian, a member
of the Drury Lane Company.
16. In puris naturalibus: i. e., naked, as it was bom, in mere natural
state or guise.
212:1. Gray's Inn: One of the four great Inns of Court (see note on
p. 163, 1. 2) in Holborn. It formerly paid ground-rent to the Lords Gray
of Wilton; has existed as a school of law since 1371; "during the 17th
century the garden, in which a number of trees were planted by Lord
Bacon, was a fashionable promenade." (Baedeker's London.) The Veru-
1am Buildings are named in honor of Bacon, the most eminent of former
members of Gray's Inn.
4. Crankles: Angles, bends; perhaps an echo of I. Hem-y IV., iii, 1, 98.
10. Bacon, Francis (1561-1626): Celebrated English philosopher,
jurist, and statesman; lord cliancellor (1618-1621).
SOff. Foppington, Tattle, Backbite, Acres, Fribble: Characters in Van-
brugh's Relapse, Congreve's Love for Love, Sheridan's School for Scandal,
Sheridan's Rivals, and Garrick's Miss in her Teens, respectively.
213:26. "Put on the weeds of Dominic'': Milton alludes to the practice
of taking monastic vows at the approach of death as a means of salvation.
The Dominicans are known as Black Friars, from their black mantles.
214:3. Suett, Richard (1755-1805): His parts were mainly confined
to Shakespearian clowns and other characters principally belonging to low
comedy. His reputation rests chiefly on Lamb's praise; though Hazlitt
and Leigh Hunt praised him, too. Mr. Lucas says that Suett had been a
choir-boy at Westminster, not at St. Paul's.
6. Nonage: See note, p. 157, 1. 21.
28. Albe: In modem spelling, alb; one of the vestments of a priest.
215:1. Secularization: A technical word meaning release from the
vows or rule of a monastic order.
9. He was known, like Puck, etc.: In A Midsummer Night's Dream,
Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, cries "Ho, ho, ho!" to Demetrius, but does
not let Demetrius see him.
16. Matthews, Charles (1776-1835): An English comedian, especially
successful as a mimic.
18. Richer than the cuckoo — which also has but two syllables at
command.
23. Unmixed existence: His simple, carefree life.
216:4. Deep as the centre: The center of the earth, conceived (in the
old Ptolemaic astronomy) as the center of the universe. Cf . Hamlet, ii, 2, 159.
326 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
7. Bannister, John (1760-1836): A noted English comedian.
16. Vesta: The virgin goddess of the hearth, one of the primitive
deities of the ancient Romans.
21. Palmer, Robert (1757-1805): An actor, brother of John Palmer,
good in low parts.
26. The Elder Palmer: John Palmer (1742?-1 79 8); "One of the most
versatile as well as the most competent and popular of actors." {Diet.
Nat. Biog.)
217:9. Captain Absolute: A spirited soldier and lover in Sheridan's
The Rivals.
13. Dick Amlet: A gamester in Vanbrugh's comedy. The Confederacy.
He tries to pass himself off as a fine gentleman.
19. Wilding: The hero of Foote's play The Liar. Joseph Surface:
A malicious, hypocritical character in Sheridan's School for Scandal.
24. Congreve, "WilUam (1670-1729): One of the greatest English comic
dramatists. Love for Love is one of his comedies.
218:17. Metaphrases: Strict or literal translations; opposed to para-
phrases.
30. Wapping: A quarter of London on the left bank of the Thames,
about two miles below London Bridge; the resort of sailors and stevedores.
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS
219: title. B. F. .• Barron Field. See note p. 128, 1. 5. Lucas points
out that the germ of this essay is to be found in an actual letter of Lamb's to
Field, dated Aug. 31, 1817. The motif is perhaps to be discovered in an
earlier bantering letter (Dec. 25, 1815) written to Thomas Manning, who
was travelling in Thibet. In Lamb's review of Field's poems there
are jocular remarks about plagiarism and kangaroos.
19. Mrs. Rowe: Author of Friendship in Death, in Twenty Letters from
the Dead to the Living. (Lucas.)
20. Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667): English poet of the so-called
metaphysical school. His Hymn to Light contains these lines:
"Let a Post- Angel start with thee
And thou the goal of earth shalt reach as soon as he."
22, Lombard Street: For centuries a great banking center of London.
The India House was not far away.
28. Theosophist: Perhaps Lamb gives this name to the Man in the Moon
because of his successive reappearances, reincarnation (a mode of reap-
pearance, certainly) being one of the essential doctrines of theosophy.
The Cent. Diet., quite unconscious of this passage, defines a theosophist
as "one who professes to possess divine illumination."
220:2. Parasangs: A Persian measure of distance about equal to 3^
miles — a famihar word to every schoolboy reader of Xenophon's Anabasis.
Lamb uses it, probably, for the sake of its outlandishness.
NOTES 327
3. Plato's man: In this sentence the Austrahan savages, the Platonic
doctrine of a self-existent "idea" (or archetype) of man, and the Man in
the Moon contribute to the complicated allusion. In one of his Latin
poems Milton speaks of the Platonic archetype as possibly inhabiting the
moon. Mr. Lucas, following Hallward and Hill, thinks that Lamb had
the passage in mind.
17. In the Bench: The King's Bench Prison. (Lucas.)
21. Munden, Joseph Shepherd (1758-1832): An English comediaii.
Old Dornton in Holcroft's Road to Ruin was his greatest part. He left
the stage in 1824.
25. Confusion of tenses: Lamb had used this idea in 1810 in a letter to
his friend, Thomas Manning, then traveling in China: "The distance
you are at cuts up tenses by the root." In the same letter, practising his
doctrine as to the nature of epistolary matter, he included a number of
puns he had recently made, among them his reply to the beggar woman
p. 260.
27. Postage: Communication by post.
28. Bath: In Somersetshire. Devizes: A town in Wiltshire.
221:9. Will Weather all: Doubtless a fiction.
12. Replication: A legal term, meaning answer.
22. Our maid Bevky: Lamb's friend Patmore has left amusing recol-
lections of the tyranny of Becky over the Lamb household (see Lucas, Life,
Vol. II., 292-5): "I believe there was no inconvenience, privation, or ex-
pense, that they would not have put up with, rather than exchange her
honest roughness for the servile civility of anybody else. ... At last
Becky left them to be married ; and I believe this circumstance more than
anything else, was the cause of their giving up housekeeping."
31. Pleadings: The formal allegations of the parties to a suit at law.
32. Flam: A lie, or hoax.
222:11. Two prophets: According to the marginal chronology of the
authorized version, Habakkuk's prophecy is dated nineteen years earlier
than the beginning of the Book of Daniel. Lamb's joining of these two
names may very possibly have been suggested by their conjunction in the
apochryphal addition to the Book of Daniel, known as the History of
Bel and the Dragon.
18. Water-plates: A sort of dish with a receptacle for hot water to
keep the contents warm.
21. Lord C : Lamb's Key says "Lord Camelford." Thomas Pitt,
second Baron Camelford (1775-1804), was a commander in the navy and
a notorious duellist. He wished to be buried in Switzerland, and after
he Avas killed in a duel, his body was embalmed and made ready for trans-
portation abroad; but, the war preventing, the coffin was left in St. Anne's
Church, Soho, and eventually lost sight of. (See Charles Reade, Jilt and
Other Stories.)
328 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
223:8. Tide-waiters: Customs officers who board ships entering port, to
enforce the customs regulations.
12. Lustring: A kind of glossy sillc like taffeta.
14. Propitiatory: Not "serving as propitiation," the proper sense of the
word, but "needing to be propitiated." *S^ Gothard (Gotthard): Bishop of
Hildesheim (1038); patron saint of those in peril of the sea.
15. Quietus: End, fate.
28. Twinkling corpuscula: According to the corpuscular, or emission,
theory (maintained by Sir Isaac Newton, but now universally rejected),
light consisted of infinitesimal particles, or corpuscles, ejected by the
luminous body,
224:4. Fine slime of Nilus: The silt brought down by the yearly floods
of the Nile makes Egypt one of the most fertile countries in the world.
6. Meliorlutus: Finer clay; perhaps an echo of Juvenal, Sal., xiv, 34.
6. Sol pater: The Father Sun.
20. Consult his visnom.y: Look at his face in a glass.
26. Peter Wilkins: See note, p. 7i, I. 5.
26. Hades of Thieves: In 1787-88 the English government established
a penal colony at Botany Bay, New South Wales. Thence the settlement
was transferred to the shores of Port Jackson, where Sydney was founded.
Convicts were sent out as late as 1841, the total number of persons trans-
ported reaching 83,000.
27. Diogenes: A Greek philosopher, famous for his eccentricities. The
story is that he was met one day in the market-place carrying a lantern;
on being asked why he carried the lantern, he said he was looking for an
honest man.
226:4. Framed: i. e., formed, established, created. Pickpocket: Could
Lamb have forgotten that kangaroos have pouches or pockets themselves?
6. A priori: Lamb puns on the literal meaning of the Latin, which is
"from before," i. e., "antecedently"; he makes it mean "anteriorly."
7. Hind-shifters, loco-motor: Evidently an imitation or adoption of
thieves' slang.
10. Young Spartans: The ancient Spartans had a reputation for thievery
and were said to train their youth in the most approved methods of stealing.
11. Spoils their scanning: An allusion to the schoolboy's practice of
laboriously counting the feet of his verse-exercises on his fingers.
16. Do you bleach: Mr. Lucas sees in this metaphor an allusion to the
contention of some authorities on heraldry that its legitimacy wears out in
three or four generations.
18. Delphic voyages: The oracje of Delphi in Greece was world-famous
and sought from all lands.
20. Hemp: For the hangman's rope.
NOTES 329
28. Ruralists: A good example of Lamb's humorous use of formal
Latin words.
226:9. Sally W r: Lamb's Key says "Sally Winter."
13. J. W.: James White. See p. 2 48 iT.
ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY
17. The Artificial Comedy, etc.: There is diflference of opinion as to the
soundness of Lamb's view of the subject of this essay. Macaulay, in his
essaj^ on The Coviic Dramatists of the Restoration (1841), objected strongly
to Lamb's defence of the artificial comedy. "The morality," he says,
"of the Country Wife and the Old Bachelor is the morality, not as Mr.
Charles Lamb maintains, of an unreal world, but of a world which is
a great deal too real. ... It is the morality, not of a chaotic peo-
ple, but of low town-rakes. . . . And the question is simply this,
whether a man of genius who constantly and systematically endeavors to
make this sort of character attractive, by uniting it with beauty, grace,
dignity, spirit, a high social position, popularity, literature, wit, taste,
knowledge of the world, brilliant success in every undertaking, does or
does not make an ill use of his powers." James Russell Lowell, on the
contrary (in Shakespeare Once More), says: "He had the great advantage
of not feeling himself responsible for the* manners of the inhabitants he
found [in the old drama], and not thinking it needful to make them
square with any Westminster catechism of aesthetics. . . . When he
arrived at the Dramatists of the Restoration, so far from being shocked,
he was charmed with their pretty and immoral ways. . . . Lamb
had the great advantage of seeing the elder dramatists as they were; it
did not lie within his province to point out what they were not." Pro-
fessor C. H. Herford {The Age of Wordsworth) is rather between Macau-
lay and Lowell: "He was peculiarly ready to believe in the art which
plays with the elements of life — which creates a fantastic world of its
own — like humanity, but detached from the conditions of human beings.
It was thus that he persuaded himself that the Restoration comedy was
a genial fantasy, flung gaily before the eyes of audiences to whose habits
and experience the Wishforts and the Millamants were as foreign as
Caliban."
The Comedy of Manners, imported from France, was comedy of wit and
fashion, very different from the romantic comedy of Shakespeare and the
comedy of humors of Ben Jonson. The chief writers of the Restoration
Comedy (so-called because the new style came in upon the Restoration of
the Stuarts, 1661) were Sir George Etherege (1634-1691?): The Comical
Revenge (1664), She Would if She Could (1668), The Man of Mode (1676);
Wilham Wycherley (1640-1715): The Gentleman Dancing Master (1671),
Love in a Wood (1671), The Country Wife (1673), The Plain Dealer (1674);
William Congreve (1670-1729): The Old Bachelor (1693), The Double
Dealer (1693), Love for Love (1695), The Mourning Bride (1697), The Way
of the World (1700); George Farquhar (1678-1707): Sir Harry Wildair
(1701), The Inconstant (1703), The Recruiting Officer (1106), The Beaux'
330 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
Stratagem (1707), and others; Sir John Vanbrugh (16667-1726): The
Relapse (1697), The Provoked Wife (1G98), The Confederacy (1705), and
others. Congreve was the most briUiant of them.
19. Exploded: i. e., hissed.
227:28. Mournful privilege of Ulysses: In his wanderings homeward
from Troy, Ulysses, after he had left Circe's isle, visited Hades to learn
whether he should ever see again his wife and Ithaca.
31. Indifferent to neither: Indifferent to both or either would make easier
228:3. Alsatia: "Explained as a cant name for Whitefriars [the ancient
monastery Avas just off Fleet Street], which, possessing certain privileges
of sanctuary, became for that reason a nest of those mischievous characters
who were generally obnoxious to the law. . . . James I. confirmed
and added to [these immunities] by a charter in 1608. Shadwell . . .
made some literary use of Whitefriars in his play of the Squire of Alsatia."
(Sir Walter Scott, Introd. to The Fortunes oj Nigel.)
10. Surtout: A broad-skirted overgarment.
229:4. Catos of the pit: Cato, surnamed the Censor, a Roman
statesman, "sought to restore the integrity of morals and the simplicity of
manners prevalent in the early days of the republic."
6. Political justice: This reading, which is followed in all editions of the
collected essays which I have examined, is, I feel sure, a misprint, not a
correction, of ''poetical justice" of the original text of the London Magazine.
The passage is incoherent and rather bhnd. I interpret thus: The
modern play being built upon current, actual notions of morality; the
poetical justice meted out by the modern author to his characters must
conform to the standards of actual justice, i. e., "the standard of police."
Such an atmosphere will bhght any character from the fairjdand of the
older comedy.
10. Swedenborgian bad spirit: Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), a
Swedish philosopher and mystic theologian, believed in the existence of
good and bad spirits which had been men. He was the founder of the New
Church, or Church of the New Jerusalem, organized in London in 1778.
13. Fainall, Mirabel, Dorimant, Lady Touchwood: Characters respec-
tively in Congreve's Way of the World, Farquhar's Inconstant, Etherege's
Man of Mode, Congreve's Double Dealer.
20. Cuckoldry: A cuckold is a man whose wife is unfaithful. Utopia:
An imaginary island, the seat of an ideal commonwealth described in Sir
Thomas More's political romance C/iopia (1516); generally used of any
imaginary and ideal land.
29. Angelica: The principal female character in Congreve's Love for
Love.
230:12. The impertinent Goshen, etc.: i. e., the frivolous, unreal world
of the fashionable comedy would have shown in the light of true moral
feeling all its wickedness and insubstantiality.
NOTES 331
231:2. Sir Siraon, etc.: These are all characters in Wycherley's Love
in a Wood.
7. Frogs and mice: The allusion is to the Batrachomyomachia, an.
ancient Greek mock epic, formerly ascribed to Homer, that deals with the
war between the frogs and the mice.
9. Atlantis: A mythical island in the Atlantic Ocean, northwest of
AtvutB.. Bacon wrote an allegorical romance, The New Atlantis, picturing
a community governed only by conscience and the moral law. Lamb
may have had this in mind.
18. The sentimental comedy: This began with Sir Richard Steele's plays:
The Funeral {11^2), The Lying Lover {IIQZ), The Tender Husband (1705),
The Conscious Lovers (1722).
23. Plausibility: Palmer was known by the nickname of Jack Plausible. ■
31. His better brother: i. e., Charles Surface.
232:29. Bowles: Carington Bowles, a publisher of prints. (Lucas.)
233:3. Kissing of the rod: To kiss the rod is to accept punishment
submissively.
11. Teazle, Sir Peter: A cross old fellow in The School for Scandal.
His wife, Lady Teazle, the chief female character in the comedy, is
a country girl who plunges into the fashionable life of the town and beats
"the veterans of the aft of scandal" at their own game.
21. King, Thomas (1730-1805): Actor and dramatist, for a long time
the mainstay of Drury Lane Theatre. He was the original Sir Peter Teazle.
234:12. Crim. con.: i. e., criminal conversation; a frequent abbrevia-
tion of the technical name of a suit for damages for adultery.
20. Crabtree, Sir Benjamin Backbite, Snake, Mrs. Candour: All char-
acters in The School for Scandal.
23. Amphisbcenas: Amphisbaena was a fabulous serpent with a head
on either end.
27. Miss Pope: Jane Pope (1742-1818), an actress in comedy at Drury
Lane Theatre. She played Mrs. Candour "in the immortal first performance
of the School jor Scandal.'' Many of her parts "she played at sixty with
the sprightliness of sixteen."
31. Saturnalia: A Roman festival period, given up to feasting, merry-
making, and license.
235:6. Notional justice, etc.: i. e., imaginary, ideal; see note on notional
essences, p. 152, 1. 24.
10. Manager's comedy: Sheridan was manager of Drury Lane Theatre
where his brilliant play was produced in 1777. Miss Farren: Eliza Farren
(1759?-1829), an English actress, a rival of Mrs. Abington. She left the
stage 1797.
11. Mrs. Abingdon: Fanny (Barton) Abington (1737-1815), an eminent-
English actress. Her best part was Lady Teazle in Sheridan's School for
332 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
Scandal, which she created. Smith, William (1730?-1819): An actor,
known as "Gentleman Smith." He was the Charles Surface of the first
performance of The School for Scandal, an impersonation "held never to
liave been equalled."
14. John Kemhle (1757-1823): A celebrated English tragedian,
brother of Charles Kemble and Mrs. Sarah (Kemble) Siddons. His best
role was Coriolanus.
237:2. Otway, Thomas (1651-1685): The principal tragic dramatist
of the Restoration. He wrote Aldhiades (1675), The Orphan (1680),
Venice Preserved (1682), and other plays.
4. Adventure bottomry: Bottomry is a kind of mortgage by which a
person pledges his ship as security for money advanced for the purpose of
the voyage. Sir Edivard Mortimer: A character in George Colman, Jr.'s
tragedy. The Iron Chest, founded on Godwin's novel, Caleb Williams.
7. G.: William Godwin, Shelley's father-in-law. His Inquiry Con-
cerning Political Justice was a visionary and radical work. He wrote also
several novels, of a speculative tendency. Lamb calls him "the Professor'
in his letter. Antonio, for which Lamb wrote a humorous epilogue, had
its first and only performance Dec. 13, 1800.
31. Eis friend M .• John Marshall. Lamb calls him "the old,
steady, unalterable friend of the Professor" (in a letter).
238:24. "From every pore," etc.: From Lee's Rival Queens. Lamb
had used the quotation in a delicious letter to Manning (Dec. 16, IS GO)
recounting the failure of Antonio. Writing to Godwin the day after the
performance. Lamb concludes his postscript thus: "I am emboldened
by a little jorum of punch (vastly good) to say that next to one man, I am
the most hurt at our ijl success. The breast of Hecuba, where she did
suckle Hector, looked not to be more lovely than Marshall's forehead when
it spit forth sweat, at Critic-swords contending. I remember two honest
lines by Marvel (whose poems by the way I am just going to possess) :
'Where every Mower's wholesome heat
Smells like an Alexander's sweat.' "
The sentence about Hecuba is an adaptation of Coriolanus I., iii, 48-46.
239:14. R s: Frederic Reynolds (1764-1841), dramatist, author
of nearly 100 tragedies and comedies, of which about 20 w^ere popular in
their day. One of his plays, The Caravan, included a rescue of a drowning
child by a real dog, with real rocks and real water. Byron pays his re-
spects to him in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
240:20. An . . . so; If they would take it, very well; if not,
that also was very well.
27. Elvira: In a summary of the plot of Antonio quoted by Lucas
{Letters- I., 201) the heroine is named Helena; Elvira appears in Dryden's
Spanish Friar and in some other plays with Spanish setting. Lamb's
memory seems to have played him false.
NOTES 333
241:3. Exorbitant: i. e., outrageous, exceeding proper bounds — the
etymological meaning of the word.
12. Misprision oj parricide: In law misprision is criminal neglect or
passive complicity.
16. Fasthold: Apparently a "portmanteau word," made up of /astoess
and strong/ioZJ.
23. Nigritude: Blackness.
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS
, 242:2. Clergy imps: See note on p. 249, 1. 28.
9. Fauces Averni: The jaws of Hell.
26. Kibed: i. e., chapped or chilblained.
28. Tester: A sixpence.
243:4. Mr. Read: "Mr. Thomas Read's Saloop Coffee House was at
No. 102 Fleet Street." (Lucas.) Saloop is sassafras-tea. See the quo-
tations under Saloop, in Cent. Diet.
18. Fuliginous: Sooty.
22. Bitter wood: Lamb plays on the metaphorical sense of worm-
wood, — misery.
24. Lenitive: See p. 104, 1. 16.
30. Valerian: An herb with a pungent odor.
244:19. Precocious: Tlie strict etymological sense is "early ripe."
21. Hammersmith: A suburb of London, formerly noted for market
gardens and nurseries.
245:9. When I walk westward: i. e., from the India House to his lodg-
ings in Great Russell Street.
21. The March to Finchley: Hogarth's picture (now in the Found-
ling Hospital, London), humorously depicting the confusion at the break-up
of a camp of the Guards on Finchley Common at the time of the Yoimg
Pretender's uprising,
246:23. The Young Montagu: "Ran away from Westminster school
more than once, becoming, among other things, a chimney-sweeper."
(Lucas. J
25. DefiUations: i. e., kidnappings.
27. Howard: The family name of the Dukes of Norfolk.
247:31. Incunabula: Literally, cradle-clothes; but in English used
metaphorically to mean origin. Lamb doubtless had both meanings in
mind.
248:5. James White: At Christ's Hospital with Lamb, admitted
on the presentation of Thomas Coventry. He published a parody.
Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff and his Friends (1796), in which
Lamb almost certainly collaborated.
334 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
11. Bartholomew Fair: A fair formerly held in Smithfleld on St. Bar-
tholomew's Day; in 1840 removed to Islington and discontinued 1853.
Originally it was a great cloth-fair, but gradually changed into a Saturnalia,
or occasion for merry-making and license. Ben Jonson portrayed its
humors in his comedy Bartholomew Fair (1614).
16. Infantry: An ancient and honorable pun.
20. Quoited: i. e., thrown.
28. N apery: Table linen.
249:2. Bigod: See p. 82, 1. 15.
4. Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of (1647-1680): A poet, courtier,
famous wit, and infamous rake. Dorimant, in Etherege's Man of Mode,
was intended as a portrait of him.
9. Dame Ursula: Ursula is a fat pig-woman in Jonson's Bartholomew
Fair.
13. The concave: The vault of the sky.
22. Kissing-crust: The overhanging crust of a loaf.
28. "Cloth": Properly, the clergy; a joke at the expense of both parson
and sweep.
A COMPLAINT OP THE DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE
METROPOLIS
250:17. Besom: An old word for broom.
18. Alcides: Another name for Hercules.
23. Purlieus: Outskirts, environs; frequently used of shabby or dis-
reputable parts of a city. Eleventh persecution: Historians count ten gen-
eral persecutions of the Christians, from Nero to Diocletian. (Haydn's
Diet, of Dates.)
251:2. Bellum ad exterminationem: War of extermination.
10. Rates: The usual word in England for local taxes.
16. Dionysius: A tyrant of Syracuse, twice deposed.
17. Vandyke: See note, p. 99, 1. 22.
18. Ferula: Schoolmaster's rod.
21. Belisarius: A great general of the Byzantine (Roman) Empire.
The tale of his blindness and beggary is not true. Oholus: A small Greek
coin. Lamb translates it "penny" on p. 256, 1. 17.
252:3. Three-foot . . shopboard: Lamb alludes to the practice
of tailors of sitting upon their tables or counters as they sew.
14. Cresseid: In Chaucer's poem and Shakespeare's play Troilus and
Cressida, a Trojan lady who deserts her lover Troilus for the Greek Diomed.
The Scotch poet Henryson wrote a continuation to Chaucer's story. The
Testament of Cresseide, in which he makes her, now a leper, beg alms by
the wayside as Troilus rides by.
15. Other whiteness: i. c, from leprosy.
NOTES 335
16. Lazar: i. e., a leper. Clapdish: A dish with a lid to make a uoise
17. Lucian wits: See note, p. 193, 1. 3.
20. Semiramis: A legendary Assyrian queen famed for her luxury and
power.
29. "Neighbour grice" : Each grade of poverty is mocked by the grade
next above. Grice: A step.
253:12. Jostle with him for the wall: To "take the wall" of a person is
to take precedence of him; from the desirability of keeping close to the
houses to avoid the mud and filth of the ancient streets.
17. Led captain: Obsequious attendant, henchman, hanger-on.
21. Tenure: Clearly used as meaning something hke uniform, badge of
office, though the dictionaries give no such meaning; but see tenure-law,
tenure-sword in Cent. Diet.
254:9. Ballad singer: The ballad singers were not a very reputable
class of citizens, but certainly a very interesting one. See Autolycus, in
the Winter's Tale, for a pictm'e of the ballad singer of Shakespeare's day.
12. Emblems: Symbolical designs or figures, often accompanied with
words intended to convey some truth or moral, the instability of Fortune
and the shortness of life being favorite themes. Mementoes: Reminders of
death (from the Latin memento mori), often in the form of a ring with
skull and crossbones carved upon it. Dial-mottoes: Appropriately em-
phasizing the flight of time. Spital sermons: Sermons preached before
the inmates of a hospital or asylum. The Blue Coat Boys used to hear
two special spital sermons in Easter week. (Lucas.)
17. Tobit: The chief personage of the apocryphal Book of Tobit.
He became blind in his fifty-eighth year, but w^as restored by his son
Tobias, through the help of the good angel Raphael.
29. St. L ; B — rector oj .- Lamb's Key says "no meaning."
253:3. Vincent Bourne (1695-1747): An English writer of Latin verse
{Poemata, etc., 1734, and other works), "What a heart that man had, all
laid out upon town scenes . . . making a flower of everything, his
diction all Latin and his tiioughts all English." (Lamb to Wordsworth,
Apr., 1815.) Lamb published translations of his poems in Album Verses,
1830 (see Introd., p. 2 9.), the Epitaph on a Dog among them. It had first
appeared, however, in Hunt's Indicator, 1820.
256:36. A well-knoion figure: Mr. Lucas identifies the subject of the
reference as Samuel Horsey, a prominent figure in London, said to have
been known as the King of the Beggars. He gives a portrait of Horsey, but
the "machine of wood" instead of having wheels, as Lamb implies, looks
like a stumpy sled. A biography of Horsey quoted by Lucas ends thus:
"Of all other men. Horsey has the most dexterous mode of turning, or rather
swinging himself into a gin-shop. He dashes the door open by forcibly
striking the front of his sledge and himself against it."
257:12. Riots of 1780: The Gordon Riots, the result of anti-Catholic
agitation led by Lord George Gordon. Groundling: The usual meaning is
336 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
a person who stood in the pit of the old-fashicned theatre instead of taking
a stall or seat in the surrounding galleries.
13. Antceus: In Greek mythology a giant, son of the Sea and the Earth.
He was invincible so long as he touched the ground. Hercules wrestled
with him and overcame him by lifting him in the air and throttling him.
15. Elgin marbles: Sculptures taken from the Parthenon, of Athens,
and brought to England by the Earl of Elgin, 1801-3. They are in the
British Museum. They include a large part of the frieze of the temple,
in bas-relief, and magnificent figures more or less mutilated, from the
pediment. It is hardly to be doubted that Lamb had in mind particularly
the splendid recumbent male figure commonly said to represent Theseus,
or, more properly, Cephissus. (In the English name Elgin the g is hard.)
20. Mandrake: A plant whose root, commonly forked, somewhat
resembles the human form. Various superstitions attached to it; among
others, that it was supposed to shriek when pulled out of the ground. The
word was used humorously or as a term of reproach for small persons;
of. II. Henry IV, i, 2, 17, and Romeo and Juliet, iv, 3, 47.
23. Centaur, Lapithan: The Centaurs — half man, half horse — waged
a fierce war with the Lapithae, according to Greek legend. The war forms
the subject of some of the reliefs from the Parthenon among the Elgin
marbles.
26. Os sublime: Literally the uplifted countenance.
2S8:S. Lusus naturoe: Freak of nature.
9. Lusus accidentium: Victim of mischances.
28. Yorick: See note, p. 140, 1. 10.
259:8. Peckham: A suburb of London, now built up.
11. Bartimeus: A blind beggar whose sight was restored by Christ.
See Mark, X, 46-52.
260:9. Mumping: Whining, beseeching. See p. 84, 1. 16.
13. Beadswoman: See note, p. 58, 1. 15.
14. My friend L ; Lamb himself.
24. "The Beggar's Petition": "A stock piece for infant recitation a
hundred years ago." (Lucas.)
27. Goldsmith, Oliver (1728-1774): English poet, novelist, dramatist,
and miscellaneous writer: The Citizen of the World (1764), The Traveller
(1765), The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), The Good Natured Man (1768), The
Deserted Village (1770), She Stoops to Conquer (1774).
261:4. Against Wordsworth: In his celebrated preface to the Lyrical
Ballads (2nd edition, 1800) Wordsworth had objected to the insincerity
and artifice of conventional "poetic diction," and hac? announced the
principle of the experiment in poetry which he undertook in his con-
tributions to the Lyrical Ballads; viz, to treat subjects drawn from common
life in a selection of the language actually used by men in ordinary talk.
NOTES 337
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG
6. My friend M- .■ Thomas Manning, the Chinese traveler, who did
tell Lamb a story of some sort on which this extravaganza was based.
11. Confucius (550-478 B. C): A celebrated Chinese philosopher.
17. Ho-ti: It is possible that this fanciful name is nothing but the Greek
indefinite neuter pronoun on, meaning anything, dressed up to look like
Chinese. Bo-bo: From booby? Mast: Acorns, beechnuts, and the like.
24. Antediluvian: Ancient; literally, before the Deluge.
262:21. Crackling: The crisp rind of roasted pork.
264:17. Assize town: Assizes are sessions of court held twice a year
by general commission issued to the judges of the High Court of Justice,
in each of the coimties of England and Wales.
26S:25. Mundus edihilis: Edible world.
26. Princeps obsoniorum: Chief of viands.
29. Hobbledehoys: Raw striplings, as yet hardly men.
31. Arnor immunditioe : Love of filth, which Lamb suggests is the
original sin of pigkind.
266:21. The string: By which he is hung before the open fire.
23. Radiant jellies — shooting stars: "Messrs. Hallward and Hill have
this interesting note: 'In Donne's Eclogues there is a reference to the
superstition that shooting stars left jellies behind them when they fell:
"As he that sees a star fall runs apace
And finds a jelly fti the place." ' " (Lucas.)
30. Filthy conversation: Conversation here means behavior.
267:8. Sapors: i. e., delicacies (Latin sapor taste, whence savoury).
See note, p. 190, 1. 31.
20. Batten: To grow fat.
268:3. Villatic: Of the barnyard.
4. Brawn: Boar's flesh; also head-cheese.
15. My good old aunt: See p. 65 and p. 138-9. But very likely Lamb
is here writing of another aunt (John Lamb, the elder, had two sisters, as
we know from his will), for Aunt Hetty lived with the Lambs in the
Temple; and London Bridge would not be at all on his way to school from
there. The implication is that the "hohday" was spent away from home.
Mr. Lucas somewhat doubtfully accepts this view {Works, Vol. I., p. 25,
note) .
16. Nice: i. e., particular, scrupulously careful.
269:18. Intenerating and dulcifying: Making tender and sweet.
25. St. Omer's: A Jesuit college. Of course Lamb was never there.
Incidentally he pokes a little fun at the triviality of much of the discussion
induced by the study of casuistry and scliolastic logic.
270:4. Barbecue: To roast whole.
6. Shalots: A sort of onions.
338 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF TPIE BEHAVIOR OF MARRIED
PEOPLE
271:24. Usufruct: In law, temporary enjoyment of property that
Ibelongs to another.
272:16. Made free of the company: See note, p. 116., 1. 26.
273:7. Phoenixes: The phoenix was a fabulous bird which, after a
solitary existence of 500 years or so, the only one of its kind in the world,
renewed its youth in a fire of its own kindling.
18. Churching of women: "A title popularly given to the liturgical form
of thanksgiving for women after childbirth." {Cent Diet.)
274:21. Per se: In themselves.
275:22. They: The wives.
276:12. A humorist: As on p. 48, 1. 13; i. e., a person of caprice, — a
crank.
278:18. Testacea: In imitation of the practice (common in satire) of
indicating a person by an appositely invented name. Lamb calls the lady
Testacea because he goes on to speak of oysters! (Testacea are shellfish.)
Similarly Cerasia, from the Latin word for cheri'ies.
25. Morellas: "To 'Morellas' [in The Reflector] was this footnote:
•J don't know how to spell this word; I mean Morella cherries.' "*' (Lucas.)
The Morello is a dark-red cultivated variety, much esteemed.
ON THE ACTING*OF MUNDEN
279: title. On the acting of Munden: The text as here printed (see
note, p. 204, title) is all that Lamb saved for the collected Elia essays from
the London Magazine paper, which in its turn had been reprinted from the
Examiner of Nov. 7 and 8, 1819. Munden: See note, p. 220, 1. 21. Lamb
wrote a comic Autobiography of Mr. Munden for the London, 1825.
4. Cockletop: A credulous old man in O'Keeffe's farce, Modern
Antiques.
27. Edwin: There were two John Edwins, father (1749-1790) and
son (17G8-1805), both actors. (Lucas.)
<280:4. Farley, Knight, Liston: Contemporary comedians. Lamb wrote
a fictitious Biographical Memoir of Mr. Liston for the London, 1825, of
which he said in a letter: "Of all, the lies I ever 'put off' I value this most."
9. Hydra: A fabulous Greek monster with nine heads, each of which,
toeing cut off, was immediately succeeded by two new ones. Hercules
killed it by scorching the stumps as fast as he cut off the heads.
18. River-horse: Hippopotamus.
20. Sir Christopher Curry: In Colman's Inkle and Yarico.
21. Old Dornton: See note p. 220, 1. 21.
31. Sessa: An obsolete interjection of uncertain meaning.
30 i
NOTES 339
281:1. The Cobbler of Preston: A play by Charles Johnson (1716) founded
on The Taming of the Shrew. (Lucas.)
9. Cassiopeia's chair: One of the northern constellations, on the op-
posite side of the pole star from the Great Bear, or Dipper.
11. A beggar, etc.: That is, Michael Angelo (see note, p. 174, 1. 2 7)
could glorify even a beggar by his art.
12. Fuseli: A Swiss-English painter and art critic (1741-1825).
17. Platonic idea: Plato taught the doctrine of the existence of ideas
as entities in themselves, the patterns, as it were, of actual concrete things.
See pp. 90, 1. 22; 152, 1. 24; 220, 1. 3.
18. Quiddity: True essential quality.
MODERN GALLANTRY
24. Females: See an article in Harper's Magazine for August, 1906,
where Professor Loimsbury discusses the changes of fashion in the use of
words, particularly noticing the vogue of /emaZe for "woman" in the early
part of the last century and the present avoidance of it in that sense.
282:8. Dorimant: A witty fashionable libertine in Etherege's comedy
The Man of Mode, "a type of the brazen faced lady-killer."
28. Lothbury: A district and street in London, once the centre of the
pewterers' and candlestick-makers' trade.
283:16. 'Has "overstood her markef : Has outlasted the demand.
20. Joseph Paice: A merchant and director of the South-Sea Company,
who took Lamb into his office (about 1789 or 1790) to learn bookkeeping,
got him into the South-Sea House in 1791, and into the East India House
in 1792. (Lucas.)
22. Edwards, Thomas (1699-1757): An English critic; wrote Canons of
Criticism upon the appearance of Warburton's edition of Shakespeare,
(1747).
28. Though bred a Presbyterian: The sect of the Presbyterians was
recruited chiefly from the plain people of the middle classes.
284:2. Casualties: Chance circumstances.
17. Preux Chevalier: Perfect knight; literally, knight of prowess.
18. Sir Calidore: In The Faerie Queene the type of perfect courtesy.
Sir Tristan: One of the knights of Arthur's court, introduced by Spenser
into The Faerie Queene. He slays a discourteous knight, in defence of a
lady, and is made a squire by Calidore.
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